Prompting Part XXIV
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IMPORTANT! Spoilers for aired episodes are now being allowed on this area of the meme, without warning. If you do not want to encounter spoilers, please prompt at our Spoiler-Free Prompt Post.
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Prompts from this post can be filled on the Overflow Post
IMPORTANT! Spoilers for aired episodes are now being allowed on this area of the meme, without warning. If you do not want to encounter spoilers, please prompt at our Spoiler-Free Prompt Post.
( Read more... )
In the end, John goes back.
It’s not that he wants to. The flat is so full of the life that he and Sherlock shared - because really, what’s the point in denying? John’s life, by the end, was almost impossible to disentangle from Sherlock’s - and he chokes on it. He’s not even inside the flat proper when it happens. On the ninth stair, John’s leg wobbled and he braced himself against the wall as his ribs rebelled and crushed his lungs.
They’d both collapsed on that step after the Pool, dizzy with adrenalin and shaking in the aftermath. The stairs are nowhere near wide enough to accommodate two grown men, but when they were half-sprawled on top of each other, personal bubbles resolutely abolished for the night, they fit quite nicely.
He worried that it was too soon.
But Baker Street is all he has left. The detritus of Sherlock’s storm, the flotsam he’d left bobbing on the skin of the world in his wake, is scattered there. John finds he can’t resist. The pull of their (his, now) flat is inexorable, a hook around his aorta.
His hand shakes as he opens the door.
The flat is as they’d left it, dragged down the stairs to waiting cars. An unbidden smile quirks John’s mouth, the first in a week. He was glad he’d punched that arsehole, even if it had led to a very brief arrest. It had been worth it for the little surprised smile from Sherlock that John had watched him cover up with a glib remark, as always. Always so shocked to find someone on his side, willing to stand up for him…
No. Stop it.
It’s far too quiet. There is the hum of the refrigerator, the rumble of traffic and the ticking of a clock from Sherlock’s room. Ironic, that. Time really wasn’t anything special now, to John. When the most important moments of one’s life have already gone by in a few thumping heartbeats, the passage of time feels a bit superfluous.
He’d been back to the flat, once before this, but it was in a state of curious numbness that John now realized was shock. Pity they hadn’t kept that blanket.
The first time he’d been back, it was like his body didn’t know how to be in this place without him to revolve around. It kept expecting a lanky body to stroll past him and throw itself down onto the sofa in a snit, and John felt himself moving his feet out of the way of nothing at all. He’d given the chair at the kitchen table a wide berth, though it was pushed in, and caught himself before he leaned over to peer over a missing, bony shoulder at the now abandoned experiments. When he left the flat, he left the door open, and he was halfway down the stairs before he realized that there was no-one to follow him through it.
John was aware now. The fog of shock had cleared and the emptiness of the house closed it, clear and cold. He looked at the sofa. There was a dressing gown strewn across it that he’d not noticed before. Blue. He’d liked that one best, and had often wondered if it was as soft as it looked. He’d never permitted himself to find out.
It was soft, as it turned out. Well past things like awkwardness and boundaries and shouldn’ts, John lifted the fabric to his face. It stuttered against the growth of beard he hadn’t had the energy to shave. He made the mistake of inhaling.
It smelled like John imagined it would, like pilfered cigarettes and camphor and his soap.
So this is what I was missing, John thought, and crumpled to the carpet.
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It’s stupid, but John just wants the coat back.
He’d intended to avoid St. Bart’s, for the rest of his life if at all possible, but he finds himself striding towards it one afternoon. His leg protests as he crosses the road (other end of the block from where that biker knocked him down, don’t think about it) and starts up the sidewalk. He resolutely does not look up or down, just forward. If he thought about it, which he can’t just now, he’d realize that he’d walked over a now-faded stain on the concrete.
Molly is in the morgue when John slips in. She jumps a bit when he clears his throat.
“Hello,” he says as she whirls to face him. The colour drains from her delicate face and her brows pull together. Guilt, is the first flash of deductive thought that flickers across John’s mind, but he dismisses it. She probably just feels bad for not speaking to him at the funeral. More likely, she feels pity. Poor John, alone again.
“John!” she says, too cheerful. “What are you - I mean, how are you doing?” She pauses, mortified. “No. Silly question. Um, what can I do for you?”
John breathes deeply.
“I was just thinking, maybe, I mean, they tend to keep things like that, evidence and whatnot, and perhaps if it wasn’t a bother… I just don’t see how it could shed any light on the… situation, and if it’s just going to moulder in an evidence bag…”
John trails off, and Molly looks expectant.
“Sorry, what is it you’re looking for?” she asks eventually.
“The… the coat, the one he was wearing… It’d be in evidence, or something. don’t they - you, I suppose - keep the clothes or something?” John tries to smile in what he hopes is a genial manner. He knows it falls flat as Molly’s face twists.
“Oh, John. I, um, thought you’d have known. They… um. They buried him in it.”
What John doesn’t know is this: Molly cried harder than anyone in attendance at Sherlock’s funeral. She was near the door, and watched the back of John’s head through her tears. She watched as he sat, ramrod straight in his pew next to Mrs. Hudson, and she knew he wasn’t crying. That was almost worse. She felt she owed it to him, to have someone really grieve for him instead of Sherlock. Molly knows she doesn’t have to grieve for Sherlock. At least, not as much.
Another thing John doesn’t know is that the coat is nowhere near that cemetery. It is, in fact, doing its level best to warm its owner as he shudders in the hold of a cargo ship crossing the North Sea. Sherlock runs a hand over his face and aches. The thrum of loneliness and wanting in his chest makes him long for home. Not the flat, precisely, though a chair by the fire seems pretty good about now. No, Sherlock aches for jumpers and the smell of tea and two-fingered typing and bickering and a lined, honest face. The agony of it makes him think of the last withdrawal he suffered. At least then, he knew it would end, eventually.
He suspects this withdrawal won’t.
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:ike with the episode, all I can think is 'poor John' and 'I wonder what Sherlock will end up doing next'. <3
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Hurts so good, I'm pumped to read the rest.
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