Fic: Pawn, Ch.1 / ?
Title: Pawn
Author: metaphlame
Alternate Links: AO3
Rating: Mature (pretty much for just language at this point)
Summary: A year to the day after Sherlock's jump, John is mugged. When he finds his jacket again, there's a note in the pocket that changes everything.
Characters/Pairings: John/Sherlock
Warnings: Angst, binge drinking.
Notes: The rating will likely go up but I couldn't move it ahead of time as I've tossed the 30-some pages that came after this in favor of starting fresh. Additionally, this hasn't been Britpicked, as I thought it would be more polite, on my end, for someone to actually like what I'm doing before I pestered them for help. I've read so many amazing fics over the last few days that my displeasure with my own only continues to grow. Which is why everything I had with Sherlock in it needs to be reworked.
John had discovered a curious thing in the months since Sherlock's death. In bed, failing to sleep, if he closed his eyes and moved them, beneath the lids, as though he were spinning--if he held the thought in his head that he was spinning and didn't let go--then his body could feel it. Usually a useless skill, it had been employed by his subconscious recently to devastating effect: one memory, replayed, over and over again whether he wished it or not. Himself, standing on a dreary cold night in a train yard before a wall where so recently bright yellow spray-paint had spelled out an unreadable code across the bricks; and Sherlock, his clammy hands pressed to either side of John's face, spinning him. Questioning him, demanding of him, around and around, if he did in fact remember the code before it had been painted over. Can you remember it? Can you remember the pattern? Are you certain? "Yes, I am!" He had cried. Really. That "really"-no question mark about it, all dripping and smirky--killed him every time. It woke him in a cold sweat, dizzy and sick to his stomach. Oh, he remembered all right. Too well.
"What are you doing?" he'd yelped when Sherlock had first grabbed him, but he hadn't fought. Hadn't twisted away. It seemed so odd now to think of it--what sensible person would permit another adult to grab his face and spin him about by it in a dingy train yard at night? But he'd let it happen. Around and around. If John closed his eyes after cold sweats like this, he saw Sherlock's face again, spinning. The nausea wrapped around the core of his sadness like the skin around a wizened little apple, and he ached.
****
A year to the day after Sherlock jumped, John took the day off work and stayed home to drink. He did not pick up the paper or check his mail or phone messages. He wanted nothing to do with anyone or anything that might remind him, even inadvertently, of the friend he'd lost. Towards the evening, though, when the bright stripes of sunlight streaming through the blinds in his sparse flat that was in no way 221B stretched long across the floor, he ran out of liquor. And this, he agreed with himself upon asking, was in no way acceptable. So out he went, shrugging into the same black hunter's coat Sherlock had once said looked like he ought to have a pheasant stuffed in each pocket. John had asked him if he'd ever been hunting, which was met with a flat stare. "Inordinate waste of time, ample food supply on grocery shelves, and still too little understood about my own species' corporeal state to even think of frittering away my time poking at dead avian specimens," had been the dismissive answer. John considered taking the coat off, to chase away the memory, but he was already halfway out the door to the flat by then and an odd fear of neighbors beginning to read his drunkenness in his actions had begun to uncoil at the base of his spine. So he kept the coat on and stepped carefully down to the street, trying not to think of Sherlock's hands on either side of his shoulders, then his face. Spinning.
He tried to keep his distance from the cashier at the off-license, so as to hide the smell of his breath--though he doubted the scowling little man behind the register would have cared. Still, John felt guilty at being drunk at three o'clock. He felt guilty in advance at having to tell his therapist that he'd been drunk at three o'clock. He could try and avoid mentioning it, but he knew she'd ask about how he spent the anniversary of--of what it was the anniversary of. No, he told himself, fiddling with his wallet. Think it. Of Sherlock's jump. Fine. Of Sherlock's death.
To John's horror his eyes began to mist over, and he all but threw the money at the checkout clerk in an effort to get out the door with his scotch before tears actually started to spill.
He turned into an alley before things could get worse. Deep breaths, John. Deep breaths. He had been good at not crying for a long time. Not since the funeral. It was a ridiculous time-a ridiculous place-to let it catch up to him now. He didn’t care what his therapist said. He’d come through a war. He’d watched friends die before. This one couldn’t-shouldn’t-be different. He was John Watson, a solid man and a good friend who knew how to let go.
Really.
Maybe it was the tears. Maybe it was the alcohol. If asked, later, he would have said the alcohol and never mentioned the tears. But whichever it was, his guard was down and he never even sensed the alleyway being blocked off. Never heard a sound until it was the hiss of breath in his ear.
“I’ll be taking that, friend.”
Two hands, one reaching around his neck and the other for his wallet in his pocket. John lurched out from other the attempted choke-hold but his reflexes were slow; his body didn’t act the way he told it to and he misjudged the size of his attacker. His swing met empty air, and the follow-through flung him off-balance. He hit the ground in an explosion of scotch and broken glass, and he knew his wallet was gone before he registered that his rather expensive bottle had shattered. He could hear footsteps now, and retreating laughter, and then a pause.
