Memories
In the days following his first visit to Sherlock's grave John was silent. Seemingly catatonic to the onlooker's eye, not that he had any.
From the cemetery the depressed doctor shared a cab with Mrs. Hudson back to Baker Street, in silence. Mrs. Hudson knew better than to try cheer up the man with the noiseless tears streaming down his face.
When the cab pulled up in front of 221 Baker Street they slid from the cab still without talking, still silence. John looked around, his eyes still glistening with the tears. Much quieter since Sherlock…left.
He wouldn't, could not , would never think the word, the appropriate word, to some. The word that had haunted his every thought and dream since that day at St. Bart's Hospital.
Died
Dead
And all derivatives there of. He would not think that Sherlock would leave this world. Never by choice.
As the army man and the landlady made their way to the immense black door John thought of how it used to feel like a welcome mat and how he longed for that feeling. Now that door was just another reminder.
John headed up the stairs to flat B when he heard the older woman start to speak but stop herself. He turned.
"Yes, Mrs. Hudson?" he forced a smile for her sake.
She began to shake and tear. "I was just wondering if you wanted ant tea or just a snack or dinner or…" Her tears were more visible now and audible in her rambling. "I just don't want you to eat alone again."
John made an almost frowning smile at the woman's concern. He came towards her and wrapped her in a bear hug, his tears starting up again.
"Mrs. Hudson, would you like together tonight? Chinese order in?" he said this through tears and into her coat. Then pulling away "My treat."
That evening Mrs. Hudson and John ate Chinese food in flat B. Eating wasn't exactly what John did. He stared at the Lo Mein, deep in thought, occasionally poking a noodle with a chop stick. The dinner was mostly silent, but he could not ask Mrs. Hudson to leave him to his misery, his thinking. He could not leave her alone on this day of all days.
The landlady was not found of all the silence. She longed to reminisce about found times with Sherlock, or at least times with him since much wasn't something to be particularly found of. She wanted to cry and to laugh at the ludicrous things the detective had said or left in her fridge. That's what women do. It felt necessary to her, however she knew no good would come of talking about it with the army doctor. His tears had long since dried but she knew they were right under the surface.
She put away the leftovers and washed the dishes. "John, if you need anything you know where to find me. Good night." She gave him a kiss atop his head, the way old women do, and hugged him around his shoulders being that he was still in the dinning room chair.
"Good night." He mumbled through a grimace. A grimace that implied pain beyond the average suffering.
With the landlady out of the flat he made his way to the chair in what he called their living room. As he sat down he could feel the emotions well up in his body, it hurt him. He wanted to scream and he wanted to punch things, hell he wanted to shoot the wall.
John found that a bit amusing and it calmed him enough to settle into his chair. And there he sat, as he did every night, trying to play the scene over in his mind. Trying to figure out a way that the man he loved could have survived.
He had a million different speculations, a million different theories but he had no proof.
Proof.
That was what he needed. That is what would let him sleep at night. If there was just something concrete, no matter how little, he could rest. It wouldn't make happy or even content, however it would allow him to breathe again.
The army man sat in their flat, in their living room. In their home and he could still feel Sherlock there. It was like he had never gone. But the ripping pain in John's chest told him otherwise.
Yet he couldn't help but feel the detective's presence as he looked around. He could see the bullet holes in the wall from Sherlock's boredom. He saw the desk at which Sherlock first asked if…
John gasped for air at this memory. It hurt almost as watching his love fall to the pavement. He knew pain well, from Afghanistan, but he knew pressing into the memory would hurt as much as the bullet he took. The pain was real though, something he could hold onto in all of it. Even if it hurt, even if it was heartbreaking to remember one the most romantic moments in his life, it was real. Sherlock was real, then at least. So the doctor pushed himself into the memory, tears streaming as he gasped for the air he didn't quiet have yet.
John remembered: He was sitting at the desk in their cluttered living room when Sherlock came in wearing his usual robe and bear feet. John Loved how narrow and long the detectives feet were.
"John." Sherlock mumbled the sleep not quiet out of his throat.
"Morning." The blogger glanced up from his computer for a moment and smiled at the pale man's bed hair. Beautiful.
Sherlock got close, almost resting his head on his flatmate's shoulder. "John?" he now said it inquisitively.
"Yes?" John turned head so his lips almost grazed the pale, perfect cheekbones of the other man. He reeled at the sent of Sherlock's skin. He longed to feel the dark curls in his fingers. His lips on those lips.
Sherlock, now resting his chin on John, leaned a bit discreetly to the side making the army man's lips touch his skin. A phenomenon the young detective never expected to enjoy.
John was happy to oblige and gave a silent peck on the other man's face, inhaling to fully take in his scent.
"Yes, what is it?"
"Well John, I have a question for you. There's something I don't quiet understand."
John was amused at this. Sherlock very rarely asked questions unless it was a social thing, the kind of thing that didn't come to the high functioning sociopath as innately as it did John.
"Yes?" John repeated humoring the man while reaching his fingers of the arm Sherlock was resting on into the dark curls he had longed for.
