#40n

“You,” Yamato hisses into the phone before Taichi is even done greeting him, “are the worst meddler in the history of sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong!”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Taichi replies without missing a beat, but all it gets him is a snort that ends on a jaw-cracking yawn.

There’s a sigh then, carrying the mental image of Yamato pinching at the bridge of his nose over the phone while Taichi tries to pull his socks on one-handed without falling on his face.

“Are you seriously trying to tell me you have nothing to do with Daisuke’s break up?”

“Okay, first of all,” Taichi corrects, eyebrows knitting in a frown of his own, “it’s not a break up when the people involved aren’t even dating. Second—come on, at least listen to me before you start groaning!”

Yamato mutters something about a headache, which Taichi hears as the jab it is even as the sound of a chair scrapping on floorboard rises and falls in the background, followed by the dull slap of a thick book falling shut. Taichi glances at the clock, and almost groans in turn when he realizes it’s past midnight in Paris, which means either Yamato forgot about calling him until it was time for him to go to sleep, or he stayed up just so he could yell at Taichi as fast as possible.

Freaking typical.

“Look,” he says instead of starting another argument—which, given his history and levels of irritation, he’s kind of grimly proud about—“he asked me if he should date that girl! All I said was that if he had to ask me then it might not be the best of ideas.”

“Which you knew was going to drive them apart,” Yamato says, but doesn’t ask. “But you still said it because she’s not one of us and you don’t like that.”

“That’s got nothing to do with it!” Taichi yelps, hating the way it makes him sound guiltier than he truly is or feels.

All he did was answer his roommate’s question and give a sincere piece of advice—Yamato may not like it, but that doesn’t make it wrong, thank you very much! Besides, it’s not like he’s telling Daisuke he should stop all kind of dating—or any dating at all really. If he’d tried to convince the guy to stay single, now that would have been egoistical and downright cruel, but Taichi has no motive of that kind, and he crosses his arms over his chest in annoyance, shoulders tightening when Yamato insists:

“Right. I assume it has nothing to do with wanting to keep him as a roommate either?”

“Of course not!” Taichi retorts, and he almost hangs up when Yamato sighs his ‘why are we even friends’ sigh. Instead, he insists: “It doesn’t, Yamato! I’m trying to spare him useless pain, why would you even think—”

“Because you’re still grumbling about Hikari and Takeru dating even after seven years—”

“I don’t mind them dating,” Taichi starts, but this time it’s Yamato’s turn to interrupt with:

“You tried to convince her their flat was too big,” he says, voice rising in volume and decreasing sharply, probably when he remembers the time it is at his place.

“Well it is a little—”

“It’s twenty square meters!” Yamato hisses, pitch climbing up as he makes obvious efforts to stay quiet, “And it’s not like it’s a new problem either—you’ve never really been okay with any of us dating.”

“I congratulated Mimi and Koush—wait, has she picked her new name yet?”

She only came out as a transgender woman a couple months ago, and she’s been hesitating on a new name ever since—it makes sense she’d want to take her time about it, but sometimes Taichi can’t help feeling like it’s a bit of an awkward situation.

“Not yet,” Yamato says after a moment of reflexion, tone calmer for the interruption. “But even if we overlook the fact that you also congratulated them on their breakup after only three months, your main source of happiness back then was, and I quote, that they ‘kept it in the family’.”

Taichi has to wince at that, because this was really not his shiniest moment. Still, he thinks as he locks his flat behind him and bypasses the elevator in favor of the stairs, more conductive to an argument, Yamato is definitely giving the incident more weight than it deserves.

“Alright,” he admits with a sigh even as he switches the staircase lights on, “the phrasing was a bit creepy but—”

“It was downright gross,” Yamato interrupts, apparently determined not to let anything slide, “and not just because of the wording—you can’t just act like there’s no one else we can date than other chosen children!”

“Well it’s not like anyone else is going to get what it’s like!”

It’s been fourteen years since their first trip to the Digiworld, and Yamato may dislike it but the fact remains that, as experience has proved numerous times, even the other groups of chosen children can’t quite share the experience. Turns out US-comics were wrong: when the strange monsters tried to destroy the earth, it’s Japan that got the worst of it.

It’s nobody’s fault, really, and Taichi hasn’t resented the fate he got saddled with in years now, but the other teams, they had it easy. And even if they hadn’t—even with the non-negligible amount of crap that fell on their noses—they didn’t go through it the same way Taichi and his friends have, they don’t carry the scars the same way they do. They have different cultures and different roles and different expectations and that’s okay...it just means not even them understand what the experience was like for the Odaiba kids.

“Daisuke doesn’t care,” Yamato says, voice muffled by a rustle of fabric against the phone receiver.

He must be getting ready for the night.

“How would you know that,” Taichi asks even though it is, admittedly, not the kindest argument to pick, “you barely even talk to him!”

“His sister does,” Yamato replies without a pause, but his voice sounds tighter around the words, “and so does yours, and they both agree he didn’t even seem to realize there was a difference to be felt until you shoved it in his head.”

Taichi didn’t think people could really splutter indignantly, but what he’s doing right now really does sound like it. It’s entirely Yamato’s fault, though, because the nerve—the willful misinterpretation is just—how dare he! Yes, sure, most of them are dealing with it okay—they’ve got mostly normal lives if you except the occasional star-struck Digimon and a recent offer for a documentary about their adventures from a very reputable history channel...and yes, sure, they’ve all got twelve other Chosen children—plus their Digimon partners—to confide in and rely on, and that plays a lot.

It doesn’t erase everything though—Taichi has yet to hear about a group of friends who’s faced as many cases of depression, of nightmares, of random outbursts and awkward moments as theirs has, and Yamato of all people should know how hard it can be to go through this.

To mention that would be a low blow, though, and Taichi steers away from the argument, bringing up his other concern instead:

“You haven’t met the girl,” he says, “there’s something off about her!”

“Akiko’s biggest flaw is that she’s not one of the people we’ve been exclusively hanging out with since fifth grade,” Yamato snaps, “and you know it. Maybe I haven’t seen her, but I know she’s as much of a scatterbrained dork as Daisuke, which—”

“Now you’re making it sound like he’s stupid!” Taichi protests.

