Chapter 20: Taking John Home
Lestrade, of course, cannot be convinced that he didn't see John with somewhat tattered but still enormous and magnificent wings. Sherlock would be slightly disappointed in him if he could. However, when his bumbling backup finally burst through the door ("We had to search the whole bloody hospital!" Sally complains. "Why didn't you answer your phone, you bugger?") Lestrade wisely says nothing about it. Sherlock is perfectly comfortable using Mycroft's omnipotence as a threat to all Lestrade holds dear, including career and family, and had not held back in telling him so.
John, now that his throat is relubricated, is talking nonstop. "They knocked me out with M99, Sherlock. Can you believe it? It's meant to take out an elephant. I wasn't able to defend myself at all. Might as well castrate me now. Jesus. Defeated by a needle, for fuck's sake." But he shudders, and his face still has a slight gray hue. Sherlock keeps an arm firmly around his back as he helps him slip down from the table.
"John, you need to shut up," Sherlock murmurs. A team from A&E has been called up, and Bernie and Dr. Linley are being loaded onto stretchers with all the attendant fuss. Nurses and orderlies are milling about with wide, horrified, inquisitive eyes. Lestrade's backup team are underfoot, attempting to be certain the two unconscious villains remain secured.
"I can't shut up, Sherlock. I'm pumped full of fucking sodium thiopental, how do you think she found out about me in the first place-" John wobbles, and holds on to Sherlock with both arms. He appears more drunk than damaged.
Sherlock rudely gestures away a nurse who comes over to assess John and puts a finger, very lightly, so it won't press or impair his breathing, across his lips. "Shhh. We need to go home."
John's shirt is wadded up on the floor, stained and sodden with blood and saliva. Sherlock leaves it there, but finds his jacket on a counter and drapes it over John's shoulders. The curving line cut into his side is already crusting over, so Sherlock doesn't worry about it. Every time John tries to talk, Sherlock shushes him. He's still very shaky, so Sherlock pulls him close, for support both emotional and physical, he is aware. John leans trustingly against him.
Lestrade wanders over to them, hands clasped behind his back. "What can you tell me about the weapons used on our two killers?" he asks.
"I can tell you that they're in the same place as the wings, Lestrade," Sherlock replies in an impatient undertone. "You're not going to find a weapon."
Lestrade examines John with intense curiosity and then throws out his hands in frustration. "Well, how am I-?"
Sherlock rolls his eyes. "That is up to you, Inspector. Just keep John's unique... talents... out of it. Need I threaten you?"
Lestrade looks involuntarily over his shoulder, as if a CCTV camera may in fact be trained on them now. Then he straightens his shoulders, pulling authority back around himself. "Now see here, Sherlock-"
Sherlock looms over Lestrade. Ergo, John is leaning towards him as well, since he's clamped resolutely in Sherlock's arms. "Lestrade: you. can't. find. the. weapon. The native incompetence of your team will ensure that such an outcome is both expected and accepted. Problem solved."
Lestrade looks around. Said crew, now down to Sally, Anderson, and Dave, are staring curiously at them. Especially at Sherlock, who has metamorphosed from someone who never touches anyone to holding John in a very close, protective, full-body hug. And John, still drugged and disoriented and hurt, just leans all his weight on Sherlock, face tucked into his shoulder; partly to ensure that his mouth stays closed.
Sherlock, of course, notices what they're all focused on and levels an icy stare at the gawkers over John's head. His arms tighten fractionally as he turns back to Lestrade. "You've got this under control, Lestrade. Call by tomorrow, and I'll give you the records of her financial transactions for the past six months. We have to go now." He releases John and pushes him gently towards the door.
"You're always pushing me around," John complains quietly, steadier now. "As if I don't know how to do it myself. I may not have last week, you know, but now I remember a whole fucking life."
"You like it when I push you around," Sherlock says absently, as the doors swing shut behind them.
Lestrade, amused, cocks his ears and hears part of an answer, "Alright. Yes. But that's only because it shows you love me-" He smothers a grin. John is just fascinating. On many levels.
