Funeral^-1, for the comment-fic challenge: Doppelgangers
Title: Funeral ^-1
Fandom: Sherlock
Rating: PG
Characters/pairings: John, Sherlock
Warnings (including spoilers): Spoilers for Reichenback, although no details. Just, like, the climax.
Wordcount: 1007 words
Summary: Sherlock is back. John is angry, then suspicious, and then it all goes back to normal. Written for the prompt ‘BBC Sherlock; Sherlock/John; John is quite certain this is not Sherlock. Mainly because Sherlock never made the tea and the only time he ever made coffee for John was when it was for an experiment’ on comment_fic.
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The flat was still. In the kitchen, abandoned science experiments had grown mold across a large section of the table. In the bedrooms, unmade sheets had long since lost the scents of their inhabitants. In the living room, a cup of tea, months cold, sat on the table in front the fireplace, waiting patiently for its owner to return. Across from it on a short couch, a violin and a loosened bow were almost casually abandoned.A sheen of dust lay over most of the furniture. As one of the last residents of the flat would have noted, the dust was eloquent. It was spread evenly in all the rooms besides the living room, where the dust on a few tables had been disturbed not too long before. A small area had been cleaned, but the feather duster lay abandoned on the floor beside the table and the door of the flat had been left slightly ajar.
The cold tea in the cup shook, ripples moving along the surface as heavy footfalls sounded on the stairs outside the flat. There was a single moment of tension in the empty apartment, as though something painful was being stretched through the air before it snapped.
“You didn’t think, did you?” The main door slammed against the wall as the blonde man strode through it. His angry steps threw cartwheels of dust into the air that glowed in the mid-morning sunlight. The chair before the fire squeaked its displeasure as he threw himself down onto it in one moment and jumped back up the next. “Six months, Sherlock!”
The detective stood motionless in the doorway, staring at the shorter man. He was wearing the same scarf, the same coat, as he had the last time John had seen him: when he’d watched the undertaker close the coffin.
“All this time, you couldn’t have given me a ring- given me a text-” John shouted, “to let me know you were alive?” When Sherlock didn’t move, John resisted the urge to throttle him, but his hands shook with the effort. Unthinking, he grabbed the tea cup from the table and smashed it against the floor. Tea splashed across the floor, splattering the hem of Sherlock’s coat, but the detective didn’t even flinch. John’s loud breaths were the only sound in 221B Baker Street.
“I denied everything!” John raged at that blank face. “Every time, every single time someone recognized me on the street and asked if you were real, I told them what you wanted me to say. I said you were a fraud, because you told me to. I hated it!”
“It was necessary,” Sherlock spoke at last. “Moria-”
“I don’t want to hear it.” John turned away and sat down again, glaring at the yellow wallpaper. “You are probably the least considerate person I’ve ever met. Did you even think about what this would do to me?” he asked the far wall. “To Mrs. Hudson?”
There was a long silence. “I’m sorry.”
John knew it was true. He let out a deep breath. “I know.”
He stared at Sherlock’s violin, untouched for half a year. Behind him, Sherlock was moving things around in the kitchen. It was the first time he’d been back at the flat since the week after Sherlock had jumped, and he hadn’t even thought twice before he’d walked through the door moments ago.
China clinked at his elbow and he looked over. Sherlock set the new tea cup on the arm of his chair and then sat down in his customary seat opposite.
John stared at him, then comically looked between his flat mate and the tea cup.
“What is it?” Sherlock asked. There was that furrow at the top of his nose, the one that appeared every time Sherlock was annoyed that he didn’t know something. It would be impossible to imitate, and yet…
John stood up and pulled his gun out of the drawer beside the chair. Sherlock’s eyes widened as the muzzle was aimed between them.
“Who are you?” John snarled.
For once, Sherlock was speechless.
“Sherlock never made the tea, and the only time he made coffee for me he was using me for an experiment. Who are you and what do you want?” His hand was shaking, but it wasn’t psychosomatic this time. In fact, his whole body was shaking. If he hadn’t been a trained soldier, his eyes may have grown wet in that moment. “Tell me,” he demanded, voice thick. The floorboards creaked beneath him as he shifted his weight and his grip on the gun.
“It’s me, John,” the seated man said calmly, his blue eyes piercing John’s. “I’ve been reliably informed that I need to be more considerate of my friends.” He nodded toward the cup. “It’s the way you take it.”
John grabbed the cup, ignored the drops that scalded his hand from the hasty retrieval, and sipped carefully. He put the cup down, put the gun down, and sat in the chair, clutching his forehead.
“We should call Lestrade,” he forced out. “He’ll want to know you’re alive. And Mrs. Hudson, and Mycroft, and Molly, I suppose, she likes you, God knows why-”
“She knows.”
John blinked. “What?”
“Molly helped me. Mycroft as well.”
“She cried at your funeral,” John frowned.
Sherlock looked slightly disturbed. “I saw.”
“You- never mind.” John shook his head, scrunched up his face, then cleared his throat and allowed himself two large blinks. “You know, there are cases,” he said at last. “Some people who didn’t believe the papers, people who still wanted your help.”
“Indeed?” Sherlock asked, smiling for the first time since John had seen him alive. “We’d best get started then.”
John smiled back and went to fetch his laptop. He brushed the dust off the casing, and as it fell to the floor it began to tell a new story.