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John checked the number three times, tapping a finger on each calendar box to confirm. He stopped himself from going back to count from the— He was going to say start but really end was more like it. But the last time he wrote was number 983, so no question, this was night 1001. He looked around the room as if there would be someone to share it with, and then had to laugh derisively because the person he still still, fuck, expected to find would have certainly deleted any knowledge of that tale. There wouldn’t have been anything to share no matter how things had turned out.
Harry had been given a fancy hardcover edition of Arabian Nights for Christmas once. He’d been jealous, looking at the ornate gold filigree design on the cover and over-sized dimensions of the book; it seemed much richer present than the shin guards he’d asked for and received. Years later, clearing out the house, he found it in a mold-riddled box along with other trappings of girlish femininity she hadn’t ever requested. The tarnished metalic paint flaked under his fingertips when he picked it up to see the remaindered price tag (£1.99) still on the back.
They’d read excerpts in the humanities credit he took in med school, an evening course unimaginatively named “Non-Western Literature I”, and he’d been a bit surprised. First that it didn’t take place in India, like he’d always assumed without ever actually thinking about it (idiot, indeed). Not the first misconception he’d had about that part of the world. And second that he’d actually expected a romance. Not the first misconception he’d had about romance, either. He wondered if Harry had ever read it, if the story of a girl holding back a monster with words inspired her to run the first chance she got. Fuck that shit, she would have said. She probably wished she’d gotten the shin guards.
Sherlock would have liked the premise, at least. Been impressed by the clever young woman who manipulated her husband-murderer against his own wishes. He was so gleeful whenever cleverness prevailed, even if it wasn’t his own. Well. To a point. Someone had been clever enough to convince him he’d gone wrong, and it had to have been more than John’s own cruel words. His words weren’t enough, were never enough. He closed his eyes and sighed, then continued the stupid deep breathing exercise that actually did give him a bit of a break.
One slow in and out. Two. Three. Eyes open, hands on keyboard. Continue. Again.