The Upwards March
Title: The Upwards March
Rating: PG
Characters: John/Sherlock (established), Sarah
Words: ~1,600
Summary: Originally posted to sherlockbbc_fic as a fill for this prompt: "Sherlock knows that John's too good for him and John will leave. One day, John does." The request was for angst, and I supplied that in abundance.
Four Hours
He is still riding out the high of being right.
It is momentous. It encompasses the whole of him, leaves him boneless and pacing by turns, sprawled and crawling the walls, the ceiling. Something so fantastically inevitable, and so long. It dragged itself out forever, leaving gouges in the floorboards, little moments where it might have come to pass, but for some last-second change of heart, some remembered reason to try again. The truth of it, the fulfilled prophecy, it fills him up. It makes the world shine. He was right. He is always right. He will always be right.
John left with a battered suitcase shoved into the boot of a black cab. He forgot almost everything, but, being John, he wouldn’t care. He had clothes and his computer and money and somewhere to go. Those were the only things he needed. John was like a Buddhist. He was oxymoronic military corners. He survived on tea and his own fear.
Sherlock walks back and forth between the coffee table and the fireplace and lives the thrill of it over and over and over again. The last few days, the shouting, the threats. It had felt terrible, then, when it was happening. Of course it had. There is a set of broken beakers swept into the corner of the kitchen and he knows he would probably never pick up the shards, because the sound it made when he threw the beakers against the wall was the most exciting thing that had happened in days, and the look on John’s face had made the Earth buck as if Atlas were shrugging it off, and when he had turned and walked silently away, Sherlock knew that he had been right.
It was a matter of time. Literally, a thing of seconds ticking into minutes into hours into days into months. From that first ridiculous chase in the streets of London after a tanned American man in a taxi driven by a lunatic, there had been the low metronome swing in the back of Sherlock’s mind keeping time and tallying the weight of frustration against payoff for John in their arrangement. From the moment when breathy jokes (you, ripping my clothes off in a darkened swimming pool) became pushing John against the wall in the foyer, became hip to hip and fingers through hair and lips meeting desperate and unabashed - from that moment, the end loomed over proceedings like a black smoke pall.
Nothing lasts forever, particularly when Sherlock is involved in it.
John hadn’t looked back after he’d slammed the cab boot closed.
And maybe Sherlock had been wrong about that part.
Two Days
There are thirteen unopened text messages on Sherlock’s mobile. Every one of them is from Mycroft. Every one of them asks some practical question about the cost of the flat and the acquisition of necessary home items, and Sherlock knows this because Sherlock knows everything.
Sherlock knows that the windows have been open in the sitting room for twenty-six hours, and that the room is frigid. He knows that his breath in frosting with each exhale. He knows that he has been sitting in his armchair with his knees drawn up and his feet on the seat for upwards of half a day.
He knows that John’s room is empty, because he looked.
It has worn off, obviously. The high. It is gone. It has been replaced by a dull throb somewhere untouchable by human fingers. He still feels that if he were capable of opening his own chest cavity, he could lay hands on it. He could clutch at it and pull it out, look at it and find what shape it is in, find what color it is. He could make the feeling something corporeal, and find a method by which to dispense of it.
He has broken every lightbulb in the flat. It is dark. He shivers.
If there were good things about being in a relationship, he has forgotten them. Deleted them, maybe. What is important is the sound of glass shattering against the wallpaper in the kitchen. He holds on to that, because it was a breaking point for both of them, and he needs to remember that he had a breaking point. That it wasn’t only John’s breaking point. That it wasn’t only John who left.
He needs to keep telling himself that he has forgotten the feeling of a warm hand beneath his shirt, on his back, against his skin. The feeling of a chin on his shoulder, observing as he did something marvelous with chemicals or blood samples. He needs to focus on forgetting the way John looked when he was happy, the way he would grin and glance away, as though being happy was something to be embarrassed about. As though it was anything less than heart-stopping and beautiful.
Sherlock needs to forget the resignation on John’s face as he turned away, because it means that John had been considering leaving for a while, that Sherlock wasn’t the only one counting down, and he doesn’t know what to do with that information.
One Week
Sherlock doesn’t notice that it is three in the morning until Sarah opens the door in her pink bathrobe and squints out into the light of the hall. The movements of the Earth in relation to the sun are suddenly a mystery to him, somehow. More so than they have ever been before.
“Sherlock?” She is blinking at him. She is still mostly asleep. She leans against the doorframe, attempting to get her bearings on the world. She stills when she is able to see him fully, finally, and he realizes that he hasn’t done much to keep himself presentable in the last seven days.
“Have you spoken to John recently?” he asks, in a voice which is entirely steady and reasonable to his own ears.
She frowns, though, and sharpens slightly. “I haven’t seen or spoken to John in about a week and a half. He sent his resignation to the clinic in the mail.”
“Did the letter have a return address?”
“No,” she says. She is answering questions plainly, as though she is afraid that any unnecessary information will cloud the message. As though she is concerned that he will hurt her. He wonders what he looks like.
“May I see the letter?”
