He woke to light. Too much of it.
The curtains were open, the air smelled like linen and polished marble, and something mechanical hummed faintly above his head like an overconfident mosquito. His first coherent thought was that whoever invented sunlight deserved jail time. His second was that if Rowan was responsible for this wake-up call, he'd personally find a way to reassign him to Antarctica.
He tried to turn, failed, and ended up halfway tangled in the couch blanket, which, now that he looked at it, was the softest thing he'd ever hated. Everything hurt. Not in the way pain usually did, but in the way being alive apparently did when your nervous system decided to reboot without pharmaceutical assistance.
