Work Text:
“Have you ever had a tour of the mountains?” Professor Kukui asks Ash one bright spring morning. Ash almost starts speaking immediately before remembering the way the professor scolded him for talking with his mouth full, so he chews and swallows. He looks up. “I haven’t done much traveling in Alola, Professor!”
He quirks his eyebrows in a way that Ash has come to interpret as You didn’t quite answer the question, but close enough ; it’s a common enough occurrence that Professor Kukui has stopped needing to explain to Ash that he is apparently ‘not very direct when answering questions.’
“Well, I was thinking I could take you to see the sights! What do you say?”
That sounds really fun, honestly. Ash needs to stretch his legs, anyway; it’s been a while since he’s really gone out and seen stuff. Alola’s different, that way. He likes it - he loves it, really. Home has always been the feeling of dirt road under his feet, the stretch of the path ahead of him, and a pack on his back; but lately, here, staying with Professor Kukui and going to school and spending every day on the beach has grasped something in his chest he hasn’t felt since he was little, living with Mom and eating her delicious cooking every night and having a warm bed to come home to.
“That sounds great, Professor! Let’s go!”
Professor Kukui smiles. “I like your go-getter attitude!”
And so here they are; Professor Kukui in the driver seat of a golf cart, Ash in the passenger, Pikachu on his lap. “On your mark, get set, go!” Professor Kukui shouts, joyfully, before stepping on the accelerator. To be honest, Ash had never imagined going through the mountains on a golf cart - he was thinking they would just go on foot. But this is much more fun!
And it really is, Ash thinks, as they go higher and higher. The wind is in his hair and Pikachu is crawling over him to get a better view. All around them is green green green; the fog - a rare occurrence on Melemele - is rolling down the slopes, sitting on the bushes like a blanket. There are so many trees and palms, swaying in the slight breeze. Down the slope, there is the ocean. The fog sits there, too, wispy and light. A few wingull poke through. Ash can only see them because the movement of their wings catches his eye.
There are outlook points as they continue up. At one of them, Ash pulls on Professor Kukui’s arms. “Professor!” He shouts. “Stop here, stop here! Look, it’s so pretty!”
The cart pulls to a stop and Ash jumps out, racing to the edge. He gets so close he nearly falls over, but the Professor catches his elbow at the last moment. “Careful,” he reminds Ash, who chuckles a little sheepishly. From here, they can see a large portion of Hau’oli City. On one side of the view, the mountain slopes down, and there are colorful houses smattered all across the slant; on the other, there are all the boats on the water. Many, many boats, just as colorful as the houses, floating there. And in the middle, there is the city. From here, if Ash looks close enough, he thinks he can spot the school.
“Wow,” he breathes, and he doesn’t know what else to say. Professor Kukui laughs, his voice just as soft. “I know, right? And we’re not even close to the top yet.”
Ash doesn’t want to turn away from the view to look at him, so he keeps watching as he speaks. “Really?”
“Just wait, Ash. It’s really spectacular. You know, I’ve hiked all the way up there. It’s worth it.”
Ash bounces on his heels, already excited for it. Two people on bikes come up to them, bells ringing. “Alola!” A woman greets them, and Ash and Professor Kukui respond in kind. She says it a little weird. Ash isn’t really sure how to explain it, except for maybe she puts a little too much emphasis on the lo part, and also maybe she is expanding the sides of her mouth too wide. It’s weird, and he thinks it is a little judgy to notice, but he has never heard any of his friends say it like that.
The man gets off his bike next to the woman, and he says it the same way. “Would you two mind taking a picture of us?” He asks, and Ash jumps at the opportunity. “Of course!”
Before Alola, Ash had not known how to use a cell phone. Some parts of it were pretty easy to figure out - camera button means camera, and stuff like that - but other parts were more difficult. Like zooming in on pictures. And typing. Sophocles showed Ash how to do it.
But now he has his own, and he immediately knows how to work the phone that she hands to him. “Smile!” He says, smiling himself. He takes a few, because Mallow says that’s polite, and then offers the phone back to her. “Would you like me to take a picture of you two?”
Ash has never been asked this before, and even though it’s a very simple question he doesn’t answer it immediately, but Professor Kukui picks up his slack and answers for him. “That would be really nice,” he says.
And so he poses next to Ash in front of the view, and Pikachu jumps onto Ash’s shoulder and flashes a peace sign, and they smile. When they hand Professor Kukui’s phone back to him, the woman says “Are you two from the cruise, too?”
Ash scrunches his face up a bit, confused. “No?” He says, though it’s not very declarative. “You two are from a cruise?”
She laughs. “Yeah! Today we’re doing an excursion in Hau’oli City!” She says this with the same sort of quality that she said Alola with; too much emphasis on the wrong syllables and weird cadence overall. “Are you from here, then?” The man asks, and Professor Kukui’s hand tightens around Ash’s arm. He starts leaning back towards the golf cart. Ash thinks it is a little rude to leave without answering their question, so he doesn’t follow. It’s weird - Professor Kukui is usually the one known to be more polite and respectful of social rules than Ash.
“Well, yeah, kinda!” He answers. “We live here, anyway!”
“That’s so cool!” The woman says, and it all feels a little weird, so Ash just smiles with her. “Alright, well,” Professor Kukui says, pulling harder at Ash’s arm. “Ash, we still have a long way to go! Thanks, you two, for the picture. Bye!”
“Alola!” The both of the strangers say, and it sounds weird again, and Professor Kukui is starting up the golf cart. He doesn’t say it back, which, again, is unlike him. But Ash responds, a quick “Alola!” before they are driving off.
