Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts, or any characters, places, or items appearing in the Kingdom Hearts game series, nor do I own any lyrics to songs used here, and I do not receive payment for the use of these materials in this fic.

Author's Note: I thank all my readers for my reviews! What I'm most interested in hearing from you is what you think is real or a hallucination.

Thank you, Corrosive Moon, Poke-the-Jello, Light Within Darkness, Ace, and Vix-Cheshire.

Corrosive Moon: thank you for the review and the favorite. I actually have a pet rabbit who has been encouraging me to write, as well.

Poke-the-Gello: thank you for your kind words and the favorite. Whether these events are "real" or not in the context of the fic is up to your interpretation. The original title for this fic was "A Question of Trust," but then "Goodnight Moon" did seem far more fitting. Yes, I have read Uzumaki-sama's "Goodnight Moon." I was not impressed.

Light Within Darkness: thanks, hon bun! I'll be working away at this, bit by bit.

Goodnight Moon

Chapter two: Escalations

'Got a big plan, this mindset, maybe it's right
At the right place and right time, maybe tonight,
In the whisper, or handshake, sending a sign…'

—She Wants Revenge, "Tear You Apart"

"Which one is that?" Sora asked, his voice shaking. Riku gave him a lop-sided look, then turned his head to look at the bottle in his hands.

"Your sleeping medication," he replied succinctly. "You won't need this anymore," he added, pocketing the white, plastic bottle.

The brunet gaped, feeling blank and no-no-no-this isn't happening so why should I be afraid? He glanced at the floor, then up at Riku's face again, hoping for a sign of softness to disperse the threat of his words. But Sora's face fell when he peered at Riku's pale face; his grin was too sharp, and his eyes were unrelenting.

Seeing no words on the brink of bubbling up from Sora's throat, Riku turned to leave. His boots sounded heavy on the hard, wooden floor. He paused in the doorway, rested his closed fist against the wood molding, and turned his head back to Sora. His hands moved gracefully to replace the pill bottle with the yellow apple once more. He held it out to Sora.

"Want it?" he asked, not unkindly.

Sora's eyes narrowed in a misdirected rage. He balked at the repetition of the offer of the apple instead of the fact that a stranger had waltzed into his house—section of the house—and had the audacity to steal his bloody medication.

"Déjà vu?" the brunet hissed, "No, I still don't want it. You asked me before." He squeezed wads of the bed sheets in his hands.

Riku's expression softened at the edges, perhaps with concern—Sora could only hope. The silver-haired male tried again.

"You sure? You might need it later," he said. His hand was still outstretched, bearing the yellow apple with its swimming skin and swimming colors and the vipers all underneath and, what? Sora tried to focus his eyes; the apple was growing blurry as he stared at it. It took him a few seconds, but eventually his surroundings returned to clarified forms. The skin of the apple was not swimming, nor was its pigment, and there were no vipers underneath. However, the apple's skin was now a fiery blossom with its new orange and red tints.

The tan male repeated himself again. This time his voice seemed like an insubstantial ray, originating from a place in his chest now void of anything but silky darkness, rock, and soft breezes breathed from nowhere.

Finally accepting Sora's answer, Riku folded the apple into the dark of his jacket and stood upright. His eyes, now unreadable, rested on Sora's form for a long moment. Then he smirked a little and made his exit, but not before knocking his knuckles against the wooden molding of the doorframe.

The resulting rokrokrok echoed in Sora's head for hours and made electric eels swim up and down his ribs beneath his skin.

-o-o-

Until the clock read that it was past nine, he could not peel himself from his bed sheets and brave whatever, or nothing, lurked in the rest of the hou—his section of the bloody, stupid house. Eventually he rallied his courage—or not really, but he managed to push down his fear so he just felt cold inside—and crept downstairs to the kitchen.

He flicked on the light switch in the kitchen. He winced as the harsh, yellow light cut into his retinas with its abrupt blast through the air. The light did little for the dingy appearance of wood paneling and cupboards. And who the Hell used dank gray as the main color scheme of a house? Like a house that rearranged its basement floor plan needed something special.

