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Until His Wine Becomes Your Water
Characters: Sherlock(/John)
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: c/a 4 600
Warnings: Angst. I'm serious. There's a fair bit of hurt/comfort and pining, but mostly it's heartbreak.
Author's Notes: I wanted to write something with tragic undertones and genuine authenticity. I love writing/reading fanfic, but I thought the potential for unrequited love/complicated feelings/not-happily-ever-after for the boys would be much higher in real life than in fanfic. I have to say this wasn't easy to write. But I hope it's a good read.

Sherlock makes sure to get back hours after John has already left. He walks into the flat and heads directly to the kitchen, checks on the samples, puts the kettle on. Like a somnambulist, he has no awareness of his surroundings or of himself.

He stands by the counter, waiting for the water to boil. His mind is numb. He fills it with plans of what to do next. If he could make a path of metaphorical stepping stones, stretching ahead to eternity and predetermining every step, he would. He would be feverish with obedience to follow it, to never have to look aside again. Or think.

Sherlock considers whether another path has unrolled behind him as he’s walked to this moment. Naturally, though of course it would be finite—it would have a beginning.

John’s face, when he walks in into their front room for the first time. Sherlock knows he’s got himself a flatmate there and then. Such a soft expression on such a hardened face—it flummoxes Sherlock. It pleases him, too. And it pleases him to see this stranger pleased, which flummoxes him even more. Just like the next urge does at John’s inadvertent prompt about the mess. Sherlock rushing around to tidy up a bit. Eager. To show he can compromise, to show he can be a good flatmate.

John, dropping down in his armchair—just the shabby armchair at the time—with a sigh of relief and some small contentment, like a dog that’s found a comfortable bassinet. John Watson. Hair still military short, face still haggard. Rubbing his leg—

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God, of course! John’s leg used to hurt when they first met, the psychosomatic limp…Sherlock’s throat pinches so hard he feels it in his eyes. It makes him take the deepest breath he can.

The kettle’s quiet; the water must have boiled. He touches the metal and finds it hot. The cupboard creaks open and Sherlock picks a random cup. He darts a glance at the shelves and is very relieved they don’t look any different. Sherlock peers cautiously into the sitting room. It, too, looks normal. There are only a few items missing, but they’ve been missing for three days now. John kept just an overnight bag for his last few nights at Baker Street. The three boxes and the suitcase left in Mary’s car.

John is unpacking. Sherlock’s already deduced most of John’s life and half of his personality. The fact that there are only two medium-sized boxes and one suitcase is encouraging. It makes Sherlock trust John nearly as much as John’s part in the cabbie affair. There’s something reassuring about a man who has a gun and few possessions. He won’t weave into your life like weeds.

No, he’ll weave like vines instead. And will produce, year by year, quietly fragrant bunches of grapes, richer and sharper in taste until…

And he will keep himself to himself. John will be useful to have around: one of his boxes is full of medical books and journals. He is also a staggeringly good shot: steady, with excellent aim. Judging by his belongings John also seems to know what’s worth keeping, just like he knows when it’s worth shooting.

Sherlock doesn’t have a very wide frame of reference, but his life style doesn’t exactly attract crowds of potential flatmates. Here, in John’s surprising poise—how does this man manage to look both relaxed and on guard at the same time?—in his four shirts and his “I hardly need any space in the bathroom cupboard but if you could re-organize the chemical laboratory, I’d appreciate it”, there’s hope.

Sherlock carries his tea to the sitting room, leaving it on the table to quickly press the ON button of the TV remote with one hand, while he opens his laptop with the other. The space fills with noises of electronic equipment and two-dimensional voices. Sherlock checks his emails and replies to them, in much greater detail than he usually would. An invisible clock in his head assigns ticks to every few presses of keys and matches them with the passing seconds. Two sentences, a minute. Short email, five minutes. Longish email, fifteen minutes. Too bad there’s only one of those to write. At this rate he might find himself replying to Mycroft’s messages. Perish the thought.

Maybe if he was on those network websites…Or if he simply had friends. Other friends.

Sherlock can hear John talking to Mrs Hudson downstairs, then taking the stairs two at a time. He walks in and addresses Sherlock’s busy back.

„Mrs Hudson said you paid the rent for a year in advance.”

„Mhm.”

John lifts his arms and drops them in resignation. Sherlock doesn’t need to turn to picture him doing it.

„Well, it’s all right for you to do that, but I can’t afford it. You should have asked me first.”

Sherlock frowns and turns.

