Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ The Walls Between ❯ A Touch of Frost ( Chapter 7 )

"Do you ever miss Wormmon?" asked Daisuke, quite out of the blue.

Ken turned to glance at him, and then shifted a little and looked away; the question obviously made him uncomfortable. So Daisuke clarified, "You don't have to answer that. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have brought it up."

"No," said Ken softly. "It's okay. I don't mind."

They were sprawled out across the bed, doing nothing but enjoying one another's company in the lazy hour before either of them was inclined to get up and go do something. It was a Sunday, one of the few that Daisuke's shifting schedule allowed him to have free, and he'd already woken up to passionate kisses and an urgent embrace. Now, with his carnal instincts sated for the moment, Daisuke was content to just relax and pet his lover's body, and occasionally wonder things like whether or not Ken missed Wormmon.

Ken rolled over onto his belly and folded his arms to pillow his chin. "Yeah, I miss him. Do you miss Veemon?"

"Well, I was just thinking about Veemon. That's what made me ask." Daisuke began to trace idle patterns on Ken's shoulderblade. "I was just thinking that if Veemon were here, we'd never get enough time alone to fuck."

"So you're glad he's not?"

"I didn't say that."

"Hmmm." Ken went silent for a moment before saying, "I think about Wormmon all the time. I wonder what he's doing, if he's okay. I wonder what the digital world is like now that we meddling humans aren't there upsetting the natural order. I wonder if the passage of time is still synced between the worlds. It's possible that it's not, you know."

"Really? I hadn't thought of that." Daisuke leaned down to brush his lips against Ken's skin, meaning nothing by the gesture. He loved the way Ken's skin felt and smelled and tasted.

"I don't know why they ever synced to begin with. Maybe because BelialVamdemon was here in this world? That might have bound them together for a while. And then when that was finished, the gates all closed and each world went on its merry way as if they had never touched. It makes more sense for time in the digital world to flow much more swiftly anyway."

"Huh."

Ken shifted onto his side again and smiled at Daisuke. "Do you ever wonder if maybe the digital world has called new children into it, to fix a new crisis for it?"

"No way!" Daisuke sat up and laid his hands on Ken's thigh. "If we were needed, we'd be there!"

"Maybe the gates have opened and closed several times. Maybe, for whatever reason, only children are allowed to go, so once we all grew too old, new Chosen were picked instead of us."

"That's a really morose thought, Ken." Daisuke frowned down at his lover, but didn't stop kneading the flesh of Ken's leg. "That's so ... It's like ..."

"Like we were used, and then discarded?"

"Well, that's not exactly what I was going to say, but yeah." His kneading motion slowed, and became a gentle rub up and down Ken's pale thigh, and over his hip. "That's like saying it all meant nothing. That's cruel."

"How do you figure? No, don't stop that."

"I don't know. The digital world meant everything to me those days. Veemon was my best friend for awhile there. I felt special. I felt like I meant something, like I was somebody. And I was." He grinned, remembering. "I would never have been able to be friends with famous, invincible Ichijouji Ken before I was Chosen. I learned that I could do anything." He paused, unsatisfied with these words and groping for the correct ones. "I'm really not explaining this very well, am I?"

"Not really," said Ken, sounding drowsy as he rolled back onto his belly. "I'm still listening, though."

Daisuke took a moment to memorize the curve of Ken's back with his hands and gather his thoughts. "You know how, when you're young, your parents tell you that you're just their most special son and they make a big deal about finger-paintings and shit and make you feel like you've done something significant no matter what."

"Well, no," said Ken after a somewhat awkward pause. "Mine never did that until after Osamu died. And by then I had the Seed in me and active and the things I was doing were significant."

Daisuke winced a little. Leave it to him to bring up not one, but two painful subjects on accident. "Sorry," he murmured, looking away and wishing he could crawl into a hole and die.

"It's okay," said Ken as he sat up and turned around. Laying his hands on Daisuke's shoulders, he encouraged Daisuke to lay down instead. When Daisuke complied, Ken began to rub his back. "Really. Go on."