Sora's blue eyes set upon the medicine cabinet under the cupboard. The cabinet was still white, still plastic, and still nondescript, bearing no smudges or marks of telltale hands that had no business snooping around in his drugs. Ironically, the medicine cabinet was the only white thing in the kitchen, and would be the only object to show dirt. All other surfaces in the room seemed to be covered in a layer of some thick something that absorbed stains and grime. The layer was of a substance against which Sora's cleaning supplies were no match. The medicine cabinet seemed to stare expectantly at him like no one else in the world mattered. I know what you're looking for, sonny boy! Sora was not prepared to discover exactly how bad his situation was. But he needed his Ziprasidone or else the hallucinations would get worse. Sora held his breath, trying to calm himself by counting the number of contractions his heart made in thirty seconds.

Sora finally approached the medicine cabinet when he noticed movement in the corners of the room: it was difficult to describe, and Sora could do no better than say that the walls were licking themselves. That did it. He quickly opened the medicine cabinet and shoved his hands inside. He did not need hallucinations on top of this bullshit.

He grabbed the bottle of anti-psychotics and downed his dose with a glass of water. Once his pills were on their way into his bloodstream, he allowed his eyes to hover over the empty space in the cabinet. Bright side: Riku did only take one of his drugs. Bad side: he'd have night terrors without his Restoril. And he wouldn't sleep, either. Maybe.

He shook off the little salt water imps trying to jump over his eyelids and strode over to the kitchen desk. He pulled open the drawer and pulled out an address book. He had two of these, plus the contact list on his cell phone, because he couldn't remember phone numbers or email addresses to save his life.

Which probably meant he was going to die, because every page in the address book was blank.

Sora closed the book, counted one-two-buckle-my-holymotherofgod-shoe with his breaths, and flipped open the cover again. He turned from page to page with increasing speed as one blank entry was followed by another and another, until his heart hammered in his chest. The brunet like something cold was trickling down inside his chest. Riku didn't have time to find and erase the entries in this notebook. The pages were smooth and crisp and clean, without eraser shavings or even remnant graphite marks. This was Sora's address book, and it had been filled with the contact information of everyone he knew.

The ivory cardstock pages became grainy and started moving. Sora pulled his gaze away from the pages and the threatening pit of quicksand in his hands. He breathed, mentally groped for memories of anything he might have missed, then flipped through the address book again. The brunet carefully rubbed each page between his thumb and index finger, demanding the leaves of cardstock to separate if they were secretly banded together against him.

The results? The entire thing was still blank. As though the pages had never seen a pencil.

With a sudden jerk, Sora fished his cell phone out of his jeans pocket and flipped the top up. He pressed a few buttons and all the cold, scared things inside him calmed down as he watched the animated "loading" icon on the digital screen cycle. The tightness coiling progressively tighter inside of him relaxed, then abruptly seized up again when he saw the state of his contacts list.

This was not even possible.

The muscles in Sora's throat closed over a pained mewl. He weakly slid out of the rolling chair. His sneakers hit the floor heavily as he walked, face cringing and salt water threatening in the corners of his eyes, to the door. He grasped the brassy door handle firmly, pressed down on the button with his thumb, and pulled. A dull thud reached his ears and the wooden door shook in the frame. He pulled again, and again, repeatedly until the gesture had degenerated into rough, incredulous tugs as Sora tried to pretend it was just something wrong with him and not the lock.

Sora rested his forehead against the door. The wetness that had been beading up in his blue eyes broke over the rims and started dribbling down his face. The little streams fell over his cheeks silently, his face contorted in despair.

-o-o-

As Sora resolved to avoid sleep in the following hours, his head felt strange, like half of his brain was suspended in one dimension in his skull, and the other was suspended in a different one above the stairs. He lay on the couch in his foyer, a voice in his head musing idly I-used-to-be-connected-to-that-lobe. It felt as though clouds hugged and cushioned his brain and his eyes. He wondered if these sensations were due to his missed dose of Restoril, simple anxiety and stress from the day's events, or simply psychosomatic.

On the coffee table before the couch were his notebooks and texts for his Animal Behaviors course and his Emily Dickinson essay for his Victorian Literature class. He entreated himself to get off his ass and keep working, but it was a lost cause. His notes couldn't claim his attention, the refrigerator wasn't calling, and only the quiet murmurs from the television—some pleasantly calm special on the Borgias in Renaissance Italy—seemed able to send out their siren song to the brunet. He began dozing, his head dipping gently as part of his mind drifted through the twilight sea within his skull, on the sadly upholstered couch.

