Chapter Text
People never believed Green Oak when he told them he’d grown up on an apple farm, which he had learned to take as a compliment.
Really, he couldn’t blame them- ever since he’d skipped the hick town where he’d lived for the first seventeen years of his life for the big city, he’d been actively trying to suppress any vestiges of his childhood that remained. He’d taught himself how to act more like a northerner, donated every flannel button-down and pair of blue jeans in his wardrobe, and made an effort to ditch all of the more rootsy sayings in his lexicon. People in the city spoke their boring phrases in straight tones with rhoticity, so Green cut out all of the lilts and shifted vowels that had previously characterized his speech. He was so unconvincing as a former country boy that, for one-off interactions with strangers he didn’t particularly care about, he would lie about where he was from. It didn’t really matter where he’d been born and raised, what mattered is where he lived now.
Even during his early years, he’d never felt quite like he belonged in the farming settlement of Pallet Town, a place that was really only granted the status of ‘town’ for the purposes of municipal governing. There was a general store, a post office, and that was about it. Even their main street wasn’t paved over- you’d get gravel roads if you were lucky, but more often than not you’d be stuck driving on dirt- a pain, considering how much rain was dumped over the settlement thanks to their proximity to the foot of Mt. Silver. Getting around was a lot harder when you had to worry about getting stuck in a mud pit, so it was honestly a blessing that Green hadn’t needed to leave the property all that often.
Most kids were homeschooled, as the closest public school was over an hour away by bus, and Pallet Town was so sparsely populated that the Viridian Board of Education didn’t even bother extending the offer of transportation. It wasn’t like the average youngin’ in Pallet was all that interested in their schooling anyways, as it was the expectation that they would take over the family farms once their parents got too old. Green only had one sibling- a sister named Daisy who was seven years older than him. Every other kid Green had known growing up had at least five siblings, done to heighten the odds that at least one of them would be interested in sowing crops for a living. Daisy loved the peaceful nature of country living, but she had gone off to university and never came back, leaving Green as the assumed inheritor of the Oak family orchard, a role he’d played into up until the very last second. It had always been his plan to leave as soon as he turned eighteen, but knowing that his parents would never have allowed it, especially with Daisy already out of the house, he’d hidden that part of himself, which wasn’t all that hard. It wasn’t like they were keeping that close of an eye on him.
Green, for one, had received almost all of his education sitting in the dusty attic of his parents’ old farmhouse, the only place on the entire property with decent internet service. Said parents had taught him the basics, but the second that Green had figured out how to use a computer, he was left to his own devices. That was how it had been with most things- they weren’t the most ‘hands on’ parents, which, funnily enough, had given Green the maturity and independence he had needed to get out as early as possible. He hadn’t said a word to them since he’d packed up and left, and seeing as his ma and pa never bothered reaching out, the lack of desire for any sort of familial connection went both ways, which was fine with Green. Whether it was his independence that allowed him to flourish on his own or his absent parents that necessitated the development of strong independence, he didn’t know- it was a real chicken or the egg scenario, but instead of being predicated on a faulty understanding of evolution, it was founded on parental neglect.
Whatever, though- he didn’t need them. He didn’t need to define himself in relation to his relatives. The only two things ‘Oak’ about him were his last name and genome, neither of which really mattered in a big city like Saffron. He may be the spitting image of his father, but that meant a lot less where said father wasn’t one fiftieth of the population. In Pallet, he had always been ‘Sammy’s prissy son’ or ‘the Oak boy- the one that’s pretty like a woman’ or some of the most obscure euphemisms for ‘gay’ known to the Kantonian language. One time he’d been called a ‘corn shucker’- which, hey, he had to give credit where credit was due. If someone from Pallet was going to be homophobic, at least they were going to get creative with it. People in the city would just call you a queer or a fag, which just felt lazy after so many years of borderline poetic harassment.
Things in Saffron City were a lot more interesting than the dirt roads of Pallet, that was for sure. Between the thousands of residents from all around the globe and the flourishing arts scene, there really was never a dull moment. Everything was moving all of the time, the exact opposite of Pallet Town, where nothing changed except for the seasons. Saffron was loud and bright and busy, sometimes overwhelmingly so, but it didn’t stop for anybody else, so why would it stop for him? Life in Saffron just kept going, so to keep himself from going insane, Green spent any time he had off from work locked in his apartment with all of the lights off.
