Grey.
Grey walls. Grey room. Grey windows. Grey world.
Back in Afghanistan, the battlefield had made itself too vivid to be ignored. Blazing heat, bursting colours, an environment constantly in turmoil with itself.
The crime scenes had been much the same way, except that they kept their liveliness hidden. Buried in the details that only he could uncover. At every scene of gruesome brutality, there was a subtle beauty that he brought out to play. He painted invisible masterpieces.
But his blood on the pavement had painted the world back to grey, permanently.
It was getting harder and harder to tell the difference between days. John knew Tuesday when it came around because it was the only day that he had contact with the outside world. It was the only day he had to deal with the outside world's mediocrity.
Always the same questions, same answers, same advice.
"You haven't abandoned your blog, have you?"
"There's nothing to write about. Just like before.
"There are things, if you look for them. You should keep writing. It's good for you."
Why bother looking if I know I'll find nothing?
Nothing.
Only he knew where to find those things.
"You're thinking and not sharing again."
His eyes shot up, ice cold but melting. "Yeah. Funny thing is, they're my thoughts," he snapped. Then he stormed out of the session for the third time that month. Outside the office building the ice dissolved all at once and trickled down his face and scorched it with shame.
He tried so hard. He always tried so hard not to cry. Thank god for the rain.
That night, like every other night, he sat in front of his laptop and tried to write a blog entry.
I hate my therapist. Yes, you, Ella, since I'm forcing myself to write this just for you. It's nothing personal. You just don't understand. You don't understand that he was everything. You don't understand that I
That entry was left unfinished and added to the endless repository of drafts, all of which ended similarly.
He lay in bed long before the sun went down and pondered at how empty it was. Empty bed, empty room, empty world. All colour drained. A flat that once had a personality of its own, a story unlike any other, now diluted to a murky grey.
A grey room with stark white lights. Not the flat. Someplace he'd never been before.
He'd been approached on the way back from the therapist that day by a man in a pristine suit, bursting with zeal for his cause. "Excuse me, sir. I've got an indispensable offer for you."
"No thank you."
"It's an offer sent directly from the field of science. Highly personalized, just for you, Dr. Watson. A group of the most renowned graduates from the Science Division of Oxford have-"
"Wait, how do you know my name?"
"Like I said, Dr.-"
"You know what, nevermind. I don't care. I'm not interested."
At that point the man stopped walking and said, "We believe we can bring Sherlock back to you."
John halted in his tracks. His right hand clenched into a fist at his side. The other rose to point an accusing finger as he turned to face the man and uttered, "If you think this is funny, you're a damn sick bastard."
The man only stared back cheerfully. "I assure you this offer is sincere. Allow us to take you back to headquarters so we can explain the project in detail."
That was when John noticed the slick black car parked against the curb, and he couldn't help but recognize that Sherlock would have noticed it from the very beginning. Stupid.
It could still easily be a scam. The car could take him to a dark alley on the outskirts of town. They could knock him out partway there and have him wake to a bloodstained basement. They could beat him, rape him, torture him, murder him; they could do any number of horrible things for their own sick pleasure, as people do.
Or they could bring Sherlock back to him. And that - that single, minute possibility - was enough to make it worth the risk.
Without another thought, John approached the car and got in.
They took him to a tall building in one of the shadier areas of London. It was still daytime, but there were no streetlights. The entire block looked abandoned, including the building whose faded metal door they led him to. There was an elaborate series of locks that involved both physical keys and fingerprints from two of the men that had accompanied him there. Everything in John's head screamed at him to run.
Instead, he remembered what awaited him at home, and stepped through the doorway. The lights flicked on all the way toward the end of the hall, and it was revealed that the battered exterior betrayed everything that lay hidden inside. This was a place of science, without a doubt.
The grey room was several stories up. They encountered no one else on the way there except the young men and women in medical uniforms who stood in special windowed rooms, bent over their work, attention undivided. John never managed a good enough glance to determine what exactly they were bent over.
