Hi guys! I hope you are enjoying these tidbits! I am having fun writing them. For anyone who is being patient and waiting for chapter 8 of Skittles, it will hopefully be posted this weekend. Its a pretty lighthearted one.

Number 13 will be the closest I get to acknowledging Tri in my stories. I won't be writing anything related to Tri until its all over and I can see that things end happily. They better.

Eleven

Natsuko kept telling herself that there was no reason to worry. Hiroaki wasn't like other fathers she had heard her coworkers talking about… Yet she had been hesitant to leave the man home with the boys for a three-day weekend. They were good boys of course… but they could be a handful. Readjusting the overnight bag under her arm, she fished for the apartment keys. There was a lot of noise coming from behind the door, and Natsuko could only hope it wasn't crying.

As she opened the door and left her shoes in the entryway, it became apparent that the sounds coming from the living room were laughter. Not light, giggling laughter like she was used to hearing from her eldest, but raucous, deep belly laughs. She was so curious that she failed to even give the pile of dirty dishes in the sink a second glance.

Hiroaki was sitting on the floor with his back to the couch, which wouldn't be so odd if it weren't for the appearance of a second, smaller blond head growing out of his shoulder. Yamato was cackling in a way Natsuko rarely heard, reaching halfheartedly towards his brother. Three-year-old Takeru was pinned under his father's knees, on his stomach and out of breath from laughing so hard. Through his laughter, she somehow made out a few words.

"Help…me …onii-chan! D-Daddy…is… is squishing…meeeeee!"

Natsuko pretended to be serious, forcing a frown onto her face and clearing her throat.

"Hiroaki, where are the children?"

Hiroaki snapped his head up at her and gave a big, fake sigh of contentment.

"Oh darling, I have no idea where the boys are, but you have to try out this chair!"

Twelve

Takeru laid on his stomach on his brother's bed, kicking his feet around in the air. He rested his head on his arms and let his eyes half close, feeling so very relaxed.

Yamato sat on the floor at the end of the bed, tuning his guitar and humming quietly to himself. He knew it was technically past his little brother's bedtime, or at least the one his mom made Takeru adhere to. But Takeru was ten and a half, and Yamato thought of all the nights in the Digital World where they had stayed up nearly the whole night. Dad wasn't home yet. One more late night wouldn't hurt.

Thirteen

Hiroaki ishida had long accepted the idea that his older son had in image to maintain and that the clothes he wore were somewhat more stylish than a typical seventeen-year-old would wear. He had also long since accepted that his younger son had absolutely no sense of style whatsoever. Strange hats, the same shirt in three different colors, really anything was possible.

So, when he came home one day and found Takeru helping Yamato out in the kitchen wearing skinny jeans, a purple v-neck shirt, and an interestingly feminine scarf... Well, that gave him pause. Hiroaki wondered briefly if the change came with a different attitude as well. However, his fourteen-year-old took that moment to whip around with a blinding smile.

"Dad! You're home early! Nii-san is making tonkotsu ramen."

Ah. No change at all then.

Fourteen

Takeru Takaishi, currently twenty-four, had faced many frightening moments in his life. One would think that after all those times of stress, something like this would be a piece of cake. Nothing was about to try to kill him, after all.

He hoped.

"Taichi?" The young man stood stock still, trembling and sweating much more than he would care to admit.

"Yeah?" His older friend took in Takeru's condition and instantly became serious.

"Um," The blond took a deep breath. "I already talked to your parents about it, but I wanted to ask you too… I… I'm going to ask Hikari to marry me. Can I have your blessing?"

Fifteen

Proud mommy, Natsuko Ishida, sat beside her two-and-a-half-year-old son on the couch, watching a movie and holding a barf bowl. Her very brave little boy did not shed a single tear at the doctor's office this afternoon, despite his terror of needles. His lip had trembled something fierce, but Takeru had sat patiently in Natsuko's lap as the pediatrician took his temperature, and poked and prodded him, ultimately declaring he had the flu.

Like they didn't already know that.

Oh well, at least we knew it isn't something worse, she thought.

"See honey? The doctor wasn't so bad, right?" The mother pulled her son closer and smiled down at him.

Takeru turned slowly away from the TV, half melted orange popsicle in hand, and fixed his mother with a glare so reminiscent of his big brother that Natsuko could not help but laugh.

If anyone cares, tonkotsu ramen is pork ramen.