A Series Of Fleeting Looks Chapter 1: Singing Jewelry Box, Whisper Whisper, a kingdom hearts fanfic

Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts is owned by Square Enix and Disney. And all those other companies that lent their resources and characters to the game.

Warning: Yaoi. (Boy's love.) Perhaps some implications of darker content.

Not much to say, except that it's been doodled in on-and-off for a while. You know, a few sentences one day, a short paragraph the next. It'll be continued. If I manage to, I'd like to get it up to one hundred glances.

I don't expect anyone to understand it. xD But if you do – you're absolutely amazing. I don't think I understand all of it, and I wrote it. --; But if you read through it, you should find a plot. Yes.

Don't think, just read. Expect typos – a crapload of typos.

A Series Of Fleeting Looks

The First Twenty Glances

LeonRiku moments, all piled together to form a semblance of no plot.

When they meet, it's on a rainy day; they type in which hair is plastered sorely on a person's forehead and pants which they both deemed too tacky to be cuffed were soaked, leaving a trail of dampness trailing up their legs and touching their knees. And it's a day when they're both running in their own way, not literally, but either from or out of a relationship or away from the realities of people who know who they are.

Gray eyes meet green and the faces attached to the eyes gestures a slight nod with morbid understanding.

Splotches of shallow, murky, and sketched water line the streets and the gutters in which the younger's bag fell. It was of useless content anyway, Riku thinks, and how it was of much less significant now that the day was ending.

He doesn't normally let himself be bought – or even give off the impression that he's that type of person, but the desperation that meets his relenting eyes breaks his resolve.

That night, when legs are tangled in a personal yet not embrace, and the older but still young man is pooling through his troubles, Riku gets up and walks into a neatly tiled bathroom.

He uses a brand new, unwrapped toothbrush that he found in the cabinet, and muses lightly that Leon tastes nothing like the mint toothpaste he uses on the counter. The brunette tastes much different – like a shot of espresso too early in the morning, but bitter enough that it addicts you.

After a moments debate, he takes up rooming on the couch adjourning the master bedroom. Riku hugged a pillow in his arms as replacement – it was hot enough to go without covering.

Leon doesn't say it, but he only sleeps after realizing he didn't hear the sound of his door opening.

The next time they meet, it's in a street not three blocks away from the previous one. They both have hair a bit longer and egos cut a bit shorter than before. Struggles that children were never taught did that to a person.

Leon's mind jumped to conclusions a bit too early – it was never in his nature to sit and listen. And the firm, steady grip on his wrist convinces Riku that the older man still has some things to work out, and his greenish eyes manage not to look back at respective pairs of sapphire blue and piercing green a shade off his own watching him go.

They're not sure whether or not to stop him.

They have a heart-to-heart chat, remarkably soothing and deep for two complete strangers who shared nothing but a single night. Nothing else happens that evening, except glasses tinkling in comfortable near-silence and unsteady whooshes of the cushions as they breathe in air from the removal of their weight.

But it proves that they don't need that one tie to hold this something together.

The two don't exchange trivial things such as addresses or cell phone numbers, because they expect that they would never meet each other again anyway. This second time is a mere coincidence of providence and crossed pathways.

The next morning, Riku leaves the apartment dryer than before and hair just a bit straighter. His wallet sits full in his pocket while he chews on another bite of bread, with more waiting for him in his hands.

He doesn't usually accept charity, but there really isn't any other word for it.

When Riku takes his order, Leon doesn't blink.

It's nice to see that the younger teen took his last conversation to heart, he thinks. Even if at first he had been utterly mistaken and assumed the worst, as he had with his other friend. Except, with her it was different – she really was caught up in the bad side of the city.

He got there too late.

Leon moves up in line – there's only another person in front of him now; someone with a brown, tall hat with fringe on the side. A cowboy, he thinks. He's close enough to hear the person order a tall order of fries with a drink on the side.

Not real food. But when Riku hands back the man's change – bills under coins, and the receipt on top – the light-haired man tilts his head in the teen's direction and gives a smile of thanks. Riku nod's back in rapid succession, and Leon feels a twinge of worry again.

Or jealousy, he can't differ the difference.

