Chapter Text
It’s not even two weeks until the Cup Tournament starts, and Oleana has finally put her foot down. She’s normally always taking the Chairman’s side and will normally do just about anything to make sure he gets what he wants. Leon certainly hadn’t ever expected her to be an ally, but it’s thanks to her that he’s been let go. At least for now he gets to stay in Wyndon ‘until it’s time.’ whenever that might be.
Leon is worried that the Chairman will make it sooner rather than later. Actually, he’s worried in general. Both about the whole affair, but also about Chairman Rose himself who seems to be getting more obsessed by the minute. Oleana hasn’t said anything, but Leon can read between the lines that the man has virtually stopped eating and sleeping, not wanting to interrupt his work.
Regardless, as Oleana had said, someone needs to fill in for the Chairman at the League as he stubbornly refuses to leave his project and since Oleana is with Rose in Hammerlocke, Leon is also conducting some business on behalf of Macro Cosmos. It’s not his favourite thing to do, but he can do it, and the way people react to him wearing a normal suit can honestly sometimes be funny.
It’s a bit weird to have his arms covered and he feels oddly naked without a hat, but even he recognises that it doesn’t really go with the rest of the outfit (See, Raihan, he does have some sense of style). Instead, his long hair is gathered in a bun. He still takes the first opportunity to take off the suit jacket at the end of the day though, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt, not caring all that much about the very clear tan lines left behind from the glove on his right hand, making his darker thumb stick out like a... well, a sore thumb.
He hangs the jacket over the comfy chair in Rose’s office. He thinks it says something of the trust Rose has in him that he’s allowed in the space without the man himself present, but of course, anything important might have been moved to Hammerlocke at this point, meaning that the office is simply just an office.
It’s nice to show people that he is more than just a pretty face and he does have other skills than battling but it certainly wouldn’t be his first choice of career, no matter how much Rose insists he’d be good at it if he applied himself more.
He’s been in a series of annoying meetings all day, notably one with the head of Macro Cosmos Tech who had been severely put out by the fact that Leon, acting on behalf of the Chairman, agreed to the Pokémon League going with Silph Co. for counter-cheating measures when they had their own product underway. He was even more put out when Leon reminded him that Macro Cosmos Tech’s product firstly was inferior to Silph Co’s and secondly wasn’t even done.
Leon probably shouldn’t have enjoyed the appalled look on the guy’s face when he told him that he didn’t care about Macro Cosmos’s ambition of a Galarian monopoly as much as he did. Nothing like a good, strong rival to push you to get better after all.
The head of Macro Cosmos Tech strongly disagreed. It wasn’t pretty.
He sighs as he drops into the chair and takes a sip of the cinnamon latte waiting for him at the desk, courtesy of his temporary assistant, Ned, who is usually a back-up PA for Oleana. It has too much sugar and too little cinnamon but so far, Ned has been exceptionally nice and helpful, and even “accidentally” interrupted the meeting when it went wrong, so he doesn’t bother pointing it out.
He spends another thirty minutes going through papers while drinking the latte, deciding which ones to take home and which ones can wait. Luckily it isn’t all that much. It’s only the most pressing issues regarding the Championship Cup that he needs to deal with and sign off on. Mostly the boring stuff like the preparation for increased traffic for Macro Cosmos Rail and Macro Cosmos Air and signing off on merchandise, but it’s more than plenty when, he has his own stuff to deal with, like interviews, photo shoots, and a press conference.
He just doesn’t have time!
From his own estimations, Gloria will be coming sometime tomorrow and while his housekeeper has done an excellent job as usual, there are plenty of little details that he’s missing. He didn’t even order groceries yet.
(How hard would it be to find Dialga to ask for an extra couple of hours per day?)
He rubs his face and shoves the papers he needs into the satchel he brought, along with his laptop, not caring all that much about the crunch of paper being crushed.
It’s a warm day in Wyndon and accidentally on purpose, he forgets the suit jacket at the office.
He says goodbye to Ned before he leaves, thanking him for his invaluable help, and gets a surprised smile from the older man. Given that he’s used to working for Oleana, it’s no wonder, really.
He’s grateful for the change in wardrobe when he’s going home because he isn’t immediately rushed by fans as soon as he gets on the Monorail. The normal Wyndon residents are somewhat used to him by now, not to mention the other celebrities who live in the town. They don’t really care that much anymore and usually respect his privacy, but this time of year, Wyndon is full of tourists who don’t have the same reservations.
He still turns a few heads, and gets a couple of double takes, but he isn’t asked to sign a single slip of paper all the way to his house at Grafton Hill and to his knowledge, no one takes any pictures, which suits him just fine.
Leon comes home to Mr Rime dancing around with a Swablu duster, which ends up in his face. The Pokémon jumps back but Leon waves off his worry and spits out the fluff that had gotten in his mouth.
With a sigh, he lets Charizard out of his Pokéball in the living room. His friend looks around and perks up when he realises that they’re home. Leon chuckles at his antics when he flops down on the floor and wiggles around, rubbing his back against the carpet, more like an overexcited Yamper than the ferocious dragon people think he is.
Leon snaps a quick picture of his Pokémon with his wings stretched out on either side and his tongue lolling out goofily. At least he’s keeping his tail away from anything flammable this time.
He briefly considers uploading it to Instapic but decides against it. Rose wouldn’t approve. They have an image to maintain after all, and no one is intimidated by a Charizard acting like a Zigzagoon looking for belly rubs. He does look awfully cute though, so he sends it to Gloria who responds with a 😍 and a picture of Boltund’s butt sticking out of a snow pile.
“Good to be home, buddy?” he asks Charizard and gets down on his knees to provide aforementioned belly rubs.
He gets a headbutt in the side for his efforts, and he laughs when he nearly falls over from the force of it. He rubs a bit harder in retaliation, which intensifies the wiggling until Charizard’s tail gets a bit too close to the curtains.
He flops down next to his friend and sighs. He still has a lot to do. He tried to cram as much as possible into these days so he can have some time with Gloria when she comes, and he’s been mostly successful. After tonight’s paperwork, all that’s left is a few meetings, a photoshoot, three interviews and a press conference, unless something unexpected happens. He also needs to check up on the rest of his team and go over his strategy for the Championship Final, but he’s planning on waiting for that until Gloria leaves. He’ll have a few days buffer and he’s not planning on attending all the matches. Just Hop and Gloria’s, and then he’ll stream the rest. Either way, the Pokémon he can’t keep at home are well taken care of elsewhere.
He scrolls through his phone again, to see if there’s any news about Hop or Gloria’s whereabouts on Instapic that he missed. There’s nothing about Gloria, but #Hop189 was tagged by a Hiker named Douglass. The image is a selfie showing off the man himself, beaming, and Hop standing by him with a sheepish, but proud smile.
‘Don’t mess with this kid! He knocked my Pokémon out in less than 5 mins!😂😅’
It makes Leon chuckle, and he sends Hop a screenshot, writing how proud he is of him and to please update him when he finds a safe place to camp. Route 10 is no joke.
He closes the app and gets on with ordering groceries, foregoing the microwave meals he usually gets for the freezer. He figures they might get take-away most of the time she’s here. Maybe they’ll even cook.
Or, well, someone will cook.
He can’t cook much more than the basics he learned after living off wild berries for a month during his Gym Challenge, but it wouldn’t be fair to have Gloria cooking as a guest.
He should probably look into learning more about how to cook, really. He doesn’t want to be the kind of guy who always expects his girlfriend to cook for him.
