JOHN POV
"John! Why are you still here?" Mary calls out from the bedroom.
"I'm sorry?" John asks confused. He was preparing a meal for the two of them but walks over to the bedroom. He doesn't enjoy yelling from one room to the other. Maybe it reminds him too much of his time with Sherlock.
"Weren't you supposed to go out with Greg tonight? To the pub, remember?" Mary looks at him and puts her hand on his forehead.
"Are you alright, John?" She asks concern written all over her face. Concern was always always written on her face, from the moment they met, to the moments he talked about Sherlock, to moments he didn't talk about him, to moments like these. He wonders if it will ever leave her face or has it become a permanent feature of hers.
"I'm fine, I just forgot." John says. He hadn't completely forgotten just tried to avoid it, the same way he avoided phone calls from Greg, Mrs. Hudson, Molly and even Mycroft, though one couldn't truly avoid Mycroft no matter how one tried. Cars would show up and pretty secretaries staring into their phones would force him to get in. John used to struggle against getting in but one day he just resigned himself to seeing an echo of Sherlock in Mycroft's face.
"Well you better hurry up, you're already late." She says with a smile.
He walks over to the closet and takes out a different shirt, when a hand appears on his shoulder.
"It's okay to feel sad meeting up with a friend. He reminds you of your time with Sherlock, it's understandable. And Greg knows that, so don't feel guilty for trying to avoid him. But this will be good for you both."
John smiles. Mary was always good at figuring out what was going through his head and calming him down.
The pub wasn't too far from their house so he walks there instead of taking a cab. Walking in he sees a figure sitting on a bar stool with two empty glasses of beer in front of him. Was he that late that Greg already had several pints in him? He walks over to the man and claps him on the shoulder. The detective looks up and smiles but it's as if he was forcing himself to smile. John immediately feels guilty. Was he the one to induce this sadness in him because he rarely answered his calls anymore?
"Are you alright Greg?" He asks and waves the barman over to order a pint for himself.
"Just a...bad day you could say. Well maybe a good day, but in essence a bad day. No, a confusing day. Yes, that's it." Greg says and John can see that the alcohol was already taking it's effect. There was always a sad mood when they talked nowadays, no matter what they talked about. But John was used to being the one to make it worse, not Greg.
"What happened?"
Greg just waves it away. "Nothing important really. I don't feel like talking about it."
Even though he was curious John didn't push him. He understood the feeling of everyone wanting John to talk about his feelings about Sherlock's death when he just wanted to ignore it or move on.
In the end they talk about Molly, Greg's girlfriend, who's been avoiding him a little bit. John talks about Mary and him, and the child that's on its way. Greg doesn't talk about any cases because he knows that it reminds John of Sherlock. Though if John were quite honest with himself, anything was capable of reminding him of Sherlock, that's how screwed he was. They talk about their early years when they were young and spry. Throughout the evening John could see Greg was fidgeting a lot and sometimes avoiding eye contact with him but waves it off as them not having seen each other in a while.
As he's in his bed he smiles. In the end he was happy he went. Greg was still his friend, no matter how painful it was to be around him. A tear of frustration trickles down his face as he wonders whether he'll ever get over the tall, lithe man with the curly hair and ridiculously prominent cheekbones. The man that frustrated him every single moment of his life but also gave him a sense of purpose and youthfulness that he was sure was long gone. As the darkness of sleep takes hold the last image that he sees is Sherlock standing by the pool as John walks out with a bomb on his body. Will his last image ever be Mary?