Disclaimer: Don't own - wish I did!

Every night it came.

Every night it started the same way, with soft words – the kind of soft words no one else had ever heard from those perfectly shaped pink lips, with warm breath ghosting over chilled skin.

And following the whispers came hands reaching out, hands with long slender fingers skilfully manipulating tense shoulders, lightly stroking away the burgeoning headache born of crushing loss.

The human body, that marvellous feat of engineering developed muscle memory, remembering and feeling in its absence the hint of pressure, of legs entwined, of arms wrapped around to offer comfort and safety, to keep away the nightmares that threatened sanity.

With the rise and fall of the smooth skinned chest came the steady, constant sound of a heart beating beneath that slender ribcage – the soundtrack to a life rebuilt from the ashes of war, to fight a war of a different colour, to fight, to win, sometimes to lose, but this depth of loss had been too much, too painful, and so he retired to the now cold and empty bed in the hope that this night would be different, would bring hope.

Every night he considered it a kindness, that as sleep came to find him, he was inevitably moving one step closer to finding Sherlock, the dazzling vision in his world of blindness.