PATIENCE

disclaimer: do not own.

a/n: so the other night I was just sort of sitting there at dinner and it was just like, INCOMING DRABBLE IDEA SMACK IN THE FACE. like I literally just threw myself away from the table and it probably looked semi-spiritual but whatevs. we were eating montecristo sandwiches from the lovely Char-sensei and those come from New Orleans so that correlates, right? you know. voodoo and all. or something.

PATIENCE

There were a lot of things in Sora's life that he could consider tiny tragedies, if he was the cynical angsty type. Which he generally wasn't.

First, his dad Left.

Well, his dad had always sort of been Gone—one weekend very simply not there, the next back from one of his "adventures" with coconuts to crack open with hammers on the living room floor while Mom paced in the periphery in her fleece robe. That was why Grandma was always there, making snacks like ants on a log or fried bologna sandwiches, and that was why Grandpa always took Mom grocery shopping.

But one night just after Sora turned five, his dad actually, finally Left. And Never Came Back. And that was when Sora learned about things like Divorce and Kid Cuisine TV Dinners and Next Door Neighbor Babysitters Who Let You Stay Up Too Late Eating Popsicles And Watching The Poltergeist, which wasn't really as bad as it sounded because it just meant Sora slept in bed with his mom instead, falling asleep to her favorite funny late-night sitcoms about nannies in New York and rednecks who won the lottery, and his mom's fingers threading through his hair and his face jumping on her knee every time she laughed to herself.

Then, his mom started dating again.

Which hadn't really felt like a tragedy at first, mainly because by that time, Sora was old enough to have his very own house key, and the babysitter never came until his mom left in her good heels and pearl earrings which meant between school and his mom getting off work, it was all junk food snacks and after-school TV, and baseball and rollerblading in the cul-de-sac with the neighbor kids, Tidus and Kairi and Selphie. But then the tragedy stealthily unveiled itself, because Sora's mom started getting serious about this guy named Jun. Jun had premature gray hair. Jun had teacher glasses that made you feel stupid when he looked at you over them. Jun wore his shirts tucked in with belts. Jun was there every Saturday morning when Sora rolled down the stairs into the kitchen still half-asleep but eager to throw back some cereal and orange juice so he could get to Saturday morning cartoons.

There was one—stress that word, one—single good thing Jun ever did for Sora in his opinion, and it wasn't dating his mom. It was convincing her that Sora would be better off in after-school curriculars, which she agreed to, because he made her feel like a bad mom most of the time so she was always ready to disprove that.

"Football," Jun suggested.

"Swim team," Sora argued.

"Baseball," Jun tried.

"Soccer's a happy medium," Sora's mom said, and soccer it was and soccer was where Sora met Riku.

Riku was cool. Riku was funny. Riku was older; his birthday always fell right around Christmas break, that awkward placement that made people think you were held back when you weren't. Riku was sort of one of the heartthrobs of Skyview Jr. High, and so by association, Sora sort of became one, too.

The threshold from preteen puberty to teenagedom was an abrupt one, just like the days when Sora's dad had been there and not been there and then just suddenly been Gone.

Very simply one weekend, they were still playing hide-and-seek in the empty duplexes the neighborhood development had abandoned last summer (and stepping on industrial-sized staples and consequently getting lectured all through dinner); the cicadas whirred when the streetlights danced on and Sora's mom called, "Get inside now before the mosquitoes eat you alive!" and Kairi blew him a kiss from her porch; he and Riku sat on the curb talking middle school girls and their popsicles dripped sticky down their knuckles; and Sora was avoiding The Talk like the Plague. And then, the next, Riku was over with a date night book he'd yoinked from his older brother's room, and he and Sora flopped down on the bed to flip through sex positions and spice-it-up advice and every time the floor creaked when Sora's mom walked by, Sora thought he might die of asphyxiation from holding his breath as Riku muttered, "Jesus, you're totally not obvious, covering the book like that."

That was it; just like that. One door closed, and the door to adulthood opened.

Hide-and-seek in the empty houses gave way to chasing sixth-graders through the old bus lot, which was sort of like their initiation into Skyview Jr. High. Soccer became less about playing together and more about beating the other schools. Scribbling on your homework when you got bored in class became less interesting than staring at the girl sitting in front of you, because you could see her bra strap through her T-shirt (Kairi always wore colorfully printed bras), and the world as you knew it ended on a Wednesday in seventh grade when you had to get braces.

