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Resonate	By : memory Category: Kingdom Hearts > General Views: 8146 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-act 1
- 2-Interlude
- 3-act 2
- 4-act 3
- 1
- 2
Author Notes: Do not read this if you value your sanity. Here’s a small, incomplete list of the warnings that are pertinent to this story as a whole: M/M, Slash, NC, AU, Anal, BDSM, B-M(od), BP, D/s, Fet, MC, Minor/Ped, Oral, Solo, Tort, Voy. (Why did I write this? Good question.) This story takes place within three acts in an alternate universe where Sora did not go onto Castle Oblivion after defeating Ansem and closing Kingdom Hearts with Riku (that is, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories is nonexistent). If you’re confused, don’t worry. You’re not here for the plot, right? DISCLAIMER: I’m not the creator of any of the characters in this story. None of the views and activities in the story reflect those of the website it’s hosted on, Nomura Tetsuya’s personal fantasies, or anything else. The storyline, however, is mine. But I doubt anyone wants to claim it as their own. This disclaimer applies to all chapters.

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RESONATE

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[start resonate]

[start act 1]

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Sora flicked the metal bar closest to his hand and listened to it sing. The metal resonated, its tone low and loud, unlike any other metallic material he had ever encountered before. There were twenty of these bars, each strong and sturdy and silvery, all arranged in a perfect circle that went upward to bend in and coalesce almost seven feet above his head. He miserably leaned back against two bars of a diameter he could not measure with great accuracy, although he understood from sight alone that the bars were meant to be austere and intimidating, and intended to keep him locked in.

I’m sitting inside of a birdcage. The very idea was insane and impossible, but it wouldn’t leave him alone. I’m sitting inside of a birdcage. He opened his mouth, considered acknowledging his predicament aloud, and decided instead to believe an irrational little fear that swore delusion would metamorphose into reality if he spoke up. But he was inside of a birdcage: the architecture suggested it, really, what with the curved bars, common apex, and two vertical chains that supported a wide wooden swing seat hanging in the center. The dimensions of the cage had been blown up to proportions fitting of a gargantuan bird—or a normal-sized person. I’m sitting inside of a birdcage. It was the swing seat suggested so first and now bothered him the most, even if its crimson velvet slip and gold bobbles might have looked pretty had the situation been different.

I’m sitting inside of a—peoplecage.

The made-up word caused Sora to shiver. Peoplecage. This was not a birdcage after all, because birds never grew to the size of a teenage boy. I’m sitting inside . . . of . . .

He had woken up a little while ago, and he could still hear the echo of his scream whenever he strained to listen. He had woken up screaming, had needed a second to understand where the scream was coming from; when he did, his voice had hitched and weakened, and then the scream had trailed off into a wheeze that sounded more like a death rattle. Confused and embarrassed, he had looked around with wide eyes, ready to apologize to whomever he might have awoken, and had discovered the twenty silver, sturdy, strong bars forming a circular cage around him. He didn’t have much to say about that with surprised speechlessness.

Beyond the bars of the cage he could see only darkness, shadows without end, and his first hopeful thought after the disturbing I’m sitting inside a peoplecage told him that this was another one of “those dreams.” It wasn’t one of the dreams inspired by puberty that left the sheets sticky in the morning—no, of course not—but one of the dreams from before, those seemingly prophetic ones that had always felt too real. Those special, too-vivid dreams had defined his pubescence to a greater degree than the murky ones about sex had. He remembered frantically fluttering doves and glistening stained glass and strange voiceless voices telling him about doors, about fighting, about shadows that lengthened the closer you came to the Light. You will be the one who opens the door, and all that.

Unfortunately, the peoplecage did not have a door. That method of escape and retribution was pretty obvious: find the door, pick the lock with the keyblade, track down the person responsible for all of this, and beat the shit out of them. Sora had no interest in being forgivingly diplomatic when he felt cold, miserable, tired, and so unbelievably hungry. As he studied the solid bars sitting on the other side of the cage, he wondered if any nutrition could be gleaned from them.

Maybe iron. His laughter, the first sound he had heard since the scream, was very feeble. Maybe it’ll taste like candy, too, if I believe hard enough. Like chocolate.

He didn’t know how long he had been here due to his prior unconsciousness, but he decided that it had been long enough. Without a door and a lock to pick, he turned to the idea of breaking out directly through the bars. They sounded unusually resonant when touched, humming in a way that might have been magical, but Sora didn’t think the keyblade would have much trouble shattering them or deforming them enough to allow room to slip out. He summoned the keyblade, lined it up, and swung as hard as he could at the bars.

One strike changed nothing; the second got the resonant ringing started; the third, fourth, and fifth, so close together as they were, rattled the cage and made the resonance of the bars reach a pitch so brassy that his very innards began to vibrate to the point of pain. Every muscle in his body turned to jelly without any warning at all, their natural frequencies matched by the resonance; he dropped the keyblade, started panicking, and then collapsed to the floor when he could no longer support his own weight.

As he rested on the floor, forehead pressed against the cool metal, his lower back throbbed in time to the passage of vibrations in the air. The sound continued, monstrously deep, bouncing from place to place inside the peoplecage as though it were a closed container—an impossible thing for physics, but that was what happened. Each time a vibration rolled over him, as he was lax to the point of helplessness, the most frighteningly pleasant sensations went from his skull to tailbone and back again. It was as if an invisible, magnanimous hand had wrapped around him, and whenever it chose to, it squeezed his entire body gently. He felt horrified when he realized that the tightness in his groin was not a false alarm, because from the warm, invasive vibrations he had gained an erection.

He sat up and back onto his haunches once the vibrations dissipated and control of his body returned to him. Oh my God. He quickly shifted position from his knees to his butt, curled his arms around himself, and tried to shove away the feelings of an unwelcome arousal. These bars must have been composed of some magical material to be able to generate such intense vibrations—or so he thought about and debated on, since fantasies stirred from slumber lingered on the edges of his mind and tempted him to make use of his arousal while it lasted. His nerves tingled, but he waited and waited until he felt his cock soften. With a nervous glance to the darkness that surrounded the peoplecage, unsure of whom could have seen him rocking back and forth and trying to divert his imagination away from potential exhibitionism, he lowered his legs and leaned back onto his palms.

That was when his imagination struck, however, having bided its time like a strategic predator: only seconds after palming the chill of the metal floor did he pause, hold his breath, and remember a chilly day long since removed from his present reality. It had been one of those special days that you look back on and call a milestone; it had proved to Sora unequivocally that he was growing up; and it had happened three days before Christmas one year.

Destiny Islands was not known for its winters because it didn’t have any. A long and hot summer turned over into an autumn defined by milder temperatures and trees changing colors like slowly twirling prisms. From there the leaves fell off the branches at an alarming rate, children on winter holiday built sandcastles while wearing windbreakers, and parents reserved treats of hot cocoa for the chills that only came overnight and dispelled upon first light. But one year—he didn’t know how many years ago, but it must have at least been two—they had been treated to the rarest sight imaginable for winter on Destiny Islands: snow. It had happened three days before Christmas one year and Kairi had cried because . . .

“The sky is falling down,” she says to a bewildered Sora and a greatly amused Riku—her best friends. “The sky is falling down!”

Sora and Riku have been waiting out on the beach for her arrival, contemplating the water that looks colder and choppier than usual. Sora has already proven its chilliness by running through the shallow surf without shoes on, cursing childishly the entire way, while Riku laughed in the background at the kid’s endearing stupidity. They got into a brief tussle afterwards, which Riku ultimately won, but Sora felt better after landing that punch on Riku’s arm.

“What?” That’s Sora, who has just gotten up from pulling on his shoes and socks again. His feet might as well be blocks of ice; he can barely wiggle his toes.

Kairi points at the sky. Snowflakes have been drifting down in irregular scatterings since this morning, disappearing the instant they touch sand or water or skin. She repeats the horrible news from around her fearful tears: “The sky is falling down.”

“How old are you?” Riku asks, hiding a wicked smile behind his hand. “It’s just snow. It’s nothing special. And it’s definitely nothing to be crying about.”

