Sherlock (BBC): Sidekick (1/2)
Title: Sidekick
Author: Vescaus
Pairing: John/Sherlock (pre-slash to become slash)
Summary: John is obviously struggling after the incident at the swimming pool with Moriarty. And try as he might, Sherlock cannot uncover why whilst coming to terms with his own internal issues.
Spoilers: Definite ones post 1.03 The Great Game and very minor for 1.01 A Study in Pink
Rating: R
Words: 12K
Disclaimer: See User Info
Sidekick
by Vescaus
Sherlock's brain was engaged to its full potential after the encounter with Moriarty at the swimming pool, working almost tirelessly against the mastermind's wishes to catch him. He was up at all hours, barley eating or hydrating himself as the apartment slowly evolved into a disaster scene around him. The wrist pain he had suffered from landing awkwardly from the blast did not phase him; in a fit of frustration he had done away with the wrist support three days later, chucking it into the far corner shouting expletives at a tool forced to restrict his movement. While he winced when his body moved in a way which did not agree with the numerous healing cuts and bruises adorning his body, he did not let it distract him. His sole focus remained firmly attached to his aim of finding Moriarty.
As every alleyway led him to a dead end in unravelling the mystery of Jim Moriarty, the more volatile and unbearable Sherlock became. He was snapping at Mrs Hudson, snapping at Lestrade and against his own better judgement, snapping at John.
John had taken his recuperation in a sensible and predictable way. He rested. He came back home from the hospital (two days after Sherlock discharged himself) and slept for hours on end, struggling up for painkillers and tea with some digestive biscuits when necessary. Sherlock, in his passable knowledge of the (living) human body was aware John was suffering from a concussion and needed supervision, For the most part, Mrs Hudson had been taking care of John's needs when she was around, above all, hydrating him and making sure that he was still aware of his surroundings when waking him up every few hours. Sherlock was content with this arrangement, believing his care-providing services were not up to par and would only serve to distract him from his focus on Moriarty. Sherlock recuperated by working; his brain was unable to convince him that any respite was necessary. Nothing mattered but Moriarty. After all, that was the only way to ensure their continued security and safety.
However, there were times as Sherlock sat on the floor, his back against the armchair surrounded by the precious information he was gathering, that he experienced a moment of complete dislocation. He was aware that he was alone, the flat was dark and completely silent. Then he remembered what happened at the swimming pool after the explosion in vivid detail. Every time Sherlock experienced that moment of dislocation, he remembered how the force of the explosion had knocked them both of their feet. He had landed awkwardly in the water. John was thrown back from where he had been crouched further away from the pool's edge, slamming into the cubicles further down the building which had completely shattered. He lay underneath them as Sherlock pulled himself out of the watery haven;he needed to find Moriarty.
It was only during these moments alone that Sherlock forgot about his work for a moment and got up from the position he had been sitting in for countless hours. With deftness and grace that most people would envy, especially given their involvement in an explosion, he silently bounded up the stairs. He opened the door to John's room, to reassure himself that his flatmate was still there. Every time he was, his breathing low and even with the occasional hitch, lying on his side to ensure that he wouldn't aggravate the back that had made such vigorous contact with the cubicles. His sparsely decorated room was suited to John. On the outside, it was difficult to determine much about him. In those cupboards and drawers Sherlock knew that there were whole worlds of interests relating to John. With such visible proof, against all logical judgement that Sherlock possessed and relied upon, he could be certain that John was still present. Most importantly, still alive.
Because one minute John was under cubicles and that was enough reassurance for Sherlock to bound off after Moriarty; the next minute (or more like thirty) when Sherlock returned to the swimming pool empty handed, John was not where he left him. Sherlock, despite the chaos he sometimes lived in, always knew where he left his possessions and disliked people moving them. By the time he found Lestrade amongst the debris and pointlessly milling policeman, he had reached near panic proportions. Only Lestrade was able to tell him that John was in fact still alive and had been taken to hospital in an ambulance and not to Molly's morgue in a body bag.
That night, Sherlock experienced two emotions so close in timing that it had the affect of knocking him off his logical train of thought. The first was the hurt and betrayal at seeing John emerge from the cubicles of that darkened swimming pool. When that feeling disappeared with the realisation that Moriarty was using John as his latest hostage, Sherlock felt fear. He had rarely felt fear for himself but less so fear for other people. It was difficult to concentrate on Moriarty when his eyes kept flickering to John for assurance that the man was actually in good health and not damaged in any way. To have his normal procedure interrupted by what he normally considered an unnecessary concern over someone's life threw him off balance. For all his self proclaimed sociopathic tendencies, even he could decipher the importance John now held. Seeing his flatmate there had awakened something which made the need to catch Moriarty stronger than ever.
In his mind, his actions and thought processes made perfect sense. John did not see it in quite the same way.
____
It started with something simple. John emerged after five days of pure resting still with a backache and a headache but with the added benefit of not rushing to the bathroom to be sick as a result. Sherlock considered that a successful recuperation.
"Oh good, you're up!" he said, with far too much energy for this time of morning as John painfully searched his belongings in the living room to find the codeine. Sherlock was sat on the floor, folders amassed around him in a semi-circle pinning new information to the notice board that had found a new permanent home above the fireplace. Any scrap of information Sherlock had uncovered from his underground contacts through the homeless network (and other networks John had no idea existed) were all added to the ever increasing data. Somehow, in this mess, lay the key to Moriarty.
The focus and drive to find Moriarty was so instilled within Sherlock that it was difficult for him to notice anything else and while Sherlock was aware John was getting slightly annoyed by his obsession, he had yet to voice annoyance.
"Are you still at this?" John asked, sleepily. "Have you even slept?"
"I had a nap about three hours ago, it was enough. Sleep wastes time. And you can’t waste anymore either now that you’re better. Go down to Scotland Yard and find out what you can from Lestrade about the swimming pool crime scene. Even Anderson must be done with it by now. I doubt there’s anything there but it doesn’t hurt to cover all the bases.”
John looked at Sherlock as if he’d grown another head and rubbed his face to make sure he was fully awake. He was suddenly aware of the extent of his stubble, making a scratchy sound as he rubbed it. “Excuse me?”
“Go, quick, I need the information as soon as possible.”
“Sherlock…it’s five o’clock in the morning. It’s not even light outside, I’m not going anywhere.” With that, he turned round into the kitchen, desperate for something which would knock him out again for another few hours and help him temporarily forget the life he’d been flung into.
The detective twisted his lanky body round to look at the retreating figure with wide eyes and a shocked expression. “What do you mean you’re not going? Why not?”
“Why not?” John repeated incredulously, looking back at him. “Well, let’s see, you’re asking me to head down to Embankment at a ridiculous time of morning for information you already rightly suspect does not exist. Oh, and I can barely move by the way. I’m not in the mood for a rickety journey on the Bakerloo line.”
“But you have to go!” A plea which sounded weak even to his own years. But in Sherlock’s mind it complimented the equal failure to understand why John would not help in the investigation to catch Moriarty.
John knocked back a couple of pills and grimaced as he washed them down with the horrible mineral tasting water from the tap. They had run out of juice and taking tea would take too long. “What gives you the impression you can just order me around?”
Sherlock’s expression suddenly narrowed in anger at John’s growing intransigence. His tone evolved into one of cold, sharp cruelty. “You were doing a good job up until now. I would have thought with your prior role as a soldier, you would have been very good at taking orders from superiors. Apparently not.”
It never for a second occurred to Sherlock that he might have said something out of line or potentially hurtful. He never normally cared. Very little mattered at this early stage of investigating - collecting all the information possible so he could start working out patterns and links. Since John had arrived, he’d found the speed with which an investigation moved more exhilarating than ever. Those extra hands and John’s occasional moments of logical ingenuity as well as comfortable discussion had become invaluable to Sherlock’s never-ending desire for stimulation. The notion that John would refuse outright to aid him in the simplest of steps was a personality wrapped in a conundrum which Sherlock had neither the patience nor the ability to solve as well.
