Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ Never Let Me Down Again ❯ Chapter 1

TITLE: Never Let Me Down Again

 

SUMMARY: Ken and Daisuke grow up, get jobs, and have sex. Sometimes even with each other.

 

RATING: M

 

DISCLAIMER: Digimon and other media relating to the franchise are registered trademarks of Bandai and their respective corporate bodies. I am not affiliated with nor claim ownership to material produced by Bandai.

 

AUTHOR'S NOTES: This story would not exist, in any form, without Chex, who first brainstormed the plot and idea with me in chatfic almost two years ago, and then insisted that I write it, and then agreed to beta for me. This is my first completed Digimon story, and my first story posted here to Mediaminer.

 

This is futurefic, which means that the characters are all of an age for us to be watching them do dirty things to one another, not that there's much very explicit on that front. This story goes AU somewhere between the end of the fight with Belialvamdemon in Episode 50, and the 25-years-later epilogue in Episode 50; which is not to say that the epilogue is completely disregarded. Consider the epilogue as one road that the Chosen Children could, potentially, have traveled, no matter how unlikely out of all possible roads it is (*cough*astronaut*cough*). This is another.

 

Credit for digimon names, attacks, and evolutions goes to the database at http://wikimon.net, which was an invaluable help in filling out a universe where everyone from family members to coworkers has their own digimon. Credit for the title to the Depeche Mode song by the same name.

 

All feedback is read and appreciated; for questions or comments that you would like a response on, feel free to email me at kaeru_hime@hotmail.com. Enjoy!

 

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"Hey Ken, don't look now, but there's another bunch of people arguing about us on the Internet." Ken looks up from the pile of tiny screws and allen wrenches on the floor of the apartment with more amusement than exasperation.

 

"Don't tell me you're browsing 2ch again," he says mildly. Daisuke, of course, is sprawled casually across the entire length of the sofa, the picture of careless comfort, V-mon tucked into the crook of one arm and Ken's laptop on his chest. Ken should really insist he get down here and help assemble the new flatpack coffee table, given that he's the one who fell on the old one trying to catch a soccer ball in midair, again. It's his responsibility, and another hand would probably be useful once Ken gets past figuring out Step 3 and gets to Step 5. It's just...

 

Well, it's just that Ken's been living with Daisuke for more than six years, and friends with him for at least seven before that, depending on where he starts counting. If he wants a coffee table and not some strange modern art sculpture, he'll figure out how to brace the opposite corners of the table by itself and count on Wormmon to screw in the supports.

 

"Hey, it's educational!" Daisuke protests. "Anyway, how else would I find out that half of Japan thinks going to buy a table together means we're having sex?" This time, Ken really does roll his eyes.

 

"Not that again." Let's see, if he turns the X-shaped strut that way, it aligns with the holes on the table legs, but the support for the top of the table is pointing downwards...Ichijouji Ken is a world-renowned genius and savior of the Digital World. He is not going to be foiled by a piece of furniture.

 

"I still don't know why they can't just mind their own business," Wormmon pouts, and Ken runs a calming hand along his back. "Maybe you have the table legs upside down?"

 

"They just can't imagine anyone could live with me and be able to resist my charms," Daisuke proclaims. Ken would grin, but he's too busy staring at the instruction sheet again. Maybe the directions make more sense in French?

 

 

 

Life in the Motomya-Ichijouji apartment--or, as Daisuke likes to call it, Ken and Daisuke's Smokin' Spectacular Bachelor Pad of Awesome--involves a series of compromises. Theoretically, Daisuke doesn't yell at Ken when he comes home late and tired from a case and leaves all of his dirty dishes in a pile in the sink, and Ken doesn't yell at Daisuke for practicing soccer moves inside. In actuality, ok, usually it's at least as many of Daisuke's unwashed dishes as Ken's and somehow he still always gets scolded for the soccer. But hey, Ken doesn't mind being the one to keep the apartment mostly clean, if by 'doesn't mind' you mean 'is the one who really cares that it happens', and Daisuke doesn't mind doing the cooking. Someday, he's even going to learn to make something more than ramen.

 

He brings the idea up to Old Man Kuwabara towards the end of his next shift. "Impudent brat!" the old man says, and wallops him about the head with his broom. "This is a ramen stand! What else should we make?"

 

"I don't know, why do I have to come up with all the ideas around here!" Daisuke throws back. The old man snorts and stomps off to sweep the other end of the stand. Daisuke cheerfully goes back to dishing out bowls of noodles for the dumbfounded customers.

 

The old man's Tsumemon skitters along after him; it has one eye and a bunch of claws, and no mouth that Daisuke's ever been able to see, even though it always eats its share of ramen and more. It giggles a lot. Daisuke thinks it's creepy. The old man's a pretty good sport, though. He never seems to care that Daisuke totally saved the world when he was a kid, especially when he's making Daisuke do extra mopping or beating him about the head with a broom. He also never seems to mind when Daisuke yells at him right back, which means he's pretty much the best boss Daisuke's ever had.

