Chapter Text
The first text message catches John in surgery midday; a horrible day, in which each patient is more miserable than the last. Preoccupied with moaning patients and later, a whimpering, feverish Rosie, his mind refuses to parse the news and its meaning.
There’s order in his life these days, he ardently reminds himself; a toddler he’s the sole minder of, a house and a job and everything suburban in between. He has priorities he’s determined to stick to in order to keep his sanity at bay, if just barely. He’s older and wiser; painful lessons well and truly learned. No longer the greatest fool that ever lived, thrown under the bus again and again by people he foolishly believed loved him just as much as he loved them.
They never did. He knows that now. He can live with that now. It’s been a long time.
But then, three days later, breathing in the subdued silence of another sleepless night and a cold, empty bed, a second text arrives.
For a fraction of a second, the world stops humming.
“You’re faffing,” he tugs helplessly on his tie, admonishing the aging man in the mirror. His dress shirt needs pressing and his tie is hideous, but trying to fix this all now will only result in him running later than he already is. There’s a biting irony he refuses to acknowledge in the fact that he threw away the perfectly fitted suit he wore the last time he attended a funeral. Mary’s funeral.
It’s been two years.
Tw and a half hours later he steps off the train. The skies over Hastings Village Cemetery are dull and leaden. Shafts of sunlight cut through the early autumn grey, as if the sun’s playing hide and seek with the low clouds. Standing away from the crowd, John flexes his fingers inside his gloves, carefully, breathlessly watching Sherlock from afar like a stranger.
These days, of course, that's exactly what John is.
The detective stands ramrod straight by the shallow graves, his coattails flapping in the afternoon breeze and mixing with fragrant smells of freshly dug Earth. From far away at the edge of the plot, John can almost hear the soft rustle of his bulky, buttoned-up coat. Slowly, far too slowly, the crowd of mourners disperses, each shaking the pastor’s hand in thanks for a moving sermon. Mycroft is nowhere to be seen; ironic, given that the last time he laid his eyes on the elder Holmes was at Mary’s funeral, in lieu of Sherlock himself. John doesn’t remember much of that day. To be perfectly honest, he doesn’t remember much of those months. All he can say for sure is that one moment Mary was bleeding an enormous amount of blood on a cold stone floor, and the next moment, John’s life became the centre of a perfect, malignant storm.
As soon as the tempest blew over - it’s hard to tell how long after - Sherlock was no longer in his life. John had insisted. He demanded it like he never demanded anything else in his entire life, furiously and in complete disregard for Molly Hooper's begging eyes. Sherlock, for what must have been the first time ever, had acquiesced. Only, John never expected him to. He assumed, based on past experience, that Sherlock would pester him, insisting on breaking John’s will down. But he didn’t, and so John put his head down and soldiered on… and just like that, they haven’t seen or heard from each other in two years.
Two whole years.
The realisation makes him dizzy. No texts, no phone calls, not even mentions of Sherlock in the news. For all John knew, Sherlock had gone underground all over again. It was none of his business, he’d told himself. Ten times a day at first, and then as the months passed it dwindled down to once a day, then once a week, then the nagging thoughts stopped. Mostly.
And yet, there Sherlock stands looking much the same over the fresh graves, expensive dress shoes digging into the already melting sleet. John's chest blooms with something childish, something ugly at the sight of him still alive, obviously mourning, and so bloody, horribly distant. For a moment or two, when John first set foot in the cemetery, he’d thought about going over and speaking to him. Swallowing his pride, rising above all the ugliness between them, and offering his condolences. At the very least, he figured as soon as his determination dwindled, he should make a point of standing in his line of sight and nodding meaningfully when he catches the man’s eye. He mustered the courage to act, moved around this way and sent hesitant glances, but it was all for nought. Sherlock's eyes would focus either on something unseen at a distance, or down to the ground. Shocked, maybe. Lost in his own world, probably. Overwhelmed with the stream of well-wishers; all the talking, all that hand-shaking, all that bloody attention, right when one simply cannot stand it.
John can’t blame him.
He was right there only two years ago, after all.
After the joint funerals, the crowd - bigger than John ever expected - gathers at the Holmes' cottage for the reception. The mood in the house, much like Sherlock's body-language that afternoon, is muted and stifling.
Despite the numerous guests filling the space between the walls with hushed, polite conversations, the red-bricked cottage feels empty as it stands devoid of both of its owners. The main topic of conversation is, of course, the circumstances that brought them all there, Poor Mrs. Holmes, who went into the hospital for a simple case of pneumonia, just as a precaution. And poor Mr. Holmes, who climbed a small stoop during her third day there to bring her her favourite book and broke both hips when misplacing a foot.
A simple lung infection took Mrs. Holmes away on a Tuesday. A blood clot claimed Mr. Holmes three days later. Both gone, quickly and unexpectedly, in a matter of days.
