Sherlock: A New Kind of Communication 2/2
Jul. 1st, 2011 10:49 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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tartanficsTitle: 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. Part one is here.
John stumbles down the stairs one morning, feeling bleary, and finds Sherlock sitting on the sofa, staring intently at the doorway. He could be staring at John, since John is standing in the doorway, but John’s not certain Sherlock’s really seeing him.
“Huh?” John says, too sleepy to be coherent but too confused to be silent.
Sherlock’s eyes abruptly focus. “You’re going to the surgery today,” he says. Something about John’s appearance has obviously tipped him off to this fact, and he doesn’t sound pleased.
John rubs at the corners of his eyes. “Are we about to have an argument?”
“No.”
“Can I make tea first?”
“If you must.” John nods, and, yawning, shuffles into the kitchen. He makes their tea mechanically, relying on muscle memory not to pour boiling water over his hands. Considering toast he prods at the bread, but finds a post-it note on it: Past the date. Do not bin. So much for that idea.
He hides in the kitchen until the tea is finished steeping, despite the worrying silence emanating from the other room. The kitchen is slightly less of a horrible mess than usual, since Sherlock hasn’t been able to move around it in quite so much of a human tornado as he is wont to do. John pulls a couple more post-it notes off various surfaces, stuffing them into the pocket of his dressing gown, and stacks several plates in the sink, all of which have crumbs and vague hints of jam glued to them. John hopes Sherlock hasn’t been subsisting on nothing but toast and jam.
By the time the tea is ready the kitchen looks positively tidy, though John knows this is never a lasting state. He takes a deep breath and carries the two mugs of tea out to Sherlock. (He always makes two, now.)
Sherlock is sitting in exactly the same position John left him, slumped forward and gazing vacantly toward the door. John sets Sherlock’s mug on the coffee table and nudges his shoulder. “What’s up?”
John sinks down onto the sofa next to Sherlock. He’s already mostly awake by the time he takes his first sip of tea, but the warm liquid seems to clear not only the passage down his throat but the way up to his brain as well.
“I would prefer it if you did not leave the flat today,” Sherlock says, picking up his tea and staring into it.
“Why? I’m not staying home just to keep you entertained.” John sips at his tea and attempts to flatten his hair. He always feels strange sharing the sofa with Sherlock. Usually they’re either both sitting in their chairs by the telly, or Sherlock is splayed out over the entire sofa, or Sherlock’s not home and John has made a tentative venture into the pleasant squashiness of the sofa. They’re never both there at once. John tries to make himself comfortable and not slide towards the dip in the centre, where Sherlock is.
“It would simply be better if you did not go out today.” Sherlock makes an attempt to shove his fingers down the side of his cast and scratch, and then he gives up the effort and runs his hand through his hair. John blinks at him, trying to work out the meaning hiding in the words.
“Sherlock, if I don’t work we’ll have no money at all, since you can’t work. Somebody’s got to pay for all the random food you keep telling me to buy.” He gets up, prepared to dismiss the idea of staying home, when Sherlock speaks again.
“In the interest of my... peace of mind. Do not go to work.”
John pauses, standing in the small space between the sofa and the coffee table, looking down at the top of Sherlock’s head. Is he... what is he asking? Does he want...? No, of course not. Just bored. “Right, sorry, patients to see. I’m going to go get dressed.” And he takes his mug of tea, steps around the coffee table, and goes upstairs.
-
The morning passes in a blur of colds, flus, and minor aches and pains. John enjoys the monotony of examination, diagnosis, prescription, harmless chat, though he, like Sherlock, is beginning to feel impatient for more excitement to hold the balance. At lunchtime he eats a sandwich at his desk and reads the paper.
He is just cleaning up his crumbs and getting ready to go back to work when his mobile vibrates.
John?
SH
yes?
No answer. John puts his phone away and goes back to work.
At half past three John shows a patient (woman, 32, sore throat) out of his office, and sees Sarah talking to a man by the front desk. Nothing strange about that, really. She is obviously explaining a prescription to him. It’s not as if John is jealous. They’ve been cheerfully just friends for months now, a slow and gradual lapse that neither really minded or commented on. Anyway, John--well, he has other things on his mind.
That’s not what catches John’s attention. Neither is it the man’s appearance--a fraction taller than Sarah, unremarkable brown hair, skin on the pale side (not as pale as Sherlock), slender, wearing a blue t-shirt and grey trousers. He glances around, apparently just looking at the decorations on the walls, the other patients in the waiting room. It’s not the way he looks or the way he’s talking to Sarah that catches John’s eye. John doesn’t know why he feels cold, alert, and just a little guilty.
But he does.
He tells Patty at the front desk that he needs a quick break, and goes into his office, locking the door behind him. Working on instinct, he scans the room, then sits down behind his desk and takes out his mobile.
INBOX
John?
SH
John stares at his phone’s screen, trying to decipher what answer Sherlock was looking for. His mind jumps from the text on screen to Sherlock’s request this morning--”In the interest of my peace of mind, don’t go to work.” Maybe it wasn’t Sherlock’s boredom talking. Maybe it wasn’t Sherlock wanting... something. Maybe there really is something disturbing Sherlock’s peace of mind.
John chews on his lip for a while, knowing the time is ticking down until he has to let the next patient in. Finally he comes to a decision, and rings Lestrade.
“It’s, um, it’s John.”
“Everything all right? Sherlock’s not done anything that will involve paperwork, has he?” This has become a bit of a running joke between John and Lestrade, who have worked out a conversational routine over the months, which mostly revolves around commiserating about Sherlock.
“No, I don’t think so.” John taps his fingers against his desk, working out exactly what he wants to ask. “The day Sherlock broke his ankle--tell me again what happened?”
“You read the report already, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, it’s got a bit fuzzy. Tell me again? Sorry, you’ve probably got cases on, but--”
“No, fine. It started with a robbery of an old bookshop. Seemed like a fairly amateur sort of thing--smash open the till, grab the money--but we couldn’t figure out how they got into the building. No camera footage, no evidence of tampering with camera footage, nothing. So I phoned Sherlock.”
“Did he figure it out?”
“Well, you know how he is. I suppose he did, but he never really said. Just saw the scene, got this look on his face, and rushed off. About an hour and a half hour later he sent a text with an address, no other info. And you know how it is--Sherlock tells you to be somewhere, you bring a team and some medics. Just to be on the safe side.”
John grins--he does know.
“So we got to the scene, and I saw Sherlock chasing some kid--19 or 20, looked pretty scruffy. But they were too far ahead for me to catch up, and by the time I got there Sherlock was lying in an alley with a concussion and a broken ankle, and the kid was gone. Dunno how it could have happened, Sherlock was a lot bigger. Maybe he just tripped, and was too embarrassed about it to say so.”
“I think someone else did it,” John says, voice low. “Not the kid, someone else.” He begins gathering up his belongings, preparing to go home for the day, though he’s not due to get off work until five. “Look, I hate to ask this of you, but could you give me a lift home? I don’t think I should take the tube, and I don’t exactly have a lot of trust in cabbies.”
Lestrade laughs. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t. But really, is this something I should know about? I’ll give you the lift, I’d just rather know what I’m getting into.”
“You’ll have to talk to Sherlock. I’ve just got a hunch, I don’t really know anything.”
“Right. Just let me know eventually, all right? That case is still open. Sherlock won’t give a proper report.”
“I’ll try,” John promises. He’s determined to get some kind of answer out of Sherlock.
-
Lestrade comes into the surgery to find John, who makes his excuses to Sarah (she’s got used to excuses by now). John smiles at Lestrade when he sees him. John’s not worried, or tense the way he usually is in dangerous situations. He is simply very aware that something is up, and is taking precautions accordingly.
