Scent

Every night before Kaoru falls asleep, Kenshin pulls her closer to himself and whispers to her.

"Kaoru, you smell like cookies,"

"Kaoru, you smell like library books."

"Kaoru, you smell like Old Spice have you been using my deodorant?"

"Kaoru, you smell beautiful."

Thus Kaoru knows exactly what she smells like, every day. According to the tabs she is keeping in her head, it is a rare occurrence when she smells like the same thing more than once.

Kenshin, on the other hand, always smells exactly the same; Kaoru thinks she would recognize the familiar scent of him, pine trees tinged with cinnamon, absolutely anywhere. Her dreams are filled with the scent, and when she wakes up it envelopes her.

One night Kenshin has to stay late at work, and when he gets home he slumps down on the bed and falls asleep immediately. Kaoru spends the evening pacing between the kitchen and the bedroom, worried. She has checked his temperature four times ((98.6° every time)), called Sano (("We were very busy today, missy, but he didn't seem sick or anythin'. He's probly just tired.)) and has made three glasses of tea and drunk none of them.

Eventually she stops pacing and sits on the bed next to him. He looks peaceful, sleeping, and she reaches out to brush aside a stray strand of hair from his face.

He opens one eye lazily. "'Ru," he mumbles, "Will you please calm down? I'm fine." He opens his arms, letting her curl up next to him and rest her head on his shoulder.

Kaoru presses against him, desperate to hear his heartbeat. "I was…I thought— you didn't… you didn't tell me what I smell like…" She closes her eyes, painfully aware of how lame this sounds. But Kenshin knows she is perfectly serious, and he pulls her closer so he can bury his nose in her shoulder. Breathing deeply, he lifts his head and kisses her softly.

"You smell like Kaoru," he says.

And after she falls asleep in his arms he admits to himself what he could never say to her; that she smells a little like worry and tastes a lot like perfection, and in the morning when he wakes up he knows she always smells like jasmine with a tinge of pine trees and cinnamon.

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