#as always I will probably not come back to fix the emphasizes that tumblr stole

[god-fucking-dammit-mizutani]

Moonlight Mile 2

Rating: G | Word Count: ~5200 Pairing: Taishirou Chapter: 2/3 Tags: Summer Camp AU Part 1  | Read on Ao3

Across the field the early morning sun has ascended just above the tree line, slipping enough light under the propped open window boards to lighten the rec room cum mess hall in a gentle haze.

“I get it,” Mimi declares. Every curl in her hair shines with the vibrant hues of an artificial sunrise. The metal star clips fastened between each ringlet soaks up the sun and reflects little rainbows off the walls, the ceiling, the table.

Taichi stares up at her, watches her chew in an oddly considering way. The slight nip in the air causes his sleep deprived eyes to burn.

“You do?” Jyou asks around his fork. She nods at him, vigorously.

One of the little rainbow lights comes to arc over the back of Taichi's hand. He tries to pin the intangible light beam down with the weight of his fingertips, but they slip away when Mimi turns back to him. She raises her fork up nearly towards the center of his eyes in lieu of her pointer finger.

“What's more surprising than someone being in love you, right?”

“Oh, right!” Jyou thumps a closed fist into his open palm, exclaiming, “I get it!” He smiles brightly as Mimi beams back at him. Taichi's only seen Jyou look this excited when it rains during his field duties and everyone gets stuck inside playing board games and foosball.

“Wow,” Taichi says, dragging the syllable out.

“Not you, you,” Jyou puts in, sheepishly. He makes a gesture Taichi isn't really sure means anything. “But the general you, you know?”

Mimi pulls back her fork and wields it against Jyou next, swiping a few of his tater tots with a single stab. He glares at her, but Mimi just smiles. Jyou moves his tray just a few inches over, using the bulk of his shoulder to ward off any further invasions on his breakfast.

Taichi blinks up at them and then turns away, resting his cheek down on the table. They’re the sort he remembers using in elementary school and if he angles it just right, the laminate surface feels cool and inviting, like an ice pack for his swollen eyes. Beyond the windows, the outside world is quiet. Taichi watches as the wind ruffles through tree branches and thinks about his mother running her hand through his bangs, cooing and asking if he feels well. Taichi’s not sure.

“Come on, Taichi,” Jyou begs softly. He hums in response.

“Don't worry about him,” Mimi says. “Taichi's like a rubber band, he'll snap back.” He hears a crisp woosh over his head and Mimi shouts.

“What did you think was going to happen?” Jyou asks. Taichi tilts his head until his chin lays flat on the edge, watching Mimi wave her hand erratically. There's an angry, red bracelet of skin Taichi knows wasn't there before. It sits under the thick part of her palm, just barely covered by a hot pink hair tie.

“I was proving a point,” she whines. She rubs the mark with her other hand, frowning pitifully.

“It’s not good to wear those things on your wrist anyway,” Jyou adds, frowning.

Taichi laughs, a short little huff through his nose, but it's enough to steal back their attention. They smile at him.

Jyou's eyes flicker over the crown of Taichi's head and they widen momentarily. Taichi doesn't have to look up to know what's caught his attention. Jyou always insists on sitting where he can keep his eyes on the clock despite having a perfectly functioning wristwatch.

He slides his tray over to Mimi's awaiting hands. In her excitement the fork clears straight through the styrofoam, but it doesn't deter her from wiping the debris off the pronged tips and popping another tater tot into her mouth. Jyou winces. Taichi snorts.

“That’s just unsanitary, Mimi,” he says in a high whine already ambling to his feet. Mimi shrugs. “You don't know the last time these tables were washed.”

Mimi snaps her gaze up to him, cheeks puffed up in a pout. “Of course I do!” she shouts. Several people behind them whip their heads around to gander at the outburst. Taichi waves them off and they return quickly to their meals. “Because I washed them. Last night.”

Jyou keeps his nose wrinkled up at her.

“Not that I'm complaining,” she continues, “but there's still ten minutes left. You have plenty of time.”

