A/N: hey everyone! Hope you like the new chapter :) please vomment/cote if so, it's really helpful!

ps. Lol it's bout to get a Lot Worse

He pulled his tie tight enough to choke, yanking the end taut with violence. Standing in front of the mirror in Claire's bedroom, eyeing his funeral suit, smoothing his arms down the planes of his chest, his thighs - only aware of his own presence because it was so incongruous from his softly lit surroundings - he found no solace. It was painfully obvious that he did not fit. Grieving, weary eyes stared back at him as he adjusted his cuff links ever so minutely. At this point, he was fidgeting to avoid conversation; Claire had been sitting at her vanity for the last hour, unmoving but somehow moving, maybe shaking. John couldn't look at her for too long.

Her hair had grown longer. Now it cascaded onto delicately freckled shoulders, paled by winter light permeating through the curtained windows. The sun painted a white streak across the bed, bleaching the sheets and creeping onto the sheer silk slip clinging to her frame. John glanced at her through his eyelashes and didn't move too fast, in case she startled. Or maybe he didn't want her to smell Sherlock on him. Under his fingernails. In the creases of his hands.

John looked back to his reflection and readjusted his cuff links, again. He had gone through the arduous cycle of fidgeting with his hair and clothes twenty times now. He was deathly afraid of breaking the silence.

Because: When Claire had finally calmed down, and finally explained what had happened, and they were both sitting next to each other in the living room as cool winter light streamed in through the windows, she looked down at the hands that were wrapped around her shoulders and saw the blood. Crusted, brown, not his. The last few days had been... difficult, needless to say.

For more reason than one, John was now praying she would completely forget that he was standing in the room with her. She seemed absorbed in herself. He didn't want to leave her but he didn't want her to ask about the blood on his hands; that part of his life was over. And more urgent still - John was afraid she knew. Claire was many things, but she certainly was never stupid. Her self-agency was one of the reasons that John had fallen in love with her, years ago. But this? This weary dance, this dilapidated loss of self? It was torture.

He couldn't put her through this anymore. Under the shower, water sluicing into his hands, washing blood and grime down the drain, John washed himself of Sherlock. He'd made too many detrimental decisions in a row. He was ready to let this unpleasant charade go - if not for Sherlock, then for Claire. (And he hadn't been sure if he could reasonably say he was doing anything for Sherlock, after what had transpired the night before.)

There was too much to be left to chance. And feasibly, John couldn't move to London. He couldn't drop everything, elope to the city like a headstrong teenager, and he couldn't leave Claire, although he kept pretending he would. Not only because Moriarty would kill her if he ever left Bristol - but also because life was difficult, and messy, and John wanted to believe that he could live without Sherlock making his life more difficult, messier.

Truthfully, honestly - John could not find a reason to leave, anymore. He was unhappy, but Bristol had things here for him. The academy. Mark. Francis. Six years of his fucking life. And Claire, and marriage, and children, and growing old, and being content. John would live with contentedness, even if it was complacency in disguise.

For some obscure reason, Claire suddenly remembered he was in the room. "John?" she asked the mirror, eyes still fixated on herself.

He turned to her. She was still beautiful, but John hated looking at the living symbol of all his vices. "Yes?" he finally said, trying to sound amicable.

"I don't know what makeup to apply, and you were always better at it, I-" she broke off. "Please."

"No, no," John responded, shaking his head shamefully, a plume of yellow self-hatred billowing in his gut. "Don't. Don't do that. Of course." He crossed the room to her vanity and sat on the side of the bed facing her. "Of course I'll help." He immediately went for her eye shadow, a collection of subtle dark shades. Popping open the palette with a click, he dipped his ring finger into the product and dabbed it along her closed eye. His gold engagement ring brushed Claire's freckled cheek, and she inhaled quickly.

"Thank you," she said in one breath. "I appreciate it," in another.

"Don't thank me," John said, but it didn't come out soft, or generous. He forced it through his teeth and it scraped the air like nails. Could she hear it? How much he despised himself? Don't thank me. I have hurt everything I have touched and I am searching for redemption, but redemption is not to be found here.

