Within Your Reach (Gen), part ii
Title: Within Your Reach (Can You See Me? Can You Hear Me?)
Characters: John, Sherlock
Rating: G
Length: 5000 words
Summary: After Sherlock's death, John starts to fade away.
Notes: Originally posted in response to t his prompt on the meme. Click for disclaimer.
<< Go to part i
“To see and to be seen, in heaps they run; Some to undo, and some to be undone.”
-John Drydan
John finds that it is much harder to resubstantialize than it was to disappear. Invisibility came naturally to him-the process began without his even being aware, and continued without his input or effort. Undoing the process is another story.
At first he is content to simply follow Sherlock around. The joy of discovering his friend alive is overwhelming. He floats beside him as Sherlock prowls the city, drinking in the familiar angular face with cheekbones like wings, eyes like ice, the deep breathy voice he would recognize anywhere. He doesn’t miss the changes either: the dusting of freckles, evidence of a sunburn, the blond hair and cheap clothes he wears-this makes John chuckle-as if abandoning his usual sartorial perfection could suddenly make Sherlock Holmes unrecognizable.
For it becomes clear to John immediately that Sherlock wishes to remain anonymous in his hometown. He discovers the reason a week after he starts haunting Sherlock, in a dingy café with a sign on the door reading, “Closed by order of the Dept. of Sanitation.” Sherlock seems particularly edgy, pacing between the empty tables until the employee’s entrance opens and Mycroft enters.
“Well?” Sherlock begins challengingly. “What have you got?”
Mycroft sighs. “Manners, Sherlock. You’d think you were raised by a pack of hyenas.”
“Worse,” Sherlock retorts in clipped tones. “I was raised by you. Now, what have you got?”
Mycroft rolls his umbrella between his fingers once before answering. “He arrived last night by train.”
“Excellent,” Sherlock exclaims, a feral grin spreading across his face. “He took the bait then. All is ready at 234 Baker Street?”
“As you requested.”
“Good.” Despite his obvious satisfaction, Sherlock looks slightly disgruntled. John suspects it’s the necessity of relying on Mycroft that’s souring his fun.
As if to confirm John’s suspicions, Mycroft steps forward. “I hope you understand the ramifications of this, Sherlock,” he begins. Sherlock frowns ominously.
“I’ll do the next tedious little case you come up with, if that’s what you’re after. I won’t promise to enjoy it, though,” he sneers in reply.
“No,” Mycroft eyes him warily. “I mean that going back to Baker Street will not bring back Dr. Watson. If that’s what you’re thinking, we ought to call the whole thing off. There are other flats, Sherlock. Better flats.”
Sherlock tenses at once, back going rigid. “There is no better flat in London,” he hisses, turning to leave the cafe. John, invisible as he is, glares over his shoulder at Mycroft. Sherlock pauses with his hand on the door. “And this isn’t just about John,” he adds in a near whisper.
“Isn’t it?”
“I know he’s gone.”
John tries to swallow around the painful lump that has suddenly appeared in his non-existent throat.
*
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” DI Lestrade asks for the third time that evening.
Sherlock heaves an exasperated sigh. “Must you keep repeating yourself? As I said the previous two times, as long as everything goes according to plan, you’ll get your man.”
Lestrade ruffles his hair, his forehead crinkling upwards. He’s aged a lot in the past year and a half. There’s more salt than pepper in his hair, and new wrinkles have joined the laugh lines around his eyes. He looks tired already, and he’d only learned of Sherlock’s continued existence a few hours ago. “It’s just your plans have a way of going tits up, you know.” Catching Sherlock’s eye, he amends himself: “Occasionally.”
“Rarely,” Sherlock asserts primly. “And this time it’s perfect. All you have to do is get your dogs to watch 234, and make sure they don’t enter until after the shots are fired.”
“Why can’t we just go in now if we know he’s in there?”
“Because,” Sherlock sighs with the air of a beleaguered nanny explaining bedtime to a three-year-old, “Moran is a world-renowned sniper. I doubt any of your lot could touch him with a full clip in his hand. Once he’s fired, you’ll have to move fast before he gets a chance to reload.”
