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Broody Boy-Feelings

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Riku didn't really consider himself an angsty person. He was simply a boy - sorry, young man - who rarely expressed his feelings, preferring to keep them locked up in his dark, tainted heart.

He may have been a bit broody.

But that was all.

Riku hadn't always felt the need to hide his feelings away. He'd been perfectly sociable to those he liked. He told his parents about his days at school. He told the girls they had disgusting, nasty cooties. He played with his friends in the dirt and the mud and God knows what else until he was so filthy that it was a wonder he didn't stay that way.

And then he met Sora.

Sora was a happy, bubbly, bouncing ball of energy who didn't know how to sit still. At every opportunity he was up and moving; challenging Riku to another race, shimmying up a tree to snag a coconut, taking a running jump off the docks and belly-flopping into the ocean.

Riku wondered where he got it from.

And then there was Kairi.

They didn't know where Kairi came from, and didn't know how she managed to squirm her way into their twosome-now-threesome, but she was okay. She was smart, and she was funny, but Riku didn't think anything else of her because she was, well, a girl.

And then she whooped his butt at dodge ball.

Riku stopped thinking of her as a cootie-girl after that.

Riku liked Sora, and he liked Kairi, too, but since Sora was a guy, like his manly self, it seemed logical that he gravitate towards the younger boy until the stage where girls had cooties had passed (not that Kairi had them; she was different) and began to become interested in them.

Except he didn't.

Instead of gravitating away from the guys and towards the pretty, curvy, feminine girls, Riku found himself rejected by them (perhaps he came on a little strong) and instead gravitated the other way, to one person in particular.

Sora.

And that's when the hiding of his deep, dark secrets began.

Riku entered that stage in life where he became more aware of himself, his surroundings, and the people around him. Mostly Sora. He wanted to touch Sora's hair. It just looked so soft, and did it really grow that way? Was Sora hiding something from him? He caught himself, on more than one occassion, staring absently at Sora's face, wondering how it was possible to have eyes so perfectly blue and a mouth so perfectly kissable. Er.

Before he knew it, Riku was kind of in love.

He didn't tell Sora because, well, Sora was obviously interested in girls and was going to marry Kairi one day anyways. His parents expected it, their parents expected it, their teachers expected. Everyone did. They were nigh inseparable. (Riku tried not to think to hard about how much that hurt.)

Besides, Sora didn't need any more distractions; the kid was distracted enough as it was.

So Riku began to brood. He stopped telling his parents about his days. He stopped telling the girls they were pretty. He stopped getting so incredibly filthy that his skin paled to a pasty white.

He wasn't angsting, per se, but he found that training alone and telling his old stuffed bear (it was a manly bear, mind you) about his lomve problems was a good way to vent after spending a day with the googly-eyed lovebirds. He sometimes excused himself when their sweetness started to overflow into sickliness. It was probably better that way.

And so, Riku kept his secrets, Sora remained oblivious, Kairi fell in love with Sora, and Sora her, as it should be.

At least, that's what Riku told himself. He reminded himself over and over again that Sora was straight, dammit, and besides, who would love a man whose heart was impure, tainted by darkness? Sora, being the epitome of light that he was, certainly wouldn't.

And that's why Riku almost had a heart attack and died when Sora kissed him.

Kingdom Hearts lie broken and shattered on a backdrop of the deepest blue, its ephemereal glow casting a ghostly light over the remains of The Castle That Never Was. Xemnas was defeated (or so everyone naively thought) and all was right in the Worlds.

Of course, Riku wasn't paying much attention to that.

What he was paying attention to was Sora. Or rather, Sora's lips covering his own. They weren't exactly soft; too long exposed in the open elements left them a bit chapped, but it was still nice, nonetheless.

As quickly as it came, however, Sora was gone, moving on to the rest of the group and celebrating, happy.

Riku was sure it was a mistake. Surely Sora had been aiming for Kairi, standing right beside him, and missed? Perhaps he had confused Riku with Kairi (he blamed the hair), here in The World That Never Was, where it was really hard to see? The light shed upon them by Kingdom Hearts was dwindling by the moment, after all.

Riku didn't deserve Sora. He didn't deserve Sora's heart. He had, after all, given into the darkness in his own heart.

To save the kid who would never return his feelings.

Riku frowned. He wasn't deserving of the bright, joyful bundle of energy that was now apparently talking to himself.

He wished he could have pondered further, but everyone had disappeared and Sora was telling to get a move on before the portal closed on them.

But then the portal did close, and Riku had barely begun to think of how totally screwed they were when Xemnas reappeared, and Riku decided that it wasn't exactly the best moment to sort out his broody boy-feelings.

They were back on Destiny Islands, and things were back to how they should be. Riku was still brooding, Sora was still oblivious (and apparently ignoring the fact that he had kissed Riku; Riku chalked it down to embarrassment over his clumsy aim), and Kairi was still in love with Sora, and vice versa. Everything was back to normal.

Except for the fact that Sora apparently thought "normal" was overrated and decided to do something about it.

"Man, I just don't get it," Sora sighed, swinging his legs back and forth from his perch atop the paopu tree.

"Don't get what?" Riku inquired from his leaning position beside Sora.

Sora slid from the bent trunk, landing heavily in the sand. He turned imploringly to Riku.

"Everyone thinks I'm going to marry Kairi! Even your parents!" he almost shouted, crossing his arms across his chest.

Riku cocked an eyebrow.

"And...aren't you?" he asked, slightly confused.

"No!" now Sora was really shouting. He looked at Riku like he had swallowed something prickly.

Riku was still confused.

"Why not?" he asked, keeping a cool, calm, collected, and not internally flabbergasted face

"Because I don't love her," Sora said exasperatedly. "I mean, I do love her, but I don't love her, y'know?"

"What?" Riku was really confused now. "Why not?"

"Because," Sora said, rolling his eyes, "I love you."

"Oh," Riku said.

Then his brain processed it.

"What?" It was Riku's turn to look as though he had swallowed something prickly.

"Oh, come on, Riku, I kissed you, for crying out loud. How could you not get it?" Sora asked. "Is mouth-to-mouth contact too subtle for you?"

Riku was too busy trying to comprehend the idea of Sora maybe kind of being in love with him to catch the jab. "But, but Kairi, you missed, and it was dark and you couldn't see properly," he floundered.

Sora gave him a look, one that read you are being completely serious right now, aren't you? "Kairi is a friend, Riku. A friend. She's known I've been crazy about you since, like, forever." Then he smiled.

And so Riku, after processing that yes, Sora being in love with him was actually a thing, kissed him, right on his smiling mouth.

He decided that he liked kissing Sora, and if his dark, broody heart had any problems with it? Well. Too bad.