The next morning, Aerith awoke to find a pile of blankets on the couch that she swore hadn't been there when she went to bed last night. After inspecting the far end of the couch, however, she saw Riku's sleeping face, framed by chocobo-yellow spikes. Of course she had been right.

Aerith smiled one of her knowing smiles, and quickly grew excited. She was still a girl, after all, despite her calm demeanor. Soon she found that she could no longer contain her excitement, so she went back upstairs and came down only moments later dragging a pajama-clad, bed head-sporting Kairi with her. Despite her appearance, the redhead was wide awake, and seemed to be channeling Aerith's excitement. As soon as she saw the two boys asleep on the couch, she put a hand over her mouth to contain her squeal, and began jumping up and down like a little girl. Thanks to the carpet, it didn't make much sound, so the occupants of the couch stayed fast asleep, blissfully unaware of their growing audience.

That is, until Yuffie came down.

She had been woken up be the sound of Aerith opening the bedroom door, and after hearing some unintelligible whispering, had finally managed to sit up in bed, only to find the room completely empty. She rubbed her eyes to make sure.

Yep. Still empty.

And so, she crawled out from her warm cocoon, stretched, yawned, and basically took her time to leaving the room. Figuring that her bunkmates wouldn't have business in the keybladers' room, she shuffled her way down the stairs to the living room, only to find Kairi jumping up and down like a pogo stick, hands clamped over her mouth, and Aerith smiling like she'd just seen a group of moogles ice-skating. In little suits. Wearing adorable makeup. And singing. (Aerith was a bit odd…)

Curious as to what was causing such reactions, she joined the line of girls looking at the couch.

Okay, so it's Riku. Whoopie. Yeah, he's cute when he sleeps but it's not tha…

Yuffie took a moment to contemplate the yellow spikes behind his head. Did he get a chocobo hat or something? She moved past the other girls to get a better angle, and then…

"HOLY SHIVA! IT'S CLOUD!… AND RIKU!… OMIGOD THEY'RE SLEEPING! TOGETHER!"

Obviously Yuffie didn't possess anywhere near Kairi's ability to control herself. Not to mention that her voice was higher on the register than anyone would have thought possible, and that a wordless squeal came in-between every word.

Cloud and Riku, of course, were startled awake by the first "HOLY…" Riku's eyes snapped open, and Cloud sat up so quickly that he accidentally knocked Riku off of the couch. From these positions, Cloud could see that Yuffie was the one screaming, and grimaced as he tried to block out the sound by plugging his ears and diving back under the blankets.

Riku, whose range of vision was currently limited to the carpet and a pair of shoes, assumed that some type of sadistic town siren was going off, and huddled into a ball with his hands over his ears, trying to ignore the sound. It was barely intelligible, anyway.

By the time Yuffie got to "SLEEPING!," Leon, Sora, and even Merlin had woken up, and were stumbling into the room, trying to rub the sleep from their eyes and cover their ears at the same time. They were followed by Cid, who was wearing earplugs while stringing together profanities under his breath. Donald and Goofy were still sleeping soundly on the gummi ship, unaware to the chaos inside the house.

Leon, who was almost used to this sort of thing, shuffled up to Yuffie and clamped his hand over her mouth, using his other arm to pin her flailing limbs to her sides and try to hold her back.

"Wha's goin' on?" mumbled Sora.

Now that Kairi no longer had reason to hold back, she squealed (at a rather reasonable tone), look! Look!

Sora made his way over to Kairi, and stared at the scene before him. As Cloud was still under the blankets, all he could see was Riku lying on the ground, curled up on his side, recovering from the recent trauma.

"Riku, why'd you sleep down here tonight?" Sora asked. "D'I kick you in my sleep? M'sorry…"

Cloud chose this moment to emerge from under the blankets, inciting disbelieving stares from the only four still out of the loop. Leon even lost his grip on Yuffie for a second, but managed to recapture her before she could continue in her attempt to deafen them.

After a moment of shocked silence, Cid burst out in laughter, trying to light a cigarette, but laughing too hard to even keep his lighter steady.

Merlin merely acted as if nothing was out of the ordinary, and so went to the kitchen to get a blueberry bagel.

Sora, however, was still completely nonplussed, and stood there, head cocked, arms akimbo, with a look of monumental confusion on his face.

"Wait. Riku, did you know Cloud was on the couch, too?"

Riku just stared up at him from the floor, where he had pulled himself up to a seated position. Sora had gotten that stare enough times to know that it was Riku's classic "are you stupid?" stare (others include 'back off,' 'you're so childish,' and 'I'll give you a three-second head start before I chase after you and beat you with this wooden sword or anything else remotely weapon-like in the vicinity').

This, of course, confused Sora even more, because now he knew he was being stupid, but couldn't figure out how.

"Did you guys come down for a midnight snack or something and then start telling ghost stories and get too afraid to go back to bed so you just sat up on the couch all night?"

There was that stare again.

