Chapter Text
He catches a cold in the middle of month four.
John had been pretty steadily moving through the sludge, before that. He wasn’t exactly having a good time of it, but now that Sherlock no longer took him on cases - something he avoided thinking about, usually, the stab of hurt only came from a blunter and blunter knife each time he did - he had settled into a routine that didn’t change, and was easy to trudge through, and boiled down, really, to getting up to go to the clinic and coming back to go to bed.
Something collapses when he first feels the headache and stuffy nose. He calls in sick to work, and he takes the next two days off. He’s always had a pretty strong immune system, and he fights it off in those two days, and he feels much, much better after, especially with the help of who he assumes is Mrs. Hudson, leaving food in front of his door. He could probably have returned to work after those couple days.
But he doesn’t.
He means to, the next day, he really does, but he’s spent the entirety of the past two days in his bed, and now that he’s changed the sheets, the bed only looks more tempting. Something in his mind whispers that he can take another couple days off. No one’s going to miss him, certainly, the only person getting hurt will be him, and Sarah’s always cut him slack when he ran off with Sherlock for cases. It’s just a couple days.
It comes from the back of his mind, the place that seems to always house the strangely thick darkness, even on his better days. It’s a place he knows not to trust, but it’s so tempting, it’s so tempting, and how bad can it be if it’s only echoing something John’s been wishing for day after day?
It’s just a couple days.
Just a couple more days turns into a week, and he spends all of it sleeping. He only goes downstairs when he knows Sherlock won’t be there, to eat and bring food up into his room. He hasn’t showered in three days. He feels awful, but he knows, or at least the voice in his head knows, that it’ll only be worse if he gets out of bed, if he attempts to get back on his feet. He doesn’t, instead rolls over in bed and goes back to sleep (or, rather, stares at the wall for a couple hours until he finally falls into a doze that somehow only makes him more tired).
It’s exactly seven days after he first contracted the cold that there’s a knock on the door. He’d been on the bed, of course, and hadn’t been doing anything but watching himself. It was an odd feeling, looking from outside down at himself, like he was floating, like what he was doing wasn’t really him anymore. The knock doesn’t exactly scare him back into his body, but it’s enough to prompt him into dragging himself up (slowly, lethargically, as per usual), then again to the door, until he comes face to face with Sherlock.
He blinks. He wasn’t entirely sure who he was expecting to be on the other end of the door, but he knows he hadn’t been expecting Sherlock.
He stares stupidly at Sherlock until he speaks. “Ah . . . John.”
“Yeah?” His voice is rough and weary. He hasn’t been using it much. At all, really, he thinks, over the past week.
“It’s been 8 days since you’ve left the flat,” Sherlock starts out cautiously, a sign that he means for this to be more than the casual do-you-want-to-split-take-out and how-did-the-case-go conversations they’d had more than enough of in the previous months. “8 days since you’ve left your room, really, except to get food when you’re sure I’m not here-” Damn. He had been hoping Sherlock didn’t notice, although he supposes he should have expected it. Sherlock is still Sherlock even if John is no longer John. Sherlock’s words speed up. “-and you got over your cold in the first couple days, so that is not the reason. There hasn’t been any significant event in the days prior to cause such an extreme reaction, so there must be something I cannot see.” He stops abruptly, taking in a breath, and stares at John, something in his eyes that John has never seen before, something that asks John to please fill in the blanks.
John doesn’t know what blanks he wants him to fill. “It’s nothing. I’ll be out tomorrow.” Probably.
“No, it’s not!” Sherlock looks like he’s just as surprised by the words as John is. He recovers quickly, much quicker than John, and says in a much quieter voice, “no. it’s not. Just- just, please, what’s wrong?” Sherlock’s voice has taken a pleading tone, something John had never genuinely heard from him outside of manipulation and disguises.
And suddenly, John is very, very angry. Sherlock had been the one that had started all this, wasn’t he? He had left him, had left John until everything that made him John disappeared and he had been completely taken over by this strange, ugly shadow, had almost completely severed their relationship by no longer allowing him on cases, and now, for all of his brilliance and cleverness and deductions, could not figure out what was wrong?
It’s the first time in a long time, a longer time than John cares to count, that John has felt something besides gray, humid sadness and dull, endless apathy. He feels almost lit on fire, feels like he could burn Sherlock to the ground and maybe burn himself up in the process, feels like his old self again.
“You can’t deduce it?” he snaps harshly. Sherlock looks taken aback, again, only for a split second, before his face melts back into a determined, pressed anger. He looks like he might say something, but John doesn’t let him. “No. Leave me alone. You didn’t exactly have a problem with doing that before.”
He doesn’t wait to see Sherlock’s reaction to the jab, instead closing the door in his face and pressing his back against it. As soon as the door clicks shut, the anger dissipates, no matter how much he tries to hold on to the feeling. The bright, red anger disappears and he’s back to feeling nothing but gray.
He tries to muster up anger at Sherlock again for that, but, still, the only anger he finds is at himself.
---
He returns back to work the next day.
