The Cold Case {Sherlock/Johnlock}

THREE

i'm aware nothing really happens and i haven't edited, but whatever, tell me what you thought anyways

thanks:)

-georgia

--

John was sitting on the Tube with the most mournful expression on his face and the slightest of tremors in his hands. His heart had finally stopped pounding, though there wasn't much to be said for that since he'd left Whitehaven almost two hours ago, and had spent the extra time in the pub. It was the first one he'd found, a tiny little dingy one in a side-street, and had almost poured the alcohol into himself, relishing the warmth that spread through his veins with it.

It was strange, he mused, as the train thrummed through another tunnel. John Watson had been a soldier and nothing had ever scared him in the years that he'd been in service. Not people, not guns, not threats. The amount of times that his life itself had been dangled in front of his eyes was reaching the twenties, but it was the things that were eating him up inside that scared him the most. The things that were barely threats, things that didn't jeopardise his life, things that seemed pathetic and insignificant in the grand scheme of things- were the things that he shied away from as though they were the things that would hurt him.

John had sat in a rickety plastic chair in the Whitehaven clinic for nearly an hour, fighting the words that were whirring in his head but didn't want to come out of his mouth. He'd left almost as soon as the topic of his arrogant flatmate had surfaced, thankful that his appointment time had ran out before he found himself saying things that he hadn't admitted to anyone. John was acutely aware that running away from things like this weren't going to help and were only going to cause more trouble than they were even currently, but he couldn't seem to stop himself.

"Am I alright to sit there?"

An unannounced male voice snapped John out of his reverie, and he looked up in surprise. Surprise because when did anyone ever ask to sit next to someone on the Tube? That wasn't a given London custom, and John's eyebrows furrowed because the man's accent was local. He looked very bright, silhouetted against the well-lit roof of the carriage, and even though the sky had fallen to dusk outside, John found himself squinting.

"Yeah... Yeah if you want."

Watson shuffled minutely sideways- despite not actually needing to- and didn't look at the stranger properly until several moments had passed and they were thrust back into the harsh light of the weak winter sunlight and icy sky. Out of the corner of his eye and without moving his head, John chanced a look at the stranger sitting next to him. He'd never done that until he met Sherlock, but the detective had instilled some kind of social paranoia in him, and he found himself drinking in as much of his surroundings as he could- just in case someone was going to set off a bomb or let Jim Moriarty out of their suitcase.

The man sat next to him was thin, dressed in grey jeans and a blue sweatshirt, the clothing looking old although he smelled of expensive aftershave and the shoes he was wearing were pristine. Unlike everyone else, he wasn't staring at a phone or a book, there were no earphones in his ears and his eyes were unmoving from a single spot opposite. Thinking nothing of it, nothing more than he was just another weirdo ( they were around in abundance in the capital and seemed to make beelines for John on trains) the doctor simply shrugged down further into his seat and tried his best not to think about the things he'd discussed at Whitehaven.

'Get anything?' The text he'd sent to Sherlock almost twenty minutes ago had gone unanswered. The detective was most likely just busy- he didn't tend to get quick replies from him ever, but there was always the tiniest nag in the back of his mind that maybe something bad had happened to him. It was unlikely, but Sherlock had a troublingly large list of enemies. It was barely two stops until Baker Street station anyway- he couldn't wait to get in and fall asleep.