Fic: The World on His Wrist - 1/6 (BBC Sherlock)
Title: The World on His Wrist
Rating: PG13
Wordcount: 3.5k, this part, 31.2k overall
Betas: vyctori and fogbutton
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: First, he is shot in Afghanistan. Second, he wakes to a phone call in Chelmsford, Essex. Third is pain, fourth is normalcy, fifth is agony and sixth is confusion. By the eighth, he's lost track. (John-centric AU)
Prologue - Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four - Part Five - Part Six - Epilogue
Keeping his lives within a week of each other takes some effort. He spends some of his time in Chelmsford and almost all his time in London testing it out. Life in Afghanistan continues on as per usual, for which he is endlessly grateful. There’s still no pattern to it, no rhyme or reason, but he’s discovered that any sort of nap is enough to send him off and uses that to synchronize his calendars. Beyond that, he takes notes.
Having four Christmases a year is not at all the experience he dreamed of as a child. Enduring Harry for three of them is a trial in itself. Christmas in Afghanistan is wonderful beyond belief, the youngest sergeant turning to him and asking, laughing, “Think it’ll snow, doc?” The gifts are small, some hand-me-downs, and it’s somehow more satisfying than the Secret Santa at Broomfield.
He can’t work out a conscious rotation of these lives, but if he could, he’d save Afghanistan for last, a reward.
What that says about the rest of his days, he tries not to think about.
He toys with the blog through January. It’s the worst thing in the world, being settled in Essex, a capable man with two steady hands and two good legs, and then spending double-time in London, useless and crippled. Still, he’d rather be useless in London than useless in Chelmsford, if it’s all the same to whatever deranged powers-that-be that have unwound his life. Useless in London is still in London, but useless in Chelmsford? Is in Chelmsford. Possibly forever. Shot in October, trudging through January, the last three months have taken a year.
It could be worse, he tells himself.
In Chelmsford he lives ahead a bit and tracks the market online. In London, either London, he makes a tiny investment here, a tiny investment there. It’s cheating, but he feels as though it’s owed to him. He’s not stupid enough to go and win the lottery. The only changes between his Londons are the changes he makes for himself and being invalided is change enough, thanks.
He blogs about it here and there, largely in the digital life. Seems more fitting. Having tortured himself through rehab twice, he doesn’t force himself to type it all back up in analogue London. It annoys him to no end, his inability to bring anything between his lives but the knowledge in his head. If he could wire himself some money, copy-paste a blog entry or two, it would improve so much.
When he says nothing happens to him, he’s not joking. He is living four lives in three locations, and the only one that’s at all interesting, no one wants to hear about. Not that he can talk about it in the present tense without being considered crazy. Bill’s tour finishes in Afghanistan, the man comes home and gets married, and John can’t keep track of what he and Bill had been talking about before he’d been shot. It’s a poor way to treat the man who saved his life - two of his lives? Or all four? - but he avoids Bill back in England out of sheer confusion.
Not to say he’s entirely alone in London. He goes out for drinks with the rugby lads from Blackheath but feels as though he’s watching a sitcom, stuck behind a screen and meant to be the laugh track. None of them mention his leg, he forgets his mobile there, and he’d much rather not go and get it back. When they call him up on the same day, digital-side, he says he has other plans. Two thirds of the time he has a telly, the world is on reruns; he doesn’t need his social life to be the same.
He decides then and there that separation is key. He’s thought it before, but now he means it. If he thinks about it correctly, he can use this to his advantage. Analogue London is slipping ahead of digital London, a bit, and he winds up asking out every woman he meets just for the hell of it. He makes a mental note where there’s interest despite his poor delivery. Maybe he’ll try again in digital, if he sees her again.
The effort required to fill his London days is the worst of it. Broomfield Hospital keeps him going at a reasonable clip when it’s not working him into the ground. Afghanistan is a world of tedium, adrenaline and bad food. Between keeping his unit going and figuring out what the hell his pre-existing social life in Chelmsford is, he hasn’t much time to stop and think in those lives.