His escorts told him to sit down and make himself comfortable. One offered him a mint, which he cautiously rejected. One pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt and mumbled something. Half a minute later, a man in a white lab coat stalked through the door and sat down on the other side of the table. "Langdon Faust," he introduced in a cold voice, offering his hand and a contrarily charismatic smile. John shook it. The scientist pulled something out of his coat pocket, set it in the center of the table - a small green pill - and sat perched forward in his seat expectantly.
"What is that?" John finally asked.
"That," remarked Langdon, beaming. "Is the most powerful psychostimulant ever made."
"I see. And what does it do?"
"It makes your memories come to life."
An intriguing idea, but its efficacy depended on what Langdon meant by 'life'. John didn't want them digging Sherlock's dead body out of the ground and resurrecting him like a real-life Frankenstein. Neither did he want an amoeba that he could look at through a magnifying glass while it complained and made deductions at him. Despite all the raw pain biting at his chest, John sniggered.
"Something funny?"
"Not at all."
"It's alright. You fellows always doubt us at first."
"I'm not the only one, then? I thought this offer was highly personalized."
"It is. It's the drug itself that personalizes the experience."
"Care to elucidate?"
"In simple terms, the drug examines your memories and recreates them in real time. It searches for the one thing you've lost that was most important to you, and then takes all the information it can about this thing and transforms it into a phantasm that will blend into the present world. This phantasm learns and grows and has memories just like any living, breathing person - if it is, in fact, a person. In your case I have no doubt it is the famous Sherlock Holmes."
John shifted uncomfortably in his seat. So they had only done a surface check on him. It was the drug which would know everything. It was the drug which would have unrestricted access to his mind and the things it produced.
"We call this drug PHENICS. Perception Has Everything Needed In the Creation of Sentience."
John took the pill between two fingers and held it up in the light. "So you're telling me that if I take this pill, the most annoying, sarcastic, and impossibly intelligent arsehole who ever lived will spontaneously appear in this room and act as if he were alive?"
"Well if you took that pill right now, it would do nothing except give you a slight buzz. The process requires an initial injection."
"And if I had the injection?"
"Then yes. Within a couple of hours, your mind would recreate Sherlock Holmes."
"That's ridiculous."
"Care to try?"
The scientist smiled and suddenly John felt as though the universe were watching him, waiting for him to make the right choice, waiting for him to reject an obviously illegal narcotic, because he had never been desperate enough to fall victim to the appeal of such a deplorable thing before.
But looking past the man's shoulder he could almost imagine Sherlock standing there, kneading the pill between two fingers, holding it up to his nose and tongue to see if he could determine any of the ingredients, muttering "fascinating" under his breath.
God, he wanted to see it with his own eyes.
"What is this pill made of?"
"I'm afraid that information is classified."
"Any dangerous side effects?"
"Any number of them. None reported so far."
"So far?"
"This is still an experimental drug, Dr. Watson. We need opportune candidates like you to test it out for a few more months until it's ready for commercial sale on the black market."
"I'm a test subject?"
"I wouldn't put it so harshly. The test subjects have already served their purpose. You are simply double-checking for mistakes."
Well, at least that meant the drug would be free.
Langdon gestured at one of the other men, who pulled a packet of papers out of a cabinet and handed them over. He set the stapled packet on the table, facing John. "If you choose to accept the offer, you'll need to sign off responsibility for anything that happens while under the effect or caused by the effects of the drug, knowledge of the dangers, and consent to participate in all parts of the program for as long as you or I see fit."
"I'm allowed out whenever I want?"
"Of course. All I ask is that you don't go blabbing to the authorities if something displeases or otherwise maims you. Agreement of confidentiality is outlined on the fourth page."
The scientist flashed him a smile that suddenly looked borderline sadistic. John stared at the papers. Signing these would be putting his life in the hands of a bunch of scientific maniacs. It would be the stupidest action he'd taken in the length of his uneventful life, besides running for the flat unaccompanied when he'd been told of Mrs. Hudson's supposed attack.
Then again, what was his life worth now that it wasn't needed to document the adventures of the greatest man who ever lived?
Sherlock would have castigated him for referring to his cases that way.
