Diclaimer: I don't own it - if I did there'd be way more sexual innuendo and not a lot else would get done. The characters should be thankfull they have Square Enix and Disney guarding them.

It's my first KH fic and I'm trying to make it not-awful (this can be testified by my unofficial beta who I harrass every five minutes) so reviews would be greatly appreciated. At this stage its rated M for language. Enjoy XD

I hate waking up with someone else's hand down my pants.

The fact that I can immediately recognise the sensation of a clammy palm pressed against…well, areas that only my own hand should be touching at seven fifteen a.m. should probably worry me, but to be honest its becoming a regular occurrence; one of those things that just happens. Along the same lines as opening the refrigerator door only to discover that Sora ate all of my chocolate or that Namine took the only bottle of cold water to clean her paintbrushes - what can you do other than shrug and sigh and accept that it's neither the first nor the last time it'll happen?

Granted, my family thieving my food and finding a stranger's hand groping you in the morning probably don't fall under the same category of unavoidable issues, but the point I'm trying to make is it's a very common problem for me - and this in itself is, I guess, is also very disturbing.

I glanced over my shoulder and found that in the dim grey light I didn't recognise the girl lying in the bed beside me. A bed that I should point out is made for one and having two bodies pressed into it meant that I was both uncomfortable and over-heated. On the other hand I'm pretty much just pleased that it's someone I don't know, since it'd be a shame to ruin a friendship through some sort of accidental sexual encounter that I won't remember and should probably contact a psychiatrist over. Or at the very least talk to my brothers about.

This would be a pretty good time to get the hand off my crotch.

I rolled my shoulder to dislodged the arm, realising that it wasn't actually down my pants, but only because I didn't seem to be wearing any – and great, because doesn't that just make everything more shameful? At least she could have told me that the elastic waistband had trapped her hand there with no possible chance of escape and in a desperate attempt not to wake me, me the total stranger whose house she was in, she had resigned herself to waiting until I'd come to consciousness on my own. And despite the fact that no one talks like that, I would have accepted that story quite happily, but instead my only option was to roll out of bed and use my foot to pick through the clothes scattered across the floor until I found my old, faded jeans. Then I found a clean pair of boxers from the drawer and pulled them on, quickly followed by the jeans and the nearest t-shirt before I shuffled out of the room, letting the door click shut a little too loudly now that I was in the safety of the Strife family living room.

Of course 'safety' is a relative term.

About a year and a half ago my mother announced that she was moving up to Destiny Island to take care of Grandma and Grandpa Strife who were clearly far, far too sick to take care of themselves or each other. Contrary to our mothers apparent belief, Cloud, Sora and I are not complete idiots, we are intelligent young men who achieve good grades at school - mostly - and keep ourselves out of trouble - rarely - and knew for a fact that our Grandparents were in perfectly good health since we visit them on the Island every year and Grandpa had spoken to Sora on the phone the day before our mother's declaration. What my mother actually meant was that she couldn't tolerate our father's presence – or absence - anymore and figured we were old enough to cope without her; which pleased us more than a mother's abandonment of her children probably should.

My father is one of those men who works nine to five but won't actually leave the office until eleven, he also travels constantly and comes back home for two to three weeks every four to five months. Not that you'd notice the difference. And I don't feel nearly as bitter about it as I just sounded. In fact I kind of enjoy it. With both parents out of the way it leaves Cloud in charge - and you can imagine exactly what kind of authority figure a twenty one year old is to his seventeen year old brothers. No kind of authority figure is the answer you're looking for. Aside from the occasional request to tidy up after ourselves Cloud let's us do what we want. And in return for this freedom, when Cloud asks us to do something we do it. You could also chalk up our speedy acceptance of his commands to a desire to remain alive, but Cloud is secretly a big pussycat despite his stoic presence and somewhat terrifying glaring powers.

And so we existed quite happily like this until roughly a year ago - maybe eleven months, maybe thirteen, you'll have to go to Namine for the specifics. Our aunt and uncle on dad's side are pretty illusive relatives, they both like science as a hobby as well as a profession. You know in exams when you get questions like 'Ellen and Billy wondered about the pH levels of their local pond and whether the water contained excess levels of natural minerals. One Saturday morning they decide to do some experiments to find out…'? You know the questions you almost forget to answer because you're too busy wondering what could possibly be so wrong with Ellen and Billy's home lives that they think this is fun activity for a Saturday morning? Well, my aunt and uncle are Ellen and Billy. I don't mean those are their names, I mean when they aren't working all the shifts they can possibly get at Hollow Bastion General Hospital they're down at the pond checking the waters pH level – purely for shits and giggles.

