The atmosphere in the house was different.

Suzuki had felt it the moment he came home. For one thing they weren't having breakfast for dinner. Masami always made breakfast for dinner when he came back from being abroad. He had given her plenty of notice but instead of an omelet and pancakes and waffles and whatever else he found pizza. Cheese pizza. Not even any toppings. The children were very particular about their toppings it seemed, something that made no sense to him. Pizza was meant to be eaten with toppings, that was why they put toppings on pizza. Also it wasn't like Masami to indulge the children so. She was always on them to broaden their culinary horizons even though it was so much simpler to just let them eat whatever they wanted.

That was odd.

Something else which could only be classified as odd was the fact that Masami was in her nightgown even though she was not anywhere close to being ready for bed. She had done nothing with her hair, too, just tied it back. No makeup, either, which felt….it felt strange. She used to make such an effort for him, he was used to her making an effort for him, but now that effort was just….where had it gone too.

Odd.

The last bit of oddness was the fact that he could feel Fukuda. The ghost of him, not his literal ghost of course but the ghost of his presence. He had been….he had been in Suzuki's home long enough, and enough times, to have left an imprint of himself. For a little while Suzuki wonders, as he shares the first meal with his family in weeks, if there had been some catastrophe while he was away which had necessitated Fukuda's presence in his house.

But there hadn't been.

The bathroom had exploded, daughter had made the bathroom explode on accident, but that was not why Fukuda had been in his house long enough that his energy lingered….no. Apparently, according to the children, Masami had taken very ill in his absence. Daughter had said that so matter of factly, as matter of factly as she said everything, but it was not something that was matter of fact at all. Well it had been a fact, Masami had been ill, but it was also something that made his aura flare. A flare of yellow. Yellow where there should have been red.

Daughter noticed.

And commented.

And for that he almost didn't give her the doll he had purchased for her. A native looking doll in native clothes. Good for her cultural education. If she was going to inherit the world someday she'd need to be able to understand it. He had almost kept that doll from her because she should have known full well not to comment on when her father had his own lapses in control. They were rare but they happened. He did not keep her doll from her, that would have just upset both of the children and after the trip he'd had the last thing he wanted to deal with was upset children, but he did tap his aura against hers somewhat harshly.

She was much easier to correct than Sho.

He exorcised that emotion, that panicked emotion, as quickly as he could. No harm would ever come to Masami. He had procured an on call healer for her and built her a fortress…though no fortress could keep out germs…maybe he should have built some sort of bubble instead…but that just lowered immunities…but it would keep her safe from illness…he put a pin in the hermetically sealed bubble idea. He had enough irons in the fire as it was. Still the thought of her becoming ill, so ill, so very ill that he could lose her…

He does not like that feeling.

But it's an irrational feeling. She was fine. She may have been acting oddly but she was perfectly fine. She was up and about and perfectly fine and he was just overthinking everything. He was overthinking the fact that she was not dressed, hadn't made him his favorite dinner, hadn't kissed him when he came home, hadn't badgered him about spending time with the children when all he wanted was a moment to himself after dealing with sycophants and cultists and the like for weeks on end…she just left him to his own devices.

She bathed the children.

She read to the children.

She put the children to bed.

And she did not once ask him to be a part of any of those rituals. The children had asked for him, they always did, but their mother corrected them. It was nice being able to be left alone in his bedroom to just…be. Nobody around him. Nobody kissing up to him or making any attempts on his life. Just him sitting in his own bed in his own home in his own country…it was nice. Just being. Just being there, on that bed.

That bed.

Something was different.

"Masami?" he asked. She had come to their room after putting the children to bed. She had changed into different pajamas, another nightgown but one which was yellow not white like the last one had been, and had been rubbing lotion into her skin when he got her attention. He never needed to get her attention before, it had always been on him, even if she had been doing something else. That was also odd, very odd, and it made his chest feel…tight…and his aura threatened to flare out again. He didn't like this feeling at all.

So he tried to exorcise it.

"Touichirou?" She didn't even look at him when she said his name. There was something different, to, in the way that she addressed him. There was something missing, he did not know what, but he did not know that his pulse rose and his chest tightened and his aura, once again, flare outwards. He was filled with the irrational urge to…to…he wasn't even sure what. Hold her? Kiss her?

Perform a pair bonding activity.

