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London was hazy now.
A permanent fog had settled on everything, soaking through the steel and the too-much glass and leaving it damp and slick underfoot. The air felt slimy and cold and John couldn’t see through the greyness that seemed to weight down the world.
There were days when he wondered whether he’d ever see the changing leaves of Regent’s park burn through orange-red-brown in quite the same way. Whether the bright lights of Piccadilly or the raucous loud of tourist trap Oxford Street would seem anything other than blurred lines and white noise. Those are the times that he sits quietly, alone, in the bones of Baker Street and wonder why he bothers? He was a ghost, before. Haunted by the war, the lack of war, his own need for war, the bodies and the blood – it swam in his veins, urging him to do dark things… dangerous things. It was Sherlock who pulled him free. Sherlock who unclogged his brain and bought him new lenses to see the world. Sherlock and his eccentric, brilliant, frustrating deductions: always seeing everything but the obvious, aren’t you Sherlock? Without Sherlock he feels adrift. He feels as he did before but worse because now he feels the loss.
It cripples him.
It chokes his lungs and closes his throat and sometimes he can’t make his tongue move, his lips won’t obey, unless he’s unconscious and screaming himself awake.
He moved out of Baker Street, about two months after the fall. He couldn’t live in the space where his best friend, his family, the-love-of-his-goddamn-life had lived anymore. He spent three weeks in a strange flat with a kind landlady that wasn’t-Mrs-Hudson and hated every minute of it. Because Baker Street might not ever be the same; might never be full or happy, but Baker Street was home and John was lying if he thought he could find anywhere to replace it.
Mrs Hudson was glad to have him back, she said. A quiet interaction, three hours after his meagre belongings were back in the upstairs bedroom, over a too sweet cup of tea.
No milk.
They seemed to brush past one another since then. Only talking when Mrs Hudson decided too long had passed since she’d heard John say something and even then, it was stilted. Sherlock had broken both their hearts.
He takes a job as a doctor in an A&E department. It’s busy, hectic work and it keeps his mind full and stops him from drifting, stops him from giving up. But he sees Sherlock in every jumper, every suicide attempt, every young man with dark hair and blue eyes, and spends ten minutes breathing through a panic attack after he’s patched them up. If he loses them, he spends the rest of the day in a daze and drinks enough when he gets home to pass out, otherwise he won’t sleep.
His friends seem to know he’s struggling, but John knows how to fake. He’s been in enough shit to know when to smile and when to laugh to keep people thinking he’s struggling and not breaking down, not splitting at the seams and spilling out into a beer bottle.
On the first anniversary, he locked his gun in the safe and drank until he couldn’t stand. He spent the entire of the next day with his head in the toilet bowl, sobbing into the porcelain as he hurled and grieved and begged the universe to give him Sherlock back. Lestrade texted him, asking if he’d been to the grave, if he’d seen Sherlock. But John hadn’t been back after his pleas went unanswered. One visit to the headstone in a year was enough to make him think that perhaps the adjoining plot was too empty. John’s depressed but he’s not there yet, so he avoids the graveyard like the plague. He thinks Mrs Hudson might just about break if he followed Sherlock one last time. So he hadn’t.
No, John says.
Lestrade replies a moment later. He’d probably call me an idiot for going, for talking to a slab of stone.
He would, John knows he would, but he doesn’t reply. What is there to say?
The next year blurs.
He meets a woman called Mary. She’s beautiful and kind and strong and kisses him sweetly.
John hates her.
She’s not him.
Their break-up is amicable because even if his friends can’t see just how deep the scars on John’s heart go, Mary can. Mary can see how in love John was. How his life, his being, revolved around a detective in a funny hat.
“I hope, one day, you’ll find your peace, John,” Mary says as she presses a feather light kiss to the corner of his mouth.
Neither of them say he’s too broken, too far gone.
The second anniversary, John doesn’t drink – his liver’s had enough of a beating – but he cries. Horrible, snotty, vile tears that puff out his face and make his eyes feel drowned in grit. He’s at work the next morning.
