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Kairi is not especially forgiving when Riku finds her on the southern beaches of the Play Island, swiping viciously at some math homework as the tide licks at her heels.
"Riku!" she shouts when she sees him, scrambling up from the sand, worksheets abandoned to the sea. Her uniform is sweat-stained from rowing across the channel and the damp salt wind's made ringlets in the hair around her face. She is both beautiful, and, Riku suddenly realizes, very, very terrifying. He takes an unconscious step back as she storms forwards.
"Where have you been!" Her face is mutinous and her voice loud enough to shake the gulls from the trees. Riku gulps. Kairi glares. "Where's Sora? Is he safe? God, I've been trying to get word to you for days, what is going on?"
"Okay, well..." Riku trails off, suddenly at a loss for how to put the last week or so succinctly. Kairi takes this opportunity to jab accusingly at his chest.
"Ow, okay, that isn't helping, Kairi—" he starts, grabbing her wrist. She doesn't let him.
"Three days, Riku! You were supposed to be gone three days!" She snatches her hand from his grip, face starting to twist as the wind picks up off the water, tangling her hair and making Riku blink. "It's been a week! I thought something had happened again, I thought— oh, I don't know what I thought, but you never returned my hails and I couldn't get the King, either, and... oh, shit."
She puts a hand to her face, shoulders hunching in, and Riku realizes with a sick swoop of guilt that she's crying. He hesitates a moment, arms stiff as steel at his sides, then sees Shiki staring him down in Traverse Town, a look on her face like she'd known his type the second she caught his eye. You get out much?
Christ. He really is bad at this.
Kairi leans in when he finally manages to put his arms around her, unaware or maybe just uncaring of the extra half second he took to get his shit together, and wraps a fist in his vest. He rests his head over hers and whispers sorry, sorry, we're fine, we're safe with every breath he has until the tight hunch of her body starts to uncurl against his chest. "I'm so sorry, Kairi, we didn't mean to make you worry," he says into her hair. "Something went wrong with the exam, with Sora's exam, and he's fine now, I swear," he adds when she tenses again, fingers tightening in his shirt, "It just took a while to sort out. And, well, we couldn't get your messages because we were all asleep. Honest."
Kairi stares up at him like she's considering jabbing another finger into his chest, tear tracks already dry on her cheeks, but he smiles sheepishly and, well, she's always been able to read him like a book. He can't remember the last time he even attempted lying to her.
She sighs, and scrubs at her face with one hand. "Asleep," she says, as accepting of the strange circumstances of their lives as she is incredulous. "Well, it wouldn't be the first time, huh. Tell me everything."
She leads the way up to the pier, twining her fingers in his, and Riku does his best.
---
"Really? Thirteen Xehanorts? That's not good."
She's playing with the hair at the back of his head as they kick their feet off the dock, twisting it between two fingers and scratching at his neck. Riku knows it's a not-so-subtle hint to get a haircut. Maybe he won't let Sora help this time.
"Yeah, it's, uh. It's pretty bad," he sighs, staring out into the darkening twilight. The Destiny Islands are small and so often stifling, but they're warm at night, and the stars shine like rough-cut jewels. Riku's loved more distant worlds for less. "They'd done something to Sora's heart before we could get to him, to try and make him into a, a better vessel—" the word feels slimy in his mouth "—for the thirteenth piece. I had to dive back into him to wake him up."
"See anything interesting down there?"
She asks the questions lightly, still matching his stare out over the water, but Riku remembers the Nightmare. He remembers Roxas, too, and the not-Roxas, and...
"I think I saw you, actually."
Kairi blinks, sitting up against his side.
"Me?" He can see her blushing a bit, despite the dim. It's never been very hard seeing at night since Sora ripped Ansem from his body. It's still very hard knowing what to do when Kairi goes pink-faced and a little giggly.
"I think so," he says, staring into the horizon with a new kind of pointed determination. Kairi hasn't giggled yet, but he knows it's close. He has never in his life known what to do with the giggling. "She had darker hair than you, and she was sadder, I think, but she felt like you. And Sora, too, in a way. Like if you asked Sora to draw you from memory, without looking at a picture, the drawing would look like her. You filtered through him." He shrugs, suddenly blushing himself. "I think she was like Roxas. A piece of her kept in Sora's heart. I don't think it was, uh, I don't think it meant anything about your...relationship. With Sora."
Kairi does giggle now, except it's more like laughing. Probably at him. Riku desperately resists the urge to fiddle with his hair.
"You know, you're kind of a idiot, Riku," Kairi smiles, leaning her head against his shoulder. She feels warm, pressed against the length of his side, and Riku doesn't even attempt a rebuttal. He's never found a good one before. "My relationship with Sora isn't any different than your relationship with Sora."
Riku pauses a moment, mouth half-open. Five thalassa shells, sewn together like a star, strung from the end of a Keyblade. "I'm—I'm not quite sure that's true."
"No, no, it is." She doesn't even look up when she replies. She knew what he'd say. Two years ago it'd've been absolutely infuriating, but he barely registers surprise now. "If there'd been a true copy of me, there'd have been a true copy of you. I know it."
