Part 2 of Spring Break. Thanks for being patient with me; I know this chapter's been a long time coming. And thanks so much for all of your reviews! They inspired me write when I needed a little push. Enjoy!
xxXXxx
"Do we have any idea where we are?" Riku asked, surveying the surrounding trees. They were in a forest, certainly, and they were walking in a line along a thin, winding path, but beyond that it was hard to say.
"Bear country," Saïx said seriously from the front of the pack.
"Bears?" questioned Sora.
"If we meet any bears, I'd worry more for them than for us," Zexion assured him. "Saïx has a nasty bite. Don't you, boy?"
Saïx bared his teeth over his shoulder and growled low in his throat, and for a brief moment, Sora wanted to wet his pants.
"Good boy," Zexion chuckled. Saïx grinned back at him. Sora found the grin only slightly more reassuring than the growl.
This exchange must have been sufficient to answer Riku's question because the next thing he asked was, "Doesn't it seem too gray for this time of year?"
"Be thankful," Saïx said. "The clouds will keep us cool."
"Uh, I'm always cool," Riku retorted. He followed this with a dramatic hair flip for effect.
"Except for when you're hot," Zexion drawled sarcastically.
Riku smirked. "I'm always hot."
"That sounds like a personal problem," Sora offered.
Saïx and Zexion broke into peals of laughter, but Riku only managed a chuckle after reddening slightly behind his silver-white bangs.
"I like this kid, Ri. He can stay," Saïx declared, still laughing to himself.
The narrow trail they'd been following widened and Riku fell into step beside Sora. In the silence that followed, Sora rubbed at his neck—he was a little sore after a night away from his comfy bed at home. He arched his back as Saïx gave Zexion a noogie further up the trail.
"So are—"
"How do—"
The two boys started and stopped talking at the same time, then exchanged flustered glances.
"You first," Sora insisted.
"I was just going to ask how the hike's going," Riku asked, covering his still-fading embarrassment with a smirk. "These idiots aren't getting on your nerves, are they?"
"Heard that," Zexion called from up ahead.
Sora shook his head and wiped a bead of sweat from his brow. "No," he said, smiling, "I like them."
Looking pleased, Riku snatched a thin leaf from a bush as they passed it and twirled it between his fingers. He was the most relaxed he'd been since they'd set off on their camping trip that morning, Sora could tell, but he was still acting strangely—too formally, maybe, as if he were trying to impress a date's parents. Sora guessed it had something to do with Saïx. Riku seemed like a little kid around him, like an adoring younger brother.
"What were you going to say?" Riku asked, still worrying at his leaf.
"Huh? Oh, nothing," Sora said with a shrug. He had been about to ask Riku about Saïx again, but he thought better of it when he remembered Zexion's advice. He was burning with curiosity (Sora had enough curiosity to kill a pet store's worth of cats,) but he figured the question could wait a little longer.
"Lake ahead!" Saïx boomed.
"Finally," Zexion grumbled, tugging his navy t-shirt over his head to reveal a streak of porcelain-white midriff. "I'm dying."
"That's because you dress like a ninja," Saïx said brightly, subjecting his short friend to an affectionate hair-ruffle. Zexion ducked away from his big hand. "You do know they make clothing in colors now, right?"
"Don't make me kill you."
"I'd like to see you try, squirt."
Before Zexion could accept the challenge (and judging by the way he cracked his knuckles just then, he would have,) the trees parted to reveal a rocky beach sloping out into an expanse of dark blue water. The other side of the lake was mostly fringed with tall trees that dipped twice—once where a road passed close to the lake and cars flew quietly by, and again where someone had built a small dock with a number of two- and four-seater pedal boats tethered to it. A few of the boats were occupied and gliding slowly around the lake, but they were far enough away that Sora couldn't make out more than the indistinct outlines of their pilots' faces.
Sora's eyes refocused on his side of the bank. Saïx had peeled off his shirt and jeans and was wading into the water in black board shorts, and Sora did a double take. A giant Chinese dragon crawled up the left side of Saïx's torso. It was black, blue, silver, and yellow, wrapped around a bolt of lightning. When he turned, Sora saw a number of stars done in the same style as the dragon curving down the opposite hip.
"Woah," Sora whispered.
"Hm?" Riku stood beside him, clad only in board shorts. Unlike Zexion, Sora couldn't help but notice, Riku was tall, sleek, well-muscled, and lightly tanned. He'd let his hair down so it fell in shining wisps around his shoulders.
Sora's mind went blank.
