Fic for hiddenlacuna: Boxes, Part 1/2
Title: Boxes, Pt 1
Recipient: hiddenlacuna
Author: LyricaXXX
Characters/Pairings: John/Sherlock
Rating: Mature
Warnings: None
Words: ~16500
Summary:
The only uncovered flat surface in the room is the bed. Even on John’s bedside table, the alarm clock and his computer sit atop stacks of the books he unpacked yesterday. He hadn’t intended to unpack books, not until he’d actually cleared a path to the bookcase, but...he’d been hoping he’d find his missing pants at the bottom of the box.
Possibly, the state of the room says something deep and existential about the state of his life, the boxes both clutter and metaphor for the stagnation through which he wades everyday. Since he moved back into 221B, he’s felt as though he’s in limbo. His life and his heart, still packed up in boxes. Balanced, precariously, on a knife edge, waiting. Waiting. For what, he doesn’t know.
Boxes, Pt 1
Photographs and memories,
Christmas cards you sent to me,
All that I have are these
To remember you.
~Jim Croce
John’s huffing and completely frustrated by the time he gets to the top of the stairs. Back complaining, feet tired, fingers an odd combination of tingling and numb from the weight of the bags he’s just carried all the way home from the supermarket.
He’s just stood, banging his foot on the door of 221B, waiting in vain for someone to answer. He’s sure Mrs Hudson is out, and he’s equally sure Sherlock is home and just ignoring him. It’s not like he wasn’t loud enough to be heard, because the woman across the street had opened her door and glared at him. So he’d given up and juggled bags and keys to get the door open.
After all that, he doesn’t even bother to thump on the door of the flat. Just goes through his routine of standing on one foot, bracing bags with his upraised knee, twisting his arm up at an impossible angle to fumble with the doorknob on the door that opens directly into the kitchen. If it’s locked, he thinks he may just drop bread and milk and vegetables (and the ginger cake that called to him from across the aisle and had his mouth watering) on the floor and leave them where he’s standing. Go back out for a beer instead of going in and making tea. But the knob finally turns in his numb grip, then clicks open.
He turns and bumps the door open with his arse with maybe a bit more gusto than is necessary. It swings all the way back and bangs the wall with a satisfying thump that perfectly mirrors his annoyance.
The wild swing of the door ripples the papers spread across the entire surface of the kitchen table.
Sherlock, sitting at the table in the chair nearest the door (where he definitely could hear John trying to get in both downstairs and upstairs), reaches out casually and extends his long fingers across the papers nearest the edge to keep them from flying away.
“Couldn’t you hear me knocking?” John’s annoyance and frustration raise the tone of his voice an octave.
Sherlock doesn’t even look up from the file he’s reading. “John...” he rumbles. “Good. We’ll be leaving just after sunset.”
John stares at him, trying to decide between a grin or a grimace, exasperation warring with admiration for the casual yet elegant picture Sherlock presents. He’s dressed all in black-tight black shirt stretched taut across his chest and shoulders and snug black trousers clinging to his lean thighs; one foot, clad in a black sock, hooked carelessly over a rung of the empty chair beside him.
John settles for something in between. A grinace, he supposes. His own new word, coined with one person in mind.
grin·ace
/ˈɡriməs,ɡrəˈmās/
noun
1. an expression combining fond amusement, irritation, and resignation;
2. often accompanied by the urge to punch the object of said facial expression right on his patrician nose
In the Oxford English Dictionary, under the entry for his new word, a footnote would say, ‘See ‘Sherlock Holmes’.’
“Hello to you, too,” John says, a bit too loudly. “Sorry if I disturbed you with all my noise, banging on the door and all, trying to get our shopping up the stairs.”
Sherlock glances back at him, just a twist of his long neck, a quick flick of his incredible eyes, before he returns silently to what he’s reading.
John juggles the shopping bags and tries to retrieve the door with his fingertips, then gives up and shuffles around, catches the edge of door with his foot, and shoves it closed. The bang is louder this time and not quite as accidental as the first one, but just as satisfying.
Sherlock holds his papers down again and doesn’t even bother to look up.
John gives in to the grin. It’s not like he didn’t know, from previous experience, what living with Sherlock was like. It’s not like he moved back into the flat blindly. John sighs-something he catches himself doing a lot these days-as he struggles over and dumps the bags on the counter.
Though there had been those few weeks when alien-pod-Sherlock had been flitting around... That had been kind of nice, in a bewildering, changeling sort of way.
After his marriage to Mary had died its unnatural death, and John had mentioned that he wasn’t keen to keep living alone in their house, Sherlock had been almost puppyish in his eagerness for John to move back into the flat. For the week or so John took to make up his mind, and the first few days after John moved back in, Sherlock had been on such good behaviour that it had been disconcerting. Sherlock had still snarked at Donovan, talked down his nose in that disdainful tone to Greg, but with John, Sherlock had been polite and attentive. And in the flat...he’d cleaned up after himself, left no body parts in the fridge, didn’t walk on the furniture.
It had been so noticeable that John had joked, ‘Okay, where have you hidden the alien pod? Not that I mind pod-person-Sherlock. I mean, it’s nice not to wonder whether the fork I’m using has previously speared an eyeball, or whether I should disinfect my toothbrush before I use it. And last night, just you and me and Mycroft’s really good brandy-does he know you stole that, by the way?-and civil conversation, that was great. But where’s the real Sherlock?’
Sherlock had looked at him, affronted, and said only, ‘People change, John.’
John tugs off his coat and tosses it in the general direction of his chair. No point in hanging it up when he’s just going to have to go back out in an hour or so.
Of course, that pod-person-Sherlock thing hadn’t lasted long. Within a few days of mentioning it, John had realized he’d spoken too soon. Some of the old traits had begun to slip back in. Sherlock had broken into John’s computer rather than walk the few metres to his bedroom and retrieve his own. And he’d disappeared for several hours a couple of nights in a row. He’d left a smelly, probably toxic experiment percolating on the kitchen table for three days. And then Greg had called, wanting their help with another case, and the old Sherlock (focused, manic, maniacal, socially clueless, oblivious, going over the furniture instead of around) had made a full reappearance. It was like Sherlock had been on good behaviour while he was enticing John to move back in, and once that started to slip away, all it had taken to shove him the rest of the way back to normality was the excuse of a case. What passed for normal in Sherlock’s world, anyway.
And, for the most part, that’s been okay. There’s no denying that the Sherlock who would have answered John’s banging on the door and helped carry the shopping was nice. But there’s something comforting in this more familiar Sherlock, too.
Though it has added to the niggling sense of déjà vu that won’t leave John alone. That sense that sneaks up on him...sometimes, when he’s not looking...that his life is running in reverse. Instead of moving forward, he’s moving backwards.
Or maybe...he’s not moving at all. Sometimes...it’s like he’s standing still, and the last two and a half years didn’t even happen. Which, really-considering everything that occurred-isn’t that bad an idea. There’s very little of the last two and half years that he wouldn’t be pleased to let go.
But that’s not the nature of memory and fallout, so he supposes he’ll just have to keep slogging on. At some point, he’ll get back to a place of equilibrium. Maybe. Until then, there’s an annoying kind of comfort in falling back on old behaviours, old ways of doing things.
As John opens the fridge and puts away the cold items (still no body parts in sight, thankfully), he grumbles, “My day was fine, thanks. Not too busy at the clinic, though Tesco was a madhouse. But, otherwise, my day was fine. Nice of you to ask. And yours?”
“Uhmmm...” Sherlock responds, still not looking up. He takes a handful of papers and drops them on the floor, then spreads another stack out like a hand of cards.
John makes quick work of putting the remainder of the shopping into the cabinets, fills the kettle, sets up mugs and teabags. Cuts slices of the ginger cake and puts it on napkins, regretting that he didn’t think to buy custard to go with it. Then he props up on the counter while he waits for the kettle to boil. “You know...” He addresses the top of Sherlock’s curly head. “I think I might give it a miss tonight. I’m still living out of boxes. I need to finish unpacking and do laundry.”
Sherlock shuffles the pages he’s holding.
John leans closer and squints. Witness statements. Sherlock really is getting desperate, going over the witness statements again. They’ve been almost a week on the case. Sherlock had rated it a four at best, and in a bored, condescending tone, assured Greg it would probably be wrapped up in a couple of days. But the solution has eluded them, and Sherlock has taken it as a personal affront. They’ve spent days on interviews and research, nights lurking in alleys and under bridges, trying to find the witness whom Sherlock has pinpointed as the key to the whole mystery.
John turns and pours hot water into the mugs, then gets the milk from the fridge. “What the hell did you and Greg do to my clothes when you helped me pack, anyway? My shirts look like they’ve been tied in knots. My socks are shuffled in with the other stuff, but not in pairs. All I’ve got clean and halfway unwrinkled for tomorrow is a red jumper and a blue and green check shirt. And green socks. Not matching green socks, mind you. A light green one and a dark green one. And I still haven’t found my pants.”
Sherlock hums again, as noncommittal-or maybe it’s simply disinterested-as he was the first few times John complained about the subject, and drops another stack of papers on the floor. “You should wear black tonight. You might as well have been carrying a lit torch with the shirt you had on last night.” He flicks imaginary lint from the cuff of his immaculate silk shirt.
John’s not sure whether it’s a commentary on the horrid colour combination he’s just mentioned or his previous night’s choice of costume for lurking under a bridge.
John sighs as he adds milk to the tea, then puts the milk away. “My black jeans and shirt are too crusted with dried mud to even put in the hamper. That’s what I was wearing two nights ago when I slid down that embankment to keep you from falling into the Thames. I can’t wear black again until I do laundry.”
“I wouldn’t have fallen,” Sherlock says mildly, still not looking up as he accepts the cup of tea John hands him. John shifts a couple of files to put down a napkin containing a slice of cake.
