The Enigma Variations: Ch 21/22: Revelations
Title: The Enigma Variations. Chapter 21/22: Revelations
author: ghislanem70
rating: NC-17
word count: 7,500/ 110,000 total (complete)
warnings: explicit sex, graphic violence, reference to sensory integration syndrom
Summary: An alternate Series 3 AU. After Sherlock's death in The Reichenbach Fall, John finds he's still got one thing left to live for: to take down Sebastian Moran and Jim Moriarty -- who is Not Dead, after all. A dark!John fic.
disclaimer: I own nothing. All honours to Messrs Gatiss, Moffat, BBC et al.
Sherlock watched John and Moriarty's meeting concealed in a large Victorian crypt with fretted bronze doors. Picking the lock had been easy, moving the ancient hinges, harder. There were excellent photographs of the children's graveyard, the Angel's Corner, online, and he had readily located a crypt near Estella's grave, perfect for his purpose. Child's play-- although he knew John would be disappointed to hear him think that way standing in the midst of so many dead children. He recalled John chastising him for smiling while he unraveled Moriarty's clues at the boarding school of the ambassador's children. Despite everything that had happened afterward, he had still solved Moriarty's puzzle. He had still saved the children, he told himself, even if John, Lestrade, everyone thought that he didn't care about them at all. The truth was that the little girl's scream had hurt very deeply, it still rang in his ears whenever thought of her.
He kept the gun barrel resting against the bronze filigree, his finger relaxed on the trigger. Moriarty almost seemed to sense his presence because he seemed to have maneuvered John to be always in his line of fire. No clear shot.
The meeting was going well, apparently. He felt a twinge of strange jealousy. What was Moriarty talking to John about, and for so long? He hadn't dared the risk of fixing John up with any kind of a wire.
It was getting dark. Soon the light would be gone and their chances would be spoiled. Sherlock consulted his watch. Moriarty and John's conversation was now officially longer than any conversation he and John had had since their reunion, probably because there was so much that both of them were afraid to talk about.
While he watched John talk to Moriarty for so long, his mind processed ceaselessly the clues in the game. Specifically, the one clue that didn't quite fit, or rather which he didn't feel he had fully understood. The game was like that. Things weren't always what they appeared on the surface, and for a long time he had been incredibly grateful for that. Because he needed it.
Music.
Bach.
"Can't bear an unfinished melody."
A name in code, marking the end of the unfinished melody: B-A-C-H.
"On the side of the angels."
Graffiti of angel's wings.
"I.O.U."
"I owe you a fall."
"I owe you so much."
"I did tell you. But did you listen?"
I.
O.
U.
* * *
A code? Like Bach? B-A-C-H.
Which was in fact a musical cryptogram, written and played as "b-flat, a, c, b-sharp."
There were systems of musical cryptograms, a common one being the 'French system':
ABCDEFG
HIJKLMN
OPQRSTU
VWXYZ
Under the French system, I.O.U. translated to the musical notes "B-A-G."
A bag? He wracked his mind palace, but it did not fit.
Played as musical notes, though, it fit the classic bars of a famous aria: "Largo al Factotum" from Rossini’s The Barber of Seville:
Fi-ga-ro Fi-ga-ro Fiiii-ga-ro...
Lancets and scissors
at my command.
Everything is here.
Here are the extra tools
then, for business
With the ladies...
Figaro! Figaro! Figaro!
Swifter and swifter I'm like a spark:
I'm the handyman of the city.
Ah, bravo Figaro! Bravo, very good;
Fortunately for you, I will not fail.
He could almost hear Moriarty laughing. Mocking him. And he would be right. The nature of Moriarty's little trail of breadcrumbs was that there were almost an infinite number of associations, connections-- all of them fit, or seemed to. Moriarty always enjoyed seeing him run. But even if the pieces fit, did that ultimately mean anything? The bravado of the aria seemed to fit Moriarty's idea of his own power, his comprehensive victory: I will not fail. Also, the Figaro aria fit with the opera that Moriarty had used to open the game, La Gazza Ladra, played at the Tower of London.
Another opera composed by Rossini. Both operas were in two acts.
Two acts. After the fall, Sherlock's second act was a resurrection, a restoration. He had John now. They would go home. There would be a new life.
What was Moriarty's second act?
* * *
If the Enigma was love, there was also the fact that one of the weapons used to kill Estella Hillier was a pair of scissors:
"Here are the extra tools, then, for business with the ladies..."
