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How he never clipped and kept her hair, or drew a hairbrush though that style of hers – Simon Armitage
It’s warm tonight. It’s warm, and John Watson sits upright like a bolt in his bed. There is a quietness about his mechanical movements that suggest this is not the first time. He breathes deeper and louder now, realising that he can; there’s no one in the flat he can wake by accident with his heavy inhale-exhale. He goes to rest back against the mismatched pillows, but stops, body tensed at 120 degrees. His face brightens and he scrambles to push the covers to the floor. Was it hope, or just the brittle, impressionable state of a sleepy mind with an idea?
A moment later and the bedroom was empty, its sleeper stumbling down the stairs and along the carpeted hall with the eagerness of a college kid almost home, almost there. Almost there. It’s like a chant. A sleepy chant sluggishly repeated, and why hadn't he thought of this already? It had been almost a week and why hadn’t he thought of this already? Because surely, crossing the continents of carpet and wooden floorboards to his flatmate’s bedroom was an idea, wasn’t it? A bright, brilliant sort of idea and the doctor finds himself snagged in the sticky tendrils of half-wakeful hope as he moves towards the door like a blind man following the voices of his family.
It’s at the door that he stops, the reality of where he is like falling into an icy river. He hisses, leaning forward until his head thuds against the wood.
“Fuck.”
John sags, a hand coming up to his mouth to clamp it closed. He tries to stifle the tremor in his hand as it hits him, 100 miles per hour, the impact leaving him hollowed and winded.
“It’s empty. It’ll be empty. You know that,” he tells himself shortly, because he sometimes needs reminding. He opens the door, and it’s empty. It’s cooler and darker in here though, and John reaches for the closet where it will smell of him. He stares at the impossibly still suits, lined up, ten green bottles sitting on wall, and counts them slowly, fingers trailing over the cool starched shoulders. There are eleven. Well then.
John moves closer because it’s no good, he can’t smell anything from here, and he even – horrified at himself – eases one from its hanger, the heavy material familiar familiar familiar under his fingers. He puts it back quickly because they don’t smell of him, freshly laundered as they are. The wardrobe doesn’t smell of anything much. It’s horrible and John has to shut the door and step back because suddenly he doesn’t know why he’s here. Doesn’t know why he thought this a good idea. That brilliant little flicker of an idea.
And then his toes tangle in something cold and soft and he looks down and it has to, it has to smell of him because if it doesn’t then John might cry.
John sits on his dead friend’s bed and holds the blue silk in his hands. It’s perfect and for a moment John is no longer sat in the dark clutching a dressing gown like it’s his lifebelt and he’s a drowning man.
He’s back in the main room of 221b and it’s six months ago. There’s a fire burning and it’s warm and homely and John should be relaxing but he’s not. He can’t when when his friend is pacing pacing pacing, wearing a hole through the rug John imagines, and he’s got to stop soon, surely.
“Sherlock.”
The doctor says it patiently and quietly, because John is a patient man, and occasionally a quiet man, but his patience is going to run out soon and John wants the shouting to be as impressive as possible when it begins, which it inevitably will, because Sherlock is without a case and there is often shouting when Sherlock is without a problem to solve or somebody to outwit. Not that the amount of shouting necessarily reduces when he does have a case, but John knows that that shouting is usually justifiable.
Sherlock doesn’t stop moving, up and down, up and down, and John sets his newspaper on the seat and leans forward, elbows on his knees.
“Sherlock. Stop. What – what are you doing, and is it helping?”
“No,” his friend snarls, whipping his head in John’s direction.
“Then what – ” his eyebrows raise, “are you doing?” he says again.
Sherlock makes a little noise like a huff but it sounds a bit too desperate to just be frustration at John’s blinding ignorance and just a little embarrassed to be something that he is busy with and therefore mustn’t be disturbed at any cost. Sherlock catches the mantle midway through his incessant trekking from chair to chair and slumps, leaning his forehead against the wood and turning his face into his folded arms. He is alarming close to the skull. There seems to be some sort of muffled, one-sided conversation going on over by the fireplace and John rolls his eyes.
