Sherlock Fic: The Bitterness of One Who's Left Alone (Sherlock, Molly, John; R)
Title: The Bitterness of One Who's Left Alone
Word Count: ~6k
Rating: R
Fandom: Sherlock
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock, Molly, John. Brief John/Molly. Implied Sherlock/John.
Warnings (Non-Con/Dub-Con/RPF etc): Spoilers for 2x03, mentioned character death, mentions of substance abuse, dark themes, implied sexual situations, sexual refs, swearing.
Summary: It had been hard on all of them, in different ways. That’s what Sherlock always did. He rushed through and the change is barely noticeable until he’s either gone or back again.
A/N: This is for Rose, who suggested the attic related insanity. It kind of deviated from that and got a lot bigger than I expected. Hope you still like it xx Title and cut text taken from Disarm by Smashing Pumpkins. I'm also using this for my Big Bang submission at fandomverse.
It had been unbelievably easy to smuggle him out of the hospital. After all, who pays attention to a pathologist pushing a cart with a body shape on it covered in a white sheet? Obviously a dead body, right? Wrong. But he wasn’t going to start pointing that out to those people wrongly assuming he was dead because that would have been counterproductive to him trying to be dead.
It should have been harder trying to push a dead body into the back seat of her car but what with the police confusing everybody out front, who paid attention to the dark corner of a car park where it looked like someone was trying to steal a protesting corpse.
“Will you stop pulling at the sheet?” Sherlock whispered loudly, clinging onto said sheet for dear life.
“Why won’t you just let go of it? It’s going to get caught in the door like that!” Molly tugged the sheet again and he lost his grip on it. “Oh, that’s why.” She made her best attempt at adverting her eyes and successfully turned a rather painful shade of pink.
“Corpses don’t wear clothes. Besides they’ll be needed for evidence.”
“I-I guess. I’ll just...go take the trolley back.”
“A brilliant idea.”
And that was how it started. How he wound up with no home, no clothes and no friends. Well, no friend except Molly, who let’s face it, wasn’t that interested in friendship. It made for an awkward car ride and an even more awkward request.
“Can I live with you?”
“Erm...” Molly flailed, trying to process the enormity of the situation while trying not to crash her car.
“Good. I’ll need to keep out of the public eye for a while. They’ll no doubt come looking for me. Have you got somewhere people wouldn’t usually look for house guests?”
“I’ve got a loft? It’s converted but not many people...”
“That will do.” He interrupted her again, throwing the car back into unsteady silence.
After a few minutes of watching the London skyline, he got bored. He glanced over to Molly, falling back into an old habit. Sweat had damped her forehead, her pupils still slightly blown and her shoulders were tense, she was making an effort to sit like that, with her breasts shoved forward. Her breathing was unsteady and shallow; she was trying to make herself look thinner than she was. Her thighs were pressed together; she either needed the bathroom or was trying to ignore sexual arousal. Probably the latter. Put together, Sherlock could only imagine one possible explanation.
“I am not going to have sex with you.”
“I had gathered that by now, thank you, Sherlock.”
He went back to staring out of the window until they pulled up outside her house. He followed her mutely, still clinging onto his sheet as she led him through her home, needlessly pointing out which room was which.
“Molly, if you could, I’d very much like my clothes.” He hinted as she pulled down the ladder for the loft. “I can manage from here.”
“What about ‘evidence’?”
“Different clothes. I slipped the key to the apartment into your coat.”
She checked her pocket and pulled out a key. She wasn’t even surprised.
“What about John? What am I going to say to him?”
Sherlock’s jaw clenched, barely noticeable, at the sound of John’s name.
“He won’t be there, not yet. And if he is, tell him its part of your grieving process.”
He watched as she tried to come up with alternative solutions, each of which he batted down before she’d even finished pitching them. He needed his clothes, apparently. She relented in the end.
He made his way up the ladder, an impressive feat in nothing but a sheet.
-x-
“Sherlock?” Molly yelled, as she came through the door, struggling with a laundry bag. She’d made it halfway up the stairs before he showed his face and even then he didn’t offer to help.
“One set of clothes would have sufficed, you know.” Sherlock said when she got to the top. He snatched the bag off her. “This is last week’s laundry; I recognise the red wine stain on this shirt, John...” He stopped suddenly, the anecdote seeming suddenly scared.
“Yes, well, in order to seem like less of a freak, I stole this...” She pulled a crumpled ticket from her pocket. “from a kitchen draw while I was making tea. I figure state he’s in, it’ll be a while before he remembers to count his shirts.”
“Why was he there? No, stupid question, he lives there, perfectly logical. What state was he in?” He watched as she gave him a strange look, like she was trying to see through his skin into his mind.
“What state do you think he was in?”
“I imagine he’s probably mildly put out by this morning’s events.”
“Really?” She shakes her head and starts descending the stairs.
“What state was he in?!” He shouts after her.
When she doesn’t answer, he chalks it up to another social faux pas, an occurrence he is used to. He doesn’t follow her down, that’d be too much of a show of desperation. He doesn’t need to know about John. He tells himself that knowing won’t change what is actually happening to either one of them.
-x-
There is no window in the attic, just an overcompensation of artificial light. There is also no cigarettes or quick fixes from nicotine patches. There’s nowhere to look for them because there’s nobody that would hide them from him.
There’s no window to look out of, no rain or wind shaking it, no sunlight streaming through it.
He feels like a mouse caught by a small girl and smuggled into a shoebox. He wonders if whoever built this house remembered to leave air holes.
Molly still hasn’t told him about John.
It’s only been seven minutes and twenty-six seconds.
-x-
By the time night fell, he was metaphorically climbing the walls. He braved the risks and climbed down the ladder.
He found Molly in her kitchen, cooking. He took in the big pot and the stack of vegetable skins on a chopping board nearby.
“I don’t like anything derived from a vegetable stock.” He said by way of announcing his presence. Molly jumped almost visibly.
“It’s stew and it’s all I’ve got that isn’t made for one.” She muttered quietly and lifted the lid of the pot, letting Sherlock peer in, distaste apparent on his face.
“What kind of state was John in?” He tried to sound conversational.
“He was upset. Distraught even.” She relented, reading volumes into how hard it was for Sherlock to even ask, just by the way he had to fight to appear to be only mildly interested. That was one good thing to come out of her doomed crush on him; she could read a lot into tiny differences.
“Why?” He asked, almost too quickly.
“Because of you, what you did.” He flinched slightly and she winced. “That came out wrong. All I meant is he thinks you’re dead, he misses you.”
When she let the silence hang for a few seconds she noticed that he was staring fixedly at a dent in her wall. She chanced her luck, hoping to catch him off guard. “Do you miss him?”
She noticed another small movement in his jaw and his hold body seemed to tense suddenly.
“I don’t want any stew. I’m not hungry.” He walked past her, each step seeming impossibly even and measured. She would have rolled her eyes if she wasn’t so concerned.
-x-
She didn’t see him for a week. He didn’t come down and she regretted the little flickable piece of wood that acted as a lock on the little hatch into her attic.
Because of her job, she was very aware that in theory, due to lack of water, he should be dead up there but she her fears were comforted by the bouts of creaks that accompanied his pacing.