Lestrade is driving a police car, which seems uncomfortably conspicuous to John, but also a little more secure. They get in and Lestrade doesn’t ask any questions until he starts up the car and pulls out into traffic.
“Sherlock up to something dangerous?”
John considers this. Life with Sherlock is always dangerous, in at least one of several ways. “I don’t think Sherlock is up to much of anything. Except getting in to my internet history.”
“Spying on your porn viewing habits?” Lestrade asks, with a casual grin.
John’s ears turn pink. It’s not that he’s embarrassed or ashamed of watching porn. It’s just been a long time since he’s had the kind of friends or acquaintances he jokes about it with. John doubts Sherlock watches porn, or would be inclined to joke about it if he did. He pulled a disgusted but amused face the one time he found a dirty magazine under John’s bed. That time, John’s whole face had turned profoundly red.
“No, there’s nothing wrong with Sherlock. Besides a touch of cabin fever. I am a bit worried, though,” John admits.
“Isn’t that normal? Worrying about Sherlock?”
“I don’t usually worry because he’s worried.”
“What’s he worried about?”
John shakes his head, wondering. “Me, I think.”
Lestrade opens his mouth and closes it again. “Look, John, I don’t want to interfere.”
“Nobody says that unless they’re about to, do they?” John asks, grinning.
“Hah! No, I suppose not. I just feel like I should say--I’ve never seen Sherlock worry about anyone. Are you sure he--”
“He asked me not to go to work this morning. For the sake of his peace of mind.”
Lestrade changes lanes in traffic and blinks out the windshield. “That wasn’t just a ploy?”
“No. I’ve seen Sherlock worried before.”
“About you?”
“Well, yeah.”
There’s a long silent pause, until a few minutes later they turn onto Baker Street and pull up in front of 221B. John unbuckles his seat belt and pauses, glancing at Lestrade.
“I’m not surprised, I suppose,” Lestrade says. “That Sherlock worries about you. I mean, you’re a bit special, aren’t you?”
John thinks about this for a long moment, and finds he can’t actually argue with the idea. John is special. He is the only person about whom someone could say to Sherlock, “I met a friend of yours,” and Sherlock would not be confused and suspicious. He leaves John notes (not always civil ones), sends John ridiculous instant messages, makes John buy ridiculous food, and folds John paper aeroplanes. Most of the time when he’s talking to John he just wants something, like tea or transportation, but there’s no denying that their relationship is somehow different than Sherlock’s relationships with other people.
John’s just not sure how different.
He thanks Lestrade, gets out of the police car, and goes inside. He half expects to find Sherlock in the middle of something--shooting walls, or possibly people, or blowing things up. Instead he finds Sherlock leaning against the window frame, balanced on his good foot, looking out. Sherlock has clearly just watched John get out of the police car, and he’s probably watching Lestrade drive away as John comes in and glances around the room. “Thank you, John,” Sherlock says, still looking out the window.
“Hm?” John asks, taking off his coat and hanging it on the back of the door.
“You asked Lestrade for a lift? I assume you haven’t been solving cases without me.”
“Hardly,” John mutters, sitting down in his chair and looking at Sherlock’s profile against the brightness of the window.
“But you’re early. You were supposed to be at the surgery until five o’clock.”
“Yeah.”
Sherlock turns toward him, though his features are hard to make out with bright daylight behind him. “What changed your mind?”
“You’ve been expecting something to happen to me, haven’t you?” John asks, question for question. “That’s why you told me not to go to work.That’s why you keep calling or texting when I’m out. You’re checking up on me.”
“You did go to work. Something tipped you off, and you came home. What was it?”
“Man in the surgery. Nothing really wrong about him; he just felt off. That’s when I realized you weren’t just asking because you’re bored.”
Sherlock looks enormously pleased, grinning, and looking like he wants to bound across the room, except that his ankle prevents him. “Excellent instincts, John, always trust your instincts.”
John smiles faintly, but he’s too busy being mildly irritated that Sherlock hasn’t told him what’s going on to properly enjoy the compliment.
It’s one of those cloudy days that seem sunny anyway, the clouds too thin to block the light but too thick to show any blue. The flat is lit only by the daylight, easily bright enough but not cosy. John looks around for Sherlock’s crutches, and sees them leaning against the wall in the corner by the door. He blinks at Sherlock, standing across the room by the window, and hopes he hasn’t been straining his ankle. It’s probably a vain hope, honestly, and John fights down the urge to mention it, nag Sherlock into taking better care of himself. That’s not the conversation they are having.
John crosses his legs, folds his arms across his chest, and looks at Sherlock. He appears to be vibrating slightly, his thoughts and his pent-up energy racing in spirals and webs under his skin. Weeks of being cooped up inside, and, as John is coming to realize, weeks of being worried. Irritated as John is, he can’t help but feel both sick and happy that Sherlock has been worrying about him.
“Sherlock, how did you break your ankle?” John asks, finally.
Sherlock steps forward onto his good foot, and then clearly remembers the bad one stuck behind him, and looks at the ceiling, a frown faintly visible on his chin. He takes a deep breath, rests one hand on his hip, and turns to John.
For all the ways Sherlock talks to John--texts, instant messages, phone calls, paper planes, post-it notes--none is so eloquent as the expression now on his face. The vaguely tilted eyebrow, the pinched mouth and set jaw, God, even his hair. Sherlock is fed up, and inexpressibly strange even to himself, and he doesn’t just need John’s help, he wants it.
“John.”
John pushes himself slowly out of his chair, and steps across the room to stand in front of Sherlock, a little too far into his personal space for anyone normal, but the normal distance for Sherlock. John takes Sherlock’s arm and pulls it around his shoulders, and helps Sherlock hop over to the sofa. He takes hold of Sherlock’s waist to lower him onto the sofa, and is slow to let go once he’s there. Sherlock makes a vague irritable noise, and John pulls back to sit down on the coffee table and look at him. He sits down on a stack of newspapers (should know to check all flat surfaces first, by now), and has to get up again to move them.
Finally settled, John looks at Sherlock and contemplates the day of the accident, and the time since.
“Shall I try making some deductions?” John asks.
Sherlock gestures, like, well, you can try, but he doesn’t actually protest.
“It was someone else’s fault, your ankle. Not the kid you were chasing, someone else was there. Someone you think you should have been able to beat in a fight, which is why you don’t want to talk about it. Someone you’re worried is going to try to hurt me, next.” John always feels like an impostor when he makes deductions, like someone trying to sound knowledgeable in front of an expert. He’s pretty sure he’s right about these, though, and even if they’re not such complicated deductions like pink suitcases or green ladders, or the turn-ups on someone’s jeans, he’s a bit pleased about it.
Sherlock begins to smile, and John knows what kind of smile it is. It’s a bit infuriating, but it’s also so Sherlock that John can’t be bothered much. This is Sherlock’s version of, “oh, look at the adorable little girl wearing her mother’s shoes.”
“Very good, John. Those are barely deductions at all, but very good. You’ve only missed all the obvious things.”
John actually grins at him.
“It was Moriarty, wasn’t it?”
Sherlock’s face twists, mildly horrified and a bit shocked.
John takes a moment to feel smug, and then he punches Sherlock on the arm. “You didn’t tell me, you complete arse.” He is taken with the familiar urge to strangle Sherlock. His fingers twitch, and then he digs them into Sherlock’s arm.
They touch each other a lot. Sherlock’s injured and John’s a doctor, so there’s a good reason for that right now, but if he touched a patient in the surgery the way he touches Sherlock he’d probably be sued. Negotiating the intertwining of the doctor-patient and colleague-flatmate-friend relationships is difficult for John. His instincts as a doctor get mixed up with his instincts as a friend, as someone who always, always wants Sherlock to be okay. So when he touches Sherlock, sometimes it’s a measuring, diagnosing evaluation, and sometimes it’s something less clear-cut that John doesn’t really know how to think about, and sometimes it’s both, which is the most confusing of all.
