Title: Embrace The World In Grey
Characters: John, Sarah
Summary: "You haven't told her yet, have you?"
*****
The intercom box on his desk buzzes to life again. “John,” Sarah crackles through the device, all white static but still human somewhat. “John, it’s been ten hours straight, and you haven’t had any lunch; please don’t lie and say you brought something in to eat today, because you said the same thing yesterday and the day before that and I know for a fact that you don’t.” There’s a short pause, like she’s trying to get something out without riling him. The feed switches off with an electrical buzz and half a minute later there’s a rap on the door.
Sarah gently nudges the door open and peers in with one hand resting on the doorframe and the other on the knob. “John,” she repeats. “Please.”
John is in the process of writing out a prescription for flu pills and antihistamines at his desk for his last patient. The pen slips clumsily off the surface of the rectangular paper at her voice, skewering the signature box with a brilliant line of Pilot blue. He looks up from the prescription pad in annoyance, even though he knows fully well that it isn’t her fault. None of it is. John brings his free hand up to his forehead. “What?” he growls.
Sarah doesn’t step down. Instead, she moves forward to pry the ballpoint out of his grip and clatters it on the table. John looks at her with one eye, covering the other half of his face with his palm. She’s gazing concernedly down at him, and at least there’s no pity in her eyes. He’d hate that like he’s never hated anything before. He appreciates that she knows him this much to be conservative. “Go home,” she offers. “Sleep. Eat something. Take a vacation. Just do…something. Anything.”
A compromise. No, wait, a prescription. The irony. “This is something,” John replies lamely, and then on a different tack when he realises it to be so, “I need to work.”
“What you need,” Sarah says, sliding the stethoscope off from around his neck and coiling it up, “is rest.”
“I’m not tired.” John’s amazed at his own straight-faced lie. He wonders if Sherlock would be impressed. Probably. Perhaps then John would be slightly more useful whenever they’re on a case and need to bluff their way through. Not that there’s much of that going on nowadays.
“Mm-hmm.” She doesn’t believe him, obviously. John is too wrecked to care. “Right, so now I’m speaking as your advisor who is very, very worried about the state of my colleague and is bound by labour laws to make you take some time off. Now.” The firmness in her voice cannot be argued with, but then her eyes soften when John drops his head and slumps back into the chair, defeated. “Listen, if you ever want to talk about Sherlock,” she starts slowly, holding the rest of it back, testing the waters for mines hidden beneath the surface.
No response. A negative.
She sighs, consulting the Casio on her wrist. “At least promise me you’ll take the rest of the day off, John. Speaking of which, there isn’t much of the day left anyway, so that’s not asking much.”
It isn’t.
“All right,” John concedes after a minute of thought. He’ll let her have this one, just for now.
“Need a lift?”
“That’s very kind, but it’s fine. I’ll…catch a taxi or something,” John says. Forces a smile. It seems that Sarah doesn’t buy it either, but if so she conceals it quickly by nodding lightly.
“Tell me when you’re going. I’ll lock up.”
He doesn’t leave immediately. After Sarah has returned to her office, John shrugs off his lab coat and hangs it up on the wall. His desk is cluttered with stationery and diagnoses botched by fatigue-ridden penmanship, so he starts clearing up the best he can. Pencils and pads are swept untidily into his desk drawer. He bins what cannot be salvaged and starts to think about how he’s going to get back to Baker Street later. Despite what he’s told Sarah, he knows he’s not going to able to afford a taxi on the few pounds he has moping around in his wallet. Even taking the tube would be a stretch. Maybe he’ll just take the two hour walk and spare himself the additional expenses.
His trousers pocket chimes. John fishes his phone out and checks it – a very worried text from Mrs. Hudson, a missed call from Harry and two messages from the same unrecognised number. Mycroft. He deletes the two without even opening them, blocks the number like the rest of them and responds to Mrs. Hudson’s with the assurance that he’d be back soon. John decides to ring Harry back later; he’s not in the mood to speak with her just yet. Knowing her, it’s entirely possible that she’s almost inebriated herself into a coma by now anyway. When he’s finally done with everything, John plonks both elbows on his desk and scrubs his hands through his hair. He can still smell disinfectant and rubbing alcohol on his hands. It does nothing to ease the tiredness, and he closes his eyes, breathing in deeply.
Click.
Eyes fly open. A shiver. The radio in his office starts to play a soft song, drifting delicate notes about the room. An evening station hosted by a man who sounds a bit like Stephen Fry sucking helium is on.
I close both locks below the window
I close both blinds and turn away
“You haven’t told her yet, have you?” a voice croons from John’s right.
John holds still, halting his breathing. It turns cold – the kind of cold you find in winter, the kind you know is there even when you can’t feel it through layers of clothing and insulation. Between the song and the cold and the clock ticking the seconds away there’s only his heart thrashing in his chest, a pulse pounding blood in his head. It’s all he can do, not to turn to look, but he already knows what he’ll find. Something terrible will happen if he looks, it always does. It’s happening again. It’s never happened here, and he’s scared.
Well, there’s a first time for everything.
