Author's Notes: I had notes to tell you all, but FF.N was a bitch and wiped it clean.

Basically, got to have fun at a Mexican Wal-Mart. Whooo. I was paranoid as hell trying to make sure my parents and friends stayed together. We ate at a nice restaurant and such.

If anyone read this when the site was being a whore, they'll notice any formatting fuck-ups were fixed.

Chapter 37

"I'm Just A Little Unwell"

Sora was upstairs some hours later, eating little capfuls of Jello that he'd found high up on the refrigerator. He wondered why on earth Jello would be kept on top of the refrigerator, and he was wondering why they all tasted a little sour, but hey—Jello is Jello. Besides, it didn't taste half bad. It wasn't spoiled, so as far as he was concerned, it was free game. And it came in all sorts of flavors, too!

He shook off the dizzy buzz he got after two or three of them, but didn't exactly quit consuming them. In fact, the more he ate them, the better they tasted, so he essentially began to treat it as a buffet. He sat on the couch watching television—and since they were the only two there besides Fuujin, who was napping, he went nuts with the channel surfing, mostly on cartoons. Everything that was on was funny today. He sometimes laughed so hard his face would get red from lack of oxygen; then he would switch channels and watch something else. This went on even up to the point where Riku arrived. Sora smiled goofily and waved.

"Heya, Riku!"

You're looking really good in that, he thought. Sora blinked and raked his eyes over Riku's form without a second thought. He's hotter than Kairi! This thought made him giggle.

Riku cast a sideways glance at him. Sora was still grinning like an idiot.

"What's up?"

"Um, nothing. Listen, about earlier...I'm sorry I offended you. I shouldn't have said that."

Sora waved a hand, eyes rolling. "Pfffff. Don't worry 'bout it, iss'cool, esé!" He paused. "What'd you say, again?"

At this point, even Riku was starting to get worried. "Sora, are you okay?" He warily eyed the pile of little plastic caps around Sora on the couch and floor, and at the little treat he was slurping up right now. Sora continued to grin madly at him.

"Fine, fine! Never been better!"

Riku blinked. He'd never even seen Sora this cheery—he was either really pissed and trying to hide it (badly), or he was—

Oh, shit.

"Sora, what are you eating?"

"Jello!" Sora held one up. "Want one? It's jiggly."

Riku snatched up the thing in Sora's hands, sniffed it, and scooped it out an ate it. He almost gagged when he swallowed, and stared at the empty cup incredulously, brow scrunching in disgust.

"Sora, these are Jello shots!"

"Isn't it yummy?"

"These have alcohol in them! Where the fuck did you find these!"

Sora pointed to the top of the refrigerator. Riku flung his hands up. "Did you even stop to think that they might be up there for a reason? Jesus Christ!" Riku hissed at him, "You're fucking drunk!"

Sora blinked at him, frowned, then smiled again. "I am? Wickeeeed."

"How many of these did you—no, wait, don't answer that." Riku shook his head, shielding from his vision the pile of empty caps on the floor and couch. "Good God, Sora, you don't eat Jello shots at sixteen years old...!"

"Underage! Whoo-hooo!" Sora flung his arms up in the air. Riku whirled around and clamped a hand down on Sora's mouth.

"Sssshhh! Fuujin might hear you!"

"Bullshit she'll hear me," Sora snorted. Riku growled and tugged Sora up.

"Come on, can you walk?"

"No!" the brunet giggled. "Wheee...my legs are wobbly..."

Riku sighed. He walked around the couch, and then slung Sora's arm over one shoulder, wrapped an arm around his waist and started moving. "Let's go, you. Bed and water. Gotta get you sober."

Sora was practically leaning on the other with his entire body weight. As Riku took him downstairs into the basement, he kept on giggling and making little mumbling jokes at himself. (Well, he found them funny, while obviously Riku did not.)

"Your face is redder than it is when you blush," Riku grumbled. Sora grinned.

"Hee hee hee, I'm a cherry!"

"Yeah, and that cherry's gonna pop soon if we don't control the swelling..." Riku paused for a moment, as if thinking, and then shook his head.

Getting him down the stairs was actually a pain. At one point, Sora stumbled and fell down about eight of them face-down, whining in pain at the end of it, and Riku eventually settled with picking him up and just carrying him down. By the time they got to the actual bed, Sora was clinging to Riku like a baby monkey.

"Get off me," Riku nudged him. "I'm going to get you some water."

"I dun'waaant annyyyy." Sora had his arms and legs wrapped around Riku's shoulders and waist, accordingly. "Mmmmm, my Riku."

"Sora!" Riku finally pried him off and let him drop to the bed. "Stay there. Don't move."