Sherlock peers at it and mumbles something that sounds like ‘thanks’ as he shuffles under the papers and pulls out a map.
John sips his tea and looks over Sherlock’s shoulder. The map is dotted with large red X’s. There are way too many marks to be only the places he and Sherlock have staked-out, so some of Sherlock’s homeless network, or maybe some of Greg’s coppers, must be covering other areas.
Sherlock taps a spot on the map, one already marked with an X. “We’ll do Vauxhall Arches again tonight, I think.”
“Did you hear anything I said, about unpacking and washing my clothes?”
“What?” Sherlock breaks off a piece of cake, then forgets to put it in his mouth as he peers at the map.
John shakes his head and sighs. He balances his cake on top of his cup and cradles everything in both hands as he heads up the stairs. Then sighs again as he stands in the doorway and surveys his bedroom.
It’s been almost three months since he and Mary split up, almost four weeks since he moved back to 221B, and it still looks less like a living space and more like a messy storage locker with a bed. Between the clinic and Sherlock dragging him along on cases, there’s simply been no time for something as, 'Mundane, John,’ (he can hear Sherlock’s sniff of disdain) as unpacking.
John crosses over and makes a space on his bedside table for his tea and cake.
The only uncovered flat surface in the room is the bed. Even on his bedside table, the alarm clock and his computer sit atop stacks of the books he unpacked yesterday. He hadn’t intended to unpack books, not until he’d actually cleared a path to the bookcase, but...he’d been hoping he’d find his pants at the bottom of the box.
Possibly, the state of his bedroom says something deep and existential about the state of his life, the boxes both clutter and metaphor for the stagnation through which he wades everyday. It’s good and it’s safe and it’s comfortable here (or it would be comfortable, if he had clean clothes and could move more than a couple of feet without stepping over a box), and he should be feeling better since moving back, but instead it feels like he’s in limbo. His life and his heart, still packed up in boxes. Balanced, precariously, on a knife edge, waiting. Waiting. For what, he doesn’t know.
This room is the last place he can remember being truly happy and content for a significant length of time. There were days, even weeks, during his and Mary’s honeymoon period and a very short period after their reconciliation when he’s sure he must have been happy and content, but those memories are all suspect now. Murky with lies and deceit. With all of that behind him, it seems as if he should be happy and content again. But all he really feels is trapped. Boxed in.
He shifts a couple of boxes of books over towards the bookcase, grunting as he lifts one to stack it. Then, pleased with even the small area of floor he’s just cleared, he shifts a couple more, and that’s even better.
Maybe it’s only the lack of order that’s contributing to his unsettled frame of mind. Or maybe it’s just that, instead of moving forward to something new, he’d jumped back into the old whirlwind way of living his personal life on the fringes of Sherlock and this week’s case, of putting his life and his needs on hold.
Sometimes, it feels as if he never left 221B. That all that happened in between living here last time and moving back this time was a long, drawn-out nightmare from which he’ll wake at any moment. And then he’ll start moving again. Forward to something...he’s not sure what. Just...something different. Something that feels like living.
He turns slowly in a circle, looking for another box that can be shifted into the stacks he’s beginning to build.
Except for the bed, everything in the room-dresser, chest of drawers, the small bookcase-is covered with unpacked boxes. Even the top drawer of the chest of drawers is open and has a couple of the smaller boxes toppled into it. The small table and chair, all that he kept of the furniture he and Mary bought together, fits as he thought it would, perfectly just under the window.
In fact, it fits into the room better than he does at the moment. It’s going to make a cosy and pleasant work space, if he ever gets organized again. Right now, though, the desk has become a makeshift laundry basket. It’s stacked with jumpers and shirts and trousers too rumpled to wear, and the chair is draped with the mismatched socks he’s pulled out as he rifled through boxes trying to find un-rumpled outfits that match.
Where the hell had he accumulated all this stuff? He knows it didn’t take this many boxes to move out of this room after... After. But then, most things from those first few weeks after Sherlock jumped are a blur. John doesn’t really remember the actual, physical act of moving. He doesn’t really remember the boxes, except as something into which he threw what was left of his life.
The pain of that time, the grief that was like something had ripped lose in him, leaving him to slowly bleed out...the memory of that’s all still as sharp as the day it happened. But how he’d managed to move through those days-sleeping, eating, talking, breathing, packing his life into boxes-all while carrying the weight of that grief...that’s still kind of fuzzy.
He remembers that he’d barely been able to stay in the empty flat long enough to box up the essentials. The bright, cheery sunlight streaming through the windows had been an insult. The dust motes hanging motionless in the air without Sherlock’s constant, manic movement to stir them, had been sorrow. The silence, the familiar scents already fading, had been too much a herald of what his life was going to be without Sherlock in it. Still. Grey. Boring. Lonely. Like the interior of an empty box...yawning, shadowed, and barren. An empty life without the promise of anything to fill it.
A couple of the older boxes, shoved far into the corners and still covered in dust, are from that time. They’re filled with things that hadn’t fit into the small bedsit to which he’d fled. Or things that had such a strong association with Sherlock that they’d been too painful to touch. He’d promised himself he’d return for them. One day, when the pain had dulled. But in the end, it had been almost two years before he’d been able to face the emptiness of the flat, the reminder of all he’d lost.
John wipes his hands on the seat of his trousers and takes a bite of his cake. It tastes sweet and spicy, every bit as good as his nose told him it would, but...it’s strangely unsatisfying. It’s soft and moist, and yet like chewing sawdust. He takes sip of his tea to wash it down.
He’s become accustomed to quashing the emotions that flare whenever he thinks of that dreadful day and the grey days after, and of the night he’d looked up and seen Sherlock alive. They’re emotions on the opposite ends of the spectrum: pain beyond bearing, un-containable joy. And colouring it all, anger like lava overflowing a volcano’s edge. But the memories of pain, the flashes of joy all blend and run together like watercolours in the rain. And they’re all, old and new, tinged with red...
Dark red... Sherlock falling; dark red blood on grey pavement; John’s own voice, so filled with fear and horror that he almost doesn’t recognize it, ‘I’m a doctor, let me through. He’s my friend.’; his heart already crumbling under the pain; that brief touch on a too-still wrist.
And bright red... Sherlock alive, breathing, smiling, ridiculous painted-on moustache. Bright red blood, proof of life, spurting from his nose after John head-butted him. John’s own savage, furious joy at feeling Sherlock’s warm, living flesh under his hands, at the coppery scent of Sherlock’s blood. No one knows, not even Mary, but the night that Sherlock returned, John had hid in the bathroom of their flat and stared at the blood on his hands. Sherlock’s blood. And he’d sucked it off his fingers, greedy as a vampire for the salt taste, for anything to make it real. To make it seem less like a dream. Sherlock warm and breathing. Bleeding. Alive.
In a mist of dark red, John had boxed up his life and moved on and tried to learn how to breathe again. And, then, months later, with that flare of bright red, with the coppery, salty taste of Sherlock’s blood on his tongue, it had felt like his heart had suddenly starting beating again.
John takes another deep breath and shoves it all away, the memories, the pain, the colours. ‘What’s done is done’, one of the medics who went through boot camp with him was fond of saying, and John’s found himself falling back on it often since Sherlock came back. Since Mary showed herself for who she is.
Sherlock had done what he’d done. Mary had done what she’d done. And John was the one left to figure out what he could forgive and what he couldn’t. What he could rebuild and what he couldn’t. What he had to box away forever.
In a weird, time-warping sort of way, their choices-Mary’s and Sherlock’s-have plopped him back down where he started. Back in this room. This boxed-in bedroom that he still hasn’t had time to make his own again. It seems like a long time ago that this room was his. A lifetime ago that he was happy and content here.
And at the same time, if it wasn’t for the boxes, he could almost imagine he never left. That all that time in between was a dream. A nightmare of pain and grief, deceit and treachery. Months of mourning, months of rebuilding his life, months of loving someone he thought he knew. But had he ever really known Mary? Or had he only loved the person he’d built her up to be in his mind? And how had he not been able to see her for who she was?
After all, it had taken only a couple of boxes to pack up her possessions and a couple for her clothes when they moved into the house. Shouldn’t the lack of boxes have tipped him off? Even moving from the cramped bedsit to Mary’s place, he’d needed more boxes than that for his belongings.
He flips open the lid of another box. It’s full of folders and papers. He closes it. He’s planning to discard and shred as he unpacks personal papers, and he’s neither up to tackling that tonight nor is Sherlock likely to give him the time he needs to do it.
He takes a sip of his tea, then tugs his jumper off over his head, and throws it onto the stack of clothing earmarked for laundry. It’s one of his warmest ones and would be more comfortable for lurking in the damp and cold of the Arches tonight, but it’s light-coloured, sure to provoke Sherlock’s ire. And he’s worn it three times already. It doesn’t look dirty, but it doesn’t feel clean.
He tugs his shirt out of the waistband of his jeans and his belt out of the loops. Toes off his shoes and realizes he’s wearing one dark green sock and one dark blue one. Huh. Well, that solves one of his problems, at least. He’ll give it a rinse in the sink later, and at least he’ll have matching, clean socks tomorrow. To go with an only slightly rumpled red jumper and the green and blue shirt. He grimaces. He’s going to look like Christmas warmed up.
He rubs the back of his neck, then scratches his nose as he contemplates the boxes. Might as well get started. Sighs and reminiscing aren’t getting the work done, and he’d promised himself at work today that he’d tackle at least a couple of boxes tonight. And every night, until he’s unpacked, no matter how dire the case is.
Sherlock will just have to give him a few extra minutes every evening. It’s silly to have the use of only one tiny bedside table and the bed and to still be digging every morning for something to wear. It’s daft to live, feeling like he’s still caught on the edge between past and future.
