Yep, my first SoraxRiku fanfiction. Go easy on me. It's very OOC. ; Sorry folks. Also, There will be a little SoraxSeifer pairing in the begining, (slap me now), but it won't last. I promise.

Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't even own the game Kingdom Hearts 1or 2, so back off!

That's Just Life

A Wonnykins Production

Chap 1: New Boys In Town

"Roxas, don't you dare drop that, ya! All my pictures are in it!"

"Well, why don't you carry it, then? It's heavy!" Blonde Roxas Oceanic glared at his older, red-headed brother. Wakka, said brother, rolled his eyes.

"Because I've got something already and it isn't that heavy, ya. Work out more, Rox." He hefted a large cardboard box onto his shoulder, shifting another under his arm. "If we hadn't moved, we wouldn't have had to do all this anyway, ya..." the red-head turned his gaze onto another boy coming out of the house. This one had cinnamon colored locks, and large, deep blue eyes like the rest of his brothers.

The boy grabbed a box by Roxas's feet, not saying a word. Roxas nudged him in the ribs playfully.

"Hey, perk up, Sora. It's not so bad."

The boy, Sora, looked up, forcing a weak smile before going back into the house.

Wakka shook his head. "He hasn't been himself since we left the islands, ya. Maybe you should talk to him, Rox." He started towards the house as well.

Roxas growled. "What? Just because we're twins doesn't mean we're best friends, you know." He sighed heavily, picking up the box with Wakka's pictures in it again. He, too, headed into the house.

The Oceanics had moved from Destiny Islands just recently. Liota Oceanic, the boys' mother, had been offered a very nice position at a large company in Hollow Bastion. Her and her four sons, Wakka, Roxas, Sora, and Tidus had all packed up to go. She was excited. Her boys were not.

"My team needs me, ya! They can't play in the tournament if I'm gone!" was Wakka's argument.

"My friends are all here! I'll never see them again!" was Roxas's.

"But what about my teacher, Mrs. Leonhart? She said she'll miss me, momma!" Tidus had squeaked. (A/N: Aerith Leonhart, to be exact. XD)

Ms. Oceanic had seen it coming. She knew boys well. However, something troubled her. While her other three boys complained and hemmed and hawed, she heard nothing at all from the usually talkative Sora. This bothered not only her, but Sora's brothers, too. In fact, Sora hadn't spoken a word to anyone after his mother told them they were leaving the Islands. Not even his closest friends heard a sound from him. He said nothing about how he wanted to stay, but nothing about wanting to go, either. The most they could get out of him was 'Yeah', or 'No', or, if they were lucky, 'Maybe'. Mostly, though, all he said was 'Hm'.

The house they had moved into was nothing like their lovely beach house back at the Islands. This one had grass instead of sand. There was a side walk and a street with other houses on either sides instead of the ocean blue waves that looked like the family's eyes. While Sora and Roxas no longer had to share a room, all four of the boys had had their own bathroom with their rooms at home. Now all of them had to share one. The living room smelled of dog, the kitchen was the dining room, and there weren't any palm trees in the back yard. It gave all of them the feeling of being aliens.

Roxas dumped his cargo into the room Wakka had called, one with a roof jutting out beneath the window over-looking the backyard, and wandered out to get more stuff from the moving van. A blonde whirlwind hurtled into him, and he stumbled backwards.

"Sorry, Roxas!" Tidus, eight, grinned sheepishly from the floor. Roxas, fifteen, just shook his head.

"Be careful, some of this stuff can break, you know. What are you in such a hurry for, anyways, Tidal Wave?" Tidus pouted at his nickname and looked at a box longingly.

"Mommy said she put my blankie and my bunny in a box, and I wanna go ta' bed." He whined.

Roxas sighed, blowing a strand of his straw-colored hair out of his face. "You don't need those ratty things to sleep, now either help me and the others get stuff out or go pitch." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

Tidus stomped his foot. "I can't sleep with out them! I want my blankie!" He started tearing around Wakka's new room, ripping open the boxes and throwing things out of them, desperately searching for his blanket and his stuffed rabbit. "Rox-aaaaaaassss! Help me find 'em, please?" He grabbed the older boy's arm and tugged, giving him his largest puppy eyes. Roxas felt his heart-strings being tugged; Sora used to give him that look all the time before. He yanked his arm away.