When he came down he didn’t look all that different. He looked a little drawn but other than that there were no indicators of him having not left the same room in a week.
“Morning?” She ventured.
“Why aren’t you at work?” He asked instead of greeting her back.
“Ah, so that’s how you’re doing it. I knew you couldn’t have stayed up there like that.”
“Irrelevant. Why aren’t you at work?”
“Saturday.”
“Is it?” He asked absently, he looked like being down here was irritating him.
“Yes.”
He nodded and turned to leave, whatever plan aborted by her presence.
“Sherlock, wait.” She was quite surprised when he actually turned. “You don’t have to be like this. You can come down and talk. I promise, whatever is going on in your overcomplicated head, I’ll listen to it.”
“I...” He looked down at his bare feet and for a second Molly thought he was going to cry or talk to her or something but he just shook his head. “...can’t.”
-x-
Back in the attic, he felt like he could breathe again. He didn’t have to explain himself or share his feelings. He could just lie back on his bed and let his eyes trace over the letters on the ceiling. He could extend his hand and try to reach the letter’s, mimicking his own handwriting in the air.
They all spelt out the same word, the same name. John.
-x-
There were dra backs to having an advanced mind. Sure, you could whittle away hours of boredom in your own personal palace but in reality, it was just a larger playground for all those thoughts and memories that made him want to fall back into cigarettes and narcotics, easy fixes and dreamless sleeps. But it was a harder beast to tame than any previous addiction. It was masochism. His brain kept throwing him on his own sword and he couldn’t stay away from the delicious agony of thinking about him.
What kind of a state was he in?
He could see various ideas of addictions for John. He liked a pint which made Sherlock cast him into alcoholism, drowning sorrows and drowning out Sherlock. He’d seemed shocked; although he recovered it well, at the idea of Sherlock’s own dabble in illegal substances so that ruled out that addiction, his mind lamenting the loss of a powerful image. He cast John down and down, further in despair. He didn’t get a kick out of imagining his friend suffering but a tiny voice in his head shushed and soothed him. You’ll make it all better. You’ll pick him up again when this is over. That’s what kept the torturous images unravelling in his mind.
Sherlock knew John’s real addiction and it was the only one he couldn’t bear to imagine. John would fall back into his old habits, his old life. He’d become once again the soldier without a cause that relied too heavily on blaming his PTSD and his psychosomatic limp. John’s addiction was wallowing and self-pity. An unspoken judgement he’d made the very first night he’d invited him along to a crime scene. He’d been very proud to be the one to have pulled him out from all that. He refused to admit that the most likely thing John would be doing in his absence was nothing.
-x-
For two months he lived like that. Stealing scraps out of Molly’s fridge when she was at work and pushing away any comfort she tried to give him until she stopped bothering. His walls were covered in letters, to the point there was more black than white and there was no longer a single working biro in the house.
His thoughts revolved around various made up realities in which John’s life took various downward spirals, each becoming more real to him than stories of how John was actually doing, related to him by Molly as he’d take the stairs two at a time, not wanting to hear.
He’d catch snatches of ‘fine’ and ‘coping’ but he blocked them out. He couldn’t fix fine and coping. He wasn’t needed if John was fine.
-x-
“Go and find out how he is.” Sherlock said from the living room doorway, wrapped in a different sheet and making Molly spill her tea.
“Sherlock, it’s been months. Surely you could just...” She was cut off by a sharp look.
“I can’t.” He said in a tone as sharp as the look had been.
“Why not?” She asked, exasperated. Having a flatmate was one thing but she couldn’t comprehend how John had lived with him all that time. He barely spoke; he rarely showed his face and all he ever wanted from her somehow related back to himself and John. It was like expecting social manners from a panda, she supposed. Sherlock never had been the usual man.
“You know why.” He looked at her as if she was being obtuse on purpose. If anything she’d say the exact opposite was more likely. Sherlock seemed defiant not to admit he could just go home.
“He’s dead. Moriarty I mean. And he may have been powerful and he may have been obsessed with you but honey,” She used the term as lightly as she could, aware of his disdain for personal pet names and very aware that he knew full well how personal she felt about him. But she used it, feeling the need to mother him in some way. “I don’t think you’re so important that his people would still care about you. In fact, seeing how his money disappeared with him, as he didn’t ‘really’ exist, I doubt anyone still cares about him. So...”
“No.”
“Sherlock, I swear to God, if you don’t, I’ll...” She paused, trying to regain come control.
“Yes?” Sherlock asked, knowing she had no answer. He was maddening sometimes. “Now, go and see him.”
“I am not your puppet!” She shouted, standing up, her barely regained control evaporating.
“My dear Molly, you have never been anything but.” He smiled coldly and barely recoiled when she slapped him.
She blinked back tears, her eyes and her hand stinging. It had felt good to hit him. Just for a second. If only because she was so sick of having him treat her like this and because she had finally stopped liking it.
After he crawled back into his attic, guilt seeped in. Was this fair on her? Certainly not. Was it any better for him? She doubted it.
-x-
John shuffled to the door, vaguely aware that he was still in his pyjamas. It was a Sunday, he had ready as a justification.
“Hey.” Molly said when the door inched open.
John looked about as bad as she reckoned Sherlock would, if he’d been a normal person. She wondered if later she should repeat that very though, word for word, to Sherlock. It’d be cruel but then at the moment, so was he.
“Molly.” He said surprised. He ushered her in and offered her a cup of tea.
“I’ll get it.” She offered remembering the last time John had made her tea and how disastrous that had been.
She sat nervously, listening to cups chink together before something smashed echoing through the room. She got up, running to the kitchen and taking in the sight of a grown man; one she knew was so strong, kneeling on the floor, sobbing, surrounded by broken china.
She tip-toed over the shards until she could crouch beside him, pulling him against her.
“Shh, shh. It’s only a mug.” She stroked his hair and squeezed him a bit tighter. She was a Doctor, of sorts, so she knew scared and upset animals were soothed by applying pressure to them. That’s why people liked hugs and sex so much, she reasoned.
“But...it...was his.” He spat out every word like it was painful to hold them back.
“I’m sure...” She paused, about to say she was sure he wouldn’t mind or that he could get him another before realising she couldn’t give him that comfort because to John, he had to be gone, he had to be dead. Her voice felt small in her throat. “You didn’t mean to drop it.” She finished uselessly.
“Oh, I did.” He said, his eyes not quite focused on her. “How could he do this to me! How dare he!” His shouts fought his cries for which could escape first and eventually he collapsed into her arms, screaming wordlessly through his tears.
When he ran out of energy she guided him, half asleep into his bed and left him there. It had been a long day, his best friend had died. She couldn’t think of anything he needed more than sleep right now. Except his best friend but that was out of the question, apparently.
She went back into the kitchen and cleaned the broken mug up, putting the broken pieces in a carrier bag; he didn’t need the reminder lingering in his dustbin.
She made herself a cup of tea to calm her nerves, noticing this little piece of paper on the side. A laundry ticket, perfect.
She downed the cup of tea and let herself out. On the way home she resolved not to tell Sherlock what had happened.
So from then on she made the tea.
