Archive of Our Own

It starts out like normal.

Which isn’t to say it’s a good thing, the normalcy. If anything, it’s pretty terrible by just about everybody’s standards. If it wasn’t normal he might be dreaming of laughing with his friends or going to Disneyland or fighting monsters and being a hero.

Normal for Sora means nightmares, plain and simple. And the nightmares are normally the same. He’s here, living life, existing, but suddenly he’ll remember in that fuzzy blurry way that dream logic seems to churn in that he has a twin. And even without saying anything, without looking around for him at all, he’ll know that in this dream world Roxas doesn’t exist. He can feel it, or rather it’s the lack of feeling that lets him know.

It’s usually that feeling that wakes him up; a soft edged aching in his chest that he’ll find himself rubbing at through his shirt before his bleary eyes are even able to pry themselves open. This morning is no different.

He opens his eyes, fingers twisted in the fabric of his shirt, and quietly moves until his head is craned over the edge of the top bunk and he can see Roxas sleeping in the bed below with his arms bent in an odd position and his hair sticking to the side of his face. It’s only after he sees him that Sora bothers to wipe away the dampness from his eyes, letting out a slow breath to ease the fading ache.

It was only a dream, so it’s fine.

Roxas is still here, so it’s fine.

Sora isn’t alone, so it’s fine.

It’s fine.

He rolls over on his side and shoves his face none too delicately into his pillow. He doesn’t fall back asleep.

~

He should’ve taken the start to his week as some sort of indicator for how things would be going.

Instead, he’s sitting on the beach with his back up against a palm tree while Riku and Kairi stand a few feet ahead, watching the way the descending sunbeams glitter and refract off the uneasy ocean.

There’s a strange tugging somewhere in the back of his mind, one that’s telling him something is a little off here. Maybe it’s because when he looks at Kairi, a little shorter with her hair cropped closer to her chin, and when he looks at Riku, a fair bit leaner, almost lanky, he thinks they might look a little younger than he remembers them being. He runs his tongue against teeth only to find them bare and he thinks he might be a little younger, too.

Not that it matters. He pushes the feeling even further into the back of his mind.

“There’s probably a lot out there,” Riku says with a strange unfamiliar distance in his voice. The tugging feeling comes back from where he put it and pushes itself to the front of his thoughts.

“We should see what’s out there,” Riku continues. Sora wonders if his friends’ backs have always looked like those of strangers. “We should leave here.”

It somehow doesn’t seem like the worst idea. “I bet Roxas would come with us,” Sora says with a smile, unfazed by the higher lilt to his voice, but bothered by the thoughts that follow. “I’d miss Dad and Pa, though. Not that they’d let us go, anyways.”

“Who?”

There’s a cold dread that snaps his spine straight, his smile falling as he looks up at his friends’ faces that are finally looking at him. “W-what?” he manages despite the feeling of wrongness all around him. He tries to smile again, but he’s not used to having to force it and the tenseness of his cheeks adds to his discomfort.

“Who’s Roxas?” Kairi asks, a slight tilt to her head.

“Dad and Pa?” Riku adds, one brow raising in question.

The tide is getting higher. Riku and Kairi don’t seem notice the water lapping at their calves.

Sora falters, hands grabbing at the tree to try to help himself stand. His body feels heavier than before, but that’s low on his current list of priorities. “What are you guys talking about?” he questions back, a breathless sort of laugh escaping with the words. He thought they knew better jokes than this. “They’re my family.”

He doesn’t like the look Riku and Kairi exchange, the kind that says they know something he doesn’t.

“Quit messing around, Sora,” Riku sighs as he crosses his arms.

Sora blinks a few times, turning to Kairi. There’s a sinking feeling in his stomach at the guilty look on her face.

“You’re an only child, Sora,” Kairi says and even though her lips are turned up it doesn’t look like much of a smile. “You live with your mom.”

There’s a panic welling up inside him, but before he can protest he feels the world give out beneath him.

He gasps as his eyes shoot open and there’s still a panic as he tries frantically to move his limbs only to find he barely can. It takes a few seconds, but soon enough his eyes adjust to the darkness and his body stills as he stares up at the ceiling.

“Just a dream,” he mumbles to himself.