Not here. How could he make up for months of lying? How could he make it up to everyone he hurt?

"Claire" - John started, abruptly halting his seamless application of her makeup. Both her eyelids were coal gray as she opened them to look at John, whose head was angled towards the floor. He was choking on everything he didn't want to say to her. "I know the last couple of months have been strange." He grimaced bitterly, disappointed at his placatory word choice. "Hard," he suggested.

She let nothing slip, maintaining a calm exterior, waiting for him to continue. John couldn't tell if his interjection was welcome, but he went on. "I've been thinking a lot about us. And my priorities. And they certainly haven't been in the right order recently and I just wanted to say that." When she said nothing, he quickly added, "So."

She gave a visibly drawn out nod, and closed her eyes again. His speech seemed ineffective, and he didn't really want to say more, but. "This is difficult for me," he offered, quietly.

"I know," she whispered, eyes still closed.

Maybe this was why this was hard. She knew him and yet he never felt like he was safe around her, never felt real, never felt like a fully fleshed out human being. He always placated his emotions and the tireless facade never faltered. Yet. She knew him. He almost didn't want her to.

"I love you," he lied. He swore to himself that this time was the last time he would be lying about it as his eyes met hers a second too late. He wondered if she knew him well enough to know what he had done only a week before, to know what similar and intimate thoughts he had had about a man, completely separate from everything he was fighting to keep at this very moment. "And you're the only... constant in my life, Claire. I want to marry you. That's why - that's why I asked you. To be my wife."

Her eyes were still closed as she said, "You proposed to me because my father wanted me to marry a rich politician's son."

"I'm not a politician. And we knew that when we got engaged. It wasn't for him."

She forced her eyes open. They were pink, welling up with tears, hot.

"Don't, Claire." He cupped her cheek. "I'm sorry." Her skin was soft and delicate and freckled - he felt as if he could wipe her freckles away with his thumb. "We can move. Start a new life. Have children."

"Why now, John?" she suddenly demanded, eyes bleeding hurt. "I don't understand."

Behind layers of superfluous excuses, John ignored the core reasoning: Because he didn't think he could ever look him in the eyes again. Not after what he did.

Instead of saying this, John sat back on the bed, looked at her with his hand now resting on her shoulder, lost. She should have been faintly happy. Hopeful, if not that.

"I-"

"You said it was too costly to raise children."

"Your father's money is going to be yours, soon," John placated.

"It was always mine, John."

John became a little more forceful. "I want to have children, Claire." If it'll fix everything wrong with us - with me - I want to.

(Maybe fatherhood would teach him not to touch burning things.)

Her eyes narrowed into gray slits. "You told me that you didn't want to raise children during the war. We just suffered a major bombing, and now you believe that it's the perfect time to start a family?"

"Do you not want to?"

"You don't want to, John."

"Well, now I do."

"Why?" she asked again. "Is it because my father's passed?"

"It's because I want to have children," John stated defensively, truly taken aback. "I know that now's not the greatest time-"

"I should think not," Claire exclaimed.

"But this" - he swallowed, hard, bracing himself from the impact of his own words - "is what I want."

His hand grasped the nape of her neck, fingers tangling hair. To her shoulders, straight, blonde, thin. Nothing like his. After touching Sherlock for so long, she was so foreign.

And - oh. John recalled Sherlock promising to cut his hair after they went to theater. The thought alone made him relentlessly bitter - he swallowed it, cursed it, moved his attention back to Claire. "Your hair is getting long," he commented, wringing the last of his affection for Sherlock out for her. Even that felt dirty. Using him as a catalyst for his kindness towards his fiancée.

She didn't smile, but she dropped the subject of children, apparently resigned. "As is yours."

"Actually - can you give it a trim?" The self-hatred made itself known again. His heart plummeted. He bit back the hoarseness that threatened to wash over his voice.

"Now?" she asked, incredulous.

"Why not?"

"You're already wearing your suit, dear."