And no matter how it happens, John likes touching Sherlock.
Sherlock lets him. That’s the way touch goes, with Sherlock. He moves into your personal space like it doesn’t matter how far apart you are as long as you’re close enough to make deductions, but he doesn’t touch people. He doesn’t let many people touch him, but he sits still while John reaches into his inside jacket pocket for his phone (on his orders), or while John examines his chest (on John’s insistence).
This is not how he reacts to John’s fingernails in his arm.
This time, he touches back. He reaches out and rests his knuckles lightly against John’s knee. Not a grip, barely a touch, but very definitely there, very much a reciprocation. Of something, anyway.
“You always do this with Moriarty,” John says. “You go off on your own, and then I wind up with a bomb strapped to my chest because you decide to offer him secret government information.”
“Your kidnapping was not, strictly speaking, my fault,” Sherlock answers, sounding sulky.
“You still might have told me what you were planning to do.”
“You would have tried to stop me.”
“Well, I would have been right. He didn’t want the Bruce-Partington plans anyway, did he? Besides, when has anyone ever managed to stop you doing anything?”
Sherlock sniffs. “You probably could have.”
John blinks, and clears his throat around a jumble of completely nonsense words. He decides, in a slightly panicked moment, to switch subjects. “So Moriarty was there. Did he trip you, or what? How did you bruise your chest?”
Sherlock’s eyes drift, downward across John’s chest and onto his own fingers on John’s knee. “It was a message, I suppose. He ought to have written a note on my cast, that would have been suitably childish.”
“A message for what? Who?”
“For me, for you, it doesn’t matter.”
“If it was for me it didn’t work, since you never told me about it.”
Sherlock gives him a quelling look. “He used snipers again, meant to keep me from fighting back. That trick’s getting a bit old. Do I really need to continue?”
“What was the point? The message.”
“Wouldn’t you rather foil his plans by not knowing?”
“Sherlock, that isn’t the bloody point.” John breaks away, getting off the table and out of Sherlock’s space, stepping towards the door. “I’m not going to just follow you around blindly if you never tell me anything. You know why Moriarty hurt you, so there’s no point in not telling me.” He clenches his hands into fist against his hips and glares. “You’ve been leaving me messages for weeks, there’s no reason you couldn’t have thrown this one in with the lot.”
“It isn’t that simple.”
“Are you implying you think I wouldn’t understand it?” John asks, practically shouting. He isn’t even sure why he’s so angry, but the urge to touch Sherlock, to shake some sense into him, to shake him into seeing the world in a way John understands, is overwhelming.
“Don’t be stupid, John,” Sherlock says, mouth pinched tight against his teeth, fingers digging into the couch cushions.
“Are you seriously telling me I’m being stupid for asking if you think I’m stupid?”
Sherlock’s mouth twitches, not like he’s suppressing laughter, but like he’s suppressing the need to say something cutting. “This is a ridiculous argument; you’re going in circles.”
“So tell me what the message was!”
Sherlock stands, his balance slightly wobbly. “He threatened you. That was his message. He hurt me so we’d know he could hurt you.”
John backs away. His back thuds into the door jamb, and he’s thankful for the solid wall grounding him, keeping him from doing anything he might regret. “You didn’t think I should know that?” His voice is a cold, flat blank, and he’s looking at Sherlock but barely seeing him.
“John.”
“You let me go to work, you let me go shopping. You let me go all over London, and you never told me I was in danger. Were you trying to get me killed?”
Sherlock doesn’t answer, and John’s too caught in the moment to have any idea why.
“I’m going to bed,” John says shortly. “Maybe I’ll talk to you in the morning.”
He turns away and climbs the stairs. When he gets to his room he paces, trying to work off some of his pent-up anger, still too physical for him to calm down. He digs his fingers into his own thigh, needing something cathartic, something better than this back and forth across the floor.
Eventually he sits down on the bed, taking deep breaths. It’s only four-thirty in the afternoon, far too early to go to sleep, but John isn’t hungry and his computer is sitting on the table in the lounge. There’s no way he’s going downstairs again (too much like a surrender, too likely to end badly), and there’s nothing else to do, so he pulls off his shoes, strips off the rest of his clothes down to his underwear, and curls up in bed.
He’s surprised when the feeling of the sheets against his skin calms him down, when his bed is so comfortable he begins to feel drowsy.
He will be surprised, when he thinks about it later, that he falls asleep and does not dream of watery light, or pale skin.
-
John wakes again in darkness. He rolls over and takes several deep breaths, lying in his bed under the window and watching the amber sweep of headlights across the walls. He feels sweaty and nervous, not like waking from a bad dream but like waking from a deep sleep and remembering today is the day of a long-hoped-for date.
He bites his lip, stretches his toes out through the sheets, and wishes he wouldn’t keep thinking about this in those terms. Certainly not while he’s still angry.
His anger has changed in the night, less rage now and more hurt. The desire to pummel Sherlock has faded, but John still wants to push him against a wall and make him see he can’t do the things he does. John lets Sherlock get away with a lot, but he won’t let him get away with this.
Sherlock lies to everyone--pretends to be normal, pretends to be innocent, pretends to be helpful, pretends not to care. To John, he lies by omission.
He doesn’t bother to mention things.
John kicks the blankets away and looks at the digital clock on his bedside table. 2:12 AM. He’s been asleep almost ten hours, and he’s perfectly awake now, alert and ready to make something happen. He gets up, puts on a clean t-shirt, and goes downstairs.
Sherlock is sitting in his armchair. The telly is on, some late-night rubbish programme, muted. Sherlock is clearly still wearing his pyjamas, as he has been ever since the accident, but he’s put his coat on over everything and is practically curled up inside it, as though huddling for warmth. It’s not cold--John, in shirt and pants, is perfectly warm. John takes a moment to think about how Sherlock wouldn’t be so cold all the time if he were less skinny, but he shakes off the thought.
John leans in the doorway, looking at Sherlock.
He remembers, every time he starts over-analysing himself, that he has a broad capacity to willfully overlook things. He was completely unaware that Sherlock was preoccupied with something until Sherlock had started telling him not to go to work. Even then, he had overlooked the depth of Sherlock’s worry. In the midst of his anger, he’d barely seen Sherlock, been oblivious to his reactions.
Now he’s looking, there’s nothing to see. Sherlock’s face is a blank.
“Hey,” John says, soft enough for two AM but loud enough to catch Sherlock’s attention. Theoretically. Sherlock doesn’t respond.
“Just going to ignore me?” John asks, crossing his arms.
“You said ‘in the morning’. I’ve got at least four hours before I’m obliged to speak to you.” He glances at John and glances away, dismissive, and his voice is sharp.
“I’m surprised you feel obliged to talk to me at all.”
“Path of least resistance,” Sherlock says distastefully.
“You usually like resistance,” John points out. “It makes more bother for other people. Anyway, it’s morning for me. I’ve been asleep since half past four.”
Sherlock raises one eyebrow, but nothing else moves. “I know you believe I’m nocturnal, but even I know it is the middle of the night. Go back to bed; you clearly have nothing better to do with your time. Waste away, lying in bed, sleeping.”
“Shut up, Sherlock,” John says, more forcefully than he usually would. He crosses the room and sits down in a chair at the table behind Sherlock, who is forced to turn around to face him. Out the window the street is dim and empty.
“Do you know why it bothers me when you lie?” John asks, a little sharply.
“I never lied,” Sherlock answers, affronted.
