Ah, this is where things may start to make sense.

Also: HI MISSA, I LUV YOU, DARLING. And yes. Sora is badass. )

Chapter Ten: Manic Monday

Riku stumbled out of bed the next morning – literally, because Axel had apparently rolled out of his own bed and fallen asleep in a tangle of blankets on the floor right next to Riku's. He tripped over the redhead's unconscious - possibly dead if he'd put the moves on Roxas - body and went smashing face-first into the second bed, the one that Axel had fallen out of. For a moment, he was sure he would suffocate in the tangled sheets, and wouldn't they just laugh when they found him dead on a cheap hotel bed with his foot in Axel's mouth? He wriggled his way out of them and glared at the redhead simply because he had just very nearly caused Riku's death and hadn't even had the decency to wake up.

He stumbled toward the crappy bathroom, wondering briefly why no one had bothered to make the awful complimentary coffee and rubbing sleep from his eyes all the way. Yawning, he felt for the doorknob and turned it, pushing the door open with his shoulder when it stuck to the doorframe.

"Axel, if you- holy shit!"

Riku let out a similar curse and shot back, tripping over his own two feet and shielding his eyes with one hand. "What the hell are you doing?!"

"What the hell am I doing?!" Roxas yanked a towel off of the rack, wrapping it around himself just as Riku peeked through his fingers. "What the hell are you doing?!"

Riku cautiously uncovered his eyes. "It's my bathroom. Why are you naked?"

"It was dirty! I was cleaning!"

The detective blinked, and glanced over to see if Axel was still dead to the world. He was. "…And cleaning involves you being naked?"

Roxas blushed a bright red and tightened his grip on the towel shielding his happy man-parts from Riku's eyes. "I was going to take a shower afterward."

"Alright, that explains the naked, I guess." God, it was really too early for this. If Roxas had already been up and naked, why the hell hadn't he made coffee? "Why are you naked in my bath-" His brain suddenly supplied a conclusion and promptly died. "Holy… How drunk did Axel get you last night?!"

Roxas' mouth fell open. "What? No! No! It's not what it looks like! I – he… He fucking passed out on me! I had to sleep with him, he wouldn't get off!" A horrified look crossed his face as he realized exactly what he had just said. "I didn't mean it like – Just get the fuck out!"

The chipped wooden door was then slammed in Riku's face, leaving him staring at it with a mix of amusement and horror. He heard a rustle and a curse that could only be a hung-over Axel finally rousing from the dead, and looked over to see Axel half-draped over a bed, gel-free red hair falling around him.

"So, you raped Roxas," Riku said, now fully awake thanks to Roxas' screaming and nudity. He dug through the duffel bag, found a bottle of pain killer, and pegged Axel in the head with it because he could. "Did you at least make him like it?"

"Shut up, asshole, I didn't rape him," Axel replied, voice muffled by the mattress and one hand blindly groping for the bottle. "I just molested him a little bit before I used him as a pillow. Get me water."

"Say please."

Axel mustered up the energy to flash him a middle finger.

Roxas tossed him a complimentary expired bottle of water – and who knew that water had an expiration date? – which bounced off of his head as well. "You win?"

Axel downed four ibuprofen, dooming his stomach lining to a short life of misery. "From what I can remember, every game except one. I think I drank the money away."

The shower shut off, cutting their conversation short. Axel flopped back down onto the floor, burying himself in the blankets and covering his head with a pillow. Riku managed to wipe the smirk off of his face just as the bathroom door was pulled, got stuck, and was yanked open fully, banging into the wall behind it, allowing Roxas to stomp out in the clothes he had worn the night before.

"Not a word," the blond hissed, glaring at Riku leaning on the wall and Axel lying in the floor in turn. He made it to the door before Axel couldn't help himself.

"Hey, babycakes, I'll call you later!"

Roxas growled something obscene in reply and yanked open the door far enough for the chain to get caught, closed it, unhooked the chain, opened it again, and stomped out like he'd meant for that to happen, damn it, slamming the door behind him for good measure. A moment later, the door opened again, and Kairi stuck her head in.

"Axel, did you rape Roxas?"

"I didn't rape him!" Axel repeated, wincing a little as the door opened fully and let light in. "I just felt him up and passed out on top of him!"

Kairi grinned. "Of course. Donut?"

Axel turned a decidedly disturbing shade of green and quickly made his way to the recently-cleaned bathroom. Kairi watched him go, unrepentant, and offered the box to Riku.

"So, talk about anything interesting? Figure out the meaning of life?" he asked as he carefully selected a donut.

