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The usually vivid interior of 221B Baker Street was not bathed in yellow sunlight like it would have been a few months before. Instead, the curtains were drawn and everything was thick and dull with dust; particles of it danced softly in the light cast by the lamps. Sherlock watched as it settled.
It pained him to see his home like this, for it was no longer a home. It was a house, a flat, empty of what made it a place he belonged.
Empty of John.
The rich red fabric of his best friend's chair was nowhere to be seen, stowed away in the upstairs bedroom so he didn't have to be reminded of what was lost to him.
Best friend. A strange concept, Sherlock thinks. Do best friends usually not see each other for four weeks straight? For a whole month? Or twenty-eight days, eleven hours and thirty two minutes, to be exact? They do once one of them is married, apparently.
These are the thoughts Sherlock has been trying so hard to push away and so he tries to repress them again by pushing the palms of his hands against aching eyelids. Since the wedding he had tried his hardest to forget and move on, accept what he was told by various people; marriage changes everything. Sherlock wasn't inclined to believe them before but now, as he glanced at the tray of tea and saw only one cup, one spoon, one everything, he understood. Understanding had never before left him so empty.
The decision to stand turned out to be a mistake as jt caused a rush of blood to ambush the detective's brain. He stumbled, reaching for the arm of the chair to steady himself, and stared at the cold tea beside him, sniffed and blinked, clearing the persistent fog from his brain. It was a side effect of the drugs and not the first time it had happened. It was nothing he couldn't control, as he'd already assured a concerned Mrs Hudson.
A beep sounded and drew Sherlock from thought and back to reality. He walked to the table, searching for the phone hidden under the heaps of chemistry equipment scattered across the kitchen table. Mrs Hudson had moved things again, he deduced, noticing fingerprints and disturbed dust on his appliances. Not finding the strength to be angry about it, Sherlock uncovered his phone and glanced at the screen.
The first letter he saw was a 'J'. For a fleeting moment it wasJohn. John, his best friend - who Sherlock had realised he loved at the dreaded wedding - wanted him again. In those seconds they were once more colleagues and friends, dancing on the edge of being something neither ever seemed able to acknowledge. This was over within two skips of the heart as his eyes locked onto the rest of the name and saw it was not 'John' but 'Janine'. Swallowing disappointment, Sherlock tossed his phone back into the chemical jungle he called a lab and headed for his bedroom.
Once at the door, he stopped, listening to the silence.
Baker Street was quiet without a companion. No sound bothered him here, save the soft buzz of Mrs Hudson's television and the hum of taxis in the street. All Sherlock had wanted was peace and quiet, he'd once thought. Room to think; to work. But that had been a false assumption, a mistake on his part caused by years of isolation and fear of just one thing too many. It was not what he wanted at all and in that moment, as he rolled back the left sleeve of his least favourite dressing gown and looked down at the pinpricks and purple bruises on his arm, he realised it was the complete opposite that he desired. He wanted someone. His friend, best friend, a partner. Wanted his partner; wanted John. But he had rejected it when the opportunity had been right in front of him, and now it was gone; a result of ignorance and walls he'd set too high.
Sherlock Holmes looked around the lifeless room that was now merely a flat - a house but not a home - and realised for the first time how truly wrong he had been. For the first time in years, Sherlock cried; dropped the sociopathic façade and, for the first time in his life, understood what it had cost him.