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Green knows, of course. They're best friends, so of course Red stops by his house right before, the pack on his back as heavy as the bags under his eyes.
"I'm going," Red says.
Green doesn't look up from the notes he's scribbling in his research notebook, the one he's taken to carrying around since he got home from Indigo Plateau and threw his Pokédex against the wall until it shattered.
"Okay," he says.
Beside his desk, Red shifts his weight from one foot to the other. Resettles the bag on his shoulders. Green can see in periphery how the straps cut into his skin, indenting the fabric of his worn t-shirt.
Red waits, but Green says nothing. Green turns the page in his notebook, his mind racing too fast to recall his field notes. He meant to write them down before he could forget, but it's too late for that now. He writes the only thing he can think of, the words filling his head: Go away, over and over. Leave me alone. Go away.
Red breathes, crowded into Green's personal space. Close enough to read Green's writing, if Red didn't have trouble with letters, if Green's writing was neat enough for anyone else to read.
From the corner of his eye he sees Red's jaw clench. Then he turns on his heel and clatters down the stairs without another word.
Going, going, gone. Not with a bang but with a whimper. Every other idiom Green can discard for being too neat, too simple.
Of course Green knows when and where Red goes; Mt. Silver suits him. That doesn't mean he tells anyone. He shrugs when Red's mother asks with increasing intensity if he's heard from him. He shrugs when Professor Oak sighs with regret over that Red boy, what a prodigy. He shrugs when Leaf reminisces about their childhoods, and eventually she stops mentioning it.
It's his secret to keep, he thinks. At least, until Professor Oak tells a young bright up-and-comer and news of Red's defeat races across the continent. That's one of Gramps's favorite pastimes, Green thinks: giving away things he thought belonged to him by rights. He should be used to it by now.
--
After Red's championship victory and ensuing disappearance, copies of Red's hat are haute couture. Green sees them all over the place—the supermarket, the bullet train; eventually he starts going out less.
Sometimes people challenge his gym while wearing it. They seem proud of it, tugging on the brim or twisting it backwards in cheap mimicry, proud of accomplishments that were never theirs to claim. Green destroys them. When he sees their faces crumple, something in him crumples too, feeling crushed clean, lightened and empty.
He gets reprimanded for using unsanctioned force against a challenging league trainer. The second time it happens, he has to pay a fine. Viridian Gym's still running in the red, penniless after Giovanni's ravages and Green's subsequent remodeling, so he decides he'll have to hold himself back in the future.
But he never has to. Word must get around that the hat is a sure-fire way to lose the Earth Badge, or simply enough time passes that it drops out of style, but people stop wearing Red's hat when they come to the gym. Slowly it vanishes from crowd scenes on the news and youtube videos and Viridian's town square.
Green stops feeling anticipatory anxiety every time he stands in front of his front door. Green starts feeling like he can breathe again.
--
"I'll never forgive you," Green said then.
They were eleven. Green was on the floor, his face ugly from crying. The championship room was freezing cold, and the shaking of his hands was half from that and half from shame.
"Never," Green spat into Red's shocked face. "We're not friends, you got that? We were never friends."
He holds his sobs in until he gets back to Pallet Town and his childhood bed, where he huddles close to the corner of the wall and buries his face into a pillow to cover up the sounds bursting out of him. He's mid-scream when he hears: "Are…you okay?"
He whips around and sees Daisy in the doorway, her face a picture of maternal concern. Green's sob hiccups in his chest. He gulps it down, smothering it. He takes a quick gasp of air before he manages: "I'm fine. Leave me alone."
Daisy's eyes narrow. "Green—"
"Please," he gasps out, remembering years of admonishments, say the magic word. "Please go away."
Daisy sighs slowly. She nods and shuts the door behind her, but knowing she's still in the house, listening, traps the rest of his sobs right below his vocal chords. Green buries himself under layers of sheets and blankets, his bed still swathed in its winter covers even though it's now the height of summer. He smashes his face against the pillow and shakes.
--
Every time he does an interview, his bachelorhood comes up. "Any plans to settle down?" "Any special someones in your life?" "Are you thinking of continuing the Oak line?"
The questions are rude, but of course they ask. Even Leaf asks, and she should know better. Even Daisy asks if he doesn't want her to arrange something, just dinner, nothing serious, he'll make a friend maybe.
"No, but thanks," is the answer every time.
He finally blows up at a joint Kanto-Johto League meeting when Whitney brings it up, and after that Lance seems to take a shine to him. When Green tells him he's being weird, Lance gives an awkward shrug. "I just wanted you to know that I understand," Lance says. "Perpetual bachelorhood, I mean. Some people just aren't the marrying kind, and there's nothing wrong with that."
Green thought he was the marrying kind, once. Green always imagined he'd do things differently. He'd find someone who loved him. He'd love them back. They'd have children. He wouldn't abandon them, and teach them everything they needed to grow up happy and fearless and strong. That somehow, by doing everything perfectly, by checking off all the boxes, he could somehow make right all the things that had gone wrong for him.
What would the angry child he once was think of Green now? Gym Leader instead of Champion, single instead of settled, eternally walking down the left-hand path.
He hasn't heard from Red in years. He barely thinks about him any more. There was a time, too, when this was unimaginable: when Red was woven into the sinews and seams of him, lacing every breath. But time heals all wounds, as they say. He doesn't love Red any more. He doesn't think he ever loved him at all, really. Green was just a child then. Who knows if the fleeting feelings of a child hold any real weight?
"Thanks, Lance," Green says.
--
It's Red's birthday and Green calls his phone, like he does every year. It goes straight to voicemail, like it does every year.
