Disclaimer: I do not own BBC's Sherlock, or any of the characters. I am not making any money off of this, it is purely for entertainment purposes only.
A/N: So sorry for the truly awful title, I couldn't think of anything else. ; Anyway, this is based on the seven minute video BBC One put up on YouTube, Many Happy Returns.
"I'll tell you what you can do. You can stop being dead," John said, huffing the slightest bit as his own foolishness. Someone who was dead couldn't just stop themselves from being dead. Especially so long after the fact. He knew that. He was a doctor, of course he knew that. But, some part of him just couldn't accept it. Didn't want to. Sherlock was his best friend, his...well, it doesn't matter. Sherlock would never know. And perhaps that was one of his greatest regrets.
"Okay," came what John at first mistook for a reply, an actual reply, as though Sherlock were in the room with him, or as if perhaps the Sherlock in the video was actually listening to him and answering him.
For a moment he was shocked, looked up at the screen with wide eyes and the slightest bit of a slack jaw. But, only for a moment. He realized immediately how stupid that line of thought was. Still, he watched in silence as the Sherlock on the screen continued speaking, walked across the room in that brisk manner that he'd always had about him, always in a hurry to get somewhere even if it was just to sit down.
His musings were interrupted by his phone. Naturally, just when he was doing something important someone had to interrupt.
He hit pause on the DVD remote to see what was so important.
Taking it out, he looked at the text he'd received, smiled a bit sadly, replied quickly and put his phone away again. She wouldn't text again, he was fairly certain. She was good about that, not the clingy type who constantly had to text you because they had no other way to occupy themselves or because they had to check up on what you were doing. She was practical. He liked that. Especially right now.
He hit play on the DVD remote again.
The smile and the wink, even though Sherlock had already explained in the beginning that he was going to do it and why, made John's eyes feel a little heavy, a little wet, made them sting a bit in the back.
Sherlock had winked at him during the first time they'd met, too. Just as he'd been leaving, he'd stopped at the door, looked back, given him the address for the flat on Baker Street. Smiled. Winked at him.
John shook his head, sniffed a bit, "Yeah, Sherlock. You will see me soon," he murmured to the empty room, to the Sherlock on the screen, in response to something the man had said before his phone had gone off.
Of course he didn't mean that in any sort of ominous way. John had made progress since the early days of Sherlock's death, and while he still couldn't quite completely accept that his best friend was gone, he no longer felt the deep sadness that threatened to cripple or paralyze him before, that kept him from setting foot for so long in the flat he'd once shared with Sherlock, of even being able to go near it. He'd avoided the street even for months. The sadness was still there, but it wasn't so close to the surface as it had once been.
He took up the DVD remote again and started it playing all over again from the beginning.