Something Other Than Icecream [Ariel]

[Blue]

How exciting! Exciting enough that he was actually getting a little nervous?? Ah no relax! Go away butterflies! This was gonna be fun!
It had been ages since he’d last seen Ariel!
Well…six months.
That still felt like a long time! Half a year!
And a lot had happened…

Well in any case, it seemed Ariel had retired from combat. For some reason, that idea had never occurred to Nima…perhaps because he’d not really done all that much battling to begin with. In all honesty though, it was more likely his sense of…duty? Responsibility? …Atonement?
His mother had been part of the cause. He wanted to be part of the solution.

Standing on the sidewalk, he glanced down the length of the street toward the ocean, which was a drab shade of blue thanks to the cold weather. Speaking of which, the gusts of wind that kept whipping up the walkway were making him shiver, and he burrowed into his scarf. Erg, way too cold! Even here, it was just too chilly for him!!
Sniffling somewhat pathetically, Nima walked as briskly as his leg would allow toward the café they were supposed to be meeting at. Throwing open the glass door greeted him with a wondrous blast of warm air…but he had the sneaking suspicion his hair was in a state of disarray.

GMOT ?

[GMOT ?]

Ariel, even though he had retired, that wasn't much of an excuse to stop traveling. Nima had called him and turned out to be in Sol City, which was right where Ariel was heading. It was nice to meet him after all this time. It was hard not to think about how easily Ariel was fooled by a pretty face.

So easily fooled it was ridiculous. He thought Nima was a girl for.. the longest time until he accidentally touched the fellow researcher's ass. It wasn't the lack of tits that made him question Nima's gender, it was the feel of his butt. See Ariel had felt a lot of butts in  his day, and he could easily tell between a man's butt and a lady's butt. He was a butt expert, if there was such a thing.

It was cold here, just like in the rest of the region. Ariel hated the cold. He had inherited his mother's skin alright, and her intolerance to the cold. He was bundled up, Nebula floating behind him to keep him warm. He entered the shop before Nima, taking a seat at one of the nearest tables. "Nima!" He called when the blond walked in. "Over here." It was just like this except the end of winter, turning into spring, that they met.

Blue

[Blue]

Complete with a terrible case of fly away hairs, Nima turned toward the voice in order to spot his tanned friend. Though his face was rather cold and flushed, he managed a large smile as he came over.
“Ariel! Oh my arceus it’s been ages!”
He had pondered holding back his sudden burst of enthusiasm, but actually seeing Ariel (and was that Nebula??) in the flesh was enough to make him forget all about things like personal space. Swooping down on his friend, Nima snuggled him into a hug, half losing the poor guy’s face in his fluffy scarf. At least it was warm, right?

Popping back up, Nima smiled at the chandelure just as happily as he had at her trainer.
“Hiya Nebula! Don’t you look lovely? I’ll be sure to have Violette come out when we leave the café okay?”
Plopping finally into the seat opposite Ariel, Nima shivered slightly and wasted little time in deciding to order the biggest cup of hot chocolate the place had.
“Mmm, so what’ve you been up to?? I heard you retired!”

GMOT ?

[GMOT ?]

Ariel ordered hot chocolate right before Nima wrapped him in a warm embrace. Damn he got scarf in his mouth! Besides that, he did hug him back. Hey, it was warm. "Hey Nima, nice to see you again."

Nebula floated excitedly around the androgynous man's head, chanting its name as she went in a circular motion, almost hoping to make Nima dizzy with her excitement. She missed Violettte. She nodded, which basically involved her whole body doing the motion.

"Nebula calm down, what do you want?" He asked the ghost type. It didn't take long for Ariel to figure it out. "In the middle of winter?" She nodded. "Alright.. ice cream it is."

He ordered her vanilla. "Yeah, I figured that I'd be of better use behind the scenes rather than on the front lines, you know? I nearly died about a month into the program, nearly died a little later. You remember my study Nima? With all this free time though I'm getting close to the answer.'

"Retirement is boring though, fighting the scourge is exciting."

"Enough about me! What about you?"
Blue

[Blue]

“Pffft!”
He couldn’t help but chuckle at Nebula’s antics. Seemed she still had poor Ariel under her thumb…er…uh…lantern?
“Well I suppose, being a fire type, the cold doesn’t really bother her!”
With his hot chocolate having arrived, he quickly wrapped slender fingers around the mug to warm them up. Aaah, this was the best drink on a cold day! His first drink almost ended in his hair taking a dip, and he had to blow at the fly aways a few times to get them sufficiently out of his face without having to actually move his hands from the warm mug.

He sobered right up at the mention of nearly dying, eyes going wide. Well it shouldn’t have been too surprising…how many brushes with death did Nima have during those six months he was out? Everyone actively fighting was essentially taking their life into their own hands. Still, it was always jarring to hear a friend talk of it.
“First off, exciting is definitely not the right word! This is serious, and you know it! Ah…I’m really glad you’re okay though. Truly.”
He visibly had to reign in his own irritation with Ariel’s flippant response. It was just knee-jerk concern, but they were both adults here, and they’d both taken the same risks.
“Oh, I’d like to see what you have on that when you have time! I’m still really interested in your theories about type matchups! Ah, well, um…as for me…”

It still hurt…a throb deep in his chest as soon as he thought about it. Well, then again, he didn’t much mention his parents around Ariel to begin with, but it had always been his primary goal. For a moment, he wasn’t sure how much to say. With Delilah…well, he’d completely broke down with her, for some reason feeling comfortable doing so. He couldn’t say doing something similar with Ariel would have the same results - they weren’t as close, were they? He was terrible at understanding this ‘friendship’ scale!
“I’ve spent the last six months ah…looking for people. I was hardly ever in any of the major cities, so it’s actually rather nice to be able to relax now. Before, I was always having to watch myself to stay safe. You see…well, I don’t think I mentioned it before but…my mom was at Lake Pax when it became ground zero. She was working on the Hades strain that caused all this. And my father…he worked in the Bacchus gym. I…hadn’t heard from either of them since the outbreak happened. It might have been selfish of me, but I decided to put my EOS duties on hold and go searching for them in earnest. Ehehe, well I say I put my duties on hold, but I ended up gathering more pokedex entries while in the wilderness than I ever did before!”

GMOT ?