-looks guilty- I'm REALLY sorry for the three week wait! Really, I can't stress how bad I feel for leaving you all waiting like that! But the angst that is to come was scaring me off, not to mention my social life suddenly ressurrected itself from the dead :O For those who asked, yes, my date with the Naruto lookalike went very well thank you :D But yeah, suddenly I've started going out again and being sociable and stuff, so this chapter was hard to write. And I decided to be silly and write a few Naruto one-shots when I should have been writing this v.v

So, first of all, I should say that I don't have the time, commitment or mental capacity to keep to a deadline with this anymore. I will try my hardest to update once a week, but if I don't, please don't kill me :S Second of all, it's ANGST TIME. No more fluffy stuff now peeps... so if you don't like it, consider chapter twenty to be the last chapter... I is sowwy D:
Thirdly, I am going to continue working on Naruto one-shots whilst I work on this, but please don't think I am devoting any less time to this because of that...

Right, the song for this chapter is 'Blurry' by Puddle of Mudd. Good tune :)

Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts or Final Fantasy VII.

Kiss and I Will Surrender

Twenty-One

Blurry

The ride home was rather subdued. Roxas was mentally exhausted and sat slumped in the passenger seat with a small smile on his face, staring at the fine lines in the palms of his hands whilst Sora drove through the bustling city. Sora didn't try to start a conversation, knowing that Roxas was revelling in a mixture of pure elation and utter confusion, and so contented himself with listening to the radio and humming along quietly.

Roxas wasn't sure what to think, if he was perfectly honest with himself. It was definitely incredible to have reconciled with his parents, but the hatred that had been settled in his stomach for so long couldn't just dissipate like that – it had transformed into another negative feeling, guilt. He was racked with the knowledge that his parents had been suffering from his absence, and that what had probably been a total overreaction on his part had broken their family apart. It was going to take a long time to pick up all the pieces, and even several years down the line they still might not find all the shards, some of them being swept away like trash and never to be found again.

Still, he could not deny that he was grateful to his boyfriend for the push in the right direction. He couldn't bring himself to resent what Sora had done, although he had been furious at the time. Part of it was that he was just infuriatingly infatuated with the ditzy brunette, but it was also accountable to the fact that the visit had been nothing if not beneficial.

The blonde glanced across to Sora, who was jiggling slightly in his seat as he sang along to some trashy pop music whilst he waited for the light to change. He couldn't read Sora's expression, which appeared to be happy and lost in the music, but his eyes were clearly preoccupied with something else. He didn't seem sad or upset though. Just thoughtful.

The light changed, and Sora immediately stopped singing to change gear and move off, but he kept nodding his head which caused his bangs to flick him in the face every now and then. Roxas's smile widened a fraction. Sora had that effect – you just couldn't keep the grin off your face when he was around.

They pulled up in the parking lot of Roxas's apartment and Sora cut the engine.

"Right, let's go and have some dinner, I'm fucking starving," the brunette announced as he unbuckled his seatbelt. A pale hand on his arm caused him to pause, and he turned to look over at its owner. He blinked in surprise when Roxas leant across the centre console and kissed him softly.

"Thank you," the blonde murmured quietly against his lips when the chaste kiss ended.

"Welcome," Sora replied, his face colouring a little. Roxas caught the blush and smirked, leaning in to kiss Sora again. This time, he ran his tongue along the seam of Sora's lips coaxingly, and made an appreciative sound when the brunette opened his mouth and let Roxas in. Their tongues played and twisted and the sound of their increasingly laboured breathing filled the car. Roxas closed his eyes and slid his hand up Sora's arm to the brunette's shoulder, gripping it firmly whilst his other hand moved into Sora's thick locks. He tangled his pale fingers in the soft strands close to Sora's scalp and tilted Sora's head to the side a bit more to deepen the kiss.

"Ah..." Sora gasped into his boyfriend's mouth, clenching his fists into Roxas's t-shirt as he felt a familiar heat pooling in his groin. He couldn't resist it when Roxas played with his hair; it made him completely willing to whatever Roxas wanted, and Roxas knew this perfectly well.