He reminds himself he loves this city. He loves this city more than he’s ever loved anywhere else and so, painfully, idiotically, he makes himself walk through it every day. Even with the investments, his pension can’t hold up under London’s strain. Maybe in time, but not now. At this rate, it’s move or risk the lottery. He considers, maybe, using one life to experiment with. Analogue’s running faster, so do the crazy things here. Learn from his mistakes. Make his life in digital London the best it can be.
With this in mind, he listens to Mike Stamford and thinks maybe a flatshare isn’t so bad an idea after all.
He writes up a blog entry about the complete madman he met that day, a complete, extraordinary madman, and in the morning, he gets up and carpools to Broomfield with Marta from down the lane. She’s nice enough, paediatrics and all that, but he has the oddest feeling about her, like they’ve shared a drunken snog at a Christmas party and have been steadfastly not talking about it ever since.
Still, nice enough. She asks him what’s on his mind and he almost wants to say, but his yesterday and her yesterday are not the same, particularly as his yesterday was four days ago and his tomorrow will probably be the same day his yesterday was. He’s grown to hate the ends of months. It’s February in Chelmsford and Afghanistan, January in London.
Instead of trying to explain, he simply tells her he’s tired. They drive on a bit in silence and he asks her, as if this is a sudden thought, if she remembers how they met. There’s certain information facebook can’t tell him.
That she has to think about it is somehow reassuring.
True to form, London is still in January, the day he left in analogue just beginning in digital. He wakes up thinking about flatmates. He thinks he’ll get one here too. A sane one. With two madmen living under the same roof, he’s certain 221b Baker Street will explode within the month, but maybe he’d stand a chance somewhere else.
It’s something of a gamble, but he calls up the Blackheath lads. One of them has a cousin in London, a man a few years John’s senior and fresh off a divorce. Derek, his name is, steadfastly determined to move on. Talking over the phone, he seems reasonable enough. John warns him about the limp and the PTSD, Derek tells him about the results of his custody battle, and this might not be so bad, actually. Derek’s kid might be over for weekends, but for John, that’s two days a month. The man is a librarian and he has a place in Wandsworth in mind, down near Clapham Junction. Grant Road, if he remembers correctly. They’ll meet up to look at a flat the day after next (in a week).
Overall, he has to say he feels more optimistic about this than Sherlock “Left My Riding Crop in the Mortuary” Holmes.
The orderly who replaced Bill proves satisfyingly competent, Marta hands him a coffee before climbing into his car, and Sherlock Holmes blows them both out of the water.
Come the early hours of the 31st, he kips on Sherlock’s sofa and wakes up on the 30th. Lying on the plain bed of his drab hotel room, he looks across the room to the desk, to the cane leaning there.
He’s not sure how long it takes him. Slowly, gradually, reassuring himself of the utter lack of pain with each adjustment of his leg, he sits up in bed. He pulls the duvet back and swings his feet to the floor.
He licks his lip, bites it. He shot a man last night, calm and steady, and now he’s too afraid to climb out of bed. To see if he can. Eyes closed, he thinks of running. Of cabs and chases. Of rooftops and madmen.
John Watson stands up, walks across the room, and puts away his cane where he’ll never have to see it again.
It takes less than an hour to realize he has something of an issue on his hands. The only differences are the differences he makes and that means Sherlock is going to get himself killed tonight.
Then he realizes: Jennifer what-was-her-name. The pink lady. The pink lady is still alive.
Immediately, he goes for his mobile. Which, seeing as he never lost this one in a pub, isn’t even the same mobile he texted the pink lady’s phone with. Not that he would still have her number on it even if it were Harry’s mobile.
Okay.
Be systematic about this.
She’s from Cardiff, she’s in the media. It’s easy enough to google her. Only once he’s sifted through bio page after bio page of the woman does he remember he knows her email address. She has her email on her phone, she always has her phone, so far so good. He knows she won’t die until two hours after getting drenched in Cardiff rain and the storm is still hours off.
He realizes he still has the cabbie’s plate number memorized, too. Even better.
