TETHERED Ch 7: Some Pains Just Need Company
“I was waiting for you.”
That was all. No questions sharpened into concern.
She rose with quiet ease and crossed the room in near silence. Her hand hovered in his line of sight, not sudden, just steady, before it settled on his cheek.
A hundred instincts flared at once: to step back, to snap, to disappear into logic. But he stood there and let it happen. Let her touch the raw, sea-stung version of himself, the one with no defences left.
Her thumb brushed through the coarse edge of his beard, where dried salt still clung to skin. The whirring sound of it, that small, soft friction, stirred something in him. He hadn't known there were tears left.
“Let me help you,” she whispered, almost inaudible.
He closed his eyes and gave a slight nod. He desired nothing more than that. It was surrender, not permission. Thought had slipped from him hours ago. All that remained was this hollow ache — this ache, and her .
Her fingers brushed the collar of his coat, gentle but sure. She didn’t pull, just guided, slow and certain, the fabric slipping from his shoulders.
She hung his coat over the hook, neat and deliberate.
It shouldn’t have caught him. It was only a gesture, domestic and undemanding. But her nearness, her silence, the precise, gentle way she didn’t ask,
It undid him.
He lowered his gaze, blinking hard as heat pricked at the corners of his eyes, untimely and utterly beyond his control.
He stood motionless before her, just for a beat. Then his shoulders dipped.
Not much. Just a tilt forward, slow and graceless, until his forehead came to rest against her shoulder. Not clinging, not holding. Just leaning.
His breath hitched. Once. Then again. Her scent filled his senses, but not even that could hold everything in.
“It… hurts,” he muttered — choked and wrecked, not really meaning to say it aloud.
Her hand rose instinctively, steady against the small of his back. The contact made his muscles tense and then suddenly slacken, as if he could finally stop holding himself together.
“I know,” she whispered.
He stayed there, breathing shallow. Then pulled back, not meeting her eyes.
“I walked,” he said, voice low. “Meant to come home sooner.” A pause, thick. “Didn’t.”
She shook her head, her raven black hair moving with the movement, “That’s all right.”
“I don’t…” The words came slowly, scraped raw. “I went to a meeting, but… I didn’t want to talk. Not then.”
She nodded once. “Do you want to now?”
He hesitated. The question lingered between them; open, patient. After a beat:
“…A little.”
Watson gave him that sad smile, the one she saved for moments like this, when she saw something in him he hadn’t yet admitted to himself. It always felt as if she could look straight through to his soul. If he believed in that sort of codswallop.
Her hand, still at the small of his back, steady and warm, guided him toward the library and the fire that had been burning for some time. He sank into the armchair nearest the flames, a sudden cold sweat prickling at his collar, one that had nothing to do with temperature.
She sat beside him and adjusted her leg under her, wincing slightly as she muttered something under her breath; he only caught the words “bloody hip”. A moment later, she was composed again, but he noticed.
They sat by the fire, the last embers glowing low. She had made tea for him, which had long since cooled. Still, he sipped, as if the warmth mattered less than the ritual.
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