Did it fit? Probably it was the only kind of love Moriarty was capable of, love that destroyed. Maybe... But it didn't feel right, or complete. There was more here than just a confession of murder... Although it was looking more and more as if the clues were about Moriarty's life, his loss and his pain. Abandoned by a father, loving a girl who didn't know he existed. Laughed at and mocked. Losing his love to a bloody death. A child's gravestone in Angel's Corner.
Still, he was almost certain that Moriarty hadn't killed Estella Hillier, or that if he had, it wouldn't have been with scissors. Among other things. He wished very much that he could have been at her autopsy, all those years ago. He was starting to form the idea of two killers. Two brothers, almost twins.
"The clue's in the name. Janus cars."
Moriarty was pointing a finger at his brother, Mick.
* * *
Finger. The tapping of fingertips Moriarty had tried to entice him with at tea in 221b...trying to persuade him that a binary code was the answer. But that, too, was another distraction. A bluff. Moriarty had tried hard to make him believe the problem was more complex, more elegant than it really was.
But that didn't mean that IOU wasn't a clue.
"I did tell you, but did you listen?"
He sorted over and over through all of the IOU clues like an infinite carousel: IOU -- an apple. IOU-- angel's wings. I owe you a fall.
Fall...
The fall.
An apple...
A fall.
Like pins in a lock, he felt a solidity and rightness as he imagined the apple as something quite different to the poison apple in Snow White. Moriarty no doubt thought the Bible was a fairy tale, too, so he had been playing fair.
The fall of man: Adam and Eve. The fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Genesis 2:17: God told Adam, "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Then the Serpent said to Eve: "For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."
Adam and Eve tasted the forbidden fruit: a fruit was commonly reputed to be an apple.
And so mankind fell: Cast out of Eden.
And then, to ensure that they were never so curious again, God placed terrible angels with flaming swords to bar the path to the "tree of life."
Was the apple a biblical metaphor --- that Sherlock Holmes would be punished with the ultimate fall for his relentless pursuit of Moriarty?
"Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil," the Serpent said.
"Thank you," Moriarty said on the roof, persuaded at last; Sherlock declaring, "I may be on the side of the angels, but don't think for a minute that I am one."
"No. You're not. I see. You're not ordinary. No. You're me. You're me. Thank you. Sherlock Holmes. Thank you. Bless you," he said before pretending to blow his brains out.
A blessing - a benediction, for the man who had proved to him that he indeed knew both good and evil.
Just like Moriarty. That goodness, though, was cold and rotten beneath a headstone in Angel's Corner.
"You're on the side of the angels."
Angels.
I O U an angel.
* * *
The simplest alphanumeric code is to assign each number in the alphabet a number: A=1, B=2, etcetera. Thus: I.O.U. equals 9,15, 21.
9
15
21
The answer to Elgar's Enigma, found in the New Testament: Corinthians.
The apple: Genesis.
He searched the Bible on his mobile. The numbers 9- 15- 21 had several possibilities, but only one made perfect sense.
All the while he kept his eyes focused on John and Moriarty, who were talking far too long, almost intimately. Almost like friends. Like him and Moriarty, on the rooftop.
John gave the sign, a slight brush of his fingertips to the back of his neck. This meant he was to take his best shot now, but everything had finally fallen into place. And right now, that meant one thing: Moriarty had to live.
Moriarty had to be made to tell them everything.
* * *
I.O.U, 9: 15 - 21 was a passage in the Bible.
Not about love, as in Corinthians.
Not about the fall, as in Genesis.
This was about an apocalypse. Revelations, Chapter 9:
15 And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for the hour, and the day, and the month, and the year, for to slay the third part of men. 16 And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them. 17 And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone. 18 By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths. 19 For their power is in their mouth, and in their tails: for their tails were like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they do hurt. 20 And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk: 21 Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.
Sherlock let his bullet fly.
* * *
John gave the signal, briefly brushed the back of his neck with his gloved left hand. Moriarty was instantly on his guard at the seemingly innocent move, and his hand in his coat pocket undoubtedly was closing around a concealed gun of his own. John didn't start at the explosion of stone chip as Sherlock's silent bullet went far off its mark and struck a headstone instead of Moriarty's skull.
They had prepared for Sherlock miss -- Sherlock wasn't the shot that John was.
For the briefest of instants Moriarty hesitated, his eyes flickering from John to the explosion of stone, and John's hand closed on the hypodermic concealed in his glove. He wanted Moriarty's neck, but had to settle for the femoral artery. His thumb was on the plunger ---
The one thing he didn't expect happened. Sherlock, ordinarily silent as a cat, crashed up beside him.
