John Watson's 12 Things Happy People Do (2/3)
Title - John Watson's 12 Things Happy People Do (2/3)
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - John, Mycroft, Lestrade
Spoilers - Through "The Reichenbach Fall"
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on.
Summary - In which John Watson follows the advice of a website.
Author's Notes - Word of advice: If you are going to live on an Uptown parade route in New Orleans, do not also work until after 7 pm on the Thursday before Mardi Gras.
You don't need to have read "Scotch" to follow this story, but, if you're wondering why Mycroft and Lestrade are a couple here, then "Scotch" would be the story that answers that question.
Thank you to harpinred, who tweeted the link to the website and sparked the idea for this; to arctacuda for the beta and encouragement; to L, for cheerleading; and to sensiblecat, for making sure everyone sounds British.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
6. Develop Strategies for Coping
John stared at this one for a long time. Strategies for Coping. He was managing to get out of bed each morning. He considered that a fine “strategy for coping.”
He thought of his blog, long-defunct, because what was there to write about now that Sherlock was gone? He had always been the only interesting thing on his blog. But that had been the last Strategy for Coping that had been suggested to him.
John, for the first time in a long time, navigated to his blog. He had told himself it was unhealthy to just sit and re-read the entries. He had also told himself not to delete it all entirely. Because there had been nights when the only thing he had wanted had been to erase the mark Sherlock Holmes had left on his life. As if, with the deletion of the blog, he could go back to before it all happened and not be as heartbroken as he currently was.
John scrolled down, looking at his earliest entries. Nothing happens to me.
To go back to life before Sherlock would be to go back to that. And, regardless of how he felt now, he would never have missed the eighteen months with Sherlock. Never. Not for anything in the world. It was only in his very darkest times that he had ever thought that, and he was glad he’d got through them.
John spent the entire evening re-reading his blog. He laughed in some places, and cried in more. He typed a farewell entry. There’s no point in continuing this blog without Sherlock, so I’m going to formally lock it and declare it done. It’s okay: I’d rather have had eighteen months with Sherlock than a lifetime with any other person on Earth.
He looked at it for a long time, fingers steepled in front of his lips in an unconscious mimicry of the way Sherlock had used to think things through. He thought it would be a good Strategy for Coping for him to post the entry, close the door on that portion of his life, his brief, brilliant time as Sherlock Holmes’s blogger.
He didn’t post it. It seemed too final to him. He simply could not convince himself that it really was over.
He was failing at developing a Strategy for Coping, he thought.
7. Learn to Forgive
John called Mycroft Holmes. For the first time ever.
Mycroft picked up immediately, with an extremely concerned-sounding, “Hello?”
“Mycroft,” said John, as if this were normal. “It’s John. Watson,” he clarified, in case Mycroft knew other Johns, which was probable. Unlike the way Mycroft tended to sign his communications with John as Mycroft Holmes, as if it was likely John knew other Mycrofts (he did not).
“I know. Is something wrong?”
“No, no. Nothing’s wrong. Just…thought I’d call…and see if you were free for lunch.”
“Lunch?” repeated Mycroft, after a moment.
“Yeah, it’s a meal in the middle of the day,” explained John, feeling self-conscious and ridiculous and hating this stupid happy-people list.
“Is something wrong?” Mycroft asked again.
“Nope. No, just…wanted to have lunch. That’s it.”
Mycroft was silent for a moment, before saying, “I’ll send a car for you at noon.”
“Of course you will,” said John, resigned, but he was talking to dead air.
The car arrived punctually at noon and drove John to the Diogenes Club, where Mycroft was seated in the room John had met him in before, reading the Sun.
“You still read the Sun?” John asked him, reminded of the last time Mycroft had been reading a Sun in this room. Mycroft would make this difficult.
“The Sun,” responded Mycroft, from behind the paper, “has some interesting articles sometimes.”
“I bet,” muttered John, reminding himself that he was Learning to Forgive.
Mycroft folded the paper. “Please sit down.”
“Thank you,” said John, and sat.
A waiter appeared immediately, asking, “What would you like to drink?”
John looked at him a bit blankly, and then glanced at whatever Mycroft was drinking, and hesitated.
Mycroft lifted his eyebrows, as if confused by John’s continued silence.
“The same as him,” John decided, eventually, because he had no idea what to order in this sort of place.
“I’ve signed out a private dining room for us,” said Mycroft, “we can go there as soon as they bring your aperitif.”
John’s stomach sank. He didn’t really want a three-hour lunch with Mycroft. “I have to go back to work, eventually…” he said, helplessly.
Mycroft sipped whatever it was he was drinking, which John would also shortly be drinking. “So do I,” he replied.
Which was utterly missing the point, thought John. “We couldn’t have just gone to grab a sandwich somewhere?”
Mycroft stared at him as if he’d suggested they start dealing drugs together. The waiter came with his aperitif and Mycroft tore his gaze away from John to say to him, “We’ll go to the dining room now.”
“Yes, sir,” said the waiter, and John followed he and Mycroft into a dining room, where he was presented with a menu where absolutely nothing sounded appetizing and where it appeared he was expected to choose three courses.
