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tartanfics2011-07-01 10:44 am
tartancravat.livejournal.com) wrote in tartanfics2011-07-01 10:44 am
Sherlock: A New Kind of Communication 1/2
Title: A New Kind of Communication
Fandom/Ships: BBC Sherlock, Sherlock/John
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 10,400
Disclaimer: I don't own Sherlock and this won't pay my bills.
Warnings: None
Summary: Sherlock texts, Sherlock leaves notes, Sherlock phones John, and he never really says anything.
Notes: Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cathedralcarver for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
holmestice . All the beta credit to the best beta that ever beta’d, miss_sabre . Also, this fit in one post originally but for some reason it says it's too large here. Sigh.
John hears about the accident via text message.
He’s just getting off work at the surgery on a Wednesday afternoon, wondering whether he should pick up food on his way home, when his mobile vibrates. He pulls it out of his pocket, expecting it to be Sherlock.
It’s Lestrade instead.
Sherlock hurt. St. Bart’s.
“Bloody--little more information, please,” John mutters at his phone. He presses speed dial 4 for Lestrade, and listens to it ring out as he starts walking towards the end of the road to find a cab. When Lestrade fails to answer he rings Sherlock’s phone, but that goes straight to the voicemail. “Answer your bloody phones,” John says, startling a passing pizza delivery man. “Sorry.”
-
Concussion. He’s done something to his ankle,
not sure what. Should be all right.
L
The relief John feels when he read this message while trying to pay the cab driver is shocking in its intensity. He shoves too much money into the man’s hand and then stumbles back towards the doors to the hospital, clutching his phone and his wallet and trying not to drop everything.
-
John, I need the book that is sitting on the kitchen table.
SH
The book about London trees.
SH
I need to look up which species of trees are most common in Soho.
SH
For the case Lestrade is working on.
SH
John?
SH
Doctors ought not to leave their patients unattended.
SH
He has a broken ankle and a bruise the shape of Germany on his ribs. John knows it is the shape of Germany because he walked in to Sherlock’s bedroom one morning to see him lying on the bed, pulling his t-shirt up to get a look at the bruise. “It reminds me of something,” he said. “Get me the atlas.” John sighed, but he went to get the atlas.
“Definitely Germany,” Sherlock said, glancing between his own chest and the colourful map of Europe.
So now every time John sees anything about Germany in the newspaper or hears a pair of German tourists talking in the street, he thinks of the way Sherlock’s fingers looked shoving his shirt up to bare the skin of his ribs.
Every time John thinks of that, though, he thinks of the ugly purple bruise and the broken ankle and the way Sherlock looked at him while he was doped up on painkillers.
how do you know anything about Lestrade’s case?, John finally answers.
did you bribe someone to bring you the case file?
If you don’t bring me the book I need I will attempt to get it myself.
This will probably result in injury.
SH
first bribery and now blackmail. hang on, coming downstairs.
-
The evening after they let Sherlock come home from the hospital, John doesn’t want to leave him alone. He gets Sherlock upstairs and into bed, lying flat on his back in the middle of a tangle of blue cotton sheets. Sherlock is drowsy and loose-limbed, on a painkillers for his ankle. He sprawls across the bed and looks up at John, smiling lazily. “Hello, John,” Sherlock murmurs.
“Hey,” John says around the scratchiness in his throat. He sinks onto the floor with his back against the side of the bed, tilting his head back and taking deep breaths.
“John?”
“Hmm?”
Sherlock doesn’t answer. John turns his head, cheek against the sheets, to look up at Sherlock. Sherlock is looking at the ceiling.
“M’ foot hurts.”
John closes his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you going to do something ‘bout it, John?”
“Yeah. Go to sleep, Sherlock.”
“No. Have to solve the case.”
John snorts. “Yeah, good luck.”
“Jooohn.”
He feels Sherlock moving around behind him, and then Sherlock’s hand scrabbles over his shoulder and into his hair. John can feel the shape of Sherlock’s long thin fingers, and the way they pull lightly at his hair is pleasantly soothing. “What are you doing, Sherlock?”
Sherlock hums wordlessly and moves John’s head back and forth. John, eyes closed, tries not to think too hard about Sherlock’s fingernails.
Later, remembering the press and pull of Sherlock’s fingers, John is forced to attribute the action to the drugs.
-
I want to watch television.
SH
“So come in here and watch it!” John shouts in the direction of Sherlock’s open bedroom door.
Silence. John waits a moment to see if Sherlock is going to text back, and then calls, “I’m not coming in there to help you get up. You should learn to use the crutches.”
No.
SH
John turns the telly on, just loud enough that Sherlock can hear the noise but can’t make out any of the words.
After half an hour of palpable sulking emanating from Sherlock’s room, John goes to stand in his doorway and stare at him. Sherlock is sitting up in bed, folding a paper aeroplane.
“Were you going to throw that at me?” John asks, crossing his arms over his chest.
“You weren’t answering my texts. I didn’t have any carrier pigeons.”
“Do you normally send messages by carrier pigeon?”
“It is a not unheard of occurrence.”
“You could have just come out to the lounge and I wouldn’t have needed to answer your texts. Besides, I did answer them. Just not in text form. Sherlock, you can’t just sit here until your ankle heals. And I’m not going to be a convenient leaning post every time you want to go somewhere.”
