Fic: Heart of Hearts (BBC Sherlock)
Title: Heart of Hearts
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 4.6k
Betas: vyctori, seijichan, and dashcommaslash
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: John's old heart isn't broken, but he's still very fond of his new one.
“It’s not broken,” Dr. Collins announces, entering John’s hospital room. “That’s what everyone asks, and no, it’s not. It’s definitely just a bad sprain.”
“I knew it wasn’t broken,” John says. “I know what that feels like.” The urge to stand and shake the doctor’s hand takes him, but his shoulder and the monitors won’t have it. “That should be on my chart.”
“Mm, yes,” Dr. Collins agrees, skimming over her glasses. “Then you’ll know how to care for it.”
John nods.
“Are you currently experiencing any of the following: apathy, depression, detachment, difficulties in concentration, lethargy?”
John nods for each.
Dr. Collins takes notes. “I understand two of your previous breaks required splinting?”
“Not required,” John corrects. “Splinting was optional the second time.”
“Right…” Another note. “Now, we could try another splint-”
“I’d rather not.” He feels unnatural enough already. A break pulses pain, but this is dull, listless. To be restrained on top of it would have his gun in his mouth within the month.
“Or,” Dr. Collins continues, “we could try buttressing. It would require an additional procedure, but has a high chance of repairing up to eighty percent of all previous damage.”
After a long, blank moment, John recognizes this shifting sensation as surprise. “Buttressing with what?”
“With another organic heart,” Dr. Collins replies.
“If there’s one available, it should be used as a replacement.” Not a protest: a correction. This is simple medical fact. John’s heart will recover. There are some that may not. Mechanical substitutions can only partially emulate true human hearts, and those injured enough to truly shatter deserve genuine replacements. “Abuse victims, rape survivors-”
“Veterans,” Dr. Collins interrupts gently.
John hadn’t thought of that.
“The chance of rejection is very low, less than ten percent. For the organ we have in mind, we’ve never seen lower.”
John considers. “How low is it normally?”
Deadpan, Dr. Collins replies, “I wouldn’t call eighty-five percent ‘low’. It’s either you, or it goes back on the shelf for another twenty-odd years.”
“And the time in storage hasn’t damaged it?”
“Not in the least. It’s been kept very safe. It hasn’t grown, mind you, but that makes it the perfect size for buttressing.”
“You mean, it’s a child’s heart?”
“That’s correct,” Dr. Collins answers. They discuss the potential outcomes, the risks and benefits. “Would you like time to consider which procedure you’d prefer? Your insurance covers both.”
John thinks of splinting. Of binding the numbness in his chest until even the irritation flickering at its edges can no longer move. Something shakes inside him. It might be fear.
He thinks of buttressing. Of opening not simply his chest but his entire heart to take in the heart of a long-dead child. He feels nothing. No empathy or grief or sorrowful gratitude.
“How soon could I have my compassion back?” John asks.
“With splinting, there’s no way to tell. The average is two to six months. With buttressing, a week to a month.”
John nods. With no emotional hunches to guide him, he likes a simple decision. “I’ll take the heart, please.”
Four days after his procedure, John smiles at a bee. It butts against the window, determined to reach the flowers Clara sent him. Though effectively tethered to his hospital bed, John watches as best he can.
When he realizes what he’s doing, he laughs until the nurse comes to check on him, her eyes wide in an otherwise controlled face. The monitors are going wild.
“I’m fine,” John gasps. “God, I’m better than fine.” His right hand covers the left side of his chest and he basks in the strain he feels beneath it. He’s going to be all right. He’s going to be normal again, and happy, and the pain hurts well. “Heartbeats are still synced. I’m fine.”
She closes the blinds. “You need to take it easy on stimulus.”
“What? No, open them,” John protests.
“Mr. Watson-”
“Doctor,” John corrects. “Or Captain. Open the blinds.”
“I’m afraid that I can’t-”
“It’s not difficult!” John shouts. “Pull the bloody string!”
John shouts a bit more, but she doesn’t move. After, throat sore, John is utterly unable to look at her. Heat floods his face and pricks behind his eyes.
“I’m- I’m sorry,” he tells the hospital sheets. “I am so sorry. I don’t know what I was… I’m sorry. That doesn’t normally happen.”
In response, she brings him a plastic cup of water. It has a taste that should be off-putting but is instead oddly fascinating.
“Thank you,” John says and there, there it is. He can feel gratitude again. “Thank you,” he repeats, finally able to mean it.
The next day, he’s allowed some telly and is bored by nearly all of it. For some reason, Pirates of the Caribbean is the exception.
The next week, he’s allowed out and relocates to his assigned bedsit. It’s small and soulless, and John initially takes great pleasure in hating it. That joy soon fades. His frustration with his limp grows.
The next month, he’s on his third appointment with his therapist and he doesn’t want to talk about anything. He’s bored, he’s irritable, and he is crushingly alone. It’s not about to improve.
He wonders how he might be in a year and thinks of his gun, waiting in its drawer.
He likes windows better than telly now. It’s an odd change, but it does save on expenses. He needs that. The limp holds him back from seeking employment. The buttressing inexplicably resolved his hand tremor, but a surgeon needs to stand without a cane.
For now, he wants to sit and look, to watch London and marvel. That’s one of the side effects: a renewed sense of wonder. It’s probably the only thing that keeps John going. More than force of habit and his training, it’s what makes him get up in the morning. More than the need for sunlight and exercise, it’s what makes him limp his way across the city each day before lunch. One day in late January, it’s what stops him when a vaguely familiar voice calls his name.
He barely remembers Mike Stamford, but something inside of him sits up in confusion. A friendly greeting? A schoolmate and a friendly greeting? Amazed and confused at his own amazement, John endures a quick coffee that turns into an excursion to St. Bart’s. The labs are different, filling John with lovely curiosity, and Mike brings him to one with a man inside. He’s tall, even bent over a microscope.
The verbal equivalent of a whirlwind ensues.
“Yeah,” Mike says. “He’s always like that.”
John shifts a bit, distracting himself with the pain of his leg. “Always?” he asks, watching the door. Fighting down the urge to follow, John shakes his head. “How could anyone always...?” He looks at Mike, trying to convey the unknown word with his eyes.