He’s twenty minutes into swirling apple cider in an ancient crystal flute when Sherlock sweeps through the house like a spectre, storming all the way from the front door to the kitchen. A man walks into the sitting room right behind him, shaking sleet from his shoulders: tall, saturnine. There’s something faintly familiar about him, but it’s Sherlock that grabs John’s attention back immediately (what else is new).
John cranes his neck, following Sherlock’s movements. When he disappears, John looks around for a familiar, reassuring face, but there’s no one there to speak to. Lestrade is in Ireland for a family wedding, and Mrs. Hudson is recovering from an emergency eye surgery.
Mrs. Hudson.
He rang her up last week. It was only when she answered, business-like and distant, that he’d realised how much he missed the soothing warmth of her affection. She was surprised, caught unprepared, but also straight-forward. He’d asked about the funeral. She answered. Told him about her surgery, asked about Rosie’s well-being.
Later that night, as he tossed and turned in his bed, it dawned on him that she didn’t ask about him.
She didn’t ask about him, because they’ve been there before. Because he’d taken himself out of the picture yet again. Because when Sherlock isn't around, he not only loses Sherlock, he loses the people who love Sherlock.
You’d think he’d have learnt his lesson by now.
He’s faffing again.
He’ll have to leave soon, very soon, in order to make it back to London in time to relieve Rosie’s minder just as he promised. Suck it up, he orders himself. He’d fought wars, he’d shot criminals. He can gather the courage to express his condolences to a man who sorely needs them. Leaving now without having said a word would only add insult to injury.
Putting one foot in front of the other he finds the kitchen empty. Bereft somehow, though you can still spot the signs of everyday life strewn about. Mr. and Mrs. Holmes left the house expecting to come back, the knick-knacks, the photos, the carefully handwritten notes scribbled on a calendar. For all Sherlock's supposed detachment and coldness, it always struck John just how cosy and homey 221B was. No doubt an inheritance from his parents, homely and quaint though it may be.
It doesn’t take a detective to figure out the trail leading to him: a familiar navy-blue scarf on the kitchen table, a pair of black leather gloves next to the stove, right beneath the frosty window overlooking the patio. Most telling of all, perhaps, is the plume of cigarette smoke, billowing up against the backdrop of a greying grove. When John was last here, searching for Sherlock amidst Christmas dinner cooking, Mrs. Holmes pointed at the very same spot.
“It’s where he would hide from me as a boy,” she said with that patented, crooked smile that the magic of genetics passed on to her younger son. “When he’d had enough of my nagging.”
“Not a very good job of it, is it?” he asked.
“He’s gotten much better since,” she shrugged knowingly, stirring her soup.
The memory unsettles him, just enough to reach for the patio door handle. The door doesn’t creak. John's presence is left unannounced. In his pale, still state, Sherlock stares into the distance like a marble statue. He’s scratching his lower lip with his thumb, deep in thought.
John clears his throat. It’s the sensible thing to do. Then, with a gravelly quiver, “Hi.”
Sherlock turns around in surprise. “John?”
John nods hesitantly. With his lips rigid and barely parting, he replies, "I'm so sorry."
“Whatever for?”
“Ahm-” John blinks. “For… for your loss. I’m so sorry. Losing them both like that, that’s…”
“Right, of course,” Sherlock shakes his head. “Thank you. That’s very kind of you.”
“They were lovely people.”
Sherlock arcs his neck around. “They certainly put up a great show, didn’t they?”
Every single ounce of air leaves John’s lungs in one fell swoop at the sight of him, the sound of him. He’s been expecting a raging tirade at him showing his face there, a snarky comment perhaps. At best, a pair of narrow eyes and a decoding, all-knowing glare.
What he wasn’t expecting was this: cordial Sherlock. Impossible-to-read, emotionless, dormant-volcano Sherlock.
That’s the worst one.
“Where’s, eh…” John clears his throat. “Where’s Mycroft?”
“Should be lurking somewhere by the cucumber sandwiches, is he not?” John shakes his head. Sherlock takes a long drag on his cigarette in response. “Terrorizing the caterer, then.”
“Must be.”
“Somebody has to do it,” Sherlock shrugs.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Perfectly all right, thank you for asking. Thank you for coming, too. I really do appreciate it,” Sherlock says, pressing the butt of his cigarette against an empty, yellow planter. “The last direct train to Victoria leaves in forty-five minutes.”
“Sorry?”
“Don’t let me keep you,” Sherlock says when something catches his attention right behind John. “And do give my best to Watson.”
“Sher-”
“Excuse me,” Sherlock says and with a twist of his coat he steps inside the warmth of the kitchen.
John cranes his neck around just so, following him as he leaves.
