FIC: The Illusion of Free Will (7/?)
Title: The Illusion of Free Will 7/?
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock/John
Rating: NC-17 overall
Warnings/Spoilers: Drug use, violence, attempted rape.
Summary: 29th May 2010 (Sherlock is 29, John is 33).
It's something of an anti-climax. A ridiculous ringtone, a maddening half of a conversation, and then he was left with John looking at him as if he had betrayed him.
Disclaimer: This is the bit where they make me say I don't own anything. Sherlock is the property of the BBC, Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss and, of course, the one and only Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The Time Traveler's Wife belongs to Audrey Niffenegger.
On AO3
29th May 2010 (Sherlock is 29, John is 33)
It’s something of an anti-climax. There he was, prepared to die for John, prepared to divulge the one secret of his heart rather than his head, and then… nothing. A ridiculous ringtone, a maddening half of a conversation, and then he was left with John looking at him as if he had betrayed him.
He doesn’t have time for it. He needs to figure out what Moriarty’s next move will be. He needs to know who just saved them, whether they are a friend or foe. There are questions that need answering and he can’t think, he can’t, because John Watson is looking at him like that.
There will be time later to explain himself. Maybe he’ll even manage to convince John not to leave Baker Street, but it’s doubtful, not if John truly believes that Sherlock could have had one iota of involvement with him being shot in Afghanistan. Even if he believes that, he’ll want to leave if he knows, as he surely must now, how Sherlock feels for him.
Sherlock didn’t even know before tonight, not fully.
There will be time later to attempt to salvage their relationship, but the first thing he needs to do is ensure John’s safety. The game is on with Moriarty, and he’s going to need help if this goes where he thinks it will, where he knows it must.
He gets a cab alone. He leaves John waiting for another, with no idea where he might ask for it to take him. Probably somewhere far away from Sherlock.
Sherlock leans his head against the car window, closes his eyes and pictures London rushing by him. He doesn’t need to open his eyes to know the mental picture is accurate.
He makes a call to his older brother.
----
30th May 2010 (John is 33, Sherlock is 29)
‘Life Goes On’ he types.
Then John sits, hands clasped and pressed against his mouth, and watches the typing cursor blink at him for a full ten minutes.
He should leave typing this up for another time. It hasn’t even been a full day since he was kidnapped and made to wear a bomb. Most people would need time to process that. Most normal people would need to return to therapy and yet…
John feels okay about it. He’s about as confused as he’s ever been, but it’s not because his life was in danger. That’s happened to him plenty.
The cause of his turmoil lounges in a dressing gown, sipping tea in his chair a few scant feet from where John sits now as he tries and fails to type up a blog post in the hopes that it will help him work through what happened.
How can it though? He can’t write it down for the public that Moriarty made him say ‘I love you’ to Sherlock because he had the strange idea that it would affect him somehow. He can’t record the way that it did affect him, the look that it put on Sherlock’s face.
There simply aren’t words. If John even pictures that expression for more than five seconds, it makes his stomach churn and his heart race.
For all that Sherlock is in the same room as him, he’s never felt more distant or closed-off to John.
After Moriarty left the pool, they got cabs home. Cabs, plural. Sherlock declared he needed to think, which was obviously true because they were saved by a mysterious phone call from a player Sherlock wasn’t even aware was on the board, but John would bet everything he had in the world that Sherlock also wanted some time alone to puzzle out how their next conversation would go.
Mainly because it’s a conversation they still haven’t had.
Sherlock hasn’t said a word to him since John arrived back at the flat. He just looked mildly surprised to see him, then went to his bedroom, closed the door, and didn’t emerge until this morning.
John’s not sure if Sherlock managed to sleep at all. (John’s not sure how much sleep Sherlock gets in general.)
His own night passed slowly. He went to bed when he realised (after an hour or so) that Sherlock wouldn’t be coming back out that evening. He didn’t imagine he’d be able to sleep, but he awoke from a nightmare at three in the morning, the usual camouflage uniforms and screams exchanged for designer suits and the smell of chlorine. As he lay awake after that, he had time to think about how he was certain that he’d closed his bedroom door when he came up earlier, not left it ajar.
This morning, in the cold light of day when everything makes more sense, he’s trying to look at it as Sherlock might. Sherlock’s methods - observation and inference.
Observations: Moriarty said that Sherlock thought he was in love with him. Moriarty told him that Sherlock had been searching for him before they met in January. Moriarty raised a theory of Mycroft and Sherlock organising for him to be shot. Sherlock wanted to sacrifice himself, certain that John would travel and be safe.
Inference: Sherlock really is in love with him, or Moriarty is just insane, sick, and twisted.
The trouble is, the latter is certainly true. If the inference really is an ‘or’ statement, then he has his answer.
What if it could be an ‘and’ statement? Sherlock really isn’t the sociopath he claims to be. Sherlock isn’t a lot of the things he claims he is, and he’s quite a few of the things he claims he’s not.
“I should really tell you, if this is my last opportunity.”
“Tell me what, Sherlock?” John asks.
“Sorry?”
Sherlock has turned towards him at the sound of his voice after such a thick, heavy silence. The careful lack of any expression makes him more open than he thinks.
“At the pool, in that last moment before Moriarty’s phone went off, you were going to tell me something.”
Sherlock blinks a few times and John watches the muscle jump in his jaw.
“It was nothing.”
“It didn’t sound like nothing.”
“It was a ploy; I was just stalling for time. I was giving you more time to travel.”
John leans back in his chair, regarding Sherlock’s own posture as he does. His back is straight; his shoulders are squared. He looks ready to march off to a crime scene.
“Are we going to talk about the actual issue here?”
The frustration has crept into his tone without him meaning it to. John massages his temples, still watching Sherlock as if he might get some clue from his body language as to what he’s actually thinking.
He has no idea how to interpret Sherlock staring steadily back at him, apparently at ease now.
