Title: Adventure Finds You

Wordcount: 987

Pairing: Riku/Yuffie

Rating: K

Notes: Felt like posting something a little more serious, a little more introspective for Riku - a different take on the beginning of their adventure together, one of many alternate views I have on the pairing. I do have quite a few lighter things to post later - but for now, here's something to tide you all over until those get edited... really, I like keeping things light and airy for Ruffiku, but I just needed to get a bit of a darker piece done. And excuse my rambling :)

Also, as a note, we are now 10 of the way through the adventure that is You Plus Me Equals Us:) Thank you all so, so much for your kind praise and concrit - it means so much to me!

Adventure Finds You

She's the friend of a friend, the little sister of a reluctant guardian, the acquaintance of a King. Certainly not his friend, certainly not his sister, yet, it seems, certainly not just an acquaintance. Her lips curve into a smirk, her shoulders hunched, as she watches him from across the room, curled up on the couch. He dislikes her childishness - he has been running from his for great spans of time, now - and he loves her childishness - after all, adults are superficial, boring. Riku? He is adventurous. Ages, eons, years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds ago, he wasn't about to sit behind and wait for it to find him, and, lo and behold, it had before he could find it.

This time it's found him in the form of a rambunctious young girl. Adventure found him, from the first time she leapt to her feet and seized him by the neck in an over-friendly hug, from ten minutes ago, when her good-morning call was in the form of dumping a bucket of ice water over his head.

Unlike Sora, he just doesn't consider people his friends off the bat - he recalls a time when Sora introduced him to his new friend, a cheery young girl who was more interested in watching them play fight than join in. He didn't like that sense of distrust she had - he never hurt a fly, no matter how rough their games got, and with this girl's reluctance to join their games, he sensed discomfort and indifference.

But then again, Riku had had it proven to him many times, that, in fact, he was a terrible judge of emotion. He spent years seeing a girl's crush - his crush's crush - on his best friend as a threat to his friendship with Sora, instead of as an innocent childhood game that he didn't have control of.

But perhaps Yuffie is a bit different - it's easy to predict when she'll blow, when she'll boil over. It's like cooking, sometimes - if you don't turn down the heat, sooner or later, the water's going to spill over the sides of the pot, staining everything in hot water and trouble. But at the same time, Yuffie's unpredictable, as he learned when he first tried to talk to her, when a friendly girl in a bad mood snapped, "You think you're just such hot stuff, don'tcha?"

Those words had probably scared him away at first, but he was never one to ignore a direct challenge. A chance at adventure that wouldn't have been more real if she extended her hand and pulled him into it.

And so they began the game. Argument here, argument there, childish disagreements about the simple things. She drove him nuts, but in a world where one was without friends, perhaps that was a good thing.

And somewhere along the line, she became a sort of companion. Not someone he would outright call a friend - after all, there were times he doubted her sneaky sense of sincerity, her sense of total disregard (once, there was a shameless moment where she srole a young man's wallet, stealthily, and spent the money inside it on a lunch out - he remembers being angry, but remembers laughing and accepting her invitation to join her, and feeling like a child who's taken a cookie without asking).

And there was the sense that he had too much to do - Sora was out there, looking for him. Kairi was somewhere. Everyone was somewhere. And he was stranded in a town, wishing himself anywhere but there, but remaining only because a cheery little mouse king had ordered it.

Some people can be your friends without even needing reason for it to be.

Why get involved with Yuffie - friendship, love, a casual fling or two (or three or four or five or a million, he told himself) when there was a million other things he had done to hurt old friends? Why take up new ones, when he was just bound to hurt them?

But Yuffie isn't thinking of that when she raises an eyebrow at the look that is no doubt brewing on his face, a look of confusion and wonder, and throws her arms around his neck to drawl, "Awww, don't think too hard, pretty boy, you might pop a brain cell."

He isn't sure if he smiles or stays the same at that, if he gets angry or not, but he figures that if he doesn't find adventure, adventure will find him, and the former is better than the latter. But he realizes that maybe it's been a bit of both - he found a way out, adventure put him in for more than he bargained for. He found a way to save a friend (misadventure, misadventure) and adventure found a way to corrupt him. He found a castle with darkness and mangled dreams, the adventure sent him truths and lies and pains and gains. He tried to take a stab at life, and adventure laughed in his face and life took a stab at him, but he always comes out on top in the end.

And, without a second thought, he pushes her down onto the couch, and kisses her.

Adventure finds him.