“And how are you going to avoid being hit?”
Sherlock raises an amused eyebrow. “I’ll duck.”
Lestrade groans. “This isn’t the time for jokes. You know I don’t like you exposing yourself,” he continues. “There’s too much risk.”
“Right. And jumping off a four-storey building…”
“Was the most bloody-minded thing you’ve ever done,” Lestrade snaps, his expression hardening.
“It had to be done.”
“For god’s sake Sherlock. Think of John. It destroyed him.”
Sherlock’s chilly gaze slides past Lestrade towards the window. “Time’s up. Get in place.”
Lestrade sighs but stands, careful to stay out of sight of the windows. He moves to the door, then pauses. “Just-be careful. Don’t let it all be for nothing.” He leaves.
Behind him, Sherlock stands silhouetted in the window. His hair is back in its usual dark curls, his figure once again draped in the customary dressing gown. He lifts the Stradivarius to his shoulder, closes his eyes, and begins to play. The first notes are odd and erratic. They sound the way it feels to meet an old friend after a very long time, that ache of recognition when both realize the other has changed. Soon, however, strains of Bartók are drifting through the open window and out into the deserted street.
Night falls. Sherlock’s violin continues unabated. Bartók turns to Krenek, turns to Prokofiev. His hold on the bow is slightly too tense for Debussy, so he tries Dvorák. The house across the street remains dark and silent.
It all happens in the blink of an eye. The air coagulates around the sound of a gun firing, a sharp gasp sounds in his left ear, and something pushes him to the ground as glass shatters above him.
“Bloody idiot!” the air hisses at him. Sherlock rolls onto his back, but there’s no one there.
Later, when Moran has been taken away and Sherlock has refused three successive shock blankets, Lestrade compliments him on his reflexes.
“Yeah,” Sherlock answers, dazed. Lestrade casts him a concerned look, and considers retrieving another shock blanket. “Don’t bother,” Sherlock anticipates him, sounding more like himself. “I’m fine.”
*
Sherlock has taken to sleeping in John’s bed, when he bothers to sleep. John concludes that there are two reasons for this. The first is that Sherlock’s own bed is now home to an extensive dead insect collection of indeterminate origin. The second is that John no longer needs it.
Now that he’s moved back into 221b, Sherlock falls back into the old ways. He frequents crime scenes, solicits body parts from the morgue, stores revolting experiments in the pantry, and blows up the kitchen on a regular basis. But he also keeps the top shelf of the fridge free for milk that never seems to materialize, sits for long evening hours in front of the darkened television screen, and ignores his own laptop in favor of John’s, which he must have nicked at some point from John’s abandoned flat. He plays John’s favorite Mendelsson, though John knows he prefers Debussy. There’s too much space in the flat. This is when John starts wishing for his body back.
He rather liked the idea of staying invisible initially-mainly for the privileged ability to see Sherlock at his most vulnerable, his face unguarded and unprepared for other people. John decides to become an avid collector of Sherlock’s expressions, and he observes with an unblinking intensity that would make the detective proud: Sherlock sleeping, Sherlock playing the violin, Sherlock meditating on the sofa, Sherlock poised with a beaker of human fluids in one hand and a pipette in the other. It doesn’t take long for John to realize that none of these expressions are new to him.
Soon he longs for the thing he can’t have-not just to observe, but to instigate. What face would Sherlock make if John surprised him in the middle of a bath? What would he say if he could feel John’s arms wrapped around his shoulders? What would he do if he awoke one morning to find John sleeping, curled up opposite him in the double bed upstairs? Sherlock undoes his impotent resignation, and John longs to laugh together again.
The first step, he decides, is to make himself felt. Touch was the last quality to abandon him, so it makes sense that it would be the first to reappear. He has high hopes after the incident with Moran, but several weeks’ fruitless attempts lead him to suspect the moment was a fluke, rather like the amazing feats of strength achieved by normal people under duress. He caresses and embraces, slips his “hand” into Sherlock’s and squeezes in next to him on the couch at night. It’s so intimate that he would blush if he still had circulation, but he doesn’t and Sherlock doesn’t notice.
