A/N: Don't even bother reading if you didn't watch Putting the Air Back in Aerodactyl.

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Gary was woken up by his chin cracking into the desk, his arm positioned awkwardly above him. Eyes watering, he sat upright on the desk. He'd been sleeping again. Fuck, he'd been sleeping again!

He fixed his spine against the back of the swiveling chair, trying to get as straight as he could, in hopes it would improve his ability to stay focused (or awake.) His head lolled forward as little as he could, he tried to read the report on his low desk. It only took a few moments to realize his eyes were following the lines of text, but he wasn't reading. With a sigh, he closed the manila folder, giving it up as a bad job, and kicked off the floor, letting the chair swivel a few full circles before stopping himself by grabbing onto the lip of the desk.

Night on the island was pretty dark. Crystal and Dora usually got to bed a few hours before he could. Jared was long gone—moved on to better things two years ago. He'd ruffled Gary's hair, like he was a kid—something he'd never done before—and climbed on the boat, waving until the very end of the horizon. Crystal had screamed after him, telling him to visit. He hadn't.

Seemed like his world was getting smaller and smaller, and his days longer and longer. Well, his days were getting longer. But that was just due to the increasingly towering piles of work to be done, not so much cutting into his sleep as chopping away hunks of it. And still, aspects of his life were dropping out one by one. His leisure time was gone. Jared was gone. His social life was now compromised of other professors—and that could hardly be called social, considering they talked of nothing but work. Well, he had nothing to talk about but work. That was his life now.

His green eyes tilted toward the shelf by the window. A couple of framed certificates. A picture of his family, posed and dressed. Impersonal and generic. Aside from that stupid thrust of gold in the center—awkward and angular and cheap-looking. It was made of gold. It could've been made of the solidified blood and tears of all of his enemies, it would be ugly and cheap to him.

He hadn't wanted to go to the stupid ceremony. It was his grandpa that goaded him into it. A total waste of an evening of work, he'd thought beforehand, as Dora tied his tie, jabbering with what sounded to him like a smug pride. She did partially deserve it; she'd assisted him the whole way. Feeling the light bulb flash over his head, he happily suggested she take the award for him.

"What, me? No, it was your work! You're the one who discovered the vaccine, not me." And, with real pride, she patted him on top of his brown mass of hair. "You deserve this, Gary."

It was two hours in. He needed to sit down—he felt violently sick. He'd felt fine before, but two hours of being told by almost strangers the same repeated mantras of support, suggesting they'd been there for him, saying they believed in him, as if he should have thanked them for their contribution, had triggered some kind of illness in him.

He saw an empty chair, felt a glimmer of hope open, and then felt it shatter; someone stepped in his way. A complete stranger.

"Gary, I just wanted to say…" He spoke so slowly. "You should be proud of what you've done. I've always thought—"

Gary didn't find out what he'd always thought. He was interrupted by the jet of vomit sprouting up through his throat and onto the man's chest, his body going limp slightly so that it showered him from neck to feet.

The man, who Gary saw now was round and white-bearded, blinked beadily, holding his drink out from himself silently. Somehow, he couldn't get up a good enough guilt to offer any sort of apology. And he felt better, at any rate. Just as the man made some slight movement, he turned on his heel, weaving his way through the strangers hoping to congratulate him, as if he were Pac Man, and to the door.

Dora brought the trophy out to him where he sat on the dock, waiting for the ferry to come to take them home. Umbreon was out, curled up on his lap, ears folded back, inflating and deflating with breath.

"Are you okay?" She asked. Crystal, for once, was quiet, hiding slightly behind her sister's legs as though afraid Gary might start taking them out like targets.

"Not really--I don't want that."

"Just take it. It'll make me feel better."

And now it stood, watching him from its place on the shelf, reminding him of some emotion he couldn't label.

He was only fifteen. He was getting about three hours of sleep a night, working every moment, and he didn't know what for, and he was only fifteen.

A pale blue tinge was forming over the edge of the ocean he could see outside his small window. He bit his lip, then stood, realizing it would be easier to read once he'd had some sleep, anyway.

--

He was woken up by the redness of the back of his eyelids. Red was wrong.

He opened them to verify this; the sun was streaming like a river through his open window, already nearly halfway through the sky.

"FUCK!" He shouted, attempting to throw himself out of bed too quickly and entangling himself in the dark blue comforter. He twisted and writhed on the ground, finally shaking his ankle free, and scrambled out of the room, still fully dressed.

He managed to keep his anger up the whole walk from his bedroom to the kitchen. (It was a pretty large building.) There, Dora stood at the stove, poking at a frying pan full of eggs with a spatula. Crystal was at the counter, her chest thrown over it so that her feet were hanging a foot or so off the ground.

"Why didn't you wake me up!?" He shouted at her.

She turned around, enragingly benign. "You're the one who turned off your alarm."

He did this relatively often; his sleeping self was much less responsible than his waking one, obviously. On every other occasion, Dora had woken him up just a few minutes after she got out of bed.

"But why didn't you wake me up!?"

