Sherlock awoke the next morning with a pounding headache to the dreadful clanging of pots and pans downstairs, burying his face into the pillow until he could no longer pretend to ignore his surroundings.
John was already up, sipping coffee and typing away silently on his phone as he sat in the reading chair with his bare feet resting on the desk. Without taking his eyes off his phone, he gestured to the two Paracetamol tablets and glass of water next to Sherlock's bed.
He groaned as he managed to sit himself upright, thankful for the remedy as the water soothed the dry burning in his throat and waited for John to start his lecture on the dangers of double dosing.
'Who are you texting?' Sherlock prodded, annoyed by the lack of responsiveness.
'Mary.'
'Mary,' Sherlock repeated as a murmur, as memories of the previous night came flooding back, a feeling of dread rising in his chest and landing a firm lump in his parched throat. 'Is she with…,' he started, unable to say her name.
'Molly? Yeah, she is, and you're bloody lucky she was there to look after her.'
'I see,' Sherlock mumbled, busying himself with rifling through his closet and finding a dressing gown in hopes he could avoid the impending uncomfortable conversation.
'Uh, Sherlock,' John cautioned, stopping him in the doorway. 'Firstly, we're talking about Molly later, you're not off the hook. Secondly, I didn't snitch, so no one's making you pee in a cup today, but you might want to... freshen yourself up a little bit first?'
Sherlock plodded his way to the adjacent bathroom and assessed his appearance. Save for the headache, the comedown was thankfully not as bad as some of his previous withdrawals, but he still looked a mess. He was still wearing the formal shirt he had fallen asleep in, crumpled and sporting a small tear in the breast pocket. His curls were frizzy and damp from sweat, his pale skin coated in a clammy sheen, and his pupils were only just returning to a normal level of dilation.
'Oh and I forgot to mention,' John called out from the bedroom, 'you've got a visitor.'
Sherlock frowned, glancing quickly around the room for clues. He sniffed, forcefully and suddenly as Mycroft's aftershave filled his nostrils.
'Oh for God's sake,' he muttered to himself, rolling his eyes as he realised who was to blame for the unusual racket this morning. Mycroft was visiting home for the weekend and had requested a full English breakfast with all the fixings from Mummy.
He splashed his face with cold water and pinched his cheeks as he'd seen on one of his mother's favourite daytime television makeover shows. Mycroft would see right through him, but it was enough to fool his mother and pass it off as a regular hangover.
'Better?' He asked, returning to his room and giving a noncommittal shrug towards his face.
'Mildly.'
The boys padded their way down the stairs and into the kitchen to find Mycroft, fully dressed in a three-piece suit at 8:30 on a Saturday morning, and the matriarch of the Holmes family in a bright red apron with the words "Kiss the Cook" sprawled across the front.
Mycroft raised a judgemental eyebrow from over the top of his newspaper, snickering to himself as he took in Sherlock's haggard appearance.
'Still haven't kicked the habit then, brother dear?' he queried, quietly enough so Mrs Holmes wouldn't hear.
'Still getting fat, brother dear?' Sherlock quipped in response, pinching a piece of toast from his brother's plate and shoving it defiantly into his mouth.
'Boys,' their mother warned. She was feeling particularly maternal that morning, a rare treat to have the boys together at the breakfast table again and her husband outside tending to the garden as she happily piled up two extra plates for John and Sherlock.
The smell of egg, beans and black pudding was nauseating in his current state, but Sherlock managed a few mouthfuls to keep up appearances while John effortlessly scarfed his whole serving down. He evaded his mother's questions about last night as much as possible, kicking John under the table for help any time she got too nosy, giving up entirely when she finally mentioned Molly's name and asked if she'd attended.
'I'm going to walk John to the bus stop now.'
'I haven't finished,' John mumbled, his mouth still half-full of food as he was dragged out of his chair, scrambling to pick up his shoes that had been tossed near the doorway when they stumbled in last night.
'Yes you have.'
