Thank you to all my kind reviewers and people who have favorited my stories and asked for more! Rest assured I am trying to answer a request, but as I was writing these two pieces fell out and neither fit the other piece or each other-one angst and one funny. Normally I'm not an angst girl, but this was important to say, and I even managed to reference a mystery, which is not my strong suit. R&R desired and always appreciated.
Sherlock was still, on the couch, and judging by the faint sounds and steady, slow rising and falling of the chest, he was asleep.
John smiled and smoothed back a lock of hair to keep it from tickling his lover's eye and waking him. It had been a hard case and John hadn't been there for most of it, off at a pharmaceutical convention in Cambridge, Massachusetts on solutions for long-term follow-up treatment of traumatic injury—right up John's alley, but still strange to be invited. It had a Mycroftian feel to it—as if Mycroft wanted a possible brother-in-law to have a respected career. What, so they could buy a little cottage somewhere? He smiled at the absurdity of it but then looking at Sherlock's face made it seem less surreal. There were purple smudgings beneath Sherlock's eyes and he was thinner than he had been, just a week before.
John knew the case had involved torture of children and that it was big enough to be followed in American newspapers. He had sat anxiously in one seminar after another clutching his phone waiting for texts from Sherlock, Lestrade and even Mycroft. The later two asking if he could return any sooner. The former assuring him that he needn't rush back—"Perfectly capable of muddling through an ordinary case without my blogger, John. Just fine before I met you.—SH.
The one worrying thing had been fumbling his phone out of his pocket at midnight after a booze and schmooze only to find five calls from Sherlock but no messages. It was five in the morning in London. To call, or not to call? Sherlock probably up, but possibly not and needing sleep. The question was taken out of his hands figuratively if not literally, by his phone ringing.
"Ah, there you are," said Sherlock, for all the world as though they were just passing each other in the flat. "Just thought, I'd…wish you good-night."
"Sherlock, don't lie to me…you've called five times, six now. You text me good-night every night and never call. Tell me what's going on."
"It's nothing, I…I just wanted to hear your voice, John. I love you. And I don't even want to know what you've been doing with boring doctors and cheap booze."
"Booze was actually quite top drawer," John could hear the faint snicker, "but yes, the doctors were very boring and you probably could have talked rings around them. I love you too. I hope you've been to bed and if you haven't, go there now. I'm hanging up."
By skipping the closing day ceremonies and taking a red-eye John had arrived back home on what proved to be the last day of the case. Sherlock alternately manic and perfectly still. No nicotine patches in sight, but discovered on legs this time—presumably to hide them from John. Clearly having not eaten or slept for days.
"I know where he must be taking them, but he isn't there now. I'd know if he were. The network would know. Which do I follow? Which do I follow?"
"Find the child, Sherlock."
"But if I leave him, then he'll only do it again to other children."
"Tell Lestrade how to catch him and show me how to find the child. I'm a doctor. I'll be able to help."
"Lestrade and company couldn't catch a train in Paddington Station," he complained, but he had complied. Calling Lestrade with what he knew of the culprit's path and running out the door with John behind him.
They found the girl.
To his dying day, John would wish that they hadn't, or at least that it hadn't been Sherlock first into that room. The blood, the smell, the instruments, the chemicals. And the tiny body, eight or nine, but so malnourished she looked five. Fresh scars and burns over old ones. Three fingers missing from the left hand. Burns on the feet and what remained of the toes. And the eyes were gone. Gone with enough blood to indicate she'd been alive when they were removed and he knew that Sherlock could see that too.
Sherlock started scouring the room—looking for clues that might help the manhunt. John moved to the little form, feeling but not hoping for signs of life. There were none, but the body was still warm. This was a recent kill.
"Sherlock, SHERLOCK, he was just here. The body's still warm, 20 minutes, maybe a half hour."
Sherlock screamed, a scream of such guttural fury that John couldn't believe it came from him. "DAMN, John. Stay with the…stay with her, phone Lestrade."
Much as it made him sick inside, John made himself call Lestrade and wait for the DI and the coroner and the team. He felt strangely reluctant to leave the little girl, even though there was nothing he could do for her, even though half his mind was following his friend, his lover, his Sherlock through the streets of London, wondering if he needed a crack shot to save him.
"Where's the Freak? Probably doesn't even think of that poor little girl as a person. Just another puzzle," Sally drawled.
John turned to her, standing slowly from where he'd still been kneeling when they took the body away. "YOU KNOW WHO DOESN'T FEEL, DONOVAN? You, you sick bitch! You're standing here in this room over that little girl's body, knowing it's that man who'll find the monster who did this and stop him from ever doing it again, something that none of you can do, and you can't stop sniping at him. It's YOU who feels nothing for the dead. He feels more in his soul than any of you will ever know in your tiny, pathetic brains." John felt himself stagger from the room, praying to a God he'd given up to keep Sherlock safe.
He didn't hear Lestrade say, "Donovan, you're on suspension." It probably wouldn't have helped if he had.
He didn't know where to go. He daren't text. And so he found himself in Baker Street watching the telly, curled in Sherlock's chair and covered in Sherlock's dressing gown, when the program he was barely seeing was interrupted to announce the capture of the murderer and to cut live to DI Lestrade talking to the cameras, and for just a moment in the crowd John saw the turned up collar, a bit of scarf, a face in profile watching the criminal being shut away.
He jumped up, unsure whether to go or to stay. And finally made a pot of tea put it on a mug heater and waited until he heard the stagger of feet up the stairs. They were slow and unsteady and took the steps one at a time. It made his heart break, and his head panic as he rushed down to help Sherlock in, worried that he was injured, but after prying him out of his coat and his jacket and getting him to drink some tea, John was satisfied that it was nothing but exhaustion. He made Sherlock have a little soup and tea and curl up with him on the couch, wrapped in blankets and together they fell asleep.
