Remix of lindentreeisle: “Lifeblood”
Original Story:
Author: lindentreeisle
Title & Link: Swallow You Whole
Pairings & Rating: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Explicit
Warnings/Content Notes: Rape/Non-Con, Non Consensual, Dubious Consent, Stockholm Syndrome, Brainwashing, Hurt/Comfort Bingo, Vampires, Alt U - Dark
Remix Story:
Author: tiltedsyllogism
Title: Lifeblood
Pairings & Rating: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Mature
Warnings/Content Notes: Non-con, dub-con, manipulation, brainwashing, dark themes
Beta: hiddenlacuna
Britpicker: persiflager
Summary: “The thing is,” John said, and stopped. It all seemed a bit mad, that the prime minister’s younger brother apparently had nothing better on than to trail about after a crippled veteran with no job and no prospects. But then, Sherlock seemed a bit mad himself. It couldn’t be quite healthy, John supposed, being able to have anything you wanted.
The grey-haired DI leaned back in his chair. “You understand things look pretty bad for you, Mr. Watson.”
“Doctor Watson,” John said, leaden and mechanical.
“Doctor Watson,” the DI repeated, like it didn’t cost him anything. There was even a trace of pity in his voice. Underneath the table, John clenched his fists.
“One is suspicious,” he continued, “but two, now, that’s starting to look pretty bad for you.”
John held himself impassive. “I told you. I’ve no interest in cocaine or the people that sell it. I just… like to walk in the park in the mornings. Is all.”
“Walk,” repeated the officer, with patient, practiced suspicion.
“Exercise,” John said, slow and precise. The man’s eyes darted toward John’s cane, leaned up against the wall of the interrogation room, and for a moment John hated him.
The officer rubbed the back of his neck. “Still, quite a bit of luck for you to come across two different men bleeding on the ground. In the same park. When nobody else had -”
The interrogation room door slammed suddenly open, and a tall, dark-haired man stalked in, his enormous coat swirling behind him.
“Lestrade,” said the man imperiously (and for this John liked him at once, he’d forgotten the name five minutes in and had been struggling to recall it. “You’re ignoring my texts. I need you to take me through the new evidence in the gallery heist.”
The officer - Lestrade - hadn’t moved, and he didn’t look at the intruder now. “I’m with a suspect, Sherlock,” he said evenly.
The man glanced at John and scoffed derisively. “No you aren’t. Not unless the Yard has descended to new depths of idiocy and imprecision. This man has nothing to do with the drug assaults.”
“Sherlock, he was the first on site at two separate crime scenes.” Lestrade sounded utterly exasperated, rather like John’s own father when he was a teenager. John suppressed a smile.
Sherlock rolled his eyes dramatically, and yep, John could see why Lestrade was reminding him of a teenager’s long-suffering parent. “Lestrade, you are looking for an attacker who requires thirty to fifty blows to render his targets unconscious, though all of them have been slender and below average height. Impassioned, but not very effective. This man,” he paused briefly to appraise John, “is a recently returned veteran with medical training. Your attacker, by contrast, demonstrates not only a lack of restraint but also a lack of skill. Not anybody with military training, let alone medical knowledge. And nearly six feet tall, as the pattern of blows clearly indicated, which…” he waved a dismissive hand at John.
John was used to digs about his height, but less accustomed to flights of intellectual brilliance, tossed off as casually as if it were the weather report. “That was amazing.”
Sherlock’s eyes turned back toward John, and stayed there. “A fixed income,” he said, more slowly, “in sponsored housing. Living on your pension because - you’re injured, you can’t work anymore.”
“Sherlock,” Lestrade groused. “Can we focus, please?”
Sherlock glanced up at the DI. “We are focusing,” he replied, “on getting to the case that matters, which clearly won’t happen until you stop wasting your time interrogating the wrong people.” Sherlock looked back at John, and though his face remained impassive, there seemed to be some humour in it. “If this man were going to be violent, it would look very different.”
John didn’t feel quite ready to own up to that in front of a police inspector who was, after all, still trying to book charges against him, but he smiled slightly in response.
Sherlock looked away from John as if he had forgotten John was there. “Lestrade, find someone to process his release, we’ve got work to do.”
Lestrade looked at John, sighed, winced, and then walked to the door of the interrogation room and leaned out into the hall. “Donovan!” A female voice answered him a moment later, and while the two officers conversed quietly, John stole another look at his saviour. His attention had been like a physical weight, but now that was gone; Sherlock seemed impatient with everything, flicking through his phone, paging through files he seemed to have taken out of Lestrade’s satchel, eyes flitting all over the barren room. That was that, John supposed. He was still grateful, if a bit bemused.
“Doctor Watson.” John glanced over to see the female officer standing in the doorway next to Lestrade. “You can come with me.”
John collected his cane from where it leaned against the wall and followed the officer - Donovan - to a cubicle down the hall. She took a seat behind the desk anf waved him toward the chair crammed in the corner. “This’ll be just a few moments,” she said, and she didn’t bother to smile, and he liked that. She was quite pretty, even without smiling. Very, very pretty. A few years ago, John might have had the cheek to chat her up properly - police station and all - but a cripple on a fixed income couldn’t conjure the same sort of swagger. Instead, he sat patiently as she typed and gave one-word answers to her questions.
“All right, you’re free to go.” Donovan gave him a brisk smile. “Apologies for the mix-up.”
John stood. “Good. Okay. Thanks. But, um…” He was standing, looking down at her, and the cane was still on the floor; it was like a taste of being normal again. She was looking up at him. He gave her an easy smile. “I was wondering if you could tell me. That, uh, that man in there…”
She rolled her eyes. “What, the posh one in the great big coat? That’s Sherlock. He’s a live one, all right. Gets away with murder.”
“Not actual murder, probably,” John answered, grinning.
“No.” She snorted. “Although he probably could,” she added, with a surprising edge of venom.
“Is he in tight with the DI?”
“Sort of.” She leaned back and crossed her arms. “That’s Mycroft Holmes’s baby brother.”
John’s eyes went wide. “To the manor born, you might say, then.”
Donovan nodded. “And what he wants to do is to hang about the Yard pestering us, so that’s what he gets. And the rest of us have to put up with it, is all.”
“Hmm, I’m sure that’s great fun for your lot.”
“Oh yeah, loads.”
John smiled back, rocking on his heels. “He is quite personable, I did notice.”
She smiled back, a real smile. “Oh, yes. He’s very popular. So polite.”
“Quite modest, as well.” John’s smile faded; it felt a bit unfair to be ragging on the man who had got him out of trouble. “Though to be fair, he is quite brilliant. I suppose I should be grateful, since he’s the reason I get to walk out of here.”
“Well, good for you,” she said. “At least somebody gets to go home. Anything else?” Her face had closed.
He felt his smile fall away. “Ah, no. Thank you very much.”
All things considered, he’d come out ahead, he reflected as he walked out into the midday sunlight. Getting shot down wasn’t that bad, when he very well might have been booked for assault. And at least it had been something he said. That was a thing that could happen to any sort of person.
