Crimson Tears

Book 3

'John and Sherlock'

The lives of our couple wasn't all wings and rainbows and games of mind tag, let me tell you. After all, there was Mycroft, the possible and imminent rescue of Angels, and the unknown threat of a fallen (and hungry) demon closing in around them. One can only fend off so many desperate attackers at once.

There was also the fact that John was infected and slowly dying of that poison in his scar. I'm not being figurative, here, dear readers, when I say that he was dying of that poison. The Howlers did poison him with their filthy claws, and the magic couldn't hold it back forever. Sooner or later, John would die of the curse he bore on his breast.

He still suffered, John did, every night. Howlers scream in the darkness, and when John was alone in his bed, gazing into the suffocating darkness, he felt the stab in his shoulder again and again. It burned like white hot iron, fire eating at his heart and clawing at his throat and in his mind, hurting but never killing.

John would lie in his bed, sweating and suffering in the darkness, clinging to the damp sheets and holding back his cries and throwing up viscous walls around his mind so Sherlock wouldn't be able to sense his discomfort. But it was hopeless to think, to believe, that he would be able to hide it from Sherlock forever.

It was a particularly horrible and anguishing night, where John was desperately holding in his cries as he lay stiff and damp in his horribly uncomfortable bed. The room was stifling hot even though it was almost forty degrees. He tried putting up thicker shields around his mind, but that in and out of itself would attract Sherlock just as much as if he had been aware of his pain.

He did it anyway and rode through a horrible, racking wave of pain.

Sherlock, on the other hand, had opened his mind to the two floors of their flat and felt John's extra protection. He frowned, focusing in on his mind without giving himself away. He sensed the wavering protection, almost saw and felt occasional stabs of pain in his breast that were actually John's.

He was on his feet in an instant, and at John's door at the next. Sherlock carefully rapped on the door. "John?" he asked the wood. He didn't receive an answer, so he opened the door and stepped in.

He was met with startling darkness and small sounds of pain from the man consumed in the unforgiving darkness. His eyes adjusted quickly, and he saw John stiff on his bed, his pale face covered in beads of sweat and drawn tight in pain. His eyes were bagged with dark smudges and they were squeezed shut.

"Sherlock," the pained Angel whispered, mangled and hoarse. Sherlock was at his side in an instant, hands hovering over the inflamed and almost throbbing scar on his shoulder, blackened and spidery.

"John," the consulting detective whispered back. "What can I do?"

"Window?"

Sherlock didn't respond, but he quickly went over to the window and threw it open as far as it would go. Cold, damp night air washed over him and made him involuntarily shiver. John only seemed to get a little less uncomfortable, but nothing substantial.

"What else? Water? Anything?"

John shook his head, and slowly opened his eyes, his beautiful blue eyes wide and filled with pain. "No," he croaked. His eyes said otherwise, and Sherlock could understand what the eyes were saying even though he dared not enter the Angel's mind.

Sherlock carefully reached out and slipped his long fingers between John's fist, and the Angel's hand loosened, allowing the human to hold his hand in a tight, comforting grip. John swallowed and closed his eyes, betraying how much he hurt, crimson tears silently falling down his pale cheek.

The not-Angel took this as a discreet, but begging sort of prayer that told him not to let John battle this alone. And he knew at that instant that he would do anything, sacrifice anything from his work to his body for his Angel, his John. So he sat on the bed, holding John's hand still, closed his eyes and pressed his mind against John's. He engulfed the Angel's mind in his own, not looking in the mind, but becoming one with his body and feeling the pain.

Sherlock wrapped his own resolve, his own Sherlockian magic around the flaming, fiery poison in the scar and felt it burn in his own breast, but that was fine, because he felt John relax and heard his sigh. He heard his mumbled 'thank you' and found he didn't want to leave, not at all. So Sherlock did what any reasonable Sherlock would have done in that position, unable to go more than a comfortable twenty feet away from John and not really wanting to either. He laid down next to the Angel, nose to nose, hand in hand, mind in mind.

Being in another's mind, completely engulfed in each other's essence is so gorgeously intimate that no physical ritual can compete. They could practically think each other's thoughts as they thought them, feel each feeling the other felt, literally crawl in the other's skin and lay there, comforted and warm and safe.

Sherlock watched, felt, thought, and heard as John smiled and drifted off into a comfortable, deep sleep, the pain in his chest no more painful than a random bout of heartburn. (Excuse the choice of words)

Sherlock stayed in John, watched his slack and peaceful face, and then drifted off into sleep after him, not pulling back from John's being, but remaining in the Angel's essence deep into the night and well past first light.

-Fallen Angel-

Mycroft came at eleven in the morning. Sherlock was downstairs, having already woken and spoken with John and letting the Angel drift back into sleep. He was carefully looking over a somewhat interesting site on his laptop when his brother strode in without much introduction or glamour.

