Title: glimpses through a closing window
Pairing: background John/Mary Morstan
Rating: T
Warnings: none
Spoilers: none for S3.
Wordcount: 2266
Summary: John starts a domestic vlog. Sherlock watches it on stolen phones, over flickering wi-fi, and aches.
A/N: Love to fallingvoices for looking this over! This is just something quick as S3 approaches.
15 September, 2012
[John Watson faces the camera. The camera is not of the best quality - colours muted slightly - but it's obvious that John is unwell. His mouth is a tight line and he stares listlessly at the camera. Close behind him is a wall of darkened wood and an empty corkboard. A small flat, then. Not 221B.]
I—um.
[cough]
Ella, my—well. She wanted me to take up the blogging again, but I—
[He looks down, and then back up with a stiffening of his neck.]
Um, I didn't know if I.
[He swallows.]
She suggested if I didn't want to write things out, maybe it'd be easier to just. Talk to a camera. So. Here I am.
[He shrugs his left shoulder, blinking hard.]
There's really not a lot to talk about. Nothing...exciting. Went to do the shopping because I was out of—
[His jaws clench, and his next word is shaky.]
—milk.
[He opens his mouth but seems unable to speak.]
Yeah.
[He clicks off the camera.]
—
"Comments disabled", bold green letters pronounce at the bottom. Sherlock is crushingly, pathetically glad of this fact, because he does not quite trust his self-control, in a cramped hotel room in France where his clothes don't quite fit and his hair is too short and he does not carry his own name.
The wi-fi is weak and the video had lagged terribly. He clicks the white triangle anyway and watches John's face appear on the tiny screen of his phone once more.
I—um.
23 September, 2012
[John's torso fills the screen. There's a crackling noise, before he leans back and his face comes into view. The corkboard behind him has gained a splash of white, criss-crossed with lines – a calendar.]
Bloody—sorry, sorry. I should probably learn how to edit these or something, but that's beyond my abilities. I can't even work a chip-and-PIN machine.
[He laughs, a bit bleakly.]
Anyway, I, uh, got a job. Going to be working in St Mary's A&E. It's...well, it'll be more exciting than locum work, but I can probably handle it.
[A corner of his mouth twists up.]
Yeah, so I just wanted to share that. Things are...fine.
[He stares at the camera for a moment.]
Everything's fine.
[He clicks off the camera.]
—
It takes Sherlock two days before he watches John's newest video, because he's hovering in and out of consciousness in a safe-house in Prague. The heating is broken so he's curled up under three layers of blankets that reek of cigarette smoke and vomit, on a stained sofa with one broken leg.
When he's well enough to do more than raise himself onto his elbows to choke down expired paracetamol, he stares blearily at the seventeen messages in the inbox of a disposable email and sets off for Vienna; at the train station he leans on a cold stone bench and looks at the lines of John's face, at the movement of his mouth as he says fine like he's trying to convince himself.
The train pulls in and Sherlock becomes just one of the many passengers, shoulders slumped and eyes lowered. He drops his phone in the gap between the platform and the train as he walks through the sliding doors and does not look back.
9 October, 2012
I'm not dead, really.
Sorry for the lack of activity, I've been pretty busy lately. New job and all, right.
Will have a proper update later.
—
"New entry at johnwatsonblog," says the email, and Sherlock clicks on the link with his breath suddenly coming short, cupping one hand protectively over the small screen. He watches the bar blink "loading…87%" for several minutes before the page finally pulls up.
The words are stark on the screen, and Sherlock is suddenly furious at himself for being disappointed. He powers off the mobile, but he can still see John's face smiling from the sidebar.
21 November, 2012
[John's eyes are hard and steady.]
Well, I guess by now everyone's probably heard of the Scotland Yard scandal. Close to sixty cases opening back up and everyone under review, it's a right mess.
They, uh, called me in today. Asked some questions about – Sherlock.
[He blinks, clears his throat.]
And here's what you need to understand: Sherlock isn't – wasn't – the easiest to get along with, because he was so far above everyone else, but he was also—
[He stops, mouth open. His shoulders move in a stiff shrug.]
I'd never met anyone more true, more…himself.
He didn't need to be famous, don't you see? He knew perfectly well what he could do, why would he need the world to tell him?
[He rubs a hand over his face. When he speaks again, his voice cracks.]
He was brilliant and amazing and so…alive, god, no-one who met him could ever believe he wasn't—
He was real. I know he was.
[He gets up. The screen goes black.]
—
Sherlock's hand is numb from the icy wind, but the touchscreen won't respond through his cheap gloves. His fingers are white, curled tightly around the phone, and his head is so close to the screen that every breath brushes over his fingertips.
"John," he whispers helplessly, because it's not entirely true that Sherlock doesn't need anyone else's approval – he's just chosen carefully the people who matter, Mycroft and Mrs Hudson and Lestrade, and John, from the first flush of deduction and an answering smile, "Fantastic."
The faith in John's words now makes Sherlock's eyes sting, but he straightens up and slips the mobile back into his pocket, his fingers still folded around it. He ducks into an empty office building and takes long, shuddering breaths in a shadowed corner before he's sure his voice will be steady again, so he can go stare down a hard-eyed man who demands a truly ridiculous sum of money before he hands over a slip of paper with a name on it.
Sherlock has a job to do. It does not involve John.
13 December, 2012
[John's mouth is quirked up in bemusement.]
Well, um, it appears that I have a date for tomorrow night.
Her name's Mary, and she's a surgeon at the hospital. We met – well, to be honest we met when I stumbled into the canteen half-asleep and ran into her. She dropped her coffee, but we both agree the canteen coffee's terrible so it turned out all right.
I feel…very old. It's been ages since I went on a date, actually. Is it possible to be out of practise dating?
