Characters/Pairing: Green/Red, Leaf
Warnings: references to sexuality
Disclaimer: Pokemon is property of Nintendo.
Chances Are More Likely Than Not
The first time it happens, they're in a diner together, the one Green always takes Leaf to when she's in town. Red hasn't been back that long, so Green's still jittery, still a little convinced that he's bound to leave at any second, and clings a bit too tightly. He needs to keep touching Red, holding Red to make sure he's actually there, without any intention of jolting at a moment's notice.
Which might be why Green's hand is slowly (and somewhat inappropriately) traveling up the inside of Red's thigh under the table.
He doesn't know how they manage it, but it all looks rather innocent on the surface; Green's eating fries with one hand (the hand that's not under the table) and somehow somehow manages to keep his expression straight, and Red's got the best pokerface known to man.
Green's so close, has almost got his hand to his destination when
"Gym leader Green! I challenge you to a match!"
Whack. "Aaagh!"
Green stiffly pulls his hand out from under the table.
The challenger blinks. "What's wrong?"
"My hand," Green hisses, other hand around his wrist. Having the bottom of the table meet the top side of his hand had not been the most fun Green's ever had, no.
"What?" the challenger asks, clearly unable to take a hint from Green's tone. "Whatever. I'm here to challenge you for a gym badge." He crosses his arms.
"I'm eating," Green says flatly, gesturing to the food on the table (with the hand that's not in intense throbbing pain).
"Yes, but I want a gym match."
Green glares. The challenger stares at him, unmoved.
Green rolls his eyes and turns to Red. Red looks back at Green, then the challenger, and shrugs noncommittally before pushing away the plate of nachos he'd been poking at.
"I'm waiting."
Green sighs, resigned. "I'll be back in fifteen minutes," he says.
He doesn't feel an ounce of remorse nineteen minutes later, after Eevee's beaten the challenger's Rattata into the ground.
(It hadn't all been bad, Green decides, when he remembers how soothing Red's grasp had been against his throbbing hand on the way back to the gym, and how he never let go.)
-o-
The second time it happens, they're in a movie theatre. The movie had already been out for a while and wasn't particularly good anyway, and Red's paying more attention to the popcorn than the screen in front of him.
Green's about to suggest that it would be a perfect time for them to make out, leans over, and the word Red is almost out of his mouth when
Wham. The theatre's door bursts open. "Green, I know you're in here! I want a gym match!"
Several heads snap back and a chorus of "Shhh!" echoes throughout the theatre.
Green sinks into his seat a little.
"You can't do that," Green says a few minutes later, when the three of them are outside the theatre.
"But I wanted a match," this challenger, a pretty blue-haired girl, explains.
"Yes, but this is a theatre. Not my gym." Green is pretty sure he hadn't been that thick-headed or rude in his trainer days. "I'm not going to fight you right now."
The girl makes a disgruntled face. She turns and appraises Red, who'd been standing there quietly.
"You were the former Kanto champion, weren't you?" she asks. Green's cough which follow sounds suspiciously like metoo.
Red stares at her for moment before tugging down the edge of his cap and nodding.
"Fight me," she demands.
An outsider wouldn't see the difference, but Green notices that Red's eyes narrow a fraction of an inch.
Red pulls out the PokBall with Snorlax.
The girl doesn't last two minutes.
-o-
It's a rather inelegant system they've worked out to deal with their date crashers. Green has his work hours, and those aren't it. While neither of them ever cares to back down from a fight, the intrusions become rather tedious to deal with.
"Heads or tails?" Green asks.
"Mm?"
"Heads, I win; tails, you win," Green says. "Loser gets to fight the challenger."
Red raises an eyebrow, and Green can almost hear the what's in it for me? Instead, Red hums and surprises Green by asking, "What about the winner?"
Green smirks. "Winner gets to hold the loser's hand."
-o-
Sometimes, when Leaf visits them, she ends up taking care of the intruders of their personal get-together.
("Technically," Green says, "you're crashing on our date. If one of us fights you, will you go away?"
Leaf sticks her tongue out at him, and Red punches him in the side.)
"So, I hear you two have a system going on," she says once, after her foreign-caught Ambipom's pummeled the latest challenger. "Since I won, does this mean I get to hold your hands?"
Green makes a face at her and grabs at Red's hand. "That's not how it works," he snips.
Red half rolls his eyes before pulling Leaf into a hug with his free arm.
-o-
There's almost a perverse sense of normalcy to this, Green thinks. It's not that he enjoys having his dates with Red interrupted (which almost all of them inevitably are) but he'd rather have his dates with Red be interrupted than not have dates at all because Red's not there.
Still, there are times when it crosses the line.
On Saturdays, Green closes the gym and takes a day off (having been convinced by Red rather convincingly that he needs one), and invariably spends most of it at home.
"Green! I know you're in there!" the challenger yells while pounding on Green's apartment door. "I'm here to challenge you for a badge."
There's a long pause before the challenger hears anything. "Go away!" comes the muffled reply. "Gym's closed!"
"No! Fight me now!" the challenger yells, and is ready to continue his vicious pounding.
The door snaps open before his fist can meet it again. The challenger blinks; then his jaw drops open slightly.
Behind it, a rather disheveled Green is glaring at him. "Look," Green says while trying to flatten the side of his hair with one hand while the other is pulling up his pants, neglecting his half unbuttoned shirt. (The challenger thinks he's definitely seen enough.) "Take a hint. I'm busy."
Green slams the door shut in his face.