Chapter Text
Something is off.
Corbeau watches the clock tick at his desk with an ever-increasing frown. He had just finished reading through the stack of reports piled high from the morning and has been expecting your arrival by the time lunch rolled around, and yet the office remains empty save for its usual occupants. Despite his preference to work in silence, Corbeau now finds it oppressive, scowling deeper as he observes the hands of the analogue display tick ever onward, mocking him with the reminder that he’d been waiting thirty minutes, and you are not where you were supposed to be.
It was unlike you to be so late, and despite the unspoken nature of your arrangement, you had always arrived at his office on the odd days to have lunch with him and tell him about whatever inane chaos you had plagued upon the city that morning. Neither of you acknowledged this, but it had been going on seven weeks since you had come to his office for no other reason than just to talk. Your contract had expired, and Corbeau found a fondness for you by the end of it, even if he would never voice such a thing to anyone other than yourself in the privacy of his own office. He never tried to hide it, at least among the members of his own syndicate, even if he was careful not to show it much. The two of you would talk of much and nothing. Corbeau knew the intimate details of Lida’s dance routine practices, the online discourse Naveen wades through for Canari’s honour, and Urbain’s continued struggling attempts at marketing the hotel. In turn, you had asked — but not pushed — about his business, and his mornings, and although he tried his best to keep it vague and keep you unaware of the more unsavoury side of his business dealings, he had relished in having someone other than Philippe to discuss serious matters with.
You had seemed to him, at first glance, someone lacking in sensibilities. When he had intimidated you and Lida, persuading you to work for him, you vehemently refused, opposing him with such a stubbornness that seemed entirely unaware of the circumstances of the situation and which party held the power. Corbeau found it entertaining to watch the back and forth between the two of you, as you tried to stand your ground while your friend grovelled for mercy, folding immediately to the terms of the contract without even bothering to read the fine print. A mistake that had already gotten their dear Urbain in trouble in the first place.
Yet, it seemed, he was wrong. A phenomenon that took him by surprise, since it happened so infrequently now that he’d accumulated all this power for himself. The more he saw of you, and saw you in person, spoke to you, battled with you, the more he realised the foolhardy stubbornness he mistook for stupidity or naivety, was actually an acute awareness of just how efficient your skills were honed for getting things done. No matter what task Corbeau threw in your direction, no matter what topic of conversation he weaved into your discussions, he found nothing you said or did to be lacking. You achieved what he had asked of you with a dogged competence that rivalled even that of his own right-hand man, and every conversation he had with you had revealed a sharp intellect behind the soft smiles and kind words you liked to give out freely to anyone who stood within a five meter radius of your presence.
All of this to conclude that Corbeau stands utterly vexed. It was out of character for you to be so late without explanation, and he worries with how recklessly you throw yourself into every single given responsibility, that you might have somehow found yourself in a situation neither your Pokémon nor your own wiles could get you out of.
Sitting up from his chair, he leans his elbows on the desk, typing something frantically on his keyboard. Perhaps he needs to inquire about his many eyes across the city to see where you had landed yourself and what exactly is keeping you. Or, well — he would have, if his own rotom phone had not flown into his face at that very moment with a notification for a voice message.
“Hey, Corbeau! I’m so sorry, you must be so pissed I’m running late, but I actually can’t make it today! My friend from Galar surprised me with a visit, so I’m picking him up from the station and we’re going out to lunch and tour the city. Make it up to you soon! Bye! Love you!”
Corbeau finds himself blinking. Did he hear that right?
He plays the rotom message again, just to be certain.
“— Bye! Love you!”
Suddenly he is acutely aware of Philippe’s presence behind him, having certainly heard the entirety of the voicemail his phone played out without warning. He fixes his expression into a poker face, ignoring the burn spreading across his cheeks and the back of his neck, and reaches for his phone, typing out a text reply. Perhaps if he says nothing Philippe wouldn’t bring it up. Well, Philippe wouldn’t bring it up because he values his life and his position in the organisation.
[It’s fine. It seems like you didn’t get a heads-up about their appearance anyway. Don’t worry about making it up to me and just make sure to show your friend the best parts of Lumiose.]
He ignores the final part of the message. It must’ve been a slip of the tongue.
Philippe coughs.
“There goes my 10,000 pokedollars...” He whispers, mostly to himself.
