a/u: hey so i'm supper busy, but it's coming together, at least. reviews welcome. happy reading! (ps, thanks for the support you guys gave. it means a lot.)
It was one of those days where John and I overlapped. We fell into each other like the sea falls into the sand- salty and on the verge of uncontrolled; bitter, in a sense. Beautiful, in another. One giant mix of things that I can't begin to explain, which in itself is unknown to me.
I can gather up your life story like lose change just by gauging your stance, but I cannot tell you why I love John like I do. I need him like the rain needs the wind.
We come back to the flat, damp and chilled from the rain. The case is solved. Our skin is covered in little bumps, little forget-me-not's from the biting wind, and we make our way upstairs; from there, to the bedroom. A pile of damp clothes on the floor (tomorrow's worries), and John curls around me. We seem to rotate around each other, like planets orbiting the sun. I decide that John would be the sun. He's so warm.
I don't tell John that I love him. Not with words, anyway- no, because words are just noise and noise is just so usual. There is nothing usual about John. So I knit my fingers between his and let my confessions fall in heaps below his collarbone, or I just look at him- memorize how his eyes look at 3 am when we're both too suborn to sleep, and when moonlight is tugging at his eyelids. John looks beautiful when he's in between one world and another.
When I fall asleep, I do so because John's body has become warm and slack in my arms. The rhythm of his breathing lures me to dreams.
I don't know what time it is when my phone rings. It's dark, and there's not enough time for my eyes to adjust, so I stumble over and pick it up.
Mycroft tells me that I need to come home.
"Father is very ill. Come see him."
My brother doesn't want me there for sedimental reasons. I know that like I know the sun rises. No; he wants me there for the sake of appearance.
"I can't," I say, cooly, and I mean it.
Suddenly I'm filled with a thousand lost words, things that I cannot tell my brother. I hang up. The silence that follows John and I's short conversation is carnivorous, (cannibalistic, even) and I fell it sink into the pit of my every fiber.
In the morning, when I tell John that I hate my father, I tell myself that I mean it.
"I love you," John says to me.
I tell him that I love him too, just in my own way. He understands.
I wind my fingers around his wrist and feel his pulse against my skin. It reminds me that John is still here; loving and breathing and whole, and it is enough to keep me steady.
John goes to work. I get a call from a man I went to university with. He says that he's in need of my assistance; something stolen, someone threatened, and my mind is so full of unbearable nothing-ness that I take the case for the sake of distraction.
It's a simple one (but aren't they all?). Motive, suspect, and, finally, the criminal, all fall into my open palm. If one just understands simple human sociology, it's easy to solve.
You see, most of what humans do, we do out of two key reasons:
selfishness.
dishonesty.
Don't get worked up, now. You're not going to hell. It's subconscious; we can't help it, or, so they say. If someone wants someone badly enough, they will do everything in their power to get it, even if they add a few more bodies to the soil in the process.
Secrets appeal to everybody. Even if you don't think that you're being dishonest, chances are, you are.
As much as I try to be, I am not fully immune to these faults in our nature, because when Mycroft calls me again to ask me to come to my father side, I refuse. Again.
"This is most likely his last night," he tells me.
I don't respond. He signs; scratches his head, a sound so usual that I can almost see him do it. Almost.
"Come, see him. Say goodbye, at least. For the sake of… normalcy."
"No." Selfishness.
"Why not, brother?"
"I don't want to."
"Why do you resent him, so?" In that moment, Mycroft sounds older than the mountains.
"I don't resent him." Dishonesty. "I'm busy, Mycroft. I don't have time for this."
I hang up, then, because I know if I don't I'll wind up telling him everything. Like how I don't resent him- I hate him. I hate him with every bone in my body.
I hate him for all the scars.
I hate him for all the invisible scars.
I hate him for making me hate him and I hate him for making me hate myself and goddammit I hate him for making me hate Mycroft a little, too.
Every time he he hit me, a little bit of my broke off and floated off into space. And every single time a piece of me snapped off, there were more shreds of myself, too, from where I had to prove that I was in control, and they met up with the ones that he all the lashes and the screaming, there should be enough to make a constellation, at least. Something.
I press my palms against my eyes, knowing that even if it is his last night alive, he will die sometime- and I will go to the funeral, because no matter how much I hate him, I can't not go.
Words pound inside my skull. Piercing.
hatehatehatehatehatehate.