SEVEN AM | hope, improved insight and perspective
Red jerks awake when he hears, of all things, the sound of a vacuum outside the bedroom door at seven in the morning.
The whirring noise itself is startling enough – he hasn't heard a vacuum ever since he left Pallet Town – but nothing is more startling than emerging from the room to find the culprit who broke his sleep, only to discover that the disturber is Green.
Red blinks at Green, then at the vacuum, then at Green again.
"Er – sorry about that," Green says after a moment, rolling up the device's cord in his hand. "You usually act dead anyway so I didn't think a vacuum would actually wake you up."
He shrugs – of course, it's never his fault – and tugs the vacuum away into the hall closet. "It's what you deserve for tracking mud into my place. So deal with it."
For a rare moment, Red is not just silent, but speechless.
Red remembers when they were seven.
Green barged through his front door with pokeballs he stole from Oak's lab, running in circles and arms out as though he were soaring freely on a Pidgeot. Red rushed down the stairs to greet his new friend, but stopped dead in his tracks when his mother got to Green first with a rare edge to her voice.
"Green! Your shoes are filthy!" His mother sighed in exasperation, not used to dealing with a child as wild as Green. "Dear, you're tracking mud all over my clean carpet…"
"So what? It'll come out! Let's go, Red!" Green grabbed his hand before Red could point out the filth as well, and dragged him outside towards the tall grass.
"Green," Red finally said, after catching his breath. "That wasn't nice."
"Tch, you still worried about that?" Green tossed a pokeball up and laughed without a care in the world. "She'll clean it up! What do grown-ups know, anyway? It's just a stupid carpet."
Red shifted on his feet and frowned at the grass enclosing them within the town. "You shouldn't steal from your grandpa's lab. He told us not to come out here…"
He knew it would annoy his friend, a boy who received endless lectures from the tiny family he had already, but Green grabbed at Red's hands again, looking more determined and desperate than ever.
"Red. We're best friends, right? Right?"
Green didn't let go when Red gave a hesitant nod, and kept holding him as they trekked through the grass together.
Despite being scolded and grounded that night, Green stole pokeballs again the next week and repeated the process again.
Red finds himself speechless again when Green takes their plates and starts cleaning them.
The apartment is wealthy and comes with a dishwasher with plenty of space for a pair, but Green still spends a few minutes scraping stray bits of bread and vegetables away before slipping them into the washer. Leaving them in the sink seems perfectly acceptable to Red, but Green continues working until no food and dishes are left astray in the kitchen.
"What?" he barks, very well feeling the pair of eyes on him, and Red ducks his head.
"Weirdo," Green mutters to himself, moving to the living room. "It's like you've never seen someone do dishes before."
Red remembers visiting Green's house when he turned eight.
"Don't you want more cake, Red? Promise I won't make you pay for it!" Green laughed at his own joke as he waved the spatula harder in Red's face. Red politely shook his head and held his plate away; he just wanted to move upstairs to Green's room and play, like they were supposed to as best friends.
Red's eyes flickered over to Professor Oak's gifts to his grandson on the table: Pokemon toys, Pokemon books, Pokemon plushies, Pokemon everything. There was nothing Red particularly wanted to play with, but if Green was having fun, then Red supposed he could, too.
Daisy's lectures snapped him out of his thoughts, and Red quickly collected up his dishes and slid them next to the sink before they got worse.
"See? Red puts his dishes away, and he's younger than you!" Green only rolled his eyes at his sister's wagging finger, never one to shy away from escalating the situation. "You're getting to be a big boy now, and you should be sharing some of the responsibilities around here."
"Whatever! You can't tell me what to do!" Green rushed upstairs before Daisy could retort or call in their grandfather, carrying his Pokemon gifts with him but leaving Red behind.
Red lays back on the couch and holds Pikachu up in the air, smiling at how his companion stretches out his limbs and attempts to squeak airplane noises through Pokemon language. They both pretend they're back on Mount Silver, before the new Champion came, before Green came, before Red realized how much he had missed in his years away.
He hears Eevee's footsteps trail around the living room, following Green protectively as he collects – laundry?
Pikachu makes an offended noise when one of Red's hands nearly slips.
"Do you need anything washed?" Green asks in the middle of a yawn. He hoists the laundry basket higher up his hip. "You better be using those other clothes I got you, by the way. I earn my paycheck for me, not a dumbass freeloader like you."
Green patiently waits through Red's silence and bizarre staring, but gives up after a few seconds and rolls his eyes.
"Not my fault if you start smelling like a Koffing," he says.
Red remembers feeling nervous after he turned nine, and he couldn't shake the feeling that he would be alone very, very soon.
His companion – friend? best friend? – tightened the pack around his waist, brand new clothes and brand new accessories that would just get dirty by tomorrow, and walked faster through the tall grass, forcing Red to run just to keep up. He was beginning to suspect Green liked making him run just to keep up all the time.
"You're too slow," Green growled, kicking a rock. "I'm not gonna find you if you get lost. Cry to your mom for that!"
