Riku couldn't have known the first time they met, couldn't possibly have foreseen the trailing fingers, the heat of a smile in the crook of his neck, the rainy days and soft still afternoons filled with nothing but quiet laughter fading into brilliant, breathing silence.
But he knew.
It was probably Sora's eyes that gave it away. Riku couldn't remember exactly how it had felt the first time they had met gazes, but he liked to think it had felt the same way it did all those dream-like afternoons that came later. When he replayed the moment on the dusty projector in the back of his mind, he liked to rearrange the film until just glimpsing the summer-ocean blue of Sora's eyes for the first time had sent electricity dripping down his spine and trickling all the way out of his fingertips. He didn't really think it had. But something had happened. Whether Riku had realized it right then or not, those eyes had needed only an instant to plant a fuzzy little vision of the future deep in his chest where it would poke out roots and sprout leaves and grow until he couldn't ignore it anymore. Yes, it was those eyes. Riku harbored no doubts in his mind.
oo00OOO00oo
It was before the long, happy afternoons had finished flowering into an unavoidable premonition that Sora first revealed his interest in the war.
Riku recalled feeling surprised at first, then unsettled. Mention of the war always unsettled him back then, probably because he felt it should matter more to him somehow. It mattered, of course it did—it mattered because everything he needed was scarce, and when he could find it, it was so expensive that he didn't dare wonder how he would afford the rest of his college education—mattered because his roommate disappeared for a week when he left to attend his younger cousin's funeral—but he always felt it should matter more to him personally.
All of the protesters had told him it should matter to him personally. They told him with bullhorns and graphic posters to see through the eyes of the innocent dead in Agrabah. They told him with bumper stickers and pamphlets to stand up for the bloodied children and their shattered worlds. They never told him why he should drop his own life and leave behind his own world to join them in their protests; maybe they assumed he knew.
Sora knew, and he refused to sit by and do nothing.
"It makes me angry," the blue-eyed kid fumed. Riku was surprised and unsettled, but he masked his feelings by reaching up to liberate a slender leaf from Sora's soft brown locks. Sora brushed his hand away in agitation. "How could anyone do that to another human being? I mean, it… it doesn't make sense," he mumbled, trailing off in a passion.
Riku lay back in the cool grass with his fingers interlocked behind his head and observed the brunette with wondering fondness. The younger boy stared moodily into the distance, unable to feel Riku's gaze steadily traversing his face. The tree above them playfully dappled Sora's skin in shade and yellow sunlight that swayed with the gentle tug of the wind. Riku watched, mesmerized, until Sora tilted his head and swung his gaze in Riku's direction.
Rousing himself from his warmth and Sora-induced trance, Riku said, "We went in with good intentions."
Sora's gaze crystallized rapidly and Riku felt the need to reel his words back in, dry them off, and tuck them away where no one need ever see them again.
Sora snorted. "Went in with good intentions, maybe. I doubt it. More like invaded with hopes of riches and conquest," he spat. He glared at the grass beside Riku's head. "You can't really think there was anything—anything benevolent about this war."
Because he felt that Sora was pressing him for an answer, a response, anything, Riku considered this. Did he really think there had been "benevolent intentions" involved? Well, that sounded ridiculous. How often did history books laud the achievements of a benevolent war? Never. There were none. Wars shifted power, shifted land, shifted souls, and they were hardly about goodwill and charity. So that left the question of the war as a whole—was it right?
Riku frowned at the branches arching above him. Was it right? He had been asked that question so many times in so many different ways and always told himself that he'd find the answer later, or he'd find the answer when he had time. He had time now, but all he could think to say was, "I dunno."
"It's wrong," Sora said firmly, and Riku felt like a small child being admonished for drawing on the walls or hitting a playmate. Only Sora possessed the ability to make him feel like that. Sora's word was law.
oo00OOO00oo
So it was that later, when Riku could just taste the first of the honey-sweet days to come, could almost reach out with his fingers and grasp them, coddle them, that Sora thumped his books on the desk in Riku's dorm room and stared Riku in the eye as if daring him to utter a challenge. Riku said nothing, of course. Just waited.
"They're sending more troops," hissed the brunette. Something new had grown behind his eyes, something that Riku thought he recognized—the spark from that day beneath the tree grown to a crackling blaze. Sora's face had flushed with anger. "My friends are holding a protest, and I'm going."
Time slowed and tottered to a halt, and in that moment that the universe stopped, Riku thought a million things and felt a million things and saw all of existence shrink to a shimmering point of nothing right before his eyes, and then Time tripped forward to make up for what it had lost and existence sprung back into its usual shape like water flowing to match the inside of a bowl.
Everything rushed out at once as Riku blurted, "No."
