The Untitled Leon-Riku PORNO!
This has been sitting around, waiting for a title, for ... well, for a while. At least three months, probably more. It still has no title. But I need to post it SOMEWHERE. So. here we go.
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts 2, post-game
Pairing: Leon/Riku, allusions to Sora/Kairi (or Roxas/Namine? I don’t know. Both, really)
Rating: R
Warnings: sex, drinking, some swearing, one very brief allusion of FF8
Summary: Why would he track through almost anything for this guy he’s known for not even a year?
Notes: OMG, LEON/RIKU FTW. LIEK, OMG, GAIZ. OHEMGEEEEEE! Uh, yeah. Don’t ask.
When they come, Yuffie finds them in the Marketplace. She leeches onto Sora and Riku can feel that jealousy he’s still not entirely sure he’s used to bubbling up in his chest. From the look in Kairi’s eyes, she feels it to. They don’t say anything, because Sora grins like a fiend when he turns to them and starts to run through introductions. We’ve heard so much about you, Yuffie says, and Kairi says, We have too. Sora’s hard to shut up, they all know that; they say it, too. Sora pouts and looks too cute and Riku ruffles his hair in what he hopes looks like a brotherly manner because he certainly doesn’t feel all that brotherly right now.
“Everybody’s at Merlin’s,” Yuffie tells them, and so off they trek. Sora talks in animated gestures-sometimes explaining things about Radiant Garden, other times having exclusive conversation with Yuffie. She says they were all worried when there wasn’t hide nor hair of any of them after they’d gone off to the alternate Twilight Town. She asks Kairi what she thinks of Radiant Garden-“The renovations are nearly complete, ya know. And you’re one of those legendary Princesses, right? Maybe we’ll set you up in the castle.” It’s all followed with a little wink.
‘Everybody,’ it turns out, is four other people. The two women great Sora in much the same fashion Yuffie did. The old wizard stumbles and gushes and asks what brings them out of their world, while the other man gruffs and swears under his breath but finally says around the toothpick in his mouth that he’s glad boredom hasn’t made a criminal of Sora.
“I’m so glad to see everybody!” Sora gushes right back, and Riku wonders if he’s gonna cry. He’s done that a lot over the past few months. Riku doesn’t entirely blame him. “Everybody,” he finally introduces, “These are Kairi and Riku. Guys, these are Merlin; Aerith and Tifa; and the angry old geezer is Cid.”
“Wha'cha call me, ya little punk?”
The others all laugh. Riku can see that Kairi looks as out of place as he feels. She smiles at everybody though, and says hello very politely; Riku shrugs and tries to express his boredom through body language.
It works, apparently. Yuffie and Aerith both frown and put their hands on their hips. Aerith says, “He’s just like Cloud!” in the same moment that Yuffie grouses, “Sora, he’s acting like Squall.”
A voice from behind them, which is dark and bored and even, simply interjects, “Don’t call me that, Yuffie.”
Sora’s face goes as bright as the sun, and Riku half turns as Sora launches himself at this long haired twenty-something in leather slacks and a cut-off jacket. The twenty-something (who isn’t to be called ‘Squall’ apparently, but Riku thinks he’ll remember that name) catches Sora and looks thoroughly put upon with having to have physical contact with the little keyblade wielder. But there’s something there, and Riku understands that hidden look in his eyes.
“I missed you,” he hears Sora saying. He also sees Kairi go a little stiff in the shoulders. And he thinks he has an idea who this character might be.
“You must be Leon.” Sora pulls away and smiles sheepishly, clearly about to begin introductions again. But the twenty-something looks him over slowly, looks over at Kairi, and then cocks a brow cruelly.
“And you’re supposed to be?”
“Leon, these are Kairi and Riku!” Sora manages to get in before Riku decides he might want to see if he can still summon his own keyblade. He smiles up at the twenty-something like he’s brought down the moon or something, and explains, “We’re visiting everybody. I’m showing them all the stuff I saw while I was running around saving the worlds from certain destruction.”
“They need a place to stay,” Yuffie volunteers. Sora looks slightly distraught at her straight forward manner. Leon looks even more put upon. Riku reminds himself that he should just kept Sora home.
“Kairi can stay with Tifa, Yuffie and I,” Aerith says. Sora looks hopeful at that.
Yuffie opens her big mouth and says, “That still leaves Sora and Tall-Dark-and-Handsome over here.” She smiles at Riku in what she must think is a cute manner. Riku thinks he might vomit.
“There’s a little extra space, I suppose.” It’s said in a monotone that somehow manages to be long suffering. Sora looks embarrassed. Leon frowns a little and says, “Maybe we should just buy you an apartment so you’ll stop sleeping on people’s couches.”
“I like sleeping on people’s couches,” Sora complains. He smiles at Riku. “Don’t I, Riku?”
“Couches? When have you ever settled for couches? I’m usually the first one you force out of bed.” Sora pouts a little at that. Leon doesn’t look surprised at all. He doesn’t look much of anything really.
Kairi says she’ll get her things from the gummi ship later; now she wants to get to know everybody. Sora looks goofy at her and giggles a little, and she smiles and touches his hand. Riku thinks he’ll vomit again, but stifles the urge as the gruff ‘old geezer Cid’ (who doesn’t look much older than his late thirties) says that Chip and Dale are bringing his and Sora’s things to Leon’s place. He only stifles the urge because Leon looks marginally confrontational and says to Sora, “You told them you were staying there.”
Sora grins, but doesn’t have to say anything. That grin could move mountains. Riku is half convinced that grin could have won over Xemnas of the Organization; they should have thought of that before nearly dying in the darkness.
Leon tells Sora, “You catch up. I’ll pull out an extra cot.” He grabs Riku’s shoulder. He’s much stronger than he looks. “You’re helping.” Putting up with irrational anger isn’t high on Riku’s list of ‘ways to pass time while Sora chums it up.’ It’s near the same slot as Yuffie making doe eyes at him, only higher. He’ll suffer irrational anger.
Leon doesn’t talk. It isn’t that he just doesn’t talk much, it’s that he doesn’t utter a single word after they leave Sora’s vicinity. When they reach his ‘place’-which is actually a pretty nice apartment building that he apparently runs super for-he still doesn’t say anything, just leads Riku into a spare bedroom and opens the closet.
Then, he asks, “How long are you staying?” to which Riku only shrugs slightly.
“Until Sora figures we should be moving on.”