It hurt, first of all. He hated the way it looked, second of all. Two years, they said, but it was two years too long, third of all.

"What girl is gonna wanna kiss me?" Sora lamented. "I could pick up radio stations with this crap in my mouth."

"It's okay, Sora," Kairi cooed, and she smelled like sunscreen and fruity perfume when she put her arm around him. "It's really, really not that bad! It's only for two years! If a girl doesn't like you because you have braces, then she's definitely not worth your time, anyway."

Sora's mom said about the same thing but, see—neither she nor Kairi had braces. So they didn't understand.

It sucked being the tiny guy in class. It sucked being the airhead at the cool lunch table. He was already just the cute little brother sidekick to guys like Riku, who were absolute harlequin-status studs in the eyes of all the girls, and now he had braces so he might as well demote himself to the Science Fair Nerds table back by the broken water fountain.

Riku tore his ACL during a game against Georgetown, and Kairi started dating a real-life high schooler named Cloud who lived three doors down, and the day it became real to Sora that Jun was not a tragedy that would eventually go away was the day Jun married his mom.

Sora hid in the back of the limo during the reception. He didn't want to see all the relatives. Freshly Fourteen was far too old to be getting your cheeks pinched and Uncle Rori would probably just tell his mom Sora needed a haircut like Sora wasn't standing right next to her as he said it. Also, he didn't want to see Jun shove cake in his mom's face. Also, Kairi looked cute with the flowers in her hair and her gauzy lavender dress but Sora was not about to put his reputation as Nike-wearing, banged-up-knees, killer -soccer-offense, sometimes-class-clown, freshman-summer-grins boy next door at stake by letting a girl see him cry.

The limo was just there, waiting to take his mom and Jun to their beachside honeymoon rental. (Another one of Jun's obvious draws to a single mother: cash and a classy tendency to show it off.) Sora was going home with his cousins Ven and Aqua after the reception, staying at their house until Monday so his mom and Jun could have a weekend to themselves. But while everyone was toasting with the bubbly and screaming and laughing in good celebratory cheer, Sora was fighting tears. He kicked the limo door when he opened it, for good measure. He threw himself in the backseat with balled up fists and that was about the time he started making hiccupping sounds like he needed a paper bag to breathe into or something, and he hadn't even realized it until the limo door slammed shut behind him that Riku had followed him out and into the leather interior cave.

"I hate him!" Sora sputtered, ready to duke all his feelings out with anyone willing. Except the moment Riku grabbed his shoulder, fingers curling in the black of his tiny church suit, Sora felt himself shatter into a million fragile pieces just like the vase you totally didn't mean to knock off the china cabinet on your way out waving your hockey stick or your baseball bat.

"You don't have it in you to hate anyone," Riku argued, all snazzy with his rolled-up sleeves and neatly-combed hair, and the way his eyes flashed in the back of the limo was the way they only ever really flashed on the soccer field. He'd ditched the crutches but he was still limping a little now and again. "You don't hate him," Riku said a second time, firmly.

"Then I just really don't like him!" Sora hissed. "He yells too much and he likes that he's scary and I just can't believe she actually married him, she actually did it—God, my life fucking sucks right now—my mom married a jerk, I have to start high school in three weeks with braces—"

"Do you ever wonder why it's so bad to have crushes on boys?" Riku interrupted, and Sora shut his mouth with a succinct click of the teeth.

"…What?" he whispered back, a little confused as to how that was pertinent, but more concerned by the deep and honest dimple in Riku's brow that only ever really came around when the subject was dads, and dads leaving, and dads having too-high expectations, and apparently also now stepdads who had teacher glasses and gauged your worth as a son by how many games your soccer team won.

"I mean… It's all the same, isn't it?" Riku insisted, fingers tightening on Sora's shoulder. "When you like a girl, you want to kiss her. You want to smell her hair. You want to tuck your face in her neck. You want to put your arms around her waist from behind. You want to smile at her and mean it, and have her smile and mean it back. You want to be all cute and typical with her and feel those killer butterflies over, and over, and over again, until you can't sleep at night because you're so worked up. Right?"

"Uh, I guess," Sora stammered, trying but not about to admit that he'd never really crushed on a girl that hard before. Well, there had been Kairi, but kissing on the cheek had been the peak and Kairi had told him not to do it again without her permission. And also it hurt him a little to hear Riku talking about someone else like that. Who, though? Was it bad to be jealous of your best friend liking someone because then you wouldn't get to spend as much time together anymore?

