A/N: This is not part of the story. It's taking place in, what, July? But two days ago I realized "Aw...shucks, it's my birthday on Saturday, I should do something to celebrate my impending death." I'm not such a big fan of getting presents because I was born (anyone can be born, it isn't difficult for the child involved), but I figure people should give back to the world that let them in in the first place, huh? Then I gave up on that because it's hard and wrote a semi-related one-shot for this story.

Just keep in mind that it's a good four months later, so if their behavior or interactions seem different or not what you'd expect, that might be why. Or maybe I just screwed up. Tell me. (And yes, I wrote this on a word processor, so it does look a little different.)

Riku Tepes had been thinking about it, and had decided that he wasn't gay. At least, not traditionally. He had never in his few but hormonal teenage years found himself attracted to a man. He had never seen a male model in a magazine and thought to himself, "That is hot shit."

…he'd never thought that about any girls, either, but he had definitely felt himself leaning towards those of the female persuasion when it came to how severely he was apathetic towards them, versus active dislike. Maybe it was that girls matured faster and comparatively rarely made penis jokes.

School was out for the summer, and had been for three weeks. Sora and Riku had fallen into the sort of boring, predictable and repetitive pattern that often characterizes lazy summers. Part-time work in the morning at a coffee shop or a bookstore or a tacky seaside restaurant, and the rest of the day and most of the night was spent at the beach or at someone's house, or even at the coffee shop or bookstore or tacky seaside restaurant they'd come from, now as customers. Riku didn't see anything wrong with it; he liked repetition. It was reliable.

Of course, it was Sora. Reliable usually just meant he was going to show up. It didn't mean he wasn't going to say something stupid, or fantastic, or try to climb a tree to see how far up it he could get just because.

Riku was taking some joy in the fact that Sora absolutely did not know how to deal with tropical summers. He wore pants on the first day of June. Pants.

Riku wasn't the most compassionate person in the world, but even he wouldn't let Sora leave the house in long baggy pants on the first day of June.

He almost missed that week in March when it had rained for five days straight. It was also the week Sora had had surgery, but it didn't mean Riku couldn't wish the ground was wet, or that there were at least clouds in the fucking sky, the one he was staring at now which was so fucking blue it hurt his eyes.

They were on Sora's roof, sometime in the late afternoon, wearing nothing but swim suits and sweat and the sour smell of sun lotion. Sora's roof was small, and flat, and made of white stucco like the rest of his house. Belle claimed she liked it because the color kept the heat out, which Riku supposed was reasonable. But really, he couldn't imagine either of them living in a black house, so.

Spread out like sea stars, both of them, not even touching. Each man trying to find a better way to cool down. Riku could still smell the sun tan lotion; pungent and oily and yet somehow comforting, like every summer comforting, because it smelled like swimming and hiking and summer camp and going outside even though it was over a hundred degrees because it was summer and yesterday could be today could be tomorrow comforting.

Sora was, naturally, the first one to speak. Tigers could shed, but they stayed stripy. "Dude," he groaned. "It's seriously like this every summer?"

Riku rolled his eyes. "No, the weather's just picking on you," he grumbled, throwing an arm over his eyes and quickly removing it before the skin was glued together with sweat.

Sora laughed, wiggled his toes and moved a little closer. "It's okay, Riku," he smiled. "I know you only lash out because you're uncomfortable with how close we've become as friends. That's what my therapist says." He snorted.

"Aw, Jesus," Riku moaned and hit the back of his head on the roof. "How many more of those stupid sessions do you even have?" He didn't care, but it was getting annoying how much Sora made fun of it.

"Just two," Sora sighed. "I only have to have three months' worth, then I get 'evaluated' to see if I've got to keep going, but I don't think I will. 'S not like I'm depressed about anything. Things have been going my way, you know?" He laughed. "I mean…lately, anyways."

