Hey all! So, I've had this rolling around in my brain for a solid two and a half years, stumbled upon a tiny handwritten portion of it a month or so ago, and decided to finish writing it. Surprisingly, I enjoyed writing this, so I hope you guys enjoy reading it!
Peals of laughter rang on the beach of the Destiny Islands, along with rapid footfalls of little feet.
"Come on, Sora!" Little six-year-old Riku called out ahead of the five-year-old brunette. "You can run faster than that!"
Sora panted as he tried to catch up. "You always… get a… head start! It's no… fair!"
Riku ignored his friend's usual complaining and made a mad dash towards the wooden bridge.
There was a shout and the soft thud of something hitting the sand hard from behind him as he crossed under the bridge.
The silver-haired boy slowed himself to a stop, recognizing his feat. "I win again, Sora!" he gloated.
But instead of the usual complaints, excuses, and shouts for a rematch, Riku heard a sob behind him.
Sora did a number of things when he lost; crying was not one of them.
"Sora?" Riku asked hesitantly, turning around to face his friend. The brunette boy sat on the sand, cradling one of his knees.
Forgotten completely about the race he just won, Riku ran back to where Sora sat.
"Are you okay, Sora? What happened?"
Sora sniffled and hiccupped, tears starting their trails down his round face. "I w-was trying to c-catch up, but I fell a-and a really sharp seashell cut my knee and it h-h-hurts!"
Riku knelt down beside him and attempted to peel the younger boy's hand away from his knee, but was met with a flinch.
"No, don't touch it!" Sora whimpered, pushing the older boy's hands away.
"I need to see how bad it is, Sora." Riku insisted, fighting against the brunette.
"Stoooooop!"
Finally, the silver-haired boy stood up, frustrated.
"Fine. Sit here and cry. I was only trying to help." Riku only took a few steps before Sora called him back.
"I'm s-sorry." He sniffed. "J-just… be careful, okay?"
Riku walked the short distance back and sat back down next to the brunette.
After a few seconds, Sora took a deep breath and let go of his knee.
There was a fine layer of sand on his knee which, underneath all of the sand, only looked a little scraped. The scrapes, however, were deep enough that they drew blood.
"Your knee isn't cut, but it still looks pretty bad. Plus, you got sand in it when you were holding it." The older boy stood up again. "Hold on, lemme go get something."
He looked around the beach and approached the shoreline, grabbing a bottle that washed up onto the land. Then, he walked back to the waterfall, filling up the bottle. As a last minute thought, Riku swished his hands around in the waterfall's basin to make sure that he didn't have any sand on them before he returned to Sora.
"Okay, you need to keep your hands away from your knee. Part of why it hurt so bad was because you rubbed sand in it."
The younger boy nodded, keeping his hands in his lap as Riku tended to him.
Grabbing the bottle of water, the silver-haired boy adjusted Sora's leg so it was sticking out straight and carefully poured the water over the scrape to remove the sand.
Realizing that he didn't grab anything to dry the brunette's leg off with, Riku opted to use his shirt, pulling the hem away from his body and clumsily wrapping it around his hand to dab the water off.
Once Sora's knee felt dry enough, he let go of his shirt, the stretched fabric falling back a little loosely than before.
The brunette smiled at his friend, his tears long forgotten. "Thanks, Rik-"
"I've got one last thing to do, Sora."
He tilted his head in confusion. "But, you cleaned my knee. Do you have a band-aid or something?"
Riku didn't answer. Instead, he leaned down close to Sora's knee, giving it a tiny kiss near where the scrape was.
When he looked up, Riku noticed Sora looking at him weirdly, his whole face pink.
"Why did you do that?" the younger asked.
"It's something my mom does when I get hurt. She says that kisses are magic and that they can make the pain go away." He helped Sora up, careful not to let his friend put his knee in the sand.
"It doesn't hurt anymore, does it?"
Sora's smile returned full force, big blue eyes looking at him in awe. "No, it doesn't! Wow, Riku, you got magic kisses!" He threw himself at the older boy, giving him a big hug.
"Thanks, Riku!"
Riku opened his mouth to speak, but closed it, returning his friend's hug.
"No problem, Sora."
"Is that all you got, Riku? Geez, what have you been doing this whole time?"
Said silver-haired boy got up, dusted the sand off of his clothes, and returned to his fighting stance. "Don't get too cocky, Sora." He charged towards Sora, wooden sword in hand, and slashed downward.
The younger boy met Riku's attack head on with one of his own, slashing upwards in hopes making the other stagger, their swords connecting with the distinct clunk of wood hitting wood.
Just as planned, Riku staggered back a bit and Sora took the opportunity to attack from the left.
However, the older quickly recovered and, before Sora's attack could connect; jumped back a few feet, unconsciously lobbing a Dark Fira spell at the other.
Fortunately, Sora quickly dodged the magic attack and looked at Riku in what could be described as disbelief. "I thought we agreed earlier that we couldn't use magic or any other special attacks, you big cheater!" he called out.
"Would you believe me if I said 'my hand slipped'?" Riku called back, trying to diffuse the situation.
Sora didn't answer, but quickly charged at Riku.
"It was an accident, I swear!" the silver-haired boy assured, dodging another attack.
"Accident, my ass! That was aimed for my head!"
"No, no, no! Sora, listen!" he started, seeing that he was clearly in hot water.
