Flirting and the Art of Kissing Idiots
By Rhino7
Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts, its characters or storyline. This oneshot is mine, as is Kelly. This piece is dedicated to Endings Matter Most, who has wonderfully followed many of my humble KH stories and left awesome reviews, despite the lack of substantial Riku in the majority of them. While I don't personally ship Riku and Kairi, I wanted to give them a whirl. So here you are, EMM, my best attempt at a RiKai story!
..:-X-:..
Day four of the worst heat wave in Destiny Islands recorded history was upon them.
Well, day four and a half…whatever, beside the point…
It was the middle of the night, but the beach was glowing bright. The bonfires were scattered haphazardly across the sand of the main island. Someone had gotten a little gratuitous with the fire-starter and a few of the bonfires were starting to grow tall enough to tempt the swaying canopies of the palm trees.
Even in the middle of the night, the heat was thick and palpable, unseasonably humid. The air seemed to hang on the skin like cobwebs, making everything sticky and uncomfortable. In hindsight, bonFIRES probably didn't help Wakka's theory: it was too hot to have a party during the day, so how about a night party?
Then again, Wakka chose to wear his hair like that…
The fires cast orange and yellow colors dancing across the rocks and trees along the upper part of the beach, immersing the party-goers in the warm light. The moon was only half full, but the night sky was so clear that it, along with the uncountable stars, cast a pale blue hue across the shoreline, the waves, and the moving bodies.
School was out for summer, roughly a month after Riku, Kairi, and Sora had returned home from their adventures. All of the village kids were in a festive mood, and everyone was inventing opportunities to throw a big end-of-semester bash. Given the weather, it had been too hot to do anything but stay indoors or splash around in the ocean. Under the cooler eyes of the night sky, however, some more fun could be had.
A group of party-goers had set up a net in the sand and started a pick-up game of volleyball. They had been playing for over an hour now. Some kids left the game to join their friends at the fires, replaced by others who had gotten tired of sitting around the fire. Victors went for a triumphant splash in the ocean. Losers threw each other into the water.
Basically, everybody was getting soaked either way. Luckily everyone had come to the party in swimwear anyway.
Well, most everybody.
It was…bizarre…to consider throwing a party just for the end of school, Riku mused. Celebrating the end. He, Kairi, and Sora had missed nearly an entire academic year and a half of school. They had returned near the end of the recently-finished semester, and, given the mess of their lives for the past 18 some-odd months, none of their parents had really pushed them to return to school for one lousy month. They could use the vacation.
Now vacation was here, and all of their friends were free too. Peace had come to the outer worlds. Darkness had been defeated again. Organization XIII had fallen. He and his friends were all together, home, with their families, and safe.
So why did he still feel so…distant from it all?
He had known that coming back would always be difficult. He had expected it. He played the anxiety down around the other two, but only because they were anxious enough as it was. Yet, they weren't having much trouble adjusting back to 'normal'. Sora was playing volleyball in swimming trunks with the others, soaked from being shot-put into the ocean by Wakka. Kairi was sitting with Selphie and some other girls away from one of the fires, and even though she was wearing a purple bikini, Riku hadn't seen her swim all night.
Girls were just weird that way…He wasn't complaining.
This was their coming-home party, in a way. Sora and Kairi were living it up. And here Riku was, sitting on the pier, watching from a distance, looking in from the outside. Selphie had already jabbered at him about where he'd been, did he notice her haircut, blah, blah. Tidus had tried unsuccessfully to coax him into the game. Sora had thrown a fish at him.
Life was back to normal. Maybe that was the problem.
With a soft sigh, he looked up at the stars. All the years that he'd spent gazing at the night sky, up until that fateful night that the Heartless came, he had never seen so many stars. Thousands upon thousands of them, each one shining more brightly and more boldly than the last. Before, he had wondered what was 'out there', whether other worlds existed, and what adventures lay in store for them. Now he knew that each and every pinprick of light in the sky was an entire planet, a world teeming with life and culture and lore that made the imagination stretch.
