Author's Notes – I'm still chugging along although school's been putting a serious wrench in my plans. But in any case, this getting to be so much fun to write! Well...not like it wasn't before, it's just that sometimes you hit a few dry patches.

Oh, and I just realized something. I sort-of referenced a line from the game in Chapter 42 without noticing it. In the game when everyone's at the orphanage and Squall's in his own little world he thinks, 'We had a lot of arguments at first. But in time, things began to change,' and in the chapter he says to Rinoa, "Things...change Rinoa." I know it's not the same but I still feel like it's a loose reference considering it gives off that same kind of feeling, you know? Ah, whatever.

-—-—--—-—--—-—--—-—-

Chapter XLV – Dishes and Discussions

-

As the sun goes down in front of me,
It reminds me of where I want to be,
With you and you alone,
Pull me in like you were made for me,
I'm losing faith in gravity,
I just need to let you know,
And I just need to let you know.

-David Cook, Heroes.

-

After finishing the remains of the wonderfully-prepared meal by the currently-absent chef, Rinoa pulled out her chair and picked up her plate and utensils to put in the dishwasher. She would have taken Squall's too, but he wasn't quite done. She'd have to make a second trip for him.

"You don't have to do that. I'll put them all away later." he said as she was passing by. She turned to face him and set what she had on the corner of the table.

"The least I can do is put these away in the dishwasher. You had to clean up earlier."

"No, that's the thing. Our dishwasher's broken. Something's jammed and the door won't open. I have to hand-wash everything later."

"Oh ho, thought you'd let that one slip past me, huh?"

"You came here as a guest, you're not supposed to be put to work."

"Yeah, but that's for normal guests. Girlfriends are supposed to help her boyfriend's parents when it comes to stuff like that and vice-versa. It's like a test."

"Rinoa, neither of them is here. I'm not going to make you do that."

"I still want to help though."

"It's fine Rinoa, honestly."

"Alright then." she said with an overly-dramatized sigh. "I guess I'll have to kill time by looking at some albums while you're doing dishes. Who knows? Maybe I'll find a few embarrassing bathtub photos."

Squall gave her a smug look. "Nice try, but you won't be able to find them by the time I'm done."

"I guess I just need a head start then."

She started tip-toeing away with a huge smile on her face, just waiting for him to reconsider and try to catch her. Once she was out of the room however, he still hadn't moved an inch. Figuring that there wasn't enough incentive to go after her, she speed-walked down the hallway and loudly scurried up to the top of the stairs. When that still wasn't enough, judging by the lack of noise, she walked down the hallway, passed a bathroom on the left, followed the rightward bend, passed two doors and eventually went into the only room with its door open at the end of the corridor. Standing smack-dab in the middle of the room, keeping the door open, she took a deep breath, preparing herself for what she was about to belt out next.

"Oh wow, would you look at that! I found an album already! I think I'm going to look through it!"

…And only the imaginary crickets heard her.

But it didn't really matter because there really was an album on a nearby dresser — a mint-green one with accentuating pale yellow stripes and the title 'Family Photos' emblazoned on the cover to be exact. After lifting the cover and seeing that the first six plastic slots were all filled with pictures of a newborn baby in a hospital with a full head of chocolate-brown hair, it was obvious that it was his.

Boy, for someone who was so certain that she wasn't going to find an album; he sure hadn't done his homework, especially since he had even said that there was a likely chance that at least one of them was going pull out some baby photos.

As ironic as the situation was, Rinoa knew that it wouldn't be right to look at them without any permission so she closed the cover and quietly walked out of the room. After walking past the winding corridor and descending the stairs, she could hear the tap running in the kitchen from the base of the stairs. She quietly walked a little further, poked her head into the kitchen and saw that he had his back turned, watching the hot water cascade into the sink and the foam rise from the dishwashing liquid, the telltale evidence of their meal piled to the right of the sink. There was a fair deal of plates, pots, dishes and cutlery stacked on the side.

She walked up to his back and, without any rational reason whatsoever; while standing on the tips of her toes, she looped her arms around his neck.