He didn’t really like his apartment, but it was what he could afford, so Green had convinced himself that the thin walls, cramped living space, and barely functional appliances added to the charm instead of taking years off of his life. The lumpy mattress and creaky floorboards were monuments to independence, not joylessness and suffering, and the ghosts of every fly that had gotten trapped between the crumbling drywall and the unevenly applied beige paint were much better than the ghosts of his past. He barely even noticed the vague scent of damp unpleasantness that seemed to emanate from every surface anymore!
Saturday morning, Green had slept in until two in the afternoon, which was the latest he could stay in bed before he started feeling like he was wasting his fleeting youth. He had worked until three thirty in the morning, gotten home by four, tried to take a shower, been unable to do so because it was seemingly a dice roll whether or not he would have hot water at any given moment, and passed out around four thirty. It was his miserable routine that he repeated day in and day out, only varying in whether or not he was able to shower when he got home. He hated it, but as he so frequently found himself needing to remind himself, it was certainly better than whatever hell he would be living through if he’d stayed in Pallet. It wasn’t like he really had a choice, either- he sure as shit wasn’t welcome back with his folks, and he was just barely scraping by as it was. The cost of living in Saffron was high, sure, but it wasn’t like the other cities were any cheaper, and with his specific employment experience, he needed to stay where the nightlife was the most vibrant.
Without any post-secondary education, Green was stuck working as a bartender, which he’d been doing long before he was able to legally serve alcohol, but what his old bosses didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. He’d been at the same place- an extremely popular gay club- for three years, and had long since figured out the routine that brought in the most tips. Short shorts and tightly fitted tops, when paired with a sickening level of lilted syllables and eyelash flutters, drove the vast majority of the men buying drinks wild. Green knew he was a hot piece of ass, so if he was going to have every other customer imagining bending him in half while he shook their appletinis, at least he was going to profit from it. A twenty dollar bill with some guy's digits scrawled on it was still worth twenty bucks, and he’d gladly take that over the spare change he got handed on the days he was too angsty to slut it up. All in all, he was doing pretty well for himself. He was, of course, miserable, but he was miserable and free.
Since Saturdays were his only day off, Green liked to stay as far away from people as he possibly could. Obviously, this was with the exception of his best (and only) friend, Leaf, who came over every Saturday to keep Green from rotting in bed all day. Without her, Green would spend his little time off swaddled up in a blanket watching bad movies and doing his best to ignore the Grindr notifications that buzzed from his phone. Even though Green was himself a homosexual, it was hard to not hate gay people after six days of making stupid cocktails for stupid muscle daddies to send to stupid twinks and keeping said stupid twinks from contaminating his stupid work station with the stupid non-biodegradable glitter they dusted themselves with. Stupidly.
The type of men who messaged him on Grindr were the same ones who would grab his ass while he was at the bar and call him ‘princess’ while ordering, somehow expecting that their harassment would convince him to punch out and spend his precious dinner break on his knees for them. Honestly, the only reason he hadn’t uninstalled the app was because he and Leaf would make a game of seeing who could get sent an unsolicited dick pic the fastest every time they hung out. She currently held the record of 2.91 seconds, which Green hadn’t even gotten close to. He always told himself that he’d delete the app once he beat her high score, but that wasn't happening any time soon (and if he did arrange the occasional hookup, well, nobody needed to know).
Green’s plans for his Saturday included sleeping in, doing some household chores that he’d neglected throughout the week, and having Leaf over to watch reality TV and get- as she liked to call it- white girl wasted. He was in the middle of washing the pile of dishes he’d abandoned in the kitchen sink over the last six days when he heard a sharp rapping at his door. Well, he didn’t exactly hear the knocking- he’d been blaring indie pop from his tinny Bluetooth speaker. He did hear his cat, a fluffy ball of brown fur and entitlement named Evie, start yowling at the door, so Green paused his music and went to see who the hell was there. It wasn’t Leaf, because she had a spare key and wasn’t afraid to use it, so who could it be? Only one way to find out- Green fiddled with the janky brass knob, turning it left slightly, pushing upwards, cranking it right, and the door swung open on its creaky hinges. On the other side of his threshold was a well-dressed woman with a briefcase and a general air of unpleasantness- something about the way that she was standing told Green that, whatever she was after, it wouldn’t be fun for him.
“Are you Green Samuel Oak?” Her voice was direct and professional, everything he hated about the city dialect. Green raised an eyebrow- he’d dropped the ‘Samuel’ part of his name years ago, before he’d even moved out, which begged the question- who was this lady and why was she calling him that?
