First Kisses

disclaimer - don't own it.

warnings - possible KH2 spoilers!

Riku, as it turned out, was a much better kisser than Kairi was.

Except Sora probably wasn't supposed to know that.

In fact, he kind of wished that he didn't know it, because he had a feeling that his life was about to get complicated all over again and he'd only just gotten used to the peace and quiet that Destiny Islands usually brought.

Not to mention things would probably be all sorts of awkward now.

See, it went like this…

Kairi hadn't been joking when she told Namine and Roxas that she and Sora would be together everyday. Sora had a hunch that Kairi was afraid he'd whip out his keyblade and flounce off on another adventure if she so much as let him use the bathroom on his own. It was a testimony of how much they hung out together – or rather, that Kairi hung all over Sora – that he would find himself startled when he glanced over at the urinal next to his only to find Kairi's presence absent. He'd gotten sort of accustomed to her always shadowing him wherever he went now.

Not that he was happy with it.

It was okay at first. Nice even, because he was so relieved to be back with his friends. Both of his friends, because in the first days of their arrival back to the islands, Riku was always there as well.

But then school started up again, which was just absolutely horrible and really, Sora would take battling the Heartless over homework any day. It didn't help that, on top of classes and, yes, the homework, Riku was a grade above Sora, so he rarely got to see the boy. Kairi, Selphie, and Tidus were in Sora's class (Wakka was in Riku's), and not that Sora disliked these three particular friends, but it was Riku he wanted to hang out with and catch up with and be best friends with like they were before everything had happened.

And it was Riku who he now barely got to see.

If Kairi thought that Sora would disappear if left on his own, her worry seemed to grow tenfold if it was Riku that he was left alone with.

Sora blamed it on the one time she discovered them sitting on their tree, staring out at the horizon with, as she had put it, yearning looks on their faces. Sora couldn't help it if he'd been thinking about Donald and Goofy and was wondering how they were doing! He hadn't heard from them since they'd gone back to King Mickey's castle.

In any case, Kairi had taken it upon herself to become Sora's unofficial bodyguard, and, it seemed, his girlfriend.

He still wasn't quite sure how that had come about. One day at lunch, Kairi had sidled up to him while he was standing in line, taken his hand in hers, and fitted herself snuggly against the side of his body. Sora had caught a knowing smirk from Riku two tables away and grinned goofily back at him, and by the end of the day everyone had been congratulating him on finally asking Kairi out.

Which, of course, had never actually happened, but when he tried to explain this to people he was only waved off and ignored.

So it stood. Sora and Kairi were together, taken, no questions asked, and Kairi took to her new role with relish.

Riku, of course, had his own fair share of admirers, all of whom he outright ignored. Along with his mysterious absence (which had been explained to their parents that Riku and Sora had simply gotten separated – they left the whole 'succumbed to the darkness' bit to themselves) and then, subsequently, miraculous return to the islands after over a year, it helped that his hair was now a foot longer and that he stood a foot higher. The girls seemed to like that.

Riku thought it was all very amusing.

Sora thought he might just take a pair of scissors to Riku's hair when he was sleeping and be done with it.

Sometimes they managed to find time alone, though.

"I mean, she's just so clingy!" Sora was busy complaining to Riku, having somehow managed to lose Kairi for the night. She'd nearly invited herself along to Sora's to join in their sleepover, but Sora had adamantly refused.

"So dump her, then," Riku said in a bored tone, flipping through the pages of one of Sora's magazines from where he was sprawled out on his stomach across Sora's bed.

"How can I dump her if I never asked her out in the first place!" Sora cried. He flipped over onto his back beside Riku, balling up his fists and rubbing his eyes. "Maybe I'll run away to Atlantica. She'd never find me there."

"Maybe you should have just left her with Maleficent and been done with it," Riku said flatly. He flipped another page, grinning when Sora whacked him upside the head with a pillow.

"Not funny," he said, holding the pillow as if it was his keyblade and then hitting Riku again. Riku tried to grab it from him, which resulted in a brief scuffle that ended with both of them on their backs, panting up at the ceiling.

"Come off it, Sora," Riku said eventually, folding his arms behind his head. "I thought you liked her."

"I do!" Sora argued. "As a friend."