Riku knocks a heel against one of the pier's aging supports, doing his best not to give Kairi's words much thought. He can't say he's never considered the subject before, late at night, lying sleepless in bed or out sprawled on the beach. Sora smiles wider than anyone Riku's yet met, as wide as the sky from east to west, and Kairi has a way of moving her hands when she speaks, like she's got the world in her grasp and if she twists it just so, just for you and her, it'll blossom.
Riku can't really, honestly say he dislikes thinking about Kairi and Sora, late at night.
But when he does, most times, he also sees Sora with a keyblade in his chest, or Kairi still as death on the floor of Hollow Bastion, just as he often as he sees her hands, or his smile. He sees the fear in their faces when they'd looked at him, in Hollow Bastion, in The World That Never Was, too many times in too many places, and, well, it's a bit of a mood-killer to be honest.
And some nights he sees Kairi pulling Sora up out of the waves, the thalassa charm pressed between their palms, or the rough chalk drawing on the stone by the door in the Secret Place, two smiling faces with a paopu fruit between them, and that kills the mood, too, in fresh, unexpected ways.
So he's taught himself to not think too much about what Kairi's talking about. It's never lead him nice places.
But the stars are bright tonight, and Sora had thrown his arms around Riku's neck, and Kairi's warm against body, and maybe:
"I told you Yen Sid didn't name Sora a master, right?" Riku says. He can see out of the corner of his eye that Kairi's giving him a look, like this kind of conversational deflection is unbecoming in so forthright a young man as himself. He doesn't know how to tell her that the only way he can have this conversation is by deflection. "It was only me that passed, even though Xehanort interfering wasn't Sora's fault at all. And Sora even managed to beat Xemnas again, when the last time I tried that, with his help, I nearly got myself killed. But when Yen Sid said he'd failed and I passed it was like he hadn't even heard the first part. I'd have been upset or angry in his place, but he was just happy I'd done well. Delighted, even, like he couldn't stop smiling."
When he chances a glance down, heart lodged itself somewhere high in his throat, Kairi's grinning like she's proud beyond speaking. Her hand's slipped into his at some point during this conversation, and she gives it a squeeze as she says, "I told you, jerk. He loves you. He loves me, too, I'm pretty sure." She blushes when she says it, but here at least Riku can grin.
"Oh, yeah, he definitely loves you."
"Well, good, then. It's decided. Sora loves us both."
Riku stutters a moment, remembering again the fear, and the guilt, because he remembers it most days and especially days like this, when it should have been Sora made master and never him, not when he almost killed his friends and ended the worlds and left it all to darkness and...
He lets the thoughts peter out. He doesn't know that he's ever been able to do so before, but Kairi shifts her heard against his shoulder, the brief tickle of eyelashes against his skin, and Sora had thrown his arms around Riku's neck. I could hear your voice the whole time!
"I... yeah. Maybe he does."
Kairi scoffs at his qualifying but lets it slide, too smiley herself to make an issue of it. Besides, feelings are hard and slow to process, and Kairi's a generous young woman. There's a shape of something growing in the back of Riku's mind, something that looks like Sora's smile and Kairi's hands without the stench of guilt to drown them, but despite its warmth, and Riku's near glowing with the warmth, it's small, and new, so Kairi won't push. She knows better, and is kind besides.
"Come on," she says instead, tugging at his hand as the moon ascends over the water and the last glints of sunlight fade into night. "You said I'm coming with you, right? I've gotta tell my dad before he goes to bed, or else he'll think I've been kidnapped by religious zealots again."
Riku snorts out his nose, startled. "That's what you told him? That you were kidnapped by religious zealots?"
Kairi rolls her eyes, slipping her arm through his as they make for Riku's gummi ship, hovering just over the falls. No sense paddling back across the water like a couple of kids when they could be riding in style. "What else was I supposed to tell him, huh? That a bunch of guys without hearts were using me as bait for a childhood friend the whole world'd forgotten about in order to, what was it, open the door to the heart of all worlds and get their own hearts back slash destroy the universe? Nah, I think the religious zealots are more believable."
"I... yeah, you got me there," Riku smiles, calling down the ship. "I guess it does sound pretty ridiculous when you say it out loud."
"Damn straight," Kairi nods, mock serious, and Riku laughs as she pulls herself into the cockpit, some world of smiles and hands and glowing warmth starting to blossom in the back of his mind.
---
Sora's back by the time Yen Sid's gotten done explaining the Kairi, Guardian of Light thing, which seems to have taken everyone but Kairi by surprise ("Hah! Now you can't leave me behind anymore, you jerks!"), though his arrival is slightly less elegant than Riku and Kairi's smooth gummi ship touchdown. Mostly this is because Sora lands face-first on the lawn.
"You know this is what you get for traveling between worlds without a ship," Riku says as he pulls Sora up, grinning just a bit at the dirt in his hair and the grass on his cheeks. Sora smiles back, not even attempting shame.
