Chapter Text
“Leon?” Hop broke the silence between the two brothers, as they sat together in the back corner of Cosmos Café.
Leon set his book down and picked up his coffee, taking a quick sip and warming his hands on the mug. He had long since finished the cinnamon roll Hop had bought for him but was curious as to why his typically sweets-obsessed brother hadn’t done the same. After all, it had been Hop to invite him to the newly opened café that crisp autumn morning, stating that it had the best pastries in Wyndon.
“Yeah, Hopscotch?”
“How do you tell someone you love them?”
The Champion gasped, and subsequently choked on his coffee. He was quick to snatch up a napkin off the café table, covering his mouth and coughing for a good thirty seconds before regaining control of himself. A red blush crossed his cheeks as he covered his face with his hand, embarrassed at all the people now staring at him. “What do you mean? Who on Earth could you be confessing that to? You’re like… twelve.”
Hop gave him an unamused look, an eyebrow quirked in his direction. “I’m not a kid now, Lee. And as for who it could be… does that really matter?”
“I’d say it would change my answer on how to do it depending on who it is.” Leon shrugged. “But I’m stunned you’re even dating someone, Hop. You haven’t told me about a partner!”
“I’m not dating anyone.” He grumbled, taking a sip of his own black coffee. “That’s why it’s so important that I get it right! I mean, I don’t want to mess it up – I’d never be able to face them again!”
“Ah, so it’s a crush, huh? Would I know them?” The Champion ribbed, a cheeky grin on his face. “C’mon, is it Marnie? Peonia? Arceus, is it Bede?” He laughed, shaking his head. “That’d be bloody mad.”
Hop looked away from Leon with red cheeks, his bottom lip worried between his teeth.
It dawned on Leon that the answer was most certainly Bede.
“No way, Hop – that kid treated you like rubbish during the Gym Challenge! What on Earth are you doing?” Leon huffed, as he crossed his arms over his chest. When Hop seemed to deflate at his words, though, he quickly began to feel guilty – perhaps he was being a bit of an overprotective brother at the moment. After all, his younger brother was more than capable of making his own decisions. He just couldn’t help but be worried for him. “I trust your judgement, but… I don’t want to see you get hurt like that again. I’m sorry I laughed, though. It wasn’t nice of me.”
“Well… it’s okay. I know you’re just looking out for me, Lee.” Hop gave him a tiny smile, as he looked down at his slowly draining coffee cup. “I don’t know how it happened… but after the whole incident, with the Darkest Day and all that nonsense… he came back into my life in a peculiar way. For a while, I was in a bad place – you remember… inpatient and all that stuff.” Hop waved his hand, as if to dismiss the memory.
The Champion frowned at the mention, recalling just how bad “that stuff” had truly been. Effects of the Darkest Day reached far beyond that of simple chaos and structural damage. Leon assumed intense physical and mental therapy to recover from his injuries, and his beloved Charizard had to spend a week in a Pokémon Center to rest after taking on the force of the blast from Eternatus. Hop had broken down only a week later, the night terrors and anxiety attacks becoming too much to bear on his own. He had checked himself into the mental healthcare center at Wyndon hospital the day before his seventeenth birthday. Leon couldn’t be prouder of how far he had come, but it still stung knowing that Hop had been left to struggle in private while Leon himself received the highest care and support Galar had to offer. He hesitated for a moment, as he wanted to apologize yet again for the time Hop had to spend away from home in the hospital, however, Hop had made it clear that he didn’t want another apology. Leon wasn’t to be sorry for the situation, as he had nothing to do with the circumstances. They had spoken at length about it during their family therapy session, at the behest of both brothers’ care teams. Ultimately, it had been quite beneficial – but it was still difficult to break the habit.
Instead of falling back into the pattern of apologies, though, he gave a slight nod to his brother, encouraging him to keep speaking.
“I got a lot of mail and stuff, while I was there. Marnie would send me long letters about being the new Gym Leader in Spikemuth, Raihan and mom would deliver cards and gifts, not to mention all the presents you gifted me, too, even though we were a building away from each other.” Hop smiled at him, squeezing his hand. “It made things a lot simpler for me, knowing that so many people cared about me that much. But… about three weeks in, I got a letter from Ballonlea. For a moment, I thought it could have been from Ms. Opal. She doesn’t know me that well, but she’s nice, so it wasn’t totally out of the question. I mean, it was addressed with a pink pen and had butterfly stickers all over it.” He laughed, running a hand through his hair. “But… when I opened it, I saw it was from Bede. Trust me, I was absolutely gobsmacked. He wrote me this letter about… well let me just read it.” Hop reached into the breast pocket of his denim jacket, pulling out a slightly crumpled pink envelope.
“You keep it in your pocket?” Leon tilted his head. Perhaps Hop was more serious about this than he originally thought.
“Well… yeah. Sometimes I read it when things get too much up here,” He gestured to his head. “Helps calm me down… Anyways.” He cleared his throat, starting to read from the page.
“Dearest Hop –“
“Dearest?” The Champion smirked. “Is he writing a sonnet?”
“Listen, this is Bede we’re talking about. Expect it to be dramatic. He writes so formally you could almost imagine it coming from a classic’s novel.” Hop rolled his eyes, before starting over.
“Dearest Hop –
You are most likely confused as to why I am reaching out to you after so many cruel words have been exchanged over the last year. Although you and I have held animosity between each other in the past, I would first like to extend my well wishes to you and your brother during this time. You undoubtedly have demonstrated yourself to be the worthiest of trainers, considering the feat you’ve achieved, though I will not dwell on that now. I imagine it must be a difficult time for you to think of such things.
