Charm and Strange: Hello to all of you. I have three things I want to say, so here they are:
1. I'm sorry for how late this chapter is. I got writer's block from-of all things-watching Season 2 of Sherlock. I've managed to correct it, but to do that I've not been able to watch the last episode. I'd appreciate it if no one left gaping spoilers for it in the comments section.
2. Thank you to all who have reviewed so far. It's a great encouragement; I love getting reviews. An extra-special thanks goes to KayMoon24, Mirith Griffin, Garonne, and shadowsofyore, who have all encouraged me to get over my writer's block. Couldn't have done it without you guys, so thanks.
3. I meant to include a bar scene with Sherlock and Mirith Griffin's West Ham Fan, but it didn't quite feel right in this chapter. I've decided to post it as a separate one shot, so it should be coming up this week (or next, depending on how horrible my organic chemistry teacher decides to make my life).
4. Alright, I lied, I've got four. LOOK AT THE DATES ON THE HEADING OF EACH SECTION. It will help you understand what's going on.
Scene One: Phone Call (Early August)
"And how are you, Sherlock? It's been...yes, five months since you've seen Doctor Watson, correct?"
It should be an innocent enough question, but it's not, and Sherlock's heart stutters before picking up speed, clenching and aching in his chest.
"Mycroft," Sherlock starts, voice low, raw, unprepared. "It's-It's been so long..."
He can hear Mycroft's breath gently puffing into his speaker. Sherlock closes his eyes, clears his throat, forces his voice to glibly continue on. "...That I don't remember him very well at all."
What am I saying? My tongue forms these words without my brain processing them, analysing what statement they are in response to. It seems to matter very little, now. My tongue can form what it wants, bisect and point like the Devil's himself for all it matters to me.
"—Not any more, at least. Is it really so important to remember the reasons? It doesn't bother me now. It's been months. I've gotten used to life without him."
He can't help but pause at the lie, mouth twisting at one corner in miserable anguish. He licks his lips, clenching his eyes shut. It's a crime, how smooth his voice remains.
"Indeed, Mycroft, restoring our relationship to its proper state would cause such disorder I'd never be able to put it back in its place."
Sherlock pauses, waits for a response, any response. Finally, a light snort breezes through the line onto Sherlock's eardrum. "Are you done, little brother?"
Impatience flairs in Sherlock's mind, exacerbated by the lingering anguish he still feels. "I will be fine, Mycroft.I am lasting hold did he have, after all? It is proving to be nothing enduring."
Months after you've left I still expect to see your tread upon the stairs, hear your voice raised in umbrage, smile with you in countless moments that matter only to us. I am beginning to think of myself as a dog, and you as Pavlov's bell; or perhaps I am the captor and you are finally tired of Stockholm Syndrome.
John, dear John, stealing, lying, killing for you is nothing to me. I would commit those sins and many more, yet I know your own inner priest is far more vengeful than you show to the world. You know who I am, John; my only god is myself, and no one wallows in sin more than I.
I am writing an obituary, though yours or mine I cannot tell. My mind thinks of empty deserts and bombed-out cities, of you just out of my reach. My memories of you will not dull with time, whatever I may say and even hope. This hold cannot be forgotten, my John, even if it is all you'll permit me to have of you.
"He will not be remembered, because there was nothing memorable in our relationship." Sherlock bites out, opening his eyes. The glassy starlight silver of earlier has been replaced by a hard, flat grey that is mirrored in his voice.
Blasphemy, Sherlock. "Indeed, it has already begun to fade."
Scene Two: He Likes Them Insane (Late April)
It is nearly three in the morning, and I wonder what you are doing. By all rights I should be asleep; I stopped dreaming of Afghanistan the first month I moved to Baker Street, and it's not the room. It's nice, if too sleek and satiny and lacy for my tastes. But the bed's comfortable—it's not mine, but that's not what's wrong.
It's you. I can't get you out of my head. Or out of my bloodstream, because that's what's really missing you. You're made of adrenaline and I'm your junkie. It's an absurd thought, because even though I remember thinking that without you I was nothing, I can exist without you. You're not oxygen, or potassium, or iron. There should be nothing you take with you when you're not here.