But, Sora didn't listen, nor did he attempt to. His disbelief already changed to betrayal with just enough anger to make him impossible to reason with. The only thing he seemed to want was to beat Riku in order to quell his anger.
Riku continued to evade and parry attack after attack, completely thrown off and put on defense.
He jumped back, narrowly avoiding a swipe at his midsection. Wooden sword or not, that would've hurt.
The brunette continued his onslaught, drawing his friend backwards.
"Come on, Sora, you have to-agh!" The silver-haired boy was cut off as he tripped over a rock and fell flat on his back.
Riku's tumble seemed to snap the younger boy out of his anger, blue eyes widening as he dropped his wooden sword.
"Riku! Are you okay?!" he asked, holding his hand out for the older.
"Yeah, I'm fine." Riku replied, grabbing the brunette's hand. "What about you? I didn't expect you to get so upset."
Sora pulled, helping Riku up onto his feet. "I just… overreacted, I guess. I'm sorry." His eyes diverted away from his friend's face in shame, noticing a gash on Riku's arm. "You're bleeding!"
Riku lifted up his left arm and examined his wound. "Oh, I guess I am." He lifted his gaze to Sora. "I'm okay, though. It just stings a little."
"A little?! I'm hurting just looking at you!" Sora grabbed the other's wrist and dragged him over to the waterfall basin. "There's no way we're going back to the main land with your arm like that. Now, sit down."
Riku rolled his eyes at Sora's fussing, but complied anyway, sitting down and looking into the water's reflection, checking his wound out further. The gash seemed to be bleeding more freely, little trickles of blood flowing down the width of his arm.
…So maybe there was a little to worry about.
Sora sat down next to him, removed his gloves, and dipped one of his hands into the water. Then he grabbed ahold of Riku's arm with his dry hand and gently started to wash the blood away.
Despite his best efforts, the older winced and hissed a low curse,
"Don't be a baby, Riku. I thought it only 'stung a little'?" the brunette remarked cheekily , not relenting in his work.
"You're touching it, you smug little shit. Of course it hurts more." Riku retorted.
"Yeah, okay. Like you haven't been through worse."
"Shut up, Sora."
"Oh, hey, look! While you were whining, I finished cleaning your arm!"
Riku looked back down into the water, noticing a lack of red on his arm. "I was not whining. So, does this mean you're done?"
"No, you still need bandages." Sora started rummaging through his pockets, his expression becoming more confused as he searched. "Huh, they're empty. Um…" he looked down for a few seconds and then shot up from his seat.
"I know what'll work! You stay right there." The brunette headed for the treehouse closest to the waterfall, hastily climbing the ladder and dashing down the walkway, out of Riku's sight.
"What is he getting?" Riku thought out loud, looking up at the ladder that Sora had just scaled.
"I got it!"
Almost as fast as he left, Sora came back, a sizable piece of cloth slung over his shoulder. He jumped down from the walkway and hurried back to Riku.
"I almost forgot that this was here." The brunette mentioned, taking the cloth off of his shoulder, ripping a large piece off, and folding it. "I just remembered it a couple of minutes ago. We were going to use it as a sail a few years ago, back when me, you, and Kairi all wanted to find out if there were other worlds out there other than this one. Remember?"
The silver-haired boy remembered what he was talking about, as far as events went, but not the cloth itself.
"You were the one that went supplies hunting, Sora. Not me. I was little busy building the raft." He stated. "Since when has your memory been so vivid?"
Sora continues ripping the cloth apart, tearing it into strips. "I have my moments."
After tearing off five strips, Sora took the folded up piece of cloth and placed it over Riku's gash. He then took the strips, one by one, and tied them snugly around the cloth, securing it to Riku's arm.
"It looks terrible, but it's better than leaving it untreated, right?"
The silver-haired boy opened his mouth, but was cut off by Sora before he could even say anything. "Wait, hold on, I almost forgot something really important!"
At that, Riku furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. "You didn't forget anything. You cleaned and covered my arm, you can't really-"
Sora ignored him with a small smile on his face, lifted Riku's arm a little, and kissed the cloth.
That made Riku shut up very quickly.
"I needed to do something for the pain." The brunette boy explained simply. "Does it hurt anymore?"
Riku could only smile as he recalled when he had showed that to Sora nearly twelve years prior.
"No, it feels great." His arm actually still stung, but it was worth seeing Sora's face light up. "Thank you, Sora."
Sora leaned forwards and pressed a kiss to Riku's lips.
"No problem, Riku."
This originally was supposed to be the first of five little RiSo drabbles based around things that can mean one thing when we're kids, but take on a different meaning when we get older (or something like that. I don't understand 16-year-old me).
The first thing I had thought about back then was that phase where we run to Mommy or Daddy when we got hurt so they could kiss the boo-boos better, since my niece was at that stage at two-years-old. It fell from there. It was morning, I was trying to come up with fanfiction ideas in the middle of English III, you know how it goes.
Now, two and a half years later and I still can't think of anything else that isn't essentially the same thing as this. Nightmares, jealousy... but really it all seems the same to me; or at least I'd wind up writing it the same way.
What about you guys? If any of you have a prompt that could fit in with the theme that I'd thought up, feel free to shoot me a PM or include it in your review and I'll be more than happy to take a shot at it.
As always, thank you for reading!