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I sit and stare intently into the fire place until my vision is obscured with coloured spots. Wisps of smoke escape and strive for freedom, rising into the haven the chimney provides, leaving the flat we call home. Called home.
We.
John and I.
The man of whom I speak is sat across from me, glass of whiskey in hand and a dazed smile softening his features. These days they are often contorted with stress, boredom; a cohort of things he doesn’t tell me but I observe anyway. For now, however, John is at ease.
I don’t allow myself to think too much about it and instead touch my glass to my lips, tipping amber liquid down my throat just to taste its familiar burn. The ache reminds me painfully of the same ache in my chest, the one that has lingered there since I watched the only person I’ve ever wanted to stay in my life do the opposite.
Except he never really left, did he? John never leaves completely. Sprawled less than a metre in front of me, toes inches from my own. He is always there, at my side, in one way or another, reminding me of both his presence and his absence.
In the glow of the fire his face is different. Although I’ve seen it in the exact same lighting countless times before, it seems somehow changed. I observe the creases, the withered lines that deepen as time goes on but only grow more beautiful to me. The crinkles around his eyes reveal themselves as a smile forms, lips curling upwards, unrestrained thanks to the release of inhibition alcohol provides.
“You’re thinking,” he says to me, and I have to remind myself not to drop my gaze to his lips.
“Always, I’m afraid.”
He exhales, and it's not quite a laugh, but is close enough that a tingle of pride threatens to colour my cheeks.
“Very funny,” I nod, feigning smugness. “But then you always are.”
“Not a compliment I can say I receive frequently,” I deflect with cheeks flaring. John’s words too often have that effect.
“Mm, not said it before because your ego is already big enough.” He takes another sip of alcohol. “But you make me laugh.” He shuts his eyes, grin still on his face, whiskey still in hand, and I inhale slowly to detach myself. My cheeks can redden if they wish but I will not allow my heart to race or my pulse to quicken; I promised myself.
“Thank you, John,” a muttered and unemotional response.
The conversation, if it can be called that, dies and I force my eyes back to watching sparks of the fire, only for them to be pulled to John against my will. His jumper is askew and his shirt collar is creased, but instead of aggravation it sends a wave of something moreunfamiliar through me. Perhaps affection. It makes my fingers itch to reach forward and straighten the clothing, to fasten the button of his shirt slowly and look into his dark eyes as I do so. But I don’t. I’m afraid of what might happen. My hands, untrustworthy, would betray me and find themselves on his cheeks, his jaw, his waist and all the other areas of John I have forbidden myself to consider.
“You’re staring,” he tells me, because it’s true.
“I’m thinking.”
“Hm, always are.”
“Thinking?”
“Staring.” I feel my breath hitch but manage to conjure a laugh. Contentment is dangerous; he is too close, and I know he will regret saying that by morning.
“You are mistaken, as you often are. I was not staring, I was observing,” I lie.
“What did you observe?” he asks, interest piqued but not entirely focused on his words. His eyes are on my hair, my face, my hands. Quickly, I look back to the fire for want of a distraction.
“I was observing you.” Always am.
“Got that bit.”
“I was observing your clothing.”
“My clothing?”
“Yes.” Keep answers short, don’t encourage anything that the alcohol makes him say, I tell myself.
“Odd thing to observe. What does my clothing show you then, clever boy?” There is amusement in his voice and something else. My stomach lurches at clever boy. I swallow down a smile and ignore the tingle high on my cheeks. This isn’t allowed. It’s not John - this is whiskey and two shots of vodka and too much red wine from Mrs Hudson’s kitchen cupboard.
“The tilt of your collar, the collections of wool on your jumper - mostly at the sleeves. Small bobbles show you’ve been picking at it." John swallows hard but I continue. "The clumsy way you have fastened your buttons are indic-”
“Indicative of what?” He asks me, tone less carefree than it was before; interest or suspicion, I cannot tell. The glimmer of something else fades.
“Doesn’t matter, John. Rest your eyes again. It's nothing.”
“I’m not tired. What were you going to say?”
“Nothing of importance.”
“Everything you say is important to me.” A wave of warmth seeps through me but I repress it with a blast of cold indifference. I must be above such things now John has left me. Left Baker Street.
“John, really. I was just looking at you.”
“Sherlock, I want to know.”
I cannot deny him when he says my name like that.
“It merely suggests a lack of care. That is all.”
I watch as his jaw clenches and his hands tighten predictably.
“A lack of care?” Questions are never a good sign with John Watson, they are how I know he is pissed. Pissed or confused or bewildered, or any emotion that does not bode well for the coming minutes.
“Nothing of import-”
“Sherlock.”
“Yes, John?”