It’s easy enough to create a new email address for himself. Hopefully, she’ll look at the londontravelwarnings and ignore the @gmail portion of the address. He looks at a couple of old warnings online and types his email with care. Disgruntled taxi driver wanted for questioning by the police. Physical description of the man, the plate number of the cab, and instructions to call the police immediately if this cab is spotted. There is no cause for panic. Exercise reasonable caution and do not board this vehicle.
He edits it down, rearranges it a bit, and sends it off with a tagline about all email addresses being provided through the rail system for customer safety. He hopes she bought her train tickets online, a reasonable gamble.
All of this will mean nothing, of course, if he doesn’t get the police to catch the cabbie. Time for an anonymous phone call.
That night, he sits on a table in an empty classroom, staring out through a window and in through a window, waiting for a light to turn on. His heart beats evenly, his left hand is steady, and his gun is a comfort against his back.
The light never turns on.
There’s no giggling over crime scenes, no shooting a man in the chest, no crazy umbrella-wielding brother, but he does go all the way across London for Chinese. It’s just as good as the first time.
Marta has a friend named Rachel who is very pretty and probably a bad idea. Dark hair with long, loose curls, pale blue eyes. Gorgeous smile, as well as other things. In light of recent events, the name warns him off. Both of the women are in paediatrics and it’s Rachel’s name that makes him think about it. He hasn’t been following London news in February yet, not out in Chelmsford, and it’s been February here for days.
When he asks, Marta isn’t sure, but Rachel has followed the matter with interest. He asks about the three, the three linked suicides, and Rachel corrects him. It’s five. As of the end of January, it’s five victims. Two in one night, a first, though not near each other. A woman, then a man. The woman used to be on telly. The man had a funny name.
“Sherlock Holmes,” he says.
Rachel agrees. It was that, or something like that. Clinched it as murder, though. Apparently, the man had been working with the police. Serial killer then, must be, and still at large, too. At that, Marta brings up something she saw on the local news a while back, some other story about people who didn’t deserve it getting killed.
John doesn’t pretend to listen.
He’s days late. He’s days late, and he couldn’t have ever seen this coming. He works it out and discovers he’d met Sherlock in analogue London the day after Sherlock had died in digital Chelmsford.
There’s literally nothing he could have done and it doesn’t help one whit.
Certain but unable to check, he waits through a day in Afghanistan only to wake back up in Chelmsford. All his surgeries for today are planned, non-emergency affairs, and he tries to let the paperwork surround him once he’s finished.
That night, for the second time, he googles Sherlock Holmes.
The pictures they use in the articles are strange. The eyes are flat, the mouth hard. He looks proud and aloof, probably on purpose. This isn’t a man who laughs at gallows humour, or jumps and whirls with excitement, or tidies up his things to placate his potential flatmate. John looks at the picture, so still and lifeless, and all he can see is Sherlock eating rice with chopsticks in his pale hand, eyes grinning at John’s pitiful attempts at emulation.
They’ve got him wrong. They’ve got him completely wrong and this is all the world will ever know of Sherlock now. They’ll see a cold, humourless man who died in a police investigation. The only words of praise anyone had for him centre on his intelligence.
Anyone, but for one man. When John reads it, he’s not surprised. Moved, yes. But not surprised.
He pulls out his credit card, looks up a florist, and arranges for a delivery. After giving the woman at the other end of the line a somewhat convoluted explanation, he gets a sympathy card included with his order. She writes down what he dictates. If she thinks it’s strange, she doesn’t say. Once she’s done, she reads the plate number and physical description back to him, then asks how he’d like the card to be signed.
“Just... a friend of Sherlock’s. ‘Putting my trust in you, a friend of Sherlock’s,’” he says. “That’s all. Thanks. And yes, express delivery would really be best.”
He has no idea what Lestrade thinks of lilies, but that’s really not the point.
He wakes up and has about five hours before he has to meet Derek to look at their potential flat. His morning is a horrendous affair until he finds the news online. The news titles are worse than usual, pulling up puns in very poor taste - “insisted suicide,” for one - but the content is very firm on certain key points.
The killer has been caught.
There have been no further deaths.
He feels a giggle well up and shoves it down. He shoves it down and he presses it down and, given enough time, it fades away. His head is light, dizzy, as if he were suffering from blood loss. It’s just relief. God, it is such relief, and then it vanishes.
