Chapter Two
Late update is unreasonably late. If you have any interest in this fic you should probably ask to be put on the PM list because, knowing me, it might be a while before any new chapters emerge.
On a more cheerful note, I have been nominated for the fanfiction awards by harryheart! Thank you very much!
Also please vote for me. :B
If you have anything at all to say about this, please leave a comment. I love hearing from you guys.
Also, the chapter had to be split into two posts because I tl;dr all over the shop like a mad thing and exceeded the character limit. Serebii couldn't handle this, yo'.
******
Marcus had taken a long time clearing up his so-called “misunderstanding” with Anna and Nina, despite being amazing and perfect and wonderful in almost every other way, had never considered herself a very patient person. So she trudged home without him and walked through the front door without him, got out Emily without him, cleaned up the resultant scared-bidoof faeces without him and then viciously attacked a sofa cushion without him around to make any kind of snappy comment or push up his glasses in that annoying way he did it.
And she realised she didn’t much like being without him when she was pissed and needed to someone to complain at.
Her first pokémon was common. Her first pokémon was
common. Emily was common and weak and sickly and, from the looks of it, he had diarrhoea. He’d already had diarrhoea all over the carpet in fact and she’d washed it out as well as she could but it still smelt icky.
Nina sat down on the floor cross-legged in a nest of the feathers expelled from a now-limp sofa cushion by her prolonged and violent assault on it, staring at the creature snuffling around in the tissue box on the coffee table and clutching a shiny, new pokédex in the hand not currently itching to wring his furry little neck. Emily seemed to sense her burning hatred for his very existence and removed his face from the apparently fascinating box of tissues in order to blink at her in what he appeared to think was a charming and adorable manner. “How could you hate me?” his blink asked, “When I am so filled with fuzzy joy and endearing affection for you.”
“Doof,” he said as if to add emphasis to this point.
“Shut your face,” Nina replied and took another hesitant look at her pokédex. It had been in the bag of things Marcus had bought her and that she had upended all over the kitchen table almost as soon as she’d got home, nestled in a side pocket with a thick leaflet of instructions and warnings and warranties, almost mocking her with its glossy surface. It was a thing of beauty, designed for storing information about equally beautiful things like super awesome lightning god pokémon that could shoot rainbow lasers out of their toes while baking you a cake in the dream kitchen they built for with their mind powers.
It was not a thing for storing information about anything like Emily. Something this beautiful probably hadn’t even heard of the word “diarrhoea”.
She held it up to the light so she could watch it gleam, twisting it this way and that in her hands and resisting the temptation to throw it in Emily’s face when he directly disobeyed her orders again and repeated his earlier sentiment of “Doof”. This time the statement was followed by a high-pitched, keening noise and Emily straightened up, hind quarters resting on the table and paws out in front to steady him like he was posing for a photo. He shook his bobbly tail once and then stilled.
Nina looked at him, sitting there all quiet and still like a statue, and then looked at her pokédex, still raised in the air and shining like a new coin. And then she looked at him again and he looked at the pokédex and she shook her head and buried it in her hands.
“You want me to use the pokédex on you,” she said, “You actually want me to use this thing on you.”
Emily’s face had taken on the fierce expression of someone trying very hard not to move for longer than was comfortable and, whether he hadn’t understood her or was ignoring her question, he made no attempt to explain or clarify his thoughts on the matter. Most likely, in Nina’s opinion, because he didn’t have any thoughts, since he probably didn’t think.
Nina started laughing before her sense of humour gave up the effort and stormed off in a huff. “How do you even know what this thing is?” She waved it in front of his face and watched his stare intensify, eyes shifting to follow its progress, “You’re a wild pokémon! Who would have used one of these on you before?”
Then it came to her, which is not to say that she had a stark realisation based on intelligent deduction and educated guesswork, but that the understanding of where Emily would have seen a pokédex before popped into her head like someone else had put it there on a whim. It just turned up and, though this would have worried and confused Nina if she had been thinking about something less important - like cheese maybe - and perhaps even have been cause to consult Marcus and face his knowledgeable condescension, at the moment she was prepared to push it to the side in favour of more vital thoughts.
