John whistled. He held up the front page of the morning paper to Sherlock. "Would you look at that! Couldn't keep the press quiet on this one; you're the hero of the hour!"
Sherlock barely glanced up at his full-length photo from his snail-shell curl on the couch. Unflattering light. "Not a hero, John." He said it like Mrs. Hudson's mantra.
"Of course you're a hero! You're Superman, you're Churchill— the Queen is ready to knight you—"
"Again," Sherlock muttered bitterly.
"Yes, Sherlock, again. No one else could have done what you did. It was—" he groped for the words. "Brilliant," he sighed finally. Sherlock was always brilliant.
Sherlock poked his head up liked a meerkat. He narrowed his eyes at John and scowled. "Mouth set, heart rate accelerated— you're not proud of me, you're angry."
"No, no, I'm not angry," John refuted tightly.
"Don't deny the facts."
"Damn the facts! I'm—"
"Angry," Sherlock interjected.
"Yes for Chrissakes!" Sherlock never let him have any dignity, particularly not for propriety's sake. And forget about blissful self-ignorance. "I'm angry. Why aren't you?"
"Why should I? The facts—"
"It's not about the facts, not at all." His voice measured out the words like a teacher. But they gave way. "God, only you would say that, Sherlock. Only you…" He tried again, "It's about people. You can be angry about people, especially in this case."
"There is nothing in this case to anger me." His head jerked back. "Are you really angry at me for not being angry?"
John nodded. "I guess I am."
Sherlock wasn't listening. "No, you're not. The source, where's the source?" He jumped to his feet and squatted in front of John's armchair. He held his face still with thin fingers like iron bars. He set to work deducting John, tearing off the personal armor that no one could take for granted anymore once under Sherlock's magnifying glass. "Unwilling to maintain eye contact, sudden discomfort with normal physical contact, flinching from the flight instinct—" Thud, a helmet hit the carpet. Clang went a cuisse on the coffee table.
Finally Sherlock rocked back in his heels. "You wish I hadn't done it," he pronounced.
John leaned in, kissing him sadly. "Brilliant," he said.
"You're not proud of me like they are." Was there an accusation in that declarative?
"If there were heroes," John quoted back at him, "you wouldn't be one of them." He took Sherlock's fingers from his face, held them for a moment— I'm sorry— and let them fall.
"No, I wouldn't," Sherlock agreed. "Heroes get angry."
"To fight, yeah." John was softer now. "Fight for your brother, for example."
There was a pause. Sherlock stood and saw to the maintenance of some petri dishes on the kitchen table. John turned in his seat and watched, feeling for a response. He found it in the delicate angle of the suspended eyedropper. Simple as the gravity that tugged the bead of liquid to douse the sample.
"Why did you turn Mycroft in for embezzlement?"
Nine dishes each needed two drops. Sherlock didn't answer until the job was done. John waited.
"He asked me to."
Of course. Forget Queen and country. "I see," said John. "Do you know why?"
Sherlock switched the petri dishes for another batch from the fridge. Nine dishes again, but with just one drop now.
"That's a preposterous question, John. I'm giving you a chance to rescind it before you embarrass yourself further."
In other words, he knew full well. "Alright, alright, I take it back." John waited some more, but there wasn't a third set of dishes. "Aren't you going to tell me?"
"No." Sherlock had his Blackberry out now.
"Why?"
Sherlock didn't lower the Blackberry. "Because you're the hero, John," he answered in light, distracted tone, "of the war right here. Someone has to keep us good."
That manipulative son of a bitch. John didn't buy a single word. He snorted, "Well thanks, but I'm hardly innocent. I'm a doctor who's killed men." It wasn't hard to say. That was part of the magic of Sherlock: with no apologies expected, they soon became unnecessary.
"Mmm, killed men for me. If that's not a good reason, I don't know what is."
"You facetious prick," John laughed, and Sherlock smirked. "No, but seriously, though," he continued, "Why not tell me what's going on?"
"For an excellent reason. That's a new sweater, isn't it? That shade of loam sets off your eyes."
"No, no, no; you've tried that already," John said, wagging a finger. "Can't pull the wool over my eyes. Flattery won't work on this one."
"Oh?" Sherlock moved to John, who was still twisted to face the kitchen. "The lighter flecks stand out more around the iris." He crouched and raised a finger to hover before John's eyes like someone following the lines of a book. He talked about color variations of the human eye— the unusual mutations, the array of pigmentations possible, their gradations, why crows find the eyes of fresh corpses particularly scrummy.
Seeing John smothered in explosives had done many things to Sherlock. For one, it had inspired him to propose just as they dove in the pool to take cover. It had also planted a secret fear in him that John would go bad. The same ingredients went into those two results: bombs and love. Sherlock had never been one to shirk the load of heavy thoughts, and he had thought long and hard about that ratio of fear and love. He couldn't recall the last time he had feared for anyone.
Sherlock lowered his finger, his hand. He tilted to touch foreheads, closed his eyes, and said 'I love you': "I fear for you."