Corbeau looks over his shoulder to glare at his subordinate. Clearly, he has been too generous with their downtime if they have enough leisure time to spend making bets about his personal relationships.
Despite your absence at lunch, his afternoon remains mostly unchanged. Really your chats with him consisted only a relatively small portion of the pie that comprises his schedule. Most of it, a veritable sixty-percent perhaps, was desk work, and if he was lucky, the remainder of it would be him stretching his legs to do some menial field labour, check in on suppliers for his various manufacturing and production operations, perhaps negotiate in person with his more stubborn clientele, and if he was really having a good day, get to battle some ruffians trying to pick on innocent bystanders with his Scolipede. All in all, the time you spent together consisted perhaps not even a tenth of his schedule. So why did he feel your absence so severely?
Without meaning to, Corbeau finds his mood taking a downturn. He feels his patience wearing thin faster than it usually does when he speaks with the ingrates he finds himself doing business with.
On more than a handful of occasions, Philippe had stepped in to usher the men sitting across from Corbeau to enjoy the snacks and tea put out in front of them to give him time to compose himself and approach their dealmaking more rationally.
Honestly this meeting has been going on too long.
“This is a stunning apple tart! Are these local?” The one with the ridiculously bright blazer (Ethan?? Something or other — it didn’t matter. Corbeau wouldn’t see these people again. Their names don’t matter.) bites into it with an enthusiasm that almost reminds him of you, except of course that comparison would be ridiculous because you are infinitely more endearing to watch dance around your food than this oaf who could barely type up a contract without needing to be spellchecked every other word.
How can a person mess up a standard issue import agreement with a litany of spelling mistakes and grammatical nonsense when the machines HAD SENTIENCE?!
Corbeau takes a deep inhale. Clearly the man’s own rotom has given up on him. Or it hates him enough to mess with the printing of an important legally binding agreement. Whichever, Corbeau doesn’t care to know or ask.
“The pastries are, but as far as I’m aware, the man running the shop gets his apples from Galar. I’ll tell him you liked his goods.” Corbeau manages a semblance of pleasantry because despite his well-earned reputation for being an antagonistic, intimidating mob boss, even he has his limits, and these businessmen from Johto surely have strings they could pull to sabotage him if he doesn’t handle this rejection with care.
“Oh! Galar! That’s why these are so good! Galar’s got a whole thing about apples, don’t they?” The one seated next to bright blazer grabs another tart, shovelling it down with all the desperation of a man who hadn’t eaten in decades — a stark contrast to everything about his appearance and what Corbeau knows of his activities since his whole party had landed in Lumiose, but whatever. He only has to put up with them for so much longer.
“Speaking of which,” The one at the farthest end from the two, seated directly opposite Corbeau, eyes him with something of a glint in his eye — suspicion perhaps? Mischief? It unsettles Corbeau only a small amount. Powerful as they were, they were in his city, on his turf. They could only do so much from here.
“Chairman Leon’s in town, isn’t he? At least I heard he flew here to bring the champion back to Galar or something like that. What do you think of it, Mr. Corbeau?”
Corbeau eyes the man suspiciously, though he keeps his own face carefully neutral.
“Why would I know anything about what goes on in another region, Mr. Clay? I’ve already got my hands full with this city alone, do you really think I have time to listen to chatter about champions from places I’ve got nothing to do with?” Although he tries to keep his response fairly polite, there is only so much his patience could take. Why had they derailed the meeting to this?
“Anyway, we should return to discussing the shipping fees—”
Bright blazer interrupts him with a laugh — a laugh! — leaning forward conspiratorially.
“I wouldn’t be so quick to say it has nothing to do with you, when the rumours have it that Galar’s champion has been doing favours for you. Correct me if I’m wrong, of course, but I have seen them out and about with you on a few occasions, so I assumed you had them on your payroll a bit. Though, why a champion from Galar needs to work for you, is beyond me. Of course, I’m sure you could provide an explanation, Mr. Corbeau.”
Champion? What on earth were they insisting that the Galarian champion was working for him? He has no memory of ever hiring or so much as speaking to the champion of Galar. The only person he’d ‘hired’ quite recently was — you.
Corbeau feels the metaphorical Gyarados hosing him with Waterfall. You are the champion of Galar?
Something clicks in his mind. Your friend from Galar who came to visit by surprise.