Nothing special? Sora looks between the still-crying Kairi and his best friend, brow wrinkling. “Lay off, Riku,” he says and steps forward to gather Kairi up in his arms. She leans against him and snuffles wetly into his neck. “Don’t worry, Kairi. The sky isn’t falling down, and—and if even if it was, I’d protect you! Or—well, yeah!”

“You two are total dorks,” Riku mutters and knocks Sora in the shoulder as he walks past them. A snowflake lights on his hair, but it blends in seamlessly with the natural platinum color. He looks up at the sky, arms hanging loosely by his sides. “But this is the first time I’ve seen snow. My mom said it hasn’t happened in a long time . . .”

Sora is composing a devastating retort to use against Riku when Kairi suddenly brings up her arms and wraps them around his waist. While standing that close to her, Sora can feel the involuntary shivers going up and down her spine and how her fingers tremble a little as they curl into the material of his jacket. It makes his heart drop into his stomach.

“Kairi?” he murmurs, wary of her behavior. She’s seriously broken up—and that’s totally unlike her. “Are you okay?”

“Did you mean it?” Her face is still pressed to his neck. He can feel how her lips move to shape each muffled word. “I mean—oh, I’m just—”

Sora notices some peculiar warmth spreading throughout his abdomen, but he doesn’t pay much attention to it. “About me protecting you if the sky was really comin’ down?” he asks softly. “Of course I meant it. You know I never break my promises.”

She squirms this way and that so she can lift up her head and still keep her arms around him. When he looks at her face, she is smiling; most importantly, she is no longer crying. Another snowflake drifts down, lands on her eyelashes, and she blinks it away like she would a tear. When he has a chance to think about this later, he decides that the shine of her eyes, the lithe movements of her body, and even her fear of the stupid snow were all very alluring things. If only for this moment, she needs and wants his protection, and he is overjoyed.

“What about the time you promised me you’d win that stuffed animal for me at the carnival?” she asks, the epitome of picture-perfect innocence with her rosy cheeks and cute yellow-and-green scarf wrapped about her neck. She grins. “Or what about that time you promised me that you’d help me buy a birthday gift for my mom?”

“Uhm,” Sora says articulately.

“Or what about the time you promised me that—”

Sora laughs as the warmth in his tummy intensifies tenfold. It’s something he has never felt before, and he thinks he might like it. “I get it, I get it. But this time I’m serious: I won’t let the snow get you.”

After looking at him shrewdly to make sure she isn’t being mocked, Kairi acknowledges his sincerity by nodding. “Okay, I believe you,” she says, stepping out of the hug and leaving Sora to feel almost bereft without her holding onto him. “It was just—well, Jennifer was teasing me, and—”

“Don’t listen to what that girl says,” Riku declares behind them, now facing the ocean. “She’s always mean like that. You’re much better off with us.”

Sora is about to nod in agreement and say something spontaneous, ignorant, and arrogant about how much of a good friend he is, but that’s when he notices . . . something . . . and the path his thoughts had been taking twist into a spiral that turns in on itself like Oroborus. He can’t describe what the something is exactly. It’s kind of like the pressure you feel from congestion, but instead of being in his sinuses, it’s right around where that warmth is pooling in his lower abdomen. He tries to sort through the sensations as Kairi steps up next to Riku to joke with him about Jennifer, a girl who apparently wears too much cosmetics for her age and hits on every boy with black hair at school.

They say something about the big gold hoop earrings Jennifer cherishes and Sora simultaneously realizes he has an erection.

It doesn’t dry out his mouth or make him want to attach to the nearest palm tree and begin humping away, but it’s noticeable: conventional tightness in his groin, the pulse of diverted blood flow and resulting heat, a strange tingling sensation under his scalp. He knows that Kairi is the reason. This is the first time he has ever experienced an erection in broad daylight. This is how puberty really kicks off for him.

The snow is falling harder now, whipping around in the wind, and sometimes the flakes form fragile while halos over the heads of his two friends. Confused and alarmed, Sora makes up a loud and fumbling excuse about helping his mom with chores and, uncharacteristically, runs away.

In retrospect, the Kairi that clung to him and cried into his neck hadn’t been a curvy bombshell. Her eyes had been red, her cheeks had shined with tears, she had worn that old scarf her grandmother made her, and any burgeoning swells on her body just hadn’t shown up through the heavy clothes meant to ward off unseasonable chills. But Sora would never forget that first time he got an erection because of Kairi. It became engrained in his memories, and as puberty progressed, dreams of that memory became more and more risqué. First Riku disappeared, leaving Sora and Kairi alone to their heartfelt promise. Then came not-so-innocent touches, kisses with mouth closed and then open, the warmth of the islands returning like magic so they could shirk their clothes . . . His imagination said she had the smoothest skin imaginable on the small of her back . . .

Sora groaned and reclined onto the peoplecage’s chilly floor that so reminded him of a special wintry day on Destiny Islands. Anyone—anything—lurking in the darkness surrounding the peoplecage would be able to see him, but he didn’t care. The ache in his groin beckoned his hand like it had in the past, during those lonely nights when a draft wormed its way beneath the sheets. His fingers felt pleasantly cool when they wrapped around the base of his cock; he shut his eyes, breathed through his mouth, and didn’t try to resist the images that his imagination illustrated for him in sensational detail.

(Kairi is licking his neck.

She pulls away and beckons him down to kneel on the cold sand.

The sand is rough on his palms. She grabs his silver necklace before he can panic and run away from this, using a physical authority that rarely exposes itself in reality.

Her grown breasts feel softer compared to the sand; she laughs when he tickles a magically sensitive spot situated right between them, parallel to the sternum.

—sometimes Riku is there still, facing away, but he turns around and looks at them. He smiles, walks over, and stoops down to slip calloused fingers over Sora’s ass and squeeze while Sora gets to enjoy Kairi’s mouth. It speaks for unresolved sexual issues, maybe, but whatever worked—

They roll around on the sand. He claims the upper hand, straddles her, and unwinds the frizzy but cute hand-knit scarf from her neck. It falls off to the side, forgotten, like inconsequential wrapping paper on Christmas morning.

Slowly, slowly, he slides his hands beneath the hem of her pink sweater. It’s the one with a white kitten embroidered on the front, a last-ditch testament to her otherwise deteriorating purity in his imagination . . .)

He was long since spent by the time his mind tried to simulate how Riku’s cum would taste—maybe kind of sour and fruity, like muted lemons or unripened plums or fresh grapefruit—and how Kairi’s blossoming womanhood would smell—perhaps damp and fertile, like a forest that hasn’t had a human visitor in centuries. As he sunk into a general feeling of well-being from the aftereffects of his fantasies, he removed a cum-splattered hand from his shorts. He brushed his undone blue belt on the way, and from where he rested he could see a gleam of the drying cum just next to the buckle.

In that moment, Sora decided not to hit the mysterious bars of the peoplecage anymore. He exhaled slowly, stuck out his tongue, and wondered how he was going to clean himself off with his limited resources. He made do, although the eventual stickiness in the spaces between his fingers was both disgusting and fascinating.

“Well,” Sora said aloud when he was ready to do something else, unafraid of his reality now, “if they won’t break, maybe they’ll melt.” He summoned the keyblade, pointed it lazily in a downward-sloping angle at the point where the bars met the floor, and cast Firaga.

An electric blue ripple spread out over his prison in the split-second before the fireball hit the bars. The air spontaneously became charged and tense, even a little humid, and Sora knew something was wrong. The bars absorbed the fireball, began humming softly as though they had been flicked—then they started to glow—the hum broadened, became grittier—Sora backed up, warily crossing the keyblade in front of him and darting looks back and forth—but then the bars roared and launched a volley of their own fireballs back at him!

Only his honed reflexes prevented him from being burned to death, although one caught the back of his left hand and clung to it like ignited napalm until he was able to smother the flames with his hoodie.

That hurt. That hurt a lot.

