Chapter Text
Before, when John shared the flat with Sherlock, cooking was rare. What with all the science equipment and experiments spread all about the place and heavy odds on any eating and cooking surface not being completely sanitary at any given moment, it just didn’t make sense to cook in that kitchen. Easier to head to the shops, pick up some ready-meals and pop them in the ‘FOR EATING’ microwave, and God, how obnoxious that it had been necessary to not only have two microwaves in one tiny kitchen, but to put fucking labels on them to distinguish which one was to be used for food that actually went into living human bodies. Easier still, ring up one of the local spots and order takeaway. And there was always Angelo’s when they had felt like proper napkins would make for a nice change of scenery. Or rather, it was in the ideal spot for a stakeout, and they may as well eat while they were about it.
Sherlock never minded all the eating out or microwave meals. He ate whatever John put in front of him, when he could be bothered to eat, and he passed his card over to whatever server brought them their bill without a care.
After, there were days that John wouldn’t have eaten at all if it hadn’t been for Mrs. Hudson’s constant, well-meaning but incredibly frustrating, meddling. She brought up meals for him regularly. Sandwiches or casseroles that were still hot. Tea. Anything she brought up was already prepared to be eaten so he would have no excuse to not eat.
One day he woke and was dressed and out the door before the sun had risen. He walked the city that he had always loved and wished that he could get lost in it for a while, but he had learned too much about the back alleys and rooftops chasing after Sherlock to really do so. When he had returned to the flat in the early afternoon his feet were sore and his legs were tired. His knee twinged and for a moment he feared the return of a limp that shouldn’t exist, but then he reminded himself that he wasn’t exactly a young man anymore and he hadn’t worn the best shoes for walking that morning.
When he made his way to the kitchen he noticed the smell of bleach, but it wasn’t until he walked in that he noticed the counters and table were clean. Spotless. He walked to the refrigerator and pulled it open. The sharp scent of bleach flooded his nostrils as the soft white light illuminated the clean shelves. There was milk, and butter, and a sandwich on a plate wrapped in cellophane.
In the crisper were apples with shiny pinkish-red skins.
He pulled out the plate and set it on the table behind him before he closed the door. He pulled a glass down from the cabinet and filled it with water from the tap, then he sat down at the table, removed the wrap from his sandwich, and took a bite.
He couldn’t have said what was in the sandwich other than bread. He tasted nothing as he chewed and stared at the wall across from him.
It was clean. All of it. The counters, the table, the dishes.
The refrigerator.
Not a single bloody specimen in sight. No toes, or dead mice, or decapitated heads.
No science equipment.
Even the experiments-only microwave was gone.
There wasn’t a single thing in the kitchen that spoke of Sherlock having ever been there.
He was gone. Wiped clean.
Some bleach and a flannel and it was as if he never existed.
John didn’t remember making the decision to throw the sandwich at the wall.
He did remember how he got up afterwards to pick up the bread and ham from the floor to throw away.
Later, he scrubbed bright yellow mustard off the wall. Mrs. Hudson had done such a nice job cleaning and he hated the thought of her going through so much trouble just for him to ruin it all.
_____
Sherlock had left him all the money from his cases. John didn’t know how or why. Anthea had shown up one day with a folder and paperwork for him to sign. He didn’t bother reading any of it before he grabbed a biro and signed the dotted line in a rush to shove her out of his flat. It was foolish, really, to sign anything that came from Mycroft without reading it, or probably just throw it in the fire to burn, but it had been done. The next day he noticed a significant increase in his bank account. When he went to pay the rent, Mrs. Hudson informed him it had been paid in full for the next year, all utilities as well, and he stared at her for several moments before turning out of her flat, out the front door, and down the pavement.
He had felt a flicker of some emotion, then. Anger, he thought. Anger at Sherlock for leaving, and at Mycroft for meddling, but it faded into the background as everything else had in the haze that surrounded those first few months after Sherlock’s death.
Greg came over at some point a week or two after the funeral. John heard Mrs. Hudson talking to him at the front door, but whatever she said to him was enough to convince the DI to not venture up the stairs. John was grateful. He didn’t want to talk to anyone, but especially not Greg. Greg, who should have believed in Sherlock. He had read in one of the papers that he was facing some inquiries at work due to his associations with Sherlock. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it. On one hand, he had liked Greg and hoped he wouldn’t get in any serious trouble or lose his job over whatever they were saying he did wrong. On the other darker and more bitter hand, he hoped that Greg got a taste of what it felt like to have your entire career, your life, dragged through the mud. He wasn’t proud of it, but it was how he felt.
_____
About a month after Sherlock fell, John decided he should find a new job. It wasn’t as if he would be solving crimes anymore. A standard day job was what he needed. He considered calling Sarah and seeing if there were any openings at her clinic, but he quickly decided against it. Even without the complication of Sherlock calling at all hours and John needing to call out at random times, it just wouldn’t be the best work environment. He liked Sarah, liked working with her, and he thought she liked him well enough, but he doubted she would ever want to work with him again.