“Well now and what a shame it would be to leave a nice coat like that, eh?”
Footsteps returning, and John baring his teeth in a snarl and preparing to leap out of the way of the incoming foot, but then-stars, stars, nothing but stars. Rough hands on him but all he saw were stars. Spinning.
Can you remember it? Can you remember the pattern?
John wanted to say he could, the words were on his lips, because there was something-something just beyond his grasp-that he knew he’d done to make it so. But it was gone, washed away by the sea of stars engulfing him in their horrible spinning. I can’t, Sherlock, he wanted to say. I thought I could but I can’t. I really can’t.
Really really really really.
****
The mobile woke him not once but twice, three times-he lost count. His skull was a bell clanging at the bottom of the ocean, and the rest of him was the battered clapper jangling back and forth. Finally John stumbled off the sofa to retch into the toilet, and only then, after reconsidering his initial urge to flush the mobile down along with yesterday’s bile, did he hit the answer button.
“John, it’s Greg. I’ve been calling you all day.”
“All day.” John squinted painfully out the window. It was bright, that was all he could tell. “It’s the fucking crack of dawn,” he said around a mouthful of cotton, because the fucking crack of dawn was what it felt like.
A moment of silence. “John, it’s five o’clock in the evening.” Then, when John said nothing in response, he cleared his throat. “Anyway I’m calling about what I think may be your jacket. Were you robbed recently?”
“My coat.” John wanted to retch again and slid closer to the toilet just in case. “Fuck my coat. My wallet! Do you have my wallet?”
“Er, no. Didn’t you call the police?”
“If you don't have my wallet, how do you know it’s my coat?”
“I…I was passing through the SVU department and thought I recognized that coat.”
“You recognized it.”
“Yes.”
“My coat.”
“Yes.”
“Out of all the coats in London. Wait, what the hell were you doing in SVU? Did those bastards steal a car, too?”
“No, I…I had a date, is all, and I was picking her up, and they were booking these guys as a came down. One of them had your coat on. Smelled awful.”
“Likely better than me.” John swallowed as another wave of nausea hit him. “Can I have it back, then?”
“Well of course. That’s why I called you. I’m glad we found it.”
“I could have done with my wallet, too, but thank you.”
“Thank my date. Shall I drop it by?”
“You can’t just leave work on my account-“
“It’s five o’clock in the evening, remember?”
“Oh. Right.”
Silence. “I tried to call you yesterday too, you know. You didn’t answer.”
“I know.”
More silence. John wished he could substitute his skull for the one on the mantle in 221B, the one-oh, no. Bad thought trajectory.
“Right then, I’ll see you in a bit.”
****
Lestrade may have known the score but that was no reason not to make an effort. Part of one, anyway. His trousers still reeked of yesterday’s exploded scotch, but John managed to at least dig up a clean shirt and to gurgle away some of the vileness on his tongue before the door rang. He still kept the blinds shut and the lights off, though. Sensory details did not mesh well with the state of his stomach.
When he saw Lestrade standing there on his doorstep, awkwardly holding the coat at arm’s length, John felt he must let him in, whatever his wishes. “Come in, then,” he coughed roughly, squinting against the evening light.
Lestrade entered gingerly, with the air of a cat about to get a soaking. “I haven’t been round since you moved in,” he said, carefully neutral. The same cardboard boxes that had marched upward in neat little piles when John had first moved in still stood there now, with only a skin of dust on them to mark the passage of time. “It’s…spacious.”
“Yes, well. I need room. To exercise. Or…something.” John scrubbed a hand through his hair, instantly regretting the motion, and made a note not to touch his skull in the near future. “My coat?”
Lestrade’s turn to cough now. “Yes, of course, here you go.”
Lengthening shadows of twilight cloaked the room, but other than a faint whiff of unfamiliar body odor, the coat seemed none the worse for wear. John tucked it under his arm. “Can I get you some tea?”
The inspector shuffled his feet. His embarrassment at John’s surroundings was becoming infectious, and John wished he’d thought to meet him at the corner or something. “Oh no, you know. Date and all. I just wanted to get this back to you. I know it means-well, you know. It’s a nice coat and all,” he finished lamely. “You’re…taking care of yourself?”
“More or less,” John answered, striving desperately for a lightness he didn’t feel. God he was tired.
“Good, good. Listen John, I-“
“Greg.”
Lestrade grimaced at him.
“It’s all right. I’m fine. But I need you to go right now because I think I’m going to sick up.”
“Oh. Right. I-feel better, John. Today and tomorrow. And, you know, whatever comes after that.”
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
John’s stomach lurched. He shouldn’t have drunk so much water all at once. “Will do. Have a nice date with SVU.”
Lestrade managed an attempt at a laugh before ducking out the door and back down the sun-striped street. When John closed the door he leaned back against it, grateful for the coolness of I pressing through his shirt, before his untrustworthy bowels necessitated a quick exit to the bathroom. Again.
