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The Fanboy Nerd and The Princess - chapter 8 (part 1)

previously titled: nerds do it better pairing: digimon fan!nerdjo x digimon nerd!fem!reader summary: You know, most people wouldn't be all that interested in getting to know the weird Digimon kid. Good thing you're not most people! or, you and Gojo meet at a DTCG game night. tags: college/uni au, fluff, best friends to lovers, established relationship, domestic fluff, costumes, mentions of sex. wc: 22.2k ( + 25.9k! read part two) ( + 13k! read part three) ( +8.4k! read part four) | highly recommended you read this fic on ao3! series masterlist! | buy me a cup of dandelion root tea? (ko-fi) ⚠︎ this author is a huge digimon nerd! reference explanations are provided in-text

LIGHT | The Gardens of EDEN

“You want to go as… Julian and Anneliese?”

Julian and Anneliese are characters from the 2004 film Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper. Gojo and the reader watched this movie together at her mother’s birthday party in chapter 7.

These last few months with Gojo have been more than you could’ve ever dreamed of.

There was always something old to see in a new sunlight, something new to unearth under the moon, and there was nothing easier than being with him to experience it all. Stolen glances across rooms where you’re the only person he sees, fresh flowers in the vase on the dining table even on the most mundane days, sleights of hand to hide your option cards and, for the first time, not your feelings.

You’re sure the rest of time will treat you well, but you’ll forever mourn your twenty-first summer, young and sweet and not-so-innocent.

And you’d wish for it to never end, but, alas, time stops for no one, not even the first and second-place finishers of the 2025 Odaiba Day DTCG Tournament.

It’s the beginning of autumn now, leaves starting to fall along footpaths and sidestreets. Cafés around the city are changing their menus and their lines are around the block every morning an hour past sunrise, and stores are already starting their holiday sales well before people are even thinking of who they’ll need to get gifts for. It’s starting to get colder, the wind picking up hints of frost and star anise, and you’ve been having to wear Gojo’s hoodies and sweats now instead of the usual t-shirts and shorts you’d steal from his drawers during nights over at his apartment.

And school’s started back up again, so it’s back to late-afternoon-studying-on-the-sixth-floor-of-your-campus’-main-library-and-playing-DTCG you go.

Admittedly, it’s been a bit of an adjustment—coming back to campus. Instead of summer internships, you and Gojo are now busy with your own coursework, he has a few more students than last year because word of mouth at the local junior high has come around to saying that Satoru Gojo is the surefire way to make sure your kid does well on their high school entrance exams, and you’re TA’ing for a few classes as part of your work-study. All of those things in combination make time move both like oil and like tar, slipping away but still too slow.

Thankfully, though, you and Gojo have already gotten most of your core focus courses out of the way and are able to take a few classes that’re a bit less stressful, so things aren't going to be too bad. You thank both Gojo and yourself for frontloading all the higher-effort courses to have a relatively easy fourth year. Of course, you still both have a few classes that demand your academic excellence, but you’ve also got ensemble rehearsal to take care of a performing arts requirement most people do in their first year, Gojo’s in a traditional floral arrangements class to learn more about the art (and also to fill in the credit minimum for his scholarship this quarter), and you’re both taking Intro to Ruby even though you both already know how to code.

Anyway…

Earlier this week, Haibara sent out invites for a small Halloween party, and while you and Gojo wanted to dress up together as a couple for that, you didn’t have anything specific in mind, so you left it up to your boyfriend to come up with costume ideas.

And you knew your boyfriend liked Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper—that much is evident with how many times he’s asked to rewatch it with you (five, to be exact)—, but you never would’ve thought he’d want to go as characters from the movie for Halloween.

Or, uh, you guess for the day before Halloween. The party’s not actually on Halloween because Haibara has to take his younger sisters to the children’s parade for the holiday, and you and Gojo already have plans to stay in, hand out candy in-costume at his apartment, and rewatch Halloween episodes of Digimon and other comfort shows you’ve already seen a million times over.

But, back to reality.

Gojo nods enthusiastically and smiles. “Yeah! Can we?”

You blink in surprise. “Honestly, I kinda just assumed you would’ve wanted to go as Digimon characters.”

“Well, I did consider the possibility of that…” Gojo starts, swinging your joined hands as you both turn the corner, his car now in sight in the distant lot. “But think about it! The dress I got you on Odaiba Day could work as the base of your costume if you were Anneliese, right?”

You nod again. “Right.”

“Right! So you wouldn’t have to stress yourself out trying to make something entirely new to wear. And I have everything that I’d need for a Julian costume, just not a blue vest, but I think I could make that myself!” Gojo’s thumb brushes over the scrunchie you’re wearing on your wrist, one of the many he’d made when he was first learning how to use his sewing machine (and the rest of which are strewn around your apartment as tokens of his affection for you).

You hum curiously, thinking over Gojo’s suggestion more seriously with this in mind.

He makes a good point. The dress neatly tucked underneath your bed isn’t exactly the same style as Anneliese's, but it’s the right color, and it’d be easier to layer pieces on top than to try and make an entirely new dress in a month’s time. Gojo’s been learning how to sew for a while now too, having taken serious interest in it after attending the summer convention and getting to see you and other cosplayers in your element, so with a little bit of help from you, you think he could have a vest ready in time for the party.

You don’t really know where else you’d be able to wear that dress again either, save a garden wedding or future date somewhere just as magical as the Odaiba Rainbow Bridge, so this would be a good excuse to take it out of the box with that evening’s bouquet ribbon lovingly wrapped around it.

It would be nice to relive even a little bit of that night again, you think fondly to yourself.

Gojo is oblivious to your musings though, and he keeps going, trying to sell this costume idea to you as if you haven’t already bought it and scribbled a smiley face on the receipt.

“Also! We’d be more recognizable at the party if we went as Julian and Anneliese than it would be if we were, like, Takato and Jeri.”

Takato and Jeri are a pairing in Digimon Tamers. They aren’t canon, but Takato has a crush on Jeri, and it is heavily implied she also has feelings for him.

“You think so?” You ask curiously.

“Uh, I don’t know, actually. I think so?”

“Hm, you’re probably right.”

Pitting the two against each other, you suppose that Barbie would be more recognizable than Digimon as an IP, but you (and Gojo, for that matter) don’t have the greatest gauge of how popular Digimon actually is. In your own worlds, it’s the greatest piece of media to ever exist, but the rest of the world is rather indifferent to it.

The rest of the world is missing out.

But, again, Gojo makes a good point.

Haibara’s party is going to be an intimate affair, just friends and sweets and microphones for karaoke when it’s late enough to forget that you’re self-conscious about your singing, and while you love them, you know that you and Gojo would both be a little annoyed having to explain your Digimon costumes all night to your friends instead of just enjoying the festivities.

Not that anyone would be particularly curious to the point of needing the long-winded explanation, but you know yourself (and Gojo, for that matter), and you know that neither of you know when to stop when it comes to that sort of thing.

It’d be easy to just go as Anneliese and Julian. Thinking about it now, you remember watching the movie with Misato and Riko at a sleepover a few summers ago, and you distantly recall Shoko telling you that Utahime had chosen powder blue and gold accents for their bedroom because she liked the movie so much when she was growing up that she wanted to incorporate it into their decor. Enough people at the party should know who you’d be dressing up as, then, and if not, then Gojo can do the explaining.

Going back to Gojo’s words, you also make a mental note to write down somewhere that the two of you should most definitely cosplay as Takato and Jeri at some point in the future.

How you hadn’t ever thought of it before, you have no idea. You made Jeri’s dog sock puppet for your very first sewing project back when you were in grade school—you still have it in the top drawer of your nightstand back home—, and you know Gojo has Takato’s goggles hung up in his bedroom next to Tai’s.

And Davis’.

And Takuya’s.

Jeri uses a dog sock puppet to communicate for a portion of the series, and Takato wears the classic Digimon protagonist goggles that Tai, Davis, and Takuya all wear. Both the sock puppet and the goggles are their primary character props.

Either way, Gojo’s a lot like Takato—bubbly, bright, hopelessly in love with the girl he plays the Digimon Card Game with—, and you’d venture to say that you and Jeri are quite similar as well—sincere, sweet, hopelessly oblivious to the affections of the boy she plays the Digimon Card Game with—, so cosplaying as them sounds like a perfect idea.

In Digimon Tamers, Digimon exists as a pre-existing franchise that the characters are already aware of and are into. Takato, Jeri, and the rest of the cast all play the Digimon Card Game, though it is vastly different from the DTCG that exists today.

Unchanged (and as often as he insists otherwise), Gojo still can’t read your mind, so he continues.

“Not to mention, we’re literally them!”

You hum to give pause. “Who? Julian and Anneliese?”

“Yeah!” Gojo lets go of your hand and jogs a few steps in front of you, walking backwards so he can face you in the path, and he gestures to himself. “I’m Julian because I have blue eyes, I'm smart, and I'm great at singing! Not to mention, I’m a tutor, just like he is!”

“Well, you’re not my tutor.”

Unfazed, he just chuckles. “I helped you with o-chem last year, that’s gotta count for something, right?”

“If you say so,” you roll your eyes playfully. “But I guess you're right about all those other things. What about me? How am I, Anneliese?”

“Simple! You’re smart, you’re kind, you like the color pink…” Gojo stops walking and lets you crash into him, catching you by the hand and placing a kiss on your knuckles. “And you’re a princess. My Princess, to be exact, but a princess nonetheless.”

Your heart skips a beat, and you let him spin you around when he raises your joined hands so you can step underneath him. You’re careful as you step, trying not to trip over the leaves on the concrete, but Gojo decides you won’t need your balance anyway because he dips you and steadies you with a hand on the small of your back.

He looks down at you, earnest and honest, and he steals your heart again with a smile that reaches his eyes.

“So, what do you say?”

You giggle, and you hum thoughtfully, trying to get yourself comfortable with the butterflies in your stomach. “Well, how can I refuse?”

“How Can I Refuse?” is Preminger’s villain song in Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper.

Gojo beams, and he eases you out of the dip to spin you one last time, and nearly at his car already, he jogs a few steps ahead so he can open the passenger-side door for you. He doesn’t bother inserting the key to “unlock” it anymore—now that the long-held secret about his car doors working is finally out, he gets an even bigger kick out of just making it obvious that he’s opening it only because he wants to—and he bows as he holds it open for you to step in.

“After you, Princess.”

You smile and curtsy to him. “Why, thank you, my Prince.”

“Technically, Julian doesn’t become a prince until the end of the movie…”

You roll your eyes and take off your backpack to set it down first at your feet before stepping in, and you give Gojo a kiss when he leans down to ask for one. He races around to get into the driver’s side, and as he’s getting settled in, you make conversation by going back to what he’d said earlier.

“Out of curiosity, why didn’t you end up wanting to dress as Digimon characters? You said you thought about it, right?”

“Well, I thought it’d be nice to try something different! Not that I think either of us would ever get tired of Digimon or anything like that, but if there’s anywhere to do something different, I think a Halloween party is great for that! And it’d be a surprise to everyone else that we wouldn’t be going as Digis, since I’m sure they assume we’re going as, like, Angemon and Angewomon or something ridiculous like that,” he laughs, turning on the engine and adjusting the AC to account for the colder weather.

Angemon and Angewomon are generally assumed to be a couple by non-Digimon fans, but Angewomon is more appropriately paired with LadyDevimon because they Jogress digivolve together (which is similar to DNA digivolve, implying strong intimacy and connection) to form Mastemon. Their promotional material is also generally paired together.

“And I figured that it’d be easier for both of us if we didn’t plan anything too intricate, too, since we’ve only got a month before the party. I’m still not great at sewing yet and we’re both gonna be busy with midterms even if we aren’t taking anything too serious right now, so why put even more pressure on ourselves to get this done too?” Gojo hums, pausing to roll down his window and wipe the condensation off his side mirror with the sleeve of his sweater.

“Besides…” he leans across the console to give you one last kiss before he has to actually pay attention to driving. He pauses again to feel your smile against his lips.

“We have the rest of our lives to dress up together as Digimon characters anyway, so it’s not like we need to rush right now, right?”

. . .

“Wait, what?”

“Hm?”

“What… what did you say?”

Gojo blinks and pulls away slightly to get a better look at your face. “You’re gonna have to be more specific, sweetheart, I said a lot.”