"Er…"
"What, Saïx's tattoo?" Riku asked. He tossed his head in the general direction of his big friend.
"Yeah, that," Sora said with relief. "Right." He cleared his throat self-consciously.
"Pretty badass, huh?"
Sora nodded. Damn, Riku was lucky. Whereas Sora had freckled shoulders and scrawny arms, Riku had completely unblemished skin and a distance runner's tight physique. It was no wonder legions of girls at school swooned over him.
"He got it in memory of a friend," Riku continued, unaware of Sora's assessments.
Sora nodded again, mentally calculating how hard he'd have to work for muscles like Riku's. A moment later, the import of Riku's words sunk in. He blinked. "Oh."
"Yeah," Riku said, "it was a while ago." He fidgeted with the shirt in his hands. "So… you going in, or what?"
"Right," Sora said, suddenly aware that he was the only one of the four who had yet to strip down to his swim trunks. Saïx was already swimming beyond the protruding rocks with sure strokes and Zexion, standing on the tallest of a number of large boulders, was contemplating which rock would be the best to execute a cannonball from.
Hurriedly, Sora pulled at his clothes until they lay in a pile beside him and he stood in only his black-and-red board shorts. Riku, already clambering over the rocks toward Zexion, motioned for him to follow.
Sora's feet were sure enough on the shifting rocks, but he still took his time. He reached the boulders just in time to watch Zexion hurl himself into the water. The lake happily engulfed his thin body and sent up a welcoming spray of freezing mist that rained down over Sora and Riku.
"Gah, cold!" Sora exclaimed, rubbing at his goose-pimpled arms. He edged along the rocks below Riku until he reached their farthest edge.
They were climbing over a number of large, oddly-shaped boulders, the largest of which stretched out to where the water was deep enough to dive into. Riku stood at the edge of this one. Around its base, where Sora was, a number of smaller boulders created a rocky ledge a foot above the water. These rocks dropped off steeply, giving Sora the feeling he was standing at a pool's edge.
"Come on, it's not that cold," Riku called down from above. Grinning up at him, Sora dabbled a toe in the dark water.
"Oh yes it is," he called back, pulling an exaggerated face of displeasure.
Riku crooked a finger. "Come up here and jump in properly."
Sora grinned wider, craning his neck and raising a hand to shield his blue eyes from the white sun, which had just begun to peep through a crack in the clouds. "Alright, alright, just give me a—"
His sentence was cut short as a clammy hand wrapped around his ankle and someone shouted, "BOO!"
And it would have been funny, really, if the hand had grabbed his other ankle instead of the one he had twisted not long ago, the one that had started to swell slightly after their long hike to the lake, and the one that gave out underneath him when fingers pressed into his foot around it—would have honestly been funny if he hadn't collapsed sideways just then, catching his ribs and then his shoulder on a flat rock beside him and then plunging into shockingly cold water.
Somewhere between the rock against his ribs and the icy water he lost his breath, and it occurred to him as he sunk into shadows that he wanted it back. He moved to claw against the water, but a shock of pain in his shoulder made him go rigid.
Drowning, he thought, I'm drowning again. His eyes flew open. It wasn't as dark, true, but the sunlight slanting through the trees and rocks reminded him of flashlight beams, and he could almost taste the salt of ocean water in his mouth.
This was where he had begun to black out last time, where a faceless angel had swooped down from above and grabbed his arm with a strong hand before everything went white and then black. But this time he was fully conscious when a large shape blotted out the light above him and a hand groped through the water to brush his wrist. The shadow above him pushed down through the water until he felt elbows hook under his armpits—he wanted to shove the arms away; one was yanking at his screaming shoulder—and legs kicked hard at the water, knocking against Sora's knees and propelling the two bodies toward sky.
Sora's mouth broke the surface with a gasp. A face collided with his before he could satisfy his ravenous lungs, a mouth and jaw connecting sharply with his cold-numbed cheekbone. He gasped again, his savior's limbs still clumsily entangled with his own as they both struggled to stay above water.
"Are you okay?" the other body spluttered.
Sora blinked water out of his eyes. Partially obscured by dripping bangs, Riku's flushed face bobbed inches from his. The boy's chilly arms still encircled him in an attempt to keep him afloat.
He spit out a mouthful of lake water and took another eager breath. "Yeah," he gasped.
"Shit, you okay?" asked another panicked voice. Zexion's face bobbed into view.
"He's fine," Riku said, eyes still trained on the spluttering brunette before him. Then, to Sora, "Let's get to shore."
