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"Mary's gone." He states it simply, emotionless, as he stands at my door with a duffle bag hanging over his good shoulder. Obviously, the simple fact hasn't reached his conscious brain yet, or it has, I never much understood this part of grief, but he is shocked and closing himself off for it. I step aside to let him in, out of the cold, and close the door behind him. I want to say something ridiculous, like welcome home or I've been waiting because it's true and I have, but this is not the moment so I bite my tongue and rest my hand on his shoulder instead.
"Emma, too." John suddenly turns and rests his head against my shoulder and I feel my shirt getting slightly damp. I stay silent, awkwardly reach my arm around him and pat his back. Everything will be all right, I want to say, you can stay here until you find another and love her and leave me again. I bite my tongue again and ignore the familiar bitterness in my chest. "We'll manage." I say instead, and it's enough to make him lift his head and look at me before producing a weak, but genuine smile.
"We will." He says, as if he's convincing himself. His hand fists in my shirt. "At least you're here."
Here. Not dead, he implies. Not gone, he means. Here to support him through everything until he doesn't need me anymore, until he runs off once again to another family, to a kind of happiness I can't give him, a kind of love he won't accept from my hands. I'm here, and I will stay right here until the end, until John Watson stops being here and starts being somewhere else.
I realise I've been staring and smile down at him. "Always." I quote one of those ridiculous films back to him. Something about wizards, I think, and there are supposed to be books, too, but I've deleted most of it apart from that sentence because it seemed to make John tear up and it is such a subtle way of saying so much more. John doesn't seem to get the reference, though, as he just steps away and nods.
"You look tired." I say. I try to not sound like an arse, and I seem to succeed. "Come on, you can have my bed." I place my hand on his shoulder and guide him to my room. It's a good thing I have made my bed this morning. At least it doesn't smell like my failed experiments anymore.
He stands in the middle of my room, slightly lost. "Go on, then." I gently urge him. He frowns.
"I'm not sure I'll be able to." He confesses, slightly ashamed. I take a deep breath, move to my bedside cabinet, and pull out the packet of pills that Mycroft had left one day. I hold them out to him and he takes them, reading the label. He frowns and looks up at me, suspicious. Ah, he worries.
"Where did you get these?" He asks. I swallow. I promised myself not to lie to him, so I don't, but I can allow myself to be a bit vague.
"Mycroft." I say. "I had a hard time sleeping, after." After. It could be anything. In his ears, it will be something along the lines of death, or The Fall, or something ridiculously capitalised like that. In my ears, it means everything. It means after the fall, after the wedding... I do not sleep well when John Watson is not near me.
John nods and pops one. "Thank you." I retrieve a glass of water and return to him already lying in my bed. He takes the pill and smiles at me. "Really, Sherlock, this is... Thank you." I smile at him and make to leave the room, but his voice stops me.
"Please, stay?" I freeze, my heart pounding double-time in my chest. When I manage to school my expression, I turn. "Sorry?"
"Stay, please?" He's very nearly blushing. "I'm not used to sleeping in a bed alone. Anymore." I nod, slowly. Of course it's such a simple explanation. I can't resist, though, and move closer. I lay down under the covers, on the opposite side, stiff and uncomfortable and as far away from him as possible. This is not how I envisioned sharing a bed. He sighs and moves over me to turn off the lights, then lays back down just a bit closer.
"Good night, Sherlock. Thank you."
I stare up into the darkness, wondering if Hypnos will find me tonight.
I lie in a bed and stare up at the light as the world blurs around me, shifting out of focus in different ways, making me uneasy and dizzy, even as the haze of medication subdues my body to a point where it just wants to sleep.
I hear the door open and close, but can't sit up to see who it is. I can barely keep my eyes open. I catch a hazy silhouette, blurry, red-like hair, a yellow tie... I feel dread.
"They're not all from me." He says. His voice alone disgusts me, but I can do nothing but lie there, hooked up to all these trapping machines, drugged into near-oblivion. I blink.
"The straggling carnations are from Scotland Yard." Are they? What carnations? They're probably just out of my range of vision. "And the single rose from... W?" Really? Irene sent me flowers? How tedious. I follow the man with my eyes, or try to. "And the black wreath? C block Pentonville. I'm not sure the intent was entirely kindly." What is he doing here? Why won't he just leave, for gods' sakes? He's not here to state every single flower in the room, is he?
He sits down right next to me and strokes my hand. His fingers are sweaty. Disgusting. "Oh, I covet your hands, Mr Holmes." His voice is almost wistful and he makes me sick. "Though, since you survived, I suppose you get to keep them." He's picked it up now, he is holding my right hand with both of his, both of his clammy, sweaty, disgusting hands. I get sick, but I have no power to move. He removes my pulse-oximeter. Good. That's good, right? Doesn't some kind of alarm go off when the machine no longer gets a reading? Apparently not, because he can continue.
"A musician's hands." He says, once more stroking. I can't bear this much longer. "An artist's." He's bending closer, now, I can feel his breath. What...? MY GOD, he kissed it! He has pressed a wet, soft, gross, disgusting, infuriating kiss to the back of my hand and I can just lie here. I breathe in sharply, as sharply as I can. "A woman's." I muster all of my strength and move my hand, out of his, let it flop back on the bed. He allows it. I wouldn't be able to stop him if he didn't, and the thought frightens me. "Apologies for the dampness of my touch." He says. I still feel sick. "You'll get used to it." What does that mean? What is he planning? He will not be returning, will he? I hate this feeling of dread, of fear, of helplessness he gives me.
