Hello, it is Wednesday and I am back with a new chapter! Originally, the concept of this chapter was just meant to be a daydream just for me. It's safe to say that I spend a decent amount of time in my head, pondering ideas that will get written and others just for me and simply because I love thinking about all of the characters! Soon enough, however, I knew that I wanted to write it and I had a chance to try something new when I realised I didn't want to turn it into a chapter of the usual length. I wanted it to just be a moment - hence the title. I hope you enjoy. We revisit James and Jorginho once again. And this time, I think it becomes crystal clear the true, deep nature of their dynamic :)

Ages:

Jorginho: 48

James: 48

Disclaimer: I own the story and the OCs mentioned!

The low light of the autumn sunset bled through the windows of James' office and bathed the room in a citrussy glow. Everything was perfect. At least, that was how Jorginho felt.

He scarcely lifted his head to glance at the clock hanging on the main wall and did not need to nod. There was nothing he needed to do. No dishes were left waiting for him on the kitchen counter tops. The groceries for the week had been ordered. Jorgie and Johnny were staying for tea at a friend's house after their day with the home-education group in the community hall. Their usual pick up had been postponed.

There was nothing to do. There was nothing else to do other than live in harmony with the present moment. To bask in the sweet nothingness.

It was perfect.

Jorginho may not have bothered lifting his weighty head up from the carpet which he had been lying flat out on like a star from heaven in order to properly check the time. But he did bother leaning it back, following the silhouette of his strong nose and tilting his head as far as his neck would allow without pain.

A dimple like a segment of a tangerine cut a hole in his cheek as he noted James right behind him. He had of course always known that he was sitting there. But seeing him did make him smile. Hearing him made him smile even more so.

With a blissful sigh, Jorginho settled his head back against the carpet and allowed his eyes to fall shut. And he listened.

James' guitar hummed, sang, and poured its hollow heart out to the tunes that they had both selected to play on the record player and it caused Jorginho to grow lost in some sort of daydream. At first, he had been captured by the melodies of James' oldest guitar. Now he had fallen victim to reverie.

It fascinated him how James' taste had hardly changed since they were young adults. Even with all the new music that he stumbled across and even formed a close union with, he was very much drawn to a similar thing within each piece that could hardly be described with human words. It was more to do with feeling. It was a visceral thread.

Even if James had discovered new music to tuck inside his heart over the years. Even if James' own son's records were added to the collection! His taste was one of the things about him that hadn't changed at all.

And it made Jorginho able to kid himself that they were still nineteen years old, unjaded by life and wide eyed with possibility. They had everything up in front of them rather than being right in the middle of it all.

Anybody could have told Jorginho that they still had things ahead of them. Anybody could have reassured him especially that he still had new chapters of life to live. But these were his private thoughts. And for once, he was not desperate to share them with anybody, not even to allow his musings to scratch letters in his journal.

Jorginho's eyes fluttered open as one song on an album made way for the next one to take center stage and without missing a beat, James' fingers moved in perfect synonymity. They started to dance to that new melody without hesitation.

It was not this, however, that caused the butterfly wings of Jorginho's eyes to spread apart. Perhaps even he did not know why he felt the urge to open them. And yet, he was aware of his next thoughts, his new thoughts, as he gazed around the room of James' office.

Jorginho's jaw that was lightly speckled with the scruff of his greying beard clenched together as eyes as wide and deep as home-cooked chocolate pudding took in all that there was to see. Some of it even looked back at him.

Photos from the decades of James' life that he had missed cast empathetic gazes down at him. Jorginho shuffled, moving on to musical heroes of James' as he felt that they looked at him with more encouragement than his relatives did.

James had always had the same heroes. They had always shared the same heroes too. They both had been infected by the disease of yearning to travel and Jorginho was reminded of this as his eyes took in the maps slapped with tape onto the wall to hold them up, marked with drawing pins, telling Jorginho stories of where he had been even if James had not yet told him himself.

He couldn't help but wonder, had they ever boarded the same plane when they had not spoken for more than twenty years? Had they checked into the same hotel? Had both he and James thrown a drawing pin towards a map as if it were a dart and the head of it buried into an area only a hairline away on paper but miles in reality?

Had they always been destined to lose each other and then find each other all over again?

Jorginho had never been able to make his mind up about that. So once again, he did not bother, and he directed his gaze to a rare patch on James' wall that was not decorated by anything other than paint.

