Work Text:
Sherlock opened his eyes in an unfamiliar bedroom, but that was nothing new. He sat up and swung his legs out of the bed. Judging from the quality of the light, it was still quite early in the morning; just after dawn.
He padded down the stairs in his bare feet, wrapped in a sheet, and went about his business in the kitchen without the usual slamming of cupboards and rattling of drawers that, years ago, he would have engaged in. The mugs and sugar and coffee were still in the same places, and before long the kitchen filled with a dark aroma. Sherlock arranged sugar and milk and mugs on the counter, smiling and feeling quite proud of himself.
Two cups of coffee and an hour later, John still had not emerged from his bedroom (which had once been Sherlock's bedroom). John was not usually a late sleeper. Sherlock prowled back and forth in the kitchen, the coffee making his fingers restless and his knees twitchy. Finally, he went to the bedroom and pushed the door open.
The room was empty.
Well, it was not empty. There was a bed (Sherlock's bed), a wardrobe (Sherlock's wardrobe), some books (John's books), evidence of life (John's life). But John was not there.
Sherlock tore through the flat. John was not in the bathroom. He was not in the sitting room. He was not in the upstairs bedroom. He was not in the flat. He was gone.
-----
John's shoes and his coat were missing. No note. No sign of a struggle. Sherlock could not find John's wallet. Wherever he'd gone, it'd been in possession of his faculties and of his own free will.
In another life, another universe, Sherlock would have texted him and demanded to know where he'd gone. But in this life, in this universe, Mycroft had not yet provided Sherlock with a new phone, and Sherlock was untethered and unmoored.
He prowled the flat with the sheet trailing behind him like a bridal train, observing the unfilled gaps on the shelf where his books had once been, the clean kitchen table that had once held his scientific apparatus. John had taken down Sherlock's poster of the periodic table, his judo certificate, his bats and bugs, the cow skull, and replaced them with his own medical school certificate and bland, tasteless art prints. He'd left the skull on the mantlepiece, but he'd thrown away Sherlock's toothbrush. Sherlock found a spare one, still unopened, in the cupboard, and used John's toothpaste.
He knocked on Mrs Hudson's door. She did not answer.
Sherlock stared at the front door. He could go outside, see what was left of his old homeless network, rouse them to the hunt for John.
Instead, he went back upstairs.
-----
Sherlock found the Stradivarius in the upstairs bedroom, tucked neatly in the back of the wardrobe. His fingers left streaks on the dusty case. Sherlock plucked a few loose strands from the bow, rosined it, and scraped out a few notes that were badly flat. He tightened a peg, scratched out another few notes, and adjusted the peg again. A minute later, he abandoned the violin on top of the bed in favour of searching through the drawers, which were all empty.
He looked under the bed, and between the mattress and the boxspring. He did the same in his old room, which was now John's. He checked between the couch cushions and even in all the kitchen cupboards. He tossed the bookshelves and lifted the loose board in the sitting room. He opened desk drawers and peered behind the television. He lifted up the skull.
There was a carton of cigarettes inside the skull, with three cigarettes inside. Sherlock smelled them. John did not smoke, and he had not taken up smoking in Sherlock's absence; these were the same cigarettes that, once upon a time, Sherlock had allowed John to think he'd successfully hid.
He could smoke them now.
Sherlock put the cigarettes back in the skull and resumed his hunt. An hour later, he was forced to admit that perhaps John had taken the gun with him.
-----
The fridge contained sliced bread, sliced luncheon meat, cheese, a container of what appeared to be leftover risotto, a jar of mustard, a jar of jam, a bag of wilting lettuce, a few cans of beer, a carton of eggs, a bag of carrots, and a few stalks of rubbery celery. The freezer held ice, a few frozen Tesco meals, and a bag of peas and carrots.
Sherlock made a sandwich of bread, meat, cheese, and mustard, and ate it standing over the sink. He drank down an entire glass of water, and then another, and then made himself another sandwich. He hadn't noticed how hungry he was.
-----
Sherlock sat up straight, gasping like a swimmer breaking the surface, his heart drumming furiously against his breastbone.
"John!" he yelled, and his voice echoed queerly in the empty flat. He remembered that John was not home. Was perhaps never coming home. He sank back down onto the floor.
It was ridiculous, on the face of it; John lived here, all his things were here, why should he not return? But people did many things that were ridiculous on the face of it, such as telling each other lies in order to "spare their feelings" and purchasing useless gifts for each other such as teddy bears and flower bouquets and fragile statuettes. John might decide to vanish, just to teach Sherlock a lesson. He might be angry at Sherlock. Or he might get into an accident. Or he might be kidnapped.
Of course, Sherlock would find him. Whether John were in A&E, being kept in the bottom of a well, or in Belize, Sherlock would always find him. Even if John didn't want to be found. (And John would want to be found, wouldn't he? Wouldn't he?)
But it was pointless to think about these things. John would come home. Eventually. When it suited him.
