Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts. Also, I do not own chocolate fountains or extremely expensive gemstones.
Warnings: This fiction contains and is not limited to boy/boy moments, the use and abuse of stereotypes, hints at original pairings, very despicable people, emo-Riku, lustful teenagers, underage drinking, occasional mixes of the last two points, questionable situations, morally ambiguous choices and a few, occasional and really shy attempts at humor.
Author's notes: I'm really glad that the first chapter was well received with a few great reviews. It may not seem much, I know, but there's nothing like a few words of encouragement for a writer. Thank you again and have fun with Chapter 2 ;).
Reviewers:
- Logan Jindrak X: Thanks a lot, I tend to focus a lot (even too much) on dialogues, so it's good to know that someone appreciates that. As for the brunet/brunette thing... don't really know, but I've seen it used both ways, so I stick to the one that seems more correct to me.
- SilverHairedAngel: You're quickly becoming one of my bestest reviewers, glad you liked all three of my stories. And yep, I write only High School AU, I like too much that setting, I try to focus on different aspects each time, however. Thanks a lot as usual, great to have you on board for this ride (and, rest assured, it will be a wild one ;).
- Theblackcoat: So cool to see you back, it's been a long time! Your reviews are always detailed, thanks a lot. You're right, it felt strange at the beginning to write Sora and Riku this way, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of it, I'm simply trying to focus on different sides of their characters.
- LitteralFandomTrashXD: It's always a pleasure to meet new people, glad you're liking this story. And glad to play a part in postponing your impending doom ;).
- Guest: ...and here we go!
Chapter 2: Magnet Spiral
Sora was sitting quietly on the edge of the window of his literature class. Despite being the five minutes break between classes, he was unusually quiet, for once letting his friends talk and choosing to focus on his own thoughts. Which in the last hours had happened to revolve around the boy that he had met that same morning.
'Riku... What a strange guy.'
"So-o-ora, are you listening?"
Kairi's high pitched voice brought him abruptly down on Earth. "Uh, sorry, can't say I was. What did you say?"
She sighed. "No wonder everyone calls you sky-boy... I asked if you remember our date this afternoon."
At the brunet's quizzical expression, the girl sighed again, but her voice betrayed a trace of excitation. "This afternoon? Shopping? Buying some clothes? Something new to wear for Larxene's party? Any of that ring a bell?"
"Oh, was it today?" a far less enthusiastic Sora replied. "Do you really need me for that? And... wait, was it a date?" he asked without the slightest trace of embarrassment in his voice.
Kari blushed slightly. Or at least pretended to do so. "Oh, come on, you promised. It will be fun!"
Somehow, Sora doubted it. For once, he hated to go shopping, for second, there was a problem in the company. He was the kind of guy who could make friends with everyone and it wasn't like he had something against Kairi. But, for some reasons, he just couldn't help but feeling uncomfortable around her. It felt like he had to always weigh all of his words, like she could use something he says against him at any moment.
"You're not nice, Sora!" she said, uselessly trying to sound disappointed. Then her expression changed slightly. A nearly imperceptible change, but Sora caught it all the same. "Anyway..." she started innocently. "I saw you talking to Riku this morning..."
"Yep, what about it?" he asked, not really liking the girl's tone of voice.
"Nothing." She smiled viciously. "I was just wondering what did you find so interesting about him..."
But he didn't have the time to answer, being interrupted by the sudden arrival of a tall muscular blond boy.
"Ah, just the man I was looking for!" Seifer smiled. A shark-like smile.
His authoritative voice boomed in his ears, but Sora felt relieved at the change of subject and pretended not to see Kairi pouting next to him. "Kairi!" He grinned. "Seifer is looking for you."
The girl's face transitioned from pouting to frowning so quickly that Sora decided it was better to cut it short with the jokes. "Hey, Seifer, what are you doing here, you didn't take literature classes, right?"
The blond boy looked around him, analyzing his surroundings. "So, you really did it in the end."
"Yeah, it wasn't easy, but I survived a full year listening to prof. Zexion." Sora answered, pretending not to realize what Seifer was talking about.
"Don't play dumb, you talked to Riku this morning."
Once again, Sora was starting to feel unease. He had thought to have left that awful feeling in his old school, never to be experienced again, but here it was again. He shook off his head a few bad memories. "Really? I didn't realize it by myself, thanks for telling me." From the corner of his eye, he could see Kairi smiling viciously.
Seifer exploded in an over-the-top laughter. "Oh, man, you're so funny. That's what I like most about you." The brunet relaxed a little at those words. "Just out of curiosity..." the tall boy continued, exhibiting his smile once more. "Did Riku already made a move on you?"