Chairman Leon.
He had come to this city to take something that belonged to Corbeau.
He would not have it.
You scroll through your phone while you wait for Leon to exit the toilets. Not even three hours into your day out together and the paparazzi had already gotten wind of your presence in Lumiose, swarming every café and shop you stopped by. It was only with the practiced grace and ease of the months of PR training that the League had put you through when you first became champion that allowed you to smile for the cameras and, for the most part, ignore the flashing lights that followed you even as you sat at a park bench waiting for your friend to return.
If nothing else, you had to give the press credit for how fast they were able to get the photos and articles uploaded. How they managed to do that while still following you and Leon was truly a mystery, but it was clear that privacy was not going to be an option for the day as you scroll through tweet after tweet of various shots of you and Leon on your café lunch date (platonic — you had literally GROWN up with the man; he was practically your older brother! — despite what certain tabloids might say).
Well, had a good run. Sighing, you pocket your phone and decide to instead take pleasure in watching the Swirlix bouncing around the rooftops. It was three months of peace, at least. Three months of escape from the shitstorm that is the Galarian press, in a city that felt both so large and yet so homey and small, where no one really knew you even though you hadn’t attempted to hide anything about your name or identity.
A charming, excited chirp comes your way, a wild Swirlix barrelling towards you, spinning around in circles as it stops right in front of your face. You laugh as it continues to twirl, reaching out to offer it pets, and it immediately smacks itself into your hand, crying out excitedly while you scratch between its ears.
You pretend not to hear the camera flashing somewhere nearby while you do a completely mundane activity that you’ve done some iteration of, at least a few hundred times already in this city. You understand that people care and watch because you are the champion of Galar, but so much more often, you feel less like a champion, or even a Pokémon trainer, and more like a glorified show monkey dressed up with all the logos of brands that had begged to sponsor you.
Not like you needed the money, but Leon said it would be better for the League if you’d played ball with them, so you did. Until you got sick of it and decided to fuck off however many hundreds or thousands of miles away Kalos was from Galar. You told Leon it would be a short vacation, and you had intended that at the start, but then everything happened, and somehow your vacation turned into the beginnings of another doomsday event and were you just supposed to leave when all the rogue mega Pokémon reminded you so much of all the Pokémon agonised by the forced, random dynamaxing they’d gone through when Rose had fucked around with Eternatus and almost gotten the entirety of Hammerlocke, if not the whole region of Galar, wiped off the map?
Anyway, the point is, it’s not like you decided to stay. It kind of just. Happened. And though Leon hadn’t said why he was here, you had a feeling you knew what it was about. After all, you were only technically sanctioned for a month of paid leave, and it has already been… well past that. The only reason they hadn’t hounded you on your absence was because they couldn’t. It wasn’t like you told anyone where you were going (and you even ditched your old rotom phone at your dad’s place to avoid the work calls), and Kalos wasn’t even really the first stop during your supposed vacation time — it just ended up becoming your lengthiest stay. Doing things that weren’t exactly vacation activities. Okay, so you’d basically signed up to compete in a tournament that kind of, sort of made you — well, not champion, per say, but at the very least, a very well-known, well-respect, renowned, strong accomplished trainer in Lumiose. So, essentially champion.
While shirking your duties as champion of another region.
Yeah, you were lucky they sent Leon, and not Raihan, who might’ve torn you a new asshole for leaving him to deal with the brunt of your duties since he’s as close as it gets to the region’s interim (deputy?) champion without you around, given that he is the strongest gym leader in the region (no offense to everyone else, but it’s not exactly a secret).
You are alerted to Leon’s return, not by the man himself, or even your own abysmal situational awareness as you had just zoned out petting the Swirlix in front of you — who seemed content with the absentminded pets regardless — but by the sheer volume at which the thundering shutters start clicking. Cameras go off, each capturing every nanosecond of Leon’s relatively short walk from the public toilets to the bench. You hesitate a moment between playing into it or just doing your best imitation of a certain poison-type trainer that certainly does not occupy space in your mind, but one look to Leon and the magnanimous way he holds himself in front of the paps has you folding. You decide then to match his energy, giving Swirlix one final scritch as it shimmies away to the nearest pastry stand, swirling happily in the air following the aroma of the galettes.