Because he wanted to get the meal over as quickly as possible, he chose the first course blindly, saying to the waiter, “The goat cheese one.”
Mycroft looked surprised by the hasty ordering but said merely, “I’ll have the same,” and then sat back in his chair and looked evenly across at John, clearly waiting for him to take the conversational lead.
John delayed by studying the choices for the second course. “Possibly the guinea fowl,” he said. “What do you think?”
Mycroft did not reply, waiting patiently, all disconcertingly watchful silence.
“I forgot to bring your umbrella,” John blurted, finally, to have something to say.
“That’s quite all right. You may keep the umbrella. I have told you several times before.”
John fidgeted with his aperitif, not really wanting it, and said to Mycroft, “I’m learning to forgive.”
Mycroft said nothing.
“So,” said John, quickly, “I forgive you.”
Mycroft still said nothing.
Which made John bristle with anger. “Why don’t you defend yourself? Give me a reason to forgive you? It would make this a lot easier.”
Mycroft placed his elbows on the table and threaded his fingers together, a gesture John had seen him make before. “I haven’t any defense to offer you, John. I would have mounted one long before this, were there one for me to mount. I can only apologize, which I have.”
“I don’t know how you sleep at night,” John said, in amazement. “Although I imagine you sleep very well. Look at you. How your life has improved since your brother’s death.”
Mycroft didn’t rise to the bait. He said, evenly, “If there were anything I could do to fix this, John, I would. If I could bring him back for you, now, I would. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
John sighed. Because he knew this. “It’s very hard,” he said, with a tight smile, trying to lighten the mood. “This learning to forgive business.”
Mycroft smiled without it reaching his sharp eyes.
“Sometimes,” John continued, “I lie awake at night, and I think of all the ways I failed him. All the little things I could have done better, and maybe we wouldn’t have ended up here.”
“There was nothing-”
John cut him off. “I know. I just…Tell me you do that, too. Tell me you go over everything, making lists of the things you wish you’d never done.”
Mycroft looked at him for a long moment. When he spoke, it was with heavy weariness. “Constantly,” he said.
John believed him.
8. Increase Flow Experiences
“Are you serious?” John asked the website he was viewing, and then heard Sherlock’s voice in his head, feigning boredom, tinged with genuine amusement. Don’t argue with inanimate objects, John. You’ll never win.
But seriously? Increase Flow Experiences. He’d had plenty of flow experiences, back when he had been happy. They weren’t just ten-a-penny, flow experiences: experiences that made you lose track of time, of anything but what you were doing and how you’d do it the rest of your life if you could. The website suggested it so blithely, as if he could read the suggestion and walk outside and run into another man like Sherlock Holmes.
If he could figure out how to get back into flow experiences, then his problems would be solved and he’d be happy again, wouldn’t he? Telling him to increase his flow experiences wasn’t helping him. It was merely reminding him that, so far, he hadn’t managed to do it.
John wracked his brain for something he could do that he could get lost in, that would swallow him up and make everything else-all the rest of it-seem small and meaningless by comparison. His medical practice no longer filled that role. He had been an army doctor, anything else was always going to seem a bit mundane by comparison. He could think of only one thing that would make everything else fall away: Sherlock Holmes returning from the dead and walking into his flat. The only other thing he could think of that might make everything else fall away was a good crime.
All of a sudden, frustratingly, a good crime was hard to find in London.
He phoned Lestrade and said he was bored and would take anything, reminding himself strongly of Sherlock as he did so, and Lestrade gamely let him tag along, but it was even worse to be on a crime scene that was dull than it was not to be on a crime scene at all.
“It’s just a lull,” Lestrade told him, as they stood to the side of the fourth open-and-shut case that week. “You know how it goes sometimes.”
“Oh, I know,” John agreed, grimly. “I used to be subjected to much whinging during lulls. Those were the times when bullets would be shot into the wall.”
“It really wasn’t safe to have a gun in that flat,” commented Lestrade.
“It really wasn’t safe not to have a gun in that flat,” countered John.
“Fair enough,” allowed Lestrade, and then, “Everything okay?” He took his eyes off of Colin, who was supervising, to look in concern at John.
“Everyone is always asking me if things are okay,” John said, irritated. “No. Of course everything is not okay. If everything were okay, then I think it would be cause for you to be alarmed about me, don’t you?”
Lestrade watched him patiently. Because Lestrade knew by now-and John knew he knew-that every Watsonian outburst was followed by an immediate apology.
Which he did now, sighing, “Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry.” He paused. “I’m looking for a flow experience.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s something you do that you love so much that time basically stops while you’re doing it. Something you do that you could do the rest of your life-you can’t envision what your life would be without it.”
“Huh,” remarked Lestrade, his hands in his pockets. “That doesn’t sound like something that’s easy to find.”
“Tell me about it,” muttered John, in agreement, looking back to the crime scene.
“Well, cheer up,” said Lestrade. “As we used to say to Sherlock, maybe there’ll be a nice murder soon.”
But there was no nice murder. And now that John was thinking harder about the things he spent his time doing, the lack of flow experiences in his life made him want to shout in frustration. Monotony clawed at him. He needed a hobby, or a project, or something.