“You said ‘the rest of our lives…’” You repeat back to him cautiously. “Is that what you said?”

And instead of freezing like you’d expected he would, Gojo just smiles at you, casually putting his arm over the back of your seat to start backing out of the parking spot. “Yeah, that’s right.

“‘The rest of our lives.’”

He says it so matter-of-factly, no hesitation or fear in his voice. If anything, it sounds too natural coming from his lips, like it's just another Digimon reference he wouldn't ever have to explain to you or a formula he’s had encrypted in his long-term memory since he was twelve and learning about equilibrium for the first time.

Your brain blue-screens. Tai’s email is definitely not getting to Sora.

In Digimon Adventure: Our War Game!, Tai’s email to Sora isn’t sent because his computer malfunctions.

Your heart, seconds ago hoping that he’d stumble over his words so you could tease him for something you’re neither of you have ever been brave enough to say out loud, stutters, and you have to turn away to not let him see you so flustered.

You’d think that after being intimate, there’d be nothing else to be embarrassed about, but the mere knowledge that he thinks the two of you will be able to cosplay together at conventions for, in his own words, the rest of time…

You can’t get yourself to say much else, your heart caught in your throat at the implication of Gojo’s words just now, but thankfully, even though you and Gojo have been together for a few months now, he’s still a bit too clueless to realize just how flustered he can make you when he’s speaking so lovesick like this, so he just drives as normal, pointing out shops on the way to your apartment that have good deals on sweets on certain days of the week and saying “DNA Digivolve!” whenever a car wants to merge out of the lane he’s trying to get into.

After he parks in the spot next to your car and rolls down the passenger-side window so his clay Joe keychain can say “hi” to the clay Mimi keychain across the distance, Gojo follows you upstairs to take a nap with you before he has to leave. As much as he’d love to stay up and play a few more games of DTCG with you (especially now that you’ve both finalized your EDEN decks), Time Stranger releases at midnight tonight, and both of you need to be well-rested so you can get through as much of the game as you can before inevitably falling asleep at your computers to do it all over again in the morning.

Digimon Story: Time Stranger released October 3, 2025. The demo has been available since September 10, 2025, so Gojo and the reader have already played that and are familiar with game mechanics.

After dropping your backpacks at the dining table, you hop in the shower while Gojo changes out the water in the vase of Bellflowers on the counter, and you trade places with him so he can shower while you can get your bed ready.

Once he’s ready and dressed in a pair of sweats he keeps at your place for lazy nights in with you, the two of you find each other again underneath blankets to ward off the cold.

“I set Biyomon for three hours, does that sound like enough time to nap?”

The reader has a Biyomon alarm clock in her bedroom, just like how Gojo has an Agumon alarm clock in his bedroom.

“Yeah, I think that’s fine,” Gojo yawns, getting settled in against you. “Am I invited to stay for dinner?”

“Didn’t you say you had those leftovers you had to finish today?”

“Yeah, but I don’t wanna leave yet,” he pouts, wrapping his arms around you tighter.

“You’re so dramatic,” you smile fondly at him. You’re too tired to lean down to reach him, so you kiss two of your fingers and tap them against his lips, watching as his pout disappears and is replaced with a sleepy smile. “But sure, then. You can stay for dinner.”

“Yay,” he cheers quietly, the air already lighter with his smile.

“What should we eat?” You ask.

“Hm,” he ponders, closing his eyes and humming. “How about a stewpot? One with lots of meat in it, and no chrysanthemum.”

An Ouran High School Host Club reference. In episode 10, Tamaki asks Haruhi if she can make them a stewpot with lots of meat and no chrysanthemum.

“That sounds good. We’ll have to go to the supermarket though, I don’t have all the ingredients we’d need for a stewpot right now.”

“Is that okay with you?”

“Mhm,” you yawn, running your hands through his hair as you fight against sleep for a few more minutes. You can tell he is too, looking up at you through his eyelashes and blinking slowly to stay awake.

There’s something so secret and sweet about getting to enjoy the quiet with someone who’s usually so loud, but even when he’s silent, he’s still saying enough for the both of you, his fingers tracing hearts onto your spine.

Moments like this with Gojo, soft and gentle and bright with affection, even before the two of you were officially together, have always been your second favorite. First favorite being, of course, the moments where you and him do literally anything Digimon-related, but you suppose that that’s not entirely in a category of its own considering just how much of what you do together could be considered a Digimon reference.

And, of course, Gojo is determined to make every moment you share with him your favorite.

“Have you thought about who you want on your team yet?” Gojo asks quietly in reference to your Time Stranger plans.

You nod, yawning. “Yeah, I think so. And I’ve thought about it a bit, I’m not sure about the rest of my party yet, but I was thinking I’d slot Rosemon: Burst Mode as my debuffer, maybe a DPS.”

“What evo line were you thinking of following?”

“Hm, I think Yoshi’s.”

There are multiple digivolution pathways to most digimon. Yoshi is a main character from Digimon Data Squad, the fifth season of the anime.

“Ooh, that’ll be fun! Sunflowmon is so cute, you have to make sure you send me lots and lots of pictures of her as you digivolve her!”

“Who do you think I am? Of course I will,” you giggle, and you take off his glasses for him and set them on the nightstand by your Biyomon alarm clock so he can put his head down comfortably. “What about you, have you thought about your team at all?”

“Not really, no. I was just going to figure it out as I go,” he answers, now fully laying down with his cheek flush against your chest. “Thank you.”

“Really? You weren’t even planning to build a Lilithmon on your team?” You tease.

Courtesy of Shoko, you’d found out some time ago that your boyfriend used to have a bit of a crush on the fallen angel, so you’ll poke fun at him about it here and there (which was what you were trying to do here).

He doesn’t mind the harmless teasing—after all, he’s done the same to you since learning about your childhood crush on Lobomon—but instead of laughing, he just cheekily smiles up at you and reaches up to cup your face in his hands.

“Nope. I already have my own Goddess right here.”

Lilithmon’s alias is “The Goddess of Darkness.”

Even with your mind halfway to sleep, you blush furiously, your eyes flickering over to your closet where your Lilithmon cosplay is neatly stored away.

Too flustered to say much else, you tug on his hair to convey your feigned annoyance with him (which doesn’t really help your case because you know your boyfriend likes the feeling of that, especially in combination with your sleepy eyes and tired voice), and you scowl. “You’re so fucking annoying.”

At your flustered reaction, Gojo laughs, and he gives you another sincere smile. “You still love me anyway, Princess.”

There’s a bit more back-and-forth about this (mostly composed of him making corny jokes and you pretending you hate them) before eventually, Gojo falls asleep first, snoring softly in the late afternoon sun with his arms around your waist and his head on your chest. The sight of him laying on top of you makes you force yourself to stay awake just a little bit longer so you can admire him and trace an eight-point star on the back of his neck, your mind wandering off to dream about him just a tiny bit longer before following him to the Dream Dimension.

The crest of light is an eight-point star.

At the sound of your alarm a few hours later, you and Gojo both wake up, and through the sleep in your eyes, the two of you go to the supermarket to buy the ingredients you need for a stewpot.

In the produce section, Gojo holds the plastic bag opening taut so you can place the napa cabbage inside without having to fuss with it sticking to the leaves. You make your way over to the fruits to grab a bag of apples to refill the bowl on your dining table, and Gojo makes a fuss of choosing Tsugarus because they're the perfect amount of sweet without being cloyingly so. You already knew to get them, but you decide to play around with him a bit and insist that Mutsu apples are sweeter and that you should get those instead, and you laugh as he goes off about how Mutsu apples are way too sour to snack on. When he's finished, you kiss the pout off his face and grab the bag of Tsugarus before he's all smiles again.

At the drinks cooler, you grab a bottle of melon soda for Gojo, pressing the cold metal onto his cheek to force a laugh out of him. He yelps, but when you try to pull away so you can move along, he places his hand over yours and keeps you there close to him so he can kiss the inside of your wrist. It ends up being a distraction so he can grab your favorite drink from the fridge shelf behind him and press it onto your forehead, and you jump in surprise as the cold metal shocks you out of reverie.

Over by the spirits, Gojo hands you bottles of cooking wine to pick between for the soup base, and you get so distracted by the sight of him so easily grabbing them from the top shelf as if they aren’t nearly twice as tall as you that you nearly trip over yourself when he leans down to try and read the label from over your shoulder. An elderly couple dressed in thick knit-wool hats and puffer jackets pass by the aisle and giggle at the two of you, smacking each other's arms to remind themselves of how they once looked like the two of you here, and Gojo shuts up for once because he's too flustered to even open his mouth.

As you’re passing through the snacks, you toss a few packages of Gojo’s favorite cookies into the shopping cart without him asking, and he doesn’t even bother looking around first before leaning down to kiss you for remembering to get them for him. You roll your eyes because obviously you know to get them for him by now, but you're not going to lie and say that your heart doesn't flutter when his cold lips become warm against yours with just a feather touch.

Once you’re done shopping and everything’s paid for and loaded into the trunk, you reach across the console to put the key into the ignition while Gojo goes to return the shopping cart to the corral. When he’s back, the drive back to your apartment is sunsetlit and sparkling with life as the two of you chat about the random this-and-that, and on the way up to your unit, Gojo pushes all the buttons in the elevator to steal a few extra kisses from you.

After you thoroughly scold him for making the journey to and from the supermarket longer than it needed to be (by shoving him on the couch and furiously making out with him, obviously), Gojo sears the meat while you cut the vegetables and crack open spice seeds with the side of your knife, and the two of you eat at your small dining table with enough laughter to let the simmering hotpot between you cool long enough to not burn your tongues.

When all that’s left at the bottom of the pot are streaks of salt where the broth has dried up, he does the dishes while you clear the table and slice an apple rabbit to share. You stand on opposite sides of the kitchen counter while you snack on the fruit, laughing at the way he blushes when you lean over to brush an eyelash from his cheek until he has to leave.

And it’s there in your doorway as he’s meant to leave that you find out that Gojo saying he’s “figuring it out as he goes” in regards to his Time Stranger team actually means that he’s got his whole roster planned with multiple flex spots and back-ups in case his team synergy doesn’t work out the way he wants it to.

You know he’s only telling you all this now so he has an excuse to stay, but, still, you let him talk himself in circles because you don’t want him to leave either.

And you’re sure that anyone walking by would have no idea what either of you are talking about—that position optimization and type-pairing doesn’t ring any bells for anyone but you, that MarineAngemon and Venusmon aren’t in competition for the debuff role for anyone but him—, but none of that matters. All that matters is the way he lights up when he talks about BlackWarGreymon, stars in his eyes as he talks about raising him and promising to digivolve him only with you either on call or right next to him in front of his PC.

But all good things must come to an end, and he really does have to go in order to get ready in time for the Time Stranger release. With one last kiss goodbye (…okay, maybe it wasn’t just one kiss), Gojo leaves with your heart squarely tucked away in the side pocket of his backpack where he keeps his deck box, and you, too, go to start getting ready for the game release.

You make your bed preemptively, already 1000% sure that you’re just going to fall asleep in your gaming chair at five in the morning anyway.

You double—no, triple check that you already pre-downloaded the game last night and that it’s finished installing so you can play it as soon as the clock strikes 12.

While you tidy up your bedroom, you keep Discord open so you can watch in real-time as the timer goes up on Gojo’s game status as he stocks up on Equipment items last-minute so he doesn’t have to grind for them mid-main story quest.

And from the corner of your eye as you’re looking for your controller in the desk drawer, you see it.

A spool of red thread.

Honestly, you have no memory of ever getting it for yourself or having it gifted to you—it’s just been there for years now, taking up space and waiting to be used, and half the time, you don’t even remember it’s there. You might’ve gotten it from the clearance bin at the craft store at some point and forgotten about it, or maybe someone visiting your apartment left it behind on accident and you’d blindly thrown it in here for safekeeping.

Regardless of how it found its way to you, though, you can’t take your eyes off of it.

You see BlackWarGreymon, the thread fire as it follows his claws to perform Dragon Crusher.

You see Gojo, the thread red as his cheeks when he’s laughing at a Digimon reference you’d made that wasn’t even funny.

(You see ▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯, the thread taut around two crooks he’d cross to make a heart.)

This is not an error with symbols; this is intentionally not meant to be read.