Sarah gives him worried glances over the course of the day, asks him where he was and why he wasn’t answering his mobile when he’s readying to leave. He mutters something about Sherlock being a prat and ducks out. It’s raining outside.
When he gets back to the flat, it’s late and he’s wet. The door is unlocked, as usual, so he heads straight to the shower, plans to grab an apple from the kitchen if they have any left, then go straight to bed. He takes longer in the shower than he normally takes, catches himself watching water swirl down the drain no less than four times.
Sherlock is downstairs when he finishes up and walks down for his apple. In fact, he’s already holding out an apple, along with a cup of tea, and isn’t that strange? As far back as John can remember, Sherlock has never made tea, not once. Hasn’t made anything for safe human consumption at all, really, and yet here he is, offering John exactly what he had been craving without even being asked. John hadn’t even made eye contact with Sherlock when he had strode in, so how-?
John takes the food with a cocked eyebrow, and Sherlock can’t ever resist showing off, and launches into an explanation that John is only half listening to. It’s when Sherlock stops, and looks at him with an expectant stare, looking like he’s waiting for John to tell him something, like he’s waiting for John to-
Of course. Without John at crime scenes, who would praise Sherlock’s brilliant deductions?
It’s this that finally sets John off. He hasn’t really, truly smiled in weeks, but this small, simple look from Sherlock sends him into peals of laughter, so much so that he has to set down the tea onto a table, hands shaking so much that there’s a real danger he might just spill it all onto his hand. Sherlock looks at him confused, which only makes him laugh harder, and he laughs and laughs until he thinks he must have made up for all the months without a single bright moment.
When he’s finally able to regain control of himself, his sides ache, and he’s so happy. He’s so airy, feels amazing and so wonderfully sated and content and he wants to stay like this, to feel like this, forever. There’s a blue, happy feeling painted over the darkness in the depth of his mind and he barely restrains himself from letting out a gleeful giggle. He wonders why he ever, ever avoided Sherlock, why he decided that both he and Sherlock would be better with minimal contact, why he decided to deprive himself of this wonderful, wonderful feeling.
Sherlock still doesn’t look like he knows what’s going on, but John definitely doesn’t want to explain and send Sherlock into a sulk when he seems to just have started to open back up to John (and perhaps visa versa?) so instead he just says, “Brilliant, as always.”
Sherlock, predictably, preens at the praise. John suppresses another laugh.
“And,” John adds. “Thank you. For this.” He pauses to take a bite out of his apple, but also to give himself break enough to push down his pride to say, “I’m sorry for yesterday. I didn’t- I was out of line.”
“No it’s- it’s fine. It’s fine,” Sherlock says, and John wants to frown again, this time in concern - Sherlock hates repeating himself - but Sherlock continues before he has any time to ponder it. “And, John, I’d like- well, Lestrade said he might have a case for us tomorrow.”
Us.
---
Everything is back to normal.
Everything is back to the way it was, at month two, when he was still going on cases with Sherlock and there wasn’t a raging uncertainty between them, and they’re closer now, he thinks, and more and more days are spent in blue and happy and laughter and together, rather than the gray, crushing loneliness and sadness and icky smog of before.
However, it really only makes things worse when those days do come back, because what reason does he have to be sad like that? What justification does he have for feeling so awful? Why does he still feel a haunting presence in the back of his mind, even during the most wonderful of days?
This time, just as before, Sherlock notices something is wrong. This time, though, he doesn’t stare as much as he tries to help - or, at least, John thinks so. He begins to find cups of tea left around the flat, always hot, usually whenever he finds himself craving one. Sherlock starts to demand his presence more and more for the simplest things, calling him back to help him with another one of his inane experiments, or to help him organize the flat with a method that only he seemed to understand. If John’s being honest, it’s nice to feel taken care of and, at the same time, to feel like he’s needed.
The depression remains - and John thinks he’s finally aware enough to recognize it for what it is, rather than a faint pressured sadness at the back of his mind.
It’s during another one of these dark spells - the ones in which John, usually right after a case when he knows the clinic won’t be expecting him for another day or two, lays in bed the whole day and tries to simultaneously fight off and embrace the gray exhaustion - that Sherlock knocks on the door. John can’t help his surprise. They’re on month 6, and ever since they had returned to business as usual, John had assumed that Sherlock was ignoring, well, this. Just like John was.
It looks like he was wrong, though - he’s been up here for two days, he thinks, and there’s no way Sherlock could have mistaken this for anything but one of those days. He doesn’t want Sherlock to come in, doesn’t want him to see him like this, and definitely doesn’t want to have to explain anything to Sherlock. He calls for him to come in anyway.
Sherlock enters hesitantly, but he hides it well, John knows that if he hadn’t known Sherlock for so long he would have missed it behind the determination and clenched fists. “John,” he starts, and then pauses, staring at him, harshly enough that John isn’t actually sure that Sherlock isn’t glaring at him instead.
“Sher . . . lock?” he says after a couple moments of them staring at each other (or Sherlock glaring at him, and John staring back at him?) in silence. He tries to subtly clear the raspiness from his throat. It doesn’t work, he thinks, but he has no way of knowing, because Sherlock, taking his voice as a prompt to speak, launches into what is clearly a pre-rehearsed speech.
