Chapter 9: God thinks you're an idiot

Taichi was gobsmacked when he pried open sleep-crusted eyes, and gathered spit in his mouth to abate the stinging Sahara desert sensation in his throat. Oh, he remembered perfectly well why he didn't have his trusty water glass in his immediate vicinity. He didn't think he'd be able to fall asleep to begin with.

By the tall location of the sun, which hadn't torn through his window yet, he hadn't gotten much of it. Unsurprising, considering his alarm clock was a guilty heart palpitating hard – very hard – against the curved bones of his chest.

He swung his feet over the side of the bed, all begrudging and fucking pissy. He inhaled for four seconds and exhaled for five, taking his time to reconstruct the sound reasoning he found before he zonked out a few hours ago.

Plucking his comb from the bedside table, he moved its plastic teeth from the roots on his scalp to the thick of his tangled hair while making his way to the kitchen, lured in by the smell of sizzling yolks.

On the way, he snuck a glimpse into Yamato's room. It was mighty hard to miss the many crinkled rectangles of used tissue paper all bunched up on the carpet, a mere few centimetres below the ruffled fringe of his unmade bed cover.

'At least one of us had a good night, ey?' The bitter thought flitted through Taichi's mind.

When he reached the first line of the ceramic floor tiles marking his destination, he had to stop and look. With one elbow angled, shaping his arm into a triangle, Taichi reclined against the wall and took a moment to soak in the bright scene: he – standing there and grooming himself for the new day, and Yamato – leaning over the cooker, making Taichi's favourite fried eggs with soy sauce, rashers, and leftover meatball gravy next to a batch of white rice.

How come Taichi never once paused to consider how easily, almost incidentally, they fell into each other's routines? Or why was this pretty, domestic picture which unfurled before him, now like every other Saturday, so much like a photograph taken from a couple's honeymoon album? Or that he could do this for the rest of his life? For the rest of their lives?

On any normal day, he'd walk in, glue his face into the smooth spot between Yamato's shoulder blades, and hang from Yamato's back like a baby sloth till breakfast was ready. Then they'd breathe coffee.

Taichi examined the small room like it was the first time he entered it instead of the millionth. The ceiling, the walls, the aerial particles of dust whirled by invisible rivulets, the dirty dishes in the sink dripping with the slimy residues of eggs and tomato sauce – all were dipped in the golden hues of early noon.

And at the far end was Yamato, the sun casting a brilliant aurora around him. He was humming notes which sounded a lot like the birth of a new musical project, and flipping meat pieces in the pan with his bare fingers. He was a bassist, so he could do that. It was brilliant.

Taichi was about as functional as a legless zombie and his yawn almost split his face in two, but the tiny bits of consciousness he did salvage all revolved around the man in front of him.

Said man, his best-friend-turned-gay-fantasy-overnight, wasn't wearing a bottom half – only a thin, loose-fitting sleeping shirt and a pair of short briefs which revealed to Taichi's roaming eyes the long sequence of Yamato's toned, slender legs.

'Meh, at least he's no longer parading women's lingerie.'

Taichi thanked the world for small miracles.

'But… ya know… those top-notch, perky cheeks of his totally pull it off.'

'Brain, no! No! No one asked for your opinion!' Another wave of self-loathing hit Taichi like a monster battering ram – not that it prevented his gaze from lingering on the aforementioned piece of supple flesh. Not when it protruded so nicely from underneath the blue cloth, making the hem of Yamato's top flare a bit around it.

As a matter of fact, he was staring so long and so hard at the globes of Yamato's backside, he was surprised they didn't start staring back.

'Sweet, merciful fuck, I am so messed up.'

"Morning." His voice came out raspy and a bit scratched, like he spent the entire night smoking a packet.

A laid-back smile, expecting Taichi's adorable straight-off-the-pillow look, turned to greet him but evaporated before Taichi blinked.

"You look wretched. Like the inside of someone's arsehole."

Oh no! No! No! No! Taichi forgot Yamato had nipples. He didn't get a peek last night, but now – here they were! Poking right through Yamato's thin and so devastatingly flimsy shirt, properly staring Taichi down.

In the two seconds since Yama swivelled around, Taichi had to get his head straight – well, straighter – and remember how to operate his lungs. It somehow worked when he answered, "Why thank you, I don't know how I managed aiming my piss properly into the bowel so far without your striking powers of observation guiding my hand."

Yamato wasn't fazed by Taichi's deadpan mood in the slightest.

"What did you do all night? You look like a truck chock-full of manure ran you over, picked up your body, added it to the waste pile of scheisse, and it all went merde from there."

Taichi grumbled at Yamato's un-funny funny and slunk into his seat. While he had a profound appreciation for Yamato's rich vocabulary, he didn't fancy prompting him to unleash all his known synonyms for faecal matter. At least, not before their twelve PM breakfast.

"Bung over the salt – you all right, though?" Serious and gentle – in his own way – Yamato encircled Taichi's wrist, his finger-pads finding the prominent blue vein and the pulse under it.

"I'm fine. Sleeping just didn't quite go according to my foolproof plan."

Taichi handed over the desired salt shaker.

"You should really be 'bit more organised…"

But Yamato seemed peppy enough when he pulled two plates from the cupboard and poured half the contents of the pan into each, along with a bowel from the rice cooker. He placed Taichi's share in front of him, teamed with eating utensils, a milk carton, a kettle steaming with a cinnamon-heavy Indian chai, and a pot of black coffee as a hangover remedy for them both.