“Oh, that right there,” John snaps. “That’s what bothers me. Damn it, Sherlock, did no one ever explain the concept of a lie of omission to you?”
Sherlock stares back at him, impassive, clearly deducing. “No, if I lied--and it doesn’t matter to you whether or not I did, only that you believe I did--if I lied, it bothers you because you trust me. You trust me despite your better judgment, and it bothers you when I disappoint your trust. Not because I’ve disappointed you, but because you’re disappointed in yourself for your irrational trust. Which is ridiculous, because people lie all the time. People lie about everything from whether they remembered to buy milk to whether they are faithful to their spouses. The vast majority of those lies have nothing to do with trust.”
“None of that was what I was going to say,” John points out.
“Then you are also lying by omission.” John tucks that assertion into the back of his mind and tries not to prod it. “What, John?” Sherlock continues. “Why am I obligated to tell you everything?”
“It’s not that. You’re allowed to have some secrets, obviously. Everyone does. You don’t have to tell me everything, you just have to tell me when it’s about me. Communication, all right?”
“We communicate all the time, in case you haven’t noticed.”
John picks Sherlock’s phone off the table and waves it at him. “Through text, sure. Through post-it notes. Doesn’t count.”
“It’s perfectly possible to sum things up in 140 characters. Most people say far too much, when what they mean is really very simple.”
John sets Sherlock’s phone down again, very softly. “Fine. Here’s what I mean: You put me in danger because you didn’t tell me something important. You can’t do that.”
“You see?” Sherlock says. “That was less than 140 characters.”
John glares. “I’m not done. You can’t do that unless you have an extremely good reason which you think--after lengthy consideration--I would approve. If you had a reason like that, I think you should tell me about it now.”
“John, you would have been in danger whether you knew about it or not.”
“You just decided I shouldn’t go to work.”
“What?”
This has been bothering John, and now he has the opportunity to ask it. “You let me go to work before. Yesterday you asked me to stay home. What changed?”
“It’s been too long. No doubt that was his intention--to make us wait, to prolong the anticipation and thus increase the fear.”
“And you fell for it?”
“No, of course not. I simply trusted my instincts that something would happen today.”
John scoffs, suspecting Sherlock’s “instincts” were mostly influenced by his impatience. “Fine. But how could you know for sure he wouldn’t do something, before? If you were expecting him to wait, why couldn’t he have known that, and done the opposite? No matter how you spin it, Sherlock, you put me in danger.”
He watches Sherlock, who tucks his coat back around himself and then looks up at John. “You’ve not been unprotected.”
“So you had Mycroft watching me?”
Sherlock waves a dismissive hand. “Oh, he does that anyway.”
“You ever notice your brother’s a creep?” John mutters, suppressing a strangled noise.
“Frequently. But his voyeuristic tendencies are occasionally useful. He has dealt with the man you saw yesterday already.”
“So, what, has he got somebody trailing me ready to shoot my attackers?”
Sherlock wrinkles his nose. “I prefer not to ask questions. I let Mycroft make the arrangements, and take my own measures in the meantime.”
"Your own measures? You can't leave the flat, what have you--Hang on, is that why you keep texting me about nothing, and phoning while I’m shopping? Are you checking up on me?”
Sherlock eyes John, possibly checking the sincerity of the question. “You didn’t really think I had a use for gherkins, prawns, and a meat tenderiser, did you?”
“So you had me waste money buying ridiculous things, just so you could make sure I wasn’t dead?”
“It wasn’t a waste. Well, the meat tenderiser, perhaps, but I’m sure it will come in handy somehow. The prawns are still in the freezer, we can eat them for dinner."
John thinks back to the other things Sherlock made him buy, and remembers the lubricant. He wonders if Sherlock expects that to come in handy. Sherlock watches him expectantly, no doubt aware that he is not finished with this conversation, and John pushes the thought to the back of his mind. He scrubs his hands over his face, and rests his elbows on the table. "Look," he says, "it's Moriarty, isn't it? As criminals go, he's sort of special. For us. I mean, most cases are your business, and I just tag along." Sherlock looks almost as if he wants to protest this assessment, but the expression on John's face seems to quiet him. "But Moriarty has kidnapped me, and he's hurt you, and he's tried to blow us both up. And we--well, we agreed to die rather than let him escape, didn't we? So he's our business. And we should deal with him together."
Sherlock watches John contemplatively. It's almost the same expression he has when he's deducing--fascinated, urgent--but softer. John bites his lip, wondering if he's given something away he shouldn't, if he's said more than he means, or means more than he's aware of.
"I was trying to protect you," Sherlock says.
"Christ. Please don't. I appreciate it, but--God, I want to strangle you." And he does. He feels that physical urgency in the tips of his fingers again, the desire to shake Sherlock until Sherlock understands. The knowledge that trying to change Sherlock’s mind is nearly always futile only increases the frustration, but John also knows that Sherlock would not be Sherlock if he saw things as John does.
Sherlock smiles, a faint, impish smile, and John....
John still wants to grab Sherlock by the shoulders, to leave marks there, but not to make him see. John wants, with an urgency he's never recognized before, to press himself against Sherlock, less angry and violent, and more instinctive. The touch of violence is still there, but it's more...more passion, than violence. John swallows painfully. "You must have known not telling me I was in danger wasn't going to protect me," he says.
“You may not believe this, John, but I am not always rational,” Sherlock says.
“Those post-it notes were pretty mad, yeah."
John wants to stick his hands into Sherlock's hair and press his palms against Sherlock's back. He knew Sherlock had a possessive, protective streak, an Are you all right? streak, but the times when it is apparent are few and far between. He's never seen Sherlock admit it. He pines, momentarily, for their post-it note communication, when it was easier to understand what Sherlock was saying, or to ignore it if he didn't understand.
“John.”
John hears the dark tone in Sherlock’s voice, almost a warning, mostly a wanting. It’s strange and familiar at the same time, a mixture of the voice Sherlock uses when he’s arguing with John over something stupid like the telly, fond and slightly frustrated, and a more serious voice. More like the voice Sherlock used to ask, “Are you all right?”
John's not all right. He's a bit panicked and very frustrated and a little hopeful. The man who can shoot a serial killer through a window and then go out for Chinese can't have a simple conversation with his flatmate.
"What?" John asks, hoarse.
"I'm sorry."
It's the apology that tips hope into near certainty. Sherlock never apologises. John stands, pushing his chair back, and steps forward to lean against the arm of Sherlock’s chair.
"Sherlock, will you let me--?"
Sherlock narrows his eyes, and then reaches out to take hold of John’s hip and pull him in. Looming over Sherlock is strange. Sherlock’s fingers slip upwards, underneath John’s shirt, rubbing against the smooth skin just above the waistband of John’s pants. John takes a deep breath, and slides his hand against the back of Sherlock’s neck, just brushing his hair, just creeping under his collar.
"I seduced you with post-it notes," Sherlock mutters, looking up at him, a bit amused, a bit wondering.
John snorts. "No, really. The post-it notes have got to go.” He grins and leans in.
“Hmm,” Sherlock hums, mouth barely an inch away from John’s, their breath mixing together, warm.
John lurches across the last inch, digging his fingertips into Sherlock's shoulder, pressing the knuckles of his other hand across Sherlock's collarbone. Their lips slide together and John's teeth catch, and then Sherlock's tongue creeps forward and curls against John's upper lip, and it is all just as tactile as John has ever wanted. Just as good as strangulation or pummeling. Much better than beating sense into Sherlock is the attempt to kiss the sense out of him. John leans forward, bracing his weight on Sherlock's shoulders, letting Sherlock hold him up.
After the post-it notes, the texts, the instant messages, the phone calls, touch is a new kind of communication. More subjective, maybe, but more real. John's breath stutters against Sherlock's mouth, and says everything.