"Mmm," Roxas growled, pulling away only to lick teasingly at Sora's swollen lips, "You always taste so good, Sora..."

"Hah," the breathless brunette replied, clenching his eyes shut when Roxas began to kiss along his jaw line towards his neck. Roxas planted a few sweet kisses on the sensitive patch of skin just under Sora's ear before moving up to take the earlobe between his teeth and bite down gently.

"Oh god..." Sora mumbled, tightening his grip on Roxas's shirt.

"Sora," Roxas whispered, right in the boy's ear. He was going to say it. He had hidden it from the boy for long enough, it was time for Sora to know that the feelings were returned.

"Roxas, I love you so fucking much," Sora whimpered into Roxas's collarbone.

"I know," the blonde replied. He turned his face and pressed a kiss to the angular curve of Sora's jaw. "I love you too, Sora."

Sora stiffened. Roxas continued to kiss and nuzzle at his neck, letting it sink in, but when Sora didn't do anything for a full moment, he pulled away so that he could see Sora's face. He frowned at what he saw.

"Idiot, why are you crying?"

Sora jerked, his eyes focusing, and brought one hand up to touch the tears slowly creeping over his cheeks. "I didn't realise," he mumbled, and began to wipe them away with the back of his hand. Roxas wasn't sure if he was referring to the tears or Roxas's statement.

"I mean it, you know," he said, hooking one finger under Sora's chin and forcing the boy to look at him. "I love you. I think I have this entire time, but I was too scared to say it."

Sora swallowed shakily and a few more tears snuck out of the corners of his eyes. He wasn't properly crying, but he looked pretty shocked. Roxas knew that Sora didn't really know what to say, so he decided to make words unnecessary by kissing him again. He tasted salt on Sora's lips and kissed it away. He didn't care if Sora was crying out of happiness, he never wanted to be the cause of him crying.

Sora started to kiss back, and this time it wasn't the sweet, languid kisses that they had previously been sharing. There was a sense of urgency stretched between the two of them that they could both feel in their lips, their fingers, their nerve endings. They bit and licked at each other's mouths, gasps escalating to voiced moans and hands exploring the torsos they both knew off by heart already.

When they stopped and pressed their foreheads together, breathing heavily and cheeks flushed pink, Sora finally replied.

"Thank you."

After a frantic sex session against the apartment door, the two boys had ordered pizza and curled up on Roxas's huge white couch together, a movie on in the background that neither of them were really watching. Their hands were intertwined and most of the time, their eyes were closed, both just enjoying the feeling of each other's proximity and warmth and the scent of their loved one. Occasionally, Sora would laugh at something Ron Burgundy said, and because Roxas had his head on Sora's chest, he would be jostled and would grumble half-heartedly. When the pizza arrived, they sat up to eat it and then cleaned up, before turning the movie off and crawling into bed with each other.

Roxas could have been mistaken, but he was fairly sure that Sora held him a lot tighter that night as they spooned up against each other. And when Sora fell asleep before him, the brunette didn't toss and turn nearly as much as he had done before, remaining curled up against his boyfriend's back with his faced buried in Roxas's hair.

And Roxas didn't realise it, but when he went to sleep, he turned over and curled into Sora like a puppy seeking warmth from its mother, and somehow their hands became intertwined. They smiled in their sleep together, and finally, everything felt right with the world.

But it is ironic how as soon as things start to go right in one aspect of your life, another part you had completely forgotten about decides to make itself known and completely ruin everything.

They noticed nothing weird when they woke up, of course. Sora got up early because he had to go to classes, and Roxas stayed in bed whilst his boyfriend showered, revelling in a half-awake reverie of the scent of Sora on the pillows and the sound of his awful singing in the shower along to DJ Demyx. When Sora came back in, fully dressed, he put one knee on the bed and leaned forward to kiss Roxas softly.

"You have a modelling shoot today, don't you?" he asked as Roxas forced himself to open his eyes. Sora smelled like soap and citrus shampoo.

