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“Fuck.”
It’s a good thing that inside thoughts are exactly that — inside.
Paxton doesn’t know exactly how it has gotten to this point.
Just six months ago he’d been just one of many tourists in Lumiose city, drawn in by the brightness, the attractions, the many cafés on the side of the road. Admittedly, it hadn’t been his first choice, but in the end, it had been the correct one. Similar enough to Hearthome that the homesickness wouldn’t kick his ass, but different enough to give him a change of scenery.
If it hadn’t been for the disaster hitting Hammerlocke just a few months before he was scheduled to leave, he would have never made it to Kalos. It had been easy enough to send a new visa application, this time for Kalos, as his Galarian one had been rejected on account of the calamity— the Darkest Day, as the media had dubbed it, named for a similar disaster happening many years earlier —and just a few weeks after graduating high school, he’d landed at the airport just outside of Lumiose with a bag and a three-month work permit.
It had never been the plan to stay. The family business in Hearthome had been calling for him, and while a three month trip to learn independence and gather inspiration had been allowed, it had only meant to be that. Three months in a different place with different customs and different pokémon. His older sisters had undertaken similar trips, one of them to Kanto and the other to Alola.
“Hero?”
Paxton hates that title.
Of course it had been just his luck that he’d been dragged into another apocalyptic event. As if averting one hadn’t been enough. As if the fabric of the world tearing itself apart at home hadn’t been enough (not that he’s meant to know about that happening, but he’d been around, hiding behind a door when Dawn — heroine, Champion (at twelve, what a weight to bear) —had talked to his mother about it).
“Hero, could I have an autograph?”
He’d just wanted to enjoy his hot chocolate in peace, a rare treat after a morning on a long call with his mother and one of his older sisters, trying to get it across to them that despite it all, he’s really settled into life in Lumiose, and with a hotel to run and a hero title and two maybe-boyfriends, he can’t just come back home, even if it means helping the family business. Can it be considered a family business if it’s not independently owned and only two family members are involved in it?
“Of course,” he says, scribbling down the autograph that looks nothing like his own signature and definitely doesn’t include his real name— so much of his privacy has been stripped from him, and his name is the last thing he has left now —before handing it back to the girl. She’s got the same nondescript face as the rest of his young fangirls. The variations in hair and eye colour all blend together at this point.
Thankfully she leaves him alone after that. Absol gets up from her spot under his chair and rests her head in his lap. “Thanks, Lucia,” he whispers to her. If he had been in a more private place, he would have bent down and hidden his face in her wonderfully soft fur. But Café Classe is public, and he always sits outside so that he can have Absol out and let her have one of the many pokémon treats the café makes in-house. It leaves him so exposed.
Too exposed.
By now he’s mastered the art of calming down without ever looking distressed in the first place, which is great for not causing public concern, but unfortunate in every other way. Time passes so much faster than it should be allowed to, and every action feels hollow and mechanical. The hot chocolate has split and formed a film by the time he comes back to life. The croissant he ordered is sitting on its plate, untouched and being eyed by a Fletchling sitting on a nearby streetlamp.
Paxton pulls out his phone, taps into the group chat he has with Philippe and Corbeau and reads through the list of meetings that have been scheduled for that day.
There’s no guarantee that the schedule will stay that way, however, and just because there’s nothing planned doesn’t mean that something hasn’t been pencilled in last minute or that either of them will be available. It’ll take a solid half hour to walk over to the Syndicate, and while a cab is faster, being contained will only make him feel worse.
“C’mon,” he tells Absol, and she steps back so that he’s able to get up. Technically the café has someone to come around and collect the cups and plates, but it’s easy work to bring them back inside, Absol waiting loyally by the table.