The next few hours were miserable for John. After phoning various credit card companies and reporting his cards stolen, his meager reservoir of normal-seeming engagement was spent. He tried watching crap television but it was too bright. Tried sitting on his sofa in the dark but it was too empty. Tried making tea, but one whiff of it emptied his stomach again. It was only by accident that he ended up coming in contact with his coat, long since forgotten and draped over one of the stacks of boxes. Stumbling out of the bathroom after another gut-wrenching spasm-just a spasm, now; there was nothing left to come up anymore-John knocked the coat off its pile and knelt unsteadily to pick it up. It was then that he felt the crackle of something in one of the pockets, through the cloth. Aha, he thought. Take something from me and I’ll take something from you. With a grim smile of victory he removed what appeared, to his immediate disappointment, to be only a receipt, once crumpled but then folded back out and then once over, like a note. Carrying it into the kitchen to the light over the stove, he saw that there was indeed writing on the inside of the fold:
Tiergarten. Come at once if convenient. -SH
One beat.
Two beats.
Within seconds John’s phone was out, his fingers were flying and he was wound tight as the string on a violin, ready to snap. When the fifth ring tone cut off abruptly and gave way to what would have been Lestrade’s greeting, John didn’t even give him a chance to speak.
“What kind of fucking mental joke are you trying to play here, Greg?” he hissed. He hissed. John Watson, a distant part of him noted abstractedly, did not hiss. “Because I am not. Laughing. Not one fucking bit.”
“John, what are you on about? I told you, I’m on a date-“
“The note, Greg. In my coat pocket. If that’s your idea of offering comfort to a friend I’d hate to see how you-just what the bleeding hell did you think you were doing?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about! What note?”
John’s knuckles flashed white where he gripped the edge of the kitchen table. “The note. That you signed. From Sherlock. What kind of sick twisted prick does that?”
“From Sherlock?” The tiny gem of hope in that voice did far more than the shock-which could be faked-to plant a seed of doubt in John, though he was too riled to attend to it at the moment. “That’s impossible.”
“Oh really? I hadn’t noticed. I only watched him jump to his death in front of me. So what, did you all think you’d have a laugh, slipping a little tidbit of Sherlock into my pocket when you handed the coat over? Ha ha ha, look at poor sad sack John, maybe this will cheer him up?”
“That’s fucking ridiculous. Why would we-why would I do that to you John? I would never. I know nothing about any note.”
“It wasn’t in the coat when you searched the robbers?”
“They search for weapons, not notes, John.”
“But nobody pulled it out and thought, how odd, a note from the deceased Sherlock Holmes in the pocket of this jacket stolen from his old-“ he coughed thickly, harshly past the catch in his voice, “-from John Watson?”
“I wasn’t there. I only showed up as they were booking them.”
John’s voice was gravel. “Ask your date, Greg.”
“What?”
“Ask. Your. Date. You said she’s the head of SVU. She booked him. Ask her what was in my pocket.”
“I-all right, John, give me one moment.” A buzz of unintelligible sound-talking, the clink of cutlery, perhaps some distant music-swelled for a half-second before the phone’s programming drowned it out, waiting for the close-range voice it was designed to pick up. Lestrade was back in a few moments. “She says she knows nothing about it, either. They did search for wallets and other stolen items, but she didn’t remember anything about a note.”
“She didn’t remember? One of her people couldn’t have just popped it in there? Just for larks?”
“John, she doesn’t remember, but look-no one would do that to you.”
“Well someone did.”
The ambient noise swelled to fill the silence again, before the phone dialed it down past hearing. “What does the note say?”
“Tiergarten. It says to-“ Here he stumbled on the words that were so stupidly familiar, so dear to him it hurt, “to come immediately. If convenient.”
“Tiergarten? As in, Berlin?”
“I don’t know of any other. But who cares?” John’s voice hardened, the soft spot of a second ago resoundingly conquered. I want to know whose idea of a prank this was, and I want to find them and break every bone in their body.”
“I swear it was no one I know in my division, and Patty swears it was no one in hers, either. Maybe one of the toughs had it on him the whole time, and we just missed the note in the search?”
“You’re the fucking police!”
“Yes, well…Sherlock thought us fallible. Maybe he was right?”
John ripped the phone from his ear and thumbed the Call End button, barely restraining himself from hurling the device against the wall. Can’t break it, will need it abroad. The thought had him sneering at himself. Oh really, so I’m humoring these little shits, am I now? He was so angry he was shaking, and set the mobile down on a counter in case the urge to throw it overtook him again. Fucking hell. If he found who did this he’d kill them. He’d kill them. He began to pace. What he needed to do was to talk to the lousy piece of shit who tackled him in the alley yesterday. He was still down at the precinct, wasn’t he? He ought to be. Lestrade had said they’d been booking him. Lestrade. If this is his doing I’ll kill him, too. In that moment he knew he meant it. But that tiny ray of hope he’d heard in Lestrade’s voice stabbed at him, as though someone had quietly coaxed a patch of briars into growing round his heart without him even knowing it. John had been listening so hard for amusement, disdain, triumph. Maybe body language was half communication and words only 10%, but the remaining 40% was tone and had he picked up any foul taste of victory in Lestrade’s tone there wasn’t a power on earth that would have stopped John from marching into that restaurant and pounding him to a bloody pulp.