"Okay, well, mine did." Daisuke rested his chin on his arms and closed his eyes. He loved backrubs from Ken. "But I saw through that. I knew that what they were praising wasn't worth shit, and their praise started to mean nothing to me. And it wasn't just my parents, it was everyone. Everything meant nothing, you know? It was all worthless, except that a lot of it was fun and I could overlook the worthless part in favor of the fun part."

"Mmm," said Ken, sounding amused. "A philosopher before puberty."

Daisuke raised a foot and casually kicked Ken in the leg with his heel. "You know what I mean. I didn't understand what I felt. I wouldn't have been able to say any of this or explain it. And it didn't make me cynical until I was, oh, at least fifteen."

"You've never been cynical in your life," said Ken.

"You'd be surprised. Anyway, I knew I was just a kid and I couldn't do anything meaningful, yet people acted like it was all meaningful. So I knew that was all bullshit. Only then, it wasn't. Then I was a Chosen Child, and what I was doing was meaningful. I could save a world. Then I was saving my world, and shit that was scary for awhile. If we screwed up, it would be the whole world that paid for it, so obviously there was no room for a screw-up. I was so glad you were there, by the way."

"Why?"

"Because you're brilliant. Even without the fucking Seed, you're still brilliant when you want to be and put some effort in it." Daisuke turned his head so that his cheek rested on his arms. "I trusted you to smack me around if I tried to bull my way into something fucking stupid."

Ken chuckled, but didn't comment, and after a moment Daisuke continued. "It meant something. It was important. It affected people, a lot of people, and in a good way. All of a sudden, I wasn't just a kid playing at being a hero. I was a hero."

"I'm glad you got something good out of it," said Ken. He stopped massaging Daisuke's back, and then Daisuke felt him moving, shifting to drape himself half-across Daisuke's legs.

"Didn't you?"

"Hmmm," said Ken. "What I mostly got out of the digital world was that I was a human being. I wasn't my brother's shadow. I also wasn't some sort of super-evolved new species, or a totally worthless excuse for a person. I could make mistakes, really spectacular ones. I could also do great things. Everyone is a blend of extremes, and forsaking all other aspects in favor of only one is ... to do yourself an injustice." He paused, and then added, "But I also got you, and in some ways that was the most important thing of all." He began to play with the hair on the back of Daisuke's head, which was soothing.

"That was really deep until you switched the focus to sex. Ow!"

Ken's hand went back to smoothing Daisuke's hair, having yanked it a little at that statement. "You're not about sex."

"Sure I am. And I wasn't complaining. In the end, everything always comes down to sex, it's okay to admit it."

"That's not true. Don't be crude. I'm not talking about that anyway."

"Do enlighten me then." Daisuke squirmed around until he was laying on his back and looking up at Ken's thoughtful features. Ken's hand dropped from his head to his nipples and began to idly stroke them.

"The driving force in my life has always been fear," said Ken, with his gaze cast downward at his hand on Daisuke's chest. "I was always defined by what I feared, and fear circumscribed everything. I hated it, but there was nothing I could do about it until the Seed came along. I know you don't like to hear about it, but that Seed was an important part of my life anyway. It deceived me, promised me that it could take away all the fear, but it didn't."

"I don't know," said Daisuke. "You seemed pretty fearless to me." The motion of Ken's fingers on his nipples was starting to get him aroused again.

Ken shook his head. "I was reckless, and I had a false sort of courage that came from not understanding the possible consequences of my actions." He spoke in a low tone, as if to himself. "The Seed was a liar, and in the end I knew that it had betrayed me. I was still afraid, all throughout the time when I was the Kaizer. I just ... I believed that I wasn't, and so I did things that I thought were brave, but really they were just stupid. I was trying to prove my lack of fear to myself, I think. Wormmon understood my fear, though. He stayed with me, no matter how hard I tried to drive him away. I was afraid that someday he would get tired of me, or disgusted with me, and leave anyway, so I tried to pre-empt that and make him leave on my terms. But he didn't. He understood, somehow." Ken paused, with a little smile curving his lips. "Wormmon was a very simple sort of creature. A lot like you."

"Gee, thanks."

"No, I don't mean that in an insulting way. You and Wormmon, you see a complex situation or problem, and you're able to boil it down to its essentials. You see things in a very simplistic way, but that's an advantage to you. You don't get mired in the complexity, you don't let it get in your way. You're not deceived by thinking things to death. Wormmon somehow saw that I depended on him, that I was terrified of being alone. So he stayed, no matter what."

