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It’s never quiet in Medali, but there’s a certain time on certain nights when silence graces the streets. The chilly hours of late Sunday night - or early Monday morning, depending on who you are - where the lights in all the buildings are out and the restaurants are all closed, and there’s not a soul to be seen on the cobbled roads. Only the glaring neon-blue flickers of the vending machines and golden-amber glowing street lamps to guide the wandering traveler.
It’s at this magical time that you’ve come here, weeks since last you’ve been, and the harrowing gate to the forbidden mystery of Paldea is where you hesitate.
You tuck your knees in, hugging your blazer around yourself as the cool desert wind tousles your hair. You would have worn something nicer, but class ran late, and Nemona wanted a battle before you left. You figured you could always shower at his place if you really needed -
And that thought is exactly the reason you asked to see him tonight.
You shudder, clutching your phone to your chest, thinking about the reply he’d sent to you at a much more reasonable hour, earlier in the day.
yes, i’m free tonight. come see me.
He never texts you first. Never uses emojis or emoticons - it's all proper punctuation and sentence structure. Very no-nonsense. It was jarring, at first, especially with the way Nemona communicates (sometimes through smiley faces alone), but you’ve come to like it. He’s straight to the point, has an answer for everything, and even if an ellipsis makes you anxious, you know he enjoys talking to you. Because he tells you so. He’s a practical man, so it’s not so much generosity as it is the fact that he’d rather just keep things simple - but you appreciate it nonetheless.
So if it’s getting to the point where you have a change of clothes at his place, you’re probably going to need to talk about whatever it is you’re doing, right? Simple or not, Larry has said nothing so far of where he sees this going, if anywhere. And surely a man like him would take no issue with being frank about what he wants.
Both of you are getting at least something of what you want, as it stands. If he wanted something else, he would have said so by now. (right?)
“Juliana.”
You lift your head, heart leaping at the raspy scratch of his tired voice. “Oh - hey, I was just on my way…”
“It’s alright,” he says pleasantly, leaning against the concrete wall. “Nothing wrong with taking a breather.”
It’s well after office hours, but he’s still in his suit; your fretful expression mirrored in the immaculate polish of his expensive Oxfords. It’s hardly cold enough for them, but he’s wearing leather gloves, and the sight of him snapping open his silver cigarette case with them on serves to make you feel a little more feral than usual.
“Got a light?” he asks, airy and smooth.
“Um, actually, I do,” you answer, standing up to reach into your purse to fish it out. It’s an old one, tiny, with a silly heart pattern printed on the side of it, but it still works just fine. “I quit, myself, a while ago, but. I still keep this one on me.”
“Good. That you quit, I mean. You’re too pretty to be smoking.” He says, stony-faced, but his eyes light up the way they always do when he flirts with you. He sticks the cigarette in the corner of his mouth, and rather than give him the lighter, you spark it to life for him. Heart turning cartwheels in your chest as you watch the flames flicker across his depthless eyes.
He takes a short drag, careful not to exhale in front of your face. “I hope this doesn’t bother you.”
“O-Oh, not at all,” you insist, shaking your head as your voice cracks. “I kind of like it, honestly. It’s nostalgic.”
Larry doesn’t smile, not quite. The corners of his mouth twitch, and he wrinkles his nose a little, and that’s as much a smile by your standards. He looks at you softly, taking one drag after another as your gaze drifts away, lingering somewhere else. On the cracks in the pavement, a spot on your shoes. The chipping paint on your nails. You don’t know why you bother with manicures. A week goes by and they're ruined, whether by nature or by handling your Pokémon, but it makes you feel good to get them, so you keep getting them done at the salon in Alfornada.
(it feels good, so you keep doing it.)
“You’re getting farther along Victory Road.”
He catches your eye. You lift your brows, nodding, pulled away from your orbit of protruding thoughts.
“Y-Yeah, one more Gym,” you tell him. It doesn’t feel real, but it is.
“Glaseado?”
“Yeah.”
“Grusha,” Larry says. The Gym Leader, he must mean. He blows out a whisper of smoke and it dances in circles around his hands. “You’ll like him. It’ll be a good time for you.”
“I hope so,” you say, trying to smile, but the nerves. You chew on your tongue, glancing up at the twinkle of stars, high above the towering building he’s resting against. So much bigger than the both of you. It makes you feel tinier than you are. “I can’t believe I made it this far. I really didn’t expect to.”
“I’m not surprised you have,” he says. It’s sincere and he means it, but you can hardly believe it yourself.
“Everyone says that.”
“Even La Primera. And she’s never wrong, you know,” he jokes. You want to giggle, but a pitchy gasp comes out instead.
“I don’t want to sound ungrateful,” you start to say. Mouth outpacing your mind by a mile. “I have so many people supporting me, but I don’t…”
“You’re afraid of disappointment,” he finishes your thought. “Of disappointing others.”