“But the allergy kids, Mimi,” Taichi puts in just as Jyou follows up with, “but the kids with allergies will be coming in soon, Mimi.”

Mimi looks back to Taichi and they both giggle.

“I just want to be diligent,” Jyou sniffs at them. When his eyes meet Taichi's, a light smile lifts the frown lines along his face. “Hope you feel better, Taichi.”

“Thanks,” Taichi drawls, letting his forehead thunk against the table. It does nothing for the aching in his brain, but the darkness greets him like a comfortable friend. “Have fun getting puked on.”

“I will,” Jyou says back. Taichi makes a face, unseen, because he's not sure if Jyou's being facetious. His footsteps slowly become indistinct among the other camper’s, now little more than the white noise around them.

But Jyou’s still lingering at the far end of the building when Taichi tilts his head that way, giving his other eye a minutes reprieve with the cold surface. A camper wiggles and kicks in his arms, knocking a chair in front of her to the ground. It’s the one that usually keeps the back door propped open, Taichi notices with an amused snort. He’s seen campers and counselors alike through the years pull the chair from it’s post to climb that particular wall because it’s there—the sloppy red-purple stain that haunts the rec room. Even when the rest of the paint and plaster had eroded away, it had remained, stubbornly attached to the crown molding.

Taichi’s heard the rumors, the urban legends; they’ve evolved over the years from the stain being an ominous mark of the apocalypse to a symbol of good luck if you can reach high enough to slap the vibrant blemish with the full of your palm. Taichi’s never believed any of them. Mostly because he remembers putting it there himself after chucking his cranberry juice at Yamato when they were eleven. It’s his greatest regret, missing so poorly.

He can almost hear Jyou across the room, giving his lecture on the dangers of falling from high places as he ushers the camper back to her seat. He takes the chair back out with him, pushing the door open with the broadness of his back. Taichi watches him notice someone in the distance, waving as the door falls shut, Jyou on the other end of it. The slam echoes along the arched ceilings, over the shuffling and rabble of the campers, but no one seems to mind it. Taichi watches the door, though, his heart holding on a beat as the handle jiggles and someone pulls it back open.

Koushirou, notoriously late to breakfast, keeps to predictable this morning. He pushes the chair up against the door and fiddles with it a moment, making sure it’ll hold before stepping up into the rec hall. Across the room his dark eyes meet Taichi's for a moment, and they look, somehow, as if he’d gotten less sleep than when Taichi had last seen him.  

Taichi looks away, shoving his half eaten tray into Mimi’s hoard and let's his forehead rest against the table again.

“Hey, Taichi?” Mimi calls him gently. Her hand sits gently on the crown of his head. Taichi welcomes the chill of her fingers where they graze his scalp in soft waves of her hand. “If you don't feel good, you can switch with me today. Or I'm sure Jyou will let you sit out in the first aid tent.”

Taichi looks back up at her again. Mimi's smile is sweet, serene, and it makes his heart both swell and ache. For how much the three of them banter, Taichi enjoys her company, and Jyou’s. But he wishes, too, that Sora were here. He thinks she'd know exactly what to say, but Taichi has no way to contact her.

He props his arm up on the table, rests his cheek inside the cup of his palm, and tries his best to smile. “Thanks Mimi,” he tells her, voice hushed under layers of fatigue. “I'm just super tired.”

“You sure?”

Taichi nods, his eyes following the motion without his permission. He yawns. “I'll let you know if I change my mind.”

*

On the field, under the sun, Taichi thrives. Usually.

The listless cloud that had kept him company through the morning has since evaporated, the pull of his eyes to remain shut, gone. It feels like every ounce of his blood has been replaced by static, the crackle of it deafening in his ears. He wants to believe it's his natural habitat: the bright skies, the echo of laughter ringing in the air. But he knows it has everything to do with his unlikely company.