"M'kaaay!" Sora rolled onto his stomach and hugged the pillow, nuzzling it while Riku went into the bathroom to fill a cup with cold water. Sora smiled dreamily.

Pillow has Riku-smell. His smile widened and he breathed in the scent of shampoo on the pillow. They both used the same kind, but that thought didn't occur to Sora. It was Riku's scent at the moment, and that was all.

The silver-haired teen came out again moments later with a glass of water in hand. He gave it to Sora, and the brunet took it only because Riku was giving it to him. He sipped at it quietly, and meanwhile, Riku sat down next to him.

"You're not leaving this bed. Until you're sober again, I'm not letting you get up."

Sora blinked at him, bleary, and shrugged. His vision was just a little hazy—in fact, most of his senses were like that. And there was a very odd buzz in his head, one that creeped south down his spine and made his whole body tingly and numb. Quiet now, Sora just drank a little more of the water. It was tasteless. He didn't like it.

"Seriously, how many did you have?" Riku asked. Sora shrugged again.

"Ummmmm...ten...fifteen?"

"Jesus Christ!" Riku shook his head. "If the legal drinkers find them gone, I'm pointing straight at you."

Once more, Sora didn't really care. He found his eyes wandering to Riku's, examining his features. His eyes, his cheeks, his lips, the curve of his neck. Strangely, the way Riku looked right now was much more interesting than what he was saying. Sexy, he thought. And, while he wasn't able to pick up on this, Kairi was entirely gone from his mind.

Riku stared at him, and Sora stared back. Then the silver-haired one blinked first.

"You got quiet."

"You got sexy."

Riku sighed and flicked Sora lightly on the nose, making the brunet go cross-eyed. "And you're a bold little bastard when you're drunk—I'll remember that."

Sora giggled at him and touched his lips to the rim of the glass. "Sexy, sexy Riku." he mumbled. He blinked, recalling a name. "Mmm...pretty Kairi...sexy Riku."

Said teenager just shook his head. "Sora, quit muttering, you sound like a crackhead."

"Y'neverrr knowww'f I miight be," Sora said loudly, actually squealing this time as he flung his whole body forward languidly and flopped onto Riku, clinging to his waist. Riku jumped mentally.

"Hey, whoa, whoa!" Sora pushed so hard that he spilled the glass of water all over Riku and the sheets. While Sora just went on tittering like a schoolgirl, Riku was shuddering from the sudden freeze on his torso.

"You klutz!"

Sora just purred and nuzzled up against the other. "Mmmm, body heat."

Riku growled. "Sora, my stomach is freezing and it's all your fault."

"Ask me if I care," the brunet slurred. He brushed his lips against Riku's skin through the cloth of his shirt and bit a little hard.

"OW!" Riku winced and pushed Sora's face away. "Look, if you're going to get frisky, at least try not to hurt me, okay? I got enough scars as it is."

"Frisky?" Sora sat up then, totally detaching from the other, cocking his head curiously like this was a new thing to him. Riku leered at him.

"Yes, contrary to what your hazy mind is thinking, I don't like monkey bites." (If that even was a monkey bite, Riku thought, that was just a bite!)

Sora pondered on this for the next several moments, but after that, it all went black—his memory and his senses failed him and the only thing he would remember doing later that evening is falling asleep.

Seifer came home at four from work and found Fuujin holding a mostly-empty pan of Jello shots out of reach from the children. When Seifer managed to shoo them all away, the first thing that scared him was how many were gone.

"Where the fuck are all my babies?" he demanded. "How many did the little bastards eat?"

Fuujin pointed to the stairs leading to the basement. "Not them. Sora."

Seifer stared at the pan, and shook his head, thinking his eyes had deceived him.

"Well, fuck, I hope he doesn't die."

"Not die," Fuujin shrugged, "Just drunk."

A dark-skinned hand gripped the bars of his hospital bed so hard that his knuckles were white. The cradle of the phone received the same treatment.

"She did WHAT?"

"You'll have to settle for counter-sueing. This will make things much harder for you," Sephiroth said. "It appears that bitch ex-mother of Riku's beat you to the punch. Court already declared her the plaintiff."

Ansem didn't even answer to that. There was a very long pause, and he grit his teeth before slamming the phone back down onto the receiver. He wanted to rip his pillow apart and grab a needle and stab the nearest nurse that came by. The staff and other patients must have sensed this, because suddenly all the people around him shut their curtains if they were still open, and the doctors and nurses all gave him wary glances from the corner of their vision and shrank away.

Reality was starting to close in on him, and he was absolutely HATING it. Surely there was a way out of this—there had to be! He was going to get out of this somehow; all you needed were the right connections and plenty of green.

But even Ansem didn't find going over it thousands of times to prove very helpful.

No matter how many angles and excuses he invented...he was most assuredly fucked.