Riku rolled his head to the side to meet Sora's eyes. He didn't like it, but at least he knew what to expect in Sora's. They were nicer than the sky, even (especially) when they weren't cloudy. "Yeah?" he asked quietly.

Sora smiled a little and made a small sort of "mmf" noise, wiping one eye with the back of his wrist. He'd learned not to use the hands he'd used to apply sunscreen for touching his eyes. After a couple of trial-and-errors which Riku could have technically helped him avoid. "Yeah," he said and laughed. "School's out, and the beaches here don't suck, and…" he saw Riku start to get that distant, "this is the part of Sora that is stupid and boring" look, "And I bagged myself a hawt piece o' man meat!" he cawed, jabbing Riku in the stomach. Riku cringed in on himself, punching Sora in the gut without much conviction, baring his teeth.

"…fucktard." It was Riku's affectionate nickname for Sora. It had arisen after a few days of summer, in which Sora had been determined to establish a pattern of hanging out almost constantly. Any nickname Riku gave someone was affectionate, since he'd never bothered nicknaming anyone before (unless you counted "mom" or "dad," which Riku didn't).

"Yeah, but now you're paying attention." Sora just laughed, a very boyish and careless summer laugh, rolling onto his back and staring at the sky again. Riku followed his example after a few seconds.

They lapsed into a thoughtful sort of silence, spread out like almost-naked, sweaty sea stars trying to cool down again, barely touching. Riku started to blink when his eyes almost closed, stinging from perspiration and sunscreen. Any words he wanted to say hung on his tongue and stayed there only briefly, like moths, taking off before he could even sneeze from the tickling sensation.

Yes, he thought, he was probably not gay. Calling yourself gay meant that you appreciated everything about the male body (or female, if you were a girl, which Riku wasn't), got sexual gratification from it, the whole nine yards, right? It didn't mean you only got along with guys, but it meant you only wanted to date them, right? And Riku definitely didn't like Sora because he was a guy. The words Sora and penis didn't really feel right in the same sentence. He wasn't in like with Sora's body. Not that there was anything wrong with it, but it wasn't exactly fascinating. It was just a bunch of sticks, tied together with string, or it was when he was asleep.

Riku was a little worried that he'd fooled himself into liking Sora because his mind had finally found someone it couldn't scare off, someone interesting. That this was actually how friendship felt, when you were a teenager, but people probably minded when their friends kissed them. People probably didn't kiss their friends.

(Not they did that often, but more than once couldn't be blamed on spontaneity, right?)

But when Riku turned his head to the side to look at Sora, who was still staring up so determinedly it was like he expected to start floating, pulled up there, Riku wondered if that really mattered. He rolled his head back to stare at the sky.

After a few more minutes, Sora's hand appeared in the blue, sticking straight up with his fingers all spread out like he was trying to block the sunlight from his eyes, or at least touch it.

"You know," he said quietly, "I think I only ever have nightmares when my life is going, like, really well."

That wasn't true. Riku knew that wasn't true. Even the first time he'd slept over at Sora's house, the kid had woken him up in the middle of night because he was whimpering and kicking the foot of the bed and muttering in French and screaming in English and then curling up in a ball. But he always looked fine when he woke up, so maybe he forgot about them. Maybe you only remembered your nightmares when they were worse than your real life.

When Riku didn't respond, Sora continued, "I had a nightmare last night. I think." He coughed a little.

"Nn," Riku said, and winced inwardly. He was supposed to at least ask what, right? What Sora's nightmare was. He wasn't supposed to say "Nn," he was supposed to care because that's what friends did. But the world was not a fucking tree right now, it was not a tree and it was not a perfect circle it was dead fucking moth that Riku had killed with his stupid chair –

"What about?" he muttered.

Sora blinked lazily, taking a deep breath and not-looking at the sun. An airplane hummed somewhere high up. "I don't really remember," he said, unperturbed by Riku's anger with himself, "I don't think anything happened, specifically. I just remember, like...I think there was a barking dog…" he trailed off and then on again, "And fire, but," he made a "tch" noise and rolled his eyes. "That's always there anyways. I just…" he sighed. "Woke up feeling scared, you know?"