Taichi looks behind him, the top of his head scraping along the ground where he’s splayed himself across the slope of the hill nearest the field. Most of the counselors usually hide up in the shade, under the trees at the plateaued top. Taichi prefers being under the sun himself. Koushirou is of the former group, and Taichi understands why, his skin an unhappy shade of red. Taichi watches him struggle with a near-empty bottle of sunblock, alternating between squeezing and slapping the bottom, until it finally deposits the last dollop of lotion into his hand with an undignified plop. Koushirou’s nose wrinkles at the noise, dismayed.

Taichi watches his expression turn to a grimace when he slaps it against his face. He hasn't worn sunblock in so long himself, but his skin still feels the sympathetic prickle of cold as Kouhsirou soothes the lotion into his cheeks.

He notices Taichi's stare a moment later, dark eyes quiet and inquisitive. There is a moment Taichi has to fight the urge to look away.

“Yes?” Koushirou asks. He breaks eye contact to tug his laptop back into the seat of his lap. Taichi can only see the sprout of his hair, darkened by the shade above him, just over the lip of the the back of it. Which is fine. Taichi wasn't going to tell him where he'd missed spots along his face, anyway.

Taichi breathes in and the scent of sun and sweat and everything quintessentially summer wafts in through his nostrils. "It smells like barbeque," he says. To Koushirou's back, a small distance away, is a thicket of woods. Just beyond that is a residential haven, where Taichi hears the owner of the camp lives in a rather sizable craftsman house with a large acre of land for his two large dogs to run around. Taichi only knows about the dogs because they sometimes find their way to camp through the woods, jumping out of the bushes when campers have their lunch out on the lawn on nice days. The old man's daughter used to be Taichi's counselors for years, but now she's some high powered attorney in a big city.

He wonders if she's visiting now, and they're celebrating in that big old craftsman house with the dogs begging under the deck tables. Taichi's stomach growls with envy.

He rolls over onto his stomach, legs kicking up behind him and dismantling grass from the bottom of his shoes as Taichi swings them. He cradles his chin in his hands and watches the bob of Koushirou's hair over the edge of his laptop back. His lower thighs burn where the sun rests upon them. He takes in a deep breath and adds, "and Dr. Pepper." “That's oddly specific."

“Dr. Pepper is very distinct,” Taichi insists. This time when he sniffs, it has nothing has nothing to do with scent.

The clacking of keys stops momentarily. Koushirou tugs down the screen of his laptop until his eyes find Taichi's. It feels like he's staring back down the barren forest roads, deep in the thick of midnight, and Taichi can't seem to breathe in deep enough.

Koushirou sniffs at the air, brows furrowed deep. One of his hands comes up to curl around his chin. Taichi's seen the pose in movies before, the ones with mad scientists and rampaging monsters. Koushirou sniffs again, and the look on his face is the epitome of perplexed.

He should look confused more often, Taichi decides.

“Interesting,” Koushirou mutters. He lifts the screen back up with his other hand and the clicking starts again, but he’s still murmuring to himself. Taichi only understands every other word because he thinks Koushirou's still talking into his palm.

“Would you say it's—”

Koushirou snorts. “Don't start.”

“Come on,” Taichi whines. “You're berry un-raisin-able, Koushirou.”

Unexpectedly, Koushirou laughs.

It's raspy, but loud, and Taichi thinks the toothy smile Koushirou sports could have brightened their way home. His laptop slips from between his crossed legs, gingerly tapping the grass as he falls back, clutching at his stomach and Taichi can't help his own smile.

He can hear some of the kids on the field wondering about Koushirou’s health, asking if they should get Jyou, if heat stroke is contagious. Taichi turns over, crunching to a sitting position and waves them off. Half of them have taken up sitting in the grass, pulling up blades and stray weeds and tossing them at each other. A large group has started playing cards under the goalie posts. Taichi wonders if they'll get in trouble for not watching them properly today, and finds that he can't really muster up the energy to care.

Koushirou has righted himself by the time Taichi peeks back over his shoulder. He's rubbing under his eyes, face still blotchy with speckles of white. He wonders if Koushirou's one of those kids who gets freckles in the sun.

