Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts. Also, I do not own the rights to Riku's backstory, but I still consider it a better version than the official: "he tried to destroy the world with an evil witch-fairy because Sora got a couple of new pets".

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 22: An Outcast Boy's Story

Many years ago

On one unfortunate day when he was still in secondary school, Riku incautiously beat a couple of upperclassmen named Rai and Fuu in a school competition. As a consequence, from that day on he became their favorite punching bag.

Whatever, it wasn't like a couple of thugs could worry him. Or so he had thought in the beginning.

What he had failed to realize, was that being targeted by the school's most deranged guys was quite the deterrent for his classmates for wanting to be seen around him. Which meant that all his efforts to befriend the people around him were fated to be met with utter failure.

'Bunch of cowards!' he had thought after one of his classmates had flaked on him after his umpteenth invitation. 'I need no one, I'm better off on my own!'

A thirteen years old Riku was sitting alone, as usual, on one isolated bench of the school courtyard, waiting for the school break to end.

Riku didn't like school breaks. He didn't like much school classes either, but at least you had something to do in there. During breaks, the harsh reality always crashed on him, constantly remembering him that he was alone, friendless. He didn't remember ever having someone close enough to be called friend in his whole life.

He was so immersed in his own thoughts, that he failed to notice that someone was walking towards him. A few seconds later, a blond scrawny boy was standing in front of him, clearly embarrassed. At first, he had thought of someone wanting to prank him, but then the strange boy talked.

"Hey. I... uhm... I'm Roxas. Who are you?"

Riku remembered thinking that his voice was... kind of musical. Under a few blond bangs, two deep blue eyes were staring at him.

And he knew that he was in love.

The two boys bonded over the course of the next couple of years. Riku had quickly noticed that, just like him, Roxas didn't have a lot of friends. In fact, he probably was his only one. It was easy to understand why: his mannerisms and looks were way too feminine for him not to be targeted from the usual school bullies.

Riku didn't care about that. In fact, since the day he had first met Roxas, he had found him adorable: a cute, timid, sensitive boy to protect from the outside world.

He had caught sight once of Rai and Fuu observing the two of them at a safe distance: a few days later, Roxas came to school with his hair painted pink. Not of his own volition.

As soon as Riku spotted Rai and Fuu, he assaulted them, unable to restrain himself. It ended with a broken nose for Rai, a black eye for Fuu and two weeks of detention for Riku. Still, the two of them never tried to go after Roxas again.

Riku was satisfied with the outcome.

When Riku finally entered high-school and became part of the swimming team, his life drastically changed for the better: few or no one knew about him, his old bullies weren't in there and it looked like he had started to attract a discrete part of the student body's female population. His recent growth spurt and the wide shoulders he had started to develop might have played a role in that.

Before he could realize it, he was one of the most popular guys in his new school.

But to Riku, that didn't really matter: what really made him happy was the fact that he had managed to finally make a few friends. Axel, Saïx, Larxene, Hayner, Seifer... they were all cool and had managed to make him feel one of them.

Still, he hadn't forgotten about Roxas. How could he?

Since the first time he had seen him, he knew he was in love with the little runt. He tried to get every occasion to see him, treasuring every second spent together, always struggling not to cross the thin limit between being thoughtful and being excessively intrusive.

For a while, his life was nearly perfect.

Then Kairi came.

Riku was sixteen when he first met Kairi: a transfer student from Daybreak Town, whose diva attitude transpired from the many layers of make-up she always wore. And what could an ambitious girl wish for, in high school?

Popularity, was the obvious answer. And because their group of friends was looked at as kinda popular at the moment, Riku knew that sooner or later he would have had to meet her.

The fatidic day happened on a Friday, towards midday. They were sitting at their usual table at the cafeteria, eating peacefully, when she showed up. "Hi there, nice to meet you. Can I sit here?"

Considering that there were eight places at the table and only six people sitting, there was no reason to say no. Seifer immediately showed a particular interest in her, considering that he spent pretty much all of the lunch -more or less discretely- trying to unsuccessfully impress her.

Much to his disappointment, the red-haired girl had quickly showed more interest towards Riku, to the point that by the end of the lunch, she had forced her phone number in his hands. He had reluctantly accepted it, reminding himself not to make use of it in any way.

