Chapter Text
The first time Zach Avalon meets Jasper Tan, he has no idea who he is. Later this is a fact that will make the former laugh and the latter grumble, but as it happens, the only thing Zach can really think about it all is that Jasper is very intense.
“You,” he says, pointing at Zach. It should be noted that the only reason Zach was even there that day was because he’d followed a crowd to the opening ceremony for the annual gym challenge. Had the first gym not been so close to Zach’s hometown and the weather not been a perfect cloudless blue, the two of them might have never met at all. Aside from the occasional play battle with his friends, Zach has never battled; he has no plans on entering the gym challenge.
But the fates, it seems, have different plans. Because when Zach blinks and the boy with the intense stare is still motioning for him to approach, Zach—who has always been of the opinion that going with the flow is the best way to live life—shrugs and figures, why not? It doesn’t cost him anything to indulge in small measures like this, and it might even be a little fun.
He doesn’t expect to win. And clearly, the intense boy doesn’t expect to lose. He must have already won against a bunch of people, too, because there’s this sort of shocked hum over the crowd, because they’ve all been watching; all placing their bets on this intense boy with his oozing bravado and his sharp voice. Zach is ushered into the gym and it’s by pure instinct and slight confusion at the whole thing that unfolded outside that he actually goes through with it.
He wins, too, a neat little golden badge pressed into his palm and a cheque handed to him at the door. “Congratulations,” says the man at the entrance. “You’ve taken your first step towards becoming a Pokémon master.” And that wasn’t even on Zach’s agenda for the day. He contemplates going back home to his mother and telling her about it; just a funny little anecdote of the time when Zach was eighteen and accidentally completed one seventh of a gym challenge. He’d keep the badge as a family heirloom, a quaint little decoration for his future Pokemon cafe.
But when he exits the Striaton City gym, he’s faced by the intense boy yet again, and he has this gently foreboding feeling that his homecoming will have to wait a little longer.
“You,” the boy says again, and it’s clear that he’s been waiting for him. “Come with me.”
Zach scoffs. He looks like the quintessential city boy; pristine, expensive clothing and a neat bowl cut. A perfect face and perfect posture. The kind of guy who has never had to ask for something in his entire life. Zach, who, if anything, considers himself a country boy, can’t help the scrunch of his nose at the commanding tone.
“I have a name,” he says, offended. And he expects the boy to turn his nose up at that; what would a guy like that care for propriety for, after all, and so he’s surprised when he instead blinks, his demanding demeanour crumbling a smidge.
“Right,” he concedes. “What’s your name?”
Zach pauses. “It’s Zach.”
“Well, then, Zach,” the intense boy picks invisible lint off of his shirt. “Come with me.” For a moment Zach just stands there, glaring incredulously. “What?”
“Typically,” Zach drags out the syllables of the word. “This is where you’d tell me your name.” And the boy looks at him like he’s an idiot.
“Are you being serious right now?” He stares at Zach as if trying to read something in the lines of his face. Maybe he’s prolific in his own city. Zach has heard about those kinds of trainers: children of professionals raised with pokeballs in their tiny hands, sent to trainer schools in the evenings and on the weekends.
Zach shrugs. He never cared about that enough to recognise gym leader sons or elite four nieces.
“Jasper.”
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Zach chirps, and Jasper rolls his eyes. It occurs to Zach that this is the kind of person who doesn’t take lightly to losing. Maybe that’s why the crowd seemed so shocked when Zach beat him. Maybe he stayed back to kick his ass. Looking him up and down, Zach decides that he could definitely take him if need be, but Zach isn’t much one for conflict. “Now what do you want?”
“I want a rematch,” Jasper sniffs, a disinterested look on his face. He must be putting on an appearance, Zach thinks, because it certainly seems like this is something he cares about. “My Pokémon weren’t fully healed last time. Otherwise I would’ve won.”
Zach isn’t a particularly temperamental creature, but in that moment he finds that those counting exercises Maddie always talked about comes in handy. It’s not that he even really cares about the statement that much; Zach doesn’t battle on even a casual level and he’s sure that there is something to what he’s saying.
