Fic: Multiply (the sum of our parts) - Chapter Three
Title: Multiply (the sum of our parts)
Author: 1electricpiratexkeijukainenx
Rating: M
Pairing: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson (BBC)
Author's Notes: This is an AU and I have not even *tried* to be true to the original canon timelines. You have been warned. The story has been beta'd rather thoroughly and any mistakes that remain are mine and mine alone.
I am neither a scientist nor a mathematician, so if any of this is scientifically inaccurate... well, I apologize. I did try to research but you know what they say about Wikipedia.
Disclaimer: I do not pretend to own any of these characters (besides the two or three I have conjured from thin air). Credit for that brilliance falls to ACD and the Godtiss.
Previous Chapters: One | Two
Chapter 3 - Cross Multiply
”You think we should get married.”
It is not a question, merely a statement. Sherlock does not need John to tell him what he is thinking; quite a lot of the time, he already knows. (Not all the time, though - more often than not, John surprises him, and it is this ability of John’s to evade predictability that keeps Sherlock interested in him, despite all the odds.)
In this case, however, Sherlock is bang on the money, and they both know it.
John nods slightly (no point in denying it), bringing wary eyes up from the newspaper (The Sun, which John despises but Sherlock insists on buying) to Sherlock’s face. He finds it a study in affected nonchalance - the same mask Sherlock uses when someone is accusing him of being a prick and he wants to come off as a sociopath who doesn’t understand that his words cause pain.
(John thinks that mostly, Sherlock is aware of the way his words can cut people to the quick, but as he generally does it in retaliation, he considers himself justified. John does not often disagree with him. It is shocking, when you are really looking for it, just how many people are carelessly hurtful to him because they think he is immune.)
Sherlock’s face can be lively and expressive, but when he is being cautious it may as well be carved out of ivory. The smallest wrinkles seem to disappear in his attempt to seem unaffected. John is unused to having The Mask turned on him, and he finds it unsettling.
Clearly, Sherlock is waiting for him to explain himself - and he is worried about what he might hear. John sighs and puts the paper down, folding his hands together on the table and giving Sherlock a quick once over.
“I just think, after what happened yesterday, it might be ... prudent,” he says finally. Sherlock remains impassive. John ploughs on. “It was horrible, Sherlock, I had no idea what was happening to you and they wouldn’t let me in to see you, they wouldn’t even tell me if you were still alive.”
Yesterday... Yesterday had been John’s idea of hell. A long chase across London had lead to a standoff at gunpoint in a closed off alleyway - John (and his gun) had tried to get Sherlock behind him but Sherlock refused to move, the suspect had been backed into a corner and there was no way out but for one of them to fall.
The bullet had grazed Sherlock’s temple; but it was the fall (Sherlock, graceful in every other aspect of his life, had come crashing to the ground, glancing off the edge of a metal dustbin as he went) that had done the damage. John’s bullet lodged itself in the suspect’s thigh and he lived long enough to give Lestrade’s team the evidence they needed, but watching a serial killer bleed out in an alleyway in Hackney was the least of John’s worries.
John, despite his best efforts, had been forced to ride in a police car with Lestrade behind the ambulance carrying an unconscious, bleeding Sherlock (concussion at least, broken ribs possible, a twisted ankle and potentially a broken arm as well - there had been a lot of punching, and kicking, and falling, and twisting, before they’d managed to corner the suspect) and by the time they’d arrived at A&E, Sherlock was no where to be found.
Not even Lestrade could convince the orderlies to let John in to see him, and they refused to give any information about his wellbeing to someone that wasn’t family and didn’t have a warrant. John had been forced to stay in the waiting room, pacing back and forth while Lestrade looked on with increasing nervousness, until (finally, finally) Mycroft swept in.
Within three minutes both Mycroft and John were ushered in to a private room where Sherlock lay, still unconscious, spread across a gurney.
John knew, then, what it was like to have one’s heart stop in one’s chest.
Sherlock looked so young, so innocent, so perfect (besides the crimson smear of blood across his face). John had flown across the room to clutch at his hand, to check for himself that there was a pulse beneath that perfect porcelain skin. (His practiced hands found it nearly instantly; breath flooded his lungs and relief washed through him, though he was hard pressed not to grab Sherlock, hold him close and never let him go.)
The fear that he felt then, underneath the cool lights of the hospital, feels slightly alien when he thinks back to it, ensconced as they are in the relative warmth of 221b. The only reminder of last night is the flutter of stitches (four of them, adequately executed, though John would have liked to have done them himself) across Sherlock’s forehead and the bandages around his ribs.
(John had wrapped those himself, with almost painful care, wincing when Sherlock winced, gasping when Sherlock gasped, his fingers trembling the whole time even as Sherlock assured him in low, indulgent tones that he was okay.)
“John,” Sherlock murmurs, drawing him back to the present. John smiles, slightly, and shakes his head.
“I can’t do that again, Sherlock.”
“I’m alright, John.”
Sherlock’s right hand, large and warm, closes around the fist of John’s left (clenching against the unpleasant memories, the rising feeling of uselessness, the memory of the terror of being left behind) and John heaves a sigh, forcing his hand to unclench, letting Sherlock’s long, pale fingers tangle with his smaller, stubbier ones. He looks at their fingers (porcelain wrapped around honey) for one long moment before meeting Sherlock’s eyes again.
The mask is gone, now, replaced with uncharacteristic concern. It is genuine, and that makes it even more unsettling.
They do not talk about this thing between them. It has never been necessary to talk about it. They are simply John&Sherlock, where once they were John and Sherlock, and that is enough. They are not demonstrative. They have never had to explain themselves to anyone. Several people suspect, and even more people tease, but they have never been asked and so they have never had to do anything quite so pedestrian as put a label on the fact that they spend most of their time behind closed doors breathing the air from each other’s mouths.
John has never told Sherlock that he is so in love with him it hurts, sometimes, to breathe. Sherlock has never told John that he cannot process a single logical thought unless he knows that John is somewhere close by. There are things between them that do not need articulation. John does not need to be told that Sherlock loves him just as much as he loves Sherlock, and Sherlock rarely needs to be told anything at all in order to know whether or not a thing is true.
None of this is important (it is simply how they are, how they always have been, how they will continue to be); all that it means is that John is decidedly out of his comfort zone when he looks Sherlock in the eyes and says, “I’m going to spend the rest of my life with you.”
Sherlock does not look away (though John knows he wants to) and that is enough for John to know (know? He already knows this. It is, rather, reassurance) that Sherlock feels the same.
They are silent for a while; it is comfortable, and though they do not generally sit around holding hands, neither of them moves to extricate their fingers from the complicated knot they’ve created in the centre of the acid-marked table. (Mostly hydrochloric and, on one particularly memorable occasion, sulphuric.)
“It’s a good idea,” Sherlock finally says, leaning back in his chair gingerly. (John is suddenly overwhelmingly glad that the man who made Sherlock wince like that is already dead, and that he, John, made him that way. Serves the bastard right.)
“Yeah?”
Sherlock’s smile is contained to the corners of his eyes when he replies, “Yeah.”
“Oh. I thought...” John takes a breath, squeezes Sherlock’s right hand in his left. “I thought you’d hate it.”