The fact Yamato insisted on having his morning tea even during the scorching heat of August never ceased to amaze Taichi. Then again, Yamato also left the central air working twenty-three hours a day so he could pretend it was still winter and sleep with a duvet while freezing everybody else over. Taichi swore that last summer his nuts had effectively shrunk into cashews over the course of a single Friday.

When he finished arranging the small, square table, he sat on the side adjacent to Taichi. Their knees met below the plastic surface and grazed against each other while Yamato dug into his own portion.

That picture Taichi thought about when he entered the kitchen resurfaced. He tried predicting by virtue of what and where he and Yamato would be one day – in some grey, unforeseen future. How will they be like when either one of them was married off to someone? Potential, futuristic people whose faces were currently nothing more than a blurry stain on top a generic human body inside Taichi's imagination.

Upholding that type of relationship on Yamato's end would be difficult, Taichi reckoned, since Yamato considered marriage an archaic establishment.

'But he would be an amazing partner, wouldn't he?'

Taichi sniggered and spent the next two seconds trying to sneeze out his big mistake that took the shape of milk climbing up his left nostril.

"What?"

"Nothing. Just figured Mimi has a point."

Yamato stared at Taichi expectantly, waiting for him to make sense while Taichi manoeuvred his chopsticks with all likeness to a food shovel.

"One day, you really will make someone very happy."

It was sweet.

It was supposed to be sweet; so much so the diabetes in the air was almost tangible for Yamato – or inside his arteries if he insisted on keeping up with semantics. But he wasn't much moved by the compliment or found it worthy to fake half a giggle for. There was only one 'someone' he wanted to make happy, and learnt the hard way there will not be another person to take Taichi's place.

"I guess."

The dish in front of Yamato suddenly wasn't appetizing. He started forcing it into his mouth just to prevent it from finding its demise along with his waning mood – somewhere in the gutter.

The hard and cold weight of realisation landed in Taichi's gut the moment the words were on the other side of his mouth. Straight up, like someone gave him the knee and plugged all the food-craving he had.

'He will, won't he…?' Taichi could fold Yuri – who'd been lowkey nagging Taichi about Yama since the game, by the way – into an origami duck, cram him into a box, and ship him to Murmansk but there would always be someone else… probably… eventually. What would he do? Club everyone who goes after Yamato with a really big stick? 'One day, Yamato'll be happy somewhere else, make breakfasts for someone else and all this will be nostalgia.'

"Taichi?"

Taichi glanced over to Yamato while moving the red edges of his chopsticks across the white of the egg as though he was drawing an abstract doodle. He punctured a hole in the mucus preserving the shape of the yellow dome, and inspected the yolk spilling over till it filled the margins of his plate. It gave him one more colour to paint his masterpiece with.

"It's breakfast, not the bloody National Gallery. You're supposed to eat it – not stare at it and evaluate its artistic properties."

Taichi couldn't produce words even if he puked them all over himself. He feigned ignorance when Yamato dealt him the 'glare of glares' and decided continuing his one-track-mind fascination with the wobbly edibles in his plate was as good a pass time as any.

"Right, I made a gorgeous meal. If you're not eating, I'm calling a bloody ambulance."

A cold hand covered Taichi's brow and Yamato's snarky attitude morphed into genuine concern.

His palm was callused at the tips but softer in the midsection, smelling a bit of the dissonant mixture of olive oil and a washing-up liquid for dishes.

Only his mother, and maybe Hikari once or twice, ever checked Taichi for fever like this. But their hands were small and dainty. Yamato's hand was large. Having the blatant component of a male added to the touch made the familiar gesture into something almost new and kind of foreign – but not uncomfortable.

Playing doctor and patient with Yamato had, momentarily, seemed like an interesting idea. It certainly had its appeal.

Taichi wanted to lean into the chill of Yamato's fingers and broaden the contact; land a small peck on his palm. Let Yamato take care of him, like he always has. 'I love you, Yamato.' It was in his body. At the same time, Taichi wanted to rip it away from him as if it was a big, fat and uninvited roach.

"You've been off since last night and you're a bit hot. You feeling alright? Want me to make soup?"

'I love you too.'

Taichi shook his head but remained unresponsive otherwise.

"Something happened…? Ammm… do you want to… talk… about it…?"

'Fuck, trust Yamato to simply sense when I'm out of it…'

Taichi hated the worry laced in Yamato's voice. He always did know Taichi better than anyone else; always first to notice when something's wrong with him. Him being this observant wasn't a blessing this instant for either of them, though.

'I mean, what am I gonna say? 'Righty-o, mate, sorry 'bout that – got an eyeful of you wanking last night and now I don't fancy seeing you with anyone till I pull my shit together. So, yes – this friendship of ours has just crossed some serious boundaries. Also, nice arse?'

He wasn't going to lie either, but he was way too exhausted to come up with any intelligible explanation as to why he was acting like what the darkest secrets of McDonalds' looked like, or like an orgy of homeless people smelt.

All the smart things he convinced himself of last night were dying a slow, painful death along with his brain.

There was nothing he wanted more at the moment than to catapult his arse to his room, crawl into a bottle, and hit rock bottom before Hikari got home.

Yes, he was needlessly in hysterics due to being underslept – no, he couldn't do squat about it right now. "No, I don't want to fucking talk!"

'God, it came out so wrong!'

