Chapter Text
There is a sort of abruptness that only ever accompanies waking up shortly before your alarm goes off, when the brain snaps into being entirely and totally awake, and this was how Lysandre woke the following morning. He blinked into the half-light of Augustine’s bedroom, staring up at the ceiling, trapped between the other man and the edge of the bed. He tried to fall back asleep.
He failed.
After a few minutes, he reached for his C-Gear on the bedside table to check what time it was, and sighed when he saw it wasn’t yet six. He put his C-Gear back, folded his hands over his stomach, and closed his eyes. He dozed sort of aimlessly, a nonspecific relaxation, trying to get the tail end of his REM cycle. Eventually, when he felt shifting beside him, he rolled over to face the man whose bed he was sharing.
Awake, it was a practical impossibility to catch Doctor Augustine Sycamore still. The only times when he ever truly stopped, frozen mid-motion, were when he listened to music and when he came. Otherwise, he was always twitching, reaching between one idea and another. Even when he stopped his constant physical oscillation, his brain ticked on, speeding through ideas and thoughts so rapidly that Lysandre usually gave up on attempting to follow what he was thinking. Augustine Sycamore had no brakes. He didn’t seem to want them, either.
Asleep, however, was a very different thing.
Augustine slept like the dead. He didn’t even twitch. On more than one occasion, Lysandre had started to wonder whether he was even still breathing and had leaned over, pressed his ear beside his friend’s lips, and waited to feel the warm exhalation.
Today, Augustine was twisted in his usual Tangela-configuration. He was facing towards Lysandre on the pillow, but had one knee up in the air with the other propped across it, one arm thrown over his head and the other across Orléans, who was crammed like a baguette into the corner of the bed next to the wall. His mouth was half-open, his hair scattered in black streaks across his face, and he was dreaming, eyes occasionally moving under their thin lids.
Seeing him like this, sprawled and deeply asleep, Lysandre couldn’t help but think about the night before. How they’d fallen asleep. It had been—so utterly different from whatever he had possibly expected. It had been... what had it been, really?
Based on what Augustine had been able to communicate after, in the process of crying himself to sleep, it seemed that they had switched. They had switched, and neither one of them had been ready for it. Even now, in the morning, his friend’s eyes were still red and swollen from the force of those nighttime tears. Augustine had said he was happy, that it was good and right, but that changed nothing about how Lysandre felt. That changed nothing about how frightened he’d been when Augustine had gone totally silent and still, rendered speechless and senseless, and then, begging him, begun to cry.
If he’d known it had been coming, it would have been one thing. As it was, Lysandre had felt cut adrift from everything he thought he’d known about the world.
In the here and now, Augustine made a muffled noise and shifted, scooting into the embrace of Lysandre’s arms until he was forced to make room for his friend, rolling onto his back so that Augustine could tuck once more into the lee of his shoulder, one bony leg thrown over his thighs.
Lysandre closed his eyes, set his hand atop his friend’s back, and listened to near-inaudible breaths. He searched for something to think about, but found his mind coming up short again and again as he fell into an almost meditative trance, breathing in the scent of Augustine’s hair, feeling the warmth of his skin. Finally, at last, Lysandre fell back asleep, tugged down into the somnolent world of dreams by the reassuring presence of—
Augustine.
In Lysandre’s dream, Augustine stood atop a mound of greenery and earth under a sky bluer than the sea, the clouds spiraling up in a tower that reached unto the heavens. As Lysandre approached, climbing a never-ending hill, the Augustine in his dream constantly changed.
He began naked and exactly as Lysandre expected him to be, down to the dimples at the small of his back and the burn scar on his thigh. He was young and starry-eyed next, in ill-fitting clothes but burning like a bolide, as if the trappings held only the skin—the mind, the brain, was separate, and as brilliant as the sun. He was a man in middle age, wearing well-worn sweaters and with his hair gone almost entirely white, fine Murkrow’s feet framing his grey eyes and no longer smoking, smiling in a way that tasted like the words mon ami. His glasses were lopsided as he reached for Lysandre, waiting to take his hand.
His next transformation was into a stranger with sharp teeth in a long red coat. This Augustine looked at Lysandre like he was hungry and far too willing to find a less than ethical source of meat. His eyes were hidden behind a visor, and when he lifted it, they were blind to the light, unchanging, and he purred Lys like an open wound.
