Warnings: cursing, first person, innuendo, implied past sexual content, smoking, AU

1. I Had To Go

?

In the past, I probably would have cried or begged forgiveness, or at least done everything desperate to hold things together. Something sentimental, maybe childish. Just something different from now. But, well, this isn't the past. I'm not that soft anymore, I don't think.

it's not like I'm rough, or something along those lines. I'd like to say I'm still a gentleman, or at the very least, friendly. My friends, my new ones, they all call me a stray cat. Slow to purr, quick to claw. I like that analogy. I like my new life, not that I wanted to take it before.

But things happen, you see. Shit happens, as one of my high school buddies would say. He always did know how to hit the nail on the head.

Like, to start with, I nearly got stabbed to death as a kid. Twice. It puts a damper on things.

"Put that shit out."

I blew a puff of smoke and looked over at the bed. The occupant wrinkled his nose at me, and I raised an eyebrow.

"I'm aiming it outside. I fail to see the problem here."

"The shit stinks," they grumbled, rolling away from me.

I couldn't help my smile. It was my best weapon. Even my hands weren't as crafty. "Well, so does yours. It evens out."

"Put that shit out."

"I'm almost done." I exhaled again, smooth, dry. I knew I had to quit. It would happen at some point when I could find a better bad habit to blow money on and the nicotine gum didn't taste quite as bad. It definitely wasn't going to happen because a one-night stand punk had a problem with it.

I didn't like offering myself up to everyone anymore, at least not like that.

A huff and a grumble. I didn't pay it much attention. They were usually like this, the guys. They didn't think I was man enough (what did that even mean, honestly?) to smoke a cigarette like a pro, made all sorts of assumptions because I preferred to be spoiled. I spoiled the world plenty. I figured the least I could do is get a bit in return. It wasn't like I asked for the expensive hotel rooms or presents. That was too ridiculous, wasn't it?

I put the rest of my cigarette in the ashtray. I was really tempted to light another, just to see him squirm. But these needed to last a little longer, so I shut the window.

"Thank you."

"Fuck you," I said without any interest. (Sometimes, I had to love French, it always made them think I was seducing them if they were stupid enough.) I ignored whatever he said after that, deciding it would be a good idea to shower and put some pants on. I had work in two hours and I had to pretend I wasn't having sex on my day off. It made the others jealous. Not sure why they cared. I guess they expected me to bring somebody home.

Pfft. Right.

"Don't use all the hot water!"

"Yeah, yeah…"

It was my apartment, I was the one paying the rent and utilities. He could bite me over some water, if he hadn't already sank his teeth in like my shoulder said he did. I was probably going to have to cover it too. Great.

I let it go, turning my squeaky faucets and sitting on my toilet. When I got in, I hissed in pain. "That … god…" I hadn't realized he'd scratched that hard. I was going to have to wait tables like this. I sighed and scrubbed shampoo in my hair. It wasn't worth writing home about but damn it. What the hell in my system caused me to get this? It took a lot to make me bruise or bleed.

Over the years, I'd accepted there was something about me that called people over, charisma or something. It was useful for some things, but after a while it was annoying. When people liked you, they wanted things from you. It was a fact of life. I couldn't give everybody what they wanted, especially since one of those things was "stop working yourself into the ground, you're going to get hurt!" Wasn't that called a work ethic or something?

The door opened and I groaned. "I have work."

"I'm just brushing my teeth, Ty. Chill."

My eye twitched ."You're going to work smelling like that."

"I'm propping a movie set. The hell will they care?" He leaned in and I pressed out of his reach while he wet his toothbrush. "It was fun, Ty. Don't delete my number."

He left to use the kitchen sink and I snorted. Was it too late to mention I already had?

…

I'd like to think of myself as introspective, or even self-centered. It's not like I hate myself, or even that I think I don't, you know, have all of the same needs as other people. I do, I just… the problem is that I used to forget that and it ended up biting me. After about the seventh time of someone almost killing me, I had to take a step back. Or a kilometer. Or a lot of kilometers.

"Tyler!"

