Fic: Multiply (the sum of our parts) - Chapter Twelve
Title: Multiply (the sum of our parts)
Author: 1electricpirate
Rating: M
Pairing: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson (BBC)
Disclaimer: I do not pretend to own any of these characters (besides the two or three I have conjured from thin air). Credit for that brilliance falls to ACD and the Godtiss.
Previous Chapters: One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten | Eleven
Chapter 12 - The Disputed Existence of Irrational Numbers
“Chinese or Indian tonight, Sherlock? Or Vietnamese? Push the boat out a little? Molly was telling me about an interesting North African restaurant, we could try that too. Be good to get out of the house. Sherlock?”
John cranes his neck to poke his head through the kitchen door and catch Sherlock’s response, but none comes. Sherlock is absorbed, utterly and completely, in whatever horrible microbe or other is swimming underneath the lens of his microscope.
“Sherlock. You have to eat.”
“Not hungry. Leave me alone, this is important.”
“Food is important,” John reminds him.
“This case is important,” Sherlock retorts without looking away from the eyepiece. John rolls his eyes and lets it slide. He goes back to poking at the keys of his laptop, punching at them loudly and deliberately whilst smirking to himself.
It takes all of three minutes.
“John.”
“Hmmmm?” John continues jabbing at the keys, blissfully aware that this is just about the equivalent of nails on a blackboard for Sherlock.
“John.” Sherlock’s voice is louder now, but he has still not looked up from his microscope. John types louder.
“John, stop it.”
“Stop what?”
John looks over at Sherlock and grins at the way his eyes are narrowed and his lips are pursed - surely he can’t actually see through the lens like that. He carries on, typing nonsense on to the page with loud, deliberately uneven key strokes. (Nothing gets on Sherlock’s nerves like someone misusing technology, and John doesn’t even have to try to type badly. It’s wonderful and hilarious all at once.)
Sherlock lasts another two minutes before suddenly whirling around, pushing out of his chair and storming across the room to snatch John’s laptop away, slam it shut and throw it on the couch.
John grins up at him, crossing his arms over his chest. “Problem, love?”
“You are infuriating,” Sherlock tells him, voice low and deep in his throat, eyes glinting with irritation.
“I was writing my blog,” John says, but he can’t quite keep the grin out of his words. “And you were ignoring me.”
“I was working,” Sherlock growls, stepping closer. John stands up and uncrosses his arms.
“Boring,” he says, deliberately. Sherlock raises one eyebrow.
“It pays the bills.”
John snorts. “Mycroft pays our bills and if he didn’t, your trust fund would.”
“Keeps me sane, then.”
“Dull,” John repeats. He steps closer. Sherlock's eyes flash; John's lips twitch towards a smile.
Suddenly the tranquil air of 221b is positively buzzing, sizzling, humming with this thing that it is between them - it's not animal, not really, John doesn't want to simplify it to anything so base as animal desire because it isn't, it isn't just lust, this thing that sits between them like a third inhabitant of their tiny little microsystem. Sherlock is the most beautiful creature John has ever seen but that isn't it. The thing between them, the connection ... It is layered and multifaceted, it is as steady as a rock and as changing as the tides. John is consumed by it, and he doesn't even care, because he knows (can see it in the flash of Sherlock's eyes, in the quirk of his lips, in the twitch of his fingers, in the shape of his shoulders) - he knows without a shadow of a doubt that Sherlock is in just as much danger of drowning in it as he is himself.
This is all it takes, these days, for a perfectly normal, sedate, respectable morning to degenerate completely and utterly into the most delicious, depraved a afternoon full of the most unproductive activities either of them can think up. A look, a glance, a few stupid words said in jest - and suddenly the thing, which had been lounging contentedly on the couch, stretching itself across John's favourite cushion like a spoilt, lazy housecat, sits up suddenly and morphs into some kind of feral, posturing tom-cat.
It's the most lovely thing John can imagine, the fact that they can plough on as before (stodgy and boring and caught up in their work) but also have thissomething between them that threatens to burn them both up alive for hours at a time before spitting them out again at the other side, sweaty and satiated and sore and so in love it threatens to knock them both for six, but then one of them stretches and smiles and yawns and says, "Tea?" and then the thing is back lazing on the couch and they carry on as before.
(Honestly, John finds it positively baffling that no one has noticed - quite apart from the matching gold rings that they don't bother hiding, Sherlock's productivity on cases anywhere less than a seven on his personal rating scale (a one being a stolen bit of a jewellery that turns out to have been wedged in a floorboard; a ten being a locked-room murder-suicide without a murder weapon with no link, perceived or hidden, between the two victims) has fallen drastically; John's dedication to his paperwork is all but gone.
Even the blog has been suffering - though John suspects that perhaps Sherlock has been engineering these little provocative encounters to occur just as he is getting in to the swing of blogging. (Sherlock does so hate his blog.)
"John?" Sherlock's voice cuts in to John's introspection; John shakes himself out of it and grins at him.
"Chinese or Indian for dinner then," he asks, teasing; Sherlock growls his frustration at bring tricked into answering and, in his twisted idea of payback, all but pounces.
"I'd much rather eat you," he says into John's lips, hands smoothing possessively down John's back to grip his arse. John grins and bites down on Sherlock's neck, not hard enough to bruise, but nearly.
"Excellent idea," he murmurs, "and then I think Indian, don't you?"
"Shut up, John," Sherlock growls again, beginning to work with one hand on John's buttons. John laughs, and there is no more talking (well, no coherent talking) for a long time.
(Later, stretched out naked and content across their bed, with slightly stained sheets pooling about his midriff, Sherlock lets John nap with his head on his chest, curled around him with one leg thrown protectively across Sherlock's thighs. Sherlock splays one wide hand across John's back and buries his nose in John's hair and remembers, vaguely, the microbes swimming under his microscope and thinks to himself that they are not even remotely as interesting as this moment here: John's steady, even breaths, the cloying smell of sweat and sex heavy about him, the slightly uncomfortable feeling of semen drying in awkward (and frankly surprising) places, the glint of the setting sun on the ring around his finger (the surge of warmth when he sees the matching glint around John's finger). He commits it all to memory, every small bit of it, greedily hoarding every piece of this perfect moment in his mind. In a few minutes, John will wake and stretch and kiss him sloppily on the chin before calling for Indian (Saag Paneer, Lamb Madras, Chicken Korma; a garlic naan and a peshwari, pilau rice and as many bhajiis as he seems to think fitting for two grown men; it is always this order, always the same. Steady, unchangeable, predictable John, with his jumpers and his cropped hair and his hospital corners, and the infuriating ability to take Sherlock (Sherlock!) by surprise on an impressively regular basis despite all evidence to the contrary). He will fall out of bed, out of Sherlock's arms and into the shower. Sherlock will return to his (now entirely ruined) experiment and John will attempt to shovel curry down his mouth.
They may get a call from Lestrade later, they may fall asleep on the couch watching Star Trek reruns; those moments will all also be perfect but they will not be this moment and for right now, Sherlock just wants to hold John, his John with his shredded shoulder and the leg that still bugs him if it rains for too long, his John with the crows' feet around his eyes and an absolutely atrocious attachment to horrible jumpers, this strange man who should have been ordinary (should have been the most boring, ordinary person on the planet) but somehow was exactly the opposite, was more fascinating to Sherlock in this moment even than a 10 on the interesting scale - and he was asleep. Sherlock presses his lips into John's hair and breaths him in, as if by breathing hard enough he can keep this man here, forever, right where he belongs, pressed up against him, warm and lazy, so that Sherlock can't really tell where his limbs end and John's begin.