The idea came to him while he was considering his options. He didn’t want to learn a musical instrument, or a foreign language, or how to draw. Those things would not capture his interest. He would just spend all of his time thinking about Sherlock’s reaction to them, hearing Sherlock’s voice in his head making snide remarks. So, if all he was going to do was think about Sherlock anyway, he might as well make this his flow experience. He might as well immerse himself in Sherlock.
He rang Lestrade.
“I still don’t have anything, John,” Lestrade said, apologetically. “Trust me, I’m combing every call that comes in.”
“It’s okay,” John told him. “I’ve had an idea. But I need to ask a favor of you.”
“Sure,” said Lestrade, agreeably.
“It’s really a favor of Mycroft.”
“Then you should probably ring Mycroft.”
“But you could just ask Mycroft for me.”
Lestrade paused. “He’d do anything you asked him to, you know.”
“I know, but he’d judge me while I was asking for it.”
“No, he wouldn’t.”
“Yes, he would. He does that. You’ve just got used to ignoring him. This way, if you ask him, he’ll judge me at you, and that’s less annoying.”
“Less annoying to you,” Lestrade pointed out.
“Obviously,” said John.
Lestrade sighed. “What’s the favor?”
“I want to catalogue Sherlock’s belongings. The stuff in Baker Street.”
“Why?” Lestrade sounded curious.
“It’s a flow experience, Greg.”
Lestrade wasn’t sure that was what he would call it, but if it was going to keep John busy while the criminal masses in London were being unusually law-abiding, then Lestrade thought it was a good idea. So he agreed to ask Mycroft.
Mycroft was working, but Mycroft tended to always be working. Lestrade had learned that, when Mycroft genuinely wanted to focus on work, he didn’t come home. If he brought work home, that meant he didn’t mind if Lestrade interrupted him. Once Lestrade had deduced this-and living with Mycroft was a constant puzzle, which made it a good thing that Lestrade had become a detective because he liked puzzles-he thought it was an arrangement that made perfect, logical sense and had adopted it for himself.
And this was the reason why, upon finding Mycroft in the library with a pen in his hand and a document on his desk, Lestrade didn’t hesitate to walk in and sit down and say, “I need a favor.”
“Oh, dear,” said Mycroft, and turned a page.
Lestrade had rather expected Mycroft to simply respond with What is it? so he said, “What’s that reaction for?”
Mycroft put down his pen and leaned back in his seat. “You never ask me for favors. Ever. If you’re asking me for one now, I can only conclude that you must have murdered someone.”
“I haven’t,” said Lestrade.
“How reassuring,” Mycroft responded.
“It’s really a favor for John.”
“John.” Mycroft frowned. “Why isn’t John asking me for this favor then?”
“Because John thinks you’ll judge him for asking for it.” Lestrade held up his hand as if to head off whatever Mycroft might say next. “Before you protest, I’ve no idea where John got that impression. I told him you’re the least judgmental person I know.”
“I don’t think you’re amusing,” said Mycroft.
“Yes, you do,” said Lestrade. “He wants to catalogue Sherlock’s belongings.”
“What belongings?”
“The ones in Baker Street.”
Mycroft paused, and Lestrade could tell he was determining how to react to this. “Why does he want to do this?” he asked, finally.
“Do you mind if he does it?”
“No, I don’t mind. Of course I don’t mind. I told him months ago he could have everything in the flat, and he didn’t want it. So I don’t quite understand why he suddenly wants to catalogue all of it.”
“It’s a flow experience.”
Lestrade recognized the look on Mycroft’s face. It was his resigned-to-ridiculousness look. “And what, pray tell, is a flow experience?”
“As far as I can tell, it’s falling in love with something, or someone.”
“And you think it is entirely acceptable for us to permit John Watson to wallow in falling in love with Sherlock Holmes’s possessions?”
“I think he isn’t in love with Sherlock Holmes’s possessions, but if they can stand in for Sherlock and take his mind off everything for a little while, then maybe it’s not a bad idea.”
Mycroft sighed. “‘Flow experience.’ Where did he even get this idea?”
“He might be reading self-help books.”
Mycroft laughed without humor. “If I texted Sherlock that John was reading self-help books, I feel sure he’d come back immediately.”
“Then maybe you should do it,” suggested Lestrade, lightly, as if it were not an unwinnable argument they’d been having periodically. Mycroft censored reports to Sherlock, made light of John’s mood. Lestrade thought this a terrible idea. Mycroft thought it a brilliant one. They had, so far, agreed to disagree on the point.
Mycroft acknowledged Lestrade’s jab with a brief smile and moved on. “He can catalogue everything, but do ask him if he wouldn’t mind being careful with leaving it as it is as much as possible. That really was a request from Sherlock. I think he assumed John would just go on living in the flat and keep everything in place as a shrine to him.”
“Of course he thought that.”
“So I find myself in the situation now of preserving my brother’s shrine to himself.”
“I’ll tell John you can’t bear to have it disturbed and moved all about. You have become quite sentimental since Sherlock’s death.”
