What The House Forgot

Mine To Adore and Abhor

John felt that he had to bring the journal home, for he couldn't allow himself to part with the thing for anything more than a passing moment. Even as he took to touring the rest of the house he felt uncomfortable leaving it upstairs, as if some other entity would arrive through the walls and snatch his definitive proof. Such a valuable record, the words of another John Watson that would serve to forgive any claims of madness down the line. And so the thing sat in the passenger seat of Victor's car, the last of the dying sunlight sparing a few rays so as to catch against the binding and shine the sparking initials of JW into the windshield. A legacy to be upheld, then. The name John Watson was not so light a thing; it wasn't just a name, but a title. Something to defend, something to uphold. How many more John Watsons had traveled this path before? How many more would be in his wake? John swallowed hard, though he knew that he had to keep his mouth shut for the rest of his time here. He didn't know the specifics; certainly a closer look at this journal would highlight the difficulties of absolute clarity. There was some sort of path to follow, a certain fate aligned for them all, but how better to avoid such a fate than disallow it entirely? John knew that they all ended up dead. Even as he drove his forearms were exposed to the sunlight, glistening the long thing scars across his skin as if to demonstrate what fate held in store. If he never told Victor of this madness, never told Sherlock, well then they wouldn't dare follow along the same path as before? Certainly killing each other wasn't in their DNA, it wasn't written into their very humanity. It could be avoided if they plead ignorance, if they live their lives and cooperate long enough for John to return to America unscathed.
It wasn't that he didn't like it here. England had its perks, it had its advantages. Certainly there was only one direction he could have been heading in his entire life, and it seemed perfectly destined that he would end up in England at the same time as all of these interesting characters. And yet, there was something terribly wrong. John realized very soon that some part of himself had been left in America, something to sit alongside of the even more massive chunk of Victor Trevor that hadn't been able to fit in the baggage compartment. Some part of his innocence had been left, some part of his ignorance. The boy was more corrosive, as if he had adapted to his environment a bit too well and absorbed the rebellious side of his friends into his own personality. It was a shame, a loss of a perfect boy. A loss of someone pure.
As John pulled into the driveway he noticed that his was not the only car. The Trevor parents had the advantages of two garages, but Victor's usual parking space was being taken up by Sherlock's little car. That beat up old thing, perhaps salvaged from one of his lives four times down the line. The metal was rusted around the wheels, falling off in disgusting sheets of accumulation. The tires were flat on the one side, owing to the vehicle tipping dangerously to one side and looking ridiculously lopsided from a spectator's perspective. John chuckled as he stared at it, wondering just the stench of marijuana that clung to the interior carpets and seats. The sort of smell that would not fade with time, but would embed itself into the fabrics as if it had been woven in from the beginning. A beautiful smell, as it was associated with the smoker. A beautiful boy with a blunt between his teeth. John parked Victor's car in front of the garages, planning to blame Sherlock for the inconvenience when the Trevors attempted to leave for work in the morning. That was assuming he would be leaving towards the middle of the night, like any gentleman would do. But Sherlock Holmes was not a gentleman. John slid from the car, pushing his hand across the seat without breaking eye contact with the void in front of his eyes. Somehow, John stared straight through the pavement and into the front door of the old house. A more welcoming sight, a more welcoming structure. He wondered if the Trevor parents knew Sherlock was here or not. He wondered if they cared.
Clutching the book carefully to his chest, and mindful of course to keep the pages closed tight enough to keep pressure on the photograph, John walked in through the back door. He was careful to keep himself hidden from the occupants, as he could only imagine the interest they would take to his carefully clutched leather book. It would be one thing if he had ever bothered to read; though this was perhaps the only piece of literature he would be reading voluntarily, the only string of the English language that would entertain him past a passing grade. There were muffled voices in the kitchen, though thankfully John was able to scramble up the stairs and avoid any confrontations with the Trevor parents. The poor couple was undoubtedly oblivious to the traffic of children in their home, especially after adopting John into the household. There was a small gang forming, in fact there was a small gang already shattering, and each pair of footsteps on the upper floors of their new house could belong to any one of the four at any time of day. The poor, long suffering Trevors. Did they know what their child was doing?
Victor's door was shut, and although John figured he would be welcomed for a small hello, he decided not to test his luck with what was going on behind it. How far was Victor prepared to go with that boy, if there really was a romance sprouting? How far had he already gone? A string of sadness crippled John from the inside, and for a moment he hesitated at his own door, one hand clutching the book to his chest while the other turned the knob aimlessly, never pulling, never pushing. Just turning, as if expecting the door to remember how to open without the proper force. Was Victor so far gone from him, was it really a relationship that would shatter their friendship for the last time? John finally gave a push against the door, tossing the journal onto his bed in a fit of unintentional recklessness. The pages fluttered open, the book turning on its head in the air and spilling the photograph into a soft, gentle decline. While the book fell heavily onto the bed it took a long while for Sherlock to fall, the photograph seemed to do a dance in the air, a soft and careful decent to the carpet below. John watched from the closed door as the photograph landed in the perfect orientation to make eye contact with him. Those eyes, having been captured some two hundred years before this moment, seemed to know exactly where to look.