In a few minutes this moment will be gone and John will get up and he will go back to his experiment, so Sherlock lets himself memorise it as best he can, never to be forgotten, this moment of complete serenity and warmth and love. Sherlock never expected to love anything, had tried never to love anything ever again, but then John Watson came along with his jumpers and his crow's feet and his crooked smile and gimp leg and had quite literally bowled Sherlock over, had knocked him down and drawn him in, and Sherlock has never cherished anything in this world more than he cherishes his husband. He has few moments peaceful enough to appreciate these facts for what they are so he takes this moment, this perfect, quiet, really rather unpleasantly pungent moment, to take it in and catalogue it for posterity. He has just finished memorising the sensation of John's shoulder scar under his fingers when John stretches and yawns and kisses him on the chin, already reaching for his phone. Sherlock smiles and wraps himself in the sheet and makes his way back to his microscope. The moment is gone, but it will not be forgotten.)
--------------------------
Irene sits at her desk, thumbing the sharp edge of her laptop. The office is stark and white and modern, with lofty ceilings and huge windows and an enormous couch that folds out in to a bed.
It was made exactly according to her specifications and she keeps it exactly how she likes it.
Irene has found that here, right in the middle of the cesspit of upper-working and lower-middle-class England, it does not matter whether one technically exists or not (given a certain amount of freely-flowing cash and a frankly impeccable bosom). She has kept this office for years. It has seen many a dubious business transaction in its time as her only true base and it is that one, tiny, nearly insignificant detail that makes her trap a viable solution to the myriad problems she is currently facing.
Namely: Sherlock Holmes and the whirlwind of drama he brought with him.
At first, Irene was helping him because she had no choice (and, okay, a small amount of curiosity). Mycroft Holmes was literally holding her captive by her pursestrings and she had been all but manhandled by him into playing mentor to his baby brother.
Months later, though, Irene finds herself helping no longer because she has to (she does, sort of, need this to be over for her own personal business interests) but mostly because she wants to.
She had heard of Sherlock Holmes and been working to thwart him long before she ever met him; but if she’s very honest with herself (and she usually is - she lies to so many other people lying to herself just adds a layer of exhaustion that is too wearisome to be worthwhile) - if she’s very honest with herself, the moment she met Sherlock Holmes he ceased to become a target and became, instead, an adversary, an opponent worthy of her time.
(She never does figure out what it was about him, but she suspects it had something to do with the grudging respect she saw in his eyes when he looked up and found her standing naked in her assumed living room in Belgravia. It took him all of two seconds to realise exactly what he was dealing with and drop his act, and they’d immediately locked minds in what turned out to be one of the most exhilarating verbal and mental exchanges (perhaps it was less an exchange and more a duel) of her life. She wasn’t lying, she’d have had him right there if it hadn’t been for the fact that he was so obviously smitten with the ordinary, short little beige-coloured Doctor that tailed him around everywhere and never let him out of his sight, even back then, three months into their acquaintance, both of them still essentially unaware of the gravitational force between them that more astute eyes could have seen from space.)
From the beginning, then, Sherlock earns her respect in the way that few men ever have or ever will. Sitting here in her familiar, stark white office space in Milton Keynes (a conveniently bland place to hide a very covert operations base), Irene has to admit to herself that after months of trailing across Britain with him, she no longer simply respects Sherlock Holmes. She likes him.
This is all very alarming for Irene, unaccustomed by nature to having anything so close to a friend, or even an equal, as Sherlock is to her now, and if she had the time to spare she has no doubt that she would berate herself heavily for it.
She finds it very hard not to like him, though. Oh, of course, he is rude and contemptuous and cruel and mocking, just as he has always been, but since the beginning of their joint endeavour Irene has been keenly aware that the Sherlock she now knows, the Sherlock in fact with whom she has spent the past however many months in claustrophobically close quarters, is not the same Sherlock she first met.
He is sharper, better, keener; sometimes that makes him colder and crueler and all but impossible to deal with, but no person can keep up that act for ever, and it doesn’t take Irene long to understand that the Sherlock of now is simply the broken version of the Sherlock of before. The new Sherlock hurts, he hurts deeply and vividly and somehow that hurt makes him warmer amidst his prickles.
Gone, apparently, are the days where Sherlock would proclaim loudly and to anyone who cared that the only thing that mattered (above anything and anyone else) was the work. Gone is the Sherlock who refused help of any kind, who acted as a law unto himself with no regard for anyone else, seeking only data and answers and cold hard facts.
This case, though - there is something fundamentally different about it. This is no longer a strange kind of fix for Sherlock, who, Irene knows as well as anyone, got his kicks off illegal drugs and darkened crime scenes.
Sherlock is not doing this to keep his mind busy, to stop himself sliding into an early grave dug by aggravated boredom combined with a hyperactive intellect. He no longer pretends to be operating in a vacuum. Sherlock is doing this because the person he loves (and despite herself, Irene believes that Sherlock does love John, more deeply and truly than anyone she has ever known to love any other person) is in danger and that resonates with something deep, deep down in the long-forgotten bit of Irene Adler that yearns to mother broken things until they are whole again.
Spend six or seven months in close quarters with anyone and you want to break their face in, but Irene often experiences the peculiar mixture of urges that would involve breaking Sherlock’s face in - but doing it gently.
She has watched for the past six or seven months as layer by layer, Sherlock’s armour of cold indifference was peeled away by distance and desperation and despair. She held him, actually held him in her arms as he shook and sobbed and asked for help. The great, invincible Sherlock Holmes had begged for help. (Irene doesn’t have the heart to tell him that she hadn’t even needed to be asked by then.)
It helps, of course, that she has a grudging respect for John Watson, who is shockingly dull and ordinary but also, it turns out, a surprisingly indomitable force all on his own.
Somehow, some way, these two (utterly useless, idiotic) men had fallen together and then they had fallen apart and (despite herself) Irene feels that it is somehow her responsibility (as the only one with any emotional intelligence to speak of) to fix them, and she actually wants to do it.
(Of course, if this comes off as she plans it, it will not only be remarkably lucrative to her, but she will hold both Holmes brothers in her debt, which, of course, is tantamount to having the entirety of Britain and its various remaining colonies (Mycroft fools no one with his imperiously unassuming posturing) grovelling at her feet.)
At first, while they were still darting across the country trying to thwart Moran’s little enterprises one by one, Irene had joked about her and Sherlock giving up and going to the dark side and spinning little webs of their own. It had been an amusing way to pass the hours - until suddenly Irene realised that unless they drew Moran out of his cave, they would never be able to end this little game they were playing.
They needed to bait him at the same time as threaten him, and they needed to do it in such a way as to keep him from figuring out what was going on.
Moran was, by all indications, fiercely territorial. Moriarty’s web had all but crumbled abroad (thanks entirely to Sherlock’s year in exile) but it remained tight and functional within Britain. He was not quite as clever about his little games as Moriarty had been but it was obvious that he’d been trained y the best to keep the ball moving.
Irene and Sherlock had two distinct advantages. Number one: Moran thought Irene was dead. Number two: They had the full weight of the British government firmly on their side. (Not that Mycroft could ever help them directly, but the creation of a country-wide blind-spot where the two of them were concerned had had its uses.)