“Go away,” said Mycroft, without heat, “I’ve work to do.”
Lestrade chuckled and stood up. “Thank you.”
“I am delighted to assist in the perpetuation of flow experiences in the world.”
“That’s what I tell people about you,” remarked Lestrade, as he left the room, texting John.
“No doubt,” rejoined Mycroft.
Lestrade smiled absently and texted, M, without judgment, says it’s fine. Please don’t tidy up, though - he’d like it left as is as much as possible.
Lestrade was halfway down the hall on his way to the drawing room when Mycroft’s Sherlock-emergency-only mobile chirped with a text message from where Mycroft had left it on the ridiculously enormous antique sideboard under the twelfth-century tapestry. Lestrade picked it up, glanced at it, and carried it back to the library.
Mycroft looked up from his papers. “Is it Sherlock?”
Lestrade held it out to him. It was a text from John Watson, and it read: Thank you.
“Text him back,” said Mycroft, turning back to his papers, “and tell him he should have just asked me directly. And remember to sign my name.”
“He’s going to know it’s from you; you’re in his contacts list.”
“Informality is slowly creeping into all human interaction, Greg. I shall not assist its insidious invasion.”
Lestrade sighed but obediently began texting John back in Mycroft-speak. “You know, when you say things like that, it makes me amazed you ever call me ‘Greg.’”
“I make exceptions for you,” said Mycroft, making a note on the paper he was reading.
Lestrade smiled and hit send on the text.
No gratitude necessary. Intermediary not necessary either. Mycroft Holmes.
So John, with Mycroft’s blessing, spent many happy hours completely lost in Baker Street, carefully going through Sherlock’s varied and hodge-podge possessions. At the end of every period of time he spent at Baker Street, he felt as if he’d just spent an afternoon with Sherlock. Sherlock had been quiet and hadn’t said much, but then Sherlock could be like that sometimes, and it was easy to pretend Sherlock was deep in thought and that John was merely waiting for him to say something, suddenly, as if they were in the middle of a conversation, confident that John would be there. There had been a comfort in Sherlock’s silent presence-just as John knew Sherlock had taken comfort in having him near even when he wasn’t speaking-and the only place John could approximate that comfort these days was in Baker Street, surrounded by the only things left of Sherlock Holmes. John’s life had been the space between Sherlock’s speeches, and in a way it still was, it was just that the next speech was never going to come.
Some of Sherlock’s things made him smile: the Cluedo board they’d fought over the one time they’d played, a comic-book drawing of them sketched in payment by one of the clients from “The Geek Interpreter,” the crutch from “The Aluminium Crutch.” Some of them confused him, and he wished desperately he could ask Sherlock about them. What had he been planning to do with fifty-two samples of beach sand that John found stuffed at the very back of the silverware drawer in their kitchen? Where had the scimitar come from that John uncovered under a pile of six different types of red velvet fabric? (For that matter, what had the fabric been for?)
He worked his way through the flat, systematically, usually working cross-legged on the floor with his laptop on his lap, careful to catalogue the item and its location and then put it back exactly where he had found it. He understood Mycroft’s impulse for everything to be left as it was. He had the same impulse. He was sure it was unhealthy, but he couldn’t shake the idea that Sherlock couldn’t possibly be dead. It was too unbelievable. It was more believable to think he was still out there, somewhere, and that eventually he would come back, and if one sock had been disturbed in his sock index, John knew he’d be subjected to days of insufferable sulking over it.
When John had that thought, he stood up and purposely moved a sock out of the sock index, hoping someday to be subject to Sherlock’s sulk over it. He looked forward to it. He desperately wanted to be the object of Sherlock Holmes’s displeasure.
Mrs. Hudson brought him tea periodically and they chatted. Mostly Mrs. Hudson chatted and John listened. It was exactly like old times, except much quieter.
Eventually, John found himself cataloguing the desk they had shared. He had deliberately saved it until last because it had been the place where his things had most intermixed with Sherlock’s things, and somehow that was more painful than Sherlock’s things on their own, to see the places where Sherlock’s unyielding personality had yielded to him and let him in.
Sherlock had seldom kept notes when he worked, but he had saved John’s notes from their cases. John had never realized that before. He went through piles of paper covered in his own handwriting. The thought that Sherlock had saved his awkward and confused notes made his heart hurt. Literally. A pain pressing his chest that threatened to strangle him. He refused to cry, but when he took a breath it still sounded like a sob.
The very last piece of paper he found was a fortune from a fortune cookie. It is all just beginning. John stared at it for a very long time, forcing himself to breathe slowly and evenly. Then he turned to his laptop and typed into it, “S’s fortune from Chinese, night of ASiP resolution.” Their first Chinese together. John did not type that.
It was the only thing he moved in the flat. But he put the fortune on top of every other pile of paper, in the middle of the desk. He liked the proud defiance in its tone. Here in this flat where time had stopped, everything was always just on the verge of beginning. For the rest of time. Or at least time as John knew it.
John turned back to his laptop, saved the file, and shut everything down. He wasn’t sure exactly how long it had taken him to catalogue everything. He had lost track of time while doing it. But he did know that it had merely reinforced the problem with flow experiences.