And yet, that little hitch in Lestrade’s voice, that hesitant, almost sheepish thread of hope.
John realized he’d backed himself into the corner of the kitchen, against the fridge, perhaps as some sort of defensive maneuver. So he could see anything coming at him. But not this. He slid down it, the gap between fridge and freezerbox scraping down the length of his spine until he came to rest on the linoleum with a thump. Never this. He closed his eyes, sadness welling in him like the fucking fountain of youth. It poured forth and pulled him along, himself a mere fleck in its flood. He had been done with this. Well, yes, there had been yesterday’s drinking, but it had been the anniversary and he had been done with this. Mostly. Except for the spinning dreams that would seize him suddenly, like now. The two of them in the train yard, Sherlock’s hands on his shoulders, his face. The dim light swinging across curls and lips and pale, pale eyes.
Can you remember it? Are you certain? Around and around and around.
“Oh yes, Sherlock,” John said aloud, his face buried in his hands. “I am so fucking certain.”
Only the fridge behind him responded, with the steady thoughtless humming that was its permanent contribution to conversation.
****
By dawn John had already stormed into, and been summarily thrown out of, the Met. No, he could not see his burglar of the previous day. Yes, they would arrest him if he kept on like this. No, they only hadn’t arrested him up until now because he was known to be a friend of Lestrade’s and, before him, Sherlock’s, and given that the anniversary of his death had just passed it was expected that the Sherlock Holmes blogger would be “going through a difficult time.” At this point John had swept everything off the nearest counter-which turned out not to be much; just a phone and some paperwork, which caused much less of a crash than he would have liked-but it was enough to get him escorted from the building. Out on the pavement, scrubbing his hand through his hair and explicitly not pulling the crumpled receipt note out of his pocket to read it again, he debated the merits of marching back in and causing enough of a ruckus to get arrested himself. On the one hand, he might get the chance to interrogate the temporary owner of this coat. On the other hand, the likelihood that they’d place him in a cell close enough to enable communication with his intended target was slim, and then he’d just be wasting time that would be better spent buying at ticket to-
I am not going.
“Not going where?”
John whirled and there stood Sally-derisive, snarky Sally who’d never liked Sherlock and likely hadn’t shed many tears over his death. He hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud and wished she hadn’t been the one to hear him.
“Nowhere,” John said flatly.
“If you mean back in there,” she said, nodding over her shoulder at the Met, “it’d be pretty easy to lock you up. I came down because they said you were knocking things off desks.”
“Just one desk. Just a few things.”
There was pity in her eyes. Pity! John had only mildly disliked her before but it was curdling now into something darker. “But I’m telling you the guy knows nothing. The one who had your coat.”
“You’re a homicide investigator! What would you know about it?”
“Patty.”
John frowned. “Greg’s date? What’s she got to do with it?”
“Greg’s-ah, well, about that.” Sally grimaced almost…guiltily, fiddling with the zipper on her jacket. “She took him out to let him down gently. She’s…not going to be dating him. Or any man, really.”
“Oh.” John rubbed his eyes; he was so tired. “What’s this got to do with me then?”
Her eyes flashed defensively. “I told you so you’d believe me. Patty says the guy knew nothing. I asked her to ask because-well, because Lestrade said he recognized the coat and I didn't understand how anyone could’ve nicked it off you.”
“It’s so nice to know I have a bunch of nannies clucking their tongues over me at the Met,” John snapped, his patience wearing thin.
“Yes, well, it’s nice to know you’ve adjusted so well to the loss of a friend who I didn’t recognize as a friend until it was too late,” Sally shot back, her eyes glistening now. “I worry about you, Watson. Everyone does. Everyone feels terrible.”
“Not as terrible as me.”
“You’re right. But so, when something pops up that has to do with you or Sherlock, we look into it. Like we did with this guy. And he’s just a sodding criminal, a couple break-ins and stolen cars to his name. No homeless network, no secret societies, nothing magical Sherlock set in motion before his death.”
“When did all this happen? Greg said he didn’t know anything last night.”
“He didn’t know anything last night. He was out being let down by Patty, remember?”
John turned away, his eyes straying down corniced facades and still mostly-dark windows to follow the cars as they ferreted through the streets. He didn’t like people caring about him. He didn’t like people he didn’t like caring about him, not like this. It made him feel guilty for not liking them, and anyway none of these feelings would help him sort out the note.
“You’re sure,” he said.
“Yes.”
“So now what?”
He meant it more for himself than for her, but she answered anyway. “If I were you? I’d go to Berlin.”