In his prophetic dreams there had been the presence of shadowy creatures he came to know as Heartless, and they often engaged in combat with him, but their claws raking across his skin had left only a phantom sort of injury that did not really throb, bite, sting, or bleed. Whenever he dropped down to roll out of the way of an attack, the ground always felt cool and hard in a way completely disconnected from his true sense of touch. It was real enough to fool the unwary, and Sora prided himself on never being unwary.

When he had sat down again, he gingerly flexed the fingers on his right hand and hissed when pain clapperclawed down his spine from skull to tailbone. The pain made him feel nauseous; it burned and stung, induced hypersensitivity, pulsed like a heartbeat. Injuries had never felt so real in his prophetic dreams.

This had to be real. He realized that someone must have cast a dynamic Reflect spell on the cage: it not only affected the magic that had been cast on the bars, but also the physical blows and the resulting vibrations.

Would it reflect vocally spoken sounds? He hesitated for a second. “Hello?” he asked, tentatively, as the pain in his hand had swelled into a pressure that threatened to crush it. “Can anyone hear me?”

He couldn’t hit the bars. He couldn’t cast spells on the bars. When no one replied to the question, his hope deflated, and he humorlessly pointed his keyblade at the opposite side of the peoplecage and said “Dispel” with little conviction. No one had ever taught him that spell, but he knew it existed.

Nothing happened.

His captor must have known that he would be powerless against a spell like Reflect, and that almost scared him.

It took less than a day for the peoplecage to make him feel something he never had while on his original quest to destroy the darkness: homesickness. It ached in his stomach alongside hunger, vying for greater attention, and all he could think about was how much he wanted a plate of his mother’s homemade brownies. Food and home. He remembered the way she sang with the radio while smearing fudge on top of the brownies after they had cooled down enough. He remembered the way she piled a few together, one on top of the other, and then laid them out with a glass of milk right before he came home from adventuring. Sometimes she mixed chocolate chips into the recipe if he had done all of his chores or had been especially sweet to her by making her breakfast in bed (which was a disaster, usually, but a kind-hearted act nonetheless) or picking a bouquet of wildflowers for her. As she always used to say, the chocolate chip brownies were “sweets for the sweet.”

His stomach groaned. He was really hungry. The last thing he had eaten had been a package of fruit chews when—

Wait.

Hold on a second . . .

He had torn open the package of fruit chews, smiled at his company, and stuffed a handful of chews into his mouth. There had been other people around him because they all wanted to have his attention. (Frowning, Sora slumped further down against the bars as he thought this over.) Fruit chews. People. Torn package, yellow on the outside and silver on the inside. He had spied a blue chew lodged in the package’s corner and fished it out with thumb and forefinger, smearing his fingers with the sticky runoff juice. A woman had delicately touched his elbow and smiled before saying something about his lacking table manners. She had had brown hair and blue-green eyes, and . . . and that was where the memory stopped.

He couldn’t remember any names. He couldn’t even remember why he was there, where he had come from, or when he had developed such a particular affinity for fruit chews when he couldn’t recall ever wanting them before. They always used to taste like artificial fruit regardless of what the package said about 100% concentrates and other weird stuff.

In fact, he couldn’t remember much of what had happened in the last week of his life—the last two weeks. He wasn’t even sure how long ago those fruit chews and blue-green eyes had been.

The swing seat rocked back and forth just a little bit, but he couldn’t feel any wind. Beyond the cage, things were still dark. He was alone. He was alone, this cage was real, and all he wanted was his mother’s fudge-covered homemade brownies thatshesometimesputchocolatechipsinwheneverhehadbeenespeciallysweettoher. He was homesick.

And he was really hungry.

“I’m really hungry,” he mumbled sourly.

He stared at the bars sitting opposite of him. It wasn’t that he felt betrayed by the keyblade or anything like that, but this was one of the first times he had ever been in a situation where it couldn’t help him directly. Without a door, he could not pick the lock; with the Reflect spell in place, he could not break the bars. Starved, dejected, and yearning for a home he hadn’t spared a thought toward in a time longer than he wanted to admit, he watched the swing seat undulate and the darkness taunting him. Eventually, to escape his misery and exhaustion, he resolved to sleep and decide what to do immediately upon waking. The bars hummed in a flat key as he curled up against them and tried to ignore the prickling that teased the insides of his thighs whenever he heard their resonant, collective voice.

Bright light woke Sora up. It shined in his face like sudden sunlight through a window; it swept over his hair, crawled across his eyelids, and splashed his mouth. His skin glowed under the heatless duress that pulled him from dreamless comfort. The light demanded his attention like a morning come too soon. As unconsciousness evaporated, he noticed he had slouched over into an awkward position while asleep and now his lower back felt full of kinks. His left elbow was jammed between two bars, and when he moved it, the bars rang with notes of loneliness.

He flinched as he set his burnt hand on the floor—the skin looked more red than white now—and his eyes opened in reflex. The light continued to assault him, preventing him from seeing very much aside from his eyelashes contrasted against the brightness.

Someone was shining the light into his eyes. It was like going to the eye doctor, or being interrogated by a policeman, or telling ghost stories.

“What’s the big idea?” Sora demanded. He used his bad hand to shield his face as he sat up straight, fighting the kinks in his back. Spots whose colors resembled an oil slick’s danced in front of his eyes, its edges alternating between sharp and fuzzy. “What’s—oh! Hey! Are you here to rescue me?”

“You could say that,” someone replied, somewhere beyond the corona igniting the edges of Sora’s outstretched hand. (Sora could almost make out the silhouettes of his bones through the thin and illuminated skin.) “I didn’t want to break the dramatic tension so soon, that’s all.”

Sora sighed with relief. “It’s okay. I really just want to get out of here. I hope you know how to cast Dispel, because—”

“I don’t.”

“Oh,” Sora said, crestfallen for half a second. “But maybe you can find a wizard who does! There were friends with me when I was taken, so they should know who to go to. Are they here too?”

“You’re alone. You’re the only one here. I made sure of that.”

“You made sure of that?” Sora tried to wrap his groggy mind around this revelation.

“That’s right,” someone said, wearing enough of a grin to be perceived audibly. The voice was darker now, and definitely a man’s. “I made sure of that. You’re quick on the uptake, Keyblade Master.”

“You’re the one who kidnapped me.”

“Yes.”

The light turned off, leaving Sora in the omnipresent glow that came from a source above the peoplecage. His vision returned to him as his eyes adjusted, but his surroundings remained frustratingly dark.

“You’re the one who put me in this cage,” he said slowly, shifting into a crouch.

“Right.” The voice had moved—it was closer now, but Sora could not see even a ripple of its owner. “Do you like it? I designed it especially for you.”

Sora lunged forward, ignoring his pins and needles-afflicted legs, and slammed into the bars closest to the voice with enough force to surprise even him. “Who the hell are you?” he hissed.

His good hand shot to the side and clenched around the hilt of the keyblade, which had materialized as quickly as his rage. The weapon warmed to his touch and his heart thrilled to know it too, because the keyblade was his and no one else’s. He was the Keyblade Master, and even without a lock to pick or bars to break open, he would have the help of the keyblade to get him out of this sitaution. I should have never doubted, he thought. The Light always provides.

“What do you want with me? Let me go!”

In response, the light came back on; it really did resemble a flashlight beam in the way it cut through the darkness, completely sure of its direction and intensity. Sora kept his eyes open against the light as it flashed by, but he restlessly moved around the inside of the cage in an attempt to avoid it, brushing closely enough to the metal bars to make them hum. The light followed after him like a stage light. Follow-spot, stage left. Stage right. Stage left. Sora ducked under the light out of exasperation, and this time it did not pursue him. Hold.

“Stop it!” Sora shouted, crossing the keyblade in front of him. Its tip touched the surface of the closest bar, simply resting against it, and a vibration traveled down the weapon’s shaft to die in his wrists. The light crossed his shoes, slid up his bare shins, and skirted his knees. “I’m going to—”

“Perhaps you have forgotten what happened the last time you tried,” his kidnapper said, “although I did so enjoy watching you squirm.”

