Hello all, it's Cody here with my first published fic in something like years. Ouch. Enjoy. PM me with questions, I love you all in the Sherlock fanbase.
[definition from dictionary dot com.]
Why was John in London again?
He dialed the number one more time, tapping anxiously on the red painted metal, paint flaking with age. Somewhere along the line, Mycroft Holmes had been here. He recognized the thin wires, hiding amongst graffiti. Nick '03, Jenna + Mark must once have been proud of their hastily Sharpied declarations of location or love. Now their writings concealed wires and bugs- digital, not biological.
Clever Mycroft.
John now realized why keeping tabs on the younger Holmes had been essential- now that Sherlock was dead and gone, Mycroft's wires rotted away just as surely as Sherlock's body was.
John forced himself to listen, absentmindedly leaning on his new, no-frills cane. The limp was back and he blamed Sherlock- blamed him for the ache in his shoulder that returned every time his thoughts strayed at night. The nightmares were back too, the bullets ricocheting in John's brain waking him as surely as Sherlock's shots into the wall had.
Sometimes, the yellow smiley face, haunting John's dreams, became Sherlock, face becoming more twisted and more warped, shifting into Moriarty, then Mycroft, as John realized the similarities between them, all of the eerie similarities, as their faces became Polaroids, and the Polaroids stuck on an imaginary wall, suddenly being connected with flesh and blood instead of string, a mutant version of one of Sherlock's mystery walls.
John woke up screaming.
The Diogenes Club number rang through once more, sending a clear message.
Don't call me.
John didn't doubt that Mycroft could have a phone booth put out of service with half a text, so he stopped calling. The doctor leaned up against the grimy window of the phone booth, absentmindedly wondering why they were red to keep his mind off of Sherlock. It wasn't as if he had anything worth doing left.
John was now in a tiny flat just outside of London. He loved London, but there was no way he could afford a flat in the heart of the city anymore, not without a flat-share. And his last flatmate had died on the streets of London. It wasn't a very pleasant prospect, to live in the city again, so he stayed away, instead taking a job an hour away in a little town.
John's new flat was absolutely tiny, and regulation-perfect. It seemed odd, really, to resort to doing everything military style, but it was habit, and in habit was comfort. John didn't spend time there, anyway. The flat was simply for sleeping and that was it. He spent his hours working in a country doctor's office an hour away from home, and overtime was every day without fail. He even worked Saturdays and Sundays, even when the clinic wasn't open, filing paperwork or cleaning, anything to be occupied.
The receptionist fancied him, and it was obvious. She was a slightly pretty but dull brunette in her early thirties, and she wore bad perfume and the same gold earrings every day. She was from America, and it showed. Every morning there was a new coffee stain on her dress- always floral, always knee-length, always accompanied by the same tan nylons with the run on the left knee. She had an unflattering bob haircut, and it didn't move, ever. Every hair always seemed to be in its place, like her hair was styled plastic. There was a gap between her two front teeth that childhood braces hadn't fixed. She had two loves, and two loves only [after a disastrous first marriage], and they were, in order, soap operas and John.
She was rather habitual and slightly obsessive. Every morning there would be an apple on his desk [the only thing besides the old-style engraved nameplate- John kept a clean desk as well] and five minutes later John would be digesting the apple. He never ate breakfast except for it, and he truly did appreciate the apples, but it felt strange to accept the gift every day. After three months of apples and a birthday card, he took her to lunch at the sandwich shop three and a half miles from the office's front door.
He discovered that he knew less about her than he thought, but none of it was interesting enough to register.
Remember when you and Sherlock went to dinner? whispered the traitorous voice that resided somewhere in his hippocampus. He hadn't entertained the thought before today, as the name was the key to the locked vault in his thoughts, the vault of anything and everything relating to the Holmes boys. Who had called them that first, Mrs Hudson?
John let his thoughts slip back to London.
"A boyfriend, then?" John was not disgusted or repulsed or looking for gossip. His only emotions lingering around this simple question were simply interest with a surrounding haze of curiosity.
Sherlock's carefully worded, slightly biting and much too fast reply set his thoughts blazing, his words the match that started the forest fire.
Oh.
He knew that tone, the too-fast and clipped words much too well. From Harry. The first time, he recalled, from when she'd denied having her first girlfriend, a petite brunette whose spirit John had liked.
He spent his quiet time with Sherlock always thinking, as he knew the dark-haired man was prone to do.
Sherlock's secret was akin to his omnipresent coat, always there, but never quite the focus with Sherlock in the room. He was unquestionably the focus.
Just being aware of his existence, let alone living with him, the air was a vacuum, and it seemed as if the only source of air was Sherlock.
John opened his eyes to cold coffee and no date.
The apples stopped coming.
John had dazed off like that again barely a week ago. It had been three months after apples, and John's Sherlock mind-void again became the magnificent black hole it once had been, Sherlock's interesting being so vast and varied that everything else paled and withered away with the slightest comparison.
