A Daiken Evil!Boyfriends/Soulmates AU I'll Probably Never Write
because it’s kind of too much is: an AU universe where soulmates exist and everyone knows they exist but either it’s really rare to meet your soulmate or only a small percentage of the population has them.
Ken and Davis are soulmates and when they shake hands during their soccer match they realize it. Later that day, Davis finds out Ken is the Digimon Emperor and confides in Tai because he looks up to him and doesn’t know what to do and needs advice - being soulmates makes him hesitate to tell the others openly who Ken is because there is a general belief amongst the population that soulmates are a perfect match for one another and he’s worried about what the other’s will think of him if his soulmate is a bad person.
Meanwhile, Ken is mad after the soccer match because how can someone who isn’t perfect like him be his soulmate? Davis clearly isn’t good enough for him but because it’s Ken, he very quickly convinces himself that he can change Davis by infecting him with a dark spore (because Ken is aware of the one in his neck and has been studying it for awhile) and make him better until he’s up to Ken’s absurd standards which leads to:
Ken offering Davis the opportunity to join him in his quest to conquer the Digital World when he realizes who Ken is and Davis agreeing to do it days later at the insistence of Tai (and reluctantly, Izzy, because they're BFFs/Boyfriends?) who think they can use this situation to their advantage and defeat Ken who has been thwarting them for maybe years at this point; it's an aged up AU and Ken's identity is secret longer.
Davis ends up convincing Ken that he wants to join him because his family and the other Digi-Destined don’t respect/care about him and Ken is his soulmates so that means if any one will, it’s Ken. I like to think Tai stages some kind of fight between them in the Digital World, probably about how his soulmate is evil and that make Davis a bad person, that Ken witnesses to make it more convincing but no one else besides Tai, Izzy and Davis are aware that the fight is staged so everyone else thinks Tai really thinks Davis is untrustworthy and Davis really has betrayed them when he joins the Emperor.
Tai and Izzy basically send Davis to get inside information to help them defeat Ken and he is supposed to report back to them about the Emperor’s activities to give them an advantage - to do this Davis insists he wants to continue school and living in the real world - but Ken doesn’t immediately trust Davis because of his lack of commitment after he joins him so Davis doesn’t know much at first and also Davis says he isn’t going to help Ken conquer the Digital World - he doesn’t want to hurt Digimon or the other Digi-Destined even if they all hate him and he openly tells Ken he only wants to help Ken because they’re soulmates which Ken laughs at.
Ken, thinking he’ll manipulate Davis until he’s on his side for real, tells him that’s fine and that he’ll come around. Meanwhile he makes it clear he thinks Davis is useless to him the way he is and Davis needs to be better to be worthy of being Ken’s soulmate and to do that Ken comes up with a series of training exercises to “help” Davis be better.
Davis is really stubborn and knows Ken isn’t convinced of his loyalty to him and, because he looks up to Tai so much and wants his respect and approval via doing what Tai wants him to do (and also he really wants to find a way to stop Ken and stop him being evil and thinks this is the best way to do it) Davis pushes himself to meet all of Ken’s absurd standards and challenges which basically amount to torture for a normal person without a spore.
This leads to a period of many many months where Davis goes to the Digital World after school every day to meet Ken, is basically put through the ringer until eventually his health starts to decline visibly because he’s trying to do things he physically can’t do and studying all the time to be smarter for Ken to the point where Tai and Izzy are like “this was a bad idea” and Ken, meanwhile is angrier and angrier that Davis is so bad by his estimates but also because of the spore he also thinks watching Davis struggle impossibly is really really funny so he keeps making everything harder and harder for Davis - moving the goalpost whenever Davis actually manages to meet one of his absurd goals naturally - while he works on a way to spread the spore to Davis which he eventually manages to do.
Davis has been giving Tai and Izzy info in secret when he can but suddenly drops off the face of the earth when Ken infects him with a dark spore. The spore has the desired effect from Ken’s perspective and Davis becomes able to match Ken intellectually and physically and is more willing to help Ken by conquering areas in the digital world and fighting the other digi-destined in earnest who, thanks to the spore, he’s started to think of as inferior to himself and Ken.