John waved a hasty goodbye to Mycroft and Mrs Holmes and followed Sherlock down the front path who was strutting ahead of him, forced into a light jog to keep up with his taller friend.
'Can we just stop and talk for a second?' he panted, gripping the sides of his ribs and looking comically dishevelled in his slept-in suit. John was fit, but he'd wolfed down too much food too quickly to be jogging this early after a big night.
Sherlock turned, defeated, dropping the charade and allowing John to see the regret in his eyes. It wasn't that he didn't want to talk about it, but more that he had nothing to say. There were no words to explain or defend his own actions, to do so would be an insult to Molly and invalidate the hurt he knew he'd caused her.
'I'm sorry,' he said sheepishly, knowing his antics must have also hurt John and Mary, or at the very least made them both uncomfortable and disappointed in him.
The advice John had been mentally rehearsing all morning came to a halt before it reached his lips. He frowned and stuttered in disbelief, typically needing to prompt him and explain what he'd done wrong and why an apology was a necessary, normal part of human relationships. He sensed that for once Sherlock may have felt actual remorse, and that the self-deprecation to follow would have a far greater impact than any sermon he could offer.
'It's alright,' he assured, pulling his friend in for a rare hug. 'Besides, I think you know I'm not the one who needs apologising to.'
'I know,' Sherlock conceded. 'I'm seeing her later today.'
'Oh? Oh,' John quickly covered the surprise in his voice, not wanting to interfere any further in their relationship or ask too many questions. 'Well, good luck.'
John hesitated for a moment before continuing his route, shifting his weight between both feet uncomfortably as he reminisced on how different he felt as a person since falling for Mary, how he wished one day Sherlock could experience that same delight.
'You're lucky, you know that? Not just that you were born with a genius brain and that it somehow still functions after everything you put your body through but…you have no idea how lucky you are that someone loves you.'
Sherlock opened his mouth to object to John's use of the word "love", but John waved him away.
'No, she does, Sherlock, she loves you. And you're my friend, and I'll always defend you, but something has to change. Because no one can put up with you self-destructing forever, okay? It's not fair on her, and it's not fair on you.'
Neither were the sort to linger on a sentimental moment. John didn't need a response from him, he knew it was better not to give him an open door to make excuses, giving Sherlock a curt, soldier-like nod before setting on his way.
After taking a much-needed shower, Sherlock waited, naively, on the front porch at the time Molly would normally arrive. It was a Saturday, after all, and she was a stickler for tradition and timeliness. He checked his phone compulsively every few minutes, waiting to see a response to any of his missed calls or texts and hoping she would pick up and say casually in her singsong voice "Sorry! Had a bit of a sleep in, I'm almost there!" and that everything would be alright.
There he stayed, hours after she was normally due, even as the sun began to set and the mosquitoes came out with a vengeance, terrified that if he moved, he might miss her. Mr and Mrs Holmes had come out to check on him, even Mycroft, begrudgingly, but Sherlock barely registered their presence. There was a story his mother had read to him when he was little, that told of a prince disguised as a black bull and a protagonist who swore to not stir even an inch, lest she never be found again.
Molly never arrived that Saturday, nor did she reply to any of his calls or texts.
Monday came, and while Sherlock was prepared for a frosty reunion at school, what he was not prepared for was her absence.
Or her absence again on Tuesday.
And Wednesday.
On Thursday, Sherlock skipped his classes in favour of skulking around Molly's, checking if she had somehow managed to just avoid him and was secretly still attending. No such luck.
Friday arrived and he decided she must at least be coming to school over the weekend to pick up her missed homework. He resolved to communicate the old-fashioned way if he couldn't reach her via text, slipping a sealed envelope into the gap of her locker.
He stayed on his front porch on Saturday with his science textbooks ready, until he was sunburnt and starving, with no sign of Molly for the second week in a row.
Another week at school passed, with Molly's absence still unexplained and causing further distress for Sherlock with every passing day. Mary was in the dark, not having seen her since she went home the morning after the dreaded formal. Teachers were not allowed to disclose personal information about students even to friends, and as far as Sherlock knew there were no other friends who would be able to give him any intel anyway.
