[Fic] AU! John/Sherlock - Out of Milk
Title: Out of Milk
Rating: PG
Word Count: 5,374
Disclaimer: I really WISH I was ACD or anyone who worked on the BBC series with copyright privileges, but I'm not.
Pairings: John/Sarah, implied John/Sherlock
Summary: Another fill for sherlockbbc_fic; The OP asked for an AU where John first meets Sherlock in a grocery shop, of all places! And that it be love at first sight, and that this disturbs John more than he expects.
Notes: If you saw my original fill on the kinkmeme, than I'd like to point out that this one has been edited and refined from the first draft, which had been originally written all in one go with no editing. I hope that you enjoy.
It had started with the milk.
That morning, Sarah had come into the bedroom before work. John, caught somewhere between sleep and dreams, rolled over at the sound of her throat clearing and opened a bleary eye to see her standing above him, hand on hip, and an empty bottle of milk in the other.
“John,” she started. He sighed and lifted a hand to rub his face.
“I know, I know,” he mumbled into his hands with a groan. “I meant to do it yesterday, I really did.”
“But?”
John sat up with a sigh, shivering momentarily as the cool air hit his body when the blankets fell from his chest, and ran a hand through his hair. It had started to get a little too long for his taste, and he added ‘haircut’ on his mental list of things to do.
“But,” he said with a sigh, “I forgot.”
Sarah gave him a look, but John’s tired eyes pleaded for forgiveness. She gave in with a small smile and sat on the bed beside him.
“Busy day at the hospital?” she asked. John nodded.
“Some days I wish I had stayed at the practice with you,” he said, and wrapped an arm around her waist, drawing her close. “I never see you anymore,” he added, kissing her on the cheek. She sighed, and leaned into him.
“Then stop taking the night shifts in the ER,” she said matter-of-factly.
John pressed his lips against her shoulder, suppressing an echoing sigh. It was the beginning of an old argument, but they never seemed to be able to break the loop.
“You know I can’t,” he said gently. “They need me.”
“You mean you need it,” Sarah answered, irritation creeping into her voice and her shoulders stiffening. “You’d get bored if you didn’t have the challenge of it.”
“Is it bad to want a challenge? To not be bored?” John asked playfully, giving her a squeeze and hoping it would dispel the tension. Sarah pulled away from him and stood.
“We’re out of milk,” she said, her lips pinched tight to hold back the reproach that he already knew. I never see you anymore, and one of these days you’ll be bored with me. No matter how much he reassured her, it didn’t seem to work, and John was too tired that morning to try. He sighed again, and with a resolute throw back of the blankets, he moved to his feet to get dressed. A glance at the bedside clock told him it was 8am. Any other person would be annoyed to be woken at 8am on his day off after a long night working the ER, but John was an early riser, and was used to getting by on little sleep. He shuffled to his feet and started to dress, when Sarah poked her face around the door frame, an eyebrow raised as she watched him.
“You don’t have to go now,” she said, by way of apology. “We’ve got juice instead.”
“Nope. I’m up now. Might as well go,” he answered as he shrugged himself into a cream colored jumper. Sarah just shrugged, rolled her eyes at him, and left the doorway.
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It had taken him a little longer than planned to get down to the shop. A sudden call from the hospital had come just before he left; a five car pileup on the road, and 7 injuries varying from moderate to critical, as well as 5 with minor injuries, all at once. They had needed all the help they could to cover the sudden influx. Five hours later, John stumbled from the clinical florescent lighting of the e.r. into the bright sun of a lovely spring day. The wind was still chilly, but John took a moment to enjoy the weak warmth of rare sunlight on his face before he hailed a cab.
The shop was packed. John had had no idea that so many people did their food shopping in the afternoon, having ever only done it in the early morning or late evening. The aisles seemed to be populated by young to middle aged mothers, carting around little children who laughed and cried at varying intervals. John spotted maybe one other man, a short balding person who reminded him of someone he had once gone to school with. Otherwise, it seemed to him that he had somehow stumbled into foreign territory. He grabbed a trolley with a firm hand, determined to be in and out as quickly as possible, plotting a mental plan around the items on his list. Tins first, then bread, greens, then the cold things, meat… He tried to picture it as he headed down the nearest aisle as a map in his head. Next to him, a child in a trolley stared at him with large dark eyes, sucking absently on undoubtly sticky fingers, little bits of sugar sprinkled on his coveralls. John tried to raise a smile, but the child just stared at him like a specimen on a tray. He gave up and turned away.
Tins, then, he thought to himself.
The shopping had gone quickly and painlessly, for the most part, until a dropped milk bottle bought it to a stall. He had grabbed the bottle with his left hand, but it had chosen that moment to start shaking, and he hadn’t been able to let go of his cane in time to catch it on the way down. John had hovered, unsure what to do until an attendant had come round and set up a caution sign before leaving again, presumably to get a mop and something to sweep up the glass. John waited for them to come back, hesitant to leave the broken glass abandoned on the linoleum with so many children around. When it became obvious that they had forgotten about the spill, he started to head back toward the front to remind them.
In that moment, his entire world changed.
His thoughts didn’t register it in the beginning. The first thing was the feeling, sudden and strong and so unexpected that it stopped him dead in his tracks. The image came next, when his mind caught up with his eyes and he understood what his body had known first. A tall man, dark hair curling delicately around his face. Strong features, not pretty, no, but handsome and very unique in their way. Piercing, light eyes, turned thankfully away from him and rather blisteringly on a banana. Hands buried in a long dark coat, and boredom etched on the very line of his body, turned sideways to John. That silhouette struck a chord at the very base of John’s core, as if he had known it forever, intimately, and was just seeing it again after a long absence. The wave of feeling that overtook the good doctor was so strong that he could feel his hands shaking, his legs go weak. John’s legs had only gone weak on him once before in his life, during the war. It was the first time he had seen someone shot in the head, up close and personally. That had been quite an unpleasant experience, and John had resolved that he would never give in to such weaknesses again. But this…this was something entirely different. He struggled to regain his composure, blinking his eyes and shaking his head in small movements to try to clear it. He took his eyes off the other man for only a moment, just one. But in that moment, he was gone.