“John.” Sherlock says his name as if it is a chastisement. John feels his face flush. Being with Sherlock is the most natural thing in the world for John, but he still feels out of his depth, as if he has been handed some priceless treasure and told to keep it safe but never given instruction on how to do so. “I never hate any of your ideas,” Sherlock is saying, and it takes John a few moments to catch up, process what Sherlock just said, and snort with disbelief.
“Sherlock, you tell me I’m an idiot pretty much every three minutes.”
“Well, be that as it may, I seem to have rather a high regard for your particular brand of idiocy.”
John grins at him and squeezes his hand again. It is the nearest thing to an endearment that Sherlock has ever uttered. John feels slightly giddy. They grin at each other for a few seconds before Sherlock shifts again (winces; John’s fist clenches - involuntary, but Sherlock notices, he always notices, and the squeeze of his hand is meant as comfort but somehow does not help. John is, once again, hideously glad that the bastard that hurt him is good and dead).
“I’ll go and see about the paperwork tomorrow, shall I?” Sherlock asks, as if they are talking about who’s turn it is to buy milk. (Perhaps that is all this amounts to in, in Sherlock’s head. Just a mundane procedure, to be dealt with and then forgotten. Should it be more than that? John - the part of John that is still a civilian - thinks that maybe it should, that marriage should be more than just another chore.) John frowns, slightly; Sherlock laughs at him, and the frown deepens.
“John.” Every time Sherlock says his name it means something different; this time, the tone of his voice (warm, but disdainful), the length of the vowel (long and rumbling), the quirk of his lips (upwards; an awkward mix of frown, smirk and smile), the twitch of his eyebrow (the right one upward at the outside corner, the left one down in the middle) tells John that he is being laughed at - that Sherlock knows exactly what he is worrying about and thinks it is hilarious.
“I know, I know,” John sighs, scrubbing his right hand over his face. “Sorry.”
“It’s a practical solution, yes, and remarkably pragmatic, but its...” Sherlock shrugs, obviously uncomfortable, but with a look of determination on his face that stops John from interrupting him. “It’s us, isn’t it? It’s... This is... We’re...” Frustrated, Sherlock sighs and frowns. John watches in something akin to horror as Sherlock, whose tongue is like a finely tuned weapon, capable of shattering entire lives with a single, punishingly eloquent sentence at a moment’s notice, struggles to finds the words he wants to say. “It’s important,” he finishes, lamely, and John (his face softening, his heart soaring, his grip on Sherlock’s right hand tightening) smiles at him and nods his agreement.
They stare at each other for one more moment before Sherlock coughs and shifts again. John, grinning, stands up swiftly (reluctant extrication of his fingers from Sherlock’s first, though he can still feel their comforting warmth against his palm) and moves towards the kettle.
“Right then. Tea? How’re those bandages?”
“The bandages are unnecessary and annoying, but tea would be lovely.”
“Coming right up, then. And those bandages are staying where they are, so you’d best get used to them.”
John busies himself about the kitchen, ignoring Sherlock’s sulk. He deftly avoids any sighting of the eyeballs in the microwave and sniffs the milk (always prudent) before setting the mug of tea in front of Sherlock. (His fiancee, now, if they are being technical about it. Sherlock generally likes to call a spade a spade but the term seems uncomfortable in John’s mind.) He is about to sit back down in his chair when a hand snakes around his neck and pulls him down for a kiss that leaves him jelly-kneed and breathless.
“I’m glad you suggested it,” Sherlock mumbles against his lips, eyes closed, nose nuzzling against John’s, his hand firm against John’s neck with no intention of letting him move. John closes his eyes too and breathes him in (Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock), huffing laughter against his perfect cupid’s bow lips.
“I didn’t suggest it, you did.”
“You were the one that thought it up. I merely voiced your idea,” Sherlock protests, kissing him again, sucking lightly on his bottom lip.
“You can’t read my thoughts,” John whispers. It is not entirely true. John cannot think, though, because Sherlock’s hands are at his throat, fumbling with his buttons. One thumb smears a hot trail across the dip of his sternum. John cannot imagine a time when his body did not belong to Sherlock Holmes.
“I didn’t have to read your thoughts; it was written all over your face.”
“Oh,” John says. His vocabulary has abandoned him, has been chased away by the delicate, teasing fingers against his clavicle.
“I’m glad,” Sherlock says again, with his lips underneath John’s ear and John, without even thinking about it, says, “I love you” (for the first time), gasping the words out against Sherlock’s forehead. Sherlock’s fingers dig into his scapula; his breath huffs across John’s neck and John feels the upward twitch of the smile on Sherlock’s cheeks against his own. “I know,” Sherlock says. He bites John’s earlobe gently. “I’m glad,” he says, and that is good enough for John.
“Good.” John slides backwards, presses his forehead against Sherlock’s; they stay like that, eyes closed, lips ghosting over each other, not kissing, just breathing, for a few moments before John, suppressing a wave of mad laughter in his chest, straightens, and backs away.
“Those bandages are staying on, Sherlock. Twenty-four hours,” he reminds him, and Sherlock sags, slightly (his plan, so obvious, foiled at the last minute, but he should know better than to try and pull one over on John Watson), but his eyes are dancing. Sherlock is happy, and it makes John feel just slightly like he could fly.
-------------
Sherlock no longer knows how long he’s been gone.
He could look at a calendar and do the maths, of course, but it seems like a lot of effort. It does not matter how long he’s been gone; what matters is that no sooner has he crushed one flea then two others spring up in its place.
Exhaustion sits in his very bones; his eyes are bloodshot; every inch of his skin aches.
He is in Berlin. (He thinks. Unless that was yesterday. This might be Zürich. Vienna?) At his last check-in point (The dodgy(est) bit of Budapest, but that was months ago now), he found Mummy had provided him with an immaculate suit, a brand new phone, a netbook (complete with several indispensable, pre-loaded programmes), and a significant wad of cash. Inside the folds of the money was picture. It had been folded several times in order to conceal it inside the bundle, but Sherlock smoothed it out and drank it in anyways.
The picture is of John. (Who else?) John is sitting on a bench in Hyde Park, his head bent over a book. In one hand he holds a paper cup of coffee. Sherlock can read the story of his absence in the lines on John’s face. The knowledge stings, like salt smeared into an acid burn, but Sherlock does not know how, now that he’s started, he can stop before it’s finished.
Sherlock looks at the picture once, drinking in every detail, spending an entire ten minutes committing it to memory. Then, carefully, he folds it along its creases, takes a lighter from his pocket, and holds it by one corner over the garbage bin while he watches it burn.
The netbook is more useful to him.
Mycroft’s CCTV network is a work of art that allow him to locate and follow John at a moment’s notice.
Sherlock, with his addictive personality, knows better than to allow himself free access to this particular narcotic. It is a heady sort of power to have, though, and he begins to understand just a little bit better why Mycroft seems to find it such a hard habit to relinquish.
The east was not a good place for Sherlock. Too much noise, too many people, too much crime; it was too easy to leave himself behind and become, instead, some kind of shadow, an angel of death, an instrument of righteous retribution.
Sherlock is glad to be back in Europe, if only because it means he can wear a suit and feel, at least slightly, like a human being again. (In as much as he ever has been able to, that is.)
