I wrote a thing. I have no idea. Tomorrow I may be able to assess whether it makes any sense, but in the meantime that’s what Tumblr is for.
***
“I spent two years thinking about him,” Sherlock confesses to Mary one day. John knew what he was doing, choosing her. She’s easy to talk to. “But since I got back, he’s never been the way I remember him.”
She looks up from her crochet, interested. “Did he change? Or did you?”
That’s the question, of course, but she doesn’t ask it wisely; she’s honestly curious. But then she didn’t know John before.
Sherlock stares into his coffee, looking for his mental reflections of John in the dark liquid.
“He was always quiet,” Sherlock tells her after a bit. “And always angry. But not at me. When he was angry at me, he told me.”
“How do you know he’s angry at you now?”
Sherlock looks at her, flat and steady, till she shifts self-consciously in her seat. She has a cup of coffee too; one per day till the baby’s born, she told him when she poured it out. He watches her curl around it like it’s her greatest treasure. “I think he’ll always be a little angry at both of us,” she admits sadly. “We broke something precious before we ever even knew we had it.”
“Speak for yourself.” He made John cry. So did Mary, but she hadn’t been there to see that. Technically neither had Sherlock; he’d had his eyes closed, pretending to sleep while John broke down in a plastic chair in his hospital room.
He swallows the dregs of his coffee with a grimace for the nasty, bitter, too-sweet taste. “I never knew how much I wanted what he’d given me till I didn’t have it anymore.” The grounds catch, sandy and bitter in the back of his throat; that’s why he coughs, twice, to clear it. Not because this idiotic thought has haunted him for weeks. ”He trusted me like a puppy.”
Mary smiles gently at him. “He still does, Sherlock.”
“But he doesn’t talk to me anymore.” They have a pretty little garden out the back window of their kitchen. The colours of the flowers and spring growth are bright in the sun, and this is why therapists hang soothing artwork in their offices. “You know I used to tell him to shut up when I wanted to think.”
“And now you regret it.” She smiles again, crooked and rueful.
“And now his silence is more distracting than his talking ever was.”
Gah darlin’ this is beautiful. Thinking of John crying in that plastic chair is breaking my heart.
The second I wrote it, I knew it had probably happened. Sherlock lying there, listening to John breaking down. And the only thing he can think to do for him is to pretend to be asleep because if he opens his eyes then they’ll both be left staring at each other in hideously uncomfortable emotion.
My bet is that John stayed alone at Baker Street while Sherlock was in the hospital for a month or more recuperating. Can you imagine how lonely it must have been?