She shrugged, taking a seat on the edge of the bed and kicking Axel's covers out of her way. "There was a lot of catching up… We talked a little bit about… you know, what happened after."

Riku smirked at her. "And a lot of 'I love you,' 'I love you more,' 'No, I love you more.'" And judging by the redness of her ear, she had fallen asleep to the sound of his soothing voice, or some romantic crap like that.

Kairi blushed a little. "Some of that too." She looked down at the donut box in her lap, and her voice went a little quieter. "Yeah, well… I doubt that'll happen again anytime soon… He almost got caught."

Riku patted her shoulder gently and began making his way toward the restroom to make sure Axel hadn't just up and drowned himself or something. He glanced back and saw her smiling sadly at the box of donuts.

"It's for the best," she said, mostly in an attempt to convince herself, it seemed. Riku kept his mouth shut, biting back the urge to tell her that there was no need to complicate things further and that she didn't know if he was going to betray her like the selfish bastard he was, and knocked on the bathroom door instead.

"I'm never drinking again!" Axel called weakly, which meant that he was either still alive or had decided to try and get into Roxas' pants from beyond the grave. "But, man, it's clean in here!"

Riku generally disliked Mondays.

"No."

Roxas and Sora glanced at each other, both a little caught off-guard by the three detectives' synchronized refusal. Riku leaned back in his chair, arms crossed and mostly-cleared plate of cheap Thai food in front of him. Axel was still picking at Roxas' food, his own plate having been cleared long before, and Kairi was studying the dessert menu. The three had spoken without even looking up at the brothers.

Sora shook his head. "Look, you can't exactly go back to St. Louis right now, and God knows you can't just wander around Chicago, so at least let us-"

"No, Sora," Riku interrupted.

"Your last 'safe place' nearly got us all killed," Axel threw in around a bite of pad kra-prao. "Might as well just take us with you."

"You can't come with us," Roxas replied, taking a bite as well.

"It's too dangerous?" Kairi guessed, eyes not straying from the dessert menu. "In case you haven't noticed, you've kind of sucked at protecting us from danger. You know. The whole explosion."

"My car," Axel added.

"Death threats," Kairi went on.

"My car."

"A shoot-out."

"My car."

"Fourteen stories on a wet fire escape."

"My goddamn car!"

"Car chase."

"My poor car…"

"And-"

Roxas interrupted her, a hand rubbing his temple gingerly. "I get it, I get it! But you still can't come with us… Not because it's too dangerous," he said as Kairi opened her mouth to argue again. "But we can't tell you why."

Kairi studied him for a minute, and then the corners of her mouth lifted ever-so-slightly into a smile that could incite terror in the Grim Reaper, but she didn't say anything. Roxas didn't catch her knowing smile.

"Look, this place is safe. The safest. I can almost guarant-fucking-tee that absolutely nothing is going to happen to you while you're there." Roxas' chopsticks briefly met Axel's as they both grabbed for the same piece of chicken, and he yanked them away like they had caught on fire.

"Where?" Riku asked.

"Wonder Lake," Sora replied. "It's quiet, you know? Someplace they wouldn't look."

"See, you underestimate the Organization," Axel said, pointing at Sora with his chopsticks. "What you don't get is that they're going to look. They're going to look everywhere. They've got eyes everywhere, even a state away. They're going to expect us to go 'someplace they wouldn't look,' and they're going to expect us to run and hide. But what they don't expect is for us to throw ourselves in the crosshairs." He cleaned the last piece of chicken off of Roxas' plate and leaned back in his chair, folding his arms behind his head. "Besides, this is our fight too."

"And what exactly makes it your fight, carrot top?" Roxas asked, putting his chopsticks down as well.

Axel nodded pointedly at Kairi. "They've got twenty grand on my girl, Roxy."

"Don't call me-"

Riku interrupted him, looking at Sora. "The only 'safe' place is out of country."

"Continent, actually," Kairi threw in. "They've got operatives in Cancun, Mexico City, Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. We'd have to go to Europe or Asia."

"What about Australia?" Axel asked. "I could do Australia."

"Too hot," she replied, waving down a waiter as she finally made a choice for dessert. Conversation ceased as the man approached, and picked up again when he had walked away. "And the dingoes would-"

"Eat your baby?"

"Freak me out," Kairi finished with a glare at the other redhead. "But it doesn't matter. I refuse to leave."

Roxas sighed, resting his chin on his hand and glancing at Sora. "You refuse, huh?" She nodded. "We can't fly you out of country at the moment anyway. Too much paperwork."

