"No-" A strangled sob escaped his throat as the door swung shut, muffling the sounds of his grief. He covered his face with his hands, dropping his cane. It clattered to the floor. The sound was jarring, foreign, after so many months of Sherlock's cases, personality, and sheer presence rendering the cane unnecessary.
"John, dear?" Mrs. Hudson called, her hunched figure and red-rimmed eyes appearing around the corner. She had finished being angry- finished thinking to herself how many scuffs she'd have to buff out, how many blood stains she'd have to remove. The only things Sherlock had really broken were hearts.
John tried to straighten himself, but his leg pulled, and he gasped involuntarily. "Sorry-" he drew a long, ragged breath. "Do you need something?"
"Oh, I just hoped… I knew it would be you." She smiled sadly, looking suddenly older and more fragile than John had ever seen her look. Even at the grave.
"I know. I- I know. I think I'll just… I'll just go up and sleep." John scrubbed his hands across his face and nodded wearily to himself, bending slowly to pick up his cane.
"I haven't brought up your new sheets yet. I'm sorry, I just… I don't want to walk past- well, you know… I haven't made it to the upstairs bedroom just yet." She attempted an apologetic smile.
"Actually, Mrs. Hudson, I think… I think I'll just sleep in his-" John cleared his throat, pulling at the bottom of his jacket and trying to straighten his shoulders. "I miss him." He said, trying to hold his head high.
That was twistedly funny to poor Mrs. Hudson. "Come to terms?" she asked, feeling the full weight of the dismal irony.
John was infected with the gallows humor. "I'm not actually gay, you know." He heaved a sigh. "I'm just…" It was too much effort to piece it all together. What was he? Without Sherlock?
"In love with him." Mrs. Hudson supplied, wiping her eyes with a delicate handkerchief.
He nodded heavily. "I suppose so."
"Goodnight, John Watson."
"Goodnight, Mrs. Hudson."
Upstairs, everything was- more or less- in its usual disarray. John never made it past the sitting room. With Sherlock's violin on the desk atop all his papers, all those lines of his handwriting. Each sheaf a memory of Sherlock's warm hands moving frantically across them, writing down something he would need, but not need enough to remember. The sitting room with Sherlock's dressing gown in the chair, halfway covering the indents his feet made where he crouched. John shrugged off his coat, leaving it piled on the floor, and picked up the dressing gown in lieu of a blanket, curling on the couch with his knees in his hands, shoulder in the dent Sherlock's shoulder had made. His shoulders were wider, but his legs were shorter and didn't entirely match the marks Sherlock's months of brooding and strange sleeping patterns had made in the poor sofa. He stared at the back of the couch, not knowing what to do. He couldn't sleep; there would be nightmares, he felt sure, not like the Afghan nightmares, but nightmares in their own right. He couldn't just lay there helplessly, uncomfortable in his own clothes and surrounded by the consoling scent of Sherlock.
Eventually he must have drifted to sleep, because he remembered vague dreams of feeling numb and having one large, warm hand caress his face before being snatched away, leaving him empty and tired and so alone.
The next day was no better. He couldn't bring himself to clean. He couldn't leave the flat, but neither could he bear to look at the mess Sherlock had made. He tried to write something in the blog, some kind of obituary, some kind of goodbye, some message to all the readers who had come to care for Sherlock. He couldn't. No words would come. No words ever really came, after those he had forced out beside the lonely grave of his lonely friend.
Months passed. He wasn't entirely idle; he stopped letting the upstairs bedroom and accepted the fact that Sherlock had been his home, and without some sign of Sherlock he would be lost again, as alone as he was before. He worked, and sometimes helped Lestrade to solve crimes. Of course, everyone on the force looked at him with such pity, and when he tried to make a deduction it invariably fell flat next to the ghost of what Sherlock might have said. Lestrade still believed, John knew, in Sherlock's brilliance, but he was one of very few who did. John had to endure the pity, both directed at his feeble mind attempting great leaps of logic and directed at his determined belief that Sherlock had not been a fake, had not been a fraud, and above all had not lied to him. Still, trying to keep up, trying to figure something out- trying to figure anything out- distracted him from trying to figure out what might have been between he and Sherlock.
This became more difficult as the months progressed. The groggy dream he'd had curled on the sofa that first night kept returning. Sometimes he could see Sherlock's face, bending over him with a look of such sweet sorrow that John's heart ached to comfort the ghost. The dreams progressed as the months did, Sherlock lingering longer and longer, seeming to become more and more bold, until one night after John felt his hair be smoothed back there was a pressure on his arm, gripping his right shoulder tight. The next night was the same, and the one after that. The next week, though, the Sherlock-dream had progressed to crouching on the floor beside wherever John happened to be sleeping, and watching him, its light blue eyes just as beautiful as Sherlock's. Once, John tried to speak to his dream, to tell it that it was beautiful, as he had never told Sherlock himself. But the apparition smiled sadly, with one solitary tear glistening in its eye, and laid a graceful finger on John's lips in a shushing gesture. John kissed the specter's hand, and its eyes widened, pupils dilating, and it breathed, just as Sherlock would've; "Oh."
