Hello! Chapter seven is up. This one is quite a bit longer than the others, and it looks like the chapters that follow will also be fairly long. I hope you don't mind. I just had to squeeze so many things in, and before I knew it, there were nine or ten pages. Thank you for sticking with this story this long, I greatly appreciate the feedback.

Speaking of feedback, though I enjoy the 'favorite' emails beyond words, I would really appreciate it if you would send me a review as well. Really, I'm so glad that you liked it, but I'd like to know why you liked it, and if there are any mistakes or things you didn't particularly favor. Thanks.

As stated before, I don't own, so don't sue. On with chapter seven.

When Riku woke up the next morning to the smell of lemon scented cleaner and the unmistakable squeal of an attempted ballad heaving out of his roommate's throat, he couldn't stop himself from rolling over and tucking the covers around his head. Sora should not have been awake so early. Unless he was preparing for work, he was usually glued to his mattress until noon, and often, much later.

It was a slight inconvenience when it came to laundering the bedding, but Riku was fine with the sacrifice so long as his morning was relatively peaceful. It looked like he would not be granted such niceties this morning.

But Sora had been quite the eager-beaver lately. Just yesterday he had taken out the garbage without being prompted. He hoped whatever invigorated his roommate so strongly would die down soon.

As a harbinger for how the rest of the day would pan out, Sora knocked on the door. "Hey sleepy head. When you get up, I need your sheets and stuff."

Riku groaned in response, but managed a muffled affirmation underneath the covers. Sora seemed satisfied and scurried back down the hall to finish who-knew-what in the kitchen.

Riku sat up fully in bed, running a hand down his face roughly. His head was throbbing something fierce, and something inside him told him it wasn't from the smell of cleaner. He showered and dressed rather sluggishly and headed into the kitchen.

Sora was scampering about with hands protected by rubber gloves, arranging dishes, washing the table, and mopping the floor, all while belting out some unrecognizable lyrics to a song.

"Hey!" He said, turning around mid-chorus. "You're going to be late if you don't get a move on."

"Right," he muttered, rooting around the pantry for a mug.

"What's the matter with you this morning?" He set the mop against the wall and leaned himself against the counter.

"Nothing."

"Oh, well, I must be crazy then." Sora grinned. "Sighs, slumping shoulders and frowns are usually signs of very happy, very hopeful young men. To think...I've been wrong all these years."

The corners of Rikus mouth turned up. It wasn't quite a smile, but Sora took what he got.

"Are you going to work today?" Riku asked, reaching for the sugar.

"Nope! Not tomorrow either! They hired a couple of guys earlier this week, which means I'm no longer the newbie. They get the last pickings of the shifts."

Riku nearly dropped his spoon. Sora was awake on his own accord?

Sora resumed mopping, and Riku had to remind himself that his roommate's unpredictability was just part of his appeal. He probably wasn't ill, and there weren't any large lumps on the boy's head to indicate a fall either. He straightened his throat.

"So, um, why are you up so early...cleaning?"

"Are you kidding me?" He paused briefly to squirt some more cleaner into a bucket. "I have to get the place all ready for Papa Riku's visit tomorrow."

Suddenly, Riku realized why he had a headache this morning.

"Oh, well, you don't have to do that."

Sora snorted. "Of course I do. This is the kind of thing responsible, mature, intelligent adults do. I happen to be all three."

Riku raised a silver eyebrow, unsure how to respond to that one. 'Part of his appeal...' he thought absently, then put his spoon in the sink. "In that case, I'll see you when I get home."

"Unless I'm at the grocery store. Do you realize that we don't have any spiced cider? How are you supposed to entertain without spiced cider?"

Riku sighed. "He's not staying that long."

"Sure he's not. Then, when you're both seated comfortably on the couch, locked in a heated debate about a sport team making it to the championship, your throats will be dry from all of the laughter and father-son rough housing. Then you'll say, 'Gee, I sure wish Sora had gone to the store to get that spiced cider he talked about this morning. I shouldn't have talked him out of it.' Then, I'll come into the room—after all, it will be past midnight, and your noise will have kept me awake—and I'll say, 'gee, you guys have been in here talking for hours. Aren't you thirsty? Wait, we would have had spiced cider if Riku would have thought this thing would work out. Hm, oh well.' Then I'll go to bed, and you'll both just have to drink water."

"...Wow," Riku coughed. His eyebrows lifted in amusement." You really think it'll pan out like that?" He smirked as he reached for his jacket.

