Disclaimer: I own nothing involved in this story unless I invented it myself. This is written for fun, not for profit. All forms of feedback eagerly accepted. Concrit is loved the most, but everything is welcome.
Fandom: Digimon Adventure
Title: Meeting You
Romance: Taichi x Yamato/Yamato x Taichi
Word Count: chapter: 2,500||story: 2,500
Genre: Friendship, Romance||Rated: PG
Challenge: Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, G5, two-shot; Advent Calendar 2015, day #9, roll dice for chapter amount (2-shot); TaiYama/YamaTai Week on Tumblr
Notes: This starts pre-episode 1 of Digimon Adventure and the 'shippiness will be very mild. After all, they barely know each other. But the prompt is 'first impressions'. I also did a bit of tweaking to how long they were there before going to the Digital World: at least a few days.
Summary: Taichi's never met a blond before, but he's heard lots of stories. Yamato just wants a peaceful trip with the brother he hasn't seen in too long. Neither one of them is going to get exactly what they expect, but they just might one day end up with what they need.

Taichi caught a glimpse of hair like new minted gold and leaned forward, trying to figure out just who it was. He knew there weren't any blonds in his class, but he'd seen one or two in the school halls. He'd just never had the chance to actually stop and talk to one of them. Maybe this trip would change that. He kind of hoped it did. It would make it a lot less boring in his opinion.

At the moment, too many people filled the bus for him to get more than the occasional glance of that bright hair. To make it worse, it was too noisy for him to even attempt to guess which one of the multitude of voices belonged to the mysterious blond.

Maybe he'd ask Sora when they finally got to the camp. She probably knew who it was. She was the kind of person who knew who everyone was and if somehow she didn't know, then she probably knew who would know.

He leaned back in his seat again and tossed his favorite ball up and down. He didn't have much else that he could do. If Hikari had been with them, then he could've at least looked after her a little. But it was probably better that she wasn't. Even if she hadn't been sick now, she got sick so easily that being around all of these kids would do something to her. She was better off at home anyway.

A low laugh, rippling and warm, floated through the air, catching his attention and making him look around again. He thought it came from in front of him, the same direction that the blond was in. He couldn't figure out who this person was either. It was too much to hope for that the blond and the person who laughed were the same. Just trying to figure it out gave him something to do with his time, at least.

He'd had a lot of bad luck on this trip so far. While he knew his other classmates, he was really only close to Sora and Koushirou, and both of them weren't around for him to talk to. Sora sat farther back in the bus, talking to someone he didn't know, and Koushirou was, as usual, buried up to his ears in his laptop.

The people in the seats nearest him spent their time babbling about some card game he didn't recognize, talking monsters and attack points and whatever. Taichi wrinkled his nose. If they were talking real monsters, he would've been into that. He wished he could see a real monster.

He wished there were real monsters for him to see.

But without his friends and without real monsters, the only thing he focused on was that glimpse of blond hair and that sound of a laugh. Both of those would be the most interesting things that could happen on this entire trip.

Maybe I should take a nap? He wouldn't be the only one doing so. But he wasn't that tired and who knew, maybe if he stayed awake, the blond would wander down this way for some reason. He'd never seen an actual blond for more than a few minutes and he kind of wondered if they were as cute as people said they were. So if he closed his eyes, he could miss out on a chance to meet one.

Yeah, this trip was not going to be one of the highlights of his school years.

He let his head thump back on the seat and closed his eyes anyway. He wasn't napping. He was just trying to make the time pass by faster until they got to the campsite.

In all truth, Taichi couldn't have said if he'd fallen asleep or not. But somewhere along the line, music filtered into his mind. It wasn't a song like off of a radio or a music player of some kind. Someone was playing something. It took him several minutes before he clicked to the fact it was a harmonica.

Whoa. Someone's good.

He cracked his eyes open enough to confirm two things: there were still too many people doing too much moving for him to identify anyone who wasn't in his direct line of sight and no one in his direct line of sight was playing a harmonica, or anything else. A couple of them were leaning forward, probably as caught by the music as he was, but that was all he could be sure of.

