Something Missing

A/N: To everyone who was looking forward to smut this chapter, I’m sorry. I’m kind of bummed about it, too. I’m glad so many of you think I’ve graduated past vanilla; it makes me want to do a happy dance. However, SassieLassie988, shower sex next time—I promise (it was actually what I was planning anyway). (Shh . . . nobody tell Chrono. He likes to be surprised.)

Logan, to answer your question: I’ve been writing a long time, but I’m new to fan-fiction. I have only two fics to my credit—this one, and a Yuugi-oh story also posted on this site called “Right in a Bad Way.” However, this has been a lot of fun, and I plan to continue writing fan-fiction. So there will be more—there just isn’t now. Thanks for the compliment and the support.

Thanks also to AnimeBabesGoneWildWithMe, BlueVixen2017 (the encouragement from you guys never stops), Lee, and Tig.


Chapter Eight: The Raw and the Cooked

Guys’ night. What a fucking treat.

Well, it was—just not this time. The communication system within their group was completely whacked. Yamato and Sora broke up: no one shut up about it for days. Hikari told Taichi hours after it happened. Yesterday, Taichi and Sora spent hours fucking: somehow, everyone knew. But Jyou signed up for a six month stint in Cambodia and nobody made a peep. Until the night before his flight out—a fact they were berating him for now.

“If you had just opened your damn mouth, we would have had time to plan a better send-off.” Yamato was searching in his fridge for dip they all knew wasn’t there. Yamato lived with one of his band mates and they were so poor they didn’t have real food let alone dip for chips. His head was in the fridge, but he kept popping it out to make comments, talking around a cigarette. “What was the point of keeping quiet for so long?”

Jyou was sitting at the table, looking as though he had been put in an uncomfortable situation. “I thought everyone might try to talk me out of it.”

Yamato straightened up and shut the fridge, announcing in a resigned sigh. “You know, I don’t think we have any fucking dip.”

Taichi hadn’t said more than a few words since he arrived. No one asked him why; this wasn’t a mystery. No one talked to him either. It wasn’t an outright shunning—he had been invited at least—and it would only last for a few days, but for now it was a palpable, unspoken rule. Also, no one knew what to say to him. The situation was so awkward it was only talked about when Yamato, Taichi, and Sora were not present; two of those people were in the room. Everyone wanted to know what had happened, but no one wanted to be the asshole who asked. They’d just wait for Daisuke to get here to do that.

And then there was the matter of Yamato smoking. Yamato only smoked when he was life-threateningly stressed; everyone knew that, and everyone knew just what had Yamato so upset. This was why Takeru periodically shot Taichi dirty looks.

Taichi supposed he had to give the group points. Despite all the turmoil and awkwardness, they were eight guys who had come together with a case of beer, a case of soda, a few bags of chips, apparently no dip, and a pack of cards to send off a member of their number.

They were sitting around the table and, after getting a call from Daisuke saying he was going to be a little late and to start without him, had played a few hands. Currently, the two in the lead were Ken and Iori, who claimed tonight was his first time playing poker. They had done this once before, but Iori had been on a family trip at the time.

The strangest element of the night, however, was Yamato. He was talking enough for all of them, and despite all obvious symptoms to the contrary (the smoking, the unshaven jaw, the clothes he had now worn three days in a row) he seemed to be in a good mood.

Yamato sat down, shuffled, and began to deal, just as Daisuke burst through the door.

“Sorry I’m late,” he announced. He seemed a little weary, Taichi noticed.

It didn’t take Daisuke long to establish his rotten mood and begin to inflict it upon the others around him.

“Do we have to shuffle so much between hands?” he complained.

“Yes,” Yamato smiled. “Ken counts cards.”

Daisuke glared at Ken, who shrugged.

“Did you tell Mimi, at least, before today that you would be leaving?” Koushirou asked.

Jyou froze. After a moment, when all eyes were fixed on him, he spoke. “Yes,” he said, his voice strained a little, “yesterday.”

“What happened?” Daisuke asked, as tactful as always.

No one thought Jyou would answer the question; it was too personal and Jyou was a private person. But Jyou cleared his throat and said, “We broke up.”

The table was silent a moment. Taichi felt a bit of rankling injustice that his own private hours with Sora had become public, while Jyou had managed to keep his break-up quiet.

“Doesn’t anybody in this group stay together anymore?” Daisuke burst into the territory of making everyone at the table grossly uncomfortable.

A little coldly, Takeru said, “Hikari and I are still together.”

Daisuke rolled his eyes, “And we’re all just ecstatic about that.”

Yamato’s phone rang. “Excuse me,” he said getting up and walking to the far side of the room, out of their hearing range if he talked softly.

Before Daisuke and Takeru came to fists over Hikari, Taichi stepped in. “It’s your deal, isn’t it, Ken?” he grabbed the deck and plopped it in front of his younger friend.

Daisuke immediately switched targets. “Wait a second. Why are we letting him deal? I thought you said he cheats.”

“Nobody said that,” Koushirou said calmly, as though he was talking to a small child—not a ridiculous notion under the circumstances. “We said he counts cards, not that he stacks the deck.”