But which box first? Not files and paperwork. Not the ones with knickknacks and such, because there’s no place to put any of that until he’s shifted boxes and placed furniture. No more books, even if his pants are possibly hidden underneath. And not the ones with the remainder of his clothing, because he’s already discovered that he might as well just throw all that stuff in the laundry. It’s all too rumpled to wear. In fact...
He marches over to his desk-to-be and sweeps all the rumpled jumpers and shirts into the nearest box of clothing. Slings the trousers into another. He does the same with the socks-except for the dark green one-just dumps it all in, willy nilly, and stuffs it down. He shoves those boxes over next to the door and stacks them.
And then he retrieves the stack of books and his computer from his bedside table and arranges them on the desk. He digs into the box of office supplies and finds a cup, pencils, and a notebook. He positions all of it on the desk. Neatens. Straightens. Rearranges until it’s how he wants it. He pulls back the heavy layer of curtains so that what’s left of the watery afternoon sunlight filters through the sheers onto the desktop, then he steps back to admire his new work space.
There. It’s minor, but it feels like an accomplishment. A reclaiming. A step forward.
Then, happier, he chooses the two smaller boxes that are nestled in the open drawer of his chest of drawers. Might as well start there. He can’t put anything away until he’s emptied the drawer anyway.
The bigger of the two is labelled ‘toiletries’ in Greg’s scratchy, barely legible handwriting. Hopefully, it contains shampoo and toothpaste, because he’s been bumming off Sherlock since he came back. He shudders to think what else Greg and Sherlock might have grabbed out of the medicine cabinet at the house.
It had been no surprise that Greg had offered to help him move. ‘End of marriage therapy’, Greg had called it. ‘Take my advice. Leave behind everything you’re done with, including the memories and regrets.’ Greg’s been through it more than once, and John had been glad of his help and his wisdom.
But he’d been shocked that Sherlock had not only volunteered to go along, but had actually helped enthusiastically with the packing. John had taken it as a sign of how much Sherlock wanted him to move back in, but with Sherlock, who knows? Maybe he had just wanted deductive insight into the life that John had without him.
It was Sherlock who had packed up John’s clothing, which is the reason most of his trousers and shirts have to be washed and/or pressed before he can wear them and his jackets have to go to the drycleaner. Sherlock’s packing method consisted of wildly stuffing clothing, clean and dirty together, into boxes and taping them shut with sleeves and hems still peeking through the lids. At the time, rumpled clothes had seemed preferable to having Sherlock shuffling through his personal papers or rifling his bedside stand, so John had allowed him to have at it. Now he realizes he should have insisted on a bit more neatness.
He smiles, though, remembering Sherlock, elbows flying, tossing jumpers into a box, exclaiming, ‘John! How many of these hideous things do you actually need?’ John chuckles, remembering how red Greg’s face had turn when he’d opened a drawer to be confronted with John’s collection of colourful silk boxers. ‘Jesus, Watson, I could have lived a lifetime without knowing you wear red silk knickers. I’ll never be able to look at you at a crime scene again!’
For the hundredth time, John wonders which box contains his underwear. He shudders as he considers that maybe that particular box never made it to the flat. The idea of Greg sitting across his desk from John and Sherlock, grinning, wearing a pair of John’s pants underneath his work-rumpled trousers...well, that’s just perverse. It’s even worse to think of Greg, kicked back and grinning from ear to ear as he invites Donovan to take a peek inside the box that’s sitting on his desk. John can imagine her expression as she uses a pencil to sort through the contents.
But Greg wouldn’t do that to him, would he? Would he? And if Greg had, wouldn’t John have already heard about it, in sniggers or sotto voce comments, either at a crime scene or at the met, or in a strategically placed photo on a bulletin board? Or, god forbid, in a comment on his blog?
It was worth it, though, the crumpled clothing and the unpaired socks. Even, John supposes, Donovan having a peek at his knickers, if that’s what’s happened. Having Greg and Sherlock there-ragging on him about his sartorial style (or lack thereof), grunting over how many books he’d accumulated, chortling over what they found behind the bookcase in the living room, complaining about the lack of beer in the fridge-had made it all easier. Greg had been right. It had been therapeutic, and they had certainly helped ease the sadness of boxing up the end of his married life.
John sets the box labelled ‘toiletries’ just outside the door to be taken downstairs, then carries the smaller of the two boxes over to the bed and sits. He thinks about taking a nap instead of opening it, but settles for another bite of cake and sip of tea, for stretching and twisting his kinked spine. That slide down a muddy slope the other night has left him with a bruise the size of his fist on his hip and achy muscles in his lower back. And the trek home with all the shopping hasn’t helped.
He pulls the box over against his knee. It has no label on it, just an odd-shaped bald spot on the cardboard where a sticker’s been ripped away. He thought he’d made sure everything was marked up as it was stacked at the door for Angelo’s boys to carry out. (‘Angelo’s boys’, a misnomer, if ever there was one, for the two husky men who’d driven up in the restaurant’s van and climbed out to help with the moving. And John still hasn’t been told who arranged that. Had to be Sherlock, but all that was said was, ‘It’s been taken care of, Dr Watson’, when he tried to pay them for their time and effort.)
It’s possible that one of Angelo’s boys picked up something that wasn’t his. Or that something Greg or Sherlock packed slipped through his labelling process.
He rips the tape off the box and opens it. And, odder still, inside the box there’s a smaller box, padded all around with wads of brown paper.
John tosses the pieces of wadded paper onto the floor and lifts the smaller box out. Throws the empty box in the direction of the door so that he’ll remember to take it down later. The small box is a shoebox, lid held on with two over-sized rubber bands. A small shoebox, for a child’s shoes. His heart gives a lopsided beat, a thump of sadness for the child that wasn’t his.
Now that it’s all done, he can admit that he wasn’t particularly ready to be a father. But back then, when it was thrust upon him, when he’d still thought Mary was Mary, while he’d believed that the child Mary was carrying was his...the thought of a son or daughter had been exciting. It had been easy to convince himself that, even though he hadn’t chosen it, he was ready for that kind of drastic change. That fatherhood was the next step. That his life had been moving forward.
His anger flares as he remembers the night Mary confessed her deceit to him. Told him she had cheated, lied. Again. He stops the thought ruthlessly, tamps down on his anger. No point in going over all that.
But it still hurts, the loss of that tiny life he had come to love. Even knowing that the baby wasn’t his, he’d offered to be a part of his or her life, but Mary had wanted a clean break. And that’s for the best, too, he supposes. But he still thinks of the baby who wasn’t. The one who was to have his eyes and hair and Mary’s smile and Mary’s ears. The child he’ll never cradle against his chest. Who’ll never coo and wave pudgy arms at him as he leans down over the cot. Who’ll never spit up on his favourite jumper. Never take her first steps and fall into his arms.
Maybe Mary had bought shoes for the baby? But, no. The box is for a child’s shoes, not baby shoes, and it isn’t new. It’s years old and it looks like it’s been through the wringer. The logo on one side is faded and smeared as if it’s been wet. The edges of the lid are worn, one corner crumpled and split, forced back into its original square with wad of tape.
There’s a piece of paper, fine ivory linen with a watermark, much newer than the box, folded in half, tucked beneath the rubber bands. When John pulls the bands loose, the paper flips out of his fingers, flutters to the floor, and slips out of sight underneath the edge of the bed. Rather than going to the trouble of climbing off the bed and kneeling to retrieve it, he lifts one corner of the lid slowly, carefully, peeking in sideways.
His caution is carried over from childhood. Whenever he opens a box, he always half expects something to spring out into his face. Too many instances of Harry playing tricks when they were kids. He can still hear her squealing with delight when he’d opened a box, or a can of biscuits, or a jar, and then fall over backwards to avoid whatever spring-loaded thing she’d managed to cram into the container. He’d been an easy-going, gullible child, nearly school-aged before he learned to be cautious about anything she handed him that didn’t have a factory-sealed lid on it.
But this box reverses that sensation of something leaping out at him. As he eases the lid to the side and peeks inside, instead of something jumping out, it feels like everything is sucked in-light, sound, the breath from his lungs. Instead of falling over backwards, he feels like he’s going to pitch forward.
The box is full of photographs. Of John.
The words to a song, old, folksy, start up in his head. ‘Photographs and memories...’, but the guitar riff that begins the song and those three words are all that come. He plays it again in his head, but that’s all he can remember. And he knows it’s going to come back later, just the little trail of music and the words, and play in his head until he finds the song on the web and plays it. But right now...a piece of a song doesn’t have the power to break his attention from what he’s holding.
He reaches into the box without being aware of sending the command to his brain. He fumbles, fingers numb and clumsy, among the images. There are dozens and dozens of photos of him, none of which he recognizes.
Some are printed on photographic paper, some on what looks like plain computer paper. They’re all different sizes and shapes, from barely larger than a business card to 4x6s, from square to rectangular. Colour photos, though some are grainy and nearly monochrome, the images grey and fading as if they were printed on a bad quality printer with impermanent ink.
With a shaking hand, John pulls a stack of them out of the box. They slip through his fingers and flutter to the floor. A few land in his lap, and John grabs them before they can fall.
They’re all of him.
He stares at them. At the dozens more still in the box. It looks like there are larger prints tucked into the bottom. He can’t see the subject without taking more photos out, but he suspects he doesn’t need to see them to tell what they are. Because all the ones he’s holding in his hands are of him.
It’s...so strange. So bizarre. And he can’t begin to understand what’s happening. All these photos that he had no idea were being taken... All these photos of him as someone he barely recognizes...
