And Nothing Hurt.

"Sometimes people do things that hurt and it's not because they mean to. They just do. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with you, but you end up hurt because of it."
- Randy K. Milholland


A/N:

1) Of all things, don't ask me why I picked the "Girl Next Door" movie. I've never even seen it. I think it's because it was mentioned in The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch which is, by the way, a terrible book that tries pitifully to emanate Catcher in the Rye and fails. Horribly. Honest to goodness, he uses the word "phony" like three times a chapter, and Miles has exactly the same innocence complex and lack of motivation as Holden. Just way less subtle. And less believable.

2) Since I'm actually kind of a prick, but not enough of a prick to go adding this to the first chapter, I'm going to write down some pointers in case you're one of those people who likes to look for overall messages/themes/character developments in writing, but don't want to look for your own and want to use mine (the story works fine if you ignore them). Basically for people who enjoy honors English lit and the like. I'm just putting it up because I know I hate reading obscure novels and only letting the main theme click after I've read all the way through and having to reread the whole thing again to understand it. So:

- be on the lookout for extremes (i.e. Sora questions his sexuality all the time but it takes Riku like two weeks of flirting with another boy and then a kiss to start to consider it, but that one isn't very imporant) and their overall effectiveness/goodness.

- remember whose point of view you've got; the narration isn't omniscient (and is often biased). If an action doesn't make sense, this may be why.

- it might help to form a personal opinion of which one of them you think is mentally healthier, or what your version of "mentally healthy" is, especially considering their circumstances (no definitive answer for this one).

- luckily, since I am (as already stated) a self-absorbed prick, if you've got a theory or a question you wanna ask about I will gladly answer, since I'm forgetting a bunch of things right now. I do, you see, immensely enjoy talking about myself and by extension all the things I do which I think are so great. Hahaha, self-deprecation, I'm so humble. Promise I won't do this again; I'm already embarassed.

Reading and running is, of course, always a lovely option and often-deployed for fan fiction, since I am a-a-all for enjoying it purely for the cracky pairingness :D.

"Hey, Mom?"

"Uh-huh?"

"I'm gonna sleep over at Sora's again today, okay? It's just easier to go home with him, since he lives closer and it's pretty late anyways..."

"...yeah, okay. You're not imposing, are you? Did they invite you? You've been going over there a lot...have him come to our house next time, will you? And are you sure his parents are okay with this?"

Riku didn't know what it meant, that hearing his mother say then sent pangs through him. It was awful. He looked up at Sora apologetically, then looked away when he realized Sora couldn't hear the other end of the conversation. Sora frowned at him and tilted his head to the side, then shrugged and stopped when he realized Riku couldn't see him.

"Mom, he doesn't - " he looked at Sora again. "...Yeah. It's fine, I asked. I'll tell him." Were you supposed to tell your parents that your friend was an orphan? Was there a point where you just couldn't any more? Riku hadn't met an awful lot of orphans. He could count the number he had met on a worm's limbs.

Were you supposed to tell them you'd had your first kiss with a boy? He didn't feel any different at all. He didn't feel gay. Did you feel gay? Maybe he'd been feeling gay since he hit puberty but hadn't realized it.

He looked at Sora again, leaning up against the side of a building, waiting for Riku to finish his phone call in the dusty blue light.

Damn.

When they finally got home - got to Sora's home - it was just past midnight, and the whole goddamn place was covered in night. He hung back as Sora opened the door, and they stepped in at the same time, the same way they had that very first day, and dropped their things off. Just shoes, mostly, and Riku tossed his vest on the floor. So again, for a moment, they were just a little too close and Riku could smell that Sora-smell like vegetables and dirt.

The living room seemed bigger and darker, somehow, and what had been too-clean and too-neat and too-organized and too-empty before was different. The furniture seemed bigger, and all stuck together; pale almost-blue light shifted through a window and highlighted parts of an art-deco leather chair. It seemed like everything was making a silent noise. Waiting, maybe, or just listening. Saïx was lying on the back of an armchair in the corner, not moving, just as impassive as everything else except for the very tip of his tail, which twitched.

"Hey kitty," Sora whispered, and smiled.

He headed into the kitchen, and Riku didn't move. He watched the back of Sora's head as the kid leaned down and opened the fridge, bathing the kitchen in yellowish light. He closed it again shortly. Riku thought about kissing him again. It felt weird, because kissing was a thing you thought about a lot, and then when you actually had the opportunity to do it, even though Sora was acting just like he always - did. Never mind.

Sora came back with two cheese sticks in one hand and a can of soda in the other.

"Here," he said, thrusting the cheese sticks in front of Riku's face. "Take one."

"Mm," Riku said, "I'm not really hungry..."

Sora rolled his eyes and grinned. "Yeah," he agreed, "But I don't want to be the only one eating." Riku laughed quietly.

