Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts. I did, however, pre-order Re:Chain of Memories. I may inexplicably disappear sometime early in December.

Pairings: Riku/Sora, Axel/Roxas

Warnings: Rose-tinted 90's nostalgia, boy/boy situations, the use and abuse of several cliches, unreliable narrators, excessive presence of flannel, Riku driving, Sora expressing badass-ocity, grunge rock, recreational drug use and references to stoner culture, language, conveniently placed trees, cheerleaders in glitter makeup, people who know the alma mater, teenagers, smoking in the boys' room, fistfighting in the boys' room, and more to be added, probably.

Summary: It's about growing up, mostly. Sometimes it's about the guy you totally didn't kiss in the locker room and sometimes it's about the guy who climbed in your window. Sometimes it's about hockey. But sometimes it's about the difference between what's real and what's fake, between what you own and what you fight, between being a boy and being a man.

Casey would like you to note: This fic has now been clocked for 23 chapters. Hooray for outlines! Enjoy the halfway point.

11: Come Out and Play

Riku could probably have said something, but he had two jump rings and a lobster clasp in his mouth, and so he settled for just looking suitably concerned and apologetic. In another set of circumstances, he might have cheered and done a little dance at the muttered announcement that 'Roxas isn't speaking to me,' but in this particular instance he didn't have the heart to celebrate the possible eviction of Roxas from their lives and relationship and general area.

Sora was drooping, visibly. Even his hair was drooping.

He didn't really want to address that possibility--that Roxas's little invasion might not have been so unwelcome on Sora's part. That maybe Sora actually enjoyed his company. That maybe they had become... friends.

Damn. Sora could have been friends with anyone, he had his pick of the school. He could have even been friends with Tidus. Riku could probably handle that, as long as they didn't start singing show tunes together. Maybe he should introduce them.

"Dan and Jimbo weren't out yesterday," Sora noted glumly, indicating the two bugs crawling across his t-shirt--it was the No Fear shirt, Riku noted, the one he'd been wearing that day in August when Riku had first seen him. He looked cold.

It was raining yesterday, Riku thought, but there were still bits of metal in his mouth and he hadn't quite got the hemp threaded through the cord tips. And you look cold, you should come over here and snuggle with me.

Sora continued to sit and droop, however, despite Riku's mental projections. "They were at the pool hall," he said thoughtfully after a moment. "Someone must've been causing trouble. Maybe like... a praying mantis. Walked in like he owned the place and took over their table."

You're so fucking cute, Riku thought at him, smiling around the findings and digging through his backpack for the needle-nose pliers. They'd slipped down under his books.

"So, there was gonna be this big brawl--you know, classic bar fight, broken tables and everything. But the owner--he's a caterpillar, you know--he told them before, if they got in one more fight he'd kick them out and contact the authorities, right?" Sora leaned sideways, elbow propped on his knee and chin in his hand, letting the ladybugs crawl onto his palm and watching them flutter their wings irritably, like they were corroborating his story. "See, Jimbo--he used to get into a lot of trouble. Even went to jail once. And it's not like he meant for any of that to happen, but--it just did, and there were people he had to protect. You know? But that sort of thing just follows you around no matter what, so he had to keep a low profile."

Keep talking, Riku's inner voice murmured, half-caught between paying attention to crimping the ends of his hemp in place and staring at the curve of Sora's neck, how it moved when he spoke and when he breathed. I like your story; I like the sound of your voice.

But Sora fell silent, mouth in a soft line and contemplating the ladybugs as they crawled circles around the circumference of his hand. Back to palm and back again.

He still hadn't spoken by the time Riku had both his jump rings attached, and he was finally able to talk properly while wrangling with the pliers and the lobster clasp. "So, what happened?"

Sora's mouth fell open for a moment before he responded. "I'm not sure."

"Well, Dan's his buddy, right? He'd make sure Jimbo didn't get into any trouble." Riku gave up on the pliers and finished off the jump ring with his teeth, tugging lightly on the clasp to make sure it wouldn't come loose.

"I don't think Dan knows about it," Sora murmured, straightening abruptly and leaning back to release the bugs onto the tree behind him. He looked, if it were possible, even more droopy than he had previously. He collected his backpack with a kind of morose resignation. "Bell's gonna ring."

