The Beekeeper
Title: The Beekeeper
Author: sariagray
Rating: PG13
Characters/Pairings: Molly (Molly/John), John, Sherlock (Sherlock/John), Moriarty, Mycroft, Irene (Irene/Sherlock)
Word Count: ~2600
Warnings: Lightly-described sex, mentions of suicide.
Summary: Maybe she only wants this because she wants to be Sherlock. A story of progress in three acts. Post-Reichenbach.
Beta: analineblue, to whom I owe my deepest gratitude for looking this over far more times than should be necessary.
Disclaimer: Do not own, or lease.
Author Notes: Inspired by "The Beekeeper" by Tori Amos. The titles of Acts are lyrics from that song.
On AO3 here.
On LJ here.
The Beekeeper
I. “Do you know who I am?” she said.
Molly removes her hand from where it rests on John’s - well, the tips of his fingers, mostly - and waits until he walks (drifts untethered) away before letting the stiff muscles in her face go slack. She rubs at the back of her neck.
Sherlock will be long gone by now. He hasn’t told her much of the plan, and even if he had tried to, she would have begged him to keep her out of it. There’s such a thing as too much information, she knows, and it would be best if she remained out of the loop.
She sighs, collects her things, and leaves in John’s wake with a small half-smile.
--
“Head hurts,” Jim complains from her sofa, fake blood still matting part of his hair.
Molly toes off her shoes and pulls her jumper over her head. It makes her hair float with static, but she’s never really been much bothered by her appearance.
“It would,” she says, and sinks into the chair at her desk. There are seven new emails to read, and paperwork to review, and a whole host of tiny details to clean up. All she wants is a cup of tea. Maybe a massage. A nap would be marvelous.
“Everything okay?” Jim asks, and lifts his head.
“Fine. Well, successful, anyway.” She pauses. “He didn’t see you here, did he?”
“No, of course not.”
She nods. Jim had been the perfect find; a brilliant actor with a quick mind who was twisted in a way that Molly simply was not. She was a logical woman, a scientist, who had almost lost her edge while whiling away the hours cataloging bones and doing minor autopsy work.
You created me, Sherlock Holmes, she thinks, and smiles to herself.
She had been a young, naïve thing once - all bright eyes and eager hope. And then a man waltzed into her life. Isn’t that how all of the stories start? The fairy tales that she remembered from her childhood certainly did. That’s all she wanted; a brilliant prince who could actually see her for what she was.
The crimes didn’t start until she’d realized how bored Sherlock was, how much he needed her to help him - to give him puzzles to solve, mysteries to unravel, treasures to uncover. The infatuation faded over time, of course, but he still remained her favorite muse, adored above all others.
Jim, at least, is nice on the eyes and easy to control. When he’s himself, he’s docile as a kitten. Molly stretches her back and yawns.
--
She’ll call John in the morning, ask him to have a cup of coffee with her. They’ll speak of old times, she’ll try to make him laugh, hold his hand and look at him with large, wet eyes.
Molly genuinely likes John. He is honest and bright and transparent - where Sherlock and Jim play in the shadows with tiny, calculated movements, John is the light and the broad stroke of a sword. It’s refreshing, really, and something she appreciates.
“Don’t hurt him,” she’d said, and Jim had frowned. “He’s still important. You hurt him, I hurt you. Is that understood?”
Jim had nodded. “And Sherlock?”
Molly had shaken her head, and forbidden Jim from harming either of them. Pain wasn’t the point, after all. Mental challenge, a series of tests, relief from boredom - that was the impetus for all of this. And no one, except those who deserved it, would be hurt by her direct order. Oh, she had her fair share of rogue operatives, but she herself kept clean.
Even the snipers had been plants, actors like Jim. She just wanted to know what Sherlock would do.
--
“You loved him,” John says into his mug.
“So did you. You still do. John, I’m so very sorry.”
She lets her voice crack, which isn’t so hard, really. She may be rational to a fault, and cold as steel when needed, but to look this man in the face is to be broken hearted. It’s almost delicious; enough so that she can resist the temptation to tell him what fools they’ve all been.
Sherlock, of course, is the biggest fool of all - he’s gone off to destroy a network that doesn’t even exist, at least not in the way that he imagines.
John is shaking his head. “I - I mean, he was my best friend. He…you know he wasn’t a fraud, Molly. Don’t you?”
“Of course he wasn’t,” she says quickly, and silently adds, but he was getting too big, it was all becoming too much.