"No, now beat it, squirt."

Tidus began to cry. "B-but I w-want my blankie!" He sat down on the floor and wailed. Roxas cringed. His mom would be madder then a swarm of wasps if she heard Tidus bellowing. She was really protective of her youngest, since he had to be the world's biggest cry-baby.

Wakka ran in first. "Aw, Tiddy, what's wrong?" He knelt down in front of the boy, looking worried. Wakka was always the first one on the scene when something wasn't right with his younger brothers.

Tidus sniffled, rubbing his eyes. "I w-want my b-blankie! This new house is s-scary! I wanna go home!" He started crying all over again.

Wakka looked at Roxas. "Help me look for it, ya?"

Roxas shook his head again. "Uh-uh. I'm not wasting my time looking for that smelly rag! We've still got half the truck to unload, Wakka! It's already nine at night! Forget it!" He crossed his arms defiantly. Wakka narrowed his own set of ocean blue eyes.

"Look, the sooner we find it, the sooner he'll be out of our hair, ya. Just look."

"Nope, nothing doing." Roxas replied.

"What's going on?" Liota rushed in, her reddish-brown hair tied back in a bandana like her eldest son, Wakka's, was. She saw Tidus bawling and flew to him, holding him in her arms.

"Tidus, baby, what's wrong?" She asked in a soothing, motherly tone.

"I can't find m-my b-blankie, m-momma." By now, he sounded like he had an awful cold.

Wakka cut in, ranting about how Roxas wouldn't help him find it for Tidus. Roxas yelled at Wakka for being pushy. Liota yelled at them both to stop arguing. The room grew silent, however, when a small voice came from the door-way.

"Here, Tidus. I found it." Sora said softly. He was holding a folded, fuzzy and dirty blanket in his arms.

His siblings and his mother stared in shock.

"Sora, you spoke." Roxas gasped.

Sora was silent. He merely held out the blanket. Tidus squirmed out of his mother's arms and over to his big brother. He took the blanket and popped a thumb in his mouth, something he always did when he was upset or scared. He gazed at Sora.

"Fank-oo, Sowa." He muttered around his thumb. Sora again put on a weak smile and disappeared from the door-way.

Wakka was the first to recover. "Oh my G-did he just?-What just?" He gave up, letting his hands fall limply to his sides.

Roxas frowned. "That's the most we've heard him say in, like, forever."

"I think we should get the rest of this unloading done, fellas." Liota said. She brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. "You've all got your first day of school in a week, and those boxes aren't going to unpack their-selves." She acted as though nothing was wrong, but deep down, she was crying. She felt responsible for Sora's silence. She shook her head and walked out.

Tidus was sucking his thumb still and yawning. Wakka noticed the tired boy and picked him up. "Bed for you, ya."

Tidus snuggled into his older brother's shoulder, mumbling.

When they left, Roxas went to find his twin. He knew he didn't like to be bothered when he was like this, but it had gone on long enough. Roxas saw the look of pain in their mother's eyes when Sora walked away with not so much a sound. It was tearing her up, and Roxas wasn't going to watch that anymore.

Sora was in the room he had wanted, or rather left with. The other boys had chosen their rooms already, so Sora had been stuck with this one. He didn't care very much; he was so artistic he could probably make them have second thoughts after he was done redecorating it. If he was happy enough. Roxas entered the small bedroom, looking at his twin. The other boy was pulling things out of the boxes and setting them around him. He lingered a bit on some things, looking sadder then ever. Roxas felt sorry for his brother for a moment.

He snapped out of his thoughts and cleared his throat. Sora said nothing, but he did stop moving to show that he was aware of Roxas's presence. Roxas settled against the wall.

"You do realize mom's worried about you, right?"

Sora shrugged a little.

"You do see her face when she sees you like this, right?"

Nothing.

"You should. It's heart-breaking." Roxas smirked. He loved doing this. It wasn't that he was mean, it was just that he was good at making people feel the way he wanted them to feel. Right now, he wanted to make Sora feel guilty.