Author: metaphlame
Alternate Links: AO3
Rating: Mature (pretty much for just language at this point)
Summary: A year to the day after Sherlock's jump, John is mugged. When he finds his jacket again, there's a note in the pocket that changes everything.
Characters/Pairings: John/Sherlock
Warnings: Angst, binge drinking.
Notes: The rating will likely go up but I couldn't move it ahead of time as I've tossed the 30-some pages that came after this in favor of starting fresh. Additionally, this hasn't been Britpicked, as I thought it would be more polite, on my end, for someone to actually like what I'm doing before I pestered them for help. I've read so many amazing fics over the last few days that my displeasure with my own only continues to grow. Which is why everything I had with Sherlock in it needs to be reworked.
John had discovered a curious thing in the months since Sherlock's death. In bed, failing to sleep, if he closed his eyes and moved them, beneath the lids, as though he were spinning--if he held the thought in his head that he was spinning and didn't let go--then his body could feel it. Usually a useless skill, it had been employed by his subconscious recently to devastating effect: one memory, replayed, over and over again whether he wished it or not. Himself, standing on a dreary cold night in a train yard before a wall where so recently bright yellow spray-paint had spelled out an unreadable code across the bricks; and Sherlock, his clammy hands pressed to either side of John's face, spinning him. Questioning him, demanding of him, around and around, if he did in fact remember the code before it had been painted over. Can you remember it? Can you remember the pattern? Are you certain? "Yes, I am!" He had cried. Really. That "really"-no question mark about it, all dripping and smirky--killed him every time. It woke him in a cold sweat, dizzy and sick to his stomach. Oh, he remembered all right. Too well.
"What are you doing?" he'd yelped when Sherlock had first grabbed him, but he hadn't fought. Hadn't twisted away. It seemed so odd now to think of it--what sensible person would permit another adult to grab his face and spin him about by it in a dingy train yard at night? But he'd let it happen. Around and around. If John closed his eyes after cold sweats like this, he saw Sherlock's face again, spinning. The nausea wrapped around the core of his sadness like the skin around a wizened little apple, and he ached.
****
A year to the day after Sherlock jumped, John took the day off work and stayed home to drink. He did not pick up the paper or check his mail or phone messages. He wanted nothing to do with anyone or anything that might remind him, even inadvertently, of the friend he'd lost. Towards the evening, though, when the bright stripes of sunlight streaming through the blinds in his sparse flat that was in no way 221B stretched long across the floor, he ran out of liquor. And this, he agreed with himself upon asking, was in no way acceptable. So out he went, shrugging into the same black hunter's coat Sherlock had once said looked like he ought to have a pheasant stuffed in each pocket. John had asked him if he'd ever been hunting, which was met with a flat stare. "Inordinate waste of time, ample food supply on grocery shelves, and still too little understood about my own species' corporeal state to even think of frittering away my time poking at dead avian specimens," had been the dismissive answer. John considered taking the coat off, to chase away the memory, but he was already halfway out the door to the flat by then and an odd fear of neighbors beginning to read his drunkenness in his actions had begun to uncoil at the base of his spine. So he kept the coat on and stepped carefully down to the street, trying not to think of Sherlock's hands on either side of his shoulders, then his face. Spinning.
He tried to keep his distance from the cashier at the off-license, so as to hide the smell of his breath--though he doubted the scowling little man behind the register would have cared. Still, John felt guilty at being drunk at three o'clock. He felt guilty in advance at having to tell his therapist that he'd been drunk at three o'clock. He could try and avoid mentioning it, but he knew she'd ask about how he spent the anniversary of--of what it was the anniversary of. No, he told himself, fiddling with his wallet. Think it. Of Sherlock's jump. Fine. Of Sherlock's death.
To John's horror his eyes began to mist over, and he all but threw the money at the checkout clerk in an effort to get out the door with his scotch before tears actually started to spill.
He turned into an alley before things could get worse. Deep breaths, John. Deep breaths. He had been good at not crying for a long time. Not since the funeral. It was a ridiculous time-a ridiculous place-to let it catch up to him now. He didn’t care what his therapist said. He’d come through a war. He’d watched friends die before. This one couldn’t-shouldn’t-be different. He was John Watson, a solid man and a good friend who knew how to let go.
Really.
Maybe it was the tears. Maybe it was the alcohol. If asked, later, he would have said the alcohol and never mentioned the tears. But whichever it was, his guard was down and he never even sensed the alleyway being blocked off. Never heard a sound until it was the hiss of breath in his ear.
“I’ll be taking that, friend.”
Two hands, one reaching around his neck and the other for his wallet in his pocket. John lurched out from other the attempted choke-hold but his reflexes were slow; his body didn’t act the way he told it to and he misjudged the size of his attacker. His swing met empty air, and the follow-through flung him off-balance. He hit the ground in an explosion of scotch and broken glass, and he knew his wallet was gone before he registered that his rather expensive bottle had shattered. He could hear footsteps now, and retreating laughter, and then a pause.