"Aright… no talk!" Yamato raised his arms in defeat and got back to poking his food instead of poking Taichi, but that pissed Taichi off even more for whatever reason. Taichi just sat there, glaring daggers at him like a right dolt!

'Fine!' Yamato scrambled to his feet, thrusting the chair backwards in the process, and slapped Taichi on the back of his head.

"What is your bleeping issue?!"

All he had to do was rile Taichi a bit further – till he gives him a bunch of fives – bring them to blows, get the war paints and a pig-head on a stick, scuffle around on the floor for approximately five minutes, and let Taichi vent his steam. Then they could discuss the sand which miraculously made its way up Taichi's anus like the two mature adults they were. Perfect.

The only issue with this plan was that Taichi didn't play along.

Taichi was simply not there.

That noon, Yamato slid the entire scale from being right chuffed, justifiably anxious, fucking livid, and royally confused before he even got to take the first leak of the day. By all accords, this was already a botched Saturday and he should turn on his heel, climb back to bed, and get his Diogenes of Sinope game on.

He had no idea what he did to get Taichi so pissed off or if he had any fault in this at all.

The fact he, Taichi Yagami, wasn't eating while food was right there, waiting to be gobbled down, was a nagging which coiled around Yamato's spine and pinched his nerves. The more likely scenario should have been one where Taichi was raiding Yamato's refrigerator for leftovers and filling his role as a biological rubbish disposal. Yamato's entire set of inward workings united to become the dire horn of a sinking submarine.

"The fuck, Taichi?!"

Taichi shot up and stormed off before he had the chance to reform his ass-slapped face into a bearing less aesthetically offensive.

He appreciated everything Yamato tried doing on his account. He did. As a matter of fact, he appreciated it so much he could just kiss Yamato – and therein laid the problem. He can't stay here. If Yamato will say something to him… If he'd say something to Yamato… If he'd hurt him…

If it were anybody else, Taichi'd be more than happy to engage in some manful brawling, but even touching Yamato at the moment was far too much for the over-sensitized mess he was.

Before he put his hand on the handle – the only obstacle between him, the building's main stairwell, and getting the fuck out of here – a pale arm blocked his passage by slamming into the wall. For a moment, there was nothing in his line of sight except for those two cobalt irises that looked at him with sheer antagonism – but mostly with sadness. Deja vu.

"What's on with you…? What are you running from? Taichi? Please… just… what did I do?" His voice was far smaller than Taichi was able to face. Like it was taken from the 'Last Resort!' chapter in Yamato's guidebook on techniques for dealing with Taichi. Hurt. "What-"

"Just stop it, Yamato."

'Shit, Yamato. Don't do this to me.' Taichi shoved past him without a word and heard "Tosser!" being sent after him.

Once on the stairs, he paused his escape and tilted his head towards Yamato, who still gauged him with the tenacity of a starved vulture who couldn't wait for the moment Taichi dropped dead.

"Look, mate, you didn't do anything wrong, aright? It's not you – it's me. So. Just leave me the fuck alone," and in a tiny instance of clarity which was very conscious of hurting Yamato, he added, "we'll talk later."

Didn't get to slosh around in his anvilicious misery for too long, though. Before he got to lay his first foot on the pavement, the informative vibration of his phone went off in his pocket. When he swiped aside the screen, the text message read: 'Did your hangover just make you break up with me?!'

Taichi recapped the argument between them. Less than a minute ago he really did, painfully, blurted out the line, 'It's not you–it's me.'

If Hikari had been here, she would have died. She always claimed their fights played out like lovers' spats and Taichi single-handedly proved her right while simultaneously taking it up to a whole new level.

Despite his glum mug, a small chuckle worked its way passed his clenched teeth.

'Yamato, you bloody brilliant bastard!'

For all Taichi's being smack dab in the middle of the street in his pyjamas, knackered, and more ashamed of himself than a stripper booked for her grandfather's birthday party, walking barefoot to his home and hoping his beloved mum would not see enough of him today to start wondering where and when did she and his father go wrong – Yamato still made him laugh.

'Now that is friendship!'

Yamato was all gaga when he handed the cashier the little plastic bucket.

It was high time he restocked on food. He had a bit of a weird OCD where he cooked when he was nervous or pissed off – and Taichi pissed him off.

He parked his scooter in front of the automatic door to the grocery store and shuffled through the isles for all manner of nutritious goods and for some goods of severely questionable nutritious value.

And there they were – gummy bears. Tartrazine, E-133, and other sorts of alphanumerical combinations representing colour, flavour, and stability enhancing chemicals, encased all lovingly just for him, spelling his thyroid lymphoma to be; his very own boxed cancer.

The gnarled pensioner behind the cash register flashed him a smile which was a bit too medicated, missing three teeth, and looked as though its owner didn't know what smiles were for.

"You don't… nyeto normalnie obed je doma?... Lunch home?" he asked with a sandpaper voice that matched his face, while passing the rubbery treats under the scanner.

Why people insisted on starting small talk, of all things, to fill in the vacancies in their miserable lives and why they always ended up being directed at Yamato was some shit beyond his grasp and even further from Yamato's will to investigate.

God, Yamato hated small talk. It's so fake. People you don't care about and who don't care about you talk about things no one cares about.

What was so terrible with listening to the world spinning in silence? And say they had to open their traps and produce frequencies they hoped would find reception in someone – why can't it be something worthy to say?

This man had to have something better to talk about than Yamato's potential lunch menu.

Still, after piecing together the fractured bits of languages, Yamato answered with a gentle smile, "I'm all grown up. I can finally eat pudding before lunch."

