Fic: The World on His Wrist - 3/6 (BBC Sherlock)
Title: The World on His Wrist
Rating: PG13
Wordcount: 3.8k, this part, 31.4k overall
Betas: vyctori and fogbutton
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: First, he is shot in Afghanistan. Second, he wakes to a phone call in Chelmsford, Essex. Third is pain, fourth is normalcy, fifth is agony and sixth is confusion. By the eighth, he's lost track. (John-centric AU)
prologue - part one - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four - Part Five - Part Six - Epilogue
John doesn’t mean to, but he does the math.
If he doesn’t get killed anywhere, have any accidents, or die prematurely of illness, he’ll live to be two hundred.
At least.
“If I go senile, will you kill me?” John asks Sherlock over breakfast.
Buttering his toast, Sherlock huffs and says, “Fine.”
Very agreeable, this one, particularly for a bloke who can’t be arsed to take out the bins.
“I assume you mean actual senility, not your PTSD,” Sherlock continues after a short moment of quiet.
“Yeah,” John says.
Sherlock chews slowly and his eyes rest on John’s face as if they belong there. He swallows, frowning. “Is your family prone to early-onset Alzheimer’s?”
John shakes his head, eating his bacon. Derek always looks at him like he’s a terrible person when he eats it and he never has time in Chelmsford mornings, so he only has it here.
“The median age for the onset of dementia in men is approximately eighty-three,” Sherlock tells him. “You have forty-four years left.”
Divide that by four.... “Check back in a decade or so and we’ll see,” John says.
Somehow delicate without looking prissy, Sherlock gives his toast a nibble, eyes still on John. He makes a thoughtful noise then, holding the toast between his teeth, starts texting under the table.
John doesn’t mind. Sherlock is sort of a joy to watch like this.
Sherlock doesn’t seem to mind being watched either. When he glances up at John, he smiles, getting butter on his upper lip.
John smiles back and shakes his head, not sure what about.
He thinks he likes these mornings best.
It’s another weekend in digital London and that means Maggie’s at the flat. Because Derek is a terrible yet crafty father, weekends are chore days for John, which means Maggie is overeager to help.
“It’s like she’s five again,” Derek tells him gleefully. “Call her a ‘young lady’ every so often, all right? She fell for the ‘big girl’ treatment until she was six.”
“You are a terrible father,” John answers, amazed and amused despite himself.
“Yes, and our kitchen is spotless.”
John laughs, wishing he could tell Sherlock about this.
The new supplies finally arrive. John encounters a new level of relief, all at such basic things. Bandages, saline, disinfectant. It’s a far cry from Broomfield, but he does the best he can.
He gets a lot of his personal history out of Marta by complaining. It only take so much “nothing ever happens to me” before Marta feels the need to shut him up. It’s not a tactic John would have considered before Sherlock, but it’s certainly effective. John falls for it enough with Sherlock’s cries for entertainment to know.
For some reason, he never joined the army in this life. When he brings it up, Marta stares at him like he’s grown another head, so he must not have mentioned it in the three years Marta’s said they’ve known each other. Except he joined the army more than three years ago, far more, so she wouldn’t have been around to see his decision process veer away from the RAMC.
As it is, she knows him well enough to know his moods lately have been strange. Distracted, mostly, but also a bit depressed.
“Something the matter?” she asks. “It’s not Harry again, is it?”
“Only the ongoing madness of the divorce,” he answers.
Marta makes an exasperated noise. “Your sister,” she says, rolling her eyes in a way that abruptly clarifies the basis of their friendship.
“Could be worse,” he says, waiting for confirmation of his theory.
“Could be mine,” she agrees and yes, there they have it. Sibling consolation.
They meet up for lunch, the two of them and Rachel, plus a few more of Rachel’s friends. That’s normal now, and no small source of frustration. There’s nothing quite like socializing with a mob of women and having a chance with absolutely none of them.
Listening to the latest hospital gossip, he reminds himself that Sarah hasn’t kicked him to the curb yet. Neither has she kissed him, but then, for all he’s known her a month, she’s only known him the week. Not to mention, he almost got her killed. Something of an issue, that.
“...will you, John?”
“Hm?” He shakes out of his thoughts. “Sorry. Rachel, you were saying?”
Rachel smiles prettily, somewhere between forgiveness and exasperation. She does that quite often. It goes well with her long, dark curls. “Jacob wants to say thanks. For your help with his furniture and all that,” she clarifies.
“Oh, that was ages ago,” John says, not sure when was the first and last time he’d seen Rachel’s brother.
“Two weeks isn’t ages,” Rachel says. “And I meant to mention this sooner, but I kept forgetting. He hasn’t managed to find a good place for a pint out and you two have pretty similar tastes.”
“Well,” John hedges. When two weeks is nearly two months, that’s ages.
“He doesn’t know anyone else,” Rachel goes on and, sod it, he’d better cut this off before a guilt trip starts up.
“All right,” he says. “You’ve got my number, don’t you?”
