RESIDUALLY YOURS
Or: Smell
I go back to the bed the moment you leave.
A little slower than usual, because I'm still sore, but I'm grateful for the stiffness in my limbs. Sleeping on the floor is nothing if it allows me to be close to you.
The dry scent of dust tickling through my nose awoke me as the early streaks of sunlight had found me on the floor next to my own bed. I had been sure I was dreaming as I listened to the soft sound of your breathing.
Now, alone again, my room feels empty and awkward, as though it was never mine. Everything I am and own belongs to you, but this was the first time you appropriated my apartment for yourself.
I was not so brazen as to hope you would spend the night when you said you needed to use my shower last night. I didn't hope for anything, really, apart from getting away from the stench.
You had ordered me to be vicious, to obliterate the pair, but I didn't anticipate my final lightning spell to so utterly decimate the Fighter's defences.
The scent of charred and smouldering flesh weighed down the gentle breeze, making my stomach churn. Blood running from my nose partly covered the smell with salty copper, but it wasn't enough.
I dared to glance over at you, but you remained stoic, even though I knew you could taste the tangy air in the back of your throat, like I could, the smell of greasy smoke.
You took a lengthy shower when we returned to my place, while I changed my clothes. I held a clean shirt to my face and inhaled deeply, trying to supplant the smell of fire and death with the breezily floral smell of generic laundry detergent.
You ordered me to take a shower too, after you were done and I obeyed, bringing another change of clothes.
The heavy steam, moist and smelling of artificial cherry blossom from my shampoo, drove all tension away as I scrubbed myself clean of the fine film of putrid violence still clinging to my skin.
All that tension promptly returned when I exited the bathroom and found you lying in my bed. Your bare shoulders the only part of you visible from beneath the white sheets.
'It's late,' you said and I quickly cast down my eyes to stop myself from staring, 'I will stay the night.'
I barely remembered how to breathe.
'Sleep on the couch,' you turned to your side, away from me and my treacherous eyes were already roving what I could see of your finely toned shoulders, 'or the floor. I don't care.'
And that was that. I lowered myself to the floor next to the bed with one of the couch cushions and settled. I barely slept, wanting to listen to every rustle of movement, every quiet sigh you made, determinedly ignoring the persistent pressure between my legs. I fell asleep counting your breaths.
But now my bed is empty.
I stare down at it with a sense of awe, taking in the sight of the crumpled linen, hardly daring to believe whose body occupied this bed not half an hour ago.
I throw myself face first into the pillow and breathe. I recognise my own shampoo, you must have used it last night, and breathe again. Deeper.
It's there, what I'm looking for, beneath it all. That scent that is so hard to grasp. A whiff that is so familiar for the smallest moment before it is gone, like trying to catch a single drop of water in an ocean with my bare hands. It takes me back to your hands on my throat as you marked me with your name, the most you have ever touched me, but this time without the overbearing scent of blood, sticky in the inside of my nose and throat.
Breathing deeply, I desperately try to memorise the fleeting, ephemeral scent that is my Sacrifice, my master, so undeniably you.
Time passes, I don't know how much, as I surround myself in the memory of you. Pressing my cheek to the mattress and pretending I can still feel your warmth.
As much as I want to keep the bed just as it is now, never sleeping in it again lest I soil the memory of you, I know I can't.
With a twinge of regret I begin to strip the linen off the bed to wash. It's just a twinge, though.
It may have taken my assertion that it was new and my swearing to the fact that I have never worn it, but you acquiesced to the necessity of borrowing a clean shirt.
I smile as I close the washing machine. How will that smell when you return it to me?
A/N: This was a real challenge to write and somehow only worked by setting it in the second perspective.
Next week: Sight. Seimei doesn't like what he sees when he looks at Soubi.
Comments, questions, critiques; it's all welcome!
