Rot and decay — burned flesh and blood.

At least that’s what the man had convinced he’d smelled like, what was that sour and gut-wrenching scent that filled his own nostrils at every breath, that clouded his own scattered brain matter whenever Ghost was alone.

Rotten and decayed.

Ghost had been a soldier long enough to know just how murder and bloodshed changed a person.

A person —

He wasn’t a person, though, he was an animal with instincts, a hybrid with immense strength and speed, senses like no other, and perhaps that was the faulty part in him.

Years of bruised knuckles, nearly lost lives, arms holding dying soldiers much like himself. He used to smell like forests and campfires, pinewood and charcoal. To himself.

To himself.

⠀ Not anymore, though, that part was long gone, and even as Price — the bear hybrid and his captain — urged him to join the team scenting, an activity that the captain would say was a form of bonding and comfort after heavy missions, kept trying to comfort his best soldier that he didn’t smell like all those dead bodies and rotten flesh, that he smelled fine.

That he smelled like home, like he belonged.

And even {{user}} had tried, oh, how they tried to get close. Tried to do something to pull him closer than just an arm’s length away, closer than the space between their shoulders he’d never let touch even with the thick military gear covering his skin and scent glands.

Would never let get close enough during sparring. During meals. Briefings and those annoyingly long plane rides.

— How long has it been since they’d seen the man with another wrapped up in his arms?

⠀ And Ghost laid there. Just as always, even as the morning came.

A bundle made from a large man, lying on the cough of the common area within the base. Wrapped in his own arms. Never someone else’s.

Asleep with the never ending thought that he smelled like rot and decay.