Char's gaze flicked down to his shoulder for a moment. "It is now."
It was hard to argue with the pecking order; since Charizards really weren't so good at the whole "equal coexistence where everyone is happy friends" thing, establishing a top Charizard was a necessity for them to live together without tearing each other apart over territory. It was probably for the better that Sasha was so opposed to the ways of her kind; her lack of interest in challenging him had made it easy to file her beneath him. The abnormality of their circumstances had made the Route 10 Charizards so weak, too, that asserting dominance had been utterly simple.
"The real stupid part of it," Char mumbled, "is how goddamn happy I was that he was a Charizard in the first place." At the start of the week, he'd been ecstatic -- a very contradictory sort of ecstatic, considering how unbelievably pissed he'd been about being usurped, and how he'd spent a lot of the time after in sullen obedience. But it'd been a good kind of anger -- he was mad for exactly the right reasons. How the hell, though, do you explain to a docile please-everyone grass-type that there was a happiness to be had in the act of competing? This had to be something uniquely Charizard, one of those entirely unexplainable things; he already knew that Bulba didn't care for his habit of picking fights at every chance.
"Sasha's too tame to get it. Riwane's still a Charmander, and they ain't wired like we are. Max... he got it. He understood what bein' a Charizard's like. I'm happy bein' Green's, but livin' tame means curbin' a lot of things." He was already excessively Charizard as is -- his fights made his brother worry, his wanderlust made his team miss him, his need for isolation and independence made it so goddamned hard to just talk to Bulba about what was on his mind. "I don't... got a lot of people that understand me," he admitted, albeit reluctantly -- he wasn't sure if Bulba believed he was one of those people, "and I don't got a lot of chances to let go and be how I'm s'posed to be. I thought..."
Oh. Here was the hardest part to admit. He might be willing to tolerate contact for the sake of putting Bulba at ease, but this, apparently, was the point where he got uncomfortable and tried to pull away. Find something to look at other than Bulba. Shift his wings and curl his tail and and then immediately reconsider that last one because Bulba probably did not want to be very close to a tail flame. Basically have no idea what to do with himself, because he had no idea how to lay this sort of feeling bare, even after four years of working on this kind of shit. Eventually, he settled for sitting up; this kept him out of physical contact, and had the bonus of letting him drape his wings around himself, like that barrier would somehow magically render him invisible.
C'mon, Char, spit it out. It's not that hard.
"I thought it'd be okay 'cause he was my friend."
He said it quietly, but as soon as it left his mouth, he had to bite back the urge to follow it up with too-loud laughter. How stupid did that even sound? Him, Char, Kerosene... trusting a human and then getting all shocked when that turned out to be a piss-awful idea. It kind of was laughable, wasn't it?
I AM SO SORRY I DON'T KNOW HOW THIS HAPPENED
damn you arcaniiiineChar's gaze flicked down to his shoulder for a moment. "It is now."
It was hard to argue with the pecking order; since Charizards really weren't so good at the whole "equal coexistence where everyone is happy friends" thing, establishing a top Charizard was a necessity for them to live together without tearing each other apart over territory. It was probably for the better that Sasha was so opposed to the ways of her kind; her lack of interest in challenging him had made it easy to file her beneath him. The abnormality of their circumstances had made the Route 10 Charizards so weak, too, that asserting dominance had been utterly simple.
"The real stupid part of it," Char mumbled, "is how goddamn happy I was that he was a Charizard in the first place." At the start of the week, he'd been ecstatic -- a very contradictory sort of ecstatic, considering how unbelievably pissed he'd been about being usurped, and how he'd spent a lot of the time after in sullen obedience. But it'd been a good kind of anger -- he was mad for exactly the right reasons. How the hell, though, do you explain to a docile please-everyone grass-type that there was a happiness to be had in the act of competing? This had to be something uniquely Charizard, one of those entirely unexplainable things; he already knew that Bulba didn't care for his habit of picking fights at every chance.
"Sasha's too tame to get it. Riwane's still a Charmander, and they ain't wired like we are. Max... he got it. He understood what bein' a Charizard's like. I'm happy bein' Green's, but livin' tame means curbin' a lot of things." He was already excessively Charizard as is -- his fights made his brother worry, his wanderlust made his team miss him, his need for isolation and independence made it so goddamned hard to just talk to Bulba about what was on his mind. "I don't... got a lot of people that understand me," he admitted, albeit reluctantly -- he wasn't sure if Bulba believed he was one of those people, "and I don't got a lot of chances to let go and be how I'm s'posed to be. I thought..."
Oh. Here was the hardest part to admit. He might be willing to tolerate contact for the sake of putting Bulba at ease, but this, apparently, was the point where he got uncomfortable and tried to pull away. Find something to look at other than Bulba. Shift his wings and curl his tail and and then immediately reconsider that last one because Bulba probably did not want to be very close to a tail flame. Basically have no idea what to do with himself, because he had no idea how to lay this sort of feeling bare, even after four years of working on this kind of shit. Eventually, he settled for sitting up; this kept him out of physical contact, and had the bonus of letting him drape his wings around himself, like that barrier would somehow magically render him invisible.
C'mon, Char, spit it out. It's not that hard.
"I thought it'd be okay 'cause he was my friend."
He said it quietly, but as soon as it left his mouth, he had to bite back the urge to follow it up with too-loud laughter. How stupid did that even sound? Him, Char, Kerosene... trusting a human and then getting all shocked when that turned out to be a piss-awful idea. It kind of was laughable, wasn't it?