#mostly when volo gets peeved at some specific person with a private historical collection he's being paid to verify something in

[miniongrin]

Statute of Limitations (Immortals AU)

Wrote 800 words for an AU that’s been rotating in my brain for over a year that I still haven’t written, but I’m posting this anyway because I do what I want.

AU context, sparknotes edition: Ingo couldn’t get sent back directly to the future for timey-wimey reasons and spent 140 years immortal, chilling in the Coronet Highlands. Accidentally befriended/tamed/domesticated the feral cat of a man we know as Volo (also immortal) while he was waiting to catch up to the future and his twin. Now the Nimbasa trio has been reunited for over a year and Volo is the twins’ weird roommate and Elesa’s bitchiest bestie.

~

“Hang on,” Elesa says one night, as they’re sitting around the twins’ living room eating Sinnoh takeout, two and a half hours and two-thirds of the way into an hour-long documentary on Hisui. They keep pausing to give Ingo and Volo the chance to expound on whatever topic the documentary didn’t have the time or information to elaborate on themselves; Ingo’s infodumping is familiar and comforting, while Volo’s is a bit of a surprise but hilariously bitchy. Even when the documentary gets things right. “Volo—you consulted on this? Historically?”

“That makes it sound like I did so fifty years ago,” Volo sniffs. “I was a historical consultant on the topic. Mostly by mail; by the time they were making this, Cynthia was a little too popular for me to go wandering around Sinnoh without a good excuse for looking like her fraternal twin.”

So, yes, but in fifty words instead of one. Cool. “You like… you got paid money for this? Is this your job?”

Volo makes an dismissive sound. “Yes, I got paid for it, but it’s not exactly reliable work, nor does it pay greatly. As a historian, the best money is in research grants, but those are a little hard to get a hold of without extensive history at a university, and my need to shuffle identities every decade or so did clash with the need to accumulate that sort of history.”

“…So, yes but no?”

Volo rolls his eyes at her. “Yes, but no.”

Elesa mulls over that. She doesn’t unpause the documentary just yet, because there’s a niggling question in her brain now—

“Do you have a job?” Emmet asks before she can. “You’re here a lot.”

Volo huffs, deciding to take offense in that catty way of his, so Elesa jumps in before letting him answer: “Dude, you’re clearly loaded, I have never once heard you say a thing about hopping back and forth between here and Sinnoh and plane tickets aren’t cheap. Frankly, neither is this apartment, and I’d be surprised if you’re just letting the twins pay for it all.”

Volo regards her shrewdly for a moment, then hums as his eyes slide away. “Don’t worry about it.”

That is the least satisfying answer on the planet. She and Emmet immediately turn to Ingo for answers.

“I do not worry about it,” Ingo says immediately.

Elesa and Emmet’s eyes meet. Weird, suspicious emphasis with no real answer. Hmmm.

“I am Emmet. Are we harboring a fucking criminal?” Emmet demands.

Volo sputters. “I beg your pardon? That’s your first assumption?”

“That’s not an answer,” Elesa points out, entertained. “He’s only going to get more suspicious the more you avoid giving one.”

“And you, of course, are virtuously on my side,” Volo mutters bitchily. “The disrespect! And here I thought we had something. A camaraderie, if you will—”

“It’s not like you’re a poacher, Ingo would worry about it a whole lot if that were the case,” Elesa interrupts him. “I can’t really imagine you beating someone up—”

“I can,” Emmet says.

“—without going full-on crazy eyes,” Elesa corrects herself. “So this hypothetical crime you may have committed and have definitely not denied committing is probably, y’know. Petty. Which fits, because you are a petty, petty bitch!”

“I,” Volo says with dignity, “am the classiest bitch any of you will ever meet.”

“I am the classiest bitch in this room, but nice try.”

“You’re all cutting-edge fashion and avant-garde, that’s not the same thing as class.”

Elesa gasps loudly in overblown offense. “You take that back!”

“Ladies, you are both pretty,” Emmet intones. “Ingo. Has Volo committed crimes? Yes or no.”

Ingo pinches the bridge of his nose. “He doesn’t have a valid birth certificate and yet has had a functional passport for decades despite being stuck at twenty-seven. Of course he’s committed crimes, we knew that already.”

“I am Emmet. I meant for money.”

Ingo shrugs and reaches for a new can of soda. “Well, that’s none of my business.”

“Ingo.”

“Look,” Volo sighs, “can any of you truthfully tell me that you’ve never talked to a particularly out-of-touch gentleman whose lone battling Pokémon is holding a useless nugget of gold worth more than everything you have on your person and thought, you know, I bet I have an island somewhere that I could sell this moron?”

There’s a beat of silence. Emmet snorts. Ingo puts a hand over his face that doesn’t hide the amused curl to the corner of his mouth.

Elesa cackles. “Oh dragons, you scam rich people for a living? I need to hear about this right now immediately. Story time! Funniest scam you’ve done, let’s go.”

“Accusing me of being a scam artist now?” Volo snips facetiously, but he’s smirking. “I will confess to nothing. …At least, not until I have the chance to check the statute of limitations for a few things.”