Chapter Text
His brain actually has to play catch up; everything slows, molasses thick and he’s underwater and a thousand different metaphors for not being of right mind and body. Limbs heavy, heart racing but somehow, miraculously stopped and everything drags and hangs and pulls from moment to moment.
It is gray, nearly everything is gray and it takes a long beat before John’s eyes stop rolling in his head and he’s able to gaze on the scene properly. A quiet sort of spectacular carnage. He imagines Sherlock, for a second, a fraction of-”Oh John, oh brilliant, look at this... this madness!” tearing off towards the stained sidewalk with confident, excited strides.
He sees Sherlock seeing his own crime scene. And, bloody fuck...
The hands on his body push and pull, away, away, away and all he can see is a heap on the ground (his friend, his friend, oh fuck, god, Sherlock no) and if he lets himself, he’ll believe this is all a nightmare. If he lets himself, he’ll sink fast into a delusion he can easily create, right here, on the spot, that the sickening splat and cracking of bones was not his friend. That it had been someone else, somehow wearing Sherlock’s face, somehow, some way.
It’s all too real and he can’t process what has happened; he understands while at the very same time, he does not. Mere moments ago-and they’re slipping away now, the seconds to minutes and before he knows it, it’s all become the past, too-he’d been speaking with Sherlock, voices being bounced to each other, from satellites though they were really only meters apart. If he’d known then that this was going to happen, that his best friend was going to splay himself on the pavement, John would have found the courage...
He would have had to, dug down deep and clawed out, unearthed all of the things he had ever, ever wished Sherlock to hear. (And my, my, there were many.) Would have, could have, should have. The words now echo within his head, pingponging, ringing. “Tell anyone who will listen to you that I created Moriarty for my own purposes.” And it feels like they were spoken a century ago, eons ago, in another world, another realm.
He won’t believe it, he can’t. It’s not in him to.
John doesn’t have the mental ability to deceive himself now and instead, buckles at the waist and is sick all over the slick cobblestones beneath him.
He blacks out.
---
In the service, John had been made to understand that while it was important to bond with his comrades at arms, it was equally as critical not to allow them to become too close, too intimate. The emotionless reason being that a soldier should keep one’s head and heart clear and uncompromised for combat; the real reason was that no one knew who would be lying dead on the battlefield at the end of the day.
It wasn’t death itself, it was the carnage. Bullets that had torn through someone’s body, brain matter, missing limbs. Slow, slow painful deaths. Not antiseptic, flurrying slipping away like in the A & E; stark, bright pain and too much noise. Terror belaying terror. It was the sort of death that he was not used to.
And things were easier when you had no attachment to the soldier whose arm you were trying in vain to torniquete. John had, of course understood the need for such detachment but found it difficult to adhere to such strictures, being so inclined to form bonds with others.
It had taken a very real toll on him, then, when he lost a man in his unit to suicide and three others in a downed chopper and John began to ingrain in his mind the notion of detachment, both medical and emotional. John squeezes his eyes shut hard and tight and swallows every time one of them is lost but he no longer frets, no longer cries. He feels it all, deep inside. John picks himself up and carries on, brave face for all of the world.
Deep inside is where it remains and festers and John goes about his duties. He carries it all back to London with him and it manifests into nightmares, sleepless and sweaty nights awake against his sheets.
The nightmares ebb when he meets Sherlock, just like that. They come to him, sometimes, but not as bright, not as vivid, not as close.
That should have been the first clue, John thinks to himself as he slips the tail of his tie through the loop and pulls it taught. There’s no point in examining himself in the mirror, but it’s perfunctory. John stares back at a man gaunt, lost, helpless but with the demeanor of a soldier standing at attention.
As always; old habits and such.
He’ll face this like all the others, he decides. There’s more room for the grief now; back in the army he’d learn to compartmentalize each death, tuck it away. Now, after so long with so little to grieve as of late there was a vast cavern within him.
But even that would not hold the death of his friend, he isn’t sure anything rightly would and on the way down the steps to meet Lestrade, John punches a wall, hard, breaks three bones in his hand.
”John, you have to know, I never, I didn’t...” the Detective Inspector had said when he’d come calling. “I didn’t...”
And John forgave, forgot so easily.
“I still...” Greg tried but could finish the sentence ‘believe him to be innocent,’ so John had simply nodded at him, invited him up for tea which neither of them had drank while neither of them had spoken.
His hand swells, purples. He curls it into himself as he makes his way out onto the street, tosses himself into Greg’s car without care. Lestrade asks in a low tone if he’s alright and John answers, “I don’t... believe I am, no.”
Greg bites his lip and swallows audibly. “No, I expect not.”
It’s raining (how could it not be) at the gravesite and the mourners are all silent, all wanting to ignore the others there. It must be difficult, John thinks, for some of them to be here, to admit to having known the man. To have respected him enough to show their faces while the paparazzi wait impatiently behind a police barricade, eager to witness the mourning.
Donovan and Anderson stand beneath a large oak tree, toward the back of the group and something in John breaks, then. They’re both frowning, as though their faces have any other way to fall; it’s what’s in their eyes. Disbelief, shame, rage and something John might call sorrow linger there. “Donovan,” John whispers and Greg hears, turning to look over his shoulder.
“I don’t... I dunno, John,” he whispers back, his shoulder brushing the doctor’s. He’s close; John’s shocked that he somehow finds that notion comforting.
The world’s only consulting detective is not delivered to the mourners in a pine box. Instead, a man John has never seen before recites Ozymandias and he thinks that maybe Sherlock would have liked this.
He liked Shelley, of that John is sure.
John doesn’t wonder who chose the reading, or who is doing the reading, or what the reading means. He thinks about Sherlock, and how his voice would have sounded, reciting the words.