Daisuke didn't reply at first. Ken's words resonated for him, they felt familiar somehow. They felt right, and true, as if everything that Ken had ever done made sense when viewed in this light. Even so, he didn't like it, so finally he said, "I don't believe that. Oh-h-h." He moaned a little when Ken leaned forward to briefly lick his nipple.

"Mmm," said Ken when he was finished. "You're irresistible. It's almost like a dream, like I'm going to wake up and you're not actually here."

"I am," said Daisuke. "And if you don't stop touching me like that, you're going to have proof in a second."

"I'd like that," said Ken. "Stay home today."

"Mmm. I promised Takeru I'd meet him at eleven, though."

"Call him and cancel." Ken murmured this as he began to tongue the spaces between Daisuke's ribs. This felt nice, but also tickled a tiny bit, and made Daisuke squirm.

"I pr-promised though, oh-h-h stop that!"

Ken sighed and obeyed, laying down across Daisuke again. "When did you and Takeru-san become friends?"

"We didn't. I don't know why he suddenly wants to see me. Oooh, wait!" Daisuke was struck by a sudden thought. "What if Miyako told him I dumped her? What if she convinced him to beat the shit out of me? She's got a lot of friends! Fuck, I hadn't thought of that!"

"So you should cancel," said Ken.

"Err," said Daisuke, biting his finger and considering. "No, I promised. I'm probably just being paranoid. Yeah, that can't be it. Shit. I need to stop thinking about it, I'm just scaring myself."

"When are you planning to be home?"

"I don't know. Probably before sundown, but we might go drinking or something and stay out. Don't worry, I'll be fine." He grinned at Ken, who didn't smile back.

"I love you," said Ken, reaching out to stroke Daisuke's hair. Daisuke took his hand and kissed his fingers.

"Let me up. I need to have a bath before I leave."

"What do you think?"

Daisuke looked up, bored, from where he was slouching against the wall. "It looks just like the last one."

"It does not," said Takeru, who was trying on sport coats and was currently modeling one that was a bluish charcoal-grey. "This one's darker."

"It looks fine. The last one looked fine."

"Are you sure?" Takeru half-turned in order to look at the cut of the back in the mirror. "My mother always said I had to be careful with colors, because of my hair."

"Why are you asking me like I'm some sort of fashion expert? Just get whatever." Daisuke was quite ready for this shopping trip to be over, so he could ditch Takeru and go home. Although Takeru hadn't tried to beat him up yet, he was still wishing that he'd taken Ken's advice and called Takeru to cancel. He could be home right now with Ken; instead, he was watching someone he hadn't seen in years try on clothes.

Despite this, he didn't really want to ditch Takeru yet. He wasn't sure why not, this was one of the dullest activities he could imagine, but there it was.

Takeru stopped examining the back of the coat in the mirror and gave Daisuke a bemused look. "I figured you'd know stuff like this."

"What the fuck for? Oh." Things clicked together for Daisuke. Naturally. "Miyako tell you?"

Nodding, Takeru said, "I didn't want to say anything."

Daisuke snorted. "You've been watching way too much television if you think sleeping with Ken has made me develop a fashion sense."

"Well," said Takeru, somewhat lamely. Then he said, "Well, you look good today."

"That's because Ken dressed me. He wouldn't let me out of the apartment in what I picked out. Is this the only reason we're here? 'Cause if it is, I think it's time to do something else." Pushing himself off the wall, Daisuke started to put all the coats that Takeru had picked out back on their hangers on the racks.

Takeru seemed a little flustered, but followed Daisuke's lead. After a few minutes, he said, "I'm sorry. I would have asked, but I didn't want to say anything."

"What, did you think I'd bite your head off?" Daisuke shrugged and hung up the last coat. "I'm over all my shyness about Ken. What else did you want to do today?"

"Nothing, really. We could go to my place if you're hungry, though. The market down the street from where I live sells some of the most amazing sushi."

Daisuke wasn't all that hungry yet, but said, "Sure," anyway. Smiling, Takeru lead the way out of the clothes store.

