Chapter 2

"No spoons." Taichi tossed his empty ice cream cup at Yamato. The other boy, who was sitting with his back against a tree, batted it back at him. "You say you're bringing ice cream for everyone, but you don't bring any spoons. Big favor that was."

"Bite me," Yamato said, lazily. He closed his eyes, resting them from the glare of the sun, and made a low noise of amusement. "As if you'd manage to get any less of it on your face with a fucking spoon. It's like eating with a five year old. Or Neanderthal man."

Taichi made a face at him. "Well, if you want to get anal about it -"

Yamato cracked one eye open. "Pervert."

"Oh, and I'm supposed to be the fucking five year old here?"

"Fine." Yamato shrugged. "Jerk."

Taichi smirked. "Prick."

"Asshole."

"Fucker."

"You wish."

Hikari raised a hand, clearing her throat. "Uh, guys... a little decorum here? This is still a public park." She was lying on her stomach, leafing through her new Hana to Yume, and Takeru had stretched out beside her, half-reading over her shoulder. His hand rested at the small of her back, not possessive or overtly intimate, but comfortable. If they had ever kissed each other with more than that same quiet, unspoken affection, Daisuke had never seen it. It was funny how he had started off resenting Takeru, then both of them because he thought they had the relationship that he hadn't, and now he had finished up just envious that they were happy with something so small, and he wanted too much.

Yamato laughed, settling easily against his tree again. Taichi grinned round at them all, the light breeze that was fractionally alleviating the heat lifting his bangs as he turned his head. "Sorry."

"Not a problem," Iori said, calmly. He sat back and scanned the immediate area, checking for any more scattered litter from their picnic before he began the long search for a trash can. His gaze alighted on Daisuke, who was scraping up the last of his ice cream with his finger. "Daisuke, are you almost done?"

Daisuke looked down into his cup at the last pink strawberry smears. "I guess so," he said, pushing it away slightly reluctantly. The hot dogs they'd filled up on first had been good, and the ice cream that Yamato had produced afterwards with a flourish - but no spoons - even better. They had all made short, sticky work of it after a lot of laughter, and nobody faster than Taichi, despite his complaints. Daisuke felt an unsatisfying sting of pride that not only had he eaten as much as Taichi himself, but that he had managed to do it while sitting near him for over an hour. He'd thought that his throat would seize up instead, but it hadn't, and he'd eaten, still aware of Taichi in his peripheral vision, licking chocolate sauce from his fingers, even when he wasn't looking directly at him. He'd been almost afraid to do that too often in case someone noticed it. With their four friends there, Taichi had seemed like a five thousand yen note lying on an empty sidewalk. He hadn't dared to reach out his hand in case there was a loud and sudden shout.

Taichi, he realized, was now looking at him - or, more accurately, at the front of his t-shirt. "You had a few problems yourself there, Dai?"

Guiltily, Daisuke shot a glance down at himself, relieved when he was only faced with a drip pattern of ice cream stains. He scratched the back of his neck self-consciously, trying for an answering grin. "Well, messy is good, right? If you ate so fast you had to make a mess it means you enjoyed it."

The corner of Hikari's mouth twitched. "There's some logic in that..." she said, slowly.

Taichi swung round to face Yamato, beaming. "See?" he said, triumphantly. "That's a guy after my own heart, right over there!"

"As if that's a compliment," Yamato said, and Takeru was the one to laugh out loud this time.

"Okay, quit it! Which of us here are the youngest here, again..?"

"He just doesn't have the right amount of appreciation for his food." Taichi gave Daisuke a quick wink. "Wanna eat more noodles with me in front of him, Dai, and really turn him off it?"

Daisuke swallowed, trying not to make it audible. He hadn't expected Taichi to mention anything about their afternoon together again, not after his unexpected touch and his own reaction. Probably everything had been perfectly normal and he was just weird and had made them both uncomfortable. Puzzled, vaguely resentful, he wondered if Taichi was trying to tease him, make it a private joke, but the cheerful expression on the other boy's face didn't reveal it if he was. Working all of this out was a minute by minute game, he thought, and he was still light years away from winning.

"I have to get moving." Yamato began to rise to his feet, pointedly brushing a few stray crumbs from his clothes. "Much as I'd love," he added, dryly, "to listen to a story about your adventures in noodles."