"Guess what I found." she teased.

She could feel him shrug. "…The imaginary photo album you were shouting about?"

"Nope. A real one."

"…Right."

"No really, I did. The only page I looked at had pictures of you in the hospital. You already had a full head of hair."

"I'm still not convinced. Anyone could have guessed that."

"There's a photo where Ellone's holding you on your mother's hospital bed with an ear-to-ear smile on her face. You can see your father wearing khaki shorts and a pale-green shirt, talking to a dark brown-haired lady in an orange floral-print dress in the background."

This statement got his attention; she could feel his hands undoing her interweaved fingers and afterwards, she could see the front of his body clearly; he'd turned around. He had shut off the tap before answering her though.

"…Where did you find this?"

"In the very last room in the upstairs hallway, it was the only room with an open door. I saw a mint-green and pale yellow striped album on top of a dresser but I only lifted the cover because it said 'Family Photos' on it. I didn't move it."

He sighed. "…I can't believe you found that."

"Well…to honest, I was just trying to tease you earlier. But I guess the album ending up finding me instead." she admitted. "But for what it's worth, you were a cute newborn."

He turned back around and started running the water again, staring at the sink.

"Hey…you're deflecting my compliment!"

He looked back at her. "…There's no reason to comment on what you said Rinoa."

"Actually…what you're supposed to do is say thanks and look all awkward about it."

He sighed. "…Thanks, I guess."

"There you go. Now was that so hard to do?"

"Yes, it was." he sarcastically replied. She lightly punched him in the arm.

"Quiet, you." she light-heartedly chided. "Move over. I'll dry, you wash."

He gave her a look. "…I hope you know that you're being stubborn."

Rinoa smiled. "If it'll get you to not do this all by yourself, then it'll be worth it."

He moved over and turned off the tap; the height of the foam was almost level with the top of the sink. After dunking in as much as he could fit into the water, he used a nearby scrub to remove all of the stuck-on bits, took each individual item that he cleaned from the water and placed it into the other side of the sink's divide for Rinoa to rinse off the suds and dry them. This process was mostly done in silence.

Then, seemingly out nowhere, Squall broke that aforementioned stillness.

"…My mom must really like you."

Rinoa placed the last dish she had dried on the counter and looked at him. He'd stopped washing too.

"What makes you say that? Does it have to do with me finding an album out in the open?"

"That particular album you found…it's normally at my grandmother's house."

Rinoa blinked. "…So you're saying that it's not even one of the seven albums you were talking about?"

"Yeah. This is the one my grandparents had for the photos my parents gave them or the ones they took themselves. It has less baby photos but it spans further than the ones in the seven here."

"Oh…wow. How far does it go up to?"

"I'm almost certain that it goes up to the day I turned eighteen." he answered. Rinoa's eyes widened.

"It doesn't have…what happened, does it?"

"That…would be a lot for a relatively-new girlfriend to learn through a photo album. I think my mother would have taken out any photos alluding to that at my grandmother's house."

Rinoa blinked. Questions were filling up the empty space in her brain by the second. "So…your grandma knows you had a baby? ...And they took photos?"

He tersely nodded. "My grandmother and mother know because they were there at the time when I'd received the call from the hospital. Ellone…suspects something happened but she isn't sure and my father has no clue altogether. He was out of town for the entire week." he began to explain. "And as much as I objected to it…my grandmother took a photo of her and another of the both of us. I was so out of it that day, I didn't even realize that she'd taken it."

Rinoa bit her lip. "…If I were in that situation, Hyne, I wouldn't know what I'd do with those photos or how angry I'd be for those being taken."

"I wasn't happy then, but...looking back, I can't blame my grandmother for taking it. ...She was her first great-grandchild."

"And...was that your mom's mom?"

"Yeah. She's the only one left. Both grandparents on my father's side had already passed away before I was born."

"I'm in that situation too for both sides of my family. I never knew any of my grandparents." she commented. "I don't have any cousins either. My mom's an only child and my two uncles on my father's side never had any kids. You have cousins on your dad's side, right?"

