Chapter Four: Red Card
Tai'd been dreaming a particularly nasty-in-a-good-way dream about Matt fucking most of the players on Tai's soccer team while Tai watched, drooling. Dream Matt, all red and wet, all sticky, eyes slits, took two at a time. Wrapped his pink lips around a third, white throat bobbing as he swallowed and swallowed. Starving for it. Laughing, loose-limbed and supple as they passed him from lap to lap.
It was wonderful. Tai was too turned on by the show to crack any skulls. But, right when bukkake seemed imminent, Tai was rudely smacked awake to find to his disappointment that the only thing real about his dream was the drool. His cheek rested in a sizable puddle of it while Sora straight up Lost It on him. He'd been talking in his sleep, and repeating the phrase "But I wasn't fucking him," did little to calm her redheaded nerves.
She stacked up a meager pile of his things and dropped a scuffed soccer ball, cherry-like, on top before pointing to the door.
Tai had time enough on his walk to Izzy's place to reflect that it really was better to forgo earthly possessions, a path he'd recently been pursuing in light of having no job and no money. It made break-ups mega easy.
Tai felt safe in the familiar wire jungle of Izzy's. Izzy sat where he always sat, enthroned in his well-indented computer chair. Tai sat where he always sat, on an ancient beanbag where Tai had sat since a teensy Tai had first visited a teensier Izzy, looking for wisdom. Little fans went whir, cooling off humming black boxes. Izzy went hrmm and steepled his fingers.
Because it was Izzy's and Tai felt safe and sad and broken-up-with and homeless, he really shouldn't have, but he blurted it all out. Everything. How the dreams started months ago, when Matt tripped and fell at a party directly onto Tai's lap, sending his and Tai's drinks momentarily airborne before they both were covered in froth and skunk beer. Sora, who'd been next to Tai on the couch, had shrieked and scooted away to save her party dress, but Matt, his arms warm and wet around Tai's neck, had said "Tai, god," in a way that went straight to Tai's dick before wriggling (bad) off his lap, squeezing his bicep (worse) when he murmured sorry, and slinking away in these black, skintight pants, ass as shiny wet with beer as the rest of him (Matt, god).
Even though Tai knew, like everyone knew—it was part of the curriculum—that Matt was hot, he'd never realized Matt's hotness could apply, personally, to him, in a wriggly-black-shiny-pants and low-teasing-Tai-on-his-neck kind of way until that party. Thus, Tai's life had begun its slow spiral down, with Matt in real life making it so much worse with his voice and his eyes and his ass. Tai didn't even know he liked that kind of stuff. Ass stuff. Sometimes he just wanted to take a bite out of it.
Instead, he started beating up everyone who touched Matt, which was too many people, sometimes it made him sick, then Joe had gone and become one of Them but he couldn't beat up Joe, so he'd had to trick him instead, which made him feel more sick, then Matt threw him down the stairs and Tai's phone broke and he'd kissed him and Matt said no but Tai spent the days after skipping class looking up hot, skinny, blond guys and their asses online, which resulted in an avalanche of porn that Tai had only just surfaced from because Sora overheard his bukkake dream and kicked him out, and he didn't remember if he had cleared the history on her browser before he'd passed out last night or not. He stopped abruptly there, not because that was all, really, he could keep going, but because Izzy's face was white.
"You okay?" Tai asked, even though traditionally this was the part where he should be happy to have finally gotten it all off his chest, and then he would receive excellent advice from a friendly genius that would lead to the day being won.
"I thought you broke up Matt and Joe for Joe's sake," Izzy said, slowly, "That was my impression, from what Joe told me."
Oh, right. "You're not gonna tell him the truth, are you?" Tai asked, and then winced at the sound of it.
"Tai."
"Don't."
"I won't. I'm just saying. What you did…abusing his trust…that's really bad."
"Well, you're bad for agreeing not to tell Joe," Tai said to a gaping Izzy, "He's your friend," Tai added, petulant.
"Yeah, and I'm not going to tell him because he's my friend. Unlike you. You used him."
"I helped him."
"You're morally bankrupt."
Tai pointed to his still-healing black eye, "I paid for what I did," he whined, not meaning to, "And my phone broke.
"When did you get like this?" Izzy asked, bewildered.
"I told you," Tai tried, "The party. Shiny pants. Bukkake," he fumbled for anything to make Izzy stop looking at him like that and finally gave up, "We can't talk about it at all, just 'cause I fucked up with Joe? I know it was mean, but I want him, Iz. When I want something…" Tai trailed off, unsure how to finish. I get it, wouldn't be an accurate end to that statement. More like, I headbutt it, then it flees.
