Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ Never Let Me Down Again ❯ Chapter 5

NEVER LET ME DOWN AGAIN--EPILOGUE

 

 

 

Iori finds schedules comforting, both on a daily and a grander basis. Armadimon will never let him get too married to his day planner--in fact, he chewed up the last one--but there are some compromises. So it is that every other Thursday, come rain or shine but barring digipocalypse, at 11:45 exactly they stand waiting for Ken at the eastern entrance to the law school campus, lunch in hand.

 

This week, Ken is early, although dressed so casually that Iori can only imagine he's come straight from working a case in some way undercover. Iori's not sure he's ever seen Ken in blue jeans before, in any context. The t-shirt, he recognizes--Daisuke's worn it several times when they've all gotten together to go camping in the Digital World.

 

"Sorry if we kept you waiting," Iori says politely. Ken straightens from his lean against the campus gates into an upright posture entirely at odds with his wardrobe, and shakes his head.

 

"Not at all. Shall we find somewhere to sit?"

 

Ken asks about Iori's classes, as always. This week he seems intrigued by the finer points of Nakamoto-sensei's discussion of property law; he raises some interesting questions that Iori will have to consider carefully, and perhaps then bring up in class.

 

"And how is your mother?" Ken asks, taking the conversation through its traditional turn for the politely personal. Ken is perhaps one of Iori's most constant friends, but that itself is in large part because neither of them are easily open with emotions.

 

"She's well, although I worry that my grandfather is about to drive her mad. He's finally found a new hobby since he had to stop teaching kendo."

 

"Oh?" Ken asks.

 

"He's become obsessed with following professional Go," Iori says with a hint of a sigh. "He's always played a few games here and there, but now it's all over the house. I've heard as much about the Meijin tournament as I used to hear about Daisuke's soccer games in high school."

 

Ken laughs. "It's an interesting game. I'm not surprised one such as your grandfather would enjoy it."

 

Iori nods. His grandfather is less spry, perhaps, but still as sharp-witted as he ever seemed when Iori was a boy. "And your family?"

 

Ken bites back the end of his laugh, looking almost--resigned? "We had both my parents and Daisuke's out to dinner together last week," he says. "It was...an interesting experience."

 

"Surely they've met each other before?" Daisuke and Ken have been inseparable since elementary school. Iori was sure, in an abstract sort of fashion, that their families must be some sort of friends friends, like his mother trading recipes with Miyako's, or the long conversations his grandfather still has with Takaishi-san.

 

"Never under these circumstances," Ken points out, and Iori reads between the lines enough to wince.

 

"Surely they can't object..."

 

"Grandchildren are important," Ken says, with a tiny, rueful smile. "Jun's had two, but..."

 

"I'm sorry." Ken and Daisuke, as far as Iori is concerned, deserve their share of happiness as much as any two people in the world. Ken shrugs, takes another bite from his bento, and swallows.

 

"Only so much can be helped," he says. "Daisuke is happy, and well, as ever."

"And you?" Iori asks. It's one of the more personal questions he's ever asked Ken in these lunches. Ken looks startled for a moment, then smiles--a real smile, not tinged with regret or self-deprecation or even sarcasm, but simple contented joy.

 

"Of course," he says, and they turn back to their lunch.

 

 

 

 

 

The first words out of Daisuke's mouth as Ken walks in the door are, "Okay, so, before you say anything, it really wasn't my fault this time." Those are never the words Ken particularly wants to hear upon coming home, but he's gotten used to it, by now.

 

"What isn't--oh," Ken says, as he spots the wreckage of what was once a perfectly good flatpack coffee table, lying in the middle of the living room floor. "Taichi this time, or V-mon?"

 

"No, I was just trying to change the light bulb on the ceiling, which by the way is totally your responsibility from now on, and I stepped on some of the broken glass from the old lightbulb, and I fell, and...yeah." Daisuke rubs the back of his head sheepishly. "We should probably vacuum for broken glass, too."

 

"Do I even want to ask how the light bulb broke in the first place?" Ken asks. He toes his sneakers off by the door and redirects Daisuke's forward motion towards the bedroom. He'd rather not step on glass ground into the carpet just yet, and these jeans are...unaccustomed. Nowhere near the strangest thing he's ever worn for a case, and not precisely uncomfortable, but Ken would rather be out of them.

 

"Would you believe if I said wild Numemon broke in and did it?"

 

Daisuke flops down onto the bed on his back, picking up a discarded soccer ball and tossing it idly towards the ceiling. It's harder to hit when he's not throwing the ball from a top bunk, but Ken knows from experience that the couch is just high enough, if Daisuke's particularly bored or particularly determined. "Wild Numemon, of course," Ken agrees. His tone is perfectly deadpan, but he knows Daisuke knows he's smiling.

 

"You having lunch with anyone tomorrow?" Daisuke asks, as Ken unbuttons his jeans.

 

"The librarian from that tax evasion case. We got to talking about Jorge Luis Borges, I wanted to continue our conversation." Once, that might even have been a pick-up line. "Sushi at eight?"

 

"Sure." Daisuke catches the ball and doesn't throw it again, instead rolling over on his side to eye Ken with a speculative gaze that Ken instinctively does not trust. "The love is gone."

 

"What?" Ken's heart only stops for half a second at that. Daisuke cannot possibly mean...

 

"You're standing there half naked, and I'm lying in our bed waiting to be ravished, and you're just looking for another pair of pants." He throws the soccer ball; Ken catches it, inches from his own face. "Come ravish me."

 

Oh. Well, then. "You broke the coffee table," Ken says, advancing slowly towards the bed. "I'm not sure you deserve to be ravished."

 

"So we'll go out this weekend and buy another one," Daisuke says dismissively. He sits up just far enough to start pulling off his shirt. Ken drops the soccer ball and kneels next to the side of the bed. "I'll even help you put it together this time."

 

Ken freezes with his fingers just creeping over the waistband of Daisuke's pants. "That's all right," he says. "I can think of a few other ways you can pay me back."