The next few days flew by John in a blur. After his rest on Monday he had gone for a walk, to the shops and to dinner. That evening was spent arguing with Sherlock about some experiment in the fridge which smelled vaguely of dead animal, and for all he knew it could be. A chicken pox outbreak kept him busy on Tuesday, and Wednesday Sherlock had called him into a case.
The case was, according to the detective “remedial at best” but if it meant a day or two without rotten animals in his fridge John was more than happy to participate. A jewel thief, working only in small shops around the city was managing to get in and out of the shops’ electronic safes without a record of the doors ever being opened or closed. It took Sherlock one day with two of those boxes to prove that the thief was working with an engineer turned safe technician to install false panels which were invisible but easily removed. According to Sherlock the bottom panel popped off with ease and then was closed with a strong metal epoxy of some kind. The arrests were made on Friday at 3 AM. John fell into bed at quarter to four, thoughts of sexual picture messages and piercing eyes long forgotten.
oOo
13, September
When John returned to Baker Street after his shift on Friday he found the flat empty. Sherlock had left a note on the table that read “
OUT. CHECK THE BLOG, YOU HAVE A MESSAGE”. After making his usual evening tea he settled at the fire and grabbed his laptop, quickly finding the message in question.
‘HELLO JOHN, IT’S CARL SANDRIDGE. I’M IN TOWN FOR A COUPLE OF DAYS ON BUSINESS, CARE TO GRAB A PINT THIS EVENING?”
The message was time stamped at 7:06 PM and included a personal email. He responded quickly with an affirmative and, finishing his tea quickly, ran to his room. John wasn’t sure why he was so excited to see his old Army friend but he was eager to go out and lose some of the tension of the week. He threw on a striped jumper and a pair of jeans before he walked to the pub around the corner.
If there was one thing John always enjoyed about London it was that there was a pub just around every corner in the city. This was, of course a bit of hyperbole but it often felt that way. In the first days that he was home, when he was dealing with Harry constantly, he had found it very annoying that he had to search so many pubs to find her but now he was just happy that he wasn’t too far off from a pub if he needed to unwind after a “Sherlock moment”.
Inside the small pub, the Queen’s Hat, he saw Carl perched in a booth in a corner with a broad smile on his face. Carl Sandridge was a man whose character could be seen all over him. Tall and thickly built, dark hair and big dark eyes; he had deep laugh lines around his mouth and a grin that always spoke of hidden jokes. John hadn’t seen him since he came home but Carl greeted him as if they had seen each other yesterday.
“Watson!” he cried over the noise of the pub.
John made his way to the booth and sat with a plop, happy to be in the company of his old friend.
“Sandridge, great to see you old man how have you been?”
“Hey, none of that old man stuff,” the smiling face replied, “I’m younger than you!”
“Yes but it’s always funny to see you get uptight about it. But really, how have you been I haven’t seen you in ages?”
The other man heaved a sigh, his eyes searching for where to begin. It appeared that he was nervous, but john couldn’t possibly know why. He waited patiently, sipping the pint of lager sitting in front of him with a groan; it was bitter and cold, just the thing to ease his sore legs after a long day.
“I’ve been really great,” Carl finally started, “I’m in town for 3 days on business before I go back to the village. Nothing fancy, just some low level management for a technologies firm up north. Just got done moving into a new flat and I’m so glad for the break. How about you? I see you’ve been busy since you came home. Not gone more than a month and I hear you’ve started up with the most famous detective in London. You always did know how to pick them, Johnny.”
“Yes well,” he replied, “I just sort-of fell into it really. I needed a flat mate and so did he; no one was willing to live with him: he can be rather difficult. Within 24 hours of meeting him he decided to take me on as an assistant and it’s been a ride ever since.”
Carl laughed. “Yes, I can imagine it would be a rather interesting life, catching dangerous criminals and jumping off roofs.”
