Chapter Text
It was a beautiful summer evening; it was still relatively light out at half past eight, them being in the northern hemisphere and all, and Lance had differential equations homework to do, so he decided to go for a walk. A Pokéwalk, to be exact—for, like so many others his age who were reliving their childhoods, he had become obsessed with ‘catching them all’.
Lance hadn’t expected to get that into it, but something about its combination of nostalgia, easy mechanics, and the Skinner box-like joy of collecting meaningless doodads all came together to create the perfect storm of addiction. If he wasn’t in class or grudgingly studying, you could probably find him rambling around his college town with his head down, barely avoiding the various obstacles and pitfalls of the real world, such as lampposts, open manholes, and other people. (This made him somewhat frustrating to travel with, but his roommate Hunk was nothing if not adaptable: he’d figured out that the best way to get them to classes on time was to keep a firm grip on Lance’s arm with which to steer him in the right direction, and by this point was probably one of the only things standing between Lance and flunking out of school.)
“These equations aren’t gonna solve themselves, you know,” Hunk said, totally conversationally and not at all judgmentally, as he watched Lance put on his shoes.
“Yeah, yeah,” Lance said, indifferent. “I’m just gonna take a loop around the block, I’ll be back in an hour.”
“The last time you said that, you came back after midnight.”
“Well, you know what? A man’s gotta defend his territory.” Fiddling with his phone, Lance got the game open, and then swiveled the view around to observe his domain. Once again, there were dark clouds erupting over the gym at the pizza place down the street; a sure sign that members of Team Valor were being a bunch of lousy punks who didn’t know what was good for them.
“They’re attacking my gym again,” he muttered. “My gym. I’ve gotta get down there, show them who’s boss.” He cracked his knuckles menacingly. “Put ‘em up in the Pokémon center for a night or two.”
Hunk gave him a nervous look. “Maybe chill, dude? I think you’re taking this stuff way too seriously.”
“You just don’t get it, do you?” said Lance, with a patronizing little shake of the head. “Besides, I’m chill. Super chill. I’m so chill that if you licked me, your tongue would get stuck.”
“Ugh.” Hunk made a face. “No thanks,” he said, but Lance was already out the door.
*
As usual, there were dozens of people milling around outside the pizza place, and all of them were staring intently at their phones. Being conveniently located at the midpoint of a cluster of three Pokéstops, the pizza place had become a very popular hangout for almost any time of day. After exchanging greetings with a couple of the other regulars, and spending a minute or two shooting laser eye-beams across the way at where their enemies were gathered, Lance got to work. He took up residence under a streetlamp, pulled up the gym, and began tapping like his life depended on it.
Most of the time, the gym was blue, allowing Lance to add more sweet, sweet Pokécoins to his stash, but every once in a while a gang of Team Valor scoundrels forgot their place and made incursions onto his territory. There was little that Lance enjoyed more in this world than grinding their gym levels into dust and displacing their teams with his own precious babies, and he didn’t hold back. He made quick work of an Arbok, Pidgeotto, Golbat, and Vaporeon, carving out room for the blue team players near him, and kept going.
Ten o’clock came and went, and by then it was dark out. As his phone ticked down to half battery, he remembered that he’d meant to go for a walk, not stand around all night—and although it was past time for him to be heading back to the dorm, he couldn’t just go home without actually doing the thing he said he’d do, could he?
So, Lance walked. Leaving the pizza place behind, he hit all the Pokéstops around the south side of town, making short work of the gyms along the way, then looped back systematically. By that point, the crowd had thinned out; just a few stragglers remained, and as Lance settled in again for another round of gym battles, they began to peel away one by one, probably to get a start on their neglected homework.
Buncha quitters, Lance thought to himself. Lance might have been a lot of things (the words “obnoxious” and “egotistical” came to mind), but he wasn’t no quitter. He waited until there was no one left, and then once again began the process of expelling the trespassing red team from his backyard.
“There,” he said with satisfaction, to no one in particular, as he reinstated his 1700 CP Arcanine to its rightful place as the heir to the pizza throne. And he was just about to pocket his phone and head back to the dorm, when he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, the prestige of his newly-reclaimed gym decrease.
Someone was still battling for it. “Son of a—” Lance muttered, whipping his head from side to side in a frantic search for the infiltrator. He saw someone standing across the street—and oh, he’d recognize that mullet anywhere. That mullet sat in the front row in his solid mechanics class, and always put his hand up to ask really concise and helpful clarifying questions. Like, who even did that kind of thing in college? It had to be ironic or something.
