For Joe, again.
And on further reflection, I'm fairly certain those Harry Potter books were yours.
John moved into the flat when I had already spread my belongings casually over every available surface, and for months his few orderly things didn't get a look-in.
For the first eighteen months or so of our co-existence his things stood out in rather sharp contrast to mine; in amidst the reams of old case-notes and treatises to the identification of perfumes and shoe-makers from footprints was the occasional shelf of tidy medical journals, an unassuming photograph of five men in army slacks nestled between the skull and the messy pile of unopened mail.
I've always liked the idea that the state of 221B Baker Street reflected the state of John's and my relationship. Well, not always – at the start, when his things were desperately attempting to find a place in and around my own, to look at things that way would have been less than flattering – but once the place began to find an odd sort of harmony in its dysfunctionality I began to see the poetry of such a metaphor.
At first his things stood out like a sore thumb, as the saying goes. He didn't have many but because I had moved mine in beforehand, the struggle to find a suitable place for his among the clutter had been extensive. After a while they seemed to form some sort of compromise, or perhaps I simply grew used to the sight of his things settling in amongst mine as though they had always been there.
It started – unsurprisingly, I suppose – with the over-the-top big red First-Aid kit. I've always been something of a magnet for scrapes and bruises, probably something to do with the amount of time I spend running through alleys and jumping off buildings, but John being the beautifully fastidious army doctor that he is would always insist on treating and bandaging each new hurt the moment we stepped through the door. Gradually, perhaps, although I didn't pay much attention to it until I noticed that it had happened, the First-Aid box made its way over to the fireplace, where we usually stood or sat to patch each other up, lying haphazardly on top of some other piece of junk.
Once I noticed it, of course, there were other things: I began to read his medical journals and he my forensic texts and slowly the careful arrangement of each on their separate shelves dissolved until his things lay over-top and underneath of mine until it was almost impossible to discern which belonged to whom, all our belongings in a hotchpotch of chaos that, quite naturally, left the things that we needed easily accessible and the things we didn't buried under everything else. Mrs Hudson tutted every time she entered the room and saw the things spilling out onto the floor, coaxing a promise out of John to tidy it up that culminated in a few books being shifted from one pile to the next and left there.
Our belongings, the evidence of how perfectly we work together, live together, are proving as difficult to separate as a limpet from a wet rock. I'm not sure which of us is the rock in this case; probably me, seeing as he's the one that's trying to leave.
Moving out, that is. John is. I should have seen it coming.
I had known he was serious about this woman. Mary had been spending an irritatingly large amount of time in the flat, giggling on the sofa and burning up all the things John and I used to do together like gasoline. I couldn't even ask for his medical opinion on case-photos anymore, much less invite him to an actual crime-scene to examine a body or keep a gun at my back at a stake-out.
When he announced that he was moving in with Mary I was, embarrassingly, too shocked to say anything except congratulations. All sorts of are you sures and but what am I supposed to do here without yous floated around in my head but refused to coalesce before John had thanked me and bounced off upstairs.
He asked if I would help him pack up his things and I said, boring, and rolled over on the sofa – not sulking, but John would have called it that anyway – because I knew exactly how painful it would be to extract the pieces of him from myself, and thought it would be better if he just packed up and left a hole behind while I lay here feeling helpless.
After a while I realised that this was probably my last chance to do something just the two of us, so I sprang from the sofa feigning cheerfulness and pulled down a stack of books that were half his and half mine from on top of a nearby lamp-table.
So here we are, then, sitting over a pile of books and trinkets, trying desperately to remember moving in and each unpacking our own things. John sighs over a rolled-up poster of the human muscular system. "Is this yours or mine?" he asks tiredly, tapping my leg with it. I look up and shrug; it's his, but I've used it before so if he wants to leave it behind I won't complain. He shakes his head. "This is ridiculous," he says. "We've lived together for so long that nothing is yours or mine anymore, everything's just ours."
I agree completely, which is entirely the problem. Things were so much easier when everything was ours. Now remembering which things John insisted were his and took away with him is going to be a royal pain when I need them in a hurry. Like the First-Aid kit. Although without John to patch things up for me I probably won't bother. "That's mine," I assert boldly, picking up a copy of The Biology of Disease from the top of the book pile.
