By Your Side (ioriku)

5

Riku is already on his fourth cupcake by the time noon comes around.

Iori has been trying his hardest not to stare too hard or too long, but the urge is strong and Riku was right there, not staring at him was borderline impossible.

"How did you know my name earlier?" Iori asks, having just now realized it.

"You were in my dream, of course I know your name," Riku says, as if it were a totally normal occurrence to know a person's name through a dream. "Do you know mine?"

"I do," Iori tells him, the guilt eating at him once again.

"Did Tenn-nii tell you?"

"No, a nurse did," Iori corrects. "But, he did tell me some other things."

"Really? Like what?"

Iori wishes he hadn't said that.

"He mentioned that you don't have many friends," Iori says through a mumble, hardly coherent beneath the hum of machinery and chatter in the hallway. But Riku seems to hear him loud and clear judging by the way he recoils, shrinking into his knee-hugging position.

"He told you that?" Riku says, his expression neutral. "Well, he's not wrong," he says, scratching his head sheepishly. "I actually don't have any friends."

Iori had already heard this twice before, but hearing it from the person himself was a different experience. An eye-opening one. How could someone like him have no friends?

"How could someone like you have no friends?" Ah... I said it out loud. Iori quickly straightens up, waving a hand around dismissively, "Sorry, I didn't mean to be so-"

"It's fine," Riku says, in a tone so solid that Iori feels the mood shift. "I guess I'm just not very good at making friends."

But, it couldn't be true. How could it be? How could an individual with a laugh so contagious, hair so bright, and a blinding smile possibly be 'not very good' at making friends?

"That's not true," Iori tells him. "I'm your friend."

Riku looks up at him, bright-eyed, a smile quivering his lips. "You're right."

For a moment, the two seem to linger in each other's presence as if holding onto something that would disappear. But, after a while, Iori couldn't stand the everlasting silence and Riku's stare was nothing short of a distraction for a high schooler's unwanted thoughts. But it was Riku who broke the silence.

"So you met Tenn-nii," he starts to say. "What did you think of him?"

Iori's face twists into a sour grimace. "He was intimidating, to say the least."

Riku throws his head back into short laughter before he says, "I get it. Tenn-nii can be really scary, but he's actually an angel! Well, sometimes." Though he mutters that last part, Iori hears it all the same.

"An... angel?" Iori pulls away at the thought, not believing him one bit.

"Yep! He acts threatening, but he isn't really. Once you get to know him, he's actually really nice. He's a good listener, he'll comfort you when you're sad, and his stories are so fun to listen to. I used to really love them!"

Used to? Iori wants to say but his mouth doesn't let him.

"That doesn't make him an angel," Iori says. "After all, he's nothing like you."

Riku blinks twice. "So, are you calling me an angel?"

Iori can feel his ears warm up and so he quickly backtracks. "That... was certainly not my intention. I wouldn't even dream of it," he huffs, rather defensively, maybe too defensively.