It’s just that his tone is insufferable. Like it’s impossible that he could have lost, like his superiority is somehow a given. But whatever. It’s not really an inconvenience for him to dawdle around town for an extra thirty minutes and it's clearly something that really matters to this guy.
“Sure,” he concedes, pocketing the gym badge and the prize check and following Jasper to the outdoor arena near the gym.
And then he wins again. This puts him at three out of three for the day, which is coincidentally also more than he’s battled in his entire life put together; all things considered this is a very good day for Zach. Jasper, on the other hand, is fuming, three seconds away from steam blowing out of his ears. Zach starts feeling a little bad, then. Some of those professional trainer families get very intense. Surely, there must be a lot of pressure on the poor guy’s shoulders if he’s reacting so strongly to losing to a random stranger. He already collected his first badge and prize check before Zach got whisked away into the gym, so obviously he’s a talented trainer.
Zach opens his mouth to offer up some sort of compliment; he doesn’t know much about strategies or techniques but he’s sure something coherent enough would come out of his mouth if he tried, but then Jasper is stepping over, his face smoothed over into something careful, pleasantly neutral.
“How are you doing that?” he asks, half accusation and half wonder in his voice. “I’m exceedingly confused as to how you won that fight.”
“Uh,” Zach blinks. “I don’t know?”
This only propels him further, rattling off questions like he’s some kind of pushy door-to-door salesman assessing how best to needle his way into his house:
“What are your Roserade’s IVs?”
“What? Like, intravenous–”
“What about EVs?”
“I’m not even sure what that–”
“It looks like it’s calm natured, wouldn’t modest be better for damage output?”
“I mean, sometimes it’s calm, sometimes it’s not?”
And he’s suddenly very close, then, dark eyes boring into him as if trying to read his mind. Zach isn’t necessarily timid, but he feels himself overwhelmed by the sheer intensity of the other boy. For a moment he doesn’t say anything, seemingly mulling over his lacklustre answers.
Then he steps back, brushing nonexistent dust off of his chest.
“Fine,” he says, in a voice that expresses the exact opposite. Careful restraint and decisive conviction all but pouring out of his mouth with the one-syllable word. “Keep your secrets. Next time I’m going to win.” And then he’s striding off into town, leaving Zach to stare after him, a little winded and more than a little bit confused.
He doesn’t get the opportunity to tell him he’s not actually participating in the gym challenge. But maybe it wouldn’t be that much of a hassle to just go to the next town as well, if only so the guy doesn’t stand around waiting for him.
He better call his mother and tell her he’s not coming home tonight.
* * * * *
The first thing Zach does when he arrives in Nacrene City is to go by the first shop he sees and get himself exactly one pair of pants, one sweater, a five pack of boxers and a four pack of black socks. Thanks to an allowance given to him by his mother—she’d been putting aside money in case he ever decided to go on a Pokémon journey, even as he’s vehemently denied ever wanting to; just goes to show mother knows best after all (her words)—he’s still left with enough money to get a single room at the motel in town and put his laundry in a washing machine at the laundromat.
His feet are aching. He’s no couch potato, but he’s certainly not a hiker either, and the trek from Striaton to Nacrene has worn him out. He glances down at his trusty, yellow sneakers. Wistfully, he thinks that the time for an upgrade might be approaching. Gathering his belongings into the shopping bag from the clothing store, he gathers his shower-damp hair in a bun and makes for the gym. Maybe, if he wins, he’ll buy himself a new bag.
* * * * *
There’s a large crowd gathered in front of the gym, which strikes Zach as weird. The Gym Challenge is well underway at this point, and typically—to his knowledge—only the first and last gyms tend to have big crowds anyways. He gets closer, pushing through some of the taller people to get a better view of what’s going on. There’s some hollering, excitement, and it occurs to Zach that there must be an ongoing battle. Which, in Zach’s mind, means that—
The crowd cheers loudly when the battle comes to an end and Zach makes eye contact with a familiar pair of dark eyes that tell him that he was indeed correct in assuming Jasper is once again battling while he’s waiting his turn. There’s a moment that feels at once cinematic; eyes meeting, time slowing down, crowd going silent. Then Jasper looks away and everything comes back into focus as the next person steps up to challenge him.