I looked up from the dishes. "Annie, what's the matter?" Her freckles were bright spots on her pink-tinged face, eyes drooping rom exhaustion. She must have been saying my name a lot. It was an issue she had; her body gave away everything she was feeling to the point that I was often worried she would blow a gasket. She tended to feel a lot of things at the same time.

She moved beside me and snatched the other dirty rag, which I was grateful for. Doing this myself was taking me too long. "Tracey won't pick up his phone."

Her boyfriend. He worked here. His shift had started almost an hour ago. "Did he sneak into the liquor cabinet again?" I always questioned the appeal, to be honest. Alcohol was an excuse for stupidity.

I reached into my pocket and popped a mint at the stray thoughts. "Are you worried about your grizzly bear?"

She glared at me."When am I not worried about that meat sack?"

"Depends. When's the last time you two had sex?"

She hit me. I deserved it, but it was a valid question.

"I don't ask you about your sex life," she said, tugging her red hair back under the net.

I raised an eyebrow at her. "Mine isn't exactly exciting. One or two nights a month, no solid dates, I spend more time here and at the books that maybe I should tote around the Bible."

She rolled her eyes. "Before or after his mother throws holy water at you again?"

I tried to hold back a laugh. "She's stopped doing that now that she's realized I find her son unattractive." I paused for flair. "Now she wants me to have a girlfriend." Which wasn't funny for the record. The only girls I had a prayer with were nowhere near here.

Then again, did I even have a prayer there?

"Even worse," Annie said with a particularly forceful splash. "Will you come with me after this shift to check on him?"

I wanted to say no. Tracey was about six feet and two hundred pounds or more, depending on how much he ate the night before. I didn't want to help her heft him up the stairs again. But I wouldn't want her to break both her shoulders to get him up or hear him moaning because he fell on her. Because he wouldn't apologize to her face. I don't think he knows how. I sighed and nodded. I wasn't going to be happy about it. "Pancakes," I told her, and she scoffed.

"Whatever you want, you drama queen."

"I resent that." I brushed my hair net off. I had to go to the tables now. "I don't skip work after a fun night."

"Masochist."

"Hothead."

"Twat."

"I should be so lucky."

I switched aprons, letting her take the rest of the dishes. She preferred that at this time of day. Patrons were too sleepy to give a proper order. I snatched her notepad. The diner was still quiet. No one came around for another two hours or so. "Wonderful," I yawned. It was a bit tempting to ask for a plate but God knew how that would look. Half of it was grease anyway.

For lack of anything better to do, I began to run through basic French. One eye was on the door, the other was back in high school. I murmured phrases and verbs and conjugations for about five minutes before a chill went up my spine.

"Merde," I said to myself. My gut tended to be right, and now it was telling me my life was about to suck.

Well, at least I was prepared to face it. Optimism!

The little greeting bell clanged, followed by the thunk of a wooden cane and limping steps.

Shit. Shit. Damn it, of all the things to utterly fuck up my life, it had to be this asshole, didn't it? The old man limped towards the waitress at the door and said in the creaky voice that made my heart sink. "One, please."

Yep, it was him.

"Right this way!" she said with a smile and I knew Natalie well enough to know that was as fake as her cigarettes. She was never in an actual good mood this early. She gave me a nod as they passed and I grimaced. Well, so much for pretending he wasn't there. I hopped off of my bar stool and went to greet the bastard.

I watched the man sit, plastering on my sales smile and sauntering over. "Good morning, sir. Can I start you off with anything? A drink? An appetizer?" I hoped on the inside that if he recognized me, he also recognized how few cares I had.

"Coffee would be wonderful. Black. And apple fritters." His creak of a voice was familiar in the same way a bad taste lingered after old gum. I scribbled it down and went to get the order, debating whether to add syrup into it and rot what was left of his teeth. I shoved the urge aside. He was not worth losing my job over.

Goodness. I sounded like an adult and acted like one too. Like I had some sort of self-preservation. Which, well, I didn't. Never have. Well, okay that wasn't true. My problem has always been that I care too much and always have. Damn me to hell sometimes. One would think I would learn.

I returned with the coffee. "Your fritters will be out in a moment."

His eyes flicked to me and I saw him smile. "Thank you."

