Open Your Heart – Angry

by taitofan

Rated PG-13 for sexual situations (future entries may be rated higher)

Disclaimer: If Kingdom Hearts were mine, Isa and Lea would be happy together right now. So obviously, nope, not mine!

Author's Note: Here's the first in a set of twenty-six fics for my KH otp. Some will be Axel and Saix, some will be Lea and Isa. Some will be short, others will be about this length. These will be all over the timeline, from BBS to a hypothetical happy ending KH3. Therefore, there will be spoilers up to Dream Drop Distance. I'm aiming for one a day, so let's get started!

If you have any CC, please share and I'll listen. Please read, review, and enjoy! Finished 06-12-13

It had been a long time since Isa finally got his heart, mind, and body back.

At least, long enough that Lea thought maybe it was time for him to stop moping.

"Come on," Lea insisted, standing in the doorway of Isa's room in their little shared house, "you can't hide in here forever. I think the sun misses seeing you."

"Very funny." Isa's tone made it clear that he didn't think it was funny in the slightest, but Lea paid him no mind.

In the four months since Isa was freed from being a vessel, he'd barely left the safety of the small house they'd been provided. It worried Lea; Isa had never been a social butterfly, but now he was too… Well, Lea wasn't even sure what he was. Depressed? Afraid? A little of both? Regardless, he didn't want Isa to be any of those things. He wanted him to be happy and to stop blaming himself for things beyond his control. But every time he told Isa 'It's not your fault,' he was met with silence.

"Well, I try my hardest you know. Someone around here needs to have a sense of humor." Isa didn't reply to that. He didn't even move. He just lay on his bed and starred at the ceiling. Well, that certainly wasn't going to help matters, but Lea was running out of ideas. How could he help his best friend get out of his funk…?

He thought about all that he'd tried and how spectacularly they'd failed, before a silly idea popped into his mind. He supposed it couldn't hurt though…

"Come on, get up and let's go get sea-salt ice cream. We haven't done that in years!" They'd worshipped that ice cream as kids, and even as Axel, Lea never stopped craving it. But Saix never gone with him to get any, too busy working on their plans to leave for something as trivial as that. Surely that could make him—

"No. You were too busy ignoring our plans and being friends with Roxas and Xion to do anything like that with me." He spat out the word 'friends' as if it left a bad taste in his mouth, and Lea was momentarily stunned. This was the most emotion he'd shown since his initial breakdown when he was freed… And Lea didn't particularly like it.

"Excuse me? You wouldn't have gone with me anyway, so—"

"How do you know?" Isa demanded, sitting up and glaring at Lea. His eyes were green again, but they held as much contempt as Saix's golden gaze ever had. "You never bothered to ask me. I never once stopped working towards our goal, even when you started to ignore me in favor of those children. So don't you dare say I wouldn't have. I—"

He cut himself off and shook his head in frustration. Lea still didn't know what to say, and he was too angry to trust himself to say much even if he did. He knew there was a lot Isa hadn't told him, and keeping it in wasn't helping matters.

…But wasn't that what got them into trouble in the first place? They stopped communicating and started keeping secrets. They both claimed that the other had changed, and maybe they had, but there was no reason their friendship had to as well. If only…

Well, Axel had lost Saix. Lea wasn't going to lose Isa, no matter what.

"All right, if you want to bring up the past, fine. Here's how I see it. You were focused on finding out Xemnas's plan and stopping him, then taking over so we could get our hearts back. You were willing to sacrifice anyone to do it."

"Not everyone." He turned his gaze to his clenched hands. "Not you."

"Fine," Lea relented, unable to doubt that even with as upset as Isa was making him. "Everyone but me. I was the only one you cared about, right? Even with our hearts gone, you still remembered how being friends felt. And our hearts started coming back without us knowing it and I was friends with Roxas and Xion, and you were getting possessed or whatever so you didn't understand it…"

"No. That's… That's not it." Lea scoffed. How very like Isa, to insist things but not offer any elaboration. He'd been like that before too, always seeming like he wanted to tell him something, but never going through with it. Lea had no intentions of letting that happen now though.

"Oh? You gonna tell me what the truth is then? Come on Isa, secrets got us into this mess to begin with!" Isa's hands relaxed, but he still didn't face Lea. Lea wished he knew what his problem was.

"…I could feel my heart returning as well, though I thought it impossible due to the influence taking over. When I was in control, I… I was jealous. I was your friend. I was the only one who knew Lea, not just Axel. And you began to push me away, and it made me angry. My… emotions were greater than someone with no heart should have felt. I knew that, but I ignored it. I was wrong." The anger was out of his voice, and Lea felt his drain away as well. How very strange, he thought, that they went through so many similar experiences, and yet Lea was just now learning these things.

He felt guilt well up in his chest. It wasn't solely Isa's fault that things had ended as badly as they had. Lea hadn't wanted to bring it up, thinking it would do nothing but make Isa feel worse, but…

"I was jealous too you know." Isa finally glanced up, a look on confusion in his eyes. "Yeah, I know, what did I have to be jealous about, right? Well, ha, you're gonna think this is stupid, and it probably was, but… It was Xemnas."

"Xemnas," Isa repeated, his tone not hiding his incredulity in the slightest.

"Hey, I said I know it's dumb now, didn't I? I knew that you getting close to earn his trust was part of the plan, but sometimes I saw you with him and thought…" Oh, the things he'd thought. The terrible, horrible things he'd imagined Saix was doing behind closed doors. "…I thought you were going to extreme lengths to get him to trust you."

There was an awkward silence. They starred at each other for several long moments, until Isa's eyes narrowed.

"You thought I was having sex with him." It wasn't a question, but Lea nodded anyway. "And that made you… jealous."

"Ah, well… Yeah, it did." This wasn't how Lea wanted Isa to find out how he felt about him, in the past and at this very moment even, but it was too late to turn back now. "I never got to tell you I loved you before we lost our hearts. Of course I was jealous."

Lea didn't know how Isa would react. Certainly he wouldn't hate him, but indifference or pretending he hadn't heard it were decent possibilities. Therefore, when Isa was off the bed and throwing his arms around Lea's shoulders moments after the words left his mouth, he was understandably surprised.

"Lea… You're an idiot." Lea tentatively wrapped his arms around Isa's waist, humming in satisfaction when Isa leaned into him.

"Yeah, I can be. Why this time though?"

"I've been in love with you since I was old enough to know what the word meant. You were all I had, and yet you had so many other friends… I was jealous of all of them. And now you're telling me you've felt the same way and we've wasted all of this time… You're supposed to be the impetuous one. You should have told me when we had our hearts the first time."

Lea chucked and ran a hand in gentle circles around Isa's back. This wasn't how he thought things would go when he suggested ice cream… No, they'd turned out much better.

"Sorry, but you know me. Gotta keep you guessing." He pulled away just enough to bring their faces together. Their lips were almost touching when he paused. "I love you Isa. Never forget that."

"I've already got it memorized." Lea would have laughed if Isa hadn't already closed the gap and was kissing him soundly. Lea wasted no time in returning it with equal vigor. He'd, no, they'd waited a long time for this.

When they parted, Isa was softly panting and Lea grinned.

"Hey… Wanna get ice cream now?"

And Isa just laughed and kissed Lea again, before finally allowing himself to be dragged outside.

After all, they had the rest of their lives to make up for lost time. Why not start with some ice cream?