“Can we talk about what happened?” He asked tentatively from the doorway.
“No.” She said, barely blinking. She had become accustomed to ignoring awkward situations like a pro. She handed him a cup of tea and took her own into the living room, sitting on Sherlock’s sofa because it was the only place to sit.
-x-
Sherlock sat on his bed with his back against the wall. Sharing his bed with him was every small object in the room that hadn’t been nailed down. Which was all of them. Plates, cups, glasses and dishes, as well as a good deal of cutlery laid acquired from every meal he’d stolen. Little decorational figures and vases joined those, followed by books and notepads and mere scrunched up pages from each.
The first time Molly had heard him do this; she’d threatened to kick him out, just as John had. Neither of them followed through with their threat because they couldn’t. John couldn’t because it wasn’t really his apartment and Molly just couldn’t bring herself to do it. So both learnt to hide anything that was valuable and breakable, instead planting charity shop finds around Sherlock, so that he didn’t go looking for more.
At home, he’d done this when he couldn’t solve a case, when it got under his skin and inside him and refused to be ignored. He supposed that was what other people meant when they complained about sexual frustration or PMS. He so he threw things, to try and get it out of him. He thought clearer when he was like this, like a child in the throes of a temper tantrum John always said. It usually worked.
Now, he couldn’t really explain why he was doing it. On some level he knew it was the same principal. Something under his skin, stuck in his head and eating away at him until he could think of nothing else. It was beginning to haunt him like withdrawal from an old addiction.
The first smash was always the most satisfying, any subsequent ones always felt too loud, too out of control. He shouted as he threw each thing. His demon refused to be exorcised. His dear Watson.
-x-
“You look...different.” John observed, he’d not been the first one to mention this. Since Sherlock had moved in, she’d lost some of her naiveté, some of her sweetness. It was hard to live with someone like Sherlock without becoming a little thicker skinned. But she couldn’t say that.
“I’m just...tired.”
“I know how you feel.” He admitted, not sure whether they were talking about their lives or their sleeping patterns.
“How are you doing? With this whole thing. Sources want to know.” She wasn’t quite sure why she’d been so ambiguous in her question, maybe she wanted to know what he’d say, what he thought she was talking about, whether his first thought was of Sherlock.
“What sources?” He asked, raising an eyebrow, too clever for her game.
“Just...sources.” She didn’t look at him, she couldn’t lie to him, not directly to his face.
“So, you. You want to know.” He looked at her, trying to trip her up, into saying what he wanted to hear.
“So what if I do? I’m still your friend John.”
“Yes, you said that last time and I haven’t seen you since...until today, obviously.” There was a slight note of bitterness in his voice.
“What do you want me to say? That I’m sorry? Well, I am and I am sorry for you too. I should have been stronger and I should have been a better friend but believe me, I’m going through this shit too. It’s been months, John, why can’t you just let it go?” She set down her tea and made for the door, slamming it behind her.
This had been a terrible idea. She was going to have to become a better liar in future or she’d always be put in this position, caving into Sherlock’s demands and unable to spend more than a few minutes in John’s company before shame and regret made her snap and shout at him. She brushed back a few more tears, cursing the little naive, sweet girl that still lived inside her, still making her cry at the nasty things that boys said.
-x-
Sherlock was waiting by the door when she came through it.
“Well?” He demanded, making her already short temper a little bit shorter.
“He’s fine.” She said through clenched teeth.
“Fine?”
“Yes! If you really care, you can go and see for yourself!” She ran up the stairs, more and more thankful that she had a lock on her door.
She collapsed on her bed, turning over the mess her life had become in her head. What had become of the sweet, naive Molly she used to be?
It was less than a week after the tea incident, she found herself back in John’s apartment, bottle of scotch at the ready in case he should breakdown again. When he opened the door, she couldn’t help but mention how she’d seen healthier and happier corpses at work. It got her a small, weak smile.
When she offered him a drink he pointed out his own half empty glass. She was glad to see that while he was drinking alone, he wasn’t drunk. The ice in his glass had melted substantially; he’d been nursing that glass for a while. It was a crutch, not a cure and she was happier in the knowledge that he knew that.
She poured herself a glass, not bothering with ice. Her nerves still jangling, she told herself it was to calm them.
“How are you doing? Sources want to know.” She said, going for the light approach.
“Sources?”
“I want to know.” She took a sip of her drink. She could tell herself she was doing this for Sherlock’s benefit, he hadn’t asked yet but she could tell he was working up to it, but she couldn’t tell John that.
“It’s not good.” John answered honestly, chucking back the last of his drink and handing her the glass. She filled it while he kept talking. “I can’t get over how he could do it. It was a stupid thing to do and he was too clever for it. I don’t believe what he said. He was real, I lived with him, nobody could fake being him twenty four seven, they’d go insane.” He stared into her eyes as she handed him back the glass. “Do you think he was fake?”
“Of course not. I’ve never lived with him,” she bit her lip as she lied, it was slightly easier to do with alcohol clearing her conscience for her. “But I loved him for years. He was so...inhuman but in a nice way. You knew that if he’d just love you back, he’d never do all the stupid things that normal men do. He’d never cheat and he’d never lie, he’d never pretend to love you just to get laid. Somewhere under that unthinking, sociopathic nature is a good man. A weird one but...yeah, good.”
“Was.” John sighed.
“What?” Molly’s attention brought back to him.
“Was a good man.” He corrected her.
“Oh. Right. Was a good man.”
She stared into her glass, amber liquid flickering from the light of the fire. He wasn’t crying but she could almost feel his heart hurting from across the room. She got up and walked over to him, not quite sure what she was going to do when she got to him.
She knelt beside him, taking his glass and putting it on the table.
“He was a good man and he was a good friend. I think if he was capable of loving anyone, he loved you.” She stared at the pattern on his shirt, she couldn’t look at him or she’d confess everything.
“Oh, he was capable. You should have seen the way he mooned over that Adler woman.”
“That wasn’t love. Hell, if I walked around with my bits out, I’m sure I’d have a few people mooning after me.”
“Maybe you should have tried it.” John said, a smile creeping up on his face.
“I think if he was ever going to notice me, it would have been when he declared to a room full of people that I was in love with him. He knew I loved him and he knew you did too. He just...didn’t know what to do with feelings like that.”
“You’re probably right.” There was a moment where he looked like he was going to smile again but it never quite made it. “If he knew people loved him, why did he do it?”
“He had to. Or at least he felt he had to. There was a gun aimed at his best friend, if it were the other way round, what would you have done?” She put a hand on his leg, hoping it would be comforting.
“I would have jumped. For him. Without a second thought.”
“There you go then.” She made to take her hand away but he caught it, his skin hot against hers.
“I miss him.” He said simply and she couldn’t stop herself looking up at him. A few tears had stained his face and he looked so lost, looking at her like she could fix everything.
“So do I.” She said, not really thinking, just knowing it was what she was meant to say.
The next few seconds seemed to happen very quickly. One second she’d been kneeling, the next she was rising up on her knees, stretching to meet him. One second they were talking about Sherlock and the next they weren’t talking at all. Instead he was kissing her, trying to replace what he’d lost with her.
