Words leave scars too, you know.
"Sherlock are you alright?"
"Yes John, I'm fine!" Sherlock replied, stalking angrily into the flat.
"But you're covered in blood".
"It's not all mine" he retorted, shrugging off his coat and hanging it up.
"Come on, where did he cut you?"
He was silent for a moment.
"My back".
I swallowed uncertainly. The back was where some on the most private and painful words were written. I had no place looking at it.
"Oh" I finally managed but forced myself past the awkwardness," If you want I can still clean the wound".
"It's hardly a wound" Sherlock sighed and slumped into his chair, avoiding, I noticed, banging his back. "You can if you must".
I nodded quickly, moving into the kitchen to fill a basin with warm water, and to grab the almost empty medical kit.
When I re-entered the sitting room, Sherlock had already taken off his shirt and had moved to sit on the coffee table.
Ink black words covered his left, and most of his right arm. The words ran up over his shoulders and neck, somehow creating a design that moved as he breathed.
He had so many more than I.
I moved behind him, setting down the basin, and began to clean the surprising amount of blood off his back.
Words that had been illegible before became clear.
Weirdo
Freak
Crazy
Strange
Cruel
Lunatic
Psychopath
Liar
Emotionless
Heartless
Piece of shi-
I moved my eyes back to his face. Sherlock's body was hunched up, his head pressed to his knees; tense, as if awaiting an invisible blow.
"Sher-"
"Are you finished?" he interrupted coldly, not looking up. His body betraying his voice.
I gazed back down at his back again. Sherlock had been right, it wasn't deep, hardly worth the trouble, but I cleaned it anyway. He didn't move when I finished, he just sat there still and silent.
"Sherlock, about the-"
"I'm fine John!" he said with more than a hint of anger in his voice.
Over his shoulder, my eyes landed on his arm, and the words written there. My words.
"Look" I motioned to him.
Amazing
Brilliant
Genius
Wow, how did you do that?
Fantastic
You're my best friend
The bravest man I ever knew.
"I'm fine" Sherlock repeated, but quieter.
I looked at him and saw him in a way I never had before.
Vulnerable
Maybe even broken
And all those things I had said about him didn't seem to change that. So I swallowed my fear and said the three words I'd been meaning to say for so long but never had.
Those three words barely made a sound as they left my mouth. I barely heard them, he barely heard them.
But they appeared like all the rest, on his skin. Because they were directed at him, they were for him.
I felt myself go red when he didn't reply, and I contemplated getting up and leaving, or even just falling through the floor, when he turned towards me.
There was something in his expressing, something I didn't understand.
But then he repeated the three words with one more, and the air left my lungs. I stared at him, startled and then at the black ink forming on my hand, trying to understand the meaning of those words, that I thought I had understood so clearly only moments earlier, but now could not.
But then Sherlock smiled at me.
And I smiled back.
And it didn't seem to matter.
I wondered later what someone would have thought if they could have seen our arms laid side by side, and the words written on them:
I love you.
I love you too.