wassoalone (wassoalone) wrote in welcomethreads, @ 2013-07-11 16:39:00 |
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John thought he’d seen his share of extraordinary and impossible things, but this was above and beyond what he thought he could reasonably take at a given time. In fact he was not altogether convinced he was still sane. Perhaps he really did lose his mind after Sherlock’s death and was in some hospital somewhere, making up ideas of magic and fictional characters talking on the bloody internet to him. It made more sense than the reality of walking around a town where he could bump into a superhero or a vampire. After the initial panic, his stubborn mind decided it had to accept what was in front of him for the time being. So he wandered around the town. It reminded him a bit of the more rustic parts of England. He spoke awkwardly with a few people, but John secluded himself after Sherlock’s death on purpose. He’d rather not make connections, even shallow ones, in a temporary situation. He went through the motions. It was strange, though, for he kept finding milk in the fridge. Tea boxes that weren’t there before. It showed up in small random doses at first, and then consistently. He thought at first perhaps that was part of the magic here, items just appearing when the person needed them, but no one else seemed to be reporting it. He tested it out by using some of the milk and tea, and sure enough, it was replaced before he needed to get more. He’d stare at the fridge, confused, and wander away. John was currently waiting for the kettle to boil, moving from his room and into the kitchen, not looking up as he went through the living room. He was getting used to looking on the phone to see what was happening, what madness was coming up now, and he went through the motions of making tea. Sometimes it was the small moments that hurt the most. He took out one tea cup instead of two. There was no one else who would be needing any. There was only him in the two bedroom apartment, and he was not altogether certain if he preferred it that way or if he wished someone would be there if only he could avoid this debilitating silence. Instead he took a deep breath and let it out, poured the tea, and shuffled into the living room area to read and drink in peace. 47 cartons of milk, 31 boxes of assorted tea (he'd set the Lipton packages on fire), and 24 jars of jam later, Sherlock's hands were in his pockets, fingernails biting into his palms. John hadn't noticed. Phase I of Plan B would have to be terminated. On to Phase II that likely involved a black eye and copious amounts of shouting. He flattens his hand on the door and hesitates a fraction of a second before pushing forward, braced like a man facing his execution. The hall was empty. No sounds of a rattling kettle met his return, no measured clicks on the keyboard. Wrong, wrong. This wasn't the plan. Track the snipers, kill them (inadvertently validate Donovan), suss out Moriarty's second, kill them (slow, preferably), and return to John. A whole, alive John who would be just the same, if a little angry. Sherlock sat in the armchair facing the window (indent in the middle, circular stain on the arm—John's chair) and waited. For five minutes. When nothing happened, he stood, reversed the chair until it faced the kitchen, then sat again with his knees against his chest, waiting for a second time. After ten minutes of more nothing, Sherlock loosed most of the strings in the blanket and was about to embalm the throw pillow when John left his room to make tea. He tracked John's progress with his eyes, every detail signaling Not Good. Tell him. The memory of Mycroft's text was like the bitter aftertaste of a fake cigarette. Tell him what? It was all obvious, anyway. The milk, the tea, the jam, the suicide—Sherlock felt his heart lodge in his throat and he hated everything for feeling something undefinable. John was alive. That had to be enough. He waited. John was indeed alive, although he might argue how alive a person could be when so much of them was stripped away. He came back from the war broken and fragile, yet it didn’t hold a candle to the devastation left behind by one Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps it was the way it happened or how he only felt alive in the past eighteen months. At the same time, John was determined to not let Sherlock’s work be undone. He resurrected John Watson, and once the pain was lessened and the ache was no more than the rest of his war wounds, John would move on. Maybe continue on with their work, to a lesser degree. That was how he’d honor his best friend’s memory. The tea cup had no hope when he walked into the living room area only to find Sherlock sitting there, staring at him. His hands shook and went numb, so there it went crashing to the floor, spilling tea everywhere on the new rug and chipping a piece of the glass in the process. It was from sheer will power and a few decades in the army John kept on his feet, but he did sway slightly. Without a word he turned on his heel and walked into the kitchen. The reason why was made evident when he returned to the living room again, to see if it was a temporary delusion, and his mouth opened and closed several times when nothing changed. So then he disappeared into his bedroom, and started over, but lo and behold, Sherlock Holmes was still there. There was a point