She knew what he was doing and why. Somewhere in the back of her head she was telling herself this was wrong and that she should stop him but when she pulled away, he looked like all the weight on his shoulders had been lifted for just a moment.
Her moral compass flickered. What was the right thing to do? There was a pleading look in his eyes that reminded her of how Sherlock had looked at her the day he asked for her help. It had only been a week but it felt so much longer. She didn’t want to go back to Sherlock. Not tonight. So she stayed, she let him kiss her, let him walk her to his bedroom. She slipped out of her dress and let him claim her skin.
He needs this; she thought to herself, he needs something to drown out Sherlock. So did she.
Three loud thumps on her door brought her back to the present.
“What do you mean by ‘he’s fine’.”
“I mean he’s fine. He’s over you. The world no longer revolves around Sherlock Holmes. Get used to it.” She shouted through the door, guilt and shame twisting into anger.
He didn’t say another word and this time she didn’t cry. She didn’t have it in her.
She’d felt sorry for him, sorry for herself. She’d been weak and given into that all too human need. Then she’d gotten scared. She’d known that he’d need her, rely on her and become co-dependent. If she let him, she’d spend every moment with him, lying to him. So she ran. Left before he woke up, leaving only a note saying she was sorry, she still wanted them to be friends. She didn’t leave her number. Just in case Sherlock was to pick up, she lied to herself.
She hadn’t gone back since, in case she was weak again. She couldn’t do that to him.
When she calmed down and opened the door, Sherlock was gone. Not just from her doorway but all together. He’d left the front door open.
She went into the attic room, just in case he’d left a note.
He had in a way. She gasped when she saw the state of the room. John’s name was scratched into every available surface. All John’s clothes from that bag of laundry were mixed amongst his bed sheets, a shirt with a red wine stain covering his pillow. There were several drawings in several notebooks. Some more were scatted, scrunched up on the floor. Against the opposite wall were fragments of just about everything, but she had suspected as much.
More guilt and shame washed over her. She’d be comforting the wrong man, resenting the wrong person.
-x-
The knock came short and sharp on his door and he presumed it was Molly, either coming to apologize or wanting an apology. He knew neither would do any good, their friendship just wasn’t working anymore. He knew it was his fault.
When he opened the door, he took a sharp breath in before slamming it.
“Great John, now you’re hallucinating. And talking to yourself.” He pressed his back against the door and tried to calm himself down.
He opened the door again, expecting to see nothing and grimacing when he was wrong.
“You’re not real. You’re dead.” He told himself.
“Close. I’m not dead. I’m real.” Sherlock said, arms spread open as if he’d performed a magic trick.
“Don’t be a smartass.” John said automatically, catching himself off guard.
“Why are you fine?” He asked, pushing past him into their apartment like he’d never left.
“I...Hold on, what the hell is this?” He asked following him.
“Molly said you were fine, how can you be fine? I’ve been going out of my head and you’re fine.”
“Wait, you’ve been going out of your head?” John’s eyes widened, his brain trying to keep up with the world that had been thrown upside down. “You have been going out of your head. I’m stood here having an argument with my dead best friend!”
“I’m not dead, do keep up.” Sherlock said, sparing him a glance as he began pacing.
John fist hit him mid-pace, coming out of nowhere. “You’re supposed to be dead! You died! I saw you! I went to your funeral! There is a gravestone with your name on it!”
“It was unavoidable.” Sherlock said, wiping blood from his lip. “It’s not been easy on me, you know.”
“Oh, I’m sorry! Do share your tale of woe! Of all the cold, cruel things you’ve done, I wouldn’t have thought you were capable of this.”
“Capable of what?” Sherlock asked, keeping his mouth shut about the supposed cruel things he had done.
“Letting me think you were dead!”
“I had to!” He finally shouted; the calm exterior breaking. “It’s been no fun I assure you. I had to sit and wait, knowing you were only the other side of London. How easy it’d be get in a taxi and come here. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t risk them finding out. All I could do was sit and think. And that’s a dangerous thing to do when you’re this clever...”
“I will punch you again.” John interrupted.
“All I mean is; all I could think about was you and how you were and if you’d forgotten all about me. I’ve never had anyone be so...clingy in my mind before. This is why I don’t have friends.”
“That’s why you need friends. They care about you and you care about them. They stop you from pulling stupid shit like faking your own death and making people grieve for you.”
“That wasn’t my intention.”
“Well, that’s what damn well happens when you think you’re best friend is dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re a selfish bastard and I’m not letting you further than three feet away from me in future.” John couldn’t help but smile slightly. The fact Sherlock had actually had the common sense enough to apologise showed that something must have happened to him.
“Does that mean you forgive me?” He asked, an eyebrow arched hopefully.
“No, it means you’re an idiot. Now go and get dressed.”
Sherlock looked down at himself and belatedly remembered he was still clinging onto a sheet. He’d forgotten he was wearing it. He nodded and shuffled over to his old room, finding all of his clothes strewn across his bed.
“John?” He shouted through the door.
“Don’t ask. Just don’t.” He said, colour rising in his cheeks.
He didn’t need to ask, he remembered spending nights when he couldn’t sleep breathing in the faint reminder of John that remained in his clothes and how much better he’d felt for it.
A few feet away, everything fitted together in John’s mind. The faked death, Molly’s sudden change and the way she always looked like she wanted to tell him something.
This had been hard on all of them, in different ways. He wondered how long it’d take for everything to feel any semblance of normal. That’s what Sherlock always did. He rushed through and the change is barely noticeable until he’s either gone or back again.
-x-
Another few months pass and Molly knocks on his door again.
“I’m sorry, I should have told you.” She says as soon as it’s open. She’s thankful it was John that opened it not Sherlock, a possibility she’d only just considered.
“Do you want to come in?” He asked and she hesitated. “I was just making some tea.”
“Ok. Do you want me to make it?” She asked out of habit.
“I can manage.” He said, smiling to relieve the tension. “Sherlock’s through there.” He pointed her towards the living room.
“Great.” She said, mostly to herself. She hadn’t seen either of them since Sherlock’s resurrection and she didn’t really know what to say to either one of them.
Sherlock greeted her politely and she did the same, taking a seat on the sofa.
John brought in the tea and handed everyone a cup.
“Well, this feels as awkward as a group therapy session.” Molly said, laughing nervously.
“Yeah, Sherlock babysitters anonymous.” John said joining in the joke and laughing when Sherlock pulled a face. It wasn’t quite there but it felt almost normal.
“So...” Molly said, leaning down into her bag and pulling out several pieces of paper. “I think I’ve got a case for you.”
“Molly...” Sherlock started, reproachfully.
“It’s just a small one. I can take all the credit if you like.” She handed him a case file. He could tell just from looking that she’d stolen it from work.
“Isn’t it about time you left the apartment?” John asked, teasing him slightly.
“I thought I wasn’t allowed more than three feet from you.” Sherlock raised an eyebrow, holding his gaze while Molly choked on her tea.
“There’s a reward. I’m going to be honest here, I need the money. Someone trashed my attic conversion, naming no names.”She said when she’d recovered.
“Sherlock?” John asked, with another small smile.
“I’ll leave him to explain.” This time Molly raised her eyebrow, daring him not to take the case.