A strip of light fell from the window and adhered to Sora's face, just around his eyes. And everything about Sora was dark and night-colored, except for the little strip of pink Sora-skin around his eyes, just like that dream.

He took a cheesestick and followed Sora up to his room.

Saïx didn't seem as scary at night, not when Sora was right there. Sora, walking in front of him, maybe-gay Sora whose parents were dead and who was still the happiest guy Riku'd ever met, and...well. He bugged Riku. He bugged Riku a fuckuva lot, because he still seemed to think he was some kind of a boy genius, was what. Oh, yeah, he mocked Sora in the back of his head with a sort of dumb hick voice, What do you think the point of life is, Ri-ku? Why haven't you killed yourself, Ri-ku? Why don't you even know if you're gay or not, Ri-ku? Do you like me, Ri-ku, uh-huh-huh-huh. Then Riku sighed because he knew Sora wasn't really like that. But he still remembered that day, right after they'd met, all those questions Sora had fired off and he'd acted so goddamn superior when Riku couldn't answer him.

A question could be important to a person, but that didn't mean you had to go around asking other people.

Riku breathed in, and it didn't feel like he was breathing air; it felt like he was breathing night.

And he could've sworn to the high heavens that Sora was about to go flying on books with striped skin, or at least, maybe, floating a little. Sora was the farthest thing from a perfect person that Riku Tepes had ever seen. He had his priorities all twisted, and he didn't know how to handle himself, and he didn't know when to stop talking or that when a person has earphones in they wanna be left alone, and he talked about his brother all the time and he hardly knew anything about anything, when it came down to it, and he just guessed, and he had no concept of personal space, and God he was just too freaking friendly. He was friends with damn near everybody he met. He must have focused on Riku 'cause Riku was so mean, like he was a challenge, or something, which was why they spent so much time together.

What a goddamn lonely person Riku Tepes was.

He didn't even really have a right to be.

Sora flipped on a light in his room, which was still mostly white. He'd printed out one of the pictures he'd taken with his computer of him and Riku together. Riku didn't look angry in it. He looked kind of surprised, since he hadn't known a picture was being taken at the time. The picture was taped to the wall next to Sora's desk. But other than that, there was just a little furniture, and the bed, and the window from which hung a funny little pipe-cleaner sculpture.

Sora flopped down onto his bed and folded his arms behind his head, staring up at the ceiling like the cracks were gonna tell him stories, or something.

Riku knew it was irrational, but he sometimes felt like he was competing with Sora. At least in the sense of how many weird, almost-philosophical things can you say, and that Sora always won. Maybe because Sora always brought up his own things.

Riku stood in the doorway, unsure of himself. He ran a hand through his hair. It was just way too long and girly. It was past his shoulders, even. He stuffed the cheese stick in his pocket and squeezed it.

A thought came to Riku Tepes then.

"I haven't killed myself," he began, and looked at Sora very seriously, with eyes strong enough to stare straight through every person but Sora, "Because I want to exist. That's all." Oh God, that sounded so dumb, oh geez. Wow that sounded dumb, Sora was gonna think that was really dumb, he'd made himself look like such an idiot and the world was not a freaking 10-meter-tall tree today.

Sora looked back at him with eyes the color the sky oughtta be. Riku'd never seen the sky that color, not really, because it was a little less vibrant and a little more eye-colored than the sky was. Less abrasive. Not that Riku cared.

Sora sat up on his elbows, and looked at Riku with his mouth set in a relaxed line, and his eyes as empty as if Riku'd said something about schoolwork. Yep. Yep, Riku'd said something really dumb. Then Sora smiled at Riku, and his teeth caught the bluish light.

Everything looked different in moonlight, bigger, quieter, more important, like it was waiting for something, or just listening.

"Hey," Sora said, and the corners of his eyes crinkled. "I like that. I really do. C'est une bonne raison pour la vie, mon ami." He laughed, very softly, because Belle was just downstairs, and asleep. "I'm surprised that you remembered, though."

They were quiet again for quite a while. At some point Sora leaned over and opened up his music player and put on some song Riku'd never heard, but which sounded weird, and he came to sit down on the floor. It was a weird piano sound, the music that was playing, and it wasn't very interesting because it didn't have much in the way of a tune or anything. So he sat still for a while, until the track ended.

"Did you just think of that?" Sora said after a while.

"...yeah," Riku said, "I don't know. It sounded good in my head. It probably sounds dumb." Guh. Everything sounded dumb today.

Sora laughed, and crawled forward on the bed, which seemed like a sound that was too loud for what they were doing, and what time it was. He crawled forward so that his head was near Riku's, and he was smiling like it was the last day of school. "That's what I always think," he said, and Riku could feel Sora's hot breath on his face, uncomfortable, "But I always say it. That might make us dumb, but at least we're brave enough to be dumb."

