Title: No Wrong Way to Stick a Gummi [pairing]
Rating/Warnings: G
Summary: Sora does his best to show Riku as much of San Fransokyo as he can in a single date.
AN: Written for Shiritori. I just love San Fransokyo a lot and Sora should take Riku on dates there all the time.
No Wrong Way to Stick a Gummi
“But this time, we’re following all the directions,” Riku said firmly, holding up the stack of pages Chip and Dale had left in the Gummi ship engine room.
“I don’t need those,” Sora scoffed, making a face at the comedic length of the pages unfolding from Riku’s hand, spilling across the floor of Hiro’s garage to bump into Sora’s leg. “I’ve built tons of Gummi ships, and I don’t need any dumb old directions. It’s not like there’s a wrong way to do it! They stick together no matter what way you put them, they’re gummies.”
“Gee, I can’t imagine why this is the third time we’ve had to rebuild the engine in so many worlds,” Riku said dryly. “You had your turn, like a million turns, and now it’s mine. And I say we’re following the directions.”
Sora stuck out his tongue, arms crossed. “We wouldn’t need a Gummi ship if you weren’t the only Keyblade master who can’t call his glider—”
“STEP ONE,” Riku read loudly over Sora’s voice. “Four Vernier Gummis.” Sora looked at the untidy heap of Gummi engine parts sitting between them. “The gray circle ones.”
Truthfully Sora didn’t really mind listening to Riku read Gummi engine directions, or listening to him read anything really in his smooth new nearly-adult voice that Sora hadn’t quite gotten used to yet. Just like he wouldn’t mind if they had to rebuild the entire damn ship every single world, if it meant he got to watch Riku haul around heavy Gummi blocks with his muscles and tie his hair back out of his eyes with that silly ponytail and make that hot ‘I’m concentrating’ face…
“Are you gonna just watch me or are you gonna help?” Riku asked, interrupting Sora’s thoughts with a poke right between the eyes. He left a smudge there of the red Gummi goo that his hand was streaked with from squishing the boosters into place.
“You know you can’t expect any better when you go all hot mechanic boyfriend,” Sora teased.
“Shut up,” Riku retorted, although a faint stripe of pink appeared over his nose. “You know, it’s probably part of the problem that half your engine pieces are from the Falcon blueprint and half are from the Golden Highwind.”
“Yeah, I dunno how that happened…” Sora grinned, sheepish.
They were almost done by the time Hiro stuck his head in the garage to ask how it was going.
“Almost done!” Sora answered, pointing proudly. It possibly looked an eensy bit better doing it the way the directions said. “Wanna see?”
Hiro came the rest of the way into the garage, Baymax shuffling in behind him. One of the Baymax. Baymaxes? Baymaxi? What the heck was the plural of Baymax?
Hiro leaned over Sora’s shoulder to get a better look. “Wow! That’s a pretty complicated…whatever that is.” Hiro looked from the Baymax poking at the pile of unconnected Gummis to the mostly completed engine. Hiro tilted his head. “The components are non-rigid? But how…” Hiro watched Riku snap the next piece in, eyebrows rising when it firmed up against the others. Hiro poked at the now-firm piece, then held his palm over it. “Is it like thermodynamic self-assembly? Or some kind of mild electric current that stabilizes the molecules…”
Baymax interrupted his rambling. “Hiro, according to the trolley timetable, you have exactly three minutes to arrive at your designated trolley stop.”
“Ugh, I can’t be late for class.” Hiro straightened up. “Hey, if you guys are around long enough for dinner, we’re going to try this new place Honey Lemon’s obsessed with, from one of her foodie influencer vlogs. I think it’s taco-ramen fusion. Hopefully not vegan this time.”
“I didn’t understand most of those words,” Riku said.
“Sure!” Sora agreed, elbowing Riku. “I’m gonna show Riku around the city after this, and we can’t do the Flash Tracer course until after dark anyway.”
“Great, I’ll text you the address. Later!” Hiro waved, his voice fading as he left the garage. “Baymax, go back to your charger, we don’t need another public incident.”
As soon as Hiro and Baymax’s voices faded, Sora crowded in against Riku’s shoulder to peer at the directions folded over in his hand. “Come on, let’s hurry up and finish this.” When Riku didn’t answer right away, Sora looked up to find Riku smiling fondly at him. “What?”
“You’ve got blue Gummi all over,” Riku said, running knuckles down Sora’s cheek. Sora leaned into it, just for a second, because that was definitely not the reason for that look. The he reluctantly shouldered Riku back.