Sherlock is wearing pyjamas, without even the usual extra layer of his dressing gown. His hair is a mess and he looks miserable. John watches as he finishes folding the paper plane, delicately flattening the edges. When he throws it, it hits John almost painfully in the centre of the chest. John catches it as it falls, and looks at it. It is more complicated than your average paper plane, and it’s beautifully folded, all crisp edges and even corners.
“What did you learn to fold paper airplanes for?”
“Boring lectures at school. The trick is to make them so they turn, and it looks like they came from a different part of the classroom.”
John laughs. “No one ever caught you while you were folding them?”
“Of course not.”
“Did you actually write a message on this? I’m not sure I want to unfold it.”
“I can always fold another.”
John unfolds the paper, flattening it against the door until he can read what it says. It’s written in blue ink, in what John thinks of as Sherlock’s real handwriting. When he writes anything he expects other people to read, he changes his handwriting, depending on what he wants the other person to know about him, who is going to read it, what character he’s playing. When he writes notes only for himself, or for John, his handwriting is a thin scrawl, sharp and jagged.
John’s never noticed before, the fact that Sherlock uses his real handwriting for him. Sherlock doesn’t have much occasion to leave John notes.
Despite the contents of the note, John looks at the curve of the f and feels warmth curling around his stomach.
Crutches are uncomfortable and undignified. I will sit here until my ankle heals and catch up on my reading. Feel free to deliver tea and biscuits at regular intervals.
John grins, and attempts to refold the plane.
"Do you really want to watch telly?"
"'Want' is perhaps not the most accurate term. Television sounds marginally less dull than any of my alternate options."
John takes pity on him, and helps him out to his chair in front of the telly.
-
John still doesn't know how it happened. Lestrade was on the other side of the building they were chasing a suspect around, and didn't see anything, so John can't ask him. John considers ringing Mycroft and asking if he knows, or can look up the CCTV footage of the area, but that seems a bit excessive. So John watches the way Sherlock moves around his injuries, and quietly wonders.
He begins to suspect Sherlock is embarrassed. He's rarely seen Sherlock embarrassed, and he's not really sure about the times he thinks he has. Sherlock's emotions are a maze behind a very high wall, and though sometimes John manages to poke holes in the wall, he only sees little, confusing pieces of what's behind it.
He knows it bothers Sherlock to need help with things. John is still working, so clearly Sherlock is capable of taking care of himself for a few hours, but movement is nevertheless a problem.
John wonders, briefly, what it means that Sherlock minds needing help, but prefers John's shoulder to the independence granted by the crutches.
-
Sherlock's injuries are a mystery, and they soon become a point of contention.
One day Sherlock is sitting on the sofa when John accosts him with a stethoscope. "You've bruised your ribs, I want to listen to your chest."
"My chest is fine."
"I want to make sure."
Sherlock sets aside the newspaper he's reading and glares up at John. "There is such a thing as being excessively careful, John."
"There is such a thing, yes. Come on, take off your shirt."
Sherlock's lips twitch. John feels his face flush a little, but he refuses to back down. Then Sherlock seems to consider his options, and chooses the path of least resistance. He pauses, clearly looking at the colour in John's cheeks, which no doubt makes them brighter, and then pulls his t-shirt over his head in one slow smooth movement.
John eyes the bruise, low on the left side of Sherlock's ribs. Sherlock is surprisingly muscular for how slim he seems and how little he eats. Until John saw him shirtless, he imagined Sherlock with ribs visible against his skin. Not that John's been picturing Sherlock naked, of course.
"Does it hurt much?" John asks, sitting down on the coffee table. He presses his thumbs to the edges of the bruise, fingertips resting against Sherlock's stomach. Sherlock winces. "When I press down?"
Sherlock takes a slightly shaky breath. "To the touch. If I turn too suddenly."
John slots the stethoscope into his ears and blows on the end to warm it. Sherlock watches the process, wrinkling his nose distastefully. "Would you rather have it cold?" John asks, seeing his face. Sherlock doesn't answer.
John sets the end of the stethoscope over Sherlock's heart and listens. After a moment he takes hold of Sherlock's wrist to look at his watch and count his heart rate. Sherlock lets him, arm moving limply to angle the watch face in the right direction. Once satisfied, John moves the stethoscope to the other side and repeats the process. Then he moves downwards, listening to the sounds of Sherlock's body underneath his Germany-shaped bruise.
Finally he sits back, satisfied everything is more or less as it should be. Well. Sherlock shouldn't be bruised, and his ankle shouldn't be broken, but you can't have everything.
"This bruise is such a weird shape, Sherlock. It would help if you--"
"No."
John hooks the stethoscope around his neck and frowns, looking at Sherlock, who crosses his arms over his chest. Maybe it's a defensive gesture. Maybe he's just cold. John's never known him to be self conscious.
"It's not--" John's not sure what he wants to ask, but Sherlock shakes his head.
"No."
John's eyes linger on the bruise for a moment, but he forces himself to turn away. "Fine. You'll be fine."
"Of course I will," Sherlock scoffs, but it sounds almost reassuring.
-
They’ve been doing the grocery shopping together since Sherlock’s injuries.
