Chapter Text
Spring is Ingo's favourite season. Warm enough to thaw the ice and coax the cherry blossoms into bloom, but not yet the heavy heat of summer. Everything is fresh and new and green: new leaves, new depot agent uniforms, new scents in the air. Spring is a time of new beginnings.
He stands in front of the mirror, awed by the sight of them together in green. Emmet is fidgeting with his uniform, pink all over with the nervous, gleeful anticipation of their years of work, tugging at his side bangs as he beams at the mirror. Ingo fixes his tie and takes his hands in his own, squeezing them tight.
“We made it,” he whispers. “We made it, Emmet. We’re depot agents.”
Emmet’s smile is like the sun, giddy and bright, too excited to speak. He just jumps for him, and they spin around their bathroom, laughing and messing up each other's hair until they step out into the first day of their new lives, together and glowing with hope.
Gear Station is a bustling, purring animal, the thrumming underground heart of Nimbasa. Another agent waves them over. Their name tag cheerfully proclaims HI! My name is JACKIE. Ingo scents the air: he's unpresented and always been bad at distinguishing dynamics, but he's reasonably sure they're a beta, with a pleasant scent like warm stone, clean linens, and a hint of the iron and oil that seems to suffuse Gear Station.
"You're the new interns? Ingo and Emmet?" They glance between them, and make the awkward pause that the twins have become very well acquainted with over the last twenty years: visibly struggling to ask how to tell them apart without seeming rude. After a few seconds, Ingo surreptitiously jabs Emmet in the back to urge him to put the poor agent out of their misery. He finds it funny when people can't tell them apart. Ingo, having a heart, does not.
He steps sharply forward and points at his own face.
"I am Emmet. If you look closely, I smile more. Ingo does not."
Jackie looks relieved. "Oh. Thank you, that's very helpful." They clear their throat and say the words they've been waiting to hear for years. "Ingo and Emmet! Welcome to Gear Station!"
After having their IDs examined, registering their partner pokemon, Lampent and Eelektrik, and being handed clip-on lanyards (conspicuously labelled with their names), Jackie leads them down the hallway and gives a brief introductory spiel that neither of them listen to because Ingo is poking his twin in the ribs.
"How many times do I have to tell you that it's rude to make them wait?" he hisses under his breath. "You like watching people squirm for no reason!"
"It is not our fault we're identical," Emmet whispers back, fending off his poking with a smirk. "You should be grateful I didn't introduce you as the twin who can't handle spice, or the twin who cries over soap operas, or-"
"You cried too! And they're our coworker, you should be nicer-"
Jackie stops in front of a door and urges them in.
"Ramses will handle your orientation and training today. You'll fit right in, don't worry," they reassure with a smile.
Emmet nods and even has the gall to salute like he's a responsible depot agent. As Jackie walks away, Emmet grabs the handle, mutters under his breath, at least I can eat spicy ramen, because he insists on getting the last word in every argument he can, winks, and opens the door.
Ingo is wordless with exasperation and affection and familiarity and everything else that makes up the huge, warm, purring storm of Emmet within him, barely able to breathe as the feeling surges through him. The only thing that captures it is- that's my baby brother, that's my Emmet. He presses his hand over his face; his cheeks are warm. He follows Emmet inside.
Ingo slumps into bed with a huff of relief, enjoying the satisfying ache of their day. He can still taste Gear Station on the back of his tongue, mixing with the steam still curling from the bathroom.
"Ingo?"
He reaches out and his fingers barely graze his brother's in the gap between their beds, which brings a slight smile to his lips as always. The other bedroom is supposed to be his, but spending his nights there would mean they couldn't have these late-night talks where he feels closer to his twin than ever before.
"Yes?"
His fingers lightly squeeze around his. "Can you still smell it, or is it just me?"
Ingo laughs. "I can taste it." Iron and oil, brawny and musty and solidly reassuring. Still, the scent of their apartment calms him in a deeper way. Their apartment smells like cherry shampoo and his favourite chocolate, smells like them.
"Not that I didn't enjoy it, but it is certainly verrry different from school." He hears Emmet click his teeth, trying to get the scent out. "We will need more soap. I showered twice and I can still smell it."
"We'll get used to it," he reassures. "Don't buy Nimbasa's entire stock of shampoo just yet. And don't drive up our water bill, we do not get paid until Friday."
Emmet snorts and only lets go long enough to clamber out of his bed and into Ingo's, the mattress creaking beneath his weight, hair catching the streetlight glow from outside and the gold light of the tableside lamp, still mumbling playful complaints.
"You know how sensitive I am about scents," he accuses teasingly. Ingo just hums, enjoying the feeling of Emmet pressed against him, head under his chin, safe and tangled beneath his blankets. Yes, this is the best part about sharing a room. He runs his fingers through his hair as Emmet talks. "You're being so unsympathetic, big brother."
His mouth quirks in a secret smile. "I've been thinking of wearing cologne. Maybe I will start tomorrow."
