I woke up in Spark's bed, which Spark was not in; he was sitting in a chair against a wall to the side of the bed, doing something on his tablet. Blearily looking around and blinking, I turned towards that wall.
"Uh, hey, honey. Do you know how I got here?"
"Candela called me at, like, 6 this morning and overrode Do Not Disturb to ask me to come get you. Apparently you decided that it was high past time to reconcile with her, and also learn something about what the music scene has been up to since 2015. I'm proud of you for doing that. I have no idea why in the gods' names you decided to do it at 3:00 in the morning. Anyway, apparently you talked for a bit slash you beat yourself up, and she got you out of your spiral with weed brownies and Motionless In White. And then you passed out, so she called me to come get you. I came over, picked you up, and you were still asleep so I just carried you into bed."
"Oh. Yeah. I do remember talking to her, vaguely. I was... not in my right mind."
"Yeah, I figured, since none of your Pokemon have claws that width. Are you at any risk of hurting yourself or others? I won't do anything without your consent, but if you are, as both your boyfriend and a team leader I'm obligated to do whatever I can to stop you. I know you wouldn't let anything happen to me, and the same goes from me to you. I'm still... I'm annoyed at myself that I didn't notice what was going on with the headband and all a couple weeks ago until it was too late."
"...yeah, that was me. I had a... really bad dream, but I think I'm okay now? Like, I don't really remember much of what Candela and I talked about well, but I think she told me what I needed to hear. I feel like we got some loose ends resolved, and I should be okay. I wear long sleeves at work anyway, and I don't think I went that deep. I don't... I haven't done that before, at least not that I remember. I just --"
"I know you already know this, but I'm worried about you. Promise me that you're going to look into some professional help, okay? I understand your concerns about disclosure given your line of work, but I think you could really benefit from having someone to talk to who isn't involved with you emotionally in the same way. We both could."
"Trust me, I know. The only reason I haven't gotten therapy before is that all the ones that are valid on the Team Go Rocket insurance are basically on our payroll, and, well, my line of work doesn't reward honest introspection. I've been sent to some required counseling in my time, and they're not interested in helping you; just getting you back into the evil business. And, well, I'm sick of self-identifying as evil. There's more to me than that. And let's be honest, most of Ronnie's output isn't actually all that good."
I rolled out of bed, reflexively covering my crotch before realizing that I was still fully clothed in the same outfit I'd been wearing hours before, and maybe when I attempted to sleep the previous night. I stretched and let out an extended yawn, the sleeves of my hoodie falling down just enough to show some of the scratch marks on my arm. They looked pretty nasty, but the good news was that I hadn't really broken skin save in a few spots, so it was unlikely to leave any scars or permanent damage and would most likely fade rather quickly. I'd had plenty of experience getting scratched by Pokemon in my time to draw on. Spark watched me stretch with a soft smile, before walking over to me and holding up his tablet.
"So, since you're in the market to expand your music taste, would you be interested in checking out some of mine? I know you don't like using streaming services, but I can send you a link to my playlist if you want to download anything."
"Spark, come on, I've heard your stuff in the car. It's all weird dance music, chipmunk voices, and pop from when we were in middle school. The more electronic and less, uh, horrifyingly gross and sexual parts of crunkcore are practically the only thing we can agree on."
"Yeah, Elaphe might be more your taste. Anything I have with screaming in it is a holdover from when she tried to get me into edgier stuff. It didn't work too well, but I'm not sure if snakes can even really hear music?"
"That's a misconception. Snakes have somewhat muffled and limited directional hearing because they don't have external ear holes like lizards, but they've got pretty good precision in between air and ground vibrations. Also, I think I've seen your ex wear headphones, so they've...probably got external ears of some sort."
"Want to head over to Mystic HQ so you can talk to them and Blanche? Everybody should be awake by now."
"Eh, sure. Why not? I don't really want to go back to my HQ for a while, at least not until the scratch marks fade a bit. That was unusual for me, and I have no plans of repeating it, but I know that Cliff would freak out about it and that would just make me feel worse. And Sierra... well, the less said about Sierra, the better."
With a tight grip on each other's hands, the couple walked out to Spark's minivan, whose seats vibrated with the aforementioned moderately less disgusting than typical screaming + weird dance pop elements crunkcore on Spark and Arlo's drive down to Mystic HQ. Arlo texted Blanche from the passenger's seat, as they'd requested after the slideshow night, so they knew to let him in and weren't taken off guard by his arrival. Sure enough, Blanche and Elaphe were both waiting for them at the door when they arrived.
Well, Blanche was waiting at the door. Elaphe was enclosed in one of the Mystic HQ lobby soundproofing pods, with all the curtains drawn. The only reason Arlo knew they were present in there was the smell of their favored ambiguously poisonous to humans tea blend and their bag sitting outside the pod. Spark and Blanche exchanged the requisite greetings while Arlo walked over to the pod. Evidently Elaphe could see out even if Arlo couldn't see in, since once he approached, the pod slid open a crack. A hand, presumably either wearing a textured glove or with a very detailed tattoo sleeve based on its pattern, emerged from the crack and wordlessly dropped a USB drive into his own. Arlo opened his mouth to thank them, but the pod had already closed and become once again soundproof. He stared silently at the extremely nondescript flash drive. Blanche and Spark in turn panned their attention over to him, Blanche making a very unnerving subtle chuckle under their breath at his confusion.