He was young again, after that: blue shirt open at the collar, tight black capris, lab coat. Laughing. Professor, Lysandre knew, the moment he saw him, he knew that was Professor Augustine Sycamore as sure as he knew the shape of his bones, a man that Augustine could have been but Lysandre had never known. There was another Professor after that, another older Augustine with a shock of white hair and a worn-out smile, a wedding band glinting on his outstretched hand.
After that he was a ghost, standing on an open grave, arms spread wide under a sky full of fire, atop a sea of corpses, laughing as the world ended.
Augustine in an old-style suit, tailored perfectly, tails flipped out behind him, narrow-faced but with slightly fuller hips. Augustine smelling of something sickly and sweet and heady that Lysandre couldn’t name or touch no matter how much he tried. Augustine soaked in freezing cold water, shuddering and laughing in the middle of a snowstorm. Augustine, young, with long tangled hair. Augustine, older, with tired eyes and a worn smile. Augustine, hair and clothes plastered flat in the rain. Augustine, grieving over a fur-lined jacket and a tombstone.
Augustine loving him. Augustine hating him. Augustine forgiving him. Augustine killing him. Augustine saving him. Augustine reaching out for him, calling Lysandre’s name, waiting.
Always, always, Augustine.
When Lysandre at last topped the hill, he found himself standing on a mountain taller than the world, out of breath and shaking. Doctor Augustine Sycamore stood once more beside him in his pinstripe turtleneck, purple jeans, and bright red socks. He wasn’t smoking, for once: he was leaning back against the trunk of a tree, picking at the bark as it peeled with one hand and holding a small dense ball of seeds in the other.
“Is this a sycamore?” Lysandre asked, looking up and into the boughs. “Platanus orientalis?”
“No,” Augustine replied. “It’s a cedar. I’m a sycamore, and so is this.” He held up the seed ball, took Lysandre’s hand, and pressed it into the center of his palm. “Or it will be, someday, if that’s what you want.”
“What do I do with it?” Lysandre asked, suddenly unsure of himself.
“I’m yours to dispose of as you see fit.” Me, not it. “I’m yours, Professor, to do whatever you want with. You can take my seeds off and plant all of them until you’ve grown yourself a grove of sycamores, as many as you want, and love each and every one of me. You can hang me as a decoration or put me out as a snack for Léon and the rest of the Lab Pokémon.” Augustine smiled, and it was less a smile and more a spade, like he was digging a grave. “Or bury me in compost and make me into fertilizer and let the world bloom from my bones.”
Lysandre had never dug a grave, but he remembered digging a grave. Remembered it viscerally, like it had been his hands that did it, his own two hands holding a shovel while a corpse wrapped in blue curtains stared unseeing at his back and a ghost rode his shoulders.
“No.” Lysandre tried to push the seed ball back into Augustine’s hands. “I can’t take this. You can’t give this to me.”
“Oh, honey.” In this dream, Augustine was himself-and-not, and his voice rang out like the sky itself was crashing down around them, crumbling into ashes and dust. “I already did. Don’t you know how the poem goes?” He set his hand atop Lysandre’s cheek, and he wasn’t wearing gloves. No gloves at all. Nothing but skin, warm and soft, smelling of home at the hollows of his wrists. “Golden lads and girls all must, as chimney-sweepers, come to dust. All lovers young, all lovers must, consign to thee, and come to dust.”
“What if I’m wrong?” The seed ball trembled in his hand. “What if I hurt you?”
“Do you want me to command you?” Doctor Sycamore’s voice was so soft, all sibilant venom. “Be cruel to you? Compel you? It’s not possible to command love, Lysandre. I want you to have my love because I, I myself, gave it to you.”
“But I’m one person. I’m only one man, Augustine.”
“I am yours,” Doctor Sycamore replied, and it tasted of four other words, four words that Lysandre couldn’t hear properly, echoing in his head like the afterimage of the sun on the backs of his eyes or the silence after the wail of a fire alarm. “You’ll know what to do with it, Professor de Lys. Just as the night knows what to do with the day.”
Lysandre woke with a sob. Augustine was cupping his cheeks, grey eyes swollen and red, face still slack with sleep. “Honey?” He asked, hoarse and low. “You’re crying.”
“Augustine,” Lysandre pleaded, and kissed him.
