Natural
Chapter Four

"Kairi!" Sora exclaimed loudly as he burst through the door to Kairi's room.

Kairi squawked loudly and dumped a large amount of the soup she was sipping into her lap, leaving a strange, unpleasant stain across the front of her pajama fronts. She stared at it for a moment before swiveling her head to stare disbelieving at Sora.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, using a box of tissues on her bedside table to mop up some of the soup in her lap and ignoring the stinging pain of warm soup.

"I need help!"

"How'd you get in here?" Kairi asked, eyeing her friend skeptically.

"Your mom let me in, I brought your homework!" he exclaimed loudly, again, waving a moderately sized package of papers that was Kairi's homework. "I'll give them to me if you help me, Kairi."

Kairi gave him a withered expression before setting her bowl of soup down on her bedside table. "I'm sorry, but are you trying to bribe me with my homework?"

Sora gave her a helpless expression. "No, I'm going to give them to you anyway, but I'd really like it if you'd give me five minutes to explain my situation to you. Kairi! I need your help."

"Give me my homework," Kairi said with some resignation in her voice. Sora frolicked over and handed the papers to her, which Kairi set down beside her soup. Breathing in deeply she gestured to her desk chair. "Have a seat, tell me what's up."

"Riku's acting strange!" Sora exclaimed as soon as his backside touched the soft plush of Kairi's chair. He leaned forward earnestly, as if that simple sentence would reveal to Kairi just the depth of his problems and make rise for a brilliant solution that only her sophisticated female mind could produce.

"How?" No such luck. Curses.

"He's being nice to people!"

"Riku's nice to people," Kairi said skeptically. "He's rather polite, actually."

"No, no! I mean, I know he's nice to people," Sora said, quickly backtracking, "but he's been nice to girls."

"Sora, I hardly see how that's strange behavior."

"That's because you're sick and you haven't seen how he's been acting!" Sora protested, waving his arms in the air for good measure, as if his flailing would help Kairi realize the depth of the troubles surrounding her two friends. Kairi simply gave him a withered expression, as if dealing with a child. "I mean… he's been ignoring me."

"You've been ignoring him," Kairi pointed out.

"Kairi! You're not helping me at all!"

"I'm telling you the truth," Kairi reassured. "That's the rule of being a best friend."

"I guess so," Sora muttered, frustrated.

"So…" Kairi said after a long pause. "How long has this been going on?"

"Three days," Sora said, perking up a bit because Kairi seemed ready to help him as best she could. "We had… I don't know. Is it an argument?"

Kairi stared at him, silently imploring him to continue.

Sora sighed. "He called me out for avoiding him, and I couldn't give him the reason."

"What did he do, anyway?"

"He didn't do anything," Sora said miserably, "that's just it!" Sora stood up from the seat he'd been sitting in and began pacing around Kairi's room, fiddling with the hem of his uniform shirt and tugging on his tie irritably. "Riku's my best friend, and he's avoiding me now. I'm avoiding him. He's being nice to all the girls, and guys, too, and he smiles. But he doesn't seem happy. I don't know. I want him to be happy. But I also want him to smile at me again, but it hurts every time I'm close to him. It physically hurts. My heart begins to hammer painfully against my chest and I can't stand to be near him without speaking, but the only things I want to say I can't say in front of Riku and—"

"Sora," Kairi said gently, "you're talking too much again."

The spiky-haired boy clamped his mouth shut and moaned sadly. "God! What is wrong with me?"

"It's obvious, isn't it?" Kairi asked, after mulling over Sora's words. She pursed her lips together and gave Sora a look that suggested to the boy that it really should be obvious, and it wasn't.

"No…?" Sora guessed.

Kairi gave him an 'are you serious' type of expression. The girl coughed when she laughed gently at Sora's hopeless appearance. Shaking her head kindly, she leaned back against her headrest and her pillows. She shifted, trying to cover the soup stain as best she could from Sora's view.

"Riku's upset you've been avoiding him," Kairi began logically.

"But that doesn't explain why he's talking to all these girls all of a sudden! You used to be the only girl he talked to!" Sora fisted the material of his school uniform, still giving Kairi a pleading look. "He was always kind of… you know… mean to the girls at school. He rarely talked to anyone unless he absolutely had to."

"That's true," Kairi said, after coughing a bit and wiping her nose with a tissue. "But he might be lonely."

"Riku would never get lonely!" Sora protested.

Kairi looked at him a long moment. "Think about it, Sora. Riku's not as strong as you make him out to be. Don't you realize what's going through Riku's mind?"

