Disclaimer: I own nothing involved in this story unless I invented it myself. This is written for fun, not for profit. All forms of feedback eagerly accepted. Concrit is loved the most, but everything is welcome.
Fandom: Digimon Adventure 02
Title: Truly Special
Characters: Ken & Wormmon
Word Count: 3,158||Status: One-shot
Genre: Friendship||Rated: G
Challenge: Written for the 2014 Advent Calendar Challenge, day #25; Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, section F, #26, fic that is K rated.
Summary: [one-shot, Advent Challenge Day #20 & Diversity Writing Challenge] It's an anniversary of sorts for Ken and Wormmon, and Wormon wants to do something nice for Ken. The problem is, he doesn't know what to do. So he asks... Ken?

Wormmon wanted to do something nice for Ken. He didn't think his partner remembered it, but today was the day that they'd been reunited after Ken's stint as the Kaiser. Wormmon didn't like to think of it as a 'defeat', because it really felt more like a victory to him, even though he'd died that day. But Digimon died and came back, that was the way of the Digital World, so he didn't let it worry him too much.

What worried him was the fact that he didn't know what he could do for Ken. He wanted to make this the most special day of special days.

Maybe I should ask someone else? He wasn't certain if the other Digimon would be a good idea, as they didn't really understand human traditions anyway. Though maybe Patamon could offer advice. From what Wormmon had heard over the last few intervening years, he'd died and been reformatted once before himself. Wormmon didn't know if Patamon and Takeru celebrated their reunion or not himself. It kind of seemed rude to ask, now that he thought about it a little more.

Asking one of the Chosen might work better. But which one? He wasn't sure if any of them would really understand what this meant to him. It wasn't just the rebirth, though that was a huge part of it. It was being with Ken. Knowing that they were together and that Ken wasn't going to leave him like he had before. That they'd truly become partners.

Wormmon fidgeted, eyeing Ken's telephone. He had full permission to use that whenever he wanted, and very seldom actually used it. Usually he only answered it when Ken or his parents were busy with homework or whatever it was Ken's parents did. Once in a great while he'd used it to call the Chosen for other reasons, like letting them know if something was up with Ken.

"Wormmon?"

The Digimon looked up at the sound of Ken's voice and saw him standing in the doorway. "Yes, Ken?" He tried not to look as if he'd been interrupted doing anything he shouldn't have been. He hadn't been, but he still kind of felt as if he had.

"Is everything all right? You look a little worried." Ken moved closer, settling down on the chair before the table Wormmon sat on. His gaze moved to the phone and then back to Wormmon. "No one called while I was in the shower, did they?"

Wormmon shook his head at once. "No." He hesitated, trying to form an answer that Ken would accept that wasn't actually a lie but wouldn't give away what he had in mind either. "I was just thinking about things."

"Oh?" Ken's smile had always warmed Wormmon's heart, it was so gentle and so kind. Wormmon never doubted for a moment why he had the Crest of Kindness. "Anything interesting?"

"Well, I don't know." Wormmon ducked his head, a faint blush tinging his green cheeks. "I just... I kind of want to do something for someone, but I don't know what they'd like."

Ken tilted his head, a curious gleam in his eyes. "Really? Is it someone I know?"

"Kind of..." Wormmon wondered how close to the truth he could come without actually giving it away. "But I don't want to say who it is."

Ken made a slight noise of agreement, resting one hand on the table and drumming his fingers. "Is this a very special someone?"

"Yes." Wormmon held himself back from saying that Ken was the most special person in two worlds to him. He didn't want Ken to think that he liked anyone more than he liked him. It wasn't true, after all. "They've been very good to me and I want to say thank you."

Ken drummed his finger again, now looking more thoughtful. "Well, it would require some effort, but have you thought about making something for them?"

"Making something?" Wormmon frowned at that, thinking harder. "What do you mean?"

"There's a lot of things that you could make. You can spin silk, right? Your Sticky Net?"

Wormmon blinked. That hadn't occurred to him at all. "I suppose. I never thought about that as a gift, though. Wouldn't it be too sticky?"

His partner's lips twitched the slightest bit. "You might be right on that. Maybe something else, until we can figure out how to fix that." He leaned his head back, eyes on the ceiling now. "What about flowers?"

Wormmon shook his head. That wasn't good enough for Ken. Flowers were nice, but just not what he wanted. "I want something...something really good. Something really personal."

Ken said nothing at all for several minutes and if it weren't for the look of concentration he bore, Wormmon would've thought that he had drifted off into a nap while sitting up. No matter how hard he himself tried, though, he still couldn't think of anything that he could make that would really be something he wanted to give to Ken.

"Why not cookies?"

Wormmon had been so deep in his own thoughts that he didn't expect Ken's voice at all and jerked up to stare at his partner, blinking large blue eyes. "Huh? What?"

Ken laughed a little, but not at all in the way he would have as the Kaiser. That just made Wormmon want to do this all the more. "For your friend. Why don't you make him or her cookies?"

