here it is! my superpower au baby no one asked for. also posted to ao3 under the same title, with more notes.

"You're different," the man said, and the kid, as kids are wont to do, slouched further in his hood and ignored him, walking a little faster and deciding it was best not to dwell on it. And life went on.

Girlfriends break up with boyfriends and childhood friends move away and teenagers say yes to drugs. Students fail tests and children make their mothers cry. A million little apocalypses pepper the day-to-day: kids sneak out at night and best friends fight and hearts are broken, and yet—

And yet—

The planet keeps on. The planet continues to twirl its bittersweet pirouette. The world can end, but life goes on.

Life goes on.

The world, as it happened, did end with a bang.

It wasn't a clap of thunder or the boom of a nuclear bomb, or the clatter of hooves—four sets, trailing death in their wake. There was no rain of blood or lakes of fire. It wasn't even a loud bang, really, because it was—cursory glance at the alarm clock, blinking through the sleep-nearly one-thirty in the morning, and people were sleeping, after all. The apocalypse arrived with a knock on Roxas's door and a weary stage-whisper: "Lights out was over two hours ago, 213. Go to bed."

Roxas was pretty sure he'd been asleep. The knocking had woken him up, in fact, and his sleep-hazy brain still hadn't caught up to what the RA was saying to him. "Lights out," the girl repeated through the door, sounding exasperated. There was a muffled thump that might have been her leaning against the wall. "Come on. Make my job easier."

Roxas sat up, tapped the stucco ceiling, and blinked in the light. It was the middle of the night, wasn't it? He wasn't still dreaming? He was positive he'd passed the lights-out check this time; for once he'd actually been in his room, instead of scrambling in through the window thirty seconds before. For once he was actually getting sleep, and this asshole was waking him up for—for what? Some bullshit rule he hadn't actually broken?

"Don't get your panties in a twist," he grumbled as he slid his legs over the edge of the bed and dropped to the lower bunk, staggering groggily over to his desk. "All right," he said, louder, "fuck's sake." Yawning, Roxas reached to switch off his lamp.

And awareness didn't hit him so much as kick him in the groin, with an alacrity so abrupt it shocked him into full alertness—shocked him nigh literally, like an electric current in his gut—that his lamp had been and was still dark and cold; the light that filled the room seemed to be emanating from Roxas's hand.

Huh.

He turned his palm over, shadows shifting in his peripheral vision. Still glowing.

Huh.

"Roxas," the RA said.

"Uh, yeah," replied Roxas, who was rapidly developing, for once in his life, a zealous interest in following school rules. "Just a sec."

He wrapped his hand in the hem of his shirt; it shone through. He shoved his hand down the waistband of his pajamas, and realised the light came not only from his other hand, but also ran up both arms, illuminating his veins like circuitry. Another time, another circumstance and that might have been really fucking cool, but right now he was verging on panic, and he could have sworn the light was pulsing with his heartbeat, and his primary gut instinct was to blame this all on the RA for waking him up at ass-o'clock and alerting him to the fact that his whole body was glowing like he was some kind of mutant radiation fallout experiment, or—or something.

Fuck. Okay. He needed to—

Roxas dropped to his knees and began digging through the clothes strewn haphazardly across the carpet. Threw some balled socks around, tossed a Smiths t-shirt over a bedpost. Found a heavy flannel and pulled it on, shoving the unbuttoned cuffs down over his hands. Light dulled to a muted glow, he clambered back into his bunk and wrapped himself in his comforter, leaving only his face uncovered, and he closed his eyes. Just until she goes away, he thought, attempting to retain a focus on breathing, slowly and correctly.

The RA's knuckles rapped on his door one last time. "Thank you," she said, not sounding at all grateful. "Don't do it again."

Roxas couldn't hear her footsteps over the sound of his own heart.

And so the apocalypse walked away on the bare feet of a student half-asleep, carried on the rapid current of a confused boy's electric bloodstream. And so life would go on, even if it would not be as before.

