Perception (Sherlock/John, R)
It's quite interesting to work with prompts, because sometimes it really feels like writing against my own grain, fleshing out a character concept that differs from my own, and it's actually quite a nice exercise to see how to make it work. *shrugs*
KINK MEME FILL NUMBER 1: Perception
Prompt: John and Sherlock are in a happy relationship...until Sherlock 'cheats'. with a criminal. John leaves. And Sherlock tries to turn to what few other friends he has to help...but it turns out when John left he went to Lestrade, and Lestrade gently but firmly turns Sherlock away, saying he can't be the one to help him this time. And something about Sherlock cheating with a criminal reminds Mrs. Hudson of her husband...she's so disturbed in fact, that she basically evicts him. So everyone Sherlock knows looks on him in anger or disappointment or disgust. Sherlock looks on himself the same way.
Eventually the truth, somehow, comes out. Sherlock didn't cheat on John. He did have sex with the criminal. But it wasn't consensual, even if Sherlock didn't quite understand that he had been forced. Now if only they could find Sherlock and explain it to him.
Word count: ~8,000
Rating: R
Warnings: fairly non-explicit non-con, discussion of injuries
Summary: John is perceptive sometimes.
Original fill here.
Perception
John is perceptive sometimes.
It's not news to Sherlock. It hasn't been since John said that's how you get your thrills, isn't it? and especially not since John looked at him, breathless months of chasing and shooting and scenes of surprisingly not-boring domesticity later, and he somehow picked up all of the trembling, unfinished trails of thought that Sherlock had no idea how to express, and understood them, and initiated the kiss between them that brought them where they are now.
Or at least, where they've been until five minutes ago; a team, a team in mind and body, a bit more distant in the mornings before John's cup of coffee, or in the evenings when an experiment isn't going to plan, but always finding each other again - John sometimes making him re-see the stories of the dead bodies under his hands in a different way, and John welcoming him into the hollow of him when he finally comes to bed, and there is warmth and sometimes sweat. That's where they've been, and it had been John who'd set things in motion, plucking at his face, adrenalin still spilling between them, and pressing a kiss to his lips that had been far too calm for the circumstances.
So John is perceptive sometimes, in a way that is a bit strange to Sherlock at times and definitely always interesting, and it takes him all of five minutes after Sherlock comes home, sweat-soaked, thrumming with I solved the case and something else entirely, to see something in Sherlock's face.
“Christ, why are you being so fidgety?” He frowns, hands hovering over the shallow scrape on Sherlock's throat he's disinfecting. His eyes are grey and steady and warm and beginning to cloud with worry and Sherlock can't. Can't accept them right now, so he flicks his own eyes to his shoes; Italian leather good condition despite twenty-three chases over streets of London and one plunge into Thames two years old stained by clay and blood from three different occasions 21, 17 and 2 months ago.
John's hand in his neck is firm, a physician's hands, a soldier's hands, finding the pressure points, keeping the blood in more effectively than Sherlock's skin ever could.
“What happened?” he says, and the question is as straight-forward as it is impossible to answer.
And Sherlock still doesn't know a lot about what he's supposed to do about John, but so far all of it has been fine, just like John had promised. It's always fine, maybe after some shouting but that's okay, that he on occasion forgets that John is with him on cases, or that he on others can't forget that John is around and hovers too close to him as John is trying to have a cup of tea or watch a stupid soap opera and very emphatically doesn't need to be dissected by Sherlock's eyes. It's fine that he always steals the covers on the nights they sleep together. It's fine that Sherlock doesn't always know when he's been using his voice and when he hasn't been and scolds John for forgetting something that he, in hindsight, might in fact not have said out loud. It's fine that Sherlock still sometimes doesn't know what to do with John's morning erections, and can't always help fleeing from it, because he does always return, and John never really expects anything, but it's fine for Sherlock, too, and when he does curl his fingers around the still surprising heat of John's cock in the morning everything is all right, and more; disorienting, surprising, thrilling.
Not saying it is not an option, it seems, pushing at the roof of his mouth as it is. So, hoping against hope, against the nauseating feeling of water churning in his gut, that this will be fine, like all of the things that he never expected to be fine but that apparently are, he says: “I had sexual intercourse with Davis.”
For a long, stretching second bursting with fear and hope he thinks it might actually be fine. John's hands remain soft and firm at the same time on his neck. His mouth stays in the same twitch of concern.
“Sexual intercourse,” John then says, tonelessly, and Sherlock thinks he might be about to mock Sherlock for his clinicalness, which is something John likes to do, especially during sexual intercourse, when he teaches Sherlock terms that somehow only work in that bubble, in that heat, with John's fingers grasping at him with intent.
He starts to open his mouth to retort something to the effect of okay, he fucked me, whatever you want to call it, but then all of John is suddenly removed from him. John takes his fingers and his warmth away, backing against the door of the bathroom. Only his eyes are still tangible, and they are clouding over with such a sheen of disappointment and hurt that even Sherlock has no trouble identifying it.
“You're serious,” John says, and sounds as though that was maybe his final lifeline, and then something sinks over his face of such darkness, such depth that Sherlock is off the edge of the bath in a reflex, starting toward him, but John puts up his palms, and he looks like steel. He looks like iron. Fe. John. Repelling water. Repelling Sherlock. “How did that - why did it -” John is saying, but they're not questions, and one hand is twisting the door handle behind him, to break the bubble around them.
“John, I didn't -” Sherlock begins to say, but then he doesn't know what it is that he didn't do, because he did, didn't he? He allowed the scrape of teeth and nails, didn't he? He welcomed the tug at his trousers until there was a mouth on his cock, didn't he? He can't say why, which is infuriating, and it will have to be examined later, but first John needs to come back and Sherlock needs to figure out what it is he didn't do, because if there isn't anything, he doesn't know what he'll do, and that's unacceptable.
“Save it,” John says. He is quiet but everything else is loud; the press of air molecules on Sherlock's ear drums, the creak of the door as it opens behind John, slowly, as though hesitant, and the soft pad of his socked feet as he steps away, and then, a small gun shot: the click of the door as he allows it to fall shut, not quite a slam, not quite gentle.
When Sherlock fights off nausea for long enough to hurtle through the door, John is in his coat and tying his laces.
“Don't follow me,” is all he says, and now there is the swell of anger in his voice; Sherlock knows that tone, it's not so much anger as overpowering fury, suppressed so much it's almost not noticeable, all the more sharp because of it - but it's never been directed at him that way, it's always been used on his behalf, and he would say John, have you met me, because that sometimes makes John laugh when John makes requests he know Sherlock will disregard, but the words won't come. And while he tries to pick the letters out of his mouth, John turns around and is gone, and Sherlock's lips, useless, can't do anything but curl around a ghostly impression of John's name.
*
He makes a list.
Really only to give his hands something else to do than pull at his hair - he doesn't do lists, he dislikes their linearity; his brain breaks down bullet points, cross-links them, enlarges and shrinks details according to their importance, and shies away from numbering in everything but chemistry, because in human behaviour there is still some eraticness of action and reaction, and going from 1 to 6 to 2 instead of following a narrative, linear sequence of action is something that he likes, even if he wishes the patterns were a bit harder to predict.
But he makes a list because his brain is screaming now, there is really nothing but I knew it I knew it I knew he'd leave one day and it would be my fault because there is always a point when I'm not enough and too much and maybe both and John's limits are just different from most people's but now they are there after all and no no no and he'd be embarrassed, ticked off at himself, giving himself a stern talking-to of the kind that Mummy used to give him if she caught him picking at the walls of his bedroom with his fingers bleeding, if there was any room left for that.
The list reads:
Lestrade
Mrs. Hudson
Mike Stamford
and, small, almost illegible even to himself (he shuts off the thought that John used to laugh at his handwriting, at the add-ons to shopping lists requesting nicotine patches or nitrogen acid that, as John put it, no human being could ever decipher, and was Sherlock honestly sure he wasn't secretly a pharmacist):
Mycroft
and that he's on there at all, even as the back-up plan of the back-up plan, makes Sherlock's own brain step back and assess the situation and proclaim his emotional state now quite worryingly compromised.
*
Sherlock has to think for six point two seconds before he can answer the cabbie's question of “So where you goin', mate?” and the streets are a pastiche of London, with people who have no clue that John Watson has gone away, who never even had John Watson, and who mean nothing. They're just people. Sherlock drums his fingers on the seat of the cab under him, cigarette ash from previous passenger, rushed handjob last night, drunk with bottle of whiskey spilled some three nights ago and then there is John again and he groans, and tangles his fingers in his hair until it hurts, and has to consciously breathe; body slipping out of control, even the most mediocre of processes now suddenly tasks that he can't seem to fulfill.
Lestrade is first, and dodges Sherlock's hands coming to grab at him in a mockery of the social niceties of hello.
“No, Sherlock,” he says, and there's a firmness in his voice, and in the hands closing around his wrist, pushing him off, that Sherlock has rarely seen in him - there's none of his soft exasperation now, of the mellow self-deprecation with which he allows Sherlock his five minutes and more time and time again.
“You don't even know what it is that I want,” he snaps.
