Over the sky, we are Gemini—attracted to each other.

GEMINI

r o x a s s o r a

At two o'clock in the morning, Roxas woke up to the sound of scraping on the roof.

In the darkness of the attic bedroom he shared with Sora, he could see that the other boy was no longer in his bed—his sheets were pushed back as if he were in a hurry and there was one missing that Roxas recognized as the oversized black and white star-riddled comforter that matched his own. Despite their being sixteen years old, their mother treated them as if they were still nine and bought them matching things, or sometimes things that were completely opposite, like their blankets and their pajamas, which Roxas though was even worse.

Pushing back his own blankets, the blonde tossed his legs over the side of his bed and padded over to the bedroom door, opening it a crack. Outside was completely dark—no light coming up from the kitchen or from the bathroom. Blinking tiredly, the teen closed his door with a quiet click and walked across to the other side of the room where the hatch to the roof was located. And sure enough, it was open and the ladder was still down, indicating that someone was already up there. Sleepy but curious, Roxas climbed the ladder in his pajamas. When he got to the top, he poked his head out to see a person huddled in the star blanket missing from Sora's bed with a book by his side and a telescope in front of his—Sora's telescope that he got on his thirteenth birthday.

"Sora?" Compared to the insulated attic, it was freezing outside, and Roxas wrapped his arms around himself in a futile attempt to retain his body heat. His bare feet pattered quietly of the roof's shingles as he approached. "Sora, what are you doing up at this hour? D'you know what time it is…?"

The brunette huddled in the blanket looked up at Roxas, then out at the ocean, then back up towards the sky. Even though Sora was usually restless and unable to keep still for more than a few seconds, that was an obvious sigh to Roxas that something was definitely up. "What's wrong?"

Sora shook his head. "Nothing. I just had… a dream, and I wanted to see what the stars looked like." He fingered the lens of his telescope for a moment before pulling his hand back under the blanket.

If it were Riku or Kairi, they might've been fooled by his story, but Roxas knew Sora better than anyone else. He frowned. "A bad dream?" He questioned lightly as he prodded his twin over so he could get in the blanket. Sitting next to Sora was like sitting next to a heat pack—Roxas immediately began to get warm again. The brunette wearily closed his eyes. "Yeah, a bad dream." He absentmindedly picked at the band-aid he'd received earlier that day when he'd tripped over a rock hidden in the sand at the beach and skinned his knee up. Sora'd laughed about it then, but Roxas could tell that it really hurt—he could feel his own leg throbbing, as if he'd fallen as well. One of the pains of being a twin, Roxas had shrugged it off. "Anyway," Sora smiled then, poking Roxas in the stomach playfully. "I'm surprised to see you up at all. Usually you won't wake up even if there's a hurricane outside or something."

"I wouldn't sleep through a hurricane…!" Roxas protested quickly. "I always get up early to get ready for school—you're the one who has to have mom come in and beat pots and pans 'cause your alarm can wake everyone else in the house up except you."

"Yeah, well…" Sora attempted to come up with a witty come back, only to waver as he couldn't come up with anything. So he fell back on his usual retort: "W-Well, at least I was born first. I'm the older twin," he said proudly. And to that, Roxas scowled. "You're older by a minute and thirty four seconds. Ninety four seconds…!" Still, he couldn't help smiling, and soon he and Sora was laughing together, their breath making little puffs of smoke in the chilly air.

- - - - -

There was no way of knowing exactly how long Roxas and Sora were up on the roof together. They'd tried to tell by looking at the stars but they quickly gave up on that idea. So they sat out in the starlight (there was a new moon), huddled in Sora's blanket, just being together.

It was Sora who spoke again, first. "Remember that time when we were six or seven and we went to town with mom and we got separated from her at the grocery store?"

Roxas smiled. "Yeah. You cried your eyes out 'cause you thought she'd abandoned us."

"And you held my hand and dragged me all over the store, looking for her—"

"And we found her three isles over, getting our breakfast cereal. She didn't even know we were 'lost'—"

"Yeah, she said she thought we were being good for once and being quiet."

"We were never quiet."