John's brows furrowed. "Claire." His voice finally gave way. "Please."

"When was the last time you got a haircut?" she said after a pause, still disbelieving. "Several months, now?"

Days before I met Sherlock. Days before I cheated on you. After curfew, after everyone left. He rubbed my thigh under the table of our romantic dinner party and I have never wanted anyone more in my entire life.

There's things I will never atone for. I kissed his stomach, his thighs, his chest. I roamed his body like a wise man searching for the Lord; I found blasphemy in euphoria; I was lustful, greedy. I called his name as I committed sodomy.

I brushed his curls back from his eyes when he slept. I asked him what he was thinking when he was inscrutable, inconsolable, when the night was heavy with darkness.

I made love to him. I planned to leave you.

There are notebooks dedicated to his anatomy. Hard lines, soft curves. Warm light streaming in through windows, his skin painted romantically, like land in an endless sea. When he said he wanted me, maybe I lost my mind. Maybe. Because I stayed, even as we damaged each other in every way it's possible to damage a person; we condemned each other to hell just by touching our palms together in the dark. We let each other die so we could feel alive, and if that's not fucked up then I don't know what is.

I loved him viciously.

That's the reason why I left. I've always loved him more than I loved you. I don't know if that'll ever change.

"John?" Claire repeated, after a minute of inexplicable silence. "When was the last time you had a trim?"

"I don't know," John absently answered.

***

It wasn't a large funeral, but there were enough people in the church that they didn't really know who was there. Mostly Claire's friends and their husbands, soldiers that Mr. Tabbot had led in World War One. After the formal proceedings and the eulogizing (which for the most part sounded like over-embellished saccharine stories meant to dredge up any inkling of affection for a thoroughly unlikable man), they displaced outside, where they snow was thick and undisturbed in the cemetery, except for the occasional animal tracks. The procession was simple, quiet, freezing. John shouldered the casket along with five other men that were considered close "friends" of General Tabbot, and no one spoke of how he died, or how the casket was closed due to the bodily trauma. John could have guessed. A concussive bomb blast from overhead, even if not at a close range, ripped apart organs and shattered bone and often disfigured a victim in the affected areas. Even those who miraculously survived a bomb often sported major disfigurements.

They lowered him into the ground. Staring at the casket, even now, was surreal. General Tabbot seemed like a man who'd never die - out of spite, he would outlive all of them. Most peculiar about the ceremony was that even as Claire clung to John like a life raft, digging her fingers into his arm, she didn't cry. She refused to. John half expected her to explode mid-funeral and start sobbing. It would be in character. She'd hardly said anything for the last four hours, and it was honestly beginning to frighten him. He couldn't imagine what she was thinking.

The relationship between her father and she had always been strained, always caustic. She'd told John that being a service brat was vastly different than being the son of a politician. When her mother died, he became even more distant. And being born during World War One, she had never seen her father as a child to begin with. There was a large chasm between her and General Tabbot. Yet his influence extended more than just biologically. It permeated their entire life. Which, of course, they both resented, but Claire had never told him, implicitly or explicitly, to take a step back from her life.

He had been the reason they had started dating. And although he gradually grew to despise John - his lax attitude about starting a family, his inconsequential career as a clinician, his dismissive disrespect after being hounded constantly by Mr. Tabbot for six years - they had started off in a place of respect, meeting mutually through one of his father's lavish parties in London.

At the time, John was still in University. He'd been juggling a lot. (The shame and guilt of breaking off an illicit relationship between he and another student being the main thing at the time.) And then he met Claire, and somehow, she relieved him of the urge that had always been there. John thought he was okay. For a while.

But loving her was like trying to cut out a piece of himself every single day. And having General Tabbot there to push him towards what he resented most about Claire only made him want to break free of their iron-wrought grips even more. He saw her father in Claire. They were the same, in most ways. Fierce, authoritarian, self-righteous. Starkly dedicated to their own opinions, passionate. She hated ridicule and loved the idea of a family. Or maybe her father did. The distinction often blurred when she somehow always found a way to involve him in the conversation about their future.

