Pieces
Sherlock didn't think. He just did.
At least, he did when John called him up at three in the morning to tell him that Mary was gone.
Dead.
He barely gave himself time to breathe in the next forty-eight hours that followed, because he was always with John. Making sure John ate, making sure John slept, taking the brunt of John's anger when he snapped and went off and inevitably ended up sobbing with his head buried in his hands. He made sure to pull John into his arms and tell him he was sorry even though it wasn't his fault. He made sure John was alright.
Because John was the one who had the right to be shattered.
Sherlock didn't.
But, as it were, there had been a steadily growing hole ripped in the middle of his chest ever since John had told him. And the wound was tattered enough now that his control was barely there, hanging on by the tiniest thread.
The funeral had been today.
Sherlock brought John home with him, as he had done the past week.
He wouldn't let him go back to his own flat and John didn't want to go. So, Sherlock set him up in his old bedroom and didn't say a word, just made sure he ate and drank and lived.
It had been brutal. Just brutal. John had been docile. Docile in the sense that the tears he produced weren't the bone-shattering, numb-numbing sobs that had come the first couple of days after Mary's death. But there had been tears, the entire funeral, gleaming down John's cheeks silently. And Sherlock had thought that that was almost more disturbing than the sobbing.
Some base, human part of him had wanted to reach over and wipe away John's tears and pull him into his arms. It hadn't been the part of himself that he was accustomed to listening to, and he hadn't then. John would have probably reacted less than favourably, anyway. Those were jobs for Mary and Mary was gone now.
Sherlock's hands were shaking by the time they got back to the flat, but he refused to acknowledge that it was more than the cold.
He made John tea and toast with jam, the particular kind he liked, and ghosted from the room. He shucked his coat off, tossing it onto the bed, and then the blazer and shirt and slacks. John wouldn't come down from his room the entire night, but Sherlock would go up and make sure he hadn't done something stupid even though he had taken all the firearms and locked them in his own closet. There were other ways to hurt yourself and Sherlock couldn't take all the danger away. He just had to trust John and, if he couldn't, then he had to watch him.
His chest throbbed with the beating of his pulse. He strode into the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror briefly. Pale under the dark shock of hair, black shadows under his eyes. His eyes were red from a lack of sleep. He prodded absently at a nearly-healed bruise on his arm that he had gotten from a case last week before all of this had happened. It didn't hurt. The only thing that did was the throb in the centre of his chest and as he watched his reflection stare back at him listlessly, he saw rather than felt his own eyes fill with tears.
He blinked, and they fell, and Sherlock shook his head wildly to spend them flying. He didn't have time for the emotion. He didn't have reason to be emotional. Mary was John's wife, not his. He didn't have the right.
Tears prickled the back of his eyelids but he kept them closed, kicking his boxers off to get into the shower. He stepped over the side of the bath, one foot and then the other, and blindly but expertly reached for the shower door. He slid it shut and reached for the tap, the first blast of water icy cold and shocking against his skin. It cleared his mind before the hot water settled in, raining down over his shaking body.
He wondered if John had ate the toast. Or drank the tea at least. What did they do now? John had been with Mary for almost three years now. Three years could change a person's life. Seventeen months had changed his life, when he had met John.
Tears came again and slipped down his cheeks. They mingled with the spray of the shower over his face. He tilted his head up.
If it was necessary to happen, this crying lark, then it was going to be here, and now, and not around John. He had to be there for John; he couldn't let John see him like this. John was allowed to be emotional; Sherlock wasn't.
But there it was: the unpredictableness of human emotion.
The pain long pushed back for the sake of taking care of John when he needed it pushed forth, demanding that Sherlock acquiesce to it now. He re-angled his face, tilting it down instead of up, turning to press his forehead flat against the tile wall. It was cool beneath his skin. The tears came hot and fast.
And then it wasn't just his heart, it was his head throbbing, and his eyes and his body and his entire soul falling apart under the hot spray of shower water that was meant to wash it all away afterwards.
