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John lost track of time somewhere between all the dancing and congratulations and small talk and the buzz of drinking a little too much wine to draw attention away from Mary not drinking any at all. It wasn’t until the fourth or fifth time his eyes scanned the whirling, merry crowd that he realized why, exactly, he found it lacking. He was carefully navigating his way through the room when Molly Hooper’s coltish boyfriend (fiancé? He really ought to pay better attention) nearly knocked him over.
“Sorry!” The tall man-boy with the ridiculous hair laughed nervously (hair should either be clean cut or completely unruly, it could not be both), as he managed to both slosh his wine on the ground and step on Molly’s foot all at once.
“Are you looking for Sherlock?” Molly asked earnestly, as always like a hound on a scent when it came to this particular topic. If What's-His-Name were a bit more intuitive, he might have been crushed, but instead he just shrugged as though he was overly pathologically concerned with the comings and goings of certain detectives as well.
“A bit,” John replied with an easy smile that was summoned even more easily due to the wine-happiness-company blanketing him warmly. “Where’s he got to?”
Molly’s face faltered, and that was enough to douse the warmth pooling inside him like a bucket of water before she even formed the words, “Oh, he ah. Well he left, I think. About an hour ago?”
“Left early, did he?” Where Mrs. Hudson even came from, John had no idea, but she materialized at his side seemingly out of nowhere like a tipsy harbinger of doom. “Well that’s hardly surprising. My own best friend, she did just the same—”
“Don’t—” John raised a hand, cringing even before she could continue blithely,
“Marriage changes everything, you know.”
“—say that. Right, if you’ll excuse me.” John quickly waded off before another tide of chilling foresight could tumble out of Mrs. Hudson’s well-meaning mouth, ignoring Molly’s pained looks and every single other person’s attempts to speak to him until he found Mary holding court with a sunny smile.
“There you are, husband.” Her smile lasted exactly until she saw John’s face, before falling in an instant. “Oh no. What’s wrong?”
“He left. About an hour ago.”
“Who? Oh.” Mary’s hand fluttered to her mouth for a moment, and John loved her for the fact that he didn’t even need to explain why this seemingly unimportant fact had left a ball of dread settled in his gut. “Text him then, tell him to drag those cheekbones back here and dance with me.”
Although he gave her a skeptical look, John fished his phone out of his pocket to oblige. He had very little expectation as he sent off: best man’s presence requested in the dancing hall. bride needs a partner who won’t keep squishing her feet (that’s me. still rubbish at dancing. sorry).
They both stared at John’s phone for much longer than anyone should stare at a phone at a wedding before giving it up as a bad job.
“He’s not going to answer,” John announced, rather unnecessarily, with a sigh. The ball of dread settled in his gut gained a few kilos. He wasn’t even sure why it bothered him so much. It wasn’t as though Sherlock wasn’t a moody bastard on the best of days, and he’d certainly earned his right to some quality alone time after earning his stripes as the best Best Friend in the entire bloody universe.
“Right then, plan B.” Mary caught his arm, dragging him off to the nearest doorway and into the hall. Somehow she managed to give everyone who attempted to distract them the sort of look only a bride could, one that said ‘newlywed business, kindly fuck off please, thanks’. Once they’d found a somewhat quiet corner, she reached up to straighten the collar of his shirt. “You know where he’s gone. He’s sulking all alone in that flat because he’s listened to Mrs. Hudson and her ridiculous flapping on about ‘an end of an era’ and all that rubbish.”
“If she says ‘marriage changes things’ one more time, I swear to god…”
“I know.” Mary pulled a face, before looking up at him with a resolved expression. “So you’re going to go get him, right?”
“Wait, what?” John blinked, feeling as though he’s missed something vital while Mary simply gave him a Look. “No, absolutely not.” That Look again. “It’s our wedding night!”
“Yes, our first night of wedded bliss of which we will have the rest of our lives to rinse and repeat until we’re a bit sick of each other. Go.”