Taichi looked up, surprised, his smile fading a little. "Hey, where d'you think you're going? Sit down! Let's all make a day of it - I figured we could go over to Leisure Land later and do some bowling!"

"I said I'd run through a few songs today with the guys." Yamato's shoulders dropped as he saw the flat look on Taichi's face, and he exhaled. "Look, Tai, I'm sorry, okay? We have that gig this Saturday, and I've got a ton of shit to work out before then."

"Sure." Taichi leaned back on his elbows, turning his head away. "No problem. More important than spending time hanging out with kids, isn't it? I mean, they're your friends, not to mention your own fucking brother, but hey, what the hell, huh?"

"Don't be a jackass," Yamato said, a sudden snap in his voice. Daisuke had seen him change as quickly as he could blink sometimes, going from languid and joking one minute to ice cold the next, and it scared him, frankly. Miyako would come out with it straight away and yell at him with everything right up front there in her face, and he could just yell right back at her, but when someone built it up under a seamless exterior and then spat it out when he'd thought everything was okay, it scared him. He shifted, trapped, as he was, between Yamato and Taichi, unsure of where to look.

Hikari didn't lift her head from her magazine, but it was clear that she wasn't reading the words on the page that she was looking at any more by the way that her lips were pressed together, like she was trying to hold something in. Takeru propped his chin up on his hand, frowning.

"Tai, it doesn't matter. We can go Friday evening... I assume we're all free then?" he added, looking around, his eyes telegraphing a silent request; help me out here, guys. There were murmurs of acceptance. "I'm cool with that, anyway..."

"We've hardly seen him for two fucking weeks!" Taichi twisted his head back to Yamato, looking up at him through eyes not just narrowed by the brightness of the sky behind him. "I've hardly seen you! Jyou's already getting ready for college, and this is the last summer before you, me and Sora graduate. Who the fuck knows what we'll be doing this time next year? I figured at least some of us could get together today and have a good time and forget about all that shit. And you want to go and rehearse with your dumbass band."

"It's alright," Iori said, quietly. "None of us mind."

"I mind." Taichi held Yamato's gaze for a moment, then grabbed up a half-eaten bag of chips and very deliberately began to poke around in it with a finger. "Go on, then. What are you hanging around here for? Go and practise being a big fucking superstar."

Yamato stared at him. He slowly shook his head. "Whatever. Stay and act like a dick in front of everyone if you like. I'm out of here."

Taichi didn't look at his back as he left. For what seemed like an eternity, but was, in truth, only a minute, nobody spoke.

Eventually, Takeru said, "He tries to make time. It's not as if he doesn't know who his friends are. He just gets so involved when he's got something like this coming up... you know how he gets."

"He needs to try a lot damn harder." Taichi stared at the bag, and then abruptly crushed the whole thing in his hand, throwing it on the floor. He ran his hand roughly through his hair. "Asshole," he muttered, although he didn't seem to be talking about Yamato any more.

Takeru was silent for another few moments. He was mellower on the surface than his brother, and his sense of humor was less caustic, but he still had that same door just behind his eyes sometimes that made it hard to know what he was really thinking. Then he squeezed Hikari's arm, lightly. "Want to go down to the lake for a while?"

She nodded, her eyes on Taichi as she stood up. "I think that might be a good idea."

"I'll follow you as far as the gate, if that's alright," Iori said. "I could use a walk about now..."

Daisuke found himself staring awkwardly down at his sneakers as the three of them walked off across the grass. He'd waited to be alone with Taichi all day, but you could feel this atmosphere; it lingered like some huge, uninvited guest, shutting their thoughts off from each other, and he didn't like it at all. It was so tangible that he jumped when Taichi's voice cut into the silence.

"Are you gonna say anything? Or are you gonna fuck off now, too?"

Daisuke stared at him, still startled. "No! I mean... I'm not going anywhere!"

"You don't want to call me a jerk?"

Daisuke wondered if it was supposed to be a trick question. He couldn't tell from Taichi's expression. "Why would I want to call you that?"

"You should do." Taichi smiled a bit, but there was no humor in it, much less warmth. "But I guess you always did have some idea that I was perfect, didn't you?"

Daisuke felt color rising in his face for what seemed like the thousandth time, all the more angrily because it was true. "You know, I'm not just some little brother following you around because you tell me to and I don't know any better! I wasn't even when I was a kid."

"Never said you were."