To hell with it, he thought, bending over the papers to read them through. It wouldn't hurt just to try it, and even if it did, it wouldn't matter much. He was helping the cause of science, right?
But behind that, behind all the surface reasons that he didn't stand up and walk out of the place right then, he was driven by desperation. He wanted Sherlock back. He wanted Sherlock back more than he'd ever wanted anything, and somehow he still hadn't accepted that it wasn't possible.
By the time he reached the end of the packet he wasn't even skimming the words. He could have signed all his belongings over and agreed to a lobotomy. He didn't care. The final signature was his last act of volition. When they took him to the medical wing and stuck the needle in his arm they might as well have sucked his soul out of him. He didn't feel like John Watson anymore.
"We'll take you home to get some rest. You might feel on-and-off bouts of drowsiness during the first week. We'll visit every Tuesday at five in the evening to deliver the pill; please be present. If all goes well, your friend will be there when you wake up."
Langdon Faust flashed his smile again, and everything afterward faded to a grainy blur.
When John first awoke he had forgotten everything. The room was empty just like he expected it be, the world outside the window dark and cold. His phone screen flashed half past midnight.
The lamp in the other room was on. He wouldn't have noticed if his bedroom door was closed, like it usually was. He could have sworn he'd turned it off, but, he couldn't remember turning it on in the first place...
Sherlock.
John vaulted out of bed and through the doorframe, heart pounding, his chest colliding with the closest armchair. He was more scared than he'd ever been in his life. More scared than the first time he almost died in Afghanistan - as if the bullet had actually hit the mark, but passed through without causing any damage.
Sherlock glanced up from where he was sitting on the sofa, newspaper in hand. Pale wrists, navy blue nightrobe, angular shoulders, full lips. Eyes piercing and judgemental and questioning all at once. High definition. Real life.
"Honestly, John, there are more civilized ways to react to a bad dream."
His voice, in person, cut through the fear and kept going, until everything keeping John together most days was lost. He collapsed sobbing against the side of the armchair, refusing to blink, and there Sherlock sat with his brows furrowed in consternation.
"Was it really that bad?" he asked.
The newspaper went back to the table. Blue silk brushed the floor all the way to John's feet and warm hands enveloped him, thick black hair caressing his cheek. There had been times like this before, maybe twice, when Sherlock found him by accident. They were the only times he openly cared, perhaps because he valued John's mental health.
"Sod you," John said, when he was just stable enough to be coherent.
"What?"
"Come back. Please come back."
"I'm right here. What are you talking about?"
"You're dead."
"John."
"You're not real."
"John, look at me."
"You're a fucking drug!"
"JOHN!" His voice broke into panic. "LOOK. AT. ME!"
John's vision came back into focus. He was already looking, directly into Sherlock's eyes, and he saw fear.
"Oh god," he said. "I'm sorry. I-"
Sherlock's suffocating grip on his arms slackened. The pain where his nails cut in was real. The concern in his face made John's chest physically ache. It was a rare thing. So rare it was scary when it appeared. John never wanted to be the cause of that fear.
"It was just a bad dream," he said half-heartedly.
After a moment, Sherlock stood up, holding out his hand. By the time John was on his feet, both of them had regained their composure. "You should do us both a favor and stop having those," Sherlock said. Then he moved back to the couch to pick up where he'd left off.
John's eyes never left him.
He walked to the side of the couch, just for the sake of being closer. He laid his hand on the silk. "Sherlock, could you...?"
What could he say? Sherlock, could you hold my hand to make me feel better? Sherlock, could you lay next to me and help me sleep? Sherlock, could you just pay a little bit of attention to me, you know, since you've been dead this past year?
"I have to use the bathroom."
He was up and gone in seconds. Immediately afterward, John heard Mrs. Hudson's meager footsteps on the stairs. She was in her bedclothes, looking worried.
"John? Was that you shouting?"
"Yeah, sorry, I was just..." He paused to consider the fact that Sherlock was still dead, especially in the minds of Mrs. Hudson and the general public. "It was a bad dream. Sorry to wake you."
