It is a soggy afternoon in late May. There are flowers just starting to show their faces, and John woke up that morning in a good mood. He'd only had one nightmare the night before and it had been early in the night. For the first time in a long time he felt rested. When he'd looked in the mirror that morning, he'd actually looked. There are permanent grey circles beneath his eyes, and the lines that had been manageable before now furrow into the space between his brows and the corners of his mouth. Any tan he'd retained from Afghanistan has fled, leaving his skin pale, wan. He has lost weight, and it showed in his face. Unlike Sherlock, with his perfect bone structure, underfed is not a good look on John. His body is fit, perhaps rivalling the physique he'd had in the army, but it doesn't make up for how bone-tired he looks.
Nevertheless, John takes to the day with as much enthusiasm as he is able. He goes to the clinic in the morning, and when he finishes his shift mid-afternoon, his mobile buzzes.
"I wondered when you might call," he says by way of greeting. He is answered by a gusty sigh.
"You know, it's funny how you manage to sound exactly like him and still not get on my nerves anywhere near as much," Lestrade grumbles. "I assume that means you know I'm calling about the Adair murder?"
"It does. Where are you?"
"At a flat on Park Lane, I'll text you the address. When can you get here?"
John is approaching Lambeth North Tube station. He consults his watch as he crosses the road.
"Unless Transport for London decides to turn on me, I can be there in less than a half hour. That all right?"
"Yeah, perfect," Lestrade says. "See you soon."
John hangs up and makes his way through the station. The lifts down to the platform are jammed full, as are the trains, but a miraculous lack of delays means John gets to the block of flats on Park Lane in just as much time as he said.
The murder itself isn't complex, but the circumstances around it are. John's examination fails to elucidate the situation, and he leaves the flat a bit put out. It seems simple enough, but there aren't enough facts to explain the murder itself. The man had no enemies, supposedly, and the door was locked. Anyone to have shot him through the window would need to have been a crack shot, professional even. However, there wasn't any evidence that Ronald Adair interacted with such people. He'd had a decent windfall the night before, nothing major enough to murder over, and locked himself into his study to work the unexpected funds into his budget. He shared a flat with his sister, who hadn't heard a shot and had found him in the morning, having forced open the door only to find her brother in a pool of blood on the floor. The flat faces the back of the building, away from Hyde Park.
When John leaves the building around six o'clock, his good mood has evaporated. He's worn out, and feels rather deflated. It's days like this, most of all, that he misses Sherlock. Days when he wishes he could turn to his brilliant friend for an answer, days when he doesn't feel clever or special and he just feels done with it all. Sherlock may have had some trouble in social situations, but sometimes he just knew what John needed, and would be happy to curl up and watch rubbish on telly. Sometimes he'd even let John pick a movie and endure indignation (but it's Star Wars, Sherlock! How have you never seen it?) if he was unfamiliar with it.
John missed the Sherlock he was in love with all the time, and the Sherlock who was his best friend, but sometimes he just missed having a flatmate.
On the corner of Oxford Street and Park Lane, a man waxes poetical about the end of the world. He has drawn a crowd, and as John passes the man's words catch his attention.
"…and the dead shall rise from where they have fallen, and with their own blood write the last words of the world…"
John scoffs as he gives the dishevelled man a glance. In his opinion, the end of the world would be much less dramatic. And besides, John might not mind the end of the world if the dead came back first.
So preoccupied is John with the man that he fails to see the person in his path. John knocks fully into an elderly man with arms full of books, and the tomes scatter across the damp pavement. John's attention immediately snaps to the stumbling old man, and guilt pours through him. The man falls heavily to the concrete. John apologizes profusely, and tries to help the man retrieve his books. John catches the title on the spine of one of the books: The Hive and the Honeybee.
"Bugger off, ya clumsy idiot!" the man rasps at John, aiming violent shooing motions in his direction. Chastened, John apologizes again and heads meekly for the Tube station. He doesn't notice the man following him into the Tube station at Marble Arch, or indeed following him all the way to Baker Street.
When John gets home, all he wants to do is lie on the couch with a mug of tea and do nothing for an hour or so. He has plans to go to the pub with Stamford, and doesn't want to go. He knows that he needs to force himself to actually engage socially with people, or risk falling back into the hermitude he'd induced immediately after Sherlock's death.
So when Mrs. Hudson calls up the stairs to tell him that a nice old man is here to see him, John isn't happy about it.
The sound of feet on the steps is somehow familiar. If John closes his eyes, the way his visitor's shoes impact the wooden stairs could almost remind him of…
Silly. It's been three years. Get over it already, John.
A shadow appears in the doorway. It is stooped, and strangely malformed. John is surprised to recognize the man from Oxford Street, still toting his load of old books. They stand in silence for a moment.
The man starts to speak, apologizing for his brusque treatment of John earlier, and explaining that he'd followed him to make amends. His voice is scratchy, barely more than air, and when he explains that he called out to John but was not heard, John is not surprised.
There is something intensely familiar about the man, also. He wear a weathered fedora and a brown trenchcoat that is many sizes too big for him. It hangs down over his hands and obscures whatever his body shape is with thick folds of fabric. The man is hunched over, and supports himself on a cane, clutching his books in his other arm. As he talks, he sets the books down on the coffee table.
John still feels horrid about knocking the man down.
"Look, why don't I make you a cuppa," he offers. "It's the least I can do."
"That would be wonderful, John," croaks the man. It doesn't even occur to John as he goes into the kitchen to busy himself with tea that the man had used his name.