"Yeah, well..." Daisuke rubbed at some dirt on the side of his sneaker. He was making this worse instead of better. It was like getting stranded out on his own, midfield; whichever way he turned, he seemed to run into more trouble. "You're cool most of the time. But you're a jerk when you fight with your friends. Maybe."

Taichi picked up the small, crushed bag of potato chips. His fingers worked slowly in a half-hearted attempt to flatten out the plastic. "The band isn't dumb," he said. "They're good, fucking good. And he probably is gonna be a star one day, because he's got the talent. He's always had that special thing going on for him. I just want a piece of him before all of that happens. Does that make me dumb?"

"No." Daisuke shook his head, trying to look as sympathetic as he knew how. "It just means you're his best friend, doesn't it?"

"Yeah." That odd look Daisuke had seen before ghosted across Taichi's face, like it was more in response to something inside his own head. "Yeah," he said, again, a little louder this time. "It does."

"You could call him later."

"I could," Taichi echoed, although, to Daisuke, he didn't sound particularly convinced. He picked at the bag again, and his face twisted in a grimace. "Should have kept my damn mouth shut today, shouldn't I? Didn't have to go at it when you were here."

Daisuke imagined that it was probably a plural 'you', but still, it was nice to think that Taichi might be even a little concerned about how he looked in front of him. He shook his head. "No. It's okay. I've just had enough fights at home with Jun and... well, only with Jun, really."

"You don't have to see her for half the year now she's in junior college, though, right?"

"Yeah, but she keeps coming back. I can't wait 'til she's married."

"I haven't gotten to talk to Jyou about much more than school for a while." Taichi's smile returned, more genuinely this time. "Jun and Shuu are still engaged? Good for her. I always kinda liked your sister, even when she was bugging Matt."

Daisuke pulled a face. He was ready to freely admit these days that sometimes he didn't mind Jun all that much, like when she made curry bread for him from scratch because their mom couldn't get it at the store, or helped him with homework. He'd sit at the table with an evening's supply of soda and cookies and grouch about his math out loud, and she'd yell back the answers from the couch during breaks in the action of her soap operas, punctuated occasionally by an 'idiot' or a roll of her eyes. It felt like denying some fundamental world truth, though, to admit that she was the sort of person you might actually like. "She's not happy unless she can bug somebody. She's like that."

Taichi sat back, stretching his legs. "Nah. She's funny. And I bet she's a good listener if you give her the chance." The t-shirt he was wearing was just marginally too small, as if he'd shrunk it in the wash by mistake, and as he moved, it rode up from his beltline, exposing a strip of flat, toned belly.

"She doesn't listen to me, but I have to listen to her talking all the time." Daisuke fought to remember that he must have seen the same thing before, a hundred times, but now he was barely able to stop himself drooling, much less staring. Was it even hotter today? Even under the canopy of the trees, the air felt close, heavy, like it wasn't giving him quite enough oxygen. "I hope her and Shuu find a place, or they'll move into her room. And then I'll have to listen to them all night!" he finished, suitably horrifying himself with the thought, despite his distraction.

"Still grosses you out, huh?" Taichi sounded amused.

Daisuke hated feeling like this in front of Taichi, like he was eleven years old again, even if he was only being teased. "It does when it's Jun! It wouldn't if it was..."

"Somebody else? Who you liked?"

It wasn't what Daisuke had really wanted to say, but he realized that Taichi was doing the work for him, giving him an easy way out, although he was faintly disappointed in himself for taking it. He sighed a little, just a shallow exhalation of air. "Yeah."

There was a short silence. Taichi tilted his head to one side, regarding him once again with that odd, curious expression. Gradually, a half-grin began to form. "You missed a bit," he said.

Daisuke blinked, uncomprehending. "I did what?"

"Here -" Taichi reached across the space between them and, carefully avoiding the bruise that had now come out, spreading from his eye, cupped Daisuke's cheek, indicating that he should turn his head. He wiped a strawberry-flavored smear from the corner of his mouth with the pad of his thumb. It lingered on the cushion of Daisuke's lower lip. It seemed nothing short of incredible that hands that had moved so surely and firmly over him a few days before could be almost obscenely gentle now, and heat flooded his belly as he permitted himself to wonder, for the first time, how they might feel on other parts of his body. He imagined Taichi not stopping at his feet and ankles, but stroking his thighs; Taichi's hand doing what only his own had done before and dropping between them to fondle and squeeze him. He shivered at the image, and his hand shot up involuntarily to grab the other boy's wrist. Normal people couldn't feel like this, could they? It was too much for anyone to handle.

