Stronger than Tea
The cup of coffee shook in his left hand. Today didn't call for tea. Well…if he was being honest with himself, no day had called for something as weak as tea since he'd felt Sherlock's lack of pulse…since he'd seen….
He tried to block the thoughts from his head. He swallowed with great difficulty, his hand giving another violent twitch as the memory flickered in his mind, threatening to overwhelm him.
Three weeks. Three goddamn weeks and still…
He'd asked him to come back. He'd pleaded with whatever deity he had once thought existed, begging for it not to be true, for Sherlock Holmes, his best friend, to not be dead. No-one had answered his pleas.
He took a rather large gulp of coffee, the black liquid burning his mouth and throat.
He stood and shoved a coat on roughly, setting the coffee on a stack of Sherlock's books, staring at the unchanged state of 221 B. His eyes took in the beakers and the vials, the skull on the mantle, the headphones on the mounted animal head on the wall…Sherlock's robe tossed lazily over the back of a chair…
He ground his jaw and reached for his cane before heading out the door, despite being well aware that his limp was psychosomatic. He didn't have the heart to try and walk without it any more.