"No…?" Sora said again.

Kairi sighed and rubbed her temples. "I guess I'll just have to tell you then. Riku did some terrible things—and don't interrupt me, close your mouth—he did do bad things, and you forgave him and I forgave him. But did he ever forgive himself? Perhaps he views your avoidance as rejection, as if it's all finally catching up to you and you realize you don't want to be friends with him anymore."

"What?" Sora exclaimed loudly, looking around wildly as if searching for a way to deny Kairi's accusations. "That's ridiculous! I could never hate Riku! I would never reject him! He's the one—"

He clamped his mouth shut.

Kairi looked curious. "He's the one what?"

"Nothing!" Sora shouted loudly and Kairi cringed. Sora dropped his voice with a quickly muttered, "Sorry." He cleared his throat. "No, no! Riku is my best friend! He wouldn't think I'd start to hate him after all we've been through. I've forgive him!"

"Has he forgiven himself, I wonder?" Kairi asked as she coughed again.

Sora felt a bead of sweat roll down the back of his neck. He suddenly felt incredibly uncomfortable.

"Sora?" Kairi asked after he'd stewed in the silence for long enough. She remained silent, even after gaining his attention. She looked like she was picking her words very carefully, and her eyebrows were knit in her concentration. Sora swallowed. Kairi looked at him squarely in the eye and asked, "Do you like Riku?"

"What are you talking about Kairi?" Sora shouted loudly, faster than he normally would answer a question. "HA HA HA. I don't like Riku! I like you!"

He realized belatedly what he'd said and he slapped a hand over his mouth. He stared at Kairi in shock, but Kairi didn't seem happy or surprised. She just looked sad.

She stared at her hands and sighed gently before softly shaking her head. "Oh, Sora."

"Kairi…" Sora began but Kairi shook her head again.

"Why don't you tell me what lead you to this realization?" Kairi looked pointedly at him, square in the eyes. Sora felt raw and exposed under her intense gaze.

"I… what realization?" Sora asked innocently. "I don't know what you're talking about, Kairi, I don't like Riku."

"You like Riku," Kairi said firmly. "I know you do. You don't have to lie to me."

Why did both his friends not believe him when he said something about Kairi? Riku didn't believe him when he said he wasn't with Kairi, and now Kairi didn't believe him when he said he didn't like Riku (and he didn't, but that didn't mean that Kairi was supposed to know about this!) Why were they always so much smarter than he was? It'd taken Sora so long to realize things, and they'd picked up on it so quickly.

"But, Kairi…"

"Sora, be quiet for a minute," Kairi snapped, looking slightly miffed. She turned her face away. "I've known you and Riku for a long time, Sora, and I know what I see isn't just my imagination. Riku's known you a whole lot longer, and he'll figure it out sooner or later. And probably sooner. Perhaps it's better to just tell him."

"No, I—!"

"Be quiet, Sora!" Kairi said and looked like she was about to cry. "Please, just listen to me! I know you like Riku. I think I've known it longer than you've know it yourself! You can lie to me all you'd like, but don't lie to yourself. You need to tell him eventually. He won't understand unless you tell him."

Sora's eyes widened at her word and a strange, awkward silence followed Kairi's declaration. Sora shuffled his feet against Kairi's carpet, and Kairi occupied herself with blowing her nose into her last tissue. Sora bent over and reached under Kairi's bed, retrieving an unopened tissue box, which Kairi accepted gratefully.

"So," Kairi said, after using two more tissues and throwing them into her overflowing wastebasket. "Are you going to tell me when you realized you liked Riku?"

"What if I said I didn't like Riku?" Sora asked.

"I'd know you weren't telling the truth," Kairi said simply. "I've seen the way you look at him, Sora. You can be honest with me."

"Fine, you're right!" Sora shouted, and found that actually admitting it to someone was liberating. His eyes widened and he felt his heart flutter. "I like Riku! I don't know when it happened, I don't know why it happened, but it's happened. It's just the way it is." He jumped up on Kairi's bed and she stared at him with a strange expression. "The sky is blue! Kittens are adorable! And I like Riku!"

"Sora, you're talking a lot again," Kairi warned, but Sora was off in a whirlwind of emotions. Kairi didn't seem too aggravated by Sora's boisterous display of epiphanies, and said nothing to disquiet the boy further.

