I have no idea where this is going and i find that very exiting!
please read and review!
A dead man's hands look no different from a living man's. The fingers curl inward, cupping softly onto air, fingertips touching, nails manicured, palm creased and all that ashen shade of pallor, like the hands of a marble statue. The tendons fasten to the phalanges like ropes around pulleys and the skin stretches tight enough that, on a thin man, it doesn't sag, or lose the form of life. An engineered bundle of tiny bones and white threads, stitching knuckles to palm, to carpus, to phalanges. A perfect machine, so elegantly balanced that even after death, the chords in the wrist and the palms and the forearms, will still pull the fingers inward, so very like a living thing, to wrap around the world, to touch.
The feet will lose their weight bearing architecture, the stomach slumps, or bloats, the thighs bow under gravity's cruel weight on flaccid meat, the genitals shrivel and the features lose all expression, eyes glazed to a dry finish like eggshells, skin, hanging down in folded ridges, lips pulled flat against teeth.
Every part of him dies, every cell, deprived of oxygen, will toxify and self destruct. Every organ will cease to perform its required function. Every muscle will fall slack, everything changes, except for the hands, which just - stop - moving.
John Watson held a dead man's hand between his own. Knees touching braced for better leverage in the space between the coffee table and the couch. He couldn't help but study the lines in his palm, couldn't ignore the weight of utter confusion which those shifting sinews inspired. The soft white skin was pocked with old acid burns and new dirt.
Sherlock would have known exactly where it came from – his brain supplied before his eyes could catch up, he looked up at his old friend's pained expression, still not ready to believe the evidence of his senses.
"It's not broken. It's just dislocated." John carefully tested Sherlock's wrist, articulating the delicate carpal bones, testing the workings of his anatomy with trained hands.
"It feels broken!" Sherlock threw his head back into the couch cushions, the tendons in his neck stiff with discomfort, his bare chest rose and fell under the neat white dressing put in place by his doctor.
"If it was broken you would be screaming with me holding it like this."
"I have very high pain toler-AH!" Sherlock kicked out one foot into the leg of the coffee table, the shift in pressure came out of nowhere.
"No, you don't" The doctor's able hands wrapped around Sherlock's wrist, bracing his weight against the edge of the couch and pulling back until he felt the sluggish crunch of bones sliding back into place.
"Bloody fu-" Sherlock hissed in through his teeth. "No count down or anything?"
"It's easier if you don't know it's coming," John carefully pressed his friend's limb between his knees to keep the bones in place while he prepared a splint and a long tan bandage. "Of course it's also easier if I had a local and an x ray." Sherlock let his fingers fall against the inside of John's wrist as he masterfully bound the limb.
Sixty eight beats per minute, eyes slightly dilated, but then it's dark. He's enjoying this.
"You're being intentionally cruel." Sherlock observed, knitting his brow.
"I can't imagine why." He looked Sherlock dead in the eye and there was no spark of warmth in his aspect.
Sherlock's shoulders drew inward, his whole body moving imperceptibly to protect the freshly bandaged wrist. He tried to speak but the words wouldn't join together into a sentence. There was something he was forgetting, missing, something he just, couldn't quite…
"Your shirt's all ruined," Mary announced, appearing at the bottom of the stairs. "I thought you could wear one of John's." She held out one of four grey RAMC shirts which Sherlock remembered fondly. John looked up at her and the lines melted from his face at the sight of her.
"And I thought this would work as a sling." She held up a flowery scarf which might have once belonged to Mrs. Hudson.
"You don't have one?" Sherlock asked, genuinely surprised.
"No, because normal people don't regularly have to set bones in their living room, they actually have this special place you can go, where someone else, does it for you." He moved his hands in sarcastic little circles.
Sherlock looked fixedly at a spot of light on the brass detailing of the coffee table, "My Brother..." he and Mycroft had fought, over this, over John, they had fought over Mycroft's chilling calculation and the long slow soak of loneliness that was turning Sherlock back into a defective, recalcitrant teenager.
"You should just come by the hospital next time."
"I will." Sherlock's voice was mechanical; he fought desperately to keep the twitch of emotion out of his cheek. Only slightly aware of Mary's weight depressing the cushion beside him, he stared and stared at that point of light on the little piece of brass on the corner of the table, a foot to the left of John.
"You can sleep on the couch tonight." Mary smiled, looking to her husband to inform him that this was nonnegotiable. John caught Sherlock's eyes as they flickered to the dark door of his old bedroom.
"Well we didn't bloody keep your bed." John said, standing up and stretching. He watched coolly as Sherlock struggled into the oversized t-shirt.
"It's my office," Mary informed Sherlock, guiding the fabric over his injured arm. "John calls it the laboratory; unfortunately you can't see Saturn from the window right now so I had to take the telescope out here."
"I… am going to bed." John sighed, frowning down at Sherlock with an unreadable expression, "Coming?" he smiled at his wife.
"I'll be a minute, just a few things I have to finish." John sighed and turned towards the stairs.
"John…" Sherlock said finally, breaking his silence.
"What?" he demanded, folding his arms aggressively, "what do you want?"
"Nothing."
John slapped the door jamb with one open hand. "Nothing? Nothing! No apologies, no thanks, no warning, you just break into MY home at three in the fucking morning. Terrify my wife, my family. Call me off work. I have another shift in ten hours and if I don't sleep people could die. But you wouldn't fucking care about them. You don't have friends; you don't have any idea what it's like to see someone you care about take their own life while they make you watch! Empathy, Sherlock, can't you even pretend to care?" silence, "And… and when you appear out of thin air, alive, you can't even summon the enthusiasm for an apology. You dragged me through hell. I mourned you! Do you even comprehend that?"
The spot of light on the table really was very pretty, polished and new and yellow in the artificial florescence. John's anger rushed over Sherlock and he could do nothing but stare. There was a mark from a rubber boot heel, two thousand four, Nike, four feet from the wall. There was a stain of what looked like wine on the carpet, ninety eight, merlot, it was new but the dark orange patch of yellow beside it was his, two thousand ten, iodine. John's scrubs were dirty around the cuffs from walking in the wet. Sherlock's ears were ringing, his throat seemed to have closed off the air from his vocal chords and he couldn't say anything.
"Whatever," Sherlock heard the huff of exasperation, saw the wide spreading hands, and he heard feet on stairs and a door slamming above him.
He sat there, completely still, feeling. "That wasn't very good." Mary cringed, her sudden protectiveness was nice, if unasked for.
Sherlock managed a weak smile, "I saved his life." He breathed through the tight fingers of his one good hand. Not sure whether to welcome the soft, comforting touch of the woman's fingers up and down his back.
She leaned over to catch Sherlock's eye, when they focused on her they saw everything, she felt dissected and in some otherworldly way she understood his confusion, "You wanna go smoke weed about it?"