Emmet squeals in his arms, wiggling further into his embrace. "I'll kick you out of our room!"
"I'll put it on your pillow." He pokes Emmet teasingly and rumples his hair until he sputters. "I'll put it on your Eelektross plushie. It'll help you get used to Gear Station."
He receives a faceful of his own pillow for that. Emmet climbs up on top of him, flushed and grinning, wielding his pillow, and smacks him with it a second time while Ingo is laughing too hard to escape.
"My brother is not going to put some random alpha scent all over my pillow," he declares with another whack. "And he is definitely not putting it on my Eelektross!"
Ingo grabs for him, smothered in worn cotton, and manages to drag Emmet down on top of him, squishing the pillow between them.
"Or what?" Too late, he remembers that Emmet always brings his own pillow into his bed, and receives a second faceful of bedding. It smells like he does, cherry shampoo and something sweet and rich like honey, something that leaves him dazed and blinking, mouth open. It also leaves him vulnerable to being smacked with the pillow several more times, until Emmet collapses on top of him in a fit of giggles and nuzzles into his neck.
His arms go around Emmet like they're made to be there, and Ingo hopes that's true. He wants this to be his forever. It's a guilty, hindbrain kind of thought, the kind he only has when the world is dark and soft-edged like this: he hopes that after they present, they'll still share a room and he can have Emmet in his bed like this. As long as he can have that, the looming storm of the future doesn't seem so bad at all.
"Are you going to stay in my bed tonight?" he asks fondly. Emmet answers that by stealing his pillow from between them and cuddling closer, just like always. One would think that two pillows and two people would result in one pillow per person, but that's not how it works with them. Emmet snuggles into both with the single-minded focus of a hibernating Beartic settling in for winter. He doesn't even put his head on Ingo's pillow, just squishes it against his chest and buries his face in it, steals most of his blankets, and gives him an angel's smile. The surge of fondness, exasperation, adoration swells up through him again, as fierce and often as the tides returning to shore. Oh, that's his Emmet, his baby brother, and Ingo loves him.
At least while Emmet is distracted with commandeering his pillow and most of his bed, he can pull him close and play with his hair, still fluffy from his shower. It's getting a little long in the back, just long enough for his loose curls to tangle in his fingers. They should schedule a haircut.
"You've stolen most of my blankets again," he informs him, lightly pulling his hair.
"Such an astute observation, big brother," Emmet drawls, and rewards him by yanking away the last two inches of blanket Ingo had been clinging to and sprawling himself fully over his bed. "And now I have stolen the rest of them."
That familiar affectionate feeling squirms within him, rolling over to show an iridescent underbelly: some strange, heated, greedy urge. Usually, when it rises within him, it's fleeting, like an animal half-glimpsed through dark water, gone before he understands what it wants. This time, it lingers.
His twin mattress is almost too small for both of them, has been since they started high school, and Emmet's long, lean figure almost spills off the sides unless they tangle their legs together. Now, with him spread all across his bed, clothes rumpled and soft curls flopping across his pillow, pink with teasing…
"You are a brat," he says, and yanks the blankets towards him. Emmet yelps and almost topples forward, catching himself with a hand on Ingo's thigh. Their faces are inches apart. His pupils are dilated wide. The air is thick with the scent of cherries.
"Am not," he says breathlessly, and pulls them back. The bed creaks beneath them as they wrestle, Emmet shaking his too-long bangs out of his eyes and always, always looking at him with something like love and anticipation in his gaze.
"You are," Ingo huffs. Their wrestling slows, both of them too warm to do more than strain against the other, hands searching for purchase on tangled blankets and narrow limbs. "Always are. Always have been." He tosses his head as his hair sticks to his forehead with sweat. "My bratty baby brother, Emmet."
He squirms, laughing, and tries to grab him by his shirt, but Ingo dodges and grabs his wrist instead. His scent gland is hot under his palm, and Emmet suddenly shivers on the bed beneath him. He immediately lets go, but his hand is stopped as Emmet pushes his wrist back into his grasp and just looks at him, something shining in the silver of his eyes. Ingo wants something and he's afraid to name it.
"Am I?" Emmet asks. His voice is lower, almost beseeching. He sits up, legs still spread across the bed, and his wrist rubs slowly across Ingo's palm. The strain of wrestling is melting out of both of them, but a heavier tension is coiling up in Ingo's chest like a purring animal.
"Emmet," he says helplessly. His twin reaches out, and when his shower-softened skin brushes the sensitive inside of his wrist Ingo sinks his teeth into his lower lip with a whistling hiss. It feels like firecrackers popping slow-motion through his body from the point they meet, lighting up everything they touch.
The light plays across the bridge of Emmet's nose and the fullness of his lower lip. Features Ingo has seen a hundred thousand times, features mirrored on his own face. Secretly, he's always believed Emmet wears them better.
"Of course you'll be an alpha." Emmet's words are low and warm and shake at the edges as if he's talking to himself, but he never looks away.
