Chibi: Unhhhh. This thing killed me. It's so long, I know. Don't hate me for the length of it. Just read it – I couldn't split it up, it all had to go in one big thing. I started this in August sometime ... and now approximately 28000 words later I have this. I hope you enjoy it. Please review! It would make it all worthwhile.

Important thing – this story is split up by different songs. I will list them in a moment so you can look them up, but I would recommend listening to each song and really listen to the lyrics before you progress onto the next section, as I chose them because they really give a feel for the mood of each section, and Kairi's feelings at that time.

The First Time (Ever I Saw Your Face) – Leona Lewis version

Back to Black – Amy Winehouse (*sob*, I still can't believe that she's gone)

Someone like You - Adele

Without a Word – Birdy version

Happy – Leona Lewis (watch the video too!)

I hope you enjoy this. I don't think I've ever worked so hard on a story before. It would mean a lot if you reviewed, please.

Here goes!

"There will always be a part of me no one else is ever gonna see but you and me." – Gracie, Ben Folds.

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." – The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Without a Word

The First Time

One thing I have learnt since starting my second year of university is to never, never underestimate your flatmate. Sure, I shared a room in the dorms with Naminé for the first year, and she was messy then, but that all changes suddenly when, newly best friends, you decide to share a tiny, poky flat with box bedrooms and a kitchen and bathroom. Because then, all of a sudden, you have to deal with plates, pots and pans that actually start growing stuff because your flatmate is too lazy to wash them up and instead leaves them all over the kitchen, or stacks and stacks of magazines spread out over the living area. Or, like me, you find unpleasant surprises in the bathroom.

This was not the first time I had tried to take a shower and found Naminé's 'delicates' (i.e. her skimpy, silk underwear) strung up around the bathroom. She seemed to forget that I had specifically bought for her last birthday a clothes horse so that she could string them up around her own room instead of leaving them to anger me every time I tried to take a shower. I found myself snarling as I yanked every scrap of silk and lace down and stormed out of the bathroom, still in my pyjamas, to hammer angrily on her door.

But that was where the real problem began. As, unfortunately, it appeared that Naminé had forgotten another rule I insisted upon in the flat – a bra on the doorknob of the bedroom when we had a boy over. Which was why I found myself storming into her room, clutching her underwear and shouting angrily, and suddenly being met with the sight of her naked back. Or, rather, I found her straddling some boy, very clearly in the middle of something.

Her head whipped around and I saw her cheeks colour a little – but only a little. Naminé very much gives off the impression that she is a sweet, innocent girl who would rather die than be caught by her flatmate having sex with a boy. But I know better. I know that she doesn't really give a damn. The girl is way too open – we sometimes share clothes and if she wants to borrow something of mine she will happily stroll into my room in just a pair of knickers. I, myself, am far more private, but I think since Naminé is from such a large family she has no qualms with nakedness. And so, as she and the boy halted doing ... that ... she didn't seem particularly embarrassed. The guy did; his eyes widened and I could see him looking around for the blanket so he could cover up what I could see of him.

"Sorry, I forgot to take those down," she laughed.

"That's ... that's alright ..." I threw the underwear down onto the floor and scuttled out of the room as quickly as I could. That was a sight I did not want to encounter ever again. I felt myself shiver as I made my way to the bathroom to attempt another shower, and I knew that the shiver was from the sight I had just seen, rather than from the wintry weather that managed to infiltrate our small flat. I turned the shower up high before I heard anything coming from Naminé's room, and stepped under the lukewarm stream.

After my shower I returned to my room. The bedrooms in our flat were tiny, but we both had double beds which I guess is some consolation. In my room, there was only just enough room for the bed, a desk, a wardrobe and a bookcase that was bursting at the seams with books. I was studying English Literature and I quickly found that all the money I earned from my part time job in a nearby cafe went on books, clothes, food and rent. Books and clothes were my favourite things. The only thing that rivalled my book collection was the contents of my wardrobe. Sometimes I felt a little guilty for buying all of these things for myself, for cluttering up my life with fabric and paper, but it was what I liked, right? Some people spent their money on holidays, others spent it on cars, houses, televisions and computers ... I spent it on clothes and books. I had read every book in my room, and I was still reading every night before I went to sleep. It was my favourite thing to do.

That day I wanted to wear some new black and white patterned leggings I'd bought the previous week, so I located them in my wardrobe and pulled them on. I threw on top an oversized, cream cable knit jumper, a big chunky black necklace and pushed my feet into a rather battered pair of khaki Timberland boots. I scooped some books into my bag and left for the kitchen, in search of food. Naminé emerged from the shower, a towel wrapped around her body and another in a turban around her hair. She grinned.

"Hey, sorry about earlier."

"Oh ... it's fine. I shouldn't have burst in I guess ..." I felt my face grow warm. It was difficult to look her in the eyes, knowing that the only thing that separated my eyes from her naked body again was the towel loosely wound about her. I knew I could never be as calm and collected as she was if I was in that position.

Naminé chuckled softly, and then took in my outfit.

"Hey, where are you off to?"

"The library."

"Kairi ... I thought all your work was done for the term?"

"I know, I know ... but I have an essay due after Christmas and I want to get started on it."

"Now?"

"It's really interesting! It's about Mary Barton-" I stopped when I saw her shaking her head with a smile.

"I believe you! Well, I'll be leaving for home in a bit."

"You're going today?"

"Yeah, Thanksgiving's tomorrow, right?" She scratched her nose absently, and then gave me one of her soft smiles. "I'll be sure to catch you before I leave."

"Alright," I nodded. I glanced at my watch. I had time to spare – Naminé would only be a half hour or so getting ready. She disappeared into her room, and I made my way to the kitchen area to have some breakfast. I remember having a bagel that day – toasted, with butter, and a cold glass of orange juice. I can't stand tea or coffee, so I live off juice and water. It's cheaper, I guess. Our flat was tiny, as I've said, but there was a little alcove with a window looking out over the street near the kitchen area, and a small table with a bench either side of it had been crammed in there by our landlord. My favourite way to sit at the table was with my back resting against the window, my knees up against my chest and my feet planted firmly on the bench. That day I took my time eating my breakfast, flicking through my battered copy of Mary Barton whilst I waited for Naminé to finish getting ready. She emerged after twenty minutes or so, her hair still damp but already curling softly on her shoulders. I noticed with a raised eyebrow that she was wearing my cream, sheer blouse but I let it slide. She was still doing the button up on her navy skinny jeans as she left the room, a big weekend bag slung over her shoulder. I watched as she yanked a thick, woollen grey cardigan on, located her Ugg boots by the front door and pushed her feet into them. She looked up, gave me a quick grin, then shuffled forward and snagged a bite out of my bagel.

"Hey!"

"Sorry, train leaves in ten! Gotta go!" I slid forwards down the bench from the window so that I could give her a quick hug.

"Have fun. Say hi to your parents for me."

"Sure. When are you off home?"

"Tomorrow, I guess." She nodded, then grabbed the remainder of my bagel, shoved it into her mouth and, grinning wickedly (no easy feat with a mouth full of my breakfast), escaped through the door into the hall. I shook my head, closed my book, and got up, leaving my plate and glass beside the sink. I pulled my khaki parka coat on, retrieved my reading glasses from their spot on the end table beside the sofa and, grabbing my keys from the pink and blue glass dish we kept on a little table beside the front door, I left the flat.

Outside it was cold, bitterly cold, and I found myself rummaging in my bag for my long, grey knitted scarf. I wound it round my neck as I walked, the cold biting my exposed face and hands. It was always cold in Midgar. Even in the summer it only seemed to get a little warmer than usual. None of my family could understand why I had left behind the warmth of Destiny Islands, where it was always bright, warm and golden, for the dull, cold and grey Midgar. But I couldn't stay in the same place I'd grown up in. We'd never moved – we'd always lived in the same, flagstone farmhouse that was a ten minute walk from the beach, with the strange, modern skylights in the bedrooms that we'd decided we desperately needed then each disliked the moment they were installed. Our house was a symbol of warmth for me, but I couldn't live there for the rest of my life. I loved coming back to it, back to the warmth of my family and pets, the familiarity of every room and the soft breeze that smelled of salt whenever I stepped off the train.

Midgar was different. Midgar was where I could work. It was a big, bustling city, and it scared me at first, but at that point, I knew the way to the library, the supermarket, the cinema, the mall, lecture theatres, every classroom ... I liked to spend my time on campus more than anywhere else. I felt safer there – I could sit in the library with my glasses on and a pile of books and I could blend in with everyone else, could make pretend that I was an overly studious recluse with no social life. Outside of classes, the library and work, Naminé liked to make me go out with her – she was determined that I wasn't going to waste my "golden years of freedom" with my nose in a book or my eyes glued to the tiny television screen in our equally tiny flat. She knew all the clubs, the bars, the best place to drink and the best place to meet boys. That thought dragged my mind back to the boy I'd walked in on with her that morning. I hadn't caught a good look at him – all I could remember was messy blonde hair and a look of sheer embarrassment – but I wondered where she had met him. I could class the boys she brought home by where she had met him. If she'd met him at Port Royal, he was a loud, obnoxious party boy who was there either as part of a stag night, or just a typical student who enjoyed the novelty t-shirts and hats given out by the women dressed as scantily-clad pirate wenches at the door. If she'd found a boy in Halloween, he tended to verge on the side of emo, and carried an awful lot of emotional baggage and wanted to listen to depressing music after they'd had sex. A boy that she brought home with her from Seventh Heaven was relatively normal. I liked those boys – they didn't stick around afterwards, when she'd disappeared off to the art studio on the other side of the city in the morning. Those boys just gave you a quick nod in the morning as they let themselves out of the flat.

After three hours of work in the library, I found myself struggling to get my key into the lock on the door of the flat as I juggled with the books in my arms. I pushed my weight against the door to support myself, managed to jam they key into the slot and turned. I pulled myself back just in time, so that I didn't find myself falling into the room when the support of the door disappeared, and shuffled into the room, pulling the door shut behind me. I leant against the door for a moment or too, breathing heavily, clutching the books to my chest. The elevator in our building was broken. We lived on the fifth floor.

"Oh ... hey there."

I looked up, and found a boy stood by the fridge, wearing just a pair of jeans with a towel wrapped around his neck. His hair, blonde, unruly and spiky, was dripping with water. His cheeks were red, I noticed, and he seemed to be trying to cover up his bare chest. He was drinking orange juice straight out of the carton.

"Oh ... hi."

I guessed immediately that Naminé hadn't met this boy in Seventh Heaven, or he'd have left by now. Instead, he was stood half naked in my kitchen, drinking my orange juice. I couldn't really muster up enough energy to care all that much though – I was still tired from climbing the stairs with the heavy books in my arms, and I wasn't the most athletic person. I headed into my room, dropped the books on my bed and draped my parka over the end of the bed, and kicked off my boots. They landed on their sides half under the bed. I noticed with a hint of embarrassment that I still had my glasses on, and I yanked them off of my face, dropping them on top of my pillow. I didn't feel much like studying anymore. It could wait.

He wasn't in the kitchen anymore when I came out of my room. I shrugged, and dropped myself down onto the sofa, curling my legs up beside me and jabbing the remote and the tiny television that sat on the window sill opposite. The old black and white film of Anne of Green Gables was on, and I wrapped my arms around myself, settling down to watch.

"So, you must be Kairi."

My head snapped round, causing a painful yank in the muscles in my neck, towards the doors to the bedrooms, where the boy was stood, with a tight black t-shirt on now along with his jeans, his hair sticking up even more than before. He came over and sat beside me on the sofa. I couldn't really muster up the words to ask how exactly he knew my name, because I was so dumbfounded by the confidence and ease with which he was moving around my flat. He sure hung around like the boys from Port Royal, but weirdly I didn't have the urge to spray mace in his eyes and throw him out of the door like I did with those sleazy guys. He seemed to take my silence for surprise (which, in a way, I guess it was), as he gave me an easy smile, and said: "Naminé mentioned you."

I nodded, and turned back to the television screen, unwilling to meet his gaze. "I see," I said shortly. He leaned back, and fixed his eyes on the screen as well. He gave a snort of laughter.

"Whoa, what is this?"

"It's Anne of Green Gables," I heard myself saying primly, and hated myself for it. "It's a classic."

"I know, my Mom used to read it."

He sighed, and stood up, and I felt guilty. I was obviously giving off the impression that I wasn't interested in speaking with him, which wasn't true. I found that I wanted to ask more, to push him, ask him about his sister, and how old she was, what the age difference between them was, and where she was now. Where was he from? How old was he? All these questions were bubbling frantically behind my lips and it was only a matter of time before one slipped out. It tumbled out so quickly it startled the both of us, stopping him in his tracks with his back to me. I could see that from the back, the spikes of his hair looked as soft as feathers.

"What course do you do?"

"Um ..." he chuckled softly, and I could almost feel that he was smiling. I wanted to see that soft, easy smile again. "That was random ..."

"Sorry ... I'm just curious."

He turned around, a hand instinctively reaching up to rub the back of his head in what appeared to be a nervous habit, and there was that easy smile again, which made the corners of his strangely bright blue eyes crinkle.

"Who's to say I even go to the university?"

"Oh..." I could feel my face growing warm, and I fixed my gaze on the television, determined not to look into his face and show my embarrassment at my mistake. I heard him give a small chuckle, but I didn't know if it was from amusement at my error or just amusement at my behaviour. Probably a mixture of both. "I... I just assumed."

"Well, you assumed right." My eyes shot towards his face with annoyance, and he chuckled again. "I do History. What do you do?"

"English Literature." He nodded.

"Well, I have to go call a friend a moment ... that was why I was getting up, by the way." I felt a soft laugh escape my throat.

"Sorry for the interrogation."

"That's okay," He walked towards Naminé's bedroom, and as he was at the door, he looked over his shoulder. There was soft light streaming through the kitchen window, through the snow, and it caught his eyes, making them shine, and his hair, in its strange but perfect style of crazed, messy spikes, shone too. As he spoke, I realised that he was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen.

"I'm Roxas, by the way."

My phone was ringing, so I muted the television, still keeping an eye on the monochrome figures, and answered the call.

"Hello?"

"Kairi, please tell me you're on the train."

"Xion?" Xion was my younger sister, who still lived back home in Destiny Islands. "What do you mean? I'm not coming home till tomorrow."

"Kairi, the snow's really bad! I've been looking online, and the last train for Destiny Islands just left Midgar station!"

"What? When's the next train?"

"Um ..." there was the sound of tapping, and I realised that she was still sat at the computer and was typing on the keyboard. "Two weeks from now?"

"No! I have to come home! It's Thanksgiving tomorrow!"

"Kai ..." I heard her sigh, and there was a creaking sound, and I knew she was leaning back in her chair. "I think you'll just have to miss it this year."