It’s not really as domestic as it sounds. It’s not as if Sherlock would go anywhere near the shopping, normally, except to demand periodically that John buy biscuits. Technically he doesn’t even go near the shopping now. But apparently he’s so bored that even talking to John on the phone while John’s at the supermarket is better than staring at the ceiling or trying to read one of the books sitting in the precarious pile next to his bed.
The first time it happens, John is in the cereal aisle. His phone starts playing some obnoxious pop song that Sherlock put on his phone in a fit of vengeful boredom. John doesn’t know how to change it.
The phone rings and John answers it as quickly as possible, embarrassed. “Hello?”
“John. Good. Don’t forget the milk.”
“Sherlock? I won’t forget the milk, it’s on the list.” He looks around at the colourful boxes of cereal and hopes no one has a sudden need for cornflakes. He hates people who talk on their mobile phones in shops.
“A shopping list, how quaint. Put pickled gherkins on it.”
“Pickled--what are those for?”
“Experiments.”
“You’re lying in bed, how are you going to run experiments on gherkins while lying in bed?”
“Trivial details,” Sherlock says, and John can just see him waving a dismissive hand.
“Fine.” John walks to the end of the of the aisle and starts looking for the gherkins. “Do you need anything else?”
“Lubricant.”
John chokes.
“Please don’t tell me what you want that for,” John mutters. He finds the gherkin shelves and starts trying to figure out which variety Sherlock wants. “What kind of gherkins?”
“What’s the selection?”
“Uh... cocktail gherkins, sweet and sour, crinkle cut...”
“Which are the biggest?”
John really, really doesn’t want to know. “Sweet and sour, I guess.”
“Buy those.”
“Fine, okay.” A woman turns onto the aisle, and John smiles a little awkwardly at her. She’s motherly and sensible-looking, and John hopes Sherlock won’t have any more awkward requests for her to overhear. He turns away as she starts browsing the mayonnaise, and asks, “Are we done? Can I go back to my shopping now?”
“Wait. I also need chocolate sauce, rubber gloves, prawns, frozen blueberries, and a meat tenderiser.”
“You--what could you possible do with all that? You’re lying in bed, you can’t even cook, and I’m not cooking prawns for you. Are you seriously going to eat chocolate sauce and gherkins?!”
“Of course not. I have already explained this, John. I have experiments to conduct.”
John heaves a very deep sigh. “Fine. Fine, I will buy all of that, and I will bring it home and you will no longer want it, and it will sit in the fridge and grow mould. Fine. Bye.” He hangs up before Sherlock has a chance to add anything to his list, and puts a jar of gherkins in his basket.
“Cravings?” John whirls around, and realizes the woman looking at the mayonnaise is talking to him.
“Sorry?” John asks, confused.
“Pardon me, I just overheard your conversation. Is it cravings?”
“Well, I guess so,” John says dubiously. “Of a sort.”
“I remember craving veal and rice pudding. You must be very patient, buying all those things for your wife. How far along is she? Is she on bed rest?”
John turns profoundly crimson. “Oh, it’s not--”
“Oh, don’t worry, dear. Girlfriend?” She smiles and reaches out to pat John’s arm. He turns, if possible, redder.
“No, I, no, just my, er, friend.”
Something about the way he says friend seems to tip her off to some imaginary shade of meaning. John winces.
“No baby?”
“Uh, no.”
Her face falls, as if the shrinking prospect of being able to coo over a doting father-to-be has spoiled her entire afternoon.
“Sorry?” John offers.
“What did he want the gherkins and chocolate sauce for, then?” she asks, rather accusingly.
“He’s a bit... weird,” John says delicately. “I assume he’s not actually eating them together.” I hope.
“Right. Well, have a nice day.” She moves away rather quickly, not even taking any mayonnaise.
John is left staring at the gherkins, wondering what just happened.
-
When John gets home, Sherlock is lying on his back holding a newspaper over his head, reading the personal advertisements. John knocks on the door jamb with the meat tenderiser. Sherlock flicks the edge of the paper aside and looks at him. “Well?”
“Got your prawns.”
“Excellent. In the freezer, please.”
“Next to the ears?” John asks, deadpan.
“Perfect.”
John goes to put the shopping away, and then comes back to lean in Sherlock’s doorway again. There is a long pause, while Sherlock affects not to wonder why John is looking at him, and John wonders if he should bother bringing this up.
“A woman in the shop assumed I was shopping for my wife’s pregnancy cravings.”
“I’m the wife in this scenario?” Sherlock asks, without looking away from his newspaper.
“Yeah. Really, it did look a bit weird having lube and chocolate sauce and a meat tenderiser in my basket all at once.”
“No harm in shopping for multiple occasions simultaneously. Everyone does it.”
“Right.”
“Did you get the crinkle cut gherkins?”
“Sherlock!”
“What?”
“You asked for sweet and sour!”
“So, I changed my mind. The experiment works better with crinkle cut.”
He might as well be my pregnant wife, John thinks, giving up on the entire situation.
-
Six months ago, Sherlock looked at John, took a breath, pointed a gun at a bomb, and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Sure, there was a pop and a lot of billowing black smoke, but the deafening sound of explosion never hit their ears. The red lights against their chests winked out, and Moriarty disappeared into the mist. There has been no word of him since.
John thinks it’s a bit funny that Sherlock should be so lastingly injured in the course of an ordinary case, when shooting a bomb left him unscathed.