"Well, you'll probably have the option of drinking milk, but I was running out of air and couldn't fit that part in. Other than that, yes."

Riku nodded, and slipped out the door. "I'll see you when I get home."

XxX

Sora had finished cleaning the apartment. He vacuumed, dusted, mopped and polished. All that was left to be done was the laundry.

He was still upset about the garbage incident the day before, but he was determined to make up for it with the laundry. It occurred to him that he had never washed anything before. Aside from folding the clothing his mother had tossed at him when he complained of boredom, Sora was rather clueless when it came to such domestic tasks.

Riku ended up doing most of the laundry (Sora always managed to come up with a reasonable excuse as to why he simply didn't have the time to do his own), and Sora did the grocery shopping. It was a fair trade.

Now, he was determined to prove himself, and laundry seemed to be the next most logical task to try and accomplish. Besides, he had seen his mother wash clothes enough times to get the gist of it, he supposed.

He headed into his room and stripped the bed of his blankets and sheets, as well as the pillow cases. He noticed a few articles of clothing tossed haphazardly in the chair, so he balled them up and piled them up along with his sheets.

By now, the mass of dirty material had gotten quite sizable, but Sora couldn't be stopped now. He dumped the mass into the hallway and proceeded into Riku's room.

As his fingertips slid along the golden doorknob, Sora couldn't help but feel the slightest bit impish. He had gotten permission from Riku—well, something like permission—that morning to go retrieve the dirty bedding, but there was something undeniably daring about the venture.

Sora had never been inside the room before.

There was no specific reason as to why. There were no 'DO NOT ENTER' signs posted on the door, nor was Riku particularly secretive when it came to his sleeping quarters. Sora had just never had a reason to go inside.

He opened the door slowly, and tiptoed inside, as if he expected the carpet to be strewn with nails and jagged pieces of glass. The floor turned out to be no more dangerous than the carpeting in the rest of the house. Sora wasn't sure if he was disappointed or not, so he stamped around a bit more to make sure there were no sharp bits embedded within.

Again, the carpet proved to be harmless.

As he approached the bed, he glanced around the space for something of general interest, but the room was void of anything eye catching. The walls were plain and tan, much like Sora's own bedroom walls. The dresser was stacked with an assortment of untouched fragrances and hair products, while his night stand was littered with loose change. An innocent looking wad of paper dangled dangerously from the edge over the trash can. The clothes were put away in their respective drawers, and the bed was neatly made.

The room gave off an air of relative tidiness, though it was slightly lacking in the excitement factor. Sora's room was a theme park in comparison. Whenever he entered, he never knew what he was going to step on.

The room suited his roommate well enough though, Sora decided, as he bent down to strip the bed of its blankets and sheets. Heaving the mass into his arms, he stumbled out of the room into the hallway, and dumped the load of bedding into the pile previously comprised of his own.

Inspecting the pile carefully, Sora decided that it would be entirely possible to carry the load to the washing room without too much trouble. After all, it would be a waste of time and energy to make two trips when he was perfectly capable of completing the task with one. Now he understood why it always took so long for his mother to finish the washing. Perhaps the woman was simply not strong enough to carry the heavy garments and bedding all at once.

He grinned.

Heaving the pile down the hallway, he stopped to deposit it into the laundry basket that Riku kept in the corner in the kitchenette. It didn't phase him in the slightest that the pile swelled over the edge farther than most safety codes would allow. He could see over the top, and that was good enough as far as he was concerned.

Somehow, he managed to get the door open, and he headed down the hallway.

Sora felt quite proud of himself. He had learned his lesson after the trash incident, and went to ask the landlord where the washing room was. (Asking Riku was absolutely out of the question.) This was followed by intense, independent surveying of the entire complex, as well as the outside. Now, he not only knew where the trash bins and laundry room were, but he also knew each fire exit was located, how many stair cases there were in the building, where the Janitor's supply closet was located, and the times and places that the door men exchanged shifts.

He was quite proud of himself indeed.

He rounded a corner with the basket and approached the elevator. His struggles with it were reminiscent of the battle with the trash bag the day before. He managed to wriggle into the door—surprisingly—without losing a single sock—miraculously.

He waited patiently for the elevator doors to open, and then suddenly found himself staring at a bright white room. The loud rumble of washers and driers rattled him. He spied them sitting against opposite walls. Clothes tumbled inside most of them, but a few were vacant, and it was in front of these that he set his basket, overflowing with bedding.

