Fic: A Study in Blue - Chapter Five
Title: A Study in Blue - Chapter Five
Author: writingispurdy
Rating: PG (this chapter)
Warning(s): mentions of war violence, my dirty jazzfetish, homosexuality in the '20s
Word count: 3,022
Summary: On 1st January, 1920, John Watson meets Sherlock Holmes. Jazz Age AU, eventual John/Sherlock.
This chapter: "Having girls 'round, no. Girls aren't really our area, are they?"
Chapter Five
The street outside the big front window of Angelo's club is open to the busy side street outside, where the cars pass noisily and their horns blend with the brass on stage. Sherlock's head is turned to look out into the traffic, watching the building across the street (the location advertised, 22 Northumberland Street, and completely lightless). Not ignoring John, not really.
John pushes the last of his food around on his plate, and he convinces himself to look across the table (still has the look of the stage in him; hairline damp from the heat of the lights, and his collar, where his impossibly long neck is twisted to stare out the window; somehow casual and tensed to spring at the same time, curiously catlike, tapping fingers like the twitching tail).
"You wanted me here at eight," John says suddenly. Sherlock's eyes flick over, but nothing else moves.
"And you came promptly," Sherlock supplies, jaw resting neatly in his hand.
"You could've told me to come at half-eight and we could've had dinner." John wants to hide from the pride gleaming in Sherlock's eyes. "But you said eight. So I could see you play."
Sherlock takes a moment, doesn't immediately answer, and his eyes go back to the building across the street. "What did you think?" he asks at last (almost as if he doesn't want to be facing John when judgment comes).
"Am I supposed to be impressed?" John asks (he is).
Sherlock's lips curl upward, slowly. "Yes."
There's a moment, then, looking Sherlock in the eye when he finally does turn it back to John. It's quiet, and it's certainly not earth-shattering. But even with the words of Sherlock's brother echoing in John's brain (you wouldn't be defending him), even knowing two things about the man across from him aside from his name-it's despite of all of that, maybe even slightly because-John knows that it doesn't matter.
He's hated strangers before because of the smug uni boy look that got them out of service, he's no stranger to anger on that count. But this time it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter if Sherlock Holmes was code breaking for Jerry, because this one's interesting. This one's clever and odd and (if his pulse is any indicator) utterly exciting.
(Maybe Sherlock sees it.)
"So you play the violin," John says. "And sometimes you don't stop talking. Anything else I should know?"
Sherlock's smirk grows even wider. "I keep odd hours. I rarely sleep for more than four a night, when I do sleep. I haven't ever blown a hole in a flat with my experiments, but when the occasional poisonous fume needs venting and the building evacuated, I'm commonly asked to leave."
John shouldn't be smiling; it sounds downright villainous.
"What about friends?" John asks.
"Is that normal?" Sherlock replies (and John's only noticed he hasn't ordered any food).
John shrugs. "People have friends 'round. Family sometimes, but I met your brother and I have to say I'm not particularly looking forward to future meet-ups." Sherlock chuckles silently at this, eyes slant and grey and watching John. Almost nervously, John drops his eyes and adds: "Having girls 'round."
Sherlock contemplates for only the space of a breath, and his voice is rather more quiet than it was before. "Having girls 'round, no. Girls aren't really our area, are they?"
It takes a moment. A stupid, blinking moment. John's shoved his chair backward in shock and embarrassment before it even fully registers. Sherlock's voice is almost like a pair of hands on John's shoulders holding him down when he hisses: "Don't get up, idiot, unless you want the entire club knowing I've propositioned you."
John's face is a shameful shade of red, a color he's sure it hasn't been in years (and he hadn't even been sure up until now that it could even make the shade again), but he stays put. Swallows his pride and stays put. Damning and careful eyes on Sherlock's unreadable face.
