Hell's Kitchen, Marvel, Clem & Matt
[Matthew was awake. His sleep had been plagued with ghosts outlined in flame, all of them seeking vengeance on him, or for him, it was never clear which. He dreamed of the woman he had seen in the dream, absolutely clear and alive with color, only the second woman he'd ever seen in his entire life. She touched him, but refused to speak to him, and that dream had fused into more explosions of the modern age, guns and exhaust, concrete that hated him and knives that snapped from two to one and dug down deep for his blood.
Consciousness came and went. He hurt. He hurt a lot. Thinking hurt. Breathing hurt. He could hear the bones around his stomach creaking, especially on the right side. His face felt stiff and he couldn't open his eyes all the way (a significantly lesser problem.) The sutures had a sensation too, a pulling, divided sensation whenever he moved. Thankfully, he slept again.
Later, he woke up a silk garden. He was on a cushion softer than anything he had ever been near, and the sheets slid cool along the bare skin of his shoulders and back. In comparison, his poor clothing from the waist down was like rusted metal scraping down his skin, and the immediate explosion of chemical and floral scents only diminished the experience slightly. To Matthew, Chanel No. 5 smelled like pieces of cleaning fluid, cloying jasmine essence, and roses if roses were boiled down in alcohol tonic. Fortunately, for someone as sensitive as he, very few scents were either purely bad or purely good--they just were, each too complex to classify in such a way.
He heard her coming far before she got there, and when she came through the door, he was standing stock still in the middle of the room. His face was not pretty, purple and misshapen from the blows, and his red hair was still dark from oil and blood. His bare chest was a patchwork of her bandages and stitches, and he breathed lightly, almost impossibly, head tilted just slightly as he listened to her. He could smell the hospital on her, the smoke, the gunpowder, the cotton. He was afraid for her.]
An' they came while I slept?
[One arm around his ribs, he took a step toward her, another almost past her, and stopped, listening for more heartbeats.]