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Sherlock is sitting on the sitting room floor, a considerable part of his not inconsiderable wardrobe spread out around him as if he's blown up the menswear department at Harrods. John has never cared enough about fashion to recognize or even identify the designers whose work is strewn across the carpet. He does, however, recognize the large rucksack at Sherlock's side. Sturdy Cordura fabric, virtually indestructible, desert camouflage print — oh, yes, he can identify it, he carried one on his back often enough when he was in Afghanistan. His eye automatically seeks out the spot where his own rucksack reads "Watson" in large block letters, but this one bears no name. Not filched from beneath John's bed, then. Purchased as military surplus, perhaps. Or requisitioned through official channels, maybe even courtesy of Mycroft, not that the British Government concerns himself with such small matters.
Sherlock is staring at the empty rucksack with an expression that could mean he's wondering whether he can fit all of his dry cleaning into it, but could equally indicate that he's trying to gauge whether it could be used to tote a body. It's not quite large enough for either task, although if he were to cut the body up — John cuts off that train of thought, picks his way through drifts of haberdashery to the kitchen, and starts the kettle.
"Tea?" he asks, though he knows he'll make the second mug regardless. He chooses to interpret the preoccupied hum that comes from the sitting room as "Yes, please, and thank you very much." When he returns to the living room with the tea, he sets Sherlock's mug down within easy reach, then settles into his armchair to watch his best friend doing — well, whatever it is he's doing.
Sherlock folds a black cashmere jumper and tucks it inside the bag. He presses his lips together in a moue of discontent, removes the jumper, and shakes it out of its folds. He refolds it in a different way and puts it back into the bag. He takes it back out. He repeats the process again, as if trying to find the one objectively perfect origami of body and sleeves. Finally he squashes the jumper into a ball and shoves it into the bag, following it with three crumpled shirts. Right, it's the dry cleaning, John thinks with a certain amount of (understandable, really) relief.
Sherlock makes his way to the couch with half a dozen balled pairs of socks in his hands. "John," he says pensively, "what would you pack if you had to go on a long trip?"
"Trick question." John has never been shy about sharing his opinions on traveling light and not checking bags if he can help it. It worked for the soldier, it works for the civilian. "If you pack thoughtfully and do laundry along the way, you never need more than a week's worth of clothes."
Sherlock lobs one sock-ball at the rucksack. It hits the strap and rolls back to land near John's feet. John retrieves it and tosses it back. Sherlock plucks it out of the air as if it were a particularly useful fact.
"What if — " He pauses to concentrate on pitching the pair of socks again, this time underhand. His eyes narrow in satisfaction when they land inside. "What if you didn't know where you were going?"
"It wouldn't change much. I'd pack things that layer well for a wide range of temperatures and carry enough cash to get anything I'd left behind. Let's face it, there aren't many places these days that you can't buy a tube of toothpaste."
Earlier in the month, John had traveled to Edinburgh for a conference on trends in emergency medicine, forgetting to pack his toothpaste. When Sherlock had spotted the overlooked item on the edge of the sink, he'd sent the half-used tube by overnight post at a fee twice what John had already spent at Boots to replace it. A year ago, Sherlock would have taken offense when John pointed out that his actions were less than practical. Today he looks at John and smirks in a self-deprecating way that's doubly charming for being a new habit.
"What if you had to pack in a hurry?" he continues. As he speaks, he fidgets clockwise on the couch until one leg is hooked over the back and his head dangles over the edge of the seat. It looks horribly uncomfortable, but it inexplicably improves his skills at basketsock. He's three for three in less than a minute.
John shrugs. "Everything I own goes with everything else, so it never takes me long to pack, unless I'm going somewhere that requires special gear. If you told me right now that we had a plane to catch, I could be out the door in less than an hour."
His flatmate may be the one hanging upside down, but it's John who's starting to get an all too familiar lightheaded, twitchy sensation. It's the sensation he's come to recognize as his subconscious mind's way of warning him that he's missing something important. He tries to settle his subconscious by saying lightly, "I suppose it's too much to hope that you're whisking me off for a surprise holiday."
Sherlock continues rotating back to his original upright position and begins to juggle his three remaining sock balls. "What? No," he says absently. It's meant to mislead by neither confirming or denying. John's subconscious is now prodding him with an insistent message of extremely not good, with all the physical cues of fight or flight.
"Sherlock," he says, voice on the tightest of leashes, "where are you planning to go on short notice, and when?"
The socks hit the floor, forgotten, and John just knows. "You mad bastard," he growls, "if you're planning to fuck off and do something dangerous without me, I will kill you myself right now to spare you the trouble."