“What ‘issue’?” Sherlock scoffs. “That asinine rubbish Moriarty was spouting to distract me? Honestly, John, I credited you with more intelligence than to buy into all of that.”
“Maybe it was the part where he said that you and your brother planned to have me shot that made me question a few things.”
He doesn’t believe that though. That’s not even the issue. Why did he bring them off-topic again?
Sherlock is actually glaring at him now, a crueller, colder look than any he’s had directed at him before by Sherlock when he thought John was being slow or boring.
It’s a far cry from desperate hands ripping that vest from his body, from that desperate plea, you have to know, John.
He does know. Of course he does. He shouldn’t have brought this part up.
“I told you,” Sherlock says. “Everything he said was a lie.”
“I know.” The apologies are forming on his lips. “Sherlock, I-”
“I had nothing to do with your injury,” Sherlock talks over him, standing up. “And I have nothing further to say on the subject.”
Sherlock throws him another sub-zero glance before striding across the room to put his scarf and coat on.
“Where are you going?” John asks, and great, now the resignation is edging into his voice too. He sounds like he’s nagging.
No wonder Sherlock doesn’t answer.
When he hears the front door slam, John makes an echoing thud with his fist against the table.
The subsequent tingle in his hand isn’t caused by his violent outburst, as there’s an accompanying feeling of sickness.
John rolls his eyes. “Not now,” he murmurs to himself. “Not fucking n-”
----
23rd April 2001 (John is 33, Sherlock is 20)
John waits until he gets out of the alley to wince, clenching and unclenching the fingers of his left hand. Bloody hell, he’d forgotten how much punching someone in the face fucking hurts.
Behind him, the young student he’s just helped is still gaping at the unconscious mugger stripped to his underwear on the floor, probably unsure whether to be more stunned that a naked man just saved him by springing out of nowhere and rugby tackling his assailant to the ground, or that the naked man took the mugger’s clothes and then asked a series of strange, obvious questions.
John shifts his shoulders in his stolen clothes as he walks up the road. Sweatshirt and jogging bottoms, lovely. Even lovelier is the pervading scent of alcohol, brutality, and cigarette smoke. Beggars can’t be choosers though, and he’d rather not have to find his way through the dark streets of Cambridge with everything on display.
The best things he got from their friendly neighbourhood mugger were the shoes, definitely. They’re cheap trainers, nothing fancy, but the soles of his feet are the most vulnerable part of him when he travels, and he really doesn’t fancy a stray needle piercing his skin. That would be all he needs.
When he first arrived, it had still been light out and he’d ended up curling up behind a bin rather than attempting to leave the alley and go in search of clothes. He was likely to be arrested for public indecency before he could find some. So he went to sleep right there, safe in the knowledge that if he was meant to do something in this time period, then the action would come to him.
Sure enough, he stopped a student getting stabbed hours later. Not bad for a night’s work.
He’s not actually all that far from where Sherlock must be right now. The student in the alley told him that the year is 2001, the month is April, and that he’s in Cambridge, a short walk from Trinity College. Sherlock told him just last week that he went to Trinity, yawning and stretching after a night of being cramped up, hunched like a vulture over his laptop as he worked tirelessly on one of the cases (puzzles) to save Moriarty’s bomb victims.
John hadn’t understood the relevance at the time, but it makes sense now. He was feeding John the knowledge in anticipation of his visit. He probably worked out exactly which point in his life John was going to from John’s age and the scrawled notes in the margins of his John-journal.
Is it still anticipation if it’s already happened for Sherlock? John can’t keep track of his tenses and definitions anymore, he really can’t.
There was something guarded in Sherlock’s expression as he mentioned his university days. He’s always near unfathomable, but he was particularly poker-faced this time in his offhand comment. It made John feel nervous, because it was the exact same look that Sherlock gets when he’s going to attempt something stupid on his own without telling John about it. He had it the night of the pool incident when John left him alone. He’s not going to forgive himself for that one for a long time.
He’s coming up on the college now, and he can see straight away that the large wooden doors of the entrance are shut. How is he actually meant to get in to find Sherlock? He doesn’t think that he’ll just be let through the front gate, and the idea of loitering around and waiting for a student to come back so he can persuade them either to sneak him in or vouch for him to a porter is just distasteful.
How do things even work at a university as prestigious as Cambridge anyway? Do they have curfews? He’s pretty sure they do have porters that let you in, at least. But would the porter still be awake at… John looks at his watch, which reads 15:31 and is blatantly wrong. It’s pitch dark and probably close to midnight by now.
As he goes to walk up to the gate, still deciding what to do, he hears singing coming from somewhere to his left. The song is unrecognisable, off-key and out of time as a male voice croons it out, the lyrics a slurred, garbled mess. John grins to himself and looks over to find a couple staggering up the road, a petite blonde girl just barely propping up a tall man with dreadlocks.
Drunken students back from a night out, perfect.
“Hey,” he calls out to them, “I need a favour!”
--
After finding out he was in totally the wrong place (“Sherlock’s over in The Wolfson Building, where we’re headed, come on”), he is now in the correct one at the very least. It’s a rough structure of concrete, glass and exposed brickwork, nothing at all like John would have pictured as accommodation for Cambridge students. It doesn’t seem to fit with the stunning architecture and grandeur of everything he’s passed so far.
His tour-guides, Lilah and James, are now safely ensconced in Lilah’s room after John ensured they got there without any major incidents. He left advising them both to drink plenty of water with another student watching out for them and went to continue his search.
He’s been told that Sherlock is five rooms down from Lilah, so John positions himself outside the appropriate closed door and raises his fist to knock on the wood. He’ll never know why, but he feels like a bucket of ice is dropped over him in that moment, the hairs on the back of his neck standing to attention. It’s pure instinct, the sort of feeling he would get in Afghanistan. A warning that something isn’t right. He’s had plenty of false alarms, but his instincts haven’t led him astray as many times as they’ve saved him.
