So, This chapter's a little later than I thought it would be, but it's a long one, so I hope that that makes up for it. And just a note for this chapter, italics (except for the ones in the author's note) are flashbacks, and bold passages are text messages.

Also, if anyone out here is also on tumblr, you can totally follow me. My username is cwrosebud, just like it is on here. :)

Anyway, hope you enjoy this chapter! Don't forget to review. The next chapter will hopefully be out before August, depending on how much I get done while I'm working on my school's summer stock production during the next week. We'll just have to see.

Just send me home. You bear your burdens,

I'll bear mine. It's better that way,

please believe me.

– "Oedipus Rex" Lines 364-366

Ch. 2: The Man With the Memories

It was a bitter John who was still examining the scarf several hours later. He had returned to his new flat, a snug little one-bedroom. The scarf lay on the floor in front of the armchair that John was currently sitting in, taunting him every time he cast a confused glance its way. He had absolutely no idea what to do with the scarf of his best friend, a scarf that had supposedly been buried with said best friend.

The package it had been sent in had been no real help. If all of the stamps were to be believed, than this scarf had been traveling the world. There were stamps from almost every continent (Antarctica excluded) and so many different languages that John couldn't even hope to name all of them.

John had no idea what he should do with the scarf. Obviously he intended to keep it, it would kill him to let go of the soft fabric now and lose this treasured piece of his best friend. But someone needed to know that the scarf wasn't buried with Sherlock Holmes, as had been believed. Not just him or Mrs. Hudson, but somebody who could actually do something.

John sighed, his hands covering his face. He knew exactly who he needed to go to, but he dreaded the encounter. The last time he had spoken with Mycroft Holmes, he had yelled at him and fought the intense urge to slap the man who had contributed to the destruction of a certain consulting detective. John hadn't spoken to Mycroft since that last encounter, but Mycroft had texted John frequently in the first weeks after the death. John had ignored all of the texts, but they were still on his phone, and he still had Mycroft's number.

John picked his phone up apprehensively, and started composing a text. After a couple of drafts, he settled on one that was just vague enough that Mycroft might actually be confused enough that John could get his attention.

"We've got a problem. It involves Sherlock."

There. It was done. John maneuvered to press the "send" button, but then he paused. If he sent this now, then he would never get any sleep tonight. Mycroft would have him up all night being dragged to some secret location where they could talk. No, it would be better if John waited and sent this text in the morning. John pulled himself up from the armchair with a loaded sigh and started towards his bedroom. He stopped in the doorway, turning back towards the scarf that still lay on the hardwood floor. Should he...? No, that was way too morbid. And yet...

John walked back over to the scarf, snatched it up, and held it to his chest. The soft fabric was comforting, and he could feel that crushing ache in his chest that had held on since that fateful day outside of St. Bart's ease up, just a bit. There was something about this scarf, something so incredibly soothing about this remnant of the friend he missed with such an intense passion. He needed this.

John turned again to his bedroom, carrying the precious scarf in his arms. Once he had undressed and slipped on the comfy pants that he usually wore to bed, the ones that had actually prompted Sherlock to look up from his violin playing one night, he settled into his bed, hugging the scarf tightly to his bare chest. But instead of sleep claiming him, he was swarmed by memories of a night long gone...

It was a surprisingly warm spring night, and Sherlock was bored. They had just finished a particularly gruesome case involving a body drained entirely of its blood and a bizarre cult, and once Sherlock had solved the case with glee, he was left with nothing to do.

"Bored. Bored. Bored. BORED."

"Sherlock. We've been home for all of ten minutes. Are you really bored already?" Sherlock shot John a dark scowl at that remark and shifted onto his side. John got up from his armchair and headed into the kitchen. "Will you actually eat dinner tonight, then?" He could hear a distinct sigh coming from the couch.

"Is that how normal people entertain themselves? Eating?" John rolled his eyes.

