After the Wrecking Ships, Sherlock
After the Wrecking Ships
Sherlock/John, mostly John!angst
pg-13
Post "The Reichenbach Fall" so, you know, spoilers.
Many, many thanks to the lovely lonelywalker especially for help making this as British as it could be. (Or not, I don't know what the "absolute British" would be, really.)
"John doesn't cry because if he begins, he's not sure he'll know how to stop."
It isn't textbook; John doesn't have nightmares because he doesn't sleep.
His brain is at rest and he closes his eyes but respite never comes. Three days of tossing, turning, cold sweat and he doesn't cry. He doesn't cry when he stumbles across the bastardised obituaries (plural; everyone wants a piece) doesn't cry when he uncovers a recently-selected tome beneath the sofa with Sherlock's hasty scribbles in the margin.
John doesn't cry because if he begins, he's not sure he'll know how to stop.
---
As a doctor, John is aware of the classic steps in the grieving process, he understands intrinsically that there are different phases that he must go through in order to process the entire ordeal, to move on, to level off. His mental health and overall stability generally demand that he analyse what has happened, what is happening, what will happen as he moves on.
In his mind, John compartmentalises his feelings as though they’re a grid on a white board and mentally adds and subtracts thoughts that pertain to the original, but scraps the entire process after about thirty seconds because this isn't him; instead he talks to himself, out loud.
Often and vociferously.
---
He doesn't unpack the boxes that it only took him thirty minutes to pack. There isn't much really, some trousers, jumpers, books and odds and ends. He takes nothing from Sherlock's things because where would he put them? And why prolong the despair? And why?
John doesn't need mementos to memorialise his pain.
He leaves Baker Street mostly untouched; he'll pay the rent for as long as he can because, even though he wants nothing that's contained within, he can't bear to part with it. Mrs. Hudson will dust and ensure that the pipes don't freeze and John will live elsewhere while the flat remains silent and uninhabited and unchanged.
Unchanged.
221b will remain the same.
---
John gets drunk twice. Once on whisky, once on gin and tonic.
The first time, he punches the wall of his tiny bathroom, breaks two fingers and sets them himself in the morning. He's a doctor and he's ashamed and he doesn't leave the flat for three days.
The second time is at a bar in Chiswick. He only orders the gin because he hears someone mention it and thinks it might be something to step outside of his comfort zone. After four doubles he picks a fight with a large, intoxicated tourist (outside of his comfort zone, miles and miles) and gets in a hit or two before there are knuckles to the jaw and he blacks out.
Mycroft is called, though John is conscious for none of the trip back to his flat. Mycroft tucks him in. Thank goodness he’s not aware of this, he’s not sure how he would’ve coped. Perhaps with snarky remarks to a friend that no longer exists, words spoken into static air in the dark confines of his stark living quarters.
Perhaps, perhaps. There are thoughts he tries very, very hard not to think.
---
There’s a woman. Her name isn’t important.
There would have been a time when her name, her age, her occupation and a whole host of other information would have been.
Now is not the time.
(She leaves in the morning while he’s still asleep and he’s all too glad.)
He can pretend to forget.
Pretend it never happened.
---
John returns to 221b in July.
The heat of the city is threatening; his lungs can’t take it.
He thinks Spain would be nice, he thinks anywhere would be nice and he needs to be away from London because he simply needs to be away from anything that holds memories of any kind. He attempts booking a ticket to Madrid, but can't seem to locate his passport.
John finds it beneath the mattress in his old bedroom (in his bedroom) and fingers the frayed edges to keep from stealing into Sherlock's sealed room and seeing if any scent lingers. John's sense of necessity demands he find out if there's still an imprint of Sherlock's head on one of his pillows, but he manages to abstain.
He bites his tongue, the inside of his cheek, his lip.
It bleeds.
Standing in the living room, he surveys the area quickly, noting that it can't have been long since Mrs. Hudson passed her duster over every surface. The place almost looked lived in, but...
The skull grins at him from the mantel and John's fingers itch to palm it, to take it.
On second thought, he takes the violin. Mycroft will surely not treat it properly (sell it, place it in the back of a cupboard, in storage or, worse, attempt to play it himself) and furthermore, he can't look at it without hearing the notes. Without seeing the player's face, placid and at peace, fingers long and lean and so in control.
John always loved Sherlock's fingers.
---
Grey. Everything. In general.
The concept of nothing is too much. Everything is dull, but not overtly so. It’s all a very long C note, held, that doesn’t waver until he lets his guard down.
John paces the combined bedroom and sitting room in his pre-war flat (which war, which war!? - he’d know, he’d know, he’d know because John doesn’t and can’t bother to try) and thinks about how alcohol might dull the pain. .
Thinks about how Sherlock would roll his eyes at the notion of intoxication.
He thinks about Sherlock, wishes he didn't.
Doesn't know what he wishes for, hopes for, anything, really, anymore. He just knows - as an educated, medical individual - that this isn’t healthy. Nothing between the two of them has ever been healthy and still...
...and still...
There’s a job at the local GP surgery and he staffs it part time. The other part of his time is consumed with piecing together a work of non-fiction, something he thinks the world deserves to hear.
He puts his fingers to the keys while he has the strength and before he can force himself to forget.
---
On the fifteenth of August, his computer crashes and he loses everything.
John loses everything on the fifteenth of August.
---
The rain.
It would be poetic, truly, if this weren’t London.