“You were here the entire time?” Sora asked, startled. “You saw everything?”

“I saw everything.”

“Everything?”

His kidnapper laughed. The light jerked, cutting across the divide of tan skin above Sora’s knees to the red cloth of his shorts, where it landed directly atop a telltale damp spot on his crotch that had not yet dried.

“I saw everything, Keyblade Master.”

That drop of cum on the belt buckle sparkled like a foggy diamond.

Sora had the modesty to blush—although that redness might have belonged more so to anger than embarrassment. “You’re sick,” he said through clenched teeth. “I’m going to make you pay for this!”

A second light joined the first, but this one was brighter and emanating from the tines of the keyblade. Before Firaga fully formed, he shoved the keyblade through the bars until most of its length went beyond the range of the Reflect spell. Sora shouted and the fireball detached, whirling out into the darkness toward the source of the light.

The light darted downward and a metallic clatter signified its metal container hitting the floor. It must have been a flashlight, because the device rolled in a semi-circle and disappointed Sora in showing that no one was standing nearby.

Sora sagged against the bars and brought the keyblade down. The fireball became a glimmer in the deepening darkness, barreling away into infinity, and Sora didn’t have the patience to fathom the extraordinary dimensions of this place. The flashlight rolled twice more, still finding nothing, but on the third pass it slowed to a stop and centered on the soles of a pair of leather boots. Sora was hardly surprised when his kidnapper bent down and retrieved the flashlight.

“That wasn’t very nice, you know.” The light assaulted Sora’s eyes again as part of an obvious challenge. “Do I have to add more spells around the perimeter of your cage to get you to behave?”

“Just try it!”

The light flipped up and away, leaving Sora to blink repeatedly until the spots discoloring his vision disappeared and his eyes adjusted yet again. By then his kidnapper had positioned the flashlight beneath his own chin, where it partially illuminated his face with the effect one wanted while telling scary stories in the dark. Shadows that had fled from his mouth rallied around his eyes, nose, forehead, and spidery tendrils of hair that bordered his cheeks.

Until those lips moved, Sora thought his kidnapper was wearing a lifelike mask set permanently into a sneer.

“Boo.”

“What’s your problem?” Sora demanded, slamming the bars again. “Just who are you?”

To make matters worse, intense homesickness had returned to him after seeing his kidnapper holding the flashlight like that. He thought of Wakka, who always made up such great scary stories despite how often his accent caused the spooky voices to be too silly. Tidus had a fascination with the afterlife, Selphie could never tell a story unless she mentioned trains at least three times, and Kairi usually dissolved into giggles whenever she tried to explain that the jampots the heroine found in the cellar were actually full of minced brains. More often that not, Riku chose not participate in story-telling unless he was alone with Sora, and even then his scary stories became depressing tales of all-consuming loneliness, sharp black coral, and silent beaches.

“My name is Axel.”

Sora was horrible with scary stories. He had had enough nightmares to sort out a believable plot and stage some characters, create the suspense and add the element of uncertainty, but he couldn’t actually get the story set into motion. But a small voice in the back of his head—something called self-preservation—told him that he’d be an expert at telling scary stories by the time he got out of this.

“Axel? What kind of name is that?”

His kidnapper—this Axel—favored Sora with a wide smile. “Commit it to memory,” Axel said carelessly, as if he didn’t particularly care either way what Sora decided to do. A click followed; the flashlight turned off again. “You’ll be screaming it soon enough.”

“What do you—”

—and suddenly a gloved hand was overlapping Sora’s where it had curled loosely around one of the bars. The fingers were slightly larger than his, an adult’s, and the glove must have been made of leather because of how smooth and cool it felt. It was an ordinary-looking hand, but his heart leapt right into his mouth, and he jumped backward until he pushed past the swing seat and met the opposite side of the peoplecage.

“You want to know what I meant?” Axel asked.

“Don’t touch me!”

The bars trembled. Sora watched, sickened and chilled, as the gloved hand collapsed into a loose fist around the bar. The hand began to slide up and down, up and down, steadily increasing its speed over the same length of silver until it looked like Axel was stroking the bar to completion.

That thought made no sense. Sora stopped thinking, narrowed his eyes, and aimed the keyblade at Axel’s sensually slipping hand.

“Stop that right now, Axel.” Sora’s voice cracked and he felt his cheeks heat.

“Are you kidding?” Axel sounded amused. The hand did not stop. “Try casting a spell. The first time must have not been a good enough lesson for you.”

“I’m going to slice your fingers off,” Sora growled.

“These fingers are good friends of mine.” To illustrate, Axel rubbed and flicked his thumb over the bar. “How cruel of you to plot their passing.”

“I’m not going to warn you again!”

The fist tightened and its leather glove squeaked, just once.

As the keyblade swung toward the offending fingers, it left an arc of light intense enough to brighten some of the room beyond the peoplecage’s bars. The floor shined—it was made of pale, polished marble for as far as he could see. Axel had red hair, green eyes, and was wearing a black trench coat. He was still smiling.

Flourishing the flashlight in one hand, Axel hit it firmly against the bars of the peoplecage. In no time at all they began to vibrate as they had before, and he hit them three more times, running the flashlight back and forth though it were a mallet on a xylophone. Sora didn’t have the chance to protest before the tones broadened and deepened, like notes drawn out on a contrabass, and the first series of vibrations knocked the keyblade right out of his hands.

“What’s wrong, Sora?” Axel shouted over the din. “You’re looking a little flushed!”

The keyblade clattered when it hit the floor and then dissolved into a cloud of stardust. Sora stared at his seemingly boneless hands and Axel laughed, moving around the outside of the cage, banging each bar with the flashlight along the way. RING. RING. RING. The vibrations relaxed all of Sora’s muscles within a few passes; the resistance went out of his knees and he collapsed to the floor. RING. RING. The ringing threatened to make him go deaf, the vibrations pureed his insides, and down at his groin, despite his best efforts to resist it, a great and invisible hand wrapped around his genitals and began to squeeze. RING.

Sora managed to choke out a pleading order, although he feared it would be lost behind the wall of reverberating sounds: “Stop!”

The ringing stopped.

With a weak cry, Sora let his unstable arms go out from under him entirely. The floor was still cool like winter, but against his throbbing forehead, it felt heavenly. It took longer for motor control to return to him this time, and even once it did, his entire lower body continued to pulsate with the echoes of the vibrations.

He felt absolutely humiliated. All of the sudden the only thing that mattered was how uncomfortable his shorts had become, what with their new tightness and old stickiness.

“What did you do to me?” he said into the floor. Once lucid enough, he lifted his head and glared at the darkness that had returned to the perimeter of the peoplecage. “What did you do, Axel?”

Although Sora didn’t want to admit it, those vibrations had been pleasurable yet again. Already his imagination was working on impossibly sexy, regrettably fictitious scenarios about a scarf-wearing Kairi. Even as an adolescent she had these full lips, and whenever she felt particularly girly (which was not often), she would smear apple lip-gloss all over them. . . . His imagination wanted to know if she tasted like artificial apples—and if so, whether or not the velvety softness of her lips compensated for the realness unattained . . .

“Isn’t it fairly obvious?” Axel replied from somewhere behind him. He itched one note off of a bar; it hung in the air like a long-awaited confession, low and soulful. “I made you feel good.”

That was true. Technically.

“You’re sick.”

But that was definitely true.

“But I made you feel good, right?”

“You kidnapped me!”

“I haven’t done anything painful to you.”

“My hand got burnt!” Sora retorted, finally sitting up. He lifted the pasty white hand for Axel to see, but went on staring downwards at the bulge that had developed in his shorts. . . . Kairi always had such a nice smile, even when her lips were bare . . .

“You were the one who cast that spell.”

“You were the one who put a Reflect spell on this thing!”

Ha, Sora thought triumphantly. Let’s see you counter that!

“If you hadn’t jumped to conclusions about being here, you wouldn’t have tried to escape. You would have waited for me and then I would have been able to explain things with some semblance of civility.”

—Huh?

Sora blinked. “What?”

