Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ Queerer Things ❯ Part Four ( Chapter 4 )

[Grievance #1: I am sorry, sorry, sorry that this chapter is so short, but I honestly couldn't think of any way to expand it without it being completely unnecessary. It packs a pretty good melodramatic wallop on its own, though, so I feel comfortable devoting chapter five to dealing with the fallout of what happens in this one in its entirety.

 

Grievance #2: AHAHAHA. How about that hiatus?

 

I can't even blame this on school or anything, considering an entire summer break straddled the gap between the last update and this one. Honestly, I lost interest in fanfiction for a while; I was concentrating on my own original stuff, and I only even thought about this story and the other ones I'm working on briefly over that break. But now I think I'm back on the bandwagon, and I'm at least going to work with this story for as long as I feel like it. This, in my opinion, is a really fun chapter, and I feel like I've actually really improved as a writer in the interim, so enjoy this one to the best of your ability. Hopefully the updates will be less sporadic in the months to come.

 

P.S. - Mitarashi Hokuto is an original character, in case it's not completely obvious. I had someone thinking he was Ken for some reason, and he's definitely not. I don't know if Ken's even going to show up in this, as much as he should be all over it. … Um. I know original characters are generally a no-no, but I feel like I'm breaking all the conventions with Mitarashi, and—admittedly—he's an incredibly fun character to write and read (hopefully). Maybe you'll all agree by the end of this chapter.]

 

QUEERER THINGS

Part Four

 

 

I decide to eat lunch in an empty classroom on the second floor. Hikari comes with me. She doesn't ask questions—she never really does, which over time has given me the impression that she can read my mind. But every time I turn my back, I feel her eyes on me. Probing.

 

I know she's disappointed in me. Were she the type to criticize, she would come out and say it—that I need to confront my problems rather than just run away from them, the way Taichi always taught her to. And me as well, I guess. But she can't understand, because I'm not about to tell her—that the minute I saw Daisuke in the hallway I bolted, and that I deemed to spend the lunch hour in here rather than the cafeteria because I can't quite handle getting another glimpse of him.

 

She can't understand. She wouldn't be able to even if I told her. I don't know how much she knows about what happened between us that summer—probably more than I think she does—but this isn't just something I can talk about. Or even think about.

 

But even as I repeat this thought to myself over and over, like a mantra, it's Daisuke's face I'm seeing—his unbridled wonder on the day I met him, introduced as he had been to a whole new world beyond our own; his grin on the day we entered middle school, when he had reached over and squeezed my hand and before I knew what I was doing I had squeezed back; the set to his jaw that had persisted all through our first year of high school, during which he almost succeeded in blending entirely into the background until that happened. His eyes a week ago. The slump of his shoulders this morning, as I had caught sight of him leaning against his locker, his eyes closed wearily as he rested his head against the cool metal of the door. Like an erratic slide show, these images play over and over again before my eyes, coming thicker and faster as time ticks slowly by. I rub my temples in a weak attempt to clear my head, but my memories have other ideas. It's as if my body is slowly waking up to truth—as much as my heart cringes to admit it—after two long years of half-hearted reprieve.

 

“Takeru,” Hikari says quietly.

 

I shake my head quietly from side to side. I'm trying as hard as I can not to deal with this right now.

 

“Takeru, this isn't like you,” she says, pressing on. I suppose she's sick of dealing with my shit. I would be, too. “You haven't acted like this in… well, in a while.”

 

“Like what?” I say hoarsely.

 

“Shutting me out,” she snaps. “Sitting there and agonizing over something that you won't even talk about. What would your brother think?”

 

“My brother,” I say, “might just understand.” But I don't want to fight with her. I sigh, pushing my lunch well away from me, and lay my head gently on my arms, watching the light stream through the cracked-open door into the dim classroom. “It's nothing, Hikari, really. I just have a headache.”

 

“Sure,” she says. Followed by a silence so thick I feel myself struggling to breathe through it. The only audible sound is her fingers rapping lightly on the desk, spelling out the rhythm to a recently popular song. I turn my head and bury it fully into my arms, welcoming the darkness that accompanies the motion. I will get through this. This is nothing but a brief, undesirable period in my life. Everyone has them. I will get through this.

 

“Daisuke came back to school today,” Hikari says.

 

I jerk my head up abruptly. It's been so long since she's mentioned him—since I've heard his name anywhere but in the back of my head or in whispers echoing around the hallways—that I forget to hide my surprise. Not that she would have bought it anyway. She knows. She must know. “… Oh.”

 

“He's been gone for a while,” she says in that same nonchalant voice, picking casually at some rice in a bowl on her lunch tray. “I don't know if you noticed. Nobody really knows why he was gone, but there are plenty of rumors. He's in my first period class.”

 

I don't say anything.

 

“Arisa accidentally bumped him this morning, and you should have seen the look on her face.” Hikari lets out a chuckle. “He just snapped at her—all, `what the fuck are you scared of?' It's been a while since something interesting like that's happened in class.”

 

I don't know where she's going with this. She must know something. Somehow. I gave that away myself—the moment she started talking about him and I didn't lash out, like I did every time, every fucking time last year she would bring up his name. It was more frequently in the early months, and then less and less, until we hadn't talked about him in months by the time that scandal erupted. But that's all ancient history.

