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“I just,” their client kept on “I just don’t love him anymore.”
“Yes, what a pity,” Sherlock said dismissively “Now, if you could tell me more about where your husband may be.”
John looked at her, her body language screamed sadness and distress. He felt… odd, listening to her story. She had simply described how one day she woke up and realised she no longer loved her husband. The husband had done nothing wrong, she just… didn’t love him anymore.
It made something in his gut clench.
“Well, he was rather fond of the forest and camping. It wouldn’t be unlike him to go for an impulse camping trip,” the woman in the seat smiled “But, he never left for more than 3 days, and he would always come home and give me a hug and a kiss on the cheek and tell me how much he loved me.”
John’s heart twisted at the thought. It was clear from the client’s story that her husband still loved her. They had been happily married for 10 years she had said. John had barely known her for 30 minutes and the moment she had begun to talk about her relationship, he could tell. She loved her husband, but no longer in the romantic sense, the love had died out, and there was nothing she could have done to stop it.
John found himself thinking about the encounter for the next week. When he woke up, when he went to work, when he ate dinner, when he and Sherlock went to bed together. All he could think about was his fear that, one day, he could wake up and realise that he no longer loved the man he had sworn to spend the rest of his life with.
His mind flooded him with images of not only his own reaction, but Sherlock’s as well. How would he react if one day John woke up and discovered that he no longer loved him. Which of them would it affect most? Would either of them be able to survive it?
He looked at the way their relationship had been going lately. Sherlock had been spending more and more time on his cases, and John had spent more and more time at work. They spent so little time together these days. John sometimes found himself having to be reminded that he was expected to give Sherlock a peck on the cheek or forehead every now and then.
Sherlock had never been the overly displayed affectionate person that John was. He rarely kissed John on the cheek, or cuddled up to him on the sofa, which made the times he did so much more precious. Lately, however, John found himself… not caring, about these intimate moments.
It went on for months until one day he woke up and his worst fear came to pass.
“I’m sorry” John sobbed out as tears formed in Sherlock’s eyes “I’m so sorry Sherlock.”
Sherlock had desperately tried to ignore the facts presented to him, and perhaps, that was what made this so much more painful. John clutched Sherlock’s night shirt in his hands and cried into his chest.
“I don’t love you anymore...”