“Just Green Oak, but yeah. Do you- uh, why are you here?” He opened the door a little bit wider and stepped fully into the woman’s field of view.
“It’s about your parents, Virginia-May Oak and Samuel Oak Jr.” It would be too much credit to say that her voice was oozing with indifference, because oozing implied some level of dynamism. It was more like when she spoke, the words left her mouth in a solid block of cold professionalism that made Green’s spine crawl, though it was very possible that hearing about his parents was what was giving him the heebie jeebies.
With the most reluctance anybody has ever used to open a door, Green made just enough space for the woman to enter.
“What do they want?”
As it turns out, they didn’t ‘want’ anything as the woman was an estate lawyer who had come to inform Green Oak that both of his parents were dead.
‘Dead’ wasn’t the term the woman had used- in fact, Green had paid attention, and not once did she say the word ‘dead’. She pulled out every polite euphemism under the sun: “ no longer with us”, “passed away”, “late”, “departed”- never dead. He had even heard the woman say that his parents were “in a better place” a couple times, hilarious- considering that if there was an afterlife, Green’s parents were not making it past the pearly gates.
He’d heard from the few other people who knew about his situation (Daisy and her husband, Bill), as well as any stranger who found out that he was no-contact with his folks, that whatever it was that was between them, he should be the one to extend an olive branch: they won’t live forever- if you don’t, you’ll wish you had when they aren’t around anymore. Now that Green was living the hypothetical he’d been warned about, he had to say, he honestly couldn’t care less. You could’ve told Green that both spontaneously exploded and his only reaction would have been good riddance . Honestly, he didn’t even really consider Virginia-May and Samuel his parents, so hearing that they’d finally bit the dust was much more like being told about the deaths of two people he really hated.
But there wouldn’t be an estate lawyer in his living room if it was as simple as his parents’ death. No, his parents had kicked the bucket and left him something behind- and knowing them, Green half-expected for the woman to open the manilla envelope and hand him a single sheet of paper with the word ‘faggot’ written in capital letters. Upsetting as that would have been, at least it would be kind of funny. What he was willed wasn’t funny in the slightest.
In classic Virginia-May and Samuel fashion, they’d somehow figured out a way to fuck up his life from whatever pit they were currently burning in, because Green was now the majority proprietor of Oak Orchards, his family’s apple farm back in Pallet Town. Apparently, they’d written in their last will and testament that one of their children was to take over running the orchard, the other receiving a minority share in the company. Given that Daisy had moved to Sinnoh four years ago with her husband and now had two young children, Green was the one who had to run the family business by default. With all of this information, there was really only one question on Green’s mind: why was he in the will to begin with?
The answer to that question was rather simple- the last revision to the will had been made eleven years ago, when Green was thirteen and still on relatively good terms with his parents. For some reason, they just didn’t write him out, even though he knew for a fact that his father had threatened to do so multiple times during the events that led to his leaving- something about how he’d rather die than let a flit run the family business. Looks like he got his wish.
From his conversation with the lawyer, he really didn’t have much choice in the matter- his parents had written it so that if either he or Daisy was unwilling to accept the terms, the business would be sold and the proceeds would be tithed to their church. They’d even thought to divide the shares so that Green couldn’t sell the business on his own without Daisy’s approval- which, knowing her, he’d never get. Now, if he refused, not only would he be fucking over his sister, who he was still incredibly close with, he would be stuffing millions of dollars straight into the pockets of the clergy who sent members of their congregation to every pride parade within the region to scream slurs at anybody who looked a little too fruity. Whatever lawyer his parents had hired to write their will had sure done one hell of a job, because despite how badly the terms made Green want to resurrect his folks just so he could be the one to kill them this time, he still signed all of the paperwork to transfer the business to his name. He did it with a level of hatred that he should probably see a therapist about, but he did it nonetheless.
Honestly, Green even surprised himself a little with just how easily he rolled over, but what was he supposed to do? Contest the terms of the will as unreasonable? Yeah, right- the only thing that Green knew about the law was that lawyers weren’t cheap, and there wasn’t a world in which he could hire one and still manage to make rent. Besides, if Daisy had any say in the matter (which she definitely did as the executor of their parents’ estate), Green wasn’t getting out of the legal Saw trap he’d been shoved into. Proving his point, when he called her later in the day, she waxed poetic about how excited she was for him- how this move would be his chance at a fresh start, even though he’d already given himself one of those seven years ago. So Green Oak was, in plain Kantonian, absolutely fucked.
