Bwahaha! I finished it! XD

[criminalize]

Author: setentia
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Characters/pairings: Sora/Riku
Title: To Keep You Warm
Rating: PG-13. It's pretty tame. XD
Warnings/disclaimers: There may be a few spoilers if you haven't played KH2 yet. And, er... I was feeling in a really silly mood when I started writing this, so... yeah. :D

( x-posted to khyaoi)


Sometimes, Riku wondered how Donald and Goofy had ever managed to survive for so long with Sora by their side. He had never remembered the brunet as being particularly klutzy before, but ever since they had returned to the island Sora had done nothing but trip and stumble all over the place whenever Riku was around.

At first, Riku had credited Sora’s clumsiness to the sandy beach. Then he had credited Sora’s clumsiness to the uneven, hilly land that their houses were built on. Then, on one vacation to Venice (a trip planned for Kairi and both boys, compliments of Sora’s “travel-agent-by-day-and-master-chef-by-night” mother) when Sora had stampeded up to Riku like a enraged rhinoceros, tripped over absolutely nothing at all (Riku suspected a dust mote, though he couldn’t really say for sure) and had fallen off the pier into the surrounding water, Riku had finally credited Sora’s clumsiness to the fact that the boy had feet that really were just too big for his body.

This summer, the two were on a trip (by themselves-Kairi had opted to spend her summer vacation tanning on the island) in… in… uh. Riku frowned. He actually didn’t have much of a clue where they were. Sora and his mother had sprung two tickets out at him, and before he’d known it, he’d been bundled onto a plane and shoved out at the bottom of a snowy mountain with a massive rucksack and a pair of skis hefted onto his back.

Riku looked down at the wet and shivering younger male in his arms. Sora, in his typical manner, hadn’t packed any clothes suitable for the chilly climate, cheerfully waving a dismissive hand and saying: “Oh c’mon Riku, it can’t be that cold; I mean, I went around in the Land of Dragons in the clothes that I’m wearing now.” Sora was thus now freezing in his shirt and knee-length trousers, which clung to his chest and body. Riku, being of a somewhat more sensible nature - while simultaneously not wanting to be outdone - had traded his sleeveless yellow jacket for a similarly designed jacket with sleeves that went down to his wrists. Trudging in the snow, he wished that he’d had the common sense to wear a more appropriate pair of shoes, as his socks and feet were now wet and rather squelchy.

Riku sighed, more out of ruefulness than irritation as Sora curled a little toward Riku’s chest with a small sneeze. Riku had said, he had said, “Sora, watch out for that patch of ice,” and what had Sora done?

Sora had stepped right onto the patch of ice with a silly grin on his face, yelped, screeched, then flailed his arms like a ballerina on fast-forward when he slid down the mountain and splashed straight into the lake below. Riku had of course panicked and taken off his rucksack and skis without thinking about it, fully intending to dive in after Sora. Instead, the pack had skidded down after the brunet, who had just squirmed out of his own pack in the water, and smacked him in the face. When Riku had finally clambered down the smell stretch of mountain to the lake, Sora had doggy-paddled to the edge, a stunned expression on his face. Riku had pulled him out and picked him up into his arms without hesitation, fully intending to find some place to stay for a while, as tiny snowflakes were just beginning to fall.

Riku kicked open the door of the cabin. It was dark, not aided in the least by the lack of a light bulb and the setting sun. The cabin was a small thing, made entirely out of wood and composed of only one room which served merely as a simple sleeping space for its owner at night. Riku didn’t know who the owner was, but he frankly didn’t care. He gently put Sora down. Sora, shivering too hard to speak, stumbled and tried to stand.

“Sit,” Riku instructed. He looked around, rubbing and breathing on his hands for warmth. He walked around the cabin, closing and latching two of the windows, which were really more like two wooden panels attached by hinges to cover up a square-shaped hole in the wall than a real window, with panels of glass and everything. In one corner of the cabin was a folded thick blanket, a thin sheet and a pillow. Riku brought the three over to Sora.

“How’re you doing?” Riku asked.

“C-c-c-cold,” Sora stuttered. He sneezed and swiped his hand across his reddened nose - an action that made Riku twitch a little in disgust - then rubbed at his arms to try to keep warm.

“Well, you shouldn’t have fallen into the lake.” Riku spread the sheet out onto the floor, making an impromptu mattress, and placed the pillow at the top. He smiled a bit, thinking about the scarf that his mother had forced him to pack. He was going to a snowy mountaintop dressed in just a sleeveless tee, a jacket, jeans and sneakers, and his mother for some inane reason seemed to believe that bringing the mortifyingly hideous scarf that she had knitted him for Christmas would somehow ensure that he didn’t catch his death of cold. That scarf was now probably at the bottom of a very deep, very dark lake.

Riku’s smile grew wider.

“It-t-t w-was an accid-d-dent,” Sora retorted in as indignant a voice that he could muster when his teeth refused to stop clicking together from the cold.

“It wouldn’t have happened if you weren’t always such a klutz.”

“Am n-n-not.”

Riku snorted.

“What’s th-th-that supposed to m-mean?”

“You’re the clumsiest boy on the islands, Sora.”

“Am n-not!”

Riku smirked.

“I’m not!”

“Whatever.” Riku patted the pillow once to fluff it up then turned his head to look solemnly at Sora. He briefly considered using Cure on the boy, but decided that it was unnecessary. Sora only needed to get warm. “Strip.”

Sora went an inhumanly bright shade of red. “What?”

“Take off your clothes.”

Sora shuffled away slightly, his knees clicking firmly together as if he was in a room with a sex-crazed fiend that he desperately needed to protect his thus-far untainted virginity from. “W-w-why?”

“Because I totally want to see you naked,” Riku quipped. Sora’s eyes practically boggled out of their sockets. Riku sighed and tried again. “Because you’re standing in wet clothes. It’s freezing in here, and your dad would keelhaul me if you went back with a cold.”

“So…” Sora looked relieved and, strangely, just a little bit disappointed (how Sora was able to pull of an expression like that was completely beyond Riku). “B-being butt-naked is b-b-better than being c-clothed?”

