Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts. Also, I do not own an arcade, though I'd really like to.

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 3: A Game of Trust

When Riku finally reached his destination, he couldn't help but grin. Sora had kept on trotting behind him until that moment, but he had suddenly stopped at the sight of a huge neon sign.

"An arcade? Seriously?" he muttered.

Riku turned his head to look at him, who was standing mouth-agape. He was satisfied: that was not a place you wanted to be seen when you were on the group of the 'kewl kidz'. He was sure that Sora would've found an excuse and run away. "I understand how you feel. If you want to go home..."

But he stopped talking mid-sentence when he realized that a huge, childish smile had appeared on Sora's face. "An arcade... I can't believe it... It's been years since I've been to an arcade, that's amazing!"

Riku looked at him, confused. "You mean... that you want to go in?"

"How can you think that I don't want to?" he replied, now his turn to grin. And an instant later, Sora had already surpassed him and was gazing in awe at the various coin-ops lined on the wall.

For nearly a minute, Riku stood there, on the entrance of the arcade, too shocked to really do anything. Arcades were -to quote Seifer- 'stupid stuff for kids'. He couldn't believe someone as popular as Sora could really like these kinds of things.

But the surprise quickly left place to another thought, a lot more disturbing.

And an instant later, he was marching inside the building, walking straight towards a certain brunet who was waiting patiently in line for his turn to play. He grabbed him by the shoulder and forced him to look at him.

'These eyes...'

For a moment, Riku hesitated. Just for a moment. "Alright, what's your game?" he asked in all seriousness.

A look of surprise was plastered on Sora's face. He gestured at the coin-op the little kid was playing and answered calmly. "Pac-Man, can't you see?"

"Don't mock me. What do you really want from me?"

Sora slightly tilted his head to the side. "Are you doubting that I'm here to play some games?"

"I'm doubting that you have ulterior motives."

At those words, Sora's grin creeped back on his face. "Then... are you implying that I'm here because I just want to spend time with you?"

Riku was taken aback by that statement. He felt a hot rush rising up on his cheeks and he internally swore at his pale complexion.

"Well, can't say it's a wrong guess." Sora continued, managing to make Riku's embarrassment even more obvious. "But as much as I may appreciate your company, I have to disappoint you: I'm here for the games. You can say I'm kind of a fan of these stuffs."

Riku took a moment to pull himself back together. He still didn't believe him, but he had an easy way to check if Sora really was a nerd in disguise. A really cute and huggable nerd, he had to admit it.

Wait, what? No, no! Sora was detestable, and Riku hated his guts. He felt the need to remember himself that.

"Alright then, if you're that much of a geek, prove it." At Sora's interrogative look, he kept going. "If you can manage to beat me in a challenge, I'll believe you. It shouldn't be much difficult if you really are that big of a 'fan of these stuffs', right?"

He was sure that Sora would have given up, probably searched for some excuses to refuse the challenge. After all, even if there was no way he could know it, Riku was the holder of half of the records in the arcade. Pac-Man included.

But, surprisingly, the small boy smiled enthusiastically and took the place that the kid had left empty moments earlier. "Want to go first?" he asked kindly.

Riku grinned, pointing at the high score list that was running on the screen. The first place's score was well higher than the second one and the three-letters name next to it was reading R-I-K. "See that? I'm already 'first'."

He savored the moment of Sora looking at him in awe, before taking out a quarter and slid it inside the black device. He took place to his right side to enjoy the show.

From his experience, there were two main ways to play video-games: the first one was to rush through every level to get as far as possible in the shortest time, the second was to spend your time carefully collecting every single item appearing on the screen, thus making as many points as possible. After the first few levels, he realized that Sora belonged to the latter category, as he was observing him running in circle, uselessly trying to collect a bonus melon that had just popped on the screen.

"Going after the fruit, uh?"

Surprisingly, Sora let go of the joystick, consequently crashing into a ghost and thus costing him a life. Riku looked at him, surprised by that strange reaction, while the brunet was restarting the level. He didn't say anything, but he noticed that his face had taken a slight tint of red.

'He's... blushing?' he asked himself. A second later, he realized the unintentional double meaning of his question. 'Wait, to react that way... does it mean that he knows about me liking guys?'

In the end, Sora didn't manage to top Riku's record, just as predicted. Still, he got a lot closer than what he had expected.

"Aww, you're too good, man." Sora was pouting, like a small kid whose favorite toy had just broken. Riku thought of that as adorable. And again, he scolded his treacherous mind for thinking so.