After the traumatizing news of the imminent death of everything Green had built for himself over the past seven years, he decided that in the short term, his best option was getting shitfaced with Leaf. He had already given his not-so-dearly departed folks the first seventeen years of his life, so there was no way in hell they were taking over his precious Saturdays. No, whatever disaster was awaiting him would have to hold off until tomorrow, because if he was going to stress himself out, he would be doing so at work. At least then he’d be getting paid.
Leaf had shown up and let herself in around two hours after the estate lawyer had left, time which Green had spent cleaning anything and everything that he could reach with his feather duster. The successful postponing of his stress-induced breakdown entirely rested on whether or not he would be able to keep Leaf in the dark about his issues. Now, Green liked to think of himself as a better-than-average actor, though it was probably more accurate to go with ‘gay and dramatic’, but that’s neither here nor there. He’d been able to fool his parents into thinking that he was straight as a steel pole up until the incident, lie about his age to get his first job working at a bar, and make up qualifications to land his current gig. The one thing all of the tricked parties had in common was that none of them really knew Green all that well. Leaf, on the other hand, knew just about everything there was to know about him, including his tells. But, he reminded himself, he technically didn’t have to lie to her to make this work- all he needed was to put up a convincing enough facade of normalcy and he’d be good as gold. So, as Leaf unceremoniously entered his living room, Green got ready to give the performance of a lifetime.
“Hey diva!” Her loud, slightly nasally voice rang out through the shoebox Green called an apartment. As she took off her chunky platform boots, Leaf glanced around the place. “Looks clean in here- what’s wrong?”
He didn’t even get a line out before Leaf called him on his bullshit- not fair, as he’d been formulating alibis the entire time he’d been cleaning. There was some good stuff in there, but the material would never see the light of day, which was a real tragedy. Maybe he could repurpose them into dialogue for the novel he’d been half-working on for the past couple years- a tome that itself was probably doomed to stay in his notes app. Of course, he could still try denial, but he already knew that in the end, Leaf would corner him and he’d have to come clean. It was a lost cause, and though Green may be stubborn, he wasn’t dumb enough to put up a fight.
“My, uh-” for as many scenarios as Green had preplanned, he had conveniently forgotten to come up with one where he had to tell Leaf about what happened. Maybe it was delusional self-confidence, or maybe it was… no, it was definitely delusional self-confidence. “My parents died. Some time last week. Didn’t ask how, don’t really want to know.”
“But why are we moping about it? We’ve been performing death hexes on the fuckers for years, shouldn’t we be happy that it worked? This has confirmed that at least one of us has magical powers.” Leaf’s tone, though it may seem insensitive to an outsider, was exactly what Green wished he could be feeling at the news. They had indeed been casting ‘spells’ on Green’s folks for a while, but it was more similar to getting piss drunk and trying to come up with the funniest way for his parents to go out. It may seem tasteless for him to so openly wish death upon the people that brought him into the world, but to be fair, Green really fucking hated them. Wasn’t like they hadn’t more than earned everything that he and Leaf wished upon them. This was justice, or at least, it would have been justice if they hadn’t cursed him back with a legally binding contract.
“We are happy, but we’re also miserable,” Green explained, setting down the glass cleaner and paper towels he’d been using to clean his microwave. Leaf bounced her way into the kitchen, yanking Green’s fridge door open as if it wasn’t only being held together by duct tape and a dream. Two hard seltzers were pulled from the six pack Leaf had brought with her, the other four being left to chill for however long their patience lasted. She cracked both open, handing one to Green before slamming the fridge closed and jumping up to sit on the counter.
“And why is that, darling?”
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Green got ready to spill all of the contractual bullshit that the lawyer had explained to him earlier.
“Why don’t you just burn the place down?”
Each three seltzers deep, Leaf had decided to start pitching ways for Green to escape the heinous claws of rural living. Considering that they were steadily losing more of their sober sense with each can tossed back, the ideas had devolved from decent solutions that only didn’t work because his parents’ Lawyer From Hell had seemingly thought of everything into the land of the whimsical, absurd, and incredibly illegal.
“Leaf, honey, that’s called arson, and it’s generally frowned upon,” Green objected.
“It’s not arson if you burn down your own house. It only becomes arson if the fire spreads off of your property.” Laying on her stomach, Leaf kicked her feet in the air like a sixth grader at a sleepover, treating Green’s tragic news like gossip about puppy love. The hand that wasn’t supporting her head was scritching between Evie’s ears, the pampered beast trilling at the attention.
