Never Run

021 ::: Never Smell

Hello! Sorry about the wait. I am trying to get this story updated as quickly as I possibly can with everything that is going on. But, ya know...life.

This chapter is dedicated to biscuitsancheese for all their awesome comments on this story! Your support really does mean everything to me.

Remember, please comment if you see any errors or inconsistencies.

Enjoy! :) <3

*****Trigger warning: sexual assault - proceed with caution

I was hot.

I woke up and it felt as if my stomach were on fire, the heat of too many hours in the sun that left skin swollen and red and painful - like I had been stung by a million bees. I groaned, or maybe it was a whimper, whatever it was, it was an unattractive noise that pushed its way out of my throat, filling the thick room and stuffing itself into my ears unceremoniously and caused my head to pound.

Great.

I despised waking up with headaches - it was worse in the slums because of all the different sounds from the pounding of a hammer trying to fix a pathetic piece of wood to the wailing of a baby or shrieks of other children. What made it even worse were the smells that seemed to ignite the nauseous part that came along with the headache. The lewd scents of unshowered bodies mixed with sadness and desperation was not something I missed, even if it did, unfortunately, smell like home.

My stomach would turn, fold over, and crash into itself when I lived in the slums and had to breathe in the air. Unlike now, as I lay here, the only scent that filled my nostrils was the one of the person - monster - I hated the most. It smelled of wood, burning wood, of the smoke that drifted off of crackling logs buried within a deep orange glow with hints of old leather and freshly mowed grass. I hated it and I hated that he slightly smelled like my favorite smell; mowed grass.

When I was younger, before they took over, I remember sitting on my father's lap as he mowed the grass. Sometimes he would let me steer the mower and even though I knew it was coming, I would never fail to be in awe as I watched the long tendrils of grass turn into short and stubby dull spikes that would simultaneously tickle and stab the pads of my feet as I ran through the yard basking in the sticky summer air alight with the glow of dusk. My favorite was when my father was too lazy to bag the chopped grass, letting it fly and flutter to the ground and enhancing the sweet, earthy aroma. It would be a matter of minutes after cutting the grass that I would be running through the back yard, rolling around and staining whatever clothes I had on, along with my skin, bright green from the recently diced grass.

And now, here I was, laying next to someone that smelled faintly of something that calmed me, something that held a place in my mind, in my memories. A scent that meant something to me from someone who means nothing. Who wouldn't ever mean anything to me. And yet? Yet, I craved the scent, I want it to fill my nostrils and completely consume and, even for just the slightest second, I wanted it to ease the turmoil that has plagued my mind for the last couple months. I wanted it to embrace me, hold me safe, and whisper sweet nothings into my ear. I wanted it to remind me of home, of who I used to be, of a simpler and happier time.

I just wanted a little taste.

It couldn't hurt, right?

Just one whiff?

Just one.

I looked over Xaler's sleeping form; he was sprawled out on his stomach with one thick and heavy arm cast over my stomach possessively. There was the source of the heat, although, I wasn't too surprised considering I cried myself to sleep in his arms. The bad taste that was left in my mouth after that thought was short lived as the need to inhale the scent of my childhood hit me hard.