Trainwreck
Summary: "You're all nervous because I've gotten super cute."
Missing moment from my 'Anchor Me Back Down' AU. Michi.
Author's Note: Because I watched the new PV yesterday and there was so much potential, have my revisitation of the Koushiro/Mimi scene. As this is a new part of my other work, "Anchor Me Back Down" (s/11451972/1/Anchor-Me-Back-Down), I highly advise you to read that first if you haven't yet to have a better understanding of the relationships background in this.
This drabble takes place when Mimi is about 17 and Taichi is 18, so to make it clear it happens sometime between the segment X and XII, the ones where Mimi, Taichi and Sorato are at school during class break and the one at Koushiro's house. Hopefully this will makes sense.
As usual, thanks for reading and for reviewing my other fictions, it really means a lot to me to see that Anchor Me especially got such a great feedback. Hopefully this won't disappoint you. x
XI.
"You keep staring at me."
Mimi's voice comes in her high pitched tone and shakes Taichi out of his half asleep current state.
She's sitting in front of him on the uncomfortable train chair, her legs stretched out so that they're resting on Taichi's seat; his hand is lazily placed on her ankle, and he's absentmindedly grazing her bare skin right above the rolled down socks she's wearing. Her shoes are laying forgotten on the floor after she'd decided to ditch them a couple of hours prior that moment, no matter how much they had begged her not to.
"No, I'm not!"
It's the rapidity in which Koushiro answers her that betrays him, and Taichi's lips curl up in an amused grin as he almost imperceptibly shakes his head, thinking that his friend still has so much to learn when it comes to Mimi, so much.
Mimi's head is turned to Koushiro, who's sitting still as a stone next to her looking at everything but her. One of her eyebrows is raised as to prove her point, and her hair is falling softly down each side of her face and Taichi is not really sure, at that point, what color exactly it is supposed to be (right now it's somewhere between her very own cinnamon shade and a washed out pink, and he keeps asking himself if it's intentional or a dyeing job went wrong); he knows that it's getting longer than she's ever had it though, now reaching all the way down her breasts.
"Have I suddenly surprised you with my prettiness?" Mimi asks Koushiro, but her voice sounds somehow distant to Taichi, who's not really listening to her, instead concentrating on how her hair follows the curve of her chest. "Hmm?" Mimi clears her voice when she doesn't get a response, the sound making Taichi tilt his head up and meet Koushiro's eyes.
He's looking at him, his eyes open wide making Taichi aware of the fact that he knows exactly what he was doing, or rather: where he was looking. Taichi, on his counterpart, recognizes how, with the slight twitch of his eyebrows, Koushiro is wondering why Mimi is calling him out when Taichi was straight looking at her boobs for minutes.
Taichi shrugs his shoulders, offering him what's supposed to be an attempt at an innocent look.
"It's not that." Koushiro splutters without turning to her.
"Then you're admitting it." Mimi's lips open to reveal a set of white teeth as she starts smiling, and Koushiro stutters a bunch of words that neither Taichi or Mimi manage to get.
"I'm not admitting anything." He finally sets, folding his arms in a nervous way. While Mimi doesn't miss a beat, Taichi lets their bickering fall to the back of his mind, turning his head to the side to look over at the passing autumn landscape, orange stripes almost covering all of the green spots still left, never removing his hand from Mimi's ankle.
"You're all nervous because I've gotten super cute." Mimi teases Koushiro.
"That's not it at all!" But he blushes, and Mimi eyes him with the look of someone who doesn't believe a word of what they've just heard. So Taichi comes to his aid, because after all Koushiro is still his bro and it's only thanks to his mother's cooking if he's didn't die of poisoning, so he owes him at least a little help with the princess.
"What he means," Taichi starts, slowly tracing squiggles on the skin of Mimi's leg to capture her attention and making her look at him, "is that you've always been pretty." He looks up to find an amused Mimi looking at him, then at Koushiro, and then back at him once more, her smile getting bigger and bigger with each turn.
