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During his journey, Data-Sora spends most of his time with his knees criss-crossed and arms outstretched, wrangling and holding down squirmy, unpleasant, fish-like strings of code, soothing them with his touch to make them lie flat against the backdrops of the data's worlds. The larger, more sentient glitches fight back with more force, and before he can untangle those, Sora does take his Keyblade in hand, beating them down, wearing them out, until he can lay hands on them and quell their agitation. Repeating this pattern serves him well enough, and he gets better at it with Data-Riku's encouragement as he continues through the journal.
But there wasn't any sort of art, finesse, or gentleness to the sin Pete commits against his friend's body in Hollow Bastion. He just piled the little buggers on, and they attached like leeches, burrowed like ticks, stuck and slimy, like wet rags shoved into the cracks in Riku's digital walls.
Appropriately warned, but out of his /mind/ with worry, fear, and grief, Sora still holds up his Keyblade, draws upon all his inner strength, and dives.
When he finds him, when he finds the edge of his /self/ that Data-Riku had retreated into to protect Jiminy's Journal from more infection, he finds a wall. Data-Riku is barely there, standing beside him as he cranes his neck to look up at it, a shadow of a ghost. But he speaks, and Sora hears him, and he leaps at the chance to scale the wall, to rip the bugs out from it, end their assault, and bring Data-Riku back in full.
Most of the bugs dissolve under his hands when he rips them out of their gnawed-in holes. They flop and wriggle like dying eels and put up no fight. But there are larger ones too, with more intelligence to them, more fire, more /teeth/. He tries to go quickly, tries to break their necks in one snap, but a few of them /bite/ and Sora /shouts/ and he /bleeds/ and that makes his hold on the wall slip and makes /everything/ more difficult.
Riku watches him struggle and cry and hates-hates-HATES that he can't do /anything/ until Sora is done and the wall is /safe/ and he can manifest in full again. He still can't help himself from screaming out for Sora to come down from the cliff face, get /away/ from the things hurting him, even though they are hurting Riku /worse/... And Sora knows this, and ignores him. Though his arms shake and his breath rasps and he's suddenly feeling worse and worse with every bite, he holds on. Riku needs him to do this for him, and so he will.
Finally, FINALLY, in a move that can't come soon enough for Riku, Sora breaks one final wet rag's neck, and lowers himself with shaking limbs to the ground, where Riku can /touch/ him, can gather him up in his arms and blink the two of them out of existence, far away from the crumbling walls that he can focus on rebuilding /later/ when his most important person isn't /dying in his arms/...
Data-Riku chooses Sora's old home as the place to retreat to. He lays the weakened boy down on his own bed, holding one of Sora's bleeding arms between them and hissing worried nonsense that Sora's heard a dozen times before. Sora rolls his eyes and shakes the arm in Riku's grasp to get him to shush.
"Hey, hey, Riku. Look at me. No, no, not my arm, look at my face." Riku breathes shakily and doesn't let Sora's arm go, but he complies. Sora cracks as big a smile as he can muster and tenderly slides one hand over Riku's. "I /promise/, if there are /any/ more bugs, from now on, we'll fight them /together./"
And as he speaks that promise, as Data-Riku relaxes and nods, a sudden glow appears from the place their hands join and Sora grunts in surprise, though it fades within seconds, never quite escalating to blinding.
They remove their hands from each other and marvel at how the bruising from the bug's teeth has faded.
Without the need for further discussion, Sora simply says, "Touch me," and Riku does, clasping his hand firmly around Sora's equally-injured wrist, but the healing light emenating from Sora's skin does not appear until Sora puts his hand over Riku's as well.
The two of them are celebrating this small but substantial victory when Sora attempts to stand. And immediately stumbles. Riku wastes no time in steadying him, only to lay him back down supine.
"Did I miss some?" Sora pats himself down weakly - even he can admit there's something wrong, now. "I didn't get bitten anywhere else..." As his arms move across his abdomen, Riku catches a glimpse of his elbow as Sora's shirt rides up, exposing skin.
