Fandom: Sherlock

Pairing: John/Mrs. Hudson

Pairing type: Platonic

Prompt: Restless


They didn't talk much in the weeks following Sherlock's funeral. Mrs. Hudson was in the flat more than she had been, but that was to be expected. At first John didn't really want the company, but he wasn't rude enough to kick her out. She'd stay for a cup of tea, in complete silence. She'd tidy up for him. She'd ask him if he needed anything; he always told her he didn't. Sometimes they'd watch their shows like they used to. Whole blocks of time would pass where John would feel the tension in his shoulders leave. He and Mrs. Hudson would start to chat, just a little, and the flat would feel like home again. Inevitably, however, something would catch his eyes. He'd see the skull sitting on the mantlepiece, he'd see a book of Sherlock's on the table, he'd catch sight of the time and realize Sherlock should've been home hours ago. Then he'd remember Sherlock was never coming home again, and the silence would come back.

Mrs. Hudson started to feel the restlessness in her bones. In her lifetime she'd seen more than one young man broken by grief, but to see it happen to someone as good, and pure. and lovely as John Watson was enough to make her want to call the whole thing off. She wanted to scream at him that Sherlock was alive, and how had he not figured that out by now, he knew Sherlock better than anyone. She wanted to shake him out of his stupor, grab him by his ear and pull him all the way down to the bridge where the homeless man with wool cap and the dirty overcoat sat, the one that John gave a dollar to every day on his way to work. Mrs. Hudson wanted nothing more than for this nightmare to be over, but she wouldn't be the one to end it. She couldn't, she had made a promise.

So instead she brought John homemade biscuits, and ironed his shirts for him when he was about to leave the house looking rumpled, and made sure as far as she could that he was still in one piece. John tried to tell himself that the attention annoyed him, but on the days where she couldn't make it up to visit he found the loneliness hit him like a punch. Eventually, he stopped pretending, and when Mrs. Hudson didn't drop in on him he would drop in on her instead.

They never talked about Sherlock, never once. Instead they stayed together, carried each other through the sadness, the loneliness, the assaults from the media and their friends alike, and through their companionship kept their wits about them. It didn't matter to John if they were watching television, or eating out, or sitting in Mrs. Hudson's flat and listening to the police scanner with a perverse interest in how Scotland Yard was making due without their secret weapon. At the end of the day, all that mattered was that he still had a best friend.