 

V-mon helpfully tugs the leg of Daisuke's pants. "Didn't you say you had to go early today?" the digimon asks helpfully. Daisuke checks his watch and yelps. He tosses his apron down on the counter and scoops V-mon u up nder one arm, tearing out of the stall so fast he's nothing but a blur of brown and blue. "Sorry Kuwabara-san gotta go got a date tonight I'll make it up on Monday!" he shouts as he flies past. The customers stare into his wake. Old man Kuwabara just snorts and goes back to his mopping.

 

It's Mitzuki-chan's birthday tonight, and he has to drop V-mon at home before he and Ken go out to meet her. There's a new club Ken heard about that he's been wanting to try...Daisuke just hopes Mitzuki likes it. He really thinks she might be The One.

 

 

 

 

Daisuke's first One was Hikari, and she'll always hold a special place in his heart, but she and Takeru have been married since they were about nine years old even if the wedding did only take place last summer. They have a little apartment not far from the school where Hikari works, full of bookshelves and secondhand furniture and far too many plants that Takeru can never remember to water.

 

In the interests of helping him move on, Hikari introduced Daisuke to his second One when they were fifteen years old. Aoi liked soccer and never shrieked because she was excited, and always smelled like peaches. She came to all of his games, and he held her hand as he walked her home after school almost every day. She lived right next to the station for the train that would take him to Ken's apartment, so Daisuke showed up at Ken's every day with the taste of peaches on his lips.

 

"She's just so beautiful," he sighed, flopping across Ken's bed and letting his head dangle over the side. "She's perfect. She's the love of my life."

 

Ken would hide his grin, but Daisuke was staring at the ceiling with stars in his eyes and couldn't see it anyway. "She's very nice," he said, knowing Daisuke would end up on a ten-minute ramble about Aoi's hair and the shade of her eyes with or without any encouragement. Once that was over they could get to math.

 

"And Pinamon is so cool!" Chibimon chimed in. He and Daisuke heaved identical sighs of contentment.

 

"Oh, and today, while we were kissing? She did this thing with her tongue--" Ken blushed, and cut Daisuke off hurriedly.

 

"Daisuke, I don't think she'd appreciate you telling everybody about that."

 

Daisuke rolled over onto his stomach and looked down from the bunk to fix Ken with a quizzical expression. "But I'm not telling everybody, I'm telling you. So anyway, she did this thing..."

 

Three months later, Aoi confessed to Hikari that while Daisuke and Ken were cheerfully chasing each other around the soccer field on weekends for extra one-on-one practice, she'd gotten bored and started kissing the Odaiba team captain behind the equipment shed. Hikari slapped her across the face and made her tell Daisuke in person. He hid in Ken's bedroom and refused to come out except for school, meals, and soccer for the next three weeks. Even his hair drooped.

 

 

 

Ken still blushes, sometimes, when Daisuke talks about kissing. This is ironic, because right now in a shadowed corner of a club, he's pressed so close to someone that he can feel the bass line of this song reverberate through the other man's entire body, and he hasn't come up for air in about five minutes.

 

The man's name is Kouta. They met an hour and a half ago at the bar, when Ken went up to fetch drinks for Daisuke, Mitzuki, and himself. Kouta works at a book shop and loves old Russian literature. He's also an excellent kisser.

 

Life at the Ichijouji-Motomiya apartment is a series of compromises, which means that Daisuke has first dibs on the apartment tonight, since it's Mitzuki's birthday. Separate bedrooms means there's no real problem with both of them bringing guests home at once, but Mitzuki gets awkward about running into Ken's friends in the bathroom in the morning. Daisuke's never cared, even if he can only remember their names about one time in ten, but Ken can respect Mitzuki's feelings on the matter.

 

Ken slides his mouth away from Kouta's lips to kiss along his jaw line towards his ear. This would be shameful in public, but the lights are low and the corner is hidden, and it's not the worst anyone is doing here tonight. It's not Ken's everyday scene--usually he prefers somewhere a little more suited to conversation, usually he takes someone home before they fall into bed together--but the heat and the thump of the techno beat are rather freeing.

 

"Where do you live?" Ken whispers into Kouta's ear. The other man moans a little at the brush of warm moist air. Ken can feel his heartbeat.

 

"A-above the bookstore," Kouta stammers. Ken nods a little and pulls back.

 

"Do you want to go someplace quieter to talk?" he asks. "Your thoughts on Chekov were really quite fascinating."

 

Even in the dim light of the club, Kouta looks startled. People always get confused when Ken uses Chekov as a pick-up line.

 

 

 

 

After all the time and adventure they'd spent together, perhaps Ken and Miyako should have started dating sooner, but Ken knows enough by now not to think that it would have ended any better.

 

Miyako had dates with all sorts of boys up through high school. Ken spent most of his time just re-learning how to talk to people he didn't know without blushing and stammering. He'd been good at it once, in the days he'd thought he was better than everyone he deigned to speak to; conversations, he remembered dimly, were easy when you only talked about yourself and couldn't care less what the other person had to say on the subject.