Two deaths out of four. He feels like he’s been given a superpower, some mad ability meant to match Sherlock’s, and if that feeling’s right, if there is some sort of purpose or greater meaning behind this, it means he’s failed.
Never again.
He’d love to be able to promise that.
It takes some consideration, but he gets that flat on Grant Road with Derek before the day is out. The man’s all right, as far as random strangers go. Seems a bit dull. No rooftop chases here, but he doubts Derek would get himself killed out of pride, what with that daughter and all.
John’s really not sure what happened to his standards.
The sofa is cosy, if a bit lumpy, and he has no idea where he is until he checks his watch.
Left wrist for London.
Analogue for a madman.
John lies there not quite able to breathe. He’s on the sofa, curled up, back aching slightly. His coat is on the armchair he thinks will be his. His shoes have been kicked off somewhere, the exact location unimportant.
He hears a noise, a footstep, and he tries to speak. He tries, and fails, and tries again.
“Sherlock!”
It’s a half-strangled yell, equal parts unnecessary and mortifying.
“Yes...?” As slowly as his drawled syllable, the man emerges from the kitchen, tea in hand. The tailored suit has been replaced by pyjama bottoms, a t-shirt and a blue dressing gown. His eyes pierce John over his mug as he drinks. Not even the floppy sleep-tousled hair can blunt the effect of that gaze.
John sits up, not sure how or what to explain.
Sherlock goes back into the kitchen.
There are a few noises that should probably be troubling.
Sherlock returns, a mug in each hand, and sits down next to him. He hands John the second mug. For reasons John can’t fathom, his tea has just enough milk, just enough sugar. Trust Sherlock to know.
They drink in silence.
Once John’s mouth is free of the taste of stale sleep, he asks, “Is this how it goes, then? I kill a serial killer and then you make me tea?”
“Ah.” Sherlock pulls his legs up under him, somehow not tangling himself up on the blue length of his dressing gown. “You regret it.”
“No,” John says. “God no,” he says and nearly laughs. Disbelief bubbles up inside him, all nervous giggles he can’t let loose, and when he looks at Sherlock, he knows he shouldn’t let himself keep smiling the way he is. “Not in the least.”
Sherlock’s lips twitch. “Do you want to do it again?”
This time he does laugh. Couldn’t help it for the world. “I think it’s been settled,” he says, only to remember that the lilies won’t arrive until the next time he wakes up in Essex. Even then, Lestrade has to take his information seriously. That very much hasn’t been settled yet.
“If you’re worried about getting caught, you needn’t,” Sherlock tells him. “I assume my brother already knows you acted in my defence and he approves of that sort of thing. I doubt you’ll have any legal trouble for years.”
“I’m not worried about that,” he says. It’s stupid but true. He has illegal possession of a firearm, he killed a man, and he’s not worried about any of it. After what he’s been through, the way he lives, there doesn’t seem much point in worrying where only one life is concerned.
Sherlock shifts a bit, moving to sit crosslegged. Leaning forward, he sets his elbows on his knees, folds his hands and stares at him. Maybe John should mind, but he doesn’t. After about a minute of this, Sherlock points his index fingers at John. “PSTD,” he says. “Nightmare.”
“Wrong again,” John tells him.
“Oh?” Head tilting, eyes narrowing. Challenge accepted. “Something you thought of between last night and when you shouted. Something to do with me.”
“Someone’s got an ego.”
“I do,” Sherlock agrees, voice warm and pleased. “And someone’s keeping secrets.”
“You’d hate it if I told you,” John says.
“I would.” There’s a liquid quality to his tone, spreading out, filling up. The man’s like a purring tiger. Sherlock goes right on studying him, smiling in a way that would make most people run for safety.
John pretends to think about that. “I could tell you.”
“Don’t. If it’s of any importance, I’ll work it out on my own.”
“Are you sure?” John glances at him, a sideways glance into the most intense gaze he’s ever held.
“Please,” Sherlock scoffs. “I’m always sure.”
“I’ll be sure to tell my brother that.”
Sherlock glares at him.