Sora hesitated, then he turned to look at Roxas. Roxas felt the smirk slide off his face. His twin's cheeks were streaked with tears. He had been crying this whole time and Roxas hadn't even noticed.

"I'll bet." was all Sora said. Again, a shock. The brunette turned back to his things.

Roxas sighed. "Look, cheer up. That's all I'm asking, Sora. Really, you need to see mom's face. She thinks it's all her fault. Are you even listening to me!" His twin didn't respond.

Roxas fumed, clenching his fists. "Fine, be that way. The rate you're going, you're going to be worse than Tidus!" He turned on heel and stormed away.

Sora waited until Roxas's footsteps were gone before he got up and closed the door. He sat back down amidst his things and reached into the box in front of him. A leathery flat surface was under his fingertips. Knowing what it was, he grabbed it and hefted it onto his lap. He brushed off the dust on the cover. Pressed into the leather was 'Sora's Pictures'.

Eyeing the door to make sure no one would burst in and yell at him for not helping, he flipped the book open.

The first picture took up the whole page. It was his family. He felt a pang of pain go through him. This picture had been taken when he was nine, around Tidus's second birthday. That was one difference. The other was that there was a man beside his mother.

Wakka, Roxas, Sora, and Tidus's father had been a good man. He always had a game to play with them or a story to share. He was famous for coming home from work and chasing his boys into the waves in his business suit. Family to him always came first. Once, he put off a huge business meeting to go to Wakka's blitzball game. He didn't get fired, because he had told his boss 'He's my son, and that is what weighs in more.'

However, when Tidus was five, about three years ago, their father started to get ill. He had to be put in the hospital. Just three weeks after he was diagnosed with cancer, he passed away. To make the situation even sadder was the fact Tidus had made his father something at school to make him feel better, and walked in looking very pleased only to be told that his daddy was gone. Everyone had their own way of taking the blow. Their mom just cried a lot. Wakka, who was fifteen at the time, actually destroyed part of his room whilst throwing the Blitzball around in blind rage.

Roxas shared a room with Sora at the time, so destroying their room was not an option. Roxas got everyone worried, though. The blonde started cutting up his arms in secret. Wakka found out when he burst in on Roxas just as he was trailing a razor across his mutilated arm. He stopped after that, but they were careful not to make him that upset again.

Tidus was just a pre-school-er, so no one was quite sure what he would do. It turned out that he would wake up in the middle of the night crying and begging for someone to sleep in his room. If no one came, he would fall back to sleep, only to wet the bed and make an even bigger fuss.

Sora went totally silent, almost like now, except he said absolutely nothing. He also took to staying in his mother's room when he went to sleep. Eventually, Roxas said something nasty and Sora started staying at his friend's houses over night, until it was normal for him not to sleep in his own bed. The habit wore off after a while, but he did seem to have nightmares when he slept in his room.

Ever since their father had died, their mom had taken to working late and being overly protective. Slowly, things started to go back to normal. They all still missed their father, but he was gone, they realized, and there wasn't any reason to dwell on it anymore. Now they had moved and left the memory of their dad completely behind. Everyone had forgotten him.

Except Sora.

He gazed at the photograph sadly and sniffed. Things had changed so much. First he lost his father, now all of his friends. He turned a few pages until he came to a picture of a boy with blonde hair, a ski cap, and a sleeveless, long jacket. He was smirking with his hands behind his head. The caption on the left said 'Seifer'. At first, Seifer had been Sora's best friend. After a while, though, it got to be a little more then that. So, Sora had left his father behind, his friends, and, most importantly, a boyfriend who he missed more then anything.

"Hey, I'll call you when you get there." Seifer had said.

"It's not the same, Seifer. I won't see you."

"Then I'll crash at your new place when you don't expect it. How about that?"

Sora had just put his head onto Seifer's chest.

Seifer had stopped smiling and put his arms around Sora. "I'll miss you."

"Same here."

"I love you."

Sora had started to cry. "I love you, too, Seifer. I'll miss you so much..."

Sora snapped the book shut, tossing it somewhere where he couldn't see it. He pulled his knees up to his chest and buried his head in them. "Seifer..."