He blinks a few more times before looking down to find the source of his problem. Or the movement one, at least. He must have been tossing and turning a lot because his blanket is tangled all around him, locking him tight in its fabric prison. He pulls it away and sighs in relief now that he’s able to properly breathe again. He rubs his eyes and leans over to see if Roxas is in bed (he is) then squints to look at the clock. 1:42am.

He flops back down on his bed and lets his eyes wander from the roof to the walls to the window until his eyelids finally slide shut again. He hopes he’ll fall asleep for at least a little while before he has to get up for school.

His hopes are thoroughly unanswered. It’s something that he was a little grumpy about around five in the morning, but now it’s almost eleven and he’s barely awake. It doesn’t help that this period is Vexen’s class of all things, the teacher’s voice droning enough on a good day when he’s wide awake, but now it’s nearly impossible for him to keep his eyes open and any amount of focus he had left him entirely about an hour ago.

The next thing he knows there’s someone shaking his shoulder and he’s peeling his face off his crossed arms to look up and see who it is.

When he looks up, Kairi pulls her hand away so she can prop both of them on her hips. She tries to look cross, or maybe even exasperated, but it gives way to something more akin to worry when they make eye contact.

Sora yawns, so she rolls her eyes and starts talking. “It’s not like you to just fall asleep in the middle of class,” she points out, a slight frown pulling at her lips. “Vexen even started yelling when he noticed you were sleeping, but he gave up after a minute since you wouldn’t budge. Or maybe he stopped because everyone started laughing when his voice cracked…” she trails, brows furrowing for a second before she shakes her head. “Anyways,” she says and looks back at Sora, that sense of worry clenching in her gut. “Are you okay? The bell rang a couple minutes ago so I can go with you to the nurse’s during lunch if you want.”

Sora blinks a few times. His brain is still a little sluggish from just waking up, but he thinks he’s finally processed the gist of it. His eyes wander around the empty classroom before going back to Kairi. He grins. “I’m fine, don’t worry! I really didn’t think I would fall asleep during class, though… Oh well, it’s all okay since you were here to wake me.”

Now Kairi feels the exasperation. She sighs, “Sora-“

“Really,” Sora cuts in, looking down at his arms, voice going a little softer. “I’m really glad you’re here.”

Kairi’s eyes widen a bit, the worry back in full force. She’s barely opened her mouth when Sora’s head flings back up, looking to her in a panic.

“Wait, did you say it’s lunch?!” he yells a little too loudly. He grabs his backpack and practically leaps from the desk, running to the door. “Come on, come on, Kairi! Riku’s definitely already beat me there!”

She hesitates then nods and grabs her own bag, but Sora is already running down the halls towards the cafeteria. She sighs and fiddles with the star shaped charm hanging from her bag. By the time she sees him again he’s already sitting at a table with their other friends so she gets her own food and sits with them and doesn’t get the chance to ask why he had tears in his eyes when she woke him.

~

He’s not exactly sure where he is, but wherever it is it’s busy. He’s in the middle of a crowd and he keeps getting pushed around and, no matter how hard he tries to push back against them, he’s getting carried away with the flow of bodies. Why did he even come to a place like this?

He looks ahead and he can see it, someone a little bit taller than the rest with a mess of brown hair walking in the opposite direction.

“Dad!” he yells and now he’s really trying to fight against the people coming his way. His arms scramble to push them aside, forcing his body through all the gaps between the bodies as he races forward. “Dad!” he yells again and his lungs burn with the force of it.

He doesn’t turn around.

Sora is almost to him, though, one last push then he’s breaking through an opening. “Leon!” he finally shouts, grabbing his arm to force him to stop walking.

Leon does stop. He stops and for a second Sora thinks he won’t look at him, but then his head turns and he wishes it hadn’t.

There’s a part of him, somewhere, that realizes it’s an awful feeling to be looked at like a stranger.

“Do I know you?” Leon asks coldly, though his tone implies he already knows the answer.

Sora freezes, a broken sort of smile quirking on his lips. “What?”

“We’re gonna be late!”

“How is that my fault?!”

“You spent too long on your hair this morning!”

“I spent the same amount of time as I always do, it’s not my fault that you were already in the bathroom at five!”

