Hiya, Hikari here again with newest chapter.

It'll probably just be me in these Authors Notes... and I've run out of entertaining things to do.

Well, enjoy the chapter

Chapter 23

Sora fidgeted slightly in his seat. After Saruhiko and Yata had their exchange of words, everything quieted down. To Sora, it felt uncomfortable and far too silent. But he currently was unable to find the right words to say.

He knew he wanted to ask more about Riku, yet he was having trouble coming up with things to ask. Thankfully he saw the waitress returned with their drinks, so he would have a bit of time before he would have to try and talk again.

"Okay, here we are. One lemonade, one water, and two cokes, with one of them having no ice," the waitress said as she placed out the drinks to their correct person.

"Now," She pulled out her pad of paper and held the pen close to it. "Are you all ready to order, or not yet? Or perhaps want to start with some appetizers?"

Riku glanced to his menu. With being so concerned about Saru and Yata breaking into a fight, he had completely forgotten to think about food. But without even looking at the menu he turned his attention to the waitress.

"I haven't figured out my main meal yet, but I'll start with a apperitzer of landjägers."

Sora looked at Riku, slightly confused. It was hard to tell, but the way he said 'landjäger' sounded different than how he normally spoke. It was far too quick to really hear it, but it did catch his attention.

The waitress nodded. "And for the rest of you?"

Sora picked up the menu and looked through it. He had only been to the place once or twice as a child, so he was not as familiar to the menu. But he couldn't decide on what he saw. Instead he looked beyond the menu to Riku. "Uh are the landyae… yai? Um are those good?"

"Yeah, it's just a type of dried sausage. I think it's fine," Riku replied before giving a shrug.

Sora nodded before turning to the waitress. "I think I'll just try that then. But is it a small appereitze for one person or is it big enough for the whole table?"

"You'll have enough to split with one serving," answered the waitress. She wrote it down onto her pad of paper before looking at the other two boys. "And either of you going to have any appetizers?"

Saru gave a half shrug before answering. "I'll probs just swipe a bite from one of theirs." He then put his head back down.

"I guess I'll have the potato pancakes," Yata replied.

"Okay, one severing of landjägers, and a serving of kartoffelpuffers. All right, I'll go get this to the kitchen."

Once they were gone Sora spoke up, looking to Riku. "How did you say it like that?"

"What? Say what 'like that'?"

"The food thing. The landyajers? Or something," Sora said, hoping he could get Riku to say it once more. He wanted to be sure he heard it right.

"You mean landjägers," Riku replied, once again saying the word 'landjägers' with a different inflection than the rest.

"Yeah that. What's with how you're saying it. You said it just how the waitress said it."

Riku shifted in his seat. His eyes drifted away, becoming a little concerned. But he lowered his head enough that no one could see it. "I've… Well it's that…"

Before Riku could finish a sentence, someone cut him off. Whomever it was also had a german accent just like the waitress. "Oh Riku! I didn't expect to see you here!"

A different waitress came up to the table and smiling largely at Riku. "What a Überraschung this is!"

"Oh, hi Amelie."

"You know her? Or I mean, she knows you?" Yata asked, now distracted by the new person.

"Of course I know Riku," the waitress answered. "He's been here plenty of times. He is probably my favorite kunde."

"Kunde?" Sora questioned.

"It means customer, or a client in German," Riku answered quietly.

"Uh-huh," Amelie said before crossing her arms. "And Riku, all I get is a 'hi'?"

"Oh sorry…" Riku said. He tilted his head up at Amelie. "Schön dich zu sehen, Amelie."

All the boys, including Saruhiko, now focused on Riku much more seriously than before. All of them surprised to hear a rather strong and not bad German accent coming from Riku. It didn't sound like someone trying to imitate it at all. It sounded as clear as it did when their waitress spoke the names of the food they had ordered.

"Danke, Riku," Amelie replied. "Now, I'm sorry to interrupt you boys. I'll leave you to be now, need to get back to serving and all. But it was nice to see you again Riku."

"You too Amelie."

"Auf Wiedersehen," Amelie called out as she waved to the group and headed off to a different area of the restaurant.

"Now what was that all about?" Yata asked. He raised an eyebrow as he was still clearly confused by the interaction he had just seen.

"Yeah, I wanna know," Sora added on. "I didn't know you could speak German that good."

"Well… it was what I was going to say before," Riku replied, now speaking in a quieter voice than before. "I'm actually fluent in German."

Saruhiko, who had finally sat up to drink his soda, was in the middle of taking a sip during riku's revelation. In his surprise, he accidentally inhaled some of the Coke, triggering an instinctual reaction to spit out and cough up soda. As Saru was sitting across from Yata, the chestnut haired boy was sprayed with Saru's drink.

Once again the attention was drawn back to Saru and Yata, with Riku and Sora starting with surprised eyes. Though the longer Sora stared, the harder it was for him to keep a shocked face. Slowly he pursed his lips and let out a small snort.

Yata, who was practically froze in place, managed to blink a few times. Though it was not as shocking as the knife near his head, this also was something that left him nearly dumbfounded. But the faint snickers and snorts coming from Sora was enough to snap him out of his near trance.

"Don't start laughing about it!"

"I'm sorry Yata, but I can't help it," Sora replied. He tried to cover his mouth to stop from laughing, but he still couldn't contain himself.

Saruhiko wasn't paying attention to either of them, instead coughing up his lungs. When he finally calmed down enough to speak, he turned towards Riku. "I've known you for twenty plus years, when the f**k did you learn to speak German?" Saru questioned his older brother.

Riku couldn't keep his gaze to his brother. He turned his head away before letting out a side. "It was before then…" He kept his voice low and quiet, not wanting to draw the attention of the other two, who were now stuck in a childish argument.

