Author: Sparkle Itamashii

Title: Clandestine Revelations

Warnings: Respect the "R" rating. (I hate the new rating system so I'm sticking with the old one!) Please see my profile for details.

Disclaimer: Digimon and its characters, settings and plot are NOT MINE.

Chapter Twenty One
It's not like I hadn't heard him call my name because I had. It wasn't even that I didn't want to answer him I just… didn't. I didn't do it and I'm not sure why. There was a part of me that still wanted to talk. It told me that if I didn't talk now that I might never talk to him. It said that there were things that needed to be done between us that shouldn't be put off until tomorrow.

But nothing happened because I clamped my jaw shut and refused to reply.

I waited, listening to his breathing until it lengthened and evened out to prove that he was asleep before I allowed myself to relax. He could be so much trouble sometimes, trying to control everything and make things happen when everything was fine. If he'd just kept his mouth shut…

That wouldn't have made a difference, I knew. If it wasn't Tai saying something then I am sure that someone else would have. Truthfully that would have been worse because if it was anyone else speaking of it to me I wouldn't have believed them. I would have brushed it off and thought they were crazy. I would have…

I'd have come to the exact some conclusions as I had now.

The difference being that I would never have said anything.

I'm not like Tai. I don't think like him, I don't act like him… We're just so wildly different most times. Of course if someone said something to him he would turn around and tell me. I couldn't do that. I would have let it fester and it would have started to bother me to the point where I would get upset without a recognizably valid reason. Where Tai reached out to people, I bottled things up and hid them.

It was stupid this time, though.

The whole thing was stupid.

I liked Tai. I wasn't so stupid that I would keep denying that much. I just didn't know what to do and it was driving me crazy. I knew what I would do in this sort of situation normally, had I happened to fall for a girl- I would talk to Tai about it. Sure I would get teased but he's my best friend. He'd have thought of something or at least talked me through it until I knew what I was going to do. He was my rock, my stable force, one of the only people I could go to with a problem and know that we could solve it instead of making it worse.

Where was that reassurance now?

Ugh. I shoved rational thought to the back of my mind, closing my eyes tightly as I flopped onto my belly and buried my head in my pillow. I had to stop this running around in circles. I had school tomorrow and I needed sleep. I needed time away from Tai to finish thinking out whatever it was that needed thinking out so that I could make a decision.

At some point during all of my thinking I know I must have fallen asleep because waking up was the next thing I remember. Awake but not quite aware, I felt a pleasant sort of warmth pressed against my back and became a little confused. Sleepily opening my eyes, I rolled halfway over and stared, trying to figure out what it was. When it finally did occur to me that Tai must have joined me, it was all I could do to groan and roll back over to try and sleep.

Before I could, however, it really occurred to me that Tai was in my bed. I startled as if waking up from a dream where I'd been falling, flipping onto my side to look at him with wide eyes. What on earth had possessed him to climb up here after our night? Given that he was asleep and he was used to sleeping up here with me instead of on the spare mattress but…

Oh god, he was so close, too.

Too close…

I know that I shouldn't have but I just… it was one of those things that you do and you're not really doing it. The sort of thing you do and later when you think about it you feel like you watched yourself do it. I couldn't stop my hand, couldn't keep myself from smoothing the backs of my fingers over his cheek as softly as possible. It wasn't me that ran wide eyes over his face, tracing along his jaw and down his throat.

He shifted beneath my touch and I just stared as his eyes fluttered open and then squinted to look at me. "Matt?" He asked sleepily, rubbing his eye with a knuckle. "Oh crap, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get up here… I must have just crashed when I got back from the bathroom." He yawned, rocking a little bit to get to his feet. "I'll go."

"No, don't," I told him quietly, reaching out to keep him next to me. "Stay. It's fine."

"Are you sure?" He asked skeptically, lying back down beside me. I knew he was just as awake as I was now.

"Yeah. It's not like you've never slept in my bed before." It sounded strange to say those words now but it was nothing but truth. We'd slept together countless times since the digiworld. "If we're not… changing anything…"

I didn't know where exactly I thought I was going with that train of thought but Taichi must have seen an opening. "Is that what you've decided…?"

"Well, it makes the most sense. I guess." I couldn't have sounded more uncertain if I'd tried. Even Taichi, who looked half asleep, still picked up on it.

"You guess?" He sat up on one elbow, looking down at me with a crinkled nose. "Are you saying that because it's what you want or because it's what you think is best?"

"Seeing as I don't know what I want," I said testily, "I think it's what's best." I was definitely in need of some sleep. My temper wasn't great even when I was well rested; sleep-deprived I knew I could be rotten. Unfortunately it was too late for me to care if I acted nicely. I just wished Tai would drop it for a little bit.

He made a frustrated noise, grabbing the pillow out from underneath my head and hitting me with it. I made a futile attempt to catch it before it hit but lost my balance on the edge of the bed and had to sit up to keep from falling off completely. "Would you get a grip already? I don't want a fake decision, Yama." He glared stubbornly back at me.

"It's not a fake decision, Taichi," I said shortly, stealing the pillow back from him. "Just go to sleep."

I settled down beside him and watched as he closed his eyes. I closed mine as well, thinking that he might have actually given up this time. I could only be so lucky… I was just about asleep when he shifted beside me and I opened my eyes again.

"I know you aren't asleep," I pointed out, my voice more husky with sleep than I'd expected.

He snorted and opened one eye with obvious difficulty. "I'm sorry." His eye slipped closed again and he sighed. "I just can't stop thinking about it all. It's like… I know all this stuff but I can't figure out anything worthwhile. I know what we should do and I know what I want to do. I know-"

Apparently Tai knew quite a few things because he didn't stop talking. After years and years of knowing Tai, I knew how long he could ramble. I also knew that telling him to stop would do no good what-so-ever. If I let him keep going I would hear the same circles I'd been running in all night. I would hear the things I was thinking about and the things I didn't want to think about anymore.

I would hear the things I was afraid of…

Worse… I would hear the things I wanted.

I'm not entirely sure what came over me as I thought of that. Why? Why would I take his words so badly? Taichi was only saying the things that were already on my mind. He was talking about school and friends and relationships and I think he was mostly asleep by that time so all his speech was leaning toward delirious but at least he knew what he wanted.

I guess I just finally realized that I needed to know what I wanted, too.

In that moment I began to understand how Tai had felt just after bringing all of this up the first time. I knew the sort of things he'd been thinking right before he decided to kiss me. I saw how much clearer things would be if I could just have or do something tangible. My stomach tied in a knot at the thought, my heartbeat racing past my ears. I knew what to do. I felt that tiny prickle of fear under my skin as I leaned forward and before I could stop myself, I was kissing him.

/End Chapter Twenty One, Clandestine Revelations/