[I am! RL’s just been really hectic… I was considering not doing this this year – but it’s been so long since I’ve managed to write anything for fandom, I figured this would be a good excuse. =D]
the fidelity of dogs
He moves out of 221B Baker Street.
It is remarkably easy to let every relationship he’d built over the last year or so die. Mrs Hudson and Lestrade hold out the longest (and John suspects that Mycroft keeps a subtle eye on him) but eventually even they too drift away. Once that had happened, John had moved again, this time telling no one his new address. A clean break’s the best, he thinks. The bone will knit back nice and strong.
It is difficult dealing with people when they know him as either a conman or a fool. For that reason, he decides to work with animals instead.
He begins to volunteer at a small shelter that’s overworked enough to disregard John’s poor reputation. The other workers and volunteers there are even polite enough not to disparage Sherlock in John’s hearing. He puts together meals and cleans up shit. In some ways, John thinks on the good days, it’s similar to living with Sherlock.
He finds that he has a deft hand with the animals, and that they calm for him quickly. It’s not something he’d expected, given that he’d only ever had a dog before, and that had been as a child. Still, there’s a kind of pleasure that comes from discovering a new talent, and John jumps at the chance to lose himself in something new.
(There is a pattern to his life. He’d escaped his family by joining the army. He’d escaped the numbing boredom of civilian life by living with Sherlock. It stands to reason that he’d escape the reality of Sherlock’s death by throwing himself into something else.)
Working with the dogs, in particular, is the kind of medicine that John could never have dared dream of. They’re uncomplicated creatures, and demand nothing of him but the ability to move on. If he forgets, their restless anxiety reminds him. As long as he is centred and certain of himself, they’re unflinchingly loyal. They don’t judge, and that is a gift infinitely more precious than John had ever known before.
(He still misses Sherlock. Part of him wonders if working at the shelter is his way of running away from people, because god, he can’t deal with everything they say and think about Sherlock. Too late to realise how he felt, too late for much of anything except coping, which he only manages because the dogs remind him to do so.)
But there is something about them, about the straightforward, uncompromising lives of the animals, that soothes that raw and aching part of him he won’t let anyone see. So John turns his volunteerism into a job and lets them heal him, and dreams about a life in which he could have shared this with Sherlock.
no subject
the fidelity of dogs
He moves out of 221B Baker Street.
It is remarkably easy to let every relationship he’d built over the last year or so die. Mrs Hudson and Lestrade hold out the longest (and John suspects that Mycroft keeps a subtle eye on him) but eventually even they too drift away. Once that had happened, John had moved again, this time telling no one his new address. A clean break’s the best, he thinks. The bone will knit back nice and strong.
It is difficult dealing with people when they know him as either a conman or a fool. For that reason, he decides to work with animals instead.
He begins to volunteer at a small shelter that’s overworked enough to disregard John’s poor reputation. The other workers and volunteers there are even polite enough not to disparage Sherlock in John’s hearing. He puts together meals and cleans up shit. In some ways, John thinks on the good days, it’s similar to living with Sherlock.
He finds that he has a deft hand with the animals, and that they calm for him quickly. It’s not something he’d expected, given that he’d only ever had a dog before, and that had been as a child. Still, there’s a kind of pleasure that comes from discovering a new talent, and John jumps at the chance to lose himself in something new.
(There is a pattern to his life. He’d escaped his family by joining the army. He’d escaped the numbing boredom of civilian life by living with Sherlock. It stands to reason that he’d escape the reality of Sherlock’s death by throwing himself into something else.)
Working with the dogs, in particular, is the kind of medicine that John could never have dared dream of. They’re uncomplicated creatures, and demand nothing of him but the ability to move on. If he forgets, their restless anxiety reminds him. As long as he is centred and certain of himself, they’re unflinchingly loyal. They don’t judge, and that is a gift infinitely more precious than John had ever known before.
(He still misses Sherlock. Part of him wonders if working at the shelter is his way of running away from people, because god, he can’t deal with everything they say and think about Sherlock. Too late to realise how he felt, too late for much of anything except coping, which he only manages because the dogs remind him to do so.)
But there is something about them, about the straightforward, uncompromising lives of the animals, that soothes that raw and aching part of him he won’t let anyone see. So John turns his volunteerism into a job and lets them heal him, and dreams about a life in which he could have shared this with Sherlock.