But there is something, because now it's three and I'm still not asleep. I miss you, and I'll admit I need that frenetic energy you cloak around you. It's your fault, too, luring me in with that half-smile and tantalizing hints about fingers in the butter dish, only to show me years later just how mad you are.
When I say it like that I sound insane.
I should probably rewind. At the time, you were just what I needed: excitement, a sense of purpose, an excuse to act like a rogue gun in the middle of London. I don't need to go into how great it was. How great it should still be. I'm not going to give anyone an excuse to keep calling me your lover, so I won't describe you like that. Besides, you've probably already deduced everything I think of you from the way I hold my tea cup.
So after saving my life, things settled down for the both of us. The bloody heads, the fingers in the crisper. Good, fine, all of it fine. And I'm having the time of my life, following along in the mad farce that's your life. Getting all this, Sherlock?
But none of that really mattered. I actually do like you, you know. I can live with waking up to find suspicious blue powder in my regimental mug. Even your shameless manipulation of other people is somehow fine. Pantsless in Buckingham Palace? Hilarious. Tricking that West Ham fan into falling in love with you so she'd tell you where the diamonds were hidden? A riot. You splitting your wrists on the floor so I'd feel guilty and spend the next week with you? A right laugh, that's what it was.
What's really rich is that I don't even think you comprehend the difference here, what makes it so completely not good, and that's the worst thing of all. It makes me wonder what I missed, what was staring me in the face these last years that I never noticed. Makes me wonder how I could have thought I was actually having an influence on you, turning you towards something good.
Or maybe I should be asking when you began to rely on me quite this much. When did having me around matter so much to you that you'd risk killing yourself for it? That thought is honestly scary, Sherlock, it is. It's frightening, thinking about how I could have lived with you for all this time and not seen what was really behind your eyes. I thought I knew you. I thought you were my best friend, and now I don't know you at all.
That's what's keeping me awake, thinking about that night over and over and over. How could I have missed it? How could I have missed it? I don't remember any sole incident that would have tipped me off to the fact that you'd gone and turned Opheliac overnight. I know I keep saying this, but it's scary thinking of you like that, Sherlock, because I know better than anyone that you don't recognize emotions when they come.
So maybe I should be asking where this came from. Where did it develop? From me being your only friend your entire life? From sharing years of our lives together, on and off cases and the like?
God, say anything but that you love me. I've seen where love can take you, Sherlock, and I'm not even sure what you felt for that Adler woman was love. It may have been admiration. Obsession. But if that's your love, I don't want it. I'll take all the snide remarks about my intelligence that you want to throw at me, but not that. I don't want to occupy your thoughts day in and day out. I don't want you wondering about me constantly. I'm not worth ruining your brain over. I never want you not to sleep, not to eat, to so completely fall apart because of me. I care about you, you know that, and I'm in the dark as to why you're so keen on wilfully disobeying everything I've told you to do when you're so desperate for the rest of me.
Desperate. Even the word gives me chills. Sherlock Holmes, of all people, shouldn't be desperate for me. When did it turn from friendship to this? And what the hell is "this," anyway? I wish you could just tell me, like you tell me everything else. I also wish I could just go back to Baker Street and open a beer and sit around the fire with you, just two blokes having a night of it. But that's never going to happen, so I'm not going to waste myself imagining.
Beside me, a body stirs. It's Susan. I sigh. I'm not going to think about why I haven't thought of her once tonight, even though I'm in her bed and those are her breasts pressed against my arm. I think that's one question we both know the answer to anyhow, don't we Sherlock?
Just how long were you trying to get me to see that, and so much more? I've been blind, so very blind. But then, you already know that.
The body beside me curls in closer and some part of me is shaken back to reality, like a spell's been broken. I grit my teeth and pull away, swinging my legs off the edge of the bed and standing up. My back arches as I stretch and I turn towards the window. I pull the too-lacy curtain to one side and stare blindly out at the black street below.