Riku swore he felt all of the air being sucked out of the room. Sora froze and stared, expression slowly becoming cloudier until his lips formed the word, "What?"
Riku scrambled with little success to pick up the handful of metaphorical cards he had just tossed face up on his proverbial table. He sat back on his bed and straightened the pillow behind him, shifted the laptop resting on his thighs and crossed his ankles, ruffled his long, silver hair. Cleared his throat. "They're not really safe, are they?" he said, trying to sound vaguely indifferent. "You hear about it on the news all the time. People protest and they get hurt. The government does everything it can to shut people up."
Sora regained his voice. "But that's the point, isn't it? They try to shut us up, and we just yell louder."
Riku kept his eyes trained on his computer screen. He refused to look up and meet Sora's gaze and let himself burn in that fire. That could come later; later, after he had convinced Sora not to go now. He had to breathe deeply before he could ask, "Do you really think a bunch of kids shouting nonsense and waving signs will end a war?"
The flames raged and leapt; Riku was sure he'd be engulfed and burned alive if he didn't keep his eyes locked on those little glowing letters on the screen before him. Don't look. Don't look.
"What?" Sora demanded again, and this time, the word scraped through Riku's chest like a fish hook, dragging with it everything that Riku wanted so desperately to keep hidden away—the poor flower—but no use. Sora had stomped to the side of the bed and was glaring down at him, and all he could do was look up and burn. "Should I just sit back and watch as the government does whatever the hell it wants with all of those people? Would you just let them die?"
Riku didn't know what to say because he was blinded and deafened as a newborn thrown into a world of roaring sounds and blazing lights, all because of the fire screaming white-hot at him from behind Sora's eyes. He had none of that fire. He couldn't know it, couldn't possibly feel it, because all he had was a fragile, leafy hope that Sora couldn't see. That Sora was ripping petals from one by one with each angry breath he took.
"Do you care about anyone else?" Sora spat.
"I don't want you to get hurt," Riku said quietly. His voice came out far steadier than he ever thought he could manage with Sora's brilliant blues boring into his soul.
"I'll be fine," Sora snapped back, but his words lacked the scorching edge they had wielded a moment before.
Riku didn't know what to say. Impulsively, he reached out to push Sora's bangs out of his face, but the brunette brushed his hand away and glared at him.
Riku let his hand fall back to his side. The room filled with tense silence, smothering everything in its emptiness, before Riku repeated in a quiet, steady voice, "I don't want you to get hurt."
The world crawled by. A cloud shifted outside of Riku's window, baring the face of the moon. Laughter reverberated through the hallway beyond Riku's door before dying abruptly.
And Sora looked for the first time, really looked, and saw the tiny, leafy flower Riku had kept hidden so well.
He was unsure at first. A breath hitched in his throat and he drew back, trying to comprehend this new thing, this new life that Riku had offered him with one simple gesture and one soft phrase. And after a moment, he realized that all there was to do was that: comprehend it. He didn't need to decide. The decision had been made, signed and sealed the first time they'd locked eyes and Riku had or hadn't felt electricity running out his fingertips.
Riku raised his hand again, slowly, and this time, Sora didn't brush it away. Instead, he leaned forward by a nothingth of an inch, then another, and another until Riku's fingertips reached the back of his jaw and drew him forward.
The first press of their lips shot a tingle down through Sora's stomach, and a moment later, so did the second, and the third, until his whole body was pulsing with warmth and relief and ecstasy.
oo00OOO00oo
Sora still felt that tingle and that simultaneous tightness and release in his chest all through the peaceful, glowing afternoons that stretched out beyond that night. Riku did, too. Together they reveled in the small miracles of searching fingertips and a soft mouth tickling the soft skin where jaw meets ear and contented laughter drifting into contented silence. Long after, when those afternoons had faded to a glittering impression of what they really had been, Riku would look back and make a game of remembering every moment of laughter, every eager touch that he could, and he would tape them together and roll them like film to place in the dusty projector in the back of his mind.
A year slipped by, then almost half of a second year until Riku lay on his bed with Sora tucked snugly in his arms, cheek hot against his chest. Riku's dorm was gone, replaced by their apartment. Theirs. Just thinking the word made Riku smile into Sora's hair.
The room was dark save for a small amount of starlight trickling through the window. Neither of them spoke. Words would only have interfered.
Eventually, however, Sora shifted his head and raised a hand to play with Riku's hair. He stared into the dark, expressionless, before whispering, "There's a march three days from now."
Riku was silent for awhile. He already knew the response, but he forced himself to say, "And you're going."
Sora twined his fingers through Riku's hair. "You know I'm going, Riku," he murmured, moist breath tickling Riku's bare skin.
