Title: There's Still Hope
Wordcount: 1,597
Posted: 08.23.15
I've been wanting to write this for a really long time and finally just sat down to get it done. This has been written for the Titles Set Bootcamp, and the Too Many Cookies Bootcamp, both found on the Digimon Fanfiction Challenges forum.
It wouldn't matter why Hikari was crying, if they were silent tears for the sad ending to the drama they were watching, or out-right bawling because her favorite grandparent just died, Daisuke couldn't stand it. He jumped through hoops to make her smile again, or to at least stop her from looking quite so miserable. What could he say, he had it bad for the girl, but he was smart enough these days to know that it was probably never going to happen. That didn't mean that Daisuke was just going to let his girl suffer when he could be doing something about it. Because if there was one thing in the world that eighteen-year-old Motomiya Daisuke hated above everything else, more than evil digimon and stuck-up, pretty-boy geniuses and a really, really bad bowl of ramen, it was to see Yagami Hikari cry.
Unfortunately, Daisuke didn't think he had a remedy for her broken heart, not like he usually did. How did he cheer up Hikari when she and Takeru, the Perfect Couple From Heaven, had just called it quits? The truth was that Daisuke didn't have a clue, but apparently, he was supposed to. During the same weekend of the Breakup, Daisuke had been scolded by Taichi for not yet going to see Hikari, and ordered by Miyako to be the Knight in Shining Armor. Mimi had insisted that now would be a good time to make himself look good, and Iori had murmured something about "everything coming together the way it was supposed to." (Daisuke wasn't sure just what Iori was implying there, but it felt like he was agreeing with Miyako and Mimi.) And when Daisuke ran into Takeru, and asked him what the problem was, he had sneered at him, it's your problem now, so go fix it like you always do.
If Daisuke didn't know any better, he would have thought that everyone was expecting Hikari to choose him, now that things were over with Takeru. It was strange, because that couldn't be true. It was Hikari and Takeru. No matter what Daisuke might have wanted, he knew that the two of them belonged together.
Which was why Monday found Daisuke on the school roof during break, debating what he should do. He watched Hikari lean against the fence, a pitiful look on her face that tore at something inside of him. Hikari did not deserve to look like that. No girl did, really, but Hikari especially deserved to be smiling, with that brilliant light in her eyes that had drawn Daisuke to her in the first place. That sorrowful, faraway expression didn't suit her.
"Hey, Hikari," Daisuke nudged her shoulder. Hikari jolted, like she hadn't heard him approach or wasn't expecting to see him. Probably both.
"Oh. Hi, Daisuke." Up close, he could see that she had been crying, and probably not for the first time. Hikari and Takeru had been together since their last year in middle school, even longer than that if Daisuke counted those annoying years when they danced around one another, with him caught in the middle…. or running interference, however one chose to look at it. He sighed and pointed at the tear tracks.
"You shouldn't be doing that," he told her. "Pretty girls like you shouldn't be crying, we've been over this."
"It's not so easy right now," Hikari sniffed, then wiped her cheeks with her fingertips.
"Now, you're messing up your make up."
"I don't wear any makeup."
"Huh. And somehow you manage to look better than all the girls who do."
"Daisuke!" This time, Hikari let out a short laugh in spite of her tears, and Daisuke felt accomplished. At least now she was smiling, and her eyes didn't seem so dead. He smiled back, glad to have brought her just a little more to life. Unfortunately, he knew he couldn't just make her smile and be done with it.
"You wanna tell me what happened?" he asked her. Hikari sighed and folded her arms, but didn't speak. They studied the school grounds together in silence.
"Do you still like me, Daisuke?"
Hikari spoke so quietly that Daisuke had almost missed what she said, but at this point in their friendship, it was like he was permanently tuned into her unnaturally quiet tendencies. Still, he was taken aback by her random question.