He hears Yamato stutter a bit—there’s echo in the background, almost drowned out by the sound of traffic on Taichi’s end of the line, but it does still sound like Yamato has retreated to the bathroom—before he recovers and hisses:

“He dropped out of school to open a noodle cart for fuck’s sake!”

“Which he’s paying his part of the rent with,” Taichi points out, “and it’ll cover the rest of his expenses too, so if you think he doesn’t deserve better than a simple waitress just because—”

Yamato swears on the other end of the phone, and Taichi does groan at that, temples beating with a headache even as he reaches his bus stop and glares at the street. Stupid Yamato, shoving his stupid face on the other side of the stupid world, like there aren’t any decent universities in Japan offering the stupid biology degree he decided to go for.

At least if he’d stayed, they could have this stupid argument face to face and settle it over a cup of tea or whatever.

“Do you even hear yourself talking?” Yamato asks when he’s done hissing invectives into the phone, “’he deserves better than a simple waitress’, seriously? Did we take a jump back to the eighteenth century I wasn’t aware of?”

“All I’m saying,” Taichi ties to say, only to be interrupted right away, real anger cracking through Yamato’s voice this time:

“All you’re saying is you’ll literally grasp at any reason Daisuke shouldn’t date Akiko, all because you can’t stand the idea of him leaving you behind like your sister did!”

“Hikari didn’t leave me behind,” Taichi protests, hand closing tighter against his phone, “she texts me almost as much as you do!”

“And yet,” Yamato retorts, sarcasm dripping from his voice thick enough Taichi can hear it over the bustle of commuters climbing on and exiting the bus, “you still act like she did, including with this.”

Yamato sighs, like he’s had this conversation far too often already—he hasn’t, Taichi would know—and insists:

“I know you don’t mean to hurt anyone, Taichi, but that’s what you’re going to do if you keep going that way.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Taichi says, annoyed enough by now that he barely notices the streets his bus is driving by, and nearly misses the stop for his university, “I’m not going to hurt him.”

On the other end of the line, Yamato’s snort—wrapped in the sound of running water, possibly because he’s run out of patience and decided to brush his teeth in the middle of a conversation like some kind of animal—is quite explicit as to how much he believes that. Taichi takes a deep breath and counts the steps from his bus stop to the university gates before he has a chance to explode.

There’s a bit of scratching, the sound of someone spitting, and Yamato sighs again:

“There’s only thirteen of us in Japan, remember? And none of the girls are available. That’s a pretty limited dating pool you’re building him.”

“Mimi and Miyako are into dudes,” Taichi points out, but even he can’t argue when Yamato scoffs.

“Mimi is even farther away from Japan than I am and she’s not the long-distance relationship type. And the very idea of Daisuke and Miyako in any kind of romantic relationship is just begging for disaster.”

“Okay,” Taichi admits, because he may be as stubborn as Yamato, but even he knows a losing battle when he sees one, “no girl available. But Daisuke is bisexual.”

“And who do you think is going to date him? You, Iori, or me?”

“I don’t want to date Daisuke!” Taichi protests, ears warming up a tad too fast.

He’s not the last to call Daisuke easy on the eyes—to the guy’s face, even!—and he may or may not have toyed with the idea a little on one of the rare occasions he drank too much, but the truth of it is, aside from the rather obvious lack of romantic attraction there, that would make things even more awkward when well-meaning strangers mistake them for brothers.

Really, they’re better off as friends.

“Well,” Yamato deadpans, “then considering I’m not interested in dating him—”

“You’re not interested in dating, period,” Taichi replies, unable to hide the hint of triumph in his voice.

“It’s not about my issues, Taichi,” Yamato half-sighs, half-yawns as a door clicks shut in the background, “I’m not interested in anything remotely close to romantic with Daisuke, which leaves him with Iori, and I’m pretty sure his partners would murder Daisuke in less than a day.”

“Ken isn’t dating anyone.”

“I don’t think you’ll get our second token straight to date a guy.”

“We don’t know that he is,” Taichi protests, lowering his voice as he nears his classroom, fifteen minutes early, “he could still be in the closet.”

“We’ve hit every stripe on the rainbow-meter,” Yamato deadpans in a rustle of sheets, “either he’s straight or he’s clearly not ready for dating.” A yawn. “And even if I’m wrong, you can’t just play pair the spares with our friends.”

“They’re barely even your friends,” Taichi snaps.

It’s a low blow and he knows it—Yamato may not speak with Daisuke on a regular basis, but he’s already demonstrated he was willing to go the extra mile for the guy’s sake anyway. Out of all the chosen children Taichi knows of, Yamato is probably the one whose bond to the rest of their little community are the strongest—there’s a reason why the rallying point shifted from Taichi to him in later years, after all.

Yamato’s relationship to Daisuke is still nowhere close to what he and Taichi have, though, or even to what exists between Yamato and Jyou, or Koushiro, whatever name she might end up picking. Yamato is a devoted friend, and so is Daisuke—it’s just easy to see their circles aren’t exactly perfect matches.

“Fuck you,” Yamato replies, the gritting of his teeth almost audible even through the phone, “you don’t get to tell me I’m a bad friend when you’re the one about to send him head first into the fucking wall!”

“He and Ken like each other,” Taichi replies, ears burning at him without it being enough to stop him.

“So did Sora and I,” Yamato spits—this time Taichi forgets to keep an indoor voice when he protests:

“That was different!”

He wasn’t privy to the whole disaster—there are things about those five years of dating (and one year of post-breakup chilly awkwardness) not even Takeru knows about, both the former couple and their Digimons incredibly tight-lipped about the whole affair. Taichi stood by the two of them throughout it all though, left them in peace when they needed him to, yelled at them when they needed him to, and collected the freaking pieces when they needed him to.

He may not have seen the car crash, but he was there for the clean up and oh, boy, is he glad he had help with that, because he’d have ended up in the gutter right alongside them if the others hadn’t picked up the slack.

At some point it almost seemed like their group wouldn’t survive the shift.

