#justmakeleftturns

From this ask meme

Thank you for the prompt! :D (I have so much fun writing these ficlets)

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"You've been drinking." Eduard took his gloves off, shoving them into his coat's pockets before removing the garment and hanging it on the coat-tree in Raivis's living room.

"How would you know? All you did was look at me." Raivis wasn't angry, per se; he was just a bit annoyed that this was the first thing out of Eduard's mouth, right after he entered his home.

"You're more relaxed than you usually are; your shoulders aren't all tensed up. And your eyes aren't as bright."

Raivis exhaled, knowing that it would be stupid to lie to Eduard; the taller boy was just too observant to fall for it. "Yeah, I had some Absolut, a bottle and a half, I think."

This caused Eduard to pause, narrowing his eyes. "A bottle and a half? Why would you do--" He cut himself off, instead sitting on the sofa, gesturing Raivis to join him. "I have many questions, but I won't ask now. Just know that, while I don't like it, I won't judge you."

Almost timidly, Raivis sat down next to Eduard, curling his knees to his chest, and rested his head against the bespectacled boy's arm.

"I didn't mean to," Raivis finally spoke, after a few moments of silence, his eyes starting to ache with the familiar pressure of tears, which he forced himself to suppress. "I just started thinking about some things. Things I want to forget, but I can't, no matter what I do, even though it's been decades. Drinking helps a bit, though. Makes my thoughts slower. Makes it hurt less. You know I barely get drunk; I have too much of a tolerance, now. But it numbs me enough."

Before Raivis could continue, Eduard pulled him to his chest and hugged him so tightly that he could feel the taller boy's heartbeat.

As Eduard rubbed his back, Raivis finally let the tears fall.

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The two of them definitely have similar base profiles at first, but start to really veer off in different directions after that!

I think the one thing that's most different between the two is that, quite simply, their "base personalities" -- that is, how they act in normal situations separated from all the stuff going on with Digimon fighting -- are actually fairly different to begin with. One thing that might surprise people is that Kouichi actually uses the more assertive/aggressive pronoun ore, contrary to what his supposedly “shy” personality might suggest (of the Frontier boys, only Tomoki uses the more polite boku, and I think it’s in line with Frontier generally portraying its kids as less naturally well-behaved and a bit more misfit). Kouichi’s “shyness” in Frontier is really implied to just be out of the circumstances of him being a bit awkward around the kids he’d been fighting for a period, and especially not sure how to approach Kouji, but Things I Want to Tell You implies that he’d actually had a full-on social friend circle (mentioning friends at school and playing soccer). The only part that made him “out of place” like the other Frontier kids was really the part right before the series, when he learned he’d had a brother, had to question what that implied, started fostering feelings of jealousy towards him, and ended up “passed over” for being chosen instead of how Kouji was, but for the most part his personality doesn’t seem to be that fundamentally different from Kouji’s (there's a point made in a scene in Frontier episode 40 where the twins are looking at Takuya with nearly the exact same expression).

Ken, on the other hand, does use the polite pronoun boku, and although he’s still a fairly casual person (his speech pattern is slightly more casual than Takeru’s), he is kind of...a polite nerd, for lack of a better way to put it. That penchant for intellectuality wasn’t entirely the Dark Seed’s doing -- he’s gone on infamous “trivial fact” spiels like about the origin of Christmas or Japanese hot springs. In contrast to the more easygoing Daisuke, he takes things really seriously, and one could describe him as “so overly serious about things he sometimes rolls into stupid”. He’s also rather tidy (he puts his chopsticks neatly on the bowl when eating, his Digital World outfit is his school uniform, he’s constantly tucking in both his summer and winter blouses, and even his Kizuna outfits are slightly formal), and because he does seem to carry himself softly, he has a stronger image of being a “nice and polite person” who doesn’t act roughly by default. Less so because he can’t be rough or aggressive, but more because he doesn’t want to be -- you can think of him as basically holding back his cards until the time is right or stronger force is called for (meaning he can seem mild-mannered, until he suddenly drops some sassy zingers right when you least expect it).

There are some similarities that go beyond their base profiles; it’s interesting how “jealousy” seems to be part of both of their initial motivations (and, in an interesting meta twist, one of the original ideas for Ken and Osamu was for them to be twins). However, as you said, they have a somewhat differing attitude in terms of what “darkness” is, and a lot of it has to do with a combination of what that even means in Adventure/02′s narrative versus Frontier’s, and what that meant to each of them personally. Ken had an outright self-inflicted identity crisis and an awareness that his fall came from his own personal vices, and the issue is casted in Adventure/02 as a problem of “balance”; Ken himself understands in 02 episode 23 that he has to accept everything in himself, and Takeru reminds him in 02 episode 37 that you can’t eradicate it entirely, but Ken of course retains an aversion to contexts where they’re obviously too much in excess. Kouichi, on the other hand, was probably not going to have a complete emotional meltdown to that degree had it not been for Cherubimon’s interference (although he still wasn’t necessarily having a great time), so being free from that influence means that, with his head cleared, he’s able to confidently deny going back there again and have faith in his ability to use it for good, especially because the part keeping it balanced -- his brother Kouji, as the light -- is able to be there and fight alongside him. His problem was addressed by learning to work alongside and get to know said brother, instead of living in jealousy of him.