No one says a word. John recalls how he was not allowed to view the body, how Mycroft had taken it upon himself to make the arrangements, the cremation (”By fire! Sherlock had once gasped at a private viewing of a body and John finally understands) and he wants to curse at someone for his lack of involvement.
But the malice is superficial; he’s not feeling much of anything, right now. Just a simple gaping, clawing emptiness in his chest.
There is nothing of note about the service; it happens. It’s over, everyone leaves.
Everyone leaves.
---
John makes almost no effort over the next few days, though he makes it a point to attempt to cancel The Sun and The Times; he doesn’t want to read about it, doesn’t want to see the manner in which the press has sensationalized Sherlock’s death.
When he finally gets a live representative on the line it’s, “I’m sorry, Mr. Watson, your subscription has already been terminated. Thank you for your readership over the years.”
John fails to mention that it’s only been one year and not multiple that he’s had such a subscription and thus their pleasantries are utter rubbish, because he’s thinking that Mycroft is the only person who would do such a thing as to cancel the papers for him.
Once again, taking it upon himself to do what he believes is right. The simple thought that Mycroft is still meddling, still believes he has any sway or influence or say in what happens in John’s life is maddening, truly, and it sets him completely on edge.
There’s a simmering hate that radiates from his belly to his limbs and he sets his jaw; in a moment it dissipates.
John doesn’t hate Mycroft.
He nothings, him.
And that’s worse, he thinks, isn’t it?
For two days, John simply sits in his armchair in front of the cold and quiet hearth and stares off into nothingness, feeling nothing for everything.
---
John waits four days before tidying up the flat. He packs nothing away, but brings a few things back to Sherlock’s room and tucks them away in the closet:
His well-worn copy of Grey’s Anatomy
dressing gown
a few collections of test tubes
violin
sheet music
music stand
the very last experiment Sherlock had worked on, that is to say, a jar of calf eyeballs
When he closes the door on Sherlock’s possessions, John releases a breath he didn’t know he’s been holding; it leads to a long inhale and Sherlock is all around him, his scent, his presence, buzzing in his veins. Shaky legs hurry him from the room and John fist grips the doorknob so hard that it’s painful and he slams the door so loudly that the windows rattle.
John mobilizes.
He makes quick work, scrubbing down the kitchen, putting the disarray back into some semblance of order. The refrigerator is given a thorough once-over, all with mindless intensity. The crisper drawer is ripped from the unit and washed clean in the sink; he carefully extracts the shelves and washes those as well. The freezer is mercifully lacking in any of Sherlock’s experiments.
The toaster is wiped of grease and crumbs, the kettle rinsed and rinsed again; John gets rid of the microwave. It’s unsalvageable and besides, he much prefers using the oven to warm. The cupboards are perused, expired food tossed in the bin (of which there is too much, just another reminder of the times Sherlock didn’t eat.)
When he’s satisfied with the kitchen, he stands to survey his work. It’s only then that he realizes he’s been crying, all the while.
He has to leave.
---
Leaving turns out to be packing a duffle and staying on Mike Stamford’s couch for a time. It’s nice enough and Mike’s wife Midge is sweet as can be, understanding and “John, could you use another blanket?,” “The shower is all yours,” “How’d you take your coffee, hon?”
It’s fine, it’s pleasant, he hates it.
It’s boring John finds himself thinking and that, as it turns out, is possibly the worst thing to think because that singular word has more meaning to him than most of his known vocabulary strung together. “Oh, jesus,” he says one evening as he thinks it.
There’s no stopping the pull of his imagination, of exactly the kind of things Sherlock would say given he had the chance to look upon John’s situation. “Dreadful, John. Painfully boring. I cannot articulate the depths to which I would loathe the situation if it were I in your position.”
John laughs, John cries.
Mike glances at him out of the corner of his eye, “John?”
“I, just... yeah,” the tears subside on a laugh and John’s head falls into his open hands. “I need a job, need, need something.” John really does need for a lot of things, but he wants for none of them, wouldn’t know how to ask for them if he did.
Mike nods and folds up the evening paper. “What you need right now, mate, is to get well and truly pissed,” comes the suggestion and John nods.
Yes, yes, that sounds about right.
---
Mike is the one person he admits it to.
“I think, you know, when it comes right down to it, there was... I loved the man, Mike.” And it’s not a shock, although it is a brand new revelation, something he’d never really considered before, something he’d never put words to. John ponders it for a moment, the notion that he loves a man and well, he takes it in stride.
John Watson loves a man.
That man is dead.
Mike’s eyes blow wide for a beat or two but he absorbs the information and slides a fresh pint in front of John. “I can’t say it was romantic but... but maybe it was? I don’t... it’s not something I understand.” John drinks and drinks and stares at Mike, eyes bleary, ignoring the people in the bar who gape, who recognize him from the papers. “But, I love him.”
Present tense.
Mike says, “Mate, s’not a bad thing.”
John shakes his head. “It’s the worst,” and a sob presses itself against his windpipe. “And the best.”
---
Mrs. Hudson nearly begs him, begs him twenty-two days after the funeral to return to the gravesite with her. “There are things... things I need to say dear and... if you could... oh would you,” and John buckles, acquiesces, hangs up the phone and pulls on his heavy jacket.
He’s back to Baker Street in a short amount of time, though time for him lately has become a very fluid construct. It could have taken months to cross from one side of London to the other and John wouldn’t have bothered to notice.
She hugs him tightly when she answers the door, offers him tea which he declines and he asks if they could please just... just.
Mrs. Hudson nods both sympathetically and thankfully and shrugs on her light coat.
“Alright, then.” John hails a cab, feels the hole in his chest opening further and further.
The service seems like a distant blur although it was only a fortnight previous. But years and years have passed, haven’t they? John hails a cab with a surprisingly steady hand, holding the door open for his landlady. “And in you go,” he finds himself saying, but the voice that emanates from his throat isn’t his.
