Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts. Also, I do not encourage or approve the modifications of identity cards to look older. And it's not true that I may have occasionally done something like that.

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 14: Rising Tension

Riku yawned noisily after a restless night, populated by small imps with Sora's face that had kept on pestering him. With the voice of his mother.

He shivered at the thought, resignedly dragging himself out of his bed to get a well-deserved coffee.

"Welcome, sunshine." Rei greeted his son in the kitchen. How did she always manage to be so lively at that hour of the morning was beyond Riku's comprehension.

"M'ning" he muttered, most of his mind still half-asleep. "And don't even start." he precised a second later. "I know what you're going to say..."

"...how about next week? On Tuesday?"

"I'm not going to invite Sora for dinner!"

"Wednesday would be better, though." she kept going on, completely ignoring his son. "Even Thursday could do..."

"I'm not going to invite Sora for dinner!"

"Dear!" Rei suddenly shouted in the general direction of the second floor. "Wednesday or Thursday?"

The answer came a few seconds later. "Tuesday we could leave them the house after dinner."

Riku's mother smiled at his son, who was hoping that the floor would mercilessly open under his feet and swallow him. "Aww... Your dad is so thoughtful sometimes."

"Riiight..." Riku forced himself to put up a smile instead of throwing up his breakfast. "Have... to go, now." he quickly added regaining the safety of his room where he established a new record time in dressing himself. Anything to get out of that house as soon as possible.

He was stopped on the doorstep, of course. "Tell him that we'll wait for him on Tuesday."

"Bye mom." he quickly answered before closing the door behind him, not giving her the time to counteract.

'Like I would ever bring him to this crazy house.' Riku thought while getting on the school bus and taking his usual place, in the last row. 'That would be the day Sora would definitively want to stop seeing me.'

And there he was again: for all his efforts, that irritating brunet was keeping on popping up in his mind. Not that Riku minded anymore. In fact, he was so caught up in his thoughts that he didn't even realize that, after a couple of stops, a couple of familiar looking guys had gotten on the bus and were now drawing closer...

"Heeey, Rikky!" Sora chirped while waving a hand towards the silver-haired boy. He had clearly expected to find the upperclassman there.

"If you want to get off the bus on your legs, don't ever call me that way again!" Riku admonished him quietly. The little smile that had appeared on his face the moment he had spotted Sora had given him away, though. Roxas grinned internally.

He didn't fail to notice that Riku's smile disappeared as fast as it had manifested when he caught sight of him, walking just behind Sora. "Oh, you're still not dead..." Riku exclaimed in all seriousness. "Which... is a good thing. I guess." he quickly added when Sora glared at him, as to remember him that just the day before the two of them had called a truce.

Roxas waved a hand timidly. "Hi, Riku." he said, pretending not to have heard his comment. He was dead set on not losing the occasion that Sora was giving him to patch things up with his ex-friend.

They took place next to Riku who, surprisingly enough, didn't object. Roxas took care to let Sora sit between the two of them, though.

"When do you think we'll get the results of the Struggle tryouts?" Sora asked suddenly.

Roxas rolled his eyes: what was so funny about that 'sport' was beyond his comprehension. Then again, he was curious too to know how the two of them had scored.

"Usually it takes a couple of days, I guess we'll have them before Friday."

Sora smiled and Roxas couldn't help but think how beautiful his smile was. "That's great. This means that we'll have the weekend to celebrate!"

"You don't even know if we'll be picked for the team." Riku quickly objected.

"You'll both pass." Roxas spat out instinctively, earning a glare from Riku. "I... I mean, you did great for someone who has never taken a bat into his hands..." He stopped: why everything that came out of his mouth when Riku was around could be seen as a metaphor for sex?

"Not to say you beat me and Seifer, and we already were on the team. That should count for something." Sora concluded, involuntarily helping him.

...or, maybe, voluntarily?

A simple doubt crossed Roxas' mind. Sora was an amazing guy: funny, smiling, spontaneously able to draw everyone to him.