“And my property is covered with trees, which are made of wood- a famously non-flammable substance. Besides, the house may be mine, but Daiz and I share the orchard, so I don’t think I can use it as firewood without her permission.” Instead of magic powers, maybe one of them should have tried to develop a basic understanding of contract law, because though there were definitely ways out, neither was competent enough to find them. At least they knew enough to see how arson wasn’t a great plan, which was something.
“I guess you could also get dinged for insurance fraud or something like that.”
“Yeah.”
They were both quiet for a minute. A crushing feeling of hopelessness pressed heavily onto Green’s chest, like he really may just be doomed. Silence apparently had the opposite effect on Leaf, who was given enough time to actually use her brain properly to come to a half-sober conclusion.
“I don’t know, maybe it won’t be that bad? I mean, whenever you talk about your childhood, it seems like the main problem is your parents, Lord damn their souls, but they’re rotting six feet under, so, problem solved, right?”
"Yeah, but-”
“Plus, it’s not like you like it out here. You hate your job and your apartment and the city and pretty much everything else. I know you love me, but Pallet’s like a forty five minute drive away, so as long as I’ve got a key I’ll be able to bother you plenty. And, at least to me, it sounds like you won’t really be doing all that much manual labour, so it’s not like you’ll be trapped out there.”
“I guess, but it’s still
their
business, and we hate them.” Sure, Leaf
may
be making some great points, but it didn’t change the negative connotations around his childhood home. The simple truth of the matter was that Virginia-May and Samuel Oak Jr. had been horrible parents who had made the first seventeen years of Green’s life a waking nightmare. The day he had left had been the day he decided to stop letting them be in control of how he felt about himself, and even though they were dead and gone, moving back to the farm felt like a surrender of sorts.
“Wouldn’t it make your parents furious to know that your gay ass is running the family business? Think of it as a way to spite them. Look, I’m not telling you how to feel about this, but it seems like whether or not you take over the business isn’t really up to you. You can only control how you approach it, so I say that you should take it in stride. Donate some of your revenue to queer charities or have orgies on the property or something. Bring shame to your family name and do it proudly because they’re rotting in the dirt and you’re hot and young and alive.”
Fuck. Why hadn’t he thought of that?
Taking over the business and doing it as gayly as possible was a beautiful way to tarnish his parents’ reputation. Besides, Leaf was right, it wasn’t like he would be trapped out there! Despite being a flagrant homosexual, Green did know how to drive, so he could spend basically all of his time in the city. He could quit his stupid job and move out of his stupid apartment and finally do all of the things he’d dreamed of on his stupid dead parents’ dime. It was the best kind of revenge- if only he’d been able to see it that way from the start, then he wouldn’t have brought down the mood and he and Leaf could have celebrated the demise of his two least favourite people properly. Well, it’s never too late to start.
“Leaf, you’re a genius. And definitely the one with the magic powers.”
“There’s my girl! I’m using my first official spell to make you go grab more drinks from the fridge.”
“Wasn’t your first spell killing my parents?”
“Shut up, fruitcake. I’ll kill you next if you aren’t careful!”
“During pride month?”
“One, it’s April, and two, you’re the cis one. If anything, it’s transphobic of you to not get me a beer.”
Shit, she had him there. Making sure his inebriated best friend noticed the exaggerated way he rolled his eyes, Green slid out of the bean bag chair he’d sunken into and walked the couple metres to his fridge.
“You really need to find a new win con, Leaf.” Green tossed her the can, the approaching projectile sending Evie skittering away.
“You got me the beer, didn’t you?”
Green hated that she was right.
One month later, and Green was getting ready to say goodbye to the city he’d called home for the past seven years.
Standing in the middle of his shitty little apartment, it was difficult for him to understand the mix of emotions his brain was subjecting him to. On the one hand, both Leaf and Daisy had succeeded in wearing down his resolve over the past thirty-odd days, and the optimist in him was kind of excited for the next chapter of his life. When he remembered around the presence of his parents, Green did have to admit to himself that there were some good memories back on the farm, even if they were buried beneath ten tonnes of shit. Summer days spent reading poetry books, shaded by the sturdy boughs of an apple tree, drinking iced tea and letting the time pass him by- watching the neighbour boys toil in the sun as they filled their wicker baskets with peaches, seeing the eldest wipe the sweat from his brow with the hem of his shirt and barely feeling bad about gawking because how could he not? He had discovered so much about himself the first time he saw that boy bite into a freshly picked peach- the way the nectar ran down his lips never failed to get Green hot and bothered. Outside of his sexual awakening, Green did have to admit that he missed the quiet of the countryside. Whether it was two drunk strangers screaming at each other on the street, the reckless abandon with which city folk used their car horns, or the water buffalo-esque moans his next door neighbour let off whenever she got laid, the noise was inescapable. There was no such thing as a moment of peace in Saffron, and Green’s optimistic side was actually kind of excited to leave it all behind.
