Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ Never Let Me Down Again ❯ Chapter 3

NEVER LET ME DOWN AGAIN--Part 3

kaeru_hime@hotmail.com

 

 

"Oh, he's finally got a new girlfriend," old man Kuwabara says, startling Daisuke out of his soup-stirring daydream. Daisuke only has a moment's notice before the broom handle clonks down on the back of his skull. "No girlfriends at work!" And then he shuffles off to actually tend to some customers for once, before Daisuke can shout back at him. Which he would, if he could stop being so confused.

 

"But I don't have a new girlfriend," Daisuke says in confusion, then looks down at the digimon staring innocently into space beside him. "V-mon? Why does he think I have a new girlfriend?"

 

"Don't look at me, I didn't say anything!" V-mon shrugs. "How should I know? Maybe he just noticed you being happy all the time."

 

"What's there to notice? I'm a happy guy!" Life is good! Today's Friday, which means soccer with the kids tomorrow morning, and tonight's sushi-even-if-he-has-to-bring-it-to-Ken's-office night. Friday's always sushi-even-if-he-has-to-bring-it-to-Ken's-office night when Daisuke doesn't have a girlfriend to insist on making it a date night. It's a pretty cool tradition. And hey, maybe Ken'll want to send V-mon and Wormmon out for snacks and have sex over his desk when Daisuke stops by. "What's not to be happy about?"

 

"You were real sad there for a while about Mitzuki," V-mon points out. Daisuke thinks about it, and shrugs.

 

"Yeah, but you gotta move on, y'know? Anyway, Ken cheered me up! Which was a great plan, if I do say so myself." Daisuke lets himself bask in the glow of his own genius for a minute. When he's through basking, he glances down. V-mon's watching him, unimpressed.

 

"So now that you're happy, are you gonna get another girlfriend?" V-mon asks. Daisuke blinks.

 

"Well, I don't know. I mean yeah, sure, if I meet the right girl, I guess..." It would mean no sushi-even-if-he-has-to-bring-it-to-Ken's-office Friday nights again. And just for a minute, Daisuke doesn't know why he'd want to commit to spending every Friday night for the next six months having dinner and sex with some girl who's just going to leave him in the end when he could spend them having dinner and sex with Ken...

 

Two or three hundred pieces slide into place in Daisuke's head. He drops the spoon in the soup.

 

"Um, Daisuke, you might want to--" V-mon starts, but cuts off as Daisuke grabs him around the middle with one hand, tearing off his apron with the other.

 

"Sorry Kuwabara-san gotta go gotta get a boyfriend I'll make it up on Monday promise!" he shouts as he tears out of the stall, nothing but a blur of red and blue. The customers gape. Old man Kuwabara just aims a swat after him with the end of his broom, and goes back to sweeping.

 

 

 

 

Daisuke's always known he'd find The One, from before he was old enough to even know what The One really meant. Maybe it was Jun's influence, always running after boys like they were the most important thing in the world, or maybe some part of him was waiting for V-mon for so long that he got some wires crossed. Maybe a lot of things, look, Daisuke doesn't know why. Ken's the one who's always trying to figure out why things are the way they are. Daisuke just knows it's true. He's been looking for his True Love, his soul mate, for as long as he can remember, he just had a few things wrong.

 

He'd say he was looking for Ken this whole time, only Ken's been standing right next to him and Ken hasn't been looking at all. That's not Ken's fault, though, not really. Ken doesn't believe in true love.

 

"How can you not, though?" Daisuke asked, bouncing his soccer ball thoughtfully against the ceiling. Sure he had his own bunk just below, but Ken's had more space to bounce the soccer ball, and he hadn't managed to get a mark on this ceiling to match the one in Ken's bedroom at his parents' place yet. "I know that dude was a jerk, but that just means one dude was a jerk. That means he wasn't your true love. That doesn't mean you shouldn't still look for the person who is."

 

"It's a question of destiny, I suppose," Ken's most contemplative voice drifted up from the bunk below. "People change. I refuse to believe that I couldn't have been a completely different person if my life had gone differently. I choose to assume that I have the free will to make that choice, that who I'll be in the future might be wildly different, depending on what I do or what happens to me now. It would be impossible to expect there to be one person out in the world somewhere who's meant for me, if that would require them to be perfectly happy with anyone I might be or become."

 

Daisuke followed more than half of that, which was a step up; college had to be good for him, or maybe it was just living with Ken for a year that was doing it. "So you're saying you can't fall for anyone now 'cause you'll change? That's lame, Ken."

 

"That's not what I meant, but perhaps you're right. Sometimes people grow apart. Just look at you and Hanako." Daisuke snorted and threw the soccer ball a little harder at the ceiling. "Sometimes people grow together, too. We can't know that the person we're with will love us, whoever we become, just that there's a chance they might love the person we do become."

 

Ken was wrong, Daisuke thought, but even though they'd argued back and forth for another half hour he hadn't come close to being able to articulate why. He knows now, though. He knows because he's seen Ken grow and seen Ken change in so many ways in the past fourteen years, and he's seen the shining core of Ken-ness, the thing that kept Wormmon by his side even when he was the digimon Kaiser, the thing that, no matter how much he changes, he'll never lose. Daisuke couldn't stop loving that if his life depended on it. He can't imagine even trying to.

 

Now all he's got to do is convince Ken.

 

 

 

 

 

Ken is at home. For once, in this rare moment where he's not on the job, or entertaining guests and making acquaintances, or cleaning up Daisuke's mess, he's relaxing alone with his partner. It's a nice, quiet moment.

 

"Three," rolls Wormmon, and shuffles the little thimble three spaces down the board.

 

"Sorry, Wormmon, that sends you directly to jail," Ken says. Wormmon can't actually reach the reach the corner of the board with the Jail square on it, so Ken reaches across and moves the thimble for him.

 

"Oh, no." Wormmon's antennae twitch. "I barely have enough money to pay bail."

 

"You never know, I could land on your hotel at Ikebukuro next roll," Ken reassures him. It would take a two. Ken can do enough slight of hand to 'accidentally' roll a two. Wormmon would be able to tell, though, so Ken rolls and lets the die fall as it may.

 

Behind him, the door to the apartment opens, and then closes again. Daisuke's the only other person Ken knows of with a key, but Ken's never heard him enter the apartment with so little banging. Ken twists his head around and spots his roommate, still lurking in the doorway, with a somewhat sheepish expression on his face. Whatever this is, it can't be good.

 

"Hey, uh, Ken?" Daisuke asks, rubbing at the back of his neck in a way Ken's come to know means he's more nervous than embarrassed. "Can I talk to you for a sec?"

 

"Of course." Ken glances back at Wormmon, who actually makes a little shooing motion with his forelegs. Ken pats him on the head before he levers himself up off the carpet to face Daisuke straight on.

 

V-mon, who must know what this is about, scampers; Daisuke doesn't move, so Ken goes to him. There are odder places for serious conversation than the vestibule, Ken's shirt dotted with pieces of carpet fluff, Daisuke's shoes still on. "Whatever it is, you can talk to me."

 

"It's about...you know, everything we've been doing," Daisuke says, and Ken thinks, Ah, with some bittersweet amount of satisfaction. Daisuke's found another girl, then, finally, and wants to call it off. Ken only wishes Daisuke trusted him enough not to be so awkward over it.

 

"It's all right, Daisuke, I understand," Ken says, but Daisuke's shaking his head before Ken even gets the sentence out, so perhaps this is more complicated than he first thought.

 

"No, Ken, you don't understand, because you don't know what I'm gonna say. And this is going to be hard for you to hear, and you're not going to want to listen to me on this, I know that, but I also know for a fact that you should, because I know what I'm talking about here, okay?" Daisuke doesn't look like he expects much more than a brief nod in the affirmative, which is good, because the sinking feeling in Ken's stomach began around Daisuke's second sentence and won't let him interrupt just yet.

 

"Ken, I...I'm in love with you," Daisuke says, and the bottom drops out on Ken's sinking gut.

 

 

 

 

"You should probably go," says Ken, and what kind of response is that to a declaration of love? So Daisuke tries again.

 

"Ken, didn't you hear me, I'm in love with you," he repeats, and Ken winces.

 

"I'm sorry," says Ken, which is almost as bad as 'you should go', if not worse. "I really am. This is probably my fault, I never should have let things get this far."