--------------------------
John had spent a good 20 minutes after his experience in the shop pushing the trolley hurriedly down the aisles, looking for the dark figure in the coat, but it was as if the man had vanished into thin air. Finally, John gave up. He finished his shopping halfheartedly, his mind distracted with confusion over his sudden, inexplicable reaction to a complete stranger, and took another cab home. The cab ride found him in deep analysis over his feelings; John had always known he wasn’t completely straight, but until that day he had only ever had vague attractions to men, nothing anywhere near the level he had with women. And -frighteningly- neither near the level he had experienced with the stranger. It wasn’t simply attraction, either. There had been something like longing, like familiarity in the mix, a dash of need as well. And even more strangely to him, of possessiveness. John had never been a possessive kind of person with his lovers; he respected their independence, and while the doctor in him gave him a caring, attentive quality, he had never seen the point of being jealous or needing to own someone. Though, if he thought about it some more, that wasn’t quite right either. He hadn’t needed to own the stranger. It had been more convoluted than that. He had needed to belong to him, to be the one owned.
John shook his head suddenly, to clear the images from his mind. “This is ridiculous,” he said to himself.
“What’s that, mate?” the cabby up front asked him. John felt a flush of embarrassment for a moment as he realized he had spoken aloud.
“Uh, nothing. Nothing at all.”
The cabbie gave him a sideways look in the rearview mirror, and shrugged to himself with a look that said another crazy. John sighed, leaned back in the seat, and took a deep breath to clear his mind.
This is ridiculous, he thought. I know better than this. This is just a passing fancy, probably brought on by fatigue. You’ve been working too many hours, John, it’s time we took a break, maybe take Sarah out for the weekend somewhere outside London. You won’t even remember what you felt in an hour. Let it go. It’s a stranger, for God’s sake!
Throughout the rest of the ride, John alternated between repeating this to himself, and trying to think of things he and Sarah could do. By the time he had gotten out of the car, he had nearly convinced himself that he would forget, that by the next day everything would be normal, and that that weekend he and Sarah would spend two days tucked up in a quiet bed & breakfast place in south by the sea.
Of course, the best laid plans of mice and men…
The hospital refused to give him the weekend off, and their plans were postponed. What was more, Sarah had taken on an extra shift at the practice, to cover a budget and staff cut, and bring in a little more money for the two of them to put away for “a real holiday” as she put it. John was convinced he could see the Eifel Tower in her eyes as she had said it. Since he mostly worked nights, and Sarah worked days, it came down to John to do most the domestics when he was there. He found that for the most part it came easy to him, his military training making him a neat man by nature. During that first week he had spent the days either sleeping or buried in household domestics, and in that fashion had managed to -for the most part- bury the nagging feeling on the edge of his fingers and the base of his spine that brought images of a certain man to mind. But it remained, no matter how many dishes or laundry loads he cleaned, no matter how many times he vacuumed the rugs or how much crap telly he watched. It was easy enough to bury at the hospital, since John was, if anything, a man of focus. But at home, he found that the closer it came to shopping day, the stronger his hands shook, and his throat went dry. He had contemplated asking Sarah to do it on her day off, but the tired lines under her eyes, when she came home in the late evening after hours of patients and still more hours of paperwork, made him feel ashamed, and his resolve formed itself once more.
So on the day when the fridge was once more empty of necessities, and the cupboards bare of even a simple tin of beans, John donned a black and white jumper, and started walking. The shop was only about five miles from the apartment, and the doctor felt that a morning walk would help clear his head and take the edge off the ridiculous and unwarranted nerves that had left his stomach in too many knots to simply breath. He glanced at his watch. 10:15 am. Much earlier than he had gone before, and not even on the same day either. HE wouldn’t be there. John was sure of it.
The good doctor had found throughout his life, however, that many times the universe is, really, simply out to get you and prove you wrong.
He was there. Same hair, same eyes, same coat, same ineffable expression as he contemplated with undue attention a stack of yellow peaches. John almost stopped again, but previous experience had steeled him against this reaction, and it simply made his already faltering limp just that much worse. He forced himself past the sudden shock, and pushed his trolley ahead of himself, towards the peaches. If he was going to behave this way every time, he thought, he was damned well going to at least know the man’s name.
Of course, it’s never as easy as all that, is it? he thought.
It was an awkward moment then, when he had pushed his cart up next to the small fruit stand and started staring at the peaches. He refused to stare at the man himself; it was too obvious and worse, it was embarrassing. He picked up a peach and sniffed it, but since he had never been sure how that told you the ripeness of a peach, it didn’t give him much of an opening. He was trying to think of something to say, even just how to go about a simple hello, when the option was taken from him before he could begin.
“How long?”
John started, and raised his eyes to find that the stranger was staring at him. He spluttered for a moment, but managed to get out a coherent “I’m sorry?”
“How long have you been back from Afghanistan?” The strangers voice was deep and low, the kind of voice found on radios and late night telly programs for women. It sent a shiver down John’s spine, which was redoubled when he realized what the other had asked him.
“Who told you I’d been in Afghanistan?” he asked, an edge to his voice that may have been curiosity, may have been irritation, but was most certainly confused.
“Nobody told me. I simply observed.” The man ran his eyes up and down the doctor for a moment in silence. “Army doctor, retired in the last year on injury. Shot, was it? But not your leg. The limp is psychosomatic, even your therapist tells you so. Somewhere else then, probably the left shoulder. Can I barrow your phone?”
It was devastating. John had seen men shell-shocked in his life, the blank stares and wide-eyed confusion that followed a sudden and unexpected attack. In that moment the doctor was shell-shocked, as if the stranger had just blown into his life and ripped him apart with the indifference of swatting a gnat. He stared, and then with great effort, swallowed his reaction down and slipped on a well used mask across his features, shutting out the stranger from his thoughts.
“I’m sorry, what? My phone?”
“Yes, your mobile. Quickly, please.” The stranger held out his hand expectantly, as if it was something natural to demand from people, the use of their phone at a moments’ notice. Without thinking, John reached into his pocket and pulled out his mobile, placing it lightly in the large, strangely delicate looking hand of the stranger. Without a word of thanks, the man started typing at the keyboard in silence. It gave John a moment to gather himself, something for which he was grateful.
