Needing is One Thing (Getting is Another) 2/2
15.
It's been ten hours.
Mycroft gave him some clothing (terrifyingly his size, and what Mycroft was doing with men's clothing in John's size he doesn't want to know), and fed him, and calmed him when Lestrade and his team showed up and proceeded to be even more useless than usual, and John decides he has not appreciated being treated like someone's pet dog, far too close to what Moriarty, that bastard, had said.
Ten hours. It's been ten hours, and Sherlock is gone, gone, gone like he never existed. CCTV can't track him, not a single bloody hair on his head, and Mycroft's called in every single favor he's accrued in his life, or so it seems from the amount of time he spends on the phone shouting people down in typical Holmsian fashion. Lestrade has moved an entire server's worth of equipment into Mycroft's parlor, and there are fifteen policemen wandering about trying to look busy, though John can follow their conversation well enough to understand they're completely at a loss. John's called Sherlock over forty times, left shouted messages and pleading messages, and calls him everything he can think of and begs him to answer his mobile answer it, please answer you fucking wanker.
John's a good lad, trained to be since birth. His mum had walloped his backside, and college had walloped his brain, and Afghanistan had walloped everything else. So John waits as Sherlock has instructed, Don't follow, you would be a liability, waits as Lestrade flaps about and Mycroft stares at everything with his brow furled with worry, and understands Sherlock on a fundamental level with sudden, viscous clarity.
John's a good lad, and he waits until the telly says We interrupt your scheduled programming to bring you this news report. There's been a massive explosion in southwest London's King's Road-- and then he doesn't listen anymore, and grabs up Sherlock's coat and listens to Mycroft shout his name behind him and he's got no idea where the bloody hell he's going only that he can't sit there even one moment longer, doing nothing.
It takes over an hour and an exorbitant taxi fare before he finds the homeless woman Sherlock had spoken to during the dragon pin case. Her name is Sandra, and she's missing five teeth in her head, and she says, "Anything for Sherlock's gentleman."
"Right, I'm not Sherlock's 'gentleman'," John says, and adds, "That isn't the point. He's on a case and somethings gone wrong. Please, do you know anything?"
Sandra looks at him out of a dirty face, shrewd, and says, "It'll cost ya."
"Anything."
"It'll cost ya prettily."
"Dammit woman, please!"
"He won't like it," she says, and sniffs, and hands him a tiny note folded in fourths.
Sherlock's handwriting is scrawled messy over it.
16.
Sherlock watches the explosion gut half a city block, send panicked children scattering into the street; the building she'd been trapped in was student housing. He finds himself somehow removed from the wanton destruction of it, though he can better imagine now how John must feel, watching Sherlock blast shapes into their wall.
Had felt. Had been likely to feel. Doesn't matter really; at its' best it's still just a sad excuse for intellectual exercise. John had been put-upon, harassed but ultimately unmoved by Sherlock's display of boredom. Here Sherlock finds he is quickly sinking into a chasm of rage he hadn't known he was capable of possessing. Anger never lasts long in his system, gets assimilated and dissipates as his mind accommodates and moves on. This is different, this ragged band of violence that stretches under his skin, waiting to snap.
The phone rings; Sherlock puts it on speaker with one hand, the other clenched in a fist.
"This won't be any fun if you don't at least try to keep up." Moriarty goads, his voice pitched to something that could pass for normal. Sherlock glares at the phone. "Let's exchange our circumstances and see how well you manage."
"Oh oh oh now." Moriarty tuts. "You wanted to change the rules, dearest. It's much too late to go back on your word."
"You did." Sherlock retorts.
"I did, I did. Unfortunately you're not in a position to do the same. You'll have to get the upper hand first, which.. isn't looking very likely."
There's a pause where Sherlock reconsiders the eighteen ways he's thought of to kill Moriarty in the past hour. When Moriarty speaks again his voice is low, enticing and intimate. "It doesn't have to be this way, Sherlock. There are better ways we could pass the time together. The things we could do- we would change this world, twist it, make it our own. Everything you've ever wanted. You'd never be bored again."
Sherlock stares at the phone. The various superficial injuries from his last encounter with Moriarty have by and large seemed to worsen in the intervening time; he's shivering with cold in the way he always does when he's gone this long without food, and the few hours he's slept in the last four days have only served to remind his body that he needs more of it occasionally. No, it doesn't have to be like this. More to the point, he doesn't want it to be.
"I don't need you to do that." He replies, then hangs up.
Less than a minute later his other phone is ringing - the one he lifted on the way here, the one that only a few scattered homeless people have the number for, none of whom own a mobile with which to call it.
He sighs. He had expected John would at least wait out the day. Then again he'd also expected not to fail so completely. "John." He answers.
"Where the bloody hell are you, you ignorant self-centered--"
"-Are you hurt?" Sherlock interrupts. He's not worried about Moriarty hearing him, or tracing the call; there would be no fun if he couldn't guess what Sherlock was doing.
"That's not an answer, Sherlock."
"Why are you calling me?" He replies, just to be petty. He knows perfectly what John's expression is like from the choked off hiss of breath that travels through the phone.
"Sherlock, when I find you I'm going to kick your fucking arse, you know that right?"
"Looking forward to it; you might not want to curse like that in front of that particular Marks & Spencers though. A lot of families, they won't appreciate the language."
"Give me. An address."
Sherlock sighs again, then is immediately annoyed with himself. He contemplates which is better - to be a singular failure, or a dead success.
"Meet me by Pr-" There's a brittle crack, and a kind of sharp sting he's never felt in his neck before, and then everything is dark.
17.
There’s no dial tone - the line is just cut off, right mid-word, and John doesn’t even care that strolling mums with baby carriages are hustling away quickly; damn Marks & Spencers, damn strolling mums and damn Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock had said not so long ago that his brain was like a hard drive - John is convinced that the entirety of Sherlock’s common sense has been deemed irrelevant and swept out with the solar system.
His hands are shaking when he dials the phone.
“John really, you’re getting to be as bad as Sherlock, we had no idea wh-”
“Mycroft, he said ‘meet me by ‘Pr’, and then he got cut off.”
“Say again?”