John reaches for and holds her hand, just like she’d wanted, and he looks as if he might want to kiss her - not because she is particularly pretty or wonderful, but because someone has finally said the words he’s been waiting to hear. She smiles at him shyly.
--
She could do this, with John. She’s laid enough of a mental obstacle course to keep Sherlock occupied for at least a year, and god knows she needs something for herself in all of this. Something that feels real, something she could pretend at that didn’t break her into pieces.
After all, any port in storm.
And Jim’s a port too far away for travel at this point.
--
Her feet are bare against the carpet. She clenches her toes, raking them over the soft fibers. She sips her red wine, and waits for John to come to her. It’s not hard to be shy now; John is a rare species of something that she can’t anticipate, which makes her uncomfortable in the most delightful ways.
“This is probably a very bad idea,” he says, watching her profile as his fingers hover over her wrist.
She smiles a little. “Yes, I think you’re right.”
That’s all it takes, really, to get his hands on her, calloused in some places and soft in others, and her breath hitches at the simple press of his warm lips against hers. God, he could consume her if he wanted, if she would only let him. She might. She just might.
And she wants to be in this moment, to be rooted in the sensation of his hands on her neck and her breasts and his tongue against her lips and behind her ear. She wants to let it surround her, and be hers alone, but all she can do is wonder if Sherlock had ever loved John back, like this, so deep and warm - if Sherlock might love John the way that John loves him, because (and it hurts, just a little, but not enough for her to want to stop) John isn’t pressing into Molly with a quiet, whimpering sob right now. He’s somewhere far away with someone else.
And maybe that makes it a little easier for her, after all.
Maybe she only wants this because she wants to be Sherlock.
--
Molly has a plan for when Sherlock returns. Oh, she’ll lay low for a few months, let Sherlock’s mind work itself into a frenzy before it begins to fizzle into a dark nothing before she acts. But she’ll be waiting, and no one will ever know.
A spider, she recalls with fondness as she stares up, smiling, at the ceiling. A very accurate metaphor, indeed.
II. I have come with my mustard seed.
Molly is warm and soft under John’s palm, and responsive in a way that might once have enthralled him. Even now, with his thoughts scattered like so many autumn leaves, he can still feel surprise at the rise of her hips, the grip of her fingers, the searching look in her eyes.
She moans against his mouth as he moves inside of her, a low sound that travels through him and eats away at whatever remaining resolve he might have. It feels familiar in a way it shouldn’t, in a way it couldn’t, but it makes him tremble all the same.
If his eyes are squeezed shut, if her eyes are just as tightly closed, if they’re both pretending, he won’t say anything. There wouldn’t be a point to it.
“Please,” she whispers against his cheek. “Please, please.”
And just like that, the false memory is shattered.
--
He offers her coffee, tea, water, food when he wakes up an hour later, and she sleepily declines with her small, timid smile and shy, bright eyes.
“It’s late,” he says. “You can -”
“No, no, it’s fine. I’ve…well, I have to feed Toby.”
She looks so contrite, so charmingly embarrassed, that John can’t help but chuckle and kiss her cheek. He goes into the kitchen to turn on the kettle, to give her some semblance of privacy as she dresses.
What a strange thing, to offer privacy now.
Sherlock would’ve balked at it. He would have demanded that John provide an explanation for the bizarre intricacies of human behavior, and John would’ve laughed and shrugged and said something about it being ‘polite.’ Sherlock would’ve scowled and flopped back onto the sofa, legs slightly bent and dressing gown draped awkwardly over his thighs.
John is so lost in thought that he doesn’t realize Molly had left the sofa until he hears Mrs. Hudson call out a cheerful goodbye. The downstairs door slams shut.
--
John goes to Sherlock’s grave every day after he finishes his shift at the clinic. Sometimes, he just stands silently and stares, as if trying to engrave the image of the black marble stone into his brain. Other times, he talks.
Today the air is wet and cold with mist that clings like diamonds to his black jacket. Today is a silent day, heavy with the weight of the previous evening.
It’s only been nine days and already he’s falling apart.
He’d call them nightmares, the things that wake him with a start in the middle of the night, but they’re not, not exactly. They’re more like pleasant diversions, heated encounters with mouths and hands and endless expanses of skin, quiet and sweet declarations - thoughts he’d never once entertained (or even considered) while Sherlock was alive.
It’s the waking that’s painful.
(Of course he’d fallen in love with Sherlock posthumously. Of course.)
