Author note: Thanks again for all the lovely reviews. I love hearing from ya'll. This fic is almost done. I have one more chapter left to write, and you have only three left to read (after this one). Enjoy! This is the chapter that most fits into the comfort part of hurt/comfort. Not intended to be slash, but you can if you want.
Disclaimer: I don't own Sherlock.
"Sherlock, what in the name of all that's holy is going on over there?"
Mycroft's voice grated on Sherlock's ears. He knew the fear and madness in Mycroft's words were echoing in his own thoughts. But this was Mycroft, and Sherlock couldn't just let him get away with his concern.
"What do you mean, dear brother?" Sherlock drawled, then held his phone away from his ear as Mycroft began to swear at him, creatively and at length. When Mycroft was done, Sherlock replaced the phone on his ear.
"I just got the strangest email from your email address. It says Dear Sherlock, I think I'm high but that doesn't change the cat on your head. What is going on?" Mycroft said again.
"Nothing I can't control. Except..."
Mycroft waited, his breathing heavy even over the phone. John must have really worried Mycroft for him to show emotion like this. Sherlock was impressed, both with John and with his brother.
"Except?" Mycroft prompted when Sherlock didn't answer.
"Would you get Molly Hooper and send her over?"
"Why Miss Hooper?"
"She is a doctor, Mycroft," Sherlock said, as though it was obvious. It was obvious, wasn't it? Mycroft probably knew more about what John was doing than Sherlock did, thanks to the many cameras that were hidden around the flat. Mycroft would know why Molly Hooper was necessary.
For the second time that day.
Sherlock pressed end and turned his attention once again to his flatmate. John was making strange gargling noises, and he writhed on the floor. Sherlock knelt next to him long enough to replace the blood-soaked towels on John's feet.
He'd almost had a heart attack when he'd looked up from his computer to see John coming down the stairs, a knife in one hand and a huge volume of blood trailing behind him. More frightening was the look on John's face, a look that wasn't manic but eager-to-please. Even when Sherlock tackled John, took away the knife, and bound John using tie-downs, John kept looking at him for approval.
A knock sounded on the door.
"Come in, Molly," Sherlock said automatically. Then stood. It couldn't be Molly already. He had only just hung up with Mycroft.
It wasn't Molly. Instead, it was Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade, and he had a horrified look on his face. Sherlock stepped in front of John, but he couldn't shield the DI's view at this point.
"Sherlock, what have you done!"
Sherlock bristled. "Why does everyone keep assuming this is something I did?" Well, there might have been precedent, Sherlock admitted to himself. Still, this wasn't his fault.
Okay, the part where John was currently high and tied up on the floor was Sherlock's fault. After all, it was Sherlock who injected John with the heroin, and it was Sherlock who underestimated the hallucinations John was going to have and the damage he could do. It was even Sherlock who had tied John's hands in front of him.
Ridiculous. Irrelevant, Sherlock thought.
Lestrade tried to shove past him to get to John, but Sherlock prevented him.
"Are you mad?" Lestrade demanded. "John is bleeding and tied up in the middle of your living room. What have you done? Is this one of your bloody experiments?"
John arched his head up to look at Lestrade, and Sherlock grimaced at the joyful expression on John's face. It was unnatural, like a puppy eager to greet its master. Anyone seeing John would think he was nothing but a pet, like Moriarty had once accused John of being. Seeing John like this made Sherlock sick.
"Lestrade!" John said, his voice singing. "Did you bring us a case?"
Lestrade stopped trying to get past Sherlock at the tone of John's voice. The inspector looked at Sherlock, his eyebrows lifting his entire face. Sherlock nodded grimly.
"But surely John wouldn't—Not John—" Lestrade said, or tried to say.
"Not his fault," Sherlock said. My fault. I should have come after John. I should never have believed the texts. Guilt was an unfamiliar and uncomfortable feeling. Odd. All those years he had been shooting himself up, he'd never once felt guilty. He looked down at John, seeing the strangeness of John's eyes and the permanent furrow in John's brow that told Sherlock John was in pain, even if John himself didn't realize it.
He could see in Lestrade's sickened expression that this was bringing back memories. Sherlock idly rubbed his arm.
