A/N: I can't stop. This is bad. Anyway, here's another Sherlock oneshot. I seriously cannot stop writing John centric, post-Reichenbach fics. I need to stop. Season 3 needs to come out already. I can't wait anymore! Arghh. At least this isn't yet another BAMF!John fic. But oh, I do love those. I'll probably have another one up at some point, considering I simply can't stop writing about the crazy bastards. Anyway, enough from me. Please read and review, let me know your thoughts. As always, enjoy!
This is unbeta'd, not Britpicked. All mistakes are my own.
Counting Stars
Written by Amputation
John Watson wasn't an overly romantic man. He really wasn't, actually detesting the idea of romance movies and romantic comedies alike, found Valentine's Day to be absolutely pointless and disgustingly consumerist. He avoided even saying the three little words even when he felt them (the few and far between that had even happened), instead resorting to quoting Han and Leia with "I know's" instead. No, John abhorred the obnoxious precedence romance took in pop culture. But that's not to say he was immune to the passing ideals of vapid romanticism that occasionally occupied his mind in the months he spent alone in 221B.
He was only human, and quite frankly he loved his flat mate with a ferocity that had taken him by surprise. It was a fluctuating, fickle feeling, ranging between platonic affection to a bone-crushing lust that threatened to overwhelm him entirely, bringing the normally sturdy man to his knees in desperation. Most often it was a quiet friendly fondness that bubbled happily in his chest, but in close second he found himself thinking of Sherlock with a distinctly romantic undertone that made his blood pound furiously in his veins and flush his skin pink with pleasure. He hated it. The man was married to his work, and the feelings would remain unrequited.
Feelings were inherent, a part of human physiology and therefore entirely unavoidable. He wished he could have had better control over them on more than one occasion, envying his flat mate with a depth that brought a chill up his spine. The blasted man was too composed for his own good, even if hints of affection leaked through on occasion, proving his humanity and further convincing John that Sherlock's "high functioning sociopath" diagnosis was self administered, serving as a shield against the world. Sociopaths don't feel affection for others, after all.
So when Sherlock had jumped off the roof of Bart's, John had taken to turning away from the world. He wrapped himself in the safety of anger and hatred of the bloody twat who'd decided to leave John behind. After the numbness came the anger. For months he sulked angrily in 221B, breaking things and having shouting matches with a man who no longer lived there. He tore at the ugly wall paper, scratched at the yellow smiley face with bullet holes until his fingernails bled and cracked. He covered the grey chair with a sheet, (he hadn't actually wanted to damage the soft leather, that would be unforgivable) hurling glass beakers at it and reveling in the sound as they shattered into pieces. He entertained the idea of hurling the skull out the window, but by then the anger always seemed to dull to a low throb. He never brought himself to do it.
He decimated Kübler-Ross' stages of grief, jumping from anger to acceptance with an aplomb that didn't seem human. Fuck the normalcy; he had strangeness in spades. He jumped from depression to anger and anger to acceptance. He never showed signs of denial, no signs of bargaining. There was no point. He'd lost those two stages in the deserts of Afghanistan, amidst the wind and the sun and the blood-soaked sand, hands shaking as he failed to save yet another soldier from the claws of death. He was a soldier, a doctor. He and Death were old friends, although after Sherlock's demise John was starting to think that perhaps Death was actually his archenemy, like Mycroft had been Sherlock's.
John was not a romantic man, but he was willing to admit that Sherlock had died a very romantic and noble death indeed. It was obvious why he'd jumped after John found the three IOU's left by bloody Moriarty, verified when he'd seen the graffiti across the street from NSY, when he'd found the graffiti on Baker Street, when he'd found the half rotten apple and taken out a sniper in hand to hand combat to protect himself. Sherlock had jumped to protect the three people he cared the most about: the father figure, Gregory Lestrade, the mother figure, Martha Hudson, and himself—the best friend—John Watson. Dying to save others was a romantic death indeed and further obliterated the shaky theory that the genius was a sociopath.
Moriarty had been wrong. Sherlock and the madman couldn't have been more different. They were a genius psychopath versus a brilliant man hiding behind a sociopath self diagnosis, denying the inherent humanity that seeped from his pores like sweat. They'd been unevenly matched from the beginning, never once similar. Perhaps before John had met Sherlock, the tall imposing man had been more like Moriarty that John wanted to think about, but that wasn't how he was in the end. He'd been human in those final moments before stepping into freefall.
John clung to those painful memories of his flat mate's loyalty and humanity like one would to a security blanket as he settled into acceptance. He entertained the idea of moving out of Baker Street, but the thought caused something to twist angrily in his stomach. He settled for cleaning the mess he'd made. It took him a few months to reorganize the flat; eventually tidying it to a point he had never seen it at since he'd first set foot in it. The layout remained the same, the sitting room the only real difference. All of Sherlock's belongings remained, but John had catalogued every case file, every piece of Sherlock' work chronologically in a beautiful filing cabinet he'd guilt-tripped out of Mycroft. The papers that had once been strewn about the flat finally contained and organized. That elegant piece of furniture was one of three shrines to the World's only Consulting Detective.