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. Part one is here.John stumbles down the stairs one morning, feeling bleary, and finds Sherlock sitting on the sofa, staring intently at the doorway. He could be staring at John, since John is standing in the doorway, but John’s not certain Sherlock’s really seeing him.
“Huh?” John says, too sleepy to be coherent but too confused to be silent.
Sherlock’s eyes abruptly focus. “You’re going to the surgery today,” he says. Something about John’s appearance has obviously tipped him off to this fact, and he doesn’t sound pleased.
John rubs at the corners of his eyes. “Are we about to have an argument?”
“No.”
“Can I make tea first?”
“If you must.” John nods, and, yawning, shuffles into the kitchen. He makes their tea mechanically, relying on muscle memory not to pour boiling water over his hands. Considering toast he prods at the bread, but finds a post-it note on it: Past the date. Do not bin. So much for that idea.
He hides in the kitchen until the tea is finished steeping, despite the worrying silence emanating from the other room. The kitchen is slightly less of a horrible mess than usual, since Sherlock hasn’t been able to move around it in quite so much of a human tornado as he is wont to do. John pulls a couple more post-it notes off various surfaces, stuffing them into the pocket of his dressing gown, and stacks several plates in the sink, all of which have crumbs and vague hints of jam glued to them. John hopes Sherlock hasn’t been subsisting on nothing but toast and jam.
By the time the tea is ready the kitchen looks positively tidy, though John knows this is never a lasting state. He takes a deep breath and carries the two mugs of tea out to Sherlock. (He always makes two, now.)
Sherlock is sitting in exactly the same position John left him, slumped forward and gazing vacantly toward the door. John sets Sherlock’s mug on the coffee table and nudges his shoulder. “What’s up?”
John sinks down onto the sofa next to Sherlock. He’s already mostly awake by the time he takes his first sip of tea, but the warm liquid seems to clear not only the passage down his throat but the way up to his brain as well.
“I would prefer it if you did not leave the flat today,” Sherlock says, picking up his tea and staring into it.
“Why? I’m not staying home just to keep you entertained.” John sips at his tea and attempts to flatten his hair. He always feels strange sharing the sofa with Sherlock. Usually they’re either both sitting in their chairs by the telly, or Sherlock is splayed out over the entire sofa, or Sherlock’s not home and John has made a tentative venture into the pleasant squashiness of the sofa. They’re never both there at once. John tries to make himself comfortable and not slide towards the dip in the centre, where Sherlock is.
“It would simply be better if you did not go out today.” Sherlock makes an attempt to shove his fingers down the side of his cast and scratch, and then he gives up the effort and runs his hand through his hair. John blinks at him, trying to work out the meaning hiding in the words.
“Sherlock, if I don’t work we’ll have no money at all, since you can’t work. Somebody’s got to pay for all the random food you keep telling me to buy.” He gets up, prepared to dismiss the idea of staying home, when Sherlock speaks again.
“In the interest of my... peace of mind. Do not go to work.”
John pauses, standing in the small space between the sofa and the coffee table, looking down at the top of Sherlock’s head. Is he... what is he asking? Does he want...? No, of course not. Just bored. “Right, sorry, patients to see. I’m going to go get dressed.” And he takes his mug of tea, steps around the coffee table, and goes upstairs.
-
The morning passes in a blur of colds, flus, and minor aches and pains. John enjoys the monotony of examination, diagnosis, prescription, harmless chat, though he, like Sherlock, is beginning to feel impatient for more excitement to hold the balance. At lunchtime he eats a sandwich at his desk and reads the paper.
He is just cleaning up his crumbs and getting ready to go back to work when his mobile vibrates.
John?
SH
yes?
No answer. John puts his phone away and goes back to work.
At half past three John shows a patient (woman, 32, sore throat) out of his office, and sees Sarah talking to a man by the front desk. Nothing strange about that, really. She is obviously explaining a prescription to him. It’s not as if John is jealous. They’ve been cheerfully just friends for months now, a slow and gradual lapse that neither really minded or commented on. Anyway, John--well, he has other things on his mind.
That’s not what catches John’s attention. Neither is it the man’s appearance--a fraction taller than Sarah, unremarkable brown hair, skin on the pale side (not as pale as Sherlock), slender, wearing a blue t-shirt and grey trousers. He glances around, apparently just looking at the decorations on the walls, the other patients in the waiting room. It’s not the way he looks or the way he’s talking to Sarah that catches John’s eye. John doesn’t know why he feels cold, alert, and just a little guilty.
But he does.
He tells Patty at the front desk that he needs a quick break, and goes into his office, locking the door behind him. Working on instinct, he scans the room, then sits down behind his desk and takes out his mobile.
INBOX
John?
SH
John stares at his phone’s screen, trying to decipher what answer Sherlock was looking for. His mind jumps from the text on screen to Sherlock’s request this morning--”In the interest of my peace of mind, don’t go to work.” Maybe it wasn’t Sherlock’s boredom talking. Maybe it wasn’t Sherlock wanting... something. Maybe there really is something disturbing Sherlock’s peace of mind.
John chews on his lip for a while, knowing the time is ticking down until he has to let the next patient in. Finally he comes to a decision, and rings Lestrade.
“It’s, um, it’s John.”
“Everything all right? Sherlock’s not done anything that will involve paperwork, has he?” This has become a bit of a running joke between John and Lestrade, who have worked out a conversational routine over the months, which mostly revolves around commiserating about Sherlock.
“No, I don’t think so.” John taps his fingers against his desk, working out exactly what he wants to ask. “The day Sherlock broke his ankle--tell me again what happened?”
“You read the report already, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, it’s got a bit fuzzy. Tell me again? Sorry, you’ve probably got cases on, but--”
“No, fine. It started with a robbery of an old bookshop. Seemed like a fairly amateur sort of thing--smash open the till, grab the money--but we couldn’t figure out how they got into the building. No camera footage, no evidence of tampering with camera footage, nothing. So I phoned Sherlock.”
“Did he figure it out?”
“Well, you know how he is. I suppose he did, but he never really said. Just saw the scene, got this look on his face, and rushed off. About an hour and a half hour later he sent a text with an address, no other info. And you know how it is--Sherlock tells you to be somewhere, you bring a team and some medics. Just to be on the safe side.”
John grins--he does know.
“So we got to the scene, and I saw Sherlock chasing some kid--19 or 20, looked pretty scruffy. But they were too far ahead for me to catch up, and by the time I got there Sherlock was lying in an alley with a concussion and a broken ankle, and the kid was gone. Dunno how it could have happened, Sherlock was a lot bigger. Maybe he just tripped, and was too embarrassed about it to say so.”
“I think someone else did it,” John says, voice low. “Not the kid, someone else.” He begins gathering up his belongings, preparing to go home for the day, though he’s not due to get off work until five. “Look, I hate to ask this of you, but could you give me a lift home? I don’t think I should take the tube, and I don’t exactly have a lot of trust in cabbies.”
Lestrade laughs. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t. But really, is this something I should know about? I’ll give you the lift, I’d just rather know what I’m getting into.”
“You’ll have to talk to Sherlock. I’ve just got a hunch, I don’t really know anything.”
“Right. Just let me know eventually, all right? That case is still open. Sherlock won’t give a proper report.”
“I’ll try,” John promises. He’s determined to get some kind of answer out of Sherlock.
-
Lestrade comes into the surgery to find John, who makes his excuses to Sarah (she’s got used to excuses by now). John smiles at Lestrade when he sees him. John’s not worried, or tense the way he usually is in dangerous situations. He is simply very aware that something is up, and is taking precautions accordingly.
