Chapter Text
There’s thirty seconds left for the cottage pie to finish heating up. The microwave, emitting the only light in the room, hums as the plastic container slowly spins. The package said seven minutes on eight hundred watt, but Mrs. Hudson’s microwave only goes up to seven hundred watt, and even that, it doesn’t usually reach. John’s meals almost always turn out lukewarm.
John stands still, looking down at the microwave. His arms hang loosely at the sides of his body. If you were to be looking at this at a distance, you might think you’re be looking at a picture. The only thing betraying John’s status as living is the slow movement of his chest, illuminated by the device in front of him, as he breathes.
“There’s cheddar cheese in the fridge. Very cheesy. Cheese-y. Melt and it’s molten. Mold could be in the bathroom. There’s mold in the bathroom. Black spots mean mold.”
It’s a pseudo-hallucination. It’s all false. John knows that much. He’s aware that it’s all a trick of the mind. He wishes that his awareness of the voice being fake would make it disappear.
There’s heavy rain steadily tapping at the window. Sherlock didn’t bring a rain coat with him. Probably thinks he’s above that. He wants to get sick, John thinks blankly, for a case or to find out what his body does or some other reason he thinks I’m too dumb to notice. Idiot. I should go after him.
He doesn’t.
He stares at the microwave. Ten seconds. Nine. Eight.
His reflection stares back, but John doesn’t recognise it as his. It can’t be him, but, then again, he doesn’t really know what he’s expecting himself to look like. Sadder. More sullen, maybe. He doesn’t look as miserable as he thinks he feels. He’s not actually miserable, he can’t be. He looks the same as he always does.
“Mold means, means, means… The means to-”
The microwave beeps.
John lets it beep for longer than he should. After a second or three or four, he bends down and tugs on the microwave’s door, opening it. Sherlock always yanks it open. He accidentally tore it off once. Mrs. Hudson got rather upset at him for that.
The light goes out. The room goes dark. John grabs the container with his bare hands. It’s already too late when the sensation of hot hot hot gets through to him. He drops the container onto the floor.
“Fuck!”
Every single feeling goes through him at once, and he springs to life like a wind-up toy. He kneels down and hastily tries to pick up the meal, burning himself again. He pulls his hands away. The floor seems fine, and he thanks the stars for it as he goes to sit on the floor with his knees drawn to his chest. He laughs in jerking breaths.
As soon as the feelings start, they seep right out of his body once more, and now, he feels more like a marionette with its strings cut. He looks, with furrowed brows, at the upsidedown container. The film hasn’t been taken off.
John isn’t sure how long exactly he stays there on the floor.
For a moment, the dull sensation that had been him for the past couple of years or so had vanished. He’d laughed. And it hadn’t been good. Of course it hadn’t been good, but he had laughed, and he had felt something else and it wasn’t thanks to Sherlock or anything. It was all him. Him and that stupid microwave meal.
He reaches to touch the container again, but it isn’t hot anymore. Not warm enough to burn him.
So, he picks it up, gets off the floor, and goes to the kitchen table, which has been decorated with Sherlock’s experiments, where he puts the cottage pie down. With trembling fingers he tears the film off, and sits, immediately wanting to bash his head against the table. Cutlery. He doesn’t have any stupid cutlery.
“Forks and spoons. Knives, maybe? The butler did it! Don’t be silly, it’s never the butler, not anymore…”
With his last bit of energy, he gets up and moves to the drawer under the microwave, which he opens. He looks at the selection of spoons and forks. And the knives. Of course, the knives, it’s what Sherlock would call obvious. John feels obvious.
It’s embarrassing to even consider cutting himself, John thinks. Logically, he knows it isn’t. He’s seen a couple of people, in his time as a doctor, who weren’t teenage girls, who still cut themselves open. Not a whole lot, but it wasn’t exceptionally rare, though the helplines and websites most often referred to self-harm as being exclusively a teenage-girl-problem.
Sherlock would notice. John would subconsciously prefer his left arm or leave a blood stain of precisely 0.012 ml on the counter, or there’s an entire knife missing from the drawer or by the way his toes wiggle it’s actually likely that he is lying and thus, guilty, you stupid, stupid moron. Not in those exact words. Sherlock would think it, though. He’s enough of an asshole for that.
John sighs. If he’s going to cut himself, he’s going to have to be less obvious. He’s not going to use a knife from their shared drawer. Maybe he’ll go to a local craft store, just to have something to fall back on if the numbness gets too big for him to handle. Maybe he’ll cut his thighs or stomach. Something not too obvious. He can do that.
John grabs a fork and spoon from the drawer and goes back to the kitchen table, where he finishes his meal in the company of a jar filled to the brim with intestines.
Some time later, John's not entirely sure how much 'some' is, Sherlock comes home, positively drenched, grinning from ear to ear. He seems surprised that John’s still in the kitchen. He says something, but it doesn’t really get through to John so he just hums in agreement and nods.
“You didn’t hear what I said,” Sherlock says, grin fading as he shifts into some kind of deduction-mode. “Most obviously, you didn’t look at me whilst I talked, your eyes are unfocused, your–”
“Yep. Yeah, got it.”
“Got it, groceries, got groceries, eggs and milk and jam and tea. Tea, put the kettle on, we’re solving this case, together, forever!”
“So, I fear I must repeat what I said: ‘good evening, John, how are you doing?’”
“Somehow, I doubt that that is what you said. I'm doing good, just finished my meal,” John makes an effort to look up at Sherlock, and puts on a half-smile, pointing at his now empty plastic container for emphasis. What he doesn't say is that he's got no clue for how long he's been sitting at this exact spot. “So, why were you outside for so long?”
Sherlock lights up and jumps into a monologue about him having to study a rock which obviously must’ve been planted there, because it was in a slightly different level of decay compared to the other rocks on the pile. The question is how and why, as there appear to be no clues or hints towards a greater overarching plot.
John stops paying attention about halfway through. If Sherlock notices, he doesn’t say anything.