 

The world looked different with the digimon there, bringing out a little bit of light in every heart. Suddenly nobody was really lonely, everybody on earth had a friend. Everywhere Ken looked, he could see tiny acts of kindness, tiny expressions of joy and wonder. He could watch in awe and fascination, but never seem to touch.

 

The other Chosen Children were less inclined to put up with Ken's solitude than he might have liked, and to this day he's still not sure if he should give Miyako more credit for helping to break him of it. Daisuke, of course--Daisuke grabbed him by the hand and dragged him this way across Tokyo and that, bringing him to parties, to soccer games, to Takeru's basketball games, to Iori's kendo matches, to concerts played by Yamato's band. He had no choice but to speak to people, regularly and often. When you're best friends with Motomiya Daisuke, shy is not an option.

 

A few questions, Ken learned for the very first time, could get almost anyone to start talking about themselves, the things they loved, the things they dreamed. A few questions could put all of that wonderful joy on display. It was enough to just sit there and listen, Wormmon pressed warm and close to his ankle, just to see all the tiny sparks of good in humanity all around him.

 

Miyako, after Daisuke, was one of the first people who ever pressed him to answer questions back.

 

Miyako bullied her way in one day at a Chosen Children Christmas party, five years after the first one had sparked a tradition. She was talking about computers while he argued politely, the long-term benefits and drawbacks to regular overclocking. He'd just finished making a point, less diffidently than he usually would because she was wrong and anyway, he could trust himself to be a little more forceful around Miyako. Instead of arguing back, she looked at him with a funny sort of expression on her face, then lunged forward and grabbed him by the collar before he could stop her. Then she was hauling him forward and kissing him, right in front of their friends and digimon and half the older Chosen Children. Her lips were a little bit dry and tasted of egg nog.

 

Daisuke's had more True Loves than anyone but Ken can really count. Not including platonic love, Ken's had two; but they couldn't have been True Love even at the time, not really, or he wouldn't have come so close to trying to destroy them when they left.

 

 

 

Mitzuki's birthday went so well, Daisuke thinks in dismay as he stares at her across the dim sum table.

 

"Just tell me what I did, and I'll make it up to you!" he begs, leaning forward and clutching the edge of the table so hard his knuckles turn white. "Whatever it was, I'm sorry!"

 

She shakes her head, unmoved. "If I have to tell you to try to fix it, then you don't really want to," she says.

 

"I do! I do want to. I'm just kinda thick sometimes, everybody knows that, Mitzuki, come on!" For once, Daisuke wishes V-mon were here for a date. Sure he had a habit of blurting out everything Daisuke had ever said about a girlfriend (including that Ruki sang like a goat, and hadn't that been fun to explain), but he was always willing to chime in with evidence about how stupid Daisuke could be. "My heart is in the right place, though, you know that!"

 

"No," says Mitzuki, and stands up, even though half her dim sum is still on the table. "No, Daisuke, that's the problem."

 

He gapes after her as she leaves.

 

 

 

Daisuke studied politics in college. It was a spur of the moment decision. Ken, of course, got into the University of Tokyo without even trying, and it wasn't like Daisuke had anything better to do with the next four years of his life. Plus, Taichi was studying politics--he didn't really have a choice, after the Japanese government fixated on him as the voice of the Chosen Children and the Digital World in Japan and started dragging him out of soccer matches to sit in on secret policy meetings with high-ranking international diplomats. Daisuke wasn't really sure he wanted to run around looking tired and exasperated all the time like Taichi (plus, he'd had to cut his hair), but hey, politics could be fun.

 

It turned out that politics was boring, just like school had always been, but being in college itself was pretty cool. He and Ken got a tiny, one-bedroom apartment right between their two campuses, with a radiator that barely worked and a water heater that made sounds like someone was beating it with a metal pipe. Ken got the top bunk.

 

College was just like high school, only his mom didn't cook him dinner or yell at him to clean his room, and he saw Hikari and Takeru less. The second part was weird, but the older Chosen Children had been scattering for years, and anyway, Koushiro had set up that weekly e-mail newsletter of what everybody was up to. The first part was weirder, except that Ken would sigh at his dirty laundry in a tone almost just like his mom's, until Daisuke loaded it all up in a bag on the train and brought it home for her to wash.

 

By the time he was done with college, Daisuke had decided there was no way he wanted to spend his life helping bureaucrats argue over the fate of the Digital World, but he had a neat part-time job at Old Man Kuwabara's ramen stand. He didn't want to live in a tiny one-bedroom apartment that still smelled like somebody's cat after four years, either, but Ken's first detective job got them the down payment on a bigger place around the corner from a park full of little kids who needed someone to teach them soccer.

 

Daisuke got a lot out of college. He learned how much sake he could drink and remain upright, the fastest way from Ken's campus at Komaba to Hikari's in Kanagawa by rail at rush hour, and how long he could go without making his bed before Ken would give up and do it for him.

