"Sea Salts to Heal."
Disclaimer: O, Canada! Our home and native land! True patriot love, in all thy sons command! With glowing hearts, we see thee rise, our True North strong and free! From far and wide, I don't own Kingdom Hearts, O, Canada, we stand on guard for thee! God, keep our land, glorious and free! O, Canada, Squall is sexy, we stand on guard for thee! O, Canada, we stand on guard for thee!
A/N: The following chapter has: Slander to JAT, a representation of what I look like on Pancake morning, and my favorite Squffie scene so far. For today, anyway.
The disclaimer was a little Canadian lesson for you guys. If you didn't see, the disclaimer was hidden in there, and also slander of my nation by imputing that Squall is sexy. I love National Anthems.
By the way, does anyone know how to keep a certain font when uploading stories? I'm so sick of New Times Roman 12, and I'm pretty sure that's the default font. So how do you change it? I've seen stories that have.
Shout-outs!
Deplora: I did update PE twice! Aren't you proud of me? Anyhoot, I happen to like your ranty reviews, so feel free to write them as much as you like. Its good to hear from you again!
Tonkeli: Yup. I myself have fallen asleep in those plastic chairs. Its not pretty. Oh, well, I love you anyway, even if Math is stupid.
NeonRaine: Yes, indeed! This chapter is quite fluffy! Er...I think...heh! Thanks again for fixing my spelling mistake...I don't know why I thought that was the word...meh!
Ann: I looooooooove yooouuuuuuuuuu! I have to say there isn't MUCH Tyku in here, and to make up for that I'm going to try and write that special scene for you as soon as I can! And write the next Riku battle scene so you can grope him! Anyhoot, I was thinking of making Riku and Tynan have a secret re-match in the alley some time...WHAT SAY YOU! Love, from, BERT!
YK2- More Squffieness in this one! In fact, its on of my favorites!
DazedXConfused: Oh, I know. But doncha worry! Sora and Shuyin are going to become more involved in the story soon. Its just that right now I can only use them to vent my angsty-ness. But they'll stop being neglected soon, don't worry! Thank you so much for your review, and I love constructive criticism!
Plumbob: You are the coolest! Hehehehe, yes, Internet Explorer plots against me all the time. As does my computer. 'Update or else.' Nice!
Iris: You rock, dude! Head slams Heh, more Squffie in this one, and I'm awesomly glad that you got an account. Now you must write. WRITE, I say!
DestinyBestWordEverWhenRikuSaysIt: Hola! YOUR BROTHER KEEPS ERASING YOUR FFX-2! Mine used to do that to! I had to buy my own copy, the scum bag. But yup, I've beat it, and one thing I can say is that WORK HARD while playing the game because the Good and Perfect endings are AMAZING and happy and they made me cry in a happy way!
Joy Blue: I was thinking of writing another fight scene, but then Riku would be acting all careful and not sexy at all. Plus, Tynan wouldn't be allowed to fight because she's injured. However...perhaps they'll have a secret rematch...heehhe..
Arzachel: Movie? What movie? Well...this chapter is PRETTY mushy but..mush is good sometimes right? Right? ISN'T IT! Ahem. I am not a spaz.
The. Dr: Your review made me ridiculously happy. And don't worry, Kairi and the magic are coming in fairly soon.
Special note:
The author is sick, so send her some 'get well soon' thoughts.
HERE WE GO!
Sora shoved his way through the door of his favorite restaurant, bones aching and stomach growling. It was just his luck that his female opponent happened to be rather big boned, with rippling muscles even Riku couldn't hope to achieve and a uni-brow to complete the look. He'd won, of course, in the end, but not before the woman had delighted in tossing him around the ring with a mere flick of her wrist. The fates really did hate him after all. It would probably be a good idea to stop challenging fate, as he had taken to doing so verbally before each battle. Challenging fate didn't seem to do anything except land him with a truck load of scratches and one too many bruises.
'I'm so full of hubris.' He thought as he maneuvered his body around the chairs and tables that littered the small restaurant. 'Now all I need is a star-crossed lover.'
He winced guiltily as he was reminded of the actual star-crossed lovers he knew; Cloud, Squall and Shuyin had all lost someone they had loved deeply. He did not want to end up like Shuyin, who it seemed no one could reach despite the time they had all spent together in Traverse. Had Shuyin challenged fate? What had happened to his lover and how had Shuyin managed to survive? The knowledge that his best friend was lost somewhere in darkness, that he'd been sent away from Kingdom Hearts, had been the hardest thing Sora had ever had to face. How would he feel if he lost someone he loved?
His thoughts were interrupted in favor for one thing, and that was the sight of Riku and Tynan seated by the usual window table. Together. Being civil. Not trying to kill each other. Riku had pushed his plate to the side, leaning his arms on the table to stare at the girl across from him in shock. He made room for Sora as his friend approached the table and the Keyblade Master was able to see exactly what Riku had been looking at.
