Work Text:
There’s clattering in the kitchen. Sinked hands, sunken in soap. The flocks turn in great wheels over the cottage. Dry November in the roses, still bright with it.
“We have a ghost,” John announces cheerfully.
“Yes, quite a lot of them,” Sherlock says, arcs a brow from the oak bed.
“Just one this time,” John says, lifts lint from a sleeve. “Made a great mess in there.”
You. Blown like milkweed over the fields, like the cries of the geese.
“Hauntings,” Sherlock says, “happen when no-one knows what else to look for.”
They walk to the river, watch it black and quick, take in the sky.
In the morning the dishes are unstacked again, strewn.
*
Clouds fast and grim over the moon and Sherlock rests his arms on the hickory table, stares into the kitchen.
“Wasting your time,” John says. Feeds birch to the fire. “Can’t solve a ghost, Sherlock. Not even you.”
But I can try.
Sherlock drags his nails, snags on a scratch. “John, when you were--” Swallows.
“When I was what?”
Tracks on the porch, fur in the brambles, calls on the night air.
“I thought.”
You haunted me.
John’s hands on Sherlock’s shoulders. “You did, too, you know. When you were up north."
Suds on the soap. Rags wrung out, draped over the edge of the basin.