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It was a slow disillusionment.
When he’d first met Sherlock he had felt like he was tasting fire and ice; so cold that it burned, so blazing hot that it melted, melted through the careful layers he’d constructed like paper barriers in the chambers of his heart. When he first met Sherlock he’d felt dizzy and electric and swept up and swept away. And riding on his coat tails was still faster than he could walk himself (limp himself, but Sherlock had cured that too, had put the run and the blood back in him after it’d leaked out in the desert sands and the streets of London).
It’s simple neurobiology, Sherlock would have said. People experience a deep bonding sensation in dramatic situations; the danger is arousing. There was a study with a bridge – no. The bridge was John putting words in Sherlock’s mouth (he knew the bridge study; if Sherlock even did he’d just disparage the small sample size). John put a lot of words into Sherlock’s mouth in those days. He spent a lot of his time in his mind parting those cold lips and slipping in pieces of paper that said ‘it’s not true’ and ‘it’ll be better’ and ‘I’ll come back’ and ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘I love you’ and ‘I love you’ and ‘I love you’.
So sure, their life together had been intoxicating, Sherlock was intoxicating, and under such heady influence (in vino veritas) John, perhaps, had a rosy view of things. He perhaps let the emotional resonance wash over and wash away more clear-headed thinking. Because that’s who John was, he felt, he felt things (up to a point, but then Sherlock had swept past that point and nestled himself into the innermost parts of John without comment, certainly without invitation, certainly by request). It was Sherlock who calculated coldly and slid around the metal beads of his mental abacus until he was satisfied with the logic of the situation and if there were feelings to weigh emotions were something that happened around Sherlock, maybe sometimes to Sherlock, but never from Sherlock, never a part of him. And so he would slide them under his microscope and fix in and take a look and then shrug and leave them to rot on the table, blue-purple stippling of mold under the plastic slip for John to clean up after.
So it happened, how he felt, John let it happen, wasn’t even in control of it happening, until Sherlock became his blood and breath. His oxygen, air, pneuma, therefore, spirit; until Sherlock became his soul. John told himself that it didn’t matter that Sherlock couldn’t care back exactly the same way, because he knew Sherlock did care, because he was as close as Sherlock had ever let someone get even if it was still in the outer regions of a vast labyrinth with something dark and slinking at the center that devoured and crumbled what could have been growing. John told himself his affection and care and – and love, it was still hard to say that, he had to spit it out like a seed in the corner of his teeth, he still couldn’t look directly at it – he told himself it would be enough to sustain them both.
He was wrong.
Because it all happened and then Sherlock said, “Goodbye, John” and threw himself off a roof.
He came back. Sure. He came back. A bit off, a bit worn out, a bit strung and wired and thin and bloodied, a bit more pushed back into his skull like someone had pressed his eyeballs in. All rough edges again, the careful erosion John had patiently applied cracked through or abandoned (he wasn’t sure which). But Sherlock came back. Sherlock Holmes returned from the dead, and that should have been enough for John; it certainly was for Sherlock, who just knocked on his door one day with his nervous fake-smile stretched wide and wondering if John wanted to come with him on a new case, a famous card-player had been shot and –
No, John had said.
Yes, John had said.
So they tried. Again. They moved into the same flat and had the same adventures and Sherlock had the same annoying habits and played the same beautiful songs and John read the same books and made the same tea and nothing was the same.
The truth of it dawned on John slowly, crept up his back as his hands tried to deny deny deny. Of course, he said, there’d be some anger, some confusion, some re-alignment of the same souls in different times, of course it’d be difficult for awhile, but…
But it wasn’t that.
It wasn’t that John couldn’t forgive him, truly, honestly, fully: for Sherlock to say that he was the first person to understand John and love John and then abandon him (John kept feeling that Sherlock had pushed him off that ledge and walked away, however wrong that was), and lie to him, and then come back uncaring. It was that John saw how much he’d lied to himself, that he was improving Sherlock, making him better; he saw how removed and fixed that star truly was in the glittering black depths. How there would always be a remove, always be that absence, that lack of care, that arm’s length, that lack of reciprocation, that John could never be as close to Sherlock as Sherlock was to him, that John could never be as close as he wanted to be that he would…would always be merely along for the ride until the moment when again Sherlock might decide to drop him and…
And John, actually, didn’t want that.
John, actually, wanted a family. He wanted someone he could come home to and laugh with and talk about the day with and treat gently be treated gently by and be alone around and support and be supported by and someone who would help stretch a shelter around them as a place to come to when the world or their own selves were too much and someone who could read him and then ask about what she saw as more than data and collection and someone who he could just, relax, and not have to be perfect around, perfectly forgiving and perfectly giving and perfectly stupid all of the time, someone who did not see him as lesser-than, someone who wanted him, someone he could kiss behind the ear and be boring around and hurt around and vulnerable around and secretive around and fight about the toothpaste with and John wanted a love that was embodied and whole and shared.
He wasn’t going to give up on Sherlock. They would stay friends. He would listen and gasp in amazement and laugh at all of Sherlock’s stories, and go with him on the cases he could, the ones where Sherlock actually needed him (or actually wanted his companionship). He just wouldn’t be Sherlock’s John anymore.
He was just going to have to leave.
He went about this without statement to Sherlock, who never asked, though did seem surprised (disappointed?) the day that John told him he was moving out and in with Mary. “You realize,” Sherlock had said, in annoyance, “we won’t be –” and John had just said, “Yes”.
It was a blow. It was a loss. But he’d already mourned Sherlock and so it wasn’t as hard as it could have been, wasn’t impossible like he would have once considered it to be, and it was necessary. It was right.
He wasn’t leaving 221b for the last time, the day he stepped out with the last box in his hand, they both knew it, but this time, when Sherlock said “Goodbye, John,” it had felt even more final than his death.
And so John hadn’t said anything back. He’d nodded and walked away and hadn’t looked back and it was the right thing and he could still feel something shattering in him and he didn’t look back and this wasn’t goodbye and he should have said goodbye a long time ago.
The door slammed shut behind him.