"New Glasses"

Fandom: Digimon Adventure/02
Genre: Humor/Romance
Summary: There's something different about Joe, and Tai is determined to figure out what. Taijyou, oneshot.
Rating: G
Warnings: Dub!

Author's Note: Just FYI, I don't pretend to know how a relationship between these two would even happen, nor do I necessarily think they would be sustainable as a couple, but DARN IT if I don't have a burning, irrational desire to see them paired up more often! Anyway. I wrote this because I randomly did a drawing of Tai wearing Joe's glasses a few months ago and the more I thought about it, the more I realized it might make a good fic prompt, so there you go.

"C'mon, Dr. Dolittle, you can't study all day."

"Watch me."

"Jooooooe!"

Joe looked up from the dense and heavy textbook long enough to throw Tai a deadpan look.

"Tai, my professor is notorious for giving more pop quizzes than anyone else in the science department. I have to keep reviewing this stuff if I don't want to fall behind."

"Yeah, but I didn't come all the way over here just to sit and watch you read a book!"

"Well unfortunately for you, the rest of the world does not revolve around what Tai Kamiya decides to do in his spare time."

"Even if I said 'please?'"

Joe sighed. Trying to make Tai see reason usually felt a bit like arguing with the weather— futile, and ultimately not beneficial to either party. Which was somewhat endearing, he had to admit to himself, but it did occasionally swerve into the territory of being slightly irritating.

"Look," he said, giving Tai a conciliatory smile but holding firm in his desire for a few more minutes' peace. "Just let me finish this chapter, OK?"

"Fine," Tai said, slumping into a nearby chair in a way that very clearly broadcast his unwilling (but voluntary) surrender. And Joe did manage to make it through several more paragraphs— that is, until he glanced up and happened to notice Tai was staring at him.

"What?" he asked, unnerved and just a little disturbed by the intensity of that gaze.

Tai leaned forward, peering suspiciously at Joe's face. "There's something different about you," he concluded.

It only took Joe a second to guess where this was heading, and he already knew he didn't want any part of it. "You don't say."

Tai stood up and circled around to the other side of Joe's desk, trying to examine him from all sides. "Is it your hair? Your clothes? Don't worry, I'm gonna figure it out."

"Well when you do," Joe said, eyes already back on his book, "I would appreciate you keeping it to yourself."

There was a pause in which Tai continued his one-sided staring contest and Joe continued to ignore him.

"Oh, I know what it is," Tai said at last, in a tone that suggested he alone held the answer to some great mystery of the universe. "You got new glasses!"

Joe didn't say anything. He turned a page tersely.

Tai leaned down from behind and wrapped his arms around the blue-haired boy's shoulders. "Well, why didn't you just tell me, hmm?" he murmured into Joe's ear. "I think they look really nice."

Joe attempted to shrug off the embrace, but Tai stayed stubbornly put. "This right here?" he said. "This is precisely why. People get new frames all the time, it's no big deal."

"'No big deal,' huh?" Joe could feel Tai press in closer, a lean and muscled body against the curve of his back. Hands had crept into the periphery of his vision, reaching up, brushing his neck, caressing his temples, and then, in a motion that was as gentle as it was lightning fast and surgically precise...

... they lifted the glasses right off Joe's face.

"HEY!"

He tried to make a grab for the other boy, but it was too late. Tai had already danced out of reach to the other side of the room, and even though the world had become nothing more than a haze of blurry shapes and colors, Joe could tell his boyfriend was grinning broadly. "See what desperate cries for attention I've been reduced to?" Tai called, twirling his prize carelessly by one earpiece as if they were some sort of party favor.

"Tai!"

But the brown-haired boy didn't respond. As far as Joe could tell, Tai had gone back to examining the glasses. He held them up to the light, turning them this way and that, and then, with all the authority granted to him by his own particular what-the-hell approach to rules and common courtesy, pushed them confidently onto the bridge of his own nose. He blinked several times, trying to get used to seeing through Joe's prescription. "Wow," he said at last. "Your eyesight is really terrible."

Joe, meanwhile, was running out of patience. He stood up from his desk and took a few purposeful steps toward Tai's blurry outline. "Tai, may I please have my glasses back?"

Tai pretended to ponder this, slowly and deliberately tapping a finger on his chin. "Oh, I don't know," he said. "Come gimme a kiss and I'll think about it."

"Tai, I'm serious, I can't see!"

The other boy grinned wickedly. "That's OK. I won't mind if you miss the first couple of times."

It was now or never. Joe lunged at Tai, which seemed to take the other boy by surprise. He tried to back out of Joe's reach but had apparently misjudged his surroundings, losing his balance when the back of his knees hit the edge of Joe's bed. Both of them fell onto the mattress in a confused tangle of limbs, and when the dust settled, Joe was amazed to find himself on his hands and knees with Tai pinned underneath him, glasses slightly askew and a look of confusion frozen absurdly on his face. "I uh... I guess I can't see all that well either," Tai said, grinning sheepishly.

"No kidding!" Joe said, just barely suppressing a laugh. "Maybe now you'll leave me alone so I can read in peace, huh?"

"It depends. Are you sure you wouldn't rather keep paying attention to me?"

Joe shook his head, cracking a smile at last. "Why do you have to be such a pill, huh?" he asked. "I get enough of that from Gomamon."

"No you don't," Tai retorted. "Because I happen to know you like it."

"Hmm, no comment. Now will you please leave me alone so I can get back to studying? I promise, we can do whatever you want afterward."

"Yeah, yeah, all right." Tai gave an over-dramatic sigh. "I swear, sometimes you complain more than an Ogremon with a hurt foot."

"Only because you're about as subtle as a tone-deaf Geckomon with a head cold."

Tai laughed. "Fair point. You know, you can have these back. I don't think they really suit me."

Joe took the offered glasses, fitting them back over his nose and giving Tai an appraising look. "Oh, I don't know. For a second there, you might've looked almost intellectual."

Tai's eyebrows shot up indignantly. "Almost?! I managed to get you away from your desk, didn't I?"

Joe lowered his head and gave him a quick kiss on the nose. "Among other things."

Tai made a face, trying to squirm out from underneath Joe but lacking the leverage. "Yeah, well... I still say you worry too much. People fail pop quizzes n' stuff all the time, it's no big deal."

Joe looked at him slyly. "'No big deal,' huh?"

Tai realized what he had walked into just a second too late. It wasn't enough time to dodge the pillow aimed square at his face.

~Fin.