“Thankfully that doesn’t happen very often,” John said with a shudder, “the jumping part.”
There were a few moments of awkward silence as Carl chose a new path in the conversation. In the end he started back up on the London weather, which was cold in the morning but hot in the day. Weather moved on to sport and sport lead to several heated stories about school footie league. Before John knew it he had enjoyed 4 large beers and innumerable bursts of laughter with his old friend. Feeling dizzy from the drink John dove into how difficult it was to find a date after he had returned home. It wasn’t that he was unhappy about it, he said, but between his medical duties and recovering from his injuries the first few months home had been hell.
“Really,” John slurred over his fifth pint, “it was more difficult than I thought it would be; finding someone, I mean. Being away from home for months, when you get back on the Queen’s soil all you want to do is shag and have someone hold you while you sleep.”
He heard Carl laugh, a big and boisterous sound. In that sound there was a kindred recognition; Sandridge knew what John felt, he was sure of it. The loneliness and confusion of returning home alone was never something a man should have to go through. Luckily for Carl he had a wife to come home to but John had no one. The doctor wondered if it might be time to find a wife, or someone who could maybe be a wife one day.
There was a pleasant buzzing sensation in the doctor’s brain as he began to wonder at how many women he had really given a go at since he got home. He thought he might have lost count; he would have to ask Sherlock when he returned to Baker Street. The detective, no doubt, would have kept a detailed record of every date and sexual encounter John had had since the day he moved in. The idea of Sherlock keeping such data locked in that head of his made John chuckle.
At the thought of Sherlock something inside John began to warm again, it must have been the alcohol doing that to him, surely. But something about the idea of going home to find Sherlock in his usual chair, reading some scientific journal about the rate of decay in human skin cells immersed in gelatin made him so happy he might burst. ‘
What is going on with me?’ the doctor wondered, thinking he must stop drinking at once, lest he go home and allow himself to give into the cuddly feelings. The idea of wrapping himself around the long limbs of Sherlock Holmes caused a shiver to run down his spine; to run his fingers through that unruly hair and whisper secrets into the dark and
‘WOAH, WHAT?! Stop that right now’. His internal scolding forced his attention back to Carl, who was sitting patiently and smiling at him.
“Welcome back, John.” The younger man beamed at him, “You were thinking about him weren’t you?”
“What, no I – who?” John sputtered, having lost most of his cognitive function to drink.
“Don’t worry, it’s alright, you looked so happy I couldn’t be mad. It must be nice to have found someone so soon after you came home. Really, I don’t know what I would have done if I’d met Collin so early after I got back to the village..."
The silence that hung in the air after that remark was deafening. John struggled wildly to determine what his friend was saying. When they were in service together Carl had been married, to a lovely blonde named Olivia. Of course, there was the chance that he meant he had found a similar best friend and personal challenge after he got home but John doubted it.
“Collin.” The doctor coughed, “And Olivia, how is she?”
“Oh she’s fine I suppose, she took the separation very well really. She was a saint through most of it, but I think my being gone so long before it made the end less...jarring.”
“Just to be clear are you saying you are gay, you left your wife and just moved into a flat with a man named Collin?” John was aware he sounded like a prat but what else could he do? He needed clarification and Sherlock always said there is a 43% better chance you will get a coherent answer if you ask directly. Now it was Carl’s turn to laugh.
“Yes, John that’s what I’m saying. I only figured it out while we were over…well, when we were gone. I spent those nights lying awake, thinking that I should be missing my wife but I didn’t miss her. I missed my parents, my dog, my garden but not Olivia, not in the way a man should miss his wife. Oh, sure I missed her company, and her tea trays and the way she used to sing in the bath. But I never thought of her unintentionally, do you know what I’m saying? A man’s wife should be at the forefront of his mind when he is away at war and Olivia just wasn’t there. That’s a strange thing, I must say. To realize you married someone that you don’t love enough to miss when you’re gone so long. After a while I realized I had married her because it was the next step for a man my age, not because I loved her. I tried to think of the last woman I had really loved, but I kept coming up short. The only person I can ever remember truly loving was my best mate at uni and it just clicked for me then. I’m gay.”