A large grin settles on your face, and you realise at this moment just how foreign this feels now even though you’ve only been away from the spotlight really for a few months. A pit of …something settles deep in your stomach that you decide to ignore. Perhaps it had settled there a while ago, and you had ignored it all this time. Whatever the case, right now, Leon is grinning as he walks back to you and it becomes a little easier, a little less fake, to smile.
“Sorry I took so long! I got lost on the way back, the alleyways here are honestly such a maze.” He says, sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck as he laughs, embarrassed.
The shutters click. You don’t even need to check to know that someone has this on 4K video or some variation of that.
“It’s fine.” You wave him off. “Anyway, I made a friend! I saw a Swirlix! Cute little buddy, very soft and cuddly. Love that guy.”
Leon’s expression softens into a fondness you’re familiar with from your childhood, and suddenly the pit in your stomach feels lighter.
“Aw, is it gonna be a new member of your party then? What are you planning to call it?” He looks behind your shoulder, immediately spotting the Swirlix in question. It’s dancing around the stall owner, trying to ply them for treats, but they seem immune to it. Maybe they’ve encountered this one Swirlix enough times not to fall victim to its charm.
You shake your head in response to his earlier question.
“I already have a Slurpuff in my party, and between her and Feraligatr’s appetites, I’m not really sure I could afford another one.”
You could. You absolutely could. Even without the obscene amount of money in your account back home (is it still that?) in Galar, you’re making enough in the Royale alone to feed a whole army of them. (Which is why you found the deal with Corbeau absolutely ridiculous in the first place, you could have just paid Urbain’s debt upfront, but no one seemed keen to listen to you at the time, and by the time people were, you had already convinced yourself of signing the contract to spite both Lida who wouldn’t listen to you and Corbeau who seemed to think he could somehow intimidate you at his grand stature of five feet and exactly one Joltik tall. Unless he spat acid or breathed fire, he wasn’t exactly as scary as he thought he came off. And he was even less scary the more you got to know him.) And that’s not even considering the notion that Corbeau might just give you the money, maybe. If you asked nicely enough.
Or you could loan it from him and publicly ruin your career.
That’s an option.
You’re definitely not considering it.
But Arceus. Imagine what the headlines would say. (Galar Champion Ruins Career and Takes Obscene Loans from Known Crime Lord. Well, okay that maybe doesn’t sound as compelling, but it’s not like you’re a journalist. Your life is battling and training Pokémon, so what if writing isn’t your strong suit?)
Leon’s eyes light up immediately at the mention of new Pokémon. He’s like a kid at a candy store for the whole day after, asking to be introduced to each and every member of your new party. He doesn’t ask what happened to the old ones. (They’re fine. They asked to be left at the hotel to rest and wander around the hallways. Maybe they liked the peace of it too, the fact that aside from Team MZ and AZ and Floette, there was no one else around. Maybe they were sick of this too.)
It's easier to ignore all the lightning strikes when Leon is so easy to talk to. He doesn’t bring up how prolonged your stay in Lumiose has been, or how you haven’t been answering your phone or anything about your ‘disappearance’. He does bring up the new moveset that Charizard has learned, how he’d trained with Master Mustard to perfect some new battle technique that he loves to spring on the poor, unfortunate trainers at the Battle Tower. He talks about how Nessa finally asked out Sonia, how it had been him, Hop and Raihan who’d all conspired together to quite literally lock the two of them in Sonia’s research facility until they finally managed to come out of it with plans for the evening, looking significantly more dishevelled than when they’d come in.
It's a nice conversation, comfortable, and it makes the walk from the Magenta District to Hotel Richissime a lot faster.
(You adamantly refuse to pay for the cabs, even if you could, by all stretches of the imagination, afford the obscene 700 pokedollar fee because fuck Le Z Eternale and his idiotic disdain for public transportation. You grew up on trains! Trains are so fucking sick! WHY would you want to get rid of them? Oh, right. For a stupid wish to make his taxi company the monopoly for transportation around Lumiose. Like Vinnie would even agree to it. What a weirdo.)
By the time you arrive there, Leon’s bags have already been waiting the whole afternoon at the lobby, and you find out that actually, Leon wasn’t here for you at all, which both makes you flush slightly, feeling a little vain at assuming so, while filling you with a sense of relief that softens the edges of that sharpening anxiety trying to find grip in your chest.