“Nothing gets past you, it seems,” Axel said. “Let me rephrase: if you would’ve waited and acted reasonably while doing so, you would’ve never gotten hurt by trying to break out.”

“How was I supposed to know you were even coming?” Sora turned around to face Axel, who was still shrouded in darkness. “I’m tired, cold, hurt—and above else, starving! I thought I’d be left here forever!”

“Are you hungry?”

“I think I just said I was!” Sora exclaimed, ready to claw at his hair in frustration.

Axel sounded genuinely curious when he asked, “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“Because you were being the scary kidnapper guy!”

“I’m not being the scary kidnapper guy now?”

“You still are!”

“I see,” Axel said, the words not clipped enough for disappointed but not long enough for satisfaction. “So I guess that means you don’t trust me?”

“Of course I don’t trust you! You’re the one who locked me up in a cage!”

“How unfortunate.”

Sora pulled at his bangs and gritted his teeth. “Who talks like that, anyway?”

“Talks like what?”

Unintelligible noise of exasperation.

“You’re very intriguing, Keyblade Master.”

“Let’s start over,” Sora said, trying diplomacy now that violence had been proven worthless. Attempting wipe out Axel The Scary Kidnapper Guy with the keyblade again just wasn’t going to work. “My name is Sora. You kidnapped me. I’m cold, tired, hurt, and—”

“Are you still hungry?”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Sora hated talking in circles!

“But you said that you don’t trust me, so I’m going to assume you won’t take any food from me,” Axel said, matter-of-fact. “Am I right?”

Sora tilted his head over one shoulder and squinted. His stomach rumbled from the mere possibility of getting food. “Well . . .”

“I could have poisoned it,” Axel said. He leaned against the bars; the glow from someplace overhead revealed his cruel smile. “You could die if you ate it, right? Just enough arsenic and you’d be no more than a memory.”

“Well, okay, but—”

“Or maybe I drugged it. You’d be unconscious within half an hour, and then I’d be able to come in and molest you while you were out of your mind.”

Sora was involuntarily reminded of the tightness of his shorts, but his stomach made another strangled and desperate sound. “Okay, I get it, but—”

“Your survival instincts are truly lacking,” Axel said with the same tone of voice he probably would have used to comment on the weather. “Do you always accept food from perfect strangers?”

“I’m not going to make any deals with you,” Sora snarled.

“How assuming of you,” Axel said, “since what I want isn’t much.”

“What do you want?”

“For you to feel good.”

“What does that even mean?”

“You’ll see. Are you still hungry?”

“Yes.”

Axel smiled wider. “Will you give me what I want?”

“I’ll feel great if you let go.”

“Maybe in a little bit, if you don’t act up again.”

“You’re the one who locked me in here!”

“There’s no lock on the cage.”

“You know what I mean!” Sora stood up again, too fidgety from his repressed anger, and he went as close to Axel as he dared. “Get me out of here!”

Axel sighed, as if bored with the wordplay, and turned his head to regard the darkness dawdling behind him. “Maybe in a little bit.”

“Can I at least get something for my hand?” Sora asked, regretting this one request.

The pain from his burn came and went in waves; aside from the sharp white line that went around his wrist and enclosed half of his palm, the skin was starting to regain its natural color. At times his hunger rivaled the pain, but he was afraid of contracting an infection more than he was of going hungry for a while longer.

“That was your own fault,” Axel said. The bars hummed as he withdrew from them, receding into the darkness.

Sora was against the bars in an instant. “Axel, come back!” he cried, searching the darkness fruitlessly. “Don’t leave me alone again! We can talk this out if that’s what you want!”

The darkness kept them separated, and Sora realized he was screaming Axel’s name now, as promised earlier.

“Axel! Axel!”

A startlingly loud brattle of glass on stone replied. A flask rolled out of the shadows, between the bars of the peoplecage, and right through a space created between Sora’s spread feet. He turned to watch as the flask caught an uneven spot on the floor, spun to the right, and came to a rest on its side. Fluorescent blue liquid sloshed around inside of it, catching and refracting the glow from above.

“It’s a Potion for your burn,” Axel said gently. “You said you wanted it, right?”

“I did . . .”

When Sora’s guard was down due to the disarming appearance of the Potion that honored his request, the gloved hand he loathed darted into the peoplecage and caught one of his dangling wrists. Before Sora could even think of yelling, pulling away, or anything else, Axel wrenched Sora backward and forced his head to crash into the bars. The jarring collision brought with it a rush of dizziness, nausea, and more warmth to his scalp that was probably fresh blood. His vision went double.

“You’re making me do this,” Axel hissed against his neck. “If you would’ve just cooperated, I wouldn’t have to do this.”

Sora didn’t understand what Axel was talking about with the onset of a concussion—at least, he didn’t until Axel reached around with his free hand and ruthlessly undid Sora’s cum-dabbed belt buckle. The belt tightened briefly around Sora’s hips before the buckle shuddered and dropped off to the side like a swinging pendulum, leaving the zipper of his red overalls open to manipulation.

“What—what are you doing?” Sora shrieked, trying to twist away. Axel’s gloved hand darted for the zipper and snaked it down. The growl of metal opening metal teeth only intensified Sora’s panic. “Let me go!”

“Just let me make you feel good.”

Another sharp, forceful tug caused Sora to hit his head again; before he could regain his bearings and summon the keyblade to finish off this perverse bastard once and for all, the hand found his underwear, bypassed the elastic waistband, dipped under his cock, and cupped his balls.

Sora managed to choke out a slurred “No!” before Axel began squeezing and caressing him. He didn’t want this. He didn’t want anything like this. This was close enough to be rape—it was rape. Up and down his back he could feel heat radiating off of Axel’s body, hot enough to be an unforgiving summer’s and not at all like the chilly air of a special day on Destiny Islands.

But . . .

“No,” Sora groaned, tilting his head back. The bars whispered as his hair slid along the responsive metal. “No, no, no . . .”

But . . . Axel knew what he was doing. And he was good at it.

Sora had already grown hard under Axel’s ministrations in spite of his choked objections and denials. Futilely, he clenched his fists and tried to think of Kairi doing this to him, promising to make him feel good, causing him to never want the pleasure to stop—but the suddenness and wrongness of this coerced act didn’t line up at all with his preconceived notions of Kairi. Her soft lips and adorable multicolored scarf vanished from his mind, leaving him alone with his painfully pleasurable reality. All he could see was the darkness behind his eyelids; all he could feel was the smooth leather of the glove gliding up and down his cock, teasing the head to test his precum’s viscosity. He groaned behind a tongue he stapled down with his own teeth. This was wrong, and yet this felt so good.

When Axel finished him off a few hard strokes later, Sora tasted blood. A bead of it welled at a corner of his mouth, bowed to gravity, and slid down the curve of his jaw.

It wasn’t until his knees met the chilly floor that he realized Axel had pulled away.

“So who were you thinking of?” Axel drawled.

Darkness, hot breathing on his neck, leather gloves, coppery flavor. Sora wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. He was shaking all over with anger and disgust, and he felt even worse at the sight of blood on his knuckles. Warmth behind him, an intense headache, the peoplecage’s song.

“Kairi,” Sora said. Oathkeeper coalesced in his hand. “Only Kairi.”

Sora screamed, neither caring that his genitals were hanging freely from his underwear, that his nerves were still tingling from Axel’s expert touch, nor that his thoughts were most certainly not of Kairi. The keyblade borne of a promise flashed brightly as he whipped it up and around, its wicked and whimsical edges gleaming in preparation to skewer his kidnapper through the stomach—

But Axel was gone.

Untrusting of the darkness, Sora didn’t lower Oathkeeper. He looked left and right, checked over his shoulder, and then moved back toward the center of the peoplecage until he bumped into the swing seat. After watching the darkness until his unblinking eyes dried out, he willed away Oathkeeper and sat down on the swing in order to start pulling his clothes back together. Now more than ever he felt revolting and two-timed by his own penis, whose cum had splashed over the inside of his shorts for someone who wasn’t Kairi. Its musty smell rose to the front of his mind and he gagged.

