[KH;AU;prose] The Shower Effect
Sora, Riku
Note: Long, overdue fic. Finally completed. Written for moontear. Rated R for bad boy-touching. Well, not really. Slight AU because...well, KH2 canon completely rapes this fic.
"I think it would be better if we both bathed together."
Riku looked up from picking at the white, relatively clean sheets of the inn they were staying in, wondering what he should think. This was five years of separation between them, and the first time in a long while since they met again that they had a break from all the fighting. Sora had a strangely hopeful expression on his face as their eyes met, and he explained, "We can share the hot water."
The mention of hot water was very tempting. Hell, the mention of clean, running water was temptation enough. Riku couldn't recall when he actually had a proper wash (besides standing in the rain, and that gave him pneumonia and a nasty cough that just wouldn't go away until Mickey and he got out and landed in Agrabah). He looked down at his hands, grubby, broken and chipped nails and dirty skin a stark, shocking contrast against the sheets.
"Come on, Riku." Warm hands gently took his, and then he was acutely aware of Sora's suddenly lilting voice. "It's not like we've never seen each other naked before."
It was true. When they were younger, Riku thought as he was led forwards, they skinny-dipped together with Wakka and Tidus when the nights were too hot to sleep comfortably on the islands. It didn't seem anything less than normal back then, but all of a sudden he could feel his face burning as Sora began to strip almost carelessly in front of him.
"Riku?"
He swallowed hard, watching as Sora chucked his top onto the sink, unbuckling the numerous belts and sliding skinny legs out of still-too-big pants, leaving only the crown necklace hanging around his neck as a kind of concession at modesty. It seemed smaller now, the chain too short and the crown tiny. He couldn't help staring at Sora's bared body, more defined, scars old and new and faint and fresh crisscrossing the skin and he suddenly felt like crying because he thought this wasn't what Sora was supposed to look like.
"You have to take your clothes off as well, unless you want to get them wet. Unless you want me to take them off for you?" Sora's devilish, mischievous smile encouraged his own to appear involuntarily, and he felt a shiver run through him as Sora laughed. "Come on, Riku. If we dally any longer there won't be any more hot water."
Come to think of it, when he couldn't recall when he last washed, he also couldn't recall when he last changed out of his clothes. It just seemed easier and more convenient to add layers to the things he wore instead of actually taking them off, and all the accumulated heat actually made him feel better when he was sick.
So it was with great reluctance he began to peel off the numerous layers of clothes, mentally wincing as each piece came off. He didn't know when it happened, too focused on removing each piece, but then Sora was squatting down before him and Sora's hands were on him and tugging at his pants. Riku fixed a surprised gaze on Sora, who just grinned back and silently mouthed,"Come on", and he couldn't stop from nodding and letting Sora help.
“You put on an awful lot of things, Riku,” Sora complained, unzipping the belt and pulling down the first of the three oversized pants, and wrinkled his nose at some smell that Riku surmised he probably had been completely used to; you can't smell your own body odour, after all. He could feel his cheeks colour again, Sora kneeling down and working on the second pair, done up with dozens and dozens of strings and raffia and the odd belt or two, he had even forgotten what a mess it had been, picking up the odds and ends to keep the pants attached to his body.
He remembered stealing it from a pile of clothes that had lain in a puddle of water, as if their owner had vanished in that position. There was a frustrated grunt and Sora was scrunching his nose up, fingers pulling at a completely dead knot, and then looked up at him.
“Do you still need these pants?”
He blinked, stuttering, “Well, I supposed not really...” where there was a sudden flash of brilliantly white teeth and silver, and Sora was slicing ribbons and he could see the dirty grey of the last pair through the strips of cloth, and the bottom half of his second pair of pants fell wetly to the floor.
“Much better.” Sora said, still smiling up at him, and it was almost fascinatingly quick work undoing the buttons that hitched both pants to his waist, and Sora laughed again when he saw that Riku had no underwear on. He could feel himself blush fiercely, annoyingly enough, and he was also shivering in his nakedness. And the realization that Sora had destroyed his only pair of pants.
“Sora, you idiot, what am I going to wear-”
“I'd get Donald and Goofy to get you new clothes. You need 'em anyways. Come ON.”
