A/N: Ohmygah, my first Digimon fic. Heehee. It's just a one shot. A terrible one shot. Hm. I hope it's okay. It's a Michi! And it's English dubbed names, cause I'm lazy. Kay?
This one shot is dedicated to my friend, rainbowishprincess. She's been bothering me to write Digimon forever. Go read her stuff! It's awesome and godly.
Disclaimer: Not…mine.
Taking a Chance
"What about these ones?" she asked, holding up a pair of bright pink feathers to her earlobes. She turned her body every which way, forcing her face to change into a pouty expression.
"Those?" he asked, his tone scoffing. She turned around to look at him, frowning. She continued to hold the earrings up to her ears.
"But they go with my outfit really well!"
"You're wearing green."
"Yes! And these are pink! They match."
"You look like a watermelon."
"Tai!" she yelled, placing her hands on her hips angrily.
Tai chuckled, flapping a hand at her. "I was only joking, Meems."
"Well--you just don't joke about coordinating outfits!"
"All right, all right!" Tai cried, holding up his hands in an innocent gesture. "I'm sorry, okay?"
Mimi only huffed and turned around to place the earrings back on the rack. "I don't even know why I asked you to come shopping with me," she muttered moodily.
"Because I have great fashion sense?"
"You can't even tell pink and green go good together!" Mimi yelled, turning around to glare at him.
"And you can't tell when sarcasm is staring at you in the face!"
The two teens glared at each other. Neither moved. People drifted in and out of the store, whilst huge swamps of people shuffled down the mall corridor outside of the store. Mimi sniffed. Tai huffed.
"Well."
"I'm done here," Tai agreed.
"Me too," Mimi replied, flipping her pink hair out of her face. "I can't believe that on one of my rare visits back to Japan, I have to spend it with you."
"Sorry I ruined your life," Tai snapped, standing up from the chair he had been lounging in. "Why don't you go and yell at everyone else instead of me? At least I agreed to visit you! They just all come up with excuses not to see you!"
Mimi's bottom lip began to tremble. "Tai, be quiet," she whispered. "They WANT to see me! They're just busy!"
"No, they're not! To let you know, Sora doesn't have a soccer game. She's over at Matt's. And TK and Kari don't have a test to study for—they're sitting at my house right now, watching TV! And Izzy and Joe and everyone else really have no plans! They don't want to come shopping with you! They all knew you'd want to go shopping, and I'm sure they love you and like you and miss you and stuff, but I'm the only one who stuck it out! And I hate shopping more than them!" Tai threw up his hands in the air. The few drifters in the store were glaring at him reproachfully.
"What?" he snapped at them, not even realizing Mimi was on the verge of tears. "Do you have something you want to say to me?"
"Tai, just be quiet!" Mimi yelled shrilly. Before he could react, she grabbed his shirt sleeve and dragged him out of the store and into the main flood of the mall.
"Mimi!" Tai yelped. A group of teens began to charge through the crowd, and one of them stepped painfully on his foot. Moaning, he gritted his teeth. "What's your problem?"
"You're my problem, Tai!" Mimi screeched. Tai flinched. He had forgotten juts how badly they got along.
"Why? Because I was the only one who could stand you?"
"No! Because you say all these things that aren't true!"
"They are true!" Tai yelled. An old man swept past them, flinging his arm out to seemingly part the crowd. Without thinking, Tai grabbed Mimi's arm and wrenched her away from the man and behind himself.
"Um…" Mimi shifted. Tai blanched and quickly let go of her arm as if it had suddenly grew tentacles.
"Sorry," he blurted.
"It's all right. That man probably would have sent me to the hospital if I had stayed there."
Tai motioned to the wall of the corridor, out of harm's way from the flood of people. Mimi nodded and Tai made sure not to grab her arm or lead her there in any sort of touching way.
Once they reached the wall, a heavy silence descended over them.
"I forgot how much we fought," Tai said simply. Mimi nodded mutely.
"I know. I…I kind of missed it," she said, smiling timidly.