Riku watched the plane live a thin smoky trail behind it as it crossed the blue blue sky. "Nn," he said again. He felt a small trickle of sweat run down the middle of his stomach. He started to think about swimming. Swimming was such a pain when it was this hot out; there were way too many people at all the good beaches and Sora didn't like the rocky ones.

The silhouette of Sora's stretched out hand wiggled its fingers. "Yeah," he laughed, but stopped quickly. There was a thoughtful, teenage sort of pause. "It's like there's a…" he sighed again. "I don't know. Somewhere at the entrance to real life, there's a cardboard cutout of a cartoon alligator in a tailcoat and a topcoat with his hand out," Sora stretched his arm out to the side, hand flat and palm down, "With a little sign, like 'you must be at least this sad to enter.'"

Riku breathed in and out, very consciously. He ran a sticky hand through his hair. "Really?" he sighed. "You think so?"

Sora shook his head, and his spikes flopped from side to side. "I don't know what I think, man. It's just a theory." He laughed again, though. "I'd rather have nightmares at night than be living through one, though!" he grinned and looked at Riku, but Riku was frowning and running his sticky hand through his hair once again.

One effect of hanging around Sora so much was that Riku sometimes found himself just saying things before thinking them out first entirely, and what ended up coming out was so convoluted and prolix that it didn't even make sense to him.

"You really think so?" he frowned. "You think a person can't be happy, ever really, actually happy no matter what? We'll always find some reason to complain?" He didn't like that thought.

"…well, I never said that," Sora shoved Riku's leg with his foot jokingly. "I bet there are happy people, I bet there are plenty of them." He didn't sound like he believed what he was saying, though. "Jeez, man, you make it sound like I'm trying to describe the human condition or something." He rolled over onto one side, propping his head on his fist and looming over Riku, grinning. "I'm just some idiot kid getting heatstroke on a rooftop in summer!"

There was another one of those horrible silences, when one of them said something just a little too serious and tried to cover it up with a joke, one of those quiet moments when neither of them wanted to plow the conversation forward, because anything they said would sound fake. They were what Riku dreaded.

Not that he minded the silence, but silence with Sora never seemed pensive or careful, not when he was looking down at you. Riku blinked and inhaled, then laughed, hard.

"Yeah," he said, "Why the hell did we decide it was a good idea to come up here to cool down?"

Sora stared at him for a second, then snorted and grinned and started laughing with him. "Wait, doesn't hot air rise?"

Thunk. Teenage idiocy was comfortably replaced. Riku smacked his head with his palm. "This was a really stupid idea. I mean this was a really fucking stupid idea."

Sora just cracked with laughter, cackling and rolling over again onto his stomach, resting his head on Riku's shoulder and just grinning and giggling to himself. Riku laughed with him a little, shaking his head, and they stayed like that, spread out like a couple of kids on a rooftop, touching. After a little while Sora stood, helping Riku up with his hand and then letting it go, putting his fists on his hips and looking at the houses all around. He reminded Riku of Peter Pan, a little.

Sora blinked and shook his head like a wet dog, then looked at Riku with his head tilted to the side. "Hey," he said. "Wanna go swimming at the beach?"

Riku almost sighed. Yes, yes, the beach, the densely-populated, disgustingly-scented, filled-with-kids-from-their-grade-who-always-stared-at-him-funny-when-he-smiled beach. Sora liked it. But he really was kind of clueless sometimes.

He supposed it was hypocritical of him to expect Sora to pick up on these things when he didn't even have a basic understanding of the workings of society, but that was different. He wasn't trying.

He wondered vaguely if Sora would pick up on it if he just kept quiet and let him come to his own conclusions, but didn't want to take the chance. "No," he said clearly, "Not really."

