Hi everyone! Interest in this story seems to have shot through the roof and I want to thank you all for reading, especially WaffleNinja and dependsonthesituation! There's a special surprise for you all at the bottom :D
As far as the wolf could tell, Sherlock hadn't left Watson's room in 24 hours. He heard scuffling and talking from the door, but couldn't make out the words or movements. He didn't want to go into his wolf form, not at all. He needed to be human, truly human right now. He wouldn't be able to understand Sherlock otherwise. He wondered if he should figure out the telephone and call Molly or Greg.
But he didn't. For the first time, John was standing upstairs outside Watson's door. He was holding tea and a new batch of dumplings.
"Sherlock?" His voice sounded small, even in his own ears. Louder, John. "Sherlock?"
He rested his head against the door, closing eyes, breathing in, hoping to catch a whiff of scent.
"Sherlock, I need to know you're alive in there."
Rough and whisper-soft, an answer, "Is that all you care about? That my body remains functioning? That I am maintained as per your contract."
Adrenaline spiked up John's spine, eyes flying open. Sherlock had growled, snarled that last sentence. Was he...? Was Sherlock always going to be like he was at a crime scene now? Dominant? Was that was John needed him to do? Was he finally, angrily, out of mourning?
Something seemed to break inside him.
John had no idea what the correct response was to Sherlock's statement so he said, "Sherlock, I brought you tea and dumplings."
"I don't care about tea and dumplings!" Sherlock (finally) bellowed, swinging open the door and smacking John in the face, making drink and food drop, their contents and holders spill and slosh and shatter. "Jesus, fuck-you absolute luna-"
Sherlock punched John in the face.
"I'm so tired-" Sherlock was hitting him, pummeling him, pounding his fists against his ribs, beating out his anger. John braced his muscles and let him. Something inside him, inside the wolf, broke more with every blow. "Of being sad. Of discovering over and over that you aren't who I thought. Of you playing human and completely missing everything, everything important. Of being maintained like some, some domesticated animal." Tears were leaking out of Sherlock's eyes. "And, and you fucking looking like him, pretending to be him the entire time! I thought today, of all days, you would see, he would come back!"Sherlock folded in on himself, clutching his head, pulling at his curls. He croaked, "Just let me die already."
"I-" John began.
Sherlock cut him off: "No, don't say it. Don't you dare say you can't. Why is-" Sherlock exploded, punching John in the gut. "it so important-" Punch. "that I live?" Sherlock socked John in the jaw, hard, making the wolf lose his balance and fall down the stairs.
The world ran by in a blur.
His head smacked the stairs, making stars appear as he rushed downward, tumbled and bumped and slid and twisted until he was gaping like a fish at the ceiling, only able to stare blankly and process the thought hell hath no fury.
Then Sherlock was looming into his field of vision. Stunned, he could do nothing as Sherlock placed hands on either side of his head and leaned down and whispered into the wolf's ear, "Give him back."
"I love you."
Sherlock startled, even more shocked than when he was standing at Matthew's dead feet. His grey eyes rounded and his nostrils flared. He closed his eyes and shook his head once.
"How can you love? You're a monster."
"I love you from the stories. I love you from what I've experienced myself. I love you when you are Broken. I love you when you are Whole."
"Stop. Stop this!" Sherlock's face disappeared from John's vision, but John felt some part of him touching his (probably broken) ribs. "Don't say that in his voice, using his tongue."
John sucked in a breath, all at once registering the pain of his body, the bruises on his chest and ribs, his left eye swelling, the blood trickling from his lip, how it would take some concentration and managing to move. Something was going, releasing, unraveling. But he continued, rasped, "I could tell you in my own language, but you don't seem to understand it." John tried to frown, searching for non-Watson words, but still Sherlock-understandable. "I would always choose you as a mate over anybody else."
"A mate. Is that some kind of fuckable plaything-"
"As a husband, you dolt," John thought it was funny but it currently hurt too much to chuckle. His breath was coming in wheezes now. He thought about Molly and Greg and had a flash of inspiration. "We should talk more. Maybe not with me bleeding into the carpet, but-I need better ways to show affection." The ceiling was getting farther away and darker for some reason. His eyelids were refusing to open and insistently started to close. "I was studying Molly and Greg so I could better tell you, be a better partner-husband-mate-caretaker." He had to transform soon; he was dying. "You're important to me. And him."