Sora allowed himself to be half-dragged through the water back to shore. The numbness from the cold water was beginning to subside, and he fervently wished it wouldn't. He guessed he had sustained a dazzling variety of wounds during his collapse and he wasn't eager to discover the specifics of any of them.
As the shock of the past minute wore off, Sora began to feel self-conscious. He stumbled up the shore while relying as little as he could on Riku's helping arms, then folded down onto a flat rock to assess damages. Riku and Saïx crouched beside him, faces eager and worried, but Zexion hovered a few feet away.
"Man, I though you hit your head on the rocks. I thought you were going to black out or something," Riku said, his eyes searching Sora's face.
"Fuck, you're bleeding," Saïx hissed, gently lifting Sora's right arm from his side. "Riku, get my backpack."
Sora looked at the wound with detached interest. His blood was almost comically red, like the type he'd seen in that B-list kung fu movie when one of the disposable minions lost a limb to the sword-wielding hero. There was barely a dribble of it compared to the streams that Henchman #4 had emitted, but it was the same color, so bright, so unrealistic. Artistic, kind of.
A stab of pain through his shoulder brought him out of his poorly-dubbed reverie.
"Ow," he winced, drawing back from Saïx's grip. "My ribs are fine, but I got my shoulder pretty good."
The giant, hawk-eyed man's fingers performed a quick, dancing inspection over Sora's shoulder. Sora hissed when a finger came in contact with a particularly sore spot, but Saïx seemed satisfied. "Nothing major. You'll just be bruised."
Sora laughed half-heartedly before asking, "You a Boy Scout?" He had already tottered through the Wow That Hurt stage, and now he was cruising steadily out of Extreme Embarrassment and into Act Manly.
"You have to be when you're around these two," Saïx sighed, accepting a backpack from Riku. He rifled through it before pulling out a water bottle and a First Aid kit.
Sora shifted uncomfortably. "It's not that bad, guys; I can take care of it myself…."
"Don't bother," Riku suggested. "Saïx'll do it." He glanced darkly over his shoulder, adding, "Even though Zex should be helping out."
Zexion looked silently horrified. He watched as Saïx attended to Sora's side without offering help or even kneeling nearby like Riku had.
"Leave him alone, Ri; it's not his fault," Saïx growled. Sora reflected that it was weird having the bear-man's scruffy blue-silver hair hovering inches from his face, and weirder to have him tending to his injuries.
Riku's answering look clearly said, "Yes, it is," but he kept his mouth shut.
"I'm sorry," Zexion said finally, looking bewildered. "It was just a joke…."
Sora remembered the clammy hand on his ankle. He shook his head, sending a fine spray of water shooting from the tips of his brunette locks. "Oh, don't worry about it," he assured the wide-eyed boy. "Seriously, I hurt my ankle a while back."
Zexion's expression worsened if anything.
"I mean, it's totally fine, it was just a little sore, so I kinda collapsed when you grabbed me."
The growing glint in Riku's eyes couldn't possibly be relieving Zexion's guilt.
"I'm serious," Sora added lamely. "I tripped when Riku and I were running from some cops at—"
"You were what?" Saïx demanded, nearly dropping the bandage in his hands.
Sora chuckled nervously. "That's, uh, not as bad as it sounds. We didn't actually do anything, just… hm."
"You better not have actually done anything," Saïx declared. He set back to work on Sora's long cut, but with a noticeable absence of his previous delicacy. Riku looked like a guilty puppy, but once again remained silent.
Well, great. Operation: Assure Zexion He's Not Guilty had gone smashingly well. Except for the part where it didn't work. At all.
Snap.
oo000OOO000oo
Sora's ankle hated him. Not just hated, in fact—loathed. Abhorred, perhaps. Its sole purpose of existence was to ruin his camping trip, and so far, it was doing admirably well.
The worst part of the hike back to the campsite was Riku hovering beside him like a hawk. He seemed genuinely concerned, and Sora's face flushed at the thought of it. He didn't need Riku's help, and he didn't need Riku's sympathy. It was all stupidly embarrassing.
"Woah," Riku said, catching Sora's elbow when the brunette's ankle suddenly wobbled underneath him. Before Sora could stop himself, he was clinging to the front of Riku's shirt for support as his ankle throbbed.
"I'm fine," Sora lied through clenched teeth, but Riku didn't let go. The smaller boy glanced up in annoyance, but faltered when he saw Riku's expression.
"You'd be dead by now if I wasn't around to save you all the time, you know that?" Riku said.
Still encircled by Riku's arms, Sora floundered for words. He could feel the heat from Riku's neck on his forehead, and it reminded him of their height difference. Riku stared down at him, expression unreadable, then shook his head and smirked. "Be more careful," he advised. His arms fell from Sora's back.
