Unexpected

"Broken"

"I still can't believe Riku has a Brokeback truck. It's not even a nice truck! It's an old beat-up-looking thing! I swear if he starts wearing a cowboy hat…"

Zack chuckled from his sprawled position on the couch, only in his baggy shorts. "If he does, you'll laugh your ass off. Again."

"Well… yeah, but…" Sora huffed and shoved the DVD into the player. He stretched, then, as the DVD was loading, and Zack didn't miss the chance to ogle the boy. He, too, was shirtless, just his black pants slung about his hips, held up feebly with a belt Zack had already taken off him once today. His muscles had developed nicely over the past year, cording and bulging ever so slightly across his body… Zack smirked. Sora was quiet the sexy eighteen-year-old.

"You're staring at me, and as appreciated as it is, you need to watch this damn movie." Sora flounced back to the couch and sat on Zack's hard stomach, pressing play on the remote. Zack rubbed the boy's back with nimble fingers.

"Yes sir. I can always stare at you later."

And that was how Zack saw the unrated director's cut of Saw IV, Jigsaw's penis and all, and while Sora cooed away the brilliance, Zack became just ever more disturbed.

--

Of course, just because Zack was disturbed, he didn't get to get out of Sora's choice of background noise for house chores the next day, namely Saw III, which Zack probably liked the least of the four he'd seen. Blood and guts were okay, but liquefied pig corpses made him gag more than a little. But Sora hummed as he went about washing dishes and straightening the house, pausing to watch the action unfold some more and laughing when something gruesome happened.

Zack was glad to turn on the vacuum and block the sound out… or, he was until he was finished and had to press the off switch. He was pleasantly surprised to hear silence, and hummed a little himself.

Until a pair of surprisingly strong arms locks around him and there was heavy breathing in his ear.

"Hello, Zack… I want to play a game…"

"Damnit, Sora!" he bleated and shoved the boy away. The named young man cackled and flashed him a toothy grin.

"Sorry. Couldn't resist…"

"I don't know which I should be more scared of: your inability to resist or the fact that you can impersonate that voice so well…"

"Be scared of both. That way you won't totally flip out when I go insane."

"… you're not going insane."

Sora smirked. "You better hope not."

Before Zack had found his voice again, the doorbell rang, and Sora skipped off to answer it. Zack stood there, trying not to let his mind process the thought of what would happen should Sora ever truly go insane… The boy had already had his brushes with depression… Okay… make some cookies. Keep him on sugar. Now.

--

Soon as Sora opened the front door, a pair of bright eyes and an even brighter smile met him. "Hi, Sora!"

"Hey, Selphie. What's up?"

"Nothing… okay, well, there's that mini-parade in the town square this weekend, right?"

"Yeah…"

"And, well, it's a lot of work to make the floats and get everything together…"

"… I'm being drafted into helping work on the float, aren't I?"

"Nooo, I know you want your alone time with Zack!" She smirked. "Anyone would… I just need some help moving all the stuff I bought at the store to my house. It'd take me, like, a million trips! And I'd get Tidus and Wakka to help but they're working on their own float and hope my float fails! So… pretty please?"

Sora laughed, and reached for his discarded shoes. "Sure, Selphie." He slipped them on and stuck his head back inside the house. "Zack! I'll be back in a minute!"

The call of "Don't go Jigsaw on me while you're gone!" made Selphie give him a perplexed look, but Sora just shrugged and ran along with her to help move the materials.

--

When Zack couldn't find the ingredients to make cookies, he settled for chocolate pudding and rice crispy treats instead. While he wasn't sure if feeding Sora sugar would make him more like Jigsaw or less like Jigsaw, it was worth a try. Maybe this obsession was going a bit far. Zack would make him watch Happy Feet tonight. Yes… dancing penguins… no torture.

Sora was gone longer than Zack expected. He could only imagine was sort of float Selphie was creating. Maybe watching the parade would be fun, so long as there were fireworks afterwards. He liked fireworks.

Zack was putting away Sora's clothes upstairs when he heard laughing and looked out the window. Sora was walking across the street with Selphie prancing along head, both of them giggling merrily. He grinned down at them, glad to see Sora spending time with his friends. Not that the boy usually ignored them… but he was more inclined to spend the day locked away with Zack as opposed to out with his friends. It was progress. He began singing to himself as he stored away all the clothes, but it was as he went to put away the last pair of socks that he heard something… quite unexpected.

A girl screamed, car tires squealed, and there was a shout of pain. Zack's head shot up. All of this was followed by someone yelling, "Sora!!" and Zack's blood turned to ice. He ran over to the window… and thought his heart was going to stop.

Lying on the pavement face-up and half underneath Riku's old truck was Sora, face twisted in pain.

-end-

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