“I don’t know, but he does it to everyone,” Mike replies. He grins a bit. “I get off easy. Never say there aren’t benefits to being boring.” He laughs a little, as if waiting for John to correct him.
“Everyone?” John repeats, not listening. It’s not just John? He’s not...? No, what is he thinking? Of course John isn’t special. It had felt that way, just for a moment, but that’s nothing more than the new sensitivity acting up again. He tightens his hand on his cane. “Sorry, what were you saying?”
Mike shakes his head. “Not important.”
They chat for a bit longer before John returns to his bedsit to think and Google.
He goes and he sits and when Sherlock asks him to follow, there really isn’t any choice. John hadn’t realized it, not until now, not until seeing Sherlock so absolutely animated, but this is what John was after. What John is after.
A crime scene is uncomfortable, but it’s anything but numbing. Sherlock whirls and shouts, his thoughts bounding about the room, through the building, and out into the world in a way John’s can’t hope to match. He’s an arrogant marvel, and John can’t stop watching.
The wonder fades as Sherlock leaves, stair by painful stair. John aches.
“Wherever he’s gone, don’t follow,” Sergeant Donovan advises. “There’s something wrong with him. His heart’s hollow.”
“I honestly hadn’t noticed.”
John limps back to his bedsit.
He doesn’t make it.
“You initially had an intermittent tremor in your left hand,” the umbrella-wielding man states, pointing with his notebook. “Gone now, I see. Vanished. How very good for you.”
“I’m afraid I don’t see your point.”
“My point,” says the man, yet another deliberate pause filling his speech, “is that there is no reason for you to continue your association with Sherlock Holmes.”
If there’s a line of reasoning there, John can’t find it.
“The missing stimulus you require has been medically provided to you,” the man elaborates, “Sherlock Holmes is of no further use to you.”
“Who said anything about ‘use’?” John asks. His mobile chimes. He checks it. He fights down a grin. “Sorry,” he says. “I’ve somewhere to be.”
“Stay away from Sherlock Holmes,” the man drawls. “It’s a fine heart you’ve received, Dr. Watson. It would be a shame to see it shattered.” His eyes leave no doubt to his meaning. Not broken: destroyed.
Hand tight on his cane, John lifts his chin.
“...I see,” the man murmurs. “How very quick.” He returns his notebook inside his jacket. “If you are determined to take up residence in Central London, I understand that you may be in need of suitable employment.”
John’s mobile chimes again. John checks it: Sherlock, impatient now. John shares the feeling. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m not interested, and I have somewhere I need to be.”
The man smiles and gestures to the car. “I am all too aware, Dr. Watson. Don’t let me keep you.”
John hesitates, then goes.
“Out of curiosity,” the man asks as John limps to the car, “do I strike you as familiar in any way?”
“You mean, besides as a Bond villain?”
The man laughs. It comes just short of being terribly pleasant. He smiles, benign and magnanimous. “Until we meet again, Dr. Watson.”
John has never in his life shot a man with the perfect clarity that comes with seeing Sherlock Holmes about to die.
He shoots and he runs, and he’s shaking, shaking so hard from it. His heart can’t, won’t, stop pounding, is overcome with pre-emptive, pointless grief. Gun tucked under his waistband, he sits on the kerb, listening to sirens blocks away, and presses his palms against his eyes until the threat of leakage stops. A voice keeps crying, “Don’t go,” and “Please stay,” broken words in a broken voice John recognizes in time as his own.
One long, shaking gasp, and he shuts his mouth tight. God, what is he saying?
He shakes until he stops. He sits in the cold, arms about himself, gripping his own elbows. He needs to see Sherlock, he realises. That will do it. That will put a stop to this.
He walks back to the crime scene, and every step does him a world of good.
“How soon can you move in?” Sherlock snaps his fortune cookie into halves and passes the second to John as they walk. His hands are surprisingly warm in the night air.
“In the morning. Could go back to the bedsit, or I could kip on your sofa. D’you mind?”
“Not at all.”
They pop the cookie halves into their mouths and bite down in unison, a satisfying crunch in stereo. They glance at each other out of the corners of their eyes, and John nearly chokes, laughing.
The flat is everything John could have hoped for. Sherlock’s chaos spills everywhere. John enjoys not cleaning it. John makes references Sherlock doesn’t understand, and Sherlock does things John doesn’t want to know about. They eat too many beans and only ever have just enough milk for their tea. Sherlock actually takes out the rubbish, but only because most of it is hazardous waste material.
Slowly, a little unwillingly, John feels himself reach an even keel. Life can’t be all excitement, not even with Sherlock, and normalcy with him proves to be enough. They don’t talk much - Sherlock effectively reads his mind, so that’s most conversations cut short - but silence is good between them. Solid. Calm. They take to sitting in the same room. John is never startled when Sherlock’s face suddenly appears next to his as he types. Sherlock always seems to know when John might be willing to hold something for him.
They have things in common at the oddest times, in the most unlikely ways. It’s his shoulder John’s self-conscious about, but when Sherlock barges into the loo while John’s stripping down for a shower, it’s not the bullet wound that catches Sherlock’s attention.
“Do you mind?” John demands, yanking up his trousers.
“Not at all.” Sherlock opens the medicine cabinet and takes out what might be a bottle of glue. His eyes remain on John’s chest. “You’ve been busy.”
“Sorry?”
“A surgeon and a soldier, but you’ve still found time to break your heart three times.” Sherlock cocks his head to the side, eyes narrowing. “Ah, PTSD as well. That would do it.” He shifts the glue bottle into his left hand, nearly lifts the right. He bites his lip.
“Yes, fine,” John allows. That’s Sherlock’s face for a small favour, not a big one, and when Sherlock finds joy within curiosity, John knows he’ll follow his flatmate into it as well.
Still biting his lip, Sherlock peers closer, slouching to keep John in the light. He doesn’t quite touch. He tilts his head until he nearly topples, and John catches a thin shoulder before it hits the sink.
“What are you doing?”
Sherlock has the grace to look amused. And then shy. John hates what it does to him, Sherlock looking shy.
A quick slap of motion: Sherlock taps the left side of his own chest. “I only see it upside-down.” He doesn’t risk looking John in the eyes.
“Oh,” John says, and Sherlock glares at him immediately. “Have you tried taking a picture? Or, you know. Mirrors. Mirrors work.”
