❉ - Stretching their arms up, showing their midriff
When Taichi wasn’t home, Hikari was used to doing everything herself. (Actually, even when Taichi was home, he sometimes took so long to do it that she gave up and did it herself.) So when Takeru suggested they have some tea, Hikari thought nothing of hopping onto the counter to reach the tea leaf canister that held her favorite Earl Grey. Takeru, for his part, looked horrified.
“What are you doing,” he demanded as Hikari tucked her knees under her on the countertop. She needed to wipe the counters down before her mother got home. She could feel grains of sugar uncomfortably digging into her bare knees.
“Getting the tea,” she answered, as though this were obvious. But Takeru looked panicked.
“Let me help,” he insisted. “You’re going to get hurt.”
“I’m not,” she insisted, but she slid down from the counter anyway.
“Which shelf?”
“Third,” she said. “It’s the–”
“I know which one,” he assured her, looking back at her over his shoulder with a smile. He looked strangely like his brother then. It struck her, suddenly though not for the first time, that they were growing up. She wondered, also not for the first time, if he ever had the same realization when he looked at her.
Probably not, she decided. She told herself it wasn’t a big deal.
When she first met him, she and Takeru could meet each other’s eyes. Hikari wasn’t aware of the first time she had to look up at him; sometimes, if she were honest, she still forgot she had to do it. She would glance over to exchange a look or to tell him something, and there would be Takeru’s shoulder. Or his chest. She wondered who taught him how to tie the knot for his uniform. Taichi’s had always looked so messy in junior high, until Yamato’s pity or disgust (or both, perhaps) had gotten the better of him and he taught Taichi how to knot it properly.
Takeru didn’t have to climb onto the counter to reach the third shelf, but he still had to go up onto his toes and stretch. Taichi was still so much taller than both of them. He wouldn’t have had any trouble. She was standing behind him, but Hikari knew him well enough to imagine him biting his lip in concentration. His t-shirt lifted a couple inches with his arm. He bought his shirts too large, but this one was becoming small. He was growing again.
She didn’t want things to change.
“Got it,” he said victoriously. He had used the same tone when, as a kid, he got the toy in the claw machine or found the show they wanted to watch on TV. He looked back at her, grinning, then frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“What?”
“You look like something’s bothering you. Are you mad I did it for you?”
“No, no!” She laughed. “I just spaced out. Sorry.”
She hadn’t realized she’d been staring at the gap between his belt and his shirt hem, at the expanse of skin between them. She shook her head and forced herself to find his eyes.
“Tea fixes everything,” he said, very seriously, and she could imagine his mother saying that every time he cried as a little kid. She stifled a giggle.
“I’ll put the water on.”