“You want to me to tell you where John is,” Lestrade says, sounds calm, but Sherlock knows his voice, and he's not calm. “And you probably want me to text him and to tell him to come back. Not happening, Sherlock.”
“Why not?” If he sounds pleading that's the way it is, because Lestrade obviously knows where John is, it's in every flick of his eyes, every tightening of his mouth, and it's unacceptable that Lestrade should know where John is while Sherlock doesn't, and it's unacceptable that John isn't here, and it's unacceptable that Sherlock is.
“He told me what happened,” Lestrade says, and he shakes his head, partly disbelieving, partly resigned. “You deserve nothing less than him leaving, Sherlock. You've really crossed a line with him.”
I know that, Sherlock wants to say, because he knows everything and yes, he does know this too. And he wants to say stop meddling and this is between me and him but what comes out of his mouth is “Help me,” and he sounds strangled, his breath being stolen, as though he's in a vacuum and every oxygen molecule is being drawn from him in an unfair, relentless exchange.
“No,” Lestrade says, and sounds almost sorry, but the determination is tangible. “Clean up your own mess.”
“Yes, because that's what you always do,” Sherlock bites, can't help but bite, but Lestrade just looks at him with a very clear you're absolutely right but I still won't help and a small part of Sherlock's brain notes that this has probably to do with his cheating ex-wife, but then that's utterly irrelevant, and he's wasting his time, so he turns around with an exclamation of frustration that might have been a word, but he wouldn't be able to say which one, and no one seems to understand that with every second John is getting further away, his presence growing less and less tangible, and that Sherlock is entertaining the notion for the first time in a long while that his heart might actually be a literal time bomb in his chest.
*
Back on his way to 221B, he texts Mike Stamford;
Have you seen John?
SH
And Stamford, clueless, says:
sure we had a pint three
days ago
as though Sherlock doesn't know that already, and his phone creaks when he pushes his thumb to the send command with unnecessary force to send the
Today, I mean.
SH
and then he feels an overpowering desire to scratch Mike Stamford's round, happy face off at the
no why? :)
*
And then Mrs. Hudson turns everything on its head, and she has no right, she can't, she's supposed to be on his side, because he's on her side and that's rare in itself but it seems like John is the only one who really understands that, and well. That's the reason he is the way he is right now, isn't it?
He doesn't know if he's ever seen her disgusted. Disapproving, of course. More often than not. Tutting, exasperated, wound-up, frustration tempered by affection. He knows all of that from her, has sampled her expressions, can summon them in his mind's eye, knows what they mean.
This, this stretch of old-lady mouth that is so tense she has no lips left, and no dancing of silent amusement in her eyes at all, is new, and he can't bring up anything from his memories of her that matches this, so he has no idea how to respond.
“Sherlock,” she says, shaking her head, and it's the lack of dear that tips him off about the seriousness of the situation, “now what you have you got yourself into this time?” Her fingers are playing with the cuff of her purple blouse, nerves, agitation, disapproval, no, stronger, disgust, at him.
“Mrs. Hudson,” he says, and he can't quite help it being a question, though it's not what he intended.
At her name she draws herself up to her full five foot two of old lady, of surprising strength, of determination that he's often seen but never seen used against him. And she's angry, he can tell.
“How can you, Sherlock?” she says, her voice almost a squeak. “Do something like that to poor John? You ought to be ashamed.”
I am, he almost says, but then doesn't, because he's not sure if it would help, and he's not even sure if it's true - he's not quite accustomed to this deep, dark feeling that's filling up his chest like glue, slowing down his organs, his limbs; and if John were here he'd ask him what it was, and John would laugh at him trying to categorise feeling like it was another specimen, but if John would tell him it was shame that would be what it was, but he has the almost lucid thought that it's guilt, full, empty, choking. Guilt because of what John's eyes did, in the bathroom, looking at him with the hardness of stones. Guilt because that was him, again, bringing John to that state.
“I know,” he therefore says, because that is true. But of course, and he shouldn't be surprised, because there isn't anything he can do right if what he does makes John leave Baker Street and tell him not to follow him, it's the wrong thing to say, and her eyes flash.
“And with such a foul man,” she snaps. He has a flash of regret for telling her what happened, but for once his mouth had been ahead of his brain, and time is about the only thing he can't turn around on itself, that he can't bring back to its core, so he can't unsay it. There aren't often moments when he wishes he could unsay things, but this day has brought him many already, and he feels the pressure of them, of the words that he should have kept in his mouth but that are now roaming free, and it's all his fault.
Mrs. Hudson is shivering in a strange way, having clapped her thin arms around herself. He wonders if he should replace her hands with his own, because she usually likes it when he touches her, and he likes it too most of the time, and maybe it would restore some normality to a world where John is gone. But she steps out of his grasp when he tries to close the distance between them, and the hardness of her mouth is cutting. “Such a foul man,” she repeats, and his brain, tired, puts forward despite everything that it's because of her husband, but it's surprisingly irrelevant, because she then says: “I can't have you around here, Sherlock.”
And she means it.
“Wait,” he says, and he means it too, because he needs more time, he needs to tell her about John and about how it's never silent inside his head, but it comes closest when it's John's voice on the inside of his skull, and surely that means something to everyone else, too, and about how he doesn't know what happened, and he'll say that to anyone if he needs to, he'll even confess to Donovan and Anderson that he doesn't know what happened it that will bring John back, and he just needs them to understand.
But she doesn't wait, and he doesn't even understand any of it himself, and time is insistent, pushing, speeding past, and she gives him enough of it to pick together a bag with some clothes before she tells him, softly, teary-eyed, staunch-mouthed, to leave.
He doesn't quite get why he didn't fight more - maybe it was the slant of her eyes, hard, disappointed, fuelling even more guilt glue inside of him. Making it hard to move. Making it impossible to be quicker than her. He can feel his veins clogging up for a moment before his brain reminds him that it's just a chemical process, this emotion, just a neurological play without a happy ending, and that there is nothing really happening inside his chest. He sits on the porch of 221B for a long while, clutching the bag of clothes and the one packet of toast he could find until it cuts off the circulation in his fingers.
Unbidden, the images of John blend with the images of Davis. And it's all wrong, because nothing about them is allowed to touch, even as indirectly as in his memory, and his breath is liquid, rushing out of him, as he tries to push his hands through the confines of his skull to get the flashes out, the flashes of Davis' head bobbing over his crotch, and the vaguely recalled confusion about how he got there, and then not knowing how to remove himself from any of it, because John did tell him to trust his body more, and even if there was the smell of piss and blood and Davis was nothing like John, nothing at all, and there was something of a wait in his brain, and later wait, no, his cock was still growing under the ministrations, and his head was bursting somehow, and what did it mean?
On the porch of 221B, in the spot of time where he finds himself, now, not able to break the pushing, constantly moving barrier of past that separates him from all of the things that have put themselves between him and John, he pushes viciously into the growing bump on the side of his head where Davis clubbed him, hard, with the broken off leg of a chair. As though the pain can create a pathway for his fingers to pluck out the glue, and the thoughts, and the horrible mix of John's eyes in the bathroom with Davis' fingers breaching his arse with pain and nothing of love. His fingers pick out small fragments of wood stuck in the wound, the wound that John would have cleaned and disinfected after he'd finished with the cut on Sherlock's neck - full of small fragments of not-him, of not-body, lodged in his blood, impure.
So this was it, and he had finally crossed over the limit that separated enough from too much. And John had said don't follow me and Lestrade had said clean up your own mess and Mrs. Hudson had said I can't have you here. All he can deduce it that all of them have come to the same conclusion - and it's new, but their sheer number means something, this time, because most people are stupid in huge numbers, but John and Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson aren't stupid, and they see things Sherlock doesn't sometimes.
And what they saw apparently brought them all to no.
He picks the list out of his pocket and looks at his brother's name. Mycroft would help him, because Mycroft is just as unfamiliar with this kind of no as Sherlock is, maybe even moreso nowadays, because John is here now. He makes a soft noise at that, and the flash of past tense, now - was here has him pushing his hands still matted with blood and dirt against his mouth, trying to stop the uncontrolled breaths from taking his lungs with them.
Panic attack, John would say, and Sherlock would scoff, or try to, past the boundaries of his breathing. Breathe, John would say, ignoring his protest. I'm here. In. Now out. Longer. I'm here.
And he isn't, and that means everything, and Sherlock can't get it under control for a long while, beating down bile, surprised at how the dried blood on his fingers smears onto his face when it mingles with the tears, and then he rips the list in half, because if no one will help him but Mycroft there is only one solution left, after all of the impossible ones have been eliminated, and the one that remains is only slightly improbable: he is wrong, and he deserves all of it.
There is a moment in which a young woman tries to touch his shoulder and asks him if he's okay, and he can get out a “Yes, I live here,” though there is no one in the world he needs to talk to less than her, and witticisms and irony still present themselves though his brain is screeching, but he's done enough wrong for today, and she awkwardly pats him on the shoulder and is off, to whatever it is that has her on the streets.