It’s some other man’s. A man that is fading away.
“John, dear,” she takes his hand and squeezes it hard (harder than he would have thought she could possibly squeeze) anchoring him to the moment. No thinking about that now, about slipping away, he has to be strong for her.
Neither of them look at the other on the way to the cemetery, neither speak a word. Everything feels like an epilogue. There’s one last page to turn and John can’t seem to fathom closing the book. His lungs fill with the impossible heave of a sigh and he’s glad for the cabbie bleating his horn just as he releases the breath.
It wracks him, right down to his bones.
He pays the driver, although Mrs. Hudson clucks at him for doing so, and he helps her out of the car, pushes the heavy iron gate open and lets it bang closed behind them. John saunters in front of her for a moment before turning on his heel and taking her frail hand in his. “It’s...” he begins but that is all wrong.
“S’alright dear,” she says quietly and guides him along the rocky path, back, back, far back into the cemetery. Around them, birds chirp merrily as the sparse other mourners stand at the graves of their loved ones, speaking in low tones.
“They can’t hear you!” John wants to scream. “They’ll never hear you again!”
Mrs. Hudson stumbles in a divot and John steadies her and they make it the last few meters to the grave; the sleek black memorial catching a bit of sun and reflecting it into John’s line of vision.
“Go, you go ahead,” John whispers and he stands back, far back, far enough away that he will not overhear what she is saying to the man who gave her so much. Her hands flurry about, pause, are back to flurrying. John watches her, his eyes prickling but he won’t give in, he won’t allow himself too. She takes a long time, a long time. The sun has shifted in the sky when she glances over her shoulder at him and makes a “Well, come on, then,” gesture with her hand.
John takes the cue, walks over, finding himself numbing with every step.
She smiles sadly and bites her lip before saying, “There’s all the stuff, all the science equipment. I left it all in boxes. I don’t know what needs doing. I thought I’d take it to a school. “Would you...?”
“...I can’t go back to the flat again, not at the moment.”
She recounts the horror of living with Sherlock but there is a lilt to her voice, as though she misses it. Misses popping upstairs to see what her boys have gotten themselves into. And of course she does; she loves Sherlock just as he does. He knows that it’s killing her.
“I’m really not that angry, you know,” John finds himself saying and it comes out all wrong, all wrong but he doesn’t have it in him to make it sound right and would it even matter?
“I’ll leave you alone to, erm... you know,” and away she goes, her tiny little hiccoughs of sobs fading as she retreats.
John wants to beg off, doesn’t want to put words to his thoughts, but at her urging, he finds himself taking a step forward. He finds it difficult, staring down at the headstone, has to swallow significantly a few times but when he reads the name etched there, there’s is a fantastic punch to his gut.
---
John believes that this would all be so much better if he could manage to properly grieve. Maybe he’ll buy a book on the subject.
---
Sally comes calling on a Sunday and John has half a mind to slam the door in her face upon opening it to her.
“I know,” she begins, animatedly and then dials it back. Both of her hands are shoved into the pockets of her oversized parka and she seems very small and insignificant. “I know, I’m one of the very last people you want to see right now-”
He finds his hand tightening on the handle of the door. “Certainly at the bottom of the list, yes,” John grinds out.
“But I have something... there’s something, jesus, I shouldn’t be here, but Greg-” her voice wavers and she can’t look him in the eye, so she casts a glance towards the traffic meandering down Baker Street.
“Last I heard you’re the reason that Greg is on suspension,” John manages to say, padding his voice slightly, giving her the opportunity to make her case.
Sally swallows and has enough sense to look thoroughly guilty. “Sherlock’s phone we...” she holds up the evidence bag in a hand that quivers. “Greg thought I should come round and tell you, he managed to figure out the password on Sherlock’s phone and-”
“What was it?” John demands.
Sally shuffles into the hallway and gently shuts the door behind her, blinking, seeing if it’s alright. John takes a step back and he’s against the wall. “It was Greg’s name, it seems, I mean, what.... I think Sherlock wanted us to find this. I mean, he did want us to find this, he just... wanted to be certain that it was someone he could trust.”
John’s jaw sets. “What of it? What’s on the phone.”
Sally swallows and glances down at her feet. “On the, the roof. James Moriarty’s... confession.”
“Confession?”
“Sherlock recorded... he set his phone to record. There’s all of it, before he-proof of Moriarty’s...”
John stood, eyes hard though he so badly wanted to gape at her. The truth, the truth he knew, there in recorded form. Exonerating, alleviating proof.
Sally bit off her words and finished. “Of Moriarty.”
She doesn’t apologize and he doesn’t wait for her to, just demands, “Play it,” and she does, fingers maneuvering the phone through thin plastic.
---
It takes a lot, nearly all of his emotional willpower and days and days of talking to himself. It takes hours of pacing and moments of tossing his fist into things very solid but John, in the end, does not blame himself.
It would be incredibly easy to.
But Sherlock wouldn’t have wanted that, of this he is sure.
And it’s always been about what Sherlock wanted and needed, anyway.
---
The table is wobbly and John intentionally rocks it back and forth, wondering why he’d bothered crossing London to come here. Here of all places. John nudges his foot beneath the leg for a moment, steadying it, and then leaves it to rock again.
He watches as the flame on the candle feels the pull and flickers with the force of the air around it. John almost fractures, right then, watches the people meandering the street outside and tries to forget to feel for a moment.
Angelo makes his way over, quiet, says nothing of the Doctor dining alone. The larger man leans over to remove the second set of cutlery, a set of cutlery that Sherlock had only once deigned to put to use in John’s presence. A calloused hand shoots out, closes around the napkin-enshrouded fork and knife. “Just... just leave it, please.”
Angelo pulls back, doesn’t look at John but John sees the tremor in the man’s hand and knows that he too is swallowing grief. “Wine?” the proprietor asks and John simply nods.