Lestrade is driving a police car, which seems uncomfortably conspicuous to John, but also a little more secure. They get in and Lestrade doesn’t ask any questions until he starts up the car and pulls out into traffic.
“Sherlock up to something dangerous?”
John considers this. Life with Sherlock is always dangerous, in at least one of several ways. “I don’t think Sherlock is up to much of anything. Except getting in to my internet history.”
“Spying on your porn viewing habits?” Lestrade asks, with a casual grin.
John’s ears turn pink. It’s not that he’s embarrassed or ashamed of watching porn. It’s just been a long time since he’s had the kind of friends or acquaintances he jokes about it with. John doubts Sherlock watches porn, or would be inclined to joke about it if he did. He pulled a disgusted but amused face the one time he found a dirty magazine under John’s bed. That time, John’s whole face had turned profoundly red.
“No, there’s nothing wrong with Sherlock. Besides a touch of cabin fever. I am a bit worried, though,” John admits.
“Isn’t that normal? Worrying about Sherlock?”
“I don’t usually worry because he’s worried.”
“What’s he worried about?”
John shakes his head, wondering. “Me, I think.”
Lestrade opens his mouth and closes it again. “Look, John, I don’t want to interfere.”
“Nobody says that unless they’re about to, do they?” John asks, grinning.
“Hah! No, I suppose not. I just feel like I should say--I’ve never seen Sherlock worry about anyone. Are you sure he--”
“He asked me not to go to work this morning. For the sake of his peace of mind.”
Lestrade changes lanes in traffic and blinks out the windshield. “That wasn’t just a ploy?”
“No. I’ve seen Sherlock worried before.”
“About you?”
“Well, yeah.”
There’s a long silent pause, until a few minutes later they turn onto Baker Street and pull up in front of 221B. John unbuckles his seat belt and pauses, glancing at Lestrade.
“I’m not surprised, I suppose,” Lestrade says. “That Sherlock worries about you. I mean, you’re a bit special, aren’t you?”
John thinks about this for a long moment, and finds he can’t actually argue with the idea. John is special. He is the only person about whom someone could say to Sherlock, “I met a friend of yours,” and Sherlock would not be confused and suspicious. He leaves John notes (not always civil ones), sends John ridiculous instant messages, makes John buy ridiculous food, and folds John paper aeroplanes. Most of the time when he’s talking to John he just wants something, like tea or transportation, but there’s no denying that their relationship is somehow different than Sherlock’s relationships with other people.
John’s just not sure how different.
He thanks Lestrade, gets out of the police car, and goes inside. He half expects to find Sherlock in the middle of something--shooting walls, or possibly people, or blowing things up. Instead he finds Sherlock leaning against the window frame, balanced on his good foot, looking out. Sherlock has clearly just watched John get out of the police car, and he’s probably watching Lestrade drive away as John comes in and glances around the room. “Thank you, John,” Sherlock says, still looking out the window.
“Hm?” John asks, taking off his coat and hanging it on the back of the door.
“You asked Lestrade for a lift? I assume you haven’t been solving cases without me.”
“Hardly,” John mutters, sitting down in his chair and looking at Sherlock’s profile against the brightness of the window.
“But you’re early. You were supposed to be at the surgery until five o’clock.”
“Yeah.”
Sherlock turns toward him, though his features are hard to make out with bright daylight behind him. “What changed your mind?”
“You’ve been expecting something to happen to me, haven’t you?” John asks, question for question. “That’s why you told me not to go to work.That’s why you keep calling or texting when I’m out. You’re checking up on me.”
“You did go to work. Something tipped you off, and you came home. What was it?”
“Man in the surgery. Nothing really wrong about him; he just felt off. That’s when I realized you weren’t just asking because you’re bored.”
Sherlock looks enormously pleased, grinning, and looking like he wants to bound across the room, except that his ankle prevents him. “Excellent instincts, John, always trust your instincts.”
John smiles faintly, but he’s too busy being mildly irritated that Sherlock hasn’t told him what’s going on to properly enjoy the compliment.
It’s one of those cloudy days that seem sunny anyway, the clouds too thin to block the light but too thick to show any blue. The flat is lit only by the daylight, easily bright enough but not cosy. John looks around for Sherlock’s crutches, and sees them leaning against the wall in the corner by the door. He blinks at Sherlock, standing across the room by the window, and hopes he hasn’t been straining his ankle. It’s probably a vain hope, honestly, and John fights down the urge to mention it, nag Sherlock into taking better care of himself. That’s not the conversation they are having.
John crosses his legs, folds his arms across his chest, and looks at Sherlock. He appears to be vibrating slightly, his thoughts and his pent-up energy racing in spirals and webs under his skin. Weeks of being cooped up inside, and, as John is coming to realize, weeks of being worried. Irritated as John is, he can’t help but feel both sick and happy that Sherlock has been worrying about him.
“Sherlock, how did you break your ankle?” John asks, finally.
Sherlock steps forward onto his good foot, and then clearly remembers the bad one stuck behind him, and looks at the ceiling, a frown faintly visible on his chin. He takes a deep breath, rests one hand on his hip, and turns to John.
For all the ways Sherlock talks to John--texts, instant messages, phone calls, paper planes, post-it notes--none is so eloquent as the expression now on his face. The vaguely tilted eyebrow, the pinched mouth and set jaw, God, even his hair. Sherlock is fed up, and inexpressibly strange even to himself, and he doesn’t just need John’s help, he wants it.
“John.”
John pushes himself slowly out of his chair, and steps across the room to stand in front of Sherlock, a little too far into his personal space for anyone normal, but the normal distance for Sherlock. John takes Sherlock’s arm and pulls it around his shoulders, and helps Sherlock hop over to the sofa. He takes hold of Sherlock’s waist to lower him onto the sofa, and is slow to let go once he’s there. Sherlock makes a vague irritable noise, and John pulls back to sit down on the coffee table and look at him. He sits down on a stack of newspapers (should know to check all flat surfaces first, by now), and has to get up again to move them.
Finally settled, John looks at Sherlock and contemplates the day of the accident, and the time since.
“Shall I try making some deductions?” John asks.
Sherlock gestures, like, well, you can try, but he doesn’t actually protest.
“It was someone else’s fault, your ankle. Not the kid you were chasing, someone else was there. Someone you think you should have been able to beat in a fight, which is why you don’t want to talk about it. Someone you’re worried is going to try to hurt me, next.” John always feels like an impostor when he makes deductions, like someone trying to sound knowledgeable in front of an expert. He’s pretty sure he’s right about these, though, and even if they’re not such complicated deductions like pink suitcases or green ladders, or the turn-ups on someone’s jeans, he’s a bit pleased about it.
Sherlock begins to smile, and John knows what kind of smile it is. It’s a bit infuriating, but it’s also so Sherlock that John can’t be bothered much. This is Sherlock’s version of, “oh, look at the adorable little girl wearing her mother’s shoes.”
“Very good, John. Those are barely deductions at all, but very good. You’ve only missed all the obvious things.”
John actually grins at him.
“It was Moriarty, wasn’t it?”
Sherlock’s face twists, mildly horrified and a bit shocked.
John takes a moment to feel smug, and then he punches Sherlock on the arm. “You didn’t tell me, you complete arse.” He is taken with the familiar urge to strangle Sherlock. His fingers twitch, and then he digs them into Sherlock’s arm.
They touch each other a lot. Sherlock’s injured and John’s a doctor, so there’s a good reason for that right now, but if he touched a patient in the surgery the way he touches Sherlock he’d probably be sued. Negotiating the intertwining of the doctor-patient and colleague-flatmate-friend relationships is difficult for John. His instincts as a doctor get mixed up with his instincts as a friend, as someone who always, always wants Sherlock to be okay. So when he touches Sherlock, sometimes it’s a measuring, diagnosing evaluation, and sometimes it’s something less clear-cut that John doesn’t really know how to think about, and sometimes it’s both, which is the most confusing of all.
