Hmm, I just realised there's a lot of talk and references to sex in this fic. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not a total idiot. I knew it was there people. And I honestly tried to keep clean, but I kinda had the idea that that was all Darcy and Riven's relationship is. I dunno, I just kinda thought it needed to explain or something. I tried to make it as innocent as possible, but I guess you really can't do that when you're taking about Darcy. Having said all that there's a lusty little scene with Darcy and Riven coming up. Go figure

Chapter Four – Trouble

"Why didn't you warn me about this?" Riven growled to Musa one afternoon about a fortnight later. The fairy looked up at him, an un-amused expression on her flawless face.

"If I had told you beforehand do you think you would have agreed to do this?"

Riven shrugged. "You never know."

"Actually Riven, I do."

Any vindictive reply Riven might have had was cut off by Miss Du Four clapping her hands together sharply, gaining the attention of all the students from Alfea that were in the room and their escorts. The formal dinner that the Alfea fairies were being testing on was a week and a half away so Miss Du Four was making sure that her students had been given every chance of passing and that included drilling them through the various dances they needed to learn.

"All right now class, we're going to take it all from the top!" the etiquette teacher told them all crisply, striding across the room to her partner, her heels clicking loudly on the wooden floorboards. Like a woman on a mission, Miss Du Four firmly struck the stance for the beginning of the dance with Professor Avalon, her look determined. "Music please, Wizgiz."

As the little man started the music, the students quickly got themselves into position for the dance they were being forced to learn. It was a rather archaic dance that started with the partners facing the same direction, the man behind and slightly to one side of the woman. Both arms were slightly elevated and their hands holding. That was the easy part. After that, there were a thousand small, quick steps and changing of direction that Riven found impossible.

"You'd dance better if you weren't so stiff," Musa advised him when they were at a point in the dance where they both face each other.

"You know I'm not good at this," he hissed though clenched teeth, trying not to trip over his own feet.

"I'm just trying to help," Musa said somewhat coldly. The musical fairy was not in a good mood. For the last two weeks, her sleep had been disturbed by her dreams of Riven with Darcy and her exhausted state was making her rather irritable. And what was even more annoying was that her dreams were beginning to plague her thoughts even while she was awake and it was being to make her doubt her relationship with Riven.

She didn't know how far Riven had gone with Darcy and she wasn't sure if she really wanted to know. Even before it had come out that Darcy had her sisters were descendants of the Ancient Coven and that they had tried to enslave the Magical Universe, Darcy had earned herself a rather scandalous reputation and unfortunately it did make Musa wonder if Riven was happy with the relationship he had with her. What if he got bored and started looking at other girls? Although she liked Riven, she could never really picture him as being someone who was completely honest. It was part of the appeal, but it was also making her rather paranoid. For example, while the dance lesson had briefly paused as Miss Du Four explained the next part of the dance she was teaching them, it sort of looked like Riven was checking out Priscilla as she bent over to tie her shoelace.

'No,' Musa thought to herself, shaking her head and trying to clear her thoughts. 'Riven wouldn't do that to me.'

However she couldn't stop the wave of anger that shot through her when Priscilla gave Riven a small smile when they got ready to begin the dance again. Damn those dreams! If only she was able to get some sleep at night instead of dreaming of Riven and Darcy, then maybe she'd have a little more patience and logical in the face of these problem. She wasn't aware that Riven was suffering the same way from similar dreams and lack of sleep, making his already short temper even shorter.

"Why do we have to dance?" he raged as he and Musa strolled around the grounds of Alfea. The formal dinner rehearsal had finished for the day and most of the Winx Club was spending the rest of the afternoon hanging out with their boyfriends.

"It's part of the test," Musa reminded him. "First we have to be announced and make our entrance, then we dance and then we eat. When that's all out of the way the test is over and we can enjoy the night. They've got DJ Mirage coming again to lay down the beats."

"Sounds delightful," Riven commented sarcastically, taking a seat on the ground, his back against one of the trees that grew towards the back of the school grounds. He was so tired.

"It'll be fun," Musa said stiffly, crossing her arms and glaring down at the boy on the ground. What was he stopping for?

"Well, that's your idea of fun," Riven sighed, holding out his arms. "Sit down with me."

"Why?"

"Just do it, Musa."

Musa hesitated. They were in a rather secluded part of the school and her dreams of Riven suddenly attacking her in his arms were still fresh in her mind. Regardless, Musa sucked up her courage and slowly lowered herself into his embrace, her back lying against his chest.