"I don't understand when it happened, Kairi, and I tried to deny it and I tried to fight it, but I can't, I just can't! I like Riku! I like Riku!" He did a strange little can-can on her bed before jumping off and turning to face her. He was grinning like a loon, but he didn't care, even if Kairi was giving him that same strange expression. "I've never felt like this before. I mean, with you, it was different. The like I felt for Kairi was different than what I feel for Riku. Ahh, just thinking about it makes my stomach flop." He curled around his stomach, but he was still grinning. "It's such a beautiful day, isn't it?"

Kairi's eyebrows were raised. "Sora…"

Sora stared at her, as if seeing her for the first time. Then his face paled slightly. "Oh, geez. It… it doesn't bother you, does it, Kairi?"

Kairi's eyebrows were still raised, and the corners of her lips quirked into a smile at his question. She mulled it over for a long moment. When Kairi didn't answer right away, however, Sora took this as a bad sign and started to backtrack.

"Here I am going on about it and I totally forgot about your feelings…" he said uneasily, rubbing the back of his neck self-consciously. He fidgeted slightly, waiting for Kairi to respond. The said girl licked her lips and hummed sweetly for a moment.

"I've known for a while," Kairi said at last, being as diplomatic as she could and thinking over her words carefully. "Or, at least suspected it. And, trust me, Sora, I've seen stranger things in my lifetime, as I'm sure you have, too."

Sora gave her a mixture of a pained and blissfully gleeful expression, which was a very, very strange combination in Kairi's mind. She watched Sora's blue eyes—the color of the sky for which he was named—glitter in the afternoon sunlight filtering through her window and she saw the happiness hidden beneath all the things demanding his attentions right that second.

Kairi thought over her words before continuing, "This is… I mean… you're happy. That's what matters, right?"

"I am happy, aren't I?" Sora asked, exploring the feelings in his heart. He felt light. He was elated.

Kairi smiled, and it crinkled the corners of her eyes pleasantly. She really was a pretty girl, and Sora regretted the pain he must have caused her by starting to like Riku.

To her credit, Kairi did seem very happy for Sora. "You are happy," she told Sora gently, shrugging one shoulder. "You like him. Of course you'd be happy."

Kairi was quiet for a moment.

Then her grin widened a bit and her eyes twinkled as she looked up at her best friend. "I want you to be happy, Sora. I'll always be here if you need me. Know that."

Sora dove forward and hugged Kairi tightly. The girl squeaked loudly and her eyes widened. Then her face turned a slight shade of pink before she was hugging him back, cushioning her cheek against Sora's shoulder. Her eyes fell shut and she gripped the fabric of Sora's uniform, committing this feeling of warmth to her memory. They hugged for a long moment before Sora pulled away and Kairi saw a world of gratitude in his eyes.

"You're one of my best friends, Kairi," Sora whispered, "and you always will be. Thank you."

Kairi, still blushing, smiled serenely at Sora. "I'm glad you're honest."

"And I'm glad that… well… I'm just so glad," Sora admitted, smiling brightly at his friend.

"You need to go talk to him," Kairi insisted with another gentle smile. She patted Sora's shoulder when she saw the boy tense beside her. She grabbed the pages of homework and pulled it into her lap. She looked up at Sora. "Everything will be okay. I promise."

"Yeah, you're right," Sora muttered to himself, picking at his fingernails out of nervousness.

"Go find Riku. He'll listen to you."

Sora knew she was right, and he nodded silently. Kairi coughed and gave him a weak smile before turning her face away. It was in that moment that Sora realized that Kairi liked him, and, yet, she'd told him to go tell Riku his own feelings. His eyes softened and he approached Kairi's sickbed. He grabbed one of the girl's hands and smiled.

"You've always been so kind to me, Kairi," he said, smiling gently. "Thank you so much for everything."

Kairi smiled slightly and shook her head. "You're the one who's kind, Sora. It's all because of you. Now go find Riku."

As Sora rushed out the door to find Riku, Kairi was left alone with her thoughts. She sniffled, and tried to pass off the feeling as her illness, and not the sadness lingering in her heart. She pulled a tissue from the box and dabbed at her eyes before inhaling sharply, trying to steady her breath and her feelings at once.

"As long as he's happy," she reminded herself as she blew her nose into the tissue. She blinked her eyes free of the tears collecting there and smiled silently to herself, wishing her two friends all the happiness in the world.

---

Fifteen minutes later, Sora reached Riku's house. He stood on the front porch for a long moment, trying to regain his breath. He bent over, pressing his palms to his knees, doubling over as he tried to collect his breath. He forgot how far Riku and Kairi's houses were from one another.