Only it’s Davis and he’d been very serious about his goal of gaining Ken’s trust in order to save the Digital World and save Ken/stop him being evil before being infected with the spore so now that he knows about the spore he immediately comes to the conclusion that it’s responsible for Ken’s behavior and is aware that it’s not only made him smarter and stronger/more athletic - which is useful - but is also making him think thoughts he wouldn’t normally think and unlike Ken who is completely oblivious to how he’s changed as a person by it, Davis is at least aware of how it has affected him.
Quite a bit of the fic I’d want to write would just be Davis’ struggle with fighting the influence of the spore trying to change him completely while trying to figure out how best to go about freeing Ken and dealing with his growing feelings towards him and how all of this is perceived and effects the other Digi-Destined who do or don’t know that what is going on.
Little scenes I thought about writing were things like: Davis shows up after having gone completely off-grid for a few days/weeks while the spore took hold and it’s the first time any of the other kids have seen him besides once when he fought them in the Digital World for Ken (without holding back for once) and he’s just genuinely nasty towards T.K. who he has never gotten along with at this point and he gets into an actual fight with Matt who jumps to T.K.’s defense but easily wins having learned how to fight from Ken over the last few months.
Tai corners him at some point to be like “what was that? What did Ken do to you? You’re not acting like yourself” while Davis laughs off Tai’s concerns before becoming angry because, isn’t this what Tai wanted?, at which point Izzy has to stop Tai from fighting with Davis, because this was Tai’s idea to not tell the other’s that Davis wasn’t really on Ken’s side and Ken clearly trusts Davis which means Davis is now in a position to do what they wanted even if things hadn’t gone how Tai imagined they would.
Matt is absolutely livid when he learns that everything that has happened was some hair-brained scheme of Tai’s that has gone off the rails and resulted in Davis going from the honest, well-meaning, happy-go-lucky kid they’d known to being depressed and angry and manipulative because Tai had unintentionally or otherwise made him feel like he would be letting everyone down if he didn’t use his position as Ken’s soulmate to their benefit. Matt, bearer of the crest of Friendship, never would have allowed them to go through with such a stupid and dangerous plan that has obviously hurt one of their friends and this causes a brief rift between Tai and Matt.
Because of the spores influence, Davis doesn’t really consider what has happened to him both before he was infected and after to have hurt him in anyway - Ken was just trying to make him better and now he is - and he doesn’t really care about why everyone is upset on his behalf but, unlike Ken, he’s self-aware in regards to the spore so he knows he probably should and would have cared before all this.
All he wants to do is save Ken now, though. He’s gone over Ken’s research on the spore and it’s clear the spore is growing and is dangerous and if it continues it might kill Ken (and now him) and Davis doesn’t know how to stop it yet but he still thinks the best thing to do is to make Ken see sense about the Digital World being real and not just a game Ken is playing.
I’ve thought about a lot of little scenes between Ken and Davis where Davis tries to understand Ken better and slowly learns that Ken isn’t actually as awful as he pretends/appears to be and then comes to the conclusion that the spore is responsible - maybe he stumbles across Ken’s research on it before he even understands what the spore does or is.
I haven’t mentioned any of the digimon in this yet but they’re there and Veemon obviously goes with Davis when he joins the Emperor and is in on their plan to gain Ken’s trust to ultimately win against him via getting inside info on Ken’s actions and the location of the base and all that good stuff that would obviously eventually happen. I like to think that while things are going really badly initially after Davis first joins Ken and is basically being put through torture Veemon does his best to help and encourage him or, alternatively, convince Davis he doesn’t have to do this and they should call the whole thing off.
Wormmon is also there a lot and becomes friends with Davis and Veemon. Wormmon tells Davis about how Ken used to be a kind and gentle person but changed and Wormmon still believes Ken will go back to the way he was before which is something Davis takes to heart and holds onto.
