A/N: Originally started for the One Hour Challenge thingy on the Sherlock Fanfiction Challenges Forum, which I flat out failed because that was about three weeks ago. So...
Also written for the OTP Boot Camp using prompt 12. Do you remember that?, the link to which can be found on my profile if any of you would like to join. (I totally don't run it, what are you talking about? *shifty eyes*)
And thanks to Kelly for looking this over and reassuring me that this was, indeed, finished.
"You can't keep it all inside," Ella says.
She's wearing that face that says I understand when she hasn't got a fucking clue, and John's fingers curl into fists involuntarily. He stares through the large glass window.
"You need to talk about this, John. Sherlock was a very big part of your life – "
"Yes, yeah, that's – I hadn't noticed," John says sharply. "Thank you."
"John. I'm just trying to help." She smoothes her hands along her the notebook balanced on her lap, leaning forward slightly in her chair. John watches her reflection, faded in the glass, as it shifts slightly, a ghost dancing before sheets of falling rain. "I know how hard this must be for you."
"No. No, you don't. Do you?" he asks, fighting to keep his voice level. He wants to turn to look at her, but his head feels far too heavy. "No. No. You couldn't possibly."
"John – "
"I'm done here. I'll – yeah. See you next week then," John says as he stands. The back of his knees hit the chair behind him and he hears it scrape along the floor, waits for the clatter as it hits the ground. He is too busy shoving his hands into the depths of his pockets and storming out to look back. He doesn't want to see it fall.
His new flat is all muted colours, too many shades of cream and off-white, and the walls are so bloody cold and bare. It's too empty.
John slumps on his bed, bad leg propped up with a cushion beneath his knee. He brings the bottle to his lips and swallows greedily, relishing in the cool burn of vodka as it slips down his throat. He should hate himself for this. He thinks of Harry and he wants to fling the bottle from his hands.
But then he thinks of Sherlock and of Mrs. Hudson and the empty flat at Baker Street and the sad eyes Lestrade had followed him with, the pitying look on Mycroft's face... The plastic of the bottle is hard and unyielding beneath his fingers, and his knuckles are turning white with the force of not letting go.
He sighs, reaching for his phone, and wonders why it always comes to this. Why texting Sherlock always seems to be the right thing, even when he's not around to read them.
Drinking again, he writes. His mouth curls into a frown at the sheer Herculean effort of typing with his unsteady hands and bleary eyes. Want to stop. Can't.
He presses Send and closes his eyes, hand falling to his side. He exhales slowly, smells the alcohol on his own breath, and keeps his fingers gripped around the phone.
Even now, he is still hopeful.
There is no reply.
"John," Harry says, and she's using that voice, the one she uses to talk to children and idiots, the one laced with barely-hidden disgust and pity. He can hear her steadying breaths through the phone. "Please, just – come over. Tomorrow."
"I can't," he says, staring at the ceiling. "Plans."
"We both know you've not got any plans," she says tersely. John wonders what she looks like right now. If her brow is furrowed so that little crease appears between her eyes. If her frown slips too far and falls into a scowl. If her eyes are sad or sorry or angry or all three.
"Still no." His eyes follow the cracks in the paintwork of the ceiling. Definitely needs repainting.
"If you don't come here," she says, "I'll come over there. Tomorrow, John. If you're not here by seven, at least have the kettle on when I get there."
John breathes a laugh. "I don't even have a kettle."
"You don't have a fucking – Jesus Christ, I'll be over tomorrow with my bloody kettle in tow. Poor tea-deprived bastard." John hears the pause as she waits for his soft chuckle, but it doesn't come.
When he speaks again, his voice has softened to a whisper.
"Not really finding tea strong enough these days."
"Yeah. Well. Leave the teabag in a bit longer then," she says.
"Ha bloody ha."
"Seven. Deal?"
"Fine."
She hangs up with a click, and John digs the pads of his palms into his eyes until he sees stars.
Harry's trying to help, he taps out on his phone. I doubt she can. About time she thought of someone but her bloody self though.
He presses Send and wonders what Sherlock would even say to that.
"You could've told me to bring some fucking biscuits as well, you wanker," Harry says, before blowing lightly across the top of her mug.
John clasps his mug between his fingers, hands hugged close to his chest, and lets the steam warm his neck. "I'm keeping the kettle, you know."
Harry smiles. Shifts awkwardly in her chair. Stares.
"John," She says softly. "You know, I understand how you – "
"Don't." His eyes fall closed. Why do people always say they understand? No one could possibly understand. John doesn't even understand. "Just...just don't, okay?"
She stops for a moment. "Okay," she says finally. "Alright."
