Failing Upward

Chapter 40 (part 2): Songs of Experience

My parents had left me a riddle about eternity.

Our last wish was the most difficult— for everything to be as if no immortals walked in any universe. We wanted to rest. Now I understood; it's how we love that's important.

Moriarty learned all this together with us. The pain of the empty space grew inside him; a poor soul dwelling in the realms of night. To not know love, only hate. He despised us both for having a home. Mica pitied him more than I for this. She pulled Moriarty to the ground, tearing his flesh from his bones with brutal love. I could feel her twisting him apart. The look on his face was somewhere between rapture and acceptance, for he could finally feel. He was human. For the space of a breath, I felt his grief as life left him, blood vessels exploding. He understood that "which was born in a night to perish in a night." His blood clotted and was welcomed by the ground beneath my feet. He became food for new life. His muscles liquefied until they could not longer bear the weight of his bones, and he collapsed in a heap. Then I spat the thorn out on to the mound that was him. The garden wept for all her years lost yearning. Wept in happiness to go home.

I stepped over Moriarty's remains and out of the circle where Her brittle vines had dropped. Her last song lingered, more beautiful than any false melody I might ever wish to create. I sobbed for her— someone I now knew more intimately than I knew myself. My chest ached for Her loss, yet I let go to see She would finally have peace. She wept in return for me.

As I turned I saw Sherlock's body, face pale upon the ground, the last flecks of life from Her fine vines kissing his cold lips. Blood, a large blossom on his chest, where Moriarty shot him dead.

I clutched him to me, cold against his cold, afraid I'd wished us both mortal too soon. I put one hand over his mouth and the other over his heart. He gasped, his hand grasped my wrist on his chest.

The kiss on my forehead let me know.

"I want to feel you close, so close we shut out the world," he murmured.

I tucked my head into that rough spot under his chin I loved. We explored each other slowly, losing ourselves along with our clothes. Heat, sweat. The sparks. Seeing inside the other's hearts and listening to the rhythm. Doing what Sherlock loved best, friction slick with spit and sweat. Slow and easy. Sliding and building the heat between us. Him on top riding me, setting a steady beat. No need to break our mouths away, kissing and capturing each other's tongues and moans. Cocks slick with each other's musk and sweat mingled. Hands caressing faces, pulling hair, raking backs. Taking our time as all our life's blood swelled into one place. Holding, holding on. We forgot the world.

Sweat, spit, semen. I made my wish. And Mica made Hers. And then we slept.

We woke to Sean and Uncle Greg standing above us. I cradled Sherlock's head in my arms. My tears wet his face and mine. I should have known he wouldn't leave me. He wasn't like Moriarty. Sherlock was all light. My touchstone.

I buried my face his neck and sobbed with joy.

His wet lashes fluttered open.

"Is it over?" he asked.

I nodded and kissed his forehead, then hugged the stuffing out of him. We were home.

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"Is this another wrinkle?" Glenda said, digging through her vanity. "God, where did I put the Oil of Olay? Could you be a dear, John, and help me find it?"

It was difficult at first. Seeing Glenda worrying about laugh lines and crow's feet, and Uncle Greg complaining about arthritis in his joints and the crick in his back. I blamed myself, considering that the passing of Old Father Time was my fault. Sometimes I thought maybe they did know that I was the cause of their suffering, that's why they complained so much around me. As I helped Glenda look for her personal fountain of youth, I remembered what Sherlock said to me just last night: "Stop beating yourself up for that. They'd never experienced it up to now, so of course they were going to bitch more. It's part of life. It's going to happen to us someday."