Riven wrapped his arms tightly around her slight frame and deeply breathed in the scent of her hair. He suddenly felt light-headed and his heart pounded with love. He was crazy to be thinking of Darcy while he slept when he had Musa when he was awake. She was everything he ever wanted and more. With a content sigh, he leaned back against the tree and shut his eyes. Maybe with Musa in his arms, his dreams of Darcy would be kept at bay.

As Riven's arms tightened around her, Musa felt her pulse quicken in fear. She had never felt this way before around Riven, but her dreams were too firmly fix in her mind. She couldn't stop thinking about the aggressive way he had held her, the way he grabbed at her body and finally how he ravished Darcy. And even though it was just a dream, she was terrified that it might one day become a reality.

Riven was just dozing off when Musa suddenly wiggled out of his arms.

"Where are you going?" Riven asked, his mind slowly waking up.

"Um, I . . . I've got some homework that I need to finish," Musa said, brushing the back of her jeans to remove any dirt or grass that may have been on her.

"Can't it wait?"

"I don't want to fall behind."

Riven sighed. "Do you want me to hang out with you in your room while you do it?"

"No. You might distract me."

"Is that a bad thing?" Riven smirked. He was trying to get back to the stage they had been at a few weeks ago, where they'd be able to joke with one another but for some reason that joke didn't go down so well.

"I'll cell you later, okay?" Musa asked, trying to keep the panic out of her voice.

"Fine," Riven huffed, getting to his feet. He tried to lean in to give her a kiss goodbye, but she ducked out of the way and left with a wave. Feeling rejected and frustrated, Riven went and looked for his bike.

Whenever Riven was feeling frustrated or irritable, he'd usually go for a ride. It was like some kind of therapy for him. Whenever Brandon would annoy him to breaking point or when school would become too much for him to handle, Riven would jump on his bike and go for a long, fast ride to avoid being tempted to kill someone. Therefore, he was currently flooring it as he raced back to Red Fountain. He was frustrated and confused with Musa and he needed to ride that frustration out, and the faster, the better.

He just didn't know what had changed between them. She suddenly seemed uncomfortable around him and had actually seemed to make an effort to avoid being left alone with him. He didn't think he had done anything wrong, or at least he couldn't remember doing anything, but that was irrelevant when it came to girls. Sometimes he had gotten into trouble by not doing anything or by doing what they said they wanted him to do when in actual fact they wanted him to do the complete opposite.

What was it with the female species and mind games? Riven had been playing their games for years and he still had no idea what the rules were. And he had competed against the ruling champion of mind games: Darcy.

Maybe Musa had been able to tell he had been thinking of his ex-girlfriend? Could she do that? Could she take one look at his face and know exactly what was on his mind? It was true she did know him better than most people, but that didn't make her a mind reader. Did it?

Shaking his head to try and clear away these annoying thoughts, Riven tried to accelerate the already insanely fast speed. He was driving so fast his hands were freezing from the wind-chill, but he didn't care. All his worries seemed to be left far behind him as he roared down the road, the normal speed limit for this particular area long, long, long forgotten. He was feeling better than he had in two weeks so, with his body reeling in adrenaline, Riven tried to make the bike go even faster.

That was when he noticed that instead of going faster, his bike was starting to slow down. The lights on the screens that displayed the bikes different gages flickered slightly and the bike slowed dramatically.

"No," Riven moaned, trying to keep his bike going. "No, no, no, no, no, no! Keep going, baby. Don't cut out on me. Don't you die on me. C'mon. C'mon!"

The bikes engine surged for a minute and then went dead. The lights flicked off and the bike stopped completely once the momentum died off.

"Damn it!" Riven fumed, climbing off his bike to have a look at the bike. It couldn't be engine failure. Riven was fanatical about his bike so there was no way he'd miss a fault in its mechanics. Maybe the engine was running a little hot? He had been pushing it pretty hard after all.

The frustration he had left behind on the ride suddenly caught up with him and it was doubled by the irritation of this unknown bike problem. Angry beyond cursing, Riven savagely kicked his bike. The bike didn't respond to the sudden outburst and Riven's foot now throbbed. Riven was so focused on trying to find his voice so he could utter every curse word in the known universe that he didn't notice the person calmly leaning against a tree on the side of the road exactly opposite his now stationary bike, tranquilly watching his predicament.

"Bike trouble?" the person asked when she had gotten bored with being ignored. Riven jerked around, glaring at the girl with an un-amused look and she couldn't suppress a small smile spreading across her lips. He looked luscious in the bloody red cast of the sinking suns.