“He’s just being dramatic, Mary. I’m sure he’s fine.” The fact that he didn’t entirely believe his own words seemed to undermine them even as they left his mouth, judging from Mary’s knowing expression. “He’s fine.”
“Did you see that look on his face after he’d said we wouldn’t need him anymore once we’ve had a baby? He thinks we’re going to replace him.”
“Well that’s just ridiculous, and he knows it.”
“Does he?”
“Well I can’t just—”
“John Hamish Watson.” Mary always managed to look several feet taller than she actually was with her hand on her hip, her mouth pinched in a stern line, and her eyebrows cocked just so. She was going to be an amazing mum. “I know for a fact you were here all day. Which means you heard all of that ridiculously beautiful speech, and you watched your best friend prevent a murder on our wedding day-- a day he planned part and parcel and spent the last two months making sure was the most perfect day anyone could ask for, and if you don’t go stop him from sinking into a bog of self-pity than I bloody well will, wedding night be damned.”
John blinked, before giving the only reply possible: “Okay. Alright. I’ll go.”
*
As John climbed the steps in the darkened hallway of 221B, still in his by-now rumpled suit, he was at first struck with annoyance at the incredibly jaunty tune that drifted down from the flat above. It hardly sounded as though Sherlock was adrift in crippling depression. John very nearly aborted the mission with a huff until he froze for a moment, actually listening. The violin music was actually not jaunty and uplifting at all: it was positively manic. He couldn’t even really make out what exactly it was supposed to be, because the pace was barreling along at inhuman speed and it appeared to be an odd mash-up of every song ever written.
John took the rest of the stairs two at a time and threw open the door. There Sherlock was, playing the violin while standing on the end table wearing a show-stopping combination of his dress trousers, an old RAMC t-shirt John must have left over at some point, his blue dressing gown and that bloody deerstalker. The entire flat was… immaculate. Every single book and random knick-knack had been sorted and put away (it was difficult to tell at first glance, but the bookshelf appeared to have been actually alphabetized instead of sorted by bizarre themes only Sherlock could understand), the kitchen table was fit to actually eat on, and there didn’t appear to be a speck of dust left anywhere.
“Oh my god.”
When Sherlock turned around to face John, the ball of dread exploded into white-hot shrapnel that lodged in his gut and heart, respectively. Sherlock’s pupils were blown overlarge and black, and he didn’t cease playing for a moment as he announced with a grin splitting his face,
“The prodigal son has returned!”
“Sherlock.” John swallowed, his throat suddenly raw and dry. He hadn’t searched the flat since he’d been back, hadn’t seen the need to. When Sherlock wasn’t involved with a case, he’d been so preoccupied with the wedding that there hadn’t seemed to be much danger. Until now. John could kick himself for not seeing this coming. “What did you take? What the hell did—no, scratch that. I know what you took. How much?”
“Enough to sail beyond the utmost bound of human thought, over the rooftops and through the woods, to Grandmother’s house, we go.”
“Well that’s great. That’s just perfect.” Running a hand over his face, John took a moment to breath in deeply through his nose and exhale slowly through his mouth—a technique his therapist schooled him on to help with his ‘anger spells’, whatever that really meant. It seemed to work, because in that single moment of calm, all of the possible reactions that threatened to bowl him over—strangling Sherlock, beating him over the head with that bloody violin, finding that blasted cocaine and throwing it against the wall, bursting into tears – evaporated down to only the most immediately useful. “Right. You, get down from there. Right now.”
When Sherlock ignored him in favor of continuing to play at an even more frenetic pace, twirling away from him to dance a little jig on the table, John marched over and firmly caught the other man by the arm. The music ceased abruptly as John wrenched his playing arm down until Sherlock was staring at him on eye level. Looking into those black, mad eyes was another hot piece of shrapnel to his chest.
“Sit. Down.”
“Yessir,” Sherlock replied diligently, saluting as he flopped squarely down on the end table. “Captain’s orders, I suppose? Are you a Captain now? I suppose you’ve earned the title by now. Moving up in the ranks.”