++++++++++++
It was a twenty-five minute walk back to John’s bedsit from the Sainsburys. The plastic shopping bag was cutting painfully into his fingers, and his arm was quite sore - usually he only bought a few days’ worth. But tinned beans had been marked down to 50p, and you never knew when that would happen again.
He trudged round the corner and saw an unfamiliar figure leaning up against the wall outside the entrance to his building. John wondered if maybe somebody new had been given the empty room at the end of the hall, but as he came closer, the figure resolved into long elegant lines, and he realized this person wasn’t the sort to wind up in veterans’ housing, not at all. A few more steps brought him closer and he recognized Sherlock Holmes, the man from the police station. John felt himself go tense beneath a film of stillness.
“Hello,” he said, keeping his voice neutral.
“Here you are,” Sherlock replied, crisp and a touch impatient.
“I live here.”
Sherlock only looked at him pityingly, and John felt foolish for a moment - of course Sherlock knew that - before the apprehension seeped back in.
“They’ve got more questions, I suppose?”
Sherlock frowned. “Who, the police? Why would they want you? And if they did, they’d send an officer.”
John set the bag of groceries down on the pavement and flexed his fingers. It felt foolish, like a piddling little civilian problem, but beans were heavy. “So why are you here, then?”
“Not for the scenery.” Sherlock looked, if possible, even less impressed than he had a moment ago. “Really, John.”
“Then why-” John cut himself off abruptly. He was beginning to learn what sort of questions earned him a cutting look, and it wasn’t an experience he much fancied.
“The thing is,” he said, and stopped. It all seemed a bit mad, that the prime minister’s younger brother apparently had nothing better on than to trail about after a crippled veteran with no job and no prospects. But then, Sherlock seemed a bit mad himself. It couldn’t be quite healthy, John supposed, being able to have anything you wanted.
“The thing is,” said Sherlock, “you hate living here. Anyone would, really. You’d like to move, but you can’t afford it, not even to another equally grotty building in a different neighbourhood, or some place slightly less dismal in this one. The housing office is so backed up that you haven’t even bothered applying. You know it will only frustrate you, and it’s hard enough to feel grateful.”
John stared. “Wow,” he said. It left him feeling a bit flayed open, to be read like that so clearly. “How’d you - never mind. That was incredible.”
Sherlock smiled a little, clearly pleased. “I was right?”
“Yep.” John rubbed the back of his neck. “Completely.”
Sherlock’s grin blossomed fully. “It’s settled, then. You’ll move in with me.”
John was glad he wasn’t holding the groceries, or he would have dropped them. “Sorry, what?”
“It’s obvious. I’ve got a spare room in my flat, which is far nicer than anything you could afford, and I don’t require any help with the rent. It works out very nicely.”
“Okay, hang on,” said John. “First of all, I had no idea you’d a spare room.” Sherlock shifted impatiently. “And all, right, you probably could have figured that out about yourself just by, by looking, but I can’t.” John swallowed and pursed his lips. “Second of all, no.”
Sherlock’s face darkened. “What,” he said very quietly.
John straightened his back. “No,” he said back, voice also low.
“Why not?”
It surprised John, that it required so much presence of mind not to drop his eyes, to stare down this… this spoiled child. He’d seen much worse, surely. “Because I don’t want to.”
Sherlock dashed his fists on his thighs in frustration and then whirled into motion, pacing up and down the strip of pavement in front of John’s building. John watched him, wary, until Sherlock came right up in front of him again. John stared up at him, challenging.
“You know,” said Sherlock, “the police never officially cleared you in that first assault case.”
John scoffed, caught between nervousness and disgust. “They know it wasn’t me. I’ve you to thank for that, in fact.”
“True.” Sherlock’s gaze lilted to the side, then snapped back to John. “However. The paperwork could still be filed - there isn’t another suspect, after all - and until the case is cleared, it would remain on your record.” Sherlock scrunched his face, as if thinking. “And I believe that allegations of violent criminal activity are enough to get you tossed out of assisted housing.”
“That… that’s not true.” John shook his head. “No. That can’t be right.” Could it, though? Sherlock’s face was inscrutable. John squeezed his eyes shut in consternation and tried to remember what he had been told, the day the SPACES had processed him and assigned his housing. That long, deadening march of paperwork and explanations had been like desert gravel rattling against a dirty windscreen, bouncing off before he knew it was there. He couldn’t remember if he had learned anything about that; all the memories of that day had fallen into vague drifts on either side of a single, bright, acid line: the struggle, every moment, to get his hand to stop shaking so he could sign the forms in front of him.
“You can’t,” John said uncertainly.
Sherlock stepped in front of him and stared down at him. “I could,” he said pointedly.
John wilted, too worn out even for rage. “So if I won’t live with you, then, what, I’m not to live anywhere at all?”
“You’re not so far from the London Road Bridge. Some associates of mine sleep there regularly, and they assure me it’s quite nice.” He shrugged. “Bit drafty in winter. I’m sure you’d get used to it.”
John wasn’t sure whether he was joking or not. Maybe, in this rabbit-hole of a world he’d stepped into when he met Sherlock, there wasn’t any difference.
“Fine,” he said. “Fine. All right.”
Sherlock’s face lit up. “Excellent. Tomorrow evening, then. 221b Baker Street. Second bell from the top.” He winked, turned around in a flower-like whirl of coattails, and began striding away down the street.
John stared after him, aghast. “Tomorrow?”
“Don’t make me send someone for you,” Sherlock called back, without breaking stride.
John looked down at the sack of groceries on the pavement, pulled out a single tin of beans, and dug into his pocket for his keys. There was probably somebody else who could use the rest of them.
++++++++++++
If it were going to be that evening, John thought, it might as well be that morning. It didn’t take long for John to pack all of his belongings he felt like taking into his old army duffel. He left the keys on the table - which might not be standard procedure, but John could hardly bring himself to worry about it - slung the bag over his good shoulder, and took the stairs in careful steps, cane-step-step, for the last time. It was only when he got to the tube station that he realized he didn’t remember where he was going.
Well. There was someone who did.
It felt a bit strange to walk into New Scotland Yard with all his kit, especially since it wasn’t really that long since they’d been offering him hospitality. But the desk sergeant didn’t seem to recognize him, and when DI Lestrade came forward to meet him, he greeted John with a friendly wave.
“What can I do for you, Doctor Watson?” he asked. His easy joviality seemed real enough, but it felt a bit weird, considering.
“Well, I’m going to, uh.” He swallowed. “I’m going to Sherlock’s, but I can’t remember…”
Lestrade chuckled. “Not to worry. I can take you over there. Come back to my office for a bit, yeah?”
“Thanks.” John re-shouldered his back and clumped forward, grateful to the desk sergeant for opening the gate without asking.
Lestrade had a proper office, not a cube like Donovan. John glanced around, half-hopeful and half-dreading, but he didn’t see her. Lestrade waved John into a chair and took a seat at his own desk.
“So did he bother to tell you, or just expect you to work it out on your own?”
“No, he told me,” John allowed. “I just didn’t remember.”
Lestrade grinned, leaning back in his chair. “Almost as if you’re human.”
“Yeah.” John huffed a laugh. “Doesn’t seem to hold him back, though.”