-
Late one night, John is holed up in his bed with his computer, avoiding Sherlock, when a chat window pops up. He hadn’t been aware he had any kind of instant messaging program (he’s not very good with computers). He’s already turned off his phone so Sherlock can’t nag him via text, so it’s a bit of a disappointment to realize Sherlock has alternate methods of communication that involve neither the phone nor the impossibility of stairs.
Sherlock has, by this time, gone a little stir crazy. This is actually not much different from his normal fits of boredom or his mid-case mania, but his immobility is forcing him to depend on John for entertainment more than usual. So John is hiding from Sherlock, who last he checked was lying on the sofa shooting rubber bands at the ceiling and talking about paint pigments. John slipped out when Sherlock got to yellow ochre, and he’s not even sure whether Sherlock noticed.
Sherlock: John, are you avoiding me?
John bites his lip, feeling guilty, and annoyed at himself for feeling guilty. Then he really looks at the little blue chat window, and notices that there’s an icon next to Sherlock’s name with a little picture of a magnifying glass. There’s something strange about the idea of Sherlock instant messaging.
Sent at 11:03 on Saturday, the chat says, and John realises he’s let an awkward pause stretch out between their computer screens.
John: Just tired. In bed.
Sherlock will inevitably see through this lie, but it makes John feel better to deny the accusation.
John: Where did this thing come from?
Sherlock: What thing?
John: This message thing. Didn’t know it was here.
Sherlock: One ought to learn to use one’s tools properly.
John: Can’t be bothered, sorry.
Sent at 11:08 on Saturday
Sherlock: Close attention to paint pigments has been the deciding factor in several of my most interesting cases.
John: I’m sure it has.
John: And it’s really amazing how much you know about them.
Sherlock: Are you pacifying me, John?
John: No
John: I’ve stopped bothering.
Sent at 11:15 on Saturday
John, half asleep against his pillows, watches the words on the screen blend together.
Sherlock: John?
John rouses himself enough to answer.
John: I was just tired, really.
Sherlock: Finally got tired of me, did you?
John: Don’t be an idiot.
John: Of course not.
Sherlock: Go to sleep, John.
Sherlock: I will endeavour to be less of a bother to you.
Sherlock is offline. Messages you send will be delivered when Sherlock comes online.
John blinks at the screen. Did Sherlock just apologise? Through instant message? John wonders if he’s dreaming, then gives up, snaps the laptop shut, and burrows into his blankets.
-
When John gets up in the morning, he always wants a cup of tea first thing. It is a disappointment, therefore, to reach into the refrigerator and pull out a completely empty milk carton. On the side of the carton, covering up the nutrition facts, is a post-it note. BUY MILK, it says.
Sherlock doesn’t usually leave notes. If he wants something, he demands it as John is heading out the door, or sometimes just as he comes in with the shopping, or, as they have recently discovered, over the phone while John’s at the store.
“Sherlock!”
John shuts the refrigerator and steps out of the kitchen, looking for Sherlock. He finds him sitting on the sofa, laptop on his knees, headphones in his ears. He’s playing some kind of classical music so loudly that John recognises the tune, though he can’t name it. John looks from the pale purple post-it on the milk to Sherlock on the sofa, and gives up on the question.
The next day, however, John finds another purple post-it note. This one is stuck to the bathroom mirror, and says, You forgot to floss your teeth.
John thinks back to his bedtime routine the night before, and realises he did, in fact, fail to floss his teeth.
It’s not surprising that Sherlock knows this, of course, but it worries John a little that Sherlock has been reduced to making deductions about the state of John’s dental hygiene.
Sighing, John peels the note off the mirror, tucks it in his pocket, and pulls the dental floss out of the cupboard.
Two days later John comes home from work, flops down in his armchair, and opens his laptop. Stuck to the keyboard he finds another purple note. Delete your internet history. John’s stomach lurches suddenly leftwards. He crumples up the note, and takes a moment to be profoundly grateful that Sherlock is not in the room.
The notes continue, and grow more frequent, so that a few days later John starts finding green post-its and realises that Sherlock has managed to use up the purple ones.
The notes range from the demanding--Move your lettuce before it contaminates my experiments, on the front of the fridge, to the random--Heart, shopping, head in fridge, on the wall above the sofa, to the practical--Watch out for mould experiment, on the cupboard above said experiment, to the observational--You had lunch with Mike Stamford, on the kitchen table. John doesn’t mind much. Anything that keeps Sherlock occupied is welcome, especially something as innocuous as post-it notes. John has taken to collecting the notes, putting them in his pockets and then emptying his pockets into the drawer of his bedside table, which is quickly filling up with loose squares of paper. He isn’t entirely sure why he does this, since half the notes are incomprehensible and the other half are irrelevant once moved.
And then there are the notes that John...wonders about.
Most of these John has found stuck to the lid of his laptop, presumably because Sherlock knows he is certain to find them there. Unlike some of the notes, these are very obviously directed at John.
The blue jumper is less offensive to all of us who possess an aesthetic sensibility. This seems to be a suggestion, but when John reads it he bites his lip and wonders--did Sherlock make the suggestion because he thinks John’s other jumpers are ugly, or because he particularly likes the way John looks in the blue one?