Riku was idly ticking his pen along the spirals of his notebook and trying to decide whether the bruise on the back of his hand was shaped more like a heart or a warped Batman symbol when some jock who smelled excruciatingly of sweat jostled against his shoulder, muttered, "Whoops, sorry, man," and promptly occupied the desk behind him with a whump that might have been either his backpack or his ass. As it happened, Riku was moderately prepared to wreck both. He half-turned in his seat—it wasn't worth any extraneous effort—and said mildly, "Watch it, dickweed."

"Up yours," the guy mumbled back, sounding bored.

Riku slouched in his seat and continued scribbling on the edges of his notebook.

Whatever.

He tried, hand to God, to tune into the lecture. It wouldn't do to neglect his grades this early in the year: it was still the first month of classes, and he promised the collective authoritarian entity that was his parents and the school administration he'd do better after his abysmal run as an underclassman. That was the thing about Riku—he saw his promises through. He'd made this one fully intending to keep it, but—but it was economics (boring), and the teacher droned, and no one could decipher his stupid accent, anyway. And he'd stayed up late last night, and the morning sun was in his eyes, and Jupiter wasn't properly aligned with Venus, and he realised he was making excuses for himself and that was a "problem behaviour" they'd outlined for him and made him vow to stop.

Riku decided on Batman, because it was cooler, and began scratching out notes.

And then—because the world desperately desired him to fail, all of twenty minutes had passed before the kid obviously decreed he hadn't had enough, and began kicking the back of Riku's chair.

At first it seemed like he was just adjusting his legs, and Riku was willing to let it slide, even if he had to force himself to pay attention with more gusto than usual. And after a few minutes it died down, and Riku smoothed down his tense shoulders and resolved not to punch anyone and continued on.

Resolutions were made to be broken, though—that's what they said, anyway, and Riku was inclined to believe it when the kid started up again, this time like he was drumming to the beat of some silent song, and every verse riled Riku up more and more until it was all he could focus on and he'd nearly snapped his pencil out of frustration.

Anger. Something else he had to work on.

He let it stew for the remainder of class, as the seconds and minutes lurched on and on and on, and not a word of the teacher's lecture reached his brain or his paper. When the bell finally—finally signalled his impending release, Riku slammed his notebook shut and swivelled in his desk to give this asshole what was coming to him.

But—

What came out of his mouth, instead of the several choice epithets he'd prepared, was a rush of air—and the rest of his anger fizzled and smoothed into calm water.

Riku took in the sun-brown skin, the wild fluffy hair, and those eyes—blue, blue, sleepy and somewhat glassy like he still wasn't quite awake, but Superman blue and crinkling at the corners as he yawned. The slope of his jaw was thinner, cheeks flatter and chin sharper, and he was used to a backdrop of palm trees and beach sunsets, but he hadn't forgotten—

"Sora?"

His jaw snapped closed post-yawn. Pausing in the act of rubbing one eye, Sora said, "Riku?"

"What the hell are you doing here?" Riku exclaimed. Wait—that sounded hostile. Switch tact. "I mean—fuck, I mean, I haven't seen you in—"

"Yeah, like years," Sora interrupted, though it seemed to be from excitement rather than annoyance at Riku's outburst. He leaned forward onto his elbows and grabbed one of Riku's hands, shook it more like an Etch-A-Sketch than a handshake. "Wow! Of all the places!" Sora's hands were everywhere, now on Riku's shoulders, now digging into his cheeks; someone coughed and someone else giggled as they passed by, but Riku ignored it, and Sora seemed to be engrossed in what he was doing, which currently was stretching Riku's mouth into a smile. "Of all the places," he said again. "And you—"

Sora's smile and his hands both dropped. Gears creaking to life in his head, his eyebrows drew together, and yeah, Riku remembered that pout well. "And you never called, or wrote or anything."

"Um, sorry," Riku said. "Neither did you."

"We didn't know where you went! I guess we know now." Sora squinted at him for a moment, head lilting to one side—like a dog, Riku thought, and the thought caught him so off-guard he couldn't stop a surprised laugh from escaping him.