Once out on the sidewalk, Daisuke stuck his hands in his jacket pockets and said, "Which way?" The wind wasn't very cold, but there was a certain bite in it that presaged winter, and so there weren't very many people walking around. This area of town was gaudy in the extreme, with a thousand signs and advertisements glaring out in every shade in the rainbow and every color combination, no matter how ill-advised. Daisuke liked it a lot. It felt wild.

"It's not far," said Takeru, turning left and starting down the street.

Daisuke followed beside him, and for a few minutes neither of them said anything. Takeru acted like he wanted to a few times, drawing a breath and raising his head a little as if about to speak, but never actually did. Finally, Daisuke said, "Go ahead and ask."

"Ask what?"

"Whatever it is you're dying to ask. Go on."

"Well," said Takeru. Then there was a pause, before he said, "Miyako was telling the truth then?"

"I guess," said Daisuke. "It depends on what she told you."

"Well, she said that you were cheating on her with Ken and then moved in with him. Along with a lot of other things that don't bear repeating."

Daisuke watched the pavement move by under his feet. "There's more to it than that," he said quietly.

"Yeah, I figured. Women are always putting their own feelings all over everything, they never tell it like it really is. Was that part true though?"

"Basically."

"So you're, you know, gay? Ken too?"

Daisuke snorted. "If you insist on putting a label on it. Ken is a lot gayer than I am, though."

"I never would have figured." Takeru was quiet for a few moments, and Daisuke let him be. "I mean, you were with Miyako, and Ken was dating Hikari. Why was that?"

"Me and Miyako are a long story, and I don't know why Ken started going out with Hikari. I bet he never kissed her, though."

"Hikari doesn't like to talk about him most of the time," said Takeru. "She holds grudges, and he wasn't very slick about breaking things off."

"You with her now?" asked Daisuke. The words came out sounding more hopeful than he'd intended; his feelings toward Hikari were very complex ones, but the primary urge he felt was protective. He wanted her to be happy.

"Yeah," said Takeru. "We've been out a few times now. She hasn't changed very much since the last time we were dating." Another silence fell while they walked, until Takeru suddenly blurted, "What's it like to kiss another guy?"

Daisuke laughed. He couldn't help it. Takeru looked at him sidelong and said, "What? You said I could ask!"

"What kind of a dumb-ass question is that? What's it like to kiss another guy! What's it like to kiss a girl? You have kissed a girl, haven't you?"

"I was just asking," said Takeru, hunching his shoulders forward a little and not looking at Daisuke.

Okay, that was a little harsh. Daisuke moderated his tone a bit and said, "I didn't mean to imply anything with that. I'm sorry. Kissing Ken is just like kissing Miyako, except when Ken hasn't shaved in a couple of days and then that's weird. It's not the kissing that's different, it's everything else."

Takeru didn't reply for a few moments, but then apparently decided to forgive Daisuke because he brightened up and said, "Like what?"

"Well, like touching and things. Girls are all soft and curvy, and they have this certain girl smell to them. Plus, girls are usually shorter than me. Is this it?"

Takeru stopped at a building and started to unlock a door. It looked like an antique store, and the door was a narrow solid one beside the larger, glass-windowed door that gave entrance to the shop. "Yeah, I live upstairs."

"You don't run the store too, do you?"

"No, no," said Takeru, shoving on the painted door. It gave with the snap of tacky paint. The hallway beyond was dark and faintly musty. "The guy who runs the store lives ... um ... somewhere else, I'm not really sure where. I just lease the apartment."

Takeru's second-floor apartment was nicer than the one Daisuke had shared with Miyako, but of course was nowhere near on the same level of class as Ken's. It was also cluttered and messy in an extremely bachelor way, and Daisuke tried not to speculate on how long it had been since Takeru had taken out the trash. He was careful to put on the guest slippers after taking off his shoes, and stood in the middle of the front room while Takeru cleared off the couch.

"Sorry about the mess."

"It's fine," said Daisuke. He had a decent idea now of why Takeru had suddenly wanted to reconnect as friends, but to test the theory he said, "So what else do you want to know about the swingin' homosexual lifestyle?"

