Disclaimer: I'm very tired, so I'll just skip over the customary disclaiming joke and get on with the story, all right?
Tai Kamiya, despite being notoriously hard to awaken at home, was up with the sunrise during on the second day of their vacation. Perhaps it was the lack of comfort on the cold, hard earth, or perhaps it was a desire to not miss a moment of being there. Or perhaps it was the fact that he had to pee really, really badly.
Whatever the reason, earth, desire, or pee, up rather early was the young Taichi. Kari and Matt, who had to listen to their brothers' snoring, were also up rather early. Matt was already cooking breakfast, which consisted of hot dogs over an open fire.
TK was up at about ten, and greeted everyone rather cheerily. Tai, who wasn't a morning person, meaning he wasn't tolerable until noon, grunted. "So, what are we doing today?" TK asked, snatching a hot dog from the fire and tossing it from hand to hand to cool.
"I don't know," replied Kari, who was trying to keep Tai from taking her hot dog straight off her stick. "What do you want to do?"
"I dunno."
Tai grunted again, and speared three franks to thrust into the fire.
"I just assumed," Matt stated, "that, being the first full day, we would do something completely fun and utterly unproductive. Wanna go swimming?"
Kari and TK agreed whole-heartedly, while Tai merely grunted in the affirmative.
They arrived at the lake at about twelve thirty, by which time Tai had realised that he was awake and his tongue worked. He dove from a rather large rock before bothering to shed his outer clothes. Matt and TK both were excited to be there themselves, but they held back long enough to remove their pants.
TK, however, didn't rush in immediately. He got… distracted. "Wow," he whispered, as Kari stood ready to dive. He'd been right; Kari did look devastating in a bikini.
By this time, Tai's pants were drying in the sun, his shirt had been flung at a tree, and he was trying to outdo Matt in terms of splashdown.
"Boo!" Matt yelled from the water. "The Great Yamato will do better than that!"
"Calling yourself the Great Yamato doesn't make it true, you know! The Mighty Taichi knows this!" Tai said as he surfaced.
"The Mighty Taichi can kiss the Great Yamato's ass!" Matt retorted. They started splashing one another, then started wrestling. Somehow, despite the fact that the water was cold enough to give a person a brain freeze if he drank it too fast, neither noticed the cold.
~*~
TK and Kari had started to have a swim race on the other side of the lake, far away from the diving rock. TK was in the lead, but just barely. Soon Kari took over, and got ahead considerably, but for some reason TK didn't mind. Perhaps it was the fact that their friendship had evolved beyond competition, or perhaps he just liked his view.
Kari stopped rather suddenly. So suddenly, in fact, that TK didn't know it before he crashed into her. TK thought she'd stopped because of their proximity to the shore, but felt that it was something more pressing.
Kari went behind TK and wrapped her arms around him. "Help me," she said quietly.
"What is it?"
"I've lost my top," she said. TK could almost hear the blush in her voice.
"Um…" Two parts of TK fought for control at this point. One was an instinct he'd had for as long as he'd known Kari, telling him to protect her. The other, a more recent addition to his psyche, was telling him that she was pressing her bare breasts against his skin, what was he going to do about it? "Where'd you lose it?" Damn, said the hornier part of his brain.
Kari loosened her grip slightly as she looked around. TK saw Kari's finger point at a black shape floating farther away from the shore. "There," she said decisively.
TK almost whimpered as he felt Kari back away from him, her arms going around her chest. Sighing, he swam to the offending garment and grabbed it before something further could happen to it.
He swam back quickly and handed it to Kari. Always the gentleman, even against his own free will, he turned away as she put it back on. "Okay," she said. "But could you make sure it's tied this time?"
The same part of TK's brain that had been yelling at him for actually getting the top was now begging him to loosen it. Cold water. Basketball. Cold water. Basketball, repeated the more lucid parts of his mind as he double-knotted the bikini.
"Thanks," she said. "You think we should head back now?"
"Sure," TK replied. He moved to go across the lake again, but Kari stopped him.
"It'll be easier if we just go around," she said, motioning towards the woods.
TK looked from the girl to the woods and back to Kari. "You're sure?"
"Of course."
~*~
"I'm hungry!" whined Matt for the nineteenth time. "Why did I let you get me lost?"
"I'm not lost!" Tai replied over the noise of his stomach. "I'm just… misdirected."
"Right. Infamous Kamiya sense of direction, I suppose."
They'd been walking in the woods searching for the lost camp for hours. Matt had very foolishly allowed his friend to take the lead. "You were half-asleep on the way. How would you remember? What was I thinking?"
"Shut up." In truth, Tai likely would have been lost whether or not he'd been awake. His idea of a map was a list of places that you might see in some random order sooner or later. "I know exactly where I'm going."
"I hope you're not using the logic of, 'If I go the same way long enough, I'll be going out,'" Matt said. This stopped Tai in his tracks.
"I think I need a new plan," he said. Matt sighed.
~*~
"We're lost, aren't we?"
"Don't be crazy, TK. I'm not my brother, after all."
TK looked around him and saw nothing recognisable. "We're lost, aren't we?"
"I think so, yes."
This story is coming along very slowly, so I apologise. Oh, and I received my very first flame from a reviewer! On this story, too. You know what they say, if no one hates you, you're not trying hard enough.