----
The shower in 221B Baker Street had always been too short for Sherlock, so that he had to duck in order to wet his hair in the spray. It seemed pleasantly nostalgic now, but in a few weeks it would start to grate again.
Sherlock stepped out of the shower, still dripping, and dried himself off with the single towel hanging on the rack (John's). He stepped over the sheet he'd left heaped on the floor in front of the bathroom and padded upstairs, leaving damp footprints in his wake. Hanging in the upstairs wardrobe was his old blue dressing gown and one of his old suits.
He slipped on the trousers at first; they were only a little looser around the waist, and the fine material felt like heaven against his skin. Pulling on the shirt was like coming home from the rain and wrapping into a warm blanket, and with each button he looped though its hole he felt a little more awake and secure. By the time he shrugged on the jacket, he was standing up straight. He felt like Sherlock Holmes again: genius, consulting detective, marvel.
No socks, but John had plenty of socks. Not as fine as he would have preferred, of course, but beggars can't be choosers. Sherlock selected a pair of black socks and put them on.
----
Tiny cracks radiated across the ceiling, here and there, spiderwebbing across the plaster in a microcosm of the shifting of the tectonic plates that had caused them.
Sherlock lay on his back on the couch and traced the filamental cracks back to their imaginary sources: footsteps from the floor above; an old building, exhaling and inhaling as the weather turned hot and then cold again; the groan of the ancient earth as it stretched and settled. These were all fancies; Sherlock had never made any study of cracks in ceilings, and he had no way of knowing if any of his theories were true, or if they were anything more than theories.
It was hateful. If he could find the gun, he would put a stop to it right now. Strike holes through his boredom and the knowledge that eluded him. Then John would come home and yell at him, take the gun away, and ferret it away somewhere for Sherlock to find all over again.
Then John would come home.
----
John did not announce his presence when he returned, but it wasn't as if he ever had.
His tread up the stairs was slow and distracted. Sherlock arranged himself on his back on the couch, then wondered if he shouldn't have his violin with him, or if perhaps he should be standing by the window in an insouciant slouch. But by the time Sherlock finished having these thoughts (and realised the violin was still upstairs), John was already in the sitting room, and Sherlock was half sat up on the couch like an idiot.
John blinked at Sherlock, slow and heavy like he wasn't sure he was awake. "Oh," he said.
"You were gone," said Sherlock. He stood up, toes digging into the couch cushions. "All day."
John rubbed the back of his neck. "I was at work."
"You could have said something." Sherlock stepped off the couch and onto the coffee table.
John's eyes narrowed. "Like you did, when you were gone?"
Oh.
Sherlock remained where he was. John had to tip his head back to look at him--more than he normally did, even--but he did not seem cowed by it. He had his arms akimbo, lips curled tight together, his eyebrows drawn taut.
Sherlock dropped off the coffee table, bending his knees a little as he landed. "I said I was sorry."
"I never said I forgave you. You just went and stayed anyhow, steamrollered over me like you always do."
Sherlock sat on the coffee table, elbows braced on his knees. He looked up at John. John loomed over him now, hands still on his hips. Sherlock was not sure which he preferred. No, he knew: he preferred neither of them. He preferred John on a level with him, smiling or laughing or thoughtful, or even face relaxed in sleep. "I'm." He stopped. He wasn't sure apologising again would help.
John shook his head and went into the kitchen. Sherlock could hear him open the fridge. "You ate all the bread? And the cheese!"
"I was hungry," Sherlock called. It couldn't be that easy, could it? He tried to relax into the sounds of John moving around in the kitchen, opening and shutting cupboards, starting the kettle, clattering with cups and bowls and silverware. His mind refused to bend to its usual tasks of sorting and deducing, throwing up instead jumbled and incoherent images of his horrible, off-kilter day, John's narrowed eyes, John's beetled brow, his new grey hairs.
"You didn't think I'd still be here," said Sherlock. "You thought yesterday was a dream, or a hallucination."
All noise in the kitchen stopped. John came out again, rubbing one hand over his face. He didn't look fierce anymore. He looked like a toy that a child comes across in the attic after ten years away, and discovers it's smaller than he remembered.
"So you went to work like you always do, and you didn't leave a note or anything," Sherlock went on.
"I was afraid to look in the upstairs bedroom," John muttered through his hand.
"I'm here," said Sherlock.
"I know. I can see that." John let his hand fall back to his side.
"I'm not going anywhere," said Sherlock.
John's face softened, and there: there was the face that Sherlock remembered, that he'd kept tucked tight against his breastbone as he'd clung for his life to a cliffside in the Swiss Alps, and as he'd squeezed the trigger in Buenos Aires, and as he'd ridden a train through the Italian countryside with blood running down the inside of his sleeve. "You'd better not."
Sherlock tried a smile. John didn't slap it off his face, so it remained.
"Except to the shops," said John. "Really, all the bread?"
---end---