“‘Pr’, prruh, pee-are,” John snaps, impatient, and hails a cab. “He carries two phones, one for daily use, one for the strictest of emergencies, and I got the number for the emergency phone - well, never mind where I got it. I need you to tell me what streets begin with ‘Pr’, and while you’re doing that I need you to put Lestrade on the phone.”
“Doctor Watson-”
“Damn you Mycroft! ” John shouts, making the cabbie startle but there isn’t time there isn’t time, “put Lestrade on the phone!”
There’s a shuffle, voices muffled, and then, “Doctor Watson? We didn’t know where you’d gone, one second you were-”
“Never mind that now. Lestrade, I need you to put a trace on a phone number, used within the last three minutes - 020 77966328 - it’s Sherlock, something’s happened and we need to be there right now. ”
Lestrade, bless him, doesn’t argue.
18.
Sherlock wakes groggily, a messy, unhinged consciousness that leaves his insides feeling like a used bin. He comes to realize he's tied to a chair, zip ties piled on his arms and legs. It's almost flattering.
He's on the top floor of a four - no, five - story building, looking out a window on the west side, near-
"Lambeth, dearest." Moriarty is behind Sherlock, behind and to the left, and there's something dreadfully wrong that he hadn't known that already.
"Oh, don't fret Sherlock - you are under quite the influence, after all. And the blow to the head you took when you fell probably isn't helping either."
Sherlock stares out the dingy window to the street below; he doesn't know how much time has passed. He should know how much time has passed. "Be a little difficult to solve your puzzles this way."
Moriarty steps forward, beady eyes alight. He leans over Sherlock, whispers in his ear while Sherlock resolutely refuses to show the slightest indication of discomfort. "Don't worry darling, I've got it all covered." He pulls a mobile from his pocket - Sherlock's mobile dammit. "Only a little longer now. Big things are happening tonight. After-" he makes a show of checking his watch, his Montblanc, of which Sherlock is fairly certain there is only one in the world, "-eleven twenty we'll be home free. Of course, you may not have a home to go to. "
Sherlock stares at him with utter hatred, unmitigated or perhaps enhanced by the drugs gushing through his system. "Planning to lord Baker Street over my head again?"
Moriarty looks at him in mock concern. "My, you are in a bad way. I would never do something so dreadfully predictable. But you... today you will."
There's a shuffle and the door on Sherlock's right opens to let in-
He stares.
"You certainly have an affinity for snipers, James." Sherlock bites out.
Moriarty smiles in an attempt at self-deprecation that fails entirely. "Everyone said you'd crack sooner or later, Sherlock." The sniper sets up at one of the adjacent windows, silent and exacting.
"No one would buy this; they all know you're involved." He almost stumbles over the words as for once his mouth can't keep up with his brain.
"They know you've threatened to harm, let's see, a doctor, two EMTs, half the Yard, your brother's assistant, and a nurse. Then this morning you ran off without telling anyone where you were going or what you planned to do." Moriarty grins. "And in four hours you're going to kill a man who bears an unfortunate resemblance to yours truly." A light flashes behind Sherlock and Moriarty looks positively gleeful at whatever information is shared. "The main event is starting!" He twitters, pressing the call button on Sherlock's mobile. They both watch it dial John's number, see John pick up after half a ring.
Sherlock can't hear what John is saying, but he's not yet so far gone to not know anyway.
"Doctor Watson, I have a proposition for you." Moriarty declares, as though he's doing John some kind of favor. "Our friend Sherlock is somewhat... incapacitated. See if you can't help him warn the man who has four hours to live that it might be a good idea to take a different route home today." He looks at Sherlock as he speaks into the phone. "You get five minutes every half an hour."
An assistant steps in to take the phone and hold it to Sherlock's ear as Moriarty moves back, whispers in Sherlock's other ear. "And then I'll kill John Watson too." He's out the door with a silent, slick stride that exposes his true nature better than all the outlandish mannerisms.
It could be the drugs, or the injuries, or the culmination of several days of nearly dying, but Sherlock's voice is unusually hoarse. "John."
19.
"Sherlock!" John bellows down the line, so angry he makes the entirety of the Yard present in Mycroft's dining room jump. Lestrade none-too-nicely rips the phone from his ear, plugs it in to the army of laptops scattered across the table and flips it to speaker phone, and of the first time John thinks this barrel of monkeys might actually be professional. Maybe. "Sherlock, are you hurt."
"John--"
"Are you hurt!"
"We've had this conversation once before, and I find this role-reversal somewhat irritating."
John can hear it in his voice, groggy and woozy and not altogether lucid, and he clutches the table tightly. "Where are you?"
"You know as well as I that's against the rules."
Lestrade's eyes widen across the table, and John watches Mycroft go pale out of the corner of his eye. John himself feels frozen, as if he's been dipped into liquid nitrogen. "I suppose if you're playing hide and seek, it might be against the rules, yes, though you and I are too old for children's games."
"I never did play well with others."
"How long, Sherlock?" Sherlock laughs, high and nothing like amusement. "I do pick good company, don't I. Not nearly as clever as me, no, but clever enough, aren't you?"
"I get by," John says gently. He can't help the way his voice softens, the way he would talk to a frightened child or woman in his clinic. "Is there a bomb?"
"No," Sherlock says -- John hopes that no one else can hear the notes of controlled fear in Sherlock's voice, but when he looks up Lestrade has shut his eyes tight, and Anderson's lips are white. "No, John, no bomb."
"What does he want?"
"I'm going to kill a man who looks like our King Moriarty."
The meaty sound of fist hitting flesh, a choked off grunt, and when Sherlock comes back his voice sounds wet, garbled like he's just been punched in the mouth. "He's going to meet his end in four hours -- it's your job to make sure he takes a different route home today. Not much good that it'll do, will it?" Sherlock adds away from the phone, as if he's speaking to someone else in the room, and the sound is back, that awful sound of punching and hitting.
After a moment, and a scuffle on the phone, Moriarty says, "He'll call you again in twenty five minutes pookie!" and hangs up.
20.
"Well I certainly hope you've planned out the next one better than that." Moriarty says, while Sherlock attempts to force his lungs to inflate. The breath he drags in is awkward and painful. There are too many angles inside his chest, sharp edges that shouldn't exist. More painful is the fact that he's letting his thoughts get away from him, that there's nothing he can do to push back against the ebb of distraction lapping into his consciousness.