when too many emotions swirled through him until the only thing he actually managed to feel was general shock and numbness. That’s what led him to stand, tense and frozen, in his spot and continue to stare. “Sherlock,” he said finally, his vocal chords worked, look at that. “What are you doing in my chair?” Initial. Compensatory. Progressive. Refectory. Low oxygen levels, danger of hypoxia. Sherlock imagines John's cells fighting against lactic acid fermentation and thinks, belatedly, it might be Not Good hearing your resurrected flatmate finds your body chemistry appealing. Maybe. He tossed the pillow at the wall during John's circuit into the bedroom (trajectory intended to break a fall, should fainting occur), curling his legs in closer to his chest. Weak. Vulnerable. Play to John's nature. Avoid second stage of shock if possible, third stage at all costs. He's talking. Good sign. "Because it's yours," he says, a simple answer to an obvious question. Sherlock tucks his chin down a bit, the way he always does when wary of something, rare as that is. But John isn’t people. He's not disposable in the ways everyone else is, the ways he can dismiss what others think if it means self-preservation. Sometimes it feels like his skin is being peeled off and there’s something there, something foreign of himself that he hadn't noticed before. He hasn't decided yet whether that scares him or not. Carbon dioxide. Sherlock forces air into his lungs, only realizing now that he'd been holding his breath, and ignored the instinct to reach out. He doesn't need to touch John to deduce his blood pressure, despite wanting to. More waiting. Not my area. They could both be in shock. “That’s not … you know that’s not what I meant!” John felt the familiar rush of emotions he could only attribute to being around his friend: anger, frustration, and affection. Now it was coupled with pain and loss and his brain was definitely short circuiting at the moment. He wasn’t sure whether he should stand or sit. He ran the risk of his knees giving out this way, and that was a problem. On the other hand once he sat he might have to stay there. For a long time. He couldn’t read body language as well as Sherlock, but he had his own intuition to lean back on. Sherlock was in defensive posture, he was wrapped up in his limbs and keeping his distance. He was not sitting confident and comfortable, arrogant and unapologetic. John narrowed his eyes. He did wonder sometimes if Sherlock felt the way real people did, and most of the time he doubted it. But after what happened between them and on the roof? He knew better. “What are you doing here? How are you ….” It didn’t occur to him that some people showed up here before their death. He could tell from one look that this was the one who knew he did something wrong. The wariness was distinct. He huffed and compromised by sitting on the arm of the nearby couch. “Answers, Sherlock, now. And they better be good.” "Moriarty." Sherlock cleared his throat, raw from disuse. "He orchestrated more than just my professional ruin. He hired snipers to eliminate you, Mrs. Hudson, and Lestrade if I didn't comply with his terms. If I didn't play the game." There was still blood under his nails. Sherlock tucked his hands away and congratulated himself on becoming the man everyone thought he was from the beginning. It didn't feel rewarding. "After realizing the scope of his plan, I had only hours to ensure your safety. Molly helped with the decoy preparation once Moriarty shot himself on the roof. I broke my fall before impact. My contact disabled you with the bike. You know the rest." There was a terrible moment of silence where Sherlock imagined John would leave him for this. Every person he had ever known had left him at some point. It was inevitable, really, like the pull of gravity or milk turning sour. People had limits and Sherlock tested them, pushing and pushing and pushing until the shoreline disappeared and he was at sea again, alone. John wouldn't be here forever. The thought disturbed him. Moriarty. John assumed it was all wrapped up in that psychopath, and while he didn’t fully understand what Sherlock was talking about, he could fit it in the places he needed to. Somehow what he saw was an illusion. “Molly, I thought she was acting ….” Different. Not as sad as he expected. He thought there would be tears and heartbreak, but she was unusually distant. Guilty, maybe, with that in mind. John was too wrapped up in his own grief to pay much attention. “Okay, all right, but that doesn’t explain why you didn’t tell me. Do you have any idea how ….” He stopped himself and put a finger against his mouth, willing himself to stop talking and breath instead. He swallowed aside the lump in his throat and closed his eyes tightly, before getting past it and starting again. And then he started to snap. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” John sprang to his feet and stomped toward the chair, waving his hands in the air. He only did that when he didn’t feel that words were enough to convey what he was feeling. “I’ve been going crazy, d’you know that? Or have you been watching on one of those bloody cameras in the flat? Were you going to let that go on forever?” Acidosis. "John," he says instead, voice thick with something, because that's what you're meant to say when the world is falling apart. Sherlock stands, perhaps less fluidly than usual—there's a hitch to the motion that wasn't there before—but he's working against the instinct to build walls. It's something. It has to be something or he's lost everything. "John, look at me." He braces John by the upper arms, gently, nearing hesitant, as if he expects him to wrench free the second they touch. Sherlock breathes like he's forgotten how. "I had no choice. If I didn't jump, they would shoot. If you knew, they would shoot. It all amounts to the same thing. Moriarty forfeited the game when he involved you. I couldn't—I refuse—" He bites off a sound from the back of his throat and thinks this is what actual dying must be like. Social behavior. Expressing oneself. The whole thing was absurdly inane. He makes a face, closes his eyes, and digs his heels in against this feeling. "I couldn't lose you," he says to nothing. "I won't lose you." Then he opens his eyes, realizes his hands are gripping John's shoulders, and forcibly loosens them. It feels like a weight is lifted, though the result is disorienting. Sherlock searches John's face. John let Sherlock touch him for a short amount of time, it was startling since his friend rarely enjoyed physical contact. It was rare and brief, but it managed to throw him off enough it took awhile for him to catch up. The grip was tight and that more than anything else told John that yes, he was alive. He was living and breathing and talking. None of it enough of an explanation. But he was weak and that led him to pull Sherlock in for a hug. He was much shorter so it took a bit of finesse and angles, but he didn’t care because he hugged Sherlock and breathed in his unique scent. This was in stark contrast to what he did after, which was abruptly pull away from Sherlock and sock him in the face. It was the exact spot he did when they tried to sneak their way into Irene’s spot, and a love tap at the most, John had a better hook than that. It was a statement all on its own. He was all straight back and sharp eyes now, shaking out his hand angrily. “I’m not talking about before you jumped, I’m talking about after. When you were believed dead and Moriarty was gone, you could’ve told me. You should’ve told me. This whole time I’ve been … was this just another of your experiments? Let’s see what happens when John thinks I’m dead, could be interesting, I’ll take bloody notes!” Sherlock felt several things at once during that display and none of them were negative. Intriguing. An inventory of the damage yielded bruising under his left eye when he poked the skin, fingers coming away with a bit of blood. There was also the faint tingling feeling that seemed to linger, which was odd, considering his body didn't usually react that way to being embraced and assaulted in quick succession. Not that he had any experience in that. He scowls on principle despite there being no real heat behind it. "Haven't you been listening? There were snipers, John. Armed, paid, trained gunmen waiting for even the slightest chance of my return. I couldn't risk informing you until the danger was eliminated." Some part of him still resisted the necessity of confessing the whole story, of telling John what he'd committed himself to carrying out. It was one thing for his loyalty to be tested when faced with his flatmate's alleged fraud, but quite another when said flatmate admitted to murder. Lines. Angles. People had their boxes and their limits and like a child, Sherlock didn't want to meet John's. Even after being punched in the face. Turning, he took up his usual spot standing next to the window, glaring out at the view as if it meant to antagonize him. Maine was appallingly sunny. He hated it. At least the dull throbbing under his eye served a suitable distraction from the agony of an apology, so he poked his cheek until he felt the beginnings of a headache. It felt like a long time until he spoke again. "I bought milk." “You could risk it, you chose not to. You didn’t trust me. You trusted Molly, but you didn’t trust me.” John wasn’t entirely sure why that in particular bothered him, but it did, so add that to the pile mounting up against Sherlock. He wanted to punch and hug him again, maybe a few more times, so instead he put a sufficient amount of hostility in his glare to make up for it. “I could have helped you, I’m not a damsel you know, I’m a soldier. A doctor.” Now Sherlock was going by the window being himself with the sunlight behind him, and John’s gaze softened slightly. He did beg Sherlock not to be dead. This was getting his wish, wasn’t it? His eyebrows furrowed slightly in confusion, looking toward the kitchen and then back at him. “You bought --- it’s been you.” John pointed at the fridge and at his friend, making the connection easily from there. “You’ve been here for a few days, and instead of starting out with saying hello I’m alive, you decided buying milk, jam, and tea was the better way to go.” He pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers, and warring emotions tore him again. He wanted to be amused and irritated, and somehow he was simultaneously doing both for the time being. What’s he like to live like, Hellish I Imagine. I’m never bored. “Sit down on the couch, I’ll look at your eye in a moment,” John instructed briskly. He saw the bruise and he’d have to make sure it was generally harmless. As much as he wanted it to sting, he was not sadistic. "Oh, for God's