“Well, he has had all the advantages, hasn’t he?”
John shrugged. He didn’t know, not really; he’d never paid much attention to that part of the papers. “I don’t really know him.”
Lestrade looked at him for a long moment. “You will.”
Lestrade was no Sherlock - not even close - but John still didn’t like the feeling of being looked at so closely. “So, shall we, uh…”
“You may as well settle in,” replied Lestrade, pulling himself back toward his desk. “We’ll be here for a bit. No point in going over now, you see - his nibs’ll be asleep for hours yet.”
John glanced up at the clock on the wall. “What is he, some kind of vampire?”
Lestrade snorted, eyes already on the file in front of him. “Be sure to tell him that joke, will you? Definitely a new one.”
John fidgeted for a few minutes, then opened his bag and dug out the one novel he had brought with him. He normally didn’t go in for paranormal mysteries, but it had been the only book in the free box outside the Oxfam without water damage. And it was absorbing enough to have pulled him in, so he found his place and read until he heard Lestrade say into the phone:
“Yeah, I’m gonna need a vehicle in five minutes. Nah, less than an hour. Okay, thanks.” Lestrade set down the receiver and looked over at John. “Ready to go?”
John had spent the past two hours stowing away his impatience, but now he felt nervous. He stood up, took hold of his bag and his cane, and followed Lestrade down to the lot.
“We’re going to Baker Street, by the way,” Lestrade said conversationally, as they pulled onto the A41.
“Oh. Thanks.”
“So how did he convince you?” the DI asked. He sounded easy and curious, all at once. He was probably quite a good investigator. John liked him, even if he couldn’t quite wrap his head round the way the man seemed to be Sherlock’s tame inspector.
John shrugged. “‘Convince’ may not be the right word.”
Lestrade chuckled quietly. “He’s used to getting what he wants. And of course he’s quite clever about getting it.”
John stared silently out the window, feeling bleak, until the car slowed to a stop outside a well-kept white building. This must be it, he supposed. He looked over at Lestrade, who was watching him.
“Does he think he’s better than everyone else?” John blurted out.
Lestrade considered. “He probably would if he ever bothered to think about other people at all. C’mon, let’s go.” He smiled wryly. “No point putting it off any longer.”
By the time John had extracted himself from the car and made it to the stoop, Lestrade was bent over the doorknob, swearing under his breath. John frowned. “You have a key?” Lestrade shook the door open and shot him a sharp, significant look that John didn’t know how to read.
Sherlock’s flat was on the first floor. John glanced around the front hallway, taking in dark wood and rich wallpaper. The steps up were a bit tricky, with his bag, but John reckoned he’d do fine when he wasn’t carrying his entire life with him. He’d have to start thinking of it as his flat, eventually.
But no, he thought the next moment as he stepped in after Lestrade, this would always be Sherlock’s flat, no matter how long John lived there. Books were strewn everywhere, a fierce-looking knife was jammed into the mantelpiece, every flat surface was stacked with chemistry equipment, and there appeared to be a cow skull on the wall. It was a lucky thing John didn’t have any pictures he wanted to hang.
Lestrade, meanwhile, had gone over to the table and was rifling through a stack of files that lay on the desk. He extracted several and was gathering them up when the bedroom door clicked and Sherlock emerged, wearing ratty old pyjamas and a silk dressing gown.
John, who had been inspecting a set of slides next to the microscope, froze as though he had been caught stealing from the candy jar. But Sherlock made straight for Lestrade, ignoring John completely.
“Back!” Sherlock shouted. “I am not done with those. You can have them on Thursday.” Lestrade had managed to slide back to the doorway, but he crouched down, conciliatory, and laid two of the files carefully onto the floor, one after the other.
“Goo-ood. Now the other,” said Sherlock, slightly more gracious in victory, but Lestrade sprang to his feet and bolted down the steps.
Sherlock sighed expansively, then turned to John and presented him with an oily smile. “So sorry about that.”
“He brought me over,” John said uncertainly.
Sherlock only rolled his eyes. “Is that everything?” he asked, pointing at the duffel bag. John nodded. Sherlock sat down on the floor next to the bag, yanked open the zipper, and pulled out two of John’s vests, which he looked at with mild interest before tossing them to the floor.
“Hey,” said John, as he realized what Sherlock was doing. “Hey, that’s mine.”
But Sherlock continued to pull clothes out of the duffel, unheeding, until he paused with his hand in the bag and his face changed. Here we go, thought John, and dull despair settled over him as Sherlock drew his gun out of the bag.
“Oh,” said Sherlock, his breath catching. John watched him from across the room, helpless, fingers twitching.
Sherlock spent several minutes turning the gun over in his hands, running his finger along the length of the barrel, popping out the magazine, even lifting it to his nose to smell. At last he looked up at John, face blank and oddly childlike.
“Do you carry it with you?”
John saw no point in lying. “Sometimes.”
Without a word, Sherlock picked up the gun by the barrel and held it out toward him.
John blinked. “Aren’t you going to report me?”
“Why would I?”
“It’s illegal,” John pointed out. Sherlock snorted. “And rather dangerous to have lying about.” He smiled without mirth.
“Dangerous for an untrained civilian, maybe. Not for you. You wouldn’t set it off by accident, and if you haven’t yet shot anyone in a murderous rage, you’re unlikely to start now.”
“There’s always you,” said John sourly, and then pressed his lips together tightly, too late, as Sherlock glanced up at him. But Sherlock met his apprehensive glance with a small smile, as if he were only amused. “You’re not going to kill me, either. You’re quite level-headed even when you’re angry, and you won’t lose sight of the fact that my brother would hunt you down and torture you regardless of where you tried to hide. And if you were to sink so far into despair that you wanted to end your own life - which is unlikely, seeing that it hasn’t happened already, even as miserable as you’ve been since returning to London - you’ll be past the point of caring what happens to me, or to anyone else, and you’ll only shoot yourself.”
John could only stare, heart hammering. It was true, of course, though John had never put it together before. Put like that, all of the things Sherlock had taken away from him didn’t seem to add up to very much. He felt shaken to bits, with only his skin holding him together. “Oh,” he said at last.
Sherlock gave him a bright, false smile. “If it’s any comfort, I can’t imagine it will come to that.” He stared hard at John, and the smile dropped away. “I was right again, wasn’t I?”
“Yeah.” John nodded. “It was -” John blinked, hard, and shook his head a bit. “It’s like you see everything, somehow. It’s amazing, really. ”
Sherlock said nothing, but satisfaction gleamed in his face as he returned to the earlier project of rifling through the bag. “No, the only thing in here that’s a problem is the laptop.”
“What’s -” John cleared his throat, still struggling to recover his voice. “What’s the problem there?”
Sherlock looked up and sighed. “It’s utter rubbish, John. It’s even older than your shoes. You need a much better one.”
“What.” John’s breath was still a bit short. “What for?”
Sherlock cocked his head, reminding John for a moment of an oversized bird. “Oh, I don’t know. Typing. Checking the internet. It’s your computer, John. I assume you want it to work.” He clicked the K, hard.
“Yeah, all right,” John said, still suspicious. At least his heart rate was going back to normal. “Just… nothing too expensive, all right?”
