Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts. I do have a friend that used to let me stay at his home after parties, though.

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, a mix of the last two points, questionable situations, morally ambiguous choices and a few, occasional and really shy attempts at humor.

Chapter 7: Sky of the Beginning

"And so, and so -ahahah- I told him: 'No, Seifer that was cat food!' and that was the last time that Seifer stole my lunch."

"Oh, that's something I'd toootally picture Seifer doing." Sora was wobbling dangerously back and forth in his chair, laughing like crazy at Riku's stories. "Hey, hey, I'm telling you. It's bad they stopped talking to you. You're cool. No, seriously, you're cool."

"Nah, they didn't stop talking to me, I stopped talking to them." the silver-haired boy answered defiantly, crossing his arms and theatrically closing his eyes and looking away. He still looked amused, though. "Who needs people? They are just a burden, a... a liability, that's the word. I'm better on my own."

Sora looked at him, turning surprisingly quickly to serious. "Really? A liability? That's what you think of me too?"

"What? No, you're my friend!" The words were out of his mouth before Riku could catch them. Nevertheless, a smile resurfaced on Sora's face.

"You know, what we need now? Another Pac-Man contest!" Sora proclaimed standing up and starting to walk towards the coin-op.

Riku looked at him, finding extremely funny how he couldn't walk in a straight line. He noticed the barman -a man in his forties who also happen to be the owner of the arcade- looking severely at him.

"I'm sorry Cid, my friend is a little... tipsy." he cried, focusing as best as he could not to stutter.

"You don't look any better yourself, Riku!" the old man grumbled back. "Just remember that the charges for everything he breaks will be on your account."

Riku quickly stood up to reach Sora, wondering why the room was spinning that much. The six toasts and the fact that it had been nearly a year since the last time he had ingested some kind of alcohol could have played a role. He wobbled carefully towards his friend, who had already inserted a coin in the coin-op. And a second later he had already lost.

"Whaaaat?" the small boy asked, more to himself than to someone else. "The game had already started?"

And Riku laughed.

A few hours later, the two boys were walking on an isolated road, holding each other by the shoulders and singing at the top of their lungs 'Wonderwall'. Having lost their last bus hours ago, their only hope to get home was to rely on their legs and what was left of Riku's sense of direction.

"How much more, Riku?"

"Thirty minutes for you, an hour for me." Riku answered completely unconcerned, despite not having the slightest idea at which distance from home they could possibly be. Granted, he was pretty sure that they were going towards the right direction, but also that Sora at the moment was not in the condition of keeping track of the flowing of time, the demonstration was that that was the third time in the last hour that he had given him that same answer.

The night was calm and the sky was starry. Riku couldn't help but notice how Sora's blue eyes were faintly shining in the darkness.

"What?" Sora asked, noticing the other boy staring.

Riku looked away quickly. "I'm not staring!" he felt the need to precise.

That teasing smirk was immediately back on Sora's face. "You know, I've noticed that you tend to blush a lot."

"That's because you're embarrassing!" Riku blurted defensively. "And I'm not really used to people talking to me." Man, that sounded really whiny, even to himself.

Sora slowly stopped walking, catching the other boy's attention. "Hey, Riku. In the end, you didn't tell me what happened with Roxas?"

Riku turned to face him, his face now dead serious, his attitude completely changed in the span of mere moments. "You really want to know?"

At Sora's nodding, he closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. He resumed walking, but he started to talk.

"Roxas outed me."

Silence. Thirty steps later, Sora finally talked. "That's not possible, he'd never do something like that."

An instinctive rush of anger started to boil inside Riku. "You have known him for... what? A week? You know nothing about him!" He was struggling to keep his words calm and controlled, but the alcohol in his blood was making difficult to restrain himself.

"Maybe you misunderstood. Maybe it was an accident."

Once more, Riku forced himself not to scream. There was some kind of purity in Sora's attitude, like he wasn't really able to imagine that someone could do something that bad. "We were best friends." he explained, refusing to look at the other boy. "One year ago, I told him that I am... that I like... yeah, well, you know what I mean. He said nothing and ran away and the day after everyone in that damn school started targeting me. End of the story."

Another long silence ensued. Fifty steps long, this time. "So... you're not sure that it was his fault, right?"

This time, Riku didn't manage to keep calm. He glared at the younger boy so intensely that he saw him instinctively taking a step back. "Do you have another explanation?" He was dangerously close to screaming.

"I don't." Sora answered, calm, but equally strong. "But maybe Roxas has, have you ever asked him?"

Riku was taken a little aback by that answer. It was true that he had never talked with Roxas about what had happened, actually he had never talked to Roxas at all after the incident. But he didn't really care about any justifications that the blond boy may have had: the facts were that since the moment he had trusted him, his life had fallen apart.

Riku waited to regain a little bit of self-control before talking again. "So... you already knew about me liking... uh, you know..." he asked. There was no need to specify what he was referring to. The next question was a lot more difficult to bring out. "Are you... cool with that?"

Sora's eyes shone even more. "Why shouldn't I?" he answered in the plainest way possible. "People are people. As long as they're nice, I don't care what anyone is."

Riku felt a wave of gratitude towards him. "How did you discover it?"

"Seifer and Kairi told me." Sora admitted, glossing over the fact that Roxas was the one who had confirmed it. "I'm sorry that you had to endure all of that."