So. Somewhere new, then.
He ended up calling on Mike, who had a lead for a position in a clinic on the other side of the city. John didn’t want to move from 221B, no matter how many ghosts haunted it those days. He called and got an interview, anyway.
John started his new job at the new clinic almost seven weeks after Sherlock fell. He woke nearly two hours early every day to make sure he had plenty of time to get to work on time.
The ride on the Tube was atrocious. It was always packed with commuters, of which he was one, and he often found himself standing between people cursing the lack of proper WiFi on the Tube when important calls cut out or their emails wouldn’t load, and it was almost enough to make him want to pay the fees for a taxi to drive him. Or even learn to drive himself.
Almost, anyway.
He didn’t like the feeling of sitting in a taxi anymore. Of trusting that the person driving him will actually get him to his destination instead of something far more sinister now that he would inevitably be alone whenever he would travel. And honestly, the idea of driving made his stomach twist uncomfortably. He had never seen the point in learning to drive when he lived in a city with (mostly) reliable public transport and when he was in the RAMC there had been no need for him to drive, either.
So he sat, or rather stood, between people he didn’t know and kind of hated them, and the Tube, and a little bit himself, as well.
His coworkers were nice enough, he supposed. He hadn’t really spent much time getting to know them beyond the required workplace niceties in the weeks he had spent working there before he was invited to a pub night. One of the nurses had made a point of inviting him and explaining how they tried to get together once every month or two in an effort to build a sense of camaraderie between them. John rather thought it sounded like complete shite. He had been a soldier. He knew all about building camaraderie with your fellow soldiers and he rather thought a single pub night wasn’t likely to ever be enough for that, but he also didn’t have any real reason to decline other than being the sad sod he knew himself to be. He wanted to decline. He had no desire to go out with these people he hardly knew and drink a beer in a crowded or noisy pub between other people he didn’t know, but he found himself nodding and accepting anyway.
Perhaps getting out for a night would do good for him. Probably not, but again, it wasn’t as if he had anything waiting for him back at the flat beyond a plate of whatever meal Mrs. Hudson had cooked up for herself that night and put in his fridge for him to heat up when he got home.
Unfortunately, the pub was about as awful as he had anticipated. Whether it was a self-fulfilling prophecy or not was beyond the point. He found himself tucked into a booth between one of his fellow doctors and one of the clinic’s receptionists, sipping on a lukewarm beer, and he wasn’t completely confident that he could recall the names of anyone that he was sitting with and worked with on a daily basis.
God, he hated his life.
He forced himself to interact, though. He answered any questions directed at him and laughed when everyone else did, even if he missed the reason why everyone was laughing. It was safe to say he wasn’t paying any attention to the people around him and he glanced at his watch to check if enough time had passed for him to make his excuses to leave. He didn’t want to be here any longer and he knew he wouldn’t be missed after he left. He just didn’t want to be a complete arse about it because whether he liked these people or not, he did need to work with them. Working with them went well enough for him to not want to completely destroy those working relationships with them.
“John.”
He blinked, looking up from where he had been staring unseeing into his nearly empty mug.
“Sorry,” John replied, forcing a smile onto his face.
The nurse that sat across from him smiled. “Not to worry. I was just asking how you like working at the clinic.”
“Oh. Yeah, it’s great. Haven’t had anyone projectile vomit on me yet, so can’t complain,” John joked, and everyone laughed as expected.
“Just a matter of time, yeah?” one of the doctors, Potter or Prewitt, something with a P, anyway, replied and then everyone nodded their heads in agreement, just as expected.
Nothing new. The same conversations had with the same kinds of people, no matter what their faces looked like. It was all just the same as before.
It was why he had joined the military. Well, partly, anyway. Even when the days were the same, they were different. A little family clinic in London wasn’t likely to see anything truly exciting, thus the personnel weren’t likely to have anything much more exciting than unexpected projectile vomiting.
He tried to convince himself that that was a good thing. Stability and safety and all that shit. He didn’t believe it, but he tried to, anyway.
Luckily, the conversation drifted away from anything that he needed to reply to and he finished off his pint with the bare minimum of interactions possible.
When one of the other doctors begged off to relieve her daughter’s sitter, John took his opportunity to head out, as well. He didn’t have anyone waiting for his return, but he had hit his sociability limit for the day. He left with a wave and a smile and received the same along with a chorus of “byes” and “see you on Monday” that followed him out of the pub and into the crisp evening air.
