Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts. Also, I do not own chocolate fountains or extremely expensive gemstones.

Warnings: This fiction contains and is not limited to boy/boy moments, the use and abuse of stereotypes, hints at original pairings, very despicable people, emo-Riku, lustful teenagers, underage drinking, occasional mixes of the last two points, questionable situations, morally ambiguous choices and a few, occasional and really shy attempts at humor.

Chapter 2: Magnet Spiral

Break between classes; Sora was sitting quietly on the window sill of the literature class. He was unusually quiet, for once letting other people talk and preferring to focus on his own thoughts. Which, during the last hours, had happened to revolve around a certain silver-haired boy that he had met that same morning.

"So-o-ora, are you listening?"

Kairi's high-pitched voice brought him abruptly down on Earth. "Uh, sorry, can't say I was. What did you say?"

She sighed. "No wonder everyone calls you sky-boy... I asked if you remember our date this afternoon."

At the sight of his quizzical expression, the girl sighed again, even if her voice betrayed a trace of excitation. "This afternoon? Shopping? Buying some clothes? Something new to wear for Larxene's party? Any of that rings a bell?"

"Oh, was it today?" a far less enthusiastic Sora replied. "Do you really need me for that? And... wait, was it a date?" he asked without the slightest trace of embarrassment in his voice.

Kari blushed slightly. Or at least pretended to do so. "Oh, come on, you promised! It will be fun!"

Somehow, Sora doubted it. For once, he hated going shopping, for second, there was a problem in the company. He was the kind of guy who could make friends with everyone and it wasn't like he had something against Kairi. But, for some reason, he just couldn't help but feeling uncomfortable around her. It felt like he had to always weigh all of his words, like she could use something he says against him at any moment.

"You're not nice, Sora!" Kairi pouted, uselessly trying to sound disappointed. Then her expression changed slightly. A nearly imperceptible change, but Sora caught it all the same. "Anyway..." she started innocently. "I saw you talking to Riku this morning..."

"Yep, what about it?" he asked, not really liking her tone of voice.

"Nothing." She smiled viciously. "I was just wondering what did you find so interesting about him..."

Sora didn't get the time to answer, being interrupted by Seifer's sudden arrival. He was smiling. A shark-like smile.

"Ah, just the man I was looking for!"

His authoritative voice boomed in Sora's ears, nevertheless he felt relieved at the change of subject and pretended not to see Kairi pouting next to him.

"Kairi!" Sora grinned. "Seifer is looking for you."

The girl's face shifted from a pout to a frown so quickly that Sora decided it was better to cut it short with the jokes. "Hey, Seifer, what are you doing here, you didn't take literature classes, right?"

The blond boy didn't answer immediately. Instead, he started looking around him, analyzing his surroundings. "So, you really did it in the end."

"Yes, it wasn't easy, but I survived a full hour of prof. Zexion's class." Sora answered, pretending not to realize what Seifer was talking about.

"Don't play dumb, you talked to Riku this morning!"

Once more, Sora started feeling unease. He had thought that he had left that awful feeling in his old school, never to be experienced again, but here it was again. He shook off a few bad memories that had resurfaced to his mind. "Really? I didn't realize it by myself, thanks for telling me." Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Kairi bearing a malicious smile.

"Oh, man, you're so funny! That's what I like most about you." Seifer said, exploding in an over-the-top laughter. "Just out of curiosity..." he then continued a few seconds later, exhibiting his shark-smile once more. "Did Riku already make a move on you?"

Sora's heart skipped a beat. Just one, though. "A... move?"

Kairi got closer to Sora's ears and started talking in a conspiratorial tone. "Riku is gay, didn't you know it?"

At those words, a deafening silence descended upon the three of them. Sora was the one to break it. "Wait, that's... that's just not possible. He doesn't look... feminine at all..."

It looked like Seifer was savoring every single moment of that situation and Sora couldn't help but wonder why. "It's not like it's our opinion, you know? He himself admitted it."

Sora looked at the two of them, suspiciously. "Come on, you're just making stuff up to mess with me."

"If you don't believe us, just ask anyone else. They will tell you the same." Seifer's grin was wider than ever and it was really starting to grate on his nerves. "Of course, I would understand if you want to give up on our..."