There was the clink of metal and then the welcoming sound of spraying water, and Sora was pulling him in, making him almost trip over his own two feet. Hot, gloriously hot water soaked instantly into his hair, pulling it down in an oddly familiar tug and trailing down his face and warming his skin where Sora's hands hadn't touched, and he unconsciously let out a sigh.
"It's good, isn't it?"
Riku nodded, feeling the warm water stroke his face, and then there were fingers digging deep into his hair, making him yelp in surprise.
"Wha-?"
"Your hair. It's dirty. Did you drag yourself in mud or something?"
He tried to turn around to face Sora, but the fingers insistently kept his head facing forward, massaging his scalp almost intensely, working out the tangles before moving down to touch the nape of his neck and kneading his shoulders, and he could smell the faint scent of...strawberry?
"Sora, why is it straw-"
"It's the only bottle of shampoo here, Riku. I can't believe you hacked off your own hair. And stop whining. And can you relax a little? You're so tense!"
He opened his mouth to retort, but Sora's fingers and thumbs pushed and prodded at the hard knots and he winced instead, and finally he gave in and closed his mouth, slumping a little while Sora rinsed his hair out with more water and finally allowed him to turn around and switch places.
"Much better. You can wash now, I'll do my own hair."
Sora's auburn bangs hung sopping wet in his eyes, and Riku resisted the urge to brush them away so that he could see the blue. And then Sora turned away and all Riku could see was his back, tiny faint white scars crisscrossing in a haphazard map. This time, he reached out, tracing the skin and making Sora twitch and complain. "That tickles!"
He found himself smiling faintly, and before he knew it he was stepping forward, back into the spray and wrapping arms around Sora's chest, pressing their bodies close and burying his face in the crook of Sora's neck while Sora squirmed because his arms were far too close to his armpits and they still tickled and "Riku DID YOU WASH YOURSELF BECAUSE YOU STILL STINK." He found himself laughing quietly against Sora's skin, shaking harder than the pnuemonia suddenly and Sora was extricating himself, carefully, gently while he stood there and felt torn between laughing and crying and trying to keep himself together and just flying apart.
If Sora hadn't been holding him he would have collapsed onto the floor of the tiny stall and stayed there till the water ran cold and he got sick again. As it is he was practically leaning on Sora, his knees suddenly buckling.
"I'm sorry," he managed to choke out, in between the interchanging gulping laughs and sobs, shaking his head and Sora lowered him, and through his long, stupid fringe and the spray of water he thought maybe he could see pity in Sora's eyes, and he wanted to curl into himself, except his limbs weren't cooperating and all he could manage was roll his arms onto the floor.
"It's okay."
Somehow Sora got a cloth from somewhere and he was rubbing soap into Riku's skin, a generic, odourless type this time, scrubbing away the accumulated dirt, scrubbing over every inch unashamedly, under his arms, over his stomach, around his cock and Riku found himself arching, mind flashing back to the times when he pulled on his own, wanking desperately and guility to the memory of Sora because it was all he had then. Somewhere there was a voice insistently complaining that this was NOT the time to get aroused, because Sora was here and he'll scare Sora away and he didn't want that, did he?
"Riku, Riku! It's okay!"
He didn't even realised he was fighting, ineffectually swiping Sora's hands away from him, and the water was cooling when Sora lunged at him, a human shadow in the light of the shower and there was a mouth on his, dripping strawberry scented water onto his tongue and he responded without thinking, tongue pushing against closed lips, needily asking for access while heat burned beneath his eyelids and down his cheeks.
And there was a foreign hand on his cock, not his own, pulling and tugging without much expertise, all thumbs but at least it was slick, slick with water and soap and he jerked blindly to its rhythm until he came, hot and sticky and messy as always.
The water was cold and he was shivering now, and then Sora's lips left his and the cloth came back, wiping away the mess on his stomach and he wanted to curl up and die there and then because it hadn't been the greatest time to break down and he did anyway. There was a low, keening noise that he belatedly realised was his, and Sora turned off the water and produced a big, white fluffy towel that he wrapped Riku up in, coaxing him to stand.
