Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ Matter of Perspective ❯ Yamato ( Chapter 8 )

DISCLAIMER: See previous parts.

A/N: Events at the Crimson Dragon will be established later on. I meant for Yamato to mention them, but this part is already longer than any of the others and I don't know where to add it in. More gender-oriented angst, more taito hinting. Some fashion, although not very specific -- and lots of Gabumon. I feel better now about hardly mentioning him at all in part five. This installment is dedicated to Meg, who just wanted something to happen. We're not there yet, but I'm working on it, and we're definitely a lot closer than we were in part seven. Considering that part nine is going to be solid taito squishiness (I won't be able to avoid it!), I hope this tides you over.

Sora would be expecting her. She knew that she didn't have much time. Twenty minutes before dinner started, the walk would take at least ten, and she still hadn't gotten dressed yet. So why couldn't she move?

"Yamato?"

Her name mumbled, the syllables melting into each other and sounding so much more feminine than they usually did. The blonde winced a little; sure, there were girls at school who shared her name, but she hadn't really noticed it before. Hadn't really cared about it before.

"Come on in, Gabumon."

The door opened very cautiously, and he stuck his paw in first as if testing for sharks before widening that initial crack and poking his whole head through. At which point Gabumon turned a very dark shade of red, and Yamato realized belatedly that she should have warned him about being naked. The idea of a digimon with real human sensibilities was so bizarre that it kept slipping her mind, no matter how often he displayed them. She pulled up the sheets and tried not to think about how she must have looked to him -- curled up on her bed like a little girl, with skirts and blouses strewn all over the floor.

At something like five in the morning, Mimi had rung the bell with an exhausted Sora and scolded them both for sleeping so late when they complained. The rest of the day was spent shopping properly, which apparently meant finding something you liked and then putting it on hold while you ran to at least five other stores, comparing prices and making sure the first one hadn't tried to rip you off. This at least made financial sense when you had a car, but Yamato was fairly certain the train tickets cost enough to make up for what few hundred yen they were allegedly saving. All things taken into consideration, her memories of the trip were mostly a long blur of Mimi squealing in his disturbingly male voice about how cute she looked 'like that', broken up by attempts to walk around new stores in high-heels. (More painful than difficult, truth told.) Then, every once in a long while, Sora would disagree with something Mimi had said and slow them all down with an argument.

Why couldn't she just shut up? Didn't she know there were already too many things to remember about passing as a girl without worrying about which ones were optional? Simplistic and generalized suited Yamato's purposes. In fact, firm boundaries made this easier. God, she just didn't want to be laughed at. Was that so fucking hard to understand? Where did Sora get off whining about stereotypes?

She blinked, surprised by the suddenness of her anger and the heat behind it. Sora had only wanted to make sure she didn't end up feeling like she had to do anything humiliating if it wasn't necessary. What could Yamato possibly have against that?

Answer: Nothing. Chances were, she had just gotten sick of being Mimi's own personal doll and was now lashing out at innocent people because of it. Well, if she had to lose her temper, Yamato reflected, better to lose her temper now when there was no one around -- she didn't even want to think about what might have happened if Sora had actually been present a second ago.

Lost in her thoughts, the blonde didn't really notice when Gabumon shut the door behind him or moved closer to her bed. In fact, she didn't notice him at all until he crawled over and pressed his face into her shoulder. Then Yamato came back to herself with a jolt and felt extremely self-conscious. Without clothes between them, his bristly fur almost hurt; especially because it made her want to get dressed and she still couldn't muster the strength. She just didn't feel like it. She didn't feel like anything. Embarrassment kept her eyes carefully trained on the blankets.

His muzzle moved against her skin, ticklish and cold. "What's the matter, Yamato? Why aren't you ready for dinner?"

Lie. Truth. "I don't know."

She couldn't bring herself to look at him when he pulled back. Not when she knew what she would see. Gabumon was always so sympathetic, and she didn't deserve that. She should have been able to deal with this. For Sora's sake, if nothing else. Every minute now would mean another minute of awkward silence while she tried in vain to explain where her boyfriend was. Why he hadn't come with his father, who of course wouldn't have really thought about the way Yamato had stayed holed up in his room ever since getting home late last night. When she'd been hiding from her own father because she didn't want to explain this more than once.

And now she had managed to frighten her digimon. Score another one for Ishida Yamato, and the crowd goes wild.

"Well, you have lots of things to wear now," Gabumon said guardedly. "And they all look nice -- at least, that's what I think. Clothes that fit right are important, aren't they?" He paused an expectant pause, and gazed at her face intently. She tried to force a smile. "What about Sora? She's waiting for you, and so are your parents. Why not just pick something and go before they get worried?"

Wonderful: guilt. "I don't think they'll get worried, Gabumon."

From the expression on the digimon's face, she couldn't have made things worse if she'd been doing it deliberately. "What are you talking about? Sora loves you, Yamato -- you've told me so yourself. No matter what you think of anyone else, how can you say that about her?"