But Riku's clothes are clean and laundered, and there are the only the faintest signs of creasing – which showed proper habits of ironing. So he leaves the restaurant with his bag of food in hand and without a single greeting but a nod.

They know, and they are the only two who need to.

Riku couldn't get over the fact that he had been kicked out.

Granted, he wasn't a street child by blood, and neither was he ever hungry or uncared for. (Neglected perhaps, but always well provided for.) But he was one at heart – as cliché as it sounded - and he saw that and so did the others, but in an attempt to soothe the jealous wraths of other groups of them having support from higher-ups, he left.

He left to level the playing field, and in sacrifice he wasn't allowed to play any longer.

Axel watched him leave, because it reminded him so much of the situation with Roxas and stroke a chord of his own unhelpfulness. That was all it was, a desire for a change in situation, but not being able or influential enough to change anyone else's mind.

Riku knew what he was doing. So when he saw the spike-styled redhead begin to rise to his feet in protest, he shook his head ever so slightly. And since no one was so intent on his feature at the moment but Axel himself, no one but them noticed.

The hoary-haired teen walked into a familiar hotel and stared straight back at the doorman's suspicious glance. He had found that if he glared back long enough, most people would look away. The blue-uniformed attendant was no difference, and looked off with a snort of indignity.

Suite 14, a number higher than the people he had just left, was oddly located on the eighth floor.

Knock knock.

The door opened to the same stranger that he had known for the last three months. There was an odd look as he was let in this time – because more than twice meant a habit. And neither of them knew if they were willing to get used to that.

They exchanged numbers this time, because even if they didn't need to, it was reassuring to have something to fall back on.

Neither admitted that the thought had crossed their minds for some time now. People often thought alike, after all.

He was walking, and the fake-wood floor was so hot against his bare feet. Unnaturally warm, as if he had stepped onto heated, dying embers that had once been infused with coal.

Bars were a place where people often lost their shoes, he mused. Whether from lack of consciousness or from their own inattention – which Riku supposed was the same in both ways.

But they were nice places, because they offered refuge. No one was idiotic enough to visit the same place more than twice a week, because then a face was but on honorable memory and would be sought after.

In a bar, with the lights melting girls' makeup and beads of sweat were a person's best friend, Riku felt quite at home. No expectations.

He sat with his feet suspended. Not that the stool would let his legs reach the floor anyway, but it amused him to try.

"Here. From the guy who down the isle."

Watching as the attendant pouring him a shot of the seemingly clear substance, Riku turned to glance at the door, seeing the end of a telltale black jacket.

Riku was one of the idiotic ones. And he preferred it that way.

A lot of people cleared out when a police car's siren flew by.

Maybe it was his own obvious fear, but that didn't stop him from worming a way into the older man's blankets and cocooning himself in the dying heat.

The heat from the expensive cotton traveled through his arms and into his abdomen.

Riku could hear the sound of a shower running, and he imagined soap bubbles and bubble baths he hadn't seen since he was a child. He had an odd green foaming liquid back then – so much different from the bars of scent Leon preferred to use.

When the brunette comes back to find his bed fill and his sheets monopolized, he doesn't say a word and Riku doesn't look up. He can feel a faint heartbeat at his back, but he can't tell if that's the other man's or his own whimsical imagination.

Riku's head hurt from a recent and not-so-obvious hangover.

He woke up two hours later with a fainter pounding on the side of his forehead. Riku raised a hand to the stop and felt it pulsate and throb. His own hand felt too hot.

Leon offered him a piece of dry toast and a glass of water. A nibble didn't make him throw up, so he took a bigger bite and washed it down with a sip of water.

Previously that afternoon – no, it was yesterday - Leon received a call and a blurry voice message. When he got there, he took the bottle from Riku's unresisting fingers and whistled as he read the label.

Expensive shit.

There was something that Leon hated about looking in a mirror. It was like looking into a distorted reality that wasn't his, like looking at Squall, and he didn't look often because he didn't know how to be jealous of himself.

He hadn't seen the light-haired kid in about a month now, and was slowly settling back into an image of normality. Or as normal as his life could get, with the amount of gunshots that he himself was used to.

The city life was never dull, after all.