It was like working a double shift. They would thwart Moran’s little bugs and in their place plant little bugs of their own. Or, rather, Sherlock would thwart the bugs and Irene would plant the replacements. They were always together but never perceived to be working together and that was the most important point of all.
A sudden loud buzz from her mobile lying on her glass-topped desk snaps Irene out of her reverie. She takes it in one perfectly manicured hand, thumbs through the new message, and grins.
The plan is simple. It involves a two pronged stick (Sherlock’s careful attempts to dismantle Moran’s web will be, of course, expected but they are also frustrating. Meanwhile, Irene is busy encroaching on Moran’s turf with impressive rapidity) and then, when Moran must least be expecting it (which is, to say, right now), a carrot.
They have carefully built up her web so that Irene sits immediately at the centre of it and so that it is difficult but not too difficult to trace back to one single hub: namely, this small glass office in a warehouse complex in Milton Keynes. There will be a final case, involving rather a large sum of money (supplied by Mycroft, of course, through various back channels) and a bit of a scuffle that will end in the message being transmitted to Moran - not a white flag of surrender, an offer of parley.
She is the carrot. She has offered herself as bait and she hadn’t even thought twice about doing it. (How’s that for selflessness? Her mother would be so proud to see her now.) Irene is used to selling herself in all manner of ways (body and mind) but she has never before felt the need to offer herself up for free. For Sherlock, though, for the sake of Sherlock and John and their children, she has chosen to act as a lure.
(Of course, she has great faith in her own plans. How could she not? And Sherlock is a genius. They may have been wrong, of course, but then again, they may not have been. Irene Adler is no wilting flower, nor will she ever be at the mercy of any man. So she offers herself as bait though she does not expect much bad to come of it.)
It will not be long now. They have spent months planning for every contingency. It is not a flawless plan, there are, of course, holes, and neither of them have ever met this man against whom they are placing their bets, which leads to rather a blind game of poker, but the risks are acceptable in light of the potential gains.
All Irene has to do, now, is sit tight and wait - and then keep Moran talking long enough to allow Sherlock the time to reach them. It is a matter of hours, now. Maybe minutes. This man is unpredictable, so she must be ready at any time.
She is wearing her battle armour: an elegant white button-down dress that clings to her best assets, an intricate knot in her hair and perfectly applied makeup. Moran may have been Moriarty’s second in command but Irene was far enough down the line of command in her time working for Jim that she never met the Colonel. She does not worry about being recognised, and if she is, well, then she will simply laugh it off and say Sherlock Holmes was not the first one to fake a death.
Irene is not nervous. She has never been a nervous person. She is wary, though, of Sherlock and the slightly manic glint in his eye as they parted. (She does not doubt him and his ability to detach, as much as possible, in order to get the job done, but that glint had been unsettling and rather too desperate for Irene’s taste.)
They have planned and plotted and schemed for months, but they are up against an anonymous foe, and that makes this entire operation more risky than any of Sherlock’s encounters with Jim ever were, insanity be damned. Mycroft sent covert teams in over the past few months in the guise of painters and decorators and plumbers and, in one memorable instance, pizza delivery men, to bug the office and install, under her desk, a tiny panic button. She is not alone.
Smiling to herself, she pops the cork on a bottle of champagne, pours herself a glass and kicks back in her chair to wait. On her laptop, the opening credits to Casablanca scroll through.
The hard part (the complicated plots and mass manipulation of resources and the sometimes brutal legwork and the endless waiting, cooped up in hotel rooms with Sherlock Holmes) is over, now. This bit, the bit where she convinces a strange man that she is someone she is not, is easy. (This bit, she could do - has done - in her sleep.)
When the knock at her door comes, eventually, her only thought before she sweeps herself on to her feet to welcome her guest (prey) is that she wishes he’d at least waited for Humphrey Bogart to finish. She fires a quick text to Sherlock, and then stands up to open the door.
Here’s looking at you, kid. To the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
--------------------
The first time they met, Sherlock took one look at John Watson and decided, boring. He had rattled off his deductions at lightning speed, not even bothering to look up from his microscope to do so. He'd braced himself for the inevitable indignant squawking and resigned himself to the inevitable slamming of the door as the stranger declared him a freak and stormed out of the room. (He'd told Mike, he'd told him, no one could stand him for more than five minutes at a time, how could he ever expect to find someone to live with him, and why did no one ever listen to him ever?)
But the squawking didn't come. The door stayed ajar and John Watson didn't storm anywhere. He didn't even hobble away. Sherlock had risked a (slightly confused) glance at him and seen a dropped jaw and incredulous eyes, and been treated to his very first sight of John's gormless declaration: "That's incredible."
Oh, Sherlock had thought, and Mike had smirked, and John had shifted his weight on his legs, and Sherlock had thought, Oh. Maybe... maybe.
The second time they met, Sherlock took John to see a dead woman and cured him of his limp. He had preened at John's compliments and snorted at his expected idiocy and John had grinned at him and scolded him and they had chased a taxi through the streets of London. Mycroft had kidnapped him and offered him money and John, John in his shabby jumper and second-hand jacket and miserly army pension who probably hadn't had a square meal in months had refused and then he had shot a man clean through two windows to save Sherlock's life and turned up at the crime scene in a cream-knit jumper and not even felt the slightest bit of guilt about the cold-blooded murder he'd committed twenty minutes earlier while they giggled like school boys at a crime scene and Sherlock had looked at him and thought, Oh.
And just like that, John Watson had scooped himself out a place in Sherlock's life and in his mind and in his soul and Sherlock suddenly found himself vaguely at a loss whenever John wasn't nearby.
It hadn't been anything so saccharin as love at first sight, but neither would Sherlock in all honesty be able to say that there wasn't a sort of quiet clicking sound as John slotted into place in his life, the lens that collected all the disparate, warring pieces of Sherlock's mind and body and soul and untangled them, effortlessly, magnified them and amplified them, focusing his blurry edges and making a sort of sense of his chaos.
John became necessary before he was loved, but that did not in anyway diminish the veracity (and voracity) of Sherlock's love for him when suddenly, finally, it exploded across his consciousness in a kaleidoscope of neon colours against the otherwise drab, grey background of Sherlock's (deliberately cold) heart.
It happened one night in an abandoned house in the outskirts of London, far without the bounds of Sherlock's beloved Zone 1. They were lying low, using the house as a vantage point to scout out the headquarters of a human trafficking ring, when suddenly they were trapped. A grunt was scouting out the house and he and John crouched in an old garret bedroom at the top of some rickety stairs, hardly daring to breathe. Sherlock whispered, "He'll come up the stairs. He's got a gun. Semi-automatic. I'll barrel him and you get the weapon from him," and John nodded his agreement but as soon as they heard footsteps on the staircase, a funny look came over John's face and he grinned up at Sherlock and said, not even bothering to keep his voice down, "Your plan's shite. I'm not standing by and watching you get yourself shot," before heaving himself off of his heels, throwing the door open and bowling headfirst into the grunt's stomach with a sound terrifyingly akin to a lion's roar. Sherlock could do nothing but watch as the gunman, inextricably tangled with John, stumbled and tumbled, backwards down the stairs, taking John with him.