"Mmm… Wait, what? Is this because of the Mycroft situation?"
Sherlock's eyes flashed open, and he pulled away, "No, don't be asinine." He sounded offended.
"Oi, it was a logical enough train of thought!"
"Are you really going to debate logic with me?"
John decided to surrender that argument. "No, no, of course not," he said briskly. "Just tell me why you're scared. And would you come around and sit in front of me so I can get this crick out of my neck already?"
Sherlock sat on the coffee table before John. He twisted his ring around his finger furiously, a new habit developed since their civil marriage. John noticed, and asked, "It's Moriarty, isn't it?"
"Oh of course it is," Sherlock spoke as if he were spitting out bile. "What the hell am I supposed to do if he won't play the game? I can't see his moves, John! Not a single one of his cat's-paws in the entirety of the United Kingdom has shown his face for months. Not a shoplifter. I can't even be bored! This is infinitely more miserable— analyzing the every move of the dullest crimes ever committed, looking for the barest clue." He fell back on the table in a melodramatic swoon, and gestured irately at the ceiling, cursing, "And the cherry on bloody top is that he knows! He knows I'm going out of my mind because he's left me surrounded by idiots."
"Ahem," John grumbled.
"Present company precluded, of course. I thought I'd try to force his hand. I doubted that he could resist a chance to move a pawn at the very least if Mycroft and I upset the government a bit. But there's nothing, nothing!" Sherlock roared.
A voice from below called out, "Is everything all right up there?" Mrs. Hudson sounded more perturbed than concerned.
John answered while Sherlock growled unintelligibly, "We're sorry, Mrs. Hudson!"
"It's past midnight, you know. A good night's sleep is worth its weight in gold, don't forget."
Sherlock shot up electrified. "Sleep doesn't have any weight, you inane woman! It's intangible!"
Mrs. Hudson's small noises of surprise and distress were audible from the bottom of the staircase. "You're lucky I'm chalking this up to sleep deprivation, young man! Good night!"
"Good night!" Sherlock yelled back, drowning out all but the tail end of John's apologetic "'Night, Mrs. Hudson."
Sherlock dropped supine on the tabletop again, storming on, "You don't see it yet, but this means that Moriarty holds sway far higher up than I feared."
"Yeah, I don't see it yet," John admitted.
Sherlock sighed, and launched the explanation. "If Moriarty doesn't feel it's necessary to take advantage of a senior officer of the Secret Service's fall from power, then he must be so soundly entrenched in the system already that Mycroft is nothing but an ant to him. The implications are dire."
"Shit…" John said, almost appreciatively. His mind was racing to link together the pieces of the puzzle that Sherlock had fit together for himself ages ago. "Hang on, please tell me that Mycroft is on board with you ruining his career."
Sherlock raised a hand to make a dismissive swish through the air before letting his arm hang limp off the table. "Never fear, John. Mycroft is working on his tan in sunny Saudi Arabia with what's-his-name, whoever the new Crown Prince is."
"I wish you'd tell me when things are staged. It would save me a lot of confusion." The instant the words left his mouth, John recognized that he was practically speaking a foreign language to Sherlock. Everything would have been as clear as a bell to him. "Or just never mind," he said. Might as well resign oneself now.
"Mycroft's impending trial is the least of our concerns," Sherlock continued. His fingers found his box of nicotine patches lying on the floor. "Our concern is that we are waging a war against a shadow enemy. I don't know who he is," Slap— he rolled up a sleeve and stuck a patch on his arm, "where he is," slap, "what he's doing," slap, "or who his people are." With that, he had run out of patches, and so he threw the empty box against the wall instead.
"Take it easy, Sherlock," John placated. "It's—"
"Spare me your platitudes," he interrupted sardonically. "It is not alright, and I will not 'take it easy' until I find something. Anything! Anything at all! Something must have escaped my attention."
Alright then. John stood up creakily. It had been a long day, and he was ready for bed. "As always, Sherlock," he said casually, "It's up to me to translate what the casual observer hears as insults into the language of love and affection that I'm sure you actually mean. I'm calling it a night."
Sherlock answered wearily, "Yes, yes, you know. If I didn't love you so much, I would never be in this state. Don't wait up for me."
John nearly fell over from shock. He knew that Sherlock loved him, and he knew that he knew, and he knew that he knew that he knew, etc, but he also had to accept that certain feelings weren't easily expressible for Sherlock. When they did surface, the moment was normally so small and precious that John had to capture it gently and savor it for months. Or sometimes, it was so big and magnificent that his heart felt as if it were blooming from joy.
This moment was of the latter kind. John paused and just looked for a second at the bizarre, infuriating, impossibly beautiful genius that lay despondent on the coffee table like a deflated balloon.
"I love you too," he said finally.
Sherlock didn't open his eyes. "Go to bed, John. You're distracting me." But the corners of his mouth were drawing upwards into a tiny smile.
Fin