"Been far too busy deciding exactly how John and I are going to kill you." Sherlock retorts, though it hurts to say it. It hurts worse when one of the guards punches him in the jaw.
Moriarty stares at him, glares, and Sherlock has to wonder what it is he sees; it certainly isn't the world's only consulting detective. Even Anderson has never looked at him that way, and after that case in October of last year he'd certainly have the right to. In that moment Sherlock sees - doesn't deduce, doesn't infer, actually sees - in Moriarty's face that one death won't be enough; one hundred wouldn't quench that violence. He'd delight in his own death if it was bloody enough.
But the things that ignite Moriarty's rage are entirely unpredictable, and right now there's very little Sherlock can do to manage it. "We're both going to die, Sherlock Holmes. The only question is how much pain you're going to be in when you go." He bares his teeth like a diseased animal. "I'll ruin you. You and your pet, your stupid fucking pet. "
He snatches the mobile from one of the guards and calls John back, puts it on speakerphone, waits for John to answer but doesn't let him get a word in edgewise. Flecks of spit hit the display as he snarls. "You think I won't kill you both? You think I won't kill you first, John Watson, just to make him suffer? Cut you open and fuck you 'til you bleed, so he can see what a pathetic excuse you make for a distraction, a toy." He pulls back, as though he suddenly wants to salvage that shredded illusion of control. "You'll fail, just like you always fail, like you failed to save your sister from your father, or her bottles, like you got engaged and then failed to get married, like you failed to save all those men, and women, and children. You'll fail, and you'll die, and Sherlock Holmes will be mine."
He hurls the mobile into the wall, where it splinters into pieces. No one moves. "Get him another phone." Moriarty orders, another man once again, this one impervious and composed. He looks back at Sherlock. "Solve your fucking puzzle. I'll be taking over your brother's government."
Then he's gone.
But Sherlock has already solved his puzzle, narrowed down the possibilities to a manageable number while Moriarty was screaming invectives down the line. What he doesn't know is how he's going to get John to do the same when he can't even tell him where he is.
His thoughts are interrupted when someone sticks him again. He spits his own blood in their face; it doesn't prove anything, but it seems like the thing to do.
21.
There's a beat, two, long enough for Moriarty's voice to stop ringing through the room, before the rage becomes so overwhelming that John gets chills, frozen from his head to his feet. His mind is a rush of sound, nauseating and swirling like the worst vertigo ever, sticking like cloying mud to the insides of his head.
It's cold, bloody indecent really and John's got no idea why Sherlock doesn't just fix the damned floor heater. It isn't as if he can't -- John's known Sherlock long enough now to know Sherlock can do anything, really, except of course identify any large body in the solar system -- but that he doesn't want to. Mrs. Hudson was going to bring in old Mr. Charles to get it fixed in the morning, and if John didn't know any better he'd say Sherlock was giving the old man a chance to earn some wages.
He remembers Sherlock grunting at him as if he can't be arsed to speak when he's that curled up and comfortable, and mentioning the left-over risotto he'd made the night before, and thinking about Sara, beautiful Sara with the explosion of freckles over her nose she tried to hide with make-up. The bite of the cold air outside of Baker Street wasn't as bad as he thought, but he pulls up his collar anyway.
He remembers a sharp pinch in his thigh, and being dragged into a limousine, and being kissed on the mouth, hungry and wet and horrible, horrible because the man's mouth tastes like acid, or maybe that's his mouth because he gags and gags and the man laughs and taps his cheek playfully and John can't bear it he just can't.
When he wakes up, two hours later, there's a bomb strapped to his body and a man's voice laughing in his ear, and John thinks of nothing but Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock.
"Doctor Watson. Doctor Watson. John."
"What?" John snaps, and scrubs his shaking hands down his trousers and breathes through the anger until it's sitting in his chest like fire.
"John," Mycroft says again, and John can see the same fury in his eyes, the same rage, but his is fueling his Holmsian mind. "My brother was speaking in codes before."
"Yes he was. Something I had to teach him, in fact. You know, for being so smart your brother can be somewhat dense sometimes," John says, even as Lestrade brings up the recorded conversation again on the computer.
Listening to it the second time is even worse than the first.
"When he says 'good company'. Good company, the Goode Company murder he was interested in before we got involved with Moriarty. A woman, mid-thirties, murdered by a long-range weapon."
"Snipers," Lestrade says after a beat, and the tension, if possible, ratchets up in the room. "Sherlock said in the initial interview after the pool bombing that Moriarty had snipers trained on you both, anywhere from five to ten."
"If there are snipers he's up high somewhere. An apartment?"
"Or an office building."
"Yes, but there are hundreds of high rises here in London," Anderson says from behind them. "That kind of search would take weeks, and we don't have the time or the resources."
"What about 'King Moriarty'?" Mycroft says, almost, almost indulgent, and John can tell he's got a clue, and hates him for not just coming out with it.
"The bombing took place on King's Road," John says, and turns to Lestrade. "Who's over there now?"
"Delany and the bomb squad," Lestrade says, then stops. "You think there's something there. Something Moriarty left on purpose."
"It wouldn't be the first time," John says.
22.
Sherlock honestly has no idea how much time is left. They could be out of time, he could be much too late. It's evening, but it's been that way the last few times he's been roused back into consciousness. It's possible the guards may have gotten a little too enthusiastic swapping between jabs in his arm and clips to his jaw.
There's a voice in his head that doesn't belong to him, that belongs to John, except it's not his head, he doesn't get to check off the box marked actively psychotic, at least not yet, and in any case this voice can't be his own doing because he's never heard John sound like this, and he wouldn't be able to conceive of it if he'd tried.
Now John is yelling. Likely because Sherlock hasn't been answering his rather frantic queries. He looks towards the mobile and reminds himself to listen to the words, not just the tone.
"Just tell me what's going on."
Sherlock's first response is absurd; he fights a smile. "Lunacy, John." It's a blatant gift, but he's beyond caring. His single biggest annoyance at the moment is fast becoming the fact that he's being forced to stay awake. There's a small part of his mind that devolves into an outright conniption at Sherlock's surrender to the physical, but it's drowned out by the clamoring of soporific sensation.
John's still talking, but Sherlock can't really focus on him. "Do you remember what you told me last night, John? About forgiveness?" He can feel consciousness slipping away from him the way it does down an hourglass.