"John! Wait!"
The shock was enough. Moriarty, those black eyes seeing all now, snaked his hand over John's with a smile of transcendent joy and slammed it right into John's thigh. John struggled, slamming into Moriarty with his bad shoulder and the needle snapped off in his muscle as he pushed Moriarty to the ground. The spent hypodermic chamber fell from his fingers.
The drug burned his veins like acid, like fire.
"Sherlock--" he stuttered as he felt adrenaline explode into his blood and hit him like a hammer to the heart. He crumpled.
"John, hold on, I've got the antidote."
Moriarty righted himself and got off a shot but this time Sherlock's aim was true; he shot Moriarty in the hand and the gun fell.
Then Sherlock shot him in the foot.
"The resurrection of Sherlock Holmes!!!" Moriarty screeched, writhing on the grass. "Or should I say, the Second Coming! My prayers are answered!"
"Tell me about the four angels, Moriarty," Sherlock said as he knelt over John, plunging in the clear hypodermic. "Tell me about the Book of Revelations, 9:15 to 9:21. I.O.U."
Moriarty just sniggered.
Sherlock stared down into John's eyes, pupils dilated to the maximum extent possible, open to receive the terror from the hallucinations already sweeping him away. Sherlock held his face between his hands, John's face had never looked like this, Baskerville was nothing. John was in the grip of horrors beyond anything he had ever even imagined, even in the worst nightmares. He knew, because Moriarty's minions always told him so. John's breath was coming in great heaving pants and he felt his pulse under his fingertip, dangerously fast. So dangerous.
"John, breathe, deep breaths." Impossible to keep his voice calm. Moriarty was moaning a little with pain, grabbing a headstone to try to right himself.
Sherlock shot the other foot.
It would be a long time before Moriarty bled out. By then, John would be stable again. He found his mobile, dialed 999, barked out "heart attack -- atrial fib-- Bear Road Cemetery-- Angels' Corner."
"John, John, it's just the drug, you know this. The antidote will counteract the adrenaline in a few moments. Help is coming. Try to.... try to.... Please."
* * *
John couldn't look at Sherlock's face, it was decomposing into the skull in 221B, his alabaster flesh falling away, mouldering, the dirt of the grave clinging to his orbital bones, worms between his teeth. He would never touch him again in this life. Death was here, it was all around. He looked away, anything else but that, and his eyes landed on Moriarty who was shrieking and mangled but still he leered, which was horrible enough until his skull melted away too like black candlewax and then Moriarty was a demon, all too real and full of infinite pain and hate and evil, crimson-faced and smoking with brimstone. John closed his eyes, this was the the drug, just the drug Sherlock was saying, and that was true but when he tried to tell that to his brain all he saw was doors, doors in a long, haunted corridor slamming shut, locks firmly falling into place. He was trapped alone with this thing. Death. All he could feel, all he could think, all he was was fear.
"Sherlock--" he managed. "No-"
Sherlock was frantically stroking his face, massaging his chest, pulling him up into his lap. The antidote wasn't working fast enough.
"What, John, no what? Breathe slowly, please, please try. Help is coming. Talk to me. Think about, think about-- London, Home. Us. Just a minute longer," he pleaded, his voice shaking, his limbs were shaking, he couldn't control it at all. His eternal self-confidence vanished as if it had never been and he would never, ever get it back or even want to; the terror freezing his own blood could hardly be less than John's as he helplessly watched the chemical horror take him and start to break his mind and shut down his heart.
"No--- antidote."
"No, John, no, I've given it to you. Hold on, just ---"
"Finish-- him." John's eyes rolled up in his head. "Just -- water," was the last thing he said.
And then the terror took him completely because it was true, he saw his own hand pouring out the antidote and putting ordinary tap water in its place. Because in the end, he knew Sherlock wouldn't kill Moriarty - not with a gun, and not with the drug. He had known that Sherlock wouldn't be able to stop playing the game. His betrayal at trying to stop this meeting by drugging him was the proof. Sherlock would decide to give Moriarty the antidote. And Moriarty would live, and the great game would start all over again.
But that wasn't a game John Waston was going to play.
Today was the day that the game ended. Today was the day they started living again. And so, he had made very sure that it would be impossible for Sherlock to save James Moriarty.