Next, he tries to speak to Sherlock. He judges it slightly more effective, because after several hours Sherlock starts to frown and shake his head, as if trying to free himself of a buzzing mosquito lodged in his ear. He does it once at a crime scene, until Sherlock growls in agitation. “Can’t you all just shut up!”
Lestrade’s eyes narrow. “Nobody said anything, Sherlock.”
“Well-” Sherlock grimaces to cover his confusion. “You’re thinking too loud. Go away.”
After that, John confines his whisperings to the flat. He hovers on Sherlock’s shoulder and whispers in his ear: orders and admonitions to sleep or to eat, comments on Mrs. Hudson’s latest boyfriend, jokes about the state of the flat. Slowly he grows bolder and his monologue takes on the tone of a confession.
Sherlock is lying on John’s bed one day, eyes closed, but still awake. John stands beside him, looking down at the freckles fading on his nose. “You look good with a bit of color, you know,” he begins, brushing a fingertip along the slope of one cheek. “I wonder where you went while you were gone. If I asked, you’d probably be disappointed that I couldn’t guess from the state of your fingernails or watch strap or something.”
Sherlock brings his hands up to rest on his stomach with a sigh. John waits for him to resettle himself before going on. “France, definitely. Maybe Estonia. You always talked about visiting Tibet, so I bet you went there too. Mycroft knew of course, bastard.”
Sherlock smiles, and John feels his lips twitch. Insulting Mycroft has always got him on Sherlock’s good side, and it seems to work whether his friend can hear him or not. “I wish you’d taken me with you,” he adds, suddenly realizing how true the words are. He’s silent for a moment, because there’s something like panic building in his chest and it hurts to speak.
“Or told me. I would have kept your secret. I could’ve helped.” No, his mind rebels, no, this is getting too serious. He wanted to keep things light, because who wants be burdened with a clinically depressed ghost? If he’s going to haunt Sherlock Holmes, he’s going to do it right.
John swallows. “Sherlock,” he starts, but his voice cracks and he has to swallow again. “Sherlock.”
Sherlock is frowning now, his mouth pursed in a tight line like it is when he’s concentrating hard. There is an acrid burning in John’s eyes, and he wavers as he stands over Sherlock. “Don’t you care about me?” he whispers. His tongue is hot and sticky and clumsy in his mouth, and he’s not sure if the words come out fully formed, so he bends down closer to Sherlock on the bed. “Because I still love you.” His heart overflows.
*
Sherlock bolts up in bed as soon as the first hot drops hit his face, too real for the sweet daydream he’d been having. He is just in time to catch John as he faints into his arms.
*
John wakes to the sound of beeping and whirring. The ceiling is white and the sheets are starched. Hospital, he thinks muzzily. The past year and a half have caught up with him all at once, and he’s sore and tired and hungry. His stomach growls as if on cue, and a dark curly head swims into view.
“Food,” Sherlock announces abruptly, pushing a carton of Chinese (definitely not from the hospital canteen, John can tell from the heavenly smell) under his nose. As John fumbles with chopsticks, Sherlock surveys him for damage from beneath lowered lashes.
“You’ve lost a significant amount of weight. The A&E doctor was shocked to find someone who’d nearly starved to death in modern-day London.”
John considers the months since his last meal. “I forgot.”
“To eat?” Sherlock huffs his disbelief.
“Yeah. I was trying to find out what it’s like to be you.”
Sherlock’s expression softens slightly. “What did you find out?”
John shrugs, swallowing a mouthful of prawn toast. “I dunno. I don’t think it worked.”
They are both silent for a moment, while John chews and Sherlock watches him chew. Finally, Sherlock cracks. “Are we going to talk about this?” he asks, waving his hand hand vaguely to take in John, his IV and the hospital bed.
John puts down the carton. “Do you want to?”
Sherlock nods. “Yes. But-later.” He ducks his head and slides his hand into John’s.
“That’s going to make it more difficult for me to eat, you know.”