Very slowly, Sherlock grins.
A loud crack! interrupts them from the kitchen. Swearing, Sherlock darts away with his glue, shouting, “Take a long shower! I’ll have it contained before you’re out!”
It all ends in tea and Mrs. Hudson making worried noises.
“How strange are my reactions?” John sets the shopping down on the floor. No room for it on the table or counters. “I honestly can’t tell anymore.”
Sherlock doesn’t look up from his microscope. “John, I am hardly the person to consult about ‘normalcy’.”
“You know what it looks like.”
Sherlock grunts. “Hand me that.” He points without looking.
John does, reaching for the slide Sherlock meant rather than the one he indicated.
“Thank you.”
John puts away the shopping and reads Sherlock’s notes over his shoulder. He hands over the rest of the slides as they’re needed. They work in silence for the rest of the afternoon.
“Normal’s boring,” Sherlock remarks after dinner. He takes John’s empty plate as well as his own to the sink.
Unnecessary, John hovers behind him out of habit. “It’s not being normal I’m worried over.”
“No?”
“’Course not. I live with a bloke who microwaves eyeballs-what could be more normal than that?”
“Then it’s your reactions,” Sherlock surmises. “If you’re worried about being appropriate, don’t. You’ll suffocate yourself.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being a little appropriate. Keeps you from hurting people by mistake.”
Loading the dishwasher, Sherlock audibly rolls his eyes. “John, nothing in the world will ever keep anyone from hurting people by mistake.”
“That’s a bit pessimistic.”
“Realistic.”
“Because you just go around not caring if you hurt someone, is that it?” It’s a question, not an accusation.
Sherlock frowns at him with all the confusion of a child. “I’m going to anyway, aren’t I? I see no point in hurting myself for the wellbeing of others.”
John frowns back. “I never said harming yourself.”
“With a mind like mine?” Sherlock asks. “Capable of extrapolating innumerable scenarios, every conceivable outcome for every piece of every interaction, every single day. Consider worrying over that and tell me it’s not self-harm.”
John considers it.
Sherlock waits.
“Fair enough,” John says, and makes them tea. They sit in silence for the rest of the night, Sherlock on his website, John on job listings. The tea does not help.
In need of a shave before his interview, John knocks on the loo door, shouts a warning over the sound of the shower, and enters.
“Get out!”
“I just-”
“Get out!” Sherlock bellows.
“Fine, fine!” He does, slamming the door shut behind him. “Jesus Christ.”
He gets the job.
Something warm expands within his lungs, filling his chest and squaring his shoulders. It’s strong and vaguely self-indulgent. He can’t put a name to it until he comes home and tells Mrs. Hudson he’s employed, more eager for her proud reaction than he would care to admit.
Pride. He’s proud of himself.
It’s foreign and lovely, and he basks in it.
“Bad idea.”
John glances at the floppy curls visible over the sofa’s arm. “Hm?”
“I said, it’s a bad idea,” Sherlock repeats.
“Got that, thanks.” John sits down so he can actually see Sherlock’s face. Or, when Sherlock rolls over, the back of his head and the blue of his dressing gown. “What’s such a bad idea?”
“Her.”
“What, Sarah? Sherlock, you can’t nearly get a woman killed and tell me she is the bad idea.”
Sherlock groans. “Dating her, John. Are you not paying attention?”
“Yes, but you’re not speaking in full sentences. Some of us don’t read minds.” He reaches for the discarded newspaper on Sherlock’s armchair. He reads halfway through an article about a formerly lost painting, waiting for the rest of Sherlock’s rant.
What will it be? Interference with the cases? The idiocy of workplace romance? Sherlock’s rejection of anything that decreases their co-dependency?
“Is she even aware of your heart condition?”
John lets the paper fall back. “Um, no?”
Sherlock rolls over, the better to aim his scorn. “I may have little experience in the area, but I do know it’s bad form, not telling a romantic partner that you’re incapable of romance.”
“What? I’m perfectly capable.” He snaps the newspaper open anew. “And fuck you,” he adds.
“You’re still splinted.”
“Nope.” John turns the page.
“What do you mean, no? The incisions are still fresh.”
“I’m not splinted. Never could stand it.”
“Really?” Sherlock sits up.
John hums, skimming. “Too constricting.”
“But that was the best part.”
Frowning, John puts down the newspaper. “Splinting was the best part of what? The recovery process?”
“Of having a heart,” Sherlock corrects.
“‘Was,’” John repeats.
“Yes.”
“That’s past tense.”
“Yes,” Sherlock agrees. “Problem?”
“No. No problem.” Some guilt, but no problem. There’s a shortage of heart donations and compatibility is typically low. “You’re on mechanical, then?” The basics are very much intact - joy, anger, depression, the need for stimulation - but this might explain the imbalance.
“Mm, yes. And you would be buttressed.”
John nods.
Sherlock bites his lip. “Could I... touch?” He tilts his face downward and looks up at John like a child yet to learn his days of adorable manipulation are over.
John agrees anyway. He crosses the room and sits on the coffee table. He shucks his cardigan and his shirt. Sherlock slides a hand up his own t-shirt, fingers finding his heartbeat beneath the worn cloth. He reaches for John’s chest with a question in his eyes and no need to wait for an answer. His fingertips are warm and make the numbness of scar tissue impossible to ignore. The touch tingles, too light.
John rolls his eyes. “You won’t kill me if you press down.”
Sherlock does. “It feels stronger, somehow.”
“Can I...?”
Sherlock hesitates, frozen, before guiding John’s hand under his t-shirt.
An awkward noise catches in John’s throat, the threadbare cloth against his wrist too... too something, but then his fingers tell him what lies beneath. God. John had thought his own chest a mass of scars. How many times? He’d count if Sherlock would let him see, which is how he knows he’s not allowed to know.
Sherlock forces his hand to the pulse proper. It’s racing. It doesn’t feel weak to John, not at all, but so few things about Sherlock do.
They breathe together, synced as always. Their hearts slow until they’re brisk and steady. As they do, Sherlock stares into John properly. He’s waiting for something he doesn’t find, but the lack of it makes him grin.
John grins back. “What?”
“Most people find it freakish.”
“Most people aren’t doctors.”
“Even doctors.”
With his free hand, John points to his own shoulder. “Trauma looks bad, but-”
“It wasn’t.”