Now John was falling into Sherlock's grave in the rain, the mud collapsing all around him, his helpless hands grabbing at roots that twisted and trapped him and dragged him ever deeper down. The very worst part was that the grave was empty, Sherlock wasn't here at all, he had left him behind again and now he would be buried alive in this empty grave, not even Sherlock's bones to keep him company in the long dark.
Nemesis was shoveling wet soupy mud over his face. He didn't feel his body start to convulse. Darkness closed over him.
* * *
Moriarty was reaching for the gun. He couldn't let go of John but he still had bullets; this time Sherlock went for Moriarty's shoulder but the angle was bad, and the truth was his hand was shaking as John quaked in his lap.
Now Moriarty had his gun back. He looked on Sherlock and John with an expression of bemused contentment, real peace, quite different from his playacting on the rooftop of Barts. Sherlock threw himself over John, futile though it was.
"You did listen. Time to find out if you're really on the side of the angels, Sherlock Holmes. Because they're coming," Moriarty said as he swiftly put the barrel of the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. He fell back and his blood ran over Estella Hillier's grave.
This time, there was no doubt at all that Moriarty was gone.
* * *
Sherlock's eye caught the glint of glass, the broken hypodermic. He scrabbled for it. Somehow, Moriarty had done them an incomparable favour, letting John break it off before the full dose was expelled. He eyeballed it, calculating. Perhaps 25 percent of a full dose remained.
Where was the ambulance? He thought he heard sirens. It might have been his heart, screaming.
* * *
The real killer in the drug, he knew, was the hallucinations that capaulted the victim into atrial fibrilation, then cardiac arrest, sometimes stroke. John was fit and had courage and nerve like no one else, no one he had ever known or could hope to if he searched the world over and back again.
But John also had his own demons, not the least of which was the ghost of Sherlock Holmes. He knew that.
He held John tight. John's eyes, black pools looking into the abyss, were past seeing. And so he leaned down and put his lips to John's ear, not knowing what he would say until the words spilled out without thought or plan, his inadequate heart taking over for his mind this once:
"John, it's me, you're fine-- I've-- got you. You didn't get a full dose, do you hear? Help is coming. And I'm never letting go. Wherever you are, I'm there too and we're together, do you hear? Take my hand," he tore off John's gloves, squeezed John's trembling hand tight in his own, wishing he was warmer for John.
It started to rain. When the drops hit John's face he tried desperately to use his hands, a clawing, digging motion that Sherlock stopped by pinning his arms hard. He could surely hear John's overworked heart thundering, pulse zooming far past the danger zone.
"John Watson, whatever you see, turn around and just -- look away," he whispered in John's ear, low and as firm. He had to deepen his voice past the tightness like rusted nails in his throat. "Look at me, John. Just a few more minutes. I'm right here-- see me, just look at me. Everything else is just -- it's just a dream -- you've come out of so many nightmares, come out of this one now. You're braver and better than everyone else, you can do this too. I want you to walk with me, John, turn around and--- here, hold my hand-- can't you feel my hand? John, we're walking-- walking in London, we're home safe."
The story was so clear in his mind, and with his inadequate words tried to paint it for John, the only fairy-tale ending he had ever wanted. "We're going to 221B, John and you're going to--- going to show me-- we're getting our life back, you promised and John Watson never breaks a promise, damn you, don't you dare leave me alone again, just when I'm starting to understand what this -- us --- is, what we're for. I never should have left you behind. I'm -- sorry, so sorry. You'll never forgive me, but I'll spend --- forever showing you-- just don't leave me behind."
John was shaking now, his skin cold as the death that was surely coming for him now, his eyes black and wide and blinking convulsively, but he clasped Sherlock's hand like a vice when Sherlock told him to hold on. Somewhere in there, John could hear him even though he was moaning so loudly, a terrible, wrenching cry made of fear and horror but worse than those, bottomless grief, endless loneliness. All of it his fault.
"John, I love you," he said, but the sirens drowned out everything, even his words, too late, far too late.
* * *
Sherlock was trapped in hospital when John's doctors refused to let him go without extensive tests and observation -- and a very thorough interrogation of Sherlock Holmes, who was after all not dead, concerning his conviction that Moriarty had put a terrorist plot in motion. After the first day, he had been able to arrange a transfer from Brighton to the very private Wellington Hospital in London, where Sherlock was able to secure an adjoining bed where he was ostensibly being treated for nervous exhaustion.