Only Kairi, he thought now, yanking up the zipper on his overalls. The teeth caught the bare skin of his stomach and he hissed. Sulkily, he eased the zipper up the remainder of the way and blotted out the stinging skin, ferocious return of his hunger, and lukewarm, squishy stuff surrounding his genitals. Only Kairi. Only Kairi. Only Kairi.

He didn’t know the ashamed tears were there until one—slightly discolored from blood residue—dropped off of his chin and splashed his wrist. After wiping at them and laughing shortly over what a pitiful picture he must have made for his kidnapper, he slid off of the swing and crouched down to find the Potion flask.

When he dumped the Potion out, its fizzling blue liquid washed all over the floor of the peoplecage, dissolving the errant beads of cum and blood and whatever other bodily fluids Sora had lost during his short stay here.

“I’m not going to take anything you give me,” he said to the darkness.

“Not willingly?” Axel asked, still out of view.

“Never.”

“We’ll see.”

Sora left the empty flask tipped over and sat down on the swing sweat, since most places on the floor were wet now. His burnt hand he placed gingerly on his lap so it wouldn’t swing loosely and hit anything while he was asleep. The seat wasn’t big enough for him to lie down on without curling up tightly, so he settled on leaning his shoulders against one thick chain and stretching his legs out toward the other. Sheer weariness and the natural swaying of the seat drew him into a deep sleep within minutes.

Someplace in the darkness, Axel was smiling.

Sora dreamt of home. Homesickness he rarely felt while conscious preyed on him when he was asleep, the only time he could not prioritize and push it aside, so he dreamt of home whenever he did not dream of sex or prophecies. Dreaming of home hurt a lot.

Most of the time in his dreams, Sora had no idea that he was dreaming. He climbed out of his boat and started jogging up the grass-covered hill that separated the mainland shore from the rest of the island, spurred forward by only a strong urgency that he didn’t have any reason to question. Riku and Kairi looked bewildered and called out for him to wait up, but he leaned into the hill’s incline and hurried to the top. From there he ran all-out down the familiar dirt path that led from the beach to his backyard; picket fences blurred at his sides as he raced by them, their colors black and white in tandem from the shadows lurking between the painted slats.

The air smelled warm and damp with an impending thunderstorm, and as he ran, airborne dandelion seeds clung his clothes and hair like fluffy snowflakes. This was the Destiny Islands immortalized in his memory.

The grass in his backyard was very green, unlike the sparse and dry yellow stuff at the beach. Over to the right was a rusty play set—swing, slide, monkey bars—that his father had built a millennia ago before leaving forever at a time when Sora didn’t have the mind to remember him. His mother’s reckless garden sat next to it, and when he saw that, he knew for sure that he was home. He was home, and nothing seemed out of place. The urgency waned and he slowed down to a stop at the far end of the backyard. Shadows played over him, intermingling peacefully with splotches of light that managed to get through the crisscrossed branches of the scraggly trees overhead. These shadows were the shadows of home, and were welcome.

The sliding glass door leading into the kitchen of his house opened; a woman stepped out, looking exactly like Sora wanted her to look just then: young and feminine, carefree and full of love, wearing a yellow sundress that complimented her soft eyes and curly brown hair that was far tamer than her son’s. He started walking toward her.

“Sora, did you have fun with your friends?” Mom asked, waving him closer. When he got within reach, she swept him up into one of those hugs only mothers are capable of. Total security. It was what Sora wanted most, just then. “Come inside. I bet you’re hungry.”

“I am,” Sora said and shuffled into the coolly painted kitchen once Mom had let go. “Did you make something?”

Here too everything was placed as he remembered: blue ceramic teapot on the stove, cat clock on the wall with a tail that twitched for every second passed, stainless steel dinner table near the door, lacy curtains in the windows, spotless linoleum that merged into cabinets with pale pink counters. He sat down at the table and liked the way its smooth surface felt on his forearms.

“I made homemade brownies,” Mom said, turning around to retrieve the glass dish of them. “I even put fudge on top, just like you like it. They’re probably cool enough to eat right now if you want some.”

Sora smiled crookedly. “Are there any chocolate chips in ‘em?”

Sweets for the sweet.

“Of course! I was just struck by how fast my little baby is growing up, so I gotta keep him sweet for as long as I can. Sweets for the sweet!”

“Sweet and innocent,” Sora amended. He watched Mom get a serving knife and fork out. “I don’t ever wanna leave.”

“I don’t ever wanna let you leave either, honey,” Mom cooed as she cut him an unusually large piece. It thudded audibly when she dropped it onto a nearby paper plate, which she then placed in front of him. “Want some milk with that?”

“Yeah,” Sora said, although he was preoccupied with staring at all the chocolate. “I usually don’t each this much, though . . .” Melted chocolate chips oozed from every dark crevice, while the fudge alone must have been an inch thick. It smelled as heavenly and homely as the approaching thunderstorm had.

“Gotta work hard to keep you sweet for longer!” Mom placed a large glass of frosty milk next to his plate. “Are you gonna turn down your mother’s cooking?”

“No, of course not! I was just surprised, is all.”

Why would she even suggest something like that? The serving size was unusual, but he was a growing boy as she had said, so he’d be able to work out all of this excess chocolate from his system in a snap. His metabolism had gone into overdrive ever since he hit puberty, and if his stabbing hunger was any indication, he really did need to eat something before he fainted. He had been out in the sun with his friends for a long time.

“Want a fork?” she asked, ruffling his hair.

“I’m good.”

The brownie smelled heavenly, but it tasted even better. Unable to help himself, he shoved a whole handful of chocolate into his mouth because he just wanted that perfect texture to coat his entire tongue from the tip all the way down.

Sublime. This brownie tasted utterly sublime. Oh God, he thought, bending over the table to get closer to his plate. The size didn’t matter if it tasted this good; he’d eat a thousand pieces if it meant keeping this perfection in his mouth forever. He grasped the slippery glass of milk in one hand and brought it to his lips, taking huge gulps to wash down the brownie—

And choked. Food got caught in his throat, and he was choking.

“Swallow,” Mom ordered, slapping his back firmly. “Swallow!”

But this didn’t feel right—

Axel pulled the Potion flask away and frowned at Sora. Barely any of the Potion had gotten into the boy’s mouth before he started choking on the brownie.

After a very tense moment of asphyxiation, Sora tipped his head back and coaxed the food down his esophagus. He opened his eyes to tell Mom that everything was all right, saw the peoplecage’s bars towering over him instead, and nearly passed out from the shock that was like a sledgehammer swinging into his cramped gut. Hadn’t he just been at home? He was eating brownies—he could still taste and smell them. They were warm and perfect, and sitting right nearby, and he was still so hungry . . .

And Axel was straddling his waist.

Sora screamed and tried to writhe away, but something solid bit down on his wrists and turned that scream into a yelp. His eyes found the pair of handcuffs with its chain strung around one of the bars, which gave off a few stuttering notes whenever he moved.

“Are you all right now?” Axel asked.

“Get off of me!” Sora screamed again, bucking his hips violently. “Get off, get off, get off!”

Axel’s smile was dark and kind. He set the mostly full Potion flask off to the side and leaned down over Sora until there was no personal space left to speak of. “What if I don’t?” he murmured. Two gloved fingers found the hollow of the boy’s throat and tested the pulse: it was erratic with adrenaline.

“I’ll make you pay for this!” The bar’s notes crescendoed and the handcuffs bit more sharply into his wrists, but Sora refused to stop struggling. His thrashing legs slid around uselessly on the smooth floor of the peoplecage, which had been cleaned at some point of the spilt Potion from earlier.

“I’m just trying to feed you before you die of malnutrition,” Axel said. He shut one eye and tightened his knees around the boy’s slim hips to dampen the fierceness of his struggling. “If you want to waste away in here, that’s your prerogative.”

With one final frustrated noise, Sora let his body sink back down to the floor. His hands were unusable when secured like that, so even if he summoned the keyblade, he wouldn’t be able to attack his kidnapper with such a short range of movement available. I am completely at his mercy, Sora thought for the first time since all of this had started. He could take my heart right now and I wouldn’t be able to stop him.