Riku flapped the blanket out and laid it over the makeshift bed.

“Oh,” Sora said. He toed off his shoes and kicked them near the door, then proceeded to strip himself of his dripping apparel, dumping them messily onto the floor. He took off his heavy chain necklace and dropped it on top of his pile of clothes.

“Those, too,” Riku said, pointing at Sora’s red and white polka-dotted boxers.

Sora flushed. He dove under the blanket, pulled it around himself like a cocoon, arched his hips up and pulled his boxers off, tossing them in the general direction of the rest of his clothing. In the meantime, Riku had walked over to the drenched apparel, rolled them up, taken them to a window and squeezed them to get rid of excess water. He then closed the window again and spread the shirt and trousers out onto the floor so that they would dry faster. He looked with distaste at Sora’s socks and boxers.

“I’m not touching those,” he stated.

“H-hey, th-th-they’re clean,” Sora protested. There was a delightful tingle that ran up and down his flesh as cold skin met warm, thick blanket, and Sora gleefully squirmed around to try and get more comfortable.

“Still not touching them.”

“The f-f-floor’s cold,” Sora mumbled.

Riku frowned. He kicked off his own pair of sneakers and socks, which were wet from melted snow, and padded barefoot over to Sora. He knelt down next to the shorter brunet and removed his jacket.

“Riku?” Sora questioned.

Riku shrugged off the rest of his clothing, dropping his studded belt with a clatter to the floor. Sora jolted upright, face burning, as Riku stepped out of his baggy jeans. “Riku?” Sora repeated. “What’re you doing?”

Riku held the clothes out to Sora. “Here.”

Sora gawped at the clothes, at Riku, and at Riku’s black boxers, which were damnably cooler than Sora’s. “Huh?”

“Put them on.”

“But…”

“You’ll get sick if you don’t. You just took a dive into icy water. You need to keep warm.”

“So do you!”

“Sora.” Riku fixed the younger boy with a firm look. “Your dad will keelhaul me if you catch a cold.”

“No he wouldn’t!”

“He owns a boat.”

“So?”

“My mom,” Riku said slowly and deliberately, as if talking to a kindergartener, “would help.”

Sora shuddered. Nothing in all of his travels had ever scared him as much as the memory of coming across Riku’s mother -a tiny woman with fluorescent pink curlers perpetually stuck in her hair - bellowing her lungs out at Wakka and Tidus just the other week after they had accidentally crushed her precious flower patch with a misplaced blitzball.

Wakka’s knees had shook. Tidus had cried.

Sora took the clothes.

Riku sat down next to his friend as Sora first put on the jeans, dragging them under the blanket and pulling them over his feet before arching his hips upward to tug them over his waist. They were a bit too big for him and fell down around his hips. Sora put on and zipped up Riku’s black sleeveless shirt, barely suppressing a pout as it drooped over his small shoulders. It wasn’t fair that Riku could fill out clothing so much better than Sora could, it really wasn’t.

“What?” Riku asked, just a teensy bit unnerved as Sora shot him something akin to a death glare.

“Nothing,” Sora muttered. He pulled on Riku’s jacket and zipped it up, not at all surprised to find that the sleeves shot way past his wrists and fingers. The clothes stuck slightly to him as his skin was still mildly damp from the lake water, but aside from that, they were very soft and comfortable. No wonder Riku wore the same thing every day. Sora noticed Riku shivering next to him, his knees pulled up to his chest and hugging himself with his arms. “Are you suuuure that you don’t at least want the jacket?”

“I’m fine, Sora,” Riku said, teeth gnashed together. “Anyway, we’re only waiting for your clothes to dry. Once they’re done, we can go out and look for that hotel that your mom booked us into.”

“What’re you going to do while they dry?” Sora asked. He grinned. “Wanna play a game?”

“I want to sleep,” Riku said. He yawned slightly. “Unlike some people, I don’t pass out on airplanes.”

“I didn’t pass out!”

“You did when we went through turbulence.” Riku shook his head. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand how you managed to fall asleep while the plane was rocking around like that.”

Sora grinned. “Believe me; having Donald drive the gummi ship is worse.”

Riku made a small, amused “hmm” noise as he crossed his arms on his knees and curled, using his arms to cushion his forehead.

Sora’s face went pink. He shuffled over a bit and smiled in a twitchy, embarrassed-nervous kind of way. “D’you wanna share the blanket?” he asked

“I’ll be fine out here,” Riku said. He didn’t notice the disappointed expression that flickered across Sora’s face as he closed his eyes to sleep. “It’s a one-person blanket. Besides, it’s not that cold.”

“Well…” Sora looked dubious, “okay. If you say so.” He promptly rolled over so that he was facing the opposite wall, semi-curled himself into the fetal position, tucked the blanket in between his chin and his shoulder, and let his sulk emerge full-fledged.

Riku was so stupid.

Sora wasn’t a klutz. Well, okay, maybe he did tend to stumble around quite a bit, but that was all Riku’s fault, really. It was Riku’s fault with his stupid jeans that only showed a hint of his ass when he bent over, and it was Riku's fault with his stupid, stupid sleeveless shirts that showed off every ripple of curved, strong muscle every time he so much as picked up a pencil. And how on earth was Riku so fair-skinned? They lived on an island, for goodness’ sake. It wasn’t Sora’s fault that he couldn’t stop staring at the taller teen’s flawlessly milky skin (how was that possible, with so much sun?), and it definitely wasn’t Sora’s fault that Riku seemed to like showing it off so much. Who, save for Seifer (who, Sora noticed, was also darker than Riku, despite living in a sunless city), wore a shirt that showed off their navel? It was practically begging people to stare at it.

Begging people to stare. Yeah. That was it. It was purely scientific observation; that was all. Like the way that Riku was so tall despite having parents that were shorter than Sora, like the way that Riku was so much better-built than Sora despite being weaker than the brunet (a fact that Sora had proven to Riku in an arm-wrestling match with a triumphant crow after slamming the older teen’s arm onto the tabletop), like the way that… like the way that Riku’s eyes were somehow so intense despite his generally mellowed appearance, and the way that Riku’s hair was so girly, yet so… so suited to him.