“Would you like a bag to put the croissant in?” the worker asks him, and Paxton nods. Words are beyond him at this point and it’s barely noon. They’ll come back eventually
With the croissant in hand and Absol walking by his side, it’s easy to slip down one of the many alleys that connect the main streets of Lumiose. Thanks to the Rust Syndicate’s recent efforts to reduce the trash littering the side streets of the city, it’s no longer as difficult to traverse the slimmest alleys, the places that only exist to allow for buildings to have the requisite amount of windows.
Paxton doesn’t know if those streets had been targeted specifically because of him, but it does fill him with a warm feeling to think that Corbeau might have thought of him as he signed the executive order. Anything to do with one of his maybe-boyfriends (because it’s hard to classify what they are, with his constant running around and both Corbeau and Philippe working twelve-hour days every day of the week) makes something come alive in his stomach.
Despite how settled he feels here in the heart of Lumiose, there are moments— moments like this especially —that reminds him of how, back at home in Hearthome, he’d been within a ten minute walk to the nearest route, how escaping away from civilisation to camp out in a forest clearing had been easy. Getting out of the city here is a whole-day affair, and with his current status, it’s not like he can just leave.
His phone buzzes, and he knows it’s probably just his twin sister. Out of his family, Harmony is the one he keeps the most in contact with, and for the worst of it, she’d been there for him, time zones be damned. She’d kept his secrets for him, and while not even she knows all of it, she’d helped him through the worst of the disaster.
As far as the rest of his family is concerned, he’d been involved with the events with the tower, yes, but that’s all they get to know. He doesn’t know how they’d react if they’d found out he’d been one of the people tasked with taking it down. They’d probably worry and tell him to come home.
He doesn’t want to go home.
“Harmony can wait, can’t she?” Paxton asks Absol. She chirps in approval. “I promise I’ll answer her soon.”
Most days he’s content to take to the roofs to get across Lumiose. The scaffolding across the city just makes it too easy, but while Absol’s a wonderful companion, she’s never quite managed to keep up with him so high up. He doesn’t blame her; when Taunie (or had it been Urbain?) had shown him how to navigate across the rooftops, he’d felt equally uncertain. Learning to trust in his rotomphone to catch him after failed jumps had been a steep learning curve.
Time seems to pass in a muddle again, and by the time Paxton comes back to himself there are more grunts than civilians around him, and thankfully they all don’t acknowledge him. He has no idea what Corbeau or Philippe has said to them, but it seems like unless he interacts with them first, they’re more than content to leave him alone.
He could text the group chat to see if they’re free, but getting over here had been more of an impulse thing than anything else.
Absol nudges his hand, and bites onto the croissant bag to take it out of his shaking hands. He doesn’t know exactly when she’d stopped acting like a normal pokémon and started taking on the characteristics of a service pokémon. All he knows is that he hasn’t trained her to do anything, and yet she’s almost exactly like the few portrayals of service pokémon that he’s seen online.
“Thanks, Lucia,” he says in a hushed voice, patting over her head.
The worst that could happen is that he has to wait downstairs for either of them to be free. There are very rarely matters that requires both Philippe and Corbeau to be in attendance, but they do happen. Paxton knows that when it comes to the negotiations, it’s usually Corbeau who heads them, with Philippe acting as intimidation. He’s seen them both in action before, during the first time he’d met them, with Lida shaking like a leaf beside him, and his own heart in his throat.
It’s almost funny how much things have changed since then.
His feet lead him to the entrance, and the grunts here do acknowledge his existence by bowing quietly. The courtyard has a gaggle of new grunts— it’s easy enough to pick them out based on the clothing they’re wearing —and many of them eye him curiously as he walks past. He supposes it must make an odd sight to see a trainer not dressed like them walking through the courtyard of the Syndicate with an Absol carrying a croissant bag in their mouth.
Back when the Royale had just started to ramp up, the attention had been uncomfortable. It still is, but it’s easier to ignore it now that it’s clear they’re looking for the Hero rather than Paxton. It’s easier to divorce the two parts of himself, to let himself construct the mask they’re looking for, so that the softer and easily injured real him beneath will be protected from harm.