These photos contain the life of another man named John Watson. A stranger who looks somewhat like him. One with grey strands eating away at his blond hair, with dark shadows like bruises under his eyes, and wrinkles emphasizing his down-turned mouth. He’s drinking coffee in a cafe. Sitting beside the Thames. Framed in a doorway. Coming out of the clinic. Getting into a taxi. Shopping at Tesco, wandering the aisles with cans of beans in a basket. And in all of them, his shoulders are hunched as if the weight of bearing his own body is too much for him.
John pulls another stack from the box, shuffles through them. There’s that other, unfamiliar John Watson with a stranger named Mary Morstan. She looks bright and jolly standing beside him at a bus stop, holding his hand. What doesn’t show in the photo is that her mirth will come to seem brittle and fake; her touch will be false.
As he shuffles through the photos, pulls more out of the box, he finds a few that aren’t of him. There are pictures of Mrs Hudson out shopping; in the cafe downstairs; coming out of a beauty shop, hand to her hair as if she’s checking that it’s been styled properly. Greg at a press conference, frowning, his brown eyes narrowed in annoyance; peering down at something on the ground at a crime scene; climbing into a car with Donovan. Molly and Mike in front of Bart’s. There’s one postcard, blank, with a beautiful picture of Albert Bridge in the twilight. But mostly, the photos are of John. Going about his daily life. The boring daily life he’s led for the past two years.
He flips one over. There’s a date written on the back, lightly, in pencil, in a hand he doesn’t recognize. He flips over photo after photo. The dates are all different days of the week, all different months, all within the last year and a half. He goes back to that first stack of photos, the ones in which he barely recognized himself. And, yes, the dates are within the first few months after Sherlock’s faked suicide.
The inevitable mix of watercolour red-anger, sorrow, relief-flares within him, but with the distraction of the photos, it’s easy to shove it away.
In a different stack, with later dates, he looks more relaxed, more like himself. The bruised shadows under his eyes and the frown wrinkles have eased. His shoulders are straighter, his eyes are brighter and, sometimes, his lips are turned up in a small smile.
Towards the bottom of the box, there’s a dog-eared envelope with six photos tucked in it. More of him, going about his daily boring life. Coming out of a cinema, blinking in the bright light. Walking along the street, head ducked and shoulders up to shield his neck from the rain. Backing through the door at the clinic, bag of pastries and cardboard holder overfilled with cups of coffee carefully balanced in his hands. These six are dated in order, just days apart.
In this box, then, are photos of him, taken (or at least, dated) every few days. For months. Months and months. But taken by whom? And why? To what purpose?
His skin crawls as he imagines the camera following his progress down the street, sweeping over him, wriggling into every corner of his life. As he imagines someone pouring over the photos, examining them, dissecting his actions and his appearance the way he just has.
This box, all these photos that smack of someone following him for months without him once noticing... This sinister box with the identifying label ripped off... It’s like finding a bomb in his room. Ticking slowly, quietly, as if there’s plenty of time before it goes off, but ticking, just the same.
Is there some new threat out there...the next Moriarty or Magnussen? Maybe he and Sherlock are in danger! A bullet-sized point at the base of his skull tingles as if there are crosshairs centred on him, and he already has one foot on the floor, pushing off from the bed, ready to run downstairs and check on Sherlock to make sure he’s all right, when he remembers the piece of paper.
He shoves the stacks of photos aside, not caring that they slip and slide, cascading across the duvet. He slides off the bed and kneels on the floor. His knee crumples a piece of the packing material, and the smell of brown paper drifts up. He shoves aside the remainder of the packing paper and the photos that have fallen, feels around on the floor under the bed until he finds the piece of folded stationary.
Despite the fear trickling like cold sweat down his spine, he doesn’t open it. He kneels there, holding it unopened in his hand. If this paper contains the whys and wherefores of all these photos, then of course, he has to know. But something doesn’t feel right, and he hesitates, rubbing his forehead while he tries to think.
These photos seem to have been taken during a specific period of time. He didn’t see any from before Sherlock jumped. There weren’t any of the wedding. The ones of him with Mary were early in their relationship. There were none of them while they were separated the first time. None since. So...not an imminent threat. Unless there are more photos out there somewhere, this is from his past.
The timing’s wrong for it to have been Moriarty. He was dead before the photos were taken. It definitely could have been Magnussen, but something about it doesn’t feel like his style. And that leaves...Mary.
But...surveillance of him before she met him? Considering all that he knows about Mary now, it’s possible their meeting was no accident. He’s wondered about that, but he’s never been able to come up with any reason for her to plan what happened between them. It’s much more likely they met accidentally and she seized an excellent opportunity for a cover story, for a disguised life. And he has enough of a sense of self worth to think that whether there was a contrived plan to meet him or not, she really did care for him. Just not enough. Not enough in the long run for her to overcome who she really was.
But if it was all planned, why would she have continued surveillance once they’d met, once they were living together? Why would she have surveilled herself? And why would the box be here now? Did someone pick it up at the house, not realizing that it wasn’t his?
Or did it come from somewhere else? From someone more sinister?
He puts the piece of paper on the floor and rubs his fingers together. The pads of his fingers are tingling. His hands are trembling. He clutches them together to still them.
But, of course, he has to know.
All these photos...he can never un-see them, never pretend that he doesn’t know they were taken, that someone looked at them, drank in his life. And he has to know why, even if it’s painful, especially if it’s a threat. There’s no other way to make sure he and Sherlock are safe.
After a moment of silence, of near meditation, and a couple of deep, cleansing, breaths, bracing himself for whatever he might discover, he picks up the note again. From the rich texture of the paper and the elegant, barely visible watermark, it’s very high quality stationary.
He opens it.
Words, stark black, leap at him like one of Harry’s springy canned snakes. He reels back, just like he did when he was a kid, and almost bangs his head on the bedside table before he catches himself, hand clutching at the comforter, sending photos slithering across it, and rights himself. A huge gasp of air fills his lungs and stays there, swells as if it’s being superheated in his chest until it feels as if his lungs will burst, and then it gusts back out, rattling the paper he holds clutched in one hand.
On the creamy ivory linen, written with what has to be a very expensive fountain pen judging by the quality of the strokes and the evenness of the lines, is a note:
Brother Dear,
These arrived in my personal post yesterday, bearing no return address
but with Buenos Aires postage and cancellation mark.
I can only assume that, at some point, you arranged to have them sent on.
Knowing your newly acquired penchant for sentimentality, I assumed
that you would wish to keep them, or at the very least, dispose of them yourself.
The note is unsigned, but the salutation and the condescending tone identify the author better than any signature. And John recognises Mycroft’s steady, precise penmanship.
Questions soar up in John’s mind like a cloud of seagulls at the shore, swooping and diving and cawing for attention. Battering inside his skull until he feels dizzy, and he has to close his eyes and force himself to breathe again. In. Out. In. Out. Until his mind is quieter if not calmer. Until his heart stops thundering and diving, too.
Now that Mycroft’s name has entered the picture, John looks carefully, more critically, at the photos spread out around him on the floor. Very few of them are high quality. Some are fuzzy and with harsh contrast. In many, the highlights are white and featureless, as if they were taken in bright sunlight with a poor quality camera. Most of the fuzzy, overexposed ones were taken from an elevated vantage point. From London’s street cameras, then. Mycroft’s own personal surveillance system.
The fear that had stabbed John when he first saw the photos eases. The feeling of sharp claws latching onto the back of his neck eases. The feeling that he’s sitting in the room with a slowly ticking bomb doesn’t.
John stretches and grabs the envelope on the bed. He’d been more interested in the photos inside when he first pulled it out of the box, but now he turns it over. It’s a Royal Mail pre-paid envelope, addressed to J. Smythe c/o a hotel in San Francisco, California. The address is typed, but the post mark is from a sorting office near Mycroft’s office.
John scoops up photos off the floor. Shuffles through them. More photos of him, doing everyday things. Eating chips as he walks along a busy street. Stopping outside the corner shop to scrutinize his receipt. Hailing a taxi.
There’s one, though, that’s really nice, and he drops the others to hold it closer. He’s sitting on a bench in the sunshine. He recognizes the park. It’s the one near Bart’s where he ran into Mike all those years ago, the fateful day that he met Sherlock and his whole life changed.
This photo...he flips it over...was taken almost 18 months ago. He doesn’t remember the day specifically. It’s just a day out of many days all run together, though obviously a little less grey than most during that time. In this one, he has a triangular sandwich box in one hand, unopened, and a bottle of water in the other. He’s wearing a striped shirt, open at the throat, and his jacket is folded across his lap. His head is tipped back to the sun, eyes closed, and he looks sad, but peaceful. The frown lines around his eyes and mouth aren’t so prominent in this one.
All those badly composed, badly printed photos obviously taken from street cameras...those John can figure out. Not the why, but at least the how. Mycroft’s been keeping tabs on him.
But this photograph throws the whole theory into question. This is a real photograph, not an inkjet print on plain paper taken from CCTV. It’s a 4x6 colour shot, professionally processed on photographic paper. It’s dog-eared and creased down the middle from being folded in half, and curved along one edge as if it’s been carried in a pocket or wallet for a very long time.
Moments later, or maybe hours later, he’s still looking at it, unblinking, as if his dive-bombing, cawing thoughts can deduce its journey-who took it, why, where it’s been, in whose pocket, those he’s pretty sure he can guess the answer to that one, but not why, why, why-when the door swings wide.
John hasn’t even realized how dark the room has grown, grey light almost gone from behind the sheer curtain, until the yellow light from the tiny landing outside his bedroom floods in. It blinds him momentarily, and he blinks against it.
“John, didn’t you hear me calling you?” Sherlock demands. “We need to be-” Sherlock’s voice cuts off sharply, words swallowed by a quick hitch of breath. Then Sherlock steps fully into the doorway, blocking out most of the light.