But that was the point.

'Spontaneously...'

What if Sora's mannerisms were just a facade? A ruse of sort? What if he wasn't like he presented himself? But if so, to what purpose?

That idea, who had manifested completely out of the blue, made Roxas feel extremely unease.

He shook away those uncomfortable thoughts and focused back on the discussion, at least until the school bus had reached his destination.

The table at the center of the cafeteria was getting emptier as the day went on. From the eight people usually sitting there, their number had now reduced by a quarter, with now only six of them still there.

"Is it my impression, or we're getting fewer?" Axel asked innocently, stating the obvious.

Seifer gave a look at the three boys crowded in the small table in the corner of the cafeteria. Differently from the others, Seifer was sure to know why Sora was spending time with Riku, and it wasn't because he liked or appreciated him.

What really bugged him, was that it seemed like he had managed to get Roxas closer to Riku, and Seifer hadn't forgotten that the two of them were best friends in the past.

His plan was clamorously backfiring: instead of bullying, isolating and, finally, humiliating Riku, it seemed that he was gaining a new entourage.

...then again, all he had to do was wait until Larxene's party and then Riku's life would definitively be over. Just one more week. Seifer smiled and let himself fell in his chair. After all, the higher you climb, the harder you fall.

"What's so funny, Seifer?" Larxene asked, just vaguely interested.

"Oh, nothing." he answered, badly faking indifference. "I'm just savoring the pleasure of crashing a little insignificant bug."

She blinked. "Sucks to be you."

Everyone at the table, except for Hayner, laughed.

"Seriously." the girl added a second later. "For someone as insignificant as you pretend he is, you think a little too much to Riku."

Of all the people there, Seifer had always liked Larxene the least, what with her bad habit of opposing him. "Men stuff, you can't understand."

"Oh, so you consider Riku a man, now?" she grinned.

"A man... I'd say a male at best." Hayner intervened. A second later he let out a not really manly cry. "What the hell, Axel?"

The redhead looked as surprised as one can be. "Oh, I must have kicked you by accident, my bad."

Kairi, that until that moment had observed silently the situation, interrupted abruptly. "I can't help but notice that, as of lately, you have started to defend Riku quite a lot, haven't you?" she asked Larxene in an accusatorial tone.

Larxene looked back at her with a completely indifferent expression. "So what? Are you jealous? I thought you ditched him a year ago."

"He left me with no choice!" she cried in a nearly pathetic way. "He humiliated me!"

"Now, now!" Axel waved his hand, cutting short the discussion. "We won't discuss about it anymore, what happened in the past belongs in the past. Let's focus on the party, instead. We've yet to decide who will be in charge of the food, right?"

'Hypocrite!' Seifer couldn't help but think. He knew very well that Axel had tried multiple times to reconcile with Riku, the last time that same week, during the Struggle exhibition match. More than that, Axel was pretty close to Roxas, who looked like he was getting back on talking terms to Riku.

...then again, maybe that fact could turn out to be a boon in disguise. He just needed to realize what was the most efficient way to exploit that weakness.

'Just a week' he kept repeating to himself.

On the break between second and third class in the morning, Roxas found someone with familiar flaming hair waiting for him outside of his class.

"Hey there, I was wondering if I had not miss you!" Axel greeted him.

"Hey, Ax." Roxas smiled. "What's the occasion, we don't have same classes today."

"Just felt like talking, want to take a coffee?"

"Uh... sure." Roxas answered, just slightly hesitant. It was quite unusual for Axel to pop up like that just to 'take a coffee'. He probably meant to discuss something, likely the fact that he had stopped taking breakfast with them.

"So... how are you doing?" the redhead calmly asked on the way to the cafeteria.

"Pretty good, thanks." Roxas answered politely.

"Some news?"

"Oh, yeah. My parents bought a goldfish."

"And that's the biggest news you have to tell me?"