--
“Are you sure he’s dead?” John asks, staring just past her shoulder at the cash register of the café.
They’ve met for tea and a chat, and there’s a gulf between them now that John both despises and appreciates. They’re both on different ends of the spectrum of wanting the same dead man, and it (whatever ‘it’ was - John isn’t entirely sure) would never work between them. God, he’s so grateful.
“I signed the certificate,” Molly mutters into the steam of her tea.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
He knows the answer, obviously he does. But no one has actually said to him, “Sherlock is dead.” It went from being pushed away from Sherlock’s body to “I’m so sorry, John” to “The funeral will be held this weekend.” With Sherlock, John has long since learned the value of a lie of omission.
“Are you suggesting I made a mistake?”
It’s not said with any malice (he doesn’t think Molly is even capable of being angry), but there is so much pain in the snag of her voice that he instantly regrets his selfish prodding.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and clings to her warmed hand. “I’m so sorry. Of course not.”
“I know. God, we’re a pair, aren’t we?”
Her smile is a bit broken as she brushes the back of her hand against her eyes, and he smiles back without any real warmth.
He doesn’t know then that he won’t see her again for weeks.
--
The nights that he stares at Sherlock’s grave are the same nights that he stares at his gun. He’s not so foolish as to contemplate suicide; he wouldn’t wish anyone an eighth of the pain he feels at Sherlock’s loss. Still, his eyes rove over the cold metal and all it’s done in the past months.
He cleans it constantly, even though he has absolutely no intention of using it ever again. It gives him something to do with his hands beyond holding a drink.
III. Plugged into a heart machine, as if you ever needed one.
Sherlock’s hair is shorn off, and it makes him feel colder than he ever remembers feeling before. At least, he’s blaming the lack of hair when, logically, it’s the lack of warm clothing that’s causing the issue.
He’s followed lead after lead, all of them resulting in dead ends in different parts of the world.
--
He meets Irene Adler in some small town in Russia, in a sort of pub-cum-general store-cum-news bureau. He kisses her that night, near the pathetic fire, just because he can - just because god, he’s missed familiarity in the months since his death and he is so overwhelmed with the strangest sense of gratitude simply at seeing her.
She gently pulls away, and shakes her head sadly.
“I’m not him,” she says, and she sounds so very ashamed.
He leaves her sitting there, in a pool of firelight, in quick strides until he can safely stumble out of the door and into the cold empty street.
Later, he will wonder what about any of that would’ve bothered her now when it didn’t seem to matter before.
--
He contacts Molly a few times, with growing disappointment as his search continues to fail. She encourages him to continue his chase and then, as his messages become more terse, to come back home.
They aren’t safe yet, he writes.
John will be fine, as long as you come home. It’s a bit boring without you.
He almost smiles at that.
--
“It’s pointless,” he tells Mycroft over the phone. “All roads lead nowhere.”
“I believe you’ll find that all roads lead to Rome.”
Sherlock doesn’t even bother rolling his eyes; it’s pointless, and he’s exhausted, and everything he does is futile.
“Every lead is a dead end,” he clarifies. “There’s nothing.”
“Ah. I had thought as much.”
--
The sky, overcast, is oddly purple-pink at dusk. Blue smoke snakes out of his cigarette, out of his mouth, and rises into the clouds.
He wants, more than anything, to go back to London. Back to the flat, his bed, John - the images swirl around his mind until they intertwine, and he spends the length of three cigarettes imagining John’s warm skin beneath the covers, pressed against his side, underneath his hands and his tongue.
He sighs and stubs out his last cigarette of the night.
--
“I’ll be returning next Monday,” Sherlock says, and closes his eyes as Molly sighs, relieved on the other end of the line.
“Finally!” she says. “I mean, good. That’s really good, Sherlock. How…how will you tell John?”
“I have no idea. I’ll think of something.”
“You broke his heart, you know. Tread carefully.”
Sherlock hangs up on her. He has four days; no doubt Molly will tell John as soon as she’s able out of some misplaced sense of decency. Still, she’s good for that sort of thing and it will save him having to deal with the shock of a sudden reappearance.
There’s a part of him that wants to prolong his absence, to give John’s anger time to dissolve - a part of him that’s completely terrified of what he might find when he returns. There is, however, a greater piece of himself that longs for home with an intensity that far outpaces any simple addiction he’s ever had.
Home. John. Even John’s anger. Especially John’s anger. John. Home.
He smiles to himself and lays back on the tiny cot in his bare cupboard of a room.