“So who told you?” he asked at last. “About me. Somebody must have put you up to this.”
“Up to what?” the dark haired man asked in flat monotone, his eyes firmly on the mobile screen.
“Up to this. This charade, of pretending to know all about me without having ever met me before.”
“Charade?” the stranger snorted. “It’s easy enough to read for the right person.”
“Read?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
The stranger still hadn’t stopped typing on John’s phone. He seemed to be composing several messages, or one very long one at the least. Without looking up, he answered
“It’s simple. It’s all there, when you look at a person; the way you stand, the way you walk, the hair style in desperate need of a trim, the fading tan line around your neck and wrists. Everything about you tells me who you are, and who you were. No one has to tell me anything.”
Somehow, this bothered John. “Are we past introductions, then? Does it tell you my name as well?”
“Your name is Doctor John Watson, currently employed at St. Bart’s hospital in the E.R. on night shift.”
The stranger seemed to finish whatever he had needed John’s mobile for, and handed it back with a small, restrained smile of thanks. Somewhere deep in John’s stomach, butterflies burst forth. He ignored them, and took the phone back with a little more force than necessary, irritation pushing his movements out of grace.
“Alright then,” he said curtly. At that moment, the dark haired man seemed to spot something in the distance outside the grocery shop front window. His eyes focused on the distance, and in a second he was walking quickly away from the doctor in long strides, his dark coat pluming out behind him in succession with his steps. Annoyed and confused about the sudden departure, John just stared after him in irritation and amazement.
“And you are?” he finally called out, just before the man had reached the doors.
The man stopped briefly in his step, and looked back over at John.“The name is Sherlock Holmes.”
And then he was gone again.
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It became a sort of ritual after that. John took to going shopping twice a week, then three times a week, then four, until suddenly he found himself in the shop every day, buying fewer things each trip, and spending more time looking for, and speaking with, Sherlock Holmes. He wasn’t always there, though. Some days the man was standing in the fruit and vegetable section, eyeing something green with that strange intensity he had, and some days he never showed, or John must have missed him. On these trips, John left the store with a sunken heart, and berated himself for his folly. How could he let himself get caught up in such childish emotions? It was quite unlike him. And then there was Sarah to think about! It seemed almost disloyal, the way the whole thing was going. And yet, nothing untoward had been said, nor any objectionable action done. Only two men, shopping for groceries, having strange chats that usually involved whatever weird experiment Sherlock was working on that day.
And yet.
On the days John did see Sherlock, he left the store feeling elated, confused, and needing…needing something, something he couldn’t understand. In this fashion, the days wore on. Spring arrived in full force, then summer, and then the edge of fall crept in, cold and bustling with the brightly colored death of leaves in their last hurrah. During that time, Sarah had worked her extra shift, and John had worked at St. Bart’s, and did the domestics at home, and the shopping. They never got around to that holiday in Paris. And somehow, the longer things went on, the further apart they seemed to drift. While nothing changed on the outside, John felt a sort of wall come between them in an almost palpable sense. Each day, brick by brick, it built itself up until they could go a week without even a simple hello. John tried to put it down to fatigue, to over-work and stress. But somewhere in his heart he knew it was something very different. For a while he thought it was Sherlock, and his strange, buried feelings for his grocery companion. But if it was that, it was also something much more, and not all entirely on his side either. The hours at work got longer for the both of them, as each seemed to retreat away from the wall in the only manner that they knew how.
It was no surprise when she broke the news on a chilly evening in late September, really. He hadn’t known the specifics, but he wasn’t blind. Loyal to a fault for a select few, yes, but never blind.
It had been “John, we have to talk.”
And “John, this is really difficult for me.”
And “John, you know I care for you very deeply, I always have.”
And “John, sometime these things just happen.”
And, finally, “John… there’s someone else.”
There had been screaming. That was only natural. There had been crying, too, on both parts, he wasn’t ashamed to admit. Finally it had been silence, and resignation. Eminently practical, his mother had once called him. She could have the apartment, he wouldn’t make her move. He’d find somewhere else to go, and that was that. It was fine. It was all fine.
He made sure not to look her in the eye when he said this. He was afraid she would see the black flood behind his them as it overwhelmed him from the inside, and covered his heart.
-------------
For two weeks, John didn’t do the shopping. Sarah had been kind enough to give him some money for a hotel stay, but outside of that John refused any and all help from her as politely as he could. It didn’t make matters easier when he discovered that all the ‘extra hours’ she had been supposedly working were spent with her new man, and that no great savings had actually been put by. He set himself up in a small hotel room, clean enough to pass tired inspection and not too far from Bart’s. The room had a minifridge, and a tiny kitchen barely big enough for one single pot. During the first two weeks, John -IF the urge to eat overtook him- had bought take out. But while takeout was fine, the year spent with Sarah had given him an appreciation for home cooked food, and he had rather developed a good hand at it. So, on a rainy Sunday morning, John found himself trudging back to the shop.
There were a myriad other stores he could have chosen from his new location, he knew. Indeed, it was rather much farther than was practically acceptable. And yet…
And yet…
At first, when he arrived, John thought that he was out of all luck. Most days, if Sherlock was there, John could see him from outside the shop windows, browsing the greens. That morning there was neither hide nor hair of the man to be seen. John sighed, grabbed a handbasket (the fridge wouldn’t fit much more than that at the hotel) and went inside. He spent ten minutes browsing absentmindedly through the aisles, his mind on work, Sarah, searching for a new flat, and underneath it all, Sherlock. It had been stupid, he realized, to think that he and Sherlock were anything but acquaintances. The strange, strong, desperate feelings that welled up inside him when he merely thought of the man were all one sided, he knew. And how sick was it, to have those feelings mix with the sheer disappointment of the stunted, dead relationship that had been him and Sarah in the last month together! He felt, at that moment, wholly disgusted with himself, and disillusioned with the world at large.
Absorbed in these thoughts, John didn’t notice that someone had come up beside him, not until the hand fell on his shoulder. With a start, he turned round quickly, and it took all his will to keep from crying out at the familiar form of Sherlock before him. John cleared his throat, and spoke with what he decided was better than to be expected dignity, all things considered.