Sora wasn’t a klutz. He was just… easily distracted. Like the time when the two boys had been walking on the beach and come across bikini-clad Kairi and Selphie, who had waved at them and invited them to join. Sora had closed his eyes to blink, and when he’d opened them, he’d been the audience to Riku stripping off his jacket and shirt and tossing them carelessly onto the sand, exposing a broad, tautly-muscled back. Or like the time when they’d been in Venice and he’d been put in charge of buying food for Riku and Kairi, who had agreed to wait for him by the pier. When he’d run over to the two of them, there had been a slight breeze in the air.

Kairi - bless her soul - had beautiful hair. She really did. She was a beautiful girl, too. She had stood on the pier and waved at him like one of those models for a cheap brand of shampoo.

Riku had stood next to her, arms crossed, and had merely smirked, looking for all the world like a supermodel with a million-dollar contract for Videl Sassoon.

The pizza slices hadn’t survived Sora’s little trip-and-fall into the Venetian water.

It wasn’t fair that Riku was always teasing him about his feet. Not when Riku was, really, the cause of all of Sora’s clumsiness. Okay, so Sora was a bit afflicted by what Riku sometimes liked to call ‘hobbit foot syndrome’. It wasn’t as if his feet were massive. Besides, Sora had heard that big feet were a good thing… or that’s what he’d gathered anyway, having overheard a snippet of conversation by the Princesses of Heart during his time in Hollow Bastion. Some of the girls had been giggling over something or other (Sora had overheard the word “Beast”), and Belle had grinned and said, “Well, you know what they say about men with big feet…” to which Alice had responded with a scandalized, “Oh, my!” and a giggle. Sora wished he knew what they said about guys with big feet (he’d wriggled his own in response at the time) but if Belle was saying it about Beast then it had to be something good.

Right?

Sora scowled. He bet that Riku would know what they said about guys with big feet. He’d ask, except that he had the sinking suspicion that Riku would just laugh at him. Riku always seemed to be laughing at him, not out of meanness but because he thought that Sora was… cute? Sora shook his head slightly, his long, spiky hair making a rustling noise on the pillow. Riku would never think that Sora was cute. Besides, Sora didn’t want to be cute. Cute was for girls and little children. Sora was almost eighteen now, for Pete’s sake. He didn’t want to look like a child. Or a girl, for that matter.

Sora vaguely processed the thought that maybe about an hour had passed and that the room had suddenly gotten very dark and cold. The sun had completely fallen, and only the dim light of the moon poured in through the cracks in the wood and windows. Small flurries of snow gusted in, accompanying the moonlight, along with a windy, howling noise outside. Sora shivered and curled himself up tighter in his blanket before resuming his thoughts.

He wasn’t a klutz. It wasn’t his fault that he’d fallen into the lake. He had turned when Riku had shouted the warning only to have his eyes, like two small electromagnets, fix directly onto Riku’s oh-so-kissable mouth. He had heard about the ice. Of course he had. If only Riku hadn’t distracted him with that mouth, those lips, the ones that practically begged you to nibble on them, the ones that, well, looked a bit chapped from the dry air…

It hadn’t been Sora’s fault that he’d stepped out onto the ice despite hearing Riku’s warning. It had been Riku’s fault. The older teen had licked his lips. That should’ve been a crime in itself; even more so for committing the act in front of someone whose brain circuits were frying so quickly that they were just a step away from having a stroke.

Sora shivered again. It really was very, very cold, and the howling noises coming from outside really were getting… well, a bit alarming really, especially when they were coupled with the way that the window panels seemed to be content with banging noisily into each other and the latch that they were joined by. Sora pulled the blanket up over his head to cover his ears. He blamed falling into an icy lake and being stripped of his clothes for his recent weakness. He had survived perfectly well in the Land of Dragons, after all. It must’ve been another one of the magicks that the three faeries had blessed into his outfit-a body-warmer, so to speak. He'd never once felt cold with his old clothing on. The magic must have worn off with the added effect of the icy water.

Sora just had the strangest thought about his nipples. It was one of those random thoughts that flicked into his mind and pranced across like a tap-dancing manatee. He crossed his arms over his chest. Did nipples really get perky when they were cold? Sora was quite tempted to check, but was unwilling to lift up the blanket, shirt and jacket to see.

Sora pondered for a bit. Maybe Riku’s nipples would be perky. Heck, if there was anything that could be done, Riku would always be the best at doing it. If nipples did indeed go perky, Riku would probably win an award for them. He’d likely even win a freakin’ competition for them. He’d stand on a stage and smile dashingly at the crowd, a “Mr. Perky Nipples” banner strewn across his naked chest, and give some speech about how he’d like to thank his mother, his father, and all the people who made it possible for him to accomplish his lifelong dream of owning the happiest non-lactating mammary glands in existence.

Sora rolled over to Riku and frowned. The teen was curled over in such a way that his nipples (and most of his torso, for that matter) were hidden. Curses. Sora watched Riku as he slept. The older teen didn’t even seem cold. He just sat there with his forehead pressed to his arms, breathing slowly, not even shivering. Sora wondered if his clothes were dry yet. He poked at Riku, intending to get the older teen to check. Strange; Riku felt like he was freezing. Sora poked at Riku again.

“Riku?” he tried. He reached out and jabbed Riku in the ribs, where the older teen was the most ticklish.

No response.

“Riku?” Sora said again, this time with more urgency. “Riku?” He scrambled out of the blanket and shuffled over to the silver-haired boy. He grabbed Riku by the shoulders (they were so cold! Why wasn’t Riku shivering?) and shook him. “Riku! Wake up!”

Riku finally raised his head. When he did so, it was a slow, groggy movement. His usually-piercing aquamarine eyes were bleary and hidden below heavy eyelids and long, dark eyelashes. His oh-so-kissable lips were a not-so-kissable shade of blue, which made him look a bit like a Goth gone horribly wrong. Sora was sure that there was nothing more terrifying… well, save for maybe Riku’s mom.