Sherlock’s flat expression flashes through John’s mind, his reluctance to speak about university beyond the college he attended. What was it about this particular visit that had him worried and tight-lipped? Normally he’s smug because he knows something John doesn’t. Granted, that isn’t an unusual occurrence, but he can tell Sherlock has put up with a lot of vague hinting and outright refusal to give anything away from different versions of John throughout his childhood and adolescence. He definitely enjoys the fact that the tables have turned in the present.
So his reticence was out of the ordinary.
As John waits with his hand poised, he hears muffled noises from within the room. A voice that isn’t Sherlock’s.
Does Sherlock have someone with him? With him, with him? As in…
A low moan drifts through the door and John’s stomach drops. That’s not pleasure. That was pain.
No longer caring about knocking, John turns the doorknob and barges straight in to find Sherlock laying on the bed, head twisted to one side, navy shirt open to reveal his pale, skinny chest. A man is straddling him, his hands on Sherlock’s belt.
“Who the fuck are you?” asks the man.
John doesn’t spare the man a second glance when he speaks because he’s looking at Sherlock, the uncomfortable angle of his head, his wide open eyes. Sherlock’s (usually keen, ever-roaming) quicksilver eyes are fixed, the pupils dilated and the colour of his iris only just discernible. The lights are on but Sherlock isn’t home.
And there is a man straddling him, his hands on Sherlock’s belt.
That’s when John loses it.
He strides across the room, and shoves the man off Sherlock with all his strength. He pushes so hard that he and the man go tumbling over the other side of the bed where John now sits on him, much the same way as the man been sitting on Sherlock, and lays into him. He punches and punches, and the man is trying to block his fists, trying to protect his face from the blows, but John just keeps hitting and hitting until his knuckles ache, until the man stops moving beneath him. (Until a good minute after the man stops moving beneath him.)
John breathes heavily through his nose, pulling back his fist to strike again when he hears a muffled whimper behind him. Sherlock.
He stands up too fast, trembling from adrenaline, rage and sheer, blind panic, and turns back to Sherlock.
“Oh God, Sherlock,” he breathes, moving to sit on the edge of the bed, reaching out a hand to take Sherlock’s pulse as the doctor in him takes over from the soldier. “What’s he given you?”
Sherlock doesn’t respond, still staring blindly. His radial artery constricts and dilates under John’s fingers, sluggish, weak. It’s proof he’s alive though, with a beating heart, and John will take that. He puts his ear to Sherlock’s mouth after checking it for any obstructions. Slow, shallow puffs of air intermittently moisten his cheek. Depressed respiration. Sherlock has had a high dose of something. Ketamine, at a guess. John doesn’t know whether to be more terrified of Sherlock’s immobile body and his sightless eyes, or whatever dissociative hallucinations that might be going on behind them. Sherlock being trapped in his own mind is dangerous at the best of times, let alone when a drug is altering his perception of reality.
John needs help.
There’s a mobile on the desk, an old Nokia. No touch screen, no colour, no apps or any of the other unnecessary gimmicks - all that matters is that it’s got a functioning number 9 key and John presses it three times with a thumb that slips against the plastic.
He bites out the details efficiently, thankful that his medical training is coming to the fore in a stressful situation, even as he ends the call with a plea for the ambulance to hurry. He looks down at Sherlock, grimacing at his ashen face, his sharp cheekbones. He’s thinner now than he is in the present. Sherlock looks like death warmed up, but he was probably this way to begin with before the bastard on the floor got to him.
Christ, Sherlock, what’s happened to you?
There’s an old bruise under Sherlock’s jaw, turned a faded yellow-brown colour, and John wants to ghost his fingers over it. He can’t though, not when Sherlock is so out of it like this. He knows a conscious Sherlock probably wouldn’t resist his touch, but there’s a man lying on the floor who was touching him while he was drugged, unable to move or talk or prevent it. John can’t be like that man now, whether Sherlock would be all right with it or not.
“Not long now,” he says aloud, resolving to talk to Sherlock until the ambulance arrives. “You’ll be okay, Sherlock. Everything will be okay.”
His own heart is racing, a feeling of sickness pushing it’s way up his chest and clogging his throat. Pins and needles suddenly erupt in his left hand and John wants to scream. He can’t travel. He can’t leave, not now, not when Sherlock needs him most.
Inspiration hits him like lightning: the phone. He opens the contacts and finds a single number to call, praying that it will be Mycroft on the other end of the line and not a Chinese takeaway.
“What is it this time, dear brother?”
Thank God.
“Mycroft, it’s John.” There’s a pause. John holds the phone away from his ear and checks that they’re still connected. “Hello? Mycroft, are you there?”
“Who is this? And why do you have my brother’s phone?”
Shit. He’s forgotten that he hasn’t met Mycroft yet. “I’m- I’m a friend of Sherlock’s at uni. He’s in a bad way; he said to call you in an emergency.”
“And what exactly is a ‘bad way’?”
“In some kind of trance in his dorm, not moving and probably hallucinating after a large dose of ketamine. Oh, and he was nearly sexually assaulted, is that bad enough?”
Another pause. John grits his teeth and doesn’t bother to check the phone this time.
“You’re not a university friend,” Mycroft says eventually, and follows it up with: “I’m on my way.”
“I don’t know how much longer I can stay with him.”
“You’ll stay with him, John, or there will be no place left on this earth that will be safe for you to crawl into and hide in. Do you understand?”
John ignores the threat. “Have you got someone watching over him here? An agent?”
“How-”
“Send them in now, and be sure to sack them later,” John says and disconnects the call.
Sherlock is in the same position on the bed, but his eyes are now continuously jerking to the left before swinging slowly back to the right. Nystagmoid movements. It’s a bad sign.
“Big brother’s on his way,” John tells him, “and a guard dog will be along in the meantime. I can’t stay, Sherlock, god, I want to. You’ll be all right though, I know you will.”