“Can’t hear you,” he says on an exhale as he stands and stretches, thinking he’d best leave Sherlock to whatever the hell he is doing. John heads towards the black leather chair to retrieve his book en route to his room, and he catches a few words.
“Head. Hurts. Think it’s a. Migraine. Seems to. Want to make. Thinking impossible. Hurts.”
John stops midway through reaching for a dirty plate and shakes his head. “Have you taken anything?”
There’s a twitch of limbs and a shake of a head form where Sherlock is crumpled on the mantle shelf.
“Well I’ve got some – ”
“I don’t know what to do!” Sherlock shouts, lifting his face from his folded arms and John is shocked and appalled at himself for not noticing his papery skin and the mauve half-moon circles around his eyes sooner.
“Well what do you normally do?” he says firmly, because sometimes Sherlock is very much like a child and doesn’t need provoking any further. Sherlock stalks to the sofa and swishes his blue silk dressing-gown so he can flop gracefully onto it. He rolls over so his back is to the room and to John, and he tucks his arm up over his face like a cat. John sighs and pads over quietly, dispensing the plate back onto the chair on the way.
“Is it a bad one?” he asks, feeling a little like he has just asked a marble statue for directions and is waiting for a reply. There is an almost imperceptible bob of Sherlock’s head, and John nods, heading to the kitchen for not-strictly-allowed-without-prescription painkillers. He returns and stands waiting with pills, uncurling Sherlock’s hand and pressing a glass of water into it.
“Take these,” he says softly, “They’ll help. I promise.”
Gown slipping off one shoulder and hair an untameable disarray, Sherlock sits up and swallows them down. John perches on the coffee table opposite.
“What do you normally do?” he asks again. “Besides locking yourself in your room for the best part of a week, I mean.”
Sherlock shrugs, defeated by his useless human body again, again, and the look on his face breaks John’s heart a tiny bit. John reaches out for his shoulder and tries to think of what to do. He knows the migraines his friend gets are bad, and he’d be willing to bet they’re all the worse for someone like Sherlock. Someone who relies on a quick, clear head.
In reality, he couldn’t be further from the truth. At least about the inside of Sherlock’s head. His head is never clear. In fact, if you can imagine the very opposite of completely clear, then you probably wouldn’t be imagining anything similar to what it’s actually like. It is, in fact, the empty head that Sherlock hates. It’s bad when all he can see is the little white words that usually only happen at crime scenes, even though he loves crime scenes, and it’s bad when there’s an overload and the world goes a bit fuzzy around the edges and he can’t see the patina of his violin.
But it’s a great deal worse than even that when he can see nothing at all, and everything is blank and his head is empty and rattling like he’s surfacing from anaesthetic (and that’s happened seven times, now, so he knows what it’s like). It’s also like, he thinks vaguely, the day he slipped and fell through the ice of the pond on his ninth Christmas. Everything went very bright then, but the cold made his brain slow down and his thinking stop and he didn’t like it. Didn’t want to be like an ordinary person with an empty head.
The headaches don’t always make things go white of course, and in those instances, he is not a masochist, but he’s not exactly adverse to the pain either. It helps, and it sharpens his mind. But when they do turn everything blank and boring and make his brain sluggishly, painfully slow so that it throbs along dreadfully, it really is rather bad.
When he was a very small boy and the headaches struck, he would throw things in class and shout very loudly at the teacher that he couldn’t see because of the whiteness. He would run, then, usually into the bathrooms at break time and sit against the cubicle door, facing the miniature toilet, and put his hands over his ears and shake his head to try and get rid of it. Try to bring the colour and the music and the little white words back, if he could.
When Mycroft came to collect him, he would know as soon as the herd of little boys began to disperse outside the gates. To his brother’s fretting teachers, he would explain that yes, Sherlock had come home earlier that day on his own, and that yes he was fine, it was just one of his little incidents, and sorry for any damage he may have caused this time and oh I must be getting home now, Mummy will be worrying.
