A/N: What is this? A Daikeru? Ah, I've been in such a Daikeru mood lately. Hopefully this is original. It centers around the importance of music in the lives of Takeru, Daisuke, Taichi and Yamato. Yes, it mentions Taito. What were you expecting from me, anyways? This fic is kind of high on sugar-fluff and has an ending that will make you choke on the fluffiness, and it is somewhat rambling...but I somehow like it anyways, so I'll just post it and see what you all think. XD Praise the fluff-inducing good moods.

Disclaimer: I don't own Digimon, I'm not profitting from this fic, and I don't own DDR, Sketchers, Playstation, or those Psyche Ward shirts.

The music pounds through my head and my ears do their best to retain the sound inside of my brain. It replaces everything else: the worries, the fears, the stress. Soon, there is nothing but a built-in neverending radio implanted in my mind, and I grin to myself. I love music almost as much as my older brother does. I love it for the same reason he does. I guess the genes he got that make him that way found their way into my bloodstream as well. The music is as comfortable in my head as the blood running through my veins is comfortable in my body. It belongs there.

I love to sing, I love to dance, and I even know a few chords on the guitar, thanks to my brother's patience in teaching me. I could play a few songs with enough ease on my brother's electric guitar. Of course, he only lets me play the red one. He doesn't let anyone touch his black guitar. No one gets to touch his "baby." Not even Taichi.

The song on my CD player changes and a new, but similar beat begins playing on the radio inside of my head. I close my eyes to better focus my attention on the music. It isn't as if anything going on outside is very interesting to me. The newer Digidestined are gathered in Daisuke's room. Hikari and Miyako are lying on the floor, talking about something only they understand, and Daisuke and Iori are playing video games. Daisuke is getting frustrated because Iori is kicking his ass at his favorite fighting game. I sit on Daisuke's bed, legs stretched in front of me, back against the pillow caught between me and the headboard, listening to Daisuke's CD collection.

Taichi and Yamato are best friends because they understand each other. Taichi loves music just like my brother does. He doesn't love it as much as Yamato does; he doesn't need it to get through his daily life. However, music is very important to him, and it's probably only because Yamato is so important to him.

Daisuke and I are the same way. We aren't in a relationship like Taichi and Yamato are. They've been dating for two years now, and they're still happy together, just like I know they will be for the rest of their lives. Daisuke and I aren't dating. We've discussed the matter before, when we noticed how similar our relationship is to the one shared by our older counterparts, and we had both decided we didn't want to settle down like that for quite a while. We're young, we're vibrant, and we don't like the idea of any form of being tied down. I don't think anything will ever be able to tie a guy like Daisuke down. I'm pretty well grounded, but Daisuke is way too high on life to be able to be brought down by anyone in that way. Even if we were going out, we probably wouldn't feel any more committed to the relationship that we do now, so we figured we might as well continue on the way we are.

Don't get me wrong, I do have deep feelings for Daisuke. I don't know what I'd do without him. I think if I woke up one day and I called him and he wasn't there when I'd expected him to be, I'd be lost. When I get too down and even my music can't console me, Daisuke steps in and takes matters into his own hands, doing anything he can to cheer me up. He feels for me as deeply as I feel for him. We don't want to destroy such a deep bond by cheapening it any with the whole "boyfriend-boyfriend" crap.

When I open my eyes again, I see that Daisuke and Iori are tired of playing the video game, and Iori has gone over to sit and listen to Hikari and Miyako. He never joins a conversation unless you bring him in yourself. He prefers to just sit there and listen to you talk instead of talking to you. Daisuke turns off his Playstation 2 and crawls over the bed to me. He sits beside me, pulls his CD player off of his desk, and begins searching through the CDs I have placed at my side. I watch him pick one out and slip it into his player, and I smile as I watch the mood change on his face as his features lighten and his smile becomes less bright and more sincere. Music calms Daisuke down. He's usually energetic and hyper, like some kind of mini-hurricane of a teenage boy, but the right type of music can make him suddenly seem like the calm eye of the storm.