He seizes Sora's sleeve and shoves it up, the stricken look on his face seriously making Sora worry. Before he can even open his mouth to ask, Riku holds Sora's arm up for the brunet to see.
On his upper arm, past where his shirtsleeve was hiding it, is a shifting pattern of red and black, exactly the pattern Sora has encountered innumerable times as he fought to restore order to the worlds of Jiminy's Journal.
He can't help it. He gasps. The sound nearly breaks Riku's fragile heart.
Gently as he can, Riku slides his hand down to press his fingers against the discolored flesh, morbidly curious, perhaps, to know whether the texture has been altered too.
However, when he does this, the pattern /leaps/ from Sora's skin to Riku's. Sora whines in dismay. This was precisely the thing he'd been trying to /prevent/ - reinfection.
Sora wrestles his arm away from Riku long enough to seize the other's reddened hand in his own. He opens his mouth to berate Riku for behaving so recklessly, putting himself in danger simply to help Sora's unimportant self.
But he doesn't get to say a word, as the contact with Riku's reinfected skin causes a flash of familiar light to brighten the room and when the two boys manage to blink its afterimages away, it's clear that both Riku and Sora's infected patches of skin have been healed. Or, at least, they're no longer visible.
"It may be only skin-deep," Riku points out, always the realist.
"Maybe the infection is too," Sora counters, and starts working at the zipper on his chest. "Come on, you too," he urges Riku, gesturing at the long and stuffy black cloak that covers more skin than Sora has /ever/ seen RIku willingly cover.
To Sora's astonishment, Riku /blushes/, one hand fisted over his chest.
"Wh-why?" he stutters, looking anywhere but his friend.
"/Why/?" Sora asks exasperatedly, wrestling his arms out of their sleeves, dismayed to see further red-and-black patches on his revealed chest and shoulders. "You can't touch me as easily if you're wearing /clothes/!"
Though logical, this response merely makes Riku blush harder and he says nothing.
"Plus, we gotta make sure there's nothing left on /you/ that you haven't seen yet. Maybe it transfers through clothing too, and you carried me here!"
Riku's face contorts in such a way as to let Sora know he's about to disagree somehow, so Sora talks over him. "And what kinda sense is there in coming this far towards getting clean and then chickening out at the last minute?" He lets his trademark grin spread over his face and tilts his head challengingly, adding, "You /scared/ of showin' off a little skin?"
Riku graces that reply with precisely the amount of dignity it requires. He snorts, rolling his eyes, and folds his arms over his chest - his new favorite pose, in this incarnation. "Yeah, /right/. You /know/ I go sleeveless on the islands back home."
And it was a little strange to hear 'back home' being talked about as thought it were someplace /not/ here, as they conversed in /Sora's bedroom/, but Sora had to admit, since the two of them were data, made of memories, 'back home' was somewhere they might never get to go. Too depressing. Sora shook his head.
"Then what is it?"
Riku's blush returns, or is still present, Sora's not sure.
"I just... aren't you /embarrassed/?" Yielding to the circumstances, Riku fiddles with his zipper and pulls it down to about his navel. Somehow, Sora's completely unsurprised by the full-length black shirt and pants /and/ boots he wears beneath it.
"No," he tells Riku flatly, kicking off his shoes and deciding to go whole-hog to prove it. To himself, at the /very/ least. He tugs his zipper down the rest of the way and wriggles out of the bottom half of his jumper. Riku's eyes don't meet his, but, Sora notices, they /do/ stray towards his hips. "Are /you/?"
Riku sighs, slowly shrugging out of his black cloak and pausing as he crosses his arms over his stomach. He lies, because that's far easier than telling the truth. "...Yes," he mutters as he pulls the shirt over his head.
