It was the smell again.

It was different this time, though, not just the smell of cooked meat, but something else, too. Something that caught in the back of his throat like burning oil.

Blood slid under his fingertip, always thinner and more watery than he thought it should be.

And he choked and reached again for the pattern in his mind. And again. And again.

But it wasn’t a skull in his hand, it was a gun; and there were two bodies on the floor in front of him.

Roy started awake with a jerk that set his head throbbing. Someone was cursing vigorously, and he heard the slithery thump of books being kicked aside. Hawkeye trod carefully into the faint lamplight glowing through the window, and looked down at him. “Bad one?” she asked quietly.

Roy shrugged, trying to find some spot on the pillow that would hold his head still enough for the left side to stop throbbing. The doctors swore the bones had reknitted, but Roy had his doubts when he woke up like this.

Hawkeye looked him over, gaze measuring in the half-dark. She plucked a sprig of hyacinth from the vase on one of the shelves and set it casually by his head as she sat down in the chair beside his bed.

Her chair, these days.

The scent of the flowers was sweet and strong and clean, and Roy closed his eye and inhaled deeper.

Hawkeye crossed one slippered foot over her knee and rubbed her toes. “I should have kept you at my apartment longer,” she said with some asperity. “At least I could walk across my guest room without tripping over anything.”

“I imposed on you for long enough,” Roy murmured. He was glad it was spring. The hyacinth had a gentler scent than the potted rose she’d silently deposited next to the guest bed early on during his stay with her.

A soft snort answered him. “There’s barely room in this flat for all of your things plus you,” she pointed out. “There’s a bookshelf in your kitchen, and the only real open space is the floor of your workroom. You should get a house. It isn’t as though you’ve used much of your salary for anything over the years; you can afford it.”

The commonplace discussion calmed the tension through Roy’s chest and stomach, and his next breath was freer. “I have no idea how to go about finding a house,” he observed, just to keep the conversation moving. “I gather one needs to be a bit careful, not to get stuck with anything unsound.”

“So take Hughes with you. I’m sure he’s had plenty of experience, by now, in what to look for.”

Roy imagined asking his best friend to go house-hunting with him. Then he imagined Hughes’ glee at the supposed breakdown of Roy’s bachelor ways, and the gleam in Hughes’ eye as he got out the pictures again to illustrate the joys of married life. And then he shuddered. “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in coming along instead?” he asked, trying to stifle the undertone of dread.

Hawkeye became so still he looked over at her. She was staring out the window. “I suppose so. If you like.”

The night shifted like a ball rolling a quarter turn; the new resting point was becoming familiar to him. “I would like it. Yes.” He wanted to reach over and touch her hand. He wanted to say something leading about how she would be spending so much time there she should have a say in the house. He wanted to address the woman sitting beside him with her light hair hanging loose over the shoulders of her fuzzy cinnamon colored robe, a little tangled from sleeping on his couch as she had been for most of this month.

Every time he did that, though, she got that distant, tolerant, Hawkeye-chuui, look in her eyes and stood up. Or asked him what book he was reading. Or stuffed a chunk of apple in his mouth. So this time, in this quiet dim time, he made himself stop and wait for her.

After a long moment she looked back down at him. “Then I’ll come.” This time, her smile wasn’t distant. Now he let himself smile back.

“Thank you.”

It was, Roy felt, completely in keeping with his life that the letter arrived the next day.

TBC