Contagious. Sora laughed, too, the same bright chatter that a lifetime ago had filled long summer afternoons, and Riku felt something warm unfurling in his chest. A spark.

"Lads," said the teacher in his thick brogue, "you do have other classes, I trust?"

Shit. Riku stood suddenly, bumped his knee on the desk. The late bell would ring before he'd make the trek across campus to his next class, and while he wasn't particularly put out by that, he didn't want to make Sora late on what was evidently his first day.

"Shit," Riku said, tugging his backpack over one shoulder. "What's your next class?"

"Um..." Sora checked the palm of his hand, where he'd apparently written his schedule. "Chemistry."

"Ah. World history. Um, meet me at lunch, okay?"

"Okay. Wait—how will I know where you are?"

Riku grinned. He couldn't remember the last time he'd smiled a genuine smile, and it felt good. "I'll find you," he said. "Oh—Sora"—a hand on his shoulder—"before I forget—next class we have together, don't kick my goddamn desk."

Sora was sure he was grinning like an idiot.

Sora was sure people were watching him all but bounce through the halls, humming tunelessly to himself; he heard a couple girls giggle, and he was sure he'd smiled at them, too.

Before he was sure of any of this, Sora was sure the move up here was going to end his life.

However much he'd moaned about it, he hadn't meant that literally, not even to himself; he wasn't going to die, but, after all, drama was where teenagers excelled, and Sora was a professional teenager. Sora felt ups and downs in storms, in waves, and right now he was riding a big one.

He was happy. It was kind of like leaving one home for another, right? Like he hadn't really left.

He had a lot to tell Kairi.

As he promised, Riku sought out Sora at lunch. It wasn't like it was a large school, but the swarms of students in denim and plaid kept getting Sora turned around and he was sure he'd passed the locker tagged with a yellow smiley face—tongue out, x's for eyes—at least four times when he felt himself plucked from the crowd like a fish from a river. There was a fist in his collar, and a combo lock was digging into his back, and he'd whipped up his fight-or-flight response before he heard Riku's voice say, "Come on, Sora."

Oh. Not a fight. Never let it be said Sora wasn't prepared to employ a proper amount of violence when necessary, though. He trudged after Riku, narrowly avoiding an accidental hip-checking from a cheerleader in full regalia.

While Sora wasn't familiar with the history, the school seemed like it hadn't originally been built for its current purpose; it was laid out in several smallish buildings surrounding one main one, with newer-looking covered walkways connecting them. At the centre of it all the largest building housed the main gym, the cafeteria, and most of the senior classes—enough that it was unofficially termed the senior wing, though Sora had a class there, and he'd seen a freshman or two walk into a corner while checking their schedules. The same corner, actually.

Riku led him past the senior wing, past a gaggle of girls in short skirts and high heels, past the football field and the senior parking lot. He paused only briefly at the sight of a boy with wild red hair who was lounging on the hood off a car with a cigarette hanging from his lips, watching the school from his perch like he was looking for something but with all the urgency—or lack thereof—of someone who was willing to wait for it to come to him.

"Is he allowed to smoke?" Sora asked.

"Nah. 'S not his car, either. Come on."

They entered one of the peripheral buildings, and instantly any thought of the guy with the cigarette was blasted from Sora's mind when his eyes were assaulted by a painfully bright mural slathered along the upper wall and bleeding onto the lockers; suddenly he was reminded of the blacklight carpet in skating rinks and bowling alleys.

An involuntary noise of disgust left his mouth; Riku smiled. "It's abstract," he said. "The '80s are alive here."

"If anything deserved a funeral," Sora responded. Once the initial shock fizzled into something resembling a queasy appreciation, he saw more than just the mural: posters advertising drama club and jazz band auditions; music note decorations above a bright red door; paintings displayed in a glass case. "Is this—some kind of art building?"

"Mm-hmm." Riku pointed at each pertinent door as he listed them: "Art room, orchestra room, band room, theatre. You know. Where the hippies thrive."