"No!" Sora exclaimed simply, without hesitation.

Kairi was observing carefully the two of them, clearly unable to understand what the two boys were talking about. "'Give up on...' what, precisely?"

But her question was fated to stay unanswered, as prof. Zexion chose that moment to come back to his class, not-much cordially brushing away the outsiders that didn't belong in his class, Seifer included.

Sora peacefully regained his place, luckily enough on the farthest row from Kairi. When he finally reached it, Roxas welcomed him back. "What did you say to Kairi to piss her off that much?"

"You could tell her mood from here?" Sora replied, not really surprised at Roxas' observation skills. Despite being only a few days from his arrival on that school, he had already noticed his surprising ability to assess situations quickly. Sora kind of liked him: he was calm, reserved and felt like someone he could trust.

Of their group, he didn't feel comfortable around Kairi, and Seifer was way too much competitive for his tastes. Axel and Saïx spent most of the time by themselves and he had never really got the occasion to do more than circumstantial talk with Larxene and Hayner.

Roxas, on the other side, had been the first one he had spoken to. And not only in their group, but in the whole school, not to say he was the one to introduce him to their circle of friends. He struck him as a kind of shy and reserved guy, somehow out of place compared to the others.

And so, Sora felt that he could trust him to get the answers that he wanted.

"Roxas... do you know a guy named Riku?"

"Sure."

Considering that it didn't look like Roxas would spill anything else spontaneously, he decided to quickly get to the point. "Is he gay?"

Sora observed carefully Roxas' reaction, but the only thing he noticed was his smile dropping. "Yep, he is. Why do you care?"

Well, that was a good question. In fact, Sora knew way too well the answer to that question, but he decided that it was better to avoid answering directly. "I just wanted to double-check. I take what Seifer says with a grain of salt."

"That's quite nice of you." Roxas replied, his smile back on his face. "Usually, I take what Seifer says and throw it in a trash can."

Sora wondered what may have happened between Roxas and Riku. Because, yeah, something had certainly happened, even if Roxas was doing a great job at hiding it. He spent the rest of the lesson talking with him of all and nothing, uselessly trying to get some more information out of him. Which meant that he pretty much lost all of the lesson, but, hey, he had already listened for a whole hour to prof. Zexion, his mind wasn't ready to endure an encore.

When class was finally over an hour later, Roxas offered him to go drink something, but Sora reluctantly declined: Kairi was waiting for him and he had the certainty that she wouldn't have accepted a refusal as an answer.

And so, the two of them were now walking across the roads of Twilight Town.

"You see?" the girl chirped in an excited voice grabbing his arm. "After two hours of literature, you finally got your prize and got to hang out with me."

"You know what they say: out of the frying pan..." He smiled, making it looks like a joke, even if it was a pretty accurate reflection of his actual feelings.

"First of all, I want to go check some new clothes at Rinoa's." Kairi kept blabbering without really paying attention to Sora's words. Or, again, pretending to do so.

"Whatever." he quickly answered, not really caring where they were heading for and hoping that in half an hour top the suffering would've been over.

"Hey, are you alright?"

Riku shook himself, unsure what to answer to the unknown man who had addressed him. What did he want? Why was he talking to him?

"I was starting to worry, you were spacing out for a while." the man added, answering the boy's unspoken questions.

"I'm fine." Riku finally answered, just before quickly walking away. He was clearly irritated to have been disturbed. Then again, he had to admit that a teenager who had spent the last ten minutes staring in front of the window of a jewelry was a little bizarre, not to say suspect.

Not that he was interested in the jewels on display, of course. But, as in all the rest of the day, Riku was finding more and more difficult to stay focused on something without his mind starting to float elsewhere. More precisely to the boy he had met that same morning. Everything around him was making him think of him: a chocolate fountain in a shop, a strange cloud in the sky and now a blue sapphire, the same color as Sora's eyes.

'Come on, man! Stop thinking about him: he's a bad, bad guy and you hate him, remember?'