"Why do people hold hands? When people are in love they hold hands. It is my understanding that you and I are in love and yet we have never held hands. What is the beneficial gain of holding hands?" Sherlock threw his arms in the air and sighed
"I guess it is a comfort thing." The doctor smiled at the thought of his fingers intertwined with those of the paler man's.
"But why, John, why is it comforting?"
"It brings two people together, closer, in a silent manner, I suppose."
"Then why, John, don't you and I hold hands?" John loved that the detective found it so very necessary to use his name so often that he missed the meaning in Sherlock's inquiry.
"Well you're not exactly a handholding kind of man, right?"he asked rather matter-of-factly.
Sherlock sighed and glared at the shorter man. Not a glare of anger or disgust. Just a glare of disappointment. John was the least tedious person Sherlock knew. It was ludicrous to him that John, of all people, couldn't understand what he was getting at.
As Sherlock went to throw himself on the sofa, out of defeat, the army man finally understood.
He reached out and grabbed Sherlock's arm.
"What, John?" he almost sneered in disappointment.
John didn't say anything he just slid his hand down the taller man's smooth forearm and laced his fingers into the place he knew they belonged. Where they fight like puzzle pieces, perfect dovetailing to Sherlock's fingers.
They both stared at the interlocked hands for a moment and then locked gazes. John could feel the emotions well up in every fiber of his being before he managed.
"This is why people hold hands."
Sherlock squeezed John's hand. The gentle reassuring he got was something beyond his normal array of feelings. Since falling in love with John Watson there were many new feelings he didn't expect.
The young consulting detective, still clasping the other man's hand, put his arm around the man he loved and held him in this hug for only a moment before placing his lips against John's. As he did every time they kissed unexpectedly John's eye became saucers and his knees became the consistency of jam. After a moment his nerves calmed, his eyes slid closed and his hands pulled the pale man ever closer making the kiss more intimate.
Sherlock, never letting their fingers lose grip of each others, put his free hand on the nape of his doctor's neck. Chuckling when the hairs there stood on end.
"John, I would expect you could handle this by now." The truth was John was more than handling it he was reveling in it. He would have retorted but he didn't care about the words he just want pale slender lips against his again. He longed to taste Sherlock's breath once more. He used the non-captive hand to lace his fingers into the dark curls once more. With his new grasp he pulled the perfect lips back down to his.
As their lips met again John kept his strength about his legs but the internal hunger grew. Their mouths became more intense on the other. Sherlock was the now the one who needed help standing, while the kiss became more urgent their tongues met and he was fully consumed. John, fully capable of supporting the lanky man, wrapped the man in closers, refusing to let the facial lock be broken.
Sherlock regained his footing and reluctantly pulled away to speck to the man he most definitely loved.
"So that's why." He mused with humor and passion in his eyes. This was a break but not the end. John nodded in response desperate to continue what he had started. The detective leaned in for a short kiss and then lifted their laced hands between them. "I do rather like this." He said gesturing with his eyes to the hands.
John still intent on not speaking looked at Sherlock with a look in his eyes that was a look he had only ever shared with the detective. It was silent but spoke volumes. With that look Sherlock to a quick inhale, and eyebrow raise, and a smirk that could make an angle insecure. He abruptly turned and with fingers tightly interlaced, dragged the short man to his bed room. John slept in that every night since then.
The doctor remembered when he awoke the next morning tangled in the white sheets of the detective's bed he was covered in only those sheets and a thin arm that was camouflage in the pale sheets. Sherlock's arm was draped over John's body their fingers still dovetailed together. He was fairly certain there hands had never disconnected since the time they had first joined.
Now back in that living John stared at his hand. Empty. Yet it was a new kind of emptiness. He had been alone before but this was different, now he wasn't searching, he knew whose hand belonged there and now it was empty.
His tears streamed down his cheeks with unreal speed. He didn't care how he would look if he had looked in a mirror no one could see him and the pain was too much. He could only manage gasps between sobs when he recklessly decided to stand up. His mind was too lost in the memory and the waterfall spilling off his chin to keep stable. He was barely on his feet when he fell toe the rug beneath him.
You will be ok. You have been though worse. NO YOU HAVEN'T, DON'T LIE TO YOURSELF. You can lie on this floor for only a minute more. Don't lose yourself to the sadness on this floor. Too much good had happened here. Don't ruin it. He thought this to himself as a sort of pep talk.
It worked. His sobs quieted as he sat up sitting with his knees tucked close to his body. There on the floor he gained his composure, the tears still continued but his breathing had regained a normal rhythm when he began to stand up. Using the chair to help him to his feet something caught eye.
Between the chair and the cushion a small green tinted piece of paper was pristinely tucked. He pulled it out. It was folded at the corners as to make a smaller square out of a larger square. Unfolding the paper John felt Sherlock's presence more then he usually did in flat B.
Inside of the little green paper was one word and it made the army man's heart drop. There in the prefect script of Sherlock Holmes the little word.
John
That was all. It meant so much that one word. His word. Somehow to him it made sense. It was proof enough, not enough to sleep, not yet anyway, but enough to get off the floor.
"I believe in you, too." He whispered while he shook ever so slightly. "I believe in Sherlock Holmes."