Disclaimer: I do not own "Sherlock", the characters, the BBC version. None of it. I do not own the song "Stone Cold" by Demi Lovato. Everything belongs to their owners and I am just a fan with no life anymore thanks to work and college sooo…
A/N: I AM BACK FROM THE DEAD! Sort of… Hello, everyone, new and old! I have been insanely busy with life, and updating stories here and there, writing new ones, all of that loveliness. I am trying to set up a schedule where I can write and actually also live, so I am so sorry I haven't updated a thing! This story is coming from wanting to have a different ending… Because you can't always get what you want, right? Enjoy!
Stone Cold
BetterxWithxAxPen
Stone cold, stone cold
You're dancing with her while I'm staring at my phone
Stone cold, stone cold
I was your amber, but now she's your shade of gold…
A known fact about Sherlock Holmes was that he did not want to delay the inevitable, no matter the cost to him. Logically speaking, it was best to actually speed up the process, so one could just get the whole thing over with without much strain. The waiting was the most agonizing part, after all. Like ripping off a plaster from a wound; doing it all in a quick enough manner meant it could just be done with. Nothing will linger but a slight sting that you will not feel in a few minutes. Plain, simple, quite to the point. It was scientifically proven that speeding up a process was healthier for one not wanting to deal with something.
So that is what Sherlock did. He sped up the process, ignoring the sting he felt himself concerned with when it came to ripping off that plaster on that wound. The wound others seemed to know, that he simply dismissed with a wave of his hand and an annoyed look, perhaps a roll of his eyes at such a stupid concept. Everyone repeated themselves, how utterly annoying. He was tired of hearing it, of being told something he refused to believe. People were such idiots, and they needed to shut up, immediately, or he could not focus. He had to focus.
He had a wedding to try and plan.
It was Mary's way of including him, he had figured it out quite simply. He was clearly no fool, but he allowed Mary and John to speak about him like he was ignorant. Mary pitied him. John worried, as John often did, but said nothing. No reason why, he never said, Sherlock never asked, but it seemed to be some unspoken thing between them that he himself refused to speak of. Something years in the making, something he might have ruined with his good intentions... Something he refused to let himself dwell on for his own sanity.
So Sherlock planned the wedding. He folded stupid napkins via YouTube tutorials. He made a song for the couple to dance to. He agonized with Mary, being as kind to her as he could, over flowers, halls, photographers (The latter of which Mary made a choice without him, but he could not find it in him to care). He worked without letting himself tire, only stopping his help when it came to cases, some of which Mary forced John to go along with, an effort of pity for feeling she was taking John from him..
Enough of that. Sherlock did not want to go down that road of thinking. But can one really run from it? From those emotions you try to snuff away like a cigarette being crushed into an ash tray, dulling the fire before it can continue to burn to the end, burning your fingers? Could he really ignore the possible burn as he wrote his "speech"? With each word he wrote, erased, threw away into the bin after tearing the paper to bits, Sherlock was playing with the flame. Daring it to touch his fingertips, a game of chicken, if you must. How far can he go, what can he say, before he lets the flame touch him? Will he allow it, or will he write something generic, staying away from the line of what he could never say? Something every best friend said at their friend's wedding, denying himself the possibility to just give in?
In the end, he lost the game of chicken. He let his fingers become burned, and he wrote how he felt. He didn't lose completely, of course. He didn't speak on the depth of his feelings, or what he wish he had said when he stood on the roof ledge, but he said enough. He said how much he loved John, how lost he was without him. He made it sound as platonic as possible, he had over thought it all, even if it was supposed to be a small note of his true emotions he had denied himself, and now…
Now he stood in the middle of the room, after playing a song to the happy couple, revealing Mary was pregnant, and watching them laugh and go off to dance. After he secretly poured out his heart, in his words, in his song, had no one really noticed it was sad and stoic? No, they all thought his words had been beautiful and tear jerking, and the music had been a work of art, anyone would want to have Sherlock not only save their lives, do their cases, but compose music for them. No one knew a thing. No one knew what Sherlock was trying to say without saying it, without being so open and screaming what he wanted to desperately say out to the world… And now it was too late.
The pain of his loss made him ache in a way he had not in years. His arm itched, he could feel the strong pull of the drug at his senses. Wanting to take away the pain, make him numb. Turn his brain off. He could remember how it was in uni; being alone and unwanted, constantly taunted. He was so much more sensitive then, he hadn't gained the shell he had now. He remembered Victor Trevor, and the small box he kept under his bed when he finally gained Sherlock's friendship. That ghost of the voice as it tied the tourniquet to his arm, as he smirked up at him and readied that needle.