Taichi hated this bus and he wasn't all that fond of the trip itself either now. It would have to be better at the campsite, because then he could wander around and find the blond (or blonds, depending on how many were actually there) and find out who played the harmonica. People wouldn't be all in his way like this.

"Ishida's really good," someone a seat or two ahead of him said. "I wish I could play like that."

Ishida. The name rang faintly familiar to Taichi but he couldn't put a face to it. Definitely not someone on his team, that was for sure. He knew every last one of them by name, face, position, and skill level.

He didn't have much time to figure out anything else, because only a short while after that, the bus came to a halt. He still didn't get a chance to figure out who Ishida was, or where the blond was, let alone the nice laugh he'd heard, because everyone in front of him hurried off as fast as they could. The most he saw was another glimpse of that head of blond hair.

A hand closed around his arm and he turned to see Sora looking at him. "Come on, let's get off of here," she said with a small smile that he returned at once. "I want to stretch my legs!"

He wasn't going to complain about that in the slightest, hurrying off the moment there was enough room for him to do so. Sora kept pace with him and he wasn't surprised to find Koushirou not that far away either.

"Hey, Sora?" Taichi decided he didn't have too much pride not to ask. "Do you know anyone named 'Ishida'?"

Sora blinked and tilted her head, thinking. "You mean Ishida Yamato? I've never met him but I think he's in one of the other classes. Why?"

"No reason. I heard someone mention the name and I was curious, that's all." Taichi played nonchalance for all he was worth. He wasn't all that good at it, and he wasn't surprised to find Sora giving him a speculative look of her own. "What?"

"Nothing." A small smile played about the corner of her lips. "I think he was the one playing the harmonica, actually."

Well, that matched up with what he'd heard, at least. He nodded, hurrying toward the cabin that he knew would be theirs during the trip. They would share it with a couple of people from the other class in their grade while they were there and he wanted to make certain he got a good bunk while he had a chance.

He got a little ahead of Sora and Koushirou, but he heard two sets of footsteps joining him not long after he entered the cabin and started to check out which was the best bunk. Sora wouldn't be sleeping here, of course, but he turned to suggest that he and Koushirou find bunks next to each other.

The words caught in his throat when he met a pair of sparkling blue eyes, rich as the sky and deep as the sea. He'd never noticed eyes like that in his life, though he'd seen a few people with blue eyes. Then he saw the head of glimmering gold hair above the eyes and blinked a couple of times, trying to wrap his head around the fact he'd seen a true blond at last.

"Are you sure it's all right that I stay with you, big brother?" A young voice asked and Taichi managed to get his brain thinking enough to notice that the blond had a smaller edition next to him. The two looked enough like each other that he kind of wondered if they were related, but all words still stuck in his throat for the moment. The mention of 'big brother' didn't completely register, either.

"Sure it is. No one's going to mind, Takeru." The owner of that hair and those eyes looked at Taichi, one smooth eyebrow going up. "You don't mind, do you?

Taichi tried to remember how to talk. He'd never, ever in his life reacted like this to anyone. He shook his head hard. So the guy was cute. It wasn't like Taichi was a troll or something himself. "Of course not." Why should he, anyway? "Uh, who are you guys, anyway?" And where were Sora and Koushirou?

The second question was at least partially answered when Koushirou stepped through the doorway, laptop tucked under his arm. He nodded at Taichi, who managed a nod back, and went to the nearest empty bunk to flip open the computer once again, losing himself in it in a matter of moments.

I need to get a soccer team together and get him away from that for a while, Taichi told himself before he looked back at the two blonds, neither of which had answered his question.

"I'm Takaishi Takeru!" The little blond piped up when he saw Taichi looking back at them. "I'm in the second grade!" The school he named wasn't one that Taichi was familiar with but since this was supposed to be a trip for multiple schools and grades that didn't surprise him.

"Ishida Yamato," the taller one said, looking away at the same time. Taichi lit up at once.