"We were never good!"

"Remember that time mom brought you back that huge bag of candy from the store?"

This time, Sora burst into laughter. "Oh my gosh, yeah! We fought over it 'cause you were jealous—"

"And mom got really mad and took it away—"

"And then you said that you were 'rweally sowwy'—"

"I couldn't pronounce 'R's then…!"

"—and I said it was okay and mom gave us each half the bag each 'cause she was 'soo proud of her little guys~'" Sora pinched Roxas's cheek and the blonde playfully shoved him away, only pull the blanket back around himself when it opened up, draining the boys' collected body heat. When Sora'd stopped giggling, they lapsed back into a comfortable silence again for a long while. Then, "I dreamed that I was in this… dark place. I was all alone and I couldn't see anything and I was freaking out. All of a sudden, this huge black thing came and tried to swallow me up." Sora swallowed hard and paused before he continued. When Roxas looked over, Sora was paler than usual, and where their skin touched at their shoulders, Sora was clammy despite the cool weather. His big, blue eyes constricted to tiny black dots, and Roxas felt a chill run through him that was totally unrelated to the weather.

"When I looked up, you were there, Rox. You were looking right at me, but when I tried to call your name to get you to come and help me, nothing came out, and you turned around and walked away. You walked away, Rox, and I was really scared… just like that time we supposedly got lost at the grocery store. I thought you'd abandoned me."

"Sora, I…" Roxas started, and then shook his head. "Remember what mom told us a really long time ago?" Roxas reached over and picked up a book from the other side of Sora and held it in front of his twin after a quick glance, his finger jabbing at the paper with sweet intensity. "That's Gemini, right? It's twins holding hands—so even when they're apart, they're still two sides of the star sign that runs in the heavens." He lowered the book as well as his eyes pointedly looking down at the garden in the backyard. "… Or… something like that. Anyway, it's just like us. I can't tell you that I'm never going to go away without lying to you, but even if we are apart, we're still going to be twins. That's never going to change."

Sora smiled a little then. "Yeah," he murmured in agreement, but he still didn't look satisfied with his brother's answer. Roxas continued.

"And besides," Roxas continued, a light blush coloring his face. "I don't know about you, but I love my big brother. I wouldn't want to abandon you—who would stop you from terrorizing little old ladies if I wasn't there? It would be a tragedy."

Sora raised an eyebrow. "… I'm only older by a minute and thirty four seconds…"

"Do you want me to help make you feel better or not?"

Sora full-out smiled at that, moving his hand so that his fingers interlocked with Roxas'. "Fine, fine. I suppose I'll be the older twin, even if it is just a minute and a half older," he rested his head on his little brother's shoulder. Roxas attempted to move his twin's hair from poking his in the face, but when it wouldn't lie flat, he settled on just moving it out of the way. "Don't get used to it. I'll allow it for tonight, but when the sun comes up, I'm going to swear up and down that we're the same age 'cause ninety seconds of being an only child doesn't mean you can say you're the big brother."

"Just because it's true—ow!" A loud smack on his arm interrupted Sora's train of thought, and he jumped to his feet in a huff. "You didn't have to hit me—I'm telling mom!"

"You go on and tell her," Roxas retaliated. "It's, like, four in the morning—she's just going to get mad at you for waking her up! You know she was work tomor—I mean, today!"

"I don't care, as long as you get in trouble!" Sora made a wild dash to the hatch in order to close it and trap his brother on the roof, but Roxas followed him and they fought all the way down to their room, as brothers do.

Even if we are apart, yes, we are the two sides of the
Star sign that runs in the heavens. A noon that clatters,
A night that's wistful, too. Over the sky, we are Gemini—
attracted to each other.

10 august 2009 4.15 am

n o t e ;; inspired by GEMINI by Rin and Len Kagamine—yes, the vocaloids. i was listening to the song on my mp3 player while waiting to talk
to my college adviser and this happened. was initially written on a mixture of text messages to myself, spare napkins and my hand and arm.
revised and edited on word three whole days later, afh;ak. school starts in 6 days. abrupt ending is abrupt, i know. DX