Sometimes solutions aren’t so simple
Sometimes goodbye’s the only way
“But then again,” the voice adds silkily, “you haven’t told anyone, so I suppose it’s not that surprising. Not Mrs. Hudson, not Ella, no one. That isn’t medically advisable, is it? Keeping symptoms hidden and not consulting a doctor at the first signs of a condition. Not unlike yourself, of course.”
It’s like faulting back into existence again – John restarts, taking a sharp, hissing breath through his teeth and he slowly moves his hands to his lap, crumpling them on top of each other. He stares at them resolutely, finding a focal point to concentrate on to collect himself. His stomach has turned to ice. Fists clench, unclench to no effect. Then, he shifts his gaze fearfully to the right, inch by painful inch.
Sherlock. Sitting on his examination table in his suit and coat, his navy cashmere scarf knotted loosely around his creamy neck. He’s leaning forward and dangling his legs off the edge of the table like a child, his gloved hands pressed into the furniture and fingers tapping to the rhythm of the music. Bored eyes scan the room, taking in every detail, stripping down the architecture to its basics molecule by molecule, the histories plastered across the walls in bits and pieces. Nothing escapes Sherlock at all. It’s just like him, really. He smiles, cheekbones dancing gaily in the fluorescent light. “I’ve never actually been to your workplace,” Sherlock muses thoughtfully. “I thought it’d be a lot larger than this.”
John just stares. He licks his lips and swallows the bitter mass that has coalesced in his throat. “What are you doing here?” he asks quietly.
This earns John a questioning look and a pout. “I just…wanted to see you again, John,” Sherlock replies simply. “I missed you, and you miss me, don’t you? I thought you’d be pleased.”
“You…you’re…” John almost cannot bring himself to say it. He wonders if Sarah can hear him talking from outside. “You’re dead, Sherlock,” he whispers, so quietly that he almost cannot hear himself speaking.
“Being dead,” Sherlock murmurs from over his shoulder, suddenly behind John, “is unbearably dull. This is much more fun, wouldn’t you say?”
And the sun will set for you
The sun will set for you
“I like how it’s just us, you know,” Sherlock continues, placing his hands gently on John’s shoulders. “You’re amazing, you know that? I can’t imagine anything nicer than this; this is fine and good, so good, and you’re wonderful, John. We can work this out and be wonderful together, like we used to. Look at that – I can touch you now, and you can feel me. Curiouser and curiouser, this. Just how I love it, wouldn’t you say?”
John is shaking so much his hands have gone numb and it’s a struggle to keep his eyes wide open. Eventually, he loses the fight and capitulates, biting down on his bottom lip and screwing his face up in despair. “This isn’t happening, this isn’t real, you’re not real,” he whispers desperately. “You’re not real, you’re not…real.”
“Well, only just as real as you want me to be, if you’re splitting hairs about it,” Sherlock says, smoothening John’s sleeves downwards. “Let’s just settle on half-real and skip the part where you fruitlessly continue to deny that I exist. Maybe we’ll find out what’s really going on faster that way, and how to make this more…permanent, if it’s possible.” He rumples John’s hair affectionately. “A doctor’s hallucination of the world’s late consulting detective might just be the next best thing since sliced bread, or any type of bread, for that matter.”
John whimpers, clamping a hand over his mouth. It’s astounding how Sherlock he’s managed to make him sound and behave down to every last mannerism and word. It’s beautiful and terrible all at the same time, this invention of his. Killer bees. Frankenstein’s monster. Oppenheimer invoking Evita: I am become death. Any moment now there’s going to be a deconstruction of one or two or every patient he’s had in the last ten hours of uninterrupted work – how a little over a third of them weren’t entirely truthful about protection and sexual activity and choice of partners judging by the state of their socks and hairstyle, the dishonesty of the political science student seeking out an easy way to a codeine high, the secretary who obviously nicked the watch out of her employer’s drawer and suffered copper allergy as a result; how can he stand being there, listening to stunning naiveties being passed all day, just how can he, it’s infuriating to watch…
“People aren’t very good at making up lies, John,” Sherlock muses. “Maybe that’s a post in the making for my website, though I can’t imagine you’d approve.”
And there it is, just kinder than usual. Not what John was expecting, but he’s far from heaving a relieved sigh.
“Catch you later at home?” Sherlock breathes in his ear. “We can talk then, alright? Don’t take too long. I’ll be waiting up.”
And the shadow of the day
Will embrace the world in grey
The room changes. All of a sudden it’s not so cold and gravity rights itself, winding down in magnitude and everything lightens. John can move his fingers again and it’s finally easy to breathe. He’s alone once more, but the feeling of Sherlock’s musician fingers on his shoulder lingers strongly like an astringent, and even as John tries his utmost best, it’s futile pretending that he cannot sense it there. He moves a hand over his collarbone, gripping it tightly through the fabric of his shirt, and looks up into the bleached flare of the lighting overhead through the glimmer of tears. It’s too bright, hurting his eyes. Outside, the sky must surely be shades of deepest brass already but still starless, and the streetlamps of London call to its nocturnal inhabitants to emerge, the whistling madmen of the night.
John remembers the time when they once walked among them, and this is all it takes for him to start to cry.
And the sun will set for you
Part 1 of The Persistence of Memory series.