“I want you,” Augustine said when they broke, foreheads pressed together. “I want you in me again.”
Lysandre wanted to say no, afraid what had happened the night before would happen again. He couldn’t take it a second time. But, when Augustine added s'il te plaît and took him in hand, he could no more have said no than he could have ended the world.
Orléans had slunk away, disappearing out of the bedroom, and the blackout curtains were cracked just enough to let in the first few phosphorescent flames of dawn. When Augustine slicked him and sank down atop his cock, head thrown back on his shoulders, he was all Lysandre could see, the whole of existence narrowed down to Augustine, Augustine, pitié, threads of silver in his black hair, slight shadow at the base of his stomach above his too-narrow hips where Lysandre’s cock bottomed out inside him.
“Please.” He tasted blood and adrenaline on the back of his tongue when Augustine unraveled atop his cock, shuddering and twitching and coming mostly dry and crying out his name again and again. Augustine was so tight—so tight and hot and swollen, open with use—but Lysandre still fit so perfectly inside him, he was burning alive buried in him, held by his slick walls, in the heart of him. “Please may I come,” Lysandre begged, and Augustine smiled, eyes narrow and the color of dawn clouds, just as the sun lit them up outside.
“Oh, honey.” He cupped Lysandre’s cheek. Lysandre turned into it, sobbing into the palm of his hand. “Of course you may.”
Lysandre came crying his thanks, each and every word a prayer, and felt in that moment like he had found an anchor. He had found an anchor and, for the first time in his life, knew what it meant to call a harbor a home.
They didn’t get up until after his alarm had gone off. “My poor ass,” Augustine muttered, rubbing the small of his back as they showered, groaning every time Lysandre touched his hips.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” It was not the first time Lysandre had asked. Augustine rolled his eyes. “I’m allowed to be worried about you.” Lysandre rinsed the last of the conditioner out of his hair before finally stepping out of the water. Augustine always stayed in after him, basking in the heat, and Lysandre was almost entirely dried off before Augustine climbed out after him, wincing. “This is not reassuring me.”
“I’m just bitching. Let me bitch, or hold my sore hips with your big hands. I’m not used to straddling you like that.” Augustine held still and let Lysandre dry him off, comb his hair, and rub Pansage ointment to rub along the tops of his thighs and the base of his hips. Lysandre considered adding arnica, too, but there wasn’t any significant bruising. Augustine sighed when he was done, folding over Lysandre’s shoulders. “Way better. Just sore.”
Lysandre didn’t bother to reply. He got them both dressed, finding comfort and relief in those simple acts of service, smiling to himself as he thought about the way Augustine had called him a service top with such delight the night before.
He began making breakfast while Augustine sat on his kitchen counter feeding Orléans, Imogen, and Juliette. When the paper towel roll ran empty, Augustine handed Lysandre the empty tube and told him to go give it to Gremlin in the bathroom cabinet. When he knocked on the door and offered the cardboard to the Sableye, she screeched in delight but refused to be shut away again. Instead, she scrambled up onto his wrist, claws digging into the cloth of his shirt, and screeched again, more emphatically this time.
Sighing and shaking his head, Lysandre brought her back to the kitchen with him. “Well, look at that.” Augustine smiled, reaching up to offer his hand to his Pokémon, who was now perched on Lysandre’s shoulders. “She likes you.”
“Because she knows she annoys me.”
“I also annoy you, and you like me. Maybe it’s like trainer, like Pokémon.” Augustine leaned into Lysandre’s arm as he said it. Lysandre pulled him closer so that he could put his chin atop Augustine’s head while he flipped crêpes.
The batter in the pan sizzled. Lysandre sighed, his breath ruffling Augustine’s dark forest of curls. “We need to talk about last night.” Augustine grunted but didn’t expand upon the noise, staying where he was. “Are you really all right?”
“I told you before, when I sub, aftercare usually involves letting me cry my eyes out and not touching me.”
“Except you wanted to be touched.” A second grunt, acknowledging his point. “You cried yourself to sleep, Augustine. It was disconcerting.”
