Hello…!
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone in here, starting with Clear Skies *huggles*. It's been quite a year… Sorry this is a little late *has been away from the web and off with the faeries*…I made it rather long (well, for me) to make up for it. And I know, you challenged me a while ago to write a piece of COMPLETELY fluffy shounenai with lots of sap and romance and plenty huggles for everyone and not one drop of angst or psychology or deep-and-meaningfulness…
So…in this fic we have angst, psychology, deep-and-meaningfulness (though not very much of the latter), insecurity, swearing, slightly late Christmasness, sap, my first try at writing about these lovely characters, tissues, the amount of slash you'd expect in a giftfic for Clear Skies, and Attempted Fluffiness. Have fun…
Oh, and these lovely squiffy people aren't mine (they used to belong to me, but I bundled them up and gave them to Skies-chan for Christmas. I regret it!)
Sparing You An Angel
The shopping bag drops gracelessly onto the floor, just inside the door to my room. Ow… I think I could cope with Christmas, if only it wasn't so heavy. Gifts and food and weird decorations - there's plenty of times, between the 'goodwill' buzz and the naff carols, when I wonder why anyone bothers with it all. This whole holiday is just a pointless excuse for retail tat - there's nothing in it but money and cheap traditionalism any more. But - I guess you've got to have a bit of hope…
I push the door to, and the four walls enclose me, a sanctuary of, god, I don't know - it's just my place, you know? A fat, gaudy stream of tinsel snakes across my ceiling - a shoddy attempt to remind myself that I'm supposed to be celebrating something - but apart from that everything here is old and familiar enough to make me feel secure. Battered armchair, faded blue curtains, graffiti-ridden desk in the corner - all mine, all tamed, possessed, and non-threatening. I'm home, and my problems can't find me in here, not ever, unless I've invited them in.
It's sitting there on the desk, and I think it's glaring at me.
Damnit.
It's - it's like, this Christmas is the hook that's drawing all my crazy guts out all at once.
I regard the bland piece of paper nervously, swallow hard, and sidle up to it with forced casualness pulsing out from every nerve. Damnit, it's only my fucking Christmas list! But it might as well be a contract with Satan for all the hell it's been putting me through. There. There. Sheet of paper, Yama, sheet of paper on desk, in hands, in hands, not hurting anyone, especially not you, and especially not him either. Now, you can open your eyes and look at it you crazy, crazy - nouns fail me, really…
Okay. It's still only the 21st. I have plenty of time left, and I've done most of this stuff already. I'm doing swell, okay? I got Izzy the joystick he wanted, cross that one off, and an art book for Yolei; progress, see? You see? I even got Sora's bubblebath (pray God she doesn't get the wrong idea), I've bought all my cards, baked my family's pudding, done the lights for the downstairs window - I'm all ready for Christmas. Nothing left to fret about at all.
Just one blaring blank space on the bloody list. I haven't a clue what I'm going to get for Taichi.
Okay, fine, fine. Stay calm. I don't know what I'm getting Father yet either - it's perfectly normal, nothing to worry about, not a problem. Not even slightly a problem. I could even keep telling myself that until I believe it. Finding Taichi's present wasn't a problem last year, was it? He's so interesting. Extroverted. Way down into so many things - sport, music, partying - that I could get him almost anything. Besides, he's such a happy person! When did he ever not open one of my presents and howl, "Oh, Yaaamaaa, it's brilliant! I always wanted one of these!" He's my best friend, and so kind to me - it doesn't matter what I give him. I could give him Sora's bubblebath if I wanted -
I regret thinking that thought, really. The hair above my ears is just starting to smoulder.
Oh come on, Yamato. You know exactly what your problem with Taichi is and Christmas has merry fuck to do with it.
…I don't want to think about it. I turn the page over, onto the card-list. That's easy. Mechanical. I can get out my cards and sign them all one by one by one and write nice little messages about nice little things and be nice to the people of planet Earth today instead of having disgustingly lustful thoughts about my wonderful best friend. Easy.
Okay, then; list, pen, cards, cards, cards, well of course they'd be at the bottom of the bloody bag wouldn't they… There. I settle into my creaky wooden desk chair and open the happy plastic box.
Plenty to choose from - angels and teddy-bears, pine-trees and snowmen, Christmassy stuff, basically. Just like last year, and the year before… I start with my grandmother; here's some decently churchy Gabriel complete with overlarge dull-gilt trumpet. The sort of thing you can give to a gentle old lady relative you actually barely know. I wonder how they cope sometimes, with all those years behind them. Seventy-two Christmases gone, seventy-two years of festive chintz and cranberry sauce, any meaning long eroded into glitterdust. And you get older and older until you're so old you get nothing but angels in your letterbox…
No, Grandma. Not this year. I pick a colourful cartoon spread of snowmen in Santa hats and sign it, "Love, Yamato. Thinking of you (and sparing you an angel)"
I…I hope that makes some sort of sense.