„What are you talking about?”

John is standing right in the middle of the sunny spot in their sitting room, grey hairs unanimously hidden in golden light.

„I am talking about our rent. That you have paid for a whole year in advance. You know, for this place, here.”

„Yes?”

„Where am I supposed to find…I don’t even know how much that is…It must be over 7 000 pounds, Sherlock! I don’t have that kind of money!”

„Yes, you do. Our fee, John. 25 000 pounds, remember?”

John’s stumped. Sorting out the rent was rational and convenient and when Sherlock thought vaguely about John’s reaction, it was with some warm gladness. Now John’s upset and Sherlock seems to have done something wrong again.

„You used the money from Sebastian to pay the rent.”

„Yes. Problem?”

„Yeah. I can’t pay you back.”

Ah.

„You don’t have to pay me back.”

„Of course I do.”

„No, you don’t—”

„I should be able to take a loan—”

They are talking on top of each other but Sherlock raises his voice and as usual drowns John’s.

„You don’t have to take a loan. This is your money, too. We live together, we go on cases together, we get paid together, don’t you see?”

Sherlock has started pacing about but now stops and looks at John, both aggravated and pleading.

„You said you were worried about money. Doesn’t that help?”

John looks genuinely affronted.

„Is this charity?”

Sherlock groans and buries his hands in his hair.

„No, it’s not charity! It’s nothing, it’s just money.”

Sherlock’s struck by a thought. He swallows.

„You said you were my colleague. This is your money—as my colleague.”

John huff is self-disparaging.

„I’m not your colleague. How can I match even half—”

„Then why did you tell Sebastian that you were?”

John meets Sherlock’s eyes although it’s painfully obvious he doesn’t want to.

„I don’t know. Because I’m an idiot.”

Sherlock doesn’t say anything. John rubs his forehead.

„I am. Not as big as he is though.” John pauses. „I saw him there and I—I don’t know what I was thinking. No, actually I do know and it was so wrong.”

John bows his head for a moment, but then squares up.

„I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—I am your friend. And your flatmate. And God help me something like a colleague, yeah.”

The left corner of Sherlock’s mouth slowly lifts. John goes on.

„But this is your fee—”

„Oh God!”

The Internet is slow again. John insisted on paying all the bills that year in exchange for the rent—by the end Sherlock would have agreed to anything just to finish the argument. John found a cheap Internet deal and neither of them bothered to change to a better provider when the contract ended. Sherlock doesn’t think that now he would ever change this provider. It occurs to him that John’s name will still be on the bill.

He feels his stomach cramping. It’s not the lack of food, although that will be a problem at some point. A major one—the prospect of putting food in his mouth has seemed revolting for days. Sherlock tries to derail his thoughts from that track—it’s not helping the cramping, which he has meanwhile identified as nausea. He really hopes he won’t be sick. He hates vomiting. It was one of the worst side effects of his use and the withdrawal.

It seems the derailment plan isn’t working. Sherlock remembers being sick once at a crime scene. It was the combination of a stomach bug he’d ignored too long and the vilest spillage of rotting human organs he’d ever encountered. He’d retched and retched, his gag reflex just as atrocious as ever. Tears had filled his eyes. In the fog he’d heard an officer or two snicker. Eventually someone had bundled him into a cab and sent him home—Sherlock remembers trying hard not to be sick in the cab, and from a point onwards not to black out, either. A twenty-minute journey had seemed like an eternity.

He had collapsed on the floor in his bathroom, drenched in cold sweat. He lived by himself.

John rushes out at 11:15pm to go to the nearest Tesco Express and buy Sherlock an antiemetic. Sherlock is not weak enough to avoid being bewildered. It really hadn’t crossed his mind that John would be involved in this, but now it’s more than logical. Between the literally gut-wrenching episodes, Sherlock has registered subtle signs of something all over John; while he’s gone, Sherlock focuses all his limited energy on reading them. It keeps him out of the loo for more than twenty minutes and he has his answer: John is feeling guilty for not having the necessary medication at hand. For being, as John would put it, useless. Good thing Sherlock’s tried telling John that he wasn’t expecting him to do anything. He continues repeating it all night: when John comes back with the meds, when John manages to be quicker and stop Sherlock from locking the bathroom door under his nose and he holds Sherlock’s head over the loo, when John uses wet towels to cool Sherlock and wipe clean his face and his upper body, when Sherlock is falling asleep on the bathroom floor with his spine pressed along John’s thigh so neatly it’s as if Sherlock’s got a tiny John-magnetic microchip in each vertebrae. *I’m fine, John. You don’t have to…I’ll be fine.*

When he wakes up John is asleep, head lolled back and mouth open. His arms are folded across his chest. John’s leg must be killing him, but he hasn’t moved it. Sherlock’s back has assimilated the thigh and arranged for warmth to spread through Sherlock’s entire body. He is still on the bathroom floor but he is comfortable. He wonders if this is what not living by yourself means.