“All of the wine in the world,” he wants to ask of the man, but doesn’t.
John sits and drinks alone for a long, long time. He thinks of the twelve steps and how drinking alone with his family’s history probably isn’t the wisest of ideas. He shouts down his mental demons to piss off and leave him be, just for now.
Just for a bit.
---
John recalls the first instance. Of.
The first instance of.
A cold afternoon, a consulting detective stretched languidly over the entire expanse of couch. John in his chair, the chair that had come to be known as his. A thoroughly unremarkable day, truly.
A date, on the horizon, not really soon, more later and John had made a casual reference to it, to being busy on the evening of the thirteenth and thus, “No running about with you that night.”
Sherlock had bitten at the opportunity to once more admonish John for the manner in which he chose to spend his free time. “I have utterly no idea why you insist on... on dating so... eagerly. If it’s simply desire to get-”
“Sherlock, contrary to popular belief dating isn’t just about ‘getting off,’ it’s the getting to know another person, enjoying another person’s company, liking the person and hopefully, eventually, somehow managing to love them.” the words slip off of John’s tongue and he thinks, ‘yes, concise, good, remarkable really’ and spares a quick glance at his flatmate.
“Love them.” It’s not exactly a question, but John is aware that Sherlock is confused.
He rolls his eyes. “Yes, to be, be happy. Eventually. That would be most people’s endgame, begin with dating, finish with love, marriage. Or, well, begin again really with love and marriage. But essentially the end game is to fall in love.”
“That is not my end game.” Obviously.
“Obviously,” John huffs and takes up the paper. “But for most of the rest of the world, Sherlock, it is. There you have it, mystery solved.” John’s voice is soft, as though not to imply that his disassociation with “the rest of the world,” make him less than, or less than normal.
(John is kind and considerate in that regard.)
“Far from solved, John. Love is such... an arbitrary term. There is of course the obvious reaction in the human body which when-”
“Yes, yes, that’s all well and good, adrenaline-serotonin-dopamine but... hm, how to put this so you’ll understand you absolute git?” John’s voice holds a note of irritation but he actually finds it almost... endearing that Sherlock is positively clueless about such an integral part of the human condition. “Ah, imagine finding the person with whom you would never, ever be bored. Not in a million years.”
“Nonsense, John,” Sherlock brushes off the idea, his hand waving lazily in the air. Sherlock’s eyes are still fixed on the ceiling. “That is in fact the purpose you serve.”
The air escapes John’s lungs but he fights not to seek the meaning in Sherlock’s words. “Good to know I’m around to ensure you’re never bored,” and John’s eyes roll dramatically even as his heart hammers in his chest and his throat tightens and he begs his mind not to begin racing. “So you’re not bored right now, then. Crap telly and nothing in to eat and no plans for the rest of the evening but to sleep?”
Sherlock turns his head, just his head. His hands remain clasped against his stomach. “Hmmmm, no.” It’s all he says, goes back to ruminating about whatever it is that he’s ruminating about.
“Right, right.”
It’s the first instance of John’s heart hammering in his chest in a way that is thoroughly different from any other manner in which it had attempted beating faster than usual.
---
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” Harry mentions to him, months, months later, over coffee. It’s a phrase that should be patronizing and it should be broken-record thin in its truth, but.
Well.
He sees the point in that, really. Not that John in any way feels bolstered for his friend’s sacrifice but there’s a calm sort of awakening in it. John has admitted things to himself that he’s admitted to no one else, he’s realized things lurking just beneath the surface of his soul.
He faces these, one by one and accepts them intrinsically as they are now parts of him:
I would have gone anywhere with him
He could have had all of me, if only he’d asked
I would have faced down death in his stead (he never would have asked)
I would have continued on loving him quietly, without really knowing, until the end of our days
I do not love Sherlock Holmes; I am a bit of a madman, in an after-the-fact sort of way and am in very sharp relief in love with the man
Sherlock Holmes is now past tense while I am still in present tense
John adds a third sugar to a coffee he hasn’t even sipped from and turns his attention to the snowflakes drifting outside. This is the longest winter he’s ever lived through and he doesn’t really mind if it doesn’t end for years and years. It’s quieter this way. “I suppose it does,” John answers his sister truthfully, quietly.
Harry’s lips are set in a thin line and she reaches over to smooth a hand over his. “Oh, love, you’ll make it through.”
“I know,” John replies.
“It feels crushing and hopeless, I know, but you’ll make it through.”
John sets his lips in a thin line as well, wonders if he resembles his sister. “I always do,” he answers.
---
John manages Mike’s couch for an entire month and then finds an old army buddy who needs a housesitter. He manages that for two months.
And then he returns to 221b.
Mrs. Hudson had tidied up considerably. There is no longer soot on the windows, and the rugs have all been replaced. She’s done nothing about the bullet holes in the wall, or the scorch marks in the kitchen.
John makes a mental note to thank her for her consideration.
John makes tea.
---
The second instance of was sharp and electrifying and wholly unexpected.
Sherlock had been nowhere in sight when Anderson had said, “Holmes is insane, well and truly and if-”
And John had cut him off, stepping into the criminalist’s face, jutting his jaw in anger. “Solved this on your own, could you?” Anderson had the sense to look startled and took a step back. “Shut your bloody mouth before I find it within me to assure that you can’t speak at all..”
Anderson blinked.
John took a step back and smiled, deadly. “Yes?”
Anderson blinked again.
“Good,” John does an about face and catches Sherlock staring at him, looking to all the world unaffected, save for the set of his shoulders and it hits John then, that this is more than everything he originally thought it to be.
---
There is a holding period.
He eventually finds employment at a surgery in Ealing.
John allows himself to find that he actually enjoys the work.
He doesn’t love it, but it’s something.