Plunking himself on the couch, Takeru looked up at Daisuke, his pale blue eyes bright with interest. "I don't know. I just never figured you for the type! I mean, you were always so ..." Takeru gestured with one hand, unable to find the word he wanted. "Anyway. And Ken! Why Ken?"

"Why not Ken?"

"What do you see in him? Other than the fact that he's tall and thin and has long hair like a girl but somehow it works on him? And all the money and success."

"Scoot over." Daisuke sat down on the other end of the couch once Takeru made room. Takeru jumped up again, though, as soon as Daisuke sat down.

"Want something to drink?" he asked, moving toward the kitchen.

"Sure."

"What do you want?"

"Just whatever you've got."

"So what do you see in Ken?" asked Takeru, as he clinked around in the refrigerator.

"I don't know," said Daisuke, who hadn't really thought about it in those terms before. "He's always been so nice to be around, I guess. Unlike some people I could name, Ken never made it his business to point out every stupid thing I ever did."

"Shit, you're not still mad about that, are you?" Takeru walked back out of the kitchen with two cans of beer, and held out one of them to Daisuke. "Here," he said, before sitting down again.

"Of course not," said Daisuke, cracking open the can and taking a sip. "You were just as much of a fucking idiot as I was, and that was just your way of expressing your stupidity."

"Thanks. I can feel the love."

"Well, that's better than saying you were a cruel little bastard. I prefer to be charitable with my friends."

"Good point. Let's forget about school, okay? And get back to you and Ken."

"Shit." Daisuke laughed a little and set down the beer. "You are just fucking obsessed with this, aren't you?"

Takeru shifted so that he was sitting sideways on the couch, facing Daisuke; he looked so earnest that it almost made Daisuke laugh again. "I can't help it! This is just so cool! You and Ken! Not only are you gay, and Daisuke, I've got to tell you, you are not my first choice of someone I would guess to be gay. Not only that, but you're with Ken! I've known you both for years and years and I never knew! Were you, you know, together when you were rooming back when Ken was in college?"

"Yes," said Daisuke. He found Takeru's interest so funny that even the reminder of the disastrous first attempt at living with Ken didn't dampen his amusement.

"So you were ... you know ..."

"Having wild sex with him every other night? Yep."

"How does that ... work?"

Daisuke stood up and said, "Come on back to my place, me and Ken will give you a demonstration."

Takeru turned pink and said, "Oh no no no no, that's fine. Oh, wait. You're making fun of me, aren't you?"

Sitting back down and picking up his beer again, Daisuke said, "You're acting ridiculous, I couldn't help it."

"I just think it's so neat. I've never known anyone who was gay before. You'd not offended, are you?"

"No, I think you're hilarious."

"You know," said Takeru, after taking a sip of his own beer, "Miyako thinks that she somehow put you off sex with women. She was really upset about the fact that you left her for Ken instead of another woman."

Daisuke shook his head. "I didn't mean to hurt her, but things just sort of worked out that way. I was with Ken before I was with her, though. This had nothing to do with her."

"Can I tell her that? It might make her feel better."

"Sure," said Daisuke. "Me and Ken got together back when we were still in school, sort of. We weren't really together until he moved out of his parents' place when he was in college, but we were having sex for a long time before that. Miyako honestly had nothing to do with it."

"That long?"

"Yeah, that long." Daisuke drank the rest of the beer and set down the can.

"You hungry?" asked Takeru. "I can heat something up for us." Without waiting for an answer, Takeru stood up and went back into the kitchen. Daisuke was starting to get the impression that Takeru wanted to put distance between them every now and again, and because he was in a perverse mood and wanted to tease Takeru about his fascination, he got up as well and followed the blonde into the kitchen.

"Sure," he said. He leaned against the counter while Takeru poked around the small kitchen. When Takeru leaned over to look into a bottom cabinet, Daisuke said, "You've got a cute butt, you know that?"

Takeru stood up so fast he almost whapped his head on the lip of the counter. "What!?"

"I mean it. Are you sure you wouldn't like to come back home with me? I know I could talk Ken into putting on a little show for you." Takeru turned such a brilliant shade of crimson, and he looked so silly with his mouth hanging open in shock, that Daisuke had to laugh. "Calm down, I'm kidding. Shit. For someone who only wants to talk about how gay I am, you sure are sensitive about it."

