He smells like vanilla cake batter and mint toothpaste.

He always has.

It used to baffle me, the way he just...smells like fucking vanilla cake batter, beneath every piece of him. Vanilla fucking cake batter.

At first I thought it was his body wash or shampoo. It certainly wasn’t whatever it was that he sprayed on himself when we'd first met because that shit had given me a headache and the little shit had thrown it out the second I started complaining about it. It blew my mind for months before he’d run out of the hypoallergenic, vegan friendly soap free concoction that had made its way into my shower within the first month and he’d continued smelling like fucking vanilla cake batter. Turns out, that stuff had no smell and using my very expensive Calvin Klein shower gel that smelled like vanilla and driftwood that blended perfectly with the leather from my favourite jacket, gave him a nice rash if he used it more than two times a month.

So that sucked.

He hadn’t been talking to his mother at that point, he was still so worked up over whatever it was his father had done that time, so there was no way he was asking her where she usually brought it from. And we’d ended up finding another kind that worked well so long as he wasn’t using it everyday and he’d insisted he could make do until he found the right brand, so I'd let him go about his life. Showering every two days and smelling like soy milk and kind of off coconut.

And by the second day, every two days like clock work, he’d smell like vanilla cake batter and he’d smile at me while I licked at his wrists or he’d clutch my shoulders while I sucked at the skin just below his earlobe. Either way he’d just let me. I’d press my nose against his soft, smooth skin like some sort of freak and he’d just let me.

Vanilla cake batter.

It was fine for a while. He smelled like vanilla cake batter and then he smell like vanilla cake batter and me. His mint toothpaste my favourite taste and the underlying tones of leather and driftwood that would cling to him the way he clung to me. I’d get drunk off it.

His hair started to smell like vanilla after a while, but that just enhanced the smell of the cake batter and drove me madder for him every morning, had me melting every time I walked past the patisserie during my lunch breaks.

He just had me. Him and his stupid vanilla cake batter.

It wasn’t until the fiddler that it changed. That he changed.

He never smelled...bad, per say, just-

Just wrong.

Kind of like he did when he could only use body wash every second day but worse. Like all the grease and the sweat of working the diner and putting effort into his school work and running around town to do shit instead of getting Brian to drive him or having the actual money to catch the bus was all building up.

It was all lingering on his skin for too long and his hair was shiny in a kind of gross way except he never looked gross because he was the Justin Fucking Taylor to my Brian Fucking Kinney and if you ever tell anyone I said that I’ll dangle you from the roof of Meathook by your balls until you take it back.

He was wrong. The whole time.

And I knew it too. I knew he’d left the last of his hypoallergenic, vegan friendly soap free shower gel in it’s lonely little corner of the shower when he’d left and I didn’t really know what to do with it so it just stayed there. I also knew that shit cost $14.99 a bottle and I knew he didn’t have the money for that and I knew he had a rash on his chest and shoulders two weeks after moving in with Ian and I knew he’d wanted to beg me to just hand over the damn body wash but he’d been too proud. Or scared. Or stupid because he really could have just taken it.

And then, by the third week, he’d had a weird sort of raspberry scent following him around.

Weird because I was familiar with it...weirder because I couldn’t pinpoint where I knew it from.

And then I’d run into Daphne on my way to work, in all her peach lipstick glory, and she’d told me about how Justin had started showering at her place because the stupid little fiddler couldn’t afford Justin’s body wash and Daphne just happened to have a scented version of the one Justin preferred.

“Soap gives me acne.”

She was so full of shit.

When he’d returned, all those months later, he hadn’t smelled like vanilla cake batter.

His whole body reeked of exhaustion and dust and Daphne’s gross smelling perfume that I ended up replacing on her birthday because I’ll be damned if she was going to transfer that shitty off brand goats piss onto Sunshine’s skin. He’d giggled about it, bragged about how much I loved his friend and then tried to hide his sulking over the fact that I’d thought of her birthday and ruined his. My ass had more than made up for it.

He still stunk of grease and the kitchen floor of the diner but he’d always kind of smelled like that, ever since he started working there, and I’d always been used to that smell so it wasn’t even a problem.

But his breath didn’t smell like mint anymore and the smell of vanilla cake batter was barely noticeable on him and it drove me mad in a less sexy kind of way. He used a new brand of toothpaste because apparently the last one had closed up his throat and he wasn’t planning on risking it and then just..life, really. Life covered the smell of vanilla cake batter and it really just kind of fucking sucked worse than the Calvin Klein rash. I liked his mint toothpaste.

Spearmint just couldn’t compare. He tasted wrong for weeks.

And at that point he’d been avoiding leaving his shit laying around at the loft so I never really got the chance to notice if anything had changed in his day to day life until he’d applied fucking...roll on deodorant right before my innocent eyes.

It kind of clicked and also kind of made me even more confused because Justin had never worn roll on deodorant so obviously if he’d started then...yeah maybe that would lessen the whole vanilla cake batter smell his skin just emits but also-

Justin had never worn roll on deodorant so why would he start now and...why did it stop his whole body from smelling like a children's birthday party?

“Since when have you put that shit on your body? I would have thought it’d give you some kind of reaction.”

He chuckled under his breath, shaking his little blond head as he did it and then he’d smiled up at me with that almost-but-not-quite-Sunshine-smile that he got when he was embarrassed.

“Ethan brought it for me.”

I wish, I wish, I wish I hadn’t asked. I really do. Because maybe I could have forgiven the fiddler for stealing this lovely piece of blond boy ass from me but of course. No. I’d scoffed and let out a confused and slightly offended, “why?”

And Justin had shrugged, his smile dropping a little bit before he turned to pack his shit away like a good like house guest. “He said I smell like dirty sex and vanilla. And he hates vanilla.”

I wanted to laugh, honestly. It’s vanilla cake batter. Imbecile. And you don’t...buy someone deodorant and not fucking hypoallergenic, vegan friendly soap free body wash. Idiot. Why the fuck did I let this stupid little ray of sunshine run off to him again?

Maybe I’m the idiot.

I’d crossed the bathroom, my eyebrow raising as I reached around him and into his fucking stupid overnight bag that I wanted to burn because just fucking ask to move back in you little shit, and I’d taken that stupid bottle of vanilla cake batter suppressor and tossed it into the bin behind him.

“I like vanilla.”

He’d beamed.

Brighter than the whole fucking sun.