“I don’t have it,” she tells him. She is being honest. He can see that so clearly. She is telling the truth. “I don’t know who does. Sherlock--” she starts. She stops. She takes a short breath and reaches out to him. When he flinches away, she draws her hand back. She looks pained. “John’s gone, Sherlock. He’s gone away. If he’s being careful so that you don’t find him - maybe you should stop trying.”
Sherlock has nothing to say to that.
She gives him an apologetic smile, mumbles something soothing, and closes the door against him.
Ten Days
There is nothing. There is nothing at all. No case to distract him, no avenue of thought not lined with memory that he needs so desperately to dispose of.
There is so much laughter in his head. There were so many times where they could do nothing but clutch at each other and laugh - relief, some ridiculous urge, some release of tension. It ricochets around the inside of his skull at such a rate and volume that he has to press his palms against his ears and bury himself further into the sofa. How can the laughter not drown out the shouting? There seems to be so much less of it.
It seems reasonable that the laughter would overwhelm the rest. It seems reasonable that the equation would balance with an exothermic reaction. That there would be a negative enthalpy change. Light and heat.
If he can reduce it to chemistry, he can begin to make sense of it.
ΔH < 0
He hasn’t followed John’s trail because none of it will ever come to any good.
He is entirely useless.
Two Weeks
Morning sunlight finds the broken glass beneath his hands, spread above the shards like a vampire’s wings. They catch the light and cast it in all directions, dotting the walls with pinholes of white -- dotting his drawn, exhausted face. He is making it perfect. He is trying to bring them back together.
Some drunken voice inside of him in the night had explained that the problem was the rack of beakers still shattered on the floor in the kitchen. That was why John had not yet reappeared in the doorway. That was why he had not yet called. It’s the glass. He hates the glass. So Sherlock pulled himself off of the floor on unsteady legs, heavy with a cocktail of barbiturates which had been somehow unable to undo him entirely, and sank to his knees by the pile, and stayed there for hours.
In the sun through the kitchen window, he admires his work. Six lines of rounded glass sitting in neat little rows, like a jigsaw puzzle. Some of the pieces are rubbed with faint red from the tiny cuts at the edges of Sherlock’s fingers. It was delicate, painful work, but he did it. The drugs are wearing away, now. The logic they presented to him wears with them.
He sits back against a leg of the table, puts his head back against the wood, and closes his eyes.
He will sweep the glass, at some point. He will shower, and he will go outside, and he will answer his mobile, and he will take another case, and another. He will resume life. There will be a Before John Watson, and an After John Watson. Before Christ, Anno Domini. There were things to look forward to before he met John. He is sure of it.
There must have been.
Rating: PG
Characters: John/Sherlock (established), Sarah
Words: ~1,600
Summary: Originally posted to sherlockbbc_fic as a fill for this prompt: "Sherlock knows that John's too good for him and John will leave. One day, John does." The request was for angst, and I supplied that in abundance.
Four Hours
He is still riding out the high of being right.
It is momentous. It encompasses the whole of him, leaves him boneless and pacing by turns, sprawled and crawling the walls, the ceiling. Something so fantastically inevitable, and so long. It dragged itself out forever, leaving gouges in the floorboards, little moments where it might have come to pass, but for some last-second change of heart, some remembered reason to try again. The truth of it, the fulfilled prophecy, it fills him up. It makes the world shine. He was right. He is always right. He will always be right.
John left with a battered suitcase shoved into the boot of a black cab. He forgot almost everything, but, being John, he wouldn’t care. He had clothes and his computer and money and somewhere to go. Those were the only things he needed. John was like a Buddhist. He was oxymoronic military corners. He survived on tea and his own fear.
Sherlock walks back and forth between the coffee table and the fireplace and lives the thrill of it over and over and over again. The last few days, the shouting, the threats. It had felt terrible, then, when it was happening. Of course it had. There is a set of broken beakers swept into the corner of the kitchen and he knows he would probably never pick up the shards, because the sound it made when he threw the beakers against the wall was the most exciting thing that had happened in days, and the look on John’s face had made the Earth buck as if Atlas were shrugging it off, and when he had turned and walked silently away, Sherlock knew that he had been right.
It was a matter of time. Literally, a thing of seconds ticking into minutes into hours into days into months. From that first ridiculous chase in the streets of London after a tanned American man in a taxi driven by a lunatic, there had been the low metronome swing in the back of Sherlock’s mind keeping time and tallying the weight of frustration against payoff for John in their arrangement. From the moment when breathy jokes (you, ripping my clothes off in a darkened swimming pool) became pushing John against the wall in the foyer, became hip to hip and fingers through hair and lips meeting desperate and unabashed - from that moment, the end loomed over proceedings like a black smoke pall.
Nothing lasts forever, particularly when Sherlock is involved in it.
John hadn’t looked back after he’d slammed the cab boot closed.
And maybe Sherlock had been wrong about that part.
Two Days
There are thirteen unopened text messages on Sherlock’s mobile. Every one of them is from Mycroft. Every one of them asks some practical question about the cost of the flat and the acquisition of necessary home items, and Sherlock knows this because Sherlock knows everything.