How many worlds were able to gleam in the night sky because of Sora? Because of his 'never give up' attitude and that boundless energy that infected everyone around him? How many of those restored worlds had been put in harm's way because of Riku? Because of his over-ambitious desire to do everything, to save everyone, even at the price of his heart?
He had been so determined to save Kairi, but it had been his fault that she had lost her heart in the first place. The Heartless always attacked randomly. No individual person's actions or thoughts could put a world in the Heartless' crosshairs…but Riku had been so eager to escape this tiny island paradise, to get out and explore and see the beyond…It was just easier to believe that it was his fault.
Yes, he thought dryly. It was easier to believe that his naïve self had inadvertently drawn the Heartless to Destiny Islands than to believe that there was no point, no plan, and no method to the madness. Then again, maybe it was perfectly logical for the Heartless to attack here. He had been chosen to wield the Keyblade…Look how well THAT turned out.
With a snort, he looked back to the teens on the beach, just in time to see Sora and Tidus both throw their arms in the air in victory, bursting into the most unusual triumphant dance that likely any of them had ever seen. Even their fellow players looked slightly alarmed, and the opposing side of the net looked ready to ambush them. A quick glance up the shore showed Kairi, Selphie, and that one friend of Selphie's—Kelly, maybe—laughing at Sora and Tidus's antics.
How did Sora DO that?
After nearly two years of going through the most grueling, innocence-shredding, and stressful time of his life, one month later the guy is prancing around a volleyball game, laughing and joking and entertaining everybody. Riku couldn't fathom it.
Maybe that was why the Keyblade had rejected him and chosen Sora instead.
Riku hissed in exasperation, cutting off that train of thought and looking toward the ocean instead. It was so dark, and the light of the fire didn't reach the water. He could hear the waves, smell them, feel them roll in before he could see them. It had reached the dark part of the night when one couldn't discern where the ocean ended and the sky began…aside from the eventual scattering of bright stars the higher one looked.
He sat there for a while, just watching the moon's light dancing across the sloshing surface of the ocean and the twinkle of the stars overhead. 'To the heart seeking freedom, this island is a prison surrounded by water': those had been that monster's words, and he had been so far gone at that point, that he had believed Xehanort and his talk of darkness. Of freedom. But by now, he had tasted freedom, and it was a little rich. Right now, sitting on the pier, hearing his friends cavorting around bonfires behind him, 'prison' was the last word he would think to describe Destiny Islands.
Sure, it wasn't paradise, but it was home, and he would never take for granted that simple fact again.
"Amazing, isn't it?"
Riku jerked, twisting around slightly. Kairi was standing on the pier, hands clasped behind her back, looking up at the sky, head tilted just so with a soft smile on her face. The pier was a creaky, rickety thing; how she had managed to sneak up on him without making any noise was beyond him.
Again, not complaining.
"Yeah." He replied mildly, looking up at the star filled sky.
"Hard to believe that every single one of them is an entire world." She said, looking awed. "They all look so tiny from here."
Riku looked at her for a moment. The moonlight and the flickering from the fires gave her skin a two-toned effect. She had always been rail-thin, but the whole adventure had taxed her slightly. Her and Sora both, he had noted. But now that she was so close, he could tell that she was getting better. She looked healthy. The bikini only emphasized that.
Kairi lowered her face from the stars to look at him. "What are you doing all the way over here by yourself?"
Realizing that he'd been caught staring, Riku twitched and focused instead on the beach-goers. "It's quieter over here. I can hear myself think."
"Are we sure that's a good idea?" She chuckled, kneeling down and sitting next to him, though she was angled more toward the beach rather than the open ocean like he was.
He snorted at that. "It's just…This is all so…weird."
She wrapped her hands around the edge of the pier by her legs. "Weird how?"