"Well, SOME people eat because they actually need nutrition to survive. But I guess that there are some who eat just for the enjoyment of it." John was digging around in their drawer of take-out menus, searching for one from a particularly delicious curry place when he heard Sherlock's voice again, much closer this time.

"Could we experiment then?" John's head whipped around, and he was startled to find that Sherlock had snuck up behind him and was, in fact, standing directly behind him. When he turned around, their faces were so close together that they would have kissed if they moved even a centimeter closer. John could hardly breathe. Sherlock's eyes, so close to his own, seemed to see through every shield that John had put up. Neither one of them spoke for several seconds, letting the silence reverberate throughout the flat. They just stood there, caught in the moment.

John felt a sudden primal instinct to close the gap between them, to kiss those soft-looking lips that had taunted him for so long now. He found that his mind had gone completely blank except for the thought of kissing Sherlock, touching Sherlock, grasping Sherlock. It took all of his strength to fight the heat that was suddenly running through his veins and break the silence.

"Um.. yeah, sure I guess. What kind of experiment were you thinking of?" John stepped back, trying to pull himself back together by separating himself from the man whom he lusted after. The man in question was still staring at John, as though he was mesmerized and couldn't look away. "Sherlock? Sherlock, are you okay?" John waved his hand in front of his friend's face. Finally, Sherlock blinked and seemed to come back to reality.

"Anything you like will be satisfactory. The experiment will be whether or not I get enjoyment out of the consumption of the food." Sherlock turned away, still seeming a little dazed as he did so. John just watched him walk away into his bedroom, unsure whether or not he should go after him.

Once the food order had been called in, John just sat in his armchair in a stupor. Had that really just happened? Had he just almost clued Sherlock in on the burning desire that coursed through his body at the thought of the handsome consulting detective. He couldn't deny that he'd thought about Sherlock in a romantic way before, but he'd pushed those feelings down in an effort to keep their friendship functional. Sherlock had made it very clear that he wasn't interested on that first night at Angelo's, and John didn't want to screw up what was the best friendship that he had ever had with romantic feelings.

But now... John had no clue how to proceed from this. If Sherlock called him out on his feelings now, he'd probably have to look for a new flat. He'd have to find a new flatmate; there was no way that he could afford a flat in London on his own.

Maybe Sherlock wouldn't say anything about it. Yeah, that was probably the best case scenario. They could just move on with their lives, and this evening would just be a blip on the radar.

But there was a third option, one that John immediately brushed off as being the most unlikely. Even the idea that Sherlock might have similar romantic feelings for John seemed so improbable, so impossible, that John immediately set that idea back into the tiniest corner of his brain where he wouldn't focus on it.

The buzz signaling the arrival of dinner snapped John out of his anxious reverie. Once he set up all of the food on the table, he knocked on Sherlock's bedroom door.

"Sherlock? The food is here. Do you still want to experiment with it?" John was met with silence. Just when he began contemplating breaking down the door to make sure that Sherlock was still alive, the door opened and Sherlock appeared in the frame.

"Of course. Shall we get started then?" Sherlock brushed past John and into the kitchen, John following closely behind. Sherlock sat down and began to eat. He stopped after about a minute, at which point he seemed to have noticed that John wasn't eating. He was just standing behind the chair opposite Sherlock with a look of dazed confusion on his face. "Well? Aren't you going to eat?" That pulled John back down to reality.

"Yes, yes, of course." John shook his head, clearing the fog from his brain, and sat down. John pulled some food over and started to eat, but all the while, he still watched Sherlock, who was devouring his curry with great gusto. John swallowed his feelings and his food and said nothing. The meal was relatively silent, with the exception of the chewing noises. Finally, they had completed their meal.

"Well then. That was supposed to entertain me?" Sherlock pushed back in his chair and stared pointedly at John.

"Well, if we'd had anything to talk about, maybe it'd have been more stimulating for you." John was starting to get a bit irritated now. Sherlock had clearly chosen to forget about their little moment earlier, and even though John had decided that that was, in fact, the best option, he was still irritated that this whole thing was just going to be ignored forever. Sherlock shook his head, and first, John thought that Sherlock had heard what John had been thinking. But then Sherlock spoke.