Izzy looked down at his foot. His fingers unsteepled, "I thought you were straight," he said, "I…" Whatever it was he wanted to say, he couldn't say it, "I guess I thought you were straight," he repeated.
Tai shrugged. He hadn't really thought about it like that, "So, my Matt problem…" he said, trying to get to the part where Izzy solved it all, using science and math. But the little redhead wouldn't meet his eyes. He sat on his chair with his arms crossed, his legs crossed. His foot jumped in agitation. "Why not? We talk about everything," Tai tried, weakly, the dawn of realization breaking.
"I know this word gets tossed around a lot, Tai, but you're an idiot."
Tai smiled his roguish smile at that. At least it was familiar ground.
Izzy frowned at him for a long time before he said, "I think you should leave."
Tai had a lot to think about on the way to Daisuke's.
Daisuke opened the door and squeezed his eyes shut. He hadn't been lying to Matt. He'd had like a billion concussions. Enough that the doctors strongly recommended he not get anymore. That was his first concern.
His second concern, when the blow didn't come and he pried an eye open to find Tai staring at him with his head cocked curiously to the side, was what the hell Tai wanted, if not to beat him to death. God, he hoped it wasn't an intervention. That would be even worse.
"Hey, Tai," Daisuke said, trying to smile it off. Tai blinked at him, blearily. He looked like absolute shit. Like I-haven't-slept-in-days and my-best-friend-threw-me-down-the-stairs shit. He had a half-healed black eye and a bruise on his jaw to match. Suddenly Daisuke felt duped for pitying Matt. If anyone needed free drugs in this world, it was Tai.
Warily, Daisuke offered his hand for their secret handshake. Tai accepted. Then he just stood there again, staring at Daisuke through narrowed eyes. Daisuke's stomach clenched. Oh god, he does know. He knows about the drugs and how I had my tongue in his mouth, "Look, Tai. What happened was, it was just a stupid k—"
"No," Tai said, suddenly, stabbing a finger at him to shut him up, "No more redheads. I've got bad luck with redheads today." And with that, he pushed past Daisuke with a mumbled, "Where's Teeks?"
Daisuke sagged against the doorframe, letting out a long, long breath.
Ken may not have been a genius anymore but he'd known going into this experiment that it would fail spectacularly. Not through any fault of their own, but because triadic segregation was an inescapable fact of human behavior. In groups of three, one will always be isolated while two will form a pair. The triangle may be the most stable geometrically but interpersonally it was, to borrow Daisuke's phrase from the fight this morning, a complete fuckup, get the fuck out, both of you!
Anticipating this, Ken had made an important decision months ago, before anyone had fucked anyone. As the tension between them crackled like lightning, he'd decided his best course through the coming storm would be one of observational silence, taking the experience in as purely sensory rather than adding his own voice to what would surely be a loud, messy thing between TK and Daisuke. In other words, to borrow a phrase TK had shouted moments before the door had slammed in their faces, Ken had decided to just shut up and listen for once, god!
If you present a void, people with fill it how they please. As a result, both Daisuke and TK confided in him, and on the rare occasion Ken did voice his opinion it went much like the scene this morning when he and TK were left staring at the door, listening to the locks click into place, unseen.
"Come on, let's go," TK had said, turning his back on the house to start down the drive.
Ken jangled his keys at TK, as in, Daisuke can't actually lock us out of our own house, so why are we playing along?
TK, his back to Ken, shook his head like it couldn't be helped, staring down the road with his hands on his hips, "Strategic retreat."
"To where?" Ken rasped, one word carrying all of his exasperation. If only one of them had taken a vow of silence.
TK rounded on him, still on the muscle from the fight, but his eyes softened when he looked at Ken, fey little wisp that he was. No one ever yelled at him. In fact, if Ken wanted, he could walk into the house right now and spend the day curled on the couch with Daisuke, listening to their hearts beat.
"I'll buy us breakfast," TK offered, sensing his hesitation. After a long look back at the house, Ken followed him away. Ken had walked in TK and Daisuke, and TK on Daisuke and Ken, but every time Daisuke saw Ken and TK together without him he flipped. Ken considered this against the spirit of their experiment, and worthy of a time out.
Over breakfast, TK tangled his long legs with Ken's under the booth and set about talking himself down, as he did after every fight. Daisuke was a fuck. Daisuke was jealous. Daisuke acted like a jealous fuck, kicking them out like that. But, being a jealous fuck to begin with, who could fault him for acting like one?
