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Like a living creature, the city of London bustled and thrummed with life. Muffled voices were echoes of another world, they were the clues to experiences, opinions and… His jaw clenched as his eyes flicked across the room and fell on the empty chair before him.
The faded red fabric seemed so ruddy and worn, battered and bruised. His lip curled at the thought, oh, how familiar that felt.
With one glance, he could deduce exactly where the chair had been assembled, the approximate age and even the amount of time it'd been used. But there was another story there, one he had always struggled to divine, one that he relied on others to see, one that was - Not good.
Like a dull vibration, Sherlock could hear the hoover that Mrs Hudson wielded, attacking her floors with an animated dance routine that would be outlandish even in her exotic dancing days. No, in one of the most densely populated cities in London, how could Sherlock feel alone?
"Sentiment is always found on the losing side."
His own words danced through his mind, titillating with a thought process he desperately did not want to entertain right now. His lips curled around a grimace as he pushed himself from his prone position on the sofa, silky dressing gown billowing behind him.
Experiment! There must be something for him to do, to ascertain some form of distraction. But as he swanned into the kitchen, very carefully avoiding the chair that loomed so ominously in the sitting room, he peered about the place.
He could dissolve the fingers he'd recently pilfered from the morgue, could boil the eyes Molly had saved for him.
He didn't do either of those things, instead, he leaned against the kitchen cabinet and stared at the corner of the dining table. His eyes narrowed on the grain there, the wood. Oak, polished and assembled in 2003, cut from a reliably sourced tree farm in North Yorkshire.
His brows furrowed then. The facts, possible experiments, everything he'd usually use to distract his racing mind couldn't touch the strange and almost alien sensation that had taken up residence in the centre of his chest.
It was as if he was tearing apart on the inside. As if his stomach had exploded and the acid had leaked across the wall of his abdomen and his organs were slowly melting away. He could feel his heart still beating, still pushing through the pain. But that was it. The pain was wrong, he wasn't dying and his body was still intact both internally and externally. No, this was an emotion. But what?
"Who leaves a wedding early?"
What an astute question. The answer was rather simple, a person would leave a wedding if they no longer wished to be there. But he had. He'd wanted to be there, wanted to dance and play his violin. But he didn't.
No, instead he'd left.
"It's the end of an era!"
Mrs Hudson had lamented so forlornly that day. How could it have been an end to an era? He'd not understood it then, but he did now. Alone, in the flat, he could see it. Feel it.
That was the worst thing, wasn't it?
He could cope with the unabashed loneliness that had always come so naturally to him. But it was the fact he could feel it, with every breath it was like his chest was tighter. Before, he was alone and had no problem with it. But now, it was so different.
Oh, what a night
Late December back in sixty-three
What a very special time for me
As I remember, what a night
The words to the song echoed through his mind. Each lyrical letter seemed to ricochet around his skull rebounding and resurfacing with a new image, a new memory.
That first night he and John had spent together, it was… To call it magical would be pathetic and stupidly sentimental, but it was. John's eyes had been so full with wonder and amazement and the best part is he'd put it there.
"Amazing."
That was the word. The one word that had told Sherlock that John wasn't like everyone else. Yes, he was quite normal and to anyone who wasn't Sherlock, or rather to the idiots, John was quite an average man.
Oh, what a night, you know I didn't even know her name
But I was never gonna be the same
What a lady, what a night
Oh, I, I got a funny feelin' when she walked in the room
And my, as I recall it ended much too soon
Oh what a night, hypnotizin' mesmerizing me
She was ev'rything I dreamed she'd be
Sweet surrender, what a night
Sherlock heaved out a breath as the song continued to play in his mind. All those happy people, even John and Mary were smiling. But he couldn't not then… Not now.
He dropped his hands to his sides with a slight shake of his head. How could he have been happy? But that didn't matter, did it? John was his priority and he knew, even if he had to replay his life a hundred times over, the brief few years he'd spent with John, the times solving cases, the 'boring' moments in the flat, even the silences that elapsed between them.
Sherlock knew that he'd relive every sadness, every torment if it meant he could hear that one word trickle from between the man's lips. That one compliment that meant nothing to everyone else, that baffled everyone, it was the world to him.
Love was something Sherlock had never allowed himself to fully entertain. Yes, he loved Mrs Hudson, he liked Lestrade and Molly. But with John, it was something far more divine and simple. Something far deeper than love.
But so long as John's lips remained curled around in that wonderful smile, that was all that mattered.
His fingers spidered into his trouser pocket and wrapped around the device that lay there. The glass and plastic had been warmed by his body as it pressed against his palm. He tugged it from its fabric prison before fluttering his fingers across the screen as he wrote out a text.
Is everything prepared, Wiggins? - SH
Yeah, the usual? It's been a while. - BW