“Sherlock. Hello. Been a while, hasn’t it?”
“You’ve been staring at that tin of beans for 10 minutes, to be precise,” the man answered.
“I-I have?” He stared down at the tin in his hand in surprise. “Oh. Well. But I meant the other kind of while.”
“You mean since you’ve come to the shop.”
“Well. Yes.”
“That’s alright. You’ve moved in that time, I see. And gone through a nasty breakup, by the look of it.”
For an instant, John let himself get caught up in his own curiosity, and ignored the painfully bright truth of Sherlock’s deduction.
“Yes, I have. How did you know that?”
Sherlock snorted, as if the answer should be obvious.
“You’ve been away for two weeks, so we can assume that that’s when the breakup happened. You can tell it was a breakup, because of the state of your clothes and your handbasket.”
John looked down at his clothes. They were slightly rumpled, it was true, but…
“The wrinkles. You’re a man in the habit of hanging up his clothes, yet you’ve recently begun folding them into small drawers. Cheap ones, by the faint scent of pine and wood glue. So, you’ve taken to a hotel, but obviously not for a holiday since you’re still going to work. Your handbasket says limited space. Probably a minifridge then, and since there are items that must be cooked on a proper stove in there, a hotel with a kitchenette. So, local hotel with a kitchenette on short notice means a sudden separation, with you being the gentleman and giving her the flat after she broke it off.”
John winced.
“How do you know I’m not the one who did the breaking?” he asked, a little defiantly.
“The Friday before the breakup, you had bought enough to fill your entire fridge. Your trolley was practically overflowing. Now here you are, buying for a tiny fridge when the one at your old home certainly had enough to take with you if you had thought about it. That says the breakup was unexpected, and you had no chance to plan. What I don’t understand is why you let her keep the flat when she was the one who had cheated on--”
John held up his hand. “Stop. Please, Sherlock.”
The man stopped. He looked at John with an expression that the doctor found inscrutable, no matter how he tried to read it. With a sigh, John ran a hand through his hair and shook his head, a small half-hearted smile tugging at the edge of his mouth.
“That was…amazing. Really amazing.”
Sherlock seemed surprised by this. He had clearly been expecting John to say something else entirely, and the doctor could take a good guess at what it might have been. The dark haired man paused, looking for the first time since John had first seen him almost a little… uncertain.
“You think so?” Sherlock asked.
“Yes, I really do. It’s brilliant. Painful,” John added, “considering the circumstances, but brilliant.”
They stood in silence together then, each looking at the other with mixed expressions. Finally, John asked,
“Alright then, how did you know I was still working at Bart’s?”
“Oh, that,” Sherlock shrugged. “Also easy. I saw you there yesterday.”
John physically jumped a little at this. “You… You saw me?”
“Of course. Nearly every time I’m down there, in fact. Where else did you think I get the subjects for my experiments?”
It struck John like a physical blow, the idea that Sherlock had seen him anywhere else but the shop. While he understood that it was a silly thought, somehow the idea of Sherlock and the shop had become entwined in his mind until he couldn’t separate the two visually. Picturing the man -who had at first seemed so out of place in the commonality of a grocers- anywhere else was difficult for him now, if not impossible. And yet, he knew immediately that of all the places for the man to be, Sherlock was much more likely to be found in a hospital than the tin aisle.
“I…well. Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
Sherlock shrugged. “I was busy, and generally enough, so were you. So what are you going to do?”
John, still distracted by the idea of Sherlock at the hospital, asked “About what?”
“A flat. I suppose you could try for one of those mundane, ugly affairs in a boringly decent part of town. You make enough for it, though it’s probably not as much as you’d like. Or…”
John’s attention snapped away from picturing Sherlock at the hospital, and back on the man standing before him.
“Or?”
Sherlock stared down at John with an expression that could have been read every which way but the right one.
“Or… you could move in with me.”
John felt a quick, involuntary laugh break from him in surprise.
“I’ve needed a flat mate. There’s this great place down on Baker Street that I’ve had my eye on for quite a while--”
“Sherlock, are you asking me to move in with you?”
Sherlock stared down at him, and John could have sworn he saw the tiniest glint of mischief somewhere in the man’s pale eyes.
“Yes.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that,” Sherlock answered.
John stared up at the taller man, and felt the butterflies in his gut rear up again and threaten to overwhelm him. He forced them down into a low, excited hum at the base of his spine and back of his throat, that only showed itself vaguely in the giant grin that lit his face. In response, Sherlock gave him one of his own small, restrained smiles- the closest thing to a true grin he seemed to have.
“Alright then,” John answered. “When do we move in?”
EXTRA
It didn’t occur to John Watson to ask until a few months later. Thinking back on it, John realized that there was no way he could have known to ask, but knowing what he did now about Sherlock, it became one of the most blindingly obvious, confusing questions that could be conceived in regards’ to the great man. It came to the doctor suddenly as he was fork deep in a carton of chow mien, and reading an online article on the faulty use of finger prints in forensics over Sherlock’s shoulder.
“Sherlock?”
“Hm?”
“What WERE you doing in that damned food shop, anyway?”
“Oh, that.” Sherlock waved a hand flippantly. “I was gathering data.”
“On what? Fruit seasons?”
“On the people in the flats across the street. I was following a case of some pretty nasty ritual killings in the area, which were supposedly tied in with a new drug cartel trying to edge in on the London market.”
“Supposedly?”
“Yes, supposedly,” Sherlock grinned, but didn’t embellish.
“And that took you nearly 9 months to solve?”
“Don’t be stupid, John, of course not.”
“Then the rest of that time?” John stared down at the man sitting beside him. He had said it casually, but the question held more behind it than even he would admit. Sherlock turned his head and stared up at the doctor in silence, his gaze heavy with things John could only hope to unlock, given enough time and patience. He waited for an answer, but none came. As if a light had been switched off, Sherlock turned his gaze back to the screen.
“I’ve always told them fingerprints were unreliable as conclusive proof,” he said, annoyance obvious in his voice. “But no, it will take a bloody Sun article to convince them, you watch.”
John stared at him a moment longer, before turning away towards the kitchen, hoping that Sherlock wouldn’t notice his smile.
