Title: His Story.
Rating: PG
Pairing: John/Mary, John/Sherlock (preslash)
Summary: In a different story, everything would have been perfect.
XXX
The first and last time he ever sat at the end of Sherlock's bed, was during the three days he managed to stay in the flat. He sat there motionless on the end of the bed looking out the open door to the other side of the flat. Watching for the unexplained mannequin torso to turn and look at him. He hadn't cried. At that moment, sitting in the uncharacteristically tidy room, he felt that he didn't ever need to.
He told his therapist this... he also told her that he did it because he was cleaning out the room.
He didn't touch a thing.
XXX
Sometimes, when he's not feeling angry, he's feeling lost. Without a goal. It isn't unlike from when he was twenty and back on leave from the Army, entirely unsure whether or not he was going back, whether he actually wanted to be a doctor. The four months spent mostly drinking and kipping on half-known mates couches and in one long week instance, a burnt out car.
Sometimes he feels listless and without substance.
Other times, he can feel the weight heavy on his shoulders. A shooting pain in his left shoulder during another sleepless night. He can feel his leg acting up when his back is sore.
These times, these are the times when he's reminded just how old he has become.
And when the passing idea that it wasn't that long ago he was old and young...
When he was twenty-five, and the first soldier he ever attended to didn't make it, he got drunk and loud and made fantastical utilitarian declarations. When he was twenty- eight , and two men he'd known in passing hadn't made, he made arrangements to go to a wedding that he hadn't planned to. When he was forty-three and working at the small London clinic, there were thumbs and heads in fridges and burnt fingertips in microwaves, and so no time to make declarations, no time to meet strained relationships...
Now, all there is, is time.
XXX
"John." Says a dark skinned woman with a freshly done pixy haircut.
"Sally." John nods, because what else can be done in Tesco at two o'clock in the afternoon? Sally swallows and attempts to discreetly clear her throat.
Objectively John can feel it sing in his bones what exactly she's going to say. She's going to make small talk (because all women do that when they've got something they don't want to say. And despite what Harry may want to think of herself, but even batting for the other team doesn't absolve this.) she'll also say she apologizes if she'd ever offended him (his and Sherlock's fictional homosexual relationship; always the other woman but never the woman) she'll also drop subtle facts about her life, (what new division or department she's transferred to, her feelings about the weather and how she feels what he looks like) and the strangely one-sided awkwardness (that exists after someone believes that they euphemized all the opinions they've always wanted to say in a pleasant conversation) and then the metaphoric slap on the back (a congratulations to a conversation they've needed to have but you haven't bothered to listen to. )
John's always felt a disappointment with Sally. For a tough law enforcer, she's very predictable for a woman.
XXX
He'll always feel a twinge of regret when it comes to Mrs. Hudson.
He moved out of 221B Baker street into the same housesit as before 221B Baker street. He lied and said he would be staying at Harry's, when he's avoided Harry at costs. He's told her generic almost heartless things, the sort of things that the-getting-more-and-more bitter Harry can be tempered down with. It means a phone call once every few days, but those will die down.
In both and conscious and subconscious way he's trying to avoid her too.
He'll never look at text messages ever again on his phone, and spends an hour trying to explain this to the telephone clerk, who sends for her manager who then sends for a security guard after John goes red in the face trying to explain that he doesn't want a service he'll never again use. The charges of assault are dropped before he's even taken to the car. The next day he no longer has text on his phone.
John refuses to analyze it.
XXX
He plans to eventually drop his therapist. Especially now that every session falls flatter than the one before.
He's said all that he's wanted to say.
He's said all that he can say.
He talked about Sherlock and he's talked about what happened with Sherlock, and he's talked and talked about what happened to Sherlock. The more he talks about Sherlock, the more he becomes like some sort creature he had in a faraway dream.
Or maybe in a night-terror.
He may not be a medical doctor in the mental health sense, but as an army doctor, a formally active army doctor, he thinks it's now time to stop talking about Sherlock.
