Chapter Text
Sherlock has been back for one month.
John has been counting, and he isn’t really sure why. He’s not sure what he’s counting up to, or what he’s counting down to, or what he’s counting away from.
But he has been, and Sherlock has been back for one month. They’ve had two cases in that time, although only one lead to the thrilling, heart-pumping, adrenaline-filled chase the two of them crave. The aftermath was the first time John had seen Sherlock smile - really, truly smile, not the fake, plastic thing he had been flashing at him as they tip-toed around each other in the relative silence of 221B.
It had broken some of the ice, and now they’re not tip-toeing anymore, exactly, but the tension is still there, keeping John constantly on edge. He’s still afraid that Sherlock might up and leave again, even though he knows the reason Sherlock had left in the first place.
There’s something else accompanying the tension, the consistent alert, but John can’t quite place his finger on it. It’s a shadow, a shadow he thinks he remembers taking residence up in his mind around the time Sherlock left. Sherlock has returned, but the shadow is still there. It’s a sort of darkness, throwing shade over every thought of his until it’s hard to even let himself smile, and at the same time, it’s so heavy. It makes his mind heavy and dark until carrying it around is a burden, a challenge, and something he just . . . doesn’t want to do, anymore.
He’s not entirely sure why. He doesn’t want to die, he thinks, but he isn’t sure, and the thought of just not having to think anymore is so comforting, sometimes. He remembers not feeling like this before, he remembers doing anything and everything to keep living, to keep pushing, but now he doesn’t think the effort is, or was, worth it. He thinks the change from whatever he was back then to what he is now was drastic enough that he should be worried, but at the same time, the shift wasn’t jarring. It just was.
Strangely enough, nothing’s really changed. It feels like it should, but it doesn’t. He still works his shifts at the clinic, he still cleans up after both himself and Sherlock, he’s still Sherlock’s praise-giver (and care-taker) at crime scenes. He doesn’t do anything differently all, except now he has an unfortunate companion in all of these activities.
Since nothing had changed, he hadn’t expected Sherlock to pick up on anything odd, but it seems like he’s still underestimating Sherlock and his brilliant mind. Sherlock sticks closer to him, now, less time out on the streets of London doing who-knows-what, and instead is inside with him doing who-knows-what. He takes more time out of his day to pester John, and, lately, John’s been catching Sherlock staring at him, eyebrows drawn together, wearing the same face he does when analyzing a body or a suspect.
John doesn’t know if Sherlock can see the shadow in his eyes. He hopes not.
It’s what Sherlock is doing now, actually. John takes another subtle glance out of the corner of his eye, to check again, and Sherlock hasn’t moved. His body is angled towards the microscope, hands on the dials, but his face is tilted towards John, who is doing nothing but watching crap telly in the last couple hours before he turns in. Or, more accurately, he’s pretending to watch crap telly, staring at the screen, as he zones out, drifts, almost. He’s been doing it more and more often. He sometimes doesn’t even notice hours pass by as he does, and he’s both terrified of how many hours of his life he’s losing but also glad he doesn’t have to pay attention, to do anything, in those hours.
Speaking of- John checks his watch. Sure enough, it’s about the time he usually heads up to bed. He clears his throat and stands up, picking up the remote to turn off the telly. Sherlock’s eyes follow him. “I’m gonna, uh, head up.” Sherlock says nothing. John is used to this, though, and takes this as assent and heads towards the stairs.
“John,” Sherlock’s voice stops him in his tracks. This is new.
“Yes?” John calls back, cautiously, as he seems to always be around Sherlock these days.
“Are you,” he pauses. John tries to give him an encouraging look, but he’s not very good at being positive these days and he’s not sure how it comes across. “Are you okay?”
It’s the first time since Sherlock came back - maybe the first time ever - that Sherlock has asked him that. Has asked him anything about himself at all, maybe. He never bothered to ask about John before, he remembers, he’d always deduce, or get Mycroft to do some snooping for him, or do some snooping himself.
“John?” Sherlock’s voice is tentative, something John never thought he would hear. Sherlock has always been confident and assured of himself, excludes an aura that makes him seem untouchable, ethereal, and John doesn’t know if he likes this new Sherlock.
“Yes,” John says. “I’m fine.” He thinks he believes that, but he’s not sure. He’s not sure about very much, these days.
He turns and walks up the stairs and in another couple minutes he’s in his bed, staring at the ceiling. He’s not fine. He feels bad. He’s not sure why, or even how, but he knows there’s something in his mind that feels bad and awful and he wants it to stop. It doesn’t.
---
They have another case. Sherlock had been ecstatic, something about the bodies being found in the walls, and it sounds exciting, like something John would have been just as excited for as Sherlock was.
But he’s not.
He knows he loves working cases with Sherlock, although he also knows that he doesn’t contribute half as much as his flatmate. The adrenaline from the chase, the dopamine rush from even just listening to Sherlock’s brilliance as he slices a case clean open. He loves it, he knows he does, but he’s not excited. John repeats Sherlock’s words to himself, hoping to get a reaction from his mind, but the only thing he feels is an empty apathy.
He grins at Sherlock anyway, says something vague about it being about time, and runs to fetch his coat. Sherlock must see right through him, though, as his expression falls, and John hates himself for it. Just because something is wrong with John doesn’t mean Sherlock has to suffer for it. He must think that John doesn’t like spending time with him anymore, must think that John doesn’t enjoy cases or Sherlock’s brilliance.
But Sherlock doesn’t say anything, and John doesn’t either, and they both pretend to be happy and pretend they know the other is just as happy as they are. John quietly hates himself on the way there, the whole way trying to inspire the same passion he has always had about cases in his mind again. The only thing he manages to make himself is exhausted, and it’s not even noon yet.
