Work Text:
Full English
i.
After the funeral, Molly returns the blue scarf. The one Sherlock always had around his neck, before. “I thought you might want to have it,” she says, pale save for the bright flecks of red in her cheeks. She can’t meet his eyes.
The fabric’s still knotted. John takes the scarf home and puts it back where it belongs. He wonders why the scarf. Why had it mattered? What could he possibly want with it now?
ii.
It’s two days after the funeral and there’s nothing in the flat but half a jar of black currant jam, sugar, beans, and an orange. John surveys the icebox, mouth pinched. He removes the bag of ligaments from the butter drawer. Throws them away. Even if Sherlock were here, he thinks, the experiment would’ve been ruined by now. The bag stinks of rot and grease.
There’s a pit in his stomach: gaping, cold. He’s hungry, but hasn’t been able to put a name to the word until now. “Right,” John says, to no one in particular. He’ll have to get dressed and do the shopping, then. He probably shouldn’t do the shopping—after the weekend, he’ll need to move his things out of the flat he can no longer bear—but John is starving, to the point his fingers are all a-twitch, and not even Sherlock could abide by beans without toast.
He doesn’t shower. The press can go to hell, if they’re still outside. He puts on some trousers and a jumper, then his boots, then his coat, and he looks at Sherlock’s scarf but he doesn’t take it with him. It’s not quite that cold, not yet.
iii.
John fills an entire cart: two gallons of milk beaded with perspiration; a whole bag of carrots, potatoes, and onions for stew; beef stock; salt and pepper and thyme; a tub of butter, two sizes the kind he normally gets (Sherlock makes faces at butter); crumpets and fresh bread; some spined fish; sweet green apples; two brown pears; a block of gorgonzola cheese; four different kinds of jam, the varying colors of blood; honey for the tea; oh, and the tea leaves to go with it; eggs and sausages; three pounds of roast; fried chicken; dried pasta in the shapes of dinosaurs; beer, too much; frozen chicken breasts; bulging tomatoes; a plastic container of cheap sushi; dried oatmeal and brown sugar to match; taco seasoning; cabbage; Sherlock’s favorite brand of boiled sweets; black licorice; and a gravy mix. For good measure, he adds two bottles of Coke at the front of the store.
He looks at the nicotine patches and passes them.
The total rings up to well over what his next paycheck will be, but John doesn’t mind. If things get bad, he’ll ask Mycroft. He has gotten a lot less leery about asking Mycroft for help. It’s sort of like, well, he’s earned it, eh?
John has to go up and down the stairs of Baker Street’s flats to get all of it into the kitchen. He locks the door. Puts on the tea. Toes off his socks and pretends he’ll never go outside again.
iv.
He eats the crumpets with his tea—thick, fluffy crumpets with spongy middles, slathered with melted butter and currant jam and translucent-thin slices of pear. The bread swells thick in John’s throat; he licks his fingers wet. The last of the pears are chopped, juice running in thick rivers over the cutting board, and John eats those with hunks of gorgonzola, still cold from the store counter. His stomach feels hard and round. He drinks the tea. He feels better than he has in—forever, honestly.
“Maybe I’ll stay here one more day,” John says. Tossing his head back, he drains the cup. He goes to bed, curls beneath the blankets, and dreams about a black pinprick on the sidewalk that he can’t quite wipe away.
v.
The next day, John eats. That’s all.
He gets up and fries eggs and sausage in the skillet, careful not to overly brown the edges—that’d always been Sherlock’s way to eat them, but it ruins a perfectly plump sausage—or over-fry the eggs. He cuts the bread: thick, fluffy slices that come apart between his fingers. In the living area, he watches the morning news, mopping the last of the grease on the plate with his toast.
There are books on the shelves still because John can’t stand to put them away. Maybe he should read some of them; they’re Sherlock’s books. He plucks a green, leather-bound pretty from the shelf, The Invisible Formula, and becomes engrossed in its pages for a few hours. He doesn’t understand it, but the language is familiar, pretentious—fast-paced. Is it bad that even now, John can hear his voice where it ought not to be?
Around nine, he puts the roast and vegetables in the slow cooker with the herbs. Stirs the mix well and puts on the heat. Eats some of the black licorice, sticky in his palms. Finds the indent Sherlock left behind in the sofa and tries to fit in it.
Lunch: the fried chicken first, crackled and damp from being in the icebox all night, and then some slices of tomatoes with salt on them. John feels bloated and sturdy. He thinks about how to fry tomatoes. He should have bought flour.
Dinner: the roast, its meat still red, the fat a sobbed bubble on the gravy’s surface. John eats until he thinks he might die.
vi.
The entire weekend, he feasts like a king. Or, as reasonably as a middle-class king with a dead flatmate (best friend) and nothing better to do would feast. John devours the apples, grimacing at their sour as it loses itself in between his teeth. He bakes the fish and picks the bones out from under his tongue. He stews cabbage, cuts the chicken, slathers his oatmeal in brown sugar until it appears the consistency and color of mud. The bread goes so fast that he wishes he’d bought another loaf; he still has yet to open two jars of jam.
He eats, and he watches telly, and he stops blogging. The cell phone goes unanswered, save for one text from MH: Don’t do this to yourself.
John sips his tea, eyeing the message on the screen. He takes a big bite of cheesy pasta. Texts back: Care to join me?
Texts again: Bring more food with you.
There is no response for a long time and John gives up on the silly impulse. He’s about to mourn over the last of his tomatoes when there’s footsteps on the stairs, and Mycroft doesn’t need a key, he’s that kind of person. He just comes in and there are two men that follow, arms laden with packages. The kitchen fills. John stands and watches in his bathrobe. Watches Mycroft.
Mycroft is pale, gray-eyed. His mouth twists with something and he says, “You shouldn’t be alone right now. If you will excuse the liberty…”
John goes to the cupboard and takes out the dandelion and burdock pips, Sherlock’s favorite and secret bit of sugar. He’s been waiting for a special occasion. When he offers them to Mycroft, he knows the exact moment that Mycroft sees how special they are, that moment his eyes go dark, that moment he nearly crumbles. They eat the candy at the table. It’s the first time John has seen Mycroft in only his socks.
vii.
It’s been a month since Sherlock’s funeral and John is ready to leave the flat. He’s eaten everything in it and his middle is a little fuller to compensate. Love handles, his mum would say. John thinks that means something, eating out of love. God, he doesn’t care to think about it, though. Not anymore.
He packs up his things and clears out the last of the trash in the bin. All of Sherlock’s things are left exactly as he put them, except one.
Three months later, he’ll still order extra slabs of butter for the toast with his full English. The jam slides over the bread like blood over bone, and John brushes the crumbs from the scarf wound around his neck. He’s growing frustrated with food—no matter how much he eats, his belly remains starved, cutting, concave.
Coffee, he takes with sugar.