Not THE Funeral, YOUR Funeral

Part 1

Author's Note: Obviously, the wonderful thing about written stories is that the reader gets to participate in the creation of the events described by the author. They get to imagine the details the author leaves out, filling in the faces of passers-by on the street, the weather in the park, the noise of the pub.

I can't tell you how to read this story: that's your choice. But I have a gentle suggestion. Try to read this in Sherlock's quick, largely objective monologue voice. If you're one of those people who can imagine Benedict Cumberbatch's delivery in your head as you read, do that. (Just with the first chapter. There will be actual dialogue between the pair of them in subsequent chapters.) That said, this is not meant to be Sherlock's narration, per se…more like Benedict Cumberbatch was objectively narrating the following events. Also? Just for fun, imagine that hyper-zoom and off-focus the show uses occasionally on John during some of the more detailed descriptions. As a personal favor to me. :)

Enjoy, and please review!

…

John was out for the first time in weeks. Not that he'd 'shut himself in', per se. He wasn't seeing anyone at the moment, and his few friends had all been relatively busy for the past month. To the untrained eye, he seemed fairly content with his life, coming home from work, fixing himself dinner, and reading or watching television until he went to bed. As if he just didn't feel the need to branch out from his recent routine of quiet evenings in.

The last time John had met up with anyone had been four Saturdays ago, when friends were in London with their daughter. John was obviously meeting the child for the first time, because he made a show of complimenting her parents. He then asked so many basic questions of them that anyone paying attention would have had to assume he hadn't seen them in quite some time, and had not kept up with the direction the couple's lives had been going. When they asked him questions, his answers were short.

The Tuesday before that he'd allowed a friend from the service to talk him into joining him for a drink at a garish Irish pub. He laughed at his friend's stories, and looked for all intents and purposes like a man enjoying a night out with an old acquaintance. After an hour or so a trio of musicians crammed themselves into the corner of the pub, onto what could only be described as the smallest stage known to mankind, and began to play. They were competent, but not especially gifted. When one traded his guitar for a violin and started to play, John's eyes flicked involuntarily to the instrument, down to his drink , to the musician again, then back to his friend. He went on smiling, and joking, and laughing, but his previous smile had changed, and no longer reached his eyes.

John occasionally took haphazard, scrawling notes in the margins of the paper when he read the day's news, especially if the story detailed a crime. Months ago one of his girlfriends caught him doing it while they ate brunch at an outdoor café table. She questioned him about it, and he was vague in his answer. She teased him consistently-but not maliciously-for the rest of the meal, hoping to get a more satisfying explanation out of him. He ended the relationship within the week.

He had only spoken to Molly Hooper twice since the funeral. She avoided his calls.

The smell of Sherlock's preferred brand of cigarettes no longer stopped him on the street, but if the smell was familiar when he passed a crowd of teenagers smoking on a street corner, he would still frown and shoot them a more disapproving look than he would have had they been smoking anything else.

Deerstalker hats invariably gave him pause, though they were few and far between in modern London.

While he had gotten quite good at doing it subtly, his eyes scanned anyone wearing a long dark coat. For the first several weeks it was with suspicious determination in his eyes. The next few months melted into glances that were less angry and more desperately hopeful. The last several weeks had not seen a cessation of those glances, but they were completed faster now, and without hope. His eyes would move involuntarily over the person, raking up and down, before sliding back to the sidewalk in front of him, or whatever had held his attention five seconds before.

Though John had always felt it more professional to greet his patients using their title and surname—Hello, Mr. Smith, I see here you're suffering from a migraine?—he addressed Mr. Peter Holmes by his first name only when he came in complaining of sciatica pain.

The blog had not been touched. Not even a farewell post or justification for the sudden absence of new material.

He had stopped seeing his therapist, and had only visited the grave once recently, on Sherlock's birthday. He had brought a small offering of standard flowers, and after placing them on the ground he hadn't lingered, he had just rapped the top of the headstone twice with his knuckles and headed back to the car he had borrowed to drive there.

He seemed to be functioning solidly within the self-constructed parameters of his life. So when he came home from work on an otherwise unimportant Thursday to find Sherlock sitting in his living room, he was understandably surprised.

Sherlock sat in a high-backed arm chair, his hands palm-to-palm under his chin. After a moment of silence he dropped his hands and gave a small, single nod.

"John," he said in greeting, as if acknowledging a coworker at an after-hours event.

"…Sherlock," John replied in the same tone.

…

Working on Part 2… It's sketched out, but not polished. Hoping to publish by this weekend!

As always, reviews make my little Sherlockian heart fill with blood. :)