Misdialed - Sherlock fic - Chapter 2
Chapter 2
John yawned as he waited for the man behind the glass to appear. He didn’t know why he was here. Alright, that was a lie. He knew why he was here, sitting in this wretchedly uncomfortable chair and sitting in front of a plate of two inch thick bullet proof glass. Why he’d let himself get here, that was an entirely different story.
Perhaps he wanted answers. Perhaps he was a masochist. Perhaps he wanted to memorize the face of whoever he saw on the other side of the glass. All he knew was that the phone call this morning had been from an Detective Inspector Lestrade, and he’d been rather insistent that John accept the invitation he was about to receive. Maybe it was the softness of the serious sounding inspector or the purity of the request, but whatever it was, John was here now. Here was here and he was tired.
He closed his eyes for a brief moment, and then someone was tapping hesitantly on the glass. John’s eyes snapped open and he stared in shock at the man in orange across from him. Okay. Maybe ‘man’ was a bit much. The guy across from him was a boy, no older than seventeen. He looked tiny in the orange prisoner’s uniform and was watching John with his head slightly lowered in submissiveness. His eyes glanced toward the wall on John’s right. John sighed and reached for the phone there.
“Sorry ‘bout your shoulder,” the kid said as soon as the device was to John’s ear.
“Yeah. Not nearly as bad as the chest wound,” John answered, and he wasn’t sure if he meant the one that had been fatal or the one he experienced every day since.
The kid frowned and lowered his eyes. “Yeah,” he murmured. “I-I’m real sorry. I didn’t mean…”
“Doesn’t matter much now, does it?” John asked, interrupting. “A man’s dead now cause of you. It doesn’t matter what you meant to happen.”
“No you don’t understand,” the boy said quickly. “He wasn’t supposed to be there. He wasn’t supposed to be anywhere in the area! I-I knew that guy. He was a nice guy… I never would’ve hurt him.”
“But you did. You shot him in the heart. Must not have liked him much.” John shifted slightly, his shoulder twinging in memory.
“He wasn’t supposed to be there. I was supposed to just shoot you,” the boy said, voice weighing with even heavier regret. John could only see the top of his head and the way the boy’s fingers gripped harshly at his hair.
“What?” John asked, voice gone. He’d been prepared to give the boy a speech about the wrongs he’d done. He’d been twisting with anger and pity and irritation. Now it was gone and he was left with stunned buzzing in his brain. “W-Why me?”
“Cause he told me to! I’ve been tryin to tell everyone, but no one’ll listen. He made me do it,” the boy gasped, voice hoarse.
“Hang on. Just calm down,” John said, shifting to get closer to the glass as though that mattered. “What’s your name again?”
“Ryan… but everyone calls me Raz,” the teen said, breathing slowly to stay calm. “If you… you know, if you believe me, I might die in here. He’s got eyes everywhere… and ears.”
“He? The guy you shot? I thought you said he was a nice guy,” John said. Raz looked truly razzled. He glanced over his shoulders a few times and then shook his head quickly.
“No. Not him. He was nice. I mean the other guy. The one who gave me the gun. He said I had to kill you. He said you were bad, a bad man. But I… at the last minute, I decided to shoot past you. Then that idiot jumped in the way. He startled me and I pulled the trigger. My fingers twitched and I let off two shots - one caught him and the other went past his shoulder and into yours. But I swear, I didn’t mean to kill him. I didn’t mean to kill you either. It’s all just so fucked up,” Raz whined, rubbing his face with his free hand.
“Why would he want to kill me? What did I do?” John asked.
Raz shook his head. “I-I can’t, man. I don’t know the details, and if I talk about him too much, he’ll get me. In jail. Out there. He’ll get me. I can’t even describe him, cause he could get linked, and that’s bad news for me.”
“Alright. Alright,” John said and nodded. “I believe you. Someone like him, he couldn’t be caught at a crime scene.” He remembered. Raz was the shooter, but that guy in the black slacks and fine jacket had been there too. He’d been watching Raz. And from the way Raz swallowed and stared back at him, John knew he was right. Someone like him… he couldn’t be caught at the scene. He’d run off. Raz knew John knew.
“Why did you call me here, Raz?” John asked quietly. Raz shrugged and shook his head.
“I guess I… I needed you to find out… to know how sorry I was. I wanted you to know I wasn’t a crazy killer,” he answered. He pressed his lips together and stared deep into John’s eyes. John nodded.
“I know,” John answered, voice heavy, and Raz relaxed immensely. He gave John a tiny smile and sighed.
“Thank you, Dr. Watson,” he said. “Thank you so much.”