He nodded. "I've got two."

Remembering something from quite awhile ago, Rinoa decided to play psychic for kicks.

"-And both of them are girls." she added.

He gave her a look. Bingo. "...You're going to have to explain how you knew that."

"I'm psychic."

"No, really. I know that it wasn't a lucky guess because if it was, you wouldn't have said that so fast."

"Alright. The day you passed out because of your flu, Dr. Kadowaki wanted me to stay and wait for your mom in case there were questions I could answer since I was with you before. After your mom finally came and asked how come you got sick and she didn't, Dr. Kadowaki asked if you were anywhere she hasn't. She brought up that you went to visit your sister one more time without her but thought it didn't matter because you'd been on that floor before. Dr. Kadowaki suggested that you might have caught it if you visited messier floors like maternity or pediatrics but your mom dismissed that idea by saying, 'Unless if one of my husband's nieces had a baby that I didn't know about, I don't think it's likely,' or something like that."

"...And you figured it out from that and what I said?"

"Pretty much."

When he rolled his eyes, Rinoa laughed a little. "Consider it payback for being so stubborn about wanting to do the dishes by yourself." she reasoned before shifting gears. "But...I think we somehow got off-topic here."

"Hm?"

"You said that your mom must like me because of the album is usually at your grandma's place." she clarified. "...Could you explain why that would make you think that your mom really likes me? I'm not sure I understand the logic here, especially since I haven't really done anything extraordinary during the times I was here before."

"The seven albums' worth of pictures is all that my family has. They don't have any pictures of me after I turned four since the albums with more recent photos of me were lost when we moved into this house two years ago. My mother's been trying to get my grandmother to loan her album to scan the photos we didn't have but she's been so reluctant that she stopped trying to get it a while ago."

"...So to have it here is a big deal?"

He nodded. "Yeah. My grandmother can be the most stubborn person on the planet once she's made up her mind. To get it from her after the things I've been told...it'd be nothing short of a miracle."

"I guess that would be something" Rinoa abruptly stopped in mid-sentence, replacing her normal tone for one of the muffled variety. "Hyne...she would have done that for nothing if we hadn't decided to make this act into something real."

"...Don't beat yourself over it. My mother would have gotten the album sooner or later to scan the photos. If anything you helped her do that."

"That makes sense but...it doesn't exactly make me feel any better about it. Not when I still don't even know what I did so for her to go through this much effort for me anyway."

"-You put up with me. That's reason enough."

She smirked. "You're not that hard to deal with. I just needed to pick my battles right. I mean, I was able to convince you to let me help with the dishes, right?"

"Not really...I was just too exhausted to argue with you."

"Hey, don't take that away from me, I won fair and square."

"Right..." he sarcastically drawled, "I didn't know that 'Move over. I'll dry, you wash,' was an extremely convincing argument."

She rolled her eyes and gave him an equally-sardonic reply. "...Sometimes I wonder why I like you."

He shrugged. "...I have no idea either. You'll have to fill me in on that reason someday."

"How about...we save time and just assume that we were both temporarily insane?" she joshed.

He shrugged again. "Might as well."

Rinoa smirked at this before changing the subject altogether as they resumed their respective tasks of washing and drying.

"So...are you exhausted enough to not object to letting me see your grandma's album?"

He turned to look at her. "It's fine if you look at it. Just...don't giggle or say any off-colour comments if there happens to be any weird pictures. I don't know what's in this album exactly."

"Sure, that's not a problem, but I have to ask a small question."

"Alright."

"If you weren't happy about the possibility of your parents bringing out baby pictures before, why weren't you so against me seeing this other album?"

"I'm only letting you look at it because my parents aren't here to shower you in embarrassing comments about the photos."

"Hyne, I know what you mean." she agreed. "My mom goes overboard like that too...although I'm not so sure you'll ever get to see her like that because of the misunder—"

She was abruptly cut off by the distinct chime of her cell phone in her pocket. Setting down the dish and towel she had in her hands, she fished for the phone and gestured to Squall to wait a moment while she took the call in another corner of the kitchen.

