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He woke to the sound of Lestrade knocking loudly at their door.
“John? John, if you don’t open this bloody door in about thirty seconds I’m going to kick it in and open it myself.”
The first thing that went through John’s sleep-addled brain as he tried to muster the energy to get out of bed was that he was going to kill Sherlock for whatever he’d done to invoke Lestrade’s wrath at such a ridiculous hour.
The second was reality, crashing down on him so hard and so fast he felt the air leave his body as if he’d been tackled.
“John, please. Open the door.”
“Yeah yeah, just a mo’.” John took a deep breath to steady himself before getting up. The throbbing pain in his leg made the three strides to the door seem impossibly long.
Visible relief washed over Lestrade’s face as he took in John’s rumpled form. The relief was quickly replaced by a furrowed brow and a slight frown.
“Hell, mate,” he said, with a weak attempt at a half-smile. “You look awful.”
John regarded him expressionlessly. Lestrade was expecting him to answer with some sort of sly, cutting comment, I still have far fewer grey hairs than you do, or a self-deprecating joke, Well that’s a hell of a lot nicer than most of the things my exes have told me! Lestrade was expecting him to act normal, as if nothing had happened, as if this were a cozy bohemian flat and not a shabby pay-by-the-week bedsit. As if the world was still spinning as usual, going round and round the sun, rather than having been knocked violently off course and condemned to a fate of floating aimlessly through space. As if…
He said nothing, leaving Lestrade in the open doorway and sitting heavily on his bed. Lestrade decided to let himself in and sit down in the rickety chair at the cheap wooden desk. They sat in silence for a few moments, John painfully aware of Lestrade observing him, taking in his too-long hair, his wrinkled clothing, his tired eyes. He looked intently at the floor, his toes curling and uncurling in the ratty shag carpet, refusing to speak first. In fact, he’d prefer not to speak at all.
“We have to talk.”
Damn.
“How have you been holding up?”
John huffed out a humorless laugh, eyes still on the floor. “Just brilliant, thanks.” He heard Lestrade sigh, the chair creaking as he shifted in his seat.
“You know what I meant.”
“And you know what I meant when I said I just needed to be alone for a bit. I’m fine.”
“That was two weeks ago. Since then, no one has seen or heard from you—”
“Well that’s an outright lie, because I specifically remember texting you yesterday and telling you not to come—”
“Goddammit, John, would you just listen?” The desk groaned and swayed as Lestrade slapped its surface, startling John into looking up. The Detective Inspector—well, former Detective Inspector, now—took a deep breath and scrubbed his hand over his face. “We’re worried about you. All of us.”
John frowned. “All of you?”
“Mrs Hudson, Molly—even Sally asked how you were when I ran into her at Tesco the other day. Everyone wants to make sure you’re all right.”
John gave a flicker of a smile. “That’s very sweet of all of you, but really. I’m fine.”
Lestrade shook his head. “You keep saying that. But I don’t think you are, mate.”
John considered the man in front of him. To tell the truth, Lestrade looked pretty bloody awful himself. His hair was unstyled, properly messy as opposed to his usual artfully disheveled look. He had two days’ worth of five o’clock shadow, and the bags under his eyes were clearly visible even in the low light. Lestrade looked like a man who had been round the bend a few times in the past fortnight. And yet he had still made the effort to haul himself to the dirtiest part of town to visit a man he didn’t need to associate with anymore—who he shouldn’t want to associate with anymore, given recent events and their consequences.
“Look, Greg,” John said in a low voice, “I get what you’re trying to do. And I appreciate the effort. But you—none of you could possibly understand what I’m dealing with right now.”
Lestrade smiled ruefully.
“You’re not the only one who was affected by losing him, you know,” he said after a few moments of silence. “You act as if no one else in the world gave a toss about Sherlock Holmes, the man. You may have been his best friend, but you weren’t his only friend, even if he refused to acknowledge the rest of us.”
A ghost of a memory flicked through John’s mind. Sherlock called out to him at a graveyard in Baskerville, his face strangely open and vunerable: Listen John- what I said before, I meant it; I don’t have friends. He shook his head before that thought could fully unfurl, and forced himself to focus on the current conversation. He willed his voice not to waver as he replied.