"There's nothing to be sorry about," Sora was saying as he was half-dragged to one of the chairs, leaving him there to drip and dry while Sora went to dry himself first. Riku thought of leaving, before remembering blankly that Sora had effectively destroyed his clothes. He was still contemplating leaving the hotel in just that big white fluffy towel and hunt for dirty, dead people's clothes again when Sora came back, dressed in a hotel robe and another robe and another towel in his hand, dumping the towel on Riku's head while using the original to pat Riku's body dry.
"I'm sorry." Riku thought he sounded like a broken record, hands curling uselessly in his lap after Sora batted them away for the fifth time he tried to lift them. At least he managed to stand on his own when Sora held up the bathrobe, raising his arms slightly while Sora fitted it around him, before pushing him back down into the damp chair and getting to dry his hair.
"Nuthin' to be sorry about, Riku."
He clenched fists into the robe, head snapping around to the side in an attempt to look at Sora in the eye.
"You just...you just jerked me off...in there! I thought...I thought you liked Kairi."
He couldn't stop hiccuping, turning his head back and swallowing hard, feeling his heart flutter and thought it would stop.
Sora's hands were still rubbing his hair patiently but busily, bunching up the ends to squeeze out most of the water, and somehow Riku was reminded of how his mother used to do that, dry his hair and comb through it with her hands, usually snaring it with her ring finger and making his head hurt. He pinched his eyes closed, feeling so much like a child all over again.
"I dunno, Riku," Sora was saying, rubbing the towel in the shell of his ears and over, "I haven't seen Kairi either. Not since then."
He felt irrational anger rising, "I told you to take care of her."
"She's safe, Riku. I made sure she was."
"You were supposed to BE WITH HER!" He couldn't help the abrupt rise in his voice, strength struggling to return to his legs so that he could surge upwards and turn around and punch Sora for defying him.
"And what? Leave you alone? Leave you in Kingdom Hearts?"
"I'm out, aren't I? And you would have been safe!"
"I'm the Keyblade Master, Riku!"
"So fucking WHAT?"
"SO, I DON'T DERSERVE TO BE SAFE WHEN MY FRIENDS AREN'T!"
"I THOUGHT YOU LOVED KAIRI!"
"Riku...can't I love you?"
Sora's arms were wrapped around his neck, and he pressed his face against the towel against the back of Riku's head. Riku was coughing hard, from the yelling and the after-effects of the illness and the shock of Sora's words. He reached up to touch Sora's hands, wedge fingers in between, and once the fit was over all he had was, "Really?"
Sora mumbled something incoherent into the towel, and his fingers curled around Riku's, thumbs stroking his skin.
"I can't hear you."
Sora shifted places. "Yeah, really."
They stayed like that for a few moments, breathing and basking in the sudden quiet.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be."
"I guess...I'm just tired."
"...We all are."
"Come on."
Sora reached over to help him up, and for the first time Riku allowed him to support him, his grip strong and safe and secure. They sort of tumbled over together on Riku's bed, Sora chuckling a little as he slipped callused fingers into Riku's still-damp hair.
"We're all gonna wake up with weird bed-hair tomorrow, if we don't dry 'em."
"Mmm...too tired. And it's not like you don't have weird bed-hair already."
It felt really weird, snuggling together suddenly, but then what's snuggling when Sora already had his hand on his co-
"Sora?"
"Mmhmm?"
Maybe not now. He could feel his face burning at the memory. He quickly said the next question that came to mind.
"Do...Do you miss her?"
Sora groaned, and buried his face even deeper into Riku's neck, ignoring the fact that he had his own bed to sleep on. Riku speculated absently that he had about half an hour after falling asleep before being kicked unceremoniously onto the floor.
"Sora."
"...why are you asking such stupid questions now? I'm tired, I'm sleepy, and you feel good. Warm." Thus saying, he burrowed into Riku's arms, wrapping his own around Riku's waist, as though he was never, ever going to let him go. "Can we talk about this and other stuff tomorrow?"
Sora slipped one leg in between Riku's, hugging tight. And Riku found himself sleepily hugging back. Sora was right.