And there he goes again with putting the carriage before the Rapidash.
Just because Gloria agreed to be his girlfriend, that doesn’t mean she’ll want it to be a long-term thing. Everything is still up in the air with the Championship too. If she wins, she might have incentive to stick around in Wyndon, but no one says she has to stay with him.
He also has no idea what she’ll want to do if she doesn’t win. Maybe she’ll go back to Postwick, though he doubts it. As much as he remembers Wyndon being gigantic when he arrived, he also remembers how tiny Postwick suddenly felt when he returned. Like he was being smothered by Wooloo wool. Sometimes literally, when Hop decided to let his Wooloo into his room to wake him up in the morning.
Maybe she’ll get offers from some of the talent scouts. He knows the Flying and Electric type Gyms are especially hungry for new talent. The Steel type Gym has been a mess as long as Leon remembers, but a trainer as strong as Gloria could definitely straighten it out.
The fact that it’s located just West of Wyndon is also very convenient.
He doesn’t know how she would feel about type specialisation though, considering how closely connected she is to her team.
Then again, Raihan is a prime example of screwing with type tradition, keeping Gigalith, Sandaconda and Torkoal active even though he’s technically a Dragon type Gym Leader.
When the groceries get delivered that same evening, Leon is briefly confused to see not one, but two delivery guys, because he didn’t order that much.
The first man he’s familiar with. He always gets his groceries from the same supermarket, and he has his usual tips waiting in a small jar near the door. It’s a quick exchange before he’s off again with his van. The second guy can’t be more than sixteen. He’s bouncing on the balls of his feet, waiting his turn.
“Champion Leon!” he whisper-yells excitedly.
Leon nods. “That’s me.”
“Shi – shoot – I almost didn’t believe it when I saw the name,” he says and thrusts the box he’s holding into Leon’s hands. Leon quickly grabs some more coins from the jar and the boy leaves with a wide smile and stars in his eyes.
The package is a nondescript brown, and Leon snorts at the content when he opens it. Several different types of condoms, lube, a Sex Ed book, and something he thinks might be a pregnancy test.
Rai 🐉
I got ur package
Ty! 🥰
you owe me so much
I want a trip to alola
and a pokémon import licence
just let me know when u wanna go
can’t promise anything about the licence
I NEED one of those goofy palm trees
you’re the champion, you can make it happen
ill do my best
Leon smiles at the phone. Rai has wanted an Alolan Exeggutor ever since he became Gym Leader. He’ll get him one if he has to catch it himself. He’s grateful to have a friend like Raihan. He couldn’t exactly go into any random pharmacy to buy this stuff. Everyone in the region would know his dick size before the hour was up, and speculation would be floating around who he’s using them with. Paparazzi would circle him at all hours like sharks smelling blood and he definitely wouldn’t get to see Gloria.
Rai had come with a solution in the form of a fake name and fake address that he conveniently had. Something Leon chose not to question. He might even get one for himself, for online purchases that aren’t anyone else’s business. He had been looking to buy a replacement for Gloria’s skirt that he’d ruined back in Hammerlocke, but even though the world is much more accepting now than it has been, people might still question why he would want to buy women’s clothing.
He puts the condoms in the bedside drawer and shoves the rest of the stuff up on a shelf in his walk-in.
It’s a relief having the condoms, so they don’t have to worry so much, but he’s going to miss going in without it. The wetness for one is going to be sorely missed. There’s nothing quite like that silky slick-slide, not to mention the idea of them so closely connected without any barriers between them.
Still, he’d rather use them than risk Gloria getting pregnant.
Some day if he’s going to give in to one of those ‘way too soon’-fantasies, but not now. She doesn’t deserve a teenage pregnancy and having to put her life on hold. Especially given the scrutiny she’s under right now. The scrutiny they’re both under. Besides, Raihan is right; if she’s pregnant now, Leon will possibly face criminal charges and he would never be able to see her again, not to speak of any child that would come out of a potential pregnancy.
He dreads having to ask Gloria if she might be. He probably should before they have sex again though.
With a groan, he lets himself fall onto the bed. In spite of all the complications, his thoughts keep returning to the feeling of his cock fitting so perfectly in Gloria’s warm cunt. The way she always gets so wet and how she clenches around him when she comes. The breathy moans she makes every time he bottoms out, and the noises she lets out when he pushes her over the edge.
He can’t really help but shove his pants down a bit to free his cock. It’s rock hard and already leaking precome. It doesn’t take much before he finishes himself off with a gasp, spilling come onto his own stomach, filling his bellybutton with the viscous fluid. That’s going to be a pain to clean out.
He lets his thoughts drift for a bit as he recovers, sprawled out on top of his duvet like a Staryu. No one has ever turned him on as much as Gloria does. He had a period of sleeping around a few years ago, but nothing from back then comes close to what he gets from Gloria. He's always needed some extra wank material to reach his orgasm when he’s alone, but he easily comes from the memory of Gloria alone.
He’s in so much trouble. She definitely ruined him for all other women. He can’t imagine being with anyone else, and he knows that even if she leaves him, she’ll always haunt his mind. Anyone else would always be compared to her, and they will always fall short.
Leon is great being professional. And even when he isn’t, he’s great at pretending that he is. Pretending is just a little bit harder when his Rotom phone happily zooms around the meeting room with a high-pitched squeal because Gloria sent him a text message.
He can’t blame the poor thing for its enthusiasm. The only one who has been more of a victim to Leon’s gushing about his girlfriend is Charizard. It’s Rotom who has been helping him find pictures of her, and videos, not just taken from the League’s official site, but the ones people upload to Instapic and other social media. Rotom has done most of the legwork in Leon’s cyberstalking by far and Leon is grateful. With any of his other Pokémon, he would give them a treat, but Rotom only feeds on electricity and it’s not like he can get a special kind of those. Maybe he should get some of that kind of sequins to decorate it with if it wants to look pretty, but that might undermine the professionalism he’s trying to go for.
Not that it can get that much worse than it is right now with Rotom zipping around in circles.
“Text message! Text message! Text message from Glo –“
He manages to catch the device before it can reveal the name, but he has to jump onto the table to do it.
He jumps back down and clears his throat awkwardly, looking down at the disapproving frowns of the Macro Cosmos department heads. “Sorry about that, gentlemen, please continue,” he excuses and leaves the room without any bad conscience. This meeting could have been an e-mail.
It takes a second for the meeting to continue on the other side of the door, and a bit longer for Rotom to stop struggling in Leon’s hand.
His breath catches in his throat when he sees the picture she sent.
Route 10 covered in fresh, glittering snow, with Wyndon spread out far down in the valley. It’s so beautiful. He wishes more than anything that he’d been there to see it with her, but at the same time, this is Gloria’s thing to experience for herself. Her journey and all the trials and tribulations she’s been through are hers to own alone, and so is the victory of reaching the finish line.
He smiles when he notices the black blur of Linoone at the corner of the picture, on his way to gleefully destroy the otherwise peaceful scenery, Boltund right behind him.
Bright Eyes ✨️
It looks beautiful
I miss u ❤
me too ❤
I see what you mean with the view
the view would be better with you in it 🥰
[selfie of Gloria mid-eyeroll. Her cheeks are red with the cold and her scarf is covering her neck entirely, all the way up to her ears and covering her chin, but he can still see her shy smile.]
Perfect
That was so cheesy 🙄
😁😘❤
😘
I wish I could greet you at the gates but I’m stuck in meetings for the day 😒🥺
🙁🥺
yes pity me!
