him.

Every time he walked out of the bathroom after one of his long showers, and sometimes even after a short one, he would have these marks stretching out diagonally across his chest, riding down his back, where his nails had trailed a little too strongly. Once or twice, out of a macabre - or maybe playful - curiosity, i made a passing comment on them, never taking my eyes off his face. He would cringe, but not a normal cringe, his muscles pulsing inwards so as not to alter a pleasantly careless facade. With a half-smile, he would turn to his perfectly arranged closet and pick the outfit of the day, pull a shirt over his head and kiss me with that smell of freshness, smell of creative space, and half-finished thoughts of his, a smell he seemed to pull out of the water. Sometimes i think his entire day was defined by how much of that smell he managed to keep a hold of.