"That's Elaphe for you. They do come out sometimes, but not for, well, you."
"What, exactly, IS your girlfriend? From what I've seen of them, they don't have a human skin tone, never blink, and I think I saw them swallow a live Rattata whole once."
"She has. That was one of the first things Elaphe did when I recruited her as an admin. I could see it wiggling on the way down..." Spark visibly shuddered, prompting a glare from Blanche.
"They're a wonderful, intelligent, and compassionate person, and that's all that matters. Also, they're excellent in bed."
Spark and Arlo had both stopped dead in their tracks to gape in Blanche's direction.
"What?"
"I just..."
"You and Candela keep telling me about your sex lives."
"I..."
"Anyway, Arlo, I don't listen to music recreationally much anymore, but I can send you some links to video essay series and podcasts you may enjoy. I've recently gotten into one focusing on popular music analysis actually inspired by you, even though it isn't your specific genre taste."
"Uh, thanks. You can text those to me. You have my number. I'm just goling to... uh, Spark? Can we leave now?"
"Yes."
Blanche calmly and not-too-subtly smugly waved them off. Elaphe emerged from their soundproofing pod and matched their smirk.
"Did you get 'em?"
"Hell yeah."
"Heh. It's so hot hearing you swear."
Blanche and Elaphe paused to make out. Gods, Blanche loved how their partner's fangs and tongue forking felt, especially in conjunction with their lip piercing. Of course, this didn't last long because Blanche had a thought occur to them.
"Uh, what did you hand him on that flash drive? I've heard the odd vaguely metal-like noise coming from your room, and you have shirts with iconography I...assume are from bands, but I don't think you've ever really talked about or shared your music taste with me."
"Oh, just some stuff from back home he's probably not familiar with. They haven't done concerts around here. Twisted Roses, mostly. No one's sure whether they're supposed to be goth, hardcore, or metal, and I don't think anyone really cares."
Despite Arlo's searching, there was no USB port in Spark's car, so when he returned to Instinct HQ, he commandeered Spark's work computer (Arlo had not brought his laptop to go reconcile and get stoned with Candela, so didn't have it on him) and started scrolling through its meticulously organized file system.
"Damn, not only do all these tracks have folders and metadata, she even included manually applied album covers and a README directory text file. That's better than a lot of professional software I've gotten, especially since I'm looking up these albums and none of them have any online records, anywhere. Do you have any idea what all this is?"
Spark looked over Arlo's shoulder and shrugged. "No. Back when we were dating, she mostly just listened to Nightcore. I don't recognize any of these band names."
"I guess just open up a random track and see what it sounds like?"
"You're willing to let me do that on your computer?"
"Elaphe handled most of the tech stuff back when they worked here, so I trust them to control for viruses and stuff. Worst case scenario, it's at frequencies humans can't hear?"
With more hesitation than he cared to admit, Arlo clicked on a random file and was immediately blasted with a wall of distortion guitar, extremely fast drumbeats, and something that sounded about halfway between an avian screech and a draconic roar with resonance he'd never heard a human do. Based on its multiple staccato notes, it was almost certainly trying to say...something, but he had no prayer of understanding what. Arlo abruptly closed the music player while Spark removed his jaw from the floor.
"Okay, let's try to find a more...comprehensible track to get an idea of what this band's about. Uh, here we go. An acoustic cover. Should give me a sense of their lyrical sensibilities so I can put... that into more context."
It was definitely a minor-key, angsty ballad-esque song, or at least that was what it had been turned into in the acoustic covering process. It vaguely reminded Arlo of the obligatory power ballad from every Craig era Escape the Fate album. There were two vocalists with good layering, although Arlo couldn't guess the genders of either of them. Even beyond the ambiguity inherent in emo-adjacent artists' pitch ranges, neither of them had vowel resonances that resembled... any vocalist he had ever heard; typically you could at least determine who someone was trained by even if their own gender was uncertain without (or sometimes even with) visuals. For that matter, he wasn't totally sure he heard recognizable syllables, or that what he was hearing was possible for a human to pronounce. He tried to mimic some of it under his breath and quickly found himself tongue-tied, and turned toward Spark with an exaggerated pose of confusion.
"No, I don't know what language this is in either. Elaphe's not from around here and they've always had a bit of an accent, but they've also always been pretty cagey about where they're from so I've never asked. Presumably it's a sensitive topic."
Arlo tabbed back to a randomly selected other track, which was back to the hard stuff and now recognizably the same vocalist as the acoustic cover, even including some melodic / screaming layering Arlo had not noticed before. He still had no prayer of understanding what was being said, but what was certain that it filled him with a deep and physically carried feeling of dread. He abruptly turned off the music player and ejected the flash drive.
"Yeah, uh, I don't think I'm going to be looking into this further. It's excellent, musically, but I think it might either summon or be by actual demons. Honestly, Blanche's girlfriend slash your ex might be the only person -- creature -- whatever who scares me more than Blanche does."
"I think that's why Blanche likes them so much."