---
Molly has lunch with him. That is to say, Molly sits across from him and picks at her salad and pushes the tomatoes around on her plate and won’t meet his eyes. The first few times, he finds it odd, but now it’s just old hat. She is sallow and fatigued and when she smiles there’s always a flicker of something else behind it. They chat idly, about nothing and more nothing and she almost always insists on picking up the bill.
Some sort of misplaced guilt, he supposes, though he’s not entirely sure why.
The mere fact that Molly was smitten with Sherlock could have been it, sure, but the way she snaps her gaze away from his when he catches her staring, it’s unsettling.
“Anything interesting in, recently?” John asks, popping a chip into his mouth, not so much caring about the answer but needing to break the silence.
Molly shrugs and takes a sip of her tap water. “Electrocution. My first, actually. Gent dropped a hair dryer in the tub while his wife was bathing. On purpose. Ghastly.” She pauses for a moment, adds, “Horrific but...”
“Interesting?”
“Yes, I suppose.” She drains her glass and he won’t stop staring at her. He can’t... he can’t... there’s something itching at the back of his mind, a question he can’t begin to comprehend, one he doesn’t even know to ask, but it’s there.
They finish, neither one of them having eaten much at all.
“There’s something you’re not telling me,” John says as he holds the door for her, sliding his sunglasses on. It’s warm and lovely outside but John feels cold, wind-beaten and battered.
Molly twirls to face him. Lip bitten, fingers clutching the strap of her bag, she says, “No John, I’m not,” even as her head tilts in the phantom of a nod.
The sun shines on.
---
The third and the most real instance of.
“This is my life,” John said, out of the blue, midway to adding sugar to his tea. His words were soft, rounded with wonder and confusion.
“Pardon?” Sherlock glanced up from buttering his toast.
John shrugged, “This is... my life. So, I mean, forever.” John meant that Baker Street was it; mad dashes through the alleys of London; danger and sweat and a man he can’t actually fathom living independently of. And to acknowledge this, out loud.
Sherlock blinked. “Splendid.”
The smile he gave was genuine and had reached all the way to his eyes and John had stepped forward, placed his hand on Sherlock’s shoulder and-
Squeezed.
---
Lestrade is reinstated to the force (not back to his old position, no hope for that) after a lengthy hearing that bleeds over the course of three days. Sally presents the most pertinent of the information. What was on Sherlock’s phone, the ballistics from Moriarty’s gun, the proof of the gunshot residue naming his death positively a suicide.
They pore over Greg Lestrade’s entire career with a fine-toothed comb.
John is afraid he will be called as a witness, but blessedly he is not. He sits in the back of the hearing room for all three sessions, keeping his head down and his profile low. He doesn’t want to turn this into more of a media circus than it already is. The room is bright and antiseptic and Lestrade looks ten years older and Sally looks as though she hasn’t slept in weeks (rightly so, John thinks) but eventually internal affairs gives in and hands back his badge and tells him to pick up his firearm at the appropriate office.
And that is that.
“Up for a pint?” John asks when he snags Greg’s attention, two blocks from the Yard.
He’s startled at first, “Oi, John I-”
“Congrats, mate, I mean, things considered,” John holds out his hand and Greg takes it, releasing a pent-up breath it seems he does not know he is holding. “‘s good, right?” There’s a beat and Greg dips his head and positively beams.
“Brilliant, yeah. It’s...” John motions with a tip of his head and they begin walking down the sidewalk. “It’s as though, I’m not on the job, I’m sort of... lost.” Greg shrugs, laughs. “It’s not healthy, I’m sure but if I’m not on the job, I’m not sure where I fit in. Even if it's not... I'm not a D.I. any longer but, well...”
“In the grand scheme of things?” John laughs and leads them down the next block.
Greg returns the laugh, “Yeh.”
They end up at a pub near King’s Cross and though it’s midday, the place is filled with co-eds grabbing a pre-calculus, post-sixteenth century english literature drink. The men find a table in the back, not so much tucked in a corner so much as forced there. Their beers are tepid which is fine and they sip at them, long, for a few moments before either one bothers to speak.
John feels neither put upon or rushed and for the first time since he stopped counting time there’s something inside of him that feels nearly content.
There’s also something inside of him that feels guilty about this. He makes it a point to shrug it off; he needs to set some things back to normal. He needs to feel fine, seeing a friend for drinks. He needs to be fine about seeing Greg. He needs to stop thinking about Sherlock Holmes. Every other thought can no longer be about Sherlock Holmes.
“Sally came to see me, awhile back,” John mentions because he needs to stop thinking, and he wants to ask Greg what is going to happen with his partnership. “She said you-”
“Yes, I... thought it might be a gesture,” Greg screws up his face in disgust but it soon melts to a sad smile. “She’s on a ‘making it up to me,’ pitch and I can’t say that I’m not enjoying it.”
“Oh, I’m sure.”
Greg stares at his pint and sets his shoulders, glances over at his friend. “I can’t blame her. I just can’t find it in me to.” Greg swallows. “We’re partners.”
“It’s not her fault,” John finds himself saying and for a split second he wonders ‘Who the hell said that!?’ “It’s Jim Moriarty’s.”
Greg nods. Greg waits. “You see any of the news coverage?”
John shrugs. “Was hard not to. Dimmock was surprisingly... concise in the press conference. Handled it well. Thought they were a little heavy on the Sherlock-as-tragic-hero-angle...” The pulling in his chest is back and his stomach rolls and everything burns. The rest of his pint is hastily swallowed, stemming the tide of bile threatening to rise in his throat.
“Well, he was a hero,” Greg says with conviction. “Is, come to think of it.”
John’s throat is so, so tight. All of that hard work, undone, he ponders. “Is?”
“Glass half full, John,” Greg reasons. “Has to be that way.”
And John thinks that yes, if he’s going to continue living at all, it does indeed have to be that way.