He was faintly aware of a pool of darkness forming somewhere in the room near hm. The pool deepened, then stood up in the vague form of a man.

The sound of the front door's meal gears shifting gently drew Sora's mind from the dark, slumbering swamp of his mind. He stirred, part of his attention softly drifting forth to take some note of the stimulus, but he was otherwise unconcerned and wanted to return to his catnap.

The brunet's eyelids lifted slightly and twitched as a blurry figure stepped softly through the front door. As the person turned to face him, Sora's eyes reluctantly focused on the head of straight, fair shoulder-length hair he'd seen hours earlier. Behind the lighted head, the shadowy shape which had manifested minutes before curled into a corner, hiding.

He noted a jacket. Sora guessed it was indeed cold enough outside at this time of night for outerwear, even if you were only coming from next door.

Sora moved his fingers, arms, and legs, then turned and sat up straighter to view the intruder. It took him a moment to note the definite absence of sharpness in the paler male's expression. That observation wasn't much, and Sora sure as Hell didn't know how to interpret it. And he wouldn't know for a while yet whether that was better than an outright threatening facial expression.

Strangely, Riku's demeanor seemed to be fraying somehow. Something was different; when Sora looked at Riku's face, it appeared as though little particles in the skin were moving and swarming over each other. Riku tapped his fingers on his thigh and swung his eyes around the room listlessly until whatever cannibalistic forces inside him banded together and culminated in an abrupt and earnest energy. He directed it at Sora. The silver-haired male advanced on him, his eyes glinting oddly, like they were truly just spheres filled with water and gold dust and there was no One at all behind them.

"Sora!" Riku breathed as he clasped the brunet's shoulders. He leaned in eagerly, like the breath of his life was dragging on something inside of Sora; now, having gotten it, his face bore a Cheshire Cat smile. "How did you sleep?" he asked with his aquamarine eyes bright and soft, still glinting.

Sora pulled out of his grasp by sliding backwards off of the couch. He wiped his hands on his jeans to remove the sensation of dreary upholstery on his fingertips. He could not do the same for the lingering weight of Riku's hands on his shoulders.

"I haven't," Sora replied acidly. "Because I can't sleep without my god damn medication and I have night terrors to avoid."

Riku seemed surprised. The information took time to register with him. His mouth opened in what may have been disbelief, but then his lips slipped back together with a small curl in the corner. Riku considered Sora solemnly for several seconds, then his eyebrows cinched, raised, and relaxed again.

"You were dozing, at least," Riku observed quietly, then sunk his focus into the hidden pocket on the inner lining of his jacket. He reached into the pocket and procured a red dog collar.

The silver-haired male pressed the dog collar into Sora's hands with the words, "You should learn how the dogs speak."

Sora swayed backward in time to Riku's forward movement. His brown brows furrowed and angry ruts grew on either side of his mouth.

"What is this?!" Sora spat, throwing the collar onto the floor. "Why the Hell are you doing this to me? If you want to give me anything, give me my pills and my god damn front door back!"

Riku swiftly retrieved the dog collar and stood, shoulders squared, to face Sora.

"You're ill, Sora," Riku stated firmly. Whatever warmth he'd felt for the brunet was now cooling.

"And what do the ill need?!" Sora yelled, blind to the exact point at which Riku's logic had broken. He was about to lunge at the intruder but Riku, apparently foreseeing his choice of action, caught him securely in his arms.

"Medicine," Riku answered with a small grunt as his muscles strained against Sora's. The taller male swiftly replaced the dog collar in Sora's hands and leaped back before Sora could make another move.

The silver-haired male had one foot out the front door when he turned and saluted.

"I'm better than you know, Sora," he said with a devilish smile and slipped soundlessly out the door.

The brunet should have run and wrenched the doorknob before it was locked again. In the last second while his opportunity still stood, little armies of anger and determination were raising themselves on the edges of his mind, ready to charge, yet he remained frozen into the old wooden floorboards. In the theater of his mind, Sora sat in the back row, subject to the looping two seconds of memory in which that head of silver hair vanished through the doorframe. But he wasn't the only one watching.