“Maybe I should just buy him a bed and get it over with,” Leon grumbles. Riku doesn’t like how jealous that makes him feel.
“Where’s he normally stay?” he asks cautiously.
“Merlin’s.” Which is better than saying he shares a bed with Leon. Riku put up with that as a kid. He even suffered it a couple times after having returned to the islands. He does not use ‘suffer’ lightly in that case.
Leon is watching him as he pulls a cot out of the closet. There’s hardly any room in the little spare room for one cot, let alone two. Riku says as much.
“I know. One of you is camping on the couch.” He’s still and silent for a moment, than abstractly says, “You’re camping on the couch.”
“Oh?” Riku snips. “And what makes you think that?”
“Because then I’ll end up with a broken jaw in the next two days, instead of a wounded conscience.” And what the hell is that supposed to mean?
-----
That first night, they eat at a tiny little boutique Aerith told Kairi about. Sora drags Leon along. Kairi invites the girls. Riku wishes he had any sort of taste for alcohol.
Sora talks with everybody, but that’s not at all unusual. Kairi actually manages a fairly lively banter with the girls, and occasionally drops a line toward Leon, which is rebounded expertly. It seems that Riku is the only one irked by the entire situation. He settles for watching everybody over his burger.
Tifa, he learns, is not a regular to Radiant Garden. She comes and goes as she’s needed, and sticks around most regularly for some guy named Cloud who, Riku gathers, is in a pretty steady relationship with both her and Aerith. He decides he might end up liking this Cloud guy a bit, if he isn’t a complete asshole like Leon.
Yuffie, in fact, is only a little older than Riku. And she’s still making doe eyes at him and dropping unsubtle hints about how, if Leon is being too much of a ‘meanie,’ Riku can stay with her. Wouldn’t even have to sleep on the couch. Riku doesn’t know a delicate way of turning her down. He pulls a face at her and asks if she isn’t a little bit crazy. She cocks a brow and asks if he isn’t a little bit gay. After that, he doesn’t want to figure out anything about her.
Leon, around Sora, is a completely different person. Sure, he’s still quiet and an asshole, but he’s classier about it. With this different mask on, Riku lets his mind wander. It wanders back to Leon bent over the cot, snapping the legs into the locked position. Then it wanders to Leon’s comment about how a broken jaw is better than a bruised conscience. It catches on that for a moment, watching Leon smile at Sora, and Sora be completely oblivious.
Leon is a dirty pervert.
Riku is infinitely jealous of his ability to admit it, however cryptically. At the same time, it’s disconcerting, the very implication that he might wake up to hard gunmetal eyes staring at him in the middle of the night.
He vows to keep Leon’s self-imposed prediction, if it comes to that. He hopes it won’t. Punching people is really hard on your knuckles.
“Riku!”
“Sorry, what?” Sora is laughing at him. Kairi rolls her eyes and sighs.
“You were off in space again,” she reprimands.
Sora, at the same time, slaps his hands on the table and asks, “Who wants ice cream? I’ll buy!” Apparently, if Sora is going to pay for it, everybody wants some. Riku thinks it’d probably be better to pass, but he can’t say so by the time they’re out of the boutique and down the street and buying ice cream.
Sora eats the ice cream like a dying man. The girls laugh. Leon tries not to stare, but is predominately unsuccessful. He’s still less obvious than Riku.
Riku hates this guy.
-----
They leave after two days. Or, rather, Sora and Kairi leave. Something about Princesses and Holding Court and while Riku is more than welcome to come Sora knows he hates to feel like a third wheel. Well, it’s too late for that.
So Riku makes himself busy. Even if the renovations of Radiant Garden are almost complete, there are still random malfunctions in the security network, problems that need fixing in the virtual plane from time to time, and the surprisingly ever-present swarm of Heartless that seem to pound on every door in Radiant Garden.
They are, surprisingly, more than grateful for Riku’s help. Even Leon gets slightly less cold. But only slightly. Riku thinks it has more to do with Sora not being there.
“He does get a little hard to bare some times,” Riku concedes one night when Sora comes up some how as they look over blue prints for a new housing project that got petitioned by several citizens of Radiant Garden.
“But we wouldn’t want him any other way, would we?” Riku doesn’t know if Leon means the imperial we, or the two of them in particular. He doesn’t say anything, just shrugs. “Bit oblivious too, isn’t he?”
“He notices what he needs to,” Riku corrects. Then he carefully adds, “And what he’s meant to.”
“Or just what people think he should notice,” Leon says. It’s biting, but not toward Riku. Probably biting toward himself. He noticed, over the almost-week he’s been there, that Leon’s very hard on himself. Like he blames himself for what happened to his world.
Riku doesn’t blame him for blaming himself. He catches himself doing that too.
Leon is watching him expectantly.
“Right. Back to the blueprints.”
-----
Kairi comes back ahead of Sora. She isn’t to be Princess of Radiant Garden, as Yuffie proclaimed at their meeting. Leon gets hard with her around too.
“Why don’t you like her?” Riku still likes her a lot sometimes. Sometimes too much. He can’t quite understand not liking her.
“I don’t not like her,” Leon corrects. He won’t talk about. Riku wonders if he’s a talky drinker. Then he decides that Leon would probably know if he were a talky drinker and therefore steer clear of all alcohol.
“So, what it is?” Riku doesn’t know why he cares. He thinks it’s because Sora isn’t here, and he hasn’t really been talking with anybody else recently. That doesn’t explain why he’s sitting on the couch in his boxers talking about Kairi.
“Nothing. What do you care?”
“She’s my friend,” Riku points out, in that sort of deadpan voice that make it sound like he ended that statement with ‘you crazy dumbass.’
“Some friend.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Most friends don’t go around stealing people out from under their friend’s noses.” Leon clearly said that without thinking it through all the way, because he swears and leaves the room with only a slow backwards glance. Like he just noticed Riku wasn’t wearing all his clothes.
-----
Sora comes back. Leon isn’t hard around Sora. He’s gruff and even more short tempered around Riku. Riku finds out about the Bailey, and claims the still decimated area as his own for a short while.
When Sora finds him there, he looks surprised.
“You were looking for Leon,” Riku observes. Sora shrugs. He sits on the edge of what was once a great view-window. It’s still a great view, even if the window itself is pretty pitiful. “He’s in Ansem’s study, I think.”
“Do you like it here?” Sora asks, looking out over the landscape. He says it looks much nicer, more lived in. Less dead. Riku shrugs at Sora’s question. “Cid and Leon said you’ve been a big help around town. Thanks.”
