Drawing
Warnings: None, except for Reichenbach Falls spoilers.
Disclaimer: Sherlock doesn't belong to me. No way I could make it that epic.
Molly found Sherlock asleep, sprawled out on the tattered couch. "About time," she said to herself. He hadn't slept in three days, and she had been starting to worry if he was going to have hallucinations any time soon.
But no, there he was, thin chest rising up and down slowly, curls limp and straggly over his pale forehead. His ribs were clearly visible through the thin blue of his shirt, and her heart ached for him.
One of his hands – beautiful hands, violinist's hands – was hanging over the edge of the couch, fingers tapered gently. The crescents of his nails were still perfectly clean. After all…this, he still hated having dirt under his fingernails. It was a surprisingly girlish trait of Sherlock's that had surprised Molly.
A lot of things about Sherlock had surprised her recently.
On the floor, underneath his hand, was a sheet of paper. The way his hand was angled and the paper had fallen, he'd been holding it as he went to sleep, and it had dropped from his fingers, fluttering to the ground.
Molly did her best to walk quietly across the creaky wooden floor. It made some protesting noises under her light footsteps, but Molly had always been good at being silent. She picked up the paper, feeling a little thread of guilt down her spine.
What was on it made her mouth twist to the side with sadness, and her throat tighten.
Sherlock had drawn a picture of John.
She looked back down at the ground, and there was a pencil lying just on the edge of the rug as well. She hadn't noticed that before.
Her attention went back to the picture.
It was a very, very good likeness, and it showed obvious understanding of artistic technique – there was John's nose with its rounded tip, and his slightly pursed mouth, and the lines under his eyes. It was rough and quickly done, and the lines were scratchy and hasty, particularly around the neck and hair.
It felt oddly intimate, like she was trespassing, looking at something private of Sherlock's that she was never meant to see. Molly dropped the paper to the ground and turned around, her fist at her mouth.
In the throes of sleep-deprivation and loneliness, Sherlock Holmes had picked up a pencil and put it to paper and drawn a sketch of the person he missed most in the world. With John's face burning behind his eyes, he had finally dropped into sleep, holding the paper between those thin, delicate fingers and…
Oh gosh, he really does love him, Molly thought to herself. This all felt wrong. She couldn't help Sherlock with this kind of pain. He could only suffer it himself, deep inside. Maybe the picture had been Sherlock's way of drawing it out, bringing John back from the memories inside that elusive mind.
"Oh, Sherlock, Sherlock," Molly whispered.
She left the room with sadness in her heart and the feeling of uselessness she was so accustomed to swollen greater inside her.