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Once, when he was young, John bit an ice pop. The sun was hot, the ice pop was orange, and the porch on which he sat overlooked a little green yard in Nowheresville, Suburbia. The sky was bright, but there were clouds on the horizon and thunder in the air, and something about the day gave him the motivation to ignore everything within him that cringed and chomp down on the damn thing as though to break the wooden stick inside. It took at least fifteen minutes to fully overcome the numbness in his teeth.
In the last five minutes, he’s tested the fit of his gun’s muzzle against his teeth three times. If he were to bite it, (literally, figuratively, who knows anymore) he thinks it would probably take more than those fifteen minutes to walk off.
He sets (throws) the weapon down again to clatter on the wooden tabletop. Sitting, the bounce of the bedsprings prompts him to leap back up, retrace the footsteps he’s been wearing into the carpet, flop backward across the covers, limbs akimbo, and fling an arm over his eyes.
Stand back up, because that is not John Watson’s body language, it never has been, acquisition of these habits cannot be allowed-
Try the gun again.
It doesn’t fit any better than last time.
(Good God, can’t he even die how he’s supposed to?)
John knows he is a good person, or at least that he tries to be. He knows he has morals stronger than most, he knows he has a spine of steel, he knows. He knows. But he doesn’t know if he has strength for-
For what? He’s not even sure what his goal is anymore. Is he trying to pull himself out of the fog? Grab his coat, take a walk, stop by Tesco on the way, only Tesco has milk and milk makes him think-
Is he trying to die? Because he’s botching that too. Damn gun won’t fit right.
Once upon a time, John Watson was a good little boy. Then he joined the army.
His mouth tastes of metal. Can you taste colors? John has learned very literally what gunmetal grey tastes like, or something close to it, if his gun would be better labeled black. Oh, call it gunmetal grey, it makes him sound cooler. Makes him sound like something out of a novel, the hero with the car full of tricks and the mouth full of quips and the beautiful ladies who hang off his arms like the diamond earrings his Mum wore to parties.
But that’s nonsense. You can’t taste colors. It’s utterly illogic-
Stop it, stop it, stop it, that’s not you, that’s him, you’ve got to stop this, let him go, let him go-
He grabs his coat, takes a walk, and stops by Tesco, keeping on the opposite side of the store from the refrigerated section. He ends up waiting behind an elderly couple with massive bags of groceries for the checkout, barely glancing at the chip and pin machine that stands barely to his right, no queue. When he gets back to - Where is he staying, again? - to Harry’s, he dumps the bag to the linoleum a meter from the door and leaves it there, drops his coat on top of the lot and marches up to the guestroom.
Lying under the bed fills his hair with dust. Fur from the cat Harry used to have clings to his clothing in clumps. Down here he feels like a relic. He is that weird old bird statue your grandmother gifts to you that you immediately exile to the attic, never to be unearthed until you move away or hold a garage sale. He’s the spare change you drop behind the dresser.
He is not John Watson.
He is also not Sherlock Holmes.
(Why is it that the second is harder to accept?)
His phone is down here in the corner, covered in a layer of its own dust. He dropped it into the space between the bed and the wall when it wouldn’t stop lighting up. He hasn’t regretted the decision since.
His watch blinks at him. Harry will be home soon. She’s one of the few good things he has going right now. His tragedy, it seems, has yanked her out of the bottle and into the role of caretaker, a mantle she’s taken up with gusto and a sense of relief. He raised his concern of being a freeloader once, and she slapped him lightly upside the head for it.
“Don’t you dare ditch me now, John Hamish Watson. You’d do both of us disservice, and so help me, if you jeopardize this for me because of your bloody pride-”
He didn’t mention it again.
Harry will be home soon, and he needs to hide the Browning before she does, lest it be confiscated. She’s been searching for it since he showed up, and he’s only managed to keep it away this long by accident; early on, he got really flaming angry and put his foot through a wall. When he shoved a bookcase in front of the hole, the result hole made for a handy hiding place.
Harry will be home soon, and he really ought to put the gun away. The rest it offers is a form of ‘ditching’ his sister, and he’s already decided against that. (Though he supposes it might not be pride anymore, what’s pushing him right now.)
Harry will be home soon, but his mouth still tastes like gunmetal grey, and curly black hair looks lighter next to concrete, and there’s blood everywhere. The dust is caked with it, it’s worked into his hair, lathered like shampoo, it’s all over the phone, if he thumbed the keys his fingers would slip on it, he’s choking-
He nibbles at the gunmetal grey and lets the taste of iron mingle with steel, sister sensations that melt and meld and sharpen the image in his mind. There’s something beautiful on the sidewalk.
Once, when he was young, John went to a butterfly house. There were dead bodies, gleaming wings flattened to the ground all about the room, never to fly again. He wondered how many butterflies the exhibit went through daily. He knows now that there was only ever one that mattered.
(Is he thinking of wings still, or coats? Who cares?)
(Harry will be home soon. The gun won’t be hidden.)
Once, when he was young, John bit an ice pop. Now, when he is old, he bites a bullet. This sting is one he can’t walk off.