Then Raz hung up the phone and the guards led him away. John slowly dropped the phone back on its holder and frowned. It was totally out of his area. He definitely wasn’t qualified for it. He stood up and made his way back out of the prison. It was crazy, what he was thinking. He should drop the idea before it could continue. But Raz believed he could do it, and somehow that seemed enough to start with.
Brrrr
Brrrr
Brrrrrrr
John stopped outside of the prison and looked down at his phone. The screen flickered and an unknown number glimmered on the screen. John had checked yesterday. All his numbers were intact. This one wasn’t known. But it looked very familiar, and so did that flickering.
“Hello?” he asked, pushing the phone to his ear as he moved down the street toward home.
“Ah. Hello again,” Sherlock Holmes’ voice came through, just as it had the day before. He sounded pleased instead of confused this time.
“Sherlock Holmes? Another misdial?” John asked, frowning. He wiggled his uninjured elbow slightly to hit his cane against his hip as he spoke and kept his eyes on the sky.
“Definitely not. I’ve found a puzzle to solve, and I thought you may be able to help me solve it,” Sherlock said. The background was entirely silent. John could hear nothing around Sherlock’s voice.
“You called a perfect stranger to help you solve a riddle?” John asked, stopping on the next street corner and looking around. Which way was home again?
“I’ve checked and double checked, Doctor Watson,” Sherlock began. “But I assure you, there is no way I misdialed your number yesterday. I was prepared to overlook the oddity, but your number was visible even after I called five people and concocted very well believed stories of why I was doing it. Somehow, my phone is malfunctioning, and I believe you will be the only one who can answer the riddle.”
John didn’t speak for a moment, deciding to go left because there was a major road that way and he could catch a taxi. Then he snorted.
“You called five random people in an attempt to get rid of my number?” he asked with a grin. “I wasn’t aware I was so unattractive - especially as just a phone number.” John stopped walking and leaned against the nearby wall. He hit his head against it twice before standing again. God, was he flirting with a guy on a phone? How pathetic was that?
“No,” Sherlock said then dropped off. John cursed himself mentally. He was making Sherlock uncomfortable, and he didn’t even know the guy yet. Yet?! What was this ‘yet’? Sherlock was a random guy on a phone malfunction. They weren’t about to have a lunch date or go out for drinks or anything.
“Um, about what I just said-,” John began, but was interrupted.
“Are you near a café?” Sherlock asked. John stopped walking and looked around the street. Indeed, he was standing right next to a shop selling drinks and sandwiches.
“Yes. How did you -,” John wondered aloud.
“Go buy a cup or a bottle or whatever. Since I’ve got you on the phone, we should…. chat. Or whatever it is people do on phones,” Sherlock half grumbled.
“What if I’m busy?” John asked.
“I highly doubt that. You wouldn’t have taken the call if you were really busy, and if you were about to be busy, you would have told me to piss off by now. Go buy a drink.” Around Sherlock’s voice, John could actually hear dishes being moved.
“Are you making coffee?” John asked.
“Yes. It’d be rude to ask you to get a drink while I just stared at the wall, now wouldn’t it?” Sherlock asked, and his tone made John almost feel stupid.
“Yep. Rude,” John said with a half sigh. He doubted Sherlock needed to stare at walls during conversations to be deemed ‘rude.’
“Indeed.”
John walked into the café and chose a small corner table for his solo café adventure. He didn’t want to be completely weird, having a drink with someone he didn’t know over the phone while sitting at the bar. He’d just keep to himself. He ordered a beer and took a seat. Balancing the phone with his shoulder so he could drink, he settled in.
“Coffee done?” he asked.
“Oh don’t be ridiculous,” Sherlock replied.
“So what do you do for a living?” John started, taking a test sip of his bottle.
“Consulting detective,” Sherlock said. “Only one in the world. I invented the job. It means I assist the police whenever they’re out of their depth.”
“Which is always,” John mused. Sherlock dropped whatever he’d been about to say. “So you any good?”
“The best,” Sherlock answered, and John fought down the urge to think it was suggestive. “Want to know what I’ve figured out about you?”
“Yeah. Give it a go,” John agreed, taking another swig of his drink.
“You’re a doctor, but you haven’t been busy the two times I’ve called which means you must not have any work right now. Either you’ve recently been let go or you’re between jobs. You’re walking places but you’re not entirely sure what’s around you, so you’ve just moved in. You value privacy because you chose the seat in the café with the least amount of noise interference, and you’re drinking beer instead of coffee, so you’re not worried about your plans for the rest of the afternoon. Aka, you’re free all day.”