Cont’d in Part 2
Recipient: hiddenlacuna
Author: LyricaXXX
Characters/Pairings: John/Sherlock
Rating: Mature
Warnings: None
Words: ~16500
Summary:
The only uncovered flat surface in the room is the bed. Even on John’s bedside table, the alarm clock and his computer sit atop stacks of the books he unpacked yesterday. He hadn’t intended to unpack books, not until he’d actually cleared a path to the bookcase, but...he’d been hoping he’d find his missing pants at the bottom of the box.
Possibly, the state of the room says something deep and existential about the state of his life, the boxes both clutter and metaphor for the stagnation through which he wades everyday. Since he moved back into 221B, he’s felt as though he’s in limbo. His life and his heart, still packed up in boxes. Balanced, precariously, on a knife edge, waiting. Waiting. For what, he doesn’t know.
Boxes, Pt 1
Photographs and memories,
Christmas cards you sent to me,
All that I have are these
To remember you.
~Jim Croce
John’s huffing and completely frustrated by the time he gets to the top of the stairs. Back complaining, feet tired, fingers an odd combination of tingling and numb from the weight of the bags he’s just carried all the way home from the supermarket.
He’s just stood, banging his foot on the door of 221B, waiting in vain for someone to answer. He’s sure Mrs Hudson is out, and he’s equally sure Sherlock is home and just ignoring him. It’s not like he wasn’t loud enough to be heard, because the woman across the street had opened her door and glared at him. So he’d given up and juggled bags and keys to get the door open.
After all that, he doesn’t even bother to thump on the door of the flat. Just goes through his routine of standing on one foot, bracing bags with his upraised knee, twisting his arm up at an impossible angle to fumble with the doorknob on the door that opens directly into the kitchen. If it’s locked, he thinks he may just drop bread and milk and vegetables (and the ginger cake that called to him from across the aisle and had his mouth watering) on the floor and leave them where he’s standing. Go back out for a beer instead of going in and making tea. But the knob finally turns in his numb grip, then clicks open.
He turns and bumps the door open with his arse with maybe a bit more gusto than is necessary. It swings all the way back and bangs the wall with a satisfying thump that perfectly mirrors his annoyance.
The wild swing of the door ripples the papers spread across the entire surface of the kitchen table.
Sherlock, sitting at the table in the chair nearest the door (where he definitely could hear John trying to get in both downstairs and upstairs), reaches out casually and extends his long fingers across the papers nearest the edge to keep them from flying away.
“Couldn’t you hear me knocking?” John’s annoyance and frustration raise the tone of his voice an octave.
Sherlock doesn’t even look up from the file he’s reading. “John...” he rumbles. “Good. We’ll be leaving just after sunset.”
John stares at him, trying to decide between a grin or a grimace, exasperation warring with admiration for the casual yet elegant picture Sherlock presents. He’s dressed all in black-tight black shirt stretched taut across his chest and shoulders and snug black trousers clinging to his lean thighs; one foot, clad in a black sock, hooked carelessly over a rung of the empty chair beside him.
John settles for something in between. A grinace, he supposes. His own new word, coined with one person in mind.
grin·ace
/ˈɡriməs,ɡrəˈmās/
noun
1. an expression combining fond amusement, irritation, and resignation;
2. often accompanied by the urge to punch the object of said facial expression right on his patrician nose
In the Oxford English Dictionary, under the entry for his new word, a footnote would say, ‘See ‘Sherlock Holmes’.’
“Hello to you, too,” John says, a bit too loudly. “Sorry if I disturbed you with all my noise, banging on the door and all, trying to get our shopping up the stairs.”
Sherlock glances back at him, just a twist of his long neck, a quick flick of his incredible eyes, before he returns silently to what he’s reading.
John juggles the shopping bags and tries to retrieve the door with his fingertips, then gives up and shuffles around, catches the edge of door with his foot, and shoves it closed. The bang is louder this time and not quite as accidental as the first one, but just as satisfying.
Sherlock holds his papers down again and doesn’t even bother to look up.
John gives in to the grin. It’s not like he didn’t know, from previous experience, what living with Sherlock was like. It’s not like he moved back into the flat blindly. John sighs-something he catches himself doing a lot these days-as he struggles over and dumps the bags on the counter.
Though there had been those few weeks when alien-pod-Sherlock had been flitting around... That had been kind of nice, in a bewildering, changeling sort of way.
After his marriage to Mary had died its unnatural death, and John had mentioned that he wasn’t keen to keep living alone in their house, Sherlock had been almost puppyish in his eagerness for John to move back into the flat. For the week or so John took to make up his mind, and the first few days after John moved back in, Sherlock had been on such good behaviour that it had been disconcerting. Sherlock had still snarked at Donovan, talked down his nose in that disdainful tone to Greg, but with John, Sherlock had been polite and attentive. And in the flat...he’d cleaned up after himself, left no body parts in the fridge, didn’t walk on the furniture.
It had been so noticeable that John had joked, ‘Okay, where have you hidden the alien pod? Not that I mind pod-person-Sherlock. I mean, it’s nice not to wonder whether the fork I’m using has previously speared an eyeball, or whether I should disinfect my toothbrush before I use it. And last night, just you and me and Mycroft’s really good brandy-does he know you stole that, by the way?-and civil conversation, that was great. But where’s the real Sherlock?’
Sherlock had looked at him, affronted, and said only, ‘People change, John.’
John tugs off his coat and tosses it in the general direction of his chair. No point in hanging it up when he’s just going to have to go back out in an hour or so.
Of course, that pod-person-Sherlock thing hadn’t lasted long. Within a few days of mentioning it, John had realized he’d spoken too soon. Some of the old traits had begun to slip back in. Sherlock had broken into John’s computer rather than walk the few metres to his bedroom and retrieve his own. And he’d disappeared for several hours a couple of nights in a row. He’d left a smelly, probably toxic experiment percolating on the kitchen table for three days. And then Greg had called, wanting their help with another case, and the old Sherlock (focused, manic, maniacal, socially clueless, oblivious, going over the furniture instead of around) had made a full reappearance. It was like Sherlock had been on good behaviour while he was enticing John to move back in, and once that started to slip away, all it had taken to shove him the rest of the way back to normality was the excuse of a case. What passed for normal in Sherlock’s world, anyway.
And, for the most part, that’s been okay. There’s no denying that the Sherlock who would have answered John’s banging on the door and helped carry the shopping was nice. But there’s something comforting in this more familiar Sherlock, too.
Though it has added to the niggling sense of déjà vu that won’t leave John alone. That sense that sneaks up on him...sometimes, when he’s not looking...that his life is running in reverse. Instead of moving forward, he’s moving backwards.
Or maybe...he’s not moving at all. Sometimes...it’s like he’s standing still, and the last two and a half years didn’t even happen. Which, really-considering everything that occurred-isn’t that bad an idea. There’s very little of the last two and half years that he wouldn’t be pleased to let go.
But that’s not the nature of memory and fallout, so he supposes he’ll just have to keep slogging on. At some point, he’ll get back to a place of equilibrium. Maybe. Until then, there’s an annoying kind of comfort in falling back on old behaviours, old ways of doing things.
As John opens the fridge and puts away the cold items (still no body parts in sight, thankfully), he grumbles, “My day was fine, thanks. Not too busy at the clinic, though Tesco was a madhouse. But, otherwise, my day was fine. Nice of you to ask. And yours?”
“Uhmmm...” Sherlock responds, still not looking up. He takes a handful of papers and drops them on the floor, then spreads another stack out like a hand of cards.
John makes quick work of putting the remainder of the shopping into the cabinets, fills the kettle, sets up mugs and teabags. Cuts slices of the ginger cake and puts it on napkins, regretting that he didn’t think to buy custard to go with it. Then he props up on the counter while he waits for the kettle to boil. “You know...” He addresses the top of Sherlock’s curly head. “I think I might give it a miss tonight. I’m still living out of boxes. I need to finish unpacking and do laundry.”
Sherlock shuffles the pages he’s holding.
John leans closer and squints. Witness statements. Sherlock really is getting desperate, going over the witness statements again. They’ve been almost a week on the case. Sherlock had rated it a four at best, and in a bored, condescending tone, assured Greg it would probably be wrapped up in a couple of days. But the solution has eluded them, and Sherlock has taken it as a personal affront. They’ve spent days on interviews and research, nights lurking in alleys and under bridges, trying to find the witness whom Sherlock has pinpointed as the key to the whole mystery.
John turns and pours hot water into the mugs, then gets the milk from the fridge. “What the hell did you and Greg do to my clothes when you helped me pack, anyway? My shirts look like they’ve been tied in knots. My socks are shuffled in with the other stuff, but not in pairs. All I’ve got clean and halfway unwrinkled for tomorrow is a red jumper and a blue and green check shirt. And green socks. Not matching green socks, mind you. A light green one and a dark green one. And I still haven’t found my pants.”
Sherlock hums again, as noncommittal-or maybe it’s simply disinterested-as he was the first few times John complained about the subject, and drops another stack of papers on the floor. “You should wear black tonight. You might as well have been carrying a lit torch with the shirt you had on last night.” He flicks imaginary lint from the cuff of his immaculate silk shirt.
John’s not sure whether it’s a commentary on the horrid colour combination he’s just mentioned or his previous night’s choice of costume for lurking under a bridge.
John sighs as he adds milk to the tea, then puts the milk away. “My black jeans and shirt are too crusted with dried mud to even put in the hamper. That’s what I was wearing two nights ago when I slid down that embankment to keep you from falling into the Thames. I can’t wear black again until I do laundry.”
“I wouldn’t have fallen,” Sherlock says mildly, still not looking up as he accepts the cup of tea John hands him. John shifts a couple of files to put down a napkin containing a slice of cake.