A hulking figure in a suit steps through the door as John says it, breathing fast. Fast enough to give away the fact that he just ran here full pelt from God knows where.
“Mr Holmes,” the man begins to say, and John breathes a sigh of relief both at the concern in his tone - this man will take care of Sherlock - and at the sirens he can hear approaching. He stops fighting it and disappears.
--
30th May 2010 (John is 33, Sherlock is 29)
John feels raw when he gets back, the urgency of his battle with himself lingering in his raised heart rate, his trembling hands. He’s slumped in the doorway of Sherlock’s bedroom, eyes closed and head tilted down, being watched by the man himself. He can feel it, the weight of Sherlock’s gaze on him in the strained silence of the room.
“John.”
Sherlock’s tone gives nothing away. John opens his eyes and looks up at him, finding Sherlock sat up in bed. He’s on top of the covers in his usual sleep-wear of a soft t-shirt and pyjama bottoms, illuminated only by the light coming from the laptop perched on his thighs.
The room is dark otherwise - John left mid-morning and he’s been gone for several hours.
Sherlock’s expression isn’t as dead as his voice, the worry etched into the lines of his face. He would have known before John left the time period he was going to, and now he’s worried about John’s reaction. Add to that their sort-of fight and Sherlock sort-of storming out and everything is a bit of a mess.
John isn’t even sure what his reaction is. He’s confused. He walked into that situation with no clue what was going on, he reacted through instinct while he was there, and now he’s back and he has to deal with it.
He’s got questions, perhaps he should start with the most important one.
“Were you all right after?”
There’s a pause where Sherlock reaches over to turn on his bedside lamp, shuts his laptop and then puts it down on the floor by the bed. In the splash of light, John remembers his current nude state. It occurs to him to be embarrassed, but he only really wonders if it makes him more or less threatening to Sherlock at this point in time, after he’s come back from… that.
He’s down to his skin, the last protective layer before blood, bone, and yielding, pulsating internal organs. Clothes are something like armour, but taking them off doesn’t mean shedding your power. He may be naked, soft and ridiculous, but Sherlock is definitely the more vulnerable one right now.
Whilst his hand is still on the floor, Sherlock picks up one of his silk dressing gowns and throws it in John’s direction. He then laces his fingers together and rests them on his stomach. He shuts his eyes when John stands to cover himself.
“Yes,” he says. “I was all right. Mycroft sorted everything.”
John nods. He expected no less, but it’s not really answering the question. “Who was the man?”
“Someone on my course.”
It’s a non-answer. Sherlock doesn’t want to give away too much, as usual. He must know that John won’t give up though.
“Was he a friend? Before… before that, I mean.”
John ties the dressing gown and crosses the room to the bed, sitting down just on the edge, level with Sherlock’s knees. He wants to sit closer, but he’s seen the tension in his jaw and shoulders. He’s just seen a man preparing to do unspeakable things to Sherlock, and he’s not sure how he’ll be received, or how Sherlock might see him. Logically, nothing has changed but John’s knowledge. Sherlock is not a wilting flower who’s suddenly going to flinch away from any touch, but John still thinks better of getting too close.
“No. Just someone on my course. I didn’t have friends at university.” Sherlock speaks matter-of-factly, but John saw his face in the bank where Sebastian Wilkes worked when the man (the prick) said everyone at university hated him. John hates his own dismissive comment at the beginning of that conversation now, colleagues, but he can’t take it back. He can’t make that experience better for Sherlock, no matter how much he wants to.
“He drugged you?”
There was a period of time in Sherlock’s life when Sherlock drugged himself, John can’t help but think. Was this one of those occasions?
“I didn’t take it willingly, if that’s what you mean.”
“I didn’t-”
“Of course you did. Rightly so.”
There’s a soft rustle of fabric behind him. John turns to see Sherlock pulling his t-shirt over his head and then removing his pyjama bottoms. John looks away quickly, flushing. Sherlock is obviously completely unabashed when naked, the same as he is clothed in his expensive suits. He’s a long stretch of pale skin, dark hair and a few sparse scars and freckles. Nothing to be ashamed of, John would say. Bodies are just bodies, when it comes down to it. He only really gets embarrassed himself if he thinks other people are embarrassed. Sherlock’s lack of inhibition is… refreshing.
“You can sit comfortably if we have to have this conversation, John. And stop thinking so much, it’s annoying.”
John doesn’t move, keeping a good foot of space separating them from bodily contact. “I’m sorry about earlier,” he blurts out, because it’s on his mind. “I don’t believe Moriarty. Of course I don’t.”
With a nod, Sherlock rolls onto his side and puts his back to John.
“I don’t remember a lot of it,” he says quietly after a few moments. “Only what Mycroft and his agent told me afterwards. Mycroft told me about the phone call, I knew it could only be you.”
“He was on top of you and you were so out of it,” John says, voice hushed to match Sherlock’s. “I’ve never wanted to kill someone so much in my entire life, and not only that, I wanted him to suffer for what he’d done, for what he was going to do. I would have killed him, but you needed me, and you came first.”
Sherlock turns back over to look at John then, losing the tension in his body. One corner of his mouth pulls back, a sad imitation of a smile. An acknowledgement, maybe even an offering of gratitude. “I stopped caring about it all because I couldn’t remember it, and so it wasn’t worth thinking about. The ketamine was the worst thing, really. By all rights, the things I saw should have put me off drugs forever.”
John’s hands clench reflexively. “What did you see?”
“I really don’t remember much of it. I deleted as much as I could.”
“Not good?” John asks softly, feeling like his heart is lodged in his throat.
Sherlock stays silent; his eyes flicker and then shut. He rolls onto his side again. “Goodnight, John.”
It’s an end to the conversation.
That night, John dreams again. Needles and beeping monitors and hospital beds and dorm room beds and Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock.