“Well now and what a shame it would be to leave a nice coat like that, eh?”
Footsteps returning, and John baring his teeth in a snarl and preparing to leap out of the way of the incoming foot, but then-stars, stars, nothing but stars. Rough hands on him but all he saw were stars. Spinning.
Can you remember it? Can you remember the pattern?
John wanted to say he could, the words were on his lips, because there was something-something just beyond his grasp-that he knew he’d done to make it so. But it was gone, washed away by the sea of stars engulfing him in their horrible spinning. I can’t, Sherlock, he wanted to say. I thought I could but I can’t. I really can’t.
Really really really really.
****
The mobile woke him not once but twice, three times-he lost count. His skull was a bell clanging at the bottom of the ocean, and the rest of him was the battered clapper jangling back and forth. Finally John stumbled off the sofa to retch into the toilet, and only then, after reconsidering his initial urge to flush the mobile down along with yesterday’s bile, did he hit the answer button.
“John, it’s Greg. I’ve been calling you all day.”
“All day.” John squinted painfully out the window. It was bright, that was all he could tell. “It’s the fucking crack of dawn,” he said around a mouthful of cotton, because the fucking crack of dawn was what it felt like.
A moment of silence. “John, it’s five o’clock in the evening.” Then, when John said nothing in response, he cleared his throat. “Anyway I’m calling about what I think may be your jacket. Were you robbed recently?”
“My coat.” John wanted to retch again and slid closer to the toilet just in case. “Fuck my coat. My wallet! Do you have my wallet?”
“Er, no. Didn’t you call the police?”
“If you don't have my wallet, how do you know it’s my coat?”
“I…I was passing through the SVU department and thought I recognized that coat.”
“You recognized it.”
“Yes.”
“My coat.”
“Yes.”
“Out of all the coats in London. Wait, what the hell were you doing in SVU? Did those bastards steal a car, too?”
“No, I…I had a date, is all, and I was picking her up, and they were booking these guys as a came down. One of them had your coat on. Smelled awful.”
“Likely better than me.” John swallowed as another wave of nausea hit him. “Can I have it back, then?”
“Well of course. That’s why I called you. I’m glad we found it.”
“I could have done with my wallet, too, but thank you.”
“Thank my date. Shall I drop it by?”
“You can’t just leave work on my account-“
“It’s five o’clock in the evening, remember?”
“Oh. Right.”
Silence. “I tried to call you yesterday too, you know. You didn’t answer.”
“I know.”
More silence. John wished he could substitute his skull for the one on the mantle in 221B, the one-oh, no. Bad thought trajectory.
“Right then, I’ll see you in a bit.”
****
Lestrade may have known the score but that was no reason not to make an effort. Part of one, anyway. His trousers still reeked of yesterday’s exploded scotch, but John managed to at least dig up a clean shirt and to gurgle away some of the vileness on his tongue before the door rang. He still kept the blinds shut and the lights off, though. Sensory details did not mesh well with the state of his stomach.
When he saw Lestrade standing there on his doorstep, awkwardly holding the coat at arm’s length, John felt he must let him in, whatever his wishes. “Come in, then,” he coughed roughly, squinting against the evening light.
Lestrade entered gingerly, with the air of a cat about to get a soaking. “I haven’t been round since you moved in,” he said, carefully neutral. The same cardboard boxes that had marched upward in neat little piles when John had first moved in still stood there now, with only a skin of dust on them to mark the passage of time. “It’s…spacious.”
“Yes, well. I need room. To exercise. Or…something.” John scrubbed a hand through his hair, instantly regretting the motion, and made a note not to touch his skull in the near future. “My coat?”
Lestrade’s turn to cough now. “Yes, of course, here you go.”
Lengthening shadows of twilight cloaked the room, but other than a faint whiff of unfamiliar body odor, the coat seemed none the worse for wear. John tucked it under his arm. “Can I get you some tea?”
The inspector shuffled his feet. His embarrassment at John’s surroundings was becoming infectious, and John wished he’d thought to meet him at the corner or something. “Oh no, you know. Date and all. I just wanted to get this back to you. I know it means-well, you know. It’s a nice coat and all,” he finished lamely. “You’re…taking care of yourself?”
“More or less,” John answered, striving desperately for a lightness he didn’t feel. God he was tired.
“Good, good. Listen John, I-“
“Greg.”
Lestrade grimaced at him.
“It’s all right. I’m fine. But I need you to go right now because I think I’m going to sick up.”
“Oh. Right. I-feel better, John. Today and tomorrow. And, you know, whatever comes after that.”
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
John’s stomach lurched. He shouldn’t have drunk so much water all at once. “Will do. Have a nice date with SVU.”
Lestrade managed an attempt at a laugh before ducking out the door and back down the sun-striped street. When John closed the door he leaned back against it, grateful for the coolness of I pressing through his shirt, before his untrustworthy bowels necessitated a quick exit to the bathroom. Again.