"Yeah, at one o'clock," Roxas murmured, getting into a sitting position and rubbing the sleepy dust from his eyes. Sora sat down on the bed and kissed him again, his tongue cool and minty from toothpaste. Blonde lashes fluttered down onto pale cheeks with a smattering of pale freckles as Roxas let Sora into his mouth, content to submit whilst he was still half-asleep. Sora pushed Roxas's bangs out of the way and kissed him deeply, as if he would never see him again though they were both going for a meal with Kairi, Riku, Xion and Axel that evening.

Roxas mewled in protest when the kiss ended, his face flushed. Sora grinned at him, and kissed his forehead.

"I'll see you at mine at six," he said, getting off the bed and picking up his bag.

"Have a good day," Roxas mumbled, already snuggling back down under the covers like a bug.

"You too baby."

And then the sound of the door closing echoed softly throughout the apartment, and Roxas fell back asleep.

The modelling shoot was taking place in a studio near to the ShinRa electric company. A new swimwear company had chosen Roxas to model their male surf range, and as soon as he arrived he was shoved into a make-up booth by his agent Yuffie, who was clutching an armload of rash vests and boardshorts.

Whilst a woman attacked his face with powder and a brush (much to his distaste), Yuffie nattered in his ear about what poses he should pull and the meal she had had with her boyfriend the night before. Roxas had met Vincent once, and never wanted to meet the guy again. He was a downright scary dude, and Roxas didn't understand how he put up with Yuffie and her fucking energy.

He spent the day changing in and out of outfits and standing in front of various beach backdrops, trying not to look like he would rather be back in bed. Preferably with a certain brunette. Naked. Every now and then his imagination would wander, which was dangerous because swim shorts do nothing to hide a male's arousal, and more than once Yuffie had to subtly suggest that they use the surfboard prop in some photos to cover Roxas's modesty.

He couldn't help it though! Images of the night before when he had slammed Sora up against the door of their apartment and fucked him senseless kept swimming through his mind and then he would start to fantasize about perhaps using those handcuffs he had bought a few weeks ago, or maybe investing in some mirrors on his ceiling... yeah, mirrors would be cool...

"Roxas!" He snapped to attention when the photographer called him and then changed his pose, thankful that he wasn't visibly aroused this time and they had just thought he was zoning out. The representative from the swimwear range was watching him with concern, probably worried that he was a bit too spaced out to be their model.

He was in a particularly vulnerable pose, on all fours on top of some fake sand with some water drizzled through his hair, when his cell phone rang in Yuffie's hand where she was perusing pictures of him and Sora (probably looking for naughty pictures, knowing her).

"Yuffie Kisaragi," she said, answering his phone as she usually did when he was on shoot. Roxas didn't look over, continuing to stare half-provocatively at the camera and trying not to get sand in his hair.

"He's currently unavailable, might I ask who's speaking?... Zack? Who the hell is Zack?"

Roxas rolled his eyes. "Band mate, Yuffie," he called as he lay back on the sand and pretended to be looking at the sky.

"Oh that Zack! How are you?" There was a pause, in which Yuffie's smile slowly slipped off her face as Zack said something Roxas had no way of hearing. "One moment," she muttered, and then went over to the photographer and asked for a time out.

"Roxas, can you come to the dressing room?" she asked. Frowning, Roxas got up and dusted the sand off his outfit and slipped on his trainers, following her into the dressing room. Yuffie handed him his cell phone and then excused herself, shutting the door behind her.

"Roxas speaking?"

"Fuck, Roxas! This is a freaking emergency and you're busy posing in front of a fucking camera!"

Roxas pulled the phone away from his ear as if it had burned him, staring at it. Zack never said insulting things like that, no matter how dire the situation. He brought the phone back to his ear. "What do you mean, emergency?"

"Aerith and Tifa have gone missing!" Zack yelled down the phone. In the background, Roxas could hear Riku telling Zack to calm down, and then something that sounded like a glass shattered, followed by lots of swearing.

"What?" Roxas hissed, clutching the phone tightly, his knuckles turning white.