“Sorry?”
“It wasn’t trauma.” Sherlock pulls John’s hand away and drops his own, all contact severed. The skin of John’s chest prickles with cold. “It wasn’t shattered. I had it taken out.”
“Er. Why? I mean, no, obviously you don’t have to tell me. That is, that’s as personal as it comes, sorry, I-”
“It wouldn’t stop hurting.” Sherlock stares through John’s chest. “That’s a perfectly adequate reason.”
John nods.
They sit together in silence.
“Does yours-” Sherlock hesitates. “Does it do that?”
“Hurt? No, not really.”
Sherlock nods.
The silence improves.
“Do you have a stethoscope?” Sherlock asks.
“Not on me.” He sits on his hands. “You could still take a listen, if you like.”
Sherlock stands. “Lie down on the sofa.”
John does.
Sherlock kneels beside him. He lowers his head, presses an ear, and his curls tickle. John brushes them aside. Sherlock tenses. He relaxes.
“It sounds like only one heart,” Sherlock murmurs, not without awe.
John breathes.
Sherlock listens. He nearly seems asleep when he whispers, “Don’t let Sarah hurt you.”
John hears it, but it seems so unlikely. “What?”
“Nothing.”
The bomber strikes a week later. People die, people die in horrendous ways, and John sees the limits of a mechanical heart behind Sherlock’s every smile.
Something inside him refuses to break, but it does begin to buckle.
With the case nearly over, John is left uneasy. It’s like staring at the fridge and knowing his body desperately needs one food alone, or else he will vomit. He sits with Sherlock, listening to him shout at crap telly, but he wants more.
Maybe he wants Sarah. It’s the only thing he can think to try.
When he’s kidnapped on his way over, he’s more angry than disappointed. Not Sarah, then.
John steps out. He and Sherlock lock eyes, and the agony across Sherlock’s face bursts inside John’s chest. Heavy with humidity and the scent of chlorine, the air stops up John’s mouth as his chest burns. It hurts so damn much and John is going to pass out while wearing an explosive vest.
He can see Sherlock’s mouth moving. This is all he can see: Sherlock’s mouth moving, Sherlock over him, a red light above his pale eyes. When did John fall on the floor? Oh, Christ. The vest could have exploded. They could have exploded.
“You know,” Jim Moriarty drawls, “I put a lot of thought into this. Bit of a shame, seeing it work so easily. Where’s the challenge?”
Sherlock’s throat, tendons visible. “Stop it! You have my attention, now leave him!”
“Me? I don’t have to. I don’t have to do anything at all.”
“Whatever you’re doing to him, stop! I understand--I’ll back off-now stop it!”
Sherlock is terrified and John cannot breathe. Everything is cold, except for Sherlock’s hands. Sherlock rolls him, tearing the vest off, and his hands remain.
“I was so disappointed, Sherlock. When I learned you didn’t have it anymore, oh, such a waste. I was going to burn it out of you. Right. Out. Of. You.
“But then it comes back,” Moriarty adds and laughs. “What a loyal pet.”
“What are you talking about?” Sherlock demands, but his hands are both pressed against John’s double heart.
“Did you think he actually cared, Sherlock?” Moriarty steps into John’s view, pouting down at him. “That some stupid, ordinary man could praise you and not resent you? That’s not the way ordinary people work, my dear. They’re not like us.”
John begins to cry with shuddering gasps against the tile. It hurts. It hurts so much. They’re pulling away inside, a pair of orange slices peeling apart.
“Stop it!” Sherlock’s hands cover John’s ears, tug his head into Sherlock’s lap. “John, don’t listen!”
“Aww. Now that’s sad. Lonely little boy, begging for a friend.”
The earpiece. Sherlock’s palm against his ear only presses it in harder.
“And boring. You’re boring, too. You were supposed to be my worthy adversary, but no, look at you. Honestly. Look at you.”
Sherlock rips the earpiece out.
“I was going to take my time about this, but it’s just too easy. You’re so simple, Sherlock.”
John can’t stop crying.
“Is that really all it takes to break you? Your one friend only likes you because he has to, and, oh no! It’s as if the world is ending.”
The break is sharp, and it is not clean.
John screams.
Sherlock clutches him to his chest. “I’ll back off. I swear I will, now stop.”
“For now,” Moriarty allows. “If you keep your word, I’ll keep mine. See that you do.”
Footsteps echo away. A team of footsteps. A door slams. The world tilts, and Sherlock is stronger than he looks. “We’re getting it out of you,” Sherlock promises. “We’ll go to hospital and take it out.”
John clings to him limply. He coughs phlegm and swallows tears. “Are you okay?”
“Of course I’m all right,” Sherlock snaps, shoving open a door. “It’s inside you, not me. I don’t feel a thing from it.”
“You are my friend,” John says. He begins crying anew. “And I’m yours.”
“That will take some getting used to,” Sherlock answers, kicking open another door, and John hiccups a laugh.
The first week home from hospital, John has never been fussed over more. Between Mrs. Hudson’s kindness and Sherlock’s paranoia, he’s alone only in the loo.
Sherlock appears at his shoulder, eyes on John’s laptop screen. “How’s it holding?”
“As well as it was ten minutes ago.” John pulls back up a cat video until Sherlock loses patience with him.
True to form, Sherlock whirls away and does a bit of pacing. He ruffles his hair. “I still say you should have had it taken out.”
For such a bad break, Sherlock’s heart had only needed basic splinting and the support of John’s around it. “You don’t have any say over it anymore.”
Sherlock glares. “Yes, I do.”
“Yes, you do,” John allows. “But not medically.”
“He’ll break it again. There will be another case and I won’t be able to resist.” Sherlock steps forward and closes John’s laptop on his hands. “John, I don’t think I could watch that again.”
“We can get yours reinforced,” John says. Very reasonably too, for a man with crushed fingers. “But mine is staying as it is.”
“There’s nothing wrong with finding you another one. Mycroft has had a list of alternates for months.”
“Right. That’s not disturbing.”
“You can have another one,” Sherlock continues. “I don’t mind.”
“I mind,” John answers, lifting his chin. “It’s mine now, I like it, and it’s staying.”
Sherlock stares down at him. “Are you sure?”
“Is there something to not be sure about?” John asks.
Slowly, Sherlock begins to grin.