Once he was content with his breathing pattern, Sora rang the doorbell. He only had to wait a moment before Riku's father opened the door. He smiled in greeting at Sora, his blue-green eyes so similar to his son's own eyes.

"Riku's upstairs," he said to the brown-haired boy before stepping aside and letting him pass over the threshold. "He's probably doing homework."

"He would be doing that, I guess," Sora said happily, grinning up at Riku's father despite the twisting and turning of his insides at the thought of what he'd come here to tell Riku.

Riku's father smiled benignly before retreating to his study. Sora watched the door fall shut before he raced up the stairs, his heart beating in his chest furiously. He breathed in deeply and rested against the wall beside Riku's door. He heard the boy inside and he tried to fight the desperate beating of his heart and the blushing of his cheeks as best he could.

Hesitantly, he knocked.

"Come in," Riku said from the other side and Sora's heart fluttered.

He opened the door and walked inside, shutting the door tightly behind him. He leaned against, wondering if he'd ever have the strength to stand straight again. His eyes were on Riku instantly. The boy was sitting at his desk, working on his homework. He glanced up at Sora and only seemed slightly surprised to see him standing there. He snorted and looked back down at his math homework.

"You weren't there after school," Riku said instead of greeting the spiky-haired boy.

"I went to visit Kairi," Sora said.

"Of course," Riku muttered, looking slightly agitated by something. Sora swallowed, unsure what to do from this moment on. He wasn't sure what would happen after he told Riku. How would he react? He hated to think about it, because, if he did for too long, Sora had a feeling he'd lose his nerve and never say what he'd longed to tell Riku.

"Do you mind if I sit?" Sora asked.

Riku gestured to the seat beside his desk. "Be my guest."

Sora grabbed the chair and plopped down beside Riku, dropping his backpack as he did so. From his position, he could watch Riku unrestrained without the boy noticing unless he turned his head. He admired Riku's features and his set jaw. His eyes scanned all of Riku's features and he felt his cheeks turn pink. How was it possible to like somebody so much?

"Riku, why are you being kind to all those girls and guys now?" Sora asked out of the blue. Sora never was one known for his tact. He tilted his head to the side and regarded Riku as the boy stilled.

Riku glanced up from his homework with his frown deepened and his eyes hardening. "You told me to."

"Well, yeah," Sora said uneasily, "But… what I mean is… you just did it so suddenly, and you didn't eat lunch with me today."

"You didn't walk home with me today," Riku countered as he scribbled something down on his homework with a mechanical pencil. He turned his eyes away from Sora.

Sora blushed. He wasn't getting across what he meant to. "Listen, Riku—"

"Have you told Kairi you like her yet?" Riku questioned, still not glancing up from his homework as he worked. To the untrained eye, he would have seemed uninterested and stoic, but Sora knew from the glimmer in his eyes that he was curious.

Sora thought back to his afternoon and blushed. "N-no," he managed to lie, "I didn't."

Riku paused and glanced at him, his grip on his mechanical pencil tight enough to make his knuckles turn white. "You do like her, don't you?"

"Well—"

Riku didn't let him finish, "And you two have been hanging out a whole lot more. You've been avoiding me, too. I thought you two would be together by now."

"What?" Sora asked, and his mouth felt as if it'd been stuffed with cotton. "Riku, that's not—"

"I know, it's not my business," Riku said easily, stealing Sora's breath. That hadn't been what Sora was about to say. That wasn't what he was going to say! Riku continued on, "I was just wondering why you were avoiding me so much."

"But what about you?" Sora asked, deciding a change in subject was needed presently. "Do you like anybody, Riku?"

Riku paused in his writing and turned to look at him squarely in the eye. He stayed like that for a long moment before shrugging his shoulders. There was a long, tangible silence dancing between the two boys.

"You do!" Sora realized, his eyes widening and his hopes smashing to pieces at the bottom of his heart. He swallowed thickly. "So, who is it?"

Riku shrugged his shoulders again and snapped his math text book shut. "I'm not going to talk about this with you."

"Riku!" Sora shouted, despite how close they were. He felt as if they were a million miles away from one another. He forced down his bubbling emotions and tried to remain control over his wavering voice. "Riku… please…"

"As if you don't know who it is already," Riku muttered. "We've had this discussion before."

"B-but, I thought…" Sora said, trying to recall when they'd talked about this. He couldn't think of a time when Riku had willingly said something about his supposed crush. Riku wasn't one to flirt or be overly attractive towards the opposite sex. When they were younger, Sora often joked that Riku would die an unmarried old man.