The second shrine came about when John finally started on clearing the expensive science equipment from the kitchen. He'd smashed most of the beakers and some of the clean petri-dishes, but the pricey microscope, centrifuge, and other tech weren't items he could merely toss out or just donate. He'd cleared three cabinets, scrubbing them down and repainting the peeling insides to keep everything clean and scratch free. He saved all the nasty bottles of chemicals, some of them less-than-harmless, painstakingly transferring each one into its own new, beautiful glass jar. He'd bought the jars from an apothecary and labeled each one with gold paint in his own penmanship. When finished, the cabinets looked like something from an art gallery, the white paint framing the expensive and decidedly toxic contents like an elegant frame. It was a testament to Sherlock's brilliant, scientific mind. John was strangely fond of gazing at the cabinet and its contents.
The third shrine was Sherlock's room. John never changed a thing about it, adoring the sparse contents and the infrequently used bed. He left the walls covered in newspaper clippings, tangled with string as connections had been made for old cases. It was a piece of Sherlock's history, and John couldn't bring himself to take anything down. The only thing decidedly blank was the plain white plaster ceiling, looking distinctly out of place in the organized chaotic mosaic of crime and punishment that littered the walls. John changed the sheets on the unused bed every two weeks, dusted religiously, and kept the room aired out. He refused to let the scent of disuse fill the air, refused to let his flat mate's absence reflect in the scent or feel of the room. Sentiment, John finally realized, made him do illogical things.
That sense of emptiness got to him quite frequently, and he couldn't help but draw into himself, curling up like a threatened hedgehog, allowing himself to feel miserable. When it got really bad, his limp would return and he'd have to fish out that ugly cane just to move about the flat. Days like those made his mind race with desperation, and more than once he'd wanted to slouch down in his chair like a petulant five-year-old and wail "bored!" at the top of his lungs. Days like those made him wonder if that was how Sherlock had felt every day he didn't have a case to occupy his brilliant mind. He'd be practically foaming at the mouth by the time dusk finally rolled around, and he'd jump into a cab with the order of "drive, just drive." He always ended up in the same place, a place he'd heard Sherlock mention in passing when he mumbled about retirement. He'd rent a room in some quaint B&B, spending the entirety of the evening lying out in the grass. John could never sleep those nights, and so he settled for counting stars.
It was stupid and sentimental, counting stars. It was a pointless endeavor, as it was impossible to count every star in the sky just to keep his mind occupied. Despite the disgusting romanticism and sentiment of the act, John wrapped himself in it like a duvet. It reminded him of the fake Vermeer, how Sherlock had solved it because of the Van Buren supernova, how the knowledge of the stars would have made it so very simple for his mad, brilliant flat mate. Sherlock had called the stars beautiful that day, even though the light of London had dimmed the majority to nearly nothing. Out on the countryside, John could see every one sparkling with vibrant glory. And so he counted.
He counted them until he'd all but mapped a tapestry out in his mind. He could recall at will the location of every single star, every single pinpoint of light he'd gazed at in the dead of night, the blinking white sprawled across a sea of black blue and indigo, the deepness of the triad unrivaled. It was aggravatingly romantic and disgustingly sentimental, but he wanted to give what he'd seen to Sherlock. He wanted to share the beauty of the sky to the man, to tell him of each constellation, each supernova burning brightly in the inky darkness of space. But he couldn't anymore; he couldn't share the magnificence of the night sky with his flat mate because the man was dead.
So he did the next best thing. He painted it onto the ceiling of the Sherlock's perpetually empty room. First he painted the darkness of space, immersing himself in the deepness of the colors and the overlapping marvels of the night sky. Violet, indigo, and navy swirled together, creating organic patterns with every brush stroke across what was once white, the deep colors accented by the impenetrable darkness of the ever-present, sweeping black. The inky depths suited the rest of the room, providing the illusion of entropy to match the chaos strewn across the walls. When the paint had dried, John started on the stars. Painstakingly, he daubed the brightness on the dark, sprawling the vibrant bursts of light out like diamonds on black velvet. He took his time, burning the story of each star into every stroke he made. It took weeks to get it right, but it was time well spent in John's humble opinion. He painted the night sky of the Sussex countryside onto Sherlock's ceiling, baring his soul to the man who no longer slept in the bed.
It was stupid. It was sentimental. It was illogical. It was romance, plain and simple. He was so sure Sherlock would have scoffed at it, but John didn't care. He'd done it because he loved Sherlock, the mad, brilliant bloke who'd turned his world upside down. He regretted none of it, absolutely none of it, not even when his flat mate turned up decidedly not dead on the doorstep.
A/N: Review, review, review! I need to know thoughts! They make me very happy indeed. Thanks!