She doesn’t, so he gives it to her. He takes care that it’s the right one, and Rachel smiles very prettily indeed.
Yeah, this might be worthwhile.
Sherlock flies off to Minsk. The night he goes, John types up another blog post. Nothing case related, not really. Just to say he’s happy.
He cycles through his other lives, comes back, and Sherlock is still gone. It’s not like he spends his day waiting for the man to come back, but he does feel ever so slightly miffed. Which is ridiculous and probably means Sherlock is rubbing off on him far more than can be healthy. Not that any amount of Sherlock rub-off could be healthy, but that’s beside the point.
The point is, though Sherlock left yesterday, he hasn’t seen him in five days now. With anyone else, with everyone else, John can’t talk about his life. With Sherlock, John is so accustomed to having his life read off his face and clothing and movements, he doesn’t need to speak. Simply looking Sherlock in the eyes is like confiding in the man.
He knows when Sherlock’s flight is, knows how long it should take Sherlock and his overnight bag to return to 221b. He spends the night out on purpose, making sure he’s not waiting at the flat like a lonely dog, and when he gets home, Sherlock is shooting holes in the wall.
There’s spot of yelling, a head in the fridge - when did Sherlock have time to get that? - and John storms back out once Sherlock insults him past endurance, possibly frightening Mrs. Hudson on his way.
When he shows up at Sarah’s, she lets him kip on her couch, more amused than affectionate. There’s a moment where he’s vaguely confused about Rachel, whether this means it’s all right to make a try with her, but mostly, he’s annoyed at Sherlock.
He fires off a text, detailing the benefits of not having the police throw him in jail for a decade on illegal firearm possession. He sends off another, explaining his limited ammo supply. He waits a while longer, unable to sleep on that small sofa - should’ve gone with the lilo, he can already feel it, but he’ll never say - and then he sends yet another. Regardless of Mycroft’s ability to wave the ASBO away, the gun would definitely be an issue. A ballistics check of the bullets in the wall would match the one he put into the cabbie.
Not that he’s stupid enough to type out any of that plainly, but he’s sure Sherlock will know what he’s saying. There aren’t that many ways to read Leave my things alone and You DO realize there are consequences?
He falls asleep, still waiting for Sherlock to text him back.
“I made omelettes!” Maggie announces. There is also tea.
“I take back everything I’ve ever said about irresponsible teenagers,” John says, shuffling into the kitchen. “You’re a wonder.”
“I’m twelve,” she says.
He’s sure to blink sleepily at her. Cock his head to the side. “Weren’t you fourteen?”
“Twelve,” she repeats, blushing hard and looking closer to eleven.
When he sits down at the table, Derek gives him a thumbs-up from behind his newspaper.
He thinks he might like these mornings best, too.
It is a particularly not-good day in Afghanistan. There is shrapnel and shouting. There’s dust in his eyes and sand in the blood, and he’s glad he’s already taken back what he’s said about teenagers as he helps ease one into death. This man was a boy, nineteen, and with three shots into his lower abdomen, there’s nothing John can do.
Blue eyes stare up at him, fighting back the haze. “What’s gonna happen?” the boy strains to say.
He’s all fear, no acceptance, and that’s why John says, “You’ll wake up in Essex.”
The boy nods weakly and dies.
“How’d you know he was from Essex?” Lieutenant Matthews asks him, later, after John’s washed the boy’s blood off his hands.
“Was he really?” John asks. The accent had been more northern than that.
Matthews nods. “Brentwood. Moved down during his teens.” A pause. “Early teens.”
John goes quiet, then says, “Lucky guess.”
John wakes up in Essex and cries.
He sobs into his pillow, huge shaking tears, and they don’t stop until he’s run dry. His eyes are raw, his cheeks feel strange, and he has a headache like none other.
A shower, some paracetemol and several glasses of water later, he almost feels like himself. Whatever that feels like.
He endures another day at Broomfield and when Jacob rings him up, it’s the pint rather than the company that makes him say yes.
A brave face is an easy thing to put on, easier still in front of an almost complete stranger. They spend the first pint pretending to care about sport and by the end of the second, they’re taking the piss out of each other.
John’s laughing and it feels great. He’s laughing and exhausted, and three pints after a day without an appetite means he’s none too steady. Curse his tiny, lightweight body.
“Careful,” Jacob tells him, laughing a bit himself. He catches the door for them on their way out. He catches John too, an arm across his back, hand fisted in the side of his coat. Stabilizing.
“I’m very careful,” John replies, seeing as this is true. It is suddenly and extremely important that Jacob understands this. “You have no idea how careful I am. I’m always careful.” He’s so careful that they even keep on the pavement where it gets cracked and narrow. It’s Jacob who nearly sends them slipping to a death of scraped hands and knees.
Jacob starts giggling, John starts giggling too, and Jacob says, “We should do this again. Wouldn’t that be fun? That would be fun.”