“I needed it. Subspace leads to me thinking.” He hesitated, lifting Gremlin up off of Lysandre’s shoulders and putting her in his lap instead, pulling down the sleeve of his shirt to start shining her gemstone eyes. She began to make a sound like a tumbling rock-polisher running. “I’d be the first to admit that my emotional intelligence tends toward the obtuse side of the spectrum at the best of times. Subspace turns my brain off. After I come back, all the things I stopped thinking and started feeling catch up with me all at once, and last night was... more than I was expecting. It’s been a few years. I can’t promise it will never happen again, obviously—it doesn’t work that way—but it shouldn’t be that... dramatic.”
Lysandre snorted.
“It compounded,” Augustine said, leaning back against his kitchen cabinets. “I was still pretty high from the emotions of the music at the opera and from how close you got me when you touched me, and that was before you facefucked me. The lull on the way home? That was the straw that broke the Camerupt’s back. You took care of me, though. And I’m back together. A little hungover, maybe, but I’ll be fine.”
“I don’t want you to drop.” Lysandre searched out his friend’s eyes. He looked tired. “I worry about you, Doctor Sycamore.”
“I could say as much to you, Professor de Lys. Are you all right?”
Lysandre turned the burner off. “I wasn’t,” he admitted, felt Augustine reach to take his hand, slender fingers curling around his palm. “Especially last night. You scared me, Augustine. I’ve never seen you that distraught, and given my druthers, I’d prefer to never see you like that again. I am now, though.” He squeezed his friend’s hand. “I’m fine now.”
Augustine laughed. “Well! Then we’re in agreement. The next time that happens, let’s negotiate it properly first. Lots of dotted lines and signatures and filing the paperwork with all the appropriate authorities.”
“You’re absurd.” Lysandre shook his head and handed Augustine his crêpes. “Come eat breakfast with me, Doctor Sycamore.”
“Oh, if you insist, Professor de Lys.”
In the middle of the night three days later, Lysandre’s Xtransceiver started ringing. It rang through once and he ignored it, barely conscious, rolling over to try to go back to sleep. It began to ring again. He pulled the blankets up to his ears and mashed his face into the pillow. When it rang a third time, he finally reached out and grabbed his C-Gear off of his side table, hitting the accept audio call button. “Quoi?” he croaked, not lifting his head from the pillow, eyes still resolutely closed.
“Sorry, I hoped I wouldn’t wake you.”
Lysandre groaned in response, cracking one eye to look at the time. “Augustine, it’s two in the morning.”
“As if you don’t regularly text and call me in the middle of the night.” Lysandre groaned again because he couldn’t exactly deny that. “I really am sorry, Lysandre—I wouldn’t have called at all, but I need your help. Dexio’s found something at Allearth Forest that matches some of our early-stage Mega Energy readings and he thinks it might be a cache of transitory phase stones. If it is, that could pinpoint the source of the initial energy burst. I’m going to get his car and drive out there, but I can’t leave Imogen.”
Lysandre rubbed his eyes and sat up the rest of the way, yawning into the back of his hand. “Why can’t you leave Imogen? Is she sick?”
“No, no—she’s fine. No Pokérus or anything like that. She found a nest of eggs and she’s being really territorial and aggressive about them.”
“So take her to a Pokémon Center or either of our Labs?”
Augustine sucked his teeth. Lysandre flicked his bedside lamp on and rubbed the back of his neck as he waited for his brain to finish waking up. “Dios Mio, La Fucking Creatura decided she had to help—Imogen used Knock Off on her so hard that she dropped her entire button hoard and she’s refused to get off the top of the cabinets ever since and won’t stop screaming. In the mood Imogen is in, I don’t want her staying with too many Pokémon or people right now, and I don’t want to try to take her and the nest with me. She and Orléans get along, plus Orléans usually keeps Incendie in check—”
“Are you coming over here?”
“I’ll drive by on the way out of town.” Lysandre grunted his agreement and went to go get himself dressed, putting on a cardigan and socks and turning the lights in the front room on as he tried to figure out the best place to put a nest of mysterious eggs. In the end, he chose the guest room, since Imogen could open the door and Incendie couldn’t.
Soon enough, Augustine drove up in Dexio’s car. He left the hazards on as he came up, carrying the nest of five eggs in a large blanket basket, Imogen right behind him. “I heard you’re being a nuisance,” Lysandre told the Audino, who started chattering at him, visibly irate. He raised his hands in surrender—to an Audino, of all things. “Augustine, why is your entire team so consistently ready to yell at something?”