"What — " Sherlock's voice cracks. "What would you do if I died?"
John's inner censor is so startled that it lets the answer slip past unedited. "I think I would go to pieces," he admits. "No. I know I would. And I'm not sure anything would ever put me back together again."
Under heat, ice must melt and water must boil. Now Sherlock must lie. Ready or not, he has to tell the most difficult untruth of his life to his personal lie detector, and oh, how carefully he has to tell it. He bites his lip hard enough to draw blood and speaks through the metallic taste.
"I'm going after Moriarty." He sees the incredulous anger flare up in John's eyes and throws up a hand to hold it off. "I should have told you sooner, but I'm telling you now. Will you listen?"
John clenches his teeth and nods.
"The idea was basically to let him think he's killed me, then hide behind my supposed demise to get past his guard. I know Mycroft will help me disappear — and I know he'll help me come back to life once I've ripped Moriarty's organization out at the roots. It's a brilliant idea, John, you can't deny that. Except that I've realized what being dead will mean."
He's breathing fast now, eyes skittering around the room. "I don't know how big his organization is or how far it extends. Wiping it out could take years. I might never see the end of it. I might have to play dead forever, and never come home to y— to Baker Street."
John shudders. His first few weeks back in London, he'd drifted ghostlike and disconnected through a city he couldn't seem to touch, and that half-life had, in truth, nearly killed him. Then Sherlock had saved him by sweeping him into his own strange and frantic existence. If giving it up would make him fall apart, what would it do to Sherlock?
"When were you going to tell me?"
John's eyes widen with raw disbelief when Sherlock shakes his head and answers, "I wasn't."
"You were going to let me think you were dead." John leaps out of his chair and begins pacing back and forth, trampling shirts and trousers under his feet. His voice gets louder with every syllable. "You were just planning to vanish, and that was supposed to be better than knowing you were alive out there somewhere, even if I didn't know when or if I would ever see or hear from you again?"
Sherlock has always considered the phrase "towering rage" so overused that it should be stricken from the language, but at the moment, John is so enraged that he seems twice his humble height, enlarged and ennobled by a magnificent stream of expletives.
"You're a terrible liar," Sherlock finally manages to say, eyes downcast. And I'm a champion, or I used to be before you, he thinks despairingly. "I didn't think you could keep up the pretense. Eventually you would slip, and you'd give it away, and then Moriarty's people would get to me." Or worse, you. Grey-green eyes, now rimmed with red, meet blue. "I was scared. I'm sorry."
And just like that, John's fury deflates. He collapses back into his armchair and rubs his hands over his face.
"Christ," he breathes. "So now I know, and I'm going to have to pretend I don't. For how long?"
Sherlock shrugs helplessly.
"If you — if something happened to you — how would I find out? Shouldn't we make some kind of a plan?"
"I think I have to proceed as if we never had this conversation," Sherlock says. "I have to die — "
"Don't say that!"
"— fine. I have to drop off the radar as quickly as possible. We might be able to arrange some way to pass messages through Mycroft, but any contact between us will endanger us both until. Until." He can't finish.
They stare at each other. The few feet between them might as well be miles. Soon they will be.
John's brain is working double-time. It's a good brain, a solid brain, maybe not as flashy or high-performance as the one belonging to the resident genius, but it gets where it needs to go eventually. Right now, where it needs to go is his bedroom.
"John?" Sherlock's voice chases him up the stairs.
He comes back with his own rucksack. It's faded and frayed from sun and sand, and no matter how many times he's washed it, the blood stains — his own and others' — have never come out completely. It speaks of pride and fortitude, protection and endurance. He always knew he'd use it again some day. He throws it on the floor next to its untried twin and stands over it, hands on his hips, every inch the soldier. Duty calls.
"I'm going to lose my fucking mind worrying about you," he says matter-of-factly. "You know that, don't you?"
Sherlock nods.
"It's going to break me. I'm going to fall apart and forget to eat and sleep and everyone is going to think I'm going mad from mourning for you."
Sherlock nods again. What is there to say, really?
"Which is why no one will be all that surprised when I disappear, leaving behind a suicide note and an empty box of bullets."
John's jaw is set, his eyes intent, his lips starting to curl upward. "A month or so should be enough time for me to convince everyone I've gone totally spare." His voice is strained, determined, triumphant. "You'll only need to contact me once, just long enough to tell me where to find you. Mycroft can work out the details."
"You… John…" Sherlock clears his throat and tries to hide his relief. John Watson is a miracle, a security blanket, a secret weapon he didn't even know he had. "Are you sure?"
"We do this together, and that's all there is to it," John says gruffly. "Let's pack."