White Noise

Man Induced Misery

           

As soon as he opened the door his wife flung herself at him, bursting into tears of relief as if she was already making the funeral arrangements.
"Oh John thank God, I thought you were dead, oh my love where have you been so late?" she exclaimed, sounding completely heartbroken. John shook her off carelessly, sinking into the couch and closing his eyes.
"Working." he said quickly.
"No you haven't, I called the office, they said you went home sick!" Mary exclaimed.
"Well I was working, then I took a walk and found that I had left my car at the office and when I couldn't get a cab back I decided just to walk." John muttered, making up some miserable lies just so that she didn't suspect the truth. However it really wasn't far from the truth, excluding the reason why he was walking in the first place.
"Oh honey you don't look good." Mary sighed, pressing her cold hand to his forehead to check for a temperature.
"I'm not sick; I'm just exhausted, what a day I've had!" John exclaimed miserably.
"Would you like me to leave you alone?" Mary wondered softly, taking John's hand in her own and holding it tightly. John pulled away quickly, groaning in agony and rolling onto his back. He was pretending to be sick, if she thought he was sick then he could get an excuse to leave work again, and he also had excuse for her to leave him alone.
"I'll make you some soup." She offered, and she left before he could protest. So about ten minutes later John was poking around the suspiciously pale pieces of chicken in his microwavable soup, the soggy noodles clinging to his spoon as he sat up on the couch, watching old black and white movies on the TV while Mary sat next to him, coaxing him softly to keep eating, insisting that it would make him feel better.
"As a medical professional I can assure you that chicken soup doesn't help anything." John grumbled miserably, but the look she gave him was enough to convince him to just keep eating.
"Rosie is upstairs sleeping; she was so worried about you John, why didn't you at least call to explain yourself?" Mary wondered worriedly, rubbing John's back carefully as if it was going to make him feel more at ease.
"My phone died." John lied. It still sat in his pocket, probably very close to dying from all the calls and texts it had been receiving and constantly reminding him of.
"Oh, well why didn't you use a payphone?" Mary suggested.
"Those things are myths." John muttered. "Besides, I didn't have a quarter."
"Well we were worried, make sure this never happens again." Mary insisted. John stared into his unappetizing soup miserably, turning Mary's words over in his mind. It wasn't a suggestion, it hadn't been a question, it had been a demand. Mary was demanding that this never happens again, talking to John like he was a child in need of scolding. She thought that every word that came out of her mouth was suddenly gospel, and that everyone needed to comply to all of her wishes as soon as she uttered them. She thought that she could bend her husband until he breaks, just for her own amusement. Well little did she know that this was all in vain, little did she know that despite her constant efforts to keep him close she was letting him slip farther and farther away. Despite her chains, John was starting to slip from her bonds and live his own life, find his own love, and be his own person. Soon he would rip those chains off with the help of the beautiful Sherlock Holmes, and he would be free at last from the shackles that had come in the terms and conditions of their marriage agreement. He didn't notice when she left, he had been so focused on the broth of his soup that when he looked to where she had been sitting he was pleasantly surprised to find that he was alone. So he was able to dump the rest of that pathetic soup into the sink and wash it down the garbage disposal, watching as the noodles got obliterated in the spinning blades with satisfaction. Then he went and plugged his laptop into the wall, sitting by the light of a single lamp and scrolling once more through Sherlock's Facebook page. John decided that if he wanted to know more about Sherlock then he ought to know more about who he liked, so he set to work on trying to find the man that shared some of these very lovely photographs with him. His past boyfriend, his muscular, beautiful, photogenic boyfriend, how could Sherlock ever compete with that? And by what the landlady had said Sherlock liked to switch from boyfriend to boyfriend every other night, so what had made this one so special? What had made this man different from all the rest? And what could John do to ensure that he was the same? It wasn't too difficult to find the man, all he had to do was scroll through who had liked the picture and eliminate from there. The man ended up being one of the first couple to like the picture, John picked him out very easily by his profile picture, a very obnoxious shirtless snapshot of him in front of the waves at a beach, the sunset dying behind him, his hand knuckle deep in his swishy brown hair, as if pulling it away from his forehead. He was looking away from the camera but he made sure to get an angle that captured not only his startlingly good looks but his muscular chest as well, all in all making John frown in disappointment. If this was the man that Sherlock allowed himself to be with, imagine how insignificant John would look compared to him! And to think that Sherlock let this man go! His name was Victor Trevor, a rather appropriate name for such a snake looking man. His Facebook was filled with even more unnecessary pictures of himself, mostly without a shirt, striking all of these supermodel poses with different men, all equally beautiful. John was happy to see Sherlock's beautiful face in some of them; however it angered him to see Sherlock and this pathetic man together once more. Most pictures were of them laughing together, or holding each other quite close in locations that were almost as beautiful as they were. One of the pictures was of them kissing in front of what looked to be a waterfall, but John was so appalled that Sherlock would dare kiss that man that he scrolled as fast as humanly possible, shielding his eyes with a yelp of despair as soon as he saw what the two of them were doing. But the image forever implanted itself in his mind, Sherlock's eyes closed, his lips locked with a man that wasn't John, that wasn't deserving! Oh it was disgusting, it was appalling to think that this Victor Trevor had any part of Sherlock Holmes, body or soul, to himself. Was Sherlock really like this, would he really fall for a man for their looks instead of their soul? Would he not like John purely because he didn't fit his previous standards? Would he push him away? John scrolled a little bit more, and with every new picture and new caption he grew to hate this man even more. He seemed to have a Facebook that was entirely dedicated to worshipping himself, and to make matters worse he had over ten thousand followers. Ten thousand! It would be one thing if he were famous, or actually came across as nice, but no, he had that many followers just because he took a lot of shirtless pictures. John scrolled through his list of followers hatefully, seeing that they were mostly all women, dispute Victor's very obvious sexuality. Oh this was just terrible, Sherlock really did fall for a more beautiful man than John, so how on earth was he supposed to keep up? How was he supposed to please Sherlock if he didn't even fit his quota? Obviously, however, John wasn't going to give up his mad search for love. He wasn't going to abandon his one true love just because there was a bit of an attractive barrier between him and Sherlock's past lovers. Sherlock would get over it, he had to, it was true love, he had to see that! Once he got to know John better than he would probably realize it, once he realized the ferocity that was planted inside John he would finally accept it and cherish it. Love had been planted inside both of their hearts, John just had to make sure that somehow Sherlock became aware that there was more potential to their relationship than he had ever expected.  He had to realize that John wasn't just another strange man at a club, crawling desperately back because he thought they had some sort of connection. He was Sherlock's one and only, his soul mate, the one he had been waiting and watching for his whole life. Sherlock was lucky; the process of finding true love was going to be almost pathetically easy for him. All he had to do was get coffee tomorrow morning, and everything would be settled.