"Hey," Green says. "Happy birthday. Guess I'll give you my usual update. Your mom still asks about you. She's the only person who does. Leaf probably knows where you are but I don't give a shit. Hope you treat her right if she visits you, because every time she's gone I miss her like hell. Gramps misses you. Lots of people miss you, probably. Sucks for them, I guess.
"There's a new Pokédex model. I've tried it, it's pretty good. You should upgrade if you haven't already.
"Gym's doing well. Handed out three badges in the last six months, a new record I think. The League loves the rematch fees I'm racking up. Might have to make that maze even harder soon.
"Eevee's fine.
"I'm fine.
"Weird that your birthday is in the middle of summer, huh? Considering where you ended up.
"Anyway, I'm gonna hang up. Catch you next year, maybe."
--
People fall in love with Green sometimes. It's not a surprise: he's handsome, charismatic, and he has money to burn. Sometimes he gets crushes on people, too. It's normal.
Eventually Green goes on a few dates, but the longer a relationship drags on the more a hole yawns wide inside of him, until he breaks it off out of a distant panicked sense of self-preservation. After the first break-up resulted in photos of his ex dumping a drink in his lap splashed on every seedy tabloid in Kanto, he learns to break up in the privacy of someone's house, or later on, over phone call and then through text. The more impersonal and simple, the better. "I'm not feeling it anymore. Don't call me again."
It doesn't stop people from asking him out, but after a while he learns how to say no so charmingly that it's impossible to take offense. He wishes they'd stop coming for him, but they don't.
"Holding out for someone special?" someone asks once, and he barks out a laugh.
--
It's been years since he's felt anxiety upon opening his front door, but when he swings open the door to his hotel room in Unova, the fear collides with his chest, knocking him back a step.
"Red," he says.
Red is standing there. Same shirt, same vest, same glance from beneath the same ratty hat. Green stares at him, and takes a long slow breath.
"Let me in," Red says.
"No," Green says, and for good measure steps outside of his room, letting the door click shut behind him. He's barely dressed in pajama pants and a soft t-shirt. He wasn't expecting company, but he forgot that Red was always a night owl to his morning lark.
He knew that Red was invited to the Pokémon World Tournament, too, which is why Green was holed up in his room instead of enjoying the Unovan sights. He thought Red would leave him alone; he had all these years, after all. He thought—well, it doesn't matter what he thought, because Red's here now, unavoidable, unignorable.
Red's jaw tips up, automatic challenge. Green's shoulders hunch, automatic defense.
"Anything you have to say to me can be said right here in the hallway," Green says, shoving his hands deep into his pockets and refusing to look up. "What do you want."
"You called me every year," Red replies.
Green can't hide the quick suck of air he takes in through his teeth, like Red's landed a body blow. Red's eyes flash.
"I thought you said you'd never forgive me," Red presses.
Green shakes his head with a laugh. "I was eleven," Green says. "I don't give a shit about that now. Are we done?"
Red doesn't answer, and the silence rings out for a moment. Finally Green glances up. He catches Red's gaze and he can't breathe—some mixture of anxiety, déjà vu, vertigo, and a helpless soft bubble of something that he thought had burst long ago.
Green clears his throat. "Look, whatever it is, there's no way in hell I'm doing this sober," he sighs. "I'm going to the hotel bar, you can come if you want."
Ten minutes later, Green has downed his first drink and is focusing on the feeling of the alcohol wending its way through his system when Red says, "I'm sorry."
Green snorts. "All right."
Red narrows his eyes and Green smiles, a sharp slice of expression. The bartender slides another drink across the bar towards him. He takes a gulp so fast he barely tastes it, just feels the harsh tang that coats his mouth afterward. Well whiskey, ugh. What was he expecting from a shitty hotel bar anyway.
"I took photos. When I was gone."
Green raises an eyebrow. "Yeah?"
"Wanted to show you," Red mumbles.
Mostly, they're not even very good photos. Out of focus, too close or too far, off-center flashes of sea or sky. The inside of a camping tent. A lot of washed-out snow photos. Pikachu's nose, or a glimpse of tail. Green looks at them, chin propped on one hand, taking rapid sips of his drink with the other.
Some of the landscapes captured are so gorgeous that even Red's photos do them justice. A wide coast shaped like a crescent moon. A sunset from a mountaintop, the orange sun setting the clouds aflame. Locks old and new clasped forever around the fence of a high bridge walkway. Red sneaks him glances that Green ignores.
It takes an hour. Green works his way through a couple more drinks in the interminable, silent interim, occasionally making a grunt of acknowledgement. "Okay," Green says when Red's photo gallery has run up through blurred shots of the Pokémon World Tournament stadium, the small room competitors wait in before they go up on stage, a lonely street lamp outside Green's hotel. "You're done, right? I'm going to bed."
He gets up to leave, but stops when Red's hand lands on his side. Green stares at it, unblinking. Red's hand curls into a fist, trapping his shirt in his fingers.
"I'm sorry," Red says, loud and clearly.
"Uh-huh," Green says. "I'm gonna go."
He tries to pull away but Red's grip jerks him back. He sighs and waits for Red to let go. Red's glare bores holes into his skull, but he refuses to meet it. There can't be a fight if their eyes don't lock.
"I'm tired," Green says at last. "I have to get up early tomorrow." His head is already starting to hurt from the cheap liquor, and he can't remember if he packed ibuprofen in his suitcase. "Let me go already."
"You're still mad," Red says.
"I'm allowed," Green snaps.
"You were mean to me first," Red hisses back.
"And you can be pissed about that too," Green says, louder. He sways into Red's personal space, biting the next words out. "I don't want to talk to you."
Red lets go. Green turns on his heel and leaves in something barely below a run.
Going, going, gone.