Author's Note: Really real TAB spoilers this time. A Johnlock argument of events. In other words, all the spoilers.
Sorry for the slight delay with this one. It took longer than anticipated to integrate the new material. So much subtext, so little time.
Sherlock walked quickly through the streets, destination only on the periphery of his consciousness. He knew the city well enough that he could put the part of his brain concerned with directions on autopilot. The night air was cold on his face; he tried to let the sensation ground him while the chaos of his thoughts blurred the edges of reality.
When the Feelings Closet broke open it had flooded his mind palace, waves of exiled thoughts shuddering the very foundation of it, impulses ripping through and upending the meticulous organisation of his mind.
He needed damage control. His mind palace hadn't been in such a state of disarray since… Not since…
Through the confusion a vision of that afternoon surfaced. The same turmoil—the rushing thoughts slick like poison in his head. But he'd known how to handle it then. He'd known how to hush the storm even as it surged through him…
"The car will be at Baker Street to pick you up in one hour. Be prepared, Sherlock. It may be a private jet, but that doesn't mean anyone is eager to wait on your whims." Mycroft's tone was no less patronising over the phone than it was in person.
"Yes, god forbid I inconvenience anyone as I depart for my suicide mission."
"Don't be dramatic, little brother. You chose your fate when you pulled the trigger. This is the best I could do for you."
Sherlock scoffed, "A death sentence. That's you doing your best? You're slipping, Mycroft."
"No, Sherlock. Between years in prison and six months in the field we both know which is the kinder option for you."
Sherlock turned away from the living room window, ducking his head as Mycroft's voice went dangerously soft. "You remember what happened last time?"
Sherlock's head snapped up.
"You almost didn't survive the week—"
"Go to Hell, Mycroft."
"After you, brother mine."
The line went dead and Sherlock tossed the phone onto the table. He picked up a thin, sleek wooden box, feeling the Pavolvian response resonating in his nerves as his fingers brushed over the surface: anticipation. He didn't need to open the lid—didn't need to see silver needles or a glass syringe for the tremors to sweep through him. Addiction never cured, only dormant, roused now just by the touch of wood.
Be prepared. Of course he would be prepared. He'd begun preparing from the moment his delightful older brother had given him his sentence. A roundup of chemicals: pills and powders and liquid. He could experiment now, try all sorts of new combinations; why not? One of the more interesting features of a death sentence is that from the moment you receive it, the concept of 'risk' becomes redundant. There is no gamble with life and death when the ending has already been written.
When Sherlock finally sank the needle beneath his skin with practiced skill—the prick of pain like a welcome home—it had nothing to do with fear. He cared nothing about the mission he'd been sent to die on, and Mycroft was right (for all of his brother's infernally annoying ways of existing, he was right). It was infinitely preferable to die on the field than it was to rot in a prison cell. Sherlock knew himself well enough to know he wouldn't survive a prolonged jail sentence: the torture of boredom without the relief of The Work, and the drugs low quality and hard to come by—his brain would tear itself to pieces. It would break him. He would be unrecognisable by the end of it, and no matter how quickly Mycroft managed to negotiate parole, there would be nothing left of him worth salvaging.
No, he belonged on the battlefield and he was content to die there. He wasn't afraid. The needle in his vein now wasn't about where he was going. It was about who he was leaving behind. Any consideration of that and the padlocks on his Feelings Closet snapped like twigs, the pain swirling in sickening torrents through his head. Fortunately there were chemical solutions to such problems, and this time Sherlock had no problem indulging in them.
The rush was pleasurable enough to make his head tip back and his eyes flutter shut.
He supposed it was a bit ironic, thoughts of John causing him to reach for his syringe, because just short of Mycroft there was no one who would disapprove more. He could almost see John's tight lips, the tension in his jaw, expression a mixture of a doctor's disdain and a friend's concern.
In the past John's presence had been enough to stave off any lingering temptation the idea of synthetic supplements might offer. He didn't need chemicals when he had his blogger, through the cases and in between. But things were different since he'd come back to London from his previous mission. John didn't live here anymore. And now—now there wasn't any question about what was necessary. Because he knew what it meant to say goodbye to John. He'd done it once before. And he wouldn't—he couldn't do it again. At least not sober.
