Little Moments: 100
Themes
#41: Jacket
Lillie Bell
Disclaimer: Sailor Moon is the property of Naoko Takeuchi and a bunch of anime production agencies, not I. Also, the National Inquirer, Hazardus Materials, Tin Man, and jiffy-puffed marshmallows are subsequently not owned by me.
Usagi had just made it out of the check out line and steered her cart to the wall next to the doors leading out of the grocery store. Though her cart only contained six bags of groceries, all precariously sitting in the infant seat of the cart, the buggy itself was full of layers of clothing and one large winter jacket. Her ski pants swished as she pulled a thin sweater over her head, covering the light jacket she already had on. Another thicker sweater followed before she pulled on a few more layers until she finally came to the large jacket in the cart.
To say winter had hit Tokyo would be an understatement. With the climate, it was cold enough to snow, yet sheets of rain poured into the streets outside the fogged window of the store. Usagi scowled slightly, tugging her already bulging arms into the jacket. Due to the sheer plumpness of her form encased in protective layers of clothing, trying to move her arms in front of her in order to zip up her jacket was proving a problem.
With a grunt, she tried for the umpteenth time to squeeze her arms together, fighting against the large jacket that was acting more as a HazMat suit than insulator and the other twenty pounds of cotton and wool on her body. Her tongue slipped out of her mouth as she finally gained purchase of the zipper and its fastener. With a deep breath, she began the process of forcing the two into one another and zipping up the warm, though increasingly time-consuming, jacket.
A noise from behind her had her turning. She pouted slightly, heaving a "Mama" at the woman behind her. She had come upon her mother shopping and they had talked for much longer than Usagi had intended to stay. Due to the cold and an increasingly harried schedule at school, the two had not had their usual dinners to catch up. As nice as it was to see her mother again, now she was late getting back and Mamoru would be out of his classes. She had missed the few minutes he could spare to sit with her before plowing through his homework on the dining table.
Ikuko clucked before pulling her own astronaut-type jacket around her. She gave her daughter a mischievous wink before suggesting that they each zip up the others' jacket. Usagi's blue eyes brightened at this and the two set forth upon their work. The blonde zipped her mother's jacket first because it seemed Ikuko had dressed warmly and did not need the thousands of pounds of fabric that Usagi was sweating under in the heated grocery store.
Once properly attired for the walk home, the two flipped up each other's hoods and handed the other their groceries. With cheerful calls muffled by the many layers of cloth and the zippers of their jackets being up their chins, the two women headed in their respective directions.
With grocery bags hanging from her arms and looking like a perfect impression of the Michelin man, Usagi trudged toward the apartment she shared with Mamoru. The wind picked up and splashed the chilling rain in her face as she continued her journey. The sun had already left the sky and the night was growing colder by the second. With chattering teeth, Usagi started in what could only be described as a moon-jog toward her apartment complex. With puffy ski pants swishing with each thrust of her leg, which came at small intervals due to the sheer size of the pant leg, she truly did resembled astronauts on the first moonwalk. The groceries flopped against her body, but all the layers absorbed the impact and Usagi only felt the bone-chilling cold as she made her way through the night.
The doorman stopped for a moment, fearful of alien invasion when he caught his first glimpse of her. The aluminum foil colored astronaut jacket she wore certainly didn't help such a claim. The poor man was dead set on writing to the National Inquirer or hiring a shrink when a wisp of long blonde hair snuck from the confines of her hood and in the sudden light of the doorway he caught the glimpse of her face hidden in the recesses of her hood.
"Chiba-san," he greeted with a strange smile on his face that Usagi, not happy about being late, didn't take the time to understand. She huffed straight to the elevator before seeing that it was out of order and promptly took to the stairs.
"Penthouse level, Mamo-chan," she growled, having finally made it to the top of the staircase. She pushed open the door and did the moonwalk to her door. As hoped, her dear husband had left it unlocked. With a little juggle of the bags, trying to keep them from shooting down her arms and into the door, she managed to get into the apartment unscathed.
"COLD!" she declared and proceeded to bounce to the thermostat. Mamoru, who had been quietly studying at their dining table, his books strung around him like a flanking army, looked up at his little wife.
His eyes bulged seeing her marshmallow-like form. She seemed to be hopping from one foot to another in some sort of industrial suit as if she'd just come from a nuclear factory. One that emitted beta rays, he noticed absent-mindedly, taking in the aluminum color. In fact, were it not for her voice, he wouldn't have recognized the bouncing blob that had just raised the thermostat from a modest 50 degrees (Fahrenheit) to the squelching 80-degree maximum. The man squirmed as the heater ripped to life in the small apartment, clearly fearing the wrath of his energy bill.
