Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ Captive Complications ❯ Yamato's Guessing Game ( Chapter 5 )

Disclaimer:

Nope. Not mine.

Warnings:

I write slowly, but I will finish eventually.

Author's Notes:

Well... it's certainly been a while. This story hasn't been updated since August of '03, and already it's May of '05. Good news is, I have chapters 5-9 ready to post. I'll put up one per week... and hopefully the delay will give me time to get the next parts done so I can continue with the weekly updates for this fic.

For those of you who are also interested in Dark Masquerade, the wait will be a bit longer, I'm afraid. I've been going through a very difficult time with my father's health (see my LiveJournal for more details) and it's affected my concentration. DM5: Revealing is mostly done, but needs a re-haul to fix a major problem before it's postable. Work has begun on DM6... but all of the writing was done ages ago. At present, my brain's only working with the funny, but I'll get back on the DM horse sooner or later.

Thank you for your patience on both fics. Enjoy!

Captive Complications

by Ice'is Blue

5. Yamato's Guessing Game

In less than twenty minutes after the nymph's collapse, Sir Koushiro was leading a large entourage in the direction of the nymph's home. His horse was in the lead, closely followed by King Yamato and Taichi. The Prince was not riding in the King's lap, much to the King's displeasure. Taichi still wore the pink dress, much to the Prince's displeasure. It was a win/win situation, really.

Trailing far enough behind them that spoken words were lost in the din of hoofbeats, was the King's Master of the Guards and ten of his best men. Yamato tolerated their presence with the grace of a man who knew he would be Mother-henned to death otherwise. Taichi had loudly protested anyone else seeing him in his current state of dress, and as the King was now riding on his left, he was restricting his gaze to the forward and right-looking directions. Koushiro, feeling like the only reasonable person there, paid the guards little attention beyond his initial examination. They couldn't be all that great, in his thinking. After listening to their unprofessional gossip, he had concluded that these were the same men who had accompanied the Master on the elite mission to capture the Princess. Judging by how well that little endeavor had turned out, the disordered group were more useful as the King's armed wardrobe consultants than actual fighters.

Each man rode a horse, and for every horse, a mule was tied into a packstring, bearing overstuffed, but seemingly well-balanced bundles. Or, at least that horse:mule ratio held true until Taichi had identified the poles and making of a summer pavilion and had insisted upon shelter and had refused to share with Yamato. The King had been about to protest loudly and with enthusiasm when his Master of the Guard smoothly appropriated the discussion by stating the King would be safer sleeping alone. And that had been that after another four mules were added with the supplies for a second pavilion.

The guards were armed with short swords, but only two wore quivers and bows and no man carried a spear or a hunting falcon. The brevity of their defense pleased Yamato, having grown up smothered by those wishing to protect the heir to the throne. Koushiro, as a knight, quietly disapproved of the Master of the Guard's lack of security measures, but Yamato wasn't his King, and no one was asking his opinion.

Of similar, but less potentially dangerous ridiculousness, was Koushiro's observation that the baggage being hauled by the men consisted mainly of clothes. Aside from what were obviously parts of the two pavilions, the majority of the sacks remaining were oddly lumpy and bits of garishly colored cloth poked through the drawstrings beneath the flapped lids. He would have thought kings had better taste. Apparently not, judging from what had to be pieces of King Yamato's wardrobe. Koushiro glanced back at the two royals, at Prince Taichi in his disturbingly pink ballgown. At least with each other they were in good unfashionable company.

The whole journey would have seemed rather laughable to the knight, had it not been for the deathly pale nymph resting against him. Mid-morning swiftly yielded to late afternoon and finally, with their journey almost halfway completed, encroaching darkness forced them to set up camp. All three were in a foul mood. King Yamato had grown snappish, frustrated by the multiple times the Prince had ignored his attempts at making conversation. He was just trying to be friendly, after all, and the constant rejection began to hurt after a point. Prince Taichi was in an equally troubled state, because while one part of him welcomed the distraction the King's attentions provided, another part of him could not forget that he was ultimately being held against his will. No amount of kindness on Yamato's part could change that. A prisoner was a prisoner, not some sort of amusing companion. So, he remained silent in the face of the King's diminishing cheerfulness. Koushiro, too, remained quiet. The nymph's condition fractionally improved the closer they came to the Glen, but he still seemed so very fragile.

There was a swift debate over whether they were even going to stop for the night, but it ended quickly when King Yamato declared that he would lose no horses or riders due to a misstep in the dark. The Knight, despite knowing the wisdom of the words, had been ready to argue for him continuing on alone, but the Prince assured him that they'd wake before dawn and would be ready to travel at first light. Prince Taichi glared at King Yamato, daring him to challenge his words, but the blond man merely nodded and relayed the orders to his men. Caught off-guard by the King's kind understanding, Taichi's approval of Yamato increased a few points. The night, however, was spent in near silence, with the King in one guarded pavilion and the Prince and Knight in another, and all three worried about the nymph's condition.

The next morning, after camp had been broken and they'd been traveling for some time, Yamato cleared his throat in preparation for his twenty-third attempt at making conversation. Yamato was the only one keeping count as Taichi was ignoring him completely. Or at least trying to. Yamato continued, though, knowing Taichi would respond eventually. Taichi knew it too. That was the downfall of having a very active personality -- it made any sort of quiet sulking nearly impossible to maintain. It was only a matter of time before Taichi's stonewall refusal to acknowledge the King cracked.