I kept quiet, because I knew if I spoke then a sob would wrench itself from my throat. Miss Thanksgiving with my family? Spend it here, in Midgar, alone? It wasn't something I even wanted to think about. I may have moved here, away from them, but I lived for visits home and sat around the dinner table, catching up on news and sitting at my mother's feet in the living room. And now ... now I had to wait two weeks. I'd be stuck here, alone, my only company a stack of books and a television that didn't always work.

"Xion ... tell Mom I'm sorry."

"I will, don't worry. Just let us know what date you're coming home." I nodded, trying to stop the tears that were pooling in my clenched shut eyelids from escaping down my cheeks. I realised that she couldn't hear me nodding, so I pushed myself to choke out a few words.

"O-okay."

"Bye, Kairi."

"Goodbye..." I heard her put the phone down, and I dropped my phone onto the sofa beside me, scrubbing furiously at my eyes. This wasn't fair! I had never missed Thanksgiving. I'd been so looking forward to it, to seeing my family and my home, to sleeping in my old bed, to walking on the beach in coats and scarves. I gave a hearty sniff, and a tear shot down my cheek.

"Hey, what's wrong?" I looked up, and there was Roxas, coming out of Naminé's room, pushing his phone back into his pocket. He came over towards me, and I felt a sharp pain in my lip as I realised I was biting it, hard, trying to prevent any more tears falling.

"I ... I ... I've missed the last train! The snow's too bad and I can't go home for Thanksgiving!" What struck me, as he came over and sat beside me, handing me a tissue as suddenly the tears were streaming down my face, was how genuinely sorry he looked. He sat beside me, and wrapped an arm around me, patting my back now and then as I sobbed childishly into the tissue, and his eyes looked sad and caring.

"I-I just r-r-really wanted t-to ... to go h-home!" I whimpered, and he rubbed my back again.

"I know. It'll be okay though ..."

"N-no! It won't! I'll be stuck h-here for a fortnight on m-my own!"

"Hey ..." he kept on rubbing my back, as I snivelled pitifully into the tissue, but he leant back into the sofa. "I was meant to drive me and my friend back to mine tomorrow, but my friend just cancelled on me."

"Huh?" I looked round at him, and his head was cocked, his eyes deep in thought. Again, it struck me how beautiful he was – he was completely unlike any boy I'd ever seen.

"Why don't you come with me?"

"What? I've only just met you!"

"So? You said you didn't want to be alone! My family are really nice and like I said, they already thought my friend was coming, so there's room for you." I wiped my face with the tissue, and then leant back so I was looking at him in the eyes.

"Seriously? You'd be happy with that?"

"Of course!" He smiled. "Naminé would kill me if I didn't." He got up, and I knew now that it was to leave.

"What? You guys only met last night, right?" He frowned.

"Didn't she tell you? We've been dating for a couple of weeks now." Quite suddenly, without warning, my heart dropped into the pit of my stomach. At the time, I couldn't understand why – I didn't properly understand my feelings, and I was pretty confused anyway, as this boy I'd only just met had invited me to his house for Thanksgiving, and weirdly, I had accepted. So I passed the sudden yank at my heart off as nothing, and watched as he moved towards the front door.

"I'll pick you up about ten tomorrow morning, okay?"

"Um, okay." And with that, he'd given me another one of those smiles, and he'd opened the door and left.

That night, I lay in my bed, listening to the sounds of the silent building – the groaning of the old foundations, the drip of the leaky tap in the bathroom that we could never manage to fix – and I thought about what I had agreed to. Tomorrow, I was going with Roxas to his family home for Thanksgiving. Yet, I'd only met him that day. Regardless, though, I didn't find that I was particularly apprehensive. I was still incredibly disappointed that I couldn't go home to my own family (it had been at least three months since I last went home and saw them), but there was something odd about Roxas that made me feel calm, and made me think rationally. There's always next time, I found myself thinking. I stretched out in my bed flat on my back, my hands clasped behind my head. For once, I was staring at the ceiling, instead of doing what I usually did before bed, which was to read a book until I fell asleep, and then woke up in the middle of the night with my glasses still on and the book beneath my cheek. I picked out the grooves and chipped paint work on the ceiling, and Roxas' face, looking back at me over his shoulder, the soft sunlight catching his features and making his eyes shine. I'm Roxas, by the way. I felt a small smile creeping across the lower half of my face. He really was the most beautiful boy I'd ever seen.

Didn't she tell you? We've been dating for a couple weeks now. I yanked myself out of my dreamy reverie. He was Naminé's boyfriend. He was nothing to do with me. He was just a beautiful boy, who happened to be dating my flatmate, who I had stumbled across in my kitchen.

I turned over onto my side, pulling the duvet up over my shoulder. My alarm clock sat on my bedside table, ready to go off at eight the next morning. Some moonlight was trickling beneath the barrier of my curtains, and it reflected off of the face of the clock, shining directly into my eyes like some kind of warning, or punishment. Stop thinking about him, my mind told me. Just stop it. I mentally shook myself, and closed my eyes. Sleep evaded me for quite some time, but I kept my eyes resolutely shut until I was sleeping. Surprisingly, I dreamt of nothing. I had almost expected my sleep to be punctured with images of Roxas.

He was buzzing the intercom of the building at precisely ten the next morning, whilst I was still trying to get packed. I stumbled over my overnight bag as I dashed across the flat to reach the phone beside the front door.

"Hello?" I asked almost wildly.

"Hey, it's Roxas. You ready?"

"Almost, come on up." I pushed the button, heard the buzz of the building door opening, and replaced the phone. A few minutes later, he was knocking on the door of the flat, and I opened it, having miraculously finished my packing in that short space of time. I was breathing heavily, having rushed around like a madwoman to accomplish this, and pushing my fringe out of my eyes, as I pulled the door open. He was stood in the hallway, wrapped in a big, woollen grey coat and jeans tucked into a pair of slightly battered combat boots. A huge, cream scarf wound loosely around his neck completed the look. I almost felt myself falter, nearly tripped towards him to press myself against his chest and run my hands through the blonde spikes that looked so soft and natural. I held myself back, forced myself to look him in the eye, smile instead of cry at the thought that he wasn't mine, and stood back, letting him in.

"Do you want a cup of tea or something before we go?"

"No, thanks. Are you ready to go? We've got to get going."

"Yes, let me just grab my bags." I pulled my parka on, and slipped my feet into my Timberlands. I was wearing a very similar outfit to the day before – the same leggings, but with a thick, oversized red jumper this time. I retrieved my handbag from my room, checking I had my keys, phone, wallet and iPod and then returned to the living room, where Roxas had swung my overnight bag over his shoulder.

"Done?"

"Done," I replied, and we left the flat.

On the street, Roxas shut my bag in the boot of his car, and we both got inside. He took a sip from a thermos mug in beside him, offered me some (I gratefully accepted), and then he started up the car flicking on the radio with practised ease. As we were pulling out around the corner, I asked the question that should have been so obvious, but had completely slipped my mind until then.

"Where do you live, by the way?"

He chuckled softly. "Twilight Town. You ever been?" I shook my head. "Well, it's about a two hour drive. Hope you're well prepared."

"Two hours is nothing compared to the four hours it takes me to get home." He whistled with an impressed manner, and I mentally slapped myself around the face, hard. I hadn't meant to sound like I was boasting; I was just trying to make conversation. Luckily, though, Roxas hadn't seemed to take it in the wrong context.

We drove without stopping, in case we ended up trapped somewhere in the snow, which would be far from ideal. It took us around two and a half hours, as there were drifts of snow that covered certain roads and we had to find and take different routes. The entire time, Roxas drove steadily, concentrating on peering through the snow that kept on falling. We were fairly quiet – I didn't want to disturb Roxas whilst he was driving and to be honest, we didn't actually have a whole lot to talk about. Later, in the year that followed from that night, we had plenty to talk about – we often had to tear ourselves apart because there was so much to talk about, so much we wanted to learn about each other – but right then, only the day after we'd met, we didn't really know what to say to each other. He just drove, and I tried to keep warm and hummed along to the radio when a song I knew came on.

So, around half past twelve, we were pulling up on the drive of his family home. At first glance, the house looked like a typical townhouse, and I discovered that inside it was exactly this. It was a fairly small, three floor house, softly furnished and with an extremely over eager Newfoundland that knocked me over as soon as Roxas opened the door, barking right in my ear and desperately trying to lick my face.

"Jessie! Jessie, no!" I heard Roxas pleading weakly, and I could see his hands pulling at the dog's shaggy fur, trying to pull the dog off of me. "Jessie, heel!" These words were shouted sharply, and the dog reluctantly left me alone, retreating obediently to her master's heel. Roxas moved forward and pulled me upright.

"I'm so sorry," he kept saying. "She always does this, she's a nice dog, really ..." I looked over at the dog, which was still sat in the same spot, almost motionless except for the excitable wagging of her tail and her heavy panting. Jessie allowed me past into the house, and Roxas led me up to the second floor at the top of the house. We hadn't seen any of his family on the quick trip up through the house, but I assumed we'd meet them soon. He swung open a door, and then I found myself stood in Roxas' bedroom.

"You'll be sleeping in here, if that's okay, but I'll go on the floor, you can have the bed," he was saying, taking my bag from me and dropping it on the bed. I felt myself gravitating over in that direction, lightly dropping down to sit on it, staring in awe around the room. I don't think I'd ever seen so many books in someone's bedroom either than mine or my father's. An entire wall had been made into a rough bookshelf, with stacks and stacks of volumes piled upon one another, familiar titles and names jumping out at me like old friends. There was a pile of books beside the bed so high that they were as tall as the bedside table, with a pair of black rimmed glasses laid upon them. The window sill, which looked out over the back garden, had a small pile of books on it, the desk was cluttered with them, the armchair in the corner with a lamp behind it had a couple strewn across it ... if it was possible, this boy owned more books than I did. There were so many that I wanted to read, that I longed to ask to borrow. He carefully tidied the books off of the armchair and slowly lowered himself into it.

"Yeah ... I like books."

"I can tell! You've got more than me, and I thought I owned more than anybody!" He chuckled, somewhat sheepishly, pulling one leg up and balancing his ankle on the opposite thigh. We were both still wrapped up in our coats and scarves, I noticed, and I tentatively started pulling mine off, and he began to do the same.

"So ... how long have you lived here?"

"Uh, since I was about thirteen. We lived in Midgar till then."

"Why the change?"

"Not sure ... I think it was a lot of things. My brother was about sixteen at the time, and he had started getting mixed up in a bad crowd ... I think my Mom just wanted us to live somewhere else. She grew up there, and I know that she hated it, so ... we came here."

"Is it nice?"

"It's quiet ... but definitely better. We've made some good friends. But I decided to go back to Midgar for university for a reason." I nodded. He got up and draped his coat over the back of his desk chair, and then took mine and hung it on the back of the door. "Well, shall we meet my family?"

Roxas' family was small and compact – there was him, his mother, his father and his brother, and Jessie the dog. His brother was an older, taller, leaner version of Roxas, with hair an even lighter shade of blonde and even messier, with eyes that were an even more startling blue. His name was Cloud, and he was one of quietest boys I had ever met. He only said a few words to me whilst I was there that Thanksgiving, and when he did speak his voice was soft. His eyes held a strange sadness that Roxas' also held, I noticed then. His parents were both quiet as well. I could see that Roxas and Cloud looked like a mixture of their parents – they both had their father's messy, spiky blonde hair, but their mother's piercing eyes. They shared their mother's creamy, pale skin, but Cloud had their father's height, and Roxas had their mother's smile. It was eerie to see them all sat together as a family.

There were eight of us for dinner that night – Roxas and his family, me, Cloud's girlfriend Tifa, and his best friends Zack and Aerith, who were also a couple. No one seemed to think it strange that they were both included in the dinner, and so I said nothing about it, and instead made pleasant conversation with them. Roxas told me later that Zack had for a long time been considered as a member of the family, because of all he'd done for Cloud. I didn't ask what exactly what it was he'd done for Roxas' brother, but from what I could gather I guessed that he'd helped Cloud out of some dark times.

The conversation flowed easily, and everyone was far too nice to me. The food was beautiful, and after the table was cleared and the plates and pans washed we all settled down in the lounge, which was on the first floor. An old film was on the telly but no one was really concentrating on it. Roxas' father, handed out small glasses of whiskey, and there was a fire lit in the grate. The atmosphere was warm and comforting, and I felt safe. I forgot the Roxas was Naminé's boyfriend – instead, I found myself curling up beside him on the floor, my legs tucked underneath me and his heat warm against me. I looked around at us all, sat on three different seats – Roxas's parents on one, curled up together, Cloud and Tifa squashed onto another, Aerith on Zack's lap in the corner, and Roxas and myself sat at his parents' feet. I could get used to this, I found myself thinking. Everyone was so kind, and cheerful. There were no harsh words, there were no snide comments – there was just playful banter, funny memories, kind questions. My head slowly made a descent onto Roxas' shoulder, and when it softly landed there, he didn't move away, or tell me not to, he simply gently laid his head on top of mine. It was so strange, but I felt like I knew him so well. Despite the silence in the car, just being sat here and watching him with his family, having seen him in his room, at the dinner table, I felt I knew a side of him that nobody back in Midgar did; not even Naminé. We all just sat there in the warmth of the fire and felt the satisfaction of the dinner in our stomachs, and felt the warm fire of the whiskey down our throats now and then.

"So tell us Kairi, how do you know Roxas?"

I was about to launch into the story of yesterday, and tell his mother how he was my best friend's boyfriend, but Roxas didn't even give me a chance to speak.

"We've known each other a while now. We study together sometimes." He cut across me with, and I fell silent at the blatant lie. There was obviously a reason as to why he didn't want to tell them all the truth, so I kept quiet and let him tell his story of how we had met in a bookstore, and had both been reaching for the same copy The Catcher in the Rye. It would have been how I'd have liked to have met him, anyhow.

After about eleven in the evening, we all began retiring to our separate bedrooms. Roxas' parents disappeared into their bedroom on the first floor, Tifa and Aerith into the guest bedroom on the second floor, and Zack and Cloud into Cloud's bedroom on the same floor. Roxas and I waited for the three of them to use the bathroom, and I let Roxas go before me when they were done. He came back into the room afterwards smelling of mint and dressed just in a pair of red and white check trousers, and I immediately felt myself turning away from him, my face warming at the mere fact that he was topless. I gathered my pyjamas and toothbrush in my arms and escaped into the bathroom.

After I had changed into my pyjamas, and had brushed my teeth, I stood staring at myself in the bathroom mirror for a long time. I was wearing a pair of pink and white striped shorts, a black oversized t-shirt that I was fairly certain belonged to my father, and a thick cardigan. My legs looked slim, but pale. My arms looked pale. My face was pale. Everything seemed pale – I was normally quite tanned but at that point I hadn't caught any sun for months. Instead, my skin was a lighter hue than normal, my hair was a darker red than it was in the summer, and my eyes stood out too much in my pallid face. I thought of Naminé and how she was a beautiful creamy colour all year round, with her soft golden hair that she didn't have to do anything to and yet still looked so soft and elegant. Of course, that wasn't the reason Roxas was with her, but I felt right at that moment, stood there in Roxas' bathroom, my hair loose around my shoulders and my mind exhausted by all the emotions and feelings that had been rattling around inside and confusing it, she was so much more beautiful than me in the winter.