And no matter how it happens, John likes touching Sherlock.
Sherlock lets him. That’s the way touch goes, with Sherlock. He moves into your personal space like it doesn’t matter how far apart you are as long as you’re close enough to make deductions, but he doesn’t touch people. He doesn’t let many people touch him, but he sits still while John reaches into his inside jacket pocket for his phone (on his orders), or while John examines his chest (on John’s insistence).
This is not how he reacts to John’s fingernails in his arm.
This time, he touches back. He reaches out and rests his knuckles lightly against John’s knee. Not a grip, barely a touch, but very definitely there, very much a reciprocation. Of something, anyway.
“You always do this with Moriarty,” John says. “You go off on your own, and then I wind up with a bomb strapped to my chest because you decide to offer him secret government information.”
“Your kidnapping was not, strictly speaking, my fault,” Sherlock answers, sounding sulky.
“You still might have told me what you were planning to do.”
“You would have tried to stop me.”
“Well, I would have been right. He didn’t want the Bruce-Partington plans anyway, did he? Besides, when has anyone ever managed to stop you doing anything?”
Sherlock sniffs. “You probably could have.”
John blinks, and clears his throat around a jumble of completely nonsense words. He decides, in a slightly panicked moment, to switch subjects. “So Moriarty was there. Did he trip you, or what? How did you bruise your chest?”
Sherlock’s eyes drift, downward across John’s chest and onto his own fingers on John’s knee. “It was a message, I suppose. He ought to have written a note on my cast, that would have been suitably childish.”
“A message for what? Who?”
“For me, for you, it doesn’t matter.”
“If it was for me it didn’t work, since you never told me about it.”
Sherlock gives him a quelling look. “He used snipers again, meant to keep me from fighting back. That trick’s getting a bit old. Do I really need to continue?”
“What was the point? The message.”
“Wouldn’t you rather foil his plans by not knowing?”
“Sherlock, that isn’t the bloody point.” John breaks away, getting off the table and out of Sherlock’s space, stepping towards the door. “I’m not going to just follow you around blindly if you never tell me anything. You know why Moriarty hurt you, so there’s no point in not telling me.” He clenches his hands into fist against his hips and glares. “You’ve been leaving me messages for weeks, there’s no reason you couldn’t have thrown this one in with the lot.”
“It isn’t that simple.”
“Are you implying you think I wouldn’t understand it?” John asks, practically shouting. He isn’t even sure why he’s so angry, but the urge to touch Sherlock, to shake some sense into him, to shake him into seeing the world in a way John understands, is overwhelming.
“Don’t be stupid, John,” Sherlock says, mouth pinched tight against his teeth, fingers digging into the couch cushions.
“Are you seriously telling me I’m being stupid for asking if you think I’m stupid?”
Sherlock’s mouth twitches, not like he’s suppressing laughter, but like he’s suppressing the need to say something cutting. “This is a ridiculous argument; you’re going in circles.”
“So tell me what the message was!”
Sherlock stands, his balance slightly wobbly. “He threatened you. That was his message. He hurt me so we’d know he could hurt you.”
John backs away. His back thuds into the door jamb, and he’s thankful for the solid wall grounding him, keeping him from doing anything he might regret. “You didn’t think I should know that?” His voice is a cold, flat blank, and he’s looking at Sherlock but barely seeing him.
“John.”
“You let me go to work, you let me go shopping. You let me go all over London, and you never told me I was in danger. Were you trying to get me killed?”
Sherlock doesn’t answer, and John’s too caught in the moment to have any idea why.
“I’m going to bed,” John says shortly. “Maybe I’ll talk to you in the morning.”
He turns away and climbs the stairs. When he gets to his room he paces, trying to work off some of his pent-up anger, still too physical for him to calm down. He digs his fingers into his own thigh, needing something cathartic, something better than this back and forth across the floor.
Eventually he sits down on the bed, taking deep breaths. It’s only four-thirty in the afternoon, far too early to go to sleep, but John isn’t hungry and his computer is sitting on the table in the lounge. There’s no way he’s going downstairs again (too much like a surrender, too likely to end badly), and there’s nothing else to do, so he pulls off his shoes, strips off the rest of his clothes down to his underwear, and curls up in bed.
He’s surprised when the feeling of the sheets against his skin calms him down, when his bed is so comfortable he begins to feel drowsy.
He will be surprised, when he thinks about it later, that he falls asleep and does not dream of watery light, or pale skin.
-
John wakes again in darkness. He rolls over and takes several deep breaths, lying in his bed under the window and watching the amber sweep of headlights across the walls. He feels sweaty and nervous, not like waking from a bad dream but like waking from a deep sleep and remembering today is the day of a long-hoped-for date.
He bites his lip, stretches his toes out through the sheets, and wishes he wouldn’t keep thinking about this in those terms. Certainly not while he’s still angry.
His anger has changed in the night, less rage now and more hurt. The desire to pummel Sherlock has faded, but John still wants to push him against a wall and make him see he can’t do the things he does. John lets Sherlock get away with a lot, but he won’t let him get away with this.
Sherlock lies to everyone--pretends to be normal, pretends to be innocent, pretends to be helpful, pretends not to care. To John, he lies by omission.
He doesn’t bother to mention things.
John kicks the blankets away and looks at the digital clock on his bedside table. 2:12 AM. He’s been asleep almost ten hours, and he’s perfectly awake now, alert and ready to make something happen. He gets up, puts on a clean t-shirt, and goes downstairs.
Sherlock is sitting in his armchair. The telly is on, some late-night rubbish programme, muted. Sherlock is clearly still wearing his pyjamas, as he has been ever since the accident, but he’s put his coat on over everything and is practically curled up inside it, as though huddling for warmth. It’s not cold--John, in shirt and pants, is perfectly warm. John takes a moment to think about how Sherlock wouldn’t be so cold all the time if he were less skinny, but he shakes off the thought.
John leans in the doorway, looking at Sherlock.
He remembers, every time he starts over-analysing himself, that he has a broad capacity to willfully overlook things. He was completely unaware that Sherlock was preoccupied with something until Sherlock had started telling him not to go to work. Even then, he had overlooked the depth of Sherlock’s worry. In the midst of his anger, he’d barely seen Sherlock, been oblivious to his reactions.
Now he’s looking, there’s nothing to see. Sherlock’s face is a blank.
“Hey,” John says, soft enough for two AM but loud enough to catch Sherlock’s attention. Theoretically. Sherlock doesn’t respond.
“Just going to ignore me?” John asks, crossing his arms.
“You said ‘in the morning’. I’ve got at least four hours before I’m obliged to speak to you.” He glances at John and glances away, dismissive, and his voice is sharp.
“I’m surprised you feel obliged to talk to me at all.”
“Path of least resistance,” Sherlock says distastefully.
“You usually like resistance,” John points out. “It makes more bother for other people. Anyway, it’s morning for me. I’ve been asleep since half past four.”
Sherlock raises one eyebrow, but nothing else moves. “I know you believe I’m nocturnal, but even I know it is the middle of the night. Go back to bed; you clearly have nothing better to do with your time. Waste away, lying in bed, sleeping.”
“Shut up, Sherlock,” John says, more forcefully than he usually would. He crosses the room and sits down in a chair at the table behind Sherlock, who is forced to turn around to face him. Out the window the street is dim and empty.
“Do you know why it bothers me when you lie?” John asks, a little sharply.
“I never lied,” Sherlock answers, affronted.
“Oh, that right there,” John snaps. “That’s what bothers me. Damn it, Sherlock, did no one ever explain the concept of a lie of omission to you?”