XXX
One day, his forty-fourth to be precise, his head clears up. He doesn't notice until a week into it, while getting a coffee from a shop on the opposite side of London... it feels like he's had a head cold for the past six months.
Six months, and 12 days.
He flirts with a teenage clerk at a different Tesco's, and smiles indulgently when frazzled mother-of-three steps painfully on his right foot. He meets a woman wearing too much make-up (to cover the bloodshot eyes, puffy cheeks and downturned mouth), he chats her up with cheesy lines that will make her smile and make him feel lighthearted. He gives her his number, only barely remembering to tell her that there's no text, to which she laughs too loudly and says,
"God, you have no idea how much I hate cell phones!" To which John laughs too loudly along for what may not be for an all that different reason.
XXX
He bumps into Greg on the same day he spots Molly in a coffee shop.
At first when he bumps into Greg he's suspicious. To be honest he's instantly suspicious when he recognizes Molly in all her jumpers and frills. He learnt in a surprisingly short time that there was no such thing as coincidences.
By the end of Greg ringing a pub-night out of him, he's discovered a skill he wants to unlearn.
Sometimes, he'll see out of the corner of his eye the CCTV camera, sometimes he'll even catch it when it's facing him. But it doesn't matter. Those CCTV camera's are watching everybody.
XXX
The day he gets a job interview call for a clinic whose patients are working-class families, typically single mothers, he thinks that the time has been nine months.
Nine months. A life can be created in nine months. And the same life can be forgotten in nine months.
On the day he gets the job, he forgets to remember about Sherlock.
XXX
XXX
There's never enough reprieve in his life when it comes to his leg. Sometimes he'll have an all consuming pain in it, which he believes now means that it isn't a psychosomatic limp anymore. He's not sure when it happened. Then again maybe he's not sure it was ever psychosomatic in the first place.
In the year since he started at the family clinic, he's become comfortable in an okay way. It's not exciting and it's not exactly thing he pictured for the end of his prime. For his sixties, yes. Sitting behind a desk in a room with tiny window, children drawings to 'Doctor John' tacked to the wall.
But he did imagine something with this feeling.
He has a dinner with Mary tonight. The fourth since she's asked to officially date. It's at a Italian restaurant run by an old man from Sri Lanka. Mary worked for him during one summer while she was doing her undergrad. For the most part, the old man doesn't like John, for things John is pretty sure he'd never do. But he compliments Mary on her light make-up saying that a woman with that kind of face doesn't need to paint over it. Which John always agrees with.
Occasionally he'll see some people he used to know. Mike Stamford being the only one he bothers to see regularly. He reasons that it's because they've known each other on and off for the past twenty years. Sometimes, though he knows he's lonely in a more obtuse way then he's ever known before. Nights out with Mike, and with Mary are the only things that keep him from being too lonely.
He tried to talk to Harry on the phone, and now currently and for a little while, they won't be conversing anymore. The problem doesn't come from him, but from her constant inebriated assertions that he doesn't act like he did before... which is ridiculous to John, since neither he or his sister have spent much time together since they were kids.
XXX
"John?" Mary looks concerned.
He snaps her head back to face her. He had looked suddenly outside the restaurants windows to a black car whose passenger looked remarkably like an impeccably dressed redheaded man. With a stupid umbrella.
It was on the other end of the street, so John doubts it's something he'll have think about immediately.
"It was nothing. Just thought I saw something." John lets it roll easily off his tongue. Mary smiles one of those small fond smiles of hers.
"Hm. Well as I was saying before you so rudely interrupted" Mary teases, "We should try to go out the country for the weekend."
"Yeah, maybe-"
"- Baskerville. I saw a documentary a few years ago about, oh well some sort of conspiracy and monsters, never mind that. However, the scenic view of the place looked absolutely amazing, with the moor and the cobblestone streets. I've wanted to see it and I thought we -" Mary continues. While John desperately tries to answer.
XXX
He's unsure why he's unable to talk to Mary about Sherlock. Talk to Mary properly about Sherlock.
