Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ Matter of Perspective ❯ Taichi ( Epilogue )

DISCLAIMER: See previous parts.

A/N: Holy CHEESE, I finished it! It's done! DONE, DONE, DONE! *throws self a party* I've been running for very nearly twenty-four hours with only a two-hour nap, but I don't CARE because it's FINISHED! However, it has yet to see an editor, so please be forgiving. Oh, and feedback would be super. I know it's been a long time coming, made longer by the unending editing process, but I asked for an MST-style beta read from my editor, and that takes a long time -- plus, she's been busy with exams. So I decided I'd stop torturing us all and just post the darn thing already.

Afterwards, he remembered it as a series of fractured images. Yamato's school shirt crumpled on the carpet like spilt milk. Pale, wintry afternoon light refracting through glasses of raspberry iced tea, still half-full. How long Yamato's lashes were when he shut his eyes. The ceiling -- the wall -- a sound on the landing that might have been his lover's father. Shadows on Yamato's bare chest and the way his nipples always hardened one at a time. The faint taste of soap in his bellybutton (innie). Soft blond hair darkening with sweat until it was more bronze than gold. Yamato's open mouth, his swollen lips, and the lines of tension in his forehead. Tears, only his head was thrown back so that they couldn't run down his cheeks. Shadows again. Somewhere, a dog barked. And then the bed lurched, slamming into the wall -- like it had been doing the whole time but harder -- and he was less aware of the picture frame breaking on the hardwood floor than Yamato's ragged breathing in his ear.

They lay like that for hours without moving, Taichi drifting in and out of consciousness but knowing vaguely that he had to stay awake. There was some obscure reason for it, something to do with Yamato's dad. He rolled over sleepily and buried his face in the pillow, trying to remember. Then something small landed on his back with the force of a soccer ball hitting the net and he stuck his hands out clumsily to fend it off.

"Taichi?" said a gravelly voice. The soccer ball bounced up and down agitatedly, striking his back each time and hurting him a little more. Taichi made a grab for it, thinking fuzzily that he was pretty sure soccer balls weren't supposed to talk. "Taichi!" the voice said again, and this time he recognized it.

Slowly, Taichi opened his eyes. "Koromon?"

"You're awake!" the little digimon cried. "Oh, good. Well, I just -- that is, Tsunomon thought...I mean, I didn't want to wake you up, all that wriggling looked really exhausting, but Tsunomon was really insistent and whining and stuff."

All that wriggling? Taichi blinked. "...You were watching us?"

"Sure. Weren't we supposed to?" Koromon asked anxiously.

Taichi blinked again. He opened his mouth, then closed it. He was going to have to have a long talk with his digimon about...about... Well, staying away from the bedroom when he and Yamato were in there alone ought to cover it for now. But Tsunomon... "What did Tsunomon want you to tell me?"

"Oh, just that Yamato's father is home." Koromon hopped over to the edge of the bed and then from there to the floor. "We were in the living room, watching TV, and we heard the van pull up, so Tsunomon was all, 'I wonder who that could be?' and got up to the windowsill to look and then he said -- what's the matter?"

It had taken a few seconds for Taichi to really comprehend the meaning of Tsunomon's warning. Then he'd been confused. Mr. Ishida already knew about his relationship with Yamato. Not like he'd be surprised or upset to see him there. Naked. In his son's bed.

Okay. Maybe he would be upset. Just a little bit.

So Taichi waved a hand at Koromon to get him to shut up and strained his ears. He was pretty sure he heard someone moving in the hallway. Footsteps -- heavy, and slow, and almost certainly Mr. Ishida's. Taichi swallowed uncomfortably, and hastily shook Yamato awake. Knowing they were dating and knowing they were having sex...well, those were two completely different things.

"Taichi...?" Yamato purred sleepily.

He grinned, feeling his urgency melt away. Hearing that soft note of affection in his lover's voice after three long years of strained friendship was like a physical caress, and caresses from Yamato, who was usually so reserved, always distracted Taichi. He gave himself a fierce mental slap and cleared his throat, trying hard to look serious. "Yamato, do you hear anything?"