He heard the tea mug clatter and break as John exasperatedly flung it into the metal sink making a deafening noise in the silence of the small flat. Certainly, it was loud enough to make Sherlock jump, snapping him out of his reverie. As Sherlock looked over, he saw that his roommate was braced with both hands steadying against the countertop surface either side of the sink, taking a few deep breaths. From the way his arms were shaking, there was an element of pain in the action. However, from the deathly glare he was giving the sink and way he bit his lip, Sherlock could tell that there was anger mixed in John’s whole persona. Then, without saying a word, John straightened up in the most graceful way possible given the pain and walked out of the kitchen, padding slowly up the stairs to his room. The force with which he shut the door was obviously his non-verb sign that he wasn’t happy with Sherlock.
Normally, Sherlock would have chalked such a display to an overreaction. And on the whole he enjoyed John’s occasional surprise of character. Except, John never really overreacted.
____
It had been so quiet in the flat for a while so Sherlock’s head snapped up in surprise at a sudden noise. Papers were clutched in his hands and strewn across his body from where he’d been desperately trying to collate all the information. The harsh glare of an office lamp he’d pulled down from the table shone on him with harsh precision, like his mind, focused on nothing but the information. Wincing painfully, he shifted in his position, realising that the stubbornly rigid position he’d sat in for the last thirteen hours was wreaking havoc on his healing body. Then he heard the sound which had distracted him again. An odd muffled thump sounded from somewhere within the flat and for a fearful moment he wondered if he should reach over and grab the antique sword from where it had been kicked under the chair. Surely Moriarty wasn’t making his move already…
Then he realised, the sound had come from John himself. He had been very quiet after his storm out earlier that day and Sherlock had debated on checking up on John, having failed in the back of his mind to get to the bottom of John’s destruction of the coffee mug. However he knew the action would have been uncomfortable for both of them. Sherlock did not wish to relocate and be distracted from his current train of thought and John was a man who preferred to suffer in silence and mask any weak traits behind a stoic and stubborn personality. It didn’t matter anyway; for all the interest surrounding the coffee mug incident, Sherlock was certain it was ultimately insignificant and would pass.
A shaft of light appeared across the landing as John’s bedroom door up the stairs opened and the heavy sound of the man himself plodding down the stairs in a gait that screamed exhaustion and weighted down.
The doctor paused in the living room and looked at Sherlock, sitting with his legs stretched out and with papers everywhere and scratched his head. “Still at it then?”
Sherlock quickly composed himself. “Yes, well…someone has to. Scotland Yard have no hope in hell.” Bent down looking at one of the papers, his eyes flickered up to watch John enter the kitchen. “You haven’t had one in quite a few weeks.”
John, rummaging through the cupboards in a desperate attempt to find a glass which had been cleaned or not used for some alternative intent, raised his eyebrows distractedly. “Hmm? What’s that?”
“Nightmare. You had them the first few nights you moved in but then they stopped.”
John slowly picked up a glass from the back of the cupboard and stared at it intently, almost reflectively. “Nightmares, yes,” he responded quietly. He looked over at Sherlock. “Should I even ask? Did I scream?”
Sherlock met John’s gaze before his eyes roamed over the man. Even in the semi darkness of the kitchen, he could still make out John’s tell-tale features and their anomalies. The military hair-cut which he was slowly outgrowing was mussed; the lines in his face were more pronounced in the dim lighting of Sherlock’s one bedside lamp. It was the most unguarded Sherlock had ever seen his flatmate and the easiness with which he could read him was somewhat disconcerting.
“No, you don’t cry out during your nightmares, you never did. But your breathing is laboured, as if you were out of breath and still trying to calm down the hitches. You take a deep breath every thirty seconds or so. You’ve put a dressing gown on to hide the fact that that you’ve sweated more than normal from tossing and turning. And then there are your eyes which are unnaturally red-rimmed which I suppose could be from lack of sleep but given the other two factors combined, it was a logic conclusion to jump to.” Sherlock smiled tightly, almost apologetically. He understood that John was uncomfortable with his weaknesses being pointed out so clearly in public and even in private.
And Sherlock wondered whether it was John’s need to prove himself, which constantly made him feel the need to portray himself as strong. “What has brought this on?” he asked gently.
John, with his glass of water, settled gingerly into the furthest armchair next to the TV. “Well, I did have a bomb strapped to my chest. Tends to have that affect.”
They sat in companionable silence and Sherlock could feel John relax as the effects of the nightmare wore off him. There were times when John, like Sherlock himself, didn’t talk but simply sat and thought, lost somewhere in his own mind’s memories. Eventually he snapped out of them but even Sherlock did wonder sometimes what went through John Watson’s thoughts during his subdued periods and if they were anything like Sherlock’s own. The fact that John was content to simply sit quietly was something Sherlock found invaluable.
“Were you never almost blown up in Afghanistan? I thought it was a prime place for getting caught in explosions. It seems every day Mrs Hudson is coming in to lament about a soldier in a roadside bomb incident.” Certainly that had sounded less disdainful in his head.
John clenched his right fist tightly and bounced it on the arm of his chair a few times as he considered the question. This time, he ignored Sherlock’s attack on the army. “Once, yes. Once I was almost blown up.” He looked at the ceiling for a moment and let out a long breath. “I was part of a convoy heading to a town about forty miles away from Kabul. It was one of my first experiences. We’d almost reached the town when the army truck in front literally just exploded into the air. Roadside bomb. It’s a miracle that our driver managed to dodge the falling debris. But after that I felt the same constant fear every time I went out of the house and down any road…the fear I could be blown to pieces and somebody could be picking up my body parts just like I had to that day and lay them out on a stretcher.”
Sherlock lifted his knees up and loosely wrapped his arms around them in contemplation. “Do you never have nightmares about that?”
John shrugged. “I was a doctor and I was in the army. Do you think I went to Afghanistan not knowing that I would be dealing with bodies with missing limbs, bloodied and charred flesh? I didn’t naively go to into combat, Sherlock.”
“That doesn’t mean you didn’t have nightmares about them,” Sherlock said quickly before catching John’s eye. “What I really meant was have you ever had nightmares about explosions.”
John pursed his lips in thought before he stood up to put the glass on the kitchen countertop. “Well, I suppose some things in life you can’t prepare for,” he remarked, smiling slightly. Sherlock didn’t answer and John scuffed his slippered foot into the kitchen floor. “Well, I’m going back to bed. Don’t stay up too late; you need a fresh eye to look over those. I’m going to go down to Scotland Yard to give my statement tomorrow so I’ll see if there’s anything about that swimming pool scene you asked for earlier.”
Sherlock nodded once. “Thank you,” he murmured quietly and gratefully, resting his chin on his knees. He watched John walk sombrely up the stairs. Something about John’s attitude confused him; he failed to understand how a man plagued by the horrific environment he’d fought in could speak of it with such longing. And all through that anecdote he had watched his flatmate’s hand. Despite the fear John spoke about, his shaking hand told a very different story of nostalgia.
____
So Sherlock did what he could best. He experimented.
John came down the next morning looking much fresher than he had in the last few days. There was more movement and less hobbling, implying that his back had healed enough sufficiently to stay upright for longer than ten minutes. He had changed the dressings on his arms and torso by himself given their crisp whiteness, once again too proud to ask Sherlock for help in the matter. Rest and a long shower had obviously done the man good. Now he came down looking for something more substantial and was greeted with the sight of Sherlock still wearing the same clothes and as far as he could tell, absorbed in work. The mass amounts of paperwork Sherlock had been accumulating were all organised under headings, colour coded and the ones of the wall were connected together by a complex web of multi coloured lines. John didn’t bother asking; he had obviously learnt that Sherlock would come to him when he required a fresh pair of eyes to see what he couldn’t or a fresh pair of ears to coordinate his thoughts. Moriarty was painfully beyond John’s level of comprehension.
