Disclaimer: I don't own Sherlock.
John is angry with him.
'Bloody hell!' he shouts. 'Bloody hell, Sherlock!'
Sherlock is rather angry, too, but more than angry, he's afraid. Because John is angry – John is really, really angry, and last time John was this angry, he went and got married. To someone else.
(Not that it could ever have been Sherlock, of course, of course it couldn't, Sherlock knows that very well by now and he's not stupid and he's not supposed to have thoughts like that; he's tried deleting them at the source but they won't stay deleted and he really needs to work on that.)
'Can we go a single day – a single bloody day - without some sort of body part in the fridge?' John says, low and cold and terrifying.
Last time John was this furious, he had gone and got married to an assassin, who'd shot Sherlock through the chest and then done a number of other Very Bad things until she and her unborn child were killed trying to escape Mycroft's special ops team. John had come back to Baker Street, after that, and if he wasn't exactly heartbroken over losing his wife, at that stage, he had taken the loss of his baby like a blow to the gut.
And Sherlock has no idea, absolutely no idea how to help someone grieve for their baby, and he knows he'll probably say the wrong thing if he opens his mouth, so he's been trying not to say anything too much at all. And John sometimes stomps furiously through the flat and slams doors, and sometimes he goes out for long, long walks on his own and comes back with a stone-set face and red-rimmed eyes. But sometimes, too, he has almost seemed happy, sitting in his armchair and reading out inanities from the paper to make Sherlock snort, or coming home from crime scenes with his eyes sparkling and his face alive.
Sherlock would very much rather that John be happy and sparkling, not angry.
'Fingers. Fingers. Bloody fingers in the carrot box,' John pants, and he turns away and walks over to the wall and bangs his head down on it.
The worst thing is that this time, Sherlock doesn't even know why John is so angry at him. All he had done was put a few fingers in a carrot box in the fridge, sealed and everything, and he thought that was what John wanted him to do to avoid cross-contamination, and there's certainly been worse things in there than fingers. Besides, it was for an experiment.
There must be something else, something that he's missed, because John really shouldn't be this angry just for fingers. And now John's head is bowed down, both his hands braced against the damasked wallpaper. Breathing heavily, shaking a little, muscles tensing and jerking on the backs of his hands.
Sherlock licks his lips, because he's scared, scared that he's done something again, something huge and devastating that he hasn't realised yet. Something that will be the last straw for John and make him go away again, away from Sherlock and Baker Street, and Sherlock can't let that happen, he can't, not if there's anything he can do to fix it.
'John,' he says, very quietly, speaking to John's back. 'John. I'm sorry.' He's not sure what it is that he's apologising for, but if there's a chance it might work, he's going to try.
John straightens, and turns around slowly. Sherlock holds his breath and stands very still, waiting to see what John will do next.
John's lips are pressed together tightly. 'Alright,' he says. 'Alright,' and fear clenches tight in Sherlock's chest.
'I am sorry,' he says again, trying to keep the note of desperation from his voice. 'Really.'
'Sherlock.' John's voice sounds more normal, now, but he still looks dangerous. His jaw is doing the soldier thing where it clenches up and goes very square.
Is that a good thing or not? Sherlock realises that his own fingers are clenching and unclenching at his sides. He can't say anything more, not until John gives him some sort of clue about how he's messed up this time.
'I'm sorry,' John says.
Sherlock freezes. What – why is John apologising? Maybe it's sarcasm. Biting sarcasm.
'Sherlock, it's fine,' John says, and there doesn't seem to be any sarcasm there. 'You don't need to apologise. This time, anyway. I overreacted and I'm sorry, okay?'
'But,' Sherlock says. 'You were angry. Really angry. You – you were...' he trails off, hoping his voice doesn't sound too small and fearful.
John walks very deliberately to his chair and sits down. 'Sit,' he says, and points to Sherlock's chair, and Sherlock has the distinct feeling that to disobey John right now would be a Bit Not Good. So he sits down, softly, and waits for John to say something.
