#sherlock crying

Six months after my last posted chapter, Elementary again pulling me in.

Not Even This

Sherlock & Joan, or Sherlock/Joan, whatever you want to read it. Rated: M. Words: 2,276. Hurt/Comfort. Episode tag. Sherlock has abandonment issues. Sherlock fears losing Watson. Sherlock has a massive breakdown. But Watson is there to catch him.

Set after Shinwell’s death and the memorial service that Sherlock didn’t attend. Something’s wrong with him, he can feel it, and he feels his mind begin to unravel. Watson is hurt, Sherlock is too. The rift is growing bigger between them. Can they start to heal? OR, Sherlock in absolute pain and fear, for what's happening in his head and for fear of losing Watson.

“I know my behaviour has been… appalling,” he said. “Please know that I’m sorry.”

“Are you?”

She turned sharply, her voice clipped, brittle.

“Because I don’t know if I can trust you anymore.”

The words hit like a bullet — not metaphorical, but real. Hot metal tearing through the centre of his chest.

His breath hitched. His knees buckled slightly, and he took one step back.

Trust.  

The one thing that had always tethered them. Quietly, fiercely. Through lies, danger, and disappearances. Through the worst of who he was.

Gone.

He looked at her, really looked, and saw none of the warmth that had once anchored him. No light in her eyes. 

Just the flat, dull ache of exhaustion. Of someone who had finally stopped hoping.

And something inside him cracked.

Not just from guilt or shame, but from the recognition . This was the moment he had spent years fighting to avoid.

Not when she argued. Not when she was angry.

But this.

This silence. This look.

The quiet surrender of someone who no longer believed in him.

Some people might’ve said you were a lost cause once…

That conversation, her voice full of conviction, came flooding back. And with it, the answer he’d given. Well, I may still be. And now, he knew it was true.

He had failed. Not as a detective. Not even as a partner.

But as a friend she could trust.

And with that failure, he had lost the only thing, the only one that mattered.

A raw, involuntary sound tore from his throat, half gasp, half sob.

He staggered back, pressing a trembling hand to his chest as if it could hold him together. But the pain was already breaking him open.

The shaking started in his fingers. Then spread. His throat burned. His vision blurred.

He was crying before he even knew he’d begun, tears tracking silently down his face, soaking into his collar.

His body folded inward, unable to stand tall beneath the weight. His breath came in shallow bursts, like a man suffocating. Shame and grief twisted like wire inside him, sharp and merciless.

He dropped his head. Shoulders hunched. Hands shaking. He couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t bear to see the final confirmation in her eyes.

HLV .... 

Pain.

Heartbreak.

Loss.

TLD ...

I killed his wife.

Yes, you did.

@mylastvow (I know you hate these tears...let me cause you some pain :-* )

The envelope pulsed in his vision. Small as it was, it dominated the room. 

A silent, patient predator.

He had not slept properly since Kitty left. Hadn’t even touched his bed in two days, preferring the upright torture of this chair.

At first, he had waited. Waited for the sound of her returning, for the door to slam open, for her voice to fill the air again, sharp but alive. He had waited a day. Then two. Now a week had passed, and the silence had grown thick, oppressive. A silence that told him the truth: she was gone.

He kept trying to think logically, to structure the chaos of his thoughts, to rebuild order from fragments. But the calculations dissolved, numbers dripping away, words shattering mid-thought. His mind circled and circled, a dog chasing its own tail until exhaustion blurred everything to grey.

He bowed his head, pressed his palms into his eyes. 

Wet. 

He hadn’t even registered the tears until his skin came away damp. When it did, it was all he could do. His eyelids clamped shut; a ragged sob clawed its way out, uninvited, like evidence he couldn’t suppress.

The ache in his chest sharpened, the cold in his stomach deepened. His breath came ragged, a staccato he couldn’t control.

Then, all of a sudden, a voice. Her voice, unbidden, surfaced in his head.

You’re stronger than this.

It wasn’t angry. Nor accusing. 

Simply steady. The way she had always been when he faltered.

His throat closed. His stomach turned even colder.

This isn’t who you are, Sherlock. You can beat this.