"Well…all of it." He made a vague gesture. "After everything we've been through: the worlds, the battles, the enemies…To just come back home…Nothing has changed here. That's not a bad thing, but it's…hard to adjust to."
Kairi looked thoughtful. "I wouldn't say that nothing changes here."
"Name one thing that has changed at all around here since the Heartless came." He challenged with a smirk.
She pondered for a moment, her bare feet hanging off into the water. "We three have changed."
His lips flattened, and he averted his eyes to the ocean again.
Yeah, the three of them had changed all right. Sora was stronger and had more confidence. Kairi was tougher and more beautiful. Riku was touched by darkness and had been dragged twice around the angst tree. He still had the scars to prove it.
He saw Kairi glance at him and straighten.
"I mean…" She bumbled slightly. "My hair's gotten longer. You grew about a foot and a half…and Sora, well, he can beat Wakka, Selphie, and Tidus at sparring completely unarmed."
Riku tilted his head at that, looking at her. "It's okay. You can say it out loud."
She blinked, "Say…what?"
"All three of us individually came face to face with the darkness. Sora punched it in the face. You spat on it. I joined it." He said quietly.
Kairi paused, looking back at him for a moment, and then exhaled heavily. "Riku, I swear, you are like a broken record."
It was his turn to be confused.
"We all did stuff that we wish we could take back." She explained. "The trick is to try and move on and not think about it too much." She knocked her shoulder against his. "The past is the past for a reason. It's impossible for things to go back to the way they were."
He canted his head. "That's for sure…Not sure I'd want to change things back even if I could."
Kairi sighed, "Same here."
There was a tone to her voice that gave Riku pause. He looked sideways at her, but she didn't return the look. Instead, she continued to gaze forward along the shoreline of the island.
It was little secret that Sora and Kairi had had feelings for each other. All throughout their adventure that much had been obvious. Of course, Riku figured that his own feelings for Kairi hadn't been much more subtle. Regardless, Sora and Kairi together had always made more sense. Sora was the hero, the savior of the worlds, the one who defeated the Heartless and Organization XIII. Kairi was a Princess of Heart, an innocent soul, the light-whisperer so to speak. How much more 'meant-to-be' could you get?
And as much as it pained him, he had stepped back. When they all returned to Destiny Islands after the final battle against Xemnas, he had given his two friends some space to sort through all of that. Sora had earned Kairi's affection, and, frankly, he deserved it more than Riku did, in Riku's opinion. All those years, Riku had been so sure of himself, so cocky and arrogant. Riku had always been the strongest of the group on the island; he knew that. Sora was kind of a runt, the ugly duckling. But when it came down to it, Sora had stepped up and fought the darkness, fought the Heartless, even fought Riku a few times. They were on even turf.
So when he had seen that look in Kairi's eyes, and he had heard that awkward tone in Sora's voice, Riku knew what was happening, and he had left them alone.
Not even an hour later, he had bumped into them—still friends, nothing more. The look in Kairi's eyes was gone and the awkward tone in Sora's voice had vanished. Whatever romantic feelings that they had harbored were simply…not there anymore. Sora had made some absent remark about Kairi being 'more like a sister anyway', and Kairi had muttered something about how Sora was 'a big dumb guy'.
Whatever had happened—or, er, not happened—his two friends seemed okay with it.
Riku didn't complain.
And neither did Sora, who at the moment was now having a sidebar with Selphie's friend, Kelly, doing some epic retelling of some battle from his adventures. Beside her friend, Selphie looked bored. Kelly looked enraptured. Sora didn't appear to be missing that bit and started exaggerating his movements even more: a swing here, a parry there, a dramatic reenactment of a Heartless dying from his raw, manly power.
Kelly ate it up.
Riku quirked an eyebrow at the sight. He could never be that forward or carefree as Sora.
Kairi finally looked at Riku and then turned to follow his gaze. She snickered. "What a ham, huh."
Riku snorted but then sombered. "Yeah."
