Fic: Witness Protection (4/?)
Title: Witness Protection
Author: missilemuse.
Part: 4/?
Wordcount: nearly 1755 for this part.
Rating: PG-13 (may go up later)
Warnings: none.
Spoilers: only for season 1 as of now.
Disclaimer: Sherlock and John belong to ACD's grey cells, and each other in that order... Although the B.B.C. version receives full credit for inspiring me to put a pen to paper.
Summary: An AU, where John is Jim Moriarty's fiancé. He finds out about Jim's job and agrees to testify against him. He is put into protective custody as a result, under the alias Victor Trevor. Sherlock meets Victor, sparks fly!
Written for a truly unique prompt on the shkinkmeme HERE; so credit for inspiration goes to the OP.
Author's notes: This was something I was working on before Reichenbach happened and temporarily derailed it. The story is now on the verge of completion and I will be posting one part weekly. My first real attempt at S/J, so please be gentle.
A special mention and a million thanks to my amazing new beta, lady_t_220 for her patience in going though the story, correcting my frankly disastrous punctuation and plugging plot-holes, which I hadn't even noticed. You're a gem.
Link to CHAPTER 1 :: CHAPTER 2 :: CHAPTER 3
John sank on one of the chairs in front of the fireplace, like he never wanted to get up. His thoughts were a maelstrom, with guilt now added to the howling mix. Layered over all of it was the certainty that, unlike a couple of hours ago, right now it felt good to be alive.
That was when Sherlock emerged from the bathroom and all of John’s thoughts flew out of the proverbial window.
The man had literally shed his skin. Gone were the thinning salt and pepper hair (a wig), the slightly crooked nose (false), the beard (also false), the dirty brown eyes (contacts) and the tweed overcoat.
The man standing in front of him now was so gorgeous as to look (to a Tolkien fan like him) elvish. He was pale; the kind of severe paleness that would make other people look pasty-faced just made his skin look illuminated from within. Those lips would make any woman jealous. He had a head of thick, curly black hair, the tips of which were glistening with residual droplets of water, dark strands framing high, aristocratic cheekbones. And those eyes…oh god those eyes! Like a stormy sea, like semi-precious stones, like lasers. He was wearing simple nightclothes over which a blue silk dressing gown was casually unfastened. Sherlock looked; there was no other word for it, beautiful.
A full minute went by before John realised he was openly staring, which was followed by the disconcerting observation that Sherlock was staring right back. John looked away first, clearing his throat to find his voice. “You look… different.”
Sherlock rolled his eyes, and just like that the spell broke. “Thank you for stating the obvious, Victor. I was undercover. In disguise.”
John smiled easily at the disparaging remark. “Good job with the disguise then. Hard to imagine this…” he said, gesturing towards all of him, “…under all of that.”
Sherlock made no comment other than to limp to the sofa and flop dramatically down on it like a stringless puppet. As John made his way to the now-empty bathroom he wondered why he found the dramatics endearing as opposed to irritating. He didn’t dwell on it, washing up as well as he could before emerging to reclaim his chair.
Sherlock was still curled up on the sofa, eyes closed, fingers steepled together below his chin, like in prayer. He kept his eyes closed as he spoke. “If you wish to sleep, the spare bedroom’s upstairs.”
John considered. This was likely to be the only time he would really get to spend with the enigmatic World’s Only Consulting Detective. Lestrade would probably ship him off to Siberia the next day, given his reaction on the phone.
“What about you?” He realised how that sounded, after the words had left his mouth.
The unearthly eyes snapped open and Sherlock twisted to regard John, who found his gaze uncertain for the first time. It didn’t suit him.
“Victor…” Sherlock began seriously. “I must tell you that I consider myself married to my work, and while I’m flattered by your interest…”
“No!” John interrupted with a wince. John was smart enough to know that elvish look-alikes were way above his league. “No… no…I’m not asking… I just wanted to know if you intend to sleep.”
His face relaxed. “Oh. Sleeping is boring”, he drawled, before turning his head back to peruse the ceiling.
“So…if you too aren’t in the mood for a kip," John suggested, "Mind telling me about the case? If you can, that is. It sounds interesting.”
Sherlock snorted. “Hardly! One round of surveillance and one evening in disguise to crack a counterfeiting case is pathetic; a bunch of witless thugs out to make a quick penny. Not worth my time. I was mistaken in taking it up in the first place.”
“Alright then, how about some other case?”
This made Sherlock sit up abruptly and gaze at John with undisguised fascination. “You really ARE interested- in the cases.”
