A/N: So here's the promised second chapter. Hope it holds up to people's expectations. crosses fingers Oh, and I just wanted to note that I use the names Yamato and Matt interchangeably, and Taichi and Tai the same way. Sorry to cause confusion! Thanks for reading!
Disclaimer: I still don't own digimon.
Pairing: Taito/Yamachi
Sultry Night: Chapter 2
"Yamato?" Taichi gasped. "What are you doing here? I thought it was—"
Realization was flooding Yamato thick and fast. He felt a little sick, hollow and empty inside. The glass window was cold to his touch. "Sultry sent me," he said quietly, cutting Tai off.
"Sultry?" Tai said, his eyes bugging out of his face. "Wait, you're—you're the—the—"
A flicker of annoyance passed through Yamato at Taichi's fumbling. "The whore, Tai? Is that what you're trying to say?"
Taichi's jaw fell open as he stared at Yamato. Yamato stared back unflinchingly, his expression smooth as stone, emotions carefully covered by a façade perfected through years of practice. He knew that Tai was taking in his skin-tight tank top, artfully ripped in all the right places, the glitter on his arms, the narrow band of liner around his eyes. He was reminded of the fact that Tai could always see through him, that he had been one of the few people in Yamato's life who could break through the outside walls to the deeper emotions underneath, from a fight in the snow of Infinity Mountain to the present day in this absurdly normal setting where Tai's eyes were boring into his and could see that it was all true.
Tai shut his mouth with a new emotion on his face, one that Yamato did not want to see. Yamato turned away, taking in the rest of the room. The table piled with dishes was in a corner with a basic kitchen area. Two sofas and an enormous tv took up the other side of the room. There was an opening to another room on that wall.
"This is a hell of a hotel room," Yamato said, not looking at Tai. Tai said nothing. "Where's the bedroom?" asked Yamato, already walking towards the opening which he knew must lead to it.
"The bedroom?" Tai asked in a strangled voice, hurrying after Yamato, who had already walked in.
"Yeah," Yamato called back at Tai, who was now hovering in the doorway of the room. Yamato crossed over to the bed and pressed on it with his knee. It was fairly large—he would guess queen size, probably. "Unless you'd rather do it somewhere else."
"It?" Again the strangled voice. Tai sounded like he was having trouble breathing, or believing. "Do what?"
Yamato looked straight at him now, blue eyes cold and hard, a gaze that Tai remembered meant that he was extremely angry. It launched his own adrenaline and set his blood running. "Fuck," said Yamato, as though daring him to.
"I'm not going to do…that with you!" Tai said, his voice rising, looking at Yamato as though he'd lost his mind.
"Why not?" Yamato countered, his eyes narrowing at Tai now, taunting him. "You hired me for the night. Your guard out there said I'm here until 6 am." His voice by contrast was soft and cold, and made Tai's heart quicken. No one could make him angry quite like Yamato could.
" 'You hired'—Matt, are you listening to yourself?" Tai was shouting now, his blood boiling. "When did you become such a total—does your father know about this!" He looked up at him. "Does TK know?" Something in Matt's eyes made him stop.
Yamato's fists were clenched now, and he advanced on Tai, eyes narrowed, voice bitingly cold. "And what about you, Tai? Does your daddy know you bring home boys off the street to fuck them at leisure?"
Tai snapped. In a flash, his fist had connected with Yamato's face, sending him staggering. Yamato regained his balance, charged forward, and tackled Tai to the floor and suddenly they were at each other's throats.
Seventeen years, Tai had time to think before Matt smashed his fist into his face, had changed nothing.
Tai retaliated by kicking his knee up into Yamato's gut, making him grunt and roll off. Tai was on him immediately with another punch to his cheek, blood already flowing from his lip from the first punch. Yamato gave an oddly feral growl and smashed Tai's forehead against his. Tai yelled and grasped his head with both hands. Yamato shoved him off onto the floor and began punching him repeatedly, his heart racing, blood pounding. "Fucking bastard," he was hissing through his split lip, all the shame and annoyance Tai had caused him to feel channeled into rage.
Taichi's hands snaked up and suddenly he had Yamato by the throat. His fingers squeezed and Yamato choked, falling backwards off of him, fingers scrabbling at Taichi's hands. But Tai didn't let go. Having finally got the upper hand, Tai shoved Yamato down onto the carpet, hands around his throat, adrenaline coursing through his body, blinking away the blood dripping into his eyes from a cut Yamato had opened on his forehead, Yamato glaring up at him with teeth bared and eyes and body alive, and more to shut him up than anything else, Tai jammed his lips on Yamato's.