“Late night?” someone asks, a small jibe and a kind smile. John only smiles in reply – he hasn’t slept yet.
It’s twenty-eight months since Sherlock died when John first sees him. It’s half ten – John had the late shift – and he’s bone tired. The light is on in his flat and there, in his chair, is Sherlock.
John stalls in the doorway, eyes wide and breath a touch shallower. Sherlock looks thinner, paler, tired.
“John,” his voice is the same, the same timbre, but its broken and desperate.
“No,” John chokes out, turning on his heel and striding away.
He walks all night.
When he returns, Sherlock is gone and he breathes a sigh of relief. The kitchen is stocked – god bless Mrs Hudson – and he wolfs down a turkey sandwich before climbing into bed. He dreams of black seas and drowning and Sherlock, always Sherlock, falling from that damn building.
He wakes suddenly, stumbles through his morning routine, even though his clock reads half-past two in the afternoon, and gets downstairs. He makes his tea, his breakfast and sits down to read the paper, television on low in the background –
He cannot stand silence –
When Sherlock strides into the room. He dressed like he always was: stupid suit, stupid coat, stupid scarf. He stumbles to a halt, clearly wrong-footed.
“John,” he says again, this time with more assuredness. There’s no hollow desperation in this iteration of his name.
John ignores him.
So Sherlock tries again. “We – I, I wanted to tell you,” he starts, urgent, pleading. He takes a handful of steps forward, reaching.
“Don’t touch me,” John hisses out, flinching away as his body chatters at him to run-run-run.
Sherlock starts violently, face crumpling like wet paper. “John,” he says again, wounded.
But John can’t, he can’t, so he shoves his chair back, grabs his keys and his coat and leaves the flat.
Sherlock doesn’t follow.
But he does stay.
Sherlock hovers. He talks, sometimes. Sometimes its little things, observations:
“Mrs Hudson’s dyed her hair again…”
“Our neighbour’s cheating on his diet,” a pause, “and his husband.”
“Mycroft is being annoying again.”
Other times it's deeper, it's where he’s been, what he’s been doing, why he couldn’t come back. “Dismantling Moriarty’s network took time, John. I – I had to make sure everyone – you – were safe.”
John ignores him.
He hates silence, but she’s his friend now. She wraps her arms around him and gives him comfort when his dead best friend is standing in the living room saying: Please John, talk to me.
It goes on.
Weeks pass. John only notices because he marks off the days on his calendar and rises and sleeps to the pattern of his shifts. Sometimes, late, he hears sorrowful violin music echo up to his bedroom. Those are the nights he cries into his pillow because he just can't. Sometimes, in the mornings, there's a cup of tea, made just how he takes it, sitting on the kitchen counter-top and it makes something violent ache in his chest. Sometimes he drinks it, sometimes he looks Sherlock square in the eye and pours it down the sink. The look on that stunning face always makes him hurt for hours afterwards, but if he's going to keep what's left of his sanity, he cannot get drawn in.
But still Sherlock stays, filling up Baker Street and dominating the space.
It's been two months when John speaks to him again. "I hate you, you know," he confesses, quietly. Sherlock is in the chair, hands steepled, eyes closed, but he lurches violently at the words. His gaze is pinned on John and his face is filled with a hundred emotions John can't name. "I hate you," he says again, just because he can.
"I know," Sherlock breathes back, broken.
"No you don't," John mutters. "I loved you," he adds, turning away and casting his gaze out, beyond Baker Street, beyond everything. "I loved you with everything I had. You were the love of my life." He shakes his head, ignoring the incredulous, desperate, hopeful look plastered on Sherlock's face. "Then you died," he murmurs. "And I hate you with everything I have left."
It's a lie. John knows it. He loves Sherlock - he burns with it - but Sherlock believes him. His expression collapses and his breath hitches.
"I - John, I-I love you too," he breaths.