Now try and imagine what a disappointment it must be for two people who live and breathe science to have two children that excel in the arts and seemingly have no natural aptitude for the beloved sciences.

Now try and imagine how awful it must be for the kids to know that's how their parents feel.

So it was probably a relief when Uncle Donald announced that he and our aunt would be packing up and leaving for a two year program in some third-world country helping the sick and needy and probably using their free time to run tests on all the pond water they can find. Because of course that meant their two artistically gifted children would be shipped off to Twilight Town to live with their six-months-independent cousins. Not that there was much change there either since Namine and Demyx had spent nearly every weekend with us since me and Sora hit five years old. Not to mention family gatherings. They're more like siblings than cousins anyway.

And so the Strife household mutated from a respectable two-parents three-kids - does it count as 2.5 since Sora and I are twins? - home into a house run by five kids with the occasional shadow of a parent drifting in to sleep for days on end before patting us all on the head and leaving for work again, probably very uncertain of exactly which of the five children he fathered.

And so when I say the 'safety' of the living room, it really all depends on exactly which members of our odd little household are up and conscious. For instance Namine leaves the atmosphere pretty laid-back, Cloud gives laid-back a slightly threatening edge, Demyx drops the overall IQ score of the house by a fair few points and Sora…well sometimes I wonder if it'd be easier to live with a puppy on crack.

Ok, he probably isn't that bad. But while Cloud and I inherited our Dad's easy nature and dubious social skills, Sora seemed to inherit an incorrigible optimism and phenomenal energy level that could only have come from our eccentric Grandmother. And just to make life more fun for the rest of us, Sora has trouble sleeping; meaning he's the last one in bed and the first one out of it.

…and that makes it sound like we all pile into one bed at the end of the day but I promise that isn't the case. Five whole separate bedrooms. Upstairs Cloud took over our parent's old room – so now Dad is banished to the couch whenever he deigns to make an appearance – Namine has mine and Sora's old room and Demyx has Cloud's old room. Downstairs we have an open-plan living room kitchen, and we used to have a dining room and a study, but those were converted into mine and Sora's new rooms. The rooms were used so little before that I don't think our dad has even realised that we've had it changed – that or he doesn't think much of his youngest sons sleeping on the dining room table.

Just as I'd suspected, when I turned from my door and moved off towards the sofa Sora was sat there beaming at me with a magazine in his lap and holding out a Styrofoam cup, the contents of which was steaming and smelled richly of chocolate. I took it gratefully and dropped onto the sofa beside him.

"Morning." He declared with a smile and from his bright eyes and bushy tail – metaphorical of course – I guessed he'd been up for a few hours. Or else he hadn't gone to bed yet.

"Good night?" I asked as a way of phrasing my speculation. Sora understood.

"Yeah, Cloud drove me and Demyx to Traverse Town; we got back about an hour ago." He gestured towards the kitchen and I saluted my older brother, who responded with a nod as he ate cereal from the box while he leant against the kitchen counter. Both of them had changed into sweatpants and t-shirts but I imagine that not an hour ago Cloud had been wearing leather pants.

Strife boys like clubs. It's a fact. Demyx likes anyplace where they play the music far too loud to be healthy, Sora likes to expel his ridiculous energy levels and Cloud has a not-so-secret secret love of leather pants and a club is one of the few places he can wear them without his angelic younger brothers cracking jokes every five seconds.

Cloud had over heard Sora's statement and sauntered over to us, dropping onto the sofa beside me and offering some cereal, I grabbed a hand-full and ate it slowly between sips of hot chocolate.

"Where were you?" Cloud asked, "I thought you were gonna come with us."

"Yeah I was, uh, busy." I replied vaguely.

"Doing?"

I shot Cloud a glance, because Cloud was using a tone I recognised, a tone that meant he looked into my room to check if I had come home last night and had seen the pretty girl cuddled up to me and knew exactly what I had been doing but was choosing to feign ignorance until I told him myself.

Because my big brother is cruel and has no sex life of his own. Poor boy.

"There's a girl in my bed." I replied deadpan.

"Yet another victim." Cloud nodded sombrely.

"It's hard not to fall victim to the Strife charm." Sora added cheerfully taking a sip of his hot chocolate and whimpering because it burnt his tongue. At least it is burnt in a charmingly Strife way. Apparently.

"Roxas' personal charm is a little different," Cloud informed our brother the whimperer, "A comparison between being lovingly courted and having a caveman beat you over the head with his club – or in this case skateboard – and drag you back to his pit."