"Not for another five minutes." Riku reached out and wrapped his fingers around Sora's wrist--not grabbing or tugging, just warm there. "Come here."

Sora looked up at him--paused for a moment, attention darting from his eyes to his lips and back for a moment, a spark of anticipation in the look but then it broke and he shook his head. "Not here."

"I'm not going to do anything, just come here."

When Sora had slid across the grass to his side and was sufficiently nearby, Riku smirked a little and leaned over to clasp the necklace around his neck. He had to lean in a lot--because the rings were being fidgety, and he had to see the back of Sora's neck to clasp it.

He heard the little inhale of Sora's breath right in his ear--so close they could easily have been making out if not for the fact that Riku's chin was rested idly on his shoulder during the process.

"PDA no way!"

"Get a room!"

"Riku," Sora murmured, and he pulled back--reluctantly, because that was all the closer they were ever going to get on school grounds.

Sora's expression was wide open, mouth parted softly (eminently kissable), watching him with a pleased confusion that looked fantastic on him. One hand was up, fingers turning the blue bead that rested perfectly in the dip between his collarbones. "I didn't know it was for me."

"It's always been for you."

He smiled, bright and perfect and still a bit droopy, but it was an improvement. Riku thought he could have improved it even more, if he could pull Sora against his side, pet fingers through his hair and down his cheek and kiss him softly. If Sora could stop thinking about fictitious insect pool halls and blond-and-flannel skaters. The world was unfair like that.

"You want to go out after school?"

"I have a game."

"Ah, right." Riku had enough time to catch Sora's hands, squeeze his fingers, before the bell rang. "I'll come watch."

Sora paused, just in the process of pulling his backpack on, and his eyebrows pulled down and his mouth was open to say something, and for a moment everything froze.

And for a moment, Riku's stomach dropped into his feet. (And the glummest of the vaguely conscience-like voices sighed and shook its nonexistent mental head. Well, here we go, he's going to tell you not to come.)

It was understandable, really. The captain had already made it clear that he didn't want Riku there. Maybe the coach didn't, either. Maybe he was a distraction. Maybe his presence was only causing issues between Sora and his team. It was okay, really. It was probably better.

He had just steeled himself to say this, but at the same moment the flow of time decided to restart and Sora's expression changed back into that smile. "Okay."

Something wasn't right.

Sora knew this with a developed instinct, the sort that made the skin on the back of his neck prickle and his muscles thrum with the tension in the air. Something was off, and it has started sometime on Monday and by Tuesday night had reached a steady buzz that hovered on the edge of everything.

The fight with Roxas didn't help. It wasn't part of the problem, but now when Sora got up in the mornings to dunk his head in the sink the other sink was unoccupied and the dorm room had been vacated before his alarm even went off. Now after lights-out with the creak of crickets outside when Sora's thoughts were piecing themselves together before sleep he was left with them on his own. He supposed he could always apologize or something even though he hadn't done anything wrong, dammit--but Roxas had a strange knack of making sure their paths never crossed long enough for such a thing to occur.

Unfortunately, this one shift in his daily routine--one he shouldn't even have been that used to after only a week--threw the rest of Sora off. Completely.

The hockey team lost for the first time that season on Tuesday night. The captain gave him a dirty look.

On Wednesday morning, the buzz became a low, ominous pulse.

The girl-entity was nowhere to be seen that morning, or perhaps they just never found him in the crowd, but their absence felt more conspicuous than it probably should have been. The press of bodies in the halls seemed thicker than usual and the whispers that sprang up behind him when he passed seemed louder and more directed than before. When he stopped at his locker his shoulders tensed with his back to the student populous behind him, like he could feel a hard stare just between his shoulder blades.

The bell rang before he could make for Riku's locker, so he had to be satisfied with passing his lab desk in the chemistry classroom and muttering, "Something's up," out of the corner of his mouth.

Riku just nodded, like he could feel it, too.

Sora spent most of first period idly taking notes and running one finger over the surface of the hemp and beads circling his neck. Riku attached himself to Sora's side afterwards and they spent most of the five-minute break in between arguing over who was going to walk who to class. Sora totally won because the sign language classroom was on the way to trig. Riku didn't even let him enjoy the victory, just ran a thumb over his wrist and suggested he be careful until English.