Watching John helps. Sherlock rations his time; ten minutes a day, unless he feels like he is drowning, again, in which case he ups his dose. Self-medication by CCTV.
John is back in 221b, now, and Sherlock knows he has Mycroft to thank for that. (He makes notes, though, mental notes, about the placement of the cameras. Just like Mycroft; it’s not enough for him to spy on every second of their lives outside the house, he has to spy on them at home as well. The camera in the bedroom is, however, definitely a new addition, and for that he is inordinately thankful.)
As far as he can deduce, not much has changed in John’s life. He sleeps in the middle of the bed, now (curled around the space that used to belong to Sherlock). His limp is back, slightly, but soon he might find himself needing his cane again. (Sherlock snapped it in half, it feels like years ago.) He looks more tired and his clothes are even more worn. But he still has nightmares (Are they the same nightmares? Sherlock hopes against hope that John’s nightmares are still of oceans of sand and the explosions of IUDs underfoot; he cannot bear the thought that he might have given the nightmares new fodder, a new horrible grip over John’s subconscious. There is no way of knowing, so Sherlock hopes instead.) He still gets up at 6 o’clock sharp every day of the week, has two pieces of toast and jam for breakfast, a cup of tea (nearly more milk than tea, two sugars, utterly vile), and then a shower before leaving for work.
He looks smaller, somehow, though that is perhaps the awkward angles of the CCTV cameras. Sherlock is used to looking down on John but he is not used to John looking small. John has always been enormous, in his eyes, big enough to fill up an entire room just with his presence.
The camera in the bedroom has an audio feed. Sometimes, when it is particularly bad, when he is about to become a shadow again, Sherlock falls asleep listening to the sounds of John’s nightmares.
John is working now. A day job at the practice. (Sherlock’s hackles raise. Sarah works there. Sarah gave him that job. John dated Sarah, once, a million years ago. John had liked her. Did he like her now? Sherlock is dead to John but John is not dead to Sherlock. He had not thought this through. What if... What would he do if...)
Sherlock is jealous and addicted and possessive and obsessive and he definitely does not share. (But you’re dead, you killed yourself, you jumped off a building and he watched you do it. He doesn’t know it’s a great charade and you can’t tell him, he has to stay alive, and if you tell him he might not be able to.)
Better for John to be alive and with Sarah than dead with(out) Sherlock.
His fears are unfounded, anyways. John still wears his ring. They are still married, in his eyes. John Watson-Holmes, widower. John’s husband is dead (he thinks) but he is still wearing his ring. Captain John Watson, loyal to a fault.
(”Should we have rings?”
“By all means, if you feel you have to subscribe to some pedestrian tradition of ring-wearing, feel free. I don’t need a ring to remind me who I’m married to.”
“I don’t want it to remind me, you prick, I want it to remind everyone else.”
“What should a ring on your finger remind them of?”
“That I belong to you. John Watson, property of Sherlock Holmes. I like it. I want people to know it. That’s what a ring does.”
“If you like, I could arrange for it to be tattooed on your forehead as well.”
“...Sherlock!”
“Fine. We can have rings.”
“Really? You don’t have to, I don’t mind.”
“I know I don’t have to. I want to.”
“You want to?”
“Hmmm. Sherlock Holmes, property of John Watson. Delicious. Anyways, maybe Molly will finally get the hint and find some dull, appropriate heterosexual to pine after.”
“You’re a right bastard, you know that?”
“Mmm. You love me anyway.”
“God help me but I do. Rings, then. Shall we go tomorrow? Gold, I rather think.”
“Gold, then. We can go tomorrow, but if you wake me before 11 the deal’s off. I’m knackered.”)
(Sherlock remembers this, he knows that the memory is real, but it plays in his mind as if he is watching it happen to someone else. He remembers the way moonlight fell through the curtains and cast strange shadows on John’s face but he cannot remember, no matter how hard he tries, the way it felt to have John’s calloused fingers brush against his cheekbones.)
(Sherlock’s ring (the real one, not the identical replica on the corpse buried at the foot of his gravestone) he left in the safest place he could think of: with Mummy.)
(No one ever did notice, when they started wearing rings. John is left handed and no one noticed the glint of gold on his finger. During cases Sherlock wore his on a chain around his throat, but he always put it back on at home. No one ever noticed, no one ever knew. Do they know now?)
(Sometimes, he finds himself thumbing his ring finger, and it takes him a while to remember what it is that is missing.)
Reading John has always been difficult; for someone who looks so damnably ordinary, Sherlock’s doctor is full of surprises and teeming with secrets. Sherlock could spend a life time trying to suss John out, but he is quite confident that he would never ever succeed. (People, to Sherlock, are like butterflies. Look at their markings; catalogue them; stick a pin through their backbones; move on. There are only so many species of butterfly and though their markings may differ, their behaviour does not. Dull, once you’ve seen enough of them. John is no butterfly. If he is being maudlin and romantic, Sherlock would compare him to a moth: hiding, with furled wings, in plain sight. Almost boring in shades of brown and oatmeal - until he spreads his wings and reveals patterns and colours of breathtaking intricacy and variation. Sherlock has always hated butterflies (sticking pins through their backs was fun, in the vindictive way of a six year old boy), but he never had an opinion on moths until now.)
John is a master of camouflage. He keeps himself to himself and if you do not know him very well (and do not have the master intellect of Sherlock Holmes), you will never be able to tell what he is thinking. Years of blending into the background, of avoiding conflict, have taught him to hide his own brilliance under layers and layers of bland normality (usually, Sherlock finds, these layers are made of wool, the itchy kind). Underneath it all, though, John is a little bit sick, a little bit twisted; he is devious, and cheeky, and he can be incredibly deadly. John is loving and warm and kind, but he is so loyal as to be idiotic, and though he tries to control it, he has a very short temper and a dangerously low boiling point. Sherlock learned quickly (through his own experience, and by watching the mistakes of others) that to anger John Watson was a very, very bad idea. (When (if) he ever returns, Sherlock will have his work cut out for him. For now, though, it is enough to know that John is alive, and well, and if not happy then at least busy.)
He has always had a hard time reading John (his deductions get tangled, somewhere in between the layers of wool and the approximately five million shades of brown that John seems to always be clad in, all at once) and maybe that is why he doesn’t realise what is going on until it is far too late.
Sherlock has been watching John for an hour a day for several months, piecing together his routine, assuring himself that he is still in tact, but an hour a day is not enough to keep track of his whole life. (Sherlock cannot do that, even if he wants to. He made a decision, to keep John safe, and the consequence of that was that he sacrificed his ability to watch John’s every move like a hawk.)
He has watched John sleep, watched him eat breakfast, watched him enter the surgery, watched him leave again; he has seen him head to the pub (to meet Lestrade, Sherlock’s brain automatically filled in, given the time of the day, the location of the pub, John’s choice of trousers), go to the gym (interesting, a new addition to his daily routine; presumably, he’d felt that chasing criminals across London precluded the need for gym training), and occasionally visit their favourite restaurants. In all the months Sherlock has been taking quick peeks at his life, John has never done anything out of the ordinary (except, perhaps, drink one drink more than usual with Lestrade, but that seems to be negligible data).