He would navigate the school’s empty hobbit-sized corridors, and slip quietly into the cubicle to sit beside his brother. He would always find him, wherever he went, and Sherlock wondered if he perhaps unintentionally left some sort of breadcrumb trail behind for Mycroft to follow. He would gently remove Sherlock’s hands from his ears and say his name, and Sherlock would open his eyes, a look of surprise on his face every time, every time at his brother having come to rescue him from his slow-moving brain.
Mycroft would scoop Sherlock up onto his feet as best he could, and take his little fingers, putting their conjoined hands into his jacket pocket. He would never allow them to be seen by any teacher while leaving, and if they ever were seen, they never commented on seeing Master Mycroft Holmes leaving the school with his little brother in tow after saying he had made it home already.
Mummy would know the moment she saw the boys holding hands, gathering them in her arms for a brief stiff hug before herding the younger boy into the library where she knew he liked it very much, the smell of the book’s binding glue soothing his head. She would lay down with him on the widow seat, her legs tucked up and not minding about his shoes on the upholstery, and run her fingers through his hair until the emptiness receded and he could see everything properly again and smell his Mummy next to him who wouldn’t say a word but would wait for Sherlock to speak first. Normally he would then sleep until the next morning, and his mother would have to perform a circus star’s contortionists act to extricate herself from the tangle of his limbs on the seat and make her way to bed, ruffling her eldest’s hair as she past him sat outside the library door, a book in his hands.
They got less frequent as Sherlock grew taller and taller, until he no longer had to shout at the teachers who didn’t understand (although he did still occasionally throw things). He learned that there wasn’t really a way to stop them, and he tried running his fingers through his own hair but that felt strange and anyway, it was like how you can’t tickle yourself. Something to do with unexpected stimulus. He must have deleted it.
He tries to keep moving, keep thinking. Cases are the best medicine of course, although Lestrade hasn’t text him in over a week and Sherlock was thinking about reverting to his backup plan (stay in bedroom and wait for it to pass), when John had spoken up earlier.
“Your shirt,” Sherlock says, and John looks confused.
“Sorry?”
“Your shirt was a gift. Awful design. Far too outlandish for you to have chosen for yourself. It’s not even practical. Not formal enough for an occasion, not smart enough for work, and you wouldn’t – or shouldn’t, I should add, wear it on a date. So, you wear it around the flat. You make it practical by letting it become your ‘Around the Flat Shirt.’
John looks thrown – obviously not a conscious decision, then.
“But who from then? Well, it fits you well, so someone who knows your size. If it was the current girlfriend, er…”
“Charlotte.”
“Charlotte, then you would have worn it at least once when you’ve been out to see her. People enjoy the verification that their presents are being appreciated.” Sherlock rested his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, muffling his words. John could barely keep up.
“Could have been a gift from a previous partner, although I do believe I’ve never seen it before and besides, no woman in their right mind would buy the man they fancied that shirt – ” he lets an arm fall towards John, pointing at his chest, “as a gift.
"So! Who does that leave? The buyer is obviously someone who knows your size, I said that earlier, but doesn’t know your taste or need for practicality in an item of clothing. Your sister then.”
“Sherlock…”
But Sherlock was not finished. The logic, the thinking helped, and the whiteness was hovering in the background like the low hum of a fridge. There was still the pain of course, but without the emptiness, that could be – ignored. Mostly ignored, then.
He raised his head. “There was a man in this flat before us – years ago – and he used to stand over there and smoke a small clay pipe. He practised science, but was not a scientist by any stretch of the imagination. You don’t get circular burn marks on a surface like that from anything else than an overheating glass beaker. Careless, perhaps. There’s also – ”
“You sure that wasn’t you?” John muttered, but Sherlock ignored him.
“ – significant HCl staining on the ceiling. No true scientific man careful with his work, or indeed, perhaps more accurately paid, for his work would allow such negligence. Besides he’d have a lab or something if it was his day job.”
Sherlock drops his head into his hands again, the words coming far too quickly, his deductions running off his tongue.
“He had a dog for a time – a small dog, possibly a bull, more likely a spaniel of some sort but it’s impossible to tell for sure, of course. However the dog moved on before the owner – too careless in leaving the door to the main road open perhaps?”