What happened after that, after I stepped out of the bathroom and into Roxas' room, settling down in his bed, changed everything. It sounds cliché, but it really did – it changed my entire outlook on life, because I guess up until then, despite the fact that I was nineteen and lived in a big city in a crappy flat with my best friend, I was naïve. I had never had a serious boyfriend before, though – the only sex I had ever had up until that point was with a boy when I was at boarding school. He'd been called Sora, and he was incredibly popular and everyone thought he was good looking. I hadn't been popular – I was a weird outsider who was, for my classmates, a little too eager to read. And yet, somehow, Sora and I had started this strange, secretly torrid relationship under the eyes and noses of everybody at school. I was certain, even then – over a year later – that no one at school except a few of his friends and my roommate Selphie had known about it. He would sneak into my room in the middle of the night, gently wake me, take my hand and direct me down the corridor to the room that day students sometimes used to sleep over in. There was a bed in there with a cotton sleeping bag on top of it, and after a week or so of kissing in that bed we had finally had sex. It carried on for the better half of my senior year, and in the week of graduation – a week of parties– he was kissing another girl, who was as equally popular as him, in front of everybody, which was something he'd never dared to do with me. I had waited all of that week, at every party, for him to finally come over to me and kiss me, show me that what we had shared together was real, but to him I was just another girl, who he'd had some fun with, but was probably below his standards and he could have more girls, and have more fun. They would probably be more experienced than me, and they would probably see him as just a bit of fun as well. I'd finished high school determined not to fall into that trap again, and yet Roxas happened to me in my second year of college.

At that moment, stood looking at myself in the mirror in Roxas' bathroom, I felt something building. I had felt all evening, as Roxas and I began to sit closer and closer together, when he'd told his family the lie about how we knew each other, when his head had laid to rest upon mine on his shoulder, that something was changing. Something had stumbled, had been jarred into a different setting, and things weren't going as they should. And yet, for me, they felt as though they were. It wasn't following the track of normalcy but I wanted it, wanted whatever he could offer up to me that night.

Watching myself in the mirror, in Roxas' bathroom, I wanted different.

I settled down into his bed, breathing in the smell of him that I had only just discovered that day but was already entranced with. He smelled clean, like a laundry detergent I hadn't come across before but found so intriguing. Clean, with a small hint of sweet rain. I couldn't place the smell, couldn't give it a name, but just lay in it, my nose pressed to the pillow. I lay on my side, watching him on the floor, stretched out on the mattress. His blanket had slipped off of him a bit, and his chest was there on show, a soft cream in the dim light. His eyes were closed, but I didn't think he was asleep. We were silent for a while, and then I forced myself to ask him the question that had confused me all evening.

"Why did you lie about how we knew each other?"

His eyes remained closed, and he didn't move from his position in the bed. He just opened his mouth, breathing softly.

"Because I wanted that meeting for us."

I didn't say a word, just kept watching him, his words buzzing in my mind. I remembered what I had thought when he had told the lie, how I had preferred the scenario he had presented to his family instead of our meeting just yesterday, when we bumped into each other in my flat. I preferred the memory he had given, to the one that was reality – that he was my best friend's boyfriend.

He shook his head suddenly, like he was cross with himself, and suddenly he was sitting up. I watched him stand up, pushing myself up onto my elbows. As he moved towards me, towards the bed, I knew what was going to happen almost instinctively. I knew as well as he did what was about to transpire. I knew it because it couldn't not happen, couldn't go un-happened between us. There were no words needed, we didn't need any shared looks of asking for permission. There were no words, except, as he came to stand over me in his bed, his brow creased, my name raggedly forced over a sure tongue and singing into my ears.

"Kairi," he murmured, and I reached up for him, pulling him down towards me and kissing him.

It was seamless, the way he was suddenly on the bed with me, pushing me down beneath him and kissing me better than I had ever been kissed before. The sensation alone of his hands moving beneath my hair and gently holding my head, tenderly pulling my face and lips closer to his, made me feel so vulnerable and out of control. I was kissing him more feverishly than I had ever kissed any boy before; my limbs were becoming completely lost with his. I pulled my hands up to his hair and sank my fingers into it, and found that his hair was as soft as the down of a chick. His breath was ragged on my lips, and he had a knee pressed between my legs. I clung onto him, let his hands slide up under my t-shirt and skim over me, let him pull it over my head and throw it on the floor, let him press his chest softly against mine, covering me up entirely. It was completely unlike anything I'd ever experienced before, was everything that I'd always wanted with a boy – everything that I'd never had with Sora – it was lust tinged with need. I'd never wanted someone so badly before, never truly wanted someone until right then, in that moment. All thoughts of Naminé escaped my mind as his head dipped, his lips brushing over my chest, down my stomach. Then my shorts were being pulled down, and I was wrestling with his trousers, and then I was there in his bed, entirely vulnerable and completely yielding, and then he was leaning over and rummaging through the drawer of his bed side table with shaking hands and pulling out a condom, hovering above me, gripping me tightly, pushing and with his eyes widening, kissing my face which had screwed up in pain, gently smoothing away the wrinkles and breathing soft words into my ear. I was entirely his - I could never be anyone else's. In that moment, with Roxas' ragged breathing whispering over my skin, advancing and retreating and seeming to sear himself onto my body, I wanted nothing more. I didn't care about anything anymore, didn't care that I barely knew him because I knew then, beneath him in his bed, in his room, in his house – I knew that I actually knew what nobody else knew about him, I knew that he had never been so intimate with someone, regardless of all the girls he may have slept with before me. I could feel it in the way his lips grazed mine, the way he clung to me as tightly as I clung to him, the way he huskily breathed out my name and buried his face in my shoulder at the peak of it all, and the way he lay in that position afterwards, letting me softly stroke his back and keep my fingers buried in his hair.

The next day he drove me back to Midgar, and the car was silent again, except for the soft buzz of the radio. It was far from an awkward silence, though – it was a shared silence of thought. I stared out the window, watched the flecks of snow hitting the window and flying back into the air with a speed that made them flurry and break. When we hit the motorway, and he didn't have to concentrate too much, his hand reached over and held onto mine, resting upon my thigh, his fingers smooth and betraying so many secrets in the silence.

Back to Black

I didn't see him after that until January. It was a similar meeting to our first – Naminé had gone off to the art studio, and we were both in the flat, alone together. I was on my way to the shower, still in my pyjama shorts and vest top, my hair messy from sleep and my eyes still adjusting to the day, and he was sat at the table in the alcove in the kitchen, looking out of the window. He looked up and saw me at the same moment that I saw him, and we just stared at each other. I could almost hear our hearts thumping at the exact same speed and rhythm, and I knew that his mouth had suddenly grown as dry as mine had, and that, like mine, all of his senses had pricked up and heightened at the mere presence of the two of us together in the same room, nearly two months after that night. He stood up, and came over to me. He gently took my wrist, and it was just like before – there was no way to stop it, it had to happen. He led me back into my bedroom, pressed me gently down into the bed and dropped his lips onto mine, and it was just like before, was always like the first time. The heat, the lack of control, the way I clung to him and wanted to never have to let him go, the way he pushed his face into my shoulder as he came and lay on top of me almost trembling as I again stroked his back.

We lay like that for a while, him in my arms, and it felt like a scene in a book I'd been reading then, and I told him this. He asked me which book, and I told him.

The third time we slept together – the next month, February 15th, the morning after the Valentine's night he had spent with Naminé, who had disappeared back home that morning to see distant relatives who were visiting – was exactly the same, and my right shoulder seemed to be moulded into the shape of his face as every time, when he came, he buried his face in it, his voice soft and his moans gentle. As we lay in my small bed together, his head as always on my chest, he asked me what book I was reading then, and I told him every time, and it became a sort of ritual, or tradition.

Of course, there was guilt. It wasn't like each time we slept together I was able to just forget about what a cruel thing we had just done to Naminé, together, and her face always swam into my mind afterwards, as he lay on top of me, my finger tips grazing the skin of his back. Her face always appeared, sweet and kind with a mischievous glint in her eyes, her lips in her soft smile. There were so many times that I wanted to tell her, as we stayed in together on cold evenings and watched the television curled up together on the sofa. Every time it was just the two of us together, the words were forming in my mouth, ready to spill out, but I was so cowardly that I never managed to tell her. It was always there, resting on my tongue. But I couldn't. Each time it almost came out, his face was there in my mind – his beautiful, soft face with its smooth contours and his smile that never reached his eyes but was so enchanting. I was so scared to lose him, terrified that if I told her then she would force the both of us out of her life and that I'd never see him again.

I was selfish. It almost didn't matter to me that she might force Roxas and I out of her life if she knew – it was more the fact that if she did, I wouldn't see him again; I seemed to conveniently forget that in that case I'd never see her either. I still barely knew him – all I really knew was that he did History, lived in Twilight Town and had read as many, if not more, books as me – but I was already in way too deep. I couldn't ever seem to get my mind off of him. I felt like a completely different person, and that nobody could ever hope to understand how I was feeling. I began craving bizarre things – one time I walked into the city centre and bought three avocados and let them ripen on my window sill, and then I sat on my bed with a knife and greedily devoured them, juice all over my fingers and the spongy flesh rolling around in my mouth. I read obscure books by people I'd never heard of before, simply because he might have said in passing that he'd heard it was a good read. I would sit in my room and spend hours shaping my eyebrows, and then cry after he'd left and hadn't said a word about them – but why would he? They were just eyebrows.

My university work slackened. I started doing worse in each essay, but I couldn't bring myself to work hard when my thoughts were so tempered with Roxas' face and voice, and the feel of his fingers against my skin and the closeness we shared – how could I work hard when he was there, living and breathing? I carried on going to my job at the cafe but that was just for money – money to buy new clothes, books, anything to make him notice me.

Midway through March was my birthday. Naminé had insisted that the two of us would go out together, because I was so used to spending my birthday at home, either with my family or alone, that she was determined, for my twentieth ("You're leaving your teens, we have to go out!") that I would go out and have a good time. I thought it would just be us two, and Xion, who had come up to visit and come out, but at nine o'clock the intercom was buzzing, Naminé was still doing her hair and Xion was picking an outfit out of my wardrobe and so I answered it, my dress still open at the side and my hair still damp.

"Hello?"

"It's me." My fingers clenched the phone hard against my ear, and just like always, whenever he came into the room and I caught sight of him, or just heard his voice, all of my senses heightened and I was seeing things so much more clearly, I could hear the slightest sound, taste him in my mouth, feel his touch on my arms ...

"W-what are you doing here?" He gave a slight chuckle, which made my heart dance.

"Naminé invited me out with you guys. I hope that's okay."

"Um ... sure." No, it wasn't okay. But I couldn't exactly tell him that, what with him here already. I still yearned to be with him every second of every minute, but he messed with my head so much that I had actually been looking forward to this, to go out with my sister and my best friend and forget about him, and all the awful things we'd done to Naminé in the short space of four months. I was looking forward to dressing up in my new dress and shoes, going for a drink, maybe getting a little drunk and relaxing. And now he was here, was coming out with us, and I just knew that everything was going to go completely wrong, and my heart was going to get severely squashed by the end of the night. It had to – the two of them were going to be together in front of me. I wouldn't be able to touch him, kiss him, clutch at him, all night long; they would be Naminé's privileges.

"Are you going to let me up?"

I didn't say anything, just pushed the button hard, heard the familiar buzz of the door opening downstairs, and slammed the phone back onto the wall. He was quick climbing the stairs, and after a few minutes he was knocking at the door and I was robotically swinging it open for him.

He looked gorgeous, as always. His hair was messy, like usual, but I loved his hair. I loved the craziness of the style, and I loved knowing that it did that naturally, just like his brother's did. He was dressed simply, in a pair of plain black trousers, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to just above the elbows, and a black waistcoat buttoned up on top of it. We were going to Castle, which was a rather swanky club in central Midgar, and had a rather strict dress code. I didn't say a word to him – couldn't – and just stepped aside to let him in, and then went back to my bedroom.

"Are you alright?" I nodded in Xion's direction, zipped up my dress, and started working on my hair. She turned back to my wardrobe, pulling her towel tighter around her as though she could feel the tension rolling off of me in rippling waves. "You look pretty," she murmured.

"Thanks," I replied dully, turning on the hairdryer.

Xion was finished first, having already done her hair and makeup, and as she was fishing around for her handbag I glanced up from doing my own makeup to see what outfit she had picked out. She was dressed in a very simple, floaty white dress, and black heeled shoe-boots.

"Nice choice," I told her. She gave me a smile.

"Thanks," She left the room then, and a huge sigh escaped me. I shook my head, and made myself continue with my makeup, swearing softly when I realised that I had streaked mascara across my nose.

When I was done I stood up and looked at myself in the full-length mirror, in much the same way I had looked at myself in the bathroom at Roxas' house. My hair was a little lighter, now, having caught some sun, but I was just as pale. I'd chosen the dress I was wearing for a reason, but I found that I was regretting my choice now that I knew Roxas would be there. It was one-shouldered, black, very short and skin tight – tighter than I would usually have picked, but I had picked this one because I wanted to be different, I wanted to break out of my usual routine. Looking back on it now, I think I picked it because I wanted to look and dress like Naminé – skin tight was usually her territory. My hair was in the same style as usual, and on my feet I was wearing a pair of heeled shoe-boots very similar to the ones Xion was wearing. I felt uneasy in this outfit, knowing that Roxas would be there. Would he think I was trying to impress him? Of course, I probably was subconsciously, but I was worried that he would think that I was dressing like this to catch his attention, to try and draw him away from Naminé. It wasn't until I grabbed my clutch and left my room, and found the three of them in the living room, that I realised I wouldn't have had a chance anyway. Naminé had bested me, as always, in a lilac dress that was somehow tighter and shorter than mine, which went with her hair, skin tone and eyes so beautifully that I found myself completely drawn to her. Roxas and Xion were sat on the sofa, talking animatedly, and it threw me a bit to see them getting on so well. Naminé turned towards me when she heard me leaving my room, and gave me a big smile.

"Hey! You look gorgeous. Ready to head out?" I nodded numbly, and with that we were suddenly leaving, deciding against jackets because it was unseasonably warm, locking up the flat and hailing down a taxi and all piling in. We were going to a bar first – Seventh Heaven, the one where Naminé met the boys that didn't linger the morning after – and she told the driver this as we sat down inside the cab. Xion was in the front, and I found myself in the back of the dark cab squashed up beside a door with Roxas beside me, and Naminé on his other side. There was music playing from the cab's stereo, Xion was leaning back to talk to us and smiling excitedly and she and Naminé were laughing loudly over something funny. In the darkness, I felt the fingers of Roxas' hand softly stroking mine.