 

 

 

 

Ken has a day off. It's rare but not unheard of, and Daisuke has a dim sum date with Mitzuki and is expected down at the soccer field later, so Ken invited Chou over to talk to him about geophysics.

 

Ken met Chou on a case last week, tracking down some embezzled money through a local research university. She's a graduate student with a wicked sense of humor and a Gottsumon she likes to call Jishin-chan. Right now, Ken is listening politely to the Gottsumon talk about volcano formations in the Pacific Ocean. Chou is clever--in her field, it's hard even for him to keep up with her.

 

"That's incredible," Ken murmurs at the appropriate interval. "Could those currents even affect other volcano formations on the same tectonic plate?"

 

"That's what we're studying to find out," Chou says, and places a hand on Ken's thigh. She's lovely as well as fascinating to listen to. Ken's glad to have met her.

 

He's about to move the conversation in one direction or another--either bring up geothermal vents or suggest Chou follow him into the bedroom, or maybe even both--when the apartment door is suddenly flung open to bang against the wall. In stalks Daisuke, head hanging down to his chest, V-mon slumped beside him in identical posture. He slams the door shut behind him again without a word.

 

"Oh, here we go again," Wormmon says. Ken winces; it may not be nice, but it's true. He turns to Chou, who looks as though she doesn't know whether to giggle or flee.

 

"It appears that my roommate's girlfriend has broken up with him," he gets out, apologetically, before Daisuke's fallen onto the couch next to him without even looking up at the girl and digimon sitting on Ken's other side.

 

He drops his head onto Ken's shoulder and sniffles. "She wouldn't even tell me why this time. I don't get it! Am I so obviously terrible they don't even think they have to tell me why?" Daisuke sniffles again. Against his better self, Ken can't stop himself from counting down in his head, three, two...

 

One more sniffle, and then Daisuke is bawling, loud enough for the neighbors to hear, face pressed flat into the rapidly-soaking fabric of Ken's shirt. A heartbeat later, and V-mon joins him. Automatically, Ken raises one hand to stroke his hair even as Wormmon scuttles over to V-mon with a tiny sigh. He turns his most apologetic smile on Chou, who is staring in amazement.

 

"Perhaps another time?" Ken offers. Chou is quick enough on the uptake to stand up and take her Gottsumon by the hand.

 

Daisuke sobs against Ken and Ken refrains from rolling his eyes. Chou lets herself out.

 

 

 

 

With a few notable exceptions, the Chosen Children of Japan haven't been really famous in ten years. Digital world history is taught in schools as a matter of course, and at least 60% of it wrong, which brings Hikari home fuming for two months every year and has already started the wheels in Takeru's head turning. The press, the paparazzi, the constant stream of interviews, however, all more or less dried up by the time the youngest of them reached middle school. Both the children and the middle school were profoundly grateful.

 

The gossip, of course, remained; what wasn't important enough for television could always be squealed about on 2ch. And then there are the other Chosen Children themselves.

 

If it had ever become truly necessary Izumi Koushiro would not have hesitated to give his life for any one of the others he'd fought beside as children, or any of their protégées--if he ever saw them. Between Mimi's life in America, Taichi running himself ragged for the government, Jyou starting medical school, and the thousand and one demands on Koushiro's own time, not to mention everybody else's lives, they hadn't all spoken to each other in months.

 

"All right, Tentomon, enough is enough," he said, sitting down at his computer and stretching his fingers.

 

"What are you going to do?" Tentomon asked, hovering next to his head. The slight hitch in his tone could definitely be worry, but Koushiro chose to consider it a sign of overwhelming faith in his prowess.

 

"We are getting a wiki."

 

He intended it to be simple, almost like a private Facebook just for them, a way to keep up with everyday details of each other's lives they didn't want made public. There was a calendar function to coordinate schedules for meet-ups, a place for each one of them to write about what important things were going on in their lives lately, and even a way to have private discussions, in case somebody wanted to plan a birthday surprise or something--although as web maintainer, of course, Koushiro saw all. This, he thought--this will bring togetherness and friendship back to the group.

 

Six months later, staring at the pages and pages of comments between Sora, Mimi, and Takeru, of all people, discussing whether Miyako was going to break up with her new boyfriend and why Daisuke and Ken weren't dating each other yet, Koushiro let his head thump onto the desk next to his keyboard.

 

"Is this really what girls talk about?" he asked. Tentomon buzzed next to his head consolingly.

 

"Maybe too much knowledge can be a bad thing," Tentomon said.

 

 

 

Daisuke will wail and moan about how terrible his broken heart is for approximately twelve hours straight, with breaks for meals, no matter what time of day he's been dumped. Ken knows this, because Daisuke's been dating Mitzuki for about five months now, and this is the seventeenth time in nine years that he's had to console his friend through a breakup.

 

Ken moves back along the couch and lowers Daisuke's head into his lap, because for the first twelve hours, a little comfort is all he can give. "Wormmon, could you put on some tea, please?"

 

Wormmon gives V-mon another little pat and scuttles towards the kitchen. Ken has to lean over Daisuke's head to reach the little blue digimon, but he picks V-mon up one-handed and deposits him next to Daisuke's side. Man and digimon continue their wailing unabated, but Ken knows from long experience it won't make them feel any better to be apart.

