It's not really that he loves him, or anything. Or even that he's that good of a lay – he's not.
John isn't even sure that he likes him.
But, it beats being lonely, right?
Only instead of cleaning up blood and ignoring whatever was festering in the crisper, he's now dumping ashes out of the good teacups and ignoring the growing mound of soiled laundry in the corner of the living room.
Mrs. Hudson doesn't come upstairs anymore. She twists her hands together when she bumps into John on the first floor landing. "Um," she says, meek in a way John's never seen, in a way that would make him scared if he thought he was still capable of giving a damn about things anymore. "How is your, um," Mrs. Hudson says, peering up the stairs with this shakiness in her eyes that makes the wounded muscle around where John's heart used to lie twinge a little.
But not enough to stop. To change. Not really.
This is the tourniquet that's keeping him from bleeding to death.
Sherlock should've thought about that before he took that fucking leap.
"He's fine," John assures her, because, really, what is he supposed to say?
He's still killing people for more money than I'll ever make in a lifetime.
He's still warm at night and that's better than nothing.
Really
XxX
Mycroft does come around, once in a blue moon.
He stands in the doorway, propped up on his brolly and staring down at the mess of 221b.
Sets his sights and his mind that's not quiet Sherlock's but close, close, and says, "You know he's not."
John doesn't even get up from his chair. Knee is hurting again. Always hurting now.
"Not what?"
Mycroft takes in the rifle lying in pieces across the coffee table – just enough mayhem that it could be confused for the mess of a genius and not that of a madman's.
"He's not Sherlock."
"You're right. He's not. Sherlock never fucked me," John says dryly.
Mycroft sneers. "I know you're hurt, but this isn't the way to handle the situation."
"Shut up," John decrees.
Mycroft ignores this. "I miss him too, John. But this… What would he think?"
"Does it matter? He's not around to think anything, is he?"
The silence settles heavily over the furniture, the mess, the shadows both physical and metaphorical.
Mycroft leaves without disrupting it.
XxX
Molly somehow manages to press on. That's what surprises John. How strong she is, there in the end. After everything.
Drags him out to coffee one Tuesday afternoon when the light is weak and watery, wintery around the edges and the flat is deserted. It's other occupant out on a mission.
"What's he like?" Molly asks. She's being polite going to the heart of the question, not digging around like a dog, like Mrs. Hudson or Mycroft or even fucking Harry (like she has the right to judge). Molly actually listens, waits for the answer.
John shrugs, sneaks whisky into his cup and Molly pretends not to notice. Finally settles on, "He keeps me warm."
"That all?" she asks, voice feather soft.
"Isn't that enough?"
"Is it?"
XxX
He gets drunk with Harry on a Sunday. In that shitty pub on the corner of her street – the one that still smells like smoke even though smoking indoors has been outlawed for years.
And it's easy. Keeps the hurt away. They find safe things to talk about, to laugh about.
They're both fucked up enough to get along now. Funny, who would've thought divorce and death would be the things that really helped them bond in ways they never could as children.
Of course, not all demons are easy to keep away and half past eight, John breaks the spell.
"You still talk to Clara?" he asks.
She shakes her head as she hiccups. "Do you?"
"I, uh, I used to," he admits without meeting her eye.
Harry's smile drops. "You used to?"
"After you broke up and before," he stops.
"Before Sherlock died."
"Yeah."
She drains her wineglass in a handful of swallows.
"I'm sorry."
"What's it matter?" Harry asks, voice suddenly watery. "Sherlock's dead, Clara's gone. What's it matter now?"
Hard to argue with that.
John leans back against the bar. The floor slips dangerously under him but no, that's just one beer too many and okay, okay. Enough.
"What's the new one like?" Harry asks halfway through her next glass after a long, sullen silence. She's pinker in the face but somehow more composed.
"He's…," John starts and then just shakes his head.
Harry smiles, a real one. It's small but warm and it hurts in the same way tombstones and church bells do. "Not Sherlock," she surmises. "They never are."
"He wasn't even mine," John gasps, exasperated, grieving over the ether of it, the lack of substance. The nothing. The shadows and the adventures and the bastard always, always, always sinking just out of touch.