End
Author: sariagray
Rating: PG13
Characters/Pairings: Molly (Molly/John), John, Sherlock (Sherlock/John), Moriarty, Mycroft, Irene (Irene/Sherlock)
Word Count: ~2600
Warnings: Lightly-described sex, mentions of suicide.
Summary: Maybe she only wants this because she wants to be Sherlock. A story of progress in three acts. Post-Reichenbach.
Beta: analineblue, to whom I owe my deepest gratitude for looking this over far more times than should be necessary.
Disclaimer: Do not own, or lease.
Author Notes: Inspired by "The Beekeeper" by Tori Amos. The titles of Acts are lyrics from that song.
On AO3 here.
On LJ here.
The Beekeeper
I. “Do you know who I am?” she said.
Molly removes her hand from where it rests on John’s - well, the tips of his fingers, mostly - and waits until he walks (drifts untethered) away before letting the stiff muscles in her face go slack. She rubs at the back of her neck.
Sherlock will be long gone by now. He hasn’t told her much of the plan, and even if he had tried to, she would have begged him to keep her out of it. There’s such a thing as too much information, she knows, and it would be best if she remained out of the loop.
She sighs, collects her things, and leaves in John’s wake with a small half-smile.
--
“Head hurts,” Jim complains from her sofa, fake blood still matting part of his hair.
Molly toes off her shoes and pulls her jumper over her head. It makes her hair float with static, but she’s never really been much bothered by her appearance.
“It would,” she says, and sinks into the chair at her desk. There are seven new emails to read, and paperwork to review, and a whole host of tiny details to clean up. All she wants is a cup of tea. Maybe a massage. A nap would be marvelous.
“Everything okay?” Jim asks, and lifts his head.
“Fine. Well, successful, anyway.” She pauses. “He didn’t see you here, did he?”
“No, of course not.”
She nods. Jim had been the perfect find; a brilliant actor with a quick mind who was twisted in a way that Molly simply was not. She was a logical woman, a scientist, who had almost lost her edge while whiling away the hours cataloging bones and doing minor autopsy work.
You created me, Sherlock Holmes, she thinks, and smiles to herself.
She had been a young, naïve thing once - all bright eyes and eager hope. And then a man waltzed into her life. Isn’t that how all of the stories start? The fairy tales that she remembered from her childhood certainly did. That’s all she wanted; a brilliant prince who could actually see her for what she was.
The crimes didn’t start until she’d realized how bored Sherlock was, how much he needed her to help him - to give him puzzles to solve, mysteries to unravel, treasures to uncover. The infatuation faded over time, of course, but he still remained her favorite muse, adored above all others.
Jim, at least, is nice on the eyes and easy to control. When he’s himself, he’s docile as a kitten. Molly stretches her back and yawns.
--
She’ll call John in the morning, ask him to have a cup of coffee with her. They’ll speak of old times, she’ll try to make him laugh, hold his hand and look at him with large, wet eyes.
Molly genuinely likes John. He is honest and bright and transparent - where Sherlock and Jim play in the shadows with tiny, calculated movements, John is the light and the broad stroke of a sword. It’s refreshing, really, and something she appreciates.
“Don’t hurt him,” she’d said, and Jim had frowned. “He’s still important. You hurt him, I hurt you. Is that understood?”
Jim had nodded. “And Sherlock?”
Molly had shaken her head, and forbidden Jim from harming either of them. Pain wasn’t the point, after all. Mental challenge, a series of tests, relief from boredom - that was the impetus for all of this. And no one, except those who deserved it, would be hurt by her direct order. Oh, she had her fair share of rogue operatives, but she herself kept clean.
Even the snipers had been plants, actors like Jim. She just wanted to know what Sherlock would do.
--
“You loved him,” John says into his mug.
“So did you. You still do. John, I’m so very sorry.”
She lets her voice crack, which isn’t so hard, really. She may be rational to a fault, and cold as steel when needed, but to look this man in the face is to be broken hearted. It’s almost delicious; enough so that she can resist the temptation to tell him what fools they’ve all been.
Sherlock, of course, is the biggest fool of all - he’s gone off to destroy a network that doesn’t even exist, at least not in the way that he imagines.
John is shaking his head. “I - I mean, he was my best friend. He…you know he wasn’t a fraud, Molly. Don’t you?”
“Of course he wasn’t,” she says quickly, and silently adds, but he was getting too big, it was all becoming too much.
