A/N. This was written for the 'Scent' challenge at Thursday100plus on LJ. Um... not much more to say than that. Except that the ending's kinda weak. But oh, well. My love for attention has coerced me into posting it. Hee. This is dedicated to my reviewers. You guys totally rule, you're what makes writing fanfic fun! Hope you guys have a great New Year.
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He loves the way she smells.
It's a bit ridiculous, really, the attraction that scent can induce, but rationally it's probably not so much the fragrances themselves as much as the fact that they remind him of her. They're something unique to Alex.
Her golden curtain of hair always smells like her shampoo. Almonds, honey, and cream, he believes. Bobby is rarely wrong about these things. He has, as she puts it, the nose of a bloodhound on PCP, which, actually, isn't quite correct, because phencyclidine induces auditory and visual hallucinations more often than olfactory ones. Somehow he doesn't have the heart to correct her, though, when she flashes him that sardonic grin.
The smell of plain, white soap seems to hover on her skin, even though it's usually hours since she's bathed. It's a clean scent, one that makes him think of crisp cotton and pale skin, and of long, cool showers on a hot day.
Like most cops, her breath smells like coffee. No surprise there, his own breath probably smells the same. But there's a lingering trace of the peppermints that she's always popping into her mouth, or a faint undertone of cinnamon from the cinnamon-raisin bagels that she sometimes stops for on her way into work. He likes those days; she brings him coffee and a bagel, too, but not cinnamon-raisin, because he likes the blueberry ones better.
Her perfume is something subtle and light, but not overly sweet. It smells like jasmine and lemons and a faint hint of ginger, an exotic undertone. He snagged a sample of it in a department store once, one of those tiny bottles that only really hold a millimeter or so of perfume. Sometimes when he's sitting in his apartment alone and he wishes that he could talk to her or even just see her face, he lifts the blue-tinted glass stopper and lets the scent of her perfume fill the room and for a moment, it's like she's there.
They say that of all the senses, scent has the strongest connection to memory. Whether this is a primal holdover from the days of pre-history or because scent has the most direct path to the central nervous system and the hippocampus where long-term memories are stored, scientists don't know. But any of these aromas will bring instantly bring her face to mind. And although he wishes that he could allow himself love her, to be able to catch a whiff of the numerous fragrances that make up Alex Eames is…
Enough.