Sherlock peers at it and mumbles something that sounds like ‘thanks’ as he shuffles under the papers and pulls out a map.
John sips his tea and looks over Sherlock’s shoulder. The map is dotted with large red X’s. There are way too many marks to be only the places he and Sherlock have staked-out, so some of Sherlock’s homeless network, or maybe some of Greg’s coppers, must be covering other areas.
Sherlock taps a spot on the map, one already marked with an X. “We’ll do Vauxhall Arches again tonight, I think.”
“Did you hear anything I said, about unpacking and washing my clothes?”
“What?” Sherlock breaks off a piece of cake, then forgets to put it in his mouth as he peers at the map.
John shakes his head and sighs. He balances his cake on top of his cup and cradles everything in both hands as he heads up the stairs. Then sighs again as he stands in the doorway and surveys his bedroom.
It’s been almost three months since he and Mary split up, almost four weeks since he moved back to 221B, and it still looks less like a living space and more like a messy storage locker with a bed. Between the clinic and Sherlock dragging him along on cases, there’s simply been no time for something as, 'Mundane, John,’ (he can hear Sherlock’s sniff of disdain) as unpacking.
John crosses over and makes a space on his bedside table for his tea and cake.
The only uncovered flat surface in the room is the bed. Even on his bedside table, the alarm clock and his computer sit atop stacks of the books he unpacked yesterday. He hadn’t intended to unpack books, not until he’d actually cleared a path to the bookcase, but...he’d been hoping he’d find his pants at the bottom of the box.
Possibly, the state of his bedroom says something deep and existential about the state of his life, the boxes both clutter and metaphor for the stagnation through which he wades everyday. It’s good and it’s safe and it’s comfortable here (or it would be comfortable, if he had clean clothes and could move more than a couple of feet without stepping over a box), and he should be feeling better since moving back, but instead it feels like he’s in limbo. His life and his heart, still packed up in boxes. Balanced, precariously, on a knife edge, waiting. Waiting. For what, he doesn’t know.
This room is the last place he can remember being truly happy and content for a significant length of time. There were days, even weeks, during his and Mary’s honeymoon period and a very short period after their reconciliation when he’s sure he must have been happy and content, but those memories are all suspect now. Murky with lies and deceit. With all of that behind him, it seems as if he should be happy and content again. But all he really feels is trapped. Boxed in.
He shifts a couple of boxes of books over towards the bookcase, grunting as he lifts one to stack it. Then, pleased with even the small area of floor he’s just cleared, he shifts a couple more, and that’s even better.
Maybe it’s only the lack of order that’s contributing to his unsettled frame of mind. Or maybe it’s just that, instead of moving forward to something new, he’d jumped back into the old whirlwind way of living his personal life on the fringes of Sherlock and this week’s case, of putting his life and his needs on hold.
Sometimes, it feels as if he never left 221B. That all that happened in between living here last time and moving back this time was a long, drawn-out nightmare from which he’ll wake at any moment. And then he’ll start moving again. Forward to something...he’s not sure what. Just...something different. Something that feels like living.
He turns slowly in a circle, looking for another box that can be shifted into the stacks he’s beginning to build.
Except for the bed, everything in the room-dresser, chest of drawers, the small bookcase-is covered with unpacked boxes. Even the top drawer of the chest of drawers is open and has a couple of the smaller boxes toppled into it. The small table and chair, all that he kept of the furniture he and Mary bought together, fits as he thought it would, perfectly just under the window.
In fact, it fits into the room better than he does at the moment. It’s going to make a cosy and pleasant work space, if he ever gets organized again. Right now, though, the desk has become a makeshift laundry basket. It’s stacked with jumpers and shirts and trousers too rumpled to wear, and the chair is draped with the mismatched socks he’s pulled out as he rifled through boxes trying to find un-rumpled outfits that match.
Where the hell had he accumulated all this stuff? He knows it didn’t take this many boxes to move out of this room after... After. But then, most things from those first few weeks after Sherlock jumped are a blur. John doesn’t really remember the actual, physical act of moving. He doesn’t really remember the boxes, except as something into which he threw what was left of his life.
The pain of that time, the grief that was like something had ripped lose in him, leaving him to slowly bleed out...the memory of that’s all still as sharp as the day it happened. But how he’d managed to move through those days-sleeping, eating, talking, breathing, packing his life into boxes-all while carrying the weight of that grief...that’s still kind of fuzzy.
He remembers that he’d barely been able to stay in the empty flat long enough to box up the essentials. The bright, cheery sunlight streaming through the windows had been an insult. The dust motes hanging motionless in the air without Sherlock’s constant, manic movement to stir them, had been sorrow. The silence, the familiar scents already fading, had been too much a herald of what his life was going to be without Sherlock in it. Still. Grey. Boring. Lonely. Like the interior of an empty box...yawning, shadowed, and barren. An empty life without the promise of anything to fill it.
A couple of the older boxes, shoved far into the corners and still covered in dust, are from that time. They’re filled with things that hadn’t fit into the small bedsit to which he’d fled. Or things that had such a strong association with Sherlock that they’d been too painful to touch. He’d promised himself he’d return for them. One day, when the pain had dulled. But in the end, it had been almost two years before he’d been able to face the emptiness of the flat, the reminder of all he’d lost.
John wipes his hands on the seat of his trousers and takes a bite of his cake. It tastes sweet and spicy, every bit as good as his nose told him it would, but...it’s strangely unsatisfying. It’s soft and moist, and yet like chewing sawdust. He takes sip of his tea to wash it down.
He’s become accustomed to quashing the emotions that flare whenever he thinks of that dreadful day and the grey days after, and of the night he’d looked up and seen Sherlock alive. They’re emotions on the opposite ends of the spectrum: pain beyond bearing, un-containable joy. And colouring it all, anger like lava overflowing a volcano’s edge. But the memories of pain, the flashes of joy all blend and run together like watercolours in the rain. And they’re all, old and new, tinged with red...
Dark red... Sherlock falling; dark red blood on grey pavement; John’s own voice, so filled with fear and horror that he almost doesn’t recognize it, ‘I’m a doctor, let me through. He’s my friend.’; his heart already crumbling under the pain; that brief touch on a too-still wrist.
And bright red... Sherlock alive, breathing, smiling, ridiculous painted-on moustache. Bright red blood, proof of life, spurting from his nose after John head-butted him. John’s own savage, furious joy at feeling Sherlock’s warm, living flesh under his hands, at the coppery scent of Sherlock’s blood. No one knows, not even Mary, but the night that Sherlock returned, John had hid in the bathroom of their flat and stared at the blood on his hands. Sherlock’s blood. And he’d sucked it off his fingers, greedy as a vampire for the salt taste, for anything to make it real. To make it seem less like a dream. Sherlock warm and breathing. Bleeding. Alive.
In a mist of dark red, John had boxed up his life and moved on and tried to learn how to breathe again. And, then, months later, with that flare of bright red, with the coppery, salty taste of Sherlock’s blood on his tongue, it had felt like his heart had suddenly starting beating again.
John takes another deep breath and shoves it all away, the memories, the pain, the colours. ‘What’s done is done’, one of the medics who went through boot camp with him was fond of saying, and John’s found himself falling back on it often since Sherlock came back. Since Mary showed herself for who she is.
Sherlock had done what he’d done. Mary had done what she’d done. And John was the one left to figure out what he could forgive and what he couldn’t. What he could rebuild and what he couldn’t. What he had to box away forever.
In a weird, time-warping sort of way, their choices-Mary’s and Sherlock’s-have plopped him back down where he started. Back in this room. This boxed-in bedroom that he still hasn’t had time to make his own again. It seems like a long time ago that this room was his. A lifetime ago that he was happy and content here.
And at the same time, if it wasn’t for the boxes, he could almost imagine he never left. That all that time in between was a dream. A nightmare of pain and grief, deceit and treachery. Months of mourning, months of rebuilding his life, months of loving someone he thought he knew. But had he ever really known Mary? Or had he only loved the person he’d built her up to be in his mind? And how had he not been able to see her for who she was?
After all, it had taken only a couple of boxes to pack up her possessions and a couple for her clothes when they moved into the house. Shouldn’t the lack of boxes have tipped him off? Even moving from the cramped bedsit to Mary’s place, he’d needed more boxes than that for his belongings.
He flips open the lid of another box. It’s full of folders and papers. He closes it. He’s planning to discard and shred as he unpacks personal papers, and he’s neither up to tackling that tonight nor is Sherlock likely to give him the time he needs to do it.
He takes a sip of his tea, then tugs his jumper off over his head, and throws it onto the stack of clothing earmarked for laundry. It’s one of his warmest ones and would be more comfortable for lurking in the damp and cold of the Arches tonight, but it’s light-coloured, sure to provoke Sherlock’s ire. And he’s worn it three times already. It doesn’t look dirty, but it doesn’t feel clean.
He tugs his shirt out of the waistband of his jeans and his belt out of the loops. Toes off his shoes and realizes he’s wearing one dark green sock and one dark blue one. Huh. Well, that solves one of his problems, at least. He’ll give it a rinse in the sink later, and at least he’ll have matching, clean socks tomorrow. To go with an only slightly rumpled red jumper and the green and blue shirt. He grimaces. He’s going to look like Christmas warmed up.
He rubs the back of his neck, then scratches his nose as he contemplates the boxes. Might as well get started. Sighs and reminiscing aren’t getting the work done, and he’d promised himself at work today that he’d tackle at least a couple of boxes tonight. And every night, until he’s unpacked, no matter how dire the case is.
Sherlock will just have to give him a few extra minutes every evening. It’s silly to have the use of only one tiny bedside table and the bed and to still be digging every morning for something to wear. It’s daft to live, feeling like he’s still caught on the edge between past and future.