But despite all of his efforts, Sora's smiling face kept resurfacing in his head. He was sure that if he had kept going on like that, he would have started to get visual hallucinations of him. In fact, he was already starting to get auditory ones: he could perfectly hear that irritating, slightly high-pitched voice of his calling his name.

'Wait a sec...'

Riku turned back just in time to see, much to his horror, Sora running towards him all the while yelling his name.

"Riku! Man, it's great to see you!"

Riku looked at him, without the slightest idea of what could he want from him. The second he reached him, though, Sora lowered the volume of his voice considerably.

"Please, save me! It's been two hours that Kairi is dragging me around shops to buy stuff!".

Riku looked at the begging brunet icily. Not only he had the guts to keep on talking to him, but he was even asking for his help. Why should he help him?

The familiar voice of a girl reached them, making him unconsciously grit his teeth. "Sora, don't leave me alone like that, how do you think I can carry all these bags while..."

Kairi stopped mid-sentence when she realized who was Sora's interlocutor. Her smile instantly disappeared from her face. "Riku, it's been ages, what a pleasure to see you."

She was clearly lying: the reason the two of them hadn't talked to each other in months was because she had started avoiding him since the moment he had been outed.

Riku didn't even bother to answer. The whole situation was awkward, but he didn't want to make it easier for her.

Same as that morning, Sora was smiling widely, totally oblivious of the tension between the two of them, his eyes darting forth and back, waiting for someone to say something. Considering nothing like that was going to happen, he chose that moment to play his card. "I'm really sorry, Kairi! I had forgot that I promised Riku to spend the afternoon with him to... uhm..."

He looked at the upperclassman, his big blue eyes begging for help.

Riku sighed. "To help me find a birthday gift for my brother, remember?"

"That! Precisely!" Sora confirmed.

Kairi was glaring at Riku so intensely that he doubted she had really listened to a single word.

Nevertheless, after a few interminable seconds of staring at each other, the girl simply gave up. "Alright then, see you tomorrow, Sora."

And without saying another word, she just walked away. Riku was ready to do the same, but it didn't seem like Sora had any intention of leaving him alone.

"Thanks, man. I owe you one." he said, trotting happily behind him. "So... what are we going to buy for your brother?"

"I don't have a brother, I'm an only child." Riku kept walking, without bothering to wait for Sora. "And Kairi knows that really well."

"So you lied." Sora observed calmly. "That's not really nice, you know?"

"I could fill a book with all the 'not-really-nice-stuffs' Kairi did to me, 'you know?'"

"Well, you should show her that you're better than her then, don't you think?"

At those words, Riku stopped walking: Sora was starting to sound a little too much like his mother for his tastes. He didn't turn to look at him: he knew that if he had met again those troublesome eyes, he might have given in. "Don't you have somewhere else to go? I'm sure people like Seifer are dying to spend their time with you."

As an answer, Sora walked past him and turned around, forcing Riku to look at him. "I thought you said it wasn't your choice to spend your time all by yourself. I'm just returning the favor for saving me by keeping you company." he answered grinning.

"That doesn't mean that I like having you around!" That last sentence came out a little bit too abruptly, even for Riku's standards. When he saw that the smile on Sora's face had completely disappeared, he couldn't help but feel a little guilty.

"...it's ok then. I'm sorry, I didn't think I was bothering you. I'll leave you alone, if that's what you want. Thanks anyway."

At the realization that Sora was walking away, Riku instinctively grabbed his arm. "Wait!"

Sora obeyed immediately, surprised by the strength of the grip. Riku let go of his arm immediately.

"I... I mean..." Damn, why was that boy making him feel that much uneasy? "You can come with me if you want, but I don't think you'd like where I'm going." he finally added, resigned.

But Sora's smile had already reappeared. Without adding anything else, Riku resumed walking, the brunet peacefully following behind.

End Notes: And that's the end of Chapter 2. For those who are not used to my style, with the exception of Dearly Beloved, I write my stories from different points of view. In particular, I think you can notice a few... (apparent) incongruencies for Sora's character when the story shift to his POV... well, no spoilers, you got to keep reading to see ;).

Preview: Sora and Riku are finally spending some time together. But what will happen when Sora discovers where Riku wants to bring him?

Next chapter: A Game of Trust