Now Sora had seen London, had been told stories from the Beast about France, and had certainly seen Riku in his underpants. But he'd never seen someone the size of the girl seated opposite him eat so much, so fast. Tynan had pulled her hair back and tucked it into her shirt, solely for the purpose of tucking a dozen pancakes into her mouth. She leaned over to stick her fork in another stack of pancakes, lifting it and shoveling on to her plate. With that she drenched them with syrup, piled them with whipped cream, sprinkled them with fruit and started all over again. She looked up at Sora as he cleared his throat, and swallowed.
"What?" She said, looking back and forth between Riku and Sora.
"You...sure do eat a lot." Sora said lightly, rubbing his own stomach as if trying to decide how so much food could fit in Tynan's.
The girl shrugged, turning back to her food. "Riku's paying."
The oldest teen sighed, swiping hair from his face in an annoyed fashion as Sora grinned at him. The brunette called the waitress over to order another round of pancakes, and Riku looked sadly down at his soon to be empty wallet. He listened only half heartedly as Sora described his battle in very intimate detail, waving his arms around and nearly knocking Riku's drink over twice. Tynan was listening attentively, leaning towards Sora with a large smile and seeming to temporarily forget about massacring her food. The silver haired boy allowed himself a small smile while they were too preoccupied to glance his way, relaxing into a forgotten state of contentment as their laughter surrounded him.
Something cold hit his face before he had even the slightest chance of defending himself, and he stared at the gooey substance that he'd wiped from his face before glancing up at the girl seating in front of him. She smiled wickedly, holding up the can of whipped cream for him to see and for a moment her act of playfulness brought Riku back to Destiny Islands. Too long. It had been too long since he'd been home, where things had been simple. He had a lot of good memories there. He'd told Sora they'd see Kairi, their friends and their parents again. But he'd never believed it.
For a moment, just a moment, he couldn't remember why he'd wanted to leave.
Sora took hold of a bottle of chocolate sauce, and as he took aim for Tynan's face and fired, as Tynan ducked her head with a small shriek and glared at Sora for his act of betrayal, as Riku suddenly felt genuinely happy, he realized letting go might not be so bad after all.
Maybe they would go home some day.
Boring Scene Break (RIKURIKU)
"Well, I have to say, you took quite a fall...Jat, was it?" Aerith smiled down at the man beside her encouragingly, pulling the thread through his skin as she attempted to stitch shut a wound on his forehead.
"I'll say!" The man cried, wincing as her needle pierced his skin. "That Shuyin guys is nuts!" (A/N: Cupcakes for anyone who can guess who Jat REALLY is. Ann, you know who Jat REALLY is!)
Shuyin, who was seated patiently across the medical tent, raised an eyebrow but remained silent. His fight against Jat had been fairly pointless; the man seemed more into the show of it since it had appeared he'd had no fighting skills whatsoever and had devoted most of his time to blowing kisses out at the crowd. He'd refrained from publically humiliating Jat too quickly, partly because he felt he recognized him somehow and partly because he was feeling humble today.
Aerith sighed, placing a bandage carefully over the wound. "I'm afraid I've ran out of Ibuprofen. Shuyin, would you mind running to the Items Shop and grabbing some for me?"
Shuyin shifted hesitantly, glancing at Jat with unease. He'd seen the way he'd been looking at her as she dressed his wounds, and it wasn't in a gee-thanks-for-kissing-my-boo-boos-better kind of way either. It was interesting how quickly he could make judgement of Jat's character, since he was sure they'd never met, and he thought it better not to mention his worries in face of Aerith's disapproval. Besides, she was smiling at him expectantly, and he was no better at resisting her kind smiles than anyone else.
He settled with a warning glare in Jat's direction as he passed under the door of the tent, and Jat turned to Aerith with quite a scandalized look.
"Yeesh!" Jat cried, crossing his arms over his chest. "What's his problem?"
Aerith smiled. "Nothing. He's just like that by nature."
Jat grinned, sliding along the bench towards her and slipping an arm around her waist. Aerith gasped and turned to stare at him, pushing his arm off her shoulder and standing. The young man grinned sheepishly at her.
"Hey, I saw you check me out earlier." He smirked, standing. "Don't pretend you weren't."
"Actually, I was watching Shuyin." She said cooly, taking a step back. "He's a friend."
He took hold of her wrist. "You don't like the way I look, is that it? I doubt it."
"Quite frankly, no." She hissed, struggling against his hold. "And I'm very much in love with someone else, if you would please back off."
"Oh, that's the problem!" Jat laughed. "I don't mind if you're taken. No one needs to know...it'll be out secret."