"Oh, 'kay," Sora smiled at him, unfazed. He made a show of thinking what else they could do, tapping his fingers on his chin, furrowing his eyebrows, making obnoxious "Hmm, hmm" sounds. Riku rolled his eyes.

"Why don't we go watch a movie on your laptop?" he said after a while, and Sora looked delighted at the prospect, if a bit sarcastically. He perked up, clapped his hands and jumped into the air a little.

"My room is air-conditioned!" he cried, heading for the window they'd crawled out of to get onto the roof.

In his room (which was, of course, pleasantly air conditioned) Riku sat on Sora's bed, watching him go over the little stack of DVDs on his dresser. There was nothing they hadn't watched before, but they'd amassed a pretty good collection of movies they both liked after a couple of days in the television room (chief among them, oddly enough, Finding Nemo).

And then when they were watching a movie they must have watched together at least three times that summer, Riku kept thinking about being gay. He was definitely not gay, and that wasn't one of those I'm-vehemently-denying-it-because-I-know-it's-true facts, which was what it sounded like, but it was just a stupid fact that Riku Tepes didn't fit the requirements for being gay. Of course that made it sound even more like denial. It was a vicious cycle.

It was nice and cool in Sora's room, and Riku sighed happily, spreading out. Even the blankets felt good against his skin as a layer of sweat evaporated. Next to him, Sora was sitting down and putting the laptop on a book to keep it a little higher than they were, drawing all the shades.

"Oh, hey," he said casually, laying on his stomach next to Riku, "Before I forget, Kairi says there's a party or something at her house tomorrow." He let out a big breath through puffed cheeks, twisting a finger around a piece of Riku's hair, which was spread out on a pillow.

"So?" Riku asked, just as lazy, staring up at his friend. He'd gotten used to Sora's touchy-feely-contact when they were alone. He didn't like it, but.

Sora shrugged. "I don't know," he said, leaning over Riku's face and grinning. "Maybe I'll drag you if I feel like it. I mean, I like Kairi." Riku stuck his tongue and tried to smack Sora, who just crinkled his nose and laughed, rolling out of the way and then back again, sticking his head under Riku's outstretched arm.

"Hey," he said, laughing again.

Then there was quiet. A very awkward, close, sweaty-but-cooling down heart-beating quiet accompanied by car chase noises from the laptop. Sora stared at Riku stared at sky stared at land stared at Sora stared at Riku. It was one of those moments when both of them were waiting for the other the move first, forwards or backwards, it didn't matter. Riku could just feel the skin of Sora's hip against his ribs, no layers, and his neck against the inside of his arm, hair tickling his wrist. It wasn't like the first time, at all, but there was that same horrible trepidation because they both knew what was coming Sora kissed Riku kissed Sora.

It started out like it had both times before, awkward and stiff-lipped because neither one really knew what he was doing, and Riku just kept thinking that's a boy that's a boy you're kissing a boy boys are not supposed to kiss other boys Sora is a BOY stop kissing a BOY

Followed by a moment of mental silence when all the tiny little gears in his head were turn-turn-turning, and the image of a dead moth flashed through his mind, and of how the words Sora and penis didn't really belong in the same sentence.

And then there was a ping. A moment of wonderful clarity.

It doesn't matter.

And that was what made the kisses worth it. Getting past that horrible front moment of what the fuck are we doing to what most people must feel immediately when they kiss. They fell into a tentative little rhythm for a minute, sometimes two, and Riku rested his knuckles against Sora's cheek and stopped thinking about gender or the car crash sounds from the laptop. Sora was Sora. That was all.

Sora was a person, and Riku was a person, and they were separate entities, touching.

Riku Tepes probably wasn't gay.

But he didn't really seem to care.

A/N: You know what? I haven't ever written a sincere kiss before, 'kay! Deal with it! It's my birthday! I have a cold!

BE NICE