For about ten seconds, the blond seemed both alert and focused, apparently straining his ears. Then he giggled, and tugged the covers over his head, answering in a slightly loopy, singsong voice, "No~o, but I bet I could fix that if you'd give me half a chance..."

It took Taichi a moment to recover from the unexpected flippancy, but he should've known better than to ask Yamato for a straight answer. Between just having woken up and the sex... Well, orgasms jarred the boy's brain a little, making him sweet and playful and not a little ditzy. It was kind of nice. Reluctantly, Taichi pulled the blankets back again and caught his lover's wrists when Yamato tried to squirm away. The blond quirked an eyebrow at what probably struck him as a very suggestive position, and only sobered when Taichi shook his head firmly. In the silence that followed, someone's tired feet carried him down the hall and right to their door. This time, Yamato heard it, too. His eyes widened in what looked suspiciously like fear.

The owner of the feet hesitated, then knocked loudly. "Yamato?"

With a speed that simply boggled the mind, the blond had gone from lying flat on his back -- and, incidentally, underneath someone who had always reckoned himself too heavy for his slender lover to move -- to a standing position. He had also taken most of the blankets with him, so that Taichi was forced to muffle a yelp at the sudden blast of cold air. "Uh, just a minute!" the Keeper of Friendship called out, digging hurriedly through his dresser for something to wear and somehow still managing in his panic to find clothes that matched.

"It's really not that important," mumbled the voice that was now most definitely Mr. Ishida's. It had sounded very different to Taichi's ears without the customary tone of mild irritation -- which seemed about as close as he ever got to being friendly.

"No, no!" Yamato said quickly, tugging on a powder-blue turtleneck and edging carefully towards the door as his head got stuck momentarily. Taichi grinned, thinking that was beyond cute, and only just remembered to pull what remained of the covers over his admittedly naked body as his beloved opened the door. "Well, Dad?"

Mr. Ishida's dark brown eyes flickered from his son, standing there and doing a pretty good job of blocking the doorway, to Taichi behind him. The old man gave a curiously long sigh. "I just wanted to make sure everything was all right in there and..." here, he trailed away, and grimaced before continuing, "...let you know that I'm going back into the office tonight. So...so you'll have the place to your...selves."

Something inside of Taichi that might have been his heart and might have been his stomach but was probably just his libido got up and danced. It quieted down again when Yamato's back stiffened with obvious discomfort. Not that he hadn't been pretty obviously discomfortable (was that even a word? Oh, well) before, too, but in more of a forced-casual-slouching sort of way. This discomfort might as well have been flashing neon lights that spelled out No, Dad, We Won't Have Sex I Swear.

"Oh," Yamato said, in a voice equally stiff and neon. "Okay. Thanks very much." Then he shifted his weight and went on anxiously, "You've eaten, right? I made dinner. It's on the stove -- probably cold by now," he admitted, "but you could put it in the microwave at work..."

Mid-sentence, Yamato slipped out into the hallway and closed the door behind him. Taichi waited three whole seconds before throwing off the covers and chasing after him, but it took a while to sort out which pair of grey pants was his and whether his blue jacket had had the odd-looking stain or the missing button. By the time he emerged from his lover's bedroom, the coast was clear. It was good timing, really, but he felt sort of guilty for thinking so -- and more so when he found Yamato sitting despondently at the dining room table.

"You okay, Yama?"

"Who, me? I'm fine." And he looked it, too. His smile was so broad and cheerful that Taichi might have even said he looked perky. Still chattering, the blond stood up and went to grab his coat. "Let's go out, get some ice-cream or something...what? What's the matter?"

The last bit had to do with the fact that Taichi had caught his arm and was now dragging him gently but firmly back to the dining room table. Happy, sure thing. Cheerful, okay. But perky was stretching it. And Taichi had no intention of letting Yamato fall back into the same role that had destroyed his relationship with Sora. Besides, he found the idea of Yamato trying to protect him from his emotional baggage insulting -- like he couldn't fully deal with the harsh realities of dating Ishida Yamato. So he said, "Nice try," and waited expectantly.