"Good for them," Sora said, nodding solemnly and appreciatively. "They're not letting the Man stifle them."

Riku's teeth were very white, but his grin was awkward and lopsided like he wasn't used to it. "Oh—you can get good pot here, too, if you need it."

Sora nodded again. "Is that why we're here?"

"Ha! No. Actually, I'm a band geek now."

"Really?" Sora laughed, then figured that was rude and covered his mouth, but Riku didn't seem to mind.

"Oh, yeah," he said. "I'm only second bassoon, but I'm hoping to clinch first chair this year."

Sora's hand was still at his mouth, fingertips curling into his lower lip as he grinned at Riku, who was giving him a sideways look.

"You're fucking with me," he said.

"I'm fucking with you," Riku conceded. "I have friends here." He ushered Sora through an innocuous black door in the corner—it was suspicious in its plainness, but as Sora stepped through it led only to what was apparently the theatre Riku had mentioned: a large open stage, all the curtains drawn back, with splatters of paint strewn across the walls and piles of wood standing by, waiting to become sets. Through a door in the back Sora could see a mirror and a sink with mannequin heads lining it; the one closest bore a painstakingly realistic magic marker moustache.

In the centre of the stage, where Riku was skirting, a couple danced with a grace so effortless it was almost lazy: the girl spun on one foot and bent backward, the boy taking her weight and twirling in a slow arc with her toes still sliding lightly across the floor. He set her upright and she circled him with some move Sora didn't know the name for except that it was probably French, and he noticed she was humming to herself when she caught sight of them and said, "Riku."

"Hey, Aqua," Riku said, as he and his backpack thumped down on a bench in the back and he began to fish out his lunch. Sora didn't know what else to do, so he sat with Riku. "Sora, this is Aqua and Terra. Aqua and Terra, Sora."

"Oh! Sora." Aqua toed at the floor like she was about to take off again—her feet were bare, toenails painted the same shade of blue as the sweater that was riding up her midriff. "You're new."

"I just got here last week," Sora agreed. "But I've been really busy. I haven't even sorted out housing stuff yet." He'd pulled double chore duty for the full week previous so his mother would let him stay with her, but she lived in the city, and Sora knew she couldn't afford to commute just so he could live with her. Besides that, he couldn't drive.

"Oh, you're in the dorms?" Riku asked around a mouthful of peanut butter. "What building?"

Sora shrugged helplessly. "B, I think? I know I have a roommate." For as long as he could remember he'd only ever lived with one parent at a time, but he was looking forward to a roommate. Like having a brother, right?

Riku seemed like he was going to ask further, and Sora really didn't want to rehash this stuff, but he was spared the inquisition when Terra interrupted, "Wait, Sora? Your name sounds familiar." Still mid-stage, he was stretching so thoroughly that watching it made Sora's groin ache in sympathy. "Riku must have mentioned you."

"Um, we grew up together?"

"Oh!" Mischief lit up Aqua's eyes, and she turned them to Terra. "Sora. He's the—"

"Yeah, the one Riku—"

"Okay!" Riku interrupted lightly, hastily feigning a coughing fit that covered even the sound of Terra and Aqua's laughter. In the midst of his bout of theatrics (Sora understood now why Riku had friends in drama), Sora snatched the other half of Riku's sandwich and watched Riku's ears flush faintly pink.

He wasn't sure what that was about, but he was content to watch.

Once Terra and Aqua had quieted down, Riku cleared his throat, chanced a glance at Sora through his bangs, and Sora grinned at him with a mouthful of Riku's food.

Well. There would be time later, Sora supposed, as he listened to Terra tell a very animated, very embarrassing story about Riku, but for now his life wasn't yet over.

Sky: overcast, clouds dispersing into the afternoon in what promised to be the shortest Indian summer this side of the mountains. Car: chilly even through the leather on his back, because the principal did not operate on the same schedule as normal humans and had been parked here probably since the school's inception—since before the fire, even, when it had still been the old train station—engine left to cool under the weight of the clouds he'd been watching. Cigarette: nearly down to the filter, warm on his face if he tilted his head into the breeze, ready to give its life to light up one of its comrades. Clock tower: faint, but there if you knew what to listen for (as everyone did)—tick-tock, tick-tock, the loud, lazy heartbeat of the town.