The main doors are open, letting fresh air in. It’s a warmer day, but the Rust Syndicate is equipped with state of the art air conditioning, so there’s no real reason to keep the doors open wide like they currently are. It suggests that there are no visitors expected today— wide open doors kept in place by heavy stone cubes hardly give off an intimidating aura —and maybe there’s hope that one or both of his partners will be available to—
—to what, exactly?
Paxton hates it when everything gets to be too much like this. There’s a deep-seated simmering feeling in him that isn’t exactly rage or hatred, but something in-between. It had led to tantrums as a child, where he’d run away into the forest or to the room he’d shared with Harmony to stew in his unhappiness until the emotions had no longer been too large to reasonably handle.
Pokémon battling has been a good outlet for feelings like this since moving to Lumiose, but it’s not always a solution, and the idea of going to something like a gym to physically work out the feelings has never seemed particularly appealing. He knows that it helps Taunie and Urbain a lot to work on their body, and that both Corbeau and Philippe have to keep in shape due to their often dangerous work.
He supposes he could take up swimming again, but that feels like a time sink he can’t afford.
“Paxton.”
He looks up, and Philippe is there in front of him, holding a stack of papers that probably discuss more money than Paxton will ever see in his life, earnings from the Royale included.
“Philippe,” he gets out, and the tone is entirely flat. He’s been so careful with how he speaks since getting here. The people of Lumiose speak with a unique melody, and he’s been careful in how he presents himself. As the Hero, there are certain expectations to follow, and he hates how seemingly everyone has deified him since he brought down the tower.
Philippe looks him over, and it’s such a piercing gaze that it almost hurts the exposed skin — not that there’s a lot of it; he’d come to Lumiose casually dressed in a white t-shirt and jeans, but ever since he’d started rising in the ranks of the Royale, he covers everything from the neck down. Evidently, he comes to some sort of a conclusion, because he reaches out to pat Paxton’s shoulder with his free hand. “The boss wanted to talk to you about something.”
Paxton can’t tell if there’s actually something going on, or if it’s a ruse to get him out of the lobby area without giving the grunts even more to gossip about. It’s bad enough that he’s here, not as a victim, but as an insider that’s gained the favour of the two most important men in the organisation. It would be so much worse if the nature of their relationship would become public nature.
It’s not that he hides his affiliation with the Rust Syndicate from the public, but just as easily as the masses had crowned him their saviour, they could just as easily turn on him and make his life a living hell and destabilise the careful peaceful normalcy Quasartico and the Syndicate have just managed to re-establish.
The walk across the lobby feels even more oppressive than the rest of the morning combined, and by the time they’re in the elevator, Paxton wants to curl up on the floor and hide from the world.
Philippe doesn’t say anything, and the blessed silence as they go up to the topmost floor feels like a balm against everything that’s happened since he woke up that morning.
The door finally opens, and Philippe steps out first, with Paxton following behind.
For whatever reason Corbeau isn’t sat behind his desk, frowning at his laptop.
“Boss is waiting for you over there,” Philippe says, nodding towards the dark leather sofas, where Corbeau is, in fact, sitting, holding a cup of tea. “I’ll be along in a minute.”
“Paxton,” Corbeau says, setting down his cup on the coffee table. “We saw you coming towards us earlier.”
He’d almost forgotten about the tracking app.
At first it had been a one-sided thing, a way for the Syndicate to keep tabs on him as he ran from one corner of the city to the other, putting himself in increasingly dangerous situations with the many Rogue Mega Evolutions across the city. Corbeau had found the monitoring from Quasartico’s side lacking, and so it hadn’t taken long for them to find a way to keep track of Paxton. At first it had been one-sided, and Paxton had hated it. But after a particularly terrible night in the Royale, where he’d ended up twisting his ankle, it had made it easier for Philippe to come find him and bring him back, first to Corbeau’s apartment for wound care, and then to the Syndicate to have a doctor look at it.. After that incident, they’d enabled him to track the both of them in return.