Okay. Second try.

"Did you have some juicy gossip that you couldn't share with the rest of us, so you came down here in the middle of the night, whisper under a tent of blankets until the wee hours of the morning, and then were too tired and cold to walk back to bed?"

Sora was beginning to think he should prepare for that three-second head-start.

Third time's the charm, right?

"Okay… so could you both not sleep, so you came to the kitchen, ran into each other, had a nice long chat and then confessed your romantic feelings to each other and ended up kissing, and then moved over to the couch and almost had sex but you didn't because Cloud was afraid of moving too fast?"

Everyone stared at Sora. He was afraid he had gotten it wrong again, and was preparing to run, but Riku was now sporting a stare that Sora didn't think he'd ever seen before. If he had to guess, he would say that it was somewhere between awe and extreme awkwardness. Which was weird, because Riku was always super collected.

What was even weirder was that everyone else was wearing the same stare, except that they were surprised instead of awkward. The awe was still there. Did they plan this or something?

Merlin, who had returned from the kitchen and was halfway through a bite of bagel, had heard the statement and ensuing silence, and so he swallowed the rest of that bite of bagel and said, "Well, my boy. That was rather specific. But I suppose everyone has their lucky guesses, and if I might be so bold, I do believe that you've hit the nail on the head, as it were."

Considering the mystery solved, Merlin returned to the kitchen to put more cream cheese on what he decided was a far too dry bagel.

Cloud was the first to regain his voice.

"Umm… Sora? What the hell? Aerith's supposed to be the one with psychic powers."

He turned to Aerith.

"Did you tell him that? Did you somehow mysteriously see what happened last night or something? How the hell did he find out?"

"Well, first," Aerith responded (Cloud's tirade had snapped her out of her shock), "I'm not psychic, I just have a very strong sense of intuition. Second, I haven't told Sora anything regarding the two of you. Sora probably noticed the way you were acting around each other, and everyone in this house knew you were homosexual, so someone probably told Sora and he put two and two together. The rest was probably an educated guess based on what he knows about Riku and the fact that you were found sleeping with together on the couch.

By this point, Leon had released Yuffie, who ran straight up and patted Sora on the back for his obvious intelligence while Kairi just stood next to him and smiled behind her hand.

Riku was still feeling terribly uncomfortable with the fact that so many people had learned about his sexuality and his new relationship (it was a relationship, right?) all at the same time, and were currently standing around them as if they were on display. Wanting to hide, he snuck back up onto the couch, slid his legs under the blanket and hid his face in Cloud's neck. Cloud chuckled softly, sending light vibrations through Riku's body, which relaxed him a bit. Sensing Riku's discomfort, Cloud put his arms around the boy and pulled him onto his lap.

"Everything's fine, babe," he murmured. "I know you feel exposed right now, but within a few days, everything will return to normal, and no one will even think about it anymore. We'll just be us. No one here is going to treat us any differently. I promise."

"I know that's how it is with Sora and Kairi, but they're straight. Everyone else in this house is heterosexual. Don't you think it'll be even a little bit awkward? I mean, seeing two guys together isn't really common around here, and it'll just make people uncomfortable."

"Okay, let me ask you something. When you're around Sora and Kairi, and they're cuddling, not even kissing, just being all couple-y, does that make you uncomfortable?"

"Yeah. It makes everything awkward."

"It'll be the same way with us. Everyone will feel awkward if we do that couples stuff around them, but it isn't because we're both male. It's just because that kind of thing always makes people uncomfortable."

"I'm just so worried that I'll do something wrong. I don't want to screw this up."

Cloud cupped Riku's chin and lifted his gaze to meet his own.

"Listen to me, Riku. I don't care what happens, okay? There's nothing you can do that will make me stop feeling the way I do about you. Even if you think you're screwing up, you aren't. Because no matter what happens, no matter what anyone thinks, I'll be right there with you. So you don't need to worry, okay?"

Riku gave Cloud a soft smile.

"Okay."

And Cloud knew that he would do anything just to see that smile again. Cloud leaned forward and planted a kiss on Riku's lips, which the boy gently returned, lacing his hands through Cloud's hair. There was no desperation in this kiss, nor wild passion, only simple, pure affection.

The moment was perfect.

Until Yuffie.

"Awwwwwww! (squeal!) You two are so adorable together! (squeal!) Seriously, this is so cute! (squeal!) Can you kiss again? PLEEEEAASE?"

Sora came up and whispered something desperately into Yuffie's ear.

"What?" she said. "Why?"

"Just trust me, please!"

A quiet voice came from the couch.

"Your three seconds are up. Better run fast."

At which point Yuffie screamed "OH SHIT!" and ran out the front door, followed closely by Riku, who stopped only to grab a wooden mallet from Cid's toolbox.

"Umm… Sora?"

"Yeah, Cloud?"

A loud bang was heard outside, followed by screaming, yelling, and overall chaos.

"Remind me to never get Riku angry."

End.