By the following Friday, 23 missed calls and 47 unresponsive text messages later, Sherlock was in a panic. Even John and Mary had agreed the time for giving her space had passed and gave him permission to try her at her house, assuring him she was probably just suffering from a bad flu.
He wasted no time in going home to change his clothes, opting to make his way straight to her house from school and stopping only to pick up a small bouquet of flowers from a local florist on her block.
He knocked on her door with all the bravado of a young man who was ready to kiss her, damn the flu, and tell her that he'd been a fool and as long as she'd have him he would never hurt her again. He straightened his tie and positioned his flowers perfectly centre, knocking once more after a minute of silence.
'What do you want?' He heard Molly's voice call meekly from inside, catching a glimpse of her peering out through the faded lace curtains.
'Investigating a missing person's case,' he jested.
Molly begrudgingly opened the door, revealing what Sherlock could only describe as a shell of her normal self.
While the rest of her body looked scrawny, her face was so swollen it looked almost bruised, from the sort of crying one days for days on end that make the bones in your face feel like they're going to explode. Her usually radiant brown eyes were drained and rimmed with red, her jumper stale with small stains on the cuffs and collar, and her pulled back hair hadn't been washed in at least a week.
From what he could see of the rest of the house, it was unnaturally still. No gentle whir of Martin's oxygen tank, no humming of voices on the television or static on the radio, no hissing of the tea kettle or pottering of Molly's mother.
He didn't need to ask her what was wrong.
'I'm so sorry,' he whispered.
'It's not your fault… Was going to happen eventually.'
She was cold and unfeeling on the outside, overflowing with grief internally yet aware that if she tried to vocalise any of those emotions she would spill over and break, and she didn't know how long it would take to put herself back together again.
She passed a suspicious eye over the bouquet of flowers in his other hand, a pastel mix of pink peonies and baby's breath. Sherlock hesitated, no longer the confident Don Juan who had come to woo her.
'Mum told me what happened,' he lied, stealthily removing the card before handing her the flowers. 'I just…came to pay my respects.'
'Right…Thanks.'
She disappeared for a moment, leaving the door open but deliberately not inviting him in. She returned with a few books and a stack of paper.
'Here,' she shrugged, passing him the pile. 'You'll need these to pass, Mr Nielson has my email if he wants to verify anything.'
Sherlock recognised the sheets as his science homework, signed off by Molly who had forged the remaining two weeks they had yet to complete together.
'I won't be attending for the rest of the year,' she answered his unspoken question. 'My class marks mean I've been accepted into uni early; they just need my final exam results as a technicality which I don't have to take at school with everyone. Mum phoned them after it happened and they agreed I could get special consideration.'
Sherlock nodded solemnly. He didn't know when exactly it had happened, nor could he bear to ask. The knowledge that it happened so close after the night he had showed her the absolute worst of him was, selfishly, too much to handle.
He knew the right thing to do was to leave her, allow her space to mourn and her heart to mend without dragging her down with him, but the thought of not seeing her again and never telling her how he felt was a heavy burden to carry.
No one can put up with your self-destructing forever. It's not fair on her.
John was right, something had to change and as much as he wished he could promise with complete conviction that he would never act so selfishly; he knew it wasn't true. The next time he needed a fix, how could he know for sure he wouldn't act the same? How could he know for sure that the next time he was faced with a room full of people who hated him that he would have the confidence to take her hand and love her anyway?
'Congratulations,' he settled on, his heart aching as he put on his best impression of diplomacy. 'Whichever university you attend will be lucky to have you and…Should we ever happen to cross paths I promise we can pretend we don't know each other.'
It was the best and most selfless solution he could offer her: a clean slate. He didn't kiss her goodbye this time, it felt too intimate, instead taking her hand and shaking it as one would do a lifelong friend.
'Sherlock,' she called out, halting him as he was halfway down her front steps. She quickly wiped her nose with the back of her sleeve as she attempted to pull herself together for their final goodbye. 'I would never pretend to not know you.'