Sora's heart skipped a beat. What did that sentence mean? "A... move?"
Kairi got closer to Sora's ears and started talking in a conspiratorial tone. "Riku is gay, didn't you know it?"
For a few seconds, a freezing silence descended upon the three of them. Sora was the one to interrupt that uncomfortable moment. "Wait, that's... that's just not possible. He doesn't look... feminine at all..."
"It's not like it's our opinion, you know? He himself admitted it."
The brunet looked at the two of them, suspiciously. Sora had managed to make himself pass off as kind of a simpleton, but in truth his actions had always been far more calculating than what it looked like. At that moment, though, the mask of the trusting, simple and naïf boy was completely gone, just to leave place to a doubtful and untrusting Sora. "Come on, you're just making stuff up to mess with me."
"If you don't believe us, just ask anyone else. They will tell you the same." Seifer's grin was wider than ever. "Of course, I would understand if you want to retreat from..."
"No!" Sora exclaimed firmly, without hesitation.
Kairi studied the two of them, unable to understand what the two boys were talking about. "'Retreat from...' what, precisely?"
But her question was fated to stay unanswered, as prof. Zexion chose that moment to come back to his class, not-much cordially brushing away the outsiders that didn't belong in that class, Seifer included.
The brunet peacefully regained his place, luckily enough on the farthest row from Kairi. When he finally reached it, he was welcomed by a blond short boy.
"What did you say to Kairi to piss her off that much?" Roxas asked calmly.
"You could tell her mood from here?" Sora replied, not really surprised at the other boy' observation skills. Despite being only a few days from his arrival on that school, he had already noticed Roxas' surprising ability to assess situations quickly. He liked him, he was calm, reserved and felt like someone he could trust.
Of their group, he didn't feel comfortable around Kairi, and Seifer was way too much competitive for his tastes. Axel and Saïx spent most of the time by themselves and he had never really got the occasion to do more than circumstantial talk with Larxene and Hayner.
Roxas, on the other side, had been the first one he had spoken to. And not only in their circle of friends, but in the whole school, not to say he was the one to introduce him to their group. He struck him as a kind of shy and reserved guy, somehow out of place compared to the others.
And so, Sora felt that he could trust him to get the answers that he wanted.
"Roxas... do you know a guy named Riku?"
Sora observed carefully his friend's reactions, but the only thing he noticed was his smile dropping.
"Sure."
Considering that it didn't look like he would spill anything else spontaneously, Sora decided to quickly get to the point. "Is he gay?"
Roxas looked away. "Yep, he is. Why do you care?"
Well, that was a good question. In fact, Sora knew way too well the answer to that question, but he decided that it was better to avoid answering directly. "I just wanted to double-check. I take what Seifer says with a grain of salt."
"That's quite nice of you." Roxas retorted, getting his smile back. "I take what Seifer says and throw it in a trash can, usually."
Sora found himself laughing sincerely.
He spent the rest of the lesson talking with his deskmate of all and nothing: after all, he had already listened for a whole hour to prof. Zexion, his mind wasn't ready to endure an encore.
An hour later, the suffering finally ended. Roxas had offered to go drink something after school, but the brunet had to reluctantly decline: Kairi was waiting for him and he had the certainty that she wouldn't accept a refusal as an answer.
And so he had reached her and was now walking through the roads of Twilight Town.
"You see?" the girl chirped in an excited voice grabbing the boy's arm. "After two hours of literature, you finally got your prize and got to hang out with me."
"As to say from the frying pan to the brace..." he smiled, making it looks like a joke, even if it was a pretty accurate reflection of his actual feelings.
"First of all I want to go check some new clothes at 'Rinoa's'." Kairi kept blabbering without really paying attention to Sora's words. Or, again, pretending to do so.
"Whatever." he quickly answered, not really caring where they were heading for and hoping that in half an hour top they could get over with that.
"Hey, boy, are you alright?"
Riku shook himself, unsure what to answer to the unknown man who had addressed him. What did he want? Why was he talking to him?
"I was starting to worry, you were spacing out for a while." the man added, answering the boy's unspoken questions.
"I'm fine." he finally answered before walking away. He was clearly irritated to have been disturbed, then again, he had to admit that a teenager who had spent the last ten minutes staring in front of the window of a jewelry was a little bizarre, not to say suspect.