No pictures of people that took up the most space in his heart. No maps showing both places adored and lands yet to be visited. No drawings or paintings that he had done. That Justin had done. That Jorgie had done. No tattoo ideas. Sketches of an outfit for Misty.

What was it like to be so connected to people? And what was it like to have a life like he did? To be so needed.

Jorginho's eyes fell shut all over again, this time with the addition of his brow plaiting together on his face, as he could not stop his mind from wondering down this road.

He had never been able to make up his mind whether he had wanted to be James or to be with him. Recent months had made it as equally clearer as it had distorted.

What was it like to be him? To breathe the air that he did? To engulf the food that he chose? To have a wife. To have a home. To have paid off a mortgage. To have browsed a catalogue of paint colors and furniture and to produce ideas of how to decorate your home with your wife. With your girlfriend.

What was it like to always have to think about somebody else?

Jorginho had never had that.

This notion bled into his heart at the precise moment that the glow of the sunset casting into the room was more tangerine than it was orange, was more reflective than comforting.

Not that Jorginho ever told people of this, but even when he had had some semblance of a marital life, he hadn't really had it at all. He worked himself to the bone. She was the ruler of the house, even if he paid all the bills. There was never any balance. Certainly not the kind that he had witnessed Jessie and James portraying right in front of his eyes.

For him, there had been no dance, revolving around somebody and their life and joining together in perfect harmony. There had been only steps out of place. There had only been chaos.

Why was he always destined for such chaos?

God, Jorginho secretly had an idea why, and it made him feel like he had swallowed the sand of the egg timer balancing perfectly on James' work desk.

However, before his mind could piece an answer into sentences, or he could even allow a grunt to tumble from his lips with the desperation to not let his mind wander down that road, James was making more sounds. New songs.

He was talking to him.

Like an umbrella shielding him from a rainstorm, James' finger curiously having left his guitar and tracing along his frown lines between his eyebrows allowed his mood to remain warm and dry.

When Jorginho's eyes tumbled open, they met the kindest gaze that they had ever known.

"You look very deep in thought there." James observed. He did not ask to be clued into what was taking up so much space in Jorginho's mind. He did not even ask if he was okay. He merely stated. And Jorginho had to watch as James' fingers left him all over again and wrapped back around the neck of his guitar.

Jorginho didn't smile, but his shoulders did shuffle, and this told James that he was right. He usually was. Another thing that he did not spell aloud was that is fingers did not have to move away so quickly. Jorginho did not like to say that they had been welcome right there.

But they had.

James' fingers may have left to give Jorginho space to think if he saw fit, but they had left the record player singing its melodies on its own.

It was this that caused Jorginho to say something. Or maybe it was just James in all his James-ness that caused his thoughts to spill.

They had both gotten pretty used to talking about everything recently.

"I understand why you quit Team Rocket." Jorginho said, and for a second time, his head tilted backwards, waiting for James' response. Deep down, he had no idea what it was going to be. He equally had no idea whether he had actually said these words a lot.

He had thought about them so much over the years. Certainly, in the past year. But he had never imagined that he would be able to say them aloud.

James did not appear to be shocked, and Jorginho did not know how he felt about this, his hands meeting together over his torso and entwining as he waited for more enlightenment.

In fact, for once, James did not appear to be anything. All he was, was present. And he blinked his soulful eyes from behind his glasses and took a long time to consider his own response before he set it free like a caged bird.

"Do you?" Was all he said from between a pair of lips that looked as if they did not know whether they wanted to chew on each other, or clamp shut for the foreseeable. At last, he was something other than present.

However, Jorginho still could not tell whether he was glad about this or not. All he could feel was that he could not believe they were having this conversation.

He shuffled again, imagining that the floor had suddenly grown very itchy underneath him and his carpet cradle was not so welcoming after all.

Why was James hardly saying anything? This is what made Jorginho wonder if he really had said anything at all. Why was he not scoffing? Or worse, why was he not laughing in his face, telling him that it was a little too late to be saying that, even if he was spluttering with jest rather than resentment?

Jorginho did not know that James had privately wondered if he would ever hear these words after more than twenty years. But he still knew – or hoped – that it would mean a lot to him that he finally had managed to spell them out. Verbally rather than discreetly in his number of poetry books as he had done since they had stopped being twenty-four years old.

"Yeah." Jorginho's lips made this sound and what was beginning to make his insides squirm more than his body on the carpet was how straight-forward this conversation was behaving. It was a little too straight forward.

Maybe he had gone straight past reverie and fallen into dreamland! Into wonderland, perhaps.