Wormmon tries to make Davis feel better when things are going particularly bad between himself and Ken or after Ken has put Davis through hell “training” him and Davis tells Wormmon he’s going to save Ken no matter what and they agree to work together for Ken’s benefit.
I have some thoughts about, like, if/when they manage to make Ken see sense and he’s freed from the spore’s influence.
The dub is really unclear but there are some parts of it that imply that once the spore goes dormant it’s effects end and Ken becomes a normal kid - no longer understanding how the control spires work, failing all his school tests etc etc - but there are also scenes where it’s like “actually he’s still a genius” - so it’s kinda up in the air and even though it is probably the former bit I like to think that the effects are permanent, so even when the spores are no longer active, Davis and Ken are still a couple of genius soulmates which would be really fun and useful for them but there would be a lot of trauma processing necessary for everyone involved.
Once Davis is able to think clearly he’d be aware of exactly how bad things had been and how different he was towards everyone as a result but Davis would put it on himself that it happened in the first place instead of blaming Ken or Tai the way that Ken and Tai definitely would blame themselves - although during the height of necessity when Ken was still evil Tai would be willing to put his own culpability on the back burner because they needed this to work or it would all be for nothing but he’d feel immensely guilty afterwards.
Ken would definitely be miserable every time Davis did or said something he wouldn’t have done or said before Ken had infected him with the spore or tried to make him better and Davis would eventually get fed up at everyone because this was how things were now and Ken and Tai and everyone needed to just accept that it happened and move on and focus on making things better for themselves and the Digital World.
The majority of the fic is quite dark and is based on things I felt were obvious in the dub, like Davis having really low self-esteem / self-worth and seeming to think of himself as undeserving of having friends or as not being a very good friend and that leads to this desire to please the people he looks up to and gain their approval - often to his own detriment.
The fic started out as just a Daiken soulmates AU about Davis dealing with the knowledge that Ken might be evil and just spiraled out of control and became this slow decent into the murky waters of depression for Davis as he tries to meet the unreasonably high expectations of a soulmate who doesn’t think he’s good enough and a senior that he looks up to who has good intentions but inadvertently puts Davis into a situation that leads to physical and emotional trauma and Davis putting up with it because he doesn’t want to let Tai down and this might really be their best chance to help Ken who Davis refuses to believe is pure evil.
And then the dark spore comes into play and for a bit it becomes a fun evil genius boyfriends AU where Davis’ maintains that he wants to help Tai stop Ken but because of the spore his words and actions are often not in line with his goal of saving Ken or helping his fellow Digi-Destined and eventually when he pulls a miracle out of his hat as he tends to do, and manages to free Ken everything should go back to normal, only it doesn’t because he’s unintentionally alienated his friends and the ones who knew what was really going on have difficulty adjusting to the changes in Davis after everything that’s happened so for a bit he’s achieved his goal but he’s still depressed.
The ending of the fic is overwhelmingly positive, though, because it’s about Davis dealing with everything he did under the spore's influence and everything that was done to him and the reasons he felt like he didn't have another choice and had to go through with things that weren’t good for him and then, eventually, repairing his relationships with Ken and Tai and the other (mainly) 02 Digi-Destined and them all dealing with and processing everything that has happened in the past, like, six+ months and learning to love and care about one another in spite of it all - it’s just really dark until the end of it.
It’s a very cathartic fic for me to think about but the majority of it being dark and depressing is why I haven’t/won’t be writing it because it’s an emotional mess and I wouldn’t even know where to begin but I woke up thinking about it and I thought, I just want to get this all out somewhere so here it is.
Also it's not the focus of this fic but Davis is trans and his parents are based on the few scenes of them in the dub that due to cultural differences unintentionally paints them as kind of flaky and, in the case of Davis' dad especially as a contributor to Davis' low self-esteem issues so they're not super bothered or observant when it comes to Davis' emotional state and probably don't notice or care that he disappears for days on end.
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