Yamato answered right away, lips mashing together, tongue pushed deep into Tai's mouth with angry force, teeth scraping the inside of his lips. Tai remembered the past kissed he had experienced, and felt how different this was. There was no softness in this kiss, no hesitation or kindness—this was war, pure unadulterated passion clawing its way out of both of them. Later, Tai would think that this was the most real thing he had ever experienced.
His hands had left Yamato's neck—he couldn't remember when—and were tangled in his long, silky hair that Tai could smell and it drove him wild. Feeling at the edge of his mind (his thoughts had long since left him) Yamato's hands forcing themselves under his shirt, Tai broke the kiss and made his way down Yamato's throat with his tongue. Yamato gasped every time Tai's teeth sunk into his skin and tongue licked it, "Jeez, Tai," and arched against him. Tai's fingers fought with Yamato's pants, wrenching them off, and Yamato, his own fingers buried in Tai's thick chocolate hair, pulled him close and pressed themselves together.
---
Ten minutes, a tube of lubricant (banana flavored), and two discarded condoms (Yamato had insisted) later, Taichi and Yamato were lying spent on the carpet, trying to catch their breath, gasps fading from their lips.
"Yamato," Tai said, between gasps. "I have never felt anything like that in my entire life." He was referring to a feeling that had enveloped him at some point between the first extraordinary kiss to the last frenzied gasps, which made him realize that this was what sex was supposed to feel like: a Molotov cocktail of pleasure and pain which pushed you to the edge of your endurance, set your body aflame, and left you gasping for more.
Yamato, who was watching the ceiling swim circles above him, let Tai's words wash over him before responding, "Yeah." He knew what Tai was feeling, and knew also that his emotions stemmed from a different realization. For him, it was not the ferocity of the action that was extraordinary, but the feeling of experiencing it with someone he knew. After months of serving his body up to strangers, it was an odd feeling to do it with a friend, with Taichi. It felt like belonging. Tai was grinning over at him now, and Yamato turned his head to smile back.
Tai's face immediately clouded with concern at the sight of Yamato's face. "Oh man, you're hurt pretty badly." He sat up to get a better look at Matt.
Yamato sat up too and felt his lip gingerly. His finger came away with blood on it. He nodded at Tai's forehead, which was cut at the temple. "So are you."
Tai shook his head and stood up, motioning to Matt to do the same. "Come on, let's see if we can get cleaned up."
In the bathroom, they found cottonballs and some disinfectant, which they used to clean each other's wounds. Tai's head would turned out to be just a deep scratch, and Matt's lip was not too badly cut. They couldn't do anything about their bruises however, so they laughed at them instead, the skin around Tai's eye blossoming black and blue spectacularly, and Yamato's cheekbone red and raw where Tai had punched him. When Yamato kissed Tai in the bathroom under cover of their laughter, his lips burned with pain, but he didn't mind; it seemed to make the kiss all the more real. Tai leaned into the kiss and licked the wound with his tongue to soothe them, then drew back and made a horrible face when he tasted the disinfectant; Yamato laughed at him and Tai laughed back.
After coming out of the bathroom, Tai noticed the plates piled on the table and immediately declared that he was hungry. Yamato rolled his eyes at him and wandered back into the bedroom as Tai hunted in the cupboards for clean plates and more food. He was picking his and Tai clothes up off the floor when Tai walked in with a platter of grapes in his hands.
"Grapes?" Yamato asked, laughing. "In the middle of the night?"
Tai grinned at him, his same open easy grin from so long ago that Yamato hadn't realized he had missed. "Why not?" he asked.
Yamato deposited their clothes on a nearby chair and joined Tai where he was sitting on the bed. He pulled a grape off the bunch on the platter and tried it. It was juicy and sweet, deliciously perfect.
"See? I knew you'd like it," Tai said, smiling at him.
Yamato smiled and looked away, and in doing so, noticed something on the carpet by the bed. "Oh Tai, I think we got some blood on the carpet."
Tai leaned over too see, and shrugged. "Oh well. I'll just tell them I tripped over something."
"Nice," Yamato snickered, then changed the subject. "So, you come here a lot?"
"Naw, I'm just here on a business trip. We had to close a deal with another company. Today's my last day…night," he amended.
Yamato nodded, then asked in a would-be nonchalant voice. "You do this a lot? Bring a guy home?"
Tai couldn't gauge the emotion in Matt's eyes. The light was hitting them wrong, and they were cast in shadow. He decided to play it safe. "Maybe…a couple of times a month," he said sheepishly, and then for some reason, continued. "I never do it in my house, but sometimes I rent a hotel room for the night. A cheap one though, not like the Crown Plaza." He joked, hoping Yamato would laugh.