“We liked each other,” Yamato repeats. “See how ridiculous you sound now?”

“Look, it sucked—big time,” Taichi agrees, because there was never any way to beat around that particular bush, “but Ken and Daisuke are older—they know what their sexualities are by now.”

“I didn’t at their age.”

Taichi swallows back another, more pointed low blow—he can still hear Yamato’s anger simmering under the thin layer of ice in his voice, and putting a spark to it now would really be asking for an explosion. Instead, he says:

“Hikari and Takeru are happy.”

“Exception that confirms the rule,” Yamato replies with a hint of dark humor, “the rest of our intra-dating attempts only ever ended up bitting us in the ass. I’m pretty sure we’ve all had enough of dating other Digisaviors for a lifetime, thank you very much.”

“Digisaviors?” Taichi repeats with a blink, “where the hell did you pick that?”

“That’s what they call us in France,” Yamato brushes off, “don’t try to drop the topic. I’m your friend, okay? And as a friend I’m telling you you’re about to fuck up big time and you need to stop.”

“And I am telling you, you’re wrong.”

There’s a break in the conversation while Gabumon’s sleepy voice whines in the distance—poor guy must have had a hard time staying asleep with Yamato talking almost nonstop for the last, what? Half hour? How is he even still awake anyway? Last Taichi checked, Yamato went out like a light at eight PM like the old man he’s always secretly been.

Taichi listens to his friend apologize to his partner in a more subdued voice—frowning when they switch to French for a couple of sentences before Yamato sighs-yawns again:

“You’re a brilliant politician,” he says, and Taichi’s chest warms at the words, even though he can’t quite manage a smile for it after such a long-winded argument, “but sometimes when it comes to our friends you’re so oblivious you make me want to slap you across the phone.”

“Well screw you too,” Taichi replies as the door opens up to let the previous class out, “I’ve got class. Bye.”

He hangs up before Yamato can say anything else, and spends the rest of the morning ignoring the weird mix of satisfaction and nausea hanging at the edge of his stomach.

{ooo}

Hikari and Takeru, when Taichi visits them for the first time, look nauseatingly domestic. It hasn’t even been three months since they moved in together—a fact which, Taichi might add, none of their parents were ecstatic about—but their cupboard of a studio looks homely and lived-in already. It’s tiny, sure, and the fold-up couch at the back looks enormous, cramped as it is between the tiniest of bathroom and a cooking area that barely deserves the name, but the kids move through it like they wouldn’t give up the occasional bump for all the space in the world.

Taichi kind of wants to gag, but that would be pushing it.

“I still think you’re too young,” he mutters around his cup of tea, and while Takeru stays silent—although close as he is, it’s impossible to mistake the way he stiffens at the words—Hikari doesn’t share the same restraints:

“If you start this conversation again,” she says with a daring look in her eyes, “I will kick you out.”

Taichi manages half of a placating gesture with his right hand while the left keeps his mug close to his mouth, hiding his face from view. The words press at the edge of his lips, lemon-sour against his tongue, but even he can only have the same conversation so many times before he gives up, and he’s had the this one with Hikari often enough that he knows her arguments by heart now.

‘We haven’t been kids since 1999, haven’t been at peace for that long ever, haven’t got any reason to breakup, haven’t got any reason to wait’—Taichi has heard it all.

If he’s being very honest with himself—he doesn’t like to, where this topic is concerned—Taichi is also capable of admitting that all these ‘we haven’t’s come shadowed in a lot of ‘we have’s. ‘We’ve been supporting and helping and understanding each other since before we were ten,’ Hikari probably thinks, but never quite says, ‘we’ve been sent to war younger than anyone else, we have a right to enter peace early, too’.

Maybe they do.

It doesn’t mean Taichi has to approve.

“Fine,” he says anyway, because there’s a difference between disapproving his sister’s choice and actively antagonizing her over it, “so how do you guys keep this place clean? Did my sister move in with a neat freak?”

“Of all the possible subjects,” Hikari starts with a long-suffering sigh, but Takeru beats her to it:

“Sorry, wrong brother.”

“It’s a dual effort,” Hikari approves, tone still stiff, while her boyfriend throws Taichi a worried look.

Taichi’s lips lift at that, thin and short-lived. He hasn’t forgotten the way he argued with Yamato last week—hasn’t missed the absence of texts other than the automated ‘go eat something’ Yamato sends so Taichi won’t forget one too many meals in profit of his political sciences textbooks and drop dead in a pool of his own sweat.

(Yamato’s words, not Taichi’s.)

Despite it all though, it’s impossible not to remember how insanely ordered Yamato’s bedroom always seemed whenever Taichi visited the Ishida’s, before Yamato decided a year in Moscow to learn Russian wasn’t long or far enough away and picked a French university for his higher education.

“How do you keep things clean?” Hikari asks after a pause—Taichi may have gotten a little sidetracked there, because she’s gone from irritated to almost worried in record time.

“Dual effort,” Taichi replies, deliberately paraphrasing her, although it sounds more flat than teasing, even to his own ears. “We clean up after ourselves in the common areas and we deal with our own rooms. Why, how many centimeters of filth did you think I lived in?”

Hikari’s fingers twitch, same as they do whenever their parents get a little too overbearing during their weekly phone calls, and Taichi almost takes offense at that—he’s ready to admit he didn’t start his visit in the best way, but there’s nothing to be annoyed about in what he just said, honestly!

“We’re just a little worried,” Takeru says in a soothing tone, one hand landing on Hikari’s shoulder all casual like, as if Taichi weren’t going to notice the way his thumb rubs circles over her jumper, “you’ve seemed a little down since we moved in here and—”

“It’s the end of November,” Taichi points out with a roll of his eyes before Takeru can finish his sentence, “I’ve got a ton of exams coming up. Of course I’m tired.”

He doesn’t miss the glance floating between Takeru and Hikari—doesn’t miss the little twist of Takeru’s lips like he’s seeing something he was bracing himself for—and he’s a little more forceful than he should be when he sets his cup down on the tiny coffee table:

“You know I can take care of myself, right? I’ve got the rent covered—”

“It’s not the rent I’m wo—”

“I know how to operate a washing machine and a vacuum cleaner, I can even cook, contrary to what your brother likes to pretend!”