“Sraaa?”

Sora blinked. Well, that was new.

“Sleepy… I… mm,” Riku slurred in a voice that Sora had only heard coming from fat, drunken men (not that he’d ever seen any in real life-the television was a great educator) and from Selphie in the early mornings when they met to catch the bus to school.

Sora suddenly had a frightening premonition. Oh God, Riku wasn’t going to grow up to be a fat drunk, was he?

“What?” Sora asked. He pressed his palm to Riku’s forehead to check for a fever, firmly shoving the horrifying images of a heavily potbellied Riku out of his mind. Riku was alarmingly cold to the touch. “Are you okay?”

“Mmfine,” Riku mumbled. “Why’rnt you under the blankie?”

“‘Blankie’?” Sora echoed in disbelief.

“Mm.” Riku put his head down again.

“Riku!” Sora shook his friend again. “Don’t go back to sleep. What’s wrong with you?”

“Sleepy,” Riku mumbled.

Sora patted Riku once on the cheek, shoulder, bicep and back. He was quite tempted to pat Riku’s bicep once again, but now was really not the time. The teenager was chilly all over. “Why aren’t you shivering?” Sora asked. “Aren’t you cold?”

“Cold,” Riku agreed.

Sora suddenly recalled a talk that he’d had with his father the night before leaving, rolling up a sleeping bag and attaching it firmly to his rucksack. It had been a short conversation, and Sora had been greatly distracted by the fresh batch of brownies that his mother had baked. His mind reeled back to the event.

“Almost done?” his father had asked, clapping him on the shoulder.

“Huh?” Sora had responded with a mouth full of brownies (plural-he never could get enough of his mother’s baking). “Urryeah. Sure.”

“Good.” His father had clapped him on the back again, almost making Sora choke. “Just make sure you wrap yourself up well, alright? We don’t want you catching-”

That was where the memory ended, as a chunk of Sora’s mouthful of brownies went flying down his throat and made the brunet cough up all the rest, causing a rather unsightly mess on his parents’ bedroom floor. He did, however, remember his father saying what the condition was called before he jumped back and stared in disgust at the gross brown stuff that had splattered all over his bare foot.

“Riku,” Sora said, feeling a mild bolt of panic tear across his heart, “are you hypodermic?”

Riku stared at Sora. He chuckled. God did Sora hate that chuckle. “You… mean hypothermic?”

Sora made a show of sniffing (an action that almost made him gag as dried snot went flying up his nasal passages toward his eyes) and rubbed a hand across his nose, trying to salvage his pride. “That’s what I said. My nose is just blocked, that’s all.”

Riku’s look of mild amusement changed into one of disgust. It hadn’t slipped his notice that Sora still had Riku’s jacket on, the long yellow sleeves dropping off the ends of his hands. “‘at’s gross, Sra.”

“What’s gross is what I’m gonna look like after your mom yells me out for letting you catch hypothermia.”

Riku shot a look at Sora. “You… thought… said… your nose blocked.”

“Huh?” Sora processed that for a moment. “You thought I said my nose was blocked?” He paused. Damn it. “No I didn’t. You must be imagining things, Riku. You must be really sick.”

“Worreva. Mmfine. Not hypotherrrmic.” Riku, despite his words, had yet to move from his curled-up position.

“Listen to yourself! You can’t even talk properly.”

“Can sso.”

“Can not.” Sora tugged lightly at Riku’s shoulders. Riku’s pale, muscled shoulders. Sora’s fingers twitched. “Come on,” he said, forcing down a crack in his voice. “Get under the blanket.”

“You’ll catch cold,” Riku mumbled.

“No I won’t,” Sora said. He grinned cheekily. “I’m tougher than you. Remember?”

Riku snorted and muttered something that sounded an awful lot like “hypodermic”.

“If it’ll make you any happier,” Sora said, swallowing the small bubble of hopefully glee that threatened to surface in his voice, “I’ll get under it with you.”

Riku raised sleepy aquamarine eyes to him.

“To make sure that I don’t catch a cold, of course,” Sora added quickly.

Riku looked like he was nodding, though Sora couldn’t really be sure. The silver-haired teen could’ve just been dropping his head. Sora bent down, put his arms around Riku from the back (barely suppressing a mortifyingly girlish giggle as he did so) and helped the older teen stagger up and shuffle over to the makeshift bed. He quickly pulled back the blanket and got Riku to lie down, then shuffled up as closely as he could to Riku (cursing himself for placing himself at Riku’s back, not his front) and tugged the blanket over them. As Riku had said before, the blanket was only made for one person and thus wasn’t big enough to cover the both of them, so Sora made sure that the most of it was on Riku’s side, shielding the older teen from the cold using his body.

Sora couldn’t help the massive grin that broke out across his face. Hehe. His body was up against Riku’s. Score!

“Prob’ly would be better f’we just had a fire,” Riku mumbled.

The rapid pounding that had started in Sora’s chest screeched to an abrupt halt. He gasped and rolled away, thumping his chest a few times to get it started again.

“Sra?”

“No fire,” Sora said. “I mean… this is a wooden cabin, y’know.”

Riku groggily waved a hand in the air. His navy-blue, wickedly curved keyblade appeared on the down stroke. “I’ll use Cure.”

Sora panicked. Cure equals normal Riku. Normal Riku equals no discreet snuggling. Stopping Riku would obviously take some kind of clever, cunning plan.

“Uh!” he barked coherently.

Riku stared at him.

“I mean, um… there’s no need for that, is there?” Sora laughed nervously. He was fully aware of how terrible he was at lying. He only hoped that Riku was too out of it to notice. “I mean… you said you’re not hypothermic or anything. All we need to do is get you warm.”

“Curing does it better.”

