BBCSH 'Reboot'
Second to 'Delete', this is.
And it's done, it's done, it's done, all over. Moran and that rat bastard, they've botched it for him, that last little while, and he's strung out. He's strung out…but it matters not, laying cold and not wanted and hated and despised. He knows—Sherlock knows—exactly what a rapist is, and hates it, for he is one.
He is one.
[He curses his Palace; it's failed him, just this once, this crucial once. Handing down visions of Rooms that never existed; transplanting expressions of joy and sweet reception straight over honest grimaces of pain and aggro.]
[This never was; what was he thinking?]
The shower rushes on and on and the sound of the water sloshing down the drain should be something that calms him, but there's no calm left to Sherlock, not now, when he's gone and broke his John.
Not his. No longer. Not his, ever again. Not with microscopic shards of porcelain pot sticking nasty pointy glassy bits into his knees and smarting palms and then the discarded leaves dribbling all across the lino left behind him. Like a blood trail but in tea leaves—John's tea. Sherlock's gone and ruined his stash of favourite, along with his arse.
…And the kettle's whistled and long since gone off, but not John's shower. Not John's shower. That is endless, and endless, and never to cease.
Weary, Sherlock wonders just how long it will take for John to wash all his bodily remains from him. The very last of him, what he wanted to be, what he could've. Once, long ago. Not even that long, really. Relatively.
But over now, decidedly.
He dozes; it is, perhaps, inevitable. Even like this, the brain demands shut down, requires escape. It's the door edge banging into his gaunt ribs that startles him, making a new bruise. He looks up, and there is John, and Sherlock can't help but want to smile.
John. He always wants to smile, if it's John.
[The old sort, the one his John liked and appreciated, the one he counted 'special', though Sherlock never thought the twist of lips and the certain crinkle 'round his eyelids was special, exactly. Just more…for John. Aimed at John, as there were few others to appreciate it. And then mostly always at John; as much as he ever smiled, it was for John's sake. Since the pants and the sheet and ashtray—right, no. That's long ago.]
"Are you—" John, this one, clad in a large bath sheet and expressionless, asks. "Are you going to lay there all night?"
Sherlock rolls onto his front and covers his head with his arms, folded, his face pressed into the thin runner. His ribs ache, but that's nothing. He knows he's blocking the door to the lav and hates himself for it—that's nothing, too.
It's the look John gives him, as if he's a nuisance and worse. A barking yappy little dog in the wee hours, never gone quiet. A chip-and-pin machine, rowing, not taking John's card, and just as irksome—no, filthy.
Filthy. He's so thin now, he's at molecule level, and deflated, and John won't—it's no point pursuing that line of inquiry, as he's already gone and destroyed it.
"I'll go," is what he'd like to say. "I'll go."
He doesn't.
"Shift over."
He does, automatically. He knows if he does, if he allows John out of his own bathroom and thence egress to the bedroom, John will likely search out clean clothes: a freshly laundered jumper, spotless, stiffly new denims, all that. And when John does, he'll be a little more himself again and a little less the victim of what Sherlock's just done to him.
[Is this what love is, this regret, this overwhelming regret. Or is it the silence, buzzing, where the old John would've been talking, talking, and drawing him up to his feet and now nothing—he's only just supine and laying here? Is this love, the wanting to lay and be trodden upon?]
"Sherlock."
[He knows, god, he knows. How many showers and changes up had he gone through, all those years? And that knowing—oh, so knowing. Exactly what was happening...until he stopped. Stopped it. Stopped it all, right at the nub, cut off.]
[John? He doesn't have that luxury, the knowing.]
[That was never love. John is. John is. His John, that's not, because of him. But that makes no difference to the definition, no.]
He adore to reply. To say 'John!' as he used to, once, but his mouth is dirty, and he is too, and he's not allowed, not allowed. Never allowed again.]
"How long?" Sherlock hears the swallow; it's audible. He's bruised John's neck, twisting it to kiss him, probably. Likely. Yes. "How long since you slept? Ate something? Sherlock?"
"I…dunno. I—"
"Sherlock."
"Don't know."
He mumbles, curling into himself. If he could possibly manage to hunch more into himself, he would; he's disappear. As it is the pea coat he's wearing currently is not nearly long enough and his hair is inadequate: too short. John wouldn't like his shorn curls.
John wouldn't like a great many parts of him, and nearly the sum of all parts, this moment.
"You."
John leans down, a quick motion that rustles his wrapper, and shoves.
He's rolled over, Sherlock is, in a cursory sort of fashion, and revealed. Belly up and exposed, and John's staring down at him, as if he's a specimen, one of his own old ones. Bit not good, that.
"You." John states it a second time, that single word, and Sherlock has no clue what it means, that. Yes—him. Definitely him, but then again not him. He's not the same man as left John.
[There's this word he used to use, once upon a time. 'Please.' It might work, but he doesn't deserve it work, either. He knows what he's done. He knows what he's done.]
"John."
"Bedroom; through there." John points. "In the morning, Sherlock, we'll have words, believe me. For now, I want you asleep, and I do want it now. Go, and fucking well crawl there if you can't manage otherwise. I'm not helping you."
Sherlock cringes. He's stunned for a bit and then he starts, jerkily. Goes, as John commands—and crawling, as he'll stumble if he stands, and then fall. He's already fallen; may as well stay there. Stay down. Hand and prickly knees, the small shards still stuck in. They can wait. They're nothing, really.
[Everything can wait. The world can wait. John's…not. He needs John. And cannot bear another moment without him. And will lurk here in his flat or outside it, should John kick him out, and bugger them all, Sherlock needs John.]
"Going."
"Good. See that you do."
From the dust of the worn runner to the smell of sheets that are John's there's a world and a universe and a stretch of time, barely recalled. Sherlock's never slept in John's sheets but he knows them, can remember them, loves them.
[This is a gift, but not forgiveness. This is John, being generous. This is John, remembering the old Sherlock. Sentiment, then, that's all.]
[This isn't his, not to keep.]
Fin