At the bar Naminé announced that we were meeting more people, and as we paid the driver and climbed out, Roxas very surreptitiously holding out a hand to help me out, I could see some of our friends from university at the door, waving us over.

"Kairi! Happy birthday!" Yuffie, a girl who had lived on the same corridor as us in the dorms the previous year, bounded over and threw her arms around me. "Come in, come in – we have birthday shots all lined up ready!"

Yuffie led me inside and over to a table where she had evidently been sat with Leon, a calm, dark haired boy from my course who was actually called Squall but insisted on being called otherwise. A row of four shot glasses, each containing a different colour liquid, were lined up on the table, and after much chanting from the others I found myself downing them one after the other, grimacing at the strong taste. Music was playing loudly – far too loudly for my liking – and the building was very crowded. Naminé and Xion sat down, my sister introducing herself to my friends, and I was about to join them when Roxas announced that he would go get some drinks, and grabbed my wrist, pulling me swiftly towards the bar.

"There's someone I want you to meet!" He told me over the music. When we got to the heaving bar, we both rested our elbows on the wood and waited for our order to be taken. My breath had already started shortening at the feel of his hand on my wrist, and as we were standing waiting, I felt his hand on my lower back, resting with incredibly light pressure in an unmistakably territorial sign.

"You look incredible," He murmured in my ear, the closeness of his lips to my skin drawing goosebumps out over my arms.

"T-thanks," I managed to reply, trying to focus on something else so that I wouldn't give in to temptation and throw my arms around him and bury my face in his. "Who did you want me to meet then?"

He gave a grin, and then waved someone behind the bar over. A tall, curvy girl was walking over, wiping her hands on a towel and slipping her dark hair over her shoulder. She looked very familiar, and as she arrived in front of us and gave me a surprised smile, I realised where I knew her from.

"Tifa?"

"Hey Kairi," she beamed, and she reached over and ruffled Roxas' hair, who chuckled almost childishly, batting her hands away. "Hey there, trouble. Your brother's over there, if you're looking for him, with Zack." She pointed to the corner of the bar, where sure enough, Cloud and Zack were sat beside a window with beer bottles in front of them, Zack smiling widely and talking animatedly with plenty of hand gestures whilst Cloud nodded quietly.

"Where's Aerith?" Roxas asked, as Tifa placed a beer bottle in front of him, and took my drink order.

"At work," she replied, swiftly putting my drink together and placing the vodka and cranberry down in front of me. "Someone needed their shift covered."

Roxas nodding, taking a drink from his beer, and then he paid Tifa and told us that he was going to say hello to his brother. We watched him go, and I decided to stay at the bar for a few minutes, knowing that this would probably be the only time I got alone and to myself tonight. Tifa drifted to the other end of the bar, taking orders and giving people drinks, and I watched Roxas clap a hand on his brother's shoulder, and laughed as Zack reached over and ruffled his hair in the same way Tifa had done. Then, he was moving back over to the table where our friends and my sister sat, and leaning down to kiss Naminé.

"Ouch." I turned to face the bar, and saw Tifa standing before me again, mixing a drink. She was looking in the same direction as I had been, and I could see from the look in her eyes that she had seen the exchange between Roxas and my best friend.

"I know," I murmured. I didn't turn around again – I didn't want to see if they were still kissing. Tifa seemed to have guessed what had happened between Roxas and I, and what was still going on, and kindly didn't press for details. Instead, she poured a shot of something clear and put in front of me.

"On the house."

"Thanks," I told her, and downed it gratefully, revelling in the sting of vodka down my throat.

"So, is there a reason why you're out tonight? You don't really strike me as a party animal."

"It's my birthday," I mumbled, staring down into the empty shot glass, almost willing more vodka to appear inside it. When I glanced up, I saw she had raised her eyebrows and was looking over in the direction of my friends again. I followed her gaze, but yanked it back when I saw Naminé sat on Roxas' lap, a wide smile on her face as she recounted a joke of some sort.

"Do you know that girl, then?" Tifa broached carefully. I nodded sourly.

"She's my best friend."

"That blonde girl's your best friend?" I glanced up, as those words hadn't come from Tifa, and found Zack beside me, his eyes incredulous. Cloud was beside him, leaning against the bar as Tifa leant over it and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek, which made him flush a deep red. I knew they'd been a couple for some time, as Roxas had told me, but it seemed that Cloud was still very shy.

"Yep." I muttered in response, and Zack whistled lowly, shaking his head with disbelief.

"Man, we thought that you were a sure thing! You're the first girl he's brought home that we actually liked." That sent my heart fluttering slightly, but the sheer fact alone that he was being so public about his relationship with Naminé easily beat that short lived feeling of elation down.

"What happened between you two?" Tifa asked gently. I sighed, and she seemed to sense my agitation because she swiftly refilled my shot glass with vodka and I downed it with the same speed. She looked inquiringly at Zack and Cloud, who both nodded, and she filled two glasses for them which they finished in quick succession.

"They were dating when he brought me back to Twilight Town."

I would have expected to feel awkward, telling these people who I barely knew that I had been sleeping with the boyfriend of my best friend (I had no doubt in my mind that they'd known we had slept together that night at his house), but it was such a relief to shift part of the burden off of my chest. I almost didn't care if they judged me for it; I just wanted someone to know what had been going on. It had been going on for around four months, and the entire time I had just been keeping the secret under wraps in my heart, trying to control it and keep it down and out of sight but it was almost beyond control. I almost understood what they meant when people who had been caught being unfaithful said I guess I wanted to be caught, because I just wanted someone to know that it had happened between us – and that it was still happening. He had already become such an important part of my life, in that short space of time, and I knew that I was already in far too deep, completely in love with him, and I almost wanted confirmation that it was really going on – we had really shared something.

I waited for their judgement, but it didn't come, because I think they had immediately picked up on how sorry I was about it. I think they had also noticed that I was stupidly in love with him. Instead of judging looks and cruel words, I just had three sympathetic gazes cast upon me that I was very grateful for.

"I'm sorry," Tifa murmured. I forced a small smile and shook my head softly.

"If I feel bad, it's my own fault, right?" Zack cocked his head slightly, his eyebrows furrowed and his eyes still sad. I sighed, still forcing that smile on my face, and sat up straight, pushing my fringe away from my face. "Some birthday, right?"

Tifa gave a soft chuckle, and moved away to take someone's order.

"It's your birthday?" Zack asked. I nodded, and pointed with some discretion over to where my friends and sister were sat.

"They dragged me out. We're going to Castle."

"We are too, once Tifa's finished her shift." I only noticed then that Zack and Cloud were both dressed similarly to Roxas, in black trousers, white shirts and black waistcoats, except Zack's waistcoat was unbuttoned and his shirt half open, whilst Cloud's were buttoned smartly.

"Kairi!" I glanced up, and saw Naminé standing near the door, waving energetically. "Time to leave!" I nodded in her direction, and began to stand up, casting a soft smile towards Zack and Cloud.

"I guess I'll see you there," I told them, and they both nodded. I started moving in the direction of the door and my friends, Roxas' almost unreadable gaze fixed on me, but as I was trying to move through the crowds a hand grabbed hold of my upper arm and gently pulled me back. Zack bent down close to my ear, and his voice was so soft that I almost missed it amidst all the noise and music.

"I'll be there, if you need me. Just come find me."

When I looked up into his eyes, I knew exactly what he meant, and I nodded. He didn't smile, just fixed me with a determined gaze that was eerily similar to Roxas'.

"Thank you," I murmured. I was sure that at some point I would be taking him up on his offer. He released my arm, and I headed towards my friends, who jovially pushed me outside and into another taxi, and we left for Castle.

The club was way too crowded, and the music was way too loud, and my friends and Xion were far too energetic for my liking. It was exactly what I had wanted, but that was before Roxas had turned up quite literally on my doorstep, and now it was exactly what I didn't want. I knew I was going to be bustled about quite painfully by the huge amount of smartly dressed people inside, my ears were going to be ringing, and I was going to be forced to drink far too much by my companions. There was nothing I could do, though – it was my birthday, my twentieth, and to my friends that meant that they had to get me as drunk as possible. So I let them steer me inside and towards the bar, let them pass me a cocktail and drank it dutifully, and drank the shot they handed me. Roxas had disappeared from sight around that time, however, so I felt myself beginning to perk up, and I allowed Naminé to drag me onto the dance floor, battling through the sweating, writhing mass of bodies that already occupied it. I felt Xion's hand in my own, and as we managed to find a space and the three of us began to dance, I resolved to try and at least look like I was having a good time for my sister's sake. She had, after all, come all the way from home to see me, and help celebrate my birthday.

I loosened up then, dancing freely and tipsily, and now and then a giggle even emerged from my mouth, which was the last thing I had expected that night, after seeing Roxas. I felt arms wind around my middle, and heard Yuffie's voice in my ear, asking if I was enjoying myself, and I nodded, and it was half truthful. I felt myself smiling wider and wider, accepting another drink (I hadn't paid for a drink all night) and sipping cheerfully on it. I was actually having a good time.

And then, Roxas came over and stole Naminé away in a storm of giggles, and I watched him press her up against a wall in the corner and kiss her hard. She wrapped herself around him and let him shower her neck with kisses, and I had to look away then. I excused myself to go the bathroom, and when I had locked myself in the stall, trying to drown out the incessant music and talking that filled the room, I clapped my hands over my ears and forced myself to take deep breaths.

You knew this was going to happen, the voice in my head told me. You should have prepared yourself for it.

I just want to feel sorry for myself for a little while, I snapped back, and the voice didn't return.

When I had caught my breath, I forced myself off the toilet seat and unlocked the door, tucking my clutch under my arm and forcing past the seemingly hundreds of girls and women to wash my hands at the sink, and then I made my way back into the club again.

I spotted Xion, Naminé and Yuffie dancing, Yuffie pulling on Leon's arm and trying to make him join in whilst he just continued to shake his head, and I was about to join them when suddenly a pair of arms slunk around my waist, and there were lips brushing against my ear in a familiar way that made my skin shiver and my eyes close swiftly.

"Where've you been, trouble?" I felt my mouth twitching with a smile at his new nickname for me. I turned around in his arms, and found him smirking at me, but then it turned into a smile and he very gently pressed a kiss against my forehead. "I've missed you," He murmured softly, and I felt my hands automatically cling to the sleeves of his shirt, in a grip so tight that it felt as though it would take superhuman strength to remove me from him.

"I missed you too," I gasped in his ear. I let him guide me over to a secluded alcove, which was dark and deserted, and he pushed me up against the wall in much the same way as he had done to Naminé, kissing me with a fierceness I had come to expect from him every time we got together. He pushed his body hard against mine, biting down on my neck in an almost painful way that at the same time felt so good, and drew a moan from me that in any other circumstances would have made me flush with embarrassment. But there was no time for embarrassment, because his lips were moving against mine again, and then he had glanced furtively around, seeing that no one was paying us any attention, and without warning pulled the front of my dress down an inch.

"Hey!" I gasped, trying to pull it back up. I may have been completely vulnerable to his touch and caress, but I wasn't that kind of girl. He shushed me gently, easing it down and dragging his lips against my chest. "No, Roxas!"

It was the first harsh word I'd said to him, ever, and his head snapped up, his brows furrowed and his eyes surprised. I took that opportunity to pull my dress up properly, hitching the one strap over my shoulder and straightening the rest out.

"I don't know what kind of girl you think I am, but-"

"-I'm sorry," he crooned gently in my ear, with an apparent tenderness that almost made me pull the dress back down and let him do what he wanted. "But you just look so incredible in this dress." His hands skimmed the curve of my waist, gently cupping my bottom. "I couldn't help it."

"Just behave, please?" I asked weakly. He sighed, and backed away, a scowl on his face that made me feel guilty. He shook his head, and turned to leave, but before he did, he looked over his shoulder and cast some words my way that hurt me deeper than anything ever had before, even deeper than seeing Sora with that girl during graduation week.

"For the record, Naminé let me do that to her earlier. She didn't complain."

He left, then, and I fell back against the wall, desperate for its support. That had hurt – really hurt. Not only was it a low, tactless blow, but it had also reminded me of the fact that he was still hers, still her boyfriend, and we'd just done something terrible to her once again. It also reminded me of the fact that every time we got together, afterwards he still went back to her – every single time. I watched his retreating back, watching him find my best friend and pull her close, watched her laughing face and his hands skimming over every curve and dips of her body in that dress that was even tighter than mine ... a sob wrenched itself from my throat, and tears started threatening at my eyes. I pulled my hands up to cover them, trying to stem them, but it didn't work and soon they were coursing down over my cheeks. I gave another sob that made my shoulders shake, and as I wiped the tears away from my cheek, my hands released my eyes again, and I spotted someone sat at the bar.

I'll be there, if you need me. Just come find me.

Suddenly I threw myself forward, out of the alcove and into the mass of dancing people. I carefully avoided the area where Roxas and Naminé were, steered clear of where Xion, Yuffie and Leon were, and pushed people out of the way until I was stumbling forward, out of the crowd, and into the arms of Zack, who was looking down at my tear streaked face with something that could have been surprise, but was more likely understanding and concern.

"Kairi?" Another sob burst out of my throat, and he pulled me close to him, pressing my head gently against his chest and stroking my hair as I cried into his shirt, no doubt staining it with makeup, but I couldn't bring myself to care. I clung to the material, hiccupping softly as his arms held me tight.

"Is she okay?" I heard a voice ask, and I reluctantly pulled my face away from Zack's chest and turned to see Cloud's concerned face, and Tifa's close behind. "What did he do?" Cloud asked, leaning close to me and wiping some of my tears away from my cheek. I shook my head, indicating that I didn't want to talk about it, and he gave a curt nod of understanding. He sighed, and ran a hand through his hair, making it even messier than before, if it was possible.

"My brother's an ass," He muttered. "I'm sorry."

Tifa passed a tissue forward to me, and I weakly dabbed at my cheeks with it, sniffing hard. Zack's hand was still stroking my hair, and I fell against him again, feeling his warmth support me.

"Do you want me to take you home?" He asked. I shook my head.

"Thanks, but I should probably stay. Sorry to cause such a scene." They each shook their heads and told me not to be so silly, of course it was okay, and that Roxas was the biggest idiot ever.

"Kairi?"

I glanced up to see Xion coming towards me out of the heaving, dancing bodies on the dance floor, her face confused.

"Kairi, what's wrong?"

"She's alright," Zack said smoothly, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and squeezing me gently. "It's nothing." I nodded in agreement with him, and Xion thankfully didn't press me any further. I introduced her to the three of them, and then she told me that she'd had enough and was wondering if I was ready to leave and wanted to share a taxi. I nodded, and Zack swept me into a tight hug goodbye, and then insisted on giving me his phone number.

"Ring if you need anything, okay?"

Cloud placed a hand softly on my shoulder and gave me a nod, and Tifa gently ruffled my hair and told me she'd see me around. Then, Xion led me swiftly out of the club, into a taxi, and home.

