Archive of Our Own ^beta

Hiro hates doing the dishes, Gammamon can tell. It isn’t that he ever complains, of course. Hiro rarely complains about anything beyond a weary sigh and a generally beleaguered air.

(Hiro’s father is the one exception to this rule, but his complaints are delivered in such a deadpan, honest way that they feel more like objective statements of fact. They probably are.)

Today is Saturday, which means it’s the day that Hiro cooks his meals for the week. Which means dishes. Which means that he already looks haggard as he climbs out of bed and slouches into a sweatshirt.

“Hiro! Good morning!” Gammamon chirps happily. 

“Morning,” Hiro mumbles, rubbing his eyes and yawning. Gammamon hops onto the edge of the bed beside him, peering up with a smile that could light up a room. Hiro’s face softens just a little. 

“Is there anything special you want me to cook today?” he asks.

“Hmm…” Gammamon thinks hard, claws curled up under their chin. “Champion!” he finally exclaims. 

Hiro chuckles, standing up and grabbing his backpack. “We don’t have to cook that, we can just get some from the corner store. But maybe we can bake something later.”

“Bake?”

“Make something sweet, I mean.”

“Ohhhh!”

Hiro opens his bag and Gammamon hops right inside. This is definitely the best way to travel, Gammamon thinks happily, snug and warm.

Hiro is a pretty good cook. That’s what Gammamon thinks, anyway, watching Hiro work in the kitchen. Not that they have much of a frame of reference. It’s more like Hiro just seems like he really knows what he’s doing. Gammamon always has fun watching him and asking questions.

“What are you making?”

“Curry.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s like a stew.”

“Stew?”

“Err…”

Hiro never seems bothered by the interruptions, even though Gammamon must be distracting him. He hopes that’s because it makes things fun for Hiro, too. Hiro really ought to have more fun, Gammamon thinks. 

Gammamon happily watches Hiro chop the chicken and vegetables, measure and prepare all the spices, and then boil them all together. When he adds the curry roux, it makes the whole kitchen smell of warm, wonderful things.

“So cool!” Gammamon cries, mouth watering. 

Hiro smiles. Gammamon likes to see him smile.

When all is said and done, Hiro freezes most of the curry, except for a couple of portions he leaves in the fridge. “For lunch later,” he says. 

“But it smells so good…” Gammamon stares longingly at the Tupperware, already fogged with fragrant steam.

Hiro chuckles a little. “I’ll make breakfast now that the curry is done, don’t worry.”

He seems a little tired after making the curry, though, and so he settles for something simple: tamago kake gohan and a little miso soup. Gammamon eagerly digs in, nearly shoving their face right into the bowl. 

“Ohhhh!” he sighs happily between bites of rice, warm and soft and savory. “This is the coolest, Hiro!!”

Hiro just smiles again. “You say that about everything you eat.”

“That’s because Hiro’s cooking is always cool!”

Hiro’s smile turns a little wobbly, cheeks reddening. Gammamon beams back at him.

But once the meal is done, it’s time to face the dishes. This is why Hiro prefers to cook early on a Saturday morning before the other students get up. It takes him a long time to get through the washing. Before he’s even started, he already looks blue. 

“Can I help, Hiro?” Gammamon offers. 

“Err… thanks, Gammamon, but I’ve got it. The dishes are a bit…” Breakable is what he was going to say, but he just shakes his head a little instead. “Well, I can handle it.”

So he says, but he looks awfully daunted by the pile in the sink. And there’s that weary sigh, quiet but unmistakable. Gammamon hates to see him look so sad.

“Darling, look! It’s your hero. ”

“ Shhh! G-Good morning, Amanokawa-kun… Gammamon…”

Kiyoshiro waves abashedly from the kitchen doorway, shooting a long-suffering look at the cackling Jellymon floating by his side. 

“Ohh! Hi, Kiyo!”

“Morning, dorm leader,” Hiro says, forcing a smile and standing so that he blocks the dishes from Kiyoshiro’s sight. “You’re up early.”

“I was going to run some errands before it got too hot out. Anything you need while I’m out?”

“Oh, no thanks—”

“Kiyo!! Can I go with you?”

Hiro and Kiyoshiro both turn to Gammamon in surprise. “It sounds fun,” Gammamon says simply.

“Err… so long as that’s all right with Amanokawa-kun?” Kiyoshiro seems a bit bewildered, looking to Hiro as if for an explanation. 

“It’s fine with me,” Hiro says, shrugging. “Gammamon could probably use some fresh air. I trust you with them.”