John’s mouth flopped like a fish, he couldn’t make words come, and he certainly didn’t know how to respond.
“But you know,” Carl continued, “sometimes it doesn’t always come easy. You never had anyone when we were stitching boys up in the desert but you found Sherlock right away when you came home. Sometimes it avoids you for a while, you know, who you are. Until it lands right on your head like a brick.”
“What-wait. No, no I’m sorry what? Carl, I’m not gay.” John sputtered, taking a large swig of lager and spilling down his front.
“And that’s fine too john,” he sighed, “there are plenty of men out there who are straight until they meet a man who makes them come alive. You know, Collin says his best mate Michael…”
“No, Carl I mean it. I’m not with Sherlock in any way.! I’ve been dating women since I got home, well trying anyway. There have been a few good relationships, I thought they were going somewhere but it never seemed to work out.”
Carl looked stunned, his ears turned a bright shade of vermillion and he began to look wildly around the bar. He tried, and failed not to make eye contact with John for several minutes before uttering a sheepish “I’m sorry, I just thought…”
“No, it’s ok. We get that a lot. Two best mates, spending all their time together and living in the same flat, I’m surprised we don’t get accused more often. Hell, one time we held hands during a dramatic chase through London proper. We’re the stuff that love stories are made of, I’m sure.” The doctor sighed, before finishing his pint.
Taking a look at his watch John sputtered when he realized the time. Quarter past, the pub would be closing down soon enough. He decided it would be a good time to end the night and rose on shaky legs. Extending a hand to his old friend he smiled and said “thank you for an excellent evening, Lieutenant Sandridge. And good luck to you and Collin; I mean that! I wish you every happiness.”
John had hoped he sounded genuine, he worried that his outburst about his sexuality may have, in some way made Carl uncomfortable about his own choices and he didn’t want that at all. He had meant what he said to Sherlock all that time ago, to him it was all good as long as people were happy.
Carl rose to his feet after John and began to follow him out of the pub, paying no attention to the other pub patrons on their way to the street. A crowd had begun to form at the entrance to the pub, John and Carl pushed their way through with all the confident (if drunken) force their military training had afforded them. John wondered what was causing all the fuss, so many people crowded around a pub door on a Friday night must have meant a celebrity was in their midst, but what celebrity would be paying a visit to this part of town he could not say.
As the two men pushed their way through the door John saw a flock of people surrounding someone a few meters away, squeals of “you’re so brilliant”, “can we take a picture”, “sign my hat!” coming from the throng.
“I wonder who that could be.” Carl said, standing on his toes to get a look at who was in the middle of the crowd of fans. “Must be a big deal.”
“Yes,” John agreed, "but what are they doing up here?”
Just then the crowd parted and a long white hand pushed its way out of the teeming grasp of screaming fans. His hair was even more disheveled than usual and his coat collar was pulled down on one side but John knew him in an instant. Sherlock Holmes was being tackled by devotees who didn’t seem to want to let him go. Spotting John, Sherlock ran toward the two men with a huge grin plastered on his angular face.
“John, where have you been, I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” the detective cried before enveloping his flat-mate in a bone crushing hug. “I have the most wonderful news!”
John Watson stood stunned as his friend pulled back, leaving long white hands to rest on his upper arms in a vice-like grip. He had never seen this before, he was sure, and had assumed that he may never see such a thing: Sherlock Holmes was well, and truly drunk.
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A/N: I am going to try for one to two chapters a week for the next few weeks until the story is finished. Between work and life that might not always be possible but I'm doing my best to schedule writing time in every day! Thank you for reading! As always, comments and feedback are greatly appreciated! .
