Luxury
She has never been one for being pampered. To her, the best things in life are the simplest: watching the slow morph of colours at sunrise, the cramped, aching delight of finally achieving something she has been working towards, the sight and sound and sensation of those she loves. She likes eating good warm food until she is full; she likes lying in the bathtub and soaking her muscles in hot unscented water; she likes clean sheets on the bed and him beside her; she likes to smile and she likes to laugh. These are the things she wants, and she has no desire for anything more sumptuous.
All the same, she admits to herself, she finds great pleasure in that ultimate symbol of extravagance, the grape. There is a bunch of them in the fruit bowl, fat and purple, and she eats them cold and still wet from being washed. When she glances at him across the table and catches him watching her again, she just smiles, leans forwards and slips one of the fruits into his mouth with finger and thumb.
It is more enjoyable, she thinks, licking her fingers, to sit at the bare kitchen table in her old stained overalls eating grapes and watching his startled blush, than it would be to indulge in a thousand luxuries.
Author's notes: Well, it's been a while. I really have no excuse other than the fact that in the meantime I've been writing quite a lot in the Death Note fandom, and that I lost my notebook containing this, among several other first drafts, when I moved house last October. When I found it today I felt like I had to upload something. After such a gap, this chapter seems inadequately short, but rest assured this is only the first of many fics and ficlets contained in the fugitive notebook.
As always, any feedback would be much appreciated.