“They’re used to dealing with me.” Augustine was dressed for cold weather; Allearth Forest was high up in the hills of Coastal Kalos, by the border with the Azoth Kingdom, and the wind off of the ocean at this time of year would be bitter. After he’d wrestled his boots off, Augustine followed Lysandre into the guest room and put the nest on the bed. Imogen immediately climbed up. One by one, she took each individual egg and tucked it against the small of her belly, tugging the heavy wool blankets over herself when she was done.
Lysandre closed the door behind them as they went out to the kitchen. “Are you leaving now?”
Augustine smiled up at him, face drawn with lack of sleep. “Yes. Dexio didn’t really explain why, but he basically told me to fly there. I’m going to drive all night.”
“Let me make you coffee, at least.”
“I have some in the car.”
They stared at each other until Lysandre gave in and bent over to pick Augustine up, the other man immediately hugging him tightly around the neck, face buried in the top of his shoulder. “Take care of yourself,” Lysandre said, murmuring the words into the skin at the hollow of his friend’s jaw. “Drive safely. Don’t exhaust yourself or fall down a mountain.”
“Juliette’s my co-pilot. She’ll stop me if I start wavering.” Lysandre squeezed Augustine until he wheezed an amused, pained noise. “You’re making my ribs creak, Lys.”
Lysandre took another deep breath, reinforcing the smell of Doctor Augustine Sycamore in his mind, before finally setting him back down. “Good luck. I’ll text you if there’s any news on the eggs. Do you have any idea what they are?”
Augustine shook his head. “Not a clue. Imogen found them abandoned by an outdoor heating lamp at a café when she was out wandering on her own last night, so it’ll be a surprise for all of us.” He yawned. “I’d better get going, I want to try to reach the forest by dawn so I can get a little sleep before Dexio wakes up. Signal will probably be terrible, but if I can get any, I’ll text you about what we find.”
“I look forward to it.”
Augustine waved once more in brief farewell before locking the door behind him as he left. Lysandre went to the window and watched as he climbed back into what had to be Dexio’s car and almost instantly slammed into high gear, peeling away from the curb and into the black of the night with a tire squeal.
Lysandre sighed, exasperated. “Of course you drive like a Unovan.”
The following morning Imogen refused to be left at his apartment alone, so Lysandre let her take the train with him to the Lab. He carried the basket while Imogen held onto his lab coat, crammed up against the doors during the morning rush. Imogen was a hit with all of his assistants (Team Flare particularly), and they took turns helping the Audino keep an eye on her eggs as breaks from putting the finishing touches on the production model Sixth Gen Pokédexes.
The production model was approved and officially sent off on Thursday, to much rejoicing. Bryony and Celosia hosted an office party at their apartment, and Lysandre spent most of it enjoying some non-alcoholic cider and talking to Aliana about updating the PHG at the stadium to be cross-compatible with the new Pokédexes before League season so they had no last-minute problems picking up the pieces. After everyone else had gone home, leaving Lysandre and Imogen alone with Bryony and Celosia, Bryony produced her chess board and they sat down to play a game. Once they’d settled into the rhythm, talking about a few unrelated things, she said, “How are things with Doctor Sycamore?”
Lysandre froze, his fingers hovering just above the white rook. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
Bryony caught his gaze and exaggeratedly rolled her eyes. “You know exactly what I mean, Lysandre. You two are almost always at each other’s apartments. He even left his Audino with you while he’s out of town.” Lysandre hesitantly edged his rook forward. He wasn’t paying enough attention, because Bryony immediately took it with her bishop. He pursed his lips. “Are you still colleagues or—”
“We aren’t dating.” Bryony deadpanned back at him. “We aren’t,” he repeated, drawing himself up. “Neither of us is looking for anything like that. Doctor Sycamore is still recovering from his last breakup and I’m not interested in something romantic. If you’re going to insist on something more specific, you could say friends with benefits—”
Bryony groaned, waving a hand at him to cut him off. “Lysandre, I don’t care what you call it. If you’re happy, that’s all I care about. Doctor Sycamore makes you happy, doesn’t he?”
Lysandre looked down at the chess board and straightened his cravat as he cleared his throat. “Augustine makes me very happy. I’m never afraid to be myself around him. I have no desire to jeopardize that by bringing feelings into the equation. Either of our feelings.”
“So...” Bryony trailed off. Celosia leaned over her girlfriend’s shoulder and joined her in staring at Lysandre.