I managed not to shudder until I made it back to the kitchen. Could have lived my whole life without seeing that. Especially again.

"Creepy old man hit on you?" Annie said slyly.

Glaring took too much effort, so I focused on getting other plates. "Afraid so. I'm just that popular." I resisted the urge to flick her off. Nothing worse than lipstick and maple syrup down your front.

Annie laughed. "Well, I know that. Hurry up and feed him before he decides to take his meal some other way. Only have a couple of hours left of our shift."

"Now that idea is wicked and sinful," I told her, taking the plates. I took his actual order as carefully as I could. If he was going to pretend he didn't recognize me, I would do the same for him.

I almost got through the rest of my shift yet, watching the poor coffeemaker (we needed a new one, so much.) try to sputter through the rest of its meager existence. Then, when I went to collect his bill and tip, I found a note sitting under the arrangement of coins and change.

We need to have a conversation.

I swore about six times in my head. Not that Rosa would have really said anything if I had cursed aloud. She honestly didn't care what happened so long as I did my job well, and my mouth was good for getting the idiots to shut up.

Also the least he could do was not make it sound like a business transition with the mafia. Was he going to gut me and throw me in one of the rivers? Sheesh.

"Ty, I'll be a few minutes," Annie called from the griddle. "Meet me out front?"

Perfect. Now I really had no reason to avoid him. "It's a date."

She glared at me and I laughed, heading towards the back door. She probably assumed I was going to smoke. No, I needed my lungs clear to yell at this guy. The place I knew he'd be, however, was the alley outside.

I have never quite understood the insistence people have for making all illicit things in a back alley. It was filthy and sinful and sure, it was good for a quick round of sex (but was it really?), but even then. Ew. A person could run up their water bill and still feel dirty in there. And yet there he was like I thought, leaning on his cane like he had always been there like he always would be there.

"Patience. Your virtue I see." I couldn't help myself. He unconsciously hit my last good nerve without even trying.

"Helped by time displacement." He paused. "Though you would know about patience and restraint, wouldn't you Kudo Taiki?"

I winced at the sound of my old name, feeling the pain in my heart at the sound of it. "Tyler," I said with a sigh, taking another breath not even a second after, just to be safe. My fingers twitched for a cigarette. "You kicked me out of my house, away from everything I cared about and said set up shop somewhere else. The least you could do was acknowledge your bullshit and call me by my name."

"I do not have time for that. Your home doesn't have time for that."

"And that's supposed to impress me?" I put my hands on my hips. "Spare me the theatrics. I can email Kiriha and get those, or any of my friends, and as you asked me to, I have not. I send them two letters a month through the P.O. box. I even deleted their cell phone numbers so I wouldn't try. So tell me what you're here for."

"Quartzmon isn't dead."

I snorted. He wasn't selling me. "You made that very clear back then that killing him was impossible."

He let out a wizened laugh. "I did, true. But this is different. He is moving. And you have to find a way to kill his connection to this world. Permanently."

Oh, fuck me, I thought to myself.

I had made every effort to not kill during my adventures once I had learned what death actually meant to Digimon. Now I had to actually do it all over again, and quite possibly, to a human being.

"Do you realize what you're asking me, Bagramon?" I said to him, eyes soft and cold and angry and I could feel it in my stomach.

The old man creaked over his cane, somehow having not aged a day. "I would not ask you if I didn't," he said in reply.

I swallowed. "I'll go home. That's all I'll promise."

At least Mom would be happy.

A/N: I'll stop posting Xros Wars one day. Not today. Anyway, this was the second or third Xros Wars/Hunters continuation I'd ever had. It's taken three rewrites from the beginning before I finally gave up and just decided to post it. So yeah, we're at the end of the chapter, whatttt happened to change Taiki - erm, Tyler-. Well, we're gonna see. But first, please read and review it really helps me out! Thanks much!

Challenges: Dicing Up Songs - Till I Die (Kill la Kill), Epic Masterclass Hunters list, canon fill, Diversity Writing K22, Christmas Advent 2017 day 24, pairing diversity prompt sex, one ship boot camp prompt - service,