Finally they're safely in the flat. Sherlock emphatically closes, and even locks the door behind them. He wants John to feel very safe. He wants to feel safe. He pours John onto the sofa and makes some tea.
John's loquaciousness is beginning to wear off, along with all the sedatives, but not before Sherlock learns some important things. Things he isn't sure what to do with. Like John saying you love me. And I knew you were coming, because I could feel you getting closer, patting the spot on his chest where Sherlock felt their connection earlier. And I keep thinking about dancing with you. That's one of the most amazing things that's happened to me in my life. And, slumping against his shoulder in the taxi, Will you kiss my ear again?
Although he'd agreed to the final request with alacrity, Sherlock refrained from comment on the other surprising statements, unwilling to commit to the newfound depth of his feelings. They were too new. Not fragile, though. Surprisingly strong, in fact. As if their emotional bonding had begun months and months ago, from when Sherlock had fist begun to care for the egg.
Although Sherlock has been physically close to plenty of people sporadically over the last decade or so, he can't say the same about emotions. Actually there is no one like John, that he cares for both emotionally and literally. He's never taken care of another human. Yet he tended the egg 24/7, feeds his John, makes sure he sleeps, holds him close, protects him when necessary. Or quickly rectifies the situation as soon as he realizes there's real danger. He wants to care for John. Derives the same deep pleasure and satisfaction from it that he gets from solving a case.
More, even. Evidently. Because the serial vivisections case is solved now, and he isn't paying it a bit of attention. All his focus is on John. Wan and shaky and vulnerable.
"Are you alright?" Sherlock asks, as he hands John some tea.
John's still feeling the truth serum. "I have an insignificant laceration on my right side," he lists clinically as he sips his tea. He holds the mug tightly with both hands. "It will match yours. And my entire chest cavity feels bruised, thanks to hosting a current of 360 joules, which induced a heart attack. I'm still affected by periodic tremors and intermittent tachycardia. While unpleasant, none of these things are life threatening, although I'll keep an eye on them. I'd like to clean the cut, but it was made with a sterile scalpel, so I'm not too concerned about it."
They sit in silence for a while as they finish their tea. They are pressed warmly side to side on the sofa. Finally John leans forward and sets the mug down with a click. He rises and twitches off his jacket. Sherlock hovers at his elbow as he makes his way to the bathroom. "Med kit," he mutters. He washes the cut up, applies an antibiotic ointment and a few plasters. His hand does shake, Sherlock notices.
Sherlock leans in the doorway, dangling his weight from the lintel with one hand, elbow sharply crooked above his head, watching John doctor his wounds, eyes an opaque gray in this light, fixed intently on John.
John looks up when he is finished and freezes, tongue snaking between his lips. Sherlock's gaze is a force of nature, consuming and powerful. The attention skewering him should laser a flaming hole through his body. Instead, it only generates heat.
Sherlock had shed his coat and jacket upon entry and wears a straining maroon shirt, buttons pulling tighter because of the forward pressure of his body, leaning into space, suspended by the hand overhead as if laid out for display.
"Fuck," John says, filter evidently still checked out. "You're just bloody beautiful, aren't you?"
Sherlock gives a slow blink. He's taken by surprise, but it doesn't show on his face, which he keeps controlled. Here, in truth-telling John, is a situation he can take advantage of.
"What do you want to do about it?" he asks. His voice is low, purring and also dispassionately curious.
"Christ, keep talking," John says with abandon. "Don't stop, it's sexy as hell." A series of disparate emotions flit quickly across his expressive face: lust, surprise, chagrin, guilt. "I can't believe I just said that."
Sherlock crinkles his eyes and twitches half of his mouth in a Sherlock-smile and swings further into the bathroom, scooping John closer to him with his free arm. "It's nothing I hadn't already deduced, John," he says. "John." He says his name because he knows John loves to hear it, deep and rumbling. "John," the last time he says the name he tugs John softly up against him, breaths very lightly into his ear.
John melts against that lean chest, shaking, inhales sharp and long as warm breath curls into his ear. His head falls back (Sherlock catches it in his hand) and slowly walks his hand up Sherlock's extended arm, to curl over his fingers wrapped around the molding. He moves closer, until their bodies are slotted tightly together.
