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John had 4 lovers while Sherlock was away.
Sherlock died in June. For a few weeks, there was no one. Days ran into days and for the most part, he wanted solitude and silence. That was the only thing all four had in common: they all knew they were going to die. He found, during this time, that he couldn’t bear to talk to anyone who didn’t.
The first was called Summer. He was a mess when he met her, rude and volatile and alone, and it was a wonder that she ever looked at him at all. He’s never known why women like her are drawn to broken men, but when he buried himself in her sweat-drenched skin, he was grateful it was so. Her flat was always a mess, strewn with clothes and dirty plates stained by overripe fruit. She never had the energy to clean, and her lethargy was infectious. They fucked lazily in the wet heat and spoke little. There was an undercurrent of anger that neither could explain. For twenty days in August, they holed up in her bedroom and smothered each other with comfort. He left when he found a photo of her children on the hearth, turned down and out of sight. It all seemed wrong. He wasn’t sure what day it was or how many shifts he had missed at the clinic. Two weeks later, when he found a long strand of her hair in the laundry, he could not tell whether it was gold or grey.
Then came Autumn. He caught her like a cold at the end of the summer, when the heat broke and the air started to move again. (He thought things were getting better.) She was the handsomest lover he’d ever had; on the pavements in the daytime, her hair hung across her collar bones like ribbons of mulled wine spilling. In his bedroom in the night, her dress slipped off her shoulders like mulberry leaves, like the very end of a campfire. She kept two kinds of maple syrup in her cupboard and six kinds of honey, with botanical names written on in latin. Everything ends, she said when he asked about her other boyfriends, so she burned pleasure like oil lamps against the darkness and the cold. She wore her vulnerability like a shield, her humanity like a challenge. It was alluring, but there was always a desperate edge to her laughter. She had lost someone too, or was about to - he never found out which.
For a while, he had thought it would last with Winter. She was waiting, waiting, waiting for something to happen. He was certain that nothing ever would - nothing again, anyway - and he thought they could wait it out together. She was pretty and reserved, with a patience that never wavered as it faded into cold disappointment. Their time together was long, filled with sleep and the same four meals over and over. He hadn’t meant to break up with her; they just slowly stopped calling each other. If you’re only waiting, he supposed, you might as well do it alone. Looking back, he cannot picture her anywhere but inside her grey apartment, wrapped in a quilt. He is sure she is still there. He is sure that nothing has happened.
Spring was a surprise. The sex was not; they had a long slow flirt and a drunken snog or two before it happened. But she was always either there or not there, and he could never be sure in advance which it would be. She was clearly going through something; she said over and over again that she didn’t understand where her life was going. They could never quite get on an even keel, her and John. She was fine with his nightmares - sort of enjoyed them, even, which was only one reason why he never quite trusted her. She was never fine with her own sudden and unstoppable tears, her unnameable pain. Her body was full of aches and pleasures. On the weekends, they snogged in the shower and she would whisper secrets and endearments. After, she would be sullen and send him home. Their relationship moved in fits and starts until they turned to bickering, then to brawling. During a pregnancy scare, they dealt their final blows: he called her unstable, she called him obsolete. Neither had the stomach to continue. Her period came the next day and they said their goodbyes.
After Spring came no one. Nothing happened, no cold bravery and no purpose
until