Hey. I'm alive. My new job just doesn't let me write while working. Also, I'm woefully behind on this project, and I've only just finished January.
Originally posted to tumblr 2016-03-02.
/ Day 20 (2016.01.20)
/ noun
/ Rhetoric.
/ 1. a sudden breaking off in the midst of a sentence, as if from inability or unwillingness to proceed.
"As such, the Tettigoniidae Tettigoniinae could not have possibly-"
John blinked at the sudden cease of Sherlock's words and looked up from his newspaper. His flatmate was supine on the sofa, fingers pressed together under his chin, eyes fixated on the ceiling. He waited a moment for him to continue, but after several, it seemed fairly clear that Sherlock had no plans on continuing.
It wasn't as if he had been going for some time with any particular conversation thread. He'd started up out of the blue and stopped just as suddenly. John had learned to go with it, to not question it, because Sherlock never remembered. Sometimes he wondered if it was because the man was hundreds of years old, if he was somehow continuing or replaying a part of a conversation that had happened years or decades ago.
John wondered if that was what was coming for him. If when he became as old as Sherlock, if he would lose his humanity in the same way, if time would fall in and out in the same way, if his memory would come and go like Alzheimer's, pulling up bits and pieces of a past no one was alive to remember.
"John, I'm hungry," Sherlock said suddenly, nearly startling John into dropping his newspaper. Sherlock sat up suddenly, sending a frankly puppy-like look John's way, as if John could feed him.
"Then go get a bag from the fridge," John replied, jerking his head back towards the kitchen.
Sherlock chuckled, licked his lips, and ducked his head. "No John," he corrected, looking up at John from under his eyelashes, "I'm hungry."
For the second time in a few minutes, John blinked in surprise, and then he smiled.
He got up to retrieve a blood bag from the fridge, stripped, and laid face-up on the coffee table. He pierced the thick plastic with a fang, careful to keep blood from spilling onto the wood and the carpet below, but his face became smeared with it. Which was the point. Just as carefully, he poured blood down the center of his chest, eyes stuck on the hungry way Sherlock watched the proceedings.
"I will eat when I'm hungry, and when you want, if I can eat off of you."
That had been the deal Sherlock had offered, and really, it was of no imposition for John to comply. Most of the time.
John pinched the opening closed and held his arm to the side, leaving his body open for the feast. Sherlock, fangs down and eyes black with hunger, dove for John's smeared mouth.
FINIS
2016 10M WotD Master Post (themadkatter13fanfiction tumblr, /10M-WotD-2016).
Like the thing? Reblog the thing (themadkatter13fanfiction tumblr, tagged/Aposiopesis). Tschüß.