Relapse
Chapter One: Progress
It was the fifth day of the third week when she walks back through his door. Their door. The door. The adjectives are quite useless here. He finds the important fact to be that on a perfectly pleasant day in late spring she came back without notion that anything happened.
But something did happen. He wasn't going to be the one to bring up or delve into the subject much.
She speaks first. "It's been a while."
He looks up from his bookshelf, in which he is currently rearranging for the fourth time today. Alphabetical by publisher. He's become awfully bored in her absence. "Two weeks, five days, ten hours, eleven minutes." He looks down at his watch. "Ten minutes, actually. Watch runs fast." She nods, wrapping her arms around herself. He continues, acting oblivious. "What took you so long, Watson?"
She ignores his lack of compassion a little too easy.
"You didn't visit, not once." She moves to the kitchen in search for something. He informs her that her tea is now kept in the microwave he never uses. She doesn't seem effected. "You didn't write or call. Nothing—why?"
He has two copies of To Kill A Mockingbird. The one already placed on the shelf is his. The one in his hand is hers. He keeps his eyes on the paperback as he says, "I didn't see need."
"Liar."
He balances the book he's holding, letting it flow through his hands as if it was randomly changing weight. He's not particularly fond of her choice word. He puts her To Kill A Mocking Bird next to his.
"Watson, it was my fault and I take full responsibility. I should have protected you better, but heroin has this way to make you—"
"Forget who your friends are?"
He taps his chin thoughtfully. Without even looking, he slides Moby Dick onto the bookshelf. "Precisely."
"You're impossible, you know that, right?" She leaves her tea and climbs the stairs with the same aggravation she would have had before her two week, five day, ten hour, and ten minute absence.
He doesn't smile at the normality of the situation. He's not sure he likes the security back.
He had just gotten to terms with her absence. He picked up his own dry cleaning, he'd grown accustomed to the smell of his apartment without her perfume, he could even deduce and solve crimes fine without her.
He may be better with her, but without her he's still great. Pondering on these little things do not make him feel better. Wasting his time thinking about what is and what could have been does not interest him currently.
Once he's sure she's gone totally upstairs, Sherlock turns his attention to the corner of the room where a hundred or so half written letters, a few dozen deflated balloons, four vases of now dead flowers, and other trinkets lay haphazardly.
All addressed to her, all never sent by him.
He throws them all away.
He smiles.
It's the fifteenth hour of the first day she came back when she fumbles down the stairs.
He had hoped that his throwing of citrus fruits at balloons pinned to the wall would coax her to come downstairs.
"You're really a jackass, you know?"
"Still colorful with the language, I see."
"I'm angry. People get angry, Sherlock." Her hands move to rest on her hips as if to prove some sort of point. If the point is as sharp as her tone, and if her tone had the ability to wound, she'd have skinned him alive. He bites his lip for a moment.
The room stays silent for a moment. He grabs one of the fruits and throws it, effectively popping a balloon and causing her to jump. "Hm."
"Hm? That's all you've got?"
He pauses. "Fine." Grabbing the basket of now exactly eighteen citrus fruits, he turns on his heel and gives the basket to her. The detective gestures to the wall of balloons. "Have at it."
"What?"
"You're angry now; you'll feel better after you throw the fruit." He takes a few steps back and gestures again for her to proceed.
She grabs an orange and throws it as hard as possible.
She hits her target. He starts to bleed.
"You're right, I do feel better."
His smile fades.
They enter the small apartment of their newest victim on the eighth hour of the second day. He is happy, she is not.
"I can't believe you jumped out of a moving taxi," she says under her breath.
"I can't believe it took you so long to follow me, my dear Watson."
"You must be kidding."
He takes a lick of his ice cream cone. "I saw the ice cream parlor and I had a desire for it, so I took action."
"You could have died."
"Oh, but I didn't, Watson. You must loosen up a bit, yes? Plus, you seem to be enjoying your own ice cream just fine."
She brings the cone to her mouth and mumbles something he can't quite decipher, but her frown is now a smile and he assumes that's good enough.
"Holmes, what are you doing?"
He ignores Bell's question and discards his shirt, throwing it at Watson who in turn tosses it in the trash. "I can't recognize what happened unless I'm in the victim's shoes, or more precisely, his clothes." Honestly, that was a load of bullshit. He hadn't been to the cleaners in a few days and very muchly enjoys the selection of clothing the victim had. No reason why this couldn't expedite his thought process, though.
"Can he do that?" Watson asks. "He can't do that."
Sherlock takes one of the shirts from the victim's closet, as well as a pair of slacks. "Obsessive compulsive disorder," he starts, slipping on the v-neck undershirt, then the crisp white button up.
"He has OCD," bell starts, "So what?"
"Very severe—every shirt and pant, every drawer and sock—it's all the same. Very interesting. And his profession was—"
"Accountant, worked out of home." She answers his question but does not look at him.