John's expression grows slightly less dangerous, although still not precisely happy as such. Sherlock breathes quietly, glancing at John out of the corner of his eyes. He's not quite sure if it would be best to make direct eye contact or not, but it seems safest not to.
John sighs, an odd sort of sigh that's really more like a groan, and scrubs his hands over his face. 'Look,' he says, 'look, Sherlock. Just relax, okay? Stop looking so scared you're going to say the wrong thing, or upset me, or make me angry, because it's going to happen anyway, sooner or later, and I can take it. I'm not that fragile.'
It's as though Sherlock's brain-mouth connection is glitching or something, because what he should be doing is agreeing with whatever John says, but instead he blurts without thinking, 'It's not that!'
Stupid. Stupid.
John frowns, and Sherlock cringes inwardly. 'Well - what is it, then?' John says. 'All this being quiet and not insulting me and letting me win all the arguments? It's starting to get weird.'
Weird.
Weird is bad. Weird is another thing that might make John decide to leave. Sherlock's been trying, he's been trying so hard to keep John happy, and now John thinks it's 'weird'?
'I just – ' Sherlock says, frustrated, and stops because his tongue gets tangled.
'Hm?' John says, stern. 'What is it, Sherlock?' It's his don't-lie-to-me tone.
'I just don't want – don't want you to leave again, alright?' Sherlock snaps out, and he rises to his feet in a swift move and turns his face away from John. God, he sounds so pathetic and needy and his face is hot and he really, really hopes he hasn't ruined everything.
'Oh,' says John, and then, 'Oh.'
'Happy now?' Sherlock can't help saying miserably, and he goes over to the window and looks out so he doesn't have to see what's happening on John's too-expressive face.
He can hear John moving. Indecision, at first, but then John's steps come up quietly behind Sherlock and what now?
John clears his throat; rocks once on his heels.
'I think you should know,' John says, 'that I'm not actually planning to leave again.'
Sherlock snorts. He can't help it, and it comes out hard and angry-sounding. 'That's what you think now,' he says bitterly, swinging round to face John again, and now the words have started, he can't stop them, harsh and cutting and a little too loud. 'You're grieving, and lonely, and things are comfortable and familiar here. And then in a bit, when you feel better and you've got over it, you'll start again with the girlfriends and the dating, and you'll find someone else again, and you'll – you'll go, again, and...'
He trails off with a quiver, much too late, reviewing what he's just said with a detached, fascinated sort of horror. This is the end of everything, then. There's no way that John will ever forgive this. And because he knows there's nothing he can do now that could possibly worsen the situation, Sherlock looks despairingly back into John's face.
John doesn't look angry.
John looks stricken. John's mouth opens, and closes, and then opens and closes again. His hand comes out in a strange reaching movement, but Sherlock flinches back like a wild wounded thing. John's hand drops.
'God, Sherlock,' John croaks, and what the hell is that supposed to mean? Sherlock hunches in on himself, starting to turn away, but then John's hand is gripping tight on his arm, keeping him there.
'Let go,' Sherlock says dully. He's shivering, and he can't stop it, but he holds himself stiffly. 'Let go, please.'
John's eyes are direct and earnest and slightly stunned, fixed on Sherlock's face, and he takes a rasp of breath and looks down at his fingers on Sherlock's arm as though he doesn't know how they came to be there. Slowly, very slowly, he peels them away, and Sherlock tries to stop shivering and tries not to notice how cold the place on his arm feels, now that John's fingers aren't covering it. He looks down at his hands, and feels his face twisting painfully.
John is still there, still standing with set shoulders and bunched muscles, as though he's rooted in place. And his eyes are still on Sherlock's face, and suddenly Sherlock can't bear it, can't bear it, and he shoves roughly past John and stalks to his bedroom and slams the door viciously closed behind him.
Sherlock stays in his room all afternoon. He's not sulking. But John is out there in the flat, and he feels too sore and humiliated and worried to face John just yet, and there are no interesting cases on at the moment that would require him to come out of hiding, and so he stays in his room, lying on the edge of his bed so as not to disturb the arrangement of petri dishes in which he's growing moss at different rates.
