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It’s the middle of summer and there’s barely a breeze in the air. The sun is searing hot on his skin, which Gou reckons is tan enough, thank you very much. They’re trekking through the scarce forest, in the hopes of finding something new. Gou is definitely regretting being baited into this by Ash’s challenge asking how dedicated he was to Pokemon.
“Do you have a plan, at all?” Gou asks.
“Nope!” Ash says enthusiastically. Pikachu nods along. “It’s really hot today, isn’t it?”
Gou groans. That was an understatement. Koharu’s words when she saw them off ring in his head. “You’re going out? In this weather? Good luck not dying of heatstroke.”
Pikachu’s small body probably helped evaporate heat, and Scorbunny was obviously fine being a fire type, but there was no explanation for Ash’s superhuman abilities.
He should have listened to Koharu. That was usually the case, though he didn’t want to admit it. If only he had a Politoed with Drizzle. Or a Kyogre. At this point, with all the things he’d heard about Ash, he wouldn’t even be surprised if he had a Kyogre as a friend he could call up to summon some rain for him.
“So we’re just going to walk around until we find something,” Gou deadpans. His feet hurt, he’s drenched in sweat, and he’s annoyed that he’s the only one who finds a problem with this situation. He digs in his backpack, and is glad to find Koharu had packed him a bottle of water, thank god.
Ash frowns at him. “Of course not!”
Before he can blurt out “What do you mean of course not”, there’s a sudden gust of wind and a giant bird swoops from the sky like a bullet, knocking the water bottle right out of his hands. Scorbunny looks rather terrified though he’s trying to play it cool, and Gou is sure it’s something to do with animal instincts and not wanting to be eaten.
“Pidgeot!” Ash says happily, as if it were the most normal thing in the world to have a fully evolved Pokemon come soaring out of the sky. He holds out his hand and ruffles Pidgeot’s head. Pikachu jumps up and gives it his own greeting, nuzzling close with his nose (but being careful not to let his cheeks touch). Scorbunny keeps his distance, watching as if ready to judge if this new Pokemon is a threat to him or Gou.
“Woah…” Gou says. “You really do have a way with Pokemon.”
“No, no, this is my old Pokemon,” Ash says. “Professor Oak lets them out to roam, but when I come back to Kanto they often find me to say hello!”
“Wow, that’s incredible!” Gou can’t help but be amazed at the ability of Pokemon to seek Ash out among all the other humans around. He looks over, and is surprised to see Scorbunny playing friendly with Pidgeot now.
“Right?” Ash’s eyes sparkle with fondness. “Oh, it seems Pidgeot wants to take us somewhere!”
Soon, they’re sitting on the back of this giant bird. Ash places his hands onto the back of Pidgeot’s neck, grabbing hold, and Pikachu slips into Ash’s jacket, poking his head out from the zipper.
“Come on, hold on,” Ash gestures to Gou. Hesitantly, Gou tries to sneak around Ash’s arms to sit beside him and hold on, but there isn’t enough space and his foot slips.
Ash catches him barely, pulling him up with ease. “Come on, hold onto me!” He makes a gesture of wrapping arms as if Gou doesn’t understand what he’s saying. Ash turns back around to face the front, and Gou seats himself slowly behind.
“Come on, hurry!”
“Okay, fine! If you really want to…”
He takes his hand and places it softly on Ash’s hip. Then almost yelps when Ash’s hand grabs both his arms, and pulls so they’re wrapped firmly around his waist.
“Hold on, or you’ll fall off! Pidgeot’s no Slowpoke you know!”
“Right…I know that.” He’s not an idiot. Gou tries to ignore the tingling feeling in his fingertips and the warmth he can feel through them. He’s sure he’s sweating buckets, and not just from the heat.
Soon they’re soaring over the forest, so fast it turns into a blur of green and brown. Ash is shouting joyfully at the top of his lungs with Pikachu (Pikaaaaa!), and Gou thinks he could get used to this as a way of travel. They’ve reached the shoreline, where a jagged cliff meets the edge, and Gou can see an expansive beach stretching out beyond.