It had felt more fair, less like Paxton’s a Scatterbug caught in their city-wide web.
“Won’t you sit down?” Corbeau asks. It’s not really a question. “You look like you could use it.”
Absol nudges him towards the couch and he sits down heavily. His pouch rustles and crinkles, and it reminds him that he really needs to clear it out. It’s full of protein bar wrappers from his latest round of terrorising the streets of Lumiose during a Royale night. There is also a bunch of spare change in there, the assorted coins he gets from defeating lower-ranked trainers. It should be going into his wallet, but during the busy Royale nights it’s easier to just throw everything into the pouch.
Paxton’s not hungry anymore and a look at Absol lets her know to hand the bag over to Corbeau. “Brought you something.”
Corbeau peeks into the bag. “Thank you.”
If it had been any earlier in their relationship, Paxton would have recalled Absol to her pokéball. Pokémon aren’t typically accepted in Corbeau’s office beyond the battle space in the back. But Absol is a special case. They’ve seen her calm Paxton down from what hadn’t exactly been a panic attack, but something close to it, shortly before the tower had gone rogue.
“You don’t look well,” Corbeau says, picking up his teacup again. “Whatever is on your mind, hero?”
“Don’t call me that!” Paxton spits out. The energy collects inside him again, and this must be how pokémon feel right before a Rogue Mega Evolution. It swirls in his stomach, travelling up his chest and towards his throat, choking him out. If he could spew fire and smoke, the office would already be in flames, smoke collecting under the ceiling, obscuring the already dim lights.
He hasn’t talked to Corbeau and Philippe how he hates the attention he gets from the masses of Lumiose, or how the title of ‘hero’ makes him want to throw whatever is closest to him in the face of whoever has dared to call him by that damned title. If anything, it would have been nice for them to just magically pick up on how he despises it, how he hates being objectified in any way.
“Am I to assume you don’t like it?” Corbeau asks, and he’s still so awfully calm, teacup perfectly held in his stupidly perfect hand, the other one holding the saucer — who even uses saucers anymore?
“I despise it,” Paxton says, and he gets up again, brushing past Absol with a care he wouldn’t give anything else right now. Pacing back and forth behind the couch he’d sat on for the grand total of thirty seconds seems to help a little. There’s a small voice in the back of his head that tells him that he must look like an absolute idiot right now, but it’s firmly squashed down. He can worry about that when it no longer feels like he’s dying.
“How so?”
And isn’t that just opening the can of awful, awful worms?
Paxton’s never been particularly good with his words on the best of days, especially not when the rage wells up within him. In the beginning in Lumiose, it had been easier to let Urbain and Taunie talk for him, and to nod and give thumbs-up where it had been necessary. Mable had talked enough for the both of him. Participating in the Royale doesn’t require long conversations about anything.
It’s not that he doesn’t talk; he has more than enough topics to talk about. It’s more that getting the right words to come out of his mouth has been more challenging than it has any right to be. Sometimes it’s easier, and the words flow easily. Other times, like now, it feels like just getting out a sentence will drive him insane.
“People want my autograph,” he eventually gets out. “I hate it.”
“You saved the city,” Corbeau says. “They know your face from that one article. It’s only natural they’d be excited to meet their saviour in the flesh.”
“I don’t want to be the saviour!” Paxton exclaims angrily, and the words come out much louder than he’d expected. “I didn’t come here to save the entire city!”
He doesn’t know what kind of expression Corbeau must have on his face right now, but it can’t be pleasant. Paxton knows he’s being unreasonable about this, that he’s having a temper tantrum over one bad conversation with his family and some innocent teenager asking for an autograph, but he can’t find it within himself to care right now. There’s rage welling up inside him and it needs to go somewhere.
“Don’t take that tone with me,” Corbeau says flatly. “If you cannot talk to me like an adult I will have to wait for you to calm down.”