They didn't notice.
It might have been a while, but the control required to mimic his sober posture, to keep his hands still and his eyes alert, was something he'd learned long ago and never forgotten.
He blamed the drugs for the sentiment involved in going to John's blog, to the story of when they met, after take-off.
The overdose was not sudden. Sherlock could feel it coming in like the tide, waves pulling at him stronger and stronger until they warped his mind palace, flashes of hallucinations disrupting what would have been linear thought. A call from Mycroft—Moriarty's message—and Sherlock closed his eyes and let the waves drag him under.
The streets of London slid by under his feet as he unconsciously navigated their twists and turns, breath clouding in the night air, oblivious to all passers-by in a kind of walking meditation. His head was buzzing with the memory of John pressed against him behind the cemetery monument, the memory of that alleyway kiss, John's mouth warm beneath his...
Images and impressions, everything he had banished from his conscious mind was being swept at him in the flood. It was all he could do to catch bits and pieces of each thought.
The brain without a heart; the calculating machine. I write all of that, Holmes, and the readers lap it up, but I do not believe it.
It had been easy to slam the memory of the overdose shut in his Feelings Closet after the fact. Moriarty was back. Not necessarily alive, but the challenge was finally a puzzle good enough for Sherlock to focus on, and the bizarre inconsistencies in the drug-addled dream remained safely locked away, unacknowledged and unconsidered. Until now. The memory snagged and his hyperactive mind tore through its details with relentless fury, desperate for more information on what John was doing to him—on these waves of impulses.
The nineteenth century dream was connected to the incident in the cemetery tonight. He knew it was connected, but the chaos in his mind left him grasping at sense in a storm of discordant thoughts.
Emilia Ricoletti: An old case filed somewhere in the archives of his mind's library. The woman who shot herself through the head and continued on to commit various murders. In his altered state of mind he'd been convinced that if he could solve Ricoletti's case then he could solve Moriarty's. It made perfect sense.
It made no sense, of course. It was all wrong. Loose stitches warning signs for the unravelling of a false narrative. Why was John questioning him about his sexuality? What did that have to do with either Ricoletti or Moriarty?
It wasn't John. It was his mind's words in John's voice, posing possibilities... The women he'd admired: Lady Carmichael and Irene Adler.
But his answer was always the same, in dreaming or in waking.
The fairer sex is your department, Watson, not mine.
Girlfriend, no, not really my area.
But what did his sexual history, or lack thereof, have to do with any of it? Why had his mind fixated on it in the midst of a (hypothetical) case?
You're in deep, Sherlock. Deeper than you ever intended to be.
Too deep, yes; too close to his core: a dark, shadowy depth where primal thoughts lurked—dangerous thoughts his conscious mind had nothing to do with. That the case had nothing to do with—
It's on the tip of my tongue; it's on the tip of my tongue.
Moriarty—his brain's representation of its own weaknesses—with the gun on his tongue, sinking down, lower, until he was looking up at Sherlock, barrel of the gun in his mouth… Even Sherlock didn't need a Viennese analyst to read the meaning in that image.
His mind palace was many things, but it was not subtle. The Moriarty in his mind had been quite explicit about embodying his flaws: the crack in the lens, the virus in the hard drive. The confrontation, then, in the living room of 221B, had been a confrontation not with the man who was Jim Moriarty, but with one of his own fears. When the Feelings Closet was secured shut he was able to write it off as his fear of ignorance (how can you still be alive?). But now, with the floodgates down between his conscious and subconscious mind, he could see it for what it was. Nearly all of Moriarty's words and actions were either implicitly or explicitly sexual. A confrontation with a weakness that had nothing to do with Ricoletti or Moriarty but in fact had everything to do with John.
Too deep, Sherlock. Way too deep.
How many times since then had he encountered John in his mind palace, in a dream, only to witness John place his gun in his mouth, sinking to his knees in front of Sherlock, resting its length on his tongue?