He didn't though, but gave Tai a wry look, which somehow made him feel that Yamato was secretly laughing at him. He ate another grape to distract himself, then added, "This is the first time I've called Sultry though."
"Ah."
There was a pause, then Tai asked, "How long have you been with Sultry anyway?"
Yamato shrugged and said, "About a year."
Tai choked on his grape. "A year? You've been doing this for a year? Jeez, Matt."
Yamato could feel the tension between the two of them ebb and flow, like waves. At times, the air in the room was light, easy, and relaxed. And at other times, like now, it was thick with repressed emotion. Nothing was ever simple when he and Taichi were together. He sighed inwardly and braced himself for another argument at the tone of Tai's voice.
"I haven't been doing this for a year. I used to dance there at first; I sang sometimes too. But then I switched to this because…well, it paid a lot better."
"Matt, you realize a lot of jobs probably pay better? Couldn't you have become accountant or something? Something normal? You know how many STDs you've probably picked up by now?"
Yamato felt that familiar twinge of annoyance. As though Tai had any right… "I'm sure you know though, from all the guys you pick up," he said bitterly.
That shut Tai up. After some furious chewing of grapes, Tai relented and said, "Look, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound so…judgmental."
"Don't worry about it," Yamato said, shrugging it off. He had already forgotten that he had been angry. He was studying Tai now, staring at him as he tried to choose a grape. He had his tongue between his teeth, and his eyebrows and nose furrowed the way he had of doing whenever he had to make an important decision about food. The multicolored lights from Tokyo's streets outside the huge window played on Tai's features, setting his skin glowing. Yamato felt a smile pull at his face. Without thinking, he picked a grape off the platter with his own fingers, and pushed it to Tai's lips. Tai looked surprised but accepted it, his tongue tickling Matt's fingers as he sucked the grape into his mouth. Yamato made to pull his hand away, but Tai caught it with his own. He entwined their fingers together on the bedspread, so they were now holding hands. Yamato stared at their fingers blending together—one pale, one tan, one pale, one tan—and jumped when Tai leaned over and placed a gentle kiss at the base of his neck, the soft hollow where his neck met his shoulder. Startled by the sudden tenderness, and unsure of how he was supposed to react, he quickly cast around for a topic of conversation.
"So, how's your job been?" His voice sounded loud and slightly panicky, but Tai smiled at him easily before replying.
"It's alright. You know, boring. Meeting after meeting, everyday. And a lot of paperwork," he added, grimacing.
Yamato nodded in sympathy. His fingers were getting sweaty and he wanted to retrieve them, but Tai wouldn't let go. It seemed amazing to Yamato that such a small tender act was terrifying him, but the last time he had held hands with someone was…oh God, when? He couldn't even remember. Distantly, he heard Tai talking and pulled himself back to the present.
"…the last time I saw you, it was a Sora's party, remember—"
Yamato nodded in affirmative. He did remember. Sora had hosted a gathering to attempt to bring the digidestined together a few months ago. It had sort of worked, though not everyone had shown up.
Tai was still talking. "—you told us you were doing solo gigs at nightclubs." Tai gave him a mock-accusing look.
"Well, in a way, I was," Matt replied, chuckling as Tai rolled his eyes. "Though it was only one nightclub, and I wasn't usually solo…and it wasn't really a gig," he finished lamely.
"Ha," Tai said without rancor. Then his features softened. "We've changed a lot, huh?"
"Have we?" Yamato turned the question back to him. "Maybe circumstances have changed, but we're still the same people, I think."
"I don't know, Matt," Tai said, pulling his fingers away from Matt's (Finally, thought Matt, relieved), and pushing him down on the bed so he was laying flat. He moved on top of Matt now, his weight an odd comfort, and something familiar. His face was inches away from Matt's. He seemed to have forgotten about the grapes. "We used to be best friends," he said, in an oddly wistful voice.
Yamato didn't know how to handle this new nostalgic Tai, so he did what he knew best, and snaked his arms around Tai's waist and lifted his head to kiss Tai's lips. Tai responded right away, slowly and steadily this time, and when they broke apart, Matt knew what the right answer was.
"We still are, Tai."
End of the second chapter! Yay!
Lol, I love how Matt can have angry!floor!sex with Tai and not flinch, but when Tai holds his hand, he's like, Meep. I don't know why I wrote him like that. :P The Yamato in my head is confuuused.
Stay tuned for the 3rd and LAST chapter, and it might not be the ending you're expecting… Please review! Your reviews feeeeed me. Thanks for reading!
