Date: 03/02/13 Time: 04:17
“Yuuri!”
The whisper was too close to his ear, tickling the earlobe and making him wince and groan. He wanted to be asleep. After the long plane ride, the terrible open landscape. There was no way he could stay up for what sounded like a long, painful conversation. What time was it anyway?
“Yuuri!” repeated the voice, soft and comforting, familiar. Who was it… no, no no, he was supposed to be asleep!
“Yuuri!” He heard Viktor say. He sighed and opened his eyes, yawning. After a few moments of bleary blinking, he took in his surroundings. Viktor was at the foot of his bed, Makkachin beside him. There was no leash in his hand, and Viktor wasn’t bundled up for outside. In fact, he was still in his pajamas.
It used to be embarrassing, to have the real flesh and blood skater stark against the large, extravagant posters and the mess of “too long out, too tired to clean” days. Now, he just had gotten used to it.
“What?” he grumbled. “What time is it Viktor… I have practice in a few minutes.”
Viktor leaned over him, close enough for a kiss. He didn’t take one, which Yuuri minded a little (well, since he had woken him up a kiss was at least a little bit of a recompense, right?), but instead he smiled and took the hand Yuuri had outside of the covers. “They’re hatching, Yuuri.”
Yuuri stared vacantly letting the words process like molasses through honey. Then he bolted out of bed and down the hallway. Makkachin was at his heels and Viktor, laughing, strolled along.
Oh god oh god oh god it was happening. In the house. Alone.
“What about Yurio?” Yuuri asked in as loud a whisper as he dared. “Is his?”
“He hasn’t said anything.” Viktor grinned, that small echo of pride all over him. “I think he’s still asleep.”
That or if he did he wouldn’t tell us. Which was fair. They weren’t his parents, but his fellow competitors and egg hatching was sacred anyway… well it was for your partner. Not that he had told Viktor that.
They crept past the girls’ rooms, Maki and her daughter’s room door being slightly ajar. The sound of breathing was only loud to Yuuri’s ears, because you had to hear to catch three little hellions never mind one of hers. As they passed, he saw a small light, the light of a laptop screen. Yuuri paused and poked his head in.
Makiko slept on in the futon and Maki sat up in bed, expression furrowed into a frown. Yuuri dared to knock on the open door frame. She looked up, and the light of the screen brought the circles under her eyes into sharp relief.
“Yuuri.” She said, not like a question. “Why are you awake?”
Why are you? He wanted to say but couldn’t. Instead he grinned blearily. “Apparently Viktor’s egg is hatching.”
Her emotions flitted across her face and then slid into blankness. “I see.”
“Do you want to watch?” Viktor asked over Yuuri’s head. “I’ve never seen it before, I don’t know what’s going to happen!”
She paused, fingers stealing over Makiko’s hair. The girl curled in closer, her partner comfortably embracing her in the same way, only with her ears. Then she shook her head. “No, this is something you two should share.”
Viktor didn’t wilt, not exactly, but there was that familiar slump in his shoulders that led to the kicked puppy stance. He must have learned it from Makkachin. He had to have. “We could have used your expertise,” he said with a fond smile and that sparkle in his eye.
Yuuri did not trust that sparkle. At all.
He gave Viktor’s shoulder a hefty tug and dragged him away from the room with a lowly spoken “good night”, heading back down to Viktor’s room. Which normally they’d share but in this inn, there was about as much space as a broom closet. There were some beds that Viktor was fine to sprawl upon with another person around, but these weren’t the sleeping places for that.
Viktor had shut his door before coming in here, which was good because the wobbling egg was letting out a steady glow, sitting upright on the second, untouched pillow. Yuuri quickly shut the door behind him. Makkachin boofed at him in greeting, tail swishing back and forth. It stuck straight up, along with every single fur, at the sound of a crack.
Viktor vaulted across the room, reaching the bed at record time. Yuuri moved quickly beside him, curling up close. His eyes scolded him for it but he couldn’t bring himself to care. The heat from the egg warmed his chest and all the way down to his toes.