He heard the lock click. Sora felt coldness pooling in his stomach at the confirmation that he was isolated and trapped, again. He gripped the dog collar tightly, part of him bent on crushing the bloody thing, but another part of him had more foresight and plucked the choice from his anger's hand.

Sora's gaze dipped from the door to the collar. There was a steel buckle and a steel dog tag on it, both quite luminescent even in the gray din of Sora's section of the divided house. He flicked the dog collar around so the center front was pointing towards him. The dog tag jingled. The blank side looked up at him. He turned it over to see the name.

There was none. Figures.

The anger in him, momentarily quieted with curiosity, abruptly burst and curdled at the thought of his captor. In the dark of Sora's mind, Riku's eyes glinted like the gray dust he'd once been on Sora's bed for the rest of the night.

You should learn how the dogs speak.

He could just hang himself.-o-o-

Sora tossed the stupid dog collar into the drawer of his nightstand. The wooden drawer shut with a dull snap. He turned away to leave his bedroom, then paused. There was something in that drawer, in the corner of his eye. It was Something, a nameless Some-thing, else that should have belonged there but no longer did.

In the great green room
There was a telephone
And a red balloon
And a picture of -

Sora shivered. He noticed something curling upwards in the edges of his vision. The motion centered in the corners of the room. He knew he shouldn't look.

He forced the air out of his lungs and closed his eyes, pretending he could count all the stars in the sky. He still had his Ziprasidone—this was not about to turn into a psychotic episode. He could keep a grip on himself—he could, he was capable of that.

Buck up, now. Don't be so hard on yourself.

When his eyes opened, the walls had ceased their curious curling, but now the shadows around the nightstand had migrated to frame the top drawer.

Right here, right here—oh, baby, you know it. What the hell are you talking about?

Sora's hand strayed forth to dust over the drawer knob and hover over the potential contents of the nightstand. A faint crunching sound, like something eating itself, echoed from a distant place in the back of his head. Sora gripped the knob between his index and middle finger and snapped open the drawer. He stared piercingly down into the dark, his eyes for the moment offering a rare, daunting challenge to any opposition. There was nothing new in the drawer, except for something he forgot.

A relieved sigh broke from his lungs as he plucked the second address book out of the nightstand. It had everything that the one downstairs used to hold. He ran his fingers over the shiny, black binding with obvious reverence. Riku hadn't had the time to find or deal with this address book when he was in Sora's bedroom. Nothing else was disturbed or out of place in or on his nightstand either, he observed with hope.

Sora drew his cell phone out of his jeans pocket and flicked open the top. As he moved to open the address book, he heard the quiet moan of an old floor board behind him, and he turned to look. Water jets abruptly burst inside of him, and he flinched, a yelp was smothered by the dark things in his throat before the white sound could be birthed from his mouth. He felt the freezing droplets tumble over every surface beneath his skin. The person standing in the doorway was no one he knew, but the build, the hair, and the color of the glowing orbs on its face were very similar to someone he had recently met.

It waited for him, docile in the doorway, its skin appearing as soft as the dust on a black moth's wings.

The brunet glanced back at the page of the address book to which he'd opened. He flicked rapidly through the other pages, wilting, before tossing the useless and also empty book onto his bed. With this thing watching him, he couldn't think. He forced down the wetness that was trying to creep up behind his eyes and tucked his phone into his pocket.

Now for the unwanted dust-construct standing before him.

Sora grabbed the voice quavering in his throat and forced it to work. The second his mouth opened, the black figure snapped to full attention. It was peculiar.

"What are you and what are you doing here?" he demanded quietly, a little scared and just pissed enough to stand up to this small fear in the doorway. This intruder's eyes lacked whites or pupils; instead, they emitted a constant, aquamarine light. The outline of the hair, build, and height was identical to Riku. But he was clearly not.

The Anti-Riku's eyelids lowered. It swayed slightly, silent, but evidently not a danger to anyone.

"Answer me!" Sora barked. "Who are you, you freak?!"

The Anti-Riku's orbs widened and its mouth spasmodically trembled with its response, like it was trying to piece together all the words Sora had imparted to it. It puffed out little black-cloud words without sound that resonated in the brunet's skull. It released some gibberish in a halting voice which sounded as though it had been little used and was not meant for speaking.

