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Sherlock has been something of an anomaly for his entire existence, if that statement isn’t too presumptuous. He supposes he doesn’t care if it is. No one listens long enough to judge his phrasing anyway.
He stares into the eyes of terrified peers and unnerved strangers five days a week, words like freak and abnormal spilling from their lips in rivulets that grow into rivers that in turn grow into a sea. Sherlock becomes an island, too far out to touch and just close enough to watch. And when he is carried through the doors of his dormitory by paramedics for the first time, he wonders who is watching as his island burns.
When he wakes up, squinting into the eyes of the man holding his meaningless little life between his fat fingers, he wonders why he swam to shore at all.
Sherlock graduates (eventually) with a degree in chemistry, Mycroft’s rummaging and habit of sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong saving him from being expelled and tossed out on his bony arse. It doesn’t get easier and words come like lashes. Sometimes he feels like the water is rising over his ankles, soaking his socks and lapping against his trousers.
He doesn’t show up to graduation. His degree is mailed to him, wrapped in delicate paper, and kept on the very top shelf in his shoebox kitchen. He thinks he could use his degree, his brain, to do things that matter. He doesn’t.
The cocaine is a siren during the night, calling out for him and luring his transport through the streets of London, stumbling and crying out into the darkness for a fix. Mycroft doesn’t find him for three months after his graduation and Sherlock, when he stumbles through the doors of his stately mansion, sees his name on the wall of Mycroft’s office. He doesn’t remember being evicted, but he does remember the shelf in his tiny kitchen and delicate paper he couldn’t bring himself to rip apart. That paper is gone, torn away to show glass and expectations he can’t live up to. It makes him laugh.
He tosses his head back, dirty curls plastered to his forehead with cold rain, and laughs long and loud. Mycroft leaves and doesn’t come back for a long time, but Sherlock hears the whisper of his voice through the crack in the door hours later. When he wakes again the next morning, his face is tacky and his eyelashes stick together, but Mycroft sits beside him and wipes away the evidence with a flannel that feels like ice against his skin.
They don’t speak, but Sherlock screams as he’s taken away. He never forgets Mycroft’s face.
-
“Are you sure?”
“It must be done. I am many things, but I have never been what Sherlock needs.”
“Do you know what he needs?”
“I don’t believe anyone truly knows what Sherlock needs. That’s precisely the problem.”
-
Rehab is distant, tedious, and dull, amongst many other adjectives Sherlock has been plucking from the dictionary Mycroft had sent him to liven up his letters. Apparently the word “boring” repeated for two pages was a waste of his academic prowess. Sherlock thinks the ache in his hand was worth the five-page lecture Mycroft sent in reply.
His schedule is simple. He takes a handful of pills in the morning at 7:30 with his dreadfully bland breakfast, pills that he cheeks and shoves down the drain in the tiny sink he’d been allowed. The doctor he’s been assigned ─ a stout man with three ex-wives, a long-term lover on the side, and a toenail clipping addiction ─ is an idiot. He puts Sherlock in individual therapy within a week, pulling him from group therapy after he made a woman, two men, and the therapist cry. Individual therapy is much less interesting and largely silent, mostly consisting of Sherlock and his female therapy locking eyes for the entire hour. Then there is lunch, a boring affair mostly consisting of Sherlock spearing his vegetables with a disappointingly dull plastic fork. The rest of the day is usually a blur, something Sherlock refuses to process and store in the flat occupying his head.
There are rooms and cupboards being added constantly, the expansion fed by the books sent by Mycroft every Monday and the medical journals he steals from his therapist’s office. But rehab is something terrible, something so mind-melting that Sherlock refuses to store its existence within the walls of his safe-haven. The sea level is higher than ever and Sherlock quivers on his patch of land, arms wrapped around himself and teeth chattering.
Sherlock learns to delete things six months into rehab.
Six months after his arrival, Sherlock ducks into Mycroft’s car, curls against the window, and begins systematically eradicating everything associated with the hell he’d been assigned. He smiles while he does it.
But in the back of his mind, in the basement of his knowledge-filled flat, he keeps the torture of the withdrawal. He keeps the sweating, and vomiting, and hallucinations. He doesn’t know why.
-
“Are you well?”
“I was, until you started buzzing like a particularly annoying insect in my ear.”