He gets bored of not-sulking after a while, because there are too many disorganised thoughts in his head, messy and feeling-y and un-indexable, and they're making his throat and head ache in a horrid dull sort of way. He rolls off the bed and folds up on the ground by the window, tugging over an old copy of the Beekeepers Quarterly that has ended up spreadeagled open under his bed.
It's a good magazine, interesting, and it should distract him, but it doesn't. The words sort of dance and blur together, and all he can see is John - John's eyes, so earnest and looking at him, and it's not fair, it isn't fair! He hurls the Beekeepers Quarterly at the wall in a fit of passion, and hunches himself up in a wedge by the windowsill. The wallpaper is curling a very little bit, right underneath the ledge, and so he scratches at it and savagely peels off a big strip, and then another.
He's going for the biggest strip yet when John knocks at the door.
'Sherlock,' John says through the door. Sherlock can hear the little shifting sounds he makes. He hunches down further into himself, because he's definitely not going to go and open the door for John.
'Sherlock, can I come in?' John asks quietly.
Sherlock grunts, and it's meant to be a 'no', but John seems to take it as a 'yes', because he turns the handle and pushes the door open and steps in the gap, stopping just inside the door. Sherlock gazes coldly out the window, ignoring him.
'I brought you tea,' John says, and then, perhaps emboldened by the fact that Sherlock hasn't yet thrown him out, he walks hesitantly across the room and stands behind Sherlock.
Sherlock sniffs, a comprehensive, haughty sort of sniff that is intended to express his complete disdain for tea and John and anything else that John has brought to offer him. But he slides his eyes furtively sideways to see if John has actually brought him tea, and it turns out that he has, a big steaming mug of it. Unfortunately, John has brought two mugs, one for himself as well, which means he's planning to stay for a while, and perhaps talk about it.
'Go away,' Sherlock says, to be contrary, because he doesn't really want John to go away. It's confusing, because he had been so sure that John was going to storm out after he said – that to him, but John hadn't stormed out. He hadn't even got angry after that, and Sherlock hates it because he doesn't know what to expect, now. So he scowls and says, 'Go away, John.'
John doesn't. If anything, John looks relieved to hear Sherlock speak. He sits carefully down on the edge of the bed, holding out Sherlock's mug. 'Here,' he says, 'Take it. It's Earl Grey.'
Sherlock likes Earl Grey, so he reaches out, still not looking at John, and takes it. The mug is hot, and his fingers brush against John's as he transfers his hold to the handle; and it's as though the light touch unlocks something big and frantic inside him, and he starts babbling and can't stop. 'I'm sorry. John. For what I – said. Earlier. Really. I – I don't know what I was thinking.' That's what people say, isn't it? They didn't know what they were thinking. Not good enough, coming from someone who has built their life around thinking. He rips viciously at the torn wallpaper, glancing very quickly at John to see if he's angry yet.
John's eyes are squeezed painfully shut, his fingers clenched around his mug. He breathes out once, harshly, and then says, 'Stop. Apologising. Just – stop, Sherlock.' He opens his eyes, and looks at Sherlock, and then sets his mug down on Sherlock's bedside table with a decisive little click. 'God. Look, I – I want to say something. Just to you. Is that alright?'
'What is it?' Sherlock's voice comes out very small.
'I want you to know that... There isn't going to be any more of that, okay? The girlfriends and - dating. Not right now, not ever.' John's voice and eyes are very steady now, and he's leaning forward, his hands clasped loosely between his knees, his gaze fixed on Sherlock's face. 'I don't know why, or – or what. I mean. This is all kinds of messed up, I suppose, and I don't know if you want to hear this, but. Please let me say this, Sherlock.' And then John reaches out as though he can't help himself, and fleetingly touches Sherlock's cheek with one calloused finger, soft as a whisper, a promise. His voice is very low and gentle, when he says, 'Sherlock, will you let me say it?'
Sherlock swallows hard, because it feels – everything feels full of weight, the very air between them still, momentous. He swallows, and watches his own hand flex on his lap, cramping and uncramping nervously, and hears his own voice say, 'Y-yes.'
To be continued…
Hope you enjoyed this – please leave a comment in the box!