Then it was dark and soundless inside himself: there was nothing. He needed to transform: John was shutting down. He thought about fur and warmth and laying his head on Sherlock's lap and getting scratched behind the ears and how Sherlock's leather gloves snagged and how the cinnamon lady had smelled and Matthew tasted (shudder), getting his fur brushed out, observing the Lestrades, and curling against Sherlock on floor, and not biting Mycroft, and snuggling together on the sofa, and drowning out London noises and the moor.
He thought about how, really, even in the beginning, he only wanted peace. Now he wanted peace with Sherlock.
IiIiIiIiIiI
In a very odd repetition and reversal of history, John awoke as a clothed human with Sherlock shouting over him in the flat.
"Wake up, you wolf bastard. I know you can hear me!"
John, sore and exhausted, cracked an eye open. He lifted a heavy arm to rub his face. "What happened?"
Sherlock zoomed into his vision, small flashlight in hand, lifting John's eyelids to shine it in. "Despite being unconscious, you managed to transform into a wolf and then back into a human. You've not had a concussion."
"Yeah, thanks for that," John said, swatting the flashlight away. Gingerly, he sat up, inadvertently getting pottery mug chinks in his palm. He swore. "You fucking punched me down the stairs." He made general swatting motions in Sherlock direction until the detective backed off. Shaking his head back and forth, John ran his already injured hands through his hair to comb out more chinks. He stood to go the kitchen.
He stuck his head under the sink to retrieve their First Aid kit. He pulled out tweezers and began picking his hands clean, dumping the shards in the sink. Keep Sherlock talking. See what he was thinking now.
"Do you have mug chinks in you?" John said. "Let me see your palms."
Sherlock obediently let John examine his palms. John squinted at them and had to go turn on more lights in order to see the slivers. "God, I'm getting old. How long was I out?"
"About a half hour."
John whistled (ability acquired after saw Lisa from the 5th Avenue television show do it). "Still getting old. But I've also never been that injured as a human before."
"Today is the most we've talked in one sitting without kissing since I met you."
John stilled. It was true. It was also true that Sherlock had said "since I met you," not making reference to Watson. Keep up the banter.
"Well, before I passed out I said we should talk more." He looked up from picked slices of a ruined mug from Sherlock's right palm. "This is me talking."
Sherlock cocked his head and squinted at him. "You're speaking very similarly to him."
"It's from him I know how to speak: some of its got to bleed through." John went back to picking splinters. When he finished, he said, "Go wash your hands with hot water and soap."
While Sherlock washed his hands, John finished picking out his own splinters, having to dig a bit. He didn't mind: he'd gotten the annoying small ones out before stopping for Sherlock. He rolled up his sleeves and Sherlock stepped back to let him wash. They dried their hands on the same white dishtowel, John leaving a little blood.
John hadn't really gotten at what Sherlock was thinking now. There had to something, some hint to get out what was bugging him-
It was then John realized.
He didn't need to be here.
(the anger had cauterized his heart).
John swallowed. The lack of wolf instinct made him dizzy.
But now he wanted-he'd told Sherlock he loved him-the moor wasn't as appealing as 221b. Perhaps there was something more he could do, somehow Sherlock was only temporarily healed. He could relapse and John needed to be around. John swallowed again and his voiced quavered out: "What happens now? To me? To us?"
Sherlock leaned against the counter across from John, hands resting on the tiles. He looked away, head against the microwave. John could see the decision play out in his head, the new steely glint in his eye, the setting of his jaw. He shook a little, but he was firm, determined.
"John Watson will always be very important to me. He greatly affected my life, emotions, and work. But you are not him, rather a shadow in his body. I need to accept John Watson is dead, that I will never speak or hear or listen to him again. You are here, a person-wolf hybrid that I am just beginning to know. It would help if you spoke to me more, became more involved in my life. Not-" Here Sherlock finally looked, almost glared past him. "so I can hold on to the vestiges of John Watson that are in you, as I have done in the past. I confess that I had my hopes that Watson was within you, waiting to break out perhaps. But no. There was no trigger I could pull to make him emerge. The Peters case was my final attempt.