Leon sighs as the sound of bickering echoes through the house. He has half a mind to tell them to knock it off, but all it takes is the twitching of his fingers between the newspaper pages for Cloud to zero in on him.

“Let them be,” Cloud says between sips of coffee and Leon sighs again, but listens.

It’s a couple minutes later when the boys are rushing out of their room, Roxas trying to zip Sora’s backpack shut before all of his papers fall out while Sora nabs the two pieces of toast on the table that Cloud made (for them? Possibly) earlier, sticking one in his mouth and holding the other over his shoulder for Roxas to take.

Roxas gives his morning leans to both men at the table, yelling at Sora to hurry up as he heads out the door. (“It’s not a lean, it’s a hug,” Roxas had tried to argue once, but Sora wasn’t having it. “There aren’t even any arms involved!” It was hard to argue with that kind of logic.)

“I’m coming!” he yells back and doesn’t seem to notice Leon wincing at the volume. “Morning, Pa! Bye, Pa!” he says cheerily while wrapping his arms around Cloud’s neck and shoulders.

Cloud winces a smile, patting the arms that have him in a stranglehold. “Morning, Sora. Bye, Sora.” He exhales heavily when the arms leave him and instead wrap around Leon in a similar fashion.

“Morning, Dad! Bye, Dad!” Sora repeats, lingering for half a second longer before pulling away and sprinting to the front door.

“Bye-“ Leon barely gets out, but the door is already slamming shut with a ringing noise ushering in the silence. He sighs once more and rubs at his neck, wondering if it’s just his imagination that Sora’s hug felt tighter than usual.

~

Sora makes it through all his classes in one semi-conscious piece and he even manages to somehow finish his homework, but by the time dinner rolls around he’s struggling to keep his face from falling on his plate, despite the smile on his face. There’s a warm feeling that comes with dinners like this, though. Listening to Roxas talk (rant) about (some very specific members of) drama club or hearing about a strange delivery Cloud had to make or just being told by Leon for the tenth time to not “talk with your mouth full, you’re spitting food everywhere” – there’s a warmth that lingers in his chest even after the dishes are cleaned up and he’s trudging to the bedroom. He almost falls while he climbs up to the top bunk, but he manages to roll onto the bed and he doesn’t think he can move any more than that. He falls asleep half a second later, still thinking that he hopes the warmth lasts until tomorrow.

He opens a door. It leads to a room that’s identical to the last one. He opens another door and steps through, letting it swing shut behind him. He knows it has to be a different room because he just left the last one, but this one looks the same and it feels the same which is the same as the last dozen rooms he’s wandered through. There’s too much white; everywhere he looks, everywhere he goes, everything is white. It’s pristine, it’s sterile, it’s cold. It’s starting to make his head hurt.

He keeps walking, keeps pushing through rooms, and things start to become blurry. He enters one room and moves to another door, but there’s movement out of the corner of his eye. A flash of red. It leaves out the door he just closed.

He runs back to it and he’s pulling the door open just as part of his brain connects that that had to have been Axel, he’s the only person Sora knows with that color hair, and while he might not be Sora’s first pick he’s better than no one and he might know where they are and what they’re doing here and why he’s-

There’s no Axel in the room. The room isn’t even the same as the one he was in before and he knows that for sure because while there might not be an Axel, there is someone else he recognizes.

“Naminé?”

The girl looks up, startled, before turning to face him. The tension drains from her quickly, her face melting into an easy smile. She places her sketchbook easily on her lap, her fingers fidgeting with a colored pencil. “Hello, Sora. I didn’t think you’d be here so soon.”

Sora looks around. There’s not much to this room either, really. The only difference comes from the chair Naminé is sitting in and the pieces of discarded paper on the ground, blots of color on all of them. “Didn’t Axel come through this way?”

She shakes her head.

“Huh…” Sora furrows his brows, unconsciously starting to gnaw at his bottom lip. “Maybe he went to find Roxas.”

“Roxas isn’t here, either,” Naminé says easily, fingers twitching in short pencil strokes over the paper.

Sora starts and runs up to her with a smile, the sudden proximity making her pause in her drawing once more. “Roxas? Then you know where he is, right?” he asks excitedly. There’s a strange pull in him, something telling him he needs to find Roxas soon.

Naminé lowers her eyes, looking away.