After that night, the dream-Sherlock seemed to have realized the depth of John's affections. It began speaking very sweetly, in that deep whisper John remembered so well. John heard in those nights everything he'd ever wanted to hear. He was told he was loved, he was told he was missed, he was told that Sherlock was sorry. The apparition cried a bit, sometimes, and sometimes seemed unable to speak, and sometimes talked about everything Sherlock might've; complaining about the idiots and the press and how he missed solving cases and missed solving cases with John.
He rarely remembered much of his dreams, mostly that Sherlock was there, sometimes being uncharacteristically sweet, sometimes being remarkably self-recriminating and sometimes just staring silently while his long fingers rested on the pulse of his drowsy blogger. Soon though, in an effort to remember, John was fighting the atrophy that seemed to creep into him just before his dream appeared; trying to interact with his Sherlock in return. Once, he remembered vaguely the next morning, he had rolled over and brought himself nose to nose with the specter. Its face swam into remarkable clarity for half a second, and then jolted backward and was gone just as John summoned the ability to whisper, "I love you, Sherlock Holmes."
Those nights were what John came to live for, those dreams of seeing Sherlock, but he tried not to let it affect him in the day. He knew he might be crazy, he knew he was having trouble letting go, but he didn't care. Day to day, he made enough to pay Mrs. Hudson's rent, he spoke occasionally to Mycroft, though trusted nothing the man said, and he did a little freelancing for the Yard. Outwardly, his life improved. He even made a few friends, something he had neglected to do whilst fascinated with the living, breathing enigma that had been Sherlock Holmes. There were no more dates, though, not when he had Sherlock with him every night, and sometimes in the day… he could swear he saw tall men across busy streets or at the other end of packed tube rides, with that ridiculously attractive curly hair and cheekbones like the cliffs of Dover. He knew it was wishful thinking, he knew it was just coincidence, but it was a nice thought that somewhere, Sherlock was watching. Probably calling him an idiot every day and wondering why John was being so sentimental. The thought made him laugh, choking on the lump in his throat.
Every day, day in and day out, he lived like this. He took to sleeping in Sherlock's bed, which, though no longer retaining the scent of the great detective, was far more comfortable and welcoming than the floor or even the sofa ever managed to be. Some nights, before bed, he'd look at the skull and wonder who Sherlock had ever cared enough about that he had kept their head with him for so many years. He looked at Irene Adler's phone, and sometimes he wondered if Sherlock knew she had died. Sometimes he wondered if she really had; he seemed to see her around too, on occasion. Alternately dressed like a business woman and a woman of the night. But she'd changed her hair color to a honey blonde, and her lipstick never matched anything anymore. He had no idea if it was really her, of course, but he doubted everything Mycroft had ever said, including the story of Adler's death.
Some days he doubted that Sherlock Holmes was really dead, but on those days he summoned remarkable strength of will and went to sit beside the grave of his- beloved. He knew he had to accept that Sherlock Holmes was gone from the world, was gone from everywhere but the mind of his devoted blogger. There was no more Sherlock, except under that elegant headstone and inside the dreams of John Watson.
He had seen Sherlock three times the day he took roses to the grave. He never chased after those men in the streets, not anymore, and was rewarded with their appearance becoming ever more frequent. But that day, something had been different. Blonde Irene Adler had been his checkout girl, and while she'd been silent and kept her eyes downcast, avoiding his every attempt at conversation and his every attempt to prove to himself that he was not crazy, as he walked away he had wished her a nice day and could've sworn up and down that she'd replied, "yes you are." Something so disjointed that only Irene or Sherlock would've known that that was the exact phrase she had said before Sherlock ran, before John chased him. So here he was, at the grave of Sherlock Holmes, holding a dozen red roses, with a question on the tip of his tongue.
"Why, Sherlock? That day, when you followed me, and heard her tell me like everyone else did- tell me I was gay. For you, Sherlock, I'd like to make that point, only for you- why didn't you say something? Tell me you loved me, ask me to dinner. I know now, I see it now, and I only want to know why I couldn't have seen it then. How you never corrected a single person when they assumed we were a couple, even though you corrected everyone on everything they were ever wrong about. It was because you wanted to be a couple, wasn't it? And you couldn't admit aloud that we weren't. And how you were jealous. Don't deny it, you were so jealous, every time I had a girlfriend. You'd play the innocent, pretend you just didn't understand why you couldn't come along, pretend you couldn't remember their names… If I had known, Sherlock, if I had only known…" He stopped, sighing, knowing he wouldn't have done a thing, knowing that no matter how much he had always cared for the genius with the turned-up coat collar, he would never have acknowledged it until forced to. "I wish I could say this to your face Sherlock, rather than to your tomb, or to some silly dream I can't let go of, but I can't so I suppose I'll just say it. Sherlock, I love you." He bent and laid the roses against the headstone, pausing to trail his fingertips across the "S" and wish he could trail his fingertips over the cheekbones of his consulting detective. "The world's only consulting detective," he said aloud. His phone abruptly vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and wiped his eyes, reading the message from a blocked number. "yes." The message read. The phone vibrated again. "I am."