---
Sometimes, John finds himself speaking to the skull, mentioning that the hydro bill is due or that it’s a bank holiday on Monday. He finds himself using the skull as a conduit, a sort of ‘if-Sherlock-could-hear-me-I-would-say.’ They’re out of milk, the woman he’s seeing is a complete pill but she’s good in bed and “If only I’d had the sense of mind to try and take you to bed, Sherlock Holmes.”
That shocks him a little, the notion that floats through his mind; it’s not foreign and that is what shocks him. The realization that he’s thought about this a million times but hasn’t ever actually consciously pondered it. Well. If only he’d had the presence of mind to think about it in the first place.
John finds himself wondering what it would have been like, if he’d managed to divest the consulting detective of all of his clothing and press him against the sheets.
That’s a moot point, because John doesn’t think that would have occurred if certain things had not happened previous. Namely, John admitting his obscenely romantic feelings for his flatmate, his unbearably painful love for the man.
That too is a moot point because John is a tragic figure and didn’t realize the nature of his emotions towards the man before it was too late and over and never even begun. He thinks; there’s a timeline to unravel, here.
The entire notion that John is thinking about having taken Sherlock Holmes to bed leads to him laying in his own bed at night and rewriting their history in his head. Much of it is the same, but he tries to read more into a sidelong glance, casually inserts a few fleeting touches on his part, a weakening in his knees at Sherlock’s scent. He rewrites their history as something entirely too romantic and realizes, some time around dawn that all of this was happening around them, all along.
Fuck, damn.
All of those months.
And they’d both ignored it for reasons he couldn’t understand.
John almost feels the skull rolling his eyes at him, from the living room. The skull has seen everything between them, why did he, she, it never say anything?
John is a maniac; he laughs himself to sleep.
---
No one calls it an anniversary because that term has happier connotations for everyone. No one speaks about it, really. Greg mentions, “I’m going by on Saturday, if you’d like.”
John declines.
He received a short message from Mycroft, ‘For what it is worth, Sherlock had a particular affinity for white trillium.’ He thinks it’s not worth much, actually, and grumbles about it as he calls all of the florists in London trying to determine what he’s looking for and is barked at by a woman, who tells him it’s a wildflower and it’s not native to Britain.
Of course. Of course.
Even in death, he’s on a wild goose chase for Sherlock..
He ends up paying a hefty sum, in tracking some down. There’s a greenhouse in Chiswick that is willing to part with the flower and John muses to himself, as he carries away a small bundle of white, lilly-esque flowers, that Sherlock’s death has cost him a lot, but now he can put a price on it.
Eighty-three pounds.
He lays them on the ground next to Mrs. Hudson’s comically large bouquet of carnations and when she’s out of earshot, tells the headstone what an utter wanker it is and just how long it took John to find these damned flowers and so Sherlock had best enjoy them.
---
It all sort of blurs after that. He breaks up with Zoe and meets a woman named Mary who is actually quite remarkable and sparks something in him that he hasn’t felt in a long while. He courts her gently.
They picnic and go to the cinema and it’s the most normal that John has felt in ages and ages. They spend an evening at the British Museum just meandering.
She’s very well-informed on Islamic art and he loves just listening to her speak about it.
When John kisses Mary for the first time, be feels the fluttering of something in his stomach. There is a voice within him that is trying to tell him that this is really all just wrong, but he ignores it. When he kisses her again, the voice harrumphs and crosses its arms and lets it happen.
Just for once, John wants to be happy.
Mary bats her eyelashes and winds her arm through his and they stroll along the Thames, all film-romance and sleepy happiness. He walks her all the way home, all five miles; they chat and laugh and kiss the entire way. He almost wishes they would get caught in the rain because that would clinch it, it would be a perfect evening, something that a screenwriter would try to imagine.
Mary invites him in and he demurs, as a gentleman. This is only their fourth date and John won’t admit to himself that he’s stalling. He’s stalling for reasons that are both all-too-familiar and so mind-haltingly foreign.
This is wonderful, this is something that everyone wants in their life, this easy closeness with another person. It’s all wrong, though. It’s somehow all completely and utterly wrong.
He doesn’t call Mary the next day or the day after that or the day after that.
He feels awful about not feeling awful about that.
Mary calls him, a week later and instead of demanding an explanation, let’s John know that it was quite nice seeing him, but that she thinks it won’t work out “for obvious reasons” . John wonders when the “obvious reasons” became so apparent to others and not to himself.
---
Mrs. Hudson slides a newspaper under the door one morning, an old edition, from a year previous. They are on the cover, Sherlock staring into the distance, following the line that John is pointing with his hand. They’re in stark relief against the white of some building and they look so solid and alone, together, that John holds his breath.
John moves; the note that Mrs. Hudson had affixed to the paper floats to the floor, forgotten: “Was thinking of you boys today, come for a cuppa later if you’re up for it.” A nice sentiment, but one that John will never read.
His body somehow finds the couch and he falls into it, paper clutched between sweaty, desperate hands. He’s never seen this photograph and his eyes trace the sharp jut of Sherlock’s draw as his mind transports him back to that day.
Warm, lovely, and a man beaten to death on the pavement.
John does not remember the victim’s name, or the name of the suspect they eventually tracked down. He remembers afterwards, he remembers just after this photo must have been taken. Walking along the Thames with Sherlock, the taller man handing John and iced coffee from a cart and the two of them acting so blindingly normal that it seems now almost dreamlike.
If he could have bottled that moment, if he could have saved-prolonged-kept it, he could use it now, as a balm for the steadily-growing hole in his heart.
He could patch up the ragged tears in his soul.
Three months ago, he would have taken the paper and ripped the photograph to shreds. Now, he finds a pair of shears, carefully crops the photograph and affixes it to the refrigerator with a Speedy’s magnet.
---
Winter is coming (John laughs at that because he’s watching a show on telly that, nevermind, you wouldn’t understand) and he decides it’s time for a change. That a change he can physically see might be something that he needs.