(Would he call him out in front of everyone? No, he'd stopped John from rising and bringing attention to them, it can't have been that. Had it only been for John's reaction? No, Sherlock's too smart for that, that's a cheap trick. It was for information; because Sherlock would have known from the very moment he met John, but now John knows...)
When Sherlock continues, his voice is low and his eyes have gone back to watching the window. "You'd questioned your sexuality most of your life, until you could finally experiment in the close quarters the army provided."
"It wasn't-" John hisses harshly, and he feels dizzy from the blood in his head. But he manages to calm himself a degree. Somehow. "It wasn't an experiment. God, you make it sound so clinical and..." John frowns, something old and sad tugging at the edges of his mouth and knotting up on his brow (he has lines there, more than a man his age should). "No, it wasn't-" He cuts himself off because it sounds too downcast, even for him.
When he manages a glance up, Sherlock's sharp face has somehow softened, just so much. "But I'm right," he adds. It's unarguably a statement.
"Yes," John murmurs, and his plate must be very interesting, for the amount of time his eyes linger there.
"And now that you're a civilian again," Sherlock continues, "you're afraid to act on what came naturally in the field."
"Stop doing that," John snaps, eyes solidly down.
"Doing what?"
"Getting inside my head." And he looks up sharply. "Yes, you're right, but that doesn't mean that I have to appreciate it."
Sherlock is sporting a look of shock (rather mild surprise, but it seems magnified on Sherlock's usually calm face), and he tilts his head before he speaks again. "I don't understand how it's any different from reading your military history or your failure to earn certification."
"It's-it's-" John tries several times, halfway to desperate, before he checks himself and clinches his teeth. "Look, it's more personal than all that, Sherlock."
Sherlock matches his frown slightly, and John nearly brightens at the childish way the man's brow furrows and his lips purse. It's all very different suddenly, and the conversation has managed to shift John's entire perception with so little movement, with such a little push. The world hasn't shifted, they have. And he can see Sherlock as if someone has thrown a bright spotlight on him, altogether a different man than the one he met at Mike Stamford's garden party. That man was dimly-lit, wreathed in obscuring smoke and hiding behind a cat's smile. This one is washed out by the light, overexposed and utterly human.
"So," John says, and suddenly his eyes aren't wavering (whether it's true bravery or simply courage under fire, he doesn't question). "Are you?"
"Am I what?"
"Propositioning me."
There's a moment, then, where neither of them is smiling, and they lock eyes across the table. John's never felt so read. Sherlock opens his mouth once, stops. Before he tries again, his eyes tick to the window as if it's some safe bastion where he can hide from John's, but then he sees something. John knows he's seen something because of the grin bouncing onto Sherlock's lips.
His eyes find John's. "He's here."
John's eyes go to the window in all haste, scanning the street outside for any sign of anyone villainous. And it looks just as normal as John has ever seen the streets of London, though granted he can't see much for the faces or the people inside the myriad automobiles puttering by.
The music has gone quiet: conserved, dark piano, soft brush of the drums, and Sally Donovan's sad voice hitting the high, lonely notes. John's eyes are certainly searching for whatever Sherlock has seen, but it's a bit difficult with the both of them leaning half out of their chairs and across the table to see better into the darkness outside, and the veteran's eyes linger more on the white curve of Sherlock's neck out of his dark collar. Oh, he can't ignore the fact that the man's attractive anymore, not especially after knowing that the both of them-
"There," Sherlock says, nodding his head to the dark car parked across the street, engine still running, and one single man inside.
"That's a cab," John notes, his brows knitting. "Looks like any other cab. Why's it a cab?" He turns his eyes back to Sherlock, questioning, and oh they've gotten close since he looked away.
"Who picks up a prostitute on accident?" Sherlock says, grinning like a boy.
It blows John completely, and everything fits together, sliding like a puzzle into a complete picture. "Oh my God," John murmurs incredulously.
