a/u: i'm back! sorry for the short chapter. will continue soon. reviews are welcome. happy reading.
For a while, all is calm. Or, as calm as it could get while living with Sherlock. We've gotten back in the rut of everyday life, with me going to surgery and him working cases, and sometimes we overlap; those are the days when we get home, breathless and sweaty from a chase. Those are the nights when he kisses me harder.
I can taste the adrenaline in him, and I drink him in in desperate gulps. He leaves bite marks on my neck.
We don't say that we love each other- there is no need.
"Words are just a distraction," he murmurers to me one night.
We are a mess of sweaty limbs, and there's a light purple flower blooming below his ear, which I trace with my finger.
I think at first that it would bother me, but it doesn't. He knows how I feel and him, myself.
The nightmares have stopped. We don't talk about them, and I don't bring it up, because when I do, I see that vacant, hollow look spread over his eyes.
He looks dead.
And I did not wait for him all those years, after he fell, just to have him fade away again.
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It's nearly spring; the snow is thawing and with the warmer weather comes a phone call in the early hours of the morning. Sherlock stumbled out of bed, (out of my hold) and finds his phone in the dark.
"Hello," he mutters.
All I can make out is a slope of syllables and Sherlock's gravely voice.
"When?"
He gets his answer. "No. I won't go."
When he ends the call and climbs back into bed with me, I can tell by the way he lies that he is not going back to sleep.
"Who was that?" I ask.
"Mycroft."
"It's four am. What did he want?"
Sherlock doesn't answer right away. I see his defenses go up and watch him pull his limbs together, folding up within himself. Works his jaw.
He looks cold, clad in pajama pants and a thin teeshirt. Chilled and dazed.
"My father," he said, slowly, "is dying."
I know that in those fragile moments after he spoke, I should have said something, but all I could do was wrap my arms around his body. He doesn't cry. Not that I expect him to.
But Sherlock doesn't speak, which is almost worse; and I don't speak, because I'm suddenly afraid that my words will shatter him. Crush him up until he is nothing but dust collecting over forgotten picture frames.
When the sun starts to rise, we look at each other, and know that neither of us has slept. I kiss him. Sherlock presses into me, hard, and there's something thunderous lurking behind his lips before he breaks away. My heart is racing.
I leave him laying there and make my way to the kitchen. Prepare breakfast for two, although I know that he won't eat it. I don't know if I'll eat.
The floor creaks and then Sherlock is standing in the doorway, all nervous fingers and dark eyes, and my words come out before I can stop them.
"It's going to be okay."
"I hate him," he says.
"I know," I respond, even though I don't know.
Sherlock runs a hand through his hair and stares at the floor. "If there's a hell," he said softly, so that I can hardly hear him, "he'll go there."
I wonder if there's some part of Sherlock that still believes in God.
When I hug him, his heart is thundering and he's shaking, but he lets me hold him, and for that I am grateful.
"I love you," I say.
"I know."
Sun starts to shine through the living room window. Though somewhere out there, Sherlock's father is dying, the man in front of me winds his fingers around my wrist as if I'm the only thing that matters, and I kiss him again, because he looks sad and in that moment, I really don't think that he hates his father.
I don't think he hates anyone.