But of course he had.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 5,374
Disclaimer: I really WISH I was ACD or anyone who worked on the BBC series with copyright privileges, but I'm not.
Pairings: John/Sarah, implied John/Sherlock
Summary: Another fill for sherlockbbc_fic; The OP asked for an AU where John first meets Sherlock in a grocery shop, of all places! And that it be love at first sight, and that this disturbs John more than he expects.
Notes: If you saw my original fill on the kinkmeme, than I'd like to point out that this one has been edited and refined from the first draft, which had been originally written all in one go with no editing. I hope that you enjoy.
It had started with the milk.
That morning, Sarah had come into the bedroom before work. John, caught somewhere between sleep and dreams, rolled over at the sound of her throat clearing and opened a bleary eye to see her standing above him, hand on hip, and an empty bottle of milk in the other.
“John,” she started. He sighed and lifted a hand to rub his face.
“I know, I know,” he mumbled into his hands with a groan. “I meant to do it yesterday, I really did.”
“But?”
John sat up with a sigh, shivering momentarily as the cool air hit his body when the blankets fell from his chest, and ran a hand through his hair. It had started to get a little too long for his taste, and he added ‘haircut’ on his mental list of things to do.
“But,” he said with a sigh, “I forgot.”
Sarah gave him a look, but John’s tired eyes pleaded for forgiveness. She gave in with a small smile and sat on the bed beside him.
“Busy day at the hospital?” she asked. John nodded.
“Some days I wish I had stayed at the practice with you,” he said, and wrapped an arm around her waist, drawing her close. “I never see you anymore,” he added, kissing her on the cheek. She sighed, and leaned into him.
“Then stop taking the night shifts in the ER,” she said matter-of-factly.
John pressed his lips against her shoulder, suppressing an echoing sigh. It was the beginning of an old argument, but they never seemed to be able to break the loop.
“You know I can’t,” he said gently. “They need me.”
“You mean you need it,” Sarah answered, irritation creeping into her voice and her shoulders stiffening. “You’d get bored if you didn’t have the challenge of it.”
“Is it bad to want a challenge? To not be bored?” John asked playfully, giving her a squeeze and hoping it would dispel the tension. Sarah pulled away from him and stood.
“We’re out of milk,” she said, her lips pinched tight to hold back the reproach that he already knew. I never see you anymore, and one of these days you’ll be bored with me. No matter how much he reassured her, it didn’t seem to work, and John was too tired that morning to try. He sighed again, and with a resolute throw back of the blankets, he moved to his feet to get dressed. A glance at the bedside clock told him it was 8am. Any other person would be annoyed to be woken at 8am on his day off after a long night working the ER, but John was an early riser, and was used to getting by on little sleep. He shuffled to his feet and started to dress, when Sarah poked her face around the door frame, an eyebrow raised as she watched him.
“You don’t have to go now,” she said, by way of apology. “We’ve got juice instead.”
“Nope. I’m up now. Might as well go,” he answered as he shrugged himself into a cream colored jumper. Sarah just shrugged, rolled her eyes at him, and left the doorway.
---------
It had taken him a little longer than planned to get down to the shop. A sudden call from the hospital had come just before he left; a five car pileup on the road, and 7 injuries varying from moderate to critical, as well as 5 with minor injuries, all at once. They had needed all the help they could to cover the sudden influx. Five hours later, John stumbled from the clinical florescent lighting of the e.r. into the bright sun of a lovely spring day. The wind was still chilly, but John took a moment to enjoy the weak warmth of rare sunlight on his face before he hailed a cab.
The shop was packed. John had had no idea that so many people did their food shopping in the afternoon, having ever only done it in the early morning or late evening. The aisles seemed to be populated by young to middle aged mothers, carting around little children who laughed and cried at varying intervals. John spotted maybe one other man, a short balding person who reminded him of someone he had once gone to school with. Otherwise, it seemed to him that he had somehow stumbled into foreign territory. He grabbed a trolley with a firm hand, determined to be in and out as quickly as possible, plotting a mental plan around the items on his list. Tins first, then bread, greens, then the cold things, meat… He tried to picture it as he headed down the nearest aisle as a map in his head. Next to him, a child in a trolley stared at him with large dark eyes, sucking absently on undoubtly sticky fingers, little bits of sugar sprinkled on his coveralls. John tried to raise a smile, but the child just stared at him like a specimen on a tray. He gave up and turned away.
Tins, then, he thought to himself.
The shopping had gone quickly and painlessly, for the most part, until a dropped milk bottle bought it to a stall. He had grabbed the bottle with his left hand, but it had chosen that moment to start shaking, and he hadn’t been able to let go of his cane in time to catch it on the way down. John had hovered, unsure what to do until an attendant had come round and set up a caution sign before leaving again, presumably to get a mop and something to sweep up the glass. John waited for them to come back, hesitant to leave the broken glass abandoned on the linoleum with so many children around. When it became obvious that they had forgotten about the spill, he started to head back toward the front to remind them.
In that moment, his entire world changed.
His thoughts didn’t register it in the beginning. The first thing was the feeling, sudden and strong and so unexpected that it stopped him dead in his tracks. The image came next, when his mind caught up with his eyes and he understood what his body had known first. A tall man, dark hair curling delicately around his face. Strong features, not pretty, no, but handsome and very unique in their way. Piercing, light eyes, turned thankfully away from him and rather blisteringly on a banana. Hands buried in a long dark coat, and boredom etched on the very line of his body, turned sideways to John. That silhouette struck a chord at the very base of John’s core, as if he had known it forever, intimately, and was just seeing it again after a long absence. The wave of feeling that overtook the good doctor was so strong that he could feel his hands shaking, his legs go weak. John’s legs had only gone weak on him once before in his life, during the war. It was the first time he had seen someone shot in the head, up close and personally. That had been quite an unpleasant experience, and John had resolved that he would never give in to such weaknesses again. But this…this was something entirely different. He struggled to regain his composure, blinking his eyes and shaking his head in small movements to try to clear it. He took his eyes off the other man for only a moment, just one. But in that moment, he was gone.