“No distractions,” he scolded, startling Riku into laughter because that was usually Riku’s line. “I wanna show you everything here!” Although not even one minute later it was Sora interrupting Riku’s direction reading to ask, “Hey, what do you think the plural of Baymax is?”
It didn’t take the two of them long to finish up the engine and get cleaned up, cheerful swirls of red, yellow, and blue swirling off their hands into the utility sink as if they’d been fingerpainting. Sora introduced Riku to the wonders of the San Fransokyo combini first, ending up with one of every flavor of onigiri, plus a package of strawberry bread to split for dessert.
“I’m supposed to make you try the puddings, but even seeing them still makes me mad,” Sora chuckled around the straw to his strawberry milk. Riku had a coffee milk, but Sora was soft-banned from them after binging on them a little too hard last trip here, resulting in an epic coffee milk crash back at the Tower.
“What’s in the middle of this one?” Riku asked, eyeing the filling of the rice ball Sora had just handed over.
“I dunno,” Sora shrugged, already unwrapping the next one. “I only know the letters for shrimp and tuna mayo.” He rolled his eyes at Riku’s cautious nibble. “Who cares? They’re all good, just eat it.”
Riku took a small bite, then a bigger one, chewing thoughtfully. “It is good. You’ve never had a bad flavor? Really?”
“The fish egg one was a surprise, but it wasn’t bad, just really salty.” Sora shrugged, licking rice from the corner of his mouth. Riku made a face, glancing into the plastic bag as if wondering about the last two onigiri. “You’re still a picky eater. We ate much weirder fish stuff back home. Here, this one’s plum, try this.”
Riku’s scrunched face at the intense of the sour sent Sora into gales of laughter.
True to his word, Sora really did want to show Riku the whole city. Unlike most of the worlds they visited, San Fransokyo was too big to do it right in a day or even a few days, but Sora did his best, starting in the gleaming downtown where the skyscrapers were so tall they had to lean backwards to squint at the tops of them, and the small parks dotted in between them where they took selfies with cherry blossoms for backgrounds.
They took a trolley cross-town to the address Hiro texted them, the neighborhood of hole-in-the-wall restaurants cramped densely together so different from the high rises that they might as well have been on a different planet. Taco ramen was worth having, Sora promising to take Riku to regular ramen for comparison’s sake. A lot better than the churro-flavored bubble tea Honey Lemon had also made them try, that was for sure.
“Can’t all be winners,” Sora said when he and Riku were tired out of from Tracer course runs. They were sitting on top of one of the bridge pylons, wind ruffling their hair. The lights of San Fransokyo spread out below them, lit all the way to the horizon. “I said I’d show you the whole city, so here it is.”
“You did say that,” Riku agreed. He was staring up at the koi wind turbines in fascination, and Sora remembered the first time he’d seen them himself, how beautiful and cool they were. Riku had been quiet during dinner, surrounded by too many people he didn’t know well, but he’d loosened up on the Tracer course, and now he looked peaceful, face relaxed.
“Hey. You had fun today, right?” Sora asked. It didn’t hurt to make sure.
“Yeah.” Riku reached for Sora’s hand without looking, twining their fingers together and squeezing. Sora didn’t feel the need to fill in all their silences anymore, content to press his shoulder into Riku’s and enjoy the wind cooling down his overheated muscles. Eventually Riku huffed a small laugh. “You remember that robot you built out of cardboard boxes?”
“He was supposed to do my laundry,” Sora remembered. “We had creative differences.”
“Plus your mom took her blender back,” Riku laughed harder, shaking against Sora. “I was just thinking…even back then, you liked that stuff. Building things, but your own way. Putting different things together just to see what would happen. It’s no wonder you like it so much here. You fit in really well.”
“Aw, you think so?” Sora grinned, and Riku finally did look down, smiling back. “I’m not even sure that was a compliment, but it felt nice. Your way’s nice too, you know. Following the directions.”
“You don’t have to say something nice back every time just because I did,” Riku said, the roll of his eyes betrayed by the small smile at the corner of his mouth. “Especially such a blatant lie.”
“It’s not a lie!” Sora gasped, mock-affronted. “Our Gummi engine might actually make it through a couple world trips this time.”
“Hmm.” Riku slid an arm around Sora’s waist under his hoodie, pulling him close enough to kiss his temple. “Only if you swear not to start sticking weird pieces on the next time we pick up a few.”
Sora squished Riku in return, tight around the waist. “Absolutely no promises.”
