On the outside, everything seems normal.
On the inside, John Watson is slowly crumbling.
They've separated bedrooms. Although still technically engaged, they both agreed that sleeping in the same bed when Sherlock hardly knew who he was wouldn't be for the best, although John really wanted to do nothing but to wake up with their bodies naked and tangled.
Sherlock's back on cases. His first after the accident was a nice lighthearted kidnapping, the daughter of an American ambassador in which the kidnappers were arrogant enough to leave a nice calling card that landed them in prison. He met Lestrade and decided he wasn't one to be hated. Anderson showed up to work the case as well, and tried to convince Sherlock that they were actually best friends, to which Sherlock made a face and rather blatantly called him a liar, informing him that he would never have befriended someone so dimwitted and pea-brained.
John has hope. As each day comes around Sherlock begins to act more and more like himself. In the beginning he was actually quite tidy, picking up after his experiments for John's benefit, it seems, seeing as they were pretty much complete strangers. But things fell back into the old routine with Sherlock leaving his scalps in the sink and the hydrochloric acid in the freezer and poor John being the first to discover it all. Yes, John has hope. It's just a matter of time, he thinks to himself, before Sherlock waltzes into the bedroom and offers himself up to John, apologizing for not doing it sooner, for making John wait for so long. John will forgive him of course, greet him with open arms, and they'll engross themselves into some fantastic makeup sex, and then one day, not too far from now, they'll be standing at an altar saying "till death do us part."
Not today though.
"Sherlock, you need to eat."
"Not hungry. Can't you see I'm busy? Shut up and let me concentrate." Sherlock is looking through a microscope straight on the dining table. John's long since give up telling him to get his experiments off the table because we eat there you know. Sherlock's hands move to adjust the microscope settings and John can plainly see his bare fingers. He'd gotten so used to seeing that golden band around Sherlock's ring finger. Sherlock doesn't wear it anymore. He doesn't mind that John does, but to him it makes very little sense.
"Come on." John pushes the plate of toast towards him. "Maybe it'll jog your memory."
Sherlock looks up from his studies and gives John an odd look. "You don't honestly believe that, being a man of medicine yourself."
John groaned and took a seat at the table across Sherlock. "At this point I'd try ritual voodoo if it meant you got your memories back."
Surprisingly, Sherlock pushes the microscope away instead of instantly turned back to his experiment. He seems oddly curious in John this morning. "Are you really so desperate to resume this…relationship we apparently have?"
"Of course," John very nearly snaps back. "Why wouldn't I be? We're engaged, for crying out loud, and it's pitiful that you remember none of it! We should be married right now, for Christ's sake! Do you have any idea how much effort it took me to cancel the whole thing? Revoke all the invitations, apologize to everyone, I'm lucky the restaurant we rented for the reception gave us a refund because that was bloody expensive!" He didn't even realize he was seething until he caught sight of Sherlock's almost shocked expression. Like he had never seen John this angry. Which of course was false, this was only the beginning of anger, nothing Sherlock hadn't seen when they were having just a small lover's quarrel, but of course Sherlock wouldn't have remembered that.
"I'm sorry," John immediately apologized, burying his face into his hands, his voice muffled. "I'm so sorry. It's not your fault. You never asked for this…disaster. I'm sorry. Jesus. I'm sorry."
Sherlock was at a loss. He had no idea how to go about comforting the disheveled man before him. He reached out his arm, intent on giving John a good old pat on the back, but retreated quickly, realizing how stiff and juvenile that seemed. It was true. He didn't ask for this. He didn't ask to slam his head through a window and lose memory of everyone important to him. He didn't ask to forget John. John Watson, a brilliant man if Sherlock would never admit it out loud. His love for Sherlock so obvious in his body language, and judging by the photos he had seen, at one point in time Sherlock had obviously loved him back. But the memories were gone. Oh, he would give anything to remember again. John had such lovely hands. He wondered what those hands would feel like on his skin.
In the end, Sherlock stands up and coldly leaves, his mind becoming entangled with itself yet again, leaving the brilliant John Watson to sob all alone for the first time in years.
They had been following a chain of bank robberies for a week now. Just last night Sherlock had managed to figure out the culprit somehow by the way the safes were repeatedly bashed in. They had pursued the suspect, but had ultimately lost him down an alleyway that wouldn't have been an issue a few weeks ago but it seemed like his mental map of every street of London had been wiped from Sherlock's memory unwillingly as well.
That was the first time John had witnessed Sherlock break down since the accident. He had surprisingly been very calm about losing his memories, a bit pained, but overall he was able to act as per usual. Today though, after they had lost a criminal because Sherlock couldn't remember which street went where, he fell to his knees in the middle of the road, pressed his forehead to the ground, and let out the most un-Sherlock-like scream John had ever heard.
"It's okay," John had told him, attempting to pull the detective up by the arm.
Sherlock had thrown John off him, hissing "no it's not! It's not okay!" over and over and over again until John was sure there were beads of liquid forming out the corners of Sherlock's eyes. Sherlock had gripped the sides of his head and trembled, shouting out "Why can't I remember, John? What can't I remember anything?"
John didn't calm him down. Sherlock kept his emotions in a bottle. A little eruption now and then was good for his health. He needed this. So John let him scream out into the night. Only him. Only John could see him like this. No one else. And John let him scream until Sherlock turned back into Sherlock and was able to stand up, brush himself off, and look as if nothing had ever happened.
But boy, were they on a roll tonight.