I should be done around 16.30 tho so come over any time after that
16 Roselia Rd, Grafton Hill, Wyndon
I can’t wait to see u ❤
They continue writing until his next meeting. He disengages the Rotom-function in his phone before sliding it back into his pocket, mentally apologising to the Pokémon in it. He’s been told that disengaging Rotom is a bit like sending a Pokémon back into its Pokéball, but the phone is so different from a Pokéball that he has a hard time wrapping his head around how it works.
Either way, he’d rather avoid a repeat experience and until he can sit down with Rotom for a conversation about workplace conduct, it’ll have to stay inactive. He still gets the normal notifications, of course, but the presentation of them should be a bit more subtle.
Once all his meetings are done, he rushes home. The last two hours of the day are completely wasted because his mind keeps straying to the girl coming to see him and all the things he might have forgotten to prepare. His phone has been vibrating quietly in his pocket on and off, with updates on her registration and pictures people tag her in on Instapic and by the time he can leave, he’s so full of restless energy that he can’t even sit down on the Monorail.
He nearly runs home from the stop at Grafton Hill, and when he makes it home, he immediately toes off the fancy torture instruments shoes, and rips off his tie.
He’d like to have a shower before Gloria arrives, but he still takes five minutes to feed the little Rookidee who lives in his garden before he takes the stairs up two steps at a time.
He only manages to let his hair down and unbutton his shirt halfway when the doorbell rings and a surge goes through his diaphragm. He doesn’t feel ready in the slightest, but races back down the stairs regardless, nearly slipping at the bottom.
He takes a second to take a deep breath before opening the door.
And there she is.
Her smile is radiant, and he wouldn’t be able to stop his own grin even if he tried.
She takes his breath away, and he finds himself simply staring at her, struck dumb by the fact that she’s really there. It’s all he’s been able to think about for the past couple of weeks, and she finally came. He’s struck by a wave of pride because he knew she could do it, but she still actually made it.
“Hi,” she says quietly, still smiling.
He breathes a “hi” back, and he knows distantly that this should probably be the prompt to get him to open the door further to let her in, but his brain seems rather stuck on the fact that she’s there, she’s beautiful, and she’s smiling at him.
He’s finally broken out of it when Mr Lampert’s little Yamper barks from across the street, and he lets her in with a sheepish laugh.
As if they practiced it beforehand (which he supposes they did), Gloria stands on her tip-toes at the same time as he bends down so they can meet in a kiss exactly in the middle. It’s soft, but so, so good, and his toes curl.
He wills away the stray thought that he should probably bring up the condoms and the risk of pregnancy sooner rather than later.
Not now when she only just arrived. Besides, they’re just snogging for now anyway – something he’s very intent on fully enjoying.
She makes a small squeak when he picks her up with an arm under her bum and she tries to wrap her legs around him so he can carry her better. He’s only moving them a few steps though. Just so he can put her on the second step of the stairs so they’re almost at the same height rather than Gloria breaking her neck, trying to lean her head back far enough to kiss him.
She giggles when she realises what he’s doing and it’s cute as hell.
“I missed you,” he says against her lips. They’re both smiling so widely that kissing becomes nearly impossible at that point, and he settles for leaning his forehead against hers.
“I missed you too,” she whispers back.
Eventually, after a bit more kissing, he grabs her hand and pulls her along with him. “You want a tour?”
She nods eagerly and jumps down from the stairs to follow him further into the house.
They keep holding hands as he shows her all the rooms, and she takes everything in with appreciative eyes.
She seems especially interested in the garden, and he can’t wait to show her the rest of the facilities in the community garden that lies beyond.
Most of the house is pretty normal and he’s appreciating Nessa’s insistence that he get an interior decorator going through it all because apparently having his hat collection on display in the living room was ‘tacky’ and no-one over the age of 13 should have a Pokémon Pinball arcade machine. He still kinda misses it though and is sometimes tempted to pull it out of storage, but she’s probably right.
Either way, he does genuinely love his house as it is now. It’s beautiful, but still cosy and Rai had begged Nessa for the decorator’s number after his first visit, which is how they ended up with the same sofa.
They walk through the rest of the house, going through the guest rooms and the office until they finally reach the bedroom.
He shows her the walk-in that his ball cap collection has been banished to, and his eyes stray to the box on one of the top shelves with the stuff Raihan sent him.
They really need to have that conversation.
But first he needs to show her the view from the balcony which is absolutely breath-taking. He’s already imagining eating breakfast with her out there on warm summer mornings when the sun hits it just right.
She laughs when he tells her about the practice pitch on the roof, but rather than asking to see it, she pulls him down for a deep kiss. He pats himself on the back for having the idea to set it up, because with the way she’s kissing him, she’s clearly appreciating it.
She starts unbuttoning his shirt, and given where this is going, he knows that now is probably the time for him to say something about the condoms. But she’s kissing him just right so instead he leads her by the hips back into the bedroom towards the bed. Besides, showing is better than telling, right? They can have the other conversation later.
She pushes his shirt off his shoulders, and he pulls her shirt off as soon as his hands are free, and oh.
He bluescreens for a bit.
Rather than the usual sports bra which she has in several different colours, she’s wearing a black lacy one that cups her breasts just right.
He’s not sure if her tits have actually grown bigger, or if they just appear so, but he wants to trace her cleavage and the curve of them with his tongue.
Before he can do so, something disturbing catches his attention at the corner of his eye, and he grabs her arm to see it better.
An absolutely massive bruise mars her upper arm, with sickly purple, green, brown, and yellow.
A thousand thoughts race through his mind, each one worse than the next.
It’s not unheard of that there are people lying in wait along the routes, waiting for challengers to steal their things, their prize money or even their Pokémon. There were also sometimes cases of assault or worse.
He hadn’t been too worried about either Gloria or Hop because he knew their teams were strong, but what if he’d been wrong? What if she’d been caught off guard and hadn’t had time to get to her Pokéballs?
“What happened?” he asks, trying hard to contain his fury at the idea of someone laying a hand on her, and shoving down the hurt that she’d gotten injured and hadn’t told him. “Did someone hurt you?”
Gloria looks at him with confusion for a moment before she’s realising what he’s looking at.
“The doctor at the clinic in Wedgehurst,” she tells him calmly.
Leon frowns, trying to process that. “What?”
“The doctor in Wedgehurst,” she repeats, and Leon feels so confused and a bit betrayed.
He always thought the doctor in Wedgehurst was so nice.
She grabs his hand and presses his fingers against the bruise and there’s... something there, under her skin. He traces it lightly, careful not to press too hard, afraid to hurt her further.
“It’s birth control,” she explains. “It’s supposed to be good for five years.”
Leon’s last brain cell gives a cheeky wave before it jumps off the balcony.
He tries to think of something to say, but draws a blank, and Gloria continues steamrolling his sanity.
“And it should be effective as of about two days ago,” she adds, and Leon’s cock twitches at the implication and from her fingers ghosting over the fabric covering it.
“You’re serious?” he asks. “You really –“ he trails off, gesturing at it, not quite sure how the thing even works.
“It was getting hard to remember to stop in time,” she points out, unbuttoning his trousers and undoing the zipper as she continues. “And I... don’t want to. I want to feel you come inside me.”
Something comes undone in Leon’s mind. All the thoughts whirling around, mixed with the near-feral horniness that washes over him almost makes him dizzy.