Sherlock knows that the windows have been open in the sitting room for twenty-six hours, and that the room is frigid. He knows that his breath in frosting with each exhale. He knows that he has been sitting in his armchair with his knees drawn up and his feet on the seat for upwards of half a day.
He knows that John’s room is empty, because he looked.
It has worn off, obviously. The high. It is gone. It has been replaced by a dull throb somewhere untouchable by human fingers. He still feels that if he were capable of opening his own chest cavity, he could lay hands on it. He could clutch at it and pull it out, look at it and find what shape it is in, find what color it is. He could make the feeling something corporeal, and find a method by which to dispense of it.
He has broken every lightbulb in the flat. It is dark. He shivers.
If there were good things about being in a relationship, he has forgotten them. Deleted them, maybe. What is important is the sound of glass shattering against the wallpaper in the kitchen. He holds on to that, because it was a breaking point for both of them, and he needs to remember that he had a breaking point. That it wasn’t only John’s breaking point. That it wasn’t only John who left.
He needs to keep telling himself that he has forgotten the feeling of a warm hand beneath his shirt, on his back, against his skin. The feeling of a chin on his shoulder, observing as he did something marvelous with chemicals or blood samples. He needs to focus on forgetting the way John looked when he was happy, the way he would grin and glance away, as though being happy was something to be embarrassed about. As though it was anything less than heart-stopping and beautiful.
Sherlock needs to forget the resignation on John’s face as he turned away, because it means that John had been considering leaving for a while, that Sherlock wasn’t the only one counting down, and he doesn’t know what to do with that information.
One Week
Sherlock doesn’t notice that it is three in the morning until Sarah opens the door in her pink bathrobe and squints out into the light of the hall. The movements of the Earth in relation to the sun are suddenly a mystery to him, somehow. More so than they have ever been before.
“Sherlock?” She is blinking at him. She is still mostly asleep. She leans against the doorframe, attempting to get her bearings on the world. She stills when she is able to see him fully, finally, and he realizes that he hasn’t done much to keep himself presentable in the last seven days.
“Have you spoken to John recently?” he asks, in a voice which is entirely steady and reasonable to his own ears.
She frowns, though, and sharpens slightly. “I haven’t seen or spoken to John in about a week and a half. He sent his resignation to the clinic in the mail.”
“Did the letter have a return address?”
“No,” she says. She is answering questions plainly, as though she is afraid that any unnecessary information will cloud the message. As though she is concerned that he will hurt her. He wonders what he looks like.
“May I see the letter?”
“I don’t have it,” she tells him. She is being honest. He can see that so clearly. She is telling the truth. “I don’t know who does. Sherlock--” she starts. She stops. She takes a short breath and reaches out to him. When he flinches away, she draws her hand back. She looks pained. “John’s gone, Sherlock. He’s gone away. If he’s being careful so that you don’t find him - maybe you should stop trying.”
Sherlock has nothing to say to that.
She gives him an apologetic smile, mumbles something soothing, and closes the door against him.
Ten Days
There is nothing. There is nothing at all. No case to distract him, no avenue of thought not lined with memory that he needs so desperately to dispose of.
There is so much laughter in his head. There were so many times where they could do nothing but clutch at each other and laugh - relief, some ridiculous urge, some release of tension. It ricochets around the inside of his skull at such a rate and volume that he has to press his palms against his ears and bury himself further into the sofa. How can the laughter not drown out the shouting? There seems to be so much less of it.
It seems reasonable that the laughter would overwhelm the rest. It seems reasonable that the equation would balance with an exothermic reaction. That there would be a negative enthalpy change. Light and heat.
If he can reduce it to chemistry, he can begin to make sense of it.
ΔH < 0
He hasn’t followed John’s trail because none of it will ever come to any good.
He is entirely useless.
Two Weeks
Morning sunlight finds the broken glass beneath his hands, spread above the shards like a vampire’s wings. They catch the light and cast it in all directions, dotting the walls with pinholes of white -- dotting his drawn, exhausted face. He is making it perfect. He is trying to bring them back together.
Some drunken voice inside of him in the night had explained that the problem was the rack of beakers still shattered on the floor in the kitchen. That was why John had not yet reappeared in the doorway. That was why he had not yet called. It’s the glass. He hates the glass. So Sherlock pulled himself off of the floor on unsteady legs, heavy with a cocktail of barbiturates which had been somehow unable to undo him entirely, and sank to his knees by the pile, and stayed there for hours.
In the sun through the kitchen window, he admires his work. Six lines of rounded glass sitting in neat little rows, like a jigsaw puzzle. Some of the pieces are rubbed with faint red from the tiny cuts at the edges of Sherlock’s fingers. It was delicate, painful work, but he did it. The drugs are wearing away, now. The logic they presented to him wears with them.
He sits back against a leg of the table, puts his head back against the wood, and closes his eyes.
He will sweep the glass, at some point. He will shower, and he will go outside, and he will answer his mobile, and he will take another case, and another. He will resume life. There will be a Before John Watson, and an After John Watson. Before Christ, Anno Domini. There were things to look forward to before he met John. He is sure of it.
There must have been.