 

"What exactly did she say?" Ken asks, and strokes Daisuke's hair.

 

"She said she hates me and I'm such a terrible boyfriend I can't ever make it up to her and I don't even deserve to know what I even did," Daisuke sobs. Ken settles back against the arm of the couch, and sighs, and readies himself for a very long day spent as damp pillow.

 

 

 

 

Daisuke cries out his prematurely broken heart onto Ken's lap for a while. Ken's a good friend. There's a break in there while Ken eases himself up and lets Daisuke cry on V-mon while Ken fixes dinner in the microwave, and it's pretty hard to eat and cry at the same time, even for Daisuke. After Ken breaks out the ice cream, though, it's back to the couch for more sobbing.

 

It's all for nothing, though, Daisuke realizes as Ken pets his shoulder with one hand and hides a yawn with the other. It's not really over. He just has to talk to Mitzuki and show her how much he really does care, maybe make some kind of grand gesture, and impress her so much she'll have to take him back!

 

He pushes himself upright and wipes dampness away from his eyes. "You know what, you're totally right!" Daisuke says, with at least a quarter of his natural cheer. "It's not really that bad. I just have to call her and talk to her and beg her to take me back--"

 

"Not at two o'clock in the morning, Daisuke," Ken interrupts, deftly intercepting Daisuke's grab for his cell phone. "You'll wake her up. You can call tomorrow."

 

"But what if I just went down there and knocked on her door until she woke up and then she'd know I care about her, and she'd have to let me in and talk to me!" Daisuke likes this idea. Even V-mon looks cheered up by it. Poor guy, he always gets so upset when Daisuke's in a bad mood, even when he knows it's not his fault.

 

"Daisuke, pounding on someone's door in the middle of the night is called harassment," Ken explains patiently. "You can talk to her in the morning, when normal people are awake."

 

"Okay, fine," Daisuke concedes, and sinks back into the couch cushions. He brightens in a moment. "That means we have all night to think up ideas to get her back!"

 

"Yay!" V-mon exclaims. Ken yawns again--he really needs to get more sleep--and Daisuke can't think why it sounds kind of like a groan. Wormmon hops off the sofa and scuttles back towards the kitchen.

 

"I think I'd better put on more tea."

 

 

 

In the beginning, Ken never really asked Daisuke for help with cases. Daisuke just showed up one day, crowding into the office that was barely big enough for Ken and Wormmon to both stand in comfortably, and claimed Ken's spinny desk chair for his own.

 

"So, what're we working on?" Daisuke asked between revolutions. Ken surreptitiously rescued a few papers from the edge of his desk.

 

"Don't you have a job of your own?" Ken asked.

 

"Yeah, but I'm not on shift for six hours and I'm bored," Daisuke whined. V-mon's blue was starting to look distinctly green from all the spinning. Ken edged the wastebasket into range.

 

"You mean you two broke the Playstation again," Ken surmised. Daisuke actually stopped spinning to look offended at that.

 

"Hey, just because I break the Playstation a lot, doesn't mean I need to break it to want to hang out with my best friend." Ken bobbed his head in apology.

 

"I'm sorry, Daisuke, that was unfair. Right now I'm trying to find a little girl whose parents are afraid she's been kidnapped. If I locate her, I would be glad to have backup." It was one thing not to want to spook the potential criminals that someone was on their trail--if Ken had to meet with them face-to-face, he had no qualms about wanting XV-mon or Fladramon on his side.

 

"Great!" Daisuke leapt up, V-mon only scuttling to safety off his lap at the last second, and the chair toppled over backwards. "We'll show those kidnappers! You're like a hero, Ken!"

 

"Ken-chan's always been a hero," Wormmon interrupted loyally. Ken ducked his head at the blush of abashed pride he could feel spreading across his cheeks.

 

"Well, yeah," Daisuke said. Ken looked up and smiled at him. Daisuke beamed back.

 

 

 

 

Ken doesn't go in to work again until the next afternoon, although he knows how much paperwork he has before his next case. Daisuke's breakup routine is only mildly dangerous at two points, and luckily, the stage where he resembles an obsessive, semiviolent stalker never lasts long. Usually if Ken can keep him from any 'grand gestures' until he falls asleep, he'll wake up in the silent moping stage and Ken can leave the apartment safely, so long as he goes home at intervals to remind Daisuke to eat.

 

Ken settles in at his desk, a pile of legal documents and finance reports from the last three missing property cases in front of him, and logs onto the computer. First things first, he opens Daisuke's digi-wiki page and updates his relationship status. Daisuke will never think to cancel his lunch with Hikari and Takeru himself.

 

Across Japan, in New York, and in the Digital World, iPhones and D-Terminals beep with the update. Ken picks up a pen and gets to the quiet order of his paperwork while eleven other people put down what they're doing to see what's up.