"Go fuck yourself," I replied emptily, too soon out of unconsciousness to come up with anything resembling wit.

"But honestly, you are verging on sexual deviancy." Cloud replied with a level expression and without sounding particularly concerned despite the statement.

"I think it has to be intentional for it to count as sexual deviancy."

"So you're what?" Sora asked, briefly grabbing the cereal box from Cloud and ignoring his slight noise of protest. "A blackout nymphomaniac?"

"Nymphomania is the female condition, in men it's called satyromania," I replied before taking another mouth full of hot chocolate, trying to suck up a few of the marshmallows Sora had dropped in for me.

"You know who would know that, Rox? A nymphomaniac."

I responded by hitting him over the head with a cushion. Sora was about to mount a retaliation strike when he paused and a second later my bedroom door opened and out sneaked the pretty brunette. She glanced up and froze, clearly having hoped to leave unnoticed. No such luck, the TV is against the wall that sections off my bedroom, so the sofa faces my door. She was standing in a situation I have found myself in many a time – trying to leave my room undetected only to find my brothers and cousins smirking at me from the sofa. Well, Demyx struggled to smirk, he usually just looks happy with maybe a hint of smug.

I gave an innocuous cough and found a particularly interesting section of ceiling to watch, allowing our guest some privacy, Sora beamed pleasantly and Cloud didn't change his expression.

"Hi." She said nervously, and when I met her eyes I realised she was one of the regulars at The Usual Spot.

"Hi." I responded without enthusiasm and I felt Sora dig his elbow into my ribs. In Sora world that is a signal to tell me I'm being rude. I shot him a glare and attempted a smile though I'm pretty sure it looked more like a wince. "How are you, uhm…?"

There was a very tense moment in which I almost wished for Demyx – because that boy could start up a conversation about the colour of the carpet and not shut up for a year.

"Olette, right?" Sora asked and I had never loved my twin more. I told him this with the telepathic powers I don't have. "I think you were in my physics class last year?"

"Yeah." She smiled, or attempted to. "I'm guessing you're Sora and Cloud? Roxas mentioned you both."

Did I?

"Well you know Roxas," Cloud spoke for the first time since the door opened, slinging an arm across my shoulders. "Roxas likes to talk about his brother's…during sex apparently."

"No he didn't – not during…it was…uh…" Olette's cheeks were suddenly very red and I felt the need to hit my head against a hard, flat surface because no matter how many times this situation occurs it will never be any less unpleasant.

"Uh, I should go. I have to get to work." She said quickly as her cheeks moved through red and ventured into burgundy.

"Yeah, summer jobs, what a joy eh?" Sora responded as though this wasn't one of the most awkward situations to ever exist. Maybe for Sora it wasn't – but I'm pretty sure the whole point of being a twin is that if I have to squirm so does he.

"Aren't you supposed to be going to Main Street with Demyx and Sora soon anyway Roxas?" Cloud asked, his tone void of particular emotion again as he glanced at the ceiling, probably trying to figure out if Demyx had gone to sleep after their late night.

"Uh, yes, yes I am." I responded quickly, because that would indeed be a reason for me to leave very soon. And If I have to leave so does she. Unless she fancies spending the day with Cloud. I probably shouldn't make that offer though.

"Right so I'll, uh, see you around." Olette said timidly, pausing briefly as though waiting for me to give a negative or positive response. Or maybe I was supposed to offer to call her. Why offer if I wasn't going to? But the pause continued on.

Sensing my discomfort Sora jumped to the rescue…

"Well if you don't see him around at least now you know where he lives!"

…or not.

Olette laughed as politely as possible whilst trying to figure out which was the front door. Cloud jerked a thumb in the right direction. "The exit is there."

Did I imagine the slightly longing tone in his voice? I must have, I'm sure Cloud adores every minute he gets to spend with us.

I managed to work up enough chivalry to get off the couch – by which I mean Sora pushed me off – and walk her to the door, and even say goodbye with a fair level of friendliness and without sounding overly cheerful at the thought of her departure. Or I thought I had until I shut the door behind her.

"You're a bastard, Rox." Sora admonished.

"What? Why, what did I do?"

"See what I mean? Like being clubbed by a caveman." Cloud declared matter-of-factly, rising and heading towards the kitchen, clearly mentally debating whether to eat more cereal or put the box back in the cupboard.

"I hope you're better behaved when you get them into bed than when you kick them out." Sora frowned.

"It's very unlikely." A voice said and I glanced over to the stairs to see Namine hovering midway up with a joking smile on her face. She could have been stood there since before I woke up for all I know – she moves like a ghost. "I heard him being quite unpleasant to some boy the other night and they still ended up in bed together."