"But it's really not a big deal," Yamato muttered, almost to himself. "Just the same old shit. Stuff like -- like I made some of his favorite things for dinner tonight and he didn't say anything about it. He always used to say something, even if it was just, 'Yamato, you know I don't like fried tuna.' Now it's just...nothing. Like he can't quite bring himself to make polite conversation, not even the please-pass-the-salt kind." Yamato took a harsh, watery breath and whispered, "Like I'm not worth the effort anymore."

A tense silence passed between them, while Taichi stared helplessly at his lover's bowed head. He didn't know what to say when, "Everything's going to be all right," would've felt like a lie. Then Yamato slapped himself in the face. Once, twice, almost three times before Taichi caught his wrist. He'd been too startled to do it sooner. "Yamato, you're hurting yourself!"

"You think I don't know that?" the blond spat. He had tears in his eyes, but brushed them angrily away with his free hand. "I hate this! No wonder Dad can't fucking stand me, why won't they stop? I'm such a goddamned mess. And you know what?" he added, suddenly much quieter. "All this time, and the first thought in my head when I start to cry is still, 'Damn, there goes my mascara.'"

Taichi didn't say anything. It might have been a joke, but he couldn't have forced himself to laugh when the boy he loved sounded so miserable. He just pulled Yamato out of that chair and into his arms, wincing slightly when he heard the tiny snuffling noise of a muffled sob but at the same time glad of it. He hated it when Yamato cried, but had come to realize that not crying was worse. A whole lot worse. So long as he would cry in front of you, you still had the power to help him.

If only Taichi had known what to do with that power. It wasn't like he could force his lover's father to stop being such an asshole. He knew Yamato was waiting for him to say something that would make it all better, but he couldn't think of anything. Instead, he kissed Yamato's soft blond hair, noticing as he did so that faint, ever-present scent of strawberry shampoo, and murmured, "I love you."

There was a brief pause, and then Yamato laughed and pulled away. Again, he was scrubbing at his red-rimmed eyes. "What, all the time?" he prodded, and this time it was definitely a joke. "I don't know what I'm going to do with you if you can't even stop when I'm crying."

He grinned and shrugged. It was still storming out, but the thunder had quieted and the rain felt warm on his cheeks. Sooner or later, he'd think of something to push the rest of the clouds away. "You'll just have to get used to it, won't you? Because I don't think I could change if I wanted to."

"Typical," Yamato complained, but no amount of exasperation could've hidden the redness in his face. "It's always about you, isn't it?"

"You and me," Taichi agreed, deciding to have fun with it. He snuck one of his hands down Yamato's back and groped the other boy thoroughly. "The clothes're kinda getting in my way, though."

Now Yamato was really blushing. "Taichi --"

"What?" he asked innocently. "You heard your dad...we've got the place to ourselves. And don't tell me you can't, you've made quicker recoveries than this..."

"No! It's nothing like that," the blond protested. Taichi was pleased to wring a semi-squeal from him between sentences, and it took Yamato a moment to recover. "Quit that," he said when he had. "I mean it, Taichi. I'm hungry, and Dad took the whole pot to work with him..."

Taichi frowned. He was right, of course -- neither of them had eaten since lunch. On the other hand, he really didn't want to make Yamato cook anything else that night. Or rather, didn't want to give him the time to brood, because cooking, for Yamato, was always a solo activity. No, better to eat out or maybe order something in. Italian?

"Oh, sure," Yamato said when he suggested it. "Italian sounds great. Order in, though. I don't really feel like going out tonight."

The guy on the other end of the phone said to give the food fifteen minutes, so they watched TV, decided there was nothing good on, and were both struck at the same moment by a wicked videogame-playing hair. Ten slightly dismal rounds later, Taichi found himself thinking that maybe his lover had just wanted to beat the shit out of something. He tangled his thumbs over a combo, watched Yamato's fighter kill him yet again, and pushed his controller away sulkily. Ling Xiaoyu's perky little victory dances annoyed the hell out of him, and the worst part was that he couldn't even accuse Yamato of being cheap. The blond always picked characters that required a good deal of skill to win with. Damn him.

