The last case was a long and difficult one. I stayed with him when needed until the chase, and the conclusion. For days he had not eaten more than a cracker or two, and I don't think he had slept in the last four. I had to go to work to fill in and make up for some of the missed hours in the last week, while he went to the station to tie up some loose ends and fill out the formal reports.
I dragged myself across our threshold just shy of midnight.
What met my eyes was a plate stained with various sauces which had been spilled out of a multitude of cardboard takeaway boxes, themselves laying in disarray at all angles on the table. The plate was on the floor next to the couch, upon which was strewn a haphazardly exhausted, pyjama-clad flatmate.
His head was thrown to the left, hair tumbling across his eyes. His right arm was dangling straight off the couch, and his left was stuck straight up the back of it. His dressing gown was unbelted and thrown behind him like a crumpled cape, and his right leg jutted off toward the floor at an impossibly uncomfortable trajectory.
I walked over and collected the dishes and took them to the sink. He did not stir in the slightest. There would be no rousing him to go to bed; he would lie where he had fallen, as it were.
I went back and stood at his side; he would wake cold and cross later, with aches everywhere. I set to rearranging him to an anatomically tenable position, knowing that Hannibal's armies couldn't rouse him after the week he'd had. He may despise sleep, and be preternaturally able to postpone it, but when it finally did hit him, it was a force indeed.
I slid a small throwpillow under his neck, and turned his head in a more neutral position. I marshaled his limbs back into the same postcode with his body, and then found our hideous-but-very-warm throw we'd received from Mrs. Hudson at Christmas.
Once tucked in, I took a moment to survey my work. His hair was still at an awfully rakish angle, sure to annoy when he started climbing back to consciousness. I smoothed the errant locks into place. Without thinking about it, I bent to place a quick kiss on his forehead, like my mum used to after tucking me in. I felt my face go a little hot. It's not really a flatmate's place to tuck the other in, but here I was doing it. But he wasn't an ordinary flatmate. He was extraordinary, in fact, but in his own way he bore looking after.
I pulled the cover a little higher around his shoulders and patted his hair down one more time. It was good to see him at peace for a change. I turned the lights down and headed toward my room. The mess in the kitchen would keep, and I was bloody exhausted myself.
Right as I reached the stair to my room, I thought I heard a quiet "'night". I smiled and went off to bed.
A/N: Inspired by the song "Everlasting Light" by The Black Keys, and one captain, who is extraordinary, but occasionally bears looking after.