I turn my body towards him and lift a hand to rest over his heartbeat. He looks down at my hand, eyes half-lidded, obviously lost in the song playing on his own head-radio. I try to match his heartbeat to the beat of the bass in the song, and I almost laugh out loud when I realize they're almost exactly the same.

"The music has claimed your soul," I mumble to myself. I'm in one of those moods where you start thinking weird, deep psychological stuff and you start babbling about your soul and your deep, inner feelings.

He is still staring at my hand. He didn't hear a thing I said.

I remove my hand and almost immediately he reaches out and rests his own hand over my heartbeat. He remains like that for a while, but then he smiles again. I guess he found the rhythm of my heartbeat to match his song as well.

He says something, or at least I see his lips moving, and his smile grows wider. I know it was an observation to himself, so I don't worry about finding out what it was he said. I let him keep his thoughts to himself.

I glance over what he was wearing. He has an orange shirt on (it's one of those Psyche Ward ones), black baggy pants with neon orange parts here and there, socks with monkeys on them (he loves them, but they embarrass him somewhat, which is why he wears such long pants that drag on the floor and cover his shoes), and his black and white Sketchers tennis shoes. He has a glow stick necklace that he puts in the refrigerator every night to keep the glow going, and he has his trusty goggles buried somewhere in his wild, spiky red hair. He looks like a true punk raver kid, and he's very proud of his look. Daisuke doesn't listen to techno as much as he listens to rock music, but if he knows of a rave going on somewhere that he's at least half-convinced he can get into, he'll be there in a flash.

Daisuke's main passion is dancing, while I prefer just sitting quietly and taking in the music. I love to watch him play his DDR games. He's better at those than anyone I know, and he's spent hours at arcades on the DDR machine challenging everyone in the room to a game. Yeah, so he's nuts, I like him that way.

I think his natural talent in dancing comes from his strong legs and high endurance from hours of playing soccer. It has to have some factor in his ability to dance for long periods of time without even breaking a sweat. I've tried playing DDR with him before. I can't even last through three songs. After the third, I kept messing up and stepping wrong. Daisuke laughed at me and called me "dancing deficient."

Daisuke has an everlasting supply of energy built in to his body that he can tap whenever he needs to. I have the natural impulse to look on the bright side of things and see a way out of a potential problem. It's easy for us to work together to find a solution to something. It's why we don't fight often, and if we do, not for very long. We know how to hold it back and search for the simplest solution. We know how to apologize, though it's not quite easy, since we're both so stubborn. Usually, we silently agree on apologizing, instead of saying the word out loud. If we didn't do it that way, it would take us forever to say the words to each other.

I'm broken out of my musing when Daisuke grabs my hands and tries to haul me to my feet. Since we are still on top of the bed, it's harder than usual, and I quickly slip off my headphones before standing up with him on top of the bed.

"Get any taller and your head is going to come off when you do that," Daisuke says, grinning.

I glance up and immediately duck when I see how close I am to the ceiling fan.

"Well it won't if I stand on the floor instead of on the bed, like any normal person would do."

He chuckles and jumps off of his bed, going to mess around with the Playstation.

"Play DDR with me," he says.

I sigh and give in, climbing down off of his bed and helping him fix the dancing mats. I know I'm going to lose, but I decide the fun I have while I'm losing will be worth it.

"Get ready to go down, Ruru!"

I groan and roll my eyes. He's using that stupid nickname again. I've told him countless times not to, but it's become a natural thing for him to call me that.

I smile and grin back at him.

"I'd like to see you try."

"And you will!" he cries, pressing the start button and getting ready to dance until the music ceases pounding inside of his head.

He begins his beat-filled journey with a light heart and that smile I've always found to be worth dying for.

I follow willingly.

~ ~ ~ ~

this is the song that never ends