“It was other trainers in the Safari zone, wasn’t it? Pointing that thing at you to find out more and then- then deciding you weren’t worth the effort or that you were the wrong type for their team or just that they didn’t like the look of you after all. And you want me to use it on you this badly because you’re one of the ones that want to get caught by someone because it’s an easier life and you haven’t got anyone to look after you so now you associate this thing,” she rattled it like she was in a daze and Emily bristled and straightened up even further, “With the chance to become someone’s pokémon.”
She stopped and stared at him. And then stared at her pokédex. And then tried to stare at her own mouth and ended up going cross-eyed. It wasn’t like her mouth had never run away with her after all, she’d said weird things before that she hadn’t quite meant, it was just that this time it felt a little different. She’d spat the last word like she was angry and that didn’t make sense because pokémon didn’t make her angry.
Well, Emily did, but that was a different sort of thing.
Nina sighed. “You already are someone’s pokémon,” she said and Emily just blinked up at her some more. She might have been imagining it but he appeared to look a little sceptical. “You’re my pokémon.”
If he believed it, it didn’t show.
Nina sighed again and then realised she was starting to sound like Marcus and cut it out. “So, I just hold this thing up in front of you,” she said, doing so and producing another bout of tense posing from her desperate to please anyone but her and first ever pokémon, “And press this button, right?”
Emily didn’t make any kind of response to this - what she been expecting anyway? - and merely sat there on the table, vibrating with sheer eagerness. Nina pressed the button on the pokédex on the basis that it couldn’t hurt.
“Bidoof, the Plump Mouse pokémon,” the pokédex recited and then hit the ground before it could finish its next word. The impact seemed to have shut it off or broken it irreparably and both Nina and her plump mouse pokémon stared at it in equal parts dismay, anger and shock.
Plump mouse, she thought. My first ever pokémon is a plump mouse with bowel troubles.
“Sorry,” she said, when aforementioned rubenesque rodent made an aggravated squeaking sound at her, “I don’t think I’m quite ready to do that.” Emily gave her a look. “Yeah, it doesn’t make much sense to me either. I just- I just don’t want to hear it say… bad stuff about my first ever pokémon.”
Emily furrowed eyebrows he didn’t have. “What could it possibly say?” she could imagine him asking. His tail twitched.
Nina gingerly retrieved the pokédex and was both delighted and disappointed to see it was relatively undamaged. She bounced it a little in the palm of her hand and felt the kind of bulky weight that came with sturdiness. It made sense that these things would be built to withstand knocks, she figured, the life of a Real Trainer must be pretty rough.
She looked up at Emily’s insistent, purring kind of whine and sagged at the shoulders. “Maybe I should let you go and convince Marcus to take me to the Safari zone again. I could get a pokémon that isn’t useless and common and doesn’t defecate all over my things and you could get a trainer who can activate a pokédex without trying to destroy it. That would be nice for both of us, huh?”
Emily once again failed to acquire the power of human speech in order to precisely communicate his opinions and Nina was left to guess what “doof, doof” could possibly mean. She sighed again because she was so past caring that sounding like Marcus didn’t even matter to her, raised the battered pokédex with the ugly crack down the side that she had just noticed and clicked.
“Bidoof, the Plump Mouse pokémon,” it repeated and then there was a pause in the recording, which Nina could have sworn was the machine waiting for her to hurl it across the room again. Satisfied no further acts of violence would be inflicted upon it today, however, the voice eventually began speaking once more. “It gnaws on trees and rocks with its strong front teeth and lives in nests near the water. A comparison revealed that these front teeth grow at the same rate as Rattata's.” Nina waited for the spiel to end - none of this was that useful or surprising to her in the end and she had no idea what a rattata was anyway - until something caught her attention.
“With nerves of steel, nothing can perturb it,” the robotic voice announced.
She looked down at the pokédex and then back up at Emily, every nerve in his body singing with pride and determination, and then back at the pokédex. She had been staring incredulously at a lot of things today, she realised, but this interesting phenomenon was most likely a symptom of the fact that the world had gone crazy and seemed to hate her guts. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she told the pokédex, “You’ve got to be.”
It wasn’t. “It is more agile and active than it appears.”
And then there was silence. The pokédex had finished totally destroying her perception of reality and was now satisfied to watch as her mind slowly unravelled under the strain. She looked up at Emily, who was relaxing from his pose, and snorted.