That’s exactly it. A giggle makes it through, this time, and you pinch your temple. The wind catches stray locks of your untidy hair.
“I’m nothing special, Larry,” the words come spilling out. Your voice shakes as much as your hands do. Makes you sound much like the kids at the academy; some ten, fifteen years younger than you. The kids you’ve come to resent. Resentment, even though you’ve made it so much farther down this road than them. You hate it. You hate that for all your victories, all your accomplishments, you can’t stop comparing yourself to them, to the trainers they are. Like you don’t deserve to be here.
(like you don’t deserve him.)
(you don’t tell him that part.) (but you tell him the rest; these things you can’t tell nemona or arven or anyone else for that very reason: you’ll disappoint them.)
“I’m not a tactician,” you go on, tears threatening to flood your glassy eyes. “I can't grasp things like...like statistics, or IVs. Strategies and things like that. I…I just love my Pokémon. And we love battling together. And…”
“And that’s enough.”
Your breath catches. Larry looks down at you, his thick, furrowed brows knit together in a harsh line as he takes a generous drag of his shrinking cigarette. He frowns, but there’s a light in his soft eyes, a tenderness in his gaze that ties strings around your heart and tugs.
“Juliana…” he mumbles, slowly, without looking away from your face. “The very thing you believe to be a flaw is exactly what makes you extraordinary. The exact reason you’ve reached this point.”
Eyes wide, you stare back up at him, wringing your hands in an attempt to keep from reaching for his.
“It’s your passion, your heart, that’s brought you here.” he says, the slightest quiver in his dusky voice. “I’m sorry no one else has seemed to notice that.”
You blink away tears, wet mascara clinging to your lashes. “Larry, I…I should tell you…”
“What’s wrong?”
There’s a lump in your throat you can’t swallow down. Choking on words that stick under your tongue. “Sorry, I’m just…God, I’m sorry, I don’t wanna sound like…”
“You don’t have to worry about how you sound.”
“I know, I - trust me, I know that,” you tell him, a smile coming a bit more easily than a coherent sentence can seem to. “That’s a big part of why I…”
He looks a little curious, training his eyes on yours. Glancing at your shaking hands now and again and making a face like he wants to hold them, but he puffs at his cigarette instead. Always so careful not to encroach upon your space, even though he’s more than welcome in it.
“Take your time, pigeon. I’m off the clock,” he toys with you again, and you gasp out a breathless string of giggles.
“God, Larry, I - I have such a crush on you,” comes your girlish confession, a juvenile jumble of words you wished you’d spent more time coloring - but the simplicity of it seems to reach him like nothing else could. His jaw falls slack open. He almost drops his cigarette.
“You told me you hoped I’d never have to succumb to a façade, but the truth is - you’re the only one I don’t have to put one on for,” you go on, breathy and stuttering, a great trembling in your heart that makes the whole of your ribcage vibrate. “I can come to you exactly as I am. And I have no words for how much I treasure that. How you make everything better just by being you. You hold me, and it feels like I-I’m flying.”
For a few excruciating moments, Larry says nothing. Not a word. Just stares back at you with his normal, vacant expression, the cigarette limply clinging between his middle and forefinger - but you think, even though it’s dark out here, you can see a rush of crimson flood his striking face.
“Oh,” he murmurs. “Oh, my.”
“S-Sorry, that was - ” you stutter, the ache of regret threatening to bruise your heart. “That was a lot, I’m sorry.”
Larry shakes his head, wisps of his graying hair falling in his eyes. “No. Not at all, Juliana, I…”
He puts out the cigarette. Scraping the end of it against the concrete blocks behind him. A sharp, deep breath through his nostrils as he takes your hand in his, the warm slip of his leather glove brushing roughly against your skin. You suck in a breath, balking, wondering what it is he’s doing - until he slips it past the lapel of his blazer. Holding your hand so tightly against his chest, and...oh. You feel it, the affirmation you’ve been yearning for in the frantic thumping of his heartbeat against your trembling fingertips. The unprecedented closeness - the sheer intimacy of the gesture is overwhelming enough to make your knees buckle. You have to clutch him to stay on your feet.
“I’m not the most expressive man, I know,” he says, quiet and vulnerable. “But trust me…the feeling’s mutual. I’ve wanted to tell you, but…”
“You didn’t wanna face disappointment, either,” you finish for him, and he smiles. Truly and honestly, he smiles.
“I didn’t want to assume,” he tells you, “just because we’ve been meeting like this…”
You cough on a laugh, shaking your head and sighing. “Oh, Larry…”
“You could have your pick of anyone in the country, Juliana,” he says, sheepishly. “Man, woman, anyone. It was beyond me to believe someone like me could stand out that much to you.”
“Why else would I keep coming back?” You pose the valid question, and he gives you the predictable answer.