sake. Don't you think I wanted to tell you?" Sherlock twists around, hackles raised and snarling like a half-drowned cat. The initial desired effect was probably lost at this point. He didn't care. "Or do you think I had a jolly time on Molly's couch washing the cat hair and blood residue off my coat? I would have told you right after I'd strangled every last one of the gunmen. After I made sure—absolutely certain, John—that there wasn't anyone left to carry on Moriarty's orders." It felt like he'd run a marathon, which sent him sagging against the arm of the couch with an annoyed huff. Norepinephrine. He pressed the heel of his palms into his eyes. This whole time he'd imagined John to be the one to succumb to the shock but it seemed, as with all things lately, Sherlock was again wrong. Pedestrian. Inexcusable. People want to know you're human. How was he supposed to know temporarily lying then doing the shopping wouldn't count as an apology? John always complained that Sherlock didn't do his part. Obviously, that meant milk represented a concession. He could have verbalized any of those things. But Sherlock didn't. He slumped off the arm of the chair and onto the floor in an obvious mockery of John’s request, contemplating clogging the plumbing with the last 46 cartons in the fridge. "No," was his only response. It was time to be seven and fend off any further sentimental incidents. Anger was at least easier to navigate. “Oh and I suppose you think that makes you the hero, does it? Flouncing around with your ridiculous coat making a martyr of yourself, leaving us normal people behind to pick up after you.” It was funny that John once thought Sherlock was an unemotional machine, because the more he got to know him the less he saw that. Sherlock didn’t understand sentiment, no, or social norms, but he was emotional. It just usually came in the form of irritation and arrogance. John might’ve appreciated what Sherlock was saying to him except he was too angry himself, and they were just going to have to shout at each other for a bit first. “You know who can help you with the strangling and hunting down of people? Me. I’ve killed before for you, and you know I’d do it again!” John watched Sherlock flop onto the floor and he rolled his eyes. “I will step on you if I have to,” he warned and then stepped into the kitchen for a moment. He would clean up the cup later, right now he only needed to wet a cloth and come back in. “Sherlock, I’m not getting on the floor. I am not ---” He made an annoyed tch sound with his tongue and grumpily got down next to Sherlock. “You are the most infuriating and impossible person on the planet. You can either remember you’re a grown man and let me see the bruise, or you can keep acting like a child. Prove me wrong and choose the right option here.” He resisted the impulse to try and touch Sherlock’s face himself, since he could get his hand smacked away. He was almost smiling through the irritation, a small bit, because this was all so familiar. Wonderfully familiar. Sherlock crossed his arms, studying the beginnings of that smirk through narrowed eyes. John was angry. John was happy. It made for a puzzling display of human behavior, though somehow more like familiar ground than a crime scene could have been. Heart rate, perspiration, body language. He never bothered with extrapolating anything beyond the necessary and disposed of the data as swiftly as it was compiled. It wasn't his job. John was tasked with defining the Not Good from the It's All Fine and without him, Sherlock was lost. The weight of that known certainty was alarming. "It defeats the purpose of the assault if you perform a physical exam." He finds the corner of his mouth is twitching, but doesn't bother to hide it. There are things about John he'll never understand without significant study, and somehow, he prefers it that way. An endless source of education in the sentimental. Oh, joy. If John reached for him, Sherlock wouldn't flinch. He much preferred the art of studying his face—signs of difficulty sleeping, poor diet, lack of consistent motivation. Sherlock knew he didn't look any better with the weight he lost, perhaps even worse. Maybe John would draw his own conclusions from the similarities. Maybe it didn't matter. "I would have—" He bites that off, reassessing. Caring is not an advantage. Mycroft could go to hell. "You are necessary." It could mean anything, but the rest gets stuck in his throat. “That’s what happens when you piss off a friend who happens to be a doctor. Makes it neater, really.” John tried to explain emotions to Sherlock, he never tired of trying, because occasionally he saw that his efforts were not in vain. Getting him the milk and tea was not the correct thing to do, but it was clearly Sherlock’s best attempt. He lived off the crumbs of a lesson not quite learned. Good effort though. Effort mattered, in John’s eyes. Since Sherlock wasn’t flailing or throwing an extra temper tantrum, John thought it was safe to reach out and touch his non-injured cheek. “Look at me, all right?” The request was gentle, and the intention was just so he could get a better look at Sherlock’s face. But his expression softened altogether when Sherlock said he was necessary, and he felt a bit awkward. And a whole lot sentimental. “Well, that’s ----” John cleared his throat and focused on the bruise instead. He touched it lightly