The echo throbbed like an exposed nerve. He clenched his jaw until it ached, teeth grinding, but it didn’t drive her voice away. He could see her as clearly as a photograph: bent over a corpse, brow furrowed in thought. Sitting across from him in the brownstone, tea balanced between her hands, another she’d press into his without him asking. The way she’d look at him, a small smile in her lips, the sort of grin he never knew what he’d done to deserve but was always thankful for. 

Quiet, but always present. Reliable. She had been reliable when no one else had.

And he had left her.

The thought was a spike to the sternum. His breath caught; he folded forward, fingers trembling against his knees. He had walked away from her, from everything, because it had been easier to leave than to see the result of being left behind. Abandoned. Yet here he was, abandoned all the same.

Everyone leaves.

The words were etched into him like old scar tissue. Mother. Father. So-called friends. Irene. Watson, in the end. Kitty now, too. Always leaving, always his fault.

Also available on Wattpad and Fanfiction:

"This is the cloak room," Sherlock said grouchily. "You said you wanted to show me something interesting and we’re in the cloak room. You do realize that you’re wasting my free period, don’t you? I’m not going to be able to get the good Bunsen burner now, someone will have taken it."

"Calm down," Irene replied. Despite being in the same year as him, she already had the budding curves of a woman and a worrying amount of control over most of the school’s boys. 

"What is it? I might still be able to get one of the decent ones if this doesn’t take too long."

"Would you shut up about Bunsen burners?" she asked almost lazily, latching the door behind them. "I said I’ve got something to show you."

"So show me."

"In a moment."

Huffing, Sherlock turned to reach for the door before a sharp yank on his tie stopped him. Turning, Sherlock saw that Irene had his tie wrapped around her fist and that she was slowly reeling him towards her. 

"What, Ms. Adler, this is," he sputtered as she pulled him closer.

"I said I had something to show you, didn’t I?" Her voice was lower now than it had been before, almost a whisper, and without thinking, he matched it.

"Yes."

"Have you ever seen a girl’s breasts before?"

He flushed red with embarrassment, mumbling something about female mammals and dissection and mothers breastfeeding in public.

"Would you like to?"

"I don’t understand."

"Don’t be thick, Sherlock. You’re the second-smartest person in this school, after myself of course."

He raised an eyebrow, looking mildly irritated until he noticed that she had released his tie in favor of loosening her own and beginning to undo the buttons of her blouse.

"Why," he licked his lips, trying to bring moisture to his suddenly dry mouth. "Why are you doing this?"

"God, I was wrong. You are thick. I should think it’s obvious, don’t you?"

Her blouse was all the way unbuttoned by now as well as untucked from her skirt. Against her pale skin, the cream-colored bra had a silky sheen, the little gem decorating the clasp catching the light.

"I’m not sure what’s obvious here."

"You think I don’t notice how you’ve studied me all year? And last year?"

"Well," he began, but she shook her head.

"Come on, Holmes. I’m the only girl you pay the slightest bit of attention to."

"You’re the only one close to my intelligence."

She shrugged, “True, but you nearly always end up as my partner in chemistry, no matter what the sorting method of the day is.”

"Could be a coincidence." 

She chuckled.

"What was that thing you said about coincidence last Friday? The universe is rarely so stupid?"

"Lazy," he corrected, before realizing what he was admitting.

"There. Well you’re in luck because we’ve got another three quarters of an hour before the next official class."

"Official?"

"Well I’d say this is going to be informative for you, though likely not school-approved."

He shrugged in that lazy way that only teenage boys can seem to manage, conveying his complete apathy for the situation.

"I suppose all the decent equipment in the lab is taken by now anyhow. Might as well."

She suppressed a smile as she unclasped her bra, watching his face change as false apathy shifted into curiosity with a touch of arousal.

Her breasts were small and firm, still that of a girl not fully a woman, but they were lovely nonetheless. Even with the faint stretch marks from growing them so quickly as puberty hit, nipples small and pink, the areolae perhaps the size of a two pence piece, they were instantly the second most fascinating thing in the room.

The first, or course, being her mind.

Despite the fact that he would have liked to examine them closer, Sherlock tore his eyes from her breasts and moved them to her face.