Sherlock scoffed as he pulled on his coat. “What does ‘too expensive’ mean, exactly?”
John was still trying to decide how to answer that as they went out the door.
++++++++++++
John’s new computer felt like almost nothing at all, hanging from his shoulder in its sharp-looking carrier bag, and John himself felt light, exultant. It was a lovely, sleek little machine, faster than any other computer he’d ever had even when they were new, and the keyboard didn’t stick at all. It wouldn’t be a trial to check his email each morning, or to type a sentence. Maybe he could go back to writing now.
“Dinner?” asked Sherlock, walking beside him with hands in the pockets of his greatcoat. “I know a nice Italian place near here.”
“Money still no object?” John asked.
“They never charge me at Angelo’s,” Sherlock replied. John raised his eyebrows. “I got the owner off a murder charge once,” he added.
“Wow,” said John. “So that’s… so that’s something you do, then. Help people.”
Sherlock snorted. “I solve crimes, John,” he said. “That means identifying the criminal. Sometimes other people are exonerated along the way.”
“Do you catch the criminals, though?” John was intrigued, almost in spite of himself.
“Usually. When the police don’t botch it up too badly. And sometimes even when they do.”
John was hooked, despite his resolution to give this man as little as he could. “Can you tell me about some of them? Or would that be breaking police confidentiality?”
“It would be.” Sherlock’s face crinkled into a small, surprisingly disarming style. “Do you want to hear about them?”
“Yes.” John grinned in return.
And so Sherlock recounted a handful of particularly adventurous cases while John devoured a plate of excellent spaghetti carbonara. Sherlock himself ate very little, but seemed to drink up John’s enthusiasm and praise like nourishment. By the end of the meal he was practically manic, glowing with every bit of praise John gave him, and came back to earth only a little when John wheedled him into eating a few bites of his alfredo before they left.
They walked out into the warm night and turned toward Baker Street, and John felt an odd, low glow of something almost like contentment. His life had been shaken off course, but here he was, full of good food and good talk, with a new laptop over his shoulder and his leg paining him hardly at all. He wondered if Sherlock would -
The next second John was on the pavement, sprawling on his side, and Sherlock was shouting. John clambered up to his elbow just in time to see Sherlock catch someone in a flying tackle about a dozen yards away. The fugitive - whoever he was - hit the ground hard, and the next moment Sherlock was on top of him, punching him in the face.
John tried to struggle to his feet, and realized as he collapsed back to his knees that his cane was missing. “Sherlock?” he called out cautiously.
Sherlock jogged up a moment later, breathless and a bit red. “Yes,” he huffed out, holding the cane out toward John. “I know.”
“Thanks.” John took the cane and clambered up. The laptop bag had landed on top of him, which was lucky. His arm hurt where he had landed on it, but other than that he seemed to be fine. Other than the fact that he had just been knocked to the ground by a random assailant and had his cane stolen.
“Thanks,” John said again, deeply embarrassed. “But, um, I could have…”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Sherlock. “You’re perfectly fine with your cane, but you can’t run, and in all likelihood you never will again.”
“Yeah,” John mumbled, heart sinking, even though it wasn’t news. It was just his life now.
He felt a soft touch at his shoulder and started up to see Sherlock looking at him almost- almost tenderly.
“Are you all right?” he asked softly.
“Yeah,” John replied. “Yeah, I’m-yeah.” He swallowed. “Thanks, Sherlock.”
Sherlock dropped his hand from John’s shoulder. “Of course,” he replied, voice still soft.
They walked the last few blocks in silence. Once inside the flat, Sherlock seated himself in front of his microscope as if John weren’t there at all.
John, still in the doorway, stifled the urge to ask Sherlock what was on next - after all, if they were to live together, it would be like this most evenings. He would have to learn to entertain himself. All right. He leaned his cane up against the wall, pulled his novel out of his bag, seated himself in one of the squashy armchairs, and started to read.
He realized about ten minutes in that he kept losing the thread - the story couldn’t hold his interest anymore, maybe because so much had happened today. He sighed and set the book in his lap.
“Hey Sherlock,” he said.
Sherlock looked over.
“Who was it, who took my cane?” John asked. “I didn’t get a good look at him.”
Sherlock shrugged. “Some ruffian. Does it matter?”
“It’s just strange, is all.” John frowned. “Do you think it was the homeless man who was sitting outside the restaurant?”
“Could be,” Sherlock answered, returning to his microscope. The conversation was clearly over.
John looked down at his book and sighed. No reason to read a boring book in a flat crammed full. He levered himself up and began to pace the room, perusing the books as he went. He quickly realized that his search was hopeless - many of the books were in other languages, and the majority seemed to be scientific and medical treatises. John found himself wondering what Sherlock did for fun, if he ever did anything for fun. Maybe his life was exciting enough, and he didn’t need to read stories. John’s life had certainly got more exciting since meeting him. He rubbed absently at his shoulder. It would probably bruise, he realized with a little spark of satisfaction. Almost like fighting again. He wondered whether Sherlock would let him help with the mysteries.
“Odd, though, isn’t it,” he said. “Why would someone take my cane when he could have had the laptop? I mean, a cane’s - well, he couldn’t have got much money for it, anyhow.”
“Mm.”
“Sherlock,” said John, a bit sharply. Something about the incident was plucking at the back of his brain, reminding him of something else he couldn’t pin down. If John was going to be living at the beck and call of an imperious crime-solving genius - and he was beginning to get used to the idea, and even like it, a little - at least he ought to be able to call on that big brain to help him puzzle out this little mystery of his own.
“Hmm?” Sherlock looked up absently. “We’ll get you a nicer cane if you want.”
John felt the old frustration well up. “That’s not…” he took a deep breath. Steady, he said to himself. Getting angry at Sherlock was a bad idea. It hadn’t done him a whit of good, along the way, and ever since John had given in and moved to Baker Street, Sherlock had been - he’d been amazing, really, considering the circumstances. Three days ago, John had been mouldering in an old bedsit, too exhausted to be afraid of the future; and now he was in this gorgeous flat, he had a new computer, and probably plenty of nice new things to come, if he wanted them. And sure he was a bit afraid, a bit apprehensive, but it felt good, like he was awake again after a long sleep. Sherlock had swept in and made it all so, and he could take it away at any moment. John knew he couldn’t afford to let himself be angry at the man.
“Never mind,” he said, in as neutral a tone as he could manage. He wiped his hands over his face. “I’m going to bed.”
Sherlock ignored him and kept working. John pottered a bit longer, straightening the stacks of books on the coffee table and washing up the mugs that had been left there, then began to climb the stairs to his bedroom.
“Go to mine,” said Sherlock, without looking up.
John froze, swallowed, came down off the first stair. He was steady enough on his feet to do without the cane, usually, when he was at home and only going short distances, but he wasn’t steady enough for this.
“Sherlock,” he said, struggling to keep his voice even. “I’m straight.”
“I don’t see how that’s relevant,” Sherlock replied. He was still looking through the eyepiece of the microscope.
John closed his eyes and shivered, and then turned and walked through Sherlock’s bedroom door.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Remember to leave feedback for both authors!