“Sherlock.” I look up at him and find him leaning forward, silvering hair shining in the light and the rosy glow, caused by alcohol, now absent from his cheeks. “A lack of care from who.”
Something tells me this moment is now vital in a way that moments can come to be. The answer I give will be pivotal, will determine the outcome of tonight, but either way he will be angry at me. Because I am an arse and will take things too far, and he has a Captain’s temper.
“From both of you.” His fingers flex, jaw clenches; he knows I am right. A shuddering exhale before he is able to find words again.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
I drop my eyes to his knees and let my gaze wander to the print of his chair. It is not new or even unfamiliar to me. I could trace the design onto his skin with my fingers whilst blindfolded, should he ask. Since he left, or moved away, many evenings are filled only by staring at that chair and its network of floral patterns and mockery.
“You know what it means, John.” My voice is measured and words are picked with care, loaded like the gun in the top drawer of his bed side table. He still keeps it there; she doesn’t like it.
“We b-... Sherlock. I care. She cares. We both... care.”
There is nothing for me to say. The clothes are just one piece of evidence, there are many more that I would never tell him. The way she looks at him, like he is a burden. The way he looks at her, because she isn’t me. The bitterness and the arguments and John leaving the surgery late, missing dinner to waste time with his ex-flatmate. A creased collar is nothing in the grand scheme of things.
“We both do, okay? We do.” The ‘we’ here is not us, like it used to be.
“Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”
“I don’t need to convince… don’t make me do this, Sherlock.”
“No one could ever make you do anything, John,” I say softly, not wanting an argument only because it is too hard to bear him hating me.
“Look. It’s difficult. It's fucking difficult, but things are… you don't understand. I can’t.” He trails off, struggling to find words or come to terms with what has been on the brink of being granted freedom for months, almost years. Finally, instead of freedom, he cages us for the last time; “You know we left it too late.”
The words, closest thing to an admission of something we’ve achieved in ages, sting unbearably. They are sharp and cutting but not the worst I’ve heard; hearing him whisper ‘I do’ was worse.
Yet I survived that, so I swallow and nod, a fractional movement that does nothing to calm the ache in my chest or the prickle in my eyes. The floral pattern mocks me now more than ever.
“You know I’m sorry. You... you know I am, you know.” John stops again and I know he is watching, desperately trying to observe and deduce in the same way I do to him except I am an expert and he is not. Of which I am glad. I blink, clear the moisture from my eyes and resist the urge to laugh. He would not appreciate it.
“It’s only a creased collar, John.” The response feels like a wall placed between the two of us and a boundary demolished at the same time. I allow myself a second to meet his gaze and immediately regret my decision. His dark eyes, grey in the dying firelight, pierce me. They are sad, they are apologetic, and they do not look at me in the same way I look at him; they are without hope.
“Yes. But a collar to you speaks a thousand words.”
On rare occasions like this, when blinded by emotion, I find myself with no response. No witty remarks or snide comments that earn me disapproving looks. My mind fails me at the times I need it most and my body is left to pick up the pieces.
I smile, not breaking our gaze, and nod slowly. A collar can tell me all I need to know about him, but it is unnecessary for I already know it all. He watches me for a long moment and I wonder if he can see the sparkle in my eyes, whether he thinks it is tiredness or a trick of the firelight or if he sees it for what it really is; grief. A mourning for something never had, only danced around and snatched away by fate and too much fear.
John stands carefully, finding a balance I don’t think my shaking legs could replicate if I did the same, and my eyes drop to the embers in the grate between our chairs. A warm hand hovers close to my face and I don’t react. I mustn’t.
Shaking fingers press into my shoulder instead; comfort? apology? goodbye? My pulse quickens at the thought of goodbye but I push it away and remember how many times he has left me in the past, only to return and save me from oblivion once more. This is what we do.
As the last specks of ash curl into smoke, his fingers fall away and he turns to leave. Coat, shoes, wallet, phone. A pat down of the pockets to check for the things he knows he hasn’t forgotten, a chance to find the words lost, to utter apologies he cannot give for feelings he refuses to confront or understand. My eyes burn more viciously than ever.
“I’m… you know I’m no good at this. There’s so much to say.” There is no anger, surprisingly. Stupidly, I find myself wishing there was. Anything is better than hearing my name spoken in John’s strained voice.
The corners of my mouth turn upwards as my eyes close. When they open moments later John is lingering at the doorway, half with me and half lost to me; tied to her and me simultaneously.
“Give my love to Mary,” I whisper, and swallow my guilt and my sadness as his face falls into shadow and he returns the gentle nod I have given him all night. Those lips that are so difficult to ignore press together and open, as if to say something more, then close again and fade into darkness, along with the one person I want more than anything to stay.