"You weren't half-bad." he admitted. "With your way of playing you could have seriously beat me."

"Ah, I was sure you were a speedrunner. Which makes your high score even more impressive."

And that was the definitive proof that he needed: Sora really was definitively a geek. His way of playing, thinking and talking gave him away. It still baffled him how someone like that had managed to get accepted by Seifer and his gang. Right, Riku was kind of a geek himself, but he had always managed to keep carefully hidden this embarrassing side of his. If there was something that he was good at, after all, was keeping things hidden from others. Sora, on the other side, didn't strike him as the kind of person to be able to hide something.

"Oh, there's a bar in here. Let's go drink something."

Riku sighed and followed the hyperactive boy, watching him order two cups of coffee. His original idea had been to bring him here so that he would quickly bore himself and go away, but it looked like the plan had spectacularly backfired.

"This place is great, you come here often?"

"Occasionally." A part of his mind told Riku to stop lying and tell him that coming there after school was part of his daily routine. A quick play, something to drink and then straight back at home, doing homework and watching some stupid tv series. But another part was telling him to try and preserve that little bit of dignity that he had managed to keep during the last year.

Sora, from his side, didn't seem to care in the slightest. He instead checked the time on his phone. "In a few minutes I'll have to go, the last bus to get home will come in fifteen. You should call me the next time you come here."

Riku shivered at those words. His last bus too would come in fifteen minutes, and that would mean...

"Please, tell me it's not the 13th..."

Sora's blue eyes shone with joy. "Yes, it is. Where do you live?"

"Alley to Between, you?" 'I swear, if I discover that he's my neighbor, I'll kill me. Or him.'

Sora put the cup of coffee back on the table and the smile on his face dropped a little. "Avenue to Dreams. A couple of stops before yours, if I'm not wrong."

Well, always better than having him living on the same road, Riku thought. Even if that was the road Roxas -his sworn enemy- also lived in.

He finished sipping his coffee and left a few bucks on the counter, before standing up. When he realized that Sora wasn't following him, he turned his head. "So, you coming?"

The boy smiled and obeyed.

As usual, Riku was gazing out of the window, sitting in the last row of the bus number 13. Nothing unusual, if not for the fact that, for the first time in longer than he could remember, someone was occupying the place next to his.

"How comes that I've never seen you on the school-bus at morning?"

Sora paused a few seconds before answering. "Uh? I don't take it, usually." he then said elusively. Riku wondered how he got to school, but his rational side reminded him that he shouldn't care about him. Not that much.

"Next stop: ATD!" the speaker announced in a mechanical voice.

"Oh, it's mine!" Sora exclaimed, pushing the red 'stop' button and hastily checking his bag. Just before going down, though, he came back and grabbed Riku's wrist. It was so fast that the other boy didn't have the time to retreat it.

"What... what are you doing?" he asked while adding a mental note to stop blushing anytime Sora got that close to him.

Sora didn't answer immediately, intent as he was on writing a few numbers on the palm of his left hand.

"Phone number." he finally answered, just a second before getting out of the bus. "Otherwise, how could you tell me when you'll go to the arcade next time?" Riku could just catch a small glimpse of the boy as the doors closed between the two of them. "See you tomorrow for breakfast." were the last words that he heard.

Yeah, sure, after half a day spent with that irritating boy, there was no way he would've wanted a repeat of that. Not that soon at last.

A few stops later, he was finally at home. After spending a considerable part of the evening carefully avoiding showing his parents the content of his left hand -seriously, he could perfectly imagine the enthusiastic reaction of his mom at the remote possibility that he had found a boyfriend (not that Sora was or could be considered anything like that, of course)- he spent an equal amount of attention to carefully copy the number on his own phone.

Just in case of, he kept repeating to himself.

And then, when he finally managed to go to bed, relieved to finally be able put an end to that extenuating day, he found himself unable to sleep, his left wrist keeping on tingling despite having washed it multiple times. Sora must have had some chemicals on his hands, that was the conclusion he reached. He promised himself to check Sora's body at the first occasion. In search of said chemicals, of course. But for the moment, what he needed was a nice, good rest.

If only his wrist would stop tingling...

End Notes: Quite a difficult chapter to write, I'm still struggling using Sora and Riku this way, aka reversing their usual dynamic. Let me know if you find them a little bit out of character, I'll be happy to write you back... to explain precisely why you're wrong ;).

Preview: Sora tries to confront Roxas and Riku about what happened between the two of them, but neither of them seems enthusiastic about it...

Next Chapter: Antithetic Duo