"I'm no-nobo—dy, who are You?"

Sora squirmed. The thing continued.

"Are you nobo-ody, t-t-too?"

The black specter's wide eyes rested softly on Sora's face, waiting. The aquamarine orbs seemed to be the only anchored thing about its physical person—the edges of Anti-Riku's form seemed to be perpetually dissolving into the shadows behind it without diminishing in size.

Sora's brow's furrowed. He had heard that somewhere before.

The Anti-Riku opened its mouth again to speak, but the "o" shape its lips took kept collapsing on itself. It opened its mouth to try again, but its jaw shuddered as the breath escaped. The intense effort resulted in something unintelligible.

The Anti-Riku shifted from on foot to another. The gloved hands began clenching rhythmically at its sides as it struggled. His brow furrowed as the seconds passed, until his head had drooped so far down that it was staring at the floorboards. The specter's aquamarine eyes glanced up at Sora's face, searching for his response, then away again with a pained, sorry wince. It kept trying, for minutes, while Sora silently waited, bewildered. The Anti-Riku kept trying, eventually choking out something that at one moment sounded clearly like syllables but not much better than silence and dust puffs. Its face began shuddering in effort and frustration.

As Sora watched, the anger, resentment, and fear jabbing through his chest softened. His brow lowered and he frowned, thinking I-should-be-able-to-say-all-this-to-you, like he had somehow failed this thing that was so clearly unfit to exist. He felt protective of this feckless, sincere thing in his doorway. I should be able to see what's wrong, he thought sadly.

He obeyed a sudden compulsion. Sora stepped forward and placed a light hand on Anti-Riku's shoulder, and shushed him in a soft, comforting voice.

I should know what's hurting you.

Sora wrapped Anti-Riku in his arms and gave him a firm, long hug. He was still unnerved by this thing, whatever it was, but for the moment he felt big enough to comfort it. For the first time in a long while, Sora knew someone as alone and incompetent as he felt. Even if that thing was a hallucination. He could still pretend, so he wouldn't feel so badly.

He released Anti-Riku and looked at it. The Anti-Riku had lost all trace of his frustration from seconds before and now gave Sora a guileless, open, and direct look which lacked any indication of knowing how strange this situation was.

If Sora could whistle, he would have. God, he would have.

"Okay, enough," Sora said. The Anti-Riku flinched, prompting Sora to follow his statement with a friendlier tone in his addition: "You can stop now, if it's that hard for you."

The dark thing before him had seamless black skin which vibrated with a quiet, latent energy. Sora thought he could see tiny motions of tiny, secret, vulnerable things just beneath the moth powder coating the Anti-Riku's skin; tiny lives made of gossamer strings, and iridescent wings made of little, gold wires.

Sora glanced around the room—and no, the walls were not licking themselves this time, thank you very much—for any stimulus to spark his thinking in any direction. Like Hell if he knew what to do.

The Anti-Riku stepped forward at that last thought and, for a moment, its glowing, aquamarine eyes reminded the brunet of ship cabins and a lost girl lying, lifeless, on the wooden floor.

"You're not Riku," Sora said, in part to himself in an effort to confirm his hope. The Anti-Riku did not respond negatively to this—well, it didn't respond positively either, but Sora didn't notice.

"You're not him at all," he said, his voice warming with obvious relief, and he moved as though to cup that blessed Anti-Riku face and beam into it. He hesitated before his hands made contact with the Things dust-skin. The Anti-Riku gazed at his hands curiously, as though hands were new to it.

"Can you get me out of here?"

The Anti's brows—well, the area of his skin where his brows would be—furrowed. It seemed to doubt the wisdom of this concept, or Sora was just projecting onto it. It placed its seamless hand on Sora's shoulder, causing the skin beneath the brunet's skin to prickle and curl over itself, and steered Sora towards the bed. In the moments of contact, Sora felt as though Anti-Riku had transmitted one of his fireflies into him.

"No," Sora stated firmly and removed the Anti-Riku's hands from his shoulders. When the dark specter tried to repeat the motion, Sora caught and held the seamless fingers. He ignored the intimacy of the contact and presented his situation to the visitor.