His door isn’t ajar when he wakes with a silent scream.
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock/John
Rating: NC-17 overall
Warnings/Spoilers: Drug use, violence, attempted rape.
Summary: 29th May 2010 (Sherlock is 29, John is 33).
It's something of an anti-climax. A ridiculous ringtone, a maddening half of a conversation, and then he was left with John looking at him as if he had betrayed him.
Disclaimer: This is the bit where they make me say I don't own anything. Sherlock is the property of the BBC, Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss and, of course, the one and only Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The Time Traveler's Wife belongs to Audrey Niffenegger.
On AO3
29th May 2010 (Sherlock is 29, John is 33)
It’s something of an anti-climax. There he was, prepared to die for John, prepared to divulge the one secret of his heart rather than his head, and then… nothing. A ridiculous ringtone, a maddening half of a conversation, and then he was left with John looking at him as if he had betrayed him.
He doesn’t have time for it. He needs to figure out what Moriarty’s next move will be. He needs to know who just saved them, whether they are a friend or foe. There are questions that need answering and he can’t think, he can’t, because John Watson is looking at him like that.
There will be time later to explain himself. Maybe he’ll even manage to convince John not to leave Baker Street, but it’s doubtful, not if John truly believes that Sherlock could have had one iota of involvement with him being shot in Afghanistan. Even if he believes that, he’ll want to leave if he knows, as he surely must now, how Sherlock feels for him.
Sherlock didn’t even know before tonight, not fully.
There will be time later to attempt to salvage their relationship, but the first thing he needs to do is ensure John’s safety. The game is on with Moriarty, and he’s going to need help if this goes where he thinks it will, where he knows it must.
He gets a cab alone. He leaves John waiting for another, with no idea where he might ask for it to take him. Probably somewhere far away from Sherlock.
Sherlock leans his head against the car window, closes his eyes and pictures London rushing by him. He doesn’t need to open his eyes to know the mental picture is accurate.
He makes a call to his older brother.
----
30th May 2010 (John is 33, Sherlock is 29)
‘Life Goes On’ he types.
Then John sits, hands clasped and pressed against his mouth, and watches the typing cursor blink at him for a full ten minutes.
He should leave typing this up for another time. It hasn’t even been a full day since he was kidnapped and made to wear a bomb. Most people would need time to process that. Most normal people would need to return to therapy and yet…
John feels okay about it. He’s about as confused as he’s ever been, but it’s not because his life was in danger. That’s happened to him plenty.
The cause of his turmoil lounges in a dressing gown, sipping tea in his chair a few scant feet from where John sits now as he tries and fails to type up a blog post in the hopes that it will help him work through what happened.
How can it though? He can’t write it down for the public that Moriarty made him say ‘I love you’ to Sherlock because he had the strange idea that it would affect him somehow. He can’t record the way that it did affect him, the look that it put on Sherlock’s face.
There simply aren’t words. If John even pictures that expression for more than five seconds, it makes his stomach churn and his heart race.
For all that Sherlock is in the same room as him, he’s never felt more distant or closed-off to John.
After Moriarty left the pool, they got cabs home. Cabs, plural. Sherlock declared he needed to think, which was obviously true because they were saved by a mysterious phone call from a player Sherlock wasn’t even aware was on the board, but John would bet everything he had in the world that Sherlock also wanted some time alone to puzzle out how their next conversation would go.
Mainly because it’s a conversation they still haven’t had.
Sherlock hasn’t said a word to him since John arrived back at the flat. He just looked mildly surprised to see him, then went to his bedroom, closed the door, and didn’t emerge until this morning.
John’s not sure if Sherlock managed to sleep at all. (John’s not sure how much sleep Sherlock gets in general.)
His own night passed slowly. He went to bed when he realised (after an hour or so) that Sherlock wouldn’t be coming back out that evening. He didn’t imagine he’d be able to sleep, but he awoke from a nightmare at three in the morning, the usual camouflage uniforms and screams exchanged for designer suits and the smell of chlorine. As he lay awake after that, he had time to think about how he was certain that he’d closed his bedroom door when he came up earlier, not left it ajar.
This morning, in the cold light of day when everything makes more sense, he’s trying to look at it as Sherlock might. Sherlock’s methods - observation and inference.
Observations: Moriarty said that Sherlock thought he was in love with him. Moriarty told him that Sherlock had been searching for him before they met in January. Moriarty raised a theory of Mycroft and Sherlock organising for him to be shot. Sherlock wanted to sacrifice himself, certain that John would travel and be safe.
Inference: Sherlock really is in love with him, or Moriarty is just insane, sick, and twisted.
The trouble is, the latter is certainly true. If the inference really is an ‘or’ statement, then he has his answer.
What if it could be an ‘and’ statement? Sherlock really isn’t the sociopath he claims to be. Sherlock isn’t a lot of the things he claims he is, and he’s quite a few of the things he claims he’s not.
“I should really tell you, if this is my last opportunity.”
“Tell me what, Sherlock?” John asks.
“Sorry?”
Sherlock has turned towards him at the sound of his voice after such a thick, heavy silence. The careful lack of any expression makes him more open than he thinks.
“At the pool, in that last moment before Moriarty’s phone went off, you were going to tell me something.”
Sherlock blinks a few times and John watches the muscle jump in his jaw.
“It was nothing.”
“It didn’t sound like nothing.”
“It was a ploy; I was just stalling for time. I was giving you more time to travel.”
John leans back in his chair, regarding Sherlock’s own posture as he does. His back is straight; his shoulders are squared. He looks ready to march off to a crime scene.
“Are we going to talk about the actual issue here?”
The frustration has crept into his tone without him meaning it to. John massages his temples, still watching Sherlock as if he might get some clue from his body language as to what he’s actually thinking.
He has no idea how to interpret Sherlock staring steadily back at him, apparently at ease now.
