Wounded With His Wounded Heart, Ch. 6
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Wounded With His Wounded Heart - Chapter Six
When they reached the living area of their suite, Sherlock called down to the house kitchens and asked the butler for a cheese and broccoli omelet for John, and one with cheese, mushrooms, tomato, and basil for himself, along with tea and toast, yogurt and muesli. He raised an eyebrow at John as he finished, who nodded approvingly at him. There were plenty of nutrients, grains, and protein in everything, all ingredients their bodies both desperately needed. Sherlock thanked Willoughby and hung up, and John found himself studying his friend as Sherlock walked back over to the breakfast bar.
“Willoughby should be up in roughly seven minutes. He abhors serving cold food,” Sherlock stated, but broke off when he noticed John’s speculative look. “What is it?”
“You’re different here,” John stated, his tone fond but slightly perplexed. “Maybe just different, I don’t know. More relaxed? As though you feel - safer? Not something I ever thought I’d see in you when you’re in Mycroft’s house.”
The exhaustion returned to Sherlock’s eyes again, and John felt a pang in his chest for having brought it back. “Safety is appealing when one has spent every hour of the last year, waking and sleeping, either shooting or expecting to be shot. I wondered more than once if I was feeling as you had felt in Afghanistan, that constant feeling of pursuing and being pursued. Much as I usually relish it, it is grueling to live with as a continuous companion. But I’m not sure safety is the right word.”
Sherlock sat and took John’s hand. “Perhaps contentment is what you’re sensing? I admit it’s not something I have felt very often in my life, and I am still getting used to it,” he said with a small smile. “But I have been in more countries and donned more disguises in the last twelve months than I ever thought would be necessary or even possible. By the end, I had worn so many faces that I had almost forgotten what my own looked like, and I wanted desperately to be myself again.”
John tightened his fingers in wordless understanding, and Sherlock went on, his voice low and soft with emotion.
“Before I met you, I would have lived for nothing but that chase, John, just as I lived for every case, for the thrill of the puzzle and the hunt. This time, I lived for it because there was no other choice, because if I wanted my heart to stay whole, then I had to ensure you stayed alive. If I wanted to come home, then you had to be here to come home to. Even if you had hated me, had moved on, had refused to see me, it would have been better than coming back to a London where you did not exist.”
“The hard part was not the actual killing, not most of the time,” Sherlock continued. “It was the searching, and the waiting - interrogating people, following trails, finding out where a particular operative was, making my way through corporate high rises and slums and everything in between. Seeing the worst side of humanity, the side that most people don’t ever see, don’t even know exists. Being filthy and tired and hungry, moving locations every night, changing my appearance constantly. I have been heartsick and so very tired, and I am through, for the moment, with pretense and disguise.”
Sherlock’s voice was gravelly and almost inaudible when he finished, and John simply leaned in and kissed him, too moved to find adequate words at first. He let Sherlock sag against him, let Sherlock simply rest on him as the detective released some of the weight he had been carrying for far too long.
“You are home, and you are safe, and you never have to pretend with me or hide from me,” John whispered finally.
Sherlock’s arms came around his waist and held. “I know.”
Their solitude was interrupted by a knock and the rattle of breakfast dishes, and Willoughby came in with the same cart as the night before, now laden with covered plates, bowls of yogurt, a steaming pot of tea and mugs, several kinds of juice, milk, toast, and muesli - in short, enough food to feed a small army, John thought in amusement.
“Good morning Master Sherlock, Dr. Watson,” Willoughby said with a smile. “I trust you slept well?”
“Better than I have in ages, Willoughby, and that’s a fact,” John said cheerily, putting some effort into his tone. “Sherlock insisted I had to experience the wonder of your omelets, and I have to admit I’m starving.”
Willoughby waved a hand as he started unloading the contents of his cart onto the counter and breakfast bar. “Sherlock exaggerates, Dr. Watson. He’s always had a soft spot for my omelets; I made them once when he was ill as a boy, and he’s irrationally persisted in thinking they’re magical, when in fact they are very simple. One of the few things I can cook well and don’t depend on the cooks to do.”
“I most certainly do not exaggerate, Willoughby,” Sherlock disagreed, taking one of the stools for his own. “I’d had pneumonia and was utterly miserable. In bed for days, my whole body aching, my throat sore. I had hardly been able to eat anything and had next to no appetite anyway. Then you coaxed me into eating a plain cheese omelet, and it was the most magnificent thing I had ever tasted. Given the number of appalling omelets I’ve had since, not to mention how many omelets of yours I’ve eaten, I think I’m well qualified to say that your omelets are culinary perfection.”
Willoughby laughed. “You’re going to be terribly disappointed, Dr. Watson, really,” he said, shaking his head.
John smiled. “Somehow I’m inclined to side with Sherlock on this one, Willoughby. He is so seldom irrational, especially with his praise, that I think you fail to recognize your own talent.”
Willoughby just shook his head again. “Well, judge for yourself then, before they get cold.”
Sherlock had already begun to dig in, and his expression told John that he was savoring his food in a way he very seldom did. The doctor took his first bite and very nearly moaned; the omelet was fluffy, creamy, and hot, and almost disintegrated in his mouth. John chewed and swallowed carefully, then fixed Willoughby with a sharp look.
“Are you sure you didn’t have another career as a chef, Willoughby? That was quite possibly the most extraordinary bite of omelet I have ever tasted.”