Each time Sherlock was jolted awake at the sight, sweat prickling his temples, his unmistakable sexual arousal seeming wildly inappropriate in the face of what he'd interpreted as a threat to John. The first time he pinned an explanation about mistranslated concern for his flatmate's safety on the dream before shoving it in the closet and promptly forgetting it. He repeated the action each time the dream recurred. But here it was now, resurfaced and swept out at him: John on his knees, pink tongue against thick metal.
God, he'd been stupid. The dream, the overdose—he'd missed everything of importance.
He'd only seen it for what it was on the surface: a misguided exploration of a case from the past, loosely linked to the possibility of Moriarty's reappearance. Now he knew what it really had been. It had been a warning. A precursor to exactly what had happened with John in the cemetery tonight.
The case had never been important.
You don't care about any of it.
He'd been fooled by his own brain's red herring, even while it tried to hint the deception to him. Even the contemplation of Moriarty's death had only been a piece of what his mind was doing.
Is this silly enough for you yet? It doesn't make sense, Sherlock.
It was about John. Obvious.
The case had two features of interest: Ricoletti's unsolved suicide and Moriarty's return, of course. But upon closer inspection there was a third, far more interesting feature, and that was John Watson. He was the conductor of the whole mad escapade, the focal point around which all sides of the dream turned.
John: His companion, his Boswell, his closest friend (against absolutely no competition whatsoever), his challenge (I can break every bone in your body while naming them), his conscience (Dear god above, you will hold yourself to a higher standard), his protector, his saviour, his break in what had been an impenetrable wall of emotional and sexual disinterest (Why are you talking like this?), his crack in the lens—
The dream had been his devastated mind's attempt to make sense of the flood of feelings surrounding John it had to contend with even as the plane left the ground, left England, left John standing on the tarmac with Mary.
The abominable bride. She was about John too, wasn't she.
Doesn't this remind you of another case?
Moriarty's own death of course, but that had been the point from the beginning. In fact it did remind him of another case. Ricoletti was not the first gun-wielding bride Sherlock had encountered. Wasn't she based off of another, more formidable, more real precedent? (Succedent? It didn't matter; the chronology was nonsense.)
There's nothing new under the sun.
A flash of a memory from his previous mind-palace-crisis: Mary, veil draped over her face and shoulders, gun held steady—
What was it?
Mary, in her wedding dress, stopping his heart—
What was that case? Do you remember?
Pain searing through his chest, eyes locked on Mary in a narrow corridor behind the façade at Leinster Gardens. I'll take the case.
He'd done it for John. He'd shot Magnussen to ensure Mary's safety to protect John's marriage. He'd done his part, upheld his vow. He'd convinced himself it was for the best. There was no need for him in a dynamic designed for two people, not three. But in the end he didn't want to go. And he'd only had the drugs in his system to dull the pain of being torn from the one person he'd never wanted to leave.
The Abominable Bride. Watson's silly title, but really his own, for the fantasy his subconscious had created to rebel against what he'd very recently done: He'd lost John by saving his marriage. By protecting his abominable bride. Abominable: causing moral revulsion. She'd lied to John from the beginning, and shot Sherlock to maintain the lie.
He'd steeled himself to let John go, but as soon as the drugs loosened his control his mind threw the truth at him hard.
His subconscious fears…
Why are you so determined to be alone?
The words he couldn't say then so obvious now: I don't want to be alone, John. I hate that you left.
His subconscious desires…
You are flesh and blood. You must have impulses.
It's on the tip of my tongue.
The dream had shown him everything and he'd ignored it all. Until tonight.
The lock had broken again tonight and with a sinking sense of dread it occurred to him that he might not be able to do it anymore. There was too much piling up. Apart from family, there had never been anyone present in Sherlock's life long enough to acquire such massive amounts of information about, and certainly no one to collect so many Feelings about. He had never tested his limits before, and grimly he was aware that he must be reaching them now.
He had always thought it would be enough—that he would be satisfied if he and John could just live together and work together, coexisting in the kind of odd balance that worked for them, the deep-seated friendship that kept them so strongly bonded together. But tonight he had discovered it wasn't. The scent of John, the weight of him, his warmth, his sturdy presence… His flatmate's physicality was becoming impossible to ignore the way he used to.