“Yeah,” John agrees, grin wide and blissful, lolling his head onto Jacob’s warm shoulder as they walk. It’s the best idea he’s heard all day. Except. Except. He misses Sherlock. Which means, which means London. He wants to eat toast and watch Sherlock with butter on his lip. Which means sleep. “Wanna go to bed first,” he tells Jacob. “We, later, later we go to the pub again.”
“What?” Jacob asks, still propping John up against his side. It’s not a bad way of walking, this.
“We’ll go to the pub again,” John repeats. “But later.”
“No,” Jacob says. “The other bit.”
John blinks in confusion, trying to remember. “Wanna go to bed?” he guesses.
“Okay,” Jacob says.
John says, “what,” and then the arm around his back is replaced by a brick wall. It’s definitely a brick wall. He knows because his hands go flat against it, his body straightening up, jerking the once, as if Jacob were a defibrillator, his lips the paddles.
Jacob tastes like beer, like something John ought to drink down and be glad for, which is the only reason he starts sucking on that tongue. Anyway, it’s already in his mouth. It’s warm too, like the hand on his neck, angling his head up. He has to strain, has to reach, and Jacob stoops down for him, all crushing lips and scraping stubble.
Leaning back for balance, hands holding to Jake’s coat for more balance, John pants at the hot mouth attacking his ear. He bucks forward, because good, because more, and Jake sucks on his skin and does this tongue thing, pressing back against him, pressing John into the wall, and it’s been ages, it’s been two fucking years, sort of, and no sex, none, even with the PTSD relinquishing its stranglehold on John’s prick.
John’s prick likes heat, likes pressure and friction and, fuck, a thigh, a thigh like that, grinding up, a thigh to thrust into and there’s, there’s something hot, there’s something very hot. Below his navel, off-centre, almost at his hip, hot and nudging and hard, it, fuck, that’s a cock.
Jerking back, he cracks his head on the wall. He groans, purely from pain, entirely from pain, and Jake’s hands are in his hair, smoothing it down, before Jake laughs into his mouth.
John turns his head, thwacking Jake on the back as Jake licks his neck. “Jacob,” he says, voice deep and strange. “Wait.”
“Public sex bad,” Jake murmurs, as if reciting something that someone’s had to drill into him. Which, yes, public sex bad, or, well, public sex illegal, because, apparently, public sex good. Any sex, yes, with a cock in a pussy, that, John wants that.
“Jacob,” he says again, because Jake’s missed the point of all this. “Jake. We’re blokes.”
“I know,” Jake agrees, and bites his lip. It’s sloppy but kind of brilliant. His teeth tug at John’s bottom lip, his chin by extension, and John’s face lifts of its own accord. John opens his eyes, looking up, looking into dark eyes beneath dark curls, a face framed by yellow streetlight, and he is either much too drunk or not drunk enough.
“Oh fuck,” John says.
Listening to tone more than content, Jake pulls back. Looks at him. He’s wobbling a bit, has to put his hands on the wall to stay stable. His forearms frame John’s head and it does terrible things to John’s insides.
“Were you straight?” asks Jake.
“Uh,” says John.
“John?” Jake leans forward as he waits, sort of tilting. Not controlled. Faces close and then hips touch and then there are circles. The hot drag of tented trousers.
John closes his eyes. Lets his head rest back against the brick. His hands tug Jake’s hips closer, harder. “I’m still straight.”
“Be straight in the morning,” Jake urges, breath hot on his cheek.
That... should not sound like such a good idea.
They snog a bit more. Jake does this thing, this thing with his cock, and John’s cock, their cocks line up, and then Jake presses. John groans and clutches at him, because yes, and then Jake pulls back, the bastard.
“Can’t here,” Jake says.
“I have a bed,” John says, because sex, and tries to snog him again.
Jake goes quiet, and sighs, and John is bewildered to find himself hauled back off the wall. “You live by Marta, yeah?”
“Mmhm,” he hums into Jake’s shoulder. Smells nice. Night air and beer and warmth. “Mmmmhmmm.”
Jake hauls him home, they fumble over the keys, and John is carefully lowered onto his sofa. He looks up at Jake in the light of his flat and Jake doesn’t really look that much like Sherlock anymore, which is a bit sad. Also, John’s face is more or less on level with Jake’s crotch now and it kind of makes him want to open his mouth.
“Essex made me gay,” John laments.
“No,” Jake says, trying to put John’s keys back into John’s coat. John’s still wearing it, so it makes the process all squirmy. “Credit where credit is due.”
“Sherlock,” John agrees mournfully, slurring the name something terrible.
“What?” Jake makes a funny face, the same one he used when John started slipping Dari phrases into the conversation for the hell of it.
“What?” John asks.
Jake blinks at him for a moment, like thinking hurts. Now he doesn’t look like Sherlock at all. More than a bit rubbish, that.
“Are we not having sex anymore?” John asks, just to be sure. “Because I thought we were.” It’s less interesting than it was a minute ago, but it’s still sex.
“I don’t,” Jake says, swaying a bit, hand on John’s shoulder, “I don’t pop drunk.”
