#close together

He tried - he really did - but he’d never been that good with words and had basically dropped out of school when he was ten. 

(Brock was technically homeschooling them, but Brock had only got his school certificate last year so the legitimacy of his schooling could be called into question)

He mostly kept in contact via vidcalls, mostly with his Mom (who he called collect) and Professor Oak (who was part of some network that meant calls to him were free from any PokéCentre). And Misty, of course.

It wasn’t so bad when he was in Kanto, as calls from a PokéCentre to one of the gyms were free. And in Hoenn there’d been only a nominal charge so they could talk for ages and only get charged a few bucks for the call. He and Brock would do a marathon call with Misty once a month, updating her on where they were and all the new Pokémon they’d seen.

In Sinnoh, though - and every region since - the charges were ridiculous. It was cheaper for him to call Professor Oak and pay the express bus fare for Misty to visit Pallet than it would be to talk to her for less than an hour. And as Misty got busier with the gym and the time difference between regions changed it just became more and more difficult to catch-up over vidphone.

And so Ash had taken to communicating via letters. Terrible letters. Ones full of spelling mistakes and nonsensical nonsequitors and grammatical errors and run on sentences that never seemed to end. Letters that sometimes just read as bad directions between one town and the next with a brief interlude to describe some Pokémon that was of particular interest. In return Misty sent him paragraphs on her daily life, describing her gym battles in intricate detail so that he felt like he was there watching.

(Misty sometimes padded her letters to Ash with her battle reports if they seemed a bit dull or on the short side. That her letters were better - longer and more interesting - was a point of pride)

Despite these failings, Ash was not an early adopter when the PokéGear added a messaging function. Electronic messages were still basically letters, even if you didn’t have to write them by hand or put them in the post.

The latest update, though, had pictures. Pictures you could send as is, and little pictures that you could put in your messages instead of words.

It was great and he’d gotten in the habit of just photographing the things of interest that he would write about in his (terrible) letters and captioning them with the little pictures.

Only just when he thought he was getting the hang of this epistolary thing, he got a message from Misty desperately urging him to get Brock to teach him how to use emojis properly.

He frowned at his device, reluctantly typing a message in reply.

Aren’t you gonna guess?

Misty’s reply was instantaneous.

Ask Brock what it means and then I’ll guess

Sighing, Ash opened the previous message and passed it to Brock. “Can you guess what it is?” He asked his friend.

On screen was a dark shadow captioned with: ‘[Eggplant] [Tongue] [Water droplets]?’

Brock froze for a moment, looking between Ash and the screen and then deciding to give Ash the benefit of the doubt. “Why don’t you tell me what it is?” He suggested, keeping his voice steady despite the way his eyebrows had crept towards his hairline.

“It’s Haunter,” Ash explained like it was the most obvious thing in the world. When he didn’t get an ‘of course’ from Brock, he explained the symbols. “The eggplant is cos he’s purple. The tongue was cos he licked Misty. And the water is like tears of laughter.”

“Right,” Brock said with a sigh of relief. “I can see why you thought that particular combination of emojis would convey Haunter,” he said slowly. “But what you’ve actually done is proposition Misty for sex.”

“WAH!” Ash exclaimed, taken aback. “You think - I didn’t,” he protested quickly. “We were just playing ‘Who’s that Pokémon’. I wasn’t propositioning anyone. I don’t even think of Misty - I”

His eyes widened with horror as a thought suddenly occurred to him. “How does Misty know that means, you know?” He asked in a secretive voice.

“She has older sisters,” Brock answered with a shrug. “Anyway,” he added, “if the water droplets is supposed to be tears of laughter, why didn’t you just use the laughing face?”

Like a switch, Ash’s embarrassment was forgotten and he narrowed his eyes at the middle distance. “Misty’s four points ahead,” he said with a glare. “I didn’t want her to guess it too easily.”

Accepting that is reasonable Ash logic, Brock offered to make a list of emojis to avoid in future messages, which Ash readily accepted.