"Don't worry about me, dear. Are you sure you're alright? Do you need company?"
"Yes, I'm fine."
The dubious look on her face gave away her concern. It had grown as the days went on, and as John's symptoms became more obvious. The locked doors, the late nights, the dark eyes, the gaunt skin. With every week he spent alone, depression set itself further in. It wasn't anything unfamiliar, but it was much worse than it had ever been before. It was caused by a much more permanent reason. A reason much closer to his heart.
"If you need anything, dear, - anything at all - you just call me over." She wanted to say more. Instead she afforded one last wary glance and scuffled back down the stairway.
Sherlock emerged from the bathroom and resumed his perusing of the local papers. His return had been almost instantaneous upon Mrs. Hudson's departure.
It made sense. This Sherlock existed only in John's mind, so he could not coincide with the presence of others.
John sat in the armchair opposite and watched, knowing that Sherlock wasn't paying any attention to him. That distant look was in his eyes that indicated his state of reverie, where his time passed on its own stream and everyone else was lost to oblivion. Eventually he reached the final page and took the violin up from the shelf, where it'd lay untouched since he'd last played it, and stood by the window composing his thoughts.
There was so much that John wanted to say, wanted to ask - things that had been bothering him for months on end. Instead he sat silently and watched the dead man live, simply for how impossible it was.
He hadn't realized just how clearly he could remember Sherlock, just how many aspects his memory had stored, even down to the smallest details. He'd had no idea that every melody the old violin had ever played in his presence would stay locked away, perfectly in tune, to be recreated now with such a strong aura of nostalgia it was suffocating.
So John watched throughout the night, enthralled by the vividity of his perception.
Much to John's dismay, Mike Stamford decided to drop by the following morning for a little chat. It was the first time John had seen him in almost two years.
"I heard about Sherlock. It's tragic, isn't it? Through all that time living with him did you ever think he was a fraud?"
"He's been gone for a year," John said, leaving the final question unanswered.
The portly man's ears turned from pale to bright pink, though he didn't give any outward indication of his guilt. "I didn't want to interrupt, you know, since it's always hard at first. I figured you wouldn't want to be bothered by everyone's condolences all at once."
John stared gravely at him. It was always hard at first?
"I brought you this cookie tin. Got it at a little promotion one of the fraternities was doing and thought you might have better use for it than I. They're very good."
"Appreciate it," John gritted out. Because nothing says I'm sorry for the loss of your best friend like a half-eaten store-bought cookie tin.
Suddenly his head began to hurt.
"Are you alright, mate?"
He had his fingers on his temples, eyes clenched shut against the pain. It was like a distorted shockwave passing through his brain, making everything blur, creating a ring in his ears that he could feel more than he could hear. Perhaps some sort of resistance against the drug's prying chemicals, which were no doubt surging through his cerebral veins already, destroying everything natural to achieve its own purposes.
The affliction passed, and then John just felt very tired.
"Yeah, sorry. Headache," he uttered, pulling his hands from his face.
"You look like you didn't sleep at all last night."
"I didn't."
From the increasingly hostile tone of John's voice, Stamford finally caught on to the unwelcome nature of his presence. He braced himself to stand. "Right. Well. I should let you get some sleep, then."
"Kind of you to visit."
"Not a problem. Take care of yourself, John. I wouldn't want to hear of another death on Baker Street."
John slammed the front door on Stamford's well-intentioned chortling. Horrible joke. Horrible, horrible joke.
As he started back up toward his room, he heard the front door open and close a second time behind him.
"Solved the case already?"
"It was solved the moment they put the report in my hands. Lestrade made it sound interesting on the phone; of course he had it all wrong." The detective brushed past, coat billowing, vaulting up the stairway three steps at a time.
"I suppose you assumed you wouldn't need my help."
"As you know, John, your accompaniment on my cases is much more of a psychological stimulus than a source of substantive assistance."
"Either way, you didn't invite me."
Sherlock didn't answer. He couldn't invite John, not now that the cases weren't real. Although Sherlock was back, the adventure wasn't. The re-creation of everything this man represented was incomplete.
