"Sherlock."
Ignored.
"Sherlock, you have to eat something."
Ignored.
"This is the sixth day in a row-"
"Shut up, John," he says curtly, a particularly pleasant sort of venomous this morning.
It's the first thing he's said since he got up at the crack of dawn, pacing back and forth along the carpet like he can't stand not being in two places at once. His shoes make clicking sounds as they stride over the hardwood floor.
"You can't keep pacing around ignoring me. This has to stop-"
"Do what you're good at and go nurse your codependency issues elsewhere. Or better yet, do the world a favor and go lock yourself in a closet," he says acerbically.
John has to wonder why Sherlock is being such a prat this morning, considering he just got laid. Not all of London is so fortunate.
John bolts up from his chair so that it legs screech along the floor, having decided that he can't stand the insufferable hunger strike a moment longer.
He strides across the living room and stands face forward in front of Sherlock. Despite the fact that he's standing directly in Sherlock's way, Sherlock makes no change to his present course, intending either to push him aside or run him over.
But instead of becoming roadkill, John swoops down and wraps his arms around him, throwing him over his shoulder. Both of them fall deathly silent, taking a moment to process what has occurred. The surprise of being able to lift Sherlock clean off the ground snaps John out of the blind, unthinking rage that had originally prompted him to resort to such drastic measures. His intention had been to prove to Sherlock that he is well past underweight and borderline emaciated. He hadn't necessarily expected it to work- or be this easy.
And Sherlock, he assumes, is stunned speechless simply because John has actually, literally, physically hoisted him over his shoulder, in all his intelligence and intellectual supremacy, like a light-weight child or girl.
"John…" he says in a deep, threatening, deeply discontented voice.
"Sherlock, I didn't.."
"Put. Me. Down."
John obeys and Sherlock walks away from him in a temper, then stops still. John looks at him, confused because there seems to be something coming out of his back, seeping onto his shirt.
"I'm bleeding," Sherlock notes without turning around.
"Yes," John confirms.
"I'll just be a moment," he says, walking promptly away.
"Wait, Sherlock—" John stammers as the brunet excuses himself and heads toward the bedroom. "Where do you think you're going?" He asks, peaking around the corner of the hallway Sherlock vanished into, "Whatever's happened to your back you can't fix it by yourself."
"It's nothing John," he retorts dismissively. He disappears into his bedroom and John files suit, feeling compelled to follow.
He finds him reaching into his dresser to grab a new shirt and stops him from rummaging nonsensically through his collection of Dolce et Gabbana.
"Come here," John says, having had enough of Sherlock's asinine, counter-productive attempts at evasion and grabbing him by the arm. He drags Sherlock back into the living room to try to fix whatever nonsense Sherlock has done to himself this time.
John moves him to settee and is about to undo his collar when Sherlock does something that makes him stop short. He flinches from John's touch. John freezes.
"Sherlock..?" John asks uncertainly, retracting his hand.
"Sorry," the detective rubs his temple, mentally kicking himself for acting in an irrational fashion, "Please continue, Doctor."
John continues unbuttoning the shirt, his hands unsteady. He was naturally about to ask what had happened but now he's having difficulty raising the question. That flinch spoke volumes. He's usually more astute about the trend in women- the low eye contact, aversion to touch, erratic behavior— It's impossible for him to ignore that Sherlock's exhibiting the textbook signs of trauma. John's hands start shaking, so Sherlock silently takes over, undoing the buttons himself.
While John was sleeping soundly last night, assuming Sherlock was being "normal" and getting laid, had he actually been— John forces that train of thought to a stop. He feels like he's about to lose it. Was this something he could have stopped, had he been less stupid?
Sherlock has been busy undoing his shirt. When it comes undone, John's not surprised to find the whip-like lacerations across his back. But he's horrified by the state of his wrists, which have deep welts on them, like a rabid dog was trying to chew them off.
"What the hell did she do to your hands?"
"She didn't do that, I did."
John looks at him scathingly, as if to ask what the hell is wrong with you.
"She forgot to take the handcuffs off." John still looks at him in complete incomprehension.
"She… forgot?" John repeats, trying to get the story straight.
"Well, it wasn't necessarily that she forgot," Sherlock reluctantly admits, the implication being she intentionally left him in handcuffs, just to be cruel, or to demean or humiliate him or whatever it is dominatrixes do.
"Why didn't you ask me to take them off?" John asks confused, bewildered even, and just a little annoyed at the absurdity that he nearly wore his wrists to the bone rather than ask for help.
Sherlock doesn't answer the question, turning his face away so that a curtain of curls fall over his face. John hates to bear witness to how he keeps repeating these uncharacteristic mannerisms, one after another, textbook symptoms glaring him in the face. They don't suit him at all.
John disinfects the wounds and bandages them. He's wallowing in misery and berating himself for being an idiot for the entire duration of it. Horrible, deep-seated guilt overwhelms him at the thought Sherlock didn't want to be seen by him in that state so badly- that he couldn't even let him know what was happening. If John hadn't allowed him to feel that way this whole thing could have been prevented, the now-irreversible damage done, averted.
"I'm sorry," John says softly, "I didn't know. I didn't hear anything."
"I didn't want you to hear anything," Sherlock says, his voice a grey, lackluster monotone. John swallows a lump in his throat, trying to bury the burning desire to demand why?
"That wasn't your first time was it?" he asks after he's finished, throwing away the some bloodied antiseptic dressage.
"I don't know what you mean," he replies tersely, buttoning his collar so that he's his prim and proper self again. He's cold in the extreme, icy even, pointedly composed so as to betray no weakness.
John takes a moment to muster up the audacity to say, "It's not supposed to be like that you know."
Sherlock blinks at him, seeing that John's staring at him so intently. John steels himself and reaches for him, carefully this time, like Sherlock is wrapped in caution tape that says fragile. He breathes a sigh of relief he didn't know he was holding back when Sherlock doesn't recoil from him like before- when he finally manages to pull Sherlock's slender body completely into his arms. Blinking back the glassiness in his eyes, he turns toward Sherlock's ear and presses a kiss against his dark hair.
Sherlock sits motionlessly in his arms, eyes distant and detached, fondling a pull string at the corner of John's jumper.
When John comes back down from returning his medical supplies to his bedroom upstairs, he finds Sherlock in the kitchen handling two plates of eggs and toast.
"Breakfast?" Sherlock asks, giving him a sunny smile that nearly makes John lose his footing. His demeanor has dramatically changed- like night and day, leaving John awestruck at his seemingly instantaneous recovery. His heart thrums with bitter-sweet relief seeing the detective acting perfectly like himself again.