“What?”
“Cherries,” Jake says.
“Oh,” John says. “Because I’m straight.”
Jake snickers.
John attempts and fails to kick him in the shins.
Jake laughs until he falls on the floor.
“Shhh,” John hushes. “Neighbours.”
Jake shuts up, clapping a hand over his mouth, so wide-eyed and ridiculous that John starts giggling. That sets Jake off again. They sit there on sofa and floor, giggling as silently as they can.
“I’ll call you a cab,” John decides.
“That sounds nice,” Jake says.
It takes a bit of effort, but he manages it. They wait for the cab to arrive, mellowing out. It’s kind of nice even without sex, sort of like the rest of John’s life. When they get a ring from the cab, telling them it’s outside, John hands Jake a tenner. “Bye,” he says.
Back on his feet, almost steady about it, Jake puts his hands on John’s shoulders. “No shame,” he says. He leans down, kisses the top of John’s head. “No shame. Okay?”
“Okay,” John says.
“Okay,” Jake says and shuffles off into the night, forgetting the tenner.
John gets up, stumbles to his bed, and collapses on it.
He wakes up in Sarah’s flat.
His first thought is that he doesn’t have a hangover.
His second thought is a great deal of profanity.
Harry can never find out about this. Any of her.
Really, there are two ways he could go about this. He could go on lying here, curled up on the sofa and trying not to think, or he could man up and blame it on alcohol and loneliness.
No contest, really.
Sarah has excellent timing, entering with a smile and fishing the telly remote out from behind him. Her smile is lovely and he likes it, feels grateful for this. It’s so very good to flirt with a woman right now, someone hiding smooth skin beneath a blue dressing gown.
He focuses on that. Wonders vaguely if the shower comment was mere remark or veiled invitation. He errs on the side of caution for the few seconds it takes him to be distracted.
The news is on the telly and, suddenly, without warning, his world tries to end.
He yells to Sarah that he’s leaving and is out the door before he gets a response. He’s out the door and out of the building and down the block and down another block and on the tube and he’s shaking inside his own skin. Copies of the Metro already litter all the seats, or close to it, but he doesn’t want to read about some painting, he wants to read about the gas explosion, but he can’t find the article. He looks for it, hands shaking, both of his hands shaking since when do both of his hands shake?
At Baker Street, he runs up the escalator, slams his Oyster card against the reader and charges through the barrier. He runs and he rounds the corner. He sees the crowd and the emergency vehicles. He sees the damage and he jogs to his flat, walks briskly past the police, and he runs up the stairs.
Sherlock is wielding his violin.
Mycroft is in John’s chair.
John slides into autopilot, mind numb, mouth moving. The Holmes brothers talk and deduce, and John gapes at him, at Sherlock. Perfectly alive in the shattered flat, perfectly all right, and not a word, not a text. Two of them, the two of them looking and knowing, talking about John’s night on a sofa but having no fucking clue what else John almost did last night.
He sits down on Sherlock’s sofa. He likes it more than his own sofa in Chelmsford, more than Derek’s sofa halfway across London. He likes it better than Sarah’s, too. There’s room to stretch out, not that Sherlock ever lets him.
Mycroft hands him papers and shakes his hand and John’s waiting to be called out on it. To be called out on anything, everything. But Mycroft and his umbrella leave as Sherlock murders his violin and John is left in something he would very much like to call peace.
For the first time in days, he and Sherlock talk. Just a little, just a bit, and Sherlock gets that phone call from Lestrade. Off he goes again, of course, obviously, off he goes again.
Except, this time, instead of telling John to buy him a ticket to Minsk, Sherlock turns around and asks if he’s coming along.
“I dug the mess out of the wall,” Sherlock says in the cab. “I’ll find a way to replace your supplies, provided I can find the correct size.”
It takes John a moment to determine what he’s talking about. His gun, the bullets. Nothing explicit where the cabbie can hear.
“Oh,” John says. “Thanks.”
Sherlock straightens his gloves, dark leather sheathing pale fingers. “You’re not still mad about that, are you?”
“What? No.” That was days ago. Feels like it, anyway. “Is Mrs. Hudson okay?” he asks rather than explain his quick forgiveness. “Where was she during the explosion?”
“On the stairs,” Sherlock says. “Don’t worry, she didn’t fall.”
“Were you...?”
“Between the windows,” Sherlock supplied. “The glass missed me, for the most part.”
“You didn’t treat the cuts, did you?” John asks, sighing pre-emptively.
“I put a plaster on where I needed one.”
“Let me guess, you washed them with water, no soap, no disinfectant.”
Sherlock keeps quiet.
“Sherlock,” John says.
“Yes, doctor. You can fuss at me when the case is finished.” For all the bite in his words, his eyes are soft.
John wonders, vaguely, if anyone besides Mycroft or Mummy has ever tried to take care of this madman. Probably not. Definitely not. He thinks it’s long overdue.
“I’m holding you to that,” John tells him.
And Sherlock, his smile slow and small, his voice as low as thunder: “Of course you are.”