This man's heavy accent and his slim grasp of how speech should be handled was a dead giveaway. He was one of the many who came here from far away, leaving an old sham of a life behind, in hope of a new home. But what he found was a strange land vacant of any sense of domestic welcome.

He was one of those who hadn't assimilated into the rest of society and sort of became enclosed in his small shell, where he could relieve poverty-stricken childhood memories about rusty merry-go-rounds and unhinged swings.

Maybe he left a family back there. He was probably lonely, and from his attempt to talk with Yamato, he probably convinced himself Yamato was a foreigner, like him. It was a neighbourhood like that. Yamato pitied him – or at least the image of him he had in his head.

"Cheers," Yamato called behind him when he left, the clerk's smoked, nasal laughter accompanying him all the way out.

Checking his phone, he noted it has been two straight days without that anthropomorphic personification of a terminal shit stain answering any of Yamato's attempts at communication. The discomfort he harboured since Saturday was mounting into small knife pricks of panic.

The last time Taichi acted like this the world almost went kablooey. Yamato was half expecting Ogremon and Leomon to pop up and start duking it out while the skies fall apart. Again.

Replacing the helmet in his Vespa's trunk with the nylon bags, Yamato revved up the engine only to turn it back off after a second.

He had to stop and stare at the commercial poster splayed in front of the mini-market for all to witness its unholy glory.

It featured a lovely, busty model, with nice umber curves in all the right places, and only a pathetic excuse for cloth, shaped like a tiny triangular bikini, to hold everything together and prevent this image from becoming restrictively rated 18+.

That, inherently, was not his problem. It wasn't about censorship. Yamato couldn't give a crap about censorship. Actually – fuck censorship. The less censorship exited the better. This was simply and plainly about good taste. While there was no doubt she was pleasing to the eye, what caught Yamato's attention was the penis substitute jammed between her humongous mounds of mammary fat in the guise of some brand-name ice cream cone.

If Yamato had to be shown chicks sucking allegorical dicks, he wanted it to be done properly.

Making Yamato cringe was no easy feat. It really wasn't – but this thing had achieved just that. He had many questions for the producers, photographers, managers, and shareholders who allowed this atrocity to take form. Questions such as: How low did we go? Was this necessary? Why can't I even have ice cream without pitching a tent? And why are my fetishes never catered to?

Now he was pissed off and frustrated. He didn't want to have his face slapped like an arse so early in the day, but there it was and that just served to make him more pissed off and more frustrated.

Society isn't buying products anymore. It's buying the feeling conveyed through the medium – buying gilded emptiness, hoping to fill the hole in people's sad, hollow lives with bigger, better, shinier boxes. Escapism for the misinformed and uninformed. They don't even know what they are running away from yet.

But the hole continues growing exponentially. The big monopolies are more than happy to invest whatever resources required, keeping the greasy mechanism of this Lotus-Eater Machine in gear. They do it to distract consumers from asking the important questions about the holders of the company, about the seething underbelly of the business world, and about the stockholders. About anything really.

And how do they get to them? With primal needs.

Everything here is about sex nowadays. Everything – expect sex.

Sex today is about numbers, quantities and "How many?"-s or "How much"-s. Such as: how many cocks did you suck? How much did laying that fit, little bod' take out of your bank account? How much blood was in your alcohol stream when you banged? How many sperms do you think you still have in your box after your mobile phone fried it well-done?

Damn thing is overrated out the wazzoo; it's both sad and ridiculous. And the worst part about this trend is that this simple, natural act has been turned from biological to political.

In almost every civil conflict between government officials, in the press, or in public debates, sex is used as both leverage and a weapon. Proof? The practicalities of aerodynamics aside, rockets and missiles are all designed after the mighty schlong that is going to screw your country over.

Yamato laid the blame at the feet of the religions and traditions that demonized sexuality and made people suppress themselves. Or, rather, at the feet of the people who made up religions and traditions to suppress and control other people's actions and thoughts, initiating the largest blue-ball fest mankind has ever known. It spanned several thousands of years and till today is still sending millions of humans to die at wars whose sole purpose is to affirm which absentee parental figure is better endowed.

'Well, soldiers of faith who insist on extinguishing their lives on theological shores while putting their words in the mouth of god, any god, are an embarrassment to the creation they believe in and don't fucking deserve their days on earth.' Yamato's loaded with grudge against the world.

It's not that he had beef with religious individuals on principal. Not at all – freedom of thought and belief and yada yada – only with anyone who used it to try telling him what to do.

Oh! And then there is the hilarity called USA fundies! A term whose reincarnation Yamato appreciated best in the form of the comically horrifying site: FSTDT. Though to be fair, every country has a percentage of its populace that is one sandwich short of a picnic basket in the kind of way which makes even some of the more orthodox folks cringe.

Their rectums are probably stretched to the width of Saturn's rings by now with all the bullshit these people pull from out of their arses.

Sanctimonious arse-holes should just burn.

'Sex is an epicentre of human biology and most humans are sexual. Get fucking over it and stop guilt-tripping. There's nothing wrong with natural desires or with treating them.'

For the most part, though, the repressed phase was done with, everything blew over and sex was plastered over anything to a point where it was no longer sexy.

But what Yamato resented most was the way films, books, and popular, 'entertaining' mass-media portrayed sex. Most human beings residing in modern countries already knew to mistrust commercials, but many were still duped by the pretty lights and sounds emanating from the screens: If it isn't the work of the Devil itself or bad Kami or something, as some of the former religious types claimed, it was an outer-worldly, heavenly experience.

