Chapter Text
Blue didn’t really want friends. All the kids in school were annoying. He just wanted a Pokémon and hoped that for his birthday he could get one from his grandpa. But right when he was going to ask about it, his grandpa took him by the arm and said, “Oh, Blue! I was looking for you. We have neighbors, and I want you to meet them. There’s a boy about your age, I don’t remember his name. The one I was telling you about.”
“Gramps, I don’t want to!”
“Blue, be nice.”
And so they walked across the street to the house that had been empty for a while, a big moving truck parked in front. His grandpa knocked on the open door a few times before a young woman rushed down the stairs to greet them. She looked nice.
They exchanged greetings and before long, Gramps was pulling Blue from behind him and pushing him towards the woman. “Blue, be nice and say hello.”
“Uh…hi.”
The woman (Delia was her name, he learned) invited them in for some tea. There were unpacked boxes littering the house, but there was a table next to the kitchen with some chairs. As Delia put the teapot on the stove, Blue tugged on his grandpa’s hand. “Gramps, I wanna go play.”
“Oh, right!” Delia said, hearing his mumble. “Red! Come downstairs, please!”
A moment later, cautious footsteps creaked down the stairs and a boy his age stared at him from the bottom step, eyes wide and hair messy. “Red, these are our new neighbors, Professor Oak and Blue. Come and say hi.”
Blue remembered what Gramps had said about Red, about how he couldn’t talk. But that was fine with him. He wished the other kids couldn’t talk, sometimes. Red waved at the two of them slowly before going and hiding behind his mom. “Oh, don’t be shy,” she scolded lightly, patting his head. “They’re nice people. Why don’t you go and show Blue your room?”
Red glanced over at him and started going back up the stairs, not waiting for Blue to catch up. Blue ran up the stairs after him and looked in the small room before entering.
It was full of stuffed Pokédolls. Red’s bed held a Charmander doll and a Pikachu doll, and more were lined up against the wall. Blue thought it was the coolest thing ever.
When his eye caught an Eevee doll, he gasped and pointed at it. “Where did you get that?! I’ve been asking my grandpa for one for forever!”
They sat and played with the dolls and Blue chatted Red’s ear off, telling him about what Pokémon he wanted and what his grandpa did and how it was the coolest thing ever, I want to be a researcher when I’m older!
Red kept the Pikachu doll close to him and was playing with its ears the whole afternoon. “Is Pikachu your favorite Pokémon?” Blue asked, and was confused when Red shook his head. “Then what’s your favorite?”
He pointed to the big picture book of Pokémon that they had been flipping through, and Blue didn’t understand. He pointed again, this time with more energy.
“You don’t have a favorite?”
Red shook his head and tapped the words, All 149 Pokémon! Blue’s mouth made an “o” and he nodded. “They’re all your favorite?” Red nodded his head, finally, and Blue grinned. “You have to choose sometime. Gramps is gonna give us Pokémon when we get older!”
Red’s eyes shone, and he opened the book, stopping on Charizard. He pointed to it and smiled at Blue.
“Charizard? That one’s cool! It evolves from Charmeleon and Charmander. I like Squirtle and Blastoise more, though.”
Too soon, Gramps called Blue downstairs so they could go back home.
The first day of first grade was something Blue wasn’t looking forward to at all. Daisy had told him it wasn’t anything to be scared of and that he was being a baby for being scared. (All big boys go to first grade, Blue, and they don’t cry, she had said. He kept crying.) When he told on her, Samuel had just laughed and messed up his hair, telling him to go to bed.
It was better when he saw Red sitting off in the corner of the room at a table of desks by himself. His eyes widened and he rushed over to sit next to his friend (friend?) as fast as possible, a big smile on his face. As Blue was busy talking about how annoying Daisy was being last night, another kid sat down, right across from Red. He hesitated in his talking when she started digging through her bag for something. He watched her cautiously. “What’s your name?”
“Yellow,” she answered cheerfully, pulling a notebook out of her bag. It was a bright hot pink, and it hurt Blue’s eyes. “What’s your name?”
“Blue.”
“What’s your name?” She asked Red, moving her bright smile to face him instead.
Red looked over at Blue for a moment before pointing down at his own notebook. There was a Pokéball sticker on the front, and his pointer finger was on top of the top part. Blue understood immediately that Red had meant Red, like a Pokéball. Yellow looked at Blue in confusion.
“His name is Red. You know,” he said, adding his own finger to Red’s notebook, “like a Pokéball?”
“Oh. Okay.” Her voice sounded really weird, and Blue didn’t like it. “What’s your favorite Pokémon? Mine is Butterfree.”
