Guess who's back! I'm so, so sorry for the unacceptably long hiatus - this semester has been kind of insane. I didn't get back into posting as soon as I finished my exams, either, because I wanted to get ahead with some of these chapters so that I don't vanish on you again. As of this point, I've written up to chapter 39, so you should expect no more disappearances for at least several weeks. And, here's my promise to you: I'm not leaving again until this fic has finished. I estimate at this point between 42 and 45 chapters. We're reaching the end, guys. It's coming.
Anyway, let me just say a quick thank you to my very excellent and very patient beta, Becca (Ao3's LlamaWithAPen), and, of course, thank you to all of you for your patiences. Hopefully you won't need to have that much patience again. (And, in my defence, I'm still faster than the writers of Sherlock.)
I hope those of you who celebrate it had a very Merry Christmas, and I hope you enjoy this!
Chapter Thirty-Six
John called Sarah as soon as he had the chance, to give her an explanation for his absence and to make sure that he did actually still have a job. He did take some time before calling, of course, to come up with an explanation that was more believable to a normal person than the impossible truth. Eventually, he decided that the best lies were the ones that were wrapped up in honesty. No one would believe that Sherlock was a vampire and he was a werewolf, but they might believe that Sherlock was a consulting detective and that John had been assisting him on a case.
It was easy enough to explain his story with this change in mind, therefore, because it meant that most of the details were fairly close to the truth. He said that they had gone after a suspect in a case, rather than a member of an organisation of supernatural hunters, but he could be truthful in the explanation that the suspect had pulled out a knife and overpowered him. It wasn't the most believable story – it was more believable than the truth, certainly, but it's not every day that someone calls in sick to work due to an injury obtained while working with a detective. However, with the medical certificate to back him up, and with the fact that John, over the past several months that he had been employed there, had (mostly) proven himself to be an honest and responsible employee, Sarah believed him. Or, at least, she accepted the explanation enough to not fire him on the spot, and she asked him to call her when he was available to work again.
After that phone call, however, there was not a lot else that John could do. Although the painkillers helped to take the edge off, and although his injury was not severe enough to really be debilitating, he didn't quite have the strength or the energy to go out, and his tiny bedsit did not offer many options for entertainment.
OoO
Sherlock came over the day after John returned home, which came as a surprise. He then asked John how he was feeling and offered to make tea, which came as an even bigger surprise. (John refused the offer under the assumption that a creature that only drank blood probably would not be able to make a good cuppa). Sherlock then proceeded to take John's laptop so that he could see if he could find any more clues regarding this Moriarty person and how they could find him, which was really no surprise at all.
John couldn't really help much, given that he did not have Sherlock's brain and he did not have the ability to engage in anything physically strenuous at that point in time. Even if he could, they were at a point where there was nothing to do but wait it out. Moriarty had not shown his face yet, and there was nothing that they could do to track him down until he had. Searching for him on databases yielded no results – the man clearly knew how to hide.
Technically speaking, it was John who came up with the idea of bringing Moriarty to them. After several hours of searching and finding nothing, Sherlock had slammed the laptop lid shut in a fit of frustration, and John had commented, absently, that they needed to find some way to make Moriarty show himself. The moment the suggestion was out, Sherlock's eyes lit up in a way that made John's stomach twist.
"What?" John asked.
"We know he's watching us," Sherlock replied, opening up the laptop again and tapping on the keyboard impatiently while he waited for it to start up. "He put a camera in your flat for that reason, so surely he would have wanted a way to keep track of us after we discovered it. It's probably safe to assume that he's watching us in the easiest way that this technological age allows."
"Which is...?"
"Watching our websites."
"Our websites?"
"Yes, my website, and your blog. You did set one up at your therapist's request, did you not?"
John thought about the few posts – if they could be called that – on his blog. Each was a matter of sentences long at best, put up there with the sole purpose of pleasing his therapist, without really containing anything of importance. "Well, yeah," he said, "but it's not like I've posted much."
Sherlock grinned, and he pushed the laptop in John's direction, standing so that John could take his seat. "Maybe you should start," he said. "You are, for all intents and purposes, my associate. Perhaps your audience would be interested in the details of our most recent case."
"You mean the case where we tracked a vampire hunter?"
Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Obviously, you're going to leave a few details out. Just expand on the story you told your employer. Perhaps if you mention that we discovered that someone by the name of Moriarty is associated with the organisation we have been investigating, it might draw his attention. It might just encourage him to make his next move."
John slid into the seat that Sherlock had been occupying moments ago. "Why don't you post it on your blog?" he asked.
"I hardly have time to do something like that," Sherlock replied. "And besides, I've never bothered writing extensive case notes. Doing so now would arouse suspicion."