Sherlock stands abruptly and goes to the kitchen to make another cup of tea, this time possibly to take more than a ceremonial sip. All this thinking about vomiting isn’t doing wonders for his stomach. The thinking about John isn’t doing wonders for his general well being, but Sherlock is not sure he can stop. Is not sure he wants to.

When he returns to the sitting room he forces his attention back to the screen of his laptop. The Science of Deduction, other websites, blogs. Sherlock works for two hours straight. He goes through information with a fine comb, storing what might come in handy, scraping between the lines for the smallest mercies to occupy his brain. How long do you have to wait in front of your laptop before your head gets so heavy that you fall into oblivion as soon as you smell the sofa cushion? It’s happened before: too long is the answer. But there’s no other option.

No. There is one other option, hidden and for a long time forgotten. Far for anyone else to find, but so close within his own reach.

Sherlock considers it. He knows he won’t do it, but thinking that he could, provides him with the momentary illusion that he’s the only one who matters.

He won’t do it because of John. There is too much complicated discomfort in the thought of what he might think if Sherlock coked himself up to the eyeballs on the very day John moved out. There’d be ultimate humiliation—everyone finding out how truly dysfunctional Sherlock is, how truly central John is to his life. It would rival only the humiliation of that day when Mycroft got a confirmation of his importance—no. No. That’s the stuff of old nightmares and it looks like Sherlock’s in a new one.

Yet there’s something savage and sweet in the fantasy of John finding out. Sherlock imagines sprinkling the rest of the fine powder on the table and carefully arranging it into lines to spell out *This is what you’ve done to me.* He closes his eyes and for a moment yearns for the blissful mind-wipe. And for John’s worried face. Would Mycroft call John? Would John come back to Baker Street? He did on the night he was supposed to meet Mary’s family for the first time.

There is enough smoke to suffocate half the Marylebone area. Sherlock couldn’t have known that would happen, could he? Yes, all right, it did say not to attempt to cut the package, but the criminal wouldn’t have drawn that line if he didn’t invite Sherlock to cross it. If anything it’s John’s fault—Sherlock has always had very poor impulse control and with John out, there was no one to stop him. He can’t understand why everyone is so upset. No one has died and Lestrade has a big insight into the case. Every detail is useful!

Why John is so upset Sherlock can understand even less. John can always meet the family another time. There’ll be Christmas dinners and birthdays and all sorts of ghastly events to be spent together by the looks of it. What’s the big deal?

„Do you know what this is called? Do you? It’s called emotional blackmail, Sherlock! I can’t live my life in agony about what stupid thing you might do if I’m not around!”

„That’s a bit strong, John. I’ve managed perfectly fine before you, I assure you I’ll be fine if you—when you leave, too.”

„None of this is true and you know it.”

„Please. You’re being over-dramatic and rather presumptuous.”

John’s pale face. The ringing quiet amidst the sounds from the emergency services. John shaking his head in disappointment and perhaps pity, like that teacher in English Literature who used to explain to Sherlock over and over the characters’ motives behind their interactions. Sherlock resents that expression. He resented his teacher. He resented all the stupid characters, who did unreasonable things half the time, leaving him no way of finding a comprehensive, solid framework for their actions.

John’s levelled voice.

„You could have died. I could have come back to you dead. You just—“

Behind Sherlock’s eyelids John’s face smudges and starts running down like paint on a clown’s face. Sherlock snaps his eyes open. It’s darkening. He goes around and switches the lamps on. For a second everything seems so normal that Sherlock reels in absurd hope that it is. That the last several months have been a dream and John’s got a late shift and Sherlock is actually happy to have the flat to himself in the evening. Before John comes home.

It’s wrong. What a ridiculous feeling. John moved out today and is currently having dinner with Mary at their new place. Sherlock has the flat to himself for as long as he wishes. He sharply pushes away from the table and goes to open the window, breathes in the smog and the late spring. He waits for the sound of London to penetrate his skull and scramble his memories. Unfortunately the fantasy of John, distraught, hasn’t brought back just the fire memory. And the other one is more powerful than any megalopolis.