His business in Berlin concluded, at least for the time being, Sherlock settles onto his hotel bed and opens his netbook. It is seven pm in Berlin, six pm in London, and Sherlock predicts that John is either in the flat toying with takeaway menus and watching the six o’clock news, or already on his way to Angelo’s.
Sherlock keys in the new code that Isabella (yesterday, she was Arabella. Sherlock suspects she has been reading rather too many salacious novels of late) sent him, and curls his fingers under his chin, waiting.
He smiles, vaguely (though mostly, his face has forgotten how to use those muscle groups together), when the system indicates that John is firmly ensconced within 221b. Sherlock flicks over to the other, non-government surveillance system and waits for the camera in the living room to connect.
John is, in fact, toying with takeaway menus and watching the six o’clock news.
He is not, however, alone.
Sherlock sits up abruptly and gathers the netbook closer. The screen is infernally small, but there is no way his eyes are tricking him: John is smiling and laughing (with only a hint of awkwardness) and chatting amiably (presumably about the menus in his hand: Indian or Chinese? The age old question of bad cooks everywhere.) with the young girl sitting next to him on the settee.
Young, heavily pregnant girl.
Something is stuck in Sherlock’s throat. He very suddenly cannot breathe.
He thumbs the keyboard quickly and the tiny, hidden camera swivels, zooms in on her. She is young, 24 or 25; an ex-student with high debts (not just hers, a lover’s, potentially a brother’s, this would be more precise if he could hear her voice and see the colour of her dress). She has no job at the moment, but that could be down to the fact that she is quite literally about to pop out at least one child (if not two).
(Two seems more likely, given the relative size of the bump and her once-skinny frame.)
She is eight months, nearly nine months, pregnant.
(How long has he been gone? How long has he been dead? How long has John simultaneously been alone (a widower) and known this girl who is now in his flat, nearly nine months pregnant?)
Suddenly, it becomes imperative that Sherlock know what date it is.
He is scrambling to find a calendar when suddenly something in John’s face makes him stop.
Sherlock takes two deep breathes and zooms in on his husband’s face. John is tired (usual, expected, the way his smile does not quite reach the depths of his eyes). He knows this girl, but his body language suggests he has not known her very long. (John makes good friends quickly; he becomes quite comfortable with new acquaintances easily. His shoulders are squared and his muscles are tense - a memory of a soldier’s alertness. John is not entirely comfortable around this girl.) Judging by these known facts and Sherlock’s analysis of her body language, the gestures she is making as she is talking, Sherlock estimates the length of their acquaintances to be two, three weeks maximum.
No where near long enough to make a baby (or two) together.
And yet. . .
John’s face is jovial, and kind, but guardedly casual when he looks at her face. He feels no affinity to her whatsoever. She is nice enough, but she is also young enough to be his daughter. He is not interested in her, as a person.
The same cannot be said for the rather prominent bump underneath her dress.
The bump, it seems, is infinitely more interesting to John than the woman to which it is attached. While the girl is chatting and laughing at (presumably) one of her own jokes, John is nodding and laughing along, but he is not looking at her face. He is staring at her baby bump with a mixture of trepidation and possessiveness that Sherlock has only ever seen directed at himself.
Sherlock does not know what that means.
He wishes, for the first time, that John were not so damnably difficult to read. John is not an obstetrician, a gynaecologist, or a paediatrician. Anyway, he would never invite a patient to their flat. His trepidation is not due to a source of professional or medical worry about this young woman and her (frankly, enormous) baby bump. It is more personal than that.
Sherlock is grasping at straws. A hundred and one possibilities occur to him; none of them fit. John is still the same as he always has been (and his ring is still firmly on his finger; Sherlock can see it, glinting in the late evening light); but he has always been infuriatingly difficult to deduce, and Sherlock needs to understand.
So he turns, instead, to the girl, and continues where he left off. She is young; she’s a former medical student (on hiatus now, obviously), with massive debts. She has a lover (he is sure of that, now; she shifted and he caught a glimpse of her shoes and that is now the only explanation) who is also in massive debt but somehow unable to pay them. (Or, perhaps, pays them and then immediately wracks up more. He gambles. Most likely, it is some sort of misplaced psychic balm for his impotence - which Sherlock can clearly see in the necklace around her neck.) She is extremely healthy with perfect childbearing hips and a positive overabundance of breasts. (How can one person need quite such large breasts? Even allowing for a certain amount of distention caused by pregnancy, this girl seems to have more than her fair share.)
Furthermore, she clearly belongs firmly to a very particular human species: Good Samaritan. One of Sherlock’s least favourite specimens of mankind, these people go around doing good deeds so that they can feel better within themselves and build themselves up as Good People. (Quite often they are found to possess a certain holier-than-thou attitude which Sherlock finds both abhorrent and hypocritical.)
Conclusion: this girl is acting as surrogate uterus to a child (two children?) that is not (are not) biologically hers (or her partner’s). She is doing so out of the supposed good will of her own heart - and also to pay off the crippling debts wracked up by her (abortive) attempts at medical school and her gambling boyfriend.
Sherlock frowns. He watches closely as John picks up the phone to order Chinese food; he smiles at the girl on the couch but his eyes slide from her face to her belly and linger there, instead.
Confusing. Inconclusive results. Need more data. He swivels the camera. There is an unfamiliar jacket on the peg by the door (which tells him nothing but that it is raining in London today and he could tell that already by the way John is favouring his good leg). Further than that, there is an overnight bag (hers; it is covered in flowers and most likely some horrid shade of pink) in the corner.
Suddenly, a thought. He zooms in on the jacket, ponders it, and crows with delight. She is not from London at all, but Sussex. She has come up from Sussex to be in London at the end of her pregnancy; why?
To be close to the parents of the child(ren) she is growing in her uterus.
Why John’s flat though? Was she lost? Is he simply letting her shelter in the flat from the rain? And why does he keep staring at her belly?
The only remaining explanation is so preposterous, Sherlock almost dismisses it out of hand.
Almost dismisses it, that is, until (during a hurried, desperate scan of the other rooms for clues) he catches sight of something that turns his blood cold: in John’s (their) bedroom, a crib.
The puzzle pieces fall into place with an almost audible click in his head and Sherlock is frozen in place, his grip tight around the edges of his netbook.
There is a surrogate mother (nearly nine months pregnant, ready to pop at any moment) up from Sussex, staying in London to be closer to the parents of the child(ren) in her womb. More specifically: she is staying in John’s flat, where a crib has appeared overnight in John’s (their, his, dammit) bedroom. They have met before but only once or twice, and not long ago; John is more interested in her distended, overly full womb than in anything she has to say. (She looks vacuous. Sherlock pities John and hopes, for his sake, that the Chinese food is good, at the very least.)
John is sitting on the couch, now, listening to her talk but staring at her stomach in badly hidden fear, anticipation, and longing. John is looking at her belly like it is a time bomb, about to explode, not just all over his flat but all over his life, and whether he knows it or not, he has been twisting his ring around and around his finger the entire time.
That (those) is (are) not just any child(ren) growing in that woman’s womb.
That is John’s child, in there, pushing that woman’s stomach out in that obscenely fertile manner. John, for some reason or other, has commissioned this woman to grow him a child.
Sherlock cannot breathe.
The explanation hits as suddenly and ruthlessly as lightning.