Author: lindentreeisle
Title & Link: Swallow You Whole
Pairings & Rating: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Explicit
Warnings/Content Notes: Rape/Non-Con, Non Consensual, Dubious Consent, Stockholm Syndrome, Brainwashing, Hurt/Comfort Bingo, Vampires, Alt U - Dark
Remix Story:
Author: tiltedsyllogism
Title: Lifeblood
Pairings & Rating: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Mature
Warnings/Content Notes: Non-con, dub-con, manipulation, brainwashing, dark themes
Beta: hiddenlacuna
Britpicker: persiflager
Summary: “The thing is,” John said, and stopped. It all seemed a bit mad, that the prime minister’s younger brother apparently had nothing better on than to trail about after a crippled veteran with no job and no prospects. But then, Sherlock seemed a bit mad himself. It couldn’t be quite healthy, John supposed, being able to have anything you wanted.
The grey-haired DI leaned back in his chair. “You understand things look pretty bad for you, Mr. Watson.”
“Doctor Watson,” John said, leaden and mechanical.
“Doctor Watson,” the DI repeated, like it didn’t cost him anything. There was even a trace of pity in his voice. Underneath the table, John clenched his fists.
“One is suspicious,” he continued, “but two, now, that’s starting to look pretty bad for you.”
John held himself impassive. “I told you. I’ve no interest in cocaine or the people that sell it. I just… like to walk in the park in the mornings. Is all.”
“Walk,” repeated the officer, with patient, practiced suspicion.
“Exercise,” John said, slow and precise. The man’s eyes darted toward John’s cane, leaned up against the wall of the interrogation room, and for a moment John hated him.
The officer rubbed the back of his neck. “Still, quite a bit of luck for you to come across two different men bleeding on the ground. In the same park. When nobody else had -”
The interrogation room door slammed suddenly open, and a tall, dark-haired man stalked in, his enormous coat swirling behind him.
“Lestrade,” said the man imperiously (and for this John liked him at once, he’d forgotten the name five minutes in and had been struggling to recall it. “You’re ignoring my texts. I need you to take me through the new evidence in the gallery heist.”
The officer - Lestrade - hadn’t moved, and he didn’t look at the intruder now. “I’m with a suspect, Sherlock,” he said evenly.
The man glanced at John and scoffed derisively. “No you aren’t. Not unless the Yard has descended to new depths of idiocy and imprecision. This man has nothing to do with the drug assaults.”
“Sherlock, he was the first on site at two separate crime scenes.” Lestrade sounded utterly exasperated, rather like John’s own father when he was a teenager. John suppressed a smile.
Sherlock rolled his eyes dramatically, and yep, John could see why Lestrade was reminding him of a teenager’s long-suffering parent. “Lestrade, you are looking for an attacker who requires thirty to fifty blows to render his targets unconscious, though all of them have been slender and below average height. Impassioned, but not very effective. This man,” he paused briefly to appraise John, “is a recently returned veteran with medical training. Your attacker, by contrast, demonstrates not only a lack of restraint but also a lack of skill. Not anybody with military training, let alone medical knowledge. And nearly six feet tall, as the pattern of blows clearly indicated, which…” he waved a dismissive hand at John.
John was used to digs about his height, but less accustomed to flights of intellectual brilliance, tossed off as casually as if it were the weather report. “That was amazing.”
Sherlock’s eyes turned back toward John, and stayed there. “A fixed income,” he said, more slowly, “in sponsored housing. Living on your pension because - you’re injured, you can’t work anymore.”
“Sherlock,” Lestrade groused. “Can we focus, please?”
Sherlock glanced up at the DI. “We are focusing,” he replied, “on getting to the case that matters, which clearly won’t happen until you stop wasting your time interrogating the wrong people.” Sherlock looked back at John, and though his face remained impassive, there seemed to be some humour in it. “If this man were going to be violent, it would look very different.”
John didn’t feel quite ready to own up to that in front of a police inspector who was, after all, still trying to book charges against him, but he smiled slightly in response.
Sherlock looked away from John as if he had forgotten John was there. “Lestrade, find someone to process his release, we’ve got work to do.”
Lestrade looked at John, sighed, winced, and then walked to the door of the interrogation room and leaned out into the hall. “Donovan!” A female voice answered him a moment later, and while the two officers conversed quietly, John stole another look at his saviour. His attention had been like a physical weight, but now that was gone; Sherlock seemed impatient with everything, flicking through his phone, paging through files he seemed to have taken out of Lestrade’s satchel, eyes flitting all over the barren room. That was that, John supposed. He was still grateful, if a bit bemused.
“Doctor Watson.” John glanced over to see the female officer standing in the doorway next to Lestrade. “You can come with me.”
John collected his cane from where it leaned against the wall and followed the officer - Donovan - to a cubicle down the hall. She took a seat behind the desk anf waved him toward the chair crammed in the corner. “This’ll be just a few moments,” she said, and she didn’t bother to smile, and he liked that. She was quite pretty, even without smiling. Very, very pretty. A few years ago, John might have had the cheek to chat her up properly - police station and all - but a cripple on a fixed income couldn’t conjure the same sort of swagger. Instead, he sat patiently as she typed and gave one-word answers to her questions.
“All right, you’re free to go.” Donovan gave him a brisk smile. “Apologies for the mix-up.”
John stood. “Good. Okay. Thanks. But, um…” He was standing, looking down at her, and the cane was still on the floor; it was like a taste of being normal again. She was looking up at him. He gave her an easy smile. “I was wondering if you could tell me. That, uh, that man in there…”
She rolled her eyes. “What, the posh one in the great big coat? That’s Sherlock. He’s a live one, all right. Gets away with murder.”
“Not actual murder, probably,” John answered, grinning.
“No.” She snorted. “Although he probably could,” she added, with a surprising edge of venom.
“Is he in tight with the DI?”
“Sort of.” She leaned back and crossed her arms. “That’s Mycroft Holmes’s baby brother.”
John’s eyes went wide. “To the manor born, you might say, then.”
Donovan nodded. “And what he wants to do is to hang about the Yard pestering us, so that’s what he gets. And the rest of us have to put up with it, is all.”
“Hmm, I’m sure that’s great fun for your lot.”
“Oh yeah, loads.”
John smiled back, rocking on his heels. “He is quite personable, I did notice.”
She smiled back, a real smile. “Oh, yes. He’s very popular. So polite.”
“Quite modest, as well.” John’s smile faded; it felt a bit unfair to be ragging on the man who had got him out of trouble. “Though to be fair, he is quite brilliant. I suppose I should be grateful, since he’s the reason I get to walk out of here.”
“Well, good for you,” she said. “At least somebody gets to go home. Anything else?” Her face had closed.
He felt his smile fall away. “Ah, no. Thank you very much.”
All things considered, he’d come out ahead, he reflected as he walked out into the midday sunlight. Getting shot down wasn’t that bad, when he very well might have been booked for assault. And at least it had been something he said. That was a thing that could happen to any sort of person.