"You're Ishida? Hey, I heard you playing your harmonica on the bus. You're really good!"

Ishida only gave a mild shrug, moving over to the bed next to the one Taichi had already mentally marked as his. He tossed a small bag onto it and then looked back at Takaishi. "Come on, let's check things out."

He didn't even look at Taichi again as the two of them headed out. Taichi stared after them, not sure if he wanted to demand answers on why Ishida barely seemed to tolerate his existence or just ignore the both of them.

"Taichi?" Ignoring seemed the better option, especially as Sora poked her head into the cabin. "Hey, we've got enough people to play a game with. Want to?"

That made a lot more sense than trying to fuss over someone he'd just met, no matter how pretty and strange their hair or how nice their eyes. He tapped Koushirou on the shoulder. "You heard her! We've got a game going!"

At least Koushirou listened to him.

But if there was one thing in his life that Taichi had never been able to resist, it was a challenge. And finding out what made Ishida Yamato tick was a challenge.

It was also one that he had no idea of how to solve, because Yamato was probably one of the few people in the universe who didn't like to play soccer and who wasn't interested in just hanging out and the most time he normally spent around other people, Taichi quickly found out, was when they were eating, and he tended to leave as soon as he could after that anyway.

He did spend a lot of time with Takeru, but Taichi couldn't get a grip on why. Even the few people he met who were in Yamato's class didn't know. All Taichi could guess was that they were friends. He'd heard 'big brother' but guessed that was an honorary thing.

He learned a couple of things fast enough, though. One was that Yamato also possessed that silvery laugh that he'd heard on the bus, which meant of the three people he'd thought he'd be interested to meet, Yamato was all of them: blond, laughter, and music. Taichi didn't think that close to fair.

At least there were other things to do around here than get annoyed over someone who paid him absolutely no attention at all. Playing soccer came first and foremost, as did just hanging out with Sora or Koushirou or some of the other people he'd met here who would pay attention to him. Kido Jou wasn't that bad of a guy, if kind of stuffy. Sora kept wanting to introduce him to someone she'd met on the bus, who was in the year beneath theirs, Tachikawa Mimi. There were a couple of others, including one girl who apparently was in Yamato's class, but Taichi didn't remember all of them.

He had enough to do with Yamato being annoying enough to keep floating around in the back of his mind, whether Taichi wanted him there or not.

And he didn't. Not at all. Not for a single moment. No matter how interesting the guy was. Why was he blond? Foreign relatives most likely, unless he dyed his hair, but he didn't really come across as the type. Why did he play the harmonica? Why was he just the way that he was?

Nope. Taichi didn't want to know the answers to any of those questions. He didn't look for Yamato when mealtime came and he definitely didn't check the audience during games to see if he'd shown up to watch just once.

He never did, the jerk.

Sometimes Taichi did catch a quick flash of that hair - Yamato and Takeru turned out to be the only blonds at camp - but by the time he got where it was, Yamato wasn't there anymore. That just made Taichi even more annoyed. Was Yamato avoiding him on purpose? What had he done?

Yamato sleeping one bed over didn't make it any better. Most of the other kids chattered until they fell asleep. Yamato pulled his blanket over his head and was out like a light in no time at all. Taichi could not help but feel a little offended.

A lot offended. Maybe. Sometimes. Not at all. Not really.

As long as so many kids were around and there were so many places Yamato could slip off to in order, Taichi knew he wasn't going to get his answers. He wouldn't have time when they left here. So it was going to be now or never.

And it looked as if it were going to be never, since Yamato had a particular talent for hiding.

Taichi didn't at all expect to have everything whirl out of control because it began to snow It was August. Who expected snow in August? Who expected those weird devices to appear or a tidal wave to come out of nowhere, when they were so far from the ocean that they couldn't even smell the salt of it?

Not Taichi, that was for sure.

To Be Continued

Note: Thank you for reading and I hope that you enjoyed the chapter. Please let me know what you thought of it if at all possible.