"Seifer." Riku muttered, just slightly gritting his teeth. "I will never understand how and why people keep orbiting around that idiot..."

"Be honest with yourself here, you too were friend with him before..."

"...before they started to ignore me?" he ended the sentence, before Sora could. "Well, the fact that I was in the same group as him doesn't necessarily mean that I liked him, you know? It's better not to get on the bad side of certain people and Seifer is one of those guys." He then got closer to Sora's ear and adopted a nearly conspiratorial attitude. "Oh, and for your own sake, stay as far away as possible from Kairi too."

Sora burst into laughter. "I got that feeling, yeah. What's the deal with her, anyway?"

"She was my ex." Blunt answer.

"Soooo... did you two ever..."

Riku squeezed his eyes and pulled his tongue, disgusted. "Heck no, we never had anything physical, nothing more than a few kisses, thank god."

Another fifty steps.

"Why did you have a girlfriend if you're gay?"

Riku shivered.

"Don't call me that." He was asking kindly, but his voice betrayed a certain anxiety.

"Uh? I'm sorry, it's just..."

"I know what I am and I'm fine with that. Just... don't use that word, please."

Sora looked at him, a strange mix of disapproval and compassion. "Somehow, I doubt you really are."

"What..."

"I doubt that you're fine with what you are, if you react this way!"

A lot of thoughts crossed Riku's mind, first amongst them, how in the world that boy dared to imagine what was going on in his head. But before he could add anything else, Sora sprinted in front of him and towards a small house.

"We did it! Finally!" At Riku's confused look, he started to explain. "It's my house, Riku. I live here!"

"Oh, good for you." he answered, badly trying to hide a shade of disappointment. "Well... see you tomorrow, then."

But it looked like Sora had other programs for the night. He swiftly grabbed Riku's arm and started dragging him towards the house. "Come oooon, it's late! You can't go home alone, just stay here for the night, tomorrow we'll go to school together!"

And so, after a few minutes of useless resistance, Riku let his friend drag him in.

The moment they entered in the small house, Sora gestured him not to make any noises: his parents must have been asleep, Riku thought. They quietly took off their shoes, paying attention not to fall while doing it. He was surprised at how much he was still wobbling.

They climbed the spiral staircase up to the first floor, then they finally entered a room. Despite its small size, it was filled with tons of stuffs, which made it seems even more claustrophobic: from clothes scattered all around the floor to whole series of manga stuffed on shelfs. On the walls, various posters were looking at them and, in a corner, an incredible collection of videogames boxes were carefully collected. Riku looked at all of this in awe and admiration.

When he turned towards Sora, he was drinking from a bottle of water, but Riku didn't remember when he had taken it. "Here, drink." he offered. "Even if you don't feel thirsty, just do it."

Riku obeyed. Or, at least he tried to, until he started coughing and spitting water at the sight of Sora quickly undressing in front of him. Clearly unconcerned by his reaction, once his shirt and pants taken out, Sora quickly walked towards the double-sized bed lying in the farthest corner of the room.

Riku was standing still in the middle of the room and it was so not true that he was staring at Sora's not really muscular, yet perfectly fit body, with just that slightest hint of a six-pack that he couldn't help but find incredibly attractive.

Totally not true.

"Well? Are you coming? I'm kinda tired and tomorrow is a school day."

Realization struck Riku when he understood that when he had asked 'are you coming' Sora meant 'you're going to sleep in this bed with me half-naked next to you.'. He took a few steps towards the bed, unsure about what the most sensitive thing to do could be. And then he finally took place into the bed, paying the utmost attention not to accidentally touch the other boy.

"What the hell, Riku? Do you sleep dressed?"

Ok, now he was sure that Sora was trying on purpose to provoke him. In the most natural way he could manage to, he started to take off his shirt. He then stood up again to put it on a close chair.

"I was right about you: you are well-built. You would definitively make a good Struggle player."

Riku thought best to turn off the light to hide his blush before answering. "Uhm... about that, the game looks quite interesting, I've got to admit it." he then said, desperately trying to divert the subject from his body build.

"That's great! So, tomorrow you'll take part in the tryouts?"

Oh, right, he had forgot about those. Of course, that's what Sora wanted to get at. "We'll see." he simply answered while taking place in the bed, so close to the edge that he was nearly falling from it.

"If you won't I'll tickle you to death all night!"

Wait... he couldn't be serious. Two boys, sleeping half-naked in the same bed, tickling each other. That was the most gayish thing he could think of. For a second, he thought of Sora's hands running over his body and to the fact that it wouldn't be so bad, after all. The second later, though, he decided otherwise. "Alright, I'll do it. Entering the tryouts, I mean."

Sora seemed satisfied with that, considering that he mumbled a muffled 'g'night' before starting to snore noisily less than a minute later.

Riku, that until that moment had faced the opposite side, turned to look at the boy's face. He looked happy with his peaceful smile, like he hadn't a single thought in the world.

And for once in a long time, Riku thought that, maybe, it wasn't so bad to have a friend.

End Notes: Quite a difficult chapter to write for a non-native English speaker, rest assured... That said I loved to write it, with Sora as a devilish cutie and Riku as an adorable dork. I hope you like this characterization, but if you don't, stay assured: it's not as OOC as you may think... ;)

Preview: Riku hates Roxas, but Roxas doesn't hate Riku. What happens when the two of them find themselves sharing a car? With Sora in the middle, no less?

Next Chapter (07.14.2023): Echoes of the Past