Magical sex fairies lit pink candles and spread rose petals around a couple that hit a hundred orgasms per second. And they were always ridiculously good looking. Hell, everything in those films, series, and books was ridiculously beautiful. Too beautiful.

The sky was beautiful, the room was beautiful, the windows were beautiful, the Egyptian cotton sheets were beautiful, the single use coffee set was beautiful, the janitor with the oil drippings on his jumpsuit was beautiful. Screw that – even the blob of snot someone left on the shower-room's counter was photogenic as sin and bloody damn beautiful!

In fact, it was so beautiful it may as well have been inserted as an active participant in the party!

Really, the sceneries had everything short of an angelic choir to remind the average viewer just how ordinary and uninteresting he or she was with their perfectly normal sex life.

It was so sterile, just like the photo-shopping done to this model – something fake which spiked in Yamato the need to rip it apart.

Life wasn't sterile. It was grimy and gritty and dirty and raw. It was full of shit and all that manure was the fertilizer which made flowers bloom. That's what made it so beautiful and worth living.

Who's writing this entire "utopia for the masses" rubbish?! Was this the product of a bunch of virgins in their fifties who were brainwashed by Disney and are still waiting for their Prince Charming or Sleeping Beauty to drop by or something?

Who was the target audience for that crap anyway?

Yamato sure as fuck didn't fancy singing the god-damn Hallelujah every time jizz came out of his dick! It being outside his balls rather than inside his balls was rewarding enough all on its own!

Sex is dirty and smelly and stupid and funny and innocent and awesome, in both the regular and the biblical sense, and when someone gets lucky – it's sexy as well. People make funny faces and there are all sorts of weird squelching noises and wet stuff all over the place. It's hilarious; practically nature's way of having a wild laugh.

The natural process of it is what makes it so fun!

Sex is good as it is and there is no need for embellishments. If no one needs to prettify two buffaloes in Africa bumping uglies on National Geographic – the same should apply for humans.

A gazillion different types of relationships exist out there and what the good ones have in common is how they are not about an endless honeymoon sex in five star hotels. Most of them don't involve sex at all!

They're about farting in bed and laughing together after. They're about knowing you fight and argue sometimes, and will fight and argue in the future, but also about compromising and making sense and listening. They're about honesty and communication and shared experiences rather than similarities. They're about what feels natural. The little things. It isn't about 'being nothing' without the other person, but about choosing to be with each other.

On a similar note, Yamato didn't fancy how love, intimacy, and sex were often lumped together like they were one and the same.

They weren't; seriously weren't.

Sure, it's nice when the whole package comes together but, more often than not, people aren't that lucky. Most people don't love who they fuck and don't fuck who they love. Intimacy isn't necessarily on the table in either case.

Taichi's received more oral service than anyone Yamato has ever met – maybe more than Ron Jeremy – but he didn't love any of those girls. Yamato had his own score but those precious three words were only made audible on his lips when he directed them at his brother, at Gabumon, at Taichi himself or, when Yamato felt kind, at his reflection.

Love and intimacy are rare; sex – not so much.

If you love everyone, you don't love anyone.

But escapism and edited, partial portrayals of human existence were not exclusive to adverts and films. The concepts of real and fake are far too intertwined in the collective consciousness. Too many individuals retreat more and more to the confines of their protected spaces and niches. Society is swarming with those promoting censorship over dialogue, those who don't want to have significant debates, don't want to hear opinions different from their own or to have their world views challenged – and pluralism be damned. They are building monoliths and are becoming increasingly afraid of having that bubble poked; or even of asking questions. Was it always like this and he just now noticed it or did it become a trend?

It was a shame. Without challenge, there can be no growth.

Everyone can use a break from life once in a while and that's respectable, but life is so beautiful, its beauty often goes overlooked.

As a child, Yamato frequently lost himself between the pages of fantasy stories, and always wanted to be one of those explorers who go on adventures in imaginary worlds with dragons and kings and magical rings. But when he grew up, he realised the real stories of real people were at least as interesting if not far more so. The simple, trivial aspects of everyday life were truly beautiful as long as they were told correctly.

Then, of course, he was sucked into a parallel universe where he had adventures with monsters and that just proved his point. His and the Chosen Children's lives were testament that truth is stranger than fiction.

He gave a huge sigh – not that the eviction of air helped him any. He checked the date and time on his phone again.

Two days, three hours.

"Taichi…"

He started typing another vengeful text, regretted it, and gave up on demolishing the last shreds of his pride by begging for attention like a mutt.

Yamato didn't know how to react or what to do any longer. Not a single bone in Taichi's body was phony or untrue in any way. His emotions flew freely across his stupid face. 'Bloody hell,' but Taichi couldn't sugar-coat things to save his life.He wasn't the type to play psychological games with people. More than that, Taichi wasn't someone who's easy to faze, so what the fuck is going on?!

The instances of him acting like this – cold, distant and passive – were rare enough, but it was even rarer for that faze to make him so unresponsive even towards Yamato. And even Yamato had no idea how to go about it back than either. He tried everything from beating Taichi up to talking him down.

There were few things Yamato wanted more in this moment than for Taichi to turn around the corner and punch Yamato's spleen out through his spine. He didn't mind going home with a few extra red and purple blotches. He just wanted Taichi to do something.