“My father was quite the accomplished cook, Dr. Watson. He may have taught me a thing or two,” Willoughby admitted, his lips twitching.
“I knew you were holding out on me,” John declared, pointing his fork at Willoughby.
Sherlock cocked his head. “How was it I never deduced that your father was a chef?”
“I was in my early twenties when I began to work for your family, Master Sherlock, and you were only five,” Willoughby responded. “Hardly at the height of your reasoning powers.”
“Oh, so they didn’t spring into being fully formed?” John asked teasingly, taking another bite of omelet.
“I was a precocious child but not that precocious, John,” Sherlock said reprovingly, trying to look superior and failing.
“Precocious enough to be several years ahead in your reading, vocabulary, and cognitive skills, however,” Willoughby remembered.
“Of course,” Sherlock said airily. “I demanded that Mycroft teach me chess.”
Despite himself, John almost choked, and he swallowed quickly. “Did he?”
“He did - although it was under protest,” Sherlock said. “I threatened to tell Mummy about the girl he fancied.”
John was profoundly thankful he hadn’t continued eating; he could almost feel his eyes bugging out of his head.
“Mycroft fancied someone?” he asked incredulously.
Sherlock scoffed. “Of course not; don’t be ridiculous, John. I could convince Mummy that he did, though, and plant evidence to make it look like he did, and he knew that I could. Mummy would have been insufferable.” He flashed John a wickedly mischievous grin, and John couldn’t help but grin back.
“Not for the first time, I am so thankful that you did not bend your mind to a life of crime,” he said.
Sherlock hummed, the smile lingering on his face. “It’s far more fun outsmarting the criminals,” he answered.
“I’ll leave you two to your breakfast, but don’t hesitate to call if you need anything, gentlemen,” Willoughby said, gathering up the miscellaneous dishes and utensils that were no longer needed but leaving the rest of the repast.
“Thank you, Willoughby. You are a master at omelets, and you’ll never convince me otherwise,” John complimented him. The butler shook his head, but he was clearly pleased, and John and Sherlock shared an amused glance as he left. John reached for the cup of tea that Willoughby had thoughtfully poured, and they both finished their omelets, toast, and yogurt in comfortable silence. John pointedly handed Sherlock more ibuprofen, which he took without protest, draining the last of his second mug of tea.
They worked in tandem to clean the kitchen, moving around each other in much the same way they had in Baker Street, putting things in the fridge and piling dishes neatly in the sink until the counters were clear and open once more.
Sherlock took John’s hand as they finished, threading their fingers together.
“We should go up on the roof,” he suggested quietly. “It’s beautiful.”
“Won’t it be a bit - cold?” John said hesitantly, and Sherlock smiled mysteriously.
“Come and see,” he said, and led John out the door, their hands still linked together.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Although they had taken the stairs the previous evening, it turned out that there was an elevator, and when its doors opened on the top floor, John frankly gaped at the room in front of him.
It was a rooftop conservatory and garden. The room that opened out from the elevator was encased in glass on all four sides, oak hardwood spreading out at their feet, a curved roof over their heads, and light streaming in and illuminating a breathtaking view of London, even on day such as this one when a thunderstorm seemed imminent. There was a large couch and a gas fireplace in the center of the room, as well as several oversized armchairs. Two end tables held lamps with carved wooden bases and stained glass shades. On the far side of the enclosed room there were double doors, also glass, and beyond them John could see an outdoor terrace with raised garden beds that were mostly dormant now, but must have been breathtaking in the height of summer.
“Sherlock, this is incredible,” John breathed, trying to take in everything at once.
“The best room in the house, I’ve always thought, although Mycroft is almost never up here,” Sherlock said, satisfaction tingeing his voice at John’s agreement. He moved into the room and turned on one of the lamps, then flicked the switch for the fireplace, and the room immediately felt cozy, the warm light a pleasant contrast to the dark gray sky outside.
Sherlock held out a hand from where he stood, and John immediately went over to him. They wrapped each other up, wordlessly, standing in front of the fire with Sherlock’s head bent over John’s.
“You still have questions,” John whispered eventually.
“Yes,” Sherlock acknowledged, his voice just as quiet.
John looked up at him and smiled, reaching up to brush curls out of Sherlock’s eyes. “Ask, then,” he said tenderly, affectionate understanding shining in his warm blue eyes. “You’ll drive yourself crazy until you do. It doesn’t matter where you start. I meant what I said before; I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
Sherlock’s eyes flickered, and John saw the thousand questions, saw Sherlock’s relentless mind sorting through them, looking for something that would give him a place to begin without asking too much at once.
“That first night at Angelo’s, were you asking me out?” Sherlock said finally, the question blunt but his eyes intent on the answer.
John laughed, his voice still quiet, and slid his hands up to rest on Sherlock’s shoulders.
“No. I really wasn’t,” he answered. “I was trying to suss you out - I’d known you less than a full day and I was already fascinated. And there was something . . . appealing about having a friend who was as unattached as I. I had so few people in my life, and not anyone I was close to, and I hadn’t met a single person who understood why that was."
Sherlock frowned. “What else did people expect? You’d left your whole unit behind in Afghanistan, you didn’t get along with Harry and still don’t, you hadn’t stayed in touch with your friends from med school because the army took over your life. Were people really so imbecilic as to just believe that you would come home and have a whole network of people waiting for you?”