Shut up, Harry, you're laughing at me right now, aren't you?
[But John is grinning, too, tugging at the collar of his shirt.]
Right, I'm going to stop this video before I embarrass myself any more.
—
Harry Watson:
OMG, what if she follows your blog?
John Watson:
Bloody hell, I still don't know how to delete a post.
Bill Murray:
Well, finally, mate, I was beginning to worry about you.
—
The resolution on his phone is much too low to display many details, but Sherlock imagines the faint pinking of the tips of John's ears, the crinkles at the corner of his eyes as he mock-scowls at his sister. And he can imagine, too, John with exhaustion draped over him, walking into the canteen with his head cast down, a yelp at the sudden spill of brown across the floor.
And then he wrenches his thoughts away from a featureless woman smiling up at John, John responding with a slow widening of his own mouth, shared laughter over the incident and a conversation in low, intimate tones. He fumbles for a crumpled pack of cigarettes, shaking one out and lighting it in jerky movements, and lets the smoke burn down his throat.
6 January, 2013
Happy birthday, Sherlock.
—
The video is only five seconds long. John says "happy birthday" as if he's saying it over toast and tea in the kitchen of 221B. Paradoxically, listening to the casual lilt of John's voice, Sherlock feels very, very dead.
He saves the last frame of the video – the one where a small, uncertain smile has lifted a corner of John's mouth – and then savagely deletes it a moment later. He yanks out the SIM card, grinding it to pieces under his boot, and then goes to kill a man for his birthday.
The knife in his belt washed clean, Sherlock spends the next half hour curled over a grimy toilet. It hadn't been the first time he'd sent a sharpened blade between the scaffolding of ribs and into a heart, but his subjects had already been dead, then, stiff and unmoving. Today, he can still feel a warm streak of blood across his forearm, and he wonders, idly, how many more last breaths it would take before murder becomes as natural to him as any other crime.
How many had it taken for John, to be able to laugh with powder-burn still stinging at his skin?
Eventually, Sherlock's stomach stops trying to climb out of his throat. He staggers over to the sink, presses a handful of water against his forehead and then looks up into the mirror. His hair is flattened to his skin and there's a crack in the mirror that slices across the bridge of his nose.
He strips out of his clothes, out of whatever identity he's put on, and lets himself be Sherlock again just for one moment; and even though the air prickling at his skin is not that of his London, he can still hear John's warm voice in his ear, and he clings to that, much longer than necessary.
15 January, 2013
[John looks rumpled, pale and tired, but he offers the camera a smile. Behind him, photographs, notes: remnants of a normal life.]
Things have been pretty quiet lately. Had to stitch up a man who'd nearly sliced off his thumb this morning, but that's pretty par for the course.
[He looks away, lets out a breath.]
I am doing fine, you know. Some of you were wondering about my last post, and—
It wasn't easy, for a while. I think, as a doctor, sometimes we convince ourselves that we can save anyone. And when we're proven wrong, it's—
Well, it's hard. But that's how it is.
Thank you, to everyone who helped me realize that.
[John looks steadily into the camera before he reaches up to turn it off.]
—
Sherlock doesn't wait for the screen to go blank before heaving the phone at the wall opposite his narrow bed. It connects with a satisfying crash, and he spends several moments breathing hard before getting up slowly to pick it back up.
Several small chips of plastic rattle to the ground, but most of the phone is intact. He turns it over to see a line of white making its way across the screen, dividing it jaggedly in two.
He shouldn't be like this, he thinks. He needs to be sharp, focused; he doesn't have the luxury of being sentimental. But despite all the broken mobiles he's discarded across Europe like lives, he runs a thumb over this one and tucks it into his bag.
2 February, 2013
[John looks content, almost...happy. He's dressed sharply, a neat tie around his throat.]
I've talked about Mary before, I think. Yes, our first date went well, thanks for asking, Harry. A lot.
Actually, we've been seeing each other for a while now. We went out to a nice restaurant tonight. She ordered something in French and I pretended to understand, it was...nice. Good.
[He suddenly turns to look out of frame.]
Do you want to—?
Okay, here, just talk into the camera.
[A woman leans over John's shoulder, laughing.]
Oh, god, I don't—John, this is horrible. Hello, I'm Mary. Don't believe anything John tells you, he likes to exaggerate.
[John kisses her quickly before she ducks out of view. He looks back at the camera, face set in a serious expression, but his eyes are crinkling.]
It's called artistic license, and I think you'll agree that I'm not exaggerating when I say that Mary is a lovely woman – don't say a word, any of you.
And with that I'm going to call it a night. Cheers.
—
Sherlock jabs the browser window closed, but he can't stop himself from thinking about what would've happened next – John slipping Mary's dress off her shoulders, Mary pressing hot kisses to John's mouth. He shuts his eyes and there's something dark and ugly curled in his stomach.
He gets a new mobile, a new email, another identity. He stops subscribing to John's blog.
Sherlock meets Sebastian Moran at last, in London. (Of course; it was always going to be London.) His arm's across Moran's throat before he can pull the trigger; Moran turns on him with a knife and a snarl like a tiger's.
The police must have arrived in time, because Sherlock wakes up with an IV needle dripping fluid into his arm. He coughs, and his stomach tries to heave itself out of his throat.
"Oh, you're awake," a nurse says, fussing over his pillow. "I'll get someone in here."
It takes a long time for Sherlock to struggle into a sitting position, and then someone's striding in frowning at a clipboard.
"Okay, you've suffered several abdominal stab wounds, but it looks like you're going to be fine, Mr—"
The doctor looks up. Staggers. He grabs hold of a chair, his fingers white.
Sherlock says, hoarsely, "Hello, John."