"Nerves of steel, huh? Fantastic. My bidoof is officially broken."
Emily appeared to ignore this insult on his person and glanced around, chirping happily under his breath at his own performance. It took Nina a moment but she eventually realised that he was looking for the potential trainer about to whisk him away to a life of luxury and league tables.
"You don't even think of me as important, do you?" Emily lived up to her expectations on this front by not even twitching an ear towards the sound of her voice, "You just saw the red, shiny thing and thought there must be trainer attached to it somewhere and now you're all confused because you can't see one."
It took her yet another moment to realise how annoying and oddly depressing that was. "My first pokémon doesn't think I've got what it takes to be a trainer."
Emily seemed to be facing equal disappointment. The expected stream of white light had not come for what, Nina supposed, must be the most recent of many times. He posed again for a second in the hopes that the mysterious invisible trainer would change their mind, trembled and then curled up into a tiny ball of fur and covered his head with his paws.
Nina stared at the desolate bidoof before her and felt her eyebrows crease together in sympathy. When Emily started crying with little shivering sobs that racked his whole body, running down the line of his fuzzy body and making his tail shudder, her eyes started to water despite the fact that she was not at all sorry for him in any way, no sir.
“Don’t you start thinking this means I’m not still annoyed at you for being useless and getting poop on the carpet,” she told him, wiping furiously at her eyes with the back of one hand. She watched him ignore what she had just said for a minute or so until most, if not all, compassionate feeling dissolved and then reached out with one hand, grasped the scruff of his neck and lifted him off the table to dangle in the air in front of her face.
“You have an owner,” she said, trying her very best to sound stern and authoritative like how Marcus did it, “That owner is me. I caught you,” she raised Emily’s pokéball in front of her face too so he could see it, “With this. You were asleep at the time so maybe you didn’t quite know what was going on but that is what happened. I am your owner and,” she paused and wondered if she would sound silly saying this to a bidoof of all things, thought about what the boys at the pokécentre would think if they could see this, and decided to say it anyway, “And I think we should stick together and try to make it work. Because we’re not that different, you know.”
“Bidoof,” Emily said softly, staring at her, “Doof.”
“Well,” Nina said, assuming that had been some kind of really stupid-sounding request for her to elaborate, “We both want to do the whole trainer thing, albeit on different sides of the equation and,” she paused yet again just to process that she was, indeed, having a heart-to-heart with a plump mouse, “We both want to achieve things and be strong even though no one thinks we- It’s just that, when you were sitting like that you looked like you wanted to be seen as- I mean not to say you aren’t strong but…”
She let the sentence trail off and looked down at her feet. A second later, she almost dropped Emily when she felt something wet brush against her wrist. It was a nose, she realised a second later, a little red nose nudging at her and urging her on, attached to a black muzzle, which was in turn attached to a pair of beady, sympathetic eyes.
“We’re both champions,” she explained, “Trapped in the bodies of chumps.”
Silence.
“Doof.”
It sounded, though Nina knew the very idea was probably ridiculous, like an agreement.
“Maybe I should have called you Doof instead of Emily,” she said, laughing, “It’s all you seem to want to say.”
“Bi-bidoof!”
She smiled at Emily for a second, tickled him on the nose with one finger much to his writhing joy and then lowered him slowly into her lap, watching as he curled up and nuzzled his face into the crook of her knee. Maybe he didn’t believe she was his wonderful new trainer just yet. After all, she’d expected her first pokémon to be powerful yet obedient, strong but still gentle and terrifying, beautiful, adorable and rare all at the same time… so maybe he’d been looking for someone better and more powerful and more beautiful than her. Someone who would know how to get bidoof poop out of the carpet, for instance, or who would know everything about pokémon. Or who wouldn’t have him lose his first ever battle. If a common, plump mouse was a shock to her, she imagined that a sickly teenage adult hybrid with no other pokémon in place of the experienced pokémon master he had been expecting must have been horrifying to him. Or would be, once he realised that that was indeed the case.
She ran a hand along his body, feeling the soft fur beneath her fingers, and decided it didn’t matter if he didn’t think of her as a trainer just yet. As long as he thought of her as friend, they would be fine.