“What ‘issue’?” Sherlock scoffs. “That asinine rubbish Moriarty was spouting to distract me? Honestly, John, I credited you with more intelligence than to buy into all of that.”
“Maybe it was the part where he said that you and your brother planned to have me shot that made me question a few things.”
He doesn’t believe that though. That’s not even the issue. Why did he bring them off-topic again?
Sherlock is actually glaring at him now, a crueller, colder look than any he’s had directed at him before by Sherlock when he thought John was being slow or boring.
It’s a far cry from desperate hands ripping that vest from his body, from that desperate plea, you have to know, John.
He does know. Of course he does. He shouldn’t have brought this part up.
“I told you,” Sherlock says. “Everything he said was a lie.”
“I know.” The apologies are forming on his lips. “Sherlock, I-”
“I had nothing to do with your injury,” Sherlock talks over him, standing up. “And I have nothing further to say on the subject.”
Sherlock throws him another sub-zero glance before striding across the room to put his scarf and coat on.
“Where are you going?” John asks, and great, now the resignation is edging into his voice too. He sounds like he’s nagging.
No wonder Sherlock doesn’t answer.
When he hears the front door slam, John makes an echoing thud with his fist against the table.
The subsequent tingle in his hand isn’t caused by his violent outburst, as there’s an accompanying feeling of sickness.
John rolls his eyes. “Not now,” he murmurs to himself. “Not fucking n-”
----
23rd April 2001 (John is 33, Sherlock is 20)
John waits until he gets out of the alley to wince, clenching and unclenching the fingers of his left hand. Bloody hell, he’d forgotten how much punching someone in the face fucking hurts.
Behind him, the young student he’s just helped is still gaping at the unconscious mugger stripped to his underwear on the floor, probably unsure whether to be more stunned that a naked man just saved him by springing out of nowhere and rugby tackling his assailant to the ground, or that the naked man took the mugger’s clothes and then asked a series of strange, obvious questions.
John shifts his shoulders in his stolen clothes as he walks up the road. Sweatshirt and jogging bottoms, lovely. Even lovelier is the pervading scent of alcohol, brutality, and cigarette smoke. Beggars can’t be choosers though, and he’d rather not have to find his way through the dark streets of Cambridge with everything on display.
The best things he got from their friendly neighbourhood mugger were the shoes, definitely. They’re cheap trainers, nothing fancy, but the soles of his feet are the most vulnerable part of him when he travels, and he really doesn’t fancy a stray needle piercing his skin. That would be all he needs.
When he first arrived, it had still been light out and he’d ended up curling up behind a bin rather than attempting to leave the alley and go in search of clothes. He was likely to be arrested for public indecency before he could find some. So he went to sleep right there, safe in the knowledge that if he was meant to do something in this time period, then the action would come to him.
Sure enough, he stopped a student getting stabbed hours later. Not bad for a night’s work.
He’s not actually all that far from where Sherlock must be right now. The student in the alley told him that the year is 2001, the month is April, and that he’s in Cambridge, a short walk from Trinity College. Sherlock told him just last week that he went to Trinity, yawning and stretching after a night of being cramped up, hunched like a vulture over his laptop as he worked tirelessly on one of the cases (puzzles) to save Moriarty’s bomb victims.
John hadn’t understood the relevance at the time, but it makes sense now. He was feeding John the knowledge in anticipation of his visit. He probably worked out exactly which point in his life John was going to from John’s age and the scrawled notes in the margins of his John-journal.
Is it still anticipation if it’s already happened for Sherlock? John can’t keep track of his tenses and definitions anymore, he really can’t.
There was something guarded in Sherlock’s expression as he mentioned his university days. He’s always near unfathomable, but he was particularly poker-faced this time in his offhand comment. It made John feel nervous, because it was the exact same look that Sherlock gets when he’s going to attempt something stupid on his own without telling John about it. He had it the night of the pool incident when John left him alone. He’s not going to forgive himself for that one for a long time.
He’s coming up on the college now, and he can see straight away that the large wooden doors of the entrance are shut. How is he actually meant to get in to find Sherlock? He doesn’t think that he’ll just be let through the front gate, and the idea of loitering around and waiting for a student to come back so he can persuade them either to sneak him in or vouch for him to a porter is just distasteful.
How do things even work at a university as prestigious as Cambridge anyway? Do they have curfews? He’s pretty sure they do have porters that let you in, at least. But would the porter still be awake at… John looks at his watch, which reads 15:31 and is blatantly wrong. It’s pitch dark and probably close to midnight by now.
As he goes to walk up to the gate, still deciding what to do, he hears singing coming from somewhere to his left. The song is unrecognisable, off-key and out of time as a male voice croons it out, the lyrics a slurred, garbled mess. John grins to himself and looks over to find a couple staggering up the road, a petite blonde girl just barely propping up a tall man with dreadlocks.
Drunken students back from a night out, perfect.
“Hey,” he calls out to them, “I need a favour!”
--
After finding out he was in totally the wrong place (“Sherlock’s over in The Wolfson Building, where we’re headed, come on”), he is now in the correct one at the very least. It’s a rough structure of concrete, glass and exposed brickwork, nothing at all like John would have pictured as accommodation for Cambridge students. It doesn’t seem to fit with the stunning architecture and grandeur of everything he’s passed so far.
His tour-guides, Lilah and James, are now safely ensconced in Lilah’s room after John ensured they got there without any major incidents. He left advising them both to drink plenty of water with another student watching out for them and went to continue his search.
He’s been told that Sherlock is five rooms down from Lilah, so John positions himself outside the appropriate closed door and raises his fist to knock on the wood. He’ll never know why, but he feels like a bucket of ice is dropped over him in that moment, the hairs on the back of his neck standing to attention. It’s pure instinct, the sort of feeling he would get in Afghanistan. A warning that something isn’t right. He’s had plenty of false alarms, but his instincts haven’t led him astray as many times as they’ve saved him.