 

"What do you mean, your fault?" Daisuke challenges, and all right, he's totally got arguments for this. "The way I see it, this is totally a good thing."

 

"Of course it's not, Daisuke, how could it be?" Ken snaps--actually snaps! Daisuke can't help himself, he takes a half-step backward, ending up against the door. Ken winces again, and turns away.

 

"You're fixating on me as a source of affection to replace the girl you actually want to date because you think I'm stable and reliable, and because we foolishly indulged in that...sexual experiment. You're just confused, because you know you care about me and I'm the only person you've slept with in two months." Which are all things Daisuke already expected Ken to say, only in with bigger words. Daisuke just didn't expect it to hurt so much.

 

"Ken, I've been in love before, and I can tell you, I know what I feel, and what I feel now is about a thousand times stronger than that. It's you, it's totally you, and it should have been you this whole time." Daisuke steps forward again, reaching out with one hand to try and grab Ken's arm, to make him meet his eyes.

 

Ken looks up, but jerks his arm away. Daisuke stops moving. Ken's eyes are cold.

 

"Then I really am sorry, but I don't think we can be around each other for a while," he says. His voice is calm, but his hands, Daisuke notices, his hands are trembling. Or maybe that's just Daisuke's eyes because he's pretty sure his whole body is shaking right now. "I can't...I don't return your affections, Daisuke, and I'm very sorry, but I never will. I never meant to give you cause to think otherwise."

 

Daisuke thinks he must know what Spiking Finish feels like, now, right to the heart. He has arguments, he spent the entire run home going through his arguments, but what the hell can he actually even say to that? There's nothing. There's just nothing.

 

"Okay," Daisuke hears himself say, although he's so numb he can't really feel himself talk. "If that's what you really want. If you want me to go, I'll go. Hey, V-mon! Come on, we're going to go!" His voice cracks in the middle of the last sentence. Damnit, Motomiya, hold it together. He's still got his shoes on. "We'll just go for a while."

 

"Daisuke..." Ken looks lost. Daisuke wonders how bad he could feel right now. "At least take a bag."

 

"No, I'm cool. We're good. Probably not going to sleep any time soon anyway." And now, now Ken steps forward but it's too late, Daisuke needs to be out of this apartment, and there's V-mon scuttling out from his bedroom, and he's groping behind himself for the door handle and there, there it is. Daisuke throws the door open and doesn't bother to shut it behind himself. He runs.

 

 

 

 

Inoue Miyako is not what most mothers would call a 'nice girl' for their sons to date. She tried to be, once, when she was younger and thought things like that really mattered, but making Ichijouji-san like her didn't really help her with Ken and she's had more important things on her mind since then.

 

Miyako laughs too loud and too publicly, and drinks too often and with too much capacity to hold her liquor. She's too smart, which wouldn't be a problem if she weren't so pushy with it, and she works too much.

 

Miyako is everything she ever wanted to be as a child except for graceful and glamorous and sweet. Instead she's strong and independent and well-loved by her friends and employees/coworkers. Well...feared by her employees/coworkers, anyway, but they love her under that, too.

 

It didn't take as much as she'd expected, getting over Ken, even if she still isn't quite sure what went wrong. Somebody pulled back, but she doesn't really know if it was her or him. It hardly matters now anyway. Ken left her, and she buried her face in Hawkmon's feathers and cried.

 

The next day, she went to class, then came home, and tried to do her homework, and cried. The day after that, she went to class, and did a little bit of her homework, and cried. The day after that she went to a party and stood in a corner feeling lonely and awkward, and went home, and sniffled a little, and then caught up on the previous day's homework. After that was all computer programs and no crying, just a little misty sniffling sometimes when she thought about Ken's eyes, or his hands, or how he'd solve this system of infinitely recursive equations.

 

That's what killed Inoue Miyako's love life, she decided a long time ago. She realized it like an epiphany as she toasted Holsmon Labs' very first product release with cans of cheap beer over cold takeout at three in the morning, grinning wildly and as proud of herself as of anything she'd ever done. She didn't love Ken, not any more, but she'd never met another guy who would understand this. She wondered if there was another guy on earth who could actually be sweet enough to make her tremble, and who knew the difference between a prototype-based programming language and a basic dataflow paradigm. What kind of guy wouldn't mind her staying in the office until dawn with Noboru and Ren? And not just because Noboru and Ren were terrified of her and hadn't washed in three days, but because he understood that she had to finish coding the specs on the GUI before she could think about stopping.

 

Ken would have gotten it, because it was important to her. Ken wanted her to be herself. But she didn't love him and maybe hadn't in a long time, and he'd left her because being honest apart was better than lying together, and maybe she'd be able to forgive him for it if it seemed like any guy she's met since could ever measure up.

 

She'd feel better about Ken not loving her either if he'd ever shown signs of wanting anyone more, because in the face of true love she wouldn't feel so much like she's the one who didn't quite measure up. Unfortunately, the only person Miyako's ever seen Ken care about more than her is Daisuke, and Sora's been telling her to leave them to themselves for a long, long time.

 

 

 

 

Ken finds himself closing the apartment door, mechanically, on reflex, and stares at his hand. There's no way he said what he thinks he just said. There's no way Daisuke made him.

 

The sound of the door shutting against its jamb is loud, too loud in the silence of the apartment. Ken was in the middle of something. He has...a life, besides Daisuke. He has other interests, other...other loves. There are things that he's responsible for. It can't all revolve around Daisuke all the time. It can't. He doesn't know why Daisuke can't just see that.

 

He'd been doing something. Ken turns, almost frantically, and relaxes as he spots the Monopoly board. Relaxes just a little, just enough to tell himself he has done. Wormmon is still sitting on the carpet, trying to shrink down behind his own antennae. Of course. It was Ken's turn.

 

Or had Ken had his turn? Or had he rolled and not moved, Ken can't...can't think, can't remember. He lets himself fall to the carpet next to the game board, only careful to avoid the piles of fake yen and the corner of the no-longer-quite-new coffee table, scuffed from just a few months of drinks without coasters and one leg already going wobbly. Daisuke always--

 

Daisuke always damages the coffee table. It's a truth. There's no fear in a true fact. There's no fear in Ken at all. He's just...he's just trying to play a game with Wormmon, that's all.

 

Wormmon isn't staying on his side of the board, though, he's scuttling around to cling to Ken's side, antennae wobbling. "Ken-chan," he says, and squeezes tighter. Wormmon has ten legs, he always gives the best hugs.

 

'We should get back to playing,' Ken means to say. Instead he hears his own voice, gone too high and quavery.

 

"That really just happened." It shouldn't sound like a question.

 

"Oh, Ken-chan." A moment later and Ken has no choice but to gather Wormmon into his arms, let the little digimon snuggle up close to his chest. "What have you done?"

 

"What I had to," Ken says, and he's not the one heartbroken, there's no reason for his voice to tremble. "I can't...I didn't mean to, I never meant to lead him on."

 

"I don't think that's the problem," Wormmon says, but he kindly refrains from any more words of too-perceptive wisdom that Ken has no desire to hear. He lets Ken hold him instead, saying nothing at all, until, however long later, Ken picks up the dice.

 

"My turn, wasn't it?" Ken asks, and Wormmon doesn't argue.

 

 

 

 

When Daisuke was thirteen, and digimon had been in the real world for just a little more than a year, and Jun and her Chicchichmon had proven that a digimon's voice could shatter glass even better than a human's when they were shrieking at the same time, he moved in with Ken.

 

Not officially or for real or anything. Daisuke just kinda showed up one day after school, and when Ken's mom asked him if he wanted to stay for dinner he said yes, and when Ken asked a few hours later if he intended to stay over, he said yes to that, too. And that sounds like a cute childhood story, except 'one day' was really more like 'four days out of every seven', with a chance of more on weekends. It was a bit of a commute, living in Tamachi and going to Odaiba Junior High, but it was better than leaving Ken alone to wallow or going home to share an apartment with Jun.

 

Besides, Ken's mom was a pretty good cook, plus she'd started doing some of Daisuke's laundry when it got mixed in with Ken's on accident. And this way his parents didn't have to worry about breaking up shouting matches about how Chibimon could totally just digivolve to XV-mon and cream everybody if Jun didn't start being nice to him. If their family had been loud with only four people, with four people and four digimon it was crazy.

