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She’s fine at first. The kidnapping, being held hostage, watching first her captor-patient and then the other members of Le Milieu drop dead in front of her were all events she couldn’t afford to process properly with more pressing matters hanging in the balance.
Then both of the Holmes brothers flee New York and she finds herself no longer embroiled in matters of international diplomacy, and that’s when the nightmares start.
She’s ashamed of it, of the nighttime thrashing and the waking up with tears on her pillow, her body and subconscious a traitor to herself, so much so that she resisted Andrew’s attempts to coax her into spending the night for much longer than she should have. It’s only until she meets his eyes during one of her demurrals and sees the hurt and confusion written across his face that she relents.
And having Andrew around made it better. It made her nights easier, until he was gone.
She’s leery when she moves back into the brownstone. Sherlock has a propensity toward watching her sleep, for whatever reason, like Edward Cullen’s balding British cousin. She starts hiding out in her basement office on bad nights, catching a few hours of rest slumped over her desk or curled up on the couch. He rarely bothers her when she’s down there, and it’s fine for a while.
Until they’re working a particularly drawn-out case and she’s sprawled out on the worn red couch in the library surrounded by phone records, feeling her eyelids droop. And the next thing she knows she’s jerking into consciousness with a scream dying in her throat and tears pooling in her eyes and Sherlock hovering above her, panic and concern etched in the lines of his face. It takes her a second to realize the ragged breathing filling the room is coming from her, that she was fine, everything is fine.
She reaches for him, sleep-heavy and disoriented, and he comes easily, sliding onto the couch next to her, cradling her loosely in his embrace. She presses her nose to his neck and breathes in his scent, familiar and soothing. She can feel the wetness on her cheeks leaking onto his shirt and she pulls away, disgusted with herself, but he curves one hand over her shoulder and dips his head to look at her.
“Watson. We’ve been so busy with the current case I’ve scarcely made an effort to bathe or attend to issues of hygiene. I’ve had this shirt on my back the last three days. If anyone is to be embarrassed here, it would be me. And yet, you’re not blanching in revulsion, so I think my pride and apparel will be just fine.”
She huffs out a laugh despite herself and bumps his sternum lightly with her head. “You do need a shower. Kinda always do.”
He huffs back at her but there’s no heat in it. “I will take one posthaste; you have my word. After we,” he extricates a hand from the tangle of their bodies to wave it between them, “discuss this.”
“What’s there to discuss?” She doesn’t know why she’s feigning ignorance. Her voice is hoarse and raw, and there are visible crescent-shaped marks on the fleshy part of her palm from where she’d dug her fingers into fists.
He waits her out.
She scrapes the hair back from her face, blows out a long breath. “It’s fine, really. I’m fine.”
He considers it, like he might really let it go at that. “How long?” he says instead. “Since Andrew…?”
“Since…Mycroft.” She can tell she’s caught him off-guard by his sharp intake of breath. A litany of emotions flash across his face; sadness, horror, what looks like guilt, like shame.
“Your being taken,” he says in a small voice, refusing to meet her eyes even as one hand loosely grasps hers. “And everything that came with it. And I abandoned you. I shouldn’t, I – did Andrew know?”
She nods, wiping away a stray tear the motion dislodges. “Andrew…helped. His presence,” she doesn’t say in bed, and she doesn’t have to, “it helped.”
“Watson,” his voice cracks, and something splits open inside her in response. “Let me help. Please.” He’s looking at her, earnestness radiating from every pore, worry shining in his eyes. It’s a look she’s all too familiar with, though she’s not usually on the receiving end of it. She knows he won’t sleep tonight if she brushes him off. He’ll pace in the hallway and murmur to himself and give her space in name while checking in on her in increasingly short intervals. And she’s exhausted. Maybe he can help.
“Alright, Sherlock,” she says finally. She’s trying for resigned, but there’s the specter of a smile coloring her words as she squeezes his hand once before letting go. “Sleep with me tonight.”
He sucks in a shuddering breath and stands, rocking back on his heels, relief and something deeper swimming in his eyes, hands clasped together tightly in front of him. “No funny business,” he asserts. “Scout’s honor.”
She lets her eyes roll. As if her virtue has ever been in question around him.
She’s on the verge of drifting off when he pads into her room fresh from his shower, clad in an old tshirt and sleep pants. She squints at him in the darkness and motions at the empty side of the bed. He hesitates for a second before sliding in, stiff as a board. She doesn’t have the energy to cajole him into not holding his breath the entire night, so she just sighs, rolls onto her stomach, and mumbles a “night, Sherlock.”
When her own screams wake her hours or minutes later, he’s there. Murmuring nonsense syllables into her hair, one hand soothing circles against her sweaty back, the other brushing the damp hair off her face as she calms, and she finds herself stroking the soft worn fabric of his shirt, the motion syncing with the press of his hand on her back. His heart beats strong and steady under her fingertips. She shifts closer, the flannel of his sleep pants warm against her toes, and lets sleep reclaim her.
