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This post is for responding to prompts from prompt posts that are full, or continuing WIPs that have already been started but the prompt post is now full or near to full.
PLEASE POST ALL NEW FILLS TO THE NEW OVERFLOW POST!( Read more... )
PLEASE POST ALL NEW FILLS TO THE NEW OVERFLOW POST!( Read more... )
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John is in the pub. Lestrade to his right making love to his drink, eyes down cast and hollow with those dark circles beneath them. He’s pale and has lost weight in the weeks that have passed. He’s lost his job, lost his family and all respect he had in his profession and social circle-what little there was of one.
John’s tried to apologize, but he feels he’s done nothing but apologize to Lestrade since they’ve known one another. And it seems wrong to have to apologize for a… He takes a long drink and forgets his name for a bit. Never long enough.
So here he is, Greg thinks, on John’s behalf of course, because no man should have to drink alone…
Especially after last time. Greg shudders but can’t help recalling it in startling clarity.
If he hadn’t come along John would have wound up drunk and staggering off to 221B again like had the week before. Greg didn’t need a repeat, not this week, not with the divorce papers still warm and finalized in his pocket and still smelling of his wife-EX-wife’s, perfume where her wrist had rubbed the pages as she briskly signed their life away.
No, once was enough-a lifetime’s worth of trauma like that. Christ, he can still hear John’s frantic breath in his ear over the phone;
“Greg-Greg-I-I saw him… Jesus-Oh, Jesus Christ I saw him!”
No, didn’t need a repeat thanks. Not ever.
He’d had to go round to 221B and collect John, who was sitting on the stair white as a sheet, Mrs. Hudson hovering over him with tears in her eyes and her fingers tapping out a marching rhythm on her lips as she tried to compose herself in spite of his babbling.
John sitting there with a half empty brandy glass in one hand-as if he’d needed more alcohol-and his other curled to his lips.
The door at the top of the stairs was open and the lights were on. Greg didn’t have to be a genius to know what had happened. That John had got pissed, developed a big head and gone up the stairs to face the empty flat and lost his nerve.
“I saw him… Fuck-He was-was all-all the blood-he was all bloody and-and-and he-he l-looked at me. Looked me in the eyes w-with all this blood on his face-“ He curled his fingers like claws and made a circular motion over his own face, his eyes still impossibly wide. Sweat beading on his brow and upper lip and his ashy skin was cold to the touch; “He… s-said m-my name-My NAME!”
Mrs. Hudson stifled a sob into her fists and fluttered quickly away to her own flat and shut the door.
Greg took the brandy away and downed it himself, placing the empty glass on the stair by John’s hip and clapped his shoulder lightly; “Stay here, I-I’ll be back,” And he ascended the stairs, heart in his throat because part of him wanted to believe that he’d step over the threshold and Sherlock would be lounging despondently on the couch like a fainting damsel, all thin sharp angles and rumpled blue silk. But the flat was empty and smelled stale and disused even though some sour energy still hung about the place. Like that sensation one got under their skin when Sherlock was too close and thinking too quickly.
He clicked the lights off, overwhelmed by a cold, WATCHED, sensation as he strode through the dark toward the door. Almost as if the shadows were alive in the corners of the room and followed him.
He shut the door with a bang, as if expecting some red-eyed monstrosity like that… that HOUND thing from the spring… Christ, that thing still gave him nightmares. He shivered, feeling something cold and similar to fog creeping under and around the edges of the door and pulling at him like octopus tentacles.
He didn’t turn his back on the door for fear of it, but made it down the steps to John, hooked both hands under the doctor’s arm and hauled him up.
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He and John had spent a sleepless night in the small room Greg had taken out across town. A worn, dilapidated thing, but all he could afford considering his recent legal… problems.
John sat there carefully sipping a glass of water and staring wide eyed into the corners of the room for three hours before he leaned over his knees and rubbed his face; “I-I can’t get him out of my head, Greg… I-I’m going mad.”