Sherlock couldn't look happier. "That's how he finds his victims, they pick him. All except Jennie Wilson; they certainly had different ideas on what they were getting out of the ride. Oh, that's brilliant. They're the invisible killer, something we don't notice go by us every hour of every day. And he can blend back in just like a shadow." Sherlock gives a victorious laugh and suddenly he's on his feet again, throwing his coat on.
"Where are you going?" John asks, suddenly defensive.
"I told you it could be dangerous," Sherlock says gleefully, and he sweeps his violin case from the floor and takes off at a dash for the door.
John hardly gives a second thought, wrangling his limbs into his coat as he follows at a hard trot. Cane still leaning lonely against his abandoned chair.
The air is like ice when they step out of the stiflingly-hot club, and John takes an immediate shuddering breath as he pulls his coat tightly around him. Sherlock comes to a halt, violin case like a pendulum in his arm with momentum lost, as he stares across at the cab. Waiting for it to make a move? Calculating when to make one on his own?
"Sherlock?" John asks, cutting into the cold air to ask those questions, but Sherlock cuts him off with a terse noise between his teeth, because the figure in the cab has noticed them. Turned toward them, seen them staring, and suddenly the vehicle is moving. Moving with all the speed it can afford in close traffic-not rushing but certainly not taking its sweet time.
Sherlock gives a curse and he bolts suddenly out into traffic, and if it hadn't been for John's quick reflexes to rush forward and pull the lanky man out from the trajectory of a fast-moving car, he and his violin would have been hit. The two of them move through the momentum of John's saving embrace, nearly dancing through opposing traffic and the screeching sound of tires and loud curses in the stiff night air (and John swears that he hears Sherlock laughing) until they're safe on the opposite side of the street.
John takes the first desperate strides after the cab, eyes locking on the number and fixing it into his brain. "I've got the number," he calls over his shoulder, and he's nearly bowled over in turn as Sherlock rushes up to him.
"Good for you," Sherlock snaps, and in an instant he's grabbed John by the wrist and tugged him urgently off in a completely arbitrary direction.
John hopelessly follows, apologizing in Sherlock's wake as he shoves by drunks and ladies alike.
Sherlock leaps over a barrier, and John follows, running like he hasn't in years. He follows Sherlock's eyes when he turns his head, catches glimpses of the cab on a parallel street, and suddenly they veer off again. John always reliably five feet behind so that he won't be caught by surprise when Sherlock takes a new route and be left behind. The last thing he needs is to be left behind (and Sherlock isn't waiting, but he isn't going to leave John behind either).
And then they're vaulting up a fire escape, climbing arm over arm onto the roof and running diagonal over London. Taking long running jumps over skylights, dodging architecture at every turn. And then, with no warning, Sherlock takes the gap between buildings in a graceful arc, violin case acting as a counter weight and keeping him balanced in the air as he goes sailing.
John pauses for a hopeless moment, the drop below him looking infinitely deep, before Sherlock's voice calls him back: "Come on, John! Don't be a coward!"
That fixes him, sets the strength back in his legs (leaping across the trench to pull a man out of range of the machine guns chewing into the meat of his legs, that's not cowardice), and John takes a hard landing right next to Sherlock. Nearly tumbles through with it, but Sherlock tugs solidly on his arm and they're off and pounding across the roof again.
Down they leap, over barriers, down the gutter of a building where the loud, carnal beat of jazz pounds and pounds and fills up the air and thrums in their lungs along with the cold sting of January air with every sharp inhale. They hit the street again, a back alley where the homeless scatter like rats when the two of them land amongst them from on high. But they're still too late, and John can see the cab go rushing by the mouth of the alley before they get to it.
Sherlock curses again, but he's stopped his forward momentum at last.
John catches fully up, leans haggardly on the nearest wall to catch his breath. "What now?"
The tall man shakes his head and falls heavily onto the same wall John's found to lean against. "Oh, it was perfect!" he laments. He growls his disappointment one more time before turning his eyes down to John. "You said you got the number?"