John reaches for and holds her hand, just like she’d wanted, and he looks as if he might want to kiss her - not because she is particularly pretty or wonderful, but because someone has finally said the words he’s been waiting to hear. She smiles at him shyly.
--
She could do this, with John. She’s laid enough of a mental obstacle course to keep Sherlock occupied for at least a year, and god knows she needs something for herself in all of this. Something that feels real, something she could pretend at that didn’t break her into pieces.
After all, any port in storm.
And Jim’s a port too far away for travel at this point.
--
Her feet are bare against the carpet. She clenches her toes, raking them over the soft fibers. She sips her red wine, and waits for John to come to her. It’s not hard to be shy now; John is a rare species of something that she can’t anticipate, which makes her uncomfortable in the most delightful ways.
“This is probably a very bad idea,” he says, watching her profile as his fingers hover over her wrist.
She smiles a little. “Yes, I think you’re right.”
That’s all it takes, really, to get his hands on her, calloused in some places and soft in others, and her breath hitches at the simple press of his warm lips against hers. God, he could consume her if he wanted, if she would only let him. She might. She just might.
And she wants to be in this moment, to be rooted in the sensation of his hands on her neck and her breasts and his tongue against her lips and behind her ear. She wants to let it surround her, and be hers alone, but all she can do is wonder if Sherlock had ever loved John back, like this, so deep and warm - if Sherlock might love John the way that John loves him, because (and it hurts, just a little, but not enough for her to want to stop) John isn’t pressing into Molly with a quiet, whimpering sob right now. He’s somewhere far away with someone else.
And maybe that makes it a little easier for her, after all.
Maybe she only wants this because she wants to be Sherlock.
--
Molly has a plan for when Sherlock returns. Oh, she’ll lay low for a few months, let Sherlock’s mind work itself into a frenzy before it begins to fizzle into a dark nothing before she acts. But she’ll be waiting, and no one will ever know.
A spider, she recalls with fondness as she stares up, smiling, at the ceiling. A very accurate metaphor, indeed.
II. I have come with my mustard seed.
Molly is warm and soft under John’s palm, and responsive in a way that might once have enthralled him. Even now, with his thoughts scattered like so many autumn leaves, he can still feel surprise at the rise of her hips, the grip of her fingers, the searching look in her eyes.
She moans against his mouth as he moves inside of her, a low sound that travels through him and eats away at whatever remaining resolve he might have. It feels familiar in a way it shouldn’t, in a way it couldn’t, but it makes him tremble all the same.
If his eyes are squeezed shut, if her eyes are just as tightly closed, if they’re both pretending, he won’t say anything. There wouldn’t be a point to it.
“Please,” she whispers against his cheek. “Please, please.”
And just like that, the false memory is shattered.
--
He offers her coffee, tea, water, food when he wakes up an hour later, and she sleepily declines with her small, timid smile and shy, bright eyes.
“It’s late,” he says. “You can -”
“No, no, it’s fine. I’ve…well, I have to feed Toby.”
She looks so contrite, so charmingly embarrassed, that John can’t help but chuckle and kiss her cheek. He goes into the kitchen to turn on the kettle, to give her some semblance of privacy as she dresses.
What a strange thing, to offer privacy now.
Sherlock would’ve balked at it. He would have demanded that John provide an explanation for the bizarre intricacies of human behavior, and John would’ve laughed and shrugged and said something about it being ‘polite.’ Sherlock would’ve scowled and flopped back onto the sofa, legs slightly bent and dressing gown draped awkwardly over his thighs.
John is so lost in thought that he doesn’t realize Molly had left the sofa until he hears Mrs. Hudson call out a cheerful goodbye. The downstairs door slams shut.
--
John goes to Sherlock’s grave every day after he finishes his shift at the clinic. Sometimes, he just stands silently and stares, as if trying to engrave the image of the black marble stone into his brain. Other times, he talks.
Today the air is wet and cold with mist that clings like diamonds to his black jacket. Today is a silent day, heavy with the weight of the previous evening.
It’s only been nine days and already he’s falling apart.
He’d call them nightmares, the things that wake him with a start in the middle of the night, but they’re not, not exactly. They’re more like pleasant diversions, heated encounters with mouths and hands and endless expanses of skin, quiet and sweet declarations - thoughts he’d never once entertained (or even considered) while Sherlock was alive.
It’s the waking that’s painful.
(Of course he’d fallen in love with Sherlock posthumously. Of course.)