I told her, that night. When we'd gotten back to the flat and sat down on my bed I told her everything that had happened between me and Roxas, and she was surprisingly understanding, and just held me and stroked my hair softly as I cried feebly on her shoulder, and told me that it would be okay, that everything would work out in the end, though I knew that they were just hollow words that were simply meant to comfort, not provide hope. We got into our pyjamas, cleaned our teeth and faces, and climbed into my bed, and she lay curled up against my back.

I hadn't seen Roxas as we left the club, but I had a feeling that I wasn't going to be seeing him for some time anyway, if the look on his face when I'd told him no was anything to go by. I think I knew, even then, as I heard Xion's steady breathing that told me she was asleep, and I felt more tears trickling silently over my nose and onto the pillow, that what Roxas and I had shared was already breaking, already deteriorating. I was sad, but strangely I didn't mind too much. I'd figured out by then – had probably always known, deep down – that he didn't feel the same way about me as I felt about him, and that he just saw me as a bit of fun, just as Sora had done.

I was certain that he didn't love me.

A month later, however, when the riots broke out in the middle of Midgar, he proved me wrong.

Around three weeks after my birthday, Naminé rang me as I was on my way home from work to tell me that one of her friends had just been dumped and she had to rush out to see her, and that Roxas would be at the flat. I have no idea why she rang to give me the warning – she'd never done so before – but truthfully I was thankful for it, as it gave me the opportunity to gear myself up for a meeting with him. I hadn't seen him since the night of my birthday and I was trying to avoid him. I'd heard him once, about a week ago, talking to Naminé as she finished her breakfast and left the flat, and he'd knocked lightly on my door, but I chose not to answer and stayed curled up in bed trying not to make a sound and eventually he'd left too. But I knew that it was inevitable that I'd see him and it was probably time to just face him anyway. But as I got closer and closer to the building we lived in I felt my heard thudding harder and harder, and nausea rose in my throat to a point when I checked my bag, saw that I had some books for university in them, and gratefully scuttled off in the direction of the library.

A few hours later, after I had exhausted an essay as far as I could (if it meant avoiding Roxas, my university work was bound to pick up some time), I finally decided to head home, and as I let myself into the flat he looked up from where he was sat on the sofa, watching the television. He gave me a small smile.

"Hey," he murmured. I nodded softly, and put down my bag and slipped off my boots. "Nice glasses." I felt my face flush as I realised I was still wearing my reading glasses, and I hastily slipped them off and put them on the small table that we kept near the door.

"How are you?" He got up and pulled me gently to his chest, and for a moment I just rested there with my head leant against his shoulder, feeling his arms around me and wanting the feeling to remain forever.

As fate would have it, though, I had got my period that morning. To give Roxas his due, he handled my confession very well, and didn't appear annoyed, but I could feel it rolling off of him in the way his body was tense and he wouldn't quite meet my eye. I felt awful, like I had let him down, which I know now was ridiculous as it wasn't by any stretch my fault, it was completely natural, but I wanted to do something to make it all better, make him still want me. So I led him into my bedroom and pressed him down on the bed, pulling his clothes and mine off until he was beneath me completely naked, and I was hovering above him in just my knickers and his hands were gently holding my breasts.

"Don't worry about it, Kairi," he murmured, looking away, at my chest, at the wall, at the ceiling – anywhere but my eyes.

"I want to," I told him, pushing my lips against his and then pulling away, and moving down his body to rest in between his legs. "I want to make you-"

"-Come?" He asked softly. I nodded, my face heating up again in embarrassment, but he gave me smile that could almost have been viewed as shy, but it held encouragement, and so I bent down, feeling my backside rise into the air, and took him into my mouth.

I had only done this a couple of times to Sora, simply because I knew he enjoyed it and I did it in the week before we had sex and I was too scared of the hurt to let him go all the way, and so I did it as a sort of compromise. I didn't like it particularly, and I was reminded of the reason why then, as I did it to Roxas – it felt like I was putting something that was simply too big in my mouth, and I had to resist the urge to choke around it and stop my teeth from grazing any part of it. I concentrated on breathing deeply through my nose, listening to the moans he was making and enjoying them because I was making them happen, but all I could think about was how thousands of women, all over the world and in broad daylight (I had, like always, insisted on the lights being off) did this with their bare asses bobbing towards the ceiling with no inhibitions. It made me want to stop, but he clutched at my hair quite suddenly and made a sound that was almost a whine and that made me decide to keep going. His head tilted back, towards the ceiling so that I couldn't see the expression on his face, but he suddenly gave a groan and pulled out of my mouth and came all over my chest. If he had come in my mouth I knew I would have swallowed it – definitely – but I didn't mind what he'd done.

He was gasping, which I found strange, but then he fumbled weakly on my bedside table and pulled a tissue out of the box on it, and handed it to me. I wiped my chest clean.

"Sorry," he murmured, watching my hands.

"It's okay," I told him, and then I climbed back up the bed and lay down beside him, resting my head on his chest – something I realised I had never done, as it had always been me who had held him whenever we lay down together. But now his arms were tight around me and his lips were in my hair, on my forehead, and he was whispering a thank you and I knew that I had done well, had satisfied him.

Around a week later, Naminé – as usual – was away, visiting some family at home. She always seemed to be away, going back home or on holiday, or off to have a drink with or comfort friends that I had never met in my small, compact social sphere. I rarely went home, except for the holidays. I spent as much time as possible in Midgar, especially now Roxas was in my life. Almost exactly an hour after Naminé had left, he was ringing the intercom, and I buzzed him in without even picking up the phone. As soon as he knocked on the door, I swung it open, uncaring that I was wearing a pair of pyjama bottoms and a crop top, and he grabbed me a fierceness that I had grown accustomed to. When we kissed it was like we had been apart for years, and we were making up for lost time. He dragged me to the sofa, pushing me down and pressing a knee between my legs and against my groin. When we had sex, we did it on the sofa – something I would never have dared to do, but I didn't care, because I felt like every moment we were apart from each other was a lifetime and I couldn't live, couldn't remember how to breathe without him – and for the first time, he pulled me on top, holding one of my hips with one hands and stroking my chest with the other. Despite the fact that I was so out in the open in this position – a position that was still relatively new to me, as Sora and I had barely experimented outside of the missionary position – it felt strangely so much more intimate, as I could hold his hair and kiss his cheeks, eyes, forehead, and could see every emotion on his face.

That night, when we went to sleep in my bed, he coaxed me gently onto my side, and slept pressed up against my back with his arms tight around me.

The next day, around early evening, we were sat on the sofa watching a film, and he was lying with his head in my lap as I stroked his hair, when Roxas' phone started ringing. He fumbled loosely in the pocket of his trousers for it, and answered it.

"What's up, Cloud?"

There was a silence as his brother spoke, words that I couldn't only faintly hear and couldn't properly make out, and Roxas frowned.

"Why?" More silence, more unspoken words. "Oh ... okay. We'll be down now, then. See you in a bit." He ended the call.

"What's going on?" I asked him. His frown was still in place on his face. He pushed his phone back into his pocket, and ran a hand through his hair.

"The mayor's speaking in the town centre. Cloud thinks we should go listen, because it's about students and college fees."

It made sense, so I went a put on my leather jacket and some boots, whilst he laced up his combat boots, and I noticed with a soft laugh that he was wearing a leather jacket too. He heard my giggle, and looked up bemusedly.

"What is it?"

"We match," I told him with a smile. He gave me a wide grin, something that was quite rare for him, and came over and ruffled the top of my hair.

"Come on," he said, dropping a kiss to my forehead. "Let's go see what all the fuss is about."

The city centre was more packed than I had ever seen it. It was already growing dark, despite the fact that it was only about six o'clock in the evening. All the people I could see were mostly of a similar age to Roxas and me, but as we pushed through the crowd I suddenly felt very small and young. I could see that some kind of stage had been erected that everybody was crowded around, and some men in suits and dark glasses were stood upon it. The mayor was stood at a microphone, his voice echoing out through the dim air, but I wasn't really concentrating on what he was saying. It was hard to, as everybody around us was conversing amongst themselves, and I have learnt from that experience that whispers in a crowd can be louder that an amplified voice.

"Roxas!" We glanced up, Roxas' hand firm and steady on my elbow, and we saw a shock of blonde hair and a hand waving to us about a hundred yards away. Roxas pulled me through the people separating us from his brother, and then we were stumbling over people's feet as Cloud was pulling his brother into a loose, one-armed hug, and Zack was ruffling my hair in much the same way Roxas had done earlier.

"We thought you should come listen." I looked to my left and found Aerith stood beside Zack, his arm slung around her shoulders, and a soft smile on her lips.

"What's he been saying?" Roxas asked.

"Looks like fees are going up," Tifa muttered darkly. Just as she said it, there was a loud, angry shout, that rose far up into the air above the mayor's voice, and swamped it. It was followed by more shouts, threats, angry words, that made me cling tightly to Roxas' arm because suddenly I knew exactly where this was going.

"We should get out of here," Zack murmured, and Cloud nodded, gently herding me and Roxas back the way we came. And then, quite suddenly, there was something that I had never expected to hear; not in this situation. A gunshot, echoing out through the dark air and sending all the hairs all over my body standing bolt upright. After that, screams danced upwards behind it, terror and fear mingling with anger and defiance.

"Let's go!" Zack yelled over the clamour. He pushed me forwards quite suddenly, out of the way of a rather burly man hurtling past, and my hand was ripped away from Roxas'.

"Kairi!" In the short space of a few seconds I had found myself separated from the group, lost in a swirling mass of people running in all directions, colours blurring and voices loud and indefinable in my ears. I kept my eyes trained above the heads of those pushing past me, trying to keep a head of blonde hair in my sight, but it kept bobbing in and out of my view. Someone pushed past me quite vigorously, and I almost fell, but suddenly I was being pulled back upright and when I looked up into the face of who had helped me, I found it was Roxas.

"Roxas!"

"I'm here!" He shouted over the noise. He kept a hand tight on my arm, yanking me almost painfully through the crowds. "Come on, I want you out of here!"

I let him pull me, trusting he would get me out of the mess. We had almost got to an area that was rapidly thinning of people, where I could see on the very distant horizon the building that I lived in. I glanced to my side, entirely by chance, and saw Tifa being pulled alongside me by Cloud, his hand tight on her arm much like Roxas' was on mine. There was another gunshot, which sounded far too close for comfort, and without my meaning it to a small, girlish shriek left my mouth. And then, quite suddenly, there was a surge behind us, and I found myself hurtling towards the floor.

My forehead cracked painfully against the pavement, and as I tried to push myself up I felt something fall on top of me that was heavy, a dead weight. I grunted, my cheek pressed against the ground, and I tried to push whatever had fallen on me off. When I felt soft hair tickling my arms, I knew it was a person, and so I stopped my attempts to get them off me and instead tried to crane my head around to see who it was.

"Oh god, Kairi I'm so sorry, I was pushed – are you okay?" Tifa was weakly trying to push herself upright, but even I could see that she had lost the strength to do so, because her arms were shaking dangerously. I tried to speak, to tell her that I was okay, and not to worry, but my head hurt so bad that forming words felt impossible – my tongue felt too thick, and my lips weren't working properly.

"Tifa!"

Cloud suddenly appeared in my vision, pulling his girlfriend upright and checking if she was okay. He pulled me upwards too, his hand tight around mine and his eyes intense on my forehead, but we were both suddenly pushed backwards, away from each other, and he and Tifa were carried off by the surging pushing and pulling of people rushing in the opposite direction whilst I was left standing in the middle of a swirling pool of colour and shouts that made me dizzy as I tried to pick out someone, anyone, that I knew.

"Kairi!"

Roxas was there, not ten feet from me, his hand outstretched, but we were both being pushed about, another gunshot had cracked through the air and ended with a scream of pain that made me gasp, but it wasn't a shout I recognised so I didn't worry too much. I just worried about getting myself to Roxas, whose eyes were blazing with something that could only be fear, and his hand was still there, almost in my reach, tantalisingly close, when finally we were pulled roughly apart.

"No! Kairi!"

"Roxas!" Words finally came to me, then – just as I watched him get carried away on the current of people, saw Cloud pull his brother close to him, and saw Zack – his arm tight around Aerith's shoulders – mouth something to me over the noise that could well have been a shout but I couldn't hear it.

"Kairi, run!" I heard Roxas bellow.

"Where?"

"Home! Go home! I'll come for you!"

I needed no further encouragement, and I set off towards home running as fast as I could with jacket flapping behind me, my knees aching and something dripping in my eyes that I just blinked away. I fumbled for my keys as my building came into view, dodging through crowds of people with a speed that I had never known myself to possess, a speed that I knew had only materialised because of the fear in Roxas' eyes, and his promise to come for me if I just did him one, simple favour and got myself home.

When I finally made it into my flat, I was panting heavily, and wiping distractedly at my knees. I was wearing leggings – the very same ones, I realised, that I had been wearing the very first day I met Roxas – and they were torn at the knees, no doubt from where I'd collided with the pavement. My knees were grazed, with dirt enclosed in the flesh that had been ripped open, and for a moment I just sank down onto the floor of the living room and clutched at my knees, whimpering softly like a child who had fallen over on the playground. Then, just as I was willing myself to get up and try to phone Roxas, to see what was going on, my phone rang.

I pulled it wildly out of my pocket, and checked the caller ID before opening it to answer the call. ZACK flashed up at me, and I flipped it open and held it to my ear. I didn't even get a chance to speak before Zack's voice shouted out.

"Kairi!"

"Zack, where are you guys?"

"We're okay, but we're stuck on the other side of town – come on, calm him down!" He snapped almost irritably to someone in the background.

"Roxas, calm down, please-" I heard Cloud say faintly in the background, and then Roxas' voice ripped out sharply through the phone with a fervour and urgency that made my heart both bleed with concern for him, and smug satisfaction for myself.

"Leave me alone! I've gotta look for Kairi!"

"Kairi, can you hear me?" Zack was saying softly in my ear, but I could hear that it carried a similar urgency to Roxas'. This confused me – I didn't really have many friends. Naminé, Yuffie and Leon were the closest things I had to a circle of friends, to be honest, and there was Xion – but I felt that I couldn't really count her as she was my sister. I had resigned myself to this, told myself that I was a loner and that I had sort of brought it on myself, thanks to my obsession with reading, good grades, and earning money. And yet, here was someone else on the phone, who could only be described as friend, who was ringing up to make sure that I was okay, with care and concern in his voice.

"I hear you," I replied, and my voice shook strangely. "Zack, what's going on?"

"The city has been shut down right across the middle – we can't get to your side."

"Oh, well that's alright. I'm home now."

"Are you alright?" His voice buzzed slightly, but it remained true and clear beside me.

"I'm fine, honestly."

"Give me that-" I heard quite suddenly, and there was an odd, clattering sound that I assumed meant that the phone had changed hands, and then Roxas' voice was sliding softly into my ears.