“Why are you thanking me?”
“Because nobody else will. They’re scared of you.” He grins though, and shoves Riku in the shoulder. Then, as he stares at the landscape again, he goes very quiet. They watch the sun coasting through the sky. Finally, he asks, “Would you ever think of staying here? Helping out, like everybody else does?”
“I like Destiny Islands,” Riku says blandly.
“But,” Sora whispers, “You don’t do anything there.”
“No,” Riku agrees. Then, he smiles. “But you’re there. And Kairi. And all our other friends from when we were kids. And we’ll always be there.”
Sora looks distraught. Then he smiles. “Right.”
He hates it when Sora lies.
-----
“So, why don’t you tell him you like him?”
Riku almost chokes on his water. Tifa looks over at him and Leon, but then gets distracted by Yuffie trying to take something from her. They get into a fight that’s a lot of bouncing Yuffie and Tifa’s tits almost flashing out of her sweat-soaked t-shirt. Leon keeps his gaze as unrelenting as that stupid leather he wears; he must be absolutely roasting.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sora,” Leon clarifies, as though Riku were being serious about his statement and not just trying to be a slitherer-outer. Riku rolls his eyes a little and hisses that he knows that. Leon leans against his shovel. At least he’s not wearing his coat or gloves, or else Riku might think the heavy gear had caused his brain to melt. He still wonders aloud if Leon’s brains have begun to melt.
Finally, he replies to the original question with, “The same reason you don’t tell him you want to fuck him. He’s my friend.”
“I don’t want to fuck him.” Leon actually blushes when he says that. He moves a huge chunk of what used to be the Bailey, and then digs for a minute.
“Oh. Excuse me.” Riku frees up his hands, and makes air quotations next to his head as he gruffly mocks, “‘Make love to him,’ sorry.”
“I don’t-”
“Like hell-!” Tifa and Yuffie look over. Leon glares them back to work. Riku lowers his voice to a hissing whisper. “Like hell you don’t. I’m not stupid, you know. And I’m even surprised Sora hasn’t noticed, okay, because you’re really not that good at being subtle.”
Sora shouts down at them from what’s left of the Bailey. As he bounds down the rock and says he’s here to help, Kairi comes after him, much more subdued but clearly there to help as well. As they start to help the others, she sticks close to him. He occasionally looks over, looks all goofy and grinning, and she’ll laugh without him having to say anything. Riku wonders if that’s because of them, or because of Them.
“That’s why I don’t tell him, beside him being my friend,” Riku finally says.
“I know.”
-----
Leon, it turns out, does keep drinks in the house. They are for special occasions, like a particularly grueling battle won against the Heartless, or a hard day’s work. Riku watched him go off before, but it’s the first time he’s been invited to come along.
“I think you should be one of the first tenants into the new apartments,” he proclaims half way through his third beer. Riku lifts an eyebrow toward his hairline. He swallows his drink and informs Leon that he’s going back to Destiny Islands with Sora and Kairi. Leon gets that same conflicted look on his face that Sora had when Riku said they’d always be there, and wishes people would stop lying. But Leon doesn’t lie. He just says, “Oh.”
“I’ll think about it,” Riku corrects after a bit of silence. It serves to surprisingly lighten Leon’s eyes. “I mean, it’s like I particularly live here already. How long have we been here?”
“Only two weeks.”
It had only been that long. “It feels longer.” Leon looks over at him. Riku laughs. “In the good way. I mean, we only spent a few months on Destiny Islands before we headed out again, but it felt like a year.”
“You always talk about yourself with the other two,” Leon points out just as he opens his fourth beer. Riku cocks a brow at that as well. “Like you’re a unit or something. What happens ...” He gets very quiet for a second, and then all he says is, “What if you’re not?”
“They’re kind of the only friends I have.” Leon looks a little put upon by that. Riku shrugs. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“What happens if they ... move on?”
Riku stops himself from thinking about that by drinking until the world spins and staring at Leon’s mouth as he begins to talk about a place called Balamb.
-----
Summer comes. It’s always summer in Destiny Islands, but Radiant Garden has seasons. Kairi is away, with some Princess or something; and Sora is gone, off to some world Riku couldn’t pick off a map if you asked him to-but he can barely find his way around Destiny Islands, so nobody can blame him. The days get long and the nights get warm. Leon leaves all the lights off all the time and runs the air conditioning in the apartment building on high as often as possible, as well as leaving the window in the super apartment open to what little breeze there is. Riku procures a set of cutoffs and hand-me-downs that Leon forgot he even had; they just barely fit him. The housing project is set into motion. They jokingly call it ‘the King Sora Memorial Apartments.’ Riku really only thinks it’s funny when Leon calls it that.
Time shifts about then, or something else does. Everything gets a little off, but in a good way. Days have becomes months some how, and Riku misses the wide ocean while Leon tells him of Balamb and fishing with a kid named Zell when they were a little older than Riku is now.
“I miss fishing,” he proclaims one night, while the sun sinks low and they sit on the scaffolding outside the mostly completely exterior of the KSMA. He doesn’t drink as quickly now as he did weeks earlier when they first started. “And swimming.”
“There are plans for a pool out near the palace,” Leon says. “Yuffie’s idea. The kids are anxious.”
“I,” Riku begins, and almost finishes the thought, but he’s not sure if he does ‘want to go home,’ or even where Home is any more. Leon watches him while he doesn’t say anything. The sun sinks and blazes red and gold and wonderfully hot against his skin.
Leon’s mouth tastes like beer. Riku isn’t sure how Leon snuck up to kiss him, or why he’s doing it on scaffolding where anybody (Yuffie) could walk by and see them. More than that, he doesn’t know why Leon would do that.
He must have snarled that one out loud, because Leon says, “We can’t have what we want.” Riku might be a little more offended if Leon didn’t look so forlorn and strangely vulnerable. It’s broken when Leon looks out at the sun, leaning over his knees with his bottle dangling out and between his fingers. “And it’s not that we couldn’t have it, either. If we really wanted to, we could have what we want. But-”
“You suck at speeches,” Riku proclaims. Then, before he does something stupid (like kiss Leon back), he stands and leaves behind a half drunk bottle of beer.
-----
“Have you decided?”
Kairi’s gotten better at appearing out of nowhere since she met Yuffie. Riku hates it. He wishes she still made lots of noise and still giggled when she saw boys. Now she doesn’t even giggle when she sees Sora, just gets a goofy look in her eyes and can’t stop smiling. He wishes somebody would smile like that for him.