This was the incomplete inventory of Axel's immediate vicinity—everything he cared about enough to acknowledge, anyway—and ordinarily he would have been content with it. Today, however, there was something missing; in fact, it had been missing all week, and it came in a small, angry, flannel-wrapped package.

Roxas skipping class wasn't an anomaly in their schedule. Axel skipping was a more likely occurrence, truthfully; for all that Roxas was what school administration had termed a "problem student," he was still a dutiful little thing who, despite all appearances to the contrary, really, desperately wanted to graduate. Besides, Axel was much, much worse.

Briefly he wondered whether he might have had some influence on Roxas's behaviour, but then he decided he didn't much care. Life was too short, or whatever, and caring about appearances was too much work.

Maybe he was a shitty friend sometimes.

Axel was lighting another cigarette off the smouldering butt of his previous one when his friends approached from the direction of the senior building.

"Where's your pet?" Larxene sneered—most of what came out of her mouth was a sneer. It was why Axel liked her.

"Clearly he had somewhere better to be," Axel said. "Where've you been?"

"Avoiding your boyfriend. Shove over." Larxene nudged him with her hip, with all the force of the skater she was, and claimed her throne beside him on the hood of Ansem's car. Her skates hung from her backpack and clanged dully against the side of the car, startling a nearby group of freshmen into hurrying on.

Axel, who had given up disputing his boyfriend status, rolled his eyes and said, "Let me guess: he wanted you to make sure I did what he demanded of me."

"Fuck no. He doesn't trust me enough for that. It's just when I saw him this morning he had that 'I need a lightbulb changed' look. Demyx, I swear to god if you play one more note of that rank song these skates are going up your ass."

Demyx twanged a sour note on his guitar, pulled a sour face before saying, "Violence, Larxene, is not the way."

"It's my way if you want to be able to walk tomorrow."

Friendship, Axel thought, listening to them squabble, watching his smoke ring curl gently towards the parting clouds. Maybe he was a shitty friend, or maybe worry was an ugly beast that he didn't want to feed by—god forbid—caring about people other than himself.

Whatever. If Roxas still hadn't surfaced by the weekend Axel would check on him, he decided. It was about time the kid learned what was going on.

Sora and Riku headed back to class, several minutes after the first bell, to the tune of a blaring radio and someone shouting over it, "I slipped and juiced it!"

"Well, un-juice it!" someone else hollered back.

"I'm trying, asshole! I can't just—"

"Hey, keep it moving, sweetheart."

Riku had wandered on; Sora jumped a little when he realised the guy—the one he'd seen before, with the red hair and, if Riku was to be believed, the attitude problem—was yelling at him. His surprise must have shown on his face, because the guy added, "Yeah, you. Keep on keeping on." The girl with him had turned to give Sora a withering look, while the other kid, white-knuckling the neck of a guitar so tightly Sora worried it might splinter, seemed torn between panic and laughter.

Sora waded through some stragglers and scurried back to Riku, who had stopped for him to catch up but hadn't so much as glanced at the scene that was unfolding. When he continued on his step was quicker, and admittedly Sora could be dense at times, but he had lived around Riku for years, and he recognised when someone was on edge.

He asked, "Do you know them? Who are they?"

After a beat Riku said, "No," a funny tight look on his face. "Don't worry about it. They're nobody."

Behind them, the radio shut off. Sora felt a shock like static electricity ruffle through his hair, but Riku didn't seem to notice.

It was Day Six.

Roxas had made a nigh impenetrable fortress of his room, barricaded himself in, and he was willing and equipped to wait out of the end of his days here.