“But you’re a girl,” Blue said, snorting. “You know it’s a Bug-type, right?”
“I know that!” She pouted. “…so what.”
“Mine is Eevee. Or Squirtle. I can’t choose.”
“Eevee is a girly Pokémon,” she interrupted, narrowing her eyes.
“No, it isn’t! 87.5% of all Eevee’s are male!” Blue saw Red turn and look at him out of the corner of his eye. Yellow leaned back in her chair, looking confused. “What?”
“What…does that mean?”
Red and Yellow were both looking at him like he was strange. He felt his face start heating up. “…my grandpa told me that. It’s a big number, isn’t it?”
Blue knew what it meant. He had spent days and days with his grandpa in his lab, asking him about all the numbers that were a part of his research. He knew exactly what the numbers meant. But that was weird.
The next day they started working on reading and writing. Blue already knew how to do both, but Red didn’t, and it gave him an excuse to go over to his house after school to help him out. It was like opening up a whole new world, because now Red could talk. His writing and pencil-hold were horrible, and he spelled a lot of things wrong, and sometimes Blue couldn’t really read it, but it was something.
By the time winter vacation rolled around, Red had written in and threw out about ten different notebooks, filled with notes on practicing his writing and spelling and notes he and Blue had passed to each other during class and whatever he was thinking when he and Blue were hanging out.
Red invited Blue and Yellow to his house for dinner on the last day of school before break via note. Yellow said sure, but she would have to go home first to tell her uncle. Blue figured it would be fine with Gramps, especially since Blue spent most evenings over there anyways.
Once Yellow knocked on the door to Red’s house, they all ran up to Red’s room to play on his Super Nintendo. They took turns playing Super Mario World until Yellow got so frustrated she almost started crying. Blue took the controller from her and played the level she was supposed to play, trying to show her how she was supposed to do it. When he cleared the level, he looked over at her to see her not paying attention, her head swiveling around to look at Red’s toys. Red gave him a thumbs-up, though, to show he was paying attention.
That made it hurt a little less. And then Red’s mom called them down for dinner.
Yellow left right after dinner, saying she had to be home before dark. She waved and thanked Red’s mom for the food before running down the road to her home. Blue didn’t leave, following Red back up to his room and picking back up the SNES controller, unpausing the game. The cheery overworld music didn’t do much to pep him up. “Hey, did I do something wrong?” He asked Red, clicking open a stage. “She didn’t talk to me much.”
He saw Red shrug out of the corner of his eye and open up his new notebook, holding his pencil awkwardly in his left hand. Blue finished the level and Red put the notebook in his lap, snatching the controller from the floor to play the next level.
No was the only word on the page. He pouted and watched Mario jump around on the screen, stomping on Koopas and Goombas. “But…”
Red didn’t look back over at him until he died. He paused the game and took back his notebook, picking his pencil back up. He didn’t take too long to finish writing. You showed how to win.
How to beat the stage , was what Red meant. “Well, yeah, but. I don’t think she really likes me.”
Red shrugged again, the only sound in the room being the buzzing of the small TV on the floor.
“Do you like me?”
Red’s face didn’t change at all, but after a moment, he nodded, making a small humming noise. Blue smiled.
People stopped talking to him when they got to third grade. Blue didn’t really understand why at first. He did, though, during recess one day when a group of boys were playing with Pokémon cards. He grabbed Red’s hand and dragged him over to the circle of kids sitting on the cement. “Hey, can we play?” He asked, letting go of Red and pulling a small box out of the pocket of his shorts. “I just got some new cards!”
One of the boys playing looked up at Blue like he had a second head. “No way.” He looked back down at his cards and picked up a quarter, flipping it and frowning when it landed on tails.
Blue wasn’t expecting that. “…why not? I know how to play, so does Red—"
“I said no.”
Blue felt Red link their pinkies together and he bit his lip. “But, um…” He clicked his tongue in annoyance before tucking his card box back in his pocket. “Fine. I didn’t want to play, anyways.”
He pulled his hand away from Red’s and shoved both hands in his pockets, his left one curling up around the edges of the box.
Red was out of school the next day because he got sick from something. Blue was lonely sitting off in the corner of the room by himself. Recess rolled around again, and the same group of boys were playing with their cards again in the same spot.
“Hey,” he said again, shyly. They all looked up at him. “Um…can I play today?”
The boy who had said no yesterday looked around him, narrowing his eyes. “Is the weird kid not here today?”
…what? Blue frowned and scratched his cheek. “…no? Red’s home sick. Um—”
“Why do you hang out with him?” The other boy (he wore glasses) interrupted, and Blue felt his throat clench up. He hated it when people interrupted him. “He’s weird.”
