Well it's been a while! Summer's great, amirite? Anyway, I bet you're all eager to see what happens next between Sora and Riku, right? Enjoy!
"Riku," Sora whispered as he stared into his best friend's eyes. Riku quietly returned Sora's gaze, waiting for the other to make some kind of move.
After a few minutes of pure silence, Sora's fist made a sudden, hard connection to Riku's jaw. The force of the punch caused Riku's head to snap back against the ground. Eyes filled with shock, he looked up to Sora who was breathing very heavily as he struggled to control his tears.
"It was you?" he whispered harshly. "This whole time? The one who left the flowers? Every night for all these years? It was you?"
"Sora, could you please let me up?" Riku sighed since the position they were in was making him uncomfortable. Instead of doing as the man asked, Sora repined Riku's shoulders to the ground and refused to move.
"No!" he cried. "If I move, you'll try to run away again! I'm not letting you go!" Riku rested one of his hands on Sora's arm gently.
"I'm not going to run," he said softly, trying to calm the raging boy above him. "So please? Sora?" Calming down a little, Sora maneuvered himself so that Riku could finally sit up.
"It was really you?" Sora asked again. "Riku, are you really my secret admirer?" The man stared into his eyes for a few quiet seconds before he solemnly nodded his head.
"Yes. I am."
"Why did you never tell me?"
"Because I was afraid!" Riku shouted back angrily, which stunned the spikey haired boy. Riku then immediately lowered his eyes, regretting that he had just yelled at his best friend.
"Afraid? What could you possibly be afraid of? You're Riku! You're supposed to be fearless!" The silver haired man raised his head and stared directly into the innocently shining blue eyes that captured his heart all those years ago.
"You're wrong," he said, shaking his head. "I'm a coward! I'm a coward and a liar. All these years, I've been secretly betraying the fragile trust you've placed in me."
"What do you mean?" Sora asked. Riku placed a hand on his forehead, as if he was fighting against a headache.
"I have these dreams of you almost every night," he said, lowering his hand to cover his eyes. "I would see you laid out before me, like a freshly cooked dish is laid out before a king. I couldn't stop myself from devouring every inch of your exposed skin. The encouraging sounds you would let out of your mouth only made my body even hotter as I ravaged your neck and tasted your lips. I would pin you down and thrust into you deeply, drinking in the cries that spilled from your lips. Then, I would force you to scream my name as I took possession of you and made it so that no one else could ever touch you again."
Sora's face turned a very deep shade of red as Riku described his dream in almost perfect detail. His face only darkened when he realized that Riku has been having the same dreams as Sora's.
"R-Riku," Sora whispered, completely speechless. He reached his hand out towards his friend, but the silver haired man jerked away from it.
"Sora, don't you see?" Riku growled, his anger returning. "I'm no different from that bastard! All I can think about is having you all to myself! I want to hold you, dirty you, and make you completely mine! How is that any better than what he did to you all those years ago? Actually," he added with a humorless laugh, "I'm worse than him because you trust me. You trust me completely, and all I can think about is destroying that trust!"
Sora couldn't hold back the look of shock on his face at Riku's words. However, when he saw how distraught his best friend was, the only thing Sora wanted to do was to hold him close and comfort him.
"But Riku, I –"
"Do you get it yet?" Riku continued, interrupting the brunette. "Do you now see just how much of a monster your so-called 'best friend' really is?" The silver-haired man suddenly stood up, nearly knocking a startled Sora over. Regaining his balance, Sora hesitantly stood up as well.
"What about the flowers? Why would you send me a flower that never blooms? Why would you give me something so horrible?" Sora had asked himself this question for so many years. "These white flowers never bloom. They were never given a chance to live. Why do they only wither and die?"
Riku suddenly looked very confused. He started shaking his head very quickly.
"Sora, that's not it! These flowers, they're call—" But it was Sora's turn to interrupt.
"Were you trying to tell me that I'm exactly like these flowers, Riku?" he asked in a dull voice, shifting his gaze to the ground. "That I'll never truly open up? That I'll wither and die alone without a chance to bloom? That I'll never have a chance to live?"
"Sora!" Riku's loud cry cut through Sora's words and left the boy silent. He looked up when he heard Riku pull something out of his pocket. Gently cupped in his large hands was another small and white flower that still had yet to bloom. He held the flower out towards the brunette.
"These flowers have always reminded me of you, but not in the way that you think."
At that moment, the clouds that once covered the moon were blown away, and the moon was once again free to bathe the street with its gentle rays.
When moonlight touched the small flower, it began to move on its own. Its petals began to slowly uncurl, and they opened up to reveal a beautiful flower with white and purple petals and a golden middle.