Ingo has always had a feeling he'd be an alpha, but hearing it from Emmet feels different. Galvanized, alive, expectant not like the ticking of a biological clock but like a summer warmth that invites storms. Static tingles at the edges of his fingertips. Emmet is so warm under his hands.
"Do you think so?"
"You always say you'll be one." He looks down and the corner of his mouth tilts up before he traces his thumb over his scent gland. Ingo gasps and jerks with the hot pulse of sensation, his bangs falling into his eyes, and Emmet grins and looks entirely too pleased with himself.
It's warm in their bedroom, warmer than spring should be. It feels like the cherries are in full fruit rather than newly blossoming. Emmet looks good when he's satisfied and pink with heat and Ingo wants to see more- he rubs his thumb firmly across Emmet's wrist and drinks in the high-pitched noise he makes.
It is too warm in here. They should open a window. They should let go of each other and go to sleep with the steam of the shower still dancing around them and the fireworks of the cherry blossoms blooming outside. They don't.
"You would be a good alpha," Emmet repeats, grip tightening. "Since you like teasing so much. Since you like to-" He reaches out and pulls at Ingo's lower lip, sweet-scented skin making him pant, making his tongue drag over his teeth. "To bite."
"In that case, you'll be an excellent alpha too," Ingo retorts thoughtlessly, but the words stumble over something patiently waiting at the back of his mind.
Emmet doesn't say anything. His grip tightens around Ingo's back, his breath hitching. His hand slips from his cheek, taking the scent of cherries with it.
"Okay," he says quietly.
"You don't have to be," Ingo hurries to say, wanting to soothe that undefinable filament of tension that now winds between them. "We don't know what we'll be yet, I shouldn't be so presumptuous. What- what do you think you'll be?"
Emmet's thumb grazes the inside of his wrist again. Ingo shivers and strokes his nape where his curls bounce away from his neck. His skin is warm.
"A beta," he mumbles. Ingo can tell when he's lying, so he leans down and brushes his hair away from his brow, rubbing circles into his shoulders until his unsteadiness is eased away. Emmet sinks against him, words slow and deliberate in the way that comes from practice, memorizing the cadence in a mirror when Ingo wasn't looking. "Or maybe I would be an omega."
Emmet won't look at him. The words are as soft and alluring as melted wax as they sink into him, a storm surge of possibilities that Ingo has never imagined before, never allowed himself to imagine. Emmet as an omega. He feels warm.
He's still silent, now starting to curl into himself and pull away, opening his mouth to take it back. Ingo hushes him, scrambling to fix his mistake as he stills him with another touch to his scent gland. The pillow and the mess of blankets are all tangled around them, smelling like his lime-blossom soap as he tucks Emmet's head under his chin and holds him tight until he goes pliant.
"That's okay," he says, voice shaking with awe. "You can be an omega, Emmet, that would be-" Perfect, he wants to say, but that feels too intimate even for the privacy of their bedroom. "Good, if it makes you happy, if you want to be one."
As long as he can have this, oh, this sweet springtime with his baby brother entwined in him like flowers growing towards the sun together, nothing else matters. Ingo doesn't care if they're both alphas or both omegas, only that he has never been more grateful that identical twins are all but guaranteed to share a dynamic. Being blood means that they won't conflict, even during heat or rut. No matter what, they'll be okay. Nothing has to change. They'll still be their two-car train, matching as always. Ingo noses into his silvery hair and strokes the back of his neck.
"We will be okay," he says firmly. "We have each other. You have me, Emmet. Always."
Emmet's tension yields beautifully under his hands. Ingo knows how to make his baby brother feel better, always has, and there's something reverent in knowing just how to work the stress out of his shoulders and ease him into sleep. Oh, he loves Emmet, so much it knocks him breathless, loves him more than anything. It's times like this, with the sweet spice of spring curling through their window, Emmet's breathing slowing until it synchronizes with his own, his warm weight chasing away the last of the winter chill, that he thinks he will burst with it.
"I love you," he whispers, and Emmet's hand finds his, wrist to wrist, fingers twining as he mouths it back.
When he's done, Emmet crawls up to lie face to face with him, a breath apart. His eyes swirl quicksilver and drowsy and endlessly trusting in the low light as he leans in and rubs his jaw against Ingo's in a long, slow, breathless arc. Fireworks burst in the space they touch, Ingo tingling like he's a cherry tree about to burst, all at once, into bloom.
"Stay," Emmet murmurs, thick with sleep and love. Ingo's lips part, dizzy; he can taste all of springtime around them. He bows his head and drags his jaw against Emmet's to return the mark, sensitive glands rubbing together. Cherry shampoo, cherry bomb, firecrackers bursting glorious in the fragrant night sky of his heart, Ingo finds exactly what the purr in his chest has been saying.
He wants Emmet. Always has. All he needs to make their bedroom into paradise is him, his baby brother right here beside him in the sweet heaven of their bed.
"Always," he promises, and they hold each other close as they drift into sleep. Ingo dreams about cherries, red-flushed and warm under his teeth, tasting so perfectly sweet.