John was going through Sherlock's papers. It was late December; Sherlock had been dead now for more than six months…he wanted all of the table in the sitting room back, and between SAD and Christmas John felt he was already as low as he was likely to get.
The mass of case notes was unexpectedly comforting. He could hear Sherlock's voice in the impatient handwriting, see stuttering progress in what Sherlock had claimed was reasoning, but looked to John like intuitive leaps. And most surprising, the sketches.
Not diagrams; little to do with the crimes under consideration: just places Sherlock's hands and eyes had left his mind alone to make their own digression. Contour sketches, the kind where you don't look down as you draw: skull, hearth, mantelpiece; John.
It took him a moment to recognise himself, but who else would that be in his chair? Five studies of his hand, more carefully drawn, with a mug, a book, palm up, clenched, relaxed. The kitchen: clutter on the surfaces neatly outlined, static; John's standing figure quickly limned like frames of a film, chopping, stirring, washing. Observed. Appreciated? Noticed, at least.
He could have that framed, John thought; Sherlock's continuing presence implied on the observer's side of the glass. Stealing from Sherlock's papers, but who had more right than his biographer?