Calendar guide
- next
Rating: PG13
Wordcount: 3.8k, this part, 31.4k overall
Betas: vyctori and fogbutton
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: First, he is shot in Afghanistan. Second, he wakes to a phone call in Chelmsford, Essex. Third is pain, fourth is normalcy, fifth is agony and sixth is confusion. By the eighth, he's lost track. (John-centric AU)
prologue - part one - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four - Part Five - Part Six - Epilogue
John doesn’t mean to, but he does the math.
If he doesn’t get killed anywhere, have any accidents, or die prematurely of illness, he’ll live to be two hundred.
At least.
“If I go senile, will you kill me?” John asks Sherlock over breakfast.
Buttering his toast, Sherlock huffs and says, “Fine.”
Very agreeable, this one, particularly for a bloke who can’t be arsed to take out the bins.
“I assume you mean actual senility, not your PTSD,” Sherlock continues after a short moment of quiet.
“Yeah,” John says.
Sherlock chews slowly and his eyes rest on John’s face as if they belong there. He swallows, frowning. “Is your family prone to early-onset Alzheimer’s?”
John shakes his head, eating his bacon. Derek always looks at him like he’s a terrible person when he eats it and he never has time in Chelmsford mornings, so he only has it here.
“The median age for the onset of dementia in men is approximately eighty-three,” Sherlock tells him. “You have forty-four years left.”
Divide that by four.... “Check back in a decade or so and we’ll see,” John says.
Somehow delicate without looking prissy, Sherlock gives his toast a nibble, eyes still on John. He makes a thoughtful noise then, holding the toast between his teeth, starts texting under the table.
John doesn’t mind. Sherlock is sort of a joy to watch like this.
Sherlock doesn’t seem to mind being watched either. When he glances up at John, he smiles, getting butter on his upper lip.
John smiles back and shakes his head, not sure what about.
He thinks he likes these mornings best.
It’s another weekend in digital London and that means Maggie’s at the flat. Because Derek is a terrible yet crafty father, weekends are chore days for John, which means Maggie is overeager to help.
“It’s like she’s five again,” Derek tells him gleefully. “Call her a ‘young lady’ every so often, all right? She fell for the ‘big girl’ treatment until she was six.”
“You are a terrible father,” John answers, amazed and amused despite himself.
“Yes, and our kitchen is spotless.”
John laughs, wishing he could tell Sherlock about this.
The new supplies finally arrive. John encounters a new level of relief, all at such basic things. Bandages, saline, disinfectant. It’s a far cry from Broomfield, but he does the best he can.
He gets a lot of his personal history out of Marta by complaining. It only take so much “nothing ever happens to me” before Marta feels the need to shut him up. It’s not a tactic John would have considered before Sherlock, but it’s certainly effective. John falls for it enough with Sherlock’s cries for entertainment to know.
For some reason, he never joined the army in this life. When he brings it up, Marta stares at him like he’s grown another head, so he must not have mentioned it in the three years Marta’s said they’ve known each other. Except he joined the army more than three years ago, far more, so she wouldn’t have been around to see his decision process veer away from the RAMC.
As it is, she knows him well enough to know his moods lately have been strange. Distracted, mostly, but also a bit depressed.
“Something the matter?” she asks. “It’s not Harry again, is it?”
“Only the ongoing madness of the divorce,” he answers.
Marta makes an exasperated noise. “Your sister,” she says, rolling her eyes in a way that abruptly clarifies the basis of their friendship.
“Could be worse,” he says, waiting for confirmation of his theory.
“Could be mine,” she agrees and yes, there they have it. Sibling consolation.
They meet up for lunch, the two of them and Rachel, plus a few more of Rachel’s friends. That’s normal now, and no small source of frustration. There’s nothing quite like socializing with a mob of women and having a chance with absolutely none of them.
Listening to the latest hospital gossip, he reminds himself that Sarah hasn’t kicked him to the curb yet. Neither has she kissed him, but then, for all he’s known her a month, she’s only known him the week. Not to mention, he almost got her killed. Something of an issue, that.
“...will you, John?”
“Hm?” He shakes out of his thoughts. “Sorry. Rachel, you were saying?”
Rachel smiles prettily, somewhere between forgiveness and exasperation. She does that quite often. It goes well with her long, dark curls. “Jacob wants to say thanks. For your help with his furniture and all that,” she clarifies.
“Oh, that was ages ago,” John says, not sure when was the first and last time he’d seen Rachel’s brother.
“Two weeks isn’t ages,” Rachel says. “And I meant to mention this sooner, but I kept forgetting. He hasn’t managed to find a good place for a pint out and you two have pretty similar tastes.”
“Well,” John hedges. When two weeks is nearly two months, that’s ages.
“He doesn’t know anyone else,” Rachel goes on and, sod it, he’d better cut this off before a guilt trip starts up.
“All right,” he says. “You’ve got my number, don’t you?”