Riku stared up at him and smirked without malice. "Gee," he said, "Deep." Of course, Sora didn't say that what Riku had said wasn't dumb. That was probably, Riku mused, because Sora hated lying almost as much as he hated telling the truth.

"Tch, shut up," Sora tugged on a piece of Riku's hair and Riku fake-winced. He grinned up at Sora.

"Oh!" Sora said, "No way! I got you to smile. I feel like I achieved something today." They laughed.

Riku thought something along the lines of I think saving the life of a girl with alcohol poisoning was a little more of an achievement, but didn't say it out loud because that would have ruined it.

Sora sat up with his legs crossed Indian-style, which Riku had always thought of as kind of a racist way of putting it, and wrapped his hands around his ankles. He stared down at Riku from way up on the bed, and Riku thought about how plain he looked, sitting on the bed, getting seen from such an unappealing angle. The shadows on his face made him look deformed. Sora saw Riku looking and smiled, then let his smile fade and looked back up at the window.

They could see city lights from here, standing tall and impassive like trees for people who were afraid of the dark. There wasn't much a person could describe a city as. They were just tall, and they honked, and they stacked people like boxes. If you were kinda dumb, you could call it a metaphor for life, but you could do that with a lot of things.

The sky wasn't as black as it should have been. The lights ruined it. It was this sort of mostly-black color tinted with puke orange. It was awful.

Sora looked back at Riku, who noticed him looking and looked back. Sora held up the thumb and forefinger of both of his hands in an L and made a little frame with his fingers, squinting one eye like he was taking a photograph and pointing the frame at Riku. "Click," he said. "Snapshots of my life."

"What?"

Sora laughed and shook his head. "Never mind." He put his hands down and looked at the city lights again. Just past them, and if you craned your neck very far to one side and squinted, you could see part of the ocean, lapping a beach that belonged to some condos. The ocean glittered like it had something to prove.

And, again, he looked down at Riku with wide eyes that seemed to stand out more than eyes usually did. He stared, was what he did, and he kind of looked like he was trying to reflect one of Riku's own angry cutting glares back at him, but without any sort of anger at all. It was weird. His eyes were so clear, and his pupils were big because it was so dark. Riku'd read all this crap in books about eyes before, but he'd never really thought about it, about how hard it was to describe a person's eyes. "Blue as an ocean" didn't really do anything for him, since the ocean changed color all the time.

He didn't even know why he was talking about eyes. Why were eyes so romantic when like, mouths weren't, and noses weren't? Nobody ever had a sexy nose.

He didn't say any of that. Instead, what he said was "Please don't stare at me like that."

He said it very quietly, too, like he was scared to say it. Which he was. He was scared as Hell, saying something so horrible and honest.

Sora blinked and backed up a bit. "Why?" he asked. God, that was such a Sora thing to ask.

"I just..." Riku looked down, fiddling with his hands. "Just don't."

"...okay," Sora said finally. He licked his lips and blinked his eyes. He sighed. He kept his eyes half-lidded from fatigue, and Riku knew he was probably thinking about Kairi, too. Of course, he probably didn't have any of the malice that Riku had about it. He was probably thinking things like "poor Kairi, I hope she's okay." Riku was thinking that too, of course, but that awful part of his mind that wasn't afraid to say the most horrible things was thinking that she deserved it, that it was her own fault, that nobody made her drink all of that booze. It was the part of his thoughts that was shameless, that didn't feel empathy, that let him think these things. That completely and impassively called 'em how it saw 'em. This tiny little voice that gave him the meanest and nastiest things to say. He never usually said them.

He hated that there was a part of him who could think such an awful thing. He hated it, too, that he didn't totally disagree with it. It was Kairi's fault.

God, he hated himself sometimes. Sora probably never thought things like that. Speaking of Sora. Riku felt pretty awful for thinking it was more important that he'd kissed a boy than it was that a seventeen-year-old girl had almost died from alcohol abuse.

He glanced at Sora's lips again, because they were both being very quiet.

He could crawl up onto the bed and kiss Sora again. He wasn't going to, obviously. But now that it had happened once, it seemed like it wouldn't have been as big of a deal if it were to happen...again. It was kind of exciting to know that if he wanted to, he could just go up there and kiss another person. Kiss Sora. It kind of felt like some huge awesome secret, especially since he could share it with another person. Not that he would go up there, or anything.

He didn't. Sora was the one who slid down the bed to sit next to Riku. Next to, but not touching. They both leaned on the foot of the bed, comfortable in the heavy layer of black silence. Sora smiled at Riku.

Everything looked different in moonlight; bigger, quieter, more important, like it was waiting for something, or just listening.

There were six inches of space between them and they were killing Riku.

Sora broke it, though. He leaned sideways and put his head on Riku's shoulder, with his arms around his knees. His hair tickled Riku's neck.