"I'm not going to sleep—no, I'm not even going to try to sleep. For one, getting to sleep is damn near impossible for me without my medication to knock me out. I'm dependent on it by now. And second, I have night terrors that result in my waking up in a trembling, shrieking puddle of what can barely be called a human being. I'm not going to be able to sleep restfully, or even sleep at all, whether or not you want me to try. Do you understand?"

Anti-Riku mouthed something silently and Sora flinched, not wanting to believe he was hearing that enigmatic statement again.

You're-better-than-you-know.

The Anti-Riku dropped its hands from Sora's. Its perfect, dark head twitched, its lips curved, and it managed a clipped-sounding "No."

Sora's typical hallucinations were frightening, bemusing, and a far cry from an ambiguous ebony imposter with glowing eyes. He wondered if this "visitor" had low comprehension, or was just nearly mute. And had been locked in a cage without human contact for, like, ever. But that was beside the point. It was an illusion and it could affect nothing in the physical world.

Then Anti-Riku snatched Sora's cell phone from his pocket and crushed it in its hands. He heard the electrical bits crunch.

…Right.

-o-o-

The brunet tensed when the Anti-Riku's hand rose towards his face. They had been standing resolutely in his bedroom since the broken phone, but Sora's eyelids lowered when he felt the dark figure do nothing more than stroke his hair. This gentle contact, or physical contact in general, wasn't something he'd experienced recently. Sora assured himself that no one else was here to see him take comfort in a hallucination, and let himself lean in to the Anti-Riku's touch. The Anti-Riku moved so the brunet's face rested upon Its shoulder and Sora closed his eyes to watch the little firefly this dark thing had given him. The little insect was crawling harmlessly around in the dark of his stomach. Its glow was gentle, like candlelight, and though its rays did not extend far, it reassured Sora that the rest of the dark space was empty of monsters

Beyond Sora's notice but well within that of the Anti-Riku, Haimund padded silently into the bedroom. The feline stopped and sat on the cold, wooden floorboards to spectate upon the interaction.

Anti-Riku shifted slightly so as to better watch the cat without rousing Sora.

Haimund flattened his ears against his skull and leaned forward, presenting its sharp teeth to the intruder. Then, the cat's silent, snarling expression changed to one of cool certainty, and it vomited a gray-furred kitten. The kitten's tiny body met the floor in limply and did not wake. Its little form crumbled into a pile of gray dust, the same shade as its lush fur.

Haimund raised its head from the disappearing traces on the floor to meet Anti-Riku's gaze. The feline's eyes were sharp and cold

Me next.

Anti-Riku defensively tightened his arms around Sora. Its wide eyes bored into the cat's form until it finally left, by which time Sora was finally almost calm.

-o-o-

Riku dropped the cardboard box onto the kitchen counter with a soft thud. His forehead was creased and his eyes pointed ahead of him without recognition. The glinting was still there, like the sparkly particles in snow globes, but it now seemed to be knitting something in the back of the man's skull.

This activity paused for a moment, and Riku's narrowed eyes gravitated to the knife box on the island. He swiveled the box around so the slit side faced him.

He opened the cardboard box and began removing kitchen knives. He slid them neatly into their slots in the wooden box, but paused to inspect one in particular. This occurred in perfect time with the light jingle of a tiny collar-bound bell as a small, furry quadruped padded into the doorway.

Riku's hand hovered near the knife box for a moment of deliberation, but he withdrew the knife and held it close to his chest. He angled his head around to leer at the cream-colored feline.

The knives were very sharp.

-o-o-

It was 11 PM. Sora and Anti-Riku sat on the couch in the foyer. Sora had set himself to studying for his classes and, with no better ideas, he gave Anti-Riku picture books and told him to read. Maybe it would learn to communicate visually. He had to give it something to do, because it had no intention of leaving the brunet alone. Sora would not attempt to sleep that night.

While Sora slowly progressed through his coursework, a sense of dread, duty, or urgency was growing in Anti-Riku. The books were engaging—indeed, Anti-Riku experienced a sense of wonder regarding all the magical contents of those bland picture books—but its interest in them did not mask the undeniable feeling of foreboding in its chest.