Paxton knows that there are a few years between them, that he’s only barely an adult, but he really thought that Corbeau would know better than to infantilise him like this. Despite this, he does suck in a breath and ignores how it gets stuck somewhere at the base of his throat.
“I’m sorry,” he says after a minute, not quite calm but no longer ready to start screaming. “I just really hate being put on a pedestal like that.”
Philippe’s next to him at this point, hands empty of paperwork. “There’s a lot of expectation weighing at you with a title so heavy, isn’t there?”
Paxton kicks one of his shoes with the other. They’re ballerina flats today, which isn’t the most masculine thing in his wardrobe, but what had felt right. Through the past six months he’s acquired more clothes than can fit in the frankly massive armoire in his hotel room, shoes lining the wall underneath the mirror. It’s so much more than he ever expected to acquire, especially living in such ‘temporary’ accommodation.
“I’m glad I could be of help in the crisis, I really am,” Paxton says, and he allows himself to lean into the side of Philippe’s strong torso. “I feel at home here in Lumiose. But the people have gotten weird after that one article. It’s like everyone knows my face, but not my name. They all call me Hero or Saviour or similar stuff and it just gets to me.”
“Most fame comes with a degree of objectification,” Corbeau says, petting Absol’s nose as she bumps into him looking for attention. “That article should never have been posted.”
“The Lumiose Sun is the worst thing I’ve ever read, and I had to read Contest articles all the time at home,” Paxton says. “I don’t even know how they got that picture of me. I sure didn’t consent to having it taken.”
“The Sun is a travesty,” Corbeau agrees, frowning. “We’ve tried to put it out of business multiple times, especially with how they keep spreading falsehoods about the Syndicate— we certainly don’t sacrifice pokémon on the full moon to continue our activities —but they have proven themselves quite resilient to any attempt to make them cower.”
“It should calm down in a few months’ time,” Philippe says, wrapping an arm around Paxton. “News travel fast around Lumiose, but once people have lost interest, they’re quick to move onto the next thing.”
“They should start ignoring me now,” Paxton grumbles. “It’s fine to be known for being good in the Royale, I expected that when I joined and kept climbing the ranks. But I don’t want to be treated like — like this kind of god. I hate it.”
“It’s only natural,” Corbeau says. “And yet, removing you from the spotlight isn’t an option. As much as you may hate it, the people need their saviour. You are the face of the disaster. It doesn’t matter that you weren’t alone in taking down the tower. You are the one who did it. You are the one who already had some fame to their name through your prowess in the Royale.”
Paxton sighs, and he deflates against Philippe. The rage is drawing out of him now, and he mostly just feels tired. He’s never been good at sustaining his anger. “I know. It just gets to me.”
He wants to be back at Corbeau’s apartment, laying on the sofa and listening to Corbeau and Philippe feed their pokémon. It’s a large apartment, all the way on the top floor, with tall vaulted ceilings and a large free space in the middle of the sitting room where all of their companions fit for hang-out and feeding time.
He wants a day of peace, where there are no fires to put out for either Team MZ or the Rust Syndicate, a day where Corbeau and Philippe can work a normal eight-hour day and go home at the end of the day. He wants to cook a meal for the three of them and put on a shitty soap opera in the background.
There’s so much he wants and half of it isn’t realistic.
“Can I stay here for a while?” He ends up asking, and at this point Philippe is carrying his weight more than he is.
“You can stay as long as you’d like,” Corbeau says. “I have no meetings for the rest of the day.”
“You look tired,” Philippe says, guiding him back over to the sofa.
“I didn’t sleep well,” Paxton admits. “Too much on my mind.”
“You’re free to take a nap,” Corbeau says. “If you’re able to settle down enough here. It’s not the most inviting place.”
Paxton thinks it over. He wants to participate in the Royale tonight, to get together some more funding for the hotel. Now that the crisis is over— and he really hopes it is over, he doesn’t think he can handle one more crisis —they’ve started renovating the building. The loss of AZ hurts every day, but with the work they’re doing on the hotel, it feels like they are doing something to honour his legacy.