"What's wrong?" Yamato asked with every evidence of concern, though he was doing nothing to end the battle's instant replay.

Seriously annoyed, Taichi reached over, grabbed the other boy's controller, and pressed START for him. But he said, "Nothing," very mulishly, and gritted his teeth with the start of the next round.

In answer, Yamato hit the power button on the game console. The screen flickered and died. He studied Taichi's face for a moment, then frowned. "Tell me you're not upset because I'm beating you."

"Okay," Taichi agreed. "I'm not upset because you're beating me." Even to his own ears, it sounded like a lie.

The blond scowled at him. "Why? We've played this game a million times, and it's never bothered you before!"

Taichi wasn't sure how to respond. The truth of the matter embarrassed him. Yamato was right -- he hadn't been bothered before. But before, it had been his best friend kicking his ass. There was something very, very different about getting shown up by his lover. He didn't want Yamato to beat him at videogames now. He didn't want Yamato to beat him at anything. In a deep, dark corner of his mind, a part that he felt ashamed of but couldn't help, what Taichi really wanted was for Yamato to be helpless.

Somehow, though, he didn't think the blond would understand if he came right out and said so. Especially considering that only a few minutes ago, Yamato had burst into tears because his dad didn't think he was masculine enough. But it wasn't about being girly, dammit!

...Was it? Taichi chewed on his lower lip, uncomfortable. Had he started to think of Yamato as a girl? He hadn't meant to. He hadn't even wanted to! Yamato was Yamato was Yamato. Girl or boy, it wouldn't have mattered to him either way, but the blond obviously preferred it like this. Except that every now and then, Taichi would catch him staring off into space and rubbing his belly in a slow circle like he was trying to start a fire with the friction...

Taichi found himself wishing suddenly that Yamato hadn't turned off the game. The aborted pregnancies were something that he hadn't let himself think about very much, and he didn't want to start now. He wasn't sure exactly why, but they made him uneasy. Even though it'd been to save Yamato's life, even though it hadn't been his child, or, from what Koushirou had said, really any sort of child, the dead baby raised a lot of issues that he wasn't ready to deal with. He was only eighteen, after all.

But he couldn't help wondering...

"Taichi?" Yamato's soft voice interrupted. He felt immensely grateful for it. No more dwelling on what might have been. "Aren't you going to answer my question?"

Taichi shook his head slowly, trying to remember what the question had been, and laughed, more at how far his mind had wandered than anything else. He chose his words carefully. "I'm not upset, exactly. It's just kinda humiliating when my boyfriend wipes the floor with me. Couldn't you let me win every now and then?"

It was true enough -- just left out the part where he wished Yamato sucked at videogames so much that he could only watch in wide-eyed wonder as Taichi masterfully executed a string of simple combos. That sort of thing, Taichi figured, was best kept to himself.

Even as it was, Yamato raised a superior eyebrow. At least he looked amused instead of insulted. "Oh-ho. Well, I'll be more careful with your manly ego from now on, Taichi-chan. Wouldn't want to bruise its delicate skin."

And that, when Taichi had managed to choke down an irritated retort, was the end of that. They went back to their game, and Taichi was more surprised than anyone else when he won the next round. He glanced at his beloved suspiciously, but the other boy's blue eyes were conveniently elsewhere. Grinning just a little bit, Taichi chose Nina Williams from the character select screen and laughed at the expression on Yamato's face.

"What? She's not a bad fighter," he said in his own defense.

"She's also almost naked," Yamato pointed out, but he was smiling, too, by now. "And you've never picked a girl before."

Taichi realized he hadn't, then shrugged his shoulders. "Well, now we can have a catfight." Belatedly, he wondered whether it wasn't a bad idea to choose someone he had no idea how to control, but the match had already started, and he wasn't actually doing that badly. Nina was a lot faster than King. And, in all honesty, the nearly naked thing was kind of a plus.

She had a weird face, though. Yamato would've looked a lot better in the same outfit. Maybe he could get the other boy to cosplay as her sometime. He certainly liked the games enough. And the outfit was just tight pink leather, so the lack of breasts wouldn't even be all that noticeable. On the other hand, Taichi wasn't entirely sure how his lover would react to the suggestion. Cross-dressing might have been a little much to ask so soon after...