with the wet cloth, but it was a clean hit. He did know how to hit a bloke without hurting him too much. No matter how angry he was, he could never do more harm than superficial. “That’s what friends are, you know. Necessary. The right ones.” Or the right one. John smiled at him, and he felt better, for a moment, which made him feel worse right after. “Sherlock, you don’t know ----” He cut himself off because his throat felt heavy and his heart even more so. “You’re necessary to me too, you know. And you left me. You left me.” It wasn’t the sort of thing milk, jam, and a few logical explanations could fix. Sherlock looked when he was told, searching the planes of John's face for the manual he wouldn't find. Friends. His brow knits before he's aware of it, a face he usually reserves for reconciling Not Good with the independent variable. There wasn't any room for friends in the spaces of his mind. No corner to be spared for the box of names and trinkets. It rattled around like there were shards of glass inside, tucked in with the police badge and the purple jumper. The right ones. He watched the changes in John's expression, the fleeting pleasure before the inevitable pain. This was grocery queues and family gatherings and college seminars and those imbecilic dinners Sebastian used to parade him around like a dog at a kennel club. All conclusive evidence. People were indecipherable. Sherlock turns his face away and thinks of the sea. "I came back," he says, finally, as if that could erase anything. "I'll always come back to you." He flicks his hand in a brief, stuttered gesture, which would look dismissive if Sherlock wasn't stealing a glance at him. "Obvious." “No, it’s not obvious, and you won’t always come back. You won’t be able to cheat death every time, so I’d appreciate you not acting like you’re bulletproof. We got lucky.” That was Sherlock. He flung himself into conflicts and managed to come out the other side intact, so it fed into him thinking he could survive anything. The infuriating part was he kept managing to be right about that! Not that John was complaining, in this case. “You broke my heart. You built it up again, and then you broke it worse than before. I’m going to be angry at you for that, and I don’t know how long.” John thought it was important he stayed mad, at least for a short time, to make it clear to Sherlock how Not Good his actions were. The faked death he understood, he held nothing about that against his friend. The afterward, yeah, that he had trouble letting go of. Because there he was crying at Sherlock’s grave, like a fool. “A relationship needs trust, Sherlock.” After being firm on that matter, John dropped his hand to Sherlock’s shoulder and squeezed it gently. “I am happy to see you. More than happy. I’ve missed you.” He didn’t have too much trouble expressing his feelings, especially since he knew that his friend took a lot of social cues from him. As if he was the social expert, really. Sherlock could find much better. Wrong. Sherlock bites down on his tongue before the word comes out, instead forcing himself to calculate the precise angle of John's frown. Of course he was bulletproof. He had John. "You don't mean that." He tilts his chin up a little, the haughty look just before he spreads a case out for debriefing. "I can continue to 'cheat death' so long as you're cheating it with me." He exhales heavily through his nose but doesn't bother disputing the rest. Most people were angry at Sherlock more often than they weren't, thus the stipulation wasn't at all unexpected. Irresistible force paradox. He dislikes riddles on principle, but unraveling all things John is proving quite the stimulant. "Do you say that to all your girlfriends, or am I special?" Sherlock smirks down at his hands, very briefly, before it disappears as soon as it came. People talk, John blogs, and Sherlock can still feel his fingers digging into the sniper's neck, the relief after that last breath. One step closer to 221B. The hand on his shoulder is like an anchor, resisting the tangible pull of his train of thought. He accepts it. Maybe looks a little lost, because he feels that way in discussions like these. "It was ... sufficiently intolerable conducting this case without you." Sherlock stares at him like he's waiting for John to translate what he can't define about himself. “I do mean that, and it’s not always going to be up to us. Just … be careful. I’d like us to keep cheating death until we’re old and gray, if that’s all right with you.” John could almost picture it too. Them still arguing in thirty years around the flat. It didn’t seem strange to him that was the way he pictured his future. Not with a wife and child, how he used to see it. When he met Sherlock he thought maybe he could have his cake and eat it too, but after he went through several girlfriends, it seemed less likely. John laughed, a huffing noise, and checked Sherlock’s cheek one last time, before moving away. He only changed position so his back was against the low end of the couch now. “If I said that to my girlfriends, maybe I’d be able to keep one of them.” For them it wasn’t a matter of trust. John Watson was very trustworthy. The women doubted where his priority was. His loyalty to Sherlock was attractive, until it seemed that was the only direction his loyalty went. “It’s true all the same.” His hand dropped when he moved away, although