But so help him if Taichi was ever simple. He was one of the most complicated, intelligent people Yamato had ever met and he was too good at hiding his motivations when he wanted to. That's what worried Yamato the most – Taichi often… internalizes his struggles.

It's one thing to bicker or get physical – that was a direct result of how far they got under each other's skin. It's a whole different story when someone like Taichi, who used to be the loud mascot for 'happy go lucky' in his eleven-year-old incarnation, goes past the point of being moody, or even depressed, and becomes detached.

Yamato hated this. He hated not knowing what's going on. He hated being useless and it hurts him that he can't fix the problem. Most of all, he hated not being able to understand Taichi.

Every time Yamato reminded himself the change happened overnight, with no foreshadowing whatsoever, he felt like an invisible hand slid ice beneath his shirt and down his back. Despite rationale pointing to the contrary, a nasty little voice sitting on his cortex tried convincing him he was somehow the one to blame.

The same questions rioted in his head, again and again, like a mosh pit in a Black Flag's concert back in the 80s – when punk as a genre still meant something.

'What did I do? Is it what I said? Did he stay up all night and finally realise his best friend is, in fact, a shitstorm in humanoid form without the fear of god in him?'

'No,' Yamato reprimanded himself for the Nth time. 'That's not Taichi.' Taichi would have said something. The both of them were straightforward, barely tactful, kind-of-painfully-honest schmucks. Their respective truths tended to spill out of them against any healthy sense of judgment.

'What the hell? We are frustrating people!'

He was stiff, deep to the morrow of his bones.

'How did I screw up this time? Why? Why do I have to get Taichi upset?'

Taichi was one miserable bastard.

Miserable and lost.

The only things to have visited his tummy recently were beer and regrets.

He had no bloody idea what to do with his new-found virility. Waking up in the morning hard, sticky, and sweaty with Yamato's name on his lips was something that up until Saturday was strictly categorised under "… What?"

Since then it moved to the folder in his head placed under the "Why?!" section and just like that – his fragile heterosexuality was shattered.

'And not just my godamn sexuality!' This weekend cut five years off his life and a good-sized slice of his sanity!

It'd only been two days, and already Taichi was terrified of falling asleep. Every time he closed his eyes, a little Yama was waiting for him in his dreams. A little, wicked-hot, hazy-eyed Yama who was waiting to be fucked by him. A very slutty little Yama who was begging on his hands and knees – ready, willing and wanting to be mashed into the bed under Taichi's heavy muscles. A sticky, wet, dirty-with-all-kinds little Yama whose hair was such a mess and whose cheeks were so prettily flushed and whose expression was obscenely glazed over after the good dicking Taichi gave him.

At the same time, it was somehow still his Yama, for sure: same long neck, same earth-core deep voice, same impossible-to-look-directly-at eyes, same blonde-headed brill; warhead Yamato.

Some 'em dream-details were particularly nasty. Good-nasty… but Taichi wasn't supposed to be having them in the first place!

He was supposed to fantasise about super-models with humongous jugs he could motorboat. Besides, he normally fancied doing the regular stuff. The Bartholin-squirting stuff. He didn't know he even fancied butt stuff. What a cat-ass-trophic way to find out!

And yet, through some twisted cosmological joke, Taichi was probably the first man in history to be upset about not simply being gay. He could drip saliva all over a glossy Victoria Secret catalogue for hours, but the moment Yamato walked in Taichi was a rainbow fucking unicorn.

Hey! It's not like he didn't give it a go. He tried watching standard gay porn, but it got as much a reaction from him as his high-school history teacher did. A man who was almost a century old at the time, looked like a newspaper, and had as much versatility in his intonation as a slab of something grey.

Taichi tried his luck with the 'twink' category and learnt he fared better – but not really. He found a video with a tall, slender blonde who was getting his waxed butt-hole pummelled by two beefcakes at a time and that kinda got Taichi going. At some point, the boy's face overlapped with Yamato's in his mind, and the next thing Taichi knew, he was raining pearl-jam drops and shame all over his keyboard.

As an afterthought, he made a valiant attempt at reminding himself how wrong it was lusting after his mate after taking a skeet at his naked arse. Most of Taichi's waking hours were spent in a marathon of self-persuasion and self-deprecation, repeating the mantra: "I'm gross, I'm repulsive, this can't be happening." Only that his ridiculously stiff hard-on was clearly not seeing eye-to-eye with him on the subject.

He got off the phone with Sora less than an hour ago, relying on his oldest friend for a willing ear, maternal sympathy, and advice without milking him for specifics.

If nothing else, at least now he got the background of her 'Never' confession: apparently, drinking yourself into lesbianism is a trope in her academy of choice. On any other day he'd be thrilled to poke her about this, but right now he was too bogged down with contemplating the deep and meaningful questions of life.

Of all the fetishes, kinks and orientations – why couldn't he have discovered the normal things people discover about themselves after a night of ethanol abuse? Like the fungi between their toes, the taste of asphalt, or some stranger's knickers. And sure, make them another man's knickers, but why, out of all the knickers in the world, did Taichi have to discover Yamato's?!

Why did he have to be turned on by that of all things? And what was he supposed to do about it now?

Taichi couldn't go on ignoring Yamato and he didn't want to either. He damn missed Yamato and his stupid mug! And he missed blurting out all the daft rubbish ping-ponging through his head, and having someone listen to it, no judgment attached. Most of all, though, he didn't want to continue disappointing Yamato – which was exactly what Taichi was doing every single passing minute he spent rotting in his bedroom. Each one of Yamato's phone calls he tuned out and every text he deleted or ignored was another disappointment. He was nothing like what Yamato wanted him to be right now. He was nothing like he wanted to be.

