did i ever say i owned these characters? aight. leave comments because i exchange them for monies from the comment exchange bank thing whatever just please.
It was always these types of mornings that reminded Daisuke of Ken.
New York City was pretty different from the Tokyo suburb he had grown up in, but it was the same sun that shone through the sheer curtains here as it did back home. The sun rose later now, the cold grip of winter having set in for a couple of months, but the natural hues warmed up the room, if not in color alone.
Daisuke rolled to his side, smiling faintly as he brushed the blue hair from the girl's face whom he was shared a bed with. She groaned slightly, her face moving into his hand as she shifted onto her belly and continued to sleep. His hand ran down the sheets and landed on the small of her back, pulling himself closer to her and placing his lips on the top of her resting head.
New York was treating the chosen child well. Very well, in fact. Even after a decade and a half, he was still considered a hero, but he had no idea how much some people nearly worshipped him and the other "originals". It felt cheap to ride on his own coat tails to find success, but so many of the other chosen were finding it difficult to avoid their pasts as well. Mimi surely embraced it—he'd seen her on Today in America twice with her own cooking segments. Apparently, there was even talk of her getting her own show on one of the food networks.
For Daisuke, it meant that wherever he worked, he became a tourist attraction. It was one of the reasons he was able to so easily find an employer to get a green card. He wasn't proud of it, but it was working. It was really working. The restaurant he was cooked at was taking his recipes seriously. He was out of the busboy role and on the line. The high pace, high stress, high energy work was amazing. Work was much more play than it was work—and career wise he knew he had made the right choice.
And then there was Tatum. His hand mindlessly moved to scratch her back, his fingers pressing into light massages. She had been one of the original chosen back when he had traveled for the World Tour. For awhile in their teenage years, they had been together. He learned English from her, and she learned Japanese from him. They shared similar hobbies and interests, and even in personality, they often overlapped. But it was hard to keep a relationship when there was 3000 miles of continent and an ocean between them. So, they fell apart, but held onto their strong friendship.
… That was more than he could say for him and his jogress partner.
Tatum was excited to hear Daisuke was coming to live in America. She was happy by the idea of having him within minutes of her in the flesh instead of in pixels. "Holy shit! Are you serious!?" She nearly grabbed the sides of her computer monitor as Daisuke told her.
"Yeah, dude." Daisuke smiled. Tatum was always so cute when she got excited. Her dimples created deep craters in her round cheek. "Still about a half year to go, though. We're moving out in May."
Tatum let out a sound that was between a groan and a scream. "Soooooo awesome. You're going to fit right in here."
"Hah, no shit. I can't wait. I think it will be the change of scenery I need. Ken seems pretty excited too."
"Oh yeah? Hard to think that guy ever gets excited."
"Yo, be nice. That's my boy you're talking about."
Tatum was the one of three people that knew Daisuke and Ken were more than just friends. The other two people were Daisuke and Ken. She chuckled. "I'm kidding. I'm glad he is. It's so cool he's doing this with you."
Daisuke sat back in his chair and smiled wide. "Yeah, it is. I sure did get lucky."
"Now if only he could convince you to shave that shit off your face." Tatum giggled, not at all surprised when the face chat was hung up by an aggravated closing of Daisuke's laptop.
Naturally, it broke Tatum's heart, six months later, to watch a Daisuke that she had never seen before. Broken and callous, his body language more akin to pile of bones than the jitter of muscles and smiles he normally was. "Wait. What?"
"It's just… Me."
"You're kidding me, right?" She saw his face contort, threatening to unleash more tears if he even had any left. "No no no. Davis, no." With a lack of anything else to do, she touched her computer screen, hoping desperately that he could feel it through the wires. "Are you still coming here?"
Tatum thought maybe the video had frozen, but it was just that Daisuke had so little energy to move. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm still coming."
"Okay… Okay… Well. You know you have me. We'll get you all situated and… I'll take you to that burger place you love. And we'll eat like seven tubs of ice cream and watch all the Avengers universe movies in a row until we fall asleep." Tatum breathed and frowned. She was never the best at cheering people up—and she had so rarely the need to do it with Daisuke. Even when they separated originally, there was little upset between them both.