John smiled again, but it was tight and grim this time. “It’s what they expect of most returning soldiers. They aren’t prepared to deal with someone who has made military service his whole life, with nothing outside of it, and then gets invalided home.”
“Yet more proof that people are stupid and blind,” Sherlock muttered angrily. “Ridiculous.”
John touched his cheek. “Thank you for the indignation on my behalf - but I found you because of that stupidity, more or less,” he reminded Sherlock. “While I would love to help solve that particular problem in some way, at some point in the future, can we shelve it for the moment?”
Sherlock nodded, his brain already visibly whirring into gear again. “While we’re on Afghanistan - there wasn’t anyone you . . . cared for, while you were there? While you were in the army?”
John gave a thoughtful sigh, his lips tightening as he searched for words, and then he looked up at Sherlock. “Let’s find a more comfortable position to be in, before I explain. You shouldn’t be standing for so long, and this could take a while,” he said. He took a step over to the couch and arranged himself on it, laying on his side with his back against the back of the couch and leaving much of the wide seat cushions for Sherlock, who promptly laid down with his head on the arm rest. The fireplace provided warmth for them, and the lamp cast a warm glow over Sherlock’s features that made John’s heart speed up.
“Now, then,” John said, resuming running his fingers through Sherlock’s hair, which was rapidly becoming one of his favorite things in the world to do. “Trust you to jump into a complicated question without even realizing it.”
Sherlock frowned again, for the second time in as many minutes, bafflement covering his face as he looked at John. “Knowing your previous sexual partners is complicated? How is that a difficult question?”
“It isn’t so much the questions itself as everything that comes with it,” John returned, unperturbed. “Because that question is tied to a million others, all of which I had to sort through in the last year in order to understand what I felt for you. The short answer is that I had numerous partners, all women, all briefly, and only when I wasn’t in an active warzone - when I was on leave, usually. I was also constantly aware that there could have been more, of either sex - I had plenty of offers.”
Sherlock nodded, but his thoughts had clearly taken a different turn thanks to something John had said; his eyes were searching John’s face as though he was trying to answer a riddle from the Sphinx.
“You thought I was dead; why would you bother trying to sort out your feelings for me after that? Why would it matter?” Sherlock winced as the questions left his mouth, recognizing his habitual tactlessness that was A Bit Not Good, but John simply took Sherlock’s face in his hands.
“It mattered because you mattered, because you were everything. You are everything, and if I didn’t know it before that day at Bart’s - and I think I did - I certainly knew it when I was looking at your corpse.”
The aching tenderness in John’s words took any sting from them, and for a moment the pair of them simply looked at each other, and John could see and feel the mutual comprehension, the recognition of the other’s suffering, that passed between them. Though Sherlock had been halfway across the world in the last year, being away from John had been an agony as wrenching as John’s grief.
“John,” Sherlock said hoarsely, his voice full of need and guilt, and John leaned down and kissed him passionately, silencing whatever objections or apologies he had been about to make. He only pulled away when they were both breathless, putting his lips next to Sherlock’s ear.
“Sherlock,” he murmured, “I love you, and I know enough for now about what you were doing and why you felt you had to do it. I’m not angry. I was when I first saw you, and I can’t promise I won’t be again, but we have both been hurting, love, far more than we should have been, and I want it to stop. I’ve thought about this conversation for so long, thought of every single thing I should have realized and should have done, and I want to tell you as much as you want to know.”
Sherlock watched him for what felt like an eternity, his eyes calculating and weighing the truth of John’s words, verifying John’s sincerity with a gaze that felt like fire before he finally tilted his head in acquiescence.
“So you had multiple partners in the army, but no one serious or long-term,” he prompted, returning them to the earlier thread of their conversation.
“No,” John agreed. “You might think that it’s easy to find . . . companionship in the army, but I never thought so. There are the anti-fraternization rules, for one - no officers are supposed to become involved with regular enlisted men and women. Although those rules were broken occasionally, it was always difficult for anyone who did, and even worse if they were found out. And I was a doctor; it felt like a conflict of interest to be involved with anyone I might have to treat. The battlefield and the hospital always came first; that’s how the army works. Regardless of who I was with, I had to be able to do my job. I got very good at compartmentalizing, keeping any kind of personal life away from the battlefields and the field hospitals. It was easier.”
“Why?” Sherlock asked. “You spent every minute of your life with the people of your unit; wouldn’t it have made more sense to find someone you could be with all the time?”
John shook his head. “I didn’t think so then. Do you remember,” he said slowly, “when I was so angry with you during the first Moriarty case? Before the pool? You had said that caring about the people he was holding hostage wouldn’t help save them, that you wouldn’t make that mistake.”
“I remember,” Sherlock sighed, his voice pained. The arm that was draped around John’s waist tightened in belated, silent apology.
“It took me ages to figure out what you meant; I didn’t really work it out until after you were . . . gone,” John said. “But then I realized it was like performing surgery. When I was repairing injuries, I put every thought of the person on the table out of my head. I focused on the details of their body, on the tissue and organs and blood vessels under my fingers. I could see the pieces more clearly, do a better job of repairing them, if I didn’t think about who I was working on. It takes a certain amount of detachment, and that’s even more true when there are bullets and mortar bombs trying to demolish the building around you.”
Comprehension dawned in Sherlock’s eyes as John spoke. “Cases are very much like that, yes.”