---
Over the next month, he still fails to inspire any sort of excitement about cases from himself. It’s disappointing and terrifying and so, so painful all at once, and he wants so badly to be angry at himself, to feel the burning rage at himself for being useless, but all he feels is a dull hatred.
It’s at the two and a half month mark that Sherlock comes back, cheeks flushed, eyes bright, and John asks, curious, “Where were you?”
Sherlock is facing away from him, shedding his magnificent coat, when he responds, so John can’t see his face when he replies, “Lestrade sent me a case.”
John’s heart stops.
“O-oh?”
“Yes. I didn’t think you would want to come - it looked like you were coming only because I asked you to come, recently.”
“I . . .” Something in his chest is burning. He knows that what Sherlock is saying is true, to a degree, and he knows that he would have come to the same conclusion, were he in Sherlock’s place. At the same time, he feels like something has been snatched away from him, like Sherlock has torn something straight from his chest and is now dangling it cruelly in front of him. He hadn’t appreciated the cases, the time, the experience shared with Sherlock enough, and now it was being taken from him.
“John?” Sherlock’s looking at him now, concerned. The concern is a new, recent development. It started appearing at the two month mark. He still hasn’t figured out how to react. They don’t mention it. They don’t mention a lot, anymore.
“I- okay,” John says. He doesn’t know what else to say. Doesn’t know how he should feel about it. He knows how he does feel, kind of, but he doesn’t know how he should feel. He’s finding out that, lately, there is a difference. “Okay.”
He gets up and heads to the restroom. He locks the door behind him. Something in his mind is telling him to let himself weep, but he isn’t that pathetic quite yet, so, instead, he rests his head against the door and closes his eyes and tries to breathe.
---
After that, he and Sherlock talk less than they already had been. It is month three and they are back to tip-toeing, John thinks, or at least, he is. They spend entire days without talking to each other. Sherlock is no longer as present as he had been in month one, and he spends days without even entering the flat. Hoping to escape John, he guesses, to breathe outside the thick smog that John seems to bring with him wherever he goes.
It seems that everything in John’s life is fracturing into small pieces. Maybe he himself is doing the same thing. Still, nothing changes. Usually, when John thinks that everything is falling apart, it is: he is no stranger to guns and bombs and dead bodies and the feeble cries and moans of those on the brink of death. But all that is a stark contrast to now. Everything is falling apart, but everything is the same. He’s fighting a war against himself, and there’s no sign of it. No reinforcements en route.
He wishes he could talk to Sherlock, but he’s not sure what he would tell him, or what Sherlock would think, even if he did. He wants to think that Sherlock, with all his new concern, would figure out a brilliant solution, just like always. Always fixing up poor, stupid John Watson. But, realistically, he knows that all he would do is make Sherlock, still unaccustomed to human emotions, uncomfortable.
Now that Sherlock no longer asks after him on cases, and John doesn’t ask to come along (because even though Sherlock had said that he didn’t want to pressure John into coming, he is still worried that Sherlock just doesn’t want him around, had figured out that there is something wrong, something pathetic now about his old companion, rendering him a burden), John starts taking out longer shifts on the clinic, and then regrets that he does.
John had thought that he should at least be making better use of his time. Now that he doesn’t have a social life anymore, he can at least help people other than himself, who had real, tangible issues that he could fix. Not like him, weak and pathetic and like this, constantly.
But dragging himself out of bed is a chore, now, and all he looks forward to is getting into bed, a time which is becoming earlier and earlier. He starts to resent the extra hours. He drifts through them, numbly. He finds himself staring off into space often, only to be snapped back into it by Sarah telling him he has someone waiting for him. Sometimes he feels that there is something dragging him down, every part of him down, all the time. Dragging himself from place to place is a burden, trying to maintain a happy composure is even more so. Occasionally he finds himself out of his body, watching himself go through the motions every day.
It’s the best way to describe it, really. Going through the motions. It seems like it should be relaxing, not having to think about anything, but all it is is exhausting.
He drops the extra hours.
---
John realizes, one day, that he no longer has a social life.
He is coming back from the clinic, heading towards the Tube entrance, and he sees Sherlock. He’s sitting at some small cafe, the sort of thing Sherlock would never have stooped so low as to do before, with Molly. They’re having tea, and Sherlock looks to be speaking a mile a minute at Molly, who only listens.
John is happy, is proud of Sherlock. Voluntary social interaction is a first. He’s glad that Sherlock goes out now, actually talks to people instead of staying cooped up inside all the time.
John himself has been doing that lately, he realizes.
He’s not sure when that happened. He had always tried to maintain a social circle outside of Sherlock, with varying degrees of success as he really only met up with Lestrade with any sort of regularity. He went out on dates, went to pubs, sometimes, and struck up conversation with whoever he was sitting next to. He had always been a social person.
Now, though, he doesn’t speak to anyone that isn’t a coworker or, sometimes, Sherlock. Not even Lestrade. He can’t muster up the energy to talk to people anymore, so he doesn’t.
He watches Sherlock for a little bit. The numb almost-sadness that has its fingers wrapped around him like a vice constantly nowadays is in full swing. It almost hurts, looking at them, like an observer, always as an observer, like watching himself live a life that doesn’t seem like his anymore. They are happy and he is here, watching them through a one-way mirror.
He turns away, disgusted with himself. He can’t even be glad for Sherlock anymore, and now he’s sure that something’s wrong with him, for him to have become this awful, miserable little thing. No wonder no one speaks to him, no wonder Sherlock no longer allows him to accompany him on cases, if this is what he has become.
---