Scrambling up from his hiding spot, Sherlock peered down the stairwell to see John and the strange man, nearly twice his size, grappling on the landing. John was bleeding from a cut on his forehead but the other man was bleeding more and then, suddenly, with a strange twist and a triumphant bark, John had the gun out of the man's hand and was bashing it across his head. The larger man fell backwards, unconscious, before Sherlock even had the chance to get out the door and halfway down the stairs, and John grinned up at him with a smile the exact size and brilliance of the desert sun and Sherlock had to stop on the stairs and grab hold of the bannister as his entire being shifted under the sudden weight of realisation that slammed into him. "Oh," he said, stupidly, and John just laughed, picking himself off the floor and wiping casually at the blood on his forehead.
"Told you your plan was shite. Mine was much better."
The cut on John's forehead was beading with new blood and Sherlock suddenly was breathless with the need to lick it clean.
"You idiot," he managed to spit out, finally, his knuckles white. "You could have been shot."
"I've been shot before - what's one more bullet hole? Rather me than you."
And just like that, Sherlock was lost.
He tried, valiantly, to ignore it, to push it away, because he couldn't afford it, he couldn't afford to fall for someone, to care for someone, it only ever ended badly. He tried to ignore the golden glow of John's hair in the soft lights of their living room, the betraying quirk of his cheeks while he watched Sherlock scold Anderson and couldn't quite manage to look disapproving, the way he licked his lips constantly, the softness around his eyes when he looked at Sherlock when he thought Sherlock wasn't looking back.
He managed it, too, managed to ignore the thumping of his heart and the singing of his blood whenever John was nearby. He managed for all of two days until the mad, brave, idiotic bastard saved his life, again, and Sherlock (still breathless from the rooftop-chase, chest heaving and sweat beading down his forehead) was unable to stop himself crossing the living room, pressing John against a bookcase and kissing him as if his very life depended on it.
(It probably had.)
Just one week later he found himself covered in sweat, laying on his side in John's bed with John in front of him and around him, the only thing Sherlock could see and feel and hear and taste and smell and think of, literally consuming all of Sherlock's senses, all of his mind, all of his body, all of his soul, and Sherlock was pressing hot mouthed kisses to the base of John's neck and John's hand was clutching at Sherlock's hip (begging him deeper, slower, closer, harder), and they were moving together as one, John+Sherlock, Sherlock+John, performing impossible mathematics, adding one plus one to create one, one body and one soul and one heart and one mind; irrational mathematics and Sherlock was the exact opposite of concerned because he had one fist around John's cock and one against his stomach, feeling himself moving within and wringing soft cries from John's lips and that was it, that was it for Sherlock Holmes, he found his home there, without even looking at for it, he had found himself inside and around John Hamish Watson.
John pressed back against him and then pulled away, perfectly in time, just as Sherlock wanted (needed) without Sherlock asking; John took just as he gave, and Sherlock had long known that John was not a man to be crossed, that he would not take anything lying down, that he was and always would be an equal, a match, for himself (if not in intellect then in every other way, using all of his surprising attributes to raise to every challenge Sherlock threw his way.) John yielded when he wanted and stood firm when he needed and he yielded to Sherlock because he wanted to, because he needed it just as much as Sherlock had.
The terms were never laid out, there was never any need: Sherlock was very much aware from the beginning that he was not the one in control, here, that they were now one, and even then, seven days into whatever this thing between them was, it scared him a little because he is not good at this, he is not good at relinquishing control and considering any person beyond himself, and John knew this, and yet John trusted him implicitly, enough to let him in to his life and his body and his heart.
Sherlock resolved, as he drove deep and gasped John's name against John's neck, as John, without warning, spilled hot and liquid across his hand, that he would do anything, anything he could to deserve John Watson's trust and love, and he had been in earnest when he whispered against John's neck, "John, you are everything, I'll do anything for you, anything", but he did not know then what would happen later.
Now, it is later, and Sherlock is ducking through the lengthening shadows of Milton Keynes, waiting for Irene's text. He has had one text already from Lestrade, announcing his arrival at Eastwell, and one text from Mycroft confirming a high alert. There are hundreds of ways in which this plan might fail, and Sherlock has tried as best he can to document each and every one, but Sebastian Moran is an unknown quantity and it makes the calculations difficult.
A tight ball of nerves sits low in his stomach. He is restless and worried, trapped in his memories as he slides, like a shadow, his part in this drama has played out with an acceptable level of success but now comes the part he likes least of all: the part where he has entrusted the lives of his family to the hands of others (because he is only human and he has only the two hands and it's not enough, never enough, not when facing off against a spider).
It took every ounce of resolve and desperation that he had to ask for help; he had had to swallow his pride and conquer his mistrust and he had done it, without reserve, for the sake of John and his children. Because John is predictable and steady and fierce and brave, he is the glue that keeps Sherlock together at the seams, and his children are innocent and perfect and helpless, and Sherlock would give every last piece of himself, including his heart and his pride and his intellect and his very last breath if it meant to keeping them safe.
This chapter is almost over, now. The last threads of the story are drawing together. There are only two possibilities left (the worst kind of choose-your-own-adventure story he has ever heard of): either he and Irene will win, Moran will fall for their trap, John and the children will be safe and life will progress from there, or their trap will fail and Sherlock will be forced to offer himself as sacrifice (and he will do it. Gladly and without remorse.)
The text comes while Sherlock is lost in the reservoirs of his memory (John's lips against his, John's voice low and rough in his ears as he whispers words of love, the sharp, piercing cries of his children and the feeling of their skin against his trembling fingers), but at the sound, he snaps into action.
It is all hanging, now, on Irene's performance, but it is imperative he reach the office before Moran leaves again. With fingers remarkably calm, he sends John a text: I love you, John. it says, simply, and that is enough. (If it is the last thing he ever says to John, it is enough, because it is the one simple truth that has carried him through the past two years. It is the one strand of thought that has made sense of his chaos. It is his saving grace, it is the thing that has turned Sherlock Holmes from a monster into a man, the unalienable fact of his love for John Watson, and he clings to it, now, here, when it may or may not be the end of all things.)
Irene is very, very good at what she does and Sherlock, as he darts in and out of the streets, careful to be seen by just the right people, finds himself immeasurably glad that she is (unfathomably) on his side. They must appear to be working against each other while in fact working together and it has been difficult but feasible, they seem to have pulled off the triple bluff with relative ease, and all that remains now is to see just what Sebastian Moran will do when he realises he has been tricked at his own game.
His task is clear: he must make his appearance seem coincidental for long enough to get Moran on the back foot, enough so that they may have a chance at incapacitating him physically. The goal is (according to strict instructions from Mycroft) to detain rather than kill, but Sherlock will have exactly no qualms murdering the man that has threatened his family for so long if that is what it comes to. Irene is busy, now, as he dashes across the city, creating a diversion. It must seem genuine for as long as possible. They have planned for as many possibilities as they could think up and then some.
Sherlock is up the darkened stairwell of the building and darting through the flickering light of the halls before he can register the uncanny quiet, the odd quality of the light filtering through the gap at the bottom of Irene's door.
In his concentration, he doesn't feel his mobile buzzing in his pocket. He is counting his breaths, steadying his hand, preparing himself for the various scenarios that may await him on the other side of the door, so he doesn't read the message on his phone until much, much later, and by then it is far too late.
Sherlock, what's going on? Don't do anything dangerous! I love you too, you bastard, I don't know what you're doing but stop it, stop it now and come home, we'll sort it out together. Sherlock?
The phone buzzes in his pocket but Sherlock doesn't register it, instead he braces himself and turns the handle to open the office and opens the door - and then stands frozen in the doorway while the world falls away and all it leaves behind is cold-hot panic and the words circling in his head: Oh god, oh god, oh god, what have we done?