"Something about this bed is different but I don't know what." She dropped the bottle of lotion she had been holding. He caught it, capped it, and put it on her nightstand with his powers. She was still, very still, sort of like an animal froze when it sensed a predator. Like she was afraid. Afraid of him….but that was absurd. He had never once harmed a hair on her head. He had never once even had the urge to. She was his.

"I bought a new bedding set." Said Masami after a moment. Suzuki felt it under his palms. Yes, the color was the same but the material was different. Stiffer. It even smelled different. They had a few sets of bedding and they all smelled the same. Like the detergent she used and the smell the house carried within it and the smell that she carried as well. This bedding smelled like…kind of like plastic. He didn't much care for it at all.

He wished that she would just lay next to him already.

To get the bed smelling the right way, of course, and also….pair bonding. He knew that the urge he had to pair bond with her, to hold her, to be near her was an irrational one. They were already married, she had chosen him and he had chosen her, they should have been past this by now. But evidently they were not. Evidently he was still weak when it came to her. He could not indulge. He could not risk losing control.

Nothing good happened when he lost control.

"Come lay down next to me. This smells like plastic. I'd rather it smelled like you." Said Suzuki trying his best to articulate what he felt without exposing any weakness. What good would he be to her if he was weak? She depended on him totally and completely. She depended on him to provide for and protect her and she could not have him weak.

"That's all?" asked Masami in a tone that he could not ever recall hearing from her. He didn't like it. It was unpleasant to the ears. Her voice had always been so mellifluous. This time there had been a hard edge to it, one that he did not like one bit. He took a deep breath. There it was, that feeling, that desperate panicked feeling. He tried his best to exorcise it.

"Yes." said Suzuki. The feeling was there and it was not going away. She made no move to sit let alone lay down. The more time passed, no more than seconds, the more this feeling seemed to grow. It grew exponentially, it seemed like, and no matter what he did it just would not stop. She just would not join him.

"What's with you?" asked Masami. She was looking at him now like he was something that she had found on the ground. Something shiny and new, like a foreign coin, some object of simple curiosity. His aura was visible now, maybe, even to her. He needed to calm down. He needed to…he needed to get rid of this feeling. This feeling…his aura was spreading. His aura was spreading throughout the room. It chased the remnants of Fukuda away.

Fukuda had been in this room.

And that thought creates an entirely different feeling within him. This feeling was worlds easier to exorcise. He knew that this feeling was pointless. It was crazy. Masami would never have been unfaithful to him. She had no reason to be. He provided for her materially and physically. They were married and part of marriage was the understanding that other people were off limits. This was a bond that humans had invented to make sure that everyone's offspring were, indeed, their own. Masami had no reason to be unfaithful. Fukuda had been in this room because Masami had been on her sickbed for some time, as the children had said.

And now another feeling was there.

And he was shaking. He was physically shaking under the strain of keeping it together. He thought of her being ill, so ill, ill enough to pass away…and she must have been very ill indeed if Fukuda had to come over and heal her over a course of multiple days. He was weak, then, and he allowed….he left himself no choice but to allow Masami to see it.

"The thought of you perishing…it hurts me." He said after a while. He articulated it as best as he could without showing any extra weakness. Admitting that he cared for her so deeply that her death would have affected him…that was a lot. But what was a wife if not a confidant. He had laid himself bare before her, physically, so many times…so he had might as well lay himself bare emotionally as well.

Even though he hates himself as soon as the words pass his lips.

"You could replace me easily." Said Masami once again in that tone that he's coming to absolutely hate more than anything else in the world. Why is she talking like this? Why? She was acting….she had never acted like this before. Something was…something was different about her…

Had she changed?

Had he been away for so long that she had changed?

"Yes, I could, but I don't want to. If you're thinking purely in terms of my ability to attract another woman that wouldn't be difficult at all. I don't want to find another woman, though. Even if you were to perish I don't think that I would want to do that." Said Suzuki. Talking helps. Talking helps ground him. Objectively speaking he's a man of wealth and power, even now with the ring on his finger women threw themselves at him. He did not indulge, he had a wife, and he was not a fan of meaningless encounters anyway. Much too messy. Masami was his and he did not think that he could ever find another woman who was exactly like her.

So if she were to die in front of him right then and there we wouldn't have taken another wife.

He didn't much need to, anyway. He had a son, he had secured the next generation, and as badly as he wanted to have another child he knew that biologically speaking his work had been done. He had a son to pass on his genes, he was fine in that regard, so there would be no need to take another wife or even a lover. Masami knew that. Anyone with half a brain could have seen that and Masami was the most intelligent woman, person, that he had ever met in his life barring himself of course.