When she finally stopped bouncing, he snuck out of his barricade of textbooks, with her entrance he'd settled with a stalemate, and made his way over to her. In normal circumstances, he would have kissed her in greeting, but beneath the hood he wasn't sure where exactly she was. So, he opted to take the groceries from her jiffy-puffed arms and move into the kitchen.
She hopped quickly behind him, horribly aware that she was leaving small puddles of water in her wake and wanting to get to the nice tiled kitchen where it wouldn't damage the floor. Mamoru sat the groceries upon the countertop before turning to her and raising an eyebrow. Seeing a small ripple of movement from her shoulder area, he assumed she shrugged.
"Quit staring and help me with this," she grumbled when a small simper flashed across his face at her attempts to once again clutch the offensive zipper at her nose. With her declaration, the smile went into full-blown, though slightly devilish, wattage and Usagi thought she might be blinded in the light. Not that she was complaining, but the reflective surface of her suit, reflecting his dazzling smile, could have blinded all of Tokyo, too.
And so Mamoru set out on the impossible task of reclaiming his wife from the silver-colored tin-man she had become. The zipper came off easy enough, it was shrugging her out of the jacket that was causing such a problem. The abominable creation had constricted around her arm due to all her layers and took all manner of tugging to get it off. As luck would have it, Mamoru tugged and when the jacket finally gave released, the two of them stumbled back a few paces because of the force. One layer down, twenty-three to go.
With a sigh and a wipe to his forehead, Mamoru shrugged off his sweater and continued to work of the rest of her layers. Usagi, on the other hand, greatly enjoyed the sight of the simple T-Shirt he now wore. Suddenly, she came to a frightening conclusion.
Mamoru, tugging off the first thick sweatshirt, noticed his wife's approving gaze turn to a scowl. He kissed her lips in an attempt to dissolve such a look, but only succeeded in having the scowl directed at him. He gently set the sweatshirt on the mound of jacket that was on the countertop before peeling the next layer off. If he was patient, she would tell him.
"I never see my husband in the winter," she pouted as Mamoru grabbed the bottom ends of her thick sweater. At his confused look, she continued once the sweater was over her head. "You're always in a sweater."
Mamoru smirked before going in for the next layer. "You're one to talk. Three layers, Usako?"
She crossed her arms after he slipped the thin sweater off of her ever-decreasing body mass. He simply kissed her and finally appeared to be getting somewhere with the clothing. He recognized the small sweater-jacket she wore as the one she would walk around in when she was cold. Instantly, he saw the light at the end of the tunnel, and not the kind that signal a train was heading that way.
Content that only one layer was between him and his lovely wife, he moved to her ski pants. He chuckled as he noticed that its legs were larger than his before pulling the puffy, waterproof pants off. She stepped out of them as he held them on the ground and he looked up to see what manner of clothing he was going to have to remove next.
Expecting to see a pair of jeans of khakis, or knowing how the whole ten-thousand shirt layer had gone perhaps a pair of sweatpants over another pair of pants, the red skirt with little pink hearts in it and white knitted stockings encasing her shapely legs caused him a great deal of surprise. Add to it that the skirt put even her senshi uniform to shame in its shortness, and Mamoru felt a very strong nosebleed about to occur. Somehow, he imagined the sudden heat in the room wasn't just because the heater was gaining on the 80-degree mark.
He stood up and roughly swallowed his tongue as Usagi giggled and removed her final jacket. A pink top the stretched across her shoulders and melded to her curves greeted him and finally her entire outfit was complete. If his glazed eyes were any indication, she'd say that she had his attention. With a chuckle, she went to the freezer and grabbed a crescent shaped ice cube. She gently pushed him out of the kitchen, tiptoeing around puddles of water, proclaiming the need to have dinner ready. When he turned to disagree, the ice cube went straight into his mouth.
Nothing brings you out of a daze better than a brain freeze, or at least that's what Mamoru found as he was shoved towards his neglected battle. With a final, shameless pat to the derriere, Usagi started dinner and Mamoru started at the mound of books and paper on the table. When he turned to grumble something incoherently through the ice cube in his mouth, the words stopped short. Usagi was crouched on the kitchen floor, back to him, mopping up the puddles she made with paper towels.
No, that skirt was infinitely times shorter than the senshi one, he concluded.
He sucked on the ice cube once more, draining as much cold in a given instant as possible, before turning and making his way back to his books. He crunched loud on the cube when he couldn't get his mind settled around the medical schools books before him. Through the partition in the wall, he caught a glimpse as Usagi moved to throw away the paper towels. Another crunch when she bent to dorp the wet towels in the trash, and she turned, winked at him, and began pulling out pots and pans for dinner.
A third crunch had completely decimated the ice cube and led to a string of giggles from the kitchen. Mamoru closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and plowed into his textbook offensive with a new vigor.