Sherlock's eyes are closed, and his breathing is uneven, like he's just run a mile. And yet this is a moment of calm: a rare, treacherous tenderness between them that allows him to be safe. Once, while slipping in and out of the delirium of cocaine withdrawal, he'd started howling as if raw sound could propel him back into the safety of the past, of knowing he was not in fact alone.
And he's not alone, not now. In fact--in fact he's so full he doesn't know what to do.
He thinks about sitting on the couch with John, watching really rather terrible films but enjoying them because they make John happy. He thinks about the two dozen songs he's learned on the violin (rock songs mostly, and a handful of things you'd hear people bellowing in a pub). He thinks about waking up next to someone in the morning, and curling up next to someone at night even during the descent into sleep. Everything, everything that isn't the work is a confession.
"All the time," he murmurs, with a strange kind of exhaustion in his voice. "I can't get away from it. From him. Even--he went up to Edinburgh yesterday to see an aunt of his, she's far more ill than he's letting on. And do you know what I said? 'Call me if there's a double homicide.' For God's sake. There should be a rule book. If there was a procedure, I could memorise it and then we wouldn't be in this mess."
True, John had laughed, in that short and huffing way that meant he was only partly irritated. But then he'd responded with a You too, idiot, and left, and now he... well, he feels the absence.
"The last time I ever said it--" and he hears his own voice crack, and hates himself for it, for admitting this at all-- "was to Dad. At his funeral. I can't manage this."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2012-06-11 04:01 pm (UTC)And he's not alone, not now. In fact--in fact he's so full he doesn't know what to do.
He thinks about sitting on the couch with John, watching really rather terrible films but enjoying them because they make John happy. He thinks about the two dozen songs he's learned on the violin (rock songs mostly, and a handful of things you'd hear people bellowing in a pub). He thinks about waking up next to someone in the morning, and curling up next to someone at night even during the descent into sleep. Everything, everything that isn't the work is a confession.
"All the time," he murmurs, with a strange kind of exhaustion in his voice. "I can't get away from it. From him. Even--he went up to Edinburgh yesterday to see an aunt of his, she's far more ill than he's letting on. And do you know what I said? 'Call me if there's a double homicide.' For God's sake. There should be a rule book. If there was a procedure, I could memorise it and then we wouldn't be in this mess."
True, John had laughed, in that short and huffing way that meant he was only partly irritated. But then he'd responded with a You too, idiot, and left, and now he... well, he feels the absence.
"The last time I ever said it--" and he hears his own voice crack, and hates himself for it, for admitting this at all-- "was to Dad. At his funeral. I can't manage this."