What he’s actually here for is a seminar for the Society of Battle Connoisseurs. You don’t know much of them, save for the few you’ve fought during the Royale, and the three assholes who tried to lecture and harass a bunch of kids that you’d fought off under Corbeau’s instruction. Your impression of the organisation as a whole from those few interactions leave much to be desired, but you do your best to be excited for Leon. It isn’t hard because he’s a naturally excitable person, and talking about battling in front of a group of people who seem as enthusiastic as he is about the topic is like a rush of sugar to him.
He’s already chatting on about the specific points he’d like to discuss, asking you about every other talking point to see if you agree with the direction of his discussion.
Despite being the champion of Galar for a good… five (?) or so years now, you’re not one on public speaking. You feel spoiled in that regard because Chairman Leon also happens to be Lee, your pseudo big brother/second best friend who has always done what he could to take care of you, so anytime you had to talk in a public forum, Leon had always taken charge.
In this regard, he’s always going to be better than you, even if you could beat him in a battle with relative ease on most days, so you only nod along to his points and reassure him that whatever he has to say will certainly be enlightening to them.
He leaves you in the lobby of the grand hotel, and you’re suddenly grateful that Urbain had somewhat strong-armed you into staying at Hotel Z because the sight of the gaudy opulence that made up the hotel’s lobby reminded you too much of the mansion suite of Rose’s old penthouse in Wyndon and standing in the not-quite familiar setting made goosebumps crawl under your skin. You wonder how Leon feels about all this. The two of you never really spoke about what happened then.
Perhaps it’s for the best. Rose is long gone by now, so if his ghost still somewhat occasionally makes an appearance in your dreams or flickers in the periphery of your vision when you speak with anyone from Quasartico Inc., well, it’s not like he’s a ghost Pokémon, so there’s not much else he can do to hurt you that he hasn’t already done.
You make yourself comfortable in one of the lobby’s plush sofas, doomscrolling for a little longer than you should, and seeing the notification counter on the bird app tick higher and higher as you steadily ignore it. What is harder to ignore, however, is the fact that every post cluttering your timeline is sightings of you and Leon across the city, with various captions ranging from wholesome and heartfelt appreciation at your fit or Leon’s appearance or the general dynamics of your friendship, to absolute insane conspiracy theories that you definitely aren’t going to think about in the dead of night when you’re about to go to bed.
You do, however, notice the messaging app bursting with notifications, which is less irregular because Lida and Naveen usually like to spam the chat with various city finds like cheap stores and restaurants or random funny memes, but when you open it, you’re surprised by the sheer amount of messages you have from other people.
Only your Lumiose contacts had this number, so there was only really a handful of people messaging you at a time, but the fact that they’re all now blowing up your inbox makes you realise just how big the news about your title in Galar actually might be. And the fact that you’ve completely forgotten to disclose it to the entire friend group. Big whoops.
Right then. Time to give Lida a call.
It honestly hadn’t been difficult to track down the hotel that Chairman Leon had been staying at, given the many resources at his disposal and his many eyes and ears around the city, but none of these had even been necessary, as it seemed every step the both of you took around Lumiose was documented down to even the moments Chairman Leon had left you alone at a park bench for thirty minutes because he had gotten lost getting to and from the public bathroom.
Honestly, how he of all people managed to become the chairman of a Pokémon League escaped Corbeau. Clearly those things had far lower standards than he’d expected. The nerve of the man to show up seemingly out of nowhere to convince you to return home with him and then leave you alone for such a long time because he got lost.
Unlike Chairman Leon, Corbeau prides himself on punctuality and the ability to read at at least a first-grade level because that’s usually when they teach children to read maps.
Thankfully, he doesn’t have to worry about the paparazzi shooting photographs of him since his frightening reputation far outweighs their desire to get viral clicks on whatever social media site, and doubly so because Hotel Richissime has a strict ‘no pictures’ policy due to the nature and wealth of their clientele. Apparently the one time it had been violated by some up-and-coming photo journalist trying to get a skirt shot of Diantha as she climbed up the giant spiralling staircase, not only had they been kicked out of the place and their expensive newly purchased equipment destroyed, but they had also been blacklisted from every major publishing house in the city. Whether that was the hotel’s doing or the actress-trainer herself, the hotel’s reputation for privacy clearly benefited from it because now paparazzi don’t even dare to enter the lobby, content to take obscure photos of the guests entering and exiting the doors from a distance that can’t be considered part of the hotel’s private property.