"You still want me not to look at you?" he asked.

"Ah," Riku said, "N- no, it's fine." That's not what he'd said. He'd said "Please don't look at me like that." Don't look at me like you're trying to see something inside of me that you have that I don't, because as much as you want to you can't understand another person, not ever, not really. He didn't say that, though, because it would have taken too long and he didn't want to. He hadn't said not to look at him period.

Sora didn't say anything else for a little while, just let his head rest on Riku's shoulder and blinked slowly every once in a while. Something about the lateness of the night, with the quietness of the room and the closeness of the two boys, it wasn't the time for long conversations. Any attempts at them were snuffed humanely. But what there was room for was little things.

"Hey," Riku muttered. "Sora?"

"Yeah?"

He didn't know why he said it; it was sorta stupid. He felt like he was playing at being Sora. "...do you still fly to school?" he laughed quietly, and Sora laughed with him.

"Yup," Sora said, "Every goddamn day, Riku Tepes. I fly to school every goddamn day."

Every goddamn day, he said. Riku smiled to himself, staring out the window he could barely see. What strange vernacular for a francophone. Where on Earth did Sora learn English so well? It was one of those questions that bugged Riku, but not long enough for him to remember when he was talking to Sora and just trying to keep up. Sora Goodwin had his tiptoes on the ground and he always bounced like the wind was tickling his bare feet.

"Doofus," Sora said, rolling his eyes, sitting up and smiling fondly. He lifted Riku's arm up by the wrist and ducked under it, resting his head on Riku's shoulder again and letting Riku's arm flop down on his shoulders.

Oh, Riku thought, Okay. Did that mean dating or was it just "I have a crush on you"? He wondered, sitting there with his arm accidentally around another boy at one in the morning on a Friday night, if he even really cared any more. All his little protests and questions seemed kind of half hearted.

It was "Can I really see myself kissing him again?"

To which the answer was always, Yeah, sure, what's the big deal?

And then it was "Does this mean I'm gay?"

Followed by a vague answer like, I dunno, does liking one boy make you gay?

Ugh. Fuck his subconscious. Sora was kind of comfortable.

"How do you speak English so well, anyways?" Riku muttered sleepily. He hadn't forgotten, quite.

"Mom was a translator," Sora said easily. Riku started a little on the inside. It was completely unrelated to Sora's reply. It was more like he'd just realized what was going on in that slow, unrelentingly teenaged way of his.

umumumum you kissed a boy Riku you're not supposed to do that Sora's got a dick and so do you ewewewewew

Which was a pretty embarrassing thought, but Riku's mind had a dirty mouth, and he couldn't control his thoughts. God, that sentence sounded seriously wrong.

His heart was beating a little faster now, maybe. He could smell Sora's shampoo and feel Sora's hair tickle his neck.

"She was?" he prompted, even though he didn't know why. He didn't really care.

Ugh. Damn.

"Uh-huh," Sora said. "She translated stuff from English to French, mostly, but sometimes the other way around. Mostly just copyright stuff or boring legislation or something, but every once in a while she'd do a comic or a novel or something, and she'd let me help out and teach me and stuff. So I learned all these slang words. Like 'doofus'." He laughed. "She taught Roxas, too, but he didn't seem to like it as much."

Riku felt it, when Sora stopped smiling. He started to chew on the inside of his cheek.

"...I worry about him all the time," Sora said quietly. "He wasn't very good at English at all, and now he's somewhere where he has to speak it all the time. I mean, he doesn't say it outright, but I think he's really unhappy. All his emails," he paused here. "- we send email every day -" and continued. "All his emails have been kind of short lately, like he doesn't even want to bother replying to me. And it's not like I can just fly up there and ask him, so..."

Riku didn't say anything besides "Yeah," because he had no idea what a person was supposed to say. He knew that in books and stuff people would just totally change the subject and go rambling off about random crap so that the distraction made the other person feel better.

That was crap.

At least when Sora was involved.

Riku remembered every time Sora had told him something important, like that day,

(March fourteenth, a voice whispered, don't act like you don't remember)

the day that Sora had broken down in the bathroom and told him how awful he felt about how long his parents had been dead, how he didn't even know if he was gay, how when Sora started talking about something which sucked he kept going until he was all finished and couldn't think of anything else to say about it so he'd never ever never have to talk about it again.

"And," Sora continued, true to Riku's thoughts, "Every time I think I'm...happy about something, or I get excited for something that's happening, I think about him and how at any given moment he's probably way more unhappy and then I feel guilty for feeling so...happy." He looked at Riku, right into Riku Tepes's green-ass goddamn eyes that should've stared straight through a person, and all Riku could think about was the cold air that hit hit now-bare shoulder. Sora shook his head and laid it back down on Riku, who was glad of it. He hadn't moved his arm.

