(Covering the whole of this fanfic- Kingdom Hearts belongs to Square-Enix. I don't own the rights, just a copy. Not the characters, either. Not even Cloud. But damnit, you know I'd like to.)

There's practically no yaoi in this prologue-thingummy, but this is a shounen-ai story, and the R rating will be justified in later chapters. First half Sora and Kairi, second Leon and Cloud.

Degrees of Separation

Sora could remember something somebody had told him long ago, how dancing was a little like fucking the music, and he'd never really thought about it until then. He felt awfully small, pressed into the corner, wishing he could be a part of that writhing mass of heat and music. It was scary, their effortless synchrony. Beautiful and ageless. Hell, they probably didn't even exist in the daytime.

He felt invisible, too. Not one person had acknowldged their presence the entire time. Not even a glance or raised eyebrow or sneer. Stupid kids. That would have been ok. At least a confirmation that they'd made it, a story to tell come Monday morning. But all there was was complete insignificance and Kairi tugging at his shirt sleeve. Her lips were moving without words, just spewing the beat. Sora stepped closer to her. As ever, one strand of hair drifted forwards when she leant into him. It brushed his face. He felt her words rather than hearing them.

"I think I want to go, now."

If he looked stupid, he knew Kairi looked a whole lot worse. An hour previously, and waiting on his lawn, he'd figured her innocent, familiar, petite. Now she just looked like a little girl playing jaded, childish, and way, way out of depth. She kept adjusting the back of her skirt and wiping away gloss on her palm, yawning to the side. It was a little pathetic, but Sora wasn't about to protest. He hadn't exactly been having the time of his life.

"So I'll take you home."

She flashed him one of those genuine smiles, the kind Sora had loved for over a decade, and took his hand. He lapped in some air and began to weave them across the floor, wishing he was taller for about the hundreth time that night. This was their no-man's land. Bodies twisted into their path and hands lazily swept their figures. Anything against the mass. Get out of here.

Sora was on the second step when he turned. Kairi had tucked her hands around his jean hooks. The lights were beginning to change, rainbow erray to a blue pulse, strobes spinning too fast to focus upon anything, just flashes of hair and lips and arms. He wanted to fix this picture, because he wasn't planning on ever coming back. The sprayed caricatures on the walls seemed to be dancing, too, the bottles the bar guy was juggling, the mock paper flames circling the dancefloor. Well. That was -

It wasn't movement that caught Sora's eye. More the lack of it.

Anything against the mass. He wasn't dancing or struggling in the crowd, just wandering through it. His expression was sickeningly calm, like nothing would - had - ever touched it, not even once. The lights meant that shadows flickered from one side of his face to the other, savouring their time, slipping beneath his features; pointed jaw, cupid's bow, ice gaze, metallic fringe. He carried the presence Sora would have loved; the dancers subsided completely to let him by. The room was moving too fast to be sure, but Sora thought the stranger's pupils settled on his own for just one moment longer than a skim.

Kairi squeezed his ass.

Sora took the steps two at a time. For the first time, some lyrics broke the beat and chased them out.

Don't you wonder what he looks like in the LIGHT?

---

"That guy," Kairi said. "Did you see him watching me?"

She was walking ahead. Her shoes dangled from each hand.

You?

"When we were about to leave," she turned back, raised her eyebrows. "You were staring at him. The guy with the grey hair."

"I wasn't staring at him."

"But you noticed him, right?"

"I really don't know."

Sora shoved his hands into his pockets and sighed. You could never see any stars in the city. He was cold and dawn was bleeding the horizon, and Kairi was getting thrills about some strange guy who was greying young. Bed was a pretty prospect.

She walked back to where he had stopped and linked his arm. "Some day, we'll laugh about this. The whole night, Decay, everything. We've waited, what, three years to get into that place? And we did."

Sora wished that he could just agree and smile and kiss her, perhaps, but it was difficult. Decay was more than just some club, it had been - pathetic - a goal? Something other than renting videos or driving to the beach with Kairi on a Saturday night. His mother couldn't ask him about it and his father couldn't spin it into his future. Sora couldn't help but think that, somehow, if he had gone alone, everything would have been revolutionary and wonderful. Which was stupid. But still.

"You looked great," he said, to make up for the thought.

"I didn't. But thanks for saying it."

She leant some of her weight against him and he wrapped an arm around her bare shoulders. The orange neon made her skin look pale, almost translucent. Her thighs were patchy with the cold. He held her tighter. Such a sucker for the role of protector. Always. That first glimpse of copper in a grey playground. All the other kids had gone inside to get away from the rain. She was drawing faces in the mud with a jagged stone. Sora had watched from the window, wishing he was out there. He could give her his anorak, or something, the way they did in the movies. That memory always made him blush, and he'd never told her, because Kairi didn't take things like that. She'd look puzzled or laugh or just leave his words humiliated and shrinking in the air between.

Her breath warmed his face and he kissed her slowly. She tasted of sweat, the weirdest contrast to the cold of skin.

"It's been such a great summer."

"I know it."

"I still love you," blue eyes slits in the darkness, angled up towards him. Kairi smiling a little uncertainly, brows creased to the centre.