"Thought what?" Riku asked, his eyebrows arching upwards. "You've made it perfectly clear that these feelings I have aren't natural."

"Huh?" Sora asked, his vision blurring for a moment as he tried to remember this conversation they'd had. He couldn't. Sora felt like he was about to cry.

Riku stared at him, his eyes wide, recognizing that look in Sora's eyes. After a short moment, they softened and Riku patted Sora's shoulder. "What are you so upset about? Don't worry. I'd… you know… never act on it. I mean, I can see that you don't like it. I wouldn't… do anything to ruin that, Sora."

Sora had no idea what Riku was talking about, which made him even more frustrated. He bowed his head and clenched his hands into fists, trying to concentrate with all his might on what he was obviously missing in this conversation. Damn him and his forgetfulness sometimes.

Sora only seemed slightly reassured, but the feeling of the familiar weight of Riku's hand on his shoulder was reassuring and melancholy at the same time. He wished he could step closer to Riku, and feel his body warmth completely surround and protect him.

But Riku must have felt Sora stiffen, because he quickly removed his hand and let it flop uselessly at his side.

"You know that I… or maybe you don't understand… how much I like… but… I guess you don't, I mean, what I mean is that, you know, I wouldn't do anything," Riku continued, looking slightly strained and depressed as well. "Don't worry. It's… never mind."

Sora's mind reeled over the last few days. He tried to think of who it could possibly be that Riku liked. Riku didn't know many girls, and often remarked how obnoxious the girls in his grade could be. He scrunched up his face in concentration, trying to recall any girl Riku had ever spoken to. He could count the number on his two hands.

Riku continued on, unaware of Sora's frustration, "I mean, you've made it more than clear that it's not what you want. And I respect that. I was actually surprised that you'd realized, to be honest. And… you know… I… don't want to ruin the trust we have. So… you don't have to avoid me anymore. I'd never do anything."

But Sora wasn't listening, his face had scrunched up in his concentration as his mind finally settled on something that was pricking at the back of his mind.

His eyes widened. He remembered Riku's anger while walking home when they'd been discussing whether Sora was with Kairi now. Sora could still recall the angered, strained look on Riku's face as they discussed Kairi. Something cold flooded his entire body and Sora shivered despite the warm tropical heat they lived in. Riku took no mind of Sora's strange behavior, for he'd bent over his homework again and was pointedly trying to ignore Sora beside him.

Suddenly, Sora recalled all the times Riku had sat down between Kairi and Sora at lunch, or walked between the two as they walked together, or somehow lodged his way between the two so that he was the one in the middle of Kairi and Sora. He recalled every instance when he was there beside Kairi whenever Sora was, too.

Suddenly, it all made sense. A wave of realization replaced the icy cold and flooded Sora's system with a disgusting nausea usually associated with air travel. Sora's heart wobbled pathetically in his chest.

Riku liked Kairi.

His world was crashing down around him. He stood up suddenly, startling even stoic Riku from his rambling. He stared at Sora in shock as the boy, trembling, started backing up towards the door, his eyes on Riku.

"Sora…" Riku began standing up.

Sora backed up faster towards the door, fumbling behind his back to find the door handle. Grasping it like a lifeline, he stared at Riku in a new light. This explained his insistences he'd just been sprouting:

He wouldn't act on it, because he thought Sora liked Kairi. He didn't want to ruin what they had, because they were best friends. He knew these feelings were wrong, because Sora had always liked Kairi.

But this didn't reassure Sora. His heart hurt, and not because Riku liked Kairi but because Riku liked somebody that wasn't him. He'd come here to confess, and, in that moment, Sora was incredibly thankful that he hadn't confessed to Riku. It would have been a disaster. They would have lost any friendship they may have had, he was sure of it. It was just one big love triangle, and it was tearing Sora apart inside.

"I'm sorry, I've got to go!" he shouted before dashing out of Riku's room.

"Sora, please wait!" he heard Riku call after him, but Sora couldn't stop. He had to get out of here before he started saying something he'd regret. He just couldn't stay here, it was too much. His heart was going to burst. His lungs were going to shrivel and die. His vision blurred.

He ran out of the house, down the front walk, up the sidewalk, and into the sanctuary of his home. He could handle heartless and nobodies. He could handle dancing between worlds. He could handle any unspeakable danger. But the idea of an unrequited love and losing Riku was more unbearable than anything else in the world.