A/N: Another shorty, but this one's muuuuch happier than the previous two. One more to go after this.
Disclaimer: Disclaimed.
Part 4: Smell
He loves the smell of her on his pillow.
These days his favorite way to get a hit of her scent is to slide his arms around her, press his nose to her neck and inhale deeply. The act is intimate and just primal enough to excite, and he wonders if there isn't some logic behind this otherwise ridiculous vampire craze sweeping the globe right now. Because he swears sometimes she smells so good he just wants to bite into her.
But now…
She hasn't been in his bed for three days, and yet he can still smell the soap, shampoo and perfume medley that is undeniably her. It's a scent that he used to associate with friendship and partnership. A scent that used to make him think of shipping containers, stakeouts, movie nights and aircraft carriers. A scent that used to provide him with reassurance that there was someone watching his back and keeping him safe. Someone who provided safety amid chaos. Someone who just happened to have the greatest ass he's ever seen.
Things have changed in the last few months. Now that same smell conjures feelings of intimacy and desire. It makes him itch to touch her, kiss her, hold her. It elicits reactions in his body that used to require a fantasy or a hand. It summons memories of nights and weekends in her naked company and mornings wrapped around her and listening to her breathe.
And on mornings like this, when he's alone with the silence to indulge in such thoughts, her smell on his pillow reassures him that all of this—their relationship, her feelings, her presence in his life—is real. It's not one of the dozens of elaborate fantasies he once built in his head that he must be careful not to indulge in around her. It truly is the life he lives every day. There really is someone who loves him and who wants to spend her life with him. Someone who he knows will stick by him no matter what, because they've already been to heaven and hell together. Someone who thinks that he's good enough. Someone he loves back with every breath in his body.
It's all real.
As he curls himself around her pillow and draws a deep breath, it occurs to him that if she is imbedded in the fibers of his sheets and clothes, then surely his smell must be all over her. The idea flicks some kind of caveman switch in his head that finds this kind of intimate marking and possession unbelievably hot. Suddenly he's not content to be in this bed by himself.
He grabs his cell phone and speed dials the number he calls at least three times more than any other. When she answers she sounds slightly breathless and far too alert for 0700 on a Sunday. He briefly mourns that he'll never break her of her early morning running habit.
"Come over."
Her response is a correct assumption about the contents of his boxer shorts. He can think of no reason to deny her charge, and his already-encyclopedic knowledge of her triggers and urges allows him to make a confident guess about the state of her own 'contents'. She chuckles, but then folds so easily that he thinks she must have been on her way over anyway.
"I'll just take a shower," she says, and he's about to tell her not to bother. He loves the real smell of her. But he'll get enough of that later when he spends a sizeable chunk of his day kneeling at the foot of his bed and making her writhe. And anyway, she needs to top up her soap and shampoo signature on his pillows. If he spends much longer breathing into them the Zivaness might begin to fade away.
He loves the smell of her on his pillow.
Because it's undeniable evidence of why his life is so damn good.
See? Happy. No need for freaking out.