I work down the pile, getting gradually more glazed from all the matching of word and scene and name and person. Teddy-bears for Takeru, and comments about getting rid of It at last (I've got him booked in at my stylist's for the 28th - that damn hat is going to burn, Teeks -) and a pageful of kind words for my mother - and, oh, a little piece of peace for each and every friend I have. From Matt. Love Yamato. Best wishes, Yama-chan…
Hmm… I need a lie-down and a good headache pill now, but I've nearly done. Looks like I got the right number this year - hm, three to go, now just a couple, and a scrawled tease to Ken about his soft spot for Hikari later, I'm down to the last name on the list. And I must have one last card to go with it…
Bugger. What's Tai going to think when I send him the bloody angel?
I screw the list up and throw it across the room. Why am I so scared of him? It's been months now…months of dark thoughts and mixed emotions, and he hasn't noticed a thing. He'll never notice me, no matter how long I stare at him like that. No…it's not him I'm afraid of, is it? It's now. It's this whole accursed Christmas thing!
So what am I going to do? Hide under my bed and tell anyone who asks that I'm phobically afraid of Christmas? I'm so weak…everyone else is out there getting ready for feasts and partytime while I'm sat here fretting about my stupid backward hormones. Like the teenage idiot I am.
Well, it's Christmas, and if there's one way to deal with difficult things at Christmas it's to take refuge in the generic. So be generic. Sorry, Taichi, but angels it shall be. No scribbled message - I have nothing to say that's you'll want to hear - just a lame, generic signature because I'm too scared to write anything else and I'm too tired anyway… "To Tai. Love and kisses, Matt" There! Another sealed envelope, and I'm finished. And I can go downstairs, get my pill and talk Takeru into running these round for me. (Dear little Teeks…he was going to take his lot round Odaiba later this evening, and I'll bet that a few squares of chocolate'll tempt mine into the pile).
I fish his and Dad's cards out of the heap and run downstairs clutching the rest, leaving the crumpled checklist sullying the corner of my retreat, slowly unravelling and sinking its roots into the woodwork.
*
It's not until pill, drink, dinner and a ye olde traditionale family row are out of the way that I realise what I'd done wrong. By now, Teeks has been gone for ages - must be halfway across town, and now I've finally remembered what I went and wrote in Taichi's goddamned flaming Christmas card -
Solutions fly around my mind. Go out and catch him! Burn it! Burn the whole street! Find everyone who's seen that envelope and kill them, starting with Takeru - fuck him, sneaking off like that while Dad was on about the - I can go round to Tai's place and say there's been a mistake! That's it, I need to take it back, I only gave him the angel by accident and I meant it to be a, a, screw it, I can't do anything, I've screwed up for real this time…
If he finds out, he'll kill me. And - so much is slipping, there's so much that I can't keep locked up inside where it can't hurt anyone this Christmas, that it's probably only a matter of time before I'm going to lose the best friend I ever had. And he's going to absolutely slaughter me…
…so why is it that I feel like, if he doesn't find out and I am left alone with it all, I'm going to die anyway?
*
What the hell is my problem?
God…it's too late now, Christmas Eve and gone 4pm already, and I still haven't found that present for Taichi! Everywhere's closing, it's after dark, the ground outside's gone to solid frost, and I'm still completely stuck! I - I don't know what I'm looking for, where to go, or - or anything, and it's too late now…
I think…there's two ways to do this. This whole Christmas thing. You can either do what I and everyone else usually does, not care a jot and just parcel up the first thing you see on the department store shelf and say there, merry christmas, and have a nice afternoon and a bit of a hangover afterwards, or you can try to make everything perfect and on-key and exactly right for people, for the people you really…love…and you mess it all up and find yourself lost and cold in the town centre when everyone else is at home playing christmas records and kissing under the plastic mistletoe. There's Christmas, and there's christmas, and just for one year, I tried…I really tried, Tai, I really tried…
There's the whole pool of perennial christmas tat on offer. Knickknacks. Funny gadgets that nobody ever wants. The two-thousand-and-howevermany-it-is-this-year diaries. The woolly socks and the foil-coated chocolates shaped like anything they think they can sell. I can't get him anything like that…I want to get him a present that really means something…something that he'll understand, something that tells him how I really feel about him…
…and the real problem is, I can't ever tell him that.