“I applied the same principle to my personal life,” John said. “I kept it separate from the unit, separate from my job, separate from the guns and the killing and the healing. That isn’t to say that I didn’t care for the few women I was with,” he added hastily. “I did. I didn’t divorce myself from them emotionally; that hardly would have been fair. But I found them away from the combat zone so that I could function in it when I went back. I could focus on the work, not the human lives that were linked with mine. The unit and the job were my life, but I kept intimacy outside of it.”
“The members of your unit were your friends, your brothers-in-arms, the people you worked to save. You shared the battlefield with them, the danger, the adrenaline high - but your sexual partners gave you a detached place of safety, something away from the rest of your life,” Sherlock processed aloud.
John cocked his head, considering. “Yes. I doubt I ever would have put it into those exact terms, but yes.”
“And you never took up an interested man on his offer when you were on leave? Weren’t you the least bit curious?” Sherlock asked in disbelief, and John chuckled.
“Most of us don’t think of everything in experimental terms, you know,” he said fondly. “And anyway, even that was a bit more complicated than you think. Not legally speaking, of course, but for me personally. I was curious, occasionally. There were people in my unit who were gay, and a few more who were probably bisexual. I could never bring myself to try, though, even on leave, even when the man was attractive - and a few of them were very attractive.”
Sherlock thought about that, and John let him think, wondering if he would come to the correct conclusion. He very often did, but not invariably, and to John at least, this piece of his own heart had not been obvious, had taken thought and memory-digging and mental confrontation before he understood his own reticence.
“It’s to do with Harry,” Sherlock said finally, slowly, after several minutes of silence. “It has to be about her, but I don’t quite see how.”
“I will never stop being astounded by you,” John said with a shake of his head and a smile. “How did you work that out?”
“Not in any way that’s as neat as I’d like; it’s closer to a guess than I’m ever comfortable being,” Sherlock answered, his voice disgruntled but his eyes full of warmth at John’s admiration. “You and Harry don’t get along; you liked Clara but Harry divorced her; you’ve made it clear you don’t agree with a lot of Harry’s decisions, and alcoholism runs in families, which means one of your parents likely had the same problem and passed it on to Harry. There’s a lot of tension and bad history there, but she is still your sister. I would think that when she - what is the expression? - ‘came out,’ it went less than well. You tried to help her with your parents but were not really successful.”
“All true,” John confirmed candidly. “Harry was a teenager when she told my parents she was a lesbian, and ‘less than well’ doesn’t even begin to cover their reaction. They didn’t throw her out, but they did everything but - shouted at her, called her every offensive name in the book, told her she was going to hell, told her she was disgracing the family, made it clear she wasn’t to bring her girlfriend home, gave her the silent treatment. I was in college at the time and came home when I could to try and talk some sense into them. They wouldn’t hear any kind of reason. I let Harry come and stay with me when she needed to, just to have a place where she could get away that wasn’t her girlfriend’s house. She refused to let them beat her - she called them names right back, shouted right back, refused to speak to them either. She had every right to react that way, but none of us ever really got over it. It went on for months, Sherlock - and even when my parents started talking to her again, they spoke to her like she was a complete stranger, only worthy of politeness. I couldn’t believe they could behave that way toward their own daughter. Our family was never perfect, but they let their hatred tear it apart. I stayed away from them as much as possible after that, though I tried to keep up with Harry.”
“But the trauma of it stayed in your subconscious,” Sherlock said lovingly, compassion in every line of his face as he ran his fingers through John’s hair. “You couldn’t bring yourself to go through it all again, so you ignored the handful of times you found a man attractive, even though no one in your family would have known.”
“Something like that, yeah,” John admitted. “I didn’t even realize I was doing it, at the time. Idle curiosity hardly seemed like a good enough reason to sleep with someone, either, not when I had never felt anything more than that for a man. It seemed unkind.”
An extraordinarily uncomfortable expression fleetingly crossed Sherlock’s face, then, but it was gone before John could analyze all of its parts. He tucked it in the back of his mind for later; there was something there he needed to know.
“Always the honorable soldier,” Sherlock observed. “That is one of the few ways in which you are predictable, John. You try to do the right thing, the kind thing, for almost everyone.”
“I suppose it’s the doctor in me,” John said. “I think of it like karma. There’s more than one way to help people heal.”
“And what extraordinary thing did I do, in this life or any other, to deserve you?” Sherlock murmured, his eyes full of quiet adoration as he looked at John.
“I could ask the same question,” John replied in a whisper, his throat thick but his eyes reflecting the same emotion as Sherlock’s.
“What changed? When did you know?” Sherlock breathed. Their foreheads were touching, now, their hands resting on each other’s cheeks, and part of John wanted nothing more than to kiss Sherlock again, have Sherlock kiss him back until they were lost in each other - but he had promised Sherlock answers, and the answer to this question needed to be said, even though it wasn’t going to be easy.
“When did I know I was attracted to you, or when did I know I was in love with you?” John said carefully, wanting to clarify the question. “Because those are two very different things.”
“Either. Both,” Sherlock said, giving John his own shy smile, and John had to kiss him then, briefly, and smile in return. He would never get tired of seeing Sherlock’s true smile.
“Well, I had my attraction to you rather ungraciously thrown in my face, if you remember. You were there. It wasn’t the most pleasant way to realize it.”
Sherlock searched his mind for a split second, his eyes closed, before they blinked open again in certainty. “The power station.”
“The power station,” John agreed.
