Here's that second chapter I promised.
Two a.m. and she calls me 'cause I'm still awake
"Can you help me unravel my latest mistake?"
Clara didn't sleep well most of the time. It was her fault, but she didn't have insomnia, or sleep apnea, or anything like that. She was used to having another person sleep next to her, and it was usually a bit not good if she didn't.
She'd slept around in the upper grades and college; waking up in someone else's bed was nothing she couldn't handle. If people thought she was a cuddler after activities, they weren't wrong, and Clara didn't care. Other people were her weakness, not their expertise or preferences. In fact, she'd camped out in a boy's room after a particularly long night.
When she was younger, it wasn't a problem. She was an only child with a single mother, and her mom never minded company. The two of them would plan and dream about life ahead before crashing in the bed that could still hold one more person. It wasn't a big deal when she was a child, and her mother was still there.
Of course, Clara's mom got a boyfriend after a few years, and Clara forgot about good sleep. But she managed, and that was the only thing to matter.
After college, Clara tried to get a flatshare, but luck was entirely against her. She somehow got a job at the local Tesco being sleep-deprived and alone. Those first months, calling Irene Adler every once in a while, and putting on concealer to hide her eye bags, were the hardest she'd had in a long time.
And then, miracle of miracles, Clara met Harry Watson.
Harry was pretty in an unusual and hard to spot way. Pixie-cut brown hair, friendly face, laughing blue eyes. Clara completely forgot her exhaustion, the bags the woman surely saw under her eyes, and realized what it was to be smitten. If she believed in love at first sight (which she was trying to deny to this day), this would have been it.
Clara wasted no time asking Harry out and remembering how to sleep. She did both things before her conscious thoughts could catch up.
Their relationship progressed really fast, so fast that normally Clara would worry she was a part-time shag and Harry would dump her as soon as another girl passed by. But she didn't. Clara barely knew it before she and Harry were sharing a bed, a house, a family. That first night, with the two women wound around each other like clock gears, was the best Clara had ever had. She was blissfully happy, and she could sleep long and deep for the first time in forever.
The marriage was so easy in the beginning. Clara and Harry stood across from each other, exchanged vows and rings, and Harry's older brother looked on with pride in both of them. John had always liked her, and after everything went wrong, he was the one to help.
Harry began drinking, and then Clara's life exploded.
Sleep became difficult again, Harry staying up in the living room for hours into the night. She smelled like alcohol all the time, and Clara tried to make her stop. She tried the rehab places, she tried hiding the liquor, she tried threatening to leave once, she tried and tried and tried. But she failed. Harry and Clara, once so easy, were now hard, and Clara didn't know what more she could do.
Her mood swung back and forth like a pendulum during those final days, ecstatically happy one minute, furious later, and depressed another minute. Harry kept asking if she loved her, and Clara kept answering yes. The bottles disappeared, and the bottles came back. Harry would cry for hours, drunk off her arse, and Clara would cry for hours, perfectly sober. Sleep was out of reach, and Clara had never wanted it more.
When Harry left, things got better and worse at the same time. Sleep was still out of reach, Clara pulling all-nighters every other night, but the alcohol was gone, and the mood swings went away. And Harry, the one person Clara was absolutely certain she loved, was gone. It almost didn't matter what she'd done (Clara still hadn't forgiven her, for the record), but life without Harry was much worse than life with her.
Of course, Clara wasn't going to give up. Life would get better, she convinced herself.
Harry eventually came to Tesco every day Clara worked and begged her to take her back. Clara had changed shifts, so she didn't know about it until Kate, her supervisor, got tired of it. Harry showed up every day, at 10:00 am precisely, and wandered through the aisles for six hours, taking a break only for lunch. She was loud, people told Clara, and disrupted the customers, but no one ever got close to getting a restraining order for her.
Only once did Harry ever come at the wrong time. At four pm, she showed up, looking drunk, but actually too sleepless to move the way that swept Clara into many a blissful state. She told Kate she'd been going through files with her brother's boyfriend for hours, and once Clara saw her, she knew Harry wasn't lying. Harry was tired enough that she couldn't move without falling over. Kate managed to drag the woman into the break room, where she would surprise Clara.
Clara saw Harry laying there, looking so beautiful and small and harmless, and decided she'd give the Watson a second chance. They both were miserable, and that wouldn't get better without the other to help them.
The kiss she planted on Harry's lips allowed her to fall asleep easier that night.
Now, a few days later, she laid awake, staring at the ceiling, not functioning well enough to work on anything for the next staff meeting and too cognitive to lull herself into drowsiness. She wondered sometimes why she hadn't gotten into bed with anyone else after Harry left her, and then answered her own question in a loop. The clock read 1:59 am, and turned to 2:00 before her screen shut off.