“And maybe one day we’ll both get what we want,” she mused, more to herself than the now sleeping creature drooling onto her ankle, “I’ll recover and get my body back to how it used to be before… before what happened and you can evolve into something a little more imposing than your current form. I mean,” she thought back to her time in the Safari zone, “That big thing Marcus says you turn into looked pretty cool and- and there’s probably an even better one after that so…”
Nina’s words trailed off as she felt the uncomfortable, wet warmth of urine seeping through her jeans. She closed her eyes and grimaced because, oh God, it was running down her leg, it was
running down her leg and bit down on her lip to stop herself from swearing very loudly, a possible course of action which would, knowing her luck, cause the bidoof to defecate
again. On her leg. As well as the other thing.
Oh,
ew.
“I swear,” she declared to the ceiling, “My next pokémon had better be made of lilac-scented, candy-coated diamonds because this is just not fair.”
And then Emily shook his tail like he so often did while sleeping, except that this time his hindquarters were sodden with urine and so the action flicked said unpleasant substance all the way up Nina’s front.
“
Uncool.”
******
Marcus strode through the front door with his back ram-rod straight a short while later and Nina immediately came to the conclusion that he was stressed. The deduction pleased her because it was such a wifely kind of thing, knowing what your fiancé’s posture indicated about his current mood, and so she was laughing as she informed him that she was wearing different trousers because Emily had soiled her other pair and grinning as he berated her for making a mess of the new supplies and smiling as she waited in the kitchen while he made dinner for the both of them.
Then she remembered what she had been meaning to ask him since they had separated in the pokécentre and the smile disappeared like a buneary in a magic trick.
“Marcus,” she began, staring down into the cup of tea that had been plonked down before her.
“Yes, honey?” he asked in that slightly high-pitched, “must we do this now” kind of voice.
“What did you talk about with Anna?”
The silence deafened.
"Well," he said suddenly and if his voice had been high before, it was off the scale now, "She's here to visit her family for a bit and then she's going to challenge Fantina, the gym leader in Hearthome, so we talked about that and how her Machoke is getting along and-"
"Marcus."
"She's a really promising young trainer, you know. You wouldn't remember her, she was only seven when you went under and then she left during that time-"
"Marcus."
"Everyone was sorry to see her go - her mother was bawling like a baby when she walked away - but with kids like that you can't just force them to stay at home. I mean, you can try like my mother did but it never-"
"Marcus!"
He stopped talking. He stopped moving too. Just stood in front of a chopping board covered in the remains of half a red pepper, knife hovering in one hand and ready to desiccate the other half. He was waiting for the inevitable, it seemed.
Nina could tell he was nervous about the potential conversation hanging before them. Another wife point for me, part of her thought, and then curled up and hid when that failed to make her as happy as before. "What was the misunderstanding?" she asked, not bothering to dance around the subject partly to put him out of his misery quickly and partly because she wanted to know now.
"Nina, darling, a lot of people don't think it's safe for you to be a trainer," he started and at her immediate, affronted expression added, "And it's not because they don't think you're strong enough, no. No one thinks that, no matter how many times it may seem that way."
He put the knife down in a slow, deliberate movement and walked over to the table, sitting down across from her and futzing about with his glasses like this moment was his last ever opportunity to do so. If he pissed her off enough, Nina decided, she might make sure it was. By cutting off his fingers.
He seemed determined to head in that direction because he went on stomping over the fragile ice that was this topic of discussion. "Honey, you can't be stronger than the world. You can be the strongest person in the world but the world will still get you in the end. It- it's like in gambling, how people say the house always wins in the end? Life is like that."
"Life is like gambling," she repeated.
"You can stare at me all you want, dear; I know that's a valid analogy. The world beats everyone, especially if you ask for it by skipping off into the wilderness and trying to catch wild animals with slightly less wild animals, and the real test of how well you can cope is how well you can deal with being beaten. How soon you're prepared to get back on your feet and try the game again."
"So when the world wins and kills me, I should resurrect myself and come back as a gambling zombie."
Marcus laughed into his hand and shook his head at her in that condescending little mannerism of his. "I have never met anyone who can twist words quite like you," he said and then Nina felt less annoyed because he'd managed to say it like a compliment. "Some wins are more permanent than others," he went on, "I'm not talking about dying - no one," and she did the polite thing and ignored the way his voice cracked for one second as he said it, "Can bounce back from death."