They sit in silence. Harry sips at her tea and John relishes in the heat that bleeds from his.
"When Clara – "
"Don't you dare," John chokes, voice low. "Don't you dare compare this to you and Clara."
"I'm just trying to help you."
"Sherlock – Sherlock killed himself. Sherlock is dead, Harry. And we were – we were fine. Before that, I mean. We were more than fine," John says, and once he's started, it's hard to stop. "He was fucking mental and infuriating and everything was so fucking dangerous all the time, and we loved it. We were idiots, the pair of us. And, you know, he says – said, he said – he didn't care about helping people. But he did."
Harry smiles sadly. "He helped you."
"He helped me."
"Did you love him?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I suppose I did. The mad bastard."
Harry laughs, and John finds himself joining in.
"Did you know that I came home to a head in the fridge once?"
"A head? A human head?"
"Yeah," John chuckles. "An experiment. And then there were the fingers in the freezer. The science lab of a kitchen table. The sheep's heart in the bathroom sink – I had to shave in the kitchen for three bloody weeks."
Harry laughs again, and the easy throatiness of it is soothing. John is smiling again.
"He sounds wonderful."
"He was," John says.
"I'm sorry I never met him." John feels the warmth of her hand on his knee, the reassuring squeeze she gives. "I'm sorry for everything."
"I know." He looks up then, seeing the softness and apologies curled up in her dark eyes. "Me too."
"Another cuppa?"
"Please," John says, even though he hasn't touched his.
While she is gone, he reaches for his phone.
Remember all I had to worry about was where I would find random body parts?
He half expects a cheeky reply. Something like, Better not check the pantry then – SH.
Harry comes back with two steaming cups of tea and a take away menu tucked under her arm.
"Who're you texting?" she asks, placing her own mug down on the floor and waiting on John to take his.
"No one," John says, and reaches to pull the menu out from between her arm and her side instead. "You paying then? I'll have a chow mein. Thanks."
She laughs and swats at his head with her free hand, but pays for the food when it arrives anyway.
When Harry leaves, she hugs him for far longer than she normally would.
"I know you think I don't understand," she whispers into his ear, "but I know what it's like to love someone so much that it physically hurts for them to not be in your life anymore. Knowing that it's impossible to be together because – And I can only imagine how much worse it is knowing that – Just don't be a stranger, okay? I'm here."
He shuts the door behind her and then goes to put the kettle on, if only to fill the silence.
You said I didn't approve of Harry once. Remember that? he writes. I don't know any more. I don't understand her.
He slumps back into his bed. His phone beeps. Message sent.
You'd help me understand. You were good at that, you bastard.
He rolls over, phone still in hand.
You'd think it was stupid of me to send these. Sentiment. You were bad at that.
He closes his eyes, waits for the light of his phone to dim, and breathes deep. He falls asleep imagining Sherlock coming back somehow, finding his phone with all those embarrassing, desperate messages. Sherlock would roll his eyes and say something derogatory about caring.
John doesn't think he'd mind.
"How's your blog going, John?" Ella asks.
"Blog? Oh, right. I – I haven't touched it since Sher – since."
"So you've not been writing anything? I thought we agreed that writing is one of the best ways to express how you feel, especially in situations such as – "
"I have been writing about it."
"You have?"
"I've been – this is stupid, I know how stupid it is – but I keep – I keep texting him. Just little things."
"I see."
"I keep waiting for him to text me back."
"I see. That's understandable. Expected, even. But, John, you have to accept that Sherlock is gone. Only then can you move on."
"Move on to where?"
He doesn't know how to feel when Ella has no answer to that.
The first time he brings a woman back to the flat, they're both pissed and she's small and sharp shouldered and sweet, all blue eyed smiles and soft touches.
She falls back onto his bed with a thump, giggles into his ear as his hands roam her sides. He peels off her dress quickly and bites the hard bone of her shoulder, kisses his way across the expanse of her neck, her chest, her stomach.
He can't quite remember her name, but he thinks it something short, something with a bite, like Kate, or Sam, and he has to resist choking one or the other out around his moans just in case it's wrong because he doesn't want to lose this, this warmth, this heat, this rush.
He's already lost so much, and if she would just – just touch him, right there, just, oh, yes, that, - then maybe he could forget, forget, forget long white hands and cheekbones and bright eyes and –
"Sherlock," he cries, with a few final erratic thrusts, and Jade or Beth or Jane, whoever she is, doesn't even bloody notice.
When he wakes up the next morning, his mouth tastes like sleep and cotton and his eyes don't want to stay open and he feels like utter, utter shit, but his bed is blissfully empty.