“Can I ask you something?” Rushes out of Taichi's mouth. Koushirou stills, hand already grabbing at his laptop. Taichi doesn't know if the red on his face is from lack of oxygen, or sunburn. It's almost indistinct in the shade.

“The more we talk, the more onerous it is to terminate this feeling.”

Taichi frowns. He looks back at the field, his own fingers skimming along the ground and plucking a few blades of grass when he finds them. It used to be green here, when the sprinklers were used in the summer. Now there's mostly patches of yellowed land that can't quite be called grass or dirt. He sits his collection upon his thigh. Taichi's always been dark, but the skin sitting just under his shorts is almost starkly pale compared to the bits that have been sun-touched.

“Why did you decide to come here—”

But Taichi doesn't know if his question ever makes Koushirou's ear as a shrill tweet cuts through the air. He checks his watch immediately. Five minutes to lunch.

The time doesn't seem to deter campers, or counselors, from leaving their posts. Kids clamber out from every hidden view, from the archery grove and the arts and crafts “tent”, yelling and waving and rushing their way to the mess hall.

Taichi looks back. Koushirou's laptop has already been packed, holstered to his back. His face is down, unreadable, but Taichi watches the sway of a bright orange whistle thump against his standard issued counselor’s shirt.

He watches him go without a word. Even among the crowd, Taichi can pinpoint the shock of red hair maneuvering around a sea of children. He's barely taller than the median age groups.

When he's disappeared into the old building, Taichi turns away. Across the field Hikari stares at him. He can make out the gesture of her finger tapping her wrist, and he shrugs.

*

“Don't move.”

Taichi opens one eye. A little girl glares down at him, tugging his hand closer to her eye level. Taichi sighs.

“I said don’t move!” she reiterates. She loops a key ring around his pointer finger. Taichi watches her weave gel threads together in what he can only assume is a lizard. Maybe a crocodile.

“Why is this happening to me?” he asks no one in particular.

There isn't much sun that reaches through the canopy of trees, but there's enough light for Taichi to notice the shadow hovering over him.

Hikari smiles down at Taichi. “Well,” she starts, tapping his nose with the feathery end of a paintbrush, “if you're going to lay on the table, then you're going to become it.”

“You don't paint on tables,” Taichi says, narrowing his eyes. Hikari giggles.

Taichi kicks his legs minutely. There’s barely enough room to accommodate six kids sitting up, and so Taichi's legs dangle over the edge. When they smack back down he winces where the wood bites in the plump of his calves. At the far end a little boy shouts.

“I'm going to make you into Miko,” Hikari decides.

She disappears from above him and Taichi breathes in deeply. This corner of camp smells unevenly of paints and sunblock, but above it all the scent of aloe vera is thick. The tickling sensation in his leg returns, the little boy focusing back on his masterpiece blooming along Taichi’s leg. He cranes his neck to try to gain a sneak peek of it, but a few other heads bob in and out of the way, some of the kids using his stomach to hold up their papers. On his free hand, a kid looks up at him with a bright, almost toothless, grin. His brush strokes leaves a colorful trail of paint along his nails.

“I'm going to look like pastel Frankenstein,” he whines. He doesn't really mind, but the outburst gains him several giggles from around the table. He wonders if they get the reference. Hikari returns, smiling back down at him, holding up a small, wooden palette. There's a splatter of old, caked-in paints, but the only fresh color is a giant dollop of black.

“Pastel Frankenstein’s monster,” she corrects him.

Hikari wets the tip of her brush and leans back over Taichi. He scrunches his nose at her as the first, cold plop of paint hits his skin, but Hikari doesn't even reprimand him for it. She looks peaceful, concentrating on her own art, as if she were crafting her magnum opus. She swipes three dark lines on his cheeks, up to his hairline and Taichi thinks she may have gotten some in his hair. The tree branches above them sway in the light breeze, shadows dancing along her face, as she drops three identical marks to his other side.