There was another loud crack and the shell split properly down the side and soon, something white began to poke out of the shell.
Yuuri moved against Viktor, forcing them both into a more comfortable position. This could be a well, if this was anything like birds.
Maybe because it was in the human world but it was a lot longer than the instantaneous explosion this time. Instead, as the sun came out, the shell fell off and formed in the light before their eyes into what looked like a cradle, leaving what looked like a white dog’s head with pink ears. It yawned slowly, revealing tiny, likely harmless fangs and a pair of sparkling beady black eyes that locked right onto Viktor at once. Like magnetism.
Yuuri waited.
“Viktor!” barked the small animal, voice high and warm and expectant.
And Yuuri felt the moment Viktor gave in, felt the familiar, painful, ripcord tight connection of a second soul tying to you without hesitation or resistance.
He bowed his head as the creature bounded over, and tried not to cry in frustration.
But of course Viktor noticed and introduced him easily and freely. Yuuri did his best so smile and be polite but now the loss was a keener ache than ever. He hadn’t even been able to say a proper goodbye, just a “We have work to do now, your time is up here. Rest.” from them and that had been the end.
And now was he, were they expected to do it all over again?
By the time noon came around, the self-proclaimed Paomon was hungry and they had gotten more sleep. So there was no excuse not to get up and find the most homestyle meal on the face of the planet to devour.
And Yuuri’s mother was more than capable of providing one. They had a large stock from winter still, as their best times were around now, during skating season. Their little inn was the best place to see sports, and have the tourists come about and argue with the locals.
So the sight of a small dog head practically inhaling a full bowl and spitting out the ceramic, though unusual, only led to Hiroko to the biggest smile since Viktor’s first arrival and another large bowl.
“He certainly packs it in doesn’t he?” she said over the sound of slurping and delighted barking. Makkachin was much more sedate, but then he got a doggy bowl. Yuuri had no idea if a paomon could actually eat dog food and not get sick. Better to be safe than sorry on what they vacuumed into their stomachs.
“Digimon are like that, especially here in the human world,” Yuuri replied before he could stop himself, and it wasn’t like Viktor could say anything anyway. “They need more fuel so they’re not feeding off of us. They could eat electricity but that’s unreliable. Hawkmon… he tried once and got sick.”
He took a slurp of noodles. What? He was on vacation. When he swallowed, Yuuri caught a glimpse of his mother, an unfamiliar expression on her usually warm and pleasant face. “Mom?” He felt a sudden urge to flee the table and it only grew the more she looked him in the eye.
Her eyes flicked towards Viktor and he almost let out a sigh of relief.
Then she said, very gently, “I wish you had talked to us about this, Yuuri.”
From anyone else, from perhaps his father, the words would have made him angry, close to belligerent, as close as he ever got to it. From her, and perhaps from Viktor, they had only served to make the sadness, the nostalgia, everything in him deflate into resignation. “I… I didn’t want to talk about it. I wanted to forget it.” Yuuri paused, searching for a way to say this delicately without being wrong. “I… no one would have believed me. Or Yuuko-chan, or Takeshi-kun or… we were a bunch of kids who daydreamed about skating on a live stage in front of millions of people. Nobody would have believed us.”
He saw the hurt in her eyes before it sunk into her face, and yet he knew it was true. A small town for Japan with few people and no secrets. Three crazy kids would be all it would be and it would be gossip in everyone’s ear for years. Better to say the heat hurt them or they got kidnapped and the kidnapper escaped town. Real things, tangible actual fears to prey upon. There were books about those.
“More importantly though,” he said, feeling the words needing to be said. Viktor’s hand was kneading into the small of his back and Yuuri had no idea how he could repay him any more than he had. ‘I thought the Digimon were gone, that they wouldn’t be coming back. THat it was over. Only now did I learn that… that I was wrong, that it wasn’t going to end like that. I’m still… I’m still coming to terms with it.’ Yuuri took a final deep breath. “I don’t know if I’ll be ever able to really talk about it, but, but when I am, can I count on you, and dad, and Viktor to hear me out?”