Sora shrugged, feeling like an oaf. It stung to admit that Riku was right.
They walked a little further before Riku said, "Huh."
"What?" Sora asked, limping along beside him.
"Nothing. I just thought—" He stopped. His eyebrows were furrowed. "Is it raining?"
Sora looked up to the sky for an answer. A fat raindrop hit him squarely in the eye.
"Aw shit, guys, it's starting to rain!" Zexion called from up ahead.
Saïx calmly soldiered on ahead. "We'll be back soon enough," he told them, shrugging his backpack into place. "It's just a little rain."
High up in the atmosphere, the gods of rain heard him and took his words as a challenge.
Sora had time to rub ruefully at his rain-coated eye before an explosion of drops shot down from the heavens and pelted them all energetically. Zexion broke into a jog and Saïx picked up the pace, but Riku remained steadfastly alongside Sora, squinting against the barrage of droplets. Sora limped on guiltily.
They made their way back to the campsite as the trails turned to mud. Zexion was there already when they arrived, his hair wet and limp across his face. He looked defeated.
"What?" Saïx asked as Riku and Sora slowed to a halt beside them.
"I left our sleeping bags beside the tent," he said to Riku.
Everyone looked at him in silence.
"Outside beside the tent," he clarified.
"Why?" Riku managed.
"We dragged some rocks and twigs and stuff into the tent when we put them in yesterday, and I was trying to clean it out," he explained miserably.
Another few seconds passed with nothing but the persistent pattering of rain for company. Then Riku said "Sweet" through tight lips, Sora shivered slightly and Saïx rubbed at his forehead with one hand. It was not the best day by anyone's standards.
"Well," Saïx said. Rain ran in rivulets down the angry scars across his face. "It's going to be too cold tonight for you two to go without sleeping bags."
Zexion watched him like a child anticipating a scolding.
Saïx sighed. "Who wants to go camping in the rain anyway, huh?" he conceded. "I'm sure we can find a hotel room somewhere for the night. Would that be alright with you guys?"
Sora glanced at Riku, who shrugged. While being rain-covered made most people look soggy and downtrodden at best, Sora couldn't help but notice that it had the adverse effect on Riku. It made him look like a dark prince, defiant, as if he had dared to face the rain and won. His sea green eyes positively glowed.
"Sora?" Saïx asked.
"Yeah," Sora responded quickly, embarrassed that he'd been caught. The inner Sora cocked his head and asked, Caught at what?
"Help me load everything into the car and we'll get going," Saïx said.
As they wiped the rain out of their eyes and trudged over to their waterlogged camping equipment, the inner Sora raised an eyebrow and repeated his curious question. Caught at what? At what?
oo000OOO000oo
Zexion's act of leaving the sleeping bags out in the rain had a bizarre effect on Riku. When he'd grabbed Sora's ankle, Riku acted unwilling to forgive him for his one trespass against the camping trip's probability of being fun. However, his second mistake seemed to negate the first entirely. It was like one mistake made Zexion a fool, but two made him a loveable fool.
"Not bad," Riku commented, dangling his legs over the arm of the couch. "Cheap enough, too."
Saïx nodded from his seat at the little desk. His golden eyes were at half-mast. Zexion sat cross-legged on the bed, skimming a brochure he'd filched from the lobby, and Sora sat at the other end of the couch Riku was splayed out on. A wisp of Riku's silver hair had fallen across his thigh. It drew Sora's eyes every few seconds.
"I'm about ready to call it a night," Saïx admitted, hiding a yawn with one big hand. The hand then travelled around the back of his neck to ruffle his hair. "Sora, we should check on that cut of yours."
Sora's eyes unfastened themselves from Riku's stray lock and swung up to meet Saïx's gaze. He'd forgotten about the large Band-Aids across his ribs.
Riku eyeballed his exhausted friend, then sat up (Sora watching as the silver lock snaked away.) He swung his legs off of the couch's arm. "I'll do it."
"I can take care of—" Sora managed before Riku snagged his wrist and pulled him upright.
"It'll be quicker if I help," Riku said. It was true.
Riku released his wrist and leaned over to grab Saïx's backpack. "We can rinse it off in the sink," he said, stepping over a duffel bag to enter the bathroom. He flicked on the light as Sora entered behind him.