A crisp whistle in the field signals dinnertime starting in the rec hall. Hikari gets the campers to put their supplies back and Taichi lifts a bucket of water to splash over their hands as they scrub away the evidence of their activities. He fills it back up with a hose attached to the old shed, as the campers scamper off across the way. Hikari organizes the paints together, ordering them into a display of splotchy rainbow containers along the repurposed bookshelf. “So what's wrong?” she asks without looking up.

Taichi frowns. “Why does something have to be wrong?” He takes in a deep breath. “Why are you psychic?”

“You always take Mimi's field shifts for her,” Hikari says, breathing a laugh. “It's just reasonable to think something big must have happened if she was willing to take your spot.”

“She said, and I quote,” Taichi brings up his fingers to create the quotes himself in the air for emphasis, “‘I can finally work on my tan.’ I'm doing her a favor.”

Hikari smiles wryly at him. She strides back over to the table and collects the abandoned paint brushes and twirls them, one by one, into a mason jar until the water turns a dark, murky gray. Taichi takes the brushes from her and dries them off on a paper towel, until the repurposed soup can that houses the camp's paintbrushes is, just barely, full.

“Someone confessed to me,” Taichi says, suddenly, “kind of. I think.” he scratches the back of his neck, a rosy burn spreading across his skin. Hikari looks up at him from wiping paint offfrom the plastic art palettes.

“A camper?” she asks. When he says nothing she guesses, “Another counselor?”

Taichi sits down across from her. He folds his arms and rests against them, until he's looking up at Hikari.

“It's not your first love confession,” she mentions, turning back to her task. “So what's bothering you about this one?”

Taichi watches the shade freckle her cheeks, the sun sit in her amber eyes until they shine golden. “He said he's been in love with me since fifth grade.”

“How sweet.” She means it and Taichi frowns.

“Sure,” he drawls out. He can barely hear himself over the thudding of his heart, the beat of it aching in his limbs. Talking about it more has done nothing for his nerves and it frustrates him. “I guess it would be nice, except I only just met him at camp. This year.”

Hikari doesn't seem phased. “Maybe he met you in school,” she reasons. “One of your classes or clubs or something.”

She takes to cleaning up the table next, rousing Taichi from his resting spot. He almost asks her to thank him, his skin and uniform having taken the brunt of every real mess. But he knows she'll just remind him that he had a choice for where to nap. Maybe he should have taken the risk of getting puked on and rested in the first aid tent instead.

“I would have remembered him if he was in my school, Hikari.” He frowns. “I'm not that oblivious.”

“No,” she agrees, snorting. “But you are a social butterfly. And sometimes a jerk. I'm sure there's people you forget all the time. Sometimes on purpose. Like how you ignored Yamato’s existence for half a summer after he told Sora about your little crush.”

“We don't talk about that year.” Taichi glares at her without any real heat. He'd been at fault for Hikari getting sent home early; Taichi had spent half of camp fretting over whether he'd be an only child after the state she had left in. Their mother had been furious, and he almost thought he’d end up an orphan, too.

Hikari pins him back with one her own glares, the weight of it drooping his shoulders. “That's exactly what I'm talking about.” She takes a deep breath and tells him, “I think you need to talk to this guy directly, otherwise you're never going to get the answers you want.”

Hikari gives him a once over and snorts.

“You should probably wash up before dinner, Taichi,” she tells him from behind her hand, the laughter shining in her eyes. Taichi wrinkles his nose at her and that doesn't really help his case at all.

But he says, “Thanks,” and ruffles her hair on his way past her.

*

Just before the showers, Taichi hangs left.

His fingers graze through the chain link fence, the metal clicking and vibrating as he walks by. The pool hasn't contained anything but grime and litter since Taichi was fourteen, but it's also overflowing with years of memories. He kissed a boy on a dare, once, in the deep end for five bucks, right under the diving board. Joke had been on Yamato, though, because Taichi had kind of wanted to anyway, but cheating him out of his snack money had been like a price for reinstating their friendship that year.

Taichi grips the pole at the far end and swings his weight around it momentarily. The rod shakes in it's cement shoes and Taichi releases his hold, clenching his fists through the chain link on the opposite side.