He looks like a gym leader in his own right, then. A challenge before the challenge. Zach glances to the side and notices a girl a few years younger than him watching with vested interest. Maybe this is a good opportunity to figure out more about him.
“Where’s that guy from?” he asks, leaning closer to make himself heard over the hollering. “People seem to know who he is, is he local?”
She looks at him, flabbergasted. “Jasper Tan? The champion of Johto, Kanto and Hoenn? That’s who you’re asking about?”
Now it’s Zach’s turn to be flabbergasted. “What? That guy?” He gestures towards Jasper, now engaged in a third battle after making short work of the second one. That would explain the ego and the elitist attitude, he supposes. He just can’t quite make sense of how he defeated a thrice over champion. Two times.
Jasper disappears into the gym, Zach goes for breakfast. When Zach leaves the gym one badge and a check richer a few hours later, Jasper is waiting for him.
* * * * *
Rather than rushing him off for an immediate rematch, like Zach had expected, Jasper takes him to a cafe this time. One of those cutesy, Pokémon themed little places with friendly Pokémon darting around eager to be pet or given treats. An Eevee pounces into Zach’s lap the moment he sits down, falls asleep to Zach’s fingers gently curling into its fur.
Zach means to ask him about the champion thing, but by the time he’s gotten his chocolate caramel milkshake (with cream and extra chocolate flakes on top) and Jasper has taken a sip of his black coffee (no milk, no cream, no sugar), Jasper is hauling a notebook out of his fancy leather bag and plopping it onto the table between them. Peering at it and struggling to decipher his upside-down scribbles, Zach can barely make out a list of his own Pokémon team, his name in block letters at the top.
Jasper presses at the bottom of a pen, looking at once a little like an interviewer about to barrage him with questions he undoubtedly can’t answer. Zach sucks on his pastel yellow, metallic straw, breathing out of his nose in expectant exasperation.
“Your team composition makes no sense,” Jasper says, and as far as a greeting goes, it’s pretty terrible. Bottom three, even. Maybe Zach needs a notebook of his own.
“Your social skills make no sense,” he replies cheerily, mouth pulling into a grin when the look Jasper shoots him is sharp enough to maim.
“Funny accusation from the guy who padded out his order as soon as he heard I was paying,” he snaps, but the tone indicates banter far more than anything more accusatory. Zach takes a long, loud sip of the order in question, stares at Jasper staring at him.
“I would’ve gotten the same thing anyways,” he says, but that’s a lie–he needs to save money for that bag. Jasper doesn’t need to know that. He would loathe to know what would happen if his ego got any larger. “What’s wrong with my team?” He reaches out to swipe the notebook, twisting it around to read it. At least that’s the intention; his handwriting is abysmal. No amount of squinting makes any of the words any less unreadable. “Furthermore, what’s wrong with your handwriting?”
Jasper sniffs. “Doctor’s handwriting.”
As if that makes any sort of sense.
“A thrice over champion and a doctor? You sure are something.”
“My mother’s a doctor,” he says, as if shitty handwriting is hereditary and not just an indication that he’s far too impatient and fast paced to care about that kind of thing. If Zach was to take a guess, it doesn’t matter to Jasper if others are able to read the things he notes down, they’re just for him anyways. “And I knew you were just playing dumb not knowing who I am.”
Zach laughs; of course he’d catch onto that. Anything to justify his own confidence. It’s a weird sort of thing. By all means Zach knows literally nothing beyond the bits and pieces Jasper has exposed of himself, and yet when he’s here, sitting across from him at a cutesy cafe that makes him seem even sharper against its soft pastel interior, he feels like he’s sitting with an old friend.
“I asked about you at the gym,” he says. “You seemed like a big deal. Fangirls and everything.”
He has the grace to look a bit embarrassed at that, the tips of his ears dusted a light red. “Whatever you say,” he grumbles into his coffee. “I’m not here to talk about myself.”
“By all means,” Zach leans back, absentmindedly petting the Eevee. “I feel like we’re on kind of uneven grounds here. You’ve clearly done some homework.”