He turns back to the professor, eyebrows furrowed. He doesn’t really want to outright tell Professor Kukui he was being rude, because that’s rude, but he does feel weird about everything that happened. “Ugh,” the professor says. “Sorry, Ash, I just get a little tired of those kinds of tourists, you know?”
And then, Ash understands. Those people - they were from a cruise taking a tour of the islands. That’s why they said Alola like that, like it was unfamiliar. Like it was exotic.
One time, when Ash was in Unova, he met a trainer who, when he told them he was from Pallet Town in Kanto, they bowed at him and tried saying some words but pronounced them completely wrong. He’d mostly been confused, but it felt a little weird - a bad sort of weird. He’d just been nice to them, battled them, and moved on his way. When they had next been at a Pokemon Center, he called Misty about it, and she got all mad, and she used that word - exotic.
Ash nods. “Ah - yeah, I get it!”
Professor Kukui glances at him for a few short moments, a look Ash can’t really parse, before he turns back to the road. “Anyway, let’s get back to some views!”
The road is very windy, and Ash can see the curves of the mountain across an expanse where the ground falls away. Flowers line the edge, yellow and white and pink, bursting and bursting and bursting with color. The blue sky is filled with thin fog, tinged blue and obscuring some of the buildings down below. The wind is a little stronger now, blowing Ash’s hair so much that his hat flies off. He’s ready to jump out of the cart to catch it, even if he knows that will make Professor Kukui yell at him, but Pikachu leaps off his shoulder, catching it with his teeth, before landing on the ground and launching into a Quick Attack to build enough speed to jump back onto the golf cart.
“Woah, buddy!” Ash half laughs, half yells, and Professor Kukui slams on the breaks a moment late. “That was crazy, Pikachu!” He says, and Ash takes his hat and settles it back onto his head.
“Maybe you should hold onto that,” the professor says. “Just in case that happens again.”
“Good idea!”
So he takes it off and holds it in his lap, and when the cart starts up again he can feel the wind in his hair so much stronger now.
It’s gotten a little longer, since living in Alola; Mallow likes to braid it, usually, so he hasn’t tried asking Professor Kukui to cut it (or, Arceus forbid, tried cutting it himself. He’s only done that twice. Once, when he was really little and he cut off all his long hair and Mom looked at him with the scissors, said Oh, honey, and fixed it; the other, back on his first trip through Kanto, when Misty saw him, laughed at him, and then fixed it herself.) Because of that, it’s whipping around and getting in his eyes, a little. On the plus side - in Pikachu’s perspective, not Ash’s - it gives his buddy more to hold onto with the rough turns of the cart.
They hit a bump in the road and the cart goes flying, and Professor Kukui is yelling but Ash is laughing and when they crash back onto the ground they bounce pretty hard. Ash is still laughing when Professor Kukui hits the brakes. “Okay,” he says, a little shaken. “Maybe I should mind those bumps.”
“No, that was fun!” Ash shouts. “Do it again!”
He’s still laughing pretty hard, and Professor Kukui looks over him and smiles, this soft sort of look in his eyes, and then Ash looks back and smiles at him.
They’re sort of on the other side of the mountains, now, and the fog is not as strong on this side, so the sun has the chance to come out. It illuminates the greens and the flowers and sea, gloriously gloriously gloriously, and Ash just stares, looking at the shine of sun on water.
They go higher and higher, wind in Ash’s hair and laughs falling out of his mouth and beautiful, sloping views, and Ash is never more grateful that Professor Kukui offered his loft back when he first came. Alola is truly something else. It is home in a way nothing else has been home in a very long time. He has grown used to the feel of salt in his hair and sand on his skin, and Ash can’t even fully describe the extent of his feelings toward the professor.
It’s weird, anyway; Ash has never had someone like that. He’s had Mom, he’s always had Mom. But it has always just been the two of them. Which he loves the two of them.
But it is just Ash and Professor Kukui now, the two of them, and it is different and so, so familiar, and the feel of a strong arm around his shoulders has become comfortable in a way almost nothing else is.
They are at the top, now, and Professor Kukui pulls off to the side. “This is what I meant,” he says, but Ash can barely pay attention to what he is saying.
They are so high up. So very high, and Ash feels like he could see the whole island from up here, from Hau’oli all the way to the Ruins of Conflict. There is the water, again, with all the many many boats, and there is the fog too, but from up here it does not sit on the water. There is the water, and then, in the sky, there is a layer of fog. On top of that, mountains peek through, and palm trees are so so tall and green. It is so blue, down there, and so green, up here, and there is this huge expanse of beauty. The sun makes everything golden and warm.
It is glorious.
Ash is speechless.
Professor Kukui lays his arm around his shoulders. “I told you. Spectacular.”
“Yeah,” he breathes. He feels like they are at the very top of the world.
He does not know exactly how long they stand there, watching the view. Only that it is silent and it is just them, Ash and Pikachu and Professor Kukui, and the mountains descending descending descending below.
“Ready to go?” Professor Kukui asks.
Ash turns in a slow circle, taking in the entire view one last time. At last, he exhales. “Yeah.”
The drive back down is silent. It is beautiful, too, and fun, and exhilarating, just as the ride up was. But Ash is still overwhelmed by the beauty of the top. It flashes across his vision, engraved across his mind’s eye.
That night, it is Ash and Pikachu, laying down on the sand, looking up at the stars. Ash can spot and identify every single constellation in the sky. Professor Kukui comes out to join them, at some point, and this is something Ash can show the professor, and so he does; finger pointed at the stars, tracing the shapes, telling the stories.
It is Ash and Pikachu and Professor Kukui. Living here together.