“Hey, let’s not get Yamato involved,” Takeru says, raising his hands in defense, but Taichi’s annoyance is loose now, and he doesn’t really try to restrain himself when he says:

“Don’t worry, he doesn’t need me to involve him in pretty much every aspects of my life, he does that perfectly well on his own!”

Both Hikari and Takeru’s eyes widen at his words, and Taichi has to make a conscious effort to stay seated, breathe in deep and swallow some of his anger down. They’re trying to look out for him, he reminds himself. Sure, they’re insulting him—and possibly Daisuke, a little—when they act like he’s going to crash and burn now his little sister has left him behind, despite the presence of a roommate who proved a perfectly sensible leader and friend in difficult time.

Still, their hearts are in the right place, and Taichi clings to that for as long as it takes to calm himself down—at least until he’s reasonably sure he won’t let his words say imply things he doesn’t really mean.

“Look,” he manages after a while—the others, he notes, have waited him out, like defusing a bomb, and the thought makes him clench his fists together—“Daisuke and I may not be in the same state of domestic bliss as you, but that doesn’t mean we’re headed for disaster either, thank you very much.”

They share a look again—full of things they’ve already discussed to hell and back, Taichi bets, full of things they don’t want him to hear although, judging by the way they look at him afterwards, he might be concerned anyway.

“Okay,” Hikari says at last, articulation as careful as the hand she extends to touch Taichi’s knuckles with, “it’s just that I’ve—I’m a little concerned about that thing with the waitress—”

“Oh my—” Taichi cuts himself off to brush a hand over his face, “let me guess, Yamato called you?”

“I learned it from Daisuke,” Hikari replies, eyebrows drawing together, “I didn’t know Yamato knew you were involved.”

“When does he not know a thing about me?” Taichi scoffs, “Whatever I don’t tell him he can learn from any of us—even my own sister, apparently!”

“First of all,” Hikari counters, visibly refusing to back down, “I’ve already said I didn’t tell him about what you did. And secondly, can you really blame us? He’s the one who gets the best results when it comes to getting through to you!”

“He’s on the other side of the freaking world,” Taichi snaps at her, getting on his feet, “you guys need to stop pretending like he can control my life from there.”

“Nobody thinks that!” Takeru yelps, indignation written all over his features,but Taichi doesn’t believe him.

People running to Yamato as soon as they have a problem with Taichi—or what he’s doing, or how he’s living, apparently—is nothing new, of course, but for the love of everything, the guy left Japan over eight years ago, it’s time everyone started getting with the program!

“Look,” Taichi says, kind of proud of how he manages to keep his voice level despite the abrupt urge to yell until everyone leaves him alone, “I’ve got Agumon and Daisuke, I’m doing fine, and I don’t need Yamato to chaperon me, thank you very much.”

He gets to his feet after that, gathers his things and leaves before Hikari or Takeru can protest—before one of them can say something that will be blown out of proportion and they have a real argument.

Then he goes home, settles into some old comedy reruns with Agumon by his side and some leftover pizza in his plate, and waits until Daisuke comes home so he can investigates the guy’s feeling for Ken a little more thoroughly and finally clear the day’s frustrations and contrarieties out of his mind.

{ooo}

For a few days, Taichi worries Hikari’s intervention—and the text-based mutual apology they engage in the day after—means she’ll try to get more involved in his life again. Part of him wouldn’t mind, but she is his little sister: he’s the one that should take care of her, not the reverse. Much like the rest of their group, though, Hikari is simply too busy to make time for anything that isn’t her immediate life.

Taichi himself barely even leaves his flat unless he’s got classes or he needs to attend a work meeting in person which, given most of his meetings involve Digimon—and therefore a webcam or two—is getting fairly rare. The end result is that he shares his time between studying, trying to convince his country’s government to officially condemn the USA’s decision to maintain Digimons’ legal status as pets, and the blissful, mind-numbing relief of bad comedy and not wearing that isn’t at least at pajamas-levels of comfort.

He gets a couple of texts from Sora inviting him over to Kyoto—refuses, too tired to bother with the effort after so much mental exhaustion—and a long email from Kou’ he has yet to answer—he wants to, he does, but it’s kind of hard writing something long when the only thing you have time for in your life is work, work, work, and some bits of university crammed in there. Taichi can barely make time for Agumon these days, he can’t be blamed for not joining the others on their outings, collective or not!

The only positive effect of this, really, is that studying until the small hours of night means more chances of catching Yamato in the middle of his day, which means they end up texting even more than they did before their fight, saving Taichi’s social life from being entirely limited to his own flat.

Ken’s visit are a good thing, too, but for different reasons.

He’s constantly around these days. He pretends he’s there to see Taichi, which is a little ridiculous—then again, maybe Yamato’s theory has merit and the kid isn’t quite ready to put himself out there—but he’s always willing to talk about Daisuke—or Veemon, or the things he and Wormon do with the other two—whenever Taichi steers the conversation in that direction.

It’s adorable in how oblivious Ken thinks Taichi is, and kind of refreshing in the innocence of the scheme, although Taichi sometimes wants to tell Ken being more forward, or at least talking to Daisuke, would be more efficient.

Either way, though, his matchmaking projects are looking quite auspicious, and while he tries to keep them to himself so he can avoid Yamato’s disbelieving sarcasm and reproaches, Taichi can’t help but feel very satisfied by his good work.

{ooo}

“I will never understand,” Yamato sighs into the phone in the middle of a Saturday night in early-December, “how you can be such a brilliant politician and fail so completely at understanding people at the same time.”

“I’m going to pretend I only heard the nice part of this,” Taichi says, stretching his legs under his parents’ kotatsu, “but only because I feel magnanimous.”