Jasper makes a dismissive sort of sound. “I couldn’t find anything about you on any of the official websites. You don’t even have a profile in this year’s gym challenge. Very lazy and bad for sponsoring, by the way, you should make one ASAP.” He’s a fast talker, Zach notes. Probably explains the shitty writing, too. It must be exhausting to be inside of his head. “So I had to make the notes by memory.”
Zach hums, a little bashful at all the effort all of a sudden. He has the distinct feeling Jasper thinks there’s more to him than there is. That he’s trying to be this mysterious master trainer sweeping the challenge rather than a village idiot stumbling through it on dumb luck and impulse alone.
“Where’d you graduate?” he asks, snatching back his notebook. Here comes the questioning, Zach remarks internally, bracing himself.
“Graduate? Just from the local school in Accamula.”
“I mean what trainer school. In Striaton? Accamula doesn’t have one, does it?”
“I didn’t,” Zach shrugs, and Jasper scoffs as if he doesn’t believe him. But he notes it down anyway.
“How many gym badges do you have?” He goes on.
“You’ve literally seen me this whole time,” Zach mutters, scratching Eevee behind the ear. “Two.”
“I mean from before,” Jasper sounds like this is the most obvious thing in the world. Which it might have been, had Zach not already made it clear he doesn’t do battling. Maddie started doing the gym challenge at thirteen, the legal age for semi-professional battling. Zach is willing to bet Jasper started even earlier. “Like, when did you start doing the gym challenge?”
“I told you,” Zach twirls the straw around the half empty glass. “I’m not even doing it this year, I just came here cause you said you’d wanna battle again and I didn’t want you to wait while I just went back home.”
Jasper looks a little like he just told him about some deeply controversial political view. He shakes his head as if shaking off Zach’s claims. “What regional tournament group are you partnered with?”
Zach groans. “I don’t know what that is. Why are you asking me things if you just think I’m lying anyways?”
“Tournament group,” Jasper repeats, seemingly unbothered by Zach’s complaints. He says it slowly, as if it was the speed of which he pronounced it that was the problem, and not the fact that Zach doesn’t know what it is. “Your sponsor. Where do you get money for training from?”
“You get paid for that? Shit, maybe I should, then.”
Jasper taps the bottom of the pen against his notebook at a rapid taptaptaptap sort of pace. He looks like the more he’s asking questions the less clear things become. Zach could tell him it’s because he’s working backwards from a conclusion that is absolutely not rooted in reality, but he finds himself a little less charitable than usual. There’s something a little bit exhilarating about annoying him.
“How old are you?” He asks all of a sudden, the tapping coming to an abrupt stop. Finally, Zach thinks, a question he actually knows the answer to.
“Eighteen.”
And unexpectedly, Jasper laughs at that. A pretty sound, despite the edge to it. It makes Zach at once very aware that if he wasn’t such a frustrating person, he would have been extremely attractive. Angular face, smooth voice, pretty eyes. If only everything out of his mouth wasn’t extraordinarily obnoxious.
“That’s impossible,” he says, and Zach cannot believe that he’s so disinclined to believe him that he won’t even take his age at face value. “You're far too young to have won against me.”
“ Excuse me,” Zach wheezes, well and truly stunned at the sheer audacity. “You don’t look much older yourself.”
Jasper doesn’t respond to that, which means it must be true.
“Well,” he says at last, smacking his notebook closed with a sound that’s loud enough to make the Eevee in Zach’s lap jump and whine before settling back down. “This has been enlightening.” Zach can’t imagine how that could be the case. He doesn’t say that, lest he exposes himself to another rant. Instead he just watches as Jasper gets up, all of his belongings carefully placed in his fancy—really, Zach cannot understate it–—leather bag and gives him a halfhearted nod. “I don’t know how you got this far without even having proper type coverage, but I expect you won’t get much further.”
And then he turns on his heel, leaving Zach to scoff as he walks out of the cafe with a clang of a cute, little bell.
