Sherlock ficlet: "Living Low."
Title: Living Low
Fandom: Sherlock
Summary: John Watson faces the night alone.
Characters: John Watson
Rating: 15
Warnings: Contemplation of suicide.
*
He doesn’t know if he was ever looking forward to coming back, really. He can’t tell. After about a week in his new place, though, after a week of Nothing Changing, he decides he should have expected this all along.
He thinks about... about it, about that, quite often, of course he does. There’s no point denying it, and he doesn’t, really, grim as it may sound; he’s aware of that in his detached, disillusioned way, the same way he’s become detached and disillusioned from everything he used to know. A bridge, maybe, falling off into the Thames. On the really bad nights, simply stepping outside in the manner of Captain Oates, letting the cold do the rest.
His gun.
He calls the Samaritans twice. The first time he feels foolish and hangs up after five minutes, because what is there really to talk about? The second time he stays on the line for ten; doesn’t think he’s ever felt more embarrassed, really. Fact is, he doesn’t know how to be helped. The third time he throws up in the sink after his nightmares, he wonders if it’s simply got worse, and not better.
He knows that Harry would cry, that Ella would be alarmed by what he’s thinking, would insist that no, that’s not the case, that there’s strength in asking for help, but what he knows, also, is that he can’t write. The words are eating themselves up in his head and really he should be devastated, thinks in some tiny corner of his mind he is a little, because he always quite liked writing as a boy. So he goes out instead, goes for walk after walk. Fresh air is supposed to help, apparently.
He doesn’t really believe it.
And then, somehow, starting with a random cry of ‘John! John Watson!’ as he wanders through the park, and ending with shared dim sum a day and a night later with one Sherlock Holmes - clever, maddening, brilliant Sherlock Holmes - he thinks that perhaps that actually - he does.
*
Fandom: Sherlock
Summary: John Watson faces the night alone.
Characters: John Watson
Rating: 15
Warnings: Contemplation of suicide.
*
He doesn’t know if he was ever looking forward to coming back, really. He can’t tell. After about a week in his new place, though, after a week of Nothing Changing, he decides he should have expected this all along.
He thinks about... about it, about that, quite often, of course he does. There’s no point denying it, and he doesn’t, really, grim as it may sound; he’s aware of that in his detached, disillusioned way, the same way he’s become detached and disillusioned from everything he used to know. A bridge, maybe, falling off into the Thames. On the really bad nights, simply stepping outside in the manner of Captain Oates, letting the cold do the rest.
His gun.
He calls the Samaritans twice. The first time he feels foolish and hangs up after five minutes, because what is there really to talk about? The second time he stays on the line for ten; doesn’t think he’s ever felt more embarrassed, really. Fact is, he doesn’t know how to be helped. The third time he throws up in the sink after his nightmares, he wonders if it’s simply got worse, and not better.
He knows that Harry would cry, that Ella would be alarmed by what he’s thinking, would insist that no, that’s not the case, that there’s strength in asking for help, but what he knows, also, is that he can’t write. The words are eating themselves up in his head and really he should be devastated, thinks in some tiny corner of his mind he is a little, because he always quite liked writing as a boy. So he goes out instead, goes for walk after walk. Fresh air is supposed to help, apparently.
He doesn’t really believe it.
And then, somehow, starting with a random cry of ‘John! John Watson!’ as he wanders through the park, and ending with shared dim sum a day and a night later with one Sherlock Holmes - clever, maddening, brilliant Sherlock Holmes - he thinks that perhaps that actually - he does.
*