He lets out a loud groan, and he shoves her the rest of the way towards the bed, pushing her down when her calves hit the edge of it. She giggles a bit, but her breath hitches when he gets his mouth on her.
He distantly registers that the knickers are the same kind of black lace as the bra, but he doesn’t have the patience to fully appreciate it at the moment.
He licks against the soft, textured fabric, and when her heavy breaths turn to moans, he pushes the lace out of the way.
The noises she makes still drive him crazy and he’s afraid for a moment that he might actually come in his underwear when she lets out a particularly needy whine. But like hell he is, not when he gets the chance to – when she asked him to –
The second she comes, he’s back standing up so he can drop the rest of his clothes. He doesn’t bother wasting time taking off her skirt, only pulling off the soaked knickers.
Her legs are still shaking when he sinks into her in one smooth thrust, facilitated by how wet she is. He knows her body well by now, and he makes an effort to angle himself just right to get her g-spot in the first shot. Still going through the aftershock of her orgasm, she moans loudly when he bottoms out.
He smothers it by kissing her hard. She kisses him back with just as much fervour, and moves with him, digging her heels into his arse, egging him on.
The wet, slapping sounds of skin on skin sound out loudly through his bedroom joined by their collective moans and gasps.
For once, he lets go.
He stops worrying about the need to pull out and lets himself be led by instinct and it’s liberating in a way that he hadn’t anticipated.
That doesn’t mean he’s being inconsiderate; no, he has a very specific target in mind. He moves a hand down to rub circles around her clit.
“You close?” he asks.
Gloria nods jerkily and throws her head back against his pillows with a small whine.
“Then come with me,” he whispers against her throat.
It takes another few thrusts and rubs over her clit, but eventually, she tenses up again, arching off the bed.
He doesn’t pull out, instead, he grabs her hips hard, and pushes in as deep as he can, staying there and grinding into her as he joins her with a groan from somewhere deep in his chest.
Her cunt grips him so perfectly, and with every rhythmic squeeze of her orgasm, he throbs and spills another spurt of come inside her.
It’s even better than he thought it would be and he’s hit by a wave of incredible gratitude. Getting that thing into her arm had to have hurt, but she did it anyway for them – for him.
He nearly collapses on top of her but manages to catch himself on his elbows. When he can finally breathe again, he looks at her, and his cheeks hurt with how much he’s smiling. A short giggle even makes its way out with the sheer giddiness he feels after the most perfect orgasm he’s ever had in his entire life.
Gloria’s smile is equally wide and tinged with a bit of mischief.
“Alright then?” she asks cheekily, and he pinches her side, making her laugh and accidentally push him out.
“Oh,” she remarks, making a bit of a face.
Leon sits up when she pushes herself up on her elbows.
He is immediately mesmerised when he looks down to see a considerable amount of his come dribbling out of her cunt and onto the sheets.
His cock twitches eagerly in renewed interest.
“Really? Again?” she laughs incredulously.
Arceus, she has no idea what she started.
It’s hours later before he finally lets her go; not that she raises any kind of objection to being kept hostage in his bed. The only reason they even leave is because Gloria’s stomach rumbles and Leon is mortified by his own lack of hospitality.
They manage to place an order about ten minutes before the kitchen closes at the place he usually gets food delivered from and he makes sure to tip extra for the inconvenience.
It’s nothing fancy, but after a healthy portion of chips and battered food, they finally make their way outside.
The community garden feels even more beautiful than it usually is. He doesn’t actually remember the last time he went out there. He should do it more often, it’s just a struggle finding the time, not to mention the fact that enjoying it alone isn’t quite the same as enjoying it with Gloria.
At this time of night, almost all residents stick to their own gardens, and under the cover of darkness, even with the fairy lights on, they can hold hands. Not that he’s all that nervous about anyone tattling. It’s a closed community garden, and he knows everyone in the community.
They’re all older than him and a lot of them helped him when he first bought the house. They got him in touch with the gardener they all use, as well as his housekeeper. He hopes that they care about him too much to sell him out to the media.
He doesn’t really have a goal in mind, as they walk along the paths. He mainly just wants to show Gloria how pretty it is, but somehow his feet manage to take them down to the training pitch.
“This was all the estate agent needed to show you, wasn’t it?” Gloria asks with a teasing grin, and Leon feels his cheeks warming a bit.
“I was sixteen!” he defends with a laugh. “The only thing I cared about besides battling was how big of a telly I could get!” he says, and it isn’t until at least five seconds later that his brain catches up to him, reminding him that she’s a year younger than that.
“Raihan’s is bigger, though,” she remarks, cutting off his thoughts before they can spiral.
He joyfully takes the bait and gasps with exaggerated outrage.
“But you know, size isn’t everything,” she says through a laugh.
“You - !” he stops himself before he can call her a little shit and instead grabs her around the waist from behind, making her squeal.
“You take that back,” he demands, grinning against her ear.
He still isn’t insecure, but there are some innuendos that a man should never take lying down. Besides, he knows the answer now, and no one won that particular competition.
She spins around in his arms and gets in close before she grins up at him.
“You’ll have to make me,” she challenges him.
“And how should I do that?” he asks her somewhat rhetorically before leaning down to do just that with a kiss. She pushes back, standing on her tip-toes.
“I’m sure you can think of something,” she says when they break apart.
He gracefully accepts the challenge and lifts her up with a hand under her bum so they can kiss better before they make their way back home, stopping every so often so he can push her against a tree or at one point sit down so he can catch his breath a bit with her in his lap before getting right back up.
It takes a while for him to shut Gloria up properly, although one could argue that he didn’t shut her up at all; he simply made her replace her words with other sounds.
She’s lying half on top of him, with her head pillowed on his shoulder and her arm is lying across his chest. He lets his thoughts drift as he lets his fingers run over her soft skin.
He feels so stupidly lucky, lying there with her in his arms. There’s no way he could have foreseen where it would go when he took her to bed back then – Arceus it was only a few months ago.
No way near long enough to justify the feelings he has for her.
“Raihan gave me a good bollocking, you know,” he says, thinking back to the conversation they had.
“Oh no,” Gloria groans and buries her face in his chest. He thinks he can feel her cheek going warm against his skin and he can’t help but wonder how the conversation Rai had with her went.
“Either I’m too old for you, or you’re too young for me, and either way I’m an idiot and this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” he summarises. It’s weird saying it out loud. It’s always sort of there in the back of his head but confronting it like that makes him feel... something.
“He’s... probably not wrong,” he can admit, but it feels wrong somehow. Because objectively, Rai is definitely right, but he still can’t make himself regret it. Maybe he should, because it’s true; Gloria is too young, and he is too old. “That night in Postwick... I really shouldn’t have...”
Because he shouldn’t have. He probably still shouldn’t, to be honest, but he can’t make himself stop. He can’t be that unselfish, not as long as she still wants him too. And what if he hadn’t done it? He would still be miserable and alone, and he wouldn’t have gotten to know how just amazing Gloria is. Not really.
He’d still endorse her of course, and he’d still see her kicking everyone’s arses, but he wouldn’t get to see the depths of the way she cares. How she loves her Pokémon and how she treats them with so much care and respect. He’d just know her as his brother’s friend. A nice girl and a strong trainer.
Perhaps he should have at least waited until the age difference didn’t matter so much, but then maybe someday, the busy-bodies in Postwick and Wedgehurst would be right, and she’d start dating Hop, and he would have missed his chance.
He wonders if he’d have caught these feelings anyway and be pining for his brother’s girlfriend for eternity.
Gloria sits up slightly and gives him a wry smile.
