Notes: I wrote this before S2 so there are some things that don't match up exactly with current canon, mainly the 'explosion' at the pool which ultimately didn't happen. I've decided to leave it alone and just consider this AU from this point.

As always, much love to my two wonderful Brit-pickers to fix this up for me. Haylebopp Brit-picked the first 8 chapters and Evildrem the rest, though both were wonderfully helpful throughout. All mistakes and issues are of course my own fault.

Disclaimer: I don't own Sherlock in any incarnation and I'm not making money off of this. My original characters are my own though I'm not making any money off of them either. Written purely for entertainment value. Please enjoy :)

Matchmaker, Matchmaker

Interlude 2c

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When John woke again, someone was holding his left hand. It was a light embrace, too light for his sister, too warm, too dry, fingers thin and calloused at the pads. John opened his eyes. The blinds were closed, but pinstripe lines of sunlight filtered through. Sherlock had pulled the two visitor's chairs so that they rested parallel to the bed, opposite each other. Sherlock faced John, his long legs resting on the other chair so that his calves threaded through the narrow gap between the seat back and the seat cushion. His coat hung over the back of the chair on which he sat. On his lap rested a stack of folders. He had the uppermost open, flipping with his index finger through the pages.

Though John hadn't moved and Sherlock's gaze remained focused on his work, by some cue John assumed would become obvious if he had his flatmate walk him through the convoluted explanation, Sherlock said, "You're awake."

"You're holding my hand."

"It's supposed to be comforting." Sherlock looked up. "Are you comforted?"

"Uhhh...yes, quite," John said. Generally when Sherlock faked an emotion, he wasn't nearly so awkward about it, so John knew the gesture was genuine. "Thank you."

"That's good then." Sherlock nodded.

John expected Sherlock to remove his hand at this point; he wasn't much on touching or displays that indicated emotion, but Sherlock was apparently comfortable enough to remain as he was, and John was warmed enough by the act of caring not to threaten it by forcing too much attention. Instead, he asked, "What time is it? When did you get in?"

"I stayed the night."

"Really?" John bit off the second half that exclamation, 'but weren't you bored to death?'

After Moriarty's pool and bomb stunt, Sherlock had been the one who sustained more critical injuries, including some rather nasty second degree burns across his left side and lower back. John had sat with Sherlock, bringing a borrowed stack of recent pathology journals from Molly and cold cases from Lestrade in a bid to keep Sherlock from driving himself and the hospital staff insane until he healed enough to be discharged. John had never expected Sherlock to reciprocate, and truthfully prior to this moment would have assumed any attempt would press Sherlock's attention span beyond breaking. Had he really sat at John's bedside all night, holding his hand? It strained credulity.

"Staying was a practical decision," Sherlock said. "Moriarty is not my only enemy, and your current medical condition puts you in a weakened state. Not that I'm disparaging your fighting abilities which are impressive."

John's face heated. Without the training, the combat experience, even if he was able to keep up with his flatmate, John would certainly be of no use to Sherlock. But John worried when his training overthrew his mind. There was something about it that made him, in those moments, not quite human, and one day it might lead him to do something unforgivable. John rubbed his forehead and said, "Victor caught me by surprise."

"Yes, well, he will have less time to be concerned with harassing you when Gloria Scott Financial divests him of all of his worldly possessions."

"Oh God, Sherlock, cut the man some slack! Victor had the misfortune to fall for you in University, and while he was too stupid to recognize his crush wasn't reciprocated for close to ten years, I think he's suffered enough."

Sherlock looked down at the file on his lap, his right thumb poised at the corner of one of the papers as though preparing to flip the page. "Is what you said true?"

"That he fell for you?" John laughed. "Like a sack of rocks."

"That I am incapable of romantic love." Sherlock's tone was even, and he had a light tilt to his head as though expressing only a mild curiosity, but the very stillness of it all made John aware that he had somehow stumbled onto very fragile ground.

Of course Sherlock had overheard at least some of John's little discussion with Victor. A man who regularly hacked John's laptop and email (John didn't have conclusive evidence of the latter, but it was a fair assumption) would have no qualms about eavesdropping. And if there was one thing that Sherlock hated, besides being wrong, it was to be found somehow lacking.

Sherlock said, "Your hesitance in responding indicates you are attempting to phrase things in a manner that you assume will spare my emotions. I assure you it's unnecessary."

Sherlock denied the existence of his emotions when he found them troublesome, so John had to choose his words very, very carefully. "Sherlock, you're a brilliant, incredibly good looking, and in your own," at points terrifying, "way a caring man."

"None of this is answering my question."

"Have you ever had any interest in pursuing a romantic entanglement?"

"I'm married to my work."

"Exactly." John squeezed his flatmate's hand. "I wouldn't presume to tell anyone what you are actually capable of. Your deductions alone continually amaze me."