His own trusted gun lay at easy rest in a drawer near his bed. There was another sitting and collecting dust in another drawer at the edge of his kitchen. Next to the utensils.

Leon figured that if his suite was ever ransacked and he ran out of bullets, he could toss knives at the intruder and hoped he hit them.

He wondered if aiming a gun and throwing a table knife required the same skill.

…Not that he expected anyone to be insane enough to climb through his eight story floor window. That didn't explain the barred windows and wire.

Paranoid? Perhaps. But as long as the paranoia didn't get in the way of his daily activities, it didn't hurt to take a few minutes of his lifetime to take…preventions.

It seemed that Cloud had been made the official leeway between himself and the…club. In decent terms.

Really, the blonde was one of the few members that Riku could stand.

It wasn't a relationship that either of them acknowledged. Not really. It was messaging for events to stay clear of, or others that he could safely walk through when it was the organization's business alone. Occasionally there was a voice speaking out of his phone, but those were rare.

Cloud didn't like phone calls, and avoided them as often as he could. Riku decided to be considerate and dropped the blonde a number to his own personal voice box.

His cell phone was empty afterwards. It looked like the blonde had taken his unspoken message and passed the digits onto the rest.

Only three people used his old number now.

He had to keep reminding himself that Riku was a child.

But sometimes it was hard, because through random conversations the teen spoke like no child could. He had a definite type of speech that only changed when he was unsure – and there weren't many things Riku were unsure of.

And times when Riku rattled off information that he was sure most people didn't know, such as the amount of blood a person has in their body or where the best place to hit nerves depending on situations, Leon knew that Riku was trying to push him away and didn't let it happen.

Rather, he responded in hand, enjoying the way a puzzled look descended on the kid's features and the way a mind inhaled new information. Learning.

He wasn't dependent on the teen, far from it. But if anyone was going to be on the pushing end, it was going to be him.

10.

It reminded him of when he was younger, and when his mother would smooth his hair back and tuck it behind his ear. It reminded him of warm milk mixed with cocoa powder to create something that was neither.

Of his father and shreds of paper littering the work floors. How he took up a pair of plastic scissors and attempted to make them beautiful – to make them into shapes and chains.

And of cruel, nylon nets and wavering wings aflutter all over the hills. Himself chasing them then letting them go again, because when they were put in jars they didn't last long – didn't glow anymore.

But that was when he had been five.

Then there had been a fire.

Riku shivered and curled into himself a bit tighter.

He hated nightmares. They woke up a person to reality. They reminded him of what home was like.

11.

When Riku found out that the brunette could cook, and had a fully stocked kitchen, he promptly sat down at his kitchen counter and demanded food.

Not only that, but food of a caliber that Leon himself was used to.

And when the teen had stared at the steaming red thing that adorned his plate, he couldn't help but stare. Leon pretended not to notice as he put down his own plate, which was not red, and two cups.

So Riku shrugged – he had never seen a poison of such an obvious color – and took a bite. His eyes widened in such a way that Leon pushed down a laugh, and the older man watched as Riku took a gulp of soda.

Soda – child's play – right on top of the spiciness on his tongue causes it to burn further. Riku grimaced. Not a good idea. …But according to Leon's smirk, that had been the male's idea all along.

Growling, he switched his plate for Leon's, and Leon only shrugged. Milk – more child's play – apparently went well with spicy food.

12.

Leon wrote with his left hand. Riku wrote with his right.

They both noticed that on the occasion that they were asked to sign a release form. The duo subconsciously added that to the list of things they knew about the other, the list that they both kept without the other's notice.

Later, Riku mused that in the span of these few meetings, he had gotten to know the other somewhat further than he knew those from his childhood. Perhaps it was because he was done changing. And it was different from growing up with someone, because during that time you're there to see them change, and it makes you uneasy.

He opened the door. Speak of the devil.

13.

Leon's doctor didn't visit anymore.

He used to make home calls – he was that much of a higher class that he never scheduled appointments – only gave hints of dates and showed up on his door step.

But lately, since Leon hadn't had any life-threatening situations – he hadn't felt the need to go bungee-jumping, at least – the doctor made it his job to bother the other, more mental patients that he had taken under his wing.