Ken could only look away and smile, accidentally meeting the eyes of a waitress, whose gum dropped right out of her mouth as she turned scarlet. He looked away quickly, trying to minimize the damage. But TK had seen it all. He didn't laugh at Ken the way Daisuke would, invite her over, introduce himself, chat her up, teasing Ken until he was pink and squirming in the booth, eager to escape. No, TK just quirked an eyebrow, amused.
"Guess we should go back and grovel before he smokes his way through next month's rent," TK said with sigh, laying enough cash down to cover it before wrapping an arm around Ken for the duration of the short walk to his car: a thoroughly beaten hand-me-down from Matt with illegal tints and no rearview mirror, cigarette burns all along the driver's side upholstery and the check engine light on.
TK stopped him there, leaning back against the trunk with a sigh, the fight with Dai still weighing down his smile, "Sometimes I think you two don't need me, Ken. Like it would be better for you both if I just gave up. Found someone new, you know?" He pushed the gravel at his feet around, sadly, "I don't want to."
Ken let him pout for a moment. It was important to let someone pout if they wanted to. He'd learned that, because of their experiment. That and a million other unteachable things about other people. About himself. He didn't want it to end either, and he would've told TK that, if he was talking. Instead, he took the blond's hand and pulled him into the backseat of the car, beneath the cover of Matt's too, too tinted windows.
When you don't talk, there's no where are we going, no someone will see, no slower or faster or less or more. No I can't take you again, I'm too sore, no I'm sleepy, no later. They liked to try and make him noisy, make him lose control. Brag about it to each other. It was Ken's favorite game, too.
"Trying to finish what we started?" TK teased, lightly. He did everything lightly. His fingers closed around Ken's wrist, lightly. Ken kissed him in answer, sliding onto his lap, right where Dai had found them this morning, walking into TK's room with a toothbrush hanging out of his mouth.
They got back home much later than they'd planned.
The silence Ken loved so much proved problematic the second he walked into the living room to find Daisuke looking guiltier than he had ever seen him before, and that was remarkable considering Daisuke was nearly always guilty.
Then Tai showed up, looking like a drowned rat. Panic rolled off Daisuke in waves.
It didn't take Ken long at all to figure it out. He wasn't jealous, exactly, though he had a lot of questions like why and how and where and when and what were you thinking and what was he thinking and what will TK think, god, he's going to kill you.
He waited until TK and Tai disappeared down the hall toward the blond's room before grabbing Daisuke's wrist and pulling him down beside him on the floor.
"What, right now?" Daisuke asked, sounding game, one hand already sneaking under the hem of Ken's shirt.
Ken cleared his throat with effort and scratched out, "You're an idiot."
"Woah," Daisuke said, eyes going wide, "I missed your voice."
"What'd you do," Ken scratched, "with Matt?"
"Sssh!" Daisuke said, covering Ken's mouth with his hand, "Nothing, okay? We didn't. We just…we just kissed. Fuck. How'd you figure it out?"
Ken plucked a long blond hair off Daisuke's shirt and handed it to him.
"From that? You should be on one of those forensic shows. No, look. Okay," Daisuke said, changing his tune once Ken hid his hands in his face in despair, "I am taking this seriously. Ken. Look at me."
Ken, reluctantly, peaked out from under his hands.
"You've gotta get me out of this," Daisuke said, "I'm fucked."
"No," Ken rasped, "Mad at you."
"No, you're not, I can tell."
"Irresponsible," Ken scolded.
Daisuke shrugged, unrepentant. Down the hall, TK laughed at something Tai said. They'd known each other longer than Ken and Daisuke, Ken realized, feeling very strange. Stranger still was Daisuke's head coming to rest on his shoulder, "Ken, it probably makes me terrible. More terrible than I know I already am. But, I've known, from the start, I was walking out of this with you. Just you and me. I've always known.
"Just like I know you're not mad at me for Matt. Because you're a zen garden. You're fucking…" Daisuke dug deep into the vocabulary he'd picked up from Ken, back when they were just friends, "unflappable. You're like a painting of an old boat, with sails. You're like koi fish that's all white with one black spot. You're—"
"You're not getting out of this."
"Fuck. Come on," Daisuke whined.
"You have to tell him."
It was Daisuke's turn to hide his face in his hands. Then he perked up, "Not Tai though, right?"
"Not Tai," Ken agreed, rapping on his own skull with a fist to illustrate, because talking hurt, "too many times."
"Right?" Daisuke asked, brightly, "That's my whole thing, too! A few more hits to the head and I'll be eating all my meals through a straw," he said, then suddenly pulled a serious face, "You get me."