“Because it’s easy.”
“I don’t do things just because they’re easy, Larry,” you tell him, a little stern. “I never do anything I don’t want to do.”
“Then there’s no need to over-complicate things,” he says. Grasping both your hands to kiss them, ghosting his lips over your knuckles. “I like you, too. Juliana. I like you a lot. God, I...”
You know this. You think you’ve known all along, but still. There’s nothing quite like hearing the words. You choke on your own breathing, watching him smile again, and it’s like opening another gift.
“I’ve been looping that thought around for the duration of this conversation. Wasn’t sure if I’ve said it out loud yet.”
You sputter out another giggle, grasping at his tie in a desperate effort to clutch him closer. Pinning him against the stone wall with your hips. You stare at his mouth and he brushes his thumb along the curve of your jawline.
“God, Juliana,” he almost whispers, breathless and rasping. You watch his throat bob as he works down a thick swallow. “When you look at me like that, I…”
He grabs your waist and you gasp, his fists curling into the soft fabric of your jacket. You can feel the strain of his hard-on already, the swell of it pressed deliciously against your lower stomach. Brazen, you reach down to palm at him, your open mouth grazing what little of his neck is exposed with his collar still buttoned up. You tug on his tie, heart skipping when he moans in your ear.
“You make it so hard to be a gentleman.”
Fuck. The words drip right through you, hot and melting right down to the ache in your cunt. God, that’s hot. He’s hot. The way he wants you so badly. It makes you swoon, makes your eyes roll back in your skull as your lashes flutter shut.
“I don't need you to be one.”
Larry keens, drawing in a sharp, shivering breath as he kisses you - harshly, fervent and brief. His hands skirt under the shift of your blazer, brushing up against the peaks of your breasts, kneading you through the soft cotton of your blouse as his teeth tug at your bottom lip. So needy, so desperate to be close, to feel you crush the whole of your weight against him.
“God, honey…please,” he groans, “Please - my poor heart can only handle so much excitement...”
“But I’ve barely touched you,” you whisper-laugh against his mouth, rolling your hips into his. He bites on your lip again. Groaning again. The grate of his voice is so husky and dark and so, so hot to listen to.
“That’s the magic of it all,” he tells you, fumbling with the buttons of your shirt, popping open one by aggravating one until he’s revealed enough of your skin to fondle your tits proper. “You don’t even have to.”
God. God. Good gracious God. You wish you had anything even remotely coherent to tell him in response, but it seems he’s more than fine with another ferocious, feverish kiss, with your tongue gliding along his teeth. Your nails scratching at his shirt. His heart is still pounding. So is yours.
“Larry, Larry,” you whimper his name, again and again. Unsure of what you'd meant to follow. It matters little, you think, when it just sounds like begging anyway. You feel your throat drying up, the crisp air of the night seizing in your chest. It’s so much harder to breathe with his hands on you.
“I never liked hearing my name all that much…” he starts to say, sucking bruises into your neck, “...until you started moaning it like that.”
“L…Larry,” you whine again, helpless and desperate, forgetting all about massaging his erection now that his wandering hands have made it so difficult to concentrate on anything that isn’t the brush of leather up your skirt. He toys with your pantyline, thumbing over your engorged clit, pulling away just to watch the color bloom in your face.
You chew on your lip, death-gripping his collar, the knot of his tie, eyes hazing over as his blank expression belies the trembling of his nervous fingers.
“Larry, you don’t have to - you’ll get your gloves dirty,” you tell him, half-smiling as you feel a pool of wetness dripping between your thighs. Larry snorts.
“Gloves can be washed,” he says, unbothered and unaffected. Carefully watching your face as he slips one, two fingers inside of you, swallowing visibly as he breathes in deeply through his nostrils. “Oh, you’re soaked.”
“Mm - mm-hmm,” is all you can manage, blushing up to the tips of your ears.
“Daydreaming about this all evening, weren’t you? Poor thing.” he clicks his tongue, a sympathetic kiss gracing your forehead. You whine again, another pitiful little mm-hmm as you shudder against his chest. Larry pulls you closer with his free hand, the warm leather grazing so delectably against your hot skin. “I know how you feel. I’ve been pining for you all week.”
He’s got three gloved fingers plunged inside of you now, but it’s that, oh, that meek little admission that makes you quiver, makes your muscles spasm and your clit throb. You almost shriek, chomping down on your lip to keep from screaming and waking the whole of the sleeping city. Bucking your hips against him, wondering just how it is you’re still even standing upright when your legs feel like jelly.
“Thinking about the way you just…unravel, in my grasp,” he muses, curling up inside of you, massaging that spot, oh, that spot. That thing he does with his knuckles against your clit, the shock of pleasure that zips along your spine. You groan into the crook of his neck. “I’ll just sit at my desk with my heart racing, most days.”
