Work Text:
It's your apartment. With your sofa, your coffee, your stupid DVD with the tangled wires. It's yours alone. Silent, empty. Safe. You like being by yourself. Sometimes, you remember living with Bobbi and miss the comfort and warmth that comes with sharing a space with a person you love. You might even miss crashing in the avengers' tower. The apartment is too silent. But everything is a little too silent lately. You think your hearing might be getting worse.
It's your apartment and it's what you wanted. You drink coffee alone. The phone doesn't ring often. You stitch up your own wounds and leave blood all over the bathroom sink for days, and there is no one to complain about it. You stay in bed for thirty six hours straight and there is no one to tell you that maybe you should see a therapist, Barton, this is getting worrying. You like being by yourself.
It's your apartment and that means that sometimes you have to clean up after yourself because you have to. There is no one to tell you to wash the blood from the bathroom sink and pick up the dirty mugs, it's just you feeling like trash and wondering where your fucking will to live went, but sweeping the living room anyways. (That's when you find the dog's old collar under the sofa, and it's like a pang to the chest. The phone doesn't ring. You drop the collar in the drawer where you keep the ruined arrows.)
It's your apartment. Yours, you repeat to yourself. Yours, because you like being alone, because you like having your own space and no one to ask you what were you dreaming of when you wake up screaming. You like being by yourself. Doing your own laundry. Drinking your coffee. You might be drinking too much coffee lately, but there is no one to tell you to stop, so you pour yourself another mug. (There is no one to point out that you've ran out of it either, and it's 4AM on a Saturday when you notice. You spend the entire weekend without caffeine and trying to convince yourself that you are functioning human being without it.)
It's your apartment and it's silent and it doesn't have a dog waiting for you at the door when you come back on Monday, bloodied and bruised but carrying enough coffee to stock up for a century. You make yourself coffee, first, and stitch yourself up later. You wonder if it's that you're getting sloppier or the bad guys are getting better, but you rarely come out of a fight unharmed anymore. When you dig inside your mess of a closet for a shirt that has no blood in it, you find a sundress.
It's your apartment and it has no dog and no noises and no one to warn you about the lack of coffee. But it has hints of Kate all over it like a ghost, it has a faint smell of lilacs that still lingers after months and the corner of the couch you don't sit on because it belongs to the dog and the drawer that only has a collar because that drawer was Katie's.
It's yours apartment and it's Kate's, but you don't know if Kate's coming back. It's only by accident that you pour coffee for two.