“Fine. I’ll get my coat.”
Word Count: ~6k
Rating: R
Fandom: Sherlock
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock, Molly, John. Brief John/Molly. Implied Sherlock/John.
Warnings (Non-Con/Dub-Con/RPF etc): Spoilers for 2x03, mentioned character death, mentions of substance abuse, dark themes, implied sexual situations, sexual refs, swearing.
Summary: It had been hard on all of them, in different ways. That’s what Sherlock always did. He rushed through and the change is barely noticeable until he’s either gone or back again.
A/N: This is for Rose, who suggested the attic related insanity. It kind of deviated from that and got a lot bigger than I expected. Hope you still like it xx Title and cut text taken from Disarm by Smashing Pumpkins. I'm also using this for my Big Bang submission at fandomverse.
It had been unbelievably easy to smuggle him out of the hospital. After all, who pays attention to a pathologist pushing a cart with a body shape on it covered in a white sheet? Obviously a dead body, right? Wrong. But he wasn’t going to start pointing that out to those people wrongly assuming he was dead because that would have been counterproductive to him trying to be dead.
It should have been harder trying to push a dead body into the back seat of her car but what with the police confusing everybody out front, who paid attention to the dark corner of a car park where it looked like someone was trying to steal a protesting corpse.
“Will you stop pulling at the sheet?” Sherlock whispered loudly, clinging onto said sheet for dear life.
“Why won’t you just let go of it? It’s going to get caught in the door like that!” Molly tugged the sheet again and he lost his grip on it. “Oh, that’s why.” She made her best attempt at adverting her eyes and successfully turned a rather painful shade of pink.
“Corpses don’t wear clothes. Besides they’ll be needed for evidence.”
“I-I guess. I’ll just...go take the trolley back.”
“A brilliant idea.”
And that was how it started. How he wound up with no home, no clothes and no friends. Well, no friend except Molly, who let’s face it, wasn’t that interested in friendship. It made for an awkward car ride and an even more awkward request.
“Can I live with you?”
“Erm...” Molly flailed, trying to process the enormity of the situation while trying not to crash her car.
“Good. I’ll need to keep out of the public eye for a while. They’ll no doubt come looking for me. Have you got somewhere people wouldn’t usually look for house guests?”
“I’ve got a loft? It’s converted but not many people...”
“That will do.” He interrupted her again, throwing the car back into unsteady silence.
After a few minutes of watching the London skyline, he got bored. He glanced over to Molly, falling back into an old habit. Sweat had damped her forehead, her pupils still slightly blown and her shoulders were tense, she was making an effort to sit like that, with her breasts shoved forward. Her breathing was unsteady and shallow; she was trying to make herself look thinner than she was. Her thighs were pressed together; she either needed the bathroom or was trying to ignore sexual arousal. Probably the latter. Put together, Sherlock could only imagine one possible explanation.
“I am not going to have sex with you.”
“I had gathered that by now, thank you, Sherlock.”
He went back to staring out of the window until they pulled up outside her house. He followed her mutely, still clinging onto his sheet as she led him through her home, needlessly pointing out which room was which.
“Molly, if you could, I’d very much like my clothes.” He hinted as she pulled down the ladder for the loft. “I can manage from here.”
“What about ‘evidence’?”
“Different clothes. I slipped the key to the apartment into your coat.”
She checked her pocket and pulled out a key. She wasn’t even surprised.
“What about John? What am I going to say to him?”
Sherlock’s jaw clenched, barely noticeable, at the sound of John’s name.
“He won’t be there, not yet. And if he is, tell him its part of your grieving process.”
He watched as she tried to come up with alternative solutions, each of which he batted down before she’d even finished pitching them. He needed his clothes, apparently. She relented in the end.
He made his way up the ladder, an impressive feat in nothing but a sheet.
-x-
“Sherlock?” Molly yelled, as she came through the door, struggling with a laundry bag. She’d made it halfway up the stairs before he showed his face and even then he didn’t offer to help.
“One set of clothes would have sufficed, you know.” Sherlock said when she got to the top. He snatched the bag off her. “This is last week’s laundry; I recognise the red wine stain on this shirt, John...” He stopped suddenly, the anecdote seeming suddenly scared.
“Yes, well, in order to seem like less of a freak, I stole this...” She pulled a crumpled ticket from her pocket. “from a kitchen draw while I was making tea. I figure state he’s in, it’ll be a while before he remembers to count his shirts.”
“Why was he there? No, stupid question, he lives there, perfectly logical. What state was he in?” He watched as she gave him a strange look, like she was trying to see through his skin into his mind.
“What state do you think he was in?”
“I imagine he’s probably mildly put out by this morning’s events.”
“Really?” She shakes her head and starts descending the stairs.
“What state was he in?!” He shouts after her.
When she doesn’t answer, he chalks it up to another social faux pas, an occurrence he is used to. He doesn’t follow her down, that’d be too much of a show of desperation. He doesn’t need to know about John. He tells himself that knowing won’t change what is actually happening to either one of them.
-x-
There is no window in the attic, just an overcompensation of artificial light. There is also no cigarettes or quick fixes from nicotine patches. There’s nowhere to look for them because there’s nobody that would hide them from him.
There’s no window to look out of, no rain or wind shaking it, no sunlight streaming through it.
He feels like a mouse caught by a small girl and smuggled into a shoebox. He wonders if whoever built this house remembered to leave air holes.
Molly still hasn’t told him about John.
It’s only been seven minutes and twenty-six seconds.
-x-
By the time night fell, he was metaphorically climbing the walls. He braved the risks and climbed down the ladder.
He found Molly in her kitchen, cooking. He took in the big pot and the stack of vegetable skins on a chopping board nearby.
“I don’t like anything derived from a vegetable stock.” He said by way of announcing his presence. Molly jumped almost visibly.
“It’s stew and it’s all I’ve got that isn’t made for one.” She muttered quietly and lifted the lid of the pot, letting Sherlock peer in, distaste apparent on his face.
“What kind of state was John in?” He tried to sound conversational.
“He was upset. Distraught even.” She relented, reading volumes into how hard it was for Sherlock to even ask, just by the way he had to fight to appear to be only mildly interested. That was one good thing to come out of her doomed crush on him; she could read a lot into tiny differences.
“Why?” He asked, almost too quickly.
“Because of you, what you did.” He flinched slightly and she winced. “That came out wrong. All I meant is he thinks you’re dead, he misses you.”
When she let the silence hang for a few seconds she noticed that he was staring fixedly at a dent in her wall. She chanced her luck, hoping to catch him off guard. “Do you miss him?”
She noticed another small movement in his jaw and his hold body seemed to tense suddenly.
“I don’t want any stew. I’m not hungry.” He walked past her, each step seeming impossibly even and measured. She would have rolled her eyes if she wasn’t so concerned.
-x-
She didn’t see him for a week. He didn’t come down and she regretted the little flickable piece of wood that acted as a lock on the little hatch into her attic.
Because of her job, she was very aware that in theory, due to lack of water, he should be dead up there but she her fears were comforted by the bouts of creaks that accompanied his pacing.