But Green Oak wasn’t known for his optimism- he was, at his core, a facetious and stubborn bitch, two defining characteristics that seemed to scream at him that this move was the end of the world as he knew it. Even though his sorry excuses for guardians were rotting underground somewhere, he doubted that the rest of Pallet’s population had died off with them, replaced by a tolerant new guard of farmers who wouldn’t call him a ‘pillow biter’ whenever he was so unlucky as to cross their paths. Fuck, he hadn’t even considered that he was going to go back to being the only gay in the village! In the years of his youth, he’d fooled around with one of the boys his age who lived down the road, but he was pretty sure that guy had a wife and kids now, and Green was not too keen on being the other woman for some closeted douchebag. Whenever he arranged hookups, it was always a spur of the moment thing, and the thirty minute drive between Pallet and the nearest actual city would give him far too much room for self reflection to ever follow through on anything. He’d end up realizing that he just kind of hated himself and no thick-dicked stranger was gonna be the cure to his crushing self-doubt, and where’s the fun in that? Unless a whole lot of people had gotten cool with a whole lot of stuff, country living was going to be a dark age of celibacy for Green Oak.
The first night in a new house was always a difficult one.
Something about a bedroom with nothing but a mattress and a tower of cardboard boxes made Green feel like he was living on an unlaid foundation, as if he was spending the evening in a body that wasn’t his own. He’d had four different apartments during his stint as a city-dweller, and even though they were all at least half an hour’s commute away from each other, the uneasiness had been a constant. It always took a couple weeks to fade, slowly ebbing away as Green made the space more his own with every poster and potted plant. Eventually, the unit would become an extension of himself, each decorative pillow and antique clock a new artery or dendrite in his body. When he moved out, once all of the paintings had been taken down, it would seem at first glance as if he had never been there to begin with, even though the damage deposit would say otherwise. It only took a second look to see the impact that he left on each former home- the light fixtures he and Leaf had spent an entire afternoon installing or the scratches Evie had etched into the hardwood floor. It let Green know that he was real, that he could affect the world around him just by breathing air and living life. But this wasn’t like that.
Green was back in the house where he had grown up, and even with his gift for interior design, he doubted that it would ever feel like home. His parents may have removed all photographs from the walls that he appeared in, but that didn’t stop them from whispering his name. The building unmistakably bore his mark, whether it be in the black dashes sketched on the trim of the bathroom door that marked his growth or the drawer still awkwardly set on its tracks from the time he yanked it out too hard. He had visited his childhood bedroom, the walls still painted that pale sage colour he’d chosen at age eight, and even though all of his things were long gone, he’d still found traces of himself. Pulling up the floorboard between his bookshelf and old bed, Green had been surprised to see the porno magazine he’d stashed underneath as a teenager still there.
Even though he was returning to where he was raised, the Oak farmhouse had never been much of a home. It was strange, looking at a place where he was supposed to feel known and safe and only being greeted by a sense of separation, as if he was a ghost just passing through. He felt like he didn’t belong, like he was looking in the mirror and seeing someone else in the glass, but maybe that's just how he’d always been. Green had never fit in with the other boys in town, always getting lightheaded instead of excited when their bicycle convoy stumbled upon roadkill to poke with sticks and feeling odd when they talked about what they’d do to the pretty girls they saw at the farmers market. Growing up had been a constant effort of trying so hard to be somebody he knew he wasn’t, and that had been the only space he had ever held, so returning to Pallet, Green was left trying to occupy a life he’d never had. Nothing in Pallet ever changed- the only thing that ever grew was the crops. Seven years in Saffron had allowed Green to flourish, to become his own person- it just sucked that that person wasn’t one who could call Pallet Town home. He had become something so different from the boy who had left all those years ago, but the memory still remained. Now that he was back, he was cursed to bear the burden of his former self- a lifetime of “is that really you” s that made Green feel sick to his stomach because truthfully he didn’t think it ever was.
Green fell asleep in his childhood bed, spine uncomfortably curved to fit on the twin-size mattress.