And wasn't it possible… The way John looked at him, the way he touched him… Sherlock stamped the thought down before it could go any further. Even if it were possible that John could want to be with him in that way (despite the doctor's peculiar hobby of announcing his heterosexuality at every opportunity), first, regardless of what he was now acutely aware that he wanted, romantic entanglements had never been an option for him. He couldn't have his mind palace flooding with Feelings for John all the time. They hadn't even kissed tonight and still his mind was a disaster zone. It was out of the question; he wouldn't be able to think clearly; he wouldn't be able to work; he could lose important documents in floodwaters. He needed to get the mess in his head cleaned up as soon as possible if he wanted his cognitive functioning back on full power.
Second, he knew he wouldn't be able to devote the time and emotion necessary to please a sexual partner. He assumed that would mean hurting John, and he wouldn't do that either.
Sherlock halted in his tracks. Dazed vision sharpened into focus as he dragged himself from the rushing torrent of his thoughts back into reality. His legs had taken him exactly where he needed to go.
He turned from the door and allowed himself a moment to sink into the wall. John. He hadn't come to any solution. There was a reason he kept these Feelings locked away. They were too dangerous. His brain was a delicate instrument, finely tuned to excel at its craft above and beyond all limits of expectation. He'd made the choice to sacrifice the emotion that would clutter it, slow it down, long ago.
But he wouldn't send John away. That was out of the question. The two-year separation had turned out to be an abysmally bad idea and he wouldn't put either of them through it again.
There was nothing for it. Sherlock would simply have to be stronger than his emotions, as he had always been. He knew now, beyond doubt, that he wanted more from John than just friendship, but he was also a master of concealment and deception. He could do it. His attraction to his flatmate was his problem, and he would deal with it himself. He wouldn't have his relationship with John ruined over an inability to overcome a mental weakness. He could steel his mind over, double the reinforcements. A locked Feelings Closet could become a sealed Feelings Vault.
He breathed deeply, closing his eyes and willing the flood to dissipate, now that it had done its damage. The waves of Feelings seeped down through the floors of his mind palace, back into the depths of his subconscious. There was shocking disorder in the aftermath, but Sherlock could deal with that later. He could function well enough for the time being, now that the storm had cleared.
He straightened his posture, as if the lift of his shoulders could force any lingering emotion to fall away.
He tapped on the door and by the time Billy opened it his face had resumed its usual mask.
"All right, Shezza?"
"I need information."
It was evening already when Sherlock was finally walking home. He had spent a fruitless night and day following up leads on abandoned warehouses that could be suitable for storing large shipments of narcotics. He supposed it was a slim chance that the drug deal Mycroft had mentioned in connection with Carl Reeves would involve Moran, or involve him directly even if it involved his gang, but it was worth investigating. Especially when you were avoiding your flatmate (and therefore your flat).
John had texted him, of course. Are you ok?
Sherlock had responded laconically. Busy. Have leads. SH
Be careful.
It was the last message John sent him. No nagging questions, no insisting on being included. John's reticence and his patience were two reasons why he preferred John's company over anyone else's. John didn't mind silent cab rides, hours of silence in the midst of pressing cases. He allowed Sherlock to let him in on his own time.
As Sherlock ascended the stairs to the flat he wondered if he should tell John about looking for the drugs, the possibility of getting what he knew would be a necessary second charge to pin on Moran. As he reached the door he decided he wouldn't. Until Sherlock had gotten his mind palace completely back in order it would be preferable for the two of them to spend the least amount of time together as possible. He could finish this case on his own.
Sherlock opened the door and there was a soldier standing in the living room.
He was dressed in full military fatigues: desert combat boots, camouflage trousers, cream t-shirt under open camouflage jacket, dog tags glinting silver at his chest. He wasn't wearing a helmet, and his blond hair was a bit longer now than regulations would approve. His dark blue eyes glanced up from where he was loading the magazine into his gun. Trained, confident hands slipped it into place.
"Hi," John said.
'Bad timing' seemed like a laughably dismal understatement.