He looks over at the battle court. The sand is warmed, because of course it is, and with it being a cloudy day, it’s dark in the back. The lamps that line the top of the walls haven’t been lit. All in all, he suspects it’s been designed to act as a form of indoor terrarium, fitting to house Corbeau’s pokémon when they’re not in their poké balls.
“I might nap on the court,” he says and Absol chirps in approval.
Corbeau and Philippe exchange a look but at this point Paxton thinks they’ve seen enough of him to know him. He’s never asked to nap on the battle court before, but after matches with either or both of them, he has laid down in the warm sand and enjoyed it for a moment before getting up, usually to tackle one of them.
“Why not?” Corbeau says, and the soft smile sneaks onto his face. “You do you, Pax.”
Paxton smiles at him, and it’s so wide it almost hurts.
“Thank you,” Paxton chirps. “Don’t let me sleep too long, okay?”
He gets up and with practised motions pulls out his poké balls. It’s rare that he has enough space to let all of them out at the same time, and the sand pitch really is the best place he’s found recently, especially since he can apparently do nothing in public anymore without gaining some sort of an audience. His room at Hotel Z is way too small, and he doesn’t spend nearly as much time at Corbeau’s apartment as he’d really like to.
As he walks over to the battle court, he can hear Philippe and Corbeau exchange words in hushed tones. He’s not close enough to hear them talk, but Philippe’s deep voice sounds fond. It’s enough to make Paxton smile.
One by one, his pokémon escape their balls, all crowding up around him to get a scrap of his attention.
Paxton laughs, suddenly light as air, as he tries to reach out and pet everyone at once. “Guys! I only have two hands. You have to be patient.”
His own Scolipede bumps into him from the back, sending him tumbling into Feraligatr. “Hey!” He complains, but he’s laughing. He briefly turns around to see Corbeau and Philippe observing him. Throwing them a thumbs up, he allows his pokémon to crowd him once again.
“Come on, let’s all lay down,” he tells them after a few minutes of playing around. “I’m really tired, okay.”
Absol, the declared leader of their pack, declares with chirps and meows where each of them are supposed to lay, and it doesn’t take long for all of them to end up scattered across the warm sand.
He closes his eyes, digging a hand into Absol’s fur when a shadow casts over him.
“Is it safe for you to sleep?” Corbeau asks, crouching down on his side, in between him and Ampharos. He reaches out a hand to pet through Paxton’s hair, smoothing it out. Paxton leans into it, enjoying the sensation. “If you’re wearing your binder?”
“Sports bra,” he says. “’S all fine.”
Them learning that he was trans had been been such a nothing moment. It had been during the time he’d fallen and fucked up his ankle in the Royale, and upon undressing to let Corbeau assess his wounds, they’d seen the binder. It hasn’t really been brought up since then, with the exception of asking him if he’s safe to sleep.
They haven’t seen him in a binder since then, and all clothing he’s worn since then, even around them, has been full coverage.
It’s not that he’s opposed to showing them— in fact, he doesn’t care —but since gaining his first fans in the Royale he’s been uncomfortable showing off skin more than necessary. Skin-tight isn’t the issue, he frequently wears cropped sweaters with a tight underlayer, but the idea of showing off his skin in public fills him with a kind of itchiness.
“Sleep well, then,” Corbeau says softly, and he leans down to press a kiss to Paxton’s nose, making him squeak. “One of us will come check on you in an hour or so.”
He hums, and reaches up his free hand to pet over Corbeau’s cheeks and jaw. It’s still early enough in the day that it isn’t starting to feel prickly again. Once, soon, he’d like to wake up with Corbeau and Philippe next to him.
The soft steps across the sand give way to the sound of dress shoes clacking on marble, and Paxton settles into the sensation of resting. Even if he doesn’t sleep, it’s a good opportunity to rest.
Eventually, the muddled and distant noise of work lulls him to sleep.