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“What do you mean, there’s only one bed?”
The kindly old man behind the counter offers Lime a tremulous smile. “It’s a busy season, m’dear, and with this weather we’ve been having, it’s not such a great one for camping out!”
Well, sure. That’s how they’d ended up here in the first place, after Nurse Joy had had to turn them away from the Pokémon Centre for lack of sleeping space. This establishment wouldn’t have been on Lime’s list otherwise; it’s a little dingy, and the decorations in here are downright gaudy, too. The bobblehead Dewgong on the counter in front of her has been taunting her with its obnoxiously hypnotic pendulum for every painstaking minute she’s spent standing in front of it.
With a sigh, she glances over her shoulder at Lemon, who, for her part, has been completely sidetracked by the hideous décor. She seems to be admiring a medieval-style portrait of a Golduck hung over the pitifully small, sputtering fireplace. Maybe, if the owner of this establishment had made as much space for the fire as they had for the giant painting hung on the wall above it, it wouldn’t be so damn cold right now.
Turning back to the old man, she says, “Fine. If that’s really all you have, then I guess we’ll just have to take it, won’t we?”
“I’m sure the continental breakfast will sweeten the deal,” he assures her as he bends down to fish for the, apparently, last remaining room key.
Somehow, Lime doubts that, but she doesn’t say so, just grumbles a thank you and accepts the key he passes over the counter. It takes all her willpower to not knock the stupid Dewgong off of it as she pulls back, key in hand.
The man gives her a quick summary of the services—room down the hall to the left, breakfast starting at six in the morning, and, due to the poor weather, the pool out back is completely off limits—and then sends her away with a cheerful wave. She turns around to fetch Lemon, dragging her feet the whole way across the cramped lobby; but clearly Lemon does not notice, because she looks over at her with a huge smile as she approaches.
“Isn’t this place awesome?” she gushes. “It’s so cute!”
“Yeah,” Lime says dryly. “Super cute.”
“You don’t like it? I kinda want to ask where I can buy a painting like this! I think my dads would love it.”
Suddenly, Lemon’s terrible taste is starting to make a lot of sense.
“Forget that,” Lime tells her. “I got us a room, but he said it’s really small. There’s only one bed, so let’s hurry up and get there so I can set up my bedroll on the floor.”
“Don’t be silly. You’re the one who paid for the room! I’ll take the floor.”
She sounds awfully happy about it as she reaches out to grab Lime’s wrist and enthusiastically tug her toward the hall. Lime grits her teeth and forcefully reminds herself that no matter how warm Lemon’s touch makes her feel, they are just friends, and nothing more. She doesn’t want to be anything more.
Unfortunately, she’s so distracted talking herself down from her body’s traitorous reaction that she doesn’t notice until Lemon’s already taken a sharp right that she’s dragging her in the completely wrong direction.
“Lemon,” she says, and Lemon stops, turning and quirking an eyebrow up at her.
“Yeah, what is it?”
“Do you even know where you’re going?”
She pauses. “Um…yes?”
Lime snorts, and rolls her eyes, pulling her hand back from Lemon’s in order to gesture down the other side of the hallway. “You’re such a crappy liar. It’s this way.”
“I knew that,” Lemon insists. “I just wanted to take the long way, obviously.”
“Yeah, right.”
“No, really,” she insists. She’s pouting, now; it’s so cute that Lime has to look away, though this doesn’t save her cheeks from stinging at the realization.
Of course, Lime’s refusal to engage has never really saved her from Lemon’s affections. Actually, it’s often made them worse, and in her weaker moments, Lime finds her heart aching with something depressingly like gratitude for this fact. Now is no different, for after a short beat, Lemon sidles up beside her and hooks her arm through her, pulling her against her side. Her head falls against Lime’s shoulder and she peers up with a wobbling lip and her best set of Lillipup eyes.
“Okay,” she laments, “you were right. I was going the wrong way. I’m sorry.”
Lime concedes the battle with a sigh. As she tilts her head to meet Lemon’s gaze properly, a small smile tugs at her lips. She can never quite help it, with Lemon.