He presses his sticky hand one more time into the growing pounding of his concussion, his body finally beaten into fatigue, the heaving of his panic stilling into a strange kind of otherness, as though his body isn't his own.
He gets to his feet, unsteady, and slings the bag over his shoulder. At least the streets have John somewhere on them, or at least traces of when he was on them, and if that's all he can have of John now, then that's what he will take.
*
“Did he even tell you how it happened?” Harry frowns, before glaring lightly at the non-alcoholic beer in her hand that John put there.
John scowls. “I wasn't about to let him tell me in detail about the fucking gangster he shagged in some back-alley dumpster,” he bites, feels how the skin around his eyes stretches with dried tears, that he'd wiped away before they could roll down his face in the short, overflowing moment when Harry was in the kitchen and there was really nothing he could do to stop himself. She pretended not to see when she came back.
And maybe it's because Harry doesn't really know Sherlock, but what she says is: “Why did he tell you that it happened?”
“Because he has no fucking clue what it means to be in a relationship,” John snaps, not at her, though she can't know that.
“I thought he'd been managing quite well for the past five months,” she says, calmly. John looks up at her and remembers how much he'd missed her like this, sober, sharp. It's been so long that he almost didn't remember that she used to be like this. “Think about it,” she pushes. “He told you. He knew that it was something he couldn't keep from you. Why would he tell you if he didn't think it was important you knew?”
“I don't know,” John says, closing his eyes against her, against the presence of her, because he can't handle it right now.
“I think,” she says, and he hears the metallic clink of her beer being put on the table, “that you might have been a bit rash.”
“Do you, now?” he says, too-harshly, and is about to go on to something cutting, something about booze, something about Clara, but suddenly he's so tired that he can't, anymore.
“Yes, I do,” she says mildly in the space that is now open instead of sharp with spite.
“You don't know him,” he mumbles.
“I know you,” she says. “And I know how fucking terrified you've been of him growing tired or bored of you. I'm no psychologist,” she says, the bitter grimace audible, “but you might have been projecting a wee bit there, Watson.” There's a pause. John opens his eyes. She's taking a sip, then says with her eyes locked on his: “I know all about that.”
*
Greg is almost frantic when he calls John the next day, fingers catching on the impossibly small number pad on his phone.
“John,” he all but pants, and John Watson on the other side is mostly silent as Greg tells him what Davis said during the interview - he tries to hide the queasiness still thrumming in his stomach at the malice in the gibes, in the small hints of what Sherlock had been tricked into, probably without being fully aware that he was being tricked. Hit 'im on the 'ead, didn't I? Was much more eager after that, Davis had said, his lip curling in a way that reminded Greg too much of his ex-wife's bull dog for comfort.
Greg dances around what John told him once when they were both a bit drunk and talking about sex more candidly than they'd ever been, Sherlock still doesn't always know when he doesn't want it and I sometimes wonder if he's maybe been abused in some way in the past. It was a bit strange to think about, Greg recalls; Sherlock with his grasp of nuance, with his eye for seeing every bodily detail, somehow not able to read his own body fully, having neglected it as a necessary accessory for his mind for so long. It made more sense when he was drunk.
“Look,” he says, feeling like a right shit, “I might have... told him he deserved it.”
“Yeah,” John only says, spanning a whole lot of meaning. There's a silence. Greg wonders what John is thinking. “I'll try to get hold of him,” John finally says, almost a whisper, and Greg isn't fully sure it's directed at him and not just at John himself.
*
Mrs. Hudson bursts into tears at the sight of him, and John thinks for a moment that Sherlock will be sitting at her table, glowering at the fact that she won't give him anything but tea, and she's crying because they're both here again, and he can say to Sherlock I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry. Tell me what happened. Tell me, I'll listen. If you don't want to tell me right now, I'll still listen.
But she reaches for him and says, “That terrible man,” and he has a very intense moment of oh fuck no.
“He told you what happened?” he asks her, a bit weak.
“Yes,” she sniffs, dabbing at her eyes with a hanky, pulling him through her door, into the cosy haven of old lady and the murmur of telly, normality, undisturbed domesticity.
“What did he - did he say?” John says, a bit dazed, and still experiencing a surprising pang of sharp disappointment when the flat is Sherlock-less.
“Cheating on you,” she says, shaking her head energetically, “And with such a horrid man. I don't know how he could, John.” She snuffles into the hanky. “Oh dear, oh dear,” she laments.
“Where is he now?” John asks, urgently, bringing a hand up to her shoulder; trying to soothe her, also trying to get her to tell him.
“I couldn't - I couldn't bear to have him here anymore,” she stammers, as though she can't quite believe it.
“You sent him away?” John asks, the words having to fight to get out over the slide of what feels like desert sand in his throat.
“Yes,” she says after a beat. Then, her eyes widen, and he supposes his face must be giving away some of the anguish that's unfolding inside him with a slow burn, a slow-motion ripple. “John?” she asks, in a plea for reassurance.
He can't give it to her, settles for a grim smile instead. “Do you have any idea where he's gone?”
“No,” she squeaks, and then she's actually, honestly crying - soundlessly, shocked, probably reeling with a decision she took in a twist of hurt and anger, and that she might have known better not to take if there hadn't been so many things pushing all of them to the wrong conclusions, and no clear-headed Sherlock to point out finely that they were all wrong.
*
Greg drives John around in his own car. John knows Greg's spent quite a couple of nights in this vehicle before his divorce was finalised, and has a flash of affection for the D.I., at how he's sitting at the wheel, intent, driving as though there's an incredible emergency, even having bent the rules for the portable police light he keeps in his car.
But Sherlock is Sherlock, good at disappearing, knowing every inseam and inverted stitch of the fabric that makes up London, and though John tries hard to recall the places Sherlock's taken him to on their cases, they don't find him. And the homeless are strangely unwilling, some even refusing their money, turning their backs on them, gathering up their sleeping bags and sacks of clothing as they approach.
“Has he told them not to talk to us?” Greg asks, frowning.
“Must have,” John says, and then feels a little faint with the tension of it all.
“He's probably fine, though,” Greg says, as they get into the car. He doesn't start it for a long moment.
“Yeah,” John agrees, because he knows Sherlock can take care of himself even at the worst of times; but he, more than Greg, more than anyone, knows how Sherlock can get in an unguarded moment, how unexpectedly sensitive his infuriating, confusing boyfriend can be about people leaving him or about people thinking that he's done something wrong when he really doesn't understand it. He doesn't think Greg has ever seen that side of Sherlock, and he remembers with a strong pang of something he can't quite identify how Sherlock's mouth had been in the midst of saying something when he went out, cutting him off with the coldest don't follow me he imagines he's ever managed.
“Look,” John says after another while of driving around, “you can drop me off at Baker Street. You need to get home sometime tonight.”
Lestrade says nothing, but his face is conflicted; he wants to find Sherlock, and he's also quite sure that they won't tonight. John knows it, too.
“I'll let you know if I hear from him,” he promises, tersely, as he opens his door to get out in front of 221B.
“Yeah,” Greg says, passing a hand over the blue shine of stubble on his cheeks, and he looks very openly worried, and John just really wishes he didn't.
*
He sends Sherlock another text - the twenty-sixth, but who's counting:
Sherlock, it's okay if you don't
want to talk right now, but please
just let me know that you're okay.
If you get this at all, just let me
know. Please.
because he's wheeled through all the sentiments of I'm sorry, I'm trying to find you, where are you tell me now, answer me or I'm bringing in Mycroft, I'm really sorry, do you even have your phone switched on, where are you tell me you wanker, you can't do this to me, I'm sorry, you can come back to Baker Street we both want you to, and I'm sorry, and he doesn't know what else he can do. And he just kind of hates himself, now, because as the details of the new interview with Davis that Donovan was overseeing now had trickled in, Greg's eyes had darkened even more and in his own head the word had gained more and more of a momentum, rape. Neither of them had used it, but it sat between them like screen, drawing the light to it, dousing the rest of the car in darkness.
And if that is what's really happened, then he's a lot less good than he usually tries to be.
*
So then he does finally text Mycroft, deep into the night, when he can't fool himself anymore and pretend he's not about to throw up with worry.
Your brother has been
missing for 36 hours now.
JW
Mycroft's a wanker:
I know, John. Has anything
happened that I should know
about?
MH
And he chews over his cheek for a long moment before reminding himself that this is the man who flexed his muscles by showing him that he had control over the city's CCTV cameras on that exciting, confusing night he met the second of the so wildly differing, but so equally infuriating Holmses.
We might have gotten into
a spat, yes.
JW
And it's impossible for texts to project the subtlety of a raised Holmes eyebrow, but Mycroft's manages it with just two words:
I see.
MH
He gives in.
Not just a spat. Quite full-blown
fight. Of a sort. I worry that he's
vulnerable right now.
JW
And of course Mycroft just re-offers
I see.
MH
but John hopes the urgency that he projects onto it is really there, and he hopes that Mycroft is taking control of every fucking CCTV camera in the whole sodding city right now.
*
Mycroft calls an hour later.
“Hello, John,” he says pleasantly.
John is silent.