--
“Are you sure he’s dead?” John asks, staring just past her shoulder at the cash register of the café.
They’ve met for tea and a chat, and there’s a gulf between them now that John both despises and appreciates. They’re both on different ends of the spectrum of wanting the same dead man, and it (whatever ‘it’ was - John isn’t entirely sure) would never work between them. God, he’s so grateful.
“I signed the certificate,” Molly mutters into the steam of her tea.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
He knows the answer, obviously he does. But no one has actually said to him, “Sherlock is dead.” It went from being pushed away from Sherlock’s body to “I’m so sorry, John” to “The funeral will be held this weekend.” With Sherlock, John has long since learned the value of a lie of omission.
“Are you suggesting I made a mistake?”
It’s not said with any malice (he doesn’t think Molly is even capable of being angry), but there is so much pain in the snag of her voice that he instantly regrets his selfish prodding.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and clings to her warmed hand. “I’m so sorry. Of course not.”
“I know. God, we’re a pair, aren’t we?”
Her smile is a bit broken as she brushes the back of her hand against her eyes, and he smiles back without any real warmth.
He doesn’t know then that he won’t see her again for weeks.
--
The nights that he stares at Sherlock’s grave are the same nights that he stares at his gun. He’s not so foolish as to contemplate suicide; he wouldn’t wish anyone an eighth of the pain he feels at Sherlock’s loss. Still, his eyes rove over the cold metal and all it’s done in the past months.
He cleans it constantly, even though he has absolutely no intention of using it ever again. It gives him something to do with his hands beyond holding a drink.
III. Plugged into a heart machine, as if you ever needed one.
Sherlock’s hair is shorn off, and it makes him feel colder than he ever remembers feeling before. At least, he’s blaming the lack of hair when, logically, it’s the lack of warm clothing that’s causing the issue.
He’s followed lead after lead, all of them resulting in dead ends in different parts of the world.
--
He meets Irene Adler in some small town in Russia, in a sort of pub-cum-general store-cum-news bureau. He kisses her that night, near the pathetic fire, just because he can - just because god, he’s missed familiarity in the months since his death and he is so overwhelmed with the strangest sense of gratitude simply at seeing her.
She gently pulls away, and shakes her head sadly.
“I’m not him,” she says, and she sounds so very ashamed.
He leaves her sitting there, in a pool of firelight, in quick strides until he can safely stumble out of the door and into the cold empty street.
Later, he will wonder what about any of that would’ve bothered her now when it didn’t seem to matter before.
--
He contacts Molly a few times, with growing disappointment as his search continues to fail. She encourages him to continue his chase and then, as his messages become more terse, to come back home.
They aren’t safe yet, he writes.
John will be fine, as long as you come home. It’s a bit boring without you.
He almost smiles at that.
--
“It’s pointless,” he tells Mycroft over the phone. “All roads lead nowhere.”
“I believe you’ll find that all roads lead to Rome.”
Sherlock doesn’t even bother rolling his eyes; it’s pointless, and he’s exhausted, and everything he does is futile.
“Every lead is a dead end,” he clarifies. “There’s nothing.”
“Ah. I had thought as much.”
--
The sky, overcast, is oddly purple-pink at dusk. Blue smoke snakes out of his cigarette, out of his mouth, and rises into the clouds.
He wants, more than anything, to go back to London. Back to the flat, his bed, John - the images swirl around his mind until they intertwine, and he spends the length of three cigarettes imagining John’s warm skin beneath the covers, pressed against his side, underneath his hands and his tongue.
He sighs and stubs out his last cigarette of the night.
--
“I’ll be returning next Monday,” Sherlock says, and closes his eyes as Molly sighs, relieved on the other end of the line.
“Finally!” she says. “I mean, good. That’s really good, Sherlock. How…how will you tell John?”
“I have no idea. I’ll think of something.”
“You broke his heart, you know. Tread carefully.”
Sherlock hangs up on her. He has four days; no doubt Molly will tell John as soon as she’s able out of some misplaced sense of decency. Still, she’s good for that sort of thing and it will save him having to deal with the shock of a sudden reappearance.
There’s a part of him that wants to prolong his absence, to give John’s anger time to dissolve - a part of him that’s completely terrified of what he might find when he returns. There is, however, a greater piece of himself that longs for home with an intensity that far outpaces any simple addiction he’s ever had.
Home. John. Even John’s anger. Especially John’s anger. John. Home.
He smiles to himself and lays back on the tiny cot in his bare cupboard of a room.
End