"It's good that you worry," Riku said. He didn't know what the Hell he was saying. "I mean, lots of people hate their siblings."

Sora looked like he wanted to say something, but didn't. Riku kept going.

"I mean, I mean I know it's different since you feel like you should be totally...supportive, since you've both been through...stuff, but that doesn't take away sibling rivalry or anything," Sora relaxed. "And most people..." he winced, "Lots of people are so self-centered they don't even bother to think about other people..." he trailed off.

"How did you deal with it?" Riku asked quietly.

He felt Sora physically startle on his shoulder. "Deal with what?"

"When your parents died," Riku said, almost whispering. He was so curious. He didn't know anyone who'd lost someone, really lost someone, other than Sora.

Sora was silent again for a while, a thoughtful sort of quiet, which Riku thought was reasonable. A person couldn't answer that question right away, not honestly.

"I cried a lot, at first," Sora said. He sounded the littlest bit choked. Oh God, Riku hadn't made him cry, had he? Sora felt like he wanted to keep going, to Riku.

"I mean, the whole stages of loss, those did happen. M- mostly. At first I thought that people were lying to me. Like, I don't know...it was this whole, whole elaborate joke my parents were playing, because forever is such an awful, awful thing. I mean, I still try not to think about it. To - about not ever seeing them again, ever. Not when I graduate high school or college, or when I - I don't know, buy a, a house or..." he sniffled, and it was the most pitiful thing Riku Tepes had ever heard.

"Like, no exceptions. Forever."

Forever, Riku's mind said again. He thought about never seeing his mom again, ever. About waiting for her to come home and realizing it would never happen again.

Riku knew he didn't fully get it, what Sora was saying; to him it seemed...sad, sure, but barely sadder than a realistic death in a movie or a TV show. He knew that Sora probably hated people like him. If he was Sora he'd hate that Riku guy who didn't know anything about anything. But Sora didn't really know anything about anything, either.

"I never did the bargaining thing. I - definitely got angry. I mean, you can't watch TV or listen to music or anything when something like that happens. I got mad at sitcoms for daring to make jokes! I thought 'How can you laugh when people are dying, all the time?'" He laughed. "I was mad at anything that seemed a little happy, and anybody on TV that was sad or mourning felt like they were just making fun of me. Like, you don't get it, it's not a dramatic twist it's a person's life, God..."

He coughed a little bit and wiped the corner of his eye with his palm. "Then I cried a lot more," he said, "When I started to really think about them being gone."

Riku thought about the little dead moth he'd crushed with his chair in a hospital of all places. Yeah, he thought, it's a big difference when you've seen it alive first. That little dead body, crushed, its wing smeared across the tiles of the floor like tracked-in mud. It was probably the tiniest carcass Riku had ever seen. He thought about it all the time.

"Yeah?" Riku said, rubbing Sora's arm with his thumb in a seriously half-assed attempt to help.

"And...I don't know. I...didn't get used to it, I guess. And it's not...getting numb, either, I don't think. I don't want to say 'acceptance,' cause it's not like I'm happy about it, I just..." he shrugged. "I'm okay with it, now, I guess. I - geez," he muttered. "This is sounding really whiny."

"No," Riku said right away. "I wanted to hear that."

"Why?" Sora grumbled, and shuddered.

"I..." he didn't want to say it was because he didn't know what actual pain felt like, or that he was just curious. "I guess I just wanted to understand," he settled on, and it wasn't a lie. Sora the stupid little sky-blue engine that had to. God. And Riku had thought he had a tough time of it. Jesus.

Riku noticed in a sort of detached way that one of his hairs had apparently snapped off when he took his ponytail out and was now twined around the hair elastic on his wrist. It was actually kind of gross. He shivered when a gust of wind blew in from the cracked-open window.

"Oh," Sora said, and pushed his head further into Riku's neck. "...thanks," he whispered.

"Yeah," Riku said. He put his chin on top of Sora's head because he could. He knew it was cheesy, what he was thinking, but he couldn't help it. He thought it anyways. He couldn't control his thoughts.

Jeez, you're fucking beautiful.

And, since it was the kind of night that stifled any long-term conversations, even ones about things like dead parents or alive and very faraway brothers, they stopped talking again. Riku couldn't shake the feeling that they were...cuddling, or something. On some level, some really small part of him was really, really excited. Holy crap somebody is leaning on me and he's got his head on my shoulder like he really needs me or something or like he just plain likes me and that's just so freakin' flattering, I guess - Jesus, Sora, you're fucking amazing sometimes. I hate it when you cry. Stop crying.

It was probably the first wholeheartedly honest thing he'd thought that night. Suddenly hyper-aware of Sora's closeness, he shifted a bit, tried to bring his arm into a better position. Better how, he didn't know.