But James put down his guitar and ran a hand straight from his own forehead and through his darkening, bobbed locks and Jorginho knew that he was not dreaming.

He did not dream about James doing those kinds of things. He dreamed about him in nearly every scenario. But not that. Never so simple. So straight forward.

"Why?" James posed a question, this time his voice softening to a whisper even if he did not mean to. And now that he had put his guitar down on the carpet, a good few meters on the other side of Jorginho, and he had stopped tussling his own hair, Jorginho knew that he meant it when his hand fell against the carpet. Right next to him, to prop himself up.

Somehow within that gesture, was one hundred percent James. Somehow within that motion, there was emotion. Within that movement, there was them. There was history. And it made Jorginho feel as though he could look straight at James as he formed words that had been a long time coming.

His body had never been more still. Never had been so sure.

"Well…" After being so sure, he was suddenly frozen. But like how he usually bravely smiled, showing off a dimple in the face of a lump in the throat or even sheer panic, he breathed through it and collected his thoughts. And what thoughts they were. "If this was the kind of life waiting for me then I would quit too."

There it was. There it was. James had merely only been holding out for the right moment. Realization like a crashing wave of the ocean swamped Jorginho and at once he knew.

Of course.

Only one of them could be heartfelt and emotionally driven at a time. When it was ones turn to bleed, it was the others turn to hold space and be a bandage. Now the time had come for Jorginho to be present, to be still. So, it was time for James to ooze.

He reacted to these words after more than two decades in the only way that he knew how.

With that hand momentarily leaving the carpet to traipse through his own locks once again to seek reassurance, James' eyelashes clapped together before his meadow orbs could grow swampy and he headed into vulnerability without a second thought.

Jorginho still did not know and did not think he would ever know how James possessed such a willingness to ache. To wither. And to suffer.

"You can… You can have any sort of life that you want to, Jorginho." James told him, showing that he was still a human underneath all his determination to feel deeply by needing to look away from Jorginho's naturally yearning eyes for a few seconds. "I mean… I know it's out there for you. Always have known." There was a loose thread on his jeans that needed to be played with. "If anybody can align with it…"

James did not need to spell it out that if there was anyone who was going to be able to align with the right path for them then it was Jorginho. He knew more than anybody that he had tried so many things in his life. Been tempted by so many different paths. Had had his brain chemistry altered more than once.

And yet, when James stood face to face with Jorginho, when they were toe to toe or their hearts were racing up against each other's, he felt that he had never changed one bit. Jorginho had always been solace for him.

It was a pity that it had taken more than just a small handful of years to be able to sit with that, let alone embrace all the questions that that notion prompted.

James heard Jorginho's throat lurch as he swallowed, and he knew it was time to forget the fraying thread on his jeans and to look back down at him. He looked down at him only literally as he saw his dimple slice open his cheek out of habit and the crow's feet etch by his eyes but not out of happiness.

Jorginho's heart had opened so much since the start of summer. But he still did not believe that he was meant for the thing that was on paper so easy but in practice so complex.

"My life is so different, James." Jorginho began and they both were no fool to the fact that this was a raw conversation. However, when they said each other's names, it felt basic. It felt like they were still two nineteen-year-olds whispering into the night because Meowth had fallen asleep at barely midnight. "My heart is so different…" James' own heart thumped up to his throat as Jorginho's hand with that tiny tattoo of his feebly gestured to the organ inside his chest. They did not ignore that his voice had cracked before he leaned into James' bravery. "Sometimes I think that my only chance of it is to latch onto somebody else's dream..."

James had to swallow and exhale out of his nostrils so that his heart would settle back into his own chest while Jorginho's was jumping around rapidly inside of his ribcage. Not that you could tell by looking at him. Not that you could tell by looking at either of them.

James had thought as much. He had asked this question himself. He could certainly hear Lynne's voice drumming this possibility into him during the middle of the night when even Jorginho was sound asleep.

He had been so lucky to have just a piece of Jorginho since the first leaf on the tree in his garden had turned brown and crumbled to the floor. They had formed a bit of family, they had, with the two of them and Jorgie and Johnny too. They had gotten into their own rhythm, their own dance.

James would be a fool to think that it would last forever. He knew that Lynne would return. And along with the return of the flap of her wings, the wind would blow in another direction and Jorginho would breeze out of the door.

He tried not to think of it as much as he accepted it as fact. As much as he knew that Jorginho was destined for things bigger than their little family. His heart would collapse when Jorginho left the front door for good.