Tomorrow. Yeah, okay, tomorrow will be just fine-
Note: Long, overdue fic. Finally completed. Written for moontear. Rated R for bad boy-touching. Well, not really. Slight AU because...well, KH2 canon completely rapes this fic.
"I think it would be better if we both bathed together."
Riku looked up from picking at the white, relatively clean sheets of the inn they were staying in, wondering what he should think. This was five years of separation between them, and the first time in a long while since they met again that they had a break from all the fighting. Sora had a strangely hopeful expression on his face as their eyes met, and he explained, "We can share the hot water."
The mention of hot water was very tempting. Hell, the mention of clean, running water was temptation enough. Riku couldn't recall when he actually had a proper wash (besides standing in the rain, and that gave him pneumonia and a nasty cough that just wouldn't go away until Mickey and he got out and landed in Agrabah). He looked down at his hands, grubby, broken and chipped nails and dirty skin a stark, shocking contrast against the sheets.
"Come on, Riku." Warm hands gently took his, and then he was acutely aware of Sora's suddenly lilting voice. "It's not like we've never seen each other naked before."
It was true. When they were younger, Riku thought as he was led forwards, they skinny-dipped together with Wakka and Tidus when the nights were too hot to sleep comfortably on the islands. It didn't seem anything less than normal back then, but all of a sudden he could feel his face burning as Sora began to strip almost carelessly in front of him.
"Riku?"
He swallowed hard, watching as Sora chucked his top onto the sink, unbuckling the numerous belts and sliding skinny legs out of still-too-big pants, leaving only the crown necklace hanging around his neck as a kind of concession at modesty. It seemed smaller now, the chain too short and the crown tiny. He couldn't help staring at Sora's bared body, more defined, scars old and new and faint and fresh crisscrossing the skin and he suddenly felt like crying because he thought this wasn't what Sora was supposed to look like.
"You have to take your clothes off as well, unless you want to get them wet. Unless you want me to take them off for you?" Sora's devilish, mischievous smile encouraged his own to appear involuntarily, and he felt a shiver run through him as Sora laughed. "Come on, Riku. If we dally any longer there won't be any more hot water."
Come to think of it, when he couldn't recall when he last washed, he also couldn't recall when he last changed out of his clothes. It just seemed easier and more convenient to add layers to the things he wore instead of actually taking them off, and all the accumulated heat actually made him feel better when he was sick.
So it was with great reluctance he began to peel off the numerous layers of clothes, mentally wincing as each piece came off. He didn't know when it happened, too focused on removing each piece, but then Sora was squatting down before him and Sora's hands were on him and tugging at his pants. Riku fixed a surprised gaze on Sora, who just grinned back and silently mouthed,"Come on", and he couldn't stop from nodding and letting Sora help.
“You put on an awful lot of things, Riku,” Sora complained, unzipping the belt and pulling down the first of the three oversized pants, and wrinkled his nose at some smell that Riku surmised he probably had been completely used to; you can't smell your own body odour, after all. He could feel his cheeks colour again, Sora kneeling down and working on the second pair, done up with dozens and dozens of strings and raffia and the odd belt or two, he had even forgotten what a mess it had been, picking up the odds and ends to keep the pants attached to his body.
He remembered stealing it from a pile of clothes that had lain in a puddle of water, as if their owner had vanished in that position. There was a frustrated grunt and Sora was scrunching his nose up, fingers pulling at a completely dead knot, and then looked up at him.
“Do you still need these pants?”
He blinked, stuttering, “Well, I supposed not really...” where there was a sudden flash of brilliantly white teeth and silver, and Sora was slicing ribbons and he could see the dirty grey of the last pair through the strips of cloth, and the bottom half of his second pair of pants fell wetly to the floor.
“Much better.” Sora said, still smiling up at him, and it was almost fascinatingly quick work undoing the buttons that hitched both pants to his waist, and Sora laughed again when he saw that Riku had no underwear on. He could feel himself blush fiercely, annoyingly enough, and he was also shivering in his nakedness. And the realization that Sora had destroyed his only pair of pants.
“Sora, you idiot, what am I going to wear-”
“I'd get Donald and Goofy to get you new clothes. You need 'em anyways. Come ON.”