John didn't care if the real Sherlock was a fraud. This drug clearly endeavored to bring back the genius detective he had known for those eighteen months, and it was unacceptably failing. That Sherlock had been nearly inseparable from him. That Sherlock had insisted upon his company as an absolute necessity to every case.
It was something that John never fully understood. He just knew that it was, and the chemical infiltrators in PHENICS had failed to pick up on it.
They spent their days at home much like they had before Sherlock's death, besides the crucial component of crime-solving. The blog remained untouched. John couldn't decide whether going to work was a nuisance or a relief, because it took him away from the false image of Sherlock.
Some part of his mind - the smidgen that still cared for his own well-being - was sending out warning signals, and they became more urgent with every touch, every stare, every conversation. Every interaction that brought him closer to believing that this Sherlock could suffice. Not that he was the real thing, but that he almost was. That he, even though it was impossible, had a sentience.
John knew with utmost surety that it was impossible. He had a firm grasp on the fact that every aspect of this Sherlock was a figment of his own imagination.
Yet his emotions were real, and they were forming an addiction.
Not long ago, John Watson was a broken man who had just returned from war. The war had not broken him. The discharge had. He lay trapped in a grey room without the turbulence to keep his spirit awake.
Then Sherlock Holmes came and woke him up, and he stayed awake for eighteen months.
Then Sherlock Holmes died.
And John lost the prescription he needed to get through the horrid disease of life.
This man, who looked like Sherlock and acted like Sherlock but wasn't Sherlock, was offering him a renewed prescription, except this one was labeled: PHENICS, Maker Unknown, Ingredients Classified.
John supposed the description wasn't much different from before, except for the fancy acronym.
It was the mornings that disconcerted him most. When he was laying alone trying to accept another day of reality and he suddenly remembered Sherlock, there was an utterly overwhelming feeling of dislocation that pervaded everything and never left, though he got used to it eventually, as one might a stale fragrance.
He questioned how he could believe in anything if he couldn't believe in the man in the next room, who seemed just as real as anyone else and then even more so.
John went out into the living room for tea and pretended everything was alright. He thought he was alone. Then Sherlock walked past in front of the coffee table, appearing like a ghost, and remarked, "Those cookies are quite tasty. Have you tried them?"
"I haven't."
He tried one, later. The taste was familiar, which seemed strange considering he had never eaten those type of cookies before. They were, in fact, rather tasty.
There was empty space in the corner of the cookie tin where there hadn't been before. Sherlock had eaten those.
That was impossible.
When John arrived home from the therapist the following Tuesday, the black car was waiting on the curb. A young woman with short dark hair got out and handed him a small grey pouch. Through the plastic he could feel the outline of the pill.
"I have to watch you take it," she said. "Need a glass of water?"
John felt slightly offended by the implication that he might be a pill-popper.
"Yes, of course I do," he responded, tearing open the plastic. A man in the backseat rolled down the window and handed him a glass.
"Have you experienced any strange side effects, any glitches?" the woman asked, as he was swallowing the pill.
"Nothing I wasn't warned about."
"How's Holmes? All that you hoped he would be?"
"Yes. Everything's great, thank you. I have a quick question."
"I'll do my best to answer."
"When he interacts with objects in the flat, moves things..."
"You are the one actually responsible for moving them."
"Because he doesn't have a physical body. When I touch him, my mind creates the illusion of corporeality."
"Precisely. When Holmes affects something in the environment, the drug programs your subconscious to carry out the task which will make perception and reality agree later on. If he moves an object from one place to another, at some point you will unconsciously move the actual object to the place your mind believes it to be. This prevents glitches; for example, your mate coming over later and grabbing what appears to be empty air."
"So at any given moment, when I think I'm having a nice relaxing sit, I could actually be moving around the flat rearranging things."
"Correct."
"That's a bit eerie."
"Only if you think about it too hard." The woman smiled and, as John was staring at the ground trying to adapt himself to the concept, got back in the passenger seat. "Cheerio."
