out on out. part 1.

After Khan has left the following morning, to find work -- which is probably a very good idea when you’ve got no identity in the world you got stuck in, no place to live, no money, no bloody clue, though that’s undoubtedly giving the man too little credit, John walks not quite aimlessly around the flat, just in his dressing gown and bare feet, looking at all of Sherlock’s things, a throw-in of John’s own here and there, but mostly, yes. Sherlock’s things. So many of them. So utterly useless now.

The thought occurs to him, then -- and since it feels right, he sticks with it, because so few things currently feel even just approaching right, he has to grasp onto whatever’s left. Whatever is left.


-*-


Mrs Hudson understands, she says. To be honest, she probably knew from the moment she opened her door and he was standing there in his jeans and his jumper, feet still bare, expression a rare mask of blankness. John Watson usually wears his heart out on his sleeve and if not his sleeve, then on the lines of his mouth, around his eyes, across his brow.

“It’s that other one,” she concludes, once they’ve sat down for a cup of tea and he feels foreign in her kitchen, all of a sudden. At the mention of Khan, at the realisation that, naturally, Mrs Hudson has followed that little adventure from the sideline. Of course. “It’s about time, John, it’s about time you moved on.”

“I’m moving out, Mrs Hudson, I’m not moving on,” he corrects her, flatly, because for some reason the distinction is very important, very essential.

“Oh, it’s all the same thing,” she replies, pouring him another cuppa.


-*-


It isn’t, though. All the same thing. John desperately doesn’t want it to be.


-*-


Throughout the afternoon, he makes calls. To Mycroft, to an estate agent, to the movers. Then, he goes about making two (not three, Mycroft didn’t want any part of it) crude piles, those of Sherlock’s things getting another chance at life somewhere else with someone else and those of Sherlock’s things he’ll keep himself. One pile’s noticeably larger than the other, he’ll leave you to guess which one that is.

He keeps his own chair, well, it’s his now, it used to be Sherlock’s, too. He keeps the violin. Just because.

The rest he leaves for the movers to -- well, move out. His own things he packs into boxes, ending up with the bare essentials and leaves the boxes in the living room to follow him. Wherever he'll go from here.

And so, over the course of a day, John has moved on (out).

distant rhythm of the drum.

[ It's been a week.

John hasn't thought too much about Khan in the man's absence, save for the punctual text messages he's received, one every day, updates -- instead he's gone through the practicalities, kept himself busy, moving out all Sherlock's stuff and helping Mrs Hudson prepare for the new tenant (two of them, in fact, sweet uni age girls in need of a share, it'll be good for her, he thinks). He's taken leave from work, 10 days' worth of it -- he thinks of it as wriggle room, time and space to get everything settled, himself included. Davies is the only one who knows (some of) what's happened, so naturally Davies was the one to suggest that John got one of the singles in the billet, if you're desperate enough for that, he'd said.

Trust me, John had replied, I'm desperate enough.

A single room at Albany Street consists of a sink, a bed, a closet and a window, the window counting for furniture in this case, because John can squeeze sideways onto the sill with his legs bent and sit there, staring out at mess in the middle of the night. There's life at the barracks around the clock and it's nice, he's found some kind of -- peace in that, over the past couple of days. When he couldn't sleep anyway.

Since he's not staying at 221B anymore, this is where he could meet Khan when Khan contacted him, apparently back in London again, apparently willing to get in touch. Fortunately the man didn't mind -- and with his background, it would probably have been unimaginable that he would. He's a soldier, more soldier than he's anything else. John is, too, in his own way.

As such, this is new ground, more neutral. It's what they can muster, right now. It's fine.

Pushing himself down from the windowsill as he hears steps approaching, he fixes some creases in his shirt and waits at ease, because waiting is second nature now. If nothing else, John can rely 100 percent on his God damn patience at this point. ]