Totally absorbed in his thoughts of pretty blondes, Taichi missed several steps and let Nina get drawn into a combo that he really, really should've been able to avoid. He winced, broke out of it just in time, and put some distance between his and Yamato's fighters. Nina didn't have much health left. If he wanted to win this round, he was going to have to pull some really cheap moves -- simple moves that were almost impossible to block or avoid for some reason, like Eddy's new high kick. Unfortunately, he knew more about Calculus than he did about Nina Williams.

Yamato, being Yamato, didn't try to corner him while he wracked his brain for a solution. Yamato, being Yamato, knew he didn't have to. The blond could afford to wait it out -- until the clock wound down or Taichi came at him. Instead, he fired off a bunch of punches and kicks on the other side of the screen that Taichi slowly realized looked very much like actual martial arts. It wasn't a combo, because it wasn't doing anything, but it looked like a combo. Like a form.

Almost like Yamato actually knew how the movements were supposed to fit together. But...nah. If he'd started pressing random buttons, he probably would've gotten the same effect.

Suddenly, Taichi realized that he had about ten seconds left in the round, and charged back over in sheer desperation. Nina ran into the first punch, a residual from Yamato's idle form, but Taichi parried it and whacked Ling several good ones in a row. It took him a minute to understand the significance of that. He had found Nina's cheap move. Ling couldn't get far enough away before the blow hit her again and knocked her off her feet. All he had to do was keep hitting that button, and he would win an entire match -- not just a piddling round, but a whole match...

He backed off, frowning slightly. It would've been nice to win on his own merits. But -- to hell with that. In Tekken, a win was a win.

The doorbell rang, interrupting Nina's rather...womanly...victory dance. She obviously wasn't into perky acrobatics half so much as hip-swiveling. He felt dirty watching it, and didn't object when Yamato quickly hit START. The character select screen was a much less slutty place to leave the game while Yamato answered the door. Their food, it seemed, had arrived at last.

No sooner had they opened the first carton than their digimon suddenly descended on them from wherever they had been hiding. (Taichi rather thought Yamato's bedroom, and briefly enjoyed the image of the two playing Go by shuffling the pieces around with their mouths.) Koromon was bouncing agitatedly up and down, firing off questions like, "Is it food? Is it pasta? Is it tasty?" For his own part, Tsunomon stayed relatively calm and quiet, but only because Yamato had scooped him up into his arms and was already sneaking him bits of food when he thought his boyfriend wasn't looking.

And between the four of them, there was an awful lot of food -- two cartons of spaghetti with tomato sauce and lots of cheese for their digimon, two cartons of shrimp alfredo for them, a white pizza for him, garlic bread for Yamato, and desserts for everybody. (He had ordered chocolate mousse cake, which was easily the best thing on the menu, but Yamato had gone for a tiramisu -- ladies' fingers dipped in a thick cream that smelled strongly of coffee. The digimon were both having fried ice-cream.) Then, because neither of them were heavy drinkers, a six pack of Coca-Cola to split.

On the whole, it tasted even better than it looked.

"I ran into Miyako after school today," Yamato said offhandedly, swirling a bite of pasta around the end of his fork. "She and some of her friends were buying swimsuits."

Taichi almost choked on his food. "Swimsuits? In December?"

"I know," the blond agreed with feeling. "I thought the same thing. But that's when they're on sale, apparently. She's got horrible taste," he added after a moment. "Orange...really isn't her color."

"I thought all swimsuits were orange," Taichi started to say, but halfway through something more interesting occurred to him. "Wait. Why were you looking at girls' swimsuits?"

Yamato turned a very dark shade of red, and shifted uncomfortably. When prodded, he finally admitted in low tones that those little femme briefs girls were wearing with their bikini tops now came in a whole bunch of cuts and colors that weren't available on the guys' floor. Then he scowled at Taichi mutinously, seemingly reading his mind, and added that the tiny shorts weren't any more indecent on him than a Speedo, so it all worked out in the end.