John smiles, more hope than innocence, and drinks his tea.
next
Rating: PG13
Wordcount: 3.5k, this part, 31.2k overall
Betas: vyctori and fogbutton
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: First, he is shot in Afghanistan. Second, he wakes to a phone call in Chelmsford, Essex. Third is pain, fourth is normalcy, fifth is agony and sixth is confusion. By the eighth, he's lost track. (John-centric AU)
Prologue - Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four - Part Five - Part Six - Epilogue
Keeping his lives within a week of each other takes some effort. He spends some of his time in Chelmsford and almost all his time in London testing it out. Life in Afghanistan continues on as per usual, for which he is endlessly grateful. There’s still no pattern to it, no rhyme or reason, but he’s discovered that any sort of nap is enough to send him off and uses that to synchronize his calendars. Beyond that, he takes notes.
Having four Christmases a year is not at all the experience he dreamed of as a child. Enduring Harry for three of them is a trial in itself. Christmas in Afghanistan is wonderful beyond belief, the youngest sergeant turning to him and asking, laughing, “Think it’ll snow, doc?” The gifts are small, some hand-me-downs, and it’s somehow more satisfying than the Secret Santa at Broomfield.
He can’t work out a conscious rotation of these lives, but if he could, he’d save Afghanistan for last, a reward.
What that says about the rest of his days, he tries not to think about.
He toys with the blog through January. It’s the worst thing in the world, being settled in Essex, a capable man with two steady hands and two good legs, and then spending double-time in London, useless and crippled. Still, he’d rather be useless in London than useless in Chelmsford, if it’s all the same to whatever deranged powers-that-be that have unwound his life. Useless in London is still in London, but useless in Chelmsford? Is in Chelmsford. Possibly forever. Shot in October, trudging through January, the last three months have taken a year.
It could be worse, he tells himself.
In Chelmsford he lives ahead a bit and tracks the market online. In London, either London, he makes a tiny investment here, a tiny investment there. It’s cheating, but he feels as though it’s owed to him. He’s not stupid enough to go and win the lottery. The only changes between his Londons are the changes he makes for himself and being invalided is change enough, thanks.
He blogs about it here and there, largely in the digital life. Seems more fitting. Having tortured himself through rehab twice, he doesn’t force himself to type it all back up in analogue London. It annoys him to no end, his inability to bring anything between his lives but the knowledge in his head. If he could wire himself some money, copy-paste a blog entry or two, it would improve so much.
When he says nothing happens to him, he’s not joking. He is living four lives in three locations, and the only one that’s at all interesting, no one wants to hear about. Not that he can talk about it in the present tense without being considered crazy. Bill’s tour finishes in Afghanistan, the man comes home and gets married, and John can’t keep track of what he and Bill had been talking about before he’d been shot. It’s a poor way to treat the man who saved his life - two of his lives? Or all four? - but he avoids Bill back in England out of sheer confusion.
Not to say he’s entirely alone in London. He goes out for drinks with the rugby lads from Blackheath but feels as though he’s watching a sitcom, stuck behind a screen and meant to be the laugh track. None of them mention his leg, he forgets his mobile there, and he’d much rather not go and get it back. When they call him up on the same day, digital-side, he says he has other plans. Two thirds of the time he has a telly, the world is on reruns; he doesn’t need his social life to be the same.
He decides then and there that separation is key. He’s thought it before, but now he means it. If he thinks about it correctly, he can use this to his advantage. Analogue London is slipping ahead of digital London, a bit, and he winds up asking out every woman he meets just for the hell of it. He makes a mental note where there’s interest despite his poor delivery. Maybe he’ll try again in digital, if he sees her again.
The effort required to fill his London days is the worst of it. Broomfield Hospital keeps him going at a reasonable clip when it’s not working him into the ground. Afghanistan is a world of tedium, adrenaline and bad food. Between keeping his unit going and figuring out what the hell his pre-existing social life in Chelmsford is, he hasn’t much time to stop and think in those lives.
