"Why won't you let me see her?" Rumiko asks softly.
Rika clenches her fists in her pockets, sharply looking away out of reflex, grinding her handsome jaw and biting the reply that burns on her squirming tongue, eyes narrowed and hard. She can still taste good coffee and a hint of overpriced gourmet sandwiches, turning stale. She denied the bottle of bubbling white, preferring a clear head filled with the static of her own existence.
"It's been years," the older woman pleads, her plump lower lip trembling. "Can't we just be together, again? Like a family."
"Mom…"
"We're not getting any younger, my love. How are you still holding this against me?"
"No." A sigh, a wince. "No, mom."
"Haven't I proved myself? Don't I deserve a proper place in your life, in your home?"
"Mom, c'mon–"
"You barely spare the time to see me, and when you're without her, I feel like… like you're not really here. It's as if you're hiding me, like I'm some illicit secret you've got to keep."
Daughter sees it shall soon rain. "I'm not doing this with you right now, okay."
"Sweetie, please, I just want–"
"You've had a little too much wine. Let's just not."
Mother surges with vigour. "Don't patronise me, Rika!"
"Don't judge her," comes out astonishingly meek, "because of me, mom."
A shaky gasp.
A strangled whimper.
The hug is sudden and crushing.
"I love you," Rumiko murmurs into her daughter's neck. "I love you so goddamn much." A slender frame is wracked by a sob. "Oh, m-my little girl."
"It upsets her." Rika sags, chin at rest on her mother's shoulder. "It hurts her just to think about it."
"I'm so sorry."
"I just can't, because… the way you look at me…"
Everything irritates. The whole universe chafes. Inside, outside.
Rika tears out of her raincoat and jabs it hastily on the hook. Kicks off her boots like they offended her, leaving them in a discordant pair to tread the floor in socks. Drops her Digivice with a clatter followed shortly by her cellphone and keys, missing the little ceramic bowl entirely. Attacking her belt ineffectually, she seethes with a hiss through gritted teeth.
Renamon senses the pain. Perhaps not all of it. Some things are kept hidden, still.
"…Son of a…"
She is patiently silent, watching the rain, spying on the reflection of her partner in the glass, fighting to unhook her belt buckle so as to wriggle out of her scuffed jeans. Oh, Rika.
The Tamer hops across the room, almost losing balance. The serpentine swirl of her tattoo is pitch black and glittery along her slender neck. Her piercings flicker like flames in her brow, her ear. Her nipples are spent bullets. She's got a bit more ass than her mother's professional eye would like, but the men love it, some women do, too.
Poised at the window, the Digimon fogs the glass with her breaths.
With a victorious grunt, Rika finally balls her damp jeans and tosses them into the laundry hamper, then collapses on the couch, slouched handsomely in her underwear, a real heartthrob gone to waste. She simmers like this for some time.
Renamon likes the storm clouds. She can appreciate the beauty in such things.
Lifting her eyes and befalling her partner, all irritation abates gently within the prolonged gaze, leaving only the beautiful stoicism behind. And even that inevitably softens. The human affords herself a smile. "Hey." A little closer to feeling comfortable in her own skin.
"Hello." The Digimon turns, finally, peering back. "You ought to dry yourself off."
"That raincoat did an okay job." Rika marvels again, for the billionth time, probably, as to how Renamon could be so gorgeous and so here, real and solid and dependable – so very hers. "I'm just a little wet."
"Are you cold?"
"I'm…" She looks down upon her body. Her abdominal muscles are still defined, as is admirable, though the passage of years has inevitably chiselled away at her in places. Her stomach crushes inwards, tightening, reflexively. A restless mind eating away at itself to the point of finding comfort in beer and recurring bouts of insomnia can sometimes leave this woman on the fringe of ruin. But not cigarettes, Renamon hates the stink. Rika did not ever form that particular bad habit. "I'm fine."
The Digimon approaches on silent paws.
The Tamer looks up, smiling. "I could do with a hug." She hates how it hurts to say it and opens her lithely muscular arms, tattoo rolling over her shoulder, her bicep.
