My first venture into the amazing world of Sherlock. Hope it's acceptable.


The hinges ought to have creaked. There should have been spider-webs, at the very least.

Rationally, John knew that Mrs Hudson had kept the place up, but still, 221B had no right to look as though they'd just popped out for Chinese.

And even with that, he still damn near lost it all over again because the kitchen table was clear of experiments, and for the first time ever John didn't want to open the fridge in case there weren't any severed body parts inside. Which, damn his own eyes, he ought to have had the decency to clear out himself, instead of leaving it to poor Mrs Hudson. Poor Mrs Hudson who wanted her boys back so badly, even just one of them would do, even if he was quite possibly more of a ghost of himself than the one who was officially…supposedly…..damn it, it was hard to even think the word.

John still didn't open the fridge. No point. He didn't expect to be here long enough to need a cup of tea, even if he'd brought milk.

Mrs Hudson had texted him to say she'd made the bed in his room ready, but John had no intentions of staying. Too likely to wake up in the morning believing it'd all be a dream, then God knew what would happen when reality hit again.

John's therapist claimed he was stuck in denial. Too right he was, and had no intentions of getting unstuck, not yet, regardless of what the tasteful engraving on the headstone said. Bloody Sherlock Bloody Holmes had no bloody right to have shuffled off the mortal coil. Not yet. Not ever. The world needed him, whether it knew it or not.

John needed him. He needed his friend back, and the life he'd loved however much he bitched about it. The blasted leg ached all the time now, but he was damned if he'd go back to using a cane. John got his adrenaline hit from the occasional stint in A & E nowadays, only they hadn't called for a while, and he didn't really think they would. Not after that last time, when he told a supposed mugging victim that if pain was her thing she really ought to get her husband to agree on a safe-word first. Good advice, and he stood by it, only it hadn't been the husband, and it was her husband sitting beside her when John opened his mouth. Sherlock would've known. Not that he'd have done anything to spare John the embarrassment. Probably would have laughed his aristocratic face off.

John sank into his armchair, letting his eyes drift shut, telling himself quite firmly not to hope the other chair wouldn't be empty when they opened. He sighed heavily, at himself, at the whole, empty world. The therapist thought it might help if he came back to the flat, saw it empty, felt it empty.

She was wrong. Sherlock's presence lingered here, in the very walls he'd shot holes in. Here, in the place they'd both called home, where floorboards still creaked beneath the memory of feet pacing restlessly across too small a space while the mind above them whirred. Any second now the door would slam open in a swirl of scarf and coat and lanky limbs, with mercury eyes alight and incomprehensible demands streaming from his lips, and John would come back to life, too. Yeah, right. The eyes behind his lids stung.

John groaned into the steeple of his hands. "Damn you Sherlock Holmes," he muttered. "Stop this. Stop it right now. I absolutely bloody forbid you to be dead."

The creaking of leather was more than a memory. The laugh was more than an echo. And the voice…the voice…..

"Well, since you asked so nicely."


Thank you for reading. There is more, if anyone's interested...