bakerstreet | (no subject)

[1, 2, 3!]

By now he's been exposed to her early Sunday morning ritual. At some point not much past sunrise--sometimes, in the lingering winter morning darkness, it doesn't seem like very much light filters in through the blinds before she stirs--she gets up. Lets him sleep in while she vanishes for a short time, not quite an hour.

The sound of her key in the front door lock heralds her return, laden with coffee and pastries (enough for two, these days) and a giant armload of newspapers. She crawls back into bed, quiet as she can, and slowly works her way through the Sunday edition of every major newspaper the newsstand on the next block carries: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Washington, DC, and even Toronto and London. And, yes, the New York Times, because one really ought to have some idea what the hell one's own employer is doing.

She's always content to read in silence until he wakes up, to start passing over sections of papers she's done with, to curl closer and read things aloud. It's what they do.

Ritual enough that this Sunday, he'll realize there's been a change. Her key turns over in the door and she comes in. But she never makes it back to bed.

And, oddly, there's the intermittent sound of piano, tinny, as if through speakers. One-handed off-rhythm fingers picking at Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.

She's at her desk. She's got a tablet computer open to a piano keyboard on it's screen, absently picking at it. There's the standard complement of coffee, pastries, and papers, but today, atop the stack, several extra copies of the paper she works for.

It had beat out his own Sunday ritual--that is, sleeping until someone called to make sure he wasn't dead--fairly quickly into the 'well now I sleep here most nights I suppose' routine of things. It wasn't something he so much looked forward to avidly as something he had come to expect. Something he felt odd without on the rare Sundays he needed to be elsewhere or had inexplicably fallen asleep in his studio instead of dragging home properly.

It wasn't crucial, perhaps. It wasn't as if he had anything overly vested in absently pulling through Sunday editions. But it definitely had him frowning to wake up and find himself alone.

Frowning slightly less to hear Beethoven filtering in from the other room.

Pants are pulled on before he shuffles to the door, giving his body a lanky stretch before coming to rest against the frame. She's at her desk, after all. That almost speaks of a suddenly-sprung deadline or a desire to hold oneself apart.

"Morning?"

Possibly good? Possibly not?

She stirs, looking up at him. "...Hi." There's a brief, sheepish glance down at the tablet as she moves to switch it off. "Molly--at work--said she got that app for her grandson. It's not quite the same thing as a real piano, I guess."

Her laptop is closed. There's no work out on her desk, no notes or files, just the paper bag and two cups from the coffee shop, and the neat pile of newspapers. Not a deadline, then. But he's right that there's maybe a bit of a desire to hold herself in a different space briefly.

Not because of him. If it's not clear, she makes it so, holding out her hand, wiggling fingers to beckon him.

"I've got breakfast."

She's happy enough, but it seems a bit blunted around the edges, tinged with thoughtfulness, some uncertainty. Nerves? Nerves.

"You can, um. Come have breakfast with the newest member of the New York Times to make it to the National pages."

That probably explains a lot.

Wiggling fingers work just as well on Cynric as on most large cats--not as a direct calling over, but certainly as a start to slinking closer curiously. Breaking established rituals, after all, worked just as well on Cynric as on domesticated dogs--just enough of a concern to make internal wires get tangled unhappily.

But that sounds like good news. That sounds like exciting news, in newspaper world. The national newspaper world. It makes the nerves feel a bit confusing, even as his own lips pull back into a smile.

"May I kiss the newest member of the National pages good morning?"

Possibly on the cheek. She got up far too early for the natural progression of brushing teeth to have occurred.

"Yes. Please."

It is good news. Exciting. An accomplishment. She's really pleased by and proud of it.

It's just.

"If you were also inclined to hug the newest member of the National pages really, really tight," she says, sliding her chair back and getting to her feet, "that wouldn't go amiss. She's... um."

It's ridiculous and she knows it. But.

"A little bit freaked out by it."

It's ridiculous. She clearly knows it. He knows it too. They probably both know that the other knows. But.

"Is she?"

Time now is not to tsk and huff and let her know she's crazy. Time now is to close the distance fully and wrap his arms tight and warm around her, face nuzzling contentedly against her hair.

"Congratulations, Rachel."

"Yes, she kind of stupidly is. I'm sorry. Thank you."

Her voice is muffled because once she's pulled close, she buries her face in his shoulder. She doesn't put her arms around him, instead raising her hands to rest on the front of his body, clearly happy to be the one held for once.

"It all just kind of hit me at the news agent's when I picked up the paper and there it was, you know?"

She doesn't need to cling back. It's important, now and then, to simply be cwtched close and not asked to do anything but breathe.

She deserves that. She more than deserves that. It's lovely to be able to be even a small piece of giving that to her.

"There it is." His arms shift comfortably, pull tighter. "It'll stop feeling so overwhelming. You'll see."

"No, I know." One hand closes gently around a fistful of the front of his shirt, and she moves to tuck her head under his chin.

She can just breathe now. He may think he's but a small part, but he's been more than that, for so long.

"I think I'm just having some 'oh God what if I can't actually do it' anxiety." Which is ridiculous this late in the game, but feelings are funny things sometimes.

"Not so ridiculous."