You see yourself, the thread shiny as the waxy skin of the apples you slice when you’re together.

(You see ▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯, the thread sharp as her Spirit Needle.)

Come to think of it…

You and Gojo never did end up choosing costumes for the actual night of Halloween.

It wouldn’t hurt to go ahead and make another set of costumes for the two of you to wear, would it?

You reach further into the drawer to take out the spool, holding it now between your fingers as pet names Gojo’s called you over the seasons and your poisonous bite afterwards float between your ears, and you run your finger over the tightly wound needlethread until you find the end of it, letting it unravel and wrap itself around your pinky like the curling petal of a spider lily.

You have to put your hands on your cheeks to calm yourself down, your heart already racing at the thought of you and Gojo, now tied together with silk and linen and bloody stamens.

Looks like you’ve got a little extra work to do.

More context about this Digimon reference will be provided at the end of the chapter, but it is meant to be a mystery what the reader is planning for their secondary costumes on the actual night of Halloween. Hints as they appear will be marked with a ❀.

☆

“For the last time, stand normally!”

“I am!”

“I know what you’re doing, and it’s not going to work!”

“What do you think I’m doing, then?”

“Don’t make me say it.”

“No, seriously, what am I doing that’s getting you all worked up right now? I’m not doing anything!”

You sigh, letting the tape measure go slack around his chest. “Oh, so you’re not flexing your big stupid muscles for me so I get all hot and bothered for you and get distracted?”

“What?” Gojo asks playfully, casually “stretching” his arms above his head and “yawning” to force a deeper rise and fall to his chest. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

When you still don’t entertain him or cave in, his façade drops and he pouts, whining and reaching out to hug you. “Come on, I thought you liked it when I showed off for you!”

You groan, your voice muffled now that you’re trapped in his arms. “I already liked you before I even knew you were built like this!”

“…I didn’t hear a ‘no.’”

. . .

“Okay, so I like when my boyfriend lets me feel his big stupid muscles, sue me,” you say weakly against his chest. “But now’s not the time!”

“Okay, okay, fine,” he chuckles, letting go of you and stepping back, this time finally standing how you’d asked him to. “I’m all yours.”

“Yeah, you are,” you huff, glaring at him before tightening the tape measure around him again.

He sighs wistfully, hearts in his eyes as he looks at you. “I love watching you work.”

❀1

You roll your eyes at him, catching the reference, and you shut him up with a kiss so you can finally get back to the task at hand.

It’s the weekend now, and with all your other responsibilities out of the way, you and Gojo have the time to get started on the costumes for Haibara’s party. It’s a nice break to be able to worry about something so entirely inconsequential, and you intend to enjoy it to the fullest.

Again, neither of you really need to do much. Gojo just needs to make the vest, and you need to make a blue cape and a bodice with sleeves to slip on over your dress. Embellishing the top of the dress you already have would be easier, sure, but you don’t want to alter it when it’s already so special to you, so this is just what you have to do.

(Well, there’s a few other things you need to do too, but that's nothing that Gojo has to know about yet.)

Either way, it’s a great excuse to spend time together, so who are you to question it?

You choose to ignore Gojo swooning over how possessive you get when you’re annoyed with him, only silently circling around him and writing his measurements in the small grid paper notebook he’s been using for the little sewing projects he’s been working on.

He pays careful attention to you as you measure his upper body, half-because he needs to remember how to do this for himself in the future, half-because—and you know this for a fact because he stammers it out when you ask nicely—he wants to memorize the way you look in the old soccer jersey you stole from his closet last night to lounge around in today.

(Which is, in your mind, ridiculous of him to say because it’s not like you’re ever going to not wear this again—it looks really cute on you, actually, so you’ll definitely be keeping this and taking it back to Gojo’s apartment only to spray his cologne on it and bring it right back to your place—, but it’s sweet that he’s still so skittish admitting that he wants to commit you to memory like this.)

When you’re finished and all his numbers are written down, you finally let yourself laugh at how flustered your boyfriend gets over your touch, and after helping each other button up your coats, you drag him with you out the door to head over to a nearby fabric store you’ve been going to since you moved to this city to grab the materials you need for your costumes.

It’s not too far away, about a thirty-minute walk from your apartment, so you and Gojo make the short journey over, silent for the most part because you want to hear the sounds of the crunching leaves beneath your shoes.

Well, “silent,” as in, you absentmindedly hum the melody of a song Gojo sang earlier when he was cooking lunch for the two of you, your boyfriend makes sound effects as he kicks a small rock along the sidewalk, and when the incoming fog rolls in, you both laugh and pull each other by the hand to start running away from MaloMyotismon.

(Malo)Myotismon is weakened by sunlight, so he summons fog whenever he appears in the Real World.

❀2

So, really, not that silent at all, but you don’t mind your version of the quiet.

When you get to the shop, Gojo clumsily quickens his pace so he can go ahead and open the door for you, and you smile fondly at him as you step through first and greet the person working at the counter.

Today, it’s one of the owners, an elderly man who runs the shop with his wife, and he gives you a smile from over his newspaper when he sees that it’s you. When he sees Gojo, who you’ve been bringing with you since he’s started picking up sewing, the man laughs heartily, knowing that the two of you are going to be filling the shop with laughter and poorly perfectly-timed Digimon references, and he lets the two of you wander off to shop.

The place isn’t too big, just about the size of a small restaurant, but you already know it’ll take a while for the two of you to get to and find the fabrics you need, even longer to find the extra bits and bobbles you want.

But first, to find your patterns!

You yourself are experienced enough to get by with just drafting the pattern off your body, but Gojo hasn’t actually attempted any clothing items for himself yet, just small projects like pouches and pot holders and tiny shirts to dress up the Digimon plushies that occupy all corners of his apartment, so you figure this vest is the perfect opportunity for him to get a men’s fashion sewing recipebook and learn how to work with his own measurements.

They’ve got a good collection of pattern books here, so you lead the way over to that area of the shop, Gojo following after you as you point out notions on the wall that remind you of things you know he’d appreciate. A zipper with two rows of teeth like Tokomon, a misplaced bottle of fabric dye in the same shade of yellow as the female student uniform at Ouran Academy, a novelty pincushion in the shape of a BeyBlade arena. The two of you end up shoulder-to-shoulder with a bag of sequins that sparkle like Neptunemon’s tail between you, distracted as you talk about the s in Time Stranger and light the aisle with laughter, until you eventually remember what you’re here for and pull him towards the right set of shelves with the task back in mind.

When you finally get there, you point to the rows marked with a blue score on the wood. “Here’s where the men’s books are. Any of them should be fine, but you should probably check to make sure there’s a pattern for a vest in it before you buy it. I’ll teach you how to read the pattern when you find the book you want, and we can go looking for materials from there.”

Gojo nods dutifully, and he picks up the first one in the row to take a look at it. While he checks the table of contents, humming the melody to a song you’d only just added to your shared playlist yesterday, you run your finger over the spines of books in the women’s section to occupy yourself.

Nothing particularly stands out—you already own too many sewing patterns and can’t justify getting another book anyway—, but you figure you might as well take a look while you’re here and see if there’s anything that catches your eye.

You pick up a book that looks interesting from the spine, but you slide it right back in its place when you realize you already have an earlier edition of it back at home. It doesn’t look much different apart from a new font for the title and a few extra dress patterns to justify the updated version anyway, so you’re sure you’re not missing out on anything by putting it back.

You crane your neck to read the title of a book that you vaguely remember seeing recommended in a crafts magazine, but you don’t bother looking through it because you were once gifted another book from the same designer, and the blouse you’d made from their pattern didn’t turn out well. That’s more on you than it is on the designer, but you still hold the grudge on principle.

Beyond those, nothing really catches your eye, so you end up just looking through a guidebook with patterns for accessories and adornments, things that you don’t really bother learning to make yourself because you’ve never really had the need to. You’ve already got enough accessories for your wardrobe as-is, and a lot of what’s patterned here isn’t really part of your personal style anyway, so you very absentmindedly flip the pages, barely scanning the pattern before moving onto the next.

“Okay, I think I’m gonna get this one!” Gojo says finally, turning to you with an excited smile and the pattern book thrust out for you to see.

You look over at him, the accessories book still open in your hands, and you tilt your head so you can get a better read on the cover. It looks like it’s the companion piece to the women’s edition of the pattern set you have at home, so you should be able to help him understand the instructions fairly easily then.

You sidestep to get closer to get closer to Gojo, but before you can tell him to flip the book open to the page with the vest pattern so you can start looking for materials together, a young child, seemingly running around the store unattended and chasing their sibling through the narrow aisles, bumps into you, knocking you into Gojo and making you drop the book in your hands.

Gojo catches you first, then reaches out to try and catch the book before it falls. He manages to grab it by the corner of a random page, and he holds onto it awkwardly between his thumb and pinky finger. He sighs in relief, and he carefully pulls the book back up so he can hand it back to you.

Before you can tell him that it’s alright and that you were going to put it back on the shelf anyway, he places the book in your hands, flipped open to the page he’d caught it by.

In the background of him asking if you’re alright after being bumped into him, you run your hands over the open spread to make sure the pages lay flat before you close it to avoid any creasing, but before you can get to actually doing that, you realize that the pattern Gojo’d caught had been one for a pair of opera gloves.

You take a second to blink at it, cut outs staring back at you and slowly crawling up themselves with black lines and gold emblems.

❀3

On second thought, maybe you do have some use for this book.

“So, what do I do now?” Gojo asks brightly, interrupting the scissors already at work in your mind theatre.

You blink again to bring yourself back to the Real World before tucking the book underneath your arm after pressing it closed, and you move to stand next to Gojo, who has his own book open to the pattern for the vest he’ll be making for his costume.

Your eyes scan the page before you point at the materials list where the numbers match his measurements. “Well, first, we need to get your fabric…”

Gojo nods, you pull your finger down to the rest.

“Then your notions…”

Gojo nods, you smooth the page with your palm by dragging your palm across the spread.

“You’ll mark and cut out your patterns…”

Gojo nods, you find the first step that needs another page and point to the number. Gojo flips to it for you, you gesture towards the smaller set of instructions there.

“You’ll flip around, reference other guides whenever you need to…”

Gojo nods, you flip back to the page with the original instructions.

“And you’ll have a vest at the end of it!”

Gojo stares blankly at the page at the end of your oversimplified (and somehow still too complicated) explanation. “Well, this is a lot more work than Erika made it out to be.”

Erika is a main character from Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper; she’s the pauper character and is a seamstress. Throughout the movie, Erika sings about how easy it is to sew a dress.

“Yeah, well, Erika had a lifetime of experience, and you don’t,” you remind him, playfully rolling your eyes. “But don’t worry! I believe in you!”

And with confidence you know he doesn’t have (yet!), he smiles and tucks the book underneath his arm, his eyes crescents as he holds out his hand for you to pull him in the direction he needs to go.

“Well, then, what’re we waiting for?”

For the next hour or so, you and Gojo fall into a gentle rhythm as you and him both go about finding things for your costumes, with him asking for clarification whenever he needs it and you asking him to grab all the items that’re too high up for you to reach on your own.

Words are exchanged as necessary (with the occasional line about a specific fabric reminding you of any one of your friend’s fashion styles or a bow that looks like it’s from Chaperomon’s apron), and you work with each other, you picking out buttons that’d best match what he needs and him carrying all the bolts over to the cutting station to ask for them to be cut.

Occasionally, you’ll glance over to where he is further down the aisle if you notice that he’s gone a bit quiet, and your heart will flutter at the sight of him thoughtfully looking back and forth between the pattern sheet in his book and the wide array of fabrics and notions in front of him, his face serious as he tries to choose. When he catches you staring, he blinks owlishly before his stern look is replaced with a smile you know he saves only for you, and he rushes over to ask for your opinion and advice.

When you’re both done, you rock back-and-forth on the balls of your feet as Gojo pays for everything you’ve both set on the counter. When he’s handed the receipt and a large bag with all the things you’ve just bought, you thank him with a kiss on the cheek, and you both bid the older man “farewell” with a wave before stepping back out into the fog to take the long way home.

The walk home is more of the same deal—cold, save for the warmth you find on Gojo’s face whenever you catch him staring at you; sweet, save for the bitter leaf that gets blown into your mouth by the wind; silent, save for the sounds of your screaming as MaloMyotismon’s fog comes after the two of you again and you run the final stretch of the path to get to the safety of your apartment.