There in the lobby, he immediately finds you. There’s not too many people milling about the hotel at this time in the afternoon, and the fact that you’re physically recoiling from your rotom phone as it screeches out the loud excitement from your friends on the other end certainly helps with being easy to find.
Before he can decide how he’s going to approach you, you lock eyes with each other and your face breaks into that squinty-eyed smile he’s become quite enamoured with, loathe as he is to admit it to anyone other than you. He nods to you, walking in your direction, and perhaps it might be a trick of his own mind to stroke his ego, but he could swear to seeing your grin widen as he approaches. Some large protective creature residing in his chest trills in satisfaction.
“— NOT TELL US YOU’RE THE CHAMPION OF GALAR??? I CHALLENGED YOU TO A BATTLE! OH MY GOD IS THAT WHY YOU HAVE SO MANY STRONG POKEMON ALREADY? IS THAT WHY THEY’RE ALWAYS JUST AT THE HOTEL AND NEVER —”
When Corbeau draws closer, he recognises the screeching from your rotom phone to be Lida, and also that your phone is set to a supposedly normal volume, and not speaker mode like an outsider might infer from how Lida’s voice carries through the machine.
You cut her off in the middle of her tirade, waving your hand in the air as you dismiss her.
“Hey, Lida, babe. Please take a deep breath and calm down. Okay, thank you. I’ll explain everything when I get back to the hotel. But I gotta take care of something right now. Bye! Love you!”
A green-eyed Arbok coils around his chest at hearing the same sentiment in the voicemail you left him thrown in someone else’s direction. He ignores the snake tightening around his heart and sits across from you. You hang up the phone, checking something else on it, but your eyes flicker up at him a moment, frowning as you look at him.
“Why are you sitting there? You’re so far away. How am I supposed to talk to you?” You not-quite-mumble, voice only loud enough for him to hear, a petulant tone in your words that satisfies the snake coiling in his chest.
Corbeau chuckles and moves to sit on the same loveseat as you, smirking all the while.
“Better, princess?”
You cough, and Corbeau notices a dusting of pink on your cheeks now that he’s close enough.
“Thank you.” You smile contentedly, pocketing your phone. “So what brings you here, boss? Got a business meeting or something?”
“I was looking for you actually, but if you’ve got something you need takin’ care of, then I’ll leave you to it.” Corbeau eyes you as you shake your head and nudge yourself closer to him. Despite the song and dance you’ve both been playing over the last few weeks, you’ve never been this openly needy for his proximity. He wonders what’s changed.
“Nah, you’re good. Actually the ‘something’ I was telling Lida was you! We weren’t able to have lunch lately. I missed you.” You admit openly, smiling softly at him, and Corbeau has to look away for a moment and pretend to adjust his glasses to stop himself from melting completely at your honesty. He does allow a small private smile to twitch at his lips.
“You’re being quite forward, you know? Somethin’ I should know about?” Corbeau teases and instead of shying away like before, you lean in next to him, grinning all the while.
“I just think I need to be more honest with my friends, that’s all. You’re a good man, Corbeau. I like you.” You say it so plainly, like it’s the truth. You both know it’s not, but you still look at him with your bright brilliant smile and Corbeau almost believes it.
He shakes his head.
“While I appreciate the sentiment, I’m not a good man, and you know that. I just happen to like you too.” Despite having admitted this in various roundabout ways in the past, hearing Corbeau say it again has you breaking out into a somehow even brighter smile than before, eyes squinting in delight at hearing him repeat it.
“It’s okay, you don’t have to be. I’ll still think of you as one. I know way worse people, anyway.” And isn’t that a sentence? Corbeau has kept much of his less than legal dealings away from your curious gaze, but he’s aware on some level that you know of it to some extent. How much you know and why you don’t run at the thought of it are both mysteries he’s not too inclined to go out of his way to solve. Still, how much exactly do you know that you think whatever he’s done isn’t as bad as… whoever it is you know?
“Oh? Care to share, champion?” The title slips from Corbeau’s mouth not-quite intentionally, really. The word drips out of his mouth with a level of sarcasm he usually reserves for people who are not you. It’s the thing they’ve been dancing around for this whole interaction — why Lida was yelling, why you hadn’t shown up at his office.
