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Cold seeped in around the edges of Sora’s dreams, and that was what woke him.
He flipped a few times, face pressed into his mountain of pillows, sighed his displeasure at being awake, then frowned when he realized his arms were missing something. Someone.
“Riku?”
The room was dark and the ceiling fan whirred above him, but there was no response, or second heartbeat under his own, and the side of the mattress that belonged to Riku was simply rumpled and cold.
For a singular moment of panic, he had visions of heartless and goat-armored men and Riku against a cityscape with unsettling eyes that didn’t belong to him, and he tugged the blanket close around his body protectively, though he was shaking from something other than the temperature. But he wasn’t there anymore, it had been several years, and he really should be over it by now.
A moment later, blanket cautiously peeled down to expose his eyes as he forced himself to breathe , Sora noticed the bedroom door was ajar, and felt his heart return to something closer to normal.
Of course. There was only one place Riku went in the middle of the night, and that was outside.
He was much like a bird, that way: something about four sturdy walls and a roof began to feel like a cage to him, no matter how many windows they put in them.
Sora could relate.
The house was silent save for the occasional sound of the wood settling, and Sora rose from the bed with the blanket still around him, irrationally afraid in a way he normally wasn’t in their house. He knew the keyblade was just a call away, but the things that haunted them now couldn’t always be chased away by weapons, and sometimes the shadows looked like they moved.
He closed his eyes, feeling along the wall for the screen door to the porch, and only then cracked open an eye at the moonlight it spilled across the floor.
Riku was silhouetted under the porchlight in their inherited rocking chair, back bent over something Sora couldn’t see from his angle, and it was like Sora’s whole body lurched forward without him, the screen door shut softly behind.
“Where did you go?” Sora mumbled, rubbing at sleep-glued eyes.
Riku barely stirred, just looked back at him with tired, quiet eyes.
“Sorry,” Riku said softly. “Couldn’t sleep. Did I wake you?”
Both of them were almost whispering because it felt like the right thing to do, out here beneath the endless stars and the dark shadows of palm trees beyond the house. The world was still sleeping on without them.
“No, but you should have,” Sora grumbled, dragging the blanket behind him as he walked. The porch was creaky and too loud for the moment, with the whole world holding its breath for the sunrise. “I told you to tell me when you’re having nightmares.”
“I know you did,” Riku answered. “But you were finally sleeping, so I couldn’t do it.”
“Riku,” Sora grumbled, because Riku was talking like he a kid, struggling to sleep through the night. “I’m not a baby.”
“Really? You look like one right now,” Riku quipped, turning his head so Sora could catch the hint of smirk.
“And you look like a grandpa, so we’re even.”
Riku snorted, but it was true. He had a cheery yellow knitted blanket across his lap and an ancient, leather bound book in his hand and a rocking chair beneath him. Sora was always wildly emotional when woken in the middle of the night, and the sudden image of Riku with hair even more silver than now, with more lines across his face around around his eyes, still doing this when they were both seventy reached into his chest and stole his breath. By the time he reached him Sora was blinking away silly tears.
“Hey,” Riku said gently. “Come here.”
They rearranged their limbs like they’d done a thousand times before, because every place Riku fit, there was a Sora sized space right beside him. Sora clambered sideways into Riku’s lap and brought the blanket around to cover both of them. Both of Sora’s hands curled into the cotton of Rikus shirt and he planted his face planted between his neck and shoulder and the wood of the chair. The warm expanse of Riku’s chest was solid and warm beneath him, and he pressed as close as possible, inhaling the cold air of night and something piney that was Riku .
“What were you thinking about?”
“Nothing,” Sora answered, because there was no way he could even begin to speak it right now. “Just missed you,” Sora said, shifting his legs around so nothing felt liable to fall asleep.
Careful,” Riku teased, adjusting his feet on the floor to take the weight. “My ancient old man back might break under the strain.”
“You’d let me lay on you anyway,” Sora said matter of factly, and Riku hummed because he knew he was right.
“Comfortable?” Riku asked. He wound his left arm around Sora’s back and the blanket securely, tucking it around Sora’s neck in a gesture so tender Sora had to squeeze his eyes shut again.
Safety settled back round Sora’s shoulders, and he felt his limbs finally relax as he melted into Riku’s embrace.
“Yeah,” he said, in a small voice. “Thanks.”
“You’re warmer than a blanket,” Riku told him. “So I should be thanking you.”
Sora slid his hands up to feel the goose pimples on Riku’s biceps, rubbing over the skin until Riku pressed into his hands appreciatively. He’d probably been out here a while, reading.
“King Arthur again?”
“Yeah,” Riku said, holding the book aloft. The cover was gold filigree, and the illustration of the knight looked a little like Sora, according to him. “Just something about it...calms me down. It’s simple, I guess. Good guys and bad guys.”
“What chapter are you on?” Sora asked.
“Sixteen.”
“Riku! You got ahead of me!” Sora accused, pulling back to pout at him, frowning. “Betrayal.”
“Not my fault you keep falling asleep when I read it to you,” Riku said, running his hand absentmindedly through Sora’s hair in that way that made him purr like a cat. His eyes were all but apologetic, framed by too-long silver lashes, and he was so pretty Sora irrationally wanted to cry all over again. Everything felt condensed into its simplest form when he was like this, dragged from bed before he’d gotten eight solid hours.
“Read it to me now,” Sora said quietly, “Then I’ll forgive you.”
“As my King commands,” Riku quipped, inclining his head in a mock-bow.
“I do command,” Sora started, but then Riku started massaging his neck with his free hand, pressing into the sides where the tense muscles joined with his shoulders and he quickly forgot what he was saying.
“You sure you’re gonna stay awake this time, your highness?”
“Sure I’m sure,” Sora said, but he felt his breathing evening out already between Riku’s careful motions and the pleasantly light breeze across his face.
Sora felt him clear his throat, then shift one arm to lay across Sora’s back to open the book.
Riku got most of the way through the chapter with Sora drifting in and out, coming back in occasionally for battle scenes and ballrooms that ballooned into wild half-images of meow-wows at banquets having tea with multiple King Rikus in his head.
“Hey…”
“Hmm?”
“Your voice is nice,” Sora muttered, but the words felt far away, like they were on a shelf just out of his reach. “You should...read more books.”
“Thanks,” Riku chuckled. “I think.”
That was so Riku , too, that embarrassed tone that slipped out whenever Sora tried to tell him how amazing he was, like words could ever capture the enormity of the things Sora had to tell him.
“Love you,” Sora whispered, pressing a sloppy kiss to the skin he could reach without moving too much.
“Love you too,” Riku replied, and Sora twitched as he nearly dipped back into dreams too fast to catch it, Riku’s arm rising automatically catch Sora’s chin before it could fall.
“Go back to sleep, Sora,” Riku said gently, raising his shoulder to keep him in place. “Arthur will still be here when you wake up.”
“Will you?”
It was out of his mouth before he could stop it, and he felt Riku stiffen against him.
For a long moment his sleepy haze began to shift, enough to make him worry —but then Riku dropped the book to wrap the blankets tighter around him, both his hands smoothing down the planes of Sora’s back, up and down, while the rocking chair under them was coaxed into slow movement.
“Of course I will,” Riku said fiercely, pulling Sora so close to him he felt warm breath fanning his face. “I promise.”
“Okay,” Sora said, then fell back to sleep just as dawn was cresting against his eyelids, Riku’s soft voice in his ear and soft tugs on the dreameat r link pulling him the rest of the way down. “You promised.”
“I’ll be right behind you,” Riku told him, and Sora believed him.