But, sometimes, somebody does. “Decided what?”
“Whether you want to stay here when Sora and I leave.” He must look like the world shattered again, because Kairi bites her lip and looks affronted. “Sora didn’t tell you-nobody told you?”
“Yeah, I’ve decided,” Riku interjects, trying to collect his wits. They’re leaving him here. That’s why they keep leaving for longer and longer stretches: they’re weaning him of them. That’s why they stopped here and introduced him to everybody and encouraged him helping out with the renovations.
Kairi smiles. “And?”
“I’m going to stay here. Have an apartment picked out and everything.”
Her smile is like the sun breaking. She kisses his cheek and says, “I’m happy for you.”
He doesn’t know what for.
-----
“Fuck me.”
Leon clearly has no idea what to do with those two words and stands there looking like they’re a two-by-four and his head just got intimately acquainted with them. Riku growls and decides he doesn’t want to wait for Leon to react to it; the door is open and he’s not going to let Leon shut it right now. Not right now.
This time, Leon doesn’t taste like much of anything. Mouth, mostly. A faint minty flavor. Cloves. His hair-he has lots of it, but the strands themselves are fine and soft. They tangle around Riku’s fingers as their teeth click together in a disgusting cacophony. Leon touches his hips.
Riku pulls away when he’s used to shut the door, and says again, “Fuck me.”
“I don’t want to fuck you,” Leon says. His voice is rough and heavy. Riku can feel it against his chest.
“Sorry.” Riku frees up his hands, and makes air quotations next to his head as he growls, “‘Make love to me.’” He rocks his hips against Leon’s and wonders why he suddenly feels like just sobbing.
Leon kisses him, and it’s the same sneaky, tender sort of kiss they had on the scaffolding. Riku does sob after that.
Leon doesn’t sit him on the couch. He’s never seen the inside of Leon’s room before, and doesn’t take his time looking around. There’s a bed, and he sits there with his head hung over his knees. He hasn’t cried this much since he brought the darkness into his heart and thought he’d never be able to see Sora again. This time, he is not alone; Leon is there, though he doesn’t seem to have any more of an idea of what to do than Riku does.
They sit in relative silence. When Riku’s calmed down a little, he returns to his earlier idea without saying anything. Leon doesn’t say anything either, not until Riku is naked and kneeling in front of him, trying to figure out the belts that cross over his narrow hips. His hands touch Riku’s hair. He looks uncertain in his resolve when he says, “You don’t want to do this. You’ll regret it in the morning.”
“No I won’t,” Riku assures. Leon is only putting up token resistance. Riku figures out the belt, and then the fly of those infernal leather pants.
The resistance is purely token, because Riku can climb onto the bed now, lying Leon back and curling next to him. He doesn’t say anything, but listens to the sound of Leon’s heart thumping against his breast bone. Sora used to do this, when he and Riku were very young-they’d lie in bed, curled together like kittens, and Sora would tell Riku everything his heart said.
Riku shuts his eyes and listens to Leon’s heart’s voice, racing and fluttering and pounding beside his ear. He isn’t a good translator like Sora. His hands skate over Leon’s skin, which is much paler than his own, almost the same color as Sora’s. They start at Leon’s shoulders and move down his arms. They have minds of their own, moving over skin-slicked muscle and feeling the ridges and valleys of scars.
“We’re not doing this,” Leon says, but it is still token protest. Riku hauls a leg over Leon’s hips and rocks against him. Leon’s heart’s voice goes sharp and heavy for a second, startled against his ear. Riku smiles a little.
When he sits up a little and moves their hips against each other again, Leon reaches up and drags a thumb over Riku’s cheek. Is he still crying?
“They’re leaving me here,” he tells Leon.
“That’s not a good reason for me to have sex with you,” Leon tells him.
Riku doesn’t care any more. His heart’s voice tells him to sleep, because at least there will be someone there when he wakes up.
-----
Winter in Radiant Garden is the first winter Riku has ever had. Christmas for him had always been with a palm tree and presents of new sandals or a video-game. Leon tells him they’ll make it a winter he won’t forget, if only because it’s the first of as many as he’d like.
Sora and Kairi are gone, and Riku, while lonely, expects them for Christmas or at least the New Year. He doesn’t tell anybody.
The KSMA opens the week before Christmas, and Riku is, in fact, the first person to move in. He’s the super. Leon tells him it’s a bitch, being a super as well as a member of the administrative group that runs Radiant Garden. Riku just asks when he got promoted from slave to administrator. Leon actually smiles, which doesn’t do anything for Riku’s slowly worsening blood pressure.
Though Leon won’t speak of it, Riku can’t stop thinking of the night he went to him and they got so close to having sex. He thinks that Leon thinks he doesn’t remember, thought he was drunk. Riku just wishes he had the courage to talk to Leon about it. He hates how jealous he is of everyone-of the kids and their families (he didn’t even tell his he was leaving); of Sora and Kairi star-hopping wherever they are; of all the happiness when he can’t even get a little settlement into his life.
Five months, and he can’t stop thinking of it. What the hell is wrong with him, he wonders; he knows, and hates it. Why would he track through almost anything for this guy he’s known for not even a year? Why would he lose himself to all of this?
He wishes his heart would just shut up sometimes.
-----
“What are we toasting to?”
It’s good to see Sora and Kairi again. He wonders if he’ll cry when they leave.
Sora looks thoughtful, before grinning across the table at Riku. “To friendship!” Everybody choruses that and takes a drink from their various mismatched glasses. Then, Sora looks at Kairi.
She smiles at everyone, and blushes a little when she says, “To family!” There’s some laughter, some soft coos of praise. Everybody drinks after their chorus. It moves around the table. Riku regrets that nobody sits to his left. He regrets that Leon isn’t there.
And just as the toast gets to him, Leon manages to have the worst and best timing ever. He slips into the seat next to Riku, and quietly asks, “What are we toasting to?”
“The darkness inside of each of us,” Riku says without thinking. There’s silence after that. But Sora is smiling when Riku looks away from Leon, and he’s the first to chorus and drink. Everybody follows suit. Riku looks expectantly over at Leon.
Leon doesn’t look at anyone else. “Sorry if I’m repeating. To new opportunities.”
The chorus is minus the voices of Leon and Riku. Across the table, Kairi and Sora share a secret smile, and chorus the loudest of all.
