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It’s only a medium drizzle today, and the sun dares to still peek through the clouds, cheeky in its cheer despite the raindrops. The rain here in New York is so different from that of London. The humidity in the air lingers and clings like a balmy second skin, no matter how much the heavens weep.
William doesn’t mind too much. Here in their little flat (apartment, he corrects himself; when in Rome, when in New York), the rain can’t get to them. Judging looks or suspicious glances can’t get to them either in their little sanctuary, never mind the lack of curtains.
Today is William’s day to make the coffee and rummage up something for breakfast. It’s uncommon that he’s the first to wake up but not unheard of, especially if his lover didn’t go to bed until the wee hours of dawn.
Sherlock stayed up far too late fiddling with a novel reaction discovered by a Frenchman named Victor Grignard. William slept like the dead, but judging by the haphazardly swept-up glass shards in the dustpan, Sherlock caused no fewer than two explosions with his experiments. The former professor makes a mental note to pick up a few more round-bottom flasks later.
Something possesses him to open the window and take in the scenery of the city below. It’s so foreign and yet, at the same time, so familiar. The accents and architecture may differ, but the smell of wet urban sludge is indeed home sweet home. William sticks his head out further to take in more of that delicious wet urban sludge smell for the hell of it. He rests his hands on the windowsill, steadying himself on the water-slicked surface.
It's alright. They’re safe. He’s safe.
“Liam, we can still afford water. Why’re you showerin’ in the rain?” comes a sleep-slurred murmur into his shoulder.
Strong arms wrap around William’s waist and resolutely pull him back inside, but stray raindrops still cling to their heads and shoulders. When Sherlock thinks William is no longer defenestrating himself, he goes completely boneless with a soft snore.
William can’t help the laugh that bubbles out of his throat. The sharpest minds of the century are no match for Hypnos, and it’s Sherlock’s turn to demonstrate that.
“Good morning to you too, Sherly. I just wanted to take in the day, is all.” He pries the sticky detective off him, limb by limb, and hauls him to their woefully cramped table. “I made coffee, but we are all out of bread.”
With his now-damp bedhead and prominent eyebags, Sherlock is hardly the picture of conventional beauty as he slumps over the wooden surface. But the way those sharp sapphires turn warm when they look at him? The way Sherlock’s scowl immediately softens into a lopsided smile when they make eye contact? That’s nothing short of breathtaking.
William slides a steaming cup of coffee close to his lover’s nose. How ironic it is that the man who saved him will be the death of him.
“I’ll be heading out shortly. You may join me if you can make yourself presentable in ten minutes,” William challenges, taking a sip of his own cup. It’s a tad burnt, nowhere near Louis’ or even Sherlock’s quality, but Sherlock still drinks it without complaint.
Sherlock does not make himself presentable in ten minutes. Hell, he cannot, not when he wastes three of those precious minutes just listening to William talk about his agenda like a student drinking in a lecture. It’s a feeling William didn’t know he missed, but he makes no exceptions. Ten minutes is ten minutes.
Coat, hat, umbrella. Check.
No cane today. Kiss on Sherly’s forehead. Check.
By the time Sherlock gets dressed, William has long left the building. When he takes off his nightshirt, a small scrap of paper flutters to the floor.
Sherlock picks it up and immediately bursts out into bright peals of laughter.
“Liam, you sap!”
In an elegant script, it simply says Sonnet 17, William Shakespeare.
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“If I could write the beauty of your eyes
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say 'this poet lies! Such heaven never touched earthly faces.”
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