ACK. I KEEP TAKING LONG BREAKS FROM WRITING. And then I attempt it again and it ends up being Sherlock/John. Sorry.
Disclaimer: I do not own the character(s) nor the show. At all. At all.
John laid sideways on top of his bed, sheets jumbled at the edge, day clothes still covering almost his entire body. His eyes, which used to spill over with a wide array of emotions now barely stood open, eyelashes almost dusting his cheeks, and practically empty. He'd just woken from another deep and tormenting sleep. The dream, no, nightmare still haunted his exhausted mind, pulling at the suffering part of his heart, threatening to pull a near break just as the day everything had tumbled over.
He remembered every tiny detail of that day. The sight of Sherlock standing atop the towering, hospital building flashed clearly in his thoughts. The chill of the wind biting against his body and that that slithered down his spine still resonated in his bones. Sherlock's voice-deep, torn, aching, final-still swam in his ears and made his stomach drop. Then the falling. The man didn't jump, no. He leaned over the edge, arms spread slightly as if he were bird about to take flight, and in one single, graceful gesture, sent himself over the edge-
John sat up then, almost abruptly, palm reaching upwards to hid his features from the vastness of their-now only his-flat as an exasperated sigh drifted from his lips. His fingers dragged down past his eyes, nose, mouth as he stood, walking with a measured and almost agonizingly slow pace and made his way down to their-no, no, his-main room.
Nothing had been moved since the day he'd returned from the first visit to Sherlock's dark gravestone. All the crumpled papers, aged books, powerful resource material Sherlock and him would use while investigating lay strewn across the wooden desk and floor, unkept, untidy, just as always. John made his way towards his resting chair in the dimly lit room, which he would situate himself once he wanted to think or read or...usually...talk. With his partner. His fingertips brushed the textured fabric of the arm, the rest of him prepared to sink into the soft cushion. But instead he stopped. He turned. He moved, drifted in the opposite direction, until he was close enough to be allowed to rub both bottoms of his rough hands up and over the edge of the black, leather seat that belonged to his best friend.
His eyelids lowered and his breath shook as it exited his mouth. He found his mind accessing memories from all the way back since the day they met without him even asking it to. Sherlock deducing everything about him in a single glance, him shooting the murderer of their first case to protect him, that first shared laugh in the air between them. And of course their first meal together. As the memory of the other's smile flashed behind his eyes, his grip on the arm tightened to the point where he could feel the wooden skeleton beneath.
Keep it together, John.
His chest constricted further with the remembrance of their talk by the fireside in Baskerville. How Sherlock had said he didn't have friends...only to say the following morning that he had one. Just one. Him. John Watson.
Shit John, keep it together.
Their last argument in the lab over Mrs. Hudson burned brightly next. He now regretted all the rage he'd directed towards his partner as if it were normal, completely oblivious to what would transpire just a few hours later. He should have noticed back then; Sherlock's expression, especially hard and rigid and...determined.
Come on, don't...don't-
The ashtray, the disagreements, the fighting, the worry, the wonder-all of it began to blur together in a raging spiral of happiness, despair, and agony that overtook him whole and he found himself shaking with his forearms pressing forcibly into the same structure he had been gripping just a moment earlier in a feeble attempt to keep himself up on his feet. No one was there to see him. No one to catch a glimpse of his grief, of his weakness. So he let go. The air kept coming out of him in slightly rapid, wavering breaths as he bit his lip, and two tears, one from each closed eye, fell over the edges and swam down the skin of his cheeks.
"Dammit...Sherlock..."
The phrase "I miss you" seemed too shallow and empty to encompass the entirety of what he felt inside. He'd given up on words. There were no words. How could there be any goddamn words for this? All the things he could have said, all that he should have said, now died in the back of his throat whenever he went to utter them and there was no cure, no remedy for it at all, and he doubted there ever would be.
"Please...just..."
John's forehead lowered onto the upside of his forearms and one final choked and desperate breath tore its way out.
"...Come back..."
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