"I do," Ken said, draping an arm around him. He traced long lines down Daisuke's back until he shuddered and Ken, remembering, stopped.
From the looks of him, from the story he mumbled, TK figured Tai would want to pass out right away, but instead he poked around TK's bedroom, casting sad, puppy-brown eyes at where TK stood in the doorway until the blond said, "Oh," and stepped inside, pulling the door closed behind him. Tai looked relieved, but he still wasn't talking. TK thought it was weird when Tai didn't talk.
"So," he tried, "Sora and Izzy both kicked you out?"
"Yeah," Tai said, sliding all the way down the wall to form a slouchy, pouting pile on the carpet, "I've got whiplash." He hadn't said why, exactly, he'd been kicked out, but TK didn't want to push him. In TK's mind, Tai would always be cool and TK would always be eight. Tai retrieved the soccer ball from his humble pile of possessions and idly rolled it beneath his hand, "I'll just stay tonight. I'd go to Hikari's but..." Suddenly Tai's eyes swam, "You wouldn't kick me out, would you?"
TK laughed. He couldn't help it. He sat on the floor by his bed and opened his hands, Tai rolled the ball over to him. TK put his right hand on it and solemnly swore, "I promise not to kick you out, Tai. I'm not even gonna wake you up. You look like hell."
Tai nodded in agreement, closing his eyes for a long moment. Then he asked, "You know those mushrooms of forgetfulness Demidevimon tried to feed us?"
TK's eyebrows quirked, but he nodded, rolling the ball back.
"Do you think they still grow by the theme park?"
"Is it that bad?"
Tai just frowned at the soccer ball.
"Well…" TK didn't exactly want to tell him, but, "Dai and I ate some, a while back. The forgetfulness doesn't really last. Made us giggly though," TK thought for a second, "Good visuals."
"You ate some," Tai said, voice flat.
TK, all doe-eyed innocence, said, "It was Daisuke's idea."
"Hn," Tai rolled the ball. TK rolled it back. Tai sighed, "Everyone's gone crazy but me."
TK's eyes crinkled, "I think that makes you the crazy one, Tai."
"Maybe," The next time Tai got the ball he kept it, hugging it against himself, "I think if I avoid your brother forever then I'll be fine."
"That shouldn't be too hard," TK said, "Since you're best friends."
"Not anymore," Tai said, "I kissed him."
"Gross."
Tai rolled the ball back, and hid his grin in his arm.
"No wonder people keep kicking you out," TK said. His brother was a feral, rangy thing. You could trap him and he'd bite you, or chase him and he'd run from you. Or bite you. He didn't think Tai would appreciate this advice though, so he stood up and offered him a hand instead, "Go to bed before you say something worse and I have to go back on my word."
"Yeah, okay. Sounds fair," Tai said, dropping onto TK's bed with a bounce. He looked around, rubbing a hand in his hair as he took in the four-door dresser, overturned egg crate bedside table, the short stack of books for school, "You don't have a lot of stuff."
"Nah," TK waved a hand, "Things are just things. You taught me that."
"That's right," Tai toed off his shoes and laid back in the bed with his hands behind his head, "Makes break-ups easy, too," he said with a yawn, as TK slipped out of the door.
He padded down the hall, wondering whose bed he'd sleep in tonight. Sometimes they all squeezed in together—Ken had the biggest mattress—and would wake up in a pleasant tangle that took hours to sort out. Between gunpowder Dai, and Ken, who was steady as a rock in a stream, TK considered himself the happy medium of their group.
Sometimes it pissed him off, the sharing. Sometimes he didn't know who or what he wanted. Sometimes he hated Ken for stealing all Dai's attention, because Daisuke couldn't take his eyes off of him, would stop in the middle of a sentence just to watch him walk by. It was infuriating or endearing, depending on the day, the hour, the minute. Sometimes he wanted to hide Ken away, greedily, for himself. Sometimes he wanted to show Ken off like a trophy—it was awful but true. Sometimes he hated Daisuke for any of the thousands of reasons one hated Daisuke. Sometimes it was too easy to hate Daisuke. Sometimes he loved Daisuke so much it hurt.
When he walked into the living room they were both staring back at him, as if they'd been listening for his footsteps and someone was going to shout Surprise! TK couldn't count the number of times he'd walked down the hall to find them nuzzling like happy cats, or asleep in each other's arms, or grinding helplessly, too impatient to wait on him.
Daisuke looked a little green. Ken's frown said, You won't like this.
"What?" he asked.
Next up: Chapter 5: Matt Attack
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