She doesn’t, so he gives it to her. He takes care that it’s the right one, and Rachel smiles very prettily indeed.
Yeah, this might be worthwhile.
Sherlock flies off to Minsk. The night he goes, John types up another blog post. Nothing case related, not really. Just to say he’s happy.
He cycles through his other lives, comes back, and Sherlock is still gone. It’s not like he spends his day waiting for the man to come back, but he does feel ever so slightly miffed. Which is ridiculous and probably means Sherlock is rubbing off on him far more than can be healthy. Not that any amount of Sherlock rub-off could be healthy, but that’s beside the point.
The point is, though Sherlock left yesterday, he hasn’t seen him in five days now. With anyone else, with everyone else, John can’t talk about his life. With Sherlock, John is so accustomed to having his life read off his face and clothing and movements, he doesn’t need to speak. Simply looking Sherlock in the eyes is like confiding in the man.
He knows when Sherlock’s flight is, knows how long it should take Sherlock and his overnight bag to return to 221b. He spends the night out on purpose, making sure he’s not waiting at the flat like a lonely dog, and when he gets home, Sherlock is shooting holes in the wall.
There’s spot of yelling, a head in the fridge - when did Sherlock have time to get that? - and John storms back out once Sherlock insults him past endurance, possibly frightening Mrs. Hudson on his way.
When he shows up at Sarah’s, she lets him kip on her couch, more amused than affectionate. There’s a moment where he’s vaguely confused about Rachel, whether this means it’s all right to make a try with her, but mostly, he’s annoyed at Sherlock.
He fires off a text, detailing the benefits of not having the police throw him in jail for a decade on illegal firearm possession. He sends off another, explaining his limited ammo supply. He waits a while longer, unable to sleep on that small sofa - should’ve gone with the lilo, he can already feel it, but he’ll never say - and then he sends yet another. Regardless of Mycroft’s ability to wave the ASBO away, the gun would definitely be an issue. A ballistics check of the bullets in the wall would match the one he put into the cabbie.
Not that he’s stupid enough to type out any of that plainly, but he’s sure Sherlock will know what he’s saying. There aren’t that many ways to read Leave my things alone and You DO realize there are consequences?
He falls asleep, still waiting for Sherlock to text him back.
“I made omelettes!” Maggie announces. There is also tea.
“I take back everything I’ve ever said about irresponsible teenagers,” John says, shuffling into the kitchen. “You’re a wonder.”
“I’m twelve,” she says.
He’s sure to blink sleepily at her. Cock his head to the side. “Weren’t you fourteen?”
“Twelve,” she repeats, blushing hard and looking closer to eleven.
When he sits down at the table, Derek gives him a thumbs-up from behind his newspaper.
He thinks he might like these mornings best, too.
It is a particularly not-good day in Afghanistan. There is shrapnel and shouting. There’s dust in his eyes and sand in the blood, and he’s glad he’s already taken back what he’s said about teenagers as he helps ease one into death. This man was a boy, nineteen, and with three shots into his lower abdomen, there’s nothing John can do.
Blue eyes stare up at him, fighting back the haze. “What’s gonna happen?” the boy strains to say.
He’s all fear, no acceptance, and that’s why John says, “You’ll wake up in Essex.”
The boy nods weakly and dies.
“How’d you know he was from Essex?” Lieutenant Matthews asks him, later, after John’s washed the boy’s blood off his hands.
“Was he really?” John asks. The accent had been more northern than that.
Matthews nods. “Brentwood. Moved down during his teens.” A pause. “Early teens.”
John goes quiet, then says, “Lucky guess.”
John wakes up in Essex and cries.
He sobs into his pillow, huge shaking tears, and they don’t stop until he’s run dry. His eyes are raw, his cheeks feel strange, and he has a headache like none other.
A shower, some paracetemol and several glasses of water later, he almost feels like himself. Whatever that feels like.
He endures another day at Broomfield and when Jacob rings him up, it’s the pint rather than the company that makes him say yes.
A brave face is an easy thing to put on, easier still in front of an almost complete stranger. They spend the first pint pretending to care about sport and by the end of the second, they’re taking the piss out of each other.
John’s laughing and it feels great. He’s laughing and exhausted, and three pints after a day without an appetite means he’s none too steady. Curse his tiny, lightweight body.
“Careful,” Jacob tells him, laughing a bit himself. He catches the door for them on their way out. He catches John too, an arm across his back, hand fisted in the side of his coat. Stabilizing.
“I’m very careful,” John replies, seeing as this is true. It is suddenly and extremely important that Jacob understands this. “You have no idea how careful I am. I’m always careful.” He’s so careful that they even keep on the pavement where it gets cracked and narrow. It’s Jacob who nearly sends them slipping to a death of scraped hands and knees.
Jacob starts giggling, John starts giggling too, and Jacob says, “We should do this again. Wouldn’t that be fun? That would be fun.”