--------------------------
John had spent a good 20 minutes after his experience in the shop pushing the trolley hurriedly down the aisles, looking for the dark figure in the coat, but it was as if the man had vanished into thin air. Finally, John gave up. He finished his shopping halfheartedly, his mind distracted with confusion over his sudden, inexplicable reaction to a complete stranger, and took another cab home. The cab ride found him in deep analysis over his feelings; John had always known he wasn’t completely straight, but until that day he had only ever had vague attractions to men, nothing anywhere near the level he had with women. And -frighteningly- neither near the level he had experienced with the stranger. It wasn’t simply attraction, either. There had been something like longing, like familiarity in the mix, a dash of need as well. And even more strangely to him, of possessiveness. John had never been a possessive kind of person with his lovers; he respected their independence, and while the doctor in him gave him a caring, attentive quality, he had never seen the point of being jealous or needing to own someone. Though, if he thought about it some more, that wasn’t quite right either. He hadn’t needed to own the stranger. It had been more convoluted than that. He had needed to belong to him, to be the one owned.
John shook his head suddenly, to clear the images from his mind. “This is ridiculous,” he said to himself.
“What’s that, mate?” the cabby up front asked him. John felt a flush of embarrassment for a moment as he realized he had spoken aloud.
“Uh, nothing. Nothing at all.”
The cabbie gave him a sideways look in the rearview mirror, and shrugged to himself with a look that said another crazy. John sighed, leaned back in the seat, and took a deep breath to clear his mind.
This is ridiculous, he thought. I know better than this. This is just a passing fancy, probably brought on by fatigue. You’ve been working too many hours, John, it’s time we took a break, maybe take Sarah out for the weekend somewhere outside London. You won’t even remember what you felt in an hour. Let it go. It’s a stranger, for God’s sake!
Throughout the rest of the ride, John alternated between repeating this to himself, and trying to think of things he and Sarah could do. By the time he had gotten out of the car, he had nearly convinced himself that he would forget, that by the next day everything would be normal, and that that weekend he and Sarah would spend two days tucked up in a quiet bed & breakfast place in south by the sea.
Of course, the best laid plans of mice and men…
The hospital refused to give him the weekend off, and their plans were postponed. What was more, Sarah had taken on an extra shift at the practice, to cover a budget and staff cut, and bring in a little more money for the two of them to put away for “a real holiday” as she put it. John was convinced he could see the Eifel Tower in her eyes as she had said it. Since he mostly worked nights, and Sarah worked days, it came down to John to do most the domestics when he was there. He found that for the most part it came easy to him, his military training making him a neat man by nature. During that first week he had spent the days either sleeping or buried in household domestics, and in that fashion had managed to -for the most part- bury the nagging feeling on the edge of his fingers and the base of his spine that brought images of a certain man to mind. But it remained, no matter how many dishes or laundry loads he cleaned, no matter how many times he vacuumed the rugs or how much crap telly he watched. It was easy enough to bury at the hospital, since John was, if anything, a man of focus. But at home, he found that the closer it came to shopping day, the stronger his hands shook, and his throat went dry. He had contemplated asking Sarah to do it on her day off, but the tired lines under her eyes, when she came home in the late evening after hours of patients and still more hours of paperwork, made him feel ashamed, and his resolve formed itself once more.
So on the day when the fridge was once more empty of necessities, and the cupboards bare of even a simple tin of beans, John donned a black and white jumper, and started walking. The shop was only about five miles from the apartment, and the doctor felt that a morning walk would help clear his head and take the edge off the ridiculous and unwarranted nerves that had left his stomach in too many knots to simply breath. He glanced at his watch. 10:15 am. Much earlier than he had gone before, and not even on the same day either. HE wouldn’t be there. John was sure of it.
The good doctor had found throughout his life, however, that many times the universe is, really, simply out to get you and prove you wrong.
He was there. Same hair, same eyes, same coat, same ineffable expression as he contemplated with undue attention a stack of yellow peaches. John almost stopped again, but previous experience had steeled him against this reaction, and it simply made his already faltering limp just that much worse. He forced himself past the sudden shock, and pushed his trolley ahead of himself, towards the peaches. If he was going to behave this way every time, he thought, he was damned well going to at least know the man’s name.
Of course, it’s never as easy as all that, is it? he thought.
It was an awkward moment then, when he had pushed his cart up next to the small fruit stand and started staring at the peaches. He refused to stare at the man himself; it was too obvious and worse, it was embarrassing. He picked up a peach and sniffed it, but since he had never been sure how that told you the ripeness of a peach, it didn’t give him much of an opening. He was trying to think of something to say, even just how to go about a simple hello, when the option was taken from him before he could begin.
“How long?”
John started, and raised his eyes to find that the stranger was staring at him. He spluttered for a moment, but managed to get out a coherent “I’m sorry?”
“How long have you been back from Afghanistan?” The strangers voice was deep and low, the kind of voice found on radios and late night telly programs for women. It sent a shiver down John’s spine, which was redoubled when he realized what the other had asked him.
“Who told you I’d been in Afghanistan?” he asked, an edge to his voice that may have been curiosity, may have been irritation, but was most certainly confused.
“Nobody told me. I simply observed.” The man ran his eyes up and down the doctor for a moment in silence. “Army doctor, retired in the last year on injury. Shot, was it? But not your leg. The limp is psychosomatic, even your therapist tells you so. Somewhere else then, probably the left shoulder. Can I barrow your phone?”
It was devastating. John had seen men shell-shocked in his life, the blank stares and wide-eyed confusion that followed a sudden and unexpected attack. In that moment the doctor was shell-shocked, as if the stranger had just blown into his life and ripped him apart with the indifference of swatting a gnat. He stared, and then with great effort, swallowed his reaction down and slipped on a well used mask across his features, shutting out the stranger from his thoughts.
“I’m sorry, what? My phone?”
“Yes, your mobile. Quickly, please.” The stranger held out his hand expectantly, as if it was something natural to demand from people, the use of their phone at a moments’ notice. Without thinking, John reached into his pocket and pulled out his mobile, placing it lightly in the large, strangely delicate looking hand of the stranger. Without a word of thanks, the man started typing at the keyboard in silence. It gave John a moment to gather himself, something for which he was grateful.
