Work Text:
Bede had tried to come home quietly, he really had. But miss Opal slept so lightly that he worried she didn’t sleep at all, merely hovered over her pillow all night through. Regardless, he needed to feed his companions and the metal mixing bowls were always louder at night.
Clang clang clang, and she was hounding him in the kitchen (aka pleasantly asking him how his evening was going, and how his afternoon had been). It didn’t get much to start him talking about his night with Hop.
“Your plans were originally with that sweet morpeko girl, Marnie, correct?” Opal sipped at her teacup. “Curious.”
“She and Eileen left, for…they said ‘girl stuff’. I assume they had some other plans together.”
Opal’s eyebrows rose. “I see! The plot thickens.”
“So, Hop and I just…ate dinner together. And talked. Oh, bollocks I said some really stupid things…” Bede groaned, his tired brain playing him a reel of the night’s cringiest hits.
Like that time he’d said ‘guy salt’. Or when he’d offered Hop a bite of his food off of his own fork oh someone please Moonblast him to bits right now.
She waited for him, ever patient as Bede had his little freak-out. This happened sometimes.
“I don’t know whether I was flirting with him or not! I mean I was trying, but I don’t know if – miss Opal what if he hates me?!” he was beginning to pace holes in her fancy Kalosian rug, mind jumping from one hurried conclusion to the next. “I was being so weird and awkward the whole time! What am I going to do when I see him tomorrow?!”
“You’re seeing him again tomorrow?”
“He…I, um, said I’d show him how to look for mushrooms. I don’t know how to act without making a fool of myself!”
“Calm down, boy. If he hates you why eat a meal with you? He obviously holds your opinion in high regard, if he agreed to forage in the rain with you. Hm?”
Opal pointed a pointy manicured nail at him, waiting for her words to sink in. Bede nodded, slowly, letting a long sigh out.
“…and this boy? What did you say to him that you’re all worked up about?”
Bede’s face burned. “I…I said pink looked good on him.”
“Oho! Pink-wearer, is he?”
“No, he – I was making a joke, about his face,” he started, hurrying when he saw the beginnings of a scowl on miss Opal’s face. “I-it was his blushing, it, I thought it looked good on his skin and wanted to be cheeky sayin’ it! That’s not an insult, right?”
She considered, tapping the rim of her cup. “Did you say it as an insult?”
“…no?”
“Well then that sounds like a perfectly charming romantic sentiment.” she nodded. “If you want my advice – “
“- I certainly never ask – “
Opal tutted. “I was going to suggest you keep at it. Hopefully this Hop has an appetite for sass.”
With his pokemon’s food preparation finished, Bede gathered himself and readied to shuffle out the back door to the little mother-in-law cottage.
“Oh, goodnight to you too then.” Opal said.
Bede sighed, and took a step back inside. “G’night, gran.”
He spent the rest of the evening staring at his ceiling, consumed with thoughts most homosexual.
Damnit Hop.