He'd spent Day One in a state of near panic, wrapped protectively in his comforter until that proved ultimately too warm, and then he'd shed his cocoon and panicked some more. By the time lights-out rolled along the glowing still hadn't died down, and he'd spent Day Two much the same way he'd spent Day One. (Night Two, though, had been an adventure; he'd cloaked himself in the thickest, darkest hoodie he owned, tied the hood around his face, and crept down the stairs to the rec room to steal next morning's breakfast. Roxas was good at sneaking around in the dark, generally—an adolescence of delinquency had seen to that—but the extra layer of danger sped up his heart, curled anxiety into his lungs, and that was how he learned his light only grew brighter the more intensely he felt.)

Most of Day Three had been lost in a haze of sleep. At some point the phone had rung and woken him up; he vaguely remembered telling Olette he had the flu, then immediately dropping back to sleep.

By Day Four he was bored enough to do his homework. He'd even begun a project that wasn't due until the end of the semester and that he'd planned to put off until the due date. Maybe the morning of, if he was feeling lucky. And then—it was during a brief, intense flare of frustration at a particularly insidious calc problem that Roxas split his pencil into several parts, the edges scorched like a smouldering match.

(That was how he learned his light was like the sun, that it was heat as much as shine, that it could burn if he let it.)

After that he'd stood in the middle of his room for a while, very still, very carefully keeping his hands, feet, and other body parts—every body part—to himself.

Was he dying? It wasn't like he could call up the doctor, say, "Hey, I seem to be emitting my own source of light and heat," and receive a diagnosis and an ointment that would allow him to rejoin his friends in the outside world. Who would believe him, anyway? In the back of his mind he knew he couldn't hole up forever, couldn't live on pilfered bananas and cereal packets, and he definitely couldn't hide away this school year if he ever wanted to graduate and get the hell out of this town. That small rational part of him was a bitch, though, and more than likely pushy Hayner would drag him back out into civilisation before he worked up the nerve to do it himself.

Roxas wondered how long the flu excuse would hold up. Maybe he should have gone for mono instead.

It was Day Five when the RA knocked again on his door—as if she hadn't done enough to him already—and announced, "Roxas, I've got something for you," and Roxas had swung open the door, snatched the document from her hands, and shut himself back in before she could comment on his luminescence. Then he'd smoothed out the paper and held a hand over it; he didn't need a lamp, after all.

Roxas skimmed over the text. Then, because something caught his eye, he read it over carefully, and read it again. By the third time around a cold dread had taken root in his lungs, twisting his breath and making his chest ache.

Sure, he'd checked the box on the form. That didn't mean he thought they were going to do anything about it.

It was Day Six when Roxas realised that even if he wasn't dying, he was going to be dead when his new roommate showed up and he'd be forced to confront his situation or—or—he didn't want to think about it.

Maybe he'd get lucky and his fake flu would kill him before then.

"...so my mom moved here after they split," Sora was saying, arms held out to his sides to balance him on the railing he walked along. "You remember."

"I remember," Riku agreed. Sora had cried, told his parents he was running away from home, and spent the night at Kairi's. He'd been four or five, if Riku remembered correctly.

"Right. She moved to the city, though, and she and my dad didn't think that would be an appropriate environment for a child or whatever, so I stayed with Dad. And then you left."

That Riku recalled only vaguely. He'd never been big on goodbyes, and he'd been too young to really conceptualise the bigness of it all, that it meant no more jackfruit ice cream on the beaches and no more scaling palm trees to see who could bring down the most coconuts. Kairi had cried then, too, and Tidus had pretended he hadn't, though Riku had talked so much about leaving the islands that Sora hadn't seemed to understand either.

"I moved around with my aunt," Riku said cautiously. "It was—she usually never stayed anywhere as long as we stayed on the islands."

"I know that," Sora said, like he was annoyed Riku expected so little of him.

"So we were in a few places before this," Riku continued. "And then when we got here I convinced her to stay."

Sora slipped off the rail and steadied himself on it with both hands. "In the middle of nowhere?"

"Yeah. Well... yeah." Riku shrugged, watching Sora reorient himself. "I kinda liked it." That wasn't entirely a lie.