You strain for a giggle, clutching him for dear life as he pumps you even harder with his fingers, kissing his neck, his jaw. “We need to - talk about better ways - for you to get your cardio in, Larry - ”
“We’re practicing my favorite method right now,” he flirts with you, his deep voice cinnamon-sweet and whisper-quiet. “Well, one of them. Nothing gets my blood pumping quite like this, though.”
You gasp, the chill of the sudden loss of contact jerking you so violently you almost lose your balance. You would have, had Larry not taken hold of your hips on his way down to his knees.
“Larry - Larry!” you hiss at him sharply, pulse thrumming in your eardrums as he ducks his head under your skirt. You feel his teeth tug down your satin panties, his wet fingers sliding between your thighs again as his hot breath ghosts over your lips.
“Larry,” you croak, shivering, “Larry, we’re in public - ”
“The public isn’t out here,” he reminds you, blunt and disinterested in rationality or maintaining composure. His disregard for the current circumstance is, truthfully, hotter than hell. Almost as hot as the foxish grin on his face as he glances up at you. “But if it bothers you, pigeon, I won’t. Just tell me. We can go back to my place. Short walk, you know.”
It is a short walk. A block down, if that. You’d be there in five minutes.
But you don’t wanna wait five minutes. Not even one. You feel your clit throbbing, wetness dripping down your shaking legs. An aching emptiness in the depth of your cunt that screams to be filled right now. And the way Larry looks back at your face - the bottomless depths of his eyes glimmer, his pouty lips rouged, bitten. He’s panting like he’s starving. How on earth would you even make it across the street, much less back to his apartment?
“Just - let me lean against the wall, at least,” you practically squeak, knees wobbling as Larry bites back an even wider smile. (god, you wish he would smile more.)
Back against the concrete, you beckon him to you, lifting up your skirt for a better view of your flushed pussy. Larry scrapes his knees on the pavement to crawl back to you, dirtying up his dress slacks in his pursuit of the taste of you. Your heart catches when his tongue finally meets your clit, fluttering so fast it makes you dizzy. He moans into your entrance, dipping his tongue into your hole and dragging it out slowly. Savoring you. His fingers dig into the meat of your ass, and you hook your left leg up on his shoulder in an effort to stay upright. Hardly works when the heady, breathy noises he’s making send your head swimming. You feel like you’re stuck inside a fish bowl, fever-flushed face and neck so hot you wish he’d torn off more of your clothes before he made it down there.
Your wavering fingers find the roots of his hair, and fuck, the guttural groan he makes when you pull at it - so unbecoming of a refined man of his standing and so, so very hot. Larry draws nonsense shapes against your clit, stroking you with a practiced, determined tongue. Each movement is so precise, so deliberate; a conscious and carefully calculated effort to bring you to a bone-melting, soul-shattering orgasm, one you’ll reach more quickly than you’d anticipated when he flattens his tongue like that, and oh, that -
“Larry, Larry,” you shudder, thrusting your hips into his face. He responds in kind, with a harder pressure against your clit, reaching back up to slide his fingers inside of you again.
The gesture sends you reeling. Your heart feels close to stopping in your chest. A kaleidoscope of colors burst and flash behind your eyes as your vision is quickly reduced to a sliver. You can hardly see the horizon line far out in front of you as Larry drinks your undoing, sucking at your clit so hard you feel faint. You sink against the wall, hips rocking, and Larry holds you steady, grasping you so tight you don’t need to hold yourself up.
Shoulders hunched, you feel a spasm, the pop of a tightened knot deep in the pit of your gut. Sharp pulses of shocking heat wrecking throughout the framework of your body as it succumbs to pleasure. A second or third quieter orgasm that Larry indulges himself in, swallowing your cunt, making out with it. Lazily pumping his fingers in and out, in and out. Your hips are twitching. Your collar feels so damp with sweat, despite your open blouse. Larry groans between your legs and your heart somersaults for it. You sigh, happily exhausted, luxuriating in the generosity of his expert tongue. He's so careful not to leave too much of a mess behind. Even licks his gloves clean.
You chew your bottom lip, watching him suck your fluids off his covered fingers greedily. Smirking when you lock eyes with him.
"What's that face for?"
"You didn't save any for me," you tease him, grabbing at his collar, bringing him up to stand.
He chortles, pulling off his glove with his teeth. "Patience, sweetheart. I didn't say I was done with you, yet."
You throw your arms around his neck, the ghost of a laugh on your breath as you kiss him hard. Kiss him slow. Kiss him like you're afraid he'll forget what it feels like to have you melt into him, even though it's things like this he'll always remember. You have no idea what a remarkable thing you've made of his life, but he'll tell you. He'll tell you tonight, he'll tell you in bed - and he'll tell you again in the early light of morning, when most you need to hear it.