He is going to kill Mycroft.
Author: 1electricpiratexkeijukainenx
Rating: M
Pairing: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson (BBC)
Author's Notes: This is an AU and I have not even *tried* to be true to the original canon timelines. You have been warned. The story has been beta'd rather thoroughly and any mistakes that remain are mine and mine alone.
I am neither a scientist nor a mathematician, so if any of this is scientifically inaccurate... well, I apologize. I did try to research but you know what they say about Wikipedia.
Disclaimer: I do not pretend to own any of these characters (besides the two or three I have conjured from thin air). Credit for that brilliance falls to ACD and the Godtiss.
Previous Chapters: One | Two
Chapter 3 - Cross Multiply
”You think we should get married.”
It is not a question, merely a statement. Sherlock does not need John to tell him what he is thinking; quite a lot of the time, he already knows. (Not all the time, though - more often than not, John surprises him, and it is this ability of John’s to evade predictability that keeps Sherlock interested in him, despite all the odds.)
In this case, however, Sherlock is bang on the money, and they both know it.
John nods slightly (no point in denying it), bringing wary eyes up from the newspaper (The Sun, which John despises but Sherlock insists on buying) to Sherlock’s face. He finds it a study in affected nonchalance - the same mask Sherlock uses when someone is accusing him of being a prick and he wants to come off as a sociopath who doesn’t understand that his words cause pain.
(John thinks that mostly, Sherlock is aware of the way his words can cut people to the quick, but as he generally does it in retaliation, he considers himself justified. John does not often disagree with him. It is shocking, when you are really looking for it, just how many people are carelessly hurtful to him because they think he is immune.)
Sherlock’s face can be lively and expressive, but when he is being cautious it may as well be carved out of ivory. The smallest wrinkles seem to disappear in his attempt to seem unaffected. John is unused to having The Mask turned on him, and he finds it unsettling.
Clearly, Sherlock is waiting for him to explain himself - and he is worried about what he might hear. John sighs and puts the paper down, folding his hands together on the table and giving Sherlock a quick once over.
“I just think, after what happened yesterday, it might be ... prudent,” he says finally. Sherlock remains impassive. John ploughs on. “It was horrible, Sherlock, I had no idea what was happening to you and they wouldn’t let me in to see you, they wouldn’t even tell me if you were still alive.”
Yesterday... Yesterday had been John’s idea of hell. A long chase across London had lead to a standoff at gunpoint in a closed off alleyway - John (and his gun) had tried to get Sherlock behind him but Sherlock refused to move, the suspect had been backed into a corner and there was no way out but for one of them to fall.
The bullet had grazed Sherlock’s temple; but it was the fall (Sherlock, graceful in every other aspect of his life, had come crashing to the ground, glancing off the edge of a metal dustbin as he went) that had done the damage. John’s bullet lodged itself in the suspect’s thigh and he lived long enough to give Lestrade’s team the evidence they needed, but watching a serial killer bleed out in an alleyway in Hackney was the least of John’s worries.
John, despite his best efforts, had been forced to ride in a police car with Lestrade behind the ambulance carrying an unconscious, bleeding Sherlock (concussion at least, broken ribs possible, a twisted ankle and potentially a broken arm as well - there had been a lot of punching, and kicking, and falling, and twisting, before they’d managed to corner the suspect) and by the time they’d arrived at A&E, Sherlock was no where to be found.
Not even Lestrade could convince the orderlies to let John in to see him, and they refused to give any information about his wellbeing to someone that wasn’t family and didn’t have a warrant. John had been forced to stay in the waiting room, pacing back and forth while Lestrade looked on with increasing nervousness, until (finally, finally) Mycroft swept in.
Within three minutes both Mycroft and John were ushered in to a private room where Sherlock lay, still unconscious, spread across a gurney.
John knew, then, what it was like to have one’s heart stop in one’s chest.
Sherlock looked so young, so innocent, so perfect (besides the crimson smear of blood across his face). John had flown across the room to clutch at his hand, to check for himself that there was a pulse beneath that perfect porcelain skin. (His practiced hands found it nearly instantly; breath flooded his lungs and relief washed through him, though he was hard pressed not to grab Sherlock, hold him close and never let him go.)
The fear that he felt then, underneath the cool lights of the hospital, feels slightly alien when he thinks back to it, ensconced as they are in the relative warmth of 221b. The only reminder of last night is the flutter of stitches (four of them, adequately executed, though John would have liked to have done them himself) across Sherlock’s forehead and the bandages around his ribs.
(John had wrapped those himself, with almost painful care, wincing when Sherlock winced, gasping when Sherlock gasped, his fingers trembling the whole time even as Sherlock assured him in low, indulgent tones that he was okay.)
“John,” Sherlock murmurs, drawing him back to the present. John smiles, slightly, and shakes his head.
“I can’t do that again, Sherlock.”
“I’m alright, John.”
Sherlock’s right hand, large and warm, closes around the fist of John’s left (clenching against the unpleasant memories, the rising feeling of uselessness, the memory of the terror of being left behind) and John heaves a sigh, forcing his hand to unclench, letting Sherlock’s long, pale fingers tangle with his smaller, stubbier ones. He looks at their fingers (porcelain wrapped around honey) for one long moment before meeting Sherlock’s eyes again.
The mask is gone, now, replaced with uncharacteristic concern. It is genuine, and that makes it even more unsettling.
They do not talk about this thing between them. It has never been necessary to talk about it. They are simply John&Sherlock, where once they were John and Sherlock, and that is enough. They are not demonstrative. They have never had to explain themselves to anyone. Several people suspect, and even more people tease, but they have never been asked and so they have never had to do anything quite so pedestrian as put a label on the fact that they spend most of their time behind closed doors breathing the air from each other’s mouths.
John has never told Sherlock that he is so in love with him it hurts, sometimes, to breathe. Sherlock has never told John that he cannot process a single logical thought unless he knows that John is somewhere close by. There are things between them that do not need articulation. John does not need to be told that Sherlock loves him just as much as he loves Sherlock, and Sherlock rarely needs to be told anything at all in order to know whether or not a thing is true.
None of this is important (it is simply how they are, how they always have been, how they will continue to be); all that it means is that John is decidedly out of his comfort zone when he looks Sherlock in the eyes and says, “I’m going to spend the rest of my life with you.”
Sherlock does not look away (though John knows he wants to) and that is enough for John to know (know? He already knows this. It is, rather, reassurance) that Sherlock feels the same.
They are silent for a while; it is comfortable, and though they do not generally sit around holding hands, neither of them moves to extricate their fingers from the complicated knot they’ve created in the centre of the acid-marked table. (Mostly hydrochloric and, on one particularly memorable occasion, sulphuric.)
“It’s a good idea,” Sherlock finally says, leaning back in his chair gingerly. (John is suddenly overwhelmingly glad that the man who made Sherlock wince like that is already dead, and that he, John, made him that way. Serves the bastard right.)
“Yeah?”
Sherlock’s smile is contained to the corners of his eyes when he replies, “Yeah.”
“Oh. I thought...” John takes a breath, squeezes Sherlock’s right hand in his left. “I thought you’d hate it.”