"The point is," Axel said, "we can't just run and hide. What the hell are we supposed to do then? How long are we hiding for? Forever? I'm not staying in some crappy little apartment forever, damn it."

"Just until we fix this," Sora replied, reaching over to snag a piece of… whatever it was that Riku had been eating.

"And how long will that take?" Axel went on. "How do you even know you can fix this? What are we supposed to do if you…" He stopped for a minute, glancing at Roxas, who was simply waiting for him to continue.

Kairi picked up for him. "What are we supposed to do if you fail?"

Riku looked at Sora, who looked at Roxas, and for the first time, the detective realized that failure most likely meant death. And if Sora died… He didn't want to think about Sora dying anymore than Kairi or Axel dying.

Roxas shrugged. "Well, somebody else takes over and finishes it for us, then."

"Finishes what?" Axel asked.

"We can't tell you that," Sora replied, stealing another piece of Riku's food. "But the point is that you'll be safe."

Axel scowled at Roxas. "But you two won't be."

Roxas scowled right back. "We are trained for this, so stop worrying. You three would just get in the way, and at this point, it's either we tuck you away somewhere nice and safe, or we kill you, and Sora's going to be pissed if I have to kill Riku."

Riku looked at Sora, who met his eyes apologetically. "You, um, really should stop asking questions now," the brunet said. "Sorry."

Personally, Riku thought that Sora's sounded like a pretty good idea, especially if it meant that he'd live to see another day. Axel sat back in his chair, his hands feeling his pockets and only finding his lighter. Roxas studied it curiously for a minute, obviously expecting a package of cigarettes to follow, surprised when he didn't see one a moment later.

"I have a last request," Kairi spoke up. "I want to go to the library. Leon's was boring and I need a new trashy romance."

Roxas shrugged and glanced at Sora. "Can you-"

The brunet nodded. "I'll take Riku. You take Kairi and Axel."

"Take me where?" Riku stood when Sora did, following the brunet out of the crowded restaurant and into the twilight-bathed street. Sora looped his arm in Riku's and waved a taxi down with a grin, apparently choosing not to reply.

The first stop was the hotel, or, more specifically, Sora's room. Riku pondered this for a moment as Sora unlocked the door, this strange situation of himself and Sora in Sora's hotel room. Alone. He found that his mind was no better than Axel's, and he had to remind himself of their agreement to wait until everything was over – assuming they were both still alive. Unfortunately, that agreement had been preceded by kissing, and kissing Sora brought him right back to Square One on the dirty thoughts drawing board. So he forced himself to think about Larxene naked instead.

"Here, put this on." Sora shoved a black hoodie at him, pulling on a gray one of his own. The brunet paused, looking at Riku's face closely. "…Are you okay, Riku? You look like you're about to puke."

Riku shook himself mentally. "I'm fine," he told Sora, although he really wasn't sure about his mental state after that little thought-adventure.

"If you're sure…" Sora replied dubiously, handing Riku a pair of gloves. This didn't bode well. "Put those on too."

"Tie your hair back or something," Sora told him, digging through the bag that he had gotten the hoodies from. "It'll get in the way if we have to run."

Whatever Sora's idea was, it was looking more dangerous by the second. Still, Riku tied his hair back into a loose ponytail without a word, figuring that if he was about to die or get arrested, he might as well not let his hair get tangled in the meantime.

"Which bank are we robbing?" he asked when he saw Sora slide a small handgun into a holster at his belt, pulling up his long t-shirt that usually hid it. Sora just grinned and handed Riku a gun as well.

"Don't worry," the brunet said. "You shouldn't have to shoot anything… It's really just a safety net. We shouldn't be going anywhere without 'em right now, anyway."

Riku really hoped that didn't mean they were actually robbing a bank. They couldn't be that hard up for gas money, could they? "I get the feeling this is going to be illegal."

Sora was still grinning. "All you have to do is hold the flashlight. Come on, let's mosey."

They locked the hotel room behind them and strode off down the stairs and onto the street. Sora flagged a taxi down and gave the driver some address near Jackson Boulevard with a sunny smile and a hand on Riku's knee. He grinned through the whole ride, much in the manner that Axel did when the redhead had found a new way to torture Kairi, a mix of excitement and mischief, and just a little terrifying. The old man dropped them off at an empty lot with a confused look, but if he was about to say something, Sora's generous tip shut him up fast enough.

"…Did you just bribe him into covering up a crime?" Riku asked when the taxi had pulled away, leaving them on a not-so busy street in the dark.