Sora examined the machine precariously, then proceeded to separate the white from the dark, just as he had seen his mother do before.

But then he ran into trouble.

He had a pair of orange shorts, which clearly weren't white, and clearly weren't dark. While he studied them, he spied a red shirt, as well as some other unclassifiable shades of clothing. Some had prints, while others were just some odd mix of colors. He scratched his head. He'd just leave all of the questionable ones for later, he supposed.

Gathering up the blankets, he dumped all of them into a hole in the washer. Slamming the lid down, he tapped his foot patiently for the machine to carry on like all the rest, but was shocked to see that it sat perfectly quiet, but most of all, perfectly...not washing.

Sora scratched his head. Perhaps the machine was a dud. With a shrug, he retrieved the blankets from one washer and deposited them into its neighboring machine. Perhaps it would prove to be more cooperative.

Again, he closed the lid and waited patiently for it to fill with the correct amount of soap and water, then proceed to clean his bedding.

And again, the washer sat, unmoving.

For the next half an hour, Sora tried several tactics to get the machine to start. He pounded it a few times, exchanged dark material for white, and he even loaded it with the questionable ones, just in case the machine was selective about colors.

But all ended the same. The clothes were left unwashed, and Sora was left feeling depressingly incapable.

He sat down on the floor in a huff, eying the washer sadly. His attempts at being self sufficient were ending terribly, and the last thing he wanted to do was go back to his room with a basket full of unwashed laundry, especially after he had worked so hard to try and get it clean.

Standing up slowly, he prepared to heave the massive load back to his apartment, but a clatter echoed throughout the room.

He looked down, and spied his cell phone lying on the ground. It had fallen out of his pocket. Gingerly, he picked up the phone—it didn't appear broken—and was about to pocket it again, when suddenly an idea struck him.

Kairi.

Who knew more about washing than women?

He snickered to himself. Here was his opportunity. All he had to do was call her, ask a few unassuming questions regarding washing machines and how to work them, and then he would get her to recite the instructions without her finding out a thing.

Pure genius.

Sora dialed her number and couldn't help but grin as the dial tone sounded in his ear. There was a click, and her gentle voice carried through, sending over him a feeling of affection mixed with puckishness.

"Oh, hey Sora. It's been a while, hasn't it? How are you doing?"

He tried to sound calm and casual. "Fine. How about you?"

"I'm alright. What's up?"

Sora rocked back and forth on his heels. "Well, nothing really. I'm just washing some clothes."

There was a pause.

"...You're washing clothes, or you're watching Riku wash clothes?"

"The first one."

There was another pause.

"...Where's Riku?"

"At work. Anyway, that doesn't really matter. Listen, I have a small problem."

Kairi's voice climbed a few octaves. "A problem? Sora, don't touch anythi—"

"Just listen to me for a minute," Sora snapped, then leaned against the washing machine. "Riku left me some specific instructions on how to wash his new dress shirt. It was extremely expensive, but I'm afraid he, um...spilled coffee all over the paper, and his handwriting isn't all that neat anyway..."

Kairi sighed into the receiver. "Extremely expensive shirt huh? What kind of material is it?"

"Cotton."

"..."

"Those long pauses of yours are getting a little on the irritating side, Kairi."

"Oh, sorry. Well, what color is it?"

Sora looked down at his three separate piles of clothing.

White.

Dark.

Questionable.

He cleared his throat. "You know what Kairi? It's the funniest thing. Riku actually has three really expensive shirts that need to be washed. I mean, it if this was something simple like washing T-shirts or bedding or something, then I'd have no problem, but these shirts...they're just so expensive, you know?"

Kairi was going to pause again, but decided against it. "Okay Sora, what color is the first one?"

"White."

"Great. Put it in the washer. I suggest washing more than just one shirt at a time. Find some socks or whatever to throw in there with it. You're going to waste a lot of money that way."

Sora scratched his head. "Money?"

"Yes Sora, coin operated washing machines typically require money."

Sora's eyes immediately fell on the coin slot sitting quite obviously next to the wash mode dial, which he had also failed to notice. He dug around in his pocket for a few coins.

The road to manhood was a long one indeed.

XxX

Sora heaved the basket of clean laundry through the door of his apartment with a grunt.

The load had been finished.

