Nᴏᴛ Gᴀʏ {Tᴇᴇɴ/Jᴏʜɴʟᴏᴄᴋ}

№ 14

I was awakened a few weeks afterward by a loud knock on my door. I groggily opened my heavy eyes to see Mum standing in the doorway, streams of mascara running down her face along with a wide smile, which, in my opinion, made no sense at all.

But Mum wasn't one to make sense. Sometimes she'd ramble on and on about how messy everything was and then go and decide to take everything out of its place and throw it on the floor in a heaping pile because she wanted to "reorganise". She was impulsive, acting on her instincts. I had found her with a tiny bag of heroin once, and it took me all my strength to pry it out of her desperate fingers. So I knew her impulses weren't good ones.

"Mum?" I said, slowly sitting up. "What day is it? What's going on?"

She walked into my room. "Time for you to pack your boxes and leave the nest!"

Usually, I was able to handle Mum crying. When she was sad and blubbering about how much she missed her parents and how much she hated Dad's habit and how she didn't have the time or energy or money to get a divorce but still really wanted to because everyone knew very well that we'd never get the old Dad back, I was able to comfort her and not feel like cringing and hiding inside of my own shirt. But when I was the person she was crying about, especially if it was because I was "growing up", I couldn't bear it. It was demeaning, in a way. And awkward. And very, very unpleasant.

I wiped the sleep out of my eyes, not minding that she entered the room without even asking because I was moving out sometime soon anyway, and furrowed my brow and scoffed. "What's that s'posed to mean?"

She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand and sniffled a bit. "You're going to university tomorrow!"

Thank God. I'd been waiting for that to happen ever since she signed me up for that bloody stupid hospital job. "Oh, yeah. Tomorrow. Fun." I made a mental note to not sound too excited to leave my family for as long as I possibly could.

"Sherlock's brother has offered to drive you both," she bubbled. "He was so considerate! I couldn't say no."

I held back a scoff. Considerate. Not Mycroft. Nope. Luckily, however, I'd be able to arrive without being drowned in my mother's tears. She was even more emotional than usual because Harry decided never to get a degree, so at least one of the children of the house was being successful. Dad wouldn't care. Christ knows if he would even know what was going on at all.

"You could pack pictures," Mum said. "I have all these... all these photographs of you when you were... just a little boy..." Her face crumpled up as she began crying again. Her bottom lip curled over itself as she did, her hand reaching up and covering her eyes as she sobbed. I felt a pang of guilt, and then empathy, and then complete embarrassment, but I couldn't just let her cry.

If manners didn't exist, I would tell her to shut up because it was bloody uncomfortable, watching her cry about me like that, treating me as if I were still a little boy. But I knew that saying such a thing would hurt her even more, so I gathered myself and held out my arms for her, which she practically collapsed into.

"Oh, Mum," I sighed, pulling her in for a hug and letting her slobber all over my shoulder. "I don't need to bring my baby pictures. You can keep those to look at when you miss me..."

I trailed off as I noticed movement outside of my window, and I glanced up to see Sherlock waving casually at me from outside. My eyes widened in shock, and I shook my head at him. "Not now," I mouthed silently at him. "Later."