"They're fucking gone!" Zack shouted angrily. It sounded like he was having a panic attack, which was frightening because Zack was the band member least likely to lose his head in a crisis, possibly apart from Riku. "Aerith never came back from her last shift at the hospital before her maternity leave, and Tifa isn't at the bar and won't pick up her fucking cell phone!"

Actually, it was totally understandable that Zack was losing it, Roxas thought as Zack gave more details about the disappearances. After all, Aerith was Zack's fiancée and Tifa was his little sister. There couldn't be anything more terrifying for the sable-haired man to experience right now. Somehow, Roxas was calmly thinking this, as if with detachment as Zack told him about how Aerith had been at a night shift at the hospital, and had left after her shift and just never come home, whilst Tifa never turned up to work at the bar and was totally unreachable on her two cell phones.

"What are we going to do?" Roxas asked, sounding scarily calm, possibly because Zack was freaking out enough for both of them. Though his heart was hammering so hard it felt like his sternum would collapse under the pressure and his eyes were wide enough to show the blood vessels at the outer edges.

"It's fucking Seifer, I just know it!" Zack hissed venomously. It sounded like he was pacing. "He's made his move at last, Roxas, I can just tell it's him! He's targeting our loved ones to get to us!"

"We don't know that Zack," Roxas said, but Zack wasn't listening because suddenly Riku started shouting on the other end of the phone. There was a clattering, suggesting the mobile device had been dropped, and then rustling as someone else picked it up.

"Roxas?" Cloud's voice echoed in his ear. He sounded hollow. It hurt Roxas more than Zack's panic attack. "Can you hear me Roxas?"

"I hear you, Cloud," he replied, wondering what the hell Zack and Riku were shouting about in the background.

"Kairi's missing too. She never came back from her lunch break."

Now Roxas could feel sweat crawling down his skin. He felt cold and clammy, and ill. Aerith, Zack's fiancée, gone. Tifa, Zack's sister and Cloud's most precious person, gone. Kairi, Riku's life partner, gone. Which meant...

"Sora could be in danger," Cloud said, voicing what Roxas had already figured out. "Roxas, you have to warn him. Get him to hide somewhere. There is no questioning that Seifer is behind this."

"How can you be so sure?" Roxas asked in a shaky voice, even though inside he knew that there was no other explanation. Why else would three of their loved ones disappear within twenty-four hours and none of them be reachable by cell phone? It was too much of a coincidence.

Cloud said as much, though he sounded close to breaking. Riku and Zack had stopped shouting and the background of the conversation was eerily quiet. Roxas could hear the pulse in his head, thumping like a crazed man in a padded cell.

"I've got to call Sora," he mumbled, and pressed the 'End Call' button. He speed-dialled 6 and listened to the ringing tone, each one seeming longer and more foreboding than the last. His hand was fisted in the brand new rash vest he was wearing and when he looked in the large mirror on the wall, his eyes were wild and his face was so drained of colour that his usually non-existent freckles stood out as though they were flecks of mud or chocolate.

"Pick up the fucking phone," he growled.

Hey, you reached Sora's answer phone, leave a message after the beep!

He smashed his fist into the wall, wincing when he felt the old injury in his wrist flare up. The beep sounded in his ear.

"Sora?" he croaked hopefully, as if Sora had just pretended he was the answer machine for a joke. Nothing answered him. "Sora, I fucking hope you're in class right now... listen, call me as soon as you get this... don't go outside and stay with your friends. This is an emergency!"

The door opened and Yuffie came in, blanching at the sight of Roxas's wild expression. "I've cancelled the rest of the shoot," she said quietly, and Roxas slumped slightly in relief even as he continued to talk to Sora's answer machine. "You hear me, Sora? This is an emergency! Seifer's made his move and people are going missing! Call me as soon as you get this... I... I love you..."

He closed the phone, and resisted throwing it at the wall. "Shit!" he hissed, kicking the waste paper basket as hard as he could. Yuffie swallowed. She had heard most of the details from Zack already.

"Do you want to go home, Roxas?"