The surgery has been good both for him and to him, and with the bit of extra cash he’s set aside, he purchased some new furniture, a thrifted-but-updated rug, gives the baseboards a few new coats of paint and retouches the ceiling. New linens on his bed and the colors on the wall change. He strips the upper hall of wallpaper and covers it in a color called “sun-kissed wheat.”
Many of the old newspapers and journals that Sherlock had kept on hand, claiming that one day they would come in useful, go into the bin. John drags a cloth over the windows and a mop over the floor and begins going through Sherlock’s room, donating clothing, boxing up belongings.
Mycroft had offered (almost too kindly) to handle it, but John had refused, choosing to go about erasing parts of Sherlock from the flat on his own. Stacks of nearly folded shirts and pairs and pairs of the same den and color sock go into boxes labeled “charity.” He leaves the room tidied and organized and draws the curtains.
There will come a day when John has to rid the flat of Sherlock’s bed, his science equipment, his bloody harpoon, but it doesn’t feel appropriate just now. If there ever comes a time that it does feel acceptable, John promises himself that he’ll list the items and part with them with little guilt.
‘The man is gone, after all,’ John thinks and rolls his eyes and only hates himself the tiniest bit. This must be acceptance; this must be the acceptance portion of the ride, John muses.
(He does not enjoy the way acceptance feels or fits on his frame.)
It looks brighter in the flat now, almost new. John stands in the kitchen and surveys his work at the end of a long weekend and something rolls off of his shoulders. Not that he’s going to move on, this isn’t something he can move on from but it seems as though much of the soot that has dirtied his slate has been scrubbed clean.
He’s not back to good, but he’s better.
---
Lestrade comes by the flat and says nothing of the change, but his eyes do widen a bit as he takes in the surroundings. He uncaps one of the beers he’s brought and hands it to John. Neither one of them will say it, but they look forward to evenings like these.
The men drink in silence for a bit and out of nowhere, John begins to laugh. It begins low, slowly and then builds to nearly hiccoughing giggles.
“What?” Greg asks, startled, pulling the beer away from his mouth slowly.
John swallows, staves the mirth that’s suddenly bubbling from him. “I was just thinking... I donated some of Sherlocks clothes and... the thought of a five-hundred quid silk button up on some random bloke...”
Greg gets it.
Greg laughs too.
---
John dreams of Sherlock once in December, nowhere near Christmas. They’re in a vacuum and there is no sound and John is the one falling and falling.
Sherlock reaching and not finding.
---
Six-hundred and thirty-five days, fifteen thousand, two hundred and forty hours. (It feels like longer.) John Watson can’t seem to do the math for minutes in his head. Not right now.
The moment that John lays his eyes upon Sherlock Holmes again, he is not shocked, he’s not upset or thrilled or relieved. At the sight of Sherlock Holmes, very fleshy, very real and spectacularly alive, John Watson feels sick. Utterly ill, deep in his bones, in the pit of his stomach. To his credit, he manages to say so.
“I’m going to be sick,” John croaks, pushing the front door closed in the other man’s face with a weak hand. Sherlock stops it with an equally weak hand, pushing it carefully back open.
“I shall explain, but first I believe it’s crucial we get you... sitting,” and he steps through the door and like that he’s back in the hallway of Baker Street. “Upstairs, perhaps?” Sherlock asks and it is laced with impatience and guilt and eagerness.
Blood thrumming in his ears, throat dry, heart just about ready to burst like a supernova, John stands and stares at the wall.
“John?”
John blinks at him and sweeps a shaking (shaking, it’s quivering as though they’re experiencing an earthquake) hand before him as though to say, “Lead the way,” but he says nothing. He has no voice at the moment.
Sherlock’s eyes narrow just a bit and John counts the lines there, notes that there are far more, far more than there had been a year and some months before. John wants to ask him every question he’s ever had, unburden himself of all of the feelings he’s managed to dredge up during the time Sherlock has been dead. He needs to know the story behind every one of those new lines.
But Sherlock has to mount the stairs first, and before Sherlock can climb the stairs, he has to stop staring at John.
It takes a full two minutes and thirty seconds before Sherlock moves. John takes a moment to gather his wits (of which he is not shocked to find he has surprisingly few at this point) and trudges up the steps after him, his head spinning, spinning, nearly spinning right off of his head.
Sherlock isn’t seated when John finally reaches the sitting room. The man is standing, straight-backed, hands in pockets, slowly taking in the flat. “You’ve tidied.”
John blinks.
John thinks.
John-”What!?”
He turns slowly and there’s a small smile on his lips.
“Stop it,” John bites. “Stop it now.”
“I’m... sorry.”
“Stop smiling before I knock it right off of your face. Just stop it.” His chest heaves with the breaths that come out fast, too fast. He’s going to have a panic attack. Dear lord, he’s going to pass out. Breathe, breathe!
Sherlock blinks. “Right... sit,” he advises and John’s eyes flash hot and angry. Pissed off.
“Kindly do not boss me around my flat. You are, after all, dead.” That knocks the wind out of his sails and John’s backside hits the couch and he bounces a bit. His index finger stabs the air before him, “You. Are dead.” Because he almost has to be. All of these months, trying to pick up and carry on. They’ve not been for nothing. They’ve not been for nothing.
“As is evidenced by my obvious corporeal presence in the living room of this, 221b Baker Street, I’m very obviously not.”
John growls, “Bite me.”
“Bite you?”
“Sherlock this is... all a bit much, yeah? You think that you’re perhaps going about this all wrong?” John heaves a breath and sags back into the sofa and scrubs his hands across his eyes. “And what does it say about me that I’m not wondering if I’m going insane.”