His parents treated him to the best home-made meal ever for lunch—or at least the endless chain of instant ramen and leftover junk food he survives on when Daisuke doesn’t bring noodles back from work made it feel that way—there’s a heater roasting at his feet, and so far he’s spent his afternoon doing exactly nothing but watch Agumon snore the time away between two micro-naps of his own. Throw in his mother’s solicitude—her constant concern over his well being just short of overbearing—and the satisfaction of being positively toasty when it’s only six or seven degrees out, and you’d be hard pressed to find more mollifying conditions.

“I’ll repeat myself then,” Yamato replies, something sizzling on his end of the line.

Taichi glances at the kitchen clock, and raises an eyebrow when he realizes it must be around eight AM in France...by Yamato’s standard, it’s a positively indecent time to be having breakfast.

“You suck at figuring out what the rest of us want.”

“I don’t!” Taichi protests, patience shrinking faster than snow on a Meramon as he straightens up, “I told you, Ken just keeps talking about Daisuke—”

“Do you even let him talk about anything else?” Yamato interrupts with far too much sarcasm, “Maybe he’d be happy to talk about your job, too.”

“My job is boring,” Taichi replies with a shrug, nodding at his mom when she comes to sit beside him with her crosswords, “why would he want to ask about it?”

“He’s polite,” Yamato replies without missing a beat—the sizzling stops, replaced by the sound of a pan scrapping against something hard, and a persistent buzzing coming to an abrupt halt before Yamato continues: “he genuinely cares about you—oh and also you’re one of the people who has the most influence on whether or not Digimon will be allowed in the police force.”

“I’m not that influent, Yamato.”

“Fine,” Yamato deadpans, “maybe he’s just doing this because Hikari and I asked him to check in on you since he’s the one that lives closest to you with the most free time.”

“Right,” Taichi snorts, opening and closing his free hand into a fist near his head for his mother’s benefit, “like I’m going to believe that.”

“Then we’re back to the ‘your work is not boring’ part of that conversation,” Yamato concludes, so matter of fact Taichi can almost see him shrug.

“Please,” Taichi protests with a grunt loud enough to make his mother turn away from her crosswords and back at him, “last week I had to talk a bunch of Numemons not to attack the prime—”

“There was an attack?”

Taichi turns to look at his mother—the worried lines around her mouth and under her eyes, the frown crinkling at her eyebrows as her knuckles whiten around her pencil—and almost wants to slap himself in the face for being so careless. He’s usually better at controlling his vocabulary—but then it’s harder to remember when he’s talking to one of the others.

Now his mother looks pale and tense, bracing herself for the worse before Taichi can even blink, and he can’t blame her for it—he knows he can’t, not with everything he already put her through—but that doesn’t prevent the spark of irritation blooming in his chest, tightening the fingers of his free hand around his thigh as he reassures her:

“With stink bombs, mom. It’s gross, but it’s not dangerous.”

“Really?” His mother insists, and Taichi clamps down hard on the wave of annoyance roiling against his stomach.

“Yes,” he promises, hating the way it’s not enough to placate his mother’s worrying.

“Would you tell me if it was?” She insists, and Taichi sort of wants to answer ‘no’.

He never has, after all—not when he was a kid and it could have meant getting out of things entirely, not when he was a preteen he wasn’t even directly involved, not when he was a teenager and he and his sister cried into her shoulder for almost an hour. What else was he supposed to do, anyway? It’s not like she could have done anything but sit and wait, none of the people actually involved having time to stop and explain the situation to her—Taichi has done a lot of that when he was a kid, watching doctors and nurses busy themselves with his little sister without realizing there was another child there. He wasn’t about to put her through that as well.

He started counting the weeks until he could move out of the family flat when he peed his bed a few days after Yamato left for his semester in Moscow, and hasn’t even dreamed of coming back ever since.

“You know what,” he tells his mother, face aching with a stiff smile, “I think I’m going to take this call outside.”

“Sweetie,” his mother tries, easily sensing the distance, “you don’t have to—”

“No, it’s okay,” Taichi tells her, getting to his feet before she can touch him, “I’m feeling stuffy anyway. I can use the fresh air.”

He gives his mother one last would-be reassuring grimace, and tries not to look too obvious in his flight as he steps out on the balcony with nothing but slippers and a thick pullover to protect him from the cold. He sighs as soon as the glass door slides shut behind him, and purposefully keeps his gaze fixed on the skyline so he doesn’t have to watch his mother instead.

“Outsider freak out?” Yamato asks after a while, voice softer than before.

“It’s my fault,” Taichi says with a shrug—his voice is a little thick, but he’s pretty sure he’s going to catch a cold out there, so he doesn’t let it bother him too much—“I slipped.”

Yamato hums in response, and Taichi almost asks if Yamato thinks he should have known better, too, but his stomach constricts at the thought, and the question leaves a bitter taste of bile in his mouth when he swallows it down. Instead, what he asks is:

“Does it ever happen to you?”

“Like I talk to my parents enough for them to freak out.”

“Takeru could,” Taichi says, but Yamato scoffs.

“To my mother, maybe. Not the old man, though.”

Taichi nods at that, and then Yamato tells him to wait before he starts saying something in French—Taichi has no idea what. He’s not surprised by Yamato’s dismissal—has spent enough nights at the Ishida residence before Yamato left the country to take an educated guess as to why his friend is so close-lipped around his family—but that doesn’t prevent his heart from sinking as he listens to Yamato exchanges what must be goodbyes with his grandfather.

It’s hard to understand that kind of situation when you haven’t lived it, after all, and Taichi doesn’t need someone who doesn’t get it right now.

“Pappy flipped out once,” Yamato says after silence has stretched between them for several seconds with no ending in sight, “it was definitely my fault. We...talk more. Since then.”

“Do you tell him about the nightmares?”

Yamato makes a garbled noise around his breakfast that could mean anything from ‘I don’t have nightmares’--Taichi has countless middle-of-the-night texts and conversations that say otherwise—to ‘we sit at the kitchen table and swap war stories: I talk about Digimons and he talks about killing Nazis’ —or whatever Yamato’s grandfather did back in the French Resistance. Something in Taichi’s stomach twists at the sound, somewhere between envy and sadness, and since he can’t quite figure out which is which he decides to go back to safer grounds:

“Well, we can’t prevent them from worrying,” he says, trying to sound more cheerful than he really is, “but at least we can rejoice in the future success of operation Kensuke—and shut up, it’s a great portmanteau.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Yamato deadpans, and it’s easy to reply:

“You were about to.”

