A/N: God, you people must hate me by now…. I've been gone for months. Anyway, enjoy!
Hands
Chapter 3
I woke up groggily, faintly remembering that heavy feeling of the ocean smacking into your chest, and blinked around a few times. A pair of blue eyes watched me intently, and a pair of green eyes were fuzzy with tears.
"Kairi?" The blue eyes said to me. "Can you hear me? It's Sora."
As the rest of the room swam blurrily into view, I gave a weak smile. "Sora." My voice cracked on the second syllable, and I felt warm tears fall down my face. "I'm sorry…"
Riku shushed me, and poured a fresh glass of water for my nightstand. "It's all right. What happened?"
I couldn't look them in the face. Not after what had just happened. Not after what I'd tried to do. How could they be so kind to me? Didn't they figure out by now what I had done?
They looked at me so intently, and with such deep concern, it made me angry with myself. I had to tell them—they deserved to know. "I jumped."
Pure shock crossed both their faces. I realized how what I had just said would sound. "No, no, not because of you two. It was because…you can't."
"We can't what, Kairi?" Riku said, taking my hand. "We can't what?"
"You can't tell them," I whispered. "Wakka will hate you."
Sora looked stupefied. "Why would you think that?"
"He thinks it's sick. I asked him, and…he said…" I looked away. "I asked, 'do you know what gay is?' and he said, 'Yeah, sure I do. It's those sickos that molest kids and have sex with other men, right?'"
Sora cringed. I saw tears come to his eyes, and Riku put a hand on his shoulder, and cleared his throat. "It was to be expected."
Sora shot him a look that was a combination of "huh?" and "how dare you!".
"Didn't you ever meet his parents before they died?" Riku said gently. "They were so…strange. And the father…did unforgivable things to Wakka."
The brunette boy's expression softened. "I can't blame him for that."
"No one can," I said tenderly. "But when I heard it, I just thought, 'oh god, Sora will kill himself if his friend betrays him.' And the thought of living without you was…too much to bear." I felt myself choke up again.
Sora kissed my forehead, and took my hand. "I understand." He smiled, stroking my hair. "I'd die without you, too."
A dry sob escaped me, and despite the bandage covering my presumably broken ribs, I reached up and embraced him.
"It'll be okay," he said. I felt a tear drop onto my neck. "It'll all be fine."
He was lying. The truth was, it wouldn't be fine. At least not at first. But when Wakka was finally able to see, there was a chance that maybe, just maybe, it would all be all right.
"Well," Riku said. "You'd better rest up. Those ribs might take a while to heal up. Selphie will be in soon to replace the bandages and get you some food you can eat."
"Thanks," I replied, waving goodbye. Sora took one final look back at me, smiled with his eyes the way only he can, and walked out.
I thought for a while after that. I thought about what Wakka would do, how Sora would take it, whether or not the relationship between my two best friends in the world would have to stay a secret forever, and about how much I was worrying about Wakka all of a sudden. I thought about how he had been there for me when I cried about Sora, all the nights we had spent on the shore, laughing until we thought we were going to pee our pants, how he had given me sparring lessons. One particular memory seemed to be coming back to me little by little…
It was late out one night, right after the original ruin of the island in which our parents had all died trying to save us, and Wakka and I were out on the beach, staring intently at the stars. He turned to face me, and whispered, "Kairi?"
"Hm?" I said sleepily.
"If you could share a paopu with anyone, who would it be?"
I just looked at him. I was too young to really understand the question, so I said, "You, of course."
He smiled at me, and snuggled in closer.
Had that been why we were so close? I remembered that when Sora had first come to be our friend, and I had started to fall in love with him, that Wakka had always been mean and confrontational with him. Had that been why all along? Was Wakka in love with me?
More importantly….did I love Wakka?
Well, It was nice to get back to good old-fashioned writing…hope you liked it! R&R pleeease!