 

Ken quietly made space for Daisuke in his room and his life. There was a corner of Ken's room that was officially designated 'Daisuke's Stuff' right up until they packed it up and moved it into their first apartment.

 

Daisuke always figured that was how it was supposed to be, his stuff and Ken's stuff getting jumbled in together into one big pile of their stuff, but maybe that's not what was really going on at all. Maybe it was just Daisuke shoving his way in and Ken making room. Ken has everything he could ever need and everybody he could ever want in life, and he doesn't let anybody in except for Daisuke, and he only does that because Daisuke makes him, whether he wants it or not.

 

Ken is always together and self-possessed. He's spent fourteen years treating every digimon Daisuke's seen him meet with the courtesy and above all, the heartfelt respect of a man who still regrets a personal wrong, even if he's not trying to make up for it any more. He's built like a whip, lean with thin wrists and the ability to snap off a judo kick that'll send you across the room if he ever really has to. Ken's Ken, which means he's impossibly smart, that he has a wry streak of sarcasm that he'll only share with a few, that secretly he loves all the Final Fantasy games and he'll always play Daisuke at Street Fighter even though it's the only thing where Daisuke's ever kicked his ass. Ken's Ken, which means he's better than Daisuke ever could have asked for, on top of being everything Daisuke's ever wanted for longer than Daisuke's ever known him.

 

Daisuke always shoots too high. That's another thing Ken has in common with all of his girlfriends. They all end up thinking they're better than him. In Ken's case, of course, he's right.

 

 

 

"We must be getting old," Takeru says as he carries the bowl of popcorn over to the couch. "A Friday night alone, and we're going to spend it watching old horror movies and going to bed early."

 

"We could call up your brother and your friends and make it a boys' night?" Patamon perches on the edge of the bowl. Without Tailmon here to laugh at him, Takeru knows he's going to be swimming in it within half an hour. Ah, the happening bachelor lifestyle.

 

"I'm not sure any of our friends are any better," Takeru laughs. "I'm sure Taichi's working, even if my brother's home, and probably Koushiro too, if I know him. And Jyou. And Iori. And maybe Ken. And--"

 

"Man, our friends are a bunch of losers," Patamon says, and tumbles face-forward into the bowl.

 

"Not us, though, of course," Takeru teases. Patamon surfaces, shaking popcorn every which way off his wings and head.

 

"Nope! Super-cool."

 

This is the life, Takeru figures, and slips in Uzumaki. Although he'd probably get pretty sick of it if Hikari wasn't back from Kyoto by Monday.

 

Then the knock comes.

 

It sounds like a knock of doom. It bangs three times on the door, so loud that Patamon jumps and upends the popcorn bowl and Takeru starts wondering frantically if any Ogremon could possibly have evolved or escaped out in the real world yet.

 

"Takeru..." Patamon says as Takeru gets up from the couch and hesitantly approaches the front door. Takeru glances over his shoulder.

 

"It's probably nothing," he says. "Just...be ready to digivolve."

 

Whoever it is knocks again. Takeru does not hesitate. He is a grown man, in his own apartment, where he lives with his wife, who is thankfully in Kyoto and not here to show him up by being way more brave or laughing at him for watching horror movies with all the lights turned off. When he was a kid he stood face to face with Pinnochimon and Piemon. So Takeru totally does not hesitate in completely spiral-induced paranoia before he unlocks and opens the door.

 

Daisuke shoves in before Takeru even gets the door halfway open. Takeru blinks after him, but Daisuke doesn't even say anything, just flings himself down on the couch with enough force to scatter the remaining popcorn kernels halfway across the room.

 

"Uhhhh..." Takeru and Patamon exchange looks. Takeru waits for V-mon to slump through the door, looking about as worn out as Takeru's ever seen him, before he shuts and locks it again. "Come on in, Daisuke. Hikari's out of town chaperoning a school trip, she won't be back 'til Monday."

 

"I don't care." Daisuke's voice is too muffled by the couch cushion for Takeru to make out tone or, really, much of the words. He thinks it's 'I don't care', anyway. "I could just die here before she gets back and nobody would notice."

 

"I'm...pretty sure we'd notice," Takeru feels compelled to point out. Both the dead Daisuke and, well, his couch.

 

"Ken wouldn't," Daisuke says, which is when Takeru's terrible paranoid feeling from earlier begins to come back. Daisuke lifts his head just enough for Takeru to hear the quaver in his voice now, and whatever is going on here, it just had to happen while Hikari was out of town. "Ken wouldn't care if I fell under a bus."

 

Takeru has one bare instant to think of something, to do anything, anything at all to stave off what he suddenly knows is coming next. He spends it frozen in place, staring, as Daisuke bursts into tears.

 

 

 

 

As a rule, Ken doesn't sleep much. It's a habit he trained himself into in his Kaiser days, when stopping to sleep interrupted valuable inventing, torturing, and battle-planning time. Then, too, the old base had gotten creepy at night. Actually, Ken can admit now that the cold, clean lines of the base, all artificial light and dark colors and endless, echoing hallways, were creepy no matter the time of day, certainly enough to make a twenty-five-year-old man shiver just at the memory. As an eleven-year-old boy he'd been able to ignore it, at least until he'd lain down in the dark of his room with nothing to listen to but the noise of phantom footsteps in the halls, the hiss of water and strange gases rushing through the pipes, the low grinding drone of faraway machinery carried through the walls.

 

So Ken didn't go to bed. He trained himself into deliberate insomnia, the dark spore absorbing most of the effects of sleep deprivation before he felt them. Work filled his nights instead--long hours spent moving and rearranging squares on endless battle maps, working out which territory to take next and how to do it, how to goad the Chosen Children into attacking just where he wanted and protect the territories he needed most, how to crush his enemies in body as well as in spirit. And if he ever really needed to escape the oppressiveness walls of his own fortress, the digimon Kaiser only needed call a surprise midnight raid. No one, not even Wormmon, would dare question his motives for that.

 

When Ken rejected the Dark Spore and lost its gifts, with the brilliance and swiftness and strength went the ability to function on only three or four hours of sleep. The habit, though, remained. Ken does not like to sleep. He is rarely comfortable in a bed, unless he's being suitably distracted there. On a bad week at work, it inevitably takes Wormmon and Daisuke exchanging conspiratorial e-mails behind his back before they manage to force him down for more than three hours slumped across his desk.

 

Having company helps. Wormmon, Wormmon is essential--no matter where Ken is sleeping or with whom, he must be able to reach out and at least let his fingers rest against Wormmon's side, feel his carapace move slightly with each breath, remind himself that, after everything, Wormmon is alive and with him and has been for a long, long time. Even having another person in the room helps put old demons to bed and soothe Ken towards sleep. Ken doesn't know if Daisuke realizes he learned to sleep again in elementary school to the tune of Daisuke's off-key snores blocking out all other night noises. Ken wondered, once or twice in high school, if Daisuke never seemed to go home precisely because he somehow knew how much easier his presence made it.

 

Forcing himself into a semiregular sleep schedule, like doing his own laundry and learning to admit defeat, was part of Ken's controlled effort at becoming a responsible adult. He is, for the most part, quite good at it, and when the nights grow too long a cup of tea more than suffices in place of a nocturnal Airdramon attack. It's only under stress that he slips back, all unthinking, into the habits of childhood and works himself through the night rather than risk trapping himself alone, in the dark, with only his thoughts.

 

Ken taps his fingernails against the window pane, staring out at the street lights glowing below. He only has so much work actually saved to his laptop, and after the Monopoly game he went through it all, meticulously. He could sit down and sort out that plan to increase his customer base that he's been meaning to do, and couple it with an efficiency plan to make sure his customers' demands don't exceed what he and Wormmon are capable of. He might even draw up a model business plan to examine the potential of expanding the operation and including new junior detectives. He should head into the office to do any of that, although he's not sure if any of the trains are still running. What time is it, anyway?

 

No matter. He needs the walk; suddenly the apartment is stifling. "Wormmon!" he calls, more sharply than he intends, and turns for the door without waiting for an answer. Wormmon scuttles hurriedly after him. This time, on his way out, Ken is the one to slam the door.