He reminds himself he loves this city. He loves this city more than he’s ever loved anywhere else and so, painfully, idiotically, he makes himself walk through it every day. Even with the investments, his pension can’t hold up under London’s strain. Maybe in time, but not now. At this rate, it’s move or risk the lottery. He considers, maybe, using one life to experiment with. Analogue’s running faster, so do the crazy things here. Learn from his mistakes. Make his life in digital London the best it can be.
With this in mind, he listens to Mike Stamford and thinks maybe a flatshare isn’t so bad an idea after all.
He writes up a blog entry about the complete madman he met that day, a complete, extraordinary madman, and in the morning, he gets up and carpools to Broomfield with Marta from down the lane. She’s nice enough, paediatrics and all that, but he has the oddest feeling about her, like they’ve shared a drunken snog at a Christmas party and have been steadfastly not talking about it ever since.
Still, nice enough. She asks him what’s on his mind and he almost wants to say, but his yesterday and her yesterday are not the same, particularly as his yesterday was four days ago and his tomorrow will probably be the same day his yesterday was. He’s grown to hate the ends of months. It’s February in Chelmsford and Afghanistan, January in London.
Instead of trying to explain, he simply tells her he’s tired. They drive on a bit in silence and he asks her, as if this is a sudden thought, if she remembers how they met. There’s certain information facebook can’t tell him.
That she has to think about it is somehow reassuring.
True to form, London is still in January, the day he left in analogue just beginning in digital. He wakes up thinking about flatmates. He thinks he’ll get one here too. A sane one. With two madmen living under the same roof, he’s certain 221b Baker Street will explode within the month, but maybe he’d stand a chance somewhere else.
It’s something of a gamble, but he calls up the Blackheath lads. One of them has a cousin in London, a man a few years John’s senior and fresh off a divorce. Derek, his name is, steadfastly determined to move on. Talking over the phone, he seems reasonable enough. John warns him about the limp and the PTSD, Derek tells him about the results of his custody battle, and this might not be so bad, actually. Derek’s kid might be over for weekends, but for John, that’s two days a month. The man is a librarian and he has a place in Wandsworth in mind, down near Clapham Junction. Grant Road, if he remembers correctly. They’ll meet up to look at a flat the day after next (in a week).
Overall, he has to say he feels more optimistic about this than Sherlock “Left My Riding Crop in the Mortuary” Holmes.
The orderly who replaced Bill proves satisfyingly competent, Marta hands him a coffee before climbing into his car, and Sherlock Holmes blows them both out of the water.
Come the early hours of the 31st, he kips on Sherlock’s sofa and wakes up on the 30th. Lying on the plain bed of his drab hotel room, he looks across the room to the desk, to the cane leaning there.
He’s not sure how long it takes him. Slowly, gradually, reassuring himself of the utter lack of pain with each adjustment of his leg, he sits up in bed. He pulls the duvet back and swings his feet to the floor.
He licks his lip, bites it. He shot a man last night, calm and steady, and now he’s too afraid to climb out of bed. To see if he can. Eyes closed, he thinks of running. Of cabs and chases. Of rooftops and madmen.
John Watson stands up, walks across the room, and puts away his cane where he’ll never have to see it again.
It takes less than an hour to realize he has something of an issue on his hands. The only differences are the differences he makes and that means Sherlock is going to get himself killed tonight.
Then he realizes: Jennifer what-was-her-name. The pink lady. The pink lady is still alive.
Immediately, he goes for his mobile. Which, seeing as he never lost this one in a pub, isn’t even the same mobile he texted the pink lady’s phone with. Not that he would still have her number on it even if it were Harry’s mobile.
Okay.
Be systematic about this.
She’s from Cardiff, she’s in the media. It’s easy enough to google her. Only once he’s sifted through bio page after bio page of the woman does he remember he knows her email address. She has her email on her phone, she always has her phone, so far so good. He knows she won’t die until two hours after getting drenched in Cardiff rain and the storm is still hours off.
He realizes he still has the cabbie’s plate number memorized, too. Even better.
It’s easy enough to create a new email address for himself. Hopefully, she’ll look at the londontravelwarnings and ignore the @gmail portion of the address. He looks at a couple of old warnings online and types his email with care. Disgruntled taxi driver wanted for questioning by the police. Physical description of the man, the plate number of the cab, and instructions to call the police immediately if this cab is spotted. There is no cause for panic. Exercise reasonable caution and do not board this vehicle.