“You can still have commitment without romance.” Celosia loudly bit into a pretzel rod and gestured at him with the broken end. “You could collar him. That’s commitment.”
Totally astonished, Lysandre replied, “Why in the world would I collar him?” and then realized what he’d said, blush burning his entire face. Ashamed, he cleared his throat and looked anywhere else, reflexively adjusting his cravat as he tried to get his mouth together to say words that weren’t garbled noises. “I,” he tried, choking off, voice cracking two octaves up. “It’s not. He isn’t—”
“Wow,” Celosia finally said. “Are you a sub, boss? I never would have seen that coming. What kind of Dom is Doctor Sycamore, then?”
Lysandre covered his face with his hand, accepted fate for what it was, and croaked, “Mean.”
A text arrived from Augustine two nights later, telling him that all was well in Allearth Forest and they’d made good progress. Lysandre was glad for the update, even if he had no idea when the message had actually been sent. He replied that the eggs were beginning to move occasionally, so they could be close to hatching.
A week after Augustine left, Lysandre got home from the Lab, opened the door to his apartment, and found—
Absolute chaos.
Every pair of shoes he owned was on the floor. There was jam and butter on nearly every flat surface. Cushions had been thrown about madly, the couch had been upended, the paper towels had been unrolled—as had the toilet paper—and there was a broken plate on the floor of the kitchen. There was syrup dripping out of the sink.
Orléans was completely soaked in what smelled like sesame and olive oil. He howled piteously.
Imogen had receipts stuck to her. With jam.
There were five perfect, filthy baby Mienfoo asleep in various states of disarray on top of his dining table.
Lysandre covered his face with his hands and took a page out of Doctor Augustine Sycamore’s book: “Sweet Baby Phione drown me in the fucking Galarian Channel.” Imogen said something that had all the right intonation to be désolé. “Not your fault,” he told her, dropping his hands so he could take stock of his apartment in mute horror. “I don’t even know where to start.”
He sent a photo of the very sweet, sleepy hurdle of Mienfoo to the de Lys Lab group chat, to which all of Team Flare replied, immediately calling dibs on various babies. He followed that up with a message to Augustine. Then he rolled his sleeves up, put his fists on his hips, and sighed over the state of his apartment.
“Baths first,” he told Imogen and Orléans. “Help me with the babies.”
It was slow going, even with the shower. Imogen and Orléans were easy enough, as much as neither was particularly happy with the process of having to be cleaned, showered, and dried off. The Mienfoo were a nightmare, scrambling all over each other in their helpless attempts to escape the glass shower stall with the door closed. “Suffer,” he told them pitilessly, working his way through them one by one, passing them over the door to Imogen standing on top of the toilet rather than risk releasing the whole soaking-wet lot all at once.
Once the babies were no longer sopping wet, Lysandre took three of them, Orléans carried one in his mouth, and Imogen shoved the fifth under her arm. They shut the entire hurdle into the guest bedroom along with Incendie, who seemed fully prepared to wrestle the whole lot dry. After that, Lysandre released Léon and stared sternly down at all three Pokémon. “I need you all to help,” he informed them. “Start with anything that isn’t dirty, please. Shoes away, cushions back where they belong. I’ll shower and then—”
His Xtransceiver rang.
Lysandre groaned as he felt the first throb of a tension headache behind in his temples and went to get his C-Gear. When he saw who it was, he adjusted the camera slightly (since he was still only in his briefs and also soaking wet) and answered.
Doctor Augustine Sycamore’s face lit up the screen. “I saw!” He was grinning. “Dexio and I are almost back in Lumiose—” The camera flickered for a moment as he turned it to reveal that Dexio was driving. Lysandre couldn’t blame him. Having seen what Augustine drove like even when simply pulling out of a parking spot, he did not want to be trapped in a car with him behind the wheel across the Region. For any reason. “Dexio’s going to drop me off. I want to see the Mienfoo! A whole hurdle of them! Five!”
“Augustine—” Lysandre began, but his friend was already gaily ringing back off, mid-conversation to Dexio, leaving Lysandre standing in the silence of his filthy apartment.
Lysandre closed his eyes and sighed. “Great,” he informed his apartment and its various Pokémon inhabitants. “Just what we need.”