When he came down he didn’t look all that different. He looked a little drawn but other than that there were no indicators of him having not left the same room in a week.
“Morning?” She ventured.
“Why aren’t you at work?” He asked instead of greeting her back.
“Ah, so that’s how you’re doing it. I knew you couldn’t have stayed up there like that.”
“Irrelevant. Why aren’t you at work?”
“Saturday.”
“Is it?” He asked absently, he looked like being down here was irritating him.
“Yes.”
He nodded and turned to leave, whatever plan aborted by her presence.
“Sherlock, wait.” She was quite surprised when he actually turned. “You don’t have to be like this. You can come down and talk. I promise, whatever is going on in your overcomplicated head, I’ll listen to it.”
“I...” He looked down at his bare feet and for a second Molly thought he was going to cry or talk to her or something but he just shook his head. “...can’t.”
-x-
Back in the attic, he felt like he could breathe again. He didn’t have to explain himself or share his feelings. He could just lie back on his bed and let his eyes trace over the letters on the ceiling. He could extend his hand and try to reach the letter’s, mimicking his own handwriting in the air.
They all spelt out the same word, the same name. John.
-x-
There were dra backs to having an advanced mind. Sure, you could whittle away hours of boredom in your own personal palace but in reality, it was just a larger playground for all those thoughts and memories that made him want to fall back into cigarettes and narcotics, easy fixes and dreamless sleeps. But it was a harder beast to tame than any previous addiction. It was masochism. His brain kept throwing him on his own sword and he couldn’t stay away from the delicious agony of thinking about him.
What kind of a state was he in?
He could see various ideas of addictions for John. He liked a pint which made Sherlock cast him into alcoholism, drowning sorrows and drowning out Sherlock. He’d seemed shocked; although he recovered it well, at the idea of Sherlock’s own dabble in illegal substances so that ruled out that addiction, his mind lamenting the loss of a powerful image. He cast John down and down, further in despair. He didn’t get a kick out of imagining his friend suffering but a tiny voice in his head shushed and soothed him. You’ll make it all better. You’ll pick him up again when this is over. That’s what kept the torturous images unravelling in his mind.
Sherlock knew John’s real addiction and it was the only one he couldn’t bear to imagine. John would fall back into his old habits, his old life. He’d become once again the soldier without a cause that relied too heavily on blaming his PTSD and his psychosomatic limp. John’s addiction was wallowing and self-pity. An unspoken judgement he’d made the very first night he’d invited him along to a crime scene. He’d been very proud to be the one to have pulled him out from all that. He refused to admit that the most likely thing John would be doing in his absence was nothing.
-x-
For two months he lived like that. Stealing scraps out of Molly’s fridge when she was at work and pushing away any comfort she tried to give him until she stopped bothering. His walls were covered in letters, to the point there was more black than white and there was no longer a single working biro in the house.
His thoughts revolved around various made up realities in which John’s life took various downward spirals, each becoming more real to him than stories of how John was actually doing, related to him by Molly as he’d take the stairs two at a time, not wanting to hear.
He’d catch snatches of ‘fine’ and ‘coping’ but he blocked them out. He couldn’t fix fine and coping. He wasn’t needed if John was fine.
-x-
“Go and find out how he is.” Sherlock said from the living room doorway, wrapped in a different sheet and making Molly spill her tea.
“Sherlock, it’s been months. Surely you could just...” She was cut off by a sharp look.
“I can’t.” He said in a tone as sharp as the look had been.
“Why not?” She asked, exasperated. Having a flatmate was one thing but she couldn’t comprehend how John had lived with him all that time. He barely spoke; he rarely showed his face and all he ever wanted from her somehow related back to himself and John. It was like expecting social manners from a panda, she supposed. Sherlock never had been the usual man.
“You know why.” He looked at her as if she was being obtuse on purpose. If anything she’d say the exact opposite was more likely. Sherlock seemed defiant not to admit he could just go home.
“He’s dead. Moriarty I mean. And he may have been powerful and he may have been obsessed with you but honey,” She used the term as lightly as she could, aware of his disdain for personal pet names and very aware that he knew full well how personal she felt about him. But she used it, feeling the need to mother him in some way. “I don’t think you’re so important that his people would still care about you. In fact, seeing how his money disappeared with him, as he didn’t ‘really’ exist, I doubt anyone still cares about him. So...”
“No.”
“Sherlock, I swear to God, if you don’t, I’ll...” She paused, trying to regain come control.
“Yes?” Sherlock asked, knowing she had no answer. He was maddening sometimes. “Now, go and see him.”
“I am not your puppet!” She shouted, standing up, her barely regained control evaporating.
“My dear Molly, you have never been anything but.” He smiled coldly and barely recoiled when she slapped him.
She blinked back tears, her eyes and her hand stinging. It had felt good to hit him. Just for a second. If only because she was so sick of having him treat her like this and because she had finally stopped liking it.
After he crawled back into his attic, guilt seeped in. Was this fair on her? Certainly not. Was it any better for him? She doubted it.
-x-
John shuffled to the door, vaguely aware that he was still in his pyjamas. It was a Sunday, he had ready as a justification.
“Hey.” Molly said when the door inched open.
John looked about as bad as she reckoned Sherlock would, if he’d been a normal person. She wondered if later she should repeat that very though, word for word, to Sherlock. It’d be cruel but then at the moment, so was he.
“Molly.” He said surprised. He ushered her in and offered her a cup of tea.
“I’ll get it.” She offered remembering the last time John had made her tea and how disastrous that had been.
She sat nervously, listening to cups chink together before something smashed echoing through the room. She got up, running to the kitchen and taking in the sight of a grown man; one she knew was so strong, kneeling on the floor, sobbing, surrounded by broken china.
She tip-toed over the shards until she could crouch beside him, pulling him against her.
“Shh, shh. It’s only a mug.” She stroked his hair and squeezed him a bit tighter. She was a Doctor, of sorts, so she knew scared and upset animals were soothed by applying pressure to them. That’s why people liked hugs and sex so much, she reasoned.
“But...it...was his.” He spat out every word like it was painful to hold them back.
“I’m sure...” She paused, about to say she was sure he wouldn’t mind or that he could get him another before realising she couldn’t give him that comfort because to John, he had to be gone, he had to be dead. Her voice felt small in her throat. “You didn’t mean to drop it.” She finished uselessly.
“Oh, I did.” He said, his eyes not quite focused on her. “How could he do this to me! How dare he!” His shouts fought his cries for which could escape first and eventually he collapsed into her arms, screaming wordlessly through his tears.
When he ran out of energy she guided him, half asleep into his bed and left him there. It had been a long day, his best friend had died. She couldn’t think of anything he needed more than sleep right now. Except his best friend but that was out of the question, apparently.
She went back into the kitchen and cleaned the broken mug up, putting the broken pieces in a carrier bag; he didn’t need the reminder lingering in his dustbin.
She made herself a cup of tea to calm her nerves, noticing this little piece of paper on the side. A laundry ticket, perfect.
She downed the cup of tea and let herself out. On the way home she resolved not to tell Sherlock what had happened.
So from then on she made the tea.
“Can we talk about what happened?” He asked tentatively from the doorway.
