Father of the Year
Author's Note: Enjoy the story and R&R.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to or of the Digimon series.
Pairings: Established Daisuke x Takeru. Referenced established (canon) Ken x Miyako, one-sided (canon) Daisuke x Hikari.
Summary:
Takaishi Takeru calls upon three humorous anecdotal snippets from Motomiya Daisuke's past to inspire his new book.
Takaishi Takeru stared blankly into the holo screen at his desk, the page equally stark, except for the title he, his agent, and publisher had agreed upon.
Digimon Adventure 02.
"How's it coming?" Daisuke rested his chin on the pad of the blond's chair.
"Have my outlines and notes done. I'm about to put it all together."
"Not to be a drag on the creative process or anything, but we gotta pay the heating bill."
Deadlines: an author's worst enemy. Okay, maybe second worst behind writer's block. They claim restrictions breed creativity, so why was he in a funk lately?
Takeru abstained from remarking how Daisuke's thriving restaurant enterprise incontrovertibly offset their expenses this month. But that's not how partnerships worked. Even though they'd just signed the papers to begin opening chain locations in Europe, Takeru couldn't loaf around on royalties from his first bestseller forever, failing to contribute to their family's welfare. He had to finish this second book.
Daisuke had spent the first couple years post-university doing the grunt work, hauling a ramen cart through the streets of New York City while V-mon hawked their single-item menu like a crooked roving salesman. A fusty marketing strategy, but no one could argue with the lucrative results. Picturing the scene from Daisuke's missives made Takeru's mouth water, tickling the olfactory receptors in his nasal cavity. He could really go for a bowl right now. His husband's shoyu ramen was unparalleled, a traditional yet delicious synthesis of handcrafted noodles, menma, seaweed, boiled eggs, and braised pork artfully arranged in soul-warming broth. Takeru was also partial to the addition of garlic, courtesy of his French ancestry, which Daisuke breached convention to prepare for him when he requested it.
Jumping down a leaf, he typed "Motomiya Daisuke" in Japanese, knowing his spouse would be unable to overcome nosiness and definitely peek upon seeing his name, bolder than graffiti. Takeru cracked his knuckles (Daisuke hoped to wean him off the habit) and deftly struck the keys, wrapping up his train of thought.
"Motomiya Daisuke was always insecure concerning fatherhood, since his early escapades in the Digital World," the subject of his piece muttered along.
Daisuke vented a tame expletive in response to Takeru's innocently guileful smile. Funnily enough, he didn't deny the deduction's veracity.
"I recall us deciding you weren't going to write about our private lives in here!"
True. They did discuss the matter; or, more accurately, Daisuke persuaded him to hold onto some material in case he ever voted to compose a tell-all memoir to rake in extra moolah.
"If you actually read my first book, you'd realize all my stories are framed around you and the boys."
Caught in a big lie, the noticeably reddened Daisuke eeked out a series of guttural non-sentences. It was on his to-do pile! Literature wasn't his best subject!
Takeru enjoyed a hearty laugh, announcing the next passage, "It occurred thusly. Gathered round were droves of Punimon, plasticky and red in their overwhelming sameness. Residents of a village the Chosen Children volunteered to restore, after the much prayed for defeat of the oppressive Digimon Kaiser. Needing somebody to care for them, Inoue Miyako entrusted Daisuke-kun a beach ball. 'Say, why are V-mon and I stuck babysitting?' Daisuke carped, to which the babies expressed their concordance with Miyako-san's choice of guardian by bouncing up and down like jiggling mounds of strawberry jello."
"I remember! I was there, Takeru!" the shorter critiqued sardonically.
Ironically, Takeru wasn't. He and Hikari had stepped away with Patamon and Tailmon to get to the bottom of their evolution difficulties. This whole anecdote arose interviewing Miyako, who happily spilled the goods at the chance to annoy Daisuke. Bingo, bingo, bingo!
"Before he could react, Miyako-san and Iori-kun had flown the coop on the backs of Holsmon and Digmon. He hurled an objection for the sake of appearances. The inflatable toy squeaking in his gloves, Daisuke discarded pettiness and waxed resolute. It was crunch time. Fostering a throng of toddler Digimon presented model pretext to show Hikari-chan what a great father he'd be in the future."
That last detail he postulated. Judging by the veteran goggle-brain tightening on the lumbar support of his seat, he hit the nail on the head.