But then they keep flying. Worryingly, it felt like they were going down, but down was nothing but-
“Hey, Pidgeot, where are we going?” Ash yells, before Pidgeot turns upside down and basically lets them drop straight down into the water.
Oh crap, oh crap. Gou saw his life flash before his eyes before he hits the water.
“Ash, I can’t-”
His head goes under, and he flails his limbs in an attempt to surface. I can’t swim.
He can already feel his body turning weak, his chest tight and clenched and trying not to breathe, but his head is foggy and there’s no air...
Then a pair of arms are pulling him up in a flurry of bubbles, and he takes a rasping breath of air that lessens the darkness his vision is fading to.
Ash doesn’t ask what he’s doing. It’s obvious that he was drowning. They float there for a second. Even Pikachu is floating by himself beside Ash, paddling with his little paws.
“You don’t know how to swim, huh?” Ash says.
Gou frowns at him. “Has anyone ever told you you can be a bit insensitive? Because yeah, I can’t.”
“I didn’t mean it in a bad way! I mean, I’m sure it’s not your fault or anything. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
There was never anyone who bothered to teach him how to swim as a child, and he never thought it was important enough to learn himself…it wasn’t like he went to the beach with friends or anyone else. And it would be too embarrassing to fail in the swimming pool where everyone could see him.
“Agh!” Gou spits out a mouthful of salty sea water. “It’s fine. It is what it is for me, I guess.”
He looks around. Wait. There was still someone missing.
“Scorbunny’s up there,” Ash says, pointing.
Gou gapes.
Somehow, Scorbunny has managed to stay on board Pidgeot, and he waves gleefully at them from where Pidgeot is hovering above the water.
“My god…” Gou has a distinct feeling those two had planned this together.
“Hey, isn’t this a good chance though?” Ash says.
“For what?”
“Swimming! I can teach you!”
“You’d do that?”
“Of course! We’re partners, aren’t we?”
“Well yeah, but this isn’t exactly in the job description-”
“Well then, we’re friends,” Ash says simply. “Come on, let’s start now! I’m gonna let go, so just start paddling!”
“Wait!”
Ash lets go, and Gou feels a familiar panic overtake him as there’s nothing but the emptiness of water surrounding him, nothing to hold him together, nothing to stop him sinking-
“Come on, paddle! You can do it!”
What on earth was this style of teaching? Was Ash insane?
He tries his best, leans his body forward and paddles as hard as he can, but soon his mouth has dropped to the water and he almost does a backwards flip trying to retreat.
Just when he feels like he’s lost it, Ash’s arms appear beneath his stomach, holding him up. “Hmm, nice try, but you gotta put more ‘pwah!’ into it.”
“What the hell is pwah…” And what happened to dedication to being a Pokemon researcher? Now Ash was just doing whatever he wanted!
“Like this,” Ash says, dropping onto his back and performing a flawless backstroke, somehow with Gou still hanging onto his arm, lifting Gou’s entire weight with each stroke and still managing to move forward.
“Okay, enough demonstration!” Gou shouts, having had enough of being tossed around. “If you want to mess around, let’s get to some dry land, please?”
“Fine, but promise to let me teach you properly one day?”
“Sure…” Gou says. Ash’s teaching methods didn’t exactly jive with his way of learning, but the offer was sincere, and he appreciated it. Even if Ash was just there to help him get over his embarrassment, that would be enough. “Yeah, that’d be good. Maybe in a shallow pool as opposed to a several hundred metres deep ocean.”
Ash laughed. “Haha, won’t be as fun, but okay!”
Ash’s idea of fun was starting to concern him.
“You know, even Pidgeot is concerned for your health,” Gou comments. “Probably got worried about how hot it was, and that you were still out walking in this weather. So decided you needed a soak to cool down.”
“Hey, you agreed to come out today!”
“You challenged my honour as a researcher!”
“Hmph…did I?”
“Don’t play dumb!”
“You’re cute when you’re like this,” Ash says, grabbing Gou’s cheek and tugging it gently. Gou purses his lips and ignores the strange urge to smile.