Chapter Seven
Wounded With His Wounded Heart - Chapter Six
When they reached the living area of their suite, Sherlock called down to the house kitchens and asked the butler for a cheese and broccoli omelet for John, and one with cheese, mushrooms, tomato, and basil for himself, along with tea and toast, yogurt and muesli. He raised an eyebrow at John as he finished, who nodded approvingly at him. There were plenty of nutrients, grains, and protein in everything, all ingredients their bodies both desperately needed. Sherlock thanked Willoughby and hung up, and John found himself studying his friend as Sherlock walked back over to the breakfast bar.
“Willoughby should be up in roughly seven minutes. He abhors serving cold food,” Sherlock stated, but broke off when he noticed John’s speculative look. “What is it?”
“You’re different here,” John stated, his tone fond but slightly perplexed. “Maybe just different, I don’t know. More relaxed? As though you feel - safer? Not something I ever thought I’d see in you when you’re in Mycroft’s house.”
The exhaustion returned to Sherlock’s eyes again, and John felt a pang in his chest for having brought it back. “Safety is appealing when one has spent every hour of the last year, waking and sleeping, either shooting or expecting to be shot. I wondered more than once if I was feeling as you had felt in Afghanistan, that constant feeling of pursuing and being pursued. Much as I usually relish it, it is grueling to live with as a continuous companion. But I’m not sure safety is the right word.”
Sherlock sat and took John’s hand. “Perhaps contentment is what you’re sensing? I admit it’s not something I have felt very often in my life, and I am still getting used to it,” he said with a small smile. “But I have been in more countries and donned more disguises in the last twelve months than I ever thought would be necessary or even possible. By the end, I had worn so many faces that I had almost forgotten what my own looked like, and I wanted desperately to be myself again.”
John tightened his fingers in wordless understanding, and Sherlock went on, his voice low and soft with emotion.
“Before I met you, I would have lived for nothing but that chase, John, just as I lived for every case, for the thrill of the puzzle and the hunt. This time, I lived for it because there was no other choice, because if I wanted my heart to stay whole, then I had to ensure you stayed alive. If I wanted to come home, then you had to be here to come home to. Even if you had hated me, had moved on, had refused to see me, it would have been better than coming back to a London where you did not exist.”
“The hard part was not the actual killing, not most of the time,” Sherlock continued. “It was the searching, and the waiting - interrogating people, following trails, finding out where a particular operative was, making my way through corporate high rises and slums and everything in between. Seeing the worst side of humanity, the side that most people don’t ever see, don’t even know exists. Being filthy and tired and hungry, moving locations every night, changing my appearance constantly. I have been heartsick and so very tired, and I am through, for the moment, with pretense and disguise.”
Sherlock’s voice was gravelly and almost inaudible when he finished, and John simply leaned in and kissed him, too moved to find adequate words at first. He let Sherlock sag against him, let Sherlock simply rest on him as the detective released some of the weight he had been carrying for far too long.
“You are home, and you are safe, and you never have to pretend with me or hide from me,” John whispered finally.
Sherlock’s arms came around his waist and held. “I know.”
Their solitude was interrupted by a knock and the rattle of breakfast dishes, and Willoughby came in with the same cart as the night before, now laden with covered plates, bowls of yogurt, a steaming pot of tea and mugs, several kinds of juice, milk, toast, and muesli - in short, enough food to feed a small army, John thought in amusement.
“Good morning Master Sherlock, Dr. Watson,” Willoughby said with a smile. “I trust you slept well?”
“Better than I have in ages, Willoughby, and that’s a fact,” John said cheerily, putting some effort into his tone. “Sherlock insisted I had to experience the wonder of your omelets, and I have to admit I’m starving.”
Willoughby waved a hand as he started unloading the contents of his cart onto the counter and breakfast bar. “Sherlock exaggerates, Dr. Watson. He’s always had a soft spot for my omelets; I made them once when he was ill as a boy, and he’s irrationally persisted in thinking they’re magical, when in fact they are very simple. One of the few things I can cook well and don’t depend on the cooks to do.”
“I most certainly do not exaggerate, Willoughby,” Sherlock disagreed, taking one of the stools for his own. “I’d had pneumonia and was utterly miserable. In bed for days, my whole body aching, my throat sore. I had hardly been able to eat anything and had next to no appetite anyway. Then you coaxed me into eating a plain cheese omelet, and it was the most magnificent thing I had ever tasted. Given the number of appalling omelets I’ve had since, not to mention how many omelets of yours I’ve eaten, I think I’m well qualified to say that your omelets are culinary perfection.”
Willoughby laughed. “You’re going to be terribly disappointed, Dr. Watson, really,” he said, shaking his head.
John smiled. “Somehow I’m inclined to side with Sherlock on this one, Willoughby. He is so seldom irrational, especially with his praise, that I think you fail to recognize your own talent.”
Willoughby just shook his head again. “Well, judge for yourself then, before they get cold.”
Sherlock had already begun to dig in, and his expression told John that he was savoring his food in a way he very seldom did. The doctor took his first bite and very nearly moaned; the omelet was fluffy, creamy, and hot, and almost disintegrated in his mouth. John chewed and swallowed carefully, then fixed Willoughby with a sharp look.
“Are you sure you didn’t have another career as a chef, Willoughby? That was quite possibly the most extraordinary bite of omelet I have ever tasted.”