Not that he was interested in the jewels on display, of course. But, as in all the rest of the day, Riku was finding more and more difficult to stay focused on something without his mind starting to float elsewhere. More precisely to the boy he had met that same morning. Everything around him was making him think of him: a chocolate fountain in a shop, a bizarre cloud in the sky and now a blue topaz, the same color as those troublesome eyes.
'Come on, man! Stop thinking about him: he's a bad, bad guy and you hate him, remember?'
But despite all of his efforts, the smiling face of the brunet kept popping in his head. He was sure that if he had kept going on like that, he would have started to get visual hallucinations of him. In fact, he was already starting to get auditory ones: he could perfectly hear that irritating, slightly high-pitched voice of his calling his name.
'Wait a sec...'
Riku turned back just in time to see, much to his horror, Sora running towards him all the while yelling his name.
"Riku! Man, it's great to see you!"
The silver-haired boy looked at him, without the slightest idea of what could he want from him. The second he reached him, though, he lowered the volume of his voice considerably.
"Please, save me! It's been two hours that Kairi is dragging me around shops to buy stuff!".
Riku looked at the begging brunet icily. Not only he had the guts to keep on talking to him, but he was even asking for his help. Why should he help him?
The familiar voice of a girl reached them, making him unconsciously grit his teeth. "Sora, don't leave me alone like that, how do you think I can carry..."
Kairi stopped mid-sentence when she realized who the brunet was talking to. Her smile instantly disappeared from her face. "Riku, it's been ages, what a pleasure to see you."
She was clearly lying, the reason why the two of them hadn't talked to each other in months was because she had started avoiding him since 'The Day', more precisely from the moment he had been outed.
Riku didn't even bother to answer. The situation was awkward, but he didn't want to make it easier for her.
Same as that morning, Sora was smiling widely, totally oblivious of the tension between the two of them, his eyes darting forth and back, waiting for someone to say something. Considering nothing like that was going to happen, chose that moment to play his card. "I'm really sorry, Kairi! I had forgot that I promised Riku to spend the afternoon with him to... uhm..."
He looked at the upperclassman, his big blue eyes begging for help. Riku sighed. "To help me find a birthday gift for my brother, remember?"
"That! Precisely!" Sora confirmed.
Kairi was glaring at Riku so intensely that he doubted she had really listened to a single word. Nevertheless, after a few interminable seconds of staring at each other, the girl simply gave up.
"Alright then, see you tomorrow, Sora." And without saying another word, she just walked away.
Riku was ready to do the same, but it didn't seem like the other boy had any intention of leaving him alone.
"Thanks, I owe you one." he said, trotting happily behind the upperclassman. "So... what are we going to buy for your brother?"
"I don't have a brother, I'm an only child." Riku kept walking, without bothering to face Sora. "And Kairi knows that really well."
"So you lied! That's not really nice, you know?"
"I could fill a book with all the 'not-really-nice-stuffs' Kairi did to me, 'you know?'"
"Well, you should show her that you're better than her, then, don't you think?"
At those words, Riku stopped walking: Sora was starting to sound a little too much like his mother for his tastes. He didn't turn to look at him: he knew that if he had met again his eyes he might have given in. "Don't you have somewhere else to go? I'm sure people like Seifer are dying to spend their time with you."
As an answer, Sora walked past him and turned around, forcing the older boy to look at him. "I thought you said it wasn't your choice to spend your time all by yourself. I'm just returning the favor of saving me by keeping you company." he answered grinning.
"That doesn't mean that I like having you around." That last sentence came out a little bit too abruptly, even for Riku's standards. When he saw that the smile on the younger boy had completely disappeared from his face, he couldn't help but feel a little guilty.
"...it's ok then. I'm sorry, I didn't think I was bothering you. I'll leave you alone, if that's what you want. Thanks anyway."
When he realized that Sora was walking away, Riku instinctively grabbed his arm. "Wait!"
The brunet obeyed immediately, surprised by the strength of the grip. Riku let go of his arm immediately.
"I... I mean..." Damn, why was that boy making him feel that much uneasy? "You can come with me if you want, but I don't think you'd like where I'm going." he finally added, resigned.
But Sora's face was already glowing with joy. Without adding anything else, the older boy resumed walking, the brunet peacefully following behind.
End Notes: And that's the end of Chapter 2. For those who are not used to my style, with the exception of Dearly Beloved, I usually write my stories from different points of view. Sora, in particular, is kind of peculiar, as he is seen as kind of spontaneous from other characters while, in truth, he is quite scheming when the POV shifts on him.
Until next chapter.
Preview: Sora and Riku are finally spending some time together. But what will happen when Sora discovers where Riku wants to bring him?
Next chapter (07.08.2020): A Game of Trust