They always, eventually, ended.
Next
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - John, Mycroft, Lestrade
Spoilers - Through "The Reichenbach Fall"
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on.
Summary - In which John Watson follows the advice of a website.
Author's Notes - Word of advice: If you are going to live on an Uptown parade route in New Orleans, do not also work until after 7 pm on the Thursday before Mardi Gras.
You don't need to have read "Scotch" to follow this story, but, if you're wondering why Mycroft and Lestrade are a couple here, then "Scotch" would be the story that answers that question.
Thank you to harpinred, who tweeted the link to the website and sparked the idea for this; to arctacuda for the beta and encouragement; to L, for cheerleading; and to sensiblecat, for making sure everyone sounds British.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
6. Develop Strategies for Coping
John stared at this one for a long time. Strategies for Coping. He was managing to get out of bed each morning. He considered that a fine “strategy for coping.”
He thought of his blog, long-defunct, because what was there to write about now that Sherlock was gone? He had always been the only interesting thing on his blog. But that had been the last Strategy for Coping that had been suggested to him.
John, for the first time in a long time, navigated to his blog. He had told himself it was unhealthy to just sit and re-read the entries. He had also told himself not to delete it all entirely. Because there had been nights when the only thing he had wanted had been to erase the mark Sherlock Holmes had left on his life. As if, with the deletion of the blog, he could go back to before it all happened and not be as heartbroken as he currently was.
John scrolled down, looking at his earliest entries. Nothing happens to me.
To go back to life before Sherlock would be to go back to that. And, regardless of how he felt now, he would never have missed the eighteen months with Sherlock. Never. Not for anything in the world. It was only in his very darkest times that he had ever thought that, and he was glad he’d got through them.
John spent the entire evening re-reading his blog. He laughed in some places, and cried in more. He typed a farewell entry. There’s no point in continuing this blog without Sherlock, so I’m going to formally lock it and declare it done. It’s okay: I’d rather have had eighteen months with Sherlock than a lifetime with any other person on Earth.
He looked at it for a long time, fingers steepled in front of his lips in an unconscious mimicry of the way Sherlock had used to think things through. He thought it would be a good Strategy for Coping for him to post the entry, close the door on that portion of his life, his brief, brilliant time as Sherlock Holmes’s blogger.
He didn’t post it. It seemed too final to him. He simply could not convince himself that it really was over.
He was failing at developing a Strategy for Coping, he thought.
7. Learn to Forgive
John called Mycroft Holmes. For the first time ever.
Mycroft picked up immediately, with an extremely concerned-sounding, “Hello?”
“Mycroft,” said John, as if this were normal. “It’s John. Watson,” he clarified, in case Mycroft knew other Johns, which was probable. Unlike the way Mycroft tended to sign his communications with John as Mycroft Holmes, as if it was likely John knew other Mycrofts (he did not).
“I know. Is something wrong?”
“No, no. Nothing’s wrong. Just…thought I’d call…and see if you were free for lunch.”
“Lunch?” repeated Mycroft, after a moment.
“Yeah, it’s a meal in the middle of the day,” explained John, feeling self-conscious and ridiculous and hating this stupid happy-people list.
“Is something wrong?” Mycroft asked again.
“Nope. No, just…wanted to have lunch. That’s it.”
Mycroft was silent for a moment, before saying, “I’ll send a car for you at noon.”
“Of course you will,” said John, resigned, but he was talking to dead air.
The car arrived punctually at noon and drove John to the Diogenes Club, where Mycroft was seated in the room John had met him in before, reading the Sun.
“You still read the Sun?” John asked him, reminded of the last time Mycroft had been reading a Sun in this room. Mycroft would make this difficult.
“The Sun,” responded Mycroft, from behind the paper, “has some interesting articles sometimes.”
“I bet,” muttered John, reminding himself that he was Learning to Forgive.
Mycroft folded the paper. “Please sit down.”
“Thank you,” said John, and sat.
A waiter appeared immediately, asking, “What would you like to drink?”
John looked at him a bit blankly, and then glanced at whatever Mycroft was drinking, and hesitated.
Mycroft lifted his eyebrows, as if confused by John’s continued silence.
“The same as him,” John decided, eventually, because he had no idea what to order in this sort of place.
“I’ve signed out a private dining room for us,” said Mycroft, “we can go there as soon as they bring your aperitif.”
John’s stomach sank. He didn’t really want a three-hour lunch with Mycroft. “I have to go back to work, eventually…” he said, helplessly.
Mycroft sipped whatever it was he was drinking, which John would also shortly be drinking. “So do I,” he replied.
Which was utterly missing the point, thought John. “We couldn’t have just gone to grab a sandwich somewhere?”
Mycroft stared at him as if he’d suggested they start dealing drugs together. The waiter came with his aperitif and Mycroft tore his gaze away from John to say to him, “We’ll go to the dining room now.”
“Yes, sir,” said the waiter, and John followed he and Mycroft into a dining room, where he was presented with a menu where absolutely nothing sounded appetizing and where it appeared he was expected to choose three courses.