It's been quite a while now… It feels like it's been longer…I just never get tired of looking at him, or thinking about him, or dreaming that one day he'll turn to me and take my hand and smile at me and mean it… I don't even know why, except that it's because he's…Taichi. He's beautiful, brown-eyed and built like an angel of war, and he's got that amazing air about him of easy victory, being active and relaxed about it, a complete contradiction that somewhere along the line I fell for completely… And he's so happy. Much happier than me. If he…knew…it'd only spoil his completely innocent spirit - it wouldn't been good for him, and even if - even if - the unthinkable happened and he actually liked me, I'd just drag him down with my own unhappiness. I - I have to let go of this - before I hurt him, before I hurt myself, before these tears freeze on my cheeks in the wicked winter wind…
If he could see me now…standing in the street, all alone with the last-rush crowd surging and swelling around me, shaking with cold and eyes bleeding with my love for him…what would he say? I - I can't think about that, I mustn't even pretend to expect anything any more - I have to stop, now, stop wanting him forever and never start again, whilst I still can, before I lose his friendship completely…
Let it go, I whisper, chill lips chafing against each other.
But I can't.
It's stuck. It won't go away…it's gone too deep, it's taken over…I can't live without this feeling… I'd - I'll have to shut it up where it can't do any damage from now on. Bury it in my Lost and Found between the high ideals and the snatches of music that came to me in the night. All gone…all consigned to the graveyard of my mind. Rest in peace, oh Crush On Taichi. I know I'll cry for you - in fact, I already am…
*
Knock.
Oh. Well. Only home for five minutes and someone tries to invade it already. If I stay quietly in my room, maybe someone else (Teeks…I think Dad's out someplace) 'll answer the front door while I get on with my guilt-trip. Yes, alright…I didn't get him anything. I always always get him something for Christmas - what'll he think now, that I don't want to be his friend any more? Maybe he should think that - if we stop hanging out together it'll make not fancying him a lot easier, for one thing.
I need another tissue.
Another knock, and I hear Takeru's nimble footsteps clattering across the kitchen floor. It's far too late, now… I could still do something, maybe sending him over to the stylist with Teeks, only I really like the way he looks already. No, I'll have to explain to him that I'm too pathetic to find him a present that says I've been secretly in love with him all year, no, no, not that, oh damn, I'll have to avoid him for a while…
"Yama?" The voice is muffled by the wall, but still a rather unwelcome distraction.
"What is it, TK? I'm busy."
"It's for you, Yama!" he hollers.
God. Christmas callers, probably trying to bum cake off me again. Just cause I make the best damn Christmas cake on the street… "Is it important?"
"No, it's fine -" that's not TK! "- I'll pop round later instead, Yama, is that okay?"
Ohshit.
"No…no," I quaver in terror "…that's fine…just come up here, okay?"
"Okay!" And I grab a tissue, three tissues, scrub all over my face with them, pat at my hair (no, not out of place thank the Lord Almighty), fiddle with my clothes…and when he barges through the door like he owns the place my breath catches, and I completely fail to smile at him as he stands there grinning at me with what under his arm…
"Hello, Matt!"
"He…hello…Tai…" I manage, finally.
"Oh." He sets the red-papered monstrosity down and leans toward me, concerned. "Have you got a cold, Yama-chan? Is that why you didn't want to see me?"
I shake my head oh-too-viciously. "Nonono, I really do want to see you, Tai…I just, I…" He tilts his head at me, sending his glorious hair (so much better than mine, or anyone's) akimbo. God, I can't keep this up…I'm so cold… "I…I just have a few problems right now, okay?" I try. "It's nothing too bad, I'm just thinking too hard right now. I'll," I flash a glittery, fake smile at him. "I'll be fine, really."
"Oh," he replies, shrugs, and then suddenly starts looking - nervous? He reaches rather shyly for the lump on the carpet. "I brought your present, Yama."
"Oh, Tai…that's so kind of you…"
"No, really! It's a silly present anyway!" And he thrusts it out in front of himself so I can't see the look in his huge brown eyes any more.
It's…certainly silly shaped - rather big, and something like a large, inverted, cut-off cone. I take it at the base; cold and solid, and slightly heavy too. "Tai, thanks. Really, you shouldn't have got me anything. I - I didn't get you anything. I couldn't find anything I wanted to get you…"
I look away, so I don't have to watch his sweet face fall in sorrow. "It's okay, really…you'll be glad you didn't get me something when you open that thing, really." He sounds so sad - there I go, spoiling his Christmas by not caring enough to care about my friend as a friend and nothing more. How could I do that?
He shifts his feet. "Can I…open it now?" I ask tentatively.
"Yeah, sure," he answers, and I slip a finger along once loose seam. "I'll - I've got to go now, Matt. Merry Christmas, okay?"