-----
“New opportunities, huh?” Riku is pretty sure Leon hadn’t meant it quite like this when he’d said it, but he wasn’t exactly regretting their mutual initiative.
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts 2, post-game
Pairing: Leon/Riku, allusions to Sora/Kairi (or Roxas/Namine? I don’t know. Both, really)
Rating: R
Warnings: sex, drinking, some swearing, one very brief allusion of FF8
Summary: Why would he track through almost anything for this guy he’s known for not even a year?
Notes: OMG, LEON/RIKU FTW. LIEK, OMG, GAIZ. OHEMGEEEEEE! Uh, yeah. Don’t ask.
When they come, Yuffie finds them in the Marketplace. She leeches onto Sora and Riku can feel that jealousy he’s still not entirely sure he’s used to bubbling up in his chest. From the look in Kairi’s eyes, she feels it to. They don’t say anything, because Sora grins like a fiend when he turns to them and starts to run through introductions. We’ve heard so much about you, Yuffie says, and Kairi says, We have too. Sora’s hard to shut up, they all know that; they say it, too. Sora pouts and looks too cute and Riku ruffles his hair in what he hopes looks like a brotherly manner because he certainly doesn’t feel all that brotherly right now.
“Everybody’s at Merlin’s,” Yuffie tells them, and so off they trek. Sora talks in animated gestures-sometimes explaining things about Radiant Garden, other times having exclusive conversation with Yuffie. She says they were all worried when there wasn’t hide nor hair of any of them after they’d gone off to the alternate Twilight Town. She asks Kairi what she thinks of Radiant Garden-“The renovations are nearly complete, ya know. And you’re one of those legendary Princesses, right? Maybe we’ll set you up in the castle.” It’s all followed with a little wink.
‘Everybody,’ it turns out, is four other people. The two women great Sora in much the same fashion Yuffie did. The old wizard stumbles and gushes and asks what brings them out of their world, while the other man gruffs and swears under his breath but finally says around the toothpick in his mouth that he’s glad boredom hasn’t made a criminal of Sora.
“I’m so glad to see everybody!” Sora gushes right back, and Riku wonders if he’s gonna cry. He’s done that a lot over the past few months. Riku doesn’t entirely blame him. “Everybody,” he finally introduces, “These are Kairi and Riku. Guys, these are Merlin; Aerith and Tifa; and the angry old geezer is Cid.”
“Wha'cha call me, ya little punk?”
The others all laugh. Riku can see that Kairi looks as out of place as he feels. She smiles at everybody though, and says hello very politely; Riku shrugs and tries to express his boredom through body language.
It works, apparently. Yuffie and Aerith both frown and put their hands on their hips. Aerith says, “He’s just like Cloud!” in the same moment that Yuffie grouses, “Sora, he’s acting like Squall.”
A voice from behind them, which is dark and bored and even, simply interjects, “Don’t call me that, Yuffie.”
Sora’s face goes as bright as the sun, and Riku half turns as Sora launches himself at this long haired twenty-something in leather slacks and a cut-off jacket. The twenty-something (who isn’t to be called ‘Squall’ apparently, but Riku thinks he’ll remember that name) catches Sora and looks thoroughly put upon with having to have physical contact with the little keyblade wielder. But there’s something there, and Riku understands that hidden look in his eyes.
“I missed you,” he hears Sora saying. He also sees Kairi go a little stiff in the shoulders. And he thinks he has an idea who this character might be.
“You must be Leon.” Sora pulls away and smiles sheepishly, clearly about to begin introductions again. But the twenty-something looks him over slowly, looks over at Kairi, and then cocks a brow cruelly.
“And you’re supposed to be?”
“Leon, these are Kairi and Riku!” Sora manages to get in before Riku decides he might want to see if he can still summon his own keyblade. He smiles up at the twenty-something like he’s brought down the moon or something, and explains, “We’re visiting everybody. I’m showing them all the stuff I saw while I was running around saving the worlds from certain destruction.”
“They need a place to stay,” Yuffie volunteers. Sora looks slightly distraught at her straight forward manner. Leon looks even more put upon. Riku reminds himself that he should just kept Sora home.
“Kairi can stay with Tifa, Yuffie and I,” Aerith says. Sora looks hopeful at that.
Yuffie opens her big mouth and says, “That still leaves Sora and Tall-Dark-and-Handsome over here.” She smiles at Riku in what she must think is a cute manner. Riku thinks he might vomit.
“There’s a little extra space, I suppose.” It’s said in a monotone that somehow manages to be long suffering. Sora looks embarrassed. Leon frowns a little and says, “Maybe we should just buy you an apartment so you’ll stop sleeping on people’s couches.”
“I like sleeping on people’s couches,” Sora complains. He smiles at Riku. “Don’t I, Riku?”
“Couches? When have you ever settled for couches? I’m usually the first one you force out of bed.” Sora pouts a little at that. Leon doesn’t look surprised at all. He doesn’t look much of anything really.
Kairi says she’ll get her things from the gummi ship later; now she wants to get to know everybody. Sora looks goofy at her and giggles a little, and she smiles and touches his hand. Riku thinks he’ll vomit again, but stifles the urge as the gruff ‘old geezer Cid’ (who doesn’t look much older than his late thirties) says that Chip and Dale are bringing his and Sora’s things to Leon’s place. He only stifles the urge because Leon looks marginally confrontational and says to Sora, “You told them you were staying there.”
Sora grins, but doesn’t have to say anything. That grin could move mountains. Riku is half convinced that grin could have won over Xemnas of the Organization; they should have thought of that before nearly dying in the darkness.
Leon tells Sora, “You catch up. I’ll pull out an extra cot.” He grabs Riku’s shoulder. He’s much stronger than he looks. “You’re helping.” Putting up with irrational anger isn’t high on Riku’s list of ‘ways to pass time while Sora chums it up.’ It’s near the same slot as Yuffie making doe eyes at him, only higher. He’ll suffer irrational anger.
Leon doesn’t talk. It isn’t that he just doesn’t talk much, it’s that he doesn’t utter a single word after they leave Sora’s vicinity. When they reach his ‘place’-which is actually a pretty nice apartment building that he apparently runs super for-he still doesn’t say anything, just leads Riku into a spare bedroom and opens the closet.
Then, he asks, “How long are you staying?” to which Riku only shrugs slightly.
“Until Sora figures we should be moving on.”
“Maybe I should just buy him a bed and get it over with,” Leon grumbles. Riku doesn’t like how jealous that makes him feel.
“Where’s he normally stay?” he asks cautiously.