John stared at his beer and frowned. Sherlock got all of that from two brief calls? He must have killer hearing. Then a smile broke across John’s face.
“Wow. I can’t wait to hear what you find out from our next phone call,” he laughed.
“Next?” Sherlock asked, and it sounded like his coffee was finally finished. John stopped laughing and frowned again.
“You mean you don’t plan to call again?” John asked, spinning his bottle on the table.
“I do. I’m just surprised you’re giving me permission,” Sherlock said. “Although I do prefer to text. Would that bother you?”
“Go right ahead. Once my shoulder’s healed up, I’ll be busy with work, and texting is much easier to reply to,” John allowed.
Silence reigned while both men drank and thought of things to say. For a moment, John worried they’d already drained into an awkward silence and was glad other people would think he was just listening to someone else talk and wouldn’t know he was listening to silence. Then he heard Sherlock’s cup connect with a glass saucer.
“What happened to your shoulder?” Sherlock asked.
John glanced at his arm in the sling. “Oh, wrong end of a gunshot the other day. Wrong place at the wrong time, I suppose. My left arm’s all up in a sling right now. Mostly useless.”
“How are you drinking and holding the phone?”
“Talented shoulder balancing. Plus I let go of the bottle a lot to hold the phone,” John teased gently. He sighed. “Got a bit of a limp of the incident too.”
“Psychosomatic?” Sherlock asked and took a sip of coffee.
“Yeah. How did you know?” John asked. He could literally hear the detective smiling, or was it smirking?
“You didn’t use a cane to walk the entire time we were speaking before now,” Sherlock answered. “Didn’t you notice?”
John looked at his cane, hung over the side of the table, with awe. It was true. As soon as Sherlock had gotten him talking, he’d walked away fine. He’d dangled his cane over his arm the whole time without a second thought. He hadn’t limped or wobbled at all. It hadn’t hurt. John smiled and tapped his foot twice.
“Well aren’t you good for my health,” he mused aloud. “I’ll be damned.”
“Oh please. Let’s not go that far. I’m sure heaven will accept you even without the limp,” Sherlock said. John took a minute to understand what Sherlock had said, that Sherlock was joking, and then he was chuckling as he looked at his cane. He could hear Sherlock laughing too. It sounded pretty good.
-- -- -- --
MasterPost
Click HERE for Chapter 3!
John yawned as he waited for the man behind the glass to appear. He didn’t know why he was here. Alright, that was a lie. He knew why he was here, sitting in this wretchedly uncomfortable chair and sitting in front of a plate of two inch thick bullet proof glass. Why he’d let himself get here, that was an entirely different story.
Perhaps he wanted answers. Perhaps he was a masochist. Perhaps he wanted to memorize the face of whoever he saw on the other side of the glass. All he knew was that the phone call this morning had been from an Detective Inspector Lestrade, and he’d been rather insistent that John accept the invitation he was about to receive. Maybe it was the softness of the serious sounding inspector or the purity of the request, but whatever it was, John was here now. Here was here and he was tired.
He closed his eyes for a brief moment, and then someone was tapping hesitantly on the glass. John’s eyes snapped open and he stared in shock at the man in orange across from him. Okay. Maybe ‘man’ was a bit much. The guy across from him was a boy, no older than seventeen. He looked tiny in the orange prisoner’s uniform and was watching John with his head slightly lowered in submissiveness. His eyes glanced toward the wall on John’s right. John sighed and reached for the phone there.
“Sorry ‘bout your shoulder,” the kid said as soon as the device was to John’s ear.
“Yeah. Not nearly as bad as the chest wound,” John answered, and he wasn’t sure if he meant the one that had been fatal or the one he experienced every day since.
The kid frowned and lowered his eyes. “Yeah,” he murmured. “I-I’m real sorry. I didn’t mean…”
“Doesn’t matter much now, does it?” John asked, interrupting. “A man’s dead now cause of you. It doesn’t matter what you meant to happen.”
“No you don’t understand,” the boy said quickly. “He wasn’t supposed to be there. He wasn’t supposed to be anywhere in the area! I-I knew that guy. He was a nice guy… I never would’ve hurt him.”
“But you did. You shot him in the heart. Must not have liked him much.” John shifted slightly, his shoulder twinging in memory.
“He wasn’t supposed to be there. I was supposed to just shoot you,” the boy said, voice weighing with even heavier regret. John could only see the top of his head and the way the boy’s fingers gripped harshly at his hair.
“What?” John asked, voice gone. He’d been prepared to give the boy a speech about the wrongs he’d done. He’d been twisting with anger and pity and irritation. Now it was gone and he was left with stunned buzzing in his brain. “W-Why me?”