John’s pulse falters, but in a good way.
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 4.6k
Betas: vyctori, seijichan, and dashcommaslash
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: John's old heart isn't broken, but he's still very fond of his new one.
“It’s not broken,” Dr. Collins announces, entering John’s hospital room. “That’s what everyone asks, and no, it’s not. It’s definitely just a bad sprain.”
“I knew it wasn’t broken,” John says. “I know what that feels like.” The urge to stand and shake the doctor’s hand takes him, but his shoulder and the monitors won’t have it. “That should be on my chart.”
“Mm, yes,” Dr. Collins agrees, skimming over her glasses. “Then you’ll know how to care for it.”
John nods.
“Are you currently experiencing any of the following: apathy, depression, detachment, difficulties in concentration, lethargy?”
John nods for each.
Dr. Collins takes notes. “I understand two of your previous breaks required splinting?”
“Not required,” John corrects. “Splinting was optional the second time.”
“Right…” Another note. “Now, we could try another splint-”
“I’d rather not.” He feels unnatural enough already. A break pulses pain, but this is dull, listless. To be restrained on top of it would have his gun in his mouth within the month.
“Or,” Dr. Collins continues, “we could try buttressing. It would require an additional procedure, but has a high chance of repairing up to eighty percent of all previous damage.”
After a long, blank moment, John recognizes this shifting sensation as surprise. “Buttressing with what?”
“With another organic heart,” Dr. Collins replies.
“If there’s one available, it should be used as a replacement.” Not a protest: a correction. This is simple medical fact. John’s heart will recover. There are some that may not. Mechanical substitutions can only partially emulate true human hearts, and those injured enough to truly shatter deserve genuine replacements. “Abuse victims, rape survivors-”
“Veterans,” Dr. Collins interrupts gently.
John hadn’t thought of that.
“The chance of rejection is very low, less than ten percent. For the organ we have in mind, we’ve never seen lower.”
John considers. “How low is it normally?”
Deadpan, Dr. Collins replies, “I wouldn’t call eighty-five percent ‘low’. It’s either you, or it goes back on the shelf for another twenty-odd years.”
“And the time in storage hasn’t damaged it?”
“Not in the least. It’s been kept very safe. It hasn’t grown, mind you, but that makes it the perfect size for buttressing.”
“You mean, it’s a child’s heart?”
“That’s correct,” Dr. Collins answers. They discuss the potential outcomes, the risks and benefits. “Would you like time to consider which procedure you’d prefer? Your insurance covers both.”
John thinks of splinting. Of binding the numbness in his chest until even the irritation flickering at its edges can no longer move. Something shakes inside him. It might be fear.
He thinks of buttressing. Of opening not simply his chest but his entire heart to take in the heart of a long-dead child. He feels nothing. No empathy or grief or sorrowful gratitude.
“How soon could I have my compassion back?” John asks.
“With splinting, there’s no way to tell. The average is two to six months. With buttressing, a week to a month.”
John nods. With no emotional hunches to guide him, he likes a simple decision. “I’ll take the heart, please.”
Four days after his procedure, John smiles at a bee. It butts against the window, determined to reach the flowers Clara sent him. Though effectively tethered to his hospital bed, John watches as best he can.
When he realizes what he’s doing, he laughs until the nurse comes to check on him, her eyes wide in an otherwise controlled face. The monitors are going wild.
“I’m fine,” John gasps. “God, I’m better than fine.” His right hand covers the left side of his chest and he basks in the strain he feels beneath it. He’s going to be all right. He’s going to be normal again, and happy, and the pain hurts well. “Heartbeats are still synced. I’m fine.”
She closes the blinds. “You need to take it easy on stimulus.”
“What? No, open them,” John protests.
“Mr. Watson-”
“Doctor,” John corrects. “Or Captain. Open the blinds.”
“I’m afraid that I can’t-”
“It’s not difficult!” John shouts. “Pull the bloody string!”
John shouts a bit more, but she doesn’t move. After, throat sore, John is utterly unable to look at her. Heat floods his face and pricks behind his eyes.
“I’m- I’m sorry,” he tells the hospital sheets. “I am so sorry. I don’t know what I was… I’m sorry. That doesn’t normally happen.”
In response, she brings him a plastic cup of water. It has a taste that should be off-putting but is instead oddly fascinating.
“Thank you,” John says and there, there it is. He can feel gratitude again. “Thank you,” he repeats, finally able to mean it.
The next day, he’s allowed some telly and is bored by nearly all of it. For some reason, Pirates of the Caribbean is the exception.
The next week, he’s allowed out and relocates to his assigned bedsit. It’s small and soulless, and John initially takes great pleasure in hating it. That joy soon fades. His frustration with his limp grows.
The next month, he’s on his third appointment with his therapist and he doesn’t want to talk about anything. He’s bored, he’s irritable, and he is crushingly alone. It’s not about to improve.
He wonders how he might be in a year and thinks of his gun, waiting in its drawer.
He likes windows better than telly now. It’s an odd change, but it does save on expenses. He needs that. The limp holds him back from seeking employment. The buttressing inexplicably resolved his hand tremor, but a surgeon needs to stand without a cane.
For now, he wants to sit and look, to watch London and marvel. That’s one of the side effects: a renewed sense of wonder. It’s probably the only thing that keeps John going. More than force of habit and his training, it’s what makes him get up in the morning. More than the need for sunlight and exercise, it’s what makes him limp his way across the city each day before lunch. One day in late January, it’s what stops him when a vaguely familiar voice calls his name.
He barely remembers Mike Stamford, but something inside of him sits up in confusion. A friendly greeting? A schoolmate and a friendly greeting? Amazed and confused at his own amazement, John endures a quick coffee that turns into an excursion to St. Bart’s. The labs are different, filling John with lovely curiosity, and Mike brings him to one with a man inside. He’s tall, even bent over a microscope.
The verbal equivalent of a whirlwind ensues.
“Yeah,” Mike says. “He’s always like that.”
John shifts a bit, distracting himself with the pain of his leg. “Always?” he asks, watching the door. Fighting down the urge to follow, John shakes his head. “How could anyone always...?” He looks at Mike, trying to convey the unknown word with his eyes.
“I don’t know, but he does it to everyone,” Mike replies. He grins a bit. “I get off easy. Never say there aren’t benefits to being boring.” He laughs a little, as if waiting for John to correct him.