"This will turn it all off, Sherlock. Like a switch in your brain. You can delete and store things… This can be the switch to turn it all off…"
He felt like he was suffocating. He had to leave. Right this moment. Another moment here, he would go back to it. To the feeling he had in his uni days; alone and scared, and just wanting to be wanted. He wanted to be wanted by one person, and he knew that would not be. He had tarnished his chances with good intentions, with his own fear, doubt, and denial. And now he had to watch as John danced with Mary and dipped her, stealing a kiss from her lips with a laugh they shared as husband and wife. It made him sick…
He slid through the bodies, dancing and enjoying themselves with not a clue of his suffering. Without a single care of how he must feel. He should have been an actor; he does it so well. He can trick an entire room into thinking he is fine, that he is happier than a beetle in shiet that his best friend got married. That he wasn't being ripped apart at the seams by every act of affection they shared, no matter how small. He was so good at pretending that he didn't mind going home to an empty flat, to a chair he not dare sit in, for he feared taking away the lingering scent that had no description, only that it was John. It had his presence and scent the strongest, even over his own room, and now it was always empty, tearing Sherlock apart whenever he looked upon it, or even came home. He was so miserable, so beyond miserable, and no one had a clue.
To his luck, the coat room was empty of its attendant, a small sign on the desk stating he would be back in ten minutes. A sign of clear incompetence, honestly, if he wanted to have an affair with the head cook, he should make it less obvious. But he didn't care, it was all irrelevant now, data soon deleted as he grabbed his coat and rushed to the exit. He had not a moment to waste on the coat room attendant sleeping with the cook, on how he was having this gay affair so he could go home to his wife without feeling like he was suffocating from his need of a male partner. How he wished, deep down, that that was the case with John, that John was faking it all, because he didn't want to be gay, he didn't want to be anything of the sort, but Sherlock was a smart man, one of the damn smartest, and he refused to let himself have such foolish, hopeful, thoughts.
The night air when he left the hall was cold, chilling him to the bones, but it was welcomed. He felt overheated with the suffocating feeling of his misery, the drugs he craved, from knowing he had to leave before a certain landlady noticed his absence. (Not John, no, John was lost in his new wife and their new life to come with their unborn to care that Sherlock left. Maybe once upon a time, and all that stupid sentiment… But not now.) He didn't need someone going after him. He didn't want anyone's pity. He wanted the sting of ripping off that plaster to go away, to fade into nothing, to a tiny dull ache he could lock away in a box in his mind palace, locking it away in the room that was just John. But would it remain a dull ache? Or would it be the one thing that could finally rip him apart?
The thought nearly made him freeze, but he kept walking, putting his coat on, flipping the collar up to shield himself from the night air, to almost shut himself away from the party going on behind him. John... John had been his salvation, his change in life. He had met him at a time when the drugs were calling him, where the nicotine patches were starting to lose their effects, when he was forcing himself to do experiments because he was seconds away from using his homeless network to get himself heroine. John was his beacon of light, there was no doubt. No one had put up with Sherlock enough to be around him long, especially to move in with him, and become so important. John was the exception to everything Sherlock thought he had known, and now he was gone. It was all gone. Because Sherlock would not drag John away from his family for him, he was selfish, but not when it came to John. Not John and his happiness.
John deserved to be happy. He deserved normal and plain, he deserved "Vanilla". John had been through so much with Sherlock, being put in danger, kidnapped… The fall… The thought made Sherlock wince as he flagged down a cab, getting inside the moment one slid to the curb and slowed. Telling the driver to take him to 221 Baker Street was automatic, and Sherlock was aware of someone looking out the window of the hall. Quickly; a person who had been looking for Sherlock because they noticed him missing, something he had wanted to avoid, but damn the sentiment had slowed him down.
He shut his eyes and turned himself away from whoever looked out the window, lying to his overly functioning brain that it was just someone who had, somehow, heard the cab pull up and wanted to be a nosy twat. But, he knew better, and let his head fall back onto the seat as they pulled away from the hall, the reception, and the happy couple with a baby on the way that had no idea they were pulling away at the seams of the once unbreakable Sherlock Holmes.
The only thought that came to Sherlock as he entered the now empty, dark and lifeless, 221B Baker Street, was that, as he gazed upon the only thing that had John left on it, the chair, he was alone. John Watson was gone, he drove it to him with a decision he had no choice but to make, and now he was off, married and happy...
And Sherlock Holmes was alone…
If happy is her, I'm happy for you…
A/N: This took FOREVER to finish, but I am glad I did. Will this be the end of my Sherlock stories? Nope! Expect more soon! For now... Don't hate me for not giving our hero his own happy ending… He'll get one… Eventually.
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-Betterxwithxaxpen