John flashed him an envious smile. “It’s just…” he gestured towards the kitchen and the skull and the mantelpiece with its clippings. “…Your life seems interesting. Much more than mine, anyway." He sighed. "You know what, never mind. You can’t probably talk about it to a stranger. I should just go sleep…”
Before he had blinked his eyes, Sherlock had walked- literally walked- over the table and in two graceful strides was dropping into the chair opposite John. “They are my cases. You will find that I can talk about them, if I so wish. Let’s see… I think you will like the case of the Norwood builder…”
So he started. It was like a valve being loosened or a crack in a dam… a frail genius, which never had an audience before. When Sherlock talked about The Work, his observations and his deductions, he was scintillating. It was certainly not due to the style of his narrative though, which was cut and dry and practically mathematical. He seemed to loathe embellishing even the slightest. But the facts were so fantastic and bizarre in places that John marvelled as the case unfolded to become an adventure.
“So you asked them to stand in the empty kitchen and yell ‘fire’?”
Sherlock’s smile was positively evil. “I ordered them! Especially Sally Donovan; it put those dulcet tones to good use.”
“And he ran out of the hidden panic room…just like that?”
“Well…he did think that he was going to get roasted alive. All he was wearing were his boxers and a pair of socks. You should have seen Lestrade’s face!”
And just like that, they were both laughing again. Then there was the next case …and the case after that. Sherlock talked animatedly, sometimes getting up to pace impatiently when John didn’t get something as soon as he said it. Once, in-between stories, they retired to the lab-cum-kitchen where John made tea again as Sherlock demonstrated a new method he had discovered of recognizing really old bloodstains (one that thankfully explained the blood in the retort.)
John found himself bitterly wishing for the first time that John Watson didn’t exist and Victor Trevor was actually real. As a pink dawn lighted the windows to 221B, all he knew was that he had never felt so much at home at any point in his life.
He didn’t admit to himself that it was a hell of a lot similar to falling in love.
Sherlock was speaking animatedly about the reasons for keeping frozen toes in the ice-cube trays, when he saw Victor’s eyes wander to the windows. The look in his eyes became strangely distant, as if haunted by such a visceral pain that Sherlock momentarily lost the thread of what he had been saying. His own breath hitched in response, but Victor wasn’t looking at him. All he said was, “Look, its morning already…”
The tone of his voice told Sherlock everything that the words themselves hadn't. Before he knew what he was doing, he found himself kneeling in front of Victor’s chair, one hand placed on each chair-arm as if to lock him in, yet all without touching him. No… Sherlock would not lose a battle like that with his self-control. He would not permit himself to breach that barrier…
“What is it?" Sherlock asked. His eyes narrowed suspiciously. "It's your ex-fiancé, isn’t it?" When Victor didn't reply he felt frustration and the faint edge of alarm start to rise up inside him. "Tell me," he demanded. "What are you so afraid of? If you actually told me what was wrong; I might be able to help you."
Victor looked at him a little helplessly, as if somehow still uncertain that Sherlock was even real. Worry had etched deep lines across his forehead, expressive blue eyes clouded with regret so intense that Sherlock felt his own stomach fall.
Victor reached out to cup his cheek, fingers warm and gentle and just like that, Sherlock was lost.
All the barriers he had maintained melted away like so much wax in the heat of that touch. This wasn’t his first kiss, but never before had he been swamped with so much desire, so much longing, too much to process. At first he only felt a press of lips to his own, but Victor didn’t draw away. In the next moment, his lips moved in tandem and the kiss deepened. There was so much need on both sides and so much yearning that Sherlock felt like he was drowning and being saved at the same time. He could not comprehend how something like that could feel so glorious!
It was Victor who broke away first and Sherlock saw the desperation that couldn’t be held back anymore and the joy that couldn’t be masked by it.
“Sherlock, I wish…” John paused. Unable to meet Sherlock's gaze, his eyes drifted across the wall behind as if seeking to anchor himself.
He froze.
"Victor?" Sherlock asked.
When he looked back at Sherlock, Victor's face was cool and unreadable. Gone was the man who had kissed him not a moment ago, the warmth suddenly replaced with something distant and implacable. He straightened in his chair and cleared his throat meaningfully. “Sorry, got carried away. It's been a long time and all that…”
Before Sherlock could begin to argue, could even say a word, Victor added, “Could you make us some tea? I believe it’s your turn now.”
Sherlock blinked at him in confusion, lips flattening into a grim line as Victor stared down at him. Uncertain of what to say, or what had precipitated the sudden change of mood, Sherlock hesitated a long moment before finally obeying. Reluctance to let the matter go was clear in his every movement and John breathed a faint sigh of relief as Sherlock disappeared into the kitchen.
As soon as Sherlock was gone, John stood up and walked closer to the wall above the mantelpiece. His eyes had strayed there accidentally while trying to convince himself that telling his secret to Sherlock was the right thing to do. It was a wall on which there was a large map with dozens of post-its and crime-scene photographs tacked to it; one which he had spared only a passing glance earlier.
John closed his eyes for a moment, before opening them to make sure what he was seeing was real.
Tacked to a corner of the board, on a small piece of paper, written in an eerily familiar hand was his ex-fiancé’s mobile number.
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