❀4

After opening the gate and getting into your apartment building, you and Gojo make your way over to the stairs this time, and you fumble with your keys as you go to open your door because you’re still so cold from the outside. Gojo offers to help warm you up, but you know his fingers are even colder than yours and are only going to make you scream (and not in the good way you know they can otherwise), so you ignore him and just stumble through it as best you can. Once you get the right key, you unlock your door and step in, Gojo right behind you and locking it behind you.

He sets the bag on the dining table before going ahead and replacing the water for the carnations on the counter, and you get to work separating what was bought into two piles for yourself and for Gojo. All the while, you and him talk about what to have for dinner tonight, eventually deciding on a trip down to the konbini down the street later to grab snacks and a few rice balls because you’re both too lazy to cook an actual meal today.

Gojo finishes up and wipes down the counter before joining you at the table, the materials properly laid out now with his pattern book opened to the instructions for the vest. You help him get started, explaining each step briefly before going back to the first one. Instead of directly marking the pattern on the fabric like the book says to though, you disappear into your bedroom and come out with a large roll of butcher paper for Gojo to draw the cut-out on paper first since it’s his first time trying something like this and it’s a little easier to mark this way.

While Gojo does that, laying on his stomach with the paper rolled out on the floor in front of him, you get started on drafting a bodice for your costume, working directly on the fabric with worn chalk. When he finishes, you hand him the scissors and direct him to cut out the pieces to try on as mock-ups, and when he’s done with that, you help him hold them against his torso so he can feel for himself whether or not it’s the right shape and size.

He can hardly keep a straight face, your hands flush against him still flustering him like it did earlier, but he manages to steady himself anyway and listens dutifully as you detail how to mark up the fabric now. You show him how you’d just done it for your own costume, the book now left alone as you and him hold two ends of the blue fabric to lay on the floor for him to mark, and he does that while you cut your pieces out. Every so often, he’ll ask for your help while you’re standing in front of the mirror and pinning the fabric on your body, and you’ll assure him that it doesn’t hurt when you accidentally poke yourself as you move around.

. . .

Okay, maybe it does hurt a tiny bit, but it happens often enough anyway that you’ve just gotten used to it.

Once you’re done with your respective steps here, you make good on your decision to head over to the konbini, the two of you in matching Patamon and Gabumon hoodies now to stay warm on the short walk.

(It’s the same Gabumon hoodie you wore when you drove up to Tokyo over the summer, and you’d only very recently found out that it was never actually being regifted to you and that Gojo had always intended for you to have it. You probably should’ve known that because, well, Geto’s birthday is in February and Gojo gave it to you in June, but it just gives you something else to tease him about when you reflect on how the two of you got here.)

When you get to the store, you split off to grab the snacks and candies while Gojo gets the rice balls, and you actually run into Haibara on your way out, him taking his younger sisters here because they want to try out a chocolate candy that’d been advertised in this week’s episode of their favorite cartoon.

You end up chatting more with the two young girls, both to leave Haibara and Gojo to catch up on their own for a bit and because you remember your cousins telling you about this cartoon over the phone a while ago and can ask them more questions to keep them entertained. It’s your first time meeting them, but they warm up to you quickly, each sister taking one of your hands and clumsily pulling you through the aisles to find their chocolate before you eventually take them back to Haibara so he can pay.

Him and Gojo immediately stop talking when they see you three, probably about something they don’t want the younger girls overhearing, and they hug each other “goodbye” before Haibara pulls you in for one as well. You laugh against his side as he apologizes for his sisters dragging you away, telling him that it’s no problem and that you’re used to children and their whims, and you and Gojo are on your way, a bag of all your food for the night swinging between your joined hands as you skip down the road.

You wash your hands in the bathroom while Gojo sets down the bag at the coffee table in front of the TV, and he swaps with you to wash his hands at the kitchen sink while you get everything set out for dinner. When he comes back, he grabs the DVD album you keep underneath the TV and flips through it while you scroll through your phone and answer texts you missed from earlier in the day.

“Ooh, can we watch this one!?” Gojo asks excitedly, drawing your attention and getting you to look up at the disc he’s holding carefully between his thumb and middle finger.

When you see that he’s suggesting you watch Barbie: A Fashion Fairytale, you can’t help but light up, nodding giddily as he puts it into the DVD player and hastily runs over to sit down next to you on the couch.

(Since watching Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper (and in addition to rewatching that specific title), Gojo has been slowly making his way through the rest of the early Barbie 2000’s movies with you, citing his love for the first one he saw as the reason for that (as well as his desire to know more about what you loved when you were growing up). He keeps a spreadsheet with his thoughts, all the good and the bad, and he updates it regularly with whatever he deems necessary for you to know about his viewing experience.

In a similar vein, you’ve taken to playing some of the fighting games Gojo grew up playing, practicing in your spare time at an arcade that’s a few stores down from Fushiguro’s. You’d had a taste of his teaching back in TRF, but once you made it known that you wanted to learn how to play a bit more seriously, Gojo comes along with you sometimes, helping you pick up combos and explaining character lore in the background of you memorizing joystick maneuvers.

In the second tab of the same spreadsheet Gojo waxes poetry about Rapunzel’s gown and complains about Prince Daniel, you write down what character kits you’re practicing, which keys you’re on the lookout for on the resale market, all your favorite catchphrases and kill screens.)

By the end of Fashion Fairytale, your stomach hurts, and you have no idea if it’s because of all the salt in the chips you ate, if it’s because of all the sugar you’d kissed off Gojo’s lips, or if it’s because you’d spent half the movie doubled over laughing over Ken’s road trip to Paris. Gojo turns so he can face you now, his arm over the back of the couch so it isn’t uncomfortably pressed against the back of the seat, and he tells you that this one is his favorite.

You know it’s just recency bias—he’d said the same thing about Rapunzel, Magic of Pegasus, The 12 Dancing Princesses, even Swan Lake (which he openly dislikes now because he thinks Prince Daniel’s the absolute worst for not realizing he wasn’t dancing with Odette at the ball, even though that’s literally how the actual ballet plays out), and every single time, he changes his mind the week after and apologizes to The Princess and the Pauper for ever saying it wasn’t his favorite anymore—, but you still listen with a smile as he talks about how much he loved Ken in this movie and promises you that he’d also travel to the other side of the world to apologize to you if he made you upset.

After clearing away the table and what remnants of dinner there were, you and him get back to work on your costumes, him laid out on the ground again with the scissors while you sit at the dining table working a bit more on your draft pieces. Misato had recommended an album for you to listen to in a genre she knows you like, so that plays from the TV speakers in the background while Gojo and you keep talking, trying (and failing) to stay focused on the task at hand.

You have to get up often, both to look at the mock-up on your body in the mirror and to help Gojo with whatever he’s stuck on in the moment, and it doesn’t really help anyone’s productivity that your boyfriend will pull you down to kiss you (and that you kiss back), but you’re both trying your best.

In the end, Gojo falls asleep there in the living room, his head on his crossed arms on top of the coffee table and the very beginnings of a vest just in front of him. The glow of the TV reflects on his glasses, a mirrored screen of the album art that’s been there for hours now because the music’s been looping, and you take them off his face so he doesn’t accidentally crush them in his sleep, placing them on the table before you put away what you can so you don’t have to deal with it later.

You know he’ll wake up with a headache and a bad neck if you just let him stay there, so you gently wake him up and direct him to the bathroom so he can wash his face and brush his teeth, his toothbrush in the mug he stole from the hotel in Tokyo over the summer.

He follows your direction, still very much half-awake (if even that), and once he’s ready to lay down, you lead him to your bed so he can finally get some proper sleep. He’s so tired that he falls asleep as soon as his head hits your pillows (and as soon as his arms wrap around the Biyomon pillow that keeps getting taken between your place and his), and you rush back to the living room to grab your phone and take a picture.

And while he’s asleep, you grab some of the spare fabric you used in the spring from your closet before heading back out to the dining table and taking out the accessories pattern book you’d gotten from the shop today, and you open it to the page for opera gloves before you get to work.

❀5

It doesn’t take you too long to make them, the actual making of the garment fairly straightforward and not too complicated, so once you’re done a few hours later (at least with the actual sewing part), you come back to your bedroom and hide them behind a few textbooks so he doesn’t know what you’re up to.

You get ready for bed at your own pace, though trying to keep quiet so Gojo doesn’t get woken up, and once you’re done, you lift the blankets so you can slip in besides your boyfriend. He stirs in his sleep but doesn’t wake up otherwise, so, for a second, you think you’ll drift off to the Dream Dimension as-is, watching the rise and fall of his chest in the dark with your hands folded underneath your face.

And that would’ve been fine, really. Hardly ever do you get to admire him like this, him always so preoccupied with making himself look good in front of you, but he’s still every bit as beautiful as the day he’d been yours.

But, like his body’s acting on its own (or like Sektor’s Rocket looking for heat in MK3), he wraps his arms around you, forgoing Biyomon and pulling you in even though he’s still asleep. You hold in your laughter as he yawns and places his chin on top of your head, mumbling something that sounds like he’s busy dreaming about taking over the Digital World one Destiny Stone at a time.

There are 7 Destiny Stones in the Digital World in Digimon Adventure 02. Controlling them gives you control of the movement of digimon between the Real and Digital World.

❀6

You can’t really tell, but you’re sure, whatever it is he’s seeing in his mind theatre right now, he’ll tell you all about it in the morning when you’re brushing your teeth together at the same sink, toothpaste dripping down as his chin as he talks without a care in the world.

And you can’t wait, already feeling the cool plastic of your toothbrush in your hands as Gojo laces his fingers with yours in his sleep, this time calling you his Darling.

❀7

☆

As the month goes on, it gets harder to keep track of the days. Immediate deadlines are a thing of the past—this quarter is less weekly packets and busywork, more long research projects and scheduled check-ins on said research projects—, so there isn’t that pressing need to remember what day of the week it is anymore.

So, naturally, instead of remembering what day of the week it is by virtue of other (probably more important) deadlines, you use DTCG games to mark your calendar.

On Mondays, you have TA meetings until later in the afternoon, so you don’t get to join Gojo in the library until about three. He’s already deep in his schoolwork by the time you sit down across from him at the table the two of you have claimed as your spot for the past year, so you both work in silence until it’s time to go and have dinner on the way home. Because there isn’t much time for it between studying and getting home, you and Gojo play one game in-between the time it takes to order food and for it to arrive at your table.

For the first Monday of October, you and Gojo find yourselves in the only restaurant that seems to really tolerate the two of you: Fushiguro’s.

“Who’d you bring to play today?” Gojo muses to himself as he holds out his deck for you to swap for shuffle. After you hand him your deck face-up to answer his question, he furrows his brows and brings up the top card. “LordKnightmon?”

❀8

You nod, taking his GigaSeadramon and already starting to shuffle. “Yeah, I wanna practice <Rush> since I don’t have a lot of experience with it.”

“Let me know if you need any pointers, I used to play a lot of Blue Flare,” Gojo offers, cutting your deck and putting LordKnightmon somewhere in the pile.

You nod as you continue to shuffle, as does Gojo, both of you cutting from the top and the bottom before and after a formal shuffle, and you swap decks again to set up the table. It takes no longer than fifteen seconds to set up both your shields and starting fives, and instead of flipping a coin, you play rock-paper-scissors to decide who gets first turn (oh, the blasphemy!).

You both play rock three times in a row before Gojo just fishes a 1 coin out of his pocket though, so in the end, you don’t have to completely say “goodbye” to your game integrity.

DTCG tournament rules require a coin flip to decide who gets first turn.

You don’t bother calling “tails” anymore because it’s been long-established already that that side of the coin is yours and that the other is Gojo’s, so when it lands with the reverse side facing up, you start and hatch your first Koromon in the breeding area without saying anything.

The two of you get lost in your own Digital World, drawing cards and playing them like they’re pieces of yourselves. Whenever you’re lost (which admittedly isn’t all that often to begin with, but like you said, you don’t have much experience with a lot of the effects in the LordKnightmon deck), you hold out the card for Gojo to look at and explain to you, and whenever he’s lost (which admittedly is a bit more often because he isn’t super comfortable playing <Blast Digivolution> even though he knows it better than you do), he does the same.