John stands. "Don't tell me now. You don't ever tell me now," he swears. "You should have told me before."
He leaves and walks until he can barely stand and ends up crashing at a colleague's flat with lies on his lips about forgotten keys and a locksmith. When he returns the next morning, Sherlock is gone.
It takes three days for John to accept that he really has gone. He finds it hurts. Even though he didn't want him there, he'd grown used to Sherlock in Baker Street again.
He moves on.
Lestrade texts a week later, for drinks and a vague reference to Sherlock. You should see him John, it reads, you really should.
John texts back with an excuse - he's good at those - and makes no mention of Lestrade's suggestion.
Molly is next. He hasn't heard from her in over eight months, but suddenly she suggests coming over, talking him through his pain. This isn't the way to handle this, John, she types. John throws his phone across the room because she has no idea - but she does.
She loved Sherlock too, didn't she? - a snide voice reminds him. John ignores them both.
He's expecting Mrs Hudson, so he cuts her off before she even starts. "The last thing I want to talk about is Sherlock bloody Holmes," he snaps, slamming the door behind him as he heads for work. There's a pile up, two falls on building sites and a four year old with a badly broken ankle and John just lets himself get lost in it all. He clocks out, exhausted, but has enough strength to slip a note under his landlady's door: I'm sorry. It's not her fault he can't cope, after all.
John isn't expecting Mycroft. He hasn't seen the man in years and even then it was a five minute conversation two months after Sherlock's funeral. The man is sat in John's chair, clearly waiting, and John huffs a little.
"You lost?" he asks, all snark and bite, because he's cornered now and he doesn't-like-it-one-bit.
"This business with my brother, Dr. Watson," he begins, no hello, no how-are-you, just straight to Sherlock, "is becoming ugly." He twists the word, like its something unpleasant he's stepped in, like John isn't cracked open and raw and being pecked at by buzzards. "It really does need to be resolved." John feels hurt - blindsided and small - and he's past being told what to say, do, how to grieve, so he just says whatever pops into his head.
"Fuck off Mycroft," he says. Then he goes upstairs. The older Holmes is gone when he comes back an hour later, hungry and tired.
They leave him alone for a while then. Two weeks of old routines and pretending he didn't see Sherlock imprinted on the back of his retinas.
Then there's a jumper. He's got dark hair and blue eyes and he's so cold, so unresponsive, and nothing he nor the team do can bring him back. John breaks down in the break room, then in the middle of the street and finally on his living room floor and he can't breath and everything hurts. He's not sure when he started screaming Sherlock's name, but soon he's there.
"Oh John," he near sobs, "John." He rocks him. It's awkward and uncoordinated, but Sherlock is so warm, so warm, that it makes John cry harder. He blacks out before they make it to the couch.
He wakes beneath a blanket, a cup of tea beside him. Mrs Hudson is in the kitchen, making noise. "Oh," she murmurs, soft and careful, finally seeing the cracks in John's soul. "You poor dear," she mothers, hovering over him, a hand to the side of his face and a small, gentle smile on her lips. "Are you feeling any better?"
"No," John murmurs, sitting up as his landlady retreats. Sherlock choses then to come in. He's in soft-worn pyjamas and his blue robe and John's heart skips.
"Alright?" he asks, crouching down. John keeps his mouth shut, not trusting himself not to scream.
Mrs Hudson pokes her head around the door and John know he should look over, should meet her gaze, but he cannot pull himself away from the brilliant blue of Sherlock's eyes. "Tea, Sherlock love?" she asks.
"No thank you Mrs Hudson," he replies, glancing over his shoulder and breaking the moment. But John can't stop staring.
"Coffee?" she offers instead. Something shy crosses Sherlock's features. "Just this once," she adds, gently, "I'm not your housekeeper."
"Wait," John gasps in one uneven exhale, looking at Mrs Hudson, tears pooling in the corner of his eyes. He's desperate and vulnerable and oh god, oh god -
oh god
"You can see him too?"