"Thank you," Sherlock said, but his body remained rigidly in place.

"I mean it. But with your current focus on your work, it is difficult to imagine you plying some handsome bloke with flowers and chocolates. I mean, outside of a case." Hell, even Victor had been an experiment. Or at least phrased as such. "It's fine."

"Perhaps."

Someone knocked on the wall next to John's open door. "Dr. Watson?"

"Yes?"

"Good, you're awake. I'm Carl. I'll be your day nurse." Carl bustled in, a tall blond with full lips and a nose a touch too wide. He walked to the whiteboard and erased Mary's name, writing in his own. "Let's see about getting you some breakfast, and we're going to have to check your pressure and do a peak flow test for your breathing." He pointed to the tube in the left pocket of his tunic. "Pam told me your boyfriend was rather insistent that we let you sleep."

"Boyfriend?" Again? John glanced at Sherlock. "We're just flatmates."

"My mistake," Carl said in a bland tone. His gaze flitted to Sherlock and John's clasped hands and the corners of his mouth twitched.

Sherlock stood. He walked to Carl and faced him. He looked down at the man's shoes and then proceeded to do a slow visual sweep upwards. Then Sherlock walked in a slow circle around Carl, studying him with the same focused attention usually reserved for the dead.

"Are you okay?" Carl asked, wiping his palms on his trousers.

"Give me your hand." Sherlock said.

John's first inclination was to put the sheet over his head and pretend that his flatmate wasn't doing his best to frighten the hell out of his day nurse, but if Sherlock had noticed something suspect (and if anyone would, it would be Sherlock) then it would be better to let him gather information and then wait for his conclusions on the subject. "Do you mind, Carl?" John asked. "I know Sherlock can be a bit odd."

Carl shrugged and held out his hand.

Sherlock squinted at the fingernails. "Other side," he said. and after observing the palm took a step back.

"So I passed," Carl said with a weak chuckle.

"Sherlock?"

"As far as I am able to determine, he is what he appears," Sherlock said.

That was unusually succinct for Sherlock. He hadn't even touched on Carl's family life or what he'd had for breakfast, let alone reveal any 'obvious' secrets or misdeeds that would send the nurse either fleeing the hospital or trying to foist John off on some unlucky subordinate. For Sherlock, it was a remarkable display of self discipline, and John was tempted to thank him, but figuring out the best way to thank his flatmate for not being an ass without being insulting was a bit more than his tired brain could handle.

Carl said, "I'd say something about people never being what they appear, but I'm afraid that might get me a strip search."

"As a rule you can deduce little more about a person if they are naked rather than clothed." Sherlock turned on his heel and walked back to John's bed.

"Well, then," Carl said, walking to the foot of John's bed and taking the chart. "So, Dr. Watson, how do you feel about eggs and sausage?"

John felt hospital sausage could be listed as a form of torture. "Is there a vegetarian option?"

"Oh, you're vegetarian?" Carl pulled a pen from his trouser pocket. "They didn't list it on your chart."

"John's vegetarian," Sherlock said, "in hospitals, at weddings, and on aeroplanes."

"Sherlock!" Any assumptions about his flatmate not being an ass were clearly preemptive.

"It's okay," Carl said with a wink. "We'll have them double up on the eggs and potatoes and nobody has to know." He scribbled something into John's chart and placed it back in the bin, then walked to John's side, opposite of where Sherlock had camped, and held out the tube. "Take a deep breath and blow out."

John put the mouthpiece between his lips and did the full ten iterations for the test. By the end, he was winded and his chest hurt. "Pain's about a six out of ten," he said.

"That's a little lower than the norm," Carl said. "It'll take a day or two for the inflammation to go down completely, so I'd save the sprinting and weightlifting for next week."

That meant no chance of a case for at least two days. A phantom stab ran through John's leg and he smothered a wince.

"John?" Sherlock rested his fingertips on the back of John's hand.

"I'm fine."

As if in response to John's thoughts, Sherlock's coat pocket vibrated.

"Looking good," Carl said. "Breakfast should be up in about a half hour, give or take. If you need anything, just tap the button. I'll be in and out." He put the breathing tube in his pocket and added, "And there's no ban on using your mobile in the patient rooms, just in case you were wondering."

"Thank you," John said, knowing full well his flatmate wouldn't.

Carl gave a wave that vaguely mirrored a salute and left. Like the night nurse, he'd left the curtain open, and the neighbouring room was unoccupied. John had a feeling this had less to do with a lack of patients and more with whatever intimidation techniques Sherlock had practiced on the night staff. On the bright side, Sherlock's antics had secured John what most would consider impossible, a night of uninterrupted rest in a hospital.

"So Moriarty's alive?" It was a possibility as the police hadn't found a body, though a remote one. Unlike Sherlock, who John had tackled into the pool, Moriarty should have born the full brunt of the explosion.