“Any food?” John asked, carefully stepping over the organised chaos into the kitchen. He threw up his hands in exasperation at how the work had also migrated into the cooking area, carefully weighted down by the cups of coffee Sherlock had used. A new one each time. “Could you not have used the same mug?” he asked with useless exasperation.
“We only have the leftovers of that Indian we ordered when you returned from the hospital.”
John looked at him in disbelief. “That was five days ago! It’s probably gone off now.”
Sherlock only shrugged distractedly. “I haven’t really needed to eat but now that you mention it, we probably should do a shop quite soon.”
He waited for John’s reaction for the man, with one hand on his hip, staring at the fridge he couldn’t even reach. He was probably too scared to look inside. “Oh, I can’t be bothered. Not sure my back is up to carrying bags across the street and up the stairs. Especially because I’m sure you won’t help.”
Sherlock, pretending he hadn’t heard, lifted his head. “Hmm?”
“I’ll just do it online. Tesco can deliver.”
Looking back down, Sherlock frowned to himself. “Well, if your back can manage to go down the street and get some milk…I’ll need another coffee soon if I plan to continue working without your help.”
“I’m not your fucking maid,” John snapped good-naturedly and Sherlock couldn’t help but smile despite the tone. It was a moment’s like these that he remembered why he found John interesting. With all that military training instilled into him, John was generally a well-mannered, patient and polite man. Even at his most frustrated and annoyed, he refrained from swearing outwardly or insulting people like most people who Sherlock met who acted like they thought they were supposed to. Social convention bored Sherlock. So it always made Sherlock somewhat giddy inside when John did something unexpected or unpredictable. Those little moments of surprise that Sherlock longed for in all the people he found in John and were occasionally visible to those who spent enough time with him.
With careful neutralism, Sherlock inquired again without giving away that he was curious to John’s reaction. “So you will go out quickly?” he asked.
He observed as John puffed out his cheeks and let lose a huff of breath in one go and then shrugged. The doctor picked up his jacket from where it was buried under mounds of papers that Sherlock had yet to sift through and place under an appropriate heading. “Fine, I may as well. I could do with some air after being cooped up in here. Besides, it’s musky and you need to shower soon before you start to smell like one of your experiments.”
“Showering is unnecessary until this is complete.”
“Sherlock, showering is never unnecessary.”
Sherlock looked up at him from the floor. He was certain he looked a mess with his still cut face and rumpled clothes. “Why? I have no intention of going anywhere. It’s not offending anyone except you and you’re asleep most of the time upstairs anyway avoiding me.”
“Oh, I’m definitely going,” John muttered. Like a long suffering wife, John sighed again and jogged down the stairs to go and get the mundane necessities like milk and undoubtedly some toast, beans and baked potatoes to make sure they didn’t starve before Lestrade chased them down for their statements about that night at the swimming pool. With the close of the door, Sherlock put down his folder and rested his elbow on his knee and chin in his hand. Apparently John was not afraid of leaving the house, he had barely protested. His kidnapping of Moriarty had obviously not affected his confidence of braving the world again. It was a long shot and Sherlock was hardly surprised that this was not the issue but it didn’t hurt to cover all bases.
It still left John’s curiously detached attitude unanswered.
____
“You were right,” Sherlock said, as he dragged John out of the house a few days later. Finally, he had reached that point where it was necessary to discuss what he had uncovered with his flatmate. However, John had been curiously absent from Sherlock’s world in the past two weeks, finding reasons to leave the house and showing a surprising disinterest in Sherlock’s strides towards Moriarty. He asked questions here and there and sometimes sat on the floor with Sherlock when it didn’t feel like his back would aflame. However, that sparkle for danger which Sherlock adored in John had faded and it wasn’t long before John got up, citing pain and faking tiredness. What Sherlock at first pinned down to recuperation had evolved into something more complex.
“I can be sometimes,” John said, with his subtle sarcasm. “About what exactly?”
Sherlock smiled to himself as they walked down Baker Street. John looked around in confusion, surprised that the detective wasn’t looking to hail a cab as usual. “I’ve spent so long looking at the information about Moriarty that I’m stating to trip over my own thoughts. The web of connections between Moriarty and the crime syndicates of London is vast; more than I could ever have imagined.” In reality, he was in awe of Moriarty, that much he could give the man. His skill and mastery rivalled anyone he had encountered because the beauty of his craftsmanship was not motivated by the moment but with calculated intensity. He created in the same way Sherlock solved, with precision and finesse.
John walked beside him, hands in his pockets against the cold and hunched over slightly to prevent the pain in his back from slowing him down. “How vast exactly?”
Sherlock stared straight ahead, putting his gloves on. “Well, out of the 120 cases I worked before you arrived, 93 of them, I suspect, were orchestrated somehow by Moriarty. The rest were random actions.”
John whistled in appreciation. “How exactly do you plan on stopping all his crimes then?”
“We have to go the source, Moriarty himself. All everyone’s been doing, including myself, is attacking the problem one case at a time. I’ve been trying to collect all the information on the cases I have solved which I suspect were orchestrated by Moriarty and find connections between them. Somewhere in all that must be a pattern or at least a slip up. Nobody can be that perfect all the time.”
“So…where are we going now?” John asked in confusion “I assume you have some lead then?”
Sherlock looked over at him and smiled. “Lunch, actually. I know a great place the other side of Regent’s Park.” With that, he walked off in determination through the park. It was quiet at this time of day. The lunchtime bustle and traffic had died down. The park, which during the warmer months would have been filled with ordinary people sitting on the lawn, was practically deserted. Only a few tourists roamed the area, remarking pleasantly at the scenery as they used it to cut through the surrounding roads. The air around them was so cold that puffs of air billowed out and disappeared with each exhale. The eerie feel of the park was punctuated by the crunch of gravel on the ground beneath them.
And John, who had still not recovered from being smashed against the wall, was not faring well at suddenly being thrust into the cold December weather. “Sherlock…Sherlock!” he cried after a few seconds, as the taller man walked off with his long purposeful stride carrying gracefully ahead of John. Sherlock turned and paused watching John hobble over to the nearby bench. “Can we just sit for a minute…my back can’t...?” John sat down heavily and let out an unmasked breath of relief.
Sherlock walked back slowly. In most cases, John would continue walking if possible to the other end of the park. After all, it wasn’t very far now. John had an admirable ability to ignore most of his physical pains in the same way Sherlock could ignore hunger and thirst. However, with a slight pang of what Sherlock could only attribute to guilt, he had a moment of clarity where he realised the majority of John’s pain were directly because of Sherlock’s own doing. He had, after all, gotten John involved in this game and the man had been hurt far worse as a result. The perfect opportunity had been presented to Sherlock for this experiment but it involved some shame on his part.
“John,” he said, gingerly sitting down on the bench with his hands clasped in front of him and staring at them intently. He waited a few seconds to formulate his words carefully. “I just wanted to say that…given your condition after the swimming pool and my current preoccupation with Moriarty I haven’t had the chance to…apologize for what happened.”
John looked over at him with a curious expression, that youthful but bruised face hinting at that old sparkle. “What, almost getting me blown up?”
“Well, yes, there is that. I was…actually referring to the moment where I left you under the cubicles after the explosion. I was more concerned with making sure that Moriarty couldn’t get away than checking for you. In fact,” Sherlock added, with what could only be described as embarrassment, “I was absent for a whole half an hour by my calculations. When I came back, Lestrade told me they’d found you and had taken you to the hospital. I…assumed you...” Sherlock sighed with annoyance, not at having to apologise but his seeming inability to flawlessly do so.