"...you should know by now," Sora said suddenly, when Riku shifted, "...that I'm a very touchy-feely person." He must have thought Riku's movements were because he was uncomfortable. Which he sort of was. But everything seemed muted at night. It wasn't as big of a deal, if you were leaning on each other at night.

"I've gathered." They'd moved on from that rather quickly.

"So, this is gonna be a regular thing."

"What, the dead parents?"

"No, the..." he wiggled under Riku's arm. "This."

"Oh," Riku said. He was surprisingly okay with that. He tilted his head back to rest it on the bed, letting his arm hang naturally on Sora's shoulders. Wha-at ever, at this point. Honestly. They'd already kissed, this was practically nothing.

Riku started to think about that kiss. (Sora seemed perfectly happy to let him.) As far as kisses went, it...was one. He was pretty sure it qualified, since lips touched on purpose.

He didn't really have anything to compare it to. And if he was being honest with himself, he had no idea whether or not it was even a good kiss, or if it had felt nice. At the time, he'd been kind of mind-drunk, or at least mind-buzzed, on Sora and sodium parking lot lights and moths and excitement. He barely even remembered the actual moment of it happening. But he knew it had happened. If he thought really hard, he could imagine those lips on his again, but he could have just been making it up. The way if you've lost something, and you try to remember what happened when you were walking home, you technically can but you've done it so many times you can imagine it with just as much accuracy. He hadn't thought much about kissing before. He didn't know what it felt like to imagine a kiss, more than the actual action of leaning in, which he'd considered at least once around Sora.

His breathing felt really loud, all of a sudden. Sora's seemed to fit. It was quiet and even, through his nose. Riku's was like a paper bag being shredded with forks, to his ears.

He felt like one of them should say something. It had generally only been a few minutes between silences, if that. But neither of them did.

After a while they sort-of-hugged, very awkwardly, and despite Sora's protests of "the guest should be the comfortable one!" Riku slept on the floor and he slept on the bed.

Riku partly woke up at two in the morning to hear Sora talking on the phone to somebody.

"Écoutes, Rox," he was saying. "Je ne sais pas quelle heure il est en l'Angleterre, mais içi c'est..." he paused. "Il est deux heures du matin!? Oi - oi, Rox, en Anglais....Oui, vraiment. Tu as besoin de le pratique. Okay? English, really, you gotta practice. Next time. Uh-huh. What? Oh, yeah.

"No, no I haven't yet," he whispered suddenly, perhaps realizing that he was being overly loud. "I only got home a couple of hours ago. Long story. I mean, really long story, like you wouldn't believe. W-" he snorted. "No, Rox, I don't know if it's as cool as what happened to you since I can't check my email right now!"

There was a slightly longer pause as Roxas spoke on the other line.

"Oh, because Riku's in front of my laptop. Mm. Yeah, he's sleeping on the floor...what?" He paused for a second then started to laugh, out loud at first and then stifled. "...n- no, it's not what you said. I mean, it is, but seriously, y- you, haha, don't know how funny it is that you'd say that today." There was a rustle of the comforter. "I'll tell you later. Mm."

He laughed again. "I will, okay, Rox? I'll check my email! Yeah, I think it allows picture attachments. I said allows. Uh-huh. It's like...to let you...do something. Yup. No, no yup is just another way to say yes. Riku?" He quieted down even more. "What about him? No, he's in my grade. I don't know. Taller than I am, and he's got white hair. No, that's normal for the island. I've seen other people that have it. It's about as common as red hair here. Ah, no, he's nice. Well I mean, he's...nice to me."

There was silence, then a frustrated huff. "No he's not a bully, moron!" He laughed. The whole time, Riku about had a view of the foot of the bed. "He's not social, that's all. I know. He says he doesn't like people...no, yeah, that's kind of annoying but he's not - it doesn't bother - Rox, hang on a second, would you? Yes, I am. This is a really weird conversation to be having with your brother. I just told you! G-A-Y, Roxas. No, I thought I said that; he's the sweetest guy I've ever - what? I don't know, you can't ask me that, rooster face! For all I know he was placating - yeah, I wouldn't put it past him. I told you, he's sweeter than he thinks he is. Listen, I'll go look at the pictures as soon as I wake up after I go back to sleep, 'kay? Promise? I don't want to wake Riks up. What? Yeah, I call him that. D'accord. Je t'aimes. Bye."

Click, said the phone.

Riku didn't fall asleep for another hour. His last thought was God dammit, Sora Goodwin, I can't believe you thought I was placating you.

He woke up about an hour later, fully, and it was at this point that Riku Tepes realized it was going to be one of those nights. He could fall asleep as many times as he liked, but he was going to keep waking up no matter what. He didn't know why. It felt like he was the most tired person in the world. He sighed and rolled over onto his back. There would be no "and Riku woke up the next morning feeling refreshed". There would be no separation between falling asleep and waking up. It was going to be a long, drawn-out, groggy six or seven hours in which he never really woke up or fell asleep. He wasn't unused to them. Sunday nights he went to bed at least two hours earlier than he had Saturday, and hadn't been awake nearly long enough to fall asleep.