John exhaled in something similar to frustration and exited the phone booth. He knew now that he couldn't repress anything relating to Sherlock, as the Sherlock tree had rooted itself firmly into his mind, and nothing short of total amnesia...not even, John said to himself, My blog...
He would remember that moment for an extremely long time, as it was when the first idea sparked into his head.
I will write. Continue the blog, no, but write. Not in Sherlock's memory, exactly...but in his honor.
I will write what could have been. Then John laughed at himself. I am becoming a sentimental man. Not good.
He dismissed the idea, but soon sentiment slipped through John's thought barrier like weak acid, slowly eating through, then rushing forward all at once, causing burning, scars that stayed.
Mysteries. He would have appreciated it.
The first short mystery was tapped out on his old laptop, word by word. John rather enjoyed writing again, and ideas came in bits and pieces so that even he himself had not figured out the murderer until the very end. This, the debut of John's collection, featured a hunter found dead in his locked cabin, keys in hand and no cause of death apparent.
Blake examined the keys stuck fast in the dead man's grip, tried to tug them away. Completely useless. This man had kept his keys on his person at all times, and this little cabin was sealed up tighter than the Crown Jewels, save for a few windows, locked but still glass, and the door propped open by Blake, as even the chimney had a makeshift cover at its top, a simple piece of cardboard taped down. Seems the old paranoid man was even scared of squirrels hopping in and devouring his food stores. Blake turned his attention back to the corpse. His eyes were closed gently as if he were sleeping, and the detective wondered vaguely if one of the medical team had closed them. He thought about poisoned food for a minute, then ruled it out. He had been a paranoid man, enough as to kill and eat most of his own food. He had only ever trusted three people, two of whom resided inside his head, the other his sister, who was currently being questioned, with no motive apparent. This man was healthy, in looks at least. His cheeks were red, his skin tanned but not burned, hair still a medium brown, having not yet faded to grey. Blake lifted the man's eyelids, making sure no one but Aiden could see him. His slim, attractive assistant hadn't been hired for his looks, but they were definitely a plus.
John stopped himself, quietly horrified. What had he written? He deleted the last sentence quickly and tried again.
...no one but Aiden could see him. He glanced over at the quiet blond, who had busied himself examining the man's book collection.
"How To Hunt and Cook a Deer Effectively," read Aiden, slightly amused. "I'd have thought he'd know that already."
"What else is in there?"
"A guide to identifying the local flora and fauna, a journal, and...oh, hmmm."
The 'hm' caught Blake's attention, and he turned to the blond.
"Erotica," he said, containing a snicker.
John stopped and stared into the dregs of what had been a perfectly brewed cup of Earl Grey. Maybe I'm just... He deleted the past few sentences, took a cold shower, and went to bed.
He arrived at the clinic the next morning to find the woman with the apples had gone. In her place was a thin, dark haired young man, barely twenty, with his nose in a novel. I'll bet that's what Sherlock looked like when he was younger... There were similarities, a good few, but too many differences for the thought to stick. He was wearing glasses with rectangular frames, a tan button-down shirt, and brown trousers with a chocolate brown tie, though it was askew. His eyes were rich forest green, not exactly reminiscent of the ice blue of John's former flatmate. He looked healthy, fuller, as if he slept and ate well, much different from Sherlock's tea-and-that-is-all days. Instead of being thin and proud, the boy [he didn't quite have the look of a man] had a nose which was slightly crooked and rounder. The curls were similar, yet the boy's were tighter and more well kept.
"Sir? May I help you...?" The green eyes had flicked up to study John's face, and his accent varied completely from Sherlock's 'rich-background-Londoner' type. He sounded Irish. Dublin? Was that in Ireland? John's knowledge of Irish geography was limited at best.
"Sir...?"
That was when the blond doctor realized that he'd been staring at the new receptionist for at least three or four minutes, dissecting his features and comparing them to a dead man's.
"Oh, I'm sorry, er, I, um, work here. I'm John Watson, ah, corner office."
"You're Dr. Watson? The Dr. Watson of Holmes and Watson fame?"
Bloody hell, a fanboy.
"Um, yes. Now, I have, er, patients to attend to." The new receptionist's stare was making John stutter. It was exactly like Sherlock's "I know everything about you" look. Quite creepy. He brushed past the boy and headed to his office, a tiny, stuffy room sans windows or lighting of any sort except one old floor lamp with scuff marks on its base that only worked half the time. Needless to say, the door was usually propped open with numerous medical texts. John's office once had been, and still was, the closet, so texts of these sort filled the tiny room floor to ceiling, leaving little room for the creaky beige metal folding chair and scuffed-up old faux wood table that John used as his desk and chair, and a few ugly greenish filing cabinets full of medical supplies and forms.
Tomorrow I'll get through to Mycroft...
Tomorrow...
Tomorrow.