He told her that a very close friend of his died. She assumed that he meant a close friend who he left in Afghanistan. He just never bothered to correct her.
She's told him all about her life. The childhood rivalry to be her brothers. The absentee (somewhere in India) father. The overbearing mother. The story of the childhood sweetheart who after ten years ran off with the childhood best friend. Then came the story of a bad man with honey tipped lies.
He's never told her about his own bad man. He'll argue with anybody who asks, that he never wanted his bad man to over eclipse her bad man. Besides in two different narratives, they are two very different stories.
XXX
In Baskerville, he's relieved to find that there's a new bed and breakfast.
In a strange way he's also relieved to find that there's been a mix-up and there's only left a double not a single room.
Mary floats around Baskerville like someone whose never left London. Constantly chatting up everyone they see, and John's relieved to find that it's a different boy, doing the tourist rounds. A little too nervous judging by the occasional lisp and flushed face. But his jitteriness keeps John focused on both him and Mary.
"What do you think it really was? Personally, I think it's a little bit of too much imagination, and a little bit too many pints after noon." Mary laughs softly in his ear.
John nods. Somehow, he lost his voice out in the moor.
XXX
When he begins to sleep at Mary's with Mary, he's not surprised to walk into his office and see an impeccably dressed redheaded man. With a stupid umbrella.
He tells Mycroft exactly that. Even mentioning having sex with Mary.
To which Mycroft crinkles up his unbearably posh nose and tish-toshes.
"Please John, you needn't be crude. I think it's been an appropriate enough time for me to... apologize." Mycroft says with a slight tilt of the head. John grunts.
"I realize that you find this is coming too late." Mycroft's eyes are considerable darker than Sherlock's, and probably played a key role in why John always felt extremely uncomfortable. "But I've been grieving too John." John can feel his pulse start racing and everything he screamed that day, that fuckin' day, just wants to come out in a wave of fire. Mycroft shifts his feet, and startled by the low-class non-British-government nervous tick, John looks at Mycroft's face.
"He was your greatest friend, and my only brother."
XXX
One night during his and Mary's six-month live-in, John wakes up from a nightmare.
Not Afghanistan. Nothing like that. It was a generic falling backwards nightmare, and he's mostly relieved that he didn't startle Mary awake.
He gets out of bed goes into the bathroom, washes his face and then he puts on a warmer pair of clothes. Christmas is only a little ways away and the weather certainly shows it. No matter how many times he tries to fix the thermostat, it never stays fixed.
He thinks about, there watching the still dark sky, how Mary will ask him about marriage in the next week, judging by the fake disgust she displays when there's sickening romance on the telly. Or on the radio.
He's not too terribly keen to ask her. Though if she did suggest it and no doubt would want it soon, he would have no objections. After all, she's a good-looking woman with a heart of gold, and generally gives off a homely sense. It would be the very thing he always wanted. A job that he doesn't hate and a good wife.
He listens to the birds as they slowly wake up.
XXX
"I'm your SISTER John! Why the hell wouldn't I be one of the witnesses?" He had never planned on telling Harry that he was getting married.
Mary surprised him anyway wanting a small court wedding. Two witnesses, her witnesses. There's no one that John knows in the world that he could possibly call a witness.
"There's a dinner-"
"- John, that's a dinner. I'm your fuckin' sister. The only family you have!" Harry starts to cry.
John gives in.
He should have warned Mary that Harry histrionics were part of the packaged deal.
Three months after they've married he receives letter with two plane tickets to Switzerland in a five-star hotel, with a typed memo, " It doesn't matter the destination, so long as the desired end is there."
John tells Mary, that Harry pitched in to help pay for the honeymoon.
XXX
In Switzerland, John wanders, while Mary sight sees. After nearly a year and half together, there's no crushing desire to spend the two weeks in the hotel room. Though a hotel room that costs more than his entire pay in three months, is certainly worth spending time in. Mary gushes about the tourists traps and the waterfall and all of the things she wants to do.