He edits it down, rearranges it a bit, and sends it off with a tagline about all email addresses being provided through the rail system for customer safety. He hopes she bought her train tickets online, a reasonable gamble.
All of this will mean nothing, of course, if he doesn’t get the police to catch the cabbie. Time for an anonymous phone call.
That night, he sits on a table in an empty classroom, staring out through a window and in through a window, waiting for a light to turn on. His heart beats evenly, his left hand is steady, and his gun is a comfort against his back.
The light never turns on.
There’s no giggling over crime scenes, no shooting a man in the chest, no crazy umbrella-wielding brother, but he does go all the way across London for Chinese. It’s just as good as the first time.
Marta has a friend named Rachel who is very pretty and probably a bad idea. Dark hair with long, loose curls, pale blue eyes. Gorgeous smile, as well as other things. In light of recent events, the name warns him off. Both of the women are in paediatrics and it’s Rachel’s name that makes him think about it. He hasn’t been following London news in February yet, not out in Chelmsford, and it’s been February here for days.
When he asks, Marta isn’t sure, but Rachel has followed the matter with interest. He asks about the three, the three linked suicides, and Rachel corrects him. It’s five. As of the end of January, it’s five victims. Two in one night, a first, though not near each other. A woman, then a man. The woman used to be on telly. The man had a funny name.
“Sherlock Holmes,” he says.
Rachel agrees. It was that, or something like that. Clinched it as murder, though. Apparently, the man had been working with the police. Serial killer then, must be, and still at large, too. At that, Marta brings up something she saw on the local news a while back, some other story about people who didn’t deserve it getting killed.
John doesn’t pretend to listen.
He’s days late. He’s days late, and he couldn’t have ever seen this coming. He works it out and discovers he’d met Sherlock in analogue London the day after Sherlock had died in digital Chelmsford.
There’s literally nothing he could have done and it doesn’t help one whit.
Certain but unable to check, he waits through a day in Afghanistan only to wake back up in Chelmsford. All his surgeries for today are planned, non-emergency affairs, and he tries to let the paperwork surround him once he’s finished.
That night, for the second time, he googles Sherlock Holmes.
The pictures they use in the articles are strange. The eyes are flat, the mouth hard. He looks proud and aloof, probably on purpose. This isn’t a man who laughs at gallows humour, or jumps and whirls with excitement, or tidies up his things to placate his potential flatmate. John looks at the picture, so still and lifeless, and all he can see is Sherlock eating rice with chopsticks in his pale hand, eyes grinning at John’s pitiful attempts at emulation.
They’ve got him wrong. They’ve got him completely wrong and this is all the world will ever know of Sherlock now. They’ll see a cold, humourless man who died in a police investigation. The only words of praise anyone had for him centre on his intelligence.
Anyone, but for one man. When John reads it, he’s not surprised. Moved, yes. But not surprised.
He pulls out his credit card, looks up a florist, and arranges for a delivery. After giving the woman at the other end of the line a somewhat convoluted explanation, he gets a sympathy card included with his order. She writes down what he dictates. If she thinks it’s strange, she doesn’t say. Once she’s done, she reads the plate number and physical description back to him, then asks how he’d like the card to be signed.
“Just... a friend of Sherlock’s. ‘Putting my trust in you, a friend of Sherlock’s,’” he says. “That’s all. Thanks. And yes, express delivery would really be best.”
He has no idea what Lestrade thinks of lilies, but that’s really not the point.
He wakes up and has about five hours before he has to meet Derek to look at their potential flat. His morning is a horrendous affair until he finds the news online. The news titles are worse than usual, pulling up puns in very poor taste - “insisted suicide,” for one - but the content is very firm on certain key points.
The killer has been caught.
There have been no further deaths.
He feels a giggle well up and shoves it down. He shoves it down and he presses it down and, given enough time, it fades away. His head is light, dizzy, as if he were suffering from blood loss. It’s just relief. God, it is such relief, and then it vanishes.