Now, she stared at his coffin like she was watching their future being lowered into the ground. The priest was saying words. John let her lean against him, into him.

Under the rim of his hat he surveyed the people there. A couple people he knew. Friends of friends. Higher-ups from London came down. A few choice socialites. But none of his friends. Which first profoundly worried him - he hadn't heard from anyone since the bombing - but then John realized that they probably just hated him. 

John scoffed to himself. He shouldn't have expected James and Mark to come - which was why a few moments later, John was pleasantly relieved.

James was across the way, his head bowed in  silence. This was one of the few occasions when he wasn't wearing a jean jacket - instead, an entirely black suit with a gray fedora clenched in his hand. His hair was plastered back on his head. The excitement stirring in John's gut ebbed away into pure dread. He didn't look like himself. Where was Mark? Francis? Why was he alone, and why did he look so... haggardly?

At that very second, as the priest finished off his speech and people began to disperse, James looked up from across the grave. His bright blue eyes, now circled by purpling eye bags, locked with John's. The feeling in his stomach deepened, growing colder as he didn't smile. And then he began to approach them. Claire was unaware, still staring at the hole in the ground, at her father's expensive casket.

"Claire," John said, nudging her. "James."

James made his way against the current of the crowd, towards them, eyes locked on John's, still deadly solemn. He placed the hat back onto his head. John wanted to look away, but the anticipation of seeing James - not knowing what he was going to say to him - kept his gaze locked on the path he walked. "Claire," John repeated, although she was now looking at him as well.

As soon as he came close enough to touch John, he extended his hand. "John," he greeted, cordially. It wouldn't have unnerved John coming from anyone else. Still, John shook his hand with a small smile, and responded, "Good to see you, James. We appreciate you coming."

"I just wanted to offer my condolences," he said, mostly directed at Claire, and she unwrapped herself from John to pull him into a hug. "Oh, Claire," he said to her, affectionately, empathetically. "I'm truly sorry." He held her for a moment longer before taking a step back to let her drift back to John.

"You can stay for the brunch," John said. "You're always welcome."

"Oh, no," James said. "No, I wouldn't. Just wanted to pay my respects."

John didn't want to push him. He obviously wasn't keen - on John or Mr. Tabbot. "Well, right, good." John fidgeted, at a loss for words. "We appreciate you coming," he repeated meagerly. "Truly."

He smiled at them. It would have been a comfort if he had not walked away a second later, feet crunching in the snow. He didn't look back, didn't slow, didn't do anything that denoted regret. John wanted to call him back. Tell him everything that had happened to him over the last week, even if it raised questions John couldn't answer. He wanted to say goodbye to him. To apologize. To hug him before he disappeared from John's life, maybe forever.

Instead, James left John standing at the edge of this grave, staring at Claire's father's headstone. There was nothing he could do except breathe, however difficult it was. He was with Claire but he truly had never felt so isolated in his life. The air was so heavy. He couldn't help it but to think about Sherlock. Would he have stayed? Comforted John in spite of himself?

Claire suddenly let go of John and drifted forward to the precipice, her heels crunching gracelessly in the snow. She was unreadable, unfathomable.

What could she be thinking? With her parents dead, with her brother, Henry, overseas?

No one was around except for she and John - the wind howled quietly through the silent graveyard, and blew hair that obscured her eyes from him. John became increasingly and eerily aware of her total silence. He still didn't know what emotions were playing across her face. Claire peered down, her head hanging over the hole where her father's coffin laid.

The coffin was beautiful. She threw herself forward and spat on it.

Saliva splattered the furnished ebony wood, hot and thick, and there was a second of dead silence as John realized with gut plunging awareness that Claire was not mourning.

Her legs gave out; she crumpled to the ground, half of her body buried under snow, uncontrollable cries of anguish finally breaking free as she grabbed handfuls of white with her bare hands and threw it uselessly at the headstone. "I hate you!" she sobbed, shaking with anger, "I HATE YOU!"