Out of the corner of your eye (and when you and Gojo both have two shields still up, so maybe, like, five minutes before the game’s over), you see Toji approach your table with your food for the evening before his wife intercepts and takes the dishes off his hands so she can bring them back to the kitchen and keep them underneath the heated lamp until you’re ready to eat.

You end up winning, a pure stroke of luck, especially considering the fact you don’t have much experience playing LordKnightmon in the first place, and as soon as the table’s clear of all your DTCG mats, Mrs. Fushiguro reappears with your food, still every bit as perfect as it was when it was first prepared. You both thank her before digging in, starving after a long day of schoolwork, and after paying for your meals, you leave to head down to the ice cream shop down the street.

There’s a bit of a line today—why so many people want ice cream in this freezing cold, you’ll never know, but you can’t really judge anyone when you’re also one of the idiots getting ice cream in the freezing cold—, so Gojo reads off the flavors from the menu on the wall for you so you don’t have to struggle against all the other people clamoring to get to the front.

“Vanilla… Green tea… Dark chocolate-orange… Cookies and cream…”

You’re hardly paying attention though, only focused on trying to warm your hands and to not lose Gojo in the loud line, so when you inevitably get to the front, you need a second to yourself to decide on what flavor to get.

Gojo always gets something new, this time picking caramelized pear because the fruit is just at the end of its season, so while the worker scoops his portion and gets all the toppings he wants on it, you stare down at the array of flavors in the ice chest. You’re so cold that you’re already starting to regret suggesting getting ice cream in the first place, so to make it easier, you pick this week’s special: orange blossom.

Gojo’s already paying for the two of you at the register by the time you pick your flavor, so he doesn’t know what you got, and after you grab some napkins and a spoon on your way out, you and him walk back to his car. When you get back to the DigiMobile, the two of you stand side-by-side with your backs against the side of his car to eat your ice cream.

You wince when you first bring your spoon to your mouth, the cold hitting you twice now with the air and with the ice cream. You get over it quickly, eventually humming around the spoon as you let the citrus-cream notes bloom on your tongue, and you glance over to see Gojo doing the same, eyes closed with his spoon stuck out the corner of his mouth.

Neither of you ask the other person for permission before dipping your spoon into their ice cream, just taking bites of it as you please. Neither of you care about whether or not the flavors will taste weird if they’re mixed together, probably because you both know you’ll taste it anyway when you kiss him “goodbye,” but it’s still sweet to think that it’s just become so normal to not fuss over that sort of thing.

(You could’ve done without the time you got apple-citrus sorbet and he got mint-chocolate, but it’s fine. You couldn’t taste anything but him by the time you were done making out in his car afterwards anyway.)

Thankfully, both your flavors today bleed into each other well this time, the slight citrus-y taste of your ice cream cutting through the fresh sweetness of his.

You watch as other people come and go from the little ice cream shop, all in different outfits with different attitudes. The line gets longer as the night goes on, something that makes you secretly smug because you already have your ice cream and don’t have to wait that long for it this time around.

In the distance, there’s a group of high schoolers huddled around a phone, and you and Gojo make stupid guesses as to what it is they’re so worked up about. You think the president and vice president of the horticulture club they’re all in are secretly dating each other and that they’re looking at pictures someone snuck of them in the back gardens, Gojo spins a wild story of one of them breaking into the school after-hours and accidentally getting locked in a haunted storage closet, and both of you are too shy to go up and ask them what they’re talking about even though you’re sure they’d love to tell two random university students all about what it is that’s got them screaming and shouting in a half-empty parking lot this late at night.

An old classmate of yours from second year spots you from the nearby laundromat, and she ends up coming over to chat with you for a bit after she puts her load in the dryer. Nothing’s really new with either of you, just different classes and different places to be, but it’s nice to catch up with her after so long and know that she’s doing well.

You compliment her on the black lipstick she’s wearing, having noticed it at the beginning of the conversation but not pointing it out earlier to interrupt her as she was talking, and she’s happy to tell you all about how it stays on even after a long day of school and work, how it tastes just like cherries. When she pulls up the product swatches on her phone to show you all the other colors it’s available in and you see that there’s a purple one, you excitedly tap her shoulder and ask her to send you the link so you can get it for yourself, and you and her end up talking a bit more about makeup and the like while Gojo follows the conversation as best he can, giving his input only when asked and occasionally interrupting the conversation to tell you that your ice cream’s dipping (and that he’ll be back in just a second with more napkins).

❀9

And she’s never met him before, but she recognizes Gojo from your Instagram because even before you and him ever started dating, you’d always post pictures of your DTCG games with him on your story, and his username is always tagged in the corner with hearts matching the colors of your digimon. When she goes to hug you “goodbye,” she tells you that she’s happy to see you with someone who looks at you the way he does, and she waves him “goodbye” as well, telling him that she looks forward to seeing which digimon you’ll be posting on your story later tonight.

After she leaves, from your backpack, you pull out the Nu Metal Empire and Hermit of the Jungle DiMs you finally got in the mail this morning, and you hand the MailBirdramon card to him and keep the Toropiamon for your own VB. You transfer the digimon from your VB out into your Arena to have it indexed in for storage, and Gojo does the same with his before you both follow the directions to insert your DiMs to hatch your Yuramon and his Bommon. The animation of the egg hatching plays on your Bracelets, both held out next to each other so you can watch them at the same time, and you gush over the Digi-babies as they float on your screens.

Arena is the mobile app used to keep/store digimon from the Vital Bracelet series. Yuramon and Bommon are the baby digimon in the Hermit of the Jungle and Nu Metal Empire DiM cards, which are sold together in a set Torapiamon is printed on the DiM holder for Hermit of the Jungle, MailBirdramon is printed on the DiM holder for Nu Metal Empire.

By now, you’ve both finished your ice cream, so Gojo unlocks his car, opens the door for you to step in first, and hands you his keys so you can start the engine and get the heater going while he goes to throw away your trash. When he comes back, he asks you how far you’ve gotten in Time Stranger to make sure he doesn’t accidentally spoil the main story quest for you, and after you tell him you’re just about at the same spot he is, the two of you spend the next hour just talking about it and nerding out over all the game has to offer. He also gives you the update on his BlackWarGreymon, right now at Greymon (Blue), and when he asks you about how your Rosemon: Burst Mode is coming along, you tell him she’s a Lalamon right now.

After Gojo drops you off at your apartment and you get ready for bed, the day ends with you climbing into your warm, cozy bed with a smile on your face after reaching Agent Rank 3 in Time Stranger. Geto calls you from the supermarket to ask what brand of chips you keep at your apartment because he’s been craving them but can’t remember what they look like, Yuki sends you a picture of a hairstick she got at the secondhand shop she went to today with Utahime, and Riko texts you and Misato about this new drama series she’s watching, and as much as you try not to, you fall asleep in the middle of her complaining about how the second lead is so much more interesting than the first lead, your phone lost between your sheets as you drift off to the Dream Dimension.

All in all, Mondays are nice. They’re uneventful, they’re tiring, and most of all, they’re boring, but, still, you manage to laugh and smile all the same. You probably won’t remember much else about today besides just that, but, really, you don’t mind that it’s marked in your calendar with sleep and the mark of the (wooled holy) beast, and an orange tree blossoms in your quietest garden.

☆

On Tuesdays, Gojo’s busy tutoring all day and you have scheduled meetings with your project group for one of your classes, so you don’t catch each other in-person in the library for a game. Instead, because most of your friends are available in the evening, the lot of you gather at Choso’s house to play video games and eat junk food until you all either fall asleep on the floor or manage to find your way home, and you and Gojo play DTCG sparsely between controller switch-offs.

(Yuuji joins in on Tuesday nights too, always happy to spend time with his older brother (and to ask Gojo for help with any science homework he’s struggling with), so you suppose your boyfriend’s tutoring hours don’t entirely stop even after he comes over to hang out with the rest of you, but he doesn’t seem to mind, always happy to spend time helping a student understand something important. It works out too that you’re all gathered over at the house since their dad, Jin, works nights on Tuesdays, and having people over helps the house not feel as empty.

Sometimes Megumi and Nobara are here too, but Yuuji relays the information that Nobara’s out shopping with her grandma for new winter clothes and that Megumi’s with his mom to take their dogs to the vet for a routine check-up, so they won’t be joining the rest of you today.)

Though there’s a variety of games available to play, because Misato has a big Kart tournament this week and needs a bit of a distraction from all the horn jumping and tricking she’s been having to practice lately, tonight’s game is Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Perfect, really—it’s been a while since you’ve played a more competitive skill game like Smash, and you know that Yuuji’s been spending a lot of time practicing his float aerials, so he’s more than ready to face off against the likes of you college-aged kids.

Sucks that Nobara and Megumi aren’t here tonight though. Nobara mains Bayonetta and it’s great watching her combo zero-to-death off-stage, and it's always a good time when Megumi obliterates all of you on Lucina.

Rules are always the same when you all play SSBU—3 stocks, 7 minutes, Battlefield stages only, no items, no Smash Balls, and no teaming up for any reason at all.

(This is partly to make games faster to queue, but honestly, everyone knows by now it’s set up this way to prevent fights from breaking out between Ino and Misato, the two most serious Smash players of the group.)

There are eight controllers available, several of you bringing your own on top of the three that’re already at Choso’s, but because it’s no fun playing with that many people at once, you start with four players for everyone to get used to their kits again.

And while all the controllers get synced up to the Switch in the living room, you and Gojo messily set up a DTCG game on the kitchen counter, flipping a coin to decide who goes first.

“Heads” tonight, so you leave the setup of your Bug Brigade and his Sea Creatures to claim a spot on the couch to play this first Smash game. You trust Gojo to not peek at your cards as he initiates his game phases, so you don’t pay him any mind as you take a controller and get ready.

❀10

At character selection, everyone picks their main—Haibara picks Villager, Riko picks Zero Suit Samus, Yuuji picks Peach, and you pick Wii Fit Trainer.

Before the game can start though, Riko has to get up to quickly answer a phone call from her parents, so you’re all left at the selection screen for a while, long enough for everyone to talk up their game skills and for Gojo to sprint back to the living room to sit in front of where you are on the couch, sliding in-between Ino and Choso.

Gojo looks up at the television screen before tilting his chin up to look back at you, a teasing smile on his face. “You know, I still don’t get why you main Wii Fit. Her kit is, like, C tier at best.”

You roll your eyes at him, putting your hand on top of his head and gently pushing it down so he’s facing forward again. “Why don’t you worry about yourself first, gogglehead? You don’t even have a main.”

"Gogglehead" is a term used in Digimon Tamers to refer to an (annoying) Digimon fan. It is generally used as an insult but can be taken affectionately in certain contexts.

“I’ll have a main when Nintendo adds a Digimon character!”

“Is that why you always pick Random when we play?” Misato asks from her spot on the floor at the other end of the couch.

Gojo nods. “Yeah, I don’t wanna main a character just to switch as soon as they add someone from Digimon.”

“He’s been sending support tickets every week for the last, like, five years begging them to add a Digimon character to the roster,” Haibara adds with a teasing smile.

“Six years, actually, but whatever! I don’t even care who it is anymore, I’ll main anyone!”

“I thought Sakurai said there weren’t gonna be any new fighters after Fighter Pass 2,” Yuuji notes innocently.

You giggle, patting Gojo’s head to console him as he fumes.

Gojo scoffs and looks back again, this time at the young boy sitting next to you with a look of disbelief. “Okay, and!? People are still waiting for Miku in Smash, am I not allowed to wait for them to add Agumon!?”

Everyone laughs at Gojo’s determination, but you all understand how frustrated he is about there being no Digimon on the roster. Before you picked up Wii Fit Trainer, you weren’t really attached to anyone else in the game because you, too, were waiting for them to add a Digimon character, but you gave up hope pretty quickly after, like, the tenth Nintendo Direct that didn’t announce WarGreymon as its newest challenger.

Same goes for Ino, who you remember would get in trouble in high school every-so-often for sneaking his phone out of class to watch Directs in the bathroom to see if they’d add Sissel (or any Ghost Trick character, really).

Same goes for Misato, who, to this day, still drags you out of lectures to watch the broadcast at the on-campus restaurant you both like (though she probably cares more about whether or not there are going to be any Kart updates she needs to prepare for, but she did wait a long time for Pyra and Mythra… only to switch right back to maining her, at best, D tier character after she got bored of playing such a high-tier kit).