"So you do talk about me." She replies mischievously. Koushiro aggressively turns to Taichi, shooting him a pleading look; his cheeks are still colored compared to his usual pale attire, and Taichi's mind starts to fill up with memories of all the times the two of them, together with the other guys, have talked about Mimi.
It's only logical that they do so, if you ask Taichi: they don't talk about Sora because she's been with Yamato for four years already, and it would be too weird to talk about her anyway because she's not a girl, she's Sora. They don't talk about Hikari because the last time he had heard Takeru commenting to Koushiro on the skirt she had been wearing that afternoon Taichi had refused to speak to them for the whole night, threatening both of them to kick them out of the house (and they weren't even staying at his place that night). They don't really talk about Miyako, mainly because even if she's only one year younger than Mimi and Koushiro, they still can't see her that way. Which leaves them to Mimi.
"We see you every day, why wouldn't we talk about you?" He lets out a moment before Mimi is about to open her mouth to push the matter. She shuts her lips closed, but just as it looks like a pout is about to show up on her delicate face, her eyebrows shoot up and she suddenly turns completely to Koushiro, taking her legs off Taichi's seat to scoot over to her right and lean with her whole body on Koushiro.
Taichi feels an unexpected wave of emptiness as his hand is left without anything to hold on to, but he doesn't give it too much weight, pushing the matter aside as he observes how Mimi doesn't seem too keen on giving up teasing an overly stressed Koushiro, considering the way he's now fiddling with his hands and playing with the fabric of the bowtie he's wearing.
"I was right all along! You have a crush on me!" Mimi squeals with pleasure, not even trying to listen to the guys telling her that that's really not what they were saying; they both give up after the second try, sure that she's just entered one of her hype-modes they still don't know how to handle entirely, especially in such a closed space as a train compartment. "Oh my god, did he ask you about how I kiss?" she turns to ask Taichi, who's left speechless for a couple of seconds, but she speaks again before he can find his own voice, "This is so cute!"
"I'm literally next to you." Koushiro comments in a defeated tone, confirming how at this point he's not even going to try to deny anything, given how Mimi is still giggling and ignoring his presence altogether, commenting the sudden turn of events more to herself than with Taichi.
"We can kiss if you want, it's not weird. I kiss Taichi all the time." She says at one point when she decides to finally sit still. She tilts her head to the side to glance at Taichi, who's shrugging his shoulders as Koushiro follows her movement and shoots him a look.
"I mean, it's mostly because of bets but she's kinda right." He comments, and Koushiro buries his face in his hands. Mimi lets out a delighted squeak and offers Taichi a warm smile, moving back her legs to lay her feet on top of his knees; he grins and places his hands on top of them, feeling surprised as he realizes he finally feels relaxed again.
"I don't even want to kiss you." Koushiro tries to retort for the last time and for a reason he's not aware of, but very thankful for, Mimi stops.
"Well, don't come to me begging when you'll want it then." She resolves, folding her arms and tilting her head to her shoulder, looking at him through the locks of hair that has cascaded over her right shoulder.
"You just wasted the opportunity of a lifetime." Taichi picks up and jokes, knowing what Mimi will likely add to his comment before she actually says it.
"He knows what he's saying." She confirms.
Koushiro looks up at him at first through his fingers while his hands are still covering his face; he lets his hands fall on his own lap when he notices how Taichi is rubbing, even if in a lazy way, Mimi's feet. He shoots him an unamused look, shaking his head lightly so that Mimi doesn't notice the small exchange and then he stands up.
"You're so scary." He finally declares looking at Mimi, who's now wearing one of her best fake harmless expressions and mimicking a "who, me?" with her lips without letting out a single sound. Koushiro must have decided that the best option at the moment is to flee the place and he does so when Mimi is still silent, walking away from their seats and heading for the next compartment where Sora, Yamato and Jyou had found free seats when they had caught the train a couple of hours before.
Mimi and Taichi both laugh up their sleeves as their friend leaves them, but they settle for a comfortable silence soon after, up until Taichi's pretty sure Mimi has dozed off.
