next chapter will be the last
whooooooooo
Seven months.
"John, please refrain from texting me whilst I am gone."
"You're fucking joking, right?"
"It will only make me miss you all the more, to the point where I might have to come home early, which would benefit neither of us seeing as my brother would have my head nailed to his wall."
"…I understand."
"Are you upset with me?"
"Dammit, how many times do we have to go over this? No, I'm not upset. I'm not fucking upset. It's your job. I'm not upset. Fuck."
Seven months of coming home to an empty flat. More than half an entire year.
In some aspects, the solitude was refreshing. There was no sleepy violinist for John to wake up in the morning. There was no one else to make breakfast for, and only one plate to wash afterwards. There was no one to sit there during rehearsals and make the flutists cry. There were no strange smelling chemicals in his room or scalps in the fridge, nor were there any loose violin sheets littering John's floor. There was no terribly painful screech to wake up to or fall asleep to.
Of course, there was also no one to talk to. Oh sure, John could hang out with his friends more, but at the end of the day he came home to silence and slept in silence. John had no one to accompany him on the way to rehearsal. There was no one to keep the trumpet players straight, no one to keep John warm at night, and perhaps most of all, there was no sweet song to resonate throughout the flat at random points in the day.
Oh, sure John got along fine. He was a man of military stature, after all. It's not like he couldn't function properly because his boyfriend was off fiddling. He enjoyed going to the bar with his mates and kept up his clarinet work like nothing had ever happen. He laughed and had fun just the same as any other man liked to do.
John kept faithful. Not even once did he ever let his gaze wander to a pretty young girl at the bar and even contemplate taking her home. Not even at his most sexually frustrated did he ever even attempt to flirt with the waitress. The days of John Three-Continents Watson were over the day Sherlock Holmes stepped through the doorway of his flat. If John was sexually repressed, which he occasionally was, he sought relief by his own hand. By no means was it ever truly satisfying, but at desperate times, it was enough.
Molly came over John's flat one day to watch Sherlock's concert.
They ordered take away and ate together as friends often do, engaging in idle chatter. By this time Molly had since left the orchestra in favor of taking up an offer at a local musical theater. It wasn't the classiest job a pianist could have, but it was a large step for Molly. "Broadway," she told John. "I want to play for Broadway."
"I have faith in you," John encouraged her. "Maybe Sherlock and I will fly over to America to watch you play."
At that, Molly blushed. "Oh no, please don't feel obligated."
"Not at all!" John assured her. "It's more for me than for Sherlock, I suppose. He doesn't care too much for musicals. I, on the other hand, adore them, and of all the countries I've been to, I regret to say America has never been one of them."
"Well then," Molly smiled. "Perhaps some day."
And then the face of Sherlock Holmes appeared on the television's screen.
John could have sworn his heart skipped a beat.
It was always amazing to John, even after all this time, how famous Sherlock actually was. There he was, in Vienna, the heart of the musical world, on televisions all across the globe. John wondered how many would see him tonight. The crowd in the city must be immense. How many others would situate themselves around the telly tonight with the same intent as John and Molly? Hundreds? Thousands? They would all see a brilliant violinist stand up and grace the world with the angelic sounds concocted from within his instrument. They would all see Sherlock, and yet none of them would see him like John would. None of them knew how sweet Sherlock could be behind that stoic composure. How tender his touch was on another person's skin. How soft his eyes were in the middle of the night.
"He's so handsome," Molly sighed, and John had to remember he had company over. Indeed, Sherlock was handsome. He looked beautiful even in T-shirts and bathrobes with his unruly bed hair and bags under his eyes, but nothing could ever compare to the beauty that glowed when he was dressed in a slick black suit and his dark curly hair was neatly combed to the side. The waistcoat hugged his middle, accentuating the thinness of his lean frame in ways that John considered lewd despite the fact that he was still fully clothed.
When Sherlock began to play, John slowly began to melt. Bony fingers grazing across the strings, everything Sherlock was born to do. There was little John enjoyed more than watching Sherlock's expressions change as he played, probably because Sherlock was so expressionless to begin with. He hardly smiled or laughed, frowned or cried, his cheeks never got red with anger or embarrassment, and he with a violin tucked underneath his chin John could read the intensity on Sherlock's face. His frank adoration for the instrument, the concentration buried deep into his furrowed eyebrows, and yet the contradictory softness to the rest of his face. John wasn't sure how the mixed expressions worked, but they did, and Sherlock was the only one who could pull them off looking like a god.
Molly sighed next to him once again. "It's not the same as in person though, is it?"
John shook his head in agreement. It really wasn't. Having Sherlock so far away from him for so long was frustrating in ways John hadn't believed were even possible, and now seeing him there on screen, his face so close and yet so far, John wasn't able to reach out and touch him without a hard screen in-between them. He sort of did want to reach out and stroke the image of Sherlock's face, and he would've too if Molly hadn't been there.
Sherlock flew to Australia. He had a concert in Russia. He taught students in America and John rolled his eyes to himself as he read about it in the newspaper. "Star violinist Sherlock Holmes kicked out of Washington Conservatory after revealing shocking scandals of staff and threatening to skin incompetent students alive." Oh yes, that was his Sherlock all right.
Twice, John had tried to call. Despite what Sherlock had asked of him, the loneliness in his heart would not disappear and he found himself ringing up the number of Sherlock's mobile. He wasn't exactly surprised when nobody picked up, but he was still devastated. He wasn't exactly surprised either when he tried again a week later to find that Sherlock's mobile was no longer in service. And perhaps John was a bit cruel. John could just picture it- Sherlock sitting there letting his phone ring, refusing to pick up and, so as to not be tempted again, probably tossed the phone away. Maybe he threw it at the wall and shattered it into a million pieces. Mycroft would have had a fit. That thought almost made John smile for the first time in months.
John wasn't exactly sure when Sherlock would be coming back. They hadn't exactly planned a return date after all, since Sherlock's schedule was indubitably always flexible. That was the disadvantage of being famous to a great mind such as Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock, being a precise man who hated the uncertain, having to confine himself to an uncertain schedule.
John did dread Sherlock coming home while John was still unprepared. Stumbling through the door while John was still in the shower, or at three am when John was asleep and disheveled. John wanted a proper welcome home. Nothing like a banner and a big neighborhood block party, but a proper welcome with John greeting him with open arms and a hot meal and a great big kiss on the lips. Oh, how he missed kissing Sherlock. Those soft, perfectly-shaped lips that John could almost imagine touching his own. For being a virgin in every sense of the word before they had met, Sherlock had excelled in the art of kissing. And…well, other things. Other things that John missed just as much as the kissing.
Seven months.
Seven months felt like seven years.