Well, Zach thinks, drinking up his remaining milkshake and giving the Eevee a comforting forehead scratch. He wasn’t going to keep going after this, and he thinks suffice to say Jasper won’t be expecting to see him beyond this. Zach isn’t a competitive kind of person. There are things he could spend his current prize money and his mother’s trickling allowance on. But despite himself, he’s caught by this urge to prove Jasper wrong.
But he’s not too fussed about it. For now, he’s got a barista to ask about interior design and cute Pokémon to pet. He does, however, make a mental note to google ‘type coverage’ later.
* * * * *
When Zach arrives in Castelia City, the only thing he wants to do is to find a hotel and sleep for approximately three days. The weather has been terrible, both of his hoodies still damp after the last shower of rain, and his trusty, yellow trainers are looking more brown than the neon yellow that lurks underneath all the mud and grime.
And because Jasper seems to be some sort of grim reaper always looming over him in a sort of all knowing, repellent sort of way, he is the first person Zach meets when he gets into the city.
Jasper makes a rude sound, peering at Zach with a judgmental gaze that probably would have pissed him off if he wasn’t so tired. “You look like a wet dog.”
Zach sighs. “I feel like a wet dog.”
“Woof,” Jasper says, flatly and so uncharacteristic that it makes Zach laugh. “I was going to tell you to battle me,” here, Zach notes the tell rather than the ask and rolls his eyes. “But if I’m seen with you like this I’d never live it down. When I win it’ll look like I’m just bullying a hobo.”
“You really are a merciful creature,” Zach agrees. “Just give me like forty-eight hours to sleep off the stiffness in my neck and wash my clothes. Did you get your badge?”
“Of course,” he says, raising his head in such a way that it must have been a stupid question in his mind. “They might as well stop letting bug specialists be gym leaders. Who loses to a bug trainer?”
“Huh,” Zach shifts his bag from one hand to the other, the plastic material digging into his palm. “This doesn’t look like the kind of place for a bug gym. I would have guessed steel or something.”
Jasper looks at him like he’s just grown a second head. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.” Zach thinks he just doesn’t have his sense of aesthetic integrity. Looking at the place; the skyscrapers and the metallic buildings, how does anything but steel make any sense? “Does your head float when you swim?”
“What?”
Jasper purses his lips. “Never mind.”
Zach squints at him, eyebrows furrowed as he tries to read his woefully blank expression. “Are you saying I’m stupid?”
“Clearly not.”
Zach scoffs. “If you keep being mean to me, I’ll cry.”
Jasper tsks, clearly not taking the threat very seriously. “When are you challenging the gym?” And then, predictably, he’s back to business. “I’m on a busy schedule.”
Zach scrambles his brain to get his bearings on the implications behind that. It’s completely possible it’s nothing but another compulsive ego flex; a reminder that in case Zach forgot he is a thrice over champion and he has better things to do than loiter around another run of the mill gym challenge. It’s also entirely possible that it’s just the sort of thing he says because it’s true.
But then there’s a third possibility: that Jasper has been waiting for him, that he’s telling him not to brag but to let him know that he’s made some sort of time for him in his neat little planner. And that possibility seems extrapolated by the fact that it’s the third time they meet and Zach got massively delayed by the rainstorm two days ago and somehow that makes his chest a little warmer.
That feeling from the cafe returns with a gentle prod, a sensation that maybe, despite their bickering and Jasper’s aversion to taking him at his word, they’re actually somewhere along the lines of friendship.
“I need a nap and a shower at least,” Zach rolls his aching shoulder, suddenly a lot more keen on obliging to Jasper’s relentless force. “But we can have that rematch first if you need to go.”
Jasper considers him for a moment, several seconds of him not jumping on the opportunity to get the match over and done with that makes Zach feel a little put on the spot.
“You might as well use my hotel room,” is what he says when he finally deigns to speak again, and it’s so unexpected it almost makes Zach keel over right then and there. The surprise must show in his face, too, because Jasper amends quickly, “Whatever hole in the ground you were gonna sleep in would just be a handicap in our rematch. I’m not letting you worm your way out of defeat on technicalities.”