they were still within easy reaching distance. “What you’re trying to say is you missed me too. And that you’re sorry you’ve upset me and you’re glad to be here now. Did I deduce that correctly?” John smiled at Sherlock, a bit smug really, since he knew he was right about at least part of that. Two years ago, Sherlock was actively pursuing a shorter lifespan. Drug abuse, violent cases, combative with authority—in retrospect, he'd been looking for an out. Something to fill the void Moriarty succumbed to, a place where he ultimately might have ended up. A rooftop somewhere with a bullet in his head and a gun in his hand. "It's all fine," is what he hears himself say in response, the imagery of a graying John fixing tea and complaining about refrigerated body parts was comforting in a way that nothing else could be. He was contracted, now. Irreversibly sworn to preserve that future, come hell or high water, girlfriend or no. Sherlock would hold fast to that promise, however unwittingly made. When John laughs, the sound is it's own reward. He scoffs simply for the principle of the thing, rubbing at the bruise to make a point. "You've kept me around, thus, it's succeeded with someone. And Mrs. Hudson. That makes two." An obvious joke, but a joke nonetheless. He's already fighting down a smirk when he plucks the wet rag out of John's hand, balling it up and tossing it across the room. There. See if the doctor can fuss without his tools. At the deduction, he scowls with his whole face, though it's born mostly out of confusion and two parts curiosity. Does he detest the idea or is he mildly intrigued by it? Further citations needed. "John. You make me sound as if I'm becoming domestic." “It’s not quite the same, Sherlock, but you already knew that.” For a man somewhat common looking, John had very good luck with getting women. Keeping them was another matter. His mind was far, far away from worrying about that anyway. All he had to think about right now was their current situation and his best mate was alive. He rolled his eyes again when Sherlock tossed the rag. “Thanks for that.” He’d have to pick it up eventually. He tilted his head toward Sherlock curiously. “Well, yes. We lived together for a year and a half. That becomes domestic, once familiarity and comfort kicks in.” John felt a twinge in his heart, something that made him slightly uncomfortable, and he couldn’t pinpoint what it was. So instead he pushed to his feet. He walked over to pick up the teacup, still dropped on the floor, and eyed it. “Still works, I think. I’ll start the kettle up again. For the record, the next time you can just knock on the door.” He hesitated when he thought about the fact he didn’t have a flatmate yet. Technically Sherlock could move in. He didn’t think they’d argue with that. John was on the fence about it. He didn’t really want Sherlock out of his sight. On the other hand, that didn’t make his point stick about things still being Not Good. Punishing Sherlock punished them both. He frowned and thought it over as he went into the kitchen to boil the water. Sherlock rolls his eyes but doesn't bother commenting on the John vs Girlfriends litigation, preferring instead to curl his fingers like his missing mobile is a phantom limb. Not being able to text was a visceral pain. And Molly was just about to introduce him to app games, too. Pity. At the tilt of John's head, Sherlock glances at him, focus snapping back like a rubber band. Something was different. He was tense, his breathing pattern quicker. Epinephrine? Sherlock reaches for him the same moment John stands, his hand inches away from catching at that wrist before he's out of range and the chance is lost. He's left like that, hand outstretched for all of ten seconds, every fiber of his being fixed with the need to evaluate. To peel him apart until every last cell can be analyzed as part of the whole, to make sense of the necessity to his own life. Domestic. Chemical. He makes note of the case requiring further evidence. Potentially a name, too, but he isn't the blogger here. Sherlock stands, a little unsteady. "Don't feign ignorance, John, it doesn't suit you and it only wastes time." If John responds to the accusation, Sherlock won't hear it. He abandons the flat entirely in favor of collecting what few items he's lifted since the journey over, the confirmation already received. John didn't strangle him. That meant they could still live together. Obviously. It was a good thing Sherlock didn’t say most of these things out loud, because John wouldn’t be all that comfortable with the idea of peeling him apart cell by cell. Sometimes he did wonder what Sherlock was thinking and what it was like in that strange mind of his, but he was just fine with keeping to his own brain at the end of the day. Being brilliant seemed well and good until you became aware of the downfalls, and he saw them. “Sh -- bloody hell.” John was probably going to sulk about it, because it seemed like the thing to do, but he wasn’t going to lock him out either. He felt bad for anyone who had to share a living space with Sherlock anyway, it might as well be him. When Sherlock went to get his things, he missed the naked relief on John’s face along with a big smile. By the time he got back, they’d have tea and start over. But it was a start, and that was more than he ever hoped for. Just like that, John Watson felt alive again. |