Itch Three: Clothes

Tir tossed and turned on his side of the bed. The sheets were too rough he felt; the fabric deceptively shiny like silk had the coarseness of a servant's washing stones. Even the new pajamas worn on his now twenty-year old body felt oppressive and suffocating: almost to point being alive, he thought wildly. Like a boa constricting around a helpless bunny...

Or like the soul eater, a living, laughing blanket of ice and fire that wrapped all around him, numbing him, burning him, and mocking him at the same time.

But he shook the thoughts from his mind; dismissing them as memories from a life long past. No longer relevant and easily buried like a body in the earth or bones covered in a sandstorm.

It has been four years since he relinquished the power of the Soul Eater. Two years since he truly began his new life. And one year since a shadow that had no name threatened to rip away the small shred of happiness he had finally claimed for his own.

He felt two a pair of comforting arms circle his chest. Warm, comforting, and bestowing a feeling he'd only been recently reacquainted with. A feeling he lived so long without and had never dared to hope to feel it again.

"Troubled?" Kasumi whispered, feeling the side of her warm head press against his upper back.

"Not really. Now go back to sleep." He spoke softly, not really sure if she could hear him.

Her arms tightened around his body. Oh, she heard. "Liar." She said, her voice low and hurt.

He felt his breath leave him. He lied and brushed her aside when she only wanted to see if he was okay. "Maybe a little bit troubled."

"A lot troubled?"

"Yeah."

"Tell me?"

And so he told her. The feeling he's been having. The clothes and the bed sheets and what it meant: the restlessness, the unease, everything.

When he finished, he couldn't decide if he should be sad or encourage or angry at her reaction.

She had laughed.

"You silly," She spoke very lightly, making his problems as simple and trivial as choosing clothes in the morning or forgetting to shower before bed. "If the bed sheets bother you that much, we'll just throw it away."

She pulled the sheets from around them and tossed them off the bed and to the floor. "See?" she said.

He turned toward, face to face. "Can it really be that simple? Can I just throw it away?"

"It can be." She lost her levity then as she closed her eyes, learned forward, and kissed him on the forehead. "Everything can be simple. Just as long as you want it to be."

Tir stared at the face of his loving wife and desperately etched her expression in his mind's eye. Someday and someday soon, when things became less simple than they were suppose to be, he would draw on her expression, made simple and full with her love for him, and make things as simple as he knew it should be.

And when Tir pulled off his pajamas and threw them to the floor, he was pleasantly surprised to find Kasumi undressed as well.

She winked at him. "My PJ's were bothering me too."

Fin

(Touch changes. Love changes)

----

So Kasumi is not her shy self, but marriage changes a person. So yeah.