Though he thought he was being crafty with his coverup, Kari had seen through his plan when he described one of Riku's shirt as being roughly the size of a bedspread, and stuffed with polyester fiber fill. Kari didn't berate him too badly for his lack of knowledge, and after she yelled at him for a few minutes, the two actually enjoyed doing this sort of phone-laundry.

He was sad when the final load had dried, and the conversation ended.

But he had more important things to think about at the moment. Riku would be home shortly—the laundry had taken quite a bit longer than expected, especially since he had to re-dry both blankets because the drier overheated—and he still had to get the blankets back on the beds.

He hurried to his own room, smoothed the sheets over his bed, and tossed his clothes in the drawer. Hopefully Riku's father wouldn't be coming in his room...

He dashed across the hallway with the remaining bedding and began to make Riku's bed as well. Taking the sheet in both hands, he flipped it over the bed, but in his haste, he knocked that crumpled piece of paper on Riku's night stand into the trash.

He grunted as he made the rest of the bed, then bent down to retrieve it.

It was so wrinkled and puckered, Sora was about to toss it right back into the trash can, but he noticed that the piece of paper was actually an envelope.

Sora peered around the room as if Riku might appear behind him at any moment. Sensing that his roommate was nowhere near, he examined the envelope more closely.

There, in the corner was a name and address Sora was not familiar with, scratched out in short, sharp handwriting. The sending information was very familiar to him, though.

It was the addressed to the apartment, and more importantly, Sora's roommate.

Realization eased over him; this must have been the letter Riku got in the mail from his father a few days ago. He looked about again, feeling the slightest bit guilty for handling the envelope, and he felt even worse while he guided the letter gently from it.

He scanned the text quickly. Looking at the stiff lettering was all he needed to satisfy his curiosity.

But he found that the more he scanned, the slower his reading became. He found himself sitting down on Riku's bed, reading the letter in it's entirety, and even going back to read a few passages to make sure he understood them.

It wasn't a particularly dark or menacing letter, at least, not in the text. It contained a few common greetings; it asked how Riku had been, what he had been doing, and how life was treating him. It described in muted detail the whereabouts of the sender, his own personal opinion of his job, as well as his current activities. Lastly, the letter offered a date in which the sender would be in town, and that meeting up with Riku during his stay would be arranged. It ended rather abruptly with a flimsy closing and a signature.

But there was something about the way the text was written that unnerved Sora a little. The handwriting was so sharp and pronounced. The letter itself was so concise and taciturn. It was hardly something he expected to see from a long lost father. The letter carried such a heavy feeling of obligation, not affability.

Perhaps that was how Riku's family did things.

He traced the folds and wrinkles in the letter with his index finger. He didn't understand why it looked like it had been thrown in a pen with a bunch of easily amused toddlers. It had been folded and unfolded so many times, the corners were going to fall off.

This letter, Sora thought, had gone through some serious abuse.

Suddenly, he heard the familiar footsteps behind the front door. He heard the key turn, so he put the letter on Riku's dresser, and ran into the livingroom, bearing as guiltless of an expression as he could muster. "Welcome home, Riku."

"Thanks," He replied, putting his keys on the hook.

Sora eyed him closely for a few minutes as he sauntered into the kitchenette to rummage around. "Hungry?"

"Not really." He ran a hand through his hair. "You know what? I think I'm going to turn in early."

Sora raised his eyebrows. "Long day?"

"Very long day."

"Oh." Sora bit his lower lip. Alright then. Goodnight."

"Goodnight. The apartment looks great by the way. Good job."

Sora smiled. "Thanks."

Riku nodded, and headed back in the hallway towards his room. The door closed silently, and Sora leaned back into the couch and sighed.

Riku entered his room and lifted a silver brow at the clean smelling linen on his bed. Sora had certainly been thorough. He collapsed into the bed with a huff, and waited for the weight that had been pressing down on him all day to finally lift. As he expected, no such weight lifted.

He shook his head, now completely irritated with himself. Just like he had told himself not to, he ended up spending the entire day thinking about that letter and his father. His mother entered his thoughts a few times too. He wished he could just get the visit over with already. Then he could put it behind him, and he wouldn't have to think about it for another long, long, long, span of time. He didn't want to have anything to do with that man he called his father.

His father had grown hard, and bitter after his mother left them. But Riku couldn't blame him for that. She was the woman he fell in love with; she was the woman he married. Riku himself had a hard time dealing with it at first. He would throw things and storm out of the house in the middle of the night. He would even pick fights with his father just to release the pent up frustration and resentment he felt.

