Work Text:
A quiet detective sits
in his forlorn flat,
he stares at the empty chair
opposite to his,
(now back at its rightful place
he never could face the vacant space)
and sighs dramatically at the one
who should have been but isn't;
hiding his cigarettes, rolling his eyes,
declining next week's lottery numbers
and filling the heart he thought he never had
with something a lot more than life
Sherlock realised it was time a month before it actually happened. It was a peaceful calm, a kind of iridescent glow seeping from under his too short curtains. The lights suddenly became more interesting, like brightness tweaked on the telly. And sounds, there were too many sounds. The bees buzzed too much and he humoured himself that they could feel him fading away and after that, the activity didn’t seem like fun anymore. The lust for tobacco ended too. It was like his lungs had become too light for smoke, too paper thin and rubbery to hold it all in. Air was redundant, so was breathing, they had realised.
The first thing that he thought of, when he actually sat down to consider it, was London. He wanted to visit London one last time. Perhaps solve one last cold case? He couldn’t. His body rebelled at the mere idea, shrugging at the prospect of travelling and leaving his comfortable Sussex home behind. He felt a cold something in his chest at never seeing this home again, and what if it happened on the way? He would be somewhere between Sussex and London, home and home but not quite. The feeling lasted only for a second before it was gone and Sherlock was left not feeling scared but gratified at having felt anything at all. He would miss this, feeling scared, reluctant, tired, angry...
However, the decision was taken out of his hand because the very next day, he couldn’t leave at all. It is here, his mind chimed, it is here, here, here.
John arrived a few weeks after that. His eyes hadn’t aged at all, they were still young with kindness and Sherlock startled himself by realising this. He wasn’t the man who noticed the way people’s eyes aged, or how their mouth shook when they spoke the same rehearsed words over and over again. He did now, when John repeated his condition to him, his voice painful in all its stability and strength. Were his hands still scarred and rough? Sherlock wondered if he should hold them, isn’t that what people did to console one another?
John’s finger brushed across his long sleeved shirt quietly before it drew back and his eyes fixed on the spider carcass at the corner of the ceiling. He was looking for words in the dried out web, he was looking for what the other spiders did when they found the carcass lying there. There was nothing around the broken web. John shrugged, and reached blindly for the cold tea.
He went through Sherlock’s condition with him over again, and Sherlock hadn’t the heart to tell him that they’d gone over this already, mere seconds ago. He let the words wash over him, feeling the nauseating calm he had run from all his life and was going to be living with from now on.
‘So, how are you? You look… old,’ they had never mastered the art of saying some sensible at moments like this. And now too, they giggled until Sherlock couldn’t stop himself from coughing and the laughter died in John’s eyes, becoming worry and needling Sherlock with something cold and guilty. He shook his head and offered him a smile, moving around in his bed till he was comfortable.
‘Should have called sooner,’ John wouldn’t look at him, he just fussed around with the covers draped around the shadow of his best friend.
‘You know me, John, I don’t like to be any trouble.’
‘All evidence to the contrary.’ This time, they didn’t laugh but merely smiled a smile that was unbecoming of two men who had spent half of their conscious lives around each other.
Words were running out between them, they realised with a start. There was only so long that the covers could be fussed over and the spiders stared at.
‘How’s Mary? And everyone else? When was the last time we spoke?’ Even to Sherlock, it sounded desperate and so many words uttered at one go made him cough again. Only this time, he gulped it down, refusing to let it rear up.
‘Seven months and eighteen days,’ John answered, still finding it hard to look into those eyes, lest they lose their light while he was still talking. The crinkled covers seemed more interesting, at least for now.
Sherlock felt he was running towards it - the calmness - running faster. Any second now.
‘They’re good,’ John continued, stealing a glance towards Sherlock as the man closed his eyes.
‘Sherlock?’ John panicked, as Sherlock bit back a grin and failed. Still here, he couldn’t bring himself to say it and so, he let John return to the covers.
‘All those years ago-’ he had never managed to call that day as the time Mary shot him but John knew, he always knew, ‘-all those years ago, I couldn’t die because… you were not there. Now I can only die because you are.’
He had said it. He had finally said it as well as he could. Sherlock felt like he’d lost 10 pounds as the words escaped his lips and settled in the space between them, pulling them together till John had leaned forward, practically lunged, and pressed his lips to Sherlock’s forehead.
‘Don’t go. Please,’ he didn’t even care if he was crying now because Sherlock’s fingers ghosted over John’s neck, finding his pulse like it was his totem for reality, something that will flutter even when he was gone, something that will remember his touch if not his lips.
‘To the very best of times, John.’
He was doing little things now, to remind himself that he was still here, in the arms of his best friend and breathing feebly, breathing borrowed air really. Little things that John was sure he would forget about later when he thinks over this scene for the millionth time in his head. Sherlock called out his name, it was almost sighed.
‘John?’
John took a second before responding.
‘Yes?’ Sherlock breathed a broken breath again, and John’s lips never left his forehead. His back was beginning to hurt and he was sure he would fall off the chair, he was right on the edge of it but he couldn’t move, like moving would break some kind of delicate balance. Sherlock called out for him again.
‘John?’
‘Yes?’
Once more, only this time, his thumb stroked John’s pulse before the word left his mouth. John breathed his response against his forehead, hands running over Sherlock’s frail arms.
And that was it. It took John three full seconds to realise that Sherlock wasn’t calling out his name again, not ever. That he would never say his name like it was something of a worship, a prayer. The stark cold reality of it made John keep responding to the question that was his name, humming over and over.
Years ago, he had called this shadow in his arms a machine, back when he didn’t know why he loved Sherlock like he did. He was like a hastily scribbled sketch, all paleness. Unfilled, uncoloured. And John had wondered once how far his freckles travelled down his back and where they disappeared, how alive he would be if he were ever to be coloured and filled, undone.
He remembered kissing the forehead one last time before strong arms were pulling him away. Lestrade. Still reliable and strong, even after Mycroft. Before he collected Billy from the mantelpiece, he whispered to the room, ‘It’s for real this time. He’s not coming back.’
Thinking back, John still isn’t sure if there were people there or if the choked sobs he heard were his own.
***
Every now and then, he would return to that cottage in Sussex where dust was still eloquent and a permanent sulk was settled on the couch Sherlock had bought back from 221B along with his and John’s chairs. And John would take his position opposite to the vacant spot as the kettle boiled.
And sometimes, he would put out two cups of tea on his lone weekends after Mary was gone, and after Louise and William got settled. And he would whisper, ‘It’s for real this time. He’s not coming back.’
***