A/N: I have this giant backlog fics I haven't posted to yet. So. Going to do that now, slowly.

Pairing: Green/Red

Disclaimer: Pokemon is property of Nintendo

as you melted me

i'll be your overcoat
so love won't catch a cold
chase away all your troubles

"You are honestly the most irresponsible person ever," Green tells him as he takes off the scarf around his own neck and wraps it around Red's. He doesn't even sound upset anymore, and says it out of habit as if he were blandly commenting on the weather.

Red murmurs something incomprehensible and pulls the scarf up over half his face. He breathes in ice and pine and Green, and when he exhales, his breath is warmth and moist against the wool.

Green stares at him bemused.

Red stares back. What.

"You just - how are you not dead already?" Green says, honestly annoyed this time. "You live up here in sub-zero temperature wearing flimsy clothes, and then you lose every single scarf I bring you. How do you do that? You don't lose the supplies I bring you too, do you? How do you live without food or clothes?" He pauses.

"Oh. My. God. Are you actually a ghost?" Green says a bit hysterically.

Red shrugs noncommittally. He's pretty sure he's real, or at least not dead. Yet. After all, ghosts don't have any warmth. While he might not be as warm as Green, he thinks as he tugs on Green's coat sleeve, he's still quite solid and quite warm, and he's happy to show Green just that.

When Green leaves, Eevee's fluffy tail wrapped around his neck in lieu of the scarf he left with Red, he shouts, "You better not lose this one!" But he's in good enough of a mood that the words have no real bite, and both of them know that it will happen again next week.

Red watches Green walk away, and when he disappears into the white blizzard, Red wraps the scarf around his neck a little tighter.

o

Somewhere in the cave, in a dark corner of Mt. Silver that Green never sees, Red keeps a pile of the scarves, clothes, and blankets that Green brings. They're all packed neatly, tightly together to form a bed for Red to sleep on.

In a week, the new scarf Green's given him will end up there, lost among the countless others. But for this week, this scarf is his favorite, the one he'll wear until Viridian's gym leader comes to visit him again.

The scarf, Red thinks, smells like snow and hail, like the blizzard and vegetation of route 28. It also smells like determination and frustration, and of heartbreak and hope. When Red breathes into his scarf, he's reminded of all the things that are (because of him) and all the things Green has done (for him, for them).

But most of all, it smells like the person Red loves.

Still, the scarves are only fabric - material things that scents will fade from. And after a week of wearing them, the scarves don't smell like Green anymore. They smell like loneliness and isolation and all the things that Red doesn't need more of.

Red lets Green bring him new scarves not because he needs them, but because he doesn't want to forget what it means - what Green means to him and what is between them.

One day, when he doesn't have to do this anymore, doesn't need to stay on Mt. Silver, he'll tell Green and maybe they'll laugh about it. Red would like that, when he won't have to settle for scarves and blankets because Green will be right there.

Red can't remember if Green has always smelled like snow.

fin.

A/N: lyrics are from the song "Me" by Super Junior M, translitearted from Chinese by me.