Riku had raised an eyebrow when he made a bonfire of prescription receipts that he had never used. It was on the balcony of his suite – he should have worried that he was going to burn down the building but he didn't. The fire was easily doused by dragging the kitchen sink's stretchable faucet to the area and letting the water reduce it.

He ignored the intent way Riku studied the fire.

When they went inside, Leon sat on the sofa and looked up expectantly.

He never really liked answering those silly, rhetorical questions – but he felt it was needed at the time.

14.

Piercing wasn't something that was necessary. Or even something pleasant. They were more a symbol of slavery, Riku himself thought. That didn't stop him from getting a cheap not-ruby stud embedded in his left ear.

He went to a less shoddy place afterwards and bought himself a pair of real black-silver earrings fitted in small bands. They had an odd, simplistic design that caught his eye easily. And they felt right.

Riku knocked on Leon's door and asked him if he had disinfectant. Riku himself didn't keep such things stocked, but he figures with Leon's habits, he might have.

Leon had antiseptic for wounds, but the teen figured it would do and secluded himself in the bathroom. He poured the liquid onto his skin and dabbed at it with some cotton balls he found in a plastic bag in the cabinet.

Riku ignored the burning sensation.

He undid the clasp holding the original stud together and tossed that out the small bathroom window. Washing the newly opened rings, he inserted one of the needles in his ear and connected the piece.

The other loop went into his pocket.

Screw the month he was supposed to keep the thing in.

He found a lion-fashioned earring the size of his thumb nail in his mail box the next day. The details were amazingly refined, but his flesh wasn't used to supporting such weight just yet.

Riku put it on its own shelf in the bathroom cabinet until his ear was healed enough.

15.

It was his own fault, Riku mused later.

Cloud had told him not to go anywhere that day. But Cloud didn't know his schedule, and Riku felt that he was well-equipped enough to tackle a few lousy lower-class members.

But he hadn't wanted to stain anything, not today.

He had only brought a single knife with him. But it had turned out to be enough – not enough to get away unlashed and unscarred, but enough to get to the store and back during a huge free-for-all.

But… Riku looked down at the nicely wrapped pendant in his grip, and frowned. He tore a piece of stained red tissue paper off and equalized the rest of the edges, and smiled.

When he got home, he looked at his calendar and checked the day off.

Birthdays were something to be cherished, after all. Another year one has lived through. He couldn't remember his own, but it made him feel a bit better and a bit less overtaking that he had found the other man something appropriate.

It seemed that he couldn't get away from anything after all. Not that he was running. He was more found.

16.

A simple "We need you back." was all it took.

He almost laughed at the audacity of it all. Instead, he invited the cerise-haired man and the shorter brunette inside. Mouthing for them to take off their shoes (He laughed as they made faces and eyed the many buckled and laces that adorned them.), he set off to the small, but perfectly shaped kitchen not too far away.

Riku made tea, because he himself enjoyed it. He couldn't quite remember his acquaintances favorite drinks. A faint trace of orange traced an impression in his thoughts, but he didn't have any of the orange-colored juice in his fridge, and hell if he was going to hand squeeze it for them.

This wasn't a gourmet bar.

To think that his old boss sent the very same people whom he had used to get rid of him… It was ridiculous. His house was small enough without people dressed in hefty black cloaks littering his doorstep at every waking hour.

Some of them were really quite messed up as well. Who ever heard of someone dating his own therapist? At least, that was how Saix had been initiated.

Axel opened his mouth, and suddenly Riku could feel the smooth power and thin sharpness of speeches and words. He was sucked back into a world he really no longer had a desire to be in.

Sora barely said a word.

He could feel eyes on him as he set various assorted mugs of no coordinated shape or size in front of them. Tinted green liquid with traces of leaves drifted in them lazily was pouring.

Riku focused on the steam that was rising.

He held a hand over his cup, as if to catch the warmth.

17.

Leon noticed that Riku had a softer voice over the phone.

Perhaps it was his ear drums playing tricks on him, or maybe he had forgotten to pay that month's electrical bill. Either way, he didn't mind the yielding speech that came out of his speaker like music.

Only this was music he could influence and change.

He could imagine cries of a higher pitch and a lower one when being serious. Could think of sounds that went with them – the sound of a street car crashing carelessly and lighting the background.