Author: 1electricpirate
Rating: M
Pairing: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson (BBC)
Disclaimer: I do not pretend to own any of these characters (besides the two or three I have conjured from thin air). Credit for that brilliance falls to ACD and the Godtiss.
Previous Chapters: One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten | Eleven
Chapter 12 - The Disputed Existence of Irrational Numbers
“Chinese or Indian tonight, Sherlock? Or Vietnamese? Push the boat out a little? Molly was telling me about an interesting North African restaurant, we could try that too. Be good to get out of the house. Sherlock?”
John cranes his neck to poke his head through the kitchen door and catch Sherlock’s response, but none comes. Sherlock is absorbed, utterly and completely, in whatever horrible microbe or other is swimming underneath the lens of his microscope.
“Sherlock. You have to eat.”
“Not hungry. Leave me alone, this is important.”
“Food is important,” John reminds him.
“This case is important,” Sherlock retorts without looking away from the eyepiece. John rolls his eyes and lets it slide. He goes back to poking at the keys of his laptop, punching at them loudly and deliberately whilst smirking to himself.
It takes all of three minutes.
“John.”
“Hmmmm?” John continues jabbing at the keys, blissfully aware that this is just about the equivalent of nails on a blackboard for Sherlock.
“John.” Sherlock’s voice is louder now, but he has still not looked up from his microscope. John types louder.
“John, stop it.”
“Stop what?”
John looks over at Sherlock and grins at the way his eyes are narrowed and his lips are pursed - surely he can’t actually see through the lens like that. He carries on, typing nonsense on to the page with loud, deliberately uneven key strokes. (Nothing gets on Sherlock’s nerves like someone misusing technology, and John doesn’t even have to try to type badly. It’s wonderful and hilarious all at once.)
Sherlock lasts another two minutes before suddenly whirling around, pushing out of his chair and storming across the room to snatch John’s laptop away, slam it shut and throw it on the couch.
John grins up at him, crossing his arms over his chest. “Problem, love?”
“You are infuriating,” Sherlock tells him, voice low and deep in his throat, eyes glinting with irritation.
“I was writing my blog,” John says, but he can’t quite keep the grin out of his words. “And you were ignoring me.”
“I was working,” Sherlock growls, stepping closer. John stands up and uncrosses his arms.
“Boring,” he says, deliberately. Sherlock raises one eyebrow.
“It pays the bills.”
John snorts. “Mycroft pays our bills and if he didn’t, your trust fund would.”
“Keeps me sane, then.”
“Dull,” John repeats. He steps closer. Sherlock's eyes flash; John's lips twitch towards a smile.
Suddenly the tranquil air of 221b is positively buzzing, sizzling, humming with this thing that it is between them - it's not animal, not really, John doesn't want to simplify it to anything so base as animal desire because it isn't, it isn't just lust, this thing that sits between them like a third inhabitant of their tiny little microsystem. Sherlock is the most beautiful creature John has ever seen but that isn't it. The thing between them, the connection ... It is layered and multifaceted, it is as steady as a rock and as changing as the tides. John is consumed by it, and he doesn't even care, because he knows (can see it in the flash of Sherlock's eyes, in the quirk of his lips, in the twitch of his fingers, in the shape of his shoulders) - he knows without a shadow of a doubt that Sherlock is in just as much danger of drowning in it as he is himself.
This is all it takes, these days, for a perfectly normal, sedate, respectable morning to degenerate completely and utterly into the most delicious, depraved a afternoon full of the most unproductive activities either of them can think up. A look, a glance, a few stupid words said in jest - and suddenly the thing, which had been lounging contentedly on the couch, stretching itself across John's favourite cushion like a spoilt, lazy housecat, sits up suddenly and morphs into some kind of feral, posturing tom-cat.
It's the most lovely thing John can imagine, the fact that they can plough on as before (stodgy and boring and caught up in their work) but also have thissomething between them that threatens to burn them both up alive for hours at a time before spitting them out again at the other side, sweaty and satiated and sore and so in love it threatens to knock them both for six, but then one of them stretches and smiles and yawns and says, "Tea?" and then the thing is back lazing on the couch and they carry on as before.
(Honestly, John finds it positively baffling that no one has noticed - quite apart from the matching gold rings that they don't bother hiding, Sherlock's productivity on cases anywhere less than a seven on his personal rating scale (a one being a stolen bit of a jewellery that turns out to have been wedged in a floorboard; a ten being a locked-room murder-suicide without a murder weapon with no link, perceived or hidden, between the two victims) has fallen drastically; John's dedication to his paperwork is all but gone.
Even the blog has been suffering - though John suspects that perhaps Sherlock has been engineering these little provocative encounters to occur just as he is getting in to the swing of blogging. (Sherlock does so hate his blog.)
"John?" Sherlock's voice cuts in to John's introspection; John shakes himself out of it and grins at him.
"Chinese or Indian for dinner then," he asks, teasing; Sherlock growls his frustration at bring tricked into answering and, in his twisted idea of payback, all but pounces.
"I'd much rather eat you," he says into John's lips, hands smoothing possessively down John's back to grip his arse. John grins and bites down on Sherlock's neck, not hard enough to bruise, but nearly.
"Excellent idea," he murmurs, "and then I think Indian, don't you?"
"Shut up, John," Sherlock growls again, beginning to work with one hand on John's buttons. John laughs, and there is no more talking (well, no coherent talking) for a long time.
(Later, stretched out naked and content across their bed, with slightly stained sheets pooling about his midriff, Sherlock lets John nap with his head on his chest, curled around him with one leg thrown protectively across Sherlock's thighs. Sherlock splays one wide hand across John's back and buries his nose in John's hair and remembers, vaguely, the microbes swimming under his microscope and thinks to himself that they are not even remotely as interesting as this moment here: John's steady, even breaths, the cloying smell of sweat and sex heavy about him, the slightly uncomfortable feeling of semen drying in awkward (and frankly surprising) places, the glint of the setting sun on the ring around his finger (the surge of warmth when he sees the matching glint around John's finger). He commits it all to memory, every small bit of it, greedily hoarding every piece of this perfect moment in his mind. In a few minutes, John will wake and stretch and kiss him sloppily on the chin before calling for Indian (Saag Paneer, Lamb Madras, Chicken Korma; a garlic naan and a peshwari, pilau rice and as many bhajiis as he seems to think fitting for two grown men; it is always this order, always the same. Steady, unchangeable, predictable John, with his jumpers and his cropped hair and his hospital corners, and the infuriating ability to take Sherlock (Sherlock!) by surprise on an impressively regular basis despite all evidence to the contrary). He will fall out of bed, out of Sherlock's arms and into the shower. Sherlock will return to his (now entirely ruined) experiment and John will attempt to shovel curry down his mouth.
They may get a call from Lestrade later, they may fall asleep on the couch watching Star Trek reruns; those moments will all also be perfect but they will not be this moment and for right now, Sherlock just wants to hold John, his John with his shredded shoulder and the leg that still bugs him if it rains for too long, his John with the crows' feet around his eyes and an absolutely atrocious attachment to horrible jumpers, this strange man who should have been ordinary (should have been the most boring, ordinary person on the planet) but somehow was exactly the opposite, was more fascinating to Sherlock in this moment even than a 10 on the interesting scale - and he was asleep. Sherlock presses his lips into John's hair and breaths him in, as if by breathing hard enough he can keep this man here, forever, right where he belongs, pressed up against him, warm and lazy, so that Sherlock can't really tell where his limbs end and John's begin.