"Kairi! Kairi, are you alright?"

"Roxas, I'm fine-" He was barely listening to me though, just talking over me and telling me exactly what Zack had told me, that my side of the city was cut off and that there was no way of getting through.

"Kairi, I'm sending my friend over to check that you're okay. They don't live too far from you, so they shouldn't have an issue getting to you."

"Roxas, please, I'm really okay."

"Please," he all but whispered. He sounded like he was having trouble forming words, like his throat or his chest were too tight, like he was close to tears, but I knew better than that. I knew – with a strange, lightless acceptance – that it was just concern that was troubling him. "Please ... I have to know that you're okay."

I knew then that no amount of attempts of convincing on my part would work, would get through to him, and so I sighed, and reluctantly agreed.

"Alright ... you win."

"I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

"Alright ... goodbye."

The call ended, and I was left sat in the middle of my living room with grazed knees, a confused expression on my face, and a wonder in my heart of whether or not I had been wrong – that maybe, quite possibly, he felt the same way as I did.

Around an hour later, my intercom was buzzing, and I pulled myself up from the sofa where I'd been sat since the phone call with Roxas ended, remembering what we'd done on the very same piece of furniture only the day before. I hadn't changed out of my ripped leggings, hadn't even shrugged off my leather jacket – I had just remained sat in the living room with a dead look on my face and my phone gripped in my hands.

I picked up the ringing phone on the wall and held it loosely against the side of my head.

"Hello?"

"Are you Kairi?"

It was a boy's voice, which surprised me – when Roxas had said that he was sending over a friend to check that I was okay I had almost immediately assumed that it would be a girl. Thinking about it then, as I registered that it was a boy down in the lobby of my building waiting to be let in, it seemed rather silly. Roxas didn't really strike me as the type to be friends with girls – girls, for him, were for sleeping with.

"Hello?" The boy spoke again, snapping me out of my thoughts that I couldn't prevent myself from sliding into these days.

"Sorry – yes, I'm Kairi. Are you Roxas' friend?"

"Yeah ... can I come up?"

"Sure ..." I buzzed the button to let him in and hung up the phone. About five minutes later, he was knocking on the door. I pulled it open, and quite literally felt my heart stop.

The first I saw Roxas and learnt his name, in my living room in November as the sun lilted through the kitchen window and caught his tilting face, I felt as though all the air had been crushed out of me like someone standing on a tin can. I felt as though my lungs were collapsing, and I couldn't remember how to breathe properly, couldn't drag enough oxygen into my body to function properly because he was literally so breathtaking. When I swung open the door of my flat in April, the air dark and damp and my knees grazed, I caught sight of another boy that had the exact same effect on me, except at the same time I had too much air in my lungs and I couldn't figure out how to inhale and exhale properly, my crushed lungs overflowing with more air than I could handle. I ended up choking on my own breath, and had to duck out of sight to have a coughing fit.

"Whoa, are you okay?"

"I'm fine, thank you ..."

He was beautiful. He was entirely different to Roxas, who for all his sex appeal still had soft, babyish cheeks and childish eyes that lit up, and a crazed hairstyle that whilst soft and appealing was incredibly noticeable and none too subtle. This boy, with his long, silver hair, his fringe dripping into his icy, brooding eyes and his face smooth and masculine, was a different league.

Maybe it was the season, or the weather, or just what all the shops were stocking at the moment, but it seemed like leather jackets were the in-thing at the moment, if the one folded over his arm indicated anything.

The thing that drew me in most was his arms – they were muscled and pale and looked incredible extending from his tight black t-shirt, and all I wanted to do was hold onto one, feel them around me, holding me tight and keeping me close ...

He closed the door behind him, looking intently at my forehead.

"Hey, are you alright?"

"Huh?"

"Your forehead, it's bleeding ..."

"Oh ..." There was a mirror near the door, and I ducked over to it to get a good look. Sure enough, there was a graze running along the middle of my forehead, and a small rivulet of blood had laced down through one of my eyebrows and ended over an eyelid. "I fell over earlier."

"I can see," he murmured. He took my hand and pulled me over to sit on the sofa, and he knelt in front of me, his brow furrowed as he gently pulled my knees one at a time up to his face to look at the torn skin beneath the equally torn cotton. "We should put some plasters on these. And on your forehead."

"Okay ..." I felt incredibly helpless, like I didn't have the energy to get up and find the first aid box, and I knew it was because he was so beautiful and enchanting and charming and I couldn't really remember the last time a stranger had tried to take care of me.

"Where's your first aid box?"

"In the cupboard above the sink." He stood up and went to retrieve it, whilst I sat there unmoving like a doll. As he came back and knelt down in front of me again, easing my leggings up over my knees and wiping the grazes with antiseptic, I wondered if this was what it felt like to be in shock. I was just sitting there with an entirely stunned expression on my face that, at the time, I couldn't really understand or source. His touch was cool and soft as he cleaned up my grazes, his pressure light and gentle as he pressed the plasters down onto my kneecaps. When he cleaned the cut on my face, I felt heat blossom out from my nose over my cheeks at the closeness, his breath deep and even on the top of my head and stirring my hair.

"There," he said softly as he gently stuck the last plaster over my forehead, and let my fringe fall back over it. "All done."

"Thank you," I whispered. He gave me a small smile.

"No problem."

He put the first aid kit away and came back down to sit beside me on the sofa, and he grabbed the remote and turned on the television. A news broadcast instantly shouted out at us from the screen.

"We have just had reports of an assassination attempt on the city mayor after he announced that college tuition fees would be rising in the next year. Mr Eraqus told gathered crowds earlier this evening in the city centre that the tuition fees for all students studying at Midgar University would be rising by twenty per cent, when a gunshot was fired that set off riots up and down the city. The centre of the city has now been closed off as police try to determine if there are any casualties. The mayor-"

He abruptly turned the television off again, and dropped the remote onto the sofa beside him, turning to look at me.

"So how do you know Roxas, anyway?"

"His girlfriend shares this flat with me."

"Oh," his eyebrows rose with light speculation. "You live with Naminé?"

I nodded. "Yes. Do you know her?"

"We're quite good friends – we do the same course. I introduced the two of them, back at the end of October."

Naminé had never mentioned being good friends with a boy on her course, let alone that he had introduced Roxas to her in the first place, but then again, she hadn't even told me that she had met Roxas, and that they were dating, so I didn't really worry too much. I wondered briefly, then, why she hadn't told me about their relationship. I knew that if it had been me, it would have been all I could talk about. But Naminé was better versed and had much more experience in the dating game, whilst I had never even had a serious boyfriend, so perhaps it wasn't really something I could dwell on too heavily, as I didn't understand the sport itself.

The boy leaned back in his seat, rubbing at his temples distractedly, and I thought about whether I should offer him a drink. As I was about to, though, the same thing happened as when I tried to talk to Roxas that first time – the wrong question tumbled out of my mouth.

"What's your name?"

His eyes widened somewhat, and I realised that he was probably quite surprised that he hadn't given it sooner.

"Riku."

We sat there silently, for almost a full minute, my hands clasped in my lap and my eyes darting around the floor surrounding my feet as I couldn't quite bring myself to look at him, until I finally got up the courage to offer him a drink.

A little later that night, after he had finished the beer I gave him and started on another, Riku asked me something that surprised me, as we sat on the sofa facing each other, my knees pulled up to my chest with my chin resting on them, and his one knee up with an arm looped around it with the other leg down on the floor. I sipped at my own beer, not really sure what he was getting at, until he reworded his question, and then I understood what exactly it was that he wanted to know.

"How do you know Roxas, really? He wouldn't care about you enough to send me over to check up on you, if you were just Naminé's friend. You've gotta be something more."

I felt my face heat again, the blush steady and determined as it seeped out across my face and I looked down at my hands once more, too ashamed to meet his eyes. He was Naminé's friend, so if I told him the truth he might tell her. He might get angry at me, say harsh words that I knew I deserved but was too frightened to hear. But he was Roxas' friend, too. He might understand, or he might not understand at all, but either way he knew Roxas, and he knew what his friend was capable of, so if I told him it might not be a surprise.

I didn't really get a chance to explain to him, though. He seemed to clock on to what was going on by the way I wouldn't look him in the eye.

"Wait ... you're that girl he's screwing around with behind Naminé's back, aren't you?"

My breath slipped from my throat as swiftly and easily as light flooding the dark, but I managed a nod, and to tell him yes.

He didn't judge me. He didn't say anything, really. He just nodded back, and tilted his head back and looked at the ceiling for a while.

Why didn't anybody judge me? Everyone I'd told – him, Xion, Zack, Cloud and Tifa – had looked at me with a look that was full of understanding, sympathetic, that held no despise or anger. Instead, everyone looked at me with pity; seemingly sorry for me because of the plight I was in. I wondered if it was because I was so inexperienced in dating that no one judged me, because I appeared naive to the ways of the world and I had been taken in by Roxas and his beauty and charming words and eyes that had captivated me from the first moment they met mine.

"Roxas isn't a good guy, Kairi."

I felt my brows knit together in confusion at his words, which he noticed, and his face softened slightly.

"You're not the first girl to be in this position."

I wanted to speak up and defend Roxas, tell Riku that it was just as much my fault and that I had technically initiated our first time together, but as I opened my mouth he shook his head.

"He's done this before. You shouldn't be involved with him. You should get out now, whilst you can."

"I don't want to."

He gave me another look full of sympathy, and I realised it was because he understood how I felt about Roxas. He shook his head again.

"Fine. Your choice. But don't say I didn't warn you."

After that, we watched the television for a bit longer, and when the clock finally struck midnight I decided that it was time for me to go to bed. I offered Riku the couch to sleep on, which he accepted gratefully – I think we both knew that Roxas would have a fit if Riku didn't stay to watch over me until morning. I told him goodnight and went to bed.

When I awoke it was because I was suddenly very aware of someone's presence in my room. My eyes were still shut tight but somehow I knew someone was there, near the end of my bed, and I somehow guessed that it was still the middle of the night, and the early hours of the morning. As I was gearing myself up to take a glance at the intruder, I remembered that Riku was staying over, and so I just mumbled sleepily at him, keeping my eyes shut tight, and my voice carried out over the quiet of the room with surprising annoyance.

"What's up?"

"Sorry, I – I didn't mean to wake you."

"What's up?" I repeated, my voice muffled somewhat against my pillow. My eyes slid open a crack, and I could see his hair in the dark.

"Nothing, Kairi, I ... I just wanted to be sure of you."

"I'm fine, Piglet," I told him, and froze, my eyes snapping open completely as I realised what I had just said. It was a game I had always played with my mother, and I waited with hesitation to see how Riku would react, or if he had even heard me. He seemed to understand, though – obviously got the joke – and he gave a soft chuckle, and came forward, gently ruffling my hair with fingers that were cool and inviting against my scalp.

"Alright then, sleep well Pooh Bear."

Someone like You

Riku and I went on to become very good friends after that night. I still kept up my activities with Roxas, so to say, but suddenly this fast friendship shot out between Riku and myself and I found that we were meeting up for lunch, going to the cinema together, and hanging out at each other's flats. It was weird, without a doubt, but we slipped into routine together so easily that I didn't feel I needed to question it. The closest friend that I'd ever had who was a boy was probably Leon, despite the encounters I'd had with Zack, but Leon and I just sat together in lectures and class, and sometimes went to the library together. Riku and I were doing everything I would do with a friend who was a girl, or even with my sister, except for shopping. I noticed, with some trepidation, that we were doing everything a couple might do together, bar the romantic aspect.

But after some time, I found Roxas growing more and more distant and distracted with me, and I couldn't help but wonder whether he was growing bored of me, so in search of some advice I found myself one night in late May on the phone to my sister as I sprawled out over my bed, my head hanging off the edge.

"Do you know the saying absence makes the heart grow fonder?" Xion was asking.

"Of course," I muttered irritably.

"Well ... have you ever considered trying it out?"

I felt my brow furrowing, and I sat up properly on the bed so that I was leaning against the wall at the head.

"What do you mean?"

"Well ..." I heard Xion sigh, with hesitation, and I waited patiently. My sister was nervous to dish out advice, normally, but she had a habit of being right on the mark, so I knew that what she had to say was worth waiting for. "Maybe you should come home for a bit. I mean – you haven't been home since Christmas, which was five months ago. Come for a weekend. Tell him you're seeing your family and that you're going to try to do some studying back here, and when you go back ... you can see if it's made a difference. Maybe he'll realise that he misses you whilst you're gone."

"You know, that's not actually a bad idea, Xion." I told her. She didn't thank me for my praise, but I knew that she'd have the small smile on her face when she was pleased.

"Why not bring a friend? You know you'll just get bored otherwise ..."

I laughed. "True. Maybe I will."

"Talk it over with Mom," she said, and then she handed the phone over to my mother, who I discussed my homecoming with, and finalised dates. When I ended the call, with plans to go down that very weekend that was only two days away, I felt my heart fluttering in my chest with anticipation that was born of not just the excitement of testing Roxas' feelings for me, but also from the excitement of going home.

He was exactly where I knew he would be, leaning up against the counter in Starbucks as he squinted at the board on the back wall, trying to figure out what the hell he actually wanted before they came to take his order. He didn't really like Starbucks but it was my favourite, so I always made him go there with me, not just for the coffee but also so I could watch his confused face as he tried to figure out what a tall skinny whip latte actually was.

I crept up behind him and swiftly pressed my hands down on his shoulders, making him jump under my grasp.

"Got any plans for the weekend?" I asked. He turned his face then, knowing it was me, and raised an eyebrow, a small smile on his lips.

"A few. May I ask why?"

"Cancel them." The other eyebrow rose then, and his eyes widened too.

"Uh ... why?"

"Tomorrow, that's Friday in case you've forgotten, you're coming back home with me. To Destiny Islands."

His face regained its cool demeanour swiftly, and he said nothing, just shaking his head slightly in the way that I'd come to notice he always did around me, and he gave the barrister his order – two regular cups of coffee.

The next day we were on the train, hurtling out of the grey pallor of Midgar towards the explosion of bright colours and the smell of salt that would come when we arrived at the Destiny Islands train station. Riku was sat beside me, reading a newspaper, whilst I flicked through the book I had to write my latest essay on – Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. He folded up the newspaper after about an hour, and he leaned back in his seat, watching the scenery flood past in an unstopping rainbow stream. Finally, he spoke.

"So, why exactly are we going back to your home?"

I didn't say anything for a while, as I knew if I voiced my ulterior motive for the visit he would get off at the next station and catch a train going in the opposite direction. So for a moment, I carried on staring at the page I was on, pretending to read and almost hoping that he'd think I hadn't heard him. But after around forty seconds of his steady stare on me as I reread the same line over and over, I finally gave a sigh and folded down the page, flipping the book shut and pushing it down onto my knees. I stared past him, out of the window, for a little longer; until my eyes hurt and I had to eventually pull them away to look into his own. His face was somewhat unreadable – the only thing I could see there was curiosity – and it made my eyes flick back down to my lap.