They don’t talk, after his relapse. Well, they don’t talk to each other. She makes arrangements, puts on a brave face for the three whole days Mr. Holmes stays at the brownstone before departing for more important business, wakes at night screaming Liam’s name, or Andrew’s, or Sherlock’s, in a nightmarish version of choose your own adventure that always ends badly.
He doesn’t talk at all. She tries to give him space, saw how he was with the bees. But it hurts. His silence hurts in a way she has no right to acknowledge, this indefinable thing between them bestowing upon her none of the privileges she’s used to having in a relationship. She aches with it, but both of them are fragile at the moment, bogged down with their individual baggage.
She checks on him before bed, wants to make sure he isn’t freezing his extremities off on the roof without a blanket again, and finds him sitting on the bed in his room, staring listlessly off into space. She walks around him to look at the tray of food she left by the bed earlier, finds it mostly untouched. Her footsteps feel loud in the room, and she suppresses the urge to scream, to cry, to beg him to talk to her, managing a steady “night, Sherlock” instead before she turns to go. She’s halfway to the door when he calls after her, voice raspy with disuse, and it tugs at something inside her just the same.
She pivots slowly to face him but stays where she is, rooted to the middle of the room. He said once that the two of them are bound somehow, even as they drift closer or further apart. She believes it, but here and now the chasm between them has never seemed greater, two broken people in an empty room. She cannot bring herself to bridge the gap, when she doesn’t know what awaits her on the other side. Also, she’s tired.
She waits him out.
His forehead is scrunched, the expression he gets when he’s concentrating writ large on his face. It looks as though he’s in physical pain just being around her. Dimly she realizes he might be trying to push past whatever is holding him back for her benefit and at his expense, and she can’t bear to watch him suffer.
“It’s okay.” She keeps her voice low, gentle. “We don’t have to talk about it, not yet.” She turns to go, again, and–
“Watson,” he breathes, steadier this time, and then all his words rush out at once, slip-sliding against each other in the rush to be vocalized, like the toll of holding in his words is finally too much for him. “For the past few days I have been at odds with myself over various matters, but I keep circling back to a singular issue. I recognize your worry, and I feel a mirroring concern for you, though I realize our situations are not equivalent or even comparable. I’ve longed to seek out your companionship these past few days, to offer or to receive solace, I am uncertain, but the truth is I cannot fully regulate my emotions right now.”
The corner of his mouth twitches like he’s not sure if he wants to laugh or frown. “It appears I am not as post-love as I previously assumed.” He shrugs, a one-shouldered thing. “Regardless, I cannot take advantage of your concern, not under false pretenses–”
“You relapsed. That’s not a false–”
“I love you, Watson,” he blurts, eyes wide. When she doesn’t respond right away he wrings his hands in his lap and directs his attention at the floor. “It’s selfish of me, especially after recent events, and I apologize. And I apologize for burdening you with it now. That was not my intention, however unlikely it may seem.”
He casts his eyes around the room for something to do, gaze flittering wildly until it lands on the tray of untouched food. “I will eat some of the food you brought, thank you. Goodnight, Watson.” His hand is shaking as he leans over the bed to reach for the tray, the muscles of his back coiled tight under the thin cotton of his shirt.
“Sherlock.” Her voice cracks on his name and she finds that her legs work again. She crowds him where he’s sitting on the edge of the bed and lays a hand on the bony jut of his shoulder. Her other hand traces the clench of his jaw, tips his face up. He steadfastly refuses to look at her, and up close he radiates a deep exhaustion that she feels in her own bones. It doesn’t look like he’s slept at all. He still has that pained look on his face, like he’s trying to control himself.
“It’s not a burden, Sherlock.” She runs her thumb over the prickle of his stubble, feels him swallow hard. “It’s not, because I love you too.”
His gaze snaps to hers and he must read the truth there because a choked sound escapes him and he’s burying his face in her midsection, sinewy arms coming up to twine around her waist. The warmth of his tears leach through her shirt, into her skin, and it’s not cleansing or poetic, nothing like standing in the rain, but it feels right. The heat of him is soothing against her stomach muscles, sore from her daily crying jag in the shower earlier. One of his hands is clenched into a fist at her back, and she coaxes his fingers open one by one and slides her palm along his, slots her fingers between his own, feels their heartbeats sandwiched between their palms.
The stutter of his pulse begins to slow, and she nudges him so that they fall gracelessly onto the mattress together, orienting themselves around each other, shifting to get comfortable. She tugs at the blanket with one hand, manages to snag it and drape it over both of them. He snuffles and worms his way closer to her, close enough that she can feel the puff of his breath against her cheek. She should get up and put the food away, but her body is starting to melt into the mattress, her head heavy, and she can’t quite bring herself to move. She knows with a resigned certainty she’ll wake in the middle of the night with death clawing at the edges of sleep, but he’ll be here. And when he jolts awake in a panic, she’ll be here too. They’ll get each other through the night, and then they’ll figure out where to go from there, in the light of day. They both have their baggage but here, limbs intertwined and foreheads kissing on the pillow, she thinks that maybe their baggage might be compatible.