The black car pulled away and John went inside. Sherlock was upstairs throwing knives at the wall, complaining about how bored he was. The marks were still there the next day, vicious and splintering and utterly real.
John stopped going to the therapist, and the questions came from Mrs. Hudson instead. Would you like me to take this extra cup to the sink for you? Where did those holes in the wall come from? Have you noticed that the flat hasn't been this messy since Sherlock lived in it? Were you just talking to yourself? Are you alright, John? Has someone knocked your head recently? Why do you keep making two cups of tea?
The tipping point was when she came up to check on John around dinnertime and walked in on a fully-laid table for two. She was still standing flummoxed in the doorway when John emerged from the kitchen with an open bottle of wine, looking much more cheery than he had in months. He hadn't seen her.
"The nice girl at the bakery? I thought you said she was devoutly Catholic," he said, glancing up at an invisible man beside the table. Suddenly he burst into laughter.
"My god, Sherlock. Thoughts that rude can be heard a mile away. It's a wonder you managed to walk through the door of that place, let alone leave having acquired half the contents of the display window for free."
He was still sniggering joyously by the time Mrs. Hudson walked back down the stairs, fully convinced that John Watson had gone insane and there was nothing she could do about it.
"The churchgoers greatly enjoyed my offering," Sherlock continued, grinning as he sat down. "It's too bad that every slice of bread they ate that day came from a whore's oven."
John laughed and laughed, and kept smiling as he poured the wine, and so it was that three months had passed living with the imaginary replica of Sherlock Holmes.
But that was one of the rare days where John could not only pretend but believe that everything was alright. Most days he was torn between Sherlock is here, be happy and Sherlock is here, but he's not. Most days he was just as unhappy as he was before, but he kept taking the pill, for the cause of science (or so he told himself).
He kept pretending in the hopes that he could eventually trick himself into believing all the time, and live at peace.
Once he came home to see Sherlock sitting on the sofa with his laptop perched on his knees. His laptop. Before John had a chance to protest, Sherlock said, "That you what?"
"What?"
John looked past him at the screen. It was his blog; he must have left it open by accident. Sherlock was reading through the drafts.
At first, John was furious.
"Nobody gave you permission to look at those."
"No, I gave myself permission. Clearly."
Then John remembered that this Sherlock wasn't real, and everything changed. He could say all the things that he wanted to say and it wouldn't matter, because this Sherlock only appeared to care. Nothing had true consequences because Sherlock was him, his mind, his manipulation of memories.
John let go and said it, for the first time in his entire life, verbal or otherwise.
"That I love you. After all the time I spent denying it, the world was right all along. It just took a damn lot for me to realize it."
The detective gave that deep, bewildered look, the one that appeared when he was trying to sort out a particularly convoluted mystery. "You love me how?"
"This world is unbearable without you."
"That doesn't answer my question."
"Well..." John looked away toward the nothingness out the window. "Sometimes I'm not sure myself."
Sherlock didn't answer, so John went to his room and didn't come out for the rest of the night.
It was hard, having that confession in the air and not receiving any reaction to it, though John supposed he should have expected that from Sherlock. Daily life went on as usual. It didn't mean anything to fake Sherlock and it wouldn't have meant anything to the real one.
Nevertheless, John wished he would have had the chance to tell him.
He hadn't visited the cemetery in a long time. Not since he'd started taking the drug. It felt weird, standing before the headstone of the man he'd left at home not long before. He had to close his eyes and remember that none of it was real, which sliced his heart with the red hot agony that he hadn't felt since he'd witnessed the fall. Somewhere along the line he had started to forget, to accept, to be happy again.
"I feel like a right idiot," he said. "I've got myself caught up in something so outrageously immoral, I'm not sure if you'd be fascinated or appalled. I should have rejected PHENICS. I knew how wrong it was from the start. Just- I couldn't."
He crouched down and laid his hand on the marble, bowing his head, trying to connect with whatever was lingering there, if there was anything, because this was important. "I love you. That's all."
It was several minutes before he stood and left. He'd felt nothing. Sherlock Holmes had abandoned him at some point, whether it was the moment his mortal life ended or the first moment that John looked at the false Sherlock with genuine adoration.