"Well, it's a huge goldfish."

Axel couldn't hold it anymore and let out a laugh. "Oh, Rox, you're too smart for your own good. Come on, seriously, I've noticed that you've taken breakfast with Riku. Twice now, what gives?"

If someone else had asked him that same question, Roxas would've thought that it was just a way to mock him. Not Axel, though: he was one of his closest friends, one of the few people that he had managed to open up to, if just a little. It was the guy that knew how bad Roxas had felt for what had happened between him and Riku and had never insinuated anything.

"Well, there's not a lot to tell." he said quickly. "Sora forced him to invite me."

"And yet Riku didn't break your nose."

"Yet."

The voice of Saïx surprised both of them. The two of them turned to see their friend walking towards them, his usual calm demeanor transpiring in every of his actions.

That caught Roxas by surprise. He stopped walking and looked at him, inquiringly. "What did you mean by that?"

"Only that Riku will grow tired of you sooner or later." The way Saïx was saying those words didn't strike him as mockingly or malevolent: he was merely stating a fact. "And then you'll end up alone." he concluded, looking Roxas up and down. "That's what you really want?"

"I... You..." For as many efforts as he was doing, Roxas just couldn't form a coherent sentence in his mind, figure in his mouth.

"What the hell, Saïx!" Axel exclaimed in Roxas' stead. "You can't just come here and say something like that!"

The two boys glared at each other for a few moments, then Saïx talked again. "Every second you spend with Riku, you put yourself at risk." Even if he was keeping on glaring at Axel, it was clear that he was still talking to Roxas. "People will start noticing that the two of you keep on spending time together. And then, what kind of conclusion do you think they'll reach?" he asked, finally turning his eyes to look at the smaller boy.

"Wait... wait a sec." Roxas finally forced himself to stand up for himself. "It's not the two... it's the three of us, actually. It's... it's not the same." Yeah, maybe that last sentence sounded a little whiny, he had to admit to himself.

"This isn't about Sora." Saïx objected. "What will you do the first day that Sora won't be there? You'll tell Riku that you can't sit with him because people could start getting the wrong idea?"

Roxas had to admit that he hadn't thought to that. The idea of being labeled as gay because he was spending time with Riku had crossed his mind, but Sora's presence had made everything feel so... natural, so right, that he hadn't given it much thought.

"Don't listen to him, Rox!" Axel intervened once more. "Why should you care if someone would talk shit about you?"

"He should, because both of us know that Riku is too fickle for keeping him around too much and if he doesn't want to be targeted from other people, he'd better reduce to a minimum these frequentations."

"What about Sora, then?" Roxas nearly cried, outraged. "What about him?" he repeated a second later, forcing himself to keep his emotions in check. "Did you tell him the same things? He spends as much -if not more- time with Riku than me!"

Saïx looked at him with a strange expression, one that Roxas couldn't really understand. "Stop thinking about him and start thinking about yourself." he simply said. "I have to go, now. See you around."

And as soon as he had said those words, he was gone, the same way he had appeared just a few minutes earlier.

"Just... what was that?" Axel scratched his head after taking a full ten seconds to understand what had just happened. When he realized that Roxas was still standing next to him, in a nearly catatonic state, he turned towards him, just a slight trace of worry in his voice. "Hey, Rox, you okay?"

"Sure." he answered, a little too fast to sound sincere.

"Man, don't let what Saïx said get you down, alright? Riku isn't that kind of person." Axel said, trying to guess Roxas' thoughts.

But Roxas didn't like that. None, not even Axel was allowed inside his head. "I... gotta go too, sorry. We'll take our coffee next time, alright?"

And before Axel could add anything else, the blond boy had already disappeared into the crowd of people.

A mere minute later, two boys were walking in the corridors of the school. More precisely, the first one was doing it, while the second one was trying to prevent him from doing it.

"What the hell were you thinking, Saïx?"