"Well, I think so." Sherlock averted his gaze, first down to his lap, then out the window. "Maybe. I don't know."

No chain of reasoning? No theories about how Moriarty might have escaped? John was grateful Sherlock wasn't looking because it gave him time to gather his jaw up up from between his collarbones.

"You need more data?" John ventured.

"I suppose." Sherlock's coat vibrated again.

"Aren't you going to get that?" John asked.

"It's Lestrade."

On the wall opposite the foot of John's bed hung a clock. It read 7:45. "This early? It has to be a murder."

"I can't help him."

"You should at least look at the text before you decide it's too boring."

"No, I mean, I can't. Not with things as they are."

Was Sherlock referring to John? God no. The only thing more frightening than a bored Sherlock taking up residence at John's bedside was a bored Sherlock rejecting a case to take up residence at John's bedside out of (an admittedly well placed) sense of guilt. John didn't think the hospital staff could take it, and he certainly couldn't. "If somebody's been murdered, The Yard needs you more than I do."

"Not if my methods are in question."

"What?"

"Until recently, I've assumed my average 4-5% rate of error was due to an inability for even the most rigorous methodology to compensate fully for the effects of entropy, but in regards to my attempting to assure your romantic happiness, it's become apparant that there are critical faults in my reasoning. Until I am assured that I have rectified these errors or at least determined how to compensate for them, I am of no use as a Consulting Detective."

"Are you saying that because you've set me up on two bad dates that you can no longer solve murders? Because that's ridiculous."

"I'm saying that I don't know!" Sherlock squeezed his hands into fists. "I've been acquainted with Victor since University, and yet I had no understanding of his psychosis. The evidence was there. I did not see it. What else have I overlooked?" When Sherlock looked up again, his face had the rigid fragility of an eggshell.

Sure, Sherlock's arrogance, his total disregard for that which did not benefit his self-appointed mission, they could be infuriating, but they also defined him. John would happily tolerate a dozen heads in the refrigerator or a hundred eyeballs in the sink rather than have his friend become a shadow of himself. "How often did you actually communicate with Victor?" Asking without really knowing the answer was a risk, but John couldn't leave his flatmate lost like this.

"Since he met Nathan, perhaps once or twice yearly via telephone. And occasional texts."

John breathed an internal sigh of relief. He'd been hoping since he'd never heard of Victor prior to this dating mess that his and Sherlock's current relationship had been at best tangential. John said, "So, not often."

"How does this matter?"

"In that time, had you turned your active attention to deducing Victor's state of mind?"

"Not since our...time together at his father's estate."

"Then that settles it. I'm sure if you'd turned your full skills of deduction onto Victor, you would have easily discovered his problem." Probably. Maybe not, but John had absolute confidence that if his flatmate was standing over Victor's corpse, he'd have no problems deducing the important matters like the identity of the killer, and John focused on that certainty as he spoke.

"And Dr. Olvistar?"

"You're making a general argument using a sample size of two. If there's a flaw in your reasoning, it's discounting years of investigative work in favour of that."

"You're suggesting I increase my pool of data? But John, with what Victor did to you, I can't in good conscience allow you to take that risk."

"Victor wasn't trying to kill me. He was just trying to give me the shits."

"John." The breathless hope in Sherlock's eyes was almost painful. "You'd do this for me? Again?"

John wiped his palm over his forehead, trying to clear the headache he knew would soon be forming. Had he just agreed to have Sherlock set him up on another date? Had he just asked for it?

Sherlock jumped to his feet. Hands clasped behind his back, he started to pace. "Next time, I promise, I will get it right. You will be so happy! It will be perfect."

Heaven help Sherlock if and when it didn't turn out so well. "Finding love is a cumulative process," John said. "Why don't you go solve Lestrade's murder first?"

"Isn't that ill-advised, considering I haven't fully assessed my methodology?"

"Why don't you just go and present Lestrade with your preliminary deductions. He can do his own investigation from there."

"John, you really are brilliant!" Sherlock ran to the chair and fished in his coat pocket for his Blackberry. He opened it, tapped at the keyboard with his thumbs, nodded twice, grimaced once and then said. "Obvious it wasn't a random housebreaking. I mean, well, it seems obvious."

"Just present what you see to Lestrade as a preliminary theory. And try not to call him an idiot when you do it, considering."

"Lestrade is the least stupid of the lot." Sherlock put on his coat. "I'll be back."

"And no food for the next date. And nobody you've ever had sex with."

"I promise." Sherlock took off at a near run, leaving the pile of files on the chair. John leaned back on his pillow and closed his eyes. If he survived the next date, he might live long enough for Lestrade to thank him. John didn't acknowledge how empty the room had become in Sherlock's absence.