It's almost impressive.
He switches his pants for the victim's slacks. "I was referring to his side job."
Bell rolls his eyes. "Side job? There's no side job, Holmes."
"His clothes are set up in such a way that would suggest he suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder—er, OCD, as it is—to the naked eye. To an eye that is more than bare, it is seen that they're all bought from different stores. Interesting, that a man who cannot break habit finds himself going to different stores, yes?" He makes his way around the body and gives it another look.
"Maybe he was a fashion forward guy with OCD," Bell suggests. Sherlock goes to answer, but stops. Rubbing his fingers against the object in the victim's pant pocket, he crosses the room, feeling up the walls. "Should I ask what the hell you're doing, or are you going to tell me?"
"Detective Bell, I assure you that my deductive methods are purely sane, as you can see," he drops to the floor suddenly, inspecting the area under the bed, "I am simply looking for something." He goes back to the closet and moves all articles to the right.
"What are you doing in the poor man's closet?" Sherlock pulls out the key and wiggles it into the keyhole. "You're crazy, you know that, Holmes?"
The consultant straightens the blazer collar on himself. "I may be. But I believe this—" he puts his hand on a handle and pulls on it harshly, revealing a hidden room "—is enough to prove Mr. Giovack is interested in much more than fashion and numbers."
"Damn."
The meth lab in front of them was small but extensive. Sherlock closes his eyes.
"Ah, it's good to see you, my old friend."
The meth lab is in his head. He's not sure why. He just thinks about it over and over like a sickening lucid dream from hell. He supposes that it's in relation to his recent relapse.
He'd never had much of a taste for meth in the first place.
"What are you doing?"
He doesn't turn to look at her, instead he throws another dart at the bulletin board. It misses the picture of a Mr. Whinfok by an inch.
"I'm deducing."
"You're playing a child's game."
"Gregor Whinfok looks suspicious."
She doesn't move closer to him. He wishes she would. "Yeah, having a delusional man throw darts at your head does that to a person."
"There's a bigger story here, Watson."
"Have you read it yet?"
He throws another dart. "I'm not quite sure it's written in my language."
He can hear her musing for a moment before she gains proximity. She grabs a dart from him and pegs Gregor square in the face.
"Get a translator, then." She walks away, quick on her feet, up the stairs.
The meth lab leaves his head and is instead replaced with thoughts of her.
Damned Watson.
The sofa has been his best friend during the past month.
When she had been gone at first, they had assured him she wouldn't come back. Out of anger and false belief, he foolishly turned her room into a thinking room. The room holds remnants of his thoughts during that time.
The room is messy. Very messy.
She refuses to clean it. She wants him to clean up his own messes now. He tries to bargain with her, but she stands firm. He swears he'll clean it, but honestly, he knows he won't get around to it, because honestly, he'd rather dig his eyes out with a fork.
She sleeps in his room now.
Thus, the sofa is his new lover.
"Watson." Nothing. "Waatsoon." Still, nothing. He holds one of the leftover balloons from his citrus fruit experiment over her head. He lets the needle in his hand connect with the rubber flesh of the air filled sac. When she is discourteously pulled from her sleep he gives her an unamused look. "You really mustn't be such a heavy sleeper."
"God damn it, Sherlock! What is wrong with you?"
"Nothing in particular is wrong with me, Watson. However, that is beside the point-"
She rolls over and pulls the covers over her head. "You're crazy."
"This is not a child's game!" She mumbles from under the blankets.
Sherlock is not amused.
"We really mustn't waste any more time. I've hit a breakthrough on the Peter Giovack case, and I think you'd like to see what I've found."
"Stop lying to me, what do you really want?"
He's not sure when she got to know him so well. He doesn't particularly like it. "That wasn't a lie. Simply a half truth."
This catches her attention. She sits up in bed and the blankets fall from her body in a way he can see the deep neckline if her tank-top and the absence of her bra strap. He sincerely hopes she's wearing some sort of pant, or the encounter will be much more awkward.
"You're such a pervert, you know?" She groans. "Of course I'm wearing 'some sort of pant'."
He bites the inside of his cheek. He hadn't meant to say that out loud. He rarely makes these mistakes.
She grabs his wrist and uses it to hoist herself off the bed recklessly. "Now show me this half truth."
She screams very loudly when she finds the prime suspect of the Peter Giovack case lying unconscious on the floor of their living room.
"Please tell me we're telling the police about this."
"You're a detective, you tell me."
"Yeah, stupid question, sorry. I almost forget you don't play by the rules." He watches her still halfway dressed form pace around the unconscious body of Gregor Whinfok tied up to a chair in the kitchen. "What happened again?"
"I told you, Watson; I was looking into him late into the night when I heard someone enter through the back. Naturally, I hid with my light saber in hand-"
"Naturally."
