#the log as a metaphor for the obstacle is very promising

[cat-in-outerspace]

I don't understand

Why won't they destroy the log for the steak???

You can have steak AND log!!!

[god-fucking-dammit-mizutani]

Moonlight Mile

Taishiro Week Day 3: Soccer / Camp

Words: ~2000

Summary: Soccer Camp AU. Taichi enlists the help of his fellow counselor in staying awake. It turns out to be more effective than he hoped. 

Notes/Warnings: Brief mention of drugs as a metaphor. There is no partaking by any of the characters, though.

Read it on AO3!

~*~

The road looms on, an unvarying landscape of dark, blurred trees and highway dividers. Unable to hold a station for very long, the van's junk radio releases a melody of hissing static. The last of the road lights blink in and out of his rearview mirror; the campers whistle and sigh through their light snoozing in the back. Together, it's the recipe for a lullaby Taichi would give anything to succumb to.

Highway Hyponsis. He'd circled the wrong name on a mock exam in driver's ed and now the answer sits with him on every long drive.

Next to him, his fellow counselor shifts in a soft doze. The car swerves slightly right, tires humming over the ridges of the audible lines, before Taichi gets enough of his senses back to correct the steering wheel. He doesn't feel too bad when midnight eyes blink back at him, sleep logged and bleary. Before he can right himself back to sleep, Taichi drops several pats onto his thigh.

"Help me stay awake," he hisses. One of the kids groans, and maybe he should be more sympathetic after a game well played on their end, but their lives rest on his tired eyes.

The boy beside him sits up. He leans his elbow on the little ledge by the window and rests his cheek onto his palm from the crooked angle, eyes focused on the dark expanse of road before them.

"How do you propose I do that?"

His voice is drained, face pale save for the blotches of sun burn that sprout in uneven patches along his face, particularly the sharpest point of his nose. The car swerves a tad again and Taichi refocuses on the road.

"I don't know," he says unhelpfully.

His companion makes a low groan, more sleep ridden than annoyed. With a long yawn, he rolls into describing something Taichi's half working mind can't wrap itself around with the exception of words he's heard repeated in science lectures. He feels transported, suddenly, to the back of class and even more prepared for a nap.

"I said keep me awake," Taichi grumbles haughtily, "not bore me to sleep."

The other hums, his tone as monotonous as the view. Taichi eyes from his peripheral a shock of red nodding against a muted world.

"If you have a preference, Taichi, I'm amenable."

In the last two months, he's not sure Koushirou's ever used his name before. Taichi finds it a bit strange. Not the lack of hearing it, even, but the buzz it seems to ripple with, a current he can't quite explain that rides through his body.

Everything about Koushirou is an enigma to him. Taichi's never met someone who wears a laptop to soccer camp and can't tell a pass from a dribble, but insists on taking his shifts on the field instead of working in the recreational cabin or first aid tent, out of the sun and away from the sport. He thinks about his friend, Yamato, the traitor who left him for space camp this year, and wonders if Koushirou would blend in better there, with science and physics at his fingertips instead of grass.

"Something that'll wake me up," he says finally. "Like a surprising fact, I guess. Or a scary story."

Koushirou jostles around until he's sitting completely straight. His head leans back where the adjustable headrest used to be. Taichi wonders if it's still sitting at the bottom of the lake, where he tossed it on a bet with someone a couple of summers ago. An easy fifty bucks.

"Surprising," Koushirou repeats, yawning. "Bananas are technically classified as a berry."

"No," Taichi says.

"Statistically, you're more likely to die from a vending machine than a shark attack."

"You are such a source of fun facts."

"I aim to please," Koushirou says. There's a ghost of smirk on his face and Taichi chokes on a surprise bubble of laughter in his throat.

He glances up at the rear view mirror on habit. In the far back, one of the kids has thrown his feet up against the back window, seat belt slaking enough that his head is no longer in view. Taichi's too tired still to stop just to save one kid from having all the blood rush to his head. When he looks back to the road, the rickety old camp logo flashes in his headlights.

Only ten more miles.

"Are you awake?"

"No." Taichi rubs at his eyes, holding one of them closed. Maybe he can trick them individually into thinking he's resting. His opened eye feels only slightly more alert, but the effect dives after a moment. "Got anything else?"

"Cleopatra lived closer to the moon landing than she did the construction of the great pyramids. We share fifty percent of our DNA with bananas."

"How berry interesting."

Koushirou snorts. "I'm going back to sleep."

"No more puns," Taichi promises. "Keep going, please?"

"Diamonds can be made from a combination of carbon dioxide and peanut butter. The chemistry in your brain when in love matches the patterns of a cocaine high."

"Cocaine, huh?" Taichi doesn't have the experience to compare them, but he wonder over it for a bit. Of all the little sparks and infatuations dotting through years in life. The puppy loves and cloud nines that dissipated. The only face he recalls with any sense of clarity is Sora's, but he should hope so. They're still friends. He had thought that was love, when he was eight, but he knows a little better now. He doesn't think any of them gave a feeling he could equate to more than a sugar rush. "Are you sure that's legit?"

Koushriou shrugs. "I haven't reviewed the exact paper myself, but it appears somewhat verifiable."

"Do you think it's like that?" Taichi asks. "Like, have you felt it?"

Koushriou huffs a small laugh, airy, tired. "What answer would surprise you more?"

Taichi shrugs.

Up ahead, their exit comes into view, and even though they're the only ones on the road in his line of sight, Taichi makes sure to signal the upcoming turn in advance.