Sora tries to school away the wide-eyed look of interest that perks up his face as more of Riku than he's seen in /years/ is revealed, and with such little prompting! He tries to remind himself that this could be a life-or-death situation, but even that doesn't dampen his enthusiasm much.
His small cock decides to start taking an interest the proceedings and without a second thought, Sora reaches down to appease it with a fist.
Riku shakes his hair back into a semblance of order as he finishes peeling the shirt off over his head, then tries not to choke on his own saliva at the sight of Sora, fully naked but for his /socks/, jerking his own cock, and /staring/ at Riku like there's nothing he'd rather see.
If Sora thought Riku's blushes were noticeable /before/, /this/ one truly puts them all to shame.
A moment later, Riku gulps, his hardwired brain finally processing the fact that Sora's skin /is covered/ in those reddish blotches, and they're probably on his back as well. Not a square inch seems to have been spared, although Riku can't really get a good look at his cock, this far away...
"Well, if you're embarrassed," Sora says conversationally, like he's /not/ five different colors that he shouldn't be, like he's /not/ jerking his cock in front of Riku for the first time in, oh, /ever/. "Then I'll just have to be not-embarrassed enough for both of us!"
"You, uh." Riku coughs. "You seem to be... getting off to a good start." Then feels like slapping himself in the forehead. He groans out loud and bends at the waist so he won't have to look at Sora as he pulls his boots off his feet and undoes his belt.
Simply dropping everything in a puddle at his feet and stepping out of it, he looks up again to see Sora's expression largely unchanged. If possible, it's even /more/ welcoming, and he takes the dedicated hand off his cock to hold both of them out to Riku in welcome. His cock is clean now, Riku notices when he glances at it. But his right hand is again tainted.
He takes one step forward and tangles his fingers with Sora's. Immediately, that mysterious, healing light grows, gives off a muted flash, and dies.
"Hmm," he muses, putting his other hand in Sora's and watching it happen again. "It certainly seems to be effective. Although I'm kind of starting to wish I had sunglasses," he jokes, sinking partway to his knees at Sora's side, making the brunet frown.
"Riku," he warns in a comedic imitation of his own mother, "I didn't get naked for you so you would just hover over me at my side, for goodness' sake! Now get down here and /snuggle/ with me!"
Riku's mouth actually drops open and a single shocked sound that's not exactly a laugh emanates from it. Sora tugs. Riku closes his mouth, eyes darting around wildly, then complies.
Laying next to Sora reminds Riku of nothing so much as laying in the sun on the first really /hot/ day of the year, usually sometime in October or September if they were lucky. Oh, it never got /cold/ on the islands, not in the way Agrabah's desert nights could cut and sting and burn. But Agrabah has wind, where Destiny Islands has nothing so punishing, outside of typhoon season, that is. Their ocean moderated the temperature, or so the adults would tell them, some of them a bit wistful for things like snow and icicles, and some of them practically melting in the sun in relief after the cooler days of mid-year winter had passed. (headcanon: DI is in the southern hemisphere, so their seasons are flipped, Australia style.)
Sora feels like the soaked-in heat of the sand, the way it radiated up against one's back like it had nothing better to do than please them. And really, Riku couldn't afford to keep himself from that pleasure, the way he notices his skin turning red as his arms tentatively slide around Sora's.
They begin working out a system where Riku would find and lay his hands over any discolored patches he could find on Sora, sliding them in wide circles to make sure he hadn't missed anything, making the younger sigh happily in the process. Once Riku's hands were covered in the life-destroying stuff, Sora would take them in his own and, more or less, massage them.
At one point, he drops a kiss onto Riku's fingers and that too instigates the glowing light. But when it fades, Riku notices a splotch on Sora's face.
Swiftly, instinctively, he leans down to kiss it. He has to scrunch his eyes shut as light bursts right in front of him. When he pulls back, Sora's face is red, but in a healthy way, reminiscent of merely a blush, though Riku would never demean a sight so precious to him with a term like 'merely'.
"So. Think we've got the hang of it?" he pants as looks down at Sora, eyes half-lidded.