Sora chose to lash out verbally instead: “What do you want from me? Are you a coward or something? Chaining me up like this—you’re afraid of me, Axel!”

“I’m not afraid,” Axel said and pulled back. “I’m practical.”

“Coward.”

“Survivor.”

“Rapist,” Sora said firmly.

“If you thought that was rape . . .” Axel didn’t finish that sentence. Instead, his smile widened as he reached off to the side and picked up something. “I bet you’re still hungry.”

Sora’s stomach growled. “Not at all.”

“That’s not what your body is saying,” Axel said, dragging his fingers down Sora’s jumpsuit from sternum to navel. “Your body is very hungry. You haven’t eaten anything since you got here, really, and don’t pretend like you didn’t enjoy the brownie.”

“That was you?” Sora asked, startled. He truly could still smell and taste the chocolate . . .

“The brownies were gooey and moist and warm and thick just like you like them, weren’t they? Chocolate cake, chocolate chips, chocolate fudge—fresh from the oven.” Axel paused and plucked a piece of lint from Sora’s jumpsuit. “You liked them. You ate fast enough to choke on them, and now you don’t want any more?”

It took a conscious effort for Sora to swallow down the accumulation of his saliva. His stomach growled again, more insistently, because enough of that delicious brownie had gotten in there to make it remember that it was in desperate need of some sustenance. “I don’t want anything from you.”

“Not willingly,” Axel said, scooping up a haphazard handful of chocolate. It had tasted so, so good . . .

“Never.” It took Sora too long to reply. Against the advice of common sense, he held his mouth open after he spoke and his starved mind half-hoped Axel would force the food into him. To prevent from choking again, he would have to gobble it down, and then later he would swear and curse and fight like he never fought before because Axel had violated him.

Axel didn’t move. The brownie was so close, just an inch or so from the boy’s mouth. “Never,” Axel repeated. No promising and ominous We’ll see or That’s what you’d like to think—just Never.

“Never,” Sora echoed, but now his voice was needy with subtext. After all, his mind told him, Axel is your only ticket to food right now. You’ll think of how to defeat him later, but first you’ll need the energy to do that. “Axel, I swear that—”

The warm corner of the brownie pushed against Sora’s lips and smeared them liberally with chocolate. Sora snaked his tongue out, licking up whatever he could, unconcerned with how frenzied he looked while doing so. According to his pockmarked memories, he had not eaten anything substantial since his abduction, which might have been more than a week ago. He tried to use this assumption as an excuse for his behavior, but Axel was laughing anyway and easing the food further and further into his accepting mouth. The corner disappeared after the first bite, and real flavor—not the mockery of it from his dreams—exploded in his mouth, volcanic, rendered utterly perfect by deprivation.

Although the handful was almost as large as the slice from his dreams, he made quick work of it and tried to ignore the strange, embarrassing sounds he released while trying to get all of it into his stomach as quickly as possible. Once finished, he felt dizzy.

“Another?” Axel asked.

An extraordinary feeling of well-being had spread throughout Sora’s body and eased his mind. He lifted his head, swallowed down the last of the chocolate that had stuck to his tongue like paste, and didn’t even think twice about letting confirmation tumble from his mouth. If Axel wanted to offer more impossibly gooey, impossibly moist pieces of brownie to him, he would continually agree, even though his stomach said that starvation wasn’t imminent anymore.

When the entire pan was empty, countless feedings later, Sora shuddered once and finally let the back of his head touch the floor. He wasn’t even sure if he was full or not—his hunger had been extreme enough to overpower all limitations and turn him into a temporary glutton. Chocolate was smeared all over his face, from chin to lips to cheeks, and he flicked his tongue uselessly at it. Axel was still straddling him, but the man’s warm presence soothed his abdomen and kept the cramps at bay.

“You forced that on me,” Sora mumbled, pleased with just how much chocolate remained on the insides of his cheeks. The flavor lingered, although it was weaker now, and he savored it.

Axel hummed as he removed his chocolate-encrusted gloves, revealing ten pale fingers that were just like anyone else’s. Sora had been expecting to see claws or bones or something demonic. “Are you full now?” Axel asked as his fingers flirted with the sharp edges of the jumpsuit’s zippered zip. They swept down to rest over the embarrassing swell of a tummy that Sora had developed from eating so much food at once.

His metabolism has always been fast-paced anyway; it wouldn’t take too long to work it off, provided Axel didn’t prevent him from moving ever again (which Sora had no intentions of letting happen). “I think so,” Sora said. He tried to squirm away from the intrusive touch, but the handcuffs didn’t allow much mobility. “Go away. I’m going to get out of here, and then I’m going to pay you back in spades.”

“You’re gonna get fat,” Axel said, deadpan. His fingers spread and conformed to the swell: although barely anything at all, it was still noticeable. “You should watch what you eat.”

The way Axel was grinning, cruel and foul, grounded Sora in reality again. The food had only provided Sora temporary comfort and security; it had done nothing to unlock the handcuffs, incapacitate Axel, or get him out of the peoplecage. To have lost the plot—to have forgotten that his kidnapper was still right here—

“Get off of me!” Sora yelled, struggling against the handcuffs with much more strength and determination than before. “I mean it, Axel!”

Axel looked unimpressed with the commands. “Didn’t your mommy ever tell you not to accept candy from strangers?” he asked, leering, and flexed his fingers into the taut, cloth-covered skin. Sora choked and sucked in a breath from the strange sensation the touch elicited: it was almost electric, although in different way from having his cock squeezed. “You never know what they put in that candy. Glass shards, rat poison, razor blades, bodily fluids, aphrodisiacs. All kinds of shit.”

“Aphro—” Sora tried to sound out the unfamiliar word, but his fingers and toes were burning, his heartbeat was stumbling, and more of that almost-electricity was zigzagging up and down his spine. “What is an—” His eyes started to water involuntarily and his pupils contracted, making even the soft light in the peoplecage unbearable to look at. “—an ah, ah, ah—”

“Aphrodisiac,” Axel said smoothly. “I think it’s defined as a drug or some other agent that stimulates sexual desire.”

Sora’s cock budged and pushed against the fabric containing it. The heat and irregular heartbeat and almost-electricity had just been a distraction—his cock was hard, more sensitive than he remembered, and only inches away from where Axel was settled atop him—

“‘Stimulates sexual desire’?” Sora exclaimed, lifting his hips in a desperate, thoughtless tactical move in an attempt to throw Axel off. All he succeeded in doing was exacerbate the amount of friction affecting the head of his cock; he held back a groan, collapsed again, and had to listen to Axel’s laughter. “You put an afro—deez—eack in that?”

Axel peered at the boy’s flushed face. “Well, you know what they say: chocolate is its own aphrodisiac.”

But Sora had never experienced such intense effects from eating chocolate: sensitivity, aversion to light, sweat beading and sliding down his temples, unpredictable heart rate and breathing, warmth and electricity intermingling all over his body. A fire sparked in his stomach and claimed his genitals instantaneously; it ate through his thighs and up his chest, flourishing with every additional inch of skin claimed.

Axel busied himself by undoing Sora’s belt. The dried cum on it from earlier melted under his touch, opaque like vanilla glaze, and Sora registered disgust around the aphrodisiac’s intense effects as Axel licked it away absently.

“Don’t—”

Sora lost control of his voice when his cock twitched and then shot upward, straining in earnest against his boxers, jumpsuit, and finally Axel’s leather-clad ass. The sensation was indescribable. He couldn’t even prevent himself from screaming from the acute pain of it. His groin was throbbing with the need for release, red-hot, and he thought that the tender skin on the surface of his cock might split if it wasn’t taken care of very soon.

“I intended to only give you one slice,” Axel said nonchalantly. His fingers slid the belt from its loops, drawing a line of delicious and agonizing friction around Sora’s waist. “But you were just overgreedy, weren’t you? The whole pan is gone now. One dose is supposed to be very potent . . . and you must have eaten at least five doses.”