But which box first? Not files and paperwork. Not the ones with knickknacks and such, because there’s no place to put any of that until he’s shifted boxes and placed furniture. No more books, even if his pants are possibly hidden underneath. And not the ones with the remainder of his clothing, because he’s already discovered that he might as well just throw all that stuff in the laundry. It’s all too rumpled to wear. In fact...
He marches over to his desk-to-be and sweeps all the rumpled jumpers and shirts into the nearest box of clothing. Slings the trousers into another. He does the same with the socks-except for the dark green one-just dumps it all in, willy nilly, and stuffs it down. He shoves those boxes over next to the door and stacks them.
And then he retrieves the stack of books and his computer from his bedside table and arranges them on the desk. He digs into the box of office supplies and finds a cup, pencils, and a notebook. He positions all of it on the desk. Neatens. Straightens. Rearranges until it’s how he wants it. He pulls back the heavy layer of curtains so that what’s left of the watery afternoon sunlight filters through the sheers onto the desktop, then he steps back to admire his new work space.
There. It’s minor, but it feels like an accomplishment. A reclaiming. A step forward.
Then, happier, he chooses the two smaller boxes that are nestled in the open drawer of his chest of drawers. Might as well start there. He can’t put anything away until he’s emptied the drawer anyway.
The bigger of the two is labelled ‘toiletries’ in Greg’s scratchy, barely legible handwriting. Hopefully, it contains shampoo and toothpaste, because he’s been bumming off Sherlock since he came back. He shudders to think what else Greg and Sherlock might have grabbed out of the medicine cabinet at the house.
It had been no surprise that Greg had offered to help him move. ‘End of marriage therapy’, Greg had called it. ‘Take my advice. Leave behind everything you’re done with, including the memories and regrets.’ Greg’s been through it more than once, and John had been glad of his help and his wisdom.
But he’d been shocked that Sherlock had not only volunteered to go along, but had actually helped enthusiastically with the packing. John had taken it as a sign of how much Sherlock wanted him to move back in, but with Sherlock, who knows? Maybe he had just wanted deductive insight into the life that John had without him.
It was Sherlock who had packed up John’s clothing, which is the reason most of his trousers and shirts have to be washed and/or pressed before he can wear them and his jackets have to go to the drycleaner. Sherlock’s packing method consisted of wildly stuffing clothing, clean and dirty together, into boxes and taping them shut with sleeves and hems still peeking through the lids. At the time, rumpled clothes had seemed preferable to having Sherlock shuffling through his personal papers or rifling his bedside stand, so John had allowed him to have at it. Now he realizes he should have insisted on a bit more neatness.
He smiles, though, remembering Sherlock, elbows flying, tossing jumpers into a box, exclaiming, ‘John! How many of these hideous things do you actually need?’ John chuckles, remembering how red Greg’s face had turn when he’d opened a drawer to be confronted with John’s collection of colourful silk boxers. ‘Jesus, Watson, I could have lived a lifetime without knowing you wear red silk knickers. I’ll never be able to look at you at a crime scene again!’
For the hundredth time, John wonders which box contains his underwear. He shudders as he considers that maybe that particular box never made it to the flat. The idea of Greg sitting across his desk from John and Sherlock, grinning, wearing a pair of John’s pants underneath his work-rumpled trousers...well, that’s just perverse. It’s even worse to think of Greg, kicked back and grinning from ear to ear as he invites Donovan to take a peek inside the box that’s sitting on his desk. John can imagine her expression as she uses a pencil to sort through the contents.
But Greg wouldn’t do that to him, would he? Would he? And if Greg had, wouldn’t John have already heard about it, in sniggers or sotto voce comments, either at a crime scene or at the met, or in a strategically placed photo on a bulletin board? Or, god forbid, in a comment on his blog?
It was worth it, though, the crumpled clothing and the unpaired socks. Even, John supposes, Donovan having a peek at his knickers, if that’s what’s happened. Having Greg and Sherlock there-ragging on him about his sartorial style (or lack thereof), grunting over how many books he’d accumulated, chortling over what they found behind the bookcase in the living room, complaining about the lack of beer in the fridge-had made it all easier. Greg had been right. It had been therapeutic, and they had certainly helped ease the sadness of boxing up the end of his married life.
John sets the box labelled ‘toiletries’ just outside the door to be taken downstairs, then carries the smaller of the two boxes over to the bed and sits. He thinks about taking a nap instead of opening it, but settles for another bite of cake and sip of tea, for stretching and twisting his kinked spine. That slide down a muddy slope the other night has left him with a bruise the size of his fist on his hip and achy muscles in his lower back. And the trek home with all the shopping hasn’t helped.
He pulls the box over against his knee. It has no label on it, just an odd-shaped bald spot on the cardboard where a sticker’s been ripped away. He thought he’d made sure everything was marked up as it was stacked at the door for Angelo’s boys to carry out. (‘Angelo’s boys’, a misnomer, if ever there was one, for the two husky men who’d driven up in the restaurant’s van and climbed out to help with the moving. And John still hasn’t been told who arranged that. Had to be Sherlock, but all that was said was, ‘It’s been taken care of, Dr Watson’, when he tried to pay them for their time and effort.)
It’s possible that one of Angelo’s boys picked up something that wasn’t his. Or that something Greg or Sherlock packed slipped through his labelling process.
He rips the tape off the box and opens it. And, odder still, inside the box there’s a smaller box, padded all around with wads of brown paper.
John tosses the pieces of wadded paper onto the floor and lifts the smaller box out. Throws the empty box in the direction of the door so that he’ll remember to take it down later. The small box is a shoebox, lid held on with two over-sized rubber bands. A small shoebox, for a child’s shoes. His heart gives a lopsided beat, a thump of sadness for the child that wasn’t his.
Now that it’s all done, he can admit that he wasn’t particularly ready to be a father. But back then, when it was thrust upon him, when he’d still thought Mary was Mary, while he’d believed that the child Mary was carrying was his...the thought of a son or daughter had been exciting. It had been easy to convince himself that, even though he hadn’t chosen it, he was ready for that kind of drastic change. That fatherhood was the next step. That his life had been moving forward.
His anger flares as he remembers the night Mary confessed her deceit to him. Told him she had cheated, lied. Again. He stops the thought ruthlessly, tamps down on his anger. No point in going over all that.
But it still hurts, the loss of that tiny life he had come to love. Even knowing that the baby wasn’t his, he’d offered to be a part of his or her life, but Mary had wanted a clean break. And that’s for the best, too, he supposes. But he still thinks of the baby who wasn’t. The one who was to have his eyes and hair and Mary’s smile and Mary’s ears. The child he’ll never cradle against his chest. Who’ll never coo and wave pudgy arms at him as he leans down over the cot. Who’ll never spit up on his favourite jumper. Never take her first steps and fall into his arms.
Maybe Mary had bought shoes for the baby? But, no. The box is for a child’s shoes, not baby shoes, and it isn’t new. It’s years old and it looks like it’s been through the wringer. The logo on one side is faded and smeared as if it’s been wet. The edges of the lid are worn, one corner crumpled and split, forced back into its original square with wad of tape.
There’s a piece of paper, fine ivory linen with a watermark, much newer than the box, folded in half, tucked beneath the rubber bands. When John pulls the bands loose, the paper flips out of his fingers, flutters to the floor, and slips out of sight underneath the edge of the bed. Rather than going to the trouble of climbing off the bed and kneeling to retrieve it, he lifts one corner of the lid slowly, carefully, peeking in sideways.
His caution is carried over from childhood. Whenever he opens a box, he always half expects something to spring out into his face. Too many instances of Harry playing tricks when they were kids. He can still hear her squealing with delight when he’d opened a box, or a can of biscuits, or a jar, and then fall over backwards to avoid whatever spring-loaded thing she’d managed to cram into the container. He’d been an easy-going, gullible child, nearly school-aged before he learned to be cautious about anything she handed him that didn’t have a factory-sealed lid on it.
But this box reverses that sensation of something leaping out at him. As he eases the lid to the side and peeks inside, instead of something jumping out, it feels like everything is sucked in-light, sound, the breath from his lungs. Instead of falling over backwards, he feels like he’s going to pitch forward.
The box is full of photographs. Of John.
The words to a song, old, folksy, start up in his head. ‘Photographs and memories...’, but the guitar riff that begins the song and those three words are all that come. He plays it again in his head, but that’s all he can remember. And he knows it’s going to come back later, just the little trail of music and the words, and play in his head until he finds the song on the web and plays it. But right now...a piece of a song doesn’t have the power to break his attention from what he’s holding.
He reaches into the box without being aware of sending the command to his brain. He fumbles, fingers numb and clumsy, among the images. There are dozens and dozens of photos of him, none of which he recognizes.
Some are printed on photographic paper, some on what looks like plain computer paper. They’re all different sizes and shapes, from barely larger than a business card to 4x6s, from square to rectangular. Colour photos, though some are grainy and nearly monochrome, the images grey and fading as if they were printed on a bad quality printer with impermanent ink.
With a shaking hand, John pulls a stack of them out of the box. They slip through his fingers and flutter to the floor. A few land in his lap, and John grabs them before they can fall.
They’re all of him.
He stares at them. At the dozens more still in the box. It looks like there are larger prints tucked into the bottom. He can’t see the subject without taking more photos out, but he suspects he doesn’t need to see them to tell what they are. Because all the ones he’s holding in his hands are of him.
It’s...so strange. So bizarre. And he can’t begin to understand what’s happening. All these photos that he had no idea were being taken... All these photos of him as someone he barely recognizes...