“No.” She said, barely blinking. She had become accustomed to ignoring awkward situations like a pro. She handed him a cup of tea and took her own into the living room, sitting on Sherlock’s sofa because it was the only place to sit.
-x-
Sherlock sat on his bed with his back against the wall. Sharing his bed with him was every small object in the room that hadn’t been nailed down. Which was all of them. Plates, cups, glasses and dishes, as well as a good deal of cutlery laid acquired from every meal he’d stolen. Little decorational figures and vases joined those, followed by books and notepads and mere scrunched up pages from each.
The first time Molly had heard him do this; she’d threatened to kick him out, just as John had. Neither of them followed through with their threat because they couldn’t. John couldn’t because it wasn’t really his apartment and Molly just couldn’t bring herself to do it. So both learnt to hide anything that was valuable and breakable, instead planting charity shop finds around Sherlock, so that he didn’t go looking for more.
At home, he’d done this when he couldn’t solve a case, when it got under his skin and inside him and refused to be ignored. He supposed that was what other people meant when they complained about sexual frustration or PMS. He so he threw things, to try and get it out of him. He thought clearer when he was like this, like a child in the throes of a temper tantrum John always said. It usually worked.
Now, he couldn’t really explain why he was doing it. On some level he knew it was the same principal. Something under his skin, stuck in his head and eating away at him until he could think of nothing else. It was beginning to haunt him like withdrawal from an old addiction.
The first smash was always the most satisfying, any subsequent ones always felt too loud, too out of control. He shouted as he threw each thing. His demon refused to be exorcised. His dear Watson.
-x-
“You look...different.” John observed, he’d not been the first one to mention this. Since Sherlock had moved in, she’d lost some of her naiveté, some of her sweetness. It was hard to live with someone like Sherlock without becoming a little thicker skinned. But she couldn’t say that.
“I’m just...tired.”
“I know how you feel.” He admitted, not sure whether they were talking about their lives or their sleeping patterns.
“How are you doing? With this whole thing. Sources want to know.” She wasn’t quite sure why she’d been so ambiguous in her question, maybe she wanted to know what he’d say, what he thought she was talking about, whether his first thought was of Sherlock.
“What sources?” He asked, raising an eyebrow, too clever for her game.
“Just...sources.” She didn’t look at him, she couldn’t lie to him, not directly to his face.
“So, you. You want to know.” He looked at her, trying to trip her up, into saying what he wanted to hear.
“So what if I do? I’m still your friend John.”
“Yes, you said that last time and I haven’t seen you since...until today, obviously.” There was a slight note of bitterness in his voice.
“What do you want me to say? That I’m sorry? Well, I am and I am sorry for you too. I should have been stronger and I should have been a better friend but believe me, I’m going through this shit too. It’s been months, John, why can’t you just let it go?” She set down her tea and made for the door, slamming it behind her.
This had been a terrible idea. She was going to have to become a better liar in future or she’d always be put in this position, caving into Sherlock’s demands and unable to spend more than a few minutes in John’s company before shame and regret made her snap and shout at him. She brushed back a few more tears, cursing the little naive, sweet girl that still lived inside her, still making her cry at the nasty things that boys said.
-x-
Sherlock was waiting by the door when she came through it.
“Well?” He demanded, making her already short temper a little bit shorter.
“He’s fine.” She said through clenched teeth.
“Fine?”
“Yes! If you really care, you can go and see for yourself!” She ran up the stairs, more and more thankful that she had a lock on her door.
She collapsed on her bed, turning over the mess her life had become in her head. What had become of the sweet, naive Molly she used to be?
It was less than a week after the tea incident, she found herself back in John’s apartment, bottle of scotch at the ready in case he should breakdown again. When he opened the door, she couldn’t help but mention how she’d seen healthier and happier corpses at work. It got her a small, weak smile.
When she offered him a drink he pointed out his own half empty glass. She was glad to see that while he was drinking alone, he wasn’t drunk. The ice in his glass had melted substantially; he’d been nursing that glass for a while. It was a crutch, not a cure and she was happier in the knowledge that he knew that.
She poured herself a glass, not bothering with ice. Her nerves still jangling, she told herself it was to calm them.
“How are you doing? Sources want to know.” She said, going for the light approach.
“Sources?”
“I want to know.” She took a sip of her drink. She could tell herself she was doing this for Sherlock’s benefit, he hadn’t asked yet but she could tell he was working up to it, but she couldn’t tell John that.
“It’s not good.” John answered honestly, chucking back the last of his drink and handing her the glass. She filled it while he kept talking. “I can’t get over how he could do it. It was a stupid thing to do and he was too clever for it. I don’t believe what he said. He was real, I lived with him, nobody could fake being him twenty four seven, they’d go insane.” He stared into her eyes as she handed him back the glass. “Do you think he was fake?”
“Of course not. I’ve never lived with him,” she bit her lip as she lied, it was slightly easier to do with alcohol clearing her conscience for her. “But I loved him for years. He was so...inhuman but in a nice way. You knew that if he’d just love you back, he’d never do all the stupid things that normal men do. He’d never cheat and he’d never lie, he’d never pretend to love you just to get laid. Somewhere under that unthinking, sociopathic nature is a good man. A weird one but...yeah, good.”
“Was.” John sighed.
“What?” Molly’s attention brought back to him.
“Was a good man.” He corrected her.
“Oh. Right. Was a good man.”
She stared into her glass, amber liquid flickering from the light of the fire. He wasn’t crying but she could almost feel his heart hurting from across the room. She got up and walked over to him, not quite sure what she was going to do when she got to him.
She knelt beside him, taking his glass and putting it on the table.
“He was a good man and he was a good friend. I think if he was capable of loving anyone, he loved you.” She stared at the pattern on his shirt, she couldn’t look at him or she’d confess everything.
“Oh, he was capable. You should have seen the way he mooned over that Adler woman.”
“That wasn’t love. Hell, if I walked around with my bits out, I’m sure I’d have a few people mooning after me.”
“Maybe you should have tried it.” John said, a smile creeping up on his face.
“I think if he was ever going to notice me, it would have been when he declared to a room full of people that I was in love with him. He knew I loved him and he knew you did too. He just...didn’t know what to do with feelings like that.”
“You’re probably right.” There was a moment where he looked like he was going to smile again but it never quite made it. “If he knew people loved him, why did he do it?”
“He had to. Or at least he felt he had to. There was a gun aimed at his best friend, if it were the other way round, what would you have done?” She put a hand on his leg, hoping it would be comforting.
“I would have jumped. For him. Without a second thought.”
“There you go then.” She made to take her hand away but he caught it, his skin hot against hers.
“I miss him.” He said simply and she couldn’t stop herself looking up at him. A few tears had stained his face and he looked so lost, looking at her like she could fix everything.
“So do I.” She said, not really thinking, just knowing it was what she was meant to say.
The next few seconds seemed to happen very quickly. One second she’d been kneeling, the next she was rising up on her knees, stretching to meet him. One second they were talking about Sherlock and the next they weren’t talking at all. Instead he was kissing her, trying to replace what he’d lost with her.
She knew what he was doing and why. Somewhere in the back of her head she was telling herself this was wrong and that she should stop him but when she pulled away, he looked like all the weight on his shoulders had been lifted for just a moment.