Takeru wiped a hand through his hair and said, "Don't say shit like that! You about gave me a heart attack!"

"Why?" When Takeru didn't answer right away, Daisuke said, "Come on, you're not my type anyway, you're not Ken enough. You keep acting like I'm this major flaming homosexual, but really, I only like Ken. Shit, I slept with Miyako for over three years, and I haven't altered into an alien life form in the past three months."

Takeru finally pulled something out of the refrigerator and faced Daisuke. "It's not that. Okay? It's hard to explain."

"I'm listening. Is that what you're making?"

Takeru glanced at the package of vegetables and nerimono in his hand and said, "Yeah ..."

"Give it here." Daisuke held out his hand for it, and when it was given over, he said, "Where do you keep your pans?"

"Down there. You don't have to fix it, I can."

"Don't be stupid, this shit is okay if you do something with it, but it's nasty bland if you try to eat it like it is." Daisuke chose a pan and started searching around for spices.

"I never knew you could cook." Takeru moved out of Daisuke's way, shifting to the doorway.

Daisuke chuckled. "Takeru, I think we've pretty well established that there's a hell of a lot of shit you don't know about me."

After a moment of silence, during which Daisuke found Takeru's eclectic stash of spices, Takeru said, "Okay, you've got a point there."

"Mom always felt this burning urge to pass down all her recipes and secrets and shit, but Jun decided to be a rebel and take a negative interest in the domestic arts. I was younger and didn't have the wherewithal to put up as much of a fight." Daisuke filled a pot with water and then eyed the stew vegetables before pouring a little out. Then he opened the little packages of dried fish and spices that had come with the vegetables and dumped it all into the water.

Takeru laughed a little. "I can just imagine that!"

"It wasn't as interesting as it sounds, because I didn't really mind learning. It was pretty funny one day, though, when Jun decided that she wanted to learn how to make botamochi while I was helping with something and Mom told her to get out of the kitchen. Jun had just assumed that Mom would drop everything to teach her, since she was the daughter and the one who ought to be learning all that shit. Do you have any sweet sake?"

"Yeah, it's over here." Takeru came in to fish it out for Daisuke and then retreated to the doorway again.

"So now you know my little secret. Now you tell me why all the fascination in who I'm fucking." Daisuke added some more spices and the vegetables to the pot before turning his back on the heating water and folding his arms.

"It's not that, really," said Takeru. He dithered a little before saying, "I think Yamato's gay is all."

Not an unreasonable assumption, from what Daisuke had seen, but he wouldn't have put money down on it. "Yeah, and?"

"And what if I'm gay too?" said Takeru. He sounded desperate, which made Daisuke think better of his first impulse, which was to laugh. "It's supposed to run in families like, like hair color or something!" Takeru ran a hand through his hair.

Daisuke stepped forward and grabbed Takeru's wrist. "Takeru, chill. You're not fifteen. If you were gay, trust me, you'd know it by now."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Well, think about it. Do you ever see a girl on the street sometimes, and you think to yourself, 'Fuck, she's hot, I wonder what she'd look like with her clothes off?' You ever do that?"

"Yeah," said Takeru, uncertainly.

"Ever do that with a guy?"

"No!"

Daisuke let him go. "Then don't worry about it. Fuck, I can't believe some of the inane shit people worry about. Do you actually lose sleep over shit like this? And is there any more beer?"

"Yeah," said Takeru, moving past Daisuke toward the refrigerator. "I mean yeah, there's more beer. I don't lose sleep over it, exactly ... but yeah, I'm worried sometimes."

"Well, stop worrying. I'm going to go sit down, this is going to take awhile before it becomes stew."

"The package said twenty minutes," said Takeru, but he allowed Daisuke to lead him back out into the front room after handing over another can of beer.

"Yeah, that's if you want it to suck. Trust me." Daisuke sat down on the couch again. The clutter in Takeru's apartment was starting to grow on him; if he lived alone, his place would probably look like this too. "So is Yamato really gay, or are you just making that shit up?"

