Joe yawned, stretching his arms high above his head. The fire crackled, waves of heat and warmth pushing back the darkness of the digital world. Gomamon snored next to him, and Joe snorted.

"Some guard," he mumbled, laying a hand on the bristly orange mo hawk. Gomamon mumbled something, curling into a tight little ball. As sleepy as the Digimon was, Joe knew he would wake up in a heartbeat should some crazy monster bust out of the bushes.

His eyes itched and he rubbed at them under his glasses. Grit was collecting from sleeping on the ground for so long, and he couldn't wait until they ran into another stream or lake or something at all to wash up in.

He stretched his fingers and rolled his wrists, trying to keep moving without falling asleep. He always volunteered for the last watch shift, trying to let the younger kids get as much rest as they could. As the oldest, it was his responsibility to make sure they all got home safe.

If they ever got home...

Joe pulled his knees to his chest, bowing his head. He couldn't keep thinking like that. He couldn't keep second guessing everything. They were going to get home – they had to!

A soft touch fell on his shoulder and Joe nearly leapt out of his skin, whipping around to face whatever creature had snuck up on him. A hand slapped over his mouth to keep him from yelping and waking everyone else up, and Matt's blue eyes were dancing with laughter.

Beside him, Gomamon continued to snore.

Joe snorted into Matt's palm, thinking and mentally rolling his eyes as hard as he could, Some guard...

As soon as Matt realized Joe wasn't about freak out and alarm the other sleeping Children, he let go of the older boy and sank to his knees beside him.

"Hey – didn't mean to scare you," Matt whispered apologetically.

"It's fine," Joe said, waving the blonde off and trying to slow his racing heart. It made sense that Gomamon would lay undisturbed – what danger could Matt pose in the dead of night? "Shouldn't you be asleep?"

Matt waved right back at Joe with a flippant smirk. "You know I don't sleep more than twenty hours a week. And besides, it looked like you could use some actual company."

Joe nudged the white lump with the tip of his shoe, smiling as the digital seal just flopped on his side. Did he really want to send Matt back to sleep? Or did he want to spend the night under the stars, talking until dawn with a beautiful blonde?

"I would love some company."

Gomamon cracked one eye open and bit back a smile, rolling over in his "sleep" to give the two blushing boys what little privacy he could.


A/N: Hooray~ It's officially Joumato month and I intend to write every prompt with every bonus condition~

If anyone here wants to participate, the official tumblr is just joumatomonth . tumblr . com You can submit straight to it, or just blog with the tag #joumatomonth

And, you know... Hey to all my old Digimon readers (if any of you actually came back ^^;;;;;)

So, I realized I said I'd be back to posting headcannon, like, over a year ago and then just straight up disappeared off the face of the internet. Hear me out guys - the computer I was writing to completely and utterly crashed. It took out all my writing, all my drawings, all my lists and notes and everything I had for Digimon V and I just kinda spiraled into a depression that prevented me from doing anything creative whatsoever. I only recently got back into the swing of things, and only just got back into Digimon in general.

The amazingly good news, however, is that while my husband was randomly going through the documents on her laptop, we discovered that she apparently made a huge backup of all my Digimon fics from before the computer crash! So I barely lost anything! (Which makes my year-long depression feel like a silly tantrum u.u;;) It'll take me a while, but I do swear I intend to finish Digimon V! There's far, far more that we want to do with the Digidestined and their children!