“Where do you wish to stay? I’m sure mummy would be delighted to see you.”
“I have a flat, Mycroft, unless you’ve had it bombed during my stay in hospital.”
Mycroft is quiet for a long time after that.
-
John Watson is a ghost from his past.
John H. Watson, middle name unknown, studying to become a doctor, planning on joining the RAMC, kind, prone to sneaking into the labs at Barts late at night just like Sherlock. They spoke once, just before Sherlock’s graduation, his stay in hospital, and the gap in his memory that spans six months, two days, and fourteen hours.
John looks different, older, and Sherlock supposes that’s what happens when one ages. Years have passed and John has changed, as all things do. He had been thinner during their first meeting, bright-eyed and searching for his place. Sherlock hadn’t known what to make of him.
He’s stronger now, less innocent and more determined. He hasn’t seen battle, but he has attended boot camp. His figure is short, but his body is hard with muscle. It ripples under his clothes. His fingers are wrapped around a styrofoam cup, but Sherlock knows there are calluses on his fingertips. They are the hands of a surgeon, a man who saves lives. Sherlock aches to know him intimately.
John remembers his name, after almost two years of separation, and Sherlock forgets about the murderous barista he had been planning on reporting to New Scotland Yard. They talk until closing time and Sherlock, caught up in the juxtaposition of his companion, doesn’t notice the time passing.
John is twenty-eight and fresh out of specialist training, leaving for Afghanistan in three weeks. He’s nervous but proud to be serving and excited to be helpful. After all, there are never enough doctors and nurses on the front lines. Sherlock wonders if this man - this beautiful enigma of a man - will come home. He certainly hopes so.
They speak for hours until they’re the only two people occupying the quaint café and the suspect is long gone. They stumble from the establishment laughing, leaning on each other for support and buzzing from the copious amounts of caffeine. Sherlock feels high, like the noise in his head has quietened, and he puts a note up in his head reminding him to throw away his stash. Sherlock forgets about the sea for a few moments and revels in the warmth of the sand.
-
“Let me have your mobile.”
“I- I don’t-”
“I’m putting my number in. Call me when you get back to your flat.”
“Of course, John.”
-
John moves into Montague a week before leaving for Afghanistan and Sherlock’s tiny flat seems so much larger with someone sharing it. He tells himself it doesn’t make sense, that the idea of space becoming larger with the presence of another person isn’t logical, but his head has become out of sync with his heart. The waves at his feet don’t crash quite as hard anymore. The water barely touches his shoes.
Sherlock doesn’t remember why John moved, nor does he remember offering, but he does remember the tiny apartment John had been sharing with his alcoholic sister. He supposes that’s enough to sleep on a thin mattress with a stranger every night, to pretend Sherlock doesn’t hear John toss, turn, and cry out in the midst of a nightmare. It’s enough.
Sherlock sees the cigarette burns on John’s shoulder blades in the light of the morning, just after they wake, just like John sees the silvery track mark scars from the blunt antique needle he keeps tucked under the floorboards. They don’t speak about it in the daylight, when the sun makes everything seem so much more real . Instead, they lay on their sides facing their respective walls and whisper into the darkness. The night is their safe haven, the one place no one can touch them.
Three weeks after their second meeting and two weeks after John moves in, Sherlock makes John tea for the first time. John stumbles out of the bedroom, ruffled and jittery with nerves, and he drinks the tea with a smile on his face. His hands don’t shake.
They take a cab to the airport and John, dressed in his uniform and clutching his duffle, stares out the window onto London’s streets for the fifty-seven minutes it takes for them to reach their destination. The silence rings in Sherlock’s ears. It makes him want to scream, shatter the space between them like glass.
John clutches Sherlock to him in the middle of the airport, his duffle abandoned on the ground, and Sherlock holds him just as tightly. There is a pressure against his lips, hard and desperate, and John is gone in the blink of an eye. Sherlock stands alone for a long time, fingertips pressed to his bottom lip, wishing away the taste of salt water in his mouth. He is cold to the bone, caught up in the undertow.
He doesn’t know which way is up.
-
“It made everything stop.”
“Yeah? That’s what my da said when he’d crawled out of the bottle long enough to apologize.”
“Do you wish for me to apologize, John?”
“Go to bed, Sherlock.”