“You’re drunk, and you’re in shock, not a good mixture on any day…” he took a deep breath and rubbed his hands on his knees; “Look, you can stay if you like, just promise me you won’t do anything stupid like that again… and if you get the urge, call me first, right? Last thing I bloody well want is a call that you’ve…” He let the sentence hang unfinished in the air and rubbed his face instead.
And that was how he’d wound up here. Drinking with John Watson and hoping neither of them got brave enough to go back to The Old Flat and face all of Sherlock’s things, and that heavy lingering presence of him that crept like liquid shadows in the edges of the room.
Christ. Greg had never been one to believe in ghost stories, but he couldn’t believe that what he’d felt, just in the flat for the seconds it took to turn off the lights, was his imagination. He didn’t like it, and had convinced himself it was just a lingering side effect of that vaporous poison he’d inhaled not so very long ago in Dartmoor. Hadn’t John said it could last months? Linger in one’s fatty tissues? He had lost weight recently, what’s to say that it wasn’t just his ‘fatty tissues’ releasing it?
And then John’s phone had lit up and given a ring.
John picked it up and studied it, then his brows drew down curiously and he’d huffed as he brought it to his ear.
“Hullo?” His face scrunched up pensively. “Yes? I-I can’t hear you you’ll have to speak up?”
Greg watched him silently, since there was nothing else to watch.
“Listen, I can’t hear you. There’s too much interference. You’ll have to call ba-“
And then he’d gone white… His knuckles popped and his free hand came up and gripped Greg’s forearm tightly. He took a careful breath and spoke in a low, coldly authoritative tone. Almost angry-no, who was Greg kidding. John was suddenly furious.
“Who is this?”
Greg watched him, the hackles on the back of his neck rising as John’s fingers squeezed his sleeve harder.
John’s lower lip quivered and his eyes hardened; “You sick bastard… I don’t know who you are but-“
“John- me… p-please… Something wrong… can’t-need you-“
The white noise flared and for half a breath John heard what sounded like a scream or the deafening roar of a waterfall, sobbing and then; “John… John, I… Please, I need you… Don’t let me fall.”
And the phone made a soft blip in his ear and powered down.
John was shaking, he felt sick and Greg had to physically help him to the toilet and scoop cold water over the back of his neck to keep him from fainting.
“Who was it? Some prank caller? I’ve had a few of those-people think they’re clever. They’re idiots… You can-you can have your sister call and get the number changed. I had to mine-“
John shook his head but didn’t say anything. Didn’t open his mouth and blurt out that he’d recognized the voice on the other end of the phone. That it had been faint, weak and sounded so lost amid the white noise, but there had been no denying it. His heart wouldn’t let him deny it.
But how was he supposed to tell Lestrade that he’d got a call from a dead man?
“John, you’re white as paste. What’d the bastard say?”
John shook his head; “Just take me home…”
Greg nodded slowly and steadied a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t say another word until he was leading John into his tiny room. Worse than a bedsit really because John’s things were in boxes in the corner, boxes that still smelled strongly of Sherlock and it was no wonder he hadn’t had time to go through them.
John’s leg shook weakly and he dropped to sit on his bed, elbows on knees face in his hands. He breathed deeply, slowly and spoke just as carefully. Picking his words and biting them out so they didn’t tremble on his tongue; “That was the second call I’ve had like that… White noise and if I listen close enough maybe I can hear something in the background… Like whispers in the rain-“
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“-That was the first time anyone’s actually spoke… Before it’s always just been hints of words… things I’m not sure I heard or possibly imagined,” He hesitates, “The reason I went over There, last week was this,” He pulls his phone out again and his hands shake as he scrolls through the menus and pulls up a text message. “The message is blank, but that’s not what bothers me,” He holds the phone out without looking at Greg and waits for the ex-detective inspector to take it.
When he does, it takes him a moment to be sure what he’s looking at and when he gets it he looks up at John in confusion before he hands it back.
“That’s Sherlock’s number…”
John nods into his palms, then slowly, with a shaking hand, reaches into his inner coat pocket and pulls out the pink monstrosity. “I left it in the flat the day of the funeral… And when I got inside, it was exactly where I’d left it and there was an even layer of dust over it so no one’s tampered with it. The battery was spent, it still is… Won’t hold a charge.”