Sherlock tried to make them send Lestrade, of course-- only to learn that he was in Macau, of all places. With Mycroft, who was also in hospital, doing well after a vicious beating that had fractured his skull. In a former life he might have sneered that he hoped it would mitigate his brother's delusions concerning his superior intellect. Now, he insisted on someone putting a call through so that he could hear his brother's voice. He couldn't help the shock of his return, and didn't want to wait. He blotted out Moriarty: "The Second Coming!"
"It really is you, Sherlock?" Mycroft sounded perfectly composed, as though he had arranged Sherlock's return personally, but that Sherlock was inexplicably, inappropriately late. Later, Sherlock would wonder if that was in any way possible. "It is good to hear your voice, but I confess I am -- surprised. We must have a brotherly chat when I return to London."
"I'm sorry, Mycroft," he said. "It was -- necessary. I had my reasons."
"No doubt," Mycroft said, more warmly than Sherlock imagined he had a right to expect.
He was going to have to say "I'm sorry" to a lot of people. He didn't have any expectation of anybody saying it to him, though, and so he was astonished to hear Lestrade, obviously at Mycroft's bedside, snatch the phone away and say:
"Sherlock -- the Yard put a out a bulletin- it's in all over the telly, but I couldn't believe it till I heard your voice. Do you know how sorry I am-- if I could go back, Sherlock, I never would have --"
"Thank you, Lestrade. I know -- you did what you thought was right," he said carefully, there were still raw places from Lestrade's doubt and distrust. But John was frowning at him very severely, and so he didn't try to rub it in. Anyway, he found he didn't have the heart for it. He liked how he felt right now. "We're going to try for--- well, for a fresh start," he said with genuine warmth, because John was actually smiling at him, rewarding him just a little.
* * *
"Didn't you stop to think, John, to calculate the odds that you might slip up, and need that antidote yourself? And you a doctor?" Sherlock was emboldened by John's surprising good spirits, and he had promised himself that he would to a good deal better than he had done before at tackling things head-on rather than leaving them unsaid. It had been brought home to him in a number of ways that life was after all very short.
John winced, covered his eyes. "You know what, yeah, I did actually. I figured that the odds were a hell of a lot higher you'd find a way to talk yourself into keeping Moriarty alive after all, than that I would fuck it up and get shot up myself. Turns out, I was right, you were going to keep him alive. How was I supposed to know you'd get your burst of insight and come crashing at me like a herd of cattle right at the very moment when you knew I was making my move?"
"I obviously wouldn't have done that if I'd known you'd replaced the antidote with water, John. You're very devious, more devious than I remembered."
"Picked up some new skills since you --- went away. You haven't, though. Remind me to take you out and show you how to shoot properly, if that drug didn't get me you would have finished me off with those wild shots."
"I beg your pardon, I was in-- a bit of a state."
He was breaking his rule about hitting things head-on, not leaving things unsaid. But he was willing to restrain himself for John's sake. Because John was actually enjoying this banter, and therefore, so would he. For now. Later, they could talk about Moriarty's terror plot -- the four angels that would kill a third of mankind. For once, he had to admit that just possibly, he was needed somewhere else far more than the thick of the investigation. The SIS, the Yard's SO15, the CIA, and other more secret agencies were all hard at work, he reckoned at least a hundred agents were on it, around the globe.
Let them all keep the world safe. For now, he was content to be responsible for just one life.
* * *
News of the terror threat had been leaked to the press and he frowned to see John looking paler as a reporter with a sense of the dramatic read out a report, starting with the quotes from the Book of Revelations:
"And the four angels were loosed , which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men..."
Sherlock stood up and switched the channel. Sometimes John laughed at cartoons, and right now hearing John laugh was holding him together so he stopped at one, then just as quickly went to switch it off. It was an animated fairy tale, Snow White. It was his turn to blanch.
"Don't. It's okay. We got a fairy-tale ending, after all, didn't we? Of sorts."
"Well, we're both alive, but I don't see --"
"We followed that trail of breadcrumbs, and we made it all the way back home in one piece, Sherlock. And Moriarty's dead. Maybe you shouldn't have taken that bite of the poison apple that Moriarty offered you."
"It meant more than Snow White -- the apple is also for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, John--"
"Don't spoil my metaphor, I'm actually enjoying this bit."
"You are?" Sherlock tried to imagine why that should be. He hadn't expected John to be ever willing to talk about the game, and Moriarty. Now that it was over, apparently he felt differently. John would never cease to surprise him.
"I am. It took two whole years, but you woke up."
"I was asleep?"
"Might as well have been, I don't know how you missed me going out of my head over you, all that time, if you weren't."