"You are like him, in some ways, a brother-soul almost." Sherlock's knuckles turned white against the counter, but he stopped shaking. "But you are not him. Greater involvement in my life, beyond the walls of 221b, will help me distinguish you two, see how you are different. I wish you would speak with me more, tell me your opinions, what you do all day besides cook, about the moor and your past. If it is amendable to you, we should continue going on cases together.
"You must work at controlling yourself. I do not care for many people, but please tell the appropriate wolf portions of yourself whatever you need to stop killing others. You can't attack at random. It is morally, socially, and politically understandable if someone is killed in protection of someone else viewed as morally redeemable, but in this day and age outright killing is considered a last resort, only used when every other measure to achieve the goal has failed. I do not want to needlessly have to explain away a dead body that somebody looking like John Watson put there. Is that all to your liking?"
These were Sherlock's rules of play. If John wanted to continue in Sherlock's more healed life, John had to do these things. John said, "That's all fine. In return, I want you to see Greg, Molly, and their children more."
Surprise was once again on Sherlock's face and he covered the expression with a hand, pinching the brow of his nose. "Your habit of answering questions with seeming non sequiturs is rather alarming. Explain please."
John was telling him everything now: might as well include this. "You were mates with them weren't you? You were..." John didn't know the wolf-equivalent. "You were partners? With them both? The way you were acting around them, the way they touched you..."
John trailed off because Sherlock had removed his hand and was staring at him wide-eyed. He recovered and asked, "How did you deduce that?"
"I just...felt it was so. They were so different from the way Watson described them in the stories."
"I-it was just Molly at first." Sherlock looked away from John. "It was an accident. I couldn't handle Watson being gone. I wanted to forget. She was there and...willing to help."
"Orgasms do make your brain shut up for a few minutes."
"It wasn't just that!" Sherlock snapped. "She-I care for her. And Greg. And Greg was obviously the better man for her to marry. So I stepped out."
John thought about how he never wanted to give up Sherlock, even when he'd thought about sex with others. They were always in addition. "That must have been a great sacrifice."
"I am capable of being unselfish. Though really, Moriarty was on the rise then and it was better for me to have as little connections as possible. I told her I didn't want to have sex anymore, that I was breaking up with her, and I arranged for Greg to pick up the pieces. I had been with him, too, but just the three times, when I was at my most desperate. When he was trying to wrestle away drugs from me." Sherlock laughed bitterly, but then continued. "Molly and Greg had been meeting for coffee regularly ever since Mrs. Hudson forced me to have that dreadful Christmas party and my actions just brought them closer. She knows the whole story now."
John didn't know what to say. Sherlock went on, "After that, I threw myself in cases, building up my reputation at the Yard, egging Moriarty into a greater Game. I visited them and did what I could to encourage their family. I am...fond of their children." (John knew he meant he loves them as his own).
Silence.
John waited. Sherlock looked at the floor, contemplating. "Do you know why I didn't go after you? Why I didn't try again at the moor?"
John shook his head.
"Mycroft collected me almost as soon as you'd left. He saw what you did and forbade me from going within twenty miles of Dartmoor. I was too weak to protest. By the time I was back in London, the emptiness just swallowed me up. I couldn't-Bitterness is a paralytic."
John tugged at one of Sherlock's hands. Sherlock let go of the counter and laced their fingers together. "John, I-"
"Shh," John said. "It's alright." He was looking at their joined hands, wanting to stay that way forever.
"Tell me about yourself," Sherlock said. "I want to know."
John smiled. It was alright. Sherlock wanted him. For now: "You need food first. I'll tell you while you eat...And answer any questions."
Right-o! Here's the prize. A lot of people seem interested in puzzling out John/the wolf, as well as Molly/Greg/Sherlock. The next chapter is going to have room for John answering questions and asking Sherlock questions and this is your chance to participate. What do YOU want to ask John? What do you want John to ask Sherlock? PM me or Review with your questions: they can be silly and mundane like what's John's favorite recipe, or more complicated like what did Sherlock do when the Lestrade Twins were born.
As long as the questions aren't too crude, I'll fit them in the story. The deadline for questions is Thursday, January 24th at 9pm PST.
If you'd rather not have a Q&A (that's fine if you don't!) and/or I don't get any questions, the story will move on as usual. In the meanwhile, happy Friday everyone!
