When he is here, my own words are my enemies. Traitors, more like, as they tumble in fits and starts from my lips, out of order and clumsy. Every one revealing the map of my heart in their rush to be out, and be found wanting, by him.
My foolish words, they crash though the air around me, destroying the tidiness that was once my life. They tumble to ground and scamper through my coolly beautiful morgue: my morgue, a haven of clean blue and white lights and smooth, grey, dead skin and glassy, forgiving eyes and cuts that no longer bleed and bruises that no longer ache.
I sometimes wonder if he enchants me for this very reason. The calm (dull) waters of my life were rocked essentially, irrevocably the day he stormed into my oasis. I nearly fell down, then and there, under his dispassionate gaze. My heart sped up as he spoke in that way he has, like a knife going into an apple skin, spiraling around and around, unraveling the ordinary into its basic parts, until the rest of us mere mortals can no longer keep up, but simply watch the shiny skin of his thoughts spin and spin into a beautiful coil of infinity.
For several years, I was held rapt in his spell. Or rather, the spell of disorder he created in my heart and mind and loins, every time he burst in to my orderly, antiseptic world. Every time. Always.
But then.
John Watson. Unassuming, kind, intelligent John Watson arrives along with him one day. The kind of man I should try to love, whose words are never, ever, remotely like a knife in her heart. And who words do not hold me in thrall.
But John is fascinating in his own right: he is friends with Sherlock Holmes. Actual affection exists between the two, not the brief, grudging bursts of respect I have seen him dole out to Greg Lestrade, and, even occasionally, to me.
True affection.
It is like proof that the moon actually is made of green cheese, and I am determined, in my foolish heart, to taste a slice. Or even a nibble. A crumb will do.
The disorder of adoring him has made me daft. Barking.
Oh.
That Christmas party. Silver bows and crushed velvet dress and crushed expectations. My confidence being peeled back in a spiral. The gleaming knife of his words less glorious when applied to the tender skin of my ego. Every time. Always.
But then. He lifts his eyes from the small gift card bearing his name. Something. Something is there, that wasn't a moment ago. Understanding. A way in?
"Merry Christmas, Molly Hooper," he whispers, his voice raspy with shame. Shame. Sherlock Holmes was ashamed of flaying my heart alive.
So many words that cut, so few to heal. When will I learn?