“I can help with that.”
Fin.
<< Go to part i
Characters: John, Sherlock
Rating: G
Length: 5000 words
Summary: After Sherlock's death, John starts to fade away.
Notes: Originally posted in response to t his prompt on the meme. Click for disclaimer.
<< Go to part i
“To see and to be seen, in heaps they run; Some to undo, and some to be undone.”
-John Drydan
John finds that it is much harder to resubstantialize than it was to disappear. Invisibility came naturally to him-the process began without his even being aware, and continued without his input or effort. Undoing the process is another story.
At first he is content to simply follow Sherlock around. The joy of discovering his friend alive is overwhelming. He floats beside him as Sherlock prowls the city, drinking in the familiar angular face with cheekbones like wings, eyes like ice, the deep breathy voice he would recognize anywhere. He doesn’t miss the changes either: the dusting of freckles, evidence of a sunburn, the blond hair and cheap clothes he wears-this makes John chuckle-as if abandoning his usual sartorial perfection could suddenly make Sherlock Holmes unrecognizable.
For it becomes clear to John immediately that Sherlock wishes to remain anonymous in his hometown. He discovers the reason a week after he starts haunting Sherlock, in a dingy café with a sign on the door reading, “Closed by order of the Dept. of Sanitation.” Sherlock seems particularly edgy, pacing between the empty tables until the employee’s entrance opens and Mycroft enters.
“Well?” Sherlock begins challengingly. “What have you got?”
Mycroft sighs. “Manners, Sherlock. You’d think you were raised by a pack of hyenas.”
“Worse,” Sherlock retorts in clipped tones. “I was raised by you. Now, what have you got?”
Mycroft rolls his umbrella between his fingers once before answering. “He arrived last night by train.”
“Excellent,” Sherlock exclaims, a feral grin spreading across his face. “He took the bait then. All is ready at 234 Baker Street?”
“As you requested.”
“Good.” Despite his obvious satisfaction, Sherlock looks slightly disgruntled. John suspects it’s the necessity of relying on Mycroft that’s souring his fun.
As if to confirm John’s suspicions, Mycroft steps forward. “I hope you understand the ramifications of this, Sherlock,” he begins. Sherlock frowns ominously.
“I’ll do the next tedious little case you come up with, if that’s what you’re after. I won’t promise to enjoy it, though,” he sneers in reply.
“No,” Mycroft eyes him warily. “I mean that going back to Baker Street will not bring back Dr. Watson. If that’s what you’re thinking, we ought to call the whole thing off. There are other flats, Sherlock. Better flats.”
Sherlock tenses at once, back going rigid. “There is no better flat in London,” he hisses, turning to leave the cafe. John, invisible as he is, glares over his shoulder at Mycroft. Sherlock pauses with his hand on the door. “And this isn’t just about John,” he adds in a near whisper.
“Isn’t it?”
“I know he’s gone.”
John tries to swallow around the painful lump that has suddenly appeared in his non-existent throat.
*
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” DI Lestrade asks for the third time that evening.
Sherlock heaves an exasperated sigh. “Must you keep repeating yourself? As I said the previous two times, as long as everything goes according to plan, you’ll get your man.”
Lestrade ruffles his hair, his forehead crinkling upwards. He’s aged a lot in the past year and a half. There’s more salt than pepper in his hair, and new wrinkles have joined the laugh lines around his eyes. He looks tired already, and he’d only learned of Sherlock’s continued existence a few hours ago. “It’s just your plans have a way of going tits up, you know.” Catching Sherlock’s eye, he amends himself: “Occasionally.”
“Rarely,” Sherlock asserts primly. “And this time it’s perfect. All you have to do is get your dogs to watch 234, and make sure they don’t enter until after the shots are fired.”
“Why can’t we just go in now if we know he’s in there?”
“Because,” Sherlock sighs with the air of a beleaguered nanny explaining bedtime to a three-year-old, “Moran is a world-renowned sniper. I doubt any of your lot could touch him with a full clip in his hand. Once he’s fired, you’ll have to move fast before he gets a chance to reload.”