But James had always known that someone was out there waiting for Jorginho. Waiting to give him the life he had always dreamed of. Even if Jorginho did not believe in it himself so much that he had told himself that he was happy with just a crumb of domesticity.

That he was happy to pick up James' children from the community hall. That he was happy to go to the shops to get the snacks for movie night. That he was happy to take up the last of his Team Rocket leave because of the three of them and to spend his time brushing up on another pediatric course.

He was. He was happy. Happier than he had been in a very long time. That was probably why he didn't imagine that there was something else out there for him.

What could be better than the unfaltering presence of your best friend as you fell? Even if these stumbling words were too life-altering to write down for any sort of poem, let alone be spoken aloud.

"You can have any dream you want, Jorginho…" James suddenly told him, easing the two of them out of any of the thoughts that either of them was having and the touch of his fingers making their way back to Jorginho's brow easing his face into a natural smile. And that was before even the next words came. "And anyway… I'll happily dream with you anytime."

And with that, James' cooling and comforting pads of his fingers lingered on Jorginho's brow a little while longer before being called elsewhere. It was time for the last song on the album. And James was itching to say even more without saying anything at all.

Jorginho could heavily feel James break the distance with him when he did. But then he felt his fingers moving and his guitar sung and more than just a natural smile broke out on his face. Within his features was the dawn of a new day.

Crow's feet cracked the skin around his eyes and portrayed joy after unease. His dimple sliced open his skin, but nobody felt wounded. Jorginho's smile stretched wide. And his brown eyes were full of warmth. Were full of friendship. Were full of knowing.

If this was his path, then he was so blessed to take it. And if there was anything more waiting for him then he would use all these lessons to allow his heart to be tapped into for good.

You couldn't see it with your eyes. This was another thing to only be felt with your heart, but if anybody had been watching, then you would have been able to imagine the final stitch of Jorginho's heart dissolving. It had at last fallen away. The last card had fluttered to the floor.

The first step of the new path had been trodden.

But for the time being, oh how happy Jorginho was to be on the carpet with James and simply being present with each other. Present with their companionship. Their history. Their downfall. Their climb. Their affection. Their love. They sat with all these things as well as each other and the nothingness as the sunset bled into the darkening of the sky and that particular day hinted of a future tomorrow.

But again, for the time being, Jorginho took the time to break the distance with James since he always taught him a new way. A new path. A new love.

James' heart smiled too when he felt Jorginho shuffle backwards on the carpet and ended up with his cheek brushing the side of his thigh while he played with his guitar and following the view past his nose and to right there James was.

Jorginho looked past his nose and found everything that he had been searching for and more. It was then and there that he knew that the silence between them had been destined. It had paved the path for a kind of solidarity that sung louder than any record.

Sometimes tales aren't huge stories. Sometimes they are just moments. And this is the moment that changed everything. Without even realizing that nothing had to change at all.

James and Jorginho were still nineteen at heart. And they would always have each other tucked right up inside there. Whoever they had since become. And would continue to be. Right by each other's sides.

The End.

There you go! Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed :) So yes, after about a year and a half of me writing about Jorginho and knowing Jorginho and the truth about his relationship with James, it finally becomes obvious! I knew all along that this was going to be the nature of their dynamic. I just didn't know how I was going to tackle it, to tell you the truth. You see, Jorginho has known that he isn't straight since he was a teenager but for James, well, it was a much later in life revelation. And to be honest, he realises because of someone else - someone not Jorginho - but that's for another story! The reason that I've never written about it is because the person James discovered that side of his sexuality with is in the closet and seeing as these stories take place from Pikachu's view, that story is something that people aren't to know. I wouldn't say that James is in the closet also. By this point, he knows how he feels - and the people closest to him do. I'm still not sure if Pikachu is one of those people. I think Pikachu knows as much as James tells him (which excludes many of the details) and he doesn't dream of asking around to learn anything new, so on that front, I think we can begin to learn some of these tales I've pondered how to tackle for a while. But they might be a bit vague sometimes! I love this moment in James and Jorginho's lives and clearly they do as well. Their romance is on and off for seven months, beginning one summer and ending in December. This is the height of it though. With Lynne "up there", they have a chance to explore something that has been on at least one of their minds since they were in their twenties. I look forward to tackling this subject even more now you're a bit more clued in :P Anyway, enough from me! Thanks again for reading and I will be back on the 28th to update Rocket Daze so see you there perhaps!

Amy signing out :)