The next few hours were miserable for John. After phoning various credit card companies and reporting his cards stolen, his meager reservoir of normal-seeming engagement was spent. He tried watching crap television but it was too bright. Tried sitting on his sofa in the dark but it was too empty. Tried making tea, but one whiff of it emptied his stomach again. It was only by accident that he ended up coming in contact with his coat, long since forgotten and draped over one of the stacks of boxes. Stumbling out of the bathroom after another gut-wrenching spasm-just a spasm, now; there was nothing left to come up anymore-John knocked the coat off its pile and knelt unsteadily to pick it up. It was then that he felt the crackle of something in one of the pockets, through the cloth. Aha, he thought. Take something from me and I’ll take something from you. With a grim smile of victory he removed what appeared, to his immediate disappointment, to be only a receipt, once crumpled but then folded back out and then once over, like a note. Carrying it into the kitchen to the light over the stove, he saw that there was indeed writing on the inside of the fold:
Tiergarten. Come at once if convenient. -SH
One beat.
Two beats.
Within seconds John’s phone was out, his fingers were flying and he was wound tight as the string on a violin, ready to snap. When the fifth ring tone cut off abruptly and gave way to what would have been Lestrade’s greeting, John didn’t even give him a chance to speak.
“What kind of fucking mental joke are you trying to play here, Greg?” he hissed. He hissed. John Watson, a distant part of him noted abstractedly, did not hiss. “Because I am not. Laughing. Not one fucking bit.”
“John, what are you on about? I told you, I’m on a date-“
“The note, Greg. In my coat pocket. If that’s your idea of offering comfort to a friend I’d hate to see how you-just what the bleeding hell did you think you were doing?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about! What note?”
John’s knuckles flashed white where he gripped the edge of the kitchen table. “The note. That you signed. From Sherlock. What kind of sick twisted prick does that?”
“From Sherlock?” The tiny gem of hope in that voice did far more than the shock-which could be faked-to plant a seed of doubt in John, though he was too riled to attend to it at the moment. “That’s impossible.”
“Oh really? I hadn’t noticed. I only watched him jump to his death in front of me. So what, did you all think you’d have a laugh, slipping a little tidbit of Sherlock into my pocket when you handed the coat over? Ha ha ha, look at poor sad sack John, maybe this will cheer him up?”
“That’s fucking ridiculous. Why would we-why would I do that to you John? I would never. I know nothing about any note.”
“It wasn’t in the coat when you searched the robbers?”
“They search for weapons, not notes, John.”
“But nobody pulled it out and thought, how odd, a note from the deceased Sherlock Holmes in the pocket of this jacket stolen from his old-“ he coughed thickly, harshly past the catch in his voice, “-from John Watson?”
“I wasn’t there. I only showed up as they were booking them.”
John’s voice was gravel. “Ask your date, Greg.”
“What?”
“Ask. Your. Date. You said she’s the head of SVU. She booked him. Ask her what was in my pocket.”
“I-all right, John, give me one moment.” A buzz of unintelligible sound-talking, the clink of cutlery, perhaps some distant music-swelled for a half-second before the phone’s programming drowned it out, waiting for the close-range voice it was designed to pick up. Lestrade was back in a few moments. “She says she knows nothing about it, either. They did search for wallets and other stolen items, but she didn’t remember anything about a note.”
“She didn’t remember? One of her people couldn’t have just popped it in there? Just for larks?”
“John, she doesn’t remember, but look-no one would do that to you.”
“Well someone did.”
The ambient noise swelled to fill the silence again, before the phone dialed it down past hearing. “What does the note say?”
“Tiergarten. It says to-“ Here he stumbled on the words that were so stupidly familiar, so dear to him it hurt, “to come immediately. If convenient.”
“Tiergarten? As in, Berlin?”
“I don’t know of any other. But who cares?” John’s voice hardened, the soft spot of a second ago resoundingly conquered. I want to know whose idea of a prank this was, and I want to find them and break every bone in their body.”
“I swear it was no one I know in my division, and Patty swears it was no one in hers, either. Maybe one of the toughs had it on him the whole time, and we just missed the note in the search?”
“You’re the fucking police!”
“Yes, well…Sherlock thought us fallible. Maybe he was right?”
John ripped the phone from his ear and thumbed the Call End button, barely restraining himself from hurling the device against the wall. Can’t break it, will need it abroad. The thought had him sneering at himself. Oh really, so I’m humoring these little shits, am I now? He was so angry he was shaking, and set the mobile down on a counter in case the urge to throw it overtook him again. Fucking hell. If he found who did this he’d kill them. He’d kill them. He began to pace. What he needed to do was to talk to the lousy piece of shit who tackled him in the alley yesterday. He was still down at the precinct, wasn’t he? He ought to be. Lestrade had said they’d been booking him. Lestrade. If this is his doing I’ll kill him, too. In that moment he knew he meant it. But that tiny ray of hope he’d heard in Lestrade’s voice stabbed at him, as though someone had quietly coaxed a patch of briars into growing round his heart without him even knowing it. John had been listening so hard for amusement, disdain, triumph. Maybe body language was half communication and words only 10%, but the remaining 40% was tone and had he picked up any foul taste of victory in Lestrade’s tone there wasn’t a power on earth that would have stopped John from marching into that restaurant and pounding him to a bloody pulp.