Riku opened his eyes. Sora's baby blues glowed in his shadowed face, shining through the darkness as they always did for Riku, and they met gazes for a long time.
Then Riku wrapped his arms more tightly around Sora's waist and whispered into his hair, "Yeah, okay. Okay." Sora had never managed to teach Riku to care about anyone but Sora, but Riku understood that the brunette's love for everything and everyone made up the essence of his being. That essence was sacred, and thusly Riku protected it at all cost.
So Sora said he wanted to go. And he would go.
Riku clutched Sora tighter and showered his face with kisses until Sora shifted his weight and kissed him back, tilted Riku's chin up with his persistent mouth and lost his fingers in Riku's hair.
They slipped into blinding bliss in the darkness.
oo00OOO00oo
Three days later, Riku woke up to find the pillow next to him empty. He let his mind sluggishly shrug off sleep before raising a stiff hand to the empty pillow and tracing the impression of a head that Sora had left there. There was a note at the edge of the impression.
I'll be back tonight. I love you.
It had a small heart drawn at the bottom of it. Riku groped across the pillow, closed his finger around the note, and drew it to his lips. I love you, too.
He got up and poured himself a bowl of cornflakes, setting the note down beside the milk carton where he could still see it.
oo00OOO00oo
Everything after he hung up the phone blurred and ran together like watercolors on soaked paper. At some point, everything ceased to make sense, and so Riku wasn't at all surprised when he found himself standing on an open lawn in the small hours of the next morning, covered in dirt and grass stains and bleeding from the knuckles of his right hand. He foggily remembered punching a wall, and nothing else.
There would be a memorial service on a Sunday. It's all wrong, was all Riku could think. Sora hated Sundays. Sora would never had let it happen, and Riku wanted, desperately wanted to tell someone, but when he got there, all he could do was stare at the little 4 by 5 photos of baby Sora eating cake; tiny Sora on a bike; beaming Sora with his daddy; beautiful, brilliant, blazing, world-changing Sora who knew where to tickle Riku to make him squirm and what flavors of ice cream Riku would never eat and the exact outline of the scar on Riku's inner thigh. His Sora.
He wanted to slap the girl who went up to the podium to speak. She got it all wrong, all of it, because Sora liked things simple and down-to-earth and her speech was full of quotes and wet running mascara. And the man who spoke after that—how could he pretend to know Sora so well? Who knew Sora better than the one who had slept with Sora's small fingers tangled in his hair every night up until a week ago?
And when someone asked "Were you very close to him?" in a hushed voice, Riku wanted to tear the whole place down with his bare hands and his teeth, to scream in all of their faces and pull out his hair and shout at the top of his lungs until his throat bled, "I loved him! I loved him! I LOVED HIM!"
He stood in the middle of the mass of friends and relatives swirling around him and all he could think of was his roommate and his roommate's cousin. That one, there, the blonde—that was Sora's cousin, someone had told him, and he had somehow registered it through the fog that had eaten away his mind since the phone call. That was Sora's cousin, and in Riku's mind he saw an endless chain of cousins attending an endless chain of funerals, all throughout time, forever, until all human civilizations had crumbled to dust and there was nothing left but silence and finally, finally peace.
oo00OOO00oo
The body was cremated, so there was no grave. Riku had nowhere to put all of the old film he had patched together for the projector in his mind, so it played constantly for the first few months: every time he buried his face in the pillow beside him, every time he sat in the grass and let the trees dapple his face and drop slender leaves on his head.
For Sora's family, he faded into memory as Sora's old roommate. After he tore up the third check they sent him to cover Sora's half of the apartment, they didn't contact him as much, and finally, not at all.
So Riku would sit and watch the news. They had never given him many details on the shooting, and he hadn't asked. The crowd got out of hand, the police claimed, and someone set off cherry bombs or something. It didn't matter. They never seemed to need an excuse. Someone had told Riku that it had been on the news. He was glad that he had missed it. He never went looking for the clip.
Most of the time, Riku sat and wondered about Sora's cousin. He wondered if Sora's cousin had a roommate who was madly in love with a secret boyfriend who cared passionately about the whole universe and everything in it with every ounce of his being. He wondered if anyone could possibly have what he once had.
And one evening, as he sat under their tree piecing together bits of film from back before the long, glimmering afternoons had sprouted or flourished or died in a burst of flame, he remembered a few things about "good intentions," "benevolent wars," and a question that he couldn't answer at the time. And he decided he had his answer. And he reached into his pocket to feel the worn edges of a folded, fuzzy piece of paper that held every answer anyone could possibly want to that question, all wrapped up, condensed, and squeezed out the tip of a ballpoint pen early in the morning above a small drawing of a heart.
I'll be back tonight. I love you.