"No, even conversation couldn't be that entertaining." John just rolled his eyes, taking yet another Sherlock-ism with a grain of salt.

"Oh, why don't we just get drunk and call it a night?"

Sherlock raised his eyebrows. "Actually, John, that might be rather entertaining."

John was stunned by the sudden turn of events. He'd suggested drinking as a joke. "Are you sure? I mean...have you ever even been drunk before?" Sherlock chuckling to himself, got up and went over to the fridge. John watched as he grabbed some beers and set them back down on the beat-up kitchen table.

"Well then. Shall we begin?"

A couple of hours later found John very drunk. His worries and anxieties from earlier that evening had been pushed to the back of his mind, and he found that he was rather enjoying himself. Sherlock too seemed to be pleasantly drunk, though not nearly as much as John. About an hour previous, they had turned on the telly and had proceeded to laugh raucously at several programs that Sherlock would have otherwise scoffed over. It was the most fun they'd ever had without somebody being dead.

"John. John. John. JAWN. Did you see that John? Those girls are about as drunk as you are." Sherlock seemed to be the kind of drunk that found essentially everything hilarious. John found it adorable.

"Yeah, except...except I miiiiiihgt be a liiiiittle more drunk than they arrrre." John was slurring majorly now, but he was having too much fun to really care. Sherlock cracked up, launching into high-pitched giggles that rang through the room. The giggles prompted John to laugh, and soon they were laughing so damn hard that their sides ached and they had collapsed onto the floor.

John was laughing so hard that he didn't notice that Sherlock was no longer laughing. In fact, John took absolutely no notice of the fact that Sherlock was inching closer to him. John only noticed the change when he turned around and found that Sherlock was staring him in the eye, only centimeters separating the two of them, echoing the position that they had been in earlier that evening. "Sherlock, what are you-" Before John had a chance to finish his sentence, a pair of soft lips slammed into John's own lips, and John put all of his strength into kissing Sherlock.

The kiss was deep and intense with a touch of awkwardness. It was a flurry of lips, tongues, and teeth smacking against each other in a frenzied passion. John was drunk on both alcohol and Sherlock's lips now. In the back of his mind, there was a voice telling him to stop, now, before it was too late. But oh, Sherlock's tongue had slipped between his lips now, and John was in the kind of heaven that only occurred in Mills and Boon novels. John started to fight for control now, trying to slip his tongue into Sherlock's mouth now. In response, Sherlock positioned himself on top of John, and they writhed on the floor together.

All of sudden, a feeling of withdrawal hit John over the head. When he opened his eyes, he found Sherlock looking down at him, a look of shock and horror on his face.

"Sherlock?" John blinked in confusion, still in an orgasmic stupor. Sherlock seemed to stiffen at the sound of John's voice, and he shakily rose from where he had been sitting on the carpet. With one last look at John, Sherlock turned and walked slowly back into his bedroom, quivering as he did so. John watched him go.

John smiled bitterly at the memory of the one drunken night that would be the only romantic encounter he would ever have with Sherlock Holmes. While the kisses in themselves had been beautiful, the following morning had been a ruddy disaster. He and Sherlock could hardly look each other in the eye, and they barely spoke. Sherlock had been the first to mention the night before.

"John. I feel that the drunken events of last night are better off forgotten, would you agree?"

John had nodded, still attempting to process everything that had happened while facing a brutal hangover. And a week later, Sherlock was dead and John was forever broken. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, and John would give everything he had to change his response that morning. To say "No, Sherlock, I don't want to forget. I want us to be a couple and I want to kiss you every day for the rest of our lives." But if time travel existed, Sherlock would be alive and John could say all of that to him now.

John lay back on his bed, clinging to the scarf that had intensified all of his memories and losing himself in the past. Eventually, a restless sleep claimed him.