Little woozy Grusha story

I don’t get many quick writing prompts these days, but I managed to choke the goose for a bit of Grusha content. TW for alcohol mention (not alcohol abuse), head injuries, and general bloating and nausea. Also TW for non stop run on paragraphs.

———

A snowboarding accident was (probably) the worst thing that could have happened to Grusha’s career. He’d been a gold medal star for the majority of his day to day life, only having to give up a bit of time on his early weekdays for gym battles. Geeta had some other schmo running the gym for the rest of the week- but it did mean his Mondays and Tuesdays were when the gym was busiest.

He could handle that, honestly. In actuality, he was rather humble about his Olympic status back in “the day” and had no problem interacting with trainers and fans alike. He always had more of a problem dealing with the cold weather; skateboarding just wasn’t an ideal change for him. Snow was so much more forgiving.

…That was until it wasn’t. But even then, it wasn’t the snow that was at fault. Grusha only had to become distracted by the Roto-drone filming his last competition of the year for a split second before he lost control. His board had pushed right out from under him before he had anything to do about it, his head coming in contact with a rock hidden right under the fresh layer of powder. All while being broadcasted live to the tube. It only took seconds for his career to come to a skidding halt.

Well. One of his careers. The second he’d recovered enough to return home to Montenevera from a near coma, Geeta had immediately switched him to an almost full time schedule as the Glaseado Gym leader.

“Your physical trainer said that the last thing you needed was to sit still for a prolonged amount of time,” she’d said, resting a gentle hand over his bicep before handing him the fuzzy copy of his schedule. Grusha wasn’t sure if the printer she used was trash or if it was his double vision— until he looked up tiredly at her two swaying heads. “Plus, your fans have been begging for more time to battle you for a few years now. Sledge wasn’t too happy to have to travel all the way down from Montenevera every day for work.”

“I have to travel from Montenevera every day for work,” Grusha grumbled. “Sledge just prefers working as Ryme’s opening act.”

“See? Now you both won’t compete with having two jobs. You’ll have the weekends off; during the week you’re more than welcome to live in the apartment above the gym lodge.”

Grusha wasn’t really in the mindset to decline her at the time, accepting her proposition, if it could really be considered a proposition, and hoping to retire within the year. But after years had passed and Geeta had all of her gym leaders lovingly reined in with emotional iron weights, Grusha could no longer see his retirement in sight. He was just as weak as the other leaders when it came to saying no to Geeta. She may have been an oddball, but she was as genuine as they came. To make her sad in any form of the word was criminal.

In the time that passed since his accident, Grusha had not recovered from the stiff joints, double vision, or raging migraines. That was to be expected after nearly lobotomizing himself on a rogue rock.

In place of his bit of ethyl alcohol humor, he preferred spiced rum. Though, even on the coldest days that he still had to force himself out on the battlefield, his spiced rum and hot chocolate only kept his stomach warm.

Grusha was always bad with the cold, which used to be funny as a snowboarder. A snow sportsman who hated the cold? It was a good Funny Ha-Ha. But after his impromptu brain surgery he was much more susceptible to the cold. Like— an insane amount more.

Be it nerve damage or not, his hands were always borderline blue when he retired inside at the end of the day, regardless of the little Darmani-hands Heat Packs™ he kept in his wool lined gloves. They were imported. Which meant nothing. Wooloo wool was no better than Mareep wool. Just less conductive.

This just meant that the amount of mugs of hot chocolate he downed without paying much mind, the first mug usually being the only one to be spiked, before a battle was increased to two or three, and he could hope that he was either— one, too functionally tipsy to care, or two, that his core was hot enough under his jacket that tucking his hands in his belly pocket would bring relief. Usually it was the former that did the trick, but he liked to believe it was the latter. Normally because it left him with an aching and heavy stomach and he needed a reason to justify his actions.

A belly bloated with stinging hot liquid quickly started to become just as annoying as the cold. He was beginning to come to that conclusion after he finished a steady third mug of the piping hot drink, seated upstairs in his sad little apartment as he waited for the gym to prepare his next opponent.

His first mistake, if not being the influx of cocoa in his system, was that his challenge was at sundown. Meaning that, besides the already cold temperature dropping significantly, he’d already eaten dinner on top of everything. So, when the notification from the referee came through his phone that his challenger was all ready for him, he felt a heavy weight shift in his stomach when he stood.