In a few minutes this moment will be gone and John will get up and he will go back to his experiment, so Sherlock lets himself memorise it as best he can, never to be forgotten, this moment of complete serenity and warmth and love. Sherlock never expected to love anything, had tried never to love anything ever again, but then John Watson came along with his jumpers and his crow's feet and his crooked smile and gimp leg and had quite literally bowled Sherlock over, had knocked him down and drawn him in, and Sherlock has never cherished anything in this world more than he cherishes his husband. He has few moments peaceful enough to appreciate these facts for what they are so he takes this moment, this perfect, quiet, really rather unpleasantly pungent moment, to take it in and catalogue it for posterity. He has just finished memorising the sensation of John's shoulder scar under his fingers when John stretches and yawns and kisses him on the chin, already reaching for his phone. Sherlock smiles and wraps himself in the sheet and makes his way back to his microscope. The moment is gone, but it will not be forgotten.)
--------------------------
Irene sits at her desk, thumbing the sharp edge of her laptop. The office is stark and white and modern, with lofty ceilings and huge windows and an enormous couch that folds out in to a bed.
It was made exactly according to her specifications and she keeps it exactly how she likes it.
Irene has found that here, right in the middle of the cesspit of upper-working and lower-middle-class England, it does not matter whether one technically exists or not (given a certain amount of freely-flowing cash and a frankly impeccable bosom). She has kept this office for years. It has seen many a dubious business transaction in its time as her only true base and it is that one, tiny, nearly insignificant detail that makes her trap a viable solution to the myriad problems she is currently facing.
Namely: Sherlock Holmes and the whirlwind of drama he brought with him.
At first, Irene was helping him because she had no choice (and, okay, a small amount of curiosity). Mycroft Holmes was literally holding her captive by her pursestrings and she had been all but manhandled by him into playing mentor to his baby brother.
Months later, though, Irene finds herself helping no longer because she has to (she does, sort of, need this to be over for her own personal business interests) but mostly because she wants to.
She had heard of Sherlock Holmes and been working to thwart him long before she ever met him; but if she’s very honest with herself (and she usually is - she lies to so many other people lying to herself just adds a layer of exhaustion that is too wearisome to be worthwhile) - if she’s very honest with herself, the moment she met Sherlock Holmes he ceased to become a target and became, instead, an adversary, an opponent worthy of her time.
(She never does figure out what it was about him, but she suspects it had something to do with the grudging respect she saw in his eyes when he looked up and found her standing naked in her assumed living room in Belgravia. It took him all of two seconds to realise exactly what he was dealing with and drop his act, and they’d immediately locked minds in what turned out to be one of the most exhilarating verbal and mental exchanges (perhaps it was less an exchange and more a duel) of her life. She wasn’t lying, she’d have had him right there if it hadn’t been for the fact that he was so obviously smitten with the ordinary, short little beige-coloured Doctor that tailed him around everywhere and never let him out of his sight, even back then, three months into their acquaintance, both of them still essentially unaware of the gravitational force between them that more astute eyes could have seen from space.)
From the beginning, then, Sherlock earns her respect in the way that few men ever have or ever will. Sitting here in her familiar, stark white office space in Milton Keynes (a conveniently bland place to hide a very covert operations base), Irene has to admit to herself that after months of trailing across Britain with him, she no longer simply respects Sherlock Holmes. She likes him.
This is all very alarming for Irene, unaccustomed by nature to having anything so close to a friend, or even an equal, as Sherlock is to her now, and if she had the time to spare she has no doubt that she would berate herself heavily for it.
She finds it very hard not to like him, though. Oh, of course, he is rude and contemptuous and cruel and mocking, just as he has always been, but since the beginning of their joint endeavour Irene has been keenly aware that the Sherlock she now knows, the Sherlock in fact with whom she has spent the past however many months in claustrophobically close quarters, is not the same Sherlock she first met.
He is sharper, better, keener; sometimes that makes him colder and crueler and all but impossible to deal with, but no person can keep up that act for ever, and it doesn’t take Irene long to understand that the Sherlock of now is simply the broken version of the Sherlock of before. The new Sherlock hurts, he hurts deeply and vividly and somehow that hurt makes him warmer amidst his prickles.
Gone, apparently, are the days where Sherlock would proclaim loudly and to anyone who cared that the only thing that mattered (above anything and anyone else) was the work. Gone is the Sherlock who refused help of any kind, who acted as a law unto himself with no regard for anyone else, seeking only data and answers and cold hard facts.
This case, though - there is something fundamentally different about it. This is no longer a strange kind of fix for Sherlock, who, Irene knows as well as anyone, got his kicks off illegal drugs and darkened crime scenes.
Sherlock is not doing this to keep his mind busy, to stop himself sliding into an early grave dug by aggravated boredom combined with a hyperactive intellect. He no longer pretends to be operating in a vacuum. Sherlock is doing this because the person he loves (and despite herself, Irene believes that Sherlock does love John, more deeply and truly than anyone she has ever known to love any other person) is in danger and that resonates with something deep, deep down in the long-forgotten bit of Irene Adler that yearns to mother broken things until they are whole again.
Spend six or seven months in close quarters with anyone and you want to break their face in, but Irene often experiences the peculiar mixture of urges that would involve breaking Sherlock’s face in - but doing it gently.
She has watched for the past six or seven months as layer by layer, Sherlock’s armour of cold indifference was peeled away by distance and desperation and despair. She held him, actually held him in her arms as he shook and sobbed and asked for help. The great, invincible Sherlock Holmes had begged for help. (Irene doesn’t have the heart to tell him that she hadn’t even needed to be asked by then.)
It helps, of course, that she has a grudging respect for John Watson, who is shockingly dull and ordinary but also, it turns out, a surprisingly indomitable force all on his own.
Somehow, some way, these two (utterly useless, idiotic) men had fallen together and then they had fallen apart and (despite herself) Irene feels that it is somehow her responsibility (as the only one with any emotional intelligence to speak of) to fix them, and she actually wants to do it.
(Of course, if this comes off as she plans it, it will not only be remarkably lucrative to her, but she will hold both Holmes brothers in her debt, which, of course, is tantamount to having the entirety of Britain and its various remaining colonies (Mycroft fools no one with his imperiously unassuming posturing) grovelling at her feet.)
At first, while they were still darting across the country trying to thwart Moran’s little enterprises one by one, Irene had joked about her and Sherlock giving up and going to the dark side and spinning little webs of their own. It had been an amusing way to pass the hours - until suddenly Irene realised that unless they drew Moran out of his cave, they would never be able to end this little game they were playing.
They needed to bait him at the same time as threaten him, and they needed to do it in such a way as to keep him from figuring out what was going on.
Moran was, by all indications, fiercely territorial. Moriarty’s web had all but crumbled abroad (thanks entirely to Sherlock’s year in exile) but it remained tight and functional within Britain. He was not quite as clever about his little games as Moriarty had been but it was obvious that he’d been trained y the best to keep the ball moving.
Irene and Sherlock had two distinct advantages. Number one: Moran thought Irene was dead. Number two: They had the full weight of the British government firmly on their side. (Not that Mycroft could ever help them directly, but the creation of a country-wide blind-spot where the two of them were concerned had had its uses.)