"I wanted a break." I answered somewhat truthfully. He nodded, and out of the corner of my eye I could see him smile slightly as he turned his vision back to staring out of the window that I had just abandoned.

I knew exactly why he was smiling – he thought I wanted a break from Roxas, because I was tiring of him and didn't want to be with him anymore. He was wrong, but I didn't have the heart to attempt to put him right. He was right in some respect – I needed a break from the secrecy and the heartbreak every time I saw them together – but really the main point of this visit back home was to try and make him want me more. I think I knew deep down by then that although I wanted him to leave Naminé for me, he wasn't going to, and I should just try and make the most of the time we had together. I had realised by then that we didn't have a functional relationship, and because of that we never would be able to have a functional relationship, and therefore what we had together would eventually come to nothing. It would probably end at some point soon, and that weekend in May I knew that I wanted to try and make the most of it whilst I could.

That night when we got home I remembered why I loved coming back to my family. As soon as I got off the train I saw Xion, and I found myself running across the platform to her and hurtling against her, yanking her into my arms with a ferocity that I had come to associate with Roxas each time we slept together. She giggled weakly in my arms, patting my back as I held onto her tight, and then my mother appeared beside us and was pulling me close, telling me that she'd missed me and that she loved me and that she hoped I still loved lamb chops.

My family took to Riku immediately and I wasn't surprised, because really, who wouldn't? He was nice, kind, handsome, intelligent, and he clearly was a good friend to me. As we piled ourselves into the back of the car and started the short journey back to my house, I felt myself leaning against Riku and he put an arm around me, holding me close against him in a manner that was surprising for him, and was surprising for us. We were good friends now, even though we'd only known each other a little over a month, but we didn't touch each other much. A quick ruffle of the hair, a playful punch on the arm, and a hand clapping a shoulder was about as far as our affection went, but as he pulled me towards him and leant his head gently down on top of mine I was surprised to find how natural it felt to be held by Riku.

That night, after a walk on the beach in the light dusk of evening, and dinner with my family, Riku and I settled down to go to sleep. We were staying in my room, and he insisted on me sleeping in the bed whilst he took the mattress on the floor, despite my protests. He fell asleep swiftly, and it was a good few hours that I lay on my back in my bed, staring at the ceiling and listening to the soothing sound of Riku's deep and steady breathing on the floor, before I myself finally fell asleep.

The next day I decided that we were going to spend the day on the beach, so after breakfast my mother packed a picnic for us whilst Riku, Xion and I got ourselves ready. When we got down to the beach, Xion immediately disappeared into the sea with a snorkel, and didn't come back out for a good two hours, so Riku and I were left to lie on the relatively empty beach (a rare thing, for this time of year) beside one another in the sun. As I felt my skin growing warmer as the time passed, I remembered the pale spectre of myself that I'd looked at in the mirror in Roxas' bathroom, and I felt myself smile slightly as I knew that my tan was increasing in the sun. Riku, on the other hand, was turning a little pink.

"Hey, you might want to put some more sun cream on," I told him. He wasn't burnt by any stretch, but the pale skin on his shoulders and just below his eyes was a bit rosier than it should be. I passed him the bottle and he started rubbing it in to his skin. As his hands moved I found myself almost hypnotised to the movement on his skin, watching the way his flesh was pushed and pulled over his muscle and bone, and the toned definition in his arms as he tried to reach around to do his back.

"Here, let me," I said, and he gave me a grateful smile. I got up and moved so that I was kneeling behind him on his towel, squirted some cream into my hands, and started rubbing it into his shoulders. I felt him relax all of a sudden, under my touch as I gently massaged the cream into his skin in small, rhythmic circles, and a greedy part of me couldn't help but wonder if it was because of me that he'd released the tension he held. He leant his head back, very slightly, and I had such an overwhelming desire to push my nose against the top of his head and breathe in the smell of his hair that before I knew it I was breathing in the citrusy smell of his shampoo and he, bizarrely, wasn't tensing back up like I thought he would, but was chuckling softly. I pulled my face back, but I stayed where I was, knelt behind him with my hands on his shoulders, and he reached up his hands and held onto mine tightly. As we sat like that, both of us looking out across the sea that shone in the afternoon light and saw Xion standing up in the water with a crab dangling loosely from her hand and waving the other at us with a wide grin, I felt like we had both been born and raised together in this haze of summer.

"You know," Xion said as she sat down beside us on her towel, the crab she'd been holding scuttling away across the sand. "There's a gig on tonight in town. Sora's band is playing." She looked meaningfully at me across Riku, and I turned my head away from them both, purposely staring out to the sea so that they couldn't see my face.

"Is Sora a friend?" Riku asked softly. I nodded, slowly, because I was still considering in my head whether or not Sora counted as a friend. I decided, though, that he did. We'd shared something that hadn't lasted, but I doubted that if we were to pass by each other in the street he would ignore me. I was still a part of his life, somehow, just like he was a part of mine. "It sounds like it could be good," Riku said.

I weighed up my options, for a while, and then I gave a firm nod, turning to give them a smile.

"Let's go."

Xion smiled back, and rummaged around in her bag to fish her phone out. She flipped it open and started texting someone whilst I lay down on my back, one arm flung across my face to shield my eyes from the sun.

I wasn't quite so sure of my decision that night, as we walked towards the bar in town that the gig was being held in. Xion was walking on up ahead, talking on the phone to someone, and the bright white of her dress stood out in the dusk before us. Riku was walking beside me, his hands in the pocket of his jeans, and I noticed, just like the first time I saw him in the doorway of my flat, just how good his arms looked. He was wearing soft yellow vest with a grey sleeveless jacket on top, and his arms, extending from the top, were pale and toned. I cast my eyes down, in case he caught my looking, and kept my eyes on my feet as we walked. As we approached the bar and saw the queue, I felt myself relax a little, as I'd been worried that I was overdressed, but there were lots of girls lining up who were dressed up more than I was. I'd settled, in the end, for my heeled shoe boots, a pair of skin tight dark jeans, a white blouse and my leather jacket, with dark eye makeup. It wasn't the sort of look that I'd normally go for but the idea had come to me quite suddenly as we were getting ready and it felt good.

When we got inside, Xion drew close to us, speaking up over the noise.

"I told Sora you were coming. He wants to see you backstage, before they go on."

"Hey, what?" She gave me a sly grin and walked away, towards her friend Axel who I'd met a few times and was leaning up against the bar and giving her a small, cursory wave.

"Shall we go see him?" Riku asked me. I was struggling to keep my emotions in check, because though I'd prepared myself to seeing Sora perform on the stage, I hadn't even considered how to behave if I were to meet him face to face again, after all this time. But Riku was looking at me intently, and I wondered if he suspected something was going on between Sora and myself, so I nodded, and we made our way to the doors near the bar with Backstage written above them.

It took a lot for me to knock on the door to the dressing room, with Riku stood beside me, but I was so determined to not give Riku the wrong idea – that Sora and I were together in anyway – that in the end I just steeled myself and rapped my knuckles sharply against the door before I could change my mind. It swung open, far too soon for my liking, and a girl who was about a head taller than me, with blue hair cut in a jagged bob and wearing the tightest black dress I'd ever seen was standing in the doorway, a confused look on her face. Then, realisation seemed to dawn on her, and she looked over her shoulder.

"Sora, is this the girl?"

"Yeah, that's her! Kairi, come on in. Hi, I'm Sora."

"Riku," They were shaking hands, right before me as I stood there, still in the doorway, a stunned expression on my face because, in the two years since I'd graduated from high school, Sora had grown up.

His hair was a bit longer now, but still in the same wild hair style that reminded me eerily of Roxas'. It was lighter, now, too – when we'd been in school, his hair was a rich chocolate brown, but now it was the colour of caramel. His face, which had been rounded and cute, had slimmed out into something that could only be described as handsome. His eyes, though, were shining as brightly and fervently as ever.

"Do I get a hug?" He laughed. I felt my face heat up in a blush that I was steadily becoming accustomed to as he reached forward and pulled me tight against his chest. Warily, I reached up my arms to cross over his back, but as soon as I took a deep breath and breathed in his smell that was so, so familiar that memories of our nights together spent kissing and touching and giggling came racing back into my mind that I tightened my hold, suddenly, and lay my cheek against his chest. It had been so long since we'd held each other like this, and though I didn't feel any romantic feelings for him now, I wanted to enjoy it.

Riku seemed to sense that we needed some privacy, and he walked over to where the girl was talking to another a boy and introduced himself, engaging them both in easy conversation.

"Kairi, I'm singing a song tonight for you."

"What?" I pulled back, away from his embrace, to give him a confused look. "Why?"

"When Xion told me you were coming, I decided that we were going to perform this song. I didn't write it, or anything, it's just a cover, but it's always made me think of you." He smiled softly, a smile that was different to the wide ones that almost seemed to reach him ears that I was so accustomed to from him. "I'm sorry. About all that stuff. It wasn't until the summer after we graduated and you went off to college and I started work here that I realised quite how much you meant to me."

He caught the look on my face – one of worry, no doubt, because though I had loved Sora, that was before, and now, although we had our memories, I didn't really have any desire to start things up again – and backpedalled rapidly.

"Oh, I'm in a relationship now, don't worry! I think you know her, in fact."

"Really?"

"Yuffie?" He murmured softly, and the tenderness in his eyes as he spoke her name made me happy – like she was the most wonderful thing that ever could have happened to him and he was still thanking his lucky stars that they were together. I didn't question how they could have possibly met; I just took it and accepted it.

"Congratulations," I told him. He smiled, and then he turned round to gesture at the girl and boy Riku was talking to.

"This is Aqua and Terra," he told me. They each nodded at me. "Aqua's the vocals and Terra plays bass. Do you know Axel?" I nodded. "He's our drummer. I play lead guitar."

"Wow," I breathed. "How long have you been together as a band, then?"

"Around a year and a half," he told me. Riku came back over to us now, because Aqua suddenly looked like she was going to be sick and Terra was rubbing her back in soothing motions. "Well, you guys will probably want to go out there to get a good spot," Sora said, checking his watch. "We're on in five minutes."

"Good luck," I told him, and he pulled me close for another hug.

"See you later!" He called to us jovially as we left the dressing room.

Sora's band was good. Like, really good. When they were performing, the only things that were going through my mind was that I hadn't managed to catch their name, and why on earth they hadn't already been offered a record deal. Their music was not entirely to my taste but their performance blew me away, and it was all I could do to just keep dancing and enjoying myself like everybody else, instead of just standing stock still on the spot and staring at them with my mouth hanging open. Aqua was terrifyingly incredible, clutching the microphone and all but screaming into it, and Sora was just beside her looking so happy and excited that I understood why he hadn't gone to college, and why he had chosen to stay at home and get a job – so he could work on his music, because watching him on the stage that night in May, I could see that he was completely at home there, and could never be truly happy anywhere else.

Xion was pulling me around, dancing with such excitement on her face that I felt myself smiling uncontrollably alongside her. My sister didn't smile often, but when she did the simple action was infectious. Riku was at the bar, getting a drink and keeping a keen ear trained on the music, and Xion pulled me close to speak in my ear.

"I approve of Riku!"

"Huh?" She gave me a wicked grin. "No, we're just friends -"

"Whatever!" She called gaily over her shoulder, as she spotted some friends from school and headed over to talk to them.

The song Aqua was singing came to an end, and there was tumultuous applause as she handed the microphone over to Sora, and slung his guitar over her shoulder. I was immediately green with envy – I wanted to be that kind of girl, so talented that I could sing and play guitar to crowds whilst looking incredible at the same time.

"This is Ultraviolet," Sora was saying. He looked off the stage and right into my eyes. "She knows who she is."

In all my life, no one had ever done something like that for me. It was singlehandedly the most romantic thing that had ever happened to me, and there wasn't even any romance lingering in the gesture. I wasn't given a chance to feel sad about that – to mull over the fact that I was twenty years old and had never had a guy do something truly romantic for me – because suddenly the song started and it ripped my breath away.

As I stood there listening to the words tumbling out of Sora's mouth with practised ease, listened to him telling everybody that I was a wave and I was breaking, and that he revolved around me, I felt like I deserved this – deserved being told that I was wonderful, deserved a handsome boy singing a song to hundreds that was for and about me. It may seem selfish but that year, my second one in college, was one of the most disorientating that I had ever experienced, and after all my promises when I had graduated from high school to never let myself be sucked into a sordid, secret relationship again, Roxas pulled me under his spell with such swiftness and fierceness that before I'd known it, I was stuck doing exactly what I didn't want to be doing. I wanted to be able to stand there and kiss the boy I loved in public, in front of everyone, to not have to sneak around behind everyone's backs and struggle with my guilt. In November, when I'd stood looking at myself in the mirror in Roxas' bathroom, I'd decided that I wanted different, but I had backtracked completely, and been swept up in the same cycle as before. But this, standing here and listening to Sora sing about me, for me, was different. This was the change I craved, the change I needed, and right then, in that moment, only one thing was missing for me to make the change.

Almost as though I had summoned him with my thoughts, Riku appeared at my side just as I was fighting tears away, and without a word he pulled me into his arms, held me close against his chest, and kissed me.

Without a Word

Things changed, after that, which was inevitable I suppose. As soon as I got back to Midgar, I took Riku up on some advice that he'd been patiently dishing out to me for some weeks before that night at Sora's gig, and started looking for a flat for just myself. Xion was trying to persuade me to move in with Riku, but there was no way I was ready to do that in the short blossoming of our relationship. Instead, I found myself a small, cheap, one bedroom flat on the over side of the city, and within two weeks I had said my goodbyes to Naminé, who was very sad to go but managed with a swiftness that pleased me to acquire a new flatmate, and Riku had helped me move my possessions across town in his old, beaten up car, and I was settling down in my new, one person flat. Like I said, I have learned to never underestimate your flatmate, and what I was craving was a change and this drastic move would provide the 'different' that I wanted.

Unsurprisingly, my move across the city meant that I didn't see Roxas for a long time. I was no longer at his liberty, as he couldn't just wait for Naminé to go out somewhere and then come into my room and find me. I would have thought that this would make me sad, but it didn't – Riku became my new focus, but I was careful not to let myself grow as attached to and obsessed with him as I had done with Roxas. I didn't want Roxas to be a part of my new relationship. I think it was something to do with the circumstances of how I'd ended up meeting Riku in the first place, but I had no desire to ever be unfaithful to him. He had been patient with me – he told me later that night, after the gig, that he'd wanted to do what he'd done since the very first time he saw me, in April when I swung open my front door with blood on my head and grazed knees – and I was not about to forget his patience, nor was I going to undermine it, and make him regret it. So instead, I immersed myself in this new life living alone, which I found to my surprise that I enjoyed greatly, and worked on my college work, and worked on my new, budding relationship.