He curled one hand into a fist and the other came up to press palm flat against the wall. It was the constant. It was unmoving, unchanging, and unyielding. It was a wall. It wasn't going to go anywhere. He didn't have a wall in his life besides the one he had under his palm. He was John's wall, but Sherlock just had this, stolen moments where his body and emotions tried to realign themselves when they really couldn't without proper time to heal.
He was a pro at crying silently.
He'd done it all the time, back in his school days, when he'd been young and fragile and unbeknownst of the world's evils. He and Mycroft had shared a room, so Sherlock had always kept his breathing under control so not to cry too hard to lose oxygen. And even then, Mycroft called him out on it multiple times and even one or twice came over to his bed and pulled him into a hug and let him cry into his chest. Never-mind that he was horrified the next day that he had left Mycroft into his bed and he had curled into his arms in a moment of weakness.
But it wasn't a trick he lost, and not one he used very often. He just didn't cry. He didn't, ever, if he could help it, but this was something different. All consuming and incredibly destructive.
The tile under his forehead and palm was warm by the time that he moved. His entire body felt too hot from the steam rising in the shower. He blinked the last remains of tears from his lashes and turned the shower down, letting the lukewarm water rush over his body and reawaken his mind - his logical mind. His emotions were going to go back to where they had come from, because he'd had his share of tears now. Even if his eyes still brimmed with them, his emotions were being locked away again. Because - John.
He made quick work of the shower, washing and rinsing and drying off like clockwork. He slipped on his dressing gown and grabbed both toothpaste and toothbrush, marking two minutes off on the clock before he rinsed and spit. He smudged the condensation away from the mirror and winced at his red-eyed reflection. He looked worse now than he had before.
The bathroom door burst open before Sherlock had time to think about anything else. John came flitting through, crashing to his knees in front of the toilet, where he threw up noisily. Threw up the dregs of tea and toast, Sherlock noted. At least he had tried to eat. The vomiting was ongoing, coming and going, depending on what kind of day it was. Sherlock wasn't surprised John's stomach protested against food on today of all days.
"Sorry," John gasped. "I just... the tea..." He coughed and reached back to flush the toilet before standing up waveringly.
Sherlock steadied him instinctively. Their gazes met, ragged emotion tearing across John's gaze as he took in Sherlock's appearance. Sherlock looked away.
"It's fine," he said, responding to John's apology. "I was finished anywa-" The breath was practically knocked out of him as John threw his arms around him. The feelings he had had in the shower all came rushing back, tenfold next to John's embrace, a continued warmth in the world of cold darknesses.
He stood, wide-eyed and starting to shake again, for a moment, stock-still. But then instinct took over again and he put his arms around John. "John-"
"Don't say anything," John interrupted. "Just... stay here, and mourn with me."
Mourn with me.
The words hit him at a painful angle. Sherlock swallowed and reached up, putting his hand against the back of John's head and tucking it against his shoulder. The motion was foreign, but familiar, too. John didn't resist, just buried his face against Sherlock's silk dressing gown and his body, still radiating shower heat. Sherlock ducked his head against John's and closed his eyes, because that was all that it took for the tears to start anew.
"I'm sorry," Sherlock said thickly. He didn't know if he was apologizing for his lapse in control or for John's pain or for what had happened to Mary, or none of it, or all. He didn't think it mattered at this juncture. It was probably the most sincere apology he had given thus far, his words watery and thick with tears.
He'd been wrong. He did have a wall. His never-changing constant.
Sherlock tightened his grip around John slightly.
John Watson.
He deserved the moon and stars, he really did, for everything he had gone through. For everything life (or Sherlock) had put him through.
All Sherlock could give him was a hug.
He hoped that was all right.
ScribeofRED and I were talking about this idea a few months ago. I said I wanted to write it, but the time was never right. Well, tears shed and a throbbing headache tonight, and it just worked with me. I've said it before: writing is like therapy and Sherlock's one of my biggest therapies of all.
I do not own Sherlock. Thanks for reading.