7 pm. Mediocre television. Bring home Chinese.
Don’t go to work tomorrow.
-
Part 2
Fandom/Ships: BBC Sherlock, Sherlock/John
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 10,400
Disclaimer: I don't own Sherlock and this won't pay my bills.
Warnings: None
Summary: Sherlock texts, Sherlock leaves notes, Sherlock phones John, and he never really says anything.
Notes: Written for
cathedralcarver for holmestice . All the beta credit to the best beta that ever beta’d, miss_sabre . Also, this fit in one post originally but for some reason it says it's too large here. Sigh.John hears about the accident via text message.
He’s just getting off work at the surgery on a Wednesday afternoon, wondering whether he should pick up food on his way home, when his mobile vibrates. He pulls it out of his pocket, expecting it to be Sherlock.
It’s Lestrade instead.
Sherlock hurt. St. Bart’s.
“Bloody--little more information, please,” John mutters at his phone. He presses speed dial 4 for Lestrade, and listens to it ring out as he starts walking towards the end of the road to find a cab. When Lestrade fails to answer he rings Sherlock’s phone, but that goes straight to the voicemail. “Answer your bloody phones,” John says, startling a passing pizza delivery man. “Sorry.”
-
Concussion. He’s done something to his ankle,
not sure what. Should be all right.
L
The relief John feels when he read this message while trying to pay the cab driver is shocking in its intensity. He shoves too much money into the man’s hand and then stumbles back towards the doors to the hospital, clutching his phone and his wallet and trying not to drop everything.
-
John, I need the book that is sitting on the kitchen table.
SH
The book about London trees.
SH
I need to look up which species of trees are most common in Soho.
SH
For the case Lestrade is working on.
SH
John?
SH
Doctors ought not to leave their patients unattended.
SH
He has a broken ankle and a bruise the shape of Germany on his ribs. John knows it is the shape of Germany because he walked in to Sherlock’s bedroom one morning to see him lying on the bed, pulling his t-shirt up to get a look at the bruise. “It reminds me of something,” he said. “Get me the atlas.” John sighed, but he went to get the atlas.
“Definitely Germany,” Sherlock said, glancing between his own chest and the colourful map of Europe.
So now every time John sees anything about Germany in the newspaper or hears a pair of German tourists talking in the street, he thinks of the way Sherlock’s fingers looked shoving his shirt up to bare the skin of his ribs.
Every time John thinks of that, though, he thinks of the ugly purple bruise and the broken ankle and the way Sherlock looked at him while he was doped up on painkillers.
how do you know anything about Lestrade’s case?, John finally answers.
did you bribe someone to bring you the case file?
If you don’t bring me the book I need I will attempt to get it myself.
This will probably result in injury.
SH
first bribery and now blackmail. hang on, coming downstairs.
-
The evening after they let Sherlock come home from the hospital, John doesn’t want to leave him alone. He gets Sherlock upstairs and into bed, lying flat on his back in the middle of a tangle of blue cotton sheets. Sherlock is drowsy and loose-limbed, on a painkillers for his ankle. He sprawls across the bed and looks up at John, smiling lazily. “Hello, John,” Sherlock murmurs.
“Hey,” John says around the scratchiness in his throat. He sinks onto the floor with his back against the side of the bed, tilting his head back and taking deep breaths.
“John?”
“Hmm?”
Sherlock doesn’t answer. John turns his head, cheek against the sheets, to look up at Sherlock. Sherlock is looking at the ceiling.
“M’ foot hurts.”
John closes his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you going to do something ‘bout it, John?”
“Yeah. Go to sleep, Sherlock.”
“No. Have to solve the case.”
John snorts. “Yeah, good luck.”
“Jooohn.”
He feels Sherlock moving around behind him, and then Sherlock’s hand scrabbles over his shoulder and into his hair. John can feel the shape of Sherlock’s long thin fingers, and the way they pull lightly at his hair is pleasantly soothing. “What are you doing, Sherlock?”
Sherlock hums wordlessly and moves John’s head back and forth. John, eyes closed, tries not to think too hard about Sherlock’s fingernails.
Later, remembering the press and pull of Sherlock’s fingers, John is forced to attribute the action to the drugs.
-
I want to watch television.
SH
“So come in here and watch it!” John shouts in the direction of Sherlock’s open bedroom door.
Silence. John waits a moment to see if Sherlock is going to text back, and then calls, “I’m not coming in there to help you get up. You should learn to use the crutches.”
No.
SH
John turns the telly on, just loud enough that Sherlock can hear the noise but can’t make out any of the words.
After half an hour of palpable sulking emanating from Sherlock’s room, John goes to stand in his doorway and stare at him. Sherlock is sitting up in bed, folding a paper aeroplane.
“Were you going to throw that at me?” John asks, crossing his arms over his chest.
“You weren’t answering my texts. I didn’t have any carrier pigeons.”
“Do you normally send messages by carrier pigeon?”
“It is a not unheard of occurrence.”
“You could have just come out to the lounge and I wouldn’t have needed to answer your texts. Besides, I did answer them. Just not in text form. Sherlock, you can’t just sit here until your ankle heals. And I’m not going to be a convenient leaning post every time you want to go somewhere.”
