Old Wounds

Aah~!

They had been lounging on the couch all day in their usual daily routine, looking through newspapers and online articles for anything particularly neat, Sherlock's arm draped over John's shoulders, and John startled at the sudden break in silence. That text was from Irene's phone, but Irene was dead. She had been beheaded almost five months ago. Who had sent it? How did they get Irene's phone after her being dead for so long? How the hell did they break her password?

"Oh," Sherlock spoke up, shutting his laptop. "Right. Irene is alive." 

John's face contorted as a series of unpleasant emotions hit him. Irene was alive and Sherlock didn't think that was valuable information? Sure, john wasn't nearly as close to her as Sherlock had been, but he deserved to know that she wasn't dead, and that Sherlock hadn't been mourning her for almost half the year. John glared at him pointedly. "Damn it, Sherlock. What does the text say?" 

Sherlock pursed his lips in his own way of apologizing, but not really. 

"It's a beautiful day in London today..." 

"... 'Let's have dinner,'" John finished. Sherlock remained silent, confirming that suspicion. He stared intently down at his phone, eyes glimmering, unreadable. 

John could feel his heart sinking in his chest. Sherlock was a difficult man to please. He had his work cut out for him just trying to keep his foot in the doorway that Sherlock was constantly trying to close on him, and here came Irene, the one woman who had the key to it. 

He bit his bottom lip and looked at the carpet, a heavy chill settling in him. Who was he to deny that match made in hell? He couldn't even bring himself to try. Sherlock had always looked so alive around her. There was a kind of mysterious mind game that they played, and Sherlock treated it like a friendly competition. Irene always earned a smile from him. The kind he would never share with John. Not with poor, ignorant John. 

John thought one of his ribs cracked in half with the reality of it. Sherlock would be so happy to have her back in town. 

"You're going back to her," he said, forcing himself to meet his... flatmate's eyes and keep a brave face. 

"Of course," Sherlock answered, not looking up. 

"... Alright." 

John wanted to break something. 

He went out that night to go to the pub. Now that he thought about it, he had about as many friends as Sherlock. People liked him well enough, but he wasn't close to anyone. Not really. He could speak to Molly, but that would be so unfair to her, considering how long she had tried to win Sherlock's affections long before John was in the picture. 

Did Sherlock know he was upset? Maybe. Maybe not. He thought he had done a fair job of hiding it, and it wasn't as if Sherlock had looked at him to deduce anything. His focus was aimed elsewhere. 

The Basement, one of the weird, sporty, modern bars was the nearest one that John could think of besides The Packet, and he wasn't going to go to The Packet in fear of bumping into someone he knew and turning into 130 lbs of pure angst and fury. 

The Basement wasn't awfully high-prestige, so the bouncer was mostly a formality and it was a Wednesday night, so there was no line. John walked up to the tall man, hand digging in his coat pocket for his ID, but the stranger held up his hand at him. 

"Don't worry about it. I believe you." He laughed at his own joke, looking at John like he expected him to laugh, too, but the unenthusiastic huff must have told him that this particular party-goer wasn't in the mood for laughs. The bouncer cleared his throat apologetically, pushing open the door to let John in.

There was no light except for neon dance lights, but the music wasn't too deafening- if he yelled, he might actually be heard. There was a little cluster of young adults grinding suggestively on the dance floor where all the light was, and John forced himself not to cringe. It wasn't their fault they were so promiscuous and stupid. 

Apparently, so was he.

He maneuvered his way around the edges of the room and chose an abandoned table to sit at, lit by nothing but a blue-violet lava lamp and the distant lights of the dance floor. The waitress didn't even wait to be flagged down, offering him a colorful little shot that, judging by color, probably tried to taste like strawberry. He shook his head at it politely. 

He opened his mouth to speak, and out of nowhere, he remembered when Sherlock kissed him. He remembered every vivid detail- how soft, how warm, how affectionate, the look in Sherlock's eyes afterwards- and he remembered the taste.

"Fire whiskey," John said, looking back to the table. The waitress nodded at him and sped off, gracefully dodging party-goers as she made her way to the kitchen. 

Like clockwork, she left and another stranger immediately took her place. There was a petite young woman, dark locks falling over her shoulders onto a pair of breasts that looked like they could fall out of her tiny little dress at any moment. 

"All alone?" she asked, and John could almost imagine little devil horns sprouting from her head. He shot her a grim look that said all it needed to, and she blinked at him, brown doe eyes batting prettily. She didn't look like she was going to give up on this conversation. 

"Fire whiskey, huh? Do you do a lot of drinking?" 

John shook his head, his lips honestly not feeling up to the task of forming words. He dare not let his guard down to this woman. He wasn't ready physically or mentally for a blurry night of sex and drugs and a morning full of regret.

"C'mon, don't you at least smoke? Bad diet? Pick your poison!" She said it playfully, and John couldn't help but scowl. 

"I'm a doctor. I try to avoid bad habits where I can." 

The strange girl narrowed her eyes at him just as the waitress came back with not a shot, but an entire bottle of whiskey, which he stared at shamefully. He gave her an indignant look, but accepted the bottle gratefully anyway. This was not a two-shot kind of night. 

The girl that had sat down with him snatched the cup off the table, a mischievous glint in her eyes as she slipped it under the table, grinning drunkenly.

"You don't drink much, huh?" she teased, and lifted it back up to swirl condescendingly. John, unamused, held his hand out for his glass back. The girl sighed loudly in exasperation and stuffed it back into his hand, standing up and marching off, her face kind of scrunched up. John felt a twinge of guilt as she pranced off to go find some other older man to bother. Poor girl probably wasn't used to getting so easily turned down.

He poured himself a glass, downed the drink in three gulps, then set the glass down and let the heat hit his cheeks. It crept up on him kind of slowly, but surely, and when he felt his ears redden, he poured another glass.  

 By the third glass, he was feeling... strange. Not the usual drunk he was used to- it was lighter than that. His vision faded in and out, and his mind stopped registering things that were happening around him. Green flashed, there were people around him. His legs dragged the floor behind him. The ground pulsed with bass, the smell of sweat and cologne gave him a headache. A pain shot through the side of his head as it hit a door frame. The last thing he remembered was the soft purr of an engine, and then everything went completely black.