-
Sherlock gets a man killed by lethal injection five months after John leaves for Afghanistan and feels alive .
He sits next to the man’s wife, staring through the glass as he falls limp, and his chest warms with fulfillment. She cries, clutching onto his coat sleeve with frail fingers, but they are tears of relief. There are bruises on her papery skin, deep purple and blue. Sherlock pulls her against his side, offers to take her back to London.
The two of them take a plane from Florida to Washington D.C. and Mycroft, fresh from a meeting with the president, looks deeply resigned to his fate. Sherlock tucks his brother’s credit card back into his pocket with a grin and a pat. Mrs. Hudson giggles.
She tells him that she owns property in central London, that he’s free to stay when they get back home, but Sherlock smiles politely, shakes his head, and returns to Montague. John doesn’t call that night, but Sherlock curls up in their bed with one of John’s jumpers tucked against his face. It doesn’t smell like him - like woodsmoketea John - but Sherlock breathes in the soap from the launderette down the street anyway.
There is a room dedicated to John in his mind, his once-small house now a sprawling mansion with multiple floors and dozens of rooms. John had once called it a palace, early in the morning before either of them had even touched the kettle. The memory is tucked into a filing cabinet, one amongst many. Sherlock wonders if the room is too small for John, if the essence of his existence and the juxtaposition of his person can be contained within four walls.
The room becomes a wing, John’s smile displayed in posters spanning across the distinctly distasteful wallpaper, and Sherlock can breathe again.
John calls the next day and Sherlock beams for the entire thirty minutes they are allowed.
-
“You kissed me. At the airport.”
“I did. Any complaints?”
“No, I don’t believe so.”
“Good, because I plan on doing it again when I get leave.”
-
John comes home tanned, strong, and so different. Sherlock holds him in the foyer of their tiny flat on Montague for ten minutes, hands running over new scars and hard muscles, trying to catalogue his body. They don’t kiss. At least, not until night falls and they huddle together under a worn, patchy afghan, feet poking out the bottom and noses brushing in the darkness.
Nothing happens beyond gentle, comforting kisses and Sherlock can’t decide if he’s disappointed or relieved.
John is home for thirty days. Seven-hundred twenty hours. Forty-three thousand, two hundred minutes. The time slips through Sherlock’s fingers like sand, like salt water, and the two of them stand in the airport once again before Sherlock realizes how much time has passed.
John kisses him properly this time, his army mates whistling lewdly from the gate, and Sherlock clutches the front of his fatigues like a swooning woman from a romance novel. John holds him up, gives him one last peck against his cheek, lets go, and walks away. There are no farewells, no well wishes, and no I love you s.
Sherlock catches a taxi to Mrs. Hudson’s Baker Street flat and spends three days being served tea and scones on her sofa, caught up in his own internal dilemma. Hours are spent sifting through snapshots of John’s smile and the feeling of his rough hands cupping Sherlock’s face. Sherlock tastes sand and Mrs. Hudson wipes away his tears with a carefully embroidered pullicate, using affectionate names like love and dear.
Sherlock tells himself all is well.
-
“Have you ever been in love?”
“Mycroft has always said-”
“I’m asking you , Sherlock. Not your brother.
“I’m… not sure, John.”
-
John comes home eventually, but Sherlock doesn’t remember exactly when.
Sherlock does remember the bliss of a needle kissing his skin and slowing of his brain. He remembers Mrs. Hudson coming for her weekly visit. There isn’t much else to recall and Sherlock, when he wakes up in the sterile white terrarium of a hospital room, looks up into John’s sadconcernedangry face and cries.
John doesn’t hold him, doesn’t cradle him in his arms and tell him pretty lies. Sherlock’s beautiful soldier sits just too far away and stares too far into the past for Sherlock to follow. His eyes are glazed over and his hands clutch at his own knees, fingertips digging into the material of his uniform. He is still dressed. Sherlock wonders if he is home as a surprise or as a result of Mycroft’s influence. Both are unthinkable; both crush him under the weight of his own guilt.
-
“Why?”
“John…”
“No. All I want to know is why.”
“I could tell you, but would you ever understand?”
-
The two of them move into Mrs. Hudson’s Baker Street flat three months after Sherlock is released from hospital. John doesn’t kiss him, hold him, or sleep in the same bed with him, but there are worse things than losing John’s physical affection.