He grabbed her by the waist, and Aerith was just about to scream when a shadow moved quickly, too quickly for her to see, into the tent and Jat was sent flying. The young man yelled, sitting up and clutching his hand over his eye.
"You've got five seconds to get out before I break your neck!" Cloud seethed, standing in front of Aerith and carting the most murderous look either of them had ever seen.
Jat scrambled up and rushed past them, pausing in the doorway. "Hey, man, sorry! No offense meant, Miss!"
Cloud turned to her once Jat had gone. "Are you alright?"
"I-I think so!" She gasped, clutching onto the sleeves of his shirt. "Cloud, I–"
He took her by the shoulders and shook her. "You are not to stay with any man by yourself, do you understand me?"
She gasped, hurt under the strength of his hold. "I didn't mean to–"
"Men will take advantage of you the minute they have the chance!" He hollered, shaking her again. "Men, you understand?"
"That's an unfair generalization." She insisted crossly, breaking out of his hold. "But yes, I understand, so will you stop being so violent please?"
He stared at her for a good moment before she was yanked into his hold, the folds of his shirt inclosing her as she sobbed into his shoulder. His lips were in her hair, on her cheek, his hands flexing against her back. He whispered to her until she visibly calmed, lifting her head to return his kisses, lips drifting across his face.
"I'm sorry." He said softly, pulling back. "Shuyin told me you were alone with that guy and how he was looking at you and I just...I was so scared..."
She sniffed, resting her head on his shoulder again. "I was being calm and cool, just like you and Leon told me to but..."
"Forget what we said." He said desperately, touching her hair. "Next time just kick them where it hurts and scream."
She took hold of his face, looking up at him with a wet smile. "Thank you."
He tilted his head to kiss her palm. "I'm sorry if I scared you when I came in..I was kind of–"
"Are you kidding?" She exclaimed, yanking his head close with a grin. "That was the sexiest thing I've ever seen!"
He laughed, and it was a fantastic sound, and his mouth was right next to hers when the door flap rustled and they were forced to jump apart. Shuyin stood in the doorway, holding a bottle of Ibuprofen and looking as though he knew exactly what he'd walked in on and couldn't care less. He set the bottle on the table with the rest of the medication, giving them both a slight nod.
"You alright?" He asked her, bright blues slightly guilty. "I shouldn't have..."
"No, no, its alright." She said softly, smiling at him. "Thank you, Shuyin."
He shrugged and made to leave to tent.
"Wait!" Aerith called, and he paused. "Where are you going? I need to clean your wounds!"
"I don't have any, that guy was a pansy." He waved a hand, and waited for Cloud to finish laughing and for Aerith to stop looking so shocked. "And I'm going to go find out who he is and then beat him."
Cloud grinned. "Can I join you?"
Shuyin looked faintly surprised and then nodded. "Sure."
Aerith clapped her hands together excitedly. "Great! A bonding experience!"
And she shoved the both of them out of the tent before they could protest.
(A/N: That was an extreme slander to Jat...heheheh..)
Intermission.
Yuffie was accustomed to waking up in odd places; she'd been an active sleep walker since she was a child. Right now, her bones were aching in the most painful of places and she was curled in a most uncomfortable position. But she was warm, so very warm and safe, and it didn't really matter that she really didn't know where she was, really.
When she opened her eyes once the sleepy fog had cleared from her mind, she let out a small groan as she attempted to stretch and found that she couldn't. Her eyes opened a little wider as she struggled, panic rising in her throat as she realized she could do no more than twist her abdomen. Suddenly the bonds around her body tightened, air brushed her neck and she stilled.
"What are you doing?" A voice muttered slowly, and Yuffie felt the warmth against her back shift ever so slightly.
"Squall?" She blinked rapidly, taking in the balcony, the cheers of people below, the uncomfortable feeling of his thighs pressing into her butt and the white chair in which they sat. She realized she was lying completely over him, her back against his chest, her legs draping over his. She shifted and her skin tingled. His arms tightened.
"You were trying to sleep walk." He told her sleepily. She supposed he was trying to justify his tight hold on her. "You would've walked right off the side of the balcony."
"I didn't mean to fall asleep." She smiled in bemusement, turning her head ever so slightly to look at him. "This is the part in the script where you shove me off your lap and think of an interesting way to kill me."
"If I were going to do that, I would have done it already." He muttered, and she saw that his eyes had already closed. "And if I shoved you off my lap, I'd be cold."
Her breath hitched sharply, and she twitched so violently that her forehead smacked gently against his chin. He cracked a single eye open to look at her in mild annoyance, closing it again with a shrug as he shifted in the chair. She must have heard wrong. But Squall's arms lifted to wrap around her middle, pulling her back against him as if she were a blanket. That tingling shot over her skin once again, and it was all she could not to start trembling. She'd hadn't heard him wrong!
"This isn't comfortable." She said shakily. "The chair."