“Yeah,” John agrees, grin wide and blissful, lolling his head onto Jacob’s warm shoulder as they walk. It’s the best idea he’s heard all day. Except. Except. He misses Sherlock. Which means, which means London. He wants to eat toast and watch Sherlock with butter on his lip. Which means sleep. “Wanna go to bed first,” he tells Jacob. “We, later, later we go to the pub again.”
“What?” Jacob asks, still propping John up against his side. It’s not a bad way of walking, this.
“We’ll go to the pub again,” John repeats. “But later.”
“No,” Jacob says. “The other bit.”
John blinks in confusion, trying to remember. “Wanna go to bed?” he guesses.
“Okay,” Jacob says.
John says, “what,” and then the arm around his back is replaced by a brick wall. It’s definitely a brick wall. He knows because his hands go flat against it, his body straightening up, jerking the once, as if Jacob were a defibrillator, his lips the paddles.
Jacob tastes like beer, like something John ought to drink down and be glad for, which is the only reason he starts sucking on that tongue. Anyway, it’s already in his mouth. It’s warm too, like the hand on his neck, angling his head up. He has to strain, has to reach, and Jacob stoops down for him, all crushing lips and scraping stubble.
Leaning back for balance, hands holding to Jake’s coat for more balance, John pants at the hot mouth attacking his ear. He bucks forward, because good, because more, and Jake sucks on his skin and does this tongue thing, pressing back against him, pressing John into the wall, and it’s been ages, it’s been two fucking years, sort of, and no sex, none, even with the PTSD relinquishing its stranglehold on John’s prick.
John’s prick likes heat, likes pressure and friction and, fuck, a thigh, a thigh like that, grinding up, a thigh to thrust into and there’s, there’s something hot, there’s something very hot. Below his navel, off-centre, almost at his hip, hot and nudging and hard, it, fuck, that’s a cock.
Jerking back, he cracks his head on the wall. He groans, purely from pain, entirely from pain, and Jake’s hands are in his hair, smoothing it down, before Jake laughs into his mouth.
John turns his head, thwacking Jake on the back as Jake licks his neck. “Jacob,” he says, voice deep and strange. “Wait.”
“Public sex bad,” Jake murmurs, as if reciting something that someone’s had to drill into him. Which, yes, public sex bad, or, well, public sex illegal, because, apparently, public sex good. Any sex, yes, with a cock in a pussy, that, John wants that.
“Jacob,” he says again, because Jake’s missed the point of all this. “Jake. We’re blokes.”
“I know,” Jake agrees, and bites his lip. It’s sloppy but kind of brilliant. His teeth tug at John’s bottom lip, his chin by extension, and John’s face lifts of its own accord. John opens his eyes, looking up, looking into dark eyes beneath dark curls, a face framed by yellow streetlight, and he is either much too drunk or not drunk enough.
“Oh fuck,” John says.
Listening to tone more than content, Jake pulls back. Looks at him. He’s wobbling a bit, has to put his hands on the wall to stay stable. His forearms frame John’s head and it does terrible things to John’s insides.
“Were you straight?” asks Jake.
“Uh,” says John.
“John?” Jake leans forward as he waits, sort of tilting. Not controlled. Faces close and then hips touch and then there are circles. The hot drag of tented trousers.
John closes his eyes. Lets his head rest back against the brick. His hands tug Jake’s hips closer, harder. “I’m still straight.”
“Be straight in the morning,” Jake urges, breath hot on his cheek.
That... should not sound like such a good idea.
They snog a bit more. Jake does this thing, this thing with his cock, and John’s cock, their cocks line up, and then Jake presses. John groans and clutches at him, because yes, and then Jake pulls back, the bastard.
“Can’t here,” Jake says.
“I have a bed,” John says, because sex, and tries to snog him again.
Jake goes quiet, and sighs, and John is bewildered to find himself hauled back off the wall. “You live by Marta, yeah?”
“Mmhm,” he hums into Jake’s shoulder. Smells nice. Night air and beer and warmth. “Mmmmhmmm.”
Jake hauls him home, they fumble over the keys, and John is carefully lowered onto his sofa. He looks up at Jake in the light of his flat and Jake doesn’t really look that much like Sherlock anymore, which is a bit sad. Also, John’s face is more or less on level with Jake’s crotch now and it kind of makes him want to open his mouth.
“Essex made me gay,” John laments.
“No,” Jake says, trying to put John’s keys back into John’s coat. John’s still wearing it, so it makes the process all squirmy. “Credit where credit is due.”
“Sherlock,” John agrees mournfully, slurring the name something terrible.
“What?” Jake makes a funny face, the same one he used when John started slipping Dari phrases into the conversation for the hell of it.
“What?” John asks.
Jake blinks at him for a moment, like thinking hurts. Now he doesn’t look like Sherlock at all. More than a bit rubbish, that.
“Are we not having sex anymore?” John asks, just to be sure. “Because I thought we were.” It’s less interesting than it was a minute ago, but it’s still sex.
“I don’t,” Jake says, swaying a bit, hand on John’s shoulder, “I don’t pop drunk.”
“What?”
“Cherries,” Jake says.