“Even so. None of you knew him like—”
“For God’s sake, John!” Lestrade cut in with an incredulous laugh. “No one is trying to usurp your—your claim! We all know that you lost the most, of all of us. My God, if this whole thing hadn’t happened, I thought you two might have—” He stopped abruptly, a ringing silence left in the wake of his words with what he left unspoken.
After a few moments, he licked his lips and continued, his voice low and gentle when he spoke again. “We all know that you lost the most. But try to remember… we all lost something, when he left.”
John just looked at him, silent and unmoving.
When Lestrade realized he wasn’t going to get an answer, he sighed and stood up. “I’ll just let myself out.” John stared resolutely at the floor, listening to Lestrade walk slowly across the bedsit and open the door. John closed his eyes and breathed an internal sigh of relief. He was all too ready for this conversation to be over.
“Don’t forget to ring, if you ever want to get a pint. Or to say hi, or call me a tosser, or whatever. Just… let me know you’re okay, every once in awhile.” Lestrade was silent as he lingered in the doorway. After a few beats, John heard his heavy footsteps fade all the way out and the soft click of the door closing behind him.
John let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding and buried his face in his hands. God, what was wrong with him? Since when had he been the type of man to hide himself away? To isolate himself from the rest of the world and refuse to cope? He’d seen plenty of good men and women die in Afghanistan—a few while he was still up to his elbows in them trying in vain to save their life. He was no stranger to death, or even to watching people die. Why should this one be any different?
You know why, a small voice in the back of his head told him. John sighed. Of course he would be more affected than usual by Sherlock’s… death (he couldn’t bring himself to even think the word “suicide;” it still felt wrong, even after all of the tabloid articles and the news programmes and what he’d bloody seen). Sherlock had been his best friend, his partner, his… his.
John replayed Lestrade’s words in his mind. “We all lost something, when he left.” It had never occurred to him that Lestrade and Molly and Sally had considered Sherlock their friend. He thought Sherlock been an acquaintance, or a colleague at most. He hadn’t considered that they would feel anything more than vague, superficial feelings of unhappiness at the loss of Sherlock in their lives.
And it had definitely never occurred to John that they might also apply that label to him; see him as his own person and not just Sherlock’s flatmate or assistant or permanent shadow. This revelation put his situation in a whole new light, and made him feel simultaneously more grateful and more pathetic than ever. Here he was, feeling alone and sorry for himself in the dark in some grimy bedsit in the dodgiest neighborhood in London, while a small but steadfast group of people was trying to help him get out of this funk. He picked up his phone and typed a message to Lestrade.
A pint would be great. Tomorrow night at 8?
As he pushed the send button, he imagined he could feel his heart get a just little bit lighter. He was being an idiot. Of course trying to move on would be a long, difficult process; but he did have people who were willing to help him. How could he have expected to have go through the process alone? With that thought in mind, and the prospect of a bit of no-pressure social interaction in the near future, he was in a much better mood for the rest of the day. Not happy, no, it would take him ages to be happy again. Just… better. If only slightly.
That night, he dreamt of crime scenes and chasing criminals and the hot surge of adrenaline rushing through his veins as he and Sherlock sat in the dark, waiting to stop a burglary. He dreamt that he told Sherlock “Amazing, fantastic,” and that Sherlock gave him a look that wasn’t a smile but could be, if Sherlock allowed himself to wear his heart on his sleeve. He dreamt that he had to force himself not to grin back like an idiot, because the fact that Sherlock never gave anyone else that look was definitely not lost on him.
He dreamt of sitting in Baker Street, the golden afternoon sunlight slanting through the windows and warming up the living room. Sherlock was sprawled on the sofa, and John sat in his armchair reading a book. They weren’t talking to each other because they didn’t need to; they were completely content just sitting in silence together as each of them worked on his respective task. As John peeked over his book to look at Sherlock, whose brow was furrowed in concentration, he thought that he had never in his life been somewhere that felt so right.
He woke up the next day with tears on his face and an ache in his chest.