Suddenly, Clara's mobile buzzed. It wasn't the email tone, so who would be texting her at this hour? When she heard the tone again, and again, she realized someone was calling her at this hour. Since it could be anyone from a stalker to her boss, Clara tapped her fingers on the bedside table until the very last tone, when she slid the bar across the bottom of her phone screen to answer it.
"Hello?" she whispered. No one lived in her immediate vicinity, but it was a habit to stay quiet.
"Hey, baby," a familiar voice answered. "I'm drunk, and exhausted, and my brother screwed up, and screwed his boyfriend, and I'm not sure this isn't a dream since you probably changed your phone number, but I wanted to hear your voice, so yeah." Harry sounded so beat-down. Clara couldn't help but talk to her.
"What's this I hear about your brother having a boyfriend?"
Harry laughed, quickly shushing herself, and then laughing again. "His name's Sherlock Holmes, and he's a fancy detective. You heard about him maybe in the paper? He got caught in a deerstalker hat once, and now people laugh at him." She paused. "He's a good guy, hotter than the sun. Would've fucked him if I wasn't into you." Clara noticed Harry said 'into you' rather than 'into girls'. Stupid two am brain. "Holmes is good for Johnny, good to him. Johnny deserved someone like Sherlock long before he got him."
Harry fell silent, and so Clara prompted, "And what about all the screwing?"
"John doesn't love Sherlock right now, and made some pretty clear signs he didn't in front of Holmes. And he did it after having sex with him, and he doesn't remember. The idiot part, not the sex. He remembers the sex. Holmes'd better be more forgiving than me, because what Johnny did wasn't right." Harry didn't speak for a moment. "If you're not Clarabella, I'm sorry to bother you."
Clara melted at the name. Why did Harry have to use it? It didn't exactly help the Stay-Strong Clara mode. "It's okay, really. Do you need any advice?"
"I just can't tell John what Sherlock told me. Sherlock has been in love with him since the beginning, I'm sure of it, and John used to be in love with Sherlock before the weird crap with Sherlock's suicide started, so now I've got two men living with me, neither of which are going to say the L-word to each other, and the sexual tension between them doesn't go away even after they have sex." Harry paused. "Clara?"
"Yes?"
"I still love you."
Clara smiled sadly into the phone, but she knew Harry couldn't see her. "Really?"
"I may be drunk, but I'm not stupid. I mean, I'll probably forget I made this phone call, but it doesn't change the fact that my life is nothing without you. I'm sorry it took me so long to tell you."
God, Harry sounded so serious, and Clara was trying to find any reason not to believe her. "It's okay."
"No, it's not. I had someone amazing and beautiful and sexy and smart about feelings, and I let her go because of an addiction I'm still too weak to beat. You shouldn't forgive me, but at least try to understand that I'm sorry and I love you, and I'll take anything you can give me."
Downstairs in 221 Baker Street, both the men Harry was talking about woke at different times to hear different parts of the conversation. John heard, "...now I've got two men living with me, neither of which are going to say the L-word to each other, and the sexual tension between them doesn't go away even after they have sex," and "...No, it's not. I had someone amazing and beautiful and sexy and smart about feelings, and I let her go because of an addiction I'm still too weak to beat."
It kind of swung a lance through John's heart when he realized he did love Sherlock, and he wasn't going to let him go because of something like this experiment. It wasn't an experiment anymore, and both of them knew it. John just wanted to be the one to say it first.
Sherlock heard a very separate part of Harriet's conversation. "Sherlock has been in love with him since the beginning, I'm sure of it, and John used to be in love with Sherlock before the weird crap with Sherlock's suicide started..." Wait. John loved Sherlock once? Him? He never remembered seeing any sign John felt the same way back then. Did Harriet have the wrong idea? Did she simply want to push them together? Was she right? "...You shouldn't forgive me, but at least try to understand that I'm sorry and I love you, and I'll take anything you can give me."
Sherlock burned the last sentence into his mind. After his fall, he figured out he was asking too much for John to forgive him. He'd done something horrible, and then lied about it. John really shouldn't forgive him, but Sherlock would take anything he could get. Without John, he was nothing.
Both men made up their minds, and went back to sleep, neither one of them realizing the other had woken.
"Okay," Clara murmured. Tears were streaking down her face, from the words, and from Harry being so far away.
"Okay," Harry said. "I'll let you sleep now. Even if you're not Clara, thank you for listening."
"You're welcome." Harry hung up the phone, and Clara put her own mobile back down on the bedside table. Harry still loved her back. She actually fell asleep that night, and didn't wake up until ten am. Maybe it wasn't a person sleeping beside her she needed. Maybe it was just Harry.
John curled around Sherlock. He whispered, "I really love you."
Again, thank you all for the 6000 views! It means so much to me. Read + review!