Our Concession to Capitalism: I do not own Digimon! No I don't!


Riko's Notes: This story is a gift to my partner in crime! Lianda, dear, this is how you write gay Izzy. ;)

Synapses

 By Riko

Everyday of my life, I've walked the same route to go to school. I hardly think about where I go anymore, I just let my feet carry me while my mind wanders on to other matters. I walk the same route everyday, but a month ago was the first time I ever really saw it. A huge old willow tree, it's probably been there since this city was built, it's half bent so that the branches touch the surface of the water. When the wind blows the leaves make elegant ripples in the water. It's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen and I first saw it a month ago.

The brain is a funny thing. I must have walked past that tree a thousand times, and it wasn't until the thousand and first time that nerve impulses connected up and said 'hey! There's a tree!' You can see something everyday for the rest of your life without ever really seeing them…

You can see someone and yet never register everything they really are or could be.

I wonder sometimes if he's ever really seen me. Does he know I'm here? Does he see me watch?

I've been watching him since the day I met him. He's so beautiful. Beautiful, he'd kill me if he heard me call him that but I can't think of another word to use. He's not handsome, not like Yamato, he doesn't have the strong jaw line that makes one seem less like a child and more like an adult. He's not cute either, not in the way that Daisuke is, although they both are just a jumble of hair and lopsided grins. No, he's beautiful. Like Sora and Mimi yet not, he's beautiful in his own way that is no one else's, only his. It's like a second skin to him; he never even notices all the emotions he can stir with a single glance.

I should know; he does it to me all the time. Ever since that first day… I'd sit on the porch of the cabin with my computer on my knees and watch him cross the campground. He'd climb this one particular tree that he chose the first day of camp, a willow I think, and lie on a branch. Sometimes he'd seem to be talking to himself, but other times he'd just let time pass by without a care. I envy his ability to do that. Other times, he'd watch people too. He'd watch Sora mostly.

I think maybe I should've seen it coming. I think maybe I shouldn't have been so surprised when it did happen. Nevertheless, I know I couldn't have stopped him from getting his heart broken. She broke his heart. Her and Yamato. He loved her; really and truly, the forever kind and she casually broke his heart. She would never mean to, she just couldn't help it and I can't hate her for that.

He came to me after that. I hate to say that I was happy, but I was. With nothing to do on Saturday nights, he came to me. He would sit at one end of my couch and I'd be at the other, he'd tell me about Sora, about her and Yamato. I'd listen patiently and nod, trying to console him. Once he had it out of his system we'd get down to business, grabbing some junk food and playing games. Some of these times I could get him to smile and on the odd occasion, I could get him to laugh.

I love his laugh, he laughs with his whole body not just his mouth and throat. When he laughs his eyes close, his shoulders shake, and for one moment you feel like you're the smartest person in the world because you were able to make him laugh. He used to laugh a lot; I wonder why he stopped?

We grew closer in those weeks when his heart was mending. Side-by-side nearly twenty-four hours a day. Then I ruined everything. I opened my eyes and I saw. I saw him. I saw how he could take a punch to the gut and still smile. Worse, I saw all the other punches he took too, the ones no one can see. I fell in love with my best friend, and things haven't been the same since.

I would tell him, but I can't, I'm too scared. I know he can never love me, because I'm too afraid and he could never love someone who doesn't have the courage he has.

On the other hand, maybe I'm getting this wrong. We were never the same or even similar. Taichi is the good looking, but still a little goofy, athlete and I am what I always have been: a little shy, a little quite and more than a little geeky. Maybe that's why we fit, he's everything I'm not and vice versa. He could be my courage.

I see him everyday and I'm just realizing how much of me depends on him. I think that, maybe I could find it in myself to tell him what I feel. I think that, maybe he could feel the same way. And I think that, maybe the reason we never truly saw each other is because all there was to see was the part of ourselves that is still waiting to be found.




Reviews are appreciated but in no way needed. This really isn't my best work in the slightest. Go read and review "That's the Way I Like it" if you really want to review something.