He huffed queasily, pressing a hand against the bloat to settle the sloshing before tugging his coat, scarf, and mittens on, giving his stomach contents another moment to settle as he fumbled his gloves stupidly around the round door knob at the base of the apartment steps.

The battle was fine against the Trainer’s first few Pokémon. Grusha obviously wasn’t the last Gym Leader on their list to challenge… and it showed. In any other region, Grusha would have been marked as the final Gym to challenge before the league (Geeta’s words, not his) but Geeta really did prefer to keep Paldea’s options open. Which meant that Grusha had to waste his time just absolutely plowing down new trainers left and right way more than he would have liked.

He wasn’t like Tulip; he didn’t get gratification from defeating weaker trainers. He enjoyed a good even match. Especially if he was going to waste his time standing there nauseously in a notable category 1 blizzard.

Grusha wished he hadn’t been torn from his thoughts as the opposing trainer sent out their Varoom. A Pokémon that already made him carsick to watch before his accident— now made twice as bad due to his double vision. Thankfully, his trusty Cetitan knew what to do better than he did, keeping on its feet even when Grusha hardly could himself.

After Cetitan missed a few attacks due to what couldn’t be described as anything other than the spastic movements of the Varoom, Grusha backed up to lean against the wall of the arena to steadily avert his gaze. He could feel a bubble of nausea stuck in the back of his throat and the slight taste of coins on his tongue. He’d always had a hard time throwing up, so he was grateful that he wouldn’t be making too big of a fool of himself again in front of another audience by horking up a liter of liquid and then some.

After taking his expected win, Grusha forced himself to stick around just long enough to force out something to the kid about challenging him again after training more, yadda yadda, before escaping back to the warm inside of the gym lodge. As much as he would have loved to escape right upstairs to nurse his uncomfortably bloated stomach directly in front of his space heater, Geeta was waiting inside for him.

“Well done, as usual,” she said charmingly. “Happy to see you working hard to keep the challenge challenging.”

“They should have been challenging Iono at their current level,” Grusha mumbled after swallowing that bubble down. “I hardly did anything.”

He kept his mitted hands tucked into his jacket pocket, pressing his fingers into his stomach to try to ease the bubbling mess inside. Geeta noticed his discomfort immediately, glancing down at his hands fumbling at belly level.

“Did you drink before your battle again?” She asked, sounding more inquisitive than she did judgemental, but there was still a slight amount of judging to her tone. It's not like he was some kind of lush or anything. He didn’t touch the stuff when he didn’t have a specific reason to.

“At most— half a shot's worth,” Grusha said honestly. “I ate too much for dinner before going out there. Just a bit motion sick.”

“Ohh, yeah… that Varoom, huh?” Geeta said knowingly. “It may have been low level, but its speed stats were impressive.”

“Yeah. Impressive,” Grusha grumbled. Just imagining the varoom zipping around made him extra queasy all over again, and he stifled a shallow hiccup under his scarf. Geeta looked at him sympathetically, reaching her hand out without warning to rub gently against his stomach. Look what she likes. Grusha wasn’t taken aback— he knew Geeta.

“Oh, wow, you are full,” she said, tucking her hand above his stomach to gauge the size from under his jacket. “Better go rest that off, hm?”

“Couldn’t possibly,” he said sarcastically, but the second Geeta’s attention moved off of him, he made a swift escape up to the apartment.

He truly wished that he was prone to throwing up. It was better than sitting on the miserable brink of barfing for so long. After tugging his jacket and mittens off, desperate for relief from the nauseating fullness, he dragged his space heater towards the door of the bathroom and dizzily sprawled out on the floor for the next few hours. Just in case.

His gaze barely had to drift downwards to see the distension of his belly. It wasn’t that big when he went out earlier, but he was well aware that he was prone to bloating when he gave himself indigestion or was nauseated. Two starly with one stone. Not that that was a good thing.

After a few hours on the bathroom floor, Grusha finally felt well enough to drag himself back to his feet. His first move before crawling into bed to sleep off the rest of the weight in his stomach was to tuck the box of hot chocolate way out of easy reach. He’d rather be cold.