Wormmon tilted his head, thinking about that. Ken liked cookies. He knew that very well. "I think they'd like that. But how can I make cookies?" He stared at his pods; they were excellent for climbing trees or buildings, but when it came to something like baking, he was really much more of use as a taste-tester.

Ken slowly nodded, a slight tilt to his head. "Well, then, would you mind if I helped you?"

Wormmon's jaw dropped. Of all the questions, that was one he'd never thought Ken would ask. "You'd do that for me?"

His partner reached out to gently rub the top of Wormmon's head, and Wormmon could not stop himself from purring in happiness. "Wormmon, I'd do anything at all to make you happy."

"Just keep doing that and I couldn't be happier," Wormmon murmured, blushing from head to tail now. Ken chuckled a little.

"Well, that might make making cookies a little hard. What kind do you think your friend would like?"

Wormmon answered without even thinking about it. "Green tea cookies!" Those were Ken's favorite. His mother made them for his birthday and on any other special occasion that she knew of.

One of Ken's eyebrows crept upward at that. "Really? Small world, isn't it?" While green tea cookies were common, most of the people that Ken knew, and thus that Wormmon knew, weren't quite as fond of them as he was.

Wormmon ducked his head down, flushing red all over again. "I guess so." He could hardly believe that this was even happening. He hoped Ken wouldn't be mad when he found out, but the more he thought about making cookies for Ken, with Ken, the more that he liked it. It was something they could do together.

"I think we'll need to do some shopping to get everything. We're a little short on flour," Ken said after a few quiet seconds. "Let me get ready."

Wormmon nodded, glad that he didn't have to do anything in order to be ready to go out. He settled down and waited, trying with all of his strength not to wiggle too hard. He would hardly fall off the table, but he didn't want to get so excited that Ken noticed anything unusual.

This is really going to happen. More than anything, Wormmon wanted to make Ken happy. These cookies just had to do it. Along with spending time with Ken himself. He couldn't think of anything that would really work any better.

Ken came back into the room a few minutes later, hair neatly combed and dressed casually. He carried the holster Wormmon usually rested in when they were going out for a long period of time over one shoulder. It was something the other Chosen had worked out over the years, giving their partners privacy and for those who had short legs or no legs, a way to keep up with everyone else.

He settled the holster on the table and Wormmon crept inside of it, getting himself comfortable. Ken peeked down at him. "How's that?"

"I'm ready!" Wormmon declared, gripping tightly with his pods. Ken lifted the holster and slung it carefully over his shoulder, then headed outside.

There was a grocery store not that far from the Ichijouji apartment and that was where Ken headed. He knew the ingredients for green tea cookies by heart, and kept a general track of what they had and didn't have in the family kitchen. So he knew that they needed flour and corn starch both, and white chocolate to decorate it with. Everything else they had more than enough of.

He wondered just who Wormmon's friend was. He had a notion or two, but if Wormmon didn't want to tell him yet, then he wasn't going to say anything. Besides, the idea of making cookies with Wormmon, no matter who ended up eating them, appealed to him far too much not to do it. It had been too long since they'd spent any appreciable time together anyway.

This time of day, there wasn't much traffic at the grocery store. Ken liked that; there were still people who remembered him far too often as the young genius of Tamachi, more than they did as the Child of Kindness, and most of those types tended to turn up when he least expected them. He couldn't even claim it was just a 'striking likeness', given how few people actually had his coloring.

Sometimes he wondered about that. Neither of his parents had blue hair or violet eyes, but both he and Osamu had. He'd done some checking into their family history, but that had been back when he'd been the Kaiser, and when he'd found that none of them did, he'd chalked it up at the time to being more special than everyone else.

Now he wondered if there were other answers. He didn't wonder very often, because it wasn't something he cared to think about, but now and then, the thought did cross his mind. Especially when he ran into someone who brought up either his looks or his past.

"Hey, are you Ichi -" Almost on cue, one of the stockers he passed spoke, staring at him with large, awestruck eyes. Ken managed to hold back his annoyance.

"Hello," he replied, just the tiniest edge to his voice. Having Wormmon so close helped him to keep his temper in check. While there wasn't much other traffic, there were people in the store, and he didn't want to draw attention to himself. Announcing who he was stood a reasonable chance of doing just that.

The stockperson blinked once or twice, then flushed a deep red. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to bother you."

Ken made a slight dismissive gesture. "It's quite all right. I'm just a little busy right now." Suiting action to words, he bent his head a little for the sake of courtesy, and headed on to search for flour.

Wormmon peeked his head out of the holster. "Were they bothering you, Ken?" Clearly he would do something about it if they were. Or at least he would try.

Ken shook his head, resting one hand on Wormmon's back for a second. "No, not really." It was the truth; it had mostly been his own musings and a bit of bad timing more than anything else.

He did rather hope that no one else wanted to ask if he were Ichijouji Ken today. He also wondered if he should've chosen a different store instead of the one so close to the apartment building. Maybe someone else wouldn't have noticed anything about him.

Well, too late to worry about that now. Instead, he located the flour and thought about those cookies and how delicious they were going to be hot out of the oven.