And yet, that little hitch in Lestrade’s voice, that hesitant, almost sheepish thread of hope.
John realized he’d backed himself into the corner of the kitchen, against the fridge, perhaps as some sort of defensive maneuver. So he could see anything coming at him. But not this. He slid down it, the gap between fridge and freezerbox scraping down the length of his spine until he came to rest on the linoleum with a thump. Never this. He closed his eyes, sadness welling in him like the fucking fountain of youth. It poured forth and pulled him along, himself a mere fleck in its flood. He had been done with this. Well, yes, there had been yesterday’s drinking, but it had been the anniversary and he had been done with this. Mostly. Except for the spinning dreams that would seize him suddenly, like now. The two of them in the train yard, Sherlock’s hands on his shoulders, his face. The dim light swinging across curls and lips and pale, pale eyes.
Can you remember it? Are you certain? Around and around and around.
“Oh yes, Sherlock,” John said aloud, his face buried in his hands. “I am so fucking certain.”
Only the fridge behind him responded, with the steady thoughtless humming that was its permanent contribution to conversation.
****
By dawn John had already stormed into, and been summarily thrown out of, the Met. No, he could not see his burglar of the previous day. Yes, they would arrest him if he kept on like this. No, they only hadn’t arrested him up until now because he was known to be a friend of Lestrade’s and, before him, Sherlock’s, and given that the anniversary of his death had just passed it was expected that the Sherlock Holmes blogger would be “going through a difficult time.” At this point John had swept everything off the nearest counter-which turned out not to be much; just a phone and some paperwork, which caused much less of a crash than he would have liked-but it was enough to get him escorted from the building. Out on the pavement, scrubbing his hand through his hair and explicitly not pulling the crumpled receipt note out of his pocket to read it again, he debated the merits of marching back in and causing enough of a ruckus to get arrested himself. On the one hand, he might get the chance to interrogate the temporary owner of this coat. On the other hand, the likelihood that they’d place him in a cell close enough to enable communication with his intended target was slim, and then he’d just be wasting time that would be better spent buying at ticket to-
I am not going.
“Not going where?”
John whirled and there stood Sally-derisive, snarky Sally who’d never liked Sherlock and likely hadn’t shed many tears over his death. He hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud and wished she hadn’t been the one to hear him.
“Nowhere,” John said flatly.
“If you mean back in there,” she said, nodding over her shoulder at the Met, “it’d be pretty easy to lock you up. I came down because they said you were knocking things off desks.”
“Just one desk. Just a few things.”
There was pity in her eyes. Pity! John had only mildly disliked her before but it was curdling now into something darker. “But I’m telling you the guy knows nothing. The one who had your coat.”
“You’re a homicide investigator! What would you know about it?”
“Patty.”
John frowned. “Greg’s date? What’s she got to do with it?”
“Greg’s-ah, well, about that.” Sally grimaced almost…guiltily, fiddling with the zipper on her jacket. “She took him out to let him down gently. She’s…not going to be dating him. Or any man, really.”
“Oh.” John rubbed his eyes; he was so tired. “What’s this got to do with me then?”
Her eyes flashed defensively. “I told you so you’d believe me. Patty says the guy knew nothing. I asked her to ask because-well, because Lestrade said he recognized the coat and I didn't understand how anyone could’ve nicked it off you.”
“It’s so nice to know I have a bunch of nannies clucking their tongues over me at the Met,” John snapped, his patience wearing thin.
“Yes, well, it’s nice to know you’ve adjusted so well to the loss of a friend who I didn’t recognize as a friend until it was too late,” Sally shot back, her eyes glistening now. “I worry about you, Watson. Everyone does. Everyone feels terrible.”
“Not as terrible as me.”
“You’re right. But so, when something pops up that has to do with you or Sherlock, we look into it. Like we did with this guy. And he’s just a sodding criminal, a couple break-ins and stolen cars to his name. No homeless network, no secret societies, nothing magical Sherlock set in motion before his death.”
“When did all this happen? Greg said he didn’t know anything last night.”
“He didn’t know anything last night. He was out being let down by Patty, remember?”
John turned away, his eyes straying down corniced facades and still mostly-dark windows to follow the cars as they ferreted through the streets. He didn’t like people caring about him. He didn’t like people he didn’t like caring about him, not like this. It made him feel guilty for not liking them, and anyway none of these feelings would help him sort out the note.
“You’re sure,” he said.
“Yes.”
“So now what?”
He meant it more for himself than for her, but she answered anyway. “If I were you? I’d go to Berlin.”