Sora didn’t understand anything Axel was saying now. The handcuffs slammed against the bars behind him, inviting them to sing alongside his wretched screams, and he stared unflinchingly into the searing light overhead because the pain was just that much.

A serrated knife—covered in chocolate—caught the light, flashing like a cautionary signal, and Sora wanted to cry.

Axel waved the knife in front of his captive’s face to show it off. “I guess we’ll find out together what happens when one doesn’t heed the warning labels.”

“No! No!”

“I’m going to make you feel great,” Axel said, bringing the knife down.

The edge pricked Sora’s cheek, but did not draw any blood. He pulled it around to Sora’s neck, where the silver chain of his signature silver crown necklace rested. The links clinked softly when he ran the knife over them, and then Sora screamed again, but only because the pain had returned in the form of a pressure that threatened to break his pelvis. The first tear rolled down Sora’s cheek slowly, but the rest were quick.

“But first we have to get rid of what you won’t be needing anymore.”

Axel flicked the knife over the boy’s pulsing jugular on his way to the shoulder. Since Sora’s wrists were strung up to the peoplecage’s bars, there would be no usual way of removing his clothes unless the restraints were compromised. Axel took a handful of red cloth and mercilessly sawed into it, tearing through inch after inch of fiber with the zeal of a butcher. Had he been more aware, Sora would have cried over this too: he had received the red jumpsuit from his mother once upon a time and had worn it throughout his adventures in the universe, reminded every day of her love and what she had done to care for him on Destiny Islands. The stitching broke and curled away, sending frayed threads everywhere, and Axel removed each disconnected piece until nothing was holding the jumpsuit up anymore. Two hard tugs detached the sleeves forever and one more peeled away the section that had been covering Sora’s chest. Axel never even bothered to unzip it.

Despite the loss, all Sora felt was relief when Axel finally got up to extract the tattered remains of the jumpsuit. His erection firmly tented his underwear, but it was no longer pressing up against something hard and warm. Expelling a sound somewhere between another groan and another scream, he stopped pulling on the handcuffs and exposed the thick red welts on his wrists to the air.

The words came out before he could stop them: “It hurts so much!”

“Have some patience,” Axel said, moving close again. He hooked his fingers around the elastic band of Sora’s boxers and ripped them down, freeing the rigid cock hidden within in one fluid motion. “You’re being such a glutton today: first food, and now this.”

This? Sora wondered deliriously, but the pain came back and left his thoughts wordless.

Axel retrieved the knife and placed the flat of its blade against Sora’s swollen stomach. The metal was cool and Sora shivered, because he was so hot, and anything that wasn’t near his soaring body temperature felt like ice.

“I could make you bleed right now.” Axel flipped the blade over halfway and its edges scraped skin, hard enough to be felt, but then he tossed the knife away before he could be tempted to do anything. “But I think I’ll make you bleed later, when you like it just as much as I do.”

Sora whimpered.

“I said I’d make you feel good, but you’re in pain!” Axel exclaimed. The sound of cured leather gliding across skin was unmistakable: he was shrugging out of his clothes. “It’s time to rectify this.”

You did this to me! Sora’s feverish, broken thoughts argued. You’ll never get away with this!

Those earnest threats disintegrated when a hand traveled over his stomach and touched the hair surrounding his pubic area. Axel’s skin felt curiously icy, and Sora longed mutely for the chill to descend lower and lower until it found his cock and massaged him to orgasm. Even if was Axel, he just wanted to pain to fucking stop.

The hand had other ideas: it crossed Sora’s inner-thigh, surprisingly docile when belonging to such a heartless man, and dipped under his balls to feel for the heated cleft of his ass.

It was around that time that Sora realized, symbolically, that he was going to be raped. The aphrodisiac’s pain at its worst didn’t amount to this new kind that overcame him when he saw just how close his virginity—his innocence—was to being taken away. When he screamed, it was full of the same curses, but they were far more virulent and critical now. Axel had the audacity to laugh, softly at first, although he was uproarious by the time he inserted an ice-cold finger into Sora’s ass.

“STOP!” Sora thrashed, fighting for more than his life now. “STOP!”

The chill swept throughout his groin, paradoxically lessening and heightening his pain. Axel’s bare legs pushed against his own, pinning him in place as soon as he began to kick for all he was worth, while one arm bent under his back to lift him just high enough for another finger to enter his unyieldingly firm asshole. The discomfort of this intrusion doubled and then tripled, because he certainly wasn’t going to relax and Axel’s manipulative fingers seemed borne of a desire to make him squirm and swelter in the knowledge that he was about to lose his last piece of childhood.

Behind his eyelids, Sora saw Kairi smiling at him with that little bit of gloss on her lips just a kiss away. Off to the side was Riku, infallible as away, his arms folded, looking ready to crack that next joke. . . . He clung to the images of the past: his friends (Axel was laughing), his house (curled fingers probed deeper, fighting the tension), his mother’s homemade brownies (his skin was crawling with revulsion), the way sunsets looked beautiful from any place on the island but especially the roof (long fingernails scuttled over the inner walls of his rectum, scraping and burning and causing more and more pain) . . .

Sora screamed—one long, keening note that the peoplecage responded to.

The images shattered like glass on rock when Axel propped Sora up higher from beneath, removed the fingers, slid along his body to paint a path of darkness and ruthlessness, and finally forced his own large and hard erection into the boy’s too-small rectum.

All sound ceased. Sora stopped screaming and Axel stopped laughing.

Sora’s lower lip trembled despite being trapped under his teeth.

Axel grinned maddeningly against the curve of Sora’s neck.

This can’t be happening, Sora thought. Right?

The unimaginably savage burning sensation that came from having his ass so brutally invaded faded away. The effects of the aphrodisiac faded away. The unmatched pain from having a childhood rescinded faded away. Everything ebbed, resisting only for a moment, and then faded away.

Sora went completely numb as Axel took the first breath to interrupt the silence, lifted his hips to partially withdraw his cock, and then returned it viciously to the blistering, pulsating canal. Sora’s muscles clenched involuntarily around this trespasser, but Axel rammed past all of the defenses using a strength he didn’t look like he possessed.

Another bead of blood slipped from Sora’s lip; it left a streak that frescoed an innocuous dab of chocolate on his chin.

Something inside Sora shut off. This unspeakable act simply flipped a switch located deep within him that he hadn’t even known existed. His head dropped back a second later and he saw the darkness stretch on forever behind his eyelids.

The only lubrication Axel used was the abrupt dribbling mess of blood that came from the severe anal tearing. Darker beads of it leaked out past Axel’s cock, slid around the shaft, and finally fell to the floor of the peoplecage. They looked like discolored tears. Axel grunted, ducked his head in closer, and the flare of red that was his hair went out behind him as he began to build up a more or less steady rhythm, timed to coincide with his gasps. His victim was as pliable and pale as a doll in his arms; he licked the salty skin of Sora’s shoulder and then bit down, hard, several times, leaving imprints of his teeth in slowly developing bruises. The taste was better than chocolate.

If there was any more pleasure or pain, Sora didn’t feel it. His body reacted as bodies always do, even during rape—pretty soon he was screaming again from horrible, horrible pleasure that never reached his brain and instead floated along the edges of consciousness like a bittersweet promise.

Eventually Axel gave a strained shout of his own, closed a fist around Sora’s solid erection (which had been batting at the man’s firm stomach), and effortlessly brought him to roaring consummation and oblivion at last. When Axel too attained orgasm, several hard and fast and incredibly damaging thrusts later, he withdrew without lingering and the rush of excess ejaculate and blood spurted from Sora’s bleeding asshole to mix on the canvas his paled skin provided.

Sora continued to see only darkness. The cum from his own orgasm cooled on his stomach, thick and disgusting, and Axel dipped a few fingers into it for a taste before he got up.

Even with his arms suspended above him like that, wrists still locked to the peoplecage, Sora managed to subside into a deep sleep. But this time, he didn’t dream.

.

.

.

.

[end act 1]
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