"Except for that we usually end up hating each other."
"Like right now?"
"Exactly."
Another silence. "I'm sure they just didn't want to go shopping," Tai reassured her. The topic caused Mimi's eyes to begin to shine with tears. She rubbed at them hastily.
"Uh-oh," Tai muttered, eyes widening. "Are you crying?"
"It's nothing," Mimi muttered shrilly, rummaging around in her purse for something. Tai felt increasingly uncomfortable as tears began to pour out of her eyes. "It's just that I thought everyone would, well, you know, want to see me."
"They do," Tai tried to fix the mistake of telling her the truth. "They just don't want to go shopping."
"And I thought everyone liked me," she continued to whimper.
"I'm sure they love you," Tai told her hastily. Inside his stomach was writhing. Would she just stop crying?
"And I thought everyone missed me!" she yelped.
"I missed you," Tai said warmly. When Mimi gave one last hearty sniff and turned to look up at him, he felt something strange tingling through his body. "I did," he repeated.
"Really?" she whispered.
"Yes," he repeated, feeling a blush creeping up onto his face.
"Even though we always argue?"
"It keeps me on my toes," Tai joked.
"And that I shop too much?"
"I play soccer too much," he countered, not really understanding why he was trying so hard to make Mimi feel better.
Mimi gave a sigh as she shuffled through her purse again. "Man, I have no tissues! Oh my God, it's like the one thing I don't have in here…"
Tai paused, and then rummaged around his pocket. Magically, he felt his fingers close around a tissue. Whipping it out, he held it in front of Mimi.
"For you," he said graciously.
Mimi cocked an eyebrow. "Why did you have a tissue in your pocket?"
Tai smirked at her. "I don't understand how you can be in tears and still manage to make me feel like a complete idiot."
"It's a gift," Mimi shot back. "But thanks."
He held it out for her, and she took it carefully from his hand.
Tai felt terrible as she began to wipe at her eyes and nose. "I'm sorry," he apologized, surprisingly sincere. It seemed to startle Mimi too. She looked up at him.
"You are?" she asked.
"Yea. I didn't mean to make you--well--cry."
"It's all right." Mimi stuffed the tissue in her purse. Tai ran a hand through his hair nervously.
"Well…" Tai searched around for something to say. The silence between them wasn't very comfortable.
"We haven't changed much, have we?" Mimi asked seriously. Tai looked down at her from his position of leaning against the wall.
"What?" he asked stupidly.
"I mean, we still argue about the stupidest things. I still love to shop, you still love soccer…" She sighed. "I guess the only thing really different is that we're actually friends now."
"Yea…friends," Tai replied absently, watching her as she surveyed the people around them. "Just friends, right?"
He hadn't meant to say it. The words had just slipped out.
"What?" Mimi asked, looking up at him with wide eyes. Her nose was still a little red from crying. Tai began to blush even more.
"Um--er--nothing," he told her hastily.
"No! You said something else!" Mimi glared at him. "What did you say, Tai?"
Her tone was enough to drag an answer out of a criminal. "I just said…just friends?" he asked meekly.
Mimi squinted her eyes at him, scrutinizing. Tai watched her nervously.
"Don't you like being friends?" she asked almost shyly.
"Yes," Tai blurted instantly.
"Then…why'd you say that?"
"I--I don't know."
"Tai."
He fidgeted. His shifted. He poked his shoes into the floor. And then he sighed.
"Do you really want to know?"
"Yes!" Mimi replied in a shocked tone.
Tai didn't even think that much. The only thing that popped into his head was that Mimi's going to kill me, and no one will know what really happened to my body.
He leaned in, rested a hand on her shoulder, and kissed her lips lightly with his. He was greeted with a gasp of shock, a twitch of her body.
But that was it. Nothing more. He pulled away. She hesitated to look up at him. And when she did, she leapt at him, kissing him again.
Tai felt strangely elated. So she wasn't going to kill him. That was good.
Sometimes taking chances was always worth it.