“You know I was all right.”
Sherlock did. He hadn’t just run out of the crippling swimming pool in the heat of the moment. He’d seen John under the cubicles, seen his legs, checked a shoulder, an arm and the side of a cut and bruised face. He had bent down to check John’s pulse and look him over. He hadn’t seen too much blood; undoubtedly there would be some broken bones. John’s pulse thrummed underneath his hand, strong if a bit fast and Sherlock closed his eyes and almost willed the man to continue on that beat. When he came back home from the hospital and experienced those periods of dislocation, he tried to remind himself how John’s pulse yet underneath his fingers. But even though Sherlock knew it should be a terrible thing to think, he couldn’t help but wonder if those precious seconds he’d spent checking over John had cost him the capture of Moriarty.
He cleared his throat when John didn’t answer, presumably out of shock at this sudden and unexpected admission of guilt. “I knew. But I realise it wasn’t right.”
“Yes, not your finest moment, especially after your fantastic duel with Moriarty,” John agreed, good-naturedly and nodded his head. He rubbed his hands together and blew into them to warm them up.
Sherlock frowned in confusion. “You’re not angry at me?”
John looked back at him for a moment in contemplation and then shrugged. “No, not angry. Not even surprised, really. I know where your priorities lie…they lie with the work.”
Sherlock nodded uncomfortably as his words to John all those months ago in Angelo’s restaurant came back to haunt him. “I would make a very poor soldier,” he replied weakly.
“A terrible soldier, actually,” John agreed, laughing slightly, seemingly not noticing Sherlock’s discomfort. It was the first genuine laugh Sherlock had heard from him in the last two weeks. He was unaware of how much he’d missed the more light hearted side of John’s personality until now; apparently John had been dour for longer than he’d originally thought.
“It was strange, really. I was lying on the ground and it was pitch black and I thought I was back in Afghanistan. It was hot, I could feel the air practically simmering, and there was falling debris and awful clanging which sounded like mortar fire or something. And I couldn’t see anything from under the cubicles but I could smell smoke. It really felt that I was back there.” After a moment, John shook his head and looked embarrassed at himself. “It was probably just the concussion, though.”
Sherlock remained silent throughout John’s confession. The doctor rarely spoke about Afghanistan but so far, he’d heard two references in a very short space of time. Once again, it was with fondness. And Sherlock always found it bizarre that what most ordinary people would call a horrific environment would be somewhere that John seemed to forever drawn to. Afghanistan was exotic and exciting and the war promised something new every day. Even Sherlock could not obtain that level of excitement in London and spent some days wallowing on the sofa in languid boredom. He completed understood the reasons behind John’s aching need. Sherlock reached over and lightly clasped John’s wrist where that faint tan line remained, trying to steady the slightly tremor running through the limb. It contrasted magnificently with Sherlock’s own translucent un-gloved hand. He was rewarded with immediate stiffening, John’s instinctual aversion to foreign touch only noticeable because Sherlock was touching him. “You still want to go back, don’t you,” Sherlock remarked quietly.
John only smiled with shocking mirth only a present on a man who had come to terms with the regrets in his life. “You may have abandoned me under a pile of rubble, Sherlock. But I abandoned my command.”
At this, Sherlock paused and let go of John’s wrist. He stood up and put his hands in his pockets, circling the area in front of the bench, the crunch of gravel beneath his feet so loud in the silence of the park. In confusion, he looked back at John and was about to reply before pausing and turning away. Then, “You didn’t abandon your command, though,” he commented as if it was obvious. “You were relieved from duty due to a serious injury in your shoulder and some misdiagnosed psychological ramifications. It was a justified discharge.”
John rolled his eyes and got up himself and Sherlock could tell the sudden movement caused pain in his back despite John’s good attempted at hiding the stiffening posture. “That’s not the point, Sherlock! You can’t understand what you haven’t experienced from your distant pedestal. It doesn’t matter the reasons are logical or true. What matters is that I left people, good people that I cared about, behind in Afghanistan to continue the fight, doing serious work. And I should be there helping them. Not stuck here getting involved in dangerous crimes which you simply use as pastimes to engage your brain. You could never understand the level of guilt I feel being here instead helping you…”
Sherlock stood perfectly still and narrowed his eyes at John as if inspecting him. The man was panting, little puffs of air let lose at increasing faster pace the more agitated John became. Sherlock found himself becoming increasingly angry towards John’s disparaging attitude towards his work and new drive against Moriarty “Why have you been so antagonistic lately? I thought you were angry that I left you. I’ve apologised.”
“Yes, yes, you did. And I said that wasn’t the issue. Why do you think I don’t care about you leaving me at the swimming pool? This isn’t the army; we don’t have that kind of relationship where we look out for each other. That’s why I don’t care!”
Sherlock still found himself failing to understand. Of course he couldn’t understand the level of bonding that exists between men in the army but he had hoped that in dangerous climaxes to their own past few cases, a small understanding may have developed between himself and John. The doctor had, after all, killed a man for him. And for his part he certainly hadn’t left John at the swimming pool due to lack of caring, whatever John may have thought. He’d seen John smash into the cubicles and tried to call out but the force of the blast had knocked the wind out of him; when Sherlock got up, he could see that John was still moving as well. It was just that in his mind, ensuring that Moriarty could never come after them again, and use John again, was more important than lifting a few plastic doors and confirming what he already knew. He could have finished it there and then, once and for all…He could have killed Moriarty just liked John killed the taxi driver. Without remorse.
“So you speak of Afghanistan out of regret,” Sherlock remarked carefully. “Not regret for going; but regret for coming home. And that has only increased, has it, since we began working together?” John didn’t answer and Sherlock felt that strange feeling of hurt hit him again. Quickly, he squashed it down, panicking momentarily at its implications, over the hold John had over him. “Would you go back, then?”
John threw his hands up in the air of frustration. “Don’t ask questions you already know the answers to. Do you think I miss the explosions, the bombs, the bodies? No, but at least those are issues I can tackle and work through because that was my job. I was scared, all the time. But at least the job only made me scared for my life.”
Sherlock shoved his hands deeper in his pockets and glared at John. He pondered this statement over but could come to no conclusion about it. Somewhere in that was hidden the key to John’s sudden attitude transformation and what was bothering him. Cataloguing it for future reference, he went down a path more directed by his own annoyance and frustration at John’s intransigence.
“And you think Moriarty doesn’t deserve your fear? One single man who kills innocent people on a whim for fun as opposed to an extreme ideology does not merit your taste for adventure and involvement. I’m sorry he doesn’t satisfy your insatiable appetite for danger and comradeship,” Sherlock snapped, stepping forward so he was in John’s personal space, looking down at the man. “Would you feel the same guilt that you do for your army command if Moriarty is to go through with his own threat against me?”
John shook his head as if he didn’t want to listen to Sherlock anymore. “Of course I would, Sherlock. But this is your fight, not mine. This is not my job. I don’t want to be dragged into your tussle with Moriarty.” John walked about ten steps before he turned around and shouted at Sherlock whilst still walking backwards. Apparently lunch was off. “He will consume you. And there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Sherlock stood on the path in Regent’s Park watched John storm off and once again, away from him and angry with him. He was even more confused by his friend’s reaction. It was evident John wasn’t angry at him for leaving him in the swimming pool. But he was angry about something and it was beyond Sherlock’s power and knowledge of the human mind to work decipher the true problem. “What are you afraid of then, John?” he murmured to himself.
To be continued here in Part II
A/N: I hope you enjoyed that. That was my first foray into the Sherlock fandom and I'm hoping to expand this into something larger and more developed, probably a multi-part story. Please leave feedback and let me know what you think, any constructive criticism would be helpful!