“Cause he told me to! I’ve been tryin to tell everyone, but no one’ll listen. He made me do it,” the boy gasped, voice hoarse.
“Hang on. Just calm down,” John said, shifting to get closer to the glass as though that mattered. “What’s your name again?”
“Ryan… but everyone calls me Raz,” the teen said, breathing slowly to stay calm. “If you… you know, if you believe me, I might die in here. He’s got eyes everywhere… and ears.”
“He? The guy you shot? I thought you said he was a nice guy,” John said. Raz looked truly razzled. He glanced over his shoulders a few times and then shook his head quickly.
“No. Not him. He was nice. I mean the other guy. The one who gave me the gun. He said I had to kill you. He said you were bad, a bad man. But I… at the last minute, I decided to shoot past you. Then that idiot jumped in the way. He startled me and I pulled the trigger. My fingers twitched and I let off two shots - one caught him and the other went past his shoulder and into yours. But I swear, I didn’t mean to kill him. I didn’t mean to kill you either. It’s all just so fucked up,” Raz whined, rubbing his face with his free hand.
“Why would he want to kill me? What did I do?” John asked.
Raz shook his head. “I-I can’t, man. I don’t know the details, and if I talk about him too much, he’ll get me. In jail. Out there. He’ll get me. I can’t even describe him, cause he could get linked, and that’s bad news for me.”
“Alright. Alright,” John said and nodded. “I believe you. Someone like him, he couldn’t be caught at a crime scene.” He remembered. Raz was the shooter, but that guy in the black slacks and fine jacket had been there too. He’d been watching Raz. And from the way Raz swallowed and stared back at him, John knew he was right. Someone like him… he couldn’t be caught at the scene. He’d run off. Raz knew John knew.
“Why did you call me here, Raz?” John asked quietly. Raz shrugged and shook his head.
“I guess I… I needed you to find out… to know how sorry I was. I wanted you to know I wasn’t a crazy killer,” he answered. He pressed his lips together and stared deep into John’s eyes. John nodded.
“I know,” John answered, voice heavy, and Raz relaxed immensely. He gave John a tiny smile and sighed.
“Thank you, Dr. Watson,” he said. “Thank you so much.”
Then Raz hung up the phone and the guards led him away. John slowly dropped the phone back on its holder and frowned. It was totally out of his area. He definitely wasn’t qualified for it. He stood up and made his way back out of the prison. It was crazy, what he was thinking. He should drop the idea before it could continue. But Raz believed he could do it, and somehow that seemed enough to start with.
Brrrr
Brrrr
Brrrrrrr
John stopped outside of the prison and looked down at his phone. The screen flickered and an unknown number glimmered on the screen. John had checked yesterday. All his numbers were intact. This one wasn’t known. But it looked very familiar, and so did that flickering.
“Hello?” he asked, pushing the phone to his ear as he moved down the street toward home.
“Ah. Hello again,” Sherlock Holmes’ voice came through, just as it had the day before. He sounded pleased instead of confused this time.
“Sherlock Holmes? Another misdial?” John asked, frowning. He wiggled his uninjured elbow slightly to hit his cane against his hip as he spoke and kept his eyes on the sky.
“Definitely not. I’ve found a puzzle to solve, and I thought you may be able to help me solve it,” Sherlock said. The background was entirely silent. John could hear nothing around Sherlock’s voice.
“You called a perfect stranger to help you solve a riddle?” John asked, stopping on the next street corner and looking around. Which way was home again?
“I’ve checked and double checked, Doctor Watson,” Sherlock began. “But I assure you, there is no way I misdialed your number yesterday. I was prepared to overlook the oddity, but your number was visible even after I called five people and concocted very well believed stories of why I was doing it. Somehow, my phone is malfunctioning, and I believe you will be the only one who can answer the riddle.”
John didn’t speak for a moment, deciding to go left because there was a major road that way and he could catch a taxi. Then he snorted.
“You called five random people in an attempt to get rid of my number?” he asked with a grin. “I wasn’t aware I was so unattractive - especially as just a phone number.” John stopped walking and leaned against the nearby wall. He hit his head against it twice before standing again. God, was he flirting with a guy on a phone? How pathetic was that?
“No,” Sherlock said then dropped off. John cursed himself mentally. He was making Sherlock uncomfortable, and he didn’t even know the guy yet. Yet?! What was this ‘yet’? Sherlock was a random guy on a phone malfunction. They weren’t about to have a lunch date or go out for drinks or anything.