But the difference between he and his father was clear. Riku had eventually gotten over it. Little by little, the pain died away, and—just like the letters his mother sent in the mail—it eventually stopped. He and his mother would probably never reconcile, but he wasn't angry anymore, he didn't let the resentment rule him.

His father, on the other hand never let his anger fade. As the days went on, and her absence sank in, he became enraged. It was as if the empty bed at night, the half-full closet, and her simple lack in presence pounded him in, reminded him that their wedding vows were meaningless, that all the time he had spent loving her was an absolute waste. He missed her beauty, her coy smile, her stunning, uniquely hued blue eyes that she had passed down to their son. His resentment began to fester, it was uncontrollable. It was to be expected that some of it would be taken out Riku.

But Riku was never beaten as a child. He never had to hide bruises, or make up excuses about broken bones to his teachers. He did on occasion have to dodge flying beer bottles, but in most cases it was accidental, and his father, when drunk, had terrible aim.

It was the pent up rage that Riku could not handle, and it was only aggravated by the fact that he and his mother had the same eyes.

His father said his eyes pinned him, accused him, filled him with an unbelievable amount of guilt and responsibility, and threw upon him a painful familiarity that he absolutely could not stand.

And he let Riku know as often as possible, how much he truly hated those eyes.

Riku couldn't remember how many times he had been threatened when he faced his father. It got to a point that he was forbidden from even looking at him.

"Those eyes," his father would cry. "Those eyes! They're the same ones your filthy mother looked at me with. Don't look at me like her. Don't ever look at me like her!"

And Riku didn't. When his father entered the room, his gaze would immediately be sent to the floor. He was even trained to the sound of footsteps. He could hear his feet several yards off, and immediately, he'd cast his gaze on anything but the doorway, so the old man wouldn't curse his appearance when he came in.

Sometimes that wasn't good enough. Sometimes Riku was watching television, and his father would see him staring blankly at the screen. He could see hints of the sharp, piercing blue, and if his father had too much to drink that night, that would be plenty to set him off. So Riku adjusted. For years, he didn't even look off the ground. Complete strangers would pass him, adults, children his age, it didn't matter. It had become second nature. He carried this habit with him even after he moved out of his father's house, determined to never show his mother's hideous eyes to anyone.

He had become so accustomed to it, it had been buried so far into his subconscious that he didn't even notice it until Sora pointed it out the day he moved in.

And then that letter came, and his greatest fear was spelled out right in front of him.

The fear of his father and his hateful words had never left him, even after he had moved out and claimed he had moved on from the past. He was doing the very thing he had tried to rid himself of when he left. He had brought the past with him, he was living it.

That letter, Riku thought in disgust. He felt around on his night stand for the crumpled up piece of paper, itching to throw it away again, torch the trash can and bury the remains in some place he would never find it. To his surprise, he felt nothing but a few spare bits of change and hard wood underneath his fingertips.

He sat up in bed, and felt around the floor for the piece of paper, but again, it was gone. It occurred to him that Sora, in his quest to clean the entire apartment, might have thrown it away, but the trash can was still had trash in it. No letter was included. Fully baffled now, he paced around the room. It wasn't on or under his bed, or night stand. The floor was paper free as well. He wrenched open the drawer, but other than a few books and loose change, there was nothing inside. Riku couldn't imagine where in the world that letter could have gone.

Part of him was relieved—though he did enjoy tossing it in the trash can at least once a night—but the other part of him was so preoccupied with its whereabouts that he simply couldn't stop searching.

Finally, his eyes landed on the small ball of paper, oddly sitting on his dresser.

Riku scratched his head. He distinctly remembered putting it on his night stand the night before. It was where he saw it that morning before he went to work, and he knew he hadn't been in his room since then. He was the only person that had been in his room at all that day...

Except Sora.

A cold shock of disbelief ran through his body right then. That kid had a lot of nerve snooping through his belongings. Luckily, there wasn't anything particularly personal in that letter, but there could have been. Besides, it was the principle of the matter.

He intended to go storming out into the livingroom to tell his roommate a thing or two about personal space, but he realized he simply didn't have the energy. Besides, he didn't want to bring any attention to the issue, and stirring up a grand debate about the letter's contents would do just that. So Riku exhaled heavily and crashed into his mattress again.

That night he shoved the letter in the night stand drawer.

That marks the end of chapter seven. Riku's father will finally visit in chapter eight.