“Maybe not,” she agrees, which stings. “But I’m glad you did,” she continues softly, and he melts.
Because that’s what matters, isn’t it? As long as he can make her happy, the other stuff doesn’t really matter.
He thinks he might have found that word that Raihan said he was missing.
“Me too,” he reciprocates.
He leans up a bit to kiss her because he can’t not kiss her. It’s the closest alternative he has to the words that are threatening to spill.
“He said something else too,” he adds when they break apart and Gloria gives him a suspicious look that makes him even more curious to know what they talked about.
He gives her a cheeky smile to tease her a bit, and her eyes narrow further.
“He said that you’re the first girl I’ve dated that he’s actually liked, so I’d better not fuck this up, because I’m an even bigger idiot if I let you go,” he sums up.
Gloria looks stunned for a moment before letting out a surprised laugh.
She sticks her nose in the air, shifting a bit so she can look down at him.
“Well, he’s right, of course,” she sniffs with mock self-importance, nearly resembling challenger Bede if not for the way she can’t keep a straight face at all.
“Of course,” he agrees. “Not that I needed him to tell me that.”
Her face softens, and she offers him a shy smile.
“No?”
Leon doesn’t say anything else, because he knows the words that would spill out of his mouth if he opened it are still too soon. He gives her a squeeze instead, and she squeezes right back, tucking herself back into his side.
The next day, Leon has decided, is not going to be about sex.
As much as he loves having sex with Gloria, there are many other things he wants to do with her as well. Besides, he also needs to show her that that’s not the only thing he wants.
He still isn’t entirely sure what Gloria wants long term, but he decided what he wants, and he needs to show her what that is, so she can decide if she wants that too.
So today is not about sex.
Well, unless she initiates. Then it might be a little bit about sex. But only a little bit.
His pure intentions are nearly derailed when he sees the new lacy set of underwear she puts on, but he miraculously manages to keep his hands to himself. The skirt and top she covers it with don’t make it that much easier, because she still looks gorgeous. He knows he’ll have a hard time, not being able to touch her when they’re out and about.
They wake up early, and he sends Ned a text, reminding him that he’ll be unavailable for the day, unless Wyndon Stadium is suddenly on fire, and he gets a cheerful “Enjoy your day off!” in return.
He likes Ned. He thinks he might try to steal him in case Ned wants to work for him. He could use someone to help him keep track of stuff. He hadn’t realised how stressed he’d been about all the appointments he needed to remember until Ned had offered to keep track of his calendar. “Not your private appointments, of course, Champion Leon, I respect your privacy.”
Ned had even given him some excellent tips on what to put on the list of places to take Gloria; not that Ned knew that it was Gloria Leon meant when he asked for ideas on what to show someone who’d never been to Wyndon before. He gave him suggestions for anything ranging from potential business partners (which he ignored) to romantic venues (which he discreetly wrote into the notes on his Rotom).
They stop by the malasada shop on the way to the monorail, for coffee and breakfast to go. It’s early, but still not so early that they get caught in rush hour which is always nice. There’s nothing worse than getting mobbed early in the morning, so he always tries to avoid it. He also isn’t in uniform, which also helps.
They have the list he made of things to see, and follow it loosely, window shopping in between. He carefully observes Gloria and her reactions to all the things Wyndon has to offer. The way her smile lights up when she sees something she likes, the way she wrinkles her nose at other things, sometimes in confusion, sometimes in amusement, and one time in disgust when she sees a woman at a sidewalk café drinking from the same cup of coffee as her slobbering Sliggoo.
He's reached a point in his residency where he takes those things in stride.
They finish the malasadas on their way to Drednaw Fountain, and he spots Gloria eyeing a blue top in the window of a small boutique. He thinks that Nessa might have told him about it at some point, but he’s never actually been inside.
“You wanna try it on?” he asks now that their hands are no longer full of oily and sugary malasadas.
She shakes her head with another little nose-wrinkle “No, it’s okay. We can keep going.”
He has to purposely hold back from taking her hand. It’s harder than he thought it would be.
“It’s not a very good shopping trip if you don’t actually do any shopping,” he points out, and completely ignores his own hypocrisy at how often Raihan has given him the same line.
“I hadn’t known this was a shopping trip,” she counters with a wry smile.
“Well yeah. I promised you the best shopping in Galar, didn’t I?” he reminds her.
“In general. You didn’t actually promise to let me drag you around to the shops all day,” she argues, and Leon nearly snorts, having been literally dragged around to the shops several times.
“You’re not dragging me,” he assures her with a grin and grabs her wrist. “I’m dragging you!”
She nearly trips when he gives her a hard tug and pulls her along towards the shop. Her laugh lights up her entire face and it makes him feel silly and giddy.
He has to force himself to look away when they get inside and catch the attention of one of the shop assistants.
“Welcome!” she greets them and does the double-take people usually do when they realise it’s him. “Champion Leon! How can I help you today?” she asks brightly.
Leon directs her helpful attitude towards Gloria and then lets the woman do her job. Gloria casts a slightly panic-tinged look his way, but he remembers how Nessa had been gushing about the place and how it was one of the few places she’d gone to where no one had posted anything about her boob size online afterwards. He’s confident that they’ll treat Gloria well, especially when he spots another shop assistant discreetly locking the door and hanging a ‘closed’ sign on it so no other shoppers will come to disturb them.
He is guided to a sofa in front of the changing rooms, and given a cup of tea, and spends a while with his Rotom, asking Ned for updates, interrupted by Gloria and the shop assistant showing him all sorts of clothing items from tops to dresses to jeans to skirts.
Raihan always said he never had an eye for fashion, but he does certainly have an eye for Gloria, and tells her in many ways how beautiful she looks. He loves the way she blushes, and even the exasperated smile when he apparently compliments the wrong thing. Even the shop assistant looks at him with slight disdain when he compliments the wrong things.
Eh, well. He can’t be the champion at everything.
Eventually Gloria finishes trying everything on, and Leon goes to join them at the register where the shop assistant rings up her purchases.
Gloria’s eyes widen minutely when she announces the total amount, and Leon can see how she wavers. Before he even fully finishes thinking it through, his Rotom has already been scanned. She should have whatever clothes she wants, and he’s a little giddy that he’s able to give it to her.
“My treat,” he says, when Gloria looks distinctly displeased. Or tries to, at least. It’s cute.
“I thought breakfast was ‘your treat.’” she points out, and he nods.
“True. Then call it a ‘Welcome to Wyndon’ present,” he amends.
“I’m pretty sure that isn’t actually a thing.”
“Sure, it is,” he counters with a grin. “I just invented it.”
She sighs heavily and rolls her eyes, looking away from him.
It stings a bit, but it’s a good reminder of why he likes Gloria so much. Other girls in his past would have been elated that he had spent money on them. Or they might even have expected it.
He can’t help but be a little torn about it, because on one hand, he loves that Gloria is like that. He loves that she’s with him for him and not for his wallet. Her deep character and steadfast independence are some of the most important things that attract him.
On the other hand, he wants to give her everything. It’s not some stupid man-thing about providing for her or whatever, not really. He just wants to make her happy. Ever since he met her, he wanted her to never settle for anything but the best because she deserves to be spoiled.
He arranges for their purchases to be delivered, because he still hopes he can convince Gloria to let him buy her more things, and he hates shopping bags, having acted as mule for both Raihan and Nessa in the past, or worse; both at the same time.