Sherlock is wearing pyjamas, without even the usual extra layer of his dressing gown. His hair is a mess and he looks miserable. John watches as he finishes folding the paper plane, delicately flattening the edges. When he throws it, it hits John almost painfully in the centre of the chest. John catches it as it falls, and looks at it. It is more complicated than your average paper plane, and it’s beautifully folded, all crisp edges and even corners.
“What did you learn to fold paper airplanes for?”
“Boring lectures at school. The trick is to make them so they turn, and it looks like they came from a different part of the classroom.”
John laughs. “No one ever caught you while you were folding them?”
“Of course not.”
“Did you actually write a message on this? I’m not sure I want to unfold it.”
“I can always fold another.”
John unfolds the paper, flattening it against the door until he can read what it says. It’s written in blue ink, in what John thinks of as Sherlock’s real handwriting. When he writes anything he expects other people to read, he changes his handwriting, depending on what he wants the other person to know about him, who is going to read it, what character he’s playing. When he writes notes only for himself, or for John, his handwriting is a thin scrawl, sharp and jagged.
John’s never noticed before, the fact that Sherlock uses his real handwriting for him. Sherlock doesn’t have much occasion to leave John notes.
Despite the contents of the note, John looks at the curve of the f and feels warmth curling around his stomach.
Crutches are uncomfortable and undignified. I will sit here until my ankle heals and catch up on my reading. Feel free to deliver tea and biscuits at regular intervals.
John grins, and attempts to refold the plane.
"Do you really want to watch telly?"
"'Want' is perhaps not the most accurate term. Television sounds marginally less dull than any of my alternate options."
John takes pity on him, and helps him out to his chair in front of the telly.
-
John still doesn't know how it happened. Lestrade was on the other side of the building they were chasing a suspect around, and didn't see anything, so John can't ask him. John considers ringing Mycroft and asking if he knows, or can look up the CCTV footage of the area, but that seems a bit excessive. So John watches the way Sherlock moves around his injuries, and quietly wonders.
He begins to suspect Sherlock is embarrassed. He's rarely seen Sherlock embarrassed, and he's not really sure about the times he thinks he has. Sherlock's emotions are a maze behind a very high wall, and though sometimes John manages to poke holes in the wall, he only sees little, confusing pieces of what's behind it.
He knows it bothers Sherlock to need help with things. John is still working, so clearly Sherlock is capable of taking care of himself for a few hours, but movement is nevertheless a problem.
John wonders, briefly, what it means that Sherlock minds needing help, but prefers John's shoulder to the independence granted by the crutches.
-
Sherlock's injuries are a mystery, and they soon become a point of contention.
One day Sherlock is sitting on the sofa when John accosts him with a stethoscope. "You've bruised your ribs, I want to listen to your chest."
"My chest is fine."
"I want to make sure."
Sherlock sets aside the newspaper he's reading and glares up at John. "There is such a thing as being excessively careful, John."
"There is such a thing, yes. Come on, take off your shirt."
Sherlock's lips twitch. John feels his face flush a little, but he refuses to back down. Then Sherlock seems to consider his options, and chooses the path of least resistance. He pauses, clearly looking at the colour in John's cheeks, which no doubt makes them brighter, and then pulls his t-shirt over his head in one slow smooth movement.
John eyes the bruise, low on the left side of Sherlock's ribs. Sherlock is surprisingly muscular for how slim he seems and how little he eats. Until John saw him shirtless, he imagined Sherlock with ribs visible against his skin. Not that John's been picturing Sherlock naked, of course.
"Does it hurt much?" John asks, sitting down on the coffee table. He presses his thumbs to the edges of the bruise, fingertips resting against Sherlock's stomach. Sherlock winces. "When I press down?"
Sherlock takes a slightly shaky breath. "To the touch. If I turn too suddenly."
John slots the stethoscope into his ears and blows on the end to warm it. Sherlock watches the process, wrinkling his nose distastefully. "Would you rather have it cold?" John asks, seeing his face. Sherlock doesn't answer.
John sets the end of the stethoscope over Sherlock's heart and listens. After a moment he takes hold of Sherlock's wrist to look at his watch and count his heart rate. Sherlock lets him, arm moving limply to angle the watch face in the right direction. Once satisfied, John moves the stethoscope to the other side and repeats the process. Then he moves downwards, listening to the sounds of Sherlock's body underneath his Germany-shaped bruise.
Finally he sits back, satisfied everything is more or less as it should be. Well. Sherlock shouldn't be bruised, and his ankle shouldn't be broken, but you can't have everything.
"This bruise is such a weird shape, Sherlock. It would help if you--"
"No."
John hooks the stethoscope around his neck and frowns, looking at Sherlock, who crosses his arms over his chest. Maybe it's a defensive gesture. Maybe he's just cold. John's never known him to be self conscious.
"It's not--" John's not sure what he wants to ask, but Sherlock shakes his head.
"No."
John's eyes linger on the bruise for a moment, but he forces himself to turn away. "Fine. You'll be fine."
"Of course I will," Sherlock scoffs, but it sounds almost reassuring.
-
They’ve been doing the grocery shopping together since Sherlock’s injuries.
It’s not really as domestic as it sounds. It’s not as if Sherlock would go anywhere near the shopping, normally, except to demand periodically that John buy biscuits. Technically he doesn’t even go near the shopping now. But apparently he’s so bored that even talking to John on the phone while John’s at the supermarket is better than staring at the ceiling or trying to read one of the books sitting in the precarious pile next to his bed.