He's out the door before I can move. Run away from his useless ex-best-friend. "Merry Christmas, Tai," I whisper, and I gently pull away the wrapping from my mysterious gift, holding it with all the care I truly owe to Taichi.
Oh Taichi…! What - is this really a -
I lay it reverently on the desk and stare, and stare, and stare. Oh my god… It stands maybe six inches tall, thick green leaves weeping to the ground in a great umbrella, long, layered, white and pink flowers nestling among the growth. It's absolutely beautiful… I bend and look reverently at the terracotta plant-pot, study the little plastic label - "Christmas Rose," I read, mind reeling, and I scan further down, and see the tiny scribbled message, hiding bashfully in a white patch of label, almost as if hoping I wouldn't read it -
Yama. L&K also, from Tai. X
Oh, Taichi…
*
I think I nearly gave Teeks a heart attack, but I don't care - if I hurry enough I'll be able to catch Tai before he gets away from me. God, what the hell is going on? I race to the corner, half-skid around it on the black ice, and look down the next road. Mist, damnit! I run off into the gloom, sticking to the grassy verge so's not to break my sorry neck. I need to find him! I need him to tell me what it all means…
I peer ahead of me, wincing as the frosty breeze gets my open eyes, and - there - a dark, hunched figure slumping slowly into the distance. Taichi…don't tell me I hurt you, I never meant to hurt you… I pound along the pavement-side, crunching icy ground and leaving cool green footsteps in my wake. I'm almost on him - Taichi, I'm here… "Taichi!"
He turns, and before he can say anything I rugby-tackle him to the ground.
"Yamaah…aah…" I cut him off with a frantic, burning kiss. Oh, Taichi…so close…don't let me be wrong about this, please don't let me be wrong about any of this…oh please, just kiss me back and tell me this is all going to work out right, that it's all going to be okay…yes, like that, oh please, it's just what I've wanted…needed…
I tear myself back, and cup his sweet, dark face in both my hands. "Tai…don't cry, please, Tai…"
"Then you don't cry either!" He laughs, hysterical, and wraps his arms round my chest. I kiss the tears from his eyes, kiss his warm lips again, and his grip on me tightens and he squeezes and squeezes and squeezes…
After a while, I turn my face and bury it in his beautiful hair. "God, Tai…I didn't mean to make you cry like that…"
He punches my shoulder, ever so gently. "I know, Yama-kun. I was only crying because I was scared about it…"
He gets the worried look again, but I chase it away with a light peck on his forehead. "What, the great Taichi Yagami? Scared? Of a pot plant?" He laughs, and I laugh too, and we stay there, wrapped together on the ground, until we've both run out of tears.
I help him to his feet, brush the frost off his jacket. "We…we'd better get going, Yama. If we hang about here the police'll turn up before too long…"
He smiles, brighter than the angel ever did, and I reflect it as well as I know how. "Yeah," I reply. "Besides," I gesture to the short-sleeved t-shirt I ran after him in, "I'm getting cold, Tai…"
Our hands meet at the same moment our eyes do, and we drift back along the pavement frozen together like that, barely paying attention to the world outside. "I guess you liked your present, then..."
"Hell, yes…Where on earth did you get it…?"
"Odaiba Garden Centre… I got it ages ago…I kept watering it in case I got brave enough to give it you in time for Christmas…"
"Tai, it's the…the second best gift I've ever had…"
"The second best…?"
"Oh Tai-chan, you kissed me, you should know how good it was…"
"Oh Yamaah…" (smooch) "Where are we going…?"
"My place… Why…? Where do you want to go…?"
"Oh, wherever you're going… What's at your place, then…?"
"Nothing, what else would there be…? Dad's at a party, I'll see if I can get rid of Teeks for the rest of the evening…"
"Oh Yama…
"Tai…"
OWARI
…okay, there. Should I make another Taito fic? I love these people, especially Teeks and Matt (but I had to have Tai in; if you're into Yamakeru you'll have to wait til Skies-chan's birthday…), but, well, *holds up a card that says EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT THE DIGIBOYS I LEARNED FROM READING YAOI FICTION* So they're probably all OOC…just flame at the bottom left, okay?
And on that other note - cuddles and chocolate to Debra, jkb, Warrior Goddess Of Insanity, Crysie, Andy God Of Passion, A Bad Suicidal Frog Called Bob, and everyone else who has introduced me to this lovely setting. Without you, tormenting Skies would not be nearly so much fun…and if anyone here hasn't read Debra's Bittersweet Symphony, or Clear Skies's Torn, or jkb's Falling Forward, there is clearly something wrong with you. Because they're the three of the finest fics in the world.
vale,
Athene Miranda.