Author: Vescaus
Pairing: John/Sherlock (pre-slash to become slash)
Summary: John is obviously struggling after the incident at the swimming pool with Moriarty. And try as he might, Sherlock cannot uncover why whilst coming to terms with his own internal issues.
Spoilers: Definite ones post 1.03 The Great Game and very minor for 1.01 A Study in Pink
Rating: R
Words: 12K
Disclaimer: See User Info
Sidekick
by Vescaus
Sherlock's brain was engaged to its full potential after the encounter with Moriarty at the swimming pool, working almost tirelessly against the mastermind's wishes to catch him. He was up at all hours, barley eating or hydrating himself as the apartment slowly evolved into a disaster scene around him. The wrist pain he had suffered from landing awkwardly from the blast did not phase him; in a fit of frustration he had done away with the wrist support three days later, chucking it into the far corner shouting expletives at a tool forced to restrict his movement. While he winced when his body moved in a way which did not agree with the numerous healing cuts and bruises adorning his body, he did not let it distract him. His sole focus remained firmly attached to his aim of finding Moriarty.
As every alleyway led him to a dead end in unravelling the mystery of Jim Moriarty, the more volatile and unbearable Sherlock became. He was snapping at Mrs Hudson, snapping at Lestrade and against his own better judgement, snapping at John.
John had taken his recuperation in a sensible and predictable way. He rested. He came back home from the hospital (two days after Sherlock discharged himself) and slept for hours on end, struggling up for painkillers and tea with some digestive biscuits when necessary. Sherlock, in his passable knowledge of the (living) human body was aware John was suffering from a concussion and needed supervision, For the most part, Mrs Hudson had been taking care of John's needs when she was around, above all, hydrating him and making sure that he was still aware of his surroundings when waking him up every few hours. Sherlock was content with this arrangement, believing his care-providing services were not up to par and would only serve to distract him from his focus on Moriarty. Sherlock recuperated by working; his brain was unable to convince him that any respite was necessary. Nothing mattered but Moriarty. After all, that was the only way to ensure their continued security and safety.
However, there were times as Sherlock sat on the floor, his back against the armchair surrounded by the precious information he was gathering, that he experienced a moment of complete dislocation. He was aware that he was alone, the flat was dark and completely silent. Then he remembered what happened at the swimming pool after the explosion in vivid detail. Every time Sherlock experienced that moment of dislocation, he remembered how the force of the explosion had knocked them both of their feet. He had landed awkwardly in the water. John was thrown back from where he had been crouched further away from the pool's edge, slamming into the cubicles further down the building which had completely shattered. He lay underneath them as Sherlock pulled himself out of the watery haven;he needed to find Moriarty.
It was only during these moments alone that Sherlock forgot about his work for a moment and got up from the position he had been sitting in for countless hours. With deftness and grace that most people would envy, especially given their involvement in an explosion, he silently bounded up the stairs. He opened the door to John's room, to reassure himself that his flatmate was still there. Every time he was, his breathing low and even with the occasional hitch, lying on his side to ensure that he wouldn't aggravate the back that had made such vigorous contact with the cubicles. His sparsely decorated room was suited to John. On the outside, it was difficult to determine much about him. In those cupboards and drawers Sherlock knew that there were whole worlds of interests relating to John. With such visible proof, against all logical judgement that Sherlock possessed and relied upon, he could be certain that John was still present. Most importantly, still alive.
Because one minute John was under cubicles and that was enough reassurance for Sherlock to bound off after Moriarty; the next minute (or more like thirty) when Sherlock returned to the swimming pool empty handed, John was not where he left him. Sherlock, despite the chaos he sometimes lived in, always knew where he left his possessions and disliked people moving them. By the time he found Lestrade amongst the debris and pointlessly milling policeman, he had reached near panic proportions. Only Lestrade was able to tell him that John was in fact still alive and had been taken to hospital in an ambulance and not to Molly's morgue in a body bag.
That night, Sherlock experienced two emotions so close in timing that it had the affect of knocking him off his logical train of thought. The first was the hurt and betrayal at seeing John emerge from the cubicles of that darkened swimming pool. When that feeling disappeared with the realisation that Moriarty was using John as his latest hostage, Sherlock felt fear. He had rarely felt fear for himself but less so fear for other people. It was difficult to concentrate on Moriarty when his eyes kept flickering to John for assurance that the man was actually in good health and not damaged in any way. To have his normal procedure interrupted by what he normally considered an unnecessary concern over someone's life threw him off balance. For all his self proclaimed sociopathic tendencies, even he could decipher the importance John now held. Seeing his flatmate there had awakened something which made the need to catch Moriarty stronger than ever.
In his mind, his actions and thought processes made perfect sense. John did not see it in quite the same way.
____
It started with something simple. John emerged after five days of pure resting still with a backache and a headache but with the added benefit of not rushing to the bathroom to be sick as a result. Sherlock considered that a successful recuperation.
"Oh good, you're up!" he said, with far too much energy for this time of morning as John painfully searched his belongings in the living room to find the codeine. Sherlock was sat on the floor, folders amassed around him in a semi-circle pinning new information to the notice board that had found a new permanent home above the fireplace. Any scrap of information Sherlock had uncovered from his underground contacts through the homeless network (and other networks John had no idea existed) were all added to the ever increasing data. Somehow, in this mess, lay the key to Moriarty.
The focus and drive to find Moriarty was so instilled within Sherlock that it was difficult for him to notice anything else and while Sherlock was aware John was getting slightly annoyed by his obsession, he had yet to voice annoyance.
"Are you still at this?" John asked, sleepily. "Have you even slept?"
"I had a nap about three hours ago, it was enough. Sleep wastes time. And you can’t waste anymore either now that you’re better. Go down to Scotland Yard and find out what you can from Lestrade about the swimming pool crime scene. Even Anderson must be done with it by now. I doubt there’s anything there but it doesn’t hurt to cover all the bases.”
John looked at Sherlock as if he’d grown another head and rubbed his face to make sure he was fully awake. He was suddenly aware of the extent of his stubble, making a scratchy sound as he rubbed it. “Excuse me?”
“Go, quick, I need the information as soon as possible.”
“Sherlock…it’s five o’clock in the morning. It’s not even light outside, I’m not going anywhere.” With that, he turned round into the kitchen, desperate for something which would knock him out again for another few hours and help him temporarily forget the life he’d been flung into.
The detective twisted his lanky body round to look at the retreating figure with wide eyes and a shocked expression. “What do you mean you’re not going? Why not?”
“Why not?” John repeated incredulously, looking back at him. “Well, let’s see, you’re asking me to head down to Embankment at a ridiculous time of morning for information you already rightly suspect does not exist. Oh, and I can barely move by the way. I’m not in the mood for a rickety journey on the Bakerloo line.”
“But you have to go!” A plea which sounded weak even to his own years. But in Sherlock’s mind it complimented the equal failure to understand why John would not help in the investigation to catch Moriarty.
John knocked back a couple of pills and grimaced as he washed them down with the horrible mineral tasting water from the tap. They had run out of juice and taking tea would take too long. “What gives you the impression you can just order me around?”
Sherlock’s expression suddenly narrowed in anger at John’s growing intransigence. His tone evolved into one of cold, sharp cruelty. “You were doing a good job up until now. I would have thought with your prior role as a soldier, you would have been very good at taking orders from superiors. Apparently not.”
It never for a second occurred to Sherlock that he might have said something out of line or potentially hurtful. He never normally cared. Very little mattered at this early stage of investigating - collecting all the information possible so he could start working out patterns and links. Since John had arrived, he’d found the speed with which an investigation moved more exhilarating than ever. Those extra hands and John’s occasional moments of logical ingenuity as well as comfortable discussion had become invaluable to Sherlock’s never-ending desire for stimulation. The notion that John would refuse outright to aid him in the simplest of steps was a personality wrapped in a conundrum which Sherlock had neither the patience nor the ability to solve as well.