“Um, about what I just said-,” John began, but was interrupted.
“Are you near a café?” Sherlock asked. John stopped walking and looked around the street. Indeed, he was standing right next to a shop selling drinks and sandwiches.
“Yes. How did you -,” John wondered aloud.
“Go buy a cup or a bottle or whatever. Since I’ve got you on the phone, we should…. chat. Or whatever it is people do on phones,” Sherlock half grumbled.
“What if I’m busy?” John asked.
“I highly doubt that. You wouldn’t have taken the call if you were really busy, and if you were about to be busy, you would have told me to piss off by now. Go buy a drink.” Around Sherlock’s voice, John could actually hear dishes being moved.
“Are you making coffee?” John asked.
“Yes. It’d be rude to ask you to get a drink while I just stared at the wall, now wouldn’t it?” Sherlock asked, and his tone made John almost feel stupid.
“Yep. Rude,” John said with a half sigh. He doubted Sherlock needed to stare at walls during conversations to be deemed ‘rude.’
“Indeed.”
John walked into the café and chose a small corner table for his solo café adventure. He didn’t want to be completely weird, having a drink with someone he didn’t know over the phone while sitting at the bar. He’d just keep to himself. He ordered a beer and took a seat. Balancing the phone with his shoulder so he could drink, he settled in.
“Coffee done?” he asked.
“Oh don’t be ridiculous,” Sherlock replied.
“So what do you do for a living?” John started, taking a test sip of his bottle.
“Consulting detective,” Sherlock said. “Only one in the world. I invented the job. It means I assist the police whenever they’re out of their depth.”
“Which is always,” John mused. Sherlock dropped whatever he’d been about to say. “So you any good?”
“The best,” Sherlock answered, and John fought down the urge to think it was suggestive. “Want to know what I’ve figured out about you?”
“Yeah. Give it a go,” John agreed, taking another swig of his drink.
“You’re a doctor, but you haven’t been busy the two times I’ve called which means you must not have any work right now. Either you’ve recently been let go or you’re between jobs. You’re walking places but you’re not entirely sure what’s around you, so you’ve just moved in. You value privacy because you chose the seat in the café with the least amount of noise interference, and you’re drinking beer instead of coffee, so you’re not worried about your plans for the rest of the afternoon. Aka, you’re free all day.”
John stared at his beer and frowned. Sherlock got all of that from two brief calls? He must have killer hearing. Then a smile broke across John’s face.
“Wow. I can’t wait to hear what you find out from our next phone call,” he laughed.
“Next?” Sherlock asked, and it sounded like his coffee was finally finished. John stopped laughing and frowned again.
“You mean you don’t plan to call again?” John asked, spinning his bottle on the table.
“I do. I’m just surprised you’re giving me permission,” Sherlock said. “Although I do prefer to text. Would that bother you?”
“Go right ahead. Once my shoulder’s healed up, I’ll be busy with work, and texting is much easier to reply to,” John allowed.
Silence reigned while both men drank and thought of things to say. For a moment, John worried they’d already drained into an awkward silence and was glad other people would think he was just listening to someone else talk and wouldn’t know he was listening to silence. Then he heard Sherlock’s cup connect with a glass saucer.
“What happened to your shoulder?” Sherlock asked.
John glanced at his arm in the sling. “Oh, wrong end of a gunshot the other day. Wrong place at the wrong time, I suppose. My left arm’s all up in a sling right now. Mostly useless.”
“How are you drinking and holding the phone?”
“Talented shoulder balancing. Plus I let go of the bottle a lot to hold the phone,” John teased gently. He sighed. “Got a bit of a limp of the incident too.”
“Psychosomatic?” Sherlock asked and took a sip of coffee.
“Yeah. How did you know?” John asked. He could literally hear the detective smiling, or was it smirking?
“You didn’t use a cane to walk the entire time we were speaking before now,” Sherlock answered. “Didn’t you notice?”
John looked at his cane, hung over the side of the table, with awe. It was true. As soon as Sherlock had gotten him talking, he’d walked away fine. He’d dangled his cane over his arm the whole time without a second thought. He hadn’t limped or wobbled at all. It hadn’t hurt. John smiled and tapped his foot twice.
“Well aren’t you good for my health,” he mused aloud. “I’ll be damned.”
“Oh please. Let’s not go that far. I’m sure heaven will accept you even without the limp,” Sherlock said. John took a minute to understand what Sherlock had said, that Sherlock was joking, and then he was chuckling as he looked at his cane. He could hear Sherlock laughing too. It sounded pretty good.
-- -- -- --
MasterPost
Click HERE for Chapter 3!