"Look, Gary, you're overworked. It's really starting to get to you. So I thought it'd be alright if we let you sleep in and did as much of your work as we could. We fed all the Pokemon, gave out their medicine and that stuff, that would normally have taken a while for you, wouldn't it?"

He deflated slightly. It was hard to be as mad when she had such good intentions. But it was so stupid—he had to do it all himself. He had been studying the digestive habits of a certain kabuto over the past week, and now he'd be missing a day of data, and she could have ruined something important without realizing it.

"If I need a day off, I'll ask for it, okay?" He snapped. She rolled her eyes and returned to the stove.

The high-pitched voice from the front room began calling to them, announcing a phone call. He gave the room one last disgruntled glare before turning down the hall; he heard Crystal blow a raspberry at his back, and actually felt a soft shame.

The screen blinked to the caller as he lifted the small phone from the cradle.

Gary forgot the sleeping in incident.

He looked a lot the same—thick black hair, jammed under a cap—the old one. The special one. Darkened from so much time outside, with bright, alert brown eyes, the same brief swish of a nose, but with a slightly less rounded chin, unmistakably taller, although Gary couldn't see much but his face. A little less arrogance in his smile.

A fifteen year old Ash Ketchum.

"Hey Gary!" He cried. His voice was rough.

"Ash?"

"Hey!"

"Ash, what're you…I haven't seen you in ages! Where have you been?"

His eyes flicked upward. "Uh, around. Man, it's been so long…I've missed you like crazy!"

He bared his teeth after this statement, looking a bit like he wished he could've taken it back. Gary was glad he couldn't.

"Me…me too." He smiled. Ash smiled back. "Why'd it take you so long to call me? What's up?"

He bit his lip, looking down this time, before admitting, "I'm really sorry to ask this, especially after going to long without…you know, talking…Jesus." He laughed airily. "Do…do you have an extra room or…anything? I…I don't really have a place to stay right now…"

Gary's thought process was jammed by excitement. Without consideration, he cheerfully burst, "Sure, we have plenty of space!"

He knew his decision was right when he saw Ash's face light up, big brown eyes and all. "Oh God, thank you so much. You don't know how bad I need this. I can get a ferry over the day after tomorrow, is that okay?"

"Yeah, yeah…how come you have nowhere to go all of a sudden?"

Ash cocked his head, silent, before turning to peer over his shoulder. "Hey, um, I'm at a Pokecenter, someone else wants to use the phone. I'll see you in a couple days, okay? And thank you so much." He hung up without waiting for Gary to reply.

Numb with elation, he stared at the reflections in the blank screen—his own lax face and the orb of light overhead—smiled at his duplicated self, and twisted out of the seat, back to the kitchen.

Crystal had pulled herself all the way up onto the counter, most likely to be scolded off soon by Dora, who was sliding the eggs onto a plate beside some toast. She looked up to Gary with slight contempt in her eyes, before forcing the plate into his chest.

"You're not too busy to eat, are you?"

He took the plate gently and offered her a smile. "Thanks. I'm sorry, you were just trying to help—I shouldn't have yelled."

She considered him, body set, ready to hold a grudge, then released it. "Okay, you're forgiven. Who was that on the phone?"

Crystal jumped off the counter, having taken half the apology for herself, to allow Gary room to sit down at the bar to eat.

"Remember me telling you about my old neighbor, Ash?" He shoveled a forkful of eggs into his mouth. "He needs a place to stay for a while, so I told him he could come over here. Is that okay?"

Dora put her hands on her hips. "Gary, we don't have a guest room."

He looked up from his plate. "What? Don't we?"

"You don't know?"

"Well, this place is pretty big, I assumed…"

"Maybe he can sleep on the couch?"

"We don't have a couch!" Crystal laughed. It was true, they had a few unused arm chairs in the room that served as a den, but no couch.

"You should've asked first, anyway."

"I couldn't let him go homeless!"

"Well, then you can just share your room with him, if you're so ready to make sacrifices."

"Fine, I will."

"Then that's settled?"

"Um…" The prospect of sharing a room with Ash felt something like preparing to bungee jump, and he didn't know why. "Alright…he's coming the day after tomorrow."

"Does he have any Pokemon?" Crystal asked excitedly, leaning back onto the counter.

"Uh-huh, lots."

"Cool!"

Dora was gazing around. The overhead light clouded her glasses, turning them into discs of white. "This place is really a mess. Crystal, would you help me clean up a bit?"

Gary made a start to speak, before catching himself. He wanted to help. He still had the report to read, a few studies to check in on, feeding the Pokemon in a few hours, other stuff he couldn't think of, probably…nothing that couldn't be put off. "I'll help."

They both looked up. "Aren't you a little busy to do something like clean?" Crystal asked, offense intended.

"No…I can cram. I want to help."

"Oh, Crystal, leave him alone." Dora moved away from the stove to stand beside Gary, pulling him close in a side-hug, sweetly saying, "You can clean the bathrooms."

He smiled and nodded, already receding back into his head and away from the kitchen, deep in memories and thoughts and fantasies regarding Ash Ketchum.

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A/N: Reviews not appreciated! Mostly posting because it's easier than emailing to all the individual people I want to send it to!