"I'd… Like that…"
And they did just that. Tatum had become his metaphorical rock as he often struggled to get out of bed in the morning. His love for his work only pulled him through the day for so long. So, after a month, she moved into the spare room to help with the bills. Four months after that, Wallace moved into the spare room when Tatum relocated into Daisuke's. It was a nice situation, he supposed. It was like home sometimes. Not in the sense of his family, but in the sense of community, and it was nice to be able to speak his native language freely if necessary.
Now, he laid here with his girlfriend-not-girlfriend—because he wasn't ready to move on just yet—her vibrant hair weaving a rainbow across the pillowcase. He loved her. He always had. But nothing was like the love he had had for Ken. Resting his chin on the crux of her neck, he held Tatum, smelling the dull scent of sweat from the intimacy they shared the previous night. Oh, she gave him everything—kindness, joy, love, security, and understanding... Understanding. Understanding was her greatest virtue. Because even though she risked her own emotions by playing the part of pseudo-girlfriend, she knew she could never begin to comprehend or compete with the idea of quite literally losing a piece of your heart to somebody.
Daisuke wondered how he managed to find people that cared for him so much... When he felt like for so long he didn't deserve anybody.
"Wake up, sleepyhead." Daisuke sang. He left a kiss on her cheek, pressing his bare chest to her back.
Tatum groaned, her back contorting in several different directions as a chorus of pops sounded from her spine. "Noooooo." She turned her head, getting immediately greeted with a kiss. She took a few minutes of groggy blinking, coyly smiling before she found more words. "You're abnormally… Awake."
Daisuke was just trying to mask his anxiety of what the rest of the day had in store for him. "What do you mean? I always love waking up at the asscrack of dawn. Don't tell me you didn't know?"
Tatum rolled her eyes, shifted her body to face Daisuke. "Hmmmm." She playfully bit her lip, "Gonna call ya on your bullshit for that one." She kissed him back.
"Damn. You're right. Think it's something about waking up with a pretty girl in my bed. Wait…" He went wide-eyed, pushing her lightly away. "Ew! Gross!"
Tatum butt her head into his chest, her arms wrapping around his back as she softly giggled. They laid there for a few minutes, until she was almost certain that Daisuke had fallen asleep again. "Davis?"
"Hm?"
"Are you… Ready for this?"
Daisuke didn't say anything. It was New Year's Eve. With that came the chosen's annual get together—its importance this year compounded by it being the fifteenth anniversary. Everybody was going this year, not just the Japanese chosen. They had rented out a huge hall in the Digital World to accommodate all the original chosen's, their digimon, and their plus ones. It was going to be congested and loud and crazy and overwhelming. He already had the script ready in his head for how he was going to answer the "what have you been up to?" question. He hoped he even remembered most of their names at this point.
Tatum squeezed him closer, knowing that he was struggling internally, his need lately to try to bottle in negative energy when confronted.
Oh. And it had been nearly seven months since he had even talked to Ken.
"No." He said meekly. "Not at all."
It was his decision. Ken had tried. At first, Daisuke had opened the emails and read them. Each one nearly a copy-paste of the last: "Hope all is going well. We miss you. Come back and visit soon." He sat on them, debating for days on whether or not to reply. Days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into excuses, until finally each one was forgotten. Until new emails appeared and never lost their "unread" icon. Until he had so many missed calls on his messaging system that he didn't even bother opening it anymore. Until Ken seemed to essentially give up a couple of months ago… Which seemed to bring on a certain sense of finality to it all that just ripped apart at Daisuke from the inside out.
"I would rather cut off both my arms. And legs."
"Davis…" Tatum trailed. She looked up at him, orange light casting across his dark skin, accentuating the sadness in his chocolate eyes. "We don't have to go. Wallace can make excuses for us."