"-and when he walked past me I hit him with the handle of my Star Wars toy."
"I thought you said it was more than a toy."
He frowns. "I said it was more than a silly toy, Watson. You called it a silly toy the first time i brought it up. It's not silly. Look at what it did to this man; could a silly toy do that?"
"Probably."
"Imma kill you both, you know that?! Untie me!" Sherlock keeps his eyes locked on Watson as he hits Gregor with the light saber again, effectively shutting him up.
"Perhaps we should call the police," he starts before pointing at the toy in hand and adding, "not silly."
"This isn't funny, Sherlock!" He opens his mouth to speak. She shushes him. "I don't want to hear it! Where is it?"
She lifts the couch cushions and throws them to the side; she searches in the cabinets and inspects the bookshelf. "What are you doing to my books, Watson?"
"There's probably a trippy book that, when pulled, opens up a secret passage."
"Do you not loathe your own paranoia?"
She turns to him. "I know you hid it!"
"It's not nice to point." He taps his chin thoughtfully before connecting his clenched fists to his side. "It's quite chilly though, care to fetch me a coat?"
"I'm not your servant."
"But you are my pathetically paranoid domestic companion."
"Sober companion," she corrects.
"You know that's false information."
"Where did you hide Gregor's body?!" She throws herself back at the bookshelf and starts removing every book and tossing them on the floor.
"What motive would I have to hide a body of a living man?"
She pauses for a moment before a sour face taints her features. "You killed him?"
"Bloody hell, I didn't do anything to Gregor Whinfok."
"Bloody hell," she muses. She continues throwing books on the floor, but softer this time around. "That's a new one."
He blinks. "Life's full of surprises."
"Are you going to tell me where you hid the body?" When he doesn't answer she frowns. "Again, this isn't funny!" She storms upstairs, most likely to scheme a new plan.
He brings the tea mug to his lips and smiles.
He thinks it's funny.
It's been eight days, five hours and twelve minutes since she last spoke to him. He isn't stupid. He knows he's being ignored.
It would be less annoying if she totally cut him off: no gestures, walking out of rooms when he enters, just bitter coldness.
Then maybe he would be able to fucking sleep at night.
But, in reality, she stays in the room when he enters and offers him a weak smile. She makes herbal tea and, if he looks away long enough, he'll find tea but no Watson for him. Just the day before he was working on something and was oblivious to her, and, needing his attention, she placed her cold hand over his writing one.
It got his attention, alright.
It puzzles him to no end. At first she was Watson, but she has become this game without rules that she's expecting him to play. He doesn't even know if he's a player.
All he knows is that her not talking to him is really causing him to lose sleep, and sanity for that matter, and she seems to have no response to the effects she's causing.
Living with him for six months must have taught her that if she desires to truly get under his skin, challenging him intellectually is more bothersome than some child's silent treatment game. And so here she is, playing a complex game with too many layers for him to currently count.
It's driving him mad.
He actually isn't sure what her problem is. Their awkward domestic relationship suddenly becoming a problem unsettles him to no end.
He turns the television on and lets the static replace his thoughts.
Those demons are for tomorrow.
Tomorrow wasn't the most pleasant tomorrow he'd had. It starts at 3AM on the ninth day she'd been ignoring him.
The sofa seems extra lumpy because his heart is extra heavy, although he doesn't know why. Naturally, he deduces.
He starts by pacing. He paces and paces before deciding tea will expedite his thinking. Drinking his tea, he thinks some more.
He thinks until he finds himself at her door. His door, really. He knocks on it loudly.
To his surprise, she opens it in under a heartbeat. His heart is beating quite rapidly.
She does not speak, instead asking with her eyes and body language what he wants.
"I don't like that you're ignoring me." She shrugs. "I don't like that you're ignoring me, and I don't like that you called me a liar. When you threw the citrus fruit at me I did not enjoy it, and you throwing my shirt away in the crime scene was quite irritating." His fists clench. She still has no words. "I don't like sleeping on the sofa, I don't enjoy how you don't respect me much anymore, and it's really bothersome how you refuse to trust me.
But what is bitterly unbearable is that all of these things I don't like, and yet I let you go on with it without change. You make me better, Watson, but believe me in that I was doing damn well without you, too."
Her first words to him were, "I believe you."
She shuts the door in his face. He turns on his heel, satisfied with himself.
One month, two days, six hours and thirty-two minutes after she came back they've finally made progress. Definite progress.
Prologue + Ch. 1. Love JoanLock but this is more angsty because, well, I love angst. Sorry bbys D:
I guess this is more of a collection of drabbles that are woven into a story. Oops.
My bby Sherlock kinda took over and decided to be a dick this chapter, sorry :$
I could really use a beta.
Drop a review if you could find the time :) I love both support and (constructive) criticism, so have at it :3
Protinus te videre!