Sora’s brain snapped back to its previous thought about nipple competitions. He imagined shirtless Riku, hair blowing Videl Sassoon style, winking and saying exactly the same thing that he’d just said, except substituting ‘Sora’ in for ‘curing’. Sora shook his head. Damn his hormones. What a completely inappropriate thing to think of when his best friend (and crush, though Riku didn’t know of it yet) was hypothermic-whatever that was. Why had no one given the birds and the bees talk to Sora? Maybe that was why he had such an insane libido.

That gave Sora an idea.

“You know,” Sora laughed, knowing that Riku wouldn’t be able to reject a challenge, even if the challenge was only hinted at. “It sounds like you’re just afraid that I’d cuddle you or something.”

Riku stiffened. He reached over and pulled the blanket back. Sora grinned so widely that he thought his face would crack, and he stepped deliberately over Riku so that he was in front of the older teen. He lifted the blanket and climbed in, snuggling himself up to Riku like a baby koala, his heart pumping like a piston. Gingerly, he inclined his head to Riku’s chest, secretly thrilled at the way that his head seemed to fit neatly in the crook of Riku’s neck, just under the taller teen’s chin. He wondered if his hair was tickling Riku’s face, but decided that Riku was probably too cold to feel it anyway. He tugged the blanket so that the majority of it covered up Riku’s exposed back, then tentatively snuck an arm over Riku’s slim torso, bringing the two even closer. He held his other arm against his own chest, but that didn’t stop him from feeling the hard muscles of Riku’s chest with the back of his hand. His thighs pressed against Riku’s slightly curled-up knees, which really was fine with Sora because if they didn’t, their groins would be that much closer to one another, and to be honest, Sora wasn’t really sure how well he could resist the urge to jerk his hips against Riku’s like a mad dog in heat.

Sora was lying down. Next to Riku. Cuddling Riku. A half-naked, muscled, gorgeous, examinable-in-a-scientific-way Riku.

Sora had to repress the urge to squeal.

Ugh. No wonder Riku chuckled at him like he was cute. He was being such a girl about everything.

“I’m just doing this to keep you warm, you know,” Sora commented offhandedly.

No response. Sora was about to look up, when he felt an arm snake around his waist and press against his back. He felt something press into the top of his head: Riku’s chin.

Sora was sure that, if there were a way to hook his brain up to a loudspeaker, the world would have heard a sound not unlike that of a small nuclear explosion. His heart was beating so quickly that he was sure that his ears were going red… though maybe that was just from the cold. He reached for the blanket and pulled it up around them, covering his ears.

The windows banged angrily at him. Sora grinned. They were just jealous.

“Mm.” Riku snuggled his face into Sora’s hair as if the younger teen was a hot water bottle.

Sora couldn’t help himself. He squeaked.

“Wha?” Riku said, earning himself a mouthful of spiky brown hair. He gagged and spat it out.

“You’re my best friend and you’re a guy. I don’t care. You’re very pretty, I’ve known you for almost forever, and lots of other things. I think I love you,” said Sora’s brain.

“Nothing,” said Sora.

A silence followed, broken only by the slamming of the windows and the howling of the wind outside. The snowflakes that had made their way into the cabin formed small puddles on the floor, which thankfully either dribbled back out of the cabin by way of yet another crack in the wall or started to solidify into thin layers of ice.

“Blizzard,” Riku commented. His jaw worked against Sora’s head when he spoke. It wasn’t an altogether unpleasant sensation.

“Huh?” Sora asked, thinking of the spell.

“Outside.”

“Oh.” Sora snuggled closer to Riku in a way that he hoped wasn’t too obvious. He was tempted to rub his hands over Riku’s back-to warm him up, of course.

“W-we’ll have to find… hotel tomorrow.” Judging by the fact that Riku was finally started to shiver and was forming somewhat more coherent sentences, Sora guessed that Riku was finally starting to warm up, although the other teen was still kind of icy to the touch.

“Yeah,” Sora said, trying his best to sound saddened.

The silence returned. It wasn’t an uncomfortable one, but Sora felt the urge to say something anyway. It wasn’t often that he and Riku would be in each other’s arms like this (in fact, he’d never actually been in Riku’s arms, ever) and… well, it just seemed like an appropriate time to bring up how he felt about Riku. Riku deserved to know, after all. Besides, if Riku were to reject Sora (Sora desperately hoped that he wouldn’t), Sora could at least make a not-so-pretense of being utterly hurt, look down, and get an yummy eyeful of Riku’s toned stomach before he’d be pushed away.

He tried to relax. He felt the rise and fall of Riku’s chest, and was dimly aware of his own breath, coming out hotly in small puffs against Riku’s naked flesh (and damn, that was one perky nipple). He tried to think of what he wanted to say.

“Hey, Riku,” his brain offered. “I love you.”

Yeah. Great way to be random.

“Riku,” his brain said, “do you think there’s a chance that we could ever be… more than friends?”

No. Not obvious enough. Riku would likely not even register that, not in his current state. Besides, it was horribly girly and cliché. Sora didn’t want to wait for the blizzard to die down and for the two to be separated again. This was the best opportunity that he would probably ever get.

“Riku,” Sora’s brain tried again. “We’ve known each other for a long time, right? And, well, we’ve had our differences, but… you’re a really great guy, and… and I think I’d be passing up on an opportunity to… well, you want me to be honest, right? So… I really hope that this doesn’t destroy our friendship because our friendship really is so important to me, but… I think I might be crushing on you.”

God. How soap opera. Sora wasn’t like that. He needed something more straight-forward, more to the point.

“Hey Riku,” his brain crooned. “You’re too sexy for your shirt! Too sexy for your shirt! So sexy it huuurts!”

Oh God, no! Sora flushed a deep shade of red. Why on earth had he ever allowed Tidus to send him that song?

“W-what are you th-th-thinking about?” Riku asked. He was shivering pretty badly now.

“Huh?” Sora asked, startled out of his reverie. He hugged Riku closer, his nose practically touching Riku’s chest.

“I s-s-said-” Riku started.

Sora rewound the conversation in his head. “Oh,” he said. He gulped down a lump in his throat, his heart pounding faster, though now for an entirely different reason. Maybe he just shouldn’t tell Riku. There was no telling how he’d take it. Besides, Sora was pretty comfortable with where he was now.