“You really don’t need to do that,” Gloria insists lowly as they leave the shop. “I can pay for things myself. I might have ended up putting some things back, but –“
“Do you really hate it that much?” he accidentally cuts her off. “Me buying you things?”
Gloria sighs, stopping for a moment. “It’s not that. Can we sit a minute?” she asks, looking around.
They find a bench a little off the beaten path.
He carefully puts a bit of distance between them, both for the pretence, and also in order to give Gloria some space, afraid that he might have crossed the line entirely too far, given how serious she’s being. It softens the blow a bit when she puts her hand between them in invitation and he doesn’t hesitate to put his own right next to hers.
She’s frowning at the ground, and Leon doesn’t rush her.
“My great-aunt left Mum the house,” she tells him, and he tries to figure out how that relates to shopping.
“Before that, even before dad got sick, we... weren’t poor, exactly, but we just had our little flat, and mum and dad always made sure I had new clothes for school and presents for my birthday and all that, but I never had loads of toys and things, not like some kids have, you know?”
He nods in acknowledgement. Gloria doesn’t talk much about her dad, and he doesn’t push for more.
“Afterward – Mum tried to hide it from me, but I was old enough to figure out that we didn’t have a lot of money. We never went hungry or anything, but there wasn’t much extra, and Mum looked so sad every time she had to tell me I couldn’t have something, or do something, so I stopped asking. And then my great-aunt – Mum’s aunt – she didn’t have any children of her own, so she left everything to Mum. The house, and some money. Enough that Mum didn’t have to worry anymore, but we’re still not rich,” she sighs. “So that’s part of it; I still always feel... selfish, almost. Especially when it’s things I don’t really need.”
He's about to tell her how unselfish she is, but she cuts him off before he can begin.
“The other part – Other parts, I guess... I don’t want to feel like I owe you anything,” she says with a grimace, and Leon could kick himself.
“And” she continues, “I don’t want you to feel like you have to... I don’t know. Buy me.”
“I don’t,” he rushes out. “And you don’t. Ever,” he emphasises.
She offers him a rueful smile and gives his hand a small squeeze. “I know. I know that. It’s not... rational. It’s just...” she trails off with a helpless shrug.
Leon sighs, processing her points. “Yeah. Yeah, no, I get it,” he agrees.
Thinking back on the before is always sort of bittersweet. Before his dad left, they weren’t well off or anything, but when he left, he left them with nothing. It’s annoying that he still gets angry about it, and he tries to push the anger out of his mind.
“We were kind of the same, when I was a kid,” he confesses. He’s not sure exactly how much Gloria knows about what happened or if Hop has even told her anything about it. “Hop wouldn’t remember, he was too young, but we moved in with Gran and Gramps for a reason. So, you know. I really do get it. That look – Mum had that look a lot too.”
He perfectly remembers that pinched look when he proudly showed her all the camping equipment he’d gathered for his Gym Challenge. A patched up tent he’d been given by the berry grocer in Wedgehurst when he got a new one, an old sleeping bag from one of his classmates, and a mat for sleeping on from Sonia’s mum who used to do yoga. He thinks he might even have gotten a kettle from Gloria’s great-aunt.
His mum praised him for his resourcefulness, but he heard her telling gramps that she was ashamed that he’d gone begging for stuff from the neighbours. He paid them all back when he became Champion though.
He wrinkles his nose when he realises that they should probably talk about money. Most girls he dated or hooked up with previously had already looked up his net worth before even approaching him, but he knows Gloria enough to know that she definitely hasn’t. Besides, he’d rather get it out of the way and since they’re already sort of on the topic, they might as well. Serious couples talk about finances after all, and he wants them to be serious.
Still though.
“This is going to sound awful,” he groans. He rubs his face, trying to come up with a way that sounds less arsehole-ish, but decides ultimately that there’s no way around it.
“Look, I have an absurd amount of money,” he starts, looking directly at her. “I mean, more than I can possibly spend. I could probably live for the rest of my life on one year of my League contract, but I get prize money from my matches on top of that, and then sponsorships on top of that. Those sponsor logos, on the cape? And the ads and all that? The contracts for those are... mad, honestly. Billions, some of them,” he tells her.
He's donating a large portion of it, but a substantial amount has been going into a trust that he recently gained access to, and another one he gets access to when he turns 25. The amounts are unreal.
Judging by the way her eyes widen, he was absolutely right when he assumed that she hadn’t even considered his money in all this. It fills him with a deep sort of warmth and serves as a great reminder that what they have is genuine. That she wants him for who he is, and not for his bank account.
Ironically it only makes him want to give her even more things.
“I offered to buy Mum a house when I was twelve,” he confesses. “I kept offering for a while, but she says she’s happy living with Gran and Gramps. I figure I’ll buy Hop a house instead, when he finally decides to move out on his own,” he muses.
Gloria is still looking stunned with her mouth slightly open. It’s honestly sort of cute.
“Any chance you want a house?” he offers teasingly, and she snaps out of it enough to giggle. He absolutely would buy her one and has had some thoughts about it in his too-soon-fantasies, but either way, with the way her career is going, she’ll easily be able to afford one herself in no time. Even if she doesn’t win the championship, there are loads of other avenues for strong Pokémon trainers, and almost all of them are very lucrative.
“I’m not trying to buy you,” he assures her. “And you don’t owe me. Not anything, and especially not that,” he emphasises, giving her a significant look. He couldn’t live with himself if she felt coerced into having sex with him and he needs her to understand and acknowledge that.
She nods seriously and he continues. “I like being able to give you things, and I can afford it. But if you want me to stop, I’ll stop,” he promises, even though it pains him.
Taking a risk, he turns his hand around, lacing their fingers for comfort. He lets her think it over for a bit, and he’s happy that she’s at least considering it and not just blankly refusing him.
“How about this; you let me spoil you a little – okay, maybe a lot,” he amends when she gives him a look that perfectly shows how little faith she has in his ability to rein it in. “And you pay me back by taking care of me when you’re the one on the billboards and I’m just a pathetic washed-up has-been,” he suggests with a smile and nudges her boot with his foot.
Gloria scoffs. “Very funny,” she retorts, but she’s still smiling.
“I’m serious!” he laughs. “About you anyway. Whether or not you come after my title next week, you’ve got a career with the League ahead of you if you want it, or on the international tournament circuit. You’re already pretty popular here in Galar, you know,” he points out.
“Huh,” she hums thoughtfully. “I guess I hadn’t thought about it,” she says.
“Well, you should,” he tells her. “If you ask me, I think you’d make a great Gym Leader, and the League could use a few more of those.”
He can picture it easily. If she wanted to be a Gym Leader, she could take any Gym to the top. The raw talent she possesses, mixed with the hard work she puts in, easily puts her at the top as a trainer, but it’s clear in the way she’s raising her Pokémon that she’s also a great natural leader. She would be the sort of Gym Leader who would help any trainer unlock each their unique potentials.
“I probably shouldn’t say it,” he continues, “since I’m sort of supposed to be impartial, but our Flying- and Steel-type Gyms have both been in need of an overhaul for a while. The Electric-type Gym has been struggling too. Any one of them would jump at the chance to have you, and I’d be willing to bet on you making Gym Leader within a year or two at most.”
Just the amount of time it would take her to build a type-specialised team, really.
He lets her think it over, and simply enjoys sitting next to her, letting his own thoughts flow. If she would choose the Steel-type Gym not far from Wyndon, they could easily make it work if she wanted to stay with him sometimes. The Flying-type Gym is more South, which would make it a bigger challenge, but maybe if she had a Fly permit? Or he could fly down to see her. Except, if she was living anywhere close to Postwick, her mum would probably want her living at home and that could get really awkward, really fast.