Just after second period, though, was when the dam broke.

There was a small courtyard between the math hall and the main building, and although it wasn't necessary to cut through it to return to the senior hallway, it was faster. And so, it was just as Sora was zipping his backpack and shouldering out a door into this small, grassy space that he felt the stares he'd been getting the edges of all day land on him full force.

He froze, exactly where he was, backpack half on his shoulder and the heel of his palm still holding the door open.

There were seven of them--he was pretty sure, at least; there were definitely more than five and less than ten but he didn't think he had time to take a head count. At least two of them were clearly football players. Three of them were the kids who tried to drag him in for a swirly last week (and one of those still had a black eye). One of them, he noted with a mental grimace that didn't have time to make it to his face, was an alternate from the hockey team.

He didn't have time to think about any of this, you see, because Sora was actually a pretty smart guy, and he knew that it was not physically or scientifically possible for him to fight seven opponents at once--two of which counted extra, being linebackers or something.

So, after freezing just long enough to take in their presence and comprehend the situation, he turned on his heel and ran.

The halls were still packed with students shuffling at a slow crawl through the bottlenecked junctions of hallways, but Sora had the benefit of size on his side. He tugged his backpack securely on both shoulders and kept an ear open for the pounding of feet behind him and dove in, wiggling and elbowing his way between the tight pack of bodies, jostling girls who screeched their anger at him and overturning someone's science project and breaking up at least one carefully hidden makeout session somewhere deep in the crowd.

When he broke free into the main hall, he could hear them just a bit farther back in the crowd, shoving people aside to get through. Sora took a break, settled on a destination, and broke into a sprint.

There was another shuffling knot at the head of the senior hall and he had the disadvantage of moving against the flow of traffic, but he'd broken through it before the slam of pursuing footsteps began echoing behind him. He still had a few seconds head start. He raced down the hall, dodging a few stragglers and ignoring the teacher who called from his doorway--something about running in the halls, psh--and skidded to a halt just in time to avoid a complete collision with the bathroom door.

He didn't bother taking in the space around him or waste time hoping he'd arrived at the right bathroom, vaguely aware of the presence of a few other unwanted bodies as the door swung closed behind him.

"Roxas!"

The door to the far stall swung open abruptly with a bang, Roxas appearing with one elbow against the frame, paperback held idly in his other hand, against his leg. Cigarette in his mouth and his blue eyes narrowed. "You got a problem?"

"My problem is gonna be here in about ten seconds."

Fortunately, Roxas didn't waste any of this precious time wondering what the hell Sora was talking about--his eyes widened, just a fraction, and then he pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and turned to address the room at large. "OUT!"

There was a guy at the sinks and another at the urinals and they both looked like sophomores--what the hell were they doing in a bathroom in the senior hall? Nevertheless, they jumped at the sound of Roxas's voice and quickly scurried out. The latter might not even have had his buttons fastened.

There was something to be said for power in reputation.

Roxas was shrugging out of his flannel. "How many?"

"Seven, I think." Sora pulled his backpack off, passing it to Roxas who tossed it into the stall.

"Shit." Roxas didn't like the odds either, shooting a sideways look at Sora and then gesturing with the two fingers holding his cigarette. "Necklace."

Sora reached back to unfasten it, nerves tingling now--the adrenaline rush, that was starting up already--and Roxas snatched it from him, wrapping it and his book up with the flannel, tossing them with the backpack and taking one last drag off his smoke before flicking it in the toilet and pulling the stall door closed.

The last second took the longest. Sora felt it in the way his feet shifted, shoulder-width and fists curling at his sides, licking his lips and tasting the salt tang of sweat already there. Aware that next to him Roxas was doing the same thing, one foot slightly back, rolling up on the balls of his feet and shrugging his shoulders loose, slow curl of smoke exhaled between pursed lips.

Then the door opened.

He was right about there being seven of them--he counted as they walked in, and even with Roxas backing him up that was still three and a half each. Five if you counted the linebackers as two. Roxas was making the same computations at his side, straightening into a defiant stance even as Sora crouched further in preparation.

Roxas's mouth was curling into a smirk, one hand raised to wiggle his fingers in a little upturned 'come on' gesture, just as the door swung to behind their seven opponents.

Bring it.

