Chapter Text
I'm a wandering soul
Lost in a city of homes
The earth is plenty
But the soil is thin
-Sleeping World, Vancouver Sleep Clinic
There was something primal about recognizing the scent of a lover. Certain smells were said to trigger strong emotional responses, and what stronger emotion was there than love.
Steve tightens his hold around you, pressing his nose to the sensitive skin of your neck, inhaling the scent that is uniquely you.
There’s the faint fragrance of the vanilla body wash you use. A simple scent that triggers memories of shared showers and steam, soapy hands roaming over wet skin and moans drowned out by pounding water. An innocuous scent that, when encountered in his everyday life, now reminds of racing hearts and cool breaths on heated expanses of skin.
As you arch your body back against him, the movement of your hair brings forth the slight tang of ozone, faint but sharp in his nose. It’s a scent that is indicative of your love of the sky, a love so deep its essence is ingrained in your very skin. It foreshadows oncoming storms, reminds him of thunder and lightning, how his heart races and the way his skin seems to crackle with energy when you’re near; that a touch could start a spark. It’s sunshine breaking through the clouds, because he’d be an idiot to think you’re not the brightest thing in his damned life.
And faintest of all, below the scent of your skin and essence, is undoubtedly him. Steve would be lying if he said smelling himself on your body wasn’t one of the most intimate things he could imagine. That he had gotten so close as to leave a bit of himself on you, and vice versa. It drove straight to the base of his self, ignited an intense heat and longing, and invoked a sense of pride and possession, like he had somehow marked you as his.
Almost immediately he discarded the thought; you belonged to no one but yourself and the sky. You flirted with stars and planets. He could never compete. But you had deemed him, a stubborn boy from Brooklyn, worthy of your affections, and he would do everything in his power to be the kind of man worthy of you.