“You’re not insane, John. This is all very real and-”
“Fucking, Sherlock sodding Holmes, shut your bloody mouth!” John shouts, sitting up straight on the couch, his face blushing hot, hot red. Sherlock, to his credit, does stop speaking and has the presence of mind to look a tad frightened and immensely agitated. “Sit,” comes the demand and the detective takes two strides into the room and folds his body into one of the chairs.
He wants to tell Sherlock what he’s been put through, that he’s the worst person in the world for letting John mourn like this. John has needlessly mourned and that’s perhaps what’s worst about this and he feels cheated and used and less-than.
John says none of this because there’s no will power behind these thoughts; rage for the sake of rage, because Sherlock deserves to have John mad at him. That’s what he deserves right now.
John’s eyes rake over him. Not much has changed; his hair is threaded with a few grays and there is purpled skin on his left hand and there are those lines around his eyes and he’s sitting a bit straighter than he used to, but there he is. Crossed right back over the river Styx looking no worse for the wear.
John isn’t quite sure what the “wear” is but he’s fairly certain that Sherlock wasn’t gone for twenty-one months on an extended holiday. Thank whatever powers that be that are gazing down upon him because Sherlock shuts his mouth and doesn’t say word one. John is glad because it gives him more time to just drink everything in. That is what he feels he’s doing, sucking down a glass of cool water after an eternity in a desert wasteland.
“I imagine you’ve had quite a while to think about what you were going to say to me.”
Sherlock breathes, “Yes.”
“Do you... need another moment?”
“No, John,” and it sounds like pleading.
Pursed lips, feeling as though he hasn’t slept in decades and centuries and eons, John Watson nods his head. “Right,” his voice is tight and threaded with relief. “Right, well, tea and then out with it.” John nods, stands, wipes his palms on the front of his trousers and thinks to add. “Out with all of it.”
Sherlock swallows and John marvels as the tension leaves his shoulders; the man transforms before him. The light catches the tear tracks on Sherlocks right cheeks and John thinks “Serves him right,” even as he thinks, “I will kill everyone who made him have to go through this.”
“Yes, John,” he sighs and goes boneless, his head lolling against the back of the chair in relief.
---
Two sugars, one milk for the both of them because John wants to give Sherlock a taste of what he’s been missing. John’s tea-making capabilities were always something that Sherlock had marveled at and quite vocally. John had never been quite sure why because in the grand scheme of things, making a good cup of tea wasn’t that difficult.
Still.
John wants to show Sherlock what he’s been missing. Sherlock watches John move about the room, drawing the curtains, shutting and locking the door (god forbid Mrs. Hudson stumble upon them and have a heart attack) and building a small fire. He waves an alight bit of newspaper up and catches the draft in the floo, wondering all the while how the fuck he’s going to explain what he’s been feeling for the past many months.
“I couldn’t have... come along, then?” John asks, back to the other man, as the fire catches and begins to pop and crackle in the hearth.
There is silence, so much of it. Sherlock clears his throat and says, “No, John.” And then, “Absolutely not.”
John nods, he understands and yet he doesn’t. “Alone, you utter, utter bastard.” Tongue runs over upper teeth and he steels himself for what is going to a long evening of listening to Sherlock speak. He pretends he won’t drink it in with greedy ears, that just to be in his presence again is all he will ever need.
“Moriarty’s criminal network was surprisingly expansive,” Sherlock begins with a note of humor in his voice. “Which I believe I anticipated but, Siberia?” Fingers steepled in front of his mouth, Sherlock launches. “Mycroft’s involvement was crucial and before I continue I’ll apologize on his behalf. He did try and persuade me to find an alternate... means of carrying out this business as not to put you through unnecessary... pain.”
And the thought that Mycroft was a voice of reason in all of this is a little too absurd for him, a little too insane. He falls back on the couch and rubs a hand over his face, disbelieving as Sherlock continues. “He also provided the financial means, of course, but then, you knew that.”
“Stop it, Sherlock, why did you-”
“If James Moriarty's people were not assured that I was indeed dead, he would have murdered Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson and,” Oh and his eyes flash and he makes it a point to connect his gaze with John’s weaker one when he speaks, “You.”
John swallows. John knows this, wants to tell Sherlock he knows this, but somehow also needs to hear the man verify it, hear the words spoken from his lips.
Sherlock’s voice is gruff, more than sandpaper, gravel. “So if you could please suspend your belief that I selfishly left you here alone to mourn a man not dead and understand that my motivations these past months have been driven entirely on the desire for you to remain “of the living,” as they say.”
“Greg and Mrs. Hudson,” John whispers, driving his fists against his eyes. “Jesus.”
Sherlock makes a curt nod and adds, “You.”
John sighs and pulls his hands away, peels his eyes open and it’s all Sherlock. Intense gaze, unruly hair. Everything is Sherlock.
“Every moment, every one, John.” Sherlock breathes. “Do you understand?”
“I, Sherlock, it’s not enough but, can you,” John stands and balls, unballs his fist a few times. “Could you, please,” and he motions with his chin and somehow, miraculously, Sherlock understands. He unfolds himself from the chair and stands, awkward before John.
It takes John a moment but he squares his shoulders and takes a step forward and wraps his arms around Sherlock so tightly that he can hear the air as he squeezes it from his lungs. Sherlock’s hands are trapped against his body by John’s arms, but it’s enough, for now.
“Sherlock,” he breathes into the man’s chest and that undoes the moment.
He extricates his arms and winds them arounds John’s back and holds on in a forever sort of way. “Do you understand?” he asks once more and there’s the threat of tears in his voice, a million apologies, the whole and complete unravelling of their time apart. There will be time enough for that later, John assures himself. He’d like this moment to last as long as it can, for now.
He is not entirely forgiven; the ache is not entirely gone. The anger still remains and the hurt, but it can all simply wait for a bit. Just a bit.
He buries his face in the crook of Sherlock’s neck, inhales and says, “I do. I understand.”