“All right,” Mycroft says, and John can almost hear him rolling his eyes, not because he knows Mycroft, but because he knows Sherlock, and he knows that tone of voice. Really, though Sherlock would rave at him for hours if John ever told him, some of the mannerisms of the Holmes brothers are so similar it's creepy at times.
“Do you have him?” he simply asks, because no words that come out of Mycroft's mouth can mean anything except the ones that answer this question.
“He seems quite determined to remain as of yet un-found,” Mycroft says, and John wishes he were there so he could punch that Victorian curl of tongue out of his mouth.
“Then why are you calling me?” he snaps, rubbing a hand over the bridge of his nose.
“It is obvious he's sought some unsavoury company,” Mycroft says. “None of the official cameras can get a visual on him. He's gone into the underbelly of the city. I do implore you to try and reason your way out of this one. If anyone knows where he is, it's you.”
“Yes, well, thanks for nothing, then,” John says, and hangs up before Mycroft can be a Holmes and get the final word.
And the dislike for Mycroft is a bit more crackling inside his chest than usual, because the last thing he needs right now is a reminder that if anyone would know, it would be him, and he doesn't think he knows, he really doesn't, and what kind of boyfriend is he, really?
*
And then, when dawn does finally stretch its rosy fingers over the horizon of London, muddied with smog, it comes to him calmly, like a leaf floating to shore on a still stretch of water, touching down without much of an impact, just the unfolding of an idea.
He calls Greg, who answers promptly, and John is almost sure the D.I. doesn't actually sleep any more than Sherlock does.
“I think I know where he is,” John says, and Greg makes a small sound that could have been a yawn, or just as easily a muffled oh thank fuck and John just really, really hopes he's got it right; for Sherlock, and for himself, because who is he, if he's not the one person who knows Sherlock and is known by Sherlock in return?
*
They reach the cinema, rich and flush with '30s and '40s decoration, just as the first stretch of liquid sunlight spills over the rooftops onto the street. The day is stretching, flexing, promising to be beautiful.
“Here?” Greg asks, doubtfully.
“Not why you think,” John says, and the knot in his gut tightens as Greg reasons with the sleepy concierge, eventually flashing his badge to get them inside.
“I never took Sherlock for someone to enjoy nostalgic cinema,” Greg says as they feel their way over the silent, muffled stretch of fluffy carpeting inside, the darkened doors of the different cinema rooms silent and somehow stealthy in the gloom.
John almost snorts. “God, no, he's not. But we had this case,” he continues, silently. “Old case of this guy who kept on almost dying in scenarios that closely resembled scenes from old movies. Died of a heart attack in the end, and one of his sons was sure that he was set up in some sort of twisted murder scenario.”
“Was he?”
John chuckles. “I'll tell you that one over a pint; it's a bit long. But, um,” he resumed, “we came here to pick up copies of all kinds of films. They've got a genuine film projector from 1934 and an impressive collection of film spools in the back. Sherlock loved it for some reason. The smell,” he finishes, and recalls with a small pang how Sherlock had stood around just breathing for at least two minutes before charging to work, and how that night he'd actually joined John in bed until John fell asleep despite their being on a case, and had tried to describe what it felt like to be able to pick out the components of a scent, and how the darkened room had helped, how it had been one-track sensation or as close to it as he could get, and that it had been energising and relaxing at the same time. It had been quite extraordinary to listen to.
They reach the back room. John pushes the heavy door open.
“Sherlock,” he calls, then winces a bit at his own voice, ripping through the somehow heavy, laden silence clinging to the age of the film spools there.
There's the loud clang of one of the spools hitting the concrete floor.
And then there is Sherlock as Greg locates and hits the light switch; narrowing his eyes like a cat against the sudden light, a sprawl of limbs and insane tufts of ringlet in a chair, holding one spool in his lap, another one lying at his feet.
“God, Sherlock,” John says, involuntarily, and starts toward him.
“John,” Sherlock hums when John reaches him and squats near him, putting his hands onto his legs lightly.
“Why haven't you been answering my texts, you tosser?” John says, throat tight.
Sherlock cracks an eye open, looks confused for a bit. “I might have - I might have left my phone at Baker Street,” he says, and John's fingers tighten on his thigh in spite of himself, because there is hardly any more proof of the disarray of mind that Sherlock must have been in, and he kicks himself for not hearing the phone go off or not looking for it, at least.
“Are you all right?” John asks, and it's a fight to get the words out past the chunk of tenderness and anxiety lodged in this throat.
Sherlock spreads his hand in a gesture that could mean of course, just look at me, don't I look fine to you? or I don't know.
“Are - are you all right?” he responds, and John can't help it, he can't help it at the sudden sharp sting of memory at one of their most recent 'how-do-people-go-about-being-a-couple' conversations, in which John had gently suggested that it was always worth a try to ask your partner if they were all right after they had asked you the same thing - he can't help the laugh of tenderness, and he can't help the falling forward, pressing his nose into Sherlock's stomach, the smell of him mixed with the particular chemicals of the room they're in.
“I am now,” he breathes, allowing the rush of relief to close over his head for a moment, not having to fight it off, because Sherlock's hands bury themselves in his hair, pushing on his scalp, as though Sherlock wants to check if his skull is still intact.
“John,” Sherlock mumbles, “I'm sorry - I don't know what - I don't know -” but he falters, and it might be because of different reasons; maybe Greg standing at the door, still a tangible presence despite his silence, or maybe because he doesn't really know what it is he needs to say, or how he can say it - he still hasn't quite mastered the art of apology, though John knows when it's earnest by now.
“God, no,” John says, stifled, pressing his eyes closed, into the fabric of Sherlock's shirt. “I'm sorry. I am. I'm sorry.”
“Whatever for?” Sherlock asks, and the genuine, small tone of confusion makes John gather some of his shirt between his teeth and press a weird sort of kiss to it.
“For leaving you,” he breathes. “For not listening to you. For jumping to conclusions. For not helping you.”
“Helping me with what?” Sherlock's fingers tighten even more on his head.
John pulls his head back and looks up at him. Pale, bruised under the eyes, still some blood, some grime on his face from the chase that ended with him and Davis in a back alley, and it's all wrong, it needs to get off, but he needs to say first: “We're going to talk about what happened later, all right?”
“Yes,” Sherlock agrees, as though he knows what John is talking about, and it's the easiness with which he doesn't even protest that convinces John that he really still doesn't have a grasp on what happened.
“Let's get home first,” he mutters, and gets up, extending a hand. Sherlock brings the film spool up to his face a final time, and seems to savour its smell, eyes closed, before slipping his hand into John's, not needing the support at all, really, but sometimes things are needed without being needed, and it's a lesson that he's been learning in the past five months, and he can accept it sometimes, now.
*
Greg drops them off at home.
John thanks him with a long look of gratitude and a firm hand shake. Sherlock waits by the door, lines of his body as smooth and long as ever, and he would pass for completely normal and undisturbed if it wasn't for the fingers closing themselves over John's wrist as they descend the stairs together, a bit awkwardly.
Mrs. Hudson can wait, and thankfully she knows that, too.
*
“But I didn't stop it,” Sherlock says, and his face is flushed in a strange way.
“You were half-unconscious,” John says through gritted teeth, hoping Sherlock knows this anger is not directed at him.
Sherlock considers. “But I didn't stop it as soon as I came back to,” he says, and sounds so wondering at all of it that John can't help but wrap him back into the hug that they'd half slipped out of to talk, sprawled together on the couch. “And I... responded,” he says, and even from the close angle of his face pressed close to John's, John can make out the wince.
“Your body really can do things you don't want it to,” John says. Then, taking a breath, he says: “Did you want him to touch you?”
Sherlock is a strange stretch of silence against him for a moment.
“No,” he says then, quietly.
“Well then,” John says, feeling a bit nauseous, “you didn't. And you never consented. Do you realise that? Not stopping something because you're not sure what's happening is not a yes, Sherlock.”
“Evidently,” Sherlock says, but John knows him well enough to detect the confusion.
“It's okay,” he therefore says, and Sherlock huffs, keeping up some front of how dull, but curls himself into him a bit tighter. “We'll work it out. But it wasn't your fault, okay? It wasn't your fault. Do you know that?”
Another spot of silence. Then Sherlock hums; not fully convinced, but thinking about it, getting there, John hopes.
“It's okay,” he repeats, and instead of mocking him for his redundancy, for his platitudes, Sherlock lets out a long breath against him, presses his nimble, slender fingers against the spot under John's jaw bone where it gives and becomes soft flesh, a spot that Sherlock loves, the weakness under the armour of bone, and just sighs, almost inaudibly, “Yes.”
And it's not quite okay that way, of course, and John fears that there are things in this man next to him, dark things, things that are old and that are new, and that they will have a to navigate with care, with a finely attuned sense of each other, but his perception is improving; he can feel what it means that Sherlock is tightening his fingers into his sides, and he knows what he's trying to say with the light press of mouth against John's neck. And as Sherlock speaks up suddenly and says: “I'm all right,” he feels how they fit together then in that moment, despite the sharpness, the points of glass in both of them, and if anyone can do it it's them, because they're safe here, away from all of the pain they encounter on the streets, and it can be done, he has faith, and he believes it more than anything he's ever believed.