The second reason I am writing today is to extend my sincerest apologies to you. I cannot take back the way I treated you during the Gym Challenge. I cannot offer you an explanation for my behavior at this time, as it would not be fitting for me to speak of my difficulties when I am apologizing for the difficulties, I have caused you. All I can say is that moving in with Ms. Opal and becoming the Gym Leader of Ballonlea has made me realize that I made a grave miscalculation in judgement. I do not expect your forgiveness, although I do hope this letter has sufficiently shown my regret for the way I treated you.
Hop, I hope that perhaps one day we could see each other again. You will always be welcome at the Fairy Gym, and I would be honored to battle against you once more.
More than that, though, I truly wish for you to feel better soon. Once again, I send my regards.
Sincerely,
Bede”
Leon gawked at the letter in his brothers’ hands, stunned and in awe of the authentic apology from Bede. He had known the challenger turned Gym Leader since he had become a ward of Chairman Rose – and he was never one to apologize, let alone expect nothing in return. It seemed that the young man had been trying his hardest to become a better person. Perhaps Opal had made more of an impression on him than The Champion could have ever expected. “Wow… Hop, that… I’m gobsmacked. That sounds genuine and… well, real.”
“It was genuine. It still is,” Hop folded the letter again, carefully slipping it into his coat pocket once more. “I wrote him aftewards. I think I took up ten pages talking about how he made me feel and how weird it was that he was reaching out – but finished it off by saying he should keep in touch. It took me a week to even get the courage to send it. I thought it was a joke at first, you know? Didn’t think I would ever get an apology from him. But he wrote me back and I got a response the very next day. It became a habit, y’know? He would write me, I would write him… he started to send me little trinkets, too. Mostly stickers and postcards. I would send him drawings or keychains I made during my free time. In a way, he was my constant. When I left inpatient, though, I was concerned that he wouldn’t talk to me any longer.”
“But he kept talking to you, didn’t he?” Leon questioned softly.
“We kept writing each other letters, but I got his number, too. We would text through most of the day. It grew into us talking on the phone or video chatting whenever we had the time.” Hop blushed, rubbing at his neck. “He asked me to come visit him in Ballonlea. Said he wanted to see me in person again if I was feeling up to it.”
“That’s why you asked me to cover for you? Mom was hounding me all night to find out if you were really hanging out with me!” Leon huffed, eliciting a laugh from his younger brother.
“I know, I know – I owe you one, I do. I just know she would’ve lost her head if I told her I was traveling to Ballonlea on my own.” He presented him a cheeky grin. “Anyways, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to go out. I had only seen Marnie since I’d left the hospital, unless you count the times when I was helping you move back in with Raihan and Piers… so I took the train and biked through Stow-On-Side to get there. I wanted to clear my head for a bit, and the Glimwood Tangle was one of my favorite places to visit while the challenge was going on.” There was a fond smile on his face as he thought of it. “When I finally got to Ballonlea, it was past dinner. Bede met me outside the gym and took me to Ms. Opal’s place, since he lives there, too. It took us a while to even get past small talk. I almost left, but then he started to ask me about the future – things like what I wanted to do now that the challenge was over, if I was going to university, all that stuff… and I couldn’t help but cry. It was really embarrassing, because I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and I was crying in front of this guy that I hadn’t even seen in months.”
“How did he treat you when you started crying...?” Leon leaned forward, clinging onto Hop’s words.
“Well, he was gobsmacked at first, naturally. He got exceedingly flustered and apologized for asking me, but… he was empathetic, after that. He sat me down on the couch and held my hand and listened to me vent about it. When I told him I didn’t know what to do, he told me he felt the same way. We were both lost after the challenge concluded. He had the Fairy Gym, at least, but he was still in training at the time and didn’t know what was going to happen since he was technically still a ward of Chairman Rose. I told him about how I… well, I wasn’t going to try the Gym Challenge again. I had given up on my hopes of becoming Champion long before we had that conversation.” Hop leaned on his hand, fiddling with the end of his hoodie strings. “We ended up talking all night, about everything. The future, our childhoods, our Pokémon… all of it just sorta came out. When I left that morning, I felt like I had known him, truly known him, my entire life. Something changed that night. After that, well… things really started to move quickly. We began training together, he would come to visit Marnie and I, and we remained pen pals for each other, too. I just… I don’t know when it happened, but I woke up one day and realized that I loved him.” Hop looked back up at his brother, eyes sparkling. “I love him.”
“Hop…” The Champion was at a loss for words, as he took his brothers hand once more. “I’m so happy for you. Seems like you’ve got a real stand-up crush on your hands… and I don’t think you have to do anything special to tell him that you love him. Just tell him what you told me,” He squeezed his hand, a bright smile on his face. “-and everything will work out just fine.”
“You think so, Lee?” Hop tapped his foot anxiously, though an excited smile still crossed his face. “You think he would love me back?”
“Be a bloody fool not to, and if I know something about Bede after hearing that letter, I know he’s not a fool.” Leon reassured him.
“Well, then… I think I’ll tell him tonight. We’re going to visit the natural history museum in Hammerlocke.” He looked determined, standing up. “Thank you for your help, Lee… I love you.”
“I love you too, Hop. Go on and get ready for your evening – and let me know how it goes?”
“I’ll text you as soon as I can!” The excitable young man gave him a hug, then ran out the door. He had a lot to get ready for, and as he hurried to catch the next train to Hammerlocke so he could head to his dorm, he couldn’t help but smile the whole way there. Tonight would be the night. He was sure of it.