#greenite

DR. MCNIDER HAVING 100% FAITH IN BETH AND SAYING SHES READY

DR. MCNIDER SAYING BETH CAN CALL HIM CHUCK

JENNIE AND BETH SCENES!!! GREENITE BFF ERA STARTS NEOW!!!!

STARNITE HUG

BETH AND CHUCK MENTEE AND MENTOR I LOVE IT

BETH CONFIDENT AND PROUD ERA IS WHAT I NEEDED FOR HER. IM EATING GOOD

Nights off like this are far and few between. Granted, he was supposed to have a long meeting with Giovanni and Rocket’s science department, but something had come up on Giovanni’s end. Cyrus isn’t privy to the details. Whatever the reason, he has a night off in Viridian he’s not sure what to do with.

So he does what he always does when the restlessness sets in and it’s too dark out to go for a run. He finds a bar to sit in.

He never drinks much, never has, a mixture of low tolerance and preferring other intoxicants... but he isn’t exactly here to drink. The distraction he’s after is physical, rather than chemical.

There’s no one interesting enough to catch his eye in the bar, at least not yet, so at the end of his first drink (and what may be the only one of the night, if he plays his cards right), Cyrus slips outside for a smoke.

He needs to quit, has been trying since he picked a pack up again six months ago, the first since he’d come out of the Torn World, but the habit is useful here.

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Sam’s heart sank when he first heard Green talk about wanting to become a Pokemon Trainer. In a way, Sam knew it was inevitable. A talent for battling was his inheritance, in a way. Sam and Agatha had been the best of the best in their day, and Amber had been talented in her own right. But that’s the thing; Sam had been afraid Green was going to up and run off one day on a Pokemon journey of his own. The fact that he didn’t leave unannounced like Amber had didn’t really quell the worry, either.

Even though he’s awful at showing it to Green’s face, Sam is proud of him. Immensely so, for winning the championship even for a short while, for becoming a Gym Leader, for the stint at the Battle Tree, and for the smaller achievements too. He’s been known to happily chat about Green to his colleagues the same way grandparents usually brag about their grandkids, though.

Bill probably wouldn’t have built the Pokemon Storage System if he knew just how much maintenance it was going to require. Of course there would be some; it was just a natural process of a living piece of software. But it seemed like every year there was more and more to do and less time to do it.

Every time he was just about to get his hands really dirty with some machine or another, someone would ping his computer with what they claimed to be an urgent request. They were usually anything but: forgotten passwords, trouble logging in, storage upgrade requests.

Despite their minimal importance, Bill always fulfilled the requests with an uncanny timeliness. The response time was advertised as two to six business days, but Bill took pride in always delivering in one. He understood that the inability to reach one’s pokemon could count as a personal emergency, and he didn’t want to deny that kind of access to anyone, even for a second.

...with a few exceptions. Every so often he would recognize the name on a request and it would leave a bad taste in his mouth. Bullies from high school, socially inept friends-of-friends who rubbed him the wrong way, people who ate the last piece of food without offering it to the rest of the table first. Bill would see requests from these kinds of people and let them rot for the full six days before getting to them.

It wasn’t particularly malicious. He wasn’t breaking any contracts or laws. And, if he was being honest, whatever minuscule amount of power gotten from this act didn’t make him feel any better. It was just a bad habit at this point, and he couldn’t stop.

He was currently on day five out of six of sitting on one such request, which belonged to one Green Oak. Yes, that Green Oak: grandson of Sam, former champion of Kanto, current gym leader of Viridian. Green had been and done many things in his life so far, but to Bill he’d always be that smug, unhelpful brat from ten years ago, the one who’d refused to help him in his greatest hour of need.

He thought about it every time Green’s credentials popped up on his computer screen, how terribly afraid he’d been. How small he’d felt, trapped inside the body of a clefairy. How relieved he was when someone finally showed up to his cabin, and all they had to do was switch on a button! But Green had looked around, nabbed one of the tickets to the fancy SS Anne party, and left without a word. And with that, Green had doomed himself to an eternity of personally-cultivated slow storage system customer service.

Bill relished in this thought as he glanced over the current list of requests, sipping his third coffee of the day (number three meant it was just before lunchtime). Green couldn’t even know that what was happening was intentional; it was the perfect crime. Satisfied, Bill drained the last of his coffee before starting on the requests of those who hadn’t egregiously wronged him.

That was when the knock at the door came. Company always was a happy distraction from the mind-numbing work of maintenance. Bill left his computer, whistling some undiscernible melody, and went to answer the door. 

He’s always been a bit awkward, socially, but it’s excessive to be nervous about meeting up with his own grandson, his baby, the kid he raised from infancy. Intellectually, Sam knows this. Unfortunately, it doesn’t make his nerves any better. He tells himself it’s just the stress of current events getting to him, and there’s a truth to that but it isn’t the whole thing, isn’t even the substance of it.

The truth is Sam has more regrets than he can put to name; the truth is he’s been avoiding Green under the guise of work, out of shame or cowardice or that old demon sadness. The fear that things with Green will turn out as they did with Amber is gripping, making it just as hard to reach out as it is to leave Green alone.

He can’t shake it off. Pull yourself together. It doesn’t work like that. Sam sinks lower into his seat at the coffee shop in Viridian, mouthfuls of scalding coffee almost therapeutic. It’s something to focus on, something concrete, until the jingle of the bell above the door and a rush of cold air breaks him of his thoughts.

Sam sits up, despondent to perky in two seconds flat. He’s gotten good at that. It doesn’t make the smile he flashes Green any less genuine, even if it’s strained around the edges. He’s tired. He’s just tired.

Sam is putting on another pot of coffee when the doorbell rings. It's late, and he still hasn't heard back from all the texts he sent to his students making sure everyone is alright after yesterday's events... but Gio had called last night, shortly before Sam had gone to pick up Green from his mostly demolished apartment. He can't worry about everyone. The two people he was most concerned about are alright, and that's... enough to think about for now.

He glances back at his grandson, sitting with his phone at the kitchen table. He shouldn't send Green out to check, should do it himself, but Sam has had a very, very long two days, and doesn't need to answer the hundreds of questions he'll be peppered with about whether his grandson in Viridian is alright, should it be a neighbor coming to call as he suspects.