“Faulty battery?”
John turned the phone over in his hands. “I’ve had it to a repair shop… I plug it in, it charges. Then I can sit here and watch the power level drop in a matter of minutes. Each time it does that I get a new text… From this phone,” He holds it up for emphasis. “And before you ask, no. It’s not Mycroft… I’ve called and he’s not in his office. His flat is empty, even that assistant of his has vanished.”
“Maybe he got the hint and pissed off.”
John took a slow breath but didn’t reply. He focused on his own words. “I know it’s possible someone’s doing it to get to me. I know it’s more than possible, and until tonight I was absolutely convinced it was only some-some heartless-“ His voice catches and he swallows the words, the rage back down and folds his hands around the phone; “This sounds insane, but Sherlock… I need more evidence than a few texts and a call…”
“John, we’re not going back there-“
“Greg-“
“-Not tonight… promise me you won’t go over there in this condition… Just-just sleep it off tonight,” He sighs and rubs his eyes wearily; “Sleep it off tonight and tomorrow I’ll call Clarke... He was always fond of Sherlock, even if they never interacted but in passing. He might be able to get you in a lab and you can find out where the texts are coming from.
Greg has a feeling, a sick gut feeling that he knows who it is and it scares him. The bastard could just be doing it to drive John mad. Pile so much stress upon him that he snaps and it wouldn’t take much, not now it wouldn’t. John’s been on a razor’s edge for weeks, unable to accept it, unable to comprehend the why and the how because the facts just don’t line up.
The facts just don’t line up!
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And the facts… God, they’re all over the place, but there’s no proof! Any chance they had of proving anything died with Sherlock Holmes. And now even Mycroft has disappeared somewhere. Oh, Greg wants to wring his neck but he can’t, the world feels empty and dark and hopeless and now there’s THIS!
Some sick bastard is tormenting John and Greg won’t have that a second longer. He holds out his hand and takes the pink phone from him; “I’ll see what Clarke can do… You-you just don’t worry about it, get some rest… I’ll come round tomorrow afternoon before I leave-“
“You’re leaving?” John lifts his head and blinks at him through bloodshot eyes.
Greg sighs and rubs his neck; “I’m goin’ to stay with my sister… ‘needed a change of scenery. She has a guest house she said I can borrow until I’m ‘back on my feet’ whatever that means…” He chuckles and it’s a humourless sound. “You look like you could use a holiday as well… why don’t you come with? Excellent food and my brother in law may be a git, but he said he’d give me a job working security and I know security is a far cry from Detective Inspector, but it’s the best I’ll be able to get any time soon…” He rubs his face miserably because he knows John won’t come no matter how nice he makes it sound. He’ll be staying in a converted garage and working as a security guard over a construction site… Glorious idn’t it… Christ.
“John…”
“Greg,” He looks up and there’s no mercy in his stare. He won’t come along he’d sooner sit here in this hole and rot.
Greg sighs again and rubs his face, stands and pats his pockets down; “Right… I’m still stopping in tomorrow, so if you’re not going to be here at least leave a note.”
John nods and hides his face in his hands again.
Greg leaves without another word.
John curls up on his bed without even bothering to undress and falls asleep with his arms tangled about his chest and his knees drawn up.
He dreams he’s back in Baker Street sitting in his chair and Sherlock is sprawled across the couch, pale and shivering.
“What have you done to yourself this time?”
He forgets everything else.
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The poor boys, though. I'm not sure if I feel worse for John or Sherlock at this point. :( Love the interaction between John and Greg, btw!
As a tiny nitpicky note, I've noticed a sudden rise in little grammar issues--mostly omitting a comma and similar. It's not enough to drive me away, to be sure, but it does occasionally interrupt the flow of reading. :P
Anyway, great work! The build-up and suspense is excellent. I'm really looking forward to the next Sherlock chapter. :)
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My wife was supposed to look it over for me, but she's recently given birth so that's out of the question now. I can't blame her though, I wouldn't want to pick over a fanfiction after I'd just passed something the size of a melon either. XD
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