"No, I'm going to pick him up from campus. No fucking way is he using public transport."

He changed so quickly that he didn't notice that his t-shirt was on inside out, and stormed out to his car with Yuffie calling after him that she hoped everything would be okay.

"FUCK!" Roxas yelled when he struggled to get the key in the ignition, his hands were shaking so badly. "Fucking Seifer, you're so fucking DEAD!"

And he meant it. Roxas had never killed anyone, but right there, as he jerked the key and the car roared to life, he swore that if Seifer touched a hair on Sora's head, Roxas would hunt him down and put a fucking bullet through his skull. He didn't care if he went to jail afterwards; Seifer had gone way too far. Roxas couldn't believe he had been friends with the bastard once upon a time!

He pulled out into the heavy lunchtime traffic that always surrounded the ShinRa district, plugging his cell into the hands free system and trying Sora's phone again. "C'mon," he growled, overtaking a Ford that was going far too slowly for his liking, "Pick the fuck up, Sora!"

It cut to answer machine again, and Roxas screamed another stream of swearwords. He cancelled the call without leaving a message this time and took a sharp right up a side street that would take him to the highway quicker.

By all logic, Sora was in class right now, but normally he picked up his phone when it rang in class. It wasn't as if he would be in a lecture, Tuesday was a practical day for Sora and he would be working on a painting, so the phone ringing wouldn't interrupt a teacher or anything. The fact that Sora wasn't answering was just making Roxas panic more and more.

"Fuck's sake," he growled, pulling onto the highway and pressing the call button again. The phone rang twice, and then as Roxas was overtaking an old Jaguar, someone answered on the other side.

"Hello?"

It wasn't Sora. But it wasn't Seifer either. It was a girl's voice.

"Who's this? Where's Sora?" Roxas demanded, constantly checking his mirrors for suspicious vehicles, as he had done since he had been attacked by Seifer's men all those months ago.

"It's Naminé," the girl answered. "Sora's classmate."

"Where is he? Why do you have his cell?!"

"Whoa, Roxas, chill out!" she said, sounding shocked. "He just went to the bathroom and left his phone in the classroom, he'll be back in a minute!"

"He went by himself?!" Roxas roared, taking the exit. He was less than three minutes from the campus.

"Well, yeah..." Naminé said. She sounded really perturbed. "I mean, he's been gone quite a while but Sora gets lost in this building easily... why?"

Great. So not only had Sora gone by himself, he didn't know the layout of the fucking building! Which meant that if Seifer's men tried to corner him in the building, he wouldn't know the way to the exit or to the classroom!

"Roxas, what's going on?" Naminé asked, but Roxas ended the call.

"Shit, fuck, fucking shit," he growled, taking the turning for the campus. He could see the plum trees that lined the quad. He was nearly there...

His eyes narrowed as they focused on a red van pulling away from the curb, leaving a free parking space right outside Sora's building. Perfect! The car screeched to a halt in the spot, about a foot away from the curb and totally skew-whiff but Roxas was beyond caring. Grabbing his cell phone, he tumbled out of the car and ran towards the building, locking the car with his remote keys.

Please be okay, please be okay, please be okay! It chanted in his head like a holy mantra over the pounding of blood in his ears. He was clenching his phone so hard that that superfluous parts were breaking off it as he ran through the corridors, looking for the classroom Sora had shown him a few months ago.

His heart nearly stopped when he saw a head of brown hair going around the corner towards the classroom. Sora! He picked up the pace, careering around the corner and slamming into the wall before picking himself up and running after Sora.

"Sora!" he yelled, relief and panic rushing through his veins in an icy concoction.

The boy turned, and Roxas was met with confused eyes. But not blue eyes. Brown eyes. Wrong person.

"FUCK!" he screamed, and ran right past the boy towards the classroom, which he could see at the end of the corridor. He could see Naminé through the glass of the door, sat on her stool with a paint brush in her hand, contemplating her canvas.