“John.” Sherlock says his name as if it is a chastisement. John feels his face flush. Being with Sherlock is the most natural thing in the world for John, but he still feels out of his depth, as if he has been handed some priceless treasure and told to keep it safe but never given instruction on how to do so. “I never hate any of your ideas,” Sherlock is saying, and it takes John a few moments to catch up, process what Sherlock just said, and snort with disbelief.
“Sherlock, you tell me I’m an idiot pretty much every three minutes.”
“Well, be that as it may, I seem to have rather a high regard for your particular brand of idiocy.”
John grins at him and squeezes his hand again. It is the nearest thing to an endearment that Sherlock has ever uttered. John feels slightly giddy. They grin at each other for a few seconds before Sherlock shifts again (winces; John’s fist clenches - involuntary, but Sherlock notices, he always notices, and the squeeze of his hand is meant as comfort but somehow does not help. John is, once again, hideously glad that the bastard that hurt him is good and dead).
“I’ll go and see about the paperwork tomorrow, shall I?” Sherlock asks, as if they are talking about who’s turn it is to buy milk. (Perhaps that is all this amounts to in, in Sherlock’s head. Just a mundane procedure, to be dealt with and then forgotten. Should it be more than that? John - the part of John that is still a civilian - thinks that maybe it should, that marriage should be more than just another chore.) John frowns, slightly; Sherlock laughs at him, and the frown deepens.
“John.” Every time Sherlock says his name it means something different; this time, the tone of his voice (warm, but disdainful), the length of the vowel (long and rumbling), the quirk of his lips (upwards; an awkward mix of frown, smirk and smile), the twitch of his eyebrow (the right one upward at the outside corner, the left one down in the middle) tells John that he is being laughed at - that Sherlock knows exactly what he is worrying about and thinks it is hilarious.
“I know, I know,” John sighs, scrubbing his right hand over his face. “Sorry.”
“It’s a practical solution, yes, and remarkably pragmatic, but its...” Sherlock shrugs, obviously uncomfortable, but with a look of determination on his face that stops John from interrupting him. “It’s us, isn’t it? It’s... This is... We’re...” Frustrated, Sherlock sighs and frowns. John watches in something akin to horror as Sherlock, whose tongue is like a finely tuned weapon, capable of shattering entire lives with a single, punishingly eloquent sentence at a moment’s notice, struggles to finds the words he wants to say. “It’s important,” he finishes, lamely, and John (his face softening, his heart soaring, his grip on Sherlock’s right hand tightening) smiles at him and nods his agreement.
They stare at each other for one more moment before Sherlock coughs and shifts again. John, grinning, stands up swiftly (reluctant extrication of his fingers from Sherlock’s first, though he can still feel their comforting warmth against his palm) and moves towards the kettle.
“Right then. Tea? How’re those bandages?”
“The bandages are unnecessary and annoying, but tea would be lovely.”
“Coming right up, then. And those bandages are staying where they are, so you’d best get used to them.”
John busies himself about the kitchen, ignoring Sherlock’s sulk. He deftly avoids any sighting of the eyeballs in the microwave and sniffs the milk (always prudent) before setting the mug of tea in front of Sherlock. (His fiancee, now, if they are being technical about it. Sherlock generally likes to call a spade a spade but the term seems uncomfortable in John’s mind.) He is about to sit back down in his chair when a hand snakes around his neck and pulls him down for a kiss that leaves him jelly-kneed and breathless.
“I’m glad you suggested it,” Sherlock mumbles against his lips, eyes closed, nose nuzzling against John’s, his hand firm against John’s neck with no intention of letting him move. John closes his eyes too and breathes him in (Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock), huffing laughter against his perfect cupid’s bow lips.
“I didn’t suggest it, you did.”
“You were the one that thought it up. I merely voiced your idea,” Sherlock protests, kissing him again, sucking lightly on his bottom lip.
“You can’t read my thoughts,” John whispers. It is not entirely true. John cannot think, though, because Sherlock’s hands are at his throat, fumbling with his buttons. One thumb smears a hot trail across the dip of his sternum. John cannot imagine a time when his body did not belong to Sherlock Holmes.
“I didn’t have to read your thoughts; it was written all over your face.”
“Oh,” John says. His vocabulary has abandoned him, has been chased away by the delicate, teasing fingers against his clavicle.
“I’m glad,” Sherlock says again, with his lips underneath John’s ear and John, without even thinking about it, says, “I love you” (for the first time), gasping the words out against Sherlock’s forehead. Sherlock’s fingers dig into his scapula; his breath huffs across John’s neck and John feels the upward twitch of the smile on Sherlock’s cheeks against his own. “I know,” Sherlock says. He bites John’s earlobe gently. “I’m glad,” he says, and that is good enough for John.
“Good.” John slides backwards, presses his forehead against Sherlock’s; they stay like that, eyes closed, lips ghosting over each other, not kissing, just breathing, for a few moments before John, suppressing a wave of mad laughter in his chest, straightens, and backs away.
“Those bandages are staying on, Sherlock. Twenty-four hours,” he reminds him, and Sherlock sags, slightly (his plan, so obvious, foiled at the last minute, but he should know better than to try and pull one over on John Watson), but his eyes are dancing. Sherlock is happy, and it makes John feel just slightly like he could fly.
-------------
Sherlock no longer knows how long he’s been gone.
He could look at a calendar and do the maths, of course, but it seems like a lot of effort. It does not matter how long he’s been gone; what matters is that no sooner has he crushed one flea then two others spring up in its place.
Exhaustion sits in his very bones; his eyes are bloodshot; every inch of his skin aches.
He is in Berlin. (He thinks. Unless that was yesterday. This might be Zürich. Vienna?) At his last check-in point (The dodgy(est) bit of Budapest, but that was months ago now), he found Mummy had provided him with an immaculate suit, a brand new phone, a netbook (complete with several indispensable, pre-loaded programmes), and a significant wad of cash. Inside the folds of the money was picture. It had been folded several times in order to conceal it inside the bundle, but Sherlock smoothed it out and drank it in anyways.
The picture is of John. (Who else?) John is sitting on a bench in Hyde Park, his head bent over a book. In one hand he holds a paper cup of coffee. Sherlock can read the story of his absence in the lines on John’s face. The knowledge stings, like salt smeared into an acid burn, but Sherlock does not know how, now that he’s started, he can stop before it’s finished.
Sherlock looks at the picture once, drinking in every detail, spending an entire ten minutes committing it to memory. Then, carefully, he folds it along its creases, takes a lighter from his pocket, and holds it by one corner over the garbage bin while he watches it burn.
The netbook is more useful to him.
Mycroft’s CCTV network is a work of art that allow him to locate and follow John at a moment’s notice.
Sherlock, with his addictive personality, knows better than to allow himself free access to this particular narcotic. It is a heady sort of power to have, though, and he begins to understand just a little bit better why Mycroft seems to find it such a hard habit to relinquish.
The east was not a good place for Sherlock. Too much noise, too many people, too much crime; it was too easy to leave himself behind and become, instead, some kind of shadow, an angel of death, an instrument of righteous retribution.
Sherlock is glad to be back in Europe, if only because it means he can wear a suit and feel, at least slightly, like a human being again. (In as much as he ever has been able to, that is.)