“You’re so dramatic,” she says. “I’m not mad. You’re making it really hard to get to the room…”
She pulls away, giggling. “Oops! Ooh, do you think the room is decorated like the lobby is? I wanna see it!”
If that’s the case, Lime might just try her luck sleeping outside tonight after all, out-of-season winter storm be damned. According to some of the patrons at the Pokémon Centre, this is the work of a rogue Articuno that has been tormenting the townsfolk here for months, now. Lime has her doubts, but as much as she’d like to go investigate those claims herself, they arrived here far too late in the day to justify going out in a blizzard right now.
Thankfully, the room is not decorated like the lobby is—but there’s a much worse issue with it, which is that it’s actually too small for Lime to throw her bedroll down on the floor. It’s a wonder she and Lemon are able to stand in the room at all, with how much space the bed takes up. And the bed’s not even that big.
“I guess we’ll just have to share,” Lemon says, tossing her bag on to the bed and flopping down beside it. “At least it’s comfy!”
“You’re being too relaxed about this,” Lime protests. “Look, if we really have to share, you’re going to have to keep your hands to yourself.”
Lemon pauses, and pushes herself up to her elbows to level Lime with wide, sincere eyes.
“I promise I won’t do anything that makes you uncomfortable,” she vows. “Though…I have been told I can be a little grabby in my sleep. Maybe we should see if the front desk has extra pillows, and we could build a wall?”
“Seriously?”
“If it would make you more comfortable.”
Lime sits on the edge of the bed with a sigh, turning her gaze away from Lemon, to her lap. She tugs anxiously at one of her sweater’s drawstrings, and, after a moment, finally says, “I don’t want to build a wall, Lemon.”
“Okay, well…what do you want, then? ‘Cause I don’t think I’d have much better luck squeezing on to the floor myself… Plus, now that I’ve had a look at it, it’s kinda gross. I wonder when the last time someone vacuumed in here was? I guess it must be hard when there's so little space...”
What does she want…? More and more obviously, she wants the same things Lemon does. But more than anything, she doesn’t want anything to change. They’ve been through so much together. Since the day they met, Lemon’s had this sort of…magnetic pull to her. Lime has learned so much from her, and knows there’s still so much more she will learn from her. It’s the nature of their friendship, and of their rivalry. If the way her eyes shine during a Pokémon battle makes Lime’s heart race these days, that’s just bad luck. Teenage hormones forcing her to feel a way she knows logically she shouldn’t.
Things like this stupid bed just threaten to push them apart. The closer they are, they more chances there are that something might go wrong. That one of them will grow sick of the other. That they will grow sick of each other. And before either of them has improved enough to win a League? It would be unthinkable. There’s no one Lime would want at her side at that moment more than Lemon. Not even her parents or her brother or her sibling. Throughout all their journeys, Lemon has become someone special to her. Why ruin it by jumping into something more volatile? They’re still so young; they might as well be putting the cart before the Rapidash.
But Lemon’s still waiting for her answer. She’s been waiting for it all year. Impatiently, granted—but with that sweet and kind compassion she brightens every room she walks into with. If Lime really had the heart to tell her to just drop it, Lime has no doubt that she would in a heartbeat. But wouldn’t that drive a wedge between them, too?
“Let’s just…share the bed,” she mutters. “It doesn’t have to be weird.”
“‘Kay. Though, you know…the only one here making anything weird is you.” She smiles cheekily. “But how much of a weirdo you are is one of the things I love about you.”
Lime looks away from her, cheeks flaming. “You’re not exactly one to talk about being a weirdo…”
“Then, we can be weirdos together forever, right?”
Lime shrugs noncommittally before quickly pivoting to a new topic: “Do you want to get ready for bed first, or should I?”
“Oh, go ahead,” says Lemon, completely unfazed by the cold shoulder. “I was actually thinking I might call my dad and see what he knows about all this Articuno business… It seems kinda weird, doesn’t it? Why would an Articuno target a little town like this for so long? There must be a reason…”
It’s a better idea than just marching out there and trying to figure it out for themselves at this hour. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that Lemon’s fathers are both Pokémon Professors, but every so often, she’ll surprise Lime with her breadth of knowledge on a Pokémon Lime only really knows the name of. It’s one of those frustrating things about her that never fails to make Lime’s heart flutter.