Because he wanted to get the meal over as quickly as possible, he chose the first course blindly, saying to the waiter, “The goat cheese one.”
Mycroft looked surprised by the hasty ordering but said merely, “I’ll have the same,” and then sat back in his chair and looked evenly across at John, clearly waiting for him to take the conversational lead.
John delayed by studying the choices for the second course. “Possibly the guinea fowl,” he said. “What do you think?”
Mycroft did not reply, waiting patiently, all disconcertingly watchful silence.
“I forgot to bring your umbrella,” John blurted, finally, to have something to say.
“That’s quite all right. You may keep the umbrella. I have told you several times before.”
John fidgeted with his aperitif, not really wanting it, and said to Mycroft, “I’m learning to forgive.”
Mycroft said nothing.
“So,” said John, quickly, “I forgive you.”
Mycroft still said nothing.
Which made John bristle with anger. “Why don’t you defend yourself? Give me a reason to forgive you? It would make this a lot easier.”
Mycroft placed his elbows on the table and threaded his fingers together, a gesture John had seen him make before. “I haven’t any defense to offer you, John. I would have mounted one long before this, were there one for me to mount. I can only apologize, which I have.”
“I don’t know how you sleep at night,” John said, in amazement. “Although I imagine you sleep very well. Look at you. How your life has improved since your brother’s death.”
Mycroft didn’t rise to the bait. He said, evenly, “If there were anything I could do to fix this, John, I would. If I could bring him back for you, now, I would. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
John sighed. Because he knew this. “It’s very hard,” he said, with a tight smile, trying to lighten the mood. “This learning to forgive business.”
Mycroft smiled without it reaching his sharp eyes.
“Sometimes,” John continued, “I lie awake at night, and I think of all the ways I failed him. All the little things I could have done better, and maybe we wouldn’t have ended up here.”
“There was nothing-”
John cut him off. “I know. I just…Tell me you do that, too. Tell me you go over everything, making lists of the things you wish you’d never done.”
Mycroft looked at him for a long moment. When he spoke, it was with heavy weariness. “Constantly,” he said.
John believed him.
8. Increase Flow Experiences
“Are you serious?” John asked the website he was viewing, and then heard Sherlock’s voice in his head, feigning boredom, tinged with genuine amusement. Don’t argue with inanimate objects, John. You’ll never win.
But seriously? Increase Flow Experiences. He’d had plenty of flow experiences, back when he had been happy. They weren’t just ten-a-penny, flow experiences: experiences that made you lose track of time, of anything but what you were doing and how you’d do it the rest of your life if you could. The website suggested it so blithely, as if he could read the suggestion and walk outside and run into another man like Sherlock Holmes.
If he could figure out how to get back into flow experiences, then his problems would be solved and he’d be happy again, wouldn’t he? Telling him to increase his flow experiences wasn’t helping him. It was merely reminding him that, so far, he hadn’t managed to do it.
John wracked his brain for something he could do that he could get lost in, that would swallow him up and make everything else-all the rest of it-seem small and meaningless by comparison. His medical practice no longer filled that role. He had been an army doctor, anything else was always going to seem a bit mundane by comparison. He could think of only one thing that would make everything else fall away: Sherlock Holmes returning from the dead and walking into his flat. The only other thing he could think of that might make everything else fall away was a good crime.
All of a sudden, frustratingly, a good crime was hard to find in London.
He phoned Lestrade and said he was bored and would take anything, reminding himself strongly of Sherlock as he did so, and Lestrade gamely let him tag along, but it was even worse to be on a crime scene that was dull than it was not to be on a crime scene at all.
“It’s just a lull,” Lestrade told him, as they stood to the side of the fourth open-and-shut case that week. “You know how it goes sometimes.”
“Oh, I know,” John agreed, grimly. “I used to be subjected to much whinging during lulls. Those were the times when bullets would be shot into the wall.”
“It really wasn’t safe to have a gun in that flat,” commented Lestrade.
“It really wasn’t safe not to have a gun in that flat,” countered John.
“Fair enough,” allowed Lestrade, and then, “Everything okay?” He took his eyes off of Colin, who was supervising, to look in concern at John.
“Everyone is always asking me if things are okay,” John said, irritated. “No. Of course everything is not okay. If everything were okay, then I think it would be cause for you to be alarmed about me, don’t you?”
Lestrade watched him patiently. Because Lestrade knew by now-and John knew he knew-that every Watsonian outburst was followed by an immediate apology.
Which he did now, sighing, “Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry.” He paused. “I’m looking for a flow experience.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s something you do that you love so much that time basically stops while you’re doing it. Something you do that you could do the rest of your life-you can’t envision what your life would be without it.”
“Huh,” remarked Lestrade, his hands in his pockets. “That doesn’t sound like something that’s easy to find.”
“Tell me about it,” muttered John, in agreement, looking back to the crime scene.
“Well, cheer up,” said Lestrade. “As we used to say to Sherlock, maybe there’ll be a nice murder soon.”
But there was no nice murder. And now that John was thinking harder about the things he spent his time doing, the lack of flow experiences in his life made him want to shout in frustration. Monotony clawed at him. He needed a hobby, or a project, or something.
