Eleven: Text

*thanks to bleh_bleh, Pat77, Sofylia, and B for your support!!*

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“Are you ever going to text this fucking guy?” Abe said, exasperated, through a mouthful of popcorn.

“Shut up,” Sage muttered despondently, face pressed to the couch cushion in Abe’s apartment as he stared blankly at the tv, which was showing some too-bright kids cartoon where all the characters were moving much too fast.

A buttery kernel went flying over his head, landing somewhere on the floor. Sage didn’t even blink as it went past. He was exhausted. He’d spent the past week staking out the governor’s house late at night, monitoring his comings and goings and piecing together his security system. It had gotten a lot more advanced and inconveniently airtight. Damn, it was like he didn’t want someone to rob his house or something.

In addition to Sage’s late-night activities, he’d also been putting in extra hours at work, and his back and eyes hurt from sitting curled up like a shrimp in his chair staring at a computer screen. He’d gotten little to no sleep for seven days, and it was starting to take its toll. And because he was so busy, he hadn’t had any time to hang out with Abe and Carolyn. Abe became fed up with his avoidant ass eventually, and dragged Sage to his place to hang out, at which point he managed to somehow wrangle Sage into confessing that part of the reason he wasn’t sleeping was also because he’d been avoiding texting Ash-the-grocery-store-stalker.

Sage felt guilty for not getting back to him. It was just, once he got back home and took out the little piece of paper with his number on it, he chickened out. It wasn’t that he wasn’t interested in him. He was. Ash was gorgeous, and also weird, which really got Sage going for some reason.

Sage just kind of wanted to wait until he had finished with villainy for good before getting into anything. Not that he was worried about Ash finding out about his side job. He’d been successfully hiding that from dates for the whole of his twenties. It wasn’t actually that hard to keep his mouth shut and make something up when they asked what he was doing later. All Sage had to do was say “visiting family.” Much more accepted than telling them he was going to steal someone’s shit.

Sage was also still reeling from whatever the hell happened the other night with Lich. It didn’t mean anything, he knew that. He didn’t really want it to mean anything either. It was just really weird, and he kept thinking about it at inopportune moments. It felt odd to jump right into things with Ash and completely ignore the fact that he’d let his arch nemesis fuck him.

Sage didn’t tell Abe any of those excuses though. He didn’t know about the whole villain thing and Sage kind of wanted to keep it that way. Knowing Abe, he’d probably want to throw on a mask and come with Sage to rob a bank. Abe was not the stealthy type. He’d probably walk into the bank, shout “What’s up bitches? Gimme the money!” and expect it to work.

Carolyn also didn’t know, and though Sage trusted her a little bit more than Abe, he still didn’t really want to drag her into his shit.

Speaking of Carolyn, the woman herself strolled in a few moments later, throwing her car keys onto the side table in the entry way with a clatter. She took one look at Sage curled up like a corpse on the couch and sighed.

“Alright, what the fuck did I miss?”

“Sage met a hottie and got his number but won’t text him because he’s a chicken shit,” Abe summed up cheerily. Sage dug his toes into his thigh with a vengeance and Abe yipped, jerking away from Sage and spilling half his bowl of popcorn.

“Why not?” Carolyn asked, and Sage closed his eyes, blocking them both out. Carolyn squawked indignantly and he heard her stomping closer, opening his eyes a sliver to see her sitting on the floor in front of him. “Are you ignoring me, asshole?”

In answer, Sage pressed his face fully into the couch cushion and pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head, trying to smother himself and hide from her scrutinizing stare. More popcorn pelted Sage from above.

Sage was still focusing on hiding in the cushion when he felt a hand slip into the pocket of his hoodie, taking out his phone. He jerked upright immediately to see Abe had already danced to the other side of the room with it, still clutching his bowl of popcorn in his other arm.

“If you won’t do it, I’ll just have to do it for you,” he said with a positively villainous smile, and Sage was momentarily impressed with the sheer evil of it.

Sage went after him immediately, but as soon as he lunged up, Carolyn tackled him back to the couch and sat on his chest, making him wheeze. “Bitch,” Sage gasped, and she pecked him on the cheek, with a matching evil grin. She patted the same cheek she’d kissed sympathetically.

“It’s for your own good, babe. You need to go somewhere other than your house or work. If it makes you feel any better, Abe and I will follow the two of you secretly, just in case he’s a psycho.”

That might be comforting. Except, Sage knew from past experience that neither one of them had any clue how to follow someone and not be noticed. He’d had one date with a guy where they followed him for his ‘safety’ and it ended with tacos in places where tacos should never be and a pretty hefty bill for damages from the restaurant owner. There was not a second date.

“Ash, right?” Abe said. “Like, the Pokémon kid?”

Sage rolled his eyes. “Yes. Like the Pokémon kid.”

“If his last name is Ketchum, I’m gonna lose my shit,” Abe mumbled, focused on typing some bullshit that would probably ensure Sage would never ever be able to see Ash ever again.

“I’m pretty sure his name is not Ash Ketchum,” Carolyn said dryly. The two were silent for a second, and then both Sage and Carolyn’s eyes widened at the same time. “Please tell me you’re not asking him if his last name is Ketchum right now, Abe,” Carolyn said, whipping her head around to look at Abe, who blinked innocently at them.

At once, Carolyn and Sage both lunged up from the couch, grabbing for Abe. He yelped and dashed into the kitchen, but they were hot on his heels. Carolyn managed to grab him around the waist while Sage wrangled his phone from Abe’s hands.

Sage frantically pulled up the text conversation Abe had started.

Sage

is this Ash? this is sage.

Ash

Yes. thank you for contacting me

Sage

want to meet up tmmrw around 7? I’ll text you the location.

Ash

Absolutely :)

A pretty normal conversation, surprisingly. Sage breathed out a sigh of relief, only to see the last sentence Abe was writing, still unsent in the text box.

btw your last name wouldn’t happen to be ketchum would it

Sage hurriedly deleted the unsent message, closed out of the conversation, and tucked the phone back into his pocket before leveling a cold glare on his friend. Abe gulped, but still smiled, scratching the back of his neck.

“Heh heh…no harm done, right?”