"Suuuure." Riku smirked. "That's why you traipsed through an umpteen amount of worlds searching for her."

"I went through even more looking for you," Sora threw back at him. "Found you a couple times, too, even though I didn't know it at the time." He frowned. "You could have told me, you know."

Riku sighed, because this was a conversation they'd had several times before in the past few weeks. "Yeah, I should have, but I didn't, and it's all over now anyway. Do we have to get into that again?"

"Guess not," Sora mumbled, shooting Riku a dirty look.

Riku nodded, before smirking in a slightly scary manner that would have worried Sora had he been paying any attention. "So. Have you kissed her yet?"

"…What?"

"I said, have you kissed her yet?"

"Well, I – um. What?" Sora stammered, his cheeks slowly turning red.

"It's a yes or no question, Sora," Riku said, looking amused. He turned on his side, propping up his elbow and resting his cheek on his fist, and arched his eyebrows. "Have. You. Kissed. Her. Yet?"

Sora pursed his lips, glancing away. "Yes," he said quickly, and then immediately followed up with a defensive, "And so what if I have?"

Riku's smirk fell from his face so quickly that Sora suddenly wasn't sure if it had even been there in the first place.

"Uh, Riku?"

"Congrats, then," Riku said abruptly, the brightest and absolutely most fake smile Sora had ever seen plastered across his face.

"Riku…" Sora said doubtfully.

"No, it's fine," Riku said cheerfully, still smiling. "She's your girlfriend, why shouldn't you kiss her?"

"She's not my girlfriend," Sora said sullenly, but Riku ignored him.

"And it's not like I expected you to tell me about it or anything. No worries."

"Hey now, that's not fair!" Sora exclaimed. "You've kissed girls before and never told me!"

"Who have I kissed?" Riku demanded, pushing himself up onto his knees and pinning Sora with a cold glare. At least the fake smile was gone. "I was kind of busy being overcome by the darkness, if you remember. And not that Ansem isn't a good looking guy, but I wasn't exactly attracting a lot of beautiful girls like that."

Sora scoffed, waving his hand dismissively. "Before all that," he said. "What about Rinoa? She's two years older than you and you got her to kiss you!"

"Who?" Riku asked, his brow furrowing, and then he seemed to realize his mistake because his cheeks went light pink. "Oh – um – yeah. Her."

"Wait…" Sora peered at him, and then starting laughing. "That – that never happened, did it?" he said, in between chuckles. "I knew it! I knew you were lying about that! Like she would have ever gone for a scrawny little fourteen-year-old!"

"Sora…" Riku growled.

"Hang on." Sora sat up abruptly, his eyes bright. "Does that mean I got my first kiss before you did?" Riku's frown deepened. "Seriously? Woo-hoo!" he cried, punching the air with his fist. "Finally, something I beat you at!"

"Che," Riku muttered, turning away and laying on his stomach again. "You beat me all the time now, remember?"

"But I never thought I'd beat you with girls," Sora crowed, still looking highly amused.

"It's just kissing," Riku grumbled, and then his eyes went wide and he looked quickly at Sora. "Right?"

"Ahaha, um, yeah. Just kissing." Sora held up his hands, grinning. "Promise. She's not very good at it, though," he continued, settling in on his stomach beside Riku.

"Maybe you're the one who's not good at it," Riku said in a deliberately bored tone.

"Nah," Sora said cheerfully. "It's gotta be her. She tried using her tongue this one time-"

"This one time?" Riku interrupted, pushing himself to his knees again. "Exactly how many times have you kissed her!"

Sora felt his cheeks warm up again. "A fair amount, I guess…"

Riku snorted. "I thought you didn't want her to be your girlfriend?"

"Well, I didn't say I like her kissing me all the time," Sora said, his nose scrunching up. "Like I said, she's so clingy!"

"Enjoy it," Riku said, grabbing the magazine again and staring down at it without really reading anything. "Some of us don't have girls to paw all over us like you do."

"There are plenty of girls who would paw you if you'd let them," Sora said, rolling his eyes. "You're so cold to them, though."

"They're annoying," Riku said flatly. "I'm not that different from before. They just think I'm some dark, mysterious, romantic guy now because I was gone for over a year. That's the only reason they're interested."

"How come no one's interested in me like that?"