He heard the tea mug clatter and break as John exasperatedly flung it into the metal sink making a deafening noise in the silence of the small flat. Certainly, it was loud enough to make Sherlock jump, snapping him out of his reverie. As Sherlock looked over, he saw that his roommate was braced with both hands steadying against the countertop surface either side of the sink, taking a few deep breaths. From the way his arms were shaking, there was an element of pain in the action. However, from the deathly glare he was giving the sink and way he bit his lip, Sherlock could tell that there was anger mixed in John’s whole persona. Then, without saying a word, John straightened up in the most graceful way possible given the pain and walked out of the kitchen, padding slowly up the stairs to his room. The force with which he shut the door was obviously his non-verb sign that he wasn’t happy with Sherlock.
Normally, Sherlock would have chalked such a display to an overreaction. And on the whole he enjoyed John’s occasional surprise of character. Except, John never really overreacted.
____
It had been so quiet in the flat for a while so Sherlock’s head snapped up in surprise at a sudden noise. Papers were clutched in his hands and strewn across his body from where he’d been desperately trying to collate all the information. The harsh glare of an office lamp he’d pulled down from the table shone on him with harsh precision, like his mind, focused on nothing but the information. Wincing painfully, he shifted in his position, realising that the stubbornly rigid position he’d sat in for the last thirteen hours was wreaking havoc on his healing body. Then he heard the sound which had distracted him again. An odd muffled thump sounded from somewhere within the flat and for a fearful moment he wondered if he should reach over and grab the antique sword from where it had been kicked under the chair. Surely Moriarty wasn’t making his move already…
Then he realised, the sound had come from John himself. He had been very quiet after his storm out earlier that day and Sherlock had debated on checking up on John, having failed in the back of his mind to get to the bottom of John’s destruction of the coffee mug. However he knew the action would have been uncomfortable for both of them. Sherlock did not wish to relocate and be distracted from his current train of thought and John was a man who preferred to suffer in silence and mask any weak traits behind a stoic and stubborn personality. It didn’t matter anyway; for all the interest surrounding the coffee mug incident, Sherlock was certain it was ultimately insignificant and would pass.
A shaft of light appeared across the landing as John’s bedroom door up the stairs opened and the heavy sound of the man himself plodding down the stairs in a gait that screamed exhaustion and weighted down.
The doctor paused in the living room and looked at Sherlock, sitting with his legs stretched out and with papers everywhere and scratched his head. “Still at it then?”
Sherlock quickly composed himself. “Yes, well…someone has to. Scotland Yard have no hope in hell.” Bent down looking at one of the papers, his eyes flickered up to watch John enter the kitchen. “You haven’t had one in quite a few weeks.”
John, rummaging through the cupboards in a desperate attempt to find a glass which had been cleaned or not used for some alternative intent, raised his eyebrows distractedly. “Hmm? What’s that?”
“Nightmare. You had them the first few nights you moved in but then they stopped.”
John slowly picked up a glass from the back of the cupboard and stared at it intently, almost reflectively. “Nightmares, yes,” he responded quietly. He looked over at Sherlock. “Should I even ask? Did I scream?”
Sherlock met John’s gaze before his eyes roamed over the man. Even in the semi darkness of the kitchen, he could still make out John’s tell-tale features and their anomalies. The military hair-cut which he was slowly outgrowing was mussed; the lines in his face were more pronounced in the dim lighting of Sherlock’s one bedside lamp. It was the most unguarded Sherlock had ever seen his flatmate and the easiness with which he could read him was somewhat disconcerting.
“No, you don’t cry out during your nightmares, you never did. But your breathing is laboured, as if you were out of breath and still trying to calm down the hitches. You take a deep breath every thirty seconds or so. You’ve put a dressing gown on to hide the fact that that you’ve sweated more than normal from tossing and turning. And then there are your eyes which are unnaturally red-rimmed which I suppose could be from lack of sleep but given the other two factors combined, it was a logic conclusion to jump to.” Sherlock smiled tightly, almost apologetically. He understood that John was uncomfortable with his weaknesses being pointed out so clearly in public and even in private.
And Sherlock wondered whether it was John’s need to prove himself, which constantly made him feel the need to portray himself as strong. “What has brought this on?” he asked gently.
John, with his glass of water, settled gingerly into the furthest armchair next to the TV. “Well, I did have a bomb strapped to my chest. Tends to have that affect.”
They sat in companionable silence and Sherlock could feel John relax as the effects of the nightmare wore off him. There were times when John, like Sherlock himself, didn’t talk but simply sat and thought, lost somewhere in his own mind’s memories. Eventually he snapped out of them but even Sherlock did wonder sometimes what went through John Watson’s thoughts during his subdued periods and if they were anything like Sherlock’s own. The fact that John was content to simply sit quietly was something Sherlock found invaluable.
“Were you never almost blown up in Afghanistan? I thought it was a prime place for getting caught in explosions. It seems every day Mrs Hudson is coming in to lament about a soldier in a roadside bomb incident.” Certainly that had sounded less disdainful in his head.
John clenched his right fist tightly and bounced it on the arm of his chair a few times as he considered the question. This time, he ignored Sherlock’s attack on the army. “Once, yes. Once I was almost blown up.” He looked at the ceiling for a moment and let out a long breath. “I was part of a convoy heading to a town about forty miles away from Kabul. It was one of my first experiences. We’d almost reached the town when the army truck in front literally just exploded into the air. Roadside bomb. It’s a miracle that our driver managed to dodge the falling debris. But after that I felt the same constant fear every time I went out of the house and down any road…the fear I could be blown to pieces and somebody could be picking up my body parts just like I had to that day and lay them out on a stretcher.”
Sherlock lifted his knees up and loosely wrapped his arms around them in contemplation. “Do you never have nightmares about that?”
John shrugged. “I was a doctor and I was in the army. Do you think I went to Afghanistan not knowing that I would be dealing with bodies with missing limbs, bloodied and charred flesh? I didn’t naively go to into combat, Sherlock.”
“That doesn’t mean you didn’t have nightmares about them,” Sherlock said quickly before catching John’s eye. “What I really meant was have you ever had nightmares about explosions.”
John pursed his lips in thought before he stood up to put the glass on the kitchen countertop. “Well, I suppose some things in life you can’t prepare for,” he remarked, smiling slightly. Sherlock didn’t answer and John scuffed his slippered foot into the kitchen floor. “Well, I’m going back to bed. Don’t stay up too late; you need a fresh eye to look over those. I’m going to go down to Scotland Yard to give my statement tomorrow so I’ll see if there’s anything about that swimming pool scene you asked for earlier.”
Sherlock nodded once. “Thank you,” he murmured quietly and gratefully, resting his chin on his knees. He watched John walk sombrely up the stairs. Something about John’s attitude confused him; he failed to understand how a man plagued by the horrific environment he’d fought in could speak of it with such longing. And all through that anecdote he had watched his flatmate’s hand. Despite the fear John spoke about, his shaking hand told a very different story of nostalgia.
____
So Sherlock did what he could best. He experimented.
John came down the next morning looking much fresher than he had in the last few days. There was more movement and less hobbling, implying that his back had healed enough sufficiently to stay upright for longer than ten minutes. He had changed the dressings on his arms and torso by himself given their crisp whiteness, once again too proud to ask Sherlock for help in the matter. Rest and a long shower had obviously done the man good. Now he came down looking for something more substantial and was greeted with the sight of Sherlock still wearing the same clothes and as far as he could tell, absorbed in work. The mass amounts of paperwork Sherlock had been accumulating were all organised under headings, colour coded and the ones of the wall were connected together by a complex web of multi coloured lines. John didn’t bother asking; he had obviously learnt that Sherlock would come to him when he required a fresh pair of eyes to see what he couldn’t or a fresh pair of ears to coordinate his thoughts. Moriarty was painfully beyond John’s level of comprehension.