"I've never written case notes."
"Yes, but for all they know, this is the first time you've had case notes to write. You're too new to this for it to be noted as unusual."
John sighed, but he logged into his blog as Sherlock asked, opening up a new post and staring at the screen. The cursor blinked in the textbook. "God," he said, "where do I even start?"
Sherlock stood, checking his phone before pocketing it again. "I'll go home and collect my laptop," he said, which did not help John work out how to start a post, "and then I can come back and see what else I can find."
John turned away from the laptop screen, looking over his shoulder. "You don't need to come back here, you know," he said quietly after a pause.
Sherlock stopped on his way to the door and frowned, glancing back over at John. "Wouldn't you prefer it if someone was present to make sure you're all right?"
John smiled wryly. "I've had worse injuries than this, I can handle it. You're going to get cabin fever if you stay here with me. You know you don't have to, right?"
"Of course I know that," Sherlock said quickly, and John shook his head.
"Really, I mean it. You don't need to do anything to make up for what happened, so if the reason you're planning on working in here is because you think you need to apologise or make sure that I'm okay or whatever, it's fine. You don't have to. Let's face it: I'm not going to be much help until my side heals anyway."
Sherlock was quiet for a moment, before he said, "I'd have more luck working on this at my flat. Are you sure..."
"I'm not going to tear my stitches out walking around my flat without supervision," John interrupted. "Trust me. You can go get some work done, and you can text me if you find anything."
Sherlock seemed to hesitate for a moment longer, but then he nodded his head. "I'll contact you if I find anything," he promised. "Are you..."
"You're hovering," John said, cutting him off again. "I'm fine. I'll just finish off this blog post."
Sherlock nodded once more. "Contact me if anything happens," he said, and then he turned and made his way out the door.
OoO
The next few days passed slowly, and for the most part uneventfully. John wrote up the blog post, as he told Sherlock he would. He took his time doing it, wanting to make it as accurate as possible (with the exception of a few minor details, of course). He wrote it out completely truthfully at first, and then went through when he edited it to change any word that suggested any sort of less-believable element to the story. He proofread it twice more before posting it, just to make sure he hadn't missed anything, and then he shut down his laptop and turned in for an early night.
The following morning, there were three missed calls on his phone. Two were from Harry, each with a voicemail message containing a number of slurred profanities expressing her disbelief about what had happened. (At least, that was what the first voicemail message contained; the second was barely coherent). The final missed call was from Ella, his therapist, politely requesting that he call her back as soon as possible to organise an appointment to discuss his most recent post.
There were also, to John's surprise, a couple of comments on his post, mostly saying the same things that Harry had said in her voicemail message (albeit more coherently). One comment was from Mike Stamford, who said that he hadn't known until now that John knew Sherlock, and that he would not have believed a word of the story if he did not know the both of them. (John wondered how well Mike really knew Sherlock, all things considered). There was also a comment from Bill Murray, simply saying how amazing the story itself was. Finally, there was a comment from Sherlock himself which could only be read in a condescending tone, discussing how John had romanticised what he considered to be an exact science.
John got as far as typing out a comment in response, telling Sherlock that if he wanted to show off his intelligence he should have written out case notes on his own blog, before realising that Sherlock had probably put the comment there to help guide whoever was watching them to John's blog. He deleted his half-written comment and made himself a cup of tea.
OoO
Aside from the comment, John did not hear from Sherlock for the next few days. He considered texting a couple of times to ask how the case was coming along, but he got no further than picking up his phone before he decided that Sherlock would not want and did not need the distraction. If there had been any news, Sherlock would have contacted him.
Four days after John had been sent home, a black car pulled up outside his bedsit. He recognised the man who came to the door as one of Mycroft's employees; although he would have known that the man was associated with Mycroft from the sight of the car alone. The man informed him that John was to come back to Mycroft's estate so that Hannah could reassess his injury, and John came willingly, eager to no longer be confined to the small space of his bedsit. He was hardly even bothered by the smell of vampire the moment he walked through the front door.
He was healing well, and his stitches came out. Hannah told him that he would have to take it easy still – nothing too strenuous, no heavy lifting – but she did say that he was allowed to go back to work. It was a relief to hear it. He needed the money, and he needed something to do while he was waiting for something, anything, to happen regarding the organisation. Sherlock was busy, but for the moment being there was nothing John could do to keep himself occupied.
He called Sarah that afternoon to tell her that he was doing better, and he was rostered on for work the following week. At least for a while, there was nothing he could do to help Sherlock, and so, at least for a while, his life returned to normal.
That is, as normal as life can be for a werewolf.