“Everyone?” John repeats, not listening. It’s not just John? He’s not...? No, what is he thinking? Of course John isn’t special. It had felt that way, just for a moment, but that’s nothing more than the new sensitivity acting up again. He tightens his hand on his cane. “Sorry, what were you saying?”
Mike shakes his head. “Not important.”
They chat for a bit longer before John returns to his bedsit to think and Google.
He goes and he sits and when Sherlock asks him to follow, there really isn’t any choice. John hadn’t realized it, not until now, not until seeing Sherlock so absolutely animated, but this is what John was after. What John is after.
A crime scene is uncomfortable, but it’s anything but numbing. Sherlock whirls and shouts, his thoughts bounding about the room, through the building, and out into the world in a way John’s can’t hope to match. He’s an arrogant marvel, and John can’t stop watching.
The wonder fades as Sherlock leaves, stair by painful stair. John aches.
“Wherever he’s gone, don’t follow,” Sergeant Donovan advises. “There’s something wrong with him. His heart’s hollow.”
“I honestly hadn’t noticed.”
John limps back to his bedsit.
He doesn’t make it.
“You initially had an intermittent tremor in your left hand,” the umbrella-wielding man states, pointing with his notebook. “Gone now, I see. Vanished. How very good for you.”
“I’m afraid I don’t see your point.”
“My point,” says the man, yet another deliberate pause filling his speech, “is that there is no reason for you to continue your association with Sherlock Holmes.”
If there’s a line of reasoning there, John can’t find it.
“The missing stimulus you require has been medically provided to you,” the man elaborates, “Sherlock Holmes is of no further use to you.”
“Who said anything about ‘use’?” John asks. His mobile chimes. He checks it. He fights down a grin. “Sorry,” he says. “I’ve somewhere to be.”
“Stay away from Sherlock Holmes,” the man drawls. “It’s a fine heart you’ve received, Dr. Watson. It would be a shame to see it shattered.” His eyes leave no doubt to his meaning. Not broken: destroyed.
Hand tight on his cane, John lifts his chin.
“...I see,” the man murmurs. “How very quick.” He returns his notebook inside his jacket. “If you are determined to take up residence in Central London, I understand that you may be in need of suitable employment.”
John’s mobile chimes again. John checks it: Sherlock, impatient now. John shares the feeling. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m not interested, and I have somewhere I need to be.”
The man smiles and gestures to the car. “I am all too aware, Dr. Watson. Don’t let me keep you.”
John hesitates, then goes.
“Out of curiosity,” the man asks as John limps to the car, “do I strike you as familiar in any way?”
“You mean, besides as a Bond villain?”
The man laughs. It comes just short of being terribly pleasant. He smiles, benign and magnanimous. “Until we meet again, Dr. Watson.”
John has never in his life shot a man with the perfect clarity that comes with seeing Sherlock Holmes about to die.
He shoots and he runs, and he’s shaking, shaking so hard from it. His heart can’t, won’t, stop pounding, is overcome with pre-emptive, pointless grief. Gun tucked under his waistband, he sits on the kerb, listening to sirens blocks away, and presses his palms against his eyes until the threat of leakage stops. A voice keeps crying, “Don’t go,” and “Please stay,” broken words in a broken voice John recognizes in time as his own.
One long, shaking gasp, and he shuts his mouth tight. God, what is he saying?
He shakes until he stops. He sits in the cold, arms about himself, gripping his own elbows. He needs to see Sherlock, he realises. That will do it. That will put a stop to this.
He walks back to the crime scene, and every step does him a world of good.
“How soon can you move in?” Sherlock snaps his fortune cookie into halves and passes the second to John as they walk. His hands are surprisingly warm in the night air.
“In the morning. Could go back to the bedsit, or I could kip on your sofa. D’you mind?”
“Not at all.”
They pop the cookie halves into their mouths and bite down in unison, a satisfying crunch in stereo. They glance at each other out of the corners of their eyes, and John nearly chokes, laughing.
The flat is everything John could have hoped for. Sherlock’s chaos spills everywhere. John enjoys not cleaning it. John makes references Sherlock doesn’t understand, and Sherlock does things John doesn’t want to know about. They eat too many beans and only ever have just enough milk for their tea. Sherlock actually takes out the rubbish, but only because most of it is hazardous waste material.
Slowly, a little unwillingly, John feels himself reach an even keel. Life can’t be all excitement, not even with Sherlock, and normalcy with him proves to be enough. They don’t talk much - Sherlock effectively reads his mind, so that’s most conversations cut short - but silence is good between them. Solid. Calm. They take to sitting in the same room. John is never startled when Sherlock’s face suddenly appears next to his as he types. Sherlock always seems to know when John might be willing to hold something for him.
They have things in common at the oddest times, in the most unlikely ways. It’s his shoulder John’s self-conscious about, but when Sherlock barges into the loo while John’s stripping down for a shower, it’s not the bullet wound that catches Sherlock’s attention.
“Do you mind?” John demands, yanking up his trousers.
“Not at all.” Sherlock opens the medicine cabinet and takes out what might be a bottle of glue. His eyes remain on John’s chest. “You’ve been busy.”
“Sorry?”
“A surgeon and a soldier, but you’ve still found time to break your heart three times.” Sherlock cocks his head to the side, eyes narrowing. “Ah, PTSD as well. That would do it.” He shifts the glue bottle into his left hand, nearly lifts the right. He bites his lip.
“Yes, fine,” John allows. That’s Sherlock’s face for a small favour, not a big one, and when Sherlock finds joy within curiosity, John knows he’ll follow his flatmate into it as well.
Still biting his lip, Sherlock peers closer, slouching to keep John in the light. He doesn’t quite touch. He tilts his head until he nearly topples, and John catches a thin shoulder before it hits the sink.
“What are you doing?”
Sherlock has the grace to look amused. And then shy. John hates what it does to him, Sherlock looking shy.
A quick slap of motion: Sherlock taps the left side of his own chest. “I only see it upside-down.” He doesn’t risk looking John in the eyes.
“Oh,” John says, and Sherlock glares at him immediately. “Have you tried taking a picture? Or, you know. Mirrors. Mirrors work.”
Very slowly, Sherlock grins.