It's pouring rain, the water coming down in hard pellets that pelt the ground like stray bullets. No one should be out in this, not even a stray dog. It's so cold that the window has condensation forming on it. I press my fingers gently to the glass, pausing to stare at them when they come away wet and dripping. I press them back and smear them across the glass in a wide arc, clearing a line of sight out onto the street.
Sherlock would be out, if he were on a case, and I'd be with him. Out. In this weather. Probably catch our deaths of pneumonia; him more likely than me, with that smoking habit he won't give up. The water on my fingers still hasn't dried. I clench my fist and the water smears over the palm of my hand.
Something catches my eyes when I tilt my head up from my fist again. Two spots of silver flash from a doorway across the way, winking in and out of focus as if their owner was blinking them rapidly. Just like as if someone was trying to blink curly strands of water-logged hair out of his silver eyes. Could that really be...
"John?"
As soon as I tear my eyes away from the two pinpoints of light they're gone. Like they weren't ever there. Like I imagined them.
"Come to bed John," the voice says, and presses those breasts against my back. A mouth latches on to the side of my throat and I sigh, knowing what's being offered and knowing I'll take it.
I follow the breasts back to their bed and try to forget silver eyes and dark hair and pale skin.
Scene Three: Nothing and Everything (Evening of April First)
John's been here. Sherlock can see it in every bend, every curve of wood and plaster and tile. He swallows, and his heart is clenching in his chest like it's in its final throws. Is there no where that's safe? Is there no sacred sanctuary in this war?
The new cleanliness of the flat is secondary to John's scent. Sherlock can imagine that he can smell it curling around him like a comforting, smothering fog. He breathes in deep, hopes he now has John's epithelial cells somewhere in his trachea, his terminal bronchioles. He holds his breath long enough that his lungs begin to burn and he's forced to exhale, and it's like John's leaving him all over again.
He almost doesn't want to open his eyes, but somehow he finds he can see despite it. The flat's spotless, and every surface gleams with John. He turns, and the pools of John-Was-Here merge into a brilliant blur of sensory overload. He's surrounded, and he can't stand it.
He staggers to the sink, mortally wounded, and that's when he sees it. A note, scribbled in John's messy doctor's hand on a blank sheet of paper and left innocently next to the stove.
Sherlock picks it up, and his hand's aren't shaking. He reads it, and he isn't gasping for breath. His eyes aren't wide, and they certainly aren't trying not to leak liquid. He doesn't drop it into the fire, and he doesn't remember anything after that.
He wishes the last part was actually true.
What Sherlock wishes he couldn't remember is his hands opening, letting the paper fall through them as if his fingers are suddenly to weak to carry the thin sheet. He wishes he couldn't remember clenching his jaw against the moisture in his eyes, moisture he's terrified to realize is there. He wishes he couldn't remember leaving the kitchen, stumbling on hesitant feet, as if they're suddenly unsure of themselves. The living room is too bright, too full of blinding reminders of John, and so he raises a hand to shield his sensitive eyes and continues down the short hallway to his bedroom.
If the living room was blinding, this room burns out his eyes like a blowtorch being held to the soft jelly of his retina. The room doesn't glow with remnants of John—in fact, it's untouched, as if the other man did nothing more than open the door, and that's even worse. It's as if John is holding him for trial and judging all his life inferior and contemptible, telling him that his broken and twisted being is not worth trying to put back together. John is telling him that he thinks he'd be better off dead, that he regretted saving his life. He could be shouting it, screaming it from the wreck that is Sherlock's untouched room.
It is after Sherlock turns away in horror that everything starts to become numb. He walks to the living room because it doesn't matter where he goes now and he stands in the centre of the room and turns around in a circle, staring at the shining flat. He's suddenly aware of that last vestige of John burning away in the grate and he strides over to the fireplace with a cry, falling to his knees in front of the burning logs.
The pain as he digs his long fingers through the cinders and ash is annoying only because it forces him to slow down as his nerve endings scream in protest, and the agony of his burn blisters is laughably negligible when he finds that the last scrap of John's handwriting has burned away.