Sherlock’s flat expression flashes through John’s mind, his reluctance to speak about university beyond the college he attended. What was it about this particular visit that had him worried and tight-lipped? Normally he’s smug because he knows something John doesn’t. Granted, that isn’t an unusual occurrence, but he can tell Sherlock has put up with a lot of vague hinting and outright refusal to give anything away from different versions of John throughout his childhood and adolescence. He definitely enjoys the fact that the tables have turned in the present.
So his reticence was out of the ordinary.
As John waits with his hand poised, he hears muffled noises from within the room. A voice that isn’t Sherlock’s.
Does Sherlock have someone with him? With him, with him? As in…
A low moan drifts through the door and John’s stomach drops. That’s not pleasure. That was pain.
No longer caring about knocking, John turns the doorknob and barges straight in to find Sherlock laying on the bed, head twisted to one side, navy shirt open to reveal his pale, skinny chest. A man is straddling him, his hands on Sherlock’s belt.
“Who the fuck are you?” asks the man.
John doesn’t spare the man a second glance when he speaks because he’s looking at Sherlock, the uncomfortable angle of his head, his wide open eyes. Sherlock’s (usually keen, ever-roaming) quicksilver eyes are fixed, the pupils dilated and the colour of his iris only just discernible. The lights are on but Sherlock isn’t home.
And there is a man straddling him, his hands on Sherlock’s belt.
That’s when John loses it.
He strides across the room, and shoves the man off Sherlock with all his strength. He pushes so hard that he and the man go tumbling over the other side of the bed where John now sits on him, much the same way as the man been sitting on Sherlock, and lays into him. He punches and punches, and the man is trying to block his fists, trying to protect his face from the blows, but John just keeps hitting and hitting until his knuckles ache, until the man stops moving beneath him. (Until a good minute after the man stops moving beneath him.)
John breathes heavily through his nose, pulling back his fist to strike again when he hears a muffled whimper behind him. Sherlock.
He stands up too fast, trembling from adrenaline, rage and sheer, blind panic, and turns back to Sherlock.
“Oh God, Sherlock,” he breathes, moving to sit on the edge of the bed, reaching out a hand to take Sherlock’s pulse as the doctor in him takes over from the soldier. “What’s he given you?”
Sherlock doesn’t respond, still staring blindly. His radial artery constricts and dilates under John’s fingers, sluggish, weak. It’s proof he’s alive though, with a beating heart, and John will take that. He puts his ear to Sherlock’s mouth after checking it for any obstructions. Slow, shallow puffs of air intermittently moisten his cheek. Depressed respiration. Sherlock has had a high dose of something. Ketamine, at a guess. John doesn’t know whether to be more terrified of Sherlock’s immobile body and his sightless eyes, or whatever dissociative hallucinations that might be going on behind them. Sherlock being trapped in his own mind is dangerous at the best of times, let alone when a drug is altering his perception of reality.
John needs help.
There’s a mobile on the desk, an old Nokia. No touch screen, no colour, no apps or any of the other unnecessary gimmicks - all that matters is that it’s got a functioning number 9 key and John presses it three times with a thumb that slips against the plastic.
He bites out the details efficiently, thankful that his medical training is coming to the fore in a stressful situation, even as he ends the call with a plea for the ambulance to hurry. He looks down at Sherlock, grimacing at his ashen face, his sharp cheekbones. He’s thinner now than he is in the present. Sherlock looks like death warmed up, but he was probably this way to begin with before the bastard on the floor got to him.
Christ, Sherlock, what’s happened to you?
There’s an old bruise under Sherlock’s jaw, turned a faded yellow-brown colour, and John wants to ghost his fingers over it. He can’t though, not when Sherlock is so out of it like this. He knows a conscious Sherlock probably wouldn’t resist his touch, but there’s a man lying on the floor who was touching him while he was drugged, unable to move or talk or prevent it. John can’t be like that man now, whether Sherlock would be all right with it or not.
“Not long now,” he says aloud, resolving to talk to Sherlock until the ambulance arrives. “You’ll be okay, Sherlock. Everything will be okay.”
His own heart is racing, a feeling of sickness pushing it’s way up his chest and clogging his throat. Pins and needles suddenly erupt in his left hand and John wants to scream. He can’t travel. He can’t leave, not now, not when Sherlock needs him most.
Inspiration hits him like lightning: the phone. He opens the contacts and finds a single number to call, praying that it will be Mycroft on the other end of the line and not a Chinese takeaway.
“What is it this time, dear brother?”
Thank God.
“Mycroft, it’s John.” There’s a pause. John holds the phone away from his ear and checks that they’re still connected. “Hello? Mycroft, are you there?”
“Who is this? And why do you have my brother’s phone?”
Shit. He’s forgotten that he hasn’t met Mycroft yet. “I’m- I’m a friend of Sherlock’s at uni. He’s in a bad way; he said to call you in an emergency.”
“And what exactly is a ‘bad way’?”
“In some kind of trance in his dorm, not moving and probably hallucinating after a large dose of ketamine. Oh, and he was nearly sexually assaulted, is that bad enough?”
Another pause. John grits his teeth and doesn’t bother to check the phone this time.
“You’re not a university friend,” Mycroft says eventually, and follows it up with: “I’m on my way.”
“I don’t know how much longer I can stay with him.”
“You’ll stay with him, John, or there will be no place left on this earth that will be safe for you to crawl into and hide in. Do you understand?”
John ignores the threat. “Have you got someone watching over him here? An agent?”
“How-”
“Send them in now, and be sure to sack them later,” John says and disconnects the call.
Sherlock is in the same position on the bed, but his eyes are now continuously jerking to the left before swinging slowly back to the right. Nystagmoid movements. It’s a bad sign.
“Big brother’s on his way,” John tells him, “and a guard dog will be along in the meantime. I can’t stay, Sherlock, god, I want to. You’ll be all right though, I know you will.”
