Clint tasted first of the city, whatever the city. In New York, it was petrol, smoke and nameless strangers. Bitter and loud and impure like the clamouring tar of burnt coffee through a plastic lid.

But underneath all that, clean and searing hot, he tasted of salt. It danced on the tip of Aaron's tongue, with a sharp, tingling effervescence. Skin and sweat laced with tangy, metal overtones of gunpowder – undertones of blood, filling his capillaries, making him blush over the quickening throb of his pulse.

And when he finally bled, when he was filling Aaron's mouth, spilling past his lips and staining his collar, he was milk and honey and golden barley.

On the outside, Barton was near unrecognisable. His soft blonde hair was brown now, and shorter than could be twisted between Aaron's fingers. His skin was darker and rougher for long exposure in the wind and sun, calloused on his palms. Scars marred his back and shoulders under Aaron's fingertips where before he had been unblemished.

And he'd grown, hardened with steely muscles that rippled under the skin. But all of that strength had given way. Older and wiser and deadlier, Clint had still sunk crashing into his arms, overcome by a desperate, vacuous need that could have swallowed him whole. Better yet, when Aaron reached into Clint's mind, crawling along his nerves and submerging himself in a lake of borrowed sensation, he felt every ebb and flow of ecstasy as if it were his own, saw the world in florid bursts of colour at each fresh sensation, and basked in the sheer violence with which Barton craved his touch... He would happily have drowned in those waters.

Sliding one hand down the back of Barton's shirt, Aaron dug his claws into the skin of his back. The archer tensed with a gasp. His neck arched as Aaron gouged bloody lines up his back and over his shoulder, spilling blood just to feel it well hot and sticky at his fingertips and let the scent fill the air. Aaron chased the wound from the dip of Barton's collarbone and up his shoulder to as far down his shirt as his tongue could reach. His own filthy moan echoed in Barton's ears, sending little frissons of pride along the archer's skin.

The pain barely touched him as he floated ever higher into the seductive haze of desire, holding him cocooned in its still, quiet warmth.

It was into this haze that Coulson intruded. His foreign warmth flickered noisily in the corner of Aaron's senses like a reflection off some unseen watch face, more irritating the closer he crept. His footsteps grated like the obnoxious, open-mouthed chewing of cornflakes.

"Let go of him or I blast a hole through your skull."

Aaron buried his nose into Clint's bloody neck and breathed him in, trying to drown out the noise.

From somewhere up in the clouds, Clint thought he heard a familiar voice.

"You have three seconds."

Hawkeye, he wondered, hanging loosely to whatever bare thread of consciousness still bound him to Earth. He'd definitely heard that before, in that voice. But… closer. Much closer.

Hawkeye, said the voice, in his ear, over static.

Over screaming and gunfire.

In the dark and quiet…

A man, he remembered. A man in a suit. Always a suit. The thought made him want to smile. He felt a tug against the thread and turned to face the rain, blurring his vi– sun, cold light through white clouds in a robin's egg sk– rain. Sheets of water fell in front of him, hitting the tops of black umbrellas without a sound. Grey skies filled with

clouds, anyway.

"Three."

There were white lilies in his hands – white roses with long stalks and – white flowers by a gravestone with a blank, granite face. He squinted, but everything was soft-focus and blurred at the edges, as if looking through fogged glass. The gravestone was

steel grey and sectioned like a beehive, bound at head height by a continuous line of mirror (not to fool him, to hide the watchers), broken only by a door that couldn't be locked from the inside. This much was sharp.

A tug on the thread yanked him out of the room.

Barton, said the man in the suit with the soft voice, rough hands – with a spear through his heart. lungs. left lung. pleura then lung then heart then ribs – skin – shirt. White shirt. His blood oozing like a rosebud blossoming in snow

gushing from a still beating heart, gallons and gallons soaking his white shirt, running over his hands and onto the floor until it was slippery and black.

Clint, he said, eyes fading, lips white,

three black arrows in his chest.

A cold draught scattered the cloud around him. Faltering, Clint grabbed for the air, feeling himself start to fall, stomach leaping into his throat, skin turning cold, and the white glow was fading, turning dark, he could hear the wind whistling past his ears…

"Two."

…Coulson?

His hands twitched behind him. His heart was thundering against his chest. He was starting to pant into Aaron's shoulder, the coppery scent of blood burning down the back of his throat. His eyes fluttered, trying to open.

"…Phil," he slurred.

Enough.

"One."

Coulson had his finger was flush against the trigger, pulse throbbing against the skin, ready to squeeze on the exhale…

Then the vampire snapped its fingers and Clint collapsed like a broken marionette. He caught him under the waist, saving his neck as it whipped backwards, mouth falling open with a soft gasp. He hoisted Clint up to hold him like a sleeping child, all two hundred-some-odd pounds of muscle and sass hugged to his chest like he was made of air.

A pair of glowing red eyes stopped Coulson dead in his tracks – he'd taken three stumbling steps forward before even realising it. Then, holding his gaze, the vampire began to lower himself slowly to his knees. Coulson followed them disbelievingly over the sights. He watched the slow rise and fall of Clint's chest as he slept. One arm hung slack at his side, individual fingers quivering sporadically. His face was turned away, buried in Aaron's chest. Purposely or not, the vampire was hiding the bleeding side of his neck.

When they'd settled on the ground, the vampire murmured something into Clint's ear. With a groan of effort, Barton pulled his legs under himself to kneel upright, but then buried his face in the vampire's shoulder, grabbing weakly at his shirt.

"Hush…" whispered the monster, and pressed his bloody lips to Barton's hair.

Then, plucking the clinging hands loose, he stood up. His lips were dark and glossy with blood. The ends of his hair were sticky with it and there was a smudge on the tip of his nose. His fingers were black under the nails. But he was pale the way humans were pale, not grey like the gargoyles splashed all over the Internet. There were no wings, no claws. Even the red in his eyes was beginning to fade. He pulled up the hem of his shirt to wipe his mouth and chin, tongue flicking out to wet the drying blood.

A small whimper made him glance down. Clint had wrapped one arm around his shins while the other held resolutely onto three of his fingers, resisting every attempt to shake them loose. His cheek rested warmly against a hip. The vampire ran fingertips through his hair and smiled as the archer sighed.

When he looked back up, his eyes were ice blue around enormous black pupils.

What now? they seemed to say.

"Thank you," Coulson replied, and squeezed the trigger.