"I said a lot of things last night and I really don't remember most of them." "I hope you remember that.” Sherlock says, then passes out.
The next thing he's aware of is John, John's face, right in front of him, John is in front of him. He almost flinches out of his chair, surprised and physically unprepared for the onslaught of questions his own brain - sluggish though it is - begins stockpiling.
"Answers later, right now we need to leave." John says, though Sherlock has yet to say a word. He's tight-lipped and utterly focused; Sherlock absently estimates how many bodies they'll pass on the way out.
"Our mutual friend is quite fond of underestimating you," he comments.
John is busy lugging Sherlock to his feet, which is the only reason he knows he's not still tied up. "'Fond' is not the word I would use to describe his feelings towards me." "Fair enough." He would shrug if he could be bothered. John's still got his head wrapped in a bandage and his body wrapped in Sherlock's over-sized coat, and the result is a very stereotypical escaped mental patient.
"How?" Sherlock asks, very nearly pleading. He can't use most of his senses right now, can barely get it together enough to walk; if he doesn't give his brain something he's going to go utterly mad. John is dragging Sherlock through the door, past the bodies of two guards, to a dilapidated hallway and a lift that looks like a museum relic from World War I. There's yelling from a distance, occasional shots and all the accumulated noise that signals what must be a complete catastrophe going on downstairs. "Apparently two dozen normal brains can get close enough to one giant Sherlock-sized one to solve the case."
Sherlock grunts and John amends, "Especially when one of those brains belong to Mycroft."
"Moriarty?"
"Mycroft's got it covered; I doubt he's still in the country. Apparently your brother doesn't take well to potential usurpers."
"Never did." Sherlock huffs with no small degree of derision. There are even odds on whether they're going to make it to the end of the hall.
John laughs, a little hysterically. "You're ridiculous."
"What?" Sherlock stumbles and John has to scramble to right them both; Sherlock knows the added strain to his damaged neck and shoulders must be torturous.
"You are such a huge drama queen." John replies, exasperated but mostly amused. He could be talking to Sherlock across the breakfast table, or next to him in a taxi. He sounds so at ease - it's only his eyes that give him away.
Then there are several distant bangs, and a thunderous rumble that sends smoke from behind the lift doors and flecks from the ceiling raining down on them. They stare for a moment, then John nods decisively. "Stairs it is."
Sherlock estimates he has four steps before he collapses. As a testament to his condition he's even gotten that wrong - he only makes it three. His last thought is that it's just as well; they weren't likely to make it out of the building alive anyway.
23.
It is, John thinks, a curious role reversal.
It seems like ages ago, decades that he was at St. Barts with his head wound, though of course it has only been a day. Now it is Sherlock who is lying in bed, unconscious and looking decidedly worse for wear -- bruised, face swollen and black and blue, arm restrained to keep the remnants of the neurotoxin from traveling any faster through his blood stream. His curls lay damp along his temples from fever, and he's trembling, the jerks of his muscles as involuntary as they must be painful. He'd been barely cognizant on those fleeting phone calls, and near the end, the second to last call, he hadn't been lucid at all, mumbling about pancakes his mummy used to make. That had scared Mycroft so badly he'd been shaking when he snatched the phone from John and hissed obscenities so vile only John, a military man, could properly appreciate.
There'd barely been a second, a second, the entirety of Scotland Yard already running into one of the buildings they suspected Sherlock to be in, but Mycroft had said, "My father's last words to my mother were a request for her to make her Sunday pancakes."
John decides then in that moment that when he sees Moriarty again he will not give the man a chance to talk, to open his bloody fucking mouth. The next time John sees Moriarty, there will be a bullet hole between his beady little eyes and John will have put it there, and he won't be sorry, not one whit.
"John," says a voice from above, rusty with disuse and yelling and pain, and John plasters on a smile from somewhere, leans up a bit.
"Sherlock. How are you feeling?"
Sherlock stares at him from a moment -- pupil reaction good, involuntary muscle spasms have already decreased, blood pressure returning to something like normal -- and says, "This is a remarkable turn of events."
"What, that you're laid up in hospital for once? I find it a breath of fresh air, myself," John says, but clasps Sherlock's wrist in his hand, fingers along his pulse point, and brushes some of those damp curls stuck to Sherlock's face away as he counts beats. "How are you feeling?"
"That is a patently ridiculous question."
“That’s me, Doctor Ridiculous,” John says. Sherlock thinks on this, and John takes a moment to do a quick check-over no doubt Sherlock's doctor will perform again. He thumbs gently at Sherlock’ eyelids to take a look at his pupil reaction, thumbs gently at an eyebrow until it twitches unconsciously. The bruise spanning the entirety of the left side of his face is terrifying to behold, and will undoubtedly turn every color of the rainbow before it’s healed, but there doesn’t appear to be any nerve damage that John can see, though of course it will require a multitude of tests he will insist very loudly on. “Aren’t you going to ask? I know you’re curious.”
“Curious?” Sherlock asks, tilts his head a bit. “I am, you’ll find, always curious.”
“No, I mean, aren’t you going to ask about how we got you out?”
“That would somehow imply I don’t already know.”
It’s exactly what John expects, and despite himself, he feels relief sweep up into his heart that he tries desperately not to show. “Oh, do you now,” he says, eyebrow arched.
“Of course. Judging from the content of the mud splattered on the hem of your jeans I’d wager Moriarty was keeping me near the warehouse district in Lambeth - that refinery oil-water-dirt mix can’t be recreated anywhere else - in an office building, somewhat high up, with a view of the Thames. Not the most creative idea on his part, as Lestrade is an ex-soldier trained in city tactics who undoubtedly got the entirety of the Yard into the building without Moriarty’s men being the wiser. He is, at times, useful. Add that to your own skills of avoiding detection gained from the military and I imagine you had half the building stormed before he knew what was going on. Clinging to your clothing is the ozone-acidic smell of a flash bomb, so that’s how you incapacitated those in the room with me without introducing any more chemicals into my body - you would never have allowed nerve gas. Kind of you. No signs of Moriarty, but that’s because he had a helicopter waiting on the roof as a means of escape.”
“There is no possible way you’ve deduced he had a helicopter on the roof.”
Amusement tilts Sherlock’s lips. “None, but we are talking about a proper super-villain. Of course he had a helicopter on the roof.”