"Sherlock," he said his tone icy, eyes even more so.

Sherlock didn't even bother to respond, other than a curl to his lip. He decided then if Mycroft spoke too loudly he would throw his laptop at him.

"I must speak to you."

"Seeing as you already are, I must say it would be desperately important. I'm busy, now go away."

"Sherlock, you must not stay in contact with John Watson. He is not…agreeable to you."

The detective stiffened, and Mycroft saw he was visibly enraged. Sherlock stood, his laptop crumpling forgotten to the floor as he stared his brother down.

"John is very much agreeable to me, Mycroft, and I would very much appreciate it if you stay out of his—our—affairs."

"Sherlock, he is—"

"Different?" Sherlock spat, not letting his brother finish. "A freak?"

"Nothing of the sort. He is—"

"Not amused that you are talking about him behind his back," a tired and sleep coated voice said from the stairs. Both Holmes brothers turned towards it, one smirking and the other annoyed he had managed to slip in without him noticing.

"John Watson, I perceive?" Mycroft said more than asked, nodding towards him, hands clenching almost invisibly on his umbrella.

"Doctor John Watson to you," he said, ignoring the spark of annoyance in the politician's mind. He had already broken through the slight protection on his mind and reading all of his thoughts and memories. He knew.

"Dr. Watson," Mycroft corrected, smiling but eyes an icy flame. "I was just going to ask my brother to call you down. I would prefer if you did not live with my brother any longer."

"I don't care what you prefer," John said, shocking both of them. "It isn't much of your business what I do, now is it?"

"It is if it interferes with the well being of my brother," Mycroft snapped back, irritated by both the man's words and the breach in his mind, one his mind was acutely aware of but he didn't know it was the infuriating doctor in front of him.

"Mycroft," Sherlock snapped back, very much satisfied by John's satisfaction he felt through their open mental connection they hadn't broken. "If you must know, I haven't done drugs since I met John. Yes, even take some hair—look at my arms! Not a fresh puncture mark anywhere on my body. Check the flat with hounds and your men, Mycroft—there are no drugs anywhere. Now, leave my flat before I throw you out the window."

Mycroft smiled tightly at his brother's rudeness. He saw that speaking would do nothing to get this creature away from his brother. "Of course," he said smoothly, "I will be leaving you now. Sherlock, Doctor Watson." With that, an icy glare to the stiff and set doctor, he left with a twirl of his umbrella.

When the politician closed the front door, John relaxed and sat heavily on the stair behind him and laughed. "Wow," he said. "You're brother is certainly a different one."

Sherlock curled his lip at that. "I'm very aware, John."

Sherlock felt John's amusement while John felt Sherlock's deep seated aggravation towards his brother. "He knows, Sherlock."

Sherlock looked at him, understand immediately what he meant. "He knows? Ah, CCTV cameras, of course. He must have been abroad when it happened and only found out now."

John nodded, agreeing, and looked out the windows. Sherlock sensed the change of his thoughts; saw the color shift from an amused sort of yellow to a worried kind of grey. Though they maintained a connection, they could not read each other's thoughts, nor did they enter one another's minds. They could only press against where they had joined, and sense the shift in their thoughts, but once the thought broke into the rope like connection the other could hear it.

"Sherlock," he said after a while, carefully guarding his thoughts. "Tomorrow is July 9th, right?" At Sherlock's nod, he continued, "Well, it's a very certain day tomorrow, very dear to Angels. There's no human language that can describe it; there is only the word in the Angel's language. It's a time where from last light…sunset to first light, every Angel in all of the Palaces flies. Never stopping, just a constant ring of Angels flying through the night and unite themselves."

Sherlock caught on instantly. "You want to fly?"

John nodded. "Even though I'm Fallen, it doesn't mean I'm not an Angel. I have a duty to fly, not to ground the race simply because I'm on the surface. I want to fly, to show them I'm safe and happy."

Sherlock smiled and nodded, and put his hand comfortingly on John's shoulder. "You should go. After all, it would be night and easy to fly unnoticed. Would you be able to maintain our connection?"

"For a while," John said. "Not for the entire trip, but for a good bit. I'd contact you as I entered London."

"Of course," Sherlock replied, and sealed the pact of death with his smile.

Awesome. Done in one day—I'm so proud. ^_^ But, on the other hand, probably filled with little mistakes, so excuse them, pretty please. =)

I love this part, personally. Just them embracing each other's minds, it's a much less explicit version of what *cough* could have happened. Much more romantic, I think, as well. After all, how many couples can immerse themselves in their lover's mind?

Two things before I say adieu:

REVIEW. ELSE I SET HOWLERS ON YOU.

I do not own Sherlock *sob* nor its characters, but the plot is mind.

Stay Happy,

Spirit