John dropped the phone. No. It was too disjointed, too random, too much like Irene at the register, there was no way it could be from anyone but Sherlock and yet how could it be from Sherlock? He sat down at the foot of the tomb. The phone buzzed. This time the number registered; it was from Molly Hooper. "John. Don't be alarmed." Molly? What did Molly know?
Molly worked at the morgue, she could have… no. It was all too impossible. John rested his face in his hands. Wasn't it, though? Wasn't it so perfectly impossible that only Sherlock…? Another buzz on his phone. Blocked. A second buzz. Molly. He went to his inbox. Both messages were short; he could read their entirety: "turn around." He couldn't help it- he turned, he spun on his knees like an idiot, looking desperately for something that couldn't possibly be there.
And yet… hands clasped behind his back, agony in his eyes, a sad slant to his mouth, hesitant body posture… there stood Sherlock Holmes.
"Sherlock!" John exclaimed, reaching upward and fumbling over himself and reaching, gazing always at the face he'd never forgotten. Sherlock's façade broke instantly, and he was on his knees, wrapping John in a tight, frantic hug.
"John, my John, my blogger…" He whispered into John's neck, nearly crushing the shorter man in his ferocious hug.
"This is real? I'm not crazy? It was you, all those people in the distance, they were you?" John's shaking hands moved up Sherlock's back, one tangling in the mop of curly hair, while he tried to make sense of the very real feeling of Sherlock's breath puffing on his neck as the detective gasped.
A strangled half-sob half-laugh tore itself from Sherlock's throat, sounding more like a cough than any other human noise. "No, John, you're not crazy, I promise… I'm here, I've always been here,"
"Those dreams… were they you?" John clung tighter, half afraid the answer would be no, that he was crazy no matter what Sherlock said.
"I'm sorry John, so sorry, but I couldn't think of anything else to do… You had to believe I was dead, had to, but… I couldn't leave you." He drew a ragged breath, one tear falling over his cheekbone and into John's hair. "I couldn't leave you alone. I-I came every night, first for me because I am a selfish man- yes I am John. But then I came for you, once I realized that you needed it too. You needed to see me just like I needed to see you. So I kept doing it. I'd wait for you to sleep, come in and prick your arm with the needle, and wait for it to take effect before waking you… I needed to know you were alright. And when I realized- when you said-" He took a deep breath and grabbed at John haphazardly, as if unsure how to hold someone close and look into their eyes, but he managed, his light eyes finding John's darker ones, Sherlock's glistening with hot tears and John's darting madly across Sherlock's face, looking for the lie or the proof.
"John, when you said you loved me… How could I not be present? In the dreams and on the fringes of the daily life of the one person in the world to whom I meant something, and who meant the world to me- how would I ever have left you? I couldn't, even when I thought I was the only one who cared… Even before, I tried to stop- I really did, once you'd denied us three times I thought well it's a lost cause and I tried so hard to leave you alone, to fall for Irene or for Molly, even Moriarty-! well you have to admit it would have been an interesting marriage- but no one was as good as you, John, no one was as important as my blogger…" He paused for breath, and looked as though he would've liked to keep talking, but John Watson made an executive decision that Sherlock's mouth had something better to do than speak and that his own had something better to do than hang there limply, in utter shock.
He pushed forward, bowling over the unprepared consulting detective in his long coat, sprawling atop the lankier man and pressing their lips together. Sherlock seemed stunned for a mere moment, but quickly regained himself, locking his arms around John and kissing back with all the inexperienced passion he was capable of. Sherlock tasted of spice and tea, and something as mysterious as the man himself. But- "no cigarettes?" John quirked an eyebrow.
Sherlock held him tighter. "Cold turkey- we agreed. No nicotine patches either. Just because I didn't live with you doesn't mean I stopped living for you. I never broke my promise to you- any of them."
"Sherlock…" John nestled his face into the crook of Sherlock's neck and shoulder. He felt as though he was receiving the best and most inadequate gift of his life. It was a miracle that this man- his Sherlock Holmes- was alive, but there was no way for John to get as close to Sherlock as he would've liked. Surprisingly, Sherlock seemed to feel the same way. He kept flexing his arms almost spasmodically, trapping John so tight he could barely breathe, and then releasing him as though he was scared of hurting his blogger. Abruptly, he began to chuckle, the noise beginning deep in his chest and rumbling out his mouth. "What's so funny, Sherlock?" John asked, curling closer and enjoying the feeling of Sherlock's laughter reverberating through them both.
"I'm lying atop my own grave John- and never have I felt so alive." His hands tightened and he turned his head to press a kiss to John's temple. "That and slight hysteria, definite signs of chemical conflicts within my brain."
That made John laugh a bit too, the sound rusty. "Welcome back, Sherlock Holmes."