Sherlock lays on the couch most days, fingertips pressed to the underside of his jaw and eyes closed against the harsh light from the windows. John, the John from before , walks the halls of his head and smiles when Sherlock locks himself inside. This John holds him and kisses him just as warmly as he used to, just as lovingly as Sherlock remembers. The two of them speak of islands and the salty taste of the sea, of the tears Sherlock cries in the security of his own mind.
When his eyes open and the light makes him wince, the burden of being alone comes rushing back and Sherlock buries himself in scientific discovery. The kitchen is a warzone, a battle of wills between Sherlock’s mind and John’s emotion. There are broken beakers and strange substances in the sink alongside John’s RAMC mug, bread resting beside human hands, and a forty year old man’s head leaning against a jug of milk. The fighting doesn’t make Sherlock happy and it doesn’t bring back the warmth of John’s touch, but it does make him feel something. Sherlock supposes it’s enough.
Six months into their stay at Baker Street and three months until John's second tour, Sherlock meets Detective Inspector Lestrade.
He comes home, eyes bright from the chase and lips spread in a gleeful smile. He hasn’t felt this alive in months. John is sitting in his chair when Sherlock stumbles home, high on adrenaline, and he watches as Sherlock steps over the threshold of their home. It is a funny thing, to share a home with someone that resents what crawls under your skin. That hate shines in John’s eyes now, flashing back at him from the shadows of their flat.
There are questions and barely strung together answers, but eventually the two of them find themselves wrapped around each other on Sherlock’s bed, sharing kisses and whispers. John doesn’t leave that bed in the months before his deployment and the John wandering his mind melts into the sea Sherlock carries around in his chest.
-
“Love isn’t an antidote, John. Affection will never cure me of this… affliction.”
“Is that what you think I’m trying to do? Cure you?”
“Have I ever been wrong?”
“Yes. Yes, you have.”
-
John leaves, like he so often does, and Sherlock doesn’t fall prey to the drugs or the shadows in his own mind.
Instead, he finds solace in the stuttered breaths of London. There are cases and late night chases and calls from the Middle East on early Thursday mornings. Sherlock feels as close to content as he can manage with a familiar dealer a twenty-minute taxi ride away and the crawl of restlessness under his skin.
There are bad nights, when the darkness creeps in and he has no one to call other than Greg Lestrade. They play Cluedo on those nights, Sherlock slipping Lestrade’s wife’s cheating habits into polite conversation and Lestrade teasingly calling him a “right bastard.” It’s not perfect - Lestrade isn’t John - but it works.
Sherlock welcomes John home from his second tour twenty pounds heavier and smiling, his edges not so sharp anymore. John looks weighed down, heavy with grief, and when he hugs Sherlock in the foyer his knees buckle. It’s a struggle to help John up the stairs and a fight to discuss John’s military career after that.
In the end, they agree on one more tour. Sherlock buries his face in John’s neck in the late hours of the night, stripped raw from the shouting and the pleading, and doesn’t fall asleep for a long time.
-
“You’re angry.”
“Quite. How did you deduce that one?”
“I… care for you, John. I don’t wish to see you hurt.”
“It’s my decision and it’s already been made. Go to bed, Sherlock.”
-
John proposes the day before his deployment and they marry immediately after, Sherlock calling in a few favors from Mycroft and his lackeys. Rings are bought after the signing of paperwork, not yet sized, and John presses Sherlock’s silver band into his hand for the first time as they stand in the middle of the airport.
Sherlock clutches it close to his chest, emotion welling up in his throat, and John kisses him hard on his forehead, murmuring Sherlock’s three favorite words against his skin. It makes the detective smile and, when his eyes finally flutter open, John is gone.
But the band in his hand is still warm from John’s skin and the smile on his face doesn’t wane. He will be back soon , Sherlock tells himself, sooner than you think . In six months, he will regret those words. In six months, John will be back and barely held together by bandages and pins. In only six months.
Sherlock breathes in London's air until then, the crisp scent of sea and salt long gone.
-
“I’ll keep it on the chain with my tags, love, close to my heart.”
"Mine will go on my left digitus medicinalis, where it belongs, John.”
“I love you.”
“... I love you, too.”