"Don't," John says, closes his eyes for a moment. "It's not funny, Sherlock."
"Of course it isn't," Sherlock says, shifts in his bed, and John pretends he doesn't see the way the skin around Sherlock's eyes tightens up. "There was something at King's Road. That's how you found me."
John goes quiet because he doesn't want to talk about it, he doesn't want to talk about it but apparently Sherlock does because he presses, "John? What was at King's Road?"
"I thought you'd know."
"John."
He exhales, stares up at the ceiling, before carefully taking Sherlock's phone out of his pocket, or at least a phone that's identical to Sherlock's, down to the dings and scratches. On the screen there's a link to an mp3 file, and when John plays it, five pips ring out across the room.
And quite suddenly John remembers just how close he came to losing Sherlock entirely, and he hasn't known him long enough to feel like he's never known anyone better but the feeling lives there, in his guts, and all the desperation and fear and relief gathers up in his chest and John can't quite help leaning over the side of Sherlock's bed and kissing him.
24.
With the superficial press of lips to his own Sherlock can feel his brain whirl to life, albeit with an unsteady gait. He can tell a couple's entire relationship from the way they kiss, has predicted innumerable divorces, affairs, engagements, issues with sexual identity, pregnancies. It takes about the same amount of conscious consideration as establishing that thing with four wheels and an engine as a car.
John kisses him, and he has no idea what it means.
He doesn't move - he can't lean forward, and he chooses not to pull away. After a long moment of utter stillness John decides for him, excerpts from the dissertation on John Watson's Feelings flickering across his face when he moves back.
Sherlock stares at him. There are several possible explanations for this turn of events: affirmation of his own life, distraction from pain and fear and humiliation, affirmation of Sherlock's life, sexual interest, romantic interest, both. Without further data he won't know how to respond.
"Sorry, sorry-" John is mumbling, looking up and around and at anything that is not Sherlock's face.
"What for?" He asks, genuinely curious. He can feel his arms twitching, an uncomfortable distraction. It makes him think of Moriarty, of his brother, of the inconceivable number of possibilities. It makes him feel out of control; he tries to focus on John instead.
"It was a stupid - it was - you know what, just forget it."
Sherlock raises his eyebrows at the uncharacteristic display of inconstancy. "That would make you... happy?"
For a moment there's a look that passes over John's face like he's going to start laughing again. "That's what I want." He replies, though they both know it's not an answer to the question.
Sherlock opens his mouth to say something, find a way to rattle the truth out of John, but there's a knock on the door, an apologetic Lestrade leaning into the room. He looks between them with a vaguely guilty expression. "Sorry to interrupt; we can always come back-" "-No, no, now is fine." John says, standing up awkwardly. He nods in Sherlock's direction without actually looking at him, and sidles past Lestrade to leave the room. Sherlock watches him go and tries to puzzle out whether the evidence would support his hypothesis.
He's leaving the hospital tomorrow. He'll have a plan by then.
25.
Sherlock is released from hospital at precisely 10:17 a.m. He’s absolutely absorbed in his own crankiness, what with all the doctor’s poking and prodding, and it’s easy work to get him into the car and back home without realizing it isn’t a taxi and in fact Mycroft’s car.
By eleven Sherlock is installed quite comfortably in Baker Street, propped up on pillows on his tatty sofa, with a thick blanket stretched out over his legs. “He’s in shock,” John says, tucking in the blanket’s corner, which doesn’t make any sense at all because Sherlock is as well as can be expected after his experience but he isn’t in shock. Sherlock, however, offers a small smile, and John looks less on the verge of crumbling, so Mycroft lets it lie.
Baker Street has quieted, and John has escaped upstairs (Mycroft is 96% sure he’s having a minor breakdown, which is only logical after the events of the past few days), and it’s only the two of them now, doing something they hadn’t done in years, something vile and insipid and a bit lovely, for all that -- watching telly. “Do you remember when we were lads, that cartoon we used to watch?”
“Of course I remember,” Sherlock says. “It’s my life, isn’t it?”
“A bit of a role reversal though, I’d say. No one would ever mistake you for Jacques Clouseau.”
Sherlock snorts, shifts down into the pillows a bit, and doesn’t take his eyes off the television. There’s some sort of news on, talking about all the world’s ills, some things Mycroft even knew of days ago. Weeks ago.
“I remember when you stole mummy’s pearl necklace and left encrypted codes all over the grounds until I found it.”
“My first polyalphabetic substitution ciphers,” Sherlock says, and smirks. “I had less finesse then.”
“You were three.” Tiny, enormous eyes so full of intelligence and sarcasm, even then; his cheeks still fat and his hair the long, downy curls of a baby. “And you got two letters wrong.”
“Oh, two letters!” Sherlock says, offended, and but whatever else he means to say gets cut off at the knees by whatever is on Mycroft’s face.
“Mycroft.”
“You were smart, so smart. I used to give you puzzles to solve, do you remember?”
“I do,” Sherlock says. “I was so angry when you gave me the rubik’s cube.”
“You didn’t speak to me for a week that time.”
“Ten days.”
“You were seven.”
Sherlock looks at him. “You’re angry with me.”
“By the time you were in secondary school I was giving you theory solving equations, things even I barely understood. I couldn’t keep up with your hunger for knowledge, your mind. And then you became a grown man, and you went out to find your own puzzles. But you see, Sherlock, I failed you somehow. Or perhaps more correctly, mummy and father did. We worked your mind, and forgot to instill in you common sense.”
“Mycroft-”
“No, Sherlock,” Mycroft says, sitting up, leaning close. “For the first time in many long years I don’t care what you have to say.” He inhales slowly, lets it out. “I can’t claim to understand your motives, nor do I care. What I do know is that you single-handedly cocked this up, in a fashion so spectacular you have even astounded me. You almost got yourself killed, and regardless of what you think, that is not alright. It never has been, more now than ever.”
“Why is that?”
“You know why,” Mycroft says, looks to the steps that lead to the bedroom on the second floor.
There is a long, awkward pause.
“Well, I’d best be off,” Mycroft says, stands with a creak of his knees, and pats Sherlock on the shoulder on his way out.
26.