“Merlin’s.” Which is better than saying he shares a bed with Leon. Riku put up with that as a kid. He even suffered it a couple times after having returned to the islands. He does not use ‘suffer’ lightly in that case.
Leon is watching him as he pulls a cot out of the closet. There’s hardly any room in the little spare room for one cot, let alone two. Riku says as much.
“I know. One of you is camping on the couch.” He’s still and silent for a moment, than abstractly says, “You’re camping on the couch.”
“Oh?” Riku snips. “And what makes you think that?”
“Because then I’ll end up with a broken jaw in the next two days, instead of a wounded conscience.” And what the hell is that supposed to mean?
-----
That first night, they eat at a tiny little boutique Aerith told Kairi about. Sora drags Leon along. Kairi invites the girls. Riku wishes he had any sort of taste for alcohol.
Sora talks with everybody, but that’s not at all unusual. Kairi actually manages a fairly lively banter with the girls, and occasionally drops a line toward Leon, which is rebounded expertly. It seems that Riku is the only one irked by the entire situation. He settles for watching everybody over his burger.
Tifa, he learns, is not a regular to Radiant Garden. She comes and goes as she’s needed, and sticks around most regularly for some guy named Cloud who, Riku gathers, is in a pretty steady relationship with both her and Aerith. He decides he might end up liking this Cloud guy a bit, if he isn’t a complete asshole like Leon.
Yuffie, in fact, is only a little older than Riku. And she’s still making doe eyes at him and dropping unsubtle hints about how, if Leon is being too much of a ‘meanie,’ Riku can stay with her. Wouldn’t even have to sleep on the couch. Riku doesn’t know a delicate way of turning her down. He pulls a face at her and asks if she isn’t a little bit crazy. She cocks a brow and asks if he isn’t a little bit gay. After that, he doesn’t want to figure out anything about her.
Leon, around Sora, is a completely different person. Sure, he’s still quiet and an asshole, but he’s classier about it. With this different mask on, Riku lets his mind wander. It wanders back to Leon bent over the cot, snapping the legs into the locked position. Then it wanders to Leon’s comment about how a broken jaw is better than a bruised conscience. It catches on that for a moment, watching Leon smile at Sora, and Sora be completely oblivious.
Leon is a dirty pervert.
Riku is infinitely jealous of his ability to admit it, however cryptically. At the same time, it’s disconcerting, the very implication that he might wake up to hard gunmetal eyes staring at him in the middle of the night.
He vows to keep Leon’s self-imposed prediction, if it comes to that. He hopes it won’t. Punching people is really hard on your knuckles.
“Riku!”
“Sorry, what?” Sora is laughing at him. Kairi rolls her eyes and sighs.
“You were off in space again,” she reprimands.
Sora, at the same time, slaps his hands on the table and asks, “Who wants ice cream? I’ll buy!” Apparently, if Sora is going to pay for it, everybody wants some. Riku thinks it’d probably be better to pass, but he can’t say so by the time they’re out of the boutique and down the street and buying ice cream.
Sora eats the ice cream like a dying man. The girls laugh. Leon tries not to stare, but is predominately unsuccessful. He’s still less obvious than Riku.
Riku hates this guy.
-----
They leave after two days. Or, rather, Sora and Kairi leave. Something about Princesses and Holding Court and while Riku is more than welcome to come Sora knows he hates to feel like a third wheel. Well, it’s too late for that.
So Riku makes himself busy. Even if the renovations of Radiant Garden are almost complete, there are still random malfunctions in the security network, problems that need fixing in the virtual plane from time to time, and the surprisingly ever-present swarm of Heartless that seem to pound on every door in Radiant Garden.
They are, surprisingly, more than grateful for Riku’s help. Even Leon gets slightly less cold. But only slightly. Riku thinks it has more to do with Sora not being there.
“He does get a little hard to bare some times,” Riku concedes one night when Sora comes up some how as they look over blue prints for a new housing project that got petitioned by several citizens of Radiant Garden.
“But we wouldn’t want him any other way, would we?” Riku doesn’t know if Leon means the imperial we, or the two of them in particular. He doesn’t say anything, just shrugs. “Bit oblivious too, isn’t he?”
“He notices what he needs to,” Riku corrects. Then he carefully adds, “And what he’s meant to.”
“Or just what people think he should notice,” Leon says. It’s biting, but not toward Riku. Probably biting toward himself. He noticed, over the almost-week he’s been there, that Leon’s very hard on himself. Like he blames himself for what happened to his world.
Riku doesn’t blame him for blaming himself. He catches himself doing that too.
Leon is watching him expectantly.
“Right. Back to the blueprints.”
-----
Kairi comes back ahead of Sora. She isn’t to be Princess of Radiant Garden, as Yuffie proclaimed at their meeting. Leon gets hard with her around too.
“Why don’t you like her?” Riku still likes her a lot sometimes. Sometimes too much. He can’t quite understand not liking her.
“I don’t not like her,” Leon corrects. He won’t talk about. Riku wonders if he’s a talky drinker. Then he decides that Leon would probably know if he were a talky drinker and therefore steer clear of all alcohol.
“So, what it is?” Riku doesn’t know why he cares. He thinks it’s because Sora isn’t here, and he hasn’t really been talking with anybody else recently. That doesn’t explain why he’s sitting on the couch in his boxers talking about Kairi.
“Nothing. What do you care?”
“She’s my friend,” Riku points out, in that sort of deadpan voice that make it sound like he ended that statement with ‘you crazy dumbass.’
“Some friend.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Most friends don’t go around stealing people out from under their friend’s noses.” Leon clearly said that without thinking it through all the way, because he swears and leaves the room with only a slow backwards glance. Like he just noticed Riku wasn’t wearing all his clothes.
-----
Sora comes back. Leon isn’t hard around Sora. He’s gruff and even more short tempered around Riku. Riku finds out about the Bailey, and claims the still decimated area as his own for a short while.
When Sora finds him there, he looks surprised.
“You were looking for Leon,” Riku observes. Sora shrugs. He sits on the edge of what was once a great view-window. It’s still a great view, even if the window itself is pretty pitiful. “He’s in Ansem’s study, I think.”
“Do you like it here?” Sora asks, looking out over the landscape. He says it looks much nicer, more lived in. Less dead. Riku shrugs at Sora’s question. “Cid and Leon said you’ve been a big help around town. Thanks.”
“Why are you thanking me?”