The idea came to him while he was considering his options. He didn’t want to learn a musical instrument, or a foreign language, or how to draw. Those things would not capture his interest. He would just spend all of his time thinking about Sherlock’s reaction to them, hearing Sherlock’s voice in his head making snide remarks. So, if all he was going to do was think about Sherlock anyway, he might as well make this his flow experience. He might as well immerse himself in Sherlock.
He rang Lestrade.
“I still don’t have anything, John,” Lestrade said, apologetically. “Trust me, I’m combing every call that comes in.”
“It’s okay,” John told him. “I’ve had an idea. But I need to ask a favor of you.”
“Sure,” said Lestrade, agreeably.
“It’s really a favor of Mycroft.”
“Then you should probably ring Mycroft.”
“But you could just ask Mycroft for me.”
Lestrade paused. “He’d do anything you asked him to, you know.”
“I know, but he’d judge me while I was asking for it.”
“No, he wouldn’t.”
“Yes, he would. He does that. You’ve just got used to ignoring him. This way, if you ask him, he’ll judge me at you, and that’s less annoying.”
“Less annoying to you,” Lestrade pointed out.
“Obviously,” said John.
Lestrade sighed. “What’s the favor?”
“I want to catalogue Sherlock’s belongings. The stuff in Baker Street.”
“Why?” Lestrade sounded curious.
“It’s a flow experience, Greg.”
Lestrade wasn’t sure that was what he would call it, but if it was going to keep John busy while the criminal masses in London were being unusually law-abiding, then Lestrade thought it was a good idea. So he agreed to ask Mycroft.
Mycroft was working, but Mycroft tended to always be working. Lestrade had learned that, when Mycroft genuinely wanted to focus on work, he didn’t come home. If he brought work home, that meant he didn’t mind if Lestrade interrupted him. Once Lestrade had deduced this-and living with Mycroft was a constant puzzle, which made it a good thing that Lestrade had become a detective because he liked puzzles-he thought it was an arrangement that made perfect, logical sense and had adopted it for himself.
And this was the reason why, upon finding Mycroft in the library with a pen in his hand and a document on his desk, Lestrade didn’t hesitate to walk in and sit down and say, “I need a favor.”
“Oh, dear,” said Mycroft, and turned a page.
Lestrade had rather expected Mycroft to simply respond with What is it? so he said, “What’s that reaction for?”
Mycroft put down his pen and leaned back in his seat. “You never ask me for favors. Ever. If you’re asking me for one now, I can only conclude that you must have murdered someone.”
“I haven’t,” said Lestrade.
“How reassuring,” Mycroft responded.
“It’s really a favor for John.”
“John.” Mycroft frowned. “Why isn’t John asking me for this favor then?”
“Because John thinks you’ll judge him for asking for it.” Lestrade held up his hand as if to head off whatever Mycroft might say next. “Before you protest, I’ve no idea where John got that impression. I told him you’re the least judgmental person I know.”
“I don’t think you’re amusing,” said Mycroft.
“Yes, you do,” said Lestrade. “He wants to catalogue Sherlock’s belongings.”
“What belongings?”
“The ones in Baker Street.”
Mycroft paused, and Lestrade could tell he was determining how to react to this. “Why does he want to do this?” he asked, finally.
“Do you mind if he does it?”
“No, I don’t mind. Of course I don’t mind. I told him months ago he could have everything in the flat, and he didn’t want it. So I don’t quite understand why he suddenly wants to catalogue all of it.”
“It’s a flow experience.”
Lestrade recognized the look on Mycroft’s face. It was his resigned-to-ridiculousness look. “And what, pray tell, is a flow experience?”
“As far as I can tell, it’s falling in love with something, or someone.”
“And you think it is entirely acceptable for us to permit John Watson to wallow in falling in love with Sherlock Holmes’s possessions?”
“I think he isn’t in love with Sherlock Holmes’s possessions, but if they can stand in for Sherlock and take his mind off everything for a little while, then maybe it’s not a bad idea.”
Mycroft sighed. “‘Flow experience.’ Where did he even get this idea?”
“He might be reading self-help books.”
Mycroft laughed without humor. “If I texted Sherlock that John was reading self-help books, I feel sure he’d come back immediately.”
“Then maybe you should do it,” suggested Lestrade, lightly, as if it were not an unwinnable argument they’d been having periodically. Mycroft censored reports to Sherlock, made light of John’s mood. Lestrade thought this a terrible idea. Mycroft thought it a brilliant one. They had, so far, agreed to disagree on the point.
Mycroft acknowledged Lestrade’s jab with a brief smile and moved on. “He can catalogue everything, but do ask him if he wouldn’t mind being careful with leaving it as it is as much as possible. That really was a request from Sherlock. I think he assumed John would just go on living in the flat and keep everything in place as a shrine to him.”
“Of course he thought that.”
“So I find myself in the situation now of preserving my brother’s shrine to himself.”
“I’ll tell John you can’t bear to have it disturbed and moved all about. You have become quite sentimental since Sherlock’s death.”
“Go away,” said Mycroft, without heat, “I’ve work to do.”