“You do know where he is then!” he exclaims, grin widening. “Can you tell me? Please, Naminé?”

She looks up to meet his eyes and there’s something almost… apologetic in her own. “Aren’t you tired?”

“Huh?” Sora’s smile falls a bit, taken off guard by the question.

“I think you should get some sleep.”

“But-“

“I’m sorry, Sora,” Naminé smiles and it looks a bit pained. “But I really think you should get some sleep.”

He can’t protest. He doesn’t know what exactly is happening, but it feels like the room is spinning. There’s no ground beneath his feet and he’s floating and the world is bending slightly almost like looking through a bubble. Maybe he’s in the bubble.

He wakes up, but it’s a bit different than usual. There are no tears in his eyes, no wetness on his cheeks, but there’s a tightness in his chest and he wonders if it’s always been this hard to breathe, if it’s always felt like he’s been trying to push air through more than two lungs. Maybe he has.

Sora doesn’t have many classes with Naminé. Actually, he only has one class with Naminé and it’s the English class he’s walking into right now. He was late the first day, so he had to take one of the open seats near the front and he never bothered changing out of habit, but when he sees Naminé sitting in the back by the windows he doesn’t think much about what he’s doing until he’s sitting at the desk next to her.

She looks surprised for a moment but when Sora flashes her his brightest grin she returns it with a smile of her own and doesn’t question his switch in seats. She’d rather have a friend sit beside her, anyways.

It is a little strange, though, which is why when they’re left to their own devices to finish filling out a vocabulary worksheet she catches herself glancing at Sora’s frustrated form as he chomps at his necklace and tries to pick the right words to fill in the blanks.

“I can help,” she finally says, her own worksheet long done like most of the others. “If you want any.”

“Really?” he asks, eyes bright and face lined with relief. The necklace falls from his teeth and thumps against his shirt. “That would be great!”

She smiles and nods as Sora scoots his desk closer and tries to help him with the work, pointing out the differences between words like “amiable” and “amicable” until Sora figures out the answers on his own. Or, starts to figure it out, at least. She’s not too sure he’s entirely grasping the meanings, but it’s close enough.

There’s still ten minutes left in class, though, and it’s starting to descend into quiet chatter since everyone is done. Naminé takes out her sketchbook from her bag and flips it open, forgetting just how curious her neighbor can be.

“Whoa! Naminé, you’re so good!” he says in awe, marveling at the dramatic shading etched across the page. “You’re really amazing, you know?”

Naminé flusters slightly, staring down at the half done pose practice she had started after tagging along with Roxas to drama club yesterday. It’s not anything special, nothing close to her best, but something about his compliments just make her feel… light. She giggles, covering her mouth with her hand. “Thanks, but this is just for practice. I’ve been using a lot of charcoal in art lately, so I’m trying to practice with it more.”

“Oh, so that’s what it is,” Sora hums, completely invested in the conversation even if he doesn’t know much (anything, really) about art. “I was wondering about that. You used to use more colors, right? Do you not do that anymore?”

Naminé brightens further, smiling. “I do, I do! I just can’t do it much for art assignments, but-“ She leans over to dig through her bag again and pulls out a smaller sketchbook than the one she’s using. She places it on Sora’s desk, flipping the cover open and turning the pages until she’s around the middle of the book. “Colors have just been more of a hobby, recently.”

Sora’s eyes widen and she thinks she might see stars in them as he gawks at the colorful sketches on the pages. He whips his head around to look at her. “These are amazing!” he says with an intense kind of whisper and the quietness of his voice seems more sincere than any of his yelling.

She smiles until her eyes scrunch, warmth spreading through her chest. “Thanks, Sora.” She hopes he sits by her next class, too.

~

There’s an immediate sense of panic. He can’t pinpoint exactly why, but he knows he’s not himself right now. In fact, he has a pretty good idea of who he is. They’re twins, identical twins, and even without seeing he knows that he’s Roxas.

He’s walking around town, but all the streets are deserted except he swears he keeps seeing people out of the corner of his eye and he can hear voices coming from somewhere but he can’t seem to find where. The voices are talking over each other, but he thinks he hears Hayner yelling so he heads in that direction. There’s no one there when he gets to… wherever, though, but then there’s Axel in his peripheries. He whips his head around, but again, nothing.