It was like working a double shift. They would thwart Moran’s little bugs and in their place plant little bugs of their own. Or, rather, Sherlock would thwart the bugs and Irene would plant the replacements. They were always together but never perceived to be working together and that was the most important point of all.
A sudden loud buzz from her mobile lying on her glass-topped desk snaps Irene out of her reverie. She takes it in one perfectly manicured hand, thumbs through the new message, and grins.
The plan is simple. It involves a two pronged stick (Sherlock’s careful attempts to dismantle Moran’s web will be, of course, expected but they are also frustrating. Meanwhile, Irene is busy encroaching on Moran’s turf with impressive rapidity) and then, when Moran must least be expecting it (which is, to say, right now), a carrot.
They have carefully built up her web so that Irene sits immediately at the centre of it and so that it is difficult but not too difficult to trace back to one single hub: namely, this small glass office in a warehouse complex in Milton Keynes. There will be a final case, involving rather a large sum of money (supplied by Mycroft, of course, through various back channels) and a bit of a scuffle that will end in the message being transmitted to Moran - not a white flag of surrender, an offer of parley.
She is the carrot. She has offered herself as bait and she hadn’t even thought twice about doing it. (How’s that for selflessness? Her mother would be so proud to see her now.) Irene is used to selling herself in all manner of ways (body and mind) but she has never before felt the need to offer herself up for free. For Sherlock, though, for the sake of Sherlock and John and their children, she has chosen to act as a lure.
(Of course, she has great faith in her own plans. How could she not? And Sherlock is a genius. They may have been wrong, of course, but then again, they may not have been. Irene Adler is no wilting flower, nor will she ever be at the mercy of any man. So she offers herself as bait though she does not expect much bad to come of it.)
It will not be long now. They have spent months planning for every contingency. It is not a flawless plan, there are, of course, holes, and neither of them have ever met this man against whom they are placing their bets, which leads to rather a blind game of poker, but the risks are acceptable in light of the potential gains.
All Irene has to do, now, is sit tight and wait - and then keep Moran talking long enough to allow Sherlock the time to reach them. It is a matter of hours, now. Maybe minutes. This man is unpredictable, so she must be ready at any time.
She is wearing her battle armour: an elegant white button-down dress that clings to her best assets, an intricate knot in her hair and perfectly applied makeup. Moran may have been Moriarty’s second in command but Irene was far enough down the line of command in her time working for Jim that she never met the Colonel. She does not worry about being recognised, and if she is, well, then she will simply laugh it off and say Sherlock Holmes was not the first one to fake a death.
Irene is not nervous. She has never been a nervous person. She is wary, though, of Sherlock and the slightly manic glint in his eye as they parted. (She does not doubt him and his ability to detach, as much as possible, in order to get the job done, but that glint had been unsettling and rather too desperate for Irene’s taste.)
They have planned and plotted and schemed for months, but they are up against an anonymous foe, and that makes this entire operation more risky than any of Sherlock’s encounters with Jim ever were, insanity be damned. Mycroft sent covert teams in over the past few months in the guise of painters and decorators and plumbers and, in one memorable instance, pizza delivery men, to bug the office and install, under her desk, a tiny panic button. She is not alone.
Smiling to herself, she pops the cork on a bottle of champagne, pours herself a glass and kicks back in her chair to wait. On her laptop, the opening credits to Casablanca scroll through.
The hard part (the complicated plots and mass manipulation of resources and the sometimes brutal legwork and the endless waiting, cooped up in hotel rooms with Sherlock Holmes) is over, now. This bit, the bit where she convinces a strange man that she is someone she is not, is easy. (This bit, she could do - has done - in her sleep.)
When the knock at her door comes, eventually, her only thought before she sweeps herself on to her feet to welcome her guest (prey) is that she wishes he’d at least waited for Humphrey Bogart to finish. She fires a quick text to Sherlock, and then stands up to open the door.
Here’s looking at you, kid. To the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
--------------------
The first time they met, Sherlock took one look at John Watson and decided, boring. He had rattled off his deductions at lightning speed, not even bothering to look up from his microscope to do so. He'd braced himself for the inevitable indignant squawking and resigned himself to the inevitable slamming of the door as the stranger declared him a freak and stormed out of the room. (He'd told Mike, he'd told him, no one could stand him for more than five minutes at a time, how could he ever expect to find someone to live with him, and why did no one ever listen to him ever?)
But the squawking didn't come. The door stayed ajar and John Watson didn't storm anywhere. He didn't even hobble away. Sherlock had risked a (slightly confused) glance at him and seen a dropped jaw and incredulous eyes, and been treated to his very first sight of John's gormless declaration: "That's incredible."
Oh, Sherlock had thought, and Mike had smirked, and John had shifted his weight on his legs, and Sherlock had thought, Oh. Maybe... maybe.
The second time they met, Sherlock took John to see a dead woman and cured him of his limp. He had preened at John's compliments and snorted at his expected idiocy and John had grinned at him and scolded him and they had chased a taxi through the streets of London. Mycroft had kidnapped him and offered him money and John, John in his shabby jumper and second-hand jacket and miserly army pension who probably hadn't had a square meal in months had refused and then he had shot a man clean through two windows to save Sherlock's life and turned up at the crime scene in a cream-knit jumper and not even felt the slightest bit of guilt about the cold-blooded murder he'd committed twenty minutes earlier while they giggled like school boys at a crime scene and Sherlock had looked at him and thought, Oh.
And just like that, John Watson had scooped himself out a place in Sherlock's life and in his mind and in his soul and Sherlock suddenly found himself vaguely at a loss whenever John wasn't nearby.
It hadn't been anything so saccharin as love at first sight, but neither would Sherlock in all honesty be able to say that there wasn't a sort of quiet clicking sound as John slotted into place in his life, the lens that collected all the disparate, warring pieces of Sherlock's mind and body and soul and untangled them, effortlessly, magnified them and amplified them, focusing his blurry edges and making a sort of sense of his chaos.
John became necessary before he was loved, but that did not in anyway diminish the veracity (and voracity) of Sherlock's love for him when suddenly, finally, it exploded across his consciousness in a kaleidoscope of neon colours against the otherwise drab, grey background of Sherlock's (deliberately cold) heart.
It happened one night in an abandoned house in the outskirts of London, far without the bounds of Sherlock's beloved Zone 1. They were lying low, using the house as a vantage point to scout out the headquarters of a human trafficking ring, when suddenly they were trapped. A grunt was scouting out the house and he and John crouched in an old garret bedroom at the top of some rickety stairs, hardly daring to breathe. Sherlock whispered, "He'll come up the stairs. He's got a gun. Semi-automatic. I'll barrel him and you get the weapon from him," and John nodded his agreement but as soon as they heard footsteps on the staircase, a funny look came over John's face and he grinned up at Sherlock and said, not even bothering to keep his voice down, "Your plan's shite. I'm not standing by and watching you get yourself shot," before heaving himself off of his heels, throwing the door open and bowling headfirst into the grunt's stomach with a sound terrifyingly akin to a lion's roar. Sherlock could do nothing but watch as the gunman, inextricably tangled with John, stumbled and tumbled, backwards down the stairs, taking John with him.
Scrambling up from his hiding spot, Sherlock peered down the stairwell to see John and the strange man, nearly twice his size, grappling on the landing. John was bleeding from a cut on his forehead but the other man was bleeding more and then, suddenly, with a strange twist and a triumphant bark, John had the gun out of the man's hand and was bashing it across his head. The larger man fell backwards, unconscious, before Sherlock even had the chance to get out the door and halfway down the stairs, and John grinned up at him with a smile the exact size and brilliance of the desert sun and Sherlock had to stop on the stairs and grab hold of the bannister as his entire being shifted under the sudden weight of realisation that slammed into him. "Oh," he said, stupidly, and John just laughed, picking himself off the floor and wiping casually at the blood on his forehead.