Being more a people person than John, she spends most of it gushing to other people. Some young men glare at John when she mentions that it's her honeymoon. Of course John is mildly amused.
If John had been listening to Mary though, he would have found out that the waterfall she was so in love with was called "Reichenbach Fall". Yet if he had heard that he would have found himself looking into every face of the crowd, hoping, that just this once one of his wishes came true.
He would have also probably gone and punched Mycroft in the face.
XXX
Four months after his forty-fifth birthday, he's startled to find the ringtone to one of his patients is "Stayin'Alive". It startles him without him really consciously able question it.
He forgets about the incident five minutes later. Mary comes by to say 'hi' before heading over to the new bookstore that has opened up across from the clinic. Mary never has time to read the books she buys, and despite what John's been telling her, she wastes money on magazines full of subjects she doesn't enjoy. He usually brings them to work and leaves on the table.
He hasn't read a science magazine for fun since his teens. It's unlikely he's going to start now at middle-age.
XXX
Mary and he get into a fight one evening. It's sort of an anniversary (but with different each other's), a day that coincides as the worst days of the year for them (though Mary doesn't know it), they start of sniping at each other, slowly escalating into screaming low blows (John knows that Mary doesn't listen to Harry, just like Mary knows John doesn't listen to her brothers).
"- I'm pregnant John! I've scheduled the abortion for a week from now. And before you ask, no! Financially we're not in a place to have children, And I'm not going to fight with you about this John. We're not ready. These things need to be planned -"
He's unsure whose more relieved when he doesn't argue.
XXX
He doesn't go with Mary for the abortion. She tells him that if they were to ever have children then she would protect them and him from a memory like that.
He takes care of her for the next week, making her high protein meals and drawing hot baths.
In the days after the abortion, he realizes that he and Mary want entirely different things.
He tries hard to ignore the facts.
XXX
XXX
His pub night with Mike Stamford is cancelled, and now he's sitting at home wondering at what point was it that he and his wife weren't able to talk.
He sits with a ten-year-old paperback best-selling book in the corner of the sitting room, quietly listening to the radio, whilst his wife has the door half-way closed to her study. He's not really interested in the book (same government conspiracy plotlines), not really interested in the radio (the only sport he's ever really liked was rugby and occasionally some football). That the foreign thought of John going to talk to his wife Mary, is in fact an alien thought drives him to distraction.
He's half-way about to get up.
Before he stops and picks the paperback up again.
XXX
He visits Mrs. Hudson in Bart's once he's gotten the memo.
He feels horrible because he's avoided her like the plague for over two years. Her hip needed a new replacement and they decided to keep her in the hospital.
Once upon a time, he would have thought critically about the text memo on his phone, and the fact that Mrs. Hudson is put in a bed at Bart's. Puzzles pieces laid out, as though someone wanted to prove that he wouldn't solve it.
Not anymore.
XXX
"Oh John! I'll be fine, I'll be fine, they are doctor's at Bart's too you know." Mrs. Hudson waves her hand loosely around in the air. She's supposed to go back to 221B Baker street, this afternoon. Which John thinks is a little too fast for someone whose had their hip replaced and never mind the fall that apparently accompanied it. He tries to insist that she come stay with him and Mary, missing the minute tightlipped expression.
"No, no. John, I'm fine."
And John's forced to leave it at that.
XXX
It's been three years since John last saw Molly. Who looks at white as a sheet when she spots him looking at her.
To be polite he waves, ignoring the pock faced stranger she's sitting by.
XXX
"New patient, John. Toby Gladstone." John nods, grabbing the folder.
John, turns to find the pock faced stranger sitting with Molly. He notices, but dismisses the new bookstore's logo on the shopping bag.
"And what can I do for you today Mr. Gladstone?" John has a horrible kink in his neck, it distracts him enough that he doesn't see pale grey eyes nor the distinct shadow of a jaw line.
The man points to the paper water cups and the small water dispenser. John raises his eyes, but says 'Okay' and goes to get the man a paper cup filled with water.