“No, he isn’t,” Blue argued, balling his fists. “Red’s cool.”
“Isn’t he special?” Glasses piped up, and the rest of the kids made sounds of agreement.
“So what?”
“So, he’s weird. And you hang out with him. That makes you weird.”
Blue felt his face heat up. “Red’s not weird. And I’m not, either!”
“Yeah, you are,” No-boy said, frowning. “I don’t want to be weird for playing with the weird kid.”
Blue punched him in the nose as hard as he could.
“You ought to know you can’t talk with your fists,” his grandpa told him when he got back home with his teacher’s note. “You’re a big kid.”
“But they were being mean to Red!” Blue shoved the note towards Samuel, his eyes burning. “They weren’t listening to me. They kept calling him weird!”
“Well, what did Red do?”
Blue fidgeted with the bottom of his shirt. “Um…he wasn’t there, today.”
Samuel frowned as he signed the note, humming. “You shouldn’t fight other people’s battles, Blue.”
“Red’s not gonna fight anyone.” Red wouldn’t even tell someone no. “He’s my friend, I can’t just—he’s not gonna do anything about it! He probably doesn’t even get that people are being mean to him.”
“Well,” Samuel said, taking his reading glasses off and putting them down on top of a stack of papers. “Don’t do something if Red wouldn’t. You can’t do something like that without consequences.”
Blue didn’t know what consequences meant, but he knew his grandpa was wrong. “But—”
“A fight is a fight. You can’t fight people.”
“I didn’t fight him! I just…hit him.”
“Did he hit you first?”
“No.”
“Did he hit you back?”
“…no.” Blue bit his lip before stomping his foot in aggravation. “But they were being mean! Gramps!”
“Blue, you aren’t going to sway my opinion on this one. No more hitting people. That’s that.” He held out the note for Blue to take back, and once it was gone he put back on his glasses. “Now, I have work I need to get finished tonight.”
Blue spent the night at Red’s that weekend, and as they set up their Pokémon cards, Blue decided he would tell him what happened on the day he missed. “I hit someone on Tuesday. One of those kids who we asked to play TCG with on Monday.”
“B-bb-b-Blue.” Red frowned, fishing around in a small bag for a quarter. “...why?”
“He was being mean. So I hit him. Gramps says I shouldn’t’ve, but I think it was right.” Red kept frowning as he put the quarter down between them. “They were calling us weird. Can you believe that?”
“Y-y-yy-you are.” Red giggled when Blue groaned. Red slowly signed the letters for weird before poking Blue in the chest.
“Yeah, but…they were being mean about it.” Red shrugged and Blue felt mad. “You don’t care?”
Red shrugged again. He started setting up his cards to play. “D-dd-di-did y-y-yy-you gg-g-get in t-troub-bb-ble?”
“Of course I did, dummy.” Blue started setting up his own cards. “I got a teacher’s note and Gramps and Daisy were upset. Hey, do you know what consequences means?”
By fourth grade, Blue was sick of not having any friends. So, he decided he was going to make some. He and Red were in different classes this year, so they had different lunch and recess times. On the second day of school, he walked up to a couple of boys who were swinging on the swings. They had been in his class last year. “Hey,” he greeted, waving a little. “Wanna see who can jump the farthest?”
They looked at each other and back at Blue in a synchronization that was a little creepy. “Aren’t you friends with Red?” The one on the left asked. He had black hair and a band-aid on his leg.
Blue panicked. “Uh, no? Do you see him with me?”
The other boy tilted his head in confusion. He had blonde hair, and a cool looking watch. “Did y’all fight, or something?” Blue almost cringed at his heavy Johto accent. “I thought y’all were super buddy-buddy.”
Blue panicked again. “With that weirdo? Yeah, no. I was just hanging out with him ‘cuz he didn’t have any friends.” Blue knew the word for that was pity , but he couldn’t say that. They’d call him weird again.
Band-aid shrugged before starting to swing higher. After a minute, he launched himself out of the seat, crashing down in the sawdust. “Your turn.”
Blue felt a smile rise up on his face.
Band-aid’s name was John and Watch-boy’s name was Danny. John was from Viridian City, but he went to school in Pallet because his parents made him. Danny moved to Pallet last year from Johto, from Goldenrod City. They were pretty cool. On the first weekend of the school year, Blue invited them over to play Super Mario Kart. Right after the first race, Daisy called him downstairs.
“Red’s at the door,” she said when he hit the landing of the staircase. “Wanted to know if you wanted to hang out. I think he said something about fishing? I don’t know sign language as well as you do.”