“You never know,” Yamato says with a rattle of cutlery jostling around in a plate, “if reason doesn’t work maybe aesthetics will.”

Taichi blows a raspberry into the phone out of principles more than anything else and, unsurprisingly enough, the only thing they exchange from then on is childish bickering, until Yamato has to beg out of the conversation so he can go attend his latest bootcamp. Taichi pretends to think Yamato is just admitting defeat, but the truth is he can’t feel his toes anymore and it’s a relief to come inside. He rubs some warmth back into his arms, wincing as returning blood prickles along his veins, and then startles when he realizes his mother is still there, looking at him like he just did something adorable.

Taichi hasn’t seen that kind of smile on her—or on his father, for that matter—since he was a child trying to act older than he was for his sister’s sake. The Digiworld and its host of complications erased that smile right off Taichi’s parents’ face when it turned out he really had to make decisions that should have been far beyond his years, and seeing it back because of something as simple as a conversation with his best friend makes Taichi pause.

“What?”

“I was just thinking how much you’ve grown,” his mother says, a touch of nostalgia gracing the edges of her smile, “not so long ago a disagreement with Yamato would have ended in a shouting match.”

Taichi’s face floods with heat, and he looks to the ground as he remembers a week of near complete silence in the aftermath of what should have been a fairly innocent argument. ‘I’m twenty five, ‘ma,’ he mutters instead of telling her about that.

She’s still smiling when he leaves, and that’s worth more than the exact truth.

{ooo}

He manages to phone Sora a few days before 2013 turns into 2014, and catching up with her somehow manages to shave something like ten years off his shoulders. It’s early in life, maybe, to think like that, but that doesn’t prevent Taichi from feeling the difference when the weight vanishes.

He’s not sure how they get around to discussing Daisuke and his growing crush on Ken, but he does know how flabbergasted he feels when she says:

“I just hope it’s not going to go too far.”

Taichi blinks at her through the video chat window, face owlish enough that Biyomon giggles at him from behind Sora’s shoulder. He’s a little too caught off guard to care though, because what on Earth?

“What do you mean, ‘too far?’”

“Well Ken is clearly not interested,” Sora explains with a wide shrugs—she pauses to answer a presumably important text before she finishes: “if Daisuke falls in love with him it’s going to make things really awkward. And painful.”

“Or not,” Taichi manages after chasing his own voice for a few seconds, “might be you’re wrong and they’re going to be perfectly happy together.”

Sora’s shoulders move like she’s putting their hands together—picking at the skin around her nails, maybe—and then she mumbles:

“Maybe.”

She sounds skeptical, at best, and changes the topic fast after that, grilling Taichi on his work and home life. He lies a little—makes up a couple of solitary outings just to spare himself the shame of admitting his social life has pretty much vanished, and does his best to sound like Digital World diplomacy is as fascinating a topic as it was when he started out—but mostly sticks to things that would be true if he wasn’t so busy and tired.

He brushes her off—gently—when she tries to warn him again, though. She may have the crest of love but she’s too far to have real clarity on the situation, and Taichi isn’t that brainless thank you very much.

{ooo}

It takes some effort not to gloat when Ken’s visits increase after their group’s New Year reunion—Taichi didn’t miss the effort Ken put in preparing the whole event and while simple kindness was definitely involved in the process, it certainly doesn’t explain the kid’s enthusiasm about it, or how much discussion of Daisuke’s qualities, life and project he can endure. Even Taichi is getting a little tired of the topic, and he’s the one who usually starts with it!

He’s had to slow down a bit in the past few days, because Wormon asked if Taichi was interested in Daisuke which wouldn’t be a problem if not for the fact that it isn’t what Taichi is going for at all. Besides, knowing Ken’s tendency to close up when he’s upset—second only to Yamato in that regard—if Taichi doesn’t set him straight, pun completely unintended, he might end up giving up on what might turn out to be the best thing of his life.

That would honestly be unacceptable.

So, Taichi makes it clear he’s not interested in Daisuke that way, keeps encouraging both Ken and Daisuke’s attention to the other, and celebrates with a much deserved sake shot one night—or maybe more like two or three.

(Agumon and Daisuke freak out when they find the bottle—not even half empty—so Taichi decides not to have a long-distance toast with Yamato about it, but that doesn’t prevent him from cheering a little every time he spots even the smallest sign of progress in his project.)

{ooo}

Taichi spends most of the weekend after New Year’s sitting on his TV with leftover cereals, watching reruns of Takeshi’s Castle while the others are either out or, in Agumon’s case, visiting a Tokomon village on File Continent. It’s not a bad program: it keeps complicated thoughts at bay and lets him idle the day away without guilt, which is all he’s asking for these days.

He spends an unusually bright Sunday morning like that, ignoring the world around him until someone runs up to his door—the footsteps echo through the corridor for a long moment before there’s banging on the door, and Ken’s voice calls out Taichi’s name through the wood. Taichi blinks and sighs at the sounds, peeling himself from the couch with the ache of too little movement in his joints before he makes his way to the door.

“Oh my—are you alright?” Ken manages, out of breath, when Taichi opens the door and nearly brains him in the process, “You weren’t answering your phone!”

“...I was sleeping?” Taichi replies, shaping the words with more care than entirely necessary, “what’s the matter?”

“Yamato tried to call you six time,” Ken replies, breathing slowly getting back to a normal rhythm, “you didn’t answer!”

“No,” Taichi repeats, more slowly, “because I was sleeping.”

It’s far too early for Yamato to be calling though—it must be around three AM in Paris right now, which is closer to late yesterday than it is to early this morning, and Taichi frowns when he realizes there’s only one possible explanation for the disruption.

“What happened?” He asks Ken even as he rushes back to his bedroom to retrieve his laptop, “Is Mr. Takashi going to be alright?”

“What?”

