Title: Fidelity

Pairings: Axel x Roxas, Sora x Kairi, and any other minor ones I decide to throw in.

Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts belongs to Square Enix and Disney, and that's definitely not me.

Warnings include the classically overdone alternate universe Kingdom Hearts cliché, boy love (though you won't be seeing much of it for a few chapters), and Roxas' bad mouth.

Summary: Roxas' love life is...a disaster. He's trapped in a constant cycle of breaking up and making up with his unfaithful boyfriend. Then he moves in with his mother and brother, and Sora takes it upon himself to straightened things out for him. After all, Sora knows what's best for Roxas in the end...right?

Chapter One

Roxas gazed out the window, his stare falling on the robin's egg blue, two-story split-level across the street with a disheartened sigh. His blue eyes continued down the road to the other houses, most of which were perfectly identical, except for a few variations in the shade of pastel they had chosen or the type of flowers growing in their impeccably landscaped front lawns. There was of course the handful of houses whose owners had dared to be bolder than the others, their houses painted a brighter shade of chartruce, or with vibrant pink trim and shutters. Obviously, these were the most hated of the neighbors, because they were lowering everyone else's property value.

"Hey, Rox, how's the unpacking coming?"

He turned to face the body belonging to the voice which had snapped him out of his reverie, his brother Sora. The tone of his question had been sincere, but there was a mischievous- almost taunting- glint in Sora's eyes. Considering that Roxas' three bags were sitting by his feet on the floor, still zippered shut and completely forgotten until that moment, the look was understandable.

Roxas shrugged noncommittally, "I'll take stuff out as I need it. That ought to get it all unpacked…eventually."

"With all the clothes you have? I'd say that'll take until it's time to pack it all away again for college. But on second thought, don't bother taking them all out. You need some new clothes anyway, some that are less hideous than what you currently wear."

"My clothes are not hideous. I mean, look who's talking." Sora wore khaki shorts, and flip-flops, and t-shirts with stupid sayings on them, or stupid sexual innuendos that weren't even all that funny, or all that sexual. When he did wear jeans they were baggy and stonewashed, and he still usually wore his horrible hobo sandals with them. Roxas, on the other hand, preferred girls pants, and black high top chucks, and had his ears pierced (his lobes were 2 gauges, he had his tragus pierced on both ears and a horizontal industrial in his left ear, he would proudly declare when someone asked, or was caught with their gaze traveling from his face to stare dumbly at his ears as they conversed.)

But they both let the argument drop there, having decided a long time ago that fashion was one thing they were never going to agree on. One of many.

Sora loved being outside and going to the beach and playing sports all while spending time with his ridiculously large group of friends and being incredibly friendly and happy. Roxas hated the outdoors- except for when it was raining- and preferred to stay inside by himself and complain about life on his weblog. He went to lots of parties, but those were so crowded with people and a vast majority of those people were so drunk or high that one-on-one conversation simply wasn't necessary and was difficult to obtain anyway. For him conversations, even with his few close friends, were better done with the safety of a middleman such as AIM or a text message on his beloved cell phone. In terms of music, Sora had never really cared much, and simply listened to whatever was popular with everyone else at the given time. Roxas judged his music by the intensity of the bass track behind it, and loved nothing more than the ridiculous system Demyx had installed in the back of his nineteen eighty-something-or-other piece of crap station wagon (those speakers were worth an amount of money much greater than that of the car itself.) Sora liked girls. Roxas liked boys (and girls, too, he had to admit, but he had always been partial to his own kind over the "fairer" sex.) They may have been twins, but they really couldn't possibly be anymore different.

Of course, it hadn't always been like that. But spending twelve years living in what might as well have been two completely different worlds could change people quite a bit.

When they were four their parents had divorced. Their mother had been the perfect wife; she was patient, loving and loyal. Their father, on the other hand had not quite met the good husband standards. He had cheated. They separated, and they realized that it was not economically feasible for either of them to keep both boys. So Sora had stayed in Destiny Islands with their mother and Roxas had moved away with their father.

Destiny Islands' main portion was large by island standards, but it still had that suburban small-town feel. It was full of rich middle-class yuppies who loved to talk about how much their beautiful beachfront property was worth and thought that half the population of the public high school casually smoking pot on the weekends was a huge teenage drug use problem.

But still everybody knew everybody and everybody was nice to everybody. Their mom didn't even bother to lock the door at night, a fact which, when he'd discovered it as a young child, had led Roxas to many a sleepless night at his mother's house. But then he'd gotten older and realized that locked door or not, breaking and entering was just not a problem people worried about in Destiny Islands.