Last year they’d hopped the fence, him and Sora and Yamato, after lights out, their stash of an entire summer’s worth of snacks dropping from their arms like a fairy tale trail of their misdeeds. Taichi frowns. It was going to be tradition, they had decided, agreed even when they spent the whole next day in the first aid tent, clutching their stomachs. He squeezes the fence tightly and then continues down the lake path behind the abandoned pool.

Even in twilight gnats hover tightly to Taichi's face along the trail. No amount of swatting shakes them, but Taichi knows this. It is absolutely out of habit.

Campers greet him on their way up, some of the more familiar faces jumping up to give him a high five. Some stop him to take pictures, complimenting Taichi on his new look. He thinks Hikari would be proud.

It's the best time to visit the lake, when everyone else is eating. Plus, it's Takeru's shift to watch the canoes, and he sometimes let's Taichi take one out if he helps fish out the stray life jackets and paddles tossed between the avenues of land and water.

Taichi stutters to a halt when he reaches the mouth of the beach.

Koushirou’s got the fabric of his khakis rolled up high on his knees, to no avail. They're already dark with damp as he splashes along the lakeshore, a small little grunt escaping his lips from the strength it takes him to heft one of the canoes up along it’s brethren on the beach. His hair is as radiant under the evening sun as it is in contrast to the night sky and Taichi frowns as he pads down the sand, coming up alongside him to share in the burden of the canoe’s weight.

"You're not Takeru," he mutters.

Koushirou startles, his fingers slipping from the lip of the helm, but his momentum continues backwards and he drops into the lake with a distinctive plop.

A heartbeat passes between them before Taichi throws his own head back, howling with laughter as he pulls the canoe up on the sand. Koushirou watches him, offering no help. His eyes look so impossibly wide, the sort of deep you can swim in, drown in, and Taichi pushes back the urge to offer him a hand purely out of spite.

He surveys the lake for any straggling gear before he drops himself on the shore, tucking his knees up towards his chest, his shoes squelching with every move. He grimaces, wishing he’d had the foresight to toe them off before trekking through the lake. The fabric of his pants chafing uncomfortably against his knees. Below that, his calves looks bruised, splotchy with a plethora of colors bleeding together where the kid’s painting had been compromised by the splashes of water. He never did remember to look.

"Where's blondie?" Taichi finally asks.  

"He's—we—" Koushiro splutters. His face tilts down, exposing the reddened nape of his neck. He manages eventually to say, "T.K. offered to switch with me after lunch.”

To not see me, something tells Taichi. "I couldn’t procure any additional sunblock," is what Koushirou tells him. Water drips from his bangs where his trip into the lake had splashed back up at him. "Jyou said he only had enough to spare for the kids until the next supply run." Koushirou turns to look at him, backlit by the evening sun and static charges in every one of Taichi's muscles. He grips a flat rock in the palm of his hand and tosses it just to the left of Koushirou. It glides quietly along the surface and sinks seamlessly into the folds of a languid wave.

Koushirou picks himself up and plops down a decent distance from Taichi. He notices since they’d last seen each other that the little bits of block he’d neglected to warn Koushirou about have been properly applied now. "Did it hurt today?" Taichi asks. Koushiro blinks at him and Taichi grabs for another rock indiscriminately. It hits the water less gracefully, like a belly flop among swan dives. "Your sunburn." "Oh, " Koushirou says.  "Just an iota." "Remember to apply aloe vera or it won't heal well." "I will," Koushirou replies. There's a smile in his voice that Taichi can just imagine blooming shyly on his thin lips and his stomach pinches.  "Thank you.”

He’s not the only one who seems to notice anything new, Koushirou’s eyes following from Taichi’s hairline, down to the tips of shoes.

“You look—”

“Don’t,” Taichi says, narrowing his eyes at the tight smile on the other’s lip.

“Glamourpuss,” Koushirou finishes in an absolute deadpan. “That was—”Taichi breaks his own sentence, laughing as Koushirou joins him “—the worst.”

“I purrceived as much.” Taichi sends him a look. “Just simple purrvenge."