“You seem confused.”

That’s definitely Naminé’s voice and it’s close by, too. He turns to walk that way, but right when he does he runs full into someone, falling to the ground from the impact. He rubs his shoulder where he hit them, looking up to apologize. “Sorry, I didn’t see you there- Xion?” He looks down for half a second while he pushes himself up and there’s no one there when he looks up.

“Who are you looking for?”

He furrows his brows. Looking for…?

He turns around again, mouth half open to respond before he stops. “Ro… Roxas?” He’s not entirely sure he isn’t looking in a mirror.

Until he gets a firm flick to the forehead.

“I’m not you,” Roxas says with a sigh, shaking his head. He rolls his eyes, “You’re not me, either.”

“Of course I’m no-“ He’s falling and he doesn’t know how he got up here or where the ground is, but he finds out soon enough that it isn’t as solid as he remembers it being. It gives out beneath him, bursting beneath his body that he knows now to be inexplicably his own, and when he lands on something solid he isn’t surprised to find the impact doesn’t hurt.

He stands and he’s in darkness. He’s not even sure what he’s standing on, some sort of pillar maybe, but the space isn’t too big and everything around him is darkness. It’s suffocating.

“Hello?” His voice echoes through the empty expanse.

He’s alone.

Sora jolts forward, drenched in sweat and breathing heavily. His heart is beating so quickly he thinks it might pop out of his chest or maybe his throat and despite his shaking hands and everything else he leans over the edge of the bed to see Roxas sleeping soundly. He sits up, sucking down breaths as he runs his tongue over his teeth and his fingers fumble for the familiar shape of his necklace.

Right. He’s him and Roxas is Roxas. Just a dream. Everyone is where and who they should be. It’s fine.

It’s fine.

Right?

He rubs his blanket roughly over his face, rubbing away the sweat and the tears he knows are there, before falling back against his pillow. He remembers Roxas telling him one time that he’s dreamt he was Sora before and Sora only hopes his brother’s dream don’t leave him feeling like this. There’s not much good that comes from thinking about it, though. He resigns himself to staring at the ceiling while trying to will himself back to a dreamless sleep.

It’s been an hour and he’s thirsty.

He’s been staring at the door for about ten minutes now, silently contemplating if he should get up. He’s exhausted, more so than he ever remembers being, but he’s positive that if he moves any chances of sleeping again are flying right out the window. Then again, what are the chances of him falling asleep if he just keeps lying there?

Taking a deep breath, he does his very best to be just as stealthy as Yuffie taught him to be (she’s much better at it than he is, he’s learning at the moment) as he climbs down from the top bunk and tiptoes out of the bedroom to the kitchen. It’s dark and he’s feeling along the wall in an attempt to save his toes from any unnecessary run-ins with any number of objects in the house and he suddenly feels like he’s trying to get through an obstacle course with the fridge as the goal line.

He manages to get there unscathed, grinning to himself as he pulls open the door for light so he can hopefully fish a cup out of the cabinet without knocking all of glasses over.

“You’re up pretty early, even by your standards.”

His effort almost goes to waste, fumbling the cup as he flinches from the sudden voice and barely catching it before it lands on the counter. He lets out a breath of relief before turning to pout.

Cloud just laughs, a soft chuckle under his breath. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I wasn’t scared!” Sora immediately denies, putting the cup on the counter and crossing his arms.

“Uh-huh, sure you weren’t,” Cloud teases easily before he really takes a look at Sora. He hasn’t missed the growing bags under Sora’s eyes and he definitely isn’t missing how dark they are right now. “Not sleeping well?”

Sora freezes for a tenth of a second, a small blip in his movements that he knows gives him away. He pretends it doesn’t, anyways. “Sleeping fine,” Sora says with a bit of forced laughter, pulling the bottle of apple juice from the fridge and pouring it into his glass. “Just got, uh, bit thirsty, ha ha…” he trails, taking a sip.

Well, he never claimed to be a good liar.

Cloud gives him a look, one with knowing eyes and a raised brow and a half smile that says he should know better than to try a flimsy excuse like that. “You do know that I’m this house’s foremost expert on sleep troubles, right?”

Sora sees the paperback Cloud is holding his place in with a finger and looks at the clock on the oven. 2:43am. Right.