Because you are champion of Galar.
And you didn’t tell him.
And now Chairman Leon has come to take you back home with him.
Your face twists in confusion, and you blink at him.
“…Didn’t…didn’t you know?” You ask, eyebrows furrowed as you stare at him.
It’s Corbeau’s turn to be confused. In all the moments you’ve met, at no point had you mentioned much at all about Galar. In fact, it might’ve been Corbeau’s first time hearing you were from there that morning. How would you expect him to know?
“You’ve never once mentioned being from Galar. How was I supposed to know that, let alone know that you’re the champion?”
You pause, tilting your head, eyeing something behind him, and turning your head to study the room around you before you meet his gaze again, a soft small smile on your lips.
“You’ve got at least six of your people in this room right now, Corbeau.” You say, not quite soft enough to be a whisper but just loud enough to be discreet.
“You have at least six of them here, and I know for a fact that you’ve got your ways of watching this city, and me. I think I spotted two Rust Syndicate members tailing me around Wild Zone 17 the other day. Almost waved at them if I didn’t think they’d get in trouble for being spotted.”
You were right of course. The whole point of surveilling you was to keep you safe, but Corbeau also didn’t want to scare you into thinking he was some sort of stalker creep. Hence the need for subtlety. He’s not sure exactly how to feel about you knowing about his surveillance. On some level, he would be relieved that you knew, but it depended on whether that coloured your impression of him or not.
He looks to you, quiet, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“I’m not offended or anything, by the way! I think it’s nice. I know you’re only doing that to make sure I’m keeping my word about protecting Lumiose. I mean, we both know with my team that I’m a pretty powerful trainer and that comes with a lot of risk too for the city, especially since I’m an outsider, right? It’s fine, really.” You laugh, waving him off, and the relief that washes over him is only shadowed by the annoyance of your assumption. You think he sees you as a potential threat to the city? That’s why you’re okay with being surveilled?
“I don’t do it for that.” Corbeau’s tone brooks no argument, but you look at him perplexed. “We’ve already established you would do whatever needed to be done to protect this city. I just wanted to make sure you actually lived to do it, when you have such a knack for getting yourself into life-threatening situations every other day.”
Your mouth forms an ‘oh’ at his statement, and he covers an amused chuckle by coughing into the back of his hand.
“Yes, I do keep tabs on you, but I’ve only done it to make sure you come back to my office in one piece when I need you there.”
This admission is as close as Corbeau gets to admitting he needs you full stop. He can only hope you get the message though.
“Oh, well, um.” Whether or not you understood the meaning behind his phrasing, you’re flustered by the admission, nonetheless. You shake your head, perhaps attempting to shake off the nerves. “You can see how I assumed you knew about, um. My status?”
The way you say status makes it seem like you’re talking about anything else except being the fucking Galarian champion. You almost seem to refer to it like it’s a plague marking you.
“I just— when you said you’d heard of me, during that first meeting, I thought you meant you’d done your research about me. It’s not like I was really hiding my identity, since no one immediately recognized me here, and yeah, I dyed my hair a different colour but it’s not like my entire facial structure changed or anything. So, I thought you knew, and you were just polite enough not to mention it.”
“Even if you thought I knew, why didn’t you mention it? Back at the office when we first met, you could’ve said something about your title.”
“Would it have made a difference? You were pretty keen on getting us to sign that contract to work for you. I mean, I could have paid for the entire thing myself, if I’m being honest, but by the time I’d worked up the courage to mention it, Lida was trying to stop me from doing something stupid and just sign the contract, and I was kind of already determined to sign it to spite you.” You admit rather sheepishly.
Corbeau chuckles, grinning at you like a Meowth catching a Fletchling in its claws.
“You’ve got an interesting definition of spite, if you thought signing that contract would spite me.”
You shrug, a breathy laugh escaping you.
“I wanted to prove I was capable, and that I wasn’t scared of you. I’m still not.” You look at him again with that soft, simple smile he’s grown accustomed to.
“You know, I thought you were naïve at first, for not fearing me.” Corbeau admits, leaning into your space. You, in turn, slide closer to him, your knees touching at the proximity.