By the time the water is shallow enough to stand, Gou relinquishes his hold on Ash’s arm and realizes that he’d just held onto Ash for ages, and hadn’t been weird about it at all. Maybe he was getting more comfortable with being close to Ash, or the casual banter between them had made him feel relaxed.
Scorbunny is waiting for him, and runs up as soon as Gou manages to wade onto dry sand.
“Bun, bun,” he says, head lowered and paws clasped.
“I hope that means you’re sorry,” Gou says.
“Yeah, that’s what he’s saying,” Ash says. Gou stares at him. “What, I told you how I can speak with Pokemon right?”
“Still weird,” Gou says. He turns to Scorbunny. “I forgive you, of course, but please never make plans with another Pokemon to drop me in water again.”
“Bun!”
Scorbunny jumps onto Gou’s shoulder, copying Pikachu’s action, and starts nuzzling him. Man, he was a strange one, but it felt nice and soft. The cool sea breeze, the endlessly brilliant and cloudless sky, the sound of the waves crashing onto the sand…and Ash stripping right in front of him?! His jacket and shirt were already off, and he was in the process of unzipping his pants.
“Ash!”
“Don’t know why I wore a jacket today!” he yells back, as if that answers anything. “Guess it was habit!”
Gou peeked closer through his hands (which had naturally come up to shield his eyes), and noticed the jacket and shirt were laid out on a rock.
Guess he’s drying his clothes?
He sighed and moved closer, still averting his gaze. “What if someone sees you?”
“It’s fine, no one comes here!” You gotta fly through that crazy cave we passed to even get here!”
Gou removes his hands, figuring he can’t spend the rest of the afternoon like this. Of course. Of course today Ash was wearing his underwear as opposed to boxers.
“Why don’t you take yours off as well?” Ash suggests. “That shirt looks quite uncomfortable.”
It’s a tempting offer. His clothes are sticking to him like glue, and with the wind picking up it could get cold soon.
He abandons all shame and strips his shirt and pants (thank god at least he was wearing boxers at least or he doesn’t think he could cope), hoping to Arceus that Ash was right and no one would ever come here.
He’s kind of self-conscious because damn Ash has a nice body, and his own is obviously underdeveloped and not muscular at all, it’s just skin and flesh. But then Ash gives him a thumbs up and he just finds he doesn’t care.
He runs over to join Ash in a game of beach volleyball with Scorbunny and Pikachu, with their newfound companion Pidgeot serving as a kind of referee, watching over them. Ash has somehow managed to make a net out of seaweed and wood, likely with the help of one of his Pokemon, and was, for some reason, carrying an inflatable ball in his bag (Ash’s bag honestly just seemed bottomless).
Scorbunny makes some mean scores with his kicks, but Pikachu returns the favour with some Iron Tails, and the match just turns into Ash and Gou commanding their Pokemon how to hit the ball as opposed to them actually playing.
The match ends before it gets too violent, and they move to building sandcastles, chasing each other around in the water and then just burying each other up to the waist in sand and relaxing.
In the end, they’re having so much fun that they don’t notice how much time has passed until the sun starts setting. It lights the sky up with rich orange and yellow hues, reminding Gou of fireworks, but calmer and softer.
It’s wasn’t the day Gou was expecting when they left this morning, but damn if it wasn’t a fun one. He’s not self-conscious as he was about a lot of things before, and when he thinks about it, this was the kind of day the old him would have dreamed for.
And now it’s just his every day, to be able to have fun adventures with the person beside him.
“Thanks for today,” Ash says, and Gou jumps. It was as if he read his mind.
“Thanks? What for?”
“For coming, of course!” Ash says. “Wasn’t it a great day?”
“I thought you said you didn’t have a plan,” Gou says. Was there a way Ash had known this would all happen?
Ash smiles enigmatically. “Well, not a plan, but I wished for a day to cheer you up, and it worked, so…”
Gou can’t help but laugh. He could certainly believe it. It seemed that Ash’s wishes had a special power to make the people around him happy, even if he didn’t know how they’d come true.
“Thanks,” he says, and he reaches over to hold Ash’s hand, watching together as the last rays of sunlight fade from the horizon.