Chapter Text
“I am as constant as the northern star.”
Joni Mitchell, “A Case of You”
February 2015
“You’re getting—you’re what?”
John’s voice comes out unrecognisable even to himself. He clears his throat, tries again.
“You’re—come again?”
“I’m getting married.” Impatiently. “It’s a thing people do, you know. People standing in this very room have done it.”
Well. They haven’t. But Sherlock doesn’t know that.
“But—how—who—” How is this happening? “How do I not even know who the lucky—” John fumbles for a gender, and of course Sherlock clocks that. His expression goes even more acerbic.
“— man is?” Sherlock tries sarcasm. “ I can’t imagine. You’ve been so present of late.”
“I—I know. I’m sorry. I was—” If there were any way John could have cocked this up any worse, he can’t think of it at the moment. But he’s quite sure he’ll come up with something worse in the near future, and do it, too.
“Don’t worry, John. It’s fine. It’s all fine.”
The sardonic glint in those peridot eyes tells John it isn’t fine.
“Let’s start over, yeah? Hello, Sherlock, long time no see, you’re getting married, that’s fantastic. Who’s the lucky bloke?”
There, almost his natural tone. All it takes is pretending he’s talking to Greg.
“His name is Eric. He’s American.” Sherlock’s airy tone tells John he’d better not meet this information with snark.
A fierce loathing seizes John for every male ever named Eric, for every male born on American soil, for every acre of North America belonging to the United States. Islands included.
John reaches for a mask. Focus. You have to project equable, generous, pleased. Surprise is legitimate. Shock is not.
“You’re marrying an American. I didn’t see that coming, I have to say.”
Sherlock doesn’t answer, only turning away, his fawn woollen dressing-gown flaring and then settling as he stares down at the kitchen table. John’s grateful for the momentary cover, and reaches for something anodyne to fill what’s becoming a longish silence.
“Well. I’m happy for you. Tell me about him.”
The silence continues, though. Maybe he needs to show more enthusiasm.
“What’s it like, being together?”
“Well. I'd say. It’s very affirming. We’re in a very good place.”
John stiffens, then realises: Sherlock’s joking. “You—you got that from a book.”
Sherlock’s tense shoulders loosen and he turns back, but instead of grinning, he’s only sketching a smile that’s unexpectedly sad.
“Yes. Everyone got that from a book. But it’s true. It is very affirming, and we are in a very good place.”
John wishes that all he felt was sad. Because what he’s feeling, living it all over again in technicolour horror, is the sick incredulous jealousy he hasn’t felt since Irene Adler turned up in Sherlock’s bed.
Try for hearty. “And I’m glad of it. But you don’t talk like that.”
An eye roll could mean anything from “Of course I don’t. Only idiots talk like that” to “How would you know how I talk, long lost friend?”
John’s never even taken off his jacket. He goes to do so, then stops. “May I—? Stay a bit? Only if it’s not a bad time—”
Sherlock’s talking over him, “of course, no, it’s a good time,” and that’s reassuring; his “I’m always glad to see you” isn’t. Once, Sherlock never had to say anything even remotely like that. Any more than he’d have had to say “humans need oxygen.”
Catching up naturally entails tea. But not made by John.
An hour crawls by, painfully. Everywhere he looks he sees evidence that Sherlock’s new man lives in the flat now. And with every word they exchange, new spikes and fences and locked doors spring up.
John learns that Eric Canfield is a freelance journalist. (Black mark, that.) Moved to London to try to make a living by podcasting on British life from an outsider’s perspective. “Two nations divided by a common language,” and all that. Has published a couple of modestly funny, modestly successful, very insightful books in the Bill Bryson vein. Sherlock urges one of them on John, claims he’ll enjoy it. (Nothing less likely.)
This Eric had asked Sherlock out after a Met press conference, and Sherlock had been too taken aback to say no. And to his surprise he’d liked the man’s company. Eric made him laugh. (“And you know how rare that is.”)
Pained jealousy is boiling through John’s veins again.
As the winter light begins to fail Sherlock begins to fidget, looking at the clock on the wall.
“John, I—we’ve only talked about me, I haven’t even got your news. And now I’m out of time. Can we—”
“Oh! Oh sure, sorry, I forgot, you’ve a schedule, just because it's my day off doesn't mean it's yours.”
Sherlock looks exquisitely uncomfortable, his cheeks actually pinking, his eyes flitting everywhere but to John’s.