Two deaths out of four. He feels like he’s been given a superpower, some mad ability meant to match Sherlock’s, and if that feeling’s right, if there is some sort of purpose or greater meaning behind this, it means he’s failed.
Never again.
He’d love to be able to promise that.
It takes some consideration, but he gets that flat on Grant Road with Derek before the day is out. The man’s all right, as far as random strangers go. Seems a bit dull. No rooftop chases here, but he doubts Derek would get himself killed out of pride, what with that daughter and all.
John’s really not sure what happened to his standards.
The sofa is cosy, if a bit lumpy, and he has no idea where he is until he checks his watch.
Left wrist for London.
Analogue for a madman.
John lies there not quite able to breathe. He’s on the sofa, curled up, back aching slightly. His coat is on the armchair he thinks will be his. His shoes have been kicked off somewhere, the exact location unimportant.
He hears a noise, a footstep, and he tries to speak. He tries, and fails, and tries again.
“Sherlock!”
It’s a half-strangled yell, equal parts unnecessary and mortifying.
“Yes...?” As slowly as his drawled syllable, the man emerges from the kitchen, tea in hand. The tailored suit has been replaced by pyjama bottoms, a t-shirt and a blue dressing gown. His eyes pierce John over his mug as he drinks. Not even the floppy sleep-tousled hair can blunt the effect of that gaze.
John sits up, not sure how or what to explain.
Sherlock goes back into the kitchen.
There are a few noises that should probably be troubling.
Sherlock returns, a mug in each hand, and sits down next to him. He hands John the second mug. For reasons John can’t fathom, his tea has just enough milk, just enough sugar. Trust Sherlock to know.
They drink in silence.
Once John’s mouth is free of the taste of stale sleep, he asks, “Is this how it goes, then? I kill a serial killer and then you make me tea?”
“Ah.” Sherlock pulls his legs up under him, somehow not tangling himself up on the blue length of his dressing gown. “You regret it.”
“No,” John says. “God no,” he says and nearly laughs. Disbelief bubbles up inside him, all nervous giggles he can’t let loose, and when he looks at Sherlock, he knows he shouldn’t let himself keep smiling the way he is. “Not in the least.”
Sherlock’s lips twitch. “Do you want to do it again?”
This time he does laugh. Couldn’t help it for the world. “I think it’s been settled,” he says, only to remember that the lilies won’t arrive until the next time he wakes up in Essex. Even then, Lestrade has to take his information seriously. That very much hasn’t been settled yet.
“If you’re worried about getting caught, you needn’t,” Sherlock tells him. “I assume my brother already knows you acted in my defence and he approves of that sort of thing. I doubt you’ll have any legal trouble for years.”
“I’m not worried about that,” he says. It’s stupid but true. He has illegal possession of a firearm, he killed a man, and he’s not worried about any of it. After what he’s been through, the way he lives, there doesn’t seem much point in worrying where only one life is concerned.
Sherlock shifts a bit, moving to sit crosslegged. Leaning forward, he sets his elbows on his knees, folds his hands and stares at him. Maybe John should mind, but he doesn’t. After about a minute of this, Sherlock points his index fingers at John. “PSTD,” he says. “Nightmare.”
“Wrong again,” John tells him.
“Oh?” Head tilting, eyes narrowing. Challenge accepted. “Something you thought of between last night and when you shouted. Something to do with me.”
“Someone’s got an ego.”
“I do,” Sherlock agrees, voice warm and pleased. “And someone’s keeping secrets.”
“You’d hate it if I told you,” John says.
“I would.” There’s a liquid quality to his tone, spreading out, filling up. The man’s like a purring tiger. Sherlock goes right on studying him, smiling in a way that would make most people run for safety.
John pretends to think about that. “I could tell you.”
“Don’t. If it’s of any importance, I’ll work it out on my own.”
“Are you sure?” John glances at him, a sideways glance into the most intense gaze he’s ever held.
“Please,” Sherlock scoffs. “I’m always sure.”
“I’ll be sure to tell my brother that.”
Sherlock glares at him.
John smiles, more hope than innocence, and drinks his tea.
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