 

 

 

 

Ken packs a bag before he leaves. He is thinking, as he does, that Daisuke will have to come home for clothes and toothpaste and a change of underwear eventually, and that perhaps it would be best if Ken isn't in the apartment when he does. He is thinking that it is only good and logical for them to avoid each other until they've both gotten their feet back on solid ground with the rest of their lives. He is, very deliberately, not thinking about running away.

 

Wormmon hurries after him almost silently, the clicking of ten little feet down the stairs and onto the pavement outside a quick counterpoint to Ken's softer footfalls. It is not the only sound in the night--there are cars, on some other streets just close enough to hear, the ever-present city hum of neon lights and distant voices--but the rest is all far off and disconnected from Ken. He can hear his own ragged breathing. He tunes it out.

 

His feet take him past the closest station, indeed closed for the night, with the train that would bring him within four blocks of his office. Ken doesn't think too hard about where he's going, or what he intends to do once he gets there. The office is a good choice. The office is safe, sensible. He can bury himself in work. He supposes, now that the closed train station has reminded him how late it is, that Wormmon will make him sleep eventually.

 

There are puddles on the street. It must have rained earlier. He hadn't noticed.

 

Ichijouji Ken does not run from problems. He solves them for a living, in fact, and quite well, too. He has nothing to run from right now, and in any case nowhere to run to. If Ken were to run from something at any point, the person he would run to would, of course, be Daisuke. But if there is a problem here--and oh, Ken will admit, with his feet beginning to ache and Wormmon lagging behind until Ken has to scoop him up into his bag to keep him near, with the memory of Daisuke's stricken face waiting in the dark behind his own unblinking eyes, that there is a problem--and if it is one worth fleeing from, were Ken the sort of man who fled from problems, then his haven is the problem himself and there is no point.

 

Ken's feet take him mechanically around corners and in the doors at Ikebukuro Station before he manages to more than vaguely wonder how he'd ended up in Toshima. He is tired. It presses down on him, makes it easier not to think. The clock on the wall reads 4:27.

 

There is a train due at at one of the platforms in three minutes that will take him...somewhere. Ken has a train pass and an excellent working knowledge of the greater Tokyo metropolitan rail system. The point...he can't quite remember the point any more, but it involved not being in the apartment. Maybe it had to do with not seeing Daisuke's things scattered everywhere. Ken gets on the train.

 

He slumps against a window and lets Wormmon crawl out of his bag up into his lap. Ken lets his fingers trail absently over Wormmon's head and down his back, stares out into nothing with his hand the only thing moving. He's been on this line before, this route. He doesn't realize that he knows where he's going until he finds himself getting off the train at a transfer point only six or seven minutes into the ride.

 

It's as good a destination as any. It may be the only place he could go and be sure of a welcome at nearly five in the morning.

 

Ken gets on the next train. He wonders if Wormmon has figured out where they're going yet. He wonders when his feet decided this was what he needed without telling the rest of his brain. He wonders if this means he really can't run from problems, or he's run so far he's come back to them from the other side. He wonders for eleven and a half minutes, and then he gets off the train.

 

The first hints of false dawn are just starting to cast shadows over the empty suburban streets of Minami-ku. There are birds in the trees overhead beginning to wake.

 

He remembers the route down from the station, now that his feet have taken him this far. It's only a short walk farther away. After a few blocks the businesses soon give way to houses.

 

The little house on the corner looks dark gray in the predawn half-light, but Ken knows that in daylight it's yellow. There's a small sign out front that it's too dark to read. Lights blaze in three of the downstairs windows. Ken knocks on the door.

 

A moment, another moment before the sound of footsteps, and one more moment for Ken to realize he has no idea what he's going to say, and then the door opens. The light from the hall stings Ken's eyes after the dark of the street, makes them water for the first time all night.

 

This was a terrible, foolish idea, Ken thinks. What he says is, "May I stay here for a while?" Miyako blinks at him, owlish behind glasses he hasn't seen her wear in years.

 

"Of course." To her credit, she doesn't ask why. "Come on in, Ken." She stands aside to give him room to take off his shoes, and shuts the door quietly behind him.

 

 

 

Takeru wakes up way too early on a Saturday morning to Patamon fluttering down and jostling the pillow under his head, and the muffled sound of sobs through the bedroom door. He groans.

 

"He's still here?" Takeru asks. Takeru's fond of Daisuke and all, they've been friends for half their lives and saved each other more times than he can count. That doesn't mean he knows what to do with the guy when he spends all night crying his eyes out on Takeru's sofa.

 

"He never even went to sleep," Patamon reports. "The pillow and blanket are still on the chair."

 

"Great." Takeru would love, would love to sleep in another three hours and have breakfast for lunch. Instead he rolls himself out of bed and rummages for a pair of pants. If Daisuke's moving into the living room, he'd probably better make breakfast.

 

Daisuke is actually curled up into a ball around one of the couch cushions, face buried in the upholstery and letting out a little moaning sob every once in a while between sniffles. Takeru can hardly believe he's been sitting there all night. After three hours of comforting and trying to figure out what happened garnered him nothing but a damp shirt, Takeru gave up and went to bed around midnight in hopes that Daisuke might manage to cry himself out in private. No such luck; it's seven in the morning, and the only difference is that the couch looks a little more wet.

 

He feels kinda bad, in addition to completely out of his depth. He hasn't figured out what went on last night beyond that it had something to do with Ken, but Takeru knows what kind of mess he'd be in if Hikari ever decided to leave him. That just doesn't make him qualified to deal with this.

 

"So!" Takeru says brightly. "Who wants nattÅ?"

 

V-mon raises his head from Daisuke's hip. "Sure," he says without much enthusiasm.

 

"Whatever," says Daisuke.

 

"Right," says Takeru, and goes into the kitchen.

 

"What are we going to do?" Patamon asks, flying in after him.

 

"We're going to bring in experts," Takeru says decisively. He reaches for the rice cooker with one hand, and the phone with the other. "Call Hikari."

 

Patamon hands him the phone already ringing. "Moshimoshi!" Hikari answers, sounding way too bright and cheerful for this time of day.

 

"Hey." Takeru can't help but grin like the love-struck fool he knows he is. He misses her already. "How's the trip?"

 

"It's great! Only every time I turn around another of the kids is trying to--hey! Kyo, Taro, don't climb on that--sorry, anyway. You were saying?"

 

"Um, yeah." He glances back towards the living room. "Daisuke came by last night--"

 

"Kyo I am telling you right now to get down from that fountain! What kind of example are you setting for your Pagumon? I'm sorry, Takeru. You were saying Daisuke came by? That's nice. You should spend some boys' time together while I'm away, maybe hang out with Ken and Iori just like old times."

 

"We would, it's just, the thing is--"

 

"Oh!" Takeru jerks the phone away from his ear at Hikari's yelp. "Oh now Kyo's fallen into the fountain, I hope he hasn't hurt his arm...oh...listen, Takeru, I'll have to call you back. Love you!"

 

And with that Takeru's staring at the beeping phone in his hand, that terrible sinking feeling back again. "Well, Patamon, it looks like we're on our own for this one."

 

"Poor Daisuke," says Patamon.

 

 

 

Takeru has dated two girls in his entire life. The first one, Kusanagi Rei, he took out for precisely one date in their last year of junior high school, to a school fair, because two of Rei's friends from the theater club swore she was interested, and two of Daisuke's friends from the soccer club swore that Hikari wasn't. It turned out they were all four wrong. Takeru and Rei had an uncomfortably boring time right up until they met up with Hikari. She greeted them politely and ran off abruptly enough that Takeru abandoned Rei in the middle of the fair to take off after her, and only remembered to feel guilty about it later.

 

Takeru caught Hikari under a cherry tree just starting to bud and asked her what was wrong until she had to duck her head to let her hair cover her face to confess it. Takeru held her left hand in his right the entire time. He was pretty sure the pounding of his heartbeat was loud enough to drown out even the happy sounds of the fair, but Hikari didn't seem to notice. He had to sweep her hair out of the way to kiss her; she didn't let go of his other hand the entire time.