The clock she happened to see on the opposite side of the room indicated that it was a little past seven and with that in mind; she had a pretty good idea of who was calling.

"Hello?" she answered.

"Rinoa, it's Mom. Are you doing anything at the moment?"

'Oops, never mind. I guess it's not Adrienne.'

"I was just helping with the dishes. Do you need me home for something?"

"No, I just found something and I think an apology's in order."

Rinoa's heart froze. What in Hyne's name did she find? Or better yet, why didn't she wait until she got home to chew her out?

'Oh well,' she mused, 'better bite the bullet.'

"Um...I'd apologize but I'm not quite sure what you're referring to."

Out of nowhere, she heard a small laugh. Okay...why was the fact that she didn't know what she was apologizing for funny?

"Rinoa, I meant that I have something to apologize for." she clarified.

"Ohh..."

"I was emptying out the garbage in the kitchen for tomorrow's pick-up and the bag's bottom had a tear in it so some trash came out." she started to explain. "I saw the mug shards with hot chocolate stains and specks of blood. I also saw some more hot chocolate and blood stains on the clothes in your hamper."

The lightbulb in Rinoa's head went off. "...So...you believe me now?"

"Yes. That's what I wanted to apologize for." she answered. "The reason I called now instead of later was so you could pass my apology to Squall before I forget."

"Alright. I will. I'll see you later. Bye."

"Bye."

Click.

After putting away the phone again, she turned to face Squall, who had clearly immersed himself in the task of dishwashing while she was talking, judging by the large sudsy stack of pots and dishes on her side of the sink. He had stopped to look at her after the click of her phone however.

"...What's with the smile?" he asked.

"I guess you might be hearing my mom go overboard sometime in the future. She found my stained clothes and mug shards from last Tuesday so she believes me now."

"That's good but...I don't think completely erase what she saw that day."

"Just take it as a small victory then. But something tells me that she's probably not that mad if she told me that she called now so that I could relay the message that she's sorry about what she thought happened right away. I figure that as long as she doesn't randomly catch us both half-naked we're good for now."

"Nice theory." he dryly replied. "I'll keep that in mind."

Rinoa smirked at his comment, the last part of it in particular. If it had been any other guy who'd said that, she would have automatically assumed that it implied that they were already picturing her half, or even fully, naked. Then again, she started to think, he still is a guy in spite of what he's like so it would be faulty logic to assume that whole-heartedly.

Keeping that thought at bay, she picked up the dish towel and started drying again, shaking her head ever so slightly.

-—-—--—-—--—-—--—-—-

After another five minutes' worth of drying and another two for running up and down stairs, Rinoa was finally sitting on the living room couch, poring over the many photographs at her disposal. Though Squall was beside her, he remained quiet as he simply watched her look at photos, providing no commentary whatsoever. After she finished the photos of his first birthday, she looked back at him with a smile. He had been sitting beside her on her left.

"It looks like you're safe." she told him. "No tub photos anywhere."

He rubbed his eyes for a moment before answering. "Good."

This made Rinoa smile even more. "You know...I think I passed a photo where you had the same tired look on your face. Hyne, I didn't know it was possible for someone to be instantly recognizable as a baby."

"It's my album...that's probably why you automatically know that the baby is me." he pointed out, sounding very tired.

"No, there could have been other babies in here. Your cousins could have been the same age."

He arched a brow. "You're forgetting that they're both girls."

"No, I know but some babies can look like they're from the opposite sex if you put gender-neutral clothes on them."

"...So you're insinuating that I could have easily looked like a girl?"

'Hyne, I don't think I have the willpower to let this comment slide...'

"Well...you do look like your mom."

He sighed. "...How did we even get on this topic?"

"I wish I knew. But if it's any consolation," she started with a mischievous grin, "-you don't look like a girl now."

"Right...and I suppose I would look like one if you put me in a dress?"

Rinoa didn't know what to do other than blink at that comment.

"Hyne, you must be tired to say something like that. But to answer your question, no, you wouldn't look like a girl in a dress. You have no chest and no girl has muscles like that." she added, poking his bicep for emphasis.