"But you don't anymore?"

"What?"

Sora had hopped back onto the rail, but backward, facing Riku.

"You said you liked it," he said. "Past tense."

Riku huffed out a good-natured breath, not quite a chuckle. "Calm down, Freud."

"Huh?"

"Never mind." Riku shoved his hands into the back pockets of his jeans, absently fingering the little silver key there. "What made you move with your mom?"

"Well..." Sora dragged out the word as he turned to face forward again, his sneakers squeaking on the railing. "After the funeral, Mom let me stay with Kairi and her grandma for the rest of the school year, but after summer was over she wanted me here with her."

"The—funeral?"

"Mm. My dad's."

Riku's key clattered on the concrete. As he bent to pick it up he heard Sora's feet hit the ground a few inches from his, felt Sora's eyes on him, and said, "Shit, Sora, I'm sorry."

"Don't worry about it," Sora said. When Riku glanced up Sora was in profile, squinting up at the weak sun, his shoulders hunched up to his ears like he was shrugging; he looked at Riku sideways, and must have seen something off in his face, because he added, "Seriously, don't worry about it. I'm not sad."

Straightening up, clenching his fist around his key, Riku said, "Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Dad was sick for a while. We had time to get used to it, y'know?"

Riku didn't know what to say to that, so he and Sora walked on in silence.

The dorms were only a short walk through town from the school, though the town itself wasn't much to look at: they'd passed a handful of restaurants and shops, a small clinic, the community college, a playground, and an arcade, the latter of which Sora had pointed out with enthusiasm, and made Riku promise to come with him sometime. When they reached the dorm buildings Sora stopped and wrested his backpack around his body to rifle through it, while Riku shifted his weight from foot to foot, watching with vague interest a group of kids kicking a knit bean bag around a boom box in the parking lot.

"Okay," Sora said, attempting in vain to smooth out the crumpled paper he'd retrieved. "Um... building B... second floor... room 13."

"You said you had a roommate?"

"Yeah." Sora squinted at the page, holding it close to his face so all Riku could see was his forehead. "R...Roxas?"

Oh, holy shit, Riku thought.

"Oh, my god," said Riku, slapping a defeated hand to his cheek. "Of course."

"You know him?" Sora peered at Riku suspiciously over the paper.

Laughing a little, breathlessly as much as humourlessly, Riku said, "Yeah," then, "no," and then he carded his hand through his hair and said, "never mind. Just—good luck, Sora. You're gonna need it."

He didn't go home.

There was something eerie, otherworldly about the high school at night, long after even the night staff had retired, no lights but for a single yellow street lamp in the parking lot. Though the past week's weather had been warm, ushering in October was an unseasonable cold front, one that only added to the atmosphere of unease as he slinked between shadows, slid around corners, though he knew—he'd been promised no one would be here but the one who'd contacted him.

And ever in the distance the clock tower tick-tocked, tick-tocked.

His own breath fogged between his face and the key in his palm. If his hand shook when he unlocked the building he could blame it on the cold, could blame his racing heart on the secrecy and how loud his own footsteps echoed in the empty halls. Were he superstitious he might even have attributed the prickle up the back of his neck to someone—something—watching him as he made his trek to the office.

The door was unlocked. The door's hinges were much, much too loud, and he barely had the chance to clear his dry throat before the overhead light was a sharp burn in his eyes; he shut them quickly, squeezed them, threw an arm across his face and called out, "Hello?"

"Riku," the man said, much too calm, and absurdly, Riku wondered how long he'd been waiting here.

"Sir," he acknowledged, lowering his arm enough to begin blinking the spots from his eyes. "If I knew I'd just end up in the principal's office again, I wouldn't have bothered cleaning up my act."

"There are easier ways to meet, I agree." Rising from his seat, the man tapped two fingers on his desk, on the thick manila folder that sat there. "I'm afraid secrecy is of the utmost importance tonight, however."

Riku met his principal's eyes for the first time that evening. "Riku," continued Ansem, "we must speak about Roxas."