The windows banged.

The wind howled.

Riku’s hand twitched impatiently.

Sora sighed. It was now or never.

“I’m too sexy for my shirt,” he said.

Riku made a strange choking noise. Sora mentally ran over his brain with a monster truck.

“Sorry,” Sora mumbled. He reluctantly disentangled himself from Riku and took Riku’s jacket off. “Here,” he said, handing it to him. “I know you don’t want me getting sick,” Sora added, seeing Riku open his mouth to object, “but you’re really cold right now. You have to put at least something on.”

Riku nodded. He accepted the jacket, hauling himself up into a seated position with a violent shudder from the cold. He pulled his arms through the sleeves then quickly ducked back under the warmth of the blanket, not bothered to zip the jacket up. It didn’t escape Sora’s notice that his hair pooled around his head and off the pillow like soft, long rivulets of silver water. It was “come hither” hair, it really was. It wasn’t fair. Sora wasn’t planning to get back under the blanket with Riku, thinking only of sitting by the edge of their makeshift bed, berating himself for ruining his one chance at revealing his feelings, when to his surprise, Riku snaked an arm out and grabbed Sora around the waist, pulling the shorter boy onto him with an exhaled “oof”.

“Just to k-k-keep me w-warm,” Riku said by way of explanation. Sora barely hid a huge, happy grin as he compliantly got under the blanket and snuggled back up against Riku, eagerly bowing his head into the crook of Riku’s neck.

Forget telling Riku about his feelings. It didn’t matter, as long as he had this now. Under the cover of his head, he curled a few stray strands of silver hair around his index finger, smiling. Their friendship really was too perfect for Sora to risk losing… not that Riku was the type who’d push him away, but Riku was very capable of… well, hiding himself. If Riku was uncomfortable with what Sora had wanted to say, he would’ve gone very quiet then made himself practically invisible as soon as the two returned to the islands. It was a thought that Sora couldn’t bear, especially not after having spent so long trying to find the older teen in the first place. He could still remember the tears that he’d shed on their reunion. It was mortifying.

Sora rubbed his thumb idly along the soft, silver locks curled around his finger. Maybe he could learn to live like this. Maybe he could live with the fact that Riku was very likely straight, despite the fact that Sora was so in love with Riku that his chest hurt every time he thought of kissing him. Maybe it would be okay just as long as they sometimes had moments like this, where they were almost intimately close. Sora felt that they clicked so well already, despite their obvious differences-they were already emotionally intimate. Physicality… well, it was just a surface thing, wasn’t it? It was their hearts that mattered, and even though his had once beaten in a steady tempo next to another’s, he now knew that his heart belonged completely to Riku. Sora smiled sadly. He would be happy as long as Riku was happ-

“Would you stop already?” Sora’s brain interrupted impatiently. “You’re beginning to sound like that weepy girl on that show that Selphie likes.”

Sora frowned. He did not.

“You do too. It was great and all when you were younger, but you’re almost eighteen now, okay? Stop being so mushy. It’s kind of making me sick.”

Sora briefly wondered if a brain could puke. Where would the vomit come out from? His nostrils? His ears? Ew. Sora then wondered why he was considering his brain as an entirely different entity.

“Hey, maybe I’m like your… something similar to a conscience. I make sure that you grow up like a normal kid. Hey, look at that. More nipple.”

Sora looked. He couldn’t stop looking. It was peeking out at him from underneath Riku’s unzipped jacket, all… nipple-like and… perky. Sora pondered whether or not putting his thumb over it would warm it enough to unperkify it. Was unperkify a word? Deperkify. Make it stop being perky. That.

“Sora?”

Sora willed his brain to be quiet.

“Sora?”

Sora froze. That… didn’t sound like his brain. He looked at the nipple… which wasn’t there. It was now being covered by a thumb which seemed to be making circles of its own accord. Sora hurriedly willed it to stop.

“What…” Riku started.

“Sorry!” Sora withdrew his hand as if it was on fire.

“What…” Riku was, for the first time in his life, incoherent. Sora fleetingly noticed that Riku had stopped shivering, his face deeply tinted. Well, that was a good thing, Sora supposed.

“I don’t… I’m sorry!”

“Wha-” Riku halted before he repeated himself again. “Sora-”

“I didn’t mean to!”

“I-”

“It was just there, and I-”

“Sora.” Riku stopped him with a firm tone of voice. Sora looked down. Goodbye, Riku’s toned stomach.

Riku inhaled then exhaled slowly. Sora felt Riku’s jaw move against his head as the older teen opened his mouth to say something.

“Can I explain?” Sora interjected before Riku could speak. Sora felt Riku’s mouth close again. He reluctantly extracted himself from Riku and shuffled back a bit, off of the sheet and away from the blanket, so that he was looking the older teen in the eyes. Riku’s eyes, normally so expressive, were now strangely blank, as if he were forcibly concealing some emotion. Sora desperately hoped that it wasn’t anger. He looked at Riku’s eyes and bit his lip nervously.

“Tell him,” his brain urged before bursting unhelpfully into song. “He’s too sexy for his shirt, so sexy that it hurts…”

Sora exhaled. It was obvious that his brain wasn’t planning on working today. He looked at Riku, who returned his gaze with an expectant look of his own. He parted his lips, fully intending to say something.

He leaned forward and kissed Riku instead.

His heart started hammering hard enough to break out of his ribcage. Oh God! What was he doing? Was Riku… Sora paused. Riku wasn’t responding. Riku had frozen. Sora held his breath and bravely decided to continue. He closed his eyes and tilted his head slightly, pressing his lips firmly to Riku’s. Tentatively, he placed his hands on Riku’s shoulders, palms pressed against the taller teen’s clavicles.

Riku suddenly shoved his hands between the two of them and started pushing insistently, almost scrabbling at Sora’s chest.