KINK MEME FILL NUMBER 1: Perception
Prompt: John and Sherlock are in a happy relationship...until Sherlock 'cheats'. with a criminal. John leaves. And Sherlock tries to turn to what few other friends he has to help...but it turns out when John left he went to Lestrade, and Lestrade gently but firmly turns Sherlock away, saying he can't be the one to help him this time. And something about Sherlock cheating with a criminal reminds Mrs. Hudson of her husband...she's so disturbed in fact, that she basically evicts him. So everyone Sherlock knows looks on him in anger or disappointment or disgust. Sherlock looks on himself the same way.
Eventually the truth, somehow, comes out. Sherlock didn't cheat on John. He did have sex with the criminal. But it wasn't consensual, even if Sherlock didn't quite understand that he had been forced. Now if only they could find Sherlock and explain it to him.
Word count: ~8,000
Rating: R
Warnings: fairly non-explicit non-con, discussion of injuries
Summary: John is perceptive sometimes.
Original fill here.
Perception
John is perceptive sometimes.
It's not news to Sherlock. It hasn't been since John said that's how you get your thrills, isn't it? and especially not since John looked at him, breathless months of chasing and shooting and scenes of surprisingly not-boring domesticity later, and he somehow picked up all of the trembling, unfinished trails of thought that Sherlock had no idea how to express, and understood them, and initiated the kiss between them that brought them where they are now.
Or at least, where they've been until five minutes ago; a team, a team in mind and body, a bit more distant in the mornings before John's cup of coffee, or in the evenings when an experiment isn't going to plan, but always finding each other again - John sometimes making him re-see the stories of the dead bodies under his hands in a different way, and John welcoming him into the hollow of him when he finally comes to bed, and there is warmth and sometimes sweat. That's where they've been, and it had been John who'd set things in motion, plucking at his face, adrenalin still spilling between them, and pressing a kiss to his lips that had been far too calm for the circumstances.
So John is perceptive sometimes, in a way that is a bit strange to Sherlock at times and definitely always interesting, and it takes him all of five minutes after Sherlock comes home, sweat-soaked, thrumming with I solved the case and something else entirely, to see something in Sherlock's face.
“Christ, why are you being so fidgety?” He frowns, hands hovering over the shallow scrape on Sherlock's throat he's disinfecting. His eyes are grey and steady and warm and beginning to cloud with worry and Sherlock can't. Can't accept them right now, so he flicks his own eyes to his shoes; Italian leather good condition despite twenty-three chases over streets of London and one plunge into Thames two years old stained by clay and blood from three different occasions 21, 17 and 2 months ago.
John's hand in his neck is firm, a physician's hands, a soldier's hands, finding the pressure points, keeping the blood in more effectively than Sherlock's skin ever could.
“What happened?” he says, and the question is as straight-forward as it is impossible to answer.
And Sherlock still doesn't know a lot about what he's supposed to do about John, but so far all of it has been fine, just like John had promised. It's always fine, maybe after some shouting but that's okay, that he on occasion forgets that John is with him on cases, or that he on others can't forget that John is around and hovers too close to him as John is trying to have a cup of tea or watch a stupid soap opera and very emphatically doesn't need to be dissected by Sherlock's eyes. It's fine that he always steals the covers on the nights they sleep together. It's fine that Sherlock doesn't always know when he's been using his voice and when he hasn't been and scolds John for forgetting something that he, in hindsight, might in fact not have said out loud. It's fine that Sherlock still sometimes doesn't know what to do with John's morning erections, and can't always help fleeing from it, because he does always return, and John never really expects anything, but it's fine for Sherlock, too, and when he does curl his fingers around the still surprising heat of John's cock in the morning everything is all right, and more; disorienting, surprising, thrilling.
Not saying it is not an option, it seems, pushing at the roof of his mouth as it is. So, hoping against hope, against the nauseating feeling of water churning in his gut, that this will be fine, like all of the things that he never expected to be fine but that apparently are, he says: “I had sexual intercourse with Davis.”
For a long, stretching second bursting with fear and hope he thinks it might actually be fine. John's hands remain soft and firm at the same time on his neck. His mouth stays in the same twitch of concern.
“Sexual intercourse,” John then says, tonelessly, and Sherlock thinks he might be about to mock Sherlock for his clinicalness, which is something John likes to do, especially during sexual intercourse, when he teaches Sherlock terms that somehow only work in that bubble, in that heat, with John's fingers grasping at him with intent.
He starts to open his mouth to retort something to the effect of okay, he fucked me, whatever you want to call it, but then all of John is suddenly removed from him. John takes his fingers and his warmth away, backing against the door of the bathroom. Only his eyes are still tangible, and they are clouding over with such a sheen of disappointment and hurt that even Sherlock has no trouble identifying it.
“You're serious,” John says, and sounds as though that was maybe his final lifeline, and then something sinks over his face of such darkness, such depth that Sherlock is off the edge of the bath in a reflex, starting toward him, but John puts up his palms, and he looks like steel. He looks like iron. Fe. John. Repelling water. Repelling Sherlock. “How did that - why did it -” John is saying, but they're not questions, and one hand is twisting the door handle behind him, to break the bubble around them.
“John, I didn't -” Sherlock begins to say, but then he doesn't know what it is that he didn't do, because he did, didn't he? He allowed the scrape of teeth and nails, didn't he? He welcomed the tug at his trousers until there was a mouth on his cock, didn't he? He can't say why, which is infuriating, and it will have to be examined later, but first John needs to come back and Sherlock needs to figure out what it is he didn't do, because if there isn't anything, he doesn't know what he'll do, and that's unacceptable.
“Save it,” John says. He is quiet but everything else is loud; the press of air molecules on Sherlock's ear drums, the creak of the door as it opens behind John, slowly, as though hesitant, and the soft pad of his socked feet as he steps away, and then, a small gun shot: the click of the door as he allows it to fall shut, not quite a slam, not quite gentle.
When Sherlock fights off nausea for long enough to hurtle through the door, John is in his coat and tying his laces.
“Don't follow me,” is all he says, and now there is the swell of anger in his voice; Sherlock knows that tone, it's not so much anger as overpowering fury, suppressed so much it's almost not noticeable, all the more sharp because of it - but it's never been directed at him that way, it's always been used on his behalf, and he would say John, have you met me, because that sometimes makes John laugh when John makes requests he know Sherlock will disregard, but the words won't come. And while he tries to pick the letters out of his mouth, John turns around and is gone, and Sherlock's lips, useless, can't do anything but curl around a ghostly impression of John's name.
*
He makes a list.
Really only to give his hands something else to do than pull at his hair - he doesn't do lists, he dislikes their linearity; his brain breaks down bullet points, cross-links them, enlarges and shrinks details according to their importance, and shies away from numbering in everything but chemistry, because in human behaviour there is still some eraticness of action and reaction, and going from 1 to 6 to 2 instead of following a narrative, linear sequence of action is something that he likes, even if he wishes the patterns were a bit harder to predict.
But he makes a list because his brain is screaming now, there is really nothing but I knew it I knew it I knew he'd leave one day and it would be my fault because there is always a point when I'm not enough and too much and maybe both and John's limits are just different from most people's but now they are there after all and no no no and he'd be embarrassed, ticked off at himself, giving himself a stern talking-to of the kind that Mummy used to give him if she caught him picking at the walls of his bedroom with his fingers bleeding, if there was any room left for that.
The list reads:
Lestrade
Mrs. Hudson
Mike Stamford
and, small, almost illegible even to himself (he shuts off the thought that John used to laugh at his handwriting, at the add-ons to shopping lists requesting nicotine patches or nitrogen acid that, as John put it, no human being could ever decipher, and was Sherlock honestly sure he wasn't secretly a pharmacist):
Mycroft
and that he's on there at all, even as the back-up plan of the back-up plan, makes Sherlock's own brain step back and assess the situation and proclaim his emotional state now quite worryingly compromised.
*
Sherlock has to think for six point two seconds before he can answer the cabbie's question of “So where you goin', mate?” and the streets are a pastiche of London, with people who have no clue that John Watson has gone away, who never even had John Watson, and who mean nothing. They're just people. Sherlock drums his fingers on the seat of the cab under him, cigarette ash from previous passenger, rushed handjob last night, drunk with bottle of whiskey spilled some three nights ago and then there is John again and he groans, and tangles his fingers in his hair until it hurts, and has to consciously breathe; body slipping out of control, even the most mediocre of processes now suddenly tasks that he can't seem to fulfill.
Lestrade is first, and dodges Sherlock's hands coming to grab at him in a mockery of the social niceties of hello.
“No, Sherlock,” he says, and there's a firmness in his voice, and in the hands closing around his wrist, pushing him off, that Sherlock has rarely seen in him - there's none of his soft exasperation now, of the mellow self-deprecation with which he allows Sherlock his five minutes and more time and time again.
“You don't even know what it is that I want,” he snaps.