"Told you your plan was shite. Mine was much better."
The cut on John's forehead was beading with new blood and Sherlock suddenly was breathless with the need to lick it clean.
"You idiot," he managed to spit out, finally, his knuckles white. "You could have been shot."
"I've been shot before - what's one more bullet hole? Rather me than you."
And just like that, Sherlock was lost.
He tried, valiantly, to ignore it, to push it away, because he couldn't afford it, he couldn't afford to fall for someone, to care for someone, it only ever ended badly. He tried to ignore the golden glow of John's hair in the soft lights of their living room, the betraying quirk of his cheeks while he watched Sherlock scold Anderson and couldn't quite manage to look disapproving, the way he licked his lips constantly, the softness around his eyes when he looked at Sherlock when he thought Sherlock wasn't looking back.
He managed it, too, managed to ignore the thumping of his heart and the singing of his blood whenever John was nearby. He managed for all of two days until the mad, brave, idiotic bastard saved his life, again, and Sherlock (still breathless from the rooftop-chase, chest heaving and sweat beading down his forehead) was unable to stop himself crossing the living room, pressing John against a bookcase and kissing him as if his very life depended on it.
(It probably had.)
Just one week later he found himself covered in sweat, laying on his side in John's bed with John in front of him and around him, the only thing Sherlock could see and feel and hear and taste and smell and think of, literally consuming all of Sherlock's senses, all of his mind, all of his body, all of his soul, and Sherlock was pressing hot mouthed kisses to the base of John's neck and John's hand was clutching at Sherlock's hip (begging him deeper, slower, closer, harder), and they were moving together as one, John+Sherlock, Sherlock+John, performing impossible mathematics, adding one plus one to create one, one body and one soul and one heart and one mind; irrational mathematics and Sherlock was the exact opposite of concerned because he had one fist around John's cock and one against his stomach, feeling himself moving within and wringing soft cries from John's lips and that was it, that was it for Sherlock Holmes, he found his home there, without even looking at for it, he had found himself inside and around John Hamish Watson.
John pressed back against him and then pulled away, perfectly in time, just as Sherlock wanted (needed) without Sherlock asking; John took just as he gave, and Sherlock had long known that John was not a man to be crossed, that he would not take anything lying down, that he was and always would be an equal, a match, for himself (if not in intellect then in every other way, using all of his surprising attributes to raise to every challenge Sherlock threw his way.) John yielded when he wanted and stood firm when he needed and he yielded to Sherlock because he wanted to, because he needed it just as much as Sherlock had.
The terms were never laid out, there was never any need: Sherlock was very much aware from the beginning that he was not the one in control, here, that they were now one, and even then, seven days into whatever this thing between them was, it scared him a little because he is not good at this, he is not good at relinquishing control and considering any person beyond himself, and John knew this, and yet John trusted him implicitly, enough to let him in to his life and his body and his heart.
Sherlock resolved, as he drove deep and gasped John's name against John's neck, as John, without warning, spilled hot and liquid across his hand, that he would do anything, anything he could to deserve John Watson's trust and love, and he had been in earnest when he whispered against John's neck, "John, you are everything, I'll do anything for you, anything", but he did not know then what would happen later.
Now, it is later, and Sherlock is ducking through the lengthening shadows of Milton Keynes, waiting for Irene's text. He has had one text already from Lestrade, announcing his arrival at Eastwell, and one text from Mycroft confirming a high alert. There are hundreds of ways in which this plan might fail, and Sherlock has tried as best he can to document each and every one, but Sebastian Moran is an unknown quantity and it makes the calculations difficult.
A tight ball of nerves sits low in his stomach. He is restless and worried, trapped in his memories as he slides, like a shadow, his part in this drama has played out with an acceptable level of success but now comes the part he likes least of all: the part where he has entrusted the lives of his family to the hands of others (because he is only human and he has only the two hands and it's not enough, never enough, not when facing off against a spider).
It took every ounce of resolve and desperation that he had to ask for help; he had had to swallow his pride and conquer his mistrust and he had done it, without reserve, for the sake of John and his children. Because John is predictable and steady and fierce and brave, he is the glue that keeps Sherlock together at the seams, and his children are innocent and perfect and helpless, and Sherlock would give every last piece of himself, including his heart and his pride and his intellect and his very last breath if it meant to keeping them safe.
This chapter is almost over, now. The last threads of the story are drawing together. There are only two possibilities left (the worst kind of choose-your-own-adventure story he has ever heard of): either he and Irene will win, Moran will fall for their trap, John and the children will be safe and life will progress from there, or their trap will fail and Sherlock will be forced to offer himself as sacrifice (and he will do it. Gladly and without remorse.)
The text comes while Sherlock is lost in the reservoirs of his memory (John's lips against his, John's voice low and rough in his ears as he whispers words of love, the sharp, piercing cries of his children and the feeling of their skin against his trembling fingers), but at the sound, he snaps into action.
It is all hanging, now, on Irene's performance, but it is imperative he reach the office before Moran leaves again. With fingers remarkably calm, he sends John a text: I love you, John. it says, simply, and that is enough. (If it is the last thing he ever says to John, it is enough, because it is the one simple truth that has carried him through the past two years. It is the one strand of thought that has made sense of his chaos. It is his saving grace, it is the thing that has turned Sherlock Holmes from a monster into a man, the unalienable fact of his love for John Watson, and he clings to it, now, here, when it may or may not be the end of all things.)
Irene is very, very good at what she does and Sherlock, as he darts in and out of the streets, careful to be seen by just the right people, finds himself immeasurably glad that she is (unfathomably) on his side. They must appear to be working against each other while in fact working together and it has been difficult but feasible, they seem to have pulled off the triple bluff with relative ease, and all that remains now is to see just what Sebastian Moran will do when he realises he has been tricked at his own game.
His task is clear: he must make his appearance seem coincidental for long enough to get Moran on the back foot, enough so that they may have a chance at incapacitating him physically. The goal is (according to strict instructions from Mycroft) to detain rather than kill, but Sherlock will have exactly no qualms murdering the man that has threatened his family for so long if that is what it comes to. Irene is busy, now, as he dashes across the city, creating a diversion. It must seem genuine for as long as possible. They have planned for as many possibilities as they could think up and then some.
Sherlock is up the darkened stairwell of the building and darting through the flickering light of the halls before he can register the uncanny quiet, the odd quality of the light filtering through the gap at the bottom of Irene's door.
In his concentration, he doesn't feel his mobile buzzing in his pocket. He is counting his breaths, steadying his hand, preparing himself for the various scenarios that may await him on the other side of the door, so he doesn't read the message on his phone until much, much later, and by then it is far too late.
Sherlock, what's going on? Don't do anything dangerous! I love you too, you bastard, I don't know what you're doing but stop it, stop it now and come home, we'll sort it out together. Sherlock?
The phone buzzes in his pocket but Sherlock doesn't register it, instead he braces himself and turns the handle to open the office and opens the door - and then stands frozen in the doorway while the world falls away and all it leaves behind is cold-hot panic and the words circling in his head: Oh god, oh god, oh god, what have we done?