She's laying on the back of her seat and her head is tilted to the side, with her hair falling down on her shoulder and over. He wonders how it can be possible that she manages to looks peaceful even on those uncomfortable chairs, and as he does so he absently stops stroking her feet; she opens one eye, catching his sight and offering him a smile.
"Should've remembered Princess Mimi is a light sleeper." He teases her, but she shrugs.
"I wasn't really sleeping, just resting."
They stare at the view out of the window for a couple of minutes before Mimi breaks the silence again.
"What did he mean?" She asks, but she doesn't turn to look at him. Taichi's eyebrows furrow, unsure of what Mimi is referring to; she picks up on his silence, "I was just messing with him earlier, I know he wasn't staring at me." This time she turns to him, finding him with a curious look painted on his strong features, "Though he was looking at me in a different way, that's why I asked."
"What a way to get an answer from him. He's going to avoid you for a week." Taichi lets out a laugh and Mimi's eyes are sparking with cunning.
"I knew from the start he was never going to tell me, that's why I'm asking you. You get him a lot better than I do." She explains, and Taichi is surprised, but at the same time not at all, by that unexpected turn. So he smirks pleasantly.
He moves her legs on his side, placing them on the train chair instead of on his own leg, so that he can rest his forearms on his knees and bend his back in an attempt to get a closer look at her. She only shoots a look at him before taking her legs off his seat and crossing them on her own chair, mirroring his motions and bending her back forward as well.
"You know how with some people you've always known they were pretty, but one day you randomly realize they are actually very attractive?" Taichi asks her. Mimi inclines her head to the side, trying to understand the meaning of his words. "We have always known that you were one of the prettiest girls in our school, you know?" He tries again and this time Mimi smiles smugly, "It's something we all knew but we never really made a big fuss about it or paid attention to it. It was just there." He shrugs, "Just like the sun or the moon are there."
"Are you comparing me to the moon? When did you get so romantic?" She teases him, but he doesn't acknowledge her comment if not with a piercing look as one side of his lips curl up.
"Maybe because we were little, I don't know, but there's a point when you realize that that person you've spent your entire childhood with and is always been cute is actually becoming attractive in a different way." His eyes lower a little for a couple of seconds, just enough to make Mimi comprehend the implications of his words, and when she does she covers her open mouth with her hand.
"Because I'm finally getting some boobs?" She asks in a hushed tone, so unlike her that Taichi bursts out laughing.
"Because you're not a little girl anymore Mi, that's the point." He explains. He has little wrinkles at each side of his eyes because of how he's still smiling at her and Mimi can't help herself but reach out to him and place her finger near his eye, right where the wrinkles are, lightly grazing his skin.
"And he's realized I've grown up? Does it mean he likes me?" She demands him in a way that makes Taichi guess she'd believe every word he'd say to her without double questioning him.
"Nah, he's just going to think about you from a different perspective now." He assures her, "Or at least that's how it was when it happened to Jyou."
"It happened to Jyou too? But I didn't notice anything!" She half-whines, but Taichi cuts her off by taking a strand of her hair and twirling it around his finger.
"Last year, but we're not all as obvious as Koushiro with these things. And, like I've said, it's not even a big deal." He finishes with another shrug of his own. Mimi is not completely sure if she gets what he really means, but that's probably because she's never experienced it; she's now caressing the side of his face and she finds it funny that it's him, Taichi, out of everyone, who's explaining her something that supposedly has to do with feelings.
"Did it happen to you?" She asks him at last, looking straight into his eyes with a curious look. She doesn't know what she expects him to say, but for a moment she finds herself wondering how come she's never really realized that the warm shade of brown of his irises remind her of something familiar and cozy, they remind her of home.
"Not telling you." He replies, his relaxed smile now turning into his signature smirk. He raises his eyebrows, not backing away from his spot just inches away from her face, and she doesn't move either, challenging him silently to break while she wears on her face her best confident look.
She knows he will tell her eventually, and it will probably take months for him to do so because he can be just as cocky as she is, but she doesn't care. Not if it means staring at those brown eyes for longer than she expected.