The first time it happens, John is in the cereal aisle. His phone starts playing some obnoxious pop song that Sherlock put on his phone in a fit of vengeful boredom. John doesn’t know how to change it.
The phone rings and John answers it as quickly as possible, embarrassed. “Hello?”
“John. Good. Don’t forget the milk.”
“Sherlock? I won’t forget the milk, it’s on the list.” He looks around at the colourful boxes of cereal and hopes no one has a sudden need for cornflakes. He hates people who talk on their mobile phones in shops.
“A shopping list, how quaint. Put pickled gherkins on it.”
“Pickled--what are those for?”
“Experiments.”
“You’re lying in bed, how are you going to run experiments on gherkins while lying in bed?”
“Trivial details,” Sherlock says, and John can just see him waving a dismissive hand.
“Fine.” John walks to the end of the of the aisle and starts looking for the gherkins. “Do you need anything else?”
“Lubricant.”
John chokes.
“Please don’t tell me what you want that for,” John mutters. He finds the gherkin shelves and starts trying to figure out which variety Sherlock wants. “What kind of gherkins?”
“What’s the selection?”
“Uh... cocktail gherkins, sweet and sour, crinkle cut...”
“Which are the biggest?”
John really, really doesn’t want to know. “Sweet and sour, I guess.”
“Buy those.”
“Fine, okay.” A woman turns onto the aisle, and John smiles a little awkwardly at her. She’s motherly and sensible-looking, and John hopes Sherlock won’t have any more awkward requests for her to overhear. He turns away as she starts browsing the mayonnaise, and asks, “Are we done? Can I go back to my shopping now?”
“Wait. I also need chocolate sauce, rubber gloves, prawns, frozen blueberries, and a meat tenderiser.”
“You--what could you possible do with all that? You’re lying in bed, you can’t even cook, and I’m not cooking prawns for you. Are you seriously going to eat chocolate sauce and gherkins?!”
“Of course not. I have already explained this, John. I have experiments to conduct.”
John heaves a very deep sigh. “Fine. Fine, I will buy all of that, and I will bring it home and you will no longer want it, and it will sit in the fridge and grow mould. Fine. Bye.” He hangs up before Sherlock has a chance to add anything to his list, and puts a jar of gherkins in his basket.
“Cravings?” John whirls around, and realizes the woman looking at the mayonnaise is talking to him.
“Sorry?” John asks, confused.
“Pardon me, I just overheard your conversation. Is it cravings?”
“Well, I guess so,” John says dubiously. “Of a sort.”
“I remember craving veal and rice pudding. You must be very patient, buying all those things for your wife. How far along is she? Is she on bed rest?”
John turns profoundly crimson. “Oh, it’s not--”
“Oh, don’t worry, dear. Girlfriend?” She smiles and reaches out to pat John’s arm. He turns, if possible, redder.
“No, I, no, just my, er, friend.”
Something about the way he says friend seems to tip her off to some imaginary shade of meaning. John winces.
“No baby?”
“Uh, no.”
Her face falls, as if the shrinking prospect of being able to coo over a doting father-to-be has spoiled her entire afternoon.
“Sorry?” John offers.
“What did he want the gherkins and chocolate sauce for, then?” she asks, rather accusingly.
“He’s a bit... weird,” John says delicately. “I assume he’s not actually eating them together.” I hope.
“Right. Well, have a nice day.” She moves away rather quickly, not even taking any mayonnaise.
John is left staring at the gherkins, wondering what just happened.
-
When John gets home, Sherlock is lying on his back holding a newspaper over his head, reading the personal advertisements. John knocks on the door jamb with the meat tenderiser. Sherlock flicks the edge of the paper aside and looks at him. “Well?”
“Got your prawns.”
“Excellent. In the freezer, please.”
“Next to the ears?” John asks, deadpan.
“Perfect.”
John goes to put the shopping away, and then comes back to lean in Sherlock’s doorway again. There is a long pause, while Sherlock affects not to wonder why John is looking at him, and John wonders if he should bother bringing this up.
“A woman in the shop assumed I was shopping for my wife’s pregnancy cravings.”
“I’m the wife in this scenario?” Sherlock asks, without looking away from his newspaper.
“Yeah. Really, it did look a bit weird having lube and chocolate sauce and a meat tenderiser in my basket all at once.”
“No harm in shopping for multiple occasions simultaneously. Everyone does it.”
“Right.”
“Did you get the crinkle cut gherkins?”
“Sherlock!”
“What?”
“You asked for sweet and sour!”
“So, I changed my mind. The experiment works better with crinkle cut.”
He might as well be my pregnant wife, John thinks, giving up on the entire situation.
-
Six months ago, Sherlock looked at John, took a breath, pointed a gun at a bomb, and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Sure, there was a pop and a lot of billowing black smoke, but the deafening sound of explosion never hit their ears. The red lights against their chests winked out, and Moriarty disappeared into the mist. There has been no word of him since.
John thinks it’s a bit funny that Sherlock should be so lastingly injured in the course of an ordinary case, when shooting a bomb left him unscathed.