The smile and "Here you go-" freeze, and he feels his stomach drop... then nothing.
John lets Sherlock with his butchered hair, and greasy skin take him by the forearms and stare into his face with almost comically wide and talk and talk. He doesn't hear a word of it.
When Sherlock stops talking, when he takes a step back,
John remembers just how tired he is of talking about Sherlock. And he remembers just how tired he got talking to Sherlock.
XXX
He will be at 221B Baker street, for when you're ready ~ MH.
John ignores the text.
Just as he's trying ignore all technology and media.
Mary and he make love for the first time in weeks. After, when she's gone to take her shower, he lays there like a corpse, feels a raw wound open heavily. He curls to his side of the bed and breathes heavily. He's managed to control by the time Mary comes back to bed.
She never notices.
XXX
"What if I need to get a hold of you?" Mary questions, her left eyebrow furrowed.
"Leave a message on the house phone. I'll check it at noon or around three. Besides if I'm not home I'm usually pulling shifts at the clinic." They very rarely call each other. Harry hasn't even called him in five months, so what does that matter?
"Oh. Okay. Do you remember when we bought that chicken breast in the freezer? 'Cause I'm thinking that it might be a good night to cook it."
XXX
It's four months before he sees Sherlock again.
This time in the middle of his and Mary's flat.
They stand in silence staring like stone at one another.
Sherlock breaks the first silence.
"I thought the polite thing to do was to wait -" Sherlock breaks off. John takes the time to look at him, from his old but new coat, silk shirt and the tight waistcoat. Three years ago John would have smirked at this vanity. Two years ago he would have done anything just to see it real again.
He's tried hard to avoid it, but it's near impossible to beat the news of a modern man recently back from the dead... he can feel every bit of his age line his face, the weight of his body on his decaying bones, the most horrifying sensation builds in his eyes-
"I'm tired of you, Sherlock... I'm really fuckin' tired of you..."
If a very boney Sherlock squeezes too tight, and he gets mucus all over Sherlock's collarbone and designer label shirt... they'll avoid talking about.
XXX
XXX
Sometimes he goes stir-crazy. He can hear his wife in her study getting her lesson plans ready. The tapping of her keyboard is slowly driving him up the wall.
He wonders why he didn't insist on a new telly, after the last one disappeared (broke, smashed). Why the radio can't help him now (weird promises to buy him antique classic).
He knows he said no. He knows he's still trying to punish both of them. To be fair, he's only trying to punish one of them. The other one gets punished by default.
He goes to bed late, 'cause he doesn't want to wake up Mary (she sleeps after some melatonin, sleeping mask and earplugs.) Sometimes he'll look to the front hallway hoping for a tall man adjusting a violet scarf standing impatiently there.
XXX
His wife. Mary Morstan (modern age, no need for a name change.) Sherlock won't say a bad thing against.
Nor will he say anything at all.
Stealing John from the clinic in the day time to feed him at Italian restaurants previously connected only to Mary. Stealing John in the middle of the weekend to go on wild chases that aren't borderline criminal chasing. Stealing John from everywhere and everyone else (if there was anyone else), yet returning right on time every night for his wife to smile at him and retire to her study.
He tries to get Sherlock to say something about Mary. But all he does is ask John to come back.
XXX
In the middle of eating some garlic bread, Sherlock produces a cell phone. The exact same model that he had broken into a million little pieces during the fight in his and Mary's flat.
Sherlock leans over to press it into his right hand, fingers white and hand not shaking. Sherlock lets his fingers trail on his wrist for too long and John refuses to acknowledge what that means.
The phone even has the old number.
XXX
He tells Mary about Sherlock, about going back to partner a tiny bit (on the weekends) with him. Mary nods and smiles. Kisses him on the forehead, and they go to bed without any conversation.
He tries to invite Sherlock to dinner, with Mary. Both of them have ways to be busy, (Sherlock with his cases, Mary with her avoidance of people outside of work), Mary will say yes they need to plan something (She's heard of Sherlock, but not being one for detective stories she takes no interest), Sherlock will act as though he didn't hear (There's always something else coming up besides).