“Come on,” Cloud says, gesturing with his head towards the living room before leaving the kitchen to head there.

Sora could just… go back to his room. Go back to bed, try to sleep. Cloud wouldn’t stop him.

He picks up his cup and follows him into the living room.

There’s only one lamp on, the one closest to the couch where Cloud is sitting. His book is open, but Sora knows he’s not reading it, not yet.

He sits down on the space next to him, his fingers twitching against the condensation already building on the glass. He’s learned quite well over the last week how eerily quiet the early morning can be, but it doesn’t seem to bother him as much now that he’s next to someone else, someone awake. It’s comforting.

Cloud puts his book aside, placing it face down on the arm of the couch so he doesn’t lose his page, before turning his head to look at Sora. “You don’t have to talk about it, whatever’s keeping you up, but you shouldn’t lie about it, either.”

“Sorry, Pa,” Sora mumbles, guilty. It’s not like he wants to lie about it, it’s just… He doesn’t really know. Like maybe saying it out loud will speak it into existence or something crazy like that.

Cloud smiles softly, raising a hand and planting it on Sora’s soft hair before giving it a comforting ruffle. “I’m not trying to make you feel bad. I just want you to know that me and Dad and Roxas, all your friends and family, we’re here for you. You don’t need to lie to us, we want you to be happy. And well rested.”

Sora nods and feels the fingers in his hair slide with the movement. Of course he knows that already, he’s always known that, but hearing it now…

The hand drops from his head when he leans forward, putting the half-filled glass on the ground. He sits up with a long winded groan before he slumps against Cloud, an arm automatically wrapping around his shoulders in a tight half hug that he sudden realizes he needed.

“I’ve been having all these… weird dreams lately. Nightmares, I guess. But they keep waking me up and I can’t fall asleep after ‘cause I keep thinking about them, but then I keep having them and waking up again and they’re just-“ his sentence is broken up by a yawn, one that only reinforces how tired he is right now. “It’s just been hard to get a lot of sleep.”

Cloud rubs his hand in small circles against Sora’s arm. “You wanna talk about ‘em?” He feels Sora shake his head against his shirt. “You wanna watch a movie, then? Since it seems like neither of us will be sleeping any time soon.”

“You don’t mind?” Sora asks just in case, despite wanting to nod in response. “You’re reading and all…”

Cloud chuckles and grabs the remote with his other hand, turning on the television. “Always time to read later, it’s time for you now.”

The hours past more easily now until he has to finally get up to get ready for school.

~

He isn’t himself, he knows that, but he’s not entirely sure who he is this time. It’s a little bit of a relief, for a moment, but then Vanitas appears and he realizes with cold dread that that can only mean one thing.

Oh no.

Oh. No.

“Come on, Ven, move your ass already,” Vani complains, stalking out of the room.

He sprints to a mirror, grimacing when he sees Ven’s reflection in it.

He knows now, without a doubt, that he’s dreaming. That’s the only reasonable explanation for this. Only in a nightmare would he be forced to be Ven.

“Ven!” Vani yells again.

He refuses to let this dream go any further. “We’re not the same,” he mutters to the mirror, scowling when his voice sounds like Ven’s, too.

He takes a deep breath and slaps both hands against his cheeks as hard as he can.

Sora’s eyes open slowly, but still end up glaring at the ceiling. He doesn’t even contemplate it this time, getting out of bed and quietly moving to the living room where he can already see a light on.

Cloud looks up from his book, eyebrows raising when he sees Sora. “Another nightmare?”

“I dreamt I was Ven,” Sora says without preamble, not even trying to hide how thoroughly disgruntled he is at the thought. His nose scrunches when Cloud starts to laugh.

“So, a nightmare then,” Cloud chuckles, unable to hide his smirk.

“It’s not funny, Pa!” Sora whines, leaning on the back of the couch until he flips over onto it, his knees hooked over the top while his heels bounce against the back of it. “That was, like, the worst dream possible! It’s gonna haunt me now forever, I can feel it.”

Cloud hums, still wearing the same smirk. “Mmhmm, sure you can.”

“I mean it,” Sora cries, stretching his arms back until his fingertips graze the floor. “What if all my dreams are like that forever now?”