At his words, Kiyoshiro stands up just a little straighter, chest seeming to puff— until Jellymon starts to cackle. “Good for you, Darling!”

Kiyoshiro turns a little red around the ears, pointedly ignoring her. “W-Well in that case, you’re welcome to come with me, Gammamon. It might be a little boring, though…”

“Don’t worry,” Jellymon says wickedly, “I can make it more exciting.”

“ No, that won’t be necessary! ”

And so the three of them set off together, walking from campus into town. It’s a cool enough morning, the sun not having risen in earnest yet, and though Gammamon still likes traveling in Hiro’s bag best, it’s not so bad to have a chance to stretch his wings. 

“Um… Gammamon?” Kiyoshiro seems a little awkward about addressing the little digimon without Hiro around. “I’m just going to grab some things from the grocery store. Is that okay?”

“Perfect!” Gammamon cries, and Kiyoshiro looks a little startled by their enthusiasm. “Let’s go, Kiyocchi!” With a little flutter of his wings, Gammamon zooms off in that direction so fast that Kiyoshiro practically has to sprint to keep up. “W-Wait a minute!”

“Haha! I’ll race you there!” Jellymon cries gleefully. “Better keep up, Darling! Last one there is a rotten egg!”

And so, trying very hard (and failing miserably) to look normal, Kiyoshiro runs along after them, huffing and puffing and already looking regretful. 

By the time they all get there, he practically has to beg the two digimon to have some mercy and let him catch his breath. 

“G… Gammamon… huff… Please stay… close to me… huff… all right?”

“Roger that!” Gammamon says brightly. Kiyoshiro nearly collapses with relief, but grabs onto a shopping cart instead. He slumps over it for most of the trip, already exhausted. 

They browse the aisles for a few staples— bread, rice, a bit of chicken and fish, and a new tube of toothpaste. Aside from occasionally having to prevent Jellymon from scaring the other customers by levitating their groceries and launching them at people, it goes smoothly. 

Once everything on his list has been checked off, Kiyoshiro looks wearily at Gammamon. “Is there anything you wanted to get while we’re here, Gammamon?”

“Yeah!” Gammamon has been searching all the aisles Kiyoshiro took them down, but they’ve yet to find what he came here for. 

“What is it?”

“Champion!”

Kiyoshiro stares blankly. “Ch…Champion…?”

“Yeah!”

“What’s that?”

“The champion!”

Kiyoshiro rubs his temples. “I see… I’m afraid I don’t know what that is. Is it a brand?”

“What’s a brand?”

Kiyoshiro rests his forehead against the handlebar of the cart, gathering his remaining strength. “Can you describe it to me? What does it taste like?”

“Hmm… it’s cool. The coolest! Not creepy at all.”

Kiyoshiro looks ready to collapse in a heap or cry or perhaps both. “Okay… what does it look like?”

“It’s brown,” Gammamon offers. “Square shaped.” They mime the shape with his little hands. 

“Oh… I think I know what you mean.” Kiyoshiro steers the cart down the candy aisle, and Gammamon cries out ecstatically, “ Ohhhh!! That’s it!” They grab a chocolate bar from the shelf and nearly start eating it right there. Kiyoshiro desperately tries to tug it out of his hands. “No, no, no, you can’t eat it yet!! I haven’t paid—”

“Oh!” Gammamon gasps, letting go of the bar and sending Kiyoshiro reeling. “I almost forgot! I can’t eat that! It’s for Hiro!”

Kiyoshiro regains his balance and blinks in surprise, dropping the chocolate bar safely into his cart. “For Amanokawa-kun?”

“Yeah! This is Hiro’s champion, too!”

“Oh, I see… You call it that because it’s your favorite…” He looks thoughtful. “Amanokawa-kun likes chocolate, huh…”

“That’s some useful intel,” Jellymon snickers. “Maybe you should get him some, too.”

Kiyoshiro flushes to the roots of his hair, stubbornly ignoring Jellymon. He clears his throat. “I’ll buy it for you, Gammamon. Is this the one you’re sure you want to get?”

“Uh huh! It looks like the one Hiro always gets!”

“All right. Let’s go check out, then.”

Gammamon settles into the shopping cart’s baby seat as Kiyoshiro makes his weary way to the register.

“Is that why you wanted to come shopping?” Kiyoshiro asks.

Gammamon nods. “I wanted to surprise Hiro!”

Kiyoshiro can’t help but smile at that. It would be hard to stay mad at Gammamon for very long. “That’s very sweet of you. Is today special?”