Sora was instantly hurt. He knew it! Riku didn’t feel the same way about Sora. He was sickened, just like all the guys in those stories and gay television dramas that his mother sometimes watched and dribbled her tears and snot out to. Riku was freaked out. Riku wasn’t going to be his friend anymore. Riku was-

Riku gave one great shove (Sora clung on like a stubborn, stunned limpet), gave up, and promptly sneezed into Sora’s mouth.

Oh.

... Ew.

“Sorry,” Riku mumbled.

Sora wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “That’s okay.”

“Iif you really want to apologize, you can lick the rest of your spit off,” his brain added helpfully.

“You’re… still cold?” Sora asked instead.

Riku looked at him oddly. “Not anymore.”

“Oh. Uh… that’s good to hear.” Sora shuffled back a bit, thoroughly embarrassed.

There was a long, uncomfortable silence in which Sora died a bit inside. If only it wasn’t a blizzard outside. If only his clothes were dry. Oh, to hell with it. If Riku didn’t say something soon, Sora would just strip off, run around and streak down the mountain, cold or no. It wasn’t like there would be anyone still around in this weather-well, maybe save for mountain goats. Did mountain goats attack naked people? Maybe they’d get insulted by the sight of a naked bottom and charge, head down, to gore Sora’s-

“That’s a… unique cure for hypothermia,” Riku commented.

“Huh?” Sora rewound the events in his head and flushed. “Oh.”

Riku pulled the blanket up around his shoulders, tucking the end just under his chin. “Hypothermia is something that you can die of.”

Sora hadn’t known that. His eyes grew wide. Dead Riku was way, way worse than potbellied, drunk Riku, even though-oh, okay, he didn’t need that image returning again.

Riku looked like he was torn as to what to say next. He decided on a half-smirk and a small chuckle of amusement. “I don’t know if touching people’s nipples is-”

“Oh!” Sora looked flustered. “Sorry. It was just there and-”

“Yeah. Like magic.”

“Huh?”

“It’s not like you don’t have any of your own, Sora.”

Sora looked both confused and disgusted. “Why would I want to touch myself?”

Riku’s lips twitched, as if he’d found the question immeasurably amusing, but decided not to follow up on it. “Why would you want to touch me?”

Sora screamed inwardly. Riku. Was so. Stupid.

“Because you’re…” Sora paused as his brain - dressed in a cheerleader’s outfit and waving pompoms - performed an alarmingly squeal-y Irish jig in his head. Sora sighed and admitted defeat. “So sexy it hurts,” he muttered.

Riku chuckled. “It looked like Tidus got you, too.”

Sora was just about ready to tear out his hair and gouge the spikes into Riku’s eyes. Was Riku being dense on purpose? Sora had kissed him! Sora had called him sexy-good grief, Sora never used that word, ever! Sora had rubbed Riku’s nipple! What else did the silver-haired boy want? Spontaneous buckets of drool? Sora ran his tongue over the back of his incisors. Maybe he could manage a bit of spit, but trying to drool when the weather was so dry would probably end up being more embarrassing than anything else...

Sora’s desperation must have been evident on his face, because Riku quickly sobered and regarded him with a solemn expression. “You’re serious?”

Sora nodded miserably.

The tint returned to Riku’s cheeks. “Why didn’t you just say something?”

Sora looked guilty. “I wanted to, but…”

“You accepted me when you thought I was Xehanort’s Heartless.” Riku said pointedly.

“Yeah, but… you’re not me.”

Riku’s eyes narrowed. Sora flinched involuntarily at the response. “You’re not that much better than me, Sora.”

“But…” Sora gulped. “You don’t think it’s weird?”

“I think you think it’s weirder than I do,” Riku commented. He sighed. “I had someone take over my body. I had someone take over my body and dress me in a skirt.”

“I-”

“I watched you sleep for a year in a white pod. I fought your Nobody. And you liking me is weird?” Riku paused. “Though I did kind of think you’d end up with Kairi.” He paused again. “Wait. D’you only like me because I’m…” he looked like he was debating his choice of words, “better-looking than her?”

“Ye-I mean, no!” Sora quickly corrected himself. “I mean, you are better-looking,” Sora frowned slightly as Riku visibly flinched at the praise, and resolved to compliment the older boy more, “but I like you for other reasons, too.”

“Like what?”

God, this was difficult. How to put it without going into an hour-long rant?

“Like…” Sora struggled for words, a dozen or so clichés running through his head. “Like…” The words finally clicked into his brain. “Because you’re you. Because... you’re Riku.”

Riku stared at him then burst out laughing. “That has to be the sappiest line I’ve ever heard.”

Sora felt rather indignant. He didn’t just tear his brain apart just to have Riku laugh at him, damn it. “Hey, is not,” he said petulantly. He couldn’t quite stop the pout (un-cute, mind) that emerged on his lips. “Besides,” he added, “you haven’t told me what you think yet. You can’t just hear that someone likes you and not respond to that.”

Riku looked blank. “I did respond.”

“I mean, do you like me back or not?” Sora demanded, face flushed.

Riku smiled and shook his head.

Sora felt his heart drop. No, forget dropping; it was plummeting from the peak of Everest with a jet-pack propelling it to its messy, splatty doom on the ground. “Oh,” Sora choked. He looked down and tried to push away the surge of hurt and disappointment that threatened to overwhelm him. “Well, okay. I get that.”

Riku looked puzzled. “Sora, I haven’t said anything yet.”

Sora’s head jerked up to Riku. His plummeting heart paused and hovered for just a moment, uplifted by hope. “Huh?”

Riku smiled his small, wry smile and shook his head again, more a rueful action to himself than to Sora. “I was going to tell you to get back under here,” he said. He lifted the blanket. “You’ll catch a cold.”

Sora's heart didn't just splatter. It shattered into a million pieces before angrily committing suicide against the base of Mount Everest. There were many noisy splatting sounds. In Sora's mind, a goat bleated in outrage.

“Oh.” Sora mumbled. 'Get back under here'. That was equivalent to a no, wasn’t it? Riku didn’t like Sora. He just didn’t want him getting sick. Sora obediently crawled over and slipped under the blanket, keeping a bit away from Riku so that the blanket only covered up to his side, leaving his back exposed.