Sora groans as his testicles try to strangle themselves in appreciation of his sheer physicality. "Yeah, sure, anything you say. Just kiss me /more/."
Riku lets out a heartfelt moan as he lowers his body fully onto Sora's, letting the younger boy feel the hot length of his cock against his bare hip.
"Mmmm. You have no idea how long I've waited to hear you say that," he murmurs against Sora's cheek. Then, taking swift advantage, he turns his head and captures Sora's lips, shamed and triumphant as both his and Sora's cocks throb and twitch in response.
When he teases Sora's mouth with the tip of his tongue, the bottom nearly drops out of his stomach as he feels Sora's cock drool precum from its tip.
/There's only one way this is gonna end,/ he realizes suddenly. And he wouldn't want it any other way.
He shifts, putting one arm out and hefting himself up with it, wrapping his free hand around Sora's small dick and jerking it almost carelessly as his eyes roam Sora's body, looking for errant viral patches.
When he finds none, he frowns slightly - an expression that makes Sora moan and writhe a little beneath him, his cock throbbing and feeling so /hot/ - and says aloud, "Turn over."
Sora stares incredulously up into Riku's face, but finds no trace of teasing there.
"You're kidding, right?" he deadpans, but Riku shakes his head, as serious as he's ever been.
"C'mon," he urges, using one hand to pull at Sora's side to encourage him. "I gotta check your back. Plus, I... think you'll like how it feels to have me behind you," he murmurs very quietly, very close to Sora's ear. He says these words because they are likely to persuade the other boy to follow his lead, but this doesn't mean they are untrue. Neither does this mean that Riku can keep himself from flushing darkly as he says them.
It's risky, he realizes, as he and Sora inch-worm around each other and drag and pull. Sora eventually traps one of Riku's hands under his against the sheets, severely limiting Riku's mobility, but then, he doesn't need it, really. All he needs is room to put his hand around Sora's cock - and /gods/, isn't that a novel thing to think? - and a nice, slick asscrack to thrust his own against.
He moans as he rocks against Sora, his cock slipping easily between Sora's sweat-slicked cheeks. Having Sora on his hands and knees before him, holding himself up and spread out like a feast... It's more than Riku has ever dared to imagine.
It's his /sweat/ that really makes it feel like nothing any dream could ever match. He's /sweating/ because he's /real/.
The /smell/ his sweat imparts to Sora is practically divine, too, and Riku's really glad he likes it because it's /everywhere/, especially when Riku inhales at the nape of Sora's neck, salivating because of it and lowering his head to mouth at Sora's shoulder.
The younger boy tips his head sideways and /moans/, something true, drawn out, and /loud/, and Riku hopes beyond hopes that Sora's memories of home don't include parents present in the house /at that very moment/ because he's not sure he can /stop/. He /knows/ Sora doesn't want to, knows it from the way the younger cants his hips up to counter every slow thrust, the way his small cock angrily pulses in his hand. Something inside him starts to quiver and Riku realizes this magical event is about to be over very soon unless he /does/ something about it.
So he pulls back. Tugs his hand out from under Sora's, pushes the teen's head back down when he tries to look over his shoulder.
"I'm checking your back, dork-face," he admonishes in a fairly-normal voice. Sora manages to huff a laugh and complies, canting his hips up even farther as he lowers his upper body to the mattress. Riku groans and clutches Sora's ass to him with both hands before hissing a breath in through his nose and pushing both hands forward up his back.
He tries to focus and coordinate his eyes /and/ his hands, but only really manages to run his hands over every square inch of Sora's back without really looking at it. He then plunges his hands down towards Sora's, who entwines them, but no white light emerges from the connection. Perhaps all the touching they've /been/ doing has done enough, Riku ponders, for all of about 2 seconds.
"All right, we'll check again later," he decides brusquely and settles his hands back on Sora's hips. "You wanna jack yourself off?" he asks, leaning sideways to better decipher Sora's expression on the face half-smushed against his forearms.