Sherlock talks faster still, his voice leaping over and around the clever words.
“He took his coffee strong but his tea with two sugars and was rather talented with his hands, ambidextrous, if i'm not very much mistaken, that much is obvious from the layout of the kitchen – I’ve never changed it – of course that was all before he lost his job in a scandal and his daughter in a a car accident, ending everything by blowing out his brains sat in that very spot, John."
Sherlock stops, his shoulders shaking and John hadn’t missed the little break in his voice when his friend had said his name.
“Sherlock.”
John clamps both hands on Sherlock’s shoulders.
“Stop. Stop, now.”
“It helps!” the detective says bluntly – “It’s the – ” his eyes squeeze closed as the headache throbs. “It’s the only thing,” he says brokenly. “The only thing that gets rid of it. I need to think, John, please.”
John is shocked. He’s never, never seen his friend beg for anything, ever, and John reckons he can probably blame it on the drugs and the pain, but Sherlock’s eyes are empty and his expression is desperate.
“What – can I – is there anything else that helps? Your head? Anything at all Sherlock?”
There is something else that helps of course, two things, in fact, but Sherlock doesn’t expect John would endorse class A drugs in the flat – or in Sherlock either, for that matter – and he can’t ask John to run his fingers through his hair. He’s not particularly well acquainted with the boundaries of friendship, but he's pretty certain that would be over John’s line. So he can’t ask him, can he.
Could he?
“Come here.” John says it softly, and it’s somehow ironic because he’s the one going to Sherlock of course. He leans forward and pushes Sherlock down onto his back, just a little too smug at the alarm on his face. The he fits behind him and Sherlock wriggles so they are both lying on their sides facing each other, Sherlock’s back to the room. His eyes are still wide and glassy, and John huffs out a breath as he settles. John props himself up on his elbows and brushes the hair from Sherlock’s eyes with his free hand.
“Is this – is this alright?” he asks hesitantly.
Sherlock swallows and nods, eyes level with John’s chest and John thinks that’s probably just about for the best right now frankly.
Sherlock’s hair is very soft and very very curly. It springs back loosely when he cards his fingers through it and he almost giggles, exhaling rather fast.
“What?” Sherlock asks, a little breathlessly, eyes rolling up to where John is propped above him.
“Nothing. Er. Nothing,” he smiles. “Your hair is just…very curly.”
Sherlock rolls his eyes but the corner of his mouth jumps and John doesn’t miss it. He also doesn’t miss when Sherlock winces and his fingers clench and he exhales a little pained noise. John frowns and uses his fingertips in gentle circles behind Sherlock’s ears and Sherlock’s eyes flutter closed, head pushing into the touch like a cat.
“Is this – ”
Sherlock speaks with his eyes still closed. “Yes. Shhh, John. It’s fine.”
John moves over Sherlock’s head, his fingers light and gentle then steadier, exerting just a bit more pressure. He can feel Sherlock beginning to still below him, restless energy leaving him as he finally begins to relax.
It’s an odd thing, John thinks, because they’re not, they’re not, not like that. And yet if they were like that, John thinks this might be a little bit what it would be like. This not-really-intimate thing, whatever it is. Easy touches only allowed from the other. He imagines drawing a brush through Sherlock’s curls often, keeping the headaches at bay and shaving stood next to each other in the bathroom. Being close enough to prevent nightmares of hot sand and blood and blinding sun.
John stops himself thinking right about there. Because they’re not. And just this alone - the relief that Sherlock is able to tell him when something is wrong - is enough. For now.
Sherlock smiles as the colours brighten behind his eyelids and he know that when he opens them, he will be able to see his music and the pattern of his favourite dressing-gown again.
Now, John sits in the dark on Sherlock’s bed and it’s long been slept in and it’s not enough. It’s not enough now and it wasn't enough then and John is crying anyway now. Careful, controlled sobs until he spots Sherlock’s hairbrush on the small table and it’s all he can do to stop himself from throwing the gown away and leaving but he doesn’t. He stays, of course he stays, head resting where Sherlock’s would have been, where it still should be.