And at this point, the slow motion camera ground to a halt and the world descended into chaos.

In a fight, the pulse of thought dropped to everything reactionary and sensory. Taste of blood in your mouth. Drip of sweat off your chin. Stale-urine smell and bad breath in the air. Impact noise, grunts and cussing and the squeak of sneakers on linoleum. Someone behind you? Elbow back. Someone in front--punch. Someone has your arms--kick, and fucking kick because if they get your legs, too, all you have to do is wriggle and squirm and hope you can knock them off-balance enough to get something free.

There were three of them--he was pretty sure he'd knocked one of them into a stall, pretty hard because the guy was doubled-over and wheezing and he wondered why there were four of them on Roxas instead of him--maybe they thought the blond was more of a threat. He had a reputation, after all, and Sora was just the transfer student.

They cornered him against the sinks, and none of them seemed to realize just how bad of an idea that was. The smaller one--that was his teammate, Sora noted with a bitter taste in the back of his throat, above and beyond the salt of sweat and copper tang of blood--learned, with a fist to the gut and an elbow in the face when the linebacker caught him by the hair. The third--the one he'd slammed into the stall, was recovering. Back of his hand across a nose and stalking back into the fray.

He couldn't see Roxas, past them. Wondered for half a second if he was doing okay--must be, or Sora would be staring down seven guys instead of three.

The linebacker jerked his head back, hair pulling, and he slammed his fist up under his chin without thinking about it. Felt the bone bruising his knuckles.

Then there was a curse, and the hand in his hair vanished, and there was a loud thud of a body hitting the floor.

And then, there was a pause while everyone reassessed the situation.

Riku stood over the fallen football player (clutching his abdomen and grimacing in pain, starting to push himself back up), shaking one hand idly out of a fist, like he'd stunned his own nerves with the force of the punch. Hair tied back in a quick, messy tail, silver waterfall on the back of his neck. Tight scowl on his face.

Across the room, Roxas took the opportunity to kick the shins of the guy holding him in a headlock.

That signaled round two, he supposed, if one were to be keeping score.

Sora was pretty sure something smashed into his nose at some point, but he didn't take any notice of it. A lot of things were smashing into him, but he ignored them to focus on his two opponents. Two, now--and it seemed they had shifted to set three on Riku, which went to show just who they thought the biggest threat in the room was.

He didn't have time to wonder about that. There was an arm against his neck pressing him into the wall--disgusting wall, tiled and sticky with something that might have been cleaner scum or something else--and he couldn't get the right angle for a hit--

Pow. Right in the solar plexus. Sora felt his body instinctively curling in on itself and that. Fucking. Hurt.

The guy--it was his teammate, noted again distantly--had his arm pulled back for another in the same place, and that was going to hurt worse, might make him puke (like that hasn't happened before, but you're used to being on concrete and not inside, never went this heavy on school grounds--too risky). He thought a knee to the groin might do the trick, push the guy off him, thought he had the right angle to do it too, but--

"BREAK IT UP!"

There was the final bell.

According to school legend, it took five janitors, seven teachers and two vice-principals to break up the fight in the bathroom. In reality, Sora was pretty sure it was only five teachers, two janitors and one very surly-looking vice-principal. That one, in particular, had a hold of Roxas by the scruff of the neck and was keeping him carefully outside the bathroom door. He had blood on his shirt--whose it was was hard to tell--and a purpling bruise down one side of his face, and a split lip.

Riku left more quietly, with the trigonometry teacher's hand on his shoulder. He'd lost a few safety pins, one of which left a gaping rip in the collar of his t-shirt, and some of his bangs had fallen out of the ponytail, and it looked like he'd taken a clean hit to the jaw.

Sora wasn't lead out at all--when the yell came, he just stopped. Waited for the guy holding him to the wall to let go, and just walked out. Stopped next to Roxas and waited, because he knew what was coming next. Principal's office. Parent phone calls. Suspension.

That was it.

Roxas grinned back at the interior of the bathroom, watching their seven opponents in various states of getting to their feet or being held back by teachers. They all had a similar look to them--bruised and bloody, worse for wear.

"Oh, we totally won," Roxas declared, cackling a little and still riding on that adrenaline high. He straightened in the vice-principal's grasp and held a hand out to either side, palm up, one to Sora and one to Riku. "Skin!"