"They were. Kairi scared them off."

"Oh." Sora frowned. "I still think you could get any one of those girls to kiss you, though."

"Maybe I don't want a girl to kiss me," Riku muttered so quietly that Sora wasn't sure he'd heard him correctly.

"What?"

Riku coughed lightly. "I said, what girl would want to kiss me?"

Sora blinked, looking doubtful. "Riku, what girl wouldn't?"

"All of them," Riku replied, rolling onto his back and sighing theatrically. "No one will ever kiss me," he bemoaned, throwing an arm over his eyes.

"If you're that desperate, I'll kiss you."

There was a sudden pause, in which Sora clamped a hand over his mouth and wondered what the hell he'd just said.

Riku slowly moved his arm from his face and gave Sora an incredulous look.

"Er – Well, I…well, I would!" Sora stammered, feeling his cheeks burn. "Um…"

"Don't be weird, Sora," Riku said, glancing away.

"It's not weird!" Sora insisted. "I've got experience and you don't – I could teach you!" he said brightly.

Riku laughed shortly. "Sora, I don't think-"

But whatever it was he didn't think he never got to say, because Sora was suddenly straddling his hips and holding his arms above his head, a determined look on his face.

"Sora!" Riku exclaimed, his eyes widening. "What do you think you're doing!"

"You haven't had a first kiss yet," Sora replied, "and quite frankly, my first kisses sucked." He hesitated for a moment, and then plowed on, "So I'm going to kiss you now."

And then he did.

Except it wasn't so much kissing as it was a slamming of their mouths together followed by an awkward pause where they continued staring at each other through wide eyes.

Then all at once Riku seemed to relax, the tension flowing from his muscles and his eyes sliding closed. His back arched a bit, his mouth fell open under Sora's and everything was immediately so much better than it had ever been with Kairi.

Sora moaned and released Riku's wrists so that he could instead bury his hands in the boy's hair. As soon as Riku had use of his limbs, however, he flipped them over so that he was on top and Sora was underneath him. Sora barely registered that they'd changed positions; he only resumed kissing Riku as quickly as he could.

Riku's chest was flat against his, their legs were intertwined, their hips pushed together. It was fantastic, nothing like the uncomfortable feeling of Kairi's soft, curvy body brushing against his. Riku was all hard lines and angles and he was so sure of himself; there was no girly tentativeness about him. Sora arched up, clutching Riku's shoulders, and felt something burn and tingle in his chest that sent shivers all the way down to his curling toes and then back up to his head.

"Riku…" he murmured when they had to tear apart to breathe. Riku was panting above him, peering down at him through his shaggy bangs, and suddenly Sora was aware of just how close they were and what exactly they'd just been doing and, oh God, Riku was his friend, what was he thinking!

"Sora," Riku said when Sora's eyes went wide and his face went pale. "What-?"

"I've – I've gotta – I have to go!" Sora squirmed underneath the other boy, desperately trying to get free. He'd probably just ruined everything. It didn't matter that Riku was a better kisser than Kairi. Things like – like – like what they'd been doing just didn't happen on their tiny little island! How would he ever be able to look Riku in the eyes again?

"Go where?" Riku asked, sounding amused. He rested his entire body on top of Sora's, effectively pinning him to the bed, and grinned.

"Home," Sora gasped, pushing in vain at Riku's shoulders.

"You're already home," Riku said. "We're at your house, remember?"

Sora stilled, his face still turned to the side. Riku didn't sound upset… Why wasn't he upset?

"Sora." Riku grasped his chin, turning Sora's face towards his. "It's okay."

It was?

Sora relaxed instantly, staring at Riku.

"It is?" he croaked.

Riku nodded. "Of course."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm always sure," Riku said simply, and then he kissed him again, slower this time, more gently.

"I guess…" Sora mumbled when Riku pulled back. "That was a much better first kiss, at least."

"Wasn't so bad from this end, either," Riku said cheekily. He crossed his arms across Sora's chest, resting his chin on them. "So when are you breaking up with Kairi?"

Yeah, Sora thought as he flicked Riku's nose and laughed at the expression on the boy's face, Riku was a much better kisser than Kairi.

And maybe things wouldn't be so awkward after all.

Let me know what you think!

-Maxine