Sherlock stares back at him, impassive, clearly deducing. “No, if I lied--and it doesn’t matter to you whether or not I did, only that you believe I did--if I lied, it bothers you because you trust me. You trust me despite your better judgment, and it bothers you when I disappoint your trust. Not because I’ve disappointed you, but because you’re disappointed in yourself for your irrational trust. Which is ridiculous, because people lie all the time. People lie about everything from whether they remembered to buy milk to whether they are faithful to their spouses. The vast majority of those lies have nothing to do with trust.”
“None of that was what I was going to say,” John points out.
“Then you are also lying by omission.” John tucks that assertion into the back of his mind and tries not to prod it. “What, John?” Sherlock continues. “Why am I obligated to tell you everything?”
“It’s not that. You’re allowed to have some secrets, obviously. Everyone does. You don’t have to tell me everything, you just have to tell me when it’s about me. Communication, all right?”
“We communicate all the time, in case you haven’t noticed.”
John picks Sherlock’s phone off the table and waves it at him. “Through text, sure. Through post-it notes. Doesn’t count.”
“It’s perfectly possible to sum things up in 140 characters. Most people say far too much, when what they mean is really very simple.”
John sets Sherlock’s phone down again, very softly. “Fine. Here’s what I mean: You put me in danger because you didn’t tell me something important. You can’t do that.”
“You see?” Sherlock says. “That was less than 140 characters.”
John glares. “I’m not done. You can’t do that unless you have an extremely good reason which you think--after lengthy consideration--I would approve. If you had a reason like that, I think you should tell me about it now.”
“John, you would have been in danger whether you knew about it or not.”
“You just decided I shouldn’t go to work.”
“What?”
This has been bothering John, and now he has the opportunity to ask it. “You let me go to work before. Yesterday you asked me to stay home. What changed?”
“It’s been too long. No doubt that was his intention--to make us wait, to prolong the anticipation and thus increase the fear.”
“And you fell for it?”
“No, of course not. I simply trusted my instincts that something would happen today.”
John scoffs, suspecting Sherlock’s “instincts” were mostly influenced by his impatience. “Fine. But how could you know for sure he wouldn’t do something, before? If you were expecting him to wait, why couldn’t he have known that, and done the opposite? No matter how you spin it, Sherlock, you put me in danger.”
He watches Sherlock, who tucks his coat back around himself and then looks up at John. “You’ve not been unprotected.”
“So you had Mycroft watching me?”
Sherlock waves a dismissive hand. “Oh, he does that anyway.”
“You ever notice your brother’s a creep?” John mutters, suppressing a strangled noise.
“Frequently. But his voyeuristic tendencies are occasionally useful. He has dealt with the man you saw yesterday already.”
“So, what, has he got somebody trailing me ready to shoot my attackers?”
Sherlock wrinkles his nose. “I prefer not to ask questions. I let Mycroft make the arrangements, and take my own measures in the meantime.”
"Your own measures? You can't leave the flat, what have you--Hang on, is that why you keep texting me about nothing, and phoning while I’m shopping? Are you checking up on me?”
Sherlock eyes John, possibly checking the sincerity of the question. “You didn’t really think I had a use for gherkins, prawns, and a meat tenderiser, did you?”
“So you had me waste money buying ridiculous things, just so you could make sure I wasn’t dead?”
“It wasn’t a waste. Well, the meat tenderiser, perhaps, but I’m sure it will come in handy somehow. The prawns are still in the freezer, we can eat them for dinner."
John thinks back to the other things Sherlock made him buy, and remembers the lubricant. He wonders if Sherlock expects that to come in handy. Sherlock watches him expectantly, no doubt aware that he is not finished with this conversation, and John pushes the thought to the back of his mind. He scrubs his hands over his face, and rests his elbows on the table. "Look," he says, "it's Moriarty, isn't it? As criminals go, he's sort of special. For us. I mean, most cases are your business, and I just tag along." Sherlock looks almost as if he wants to protest this assessment, but the expression on John's face seems to quiet him. "But Moriarty has kidnapped me, and he's hurt you, and he's tried to blow us both up. And we--well, we agreed to die rather than let him escape, didn't we? So he's our business. And we should deal with him together."
Sherlock watches John contemplatively. It's almost the same expression he has when he's deducing--fascinated, urgent--but softer. John bites his lip, wondering if he's given something away he shouldn't, if he's said more than he means, or means more than he's aware of.
"I was trying to protect you," Sherlock says.
"Christ. Please don't. I appreciate it, but--God, I want to strangle you." And he does. He feels that physical urgency in the tips of his fingers again, the desire to shake Sherlock until Sherlock understands. The knowledge that trying to change Sherlock’s mind is nearly always futile only increases the frustration, but John also knows that Sherlock would not be Sherlock if he saw things as John does.
Sherlock smiles, a faint, impish smile, and John....
John still wants to grab Sherlock by the shoulders, to leave marks there, but not to make him see. John wants, with an urgency he's never recognized before, to press himself against Sherlock, less angry and violent, and more instinctive. The touch of violence is still there, but it's more...more passion, than violence. John swallows painfully. "You must have known not telling me I was in danger wasn't going to protect me," he says.
“You may not believe this, John, but I am not always rational,” Sherlock says.
“Those post-it notes were pretty mad, yeah."
John wants to stick his hands into Sherlock's hair and press his palms against Sherlock's back. He knew Sherlock had a possessive, protective streak, an Are you all right? streak, but the times when it is apparent are few and far between. He's never seen Sherlock admit it. He pines, momentarily, for their post-it note communication, when it was easier to understand what Sherlock was saying, or to ignore it if he didn't understand.
“John.”
John hears the dark tone in Sherlock’s voice, almost a warning, mostly a wanting. It’s strange and familiar at the same time, a mixture of the voice Sherlock uses when he’s arguing with John over something stupid like the telly, fond and slightly frustrated, and a more serious voice. More like the voice Sherlock used to ask, “Are you all right?”
John's not all right. He's a bit panicked and very frustrated and a little hopeful. The man who can shoot a serial killer through a window and then go out for Chinese can't have a simple conversation with his flatmate.
"What?" John asks, hoarse.
"I'm sorry."
It's the apology that tips hope into near certainty. Sherlock never apologises. John stands, pushing his chair back, and steps forward to lean against the arm of Sherlock’s chair.
"Sherlock, will you let me--?"
Sherlock narrows his eyes, and then reaches out to take hold of John’s hip and pull him in. Looming over Sherlock is strange. Sherlock’s fingers slip upwards, underneath John’s shirt, rubbing against the smooth skin just above the waistband of John’s pants. John takes a deep breath, and slides his hand against the back of Sherlock’s neck, just brushing his hair, just creeping under his collar.
"I seduced you with post-it notes," Sherlock mutters, looking up at him, a bit amused, a bit wondering.
John snorts. "No, really. The post-it notes have got to go.” He grins and leans in.
“Hmm,” Sherlock hums, mouth barely an inch away from John’s, their breath mixing together, warm.
John lurches across the last inch, digging his fingertips into Sherlock's shoulder, pressing the knuckles of his other hand across Sherlock's collarbone. Their lips slide together and John's teeth catch, and then Sherlock's tongue creeps forward and curls against John's upper lip, and it is all just as tactile as John has ever wanted. Just as good as strangulation or pummeling. Much better than beating sense into Sherlock is the attempt to kiss the sense out of him. John leans forward, bracing his weight on Sherlock's shoulders, letting Sherlock hold him up.
After the post-it notes, the texts, the instant messages, the phone calls, touch is a new kind of communication. More subjective, maybe, but more real. John's breath stutters against Sherlock's mouth, and says everything.
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Date: 2011-07-04 04:12 am (UTC)