Same goes for Riko, who still live-tweets during every Direct to say that Miku will be announced as the newest challenger (and still believes that she’ll get added even though it’s been years since Sakurai’s added a new fighter).

. . .

Yeah, it’s rough for the best of you.

Riko comes back, clumsily apologizing before steadying the controller in her hands. No one minds that she was gone, just more excited now that she’s back, so the game starts as soon as all your characters spawn on the platform and the match timer starts.

Too much happens in a game setup like this, four people playing from the couch and four more on the floor in front of them (and all eight of you screaming at the screen), so you can’t recall every single nair, fair, down-air, back-air, B, side-B, up-B, down-B, side-tilt, up-tilt, down-tilt, forward-Smash, up-Smash, down-Smash, z-grab, grab, shield-grab, up-throw, down-throw, forward throw, back throw, combo, so on and so forth, but to the best of your recollection…

Riko gets rushed off the stage by Yuuji and the stitch-face turnip he pulls, and she loses her first stock to him when she’s unable to get back on stage because you and Haibara are taking up the entire ledge trying to spike each other at 20%.

Yuuji gets caught in-between you and Riko, both of you trying to bait each other into shield-breaking so you can grab, and he loses his first stock to Haibara when he tosses him off-stage a few seconds later.

You, Haibara, and Riko are all crowded beneath one platform as Yuuji’s Peach spawns back in, and you and Haibara lose your first stocks when Riko up-B’s both of you off the top of the screen. Riko loses her stock soon after when Yuuji, again, rushes her, but his combo’s even nastier now because he’s gotten a better feel for his controller and is floating perfectly.

Haibara keeps taunting you from the edge, slingshotting projectiles at you to keep you from coming back on stage, so after you bait him to come to the ledge, you roll on and grab him, tossing him behind you, back-airing him off, and spiking him to finally get him off your tail.

Yuuji pulls a Bob-omb and doesn’t want to waste it, choosing to run and hide instead of going on the offensive, but unfortunately for him, because you’d just performed Deep Breathing, you’re stock hungry and looking for a challenge. After you force him to shield-break (and teabag Peach's body, which honestly just looks like you’re doing burpees on top of him because WFT’s crouch is a pushup), you summon your soccer ball, cancel the header animation, and forward-Smash the ball into Peach to take his second stock.

Haibara and Riko keep trying to grab each other, but after they rack up each other’s percentages, Haibara manages to forward-Smash’s to drop Villager’s bowling ball on her, knocking Zero Suit off the stage. Haibara’s Villager hops off-stage to finish the job, but Riko ends up side-Z’ing him to pull him down with her, both of them now out of the game with zero stocks left.

It’s embarrassing to admit, but you lose your second stock watching Riko and Haibara duke it out, Yuuji having fully charged his forward-Smash and angling his control stick to summon Peach's frying pan to hit you. He knocks you off-stage before you can really recover, and you just barely miss the edge before you fall into your last stock.

For last stock, you and Yuuji play off-stage for the most part, both of your characters very aerial-focused to begin with. He floats just above the ground to try and chain turnips on you, but you keep animation-cancelling to throw him off. You try to land on him to nair him and get him above you so you can up-Smash, but he keeps side-B’ing away from you and air-dodging.

In the end, Yuuji claims your final stock with Peach's parasol, up-B’ing you at 138%, and the kill is confirmed with a splash of black and red before your Wii Fit Trainer flies off-screen.

Yuuji spins and pretends to taunt with a parasol to match Peach as her victory animation plays, and everyone claps for his win before switching their spot in the seating. While they get set up, you scramble up onto your feet and run back to the kitchen counter to complete your turn in your running side-game of DTCG.

You didn’t expect him to do so much with his opening turn, but Gojo’s proved you wrong, having hatched a Bukamon, digivolving it to a Jellymon, and playing a Seadramon for 5 memory. You’d lost your first shield, an Okuwamon that’s now in your trash, and to make matters worse, you pick up your starting five to see that they’re all option cards.

❀11

You turn back to look at him on the couch and find him already grinning at you, oblivious to how mad you are right now that he’d started off the game so strong and that your first pull was so awful. You flip him off before officially starting your turn, drawing one card.

Thankfully, it’s a KoKabuterimon, so after hatching a Motimon, you draw again to pull a Kuwagamon, and you digivolve again, moving the clay Wormmon marker two spaces to the right. You draw one more (yet again), and you decide to play Izzy onto the field before ending your turn, 1 memory for Gojo’s next turn.

You run back to the group, this time to sit on the floor as Gojo, Misato, Ino, and Choso play, and you’re just in time for everyone’s favorite part of Tuesday: the moment everyone starts bullying Ino for his main.

“You do know he’s, like, the worst character in the game, right?” Misato sneers, picking Dr. Mario and selecting his blue coat skin.

“I do!” Ino answers cheerfully as he tugs his beanie back on, having taken it off to wave it in the air to celebrate Yuuji’s victory just now.

“Can you even get back on stage after you’re knocked off?” Yuuji asks, coming back from the kitchen with drinks for everyone.

“Nope!” Ino says, thanking Yuuji for the soda he’s handed, opening it and taking a sip, and he carefully leans over to place it on the floor in front of him.

“Don’t you feel ashamed having to button-mash to survive?” Gojo sneers, selecting Random.

“Not really, no!” Ino replies, humming as the music continues as everyone chooses their characters.

“Why do you main him?” Choso asks as he picks Yoshi, trying to ease everyone else’s questions and comments to make Ino feel better.

“I don’t know!” Ino finally picks up his controller and selects Little Mac, and the game begins!

Little Mac is generally considered one of, if not, the worst character in SSBU. It is generally common practice for people to make fun of and troll Little Mac mains.

And, really, even though you’re not playing this round, it’s even harder now to keep track of what’s going on.

Misato camps Choso for the first stock, wanting to make him flustered enough to shake his confidence and throw him off his game. He isn’t familiar enough with Dr. Mario’s kit to predict her moves, so he loses his stock fairly quickly when she combos him and chains pills when he tries to dash in.

Gojo ends up loading in as Game & Watch, so he moves around the map a bit to get used to his kit before going hard after Ino, trying to get him out of neutral so he can just fall off the stage and into the void. Ino doesn’t fall for it though, having so much experience playing as Little Mac, so he forces Gojo to camp him out. Eventually, Gojo gets bored and leaves to go after Misato, landing an 8 with his side-B and freezing Dr. Mario before chaining fairs until she’s KO’ed off the map.

Ino continues to run away, the fucking bastard, so Misato takes it upon herself on her next stock to combo him with pills. Once his damage % is high enough, she pressures him to the edge to avoid Gojo and Choso, both of them with stage control right now as they try to grab each other, and Misato gets Little Mac off his feet with her down-B and chains aerials on him until he eventually can’t get back on stage. Everyone (save Ino, who’s using his invincibility window to take another sip of his soda) cheers, and the game continues.

Well, it continues in one big blur.

Or, uh, better yet, it continues in one Little Mac-shaped blur.

None of the other characters in this matchup are well-suited to play against Little Mac, all of them lacking the long-range projectiles that do well against him, so there goes any chance of really camping him out to force him off-stage. Of all eight of everyone’s mains, the only ones that do well in matchups against Ino’s Little Mac are your Wii Fit and Riko’s Zero Suit (which is why the rule of “no teaming” exists, because back when the three of you were still in high school and just starting to play with your current mains, you and her used to camp him out so hard that he’d just jump off the stage in defeat and complain about how much he hates you guys), so it makes sense that Little Mac ends up taking five stocks by the end of the game.

And, honestly, for as awful as Little Mac actually is, Ino is very dedicated to making it work. He’s been maining him for years and refuses to swap out or even have a secondary for bad matchups, and his GSP has been, like, consistently in the top 5% since he’s picked up the boxer.

GSP is Global Smash Power and is used as the ranking system in online SSBU. Having high GSP on a character gives you entry into Elite Smash, which is about top 10% of players on that specific character. You need to maintain your GSP above a certain threshold to keep a character in Elite.

Still, it doesn’t make it any less devastating when Little Mac’s victory animation plays, the losers on the couch bitter as they try to process the loss.

Choso groans, his head in his hands in distress. “This isn’t fair! We can’t camp him if he’s just going to hog the stage!”

Gojo takes off his glasses and drags his hands down his face, crying out in frustration. “Ugh, I almost had him! Ino, I swear to MaloMyotismon, I’m never helping you with your p-sets again!”

Misato spam-presses A to reset and get back to the character selection screen to have another go. “Rematch, rematch! We can’t lose to fucking Little Mac!”

“Oh, but you did,” Ino says smugly, leaning back and crossing his arms across his chest with a smirk. “Guess you guys aren’t real gamers like I am.”

Now egged on even further by his trash talk, the other players keep screaming, unable to accept that they’ve lost to Little Mac of all fighters (which you don’t blame them for at all, he really is the worst character in the entire 89-person roster), until everyone eventually cools off, hugs it out, and the next game starts with a new combination of players.

Gojo hands his controller off to the person closest to him without one, which happens to be Yuuji, before running back over to the kitchen counter to play his next turn. You all wait the two or three minutes it takes for him to come back before playing, and the rest of the evening continues like this, everyone bright with energy and snacking on food they probably shouldn’t be.

You and Gojo continue to play DTCG in the background, and everyone else’s doing a bit of their own thing in-between actual Smash games too, so there’s never a moment anyone feels left out or listless.

Eventually, as the 4-person games get tiring, you switch to 1v1, playing more seriously now that all of you have gotten comfortable and are in a good game mood. Haibara gets bragging rights for the next week for beating Gojo’s Ice Climbers as Villager, Choso and Riko keep up a conversation about their favorite metalcore bands while they play against each other, Misato and Yuuji manage to get each other down to one stock but run out of time, Dr. Mario on the victory screen because Misato had a lower damage percent between the two of them by the end of their game, and everyone cheers in celebration when you three-stock Ino’s Little Mac with your Wii Fit still at 75%.

Three-stocking someone means to beat them with three lives left (meaning you didn’t die during your game).

As the night goes on (and while Misato and Ino are fighting each other on the couch, both verbally and in-game), you later find yourself standing in front of the fridge, staring at the photographs and artwork that it’s collected over time. You’ve been over a lot over the years, having met and been friends with Choso since your first-year when you ran into him and Yuki at the campus bookstore and needed help finding a specific textbook, but there’s always still that charm in getting to see what’s been added to the fridge as of late.

Looks like there’s a new picture of Choso and Ino practicing at the latter’s place, probably taken by Geto who sometimes subs in on guitar when Ino wants more time on drums. Looking closer, you can see Geto’s backpack in the corner of the shot, so it’s definitely him behind the camera. There’s also a few other pictures of Choso and Yuki together taken on the Polaroid you gave her last Christmas, all of those with sweet love notes and lipstick kisses on them where you can write on the film, and you smile at those fondly, thinking back to when they were still “just friends.”

Well, it was more like Choso was oblivious to Yuki’s flirting for years and didn’t get the hint until she properly told him that she was interested, but it all worked out in the end and they now get to keep cute pictures like this around.

There’s a few new movie ticket stubs on the fridge too, each one accompanied by a photobooth strip. Yuuji, Megumi, Nobara, and Nobara’s best friends Fumi and Saori who came to visit awhile ago are in all the pictures, but there’s one with Choso there too next to the stub for Human Earthworm 4, probably because they needed an adult with them to go see it. Even if they didn’t, Yuuji’s talked about the other movies in the franchise before and they’re the stuff of nightmares, so it’s good that Choso was able to go with them to supervise. Yuuji’s friend Junpei, who you remember got in trouble with Yuuji a couple months ago for skipping school to go see a rescreening of Human Earthworm 2, is also in that photostrip, and it makes you laugh seeing all six of them crammed in the photobooth knowing that.

(And you’ve never met them before, but Nobara talks about Fumi and Saori a lot whenever you see her and asks you for different craft ideas because they like sending penpal-style letters and packages to each other, so it warms your heart to see that she’s finally been able to come visit. The three of them went to the same all-girls elementary school before ending up at different junior highs, but it seems like they’ve put in a lot of effort to stay connected to each other.

