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For a long time, I fantasized what would happen if my begged-for miracle came true.
If I was walking down the street, I would imagine a tall figure with curly hair and a fantastic coat falling in step beside me. When the street was quiet and no one could hear me, I would murmur to the invisible Sherlock. In public, our meeting again would be calm, cool, and rational.
Knew you’d show up some day. Or, What do you want? Not to be cruel or spiteful, but unsurprised that he was there at all. I couldn’t let him know exactly how eager I was to have him back alive. The conversations were nearly always the same, running over and over in my head, the same phrase repeated until it was perfect.
KNEW you’d show up some day.
Knew YOU’D show up some day.
Knew you’d show up SOME day.
After a particularly heated discussion… with myself… in the middle of the street, Mycroft dropped me a text. I didn’t bother reading it, but I brought my flailing arms and utterances to a more subdued level.
It wasn’t just in the street that I imagined him reappearing either.
I got my job back in the surgery, and every new patient’s name carried a thrill. Hundreds and hundreds of people just popping in for sick notes or a script, even when the birth year was fifty years off or the gender was wrong, I would still hope for a disguise to fall off and reveal the person beneath. If this one could have any possibility of being Sherlock, I could fake my limp a bit, or rub at my shot shoulder. Something to agitate him from his kept silence. Every sick person and hypochondriac that came through my door firmly remained themselves, and my practiced self-righteous indignation never got the chance to flourish in the workplace.
How dare you show up here? Go, leave, I’ll talk to you later, I’ve got work to do. Doctor Watson, saving lives, one sick note at a time.
Upon arriving home, I would half run up the stairs. He would never be there waiting. I’d look in every room, searching.
If he were waiting in the lounge, sitting in his chair drinking tea, I would ignore him and make a cup of my own. If he remained silent, so would I until I sat down. Then, calmly and with dignity, I would tell him with no preamble, God, I’ve missed you.
If he were waiting in the lounge, playing the violin in his pajamas like he’d never left, I would just stand in the doorway and let him speak first. No matter what he might say, I would ask him to keep playing.
If he were waiting in the lounge, using my laptop and asking to use my phone, I’d pick the laptop up and smack him upside the head with it. Not hard, just enough to tell him that I was right pissed off.
And on it went. Every room in the house, everything he could be or might be doing, I had rehearsed and practiced my reactions and my words to a T.
On bad days, or good days, or mediocre days… every day, in my head, we would end up in bed together. I’m not gay, I would remind myself as I ejaculated over my fist with his name on my lips. I don’t know why I bothered. I’m not gay. But I love Sherlock. It’s not that I fantasized about being with him because he had a cock, because it was taboo, or because I was curious about being with a man. As far as I was concerned, he could have been purple with blue stripes and… if it was the only way I could have him back in my life, I’d have taken it. I’d have taken anything. Just to have him back. I hated him for leaving me the way he did, because I never thought he would die before I finished falling in love with him. The moment his head slammed against the pavement was my moment of confirmation. I love Sherlock Holmes, and it took his death to prove it.
I had a lot of time to think on it, and no one around to tell me that I was wrong, that I was being crazy, and that Sherlock was not coming back. No one but the strangers on street and Mycroft’s eyes and ears. Mycroft was surprisingly easy to ignore when he tried to interject.
I realize now, I sound a bit deranged. Eager, like a kid waiting for Saint Nick or the Easter Bunny or the Great Pumpkin. I don’t really have an excuse for it. Sherlock was dead, and I tortured myself daily, hourly, every minute hoping he’d pop up out of nowhere and I’d have some pithy response and we’d laugh and it’d all be fine again. I knew he was dead. And I knew this behaviour wasn’t… acceptable, for someone who isn’t five, or suffering from memory loss, or expecting a surprise. I knew I was being ridiculous. But I couldn’t stop. It became an obsession. I likely would have continued on like this forever. The perfect response for any situation, because some day he might just prove everyone wrong as he so loved to do.
Though, strangely, so very strangely, the one situation I just did not imagine happening is the situation in which my miracle was granted. And it really wouldn’t have happened any other way.
It began with a knock at the door. I had, actually, just been silently rehearsing our conversation if I’d found him in the kitchen, looking into a shiny new microscope. There’d better not be anything dangerous in the fridge, I would have said.
But no.
There was a knock at the door, and I felt slightly irritated that I’d been interrupted. It’s only a conversation I’d had a thousand times before. By myself.
I limped down the stairs and opened the door, just as I wondered, How come I never thought of this?
Which is why I was left with a loss for words when I saw who stood there, soaking wet with the rain. Tall, curly hair, fantastic coat. I felt sick. I felt absolutely sick and awful and wretched. I’d been punched in the gut and my shirt collar was suddenly too tight, my hands broke into a sweat and my mouth had never been drier, despite having fought a war in sand.
We stood there in silence, and I had no idea what to say. Of course my first thought was, Well, I never saw this coming.
Rain kept falling on his head; the stupid bastard had no umbrella. I couldn’t stop staring. I didn’t want to stop. I couldn’t muster up the courage to speak, and I wondered if he could see my pulse in my neck or at my temple, because God, I could feel it. I could feel every hair on my body prickle and rise and my heart beating its way out of my chest and the noise of blood rushing through my body and the fabric of my clothes scratching every inch of me, and why, oh, why was I so aware of myself in body when I could not stop staring at the dead man asking for entry without a single word?
Did time stop?
Where was my pithy response? I had planned for this, dammit! I had rehearsed and planned and scripted, but he went and did the REASONABLE thing and came knocking at my door like a normal human being, and I didn’t know what to do.
I tried doing a few things at once. Hi, would have been a good start. A great start. Opening the door wider. Closing the door in his face. Jumping on him and hugging him like an idiot. Punching him in the face crossed my mind more than once, which was actually quite new.
Instead, I managed to waggle the door a bit, make a sound as though I couldn’t breathe, and blink a few more times.
Eventually, I got a hold of myself and realized… Sherlock bloody Holmes is alive, at my door, and would probably like to come inside. TOO BAD was my first thought. Please come inside so I know how to react to you was my other first thought. I couldn’t even tell you what my second thought was. My body took over from my ineffective brain and held the door open a bit wider, my arm took control of the situation and made a gesture as if to say, After you.
I took his coat. It was soaking wet, and it shocked me back into the world of the living. Maybe that’s how he came back. A bit of rain and out of the grave he rose, like the grass on a Chia pet.
I followed him up the stairs and gestured helplessly at his chair, the chair that was never moved and never sat on. He grimaced a little as a puff of dust flew up and settled on his suit, and I didn’t know if I should apologize or not.
He sat there in silence, and I made two cups of tea, resisting the urge to rehearse.
I handed him his mug, our fingertips touching as our eyes met. After I sat in my own chair and took a should-have-been fortifying sip of under-steeped tea, I could only ask, “What the hell is wrong with you?”
A bit rich, coming from me.