Gammamon thinks hard about that. “Hmm… well, Hiro is working hard today. But he works hard every day. He cooks me breakfast and carries me around and helps me clean up my messes. He’s a good brother. So I wanted to give him a treat like he gives me all the time.”

Critical hit. Any and all traces of irritation vanish from Kiyoshiro’s features. He looks entirely touched. “Amanokawa-kun is very reliable,” he agrees. “And kind, too. And brave. And…” He shakes himself from his thoughts. “Er, that is, I get what you mean.” On a whim, he pats Gammamon’s head fondly. “I’m sure he’s happy to have someone looking after him since… Well, never mind. What I mean to say is, you seem like a very good brother, too.”

Gammamon’s eyes positively shine.

Hiro puts up the last dish with a sigh to beat all sighs. The kitchen is back to being spotless for the other students. Achy and irritable from the ordeal, Hiro drags himself to one of the arm chairs in the common room. It’s still fairly early, so the place is empty and quiet. He curls up in the soft plush and closes his eyes for just a minute. 

Hiro has always hated washing the dishes. It takes forever, and worse yet, it’s dull. And even with dish gloves on, it’s a sensory nightmare— the scraping and scrubbing sounds, the running water, the soggy mess of food scraps clinging to the dishes… It’s enough to make him ill just thinking about it. 

This is why, for a long time, Hiro was excused from washing the dishes at home. It was the one thing he could always count on his father to do before going to sleep. The man was a hopeless space case, and with his mother working abroad this past couple of years, Hiro took it upon himself to do most of the housekeeping. It was a lot less irritating to keep track of it all himself than to deal with Hokuto’s scattered brains. But even so, he only had to ask his father to do the dishes once, and from then on, Hokuto never forgot. No matter how late he went to bed, he would do the dishes first. Hiro was always grateful for that, in his own way— despite it being the bare minimum, really.

It wouldn’t be entirely true to say that Hiro misses his father. Even while they were together, the man hardly ever left his room except to eat, and even then, half the time Hokuto ate in his office and worked through his meals. If anything, Hiro spends far less time alone since moving into the dorms. And yet… it’s not quite the same. For all his nonsense, Hokuto at least knew and cared enough to take the dishes off Hiro’s hands. Such a small thing, and yet so hard to build from scratch with another person. 

Hiro is more than capable of taking care of himself but…

“Hiro!”

Hiro’s eyes flutter open as Gammamon alights on the arm of his chair. “Oh, hey… You were gone a while.”

“I was having fun! Jellymon showed me lots of new games to play with Kiyo!”

“Err… is that so…” Hiro makes a mental note to buy Kiyoshiro lunch later to say sorry for whatever torment the mons have subjected him to.

“Ohh! That reminds me! Hiro, close your eyes!”

Gammamon doesn’t have to tell him twice. He’s rather in danger of dozing off right here in his chair. 

“Hold out your hand!” Hiro does so, and feels Gammamon drop something into it, something small and flat like…

“Open your eyes now, Hiro!”

Hiro does as he’s told and finds… a chocolate bar. His favorite kind, in fact— just about the darkest chocolate he can get from the store.

“Is this for me?”

“Yeah!!” Gammamon flutters their wings happily. “Kiyo helped me get it for you!”

Which means he bought it… I’ll have to pay him back for it later. Oh well.  

“That was very nice of him. And of you. Thanks, Gammamon.” 

Gammamon chirps happily, and with a beat of his wings, they leap from the arm of the chair and into Hiro’s lap. “You like it?”

“Yeah, I do. You got my favorite.”

Indeed, Hiro’s expression lightens a little as he unwraps the chocolate and breaks off a square to share with Gammamon, who happily accepts. They eat in comfortable silence— at least, silent except for the occasional ohhh!— and Hiro starts to feel drowsy again. He leans back into the chair, eyes shut, while Gammamon curls up contentedly in his lap. 

“Kiyo said we should all bake together soon,” Gammamon yawns. “I told him about what you said this morning and he said he has lots of recipes.” He doesn’t know what a recipe is, but they assume it must be something sweet.

“Oh, that sounds kind of fun…” Hiro yawns as well. “I’ve never done that sort of thing before.”

“Maybe we can all cook together on Saturdays!” Gammamon smiles sleepily, as if he’s already dreaming about it. “Ruri, too!”

“Heh… maybe.” It’s not such a terrible thought. “Gammamon?”

“Mm?”

“…Thanks for the chocolate.”

“Of course!” Gammamon snuggles against Hiro’s belly. “Hiro is the real champion.”

Hiro smiles. Gammamon thinks Hiro’s smile is the coolest of all.