Sherlock spends nine hours on the couch, which is eight hours more than he expected to. He fell asleep at some point, a blank space he has no recognition of consenting to. He startles himself awake meaning to make a coherent answer to someone, looking to his left for a mobile that isn't there. John is speaking near him though; going by the volume he's reaching the end of his conversation with Harry.
He doesn't see John hang up but he does here the slam of a cutlery drawer, which means Harry is no longer within verbal reach of his frustration. Sherlock contemplates moving but it's easier to just stare in the direction of the kitchen as John walks out.
"You're awake." He states. Sherlock plays nice and just stares his thoughts at John, who raises the hand not holding his tea defensively. "I know, I know. Obvious." The way John's hand is shaking again is alone enough of a reason to kill Moriarty, no matter the unsubtle threats his brother leaves about the place, couched in fond nostalgia. Let his brother chastise him all he wants; at the end of it all they both know Sherlock will be the one to catch Moriarty. Mycroft has too much common sense to trail him down the rabbit hole.
"You and Mycroft have fun?" John asks, probably following Sherlock's train of thought from the very obvious frown Sherlock's now wearing.
Sherlock mutters in the direction of the sofa, "He's been gone for eight and a half hours and the smell from that tacky soap he uses is still polluting the place."
"He was worried about you." John argues.
Sherlock grunts. "He's always worried about me - the way people worry about dangerous animals loose from the zoo."
"That's not fair." John tries to fight, but he's making a sad attempt to hide his smile. He looks like he's about to laugh, looks like he did right before he kissed Sherlock in a hospital room, the pair of them torn up and bruised. It makes Sherlock smile back hugely, an exaggerated expression that John is blatantly amused by even as it confuses him.
Suddenly Sherlock feels full of energy, a toy twisted round too tight. His move off the sofa is for all intents and purposes a sideways jump, and he's already aware of which injuries he'll need to compensate for, to the degree that his stride over the coffee table is as smooth as always.
John is eyeing him, curious but unperturbed, which obviously means he has no idea what Sherlock's about to do. Sherlock is but a scant step away from him, unconsciously leaning down in the way John always has him shifting. "Are you happy?" Sherlock asks, as blunt as possible.
"What?" John replies, all at once surprised and nervous and now more than a little angry. Sherlock takes the mug out of his hand, his wondrously steady hand, and puts it on the desk. "Are you un-happy?" These are such imprecise terms, they grate on Sherlock even as he employs them, but he is used to adapting his approach to elicit the response he wants, and he's convinced in this case the result will be worth the aggravation.
Sherlock refuses to let John look away, stares at him while John mentally tries out no less than six different responses and bins them all. "Not... inordinately." John replies, then moves his face in a way that suggests he's poking fun at himself.
"Then you won't mind if I do this." Sherlock says, and he puts both his hands on either side of John's face and finally kisses him back.
27.
It is not chaste.
Of all the ways John has imagined it to be (not that he has -- imagined it, that is) he doesn't expect this -- pure filth, sticky hot excitement that burns at the base of his spine, tingles up across his skin in hot and cold waves. He knows, in some part of his brain not yet liquefying, that Sherlock is thinking about this, cataloging John's every reaction, filing it away, just like he knows that he shouldn't find it as hot as he does. He shouldn't want, not this, not so soon.
"Sherlock, wait," John mutters, fingers fisted in Sherlock's dressing gown. Sherlock answers him by pressing his face into John's neck, biting and nibbling with sharp, sharp little teeth that seem to connect directly to John's belly. Every nip makes him squirm, tight and hot low between his legs. He's hard, and he's so surprised; he'd almost forgotten what it was to want pleasure, the animal need to fuck and the human need to connect.
What’s even more surprising is that Sherlock is hard, too, right there against John’s belly. The difference in height between them has never been more obvious, and it isn’t something to be hated or loved but a fact, another way they fit together. The way John can’t seem to get enough of that mouth, even though he has to get up on his toes to reach it - the way Sherlock curls low enough for him to give it.
They let go to breathe, and every single hair on John’s body stands on end. “Sherlock,” he says, clears his throat, closes his eyes.
“If you’re going to say something dreadfully stupid, please refrain,” Sherlock says, voice wrecked and deep and a shadow of itself. He runs the backs of his fingers, wonderingly, over John’s cheek. “You’re trembling.”
“I would say so,” John says, huffs a little laugh. He feels strange, off-kilter. He wants to get personal, wants to tug gently at Sherlock’s dressing gown to straighten it, and run his fingers over Sherlock’s mouth, but he’s so worried - so much is at stake. “You could still tell me, if this isn’t what you want. We can go back to being friends, Sherlock.”
“You think I’ll regret this,” Sherlock says, eyes tracking over John’s face.
“Yes, I do,” John says, and steps back.
28.
Sherlock is acutely aware of the diaphanous nature of this thread between them, the heady strength of his arousal still an - admittedly enthralling - distraction. He knows how easily it could all fall apart. Only the most subtle shift in his expression shares how deeply he is surprised by John's shrewd perception of the same. He knows how important John has become to him; he occasionally forgets just how important he is to John. He doesn't expect John to stick around because he doesn't expect anyone to stick around, and yet here John is, trying desperately to keep them off an edge so sharp it might tear everything to shreds.
There's a knock on the door and they simultaneously turn as Sherlock calls for the intruder to enter. They don't move away from each other though, which from Sherlock isn't remotely surprising but from John is wonderfully informative. Lestrade's expression as he steps past the threshold and takes stock of their respective positions seems to indicate he's reaching similar conclusions. "Is this a bad time?"
"Are we really making you that uncomfortable?"
"No, not particularly."
Lestrade's expression remains exactly the same. "I... what?" He directs the question at Sherlock.
"Even taking into consideration your generally limited intellectual capacity I can't imagine any other reason you'd ask such an inexcusably moronic question." He expects a look of censure from John, but instead receives that strange sort of bemusement that has become his default expression as of late. Sherlock acknowledges how convinced John must have been of Sherlock's imminent demise if he's regressed to finding Sherlock's dismissal of civility entertaining.
Lestrade, on the other hand, looks considerably less pleased. "You're not really in a position to talk right now, Sherlock."
Sherlock raises an eyebrow. "Do you think someone less intelligent could have survived the last few days?"
Lestrade attempts a severe expression. "Look, even you have to acknowledge you've made a few missteps here."
When Sherlock answers him he's looking at John. "I don't waste time on regrets."