"I'm really not in the mood, Darcy," he warned, turning his attention back to the bike. He heard the rustle of clothes and that sticking sound high heels make as they sink into the ground and then get ripped out again. Darcy's sweet scent flooded his senses, making it hard for him to focus on the bike.

"I can tell," Darcy responded, her voice dangerously close to him.

"So then get out of here."

"Be nice," she ordered. "Why can't we be civil to one another anymore? We used to have so much fun together, didn't we? Don't you remember all those good times?"

Riven did, but he was never going to admit that to her. "Sorry if I find it a little difficult to be polite to someone who tried to kill me."

"Oh now you're just being petty, Riven," Darcy told him, turning around and leaning against the now cold bike, forcing Riven to look at her. "Did you ever stop to think why I did those things? I was looking out for you."

"Bull."

"Why do you think I locked you in a dungeon at Cloud Tower? It was to keep you away from the Army of Decay. And that time when my sisters and I stormed Red Fountain to get that piece of the codex, I never laid a finger on you. That was all Icy and Stormy."

"Oh yeah? How do you explain the Resort Realm then?"

Darcy shrugged. "Okay, that time I did want to kill you, but you wanted to kill me too, so we're even. So why can't we, right now, talk to each other in mutual hate and understanding? You and I can try to deny it, but the cold hard truth is we both get one another. Admit it; you're not worried now, even though you're alone with your enemy, are you?"

"No," Riven confessed. He wasn't worried because he was alone with his enemy. He was worried because he was alone with his ex-girlfriend. The ex-girlfriend that he had been dreaming about at night when he should have been thinking of his current girlfriend.

"So what's new?" Darcy asked casually, as though she had never tried to kill him and enslave the universe and even though he knew he shouldn't even be talking to her, Riven felt himself relax. Hell, she was probably only girl he could really talk to, with the exception of Musa.

Man, his life was screwed up.

"Nothing much," Riven shrugged, leaning up alongside her. "It's my final year at school, so they're putting the pressure on us. Timmy's already studying like a mad man even though final exams are months away. I think I'll be glad when it's all over and done with."

"School's overrated," Darcy told him. "I never finished my final year, and I'm doing fine."

"You still haven't succeeded in taking over the universe," Riven pointed out.

"We're working on that," Darcy said with a sly smile and Riven couldn't help but grin back. "Trust me Riven, as soon as you graduate and get out into the real world, you'll come to understand that history is everything you ever learnt in high school."

"I reckon I might just believe that," Riven sighed. Something about this wasn't right. He shouldn't be talking so causally like this with Darcy. She was dangerous, he knew that more than anyone, and yet here they were talking as though they weren't enemies. His friends would freak if they knew about this so he'd just have do his best to keep this from them. They'd never understand. Plus he couldn't risk Musa finding out about these conversations. They were already in a weird patch without her knowing that he was talking to his ex the way he should be talking with her.

"So why are you so stressed?" Darcy asked.

"I'm not stressed."

"Yeah you are. You never drive that fast unless you're pissed off or frustrated about something and you were burning it up back there."

Riven hesitated. Damn, she really did know him. "It's nothing."

"Yeah right. Are you having a tiff with your girl?"

Riven's head snapped up. "That's none of your business."

"Whoa, sorry," Darcy huffed, holding up her hands in defence. "I guess it doesn't really matter. You guys have made it through worse, I suppose. Like you betraying them and going out with me."

"Thanks for reminding me," Riven grumbled.

"And then of course there was that thing with Musa going out with that Jared guy last year."

Riven suddenly felt like he had just had been plunged into ice cold water. Musa did what with Jared?! And last year?! They were kinda sorta together then! His hands started to shake, but whether it was from angry or shock he couldn't tell. Finally managed to choke out, "What?"

"You know, that date she went on with that Jared guy in the middle of last year. He was all love sick on her and I think she developed a crush on him or something," Darcy told him while she observed her fingernails. "I tried to use Jared to sabotage the reality chamber and crush all those pixies but the idiot was so bleeding obvious that Faragonda caught him out. What a loser."

"Yeah," Riven gasped. He suddenly found it hard to breathe.

"Well, I better get out of here," Darcy said, getting to her feet and walking off the road. "It was nice talking to you Riven."

"Yeah," Riven nodded, also getting to his feet. His mind still wasn't thinking properly.

"Drive safe," Darcy smiled before snapping her fingers. With a roar, Rivens levi bike came back to life, making Riven jump and he spun around to stare at it in shock. And when he turned back around, Darcy was gone.

Ohhh. Darcy let the Jared bombshell slip. That witch. TBC