Then he had to go and make himself completely untouchable.
Harry sets a clammy hand on his. Dropping him right out of the reverie, the pain, the way he knows just how the man would taste without ever having kissed him.
"He was, in his own way," she assures.
John's bad leg twinges so intensely and so suddenly that he has to pull up a seat to keep from falling down.
"But, you know, second best's not bad."
"Isn't that a Meat Loaf song?"
"No, that's Two Out of Three Ain't Bad," Harry says with a chuckle.
"Fuck, I'm drunk," John admits, staring down at his beer like it insulted him.
"That makes two of us." She bumps his elbow with her own. "But at least, you know, there's someone in your bed, yeah?"
John stares down into his glass. "Yeah, at least."
XxX
That is what it is. He thinks. Later that night. Enveloped in the scent of cigarettes.
Even when the back of his brain reminds him that's the wrong brand. Sherlock would never smoke that brand, doesn't like the way the filters taste when he gets distracted and lets them burn to the end and no, no, stop.
Stop.
Rest now.
XxX
It's gunpowder.
It's greasy food and coffee, instant coffee (Sherlock wouldn't be caught dead-), and his stubble and the undershirts, jeeze, he doesn't even put on a proper shirt, but you know, John's not one to judge when half the days he can barely make himself put on trousers-
All this just serves to remind John. Keeps him awake, sometimes, or dreading coming home, other tmes.
All those little things that aren't Sherlock. Could never be Sherlock.
Aren't even imitations of Sherlock.
Though, sometimes, when the night is heavy and the stars are swallowed in London smog, those are the things that bring him home. Bring him back to 221b and let him live till the next morning.
He's an oaf at night, when he's tired. Sweats through the sheets. Paws at John something awful, dragging him out of sleep and yanking till he's right up against him, scrubbing his cheek over John's jaw, mouthing at his adam's apple in something halfway between a slurp and a kiss and part of John breaks open, breaks apart, wants desperately for that thing he never had – the same way a soldier longs for a phantom limb – wants to wipe this man's spit off him and yell at him and throw him from his bed and demand, demand that Sherlock stop teasing him, that Sherlock return to him, and please, Sherlock, please –
"Shhhh," the occupant of his bed says, so gentle, unspeakably gentle, a thumb under John's eye, carefully brushing a tear away. "It's okay. I know. I know," he says and leans in and kisses John slow and sweet and lets him shake, lets him be broken, lets the pieces fall where they go, scatter across the bed.
This man – who is not Sherlock – holds him, envelopes him in warmth and all those scents that are still foreign, even though this has been his bed as much as John's over the past few months, and when John's done, when he's dried and empty, he keeps him warm.
He stays.
Maybe that's what keeps the demons at bay. Keeps his own gun locked up and unloaded and tucked away in the far drawer. Something as little as being not alone has taught him that much.
A lesson he learned from Sherlock, no less.
What he'd say now, John couldn't say. But that's the point, isn't it?
He's not here to have a say.
And Mycroft can scoff and Mrs. Hudson can avoid him and Harry can assume he's in love (even if it's not the way he loved the sleuth) and Molly can suggest he's not good enough, but they don't know. Don't know what it's like.
So, no, he doesn't love him. Not really. But it's something else.
It's solidarity.
Because the others can't fathom, but he knows. Stark and real. He knows.
Knows exactly what it's like to lose someone big like that, someone with so much sound and fury locked up in their skin, in their bones, in their very existence -
Knows how hollow the emptiness feels. The echoes of their silence.
And that's why, when Sebastian Moran showed up at 221b with his gun and his bad cigarettes and his instant coffee and his unshaved face and wrinkled clothes, John let him in. Let him into his flat and into his bed and let him keep him warm at night.
Because he needs to survive.
They both do.
On the off chance - the one rusted hope neither of them will voice aloud - that their real love could someday return. Someday make it back from that great nothing beyond this.
So this warmth in his bed is functionality, not love.
It's survival, gut instinct, not desire, not passion or even lust.
But that's the thing about tourniquets – they only stave off the end.