If anyone else at the store recognized Ken as himself, no one said anything to him about it, and that went a long way toward putting Ken in a better mood. And that definitely made Wormmon much, much happier than when he had any idea that someone, or something, was bothering Ken.

He spent the rest of the trip curled up inside of the holster, peeking out on occasion to make certain everything was going the way that it should. Both of their moods improved by leaps and bounds when the cashier gave Wormmon a free lollipop, giving as an excuse that they had too many and she'd been given instruction to hand them out to anyone she felt deserved it.

"What did I do to deserve this?" he asked, staring at the gigantic sweet.

The cashier smiled back at him. "You're adorable, that's what you did."

Ken laughed a little at how red Wormmon turned, made certain the lollipop remained tucked in the halter with him, and headed on home with their purchases.

This was hardly the first time Ken had made green tea cookies, so he didn't need to look up a recipe. His mother had told him teasingly more than once that the words had been engraved on his fingertips, so his hands knew what to do without needing instructions of any kind.

Ken told Wormmon once that she'd told him that when he was a little kid and he'd spent days staring at his fingers trying to see the words there.

This time, however, Ken just let his hands work, while Wormmon sat on the kitchen table and gave advice in between licks of his lollipop.

"Do you think we should save any of these for other people? I bet Daisuke would like them," Ken suggested. "How many do you think your friend will want?"

Wormmon fidgeted. It was kind of hard to remember that Ken didn't know who they were really for. "We can probably save some for Daisuke and V-mon," he agreed.

Ken nodded; the recipe usually provided about two or three dozen cookies so there would be plenty for everyone. Wormmon made himself more comfortable and watched as Ken sifted flour and beat the butter.

"Are you sure you don't mind doing this?" Wormmon asked. Whether Ken knew it or not, these were for him, and he didn't want his partner getting upset by it.

"If I did, I'd tell you," Ken replied, a small tilt to his lips. "I like making these anyway. I should've suggested we do something like this a while ago."

Wormmon shivered in delight at the very thought. Ken wanted to spend more time with him! Just what he'd always wanted. He wondered if Ken really did remember the 'anniversary' and if that was why... well, he'd think about asking another time. It wasn't the kind of thing he wanted to ask when they were in the middle of cooking such happy cookies.

Once the dough was properly chilled and ready, Ken picked up the cookie cutter. He examined it for a moment before he turned to Wormmon. "Do you remember those other cookie cutters that Daisuke gave me for Christmas last year?"

Wormmon tilted his head, thinking. He hadn't paid much attention to the gifts themselves, only to the fact that they'd made Ken happy, marking another year with friends who genuinely cared about him. "I think so?" He wasn't entirely lying. He sort of remembered when Ken opened the box, but he hadn't paid attention to what the gift actually looked like.

Ken dug around in one of the cupboards and pulled out a set of cookie cutters, putting them on the table in front of Wormmon. The Digimon leaned over to take a look, blinking some as he realized what they looked like.

"It's... me?" He peered back up at Ken, who shrugged a little.

"He never would tell me where he got them. But what do you think? Do you want to use those instead?"

Wormmon fidgeted, looking back and forth between the cookie cutters and Ken. "Do you want to?"

"I think they'd be cute. Your friend would probably like them too," Ken replied. Wormmon could feel himself blushing again. That had happened more times today than in the last month!

"All right, then." Wormmon was quite proud of himself for not stuttering over that as well. He watched as Ken cut out little Wormmon cookies and set them on the baking sheet.

Other people are going to see those. Daisuke's going to know Ken used his gift. That made Wormmon just a little bit happier as well. He thought if he got any happier at all, he'd start to float, as if he were a worm-shaped balloon filled with pure joy.

"About ten or fifteen minutes and they should be ready," Ken said, dusting off his hands and starting to clean up what little remained of the mess they'd made. He'd done most of it while they waited for the dough to chill, but there were still a few odds and ends that needed to be taken care of.

Wormmon watched him putting everything away, then inched a little closer to the side of the table. He couldn't wait any longer. "Ken, do you want to know who I want to have those cookies?"

Ken glanced over at him, one eyebrow rising up. "If you want to tell me."

The Digimon scuffled his pods a little, ducking his head down. "They're... they're for you. Because... it's been nearly three years since I hatched out again, and since we really became real partners, and I wanted... I wanted to do something with you. I wanted to give you something but I couldn't think of anything."

For a moment his head drooped, until Ken's hand brushed across the top of it gently, and he looked up to see Ken smiling at him. "I remember. I didn't think I'd ever see you again, and I didn't think I deserved to."

"I'll always come back to you, Ken. No matter what happens." Wormmon rubbed his head against Ken's hand, almost ready to bounce in glee.

"I know you will. I hope you don't ever have to again, though."

The oven pinged at just that moment, and Ken went to take out the cookies. He glanced toward Wormmon for a moment, a sudden mischevious grin worthy of Daisuke on his lips. "Does this mean we can have two-thirds of the cookies instead of just one-third of them?"

Wormmon had to laugh. And agree, because while more cookies were good, more cookies with Ken was even better.

The End