++++++++++++
It was a twenty-five minute walk back to John’s bedsit from the Sainsburys. The plastic shopping bag was cutting painfully into his fingers, and his arm was quite sore - usually he only bought a few days’ worth. But tinned beans had been marked down to 50p, and you never knew when that would happen again.
He trudged round the corner and saw an unfamiliar figure leaning up against the wall outside the entrance to his building. John wondered if maybe somebody new had been given the empty room at the end of the hall, but as he came closer, the figure resolved into long elegant lines, and he realized this person wasn’t the sort to wind up in veterans’ housing, not at all. A few more steps brought him closer and he recognized Sherlock Holmes, the man from the police station. John felt himself go tense beneath a film of stillness.
“Hello,” he said, keeping his voice neutral.
“Here you are,” Sherlock replied, crisp and a touch impatient.
“I live here.”
Sherlock only looked at him pityingly, and John felt foolish for a moment - of course Sherlock knew that - before the apprehension seeped back in.
“They’ve got more questions, I suppose?”
Sherlock frowned. “Who, the police? Why would they want you? And if they did, they’d send an officer.”
John set the bag of groceries down on the pavement and flexed his fingers. It felt foolish, like a piddling little civilian problem, but beans were heavy. “So why are you here, then?”
“Not for the scenery.” Sherlock looked, if possible, even less impressed than he had a moment ago. “Really, John.”
“Then why-” John cut himself off abruptly. He was beginning to learn what sort of questions earned him a cutting look, and it wasn’t an experience he much fancied.
“The thing is,” he said, and stopped. It all seemed a bit mad, that the prime minister’s younger brother apparently had nothing better on than to trail about after a crippled veteran with no job and no prospects. But then, Sherlock seemed a bit mad himself. It couldn’t be quite healthy, John supposed, being able to have anything you wanted.
“The thing is,” said Sherlock, “you hate living here. Anyone would, really. You’d like to move, but you can’t afford it, not even to another equally grotty building in a different neighbourhood, or some place slightly less dismal in this one. The housing office is so backed up that you haven’t even bothered applying. You know it will only frustrate you, and it’s hard enough to feel grateful.”
John stared. “Wow,” he said. It left him feeling a bit flayed open, to be read like that so clearly. “How’d you - never mind. That was incredible.”
Sherlock smiled a little, clearly pleased. “I was right?”
“Yep.” John rubbed the back of his neck. “Completely.”
Sherlock’s grin blossomed fully. “It’s settled, then. You’ll move in with me.”
John was glad he wasn’t holding the groceries, or he would have dropped them. “Sorry, what?”
“It’s obvious. I’ve got a spare room in my flat, which is far nicer than anything you could afford, and I don’t require any help with the rent. It works out very nicely.”
“Okay, hang on,” said John. “First of all, I had no idea you’d a spare room.” Sherlock shifted impatiently. “And all, right, you probably could have figured that out about yourself just by, by looking, but I can’t.” John swallowed and pursed his lips. “Second of all, no.”
Sherlock’s face darkened. “What,” he said very quietly.
John straightened his back. “No,” he said back, voice also low.
“Why not?”
It surprised John, that it required so much presence of mind not to drop his eyes, to stare down this… this spoiled child. He’d seen much worse, surely. “Because I don’t want to.”
Sherlock dashed his fists on his thighs in frustration and then whirled into motion, pacing up and down the strip of pavement in front of John’s building. John watched him, wary, until Sherlock came right up in front of him again. John stared up at him, challenging.
“You know,” said Sherlock, “the police never officially cleared you in that first assault case.”
John scoffed, caught between nervousness and disgust. “They know it wasn’t me. I’ve you to thank for that, in fact.”
“True.” Sherlock’s gaze lilted to the side, then snapped back to John. “However. The paperwork could still be filed - there isn’t another suspect, after all - and until the case is cleared, it would remain on your record.” Sherlock scrunched his face, as if thinking. “And I believe that allegations of violent criminal activity are enough to get you tossed out of assisted housing.”
“That… that’s not true.” John shook his head. “No. That can’t be right.” Could it, though? Sherlock’s face was inscrutable. John squeezed his eyes shut in consternation and tried to remember what he had been told, the day the SPACES had processed him and assigned his housing. That long, deadening march of paperwork and explanations had been like desert gravel rattling against a dirty windscreen, bouncing off before he knew it was there. He couldn’t remember if he had learned anything about that; all the memories of that day had fallen into vague drifts on either side of a single, bright, acid line: the struggle, every moment, to get his hand to stop shaking so he could sign the forms in front of him.
“You can’t,” John said uncertainly.
Sherlock stepped in front of him and stared down at him. “I could,” he said pointedly.
John wilted, too worn out even for rage. “So if I won’t live with you, then, what, I’m not to live anywhere at all?”
“You’re not so far from the London Road Bridge. Some associates of mine sleep there regularly, and they assure me it’s quite nice.” He shrugged. “Bit drafty in winter. I’m sure you’d get used to it.”
John wasn’t sure whether he was joking or not. Maybe, in this rabbit-hole of a world he’d stepped into when he met Sherlock, there wasn’t any difference.
“Fine,” he said. “Fine. All right.”
Sherlock’s face lit up. “Excellent. Tomorrow evening, then. 221b Baker Street. Second bell from the top.” He winked, turned around in a flower-like whirl of coattails, and began striding away down the street.
John stared after him, aghast. “Tomorrow?”
“Don’t make me send someone for you,” Sherlock called back, without breaking stride.
John looked down at the sack of groceries on the pavement, pulled out a single tin of beans, and dug into his pocket for his keys. There was probably somebody else who could use the rest of them.
++++++++++++
If it were going to be that evening, John thought, it might as well be that morning. It didn’t take long for John to pack all of his belongings he felt like taking into his old army duffel. He left the keys on the table - which might not be standard procedure, but John could hardly bring himself to worry about it - slung the bag over his good shoulder, and took the stairs in careful steps, cane-step-step, for the last time. It was only when he got to the tube station that he realized he didn’t remember where he was going.
Well. There was someone who did.
It felt a bit strange to walk into New Scotland Yard with all his kit, especially since it wasn’t really that long since they’d been offering him hospitality. But the desk sergeant didn’t seem to recognize him, and when DI Lestrade came forward to meet him, he greeted John with a friendly wave.
“What can I do for you, Doctor Watson?” he asked. His easy joviality seemed real enough, but it felt a bit weird, considering.
“Well, I’m going to, uh.” He swallowed. “I’m going to Sherlock’s, but I can’t remember…”
Lestrade chuckled. “Not to worry. I can take you over there. Come back to my office for a bit, yeah?”
“Thanks.” John re-shouldered his back and clumped forward, grateful to the desk sergeant for opening the gate without asking.
Lestrade had a proper office, not a cube like Donovan. John glanced around, half-hopeful and half-dreading, but he didn’t see her. Lestrade waved John into a chair and took a seat at his own desk.
“So did he bother to tell you, or just expect you to work it out on your own?”
“No, he told me,” John allowed. “I just didn’t remember.”
Lestrade grinned, leaning back in his chair. “Almost as if you’re human.”
“Yeah.” John huffed a laugh. “Doesn’t seem to hold him back, though.”