"Well, you didn't exactly take the trouble to actually tell me, though-- did you, John? Knowing my... ah, lack of data on the subject, you ought to have offered me irrefutable proof. So don't know that I can entirely blame Moriarty for that, although he did absorb a great deal of my mind palace, my. . . attention. It was a very --"
"--don't go too far, now," John warned, suddenly very stern, and Sherlock felt the chill warning behind it. It was fine to banter about it-- but it wasn't fine to sound as if he could was about obsessing over it all over again.
And he wasn't. He was almost sure he wasn't.
"-- I was about to say, it was a. . . unique game."
"Ah. That's good then. Because unique --"
"--Means there's only one. Never again, John."
John nodded toward the door and Sherlock, heart beating faster, understood. He locked it, and drew the curtain around the bed. Then, he clambered in next to John, who was warm and a little less gaunt with all the starchy hospital fare. Also, his heart beat steady and true. He put his head on John's chest.
"Sherlock--"
"Shhhhh. I'm counting."
"I'm a doctor. And you're not. My heartbeat is perfectly regular. My blood pressure is even a little low, which is quite a feat, considering."
"And you aren't even taking your tranquilisers. I saw you hiding them under your pillow. I'll dispose of them, if you like."
"Don't even think about it. I don't trust you with any drugs around me. Or around you, for that matter. Stick to forensics. You know, hair, blood, ash. That sort of thing."
Sherock silently contemplated the likelihood that John had contrived to see his own chart. Which showed traces of drug abuse, during his long exile.
Head-on, no avoiding things, he admonished himself. Got to start as I mean to go on.
"John, about drugs. While I was... away, I --"
"I know. And you won't, ever again. You're going to swear to me, right now, the only time a drug gets in your body is if I prescribe one."
"I swear," he said readily. "But I won't need to. That was a very different-- a different time, a different, well, me, you do see that?"
John kissed the top of his head. "I do see. But I'm not naive enough to think that things won't ever get -- hard for you, some day. For some reason we can't foresee now. You can't fall back on drugs."
Sherlock pushed his face into the warmth of John's neck, breathed in his clean male scent, even the hospital couldn't alter it. "I can't believe we're really doing this."
"Believe it," John said, the bantering John Watson gone, a very serious and determined John Watson in his place. Just as there were different versions of Sherlock Holmes, as he liked to think, there were different versions of John Watson. He loved them all, he knew that now, but some he knew much better than others. This version was the one that wasn't ready to wait to get home to 221B to take what he wanted. And this Sherlock Holmes was wiser than the one that fell, and so he didn't have to think twice about turning his lips up so that John could kiss him hard, the way he needed it to steady and soothe him.
"John."
"You want to talk some more? Now?"
"No, that's not what I want. I just want to go home. I'm taking you home, John," he said.
Twenty minutes later, they were sneaking out a side entrance, blinking at the brilliantly crisp, sunny day. It felt like forever since they had really seen the sun. The hospital was in St. John's Wood, it would be nothing to walk to Marylebone. They looked at each other.
Sherlock hailed a cab and they climbed in the back, just as in former times.
"Where to, gents?"
"Baker Street." Sherlock said.
"Right - O."
Sherlock instantly leaned down, seeking John's mouth, cupping his face with his fingers. He liked the feel of John's cheekbone under his hand, even better when John rubbed back into it.
"In a cab?" John didn't sound in any way as if this was a protest. Just seeking confirmation.
"Brilliant observation, John. Really good. We are indeed in the back of a cab. You said you didn't want to go back to the way things were, John."
"Does that mean I'm not supposed to tell you you're amazing, and brilliant, and a genius when we're in the backs of cabs?"
Sherlock bit John's lower lip. "No. But perhaps you might save that for after."
"Ah. Right then." John reached round his neck, and Sherlock cataloged the feel of his bare fingertips against the nape of his neck, no gloves. Their lips met, opened, tongues exploring, still tentative, not completely believing they could have this. It was thrilling and intimate and still shockingly new, and even though it felt like an invasion, it was one he thought he could welcome. He put one hand over John's heart, just to remind himself, but John gently pulled it away and clasped it.
"Stop checking all the time. It's going to keep beating. But you're making it faster," he whispered in Sherlock's ear.
"Hey! Gents! We're almost there -- unless you want me to take you round Regent's Park? You seem right cozy back there."
"No!" they said in unison.
"Whereabouts in Baker Street did you say, then?"
"I didn't," Sherlock replied. "The address is 221B Baker Street."
To be continued...
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