The mullet was also wearing a really gaudy red jacket. For a moment, Lance felt sorry for him; maybe he was colorblind? But then he shook it off, because even if colorblindness was the reason the mullet had chosen the wrong team, that didn’t make it okay.
“Hey!” he yelled across the street, not caring that his voice was probably carrying all the way to the dorms; it wasn’t like anyone would actually try to sleep before midnight, right?
Mullet-boy didn’t even look up. He was tapping at his screen, and Lance knew he was furiously trying to make a dent in Rover’s HP, the complete monster. God, what had Rover ever done to him?
“HEY!” Lance yelled again. “Why don’t you just Pokémon GO ON HOME?!”
This time, the mullet did glance up, but he didn’t stop tapping, and after a moment he returned his focus to his phone, as though the interruption had barely registered.
“Oh, so you wanna play that game, huh?” Lance muttered, and took his phone back out.
As they fought, Lance was vaguely aware that time was passing, much in the same way that children are aware that adults spend most of their time “working” to make something called “money”: it didn’t matter to him at all. Thrice the gym exchanged hands, leading to a stream of curse words from Lance and nothing at all from the mullet (Lance supposed he only talked when he needed clarification on the Euler buckling formula, or something).
At five minutes past two in the morning, he was moments from landing the finishing blow that would turn the gym blue again when his phone buzzed, interrupting the battle to present a message from one concerned roommate, name of Hunk:
listen, i know you said you were going to be back in an hr but its 2am and you havent sent any texts and i really dont want to have to call the campus cops but if youre not back or message me soon im going t...
The screen went black, taking with it both the text and the glorious gym battle. After five straight hours of playtime, his phone had given up the ghost, overtaxed by the final effort of displaying Hunk’s message.
“NO!” Lance shrieked, as though he’d been stabbed through the heart. He hammered the power button on his phone, but it was like trying to give CPR to someone who was long dead. Feeling eyes on him from across the street, he looked up reluctantly. Mullet-boy had clearly been hanging around, waiting for the gym to turn blue again, but Lance’s crazed exclamation, coupled with the fact that the gym remained stubbornly red, was enough to clue him in about what had happened. For the first time all night, he had moved into the light of a street lamp, and was staring back at Lance.
Wincing internally, Lance waited for him to say something: some kind of ego-crushing one-liner, like something out of a movie or something. But mullet-boy only smirked—smirked like Lance wasn’t even worth coming up with an insult for, like it was beneath him. It wasn’t even a full smirk, either, but a lazy one, barely visible in the half-light, a look bordering on disdain.
Then he turned, and walked off, leaving Lance alone outside the dark pizza parlor, in the shadow of Team Valor.
*
It wasn’t as though Lance didn’t know when he was being insufferable—he could be oblivious, sure, but Hunk knew he wasn’t stupid or anything. It was just that he didn’t care.
“I didn’t lose,” he said to Hunk, suddenly, as they were eating in the dining hall a few nights thence. “My phone died because it’s a piece of crap. But it wasn’t a real loss!” He stirred his soup a little too violently, sloshing some of it over the lip of the bowl, and then fumbled with napkins to try and soak up the mess he’d made.
Hunk only sighed. Sure, he’d been relieved when Lance had finally come home at two in the morning, even if he’d seemed to be in a snit about something. But after seventy-two hours of solid, single-minded complaining, it was starting to get a little old. Hunk was far too genteel to wish ill upon his friends, but he couldn’t help thinking sometimes that it would be just fine with him if Lance simply... lost his phone, and forgot to get a new one.
“Uh-huh. You’ve mentioned,” said Hunk, patiently, the way one might speak to a child who was embroiled in a days-long tantrum.
Not listening, Lance continued to mutter to himself.
“—battery died... could have happened to anyone. Doesn’t mean he’s better than me.”
“Of course not,” Hunk said, absently slathering more mayo on his sandwich. Maybe this was just a phase, he thought. Like Yugioh cards, or something. Eventually, Lance had to learn how to let things go, right?
Or maybe not. He jumped as Lance bounded suddenly out of his chair, and almost dropped his sandwich.
“What, what is it?” he asked, slightly freaked out. “Is it another pokeyman thing?”
Lance didn’t seem to hear him. “He’s HERE!” he shouted, and was off like a shot.