It was part of the nerves of being creative, after all. You could be entirely certain of your work--completely sure that it's exactly what you want--and still be thrown into a pit of despair over even a wonderful reception of it. There was no accounting for it.

And no need to account for it. Just a need to curl in somewhere safe while the first swells of anxiety worked through the system.

Her posture softens, some of the tension in her body starting to slowly melt away as he holds her. Her hands drop to his sides, resting lightly at either side of his waist.

"I'm so glad you understand." It's bad enough having these moments of doubt and worry, of feeling like maybe you're a giant imposter after all, about to be found out. (Completely untrue--but maybe that's the down side to so much ambition and drive, is the occasional bout of unwarranted nerves.)

It would be so much worse if he didn't understand. What it was like, what she needed right now.

She closes her eyes, just leaning into him for the moment.

"Just glad I was here."

This sort of things felt that much more terrifying when you tried to survive it alone. That didn't start to bleed away until there was another heartbeat to focus on and regular one's own.

"Me too."

She'd tried to tough out episodes like these on her own; they weren't fun. But having him here, his arms securely around her, feeling his chest rise and fall with his breaths and her own settle into that calmer pace, already had her more calm. More ready to start examining what the hell else was going on besides Oh my God what is happening.

"...Can we go back to bed?" Calm enough, too, it seems, to try to settle back into the usual Sunday morning ritual.

The slow relaxation means he can unlatch one arm, smooth his hand gently up and down her spine. The gentle breathing means he can rock them both, just slightly, as she comes back from the edge of exhausting nerves.

"We can. We should bring the piano."

Or, you know. Not-piano. They'd already skipped off the edge of the routine; why not make the whole morning something just a bit different?

Finally, finally, as his hand moves up and down her back, she takes a deep breath, lets it out in a soft hum. Her shoulders drop, no longer tensed up from nerves.

"Bring the--? Oh." The tablet. "Yeah, if you want. It's not that great, though, I'll warn you."

There she is. There's the proper relaxation they'd been missing. It's reassuring to feel in her spine beneath his fingers.

"It'll be fun."

Or not so much 'fun' as 'something to keep the faint distraction going while reality settled in properly.' Those were important.

Another deep breath in, another soft sound out, this one a sigh. Her brain and emotions are still mildly scattered but her body isn't holding them anymore, she's unwound enough to let that go.

Enough to lift her head, and smile up at him. "Okay." Her hands squeeze his sides for a moment and she gently pulls away to collect things: the requested tablet; only one copy of the Times, from the top of the stack rather than the entire stack of newspapers. She hands him the paper bag and one of the cups of coffee, and she picks up the other.

"Ready?"

She's amazing, really, when she pulls into herself. Like a heroine in some dramatic act, steeling herself for battle just before the height of--

Well. Their life isn't an opera. Not yet.

"Ready."

More ready after taking a preemptive sip of coffee.

"Lead on."

For once she can't take his hand and crawl into bed with him in her immediate wake. Not with her hands full, not with that cup of coffee. She heads for bed, making sure he follows, rounding the foot of it to reach her side. She sets the coffee down on her bedside table, and slides into bed, taking the tablet and newspaper with her.

But as usual she does settle in the middle of the bed, stretching out as she waits for him to join her. "Do you want to see?" She asks, separating the front section of the paper from the rest.

It's not as light, as natural and easy, to have to sit first and set coffee beside the bed rather than just flopping down happily with her.

But it's still, at the end of things, curling up in bed with her. It's still settling into a spit that's his against the headboard, reaching to pull an arm around her shoulders while he reaches to lift his coffee again.

"Am I allowed?"

"Of course." She curls into his side, bringing the section of newspaper along with her. Once she's settled, she rifles the top corner with her thumbs, until she finds the right page.

"It's not the front page. That's pretty much always world news and politics unless you break a huge story." She opens the paper, then doubles it back upon itself, smoothing out the crease. "But it's the first page of the national section."

And there it is, where she rests a finger to show him: a small section near the bottom of the page, a description of charges laid against the emergency room nurse, the barest beginning of the story she's been poking at for a while. Under her name.

"This is... not my usual section, or editors." Therein lies some of the nerves, then. "I wasn't expecting this to land here."

She's so efficient with newspapers. It's wonderful to see. He's long lived in the realm of completely hopeless with papers in general; it's another minor area of competence that makes his lips twitch up into a crooked smile.

Little bits and pieces where they fill one another in.

His lips briefly find her temple as he reaches for a corner of the paper to hold it where he can read. It doesn't take overly long to scan over it thoughtfully. "...it's unfair, you know, making people enjoy reading about horrible things."

"Oh, just you wait," and she manages a laugh, "I'm going to send it to my mother."

That, then, explains the extra copies.

There really are so many ways in which they fill in the bits and pieces the other one needs. She's good with words; he's good at letting her speak, taking it all in without judgement. And at understanding that even though it looks so different than the creating he does, that there are still a lot of ideas and processes in common.

She's never been so grateful or glad for these things as she is right now.

"I think this means when I write the follow ups, the rest of this story as I dig it up... It'll be here again. And, like... I've talked about this so long as something I was going to do. Now it's something I'm actually doing and I'm sort of terrified."

Rachel Conway | OC

any/all!

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