It is nine O' Clock on a Thursday evening, and the room John finds himself occupying (he can't go back to 221b, he just can't) is every bit as bleak as his mood. There is no light save for the dull rays of the street lamp across the road, and the weighty silence is broken only by the dull whirr of metal on wood as he spins Sherlock's phone on the coffee table.
He'd hoped, at first, that the phone would be missing, because that would mean that Sherlock was alive, wouldn't it? He doesn't know. It's almost funny, John had always thought he'd think himself cleverer in Sherlock's absence, but all he feels is so, so stupid. The phone spins again.
It was a silly thought really, Sherlock's dead, and even if he weren't he'd know better than to take his phone with him. After all, it wasn't Sherlock whose heart was held so firmly in a palm sized rectangle of technology. Funny that now, after everything that has happened, John finally finds himself able to understand Irene Adler's dependence on a phone. It had seemed ridiculous at the time, but now...
"It's my heart"
John's not gay, and Sherlock doesn't fall in love, but as the great detective once said; "when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth" and John also thinks he might understand why Sherlock needed to keep Irene's phone a little better too. The phone currently spinning on the table didn't mean half as much to Sherlock, but it was still his, and John can't help but brush his fingertips across the cool surface with alarming regularity, taking comfort in the knowledge that Sherlock's fingers had been there countless times before.
It's not his heart, but it'll have to do. It's not like Sherlock made regular use of his heart anyway. Only twice, in his last ever case, and during that whole scandalous affair with...
In seconds John is out the door, two phones in his pocket and his keys in hand. In ten he is banging on the door to 221b, ignorant of the late hour, and bypassing a shocked Mrs Hudson with a hurriedly yelped apology as she opens the door.
When his former landlady catches up with him mere minutes later he is rifling frantically through Sherlock's drawers.
"It's not here!" he murmurs quietly as she wraps a warm blanket around his shoulders and leads him into the kitchen for a cup of tea.
John can't tell her. Even if he was certain, which he's not, that it meant anything Sherlock shouldn't have had it anyway, and as trustworthy as Mrs Hudson is, he's not going to give her another secret to bear. She'd probably think him crazy anyway. Hell, she already does.
But Irene Adler's phone is missing from Sherlock's drawer, and for the first time John has hope.