“Well, he has had all the advantages, hasn’t he?”
John shrugged. He didn’t know, not really; he’d never paid much attention to that part of the papers. “I don’t really know him.”
Lestrade looked at him for a long moment. “You will.”
Lestrade was no Sherlock - not even close - but John still didn’t like the feeling of being looked at so closely. “So, shall we, uh…”
“You may as well settle in,” replied Lestrade, pulling himself back toward his desk. “We’ll be here for a bit. No point in going over now, you see - his nibs’ll be asleep for hours yet.”
John glanced up at the clock on the wall. “What is he, some kind of vampire?”
Lestrade snorted, eyes already on the file in front of him. “Be sure to tell him that joke, will you? Definitely a new one.”
John fidgeted for a few minutes, then opened his bag and dug out the one novel he had brought with him. He normally didn’t go in for paranormal mysteries, but it had been the only book in the free box outside the Oxfam without water damage. And it was absorbing enough to have pulled him in, so he found his place and read until he heard Lestrade say into the phone:
“Yeah, I’m gonna need a vehicle in five minutes. Nah, less than an hour. Okay, thanks.” Lestrade set down the receiver and looked over at John. “Ready to go?”
John had spent the past two hours stowing away his impatience, but now he felt nervous. He stood up, took hold of his bag and his cane, and followed Lestrade down to the lot.
“We’re going to Baker Street, by the way,” Lestrade said conversationally, as they pulled onto the A41.
“Oh. Thanks.”
“So how did he convince you?” the DI asked. He sounded easy and curious, all at once. He was probably quite a good investigator. John liked him, even if he couldn’t quite wrap his head round the way the man seemed to be Sherlock’s tame inspector.
John shrugged. “‘Convince’ may not be the right word.”
Lestrade chuckled quietly. “He’s used to getting what he wants. And of course he’s quite clever about getting it.”
John stared silently out the window, feeling bleak, until the car slowed to a stop outside a well-kept white building. This must be it, he supposed. He looked over at Lestrade, who was watching him.
“Does he think he’s better than everyone else?” John blurted out.
Lestrade considered. “He probably would if he ever bothered to think about other people at all. C’mon, let’s go.” He smiled wryly. “No point putting it off any longer.”
By the time John had extracted himself from the car and made it to the stoop, Lestrade was bent over the doorknob, swearing under his breath. John frowned. “You have a key?” Lestrade shook the door open and shot him a sharp, significant look that John didn’t know how to read.
Sherlock’s flat was on the first floor. John glanced around the front hallway, taking in dark wood and rich wallpaper. The steps up were a bit tricky, with his bag, but John reckoned he’d do fine when he wasn’t carrying his entire life with him. He’d have to start thinking of it as his flat, eventually.
But no, he thought the next moment as he stepped in after Lestrade, this would always be Sherlock’s flat, no matter how long John lived there. Books were strewn everywhere, a fierce-looking knife was jammed into the mantelpiece, every flat surface was stacked with chemistry equipment, and there appeared to be a cow skull on the wall. It was a lucky thing John didn’t have any pictures he wanted to hang.
Lestrade, meanwhile, had gone over to the table and was rifling through a stack of files that lay on the desk. He extracted several and was gathering them up when the bedroom door clicked and Sherlock emerged, wearing ratty old pyjamas and a silk dressing gown.
John, who had been inspecting a set of slides next to the microscope, froze as though he had been caught stealing from the candy jar. But Sherlock made straight for Lestrade, ignoring John completely.
“Back!” Sherlock shouted. “I am not done with those. You can have them on Thursday.” Lestrade had managed to slide back to the doorway, but he crouched down, conciliatory, and laid two of the files carefully onto the floor, one after the other.
“Goo-ood. Now the other,” said Sherlock, slightly more gracious in victory, but Lestrade sprang to his feet and bolted down the steps.
Sherlock sighed expansively, then turned to John and presented him with an oily smile. “So sorry about that.”
“He brought me over,” John said uncertainly.
Sherlock only rolled his eyes. “Is that everything?” he asked, pointing at the duffel bag. John nodded. Sherlock sat down on the floor next to the bag, yanked open the zipper, and pulled out two of John’s vests, which he looked at with mild interest before tossing them to the floor.
“Hey,” said John, as he realized what Sherlock was doing. “Hey, that’s mine.”
But Sherlock continued to pull clothes out of the duffel, unheeding, until he paused with his hand in the bag and his face changed. Here we go, thought John, and dull despair settled over him as Sherlock drew his gun out of the bag.
“Oh,” said Sherlock, his breath catching. John watched him from across the room, helpless, fingers twitching.
Sherlock spent several minutes turning the gun over in his hands, running his finger along the length of the barrel, popping out the magazine, even lifting it to his nose to smell. At last he looked up at John, face blank and oddly childlike.
“Do you carry it with you?”
John saw no point in lying. “Sometimes.”
Without a word, Sherlock picked up the gun by the barrel and held it out toward him.
John blinked. “Aren’t you going to report me?”
“Why would I?”
“It’s illegal,” John pointed out. Sherlock snorted. “And rather dangerous to have lying about.” He smiled without mirth.
“Dangerous for an untrained civilian, maybe. Not for you. You wouldn’t set it off by accident, and if you haven’t yet shot anyone in a murderous rage, you’re unlikely to start now.”
“There’s always you,” said John sourly, and then pressed his lips together tightly, too late, as Sherlock glanced up at him. But Sherlock met his apprehensive glance with a small smile, as if he were only amused. “You’re not going to kill me, either. You’re quite level-headed even when you’re angry, and you won’t lose sight of the fact that my brother would hunt you down and torture you regardless of where you tried to hide. And if you were to sink so far into despair that you wanted to end your own life - which is unlikely, seeing that it hasn’t happened already, even as miserable as you’ve been since returning to London - you’ll be past the point of caring what happens to me, or to anyone else, and you’ll only shoot yourself.”
John could only stare, heart hammering. It was true, of course, though John had never put it together before. Put like that, all of the things Sherlock had taken away from him didn’t seem to add up to very much. He felt shaken to bits, with only his skin holding him together. “Oh,” he said at last.
Sherlock gave him a bright, false smile. “If it’s any comfort, I can’t imagine it will come to that.” He stared hard at John, and the smile dropped away. “I was right again, wasn’t I?”
“Yeah.” John nodded. “It was -” John blinked, hard, and shook his head a bit. “It’s like you see everything, somehow. It’s amazing, really. ”
Sherlock said nothing, but satisfaction gleamed in his face as he returned to the earlier project of rifling through the bag. “No, the only thing in here that’s a problem is the laptop.”
“What’s -” John cleared his throat, still struggling to recover his voice. “What’s the problem there?”
Sherlock looked up and sighed. “It’s utter rubbish, John. It’s even older than your shoes. You need a much better one.”
“What.” John’s breath was still a bit short. “What for?”
Sherlock cocked his head, reminding John for a moment of an oversized bird. “Oh, I don’t know. Typing. Checking the internet. It’s your computer, John. I assume you want it to work.” He clicked the K, hard.
“Yeah, all right,” John said, still suspicious. At least his heart rate was going back to normal. “Just… nothing too expensive, all right?”
