My mother: "Why haven't you updated your Sherlock story in four months?"
Me: "What? How did you know that I haven't updated?"
Mom: "I'm subscribed to it. I need to know what happens next."
Me: "Oh. Oh my god. I didn't realize you- ugh. You know I could just tell you?"
Mom: "Don't joke about that. Go publish the next chapter. I saw you working on it. Get your ass in gear."
Into Thin Air
It had been three hours.
"That's it," John muttered, snatching his phone off his bedside table. He was worried, he was hungry, and he had texted Sherlock six times to no avail. He was going to the Tesco where his flatmate had last been (he was sure, at least, of that, even if he didn't know where Sherlock was now) and if Sherlock was there, God help him when John got his hands on him for making him worry.
It was only a few blocks away. John stalked through the aisles of the grocery, peeking out of each one before he went into the next, eyes searching desperately for Sherlock. Where the hell is he?
The whole store thoroughly scoured, John made his way out the doors again and was just heading home when something caught his eye on the bench near a lamppost.
He paused, not sure if he was seeing it correctly, then cautiously made his way over, picking up the cloth laying on the bench cautiously. It could be anyone's hat, he thought with a shadow of rising panic, but when he lifted it and examined it, his stomach dropped to find a familiar tweed deerstalker. John sank to the bench, his mind flooded with the memory of Sherlock walking on eggshells around his nasty mood, putting on that damn hat that John had gotten him for a joke gift as a silent attempt at affection, smiling cautiously at John as he left for the store, and disappearing out the door without a word.
Calm down, John thought, trying to breathe deeply and slow his racing heart. Calm down. If he doesn't show up back at the flat in an hour, you can call Mycroft.
As much as he wanted to keep a cool attitude about it, though, his head felt light and he was flipping through a mental list of everywhere Sherlock could be. Hands unsteady, he yanked his mobile phone out of his pocket and called him.
He got an error message, saying the phone could not be found.
John's heart seized up.
…Bean There first. That's the first place I'll look.
xXxXxXxXxXx
Mike was working the evening shift that night, along with a bookish young lady from the university that John had only spoken to a few times. When he came in, panting and wild-eyed, she'd called Mike out to get John some water.
"What the hell's going on, John Watson? Finally exercising for once in your life?" Mike joked as he came out of the back storage room with a water bottle. John wasn't emotionally equipped to handle a flippant attitude at that moment, so he stayed silent, guzzling the water down. When he was finally ready, he looked at Mike.
"Has Sherlock been here?"
"No," replied Mike immediately. "He only comes in when you're working anyway, nowadays."
This was foreboding. John sighed heavily. "You know where I might find him if he hasn't come home in a while?"
Mike, though gregarious, was quick to pick up on the foreboding tone of John's voice. "Nah, mate. You know him better than I do, now; you live with the guy."
John worried his lower lip between his teeth and nodded. "Right, thanks, Mike." He started towards the door but was stopped by Mike's hand on his shoulder.
"John- is everything okay?"
John hesitated, then replied truthfully, "I hope so."
xXxXxXxXxXx
"Well, John. I had begun my evening ecstatic for a night in with a bottle of brandy, a trip to the theater, and a phone call to my mother about her hyacinth plants, but now…"
"Mycroft, are you joking me right now? Your brother left this flat at 4:51, with the intent of coming back in twenty minutes with dinner, and he's been gone for…" John checked his watch irritably. "Five hours and twenty-six minutes. And he left his hat that I'd given to him for Christmas on a bench by the Tesco."
Mycroft's sigh over the phone made static in John's ear. He fought the urge not to hyperventilate. Why didn't Mycroft care?
It dawned on him suddenly.
"…You know something I don't. Don't you, Mycroft?" John sat down slowly. "You know something."
Mycroft was silent on the other end. John held his breath, until after what seemed like an eternity Mycroft said quietly, "You do not need to know anything about this, John. It's best if you stay out of where you don't belong."
John's temper crept up in his throat. "…Where I don't belong? What part of your brother being my best friend gives you the idea that I don't belong? What does that mean, anyway? That I don't deserve to know where he is? That I don't get to know what's going on?"
"John," Mycroft interrupted, "I suggest best that we end this conversation and, for a while, you continue on with your work as if nothing was going on. In fact, I think it's probably for the best."
Before John could say anything else, Mycroft hung up on him. Stunned, John tried calling back.
Like before, John received the same coldly intoned error message.
The growing unease in his stomach told him what he already knew: that the Holmes brothers, for whatever reason, had just cut John Watson out of their lives.
xXxXxXxXxXx
"He's worried about you."
Sherlock straightened his collar, peering at his reflection. "He'll get over it quickly," he told Mycroft, the throwaway phone he had on speaker and sitting on the sink of the public restrooms.
"What is your course of action, Sherlock?"
"I'm going to do what I need to do, Mycroft. The challenge was presented to me and I'll attack it as best as I can."
"How do you know you're not walking into a trap?"
"I do know. I am walking into a trap. That's how he plays his game. You don't think I was studying him that whole time?"
A long pause, then a sigh. "Sherlock? What exactly are you doing?"
"You know exactly what I'm doing."
"But I fail to understand why you are responding to this man's games."
Sherlock finished grooming himself, and silently hung up the phone and slipped it into his pocket. "Why," he said quietly, "to protect my loved one."
Prompts were as follows.
From FMAfreakx: shadow and foreboding
From AmonBeck: flippant and gregarious
From fingers-falling-upwards: hyacinth
From Merle: collar
From CrimsonDuchess: ecstatic and hyperventilate