“And how are you going to avoid being hit?”
Sherlock raises an amused eyebrow. “I’ll duck.”
Lestrade groans. “This isn’t the time for jokes. You know I don’t like you exposing yourself,” he continues. “There’s too much risk.”
“Right. And jumping off a four-storey building…”
“Was the most bloody-minded thing you’ve ever done,” Lestrade snaps, his expression hardening.
“It had to be done.”
“For god’s sake Sherlock. Think of John. It destroyed him.”
Sherlock’s chilly gaze slides past Lestrade towards the window. “Time’s up. Get in place.”
Lestrade sighs but stands, careful to stay out of sight of the windows. He moves to the door, then pauses. “Just-be careful. Don’t let it all be for nothing.” He leaves.
Behind him, Sherlock stands silhouetted in the window. His hair is back in its usual dark curls, his figure once again draped in the customary dressing gown. He lifts the Stradivarius to his shoulder, closes his eyes, and begins to play. The first notes are odd and erratic. They sound the way it feels to meet an old friend after a very long time, that ache of recognition when both realize the other has changed. Soon, however, strains of Bartók are drifting through the open window and out into the deserted street.
Night falls. Sherlock’s violin continues unabated. Bartók turns to Krenek, turns to Prokofiev. His hold on the bow is slightly too tense for Debussy, so he tries Dvorák. The house across the street remains dark and silent.
It all happens in the blink of an eye. The air coagulates around the sound of a gun firing, a sharp gasp sounds in his left ear, and something pushes him to the ground as glass shatters above him.
“Bloody idiot!” the air hisses at him. Sherlock rolls onto his back, but there’s no one there.
Later, when Moran has been taken away and Sherlock has refused three successive shock blankets, Lestrade compliments him on his reflexes.
“Yeah,” Sherlock answers, dazed. Lestrade casts him a concerned look, and considers retrieving another shock blanket. “Don’t bother,” Sherlock anticipates him, sounding more like himself. “I’m fine.”
*
Sherlock has taken to sleeping in John’s bed, when he bothers to sleep. John concludes that there are two reasons for this. The first is that Sherlock’s own bed is now home to an extensive dead insect collection of indeterminate origin. The second is that John no longer needs it.
Now that he’s moved back into 221b, Sherlock falls back into the old ways. He frequents crime scenes, solicits body parts from the morgue, stores revolting experiments in the pantry, and blows up the kitchen on a regular basis. But he also keeps the top shelf of the fridge free for milk that never seems to materialize, sits for long evening hours in front of the darkened television screen, and ignores his own laptop in favor of John’s, which he must have nicked at some point from John’s abandoned flat. He plays John’s favorite Mendelsson, though John knows he prefers Debussy. There’s too much space in the flat. This is when John starts wishing for his body back.
He rather liked the idea of staying invisible initially-mainly for the privileged ability to see Sherlock at his most vulnerable, his face unguarded and unprepared for other people. John decides to become an avid collector of Sherlock’s expressions, and he observes with an unblinking intensity that would make the detective proud: Sherlock sleeping, Sherlock playing the violin, Sherlock meditating on the sofa, Sherlock poised with a beaker of human fluids in one hand and a pipette in the other. It doesn’t take long for John to realize that none of these expressions are new to him.
Soon he longs for the thing he can’t have-not just to observe, but to instigate. What face would Sherlock make if John surprised him in the middle of a bath? What would he say if he could feel John’s arms wrapped around his shoulders? What would he do if he awoke one morning to find John sleeping, curled up opposite him in the double bed upstairs? Sherlock undoes his impotent resignation, and John longs to laugh together again.
The first step, he decides, is to make himself felt. Touch was the last quality to abandon him, so it makes sense that it would be the first to reappear. He has high hopes after the incident with Moran, but several weeks’ fruitless attempts lead him to suspect the moment was a fluke, rather like the amazing feats of strength achieved by normal people under duress. He caresses and embraces, slips his “hand” into Sherlock’s and squeezes in next to him on the couch at night. It’s so intimate that he would blush if he still had circulation, but he doesn’t and Sherlock doesn’t notice.