“You want to me to tell you where John is,” Lestrade says, sounds calm, but Sherlock knows his voice, and he's not calm. “And you probably want me to text him and to tell him to come back. Not happening, Sherlock.”
“Why not?” If he sounds pleading that's the way it is, because Lestrade obviously knows where John is, it's in every flick of his eyes, every tightening of his mouth, and it's unacceptable that Lestrade should know where John is while Sherlock doesn't, and it's unacceptable that John isn't here, and it's unacceptable that Sherlock is.
“He told me what happened,” Lestrade says, and he shakes his head, partly disbelieving, partly resigned. “You deserve nothing less than him leaving, Sherlock. You've really crossed a line with him.”
I know that, Sherlock wants to say, because he knows everything and yes, he does know this too. And he wants to say stop meddling and this is between me and him but what comes out of his mouth is “Help me,” and he sounds strangled, his breath being stolen, as though he's in a vacuum and every oxygen molecule is being drawn from him in an unfair, relentless exchange.
“No,” Lestrade says, and sounds almost sorry, but the determination is tangible. “Clean up your own mess.”
“Yes, because that's what you always do,” Sherlock bites, can't help but bite, but Lestrade just looks at him with a very clear you're absolutely right but I still won't help and a small part of Sherlock's brain notes that this has probably to do with his cheating ex-wife, but then that's utterly irrelevant, and he's wasting his time, so he turns around with an exclamation of frustration that might have been a word, but he wouldn't be able to say which one, and no one seems to understand that with every second John is getting further away, his presence growing less and less tangible, and that Sherlock is entertaining the notion for the first time in a long while that his heart might actually be a literal time bomb in his chest.
*
Back on his way to 221B, he texts Mike Stamford;
Have you seen John?
SH
And Stamford, clueless, says:
sure we had a pint three
days ago
as though Sherlock doesn't know that already, and his phone creaks when he pushes his thumb to the send command with unnecessary force to send the
Today, I mean.
SH
and then he feels an overpowering desire to scratch Mike Stamford's round, happy face off at the
no why? :)
*
And then Mrs. Hudson turns everything on its head, and she has no right, she can't, she's supposed to be on his side, because he's on her side and that's rare in itself but it seems like John is the only one who really understands that, and well. That's the reason he is the way he is right now, isn't it?
He doesn't know if he's ever seen her disgusted. Disapproving, of course. More often than not. Tutting, exasperated, wound-up, frustration tempered by affection. He knows all of that from her, has sampled her expressions, can summon them in his mind's eye, knows what they mean.
This, this stretch of old-lady mouth that is so tense she has no lips left, and no dancing of silent amusement in her eyes at all, is new, and he can't bring up anything from his memories of her that matches this, so he has no idea how to respond.
“Sherlock,” she says, shaking her head, and it's the lack of dear that tips him off about the seriousness of the situation, “now what you have you got yourself into this time?” Her fingers are playing with the cuff of her purple blouse, nerves, agitation, disapproval, no, stronger, disgust, at him.
“Mrs. Hudson,” he says, and he can't quite help it being a question, though it's not what he intended.
At her name she draws herself up to her full five foot two of old lady, of surprising strength, of determination that he's often seen but never seen used against him. And she's angry, he can tell.
“How can you, Sherlock?” she says, her voice almost a squeak. “Do something like that to poor John? You ought to be ashamed.”
I am, he almost says, but then doesn't, because he's not sure if it would help, and he's not even sure if it's true - he's not quite accustomed to this deep, dark feeling that's filling up his chest like glue, slowing down his organs, his limbs; and if John were here he'd ask him what it was, and John would laugh at him trying to categorise feeling like it was another specimen, but if John would tell him it was shame that would be what it was, but he has the almost lucid thought that it's guilt, full, empty, choking. Guilt because of what John's eyes did, in the bathroom, looking at him with the hardness of stones. Guilt because that was him, again, bringing John to that state.
“I know,” he therefore says, because that is true. But of course, and he shouldn't be surprised, because there isn't anything he can do right if what he does makes John leave Baker Street and tell him not to follow him, it's the wrong thing to say, and her eyes flash.
“And with such a foul man,” she snaps. He has a flash of regret for telling her what happened, but for once his mouth had been ahead of his brain, and time is about the only thing he can't turn around on itself, that he can't bring back to its core, so he can't unsay it. There aren't often moments when he wishes he could unsay things, but this day has brought him many already, and he feels the pressure of them, of the words that he should have kept in his mouth but that are now roaming free, and it's all his fault.
Mrs. Hudson is shivering in a strange way, having clapped her thin arms around herself. He wonders if he should replace her hands with his own, because she usually likes it when he touches her, and he likes it too most of the time, and maybe it would restore some normality to a world where John is gone. But she steps out of his grasp when he tries to close the distance between them, and the hardness of her mouth is cutting. “Such a foul man,” she repeats, and his brain, tired, puts forward despite everything that it's because of her husband, but it's surprisingly irrelevant, because she then says: “I can't have you around here, Sherlock.”
And she means it.
“Wait,” he says, and he means it too, because he needs more time, he needs to tell her about John and about how it's never silent inside his head, but it comes closest when it's John's voice on the inside of his skull, and surely that means something to everyone else, too, and about how he doesn't know what happened, and he'll say that to anyone if he needs to, he'll even confess to Donovan and Anderson that he doesn't know what happened it that will bring John back, and he just needs them to understand.
But she doesn't wait, and he doesn't even understand any of it himself, and time is insistent, pushing, speeding past, and she gives him enough of it to pick together a bag with some clothes before she tells him, softly, teary-eyed, staunch-mouthed, to leave.
He doesn't quite get why he didn't fight more - maybe it was the slant of her eyes, hard, disappointed, fuelling even more guilt glue inside of him. Making it hard to move. Making it impossible to be quicker than her. He can feel his veins clogging up for a moment before his brain reminds him that it's just a chemical process, this emotion, just a neurological play without a happy ending, and that there is nothing really happening inside his chest. He sits on the porch of 221B for a long while, clutching the bag of clothes and the one packet of toast he could find until it cuts off the circulation in his fingers.
Unbidden, the images of John blend with the images of Davis. And it's all wrong, because nothing about them is allowed to touch, even as indirectly as in his memory, and his breath is liquid, rushing out of him, as he tries to push his hands through the confines of his skull to get the flashes out, the flashes of Davis' head bobbing over his crotch, and the vaguely recalled confusion about how he got there, and then not knowing how to remove himself from any of it, because John did tell him to trust his body more, and even if there was the smell of piss and blood and Davis was nothing like John, nothing at all, and there was something of a wait in his brain, and later wait, no, his cock was still growing under the ministrations, and his head was bursting somehow, and what did it mean?
On the porch of 221B, in the spot of time where he finds himself, now, not able to break the pushing, constantly moving barrier of past that separates him from all of the things that have put themselves between him and John, he pushes viciously into the growing bump on the side of his head where Davis clubbed him, hard, with the broken off leg of a chair. As though the pain can create a pathway for his fingers to pluck out the glue, and the thoughts, and the horrible mix of John's eyes in the bathroom with Davis' fingers breaching his arse with pain and nothing of love. His fingers pick out small fragments of wood stuck in the wound, the wound that John would have cleaned and disinfected after he'd finished with the cut on Sherlock's neck - full of small fragments of not-him, of not-body, lodged in his blood, impure.
So this was it, and he had finally crossed over the limit that separated enough from too much. And John had said don't follow me and Lestrade had said clean up your own mess and Mrs. Hudson had said I can't have you here. All he can deduce it that all of them have come to the same conclusion - and it's new, but their sheer number means something, this time, because most people are stupid in huge numbers, but John and Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson aren't stupid, and they see things Sherlock doesn't sometimes.
And what they saw apparently brought them all to no.
He picks the list out of his pocket and looks at his brother's name. Mycroft would help him, because Mycroft is just as unfamiliar with this kind of no as Sherlock is, maybe even moreso nowadays, because John is here now. He makes a soft noise at that, and the flash of past tense, now - was here has him pushing his hands still matted with blood and dirt against his mouth, trying to stop the uncontrolled breaths from taking his lungs with them.
Panic attack, John would say, and Sherlock would scoff, or try to, past the boundaries of his breathing. Breathe, John would say, ignoring his protest. I'm here. In. Now out. Longer. I'm here.
And he isn't, and that means everything, and Sherlock can't get it under control for a long while, beating down bile, surprised at how the dried blood on his fingers smears onto his face when it mingles with the tears, and then he rips the list in half, because if no one will help him but Mycroft there is only one solution left, after all of the impossible ones have been eliminated, and the one that remains is only slightly improbable: he is wrong, and he deserves all of it.
There is a moment in which a young woman tries to touch his shoulder and asks him if he's okay, and he can get out a “Yes, I live here,” though there is no one in the world he needs to talk to less than her, and witticisms and irony still present themselves though his brain is screeching, but he's done enough wrong for today, and she awkwardly pats him on the shoulder and is off, to whatever it is that has her on the streets.
He presses his sticky hand one more time into the growing pounding of his concussion, his body finally beaten into fatigue, the heaving of his panic stilling into a strange kind of otherness, as though his body isn't his own.