These photos contain the life of another man named John Watson. A stranger who looks somewhat like him. One with grey strands eating away at his blond hair, with dark shadows like bruises under his eyes, and wrinkles emphasizing his down-turned mouth. He’s drinking coffee in a cafe. Sitting beside the Thames. Framed in a doorway. Coming out of the clinic. Getting into a taxi. Shopping at Tesco, wandering the aisles with cans of beans in a basket. And in all of them, his shoulders are hunched as if the weight of bearing his own body is too much for him.
John pulls another stack from the box, shuffles through them. There’s that other, unfamiliar John Watson with a stranger named Mary Morstan. She looks bright and jolly standing beside him at a bus stop, holding his hand. What doesn’t show in the photo is that her mirth will come to seem brittle and fake; her touch will be false.
As he shuffles through the photos, pulls more out of the box, he finds a few that aren’t of him. There are pictures of Mrs Hudson out shopping; in the cafe downstairs; coming out of a beauty shop, hand to her hair as if she’s checking that it’s been styled properly. Greg at a press conference, frowning, his brown eyes narrowed in annoyance; peering down at something on the ground at a crime scene; climbing into a car with Donovan. Molly and Mike in front of Bart’s. There’s one postcard, blank, with a beautiful picture of Albert Bridge in the twilight. But mostly, the photos are of John. Going about his daily life. The boring daily life he’s led for the past two years.
He flips one over. There’s a date written on the back, lightly, in pencil, in a hand he doesn’t recognize. He flips over photo after photo. The dates are all different days of the week, all different months, all within the last year and a half. He goes back to that first stack of photos, the ones in which he barely recognized himself. And, yes, the dates are within the first few months after Sherlock’s faked suicide.
The inevitable mix of watercolour red-anger, sorrow, relief-flares within him, but with the distraction of the photos, it’s easy to shove it away.
In a different stack, with later dates, he looks more relaxed, more like himself. The bruised shadows under his eyes and the frown wrinkles have eased. His shoulders are straighter, his eyes are brighter and, sometimes, his lips are turned up in a small smile.
Towards the bottom of the box, there’s a dog-eared envelope with six photos tucked in it. More of him, going about his daily boring life. Coming out of a cinema, blinking in the bright light. Walking along the street, head ducked and shoulders up to shield his neck from the rain. Backing through the door at the clinic, bag of pastries and cardboard holder overfilled with cups of coffee carefully balanced in his hands. These six are dated in order, just days apart.
In this box, then, are photos of him, taken (or at least, dated) every few days. For months. Months and months. But taken by whom? And why? To what purpose?
His skin crawls as he imagines the camera following his progress down the street, sweeping over him, wriggling into every corner of his life. As he imagines someone pouring over the photos, examining them, dissecting his actions and his appearance the way he just has.
This box, all these photos that smack of someone following him for months without him once noticing... This sinister box with the identifying label ripped off... It’s like finding a bomb in his room. Ticking slowly, quietly, as if there’s plenty of time before it goes off, but ticking, just the same.
Is there some new threat out there...the next Moriarty or Magnussen? Maybe he and Sherlock are in danger! A bullet-sized point at the base of his skull tingles as if there are crosshairs centred on him, and he already has one foot on the floor, pushing off from the bed, ready to run downstairs and check on Sherlock to make sure he’s all right, when he remembers the piece of paper.
He shoves the stacks of photos aside, not caring that they slip and slide, cascading across the duvet. He slides off the bed and kneels on the floor. His knee crumples a piece of the packing material, and the smell of brown paper drifts up. He shoves aside the remainder of the packing paper and the photos that have fallen, feels around on the floor under the bed until he finds the piece of folded stationary.
Despite the fear trickling like cold sweat down his spine, he doesn’t open it. He kneels there, holding it unopened in his hand. If this paper contains the whys and wherefores of all these photos, then of course, he has to know. But something doesn’t feel right, and he hesitates, rubbing his forehead while he tries to think.
These photos seem to have been taken during a specific period of time. He didn’t see any from before Sherlock jumped. There weren’t any of the wedding. The ones of him with Mary were early in their relationship. There were none of them while they were separated the first time. None since. So...not an imminent threat. Unless there are more photos out there somewhere, this is from his past.
The timing’s wrong for it to have been Moriarty. He was dead before the photos were taken. It definitely could have been Magnussen, but something about it doesn’t feel like his style. And that leaves...Mary.
But...surveillance of him before she met him? Considering all that he knows about Mary now, it’s possible their meeting was no accident. He’s wondered about that, but he’s never been able to come up with any reason for her to plan what happened between them. It’s much more likely they met accidentally and she seized an excellent opportunity for a cover story, for a disguised life. And he has enough of a sense of self worth to think that whether there was a contrived plan to meet him or not, she really did care for him. Just not enough. Not enough in the long run for her to overcome who she really was.
But if it was all planned, why would she have continued surveillance once they’d met, once they were living together? Why would she have surveilled herself? And why would the box be here now? Did someone pick it up at the house, not realizing that it wasn’t his?
Or did it come from somewhere else? From someone more sinister?
He puts the piece of paper on the floor and rubs his fingers together. The pads of his fingers are tingling. His hands are trembling. He clutches them together to still them.
But, of course, he has to know.
All these photos...he can never un-see them, never pretend that he doesn’t know they were taken, that someone looked at them, drank in his life. And he has to know why, even if it’s painful, especially if it’s a threat. There’s no other way to make sure he and Sherlock are safe.
After a moment of silence, of near meditation, and a couple of deep, cleansing, breaths, bracing himself for whatever he might discover, he picks up the note again. From the rich texture of the paper and the elegant, barely visible watermark, it’s very high quality stationary.
He opens it.
Words, stark black, leap at him like one of Harry’s springy canned snakes. He reels back, just like he did when he was a kid, and almost bangs his head on the bedside table before he catches himself, hand clutching at the comforter, sending photos slithering across it, and rights himself. A huge gasp of air fills his lungs and stays there, swells as if it’s being superheated in his chest until it feels as if his lungs will burst, and then it gusts back out, rattling the paper he holds clutched in one hand.
On the creamy ivory linen, written with what has to be a very expensive fountain pen judging by the quality of the strokes and the evenness of the lines, is a note:
Brother Dear,
These arrived in my personal post yesterday, bearing no return address
but with Buenos Aires postage and cancellation mark.
I can only assume that, at some point, you arranged to have them sent on.
Knowing your newly acquired penchant for sentimentality, I assumed
that you would wish to keep them, or at the very least, dispose of them yourself.
The note is unsigned, but the salutation and the condescending tone identify the author better than any signature. And John recognises Mycroft’s steady, precise penmanship.
Questions soar up in John’s mind like a cloud of seagulls at the shore, swooping and diving and cawing for attention. Battering inside his skull until he feels dizzy, and he has to close his eyes and force himself to breathe again. In. Out. In. Out. Until his mind is quieter if not calmer. Until his heart stops thundering and diving, too.
Now that Mycroft’s name has entered the picture, John looks carefully, more critically, at the photos spread out around him on the floor. Very few of them are high quality. Some are fuzzy and with harsh contrast. In many, the highlights are white and featureless, as if they were taken in bright sunlight with a poor quality camera. Most of the fuzzy, overexposed ones were taken from an elevated vantage point. From London’s street cameras, then. Mycroft’s own personal surveillance system.
The fear that had stabbed John when he first saw the photos eases. The feeling of sharp claws latching onto the back of his neck eases. The feeling that he’s sitting in the room with a slowly ticking bomb doesn’t.
John stretches and grabs the envelope on the bed. He’d been more interested in the photos inside when he first pulled it out of the box, but now he turns it over. It’s a Royal Mail pre-paid envelope, addressed to J. Smythe c/o a hotel in San Francisco, California. The address is typed, but the post mark is from a sorting office near Mycroft’s office.
John scoops up photos off the floor. Shuffles through them. More photos of him, doing everyday things. Eating chips as he walks along a busy street. Stopping outside the corner shop to scrutinize his receipt. Hailing a taxi.
There’s one, though, that’s really nice, and he drops the others to hold it closer. He’s sitting on a bench in the sunshine. He recognizes the park. It’s the one near Bart’s where he ran into Mike all those years ago, the fateful day that he met Sherlock and his whole life changed.
This photo...he flips it over...was taken almost 18 months ago. He doesn’t remember the day specifically. It’s just a day out of many days all run together, though obviously a little less grey than most during that time. In this one, he has a triangular sandwich box in one hand, unopened, and a bottle of water in the other. He’s wearing a striped shirt, open at the throat, and his jacket is folded across his lap. His head is tipped back to the sun, eyes closed, and he looks sad, but peaceful. The frown lines around his eyes and mouth aren’t so prominent in this one.
All those badly composed, badly printed photos obviously taken from street cameras...those John can figure out. Not the why, but at least the how. Mycroft’s been keeping tabs on him.
But this photograph throws the whole theory into question. This is a real photograph, not an inkjet print on plain paper taken from CCTV. It’s a 4x6 colour shot, professionally processed on photographic paper. It’s dog-eared and creased down the middle from being folded in half, and curved along one edge as if it’s been carried in a pocket or wallet for a very long time.
Moments later, or maybe hours later, he’s still looking at it, unblinking, as if his dive-bombing, cawing thoughts can deduce its journey-who took it, why, where it’s been, in whose pocket, those he’s pretty sure he can guess the answer to that one, but not why, why, why-when the door swings wide.
John hasn’t even realized how dark the room has grown, grey light almost gone from behind the sheer curtain, until the yellow light from the tiny landing outside his bedroom floods in. It blinds him momentarily, and he blinks against it.
“John, didn’t you hear me calling you?” Sherlock demands. “We need to be-” Sherlock’s voice cuts off sharply, words swallowed by a quick hitch of breath. Then Sherlock steps fully into the doorway, blocking out most of the light.
Cont’d in Part 2