“So who told you?” he asked at last. “About me. Somebody must have put you up to this.”
“Up to what?” the dark haired man asked in flat monotone, his eyes firmly on the mobile screen.
“Up to this. This charade, of pretending to know all about me without having ever met me before.”
“Charade?” the stranger snorted. “It’s easy enough to read for the right person.”
“Read?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
The stranger still hadn’t stopped typing on John’s phone. He seemed to be composing several messages, or one very long one at the least. Without looking up, he answered
“It’s simple. It’s all there, when you look at a person; the way you stand, the way you walk, the hair style in desperate need of a trim, the fading tan line around your neck and wrists. Everything about you tells me who you are, and who you were. No one has to tell me anything.”
Somehow, this bothered John. “Are we past introductions, then? Does it tell you my name as well?”
“Your name is Doctor John Watson, currently employed at St. Bart’s hospital in the E.R. on night shift.”
The stranger seemed to finish whatever he had needed John’s mobile for, and handed it back with a small, restrained smile of thanks. Somewhere deep in John’s stomach, butterflies burst forth. He ignored them, and took the phone back with a little more force than necessary, irritation pushing his movements out of grace.
“Alright then,” he said curtly. At that moment, the dark haired man seemed to spot something in the distance outside the grocery shop front window. His eyes focused on the distance, and in a second he was walking quickly away from the doctor in long strides, his dark coat pluming out behind him in succession with his steps. Annoyed and confused about the sudden departure, John just stared after him in irritation and amazement.
“And you are?” he finally called out, just before the man had reached the doors.
The man stopped briefly in his step, and looked back over at John.“The name is Sherlock Holmes.”
And then he was gone again.
--------------------
It became a sort of ritual after that. John took to going shopping twice a week, then three times a week, then four, until suddenly he found himself in the shop every day, buying fewer things each trip, and spending more time looking for, and speaking with, Sherlock Holmes. He wasn’t always there, though. Some days the man was standing in the fruit and vegetable section, eyeing something green with that strange intensity he had, and some days he never showed, or John must have missed him. On these trips, John left the store with a sunken heart, and berated himself for his folly. How could he let himself get caught up in such childish emotions? It was quite unlike him. And then there was Sarah to think about! It seemed almost disloyal, the way the whole thing was going. And yet, nothing untoward had been said, nor any objectionable action done. Only two men, shopping for groceries, having strange chats that usually involved whatever weird experiment Sherlock was working on that day.
And yet.
On the days John did see Sherlock, he left the store feeling elated, confused, and needing…needing something, something he couldn’t understand. In this fashion, the days wore on. Spring arrived in full force, then summer, and then the edge of fall crept in, cold and bustling with the brightly colored death of leaves in their last hurrah. During that time, Sarah had worked her extra shift, and John had worked at St. Bart’s, and did the domestics at home, and the shopping. They never got around to that holiday in Paris. And somehow, the longer things went on, the further apart they seemed to drift. While nothing changed on the outside, John felt a sort of wall come between them in an almost palpable sense. Each day, brick by brick, it built itself up until they could go a week without even a simple hello. John tried to put it down to fatigue, to over-work and stress. But somewhere in his heart he knew it was something very different. For a while he thought it was Sherlock, and his strange, buried feelings for his grocery companion. But if it was that, it was also something much more, and not all entirely on his side either. The hours at work got longer for the both of them, as each seemed to retreat away from the wall in the only manner that they knew how.
It was no surprise when she broke the news on a chilly evening in late September, really. He hadn’t known the specifics, but he wasn’t blind. Loyal to a fault for a select few, yes, but never blind.
It had been “John, we have to talk.”
And “John, this is really difficult for me.”
And “John, you know I care for you very deeply, I always have.”
And “John, sometime these things just happen.”
And, finally, “John… there’s someone else.”
There had been screaming. That was only natural. There had been crying, too, on both parts, he wasn’t ashamed to admit. Finally it had been silence, and resignation. Eminently practical, his mother had once called him. She could have the apartment, he wouldn’t make her move. He’d find somewhere else to go, and that was that. It was fine. It was all fine.
He made sure not to look her in the eye when he said this. He was afraid she would see the black flood behind his them as it overwhelmed him from the inside, and covered his heart.
-------------
For two weeks, John didn’t do the shopping. Sarah had been kind enough to give him some money for a hotel stay, but outside of that John refused any and all help from her as politely as he could. It didn’t make matters easier when he discovered that all the ‘extra hours’ she had been supposedly working were spent with her new man, and that no great savings had actually been put by. He set himself up in a small hotel room, clean enough to pass tired inspection and not too far from Bart’s. The room had a minifridge, and a tiny kitchen barely big enough for one single pot. During the first two weeks, John -IF the urge to eat overtook him- had bought take out. But while takeout was fine, the year spent with Sarah had given him an appreciation for home cooked food, and he had rather developed a good hand at it. So, on a rainy Sunday morning, John found himself trudging back to the shop.
There were a myriad other stores he could have chosen from his new location, he knew. Indeed, it was rather much farther than was practically acceptable. And yet…
And yet…
At first, when he arrived, John thought that he was out of all luck. Most days, if Sherlock was there, John could see him from outside the shop windows, browsing the greens. That morning there was neither hide nor hair of the man to be seen. John sighed, grabbed a handbasket (the fridge wouldn’t fit much more than that at the hotel) and went inside. He spent ten minutes browsing absentmindedly through the aisles, his mind on work, Sarah, searching for a new flat, and underneath it all, Sherlock. It had been stupid, he realized, to think that he and Sherlock were anything but acquaintances. The strange, strong, desperate feelings that welled up inside him when he merely thought of the man were all one sided, he knew. And how sick was it, to have those feelings mix with the sheer disappointment of the stunted, dead relationship that had been him and Sarah in the last month together! He felt, at that moment, wholly disgusted with himself, and disillusioned with the world at large.
Absorbed in these thoughts, John didn’t notice that someone had come up beside him, not until the hand fell on his shoulder. With a start, he turned round quickly, and it took all his will to keep from crying out at the familiar form of Sherlock before him. John cleared his throat, and spoke with what he decided was better than to be expected dignity, all things considered.