“All right,” Gloria says decisively, cutting off his thoughts.
He cocks his head in question, wondering if she decided on becoming a Gym Leader.
“It’s a deal. Spoil away,” she clarifies.
Leon can feel his cheeks hurting with how much he’s smiling. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She nods, and their eyes meet.
The self-discipline it takes for him not to kiss her at that moment is rivalling that of a Snorlax on a diet.
Gloria smiles at him and stands, letting go of his hand.
“Drednaw Fountain?” he asks rhetorically as they leave the little garden.
“Drednaw Fountain,” she agrees with a nod.
She tugs his arm when he starts walking the wrong way, and much to his delight, she doesn’t let go.
It should be fine. Nessa does the same all the time with both him, Rai, Gordie, and Milo, and he did it once with Raihan. They had fun with the gossip rags for months after that.
“Excuse me, are you Challenger Gloria?” a someone asks, startling Gloria so much that she nearly drops the skirt she’s been admiring.
The owner of the voice is a woman, perhaps around thirty years old. Leon stays hidden behind a rack of dresses, quietly observing.
“I uh – I am,” she responds, and the woman makes a short squeal.
“Can I take a picture of you to send to my sister? She’ll never believe I met you!” she gushes.
The woman is already moving around to take a selfie with Gloria who gives the camera a sweet, bemused smile as her cheeks turn pink. As soon as the picture is taken, the girl thanks Gloria and is gone in the blink of an eye, leaving Gloria looking a bit dazed, and it occurs to him that she’s new to this.
“Told you you’re popular,” he comments, making Gloria startle again as he comes out of his hiding place.
She gives him a distracted nod, and he gives her hand a small squeeze, hidden by the large racks of clothes.
“You okay?”
She nods again, this time a bit more assertively. “Yeah, it’s just weird.”
“It comes with the territory,” he half-warns. “I get that you probably haven’t seen the extent of it, ‘cause you don’t see that many people out on the road, but you’re one of the most popular of the challengers.”
“It’s just weird,” she repeats. “I hadn’t really considered that part when I started out.”
Leon snorts, and it turns into a laugh when she scowls at him.
“I’m sorry. It’s not – It’s just that so many people start their challenge with the goal to be rich and famous, and they throw in the minimum effort. And you’re just...” he trails off, trying to find the proper words. “You’re everything a challenger is supposed to be,” he settles on. “That’s why you’ve gotten this far,” he tells her, trying to convey his pride in her as he gives her hand another squeeze.
Gloria’s face turns as pink as a freshly picked Payapa berry and for a moment he’s afraid that he might not be able to stop himself from kissing her. He wonders if she’s thinking the same as she looks down at her feet, breaking their eye contact.
As the sun rises in the sky, the city gets busier, and it isn’t long until more people start stopping them for pictures and autographs. He’s pretty sure someone must have posted pictures with them online because it’s even more than usual and most people aren’t surprised to see them together.
Some people ask him to do the pose, but he politely declines with the excuse that it just isn’t the same without the cape. The pose looks a bit silly to begin with, but he still feels like he can get away with it when he’s in the uniform. He’s been trying to separate himself from the character in recent years though, and doing the pose when he’s wearing jeans and a button down just looks downright goofy, so he stopped doing that.
He likes just being Leon.
Gloria is a natural though. He sees how the tension in her shoulders slowly dissipates and disappears entirely, the more she gets used to being approached.
Sometimes it becomes too much for her and when he sees her smile becoming strained and her shoulders moving back towards her ears, he smoothly apologises to the people there and guides them into yet another shop they can browse through for a breath.
“Those people had my League card,” she comments as a nice shopping assistant locks the door behind them to keep out the crowd. “Isn’t that weird? That they have my League Card?” she asks him with a wrinkled nose, and he nearly laughs again.
“I have your League Card. Does that make me weird?” he teases instead.
“Yes.” she responds through a laugh, without missing a beat.
He puts a hand on his chest in mock hurt. “Ouch. Does that mean that you don’t have my league card?” he asks.
Her red cheeks and pursed lips are answer enough and he lets himself laugh then as they move further into the shop where more shopping assistants are ready to help.
Leon hasn’t had this much fun shopping in a long time, if ever. He loves simply spending time with Gloria, and her trying on clothes and posing and twirling gives him an excellent excuse to blatantly ogle her.
They spend all afternoon like that, going in and out of shops and talking to fans and writing autographs in between until their wrists are sore.
Aside from an overly complicated signature that ends up giving her a cramped up hand, Gloria is a natural at it. He’s not in any way surprised, but it still melts him every time he sees her kneeling in front of a yet another young girl, not caring how her leggings are touching the pavement.
Orientation was a lost cause to Leon as soon as they reached inner Wyndon. He loves Galar, but sometimes he wishes that the layout was a little bit more like in Unova with their practical grids, especially in the larger cities, rather than the twisting narrow streets left over from medieval times where city planning wasn’t a large concern.
Regardless, Gloria gets them where they need to go, and sometimes there are happy accidents like when he spots his favourite shop in Galar. No, the world.
Wyndon’s Best Trainer Supply.
Its proprietor is a Kantonian guy in his late thirties who also happens to have a Charizard. He’d gotten a lot of tips on training and handling the lizard’s fiery temper from him when he’d stumbled into the shop when he first arrived in Wyndon, frozen from route 10 and looking for the Pokémon Center.
He once naively asked why the man didn’t expand his business. He never got a clear answer, but now he knows better.
“Macro Cosmos has a chain of Trainer supply shops, so don’t tell Rose I said this, but they’re not lying; this is definitely the best one. And not just in Wyndon,” he tells Gloria as they wait to cross the street.
“I’ve always gotten my supplies from the Pokémon Center, or from the Watt Traders,” she muses, and he’s not surprised.
With the League and Macro Cosmos so heavily intertwined, Gym Challengers are highly recommended to use the services they provide. That, and Macro Cosmos is also rather quick to discourage any possible competitors before they can get started. He knows better than to ask how.
He opens the door for her and lets her step through first, both because he was raised to be a gentleman, and because he really wants to see Gloria’s reaction.
She doesn’t disappoint. As she takes in the shop that is bigger than one would expect judging from the exterior, her jaw drops and her eyes widen.
At first it doesn’t look like much. A lot of the furniture in the store is run down, most of it having been there before the current owner bought the place. The guy never cared that much about appearances, caring more about the quality of the products that he’s selling. The people who know quality won’t care if the package it’s in is pretty or not.
Leon is proud to say that Gloria knows quality.
Once she recovers, she darts between shelves, asking him question after question which he promptly answers, eager to help sate her curiosity. He gives her different tips and tricks, and they both commit to filling her baskets with all sorts of training gears, vitamins, toys, and other miscellaneous items.
“Shouldn’t you be keeping all your secrets until after the tournament?” she questions as they leave. Probably referring to the massive amounts of vitamins he threw in her basket around the end. “I could use all of this against you, you know,” she teases.
It’s odd, the rush of heat that surges through him at the idea of her doing just that.
He wants her to come at him with everything she has, and then some.
“If the only reason I could beat you is that you didn’t know about all of that, then you’d deserve to take my title anyway,” he tells her, briefly interlocking their fingers for emphasis.