Taichi groans and for a while the lake echoes with their laughter.

Wildlife chatters around them, fills in the eventual silence that settles between them, twilight critters stirring in the brush. A little chipmunk pokes out from the corner of Taichi's eyes and swiftly pilfers a forgotten batch of fruit snacks. He bets Koushirou would probably know the exact taxonomy of the little rodent. He probably knows every bird by their chirping alone, because the little that he knows of Koushiro is that Koushirou knows probably everything and Taichi doesn't.

"You said you were in love with me, you know?" Taichi breathes out. It feels like the exhale after taking a soccer ball to the gut. "You wanted me to shock you," Koushirou says smartly. His toe digs a short line in the dense sand, water lapping his toes with swift licks. His face colors, filling in the gaps where the sun hadn't touched. "Enamoured might have been...superlative." Taich breathes out again. "You don't feel anything for me, then?" The breeze shakes the branches above them, swims through the lake like a current. A fish breaches the surface, the only evidence of its ascent a strong, circular ripple. Taichi reaches for another stone and tosses it a good few feet into the water. It takes several steps this time before plummeting. He clutches a new one, but let’s his hand rest in the space between them. Taichi wonders if Koushirou would take it, is considering it, and his heart pounds.

"This lake is so sedentary," Koushirou says instead. "Do you think it's still down there?" Taichi narrows his eyes. Between them is a basin of questions that seems to be ever flowing, yet never emptying. "What?" This time, Koushirou picks at a rock instead. It's heavy and when it plops into the lake not too far from them, water droplets rain and scatter until there's an orchestra of ripples along the shore. A few drops land on Taichi's leg. "The headrest.” Taichi stares at him. There's a glint of mischief in his darks eyes that twinkles and Taichi thinks of stars, galaxies and it feels oddly fitting because Koushirou always seems to be somewhere close, but elusive.

“Fifty dollars says I can retrieve it by the end of the summer."

Taichi looks at the lake, the very last rays of the evening light dipping beneath the trees on the farshore and he licks his lips. "Deal."

[askdawnandvern]

"I want to live again! I want to live again!" The stallion nickered, clasping his hooves together tightly as he leaned them on the guardrail of the snow-encrusted bridge. His clasped hooves trembled as he begged the mercy of the gods who had answered his foolish cry just hours before to undo his terrible mistake. With the last of his will seemingly spent, the horse's head sagged into his hooves."I want to live again...please gods, let me live again..." The horse began to quietly sob to himself.

----------------------------------

*crunch* The sudden jarring sound drew the drowsy wolf from his partial slumber. Vernon craned his head up with a start, giving it a brisk shake as he turned his attention to the TV. "It's a Wonderful Life" was still playing along on the screen, George Nieghly's pleading to return to his former life now coming to a close as the snow began to fall softly on his crumpled form. It was clear the film Vernon had fallen asleep half-listening to hadn't been the source of the sudden, jarring sound.

*crunch* Came another loud, obnoxious chomp to Vernon's right. Now fully awake, the sound had proven easy to track, and soon Vernon found his bleary eyes now fixated on Val. The vixen was seated across from the slumbering couple, sprawled out on large sofa and making herself quite comfortable as she loudly chewed away at the cookies Vernon had left out for Santa Claws.

"VAL!" Vernon barked, his brow furrowing as he glared at the oblivious vixen. The fox let out a yawn, tilting her head back in a half-hearted attempt to make eye-contact with the annoyed wolf with the least amount of effort. The vixen smirked slightly as she eyed the wolf from an upside-down angle.

"What?" Val asked, seemingly genuinely curious as to the reason for Vernon's irritated tone.

"W-What!?" Vernon snorted, the wolf was having a hard time finding his words as he struggled to process why Val was sitting in his apartment on Yule’s Eve of all nights. "What are you doing here!?"

Val scooped another cookie into her paw from the nearby plate, chomping down loudly on the snack in an obnoxious manner as she turned her attention back to the television.

"I 'unno..." Val mumbled through her crumb filled maw. " 'Uss felt like it..."