But, I probably should have known then that Roxas was not about to let what had happened between us go unnoticed. One evening in late June, after the semester had finished for the summer and I was waiting for Riku to finish his job for the evening at the gas station he worked at, I was stretched out on my sofa watching television when my phone rang.

"It's me," Riku said almost as soon as I picked up. "I'm on my way over to your place; shall I pick up some dinner?"

"Sounds good," I told him.

"I'll see you in about half an hour," he replied, and then after we'd said goodbye he ended the call swiftly. We liked each other, but love was still a long way off, and we found the end of phone calls rather awkward. Couples normally said I love you before they hung up, but we weren't there yet and so we were working on our own phrase.

I contemplated changing out of pyjama shorts and vest into something a bit dressier, as it was my boyfriend who was coming over – as weird as it was to say that, even in my head – but truth be told, I didn't think it would matter too much. The plan was for Riku to sleep over, and although we were yet to actually have sex with each other, we still slept in the same bed and it was already ten o'clock at night anyway. So in the end, I decided to just stay as I was, changing the channel to watch the news.

Around twenty minutes later, the intercom rang. I thought it was strange, not only because it didn't seem like it had been long enough for Riku to get here – he'd said half an hour, after all – and also because he had his own key to access the building so that I didn't have to keep buzzing him in every single time he came over. But I figured he must have made better time than he thought he would, and had just left his key at home, and so I pushed the button to let him in without picking up the phone. Five minutes later, there was a knocking on my door.

I swung it open easily, a smile plastered on my face as I tried to fix my hair into something a bit neater that the messy ponytail it was in at the same time, but my smile was almost immediately wiped away. Because, instead of Riku standing in my doorway in the way I'd become so accustomed to in recent weeks, it was Roxas.

For a moment, a moment that seemed to stretch on forever cruelly as we stood staring at each other through my doorway, no words were possible. I couldn't begin to even form them in my head, let alone in my mouth. It seemed he was having a similar experience, because his jaw was clenched shut tight as though it was locked, and his eyebrows were joined in the middle in the frown of his that I could only remember seeing the night of the riots. He had changed, I noticed. His hair was longer but spikier, his eyes brighter, his face slimmer. I noticed, for what could only be the first time – which seemed so ridiculous, given that we had been sleeping together since November – that he had freckles scattered across his nose and cheeks. I wondered, as I stared at him, if the summer sun had brought them out.

Then, finally, words came, and his name tumbled out of my mouth.

"Roxas?"

He seemed to regain the power of speech at almost the exact same time as me, because he was suddenly pushing past me into the flat and saying: "You've been avoiding me."

"I haven't-"

"-You have!" He shouted. I shut the door gently, trying to pull back and linger on the other side of the walls because he was standing in the middle of my living room and his eyes were fiery, and he was angry with me. His fists kept clenching and unclenching and his cheeks were flushed a frightening red that I knew had been brought out with his shout. "What's been going on? Why have you been avoiding me? Why did you move out of the flat?"

"I needed to," I told him, trying to keep calm. I was pressing myself up against the wall beside the door, trying to keep my distance from him and feeling horribly exposed in my pyjamas. "I just needed a change-"

"A change? A change from what? From me?" I would have expected him to spit the words but he said them almost carefully and softly, hurt dancing in his eyes that flickered flames of guilt in my chest.

"No," I shook my head. "Not from you. You ... you wouldn't understand."

"Help me," he said urgently, coming towards me and gently placing his hands around my wrists, holding them firm but with a softness and tenderness that reminded me of why I fell in love with him. He looked pleadingly into my eyes, and as I looked into his I saw that they were shining, as though he was about to cry. "Help me understand, Kairi. I want to. I don't want what we had to stop!"

"It has to," I whispered. His grip on my wrists was still firm and unwavering, but the feeling had gone out of it and he held them almost loosely, as though the words I'd said had crushed him and deflated his entire being. He looked down at the floor between us, and I wondered why for a moment until I saw the gentle tilt of his shoulders and realised that he was trying to fight back the tears that had been hanging in his eyes.

"Why?" he said suddenly, looking back up at me, and I noticed that a tear had broken free of the ranks and had slipped down him cheek. He looked at me forlornly, as though I had broken everything – which, in a way, I guess I had. "Why does it have to?"

"There's someone else," I mumbled. I'd hoped that he wouldn't catch the words but he did, and he let go of me as though I had burned him and turned away, refusing to look at me.

A silence hung between us, one that I couldn't place or identify because I didn't really understand why it existed, but before I could even begin to explore it he turned back to me, his eyes fiery and all trace of sadness swept away.

"So we had nothing, then?" He spat the words this time, like I had expected him to, and I flinched, as though he had physically spat his saliva into my face. "There was nothing between us?"

"Roxas-"

"If you can look me in the eye," he breathed, coming up close to me and taking hold of my shoulders in a way that before Riku would have made me feel safe and like I had come home, but now just made me feel trapped like a bird in a cage. "And tell me that we had nothing together, that it was all lies and that you felt nothing for me, then without a word, I will leave, I will leave your life, because I've clearly been wasting my time."

"Please-" I tried to protest but he vehemently shook his head, cutting across me.

"But if you can't ... if you can't do that, because you know deep down like I know you do that it wasn't a lie, that we had something, then forget without a word, because I will see to it that everyone knows, starting with Naminé!"

It was everything I had felt, everything I had wanted to say and everything that I had wanted him to say in all those days leading up to April and the riots but now it just hurt me because he was telling the truth, it wasn't as though it had all meant nothing to me – it had meant everything to me. He had been my life, my breath, my only, he had been my evening and morning star, and before that night in April I couldn't have even begun to imagine my life without him. If I had ever tried to picture what we had ending, I had been certain that it would have been because of him. But now, I was standing here, frightened of him, and ending it. I was cutting the cord and was telling him no more, and he was the one looking hurt and betrayed, as though I had crushed every hope he ever had.

His sadness was there still, behind the fire in his eyes, but it was flickering with the anger he must have felt when I cast my eyes aside so that I didn't have to look at him and refused to speak. As there was a fumbling of keys in the lock of the door, his grip on my shoulders tightened to the point of pain and as the door swung open, he suddenly pulled and pushed and smashed me against the wall with the fierceness that normally came with his intimacy.

"Get off her!" My head bounced jarringly off the wall behind me and I sunk down, my knees refusing to support me, and I ended up in a little heap in the ground as I tried to watch through eyes that had blurred with shock and pain as Riku suddenly shot into my vision and was yanking Roxas away from me and shouting words I couldn't process for the moment. I just sat with my hands limp in my hands, my head pounding and my chest shaking with teary breaths as I tried to register what had happened.

"Don't you ever lay a finger on her again!"

"So it's you!" Roxas shouted with a sharpness that made his voice cut through the haze of my head and made me suddenly focus on him and what he was saying. "You're the someone else! Well, I guess I should have know, Riku, because you're always picking up my left-over's, aren't you?"

I wondered briefly what he was talking about, but suddenly Riku had a fistful of Roxas' shirt and was using his taller height as an advantage, and was bodily hauling Roxas away and out of the door.

"Get out of here! Do not come back!"

"I mean it Kairi! I will tell her!" I heard, just as the door was slammed shut, and then there was silence, as footsteps retreated from the other side, and all that was left was mine and Riku's heavy breathing as he stood glaring at the door, as though Roxas could see his eyes, and I sat on the floor as limp as a ragdoll.

And then, Riku seemed to remember what had happened, and he was swiftly at my side and gently pulling me upwards. I tried to cooperate with all my body, because I was determined not to be a damsel in distress and was intent on helping myself, but when I couldn't force my limbs to move properly he kindly slipped his hands underneath me and pulled me upwards in his arms, my head lolling against his chest and he carried me into the bedroom and set me down on my bed. After quickly checking the bump on my head, and seeing that it was fine, that there was no blood, he gently began pulling the covers down and pressed me down onto my back. He pulled the duvet up over me and under my chin and then he carefully lay down on the bed beside me, on top of the covers and softly kissed my face as I began crying with a tenderness that made me feel as though he thought I was about to break.

"You don't have to see him again," he kept saying, stroking my hair away from my face and pressing soft little kisses onto my cheeks after wiping tears off of them. "You won't ever see him again."

I did, though, because I knew I couldn't leave everything open like that, available for anyone to walk into and sully with their tramping, dirty shoes and harsh looks and words. So a week later, when Riku was working late and I knew Naminé was out at the art studio, I got onto a bus and journeyed over to the other side of the city. It took only around twenty minutes, and then I was standing on the pavement and looking up at the building that I had lived in until only recently but felt like an old part of my childhood, and wondering if I had made a mistake, if I had come to the wrong place because for all I knew he wouldn't be there – he had his own flat after all – but I somehow knew he was there. I've come to find that people in love have an uncanny ability of knowing when the one they love is nearby. It is as though they can sense the other's presence, even through the brick walls and four floors that separated us.

When I pushed the button for the flat on the intercom, it took a while for anything to happen, and so I just stood there in the cool air of evening, pulling my jacket tight around me because it was unseasonably cool, and then suddenly the intercom buzzed, letting me into the building without him even picking up the phone. As I pushed through the door I knew so well and started climbing the stairs – the elevator, I saw, was as always out of service – I passed off what had happened as something similar to what had happened with me, when I thought it was Riku calling my flat, and that he must have thought Naminé had forgotten her key, but a small part of me wondered if it was actually the same thing I had felt, standing in front of the building and somehow knowing that he was inside. That made my heart neither warmer nor colder – just made it thud harder.

Then, finally, I was in front of my old door, knocking softly and almost hoping he wasn't in, or wouldn't hear, but the door was opening and there he was in all of his shirtless glory, his hair damp like he'd just had a shower and his face completely unreadable. We waited for a time, watching each other as he ran a towel over his head loosely, until he stepped aside and let me inside, closing the door shut behind me.

"Where's the new flatmate?" I asked banally.

"Out," he mumbled, briefly leaving to put the towel in the bathroom and then rejoining me in the living room.

The flat was almost exactly the same, if not a bit tidier. I decided that the new flatmate must have been a bit stricter with cleanliness than I was, because there were only a few unwashed pots lying in the sink and the magazine were stacked in a neat, tidy pile on the coffee table.

Finally, he reached out his arms and I walked into them, pressing my face against his chest and breathing in his smell that hadn't changed a bit.

"I'm beginning to understand," he told my hair, a hand running down the length of it and then back to the top and down again.

"What made you see?"

"Spending time with her ... just her ... I think I love her."

That made me smile, and I held onto him a little tighter and I felt him do the same to me, like we had reached a common ground of knowing and it made each of us happy.

"It meant everything to me," I whispered. He gently released me, holding me at a distance by my shoulders in a way that was not unlike to the way he had held me only a week ago, but I didn't feel any of the fear I had then. Now, I was sad but ready, and he seemed to be too.

"If you can look me in the eye," I told him tremulously, reaching a hand up to brush his fringe out of his face. "And tell me that what we had was real, and that you felt it too, then ..." I breathed in deeply, preparing myself for what I was saying, ready to repeat his words back to him in a way that I hoped would sort this all out and finalise it all. "Then, without a word I will leave, and you can be with her and I can be with him."

He nodded, and looked at me like I had asked him to – right in the eyes with a gaze that was steady, sure and unwavering.

"It did," he said. "I loved you. I think I still love you."

"I still love you too," I whispered, fighting back all the tears that were gathering in my eyes because I had to be strong enough to say this. It felt like the most important thing I would ever do in my life and I was determined to say it right, and end it the way it should be ended. "I think a small part of me always will, but I love him too, and I want to move on with him, like I know you do with her."

"Yes," he murmured. He thumbs gently stroked my upper arms through my jacket sleeves. "I guess this is goodbye."

"For now," I said, firmly, and then I leant forwards and bridged the gap between us for a last, lingering kiss.

"Thank you," he said as we broke apart. "I don't regret it."

"And neither do I," I said, completing the perfect script it felt like we had been following. And then, I gave him a nod, and opened the door, shutting it softly behind me as I walked back down the stairs, out of the building and onto the street.

Happy

Around three months later, in September, it was the start of a new term at university and my third year. We were all sat in Seventh Heaven – me, Xion (who was just starting her first year at the university and living in dorms), Yuffie and Leon – and Tifa was behind the bar and Zack, Cloud and Aerith were sat before it, chatting softly and drinking in the rosy cheer of evening. Sora had come up to visit Yuffie and she was sat on his lap, and her face was wide with an excited smile that even had the corners of Leon's eyes lighting up softly. I was dividing my time between the two parties, laughing with my sister and my friends at a table near the door and leaning against Zack with his arm around me as I found myself grinning and chatting with Roxas' brother and his friends. Riku was at work, aiming to come over in an hour, and I had dressed up in a new outfit just for him. Everything felt easy and light-hearted, and it didn't change – couldn't change, because it was him – when Roxas and Naminé walked in with her new flatmate, a soft, demure girl called Yuna, and Tidus, her boyfriend. Roxas' arm was slung around Naminé's shoulders and I was standing in the middle of the bar, halfway between each group of my friends and on my way back to the party including my sister by the door.

Our eyes met, and he gave me a slight, pointed nod, his lips tilted in a slow smile, and I returned it. Anyone watching would have just assumed it was a friendly greeting between two acquaintances who still didn't know each other very well. There were no words – no words were even needed – and he just sat down beside his girlfriend, my best friend, and I sat on her other side and accepted her hug and held her tight because I had missed her, and that was that. I knew everything was fine.

A little later I was up at the bar, talking to Zack as Tifa tended to customers and Cloud and Aerith held a shy, quiet conversation that I realised something, and only because Zack voiced it. I was looking over at my shoulder, sharing a smile with Sora, when suddenly Zack leaned in close to my ear and whispered in it.

"Got a lot of friends, haven't you?"

I looked back at him, at my friends beside him and behind the bar, and then over at my friends sat by the door, and at the boy I had once loved and a girl and boy who I hoped to become friends with soon, and I nodded.

"I do," I replied.

"Looks like lover boy's here," he chuckled, and I glanced over to see Riku walking through the door, and I felt myself beaming. "Go on, go see him," Zack laughed, and he ruffled my hair in the way that I was so accustomed to now.

"See you later," I told him, and I did what he said, winding around the crowds of people in the room to reach him and press against him and feel his lips on my forehead.

I knew it then, as I looked round at my life and found I liked it. I remembered that first day I had met Roxas, almost a year ago, and remembered how I had cursed having a flatmate and told myself to never, ever underestimate them, and I realised I was right.

You shouldn't underestimate them, because although they can bring a lot of negative things into your life – mess, underwear in inappropriate places, boys that capture your heart – they can also bring a lot of positive things to you, be it the person you've always been looking for or just a friendly shoulder to lean on. They can encourage you to live larger, to open your heart and recklessly love and enjoy your life and the friends you have made.

And that's how I live now.

The End.

Chibi: I hope you enjoyed it. It would mean a lot if you could review it please. Thank you for reading!