He loves battling Raihan, he really does, but this year, he wants it to be different. He wants to meet Gloria at Wyndon Stadium to see which of them is the strongest. And if she doesn’t make it this year, he hopes that she’ll try again next year, until she reaches the top. He knows she can do it.
Besides, all of that stuff isn’t that much of a secret. All the Gym Leaders know these things and Hop definitely knows. He’s been asking Leon for tips ever since he could talk, and Leon has never held back, wanting his brother to reach his full potential. Hop also knows about the shop they were just in, as Leon has taken him there before when he came to visit.
Leon made sure that he’d be able to afford all the vitamins he’d ever need with a nice deposit in his bank account, with their mother’s approval of course. Whether Hop takes his advice or not is up to himself.
The fact that Gloria has reached this point on raw talent alone is extraordinary.
The sun is slowly setting, making the few clouds on the sky stand out in bright pink and orange. It makes him think of one of the things they haven’t done yet.
“Think you’ve got one more stop in you?” he asks. “It’s an easy one, I promise.”
He can even navigate there himself. Maybe.
Gloria insists on using a map though, and takes them on a walk along the river, past large flowerbeds, and small gardens. She snorts when they’re nearly run over by two children chasing a Gossifleur, their parents apologising profusely behind them.
She’s so breathtakingly beautiful with that soft smile on her lips and the way the light hits her hair, making tones of warm chestnut stand out.
He nearly says it.
So very nearly says those words that are right at the tip of his tongue, but it’s still too soon. He knows what he wants, but he still isn’t sure what Gloria wants, and he doesn’t want to scare her away, so he clears his throat instead and asks:
“You’re not afraid of heights, are you?”
“Not at all,” she confirms without hesitation, and Leon can’t help but wonder if she’s ever been flying before.
Not ‘flying taxi’-flying. Real flying. It would be super illegal, of course, but he had plenty of rides on Charizard across the Wild Area before he got his license. He definitely wouldn’t be in a position to judge if Gloria decided to take Corviknight for a spin.
He doesn’t do it often, but for once, he pulls the celebrity card and charms the fuck out of the people around them to ensure that they get an entire capsule to themselves.
It rises slower than you’d expect, but it isn’t long until they’re high above the city’s roofs, with streetlights twinkling below them like stars. He’s happy they made it before the dark could spoil the view. The horizon is still faintly orange, even if the sky directly above them is slowly turning a deeper shade of indigo.
Gloria takes a bunch of pictures for her mum, and Leon spots his own Rotom sneaking a few pictures of her as well. That thing really has a mind of its own, but he can’t bring himself to scolding it.
Instead, he wraps his arms around her from behind and enjoys the way she leans back against him. He puts his chin on her head and gives her a small squeeze.
“Good day?” he asks.
She gives him a warm smile in the distorted reflection of the glass wall. “Great day,” she confirms.
They stay standing like that against the railing, enjoying the closeness of each other, and the view of the city. He feels cold when he has to let go as they reach the ground again.
They use an app to order curry from his usual place, and they pick it up on the way back from the Monorail.
“It’s not funny!” Gloria insists after her second glass of milk at the kitchen counter they’ve relocated to after she tried to taste Leon’s food.
He tries not to laugh. He really does.
“I tried to warn you!” he argues and loses his battle against laughing. Luckily, Gloria isn’t really mad, and starts laughing as well.
“You said ‘It’s a bit spicy’! That is not a bit! How can you even eat that?” she asks incredulously, gesturing at his innocent take-away box of curry that might be a little bit on the spicy side.
“I used to share food with Charizard a lot,” he defends, still laughing. “When I did my Gym Challenge, I spent like, a week and a half in the Wild Area, eating nothing but Flamethrowered Tamato berries.”
Gloria makes a face and Leon laughs even more.
“We still eat them for snacks sometimes.”
She shakes her head. “You idiot,” she chuckles, and her tone is so full of fond exasperation that he takes it as a compliment.
“Mhm,” he agrees. “But I’m your idiot,” he smugly points out and pulls her closer by the hips.
She giggles and gives him a wide smile, putting her arms around his shoulders. “That, you definitely are.”
He gives her a deep kiss, but they break apart a little too quickly in his opinion when Gloria turns around to pour a third glass of milk.
“Too spicy,” she mutters as explanation and Leon laughs again, burying his nose in her hair as she swishes and swirls the milk like it’s mouthwash.
The day has been perfect. The evening even more so. After dinner and a dessert consisting of Custap Berry ice cream, they settled on the sofa for the League recap of Rai tearing through the last of the Challengers.
Gloria has been yawning against his chest, but it isn’t until he makes a dumb joke about a Challenger’s haircut, and she doesn’t react, that he realises that she’s fallen asleep on top of him.
He stays like that for a while, simply letting himself enjoy the weight of her against him. She’s drooling a bit on his shirt, and he finds it so endlessly endearing.
She has more freckles across the bridge of her nose now than she did when he first met her, and he thinks her hair might be a tone lighter from all the time spent on the road in the sun. It’s definitely getting longer, almost reaching her shoulders now.
She sighs in her sleep when he runs a finger down her cheek. Unfortunately, they can’t stay like this. Ever so slowly, he wiggles out from underneath her, careful not to wake her up.
Once he’s out, he’s faced with a new dilemma.
He needs to get her to bed, but she’s so peaceful as she sleeps, and he really doesn’t want to wake her.
He briefly contemplates asking Mr Rime, but she’s never met him before, and he doesn’t feel like risking her waking up in a panic because a foreign Pokémon is moving her around with Telekinesis.
After some heavy internal debate, he goes through her bag until he finds what he thinks is the right Pokéball. What he’s about to do is normally a major faux pas, but Gardevoir should be able to read that he has no bad intentions and only wants to help her trainer.
With that thought in mind, he lets the Pokémon out.
Gardevoir looks at Gloria and cocks her head in question. Leon sheepishly scratches the back of his neck.
“Hi... uh... Hi, Gardevoir,” he starts awkwardly in a low voice, almost whispering and he gets the distinct impression that the Pokémon is amused with the way he flounders. “Do you – uh, could you help me?” he asks, gesturing at Gloria whose head is at an awkward angle. “She’ll get a crick in the neck like that, but I’m afraid that I’ll wake her up if I try to carry her to bed,” he points out ruefully.
Gardevoir closes her eyes and gives him a slow bow, not unlike the one she gave him the last time they met in Circhester.
He returns the bow with a “thank you.”
He tells Gardevoir where to put Gloria, and watches in fascination as an unseen force raises his girlfriend from the sofa, without waking her. She floats in front of Gardevoir up the stairs, while Leon puts away the dirty ice cream bowls and empty mugs, giving them a quick rinse before loading them in the dishwasher.
Gardevoir joins him, announcing her presence with a low trill, not to startle him too much.
He offers her the basket of different berries he keeps in his fridge as a way of thanking her, but she only bows at him again, crinkling her eyes in a smile before disappearing back into her Pokéball which he carefully places back in Gloria’s bag before going upstairs.
He races through his evening routine, brushing his teeth, brushing his hair and strips down to his boxer briefs, eager to join Gloria in bed. She’s lying on her side, facing away from him, and he gently slides in to spoon her from behind.
He’s a bit surprised and his dick gives an unhelpful twitch when his bare chest meets her bare back, and his hand meets naked skin when he puts his arm around her.
Gardevoir helped with a bit more than transportation, it seems.
He sighs and lets himself melt into the mattress.
Not a good day.
Not a great day.
The best day.
He wants it to be like that every day.
He can only hope that Gloria agrees.