Watching John helps. Sherlock rations his time; ten minutes a day, unless he feels like he is drowning, again, in which case he ups his dose. Self-medication by CCTV.
John is back in 221b, now, and Sherlock knows he has Mycroft to thank for that. (He makes notes, though, mental notes, about the placement of the cameras. Just like Mycroft; it’s not enough for him to spy on every second of their lives outside the house, he has to spy on them at home as well. The camera in the bedroom is, however, definitely a new addition, and for that he is inordinately thankful.)
As far as he can deduce, not much has changed in John’s life. He sleeps in the middle of the bed, now (curled around the space that used to belong to Sherlock). His limp is back, slightly, but soon he might find himself needing his cane again. (Sherlock snapped it in half, it feels like years ago.) He looks more tired and his clothes are even more worn. But he still has nightmares (Are they the same nightmares? Sherlock hopes against hope that John’s nightmares are still of oceans of sand and the explosions of IUDs underfoot; he cannot bear the thought that he might have given the nightmares new fodder, a new horrible grip over John’s subconscious. There is no way of knowing, so Sherlock hopes instead.) He still gets up at 6 o’clock sharp every day of the week, has two pieces of toast and jam for breakfast, a cup of tea (nearly more milk than tea, two sugars, utterly vile), and then a shower before leaving for work.
He looks smaller, somehow, though that is perhaps the awkward angles of the CCTV cameras. Sherlock is used to looking down on John but he is not used to John looking small. John has always been enormous, in his eyes, big enough to fill up an entire room just with his presence.
The camera in the bedroom has an audio feed. Sometimes, when it is particularly bad, when he is about to become a shadow again, Sherlock falls asleep listening to the sounds of John’s nightmares.
John is working now. A day job at the practice. (Sherlock’s hackles raise. Sarah works there. Sarah gave him that job. John dated Sarah, once, a million years ago. John had liked her. Did he like her now? Sherlock is dead to John but John is not dead to Sherlock. He had not thought this through. What if... What would he do if...)
Sherlock is jealous and addicted and possessive and obsessive and he definitely does not share. (But you’re dead, you killed yourself, you jumped off a building and he watched you do it. He doesn’t know it’s a great charade and you can’t tell him, he has to stay alive, and if you tell him he might not be able to.)
Better for John to be alive and with Sarah than dead with(out) Sherlock.
His fears are unfounded, anyways. John still wears his ring. They are still married, in his eyes. John Watson-Holmes, widower. John’s husband is dead (he thinks) but he is still wearing his ring. Captain John Watson, loyal to a fault.
(”Should we have rings?”
“By all means, if you feel you have to subscribe to some pedestrian tradition of ring-wearing, feel free. I don’t need a ring to remind me who I’m married to.”
“I don’t want it to remind me, you prick, I want it to remind everyone else.”
“What should a ring on your finger remind them of?”
“That I belong to you. John Watson, property of Sherlock Holmes. I like it. I want people to know it. That’s what a ring does.”
“If you like, I could arrange for it to be tattooed on your forehead as well.”
“...Sherlock!”
“Fine. We can have rings.”
“Really? You don’t have to, I don’t mind.”
“I know I don’t have to. I want to.”
“You want to?”
“Hmmm. Sherlock Holmes, property of John Watson. Delicious. Anyways, maybe Molly will finally get the hint and find some dull, appropriate heterosexual to pine after.”
“You’re a right bastard, you know that?”
“Mmm. You love me anyway.”
“God help me but I do. Rings, then. Shall we go tomorrow? Gold, I rather think.”
“Gold, then. We can go tomorrow, but if you wake me before 11 the deal’s off. I’m knackered.”)
(Sherlock remembers this, he knows that the memory is real, but it plays in his mind as if he is watching it happen to someone else. He remembers the way moonlight fell through the curtains and cast strange shadows on John’s face but he cannot remember, no matter how hard he tries, the way it felt to have John’s calloused fingers brush against his cheekbones.)
(Sherlock’s ring (the real one, not the identical replica on the corpse buried at the foot of his gravestone) he left in the safest place he could think of: with Mummy.)
(No one ever did notice, when they started wearing rings. John is left handed and no one noticed the glint of gold on his finger. During cases Sherlock wore his on a chain around his throat, but he always put it back on at home. No one ever noticed, no one ever knew. Do they know now?)
(Sometimes, he finds himself thumbing his ring finger, and it takes him a while to remember what it is that is missing.)
Reading John has always been difficult; for someone who looks so damnably ordinary, Sherlock’s doctor is full of surprises and teeming with secrets. Sherlock could spend a life time trying to suss John out, but he is quite confident that he would never ever succeed. (People, to Sherlock, are like butterflies. Look at their markings; catalogue them; stick a pin through their backbones; move on. There are only so many species of butterfly and though their markings may differ, their behaviour does not. Dull, once you’ve seen enough of them. John is no butterfly. If he is being maudlin and romantic, Sherlock would compare him to a moth: hiding, with furled wings, in plain sight. Almost boring in shades of brown and oatmeal - until he spreads his wings and reveals patterns and colours of breathtaking intricacy and variation. Sherlock has always hated butterflies (sticking pins through their backs was fun, in the vindictive way of a six year old boy), but he never had an opinion on moths until now.)
John is a master of camouflage. He keeps himself to himself and if you do not know him very well (and do not have the master intellect of Sherlock Holmes), you will never be able to tell what he is thinking. Years of blending into the background, of avoiding conflict, have taught him to hide his own brilliance under layers and layers of bland normality (usually, Sherlock finds, these layers are made of wool, the itchy kind). Underneath it all, though, John is a little bit sick, a little bit twisted; he is devious, and cheeky, and he can be incredibly deadly. John is loving and warm and kind, but he is so loyal as to be idiotic, and though he tries to control it, he has a very short temper and a dangerously low boiling point. Sherlock learned quickly (through his own experience, and by watching the mistakes of others) that to anger John Watson was a very, very bad idea. (When (if) he ever returns, Sherlock will have his work cut out for him. For now, though, it is enough to know that John is alive, and well, and if not happy then at least busy.)
He has always had a hard time reading John (his deductions get tangled, somewhere in between the layers of wool and the approximately five million shades of brown that John seems to always be clad in, all at once) and maybe that is why he doesn’t realise what is going on until it is far too late.
Sherlock has been watching John for an hour a day for several months, piecing together his routine, assuring himself that he is still in tact, but an hour a day is not enough to keep track of his whole life. (Sherlock cannot do that, even if he wants to. He made a decision, to keep John safe, and the consequence of that was that he sacrificed his ability to watch John’s every move like a hawk.)
He has watched John sleep, watched him eat breakfast, watched him enter the surgery, watched him leave again; he has seen him head to the pub (to meet Lestrade, Sherlock’s brain automatically filled in, given the time of the day, the location of the pub, John’s choice of trousers), go to the gym (interesting, a new addition to his daily routine; presumably, he’d felt that chasing criminals across London precluded the need for gym training), and occasionally visit their favourite restaurants. In all the months Sherlock has been taking quick peeks at his life, John has never done anything out of the ordinary (except, perhaps, drink one drink more than usual with Lestrade, but that seems to be negligible data).