Sora struggled to conceal the flinch. Yeah, his values were plain and old-fashioned. He could always lie. Not that that was his strong point. This was the moment. The end of seven weeks together. Seven weeks of Kairi telling him that and seven weeks of Sora's mind bawling at him to just. Fucking. Lie. And then there was the doubt racking his mind, the insomnia. Was it a lie? And why? And Dr.Pepper commercials and Tidus' smirk(that one time); "Well, we always knew Sora was too good... for his own good." This was outside of her house. This was the goodbye.

A silver convertable flashed past, engine entirely devouring expectation. As the breath eased out of him, Sora caught their reflections in the tinted glass.

They looked good together.

After all of those corridors, the sun faded the world out. Six, seven. It was getting cooler but the shadows were still bold. This was Cloud's favourite part of the day, and he'd always been able to do that, just smile at the little things, despite everything else. His shoes sent up dust clouds when he dragged them the way adults told him not to. He was meant to be an adult now, but whatever. The street outside was nearly deserted. A few stragglers were leaving with flowers and tears and Cloud wondered what their stories were(to forget your own). He felt sick all of a sudden, and sad. He could fill his head with everything, so much random shit, that was what people said, but in the end, he'd always have to come back to himself.

Leon was sitting on the curb twenty metres away. His posture was relaxed, expression easy, leaning back on his wrists, just waiting. Cloud's smile grew a little bitter. They were both so accustomed to this. Just ignore everything, let it slip away. Perhaps they could just leave, walk home in silence again. A nurse strolled the other way, and Cloud caught her, looking across her face, under her lashes, at that stranger in the leather jacket with the belts and the tan and those eyes. She was thinking about fucking him, probably. People always thought about fucking Leon, when they didn't even know. What he'd just done. All those lives he'd just scattered.

"How long are you going to stand there thinking what to say?"

Leon's voice was flat as usual, but Cloud could hear the dregs of a smile.

"And how long are you going to spend up your own ass before you even look at me?"

Leon shrugged. The smile rose and crossed into profile. "Maybe just a little longer."

He turned around. Even when the world was entirely bleached and dazy, Leon's eyes were the same. There was lilac spreading beneath them, though, the skin there thinner. He looked tired and older than he ever had done before.

Good. And hate youself for not meaning it.

Cloud heard the entrance door close, that nurse starting her shift. Still thinking leather and belts, probably.

"So, he's not going to die," Cloud said. His imagination, or did Leon flinch a little at that? He stepped forward. The burning in his gut, it was hunger, that was all. Cloud felt as though he hadn't eaten for days, but it couldn't have been more than four hours. They had met at two that afternoon, outside the mall, and laughed at stupid jokes and shared a pizza and stumbled back to Leon's and into bed and and and no premonition whatsoever of this, of blood and that poor kid and-

Just hungry.

"If you say you don't care, I swear, I'll never look at you again. But just... gods, Leon, say something! That boy in there, that was you."

"Us," said Leon. A car passed them by, and scattered some leaves up. Leon picked one from his hair and held it in his palm, just looked at it. Cloud clenched his fists. A paper-cut twinged in the sweat on his knuckles.

"Fuck you... hey, fuck you, Leon."

Leon did laugh, then. The absurdity of the conversation, Cloud's expression, acting so innocent, so shocked. That this was how it had all turned out, when really, it had been coming all along. There was relief, too, which he eased out of his face(mask) with an old, practised nonchalance. The guilt that had been eating him up, alone out here, was seeping away. He's not going to die. The brunet stood slowly. One leather boot scraped the pavement. Cloud's head demanded him not to step back, however close Leon sidled up, however their hips touched through denim and leather, however Leon's breath reached his face still smelling of that pizza, eaten when they were both laughing and weightless.

"It's a little late for that, Strife."

The guilt seeping out in Leon's low laughter.

Cloud wanted to smash that cold, detached serenity more than anything. The impersonal use of his surname, like they didn't know one another, like they hadn't been fucking hours before. Back to basics; falling into old habits and coldness. Funny, that this whole mess should occur just when they were getting warmer. Cloud thought that if he were that guy - the one he'd always wanted to grow into - he would probably just let emotion take him and break Leon's jaw aganst the curb. If he were that guy, he wouldn't be standing here in the first place. The sun warmed the right side of his face, and he smiled with a kind of weary disbelief. This was all too big, and it had started so small, months ago, just Leon's eyes and that cold silver kid who had looked so calm, yet must have been dying all along, burning beneath the surface. That silver-haired kid now lying in the hospital behind, in a condition called 'critical but stabilised'. That kid who had physically done it all to himself. Only now did Cloud see how the blame should spread.

When Leon touched his arm and gestured back to the curb, he didn't think. The men stepped out of the light, beneath the shadows of the elms, and sat back down on the pavement together.

... hi! First fanfic. Leon and Cloud's parts will move backward in time, Memento-style. All will become clearer. And the two halves do have a connection, through my favourite KH character. Hey, got to love Riku!

Thanks for reading, and if you love it or hate it, please let me know what you think. -Abs