"Hey, if I do something you don't like, just hit me, 'kay?" Taichi pulled his hand back, although he didn't attempt to free it from Daisuke's. His voice still sounded as if there was the same familiar laughter in it somewhere below the surface, but it had dropped an octave and taken on a throatier tone. In a matter of minutes, something had shifted, and Daisuke was painfully aware that this was no longer just fooling around.

His wrist sagged, his hand still holding Taichi's, but no longer with the ability to exert any force. His own voice cracked, and he nearly had to turn his head away to cough, but he struggled back from the brink, and when he spoke, it sounded huskier than he had intended. "I liked it too much."

His hand dropped from Taichi's completely to lie, shaking, in his lap, but he somehow managed not to let his gaze follow it. He'd look him in the face if it killed him.

"You're so cute." His voice growing even lower, Taichi moved to kneel in front of Daisuke, reaching up to ruffle his hair, petting him. Touch, tease, stroke, feel. Taichi was close enough now for his breath to land on his skin in little puffs when he spoke, and Daisuke's hands clenched into fists in the effort not to immediately touch back, not to look too needy. He almost gasped when Taichi ducked his head to the side to murmur into his ear, his cheek a hairsbreadth away from his own. "What about kissing? Does that gross you out?"

"I don't know - I haven't - I -" Daisuke broke off. He hadn't kissed in the way that he knew Taichi meant, and he was aware enough of the difference to know that it would soon become blindingly obvious if he tried to lie. He squeezed his eyes shut in angry embarrassment, feeling certain that there probably wasn't anything else in the world so guaranteed to turn Taichi off. "Guess you have something new to laugh at me for now, huh?"

Taichi shrugged, slowly, like they were moving in water. His fingers combed through Daisuke's hair again as if nothing had happened to make them interrupt it, twirled a reddish-brown bang. "No. I never laugh at you. Why would I?"

"Because I'm me. And I do stuff - and don't do stuff - that makes people laugh."

"Well, I don't want to laugh." Taichi drew back, far enough to meet his eyes, but still leaving their faces only a few inches apart. "I just want to make you happy."

After being stretched so taut inside by the wait, the pressure of Taichi's lips on his, not quite as soft as a girl's, was almost an anti-climax at first. But when Daisuke felt him lap gently at his mouth, not hovering like his thumb had, but seeking entrance, it seemed to coax forth a new depth of sensation, and suddenly his mouth was opening too and he was flying, stumbling over himself to respond. And even when he leaned in and his goggles bumped, clumsy, against Taichi's forehead, it didn't matter; nothing in the world mattered, because Taichi's tongue was still sliding against his.

ooo ooo ooo

Nothing had ever made him feel like Taichi's mouth did. Not even when they ended up first back at Taichi's conveniently empty apartment, and then somehow on his bed, his confident but reassuring hands helping Daisuke off with his clothes as he murmured secrets into his ear, soft, dirty, teasing words that made Daisuke harder than his touch. Not even when he spread his shaking fingers either side of Taichi's belly, feeling the muscles twitch beneath the skin, and ran them from there up to his chest, trying to memorize the lines of him; hip hollow, rib, nipple. Not even when they spooned together and Taichi's hand covered his, guiding them both down to make a double fist around him, and he shut his eyes tight against the sun that was pouring into the room and just let it beat down on his face and his chest and his legs as the two of them stroked.

Taichi slid closer, bringing his erection to rest in the hollow formed by the backs of Daisuke's thighs. "Mmm," he said, sounding happy, and then moved back and forth a bit, and Daisuke felt a warm, sucking kiss land in the crook of his neck. "S'nice..."

"Nice," Daisuke echoed, stupidly. He felt as if he ought to be doing more, reciprocating more; at the very least trying harder to show Taichi how he was making him feel, but when Taichi's erection had touched his skin, even hotter than the other boy's mouth, his mind had gone white-blank. He managed to brace his foot against the bed and pushed backwards into Taichi's chest, just wanting to be held close while these things were happening to him, however uncool that was. Their bodies slid a little in the thin sheen of sweat between them that he was vaguely aware was neither all his own or solely because of the temperature in the room. The space between their legs, sealed in, became a moist, slippery pocket of heat, and Taichi gave a low grunt as his hips bucked forward into it, his breath tickling Daisuke's ear.