If John had moved any other part of his body as fast as he flicks his eyes in Sherlock's direction he would have instantly sprained something. Sherlock calmly stares back, and in his periphery he sees Lestrade glance between the two of them, looking increasingly uncomfortable.
"There's a first time for everything." John says, quiet but certain. Sherlock feels his forehead crease in annoyance; John is being peculiarly stubborn about this.
"Today is not that time." Sherlock shoots back.
"You've been wrong before - you're not infallible, Sherlock, no matter what you'd like to believe."
"This is not an opinion, John, it's a statement of fact backed up by solid evidence."
"Okay!" Lestrade interjects, still casting his attention between the two of them. He looks like he's afraid he's going to have to interrupt a bizarrely styled domestic, which in a way he already is. "I'll just be going then - but the topic isn't closed, not for either of you. I'll expect you both at the station tomorrow morning, first thing." He raises his hands against Sherlock's yet unspoken arguments, "There's a psychotic terrorist with an extreme vendetta against the both of you; this isn't something you're going to be able to handle on your own."
John looks like he's privately agreeing with Lestrade but knows better than to say so. He sees the D.I. out as an excuse to beat a hasty retreat from Sherlock, which is to be expected. What is startling is the fact that Sherlock lets him go.
29.
John doesn’t sleep that night.
John doesn’t sleep for the next three nights.
It isn’t that Sherlock is pretending nothing is going on, for that would be beneath him, and a frustration he would never condone - in his own words, he ‘didn’t have time for the trivialities of good society, and why should I bother with them anyway, when good society is for the most part entirely ridiculous and completely without measurable intelligence, as evidenced by the amount of running about they do looking for a suitable mate.’.
No, Sherlock would never lower himself to pretend nothing is going on, regardless of how much better John would feel. Instead, he’s taken up staring.
He stares at John, constantly, from wherever in the room he is. John feels his eyes on him all the time - making tea, typing on his laptop, reading the newspaper. At any other time having that relentless attention on him would be a best annoying, at worst uncomfortable. All it is now is overwhelming. John can see everything written on Sherlock’s face - not because Sherlock is obvious, but because John knows him as well as he’s ever known anyone, and just what Sherlock is thinking is as obvious o him as words on a piece of paper.
Sherlock is staring at him with bedroom eyes. Hooded, low, staring. They’re swallowing him up with every glance, and amused, and terribly, terribly searching. John can’t sleep, and neither can he function, not with Sherlock staring at him like a puzzle he’d like to solve in the comfort of his bed, so he does the only thing he knows to do and stages a tactical retreat.
He doesn’t know anyone he can talk to about this, not really; he can’t imagine what Mycroft would say, nor does he want to find out. Mrs Hudson and Lestrade both were out for similar reasons, because the former would have kittens if she found out her two favorite tenants weren’t already together, and the latter would have kittens for telling him something he never, ever wanted to find out period, being a private sort of bloke.
There’s really only one option.
She texts him her address, and John lets himself despair about not knowing where his own sister lives until he remembers she hadn’t known he’d left for his second tour in Afghanistan until he was already there. They’ve never been close in that way, not really, but she’s familiar and he thinks that she, more than anyone else, will understand. “Well, aren’t you a fucking sight.”
Then again, maybe not.
“Harry,” John answers, already uncomfortable, but kisses her on the cheek anyway because that was just what little brothers did.
Her flat is tasteful in that way only women could ever achieve, style without having any particular taste, and the exact opposite of his flat with Sherlock, which has altogether more body parts than he is comfortable with. She has tea waiting, and chocolate digestives, little sandwiches even, and John wonders at her ridiculousness, the clear sign of her nervousness.
“How’s Sara?” Harry asks, and then promptly slips into the kitchen.
“Alright,” John answers, picking his way around the female frippery to sit at her sofa, and wishes with all his might that Harry hadn’t mentioned Sara, when he hadn’t so much as thought twice about her since Moriarty had strapped him into a bomb. He wonders if she thought he was just being a careless sort. He hadn’t even called her to tell her he wouldn’t be around for tea.
“Actually, that’s a lie. I have no idea how Sara is, because we’ve been broken up for about a month now.”
The sounds in the kitchen stop, and Harry pokes her head out. “Oh,” she says, after a while. “And it was mutual, then?”
“Harry, I didn’t come here to talk about Sara,” John says, and takes an angry sip of his tea.
“So who did you come to talk about? Not Clara.”
His sister looks so put off he almost needles her, but then thinks better of it. “No, not Clara,” he says gently. “Can’t I just want to see my sister?”
“No one just goes to visit their sister, John.” He hates how serious she suddenly sounds, worse still when she asks, “Is it money, then? Do you need some money?”
“Harry! No, God -- no.”
“I’ve got money if you need it, a bit extra from the divorce - if you’re struggling there’s no shame in asking,” Harry says, and John is touched, despite himself. “Harry, no. No money.”
“Do you need some place to stay?” she asks, suddenly furious. “Has that Sherlock bastard finally done enough to put you off?”
“Sherlock is - how do you know about Sherlock?” John demands.
“Oh, difficult not to, isn’t it? Every time I call you he makes some excuse not to put you on the line, and makes terribly rude assumptions about me and is altogether uncivilized,” Harry snaps, and then freezes when she looks at John.
John never has been able to hide his feelings from his sister, not since he was little, so he’s expecting it when she leans forward, and takes his hand, and says, “That’s why you’re here. Why you haven’t gone to your mates. You’ve gone and fallen in love with him, haven’t you?”
She sighs, and rubs her eyes. “Christ, you’re a fucking idiot.”
"Not exactly what I was looking for." John sends back, falsely cheerful. He sounds twelve again, trying to make her smile from the other side of her bedroom door when he knows she doesn't want him around. She always wonders if he's even aware he's doing it; he's capable of ignoring almost anything when it suits him.
"Well it's certainly what you need to hear." She snaps back, eyeing him critically. He looks a mess, like he's just gotten over a bad flu. God only knows what he's been up to - he'll never tell her the whole story, and she gets impossibly annoyed when he attempts to lie to her, so she doesn't even bother asking. "Do you really think he feels the same way?"
"I don't know." John sighs despondently, left hand moving to rub across his forehead. "I have no idea what he's thinking ninety-eight percent of the time."