“Because nobody else will. They’re scared of you.” He grins though, and shoves Riku in the shoulder. Then, as he stares at the landscape again, he goes very quiet. They watch the sun coasting through the sky. Finally, he asks, “Would you ever think of staying here? Helping out, like everybody else does?”
“I like Destiny Islands,” Riku says blandly.
“But,” Sora whispers, “You don’t do anything there.”
“No,” Riku agrees. Then, he smiles. “But you’re there. And Kairi. And all our other friends from when we were kids. And we’ll always be there.”
Sora looks distraught. Then he smiles. “Right.”
He hates it when Sora lies.
-----
“So, why don’t you tell him you like him?”
Riku almost chokes on his water. Tifa looks over at him and Leon, but then gets distracted by Yuffie trying to take something from her. They get into a fight that’s a lot of bouncing Yuffie and Tifa’s tits almost flashing out of her sweat-soaked t-shirt. Leon keeps his gaze as unrelenting as that stupid leather he wears; he must be absolutely roasting.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sora,” Leon clarifies, as though Riku were being serious about his statement and not just trying to be a slitherer-outer. Riku rolls his eyes a little and hisses that he knows that. Leon leans against his shovel. At least he’s not wearing his coat or gloves, or else Riku might think the heavy gear had caused his brain to melt. He still wonders aloud if Leon’s brains have begun to melt.
Finally, he replies to the original question with, “The same reason you don’t tell him you want to fuck him. He’s my friend.”
“I don’t want to fuck him.” Leon actually blushes when he says that. He moves a huge chunk of what used to be the Bailey, and then digs for a minute.
“Oh. Excuse me.” Riku frees up his hands, and makes air quotations next to his head as he gruffly mocks, “‘Make love to him,’ sorry.”
“I don’t-”
“Like hell-!” Tifa and Yuffie look over. Leon glares them back to work. Riku lowers his voice to a hissing whisper. “Like hell you don’t. I’m not stupid, you know. And I’m even surprised Sora hasn’t noticed, okay, because you’re really not that good at being subtle.”
Sora shouts down at them from what’s left of the Bailey. As he bounds down the rock and says he’s here to help, Kairi comes after him, much more subdued but clearly there to help as well. As they start to help the others, she sticks close to him. He occasionally looks over, looks all goofy and grinning, and she’ll laugh without him having to say anything. Riku wonders if that’s because of them, or because of Them.
“That’s why I don’t tell him, beside him being my friend,” Riku finally says.
“I know.”
-----
Leon, it turns out, does keep drinks in the house. They are for special occasions, like a particularly grueling battle won against the Heartless, or a hard day’s work. Riku watched him go off before, but it’s the first time he’s been invited to come along.
“I think you should be one of the first tenants into the new apartments,” he proclaims half way through his third beer. Riku lifts an eyebrow toward his hairline. He swallows his drink and informs Leon that he’s going back to Destiny Islands with Sora and Kairi. Leon gets that same conflicted look on his face that Sora had when Riku said they’d always be there, and wishes people would stop lying. But Leon doesn’t lie. He just says, “Oh.”
“I’ll think about it,” Riku corrects after a bit of silence. It serves to surprisingly lighten Leon’s eyes. “I mean, it’s like I particularly live here already. How long have we been here?”
“Only two weeks.”
It had only been that long. “It feels longer.” Leon looks over at him. Riku laughs. “In the good way. I mean, we only spent a few months on Destiny Islands before we headed out again, but it felt like a year.”
“You always talk about yourself with the other two,” Leon points out just as he opens his fourth beer. Riku cocks a brow at that as well. “Like you’re a unit or something. What happens ...” He gets very quiet for a second, and then all he says is, “What if you’re not?”
“They’re kind of the only friends I have.” Leon looks a little put upon by that. Riku shrugs. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“What happens if they ... move on?”
Riku stops himself from thinking about that by drinking until the world spins and staring at Leon’s mouth as he begins to talk about a place called Balamb.
-----
Summer comes. It’s always summer in Destiny Islands, but Radiant Garden has seasons. Kairi is away, with some Princess or something; and Sora is gone, off to some world Riku couldn’t pick off a map if you asked him to-but he can barely find his way around Destiny Islands, so nobody can blame him. The days get long and the nights get warm. Leon leaves all the lights off all the time and runs the air conditioning in the apartment building on high as often as possible, as well as leaving the window in the super apartment open to what little breeze there is. Riku procures a set of cutoffs and hand-me-downs that Leon forgot he even had; they just barely fit him. The housing project is set into motion. They jokingly call it ‘the King Sora Memorial Apartments.’ Riku really only thinks it’s funny when Leon calls it that.
Time shifts about then, or something else does. Everything gets a little off, but in a good way. Days have becomes months some how, and Riku misses the wide ocean while Leon tells him of Balamb and fishing with a kid named Zell when they were a little older than Riku is now.
“I miss fishing,” he proclaims one night, while the sun sinks low and they sit on the scaffolding outside the mostly completely exterior of the KSMA. He doesn’t drink as quickly now as he did weeks earlier when they first started. “And swimming.”
“There are plans for a pool out near the palace,” Leon says. “Yuffie’s idea. The kids are anxious.”
“I,” Riku begins, and almost finishes the thought, but he’s not sure if he does ‘want to go home,’ or even where Home is any more. Leon watches him while he doesn’t say anything. The sun sinks and blazes red and gold and wonderfully hot against his skin.
Leon’s mouth tastes like beer. Riku isn’t sure how Leon snuck up to kiss him, or why he’s doing it on scaffolding where anybody (Yuffie) could walk by and see them. More than that, he doesn’t know why Leon would do that.
He must have snarled that one out loud, because Leon says, “We can’t have what we want.” Riku might be a little more offended if Leon didn’t look so forlorn and strangely vulnerable. It’s broken when Leon looks out at the sun, leaning over his knees with his bottle dangling out and between his fingers. “And it’s not that we couldn’t have it, either. If we really wanted to, we could have what we want. But-”
“You suck at speeches,” Riku proclaims. Then, before he does something stupid (like kiss Leon back), he stands and leaves behind a half drunk bottle of beer.
-----
“Have you decided?”
Kairi’s gotten better at appearing out of nowhere since she met Yuffie. Riku hates it. He wishes she still made lots of noise and still giggled when she saw boys. Now she doesn’t even giggle when she sees Sora, just gets a goofy look in her eyes and can’t stop smiling. He wishes somebody would smile like that for him.
But, sometimes, somebody does. “Decided what?”