Riku shrugged roughly. "So what if, when you like a boy, it's all the same? Except that you like a boy? Why is that so bad?"

It occurred to Sora then that something was really torturing his best friend, and he was absolutely clueless as to how to help. He didn't like it. He didn't want to be helpless. Riku was always there for him; all he wanted was to be there for Riku, right back. Riku had a point, though. There was no difference. No difference, except for all the world saying it was wrong, and a reputation being threatened, and boys weren't supposed to like boys unless they wanted to be ostracized and ridiculed, and weren't boys only supposed to like boys if they were sissies, not jocks? Yet Sora felt very sad suddenly because it didn't seem fair when it only seemed so natural—

It was kind of a defining moment. A turning point. An instant of enlightenment. A marker along the last stretch of the first leg of the relay that was growing up. There you go, troubled storm of adolescence on the horizon; there's the baton of childhood innocence. Time to sprint with it.

"Riku…" Sora managed, mouth dry. He wasn't shaking anymore. He wasn't crying anymore. "If you like a boy, I won't stop being your friend."

Riku shrugged again, releasing Sora from his iron grip. He cast his gaze elsewhere in that casual, aloof way of his that usually meant he was thinking something he wasn't saying aloud. His eyes shimmered with it. "I just wanted to get you thinking about something other than Jun," he mumbled. "That's all."

"Riku, you're my best friend," Sora urged. "Riku, I don't think any differently of you—"

That was when Riku kissed him.

Right there, in the back of the honeymoon limo, with the tinted windows, and a scrape of fingernails against leather upholstery. Mouth to mouth, firm press of lips, vaguely wet on the inside, tingling fever-hot on the outside, and Sora went rigid and his heart leapt to his throat so fast, he worried about gagging, and in all honesty, the first thing he thought about was that night a few weeks ago that he and Riku had discussed wet dreams, but when Riku pulled away red-faced and wide-eyed like Oops, sorry Sora, I fell and your mouth caught me, all Sora managed to choke out was, "Y-you stole my first kiss, jack-off!"

"What?" Riku's face twisted.

"I didn't want to have my first kiss until after I got my braces off this Christmas!"

"You've kissed someone before," Riku tried to argue, deadpanning. "Haven't you?"

"Not really!" Sora sputtered, and then, blushing furiously, he covered his mouth and glared at Riku, suddenly deeply self-conscious and keenly uncomfortable about the brackets and wires in his mouth and how it must have felt to kiss it. Did he taste like metal? Was it sharp on the mouth? Was it awkward? A turn-off? Fuck his dad, for being Gone and leaving his poor periodontal genetics!

"Is that all you have to say about it?" Riku grunted. "That you wanted to wait to kiss anyone until your braces are off?"

"Yes," Sora spat, resentfully—but then he understood what Riku was getting at, and he sat in silence staring at his loose shoelaces and wishing the heat of Riku's eyes didn't feel so good on him, crawling under his skin. Yes, he said aloud, but what it really meant was, I didn't dislike it, kissing you.

So maybe Jun had done two good things for Sora. Not that he deserved to know, that is.

"Can I do it again?" Riku whispered.

"No," Sora whispered back, eyes wide. Riku stiffened. Sora felt it like a current of electricity between them both. He heard Riku lick his lips; the breathy sound of it gave him chills. No, no no no, he didn't mean it like that—really—but the words wouldn't come as his heart pounded out some sort of tribal dance below his throat and his mouth went dry as the Mojave, and Riku desperately sought out his eyes, waiting literally on the edge of his half of the backseat for Sora to explain. No. It was just such a terrible word. Even though Sora had left the tail end of it open; it was just that he was struggling to get the other words out because they were clinging to the back of his tongue in shock.

Nonono, it was just that—he hadn't hated it—and he didn't judge Riku—and he wasn't upset that he'd just kissed a boy—because it had seemed so natural, and so simple, just like Riku had said—that there was no difference—and the feel of it lingered on Sora's mouth like Riku's feelings had burned their mark into him—and he forgot to breathe, so he sucked in a stuttering breath like a dumbass—and his face was so hot, it was making his neck itch under his collar—and he was gawking at Riku like a deer in headlights because—because, you know what, it wasn't just that he hadn't hated it. He'd liked it.

And it just clicked then. Like he'd never looked at Riku before. Like he'd never looked at anyone that way before. In terms of kissing. And holding. And twitching knees. And butterflies inside that laughed and laughed at you because you were a stupid boy who didn't even realize how cute his best friend was.