 

Rei, for her part, stood lost and put out in the middle of the grounds for about three minutes before Daisuke and Ken stumbled into her, heaped with stuffed animals Daisuke had challenged Ken to see who could win and armfuls of cotton candy. Since her crush had been on Daisuke all along, and he was about two weeks past moping over Aoi, this worked out well for everyone involved except Ken, who ended up having to carry all the cotton candy. Takeru swore to never again take romantic advice from any of Daisuke's friends, which he quickly amended to never taking romantic advice from anyone who picked getting hit in the head regularly with a soccer ball as their favorite sport after Taichi had sat him down in and tried to 'help' him woo Hikari.

 

Since then, Takeru's been set. He knew he wanted to know Hikari forever when they were nine years old, he knew he wanted to hold her hand and punch Daisuke in the face for paying too much attention to her when they were eleven, and he knew he wanted to kiss her and kiss her and never stop by the time he turned fifteen. He knows all of her moods and all her facial expressions, how she likes her rice just a little overcooked, when she really wants a foot rub and when to leave her alone. Takeru knows when to buy an anniversary gift, how to best apologize and avoid the worst of her wrath if he forgets, and when to take the garbage out.

 

Six months into this marriage thing, and Takeru is still pretty thrilled over how he's getting it down. He knows what nicknames are allowed to be used in public and which make Hikari giggle or melt in private, what to order for her if they go out to a restaurant and she asks him to, and how to finagle it so that it's always her turn to do the laundry. Takeru may hate his job, but he's got a great life. He's got a perfect marriage. He's nearly a perfect husband.

 

Takaishi Takeru has dated exactly two girls in his entire life, and he's married to the only one he took out twice. He knows everything there is to know about Takaishi Hikari. What he knows about navigating the rocky waters of the larger romantic world, however, would not fill a teaspoon.

 

 

 

Takeru is way worse than Ken when it comes to being comforting. But Daisuke's probably never going to cry in Ken's lap again, so he doesn't really want much comfort.

 

What he wants is Ken, in his life, by his side, on this couch with him where he belongs forever and ever. He could even lose the sex part if he had to and go back to just being friends, watching Ken go off with all those other people, sharing things he never wants to share with Daisuke again, being all poised and confident and not letting anyone break down that exterior, because it took Daisuke six times to find that spot behind his ear and work out exactly how to run his nails across it to make Ken mewl like a kitten, and he dares anybody to figure it out in less than four. Um. What was he saying again?

 

Right now Daisuke is trying to decide what's worse, Ken wanting Daisuke out of his life altogether, or going back home, grabbing his stuff out of Ken's room, and going back to normal knowing with every single day of Ken being right there in front of him that somehow, whatever he did wrong, Daisuke just wasn't enough. He thinks the answer is both. He thinks about trying to date another girl after this, and breaking up with her, because she isn't Ken and maybe she'll be quiet and poised and delicate and strong and kind and sharp and fast, but she won't have known all of his darkest secrets back through childhood and she won't kiss like Ken does. He thinks about feeling crushed by a girl, on top of how alone and impossibly miserable he feels now.

 

Great. He's going to have to have breakups on Takeru and Hikari's couch for the rest of his life. He should just go in the bathroom and slit his wrists right now.

 

As for a life without Ken, he can't even conjure up a mental image. There's just nothing there. Ken's the other arm on his incomplete soul or something, look, Daisuke's not really in a place for writing metaphors here. Ken is the other half. Maybe he's not the other half of Daisuke himself--Daisuke's got two halves right here, two arms, two legs, both sides of his brain whatever some people might say, and a heart that beats all on its own--but Ken is the other half to Daisuke's life. He's every other box in the DVD collection and the straight man for the punch line of the joke. He's the other schedule to work around every time Daisuke goes on a date. He's the dirty dishes that are never done. He's the other heart keeping the same beat.

 

Remove Ken from Daisuke's life and Daisuke's still there, it's just everything else in the world that's gone away. All that's left is fucking Takeru and Hikari and their stupid, uncomfortable couch that's too short to sprawl out on.

 

Daisuke's going to stop crying soon, because he's a grown man and nobody's around to indulge him any more except Takeru. But nobody's stroking his hair or giving him that smile for raising his head and wiping away the tears for a moment. Nobody's in the living room at all, and nobody's ever going to give him that smile again. So he's not done crying quite yet.

 

 

 

 

 

Miyako makes excellent tea.

 

Ken doesn't remember this from when they were dating. He's not quite sure if he's had Miyako's tea in the past seven or ten years or so. He thinks he would have remembered this--extremely strong, but not too bitter, and hot enough to stay warm until the bottom of the pot. The teapot is chipped at the spout, and instead of a tea cup she served him in a large novelty coffee mug with a picture of a caffeine molecule on it.

 

"Sorry Ken, the good tea set's only for clients," Miyako said, and then sat him in a chair in the Holsmon Labs Formal Business Meeting Room, also known as her living room. There are two sets of doors that lead into the dining room, the study, and the kitchen, also known as the the central computing office, the server room, and the kitchen. He can hear Miyako shouting through one of them now.

 

"You can finish it in twelve hours! Get out of my house and go back to your own."

 

"But your house is our office."

 

"And you've been here since noon on Tuesday."

 

"Noon on Thursday, Miyako--"

 

"Noon on Thursday, and now it's--really, Hawkmon, Thursday? What day is it?"

 

"I believe it's dawn on Saturday."

 

"There you go! After thirty-six hours it's my house again. Noboru went home ages ago, and the trains are definitely running because Ken didn't walk all the way from Tokyo, so pack up and go home!"

 

Ken is fairly sure they close those doors when they use this room for Holsmon Labs formal business meetings.

 

It's a very nice formal meeting room, suitable for speaking to prospective clients and investors alike. There are half a dozen expensive wooden chairs and six more small chairs that could almost pass for footstools, at a size and a height that almost any Child-level digimon could sit or stand on one and be involved in any business goings-on over the table. There's even a Wormmon-sized cup, slightly more chipped than the teapot but far more appropriate to the set than Ken's mug. Holsmon Labs has a very firm position on the subject of digital rights.

 

Miyako steps back into the room and closes the door firmly behind her. "There's a futon in the server room if you need to get some sleep. The boys crash there sometimes when they've been here more than twenty hours straight and the trains stop running or they'll do more harm than good if they keep working. For you I'll even find new sheets."

 

"That's okay. I'm not tired." Ken's through tired and out the other side now, clean into numb.

 

"Okay then," Miyako says doubtfully. "Ren'll be gone pretty soon, he's just being anal over the next security patch for the permit verification system. I think I scared Neamon enough that he'll gas Ren and drag home his unconscious body if he has to."

 

"You didn't have to do that for me." Ken looks down at his mug. He should pour more tea. Miyako's pouring some into her own mug, which has Motoko from Ghost in the Shell on it. "I never meant to be a burden."

 

"Bullshit, Ken." Miyako slams the teapot down on the table hard enough to make the cups rattle. Ken jumps. Wormmon nearly tumbles off his chair. Hawkmon, perched on the back of her chair, just looks resigned. "You show up at my door at the crack of dawn looking like you haven't slept all night and somebody just ran over your cat. Yes, I have to make you tea and throw Ren and Noboru out and not ask what's wrong even though I'm dying of curiosity. You're my friend. Now do you want to sleep, or talk, or do you want to just sit there staring at that mug like a block of wood in a chair until the new intern shows up on Tuesday?"

 

Ken sets the mug down. "I think I just broke Daisuke's heart," he says. It's worse to hear the words out loud than he thought it would be in his head.

 

"Oh, Ken." Miyako's putting down her own mug and coming around the table, the most terrifying look of sympathy on her face. "Do you want a hug?"

 

No, Ken wants to say, what are you doing, didn't you hear me say that Daisuke's heart is broken, not mine. It's all my fault. "Yes," he says instead. "Yes, thank you, that would be nice."

 

 

 

 

The best nights Ken ever spent with Miyako happened his second year in high school in her bedroom with her door wide open and her parents peeking in every five minutes at the sounds of laughter. They were some of the best nights of his life.

 

Miyako and Ken never went out, much. They would eat dinner together sometimes, or see a movie. Ken had proved early on that he was hopeless for carrying packages and would only run like a trapped rat at having to give an opinion on fashion. They were never a couple made for long walks, arm-in-arm through art museums and cherry groves. They much preferred to stay in.

