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Somewhere along the line, the world stops ending.
One day they’re sixteen. Sixteen and confused, midnight visits transforming into a once-empty guest room inhabited by a total of one extra jacket in the closet.
It takes less convincing than he’d initially thought; the five years of begging for lone sleepovers have effectively paid off.
He sleeps better here, anyway. Sometimes Gold wakes up to his warm weight cuddled next to him. They don’t mention it in the morning.
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Then they’re eighteen. Technically adults now, but they’ve been adults for years, the adult burdens of the world resting heavy on their slim shoulders. Whenever the world ended, they’d step up, fight, delay the inevitable. Sometimes it felt like it happened every two weeks.
They haven’t had a battle like that in two years.
The truth comes out after a bottle of vodka split between them, sitting on Gold’s windowsill, the sun just barely peaking over the horizon, the daytime’s farewell until tomorrow.
“I love you,” he says. “I’ve loved you for years.”
He expects to be punched. Instead, Silver smiles.
Their first kiss tastes like lingering gasoline.
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They discover the cabin by accident when they’re twenty, but Silver’s quiet for the rest of their hike. Gold doesn’t need to ask him what he’s thinking about.
Work hard, save money. Wake up at 4am, go to work. Work until 8pm. Eat dinner. Silver’s meat and pasta is getting better. Go to bed. Wake up. Work hard. Save money.
Silver deserves a home. Gold will give him a good one.
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On Silver’s twenty-first birthday, Gold takes him back to that cabin, looks him in his eyes, and tells him that it’s his.
He cries. They’re happy tears.
There’s no place to sit, no decorations, and no heat, but beneath the single working lightbulb in what would become their living room, they drink champagne and shiver in each other’s arms.
It’s the best gift Silver’s ever gotten.
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They still fight when they’re twenty-two. Every shadow could be Team Rocket, every cold gust of wind could be Pryce. A pipe in their cabin burst, the wiring is outdated and dangerous.
Gold’s mother worries too much, Giovanni lies. Crys mediates their arguments.
They never go to bed angry. The world could end any day now. However bitter an apology tastes to choke out, it beats falling asleep without Gold in his arms.
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At thirty, life is blessedly boring. There have been no more world-ending battles- none that have concerned them, anyway.
Their teams grow a bit older, a bit slower, a bit more mellow. Most of the time they’re happy laying outside of the cabin that’s been their home for over a decade, lazing around in the wildflowers.
For their anniversary, Silver takes Gold to the Lake of Rage. He doesn’t know exactly what to say once they get there, but the small box in his pocket gives him strength.
“I’m glad we didn’t die here,” he comes out with, relieved when his partner smiles, “We would’ve missed out on so much. Will you-“
The box opens, the ring glistens, and so do Gold’s eyes. His arms crash around Silver’s back, almost toppling him backwards and into the water. The ‘yes’ is like a whisper of the wind, surprisingly quiet from someone as loud as his now-fiancé, but it sends chills down his spine.
In the moonlight, on the edge of the still, quiet lake, he slides the ring onto Gold’s finger.
“Let’s go home.”
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The age of sixty-five washes over them like a calm ocean wave at dawn. Slow and easy, old pressures soothed away like roughness from sea glass.
Life is still boring. Silver is eternally grateful for that.
As a child, he wanted nothing more than a boring life. No fights, no revenge, no brutal means of survival. He wanted boring, and when he envisioned that life, it was one he’d live alone.
But any chance of that solitude ended when he broke into Elm’s lab, over fifty years ago.
The coffee set on the table in front of him snaps him from his thoughts. A sleepy groan escapes him with his first sip; it’s perfect, as usual.
It’s been perfect for decades.
He doesn’t bother looking over as Gold takes his seat next to him. This is their routine.
The sunrise is beautiful today. The streaks of bright yellow and orange in the sky remind him of his husband’s eyes; Gold’s said before that the gray of the passing clouds reminds him of Silver’s own irises.
They hold hands on the coffee table as the world comes alive.
Caterpie and weedle crawl through the garden and the creek near them swells with magikarp. And even though Exbo’s gone now, the bird feeder still stands ripe with food for the pidgeys and hoothoot he loved to watch.
Gold’s voice is music to his ears: “We have to go to town today,” he says, still facing the sunrise, thumb rubbing against Silver’s bare hand. “Get groceries for this week. You liked those cinnamon rolls from last time, right?”
He hums. In the quiet morning, with his husband caressing his hand, he lets his eyes flutter shut.
When he opens them, Gold’s looking back at him. His face is the same as it was over fifty years ago, as they met for the same time through the window of Elm’s lab. Just older, with more wrinkles, his jet black hair now overtaken with gray and white.
His gaze still gives Silver butterflies, even after all these years.
“I’m ready when you are.”
Silver’s not just talking about their plans for today.
In the back of both of their minds, they know the inevitable is coming, that they’re not exempt from the death that they have cheated twenty times over.
‘I’m ready when you are.’
Silver means it, and he knows Gold agrees. When that time comes, they won’t be apart for long.
But for now, in the haze and light of sunrise, with the taste of fresh coffee on their lips, and warm skin under their hands, the inevitable seems as far away as the day they met.