 

Five minutes later, Sora picks up her shrilly ringing phone with a sigh. She knows better than to think she'll get any more paperwork done before her next client comes in.

 

"We still can't take this opportunity to try and force them together if they don't want to be," she answers without even checking to see who's calling.

 

There's silence at the other end for just long enough that Sora begins to doubt her powers of prediction, and then, "Not even if we know it would work?" Hikari asks with a sigh. Sora grins. She'd have put her bet on Miyako first, then Hikari, then one of the older Chosen Children trying to figure out what to do about eternally impossible young protégées, but she wasn't far wrong.

 

"We can't know it would work, just like we can't know what's actually best for them. That's why we have to let our friends make their own decisions." Even if Ken sleeps around like a man on a quest and Daisuke dissolves into abject misery and refusal to leave the house every six months. At least they both seem pretty happy the rest of the time. Sora gave up on matchmaking a long, long time ago for good reason.

 

"They're ruining movie night again," Hikari pouts. "And I hate to see Daisuke so miserable."

 

"He'll be better eventually, though. He always is." Everyone gets hurt and gets better eventually. "So Hikari, I haven't gotten to talk to you in ages, and all you want to talk about is Daisuke and Ken? Tell me how your students have been doing!"

 

And Sora settles in behind her desk to run interference. Even if Daisuke and Ken are a couple of idiots who everyone in the world can see would be better off together--you'll never hear her say it.

 

 

 

 

The first time one of the Chosen Children got caught being, well, gay, it was kind of a big deal.

 

Daisuke still wasn't clear on all the details--he'd had to find out from Jun of all people!--but the press had sure had a field day. At sixteen, he didn't really keep up on the love lives of the older Chosen Children. He'd sort of figured that Yamato was dating Sora, since they usually showed up to things together and Jun would mope around and curse Sora's name about twice a week. And he'd figured out that Jun thought Taichi had a crush on Sora, because sometimes when she burst into tears, she'd wail, "Why doesn't she just go off with that goggle-boy?" and Daisuke was pretty sure she didn't mean him.

 

Next thing he knew, though, there were pictures up all over the internet of Taichi and Yamato making out and he had to talk Jun and her Penmon out of going after Taichi with Ice Prism and a kitchen knife. It hadn't calmed down for weeks.

 

"I don't get it, though," Daisuke asked to the ceiling in Ken's room, where he'd run to escape the frothing rampage of the Jun-monster. He bounced the soccer ball against the wall and caught it. "Why would Taichi want to date a guy? I mean, he's totally famous, he saved the Digital World, and his soccer moves are smokin'--he could get any girl he wants."

 

"Hmm. Some men just do," Ken said, which wasn't exactly an explanation. "Do you think there's something wrong with it?"

 

"No, of course not!" Nothing Taichi did could ever be wrong, really. "I just think it's weird." Bounce. Bounce. "Hey, at least now Yamato can't date my sister." Bounce.

 

"A true crisis averted." Bo--Ken snatched the soccer ball away just before it impacted the wall again. "Maybe we should take this out to the park."

 

Daisuke was bolt upright in an instant. "You're on! I'll race you there!"

 

If Taichi had to date a guy, Daisuke figured, at least it was Yamato, who was pretty cool in his own right even if Jun did want to be his girlfriend. He could kick serious digi-butt when he had to, and hey, bearers of the crest of Friendship had to like each other. So that was okay, then.

 

 

 

Daisuke mopes.

 

Mitzuki left a hair brush and some clothes in his bedroom; he finds them when V-mon points out he hasn't changed out of the clothing he got dumped in for three days, and he's starting to smell. Daisuke just sighs and drops his head and goes to stand in the shower.

 

Old man Kuwabara yells at him for missing his shift, then stops halfway through when he realizes Daisuke's just standing there and not yelling back. "That girl broke up with you again, didn't she?" he says, almost understandingly, and then clouts Daisuke across the ears with the broom. "That's no excuse!"

 

"It was the first time," Daisuke says, but instead of shouting it back he mumbles it to his shoes. Old Man Kuwabara makes him mop the whole stall three times, 'to get over a broken heart'.

 

Mitzuki was sweet. She was too smart for Daisuke--most of his girlfriends are too smart for him, and when they figure that out they all go--and too pretty, and too sweet to get rid of him until now. She giggled quietly behind her hand. She liked baby birds. She had a Floramon that liked to ride on her back and would whisper secrets in her ear sometimes. She was lovely and perfect and everything Daisuke has ever wanted in a woman and deserves way better than him and he doesn't care because he wants her back.

 

Daisuke mops the stall a fourth time without complaining, and then stumbles home, and falls face-first on the couch again. He flips his cell phone open and closed a couple of times. He doesn't call.

 

 

 

Ken lets Daisuke have his overdramatics for a week or two every time he gets dumped. First, it's Daisuke; he's an overdramatic person and has been ever since they were eleven years old, when he ran around in a bomber jacket with flames on it shouting at Ken at the top of his lungs and declaring them enemies-'til-death. Daisuke goes into spasms over the latest video game releases and the endings to movies and getting the last dumpling. He wouldn't be Ken's friend if he weren't prone to ridiculously over-the-top displays of emotion. Part of that is the guarantee that he'll bounce back just fine; he'll have a new girlfriend within the month, says the cycle, and Ken believes it.