There was a brief pause, because Sora wasn't sure what Riku was going to do--and Roxas didn't seem to care, just stood with all the confidence in the world that their hands were going to connect with his.

And they did, nearly at the same time--brief slap, then turned up so Roxas could return the gesture emphatically. "Hell yes."

Riku smirked, just a little, and Sora grinned at him--and maybe this would turn out all right, after all.

Principal Vandervargen (and yes that was his real name and how a guy with a name like that lacked the basic survival instincts to do something other than work in the public school system the world may never know) had a countenance that Riku had always associated with a giraffe--his neck and nose both being impossibly long and pronounced. In previous years in which Riku spent a great deal of time in the presence of the principal, he had amused himself by imagining him lifting his head over a tree branch and nibbling on leaves. The man had found him highly irreverent due to all the snickering that induced.

And he did snicker, just a little, at the memory itself, but the principal was rubbing his balding forehead and frowning at the stack of files piled on the desk in front of him, and seemed to not notice over the sound of his own, overextended sigh.

Riku resettled the icepack over his chin and waited.

"Roxas," the principal began, lifting the first folder in spindly fingers and letting it crash back onto the desk in the corner nearest the delinquent in question. It was massive, no less than three inches thick with tags and sticky notes poking out in every direction and a few dog-eared slips of paper spilling through the cracks and onto the floor as it dropped into place with a thud. Impressive.

Roxas grinned--he had his own icepack, up against the side of his face and it failed to hinder the magnitude of self-satisfaction in that expression one bit. The principal opened his mouth as though to say something, then shook his head and let it drop back into his hands. Probably reminding himself that this was his senior year, after all. Just one more year, and there would be no further Roxas to deal with.

"Riku," the principal tried next, lifting another folder. Not as massively grand as Roxas's, but still rather impressive when it thumped down on the desk in front of him. About an inch of pink and white reports filling it just enough to bulge comfortably. Those beady little giraffe eyes lifted to study him. "It has been a while, hasn't it? I was hoping I wouldn't be seeing you again."

Riku shrugged in response, just slightly, and caught the corner of Sora's look from the right. Curious. "I thought so, too, but something came up."

"I see." On the contrary, the principal didn't appear to 'see' at all, just gave him a reproachful stare before looking down, two fingers pushing the last, painfully thin and brand-new manila-yellow folder across the surface of the desk. Just a bit, as though to indicate it. "And... Sora."

And in his seat, Sora was scowling.

He had been holding a wad of Kleenex against his nose up until that point, but the bleeding appeared to have stopped and it was now bunched in one clenched fist. He was scowling, and it was nothing approaching any expression Riku had ever seen on that face before. Something dark and resentful. Even Roxas, on his other side, took a pause from his satisfaction to shift a little in his seat.

"I suppose it was just a matter of time," Principal Vandervargen intoned with a giraffe-like sniff, flipping the folder open to expose the two crisp sheets of xerox paper, and one creased leaf from a notebook, ragged edge where it was ripped out, scrawl of handwriting covering the front in number-two pencil.

Sora's fists curled tighter in his lap--and Riku wanted to reach over and just touch him, a hand on the shoulder or something. Something calming, maybe, but he had the distinct feeling, an instinct, that it probably wasn't a good idea.

"I have, here, a memorandum of understanding," the principal continued, "signed by you, Sora, stating that you understand that County High School's street hockey team has a strict, zero-tolerance policy for involvement in hockey gangs."

"There's no gang." Sora's voice was like a bark, just loud and intense enough that Roxas and Riku's heads both whipped to the side to stare at him at the same time. Same level of saucer-round eyes at this. "This had nothing to do with that."

...Gang?

"Is that so." The principal rested his elbows on the desk, long neck leaning forward to settle his chin on his folded and entwined fingers. "Then please, help me to understand. Because from my side of the desk, Sora, it appears to me that I and the administration here have made a grievous error in allowing you to attend this school."

Wait... what?

"I've done everything I said I would." There was a tremor in Sora's voice, just around the edges. His fists were tense on his knees (and fuck, Riku thought, dammit--just let me hold him, just for a minute--) "It was--there were seven of them. They were gonna jump me, what the hell was I supposed to do?"