Riku took a step forward and reached for Sora's hand. Taking the younger man's hand, he carefully placed the now bloomed flower in the center of Sora's palm. Absolutely shocked and speechless, Sora instinctively lifted his hand to his face and allowed the flower's fragrance to enter his nose. The sweet smell made him smile.
The baker took the flower from him and with gentle albeit slightly shaky fingers, tucked it behind the boy's ear to let it rest among the brown spikes that surrounded it.
"For every night I saw you in my dreams, I would wake up before the sun could rise, pick one of these flowers from the stream, and then place it on your doorstep as an apology."
"But why this flower, Riku?"
"As I said before, to me, you are the same as this flower. You allow your true beauty to be sealed away, and the world only sees you as a plain, cold, unblossomed bud. But when you find your moonlight, your petals finally come undone, and you release the true beauty that is meant to be seen. The beauty you have on the inside far suppresses the cold shell that others blindly see and follow." As he said this, the man gentle traced the flower's petals with his finger.
"I was one of the privileged few to see the true beauty that lied within you, Sora. Not just your flawless skin, or your chocolate hair, or your blue eyes that reflect the sky and challenge the ocean. I got to hear your laugh almost every day as we walked together through the streets. I got to see your happily smiling face as you ate my bread. I got to hold you in my arms as you cried. Everything about you, Sora, is beautiful beyond words."
Before Riku could say any more, Sora grabbed the edge of the baker's shirt and crashed their lips together. They stood there in silence, lips firmly pressed against each other because both were still too afraid to go any farther.
Riku made the first move as he slowly moved his mouth against the boy's. Sora couldn't stop the moan that escaped as he felt the baker's arms wrap around his waist. He wrapped his own arms around Riku's neck, pressing himself even closer to the man, their lips melding together.
Sora jumped a little when he felt Riku's tongue gently slide across his lower lip, but he immediately opened his mouth, granting the older man entrance into the warm cavern. With only a little hesitation, Riku's tongue dove into Sora's mouth, searching, licking, and sucking everything he could find. Rather than fight for dominance, both of their tongues simply slid against each other as each man savored the taste of the other. Sora let out a loud moan as Riku sucked on his tongue, gently dragging his teeth against the delicate surface.
They finally separated after what felt like hours. Sora's face was much more flushed than the baker's. Panting heavily, both men gazed at each other in perfect silence.
"I don't understand," Riku whispered, breaking the silence. Sora smiled happily at him, which seemed to relax the man.
"Riku," Sora said as he gently pushed a few strands of silver hair out of the man's face. "On certain nights, you would visit me in my dreams. Throughout the night in my dream, I would feel your hand against my skin, taste your lips as they merged with mine, smell your hair as it fell on my face, and feel your heat as it entered into me." Sora really wished there was some way he could capture the look on Riku's face.
"Why…did you never tell me?" he asked in disbelief. Sora's eyes lowered to the ground.
"I thought that I was too dirty to love someone as perfect as you. I thought that I was soiling our friendship by having such thoughts about you."
"Why on Earth would you believe you're dirty and I'm perfect? If you ask me, it's the other way around!"
"Because of what that stranger said, all those years ago. He said that it was my fault that I was a dirty little whore who seduced men. For a very long time, I believed him. So for years, I kept my feelings a secret, afraid that if you found out, you would see that I really was dirty whore."
Riku looked angry for a second before Sora placed his hand over his cheek, calming his friend.
"I realize now that there was no reason for me to believe in that man's words. You see, the only reason I was able to laugh, to smile, to cry, was because I had someone by my side that gave me the chance to. I had you, Riku."
Almost as if in a trance, Riku couldn't stop himself from tilting his head down and capturing Sora's lips in another searing kiss that lasted even longer than the first. Sora broke their lips apart in order to fill his lungs with much needed air.
Riku took this opportunity to attack the boy's exposed neck while Sora instinctively turned his head to give the man better access to the delicious skin. Alternating between gentle and harsh, Riku's biting, licking, and sucking caused Sora to let out a string of moans. He buried his hands into soft, silver hair and used his long fingers to gently massage the scalp in an encouraging manner, making the older man practically purr with contentment.
Moving his head back up, the baker seized the brunette's lips in yet another heated kiss before reluctantly pulling away.
"Sora," Riku sighed as he gazed at the boy's kiss-stained lips and marred neck. Even in this state, Sora was still the most beautiful thing to his eyes. Riku pulled away from the boy, but not completely, and held his hand out for him to take.
"Do you want to see that stars reflecting upon the water?" Sora wondered how that was possible on such a cloudy night. However, he didn't hesitate for even one second to place his hand, and at the same time, all of his trust, into Riku.
Alright! One more chapter to go! Next chapter will have what everyone has probably been waiting for this whole story...SEX! I mean, love!