“Sherlock. Hello. Been a while, hasn’t it?”
“You’ve been staring at that tin of beans for 10 minutes, to be precise,” the man answered.
“I-I have?” He stared down at the tin in his hand in surprise. “Oh. Well. But I meant the other kind of while.”
“You mean since you’ve come to the shop.”
“Well. Yes.”
“That’s alright. You’ve moved in that time, I see. And gone through a nasty breakup, by the look of it.”
For an instant, John let himself get caught up in his own curiosity, and ignored the painfully bright truth of Sherlock’s deduction.
“Yes, I have. How did you know that?”
Sherlock snorted, as if the answer should be obvious.
“You’ve been away for two weeks, so we can assume that that’s when the breakup happened. You can tell it was a breakup, because of the state of your clothes and your handbasket.”
John looked down at his clothes. They were slightly rumpled, it was true, but…
“The wrinkles. You’re a man in the habit of hanging up his clothes, yet you’ve recently begun folding them into small drawers. Cheap ones, by the faint scent of pine and wood glue. So, you’ve taken to a hotel, but obviously not for a holiday since you’re still going to work. Your handbasket says limited space. Probably a minifridge then, and since there are items that must be cooked on a proper stove in there, a hotel with a kitchenette. So, local hotel with a kitchenette on short notice means a sudden separation, with you being the gentleman and giving her the flat after she broke it off.”
John winced.
“How do you know I’m not the one who did the breaking?” he asked, a little defiantly.
“The Friday before the breakup, you had bought enough to fill your entire fridge. Your trolley was practically overflowing. Now here you are, buying for a tiny fridge when the one at your old home certainly had enough to take with you if you had thought about it. That says the breakup was unexpected, and you had no chance to plan. What I don’t understand is why you let her keep the flat when she was the one who had cheated on--”
John held up his hand. “Stop. Please, Sherlock.”
The man stopped. He looked at John with an expression that the doctor found inscrutable, no matter how he tried to read it. With a sigh, John ran a hand through his hair and shook his head, a small half-hearted smile tugging at the edge of his mouth.
“That was…amazing. Really amazing.”
Sherlock seemed surprised by this. He had clearly been expecting John to say something else entirely, and the doctor could take a good guess at what it might have been. The dark haired man paused, looking for the first time since John had first seen him almost a little… uncertain.
“You think so?” Sherlock asked.
“Yes, I really do. It’s brilliant. Painful,” John added, “considering the circumstances, but brilliant.”
They stood in silence together then, each looking at the other with mixed expressions. Finally, John asked,
“Alright then, how did you know I was still working at Bart’s?”
“Oh, that,” Sherlock shrugged. “Also easy. I saw you there yesterday.”
John physically jumped a little at this. “You… You saw me?”
“Of course. Nearly every time I’m down there, in fact. Where else did you think I get the subjects for my experiments?”
It struck John like a physical blow, the idea that Sherlock had seen him anywhere else but the shop. While he understood that it was a silly thought, somehow the idea of Sherlock and the shop had become entwined in his mind until he couldn’t separate the two visually. Picturing the man -who had at first seemed so out of place in the commonality of a grocers- anywhere else was difficult for him now, if not impossible. And yet, he knew immediately that of all the places for the man to be, Sherlock was much more likely to be found in a hospital than the tin aisle.
“I…well. Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
Sherlock shrugged. “I was busy, and generally enough, so were you. So what are you going to do?”
John, still distracted by the idea of Sherlock at the hospital, asked “About what?”
“A flat. I suppose you could try for one of those mundane, ugly affairs in a boringly decent part of town. You make enough for it, though it’s probably not as much as you’d like. Or…”
John’s attention snapped away from picturing Sherlock at the hospital, and back on the man standing before him.
“Or?”
Sherlock stared down at John with an expression that could have been read every which way but the right one.
“Or… you could move in with me.”
John felt a quick, involuntary laugh break from him in surprise.
“I’ve needed a flat mate. There’s this great place down on Baker Street that I’ve had my eye on for quite a while--”
“Sherlock, are you asking me to move in with you?”
Sherlock stared down at him, and John could have sworn he saw the tiniest glint of mischief somewhere in the man’s pale eyes.
“Yes.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that,” Sherlock answered.
John stared up at the taller man, and felt the butterflies in his gut rear up again and threaten to overwhelm him. He forced them down into a low, excited hum at the base of his spine and back of his throat, that only showed itself vaguely in the giant grin that lit his face. In response, Sherlock gave him one of his own small, restrained smiles- the closest thing to a true grin he seemed to have.
“Alright then,” John answered. “When do we move in?”
EXTRA
It didn’t occur to John Watson to ask until a few months later. Thinking back on it, John realized that there was no way he could have known to ask, but knowing what he did now about Sherlock, it became one of the most blindingly obvious, confusing questions that could be conceived in regards’ to the great man. It came to the doctor suddenly as he was fork deep in a carton of chow mien, and reading an online article on the faulty use of finger prints in forensics over Sherlock’s shoulder.
“Sherlock?”
“Hm?”
“What WERE you doing in that damned food shop, anyway?”
“Oh, that.” Sherlock waved a hand flippantly. “I was gathering data.”
“On what? Fruit seasons?”
“On the people in the flats across the street. I was following a case of some pretty nasty ritual killings in the area, which were supposedly tied in with a new drug cartel trying to edge in on the London market.”
“Supposedly?”
“Yes, supposedly,” Sherlock grinned, but didn’t embellish.
“And that took you nearly 9 months to solve?”
“Don’t be stupid, John, of course not.”
“Then the rest of that time?” John stared down at the man sitting beside him. He had said it casually, but the question held more behind it than even he would admit. Sherlock turned his head and stared up at the doctor in silence, his gaze heavy with things John could only hope to unlock, given enough time and patience. He waited for an answer, but none came. As if a light had been switched off, Sherlock turned his gaze back to the screen.
“I’ve always told them fingerprints were unreliable as conclusive proof,” he said, annoyance obvious in his voice. “But no, it will take a bloody Sun article to convince them, you watch.”
John stared at him a moment longer, before turning away towards the kitchen, hoping that Sherlock wouldn’t notice his smile.
But of course he had.