The weather also fluctuated from sweltering tropical sun in the summer to a frigid coastal winter. Sora and his mother seemed to have grown accustomed to the weather, so they didn't own an A/C, and rarely turned the heat above sixty-three degrees in the winter. Sora claimed that the weather wasn't really a problem, because you could just jump in the ocean to cool off during the summer, and bundle up in the winter.

But Roxas hated swimming almost as much as he hated wearing layers.

He had moved to The World That Never Was. This was only the city's nickname, of course, but Roxas couldn't think of anyone he knew that actually referred to it by its actual name (he assumed that the depressing title had come from the cities lack of vegetation and abundance of concrete.) It was a giant city not far off the coast of the mainland, but life there was so completely the opposite of what it was in Destiny Islands. And the only methods of travel to Destiny Islands were either the bridge (and none of his friends owned a car stable enough to be depended for a few minutes on the highway, let alone going over the bridge) and the ferry with its very limited departure times. So even though the city and the islands were no more than ten minutes apart going by car, Roxas felt very isolated from the people and things he was comfortable with whenever he visited his mother and Sora.

That had been every other Christmas, replaced by Thanksgiving on the reverse years, in addition to the occasional long weekend and a few extended visits during the summer. But now it was different.

His mother was now engaged to Anthony, her boyfriend of three years who also happened to be the owner of the most popular restaurant on Destiny Islands (Which Roxas didn't really think was saying all that much, considering the size of the town, but it still made him quite rich.) This marriage was therefore going to make his mother considerably more wealthy, and therefore she now had enough money that she could give in to the guilt she'd been feeling for twelve years at forcing her two sons, twins no less, to be split up. A few months ago she had asked for Roxas to come and take permanent residence with her.

Custody battles were not easy for anyone involved. They required a lot of extraneous paperwork and visits with lawyers and social workers and wore down on everyone's nerves. And that was when they went smoothly. Roxas did not want to deal with the stress anymore than absolutely necessary, and he did not want to hurt his mother's feelings. He didn't think his dad would care. And so he had agreed to the change much easier than he had truly wanted to.

"So, uh, I usually sleep on the top bunk," Sora started after a few moments of silence, during which Roxas had returned to his aimless staring out the window, "But if you prefer that you can take it."

Over the years Sora's bedroom, once Sora and Roxas' bedroom and now so once again, had gone through several evolutions with him. It had gone from a dinosaur theme, to blitzball, and slowly morphed into the plainer blue motif that it currently possessed. But throughout all of the changes the bunk bed that had been there since Sora and Roxas had no longer needed to sleep in cribs had remained up against the wall in it's same corner. And whenever he visited, they had always switched off between the top and the bottom. It had started of course, because little kids always want the top bunk, and it was the compromise their mother had made in order to end their bickering. But as they got older Roxas had assumed it only continued because it was a sort of tradition between them. Apparently, despite being sixteen years old, Sora still seemed to think it mattered.

"No, I don't mind the bottom," Roxas replied, trying to ignore the sexual undertones of their conversation, "Hey, you guys have wireless, right?"

Sora nodded and Roxas grinned triumphantly, grabbing for the case which contained his laptop. He took it out and sat cross-legged on the bed, placing the computer in his lap. It had been a Christmas present from Axel. The jerk. Roxas scowled, if he weren't so dependent on the stupid thing, he would probably chuck it out the window.

But it was a very nice present, and Axel probably spent a long time saving up the money to buy it, He thought with a pang of guilt. Axel was always so good to him; maybe he just needed another chance. Roxas called up AIM. He really wanted to talk to Larxene about this. But he'd barely had time to even scan his buddy list for her username when another message window popped up on the screen.

Dancing flamesVIII: Hey, baby

For some reason, that sent Roxas over the edge. All thoughts of guilt and forgiving Axel were forgotten and replace by the anger he'd been previously experiencing, tenfold. With a vehement growl he closed out of his instant messenger without even replying, and slammed his laptop shut.

Sora had taken a seat on the floor, and now needed to look up slightly to make eye contact with Roxas, he cocked his head to the side a bit, "What's wrong?" Roxas just glared at him.

And then, the monophonic sounds of Sandstorm came blasting out of Roxas' pocket.