Kairi looked at him. "You're…jealous?"
"What? No." Riku shook his head incredulously. "Just…perplexed. How can he be so…unaffected after everything we went through?"
"Unaffected?" Kairi laughed out loud at that—enough that Sora, Kelly, and Selphie all glanced over for a beat. "Riku, you have to loosen up."
He frowned and didn't respond.
She composed herself and quieted, chuckling once or twice.
Why did he have to loosen up? Would she prefer it if he just cavorted around with reckless abandon like Sora? Clearly not, or she wouldn't have friend-zoned Sora for being just that: childish and devil-may-care.
Kairi seemed to sense a need to explain her statement and dropped her hands to her lap. "I just mean…not everything has to be so dramatic."
Riku gave her a flat look and pointed wordlessly over to Sora, who had roped Tidus into portraying some…giant beast maybe?...and Sora proceeded to wail on him with a stick to impress Kelly, who was reacting like an easily-entertained 5 year old, complete with 'ooh's, 'ah's, and 'wow's.
"So…what?" Riku looked back to Kairi. "I'm supposed to be a dork instead?"
"Nooo." She laughed, "Just…do something spontaneous…Don't think so much. Overthinking is just as bad as not thinking enough. Sometimes worse." She bobbed her head. "Shoot first and ask questions later once in a while."
"That makes no sense." Riku frowned, "The whole problem with shooting first and asking questions later is…" He trailed away when Kairi quirked an eyebrow at him, as though to jibe 'see what I mean?'
He pursed his lips and faced forward again. "Whatever."
"Now." She teased lightly, smacking his knee. "Don't be a grump. Being spontaneous isn't hard. You just…do."
"Do…what?"
"Whatever you want. Whatever pops into your head…See?" Kairi pointed over to where Sora had mimicked 'rescuing' Kelly from the evil Tidus-monster-whatever-thing, and Kelly had promptly thanked him by suction-cupping her lips to his mouth. Selphie looked horrified and Tidus made a gagging noise.
Riku blinked, "Can I get that image OUT of my head?"
"Kelly saw something she wanted and she went for it." Kairi mimicked applause. "Bravo." She faded off, looking less impressed. "…and…."
Riku looked again and saw that Sora had stumbled slightly in surprise, only to shrug—seriously, shrug?—and turn it into a full blown make out session with Kelly. Selphie and Tidus scattered. Riku looked smugly to Kairi, who looked a little disturbed.
"Okay…bad example." She waved a hand.
"No, no." Riku wasn't going to let her get out of it that easily. "Was that not spontaneous enough?"
"Well yeah but…" Color touched her cheeks and she pulled her knees up out of the water and to her chest. "…Shut up."
Snickering at her embarrassment, Riku glanced back over to see Sora and Kelly still going at it. He just as quickly looked away. Spontaneous, huh? He would characterize that less as being spontaneous and more as really throwing yourself out on a limb. Hell, half of his life he had avoided 'the limb'. Sora had practically set up living quarters on 'the limb' though.
He looked back to Kairi, who looked back at him. Besides, what did spontaneity have to do with anything? Spontaneous was deciding to splash in a puddle instead of walking around it, or stepping on a crunchy leaf on the sidewalk. Randomly kissing somebody was just craz—
Kairi abruptly leaned over and pecked him on the lips.
Before Riku could register what had just happened, Kairi had leaned back out of his bubble, hugged her knees again, and resumed gazing across the shoreline.
"…" He stared at her—rather, the side of her head. "…what?"
She huffed, not looking at him. "Spontaneous."
He squinted one eye, trying to follow that logic. "…what?"
"I…pulled a Kelly." She hunched shoulders, her ears turning red.
"…what?" He blinked again. "Pulled a Kelly—is that the new phrase for 'assault' now?"
She looked at him and he saw that her face had turned scarlet. "No! It means…I…" She pulled what could only be called a Sora Face to try to find the right words. "…saw something I wanted…so I went for it."
