Allergies
The bedroom he stepped into looked like a battlefield between down pillows and the Charmin bear.
Used tissues lay everywhere, willy-nilly, piling like snow drifts most densely along the side of the bed. Empty Kleenex boxes had obviously been thrown in the corner, and judging by the haphazard pile, Kenshin estimated there to be around 560 to 700 used tissues littering the floors.
The redhead trembled, gulped, and wavered. But a muffled moan issued forth from under the covers. He steeled himself and began wading through the offensively damp piles.
Gross, gross, gross, he couldn't help but chant in his head. Squish. Oh, ew, gross!
His foot stepped on something harder than its surroundings near the edge of her bed, and he glanced down in trepidation-what new obscenities had this room to offer? A small pair of beady eyes begged for salvation from underneath more kleenex, and Kenshin's heart wrenched for the poor teddy bear when he realized it was completely buried. But nothing on earth could convince him to reach down into a very large pile of used tissues for a toy, and with no small amount of pity he moved on.
"Kaoru?" he asked tentatively. "M'love?" Another grown, this time even more muffled than the last. He cringed; whatever had turned on the spigot that was her nose now must be terrible. Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to get up onto the bed (which, on the edges where tissues had recently resided, was also somewhat damp), sit next to the lump in the covers, and gingerly place a hand on a large lump.
"Kaoru-love, you've got to come out now. You know you should eat something. You haven't come out of this room all day." His hand had encountered nothing untoward, and so with slightly more confidence he rubbed what he assumed to be her shoulder. His hand collided with a moist tissue that had been hidden under a fold in the covers and he cringed.
"No I don't," Kaoru finally answered. Kenshin listened to her voice sympathetically; it was very congested-sounding and headcold-y. Surreptiously he started rubbing her shoulder again as a cover for getting the leftover wet from the tissue off of his hand. "My face hurts. My eyes hurt. My nose hurts. My head hurts. It hurts to breathe. And I can't go twenty seconds without dripping. I'm not coming out again for another few weeks, Kenshin."
"The doctor said that if you took the medication it'd kick in in a few days," he protested. "And that it was pollen-based allergies, Kaoru. Nothing inside to make things worse, won't you at least feel a little better if you eat?"
"No," she replied firmly. "Now be quiet, please, you talking hurts too." Kenshin let out a moan of frustration.
"Fine," he said after a moment-perhaps a little sulkily. After all, he'd braved the torments of this bedroom without complaint out of concern for her welfare. Couldn't she at least humor him and take a small meal? "I will be back in a few days then, Kaoru. I will bring food then."
An affirmative grunt was the only thing that he got, and he really shouldn't have expected more. Kaoru was always a bit testy when her body didn't cooperate with her; it was often, as a kendo instructor who ran half marathons on the weekends, but when it occasionally rebelled she could be an absolutely monster.
Lucky for him her allergies were to a very small number of plants that bloomed only once during the spring, and that they were scant in this region. Still, it didn't make those few weeks of blooms any easier on Kaoru.
Kenshin finally reached the door to the bedroom, wondering what to bring next time he came back over. Kaoru really would be hungry, he figured, and eyed the massive tissue-drifts again with disgust.
"Snow shovel," he announced, making up his mind, and went to buy one.