Then there was another silence as he gazed into his own tea and that she couldn't ignore.
"You're talking about when you screw everything up and feel bad," she offered because watching him mope about what had happened was even worse than listening to him patronise her.
It was worth being forced to agree with him because he smiled then. "In less profane words, yes, that is what I'm talking about. Some people just worry about what kind of effect losing or failing - the kind of thing that happens to everyone at first - will have on you. You're still..."
"Weak."
"I was about to say recovering actually. Your body is still not as strong as it used to be and that means that your mind is under the same conditions. You might not be able to deal with as much stress as you believe you can."
"Oh, right," Nina said, rolling her eyes at him, "It's not that they think I'm weak, it's just that they think I'm a sore loser."
He looked at her and somebody must have taught him to talk with his eyes at some point because it was an unnaturally wordy kind of look. It was a look, in fact, that said a thousand words and approximately all one thousand of them were laughing at her.
"What? I'm not a sore loser."
Marcus coughed in a quiet, smug way. "One of the sofa cushions looks a little different today," he said in a voice that pretended to pretend to be off hand and made her teeth grind.
"What's that got to do with it?" she spat and made it very clear from how she glared at him that she knew what he was trying to say and that, if he thought he had enough courage to actually put words to those thoughts, then he should, in the nicest manner of speaking possible, bring it.
He brought it. "Would you have prepared a rarer starter perhaps?"
Nina stared at him and vibrated with rage, unable to quite put to words how bloody annoying and wrong and stupid he was, until she realised something at the same time both aggravating and unsurprising.
"You knew!" she accused, pointing a trembling finger in his face, "You knew Emily was a useless, common pokémon and you let me catch him anyway!"
Marcus shrugged and took a sip of his tea. "You were the one that saw him and called me over, I hardly forced you to catch him. Besides, just because something is common, doesn't mean it's useless. It stands to reason that it must be quite a strong species, if that many of them have managed to survive in the wild."
"There are that many of them in the wild," Nina shouted, previous bond of friendship with her pokémon pushed to one side in favour of indignation, "Because nothing will bloody eat them because then all the other predators would ostracise it from the pack because bidoof are that pathetic!"
Marcus snorted into the tea he was still drinking and then set the cup down on the table with a quiet clinking noise. "You've taken an awfully strong dislike to the poor things considering you only just heard of them today," he observed.
Nina was silent. Even someone as self-admittedly stubborn as she could occasionally be had to admit when she was beat. Not for long, though.
"I thought you wanted me to have a "special bond" with my starter," she said, scowling at the tablecloth like it had been the one to befoul her best pair of jeans, "How am I supposed to have a special bond with a fat mouse that keeps shitting on me?"
He sighed. "I'm sure you'll find a way. Now if you can bear to excuse me, I need to finish making our meal."
Nina didn't deign to respond to him but her stomach obviously did because it grumbled pitifully. Marcus laughed and padded back into the kitchen, checking on the saucepan of pasta on the hob and then returning to his pepper.
It took Nina about five minutes of kicking her heels under the table to realise he had managed to avoid her question, had answered an entirely different question and had - in fact - derailed the conversation enough to make her forget she had asked him anything at all.
Damn him. Why did he have to be so good at that?
"Marcus," she said, trying not to let the sharp tone in her voice show through so that his stupid prodigy mind wouldn't have enough time to think of a way to weasel out of the conversation. Again.
"Hmm," he replied back, absorbed in his vegetables. Nina had no idea why he was so fascinated by a household chore like cooking; it seemed to her like taking an interest in hoovering.
"Thank you for reassuring me that Anna didn't think I'm too weak to be a trainer," she said and there was now no point hiding the sharp edge because he didn't need it to see where this was going. She could almost hear the cogs start turning. "But, you see, that wasn't actually the bit that offended her delicate sensibilities so much. It seemed to be when I told her you were my fiancé."
Marcus didn't say anything. He probably couldn't hear her over the wheels spinning in his head.
"Do you not know that word, Marcus?" she asked and perhaps some people might say she was enjoying this too much but, screw them, she was an ex-coma patient. She had to have some fun. "It's the word for that thing you are to me. And might not be for very much longer."