He shifted his head, brushing her cheek with his hair. "You're not comfortable?"
She was suddenly aware that she didn't want to move. "This...this is..I'm almost...raping you!"
He let out a chuckle, his chest vibrating against her back. "Raping me?"
"Yes!" She insisted, struggling against his arms. "You're only half-conscious. This is very, very unlike you and I'm taking advantage of your sleepy stupor!"
He looked at her. "Would you mind this if I wasn't in a sleepy stupor?"
She blushed and looked away. "I'd never be in the situation to know if you weren't."
Squall was silent for a long moment, and just as Yuffie mustered to courage to look at him she was flying through the air and landing very hard on her back. She spat the hair out of her mouth, glancing up in shocked indignation to find Squall watching her and chuckling again. She watched as he stood, stretching his arms and ruffling his mane of hair without the faintest sign of the fatigue that he'd been plagued. Something shot through her, a feeling so powerful she was short of breath, and she wondered vaguely when she'd lost control of the situation. It had only been yesterday when she'd decided to be more assertive!
"Squall?" She said, in a quivering voice she detested.
He glanced at her with a raised eyebrow. "Leon?"
"Aren't you going to help me stand?" She demanded, flustered and angry with her embarrassment. He could be such a pig sometimes!
He smirked, pushing the screen door open and disappearing without another word. Yuffie stood and brushed herself off, the nails of her fingers digging into her palm as she clenched her fists. Confusing her like that! What a bastard.
"I hate you!" She called, stomping her foot.
Laughter floated from the open doorway. "Yeah? Take a number."
Taking a moment to choke on her own spit, she dashed to the doorway and peered inside, only to see him sprawled out over the bed. Leon did not allow her to sit on his lap, did not discuss the tangled web that was their relationship. She glanced over her shoulder to see if perhaps the apocalypse men were riding by, and when so no one, she came to a grim decision. He was seriously, seriously ill. More ill than she or Aerith had originally thought.
Yet as she settled down beside him on the bed, watched the slow rise and fall of his chest, she realized she knew Leon to a tee but despite her best efforts, did not know him any other way. Maybe, in a random twist of fate or simply a side effect of his illness...
Squall, who been fighting with Leon in the man's heart for so long, was winning.
Her hand floated through the air of its own accord, picking up the single curl that grew stubbornly at his nape despite his straw-straight hair, and twirled it around her finger. He opened his eyes in surprise, gazing up at her from beneath heavy lids. She continued to play with the hair, sweetness curving her lips upwards as he leaned his head into her hand.
She pulled her hand away and stared at it in confusion, as if it belonged to someone else. Someone who would play with Squall's hair without shyness or fear that he would maim her. But Squall hadn't protested once, hadn't even seemed to mind, and now he was watching her with that look that made her tremble-y and twitchy and not very Yuffie Kisaragi-like at all.
Oh yes. Squall Leonhart was very ill indeed.
"Y-you should be sleeping!" She squeaked, rolling away from him with trembling hands she attempted to hide behind her back.
He was still watching her. "I can't sleep."
She giggled in a rather high tone, fully aware of the fact that Squall had efficiently turned the tables on her since yesterday, and throughly dismayed by it.
"Of course you can sleep." She said, sitting up on to her knees and making to push off the bed. "You're sick."
He reached out a lazy arm and caught her wrist, pulling her down on the bed beside him as he had before, his arm slipping over her back. Those less-than-platonic feelings assaulted her again, and she trembled silently as she stared into his face, so close to hers. Her mind fogged, and she could think of only one thing that would calm her nervousness, and she knew immediately that solution was coming from her body overpowering her mind. She knew how she felt, his face was so close to hers, his breath fanning over her cool cheeks...
"I have mono." He said quietly, and she opened her eyes to realize she had closed them, that she had leaned towards him and his lips were scathe inches from hers. He should have pushed her away, that was something they both knew, but he remained perfectly still, eyes studying her face as if she were the last living thing.
"R-right." She said quickly, fumbling with her hands. "S-sorry."
She jumped when his gloved fingers touched her cheek, tracing over her freckles in such a delicate matter that Yuffie started to feel warm inside, and calmed significantly. She returned his gaze, taking in the opportunity he was giving her and the slow, uneasy promise blooming in the depths of his eyes.
"I'm still cold." He commented, pausing his finger's journey across her face.
She smiled, allowed him to pull her close, and decided that maybe Sick Squall wasn't such a scary thing after all.
Made ya look!
Woot!
I love my scene breaks!
Riku and Tynan: make out
Ann: gropes Riku
Tynan: Chases after her with Frying Pan of Doom
Me: laughs evily Just kidding, Ann, there will be more groping. All of you, please review, or the blond gets it!
Tidus, Gippal,Zell, Cloud,Seifer and Shuyin:...Which one?
Black socks never get dirty. Remember that.