"Let go of me, I'll be late for the next class." Saïx was speaking in a calm and collected tone, but Axel knew him well enough to not to know that that was just a facade.

"To hell with class!" he screamed, earning the attention of a few people around them. "I want answers!"

Saïx finally turned to look at his friend, his usual indecipherable expression plastered on his face. "About Roxas, I guess."

"Of course! Why did you tell him something like that?" Axel asked, his eyes reduced to slits.

Saïx sighed, like he was going to explain something really simple to a really dumb kid. Axel didn't like that, but he still let go of his friend's arm.

"I told him..." he started, calmly. "...that it was best for him to stay away from Riku."

Axel sneered. "I've heard that. What I'd like to know is what brought you to such a brilliant conclusion."

"Stop playing dumb!"

Saïx's answer left Axel surprised. The two of them studied each other for nearly a minute, before the former resumed talking. "You know very well what would happen to Roxas if he starts hanging around with Riku. Or have you already forgotten how bad Riku had it when he was outed?"

"But... Roxas is not..." Axel took a step back, stunned by those words. "Wait... you mean that... you were trying to protect him?"

"Do you really think that people care if Roxas is gay or not?" Saïx asked, ignoring the question. "People just care if a rumor is interesting, if it also happens to be true it's just a bonus."

"Then why not telling the same to Sora? He was the first one to get close to Riku, after all."

Saïx looked away, making Axel wonder if he was thinking to what he had just said or if he just gave zero fucks about it. "As much as Sora could be a cool guy..." he explained. "Roxas is a friend!"

"Well, I thought Riku was too." Axel answered back immediately. "And yet you left him on his own."

Saïx was keeping on avoiding Axel's stare, but his lips were curling down, if just slightly. "I did, and I'm not proud of it, but..." He then finally looked back at his friend. "Who are you to judge?"

That last sentence hit the mark. A long silence ensued, both boys too busy reflecting on their actions to say anything.

"...yeah, guess I can't blame you when I did the same." Without waiting for an answer, a moment later Axel spoke again. "Don't do something like that again!"

"Alright." the other boy simply answered after a few more seconds, before resuming to walk.

"I'm just trying to protect Roxas, you do realize that, right?" Saïx added a few moments later.

Axel looked away. "I know, I just think you're doing it the wrong way."

By lunch, the atmosphere at the table standing in the center of the cafeteria had gotten even colder. For some unexplained reasons, none was talking, eating in what appeared to be a respectful yet cold silence. Neither Sora nor Kairi were present.

"Alright... just what happened here?" Axel asked discretely to Roxas the moment he arrived, taking the place next to his.

"Nothing particular, Seifer and Kairi got into a fight." Larxene answered in his stead, completely unfazed by the general mood. "He is just jealous that she seems to prefer cute little Sora instead of him."

"I'm not jealous!" Seifer exclaimed, hitting the table with his fist. "What's to be jealous of a scrawny boy?" he bragged boldly, quite pathetically trying to tighten his muscles in what he probably considered a natural way. "I've got more muscles in my right arm than he has in his whole body."

"That just proves that you spend too much time on your own. And watch out, or you'll go blind."

"I meant it in a good way."

"I know, shows how smart you are."

Roxas was observing Larxene and Seifer bickering, but quickly realized that Axel was looking around, searching for someone. He guessed that he was looking for Sora: until that moment, the brunet had spent every lunch break with them.

"Sora had something to take care of." he told him, anticipating his question. "I'll see him this afternoon for the math class, if you need to tell him something."

"Uh? No, no. I was just curious." Axel answered elusively. "By the way, got any plans for the weekend?" he then added with a far too fast changing in subject not to sound suspicious.

Roxas hesitated a little, thinking back to what Sora had told him about celebrating Riku's (probable) admission in the Struggle team. "Uh, I had half a plan to go out with..." He stopped talking and his eyes quickly glanced behind Axel, around the space where Saïx was sitting. A second later, he smiled. A smile too forced to seem sincere.