There was the clink of metal and then the welcoming sound of spraying water, and Sora was pulling him in, making him almost trip over his own two feet. Hot, gloriously hot water soaked instantly into his hair, pulling it down in an oddly familiar tug and trailing down his face and warming his skin where Sora's hands hadn't touched, and he unconsciously let out a sigh.
"It's good, isn't it?"
Riku nodded, feeling the warm water stroke his face, and then there were fingers digging deep into his hair, making him yelp in surprise.
"Wha-?"
"Your hair. It's dirty. Did you drag yourself in mud or something?"
He tried to turn around to face Sora, but the fingers insistently kept his head facing forward, massaging his scalp almost intensely, working out the tangles before moving down to touch the nape of his neck and kneading his shoulders, and he could smell the faint scent of...strawberry?
"Sora, why is it straw-"
"It's the only bottle of shampoo here, Riku. I can't believe you hacked off your own hair. And stop whining. And can you relax a little? You're so tense!"
He opened his mouth to retort, but Sora's fingers and thumbs pushed and prodded at the hard knots and he winced instead, and finally he gave in and closed his mouth, slumping a little while Sora rinsed his hair out with more water and finally allowed him to turn around and switch places.
"Much better. You can wash now, I'll do my own hair."
Sora's auburn bangs hung sopping wet in his eyes, and Riku resisted the urge to brush them away so that he could see the blue. And then Sora turned away and all Riku could see was his back, tiny faint white scars crisscrossing in a haphazard map. This time, he reached out, tracing the skin and making Sora twitch and complain. "That tickles!"
He found himself smiling faintly, and before he knew it he was stepping forward, back into the spray and wrapping arms around Sora's chest, pressing their bodies close and burying his face in the crook of Sora's neck while Sora squirmed because his arms were far too close to his armpits and they still tickled and "Riku DID YOU WASH YOURSELF BECAUSE YOU STILL STINK." He found himself laughing quietly against Sora's skin, shaking harder than the pnuemonia suddenly and Sora was extricating himself, carefully, gently while he stood there and felt torn between laughing and crying and trying to keep himself together and just flying apart.
If Sora hadn't been holding him he would have collapsed onto the floor of the tiny stall and stayed there till the water ran cold and he got sick again. As it is he was practically leaning on Sora, his knees suddenly buckling.
"I'm sorry," he managed to choke out, in between the interchanging gulping laughs and sobs, shaking his head and Sora lowered him, and through his long, stupid fringe and the spray of water he thought maybe he could see pity in Sora's eyes, and he wanted to curl into himself, except his limbs weren't cooperating and all he could manage was roll his arms onto the floor.
"It's okay."
Somehow Sora got a cloth from somewhere and he was rubbing soap into Riku's skin, a generic, odourless type this time, scrubbing away the accumulated dirt, scrubbing over every inch unashamedly, under his arms, over his stomach, around his cock and Riku found himself arching, mind flashing back to the times when he pulled on his own, wanking desperately and guility to the memory of Sora because it was all he had then. Somewhere there was a voice insistently complaining that this was NOT the time to get aroused, because Sora was here and he'll scare Sora away and he didn't want that, did he?
"Riku, Riku! It's okay!"
He didn't even realised he was fighting, ineffectually swiping Sora's hands away from him, and the water was cooling when Sora lunged at him, a human shadow in the light of the shower and there was a mouth on his, dripping strawberry scented water onto his tongue and he responded without thinking, tongue pushing against closed lips, needily asking for access while heat burned beneath his eyelids and down his cheeks.
And there was a foreign hand on his cock, not his own, pulling and tugging without much expertise, all thumbs but at least it was slick, slick with water and soap and he jerked blindly to its rhythm until he came, hot and sticky and messy as always.
The water was cold and he was shivering now, and then Sora's lips left his and the cloth came back, wiping away the mess on his stomach and he wanted to curl up and die there and then because it hadn't been the greatest time to break down and he did anyway. There was a low, keening noise that he belatedly realised was his, and Sora turned off the water and produced a big, white fluffy towel that he wrapped Riku up in, coaxing him to stand.