Sherlock knows something bad has happened as soon as he hears John’s steps up the stairs. Just how bad is plainly written all over John’s miserable face.

„What’s wrong?”

John moves directly to sit next to him on the sofa. Sherlock scoots over by instinct, but also to better look John in the face. He can see John’s throat working around the tightness and there’s a sentence aborted twice before the reply.

„It’s my best mate from the Army. Murray. Murray’s dead.”
Sherlock’s heard Murray’s name a few times but can’t recall any details. More likely because John hasn’t said much—he does keep himself to himself.

„I’m sorry,” Sherlock says.

John nods, eyes glazed and staring straight in front of him. He shakes his head.

„Went back there three months ago. He had problems with his wife. They had a kid with Down’s Syndrome, she died while Murray was in Kabul the first time. He didn’t have to go back. His medical records were enough to—He shouldn’t have gone back, he shou—”

John’s voice breaks and he buries his face in his hands. His shoulders twitch. Sherlock gazes at him and then slowly puts a hand on John’s shoulder. He feels the tremors; he squeezes. There’s a lot Sherlock could say but the last two years haven’t been completely lost on him. So he speaks for John.

„You were close.”

John doesn’t lift his face, so his voice is muffled.

„Yeah. We were. Turned out we grew up in Northumberland, both of us. His old man was the spitting image of my dad. Murray and I went to see him once, after Murray was shot and I had come back on leave. We went to the pub, the three of us, and won the pub quiz—”

Sherlock squeezes the trembling shoulder again.

John wipes his face and bares it in one motion. Sherlock is overcome with a frustration he hasn’t felt since they closed him at his mother’s for a month until he got clean. He doesn’t feel the same anger, though; he doesn’t know what he feels, but he wants it to go away and take this version of John with it.

John looks at him, grief washed all over his features.

„When I got invalided back, Murray was the only person I wanted to talk to. He understood, he just…knew.”

John’s eyes get unfocused. Sherlock keeps his hand steady. John smiles.

„We used to swap our vests in the army, t-shirts and other gear. Same size. We could have been brothers for all the world knew—”

The last word is replaced by a bitten sob and John’s face seeks his palms again.

Sherlock feels an unfamiliar constriction in his chest moving up to his throat. He clears it by repeating:

„I’m sorry.”

John nods again, then his right hand shoots up to his shoulder, grabs Sherlock’s, crushes it and finally stills over it.

„Morton—one of our Sergeants—he called and said they were meeting at the King’s Head at London Bridge tonight—”

„Of course! There’s a bit of a traffic now, but—”

John clutches at Sherlock’s hand and prevents him from moving.

„I was nearly there and then I thought I couldn’t—I didn’t want to go and have pints with them, I wanted to have a pint with Murray, I wanted to—I told him about you the last time we spoke and I was going to bring him over here, show him where I lived, get him to meet you…He was such a nice bloke, so nice—oh Sherlock…”

John’s tears are rolling freely down his face and Sherlock feels his own eyes burst with so much pain it is like they’re newly born, like they’re just opening to light and air. John becomes a blur, Sherlock blinks and John’s clear again.

He realizes his fingers have entwined with John’s when John brings both of their hands down to the sofa and butts his head into Sherlock’s chest. Sherlock’s free hand rushes to John’s back; he can feel fingers clinging to his waist. For an indefinite amount of time they stay like this, only John’s unsuccessful attempts to steady his breathing breaking the silence.

Then, as if someone’s cut out a portion of a film strip, Sherlock observes a different scene. They’ve moved closer. Their hands haven’t separated, but Sherlock’s hand has lifted to cup John’s neck while John’s arm has wrapped around Sherlock’s torso. Sherlock’s fingers are combing through the short strands of John’s hair. John has quieted and, although Sherlock can’t see his face, his whole body has softened somehow. So has his breathing—Sherlock can feel it caressing his skin through the shirt.

