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1. He loves reading cereal boxes. Since he never has enough time in the morning to read them all the way through, Chibimon has taken to stuffing them in his backpack before he darts out the door, sometimes half-empty, sometimes otherwise.
2. He paces back and forth across his house when he has a surfeit of energy, only to collapse exhausted on his bed at some ungodly hour in the morning. Usually with his homework unfinished, which leads to a lecture from his homeroom teacher for the umpteenth time.
At this point, he thinks the teacher should just give up.
3. Snores twice as loudly as a normal human being would in his sleep.
4. Hated the taste of ramen until one day when he was looking around the house for food and could find nothing else remotely edible. By the time Christmas came, he asked his parents for a big box of ramen.
He didn't get it, and from then on, most of his spare cash went towards buying it: first the standard kind, and then different flavors with stuff like shrimp and wontons and weirder things when he got tired of that.
4a. Was worried that V-mon would try to eat it all, shortly after they became partners. It was a pressing concern for quite some time, actually, until V-mon took a bite one day, wrinkled his nose, and said, "Yuck, Daishuke, what is this?"
4b. Now he wants to convince V-mon that ramen is awesome.
5. Does not like being alone at home. His house is often very quiet and very empty when Jun isn't around, so he tries to be twice as loud to make up for it.
6. As younger brothers often do, scoffed when Jun went on about her crush on Yamato-san. Anyone could see that he was totally uninterested, right? But then, Jun retorted with something about him being the exact same where Hikari-chan was concerned, and both of them went very quiet for a while.
(Because even if it was a hopeless crush, he really did like her. A lot.)
7. They didn't speak to each other until the day after, when Jun yelled at Daisuke for losing her favorite CD which she hadn't noticed she was missing until then. Jun tackled Daisuke and tried to put him in a stranglehold. Daisuke responded to this by trying to gnaw off her left forearm. Everything was unofficially back to normal after that.
8. Maybe it was all Jun's fault, but a weird thing happened. The more Daisuke got to know Hikari, the less he saw her as the pretty girl who also happened to be Taichi-sempai's sister. She was a good friend, a teammate, and really, really cute, but he didn't feel like impressing her as much as he used to, and he didn't feel his temper spark when she agreed with Takeru instead.
And then everything with Ken went down.
A lot of stuff with Ken went down.
9. In the midst of all this chaos, Ken joined the team. And a few weeks after Ken joined the team, another weird thing happened: sleepovers at his place became an ordinary thing.
(At one point, he thought that he should never invite Ken over to his place again. Ken wasn't the problem; it was his parents, who wouldn't stop giving each other these horribly anxious looks that read Boo-hoo, our son must be giving this poor boy such a hard time and Oh, he'll probably mess up and make our whole family look bad -- and Jun, who was worse, all coy affection and sugar-sweetness and definitely not acting normal at all, damn it.
Despite this, he keeps on inviting Ken over.)
9a. Ken seems to be genuinely fond of Daisuke's family nonetheless. Especially Jun, which is just bizarre.
10. Is a little envious of Ken's family, though he'll never admit it. Ken doesn't talk about it much, but it's obvious that his parents dote on him; his mom especially, always so concerned and super-protective.
10a. Curious, asked Ken once, "Hey, do you always have to call home like that?" Ken blinked before replying, "No, but if I don't, Mama and Papa will worry about me." Daisuke had to bite back brief pangs of envy at that.
11. Was first impressed by Taichi and Ken for the same reason: in soccer, they were pure bright stars sprinting all over the fields. To him, they looked like comets hurtling through the sky. Though they each had a different style -- Taichi was all fierce energy and exuberance; Ken, sharp grace and calm precision.
12. Even after becoming friends with Ken, there are times when he has to pinch himself. Sometimes it's only a second, one reassuring heartbeat to make sure that he isn't still talking to the Kaiser.
12a. At other times, it's a series of confusing beats -- Ken will chuckle in the middle of a conversation, and Daisuke will feel warm and lightheaded. Not just giddy like with Hikari, but elated and unsteady; walking on a ray of light and yet somehow all there.
13. In general, he likes listening to Ken. His voice is calm and reassuring. Better than that, he never makes Daisuke feel like he's stupid. That's a pretty novel thing.
13a. There was one study session where they had been reviewing quadratic equations and algorithms -- well, Ken had been trying to teach Daisuke that solving for X did not mean actually circling X as an answer -- and as Ken explained the theorems, the mellow timbre of his voice made Daisuke drowsier and drowsier.
He eventually fell asleep on Ken's shoulder, and was eventually shaken awake by a very embarrassed Ken who wouldn't believe him when Daisuke tried to protest that he hadn't fallen asleep so he could get out of learning the material.
13b. On the other hand, Ken sucks at rock-paper-scissors, so Daisuke figures that they're about even. If he keeps on winning, he can keep making Ken cover for his lack of academic brilliance.
(And even if he loses, Ken will help him out with everything anyway.)
So no matter what, it's a win-win situation when they're together.
14. If he thinks about it, there isn't much that he wouldn't do for Ichijouji either.
15. But he doesn't have to think about it, and that's the thing: it's two heartbeats synched, not always in perfect full-stop motion, but always together. And that's what matters. Right?