"There's nothing to be sorry about," Sora was saying as he was half-dragged to one of the chairs, leaving him there to drip and dry while Sora went to dry himself first. Riku thought of leaving, before remembering blankly that Sora had effectively destroyed his clothes. He was still contemplating leaving the hotel in just that big white fluffy towel and hunt for dirty, dead people's clothes again when Sora came back, dressed in a hotel robe and another robe and another towel in his hand, dumping the towel on Riku's head while using the original to pat Riku's body dry.
"I'm sorry." Riku thought he sounded like a broken record, hands curling uselessly in his lap after Sora batted them away for the fifth time he tried to lift them. At least he managed to stand on his own when Sora held up the bathrobe, raising his arms slightly while Sora fitted it around him, before pushing him back down into the damp chair and getting to dry his hair.
"Nuthin' to be sorry about, Riku."
He clenched fists into the robe, head snapping around to the side in an attempt to look at Sora in the eye.
"You just...you just jerked me off...in there! I thought...I thought you liked Kairi."
He couldn't stop hiccuping, turning his head back and swallowing hard, feeling his heart flutter and thought it would stop.
Sora's hands were still rubbing his hair patiently but busily, bunching up the ends to squeeze out most of the water, and somehow Riku was reminded of how his mother used to do that, dry his hair and comb through it with her hands, usually snaring it with her ring finger and making his head hurt. He pinched his eyes closed, feeling so much like a child all over again.
"I dunno, Riku," Sora was saying, rubbing the towel in the shell of his ears and over, "I haven't seen Kairi either. Not since then."
He felt irrational anger rising, "I told you to take care of her."
"She's safe, Riku. I made sure she was."
"You were supposed to BE WITH HER!" He couldn't help the abrupt rise in his voice, strength struggling to return to his legs so that he could surge upwards and turn around and punch Sora for defying him.
"And what? Leave you alone? Leave you in Kingdom Hearts?"
"I'm out, aren't I? And you would have been safe!"
"I'm the Keyblade Master, Riku!"
"So fucking WHAT?"
"SO, I DON'T DERSERVE TO BE SAFE WHEN MY FRIENDS AREN'T!"
"I THOUGHT YOU LOVED KAIRI!"
"Riku...can't I love you?"
Sora's arms were wrapped around his neck, and he pressed his face against the towel against the back of Riku's head. Riku was coughing hard, from the yelling and the after-effects of the illness and the shock of Sora's words. He reached up to touch Sora's hands, wedge fingers in between, and once the fit was over all he had was, "Really?"
Sora mumbled something incoherent into the towel, and his fingers curled around Riku's, thumbs stroking his skin.
"I can't hear you."
Sora shifted places. "Yeah, really."
They stayed like that for a few moments, breathing and basking in the sudden quiet.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be."
"I guess...I'm just tired."
"...We all are."
"Come on."
Sora reached over to help him up, and for the first time Riku allowed him to support him, his grip strong and safe and secure. They sort of tumbled over together on Riku's bed, Sora chuckling a little as he slipped callused fingers into Riku's still-damp hair.
"We're all gonna wake up with weird bed-hair tomorrow, if we don't dry 'em."
"Mmm...too tired. And it's not like you don't have weird bed-hair already."
It felt really weird, snuggling together suddenly, but then what's snuggling when Sora already had his hand on his co-
"Sora?"
"Mmhmm?"
Maybe not now. He could feel his face burning at the memory. He quickly said the next question that came to mind.
"Do...Do you miss her?"
Sora groaned, and buried his face even deeper into Riku's neck, ignoring the fact that he had his own bed to sleep on. Riku speculated absently that he had about half an hour after falling asleep before being kicked unceremoniously onto the floor.
"Sora."
"...why are you asking such stupid questions now? I'm tired, I'm sleepy, and you feel good. Warm." Thus saying, he burrowed into Riku's arms, wrapping his own around Riku's waist, as though he was never, ever going to let him go. "Can we talk about this and other stuff tomorrow?"
Sora slipped one leg in between Riku's, hugging tight. And Riku found himself sleepily hugging back. Sora was right.
Tomorrow. Yeah, okay, tomorrow will be just fine-