Imogen, who was standing beside the dining table, made a questioning noise. “Augustine is coming over,” Lysandre explained. She looked around his apartment, seemingly as dazed by this turn of events as he was. They took stock of the wreckage.
By comparison to the state that anyone but Doctor Augustine Sycamore lived in, this was utter squalor. By comparison to Doctor Augustine Sycamore’s apartment, it was merely a particularly bad Wednesday.
That was not in any way reassuring.
Lysandre was still dripping on the floor. He needed to shower, eat, clean up, and somehow get this place presentable before Augustine arrived. He pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes and took a deep breath. One step at a time.
“I’m going to shower,” he informed the Pokémon. “Start on cleaning up and then I’ll join you.” He got a chorus of agreeable noises and left to shower as quickly as possible. He was wet enough already, so soap and shampoo were entirely perfunctory. He didn’t bother to blow-dry his hair, and if that meant it would be a frizzy disaster, that was a cost he was prepared to pay. He tied it up in a tight bun at the top of his head and went to go find clothes.
When Lysandre got to his closet he stopped, staring at himself in the mirror on the back of the door, thinking over the week and a half since that very strange night at the opera. He was now far past the point where he ought to admit that if Augustine could cry himself to sleep in his arms, Lysandre could afford to relax and wear t-shirts for purposes other than pyjamas. He put on a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt and then went to join his Pokémon in cleaning the apartment.
Imogen had rolled up all of the toilet paper and paper towels. Léon and Orléans had returned all his shoes and the cushions to their proper locations, replacing the remotes and any other random objects that had been scattered about in the Mienfoo chaos. Lysandre took charge of the ruined roll of paper towels and started wiping up the food. Imogen followed him with Léon on her head, holding the mop. Soon enough it was (passably) clean. The Mienfoo, having eaten on the couch while Imogen watched them, were curled up once more in their blanket basket, and Lysandre had just enough time to pour two glasses of wine and scarf down some cold leftover fried rice directly out of the container, standing barefoot in his kitchen like he was in college again.
It was not his best night.
When a key turned in the lock, Lysandre quickly put the leftovers down and flushed, hoping Augustine wouldn’t notice that he’d been eating out of the container. A moment later, the door was flung open. “Where are they?” Doctor Sycamore gasped, out of breath, grey eyes wide. “Where are the babies?”
“Hello to you too.” Lysandre gestured at where Imogen was sitting next to Orléans on the couch. “Over there.” When Augustine saw that all five were asleep, he shut the door quietly, stumbling as he tried to pull his boots off. Lysandre recoiled in horror when he saw the state that his friend was in. “You’re filthy.” There were leaves in Augustine’s hair, dirt smeared on his face, and mud was all over his boots, pants, shirt, and coat. “What did you do, roll in Allearth Forest?”
“Something like that.”
“You aren’t coming in here like that. We just mopped.” Léon, perched atop the china cabinet, quarked his agreement.
“Want me to strip in your entryway again?” Augustine waggled his eyebrows as he said it. Lysandre didn’t quite roll his eyes, although he came close. “Hang on, fine. I will.” It took him a few minutes longer to struggle out of the rest of his dirty clothes, complaining under his breath that it was cold in Lysandre’s apartment. Once he was only in his boxers and socks, his hair irreparably mussed from dragging his turtleneck over his head, he went straight over to kneel next to the couch.
“Would you look at that,” Augustine breathed. “That’s incredible. Amazing. They’re so small.” The Mienfoo were all—blessedly—asleep, tiny and perfect in their basket. Very clean. Incendie had licked them all dry. None of them had liked it. Lysandre followed Augustine over and set one hand on his bony shoulder to feel the heat of his skin, reveling in the joy of once more having Augustine here and present. “And you just came home to find this?”
“I came home to find a complete disaster. They got into the pantry and the fridge, there were butter tracks on the floor and the walls, things thrown everywhere, Orléans covered in...” Augustine reached up to take his hand, face pressed to the side of his wrist, and Lysandre completely forgot what he was saying. There was something sharp knotted up hot and tight behind his breastbone, bundled up under his ribs, that was threatening to stab him. He didn’t know why. Or what. Or how it had come to be there. “Imogen has done a good job,” he finally finished, clearing his throat.
“She’s very good at taking care of annoying things that cause chaos wherever they go.” Augustine scratched behind his Audino’s ears, Imogen trilling quietly at the praise and attention. “She’s used to dealing with me.”