He begins to characterize them against each other.
Sherlock is wild and passionate. Mary is stable and softly compassionate. Sometimes he feels he gets the best of both worlds with each of them.
He avoids certain facts.
Facts like how Sherlock increasingly touches his arms or hands, and there are days where Mary just smiles at him and doesn't say a word. Sherlock keeps the upstairs room in his flat exactly as John left it, (some nights he sleeps in there), Mary will spend more time at the school and study, (some nights disturbing John when she comes to bed.)
But because John ignores it.
He won't be the one to blame when it breaks.
XXX
He and Sherlock were in another fight. This one happening after a three day man-hunt that resulted in John falling into the Thames. So he's been at his and Mary's flat, sleeping off the fatigue.
Rather grumpy to be woken up from his near dead like sleep, he glares at Mary for waking him up. Before he realizes that she has her head down and is looking at her small hands inside her lap.
"Mary? What's the matter?" Mary sighs, and looks at John with her pretty eyes.
John's reminded of the first time they met, where she had the same hurting look in her face.
"I want a child, John."
When John doesn't say anything for the first heavy minutes, Mary leaves quietly and is the one who doesn't come home that night.
XXX
He'd argue that they had an unspoken agreement when it came to children. John thought he was too old, though when he was younger he wasn't too sure if he wanted any then either. Mary never provided any hints, stating that as a school teacher, it was easier to live vicariously through others.
He'd argue that it'll pass, that obviously she was at the time in a woman's biological needs where she felt she needed a child. Though if Harry ever heard him say anything like that she'd flip her lid. Then there's the abortion she arranged herself to have not that long ago.
Instead, he keeps quiet and waits for Mary to say something again.
Only four weeks after she said it, she still hasn't brought it back up.
He doesn't know how to talk about these sorts of things, and the only person he would try to go to for advice is heartless and uncaring. Almost deaf when it comes to anything to do with Mary.
XXX
What about a trial separation? ~ MH
XXX
"How long before... before you would want one?" John asks from the doorway of his wife's office.
Mary's back tenses and an ugly look mars her pretty face.
"I changed my mind, John." Her voice is strangely level and she seems as though she's going to ignore John.
Just as John ignores the underlying, I'm lying.
XXX
On his forty-sixth birthday, John finally realizes that his two-and-a-half marriage is falling apart.
And like anyone whose led a life where full failure was never an option (soldier, doctor, Sherlock), he goes into hyper mode to do anything he can to save it. No more full nights out with Sherlock, no more weeks without intimacy from his wife. No more quiet silence, (if that means he leaves the telly on too loud sometimes, then that's okay), more date nights (picking her up from work with a smile and surprise romantic dinner.)
Eight months before his forty-seventh birthday, Mary asks for a divorce.
Seven and a half months before his forty-seventh birthday he moves back in with Sherlock.
XXX
Sometimes, when he's screaming at Sherlock he'll accuse him of destroying his marriage. That he supplanted the idea that of a child in Mary's head. Sherlock usually gets his 'idiot' look on his face and John gets madder.
He knows that his marriage was broken before Sherlock came back. Just as he'd known that though he loved Mary, it wasn't enough to build an unbreakable marriage on.
Mary was heartbroken and abused by a bad man, John was a good man who was in mourning. In a different story they might have worked out perfectly.
In a different story, John would have given anything to Mary that would make her happy, because she would be the only person in his life to make happy. Then there would his own little people to make happy and John would have led a quiet but comfortably content life.
But in their story, John had only Mary in the beginning to make happy. But then there were two people in his life to make happy, and one of those people... one person took precedence over the other.
Once after John is nearly shot by a Catholic priest, Sherlock kisses him on the lips.
John punches him.
It was a year and a half before John was able to move on with Mary.
As he explains to Sherlock and his bleeding nose, out of respect for a woman he had tried to love,
It'll be a year and a half before he starts his love story with Sherlock.
XXX
the end.