Title: Midnight Poison [Riku/Sora]
Rating/Warnings: PG-13 for injury/blood.
Summary: Riku should not have woken Sora up suddenly from in the middle of a nightmare.
AN: Written for Shiritori. Mousi trivia: Flutterings are one of my favorite heartless.
Midnight Poison
“It was real, huh?” Sora asked in a small voice. Riku looked up from bandaging his forearm and saw Sora hovering in the bathroom doorway, blanket wrapped around himself and hooded over his head. “Not a dream.”
“It was,” Riku agreed gently. Sora hunched in on himself, as if trying to take up less space. Riku wanted to wrap him up in a tight hug, but he couldn’t let go of the bandage without the whole thing unravelling. He didn’t want Sora to get a good look at the claw marks gashed into the inside of his forearm; he’d had an unsettling glimpse of how deep they were before he’d slapped his other hand down to hold the wounds closed and stumbled to the bathroom.
The Cure spell he’d tried had stopped most of the bleeding, but the gashes hadn’t closed, knitting together much slower than usual. The torn edges of Riku’s skin had been dark and ugly before he’d cleaned his arm in the sink, his hand tingling with numbness—Riku had been poisoned by a Fluttering bite last month, and it had felt almost exactly the same.
“I’m sorry,” Sora said, so quietly Riku could barely make out the words. He was kneading the blanket anxiously between his fingers, pulling the hood down lower over his eyes. Riku’s heart ached for him.
“Can you help me tape this down?” Riku asked. Sora shuffled closer, taking the medical tape from counter. Riku watched him peel the edge of the tape up and tear off a strip. “Hey. It wasn’t your fault.”
“Sure it wasn’t.” Sora snorted angrily, keep his eyes down on his task. “Totally normal to wake up as a shadow form that rips a chunk out of my boyfriend’s arm, happens to everyone.”
“It was my fault for scaring you awake when I came in,” Riku argued. “If hadn’t been so late, I would have been here when the nightmare started, you wouldn’t have been alone—”
“Shut up,” Sora said crossly. Despite his sharp words, his touch on Riku’s arm was gentle as he taped down the bandage, light enough that Riku could barely feel it through the gauze.
Riku flexed his fingers, frowning at the pins and needles getting worse instead of better. Hmm. Before he could think that thought the whole way through, Sora dropped the roll of tape in the sink with a clatter and threw himself at Riku for a hug as roughly as if trying to headbutt him. With Riku sitting on the edge of the tub, Sora was tall enough to push his face into Riku’s hair for once, gripping Riku tight around the neck.
“It’s ok, you’re ok,” Riku soothed, resting his injured arm across the small of Sora’s back and rubbing circles over his spine with his other hand. “Tell me what your nightmare was.” Sora grunted a no. “You’ll have it again unless you do.”
“I was at Hollow Bastion,” Sora said, voice muffled against Riku’s hair. “On the crystal islands, climbing up. But there were so many, and I got tired and fell, and I landed in one of the waterway bubbles and I was stuck inside it, banging my hands on it, and then everything went white and it wasn’t a bubble, it was the pod, and you and Namine were standing there talking, but no matter how hard I yelled or pounded on it you couldn’t hear me, you wouldn’t look, you wouldn’t—”
Sora broke off into choked sobs at that point, shaking. Riku let him cry it out, his own throat tight with sympathy. He’d had a few nightmares of his own about the same thing, except pounding on the outside of the pod trying to break in, instead of out.
“Which is the scariest part? Nobody seeing you? Being trapped?” Riku asked. Knowing the knot at the center of a nightmare helped Riku unravel them faster, helped him keep from getting lost in the chaos of an unfamiliar dream.
“You not seeing me,” Sora answered thickly.
“Ok. I’ll remember, if you have it again,” Riku promised. Sora straightened up, shoving Riku back by the shoulders.
“You don’t have to fix everything!” Sora glared, red-eyed and mussed. “I can take care of myself!”
Riku shook his head. “But I want to—”
“And when you do, THIS happens!” Sora grabbed Riku’s bandaged forearm, yanking it up. Riku didn’t flinch, not even when Sora squeezed harder. Not a great sign.
“I don’t care,” Riku said quietly. Sora opened his mouth, but Riku cut him off more firmly. “I don’t care. I didn’t become your Dream Eater to eat Shield cookies, I did it to fight your nightmares! If you don’t like it, then dream about ponies and tea parties and solve both of our problems!”
“Oh yeah?” Sora demanded. “Well you can just…just…dream a tea party yourself!”
Riku grinned, and Sora’s scowl wobbled; they both started laughing at the same time.
“Your mom can,” Riku gasped, “can dream a tea party by herself!”
“Your FACE can—” Sora lost it when Riku laugh snorted, laughing until he was hiccuping. “You’re the worst.”
“Be nice to me, I think I’m poisoned.” Riku held up his arm sheepishly when Sora frowned. “Try true love’s kiss?”