He hates that he still does that.
Baker Street is empty.
Not the entire street, just one very particular building. The heavy black door looks exactly the same, the shiny knocker rests crooked as it does, keeping its secrets to itself. One secret, for example, is where everyone is. It’s Sunday morning. He still remembers 221’s Sunday morning routine by heart. Late lie-ins all around. A home-cooked breakfast Mrs. Hudson always insisted on making for the three of them. Newspapers read out loud for the benefit of her tutting at ‘the state of this country’.
“Sshhhh,” he rocks Rosie in her pushchair. She’s bundled safely, protected from dripping gutters and chilly drafts. This little detour is decidedly outside her Sunday morning routine. She squints up at him, confused and, though he’s probably imagining it, accusatory. “‘m sorry. Let’s just go.”
That’s what you get for being a bloody coward, he thinks as they make their way up to the park, a place he’s avoided like the plague till now on the off chance he might, just might, run into Sherlock. The wide open pastures of the park welcome them, and by the time he finds a calming pace among breathless joggers and sweeping willow trees, Rosie’s fallen fast asleep. They all pass them by, unaware of just how stupidly hallowed the place feels - as though he’s a time traveller from the past (or maybe the future) encroaching on some long forgotten memory, disturbing its peace.
His legs, which seem to have gained a life of their own this morning, take him all the way up a curving incline, and the Primrose Hill Café reveals itself in the distance. Not a bad idea, the coffee. And so he marches onward, now finally a man on a mission that actually makes sense. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he sees something that makes him do a double take. It’s Sherlock - right there, exactly where John had been meaning to get to, for a bit of shelter from the cold. Looking exactly the same as he always does, it’s the company that he keeps that stumps John. Or rather, it’s the fact that he has company at all, to be perfectly honest. And as his brain works to parse and react, somehow, two things happen simultaneously: Sherlock, thanks to some witchcraft, catches John’s eyes from afar. John, for his part, recognizes the man sitting opposite Sherlock, sipping from a paper cup. It’s the same man who came storming after Sherlock into his parents’ house right after the funeral earlier that week. He’s also, the realisation suddenly dawns on him, the same person who caught Sherlock’s eye from the kitchen as Sherlock rushed out of the patio, leaving John behind.
John’s brain falls stupidly blank. Which is a problem, because presently, Sherlock Holmes is making his way towards him.
“John?”
“Yeah,” John croaks. “Hi.”
“Are you alright?”
“Yeah, ‘f course.” John says, painfully aware that he’s staring. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“I was, er,” John clears his throat. “There was some… book thing for children at Daunt and I, er..” (Lies, all lies). “We were in the neighbourhood, I suppose, so I stopped by.”
“Stopped by?”
“Yeah,” John says. “Thought we’d say hello to Mrs. Hudson.”
“Ah,” is all Sherlock says, and it’s more than enough. Because there it is, the narrowed, all-seeing eyes, taking whatever it is John’s sweaty face and slouched shoulders have to offer to the mighty brain of a man like Sherlock Holmes.
What the hell was he thinking? Jesus, what the hell was he doing here?
“Mrs. Hudson’s gone to the shops,” Sherlock says, never one to offer more than strictly needed.
“Ah,” John swallows nervously. “And you?”
“Out for a stroll.”
“Can I, er…” John gazes out into the expanse of the park, examining the man at the patio. “Are you free? For coffee? My treat.”
Sherlock, wordlessly, presents a paper cup held tightly by a leathered glove.
“Friend of yours?” John finally asks.
Sherlock looks over the shoulder, prompting the other man to offer them both a bashful nod. “Yes.”
“Do I know him?” John asks. “Looks… familiar.”
“That’s DCI James Hawkins,” Sherlock explains. “You might have met him before. He’s working on a monograph for Scotland Yard about financial crimes.”
“So you’re…” John scratches his left eyebrow uncomfortably. “What, helping him?”
On a Sunday morning, over coffee in the park?
“I am.”
“At your parents’ funeral reception, too?” John can’t help the snarkiness. You’d have to be an expert to catch on to it. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what Sherlock is. His face tenses, and the cold air between them thickens. Rightfully so, if John may say so himself.
“James is a friend,” Sherlock says. “In my understanding, that’s what friends do.”
Over and out. The words–snarky, biting, and so obviously aimed at him–are a curtain call for John, his pride, and whichever unfortunate intentions he’d had wandering anywhere near Marylebone.
“Yeah,” John nods, an uncontrolled grimace spreading across his face. He grabs the pram’s handles, turning around in defeat. “Yeah, you’re right. Good, right then. It was good to see you.”
Sherlock only nods in response.
John can feel the burn of his glare on his back as he steps away, the gravel crackling like embers under his feet.
Yes, no doubt about it.
Over and out.