"Feels good, Dai."

"Please..." More. Ungainly, his pulse throbbing heavily in his temples and his groin, Daisuke tried to raise his leg a little to give Taichi room to move again. It was difficult, his muscles feeling like liquid and refusing to move in the way that he wanted them to, but he managed it somehow, allowing Taichi's erection to slip between his thighs and rub against him in a way that made him tighten up all over. He was close to coming; could have come in another few heartbeats if Taichi hadn't removed his hand from his erection, swiftly uncurling Daisuke's fingers as he did and bringing his with it, and he was unable to hold back his squeak of disappointment.

"Ssh..." Taichi leaned over him, nuzzling his cheek and the side of his mouth. Daisuke's lips parted, instinctively searching for him, making the shape of a kiss in the air, or perhaps a word that had somehow been forgotten halfway along its journey from his brain. Before he could recall it, anyway, Taichi was gone, pulling away and leaving him feeling intensely lonely. As he listened to the rattle-slide of the nightstand drawer behind him, Daisuke wondered if it made him look as desperate and inexperienced as he was to keep touching his own body, or whether it was something that Taichi might like, might enjoy watching. He wasn't sure how he was supposed to behave. He'd enjoyed the same thing himself often enough, hadn't he, felt warm just seeing Taichi lazily run his hands over his chest as they came back down from a stretch? He remembered all these things now that it seemed safe to bring them out.

Should he be making more noise? Daisuke wanted to moan; it was constantly welling up in his throat, but it felt as if it was going to be a weird sound, and he didn't want Taichi to think he did weird things during sex. He bit his lip instead, but still he couldn't stop his hands moving, shakily tracing the damp creases of his thighs, darting up to brush at his nipples. He'd never felt all that much there before, but maybe he just hadn't paid them much attention. He felt different now. He needed to touch himself everywhere. Every pore of his skin seemed to be awake and tingling.

"You gonna save some for me?" The bed dipped as Taichi rolled back up behind him. There was still a smile in his voice, but it was rougher now, as if he was breathing heavily, and his fingers were rougher too as he pushed them into Daisuke's hair, pulling him close. Daisuke leaned back into him, frustrated by the formlessness of it, and, more than anything, wanting Taichi to stroke him again. His erection felt so demanding that he barely noticed Taichi's other hand running down his back and around the curve of his ass.

When Taichi touched his entrance, he jerked, pure reflex making him try to clamp his legs shut. With a supreme effort of will, Daisuke forced himself to relax his cramped muscles and tentatively let himself feel. Taichi's fingers were wet and cold with something, but they quickly warmed to Daisuke's own heat, and as they circled and teased, a sensation began to build, different from the ache of his erection. This was a twitchy, strangely urgent feeling that raised goosebumps and made him half want to pull away, but as he squirmed slowly, all his body seemed to be trying to do was answer Taichi's movements, as if they both knew somehow what would feel good but his train of conscious thought had been left out of the loop. A shudder went through him as a thumbnail grazed the soft skin inside his thigh, and then he gasped as the tip of Taichi's slippery finger suddenly dipped inside. His voice shook, and sounded far too loud in the small room. "Tai..!"

"You okay?"

"I'm okay." He said it again, more determined this time. "I'm okay." And he was. Okay with Taichi's finger inside him, okay with the way that Taichi was starting to make small thrusts against him, okay with the slight shock as his muzzy brain fully accepted the idea that the touching wasn't play and that there was going to be something a lot bigger inside him soon that was probably going to hurt. Okay with the way that Taichi was breathing that said that once he started, it probably wouldn't be all that easy to get him to stop. Daisuke found it hard to imagine wanting him to stop. Not now, not after this... waiting. He shuddered again, more violently, as the finger slid deeper. This uncertainty. "Tai?" he blurted, without thinking.

"Mm?"

"Do... do you like me?" Stupid thing to say. But he had to know.

Taichi's movements slowed, and then, after a brief pause, he nuzzled Daisuke's neck, and Daisuke could feel the shape of his grin. "Yeah. Course I like you."

He really did like the feel of Taichi's mouth, and the way that his tongue lapped at the curve of his ear just before he brought his hips flush with Daisuke's ass and began to push in. Maybe that was why, when he dozed in the curve of Taichi's arm afterwards, he dreamed about it.