"John." Short. Simple. One syllable. Yet it came out thick and painful. He hadn't said the name in months. John was married now. Happily, according to his sources. Sherlock had resisted the urge to check up on John himself. It was too risky. But now the time had come. And the syllable felt funny in his mouth.
"John." How many times would he have to say it like this, to himself, before he got up the courage to face the man? He had played this scene in his mind over and over. Imagined himself standing at the doorway of 221B. It always starts the same.
"John." He says.
What follows is always different. Sometimes it's a punch to the jaw. Other times a hug. Sometimes there are tears. Other times smiles.
John. The man was as simple as his name. Why couldn't Sherlock predict how he was going to react? Why couldn't he muster a carefree attitude?
"John." He could see it all in his mind, the low whistle as John exhaled roughly through his teeth.
"Sherlock!" No more than a whisper. A momentarily furrowed brow. A million thoughts chasing one another across his face. "Y-you're alive." Not a question.
"Obviously." He would walk past him through the door of their old flat and sit down at John's laptop, as if nothing had changed.
Except, no, no, he couldn't do that. John was married now. He no longer lived at 221B Baker St. And what if Mary opened the door?
"Jooohn, someone is here to see you." He didn't know her voice, but he could hear it nonetheless, extending John's name into two sing-song syllables. High pitched and harsh. Or maybe low and seductive. If he was honest, he couldn't know.
"John." Sherlock repeated again and again as he paced in circles around the room. He had stopped feeling angry at himself. Sentiment, a tragic weakness he had been able to avoid all these years. And then John. He would have to accept it.
John enjoyed married life. It was still new and unusual, and some mornings he woke up not knowing where he was, but overall, he found himself much more content than he had been with Sherlock. Mary had helped him move on. Waking up next to a warm body and the scent of freshly shampooed hair was by far superior to being startled out of sleep by gunshots or lying awake all night trying to tune out the incessant screeching of a violin.
Still, his nightmares had returned. Not every night. Holding Mary seemed to stave them off, but there were nights when he sat up suddenly, his heart beating out of his chest and sweat dripping from his brow. Days following those nights were the hardest. His leg seemed to ache incessantly on those days, and he had taken to using a cane again. It was on one such morning that he arose to Mary calling his name from the foyer. She yelled something about a visitor.
Who visits people unannounced at 8 o'clock in the bloody morning? John yawned, stretching his arms wide. He put on his trousers and the first shirt his fingers clasped upon reaching into the closet. He was in no hurry. The uninvited guest could bloody well wait. One by one, he descended the steps toward the muffled sounds downstairs. Three uneven thuds as he walked. Foot, cane, foot.
He rubbed his eyes with his free hand and froze for a moment halfway down the steps. A deep, even voice rang out from the living room, and John could have sworn it sounded familiar. But no, it couldn't be. He had imagined seeing Sherlock on street corners, on the Tube, and even in their empty chambers at 221B Baker Street. Each time, his heart had skipped a beat, his breath had caught in his throat, and his stomach had lurched. And each time, it had been a mistake. Wishful thinking. Sherlock was dead. Had been dead. Is dead.
He entered the living room a little morose but all the more curious of whose voice could so resemble his, and all the air left his lungs.
"John." Sherlock stood up. That's all he said. "John."