“Oh,” John says. “Because I’m straight.”
Jake snickers.
John attempts and fails to kick him in the shins.
Jake laughs until he falls on the floor.
“Shhh,” John hushes. “Neighbours.”
Jake shuts up, clapping a hand over his mouth, so wide-eyed and ridiculous that John starts giggling. That sets Jake off again. They sit there on sofa and floor, giggling as silently as they can.
“I’ll call you a cab,” John decides.
“That sounds nice,” Jake says.
It takes a bit of effort, but he manages it. They wait for the cab to arrive, mellowing out. It’s kind of nice even without sex, sort of like the rest of John’s life. When they get a ring from the cab, telling them it’s outside, John hands Jake a tenner. “Bye,” he says.
Back on his feet, almost steady about it, Jake puts his hands on John’s shoulders. “No shame,” he says. He leans down, kisses the top of John’s head. “No shame. Okay?”
“Okay,” John says.
“Okay,” Jake says and shuffles off into the night, forgetting the tenner.
John gets up, stumbles to his bed, and collapses on it.
He wakes up in Sarah’s flat.
His first thought is that he doesn’t have a hangover.
His second thought is a great deal of profanity.
Harry can never find out about this. Any of her.
Really, there are two ways he could go about this. He could go on lying here, curled up on the sofa and trying not to think, or he could man up and blame it on alcohol and loneliness.
No contest, really.
Sarah has excellent timing, entering with a smile and fishing the telly remote out from behind him. Her smile is lovely and he likes it, feels grateful for this. It’s so very good to flirt with a woman right now, someone hiding smooth skin beneath a blue dressing gown.
He focuses on that. Wonders vaguely if the shower comment was mere remark or veiled invitation. He errs on the side of caution for the few seconds it takes him to be distracted.
The news is on the telly and, suddenly, without warning, his world tries to end.
He yells to Sarah that he’s leaving and is out the door before he gets a response. He’s out the door and out of the building and down the block and down another block and on the tube and he’s shaking inside his own skin. Copies of the Metro already litter all the seats, or close to it, but he doesn’t want to read about some painting, he wants to read about the gas explosion, but he can’t find the article. He looks for it, hands shaking, both of his hands shaking since when do both of his hands shake?
At Baker Street, he runs up the escalator, slams his Oyster card against the reader and charges through the barrier. He runs and he rounds the corner. He sees the crowd and the emergency vehicles. He sees the damage and he jogs to his flat, walks briskly past the police, and he runs up the stairs.
Sherlock is wielding his violin.
Mycroft is in John’s chair.
John slides into autopilot, mind numb, mouth moving. The Holmes brothers talk and deduce, and John gapes at him, at Sherlock. Perfectly alive in the shattered flat, perfectly all right, and not a word, not a text. Two of them, the two of them looking and knowing, talking about John’s night on a sofa but having no fucking clue what else John almost did last night.
He sits down on Sherlock’s sofa. He likes it more than his own sofa in Chelmsford, more than Derek’s sofa halfway across London. He likes it better than Sarah’s, too. There’s room to stretch out, not that Sherlock ever lets him.
Mycroft hands him papers and shakes his hand and John’s waiting to be called out on it. To be called out on anything, everything. But Mycroft and his umbrella leave as Sherlock murders his violin and John is left in something he would very much like to call peace.
For the first time in days, he and Sherlock talk. Just a little, just a bit, and Sherlock gets that phone call from Lestrade. Off he goes again, of course, obviously, off he goes again.
Except, this time, instead of telling John to buy him a ticket to Minsk, Sherlock turns around and asks if he’s coming along.
“I dug the mess out of the wall,” Sherlock says in the cab. “I’ll find a way to replace your supplies, provided I can find the correct size.”
It takes John a moment to determine what he’s talking about. His gun, the bullets. Nothing explicit where the cabbie can hear.
“Oh,” John says. “Thanks.”
Sherlock straightens his gloves, dark leather sheathing pale fingers. “You’re not still mad about that, are you?”
“What? No.” That was days ago. Feels like it, anyway. “Is Mrs. Hudson okay?” he asks rather than explain his quick forgiveness. “Where was she during the explosion?”
“On the stairs,” Sherlock says. “Don’t worry, she didn’t fall.”
“Were you...?”
“Between the windows,” Sherlock supplied. “The glass missed me, for the most part.”
“You didn’t treat the cuts, did you?” John asks, sighing pre-emptively.
“I put a plaster on where I needed one.”
“Let me guess, you washed them with water, no soap, no disinfectant.”
Sherlock keeps quiet.
“Sherlock,” John says.
“Yes, doctor. You can fuss at me when the case is finished.” For all the bite in his words, his eyes are soft.
John wonders, vaguely, if anyone besides Mycroft or Mummy has ever tried to take care of this madman. Probably not. Definitely not. He thinks it’s long overdue.
“I’m holding you to that,” John tells him.
And Sherlock, his smile slow and small, his voice as low as thunder: “Of course you are.”
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