PSOH 'Seasonal'
Spring generally meant that D would clean, even though the Shop was spotless, even though any mess or spot or stain would remove itself immediately, almost as soon as it existed, for fear of offending the Count.
Spring meant that Leon was scrubbing baseboards and shaking out rugs, smelling the vinegar on the rag he washed the windows with and stumbling into bed exhausted after a day of following D's orders.
Spring brought the images of a raccoon furiously sweeping, T-chan scrubbing the Hallway Powder Room, the Count with a cloth on his head while he wielded a giant feather duster. Spring resulted in disposable meals of pizza and salad for fear of crumbs on the counters or dirty dishes in the sink.
It meant renewal and the scent of lemon oil, the rise of sap in the houseplants and the acrid odor of bleach. It meant that D spent additional time scrubbing Leon's back in the bathtub and Leon used the new loofah to practically polish the bottoms of D's pretty feet.
It signified all that was new in the world – babies, puppies, daffodils blooming – and all that was old, renewed. Like the vow Leon had made years ago, to follow and to protect and to love, and the promise D had given him, to always accept.
Spring meant that the bakery on the corner sold pastel-iced cakes decorated with sugar flowers and bonbons filled with violet jelly. It made for long and light-filled evenings, spent strolling the Park or the shopping district, hand in hand, arm in arm. It led to clean white sheets, dazzling in their folded perfection, left tangled and twisted by morning and quickly laundered and replaced. It always provided the lilies Leon bought every year for D's Parlor and the Hanshin Tiger's baseball tickets D would slyly leave for him on the nightstand.
But mostly it meant that Chris was coming to visit for Spring Break, as he did every year. The Shop had to be gleaming according to D's standards in an all-out effort to welcome him, sweet-smelling and bursting with flowers and charmingly alive with newly born kittens, bunnies and chicks. Leon had to get his hair trimmed neatly and make sure the taxi from the airport was arranged for and paid up. And the two of them had to calmly sort out any differences or slights left over from the previous year, because Spring had come and it was time to start new again, soft and fresh and unsullied, the way Leon had always imagined when searching endlessly for D, the way the endlessly waiting D had determined it would always have to be.