Lestrade chuckled and stood up. “Thank you.”
“I am delighted to assist in the perpetuation of flow experiences in the world.”
“That’s what I tell people about you,” remarked Lestrade, as he left the room, texting John.
“No doubt,” rejoined Mycroft.
Lestrade smiled absently and texted, M, without judgment, says it’s fine. Please don’t tidy up, though - he’d like it left as is as much as possible.
Lestrade was halfway down the hall on his way to the drawing room when Mycroft’s Sherlock-emergency-only mobile chirped with a text message from where Mycroft had left it on the ridiculously enormous antique sideboard under the twelfth-century tapestry. Lestrade picked it up, glanced at it, and carried it back to the library.
Mycroft looked up from his papers. “Is it Sherlock?”
Lestrade held it out to him. It was a text from John Watson, and it read: Thank you.
“Text him back,” said Mycroft, turning back to his papers, “and tell him he should have just asked me directly. And remember to sign my name.”
“He’s going to know it’s from you; you’re in his contacts list.”
“Informality is slowly creeping into all human interaction, Greg. I shall not assist its insidious invasion.”
Lestrade sighed but obediently began texting John back in Mycroft-speak. “You know, when you say things like that, it makes me amazed you ever call me ‘Greg.’”
“I make exceptions for you,” said Mycroft, making a note on the paper he was reading.
Lestrade smiled and hit send on the text.
No gratitude necessary. Intermediary not necessary either. Mycroft Holmes.
So John, with Mycroft’s blessing, spent many happy hours completely lost in Baker Street, carefully going through Sherlock’s varied and hodge-podge possessions. At the end of every period of time he spent at Baker Street, he felt as if he’d just spent an afternoon with Sherlock. Sherlock had been quiet and hadn’t said much, but then Sherlock could be like that sometimes, and it was easy to pretend Sherlock was deep in thought and that John was merely waiting for him to say something, suddenly, as if they were in the middle of a conversation, confident that John would be there. There had been a comfort in Sherlock’s silent presence-just as John knew Sherlock had taken comfort in having him near even when he wasn’t speaking-and the only place John could approximate that comfort these days was in Baker Street, surrounded by the only things left of Sherlock Holmes. John’s life had been the space between Sherlock’s speeches, and in a way it still was, it was just that the next speech was never going to come.
Some of Sherlock’s things made him smile: the Cluedo board they’d fought over the one time they’d played, a comic-book drawing of them sketched in payment by one of the clients from “The Geek Interpreter,” the crutch from “The Aluminium Crutch.” Some of them confused him, and he wished desperately he could ask Sherlock about them. What had he been planning to do with fifty-two samples of beach sand that John found stuffed at the very back of the silverware drawer in their kitchen? Where had the scimitar come from that John uncovered under a pile of six different types of red velvet fabric? (For that matter, what had the fabric been for?)
He worked his way through the flat, systematically, usually working cross-legged on the floor with his laptop on his lap, careful to catalogue the item and its location and then put it back exactly where he had found it. He understood Mycroft’s impulse for everything to be left as it was. He had the same impulse. He was sure it was unhealthy, but he couldn’t shake the idea that Sherlock couldn’t possibly be dead. It was too unbelievable. It was more believable to think he was still out there, somewhere, and that eventually he would come back, and if one sock had been disturbed in his sock index, John knew he’d be subjected to days of insufferable sulking over it.
When John had that thought, he stood up and purposely moved a sock out of the sock index, hoping someday to be subject to Sherlock’s sulk over it. He looked forward to it. He desperately wanted to be the object of Sherlock Holmes’s displeasure.
Mrs. Hudson brought him tea periodically and they chatted. Mostly Mrs. Hudson chatted and John listened. It was exactly like old times, except much quieter.
Eventually, John found himself cataloguing the desk they had shared. He had deliberately saved it until last because it had been the place where his things had most intermixed with Sherlock’s things, and somehow that was more painful than Sherlock’s things on their own, to see the places where Sherlock’s unyielding personality had yielded to him and let him in.
Sherlock had seldom kept notes when he worked, but he had saved John’s notes from their cases. John had never realized that before. He went through piles of paper covered in his own handwriting. The thought that Sherlock had saved his awkward and confused notes made his heart hurt. Literally. A pain pressing his chest that threatened to strangle him. He refused to cry, but when he took a breath it still sounded like a sob.
The very last piece of paper he found was a fortune from a fortune cookie. It is all just beginning. John stared at it for a very long time, forcing himself to breathe slowly and evenly. Then he turned to his laptop and typed into it, “S’s fortune from Chinese, night of ASiP resolution.” Their first Chinese together. John did not type that.
It was the only thing he moved in the flat. But he put the fortune on top of every other pile of paper, in the middle of the desk. He liked the proud defiance in its tone. Here in this flat where time had stopped, everything was always just on the verge of beginning. For the rest of time. Or at least time as John knew it.
John turned back to his laptop, saved the file, and shut everything down. He wasn’t sure exactly how long it had taken him to catalogue everything. He had lost track of time while doing it. But he did know that it had merely reinforced the problem with flow experiences.
They always, eventually, ended.
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