When he arrived home, false Sherlock was braced against the side of the staircase with his shirt covered in blood. "John- assistance," he uttered breathlessly, one hand laid against his side. It was clear that the wound was painful but not dangerous.
"What is all this?" John asked coldly. No reaction, no remorse.
"I chased a man into gang turf. His friend had a knife. I took the slice so that I could snatch the gun from the other one before he shot my brains out. Now- assistance."
"Why aren't you in the hospital?"
"I hate the hospital and you do a better job for free. John, now."
"You're a bloody nuisance, you know that?"
"For god's sake, John, what is wrong with you tonight?"
"Nothing's wrong with me; what's wrong with you?"
"I nearly died and I am asking my doctor for medical assistance."
"You're causing me unnecessary trouble, damn it, you're not even r-" John halted mid-sentence, nevertheless moving past Sherlock toward the nearest bathroom. The man followed behind him furiously.
"Not even what? Not real? I nearly died and you're still going on about that stupid dream you had."
"It wasn't a dream! It's the truth, it's-" John cut off swearing. He was mixing reality with the wonderful deception the drug created, and he'd sworn to himself never to do that again. It would taint the illusion.
"It's a dream, John! I am real! I am bleeding!" In the bathroom Sherlock tore his bloodstained shirt off to expose the glistening gash beneath. "Since you love me, shouldn't you be helping me? Couldn't you just kiss me to figure out for yourself how real I am?!"
John stopped and stared at him in shock. It seemed he understood, to some extent, the way sentiments worked in ordinary people. He recognized the relationship between physical touch and visceral belief, which was the strongest type of belief; if John's logical mind would not believe him, his emotional mind would.
Sherlock got fed up and pulled John by the collar to his lips. The kiss was hard and cold and momentary, yet there must have been something behind it, because John's heart believed so strongly it wanted to beat straight out of his chest. He opened the cabinet and fumbled with every supply he tried to pull out.
Eventually the wound was properly tended to, and they sat on either side of the dining table in silence.
While John was busy looking anywhere besides Sherlock's eyes, Sherlock was staring directly at him. Finally he said, "What happened that made you come home acting like a menopausal woman going through divorce?"
"None of your business."
"It is my business. I could have bled to death."
"It's none of your business."
"You came from the cemetery."
John didn't bother trying to figure out how that was deduced.
"Who died?" Sherlock asked, and John's gaze shot up at him, glossy and blank, thinly concealing the secret that this Sherlock could never know. Then he stood up and went to bed, where he didn't sleep until early morning.
John had come to some conclusions that night which he did not intend to keep to himself. When he came out, his imaginary flatmate was lounging on the couch reading a book about different types of garden soil.
"Sherlock."
No acknowledgement, so John snatched the book out of his hands.
"Sherlock."
"That was very rude."
"What you did yesterday- Don't do it again."
"It's hardly my choice whether someone tries to kill me or not."
"No, obviously, not that. In the bathroom, when you, you..."
"I kissed you."
"Yeah. Just keep that nonsense to yourself, alright?"
A look of perplexity came over Sherlock's face. It was objective, as always. He was fazed not by John's sudden disinterest in him but by the suddenness itself, the lack of sense it made. Despite all of John's resolve, that hurt.
"Why?" Sherlock asked.
"I don't know. It's just not right."
Then he realized. "You still don't believe me."
If John happened to have prepared a response for that, he forgot it when he needed it, partly because he hadn't expected Sherlock to figure it out this time and partly because of the close proximity he found himself in seconds later, Sherlock's hand on his jaw and face inches from him.
This time it wasn't hard and cold and momentary. This time there was no rush, no anger, just one moment of pure appreciation that lasted incessantly in John's mind even after they parted, because he had never felt so much like Sherlock actually wanted him there.
When Sherlock waited and John said nothing but stared wide-eyed and defenseless to his own emotions, he backed the doctor against the wall and kissed him again without restraint. John felt Sherlock's tongue tracing his lips and suddenly he no longer cared what was real and what was not.