"You make me hot," John says quietly, not trying to talk dirty, just stating a fact. "I'm usually cold, but when you talk to me, when I hear your insanely..." John pauses for a second, casting about for the right word, "... suggestive voice, it feels like summer. Makes me want to start taking my clothes off."
Sherlock's pupils are so blown now that there's only the thinnest halo of color ringing them. A pink flush rises, tinting his cheeks and lips. His eyelids lower, staring appraisingly at the trousers and shoes that are all the clothing that remains on John at this moment. "I can help you with that, John."
"Ah. Jesus. Did I really just tell you that? I was better off gagged." He unwinds his arm from Sherlock's waist and massages his jaw, working it back and forth, recalling the discomfort of the actual gag. Sherlock straightens up, releasing the lintel and puts his hand over John's, then moves to stroke his cheek. There's a tiny spot of blood at the corner of his mouth, where dried skin had cracked, stretched too far around the gauze.
Sherlock's mouth says nothing, but his eyes show regret. "What do you want me to do?" he asks, ignoring the internal crisis John is having over involuntarily expressing his innermost thoughts.
"I want you to groom my feathers," John answers, taking Sherlock completely by surprise. Again. "Please."
He glances towards John's back, but the wings aren't there.
"I can feel them, even now," John explains. "They. They're all ruffled and disorganized, and some are broken. I can feel it. It's making me... twitchy. Dirty hands have been on them..." John doesn't say how violated he feels, because he's not consciously aware of that. All he knows is that he wants... needs... Sherlock's long fingers soothing down his feathers, scooping them back into order, owning them and dissociating them from the ghastly operating theater and it's psychopathic inhabitants.
Sherlock runs his hands over John's shoulders, down his back, thumbs pressing deep into his shoulder blades. "Come on, then." Sherlock heads for the lounge, and John is right behind. Sherlock guides John to sit on the back of his gray chair, as he so often does himself, and kneels down. "Shoes," he explains, and gently, efficiently, takes them off, leaving John barefoot and unguarded. "Trousers," he says, looking up. "There's blood on them." John looks down at the leg where Bernie had bled. He hadn't noticed it before, and shudders. He stands quickly and strips them off with an expression of distaste. "Do you want a shower?" Sherlock asks, tossing the stained trousers in the general direction of the bin in the kitchen.
"Not now. Just. My wings-" Seated high on the back of the chair, bare feet comfortably nestled in the seat, John has space enough to pop out his wings. Sherlock stands back as they appear, marveling at the sheer mystery of it. As he looks, he can see why John's upset. The feathers are wildly disarrayed, especially around the shoulder and carpel joints where they were fettered. Many are badly bent, poking out at awkward angles and tangled with their neighbors.
Sherlock reaches out and touches one such, shaft broken partway through, dangling by a thread. John jerks at the touch, hunching his wings in tight; Sherlock makes a soothing noise, holds John's shoulder with his other hand. "Should I cut the broken ones?" he asks. "They cannot be fixed."
John shrugs, nods, then shakes his head. "I'm not an avian expert," he says. "I don't know what the hell to do with them. I've never had wings before. We'll try it."
Sherlock gets scissors from the desk and carefully cuts the feather just above the break. He angles the cut, for aesthetics. "Does it hurt?" he asks, deep and mellow and solicitous. He nestles the amputated end back among its companions. There. Not too bad.
"No. Just feels weird." John drops his head down, and Sherlock combs through the wings, clipping where he must, arranging the feathers; and stroking each one with his fingers, so that the barbs can interlock properly, leaving them smooth. He begins at the shoulders and eventually reaches the wingtip primaries. He takes his time, moving slowly and deliberately, giving each feather due consideration and effort.
He understands that this is a ritual to help John calm down. To his surprise, he finds it calms him down as well. He has been very keyed up, alternately seething and fearful since he realized John was in danger. The very real sensation of peril and trepidation that sang along the line binding him to John is now settling into a quiet, warm vibration. As Sherlock straightens the chaos in front of him, caused by violent hands, he feels their connection settle, until it becomes the slow, thrumming conversation of two heartbeats.