"Sure, why not, did you already have something in mind?" he finally answered.

"There's this new place that just opened. 'No Name', I think it's called... why not go check it tomorrow?" Saïx offered.

Roxas hated clubs, it just wasn't his kind of things.

He didn't have the time to say anything though, because Larxene abruptly cut short her discussion with Seifer and turned her attention to them. "That's actually not a bad idea, blue-head. We could all go there, it would be a great occasion to let loose a little. Some of us may need it..."

"Yeah, yeah, why not." Seifer added, choosing not to dignify with an answer -or maybe, simply not understanding- the provocation. "Count me in."

Larxene just didn't give Hayner the time to say anything. "That's settled, then: me, Seifer, Hayner, Axel, Saïx and Roxas... that makes six of us. Someone should tell Sora and Kairi about it."

"Hey, I never said I was in." Hayner objected.

As an answer, Larxene smirked. "Alright: Hayner won't come, then."

The blond boy nearly jumped on his feet. "No, wait! I never said that. I was just saying... do not take my presence for granted before asking me."

Larxene rolled her eyes, but she didn't add anything else.

As for Roxas...

Roxas was already thinking to an excuse not to go with them.

Math wouldn't be such a boring class if professor Xigbar wasn't so hopelessly annoying. Roxas thanked the fact that he had always been quite good with science and stuff, meaning that he could afford to occasionally fall asleep during the professor's interminable speeches and still managing to get good enough results.

Suddenly, he felt someone elbowing him. "You're falling asleep again." Sora chuckled.

"I'm not." Roxas answered in all sincerity. "I was just spacing out a little. I wonder how you can follow him without keeping on getting distracted."

"You make it sound like I understand what he says. I'm simply keeping record of the words whose meaning I haven't the foggiest idea." He then turned his head towards Xigbar. "Hey, here's another one: logarithm."

Roxas smiled. "You know that this whole hour is about logarithms, right?"

"That's great: at least now I know what this is all about, thanks, Rox."

Roxas didn't answer immediately, not really sure how to say what he had to. "You know..." he finally decided to talk. "The others wanted me to tell you... well, they're planning something tomorrow evening." He paid particular attention not to precise if he would participate too.

"Nice, where are you planning to go?"

"There's this new place, 'No Name', that just opened..."

"Yeah, I've heard of it. Sounds like fun."

And then, Sora turned his head to directly face Roxas. "You're coming too, right?"

The way he had asked that question made resurface in Roxas' mind that awful feeling that Sora really was smarter than what he looked like: he had immediately understood his reticence and was now trying to force him into...

'Nah, I'm getting paranoid, now.'

"Honestly, I don't think so. They always stop me at the entrance when they realize that I'm not old enough to enter..." he finally answered in all sincerity. He simply omitted that the times it had happened in the past, he had actually been happy to have an excuse to go home...

Sora grinned. Roxas didn't like that. "That's not a problem, I have a friend in Radiant Garden that is a genius at photoshopping. Do you have an ID on you?"

Roxas reluctantly took out his identity card. He didn't even have the time to ask the reason that Sora had already snagged it from his hands.

"Yes, perfect. Don't worry, I'll take care of everything, you'll have it back by tomorrow."

Roxas observe Sora carefully: he got the feeling that his smile was sincere, like he was honestly trying to help him. Then why did he kept having that feeling that he was hiding something?

"Hey, you look good on this picture."

That sentence shook Roxas off his thoughts. "Of course I do!" he answered boldly, trying to hide the timid blush that was starting to rise on his cheeks. "I always do, don't you think?"

"I do." Sora simply answered, managing to make Roxas blush even more deeply.

End Notes: Seifer is plotting, Saïx has his own agenda, Kairi is Kairi... yeah, things keep escalating, but don't worry: payback time is getting closer...

Preview: Next time, Riku is on the spotlight again! A trip to the arcade is in order... but why does that group of guys seem to know him?

Next Chapter: Wild Dreamers