-
Late one night, John is holed up in his bed with his computer, avoiding Sherlock, when a chat window pops up. He hadn’t been aware he had any kind of instant messaging program (he’s not very good with computers). He’s already turned off his phone so Sherlock can’t nag him via text, so it’s a bit of a disappointment to realize Sherlock has alternate methods of communication that involve neither the phone nor the impossibility of stairs.
Sherlock has, by this time, gone a little stir crazy. This is actually not much different from his normal fits of boredom or his mid-case mania, but his immobility is forcing him to depend on John for entertainment more than usual. So John is hiding from Sherlock, who last he checked was lying on the sofa shooting rubber bands at the ceiling and talking about paint pigments. John slipped out when Sherlock got to yellow ochre, and he’s not even sure whether Sherlock noticed.
Sherlock: John, are you avoiding me?
John bites his lip, feeling guilty, and annoyed at himself for feeling guilty. Then he really looks at the little blue chat window, and notices that there’s an icon next to Sherlock’s name with a little picture of a magnifying glass. There’s something strange about the idea of Sherlock instant messaging.
Sent at 11:03 on Saturday, the chat says, and John realises he’s let an awkward pause stretch out between their computer screens.
John: Just tired. In bed.
Sherlock will inevitably see through this lie, but it makes John feel better to deny the accusation.
John: Where did this thing come from?
Sherlock: What thing?
John: This message thing. Didn’t know it was here.
Sherlock: One ought to learn to use one’s tools properly.
John: Can’t be bothered, sorry.
Sent at 11:08 on Saturday
Sherlock: Close attention to paint pigments has been the deciding factor in several of my most interesting cases.
John: I’m sure it has.
John: And it’s really amazing how much you know about them.
Sherlock: Are you pacifying me, John?
John: No
John: I’ve stopped bothering.
Sent at 11:15 on Saturday
John, half asleep against his pillows, watches the words on the screen blend together.
Sherlock: John?
John rouses himself enough to answer.
John: I was just tired, really.
Sherlock: Finally got tired of me, did you?
John: Don’t be an idiot.
John: Of course not.
Sherlock: Go to sleep, John.
Sherlock: I will endeavour to be less of a bother to you.
Sherlock is offline. Messages you send will be delivered when Sherlock comes online.
John blinks at the screen. Did Sherlock just apologise? Through instant message? John wonders if he’s dreaming, then gives up, snaps the laptop shut, and burrows into his blankets.
-
When John gets up in the morning, he always wants a cup of tea first thing. It is a disappointment, therefore, to reach into the refrigerator and pull out a completely empty milk carton. On the side of the carton, covering up the nutrition facts, is a post-it note. BUY MILK, it says.
Sherlock doesn’t usually leave notes. If he wants something, he demands it as John is heading out the door, or sometimes just as he comes in with the shopping, or, as they have recently discovered, over the phone while John’s at the store.
“Sherlock!”
John shuts the refrigerator and steps out of the kitchen, looking for Sherlock. He finds him sitting on the sofa, laptop on his knees, headphones in his ears. He’s playing some kind of classical music so loudly that John recognises the tune, though he can’t name it. John looks from the pale purple post-it on the milk to Sherlock on the sofa, and gives up on the question.
The next day, however, John finds another purple post-it note. This one is stuck to the bathroom mirror, and says, You forgot to floss your teeth.
John thinks back to his bedtime routine the night before, and realises he did, in fact, fail to floss his teeth.
It’s not surprising that Sherlock knows this, of course, but it worries John a little that Sherlock has been reduced to making deductions about the state of John’s dental hygiene.
Sighing, John peels the note off the mirror, tucks it in his pocket, and pulls the dental floss out of the cupboard.
Two days later John comes home from work, flops down in his armchair, and opens his laptop. Stuck to the keyboard he finds another purple note. Delete your internet history. John’s stomach lurches suddenly leftwards. He crumples up the note, and takes a moment to be profoundly grateful that Sherlock is not in the room.
The notes continue, and grow more frequent, so that a few days later John starts finding green post-its and realises that Sherlock has managed to use up the purple ones.
The notes range from the demanding--Move your lettuce before it contaminates my experiments, on the front of the fridge, to the random--Heart, shopping, head in fridge, on the wall above the sofa, to the practical--Watch out for mould experiment, on the cupboard above said experiment, to the observational--You had lunch with Mike Stamford, on the kitchen table. John doesn’t mind much. Anything that keeps Sherlock occupied is welcome, especially something as innocuous as post-it notes. John has taken to collecting the notes, putting them in his pockets and then emptying his pockets into the drawer of his bedside table, which is quickly filling up with loose squares of paper. He isn’t entirely sure why he does this, since half the notes are incomprehensible and the other half are irrelevant once moved.
And then there are the notes that John...wonders about.
Most of these John has found stuck to the lid of his laptop, presumably because Sherlock knows he is certain to find them there. Unlike some of the notes, these are very obviously directed at John.
The blue jumper is less offensive to all of us who possess an aesthetic sensibility. This seems to be a suggestion, but when John reads it he bites his lip and wonders--did Sherlock make the suggestion because he thinks John’s other jumpers are ugly, or because he particularly likes the way John looks in the blue one?
7 pm. Mediocre television. Bring home Chinese.
Don’t go to work tomorrow.
-
Part 2