As, she can admit, is the way she’s looking now, her nose scrunched up and brow knitted with concern as she considers the situation. She’s probably worrying that the alleged Articuno could be sick or injured and trying to deal with it all by itself, while the townspeople here condemn it for responding in the only way it knows how to. If she could do so with any modicum of personal safety, she probably would be out there right now trying to find the Legendary Pokémon and help calm it down, never mind that it might not even exist.
Lemon raises an eyebrow, suddenly. “Do you think that’s a bad idea or something?”
Lime blinks, and internally curses herself. She was totally staring at her, probably with some stupid, dopey smile on her face, too.
“No,” she says, as curtly as she can. “I think it’s a great idea, actually. Maybe the locals here have even sent in some kind of request to your dads’ lab.”
“I guess we’re not too far from home, are we?” She smiles a bit. “Okay, I’ll give him a call while you get ready for bed. So take your time!”
Lime doesn’t need to be told twice. Clearly, she needs some time to clear her head, especially if she’s going to be sharing a bed with Lemon all night. She needs to be logical about this. With their friendship on the line, what else could be more important than being level-headed right now? Whatever Lemon’s fantasies may be, and no matter how badly a part of Lime wants to lose herself in them too, that’s not what relationships are like in the real world. So if Lemon can’t be reasonable, then it’s up to Lime to be.
But it’s so damn hard.
She does take her time getting ready for the night, but when she emerges from the washroom, she finds Lemon still on the phone. When Lime crawls on top of the bed—there’s nowhere else for either of them to go—she says, “Oh, perfect. Here, you can tell Lime what you find, okay? I have to get ready for bed.”
And then she’s shoving the phone into Lime’s hands and manoeuvring past her to get off the bed and into the washroom.
As the door closes, Lime heaves a sigh and brings the phone to her ear.
“Hi, Professor Oak,” she says meekly.
“Hey, Lime.” He sounds amused, at least, rather than annoyed. “Didn’t I tell you you could just call me Goh?”
“Sorry. I’ll try to remember.”
“Well, I can’t blame you. Lemon seems to have put you on the spot a bit, huh?”
“I try not to be surprised when she does that anymore.”
He laughs. “That’s probably the best attitude you can take with her. Anyway, I was looking at some reports from around Evolution Mountain from the past few months to see if anyone’s actually seen this Articuno. There are a few pictures, but they’re all pretty blurry… It could just as easily be a misshapen cloud. It’s hard to say for sure. But the storm patterns from the past few months are pretty consistent with what we would expect from an active Articuno in the area, so I do think it could be possible. Otherwise, it could be a large group of less powerful Ice Types, but it’s unlikely that so many of them would gather at Evolution Mountain specifically. They would have had to have been displaced from their regular habitats somehow, and there probably would be some kind of report I could trace that back to if that were the case.”
“So you think it is an Articuno? Well…what do you think we should do, then?”
“Right now? Nothing. It’s dangerous to be out in this kind of weather anyway, and even more so at this time of day. But if you want to see for yourselves if it really is an Articuno, you’ll only find it in a blizzard, so…”
“I’ll make sure Lemon bundles up,” she promises him.
“Thanks.” He pauses, and then: “It’s nice to know she has someone with a good head on her shoulders travelling with her. I swear, she’s been running headfirst into trouble since the day she started walking… Gary’s been telling me all that time that I need to worry less, but I think the least worried I’ve ever been is when she started travelling with you.”
“Oh…well, I don’t really mind keeping her out of trouble, honestly. She keeps my instincts sharp, at least.”
“You balance each other out well, then.”
“Yeah. We do.”
“That’s what makes a good rivalry,” he goes on. “You push each other to improve, no matter what. So…if you both want to try to find this Articuno, I won’t try to stop you, even if it is going to be dangerous. Just be careful. I’m sure your Arcanine will be a big help to you in this kind of weather. One word of advice, though… If you see Articuno and it gets spooked, look out for its Sheer Cold. It’ll wipe your whole team before you know it if you’re not ready for it.”
“Right. Got it. Thanks for the tip.”