“Right,” Zach supplies jovially. “Like Pokémon not being at full health.” He grins when Jasper scowls. “Are you sure, though?” Because he’s not going to refuse what is probably a high end hotel room if he can help it. He doesn’t have that kind of pride.
“It’s paid for until the end of the week anyways.”
“Well,” Zach gives him a deep, dramatic bow; a peasant to a king. “Don’t mind if I do, then.”
* * * * *
Whatever Zach might have thought Jasper’s hotel room would look like, what meets him is somehow even more opulent. A penthouse suite, a clear view over the entire city and harbour. A full kitchen, the largest television Zach has seen in his life hanging on the wall. Zach would have had to defeat a billion gyms just to look at a place like this.
“What the fuck are those?”
When Zach tears his gaze away from the impeccable interior of the room to look at Jasper, he finds his companion staring down at his discarded, dirty shoes.
“They’re shoes,” he replies, a bit defensively. They might have seen better days but they’ve carried him this far and he will not let some snob—with an admittedly extravagant room he’s offering to let him sleep in—diminish their value for some dirt. “You wear them on your feet.”
“They’re a health hazard,” Jasper counters, nose scrunching as if the mere sight of them are an affront to his sensibilities. “I’ve seen nuclear waste that looks less lethal.”
“Not all of us can afford Armani loafers,” Zach sniffs tersely, shrugging off his hoodie and t-shirt. “Do you wanna keep the commentary on my fashion sense going a while longer, or can I take that shower so you can get your rematch faster?”
For a moment Jasper just stares at him as if he’s not sure which one he would prefer. He probably has a few choice words about the latte stains on his sweater too, now that he’s been made aware of Zach’s peasantry. But he comes to his senses at last and throws a towel in Zach’s direction, and Zach disappears into the bathroom.
There, he finds out that not only is the bathroom the size of a small apartment, it also happens to have a bathtub. Zach’s tired bones cry at the sight and he promptly decides that it won’t hurt Jasper to be kept waiting for a little while extra. He half-dozes in the tub for long enough that his skin gets wrinkly at the fingertips and when he emerges from the bathroom like an entirely new person, he finds that Jasper is no longer there.
He also finds that Jasper has found it appropriate to rummage through his plastic bag. Hopefully he was disappointed enough by the lack of interesting contents in there that at the very least Zach can take some pleasure in that, if nothing else. Feeling a little odd about crawling into someone else’s bed, Zach loiters around the room for a bit. He finds that the room is surprisingly untouched. Bed made, mini-fridge still full, not a thing out of place. And he supposes that makes sense, what with Jasper’s haphazard pace across the region. The only thing slightly interesting he comes across is a bag on the nightstand filled with dozens of creams Zach can’t even begin to guess the purpose for.
That explains the perfect skin, he thinks to himself, thumbing at the little tube of night cream, whatever the hell that is.
The bed smells, somehow, exactly how Zach imagined it would. A sort of unassuming but oddly distinct smell, one he can’t say he’s ever smelled before but that's nonetheless to be distinctly Jasper. Wrapping himself up in silky soft, thick blankets and burying his head into the large pillows, Zach is out like a light.
He doesn’t wake up until much later, when Jasper returns with several shopping bags in his arms. He looks at Zach with a blank, disinterested expression on his face, drops the bags at the foot of the bed. When Zach doesn’t immediately do whatever it is he expected him to, Jasper gestures towards the bags.
“What?” Zach mutters, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. “Is it show and tell time?”
Jasper makes a ‘hmph’ sort of sound. “You can’t possibly think you can run around with a plastic bag of laundry and nothing else.”
Zach squints at the non sequitur. For some reason he hadn’t expected such a casual admittance to the invasion of privacy, but now that he thinks about it, he really should have. “Excuse me?”
Jasper pushes the bags towards him, clearly unwilling to just spit it out. Zach sits up properly in the bed, running a hand down his face. The whirlwind change of pace from restful sleep to guessing at whatever Jasper is saying threatens to give him whiplash. Grabbing one of the bags with one hand and sticking the other into it, Zach’s fingers come into contact with the telltale fabric of a thick, woollen article of clothing. He pulls it out to discover it to be a large, very soft sweater the same shade of yellow as his discarded hoodie. It looks both way too large and way too colourful to be intended for Jasper’s own wardrobe, and the expectant look on Jasper’s face makes his chest tighten.