"Why are you showing me your breasts in a cloak room? It’s not because you like me, or it’s not the only reason. Girls don’t just go around showing boys their breasts. What do you want?"

"Ah, there’s the clever boy I was looking for."

She took a step closer and reached for his hands, taking them in her own.

"I want to know what I’m doing. What I like. I need someone to help me….experiment."

"You fancy some of the girls in our year," he pointed out. "It might be easier to compare notes with other girls."

"Girls would talk to each other about it."

"So would boys," he responded almost instantly. 

"But you’re not ‘boys’. You’re Sherlock Holmes. You like to know everything and be the only one that knows it."

She lifted her hands, still holding his, to her breasts, cupping his palms under them so he was holding her breasts in his hands.

"I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do," he admitted, flushing a little red.

"Well that’s the point isn’t it? Experimenting. Figuring out what works."

He turned his attention to her breasts before shaking his head.

"No, this is wrong."

Startled, she leaned back microscopically, drawing her shell back around her before Sherlock Holmes could see what fragility she had revealed to him. She relaxed, however, when he continued.

"This is starting halfway through the experiment. It’s not how the scientific method works. I’ve got to start from the beginning."

"Which would be?"

"Put your underthings back on. And your blouse."

"It’s called a bra."

"I know what it’s called."

Rolling her eyes, she reclasped the bra and began to button her blouse, tucking the white tails of her blouse into her school skirt.

"And the tie too," he said, almost sternly.

"Of course, Mr. Holmes."

"Shut up."

She adjusted her tie and raised an eyebrow.

"Now what?"

"Well if what I’ve heard in the boys lavatory is true, before you take any clothes off there’s snogging. And before snogging, there’s a kiss to see if she likes it."

"You’re going to kiss me?"

"If we’re going to do this right, that seems to be the best course of action."

"All right then."

She stood there, hands on her hips, waiting.

"Well?"

"It’s not that I don’t….I just don’t have a lot of practical experience in the…"

"You’ve never kissed a girl before, have you?"

"Of course I’ve kissed a girl," he lied hotly. "I’m not some kind of moron."

"Right, silly me. What are you waiting for then?"

"The signal."

"The signal," she repeated. "What signal?"

"In the lavatory…and in my own experience of course…you wait for the girl to give you a signal that she wants you to kiss her."

"You’re impossible."

Grabbing his tie for the second time in the course of ten minutes or so, she pulled him in and Irene Adler kissed Sherlock Holmes full on the mouth.

He was clumsy at first, slow and waiting for guidance. But after a few kisses, he attempted to replicate her technique, the gentle sucking on the lower lip, the two or three quick kisses followed by a slower, deeper one. And then she introduced her tongue and he was lost again, trying to copy her little licks and touches with his own inexperienced tongue. 

It was like this, with Irene Adler holding his tie and he cradling the back of her neck, both snogging with dedication, that Mycroft Holmes found them.

"Adler! Holmes! What the hell is this?"

Sherlock tried to jump back, blushing, but Irene’s hold on his tie kept him from moving too far back. 

"What’s it look like?" she asked him, cocking out one hip and daring him with her eyes to keep talking about it.

"It’s inappropriate conduct during school hours. I’m going to give you both demerits."

She chuckled, still not letting go of Sherlock’s tie.

"Are you really?”

"Yes, really,” he replied in the same tone, pulling out a little book of tickets from his trouser pocket. “And Sherlock, I’ll be mentioning this to Mum and Dad.”

He flushed an even deeper scarlet.

"Mycroft, you don’t have to do that."

"Let him," Irene said with a shrug. "They’ll be pleased you’re interested in something other than science."

Despite the fact that she did have a point, Sherlock found that he didn’t want his parents finding out about this. It was private, much like the rest of his life.

"Mycroft, please don’t say anything?"

His older brother considered it for a moment, weighing the options in his head.

"All right, this time I won’t say anything. But you owe me a favor."

Sherlock nodded, and Irene rolled her eyes, releasing Sherlock’s tie. Eyes never leaving the face of the older Holmes boy, she straightened it and smoothed it against his skinny chest.

"See you around, Sherlock."

"Yeah, all right." His voice cracked just a bit at the end and she smiled over her shoulder at him.

Did you miss me?