Rebellion raged within him, but Red kept his fists at his side. They already got in trouble earlier for fighting, but it was only because Green shoved at him and called him names. It was only because Green got mad when Red didn't want to see wild Pokemon. It was only because it was all Green's fault.
With his mind miles away, he didn't notice the stray tree root in the middle of his path and tripped over it, falling hard into the dirt. Green made fun of him for being clumsy when they were younger, so Red was better now, and managed to get by with only a scraped palm, scraped knee, and dirty clothes. But he was still young and it felt like everything stung, but he sunk his teeth into his lips and refused to cry.
"Red?" Green retraced his steps and pushed aside the grass, catching his trembling friend on the ground. "What the heck did you do?"
"…Tripped," Red said once he was sure his voice wouldn't shake with the rest of him. He clung to his knee and hissed when his fingers brushed over the torn skin. "I'm fine."
For a moment, he thought Green would leave him behind like he previously warned, but Green plopped down to his side and rummaged through his pack, pulling out small wipes and Pikachu-pattern bandages.
"No, you're not, you big baby," Green argued, but it was a weak argument. Red watched in amazement as Green – wild, rude, independent Green – tore open a wipe and took his hand to inspect the dirt.
"These are gonna sting a little." He smirked. "You're not gonna cry, right?"
Red took a breath and shook his head. "'M not a baby."
"Are, too," Green retorted, and pressed down the wipe before Red could argue back. Despite the pain and delay in their hike, they laughed at each other.
On their way back later that evening, Green had to smack Red's head to get him to pay attention to the route and not at the Pikachu bandages on his hand and knee.
"Pay attention or you'll trip again, dummy!" Green moved to shove at his shoulder, but Red had kept up fast enough to shove first.
"I'm not a dummy. Don't call me that." He clenched his fist hard enough to wrinkle the bandage in his palm. "You're being really mean, Green."
"Whatever." Green stomped ahead to his own house, not even bothering to wave goodbye to his friend – neighbor. "I don't wanna hang out with a dummy anyway."
Green slammed the door before Red could give him thanks for the bandages, or maybe it was because Red was too fascinated with the Pikachu pattern to notice Green standing on the porch, waiting for him, waiting for anything to prove they would still be all right, but Red simply missed out on that.
"No, slice the bread like this. Honestly, Red, it's not like you're doing fossil science. What, have you made Venusaur cut all your food the entire time?"
"Yes," Red deadpans, and Green rubs his forehead harder.
"Forget I even asked. You gonna manage?"
"I'm fine," Red says, which is soon followed by, "–Ow."
Green returns to the kitchen faster than a hurricane. "What did you do?"
"Nothing. Just cut myself." Green knows him too well, and grabs Red's wrist before Red can pop his finger into his mouth.
"Don't lick it, dumbass. Who knows where that hand has been?"
Red wants to respond with the obvious on the bread, but Green drags him away to the bedroom and shoves him down to the bed before rushing to the bathroom.
"Sit," he orders from the bathroom without even looking, and Red sits back down with a huff. Green really does know him too well.
Green returns with a small blue box, resembling the ones he gave to Red on Mount Silver before taking him by the ear and tugging him back to civilization. The wipes look and sting the same way, and most of the bandages are generic tone colors for generic adults, but Green manages to stumble upon more colorful ones at the bottom.
"Geez, these are old," he mutters, peeling away the paper wrapping. "Whatever, they'll work for a small cut. So don't complain."
Green will probably tease him later for it, but Red can't help smiling back at the Pikachu pattern wrapped around his finger.
"…Thank you."
"It's about time you thanked me." Green smirks – genuinely, at least – and leans forward to accept Red's payment of a kiss.
Red remembers when Green first raged through the blizzard and yelled out years' worth of frustrations in only a few minutes.
He remembers Green visiting constantly, annoyingly, determined to bring Red back and repent for whatever agony Green claimed Red put him through.
He remembers being surprised at himself when he finally caught on to why his rival was doing all this, and especially remembers Green's surprise when Red initiated the first kiss.
He remembers knocking on his own house's front door, having lost the key in the snow ages ago, and the look on his mother's face.
He remembers moving in with Green and passing the time by watching Green clean the kitchen, buy groceries, take Eevee out for walks, pay the bills, and send research to the League every month to keep his gym funded. Sometimes Red wonders where the friend he knew as a child went, and thinks that maybe this simply won't work, just as their pseudo-friendship from childhood didn't work. It seems like he can never keep up with Green.
"Hey, idiot. Stop hogging the covers."
"Sorry." Red shoves some away, but Green catches up to him first and simply squirms closer to him instead, wrapping the covers around both of them.
"Sure you are. You're just lucky you're a likable idiot."
Green plants gentle kisses on the back of Red's neck, so light and affectionate that Red almost misses it. But he's missed enough in his time away, how people have changed and still remained the same all at once, so he rolls over and threads his fingers through Green's wild hair, taking in all the features of someone he never knew he missed the most.