 

They spent three weeks rebuilding Miyako's computer, three nights a week until 9:00 and until 11:00 on Saturdays. It was never constant work. Daisuke would show up with Ken half the time, lounge on Miyako's bed cracking jokes and doing homework until he got bored, and then wander upstairs to pester Takeru or Iori. Takeru and Hikari would wander down to see if they wanted to go for a quick ice cream double-date, or Iori would come by with a set of questions on math, or French, or World History. It got so the Inoues just sat in the living room and watched the parade of teenagers flowing through with the raised eyebrows and resigned sighs of parents who've raised three children before.

 

Within three weeks, Miyako's computer had terrabytes of memory and three times as much RAM as anything else on the market, not to mention two new CD drives and a bank of USB ports, a state-of-the-art video card, and the ability to open a gate to the Digital World at the click of a hotkey. It also looked a little bit like her computer got halfway through digivolving to Mechanorimon and then exploded, but everything was safe to move after the application of a little bit of duct tape. Ken and Miyako looked at each other, looked at the evidence of a job well done, and then exchanged grins that might have terrified any onlookers. Then they got creative.

 

They took apart Ken's digivice. They argued for almost half an hour over whose digivice ought to go first, especially since Ken's could, presumably, still force dark digivolutions on other people's partners and Miyako had never tried, and there was no guarantee the owner would get it back. They took it to pieces in the real world, meticulously keeping track of the screws and ignoring Daisuke ranting in a corner about how big a risk this was. They put half of it back together and brought it to the Digital World, where they just as meticulously took it back apart again.

 

Miyako hummed while she was bending over the guts of whatever poor machine she was tinkering with. She'd taken to wearing contact lenses to school sometimes, but she always took them out and put on glasses when Ken came over to work; when loose hair escaped her ponytail, she could tuck it back and wind it around the earpieces so it wouldn't get in her way again. She still jumped up and shouted "Bingo!" when she figured out the solution to the problem, volume directly proportional to how elegant the solution was, with absolutely no regard for whose ear she might be shouting in.

 

Miyako was brilliant, not just in intelligence but in how she glowed. Miyako could make him forget about anybody else in the room for hours, just her and whatever project they were bending their heads to and the blur of words tossed back and forth, jargon mixed with slang in a language all their own until even Wormmon admitted he had trouble following.

 

At the end of the year, his digivice also functioned as a real world GPS system, a portable radio, and a cell phone, Miyako's did all that and detected local unsecured wireless networks, and Ken helped her pack her room up in boxes to move to Chofu. The funny thing is, looking back now, he can hardly remember the words to a single conversation, not debates over bitrates or any of the hundred quiet, personal discussions they'd lapsed into, when the others had all fled for the night and they'd come to a stopping point before Ken's curfew. He only remembers sitting there on her bedroom floor with a hundred tiny pieces spread out between them, trying to catch tiny screws as she threw them at him, and laughing in spite of himself.

 

 

 

 

"So you guys broke up, then?" Miyako asks kindly, but Ken flinches despite himself.

 

"We didn't break up, we were never actually together," he clarifies. How many of the other Chosen Children are they going to have to explain this to? It's always his job to enter Daisuke's breakups into the wiki. He supposes that makes this disaster his responsibility, too.

 

"Wait, but I thought..." She looks confused.

 

"We were under the impression that you two had finally embarked on a relationship," Hawkmon elucidates. Ken winces again.

 

"It was just sex. Sex shouldn't...it didn't mean...what he came to want it to mean." Miyako's nodding, understanding, good.

 

"Well, why the hell not?" She folds her arms on the table. Shit. Maybe not so understanding then. "You two have been inseparable for years. We've all been waiting for this."

 

"You've--all?" Ken knew there were matchmakers among the Chosen Children just like he followed Daisuke's keeping up with 2ch, but 'all' implies...most. "Look, not that it's any of your business, but we're not...we're friends. That's all. Sex doesn't have to mean anything more than--"

 

"Than togetherness and mutual affection, I know, Ken, I've heard the speech." She's never quite believed it, though. Ken's not sure he can handle another return speech on the benefits of a monogamous lifestyle just now. Although he'd never have gotten into this situation to begin with if he'd just been exclusively dating somebody else. "So you go in all 'I'm Ichijouji Ken and I can sleep with a hundred people and not care about any of them--'"

 

"I care," Ken protests.

 

"Sorry, 'I only care about them as friends and I don't love any of them', right? And you get into it with Motomiya 'Fall in love with a new girl every six months' Daisuke, and instead of a girl he fell in love with you. Right?"

 

"He promised he wouldn't." It's a feeble defense, but it's all Ken has, and he clutches it like he's clutching his now-empty mug. "When we began. He promised it would just be as friends."

 

"Oh, Ken." Miyako rolls her eyes, and reaches across the table to pour him more tea without being asked. "And you believed him?"

 

 

 

 

Suicide doesn't seem like an option, mostly because there's nothing sharp enough in Takeru and Hikari's bathroom and V-mon got agitated when he didn't come out again after a couple of minutes. But Daisuke can't live without Ken, he's decided, he can't. So it's time to start brainstorming.

 

"I made tea!" Takeru says with cheer so false even Daisuke can tell, carrying it in from the kitchen to plunk it down on the coffee table. "And Iori says hi."

 

"Oh yeah? What else does Iori say?" The phone so hadn't rung. Daisuke is sitting here in his hour of desperate need, and Takeru was calling up Iori. Great. At least somebody is still friends with their Jogress partner.

 

"He said to make you tea."

 

"Oh." Ken used to make tea, every time Daisuke broke up with someone. "I need to win Ken back, and you need to help me."

 

"Yesssss!" V-mon jumps up on the couch with a fistpump of victory, and Daisuke has to grin a little. "I knew you weren't going to take this sitting down. I say we lock you two in a closet until you have sex and he gets over it. I bet Wormmon'll help. Even if it is the only safe place left after the kitchen."

 

"Oh hey, maybe." It's a good idea, and Daisuke's glad V-mon's right here with him on this, but it just doesn't seem like quite...enough. "Ken could get sex anywhere, though. I'm thinking something bigger."

 

"What if you were in mortal danger and he had to rescue you?"

 

"Oh, score!" Daisuke turns to Takeru. "How soon do you think Taichi could get a Deltamon into the real world if we told him it was an emergency? V-mon, you're in charge of getting Ken to Rainbow Bridge."

 

"Daisuke, hundreds of people use that bridge!" Takeru sounds horrified. Like Daisuke would ever put innocent people in danger like that. He waves a hand.

 

"Yeah, and XV-mon's going to be so busy protecting them that Ken's going to have to save me. It's perfect. He'll see me in danger and realize how much he really does love me and it'll be great."

 

"I really don't think this is a good idea..." Takeru wavers. Takeru is not on board with The Plan.

 

"What if Ken doesn't get there in time?" Patamon points out. Patamon so does not have faith in The Plan.

 

"Yeah, or if he decides not to save you?" V-mon asks. Ok, now that was just mean.

 

 

 

The stupidest thing Daisuke ever did to win back a girl actually worked for about three weeks. She dropped him again once she found out all the details, but Ken said something to someone or possibly paid somebody off or had someone killed and Daisuke didn't get arrested, either.

 

It had seemed so simple at the time, after thirty plus hours without sleep, pacing the tiny square of the cramped apartment after Ken had to beg off to go to class. Ayame thought he wasn't invested enough, thought he wouldn't drop his own life to be there for her, which was stupid. So clearly he had to prove he could be there if she needed him. The only reasonable next step, then, was to have her kidnapped and be the one to rescue her. It would be foolproof.

 

"I don't think that's such a good idea," V-mon said. "What if she finds out you're the one who had her kidnapped? She might think you're being creepy."

 

"Yeah..." Daisuke dropped his head and kicked at a corner of the wall for a moment's dejection, and then brightened. "But if I save her before they actually manage to kidnap her!"

 

It might have....well, 'worked' is far too strong a word, but it might have gone according to Daisuke's plan, which is to say not well at all, if only Opossumon and Mothmon hadn't been the most unthreatening, ineffective, and therefore highly effective fake kidnappers ever. It was the last time he ever outsourced to V-mon's card-playing buddies. Opossumon only managed to stop gawking at all the buildings to remember V-mon had said something about kidnappers offering candy and puppies. Mothmon should have been intimidating just by virtue of being an insect-type and therefore weird-looking, but Ayame had a Kunemon and three pet stag beetles. By the time Daisuke ran up to the empty alley, panting with worry, Ayame had taken a would-be kidnapper by each hand and led them right back through a portal terminal to the Digital World.

