Chapter 4: Bart's and the Unexpected
The next day, after feeding his John again (Sherlock has set an alarm on his phone, to be sure he feeds his hatchling regularly) Sherlock tows him off to St. Bart's. John sticks very close behind him as they walk down the street to find a cab, and sits pressed against his side once they're in it. Sherlock is delighted to encounter another person to whom society's conventions are an incomprehensible bother. Although he normally doesn't like anyone to touch him, he finds that John is an exception to that rule. Perhaps because John isn't human? Well, that's leaping to conclusions. He needs to do DNA analysis and x-rays first.
Sherlock blows into the lab with John one step behind him. John's eyes are very wide, and he seems both fascinated and nervous to be out in the big world. He sticks tightly to Sherlock's shadow, just to his left, and doesn't speak. Sherlock comes to an abrupt halt when he encounters Molly at the lab bench.
"Ah. Molly. Well." Sherlock was hoping to be alone.
"Oh! Hi, Sherlock! Er. I didn't expect to see you today. Nothing too interesting in the morgue drawers right now! Just a blood clot following knee surgery and a suicide by asphyxiation." Molly smiles shyly, and looks around Sherlock at John. "Oh! Um... Hi."
John looks at Sherlock, waiting to see what he should do. Sherlock prompts him, "Say 'Hello', John; and then you don't have to talk to her after that." Sherlock is never going to get a second job as a charm school instructor, for sure.
John swivels his eyes back to Molly and smiles. "Hello."
Molly looked confused, says OK, and turns back to Sherlock. She flutters around the lab, annoying Sherlock intensely. She is talking about the new spectrometer that's coming in next week. Sherlock wants to draw John's blood, and he doesn't want an audience for it.
"Molly," he says forcefully, to attract her attention and shut her up.
She stills immediately. "Yes?"
"John would like some tea, I imagine. If you would...?"
This is Sherlock's normal behavior. Molly looks a little rejected, but not shocked at his bad manners. She smiles at John again. "Um. Ok. I'll just... go and get some, then."
John folds his face into a smile, reflecting her expression back at her. His face is warm and bright when he smiles, and it makes Sherlock feel quite... content... to see that. He tugs John over to a stool as soon as the door closes behind Molly. "Here, John," he snaps on a pair of latex gloves and digs in a cabinet for a syringe. "I'm going to take a blood sample. Please stay still."
He rolls up John's sleeve and twists a tourniquet around John's upper arm, patting around for a juicy vein. Sometimes, having been a junkie gives him useful skills. He swabs at John's skin with an alcohol wipe, and John jumps a little at the feeling of cold and the sharp smell. Sherlock jabs the needle carefully towards the biggest vein he can find.
The next few seconds are moderate pandemonium.
John leaps backward, stumbling over the stool, and drops to a semi-crouch against the lab bench. There is a cacophony of the crashing stool, Sherlock's shouted, wordless admonishment, and John's ragged gasp. Sherlock staggers a little, made unsteady by the fact that John is no longer under his hands. The syringe is hanging out of John's arm, lifting and pulling at the skin around the needle, and John is holding two large knives, one in each hand. His expression is feral, and Sherlock can see the pulse race in his neck.
Sherlock just stares. John stares back. Neither of them move for many long seconds.
Finally, Sherlock says, in a low, soothing voice, "It's alright, John. I'm not going to hurt you." John relaxes minutely, but doesn't release his grip on the knives. Sherlock disengages his eyes from John's and stares at his hands. Sherlock is fascinated and bewildered. He knows every instrument in this lab, and none of them are two military-issue Ka-Bar clip point combat knives, he's sure. John holds them as if he knows quite well how to use them.
"Where did you get the knives, John?" Sherlock isn't nervous, he's just curious. "I haven't seen them before."
John looks down at his hands and straightens up, shaking his head. He shakes his arm a couple of times, and the needle falls to the floor with a soft plink. He gives each knife a half-spin, in his palm, and they... disappear.
Sherlock sucks in a breath. "Do that again," he commands.
John twists his hands, and he is suddenly holding the knives again.
"That's how you got out of the egg," Sherlock murmurs. "Extraordinary. Where do they go?" He moves slowly towards John, stoops, and gets the needle off the floor. He disposes of it in the sharps container. He rights the stool, and then sits on it, chin on one fist. "There. See? I'm not doing the needle again. You can relax. Now. Where do they go?" he asks again.
John shrugs. Not to be recalcitrant, but because he doesn't know. He gives the knives a half-spin again, and they vanish. Sherlock is watching very closely, and is certain it's not sleight-of-hand. He reaches forward. "May I feel your hands?" he asks. Normally, he wouldn't be so polite, he'd just grab them up if he wanted to. But now he's not entirely sure his fingers won't be severed for the audacity, so caution seems the better part scientific method. John nods hesitantly, and extends his hands.
Sherlock takes John's left hand in both his own. It is warm and alive. The skin is soft, the muscles beneath are rounded and taut. Sherlock palpates the palm and the back of the hand. He feels bones, tendons, muscle and skin, and that is all. He sees pores, light blond hairs, and blue venation, but that is all. He pulls his fingers along Johns fingers, and feels nothing that should not be there, only phalanges, and broad, blunt fingernails. He rubs John's other hand, and has a similar lack of epiphanies. He works his way past the pad of the thumb down John's wrist, pressing, pulling and twisting. Nothing feels out of place.
Sherlock wraps his fingers around John's forearm. "If I hold you here, can you do it?"
John raises his eyebrows to show he's uncertain. "Do you want me to try?"
"Go ahead." Sherlock holds firmly, but not too tight. He feels the ropey muscle of John's forearm flex and pull, the ulna and radius contort, and suddenly the knife is there, in John's fist. He twists it back out of sight. Amazing. In the name of scientific inquiry, but using his somewhat less valuable left hand, Sherlock holds around John's palm. John tries, but nothing happens. Sherlock changes variables again, wraps his hand around John's wrist. Nothing. "Hmmmm. Limits." He slips his hand back to John's palm.
There is a slight noise from the door, and Molly comes in with two steaming cups. "I brought one-" she trails off, gaze fixed on where Sherlock is holding hands with John. Sherlock realizes immediately what she's thinking.
"Yes, Molly. John is the enigmatic boyfriend I've been concealing for so long." Sherlock is being sarcastic, because he's unimpressed with petty little minds that always leap to sexually-derived conclusions. Normal humans interpret everything through a sexual filter, he sometimes thinks.
Molly doesn't pick up on the sarcasm, since Sherlock's tone hasn't changed at all from his typical voice (which is not surprising, as he's always being sarcastic) and blushes fiery red. "Oh! Um... well. I'll just. Just." She sets the tea on the desk next to the door. "Leave these here."
She looks dejected, and John furrows his brows at her. He doesn't know enough about the world yet to realize this is how one looks when one's hopes are dashed, but he certainly picks up on the unhappy vibe. He feels he needs to fix that, and takes a step towards her, Sherlock's hand slipping off of his. "Thank you?" John tries. He gets a tremulous smile, and Molly scurries back out of the lab. He looks to Sherlock, for some guidance in reading body language, but Sherlock is not going to be a good teacher in that regard. As a matter of fact, Sherlock has stopped thinking of Molly entirely.