“You think he couldn’t?” Daisuke countered.

Ken opened his mouth to defend himself, but Taichi spoke first. “What the hell is your problem?”

To everyone’s surprise, Daisuke pointed to Yamato. “He’s my problem.”

Yamato was walking back to the table when Daisuke made this dramatic pronouncement. He didn’t seem confused or shocked at all, just pulled out his chair and sat again.

“Why don’t you tell everyone what you did, you bastard.”

Yamato slowly, composedly looked around the table, his eyes stopping on Taichi. “A couple months ago, I had a gig in Kyoto, at this club called the Peg-Legged Crab. Sora had a thing with her mother’s flower shop, so she couldn’t come.” For all the world, he acted like Taichi was the only person in the room, speaking just to him. “Jun was there; we slept together.”

There were a few seconds of silence, then an explosion of expletives all around the table, but Taichi couldn’t speak. Yamato was still looking at him, and only him. Taichi felt like there had been a massive manifestation of ice in the pit of his stomach—what did Yamato just say?

Still eerily calm, Yamato waited for the chaos dissipate. “She’s pregnant,” he continued.

Silence.

“It’s not mine,” Yamato finished.

Clamor and pandemonium once more. Above it all, Daisuke’s voice thundered. “What? Don’t lie!”

Yamato held up his phone. “I just spoke with your sister. She got the conception date back from the doctor; she was a good week and a half pregnant when we had sex. You can call her if you want.” Without another word, he rose, grabbed his jacket and his beer, and walked out of the apartment.

Taichi sat a moment, completely unaware of the other people around him and what they were saying. Then he rose, his own beer in hand, and followed Yamato out.

He found his friend sitting on a bench for a bus route that had stopped for the night. Yamato looked up as he approached, he didn’t smile, but he seemed happy that Taichi had followed.

Taichi felt a little sick to his stomach, and a fair amount of anger. “Does Sora know you cheated on her?”

Yamato nodded. “Have a seat.”

Taichi hesitated, then sat. “She’s . . . she’s . . . .” He was at a loss. “How could you do that to her?”

Yamato looked at a blinking sign across the street. “It doesn’t mean I don’t love her. It means I wasn’t happy. Don’t ask me why, because I’m still trying to figure that one out.” He took a swig from his beer. “What happened with Jun scared me. Sora is so beautiful, so fun, so loving—and I knew how much she loved me. I felt guilty, not just because of what happened, but also because I knew something was wrong on my end. Some guys cheat to cheat, some guys cheat because their horny, some guys have no deep-seated psychological reasons at all. But I knew that wasn’t the case with me—I knew it because I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wouldn’t have slept with Jun no matter what a year ago.”

“I don’t follow,” Taichi said.

“When I found out what you and Sora did, I was pissed. Yeah, it was partly from feeling betrayed, but it was mostly because I felt relieved.”

“What?” Taichi was stunned and getting more lost.

Yamato looked at Taichi. “I’d spent months trying to make up for what I’d done; I bought her presents and told her she was beautiful all the time. I was so attentive, but it didn’t make me feel any better, it didn’t make me feel any less trapped. When she fooled around with you, it absolved me and I . . . felt . . . smug.”

Taichi glared at Yamato.

He plowed on. “I knew something was wrong; I felt it, but I could never define it—I still can’t. It was freeing in a way for her to cheat on me because it meant she wasn’t perfect, I could take her off the pedestal. And it also meant, that I wasn’t the only one who wanted out,” he finished softly.

He looked down, and for a moment Taichi wanted to hit him, because he finally beginning to understand what Yamato was getting at.

“But that’s not what I was supposed to feel. I wasn’t supposed to be so wrapped up in my own shit that I drove her away till she found someone else to give her what I was withholding, and then get all self-righteous when she fell to my level,” he paused. “But I did, and I hate myself for it.”

“Are you saying you’re glad you broke up with Sora?”

He sipped his beer again and said, “I don’t want to make it sound like it doesn’t hurt, like I don’t miss her, but yes, there is a very real part of me . . . .” Yamato looked at Taichi. “Don’t tell her.”

Taichi shook his head. “I would never.”

“I just wanted someone to understand, someone to know this was my fault.”

Taichi took a deep breath. “So you don’t hate us, for you know, being together?”

“No. I can’t. You’ve loved her for a long time—probably more than I ever have, and Sora . . . .” Yamato smiled wanly, “Sora was just following her heart. That’s all she knows how to do.”

The two friends sat next to each other one the bench in the dark, sipping their beers. An odd peace came over them. There was still a pile of shit between them, but it was a manageable size now. They knew that they would be okay, and that made everything else fade for now.

After a few minutes, Taichi said, “So the good news for the night is, you don’t have to marry Jun.”

Yamato sniggered into his bottle, mid swig. “Oh, God. I’ve never been so damn scared in my life.”

Taichi laughed, too. “No kidding. I’d rather have my toes cut off, one by one.”

“Guys?”

Taichi and Yamato turned around to see who was behind them.

It was Takeru. “Are you guys coming back up? Ken’s cleaning us out.”

The friends looked at each other, then rose and headed back upstairs. They had a poker game to finish and a friend to see off.