She tried to stand, disoriented by the magnitude of her outburst, but only succeeded in soaking herself with more melting slush. "I hate you," she kept on shouting, scraping up snow and earth in the same anguished strokes, throwing it without aim or purpose. She was a mess, undignified; her expensive funeral dress had ripped, her hat had fallen off, her hair had displaced itself, her hands were dirty and scraped by pebbles. She scratched at the soil and screamed with such venomous intensity that John was almost terrified to go near her. He didn't know what to do; he stood behind her, shell-shocked, as she unleashed years of mental abuse, years of mockery and shame. "I" - she punctuated each syllable with a sling of snow at her father's headstone - "hate! You!" Claire wailed, and the air echoed with it, amplified it.

Her resolve was gone. There was something different about this fit. There was nothing self-righteous about it, nothing disingenuous - she was shouting like no one could hear her. "You ruined" - she threw dead grass, small pebbles that had been revealed - "EVERYTHING!  You did this! You never cared about me! You only wanted me to be your little" - she beat the snow, and now John could clearly see her mud caked fingers were cut up - "TROPHY DAUGHTER! I could have been HAPPY!  BUT YOU!"

Her yelling turned into exhausted, indecipherable babbling as she continued to throw pebbles. John approached from behind her, quietly, so as not to startle her. "Mum... and Henry... you never cared about us... you never wanted me to... you, you..."

She flailed as she spoke to the empty air. "I hate you," she hissed as John grasped her arm, trying to pull it in, towards her. She fought him, even as he slowly knelt in the snow and wrapped his other arm around her chest. "I hate you. I hate you. I hate you..."

"Shhh, shhh," John murmured, restraining her. She was shaking from exertion, panting. "Claire," he whispered. "It's okay, it's going to be alright."

"You made me like this," she cried, and for a second, John didn't know if she was still talking to her father. The pregnant pause in the air allowed Claire the opportunity to finally, properly cry. He pulled her hair back from her eyes as he held her from behind, both their bodies buried in a thick layer of snow, quivering from the cold. There was nothing cathartic about this. And even as the last vestiges of rage drained from Claire's body, there was still something severed in her posture. She let her head hang over the arm supporting her, hair falling across her tear stained face, and John's eyes drifted to the sky.

Why? he asked the unforgiving gray, he asked no one. Why this?

***

They skipped the brunch. Claire was wet and exhausted and by any diagnosis, worryingly close to hypothermia; John blasted the heat in her father's car, which was now theirs. She shivered in the passenger seat and every couple of minutes, John would say, "We're almost home," over the steering wheel.

Walking into the warmth of her home was a comfort that did not last long. Claire barely could walk up the stairs before she collapsed onto their bed, legs dangling off the edge. "I need a cigarette," she immediately chattered out through her teeth, drawing her arms tightly around her chest to preserve body heat. "They're in my dresser, top drawer."

"You need to get warm, Claire," John told her, falling to his knees at her feet. She was shivering violently, but still, he sensed it as she shook her head. "You need dry clothes."

"It'll warm me up," she protested; John ignored her and slid off her heels, revealing soaking  wet stockings. The action summoned an especially strong pulse of longing in John's stomach, even after a week of nonstop reminders of what he had just lost. In flickering images, he pieced together the first time that he had gone to Sherlock's home, and how it had been pouring, and how Sherlock had told him to sit as he untied his shoes, made him feel safe. How afterwards they had gotten high and stared at the ceiling of Sherlock's bedroom - and John had known then that Sherlock was just as fucked up as he was. He'd asked him if he wanted this. Sherlock looked away, hands still placed on a purpling bruise, and said nothing.

This was better. At least Claire knew what she wanted, for God's sake. At least she wouldn't string him along for months and months. And what did John care if he ached for Sherlock? What good would it do him to pine, to wish for impossible things, foolish things, burning things?

The atmosphere in the room suddenly changed as John rolled down Claire's stockings, slowly, discarding them next to her shoes on the hardwood. He inhaled sharply as she exhaled, breath shaky and relieved.