Roxas knew who was calling him, but force of habit caused him to pull the phone out of his pocket and check anyway. Axel. He tossed the phone down on the bed, and covered it with a pillow to stifle the unwanted noise. It finally stopped, and thirty seconds or so later there was the familiar beep indicating that he had a new voice message. He picked the phone up, intending to delete the message without even listening, when it began to ring again. Axel again, that persistent asshole. Roxas moved to hit the ignore button, but his thumb stopped mid motion, hovering over it. For some reason he could not fathom, he was feeling compelled to answer the call.

Sora watched his brother's strange behavior curiously. It was clear that Roxas was absolutely furious about something. And he was having what looked like an extreme mental battle with himself over answering the phone. Finally, he seemed to give in and picked it up.

"Hello?"

Hey baby, what's up? Sora was able to pick up from the other end of the conversation.

"Oh, cut the bullshit, Axel."

Sora shuddered a bit. Roxas' tone was dangerous. Very dangerous. He'd sounded somewhat unsure when he had answered the phone, now he just sounded livid. At that point the conversation escalated very quickly, and Sora could only clearly hear half of it.

"Don't give me that, you know full well what happened. And I know what happened. Larxene told me." Sora was starting to worry, he didn't know if he should try to comfort Roxas, or keep himself out of the conversation, since he didn't really know what was going on and it wasn't any of his business. He could see tears welling up in Roxas' eyes, and his brother was shaking with the effort to hold them back.

"You're sorry? You can't be serious! You cheated on me Axel! Again."

There was a lot of mumbling coming from the other end of the line, and Sora assumed it was some sort of shitty excuses, although he couldn't hear exactly what was being said. Roxas rolled his eyes, and one lone teardrop escaped and rolled its way down his cheek. He wiped it off with such force that Sora was surprised the skin of Roxas' cheek didn't go right with it.

"I don't even want to hear it. You're wasting my time, I'm hanging up!"

No you're not. The statement was rather pompous, but Axel also seemed to be correct. Roxas' voice was quavering a bit now, and he made no move to pull the phone away from his ear.

"You're just…UGH! I can't…Demyx! He's your best friend for Christ's sake! I didn't even know he liked guys!"

There was silence for a few long seconds until, and Sora could practically hear the smirk in the guys voice as he said it, Heh…he doesn't.

That did it; the tears unleashed themselves. Roxas was full out sobbing now, and Sora wondered if he had done it on purpose, timed it for dramatic effect and guilt factor. From the way they were both behaving, it didn't seem as though it was the first time they'd had this argument.

"Wh-why do you do this to me? I'm s-so g-good to you, and all you ever do is…is fuck me over!" He had to stop for a few choked intakes of breath, "or m-more like fuck someone else! I h-hate you!"

"No…s-stop it! Don't t-tell me I don't mean it, I know what I…d-do and don't mean. We're over, Axel. And I mean it."

Sora heard a lot of frantic chattering from the other end of the line, but Roxas seemed to have found his resolve. He pulled the phone away from his ear, allowing Sora to hear awe, come on ba- before Roxas shut it rather forcefully.

Silence descended heavily upon the room, with the exception of Roxas' occasional uncontrolled chokes and spluttering. Sora tried to let it go, he really did. He wanted to sit down next to his brother and give him a hug and comfort him without saying anything, but Roxas was not a very huggy person, and Sora was afraid of just approaching the bed with all the bad vibes Roxas was emitting. His best bet, therefore, was to just sit there and not do anything, and more importantly not say anything, because he knew Roxas, and knew that he was very pissed, and was going to be very easily set off at this point. But unfortunately Sora really hated awkward silences, they made him extremely uncomfortable, and he'd never really been good with keeping his mouth shut. And as much as he knew that as soon as he opened his mouth he would regret it, he did anyway, "So…boyfriend troubles?"

Roxas made some sort of horrible, animalistic sound from deep in his throat, and cocked his arm to chuck his cell phone at Sora's stupid face, but exacted just enough self-control to stop himself right before its release. His cell phone was very expensive. Sora's head was very hard. Therefore, throwing his cell phone at Sora's head would be a very bad idea. Instead he grabbed a pillow and hurled it at Sora with enough force that he could be confident it would hurt just as much as if he were hit smack in the face with the small, plastic device. Judging by the strangled yelp that Sora let out, he felt that he had been successful.

"Boys!" Their mother called from downstairs, "Is everything alright up there?"

Both Roxas and Sora let out a simultaneous groan.

TBC

A/N:After at least a year's absence from the site I have returned with a brand new account! Not the most original way to return, since I've posted this on livejournal already for a while now, but that also means I've got several chapters done, so fast updates for a while at least. I appreciate reviews from everyone, compliments or otherwise, but I am not inclined to beg for them, so do so at your own discretion I suppose.