 

I can't bring myself to look away. She's holding my gaze evenly, daring me to say something. If I look away I lose the game—I'll just end up giving myself away, and then everything will have to come out into the open, whether I want it to or not…

 

The door slams open all the way, ricocheting against the classroom wall with an ear-shattering clatter. Hikari and I both jump. “Takaishi-senpai!”

 

It's Hirasawa. He's panicky and breathing hard, as if he's sprinted the whole way here. “I f-finally found you… you have to come quick!”

 

I get to my feet. The light from the hallway streaming out from behind him gives the whole scene a surreal quality, as if I have until now been hidden away from the rest of reality. “Why? What's happened?”

 

“In the cafeteria…” He swallows, takes a deep breath. “Mitarashi-senpai… a-and that guy, Motomiya Daisuke… they just suddenly started beating the shit out of each other…”

 

The conjunction of those two names in one sentence has frozen me to the bone. It's Hikari who grabs my arm and pulls me to the doorway, giving Hirasawa a curt look as her fingers tighten around my wrist. “Let's go.”

 

We sprint down the hallway, ignoring teachers and aides who yell asides about how running in the hallways in forbidden. Their voices distort, like the wail of a train passing by at full speed; we're going far too fast to adhere to their rules. Still, it takes far too long to arrive at the doors of the cafeteria, and once we do I find myself frozen up all over again, unable to reconcile with what I see happening in front of me.

 

There seems to be a path carved out from the corner of the cafeteria of upturned chairs, spilled lunches and a couple of tables shoved onto their sides, leading out to the middle of the room, where a space has opened up; for the amount of people in the room it's oddly silent, the weird quiet broken only by the squeaking of sneakers on the tile, the murmur of whispers rising up out of the crowd, and Daisuke's voice.

 

“I'll fucking kill you!” he screams. “I'll rip your fucking throat out!”

 

The grin splitting Mitarashi's face in half is monstrous; it sucks the breath out of me to see an expression that is such equal parts malice and ecstatic pleasure. “Well, fuck!” He yells, his voice echoing into the rafters. “Who knew you were so much fun?” He has a busted lip, but he doesn't seem to notice; Daisuke, too, is holding his side a little too consistently for it to be casual. The two are circling each other slowly, Daisuke's steps as clumsy as Mitarashi's are graceful. “I should have picked a fight with you months ago!”

 

“Fuck you!” In two steps Daisuke has closed the gap between them and buried a fist in Mitarashi's stomach; Mitarashi, not expecting the blow, lets out a grunt and loses his balance; in another few seconds he's on his back, Daisuke straddling him, the front of Mitarashi's shirt balled up tight in his trembling fists. I hear a sharp intake of breath next to me: Hikari. But I can't look away.

 

“If you don't take it back I'll beat your face into a bloody fucking mess,” Daisuke says quietly, restrainedly. His chest is heaving.

 

A series of high-pitched giggles erupt from Mitarashi as he pushes his dark hair out of his face; he can't seem to stop grinning. “What are you doing, Daisuke-chan? Are you going to take me in front of all these people?”

 

Daisuke's shoulders are shaking; he lifts his fists up and slams Mitarashi's head against the linoleum with a resounding smack. I've never seen him look so angry.

 

“Oh, no, you wouldn't do that, would you?” Mitarashi says, his speech intermingled with bursts of manic giggling. “Would you? You probably like it up the ass yourself—“

 

Daisuke lets out a suppressed scream and punches Mitarashi so hard across the face that we hear his head hit the linoleum, but finally, finally, a teacher has arrived; as he yanks Daisuke up off of Mitarashi, the silence seems to break, suddenly everyone is clamoring to one another, shaking their heads and holding their hands to their mouths and saying “oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” and I can feel Hikari's fingers tight around my wrist, but I still can't look away, watching as Mitarashi gets to his feet, still giggling, and grabs a chair by its back, the screech of metal against stone barely audible over the noise.

 

“Daisuke!” I scream, the sound ripping through my vocal cords before I can stop it, and his head snaps around as the teacher walks away, leaving him to wait for his punishment; his eyes widen and his lips have almost formed the first syllable of my name before Mitarashi slams the chair into the back of his head.

 

Daisuke falls forward. It happens fast, so much that no one seems to realize what has happened at first, but when Mitarashi lets the chair fall from his hands, the heavy weight of it clattering onto the floor with so much finality, the bubble seems to burst; there is a surge of noise all around us, the teacher spinning around and sprinting back towards the center of the cafeteria as he yells at the nearest students to get the nurse, get the nurse, and I can feel Hikari's hands, both of them, tight around my forearm, holding me back, and her voice beneath the wash of everything else: “Takeru, please, Takeru, calm down—calm the fuck down—“

 

Daisuke is the only thing that's still, his body curled into a semi-fetal position on the cold linoleum, his eyes closed, the tiling around his unmoving head already flecked with blood.

 

+

 

[Daisuke is not having a good week. This is… like… the second time in this short story that he's ended up unconscious for one reason or another. But no matter. Sorry again for the short chapter and the long hiatus, and I suppose I'll see you all again at some point. Hopefully in less than another six months. I mean, a year. I mean, a year and two months. … Shut up.]