James x Reader | Pokemon | - | REWRITE |

TR | Strictly For Business Purposes

After a dinner was spent mostly in silence, Y/N was ordered back to their room, and everyone else went to their room by choice---which was normal, obviously, but knowing someone was deprived of a choice that they would've taken anyway still didn't sit right with James.

With time finally to himself, he reflected on what Meowth had said to Jessie that night. That Y/N would fit into the Team Rocket trio.

Of course, he wouldn't be directly opposed to the idea. They weren't uptight, and they were almost as witty and annoying as himself---which he liked greatly. Admired, almost.

Their personalities didn't clash with any of them except Jessie, but it was more of Jessie clashing with them, which always happens.

They still had a long way to go with battling, but they had just started as a trainer. Which meant that James could mentor them and have a battle partner that actually listens to his strategy for once. With a tag team like that, battling could be much more efficient for them as a whole.

But at the end of all this, Y/N wouldn't stay with them willingly, because they would never have the freedom to make that choice.

And that made James angry. Actually angry.

At Jessie. And he hoped Meowth felt the same.

Because he decided that of all the stupid plans and ideas and wants that swarmed in his head all day, he would catch this one.

So if Jessie kept proving to James that she was changing for the worse, James silently promised Y/N that he would actually do something about it.

For Y/N, for himself, for Meowth, and for Jessie. Because he didn't want her to become so bad to the point of no redemption, and to the point of more serious consequences.

Risks gave them power in this ranking system she was finally deciding to play in. And she had potential. Potential to go so far and leave them all behind. Potential to go somewhere else, be someone else, do something else...

And there had been so much tension ever since Jessie originally fulfilled her plans of kidnapping a trainer. Maybe this was her hint that she really did want to leave him and Meowth, maybe this was her just trying to rub the fact in their faces one last time.

James didn't know what he was really doing here. What he was trying to prove, what he was trying to get. But he couldn't imagine himself anywhere else.

And if Jessie left, or became someone else, he didn't know where he'd be left in that.

But he'd still be left. And that didn't feel right.

James almost laughed at that last thought. He could never be serious for more than he had to be.

But he thought about how the trainer was always blaming him. He brushed it off at first. It was Jessie's fault after all, wasn't it? James didn't do anything. He was only going to steal their pokemon.

But maybe it was partially his fault after all. He was perfectly capable of stopping Jessie, wasn't he? He could have told Weezing to not go through with the attack, it was his Weezing after all.

But he just stood there and watched, did he? Just went with it?

He held his blankets tightly in anger for himself. Nothing he could do now. Nothing that wouldn't definitely fail.