He tends to do his own laundry. When we wash – whoever loses his nerve first, or runs out of stuff to wear will do it – we have a big pile on and around the washing machine in the garage. The pile gets pried apart, whites and colours, and that's as much sorting as we'll do before chucking it all into the machine. It's usually me doing it; the chibis borrow my rags or just keep buying more clothes. Their wardrobes are bursting, and mostly I will have at least half a dozen loads. One day we will buy an industrial sized machine, Omi promised, like they use at the laundrette two blocks down the street. Right now, Kritiker won't give us the money, I can't see why I should use my own funds that I prefer to spend elsewhere, and the chibis can't see anything wrong with the way things are. Therefore, they refuse to chip in. Damn their stingy little asses, I am not their mother after all.
Ken wants me to use the dryer for his clothes, so does Omi, while I like to hang my stuff up on the line so it can soak up the aroma of rain and sun while it dries. Aya ran into me the other day; I could not see him over an armful of stuff, and he was in a hurry to get to the garage and didn't pay proper attention when rounding the corner from the hall. So he bumped into the pile of clothes, then into me, and I let the bunched rags drop and grabbed his upper arms to balance him and me.
He looked pretty – a blaze of colours in his orange sweater and black drawstrings, with bare feet and ruffled crimson hair, but he gave me one of those glares, which I think are most efficient because of his contacts. His cheeks blushed the faintest shade of pink as he opened his mouth as though he would scold or sneer. As it was, he did neither but snapped his mouth shut, tugged against my grip, and I saw that he was pressing a small, wrapped bundle to his stomach. "Laundry, Aya? I'll do your stuff with ours, if you like," I offered, spotting a sock dangling out of the black wrapping cloth.
He scowled and hugged his bundle tighter. "No thanks." And off he was, leaving me to pick up the scattered clothes. I had a hangover, and by the time I was done and turned up in the garage, I saw him kneeling, the sleeves of his sweater rolled up to his elbows, his hair not only dishevelled but wet, strands of crimson plastered to his temples and neck. He was hunched over a green plastic wash tub and beating the hell out of his rags with a cudgel.
I hardly believed my eyes. "Man, Aya, we live in the twentieth century," I said lighly as I dumped my load by the machine, "it's no hardship for me to wash your bits as well, yanno." But he would not even look up but kept scrubbing, a cardboard box of soap flakes his only aid. I might as well have talked to the wall. While I loaded our washing machine, he spent some time and frantic activity on rinsing his stuff. Even this he did with a ferocity that made me wonder why those clothes did not tear while he was squeezing the water out of them. Flap, flap, beat, wring, muscles straining under white skin, pearled with water, shimmering like silk, his back rounding and straightening as he bent over the tub and fished out garment after garment.
I suppose I was gaping, but I don't think he noticed. When he was done, pants and sweater soaking, he gathered it all up, soggy as it was. He hugged it against his belly as before, kicked the tub over to slosh the water into the drain, shoved it against the wall where it could dry out, and all but ran from the room. I am not sure whether he took objection to my attire – when I do the washing, I wash everything except a pair of briefs to cover my ass, which I keep on not for my own sake, but out of consideration for whoever happens on me when I'm busy. So that's all I wore, plus a cigarette. I could have sworn he was blushing up to his dyed hair-roots when he dashed through the door.
So he does his own cooking, his own laundry, his own everything. Making a statement, unmistakable and cranky: I do not want you, I do not need anyone, faff off. The busy equivalent of a dirty finger, poked right into our faces.
No one gives me that sorta shit. I either hit or walk away from people like that. But here we had a special case 'cos neither was an option. Aya was part of our team, like it or not, or – as Ken put it – for better or for worse, and worse was the likely outcome. Ken tends to be pessimistic, and he hasn't forgiven Aya's attempt at vivisectioning him. Me, on the other hand, I prefer to look at the bright side, and I don't like to be treated rudely, or to be brushed off when I'm trying to be courteous. So Aya's butt was on the line, and he didn't even know it.
When I went up to the roof to hang up my clothes that were spun and only a little damp while Omi's and Ken's things rumbled away in the tumble dryer, I found most of my drying line occupied. So I learned that Aya wears plain black cotton briefs, and thick black wool socks in his work boots, that he pegs them on the line religiously matched and even colour-coordinates the plastic pegs.
It was then that I realised for the first time that he cannot help it. He is anal. It's the same thing that makes him sit crosslegged by the side of his bedroom door when he hones his katana, swish-swish with grinding paste and a cloth, the blade across his lap, ready to strike at whoever ventures in, or to bolt if that should be more sensible. He almost cut Omi the other day when the chibi wanted to call him down for dinner – Omi never gives up, even though the answer is always the same.
Next chapter: Sex