The sun had gone down while he was inside and took whatever meager warmth it had provided during the day with it. He shoved his hands in his coat pockets and briefly wished he had thought to grab his scarf that morning before he left for work, but no matter. He had begun to walk towards the nearest tube station, his thoughts fluttering from one topic to the next, when he found himself standing in front of a small bookshop. The window display was filled with different books. A biography, some new fiction titles, some teenage vampire or werewolf book by the looks of the cover, and a cookbook.
He frowned thoughtfully at the display and a moment later found himself pushing the door open and the small tinkling sound of the bell rang through the shop above his head.
The light was soft and it was warm and inviting inside. He found himself smiling without meaning to as he made his way down the first tight aisle of books.
It had been years since he’d been in any bookstore that wasn’t a Waterstones. This small shop was charming and welcoming in a way that a large bookstore could never be. He was halfway down the aisle of what appeared to be some kind of science fiction section when a voice called out to him in welcome.
“Can I help you look for anything in particular?” the woman at the end of the aisle asked after John had looked up at her greeting.
“No, thanks. Nothing in particular. Just wanted to take a look around,” he replied, and the woman nodded.
“If you need anything, feel free to ask,” she said before turning around and walking to wherever she had been before, or so he assumed.
John let out a sigh of relief. Oftentimes it seemed like employees hounded after him whenever he ventured into stores, so it was a nice change of pace to be allowed to simply wander up and down the shelves.
He heard other customers come and go as he browsed through the mystery section and even picked up a couple new titles that he hadn’t read before. He hadn’t really made the time to read any kind of fiction lately. It had all been newspapers and medical texts. Once he even read through one of Sherlock’s old chemistry textbooks. Perhaps it was time to read something a bit more fantastical, even if it was just a murder mystery. He hadn’t read one in a while since Sherlock had made a habit of ruining them for him by guessing the killer before John had a chance to get even halfway through the story. He thought briefly of the fact that Sherlock wouldn’t be able to ruin the ending for him anymore, and a wave of confused emotions rushed through him. Sadness, grief, anger, and an absurd amount of fond affection.
His chest felt tight at the feeling and he sniffed hard to get his emotions under control before he began to make his way to the counter to pay. Right before he got there, though, he spotted a small collection of cookbooks.
He picked a random title and opened the book, letting the pages flip through as he gazed down at the recipes within. It seemed like a pretty easy book to follow, actually. Each recipe was pictured and the instructions seemed easy enough to follow. There were a variety of recipes, everything from curries to casseroles, to baked breads and biscuits. He flipped the book back over to glance at the glossy cover and read the title Cooking for Two.
Well. He was one, but he supposed he probably owed Mrs. Hudson a few meals after all the ones she had been feeding him over the last few months. He had no idea if he could really make anything decent beyond cheese toasties and a very basic spaghetti, but it wasn’t as if he was doing anything else with his free time, lately. It would be something different, at least. Perhaps learning how to cook would be fun.
He snorted at himself. He didn’t really have fun anymore.
If nothing else, it would help him pass the time.
He tucked the cookbook under the two mysteries he had already chosen and finished his journey to the counter to pay.
The woman at the register smiled as she priced the books for him and tucked them into a plastic bag.
“Do you like to cook?” she asked as John handed over his card to pay.
“I don’t know. I suppose I’ll find out.”
_____
John did not, in fact, like to cook.
Everything he made so far was absolutely atrocious.
It had been a week since he had picked up the book and brought it home and of the ten recipes he had attempted in that time, not a single one had come out to something remotely palatable. He had burnt cream sauce to a pot that he was still attempting to scrub off, undercooked chicken to the point where he questioned if he actually understood the concept of a timer, overcooked what would have been a phenomenal filet if he hadn’t come anywhere near it, and went through two bags of flour in an attempt to bake one single edible biscuit, and hadn’t actually managed that before giving up.
He wasn’t sure what was wrong. He was perfectly capable of reading and following directions, but apparently, when they came in the form of a recipe, that ability became nonexistent and he was left standing in the ruins.
He had needed to buy measuring cups and spoons and utensils, and since he had been in the shop anyway, he bought brand new pots and pans to help him in his quest for domestic domination in the kitchen. Nothing super fancy or anything, but definitely better quality than the pans he had used when he was in university.
Unfortunately, it hadn’t made any difference.
He wasn’t the type of person who felt like they needed to be great at everything they set out to accomplish, and he honestly wasn’t sure when cooking became something that he needed to accomplish, but here he was and he refused to back down. By all appearances, it was a losing battle and a smart soldier would accept that and plan a hasty retreat, but, well, John wasn’t a soldier anymore.
Apparently, he was a man who would look at the devastation of yet another completely ruined attempt at a home-cooked meal, order takeaway on his mobile because he had to eat somehow, and go back to the fridge to see what he had left to cook with the full knowledge that he wouldn’t make anything edible, but was unable to back down.
His curry arrived 40 minutes later as he was scraping what was supposed to have been the base for a cottage pie into the bin.