That was one of the bad things that came out of the popularity-deal: he had to keep a facade, throwing the occasional 'wow, that girl is so hot' in the discussions and, all in all, pretending to be a classic "hormone-driven-teenager".

Despite not being a big deal, Riku despised that kind of behavior: with Roxas, he didn't need to pretend being someone he wasn't.

Right, Roxas...

Even if none knew about it, Riku liked guys and he was secretly in love with his best friend. In the last few years, he had more or less come to terms with his sexuality. Admitting it to others and officially making his coming out, though, was another subject entirely. Possibly, a really-far-in-time subject.

Unfortunately, destiny had other projects for him. And destiny was starting to take the shape of Seifer, who was growing a rapidly increasing frustration at the sight of Kairi continuously flirting with the silver-haired boy (much to the latter's annoyance) and shutting down his own advances.

Riku noticed how Seifer had gotten more and more cold, even starting to openly antagonize him, with Hayner following close behind, much to his irritation. For some reasons, none else seemed to notice it, though. Or, maybe, they were simply choosing to ignore it.

Things reached a critical point the day Seifer started hinting that Riku kept refusing Kairi's advances because he, verbatim: "played for the other team, picked his fruit from the other orchard, flew his flag on the other ship and drank from the other fountain".

Riku could have simply ignored him: deep inside, he knew that that would have been the best option.

Instead, he did the worst thing he could possibly do: he started dating Kairi.

He somehow managed to persuade himself that it was the best thing to do: Kairi would have been happy, Seifer would have shut up and Roxas... who knows? Maybe if Roxas had seen him with a girl, he could have started being jealous and falling for him...

Yeah, that sounded ridiculous the moment he had thought about it, but... at very least he could get a reaction out of him.

It had already been a whole year since Roxas had joined Twilight High and Riku couldn't have been happier to have the boy he liked so close to him.

But since the beginning of his junior year, something had changed between them.

The shy, timid boy he had known for more than three years had somehow changed. In part, it was for the better: he had become more friendly and willing to join discussions. But most of his words sounded... hollow, false even, like someone reciting a part.

And since the moment he had started dating Kairi, the blond boy had quickly started growing more and more distant from him. And Riku couldn't help but feel guilty for what was happening between them.

Whatever that was.

And, finally, one fateful day of May, Riku decided that he had to do something.

His relationship with Kairi was a disaster: half of the time spent together was devoted to avoid her hugs, while the other half was to trying to stop her from taking off his pants.

At school, things weren't much better: instead of giving up on Kairi, Seifer had become more and more aggressive towards him, to the point that nearly everything he said was followed by a caustic remark from him or Hayner, by then his de facto lackey.

And with Roxas... well, he didn't even remember the last time the two of them had spent some time all by themselves.

Things had to change!

First, he had to break up with Kairi. He took him two whole minutes to make the decision: he took the phone and told her that it was over between them. Just like that.

He didn't give her the time to answer before ending the call. He knew that it wasn't a really nice way to end a relationship -or whatever you could call what was going on between them- but he knew that if he had told her in person, she would have theatrically burst in tears and, frankly, he didn't have nor the time nor the inclination for that.

Immediately after ending his call with Kairi, he punched in Roxas' phone number. His heart was beating like crazy, but he knew that he had to do it immediately or he would've changed his mind.

"Roxas? Ineedtoseeyouthisevening, weneedtotalk." The words came out so fast that, for a moment, he wondered if Roxas had caught them at all.

After a moment of silence, Roxas' ringing voice answered from the phone. "Sure, something happened?"

"Not really." Riku answered, breathing deeply and paying attention not to rush his words again. 'But, maybe, something will.' he thought after ending the call.

Riku had known Roxas since he was thirteen, a whole three years of friendship. He remembered really well when he had met him, a random Autumn afternoon, years ago.

It had taken all of those three years for Riku to gather the courage to invite Roxas to his house to confess to him.

Confess that he had hidden his feelings for a long time.

Confess that he liked guys.

And, finally, confess that he was in love with him.