"And yet," Daisuke snorted, "here I am. Stuck with you, Takeru. Making fun of me."
"Sorry, hahaha."
"You forgot what happened after. You do not want to be ankle-deep in a pack of Punimon when they do their business. I dare you to deny you can't scrub the smell of digi-farts out of your shoes!"
Trying not to imagine the fetor of flatulence wafting over the nurslings, Takeru smithed an appropriately stinging closing line: "Or Daisuke could quit while he was ahead."
Fiddlesticks. Daisuke tripped into this hole he himself dug.
Takeru fast-forwarded.
"Daisuke-kun sprinted towards Odaiba Middle School, a duffel bag stalling his progress. He would have kept running, but he stopped by a squadron of curious kindergarteners watching a news ticker scroll across sixteen TVs in a store display window."
"Oh, them."
He'd told the biographer this episode.
"'It's not this jellyfish, right?' the tot at the end chirped. His classmates parroted the question," Takeru narrated.
"Because it can live outside water, eh?" the other attempted in a callow falsetto.
A tetrad of recapitulations.
"Grownups don't understand one bit."
Four refrains.
"Jellyfish? Do you mean the kind in the sea?" Daisuke sounded off as himself.
"Proving their point, the preschoolers focused their irritated attentions on him, prompting him to spit out an excuse."
Daisuke eagerly interjected, "Oops, I'll be late for soccer!"
"His D-3 bleeped, and the squirts swarmed him like bees to snag his Digivice."
"Ahh, shut up! Get lost!"
The men rollicked at Daisuke's clutzy pantomime of the event.
I take it back. This ain't so bad, Daisuke mused.
But naturally, Takeru had to have the final word, adding, "That clinched it. He was never having kids."
"And yet, I repeat, here I am, stuck with you, Takeru."
"Do you regret it?"
"Course not! I love my kids!"
As if to test his conviction, their sons, carbon copies of their pappies during their formative years, capered through the dematerializing hard light door and wrestled Daisuke to the floor.
"Oyaji, let's visit the Ferris wheel in Odaiba!" the beanpole clone of Daisuke suggested. They could use a change of milieu.
"Argh, where are Chibimon and Tokomon?" Daisuke shouted for the hatchling and denture-pig, limbs insensate due to the excess weight.
Takeru recommenced tapping.
"A smack of Kuramon supported in one arm, Daisuke towed V-mon out the JR Express, casting him onto the station platform. Behind, Ichijouji Ken carried a barrow of infant viruses too, and Wormmon covered the gap between the rail and landing in a wobbly bound."
"Tosan is in the zone again," the mini-Takeru observed.
"The dragon whelp whined like a petulant jackanape. Daisuke yapped in the direction of the fleshy contact lenses stacked against his chest, inflamed V-mon had attacked them."
Their children cited V-mon's oft-raised defence, "But –!"
"Ken diffused the controversy, but Daisuke bemoaned his Digimon's disregard for Izumi Koushiro's directives. The techie would assuredly be reproachful."
"BUT –!" they caricatured.
"'Consider this practice for when you become a papa,' Ken chimed in. 'It'll make you a better parent someday.'"
"Ichijouji probably subscribes to his own advice. How else does he cope with those three little monsters of his?" Daisuke inferred.
"Being married to Miyako-san helps!"
"I'm not convinced that makes it easier, sport."
"Each Kuramon blinked – winked? – its cyclopean eye skeptically. Him? A dad? Daisuke wasn't sure."
Daisuke languished in self-doubt at his parenting. His upbringing didn't exactly exemplify ace childrearing. He still blamed his mom and pop for the embarrassing way they acted the day they met Ken, begging the ex-genius to tutor their "idiot son" when Daisuke was literally in the room.
They'd pulled through, though.
"Oyaji!"
"Tosan!"
"Take us to the Daikanransha!"
"Cool your jets!" Daisuke borrowed a phrase he learned in America. "I'll take you! Grab your coats and leave your dad to his book!"
Swelling with fatherly pride, more so for Daisuke than himself, Takeru replayed the yarns that had led him to such a graceful epilogue. Engrossed in the snapshot moment of Daisuke and their two boys, the writer located his preteen voice, slipping into his eleven-year-old psyche. And so, returning to page 1, he started typing again.
"That summer was unforgettable. Since then, three years have passed…"