Seriously, look at how perfectly-angled Riku's face was. Thin pouty mouth. Straight nose. Piercing eyes. Long-ass eyelashes, holy shit. And the way he held himself, so smug and confident and self-sure except for the way his hands shook now. Look at how smooth and sleek he was in his stupid tux. Look at the way his hair teased the tops of his ears. Ears. Jesus Christ, look at how kissable his ears were. You could just nuzzle right up to them and—

If it wasn't for the obvious deterrents—like the silver parade in his mouth, or the fact that someone was probably looking for him by now because his mom would surely want a family picture at the reception—why, Riku could just kiss him again now for all Sora cared. Reach up and put that quivering hand in his hair, fingernails scraping dreamy along Sora's scalp. He could kiss him harder, actually. Sora would let him. Kiss him deep and soft, body pressing closer. He could cage Sora in against the plush paneled limo door and Sora would probably let his knees sag apart so Riku could practically crawl on top of him, and there would be that burst of heat in his chest again, the electric pop! in all the nerves of kissing, kissing, hint of Riku's perfect teeth behind that silky nervous mouth, tap of the tongue on Sora's lower lip, shift of the noses as their faces turned to work the best angle—

"No?" Riku repeated finally, brows drawing up in a terrible look of puzzled helplessness. He was steeling himself for rejection. Sora realized that swiftly. It was like he was keenly aware of every nuance of expression, every shift of emotion, every breath of hesitation. Like realizing you liked someone suddenly lifted a veil and now he wasn't stupid and oblivious anymore. Babump. His heart was trying to jump out through his throat, he was sure of it. Gross. Babump. God, it was like in a split-second he'd developed a massive crush and Doctor, it was metastasizing, it was malignant, it was spreading fast. (Okay, too much E.R. with Mom.)

"I mean, not No like Never," Sora finally managed, stumbling over the words. "I mean, No, wait until my braces are off. Then we can kiss again."

Riku blinked rapidly. His shoulders fell. His brows untwisted themselves from each other. Something flashed quickly through his eyes and—was he blushing, too? Riku was blushing. Ahem, at the risk of eating a whole bar of soap for dinner, cool-ass motherfucker eighth grade superhero Riku was blushing.

"Okay," Riku acquiesced. He was straight-faced but Sora could hear the ghost of a smile in his voice. Could see the smirk sparking in his eyes. The one that jumped around when he said things like, You're an idiot and You're stupid in all the same playful notes as someone probably said, You're fucking cute. God, it all made sense now! Sora was an idiot! "Okay. It's a deal."

"A deal," Sora echoed, grabbing Riku's hand to seal the promise the way they always sealed promises and had always sealed promises since that first day at soccer practice when Sora had agreed to pool money with Riku during lunch to get vending food snacks instead of cafeteria miscellany—fingers threaded, Thumb Wars-ready, but all they did was press their thumbs together in an entwined O-K gesture. Riku's hand was clammy. Sora's was, too. God, but—he couldn't even explain it, it just felt right—he would do anything for Riku, and he'd do anything for Kairi, and if Kairi wanted to kiss him instead of Cloud, he'd let her, and if Riku wanted to use him and make a permanent homestead out of the metaphorical closet, he'd let him, but you know what, greedily, this was sort of exciting. Kissing. Riku. Gay. Not scary at all. Seemed about right, actually (but remember, Sora was not generally prone to angst and cynicism).

His braces came off at Christmas.

He had a good half a year now to lay in bed at night and think about kissing Riku.

Imagining the sensation, summoning it from memory, burying his fever-hot blush in his pillow as he heard Riku say over and over in his mind, a CD stuck on repeat: "I've liked you for a long time. I've only ever really liked boys. I've been thinking about a way to tell you without you thinking I'm gross for…about as long as I've been wanting to taste you."

And the daydreaming would go hand-in-hand, of course, with the wondering when he should tell his mom that he'd fallen for his best friend, the one who happened to be a boy.

Sora figured he'd just tell her, "There's no difference, you know. If you like a girl, you wanna kiss her and hug her and smell her hair. If you like a boy, you wanna do the same things. And I kind of realized I want to do those things with Riku and you don't have to tell Jun, I don't care, I'll try to be secret about it. It's just that… Mom… I didn't get all self-conscious or confused about it, so please don't make me have an internal struggle between right and wrong because I don't wanna overthink it. It just feels natural. Also, do you think the dentist means it when he says I can get my braces off early? I'd really like to get them off early."

END.