"I don't really know, but he never goes out with women and I've never heard of him sleeping with all his groupies either. There was a rumor about the band in a magazine a few years ago, that said they were all of them gay, and he never denied it."

Daisuke snorted. "That was smart of him. You deny something like that, people take it like proof that it's true."

"Well, still. He just laughed about it when I asked. And he looks gay, too."

"Looks don't mean anything. Don't waste your time with it. If he is and he wants to tell you, he will, but he might not be."

"Yeah," said Takeru, putting one foot up on the table and moving aside a pile of manga to do it. They were both quiet for a little while; Daisuke drank his beer and Takeru fidgeted. Then Takeru said, "So how does it work with two guys?"

It was after midnight when Daisuke came back home. He was a little annoyed with himself for having stayed out so late when he had to work in the morning, but he was working a late shift so it wouldn't kill him. He was very surprised to find Ken awake at the computer when he walked in, though.

"What are you still doing up?" he asked, as he took off his shoes.

"Waiting for you," said Ken quietly. "I know you said you might be out late, but I wanted to make sure you got in okay."

"You're not drunk this time, are you?" asked Daisuke. He walked into the living room and put his hands on Ken's shoulders.

"No. I got you something today, though." Ken picked up a palm-sized black object from the desk beside him and turned around a little to offer it to Daisuke.

Daisuke took it and turned it over. "I don't need a cell phone."

"I want you to carry it anyway," said Ken. "Just in case."

"In case of what?"

"In case of anything. I don't know what could happen to you while you're commuting all over the city. I just want you to have a way to stay in touch if you need to." Turning the rest of the way around, Ken looked up into Daisuke's eyes, and Daisuke frowned at the worry he saw there in Ken's. The light from the monitor screen turned Ken's hair electric blue. Almost Kaizer blue. "It would make me feel a lot better if you worked closer to home, but since you won't, at least keep this with you. Okay?"

Daisuke's instinct was to buck this, and he opened his mouth to refuse, but then Ken said softly, "Please, Daisuke?"

"All right, all right," said Daisuke, turning around and vaguely annoyed with himself for giving in. It wouldn't hurt him to just carry a phone, though; he could always keep it turned off. "Fine, I'll keep it with me."

Ken stood up and approached Daisuke from behind, putting his arms around Daisuke's shoulders. This felt very nice, and Daisuke leaned back a little. "Thank you. How was your visit with Takeru-san? I don't see any bruises."

"It was cool. Takeru was okay, although he is just dying with curiosity about what it's like to be living with you. He wants to get together again sometime soon."

"What did you tell him?" asked Ken.

"I told him that you're this incredible nymphomaniac and that I can't hardly sleep for you wanting sex."

"I meant about how he wanted to get together again," said Ken, with a laugh in his voice as he turned Daisuke around and started to nuzzle his neck.

"Well, I said okay of course. He's not a bad guy. Mmm, stop that. No, wait, don't stop that."

"I love you," murmured Ken, as he stroked his hands down Daisuke's back and kissed his neck. "I want you to be careful. Takeru-san lives awfully far away." He followed this with an eager nip at Daisuke's collar.

"I will be. Shit, we just had sex this morning, Ken, how can you be wanting it again already?" But then Daisuke gasped a little when Ken slipped a hand down between them and cupped the waking erection at his crotch.

"Are you going to tell me I'm the only one?"

"Um ... no ... mmm ..."

Ken kissed Daisuke's lips then, and combed his fingers roughly through the hair at Daisuke's temples. Daisuke put his arms around his lover's waist, enjoying the attention completely but unable to help wondering, in a distant and distracted way, what this was all about. Ken's kiss was fierce and possessive, and it awakened things within Daisuke, things that liked to be protected and cherished, things left over from an earlier stage in his life before he decided that he was an independent person. Daisuke melted willingly against Ken's body.

"I want to tie you down," murmured Ken, breathless.

"Okay." Daisuke didn't see any reason to deny this to Ken, and, as sometimes happened, the prospect excited him tonight as well. He didn't understand why, but didn't question it. When Ken took his wrists and held them behind his back while they kissed, Daisuke squirmed, liking the delicious restriction.

He never thought to wonder about Ken's timing in this sudden seduction, or why Ken suddenly felt a need to restrain him.