"Don't ask, don't tell," Sora said. "And that was just a little extra to make sure there's even less asking and telling." Sora took off slowly down the street, glancing around like he was just walking home on a Monday night. Riku walked along beside him, hands tucked into his hoodie pocket.

With the words, "Pull your hood up," Sora made a turn into a nearby parking garage, and it suddenly hit Riku like a blind old lady doing ninety in a semi.

"You're going to get electrocuted," Riku told him.

"I'm a pro at this, dude," the brunet replied, still wearing that exciting, terrifying grin. "Been doing this for years." The statement didn't ease Riku's fears at all.

They wandered through the lower level of the parking garage for a little bit, until Sora paused and took a good look at a silver Pontiac Grand Prix. "This one," he said quietly. "It's a 2001, so there's no kill switch." He wedged a gloved finger under the hood and pulled the latch, popping the hood for easy access. "Alrighty, hold the flashlight."

Riku moved to shine the flashlight on the engine as Sora reached for the red coil wire. "Just don't get shocked or anything."

"Relax, Riku," the brunet replied, pulling a wire out of his pocket. "Look, I'm gonna hook this to the battery and the coil."

"Sora, I really don't need to know this much about hotwiring a car," Riku said.

Sora grinned. "Hey, you never know." He motioned toward the car. "Go break in and find the starter under the steering wheel."

"How am I supposed to-"

Sora reached into his hoodie pocket and pulled out a slim jim. Great. Even more illegal.

"Use the passenger door. And make sure the parking brake is on and put it in neutral. Oh!" Sora reached into his pocket again and handed Riku a screwdriver. "And if the alarm goes off, run like hell." Oh, fantastic.

"What about the flashlight?" Riku asked as a last-ditch effort not to be arrested for grand theft auto.

Sora opened his mouth in reply. Riku tried not to think about that too much.

One broken lock and a lot of swearing later, the engine finally turned over and Sora shut the hood. Riku unlocked the door for him from the passenger's seat and the brunet slid behind the wheel, flipping on the lights and pulling out of the garage with a grin.

"I love doing that," he said when they were halfway to the hotel. "You can help me when we get ready to leave tomorrow too, if you want."

Riku looked over at Sora, at Sora's grin and Sora's gloved fingers gripping the wheel of a stolen car. Not just any stolen car, either, one that Riku had helped to steal.

"Okay," he said, which was immediately followed by the wise voice in his head telling him that he was probably screwed, and he was probably going to jail someday, and it would probably Sora's fault. And dammit, he was pretty; jail was a bad place for him.

"Cool!" Sora replied, and his little stole-the-cookie-jar grin morphed into his happy smile, and Riku decided that he could probably sleep his way out of prison if he had to. He was pretty, after all.

"Hey, man, which bank did you rob?" was Axel's first question when he walked through the door of their hotel room. He was reclining on the bed, flipping through movie channels that ranged from bad to worse to probably illegal in most states. Kairi was curled up on the second bed – Riku's, the detective would have liked to point out – her nose buried in The Italian Millionaire's Conniving Queen in His Garden of Love or something similar. All Riku knew was that it had a ridiculously muscled guy and a half-dressed chick on the front, and Kairi was loving it.

"I didn't rob a bank," Riku replied. "I stole a car."

Axel paused in his channel-surfing and Kairi slowly looked up from her book.

"…You what?" Kairi asked.

Riku shrugged. "Sora and I stole a car." He peeled off the black gloves and the hoodie, tossing them into the not-quite-dirty-yet pile across the room. "A Pontiac."

"I'm jealous!" Axel leaned back against the pillows, looking highly affronted. "I've been trying to get you to steal a car with me since high school!"

"Neither of us knew how," Riku reminded him.

"Well, now we do. Let's go steal a car!"

Riku shook his head and took a seat on his bed. "No. One grand theft auto charge is enough for one night. How was the library?"

Kairi started, accidentally closing her book and losing her page. "Oh! I Googled the names!" she said, pulling a folded sheet of paper out of her pocket. "Every single one of them has vanished without a trace in the past two years, and only this guy," she shook the paper, "has ever turned up again. This is the news article. I didn't have access to any of the databases from the library computers, they were too slow to try and hack with Roxas coming back to check on me every five minutes. This I got while Axel was keeping him busy."

Riku looked to Axel, who grinned. "The social sciences section will never be the same."

After processing that for a minute, Riku turned back to Kairi, who rolled her eyes. "They just made out," she explained. "Or, rather, Axel felt him up and Roxas kissed him in a valiant effort to distract him from his ass, or so he says." She handed him the paper.