Taichi had to find a way to be in the same room with Yamato again, even if just by proxy.

Taichi had an idea - though he didn't want to go through with it.

But he was going to.

If he couldn't be himself when he's with Yamato, he wouldn't be there. What's the point? Yamato was more than capable of stripping him bare and opening up whatever was left, so it's not like Taichi could waltz around this chaos. Yamato deserved better than having a 'Half-Arsed Taichi', anyway.

Taichi wasn't going to ruin their hard-earned, blood-brother status by blurting out his notoriously fickle sexual appetite had recently been having a taste for taking his dick out of the closet and straight into Yamato's arse.

For the third time that day, Taichi jacked off into his trash bin. His exercised fist did the job quickly and mechanically. He didn't fantasize about anything – didn't let himself. He stayed detached. He had a need, so he relieved it. That's it. It didn't have to be more fun than that.

After cleaning up stray evidence of his jizz, Taichi picked up his phone again and swept the screen aside with his thumb. The list of Yamato's unanswered texts greeted him, long and angry. It started with 'Why won't you talk to me?', continued with 'Answer me, you professional turd,' and the subtlety of the messages went south from there.

First objective on his agenda was to talk to Yuri and get the When and Where of the party this weekend.

Two minutes into the conversation and already his football mate used that kind of bloody irritating, uneven, chirpy tone. If a Stepford wife who won the lottery had a mass, honey covered orgy with the entire Sanrio cast, glucose syrup, and Barny the dinosaur, Yuri's voice would be their sugar coated offspring.

Of course, having a shot at Yamato was like winning the lottery.

All the while Taichi was telling himself that even if they ended up dating, it wasn't a Catholic wedding and it would do well for Yamato to be with a decent person for a change. Also, when Yamato would be occupied by someone else, Taichi would have enough time to let his homoerotic phase blow over. Their relationship would go back to its legit, smut-free state.

"Hey, Yuri?"

"Aye, captain?"

"Words of caution. Yamato is like a loaded gun. He can be fun to play with, but press his trigger and he'll blow your head off."

"As long as he blows the right head."

In that single second Taichi learnt what homicidal intent was like.

"Which leads me to my second point. You are one of my best players, mate, but Yamato is my blud. Don't do anything that'll make me break your legs before nationals."

He heard a throaty rumble on the other side of the line. "I'll be a perfect gentleman."

'But Yamato won't.'

Now – for the tricky part. Taichi stared at Yamato's contact information for what must have been an eon before he pressed the green phone icon and speed-dialled the number.

Not a single ring beeped on the line before, "Fuck me sideways without Vaseline. Thought you dropped off the face of the Earth straight into the sun."

Cold steel underlined Yamato's monotonous intonation – a sure-fire proof he was a heap of seething lava on the inside.

Taichi knew he was the one who put it there. Worse, Taichi knew that beneath his anger Yamato was confused and hurt. And lonely. All because of Taichi.

He felt horrid about it, but he needed Yamato to pipe down and stop. Just… stop. Taichi couldn't deal with having his own feelings projected back at him today. Yamato'd force him to sort this shit – because Taichi listened to him – and Taichi couldn't do it right now. He couldn't. Even when Taichi felt like this more often than he wanted to show, and didn't want to let anyone else know about it, this was his problem. He was aware Yamato knew about it, but Taichi needed him to shut up right now.

A small smile slipped onto Taichi's face anyway. The firestarter on the line was either expecting him to call or their minds were broadcasting on the same frequency. Either option was relieving somehow.

"And leave you here, baby? No, blud. No, if I go anywhere, your scrawny arse goes down with me. How are things on your end?"

Of course, Taichi asked this out of habit. He didn't need an answer. Yamato was livid. He was pretty straightforward and mighty specific when he texted Taichi, giving him very precise directions on where he can shove what and how. Bastard was damn creative, too.

Which was all Yamato Ishida language for: "I care. I am worried. I want to know you are all right. Please be all right. You are important to me." Really, just one of Yamato's many roundabout ways to show he cared.

"Stellar. My best friend spontaneously decided to grow a uterus and started bleeding from it like it was the bloody Niagara Falls-"

"Yeah, yeah, I love you too."

"I also lost my butt-plug and I don't remember inside of whom. I am not a happy camper, Taichi. Not a happy camper at all." All right, Yamato made up the plug bit, but it was a fine artistic measure to help him get his point across.

Simultaneously, he was regally pissed off at himself for always saying these kinds of nasty rubbish. Why was he always like this?

"Yamato-"

"And I hope pyrotechnics go off in your arsehole and seal it shut for life."

Why couldn't he just be nice?! Why couldn't he vocalize what he wanted to say like a functional human being?!What's his bloody brain damage?!

"Yamato, I'm sorry I went ape-shit on you-"

"Go snort asbestos!" Yamato couldn't help it. He fumed like he was giving birth to a nuclear wipe-out. But he filled the intermediate pause which followed with an impatient, troubled groan that led to softer chords, "… How are you, Taichi? Really?"

He'd get better with talking his heart out. Then Taichi would have it easier too.

Taichi sighed into the line. "I'm fi- I think I'm fine, anyway. Listen, about Saturday – I know I have zero legitimate reasons for ignoring you or acting like I did-"

"No shit."