“The more you think about it the more likely you’ll dream it,” Cloud offers before shrugging. “Probably.”

Sora huffs then deflates. “What do I do then?”

“Stop thinking about it?” Cloud says, chuckling when Sora gives him a pointed look at the obviously unhelpful answer. “I suggest a movie marathon.”

Sora’s eyes widen and sparkle for a moment as he moves in a half-crunch to sit up. “A Disney movie marathon?” he asks in an excited whisper.

And really, who is Cloud to deny him that? “Go pick some out,” he says with a nod, shaking his head to himself as Sora does a clumsy somersault to the floor and goes to find the movies.

It’s almost ten in the morning and they’re halfway through Hercules and Sora only willingly peels both his eyes from the TV and his side from Cloud’s because he hears the bedroom door open. Cloud seems surprised, too, considering they’re both turned around and looking at Roxas once he appears, an incredibly rare sight for any weekend morning.

“A cryptid,” Sora concludes, nodding to himself.

Roxas rolls his eyes, not bothering to look up from his phone while he texts. “I can wake up early too, you know.”

“You can?” Cloud asks in faux astonishment.

“Yes,” Roxas huffs. “Anyways,” he starts, looking at Sora. “Pence just told me that the arcade finally got that new Struggle cabinet to replace the one that broke over the summer. We’re gonna meet up with Hayner and Olette there, you wanna come?”

Sora is on his feet in an instant. “Yes yes yes! I’m gonna invite Riku and Kairi, too, okay?” he yells while running to the bedroom to get dressed.

“Do you have to tell Riku?” Roxas yells back even though he knows the answer. He sighs, plopping down in Sora’s spot on the couch and leaning against Cloud while he plays with his phone. “Morning, Pa.”

Cloud yawns, “Mornin’.”

He scrolls through his notifications for a minute before the sound of the TV catches his attention. He looks up in time to see the Hydra being slain. He blinks a few times before looking down, seeing the stack of movies on the ground. “Movie marathon?” he asks, feeling a bit of confusion.

Cloud hums and rests his head against Roxas’ hair. “It’s been a long night.”

~

“You’re up before Sora?” Leon says in surprise when Roxas walks into the room, brow arched in disbelief.

Roxas huffs under his breath and averts his eyes. “I can be awake,” he reiterates from his point yesterday, despite Leon not knowing about that particular conversation.

“Two days in a row, before noon? Must be a miracle,” Cloud teases, turning a page in his finally-almost-finished book.

“It’s eleven fifty-eight!” Roxas cries, throwing his arm out to point at the clock.

“I was more talking about the Sora not being awake part,” Leon sighs. “Is he sick or something?”

Roxas shrugs, digging some cereal out of the pantry and taking a bowl from the cabinet. “Seemed fine yesterday. Maybe he’s just tired? We did end up going to play laser tag for, like, four hours after the arcade yesterday. I think he was trying to parkour or something in there.”

There’s a slight furrow to Leon’s brows, a sign of worry, but before he can even push his chair out from the table there’s a hand on his shoulder.

“Let him sleep,” Cloud says easily, not looking up from the second-to-last page of his book. “He needs it.”

Leon sighs and goes back to his newspaper, covering Cloud’s hand with his own. “Whatever you say.”

It’s two in the afternoon when Sora finally opens his eyes and he’s more disorientated by the blinding sunlight pouring through the window than anything else. He blinks rapidly, more times than he can count, before a jaw cracking yawn forces its way through his lips. He rubs at his eyes (they’re dry, he notices belated) then stretches upwards, letting his bones pop and settle back into place.

He doesn’t think he’s slept this late since… ever.

Oh.

He slept.

“Finally!” he cheers with a smile, falling back against the mattress. He stays like that for a few minutes, right until the door opens. He rolls over to see who it is.

“Oh, you’re finally awake,” Roxas says in way of greeting, a note of subdued surprise in his voice. “Dad was starting to get worried.”

Sora’s eyes widen and he hops out of bed, landing on the floor with an unnecessary thump.

Roxas snorts, rolling onto his own bed and reaching for his phone charger. “You were really out for a long time, though. Guess you slept well.”

Sora turns around, hand on the door as he pulls it open. He beams brightly at Roxas, “I slept great.”