She met his eyes briefly and looked back toward the beach.
What the actual Hell?
Riku could only stare dumbly at her. She just kissed him—if that could be called a kiss, was more of a drive-by lip attack—and now she was playing nonchalant?
WHAT WAS WITH THIS WOMAN?
This bizarre, unpredictable, adorable, beautiful, amazing girl. She never ceased to surprise him, baffle him, and render him absolutely speechless. How was he even supposed to respond to this? What did it mean?
Was this a 'I have feelings for you' thing? Was it a 'thought I'd give it a try' thing? Was this a 'test shot' thing? Was this a 'Tidus put his dad's special mix in the punch bowl' thing?
"…what?" He repeated again.
Kairi looked at him haughtily. "One of us had to do it, ya big idiot." She pointed at him. "I took the initiative with the first kiss. That was spontaneous. You're on your own with the second."
They both paused as the statement lingered.
"Second?" Riku lifted an eyebrow.
Kairi's face filled with blood. "Derp…"
As she tried to mutter a response, Riku just stared at her.
He saw something he wanted. Madly.
So he reached out and touched her neck, coaxing her forward. She let him draw her close until their lips met again. Slower this time. Longer. His mind went blank as she began to kiss him back. He tilted his head to deepen the kiss and felt her hands move to his chest, lingering there.
All coherent thought went out the window, save for one phrase, pounding across his brain with every beat of his pulse: I'm kissing Kairi, I'm kissing Kairi, I'm kissing Kairi. And she was returning it. She wasn't pulling away. She wasn't telling him to stop. She wasn't giving any kind of indication that she wasn't enjoying it. She wasn't complaining.
As the kiss drew to a close, Riku absently leaned his forehead forward against hers. Their lips detached, but their faces remained intoxicatingly close. He could smell the gentle fragrance of her shampoo, mingling perfectly with the natural scent of her skin. He tentatively opened his eyes and saw that her eyes were still closed, forehead against his, breathing measuredly.
Unable to help himself, he kissed her again. A shorter, follow-up of a kiss, and then reluctantly straightened. Kairi seemed to lean forward a little as he moved away, though she caught herself and sat up, opening her eyes.
"Wow." She stammered, cheeks reddening.
Riku could feel his own face heating up, and he swallowed, not exactly sure where to go from here. Thoughts crashed back into his head like an avalanche.
"Kairi…" was all he could manage to get out.
She sheepishly brushed her hair from her eyes, tucking it behind her ear. "Yes?" She asked, looking at him in a way that was both innocent and absolutely smoldering.
"I…" It felt like a physical lump was lodged in his throat, like a fist around his vocal chords preventing him from finishing the sentence.
"Yes?" She leaned in a little, almost prying it out of him.
I really like you. I've always liked you. Not like friends…Well, like friends, but more than friends. What I'm trying to say is that I'm falling in love with you. I've been falling for years, but I've never felt good enough for you. That's only been reinforced by the past two years, but if you let me, if you give me a shot, I promise that I'll spend the rest of my life trying to make you happy. If I can make you even a fraction as happy as you make me just by existing, just by sitting here next to me, just by smiling at me, then I will be complete. You've become my light, and damn near the only thing that holds my darkness at bay. I want this. I want you. I don't want to mess this up. I want to do this right. I want to kiss you every day from now on.
That's what went through Riku's mind in the split second after Kairi leaned in, pressing her question. That's what he wanted to say. What came out was…
"…Date." He blurted.
Kairi blinked. "Huh?"
"Date." He blurted again. "Would you want to…go on one…with…me?" He finished awkwardly.
Dear God, how did Sora survive out on the limb like this? It was terrifying.
For a moment—but what felt like three years—Kairi looked at him like a deer in the headlights. If SHE looked like a deer in the headlights, then Kingdom Hearts only knew what HE looked like.
"An—" She started.