Daisuke sighed. "No… No. I can't keep hurting Chibimon. I'm doing this for him at this point." He frowned. If things had been hard for him, they were just as bad for Chibimon. The poor monster didn't understand what had happened, or why he couldn't see his best friend anymore. Daisuke imagined his partner must be feeling like when the older children's digimon lost their ability to mega digivolve. Chibimon lost as much of a piece of himself as Daisuke did, but it wasn't even his fault.
It wasn't his fault.
He felt guilty about it every day.
Betamon and Terriermon were only so much companionship for the little legendary dragon. So many times, while Daisuke had been on the computer, Chibimon would climb onto his lap and struggle with the concept of dread. Finally, he'd say, "Dai?"
"Yeah, buddy?" Daisuke would say, his finger held on the down arrow on the keyboard. Familiar yet distant faces scrolled up the screen as he took a fleeting interest in their lives. Ken never posted on social networks, but he always hoped that he would. For what purpose, he wasn't sure. Maybe to just be pissed off that the other boy existed without having him in his daily life.
"When can we see Minomon and Ken?"
Daisuke would always answer the same. "Soon."
Chibimon kneeded on Daisuke's legs. "But you said that three times ago, Dai. I miss Minomon."
"I said we'd see them soon."
"I miss hanging out with him. He was so funny! And nice. And he's so smart. Betamon isn't very good at building things and, Terriermon makes fun of me too much. Minomon never did that. Daisuke. Daisuke, are you listening?"
"Drop it."
Chibimon stood up on Daisuke's lap. "No."
"Yes." Daisuke spat. Angrily, Chibimon lifted himself onto the desk and slapped Daisuke's laptop shut, the human counterpart just narrowly slipping his hands away before getting them caught in the clamshell. "What the hell!" He tried to push the digimon aside, but Chibimon laid on his hands and glared up at his partner.
"I want to see them!" Chibimon plead. "I-if we won't see them again…" Big tears started to well in his red eyes. "Just tell me."
Daisuke swallowed. "I'm not lying." He slipped a hand from under his partner and placed it on Chibimon's big cheek to wipe away a tear. "It's almost December. You know what that means."
Chibimon looked up at him, wide eyed. "New Year's!" Daisuke nodded. "We get to see them then!?" Daisuke nodded again. Immediately, he jumped off the table and onto Daisuke's chest, nuzzling and cuddling and rambling excitedly. He wiggled off onto the floor and ran into the hallway exclaiming how great his partner was and how much he loved human holidays.
Without a doubt, he had to go. He was letting his own personal discomfort affect his best friend's life, and he had been selfish for too long.
But that didn't mean he had to be excited for it.
"He is rather moppy about it." Tatum said, drawing a finger across Daisuke's forehead, moving strands of red hair from his eyes.
"It's different for him. You know that." Daisuke looked above Tatum's head and bit his lip. "It's different for me. It's…" He hated bringing it up. He didn't want her to feel bad for not understanding the complexities of a jogress evolution—let alone what happens to the body when you make love to an aforementioned jogress partner. She'd heard it all before—there was no point in reiterating it.
Tatum's eyebrows upturned slightly before finally changing the subject. "How 'bout some pancakes before the big day, eh?"
Daisuke searched Tatum's eyes, green and bright and always full of life. She did so much to keep him happy, as he tried so hard to do for her. But it had been so difficult since he had moved here to be his old self. He was a totally different man from the one that she used to be in love with. He wondered if she wasn't just being kind to him out of pity. "Sounds fucking awesome."
With one last kiss, Tatum slipped out of bed and walked naked across the bedroom before being stopped at the door.
"Wait." Daisuke said.
Tatum turned, a sly and pretty smile pinching her lips, as she slung her arms through her robe. "Yes?"
"I love you." He wanted her to know. He needed her to know. "So much."
"I love you, too. Idiot."
"Dummy."
"Jerk."
Daisuke smiled wide, struggling to find another English word to retort. "You… You… Dammit." They both laughed as she left the room, closing the door quietly behind her. Daisuke let the smile slowly deteriorate from his face, the bubbly feeling of affection disappearing as the silence of the room embraced him.
Because it was alway mornings like this that reminded him of Ken, and he still couldn't believe he didn't follow.