He frowns at it. "No, it's not," he argues. "It's a biomed textbook, I remember using it in med school."
"Well, maybe you have a copy somewhere, but this one is mine," I counter, pulling it into my lap. Actually, this copy is covered in his handwriting from university, and it's the only copy in the flat, but I want something that's John's that I'll use, and I had assumed – wrongly, apparently – that a textbook would be easier to pass off as mine than one of his jumpers. Especially since I haven't seen him pick up this particular textbook in all the time we've lived together.
John reaches out for it until both of our hands are closed around it. This suddenly feels a lot more like fighting and I feel claustrophobic, I don't want to fight with John, not now, but I want to keep the textbook and I can't exactly back down after sounding so certain. "Let me have a look," he reasons. "I wrote in all my med textbooks, if it's mine it'll have my writing all through it."
"No," I say stubbornly, feeling my lower lip pooch without permission. Everything seems to be crashing down around my ears; if he gets the book off me and sees the writing, he'll know it's his and he won't understand my need to keep something of him around, he'll assume I'm just making trouble for the sake of being difficult. Panic catches in my throat.
He sighs in frustration. "Why not?" he asks, giving the book a little tug to dislodge it from my grip.
Panicking properly now, I snatch it away from him. "Because it's mine," I shout as I spin around on my dressing-gown, turning my face away from him so that he can't see that there are actual tears in my eyes, spilling down my cheeks and making my shoulders shake.
Of course he notices anyway. "Sherlock?" he says tentatively, the hand that was on the book reaching out for my shoulder to grip it gently. "Are you all right? What's going on?" I don't try to shrug away his hand, so he shuffles forward and leans against me carefully, encouraging me to lean on him as a counterbalance. "God, Sherlock, I'm sorry. I've been so wrapped up in me and Mary that I haven't actually talked to you in ages. I should have noticed something was wrong." He rubs my back, making soothing noises. "You can always talk to me, Sherlock. What is it?"
I turn around so that I'm facing him, his hand still rubbing circles into my arm. I sniff and wipe my eyes pathetically – mostly because John has a soft spot for the helpless, so the more innocent I look the more he'll try to comfort me. "I just… It's –"
Stupid, I was going to say, only that's when I realise that it's not stupid, that wanting to keep something that's been so incredible is not stupid at all, that what's stupid is being willing to let it go.
"I don't want you to go," I say firmly, looking at him and clamping my hand over his. John's stormy blue eyes widen and his face contracts in something that could be pity or guilt, I can't tell quite yet. "John… You are completely entitled to call me an idiot right now, because I have been… what was it you said about me in that blog entry when we first met? Sherlock sees through everyone and everything in seconds; what's incredible, though –"
" –is how spectacularly ignorant he is about some things," he finishes. "Yeah, I remember."
"You were right," I admit, still sniffing a little – why does crying have to make your nose run so much? "I have been spectacularly ignorant, John. I've been trying to let you go, trying to make myself feel all right with you leaving, when what I should have been doing was keeping you as close to my side as possible. I've been trying to convince myself that Mary can give you things that I can't, that you'll be happier with her, that you do laugh with her the way you laugh with me only I'm not there to see it, but it's stupid because there are things that I can give you that she can't, too, and I've never lived here without you and I don't want to start now because this, you and me, this is special." I force my mouth closed after a beat because he's still staring at me, his own eyes suddenly brimming with tears, and the look on his face is definitely pity and I'm starting to doubt myself. "I-isn't it?" I ask uncertainly. I mean, it's special to me, and I'd never seen anything like it in people I know so I've always assumed that it doesn't happen often. Was I wrong?
"Yeah," he says finally, clearing his throat and letting a single tear slip out of his left eye. "Yes, it is." He shakes his head suddenly, letting out a bitter, helpless laugh. "God, and you're right," he continues, looking at the ceiling, his hand twisting under mine. "I have no right to call you an idiot, Sherlock, because I've been just as bad. I don't laugh with Mary like I laugh with you. And I don't shake with anger when I argue with Mary like I do when I argue with you, and I don't cry over Mary like I've found myself crying over you."