“Any food?” John asked, carefully stepping over the organised chaos into the kitchen. He threw up his hands in exasperation at how the work had also migrated into the cooking area, carefully weighted down by the cups of coffee Sherlock had used. A new one each time. “Could you not have used the same mug?” he asked with useless exasperation.
“We only have the leftovers of that Indian we ordered when you returned from the hospital.”
John looked at him in disbelief. “That was five days ago! It’s probably gone off now.”
Sherlock only shrugged distractedly. “I haven’t really needed to eat but now that you mention it, we probably should do a shop quite soon.”
He waited for John’s reaction for the man, with one hand on his hip, staring at the fridge he couldn’t even reach. He was probably too scared to look inside. “Oh, I can’t be bothered. Not sure my back is up to carrying bags across the street and up the stairs. Especially because I’m sure you won’t help.”
Sherlock, pretending he hadn’t heard, lifted his head. “Hmm?”
“I’ll just do it online. Tesco can deliver.”
Looking back down, Sherlock frowned to himself. “Well, if your back can manage to go down the street and get some milk…I’ll need another coffee soon if I plan to continue working without your help.”
“I’m not your fucking maid,” John snapped good-naturedly and Sherlock couldn’t help but smile despite the tone. It was a moment’s like these that he remembered why he found John interesting. With all that military training instilled into him, John was generally a well-mannered, patient and polite man. Even at his most frustrated and annoyed, he refrained from swearing outwardly or insulting people like most people who Sherlock met who acted like they thought they were supposed to. Social convention bored Sherlock. So it always made Sherlock somewhat giddy inside when John did something unexpected or unpredictable. Those little moments of surprise that Sherlock longed for in all the people he found in John and were occasionally visible to those who spent enough time with him.
With careful neutralism, Sherlock inquired again without giving away that he was curious to John’s reaction. “So you will go out quickly?” he asked.
He observed as John puffed out his cheeks and let lose a huff of breath in one go and then shrugged. The doctor picked up his jacket from where it was buried under mounds of papers that Sherlock had yet to sift through and place under an appropriate heading. “Fine, I may as well. I could do with some air after being cooped up in here. Besides, it’s musky and you need to shower soon before you start to smell like one of your experiments.”
“Showering is unnecessary until this is complete.”
“Sherlock, showering is never unnecessary.”
Sherlock looked up at him from the floor. He was certain he looked a mess with his still cut face and rumpled clothes. “Why? I have no intention of going anywhere. It’s not offending anyone except you and you’re asleep most of the time upstairs anyway avoiding me.”
“Oh, I’m definitely going,” John muttered. Like a long suffering wife, John sighed again and jogged down the stairs to go and get the mundane necessities like milk and undoubtedly some toast, beans and baked potatoes to make sure they didn’t starve before Lestrade chased them down for their statements about that night at the swimming pool. With the close of the door, Sherlock put down his folder and rested his elbow on his knee and chin in his hand. Apparently John was not afraid of leaving the house, he had barely protested. His kidnapping of Moriarty had obviously not affected his confidence of braving the world again. It was a long shot and Sherlock was hardly surprised that this was not the issue but it didn’t hurt to cover all bases.
It still left John’s curiously detached attitude unanswered.
____
“You were right,” Sherlock said, as he dragged John out of the house a few days later. Finally, he had reached that point where it was necessary to discuss what he had uncovered with his flatmate. However, John had been curiously absent from Sherlock’s world in the past two weeks, finding reasons to leave the house and showing a surprising disinterest in Sherlock’s strides towards Moriarty. He asked questions here and there and sometimes sat on the floor with Sherlock when it didn’t feel like his back would aflame. However, that sparkle for danger which Sherlock adored in John had faded and it wasn’t long before John got up, citing pain and faking tiredness. What Sherlock at first pinned down to recuperation had evolved into something more complex.
“I can be sometimes,” John said, with his subtle sarcasm. “About what exactly?”
Sherlock smiled to himself as they walked down Baker Street. John looked around in confusion, surprised that the detective wasn’t looking to hail a cab as usual. “I’ve spent so long looking at the information about Moriarty that I’m stating to trip over my own thoughts. The web of connections between Moriarty and the crime syndicates of London is vast; more than I could ever have imagined.” In reality, he was in awe of Moriarty, that much he could give the man. His skill and mastery rivalled anyone he had encountered because the beauty of his craftsmanship was not motivated by the moment but with calculated intensity. He created in the same way Sherlock solved, with precision and finesse.
John walked beside him, hands in his pockets against the cold and hunched over slightly to prevent the pain in his back from slowing him down. “How vast exactly?”
Sherlock stared straight ahead, putting his gloves on. “Well, out of the 120 cases I worked before you arrived, 93 of them, I suspect, were orchestrated somehow by Moriarty. The rest were random actions.”
John whistled in appreciation. “How exactly do you plan on stopping all his crimes then?”
“We have to go the source, Moriarty himself. All everyone’s been doing, including myself, is attacking the problem one case at a time. I’ve been trying to collect all the information on the cases I have solved which I suspect were orchestrated by Moriarty and find connections between them. Somewhere in all that must be a pattern or at least a slip up. Nobody can be that perfect all the time.”
“So…where are we going now?” John asked in confusion “I assume you have some lead then?”
Sherlock looked over at him and smiled. “Lunch, actually. I know a great place the other side of Regent’s Park.” With that, he walked off in determination through the park. It was quiet at this time of day. The lunchtime bustle and traffic had died down. The park, which during the warmer months would have been filled with ordinary people sitting on the lawn, was practically deserted. Only a few tourists roamed the area, remarking pleasantly at the scenery as they used it to cut through the surrounding roads. The air around them was so cold that puffs of air billowed out and disappeared with each exhale. The eerie feel of the park was punctuated by the crunch of gravel on the ground beneath them.
And John, who had still not recovered from being smashed against the wall, was not faring well at suddenly being thrust into the cold December weather. “Sherlock…Sherlock!” he cried after a few seconds, as the taller man walked off with his long purposeful stride carrying gracefully ahead of John. Sherlock turned and paused watching John hobble over to the nearby bench. “Can we just sit for a minute…my back can’t...?” John sat down heavily and let out an unmasked breath of relief.
Sherlock walked back slowly. In most cases, John would continue walking if possible to the other end of the park. After all, it wasn’t very far now. John had an admirable ability to ignore most of his physical pains in the same way Sherlock could ignore hunger and thirst. However, with a slight pang of what Sherlock could only attribute to guilt, he had a moment of clarity where he realised the majority of John’s pain were directly because of Sherlock’s own doing. He had, after all, gotten John involved in this game and the man had been hurt far worse as a result. The perfect opportunity had been presented to Sherlock for this experiment but it involved some shame on his part.
“John,” he said, gingerly sitting down on the bench with his hands clasped in front of him and staring at them intently. He waited a few seconds to formulate his words carefully. “I just wanted to say that…given your condition after the swimming pool and my current preoccupation with Moriarty I haven’t had the chance to…apologize for what happened.”
John looked over at him with a curious expression, that youthful but bruised face hinting at that old sparkle. “What, almost getting me blown up?”
“Well, yes, there is that. I was…actually referring to the moment where I left you under the cubicles after the explosion. I was more concerned with making sure that Moriarty couldn’t get away than checking for you. In fact,” Sherlock added, with what could only be described as embarrassment, “I was absent for a whole half an hour by my calculations. When I came back, Lestrade told me they’d found you and had taken you to the hospital. I…assumed you...” Sherlock sighed with annoyance, not at having to apologise but his seeming inability to flawlessly do so.