Riku unfolded it and scanned it, taking in the headline, "Body Found on Gasconade Bank," and seeing a picture and name that jolted his memory quite suddenly.

"Hey," he said slowly, "isn't this the guy Zex killed?"

Axel took the paper from him. "…Yeah, it is. Why didn't I notice before? Dates match up… They didn't tell us he was missing vital organs, though."

"They didn't tell us hardly anything. I figured that would be Vexen's personal touch," Kairi said with a little shudder.

Riku could remember it well enough, the body having washed up in the middle of December and forcing the Organization into silencing a good many of those considered high risk in an effort to keep everything covered up. They hadn't told him much, but he'd heard quite a bit from Demyx and Marluxia, the latter being quite the talker with a few drinks in him. It was a good thing that they had been so good at keeping their secrets, or they would have been at the bottom of the Gasconade themselves before long, especially at a time when suspicions were running high.

"Anyway," Kairi said, "it's safe to assume that every single person on the list is dead and gone without a trace, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were never found again. They're running pretty close to date, too… The last one was a few weeks ago."

Riku studied the article again, and then passed it back to Kairi. "Keep seeing what you can dig up," he said. She nodded, tucking the paper away in her pocket, and opened her book again, but didn't actually read.

A beat of silence passed. Axel was the first to break it.

"So, think you can hotwire a Firebird?"

The Village of Wonder Lake is a small suburb situated around Wonder Lake in northern Illinois. It boasts a population of roughly 1,500 people, and was called "Wonder Creek" in the mid-'60s by its residents, for no other reason than that they were all on too many drugs, and 'creek' is apparently more psychedelic and nature-loving than 'lake.' All in all, it was a very quiet place, and seemingly a perfect place to hide away for a good stretch of time with people they didn't know who they were supposed to trust with their lives. At least, that was the plan.

If there was one thing that Riku had learned over the years, it was that 'the plan' generally got shot to hell. Usually with flames and explosions and the like.

The first sign that something was wrong came as Sora slowed the car down to a crawl and Roxas paused in mid-rant to intelligently mutter, "Shit…" The pair then proceeded to stare out the windshield at the fire trucks and ambulances parked up and down the usually quiet street, and the yellow tape surrounding what Riku could only assume had once been a house. Now it was a pile of charred rubble, still burning faintly in places.

Sora parked the car at the curb, and opened his door as Roxas did the same. He motioned for the trio in the backseat to follow suit, and they followed the brothers toward the scene. Riku noticed the grim set to Sora's features and the anger glittering in Roxas' eyes, and he had the feeling that their safe house wasn't so safe anymore.

"Hey!" one of the police officers shouted as Sora approached the tape. "You can't be crossing that, boys… ma'am," he added as he saw Kairi.

Sora glanced at Roxas, and the blond shrugged, apparently granting permission to whatever it was Sora had asked. Sora glanced back at Riku, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a wallet, flipping it open and holding it up for the officer to inspect, a glitter of gold catching the sunlight.

Kairi sucked in a breath beside Riku. "Of course," she murmured.

"Oh," the officer said. "Sorry about that, sir. Uh, they with you?" he asked, motioning to everyone besides Sora.

The brunet nodded. "Any bodies?"

The officer shook his head and Sora's shoulders lost some of their tension – not that Riku had been watching Sora close enough to notice that he had tensed up at all.

"Keep processing, then," Roxas said. "That's all we needed to know."

The officer said something mundane and strode off, leaving the two detectives and their secretary watching Roxas and Sora carefully.

"Do we get any explanation at all?" Kairi asked. "Or do we get to live if we pretend that we didn't see that?"

Roxas shook his head. "No pretending anymore. Apparently, we've been compromised."

Sora rocked back on his heels, sliding his hands into his pockets and looking up at the sky. "The King's gonna have our badges for this, dude."

"I wanted to retire young anyway," Roxas replied. "Come on. Sora, hotwire the car again. You three will need to tell us everything you can about your undercover work last year, and we'll explain what we can when you're done."

"There's not a lot you'll be able to tell us," Kairi said. "That's a big price for just a little information."

"We kept you out of jail." Roxas opened his door, reaching over to fiddle with the steering wheel as Sora attempted to hotwire the car a second time. "And now we're keeping you alive."

Riku could smell smoke in the air, left over from the smoldering remains of the house, of their last safe place, and he thought of a warehouse in east St. Louis and an apartment where they heard gunshots every night and blood on the pavement and Kairi in black leather. And he looked at Roxas again, doused in sunlight but his mind supplied the smoke and flames, and he remembered.

He didn't want to, but he remembered.