He rubbed his eyes again. "Sorry...it's not often where I get overtired like this."

"I'll say, I was surprised to see you all tired in the hallway. That class must have been insanely hard if you've never broken a sweat in Phys Ed." she commented. "But if you don't mind me asking, what are you taking it for anyway?"

"...I honestly don't know."

"Oh, okay. I thought that you needed it for something because you said that Garden didn't offer it last year."

"Rinoa...I was lying to you back then." he admitted. "I only came back because I failed Lit the year before. I just retook everything else to try to get better grades for my transcript. These two classes are just to keep my options open in case if I wanted to take the SeeD program here."

"I see. So...with the other stuff you were retaking other than Lit; what were you averaging before?"

"Somewhere around the mid seventies to low eighties." he answered. "I'm not as smart as you might think I am."

"No, I still think you are even if you're the type who has to study their butt off. I know that I would have had a much lower mark in history if it wasn't for you being my partner so it's got to mean something."

"Rinoa...if you don't mind, I'm not exactly in the mood to talk about school."

"Sure, that's fine, I understand. I'll just look through the rest of the photos so you don't have to say anything. Sound good?"

After he half-heartedly nodded, she resumed flipping through the pages. Now she was at the toddler era of photos judging by the photographed moments of him walking, looking like he was talking or by the amount of teeth he seemed to have gained in the snapshots. There was one especially-darling photo where he looked almost dazed in Raine's arms, like the flash camera flash had caught him completely off-guard. The shot was relatively close-range so she could make out his definitive features as a toddler; the big blue eyes, semi-serious stare, the mop of brown hair...the list went on and no matter how many photos where she had seen of him being so instantly recognizable to the person he looked like today, it still never ceased to amaze her. Lacking the self-control not to comment on that again, she turned to face him once more.

What she hadn't expected that he already lost the battle that she hadn't known about to keep his eyes open as she saw that he was slumped over, eyes clearly shut. Rinoa bit the inside of her lip in contemplation, not only to figure out if she should rouse him but to also figure out if she should leave. Her original plan was to wait for Raine and Laguna to make sure the latter was okay and to thank the former for the meal she'd left them, but now, she wasn't so sure with Squall falling asleep on her like this. It was kind of awkward to a point.

Following a few minutes of mulling this over, she decided that she would continue to pore through the album and leave when Raine and Laguna showed up or if Squall wasn't awake by the time she was done. In which case, she would wake him up to tell him so before she did. Feeling like this was a solid plan, she leisurely continued through the pictures again.

As she passed more and more of the pages, Squall was looking more and more like the person he was today, his features reflecting more on the shy and introverted aspects of his personality based on the looks he gave the photo-taker, whoever that was, as he seemed to be nearing his teenage years. Flicking through some more pages, she noticed that he'd gone through some major changes in a later six-photo set found on the same side of a page.

In combination with the photos she'd previously seen in the online yearbook and the fact that the ratio of pages on her left versus her right was becoming ridiculously biased towards the left, she guessed that this particular set spanned the year he turned eighteen. The first two looked like they were taken in the winter since the photos were back-to-back candid shots of Squall taking off a winter coat with snow on covering everything. He looked very wiry in the second one where the jacket was off altogether, not to mention, a good deal shorter than when she met him in October.

The next two were non-candid shots with Ellone and the change between the first two and the third and fourth photos was significant. He looked just about like he did now, the difference between the two pairs of photos was that he'd filled out considerably with what looked to be added muscle and gained some height. But the biggest change that Rinoa found happened to be in the last two photos on the page and, unbeknownst to her before this moment, the last two in the entire album. The other pages past this were all unused.

...And apparently Raine had forgotten to omit certain photos after all.

The last two were undeniably of Squall and Alexandra.

Once that fact had sunk into her head, Rinoa shut the album immediately and jostled Squall's right shoulder to wake him up. Surprisingly enough, for someone who was out cold for a good 45 minutes, it didn't take long for her to get him to open his eyes again. He rubbed his eyes before looking at her however.