“My father was quite the accomplished cook, Dr. Watson. He may have taught me a thing or two,” Willoughby admitted, his lips twitching.
“I knew you were holding out on me,” John declared, pointing his fork at Willoughby.
Sherlock cocked his head. “How was it I never deduced that your father was a chef?”
“I was in my early twenties when I began to work for your family, Master Sherlock, and you were only five,” Willoughby responded. “Hardly at the height of your reasoning powers.”
“Oh, so they didn’t spring into being fully formed?” John asked teasingly, taking another bite of omelet.
“I was a precocious child but not that precocious, John,” Sherlock said reprovingly, trying to look superior and failing.
“Precocious enough to be several years ahead in your reading, vocabulary, and cognitive skills, however,” Willoughby remembered.
“Of course,” Sherlock said airily. “I demanded that Mycroft teach me chess.”
Despite himself, John almost choked, and he swallowed quickly. “Did he?”
“He did - although it was under protest,” Sherlock said. “I threatened to tell Mummy about the girl he fancied.”
John was profoundly thankful he hadn’t continued eating; he could almost feel his eyes bugging out of his head.
“Mycroft fancied someone?” he asked incredulously.
Sherlock scoffed. “Of course not; don’t be ridiculous, John. I could convince Mummy that he did, though, and plant evidence to make it look like he did, and he knew that I could. Mummy would have been insufferable.” He flashed John a wickedly mischievous grin, and John couldn’t help but grin back.
“Not for the first time, I am so thankful that you did not bend your mind to a life of crime,” he said.
Sherlock hummed, the smile lingering on his face. “It’s far more fun outsmarting the criminals,” he answered.
“I’ll leave you two to your breakfast, but don’t hesitate to call if you need anything, gentlemen,” Willoughby said, gathering up the miscellaneous dishes and utensils that were no longer needed but leaving the rest of the repast.
“Thank you, Willoughby. You are a master at omelets, and you’ll never convince me otherwise,” John complimented him. The butler shook his head, but he was clearly pleased, and John and Sherlock shared an amused glance as he left. John reached for the cup of tea that Willoughby had thoughtfully poured, and they both finished their omelets, toast, and yogurt in comfortable silence. John pointedly handed Sherlock more ibuprofen, which he took without protest, draining the last of his second mug of tea.
They worked in tandem to clean the kitchen, moving around each other in much the same way they had in Baker Street, putting things in the fridge and piling dishes neatly in the sink until the counters were clear and open once more.
Sherlock took John’s hand as they finished, threading their fingers together.
“We should go up on the roof,” he suggested quietly. “It’s beautiful.”
“Won’t it be a bit - cold?” John said hesitantly, and Sherlock smiled mysteriously.
“Come and see,” he said, and led John out the door, their hands still linked together.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Although they had taken the stairs the previous evening, it turned out that there was an elevator, and when its doors opened on the top floor, John frankly gaped at the room in front of him.
It was a rooftop conservatory and garden. The room that opened out from the elevator was encased in glass on all four sides, oak hardwood spreading out at their feet, a curved roof over their heads, and light streaming in and illuminating a breathtaking view of London, even on day such as this one when a thunderstorm seemed imminent. There was a large couch and a gas fireplace in the center of the room, as well as several oversized armchairs. Two end tables held lamps with carved wooden bases and stained glass shades. On the far side of the enclosed room there were double doors, also glass, and beyond them John could see an outdoor terrace with raised garden beds that were mostly dormant now, but must have been breathtaking in the height of summer.
“Sherlock, this is incredible,” John breathed, trying to take in everything at once.
“The best room in the house, I’ve always thought, although Mycroft is almost never up here,” Sherlock said, satisfaction tingeing his voice at John’s agreement. He moved into the room and turned on one of the lamps, then flicked the switch for the fireplace, and the room immediately felt cozy, the warm light a pleasant contrast to the dark gray sky outside.
Sherlock held out a hand from where he stood, and John immediately went over to him. They wrapped each other up, wordlessly, standing in front of the fire with Sherlock’s head bent over John’s.
“You still have questions,” John whispered eventually.
“Yes,” Sherlock acknowledged, his voice just as quiet.
John looked up at him and smiled, reaching up to brush curls out of Sherlock’s eyes. “Ask, then,” he said tenderly, affectionate understanding shining in his warm blue eyes. “You’ll drive yourself crazy until you do. It doesn’t matter where you start. I meant what I said before; I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
Sherlock’s eyes flickered, and John saw the thousand questions, saw Sherlock’s relentless mind sorting through them, looking for something that would give him a place to begin without asking too much at once.
“That first night at Angelo’s, were you asking me out?” Sherlock said finally, the question blunt but his eyes intent on the answer.
John laughed, his voice still quiet, and slid his hands up to rest on Sherlock’s shoulders.
“No. I really wasn’t,” he answered. “I was trying to suss you out - I’d known you less than a full day and I was already fascinated. And there was something . . . appealing about having a friend who was as unattached as I. I had so few people in my life, and not anyone I was close to, and I hadn’t met a single person who understood why that was."
Sherlock frowned. “What else did people expect? You’d left your whole unit behind in Afghanistan, you didn’t get along with Harry and still don’t, you hadn’t stayed in touch with your friends from med school because the army took over your life. Were people really so imbecilic as to just believe that you would come home and have a whole network of people waiting for you?”