He smiles in that soft, endeared expression, the one that transforms his whole demeanour from the usual intimidating syndicate head to a completely different man. His eyes soften as he looks to you, eyes darting to your lips.
“I’m glad you’re not afraid of me.” He whispers, your faces inches apart, and he brings a hand to caress the side of your cheek softly. “You should never have to worry around me.”
“Corbeau…” You murmur, leaning into his touch. Corbeau is tempted to make a move. He leans in, with the intent of stealing a kiss from your lips when your rotom phone rings loudly, the sound crashing you both back down to Earth, reminding you that despite the relative privacy the loveseat affords you, you are both still in the lobby of Hotel Richissime.
Your phone wiggles aggressively in front of your face, the trickster Pokémon in it flying directly in the space between the two of you making it all the more impossible to ignore.
Corbeau clears his throat and sits back, veiling his disappointment at being interrupted by fiddling with his tie.
You frown as you pick up the phone, mouthing a ‘sorry’ at him, pouting as you answer it.
“Lee? What’s up?” Corbeau can’t hear the other end of the conversation, but it’s a lot of nodding for your part, and he doesn’t try to contextualise any of it. All he can fascinate on is the nickname. Lee.
You were so close to Chairman Leon that you called him Lee. You hadn’t called Corbeau any nicknames apart from the teasing ‘boss’ from time to time. Why was that? What exactly was the nature of your relationship with that chairman that you called him nicknames and hung around his arm and dedicated a whole day to spend time with him, even going so far as to cancel your recurring lunches with Corbeau? Was he the one you thought you belonged to? Had he claimed you in ways Corbeau hadn’t yet?
Corbeau sighs internally, shaking his head. He fixes his frames in a grounding gesture, focusing on you instead. Whatever your relationship with this Chairman Leon was, you seemed quite willing to kiss him just a moment ago, so clearly he wasn’t all that important to you in the grand scheme of things.
No matter. Corbeau would have you, even if your Chairman Leon tried to get in the way.
“That’s fine, Lee. Go have fun with Jacinthe or whoever. It makes sense they wanna get to know you before your big talk tomorrow. Have fun!” You hang up the phone and immediately look back at Corbeau.
“So that was my friend, Leon. I was supposed to be waiting for him down here to finish unpacking, but apparently, he was ambushed by the head of the SBC or something? They’re taking him out to dinner whether he agrees or not, so that means I’m free tonight, and I said I’d make it up to you somehow, right?” You look at him, a pleased grin on your lips. The same ones he was about to kiss.
Perfect timing. Tonight then, he would make his move.
“I’ve cleared my schedule for the rest of the day, so we can meet at my office in an hour or so and go for dinner after you have time to change.” Corbeau agrees readily, already making mental plans for the restaurant to take you to, and the clothes he’ll have someone bring to your hotel room. You’ve always been a fan of Kanto cuisine, and he had an in at a Kanto-style restaurant he usually reserved for only his most important clients. And you just happened to be the most important one of all.
You frown, in lieu of a verbal response and your head turns to something behind Corbeau, who follows your gaze to the doors.
“I… just…realised…” You speak in halting fragments, head still watching the lobby doors for something. “I don’t actually know how I’m going to get home with the paparazzi following me the whole afternoon. I don’t exactly want to dox myself to the entire Lumiose press.”
Was that the problem? For a moment, Corbeau had worried you might have found his offer wanting, or that your nerves might take over and cause you to back out, but the press? That was a problem Corbeau could solve with ease.
He stands, quickly removing his suit jacket, and he takes no small amount of pride at the way your eyes roam across his chest and arms. He preens inwardly but focuses on offering you the jacket.
“Wear this. It won’t hide you from the press, but they’ll know better than to follow you. Trust me.”
“Of course I do.” You respond, without a moment’s hesitation, taking the jacket from him and shrugging it on. You stand then, and nod enthusiastically at him.
“Okay then! I’ll meet you at the Rust Syndicate headquarters in a while. Do I bring the jacket with me?” Corbeau shakes his head.
He smiles softly. “Keep it. It’s yours.”
“Oh! Then, here. This, I definitely can’t take.” You stand closer to him, and he watches as you remove the badge where he keeps his key stone and pin it to the collar of his shirt.
His hands catch yours before you can drop them.
You look up at him curiously, and he can’t help himself from bringing his lips to your knuckles.
“I’ll see you tonight then.”