He takes the exit with a wide swing. It winds around, long and high, framing a particularly darkened ditch. Taichi loves when the bus makes the loop every summer, the first rush of camp around the bend of it. Steering around it himself is even better. It feels like an adrenaline rush, like scoring the winning goal after an arduous game. He wonders if love's something like that. He doesn't know.

Koushirou is silent, unmoving, in the passenger seat. Taichi feels more awake now that the road has twists and obstacles so he lets the air between them fall still save for the snores in the back seat. He chooses to switch off the radio, an effort to end some of the white noise. All it really helps is give a platform for the wind racing about the car to hum louder in his ears.

When Koushirou speaks again, it startles him. "Theoretically, the parallels are somewhat similar…" He sounds distant, defeated. His eyes have closed again, forehead resting on the glass now. For a moment, Taichi thinks he's misconstrued the sound of snoring into a coherent sentence, because Koushirou looks to be asleep, lips parted only for puffs of breath that leave trails of fog against the window.

Taichi focuses back on the road. Everything he sees is under the beams of his own headlights. The thicket of forests overhead choke out the night sky, suffocating the moon and stars, the only source of light on this road otherwise. They're still not home, not safe. There's still miles between them and camp. He imagines plopping into bed soon, cool sheets sinking around him, embracing him. He thinks about giving in to sleep and his body aches.

He'll make it. He has to.

"They're stimulants. Psychotropic, even," Koushriou continues, muttering. This time, Taichi catches the movement of his lips in the corner of his eyes paired with a quick flutter of his lashes. "Doing things out of your nature. Seeing things that aren't there-- like misinterpreting signals for your personal confirmation bias. Chasing the feeling of being around them until you've developed a tolerance… The need for more…"

Koushirou rubs at his eyes and yawns. It must be after two, Taichi thinks. The clock in the van hasn't worked since before Taichi was a camper himself, and he's not about to grab out his cellphone now just to check. He remembers the match had ended sometime about seven. Their victory dinner had been after eight, at a restaurant on the side of the road. Wrestling the kids back into the car had been like herding cats into a bath.

"It'll die some day," Taichi says, rubbing at his own eyes. There's just a few miles now. Maybe half an hour if he drives carefully, but faster. "Love usually seems to."

Koushirou hums. Taichi's never heard anything so caught between amused and despairing before, but it's a melody he thinks will haunt him for a while yet. "Contrarily, I fear it's getting worse," he says. "The more we talk, the more onerous it is to terminate this feeling."

"Have you tried asking them out?"

Koushriou snorts, "No." His lashes flutter against his cheek. They're dark against his skin, longer, also, from this angle than Taichi's ever noticed. A smile quirks up on Koushirou's lips. "They barely know I exist."

"Try it," he suggests. "You won't know otherwise."

Koushirou sighs. His lids just barely open, his eyes as dark as the world around them. His lower lids look puffy, bruising with want to sleep.

Taichi almost misses their turn, taking the right sharper than needed. No one seems to stir. Overhead, the moon peeks through a bald spot of trees. It catches on Koushirou's hair. It looks silky, tempting to touch. Taichi pinches on the nerve between his thumb and forefinger, some pressure point he'd been told helped with tiredness. He's not sure it works.

He can feel Koushirou's gaze on him, an intensity only obscured under heavy lids. It feels, interestingly enough, familiar. "Something surprising," the other mumbles. He sounds so far away.

"Ever since fifth grade…" Koushirou trails off and lets out a short, little huff. Frustrated, tired. Taichi sympathizes. "I've been enamored with you since then."

By the time the words register coherently in Taichi's ears, Koushirou has already huddled against the door, legs hunched on the seat and arms wrapping about himself like a blanket. The even lifts of his shoulder indicate to Taichi that he's already back to sleep. He thinks he has every right to wake him up, to explain further, but Taichi doesn't exercise it.

The rest of the trip passes in mostly silence, but Taichi doesn't feel the same lull of sleep call to him. His head buzzes with half formed questions, wondering if Koushirou had meant him--or had he been thinking of someone else? Half dreaming of a person who wasn't there?

He finally pulls into the old, dilapidated shed on the front end of camp. He can't remember if it's ever had doors, but the older counselors remain stern that the van must be inside when not in use. He wonders if they can collect insurance if the garage topples over on it.

Slowly, the campers stir with loud yawns and soft murmurs. Some take a little extra coaxing to move. The kid who's legs were blocking the back widow has since fallen to the floor, laying across his teammate's sneakers. Taichi shoulders the bags of equipment as everyone else grumbles and staggers through the darkened fields, blindly following their instincts back to their cabins, to bed.

Koushrou is already half way across the field to his own cabin, laptop bag latched faithfully to his back, by the time Taichi finishes dropping off the duffel bags back to the storage shed a few feet away. He doesn't bother following or calling out.

Taichi's sheets feel cool, welcoming, when he flops into bed, but tonight they do not coax him to slumber. Clipped to his headboard, his miniature fan whirls noisily. He watches the revolution of the little blades, counting the intervals like one would imagine sheep.

It might be nerves. He's overtired, worked up by driving. Restless muscles.

He knows it's not true.

The sun drift in slowly, over the open sill, stretching along the floor boards and leaning over the edge of his bed to peck him with a morning kiss across his cheek and Taichi hasn't stopped thinking about a boy, who, by possible admission, is in love with him.

The knowledge sparks something in his chest, a feeling both foreign and familiar in a way that rustles his feathers and frustrates his mind. It rattles on the tip of his tongue, refuses to dive off--

Adrenaline.

It feels like an adrenaline high.