He finds her number in his phone later – Ruth, fucking Ruth – and deletes it.
Get the fuck out of my head, he writes, scrolls down to S and lets his finger hover about the Select button for far too long. In the end, he can't bring himself to send it.
He leaves his phone on his unmade bed and opts instead for a glass of brandy and shit telly instead.
He is drunk again, sprawled out on the sofa, when the phone rings. For half a heartbeat, he thinks it is Sherlock, but Sherlock prefers to text, doesn't he? But then he thinks of that phone call, the note, Sherlock's voice stretched thin through the phone, Sherlock, perched on the edge of that building and –
And Sherlock is dead, he reminds himself. Dead people don't make phone calls.
"Hello?"
"John?"
"Yeah? What's up?"
"It's Greg. Are you – John, are you drunk?"
"Just a bit," John slurs. "Little bit."
"Right. Well. I've been worried about you." Greg's voice sounds strained, awkward, like he'd rather be doing anything but making this phone call. "You haven't been around for ages. No one's seen you or heard from you. Just – are you sure you're alright, John?"
John sighs heavily. He pinches the bridge of his nose with sharp fingers and blinks furiously. He can feel the tears burning his eyes again and he refuses to cry, not now, not now.
"No," he breathes. "No, no, no, I'm not, I'm – "
He coughs, chokes back the sobs that want to rumble out of his ribcage, and breathes.
"I miss him, Greg."
He hears Greg's uncomfortable shifting down the phone. "I know. I miss him, too, you know. We all do."
The laughter that bubbles up from John's chest is slightly hysterical, and he is acutely aware of Greg's silence. "All?" John asks bitterly. "Anderson too? Donovan especially, I'd say. Who wouldn't miss the Freak?"
"He was part of our team, John, even if he wasn't meant to be," Greg says solemnly. "And it's hard to lose any team member, liked or not."
"We were a team," John whispers, and the tears are back, tumbling down his cheeks clumsily. "Me and Sherlock. We were a good team. Weren't we?"
"The best," Greg says softly. John imagines that if he were here, he'd place a comforting hand on his shoulder. He imagines that if Sherlock were here, he wouldn't have to. "John, where are you?"
"'M home," he mumbles. "Why?"
"Look, give me ten minutes and I'll be there. I'll bring a few bottles, we can toast to Sherlock. Alright?"
John nods.
"John?"
"Oh, er – yes. Alright. Okay."
"See you then."
The next day, John sits in Ella's empty office with a pounding head and a sour grimace.
"Added anything else to your blog?"
"What is there to add? 'Got drunk with Greg'? Not a very compelling post."
"You don't have to write about what you do, John."
"What the bloody hell else would I write about?"
"How you feel. About yourself. About Sherlock. Your memories with him. Your hopes, your dreams, your future. Any number of things, as long as you let it out."
"I don't think I can."
"I see."
Silence.
"Perhaps you could try writing to Sherlock? A letter maybe?"
"I already write to him. Texts. I send him texts."
"It's not the same though, is it?"
"No. No, it's not."
His laptop is almost burning his thighs. The blank screen glares at him, and John glares back, thinking how much easier it would be to write if it were about Sherlock and his bloody cases.
You bastard, he writes. And then over and over again, you bastard you bastard you bastard you bastard, until other words start slipping in by themselves, until John isn't even thinking anymore, just writing and you bastard you left me what do i do now you bastard you fucking bastard how am i supposed to forget you you selfish prick i can't believe you would do that i just want i don't know what i want you bastard you bastard i miss you okay i miss you so much and i don't know what to do you utter fucking bastard i want to hate you but i can't i can't.
He writes and writes until the clack of the keys fills his eardrums and his chest feels as if it's dark and heavy and hot and he thinks he might be crying, but he's not quite sure, and the keys keep on clacking and the words keep appearing and the only thing he's aware of is that this room is very fucking empty.
He tries to delete Sherlock's number. He tries so bloody hard. Stares at those few digits for ages, thumb pressing on the button just a little too lightly. If he could just, just click. Just that, and it would all be over, no more tapping out useless messages, no more waiting, heart pounding, for replies that never come, no more Sherlock.
No more We need milk. –SH at arse o'clock in the morning, no more Where have you put my lungs? –SH, no more Goodnight, John. – SH. No more texts and no more Sherlock and no more cups of tea and no more violin and no more chasing bad people and no more saving not-so-bad people and no more cases and no more Sherlock and John, no more them, no more anything, and he could accept that if he could just – just – click.
He doesn't, of course, but it hardly matters at all because he knows it all by heart anyway.