“You sit right there, and don’t move a muscle until I come back with my medical kit.” John took a moment to thank his lucky stars that he had the foresight to leave a fully stocked medical kit tucked away in the loo. It came in handy far more often than he would have liked, but it was dead useful.
When he returned a few moments later, John was momentarily taken aback that Sherlock had followed his orders to the letter, and was sitting there with the same expression on his face and his violin still half poised in the air. Shaking it off swiftly, John switched easily into professional mode, which had the added benefit of being the only mode guaranteed to keep his sanity intact at the moment. He plucked the violin from Sherlock’s hand and set it aside before hauling him up to sit on the couch, noticing Sherlock’s fingers still dancing as though playing a melody on an invisible instrument. When Sherlock opened his mouth to speak, John gave him a forbidding look.
“Not a word. Not one word.” Sherlock shut his mouth with a click. “And take off that bloody hat.”
The next few minutes were occupied in silence as John worked over his patient methodically: push up his sleeves and inspect his arms carefully (two very small and neat puncture marks, one in the crease of each arm), check his pupils (still dilated), listen to his heart (accelerated sinus rhythm, but nothing overly alarming), check his blood pressure (normal, which for Sherlock is generally freakishly low), and temperature (37.7 C – elevated, but not unexpected).
“Alright,” John announced to no one in particular, considering Sherlock had gone surprisingly docile despite all his fidgeting throughout the exam. He was satisfied for the moment that he didn’t need to phone the hospital, although he probably still should. The high would pass quickly enough, given the manner of administration, so long as he hadn’t overdosed. “Sherlock, look at me. Where’s the vial?”
Sherlock remained silent for nearly an entire minute before he jerked with a start. “Oh. Am I speaking now?”
“Yes.” It wasn’t difficult for John to keep his voice calm and steady, because Sherlock was just a patient-- just another difficult patient, and not his infuriating best friend. “The vial of cocaine. Where is it?”
“My slipper. The Moroccan.”
Just a patient. No need to make a face, even as John retrieved the vial (a cocaine hydrochloride solution, and a pricey one) and then had to ferret out the location of the needles and syringes (thank god they were all in sterile packaging, at least there was that). It took another several long minutes to force Sherlock to semi-coherently show him exactly how much he took, before John disposed of the vial properly and stashed the rest of the paraphernalia into his kit to remove from the flat later.
With all that business sorted, John’s professional veneer faded and with it left the clear-headed certainty that knew how to tackle the situation at hand. The path from here on out was murky, and he paced across the room twice before returning to sit on one end of the couch where Sherlock had draped himself gracelessly across the other end.
“It’s fading already,” Sherlock declared mournfully, his thumb and forefinger pinched delicately across the bridge of his nose. “You’ve chased it away.”
“Good.” Resting his hands on his knees, John stared forward at the perfectly arranged bookshelf which was indeed alphabetized. He grimaced when Sherlock’s long legs suddenly sprawled across his lap, but he didn’t push them away. Instead, he kept his gaze trained steadily on the books as he said woodenly, “So. I’m going to spare you the speech, but only because it’d be lost on you right now. I’ve still got half a mind to take you to hospital, so don’t test me or I will. Got it?”
“Ever the soldier, ordering the pieces about on the board.” Sherlock’s normally precise drawl was clipped and erratic, a staccato beat that ran together faster than his racing heart. “I never did understand why you’re so patently awful at chess. I think it’s because you lack the imagination, you can’t see the board for anything more than checkered blocks when it’s really a battlefield, where you’re most at home. Would it help if I filled it with sand? I might, you know--”
“Damn it, Sherlock!” John finally snapped, shoving Sherlock’s legs off his lap forcefully enough to cause the other man to lose his balance slightly. “No, I’m not—yes I am. I am doing this now. How could you do this to me? To us?”
“I distinctly remember slipping the needle into my veins, not yours. It felt like mine, I’m sure it was.”
“No. No, that’s where you’re wrong.” Turning to face Sherlock, John fixed him with a steely frown. Somehow it was easier to speak bluntly now, with Sherlock still barely teetering on the edge of reason and his own chest burning with collateral damage. “You’re not just hurting yourself anymore. I’m in this, whether you like it or not. You’re my best friend, and that means when you hurt yourself, you hurt me too.”