Still. It was Friday. Technically Saturday morning at this point. It didn't matter if he didn't get much sleep; he could sleep later.

He yawned; the cloth of the sleeping bag he usually used rustled in the way only waterproof fabric can. He tried his quiet best to wiggle out of it, and stood up, checking to make sure Sora was still asleep. He was, all curled in around himself with his cast-hand flung out to the side. Riku kept forgetting it was there.

Speaking of which...he pulled the cheese stick out of his pocket. It was kind of gross and warm now. He put it next to Sora's on the desk, in front of the room-temperature, unopened soda. Next to the laptop.

Okay, maybe there was like, a check list online somewhere to find out if you were gay. Like a quiz or something. "If you got mostly 1's, you're just an average bicurious teenager! If you got mostly 2's, you're a flaming queer!" Yup. Probably.

He was kind of scared to look it up, though, because he knew if he did he was likely to come up not only with gay porn sites but, on the other end of the extreme, a ton of homophobic bull. There was a lot of hateful shit online.

Maybe he could figure it out on his own. What were the requirements for it? You had to...like guys. Or at least, you had to like them more than you liked girls. So he could...look up...girl porn. Yes? And if he didn't find naked women, of all things, attractive, then he supposed there was no hope for him. Unless he was asexual. Riku thought about being asexual, and not ever having sex because he never wanted to. He found he was unsurprisingly fine with the whole idea. It seemed to him, however, a tad idealistic. But it would have made his life much simpler.

Okay. So. He flipped Sora's laptop open with a quiet plastic click sound and waited for the screen to load. Please choose your username, the screen said, which was kind of dumb since there was only one icon there anyways. Sora had chosen one of the stock images of a pitiful-looking boxer dog with its head on its paws. Riku would have to ask him about that.

He clicked the icon and let Sora's desktop load. It mostly had school projects in the form of documents and power point presentations, and his background was seriously just like a painting of a floating castle. There were a couple of curiously-labeled documents, and a few jpegs that his brother had obviously sent him, as well as some gaming icons. All in all it was entirely too normal. Riku suspected that Sora kept all of the interesting things in the folder inconscpicuously labeled "misc".

He opened up a web browser, hovering the mouse above the search bar. What exactly were the search terms when you were looking for porn? Just typing in "pornography" seemed a little weird. Riku searched the sparse and relatively useless part of his mind that had to do with sex, just in case he could think of anything. Riku kept thinking that he was probably asexual. Teenage boys were perverts, and he was seventeen. Even guys that were barely interested in girls at all were perverts when they were seventeen. He looked back at Sora, sprawled out on his bed with his cheek squished against the pillow and his hair sticking up the way brown hay would if it was uneven enough to make points. He kind of looked like a drunk baby.

Riku sighed and turned back to the computer, taking an admittedly embarassing amount of time to come up with the words "girl next door," which he vaguely remembered being a sleezy American movie that came out when he was fourteen. He'd never seen it, but he remembered the ads, and for the most part they'd consisted of a not-very-dressed blonde woman and a couple of frat boys or something. He typed the name into the search bar and turned off safe search.

Now, it took him about a minute to realize that the results he'd gotten were not nude photography for the sake of art. That was embarrassing in itself. But once he did, he enlarged one of the images of a naked woman who looked like she was having the time of her life showing her breasts to the camera.

Riku stared at it briefly, felt his face grow hot and flush from embarrassment, and he turned away. There was something horribly wrong about an actual human being showing their naked body parts to a bunch of strangers. It was like drunk driving accidents. You heard about it happening all the time, and people joked about it, and it wasn't like you didnt' think it existed you just didn't think it existed for you. You think to yourself "boy it's weird that people look at naked pictures of other people online" but you somehow have it in your mind that if you searched it up, somehow you'd never actually see any.

But. The matter at hand.

Was it attractive? God no. It was just embarrassing and kind of awkward, and Riku sort of pitied the woman in the picture. He minimized the window and turned around in the chair to look at Sora. His eyes took a few seconds to adjust from the brightness of the screen to the darkness of the room, and eventually the shape of his friend halfway huddled in the blankets with his cheek still squished awkwardly against his face by the pillow and the blue light of the nighttime making him look about as magical as a football.

Riku was not embarassed to look at Sora. He knew that sounded cheesy, but it wasn't a very hard conclusion to come to. Riku thought about the naked picture. He didn't ever want to kiss that lady; she was a stranger, and she seemed kind of sad just for being what she was. Sora was just right there and he didn't lie. Riku thought about kissing Sora, and his brain said Yeah, okay.