"Eh, I can take a few hits!" he laughs, smiling as wide as they sky from east to west. Riku's stomach does a funny little flip at the sight, and damn Kairi, he'd been doing so well at ignoring such reactions for the past however many months. Now, though, Sora's clapping his shoulder, leading them up to the tower, and all Riku can think is as soon as we get through those doors there'll be the King and Goofy and Donald and Yen Sid and there's Kairi coming out the door now and I'd like to be brave, I want to be brave so if I'm ever going to be brave I think it needs to be now.
He hadn't been planning on this, but maybe that can only help.
"Sora, wait a second," he says, as Kairi comes trotting over the lawn, and Sora's hand is still on his shoulder so it's a simple enough maneuver to put one hand on his waist and another at his cheek and press the chastest, most genteel kiss in the world to his lips.
Kairi makes a little gasping noise to his left. Sora doesn't make any noise at all. When Riku opens his eyes, it's like Sora's achieved some kind of platonic ideal of shock. His eyebrows couldn't get any higher off his face. He doesn't say a word, and the warmth that'd been trickling its way through Riku's limbs starts to chill and die.
He swallows as Sora stares, gaze flickering now between Riku and Kairi, expression starting to adopt a little dismay, but Kairi seems to parse the situation better than either of them.
"Hi," she says to Sora, taking Riku's hand in her own. The other she places on Sora's cheek, and presses a kiss of her own to his lips. When she pulls away, the dismay is gone from Sora's face, but the shock appears to have increased tenfold. "We were worried about you," she adds, as if explaining. There's a something like a smile starting to grow on Sora's face, small and blatantly bewildered, and Riku discovers he can almost, almost breathe again. "Riku was, too, since I don't think he told you already."
"No, look, I know I must have said—"
Riku doesn't get to finish. Sora tackles them both to the ground with a shout, laughing as they get grass in their ears and straight up their shirts, grinning, "I knew you guys loved me, I knew it!"
"Oh, ow, we've always loved you, dummy!" Kairi laughs between breaths as Sora starts planting wild kisses across their faces, getting their eyes and ears and noses as often as he gets their lips, and she shoves his face away with a shriek. "But I can't breathe!"
Sora just laughs, switching his attention to Riku, and Riku doesn't know if he's ever been given such frantic, happy attention in his life. Sora's smiling too wide to properly kiss anyone, but he puts his hand to Riku's jaw and makes an attempt anyways, mashing their noses together and getting his fingers tangled in Riku's hair, whispering "I knew it!" with every free breath he's got. Riku would whisper back Alright, already! or maybe Holy shit, shut the hell up, if he had any way of getting air in his lungs, but he can compensate by biting at Sora's lip. It makes Sora laugh, everything makes Sora laugh, and Riku wonders at how long he's spent without this.
Riku wriggles an arm out from where Sora's pinned it to his chest, grabbing for Kairi's arm and pulling her in for a kiss, too, a bit softer than Sora's, a bit less slapdash, as Sora comes up for breath and says, "Oh, whoops! Uh, hey, Your Majesty!"
Riku freezes. Kairi does, too, half on top of him and skirt still rucked up by the fall. He very suddenly can't see anything but her face, eyes staring into his, both of them absolutely mortified and also completely unable to look anywhere else in case they burst out laughing. There's a dandelion tangled in Kairi's bangs.
"Glad to see you, uh, made it back safe there, Sora," the King replies, and Riku can practically hear the face he's making. "How about I come back outside in a couple minutes and we try this again?"
"Sounds good, Your Majesty," Riku shouts from his position on the ground, on his back, dead-eyeing Kairi as she nearly chokes herself on suppressed giggles, and he can just see Sora grin and offer a thumbs-up from the corner of his eye. The King sighs audibly but mostly, Riku thinks, like he's trying to suppress a laugh himself, and there's the sound of a door closing.
"So," Sora says, appearing once more in Riku's field of vision. He and Kairi are both on top of him now, casually butting heads as they jostle for airspace. "You guys really love me?"
Riku stares, still on his back, under Sora, lips just that little bit swollen from kissing, and Kairi groans. "Oh my god, yes, Sora, yes, we love you! This is obvious, right? It feels obvious now."
"I know, I know, but I like hearing you say it," Sora laughs, giving Kairi a quick peck on the cheek, obviously still thrilling in the freedom to do it. Riku smiles, and it's big, and warm, and he feels a whole lot of something filling up his chest as Sora and Kairi tease and kiss and kiss again overtop him, and when Sora breaks away to give Riku a kiss, too, Riku puts a hand in his hair, messing the spikes, and pulls him into it.
"We really do love you," Riku says when they break apart, Sora's eyes starting to go a little glassy with happy-shock. "Now get the fuck off us before the King comes back."
Sora laughs, he's always laughing, and hops to his feet, offering Riku and Kairi each a hand. There's a bit of untangling of legs, but then they've each got a hand in his, and he pulls them both to their feet, still smiling fit to burst. Riku's seen Sora smile quite a lot—just about every day he's seen Sora, really, but this is one to top the charts. There's a half-formed worry in his head that Sora's face might just snap in two, but mostly Riku just tries to remember it, Sora smiling and Kairi smiling and the warmth in his chest as the eternal evening of the Mysterious Tower cast the sky in color. He grips their hands in his, and smiles back.