There was a moment of silence, a moment of process. Then Viktor laughed. “Listen to him. As if we wouldn’t.”
His mother continued to look like stone. Then she laughed as well. “Of course Yuuri, of course.” She leaned over and pressed him into a hug and Yuuri let himself lean into it.
The moment was of course, immediately broken by a loud burp and the sound of the bowl hitting the edge of the table.
“I’m full!” The digimon declared, pink ears flapping as he jumped back onto Viktor’s knees. He earned a delighted ear scratch, followed by another casual sniff from Makkachin. The old dog seemed to take the pup head as a young dog who needed to be protected, hence the even closer proximity of the poodle.
“After two cutlet bowls?” Yuuri couldn’t help but whistle. “Those are better than I thought. I thought it would take at least four of them.”
“I just hatched,” Paomon grumbled. “Give me time! I’ll get better.”
Hiroko giggled. “We’d better get more customers then. Time to schedule another event, right Yuuri?”
Yuuri let out a sheepish chuckle. “Right…”
What had he just gotten himself into?
“You could have invited us to the funeral, you know.”
Of all the ways for the four of them to meet up and talk again, Takeshi really could have started it out better.
To her credit, Maki looked about as offended at his comment as Yuuko did embarrassed by it. She elbowed him in the ribs as Maki replied, without a flicker or change in expression. “I was giving birth at the time of it, forgive me for not giving you front row seats. I would think you had better things to be dealing with.”
“We invited you to our wedding.” Takeshi sat back, seltzer water can set down a little too hard.
Maki’s eyes widened a little. “Did you? I never received an invite. Or… much of anything really.”
“You… didn’t?” Yuuri interrupted before Takeshi’s ears could turn pink. “I mean, we didn’t send much, but I managed to find your address in the phone book and send you a card. I think…” It had only been once, to celebrate what he had thought was her graduation from middle school. He had sent one to Daigo too, he thought, but he hadn’t received a reply.
Maki nodded thoughtfully, as if she had an answer, but she didn’t quite want to voice it. “I would suppose that was when my parents tightened their leash on me and… when Gennai was getting interested in my well-being.”
“Creep.” Takeshi muttered, appearing mollified now. “The hell was the matter with him?”
“Data corruption, I suspect,” Maki admitted. “I think there is more to the story of course, but the longer he went, the more his data and the copy’s were difficult to discern. That was what made the plan work so well.”
Takeshi scowled and swallowed. All three of them reared back a moment, because Takeshi had range when he spat, a dangerous range. Only when he sipped his drink again did they lean forward, watching him warily still. “Still. It sucks. It could have been any of us. Why was it you?”
“I have no idea.”
Yuuko raised an eyebrow. “You do.”
Maki shifted in her chair and Yuuri looked away from her, to think. It was true, it could have been any of them. Just because Bakumon was dead didn’t make any of their partners were within reach. It could have been any of them. As if their digimon just leaving without a word was somehow fine and dandy.
He was still glad it hadn’t been him. He had no idea what he would have done in her position.
“Because all of you were much closer than Daigo and I would easily be.” Maki sighed. “One person is easier to convince than three.”
They sat at the table for a moment and Yuuri had a sudden, fervent hope that Viktor was properly distracting the children in the onsen and not listening outside the door like he would be in this situation.
Then Yuuri happened to glance to Takeshi’s right. Daigo was sitting seiza, suit bloody, face pale.
And for some reason, the sight of him made Yuuri sit up straight and look right at him. Because they were all together and he just, there was something so wrong about it, so sick and gross and awkward.
Maybe it was just that guilt, his own guilt, reflected in their leader’s face.
“Gang’s all here,” he said, and did not look away.