Riku hung up, and Leon went to his fridge. He pulled out a bottle of something that his acquaintance had left last he was here. Not Riku. And it had been so long ago…

The tinted green glass bottle had sat there so long that its contents and split and separated apart into sections. The way that grains of wine grapes collected at the bottom spoke of excellent quality.

Leon shook the bottle.

18.

His once-stranger took things quite personally.

To such an extent that if taunted, Leon could flaunt all his thrashing skills as well as the next person, and would do it all without practically moving.

So when a punch to Riku's head was intercepted by a swift hand catching a wrist, he supposed he shouldn't be surprised. Because even if he didn't realize it consciously and even if he didn't want it, he couldn't change it because Riku had claimed Leon in the same way.

He looked down at the blue-clad – not black – older man sitting, almost leaning on the floor in front of them and didn't know whether to laugh or feel sympathy.

Xenmas would have laughed at his pinpoint of emotion.

A scream followed them as they left the alleyway. They weren't holding hands, but they didn't need to.

19.

The russet-haired male didn't get sick often, but when it he, he got sick badly.

At first it'd been a simple coughing, a wet hacking noise muted in the back of Leon's throat. It had rapidly turned to a loud pounding in the back of his skull, and shivers when they were uncalled for. Really, when you get goose bumps in the springtime, it should be a clue that something was wrong.

He'd changed into the wrong clothes and stumbled to his bed, clumsy hands reaching under his pillow for his cell phone. He slid it open more with instinct than consciousness and dialed the number one. Leon pressed send, then let himself sleep.

The tiny, sleek phone had vibrated in his back pocket at work. After taking a look at the number and blinking twice, he told Aerith that he had an emergency and asked if he could have the rest of the day off. The forgiving woman had nodded worriedly and given him the next day off as well.

The teen had worked many extra hours, after all.

Riku sighed as he realized the numbers in his shaking fingers read that Leon's fever had broken.

Riku squeezed the towel as dry as best he could, wrung it out over the basin. His own pale hands were beginning to frown and shrivel. The caretaker took the bowl of ice water to the kitchen window, intent on watering Leon's plants with the leftover fever water.

It was six in the morning.

20.

Jealous and emotion and anger were often the best aphrodisiac.

After a day out and when Leon unofficially walked Riku to his apartment – not in the same class as Leon's, but that was all right, because a caste of the brunette's was hard to reach indeed. And it wasn't in too bad an area either – on the cross lines of three of the groups, so it could easily be deemed neutral territory.

They'd been with their friends for the day. Their companions weren't in any terms in good terms with the one they didn't know, but they worried and cared and knew what the duo was throwing themselves into.

He wasn't surprised when he was pushed into the room and shoved against the door, because you couldn't lead a leather-clad soldier around for a full day without any consequences.

And Riku was expecting it, so he fought back just as hard with his mouth and teeth and lips. They quickly turned bitten and bruised but he didn't mind because sometimes there was a need for venting and this was the best way to do it.

Leon couldn't think, and instead concentrated on getting to the bed – to make things easier – and focused on the feel of younger throat muscles contracting.

Riku let it happen, choking just as hard as he was being pushed – and in the back of his mind he knew that his throat would hurt for days afterward.

The next morning, they realized that they had fallen into something.

And neither of them knew quite what to define it, because Leon couldn't say how he expected Riku to be at the door when there was a knock and Riku couldn't describe the feeling of Leon's sound legs entangled with his own.

The end! (So far, anyway.)

:laughes: I'll be surprised if anyone gets any of that. Remember, its 20 glances, so you can take them as twenty little drabbles if you'd like. Or try connecting them all together. And there will be eighty more.

Yes, I realize that there are typos. Many of them were left there on purpose. (Such as the insanely long run-on sentences.) Others, well… Either tell me about them or ignore them.

Please review. Even if you didn't like it. :3 I'd be happy to clear up anything. And write in little themes that you'd like to see written in the next part.

Anyway, this is a note just to tell everyone that I will be gone from July 10th to August 2nd. I don't know if I will have internet access until I get back, so here's a head up if I don't have anything updated for that entire month. (But I will update Gutter Snipe before I leave. And Perfect Person, hopefully.