"If you wanted to." He stammered, trying to recover. "Just a thought. Sorry." He squinted. Sorry? SORRY? "Just…sometime."
Nice recovery, dumbass, he inwardly scolded.
Her expression softened. "Yes. Of course. Anytime." She smiled.
And the universe got a little brighter.
Riku couldn't stifle the smile that plastered itself dumbly across his mouth, and he didn't try to. For that moment, everything was perfect for the first time since the Heartless had come.
"So, what do we do now?" Kairi prompted after a beat.
He looked to her and sat back a little, glancing toward the beach. "For now…we could rejoin the party."
She smirked. "Suddenly you feel like mingling with partiers? Small talk and corny jokes and…Wakka?"
He offered a little shrug. "Someone recently told me that I think too much when I'm by myself."
Kairi scooted back and got to her feet. "Then I will just have to make sure that you aren't left by yourself, then, won't I?" She said, putting her hands on her hips.
With a snort, Riku got to his feet as well. "That seems to be the only solution."
She giggled and glanced back toward the bonfire, where Wakka was now telling some overused scary story about sea creatures. Around the great tree, Tidus was hiding, wrapping seaweed around himself to become the 'sea creature' to jump out and scare everybody at the story's critical moment. Sora had rejoined the volleyball game on the beach, and Selphie and Kelly were talking in low, giggly tones. Kelly's face was red.
Kairi raised a hand, as though to tell Riku a secret. "They can smell fear, so stay cool."
He gave a mock-serious nod. "Gotcha."
They stepped down off the pier to head back over to the bonfire. As they did so, Riku found himself wondering. Kairi had said yes to a date. Kairi had kissed him first. All it had taken was one simple question. Why in Kingdom Hearts had that taken so long?
Maybe spontaneity could be a good thing, maybe even a catalyst for something great.
With that thought in mind, he reached out and slid his hand around Kairi's as they walked. It felt brazen and very forward to him, but…dammit…he just felt like doing it. And his heart skipped when he felt her return the grip, moving her fingers between his without breaking stride. He couldn't help but glance at her and see a smile curl her lips as she half-glanced at him.
"But when the sun came up, the ship was completely empty." Wakka was saying, whooshy-arms over his head and everything. "And all that remained of the passengers and crew was some blood and clawmarks on the deck."
Tidus scampered out from behind the great tree. Riku and Kairi, having both forgotten that he had been hiding around, started slightly, but not nearly as much as the group that Wakka had spent the past ten minutes telling his story to. Tidus practically leapt at the group around the bonfire, shrouded in seaweed and…other crap…and roared. Roughly half of the group yelped or screamed at his entrance, while the other half merely jumped and proceeded to moan at his attempt. Selphie yelped in surprise and then rolled her eyes. Kelly shrieked and flopped from her seat to the sand.
"Some things never change." Kairi snorted.
Riku exhaled, feeling truly relaxed for the first time in years. He traced the fire from the pit up to the starry night sky. She was right. There were some things in life that would never change. Maybe that was a good thing. Tonight, for instance, was a very good thing, he thought as he gave her hand a light squeeze.
The volleyball from the game bounced over, smacking Tidus square in the face. The culprit, judging by the manic laugh to be Sora, leapt onto the scene…to save the day…because that's what Sora did.
"Some things stay the same." Riku sighed, as he and Kairi watched Tidus and Sora proceed to duke it out in front of the startled group.
Some things would never change.
He wasn't complaining.
..:-X-:..
A/N: So there it is. The title is a play on an older oneshot of mine—Kissing and the Art of Flirting with Idiots—which was basically my movement away from the SoKai pairing. The character Kelly is an OC that used to pop up on the sidelines of some of my older Destiny Islands stories. I threw her in there for funnsies.
Well, I hope this was at least close. Not sure if I'll pursue the pairing, but this was my first time writing with the Destiny Islands gang in quite a long while. Hope you enjoyed!
Constructive feedback is always welcome and appreciated!