Next, he tries to speak to Sherlock. He judges it slightly more effective, because after several hours Sherlock starts to frown and shake his head, as if trying to free himself of a buzzing mosquito lodged in his ear. He does it once at a crime scene, until Sherlock growls in agitation. “Can’t you all just shut up!”
Lestrade’s eyes narrow. “Nobody said anything, Sherlock.”
“Well-” Sherlock grimaces to cover his confusion. “You’re thinking too loud. Go away.”
After that, John confines his whisperings to the flat. He hovers on Sherlock’s shoulder and whispers in his ear: orders and admonitions to sleep or to eat, comments on Mrs. Hudson’s latest boyfriend, jokes about the state of the flat. Slowly he grows bolder and his monologue takes on the tone of a confession.
Sherlock is lying on John’s bed one day, eyes closed, but still awake. John stands beside him, looking down at the freckles fading on his nose. “You look good with a bit of color, you know,” he begins, brushing a fingertip along the slope of one cheek. “I wonder where you went while you were gone. If I asked, you’d probably be disappointed that I couldn’t guess from the state of your fingernails or watch strap or something.”
Sherlock brings his hands up to rest on his stomach with a sigh. John waits for him to resettle himself before going on. “France, definitely. Maybe Estonia. You always talked about visiting Tibet, so I bet you went there too. Mycroft knew of course, bastard.”
Sherlock smiles, and John feels his lips twitch. Insulting Mycroft has always got him on Sherlock’s good side, and it seems to work whether his friend can hear him or not. “I wish you’d taken me with you,” he adds, suddenly realizing how true the words are. He’s silent for a moment, because there’s something like panic building in his chest and it hurts to speak.
“Or told me. I would have kept your secret. I could’ve helped.” No, his mind rebels, no, this is getting too serious. He wanted to keep things light, because who wants be burdened with a clinically depressed ghost? If he’s going to haunt Sherlock Holmes, he’s going to do it right.
John swallows. “Sherlock,” he starts, but his voice cracks and he has to swallow again. “Sherlock.”
Sherlock is frowning now, his mouth pursed in a tight line like it is when he’s concentrating hard. There is an acrid burning in John’s eyes, and he wavers as he stands over Sherlock. “Don’t you care about me?” he whispers. His tongue is hot and sticky and clumsy in his mouth, and he’s not sure if the words come out fully formed, so he bends down closer to Sherlock on the bed. “Because I still love you.” His heart overflows.
*
Sherlock bolts up in bed as soon as the first hot drops hit his face, too real for the sweet daydream he’d been having. He is just in time to catch John as he faints into his arms.
*
John wakes to the sound of beeping and whirring. The ceiling is white and the sheets are starched. Hospital, he thinks muzzily. The past year and a half have caught up with him all at once, and he’s sore and tired and hungry. His stomach growls as if on cue, and a dark curly head swims into view.
“Food,” Sherlock announces abruptly, pushing a carton of Chinese (definitely not from the hospital canteen, John can tell from the heavenly smell) under his nose. As John fumbles with chopsticks, Sherlock surveys him for damage from beneath lowered lashes.
“You’ve lost a significant amount of weight. The A&E doctor was shocked to find someone who’d nearly starved to death in modern-day London.”
John considers the months since his last meal. “I forgot.”
“To eat?” Sherlock huffs his disbelief.
“Yeah. I was trying to find out what it’s like to be you.”
Sherlock’s expression softens slightly. “What did you find out?”
John shrugs, swallowing a mouthful of prawn toast. “I dunno. I don’t think it worked.”
They are both silent for a moment, while John chews and Sherlock watches him chew. Finally, Sherlock cracks. “Are we going to talk about this?” he asks, waving his hand hand vaguely to take in John, his IV and the hospital bed.
John puts down the carton. “Do you want to?”
Sherlock nods. “Yes. But-later.” He ducks his head and slides his hand into John’s.
“That’s going to make it more difficult for me to eat, you know.”
“I can help with that.”
Fin.
<< Go to part i