"Sure." Said Masami in a tone, another tone, that he did not understand. Well at least she answered in the affirmative. That was good. She understood that no matter what happened he would never, ever, be with another woman. He assumed that the same went for her. He took good care of her, better care of her than any other man had the means to, and even if one of the numerous attempts on his life went through she would be provided for long after his passing.

"I apologize for before, when I almost lost control. It won't happen again. I just…your illness worried me, that was all. I remembered how truly fragile you are. The thought of being without you pains me greatly but there is no reason for me to have those thoughts. Fukuda was here to tend to you and I assume that he did his job considering that you are up and about….if not behaving a bit oddly." Said Suzuki

"Yeah…he helped out a lot while you were gone." Said Masami

"I'll be sure to praise and reward him appropriately later." Said Suzuki

"….yeah…." said Masami

"Please, join me….I have not been beside you in quite some time." Said Suzuki. In for a penny in for a pound. He was being weak, and now even weaker, but he needed to have her beside him right that moment. She needed…she needed to get back to normal.

"So now you want to be with me?" asked Masami

"Yes. At the present moment I want you to be beside me on this bed." Said Suzuki. He didn't understand what was so unclear about what he had just said. Usually she was the one who craved these pair bonding activities. He felt, then, a bit like he had the first time he had ever travelled. Not even abroad, no, when he had gone on that school trip to the mountains. He had slept in an unfamiliar room on a futon, he had been used to a bed, and was surrounded by people even though up to that point he had always slept alone. It had been off and unpleasant and that was what this was, now. Odd and unpleasant.

"Are you sure? Are you sure it's not pointless?" asked Masami. She put an emphasis on the word 'pointless' that he could not see the purpose of.

"Pointless….yes, I suppose that…there is no point to pair bonding because we are already a pair…but I feel a sort of…of distance between us. Despite how close you are to me I can feel an unpleasant amount of distance and I…this is not something which I wish to feel. I want you to be near me right now, Masami." Said Suzuki. Words were hard. That made him sound so weak, so pathetic, and if she turned away from him and fled the room in disgust he would have understood.

But she did not.

The lines around her eyes softened. She drew the covers and laid herself down beside him. She laid far away from him, it seemed, usually she turned into an octopus when they laid in their bed together, and he would address that later. For now, for right now, she was lying there in bed next to him and that was what he had asked for. He always got what he asked for…and usually it felt good….but now she was just so far away that…that it was maddening.

"Why are you so far away from me?" asked Suzuki biting the bullet and just asking her. He wondered if he had done something that she found objectionable. He wracked his brain and found nothing, nothing that she would have been aware of, anyway.

"Because….do you honestly not know why?" asked Masami

"I have no idea why you're acting like this. None at all." Said Suzuki speaking the absolute truth. She did not seem to like the truth based on the scoffing sound she made.

"Typical This is so typical." Said Masami. She turned her back to him and it hurt as badly as if she had struck him. This was too much. There were too many emotions, here, emotions that he could not put a name to. He knew that they were bad. He knew that they made his aura flare out. He knew that they made his control, the control that he had spent the better part of a lifetime honing, slip through his grasp. He did not know what these emotions were or how he could exorcise them so that he could just function again.

"What's typical?" asked Suzuki levelling his voice. Strong. He was strong. He was the strongest being in the world. He knew no equal.

"You. This is so you." Said Masami

"I don't follow." Said Suzuki

"Of course you don't! God, you are such a pod person, you know that?! It's like…God! You're cruel and you don't even realize it! Don't you have any clue how…how much it hurt?! How much you hurt me?! How much you've been hurting me for all of these years!?" It was like a damn broke. She turned to face him, now, and she had tears streaming down her cheeks. Her breathing was much too fast and her eyes were much too glassy and he did not like this one bit.

He would have exorcised those emotions long ago.

But Masami was not him. She did not exorcise her emotions, she let them overtake her until she lost control. Like this. This was what she looked like when she lost control. When he lost control he didn't cry, things broke and people died. He did not have this luxury. He envied her for this. Even though she had no reason to lose control he did not envy her.

"When did I hurt you? Masami, I would never do anything to harm-" said Suzuki. He knew that he could be a cruel man at times. One did not get to be the head of Claw by being softhearted…but she had never seen that side of him. He never brought that side of him, that man, home. That man existed in offices across the water, on plains and trains and within automobiles. That man had never once set foot in this house. He had never had any need to.