A hulking figure in a suit steps through the door as John says it, breathing fast. Fast enough to give away the fact that he just ran here full pelt from God knows where.
“Mr Holmes,” the man begins to say, and John breathes a sigh of relief both at the concern in his tone - this man will take care of Sherlock - and at the sirens he can hear approaching. He stops fighting it and disappears.
--
30th May 2010 (John is 33, Sherlock is 29)
John feels raw when he gets back, the urgency of his battle with himself lingering in his raised heart rate, his trembling hands. He’s slumped in the doorway of Sherlock’s bedroom, eyes closed and head tilted down, being watched by the man himself. He can feel it, the weight of Sherlock’s gaze on him in the strained silence of the room.
“John.”
Sherlock’s tone gives nothing away. John opens his eyes and looks up at him, finding Sherlock sat up in bed. He’s on top of the covers in his usual sleep-wear of a soft t-shirt and pyjama bottoms, illuminated only by the light coming from the laptop perched on his thighs.
The room is dark otherwise - John left mid-morning and he’s been gone for several hours.
Sherlock’s expression isn’t as dead as his voice, the worry etched into the lines of his face. He would have known before John left the time period he was going to, and now he’s worried about John’s reaction. Add to that their sort-of fight and Sherlock sort-of storming out and everything is a bit of a mess.
John isn’t even sure what his reaction is. He’s confused. He walked into that situation with no clue what was going on, he reacted through instinct while he was there, and now he’s back and he has to deal with it.
He’s got questions, perhaps he should start with the most important one.
“Were you all right after?”
There’s a pause where Sherlock reaches over to turn on his bedside lamp, shuts his laptop and then puts it down on the floor by the bed. In the splash of light, John remembers his current nude state. It occurs to him to be embarrassed, but he only really wonders if it makes him more or less threatening to Sherlock at this point in time, after he’s come back from… that.
He’s down to his skin, the last protective layer before blood, bone, and yielding, pulsating internal organs. Clothes are something like armour, but taking them off doesn’t mean shedding your power. He may be naked, soft and ridiculous, but Sherlock is definitely the more vulnerable one right now.
Whilst his hand is still on the floor, Sherlock picks up one of his silk dressing gowns and throws it in John’s direction. He then laces his fingers together and rests them on his stomach. He shuts his eyes when John stands to cover himself.
“Yes,” he says. “I was all right. Mycroft sorted everything.”
John nods. He expected no less, but it’s not really answering the question. “Who was the man?”
“Someone on my course.”
It’s a non-answer. Sherlock doesn’t want to give away too much, as usual. He must know that John won’t give up though.
“Was he a friend? Before… before that, I mean.”
John ties the dressing gown and crosses the room to the bed, sitting down just on the edge, level with Sherlock’s knees. He wants to sit closer, but he’s seen the tension in his jaw and shoulders. He’s just seen a man preparing to do unspeakable things to Sherlock, and he’s not sure how he’ll be received, or how Sherlock might see him. Logically, nothing has changed but John’s knowledge. Sherlock is not a wilting flower who’s suddenly going to flinch away from any touch, but John still thinks better of getting too close.
“No. Just someone on my course. I didn’t have friends at university.” Sherlock speaks matter-of-factly, but John saw his face in the bank where Sebastian Wilkes worked when the man (the prick) said everyone at university hated him. John hates his own dismissive comment at the beginning of that conversation now, colleagues, but he can’t take it back. He can’t make that experience better for Sherlock, no matter how much he wants to.
“He drugged you?”
There was a period of time in Sherlock’s life when Sherlock drugged himself, John can’t help but think. Was this one of those occasions?
“I didn’t take it willingly, if that’s what you mean.”
“I didn’t-”
“Of course you did. Rightly so.”
There’s a soft rustle of fabric behind him. John turns to see Sherlock pulling his t-shirt over his head and then removing his pyjama bottoms. John looks away quickly, flushing. Sherlock is obviously completely unabashed when naked, the same as he is clothed in his expensive suits. He’s a long stretch of pale skin, dark hair and a few sparse scars and freckles. Nothing to be ashamed of, John would say. Bodies are just bodies, when it comes down to it. He only really gets embarrassed himself if he thinks other people are embarrassed. Sherlock’s lack of inhibition is… refreshing.
“You can sit comfortably if we have to have this conversation, John. And stop thinking so much, it’s annoying.”
John doesn’t move, keeping a good foot of space separating them from bodily contact. “I’m sorry about earlier,” he blurts out, because it’s on his mind. “I don’t believe Moriarty. Of course I don’t.”
With a nod, Sherlock rolls onto his side and puts his back to John.
“I don’t remember a lot of it,” he says quietly after a few moments. “Only what Mycroft and his agent told me afterwards. Mycroft told me about the phone call, I knew it could only be you.”
“He was on top of you and you were so out of it,” John says, voice hushed to match Sherlock’s. “I’ve never wanted to kill someone so much in my entire life, and not only that, I wanted him to suffer for what he’d done, for what he was going to do. I would have killed him, but you needed me, and you came first.”
Sherlock turns back over to look at John then, losing the tension in his body. One corner of his mouth pulls back, a sad imitation of a smile. An acknowledgement, maybe even an offering of gratitude. “I stopped caring about it all because I couldn’t remember it, and so it wasn’t worth thinking about. The ketamine was the worst thing, really. By all rights, the things I saw should have put me off drugs forever.”
John’s hands clench reflexively. “What did you see?”
“I really don’t remember much of it. I deleted as much as I could.”
“Not good?” John asks softly, feeling like his heart is lodged in his throat.
Sherlock stays silent; his eyes flicker and then shut. He rolls onto his side again. “Goodnight, John.”
It’s an end to the conversation.
That night, John dreams again. Needles and beeping monitors and hospital beds and dorm room beds and Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock.
His door isn’t ajar when he wakes with a silent scream.