I shot Namine a tense look whilst my brain clamped down on my mouth before the words 'shut up and die' could slip out. It's hard to be mad at Namine; I don't think she has any ill-intention in her. I told her to fuck off once when we were eight and she cried – Demyx punched me in the face though, I learnt my lesson.

"Two in one week? Roxas you dog." Sora laughed, and I felt my shoulders drop as I relaxed.

While my family knows about my frequent 'night-time-visitors' – if you're asking Demyx – or 'victims' – if you're asking Cloud – I tend to get the males ones out of the house before anyone notices his lack of breasts; because knowing of my sexual preference – or lack thereof – and witnessing it are very different things. And if my family were to witness it then we might have to talk about it and we all know that would be uncomfortable. More than uncomfortable, like…uncomfortable times three…or something.

Not that it should surprise me that Sora is ok with it since he has that…thing with Riku that he likes to pretend we don't know about, and Namine told me outright that she knew when she found the stack of Jane Austen books under my bed. Demyx spends too much time talking about nothing to notice anything that goes on, and Cloud is Cloud and he knows everything anyway and accepts it without changing his expression. Plus it only occurred to me that I didn't have to limit myself to girls when Cloud was seventeen and I was thirteen and caught him making out with the Black haired, blue eyed boy next door.

I snapped out of my thought process and grunted in reply to Sora as Namine went to the kitchen to look in the fridge and Cloud watched me evenly for a minute.

"You don't really need help for this, do you Roxas?" He asked and there was a slight amount of concern in his voice.

I returned his gaze steadily for a few moments, thinking. It was worrying, how frequently I'd been waking up with someone else in my bed and having little memory of how they got there and little memory of whom they even were. The only consistency seemed to be that it tended to happen after I'd been in the night clubs, not every time, but increasingly often.

I rolled my eyes at Cloud in the end. "Cloud, I'm not the first person in the world to drink too much and get laid." I smirked a little, "Maybe you should try it sometime."

Cloud threw the cereal box at my head.

**

The Usual Spot is a coffee shop that sits on the corner of Main Street and the short, unnamed road that leads to The Square. It has two walls of windows to allow customers to watch the pedestrian traffic and in the back corner is a set of metal stairs that lead into what was once a basement but now is used as a gallery, displaying the works of Twilight Town's young artists. The walls feature artwork by students of Hollow Bastion College, and I'm usually proud to note the majority of them are Namine's – though this could be due to my blatant favouritism. The Usual Spot sits opposite Blue Sitar, the music shop, and between Ancients, the second hand book store, and Orgy, the organic fruit and vegetable shop (and trust me you wouldn't believe how disappointed Sora and I were to first walk into a shop named Orgy and find ourselves staring at apples as far as the eye could see).

The Usual Spot is pretty well named, since half the community of Twilight Town comes in at some time or other, and we have so many regulars I find it hard to keep track of them – despite the lectures on how I'm supposed to smile my best little smile at any one who comes in on a daily basis. But for all its reputation and busy flow of customers there is still a point during the day when the place just dies.

And that is usually the time that – with the exception of Friday, well known as Pretend-to-clean-the-coffee-machine Day - I pull out a book, wander over to the nearest couch and coffee table cluster – because tables and chairs are for restaurant and coffee is best appreciated when reclining in the luxury of a sofa – and put my feet up until holding the book in the air over may face as I lay back against the cushions and waited for the next drabble of customers comes wandering in at around five o'clock.

Which is why, when three fifty-three rolled around and I'd been deep into a book with my mind off in the seventeenth century England I almost didn't hear the small bell jingle as the door opened. Well, I say almost didn't hear, to be honest I definitely didn't hear it and five minutes later a figure stood beside me politely clearing his throat.

I jumped the smallest amount but will never admit that out loud, and glanced up, trying not to show my surprise. The only people who ever come in at this time of day are Sora and Demyx who tend to come in for coffee on their break; but I knew for a fact that Sora would be sat next door in Ancients organising shelves and Demyx would be over the road in Blue Sitar singing along to music and pretending to work.

I saw the top of a head and trained my expression into a bored stare as I lowered my book enough to make eye contact. Schooling my expression turned out to be superfluous because the man stood before me had his eyes glued to the book in my hands.

"Sexing the Cherry?" He asked with a quirked eyebrow.

I snapped the book shut and sighed a little as I sat up and got to my feet, walking behind the counter and putting the book down in its usual hiding place. "Can I get you something?"

