ihavebeensherlocked:

A follow up to this art/ficlet. I’m sorry. Also a lot longer than I’d intended. Wish I could do readmores with Photos :|

After the funeral, John shares a taxi back to Baker Street with a sniffling Mrs. Hudson, but still insists he can’t go up to the flat, despite her tearful pleas and promises of biscuits.

The first three weeks after are the worst for him. He gets calls every day, not always the same people, but a regular enough rotation that he quickly works out a pattern.

Lestrade phones every Friday evening to ask him out for a pint. John accepted on the second invitation, but after a night of awkward, stilted conversation Lestrade does not invite him again. He still calls John and tells him mostly about the mountain of paperwork Anderson and Donovan are having to work through, and John doesn’t hang up, but he doesn’t really listen either.

Harry calls every Tuesday and Saturday night. He answers on Tuesdays and lets her talk to him about Clara, but he never picks up on Saturday nights.

Mycroft calls once, from a phone in a coffee house he was sitting in. John tells the server no, he does not want to accept the call, and sits and looks at the black car outside for nearly two hours before it drives away.

He calls Mrs. Hudson every Sunday afternoon. He worries about her, and feels guilty that he hasn’t helped her with the flat. She hasn’t asked again if he’ll come back, doesn’t mention 221b at all, actually, which he’s grateful for. They make idle chit-chat about nothing in particular, but it’s the most comfortable thing John’s found since….since.

——

A month Since, he gets a call on a Wednesday afternoon while he’s at the surgery. He feels the phone buzz in his pocket as he’s inspecting a young girl with what he’s now sure is an ear infection (poor mother doesn’t look like she’s slept properly in days) and lets it ring out (because it’s not him calling him and there’s no one else he would have put work aside for).

Once he’s written a prescription for the girl and sent her and the tired mother away with a sympathetic look, he digs his phone back and feels a brief stab of guilt when he sees it was Mrs. Hudson who had try to call. He dials her back then, at this point worried that she’s calling when she knows he’s at work. 

She’s started packing more of Sherlock’s things, she tells him, and he tightens his grip on the phone and he’s sure he knows that she’ll ask him to help again. And he knows he should, there are too many dangerous objects, a hundred different things in the kitchen alone for an old woman to handle by herself. He begins to mentally resolve himself to going back to at least help clean out the body parts.

His breath catches when instead she tells him she needs help with Sherlock’s wardrobe. She knows John had stopped by the flat before the funeral to pack up his own clothing and essentials, so she’s confused to have found so many of what she had thought were John’s jumpers mixed in with Sherlock’s clothing and would he be a dear and help sort it out? Only she doesn’t want to risk donating one of John’s jumpers by mistake.

He finds his breath again and manages to murmur something about being over soon. He makes his excuses to Sarah who still only looks at him sadly and leaves the surgery early for the day. His taxi ride to Baker Street is spent in a daze, and his hand is trembling where it rests on his knee. He feels a twinge there, in his knee, and begins to worry that his limp actually is returning.

—-

Mrs. Hudson greets him outside of Speedy’s and ushers him up the stairs and she’s saying something to him, but his head is buzzing and he’s trying not to look anywhere except his feet and it hurts to be here, to feel this raw again and he’s not ready for this after all.

But she’s steering him through the kitchen now, back to Sherlock’s room. He stops in the doorway and tries to reassure her that he’ll be fine by himself and her face scrunches up for a bare second and then falls slack again when she sees the pain on John’s face. She leaves him.

John stands there a moment, taking in Sherlock’s room again. The green damask wallpaper. The posters on the wall that he quietly laughed at the first time he saw them (he teased Sherlock for thinking Poe was a heart throb for far longer than he would have though Sherlock could tolerate). 

He breathes in the air that is Sherlock, breathes in what is left of him here and walks over to sit on the edge of the bed before his legs can give up on him. The closet door is open and John can tell where Mrs. Hudson has disturbed the clothing and sure enough, John can see the sleeve of at least one of his jumpers. He’ll go over and sort through clothes soon, but he still needs a moment.

As he sits there, his hands have begun to smooth out the sheets on the bed, and he encounters a lump under the bedding that won’t be pressed down. He pulls back the sheets and sees the familiar purple of Sherlock’s favorite shirt, wadded up and now hopelessly wrinkled.

His hands are shaking more than ever as he brings the shirt close to him, rubbing the familiar fabric between his fingers. A choked sound escapes his throat as he raises the shirt to his face and he buries his nose in it, and he thinks Yes Yes Yes because it’s Sherlock’s scent, so perfectly there, so strong and he forgets for a moment that he’s sitting by himself and Sherlock is not spread out on the bed behind him, his feet resting against John’s back as he recites the properties of one thing or other.

———-

Mrs. Hudson thanks him later for packing up all of Sherlock’s clothing for her, and for taking it with him in one large box. She assumes he’s donating it. He smiles at her reassuringly and says little because he’s still trying not to start shaking again. The box is clutched in both of his hands, well sealed with lots of packing tape and John will not let go of it, even in the cab back to Sarah’s flat.