Riku’s smile morphed into an uncharacteristically mischievous grin. He snaked an arm around and placed his hand on the small of Sora’s back, pulling the brunet closer, before leaning in and planting a small, almost chaste kiss on a surprised Sora’s lips. “To keep you warm,” he explained.

Sora grinned so widely that Riku shuffled back a bit in alarm, almost afraid that the smile would rebound like a highly-tensed rubber band and whack one of his eyes out. Riku didn’t have much time to get himself away from the blinding, almost goofy grin as he was pounced on and firmly pinned into place by an enthusiastic, madly blushing Sora.

“To keep you warm,” Sora agreed, and swept down and kissed Riku again, so ferociously and so eagerly that he almost ended up missing and sucking Riku’s nose off instead.

Riku flailed and made a startled “mmph!” noise, which was muffled and almost inhaled by Sora’s mouth as Sora corrected his aim and shifted his lips over to Riku’s, tilting his head and bringing his hands up to bracket Riku’s face, fingers curling idly in Riku’s long, silver hair. Riku shoved his hands between them and pushed insistently at Sora’s chest; when Sora moved back, hurt, Riku gasped and made a sound like a dying fish (if fish had larynxes) before grabbing at Sora’s spiky hair and pulling the shorter boy to crash down against him again. Sora grinned and responded by nibbling Riku’s oh-so-kissable (and no longer blue, thank God) lower lip. Aware that his kneeling position was allowing cold air to creep in under the blanket, Sora laid himself down flat onto Riku so that they were pressed chest-to-chest, Sora’s legs entwined and hooked around Riku’s at the knees. Sora felt one of Riku’s fingers rubbing gently along the crook of his nape, toying with the shorter hairs there; grinning, he licked at Riku’s lips and had to resist the urge to squeak when Riku timidly (Sora had to remember to tease Riku about that later) parted them. He slipped his tongue in with a happy sigh, exploring the wet warmth of Riku’s mouth and moaning and arching slightly when Riku’s other hand trailed up the back of his thigh, slipping under Sora’s borrowed shirt, his fingers tickling Sora’s skin. Sora grinned a wicked grin that would’ve put the Cheshire Cat to shame and pulled back with a slightly slurpy noise, extracting a small gasp from Riku. Lightly tracing the contours of Riku’s leanly muscled body with his hands, Sora slid down Riku’s torso, his head disappearing under the blanket as he planted curious, explorative kisses down Riku’s jaw, neck and clavicles.

“Sora?” Riku only had a moment to wonder what it was that Sora was doing down there (and, fleetingly, think that they might be moving just a bit too quickly, considering that they were technically only about five minutes into their first kiss) before he felt something warm and wet flick teasingly over his nipple. He shuddered, then arched with a breathy moan when Sora teasingly blew cold air over the short trail of saliva (another thing learned via television; thank you very much, programs-after-6pm), sending a shiver down Riku's spine. Sora winced and grinned, working his lower lip and tongue over that nipple again, his palms pressing flatly and roaming over Riku’s toned stomach and chest, as if memorizing every hard curve and arch of muscle. He slowly moved back up, Riku’s hands sliding down to rest on the small of his back as he did so, and kissed Riku again.

If this were a cartoon, this would have been the part where the camera moved to the outside of the cabin, filming, for about ten seconds, the cabin rocking violently to and fro with loud bangs to show wild, passionate sex. This wasn’t a cartoon though, and the only things banging (in both meanings of the word) were the windows against their hinged restraints as the freezing wind howled against them, sweeping in a small gust of snowflakes. Riku looked up in irritation, pausing his ministrations with the hem of Sora's borrowed jeans. Not even the thought that Sora was completely naked under there was enough to distract him from those windows. The slamming noises really were getting to be quite annoying.

Sora, busy nibbling on Riku’s lower lip, only vaguely heard the sharp sound of a sword being drawn from its sheath. He then realized that his lower back was sans one hand drawing circles on his skin. He looked up in alarm. “Don’t-”

Too late. A flurry of light blue fireballs shot down out Riku’s keyblade and blasted the windows clear off of their hinges, leaving a huge, gaping hole behind.

Riku blinked at Sora behind long, heavy eyelashes. “What?”

Sora pushed himself up onto his palms, turned his head back as far as it would go, and stared wide-eyed at where a support beam had once been.

Less than a minute later, the two were standing, shivering, and staring dolefully at a massive mess of cracked wood.

“My c-c-clothes…” Sora stuttered mournfully.

Sora didn’t have much to complain about, in Riku’s opinion. Sora, at least, was looking relatively normal (albeit very short and small-built-he had to hold his jeans up with his hand) in Riku’s clothes. Riku, on the other hand, was standing in his opened jacket and black boxers. He zipped up the jacket for sake of decency-and, well, just in case Sora decided to do something funky to his nipples again, since now really wasn’t a good time for it. The two hopped from foot to foot in the snow, their shoes still buried under what had once been a cabin.

“W-what d-d-do we do n-now?” Sora asked.

Riku rubbed his hands quickly against his arms, finding little warmth from the friction caused. “F-find that h-hotel, I g-g-guess.”

Sora nodded his assent, shoving his hands into Riku’s pockets. As he turned to follow Riku (light-footedly-the cold of the snow stung his feet) he felt his face burn from the icy wind brushing against it, tiny snowflakes drifting and melting on his long eyelashes. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Riku twirl his keyblade and mutter something. Sora felt momentary warmth, regaining all sensation in his body. He ran up to Riku and jostled his arm teasingly.

“K-k-klutz,” he accused.

Riku flushed and mumbled something that sounded a lot like “your fault anyway”. Sora grinned and linked arms with Riku, holding Riku’s arm close to his face.

“F-for warmth,” he said.

Riku twirled his keyblade again. Sora felt the warmth return to him.

“Curing does it better,” Riku stated as he trudged heavily through the snow, long hair blowing behind him like a banner in the wind.

Sora sighed.