"...Did I fall asleep?" he groggily asked, trying to stifle a yawn at the same time.

Rinoa nodded. "Yeah, you did for a good 45 minutes. Anyway," she started, "I was just looking through the photos and I found something I had to look away from. I think it's something you should look at."

"...If it's a bathtub photo, I don't want to see it."

"No, no. It's...not." She picked up the album again and quickly flipped through it until she got to the very last page and purposely put it on a specific angle on his lap so that it was out of range of her vision. "...Your mom must have forgotten to take the last two out."

Right after her explanation, she turned the other way on the couch to give him a little privacy with the photos. What she wasn't counting on was hearing his voice so soon.

"...You don't have to turn away from me, it's alright." Rinoa turned back around as if it was a request from him. When she locked eyes with him again, he continued. "You already know what's happened. I'm not going to burn you at the stake for accidentally coming across this. I have no problems if you look at those last two photos."

Rinoa gave him a skeptical look. "...Really?"

"It's better to look at them now rather than to leave them in here and save it for when we'll eventually look at the album with my parents." he dryly replied.

She tentatively took the album back into her own lap, perusing the last two photos carefully. A good moment had passed before Rinoa looked back at him.

"I...like the first picture of her best." she shyly told him, closing the album and setting aside on the empty side of the couch. "She looks like a cute little chicobo in your arms."

"...Being little was an understatement." After that, he changed the subject. "If you happen to be waiting for my parents, I'm not sure if they'll be here anytime soon."

Casting her previous plan aside, she shook her head. "No, it's fine. I don't have anything to do tonight and my mom isn't expecting me home until later anyw—"

All of a sudden, Rinoa found herself cutting her own sentence short as she stifled a yawn out of the blue, prompting Squall to follow suit.

"Mm...maybe I should go after all. I think I'm making you even more tired." she semi-joshed.

"If you wanted to stay...I'll be fine. I just need more caffeine."

"I think we need a nap. You'll just crash harder if you caffeinate yourself."

Squall arched a brow. "...You said 'I think we need a nap,' not 'I think you need a nap.'"

Rinoa froze a little. Had that been a subconscious slip of the tongue or just a random fumble of words?

'Don't lie to yourself,' her mind chided, 'you clearly meant that. It's okay. The worst he could do is say no. Go ahead, tell him.'

"I know." she said. "I was kind of thinking that we could take a nap together."

"I'm not sure about that. What if my parents come around?"

Oddly enough, it didn't take long for her to think of an excuse. "Then...we can say that we nodded off while we were waiting for them."

As she saw him mentally weigh the pros and cons of this idea extensively after nodding at her suggestion, she felt the need to push him down so his back would be flush with the cushions and his head would be against the armrest. She immediately sidled herself beside him after that. When she saw the bemused look on his face, she had to smirk.

"You sir, think too much." she whispered. "If you want this, don't think, just do."

Surprisingly enough, he listened to her advice and allowed himself to close his eyes fall asleep with her close by. Enjoying the serene warmth he brought, Rinoa couldn't help but do the same. When Raine came back from the hospital hours later with Laguna, she couldn't bear the thought of waking them up. Instead, the older woman placed a blanket over them and a call was made on the raven-haired girl's behalf.

It wasn't until Rinoa woke up to see the rays of sunlight dancing off of Squall's face and feel the blanket's soft caress that she realized that she hadn't gone home last night. In spite of the potential trouble she'd gotten herself into, all of it had seemingly melted away when she noticed a hint of a smile on the corners of his lips as he slept.

How he never ceased to amaze her was beyond her comprehension.

-—-—--—-—--—-—--—-—-

End of Chapter Comments - Sorry about the three and a half week delay. I had a lot of end of term projects and graded assignments in November and exams now that I'm in December. Luckily, they're really spaced out so it's not like I'm pulling my hair out or anything. I got another on Friday and the last one is on Monday (I've already done two) so it shouldn't be too much of a wait 'til the next one. I'm not guaranteeing anything, but the possibility is there.

Have a nice day! :D

-Emerald-Latias