"Because it's true. No, listen. Sora's the only one who knows what happened to me. Maybe at first she'll think I'm just running late, but eventually she'll decide I freaked out completely. Sora is not going to worry about where I am."

"And have you?"

"Have I what?" she asked back, confused.

"Freaked out completely."

What a silly question. Yamato almost laughed. Just because she hadn't bothered to pick out her clothes yet for no real reason, and the idea of trying to explain this to Sora's mother terrified her beyond the capacity for rational thought...just because her dad had knocked on the door to tell her he was leaving and then asked what was wrong with her voice and she hadn't been able to stop her hands from shaking for a full six minutes and then she'd had trouble breathing and even now the thought of him coming back for something made her want to lock the door and never come out of her room again until she starved and...

Okay. Maybe it wasn't such a silly question.

"I guess. But just a little bit. Not completely."

To her surprise, the digimon actually looked sort of embarrassed. Why would he be embarrassed? This was her physical/mental problem; it had nothing to do with him, at least not directly. She was still trying to figure it out when Gabumon cleared his throat and mumbled something that sounded like, "Do you need help getting dressed?"

"No..." Yamato said slowly. "Thanks all the same, but I think I mastered that when I was five or so."

"Well, I mean -- not the actual dressing, that would be really awkward anyway. But deciding on what you want to wear. And...no offense, but you've been in here an awful long time for a master."

She flushed, but recovered after a few seconds and poked him in the nose playfully. "Let's just say I'm a little rusty on the finer points. Okay, you can help, but I reserve the right to fire you if it turns out you've got Taichi's interesting color sense. Do we have a deal?"

"Deal."

Bizarrely, picking out clothes with Gabumon was much less irritating than shopping with Mimi and Sora. In fact, Yamato might have almost called this experience fun if they hadn't been working on the wrong end of a deadline. She hadn't really expected Gabumon to have Taichi's color sense (that was a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon), but she hadn't expected his taste to be so good, either. Even though something deep inside of Yamato still hated the idea that these outfits were meant for him, she could appreciate how her digimon put them together if she pretended that the girl in the mirror was someone else entirely -- if what that girl should wear was a distant, almost hypothetical problem. Only Gabumon kept personalizing it. Maybe he hadn't noticed how little she wanted to think, or maybe he felt that was unhealthy. Either way, his relentlessly matter-of-fact attitude started to rub off on Yamato until -- quite suddenly -- she didn't feel embarrassed anymore.

After they had tried everything at least twice, the end result was a simple white dress. Simple but elegant. Yamato liked that. She didn't look like a birthday present, and she wasn't a Girl Scout with a skirt down past her knees -- but not every guy who passed her on the street would strain his neck trying to peer down the front of her dress, either. Miracle of miracles, had they found an actual balance? The blonde did one last slow rotation in front of her full-length mirror, just to make sure she hadn't missed anything. A pair of light blue pumps (the word for girls' shoes that didn't kill you, apparently) completed the outfit. "This is it," she told her digimon excitedly. "It's perfect."

"Wait," he said before she could move away from the mirror. Yamato's heart sank, but all he did was pick a matching blue gauze scarf from the pile of miscellaneous accessories and tie it neatly around her neck. Gabumon winked. "Now it's perfect. If you're not going to wear white shoes, you have to put that color somewhere else, too."

Fiddling with the scarf absently while she went through her coat pockets (that was where she always left her cellular phone), Yamato shook her head. "I think you've been spending too much time with Mimi. Admit it -- when I'm at school, you go to New York."

He blinked innocently. "But Yamato...I don't even like New York. And why would I want to see any more of Mimi?"

"Gabumon!" She dropped her coat in surprise and took a playful swipe at the digimon, more amused than angry. "That's not a very nice thing to say. What if he got mad at you and took it out on me? Not that Mimi could do anything much worse than taking me shopping two days in a row...you haven't pissed him off, have you?"

Before Gabumon could answer, a series of high-pitched beeps that vaguely resembled the opening chords of 'Moonlight Densetsu' shrilled through the room -- coming from the coat she had dropped. Ignoring the look she'd gotten from her digimon (he obviously recognized the tune), Yamato bent down to catch the caller. She only just managed to locate her celphone before it could ring for the final time.

"Hello?" said the voice on the other end. "Yama?"

She raised her eyebrows before remembering that Taichi couldn't see them. He should have expected her to be eating dinner at Sora's apartment right now. Was this really that important, or had he just forgotten?

"Hi, Taichi. Yeah, it's me. Why are you calling?"

There was an almost audible double-take. "Jeez, didn't realize I needed a reason. Should I have gotten an appointment or something?"

"Taichi!" Yamato wanted to be outraged, or at least annoyed -- but she couldn't make the feelings stick. In spite of herself, there was nothing there but mild exasperation and the weird little bubble of affection that always surfaced when Taichi acted like a spoiled brat. She couldn't stay mad at him. He was just too...cute for that.