"Language, young man," predictably was the first thing out of the principal's mouth, but anything that might have come afterwards was interrupted with an abruptness that made the man jerk back from his chin-on-hands poise.

"It wasn't his fault." Roxas was ramrod straight in his chair, nothing like a grin or mischief about him, just a flat and narrow expression. Still with an icepack against his face.

"If Sora had enough time to seek you out, then presumably he could have taken that time to contact a teacher or administrator, who could have diffused the situation before it even began." Principals in general had a knack for finding solutions to your problem after the fact, ignoring, of course, that no self-respecting male on the planet would go running to an adult when faced with a fight. Vandervargen made this assertion with a nod of his head, settling back in his chair and folding his hands over Sora's file. "I will not hear excuses for why the fight occurred. You all know the school rules perfectly well."

Roxas made a noise of exasperation on one side of Riku and Sora was still clenched and scowling on the other. The principal looked from one of them to the other then finally settled on Riku himself, beady eyes thoughtful. "You don't have anything to say about this?"

He tongued the roof of his mouth, shooting a look over to Sora but there was no attention there. Riku didn't like this side of him, not one bit. "Sora's right, this had nothing to do with hockey or a... gang, or whatever." His fingers caught inside a hole in the hem of his shirt--lost another safety pin there--and tugged on it idly. Watched the principal's mild interest and how Sora's shoulders lost just a little bit of tension. "It had to do with me."

Vandervargen blinked once, twice. Then his mouth fell open, giraffe-like stupidity in the expression for a moment before he caught himself, schooled his face into neutrality and straightened his tie. "I see. That... rumor."

And just like that, Sora's entire demeanor changed. Body relaxing and curling back towards itself, back against the chair, head tilted down and something embarrassed in the red around his ears. Fingers uncurled and twitching absently against the wad of Kleenex in his hand. Still a bit of blood under his nose. Riku had the urge to reach out, catch his hand and twine their fingers together--hand-holding was within the acceptable limits of PDA, and there was nothing in the student handbook specifying gender. Riku had checked.

(You should totally do it,) the voice in his head that was nothing approaching a conscience informed him.

And so, of course, he did. Reached out, slipped his fingers under Sora's palm and tugged his hand down between them. Curled their fingers around each other. Little squeeze, just for comfort, and rubbed his thumb against Sora's. Assurance that this wasn't just for show.

(Hahaha, look at him squirm!)

And yes, the principal was doing something approaching squirming. Shifting in his seat and adjusting his tie some more and resettling the open folder in front of him--and it had to be killing him that he couldn't make them stop. They weren't breaking any rules. So there, old giraffe man.

Roxas snickered, and for a moment Riku thought about high-fiving him again.

Vandervargen cleared his throat a bit too loudly. "I suppose that would result in some hostility from certain other students." And that was probably all the concession they were going to get, but the man was flipping Sora's folder closed and Riku figured it was enough. "I've been in contact with your coaches regarding this matter. Riku, you've been suspended from the next meet and benched for the one after that. You're still expected at practice and it's my understanding that the team has its own brand of punishment for situations like these."

Oh yes. Doggie-paddle laps, those were always fun. He'd been stuck with that way too many times already. "Yes, sir."

"Sora, your coach is placing you on full suspension for two weeks."

He was going to argue--was tensed to do it, Riku could feel it in the way his palm stiffened. He gave Sora's hand another squeeze in warning, because he knew why, knew there were only three weeks left in the season but there was no sense in arguing now, just when they'd convinced the principal to not take any drastic measures. "Okay."

Vandervargen's gaze landed on Roxas automatically, being the only other person in the room. Roxas grinned. The man made another noise of interminable exhaustion. "And finally, though it should go without saying at this point, you are all suspended for the remainder of the school week. Your parents have been called and those adults who are unfortunate enough to be responsible for you three are on their way to pick you up." He collected the folders back together, tapping them even and laying them flat on the desk again. Shot one last unsettled look at Sora and Riku's entwined hands and one last defeated headshake at Roxas. "Now, get out of my office. I would suggest that you never come back, either, but I suppose that would just be wishful thinking on my part."

The giraffe-man didn't watch them leave. If he had, he probably would have noticed (with a sufficient twitch of vaguely repressed discomfort) that Riku never let go of Sora's hand.