"See?! You just can't get a clue, can you?! It hurt me last time! It hurt, Touichirou!" said Masami

"What time? Please, I can't understand what you mean and I need you to be as specific as possible because I…I am not following right now." Said Suzuki. He allowed her to shove him. It wasn't like she was capable of doing any damage. No, the way she had been acting hurt him much more than any hit she could have landed.

"Last time we had sex….do you even remember? Do you even care?" asked Masami landing another shove to his chest.

"Last time we had sex? Do you mean before I left?" asked Suzuki

"Yes! Then!" said Masami

"Then? If I was causing you pain then I would have stopped if you had asked me to. I have no interest in causing you any sort of harm, Masami. You're my wife." Said Suzuki. Well it was nice to get to the bottom of it. He had been a bit overly enthusiastic, maybe, but that was alright. Now he knew that he had done something wrong and he could easily learn from his mistake.

"Seriously?!"

Or not.

He wondered, briefly, if homosexuals had it easier. He was not the best at understanding people but he did think that he would have more in common, thought wise, with another man than he did with a women. Another man would have been socialized like he would. They would have thought similarly and acted similarly. Maybe the sex would have been better to…and he decided to put a pin in that thought. This was not the time to debate the merits of homosexuality with himself. This was the time to be a good husband and listen to his wife's troubles and try to fix whatever it was that he had done wrong.

Marriage could be so draining sometimes.

But she was worth it.

It would have been worth a hundred years of this just to make sure that she never looked at him, never spoke to him, like she had before ever again. He wanted his Masami back and if this was what he had to go through then so be it. He was no stranger to a challenge, he was going to take on the entire world soon, and this should have been a piece of cake.

"Please….please tell me what I did wrong so that I can fix it. I want you to be happy, Masami, and I can't make you happy unless you tell me how to." Said Suzuki. More weakness. Admitting that he wanted to do things for her just to see her happy. Maybe homosexuality wasn't something that would have, hypothetically, been for him after all. He couldn't imagine being this weak in front of another man even if he felt the same way for that man as he did for his wife.

"That's the problem….that I have to tell you. You just…when you told me that having sex with me was pointless it was so cruel…and the worst part is that you have no idea how cruel you had been. You have no idea how it felt….you had just been inside of me and then you…you said that it was pointless because we didn't make another kid…and it hurt so much…and it's…for years." Said Masami

"You….you were hurt by that? By my words? Why? I don't understand. The main point of having sex is to make a child….but it's also a pleasurable pair bonding activity. I said that, before, and I assumed that was the reason you sought out intimacy with me." Said Suzuki

"….I love you. I wanted to have sex with you because I love you. It has nothing to do with pair bonding or whatever. I wanted to be with you…out of love…and sometimes I feel like…like you don't love me. Like I could be anyone. Like you just needed a woman to have your children and take care of your house so you picked me." Said Masami

"That….that doesn't make any sense. Love is pair bonding. We love each other because we have chosen each other out of all other potential people to create a life, and life in general, together. I enjoy it when we have sex. I enjoy….I enjoy being near you…and I had no intention of being cruel to you." Said Suzuki. People were strange. If he had wanted to be cruel to her, not that he ever wanted to be cruel to her, then there were at least five things that he could think up in that moment that he could have done. But he had no reason to do them because she was his wife. It was hard, sometimes, trying to reconcile her view of things with his but that was what had attracted her to him. How different she was.

"Sometimes it doesn't feel like, it, Touichirou. Sometimes it feels like I could be literally anyone. Like I could just wake up tomorrow and switch places with another woman and you wouldn't miss a beat." Said Masami

"No, I would notice that. I would definitely notice that. Masami…if I just wanted a woman to care for me and my home and my children then I would have hired someone. I chose you because I…I love you." Said Suzuki even though that word was so very imprecise. Overused, too. That word did not encompass the way he felt about Masami….very little in this world did.

"Then act like it." Said Masami. She leaned her head onto his chest. He buried his face in her hair. She smelled….she smelled different. He couldn't place it but she felt different as well as smelled different. She….there was an energy clinging to her…Fukuda's energy.

She must have been very ill, then.

"Tell me. Tell me what to do and I'll do it." Said Suzuki. She was silent, after that, but she was clinging to him so then everything was right with them again. She was back to normal. She…she was his and he was hers and it was…it was all going to be back to normal now. Now she would tell him what she wanted from him and when and how.

And he was glad.