"I didn't ask you what he was thinking, John, I doubt even he can always keep up with his own brain. But feelings are stubborn, they don't change all that fast and they're tough to get rid of even when you're not pathologically averse to dealing with them."
John looks up from his inspection of her kitchen table. "You're seeing that therapist again, aren't you?"
"This isn't about me - for once," she replies, though not without some bittersweet amusement. He looks so conflicted, and she just can't prevaricate. "John you already know what you're going to do." Her laugh is so light it's more like a particularly musical exhalation. "You never fucking do what I tell you to anyway." "So I might as well give in then, is what you're saying." He asks, though it's not really a question. He shifts in his seat and avoids her eyes.
"I'm saying be careful." She answers softly. "There's no reason you have to give it all away at once." She glances towards John's phone, her phone, Clara's name a silent imprecation that in her ears still sounds like a scream.
John snags her hand, so unbearably earnest, and god when she was a teenager that used to drive her nuts. "I'm always careful."
She moves her free hand to his face. "This-" she says, tapping at a healing scab on his temple, "-says you're lying to me."
He smiles a little and holds her hand tighter before letting go. "Not like that, you know what I mean. I'm always careful with these kinds of things."
"Yes, you've bloody fucking had to be." She retorts, old rage flaring back up with the sudden conversational exposure. John just waves it off and Harry keeps her mouth shut only because she knows he genuinely doesn't want her to be angry on his behalf. Instead she stands to refill their cups. "Sherlock fucking Holmes. Really, John?" John can take care of himself, she thinks as she heads to the kitchen. He always does. He leans back in his chair to look up at her. "Mad as a March hare." He starts. She pauses in her journey to drop a kiss into his hair. "Well perhaps, as this is May..." She recites right back. This time she'll be there when he needs her, she really will.
30.
It's edging into darkness when he leaves her flat. He can't say that he necessarily feels better, because seeing Harry always comes with its own complicated set of emotions, but for the first time in many long years he feels as if perhaps something has settled between them. For that, at least, he has Sherlock to thank.
She hadn’t give him any kind of sensible advice when it comes to Sherlock, though, but John thinks that was because she had no idea what to tell him. Her own relationship fell apart, and wouldn't they be a sight for mum and dad, wouldn't they be disappointed that their two children had turned out so off that they couldn't even handle a relationship within their own gender.
The dead were long buried, though, and he is far too old to care what his parents would have thought anyway, and lets them lie.
Catching a taxi this time of night is almost impossible, much less on a Friday, so he takes the tube back to Baker Street. The flat is quiet, lights turned off save the kitchen stove, and John stands there in the dark and tries not to let his heart beat right out of his chest. He's been to war, he's faced down enemies who wanted to kill him, who tried -- this is nothing, even though he feels as if he's standing at the edge of the abyss.
He could go upstairs, backed away from that yawning chasm where it was safe, and everything would be as it always was, and nothing would happen to him, good or bad. And very suddenly, John sees the rest of his life, if he takes that road. He'd continue trailing after Sherlock, being his blogger and partner and helping him solve crimes, but this between them would never come to fruition. John would marry a young woman, someone lovely who would support him and help him begin his own practice, and he'd settle down to a normal, quiet life, with two-point-five children and a proper nest egg and a little house somewhere, proper for children and dogs and family.
Or he could jump.
Really, there's never been any other choice.
He watches himself, as if he's having an out-of-body experience, turn to the kitchen, the small hallway beyond. Sees himself open the door and step into the room, sees himself stare at Sherlock, who looks up from where he's reading in his bed, and sees himself sit down at the edge of the bed, run his fingers over Sherlock's bruised jaw, which has gone black and blue and mottled green.
Sherlock stares at him. "I have, entirely for your benefit, recorded one hundred and twenty nine ways this between you and I could go wrong," he says. "Upon recent introspection I have made note of several facts you must be aware of. I have at times been called heartless, and I forget trivial anniversaries, and I will treat you as I have always treated you, and I will change nothing of myself to suit you better. I am a horrible housekeeper, often forget to pay my bills, never do the shopping, and have been called a jealous and possessive lover in past, though of course that has always been with women. I have no reliable data with men."
It's said so perfectly without emotion that John would almost called it earnest, and he's really gone round the bend because lord help him, he finds it charming.
John tilts his head. "I have at times been called a cold bastard, and fuck all if I can remember dates -- my past birthday included -- and I will treat you as I've always treated you, and you needn't change because I--" and saying it out loud is a wondrous thing, powerful, and he runs his fingers back over Sherlock's ear, into his hair. "Don't you understand, then? It's want in me, Sherlock, for you."
Sherlock stops breathing, and John smiles at him. "Sorry it took me so long. We normal people sometimes need a bit to properly digest things and flap about a bit and make a to-do. And have illuminating visits with sisters."
"No, I -- no, it's alright," Sherlock says, but he hasn't stopped staring, and he sweeps his fingers, wonderingly, over John's cheek. "I dreamed of you last night."
"Hmm?" John says, and absolutely does not move his face down into Sherlock's touch.
"That you were here. That I was having you."
Now it's John's turn to stop breathing, and he hasn't stopped being hard these last few days, not really, and the heat returns three-fold, buries itself deep in his lap. "Sherlock, I've never--"
"I know," Sherlock says, and he does, of course he does he knows everything. "Though it came close, that one time in college."
John doesn't ask how he found out. Wonders if Sherlock read it on his face. "That wasn't like this.”
“No,” says Sherlock, quietly amused, “That wasn’t like this,” and leans forward to kiss him.
In the part of John that had thought about how it would be like between them, he’s never envisioned this familiar touch, as if this isn’t the first time at all, as if Sherlock already knew the ins and outs of him. It’s just easy, when the clothes come off and Sherlock swings him up into his lap, eyes creased with a smile when John laughs. It’s easy when Sherlock stretches them out on their sides and investigates him with his hands, then his mouth, then other parts of him, rubbing together sweet and intimate and perfect. It’s easy to let go, to fist his fingers in Sherlock’s hair and bite at his neck and cry out, spilling wet and hot between them, and it’s easy when Sherlock does the same, great shuddering heaves of his hips against John’s.
Then, they sleep.
When they do it again in the morning, John goes to his knees and doesn’t think twice about his aching hip.