John smiled again, but it was tight and grim this time. “It’s what they expect of most returning soldiers. They aren’t prepared to deal with someone who has made military service his whole life, with nothing outside of it, and then gets invalided home.”
“Yet more proof that people are stupid and blind,” Sherlock muttered angrily. “Ridiculous.”
John touched his cheek. “Thank you for the indignation on my behalf - but I found you because of that stupidity, more or less,” he reminded Sherlock. “While I would love to help solve that particular problem in some way, at some point in the future, can we shelve it for the moment?”
Sherlock nodded, his brain already visibly whirring into gear again. “While we’re on Afghanistan - there wasn’t anyone you . . . cared for, while you were there? While you were in the army?”
John gave a thoughtful sigh, his lips tightening as he searched for words, and then he looked up at Sherlock. “Let’s find a more comfortable position to be in, before I explain. You shouldn’t be standing for so long, and this could take a while,” he said. He took a step over to the couch and arranged himself on it, laying on his side with his back against the back of the couch and leaving much of the wide seat cushions for Sherlock, who promptly laid down with his head on the arm rest. The fireplace provided warmth for them, and the lamp cast a warm glow over Sherlock’s features that made John’s heart speed up.
“Now, then,” John said, resuming running his fingers through Sherlock’s hair, which was rapidly becoming one of his favorite things in the world to do. “Trust you to jump into a complicated question without even realizing it.”
Sherlock frowned again, for the second time in as many minutes, bafflement covering his face as he looked at John. “Knowing your previous sexual partners is complicated? How is that a difficult question?”
“It isn’t so much the questions itself as everything that comes with it,” John returned, unperturbed. “Because that question is tied to a million others, all of which I had to sort through in the last year in order to understand what I felt for you. The short answer is that I had numerous partners, all women, all briefly, and only when I wasn’t in an active warzone - when I was on leave, usually. I was also constantly aware that there could have been more, of either sex - I had plenty of offers.”
Sherlock nodded, but his thoughts had clearly taken a different turn thanks to something John had said; his eyes were searching John’s face as though he was trying to answer a riddle from the Sphinx.
“You thought I was dead; why would you bother trying to sort out your feelings for me after that? Why would it matter?” Sherlock winced as the questions left his mouth, recognizing his habitual tactlessness that was A Bit Not Good, but John simply took Sherlock’s face in his hands.
“It mattered because you mattered, because you were everything. You are everything, and if I didn’t know it before that day at Bart’s - and I think I did - I certainly knew it when I was looking at your corpse.”
The aching tenderness in John’s words took any sting from them, and for a moment the pair of them simply looked at each other, and John could see and feel the mutual comprehension, the recognition of the other’s suffering, that passed between them. Though Sherlock had been halfway across the world in the last year, being away from John had been an agony as wrenching as John’s grief.
“John,” Sherlock said hoarsely, his voice full of need and guilt, and John leaned down and kissed him passionately, silencing whatever objections or apologies he had been about to make. He only pulled away when they were both breathless, putting his lips next to Sherlock’s ear.
“Sherlock,” he murmured, “I love you, and I know enough for now about what you were doing and why you felt you had to do it. I’m not angry. I was when I first saw you, and I can’t promise I won’t be again, but we have both been hurting, love, far more than we should have been, and I want it to stop. I’ve thought about this conversation for so long, thought of every single thing I should have realized and should have done, and I want to tell you as much as you want to know.”
Sherlock watched him for what felt like an eternity, his eyes calculating and weighing the truth of John’s words, verifying John’s sincerity with a gaze that felt like fire before he finally tilted his head in acquiescence.
“So you had multiple partners in the army, but no one serious or long-term,” he prompted, returning them to the earlier thread of their conversation.
“No,” John agreed. “You might think that it’s easy to find . . . companionship in the army, but I never thought so. There are the anti-fraternization rules, for one - no officers are supposed to become involved with regular enlisted men and women. Although those rules were broken occasionally, it was always difficult for anyone who did, and even worse if they were found out. And I was a doctor; it felt like a conflict of interest to be involved with anyone I might have to treat. The battlefield and the hospital always came first; that’s how the army works. Regardless of who I was with, I had to be able to do my job. I got very good at compartmentalizing, keeping any kind of personal life away from the battlefields and the field hospitals. It was easier.”
“Why?” Sherlock asked. “You spent every minute of your life with the people of your unit; wouldn’t it have made more sense to find someone you could be with all the time?”
John shook his head. “I didn’t think so then. Do you remember,” he said slowly, “when I was so angry with you during the first Moriarty case? Before the pool? You had said that caring about the people he was holding hostage wouldn’t help save them, that you wouldn’t make that mistake.”
“I remember,” Sherlock sighed, his voice pained. The arm that was draped around John’s waist tightened in belated, silent apology.
“It took me ages to figure out what you meant; I didn’t really work it out until after you were . . . gone,” John said. “But then I realized it was like performing surgery. When I was repairing injuries, I put every thought of the person on the table out of my head. I focused on the details of their body, on the tissue and organs and blood vessels under my fingers. I could see the pieces more clearly, do a better job of repairing them, if I didn’t think about who I was working on. It takes a certain amount of detachment, and that’s even more true when there are bullets and mortar bombs trying to demolish the building around you.”
Comprehension dawned in Sherlock’s eyes as John spoke. “Cases are very much like that, yes.”