Riku set the bag on the counter and rummaged through it to find Saïx's first aid kit while Sora examined the bathroom. It was about as typical of a hotel bathroom as you could get—all white with the exception of the blue geometric pattern on the shower curtain (which Sora figured must have been considered fashionable in some distant era) and an unfortunately impressionistic painting of a sea star hanging opposite the sink and mirror.
His gaze wandered across the white walls until it met with Riku's expectant eyes. Sora looked at him blankly for a moment.
"Oh, right, sorry."
He clutched the hem of his shirt and pulled it up over his head, aware that it was the second time he'd done so that day. He didn't know why he'd thought of that.
He leaned back against the counter as Riku eyed the bandages. "Do you want to pull them off or should I?" Riku asked.
Sora cringed inwardly. He hated pulling off Band-Aids. There was always the moment of tension beforehand while he steeled himself for it, then the sting afterwards of freshly exposed skin. He avoided the sticky little strips whenever possible.
Rip.
"Ow!" Sora exclaimed, more out of habit than actual pain.
Riku tossed the used bandage onto the counter. Sora twitched away as his long fingers reached for the second one on Sora's ribs. "What?" Riku said, looking mock-affronted. "You didn't look very eager to pull them off."
Sora pouted. It was almost more than Riku could stand.
"Look," the taller boy said, placing one hand on the counter behind Sora, "Just stand still. It'll be over in a second."
Their faces were no more than half a foot apart. Riku's expression was open and serious.
Sora inhaled. "Just get it over with."
Rip.
The second strip came off between Riku's thumb and forefinger. Sora rubbed at the reddish skin it left behind and Riku tried not to laugh. Sometimes Sora acted like an overgrown child.
Riku worked in silence after that, wiping dried blood from the cut and giving it a fresh coat of Neosporin. When he'd finished pressing the fresh bandages into place, his fingers lingered on Sora's skin.
Sora looked up, questioning. Riku didn't meet his gaze.
Riku's right hand moved haltingly around him until his palm was pressed against the cool countertop behind Sora. The fingers of his left hand travelled up Sora's side and brushed over his collarbone to twine through the chestnut hair at Sora's nape. Only then did he look Sora in the eye.
His cheeks were flushed and his green eyes bright and sharp. He stood still, lips parted slightly, as Sora watched his chest rise and fall near the edge of his vision. All Sora could think of was the ugly sea star on the wall behind Riku, its arms radiating out behind Riku's head like a crown.
Riku stepped forward, one big hand still cupping the back of Sora's head, and it suddenly occurred to Sora that they were in an unusual situation. But however much his mind told him this, he couldn't open his mouth and say it.
Riku, your hand is on my neck.
The words didn't make it to his vocal chords.
Riku, I can count your eyelashes from here.
His mouth refused to open.
Riku….
I could kiss you.
Riku must have thought it at the same time because his face grew larger until it blocked everything, even the hideous sea star crown, from Sora's vision, and then his warm lips touched the corner of Sora's mouth. Sora went rigid.
"Did you guys," someone began, and then stopped.
Sora and Riku flew apart. Saïx speedily redirected his gaze to the tiles on the floor.
The silence was agonizing. Just when Sora felt about ready to scream, Saïx cleared his throat and said, "Good. All bandaged up. Well."
He turned around and left.
Sora knew Riku was looking at him, but he kept his eyes trained on his left shoe. His brain was short-circuiting. Where were the instructions on how to respond in this situation? It wasn't like the kiss at the party. Riku had actually, deliberately… Riku had…
Riku turned and left, too, leaving Sora alone, the cool air coaxing goose bumps out of his bare skin. What was he supposed to do?
oo000OOO000oo
The worst part was that Sora and Riku had to share the bed. Saïx took the couch and Zexion had fallen asleep on Sora's sleeping bag on the floor, so Sora and Riku were left with nothing but the bed. Sora slept under the sheets and Riku slept between them, both facing away from each other. They stared into the darkness, Sora's mind skipping like a scratched record and Riku cursing himself relentlessly, until sleep overtook them both.
Sora dreamt that he was walking down a hallway at night. Not walking, really—his feet coasted inches above the floor, but he could still hear footsteps echoing around him. He stopped beside an open door. It led into his science classroom, but the only person there was Riku, and he had his back turned. He was looking out the window.
Riku turned and they were underwater, the surface dancing far above them. Riku's eyes were the color of the tendrils of sunlight reaching toward them. They drifted toward each other until Riku could twine his fingers in the hair at the base of Sora's neck, his own silver hair floating outward like a spiny crown.
Sora woke up with the memory of Riku's warm lips still sharp and real. He stared at the nightstand beside him and clenched his fists.
What was he supposed to do?