"You were reading a book called Sexing the Cherry?" The guy asked and I took a moment to take him in. Tall, pink hair tied back in a scruffy ponytail and the jeans and paint stained, long-sleeved tee that were characteristic of the art kids around town. I recognised him as one of the regular contributors to The Usual Spots personal art gallery. Mar something – although I knew this from seeing the name under the artwork he brought in rather than from any sort of interaction. Our relationship until this point had been strictly coffee names on his part and corresponding prices on mine.

"Yeah. Would you like some coffee?"

"You know that's a girl's book?"

"I wasn't aware books had genders."

"If they did, that one would be female."

"And you know because?"

"I know because I've read it."

"So we're both women, great. Now order a coffee."

The pink haired guy grinned slightly and asked politely for two black coffees, a caramel macchiato and a hot chocolate all to go. I tried very hard not to glare at him but turned my back on him completely whilst I worked the coffee machine. When I eventually did turn back around he was leaning against the counter watching me with a small smirk tilting his lips. I put the coffee on the counter; he slid the munny towards me.

"See you around." He smiled pleasantly but didn't entirely manage to hide the smirk that was making me a little nervous.

"Yeah, bye." I responded emptily as I watched him cross the street – to make sure he was definitely leaving – and stop beside a blonde girl and a guy with insane red hair before all three went into Blue Sitar.

Content that he was gone, I went back to my book.

Roxas is a walking contradiction. I know this better than anyone because not only am I his brother but I am his twin brother – and as we all know twins come with certain magical attributes, like telepathy and the ability to jump ravines in a single bound.

True story.

Ok, maybe it was a small gorge.

Or a pot-hole, but it really depends who you ask and – just so you know – Roxas is a liar.

But the point of this was not the minimum measure of a hole for it to qualify as a ravine. The point is that while Roxas as a child was the quiet boy that spent most of his time clutching my hand – in a manly way – and refusing to interact with the other kiddies, he has grown up into an intelligent and charming delinquent…who still refuses to interact with the other kiddies, though I put this down to Cloud's bad influence.

The thing about Roxas is that his name is most often heard as a tired sigh emitted by some sort of authority figure – because if the science lab is on fire, the staff's cars are all missing or the neighbourhood plants have been replaced by cacti; you can guarantee Rox was behind it. He once punched a guy in the face for accidentally knocking me over and his social skills verge on non-existent, because no matter what he says a skateboard is not a living being.

Having said all this Roxas is also one of the most thoughtful people I know, he thinks more than anyone else in the house, although with Demyx that isn't exactly a challenge, and he could probably quote entire scenes of Romeo and Juliet. Not that he ever would. And we would never ask him to because none of us know about his 'secret' love of romance. Right. And me and Cloud have definitely never giggl-chuckled in a masculine tone over the collection of extremely feminine books he keeps under his bed in place of the playboys any self-respecting teenage boy has.

But to be honest I love Roxas as he is, his don't-give-a-shit attitude and quiet genius is what makes him Roxas. So it worries me when he starts acting like…well not-Roxas. An Anti-Roxas if you will. More than a Riku but not quite a Tidus.

Ok, maybe not that extreme. But whilst Roxas loves dancing like a fool in clubs as much as the next Strife he doesn't usually indulge in the part where you get drunk off your face and go home with the nearest living-breathing person. Unlike Tidus. Thus my comparison.

And as his twin I know that this is bothering Roxas just as much as it's concerning me – which is why when he says he doesn't think there's a problem, I know very well that my dear brother is lying.

Pink haired guy came back the next day, at roughly the same time, and I gave him a suspicious glance from where I had been staring out of the window congratulating myself on waking up alone, he shot me a cheerful smile and sent me a wave, I shot him a glower and sent him the cold shoulder; then I ignored him until he'd chosen his coffee.

"Marluxia."

I didn't move from the sofa, just dragged my eyes away from the sky to shoot him a bland look because that was definitely not the name of a coffee.

"My name is Marluxia," He clarified, standing hesitantly between my sofa and the counter. He said it with a gentlemanly tone, the kind you put on to be extra polite and I wondered if he was taking the piss out of me and my set-in-the-seventeenth-century book.

"Are you going to order a coffee?"

Marluxia sighed and moved back to the counter to stare at the lists of products. After a few minutes he cleared his throat and I rose reluctantly from my warm soft spot and went to pour a black coffee a hot chocolate and a caramel macchiato before I watched him cross the street and meet the blonde girl from yesterday. And just like yesterday the two pushed open the door to the Blue Sitar and went inside; only this time Marluxia paused on the threshold and glanced back at me over his shoulder and I tried very hard to look like I wasn't watching him.