Later, John transfers the clothing from the moving box that smells too strongly of cardboard and will mold easily with the slightest bit of damp, and into a new plastic bin that slides easily under his bed. For weeks John Watson has the pleasure of being able to open the lid of that box and inhaling the familiar smell of Sherlock Holmes. On the bad days, or when he wakes from a particularly violent nightmare, he carefully selects a shirt from the box and sleeps with it pressed to his face.

But despite his careful rationing and efforts to open the box of clothing as little as possible, the smell of Sherlock slowly fades to nothing.

(Source: areyoutryingtodeduceme, via usernamereclaimed)

godtiss:

He manages to convince himself that it’s the right thing to do. 

Three years to the day since the death of London’s greatest mind, since the death of the world’s only consulting detective, since the death of the great Sherlock Holmes.

Three years to the day since the death of John Watson’s best friend, and the pain of it has not been dulled by a single passing moment. He is tired. So, so tired.

He looks out over the rooftops, out over London. Below him, the world moves on, takes no notice of the small figure standing on the ledge of Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital.

Three years, to the day. It’s oddly poetic, if he were inclined to such sentiments. He tells himself that he’s doing what’s best – he hasn’t been the same since Sherlock died, hasn’t laughed and hardly ever smiles. Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson tried, at first. He’d invite John out for a pint, she’d bring him tea in the mornings.

Nothing helped. Eventually they got the message.

John moved out of Baker Street two months later. Found himself a small flat he was able to afford on his army pension and whatever money he managed to make at the surgery, on the days he decided to show up.

Sarah was understanding. She put up with him longer than he could have asked for.

Now he’s jobless. Nearly homeless. Living off of tea and crap telly to numb his mind. No one to miss him because he’s pushed everyone away and the only person who really mattered, John buried three years before.

He tells himself it’s the right thing to do. Sherlock wouldn’t have wanted him to, but Sherlock’s not there to tell him so. That’s the problem.

On the street below, no one takes notice of the man on the roof who spreads his arms wide, feeling the breeze telling of distant rain whisper against his exposed skin. He looks down – it doesn’t seem so far, I wonder if this is what he felt like, maybe I can ask him soon – takes a deep breath.

John Watson closes his eyes. Leans forward. Feels himself begin to fall-

-is violently snatched from behind, strong arms curling around his chest, yanking him back.

His savior doesn’t let go when they tumble backwards, landing hard on the building below them. John breathes deeply, evenly through his nose, does not open his eyes. The feel of those arms around his chest is oddly comforting, the scratch of wool on his cheek distracting, the scent of tea and unidentifiable chemicals familiar…

John opens his eyes, sees nothing but the sky thinly veiled by clouds. The arms around him remove themselves. His savior shifts.

Suddenly the sky is replaced by two pale eyes, half-lidded and grieving.

“You were going to jump after me,” Sherlock says. It’s the first time John can remember hearing the great detective say something so obvious.

(Source: oooyooo, via amenaza)

wingedbandit:

violonpleurant:

loveallthesherlocks:

shakespearwasaflirt:

wingedbandit:

I have no words that describe how thrilled I was when he put the deerstalker on.

I squealed out loud.

 It gives my url so much more meaning.

I screamed when I saw this.

It reminded me of a part of this fanfic that I read a LONG time ago:

Title: Three Ways Sherlock Conformed to His Stereotype

Author: starjenni

…

“Merry Christmas,” said John, and held out the offending article.

Sherlock eyed it warily. “What is it?”

John shifted. “It’s a hat.”

Urge to roll eyes, quashed. “Yes. I can see that.”

“It’s called a deerstalker.”

Sherlock held it up. The tweed side flaps flopped around unenthusiastically. “I see,” he said.

John scratched his head. “I don’t know what I…I saw it in a shop and for some reason I thought. I don’t know, it was like it already belonged to you.”

Sherlock looked over at John. He hated Christmas, just like he hated everything to do with the ordinary, and he thanked God that John hadn’t wormed his birthday date out of him yet, but John seemed to find it important.

He sighed, and wondered why he bothered (he shouldn’t care about John’s feelings, why did he care?), and put the hat on.

John’s expression changed. “That’s odd,” he said.

“That would be the ear flaps,” Sherlock said.

John shook his head. “No, no…I mean. It…kind of suits you.”

Sherlock raised his eyebrows. He felt like a total idiot, but he wasn’t going to tell John that. He shifted around to the mirror and inspected himself.

“Oh,” he said, finally, and not mockingly. John joined him, the two of them staring into the mirror together.

“You see what I mean?” he said.

Sherlock nodded, slowly. It looked stupid, old-fashioned and peculiar, and it didn’t match with his usual neat, trimmed suit, but…there was no denying that it gave him a certain…something. Maybe it matched the look in his eyes or something. But it wasn’t bad exactly.

It made him look like…him.

“Thank you for the hat,” he said, and realised he meant it, which was most probably the biggest shock of the day.

He wondered what Lestrade would say if he turned up at a crime scene wearing it.

…

Author’s Fanfic Page

(via fuckyeahcumberbatch)

reapersun:

inspired by the fill for this prompt on the kink meme (S/J but not explicit)

short but sweet ;_;

the kink meme can be pretty scary but once in awhile there are really nice little things that come out of unexpected prompts