“I applied the same principle to my personal life,” John said. “I kept it separate from the unit, separate from my job, separate from the guns and the killing and the healing. That isn’t to say that I didn’t care for the few women I was with,” he added hastily. “I did. I didn’t divorce myself from them emotionally; that hardly would have been fair. But I found them away from the combat zone so that I could function in it when I went back. I could focus on the work, not the human lives that were linked with mine. The unit and the job were my life, but I kept intimacy outside of it.”
“The members of your unit were your friends, your brothers-in-arms, the people you worked to save. You shared the battlefield with them, the danger, the adrenaline high - but your sexual partners gave you a detached place of safety, something away from the rest of your life,” Sherlock processed aloud.
John cocked his head, considering. “Yes. I doubt I ever would have put it into those exact terms, but yes.”
“And you never took up an interested man on his offer when you were on leave? Weren’t you the least bit curious?” Sherlock asked in disbelief, and John chuckled.
“Most of us don’t think of everything in experimental terms, you know,” he said fondly. “And anyway, even that was a bit more complicated than you think. Not legally speaking, of course, but for me personally. I was curious, occasionally. There were people in my unit who were gay, and a few more who were probably bisexual. I could never bring myself to try, though, even on leave, even when the man was attractive - and a few of them were very attractive.”
Sherlock thought about that, and John let him think, wondering if he would come to the correct conclusion. He very often did, but not invariably, and to John at least, this piece of his own heart had not been obvious, had taken thought and memory-digging and mental confrontation before he understood his own reticence.
“It’s to do with Harry,” Sherlock said finally, slowly, after several minutes of silence. “It has to be about her, but I don’t quite see how.”
“I will never stop being astounded by you,” John said with a shake of his head and a smile. “How did you work that out?”
“Not in any way that’s as neat as I’d like; it’s closer to a guess than I’m ever comfortable being,” Sherlock answered, his voice disgruntled but his eyes full of warmth at John’s admiration. “You and Harry don’t get along; you liked Clara but Harry divorced her; you’ve made it clear you don’t agree with a lot of Harry’s decisions, and alcoholism runs in families, which means one of your parents likely had the same problem and passed it on to Harry. There’s a lot of tension and bad history there, but she is still your sister. I would think that when she - what is the expression? - ‘came out,’ it went less than well. You tried to help her with your parents but were not really successful.”
“All true,” John confirmed candidly. “Harry was a teenager when she told my parents she was a lesbian, and ‘less than well’ doesn’t even begin to cover their reaction. They didn’t throw her out, but they did everything but - shouted at her, called her every offensive name in the book, told her she was going to hell, told her she was disgracing the family, made it clear she wasn’t to bring her girlfriend home, gave her the silent treatment. I was in college at the time and came home when I could to try and talk some sense into them. They wouldn’t hear any kind of reason. I let Harry come and stay with me when she needed to, just to have a place where she could get away that wasn’t her girlfriend’s house. She refused to let them beat her - she called them names right back, shouted right back, refused to speak to them either. She had every right to react that way, but none of us ever really got over it. It went on for months, Sherlock - and even when my parents started talking to her again, they spoke to her like she was a complete stranger, only worthy of politeness. I couldn’t believe they could behave that way toward their own daughter. Our family was never perfect, but they let their hatred tear it apart. I stayed away from them as much as possible after that, though I tried to keep up with Harry.”
“But the trauma of it stayed in your subconscious,” Sherlock said lovingly, compassion in every line of his face as he ran his fingers through John’s hair. “You couldn’t bring yourself to go through it all again, so you ignored the handful of times you found a man attractive, even though no one in your family would have known.”
“Something like that, yeah,” John admitted. “I didn’t even realize I was doing it, at the time. Idle curiosity hardly seemed like a good enough reason to sleep with someone, either, not when I had never felt anything more than that for a man. It seemed unkind.”
An extraordinarily uncomfortable expression fleetingly crossed Sherlock’s face, then, but it was gone before John could analyze all of its parts. He tucked it in the back of his mind for later; there was something there he needed to know.
“Always the honorable soldier,” Sherlock observed. “That is one of the few ways in which you are predictable, John. You try to do the right thing, the kind thing, for almost everyone.”
“I suppose it’s the doctor in me,” John said. “I think of it like karma. There’s more than one way to help people heal.”
“And what extraordinary thing did I do, in this life or any other, to deserve you?” Sherlock murmured, his eyes full of quiet adoration as he looked at John.
“I could ask the same question,” John replied in a whisper, his throat thick but his eyes reflecting the same emotion as Sherlock’s.
“What changed? When did you know?” Sherlock breathed. Their foreheads were touching, now, their hands resting on each other’s cheeks, and part of John wanted nothing more than to kiss Sherlock again, have Sherlock kiss him back until they were lost in each other - but he had promised Sherlock answers, and the answer to this question needed to be said, even though it wasn’t going to be easy.
“When did I know I was attracted to you, or when did I know I was in love with you?” John said carefully, wanting to clarify the question. “Because those are two very different things.”
“Either. Both,” Sherlock said, giving John his own shy smile, and John had to kiss him then, briefly, and smile in return. He would never get tired of seeing Sherlock’s true smile.
“Well, I had my attraction to you rather ungraciously thrown in my face, if you remember. You were there. It wasn’t the most pleasant way to realize it.”
Sherlock searched his mind for a split second, his eyes closed, before they blinked open again in certainty. “The power station.”
“The power station,” John agreed.
Chapter Seven