Blue froze, a sense of panic grabbing his lungs. He opened the door and Red was sitting on the step before the door, looking up at the sky. “Hey.”
Red turned his head and Blue caught a glance of his eye before he turned around and stood up. “Fish?” He signed, his gaze fixed at the doorframe above Blue’s head.
“Um, yeah. About that.” He ran a hand through his hair, looking over at Red’s house. “Uh, I have company.”
Red’s face didn’t change. “Fish?” He asked again, repeating the motion three times for emphasis.
“I can’t. I have friends over.”
“Friends.” Red’s face changed finally, going from its neutral expression to a slight frown. “What?”
“I made some friends. Uh, we’re kind of in the middle of Mario Kart. They probably started the next race without me, actually.”
Red’s eyes widened in excitement. “Can I? I want to play.”
“Um…” Blue sighed before looking back at Red’s face. “No.”
No . Why did he say no? Red was his friend. Red was his first friend ever. Red had been his only friend. Red liked Mario Kart. He was pretty good at it, too.
“Why? I’m good.”
“Uh. Yeah. Uh. Maybe tomorrow, or something. I hang out with you all the time. And they don’t know you.” Blue was throwing up excuse after excuse, but it seemed like it was working. “We can hang out tomorrow. Fishing or Mario Kart. Whatever.”
“Okay. Have fun.” He gave a peace sign before stepping down from the porch and heading back to his house. Blue didn’t go back inside until he watched Red go back inside his house.
He got back in his room and John and Danny were going through his other video games, the game still paused on the TV screen. “You were gone for a long time,” John said, and Danny nodded.
Blue glanced at the clock above his computer and frowned. He was downstairs for about five minutes, which wasn’t all that long, but he shrugged before grinning at them. “Yeah, my sister just wanted some help with her homework. Sorry.”
He and Red went fishing super early in the morning on Sunday. There was still dew on the grass and the air was chilly, but Blue was used to it at this point. Red had a tendency to wake up super early. They sat at the edge of the lake just south of the town, their thighs barely touching as they sat down and cast their lines.
“Uh,” Blue spoke up for the first time that morning, his voice a little scratchy. “Sorry ‘bout yesterday. I just, um…really wanted them to like me.”
Red shrugged. “Why would they not? You’re cool.” He snorted before waving his hands in front of him, wiping his invisible slate clean. “No, you’re weird. Cool and weird.”
“Because I hang out with you.” Blue looked out at the calm water of the lake, the soft splashing nearly hitting his bare feet. “And everyone thinks you’re weird.”
“Am I?”
“Well, a little.” Red nudged him with his elbow. “Not a bad weird, though. I guess.”
He felt a tug on his pole and he reeled in his line and yanked it up, staring at the tiny Magikarp stuck to the hook at the end. Blue felt a little bad for lying, but he wasn’t really lying, was he? Red was kind of weird, but he never really noticed until people started not wanting to be friends with him. Yeah, it sucked no one liked being around Red, but what could Blue do? Red wasn’t about to change anytime soon.
“Is it okay if we stop…talking? For a while?” He barely saw Red’s hands tighten around his fishing pole. “I mean, I…I want friends.”
“I’m your friend,” Red signed, poking himself in the chest forcefully.
“Yeah, but…people don’t like you.”
Red frowned before his line started pulling down towards the water. He didn’t take his eyes off of the lake as he reeled it in. “S-ss-s-ss-sooo w-w-what?” He asked, his voice wavering more than normal. “W-ww-we’re f-ff-ff-friend-friends.”
“No one wants to be friends with me other than you,” Blue said, tossing his tiny Magikarp back in the water and re-baiting his hook. “Danny and John are the first people to actually want to hang out with me other than you.”
“W-who—”
“The friends I had over yesterday.” Red clicked his tongue when Blue interrupted him. “The last person I spent time with—other than you—was Yellow, and what happened to her? She stopped wanting to hang out, because you were weird.”
Red held his Magikarp awkwardly in his hands, staring at its big, blank eye. “B-bb-b-but—”
“It’s not fair.” Blue narrowed his eyes as he watched a Tentacool float up to the surface, its bright red spots glittering in the sun. “Hanging out with you is keeping me from making friends.”
“B-b-b-bb—”
“I mean,” Blue interrupted again, and Red tsk -ed again. “I like hanging out with you, you were my first friend, of course I like spending time with you, but I mean, what am I supposed to do if you can’t hang out? Like when you get sick, or you’re visiting your dad with your mom.”
“B-b—”
“I’m not saying we have to stop hanging out—” He was cut off when Red’s elbow stabbed him in his side. “Ow! Jeez, Red!”