The doorstep isn’t easy to find - far, far off of the beaten path, two back alleys and a backwards curve of a hill - and thus John knows he’s been watched for some time. And still, the notion that Sherlock has known all along, where he’s been, what he’s been doing, isn’t comforting.
Three sharp raps, teeth set on edge, his body knows before his consciousness does. Fancy that.
He feels as though his privacy has been invaded. There’s nothing of feeling bamboozled and duped, nothing of that. John slams a fist against the door frame, swollen with moisture, and sets his jaw.
John says nothing and Sherlock nothing back, just stands in the rain while John comes up with adjectives to lines of prose he will never write.
Sherlock stands in rain. Fuck, John can’t, he cannot think or feel or process and he hates almost everything. Inside, he burns, ashes over. This isn’t real - it is - it isn’t - it is. There is of course the realisation that he’s been lied to, that he’s been made to suffer unnecessarily.
No. Not unnecessarily. There’s always a reason, with Sherlock. Always.
Still that doesn’t mean that the wave of being simply pissed off, boiling and angry and paranoid and SIMPLY PISSED OFF isn’t rational or real or valid. John coughs, and then there’s the floor and he’s staring at it. The linoleum stares back, nearly neon in its stark, brilliant white.
He slams the door in Sherlock’s face. Some finality.
He can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t function. It all comes too fast, synapses firing too rapidly, and he shuts down. There is alive and there is not alive and in about thirty-two seconds everything sweeps over John in a wave.
Nothing had prepared him for this.
The sound of the door hitting the jamb rings in his ears; he throws the lock and stubs the tips of his fingers.
It kills him.
It feels brilliant.
John is devastated on the threshold; he folds, collapses, wills his hand not to reach for the knob although he knows there’s a man on the other side of the door who owes him an explanation.
Three thirty-three in the morning and John falls asleep, half on linoleum, half against humidity-swelled oak.
---
There’s an awakening, stiff and sore. John is cold and sagging, head nudged in between the cupboard door and the hinge. It’s the arabica beans that bring him round; his sense of scent gives him over to consciousness and John’s eyes flicker.
Open, open.
For a moment it’s all too much and then it slams into the front of his skull and there is nothing but pain and five months of hoping and nearly praying and another of near-acceptance and one more of simple lingering goodbyes.
He’d let it all go, all of it.
“John,” Sherlock says, eyes on the coffeemaker, not on him, and thank goodness because he breaks. John breaks hard against the floor, dissolves into himself. Knees to his chin and his face tucked in.
No tears, but he remains there for a time. For an hour, or a few, until he hears the creak of the stool and Sherlock leaving through the front door.
As if it were all a dream.
---
‘Regent’s Park, 10am,” the text reads, but John does not go. A deep breath and a hard swallow and he still does not comprehend and instead he deletes the text message. He stands in his kitchen and does not move for four hours.
That is the majority of his Monday.
---
The happy times, there are so few he categorises as happy... now that he thinks about it. There were the endorphins, a whole day wrapped up in a rush. The feeling that he and Sherlock were onto something so much bigger and better led him to feel heady and high and wonderful.
He wakes in the early morning and remembers how easy it is, not to believe in fate. How easy it is to see life in a series of brilliant, clipped moments.
---
Another early morning brings rain again. Of course.
A knock at the door, just one.
John doesn't collapse, but stands rigid. His spine is locked military straight as Sherlock steps inside and latches the door behind him. There’s a whiff of humidity that he trails in with him, a whiff of spring, and it takes a strength that John doesn’t know he has not to start at it.
He takes a step into the flat and John steps back, as though burnt. Sherlock strides to the stool and sits, just as he had two days ago. “John,” he begins again, softer than last time. “I feel as though I should begin with-
“Stop. Stop, stop,” John begs, shouts. He stands with his eyes closed and his hands in front of his, as though warding Sherlock off. “You have to stop right now.”
Sherlock takes a breath, slips off of the stool steps towards him and “No, no, stop!” John’s eyes flash open and finally meet Sherlock’s gaze and it’s a rush of words because it’s real and it’s not. “I saw you. I saw you die. No, no, I can’t, you were ,I saw you die!” He’s shaking, a leaf in a breeze and still, Sherlock steps closer.
“You saw what I need you to see. John I’m-”
“No! You wouldn’t... Sherlock, please, you wouldn’t-”
“Sorry. I’m sorry.” His voice nearly wavers and still...
“Do you understand?!” John shouts, shouts at the top of his lungs. “What we’ve, Sherlock... do you even comprehend what we’ve, no, what I’ve been through?” John waits for the words to land and sucks in a large breath, continues, “You great, giant... you fucking prat! Do you, do you… I think, no, yes. I hate you, Sherlock Holmes.”
Sherlock stares calmly while John heaves.
“I hate you!” John shouts again, but his voice cracks. “I,” he stops, breathes, his words are much less sharp. “I hate you.”
The moment goes on and on.
Sherlock speaks, after a long time, a long, unquantifiable time. “That’s fine, it’s... expected.”
“I hate you,” John reiterates, his chin falling to his chest.
“Yes, John, and it’s fine.” His hands on John’s shoulders. Heavy. Real.
John sucks in a shaky breath, his body wracked by a silent sob. “...hate you...” And then Sherlock’s arms are around him, strong, unwavering, and John submits.
---
John sleeps, but the nightmares are a constant companion. He awakens, cold sweat rimming his brow, breath laboured wondering if this is the time he will wake up and Sherlock will be gone again.
It’s the hand across his waist, firm and real, that pulls him back under to sleep.
It’s almost enough to let John forgive him.