“You know I was all right.”
Sherlock did. He hadn’t just run out of the crippling swimming pool in the heat of the moment. He’d seen John under the cubicles, seen his legs, checked a shoulder, an arm and the side of a cut and bruised face. He had bent down to check John’s pulse and look him over. He hadn’t seen too much blood; undoubtedly there would be some broken bones. John’s pulse thrummed underneath his hand, strong if a bit fast and Sherlock closed his eyes and almost willed the man to continue on that beat. When he came back home from the hospital and experienced those periods of dislocation, he tried to remind himself how John’s pulse yet underneath his fingers. But even though Sherlock knew it should be a terrible thing to think, he couldn’t help but wonder if those precious seconds he’d spent checking over John had cost him the capture of Moriarty.
He cleared his throat when John didn’t answer, presumably out of shock at this sudden and unexpected admission of guilt. “I knew. But I realise it wasn’t right.”
“Yes, not your finest moment, especially after your fantastic duel with Moriarty,” John agreed, good-naturedly and nodded his head. He rubbed his hands together and blew into them to warm them up.
Sherlock frowned in confusion. “You’re not angry at me?”
John looked back at him for a moment in contemplation and then shrugged. “No, not angry. Not even surprised, really. I know where your priorities lie…they lie with the work.”
Sherlock nodded uncomfortably as his words to John all those months ago in Angelo’s restaurant came back to haunt him. “I would make a very poor soldier,” he replied weakly.
“A terrible soldier, actually,” John agreed, laughing slightly, seemingly not noticing Sherlock’s discomfort. It was the first genuine laugh Sherlock had heard from him in the last two weeks. He was unaware of how much he’d missed the more light hearted side of John’s personality until now; apparently John had been dour for longer than he’d originally thought.
“It was strange, really. I was lying on the ground and it was pitch black and I thought I was back in Afghanistan. It was hot, I could feel the air practically simmering, and there was falling debris and awful clanging which sounded like mortar fire or something. And I couldn’t see anything from under the cubicles but I could smell smoke. It really felt that I was back there.” After a moment, John shook his head and looked embarrassed at himself. “It was probably just the concussion, though.”
Sherlock remained silent throughout John’s confession. The doctor rarely spoke about Afghanistan but so far, he’d heard two references in a very short space of time. Once again, it was with fondness. And Sherlock always found it bizarre that what most ordinary people would call a horrific environment would be somewhere that John seemed to forever drawn to. Afghanistan was exotic and exciting and the war promised something new every day. Even Sherlock could not obtain that level of excitement in London and spent some days wallowing on the sofa in languid boredom. He completed understood the reasons behind John’s aching need. Sherlock reached over and lightly clasped John’s wrist where that faint tan line remained, trying to steady the slightly tremor running through the limb. It contrasted magnificently with Sherlock’s own translucent un-gloved hand. He was rewarded with immediate stiffening, John’s instinctual aversion to foreign touch only noticeable because Sherlock was touching him. “You still want to go back, don’t you,” Sherlock remarked quietly.
John only smiled with shocking mirth only a present on a man who had come to terms with the regrets in his life. “You may have abandoned me under a pile of rubble, Sherlock. But I abandoned my command.”
At this, Sherlock paused and let go of John’s wrist. He stood up and put his hands in his pockets, circling the area in front of the bench, the crunch of gravel beneath his feet so loud in the silence of the park. In confusion, he looked back at John and was about to reply before pausing and turning away. Then, “You didn’t abandon your command, though,” he commented as if it was obvious. “You were relieved from duty due to a serious injury in your shoulder and some misdiagnosed psychological ramifications. It was a justified discharge.”
John rolled his eyes and got up himself and Sherlock could tell the sudden movement caused pain in his back despite John’s good attempted at hiding the stiffening posture. “That’s not the point, Sherlock! You can’t understand what you haven’t experienced from your distant pedestal. It doesn’t matter the reasons are logical or true. What matters is that I left people, good people that I cared about, behind in Afghanistan to continue the fight, doing serious work. And I should be there helping them. Not stuck here getting involved in dangerous crimes which you simply use as pastimes to engage your brain. You could never understand the level of guilt I feel being here instead helping you…”
Sherlock stood perfectly still and narrowed his eyes at John as if inspecting him. The man was panting, little puffs of air let lose at increasing faster pace the more agitated John became. Sherlock found himself becoming increasingly angry towards John’s disparaging attitude towards his work and new drive against Moriarty “Why have you been so antagonistic lately? I thought you were angry that I left you. I’ve apologised.”
“Yes, yes, you did. And I said that wasn’t the issue. Why do you think I don’t care about you leaving me at the swimming pool? This isn’t the army; we don’t have that kind of relationship where we look out for each other. That’s why I don’t care!”
Sherlock still found himself failing to understand. Of course he couldn’t understand the level of bonding that exists between men in the army but he had hoped that in dangerous climaxes to their own past few cases, a small understanding may have developed between himself and John. The doctor had, after all, killed a man for him. And for his part he certainly hadn’t left John at the swimming pool due to lack of caring, whatever John may have thought. He’d seen John smash into the cubicles and tried to call out but the force of the blast had knocked the wind out of him; when Sherlock got up, he could see that John was still moving as well. It was just that in his mind, ensuring that Moriarty could never come after them again, and use John again, was more important than lifting a few plastic doors and confirming what he already knew. He could have finished it there and then, once and for all…He could have killed Moriarty just liked John killed the taxi driver. Without remorse.
“So you speak of Afghanistan out of regret,” Sherlock remarked carefully. “Not regret for going; but regret for coming home. And that has only increased, has it, since we began working together?” John didn’t answer and Sherlock felt that strange feeling of hurt hit him again. Quickly, he squashed it down, panicking momentarily at its implications, over the hold John had over him. “Would you go back, then?”
John threw his hands up in the air of frustration. “Don’t ask questions you already know the answers to. Do you think I miss the explosions, the bombs, the bodies? No, but at least those are issues I can tackle and work through because that was my job. I was scared, all the time. But at least the job only made me scared for my life.”
Sherlock shoved his hands deeper in his pockets and glared at John. He pondered this statement over but could come to no conclusion about it. Somewhere in that was hidden the key to John’s sudden attitude transformation and what was bothering him. Cataloguing it for future reference, he went down a path more directed by his own annoyance and frustration at John’s intransigence.
“And you think Moriarty doesn’t deserve your fear? One single man who kills innocent people on a whim for fun as opposed to an extreme ideology does not merit your taste for adventure and involvement. I’m sorry he doesn’t satisfy your insatiable appetite for danger and comradeship,” Sherlock snapped, stepping forward so he was in John’s personal space, looking down at the man. “Would you feel the same guilt that you do for your army command if Moriarty is to go through with his own threat against me?”
John shook his head as if he didn’t want to listen to Sherlock anymore. “Of course I would, Sherlock. But this is your fight, not mine. This is not my job. I don’t want to be dragged into your tussle with Moriarty.” John walked about ten steps before he turned around and shouted at Sherlock whilst still walking backwards. Apparently lunch was off. “He will consume you. And there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Sherlock stood on the path in Regent’s Park watched John storm off and once again, away from him and angry with him. He was even more confused by his friend’s reaction. It was evident John wasn’t angry at him for leaving him in the swimming pool. But he was angry about something and it was beyond Sherlock’s power and knowledge of the human mind to work decipher the true problem. “What are you afraid of then, John?” he murmured to himself.
To be continued here in Part II
A/N: I hope you enjoyed that. That was my first foray into the Sherlock fandom and I'm hoping to expand this into something larger and more developed, probably a multi-part story. Please leave feedback and let me know what you think, any constructive criticism would be helpful!