He burst into the classroom, the door slamming against the wall with a thundering bang. Several students jumped and fell off their high stools, and the supervising teacher squawked in surprise. He stared frantically around, looking for that face that he had memorized by heart, the face he had stared at for hours when he couldn't sleep, the happy-go-lucky grin that lifted his spirits no matter what.

"Where is he?" he gasped, holding his knees as he crouched over, gasping raggedly for breath. Naminé stared at him incredulously.

"He still isn't back from the bathroom," she said slowly, putting her paint pallet down and getting off her stool. "Roxas, what the hell is going on?"

"Where... are the bathrooms?" he wheezed out. The teacher was clucking about him leaving the class in peace but he ignored her, staring at Naminé desperately.

"Straight down the hall, first left then second right," Naminé replied. "Roxas, tell me what-"

But Roxas was already gone, leaving a wake of confusion behind him.

He was almost at the bathrooms when his cell phone rang. It was a number he didn't recognize.

"WHAT?!" he yelled, skidding around the corner and bursting into the men's toilets. The stalls were all empty. He was about to turn around when a familiar chuckling filled his ear, turning his blood to ice.

"So crotchety, Roxas! Is that any way to speak to your old friend?"

"Seifer!" he hissed. His stomach had dropped sickeningly and he felt like he was going to vomit. If Sora wasn't here, and Seifer was calling him, that could only mean one thing...

"You know, if you had been a bit more perceptive, you could have stopped us," Seifer laughed, and the sound of male guffawing filled the background. "In fact, you took our parking place."

The red van. The red fucking van. Why the fuck hadn't he been wary of it?! Of course it was suspicious, he should have fucking realised that!

"What the hell are you going to do with him?!" he spat, clutching the sink edge for balance. His vision was a mixture of blurred mirror images, red bloodlust and black oxygen debt. He couldn't see properly. He felt sick and dizzy. Worst, he felt terrified.

Seifer laughed again, that hair-raising laugh that made Roxas clench his teeth and growl warningly. "We'll do whatever the hell we like with your little faggot boyfriend, and the three girlies we've got here as well! One of them looks kind of fat though, what the hell does Zack see in her?"

"She's fucking PREGNANT you sick fuck!" Roxas screamed. He felt his knees hitting the cold tiles and then he was slumped against the counter of the sinks, shaking with fury. "If you touch ANY of them, I swear to God I'll fucking kill you!"

"Never knew you were religious, Roxas," Seifer chuckled calmly. It only served to infuriate Roxas more, though he knew that Seifer was just baiting him.

"Shut the fuck up!! What the hell do you want?!"

"We want you, Roxas. We want your life, and immunity from ShinRa and the cops." There was a muffled yell in the background followed by a thump and a groan. "Disgusting faggot piece of shit," Seifer muttered.

"Leave Sora alone!" Roxas voice was becoming choked now, but he was furiously fighting against tears. "Why the hell do you want me?"

"You betrayed me, Roxas," Seifer said with a harsh barking laugh. "You left. And then your fucking brother and his ShinRa friends chased us out of Midgar! You think I'm going to forgive you for that? You think you can just leave the Yakuza and not suffer the consequences?!"

"It wasn't by choice! It was your fault for stuffing me so full of drugs I ended up in hospital!"

"Whatever, the time for explanations is long gone, Roxy," Seifer said, and then laughed again in that same bone-chilling manner. "Call me when you can meet our terms. You've got a week, but I would hurry, because Rai here has been mighty bored and might start killing hostages for fun..." A deep laugh sounded in the background and Roxas clenched his fists.

"You... you dirty..."

"Save it for the reunion, Roxas," Seifer cut off. "You can insult me all you want before I kill you! How's that for a deal?"

"You fucking bastard!" But Seifer never heard the last insult, because he had hung up. Roxas dropped his phone and it clattered onto the floor, more parts breaking off from it and skidding across the slightly damp tiles. He fisted both hands in his hair and let out a blood-curdling scream that ricocheted around the bathroom as hot, angry tears began to pour down his face.

-dodges flying projectiles- Please don't kill meeeeeeeeee!!!! Please review, this story has a reviewing withdrawal because I left it for so long :S