Sherlock slept most of the next day on the couch while John tiptoed around, posting some pictures of Boston on his blog and going to some medical forums to share what he'd learned. It was a surprisingly beautiful day out after the cold rain the night before—the rare English April day. John opened the window and gazed out.
"It seems almost worse, doesn't it?"
"What?" said John, turning from the window. Sherlock was on his back with an arm thrown across his eyes to block out the sunlight.
"That it's so beautiful out. That everything is alive with spring and we can hear children playing. And that those little children never knew any of that and never will again."
"But other children will because of what you did."
"There are always other monsters, John."
"And there is Sherlock Holmes to stop them."
"And John Watson to stop Sherlock Holmes."
"John, I…oh, God, John, I don't know why you're here. I am a monster, a freak, all the things they say, a sociopath. Children are dead, horribly dead, and I want, I want—"
John knelt beside the couch trying to touch Sherlock's face and pull it to him. Sherlock resisted, resolutely keeping his face buried in the leatherette of their awful sofa.
"Ok, say for an instant that you are a monster. Tell me why you are and why I should run, because frankly I've never seen signs of it. Cruelty, stupidity, deliberate blindness, manipulation and scorn, but not true sociopathy. I've read up."
"You said it when we were fighting Moriarty—that I didn't care about the people, that they were just pawns and not important."
John sat back on his heels for a moment, "Sherlock," he said is his most soothing voice, "Sherlock, I was wrong then and I, of all people, should have known better.
"When I was on the battlefield and they brought in some poor kid with his foot hanging on by a thread, and his face half burned off, gut open. Did it help me to think that his name was Donald and that he'd been playing cards with his mates not two hours before and that his girl at home was named Donna and they got teased about it? Or that he loved footie—Leeds United—and played a pretty mean game himself.
"No, of course not! Because if I stopped to care about him as Donald and not a patient then I might make a mistake, try to save the foot when it would be better to remove it. Work on repairing his face instead of working on his gut, so that Donna would still want him when he got home.
"I know you care. You have a great heart as well as a great brain and you have the sense to focus on what will do the most good—and most of us "caring" people don't. I saw your face when you tried to stop that old woman from getting herself killed, or when you realized he'd taken a child. I saw your face when you realized that I was strapped to bombs or that I was willing to sacrifice myself for you. And I saw your face when you saw what he'd done to that little girl.
"You tried to save that little girl AND catch her killer, and it nearly killed you when you saw that you were too late, but that's NOT your fault! That's the murderer. It always will be and you stop the bad men from doing that again and again. Which makes you a great man in my eyes.
"Now then, do you still think you're a monster?"
"Yes," said a tiny voice.
"Why?"
Sherlock twisted around to face him, "Because, and please don't be scared, please don't run, I couldn't bear that. I want you John. I want you so much it hurts. When I found you home last night I wanted to push you down on the couch and take you or force you to take me. What kind of sick person sees that poor child, runs through London, nearly kills the man who hurt her and comes home saying, 'Gee, darling, it's been a week, take me now.""
John almost laughed, would have laughed if the pain in the other man's eyes didn't stop him. "Do you know what I think?"
Tiny shake of the head.
"I think that you missed almost everything of importance. You're a human being, Sherlock Holmes, whether you want to be or not. If you feel during the crisis then you're a danger, but if you don't feel when it's over then you're dead already."
"But surely this is a terribly inappropriate response."
"But it's what we do, we humans, because we're alive. We fight death by celebrating life. People get more sex after funerals than after weddings. In hospitals, on battlefields, doctor's and nurses collapse on each other when they lose a patient. We need to look death in the face and say, 'We're alive, damn you! Human beings will go on.'"
"And after I had determined that you weren't injured and had gotten you settled on the couch, because I was genuinely afraid you were in shock and that I would need to get out the orange blanket, I wanted to pull you to me and kiss you so hard your knees would collapse."
Sherlock finally looked up at him, shyly beneath his dark fringe. John leant in and kissed him delicately, both pulling closer, and deeper before John pulled back.
But first, I want a bath. You smell like a chase thru London, a couple of chases, actually and I smell like America and British Air.
John drew the bath and eased Sherlock into it, then stepped behind him sliding down into the tub, letting the water slosh over the side. Sherlock leant back into him, and for awhile they just enjoyed the warm water, John rubbing a flannel across Sherlock's chest, washing his hair for him. Tutting over new scars and bruises. Despite his flawless appearance, Sherlock was covered in tiny scars from needles, blades, splatter burns, and God only knew what else.
At last, as the water cooled, they climbed out, John toweling himself off first and then Sherlock. God, this man was beautiful, he thought, not for the first time. The lithe muscles of the calves and buttocks, when he dried them, oh, God. Sherlock pulled John's hand around him to his growing erection.
They stumbled to the bedroom, but once there both seemed to want to go slowly. Kissing, long and slow; fingers in hair, running along cheek bones and chins, along the slight bump where Sherlock had broken his collar bone, along John's scar. Until finally reaching down to touch each other and stroke, with agonizing tenderness. As Sherlock started to come over John's hand, John leant in and kissed the younger man, swallowing Sherlock's moan with his mouth. Sherlock's hand tightened, worked faster and John was there.
John reached for the towel that they kept in the headboard and cleaned them up. The towel of cleaning he called it, but Sherlock never knew why.
Then crawling under the covers they snuggled against each other. While Sherlock could certainly sprawl across the bed like a Great Dane when he wanted, he could also curl his gangly limbs up into a tiny ball and crawl under John's arm to rest his head in the nest of John's shoulder, and in that position, they fell asleep.