He gets to his feet, unsteady, and slings the bag over his shoulder. At least the streets have John somewhere on them, or at least traces of when he was on them, and if that's all he can have of John now, then that's what he will take.
*
“Did he even tell you how it happened?” Harry frowns, before glaring lightly at the non-alcoholic beer in her hand that John put there.
John scowls. “I wasn't about to let him tell me in detail about the fucking gangster he shagged in some back-alley dumpster,” he bites, feels how the skin around his eyes stretches with dried tears, that he'd wiped away before they could roll down his face in the short, overflowing moment when Harry was in the kitchen and there was really nothing he could do to stop himself. She pretended not to see when she came back.
And maybe it's because Harry doesn't really know Sherlock, but what she says is: “Why did he tell you that it happened?”
“Because he has no fucking clue what it means to be in a relationship,” John snaps, not at her, though she can't know that.
“I thought he'd been managing quite well for the past five months,” she says, calmly. John looks up at her and remembers how much he'd missed her like this, sober, sharp. It's been so long that he almost didn't remember that she used to be like this. “Think about it,” she pushes. “He told you. He knew that it was something he couldn't keep from you. Why would he tell you if he didn't think it was important you knew?”
“I don't know,” John says, closing his eyes against her, against the presence of her, because he can't handle it right now.
“I think,” she says, and he hears the metallic clink of her beer being put on the table, “that you might have been a bit rash.”
“Do you, now?” he says, too-harshly, and is about to go on to something cutting, something about booze, something about Clara, but suddenly he's so tired that he can't, anymore.
“Yes, I do,” she says mildly in the space that is now open instead of sharp with spite.
“You don't know him,” he mumbles.
“I know you,” she says. “And I know how fucking terrified you've been of him growing tired or bored of you. I'm no psychologist,” she says, the bitter grimace audible, “but you might have been projecting a wee bit there, Watson.” There's a pause. John opens his eyes. She's taking a sip, then says with her eyes locked on his: “I know all about that.”
*
Greg is almost frantic when he calls John the next day, fingers catching on the impossibly small number pad on his phone.
“John,” he all but pants, and John Watson on the other side is mostly silent as Greg tells him what Davis said during the interview - he tries to hide the queasiness still thrumming in his stomach at the malice in the gibes, in the small hints of what Sherlock had been tricked into, probably without being fully aware that he was being tricked. Hit 'im on the 'ead, didn't I? Was much more eager after that, Davis had said, his lip curling in a way that reminded Greg too much of his ex-wife's bull dog for comfort.
Greg dances around what John told him once when they were both a bit drunk and talking about sex more candidly than they'd ever been, Sherlock still doesn't always know when he doesn't want it and I sometimes wonder if he's maybe been abused in some way in the past. It was a bit strange to think about, Greg recalls; Sherlock with his grasp of nuance, with his eye for seeing every bodily detail, somehow not able to read his own body fully, having neglected it as a necessary accessory for his mind for so long. It made more sense when he was drunk.
“Look,” he says, feeling like a right shit, “I might have... told him he deserved it.”
“Yeah,” John only says, spanning a whole lot of meaning. There's a silence. Greg wonders what John is thinking. “I'll try to get hold of him,” John finally says, almost a whisper, and Greg isn't fully sure it's directed at him and not just at John himself.
*
Mrs. Hudson bursts into tears at the sight of him, and John thinks for a moment that Sherlock will be sitting at her table, glowering at the fact that she won't give him anything but tea, and she's crying because they're both here again, and he can say to Sherlock I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry. Tell me what happened. Tell me, I'll listen. If you don't want to tell me right now, I'll still listen.
But she reaches for him and says, “That terrible man,” and he has a very intense moment of oh fuck no.
“He told you what happened?” he asks her, a bit weak.
“Yes,” she sniffs, dabbing at her eyes with a hanky, pulling him through her door, into the cosy haven of old lady and the murmur of telly, normality, undisturbed domesticity.
“What did he - did he say?” John says, a bit dazed, and still experiencing a surprising pang of sharp disappointment when the flat is Sherlock-less.
“Cheating on you,” she says, shaking her head energetically, “And with such a horrid man. I don't know how he could, John.” She snuffles into the hanky. “Oh dear, oh dear,” she laments.
“Where is he now?” John asks, urgently, bringing a hand up to her shoulder; trying to soothe her, also trying to get her to tell him.
“I couldn't - I couldn't bear to have him here anymore,” she stammers, as though she can't quite believe it.
“You sent him away?” John asks, the words having to fight to get out over the slide of what feels like desert sand in his throat.
“Yes,” she says after a beat. Then, her eyes widen, and he supposes his face must be giving away some of the anguish that's unfolding inside him with a slow burn, a slow-motion ripple. “John?” she asks, in a plea for reassurance.
He can't give it to her, settles for a grim smile instead. “Do you have any idea where he's gone?”
“No,” she squeaks, and then she's actually, honestly crying - soundlessly, shocked, probably reeling with a decision she took in a twist of hurt and anger, and that she might have known better not to take if there hadn't been so many things pushing all of them to the wrong conclusions, and no clear-headed Sherlock to point out finely that they were all wrong.
*
Greg drives John around in his own car. John knows Greg's spent quite a couple of nights in this vehicle before his divorce was finalised, and has a flash of affection for the D.I., at how he's sitting at the wheel, intent, driving as though there's an incredible emergency, even having bent the rules for the portable police light he keeps in his car.
But Sherlock is Sherlock, good at disappearing, knowing every inseam and inverted stitch of the fabric that makes up London, and though John tries hard to recall the places Sherlock's taken him to on their cases, they don't find him. And the homeless are strangely unwilling, some even refusing their money, turning their backs on them, gathering up their sleeping bags and sacks of clothing as they approach.
“Has he told them not to talk to us?” Greg asks, frowning.
“Must have,” John says, and then feels a little faint with the tension of it all.
“He's probably fine, though,” Greg says, as they get into the car. He doesn't start it for a long moment.
“Yeah,” John agrees, because he knows Sherlock can take care of himself even at the worst of times; but he, more than Greg, more than anyone, knows how Sherlock can get in an unguarded moment, how unexpectedly sensitive his infuriating, confusing boyfriend can be about people leaving him or about people thinking that he's done something wrong when he really doesn't understand it. He doesn't think Greg has ever seen that side of Sherlock, and he remembers with a strong pang of something he can't quite identify how Sherlock's mouth had been in the midst of saying something when he went out, cutting him off with the coldest don't follow me he imagines he's ever managed.
“Look,” John says after another while of driving around, “you can drop me off at Baker Street. You need to get home sometime tonight.”
Lestrade says nothing, but his face is conflicted; he wants to find Sherlock, and he's also quite sure that they won't tonight. John knows it, too.
“I'll let you know if I hear from him,” he promises, tersely, as he opens his door to get out in front of 221B.
“Yeah,” Greg says, passing a hand over the blue shine of stubble on his cheeks, and he looks very openly worried, and John just really wishes he didn't.
*
He sends Sherlock another text - the twenty-sixth, but who's counting:
Sherlock, it's okay if you don't
want to talk right now, but please
just let me know that you're okay.
If you get this at all, just let me
know. Please.
because he's wheeled through all the sentiments of I'm sorry, I'm trying to find you, where are you tell me now, answer me or I'm bringing in Mycroft, I'm really sorry, do you even have your phone switched on, where are you tell me you wanker, you can't do this to me, I'm sorry, you can come back to Baker Street we both want you to, and I'm sorry, and he doesn't know what else he can do. And he just kind of hates himself, now, because as the details of the new interview with Davis that Donovan was overseeing now had trickled in, Greg's eyes had darkened even more and in his own head the word had gained more and more of a momentum, rape. Neither of them had used it, but it sat between them like screen, drawing the light to it, dousing the rest of the car in darkness.
And if that is what's really happened, then he's a lot less good than he usually tries to be.
*
So then he does finally text Mycroft, deep into the night, when he can't fool himself anymore and pretend he's not about to throw up with worry.
Your brother has been
missing for 36 hours now.
JW
Mycroft's a wanker:
I know, John. Has anything
happened that I should know
about?
MH
And he chews over his cheek for a long moment before reminding himself that this is the man who flexed his muscles by showing him that he had control over the city's CCTV cameras on that exciting, confusing night he met the second of the so wildly differing, but so equally infuriating Holmses.
We might have gotten into
a spat, yes.
JW
And it's impossible for texts to project the subtlety of a raised Holmes eyebrow, but Mycroft's manages it with just two words:
I see.
MH
He gives in.
Not just a spat. Quite full-blown
fight. Of a sort. I worry that he's
vulnerable right now.
JW
And of course Mycroft just re-offers
I see.
MH
but John hopes the urgency that he projects onto it is really there, and he hopes that Mycroft is taking control of every fucking CCTV camera in the whole sodding city right now.
*
Mycroft calls an hour later.
“Hello, John,” he says pleasantly.
John is silent.
“All right,” Mycroft says, and John can almost hear him rolling his eyes, not because he knows Mycroft, but because he knows Sherlock, and he knows that tone of voice. Really, though Sherlock would rave at him for hours if John ever told him, some of the mannerisms of the Holmes brothers are so similar it's creepy at times.
