Confessions
... I can't help wondering, what finally brought me to this, when it finally got so bad. I mean, I have children... a wife... a family. I should be faithful to them. I should be strong enough for at least that... to resist the temptation. To ignore my heart.
... I thought it was expected of me, to marry her. It was a mistake; I can see that now. But hindsight is always 20/20. After all, we had fun back then... she was my friend, one of the best; we shared experiences that only a few other people could conceive, let alone claim to have been part of. We understood some parts of each other in ways so profound... and other parts in ways no more profound than dry toast, as I see so clearly now. For a while, keeping up pretenses of a normal relationship was easy. But after a few years... people expected more. She expected more. Suddenly, a relationship that was once normal and healthy suddenly appeared, to everyone else, like the deceptively smooth packaging of a rapidly decaying article. I knew this. I knew this was true. Things were beginning to be uncomfortable, once pleasant silences becoming awkward. I should have confessed everything right then, should have broken it off...
I chickened out. Not for the first time, or for the last time... then again, Courage isn't my crest. That's Tai's forte. You think the selfless bastard could have tried a little harder... in the end, it might have saved us so much pain. But I digress...
I proposed (read: opened the doors to Hell). She excepted (read: closed them after us). It was a huge wedding. Sickeningly so, almost. Everything about it, saccharine sweet... to cover an underlying bitterness. A subtle taste, truly, but... Mimi noticed. -Mimi-. She came to ask me about it – she was worried. Sora or Jyou would seem to be the worrier of our group, I know, not sweet, care-free, only slightly-ditzy Mimi, but the both of them were a little occupied. So I lied to Mimi. At least it wasn't Takeru. I couldn't have lied to my little brother... Then again... maybe that could have been a last chance for redemption before I sent my soul to Hell.
Oh, it was fine for the first few years. A dream. The honeymoon wasn't over yet. Right. We had children, such amazingly beautiful children... my heart aches, for my children, having to endure such a father as I've become. Kinda poetic, hmm... I guess music never really dies, in you... tangent. I know. I'm getting back to the point. I was a good little husband. I was a good father. The kind of clean-cut guy that makes it in the space program. Perfect, of course.
After a while, though... I couldn't take it anymore. On the outside, of course, I was still perfect, still the loving husband and father I had always been. Oh, what I've become now is a hell of a lot better than what I was back then... hell, I would hump anything pretty with a dick. Scared the hell out of Gabumon, because of course, he knew... I could have caught God knows how many STDs, everything to AIDS... then again, maybe that would have prevented me from falling so far into the abyss. Hopping beds to sooth a lonely heart... that was one thing. But bringing love into the equation...
I was so careful. A PI would have had trouble figuring out that I wasn't just going out to bars with the guys and spending the night at their house, because I was too smashed to keep my bladder in line, let alone attempt to go home. Disgraceful, truly, but not nearly as bad as what I was -really- doing. I could have just kept on, woken up lying next to a new man, everyday before I dragged my carcass home to my wife and kid. Maybe I would have cleaned up my act, and languished in my lies for the rest of my life... or maybe I would have self-destructed. Gone out the rock-star way. But then...
I know. But -what-? What's the big secret? Well, I'm getting there.
It was already after a few drinks when I spotted him, so, of course, I thought the resemblance was due to the alcohol. But it didn't matter to me... close enough, right? Like screwing something that -looks- like the reason I was slowly going deeper into the Devil's house was going to make my poor, battered heart feel better... But close enough. And he was willing, too, and in my alcohol daze (I thought), sounded so much like the one I really wanted...
How was I supposed to know I've wake up next to my heart's one desire...? Of all the bars in all the world, why'd you have to walk into mine, right?
He was shocked. I was shocked. I think there was a period of about twenty minutes where we just stared at each other. Then the discomfort. We agreed to pretend it never happened, to avoid each other for a little while... it was a mistake, a stupid mistake. Even if the sex was great. I might not have been all that loving, that first night, but God, looking back, it was probably the hottest, nastiest, most perfect experience I had ever had...
Two days later, I was calling him. Just as he was about to call me.
It all came out, when we met, later. He had wanted me just as desperately as I had wanted him. But unlike me, he hadn't made the stupid mistake of marrying the girl that had kept me away from him.... but he had wanted me. Like I had wanted him. My heart wept while my brain steadily tried to ram itself against the inside of my skull for my stupidity. A dime short and a day late, right? We should just say goodbye... Heh...
I don't think either of us had expected to end up in bed again. But we did. And we weren't even drunk. And -that- was the most exquisite experience of my life. Even as I ached with the knowledge of how this could never last, I stored the memory away for safekeeping.
And so started the whole, illicit affair. I'm almost scared to admit things were better than ever between Sora and I. We could talk again, like we had when we were kids. In no longer pressing to be a lover, I could become her friend again. It didn't even seem to matter to her, that we didn't make love... well, hardly ever. Maybe she thought it was natural in the development of our married relationship. Yeah, right. More likely, she just knew what was happening. She had probably excepted it far longer than I had, and was just waiting for me.
Waiting for the end of the lies, a conclusion that will inevitably come.
~*.~..~.*~
In tangled, formerly pristine sheets of his lover's bed, Yamato roused himself somewhat, retreating from his thoughts, as the figure beside him stirred. Turning from his contemplation of the view out the window, the blonde silently moved his gaze to rest on his love, moving over long, pale limbs... a lithe body... while he had filled out some since childhood, his form remained slightly slim, achingly beautiful to Yama. His eyes moved upward, over slightly tangled strands of silken dark blue, and to the lovely countenance resting on the pillow, peaceful in sleep. Yamato move a hand, touching his lover's bottom lip, and wondering if worry lines or laugh lines would be the first to appear. At his touch, shadowy lashes fluttered, and opened, revealing dark, almost black eyes – unfathomable at times, and as open as a book at others – which came to rest on Yamato's face. For a moment, they both sat like that, silently staring at each other, before the dark-haired young man spoke, as he always did.
"... tell her," Jyou requested. There was no obvious pleading in his calm, soft tone. Yamato looked away, absently stroking Jyou's bottom lip, and thought. It would be easy, he realized, to simply brush the entreaty off with an excuse or misdirection or silence, all of which he had employed before. After years of running, hiding, and lying, it would take a different sort of thing, he knew, to actually do what Jyou wished... and, as he had just understood, what he wished as well.
Yamato looked back down at the person he shared his bed, his heart, and his soul with. He had finally might have found what it was he needed. "... alright."
Maybe, just maybe, that smile made it all worth it...