Except he did the horrible thing and stayed quiet and still, his back turned away from her so she couldn't see his face. That wasn't right, he was supposed to respond with something he thought was terribly witty and then they would both laugh at each other. You couldn't have fun teasing someone if they weren't prepared to give as good as they got, that took all the enjoyment out of it.
And then she considered the fact that this might not have been a simple "misunderstanding" kind of misunderstanding. That this might not have been just a case of someone a bit dim thinking she looked a bit too young for him, or thinking she was a bit beneath him - because he was an academic, they said - or whatever other moronic thing people had assumed in the past. That's what she'd thought when Anna had waltzed off with Marcus, that the girl was just being an uppity cow about something she didn't understand and that he'd set her straight, but now it seemed like it was the kind of "misunderstanding" where the quotation marks didn't stand for "these morons don't get it" and stood for something more like "****, they're on to us".
"It was just like the thing with that crazy old lady down the road, right?" she asked, craning her neck and leaning back in her chair to try and get a look at his expression, "When she thought we met because you were the doctor that treated me and got all," she did her best imitation of an old lady voice in a desperate attempt to make him laugh, any kind of response to her would do, "'That's a breach of professional ethics!' on you."
Marcus did smile but it was thin and weak. He smiled like a man smiling because he'd just finished throwing up or a man smiling on the way to prison at a particularly pretty bird. It made Nina a bit angry - why was he so defeated all of a sudden? - but he spoke up before she could reprimand him.
"And I had to tell her I was research scientist, not a doctor," he said and that made Nina even more annoyed because she wasn't looking to reminisce with him, goddamnit, she was looking for reassurance, "Yes, I remember that."
"Great," she said, tersely, "And that's what happened with Anna, right? It was just someone being judgemental about us again."
"Hmm?" Marcus hummed, as if he hadn't been following the conversation at all, "Oh, yes, of course. Yes, sorry. I just got a bit distracted by something you said there. No, she was- it was just- Anna's very young. There's a lot in the world she doesn't understand yet. I mean, she's never- she hasn't ever been in love yet and everyone in this town, before you came along, they sort of expected me to marry her sister so-"
"Oh," Nina said, deadpan, "Melanie's little sister, huh?"
A part at the back of Nina's brain heard the word "Melanie" and immediately applied the suffix "that *****". This explained a lot.
"You've- you've heard of Melanie?" Marcus asked and now he was really sweating.
"Yes," Nina said, sourly, "About a month after I got discharged. Your landlady popped round and told me all about her. At length. Repeatedly."
"Ah," he said, pushing up the glasses not even thinking about slipping down his nose, "So you know that-"
"Really repeatedly," Nina growled, more to herself than him. She'd been cornered by that damn woman - turned out to have been precious Melanie's auntie - harassed, hunted until she'd snapped, had a huge row with her and very nearly got both of them booted out of the flat forever.
"Yes but that means you know that-"
"Once she came in here when you were out and I was in the shower and talked to me about you two through the door."
"Yes," he said, holding up a hand to try and stop the flow of words, “I understand that must have been very unpleasant for you. I- I just want to clarify that this means that you realise that Melanie and I were..." He trailed off to look for a word that would suit his prudish nature.
"Banging?" Nina suggested.
"Intimately involved."
"Yeah, she included that part. Apparently you were about to propose when you met me." Take that, Melanie, the nastier part of her said and she couldn't help but grin a little.
The affronted look on Marcus's face didn't dissuade her much. "I was not!" he said, resuming his work with the vegetables more enthusiastically than necessary, "I was considering ending it anyway - I didn't like some of the things she was prepared to do - so Ruth can't say you were the cause." Nina's face fell, she'd liked the idea of being the reason he left the village darling, but she cheered up a bit at the way he smiled when he added, "You were just the catalyst."
As sappy as that was - for him anyway - she still couldn't resist the chance to tease him and walked into the kitchen, leaning on the countertop a little way down from him, her chin resting on her hand.
"'You were just the catalyst'," she said, making air quotes with her fingers and rolling her eyes, "You're such a science nerd." Marcus fake-scowled and chucked a slice of pepper at her, which she caught in her mouth and chewed on as she continued because she knew his etiquette-loving self would hate that, "Maybe that's why you liked Melanie so much. She was a scientist too, right?"