Vernon ran a paw through the fur on his scalp, his piercing and irritated glare remaining fixed on the lazy vixen still sprawled on his couch.

"I mean..." Vernon said, the wolf lowering his voice in an effort to keep his cool. Val’s usual shtick was already wearing thin, and it was taking all the strength he had to keep from shouting. But despite his efforts, his response was terse, his words emphasized sharply with ire despite the lower octave.

"How did you get in?" The wolf demanded an answer.

Val smirked. "You gave Gus a key remember?” The vixen replied matter-of-factly.

"I gave GUS a key!" Vernon reiterated Val’s careless explanation. "Not you!"

"What's happening?" Came a quiet, sleepy sounding mumble from somewhere closer to the wolf. Vernon glanced back toward his lap to find Dawn had begun to stir, the tiny ewe rubbing her eyes in an effort to chase away the lingering sleep. "Vernon?"

"Sorry Honey Lamb, I didn't mean to wake ya'll up." Vernon replied, giving the ewe's head poof a soft tussle before turning his attention back to Val. "We just got an uninvited guest is all."

"I copied Gus' key when he had me take his key-ring down to the hardware store to make back-up copies for the store." Val shrugged. "I figured it'd be handy to make myself a copy."

Vernon pinched the bridge of his muzzle, letting out an annoyed sigh.

"Is that Val?" The question came from Dawn, followed by a long and tired sounding yawn. The ewe had now pushed herself off the wolf slightly, propping herself up on her elbow as she turned her attention toward the vixen.

"Right, so ya'll stole a copy of Gus's key so you could...what...steal our food?" Vernon asked.

The vixen rolled her eyes. "Well if you're just going to leave out free food, why can't I have any?"

"Those were fer Santa Claws!" Vernon snapped back. The wolf’s lips curled around his bared teeth as he stared daggers at the clearly unimpressed vixen. Val chuckled, a wide and mischievous grin crawling across her muzzle as she cocked her head in Vernon's direction.

"You still believe in Santa Claws?" Val asked, quirking an eyebrow. "Really?"

Vernon went mute, his features dropping almost immediately from ire into something more akin to embarrassment and fear. Vernon’s eyes had opened wide, and his iris’ darted from side to side as he attempted to look anywhere but in Val's direction.

"N-No!" Vernon snapped back, his voice shaking with uncertainty despite his attempt to remain firm. The wolf knew Santa Claws was fake, at least the adult in him reaffirmed so. However, there was always that lingering Pup in him that seemingly refused to accept such a notion. The Pup that was certain magic existed and there for everything was possible even if you couldn’t explain or prove it. And somehow, Val’s remark had managed to drag that Puppy up to the surface long enough to make Vernon feel even more a fool than her essentially ‘breaking and entering’ to scroundge for food had.

"Oh Puppy, don't listen to her." The ewe tutted, gently patting his chest reassuringly before resuming her previous snuggly position balled up against his chest. The ewe let out a pleasant sigh. "Santa Cloves is real, she's just mad because she probably only ever got coal."

Vernon knew there was no Santa Claws, he kept repeating it to himself in his mind again and again. But despite that, the ewe’s words were...oddly reassuring.

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Closing out the year with a Christmas farewell before I go into hibernation till like Mid-January. Yep, closin' the blog and pretty much everything else outside of the Patreon/Streams and writing for the year in order to enjoy the holiday. I hope you all have a great Holiday, see you in 2018!

Story blurb was written in haste...one shot...so it ain't up to my full quality credentials. But eh, it's non-canon as it is...probably...maybe.

Just some extra notes, please do not ‘message’ me via tumblr messenger with asks. If the links on the ask page aren’t there, it means asks are closed. So that means I can’t take any in at the moment. Any future asks submitted that way will be deleted. Not trying to single anyone out here, but i feel the need to mention the person who sent me the Dawn Yule Childhood question, that was fine. The reason being because I totally forgot Dawn in the ask about Yule childhood stories from the Hunters and Hunter gals. So it was to remind me more or less that I missed that. Sorry.