"Yeah," John wheezes, and suddenly, unexplainably, he's laughing. Full-lunged, hard laughter that shakes his body to his toes. "Oh God," he manages around the convulsions, grinning like a fool, "that was ridiculous."
He breaks his words off to glance up at Sherlock, whose own stoic face is cracking hopelessly into a weary grin.
"That was the most ridiculous thing I've ever done," John murmurs, trying to straighten out.
But Sherlock has caught it, whatever's brought the laughter on, and his own voice is interrupted by it. "And you were in the Somme."
Completely inappropriate giggles suddenly burst from John's mouth, which take the both of them by surprise. "That wasn't just me," John says after he's tried finding his breath three times. "Me and you. And."
And John shouldn't be giggling, shouldn't be fighting for breath around laughter that won't die. But he is. Sherlock is very much like the front: trenches filled with gas, and pounding feet and hearts. And the running, oh, that'd spiked his heart rate, filled his head with barked orders and the rumble of mortars in the cold, smoky air. And it melds with the smoky air twined with jazz, the mortars drumbeats in his head and there's Sherlock Holmes on the stage.
Maybe it's that dichotomy, maybe it's the swimming in his adrenaline-filled head or his pumping heart, that makes him take Sherlock's tie in his fingers and yank him downward.
Practically nose to nose, sharing the same air (hot now, not the cold stinging in his lungs but burning). Harsh breaths gone terse in proximity with eyes wandering in this new closeness. Sherlock tilts his head (his eyes are half-shut, not squinting but languid, and it's gorgeous), John wets his lips thoughtlessly.
"You miss the war," Sherlock remarks quietly. "You like it dangerous,"
"So do you," John replies.
Sherlock's smile is a slow curl of smoke. "Oh, I think we're going to get on fabulously, John Watson." He touches his nose to John's, and it's almost too close. "Forget something?"
At first John doesn't understand (and he tries not to admit the throbbing that goes all the way to his toes when Sherlock touches him, just that little bit, oh it's been a long time), and it's only at Sherlock's mischievous grin that John realizes his other hand is unusually empty. His cane. He'd left it back at Angelo's.
"I-shit," John murmurs, and he stumbles back, expecting the pain to shoot up his leg as it usually does. But not this time. Almost as if it had never pained him before. John looks down at his leg in astonishment, then back up to the detective with disbelief blowing wide in his eyes. "How...?"
"It was Freud who developed the idea," Sherlock says vaguely, blithely, "that repression in the mind impedes normal physical function. He called it psychosomatic."
"What on earth are you talking about?" John asks breathlessly.
"It's in your head, John," Sherlock elucidates, and he turns quickly on heel. "Have you a pen on you?"
John pats at his pockets and finds one, handing it over blindly (still trying to wrap his mind around shifting from extreme to extreme so quickly; face to face and suddenly chasing after him again). Sherlock takes it and asks John aloud what the cab number had been. John, naturally, provides the number Sherlock jots it down on a scrap of paper, which he folds into a fiver.
Bending down to one of the vagrants in the alley, Sherlock asks blandly about the weather, and the girl replies in an equally colorless tone. Anyone could have missed Sherlock passing the girl the fiver and the note, but John knows what's on that scrap of paper. That done, Sherlock hops back to full height and rejoins John as if nothing-not the chase, not the near-kiss, not even staring up at him on the smoky stage-had happened.
"Baker Street?" he asks. "Unless you'd rather back to Angelo's to finish eating?"
"No, no," John interrupts, "wait a second. We didn't chase that cab for nothing."
"No, we didn't," Sherlock says, starting off again and expecting John to follow (he does). "Don't worry, I'm sure we'll find it again. Or it will find us."
Watching the side of Sherlock's face for any sort of information, John nods slightly. "Baker Street, then."
They keep a studied distance between them as they walk back to the flat, room enough for Sherlock's violin to swing merrily at his side. Room enough for no one to ask questions. Room enough for John's mind to buzz with them.
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