Sherlock never quite finds out what happened to that blissful, momentary numbness, though he knows better to try and recreate it. Crystal, scag, his dear nicotine...Oh, Sherlock would solute them all, worship them like the homicidal gods of self-destruction they are if only they could make him forget.
He doesn't come to himself until dawn breaks.
1 April 20XX
Sherlock,
Look, I don't know what happened that night, but I don't think you really do either. The only thing I'm sure of is that we can't continue like this. You're my best friend, Sherlock, and nothing could ever change that except for you, but not everything is okay. What's hard is that I know you don't understand the difference, and I know you can't see why that wasn't good and so much else was.
I guess it's that you've never purposefully hurt anyone before. At least no one who was innocent. There's a difference between shooting a murdering cab driver and what you did. It's even different from that time you ignored finding the hostage because you knew her captors were dead; you weren't the one who did that to her. You hurt yourself, Sherlock, and you did it to get to me and I'd rather you didn't find a hundred hostages because what you did here was so much worse it's not even comparable.
You hurt yourself to hurt me, Sherlock, and I don't want you to hurt yourself because you think it will change the way I think about you. I don't want you to hurt yourself because you think it will make me listen to you. I don't even want you to hurt yourself because you think it will make me see sense. I don't want to worry about coming home because I don't want to see you dead in front of the fireplace again. I don't want to have to worry about upsetting you because I'll never be sure of the reaction it will cause. If this is what I do to you, Sherlock—if it is me that causes this response—
God, I don't even know. I'd rather I never met you, because I don't deserve that and what were you doing, thinking that was fine. You're my best friend. Best friends don't do that.
I can't live here like this. I've got to leave until you don't react like that every time I do something you don't like. I've got everything I need with me, so I won't be back for a while. I know you can pay the rent on your own, so don't contact me about that. Don't contact me at all, actually. I don't want to hear from you right now.
With all sincerity,
Dr. John H. Watson
Scene Four: A Very Common Crisis (Early May)
"...and then I'm meeting Maggie and Laura for lunch in Harrods. Thought we'd do a bit of shopping after. I was thinking of picking you up a new tie, what do think, John?" Susan turns from where she's applying her red lipstick and raises her eyebrows at John, who's leaning against the bathroom doorway with his hands in his pockets and trying to pay attention.
Susan's pretty today, but then, she's always pretty, with her dark hair and pale skin and elegant red nails. Her hair is swept up from her neck in a casual up-do and the cardigan she's thrown over the top of her bright, floral print blouse matches her lipstick perfectly. She dresses fashionably, as if she's ten years younger than she is. John's never asked her how she manages to look so perfect when the other chemists he knows (Sherlock) have stained hands and acid-bleached clothing.
"John? Did you hear me?"
He shakes his head slightly and blinks, hitching up the corners of his lips in a smile. "You're going to Harrods for lunch? Bit expensive, yeah?"
Susan smiles deprecatingly at him and it reminds him of Mycroft. "John, dear," she purrs, walking closer and running her long nails down the side of his cheek. The tight, snake-like smile is still in place. "You're a doctor. Of course I can afford to go to Harrods for lunch. Maybe we could go more often once you've taken that surgeon's position you applied for."
He closes his eyes, and he can feel Susan's smirk through his eyelids. He feels tired, so tired, and it hits him now like it's done a thousand times before in last two weeks: He doesn't love her any more, isn't sure how he ever did. He wonders if he closes his eyes long enough if she'll disappear like a bad dream.
But of course she's still here when he opens them, so he tilts his head, turns on the smile that's conquered three continents worth of women. "We'll talk later, Susan. You need to meet your friends, and I've got to leave for that extra shift I picked up from Stevenson."
She narrows her eyes at him and pauses, not to be distracted. "You are taking it?" It's barely a question.
Something in John snaps open, detaches itself from him, and settles on the bathroom wall like John's very own fortune teller. He can see himself quitting his job, settling into the time-intensive schedule of a true surgeon. And there's Susan, with pearls and diamonds, loving the money, going to parties, quitting her job, because who wants to be a chemist when you could be a socialite?