Deeply amused but satisfied for the moment, Taichi stuffed a piece of white pizza into his mouth. "So, how was she? Miyako-chan, I mean. I haven't really seen her since...things settled down again."

"What?" Yamato asked; the swimsuit question had obviously distracted him. "Oh, she seemed okay, I guess." He paused, frowning. "The ugly orange suit was a string bikini, though. You know, the ones with knots holding them together that you can actually untie. Is that kind of strange, or is it just me? She's always gone for one-pieces before..."

Taichi frowned a little himself. It was kind of strange. "Maybe she grew out of the cow-spotted number," he suggested doubtfully. They both knew Miyako hadn't exactly sprouted a million curves in the last year or so, and her old bathing suit had fit her just fine last summer.

Yamato was shaking his head unhappily. "I don't think so. I think she just...you know...wanted something more feminine this year." He took another bite of pasta, but didn't seem to taste it. "Takeru says she's not talking about it -- not with him, or anyone else. Even Hikari-chan gets brushed off, and those two are best friends! I get the feeling, from what he's told me, that Miyako just wants to pretend the whole thing never happened."

Which wouldn't have been very surprising, but the swimsuit worried Taichi -- reminded him of Mimi, whose return to normal had been followed by a massive feminine overcompensation. Kinda funny, really, since he hadn't thought there was such a thing, but no other word would've fit. She had gone from a slightly ditzy girl who loved pink but liked other colors once in a while to an extremely ditzy girl who giggled at the end of pretty much every sentence and had redecorated her room so that even the windows only let in pink light. There were enormous glittery hearts visible on the walls during her video emails, and a mound of fuzzy teddy bears on her bed. Palmon avoided the camera with apparent desperation, but the one time he'd caught a glimpse of her, she'd been decked out in sequined bows.

Bad enough knowing one of his friends was acting like that overseas. He didn't think he'd be able to take it if Miyako brought the insanity closer to home. But, "Mimi-chan's the same, if not worse," was all he said.

The blond looked mildly surprised by this. Grimly, Taichi thought that Yamato probably hadn't ever expected him to know more about Mimi's goings-on. After all, the two of them didn't have a lot of common ground. But ever since he had officially come out of the closet, Mimi seemed determined to prove that being gay improved a man's color coordination. She probably would've been trying the same thing on Yamato, but...well, her denial ran deeper than Miyako's. She didn't seem to want to talk to any of the other gender-benders just yet. Probably worried it would come up in conversation or something.

"What about your little brother?" Taichi asked bracingly, stealing a piece of his lover's garlic bread. The mention earlier had been too quick to catch his tone of voice, and Hikari was far less inclined to share information about her boyfriend than he was about her. Then again, Yamato and Takeru were about as close as siblings got. They probably didn't believe in keeping secrets from each other.

Yamato swatted at his hand ineffectually, then watched with visible distress as his bread disappeared into the black hole that was his boyfriend's stomach. He took up a piece himself and chewed on the end while he considered his answer. "You know, he was pretty upset at first, but I think he's more okay with it than I am. Completely unfazed. He even makes jokes about it with Daisuke sometimes..."

They lapsed into a comfortable silence, both mulling that over, and then Taichi grinned. "You think there's something more traumatizing about turning into a guy than the other way around? I mean, maybe it's just a coincidence that you two are fine and they're miserable, but..."

A very odd expression passed over Yamato's face. "I don't know," he said slowly. "Maybe." But he was obviously having trouble imagining anything much worse than what he had gone through himself.

Taichi blinked. It had been a month, he reasoned. Yamato was still touchy about the change sometimes, but maybe now he could ask without getting his head bitten off. "What was it like? Being a girl, I mean."

The other boy didn't even hesitate. "Weird."

"Weird?" Taichi repeated blankly.

"Weird."

So much for that approach. It looked like he was going to have to be more specific. "Okay, then," he tried again. "What was the weirdest part about being a girl?"

This time, Yamato shrugged his shoulders and went back to stirring his pasta idly. He probably wouldn't have answered at all if Tsunomon hadn't perked up and offered, "He complained a lot about using the bathroom. Does th