“You do have a tendency towards self-destruction that anyone would want to mother.” Lysandre immediately regretted saying it, because the way that Augustine went still, his face falling, made him feel as if he’d thrown something priceless on the ground for the sole purpose of seeing it shatter.
Lysandre tried to think of something that would ease that hurt and came up blank. Instead he tugged his friend up and into an embrace and buried his face in Augustine’s frankly frightful hair.
Augustine relaxed into his arms after a few breaths, leaning back into his chest. “And does anyone include you too, Professor?” Lysandre snorted. “Should I take that as a yes?”
“You’re filthy,” Lysandre said, rather than answer the question. “You need a shower. Have you eaten?”
“No. I could eat you?”
“Not when you’re filthy.” Augustine made a fond noise, turning around so he could reach up to grab the back of Lysandre’s neck, pulling him down and into a kiss. When they broke apart, he looked tired and wan, the hollows under his eyes heavy, his skin lax and sallow. Lysandre frowned, brushing a thumb under one of Augustine’s eyes, that foggy grey haunting in his pale face. Had he ever seen his friend so exhausted? “How was your trip?”
Augustine mustered up a smile, and Lysandre elected to believe it. Augustine hardly looked as if it had been time well spent. He looked fatigued to the bone, but if he felt fulfilled, that was what mattered. “Very successful. Still not entirely sure what will come of it, but Dexio was right on the money this time.”
“When do I get to know what you found?”
“When I know what I found.” Augustine shrugged. “You know how it is. I’ve got a bunch of rocks and some new leads and more questions than I started with. We’ll see what this plays out into once we get to run the numbers.” Lysandre did indeed know how it was, and knew further questions would bear no more fruit. He basked in the other man’s heat for a moment longer before going to get the cold leftovers and the wine.
Augustine followed Lysandre to sink down, exhausted, at the dining table, watching the bustling with tired eyes. He drained his glass in one long drink, head tilted all the way back, throat working under its week’s worth of black stubble. When he set it down empty, he sighed with relief.
Lysandre noticed, surprised, that his friend very nearly had a full beard. It had twice as much grey as it did black—strange, given how dark the hair on his head was.
Augustine was still watching Lysandre, eyes a little hazy, as he brought the food over. “I’ve never seen you wear a t-shirt except to bed. To what do I owe the honor?”
“I decided that you could be trusted to not Rattata out my ability to dress casually.” Augustine snorted as Lysandre sat down, passing over the cold fried rice and the second wineglass. “Here, have mine too. You look as if you need it.”
They sat in silence while Augustine ate, watching Imogen fall asleep with the Mienfoo. When he was done, he coaxed Lysandre over to the recliner—the couch was, after all, currently covered in Pokémon—and climbed onto his lap, legs slung sideways over the arm of the chair, face tucked up against the curve of his neck.
Lysandre expected them to talk.
They didn’t, not really.
There was a little perfunctory conversation—thank you for taking care of Imogen and the nest; of course, you asked, it was hardly that great of an imposition; do you want me to take them when I leave?; no, they can stay tonight, we can figure the rest out tomorrow. All of Team Flare wants one, so we only need to wait until they’re old enough to be separated from Imogen; you’re a phenomenal Pokémon Professor, you know that?—but before Lysandre knew it, Augustine had gone quiet.
He looked down to find that his friend had fallen asleep in his arms, curled up against his chest, holding the wineglass in one limp hand, the fingers of the other slid under the hem of Lysandre’s shirt, warm against his side. When Lysandre whispered his name, he did not so much as stir, and that little knot that had been hovering behind his breastbone unspooled into something heady and cloying and warm, a tide that rose and threatened to drown him with titanic force.
Lysandre de Lys did not so much fall in love like falling. Lysandre de Lys fell in love like he had misplaced something he had never even realized he had bought, and then when he’d gone looking for it, had found it in the spot he least expected it to be. He fell in love like he had forgotten how to, but rather than remember, he picked love up and brought it home.
He was in love.
He was in love with Augustine Sycamore.
He was helplessly, indelibly in love with Augustine Sycamore, who had come raging in out of the tempest and upended his entire life and made a space in Lysandre’s chest shaped like his smile.
“Oh,” Lysandre whispered, and then, closing his eyes, added, “merde.”