 

Second, Ken himself lived in a quiet gray school uniform from elementary school right up through high school graduation, and rarely raised his voice--except that while Daisuke was running around in goggles and that ridiculous bomber jacket, Ken was striding around in a golden visor and a long black cape, claiming dominion over all that fell at his feet. Ken is not usually prone to dramatics, but when he does them, he surpasses all of Daisuke's wildest fits. When it comes to being broken up with, he has no grounds to tell Daisuke he's overreacting.

 

After Ken broke up with Miyako, he let himself into his apartment, greeted his mother politely where she stood in the kitchen, and closed himself into his bedroom with an economy of noise and movement. Hey lay unmoving on top of the covers on his bed, still in his school uniform, staring up at the ceiling in a daze that floated in and out of sleep. Wormmon poked at him worriedly a few times, he remembers now, and his mother came in and out to try and wake him for dinner, but at the time he didn't notice.

 

His mother called him in sick at school the next day as Ken stared unseeing at the smudges Daisuke's soccer ball had left over the years on the white paint, trying to fathom just what had gone wrong. She saw him, he thought. She knew him. He'd felt her heart beat pressed right up against his chest so many times. She looked at him and saw right through him, all the parts that were more than just Ichijouji Ken, and he knew all the last scraps and shadows in Inoue Miyako. That sort of bond meant forever. That sort of bond promised it. And now she didn't need him any more.

 

He lay there for two days, turning that thought backwards and forth in his mind, trying to work out the sense. She didn't need him any more. She didn't need him. Daisuke came by, he knows. Miyako didn't. Wormmon clung loyally and worriedly to his side for two days, as Ken pondered this feeling, this loss, this despair--oh. So this is what heartbreak feels like. This betrayal.

 

The anger built slowly, seeping in from the darkened corners of his mind that Miyako had always known were there and never trusted. She'd been right not to trust, of course. She shouldn't have claimed to want all of him if she was only going to pull away like this. She shouldn't have promised.

 

"Ken-chan?" Wormmon asked, as Ken sat up and let himself down from his bunk bed. Ken patted his head without answering.

 

Daisuke showed up an hour and a half later, panting like he'd run all the way from the train. Ken sat at his computer, typing rapidly, an empty bowl of rice sitting next to his keyboard and Wormmon fidgeting nervously next to his ankle.

 

"Ken, you're up! That's great! You're--what are you working on?" Daisuke asked. Ken calmly kept typing.

 

"It's best if you don't know," he said. "Don't worry, you'll be kept safe." It was starting to come back to him now, the talents he'd been pushing down on for the past seven years.

 

"Yeah...hey, Ken? What's it say on all those pages under the stupid bird thing?" Ken hesitated before answering, though he surely just seemed engrossed in the code scrolling across his screen. Daisuke would find out sooner or later, particularly if Ken was going to find a way to keep him out of the line of fire. Couldn't be helped.

 

"It's an eagle," Ken said calmly. "It's the symbol for the US government. They stockpile a great number of nuclear missiles that the Japanese government has no access to."

 

"Wait, what?" Daisuke sat upright so fast the rolling chair shot out from under him and landed him flat on Ken's floor. "What do you want with nuclear missiles?"

 

"What else? I intend to start a war." Ken didn't bother to move his head or stop typing. Transporting the missiles through to the Digital World would be the tricky part, unless he could simply analyze their blueprints well enough to reproduce a functional nuclear warhead purely through digital code. Even an Ultimate couldn't do much against a fifteen-megaton explosion.

 

Perhaps Miyako would find herself needing him again after all, once he owned everything she held dear. No matter what, she certainly wouldn't pretend not to be afraid of him any longer.

 

 

 

Ken's week is practically typical, barring the fact that he's much less likely to come home to the sound of suspicious crashes and clatters. Moping-stage Daisuke, he's learned, is best handled with regular application of cuddles on the couch and a very judicious use of disturbingly gory action movies. Ken knows better than to push too much, though; if Moping Daisuke finds himself accidentally cheered up before he's ready to move on to the next stage of the breakup process, he'll make a point of sulking extra hard for the next several hours just to make up for it.

 

Since nothing Ken does is going to make a difference one way or another until Daisuke's ready for it, Ken resolves to have a very nearly pleasant week, and promptly hunts down a small fortune in stolen jewelry, stops a blackmailer in his tracks, and finishes writing the next six months' budget.

 

Ken also has tea with a very grateful ex-blackmail victim's daughter, and dinner with a very confused jeweler. He doesn't sleep with either of them, since the girl is much too traditional not to be hurt by sex without commitments and the jeweler is obviously far too self-defined by his straightness, but they're very pleasant afternoons nonetheless. Ken learns quite a lot about calligraphy and quite a lot about lapidary. Then he goes home and pets Daisuke's hair for a while.