Renamon simply sinks into Rika. Thighs like the trunks of saplings straddle, talons raking goosebumps across a shivering back, nuzzling whiskers ticking a shoulder until a giggle bubbles forth.
The human bows and buckles beneath the beast, falling altogether onto the couch. It's gentle, effortless. Rika surrenders herself to Renamon, lost to their entanglement of limbs and grazing torsos.
Everything else chafes and irritates. Everything, save for this.
Watching her human, especially handsome and rugged with her hair tossed about her bare shoulders and hard eyes focused on a monotonous task, Renamon does wonder at the trail of broken hearts, sometimes. Takato. Jeri. It is not a jealous thought.
Rika scrolls through social media dispassionately. She hates the stuff, but it lets her keep track of her old friends. She loves them. Misses them. Hardly knows how to reach out. Generally makes excuses whenever they try.
Renamon is enjoying a distracted, idle scratch behind the ears, her head at rest atop her Tamer's bare stomach. The Digimon has a tendency to stare.
Rika feels those blue slits, narrowed with apparent relaxation. She lowers her phone and peers back at Renamon, whose slits widen into searching ovals.
"Do you wish to talk about it, now?" comes the soft, soothing rumble, all too aware.
"No."
"Very well."
The Tamer gently drags her thumb along the bridge of a vulpine snout. Returns to browsing socials on her phone.
Her Digimon flares her nostrils softly.
"I love you," comes out quiet and sad.
"As do I," returns assertively.
"I love you so goddamn much."
Renamon wrinkles her muzzle when Rika deliberately teases her nose, tapping it repeatedly, like a button needing to be pressed.
The Tamer taps in tandem with her perceived heartbeat. It has become uneven, irregular. She really needs to see a doctor about it.
The Digimon lifts her head slowly, escaping the button presses to her nose, ears pricked.
"Sorry."
A slow tilt of the head.
Rika's spare hand returns to Renamon's ears. Their bed is a sanctuary against the downpour that weeps for the world beyond their apartment.
"And yet."
A world that has not faced a serious wild Digimon-related incident in years. Too many dedicated Tamers with heroic hopes, to lead onto further generations of heroes and their heroic Digimon. It's the outlying Tamers with wicked intentions, abusing their Digimon partners for criminal ends, that are to be feared and snuffed out, now. Until governments weaponise Digimon in wars.
Hard eyes reflect artificial light.
This world doesn't have much need for Rika and Renamon, anymore. They're too old. All that's left for them is roiling sex, a mundane desk job and the occasional chat with the neighbourhood strays.
"And yet, I love you more."
Rika smiles as Renamon stalks on all fours and kisses her until her eyes flutter shut and she drops her phone.
The rain has hardly let up in hours.
The Tamer abruptly bursts into tears and grips greedy fistfuls of fur like this is all that anchors them in place. Kisses her partner back, kisses her harder.
Stiffening, the Digimon lifts her paw away from her partner's breast, talons catching the light with movement, and lays a huge, gentle pressure upon her jawline instead, effortlessly powerful, overpowering.
"Mmmph–" Renamon's goodness can sometimes frustrate Rika to the point of feeling teased by it, protesting as the kiss breaks them apart.
The Digimon sits back on her haunches, holding her Tamer's cheek, finding a dainty little human hand to cradle in claws that were never intended for such a tender, dexterous task. Blue eyes are wide and wonderful. "Rika."
She twists away, hiding half her face in a pillow.
"Shall I go?"
"N-no." A sniffle. "Please. Stay."
A gentle, patient nod.
"Y-you're so f-fucking good to me. Don't g-go."
"I'm here." Renamon stoops again to nose at a trail of tears. A stroke of her tongue. She smells, then tastes the salt of distress.
Rika is thinking about her mother. How she should have listened to her mother and found a nice conventional human husband who could kiss her conventionally and love her conventionally as conventional human husbands ought to do. He would've tried his best to understand, she would've refused to communicate her hurts, he would've inevitably failed to help her, and she would've inevitably divorced him. She would've set him free.
A Digimon partner is not a husband a Tamer can simply divorce.
Perhaps Rumiko could finally relate, then, and Rika would rather die.
Renamon's ears press flat against her skull.