"What does that matter?" he replied instead of giving her a proper answer. The problem was, if Daisuke did indeed know Hikari as well as he knew the current soccer stats, then of course she knew him to the same degree.
"I'll take that as a yes then," she answered herself. She seemed to shrink then, hugging herself more tightly and leaning her back to the fence. "It's not fair is it? That I was with Takeru when you felt that way. That I'm always relying on you so much. And I think I knew you still liked me too. I know Takeru knew, but I guess I was just hoping you might have moved on."
It wasn't as if Daisuke hadn't tried to move on. He had dated other girls, but never for very long. Hell, he had even tried looking at guys until he realized just how awkward it made him feel. (It only took three hours for Daisuke to decide that he was definitely not gay.) But for whatever reason, he was just stuck on this girl who belonged with somebody else.
What was Daisuke supposed to say, anyway? Sorry, you're just too awesome, but I'll try harder to find someone else?
"It's just not so easy," Daisuke repeated Hikari's words from earlier.
"Four years?"
"Sure," Daisuke shrugged and leaned his back against the fence as well.
"Why?"
"Because all of me is stubborn, not just my personality." Daisuke grinned at her, carelessly, as if it didn't bother him that he was stuck being in love with someone who wasn't in love with him. And truthfully it didn't. It had stopped bothering him a long time ago, although once in a while, it could get awfully annoying, when Takeru would put his arm around Hikari, or she would kiss him, and jealousy reared its oversized, slime-covered head, and Daisuke would have to find an excuse to leave. No, it didn't happen often, but every blue moon, when Daisuke felt particularly lonely, it was unbearable.
"Daisuke, I'm being serious!" Hikari laughed.
"So am I!" argued Daisuke. "I didn't do this on purpose, you know. I didn't just decide, I'm going to pine after my best friend, even after she's found the guy she'll marry. It just happened, and sometimes it sucks, but if I wasn't still in love with you, I probably couldn't be half the friend you needed me to be. So I'm not sorry. Just…"
"I'm inconvenient, aren't I?"
"Maybe," Daisuke shrugged again. "But you're a lot better looking than my sister, and a little nicer than Mimi. Not to mention you aren't nearly as bossy as Miyako, so I don't mind nearly as much as I should." Hikari shook her head at him then sighed. Amusement and joy slowly drained from her expression, and she stood looking sad again, though thankfully not on the verge of tears.
"Takeru knew. And he thought I stayed close to you because I liked you too." Imagine that, a jealous Takaishi Takeru. It made sense now, why he was so rude the other day.
"Your boyfriend's an idiot, Hikari," Daisuke told her bluntly. "Then again, you're friends with me too, but I always see what everyone else fails to."
"What's that?"
Daisuke rolled his eyes and pushed away from the fence as he spoke. "That you two belong together. Sheesh. And I'm the one they call dumb."
"I've never called you dumb," Hikari followed Daisuke across the roof to the stairwell.
"That's probably why Takeru thinks you like me," Daisuke grinned. "Even Sora's called me an idiot once or twice."
"I don't need to admit what everyone else already has," Hikari laughed again. She grew quiet again, but Daisuke knew that he couldn't really do anything to distract her this time; classes were going to start back up soon. "Do you really believe that?" Daisuke almost asked if she meant did he thought he was an idiot, but the softness to her tone made him doubt that was even on her mind.
"Do I believe what?"
"That I'll marry Takeru? That we really do belong together?"
Daisuke stopped at the bottom of the stairwell and turned just enough that he could look Hikari in the face. "Of course I believe that. I wouldn't have said it otherwise." The corners of Hikari's mouth turned up in another one of her uncertain smiles. She reached out and wrapped both of her arms around one of his, laying her head on his shoulder. Daisuke smiled fondly at her, feeling content with the moment. No, he hadn't had a special remedy to cheer her up again, just his trademark brand of idiocy, and hope. Ironic. "And if he doesn't apologize soon enough," he told her softly, "I can always go punch some sense into him."