They remind you a bit of yourself and Misato, who was your neighbor growing up and ended up moving out and doing odd jobs after she graduated high school a few years before you did. You and her kept in touch mostly online, both of you sending miscellaneous gashapon items to each other in the mail every so often because the machines in your regions always had the items the other person wanted, until you both ended up at the same uni and got close all over again.)

There’s a flyer from Yuuji’s school for a Halloween festival to help raise money for individual clubs and for the third-year junior high students to go on their trip to Kyoto in the spring. It looks like the local high school is going to be participating too to help out the younger students with planning and work shifts and such, so it looks quite well-put together, actually.

You pull out your phone from your pocket and check your calendar to make sure you’re available on the day it’s being held, and thankfully, the event lands on a Friday so you’ll be able to come after your afternoon Ruby lecture.

Gojo should be free to attend with you, but hopefully your other friends will be available too. It'd be fun to get everyone together again and do all the typical festival things, and, if not that, then it’ll be a good way to help lessen the cost of the kids’ trip in the spring.

There’s probably a lot more that you’re missing that’s been added recently, but Choso’s love language is 1000% sticking things onto the fridge and staring at them all longingly for hours at a time and it’d take years for you to actually take everything in, so you’re fine leaving them for next time.

There’s a tap on your shoulder, and it startles you before you realize that it’s Gojo handing you a controller. He’s holding two, actually, one for himself, one for you, so you look over at the kitchen counter to see that, unfortunately, he’s taken the win today with his aquatic digimon, ending your switch-off game of the night.

You playfully shove his shoulder and congratulate him on the win before taking the second controller and following him back to the couch, sitting down and opening your mouth for Riko to feed you the sandwich crust that she’s too picky to eat herself. You select Random this time to switch up the gameplay loop, as does Gojo, and you both load in, you as Rosalina & Luma, Gojo as Luigi.

Before you start, without saying anything, you and Gojo swap controllers. It definitely defeats the purpose of choosing Random in the first place, but games are significantly more fun to play and watch if both players excel at the characters they’re on, and you play a mean Wiggie, and Gojo can manage on Rosalina just fine (as in, his GSP on her floats at around 14,500,000 and he hasn’t ever lost to anyone in this room while he’s playing her before).

(Also, Gojo’s a huge Super Mario Galaxy fan.)

(His favorite galaxy’s the Sweet Sweet Galaxy, but that’s a given.)

The other people in the living room return from various parts of the house to come watch the two of you play, backseating both of you from the very beginning because that’s how it always is. You know not to take any of their directions seriously because none of them know Luigi’s moveset like you do, as does Gojo with Rosalina, so you both just laugh along with them to annoy them and do what you do best—game.

You’re both taking this game just as seriously as you would any other, but, like on any other game, you’re both so evenly matched that it’s hard to really get the leg up or down.

He keeps trying to set you up for a dac nair, but when he realizes you’ve picked up on the setup pattern, he swaps to go for a grab, forward throw, nair, up-air, and you can’t do anything but desperately try to air-dodge out of his hitbox.

Before he can rack up any more damage, you manage to get back on stage to grab, down throw, short hop, down-air, nair, short hop, down-air, up-air, dash, and up-B connect to zero-to-death him, and you taunt on the center platform as everyone else cheers for your first kill.

To even out the stock again, he connects a landing nair into an up-air, and he laughs and everyone else’s cheers get even louder with his kill confirm.

The rest of the group has given up on backseating, especially because it’s now much more interesting to just egg on either one of you to take the risk and dash attack in, and the two of you go back and forth on this for too long, both too prideful to be caught in another combo.

Damage gets racked up slowly but surely, and you end up caught in what you recognize as a low-percent combo. This time, you do manage to up-air-dodge out of his hit box because the knockback is further than he planned for it to be, and you try to connect back with a side-B. Unfortunately, the one time you don’t want it to misfire, Luigi’s Green Missile misfires, and you miss Rosalina and end up vulnerable off-stage. You try to get back on, but Gojo takes the opportunity to ledgeguard you and eventually spike your second stock.

The room explodes as now Gojo taunts on the top platform, Rosalina and Luma both twirling on an axis as WFT comes back on-screen.

“I hate this game,” you grumble, flicking the left stick down to fast fall and get back on stage.

Gojo scoots closer to you and leans over to kiss the top of your head, laughing when you whine for him to leave you alone so you can actually focus on the match, and he eventually gets his head back in the game when you down-throw him and nearly get a kill confirm. He gets a few more jabs in on you before you’re finally able to take his second stock with a dash attack, and, thankfully, your damage is still just below the threshold for Rosalina’s kill confirms, so you’ve got a fighting chance.

Everyone’s back to backseating for last stock, this time now split between who they want to win. Haibara, Choso, and Misato are rooting for you to finally end Gojo’s undefeated run on Rosalina, and the other traitors are desperate for him to win because you haven’t lost in a 1v1 yet tonight and they can’t stand the thought of someone leaving a Tuesday game night without at least one solo loss.

You and Gojo keep racking up damage until, right when the match timer reads 1:43, Lip’s Stick lands on the platform right in the middle of where you and Gojo are positioned on-screen.

Item Switch allows players to select what items appear in a game. Lip’s Stick is a Smash item that inflicts “Flower” status to anyone hit by it. A character with Flower status sprouts a flower out of their head.

❀12

Whenever you and Gojo play 1v1, you enable Item Switch to allow only one item—Lip’s Stick—as a way to keep things light-hearted (and because you both think it’s cute because Gojo’s always getting you flowers in real life) (…and also for either one of you to have an excuse if you lose, despite the fact that the item really doesn’t do that much meaningful damage in the first place). It works out that neither of you really care too much about Smash to be as strict as Ino and Misato are about items, too, so it really is just a bit of extra fun.

(. . .

And, uh, let’s just ignore all the characters Gojo has in Elite. It really isn’t even, like, that serious.

. . .

Uh, let’s also go ahead and ignore all the hours you’ve put in on WFT for tournaments Misato would take you to in junior high.

. . .

And in high school.

. . .

And still now in university.)

Gojo immediately dashes for it, game sense apparently all out the window, and to give him a false sense of security for a win, you pretend to accidentally spot-dodge in the wrong direction so he can hit you with it and inflict you with Flower status. You pout, making a point of looking upset that he’s “got” you, and Gojo looks over at you and smiles the same way he does when he’s giving you your flowers, eyes soft and glittering with reverie.

You push Gojo’s hair back to get a better look at him, and you lean in, lost in his gaze as he watches you. When he closes his eyes, waiting for your lips to meet his, you bite the inside of your cheek to keep your laughter to yourself, and you pull back and face back to front to charge a Green Missile directly next to Rosalina, all your friends holding their breath in anticipation. By the time Gojo realizes that you’ve left him hanging, he scrambles to get his controller, but it’s already too late.

When your side-B connects, red and black splashes on the screen before Rosalina gets knocked off-stage and off-screen, and you do finger guns at Gojo alongside Luigi’s victory animation with a bright smile to tease him.

Riko shakes your shoulders to celebrate with you and your other friends all start chanting your name, but before you can really enjoy rubbing your win in his face more than you already have, Gojo leans forward and pokes you just above your hip, swiftly making you beg for mercy as he tickles you.

Haibara comes to your defense and hits Gojo with a pillow, which redirects your boyfriend’s tickling onto him but accidentally connects with Yuuji instead, which then forces Choso to throw a spare blanket over him, which then starts a pillow fight as everyone scrambles to get out of harm’s way.

The living room just keeps getting louder and louder, which means Ino will have to answer the door when the old lady next door inevitably comes over to complain about the noise because he reminds her of her grandson and won’t bother the rest of you as long as he’s there, which also means that the rest of you will have to apologize to him for subjecting him all her doting and promise that it won’t happen again.

(Which it definitely will—this happens every week—, but the deep-fried horse mackerel you all pitch in to get him the day-after always seems to smooth things over, so it works out for everyone.)

A few more games are played, some extra 1v1s before eventually ending with an 8-person match where no one can even figure out where they are on-screen, and at midnight, you all start heading out so you can actually get some sleep.

(Actually, you pull aside Choso while everyone else is putting their shoes on to ask if he still has all those gold buttons he bulk-bought for an art class he took last year. He tells you that he does and that he’s actually been meaning to give them to you for a while now because he knows you’d get more use out of them than he would, so he thanks you for reminding him and goes to grab them from his room.

You end up being the last one out the door, having waited for everyone to step out so you can stuff the bag of them into your backpack without anyone else seeing, but you still take a moment to thank Choso for the buttons and hug him “goodbye” on your way out.)

❀13

Yuuji waves “goodbye” through the living room window in his Spiderman pajamas, having gotten ready for bed while the rest of you packed up your things to leave, and Choso’s with him too, his arm slung over his younger brother’s shoulders. You all wave back, and right before splitting off for rides home, you hug everyone else “goodbye” for the night, Gojo sneaking in a kiss when it’s his turn with you.

Haibara drives you and Riko home, Gojo drives Misato and Ino home, and Choso always makes it a point to stay awake and wait for news that everyone’s gotten back safe before even considering getting ready for bed, so you imagine he’s still in his living room until he hears back. When you get back to your apartment, just barely awake enough to find your way to your bedroom, you text the group chat to let them know you’ve made it back all in one piece before promptly falling asleep, your DemiVeemon plushie as your pillow for the night.

Tuesdays are… a lot. You all should know better than to stay over so late, and you all already know that Choso’s going to text the Tuesday group chat in the morning to remind you all again that you guys have to start leaving earlier in the evening even though he’s the one who asks for, quote, “just one more game,” but, honestly, they’re perfect the way they are—messy, lively, irritating, bright.

For the calendar today, there’s one bug sticker and one fish sticker to mark your DTCG game, and a five-petaled flower you can’t quite name gets planted in the garden of your memories therein, inflicting damage until you can flick it off with your control stick.

☆

On Wednesdays, you have Wind Ensemble from 6pm to 9pm, and because it’s so late by then, you don’t play any DTCG at all. It’s a little weird, not having at least one game during the day after spending the last year or so across tables with him, but you don’t mind it, really, or think much of it in the first place. It’s not like you’re going to die if you don’t see your boyfriend for one (1) day.

Genuinely, you having a boyfriend is one of the least interesting things about you, and DTCG is always going to be waiting for you anyway, so the break in play is actually much appreciated. The game hasn’t ever been suffocating, but it’s nice to forget about it for a day and do other things, indulge in hobbies and interests outside of Digimon.

It’s not like Gojo’s lost without you and the game either, as much as he tries to paint things to be that way. He TA’s for one of the intro physics courses and has his own classes to attend throughout the day, and afterwards, he’s just fine spending time on his own and holing himself up in his room to play video games like the Fanboy Nerd you know he is.

Fanboy Nerd is a character from Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth who’s a fanboy nerd, as the name implies.

(Even if he weren’t already doing that, Gojo needs to get to work on raising his Agent Rank anyway. Last he’d updated you, he was Agent Rank 5, having just digivolved his Greymon (Blue) to MetalGreymon (Blue), and you need him to get to BlackWarGreymon in time for Halloween, which is two weeks from now.)

❀14

Besides, your Wednesday schedule is full—two lectures early in the morning, an extended study session with Shoko and Nanami in the medical library she sneaks the two of you into with her lab assistant keycard, dinner with Ino and Haibara to watch the latest episode of this seasonal shōjo you’ve all read the manga for together, three hours of ensemble rehearsal—, so, suffice to say, you really don’t have the time to stop and think about playing.

You yawn as the director yells at the high brass section for missing their cue for the third time tonight, hiding your open mouth behind your hand as you look down at your VB. There’s only a few more minutes ‘til class ends, so not enough time for a full run of the piece you’ve been going over for the last half-hour or so, so you quietly disassemble your instrument and start wiping down the interior with a cloth-covered rod.

(You don’t mention it when you meet new people (or ever, really… it just doesn’t come up in conversation), but you played the flute for most of your childhood, right up until your last year of high school when you had to divert more attention towards your studies and college entrance exams. You pick it up again every so often to make sure you haven’t forgotten how to play, so it’s not any surprise to you at least that you ended up placed in the intermediate-to-advanced Wind Ensemble over the beginner’s musical performance group after your audition.

❀15

When ensemble rehearsals started a few weeks back though, Utahime was pretty surprised to see you from where she was over by the percussion section, and after class, she came over to the winds to make sure it was really you that she saw. Since then, the two of you occasionally meet up in one of the department practice rooms when you’re both free to just mess around for a bit, yourself on the flute and her on any one (or all) of the percussive instruments she’s picked up over the years.)