"Tsk. Fine, I'll ask again when we're home."

Riku nodded, thankful that Saru knew when to question him and when not to. Now that the topic had been sided for later, he spoke up, but this time direction his voice to everyone at the table. "And now I think this means you have to apologize, yet again Saru."

"Yeah," Yata agreed as he used his napkin to wipe off the coke from his face. "Why did you have to go and do that, I didn't think hearing that your brother knows German is that shocking."

"It's shocking when he basically spends all his waking moments babysitting." Saru retorted with a bored tone.

"I don't spend every single moment babysitting you," Riku grumbled, giving a stern look to Saru. "I have my own personal time you know."

"When Zack isn't busy or when Zexion feels like taking over for you for a bit."

Riku rolled his eyes. Clearly Saru was not in the mood to make things any easier with this. "So what? If I know another language, what difference does it make?"

Saru just shrugs and puts his head back down before asking a semi-random question. "Would you teach me how to insult people in German?"

Riku blinked slowly. That was not the response he had expected his brother to say. It was actually rare that Saru wanted anything to do with him. Aside from training against him, Riku couldn't think of any other moment where Saru actively seemed interested in doing something with him.

"Uh, sure. If you want to learn," Riku replied.

"I think it's cool that you know that though," Sora said, now speaking up again. His eyes beaned with amazement. "I think it is super cool though that you are bilingual!"

Riku felt the heat in his cheeks resurfaced. "Ah… th-thanks. Though I also know Japanese, but most people in this area know that."

"Multilingual!?" Sora gasped. "That is still so awesome! I mean yeah I know Japanese as well, and so does Yata, but you know three languages! That takes a lot of effort to learn."

Sora then looked over towards Saru. "How about you. Do you know any other languages?"

"Just Japanese and English."

"Ah, okay," Sora said before turning back to Riku.. "I guess that makes you special Riku."

Sora grinned one of his huge, but adorable grins to Riku. Finding the smile too adorable, he smile back and laughed a little. "Thanks Sora, I never really thought anyone would compliment me so much on knowing languages."

"Sora, can you save your cheesy compliments for later?" Yata asked while rolling his eyes. "We don't need to see you gush over Riku right now."

Sora scrunched up his nose and glared. "Hey! Cut it out!"

"I'm not doing anything," Yata shrugged casually.

Sora looked like he was going to pout, or complain some more, but instead he shook his head. He once again turned his focus to Riku. "Do you think you could say something else in German?"

Riku pondered the thought for a moment. Finally he answered with something. "Ich weiß es nicht, was ich sagen soll."

"Wow, and what does that mean?" Sora asked, deeply curious.

Riku smirked slightly. "Basically it means, 'I don't know what I should say'."

Sora started to laugh, while Yata and Saru just rolled their eyes. "That's still neat. And hey, if you are going to teach Saruhiko, maybe you can teach all of us."

Yata groaned as he leaned his head back. "I have no need or want to learn another language."

"Well I wanna learn! I think it would be fun," Sora replied.

"I don't know how well I would be at teaching though, I wouldn't get too excited," Riku responded while rubbing the back of his neck.

"As long as you try, I know it will be good," Sora replied, once again smiling largely.

Soon enough the food came, sparing Yata and Saruhiko from anymore of Sora's sappy attempts to apparently flirt with Riku. The appetizers were set down and the waitress said that she would be back after they finished to see if they would be ready to order anything else.

Once she left, the boys went to take food to place onto their own personal plates. Only Sora, Riku, and Yata went for food at first though, with Saruhiko only watching. Though none of them spoke as they ate, letting a new wave of silence wash over them.

Eventually one of them decided to break the silence, and it was of course none other than Sora. He reached for another landjägers. "Hmm, wow they are really good. You going to eat anything Saruhiko?"

Saru's response was to shrug his shoulders, but he was staring at the landjägers. Soon another hand came towards them to take the last one on the plate, this time being Yata. He took it and placed it on his own plate and then took a kartoffelpuffers as well. He glanced quickly to Saruhiko, but shook his head. Whatever thoughts he was having he decided to brush them off and went back to focusing on eating.

When Yata's eyes flicked away for a moment from the food on his plate and from Saruhiko, the last landjäger that he had was swiped right under his nose.

"Wha?" Yata mumbled when he looked down to see his plate missing part of his food. Right away his eyes locked with Saruhiko. "Hey! What gives!?"

"I decided I wanted to try it, and you took the last one." Saru stated between bites.

"You could have asked!" Yata retorted, his eyes narrowing slightly.

Saru finished eating before replying, "I doubt you would have let me have it."

"Maybe I would have if you asked," Yata mumbled, finally dropped his gaze from Saruhiko.

"So what are we going to do next?" Sora asked, speaking up and clearly not noticing the conversation that had started between Saruhiko and Yata. "For food I mean. Are we going to order main courses or something else?"

"I'm not really that hungry," Riku replied. In all honestly it was true due to his vampire nature. Being a pure blood meant he didn't need to eat three meals a day like a human would. Even his brothers didn't have to do that even though they were only half.

"You're not that hungry?" Sora asked. "It's evening now and we meet up at noon. It's been a good few hours."

Riku bit his thought slightly. He had to figure out something to say that would be an easy cover. Thankfully something revolving around food wasn't too hard. "I had a big lunch, cause you know wasn't too sure what we would be doing today."

"Ooh, okay. But maybe we could order something else? There looked like there was a lot of good things to eat on the menu," Sora replied.

"If you can't decide on anything, how about just some desert?" Yata said, giving only half his attention to the conversation.

"I think that could work," Riku replied.

Sora grinned happily. "That sounds great!"

Hoped you liked it.

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