Work Text:
Series: In The Cycle||Title: He Was Looking
Chapters: 1-1||Words: 880
Ship: Ken x Daisuke
Genre: Romance||Rated: G
Notes: This takes place probably a couple of weeks after All My Heart. POVs will mostly flip between Ken and Daisuke.
Summary: Getting older means wearing a school uniform. Ken sort of wishes Daisuke wouldn’t wear his – or maybe he wishes Daisuke would wear it more often. But he’s not looking. Really.
Most people wished school breaks would go on forever. Ken wasn’t any different in that regard. Though his reasons weren’t quite the same as others that he knew. Most people looked forward to to not needing to attend class or to whatever leisure activities would take up their time.
Ken found himself thoroughly and absolutely and eternally grateful for the fact that school breaks meant that Daisuke wasn’t wearing a school uniform anymore.
I don’t know if it’s because he looks better all rumpled up or because he looks better tidied up.
Ken kept at least a third of his attention on the textbook in front of him. All the rest of it was on Daisuke, who lay flat on his back, uniform jacket undone, his shirt rumpled up, his hair messy, and his eyes closed.
It shouldn’t have looked that good. Even if he did, Ken knew that he shouldn’t have been looking. The view was just too spectacular, at least in his eyes. Daisuke was his best friend, the first true friend that he’d had in years. He was pretty sure he’d had friends when he was younger, before Osamu, but he’d not spoken to them in years and doubted they’d even consider him friends anymore.
Daisuke knew, had experienced first-hand, the best and the worst of him, and not only accepted Ken no matter what, kept believing that Ken could be better than he’d been. All the other Chosen believed that as well, but it seemed somehow more with Daisuke, in a way that Ken didn’t have any words for.
He tried not to think about it. Thinking too hard about Daisuke made parts of him tingle that he was pretty sure weren’t supposed to tingle. They did anyway; there wasn’t much he could do about it. Daisuke had a very annoying habit of roaming into his mind when he least expected it. Ken learned to roll with it. There weren’t many other options.
He turned another page and tried to think about something else. But his mind refused to leave the thought of Daisuke, especially Daisuke either in or out of a uniform, and since those were the only two options, his choices were extremely limited there.
He cast another glance, too quick and too long, and swallowed hard at the sight of a long streak of Daisuke’s stomach, muscled from years of sports and tanned from the sun and jerked his head to one side, trying so hard not to blush and knowing that he failed miserably at it.
You’re an idiot. Ken admonished himself, and knew it to be true. Daisuke had never minded people looking at him. One thing he’d never been was body-shy, and Ken took shameless advantage of that at times. But he didn’t want Daisuke to know, because then Daisuke might decide that he didn’t want Ken looking.
Going to saunas or hot springs with Daisuke counted among his personal pleasures. He wasn’t going to do something to lose out on the privilege.
“Ken? You all right over there?” Daisuke pushed himself up onto his elbows and raised his head to look at Ken, head tilted slightly to the side.
Ken stared harder at the book in his hands. “Yes.” His voice didn’t squeak. It hadn’t fully finished deepening with maturity but it did not squeak. He refused to even think about squeaking. “So, did you want to go to the Digital World this weekend?”
“Sure!” Daisuke grinned, sitting up, his shirt sliding down to cover his stomach. Ken completely refused to admit that he sighed internally in relief. “Want to bring V-mon and Wormmon back here?”
Their partners spent at least part of their time in the Digital World, as well as part of it in the human world. Ken missed Wormmon when he wasn’t there, but understood that their partners needed time in their own home as well. It had really been too long in his opinion, though.
“That sounds like a good idea,” he agreed. At least now Daisuke would wear his normal clothes and not that uniform. Sure, most of their friends wore or had worn ones like it. But ever since Ken had first seen Daisuke wearing a school uniform, his head spun and his throat closed up and he had to remind himself continually how to walk and speak in a coherent fashion.
That was one of the reasons he wanted to see Wormmon again. Wormmon knew. Wormmon knew every thought he’d ever had about Daisuke, from his Kaiser days right up until the last time they’d talked.
He keeps telling me just to tell him. Honestly, the thought had occurred to Ken more than once, but the idea of saying it out loud, where Daisuke could hear him, wasn’t one that he liked. Daisuke would never reject him as a friend – he had absolute faith in that – if Daisuke would hold out his hand after everything Ken did as the Kaiser than this was nothing.
But would Daisuke ever return it? That was something Ken couldn’t figure out – and wasn’t sure if he wanted to.
Daisuke adjusted himself a little more, and Ken stared harder at his book. He wasn’t looking – he wasn’t looking.
He was looking. And he liked what he saw.
The End
Notes: My idiots are mutually pining for one another. Eventually they will move beyond this to using actual words. Eventually.