“Do you have him?” he simply asks, because no words that come out of Mycroft's mouth can mean anything except the ones that answer this question.
“He seems quite determined to remain as of yet un-found,” Mycroft says, and John wishes he were there so he could punch that Victorian curl of tongue out of his mouth.
“Then why are you calling me?” he snaps, rubbing a hand over the bridge of his nose.
“It is obvious he's sought some unsavoury company,” Mycroft says. “None of the official cameras can get a visual on him. He's gone into the underbelly of the city. I do implore you to try and reason your way out of this one. If anyone knows where he is, it's you.”
“Yes, well, thanks for nothing, then,” John says, and hangs up before Mycroft can be a Holmes and get the final word.
And the dislike for Mycroft is a bit more crackling inside his chest than usual, because the last thing he needs right now is a reminder that if anyone would know, it would be him, and he doesn't think he knows, he really doesn't, and what kind of boyfriend is he, really?
*
And then, when dawn does finally stretch its rosy fingers over the horizon of London, muddied with smog, it comes to him calmly, like a leaf floating to shore on a still stretch of water, touching down without much of an impact, just the unfolding of an idea.
He calls Greg, who answers promptly, and John is almost sure the D.I. doesn't actually sleep any more than Sherlock does.
“I think I know where he is,” John says, and Greg makes a small sound that could have been a yawn, or just as easily a muffled oh thank fuck and John just really, really hopes he's got it right; for Sherlock, and for himself, because who is he, if he's not the one person who knows Sherlock and is known by Sherlock in return?
*
They reach the cinema, rich and flush with '30s and '40s decoration, just as the first stretch of liquid sunlight spills over the rooftops onto the street. The day is stretching, flexing, promising to be beautiful.
“Here?” Greg asks, doubtfully.
“Not why you think,” John says, and the knot in his gut tightens as Greg reasons with the sleepy concierge, eventually flashing his badge to get them inside.
“I never took Sherlock for someone to enjoy nostalgic cinema,” Greg says as they feel their way over the silent, muffled stretch of fluffy carpeting inside, the darkened doors of the different cinema rooms silent and somehow stealthy in the gloom.
John almost snorts. “God, no, he's not. But we had this case,” he continues, silently. “Old case of this guy who kept on almost dying in scenarios that closely resembled scenes from old movies. Died of a heart attack in the end, and one of his sons was sure that he was set up in some sort of twisted murder scenario.”
“Was he?”
John chuckles. “I'll tell you that one over a pint; it's a bit long. But, um,” he resumed, “we came here to pick up copies of all kinds of films. They've got a genuine film projector from 1934 and an impressive collection of film spools in the back. Sherlock loved it for some reason. The smell,” he finishes, and recalls with a small pang how Sherlock had stood around just breathing for at least two minutes before charging to work, and how that night he'd actually joined John in bed until John fell asleep despite their being on a case, and had tried to describe what it felt like to be able to pick out the components of a scent, and how the darkened room had helped, how it had been one-track sensation or as close to it as he could get, and that it had been energising and relaxing at the same time. It had been quite extraordinary to listen to.
They reach the back room. John pushes the heavy door open.
“Sherlock,” he calls, then winces a bit at his own voice, ripping through the somehow heavy, laden silence clinging to the age of the film spools there.
There's the loud clang of one of the spools hitting the concrete floor.
And then there is Sherlock as Greg locates and hits the light switch; narrowing his eyes like a cat against the sudden light, a sprawl of limbs and insane tufts of ringlet in a chair, holding one spool in his lap, another one lying at his feet.
“God, Sherlock,” John says, involuntarily, and starts toward him.
“John,” Sherlock hums when John reaches him and squats near him, putting his hands onto his legs lightly.
“Why haven't you been answering my texts, you tosser?” John says, throat tight.
Sherlock cracks an eye open, looks confused for a bit. “I might have - I might have left my phone at Baker Street,” he says, and John's fingers tighten on his thigh in spite of himself, because there is hardly any more proof of the disarray of mind that Sherlock must have been in, and he kicks himself for not hearing the phone go off or not looking for it, at least.
“Are you all right?” John asks, and it's a fight to get the words out past the chunk of tenderness and anxiety lodged in this throat.
Sherlock spreads his hand in a gesture that could mean of course, just look at me, don't I look fine to you? or I don't know.
“Are - are you all right?” he responds, and John can't help it, he can't help it at the sudden sharp sting of memory at one of their most recent 'how-do-people-go-about-being-a-couple' conversations, in which John had gently suggested that it was always worth a try to ask your partner if they were all right after they had asked you the same thing - he can't help the laugh of tenderness, and he can't help the falling forward, pressing his nose into Sherlock's stomach, the smell of him mixed with the particular chemicals of the room they're in.
“I am now,” he breathes, allowing the rush of relief to close over his head for a moment, not having to fight it off, because Sherlock's hands bury themselves in his hair, pushing on his scalp, as though Sherlock wants to check if his skull is still intact.
“John,” Sherlock mumbles, “I'm sorry - I don't know what - I don't know -” but he falters, and it might be because of different reasons; maybe Greg standing at the door, still a tangible presence despite his silence, or maybe because he doesn't really know what it is he needs to say, or how he can say it - he still hasn't quite mastered the art of apology, though John knows when it's earnest by now.
“God, no,” John says, stifled, pressing his eyes closed, into the fabric of Sherlock's shirt. “I'm sorry. I am. I'm sorry.”
“Whatever for?” Sherlock asks, and the genuine, small tone of confusion makes John gather some of his shirt between his teeth and press a weird sort of kiss to it.
“For leaving you,” he breathes. “For not listening to you. For jumping to conclusions. For not helping you.”
“Helping me with what?” Sherlock's fingers tighten even more on his head.
John pulls his head back and looks up at him. Pale, bruised under the eyes, still some blood, some grime on his face from the chase that ended with him and Davis in a back alley, and it's all wrong, it needs to get off, but he needs to say first: “We're going to talk about what happened later, all right?”
“Yes,” Sherlock agrees, as though he knows what John is talking about, and it's the easiness with which he doesn't even protest that convinces John that he really still doesn't have a grasp on what happened.
“Let's get home first,” he mutters, and gets up, extending a hand. Sherlock brings the film spool up to his face a final time, and seems to savour its smell, eyes closed, before slipping his hand into John's, not needing the support at all, really, but sometimes things are needed without being needed, and it's a lesson that he's been learning in the past five months, and he can accept it sometimes, now.
*
Greg drops them off at home.
John thanks him with a long look of gratitude and a firm hand shake. Sherlock waits by the door, lines of his body as smooth and long as ever, and he would pass for completely normal and undisturbed if it wasn't for the fingers closing themselves over John's wrist as they descend the stairs together, a bit awkwardly.
Mrs. Hudson can wait, and thankfully she knows that, too.
*
“But I didn't stop it,” Sherlock says, and his face is flushed in a strange way.
“You were half-unconscious,” John says through gritted teeth, hoping Sherlock knows this anger is not directed at him.
Sherlock considers. “But I didn't stop it as soon as I came back to,” he says, and sounds so wondering at all of it that John can't help but wrap him back into the hug that they'd half slipped out of to talk, sprawled together on the couch. “And I... responded,” he says, and even from the close angle of his face pressed close to John's, John can make out the wince.
“Your body really can do things you don't want it to,” John says. Then, taking a breath, he says: “Did you want him to touch you?”
Sherlock is a strange stretch of silence against him for a moment.
“No,” he says then, quietly.
“Well then,” John says, feeling a bit nauseous, “you didn't. And you never consented. Do you realise that? Not stopping something because you're not sure what's happening is not a yes, Sherlock.”
“Evidently,” Sherlock says, but John knows him well enough to detect the confusion.
“It's okay,” he therefore says, and Sherlock huffs, keeping up some front of how dull, but curls himself into him a bit tighter. “We'll work it out. But it wasn't your fault, okay? It wasn't your fault. Do you know that?”
Another spot of silence. Then Sherlock hums; not fully convinced, but thinking about it, getting there, John hopes.
“It's okay,” he repeats, and instead of mocking him for his redundancy, for his platitudes, Sherlock lets out a long breath against him, presses his nimble, slender fingers against the spot under John's jaw bone where it gives and becomes soft flesh, a spot that Sherlock loves, the weakness under the armour of bone, and just sighs, almost inaudibly, “Yes.”
And it's not quite okay that way, of course, and John fears that there are things in this man next to him, dark things, things that are old and that are new, and that they will have a to navigate with care, with a finely attuned sense of each other, but his perception is improving; he can feel what it means that Sherlock is tightening his fingers into his sides, and he knows what he's trying to say with the light press of mouth against John's neck. And as Sherlock speaks up suddenly and says: “I'm all right,” he feels how they fit together then in that moment, despite the sharpness, the points of glass in both of them, and if anyone can do it it's them, because they're safe here, away from all of the pain they encounter on the streets, and it can be done, he has faith, and he believes it more than anything he's ever believed.