"Shut up for a moment. I just had an off morning that lasted till ten minutes ago. My brain wasn't co-operating. It's not about something you did or something you can do. It– it's really not about you at all. You're brilliant, mate, and I love you and I'm sorry for the grief. I was just kind of a mess there, you get me?"

"Yeah? Bollocks. You're calling me to make excuses?" Yamato detected it straight away: that tone in Taichi's voice. The one he used to chase away those pesky distractions which were ruining the concentration he needed to keep the whole fake, bubble-gum smiling thing of his going.

"Yes, I do. And because there's a wild, right old knees-up this weekend and we haven't been out for fuck knows how long – you on for it? It's gonna be riotous fun!"

"Don't deflect, Taichi! What's going on with you?!" Curse Taichi and his superior avoidance techniques!

"Yamato…" – Yamato hated that injured sound on him – "please, just give me some breathing space, all right? I really need distance from my life right now." Then Taichi started counting backwards from twenty.

'Eighteen… seventeen… sixteen… fifteen…'

There was a short silence on the other side, implying Yamato was chewing over all the suggestions and pretexts he just heard.

'Four… three…two… one…'

"The party… Details?"

"Friday, the old warehouse over at Goats' Hill, from eleven PM till you can't walk straight, pass out, get up again, and crawl home on all fours. And don't get bladdered at home before coming 'cause there'll be a sick bar."

"Can I smoke?"

"Yamato-"

"Right. Sorry."

The esoteric description piqued Yamato's interest and his voice moved from sounding like he was doing Taichi a favour by simply existing to carefully curious. "Underground rave? Nice. How'd you get wind of that?"

"What? You think footballers are married to the field? My mates want to celebrate the victory properly and some of them boys know some other boys who throw some sick blowouts. One of those D.I.Y. groups, you get me?"

Yamato produced uncertain vibrations at the back of his throat. "And how do you reckon me and your football crew mix?"

"It's not like we're gonna be the only ones there, you nitwit. Besides…" Taichi took a long breath and talked like his lines were scripted for him, "one of my boys took a fancy to you."

Another pause, longer than the previous one, hung between them.

"What are you on about…?"

Taichi wanted this conversation to be over with. His insides were churning something awful and he felt rank. The lump in his throat was about to be resolved as a spray of puke all over the receiver.

"What can I say? You're irresistible."

"And… that mate of yours knows I have a penis, yes?"

"No, duh!"

"Is he into guys?"

Cue Taichi's turn to become quiet.

'What does this imply 'bout Yuri?'

"He is experimenting…" He eventually replied, figuring it was as close to the truth as he was gonna get till Yuri told him otherwise.

'Twenty… nineteen…'

On the other side of the conversation, the phone was becoming hot and uncomfortably sweaty against Yamato's ear.

The inflection in that sentence was one he was a bit too familiar with and he cringed. Fucking hell, his cringing had a flavour and it tasted a lot like hot dumpster soy-milk on the palate.

He read somewhere that the majority of men who had sex with other men didn't consider themselves as homosexuals. People were more afraid of the title 'gay' than they were of the actual act – not that committing it inherently made a person gay either.

So far, Yamato's been left with straight-acting benders ogling his barely-of-age tushy while pretending not to, and "straight" blokes with self-convincing propaganda who wanted to thrash him good all night while telling themselves they're pretending he's a woman. Now, where's the sense in that?

And he got it, alright? He got it. Most guys couldn't grow the pair of balls required to come up to another man and tell him he's pretty. It's just not something you do. Especially to someone like Yamato who, as far as they're concerned, was supposedto be tough and potentially set them on a date with an infusion pump for the rest of their lives.

Yamato didn't expect Taichi's 'boy' – as Taichi called his mates – to be any different. In fact, Yamato could build the bloke's psychological portfolio right now.

Even if he was different – even if he was every gay boy's wet dream on a stick – he was not Taichi.

Besides, hooking up with members of Camp-Straight could be such a mess.

'Twelve… eleven … ten…'

"Experimenting? How very romantic. Do I look like a lab rat to you? Mate, I don't need this aggro!"

"Come on, you tosser! You know it's not like that! And I'm not asking you to exchange vows before the pews. Just come and have some fun with your uber-awesome best friend at the fiercest gig you could possibly be at. If you happen to hook up with him…"

Taichi couldn't bring himself to complete the sentence. 'You are a coward, Taichi Yagami.' The usually conflicting voices of his inner monologue agreed on a truce and were instead yelling at him and demanding he stopped advertising for Yuri.

"What about Sora?"

"She won't come 'cause she has a girl-night out with her uni friends."

'Five… four…'

Yamato swept aside a few long, yellow hairs, wet from sweat, which got tangled in his eyelashes. "I don't know. I'm several leagues further up Darwin's curve compared to most of your mates."

"I get where you're coming from-"

'No, Taichi, you don't. You really don't. You don't know how I feel. You don't know what you mean to me.'

"-but it's gonna be a real banger! We've been cooped up indoors since the end of spring semester."

"Taichi-"

"This one's a really phenomenal guy, I promise. And I think he's totally your type."

"Taichi-"

"We are going to nationals, for Pete's sake! It's huge for me and I want you to be a part of it. I want to be with you. I want you to be with me."

"Ta-

"And… I could really use the distraction right now. It won't be the same without you…"

'Zero.'

Yamato's deep intake resounded through the rasping in the speaker.

"Please…?"

Yamato couldn't refuse him; not when Taichi was so gentle. Not like this.