“Mr. Takashi!” Taichi repeats, opening his laptop in the same breath, “If it were a Digimon thing you’d have led with that so Yamato called for something else, and unless something happened to him or Gabumon, then it’s got to be his grandfather, so how is he?”

“I don’t know,” Ken replies, crossing his arms over his shoulders, “Yamato didn’t mention.”

Taichi pauses, confused.

“Then why on earth is he calling that early?”

“Taichi, it’s not early,” Ken says with the same careful enunciation Taichi used earlier, “it’s almost five PM.”

Taichi stares at Ken over the edge of his laptop, the orange glow of his screen almost painfully bright between them while he scrambles to gather his thoughts, and yet only manages a feeble:

“What?”

“It’s almost five PM,” Ken repeats like Taichi might break if the news is delivered too abruptly, “Yamato asked me to check in on you because you missed your phone call.”

“I—ju—what?” Taichi stutters, still unable to make full use of his braincells, “what do you mean he asked you to check in on me?”

“Well,” Ken answers with a heavy blush, “we’ve all been sort of worried about you lately, and you didn’t seem ready to listen, so I agreed to keep an eye on you...then when you didn’t answer on Skype or on your phone, Yamato asked me to pop by and I just...trusted his instincts, I guess.”

“...what?”

Ken’s face goes from flushed to beet red in record time, and Taichi almost feels his own eyes turn into panicked spirals as one realization follows another and he all but yells:

“What do you mean, you were keeping an eye on me?”

“Like said,” Ken says, shoving his hands behind his back, “we were all worried...I’m the one who lives closest, and your place is on my way from the academy, that’s all. Why did you think I spent so much time here?”

“To see Daisuke?” Taichi replies, hoping the high-pitch of his voice doesn’t erase the ‘duh’ from it.

“I see him every day while he works,” Ken points out, puzzlement pushing at the edge of his obvious discomfort, “I can talk to him there. Besides, if I were visiting him, I’d at least talk to him.”

“Okay,” Taichi answers, bringing his hands up to rub at the slowly-forming migraine between his temples, “so you’re...not interested in him?”

Ken blinks and looks down at his crossed arms as if expecting Wormon to be there—as if looking for comfort in the shared confusion—before he shakes his head with a helpless little shrug and says:

“You know I’m straight, don’t you? I mean. I’m actually demiromantic, but I’m still not interested in men.”

Taichi’s eyes widen, heart hammering louder and louder in his ears and against his ribcage as he absorbs the enormity of his mistake.

Months—he’s spent months encouraging Daisuke’s crush, shedding as much of a positive light on the prospective match as he could manage, plotting and congratulating himself on a project well-managed, and all that for what, exactly?

He shies away from the answer like stepping back from the edge of a cliff you were about to fall off of, clenches his fingers into fists, and tries to breathe deeply through his nose. What does his reasons matter? The result is exactly the same: he was warned against this. Extensively so, even, but it wasn’t enough to stop him, and now Daisuke’s the one who’s going to pay the price.

“Oh my god,” he mutters, “what have I—”

“It’s okay,” Ken interrupts, clearly misreading his intent, “what matters is you’re safe.”

Taichi looks back at Ken’s face then—stares at the concern in his dark eyes—and tries to listen to his friend’s word while his brain slowly turns into some bland cotton-candy thing.

“It’s just—you’ve lost a lot of weight in the past few months,” Ken says like he’s reciting a list, “you haven’t been playing soccer—Hikari said you didn’t even eat much even when your mom was cooking. And then Yamato told us you sounded bored about your work and you’d started texting him at odd hours—it wasn’t that hard to put two and two together.”

Taichi frowns at that, going over Ken’s speech in his head—abrupt weight loss, lack of appetite, loss of enthusiasm...and okay, he woke up at five today, but that’s just because work and university left him positively exhausted for heaven’s sake!

“You think I’m depressed?” He asks anyway, just to confirm—he manages to be disappointed at the way Ken’s face softens no matter what, and squashes the feeling as hard and fast as he can manage. “I’m not depressed,” he promises.

“Taichi,” Ken starts, but Taichi cuts him off:

“I’m really not. I’m just super tired—I see how it can look that way, but just because it looks like it doesn’t mean I am.”

“In my experience,” Ken starts, but Taichi cuts him off with a raised hand:

“Ken, I’m not depressed. Stop worrying, and tell the others too—I’m fine. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have something important to take care of.”

He all but pushes Ken out of the apartment after that, deploying considerable amounts of energy on convincing the guy not to worry—it doesn’t look like it works but, at last, Taichi is alone again, and he can finally catch a breath.

After all, if he’s going to have to break a friend’s heart—all through his own usual, pathological, bullheaded stupidity—he might as well take some time to figure out the least bad way of doing that.

If it even exists, that is.

{ooo}

Daisuke looks down at his hands while Taichi’s face catches fire, sweat boiling under his armpits while the burning heat of shame licks at his neck and ears.

It’s only been a couple of hours since Ken left the flat, and maybe Taichi could have given himself more time before he had to face this conversation, but what would have been the point? Delaying things protects no one but himself, and if anything he deserves the discomfort after what he did. He’s the bearer of Courage, dammit! He’s supposed to be a leader—to keep his team safe—and all he’s done lately is set one of them up for heartbreak while he made all the others worry!

Suffering for it won’t change anything to the situation, but at least it should ease his mind.

“I really am sorry,” he promises for what must be the third time in as many minutes, “I don’t—I shouldn’t have encouraged you without knowing...I shouldn’t even have gotten involved at all, actually. I never meant for you to get hurt—I’m so sorry.”

“Well,” Daisuke starts, almost—but not quite—managing to hide the shiver in his voice, “you were trying to help. That happens.”

Taichi opens his mouth to answer—tries to nod in assent and accept the forgiveness he’s so readily presented with—but the words stick at the back of his throat and he looks at the ground instead, fingers digging so hard in the flesh of his thighs even his knuckles ache. He stays silent, and lets the weight of his shame drag his shoulders down, down, down, until he’s almost kissing his own knees.

He barely resists the urge to bang his head against the bones when, after a long, painful silence, Daisuke leaves the living room and slams the door to his bedroom shut behind him.