Marcus nodded. "We worked at the same laboratory in Veilstone."
"Mm, so she could turn you on with her nerdy science-related dirty talk."
Marcus furrowed his eyebrows at her. "Don't be crude. Of course not."
"What?" Nina asked, trying to look genuinely surprised and finding it difficult considering the massive grin on her face, "Was she no good at nerdy dirty talk?" Marcus didn't seem to want to respond to such a vulgar comment so she inched her grin a little wide and added, in a lower voice, "I'm good at nerdy dirty talk. Is that why you picked me?"
"No, I did not choose to spend the rest of my life with you because you are good at 'nerdy dirty talk'," Marcus said, "If that is indeed true."
Nina put a hand to her heart, a thoroughly affronted expression on her face. "What do you mean if it's true? Don't you believe me?" She paused and narrowed her eyes at him in false suspicion, "Or is this just a clever ploy to get me to show you my nerdy dirty talking skills?"
Marcus sighed but Nina could see he was grinning too and counted that as a victory. "No dirty talk around the food, Nina. You'll make it taste like your filthy mind and then," he said, shooing away the rogue hand sneaking towards a lone slice of pepper, "It will be inedible."
She managed to grab the slice before he could stop her anyway and popped it in her mouth, munching happily as he chided her and revelling in her dual victory. Eventually, though, even nicking food from underneath his nose - his reactions were so slow for a pokémon trainer - got boring so she looked around for inspiration.
It soon came.
She hopped up to sit on the countertop in a spot a little closer to where he was and then stared off into the distance away from him. Slowly, so slowly he didn't notice at first, she leaned over to one side so that her face was near his, turned to him and whispered in his ear, in her best - but admittedly not very good - sultry voice. "I wish I were a DNA-helicase so that I could unzip your genes."
The grimace on his face made it worth it. "Nina, that's vulgar and inaccurate. I'm not even wearing jeans right now."
She rolled her eyes at him - pedant - as she straightened up and then, barely a minute later, leaned over again. "Hey, baby, have you got dynamic loading support? Because I have a package for you to import."
This time he snorted. "No, you do not have a package for me, dear, because you are female. And computer science isn't even my field." He waved her away when she tried to ask him if he used his "infinite rod" for more than just calculations and frowned at his chopped vegetables, raking a hand through his hair. "Stop distracting me. I need to concentrate on the meal."
Nina hopped off the counter as if to leave him alone and instead scooted closer to stand next to him. "So I'm distracting you," she said, grinning impishly, "The nerdy dirty talk does work."
He turned his frown on her and groaned in exasperation. "Nina."
Nina held up her hands in surrender and slunk away to her original spot leaning against the counter. "Rawr," she said.
Marcus tried to sigh and chuckle at the same time. "You're such a child sometimes."
She smiled and then occupied herself by fiddling with the little bottles of spices Marcus had lined up against the wall like the freak that he was until a question appeared in her mind and demanded to be given her immediate attention. "Why does everyone in this stupid place like," she cooed the name, "Melanie so much anyway? What did she do to have everyone love her? Save someone's kitten?"
Marcus seemed annoyed at being interrupted yet again but answered her despite it. "This is a small community compared to most of the places nearby and Melanie has a big, close-knit family. A lot of the people you'll have met in this town will have been one of her relations. They're kind of everywhere here."
Like an infestation, Nina thought, but decided not to say it in case one of them was listening and reported it back to base camp. "And they all hate me because I stole her boyfriend. Great."
The corner of his mouth quirked. "I can only hope I'm worth it."
Nina didn't know quite what to say to that - she didn't think any variation on "aaaaw" would be appreciated and she didn't want to go to her default of mocking him either - so she let the comment hang in the air and looked around the room for something else to talk about.
"The pan's boiling over," she pointed out.
Marcus turned round. "Fudge," he said, the closest thing to swearing the man was capable of and then raced over to take it off the hob. Nina noticed that he did not thank her for informing him of this fact but decided not to point it out as a sort of reward for being mushy and not whacking her in the face for all the dirty talk. Even if it was awesome and much better than Melanie's.
Inspiration for said dirty talk hit again as she watched him faff about with the pasta and Nina sashayed over, nudged him in the ribs with her elbow much to his annoyance and said "You make my pan boil over."