His business in Berlin concluded, at least for the time being, Sherlock settles onto his hotel bed and opens his netbook. It is seven pm in Berlin, six pm in London, and Sherlock predicts that John is either in the flat toying with takeaway menus and watching the six o’clock news, or already on his way to Angelo’s.
Sherlock keys in the new code that Isabella (yesterday, she was Arabella. Sherlock suspects she has been reading rather too many salacious novels of late) sent him, and curls his fingers under his chin, waiting.
He smiles, vaguely (though mostly, his face has forgotten how to use those muscle groups together), when the system indicates that John is firmly ensconced within 221b. Sherlock flicks over to the other, non-government surveillance system and waits for the camera in the living room to connect.
John is, in fact, toying with takeaway menus and watching the six o’clock news.
He is not, however, alone.
Sherlock sits up abruptly and gathers the netbook closer. The screen is infernally small, but there is no way his eyes are tricking him: John is smiling and laughing (with only a hint of awkwardness) and chatting amiably (presumably about the menus in his hand: Indian or Chinese? The age old question of bad cooks everywhere.) with the young girl sitting next to him on the settee.
Young, heavily pregnant girl.
Something is stuck in Sherlock’s throat. He very suddenly cannot breathe.
He thumbs the keyboard quickly and the tiny, hidden camera swivels, zooms in on her. She is young, 24 or 25; an ex-student with high debts (not just hers, a lover’s, potentially a brother’s, this would be more precise if he could hear her voice and see the colour of her dress). She has no job at the moment, but that could be down to the fact that she is quite literally about to pop out at least one child (if not two).
(Two seems more likely, given the relative size of the bump and her once-skinny frame.)
She is eight months, nearly nine months, pregnant.
(How long has he been gone? How long has he been dead? How long has John simultaneously been alone (a widower) and known this girl who is now in his flat, nearly nine months pregnant?)
Suddenly, it becomes imperative that Sherlock know what date it is.
He is scrambling to find a calendar when suddenly something in John’s face makes him stop.
Sherlock takes two deep breathes and zooms in on his husband’s face. John is tired (usual, expected, the way his smile does not quite reach the depths of his eyes). He knows this girl, but his body language suggests he has not known her very long. (John makes good friends quickly; he becomes quite comfortable with new acquaintances easily. His shoulders are squared and his muscles are tense - a memory of a soldier’s alertness. John is not entirely comfortable around this girl.) Judging by these known facts and Sherlock’s analysis of her body language, the gestures she is making as she is talking, Sherlock estimates the length of their acquaintances to be two, three weeks maximum.
No where near long enough to make a baby (or two) together.
And yet. . .
John’s face is jovial, and kind, but guardedly casual when he looks at her face. He feels no affinity to her whatsoever. She is nice enough, but she is also young enough to be his daughter. He is not interested in her, as a person.
The same cannot be said for the rather prominent bump underneath her dress.
The bump, it seems, is infinitely more interesting to John than the woman to which it is attached. While the girl is chatting and laughing at (presumably) one of her own jokes, John is nodding and laughing along, but he is not looking at her face. He is staring at her baby bump with a mixture of trepidation and possessiveness that Sherlock has only ever seen directed at himself.
Sherlock does not know what that means.
He wishes, for the first time, that John were not so damnably difficult to read. John is not an obstetrician, a gynaecologist, or a paediatrician. Anyway, he would never invite a patient to their flat. His trepidation is not due to a source of professional or medical worry about this young woman and her (frankly, enormous) baby bump. It is more personal than that.
Sherlock is grasping at straws. A hundred and one possibilities occur to him; none of them fit. John is still the same as he always has been (and his ring is still firmly on his finger; Sherlock can see it, glinting in the late evening light); but he has always been infuriatingly difficult to deduce, and Sherlock needs to understand.
So he turns, instead, to the girl, and continues where he left off. She is young; she’s a former medical student (on hiatus now, obviously), with massive debts. She has a lover (he is sure of that, now; she shifted and he caught a glimpse of her shoes and that is now the only explanation) who is also in massive debt but somehow unable to pay them. (Or, perhaps, pays them and then immediately wracks up more. He gambles. Most likely, it is some sort of misplaced psychic balm for his impotence - which Sherlock can clearly see in the necklace around her neck.) She is extremely healthy with perfect childbearing hips and a positive overabundance of breasts. (How can one person need quite such large breasts? Even allowing for a certain amount of distention caused by pregnancy, this girl seems to have more than her fair share.)
Furthermore, she clearly belongs firmly to a very particular human species: Good Samaritan. One of Sherlock’s least favourite specimens of mankind, these people go around doing good deeds so that they can feel better within themselves and build themselves up as Good People. (Quite often they are found to possess a certain holier-than-thou attitude which Sherlock finds both abhorrent and hypocritical.)
Conclusion: this girl is acting as surrogate uterus to a child (two children?) that is not (are not) biologically hers (or her partner’s). She is doing so out of the supposed good will of her own heart - and also to pay off the crippling debts wracked up by her (abortive) attempts at medical school and her gambling boyfriend.
Sherlock frowns. He watches closely as John picks up the phone to order Chinese food; he smiles at the girl on the couch but his eyes slide from her face to her belly and linger there, instead.
Confusing. Inconclusive results. Need more data. He swivels the camera. There is an unfamiliar jacket on the peg by the door (which tells him nothing but that it is raining in London today and he could tell that already by the way John is favouring his good leg). Further than that, there is an overnight bag (hers; it is covered in flowers and most likely some horrid shade of pink) in the corner.
Suddenly, a thought. He zooms in on the jacket, ponders it, and crows with delight. She is not from London at all, but Sussex. She has come up from Sussex to be in London at the end of her pregnancy; why?
To be close to the parents of the child(ren) she is growing in her uterus.
Why John’s flat though? Was she lost? Is he simply letting her shelter in the flat from the rain? And why does he keep staring at her belly?
The only remaining explanation is so preposterous, Sherlock almost dismisses it out of hand.
Almost dismisses it, that is, until (during a hurried, desperate scan of the other rooms for clues) he catches sight of something that turns his blood cold: in John’s (their) bedroom, a crib.
The puzzle pieces fall into place with an almost audible click in his head and Sherlock is frozen in place, his grip tight around the edges of his netbook.
There is a surrogate mother (nearly nine months pregnant, ready to pop at any moment) up from Sussex, staying in London to be closer to the parents of the child(ren) in her womb. More specifically: she is staying in John’s flat, where a crib has appeared overnight in John’s (their, his, dammit) bedroom. They have met before but only once or twice, and not long ago; John is more interested in her distended, overly full womb than in anything she has to say. (She looks vacuous. Sherlock pities John and hopes, for his sake, that the Chinese food is good, at the very least.)
John is sitting on the couch, now, listening to her talk but staring at her stomach in badly hidden fear, anticipation, and longing. John is looking at her belly like it is a time bomb, about to explode, not just all over his flat but all over his life, and whether he knows it or not, he has been twisting his ring around and around his finger the entire time.
That (those) is (are) not just any child(ren) growing in that woman’s womb.
That is John’s child, in there, pushing that woman’s stomach out in that obscenely fertile manner. John, for some reason or other, has commissioned this woman to grow him a child.
Sherlock cannot breathe.
The explanation hits as suddenly and ruthlessly as lightning.
He is going to kill Mycroft.