The walls were still moving, Haimund was missing, and there was something down in the basement of Sora's section of the divided house. This was a point of potential crisis, at which it could be combated and resolved, or grow explosively worse. But Sora dismissed Anti-Riku's attempts to lead him in a search after Haimund or downstairs. He would not talk about the walls or the immovable, unreal layer of dust coating the entire kitchen, or the new neighbor. This was bad, it was wrong, something needed to happen, and if it didn't—Anti-Riku's fingertips had grown into sharp points. He did not want to.

The Anti-Riku glanced up at Sora, then back down to the book in its clawed hands. It tried to take pleasure in the pictures and symbols on the page, words it would not exist long enough to pronounce. As it turned to the next page, an idea sparked in its head. A particular, warm, inviting intrigue grew in its stomach at a picture of two people in gown and suit were touching lips. It seemed to function alternately as a pleasure, distraction, or persuasion. But it cringed and reflexively ducked its head down, as if to hide its face in shame from anyone who might be watching. No one was watching. But the idea was foreign and new and made it feel uncomfortable. It did not like feeling vulnerable.

It turned this idea over and over in its head until the clock said the time was 12:30 AM. Sora was still working and he made no signs of stopping.

The Anti-Riku bit the inside of its lip nervously, then stood in front of Sora on the couch. The brunet looked up at him blankly, now completely calm for the first time they'd known each other. The Anti-Riku closed the books and binders and took them from him, then grabbed his forearm firmly and took him to the top of the stairs to the basement. It looked at Sora with a question in its eyes. Sora pulled back and made it clear who, if anyone, was going down there tonight, and whether or not it'd be with a boot up their ass. In the kitchen, Sora was unconcerned that Haimund was missing. Anti-Riku knew not what else to do then, so it dragged Sora upstairs with one of the picture books in its hand.

In the bedroom, Sora did not want to lie down, so the Anti-Riku drew on its courage and imitated the couple in the picture book: first it pulled Sora flush against it, then pressed their mouths together. Sora tolerated this for a few seconds, long enough for the Anti-Riku to try again, and he allowed himself to be steered backwards onto the bed. It pushed Sora backwards onto the bed, hovered over him on all fours, and faltered.

"What are you doing?" Sora asked in a kind and patient tone of voice. He hadn't a clue. A non-aggressive hallucination was making out with him. What was the worst that would happen? And while he knew he should have knocked on wood after that thought, he trusted the Anti-Riku.

Anti-Riku produced the picture book. It showed Sora a page which bore the image of two smiling people wrapped around each other on a couch. Anti-Riku was not sure if it could smile, but maybe Sora would get the idea.

"Cuddle. You want to cuddle?"

The Anti-Riku's facial expression declared, clearly, to all the world that it had no idea what that word meant, but Sora was able to fill in the gaps. Sora did not know what this would amount to, but he also saw no harm in it. He acquiesced, got under the covers with the specter, and opened a book from his nightstand. The Anti-Riku wrapped himself around Sora and Sora did not give a damn because no one had to know he was cuddling with a hallucination. The most significant outcome from this, as he saw it, was that he might feel comforted. He was still trying to forget the day's events. He read—and read, and read—whilst the Anti-Riku lay there beside him, charged with the knowledge of what must be done.

The forward momentum apparently at an end, Anti-Riku nervously glanced at the clock's red numbers. Time was ticking on and the dark thing's mind was worried by thoughts of the cat's dust-meaning in the corner. The fine gray corpse was still there, but Sora never noticed it.

At 2 AM, Sora was pulled from his escape in his book to the insistent akhakhakh of fingers rapping on the headboard. Anti-Riku's fingers. The sound was not so disturbing as the one he associated with Dr. S but it was close enough to make him wince. He snapped at his visitor to stop, but his order fell on deaf ears.

The Anti-Riku turned him onto his back hovered over him on all fours. Its aquamarine eyes bored down into Sora with such a particular expression that the brunet's heart fell into his stomach.

The specter made Sora turn off the lamp. But as the brunet's hand hesitated around the knob, Anti-Riku kissed him, apologetically, again. He waited for the light to turn off, hoping Sora would know what to do, because Anti-Riku dearly did not want to murder him.

-x-x-

That was chapter two. I really appreciate reviews because your feedback helps me continue to write something worthy of your attention. Also, I'm alive. I haven't updated this in four years. We'll see what happens next.

Next chapter: "Psychological Monsters"