“John, I have analysed your behaviour over the past six months and your symptoms are as follows. You seem to constantly be in a state of sadness, no matter how much I, or others, attempt to cheer you up via things that usually seem to do so, such as assisting me. You lose interest in things that you previously enjoyed - such as the cases, which I am very sorry for depriving you of - and have also lost interest in socialising. Although you seem to be at the pinnacle of health when you accompany me on cases, you lack energy when we are not on a case. You have withdrawn from myself and others, leading to concern. There are others, most of which I am sure you are aware of, but I think this is sufficient evidence to begin showing elevated concern for clinical depression, and as your,” he pauses for a moment, barely noticeable, before continuing, “friend, I insist that you return to taking sessions with Ella, or another therapist of your choice, equipped to deal with both your pre-diagnosed PTSD and this as well. Mycroft and I, of course, will provide you with-”
Throughout most of his speech, John’s mind hadn’t allowed for any other emotion other than shock, mainly because he could never have imagined Sherlock tackling a problem so out of his comfort depth so head-on, and also because he really couldn’t believe exactly what was happening in front of him. Sherlock’s tendency to speak a mile a minute didn;t exactly help, but before long, John really couldn’t listen to it anymore, and instead interrupted, with more force than he normally would as Sherlock sometimes needed to be forcefully interrupted to even hear that someone was speaking to him, “Sherlock!”
Sherlock hears him, and pauses for another miniscule second, before continuing, although not exactly in the same vein as before. “John, I understand that this amateurish diagnosis is probably upsetting, but even if I am not correct, clearly there is some sort of is-”
“Sherlock,” he says again, more patiently. He’s not sure what Sherlock interprets this as, because he shifts gears again, although this time his tone is much different from his usual, almost robotic, voice that he usually used for his deductions. It’s almost frantic, almost desperate.
“No, John, you must listen to me, this-”
“No, Sherlock, you listen to me,” and this time, Sherlock does shut up, and stares at him intensely, eyes wide.
He pauses for a minute, not exactly what he wants to say now that he has the chance - he hadn’t expected Sherlock to stop so suddenly - then sighs and says, “I know.”
Sherlock narrows his eyes at him. He ignores it, and says again, “I know.” And it’s true, he does. He just- “I just, I didn’t, I wanted- well, I don’t know. I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I didn’t know if you . . .” He doesn’t know. Didn’t know if Sherlock would support it? Didn’t know if Sherlock would want to stick with someone so broken?
Sherlock scoffs, apparently, yet again, knowing John better than he knows himself. “Don’t be stupid, John, I love you, there’s no way I wouldn’t-” He halts again, and his eyes blow wider than they already had, and isn’t that a feat? John’s not sure what caused such an extreme reaction, before playing the words back again in his head and he freezes too.
I love you.
Sherlock stays silent and frozen for only a moment more, before he swiftly turns on his heels and to the door without another word. John unfreezes himself at the sight, calling out quicker than he would have thought possible, “wait, Sherlock, stop!”
Sherlock does, although he doesn’t turn back. “What?” he snaps at the door.
John says what comes to mind first. “I love you, too.” And it’s true. John’s surprised by how true it is, but it’s true. He’s not sure when it happened, not sure why he never realized it, but he knows he believes it more than he’s ever believed anything. He loves Sherlock Holmes.
Sherlock slowly wheels himself around. He scans John’s face for any sign of a lie, and John doesn’t need to keep his face open because he knows it’s displayed over every inch of it: The truth is, he loves Sherlock Holmes. He’s in love with Sherlock fucking Holmes.
Sherlock comes closer. He sits on the bed. “Can I kiss you?”
John presses his lips to Sherlock in lieu of a response.
---
It’s only a little while later later that they finally settle, but John is still under the throes of the thick exhaustion, although, currently, he doesn’t feel anything else but a happy, airy feeling, not unlike what he had felt a couple months ago, back when Sherlock allowing him back on cases was the happiest thing that had happened to him. He feels light, unburdened, at least for now.
They’re still in John’s room, but John is now back to laying on his back, and Sherlock is perched on the other side of the bed, long legs stretched out in front of him.
“Does this mean that you’ll book an appointment with Ella? Or perhaps allow me to find another, more suitable, therapist?” Sherlock’s disdain for Ella is barely contained in his voice.
John laughs. He finds he wants to do that a lot more now. “Yes. Yes, another one, I think.”
He rests his hand, palm up, next to his head. He feels Sherlock’s hand tentatively move to grab it, and he lets him. Squeezes his hand when Sherlock does the same. “Thank you,” he says, suddenly.
Sherlock only replies with what John is sure is a fond look. “Don’t be an idiot, John.”
The shadow, the heaviness, is still at the back of his mind, waiting to sink its teeth back into John, but right now, happy and light and blue and next to Sherlock, who he loves and who loves him?
It’s the first time in a long time he’s felt really, truly, happy, and he doesn’t ever want to let this feeling go.
---