"Mmf," Sora said, and Riku felt his heart speed up when Sora slowly sat up and rubbed at his eyes. "Why are you on the computer? It's so bright."

It occurred to Riku, only just now, that Sora had restrained himself from going on the computer because it would have woken Riku up, but that Riku had had no such consideration for Sora. Oops. Whatever. Some defensive part of his brain kicked in. What did he care anyways? Sora would get back to sleep eventually.

No, said another part. Quit thinking like that; it's what got you into this mess in the first place.

"Ah," Riku made a noise. "I was, um, trying to figure something out." He spun around in the chair and killed the window he had up with a click. He shut the laptop.

"What?" Sora asked him innocently. Riku started smiling at him. Not because he was happy or anything, but more for lack of anything else to do with his face.

"Well," Riku said, "I was trying to figure out if I was gay."

Sora stared at him for a second. His eyebrows shot up. He opened his mouth in a sort of half-faked laughing surprise, bit his lower lip to try and keep from grinning and chucked a pillow at Riku's head.

"Hey!" Riku grumbled, catching it and settling it on his lap. "What was that for!"

"You kissed me and you didn't even know if you wanted to, doofus!"

Riku laughed then, because he was tired and in a funny mood, and came to sit on the bed and return Sora's pillow. Sora took it and put it back behind his head, then turned to Riku with patient eyes. It was funny. Used to be that Riku was always the one who waited for people to talk, all the time, and he always waited the whole time until he knew you'd said everything you wanted to say before he'd shoot you down with some little angry quip.

Sora Goodwin looked at him with patient eyes and bare feet, like he already knew everything about everything and was waiting for Riku to catch up with him, starting now. He smelled like a garden.

"So?" he said quietly. "Are you?"

Riku didn't know what made him say it. Maybe it was that everything seemed bigger and quieter at night, more muted, like it didn't count if you said it now. Maybe it was because he kept thinking about that stupid dead moth, all the time, and how lately it seemed like Sora loved to talk about all of the things he'd be when he was old and wrinkly and useless, since his goal in life was that. Maybe Riku just once didn't want to disappoint someone.

"Yeah," he said, "Think so."

Waitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwait. That wasn't right. Nonono, he hadn't come to that conclusion, he hadn't tried a fair field, he was probably asexual! Just because he didn't like girl porn didn't mean he liked guy porn. Maybe he just had a type! He hadn't come to any conclusions, he wasn't even sure what he was looking for! Nononononononono.

He hated that there were no takebacks in real life.

"Good," Sora said simply, with no further explanation.

Good? What the fu- he should have learned to expect this from Sora by now.

They stared at each other for a few seconds, and Riku got the feeling that one of them was supposed to kiss the other one, but he certainly didn't have the guts to. He felt the muscles in his abdomen tighten uncomfortably. It was like he was hungry without actually wanting to eat food.

Sora took a big breath and looked down and to the side absently.

The moment passed, and Riku felt his clenched stomach relax.

Sora slid his legs off the side of the bed to sit right next to Riku, staring at the floor. He looked up at Riku again and Riku got that funny stomach feeling. It was horrible. He wished it would stop. He knew it was nerves, he wasn't stupid, but that didn't mean he had to like it. Whatever idiot had described it as butterflies had clearly confused butterflies with cotton balls. Sora and his stupid eyes!

Sora leaned in and hugged Riku, all of a sudden. Riku stiffened completely. Oh no. Get off. Get off now.

"Hey," he said in this sort of awful, heart-breaking little voice. "Riku Tepes."

"Yeah?" he said through clenched teeth. Get off now! His hands were fists.

"I'm glad you aren't dead," Sora whispered, and squeezed his eyes shut. Riku's body was still horribly tense, and he found himself unable to relax, since - well, Hell, he was being hugged, that wasn't - ! He kept his jaw tight.

Sora either didn't notice or didn't care. "...I know," he said very quietly, "That's a really lame thing to say." Riku felt his heart slow down, but he didn't relax his body. "But...I don't know. You don't know how much you want to say that to most people until you can't say it to them. I just..." he sighed, "I hope you get all old and wrinkly, too. Just give me a sec."

Riku did. His muscles started to shake from having been tensed up for so long. Just when he thought he was about to break, or burst, or explode or something - Sora let go. Riku inhaled deeply.

"Sorry," Sora said, climbing back into his bed. He sounded incredibly meek.

"It's okay," Riku lied.

Riku could only technically speak for himself, but he was pretty sure neither of them fell asleep again that night.

A/N: I know, I'm an ass. You thought I was done with emotionally unsteady reactions?

You could probably figure out the contents of the email, anyways. That was in here, but I'm putting it in the next chapter since it's kind of too light for here. Actually, I hope I find a place for it. This one ended pretty sad.