Sherlock scoffed as he pulled on his coat. “What does ‘too expensive’ mean, exactly?”
John was still trying to decide how to answer that as they went out the door.
++++++++++++
John’s new computer felt like almost nothing at all, hanging from his shoulder in its sharp-looking carrier bag, and John himself felt light, exultant. It was a lovely, sleek little machine, faster than any other computer he’d ever had even when they were new, and the keyboard didn’t stick at all. It wouldn’t be a trial to check his email each morning, or to type a sentence. Maybe he could go back to writing now.
“Dinner?” asked Sherlock, walking beside him with hands in the pockets of his greatcoat. “I know a nice Italian place near here.”
“Money still no object?” John asked.
“They never charge me at Angelo’s,” Sherlock replied. John raised his eyebrows. “I got the owner off a murder charge once,” he added.
“Wow,” said John. “So that’s… so that’s something you do, then. Help people.”
Sherlock snorted. “I solve crimes, John,” he said. “That means identifying the criminal. Sometimes other people are exonerated along the way.”
“Do you catch the criminals, though?” John was intrigued, almost in spite of himself.
“Usually. When the police don’t botch it up too badly. And sometimes even when they do.”
John was hooked, despite his resolution to give this man as little as he could. “Can you tell me about some of them? Or would that be breaking police confidentiality?”
“It would be.” Sherlock’s face crinkled into a small, surprisingly disarming style. “Do you want to hear about them?”
“Yes.” John grinned in return.
And so Sherlock recounted a handful of particularly adventurous cases while John devoured a plate of excellent spaghetti carbonara. Sherlock himself ate very little, but seemed to drink up John’s enthusiasm and praise like nourishment. By the end of the meal he was practically manic, glowing with every bit of praise John gave him, and came back to earth only a little when John wheedled him into eating a few bites of his alfredo before they left.
They walked out into the warm night and turned toward Baker Street, and John felt an odd, low glow of something almost like contentment. His life had been shaken off course, but here he was, full of good food and good talk, with a new laptop over his shoulder and his leg paining him hardly at all. He wondered if Sherlock would -
The next second John was on the pavement, sprawling on his side, and Sherlock was shouting. John clambered up to his elbow just in time to see Sherlock catch someone in a flying tackle about a dozen yards away. The fugitive - whoever he was - hit the ground hard, and the next moment Sherlock was on top of him, punching him in the face.
John tried to struggle to his feet, and realized as he collapsed back to his knees that his cane was missing. “Sherlock?” he called out cautiously.
Sherlock jogged up a moment later, breathless and a bit red. “Yes,” he huffed out, holding the cane out toward John. “I know.”
“Thanks.” John took the cane and clambered up. The laptop bag had landed on top of him, which was lucky. His arm hurt where he had landed on it, but other than that he seemed to be fine. Other than the fact that he had just been knocked to the ground by a random assailant and had his cane stolen.
“Thanks,” John said again, deeply embarrassed. “But, um, I could have…”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Sherlock. “You’re perfectly fine with your cane, but you can’t run, and in all likelihood you never will again.”
“Yeah,” John mumbled, heart sinking, even though it wasn’t news. It was just his life now.
He felt a soft touch at his shoulder and started up to see Sherlock looking at him almost- almost tenderly.
“Are you all right?” he asked softly.
“Yeah,” John replied. “Yeah, I’m-yeah.” He swallowed. “Thanks, Sherlock.”
Sherlock dropped his hand from John’s shoulder. “Of course,” he replied, voice still soft.
They walked the last few blocks in silence. Once inside the flat, Sherlock seated himself in front of his microscope as if John weren’t there at all.
John, still in the doorway, stifled the urge to ask Sherlock what was on next - after all, if they were to live together, it would be like this most evenings. He would have to learn to entertain himself. All right. He leaned his cane up against the wall, pulled his novel out of his bag, seated himself in one of the squashy armchairs, and started to read.
He realized about ten minutes in that he kept losing the thread - the story couldn’t hold his interest anymore, maybe because so much had happened today. He sighed and set the book in his lap.
“Hey Sherlock,” he said.
Sherlock looked over.
“Who was it, who took my cane?” John asked. “I didn’t get a good look at him.”
Sherlock shrugged. “Some ruffian. Does it matter?”
“It’s just strange, is all.” John frowned. “Do you think it was the homeless man who was sitting outside the restaurant?”
“Could be,” Sherlock answered, returning to his microscope. The conversation was clearly over.
John looked down at his book and sighed. No reason to read a boring book in a flat crammed full. He levered himself up and began to pace the room, perusing the books as he went. He quickly realized that his search was hopeless - many of the books were in other languages, and the majority seemed to be scientific and medical treatises. John found himself wondering what Sherlock did for fun, if he ever did anything for fun. Maybe his life was exciting enough, and he didn’t need to read stories. John’s life had certainly got more exciting since meeting him. He rubbed absently at his shoulder. It would probably bruise, he realized with a little spark of satisfaction. Almost like fighting again. He wondered whether Sherlock would let him help with the mysteries.
“Odd, though, isn’t it,” he said. “Why would someone take my cane when he could have had the laptop? I mean, a cane’s - well, he couldn’t have got much money for it, anyhow.”
“Mm.”
“Sherlock,” said John, a bit sharply. Something about the incident was plucking at the back of his brain, reminding him of something else he couldn’t pin down. If John was going to be living at the beck and call of an imperious crime-solving genius - and he was beginning to get used to the idea, and even like it, a little - at least he ought to be able to call on that big brain to help him puzzle out this little mystery of his own.
“Hmm?” Sherlock looked up absently. “We’ll get you a nicer cane if you want.”
John felt the old frustration well up. “That’s not…” he took a deep breath. Steady, he said to himself. Getting angry at Sherlock was a bad idea. It hadn’t done him a whit of good, along the way, and ever since John had given in and moved to Baker Street, Sherlock had been - he’d been amazing, really, considering the circumstances. Three days ago, John had been mouldering in an old bedsit, too exhausted to be afraid of the future; and now he was in this gorgeous flat, he had a new computer, and probably plenty of nice new things to come, if he wanted them. And sure he was a bit afraid, a bit apprehensive, but it felt good, like he was awake again after a long sleep. Sherlock had swept in and made it all so, and he could take it away at any moment. John knew he couldn’t afford to let himself be angry at the man.
“Never mind,” he said, in as neutral a tone as he could manage. He wiped his hands over his face. “I’m going to bed.”
Sherlock ignored him and kept working. John pottered a bit longer, straightening the stacks of books on the coffee table and washing up the mugs that had been left there, then began to climb the stairs to his bedroom.
“Go to mine,” said Sherlock, without looking up.
John froze, swallowed, came down off the first stair. He was steady enough on his feet to do without the cane, usually, when he was at home and only going short distances, but he wasn’t steady enough for this.
“Sherlock,” he said, struggling to keep his voice even. “I’m straight.”
“I don’t see how that’s relevant,” Sherlock replied. He was still looking through the eyepiece of the microscope.
John closed his eyes and shivered, and then turned and walked through Sherlock’s bedroom door.
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