And then she'll cheat on him, because of course she will, and she'll get pregnant, and he'd forever be wondering if those kids are really his. Maybe he wouldn't even be able to tell, because he's short and blond and full of recessive alleles that certainly wouldn't be present if he reproduced with the tall and dark Susan. He wouldn't let it bother him, though, because they're children and will deserve better than that. They'd move to the suburbs, of course, and John can't help but think that he'd slowly be driven mad from the mundaneness of it all.
It would only take a few years to build up generous collage funds for their two children, and then he'd be dropped like the ageing, regretful soldier he is. And then what would he do? Go back to Sherlock? Right. As if Sherlock would take him back after that.
Good Lord. He's talking as if he's dating the man.
And then the world comes back to itself and John's left blinking at his most recent stint as an oracle.
He shifts, straitens up, and looks Susan right in the eye, takes her hands in his. God, he'd hate being tied to her. He needs excitement, adrenaline, not her inept attempts to make him a socialite like herself. "I've got it all figured out. We'll talk later."
She smiles tightly and pecks him on the cheek before leaving, calling out, "Remember, we've got the Ashdown's party to go to later!"
John rolls his eyes. "I didn't forget, Susan," he yells out after her. It's not a lie. He didn't forget. He's just not going.
When he comes home from the A&E, he's smiling. He hasn't felt this relaxed since, well, since before he met Susan. The irony is not lost on him. He whistles a tune he heard on the radio this morning as he fixes himself a cup of tea and changes out of his work clothes and into a sensible pair of trousers and his old striped jumper.
He's reading a new—hilariously ridiculous—action novel when Susan returns from her day out. She's carrying more bags than he wants to count, and he sags with relief when he remembers that his credit card is safely in his pocket. He continues to sit and watch her over the top of his novel as she struggles into the flat. It's oddly gratifying, watching her battling with the bags without him; it soothes the small, petty part of him that wants to see Susan's life fall apart around her ears. He feels like it's something Sherlock would do, and then wonders if that means every time Sherlock didn't help him with the shopping that he was mad at him. He doesn't think so.
A few minutes later, Susan returns and pauses in front of John's chair. He looks up, tilts his head innocently. "Hello again. Did you have a good time?"
Susan sighs and pulls the book out of his hands. "John, we've got to leave for the party in an hour, and you haven't showered yet? You know I don't like the flat to smell like the A&E. Tell me you've at least looked up the topics on that list I gave you—you know, the topics Marc Ashdown likes talking about. I know you don't know a thing about golf."
John stands up and he can feel the innocent look falling away. "I'm not going to that party tonight," he says, and his voice is as serious as a heart attack, as point-blank as it was years ago when he first told Ella nothing happened to him.
Susan gapes at him, uncomprehending. "Why? Are you not feeling well?"
"Nope, just not going," he annunciates, and he's not altogether surprised to feel the slight upward curve his lips have taken on. He's been waiting for this longer than he thought.
Susan backs away, blinking, finally catching on that something Very Wrong is about to happen to her world. "What do you mean, John?"
He exhales, considers the woman in front of him, and starts speaking. "I'm not going to that bloody party. I don't know anyone there, just like I haven't known anyone at the last two parties you took me to. And for God's sake, I'm not looking up a bunch of topics I don't care about just because you want to impress some businessman. Secondly," and John pauses, looks at Susan's face, and decides to screw the list he'd come up with. His discontent is already pouring out of him in waves. "I'm not quitting my job. I like it at the A&E. Those curtains you bought for the bedroom are hideous. I don't wear pink—I don't care if it looks metro—and I've always hated the suburbs. We're not moving there."
Deep breath, John. "I don't love you, Susan, and I'm certainly not going to marry you. Find someone else to be your trophy husband."
Susan gapes at him in shock, tears beginning to pool in her eyes as full import of what John is saying dawns on her.
Later, he thinks he rather deserves the slap and the insults, but as he lugs his two suitcases behind him in search of a cheap hotel, he decides that waiting until he'd found a cheap apartment wouldn't have been a bad idea.