"He needs a hospital," Lestrade said.
"Molly Hooper is coming," Sherlock told him.
"Molly Hooper is coming?" John echoed from the floor. "No, that doesn't sound good. She only works on dead people." John giggled, then his eyes filled with horror. "Am I dead? Sherlock? Sherlock, am I dead?" His lower jaw began to tremble again, as though he was (once more) going to burst into tears.
Sherlock knelt down next to his flatmate, patting him awkwardly on the arm. "No, John, you're not dead. Molly's just coming to take care of your feet."
"What's wrong with his feet?" Lestrade said.
Before Sherlock could answer, Molly Hooper came rushing in without knocking. She looked flustered, and she was dressed up. Date, perhaps, or girl's night. Girl's night, definitely. No lipstick.
"Sherlock, what's happened to him this time?" she said.
"His feet got cut. Fix him," Sherlock said.
Molly went right to work, paying no attention to the fact that she was kneeling on blood-soaked carpet in her party dress. She raised an eyebrow when she got the towels off John's feet, but made no comment.
Admirable, Sherlock thought.
"While she works, Sherlock, you're going to tell me what happened to John," Lestrade said, dragging the detective into the kitchen.
"He left me," Sherlock started, sounding petulant even to himself. "Two weeks ago, he just left. Then I got texts every night saying he wasn't coming home. I thought . . . well . . ."
Lestrade nodded. "None of us would have been surprised if John had decided not to come home," he said, and his voice was surprisingly gentle.
"Then he came in this morning, and he was high as a kite and banged up. He'd been kidnapped, Lestrade, and I didn't even . . ." Sherlock had to stop. Now that he was telling someone else what had happened, it was beginning to sink in exactly how badly he'd failed his one and only friend. He was the world's first consulting detective. He was supposed to notice things like when his friend was kidnapped. Instead he'd sat in this living room, playing his violin while John was beaten and drugged and possibly nearly killed.
"Keep going, Sherlock. What happened?" Lestrade said.
"He escaped this morning, or they let him go. That's all, really?"
"Any idea who kidnapped him?"
"I haven't had time to think about it," Sherlock admitted, making a fist with both hands. John was taking priority over solving the case, a circumstance as galling as everything else.
Lestrade thought a moment, then frowned. "Hang on a mo. You said John was high this morning. Surely that would have worn off by now, but he's still up."
"Yes, well, he was having a difficult withdrawal," Sherlock said. Lestrade caught on immediately, to Sherlock's surprise.
"You gave him more. You gave him more drugs. You bloody idiot."
Before Sherlock could protest his innocence, a cry came from the living room. Then Molly appeared in the kitchen entryway.
"I need your help, Sherlock. He keeps trying to 'help' me fix him up," she said.
Sherlock hurried back into the living room to find that John was, indeed, holding a bottle of something and pouring it on his feet. Even with his hands bound, he was managing to cause himself pain.
"What should I do?" Sherlock asked quietly, uncomfortable. He didn't like being faced with the anguish he had caused in John.
"Just get him to lie still and keep his hands occupied," Molly said.
Sherlock obliged, sitting cross-legged on the floor next to John and guiding his friend down so he was laying on his back on the floor. John whimpered, his manic eyes searching for Sherlock's. Without thinking, Sherlock grabbed John's hand (or rather, hands, since they were bound together). To his surprise, this caused John to calm down. Interesting. This might be something to experiment with the next time John gets hurt.
John blinked twice, heavily, and tried to curl his fingers around Sherlock's. Molly went back to work on John's feet, but John no longer seemed interested. He kept his gaze on Sherlock's face.
"What happened to his feet?" Lestrade asked.
"Shut up, Lestrade," Sherlock said without looking away from John.
John was almost asleep when Molly announced she was done with everything but bandaging.
"Sherlock, I think you should take a look at this," she said.
Scooting so he still had John's hand in his own, Sherlock manoeuvred to see the bottom of John's feet. The cuts were stitched but still angry. There was a pattern to them, a pattern that took Sherlock a few minutes to figure out. When he did, he had to blink away the strange sensation of tears in his eyes.
John's left foot was cut in a pattern that spelled S-H-E-R. The right foot spelled L-O-C-K.