Cute? Well, sure. Why not? Taichi could be cute, couldn't he? Like a puppy dog or something. There was nothing wrong with that.

"You're such a jerk sometimes," she told him.

"What, am I interrupting?" He sounded confused at first, but his tone changed quickly. Maybe he knew now that he'd forgotten something and wanted to distract Yamato from his mistake, and what he said next was unarguably distracting. "You don't have Sora there, do you? Hot lesbian action?"

She reacted without even thinking. "NO! Don't be disgusting!"

Again, the double-take. Yamato couldn't believe she had bitten his head off like that. "Okay, sorry. Man, try not to get your panties in a knot." Taichi paused and snickered. "And for the first time, I could mean that literally. Are you wearing panties, Yama?"

"That's none of your damn business." Then she slapped herself in the face, because she really might just as well have said yes. "I mean..."

More snickering. "Hey, your secret's safe with me. Anyway, pissing you off would be counterproductive, since I'm calling to see if you wanted to come over and hang out for a while. Bored out of my skull and there's nothing on TV."

"I'm guessing you forgot that I've got this huge dinner thing tonight. You know, with my parents and Sora's parents and me panicking quietly in the middle?"

"...oh, yeah." Proper embarrassment. "Um, wasn't that at seven? 'Cause it's almost eight now."

"Let's just say I'm running a little late," Yamato muttered.

Her best friend did a very poor impression of sympathy. "Little? Dude. It's seven fifty-five. That's not a little anything anymore. We're talking late as in dead here. What are you going to do?"

"Hang up?"

"This is your mobile number. The fact that you're not on the train right now has nothing to do with talking to me."

Why did he have to be right? Yamato glared at the phone. "Screw you."

"What did he say?" Gabumon wanted to know, and quite frankly she didn't mind pulling her ear away from Taichi's smug laughter. Had she really called this boy cute?

"He said I could be walking while we talked, meaning that I can't blame him for being late. And he's right, so I hate him." Reluctantly, the blonde gathered her lightest possible jacket and looked over at the bedroom door.

Between Gabumon's help with getting dressed and Taichi's decidedly irrelevant conversation, she hadn't thought about what this dinner actually meant for a long time. Now reminded, she found herself wanting to just stay home. Her father would find out sooner or later, and this really wasn't the best time to tell Sora's mother. So what if Mrs. Takenouchi already expected total failure? That didn't mean Yamato felt comfortable delivering it. Especially when gender was probably the only thing she'd ever had in her favor. God, she thought, I wish I didn't have to go.

"Then don't."

Taichi's smooth intrusion made her jump. "Did I say that out loud?"

"Guess so. C'mon, Yama. I meant what I said the other day. Why are you doing this?" His voice softened, grew deeper and more serious. "I can't protect you from yourself."

She had trouble swallowing for some reason. They were best friends, and Taichi said things like that sometimes -- he liked to call himself her knight in shining armor, so she was used to that dynamic. It had never gotten to her like this before, never made her feel so warm inside. But then again, she didn't think he had ever sounded like he meant it before. She cleared her throat. "Taichi, I can't just...not be there all of a sudden. They're expecting me."

"Call your dad. You can say that you were on your way over, and you ran into me. We got to talking, lost track of time, that kinda thing. Like when you walked home with me and then realized Takeru was coming over for dinner. Your dad knows we've got a history with this stuff."

Yamato rolled her eyes. "He'll tell me to get my butt over there now and stop wasting time on the phone."

"Hey, I wasn't finished. I'm getting to that part. Anyway, when he blows his top, you say that of course you were going to leave -- but on the way over to my place, you threw up. Right on the pavement. So then I didn't want to let you go anywhere by yourself and dragged you inside. The only reason you're even calling is because you wrestled the phone out of my hands. How does that sound?"

"Like you're trying to kidnap me." She paused, and smirked. "But he just might buy it. Oh, I can't believe I'm even thinking about doing this. Ditch my girlfriend when we're supposed to be introducing our parents to each other...poor Sora."

Sharp intake of breath. "You had plenty to worry about before this happened. Sora will understand why this was one thing too many. Call your dad and cancel." There was a very slight pause, and then Taichi did something he hadn't done in a long time. "Now. That's an order, Ishida."

The embarrassing thing was that she'd agreed and hung up before what her former leader had said really registered. She stared at the phone in disbelief and mounting pleasure. Maybe it was something she would feel guilty about doing tomorrow (she felt guilty now), but that didn't change how much Yamato had wanted to. Gabumon watched while she took one last look in the mirror, and followed her into the hallway.

"Are we still going to Sora's?"

Halfway through dialing, Yamato glanced back at her digimon and threw open the front door with a sense of liberty. "No, Gabumon. We're not."

And then, out of nowhere but feeling so inexplicably natural, something else occurred to her.

"I hope Taichi likes my dress."

End Part Eight