You make eye contact with Utahime from across the room before you tip your head towards the exit door, letting her know that you’ll be waiting for her there by the time she’s done taking down her instrument. She nods in understanding, but before either of you can get a proper headstart on packing up, the director claps twice to get everyone’s attention for one last runthrough of the piece.

Everyone groans, already having started putting away their instruments, but the director scolds the ensemble for packing up early because there’s still—she checks her wristwatch—three minutes left of rehearsal, and those three minutes will be used up to the very last second. You scramble to put your flute back together, and once it’s properly assembled, you set it down on your lap and flip through the sheet music to get back to the measure you’ll be starting from for this run. Your stand partner thanks you quietly under his breath, lip plate already against his mouth, and you ready-up to watch hands for the tempo as your director counts the ensemble off.

Everyone in the ensemble is exhausted, but you all know that the director’s just going to make you redo the piece if she senses that any of you aren’t putting forth your best effort, so everyone braves through it and gets it done. After the last measure, the director reminds you all to continue practicing outside of rehearsal in preparation for the winter concert in December before dismissing the ensemble for the evening, and everyone rushes to get on their way. Your stand partner finishes breaking down his instrument first, so he puts your sheet music on his seat next to you and brings the stand over to the rack, waving you “goodbye” as he leaves. You nod at him as your own “goodbye” and as thanks for putting away the stand, and you pack up your flute in its case. You’ll clean it properly when you get home—you can’t be bothered to right now with everyone else rushing out of here.

Out in the hallway, you take your phone out of your backpack to check for any new notifications, and you’re not surprised to see that Gojo’s texted you a bunch of pictures of his vest progress. In all his free time lately, he’s been working diligently on his costume. Although he’s still a little nervous about the whole thing and fusses over any and all hardly-noticeable mistakes, he seems to be having a lot of fun with it, his progress photos always accompanied by pictures he takes of himself smiling next to whatever he’s working on.

Today, it looks like he’s just finished pressing everything down and is getting ready to pin the right sides together to sew the edges, and in the pictures of himself he takes, he’s wearing his heather grey crest of light shirt and a pair of sweatpants, the blanket your mom gave him a couple weeks ago draped over his shoulders to keep him warm. You see that his Agumon plush is also on the couch with him, and you remind yourself that you ought to bring over your DemiVeemon for a playdate soon.

You “heart” all the pictures he sends and text back letting him know that you’re proud of his progress (and that you hope he’s having a good day and that you love him and miss him and all those other sweet words you pretend to hate), and after he responds and says he misses you to (and that he’s going to hop on Time Stranger for the rest of the night and will call you to stream if he ends up digivolving Greymon (Blue) to MetalGreymon (Blue), but, if he doesn’t, then he hopes you have a good rest of your night, sweet dreams, he loves you—all the sweet words he knows you don’t actually hate), you smile at your phone and scroll back up to save all the photos he sent you earlier.

As you’re putting your phone back in your pocket, you see Utahime come through the music hall doors, and you wave to get her attention. When she spots you, she perks up, the marimba mallets sticking out her backpack making a line of blue as her steps quicken to get to you.

“Ready to head out?” Utahime asks, linking her arm with yours with a smile.

You nod, and you reposition your arm so it can more comfortably slot into hers, and you and Utahime head out, mindful of all the other students trying to leave at this late hour.

You and Utahime have the same routine every week after rehearsal—wait by the fountain over by the arts building for Riko to meet you there after she finishes with symphony orchestra rehearsal at 9:30pm, take the subway to grab a few pastries from the bakery two-stops over that sells the end-of-day stock for cheap, set aside a few breads for Utahime to bring Nanami in their shared marketing class tomorrow, get picked up by Shoko (who’s on her way home from work at the clinic by then), eat in her backseat while she drives all of you to your apartment, sit in the car for an hour talking until someone needs to come up to use the bathroom, and ask them to let you know when they get home safety before sending them off with hugs—, and this week is no different.

Riko takes a little longer to meet you at the fountain this week, and on the subway ride over to the bakery, she excitedly tells you and Utahime that her stand partner (who she’s had a crush on since he let her borrow his rosin last year) stopped her on her way out of the auditorium to her to the cinema to see a rerun of her favorite horror movie together next weekend. You and Utahime cheer excitedly for her, offering to come over to help her do her hair and makeup and choose her outfit with her, and she takes you both up on it, all three of you agreeing to divide-and-conquer to invite Yuki, Shoko, and Misato as well.

It’s definitely overkill, but this is Riko’s first date in, well, her life, so she figures having all of you there will be good moral support on top of alleviating any decision fatigue when it comes to her styling for the day.

The three of you make it just in time to the bakery and find everyone’s favorite pastries still in their cases, all marked down half-off or more. You pay for all of them since Utahime paid for lunch the last time you and her went out, Riko tells you she’ll spot you at the crêpe stand tomorrow, Shoko doesn’t have to pay you back because she’s driving, and because the teenage girl working the closing shift recognizes the three of you from all these late nights, she gives you a bag of sweet breads for free, which takes care of Nanami’s payment.

Every week, you also make sure to bring a booster pack for the baker that works nights here because she complimented your Botamon phone charm and had mentioned in your brief interaction that she was interested in starting a DTCG collection, so you ask if she’s in tonight so you can hand it to her directly. The girl at the register goes behind the cloth curtain separating the front and back of the house to call for her, and the baker comes out with her a few moments later, smiling bright when she sees you. The two of you stand over to the side to open the booster together, gasping every time she reveals the next one in the stack, and she gives you a side hug and a pair of purple sunglasses she thought fit your style to send you off for the night.

Booster packs are card packs; DTCG generally has a new booster pack series every few months, so there’s a lot of variety on top of the card randomization as well. One DTCG booster pack is 500 for 12 cards.

❀16

Utahime texts her girlfriend to let her know that you three are ready to go, and Shoko arrives on the streetside not long after. Utahime gets in the passenger seat and kisses her girlfriend on the lips, then all over her face because she likes seeing proof of her affection (i.e., her lip gloss) on Shoko, and you and Riko slide into the backseat with all the breads and pastries. Riko takes your backpack and shifts it closer towards the empty middle seat so you have room for your legs, and you thank her before closing the door to get the car moving.

The drive to get to your apartment is quiet, all four of you decompressing after such long days. Shoko holds Utahime’s hand as she drives, Utahime stares out the window with her music playing from the car stereo, Riko plays a few songs on Lanota, and you scroll through DTCG meta forums to bring your mind back to something more grounding.

At the first red light you stop at after you’ve gotten your bearings, you turn on the light in the backseat so you and Riko can distribute the pastries between the four of you. You unwrap Shoko’s favorite for her so she doesn’t have to fuss with the cellophane as she’s driving, and you hand it to her from over her shoulder at the next red light.

Riko gives Utahime her pastry with a few extra napkins because it’s crumbly and hard to keep all in one piece, and you and her grab yourselves your favorites and open your mouths wide to take a bite (but not before Shoko scolds the two of you for forgetting to turn off the overhead light).

Sometimes, you think you’ll end up just turning in early for the night because you’re so tired, but it never really works out that way. Today, it starts with Shoko complaining about the flavor of milk tea she had to get today on her lunch break because they were out of ingredients for her usual drink, then Utahime gushing about this week’s rotation of snacks in the engineering department building’s vending machine, then Riko describing the egg tarts she had with her lunch yesterday, then you reminiscing the now-discontinued ice cream bars you and your teammates in high school would get after archery tournaments, and before you know it, all of you are misty-eyed as you talk about fond memories dusted with sugar and snowflakes.

Riko unbuckles her seatbelt and scoots over closer to you so she can lay her head on your shoulder, and Shoko and Utahime both lean back their seats and let the car heater run to keep you all warm. You let their voices carry the conversation until it eventually reaches you and you can tell the story of how your Gatomon socks came to be, blue-thread stitches and all.

Shoko needs to use the bathroom before she leaves, so the girls come up to your unit with you so she can do that. As soon as you unlock the door, she runs to your bathroom and shuts the door before you get the chance to even turn the lights on, that desperate to go because she’s been holding it in to let Utahime tell you and Riko an embarrassing story from high school about Gojo uninterrupted, and the other girls stay out in the living room, already spread out across the couch and yawning with their mouths wide open.

While Utahime groggily complains about the newest booth assistant in her soundmixing studio class and Riko struggles to stay awake, you change out the water in your flowers, taking them out of the vase and laying them on the counter before dumping out the water into the sink. Gojo’d brought you a bouquet of flowers on Monday, and though he’s usually the one to redress them and make sure they’re as lovely as the day he brought them to you, he forgot to when he dropped you off from Choso and Yuuji’s house yesterday, so you’re doing it now.

(Well, to say that he forgot is only half the truth.

He did forget, yes, but it’s only because you’d been sweettalking him in the car and he needed you to sit on his face the second your apartment door closed behind him, and you aren’t ever going to complain about that. He could’ve remembered to change out the water after that, I guess, but he fell asleep fast in your bed after a shower you and him took together to clean yourselves off, so he didn’t really have the chance to handle it then. He was going to do it when he left this morning, but you’d forced him out the door before he could so he wouldn’t be late to his electromag lecture, so there’s that too.)

You set down the vase after you’re done, flowers already looking livelier just from that, and you come back over to everyone else at the couch, Shoko having come back from the bathroom a few moments ago. Riko’s fast asleep on the couch so you’ll grab a few pillows and a blanket from your room for her in just a second, but you see that Utahime and Shoko are both looking at garments laid out on your living room floor, and you rush over to pick them up and hide them in your room.

They aren’t going to understand what a red dress, a royal blue coat, a red and purple cloche hat, and a black chest harness have to do with anything, but better safe than sorry, lest you want Gojo to catch wind (or thread) of what you’re tailoring for the two of you in secret.

❀17

They’re too tired to really question anything to begin with though, so after you hug them “goodbye” at the door and yell after them to remind them to let you know when they’ve made it back to their place safe, you can sleep well knowing that your second set of costumes is still a secret. You’re usually a lot better about keeping it out of sight, but you were in a hurry this morning to leave for class, so you forgot to put the pieces away before you were off.

You get Riko the pillows and blankets you promised you would, and after brushing your teeth and washing your face, you fall asleep on the living room floor with your phone open to Utahime’s text letting you know that her and Shoko have made it home safe. The next morning, you’ll wake up and wonder why your back hurts so much, but you’ll forget about it by the time Riko wakes up and makes you your favorite breakfast while you get ready for the day, and things will fall into place like Digi-Eggs from the sky.

Wednesdays are the most tiring day in your week. You spend nearly all of it either in lecture or studying somewhere with people who actually study (which would be any one of your friends plus your boyfriend because you’re all boring losers who unfortunately care about school), so it’s no surprise that you’re burnt out by the end of the day. Even so, your wick is burnt with a match lit by the second crest, and the wax that melts around it is warm like the laughter you share with Ino and Haibara when there’s an inappropriate ad that pops up on the screen in the middle of the confession scene, so the ache is worth it.

The crest of friendship is the second crest to be unlocked in Digimon Adventure 01.

There’s no sticker to put on the proverbial calendar because, well, there’s no DTCG games that were played, but you’re more than happy to give the column a break; there’s a tree in this garden that’s got your initials and Gojo’s carved into it underneath a love umbrella, but you’ll trace over it another time. Instead, you tend to the alstroemeria, grown in a garden where you can snore to the sound of a symphony, where the desire path is made with careful footsteps from you and Nanami as you dodge the security personnel in the medical library, and you fall asleep in tandem with the petals that fall from the tree.

This section is mainly dedicated to platonic relationships. Matt, the holder of the crest of friendship, is assigned alstroemeria as his flower in the 25th anniversary pop-up merch.

☆ thank you for reading! comments & reblogs are appreciated, so consider leaving one (and joining the taglist)! read part two! (˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶)!! taglist: OPEN! comment to join | @okkupid @hellovanie @sweetwonieee @chocalycake @serenadesvt @fleuscents @faeryminnyx @hnnyflkss @heyl820 @man1cslut @mad-hatters-lover @1stmagnoila @gojofucker7 @chewiebee @luvleixo @lysaisland @minwonfairy

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