What good would thinking of Sherlock now do him? Thinking of his lips, his scorching heat?

Her skin was soft and her legs feminine, curved towards him as he pulled himself closer, nearer. He tried to think of anything but him as he pushed up her dress to her hips, revealing white cotton knickers, damp with water.

John's brain fried; he ceased to move, frozen at the crease of her thigh, breathing onto her bare leg. The air became heavy and damp as Claire sensed his dreadful hesitation. She pulled into a sitting position, and locked her eyes on John as she lifted her dress over her head. Almost as if to say: you can still prove you love me, John. You can still love me.

He never wanted to touch her like that again.

But John couldn't close his eyes against her and he couldn't move away, and his hands weren't pushing her legs apart but she still was spread wide. This was what love was. Everyone said so.

Her gaze was desperate. And lost. And they both knew that this wasn't love, this couldn't be - because love didn't feel like this, love wasn't cold and tight and claustrophobic - but John couldn't run away anymore. All she wanted was for him to prove that he loved her, that he wanted her.

John swallowed down bile. His hands were leaden as he finally peeled back Claire's underwear.

***

Pretending was exhausting. It really, really was. John squeezed his eyes shut as he buried his mouth in wet heat; he had to sink his tongue inside of her to stop himself from repeating: Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock.

***

"John," Claire whispered into total, jarring silence.

They were laying together on the bed in the dark, separated by a foot of distance. There were no sirens, this evening, although the blackout curtains were still drawn tight over the windows, draining the room of all light.

John was repulsed at himself. He felt dirty, perverted. He could barely touch his own fiancée. Laying in bed next to her was like pressing his flesh against an iron; his skin felt like it was melting on contact. Which was shameful, graceless. And it was frightening, too - because John had been carrying his hopes of a new life with her on the idea that he could fall back in love with her again, force himself to please her. Six years lost to Claire; to her father, to his plan for them. Six years thrown away in five months. Now John couldn't bear to think of loving Claire, wanting her. The only good thing about having sex with his head between Claire's legs was that he didn't have to look at her face while he did it.

More terrifying was the fact that she hadn't uttered a word for minutes; the atmosphere was constricting John's chest, stopping him from getting up. The thing was: he could guess what was next but was still helpless to stop it. One glance at Claire, and John could see what they both had been deliberately ignoring for months.

Nothing he could say was worth anything, anymore. Maybe she'd finally figured out that his lies were just lies. And neither them wanted to say it now, but no amount of pitiful comfort sex could undo months of neglect. Not this silence. Not even coming back to her - John's aborted last-ditch effort - could make Claire stop herself from saying the words he knew were coming. 

"I know you're having an affair," she suddenly gasped out. John's face crumpled in the dark as he shut his eyes against the words.

The silence that followed was physically leaden. And the implication was different from the time she had spat in a rage-induced stupor: "I want you to go with the girl you're fucking behind my back," because somehow Claire had both understood and made it explicitly clear that John had deliberately and systematically cheated on her, over and over. Somehow, she had sufficiently condensed half a year of hidden emotion in a sentence. 

John became physically nauseated. All those moments where Claire knew and John refused to let himself see it.

For the first time, John couldn't deny it. He didn't know how to. Every time he had lied to her so easily, every time he had come home with a sloppy smile on his face after being with Sherlock for the last four hours, every time he'd maintained his innocence. All those years of pretending he didn't want to be touched by men. All those moments of cold repression. All those times he had kissed Claire so intimately, let her tell him things no one else knew, said "I love you" like he wanted to love her.

(And of course she couldn't know about Sherlock - he would have already been in jail - but she was so close to knowing, she was so agonizingly close-)

With a chilling amount of false composure, John consciously said nothing and slid out of bed. He staggered towards the bathroom. Shut the door behind him, turned on the bath water, let the static sound ebb away the thoughts that were pulsing ceaselessly in his head.

Maybe this emptiness - maybe this tireless excruciation - would finally teach him not to touch burning things.