“Whether you want to stay here when Sora and I leave.” He must look like the world shattered again, because Kairi bites her lip and looks affronted. “Sora didn’t tell you-nobody told you?”
“Yeah, I’ve decided,” Riku interjects, trying to collect his wits. They’re leaving him here. That’s why they keep leaving for longer and longer stretches: they’re weaning him of them. That’s why they stopped here and introduced him to everybody and encouraged him helping out with the renovations.
Kairi smiles. “And?”
“I’m going to stay here. Have an apartment picked out and everything.”
Her smile is like the sun breaking. She kisses his cheek and says, “I’m happy for you.”
He doesn’t know what for.
-----
“Fuck me.”
Leon clearly has no idea what to do with those two words and stands there looking like they’re a two-by-four and his head just got intimately acquainted with them. Riku growls and decides he doesn’t want to wait for Leon to react to it; the door is open and he’s not going to let Leon shut it right now. Not right now.
This time, Leon doesn’t taste like much of anything. Mouth, mostly. A faint minty flavor. Cloves. His hair-he has lots of it, but the strands themselves are fine and soft. They tangle around Riku’s fingers as their teeth click together in a disgusting cacophony. Leon touches his hips.
Riku pulls away when he’s used to shut the door, and says again, “Fuck me.”
“I don’t want to fuck you,” Leon says. His voice is rough and heavy. Riku can feel it against his chest.
“Sorry.” Riku frees up his hands, and makes air quotations next to his head as he growls, “‘Make love to me.’” He rocks his hips against Leon’s and wonders why he suddenly feels like just sobbing.
Leon kisses him, and it’s the same sneaky, tender sort of kiss they had on the scaffolding. Riku does sob after that.
Leon doesn’t sit him on the couch. He’s never seen the inside of Leon’s room before, and doesn’t take his time looking around. There’s a bed, and he sits there with his head hung over his knees. He hasn’t cried this much since he brought the darkness into his heart and thought he’d never be able to see Sora again. This time, he is not alone; Leon is there, though he doesn’t seem to have any more of an idea of what to do than Riku does.
They sit in relative silence. When Riku’s calmed down a little, he returns to his earlier idea without saying anything. Leon doesn’t say anything either, not until Riku is naked and kneeling in front of him, trying to figure out the belts that cross over his narrow hips. His hands touch Riku’s hair. He looks uncertain in his resolve when he says, “You don’t want to do this. You’ll regret it in the morning.”
“No I won’t,” Riku assures. Leon is only putting up token resistance. Riku figures out the belt, and then the fly of those infernal leather pants.
The resistance is purely token, because Riku can climb onto the bed now, lying Leon back and curling next to him. He doesn’t say anything, but listens to the sound of Leon’s heart thumping against his breast bone. Sora used to do this, when he and Riku were very young-they’d lie in bed, curled together like kittens, and Sora would tell Riku everything his heart said.
Riku shuts his eyes and listens to Leon’s heart’s voice, racing and fluttering and pounding beside his ear. He isn’t a good translator like Sora. His hands skate over Leon’s skin, which is much paler than his own, almost the same color as Sora’s. They start at Leon’s shoulders and move down his arms. They have minds of their own, moving over skin-slicked muscle and feeling the ridges and valleys of scars.
“We’re not doing this,” Leon says, but it is still token protest. Riku hauls a leg over Leon’s hips and rocks against him. Leon’s heart’s voice goes sharp and heavy for a second, startled against his ear. Riku smiles a little.
When he sits up a little and moves their hips against each other again, Leon reaches up and drags a thumb over Riku’s cheek. Is he still crying?
“They’re leaving me here,” he tells Leon.
“That’s not a good reason for me to have sex with you,” Leon tells him.
Riku doesn’t care any more. His heart’s voice tells him to sleep, because at least there will be someone there when he wakes up.
-----
Winter in Radiant Garden is the first winter Riku has ever had. Christmas for him had always been with a palm tree and presents of new sandals or a video-game. Leon tells him they’ll make it a winter he won’t forget, if only because it’s the first of as many as he’d like.
Sora and Kairi are gone, and Riku, while lonely, expects them for Christmas or at least the New Year. He doesn’t tell anybody.
The KSMA opens the week before Christmas, and Riku is, in fact, the first person to move in. He’s the super. Leon tells him it’s a bitch, being a super as well as a member of the administrative group that runs Radiant Garden. Riku just asks when he got promoted from slave to administrator. Leon actually smiles, which doesn’t do anything for Riku’s slowly worsening blood pressure.
Though Leon won’t speak of it, Riku can’t stop thinking of the night he went to him and they got so close to having sex. He thinks that Leon thinks he doesn’t remember, thought he was drunk. Riku just wishes he had the courage to talk to Leon about it. He hates how jealous he is of everyone-of the kids and their families (he didn’t even tell his he was leaving); of Sora and Kairi star-hopping wherever they are; of all the happiness when he can’t even get a little settlement into his life.
Five months, and he can’t stop thinking of it. What the hell is wrong with him, he wonders; he knows, and hates it. Why would he track through almost anything for this guy he’s known for not even a year? Why would he lose himself to all of this?
He wishes his heart would just shut up sometimes.
-----
“What are we toasting to?”
It’s good to see Sora and Kairi again. He wonders if he’ll cry when they leave.
Sora looks thoughtful, before grinning across the table at Riku. “To friendship!” Everybody choruses that and takes a drink from their various mismatched glasses. Then, Sora looks at Kairi.
She smiles at everyone, and blushes a little when she says, “To family!” There’s some laughter, some soft coos of praise. Everybody drinks after their chorus. It moves around the table. Riku regrets that nobody sits to his left. He regrets that Leon isn’t there.
And just as the toast gets to him, Leon manages to have the worst and best timing ever. He slips into the seat next to Riku, and quietly asks, “What are we toasting to?”
“The darkness inside of each of us,” Riku says without thinking. There’s silence after that. But Sora is smiling when Riku looks away from Leon, and he’s the first to chorus and drink. Everybody follows suit. Riku looks expectantly over at Leon.
Leon doesn’t look at anyone else. “Sorry if I’m repeating. To new opportunities.”
The chorus is minus the voices of Leon and Riku. Across the table, Kairi and Sora share a secret smile, and chorus the loudest of all.
-----
“New opportunities, huh?” Riku is pretty sure Leon hadn’t meant it quite like this when he’d said it, but he wasn’t exactly regretting their mutual initiative.