“What is this?”
“It’s a sweater,” Jasper replies curtly. “You wear it on your torso.” Zach hopes the glare he rewards that particular comment with is appropriately scathing, but if it is Jasper certainly doesn’t show it.
“Aha,” Zach mutters. “Are you expecting a growth spurt? Want to spruce up your closet a little?”
Jasper huffs out an annoyed breath, sitting down in the chair by the desk under the television. “There are shoes in there, too. Please do the world a favour and throw away your little swamp clogs.”
“You can’t be serious.” Zach feels a little bit like he’s falling backwards out of his body, pulling out a sturdy looking pair of black boots. They look more expensive than anything he’s ever worn in his life, and it’s a sort of delirious panic that bubbles up in his chest when he peers into the remaining bags and finds pairs of thick woollen socks, a jacket and, worst of all, an impeccable, waterproof backpack.
“Whatever,” Jasper doesn’t seem quite willing to meet his eyes, gaze fixed very pointedly out the window. “I get discounts everywhere. I can’t beat you if you trip over some pebble in a forest and die, can I?” And this is such an obvious exaggeration, uncharacteristic and clumsy as Jasper delivers the line, Zach can’t find a way to explain away the fact that Jasper, after already offering him a hotel room so extravagant it’s threatening to make him go blind, has gone out of his way to get him things that will make his travelling easier. Maybe they’re better friends already than he anticipated. Or maybe money just really means nothing to him.
“I can’t possibly repay you for any of this,” he says, finding himself a little breathless.
“Just tell me how you beat me and we’ll call it even.”
And Zach knows he means it too, a laugh bubbling out of his mouth as he pulls the sweater over his head. It’s like wearing a cloud. Incredible. The tag has already been removed, a little detail Zach tucks away to ponder at later.
“I sold my soul to the devil for incredible battling skills and overpowered Pokémon,” he says, because if he has to tell Jasper one more time that he doesn’t know he’ll make himself go crazy. He expects another sharp glare from the other boy, but Jasper merely hums, seemingly taking the claim into consideration.
“That certainly does sound plausible,” he says, and Zach can’t even tell if he’s joking or not, which makes him laugh even harder. And there, half obstructed by the sunlight and the way Jasper looks away; a blink and you’ll miss it sort of smile, unassuming and innocent in a way that softens his edges and smoothes out his features. Zach’s chest does a weird swoop and then it’s gone. Jasper’s face is back to its blank, neutral expression and Zach wonders if he imagined it in the first place.
Jasper sighs, getting up from the chair and making to leave. He leaves the keycard on the desk, taps it absentmindedly with his index finger.
“Well,” he says in an exhale. “It’s fine if you don’t want to tell me.” He shrugs his jacket back on and slings his leather bag over his shoulder. “I’m starting to enjoy the mystery anyways.”
And with that, Jasper exits the room, leaving Zach with his new wardrobe and a heart that can’t seem to calm down.
* * * * *
Zach beats the gym. Very easily, one might add, even by his own estimates. Maybe there was some truth in what Jasper said about bug gyms. He beats Jasper, too, on the outskirts of the city. Jasper seems less bothered about it than Zach expected, a frown and a furrow of eyebrows the only real sign of frustration at the loss.
“At least you don’t look like you crawled out of a cave now,” he says. “Less humiliating.”
And Zach must have really started letting himself get swept up in his fast paced, honest but not really way of speaking, because when he says it, all he hears is a compliment. He grins, bending down to give his Espeon a head pat and a treat.
“I’m a new person now, truly,” he says. “You might have miscalculated and made me too powerful.”
Jasper smirks. “When I beat you it’s going to be at your best.”
“You might have to wait for a bit, then,” Zach laughs. “I looked up type coverage the other day and zoned out mid article.”
Jasper shakes his head. “Don’t get lost in the forest.”
And he’s gone.
Spoiler alert: Zach does get lost in the forest.