A loud crack! interrupts them from the kitchen. Swearing, Sherlock darts away with his glue, shouting, “Take a long shower! I’ll have it contained before you’re out!”
It all ends in tea and Mrs. Hudson making worried noises.
“How strange are my reactions?” John sets the shopping down on the floor. No room for it on the table or counters. “I honestly can’t tell anymore.”
Sherlock doesn’t look up from his microscope. “John, I am hardly the person to consult about ‘normalcy’.”
“You know what it looks like.”
Sherlock grunts. “Hand me that.” He points without looking.
John does, reaching for the slide Sherlock meant rather than the one he indicated.
“Thank you.”
John puts away the shopping and reads Sherlock’s notes over his shoulder. He hands over the rest of the slides as they’re needed. They work in silence for the rest of the afternoon.
“Normal’s boring,” Sherlock remarks after dinner. He takes John’s empty plate as well as his own to the sink.
Unnecessary, John hovers behind him out of habit. “It’s not being normal I’m worried over.”
“No?”
“’Course not. I live with a bloke who microwaves eyeballs-what could be more normal than that?”
“Then it’s your reactions,” Sherlock surmises. “If you’re worried about being appropriate, don’t. You’ll suffocate yourself.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being a little appropriate. Keeps you from hurting people by mistake.”
Loading the dishwasher, Sherlock audibly rolls his eyes. “John, nothing in the world will ever keep anyone from hurting people by mistake.”
“That’s a bit pessimistic.”
“Realistic.”
“Because you just go around not caring if you hurt someone, is that it?” It’s a question, not an accusation.
Sherlock frowns at him with all the confusion of a child. “I’m going to anyway, aren’t I? I see no point in hurting myself for the wellbeing of others.”
John frowns back. “I never said harming yourself.”
“With a mind like mine?” Sherlock asks. “Capable of extrapolating innumerable scenarios, every conceivable outcome for every piece of every interaction, every single day. Consider worrying over that and tell me it’s not self-harm.”
John considers it.
Sherlock waits.
“Fair enough,” John says, and makes them tea. They sit in silence for the rest of the night, Sherlock on his website, John on job listings. The tea does not help.
In need of a shave before his interview, John knocks on the loo door, shouts a warning over the sound of the shower, and enters.
“Get out!”
“I just-”
“Get out!” Sherlock bellows.
“Fine, fine!” He does, slamming the door shut behind him. “Jesus Christ.”
He gets the job.
Something warm expands within his lungs, filling his chest and squaring his shoulders. It’s strong and vaguely self-indulgent. He can’t put a name to it until he comes home and tells Mrs. Hudson he’s employed, more eager for her proud reaction than he would care to admit.
Pride. He’s proud of himself.
It’s foreign and lovely, and he basks in it.
“Bad idea.”
John glances at the floppy curls visible over the sofa’s arm. “Hm?”
“I said, it’s a bad idea,” Sherlock repeats.
“Got that, thanks.” John sits down so he can actually see Sherlock’s face. Or, when Sherlock rolls over, the back of his head and the blue of his dressing gown. “What’s such a bad idea?”
“Her.”
“What, Sarah? Sherlock, you can’t nearly get a woman killed and tell me she is the bad idea.”
Sherlock groans. “Dating her, John. Are you not paying attention?”
“Yes, but you’re not speaking in full sentences. Some of us don’t read minds.” He reaches for the discarded newspaper on Sherlock’s armchair. He reads halfway through an article about a formerly lost painting, waiting for the rest of Sherlock’s rant.
What will it be? Interference with the cases? The idiocy of workplace romance? Sherlock’s rejection of anything that decreases their co-dependency?
“Is she even aware of your heart condition?”
John lets the paper fall back. “Um, no?”
Sherlock rolls over, the better to aim his scorn. “I may have little experience in the area, but I do know it’s bad form, not telling a romantic partner that you’re incapable of romance.”
“What? I’m perfectly capable.” He snaps the newspaper open anew. “And fuck you,” he adds.
“You’re still splinted.”
“Nope.” John turns the page.
“What do you mean, no? The incisions are still fresh.”
“I’m not splinted. Never could stand it.”
“Really?” Sherlock sits up.
John hums, skimming. “Too constricting.”
“But that was the best part.”
Frowning, John puts down the newspaper. “Splinting was the best part of what? The recovery process?”
“Of having a heart,” Sherlock corrects.
“‘Was,’” John repeats.
“Yes.”
“That’s past tense.”
“Yes,” Sherlock agrees. “Problem?”
“No. No problem.” Some guilt, but no problem. There’s a shortage of heart donations and compatibility is typically low. “You’re on mechanical, then?” The basics are very much intact - joy, anger, depression, the need for stimulation - but this might explain the imbalance.
“Mm, yes. And you would be buttressed.”
John nods.
Sherlock bites his lip. “Could I... touch?” He tilts his face downward and looks up at John like a child yet to learn his days of adorable manipulation are over.
John agrees anyway. He crosses the room and sits on the coffee table. He shucks his cardigan and his shirt. Sherlock slides a hand up his own t-shirt, fingers finding his heartbeat beneath the worn cloth. He reaches for John’s chest with a question in his eyes and no need to wait for an answer. His fingertips are warm and make the numbness of scar tissue impossible to ignore. The touch tingles, too light.
John rolls his eyes. “You won’t kill me if you press down.”
Sherlock does. “It feels stronger, somehow.”
“Can I...?”
Sherlock hesitates, frozen, before guiding John’s hand under his t-shirt.
An awkward noise catches in John’s throat, the threadbare cloth against his wrist too... too something, but then his fingers tell him what lies beneath. God. John had thought his own chest a mass of scars. How many times? He’d count if Sherlock would let him see, which is how he knows he’s not allowed to know.
Sherlock forces his hand to the pulse proper. It’s racing. It doesn’t feel weak to John, not at all, but so few things about Sherlock do.
They breathe together, synced as always. Their hearts slow until they’re brisk and steady. As they do, Sherlock stares into John properly. He’s waiting for something he doesn’t find, but the lack of it makes him grin.
John grins back. “What?”
“Most people find it freakish.”
“Most people aren’t doctors.”
“Even doctors.”
With his free hand, John points to his own shoulder. “Trauma looks bad, but-”
“It wasn’t.”
“Sorry?”