{ooo}

“I can’t even believe anyone thought I’d make a good ambassador,” Taichi tells Yamato when he catches him on the phone a several hours later, “I’m so—so—stupid and selfish!”

Yamato half-yawns, half-grunts into the phone, and Taichi listens to the rustle of fabric on his friend’s end of the line, followed with another soft grunt when—Taichi assumes—Yamato realizes what time it is.

It strikes him, now, that there is quite a lot of irony in waking someone late at night so he can complain about being too selfish, but then the damage is already done by now—and Yamato will just call back if Taichi hangs up anyway.

“Sorry,” he says nonetheless, glad, for once, that Agumon isn’t here to witness the interaction, “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize—”

“Calm down, it’s barely past nine here,” Yamato tells him in a whisper—Gabumon must be sleeping in the same room, meaning Taichi could end up indirectly waking the Digimon up as well.

Things just get better and better.

“The real question is why are you up at five AM?”

“You were right about Daisuke,” Taichi admits in lieu of an answer, ears still burning, “about Ken—about everything.”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line—Taichi imagines he can hear Yamato frown, impossible though he knows it to be.

“I assume,” Yamato says in a careful tone, “that you apologized already and he didn’t take it too well?”

“He took it very well, actually,” Taichi admits in a tight voice, “better than I had any right to hope for. He thought I was just trying to be nice.”

“So you set him straight.”

Taichi swallows around the thick lump in his throat—refuses to let the burn of his eyelids become anything more, even if it takes some loud, deep breathing Yamato is sure to identify. At least the living room is dark now, and neither Daisuke nor Veemon have given any indication they wanted to come out so far.

“I didn’t even have enough guts for that,” Taichi admits, shame rushing back to life with the words, “I just sat there and let him figure it out for himself.”

“At least you didn’t lie,” Yamato points out, tone more gentle than it has any right to be—it stiffens Taichi’s back, claws at his throat until he hisses:

“You sound like you don’t even mind!”

“Fine. You were stupid, pigheaded and selfish, and you got Daisuke hurt, just like I said you would,” Yamato says, each words sharp as a knife, “does it make you feel better?”

“No,” Taichi admits.

In Yamato’s defense, it’s not like anything has a chance of succeeding at that just now.

“Then saying it was pointless,” Yamato says, voice barely above a whisper, “you’re a decent human being. You feel bad enough about this without me adding to it.”

“For all the good it does to Daisuke,” Taichi mutters, and Yamato snorts.

“I don’t think you can do anything about that just now,” he says, “you’ve said your piece, now give him space so he can think things through. Then we’ll see how it goes.”

Taichi sighs and nods, even though he knows Yamato can’t possibly hear that, much less see it.

Yamato’s right, though: there isn’t much to be done about Daisuke’s predicament right now, and it’s not Taichi’s place to do it. Excruciating as it is, the only thing he can do is wait.

“What if he doesn’t want anything to do with me afterwards?”

The question left Taichi’s lips almost of its own accord, cold dread flooding his lungs at the though. What if Daisuke decides to leave for good—what if the others feel like they have to make a choice, what if Taichi’s stupidity just damaged their group beyond repair?

“I don’t think he’ll do that,” Yamato starts, but Taichi snorts before he can finish his sentence:

“How would you even know that?”

“Because I wouldn’t,” Yamato says, matter-of-fact tone blurring into a yawn. “We’re not close friends, but we share a crest, remember? He’ll need time, sure, but I don’t think he’ll leave entirely.”

Taichi nods again, the motion just as useless as it was before, and wipes at the edge of his eyes with his palms. Really, he’s being pathetic—Yamato’s right. There’s nothing he can do to help right now, and sitting in the dark like an idiot won’t change anything to his situation.

With a sigh, he gets to his feet—winces when his knees crack as he straightens up—and then he says:

“He’d have a right to leave though. I basically broke his heart because I was afraid he’d leave the flat.”

“I know,” Yamato replies, “you messed up, there’s no hiding that. I just don’t think it’s entirely your fault.”

“I’m not depressed,” Taichi replies automatically, before he amends: “well, obviously I am feeling depressed, but I’m not actually sick or anything.”

“Then you’re doing a good job of pretending,” Yamato says, and Taichi pauses at the edge of his bedroom, one hand on the threshold to hold himself steady:

“I’m not,” he insists. Then, tiredness stretching his voice into some sort of half-whine he barely recognizes: “can we just leave it at that? I’m not up for a debate about it. I’m fine. Overall.”

“Okay,” Yamato says in that way that means he still disagrees but doesn’t want to fight about it—in a way, it’s almost worst than having to argue the point. “You should go to sleep now, though. You’ll feel better tomorrow.”

“I don’t feel like sleeping.”

Taichi would say he’s not tired—if anything, it would salvage the sad remnants of his dignity, if only to his own eyes, even if not much of it is left to spare where Yamato is concerned—but the truth is he hasn’t been that exhausted since the weeks following the Reboot. It’s a bone-deep ache, something thick enough to coat his entire being and spirit, and right now he doesn’t have the energy to pretend otherwise.

It’s not like Yamato hasn’t already seen him at his worst, anyway. What’s one more instance in the grand scheme of things?

“At least go to bed,” Yamato insists, and Taichi honestly only agrees because putting up a fight is too much of an effort just now.

He makes his way to his bedroom on autopilot, free hand in front of him to avoid bumping nose-first into the wall as he feels his way to his bed. He collapses on it without bothering to take his clothes off—he only even put them on out of respect for Daisuke anyway—and keeps his phone against his ear when he pushes his head into the pillow.

It takes him a second to register the sounds of movement on Yamato’s end of the line, and then he’s yawning into the phone:

“What are you doing?”

“Getting my guitar out,” Yamato replies after a brief pause—he must have gotten earphones to free his hands, then.

“You think a lullaby’s going to put me to sleep?”

“I know I’ve put you to sleep that way before,” Yamato replies without missing a beat, “shut up and enjoy.”

Taichi chuckles, surprising himself with it, but he does manage to shimmy out of his dress pants and slip under the covers while Yamato tunes his instrument.