Everything had to be as perfect as possible for that evening: he had worn his best clothes -an elegant white shirt clear enough to guess his muscular build and a pair of long pants who had the perk of evidencing his well-toned butt-, put on three drops of his favorite cologne and, most importantly, stolen a bottle of liquor from his old man's 'grand reserve'. And now he was looking at himself in the mirror: "You are ready. You are perfect. You can do it."

His resolution disappeared the instant he heard the doorbell ringing. 'I'm so not ready!' he thought, panickingly trying to get settled as best as he could.

"Hey, Rox."

"Hi, Riku."

Riku welcomed his friend as naturally as he could, trying his best to hide his uneasiness. Once the two of them had taken place on the sofa in the dining room, he took a deep breath, wanting to get straight to the point. No pun intended.

"So, you wanted to talk about something?" Roxas asked innocently.

And all of Riku's motivation crumbled once more. He started talking non-stop about everything that was crossing his mind. Everything... except the reason he had invited Roxas that evening.

The situation kept going on until around 9 in the evening, when his phone suddenly rang. God, he should've shut it down.

He quickly checked who had chosen the worst possible moment to call him: much to his horror, the name 'Kairi' was displayed on the screen. For a second he thought of not answering, but, in the end, he thought that he owed her at least that much.

"Hey."

"Riku? We need to talk!" Kairi's voice was broken, as if she had cried all of her tears. Riku felt an honest wave of guiltiness for the way he had ended their relationship.

"Alright..." he started answering before being cut immediately.

"I'm coming to your home right now!"

Riku panicked at those words. "Nope, sorry, I can't tonight." He bit his tongue, trying to sound as calm as possible in front of Roxas, who was observing him from his place on the sofa. "Stuff to do... listen, I can't talk now, we'll talk tomorrow, ok?"

A moment of silence, during which Riku was afraid he would've heard the doorbell ring again to reveal that Kairi was already at his doorstep. Then, after a few interminable seconds, she spoke again. "Ok. See you tomorrow."

"Uh... bye." he managed to mutter before hastily closing the call.

Roxas had not taken his eyes away from him for a single second during the whole phone call and Riku was sure that he had registered every single word.

"Kairi?"

"Kairi."

"Listen." Roxas offered. "If you want to see her, no problem, I can come here another evening."

"No, stay, please." He couldn't help but blurt out those words. Just like he couldn't help but blush immediately after.

Roxas looked at him, kind of surprised. "Come on, Riku, you know you can talk about anything with me."

And with those words, the reason why Riku had been in love since the first moment he had met Roxas was so evident that he couldn't restrain himself any longer. All of the speech carefully prepared for that evening completely forgotten, he pronounced the fatidic words.

"I love you."

The world froze for ten interminable seconds. Then, Roxas answered.

"...what?"

Realizing that he was keeping his breath, Riku let out the air and repeated those few words, this time forcing himself to look at the other boy in the eyes.

"I'm in love with you."

It was impossible for Riku to imagine what was going on in his friend's head. He was hoping that, at least, he would not hate him for what he was feeling.

But Roxas didn't answer.

He was staring at Riku in a blank, unreadable expression, somewhere between disbelief and distrust. The upperclassman had just a few more moments to realize that he wasn't going to get an answer before the blond boy stood up and stormed out of the house without saying another word.

The day after, by lunchtime, everyone knew that Riku was gay.

It shouldn't have been this bad.

His friends started finding excuses not to be at their normal meetup places. He gradually became used to his phone not ringing. His locker quickly transformed into a showcase for people to insult him.

And a mere few days after his brutal outing, he finally cracked.

It was during an evening dinner with his family, when his mother asked him if something had happened. He burst into tears for half an hour, before telling everything to his parents.

And then, after having listened carefully, his mom had told him something he would've remembered forever.

"Someone who judges you for who you like instead of who you are isn't worth your company anyway."

That evening, a new life started for Riku.

End Notes: Finally! I was waiting for a long time for this chapter! And it's (another) one of my fav, for evident reasons. I tried my best to convey Riku's feelings while shedding light on what happened that fateful day. But for those who are still reading, stay assured: the best has yet to come ;).

Preview: Back to the present! It's time to sort feelings out, boys!

Next Chapter: Scarred Hearts