“It wasn’t trauma.” Sherlock pulls John’s hand away and drops his own, all contact severed. The skin of John’s chest prickles with cold. “It wasn’t shattered. I had it taken out.”
“Er. Why? I mean, no, obviously you don’t have to tell me. That is, that’s as personal as it comes, sorry, I-”
“It wouldn’t stop hurting.” Sherlock stares through John’s chest. “That’s a perfectly adequate reason.”
John nods.
They sit together in silence.
“Does yours-” Sherlock hesitates. “Does it do that?”
“Hurt? No, not really.”
Sherlock nods.
The silence improves.
“Do you have a stethoscope?” Sherlock asks.
“Not on me.” He sits on his hands. “You could still take a listen, if you like.”
Sherlock stands. “Lie down on the sofa.”
John does.
Sherlock kneels beside him. He lowers his head, presses an ear, and his curls tickle. John brushes them aside. Sherlock tenses. He relaxes.
“It sounds like only one heart,” Sherlock murmurs, not without awe.
John breathes.
Sherlock listens. He nearly seems asleep when he whispers, “Don’t let Sarah hurt you.”
John hears it, but it seems so unlikely. “What?”
“Nothing.”
The bomber strikes a week later. People die, people die in horrendous ways, and John sees the limits of a mechanical heart behind Sherlock’s every smile.
Something inside him refuses to break, but it does begin to buckle.
With the case nearly over, John is left uneasy. It’s like staring at the fridge and knowing his body desperately needs one food alone, or else he will vomit. He sits with Sherlock, listening to him shout at crap telly, but he wants more.
Maybe he wants Sarah. It’s the only thing he can think to try.
When he’s kidnapped on his way over, he’s more angry than disappointed. Not Sarah, then.
John steps out. He and Sherlock lock eyes, and the agony across Sherlock’s face bursts inside John’s chest. Heavy with humidity and the scent of chlorine, the air stops up John’s mouth as his chest burns. It hurts so damn much and John is going to pass out while wearing an explosive vest.
He can see Sherlock’s mouth moving. This is all he can see: Sherlock’s mouth moving, Sherlock over him, a red light above his pale eyes. When did John fall on the floor? Oh, Christ. The vest could have exploded. They could have exploded.
“You know,” Jim Moriarty drawls, “I put a lot of thought into this. Bit of a shame, seeing it work so easily. Where’s the challenge?”
Sherlock’s throat, tendons visible. “Stop it! You have my attention, now leave him!”
“Me? I don’t have to. I don’t have to do anything at all.”
“Whatever you’re doing to him, stop! I understand--I’ll back off-now stop it!”
Sherlock is terrified and John cannot breathe. Everything is cold, except for Sherlock’s hands. Sherlock rolls him, tearing the vest off, and his hands remain.
“I was so disappointed, Sherlock. When I learned you didn’t have it anymore, oh, such a waste. I was going to burn it out of you. Right. Out. Of. You.
“But then it comes back,” Moriarty adds and laughs. “What a loyal pet.”
“What are you talking about?” Sherlock demands, but his hands are both pressed against John’s double heart.
“Did you think he actually cared, Sherlock?” Moriarty steps into John’s view, pouting down at him. “That some stupid, ordinary man could praise you and not resent you? That’s not the way ordinary people work, my dear. They’re not like us.”
John begins to cry with shuddering gasps against the tile. It hurts. It hurts so much. They’re pulling away inside, a pair of orange slices peeling apart.
“Stop it!” Sherlock’s hands cover John’s ears, tug his head into Sherlock’s lap. “John, don’t listen!”
“Aww. Now that’s sad. Lonely little boy, begging for a friend.”
The earpiece. Sherlock’s palm against his ear only presses it in harder.
“And boring. You’re boring, too. You were supposed to be my worthy adversary, but no, look at you. Honestly. Look at you.”
Sherlock rips the earpiece out.
“I was going to take my time about this, but it’s just too easy. You’re so simple, Sherlock.”
John can’t stop crying.
“Is that really all it takes to break you? Your one friend only likes you because he has to, and, oh no! It’s as if the world is ending.”
The break is sharp, and it is not clean.
John screams.
Sherlock clutches him to his chest. “I’ll back off. I swear I will, now stop.”
“For now,” Moriarty allows. “If you keep your word, I’ll keep mine. See that you do.”
Footsteps echo away. A team of footsteps. A door slams. The world tilts, and Sherlock is stronger than he looks. “We’re getting it out of you,” Sherlock promises. “We’ll go to hospital and take it out.”
John clings to him limply. He coughs phlegm and swallows tears. “Are you okay?”
“Of course I’m all right,” Sherlock snaps, shoving open a door. “It’s inside you, not me. I don’t feel a thing from it.”
“You are my friend,” John says. He begins crying anew. “And I’m yours.”
“That will take some getting used to,” Sherlock answers, kicking open another door, and John hiccups a laugh.
The first week home from hospital, John has never been fussed over more. Between Mrs. Hudson’s kindness and Sherlock’s paranoia, he’s alone only in the loo.
Sherlock appears at his shoulder, eyes on John’s laptop screen. “How’s it holding?”
“As well as it was ten minutes ago.” John pulls back up a cat video until Sherlock loses patience with him.
True to form, Sherlock whirls away and does a bit of pacing. He ruffles his hair. “I still say you should have had it taken out.”
For such a bad break, Sherlock’s heart had only needed basic splinting and the support of John’s around it. “You don’t have any say over it anymore.”
Sherlock glares. “Yes, I do.”
“Yes, you do,” John allows. “But not medically.”
“He’ll break it again. There will be another case and I won’t be able to resist.” Sherlock steps forward and closes John’s laptop on his hands. “John, I don’t think I could watch that again.”
“We can get yours reinforced,” John says. Very reasonably too, for a man with crushed fingers. “But mine is staying as it is.”
“There’s nothing wrong with finding you another one. Mycroft has had a list of alternates for months.”
“Right. That’s not disturbing.”
“You can have another one,” Sherlock continues. “I don’t mind.”
“I mind,” John answers, lifting his chin. “It’s mine now, I like it, and it’s staying.”
Sherlock stares down at him. “Are you sure?”
“Is there something to not be sure about?” John asks.
Slowly, Sherlock begins to grin.
John’s pulse falters, but in a good way.