"He went this way," John shouts, pointing to the left. The both of them turn the corner and run after the suspect, hot on his tail. John feels his breath begin to give out, and Sherlock passes him, but the adrenaline keeps John's legs moving, chasing after the both of them.
Sherlock practically throws himself at the culprit, both of them tumbling over to the ground. Sherlock keeps him pinned for a while, but then it turns into a wrestling match.
John hurriedly comes to Sherlock's aide, grabbing the suspect's wrists and keeping him writhing on the ground.
They stay like that, battling with all their strength, until Lestrade shows up.
The criminal is of course, handcuffed, and Lestrade offers his thanks.
Both John and Sherlock are still breathing heavily and uneven when they get back to the flat, thrill still pumping rapidly through their veins as smoothly as the blood itself, and the moment they set foot into their main room, John's legs give out and he falls, taking Sherlock down with him.
At first, they're shocked, but then they catch a glimpse of each other's stupid faces and both erupt into laughter at the same time.
"Off, off," Sherlock managed in-between giggles. "You're crushing me."
"Christ, sorry I'm so fat," John says sarcastically as best he can with only half a properly functioning lung, but he rolls off Sherlock and the scramble to their feet together, using each other's bodies as leverage to pull themselves off the floor.
They both stand there for a moment, catching their breath and grinning like idiots. Coats are shed.
"Oh, that was exciting," John remarks.
"Indeed," is Sherlock's response.
And then they're kissing.
Or rather, John's shoving Sherlock against the wall and forcing their lips together like their lives depended on it. Sherlock lets out a gasp, obviously not having anticipated John's actions, and he immediately pulls a hand up to the middle of John's chest to push them apart, but decides against it and the land just stays there, feeling the rapid beat of John's heart.
It's not a nice kiss. It's hard, sloppy, like a pair of cannibalistic wild animals. Tongues down each other's throats, growling rumbling from each of them. John grazes his teeth at Sherlock's bottom lip, making the taller man groan a bit against their lips, though whether it was from pain or pleasure neither probably knew.
John presses his body into Sherlock's, rolling their lower bodies together while never once breaking the kiss. His hands fly to Sherlock's hips, gripping the bony pelvis tightly in every way he knows Sherlock loves. Sherlock moans against the kiss, and his sounds go straight to John's crotch. Sherlock is usually never this vocal. It's a surprise, and a rather nice one, John might add. Oh, he could get used to this.
John breathes out, grinding their pelvises together in the most pleasurable way possible, breaking the kiss to latch onto Sherlock's skin elsewhere. Tiny kisses along Sherlock's jawline. Over those beautiful cheekbones. Down his neck. Sherlock allows himself to throw his head back to give John more access to his flesh. Both hands snake around to tangle themselves in John's hair.
"John," Sherlock involuntarily strains out.
"Sherlock," John whispers against his collarbone. Thumbs hook beneath Sherlock's waistband, touching the bare skin of Sherlock's hips.
Suddenly, Sherlock snaps back to reality. He pushes John away at arms distance and their eyes meet. Sherlock looks positively mortified and John just looks bewildered.
"No," Sherlock breathes out as best he can.
It's such a simple word, yet it can mean so much. Such ambiguous was the word. No. No what? No, don't touch me? No, don't let me love you? No, go away and never come back?
"I can't," Sherlock continues, eyeing John's expression like a hawk. "I…I don't know you."
"Yes you do," John answers, grabbing Sherlock's upper arms. "Of course you do. I'm your fiancé. I love you. You love me."
"No."
That word again. It's driving John mad.
"Sherlock. Sherlock, please," he croaks, the grip on Sherlock's arms tightening. "Please remember. Remember me, dammit!"
Sherlock looks at John's face of devastation, as if he'd just witnessed the apocalypse. It hurts. It hurts both of them. John can't bear the fact that the love of his life knew nothing about him and Sherlock couldn't bear the look on John's face. So he left. He slipped out of John's grasp, and John let him, and he somberly marched into his own bedroom.
Just a few weeks ago a snog like that would have been a simple "hello honey I'm home." John didn't know what the hell that was.
John fell to his knees facing the wall and just sat there staring into nothing.
Not even bothering to change out the clothes he'd been sweating in, Sherlock laid sprawled out on his bed, the bed that, before the accident, he evidently had shared with John. John Watson, the fiancé of nearly two years he never knew he had. He held his left hand up to his face, his ring finger bare. He vaguely remembered John saying something about keeping a ring in safe keeping somewhere in a drawer. He sat up abruptly and strode towards his desk. He didn't remember what was in this desk, he never had enough interest to pull apart the drawers, but today he did.
He found it the first drawer he opened. There, tucked away in plain sight, a little black box. Sherlock hesitated to touch it, but ended up taking it out anyways. When he opened it, he was greeted by a golden band, an exact match to John's, except for the fact that it was smaller. Sherlock's fingers were skinnier, after all. He removed the ring from the box and stared at it long and hard, but no matter what, he had no recollection of it. He remembered nothing.
How did he and John fare as a couple? It was evident they were very nearly polar opposites, it's a wonder they had anything in common. Who started the relationship, Sherlock wondered? Who proposed? Who initiates kisses? Well, that question might have been answered just a while ago. Sherlock closes his eyes and he can see John's lips on his again, shoving him into the wall and grinding their pelvises together. A fresh new memory that he can remember. He nonchalantly slips the ring onto his finger and secretly marvels how well it fits on him. It feels strange, though, and he wonders if wearing this band will ever become normal for him again. He brings the hand up and ghosts it over his lips, feeling John's hot touch as best as he can, and perhaps he even smiles a bit.