A month and a morning later, John makes two cups of coffee and asks Sherlock where the sugar is.
The answer is a resounding nothing. "Dust is eloquent," he once said. Silence so much more in this case.
John doesn't know what he was expecting. An answer, maybe?
("Second cupboard, between the peanut butter and the pickled eyeballs, and no, I haven't drugged it, before you ask."
"But I didn't say-"
"I know.")
Or not.
Because only crazy people get answers from voices that aren't actually there and John is not crazy.
"I'm not crazy," John says firmly to the kettle. The kettle sits in silent, sceptical acknowledgement. "I'm not crazy and I did not just talk to a kettle." At least I'm not talking to a bloody skull, he thinks and he chokes on the sob that's clawing its way up from his heart to his throat because the pain is still too fresh, still too raw.
He doesn't pour the second cup of coffee down the drain.