“Best friends. What does that even mean? Best friend. Best. Friend.”
“It means it’s my bloody wedding night, and instead of spending it with my wife, I’m sitting here with you and I’m not leaving.” John was startled from his tirade as his phone buzzed in his suit pocket, and he felt a stab of guilt as he remembered said wife with her text of Well??? Is he alright? What’s going on?
complicated. staying here tonight. will explain in the morning. really very sorry.
Don’t be. Stay as long as you need. Should I come?
better not. tell everyone… something.
I told them you’d had too much drink. Very convincing after that story about your stag do. Then I ran off to vomit so everyone thinks we’re quite the pair. Love you.
“You weren’t meant to come back.” Sherlock’s voice cut through John’s distraction, and when he looked over, Sherlock was sitting up and staring at him with a frown. “Why did you come back? It’s your wedding night. You shouldn’t be here.”
“Because I care about you, you ruddy prat. God knows why, but I do. And so does Mary.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“Bit late for that.” John sighed, tucking his phone away in his pocket as he leaned back to rest his head on the back of the couch. There were so many things he needed to say that he was exhausted by the weight of them. “Look. It’s been a long night. Once you’re able to stop twitching about, we’re both going to turn in and talk about this in the morning. And we will talk. Don’t think you’re getting out of that speech.”
“I’m sorry.” Sherlock’s voice was so soft it barely reached the other end of the couch, but when it did, John looked over and almost immediately wished he hadn’t. His friend’s face was a study of quiet misery, emotions laid bare on his features in a way that was rarer than a Great Comet and it made that shrapnel twist in John’s chest once more. “I never would have, that is, I never meant to--”
“You didn’t mean to do a lot of things, Sherlock,” John said quietly with a frown. “But you did them anyway, and they’re done. And I forgive you, because I’m an idiot, so of course I have an idiot for a best friend. And you are, you’re a great bloody idiot, but you’re my idiot, so there’s that.”
This managed to draw the very slightest hint of a smile from the other man, although it was so brief and sudden that it may have simply been a spasm. “I did say I wasn’t able to congratulate you on your choice of companionship. You really ought to stop suffering fools.”
“Why would I do a thing like that?” John replied gently, his savage frustration from earlier fading into a desire to sooth away the self-loathing creasing Sherlock’s features. It occurred to him now, as it did briefly much earlier during that speech, that Sherlock was being particularly and unusually hard on himself. It should have been a red flag. “You make me look like a saint in comparison. It’s proper good for my ego.”
“You are a saint, John Watson.” Sherlock’s gaze lacked its normal microscopic intensity, but it seemed to be deconstructing John nonetheless. This, at least, was familiar ground.
“I’ll hold you to that, later.”
*
John wasn’t sure when exactly he dozed off, but he woke up with a ball of cotton in his mouth and the dappled grey light of a rainy morning stabbing him in the eyes from the nearest window. His neck twinged with the beginnings of a fantastic crick from falling asleep mostly upright with his head tipped against the back couch cushion. It wasn’t hard to locate Sherlock, whose legs were once again draped across his lap and half off the opposite arm of the sofa. He was curled on his side, with his face pressed into the cushions that muffled the sounds of a quiet snore (Sherlock had once sworn on the tenets of logic and reason, which he held most dear, that he did not snore. This was a lie).
Another unexpected sound nearly made John jump out of his skin, drawing his eyes quickly across the room. There, curled up like a cat between two armchairs pulled together, was a diminutive blonde still in her wedding dress with Sherlock’s Belstaff draped over her like a blanket. Her hair was sticking up in all angles and her mouth was open rather ungracefully, adding her snores to the chorus (unlike Sherlock, Mary shamelessly owned her snoring habit and in fact announced it on their first date). John felt his chest swell with gentle warmth, a welcome departure from the burning ache of the night before.
It didn’t solve all of his problems, but it was a decent start.
*