“Any time,” he says warmly. “Anything else you want to know?”
She considers it for a moment, and in the silence finds herself momentarily distracted by a sound from the other side of the bathroom door: Lemon is singing, though the lyrics are muffled by the closed the door. If she were in front of her, Lime might tell her off for assaulting her ears with her terrible pitch, but…admittedly, she’s not horrible. It’s kind of cute, actually. She must be brushing her hair; Lime’s noticed she often hums or sings under her breath when she’s doing that.
“Hello? Lime?”
She starts, nearly dropping Lemon’s phone. As her face floods red with crimson, she stammers out, “S-sorry, I just got a bit distracted… You know, I don’t think I do have any other questions, but if something comes up, we’ll send you a message before we go up the mountain.”
“All right. I’ll keep an eye out for you. Is Lemon there?”
“Still getting ready for bed.”
“Tell her I said good night, then.” He pauses a moment, then adds, “And good night to you, too. We’re always here if either of you needs anything.”
“Cool. Thanks. Um…good night, then.”
“Good night,” he says cheerfully, and hangs up.
Lime lets out a hefty exhale, dropping Lemon’s phone on to the bed and then flopping down on her back and staring up at the ceiling. Lemon’s muffled singing carries on, winding around her like a malformed lullaby.
How long she stays like that, it’s hard to say, but eventually Lemon emerges from the washroom and pounces on the bed again, practically leaping over Lime’s legs. She pushes herself up and glares at her, though she doesn’t get a chance to chastise her before she’s asking, “So? What did he say?”
At once, her irritation fades. Lemon’s sweet, earnest expression gives her a really unfair advantage here.
“He said he thinks it really could be an Articuno,” she mutters. “And that if we’re gonna go after it tomorrow, then we need to be careful.”
“Careful’s my middle name,” Lemon says dismissively. “So, we’re going after it, right? I wanna see an Articuno!”
“Even one that’s been rampaging against this town for months?”
“Well, sure. It must have a reason, right? Maybe we can help it!”
Lime’s lips twitch at that. “Yeah,” she says. “Maybe we can.”
“Well, in that case,” Lemon says, “we'll have a big day ahead of us, so we’d better get some shut-eye, right? You’re closer to the light, so…”
She doesn’t wait for Lime to agree to turn it off before she’s pulling back the covers and tucking herself into bed. With a fond shake of the head, Lime stands to switch off the light, then tiptoes back to the bed in the sudden flood of darkness. Hesitantly, she pulls back the covers and slips into bed, as close to the edge of the mattress as she can get.
But the bed is so small, she can feel Lemon right beside her anyway. Can hear her breathing growing deeper as sleep overtakes her. Is warmed by the heat radiating off her body when she rolls on to her side, toward Lime.
They had no choice, right? So, sure—Lime should keep her distance. They’re not in a relationship, after all. Neither of them should want to be in a relationship. Their friendship, and their rivalry, matters more.
But…it’s cold, and it’s late. Lemon was right: They’ll have a long day tomorrow trekking up the mountain in search of their wayward Articuno. Lemon’s already fast asleep. By her own admission, she doesn’t tend to keep her hands to herself in her sleep anyway. If they wake up in the morning with their limbs tangled together, Lemon will take the fall, and they can move on from it like nothing happened.
As the thought occurs to her, Lime’s breath catches. What does she want? This—the closeness, the…togetherness. But even if she can admit it to herself in the quiet of the dark night, she can never say so aloud. Why ruin a good thing?
But this is a good thing, too. Isn’t it?
Maybe she’s just exhausted, and that’s why she lets herself scoot closer to Lemon. It’s only the long day they’ve had that keeps the logical parts of her brain from protesting too fiercely when she reaches a hand out to brush against Lemon’s. When she leans closer, relishing in the sounds of her breathing, the steady rise and fall of her chest. It’s so comfortable. A rhythm Lime would know deaf. Her eyes flutter closed, and she breathes in, and out. Her fingers hook around Lemon’s, and pull her hand up, toward her own chest, so that their held hands come to rest in the minimal space left between them.
Warmed by Lemon’s presence, she begins to drift off. She can’t quite keep the smile off her face as she does.