“Shut up,” he signed, his entire face frowning. “Stop talking over me.”
“Could’ve said that instead of hitting me.” Red somehow frowned even more. “Anyways. If we were really friends, you wouldn’t try and keep me from making friends with other people.”
“I’m not .”
Red watched as Blue pulled up another Magikarp. It was a lot bigger than his last one. It flopped around a lot in his hands before it flopped right back into the water, the hook still in its mouth. Blue rolled his eyes and yanked it back up again forcefully, and managed to take the hook out before it flopped back again. “Well.”
“Why are you—you’re just—why—” Red clapped his hands together angrily, then held them out in front of him for a moment, gathering his thoughts. “Why not just tell me?”
“Tell you what? That I can’t make friends because of you?”
“That you don’t like me.”
Blue felt his throat tighten up. “I didn’t say that!” He suddenly shouted, and Red flinched back from him. “I never said that I don’t like you!”
“You don’t want to be friends.” Blue opened his mouth again and Red started signing again as fast as he could. “That means you don’t like me.”
“I—” Blue cut himself off as his fishing pole was yanked from between his legs and into the lake. He groaned and balled up his fists. “I didn’t!”
“You just said—”
“No I didn’t!”
“Liar.” Red’s finger pointed across his face three times. “Don’t lie.”
“Fine! I don’t want to be friends!” Blue stood up, and Red just stared at him from the ground. “You’re weird and being around you makes me weird and I can’t make any other friends!”
Blue ran into his room and face-planted on his bed, screaming into his pillow as loudly as he could. His eyes and nose burned, and he knew Daisy would make fun of him if he started crying and tell him Blue, boys don’t cry, stop being a baby, even I don’t cry anymore. He hated Daisy. He hated Red.
He started crying.
Dinner was quiet. Samuel was home, for once, but Blue felt anything but happy. “How was your day, Blue?” Samuel asked after five minutes of silence.
“Blue was crying,” Daisy said, and Blue kicked her leg under the table. “Ow! Blue—”
“Don’t kick your sister,” Samuel scolded, tapping his spoon on the side of his soup bowl. “What’s this about crying?”
“Me and Red fought.” The clink of Samuel dropping his spoon in his empty bowl resonated through the room.
“What?!”
“I didn’t hit him!” Blue blurted out, not taking his eyes off of his own soup. “I just yelled at him. He was being dumb, Gramps.”
“Blue!” He glanced up to see his grandfather looking at him, furious. “Did you apologize?”
“He was the one being dumb, not me!”
“Don’t call him that!”
Blue clicked his tongue and dipped his spoon in and out of his soup. “He doesn’t want to be friends.” That was a total lie, but Blue didn’t care. At this point, it was basically true.
“He doesn’t want to be friends.”
“That’s what I said.”
Daisy kicked him. He snapped his head over at her and stuck his tongue out.
“Don’t give me an attitude, Blue.” Samuel sighed, shaking his head before standing up from his chair. “I expect to hear that you apologized to him by tomorrow night.”
As Samuel took his bowl back into the kitchen, Blue kicked Daisy back as hard as he could. She shouted, and he saw her eyes start watering. He got grounded for a week, and Daisy got a nasty bruise that could be seen whenever she wore a skirt or shorts.
During winter vacation, Blue opened his front door to go over to Danny’s house and almost walked into Red. His hand was raised as if he was about to knock on the door. Blue scowled and shut the door behind him. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”
Red didn’t say anything, just held out something for Blue to stare at in confusion. The cartridge for Kirby’s Dream Course was looking back at him. Blue took it and watched as Red’s hands started signing. “Found this. You left it at my house. Don’t want it.”
“Well, I don’t want it back.” He held it loosely between his thumb and forefinger. “You probably did something to it.”
“I didn’t do anything.” Red frowned. “Stop acting weird.”
“You’re the weird one, not me.” He dropped the cartridge back in Red’s hands, hiking his bookbag higher on his shoulder. “Anyways, I gotta be somewhere. Beat it.”
Red put the game in his pocket. “Stop acting weird,” he signed again. “You’re never home.”
“I know that. Because I’m out with friends.” He narrowed his eyes and sighed. “Red. Go away.”
“What did I do?”
Something twanged in Blue’s chest, but he ignored it. “Exist.”
Red punched him in the chest, and then they tumbled down the step and onto the sidewalk, pulling hair and kicking and biting and punching. He heard Daisy shout something, and next thing he knew he was being yanked back and up by his grandfather by the scruff of his neck, like a wild Meowth.
He got grounded for the rest of winter break and sported a black eye, bandaged nose, bruises, and bite marks for most of it.