 

On Thursday, he has lunch with Iori near the Hitotsubashi University law school. Iori has class in an hour, but they've both striven not to miss their biweekly lunch ever since Iori decided to follow Ken's path and study the law. Iori will make a far better lawyer than Ken ever would have, Ken is sure. He's much firmer when it matters, and only vindictive within reason.

 

"How's Daisuke?" Iori asks, unwrapping his lunch with careful precision. Ken sighs.

 

"I hate to see him like this," he admits to his own bento. "He'll be fine in a week, though, ready to embark on some crazy scheme just like always. You know Daisuke."

 

"We know Daisuke," Iori agrees. "He's lucky to have you there with him."

 

"Yes, well." After all this time, at a compliment like that Ken still feels the need to blush. "How is your grandfather?" he asks, grateful for the subject change, and grateful for reasons he couldn't quite say that Iori goes along with it without question.

 

 

 

Ken has and hasn't changed in a thousand different ways since Daisuke's known him. Daisuke's pointed it out, more than once, in high school, and in college, and beyond. Ken went from evil emperor to shy, guilt-ridden moody teenager, to the high school kid who was somehow friends with everyone, right down to the school cleaning ladies, to the super-philosophical college student who slept with everyone and didn't talk to most of them twice.

 

"People do change, Daisuke. We're just a sum of our experiences, after all," Ken said the first time Daisuke brought it up. They were fifteen, at a school fair, and Daisuke caught Ken chatting almost comfortably with some of his classmates he didn't think Ken even knew. But all that proves is that, experiences or not, Ken is still Ken on the inside and has been for as long as Daisuke's known him, because Ken also said almost the exact same thing last month.

 

Daisuke hasn't changed in fifteen years except to get taller, and cooler, and better at soccer. He's never seen why he should have to. The past, for the most part, was pretty cool, and a lot like the present.

 

Daisuke's life has his parents and Jun, just like it always has. It has Hikari and Takeru, Miyako and Iori, Taichi and Yamato, and he'll be hanging out with them until the day they die whether they like it or not.. Daisuke's life has V-mon and Wormmon and Ken, every single day for the past fourteen years. Daisuke's life revolves around the things that don't change, because even if Iori got tall he's still way too serious, and even if Jun moved to Kyoto she's still annoying, and even if Ken laughs now and is really good at getting other people to open up to him, he still really only opens up back to a couple of people other than Daisuke.

 

Daisuke's life has The Girl, too. Her name changes a lot, but she's pretty much always the same. She's always poised and self-contained, and it's always a rush every time he makes her smile. She always talks to digimon like they're people, instead of getting awkward or ignoring them or talking down to them like so many people did after digimon came to the real world. She's always sort of delicate, at least to look at, but never actually helpless inside.

 

The Girl is the love of Daisuke's life, and she's the one thing that makes him wish he could change, because The Girl always leaves him in the end, and maybe if he knew how to learn from it, sooner or later he'd be able to make her stay.

 

 

 

 

Daisuke goes to work an hour early, because he's starting to get so, so bored of his apartment.

 

"Finally," Old Man Kuwabara snorts. "You still owe four hours from that shift you missed being a sad sack of pathetic misery last week."

 

"Must have been from looking at your face all day long," Daisuke shoots back, and the old man only hits the backs of his heels with the broom because he's already walking off to grab the mop.

 

Daisuke spends most of the day mopping floors and wiping out bowls and stirring ramen so furiously he accidentally cracks three dishes. Old Man Kuwabara shouts at him sixteen times.

 

He's kind of angry at Mitzuki, and kind of angry at himself, and kind of angry at how he's tripped over V-mon three times already but V-mon just looks at him and wibbles when he shouts, so Daisuke has to apologize and then mostly he's just angry at himself again. It's not like he didn't try everything he knew how to do to keep her happy, so why does he have to be so stupid that this keeps happening?

 

Clearly it's time for a change. Clearly he's got to just do something completely different with his life, because this isn't working. Clearly he's never going to find the Girl Of His Dreams who's actually willing to put up with him, so he might as well just do something else in the mean time. Also, he's not like Ken, but he still misses getting laid, damnit.

 

Maybe he should be like Ken. It always seems to work for him. Daisuke frowns, and ponders, and trips over Old Man Kuwabara's broom and breaks another bowl.

 

When Daisuke lets himself into the apartment again several hours later, there's a purposeful energy to his steps that hasn't been there in over a week, and Ken is vacuuming again.

 

"You're right!" Daisuke exclaims, and Ken looks up as he shuts the vacuum off. "I totally suck as a boyfriend, so what I really need to do is have a whole bunch of no-strings-attached sex with people who are just friends, because they put up with me anyway!"

 

"Daisuke," Ken says, "You've tried that after at least four out of your last seven breakups. It always ends badly."

 

"Well yeah, but that's because I keep trying to pick up total strangers!" Daisuke points out. He can't believe he never thought of this before. "It's totally obvious, I just need to be having sex with you."

 

Ken drops the vacuum.