John sighs and lifts his head, and Sherlock is stunned how close he really is. He can see pairs of eyelashes stuck wetly together. All the imperfections on John’s skin. John’s upturned nose: streams of invisible warm air puffing gently out of it over Sherlock’s chin. The tiniest cut over John’s upper lip where the razor has pressed just a degree off its predictable path this morning. While he’s watching the gleaming dots of fresh stubble over the lip, Sherlock feels John’s hand skimming up until it stops at his neck. It pushes gently and Sherlock finds his own hand mirroring the action. The dots gleam brighter—

Sherlock suddenly feels unpleasant shivers run through his body. Time slows and then it’s as if he’s looking at himself and John and the room through the far side of a binocular. Everything seems small and very far away, surreal. Sherlock gets scared; he doesn’t know of what. His mind is swept in a wave of irrational fear that snowballs into terror. He can’t breathe and he’ll be gagging in a second. He disentangles himself roughly and gets to his feet. John looks dazed; he’s like a rag doll that’s been dropped in a hurry. He looks up at Sherlock, who barely manages to keep his eyes on him. John recoils and his own eyes close down like shutters.

„I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Sherlock just shakes his head vehemently, reluctant to scare John but desperate to get away.

„It’s fine, I—I need to get some air. You go to that pub, I’ll see you later.”

Sherlock doesn’t come back until midnight that night. He wonders if he should wait for John and—he still doesn’t know what he really wants but he knows he wants to wait for John—or if he should see him in the morning. He is utterly exhausted. At any other time that would be a thing to marvel at. Now it means he drops off on the sofa in an uneasy slumber. When he wakes up John’s already gone out. Sherlock doesn’t remember much of the day. When John comes back in the evening, he is odd. He is so odd and Sherlock isn’t very good with people even when they’re their usual selves so he stays out of John’s way. It takes them a week to return to some semblance of normality—mostly aided by the brutal double murder in Clapham South.

They never mention Murray again.

Sherlock closes the window. Darkness has permanently conquered the air. The evening is here and it has to be filled with more sounds and deductions and experiments, and doesn’t that thought fill Sherlock with cold panic.

It won’t work. Sooner or later, there’ll be just one moment when Sherlock will stop, one instance when he’ll let go of the tightly grasped wheel of his mind and violently veer off the road. Fall into the chasm. The journey so far has already been rather tricky.

He suddenly thinks he doesn’t want to fall here. He doesn’t want this half-empty, half-dead half-room. He doesn’t want to go to his room either. There’s nothing to look at there, nothing to remember. There’s a beautiful parallel with the chasm itself in the room he’s heading to now: it’s completely void. Yet if Sherlock is there when he plummets, he’ll have the shell of memory around him. There’s only one dimension wrong in that room: time. Everywhere else things are wrong in all kinds of ways, but there, there it is only time. If the clock could turn back 259 days in that room, the world would be just fine.

John’s eyes when Mary Morstan walks into their front room for the first time. Sherlock notices it even before John does. But then he gets completely absorbed in the case and besides, John tends to notice a pretty girl. Sherlock’s seen John’s eyes shine like that enough times. This won’t be any different.

Sherlock walks in and finally, here, it’s the way it ought to be. Now Sherlock wonders how it is possible that the whole flat isn’t covered with ugly, black crevices, floor to ceiling. All those spots where John sat, or where John propped his hand to seek balance while he tied his shoe, or where John’s soap was… Nowhere else but in this room is there any adherence to accuracy. It is cutting Sherlock in half, how thoroughly empty of John the room is. Sherlock sways and leans on the wall for support. There’s a short, anguished sound—he recognizes it as his own voice. Ice nips at his forehead; Sherlock feels his extremities follow and grow numb and cold. There’s now a steady high-pitched noise in his ears. Sherlock flogs his brain for a diagnosis and he gets it—all symptoms indicate his blood pressure is dropping and he might faint. He pushes himself off the wall and staggers to not-John’s-bed-anymore—and at that thought he’s grateful he’s got to it now because he can lie down and prop his feet awkwardly against the wall. His breathing continues to be weak and shallow and the world is still coming from afar. There’s a new symptom, or rather a new variable. Smell, that most stubborn of traces, has assaulted his nostrils. John’s smell, John’s. And now Sherlock’s vision is deteriorating: the foggy veil in front of his eyes turns into a blur as if he’s looking out a window on a stormy night…

From behind the curtain Sherlock is watching John dive into the cab. John’s wearing his best tie. He’s just told Sherlock he is going to propose tonight. Torrents of rain hurl belligerently at the window and distort the lights of the departing car, making them seem bigger and closer than they really are.

Sherlock feels the steady tightening of the first convulsions claiming his body. His eyes burn and he turns his face to bury it into the single uncovered pillow. He breathes in and everything twists grotesquely: his spinal cord, his insides, the whole world. Sherlock brings his body down into itself, while his heart expands bigger than his mind has ever been. He folds and folds around the pillow until he is curled in like a foetus and he falls.