“No, it’s just—I—Eric will be back soon to pick me up for a late afternoon concert.”
And God, John is not ready to meet the confident, accomplished, and no doubt gorgeous Eric. He springs up to gather jacket and scarf, gloves and portfolio case, all but tripping over himself to get to the landing.
Baker Street isn’t his anymore. Never will be again. He tries not to notice a framed photograph of the happy couple mostly covering the happy face on the iris wallpaper.
“Listen, why not come out to mine sometime, I’ll show you what I’ve been up to? You can mock it ruthlessly.”
A bit confused (strange—doesn’t Sherlock see everything?) and a bit bleak, Sherlock says, “I think you have a new address. You’ll need to give it me.”
“Sure, of course. God. I’m sorry. It’s a bit out of the way. Wargrave. Decent service from Paddington, though. Come out and see me, we’ll take a walk along the river, talk over lunch.”
As though Sherlock were just anyone. As though he weren’t above all the trivial rituals of human interaction, as though John weren’t far too close a friend for those anyway.
The look on Sherlock’s unsmiling face is yet another blow: he never used to like seeing John leave, but now he’s visibly relieved.
“Next week,” he says, practically herding John out onto the landing. “I’ll let you know before I come.”
Right, that’s what casual acquaintances do—they don’t drop in, they make a plan.
At the street John turns, uncertain what to say, how to say goodbye.
“You—you look well, Sherlock. I’m happy for you.”
“So do you. Thank you for coming.”
Excruciating words of two men who’ve become strangers. Were any of them true?
As the door closes on 221, John realises that neither of them ever mentioned his meeting Eric.
In a numb fog he takes an express from Paddington out to Wargrave. He’d been lucky to find an affordable spot there, close to his new job in Henley. The expensive market town is filled with posh visitors for regattas and a few notable denizens famous or infamous, making for rents he can’t afford on his pension and part-time salary. It isn’t central London, but he’s always consoled somehow that he can get there in under an hour, often even less. Mike Stamford’s always horrified when he mentions it.
Out of the rainy, misted window he watches darker patches alternate with twinkling lights, and thinks he shouldn’t think about all this just yet.
The walk to his place from the station is seven minutes of increasing wet, cold, and discomfort. He lets himself into the chilly studio flat and turns on all the lights, trying to wrap light around himself to fend off the coldest chill he’s ever felt.
The garage flat he’s living in is a rebuild that seems made just for him. The north wall contains a lavish number of windows and glass bricks—enough diffuse light for when he’s drawing, for fine detail work (who’s he kidding). Even in the short days of the year when he leaves for work and returns home in darkness, he feels the northern light the owners named the place for.
He’d set out today with such hope. How stupid he is, how foolish he’s been. Sherlock’s always been his focus, his—what, lodestar? His person. He was an idiot to think he was that for Sherlock. And when he got to Baker Street, nerves had come crashing down on him and he’d frozen when Sherlock had opened the door looking absolutely mystified to see him.
The past thirteen months in this tiny studio have been spent trying to get himself together. It’s a haven barely big enough for one, with few comforts and no frills. A bookshelf he’s filled with novels, drawing-paper, and folders full of sketches completed or discarded (initialled and dated, even the discards.) A hideous but comfortable modern reading chair he sometimes sleeps in. He even bought a proper drawing-table and a decent stool, and didn’t that take up a quarter of the available space.
But he’d imagined the studio infinitely expandable, a Tardis or a Mary Poppins carpet-bag. Able to accommodate also one Sherlock Holmes, a laboratory table complete with microscope and associated glassware. A music stand. A sofa, ideally big enough for two to stretch out together.
But then again, Sherlock’s all over the place as it is. Sherlock in all of his moods and movements. Sketches taped to glass walls, to a small filing cabinet, to the fridge. John’s had him here for so long he’s forgotten that Sherlock’s never been here, and has no idea that John is.
Sherlock in this place had been a halfway hope, a transitional stage. Endgame was always a return to 221B, healthy and calm. Master of a dangerous temper he’d fought all his life. Master of an autopilot recourse to drinking that he’d only recently recognised as a symptom, not the root problem. A John Watson starting over at 221B with the only person he’d ever cared for so deeply that he literally could not get over losing him.
A person who’s now living there with someone else, someone he means to marry.
How blithely, how cluelessly, he’d rolled back into 221B with no certainty but with great expectations, high hopes, of being welcomed back with open arms.
Well, as the song says, send in the clowns.