His hand is still struggling in mine, so I reluctantly let it go; to my surprise, he twists it around and links our fingers together, holding hands like lovers. "I told myself that was a good thing, that I was… compromising," he says, and now we're both crying properly, kneeling on the floor of the sitting-room with our belongings spread-eagled around and between us, our hands clasped in my lap. "But it's stupid, isn't it? I've never, I will never feel anything the way that I feel everything with you. What Mary and I are, two people trying to convince themselves they could be happy together, that's commonplace. You and I are beyond special."
And there we have it. "Don't leave," I ask him gently, stroking my thumb over the back of his. "Please."
He barks out another one of those helpless laughs. "I can't, now, can I?" He sniffs for a bit. "You always make everything so difficult."
I try to snort – his words were ostensibly hurtful, but they were said without venom – but the dignity of the action is obliterated by the glob of mucus that shoots out of my nose mid-snort. John grimaces with that look that says he's amused and attempting not to show it. "That's disgusting," he says critically, while I try to laugh and delicately wipe it away without getting anything on my sleeve. John laughs too. "Come on," he says, heaving himself to his feet. "Let's get you a tissue."
He didn't say he wouldn't still move out. I understand the difficulty he'll face telling Mary, at least, even if I don't think I'd have the same problems. Were it me, not that I would have backed myself into such a situation, I'd have very few qualms with straight-out telling her it wouldn't work. She must have an inkling. I follow him into the kitchen nonetheless, allowing him to pluck a tissue from the box on the kitchen table and hold it up to my nose. I quirk an eyebrow at him, just to let him know he's patronising me. Quite often, he forgets.
"Blow," he says cheekily, wriggling the tissue. So, rolling my eyes, I blow. John perfunctorily wipes my nose back and forth before throwing the tissue in the bin.
Then we both collapse into giggles.
After, when we're shaking and clutching onto the bench and each other for support, John takes a deep breath and slides his arms around me, burying his face in my chest and holding me so tightly, as though I'm the one who had planned to leave this behind and he doesn't want to lose me. Slowly, I put my arms around him and drop my head until my nose is buried in his short, greying hair. He smells like gunpowder, even now. I can't help but smile.
The door behind us opens and John and I look around – rocking from foot to foot in a bizarre tango to avoid breaking apart, still wrapped tightly in each other – to see Mary come in, see us together, and freeze where she stands. I get ready to disentangle myself from John, but he clutches me tighter and doesn't make to move.
"So," Mary says, slightly bitter but startlingly, overwhelmingly calm. "It's like that."
John doesn't move. "Yeah," he says quietly. "It's like that."
The tall brunette stares at us for a few more seconds, nodding absently, biting her lip and fighting back tears. Just as I'm flinching, preparing myself for when she bursts into accusations and starts shouting in that high, shrill voice I've heard far too much of, she turns without a word and runs down the stairs. John flinches at the sound of the front door slamming.
"Sorry," I whisper into his hair.
He snorts. "No, I'm sorry," he replies, lifting his face out of my pyjama shirt so that I can see it. "No way is this your fault. And she'll understand when I explain. I'll go and talk to her later." I smile tentatively, one of my hands trying to clamber into the soft hair at the base of John's neck without being noticed. He smiles back. "I think we have some ground to cover first."
I'm not sure if he means what I think he means, but I can't be blamed for interpreting it like that, so I lean my head down towards his anyway; each little doubt is obliterated when he tips up his chin into a tiny, sweet kiss.
"So," I murmur when he draws away, a smile hijacking the corners of my mouth. "It's like that."
He laughs, rich and warm. "Oh, God, yes," he replies, falling back into the hug. "I suppose we should unpack our things again," he says, staring at the open boxes. I chuckle.
I realise, as he kisses me swiftly again and then lets go, picks up a box and upends a series of medical journals onto the floor, that this would have happened somehow within the next few days no matter how things played out.
I could never let us go.
A/N: I'm sorry that this is pretty much my first draft of this story, but it's Friday afternoon and I'm getting a migraine and I don't have internet at our new flat yet so if I don't upload it now it won't get here until Monday. And I'm going to have to write at least 5,000 words of my NaNoWriMo project tonight for caving like this.
Life. It all sort of happens at once.