"Mmmm, mmkay," Sora agrees sleepily, shoving one hand southward towards the general area.
"Can I, I mean. I'd like to come all over your back if you're okay with that." Riku stumbles over every word of that sentence, running each word together and trying to keep his palms from sweating too profusely as he tries to hold nightmare scenarios at bay.
He convinces himself, over the course of getting all the words out, that the /worst/ Sora is likely to do is scrunch his nose up adorably and say no, and tell him to come elsewhere instead. He will /not/ go still and cold beneath Riku and suddenly start fighting him out of sheer disgust at his perverse desires.
"Mm?" Sora questions, not really asking for anything specific. "Come on my back? Um, sure, if you do all the clean up!" His 'I'm getting the better deal and I know it' face is exaggerated and comical, but Riku heaves out a rush of air that is pure relief, not laughter.
"Ohhhh, thank you," he says to no deity in particular. Sora shrugs and rolls his head against his one still-folded arm.
"Yeah, sure." Then he moans and Riku can hear the slap of skin that signals Sora's hand aggressively meeting his genitals. It's the sound of a timer counting down.
"Okay," Riku says bravely. "I'm gonna. I'm gonna do it now."
"Mmm, yeah, do it /now/. I'm so fucking hard for you Riku, you don't even know."
"Yeah?" Riku panted back, spreading his knees for balance and tugging Sora's hips back against his repeatedly, blessing and cursing the sweet friction by turns. "/How/ hard?"
"Feel...like I...could punch...through /rock/," Sora replies, brokenly, as he can find breath between Riku's thrusts.
"Mmm, yeah?" Riku mutters, mouth out of step entirely with his brain, moving on autopilot. He's never felt more purely /human./
"Gunna... cum..../rainbows./ You'll see," Sora promises, tilting his hips even more dramatically to be able to slap Riku's balls with his own.
Riku lets shivers of laughter wrack his body and cums huffing for breath between shouts of joy. He repeats a few syllables over and over, feeling like nothing matters, he's so high. So far apart from it all, so far away. Only the land and the sky and a blanket of stars.
Once they drop back into themselves, sweat and cum cooling on their bodies and on the sheets, tangled together side by side, Riku remembers to check Sora's skin more carefully.
The light outside this room hasn't changed; it's barely enough to see by, but Sora twists a hand behind him and taps the rim of a globe. The whole thing glows, lit from inside. A clearly mechanical marvel, nothing like the healing magic of their combined touch before. Sora consents to undignified inspections of his inner thighs and backside, and a very thorough head massage to assure Riku that Sora's brain was safe.
There are plenty of places inside Sora that Riku can't reach, of course, but he squeezes thighs and chest and belly alike, concentrating with all his might on his 6th sense of darkness, but finding nothing.
There's still dried blood on Sora's sleeve when they go to put their clothes back on to ward off the island's chillier night, but a single touch from Riku is enough to magically cleanse it. Sora enthuses over the usefulness of this skill, and Riku scolds him kindly, exasperatedly.
It's only because the datascape needed a vessel for its innermost secrets that he exists, that he knows so much, can do so much, has such /power/.
In Jiminy's journal, he is a far simpler creature. Selfish and seduced and uncomfortable with some of his choices, yes, but ultimately self-sacrificing. Ultimately redeemed.
And perhaps by Sora's grace, by the conviction of his heart that brought his Keyblade back to him at the moment of most desperate need... He can be redeemed again.
Sora is the hero of this story, that Riku knows. After seeing how easily Sora defeated the bugs Pete had placed into Riku's code, how much finesse he displayed, how much familiarity, Riku is calmly, confidently certain he will be more than a match for whatever ultimately ends up being the root cause of the journal's problems.
Sora will make their story end happily, in triumph. (Riku curls his arms around a sleeping Sora and puts off clean-up for a little longer.) /He/ will make sure of that.