“Who—oh no.” Shoulders slumping, Hunk looked longingly down at his sandwich. He’d been this close to enjoying a nice, peaceful dinner, without any confrontations or angry altercations. Just him and a beautifully-crafted artisan sandwich, with the dulcet tones of Lance’s intermittent whining to aid digestion.
Come to think of it, if he’d wanted to enjoy peaceful dinners, he probably shouldn’t have agreed to room with Lance. With a sigh, he returned his sandwich to its wrapper, and got up. He had a tendency to feel a certain, almost parental, responsibility towards Lance, so if Lance was going on a rampage, he could hardly just look the other way.
He made his way gingerly across the dining hall—“sorry, ‘scuse me”—following in Lance’s wake. When he arrived, Lance was already grabbing the guy by the shoulder to spin him around.
“Lance!” Hunk hissed, trying to get his attention, but as usual, Lance wasn’t listening.
“You’re on Team Valor, right?” he demanded, puffing himself up threateningly, like a cat trying to make itself look twice its size.
“So what if I am?” said the guy, looking confused.
“So—so—” Distracted by the guy’s nonchalance, Lance floundered a little, before remembering why he was there and rallying in magnificent fashion. “So stay away from the Cheeseboard gym! That’s my gym!”
That made the guy’s face change. He stepped back, looking Lance up and down, as though recognition was finally dawning on him. (Privately, Hunk wondered how Lance had failed to make a big enough impression the first time; it wasn’t as though he was the kind of guy who traveled under the radar. Perhaps there was more than one reason why Lance was so perturbed by him.)
“I guess that means you’re, uh, Lancealot?” said the guy. “Dumb name, by the way.”
Lance glowered at him.
“It’s a pun,” he said, in a superior tone of voice. “I use my lance a lot, you see. I’m a sex god.” He paused for good effect, then added, “Not that I’d expect you to understand.”
“It just looks like you don’t know how to spell ‘Lancelot’,” said the guy.
“Oh, screw you!” Lance snapped, shedding any pretense of restraint. “I don’t want to hear that from a guy who calls himself kchen-underscore-two thousand. Like, bo-ring! What kind of name is that, anyway?”
The one who went by the moniker kchen_2000 merely shrugged. “kchen was already taken?”
They were loud enough—well, it was mostly Lance being loud, but he was loud enough for two—that the other people in the dining hall were starting to look around and take notice. That was the problem with Lance, Hunk thought in despair, or at least one of the problems with him: he seemed to think he was the star of his own personal action movie, and acted accordingly. Most of the time, this was amusing in a harmless way, but every once in a while it led to disaster. Like right now, or the time that Lance said he was going to break a board with his kung-fu moves, and ended up in the hospital. He just didn’t think things through.
“What’s going on?” said a girl with bushy brown hair and thick glasses, coming up beside Hunk. “Is there a fight?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Hunk desperately. “Do you know these guys? I don’t know them. Let’s just pretend we don’t know them.”
The girl squinted. “Hmm. I think I know them.” She adjusted her glasses. “The guy with the red jacket is Keith. He lives on my floor. And the other one is your roommate, Lance.”
Hunk was about to ask her how on earth she knew that when Lance launched himself at Keith, knocking them both into a dining table, which then fell on top of them. People were gathering around, both cheering and heckling. The girl’s eyes had gone wide. Thinking fast, Hunk acted.
“Can you—uh, can you make sure that Keith guy is okay? I’m gonna grab—I’ll just—I’ll get the other one,” said Hunk, trying to sound more upbeat than hopeless.
The girl nodded, and so, steeling himself, Hunk waded into the fray.
“Okay, you guys, break it up,” he said loudly, hoping his voice would carry over the crowd, although—on closer inspection—there wasn’t really much of anything to break up. Keith, who had probably never been pounced on in his life, just looked sort of shocked and confused, and Lance appeared to have dazed himself on a piece of furniture. Hunk reached down and untangled him from the chair that he’d managed to get himself wrapped around, and then began dragging him away through the crowd.
All eyes were on him. He laughed nervously as Lance stirred, regaining lucidity just long enough to yell, “And stay away from my gym, dammit!” before going limp again.
“We are going to have a serious talk when we get back to the dorm, okay?” he muttered as they exited the dining hall, over the sound of Lance’s weak protests. “Because you—you need serious help.”
Lance just grunted, and Hunk tried not to feel as though he was crying on the inside. You knew things were bad when you didn’t even play the damn game and it was still ruining your life.