He stared at her. She waggled her eyebrows.
Marcus bit down the first thing his mouth tried to spit out. "That," he said, once collected, "Is unnecessary and anatomically impossible, not to mention disgusting."
"It's not disgusting," Nina said, "My grandparents used to say stuff like that to each other all the time. With me in the room and everything."
"This is probably why you have such a filthy mind."
Nina did the mature thing and flicked a cube of onion at him. He sighed.
******
Soon, despite all of her so-called "interference", Marcus had a finished dish on his hands. Nina's eyebrow rose when he pulled a stack of three plates out of the cupboard and he seemed to pre-empt the question she wanted to ask.
"I've invited Anna over. So she can get to know you better."
Nina was appalled. "You invited one of the enemy? Into our house?"
"No, dear, I invited a fourteen-year-old girl into our house. She is not the enemy. Her being the enemy is, in fact, precisely the situation I am trying to avoid."
Nina harrumphed and folded her arms in front of her. "Why do you care so much if some little girl hates me? Crazy lady down the road hates me and I don't see you inviting her over for dinner."
"That's different. Mildred hates everyone. But look," Marcus said, turning to her with a serious expression on his face, "That family is a hive mind. If I can convince one of them that you are a good thing, they will all think it or at least never admit they don't. Though I can't promise it'll make all of them actually like you."
"And why is it important that we make that stupid colony pretend to like me?"
Marcus stared at her. "Do I really have to explain to you why having over 60% of the population of this town openly despise you is a bad idea?"
Nina paused, shrugged in a way that meant "I agree but hell if I'll admit it" and grumbled something incoherent back at him. Another thought soon bubbled up to the surface of her mind. "You've only got three plates out. Isn't she going to bring a parent or something?"
Marcus shook his head and started serving up the pasta.
"Wow, okay, so getting engaged to a girl that's not from here means total social alienation but a grown man inviting the fourteen-year-old sister of the girl he used to nail round for dinner alone is peachy keen? What the hell is wrong with this family?"
Marcus laughed a little under his breath. "Well, I suppose it sounds a little strange when you say it like that but," he paused to lick some pasta sauce off his thumb, "It's not unusual for Real Trainer children of very young ages to be afforded more responsibility than their normal friends. I mean, when you have no issue letting your kid climb a bloody mountain, it seems a little hypocritical not to let them go out to dinner. Besides, the family knows me."
"They don't know me," she pointed out, "Nothing stopping me from being some kind of axe-crazy psychopath."
Marcus gave her a look and shoved a plate in her direction. "I think they have more faith in me and respect for Melanie than to assume I left her for a maniac."
"Nah," Nina said, grabbing the offered plate, "I think they'd like that. Probably think I threatened you into leaving her and if they can expose me to everyone and rescue you from my vicious clutches, you'll go running to Veilstone and back into Melanie's arms, ready to make them a truckload of nerdy little grandbabies." Marcus shook his head at her and it was fun to wind him up so she added, "I bet Anna's a spy and she'll go back to them and report everything we do."
"I can only hope you'll be on your best behaviour, then," he said and carried the other two plates into the dining room without another word.
"What?" she asked, following him through with her own plate, "No 'you’re being unreasonable, no 'I'd never leave you'?"
"Is there any point in me saying either of those things?"
"Well, no but I'd appreciate the effort anyway."
Marcus laughed and set the plates down on the pure white tablecloth he had draped across the table especially for this occasion, though Nina had thought the occasion in question was her becoming a trainer. He seemed to assume it made their pokey dining room look classy but she thought it made it look like a cheap restaurant and attracted dirt like a magnet.
Nina thunked her own plate down onto the table, ignoring the way Marcus groused at her for splattering some pasta sauce on his precious tablecloth, and slumped down into a chair. “This is going to be really, really awkward, you know,” she said, petulantly.
Marcus shook his head and shoved Lucy, who had been roused to shift from her usual perch by the prospect of food, off the table. She plopped onto the ground in a puddle of fur and hisses, twitched her ears angrily at him and waddled off back to her favourite warm spot by the radiator. “Don’t be silly, darling,” he said finally, “It’ll be fun.”
Nina scowled. “I want that in writing.”