Her moral compass flickered. What was the right thing to do? There was a pleading look in his eyes that reminded her of how Sherlock had looked at her the day he asked for her help. It had only been a week but it felt so much longer. She didn’t want to go back to Sherlock. Not tonight. So she stayed, she let him kiss her, let him walk her to his bedroom. She slipped out of her dress and let him claim her skin.
He needs this; she thought to herself, he needs something to drown out Sherlock. So did she.
Three loud thumps on her door brought her back to the present.
“What do you mean by ‘he’s fine’.”
“I mean he’s fine. He’s over you. The world no longer revolves around Sherlock Holmes. Get used to it.” She shouted through the door, guilt and shame twisting into anger.
He didn’t say another word and this time she didn’t cry. She didn’t have it in her.
She’d felt sorry for him, sorry for herself. She’d been weak and given into that all too human need. Then she’d gotten scared. She’d known that he’d need her, rely on her and become co-dependent. If she let him, she’d spend every moment with him, lying to him. So she ran. Left before he woke up, leaving only a note saying she was sorry, she still wanted them to be friends. She didn’t leave her number. Just in case Sherlock was to pick up, she lied to herself.
She hadn’t gone back since, in case she was weak again. She couldn’t do that to him.
When she calmed down and opened the door, Sherlock was gone. Not just from her doorway but all together. He’d left the front door open.
She went into the attic room, just in case he’d left a note.
He had in a way. She gasped when she saw the state of the room. John’s name was scratched into every available surface. All John’s clothes from that bag of laundry were mixed amongst his bed sheets, a shirt with a red wine stain covering his pillow. There were several drawings in several notebooks. Some more were scatted, scrunched up on the floor. Against the opposite wall were fragments of just about everything, but she had suspected as much.
More guilt and shame washed over her. She’d be comforting the wrong man, resenting the wrong person.
-x-
The knock came short and sharp on his door and he presumed it was Molly, either coming to apologize or wanting an apology. He knew neither would do any good, their friendship just wasn’t working anymore. He knew it was his fault.
When he opened the door, he took a sharp breath in before slamming it.
“Great John, now you’re hallucinating. And talking to yourself.” He pressed his back against the door and tried to calm himself down.
He opened the door again, expecting to see nothing and grimacing when he was wrong.
“You’re not real. You’re dead.” He told himself.
“Close. I’m not dead. I’m real.” Sherlock said, arms spread open as if he’d performed a magic trick.
“Don’t be a smartass.” John said automatically, catching himself off guard.
“Why are you fine?” He asked, pushing past him into their apartment like he’d never left.
“I...Hold on, what the hell is this?” He asked following him.
“Molly said you were fine, how can you be fine? I’ve been going out of my head and you’re fine.”
“Wait, you’ve been going out of your head?” John’s eyes widened, his brain trying to keep up with the world that had been thrown upside down. “You have been going out of your head. I’m stood here having an argument with my dead best friend!”
“I’m not dead, do keep up.” Sherlock said, sparing him a glance as he began pacing.
John fist hit him mid-pace, coming out of nowhere. “You’re supposed to be dead! You died! I saw you! I went to your funeral! There is a gravestone with your name on it!”
“It was unavoidable.” Sherlock said, wiping blood from his lip. “It’s not been easy on me, you know.”
“Oh, I’m sorry! Do share your tale of woe! Of all the cold, cruel things you’ve done, I wouldn’t have thought you were capable of this.”
“Capable of what?” Sherlock asked, keeping his mouth shut about the supposed cruel things he had done.
“Letting me think you were dead!”
“I had to!” He finally shouted; the calm exterior breaking. “It’s been no fun I assure you. I had to sit and wait, knowing you were only the other side of London. How easy it’d be get in a taxi and come here. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t risk them finding out. All I could do was sit and think. And that’s a dangerous thing to do when you’re this clever...”
“I will punch you again.” John interrupted.
“All I mean is; all I could think about was you and how you were and if you’d forgotten all about me. I’ve never had anyone be so...clingy in my mind before. This is why I don’t have friends.”
“That’s why you need friends. They care about you and you care about them. They stop you from pulling stupid shit like faking your own death and making people grieve for you.”
“That wasn’t my intention.”
“Well, that’s what damn well happens when you think you’re best friend is dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re a selfish bastard and I’m not letting you further than three feet away from me in future.” John couldn’t help but smile slightly. The fact Sherlock had actually had the common sense enough to apologise showed that something must have happened to him.
“Does that mean you forgive me?” He asked, an eyebrow arched hopefully.
“No, it means you’re an idiot. Now go and get dressed.”
Sherlock looked down at himself and belatedly remembered he was still clinging onto a sheet. He’d forgotten he was wearing it. He nodded and shuffled over to his old room, finding all of his clothes strewn across his bed.
“John?” He shouted through the door.
“Don’t ask. Just don’t.” He said, colour rising in his cheeks.
He didn’t need to ask, he remembered spending nights when he couldn’t sleep breathing in the faint reminder of John that remained in his clothes and how much better he’d felt for it.
A few feet away, everything fitted together in John’s mind. The faked death, Molly’s sudden change and the way she always looked like she wanted to tell him something.
This had been hard on all of them, in different ways. He wondered how long it’d take for everything to feel any semblance of normal. That’s what Sherlock always did. He rushed through and the change is barely noticeable until he’s either gone or back again.
-x-
Another few months pass and Molly knocks on his door again.
“I’m sorry, I should have told you.” She says as soon as it’s open. She’s thankful it was John that opened it not Sherlock, a possibility she’d only just considered.
“Do you want to come in?” He asked and she hesitated. “I was just making some tea.”
“Ok. Do you want me to make it?” She asked out of habit.
“I can manage.” He said, smiling to relieve the tension. “Sherlock’s through there.” He pointed her towards the living room.
“Great.” She said, mostly to herself. She hadn’t seen either of them since Sherlock’s resurrection and she didn’t really know what to say to either one of them.
Sherlock greeted her politely and she did the same, taking a seat on the sofa.
John brought in the tea and handed everyone a cup.
“Well, this feels as awkward as a group therapy session.” Molly said, laughing nervously.
“Yeah, Sherlock babysitters anonymous.” John said joining in the joke and laughing when Sherlock pulled a face. It wasn’t quite there but it felt almost normal.
“So...” Molly said, leaning down into her bag and pulling out several pieces of paper. “I think I’ve got a case for you.”
“Molly...” Sherlock started, reproachfully.
“It’s just a small one. I can take all the credit if you like.” She handed him a case file. He could tell just from looking that she’d stolen it from work.
“Isn’t it about time you left the apartment?” John asked, teasing him slightly.
“I thought I wasn’t allowed more than three feet from you.” Sherlock raised an eyebrow, holding his gaze while Molly choked on her tea.
“There’s a reward. I’m going to be honest here, I need the money. Someone trashed my attic conversion, naming no names.”She said when she’d recovered.
“Sherlock?” John asked, with another small smile.
“I’ll leave him to explain.” This time Molly raised her eyebrow, daring him not to take the case.
“Fine. I’ll get my coat.”