"Having shot you, the woman you know as Mary Watson left without killing me." He has picked up my hand again, and there is a small pinch as he reattaches the oximeter. "Which is odd, because that was the reason she came." He places my hand back down, but he doesn't get up. Yet, I hope. But then he does, and I wish he'd stayed seated because now his face is hovering over mine, an odd four inches between his nose and mine. "I didn't pass on her identity to the police." He could lean down and molest me, or kill me, and no one would know it was him. He could end it all right now, and he knows I know. I can hear the fear echo in the way I breathe. "Information like that is just too valuable to be shared, wouldn't you agree?" I stare up at him in fear, in shock, for endless moments, feeling the medication pull me down until my eyes are forced closed by the power of the combined drugs and emotions.
I hear him leave, and let the drugs take me.
I wake to darkness and roll out of bed almost straight away. I stumble to the bathroom, don't bother with the lights, find the toilet bowl and dispose of what little I have in my stomach. The light clicks on, someone moves closer, there is a voice but I'm to hazed to understand anything and then there's someone next to me but I don't look up, I don't want to look up, because what if it's him, what if he's alive just like Moriarty and he's here to take me away, to kill me, to torture me-
A wet flannel is pressed to my forehead and I let my eyes flutter closed. Someone turns my head and cunning hands gently clean my face, the edges of my mouth, my slightly tear-streaked cheeks. I slowly come back to myself, feel my breath calm.
"There you are." John's voice says, and I don't dare to open his eyes because the look he has in my mind is the concerned love he once had in his eyes when he looked at Mary, and I can't handle it when I open my eyes and it's not there. I take a couple of deep breaths, trying to steady myself.
"Do you want to tell me what happened?" I shake my head, frantically. This is not something he should need to know, not something that should matter and it bothers me that it does. I hear him stand, and the tap runs, again, I realise. He presses the cool rim of a glass of water to my lips. "Sip slowly." He orders, stroking my shoulder. I don't think he realises he's doing it. I slowly drink, just a bit, not more than I can manage. I still feel sick.
"Come on." He says, removing the glass and helping me up. I keep my eyes shut. "Let's get back to bed."
"I can't-" I swallow. "I can't go back to sleep." I manage. He guides me to the bedroom with gentle hands, anyway.
"I know." He murmurs, sitting me down on the bed and helping me lie down. I realise that he does know, he knows what it's like to wake from terror and fear going back to it. I feel the bed dip as he lies back down, too. "Why don't you just listen to me, instead? You don't even have to open your eyes, if you don't want to." I nod, and he starts to talk, his hands just not touching me, radiating comforting warmth.
"Mary and I had a fight." He whispers into the night. "She said I loved someone else, that she didn't mind always coming second but that I should just admit it, damn it." He chuckles softly, the sound warming my cold chest. "I told her I didn't, that it didn't matter, anyway, that I was married to her. She said we weren't married, that she didn't even exist, not really. I said it didn't matter, anyway, and then she decided to go on about how you look at me when you think no one's watching, how you became all depressed when I was gone, how you lied about who shot you just to keep my marriage happy and how you then decided to come clean because you couldn't lie to me anymore. That's when she told me I should just go already and then she'd do the same." His hand moved just a tad bit closer, still not touching. "And I realised she was right. About everything. I love you, Sherlock, you are the most important person in my life. And you love me, too, don't you?" He takes my hand and I fall out of bed with the power with which my body instinctively recoils. I grab the dust bin and retch, all the happiness of moments before gone, overwhelmed by the cold fear. John is right behind me, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me against his chest while I keep my head above the bin. I feel that something has clicked in his head, he has worked something out and he is not happy about it.
"Who was it, Sherlock?" He asked, voice gentle but firm with unspoken rage. "Tell me who it was and I will kill them, I will blow their brains out." Though his firmness is reassuring, I laugh bitterly.
"Too late." I manage. He reaches up and gets a tissue from the bedside cabinet, holding it out for me. I take it and wipe the corners of my mouth before tossing it in the bin below me. With his hands around my torso, his breath in my neck, I dare to say it. "I already did that for you."
He breathes in sharply, his chest expanding against my back. "That sodding arse." He growls, before pressing a gentle kiss to the side of my neck. "He's not here, now." He whispers. "I'm here, and if you think you can handle it, we can get back into bed and I can hold you for a bit and maybe we'll sleep but we don't have to." He pressed another kiss to my neck. "And when you're ready, one day, you can tell me what that was about. But not before that. Okay?"
Yes. Yes, please, John, that sounds amazing. You, being here, you, comforting me, all of it sounds amazing, and one day I promise I will tell you what happened, just not now, please, but you already understand it, just like you understand that you probably shouldn't take my hand right now and that I don't want to go back to sleep but probably have to, because you always understand, John, and that's why I love you. I love you, so very much, John, do you hear me?
I realise he doesn't, because I forgot to open my mouth. I'm too tired to repeat everything, so I just nod, instead, and the strong ex-soldier, my strong ex-soldier hauls me up and brings me back to bed. He pulls me close, holds me close in the way I've dreamed about for so long, traces patterns over my back while he kisses my forehead, while he tells me how much he loves me, while he soothes me back to sleep and holds me as I drift off. I let Hypnos take me, feeling safe for the first time in an eternity. We're not fine, not by a long shot, we both still have issues to discuss, things to work out, but right now, at last, here with John, things are how they were meant to be.