"So, are you going to fill me in on why you're wearing a dress?"

Taichi didn't even bother turning his head.

"No? Okay. I can guess. You like looking pretty?"

Taichi imagined a blank wall separating him from the irritating King. If he could occupy his mind, maybe he wouldn't feel the need to respond to the man's persistent overtures.

Yamato continued guessing. "You had the urge to wear pink and that dress was the only thing you could find?"

Blank wall. Smooth gray stone, a few chinks here and there, patched with mortar.

"You lost a bet with your sister and had to play dress-up?"

Okay, so maybe even Taichi's horse was rolling its eyes at that one, even if Taichi wasn't quite. In actuality, he'd only made one dress-up wager with Hikari, and that debt had been repaid years ago -- in absolute secrecy. Blank wall. He gave the mortar-chinked wall a vine sprawling up one side... with flowers of the same golden hue as the King's hair.

Yamato forced himself not to sigh at Taichi's persistent silence. He continued teasing, thinking that a bit of vinegar might do the trick where polite conversation wasn't achieving the desired result. "You have some sort of uncomfortable medical disorder that I don't want to think of and dresses are the easiest garments to wear?"

Taichi nearly grimaced at the imagined condition. Yamato saw a twitch that might have been a scowl and grinned.

"No? All right. I know: you're secretly in love with me, and through crafty ways you uncovered my plans to kidnap your sister, and substituted yourself in her place so you could spend more time with me."

Taichi turned his head forty-five degrees, glared, then resumed staring at the passing terrain. The wall he'd been holding in his mind developed a door. An observation window slid open in the wood and Yamato's triumphant face waggled his eyebrows suggestively at Taichi from the other side of the door. Taichi snarled and kicked at the wall. The mental structure, not an entity to take abuse, cheerfully disintegrated, and left the Prince alone with no barrier against his desire for the King.

Yamato recognized the Prince's expression as a win for himself and smirked. Having a non-conversation had never been so fun. "Hmm. Close with that, was I?"

"No," Taichi answered in a clipped tone.

"Sure. Whatever you say. One last guess and I'll leave off."

They traveled on and Yamato let the silence spin out between them. It was a net carefully designed to bring the taciturn man even closer. Yamato was patient, Taichi was not.

"So are you going to guess, or what?" he asked in a carefully bored voice without turning his head.

Yamato had been saving this one, waiting for the opportunity to find out if the Prince's heart was already taken. "For my final guess..." He pretended to think hard. "You're... madly in love with a woman but the only way her father will let you two be together is if you're dressed as a female?"

Taichi snorted. "Hardly."

"Hmmm... but that's a good topic, though. Why aren't you married or betrothed already?"

Taichi turned again to glare. "I thought you were going to leave off?"

Yamato smiled benignly. "That was the bargain for the old question. This is a completely different one. Feel free to answer, thus escaping without suffering my guesses. You're young, devilishly attractive, with everything to offer. So, why isn't a young maiden fluttering by your side?"

The good humor that had been building in Taichi fled with unexpected severity. He might find the King attractive, but that didn't mean he had to respond civilly to someone who thought he could keep another human being as a bargaining chip. And he certainly didn't need a man of questionable morals digging into his private life... or lack thereof. To top it all off, the jerk probably already knew why, and was amusing himself by putting Taichi through the hell of admitting his condition. "Well, why aren't you married? How about you answering a few damn questions for a change?" the Prince returned crossly.

Yamato looked askance at the man riding beside him. Perhaps he'd found a touchy subject. Oh well. "I asked you first."

Taichi responded to the simple and childish response with blazing eyes. "I'm under a curse! What's your excuse?"

"I'm gay!"

If the soldiers riding in the distance heard their King (and surely they must have), they gave no sign.

Koushiro, riding behind the pair for this portion of the journey, listened to Taichi and the King's banter with barely concealed amusement. After the King's somewhat loud pronouncement of his sexual preferences, the back of Taichi's neck and the tops of his ears cycled through tomato red, cloud white, and finally settled on sunrise pink. Taichi's head was turned away, but the knight was fairly sure the Prince's face was putting on an equally impressive display of color.

Taichi knew his face was doing odd things that may or may not have been revealing his inner thoughts, but the majority of his intercranial functions were occupied in a dance of joy and panic. Maybe the King wasn't such a bad guy after all. And maybe it was possible the barrage of questions stemmed from a genuine desire to know him better. And all because... The Prince shook his head. There had always been whispers about the young King, but they had all been made with the gossipy air of bored courtesans with nothing better to do than fabricate tales about other people for their own amusement. There was even a rumor floating around that his own condition was merely a cover for his incurable sexual addiction... one forcing him to keep a secret harem that pleasured him the entire time he was away from the court's many eyes. Taichi snorted at the memory. As if that impossible idea even began to remotely explain why he avoided all physical contact with females.

Yamato coughed to get the Prince's attention, unwilling to let the man's brain overwork itself, spinning out conclusions about the King with no information to correct them. "Do you have a problem with that?" He'd meant for it to sound self-confident, or even arrogant, but it came out quietly and genuinely curious.

Taichi's brain stopped in mid-thought. "Uh." The King looked even slightly unsure. Taichi smiled softly and looked away. "No, I don't have a problem with it. I always strive to be unhypocritical."

Unhypocritical... What sort of word was that? King Yamato smiled as he realized what the Prince was saying. Maybe this had a chance of working after all.

TBC...