 

An hour later, Daisuke trudged up a hill after V-mon towards Mothmon and Opossumon's tree, glumly wondering how things had gotten so out of hand. Apparently, having accidentally really kidnapped the girl they'd only been supposed to pretend to threaten, Opossumon and Mothmon figured the only thing to do was to actually take her home and keep her there until her rescuer showed up. The best way to do this, they figured, was to stick her on Mothmon's back for flying lessons as soon as they were through the portal and then not let her down.

 

Daisuke collapsed at the base of the tree. Overhead, Mothmon pulled a quick loop-de-loop and Ayame shrieked with joy.

 

When Mothmon finally landed, Ayame barreled right into Daisuke's arms and kissed him so hard he saw stars. If V-mon hadn't gotten drunk over dinner and spilled everything a few weeks later, Daisuke figures they'd be married by now.

 

He's not really sure what that says about honesty and relationships, but he hasn't brought V-mon on dates in a while. On a completely unrelated note, Ken started staying home from class the day after Daisuke lost a girlfriend the second time Ayame broke up with him.

 

 

 

Sora isn't answering her phone, either her cell or her line at work. Takeru doesn't know who schedules therapy for 11:00 on a Saturday, but the secretary at Sora's clinic refused to do any more than take a message. "Call Takeru ASAP about Ken and Daisuke," he'd said. He isn't holding out much hope.

 

"Daisuke's been on my couch since eight last night. I think Ken broke him," he says helplessly into the receiver.

 

"Oh yeah? Okay, sure. Hey, Ken, I have to take this in the other room," Miyako says. There's a sound of a door shutting, and then, "Good, I was afraid he was out wandering the streets like this one."

 

"You have Ken, then." Takeru sags against the counter in relief and tries to keep his voice down. He's never had this many conversations in his kitchen in one morning. They've definitely never involved so many people laughing at him.

 

"He showed up before it was even light out. I don't think he slept. Poor guy."

 

"Has he been crying, too?" Takeru knows he's seen Ken cry, once or twice, but he can't remember a time since they were twelve. It's sort of hard to picture him breaking out into Daisuke's sobs of heartfelt agony.

 

"What? No, we've been talking. He helped me with my dishes."

 

"Oh." Takeru glances at his heaping sink. Why couldn't he have gotten the quietly tortured genius? "Daisuke just spent two hours threatening to throw himself off Rainbow Bridge so Ken would have to catch him. He was up all night."

 

"Well, don't let him do that. Ken's a hour away from Odaiba at top speed."

 

"Miyako!" Takeru groans. "I don't know what I'm doing here. You're the one with the crest of Love, help me!"

 

"I've got my hands full with Ken! Just keep him from doing anything homicidal, or suicidal, or digicidal. What's he doing now?"

 

"Sleeping, I hope. He passed out on the couch about fifteen minutes ago." Carefully, Takeru cranes his neck around the door jamb. He can't see more than the top of Daisuke's hair protruding past the back of the couch, and those sure sound more like snores than sobs. "What am I supposed to do with him when he wakes up?"

 

"Try to cheer him up or something. Give him some advice. You've practically been happily married since you were thirteen."

 

"I...advice? Miyako..."

 

"Listen, I've got to go. Good luck!" Without another moment's notice, Takeru finds himself listening to the shrill beep of the dial tone.

 

"What kind of advice do I give Daisuke?" he mutters, staring at the receiver in his hand. And better yet, who can he ask who might actually know? How to deal with a break-up....how to deal with breaking up with Ken...

 

Grimly, Takeru dials again, another number long since learned by heart. "Ohaiyo, Yamato? Hi, yeah, doing ok. She's out of town 'til Monday. Look, I have kind of a problem I was hoping you or Taichi could help me with." He settles back against the counter. "So, you're gay, right?"

 

 

 

Miyako steps back into the sitting room with biscuits to find that Ken hasn't moved. Well, if she can't get him to sleep then maybe she can feed him.

 

"Do you have enough tea?" Maybe she should switch them to something less caffeinated. Besides beer, she doesn't know if the kitchen even has anything uncaffeinated.

 

"Yes, thank you." Ken tilts his head to look at the plate when she puts it down, but doesn't move to take a biscuit.

 

"Ok, that is enough." Sora be damned. Ken's been standing and sitting in Miyako's house for the past six hours, making monosyllabic small talk and only moving when someone orders him to. If this doesn't constitute asking her to step in and fix his love life herself, once and for all, well, she's going to do it anyway and he can thank her later. "You need to un-break up with Daisuke, Ken."

 

"No." He says it as quiet and firm as he's ever said anything, but he doesn't look at her, which means he knows she's right.

 

"Well, why not?" Ken raises his head now, turns towards her, and lifts his shoulders with a helpless expression. "Why did you break his heart, Ken?"

 

"Because..." The corners of his mouth crinkle up into the least humorous of smiles she's ever seen. "Because..."

 

"Ken, I can't help you if you don't tell me," she presses. "That's why you came here, isn't it?"

 

"Listen to her, Ken," Wormmon urges. He wound up curled up in Ken's lap at some point, and now he's tugging the front of Ken's shirt for attention, but Ken doesn't even look down at him. Bad sign. Ken never ignores Wormmon when he's not evil.

 

He just keeps staring off into the distance over Miyako's shoulder, face gone blank, old and sad, that horrible tragic smile still curling up the corners of his lips. "Miyako," he finally says, after such a long silence that she's just about to start yelling at him again. "Miyako, we're friends, right?"

 

"How can you even ask me that?" Of all the impossible, impertinent questions. "What do you think we are? Do you think I sit here for hours to fix just anybody's love life for them? Of course we're friends, Ken, and if you weren't feeling like such a jerk and such an idiot already--"

 

It's his expression as much as his voice that cuts off her rant, the look in his eyes when he raises them to meet hers. She's seen Ken in pain before, and she's seen him wearied, even this wearied, but she's not sure she's ever seen him quite this helplessly lost before.

 

"How?" he asks, a thousand worlds of meaning packed into one short question, so much that Miyako, for once, finds herself at a loss for words.

 

 

 

Ken would like to say that after the brief, scorching flare of their relationship died out, he never saw Jirou again. It would be nice to imagine that he'd kept some kind of dignity, that a fist to the face could have answered betrayal with swift finality. It would soothe his conscience, not to mention his ego.

 

It would be nice to wipe out the memory of the helpless rage that swept over him a few days later when he spotted Jirou and Bakumon underneath one of their favorite trees. Ken pressed himself around a corner, out of their line of sight, horrified at his trembling and the terrible, too-familiar desire to march over, to beat Jirou with fists and feet, to make him beg for mercy, to make him kneel and beg for it. Ken wanted a whip.

 

He tried to avoid Jirou even more after that, cut Daisuke off at any mention of him, but they shared too many friends. Too many acquaintances raised an eyebrow and a glass every time Ken repeated, tightly, that they were no longer speaking.

 

"Good for you," said Midori, and Rikuto, and Shun. "He's a bastard." And, "I never understood why you put up with him anyway."

 

Nobody, it appeared, had been quite fooled except for Ken. It was a sledgehammer to his already bruised sense of self-worth. The last time Ichijouji Ken trusted readily, he was eight years old. He did not have an easy sense of how to deal with betrayal.

 

He should have felt sad, or heartbroken, he thought to himself in abstract detachment, though it was too late by then. His laptop was out and he was typing, eighty, ninety, a hundred words per minute and increasing. There was only cold, driving anger layered like a protective shell over the inner core of hurt. Anger, at least, Ken knew how to channel. Ikeda Jirou would pay. It was a simple as finding everyone he'd ever loved, if he'd ever really loved anybody at all, and betraying his trust right back.

 

Ken's opinion of himself would be so much higher if he didn't remember the state of mind where he nearly didn't balk at threatening a ten-year-old to punish her older brother. It was like walking a clear path with a dark sky looming overhead, illuminated by columns of bright, cold flame on either side, hemming him in and showing him the way. Every action was as simple as one foot in front of another. If direct violence was not enough, he could hire more. If he did not know where, he could find out. Ken has always taken well to being the one in charge.

 

Ken and Jirou haven't spoken again since three days after Wormmon ran to Daisuke for help, and Daisuke slapped Ken across the face to bring him back to himself. Ken composed himself, dressed in his most somber grays, and carried a box of belongings not his own off to an apartment he knew quite well.

 

"You shouldn't have betrayed me," Ken said quietly when Jirou opened the door with little more than a grunt. "I'm more dangerous than you realize. It's not wise to mock what's more frightening than you simply because you don't understand."

 

"Psh," Jirou scoffed. "That's the problem with you, Ichijouji, you think you're so tough, such hot shit, like you could ever--"

 

"I hear your mother got mugged the other day," Ken said, with cool, staring eyes although now it made him sick. "Lucky Hana wasn't with her, I suppose."

 

"You..." That was the look of dawning realization in the eyes of a man who knew what had never entered the school's gossip chain. That was his fist, swinging for Ken's face.

 

Ken gave him one free hit. He deserved that. He dodged the second punch, though, all speed and fluidity that always return best when he's at his most cruel. Moments later Jirou was panting, face-first on the floor, trying to tilt his head to staunch the flow of blood from a broken nose with both arms pinned behind him and Ken leaning over him, pressing him into the ground.

 

"I have some mercy left in me," Ken whispered into his ear, trying not to wonder if Wormmon would refuse to hold Bakumon off just for his own good. "Don't test it."

 

Then he stood and left. He didn't turn, even when Jirou struggled to his feet in the doorway. "You're insane, Ichijouji!" Jirou called after him. "A sick, violent freak!"

 

"I know," Ken said, pausing at the end of the hallway, not daring to turn his head lest Jirou realize how much self-loathing twisted the wry smile accompanying the amusement in his voice. "That was your mistake."

 

 

"What do you mean, 'how'?" Miyako asks. "We're friends. We talk. Sometimes we hang out. Sometimes you do something really stupid like breaking up with Daisuke and I kick my employees out so you can talk about it."

 

"But...after everything," he says, tries to explain. "I don't understand how we got to this point. I don't know how I...how I forgave you, I suppose." He looks away. Fiddles with a biscuit so he can pretend that's what moved his eyes, not shame or anger or confusion.

 

"You broke up with me, Ken," she points out. Of course he did. He remembers doing it, standing in her dorm room and refusing to look at her, just like he is now.

 

"You were the one who moved on and didn't need me any more."

 

"You never needed me in the first place!"

 

"That's not true." He still needs her, even now, or who knows where he'd be--wandering the streets, or in his office, or still sitting in that apartment with Daisuke's DVD's, the video game equipment strewn across the floor, the muddy soccer cleats left by the door. She's the only person who could ever answer these questions, maybe the only person who's ever known him in the way she did. "How you forgave me, then. How I forgave myself. Any of it."

"I don't know," she says. "We just...moved past it, I guess. I cared about you even if I couldn't be the most important person in your life. And, tch," Miyako says, a little noise that might have been the beginning of a laugh if anything here were funny, "I was never the most important person in your life even when we were dating. Maybe I was the second. So I was already sort of resigned to having part of you if that was all I could get."

 

"What do you mean? Of course you were." Losing her nearly broke him. He has a bad habit of losing the people he cares about most.

This time, she really does laugh, and Ken has to turn his head enough to look at her. Miyako looks bitter and resigned, amused with a dawning edge of incredulous.

 

"He's always been first, Ken. It doesn't matter how many friends you've had or who you've dated, it's always been Daisuke. He's the first person you think of, no matter what. He's the first person you go to with your problems whenever the problems aren't him, you trust him more than anybody else, he knows you better than anybody else, and it's always been like that. I was just your girlfriend. He's the guy you synchronized your heartbeat to."

 

"That's not fair, you and Hikari did the same--"

 

"Ken? Nobody talks about Jogress like you guys do. Not even Taichi and Yamato. They just sort of get quiet and blush."

 

"Fine," Ken says. Some small part of his brain reminds him not to clutch Wormmon too tight to fend off the rising tide of total despair. She's not wrong, of course she's not, which means any last hope of salvaging something out of this situation have been dashed. "I'm doomed, then."

 

"What are you talking about, doomed? The love of your life has finally figured out he's in love with you back and you run off to hide in the suburbs like that's a bad thing? Ken, what are you--"

 

He stands, Wormmon curled tense with obvious unhappiness but blessedly silent in his arms. "I'd like to take a nap now, Miyako, if it's okay. I didn't realize how tired I was."

 

 

 

 

Some days--most days--every day, these days--Taichi curses the fate that landed him in charge of the Chosen Children. It's not about the danger, the battles, the evil digimon, or all the responsibility he was too young to take on landing squarely on his shoulders before he was even out of middle school. Heck, that had been fun. No, the real problem is everything that's happened ever since they won.

 

Taichi signed up to explore a new world, beat up evil digimon, and get his friends home in one piece. He definitely didn't sign up to spend the rest of his life arguing with UN delegates, Tonosama Gekomon, the petty bureaucrat at Digital World customs who wanted him to fill out four completely inapplicable forms in triplicate, and Motomiya Daisuke, all in one week.

 

"He's been sitting there since Friday night," Takeru says as he ushers Taichi into the foyer. Taichi glances down at his way-too-complicated watch to see if he's misplaced a day somewhere again, but no, it's Sunday morning. Seeing Daisuke sitting still and staring glumly out into space is disturbing enough, but for a day and a half?

 

"Yamato said you were afraid he was going to do something stupid?"

 

"He wasn't moping at first. He was spouting off all these ridiculous plans...you know, Daisuke plans," and Taichi nods. He remembers Digiball. "And then he took a nap and woke up yesterday afternoon, and ever since he's been just sort of...sitting there. Yamato said one of you would come over to check on him if he was still like this this morning, so..."

 

"Right," Taichi says, and squares his shoulders. He's good at talking people into things. Too good, these days. That's got to extend to knocking some sense into a friend, right?

 

"I'll go make some tea," says Takeru, and flees. Taichi's brother-in-law is a wuss.

 

He drops himself onto a chair across from Daisuke with enough of a blur of motion and sound that V-mon jumps. Daisuke barely looks up. Great.

 

"Hey," he says in a very quiet voice.

 

"Hey," Taichi says. Ok, direct approach. "So, Ken broke up with you, hunh?"

 

"Psh. No." Daisuke isn't fidgeting, which, again, creepy, but his hands ball into loose fists on his knees. "You've got to be dating for that. He just never wants to see me again."

 

"And you're just going to put up with that?' If Taichi hadn't heard about a weird border-crossing incident involving an Opossumon a few years back, he'd wonder if this is why Daisuke kept losing girlfriends. "If you're going to just sit down and take it, maybe he's right."

 

"Yeah, he's right." Instead of sitting up against the slight to his pride, Daisuke just slumps farther over his knees. "I mean, he's put up with me for this long, right? It must be a relief to finally get rid of me."

 

"Cut the self-pity!" Taichi snaps. "You think Ken's spent thirteen years glued to your side because he's too nice to say no? The guy who has sex with people he'll never see again twice a week and put three kidnappers in the hospital last month? The guy who tried to take over the Digital World--"

 

"That's not fair, he was just a kid, and Archnemon was playing with his head, and he thought it was a video game--"

 

"--twice?"

 

That, apparently, is the right shock to stop Daisuke short, make him look up and stare straight at Taichi in surprise and worry. Good.

 

"You know about that?"

 

"Who do you think helped cover it up so nobody found out what he almost did? Of course I know about it." Taichi shakes his head. "That's not the point. Look, the Ichijouji Ken I know would never put up with a friend just out of pity or duty or whatever. And you know damn well he wouldn't let anyone know as much about him as you do, except for you."

 

Daisuke drops his head back down to stare at his lap again, but he appears to be thinking, at least. "It hasn't been twice a week," he says.

 

"What?' Taichi asks, confused.

 

"The other people. I mean, sometimes, yeah, when I have a girlfriend and can't go out with him, but since we started, I think it's only been once or twice."

 

Taichi resists from rolling his eyes. "And you think you're not important to him?"

 

"Yeah, well, then why did he tell me he didn't love me? Why did he kick me out of the apartment?"

 

"I don't know, Daisuke," Taichi says. "Why don't you ask him?"