The Case of the Cuddle Chapter 11

Warning: mention of child rape and severe trauma. If you have any issues relating to this, please, please don't read, you won't miss any real narrative if you skip onto the next part.

To everyone else, I know this is hard, but it is necessary to the building of our boys' relationship. And please review - your comments are keeping me going.

I would like to pay tribute to the dear correspondent who said 'every hurt kid should have a Mycroft.' So few children do. I hope we can all vow to be someone's Mycroft if it ever becomes necessary.

And I promise happies next week.

John had not wanted to do the shift at the surgery, but Sarah had called him, desperate. It was the height of flu season, several of the doctors had caught the bug, including herself, and half the nursing staff were down with the Norovirus to boot. She knew Sherlock's condition, and she would never have rung John if she'd had a choice, but even the locum agencies were struggling. In the event, he worked a thirteen hour shift, including two emergency call-outs, for which he was unlikely to get paid, to elderly patients with breathing difficulties. One was so bad he had to have her carted off in an ambulance immediately, and didn't expect her to last the night. It had generally been a bad day.

He knew something was wrong as soon as he walked through the door at Baker Street. Mrs Hudson was out at her Saturday night Bingo, but the flat was eerily quiet. There were no lights on. Carefully, he opened the living room door and stepped through, knowing his form would be outlined against the landing light.

There was a slight whimper from under the gateleg table by the window.

John took a moment to collect himself. He had suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder himself for over two years now, and had treated a number of patients with similar problems while still in the army. Yet never had he realised the effect of flashbacks on the sufferer until now.

With PTSD amongst soldiers it was easy to see. Men sank into reliving the experience of battle. It was a situation he knew well himself, so watching patients act and react in combat situations, even if they occurred solely in their heads, was nothing new. But seeing what a flashback did to Sherlock was another matter entirely. When the detective relived his rape, he became the eleven-year-old boy he had been at the time, from the high-pitched voice to the child's body language. It was not an act. And watching a grown man, especially one as self-possessed as Sherlock, become a terrified child was almost more of a horror than the reality of the attack itself. What made it doubly bad was how much John loved Sherlock. It tore his heart out to see him suffering like this, but he knew from personal experience that the only way out was through. So he had to stay calm, centre himself, be the rock in the storm to which his lover could cling, just as he had been for John.

John dropped onto his haunches and peered under the table. He could just about make out a shape. Streetlight from the windows caught frightened eyes, glinting in the shadows by the wall. Sherlock was huddled up in there, shaking, pinned to the plaster by his terror.

'Hi,' John smiled, willing his voice to be calm in a way that his churning heart was not.

Two gimlet eyes blinked back.

'I'm just going to put the lamp on, is that okay?'

Another blink.

John got up very slowly so as not to spook the little boy, and switched on one of the side lights. It cast a sudden yellow glow, and the shadows softened. Everything became instantly less menacing. He crouched down again, just to check. Sherlock had not moved. John settled himself on the carpet. He was about six feet from where the boy-Sherlock shivered in his den. He made no effort to close the gap or to speak, or even to look too hard at Sherlock. Just sat there quietly, allowing both of them to get used to his presence.

After about fifteen minutes, Sherlock let out a shuddering sigh, as much a sob as anything.

'Would you like a cup of tea,' John asked him gently.

A long pause. Then a careful nod.

'I think I might have some biscuits. Would you like a chocolate biscuit with it?'

Pause. Wary nod.

The irony of coaxing a child traumatised by sexual assault with chocolate biscuits was not lost on John. Still, it was the best he could do under the circumstances. He got carefully to his feet, ignoring the twinge of pain in his leg, and made them both tea. He bought a tray back from the kitchen, two mugs and a plate with four chocolate biscuits on it. Carefully he laid the tea and the plate down on the carpet about two feet from the table, still in neutral territory he calculated, but a little closer, and retreated a little way with his own mug.

There was another long pause. He watched the wary eyes flick from mug and hobnob to his own face and back, working out risk versus reward. Eventually a hand stretched out and snatched up a biscuit. There was a crunch.

'Good?'

No response, but then another crunch. Sherlock was eating. That was good. It would ground him back in his body, bring him a little closer to reality.

John sipped at his tea, trying to appear far more relaxed than he felt inside.

After a while, long fingers stretched out and wrapped around the handle of the mug, drawing it in. He heard a slurp, and a sniff.

Come home to me Sherlock, he thought.

A little while later there was a shaky sigh.

'That's a good den,' John said, feeling that he needed to make a little more progress now. 'I'll bet it keeps you safe, doesn't it?'

Those glittering, pale eyes followed him watchfully.

'I know you're scared, Sherlock. I know they hurt you. I won't hurt you. I won't let them hurt you either. Never again. Do you understand?'

Pause. Nod.

'Maybe I could come into your den? Do you think I could do that? Would you let me?'

Wary eyes. Long pause. Nod.

Under the table, it was extremely cramped. John managed to settle himself against the wall, about a foot from Sherlock. The childlike face turned to him, streaked with tears, the eyes red and scared, head cocked on one side, observing. He was curled up, knees pulled tightly to his chest, arms wrapped around to hold them in. Anyone else would have been amazed that a six foot man could remain in such a position in so small a space. But not John. He knew what Sherlock was capable of, how he could utterly disregard the signals his rangy body was sending him, withstand virtually any pain and discomfort. It was only now that John realised why. He was so dissociated from his body because of the rape. He had completely disconnected from it, shut down entirely. He wasn't kidding when he said he regarded his body as mere transport. His physical shell was an inconvenience to a man who lived entirely within his mind. It occurred to John then that perhaps that was why their kisses had awaked the memories. John's caresses had reasserted the connection between Sherlock's mind and body, and with it came all the memories he had so diligently repressed. And now here they were, the pair of them, hiding under a gateleg table with two mugs of tea, two remaining milk chocolate hobnobs, and a world of horrific memories to keep them company.

'Very nice,' John said, looking up at the underside of the tabletop. It was rough, unpolished. He glanced at Sherlock. The frightened child looked back. And then did something John would never really be able to get his head around. An act of trust so overwhelming that it stung the doctor's eyes.

Sherlock put his palms on the carpet to support his weight, leant down, rested his head on John's lap, and then curled up with a relieved sigh.

John didn't dare move, or even breathe, for a moment. Then he reached out and gently brushed Sherlock's hair with his fingertips. A few more strokes, and he was rewarded with something like a purr. Sherlock resettled himself in his ball, sighed and closed his eyes. His body softened.

John had no idea how long they sat there under that table. It would not be the last time, he was sure of that. He wondered about Lasky, whether if he could see Sherlock in this state, a grown man becoming in every sense possible a terrified child, would he understand the effects of the evil he had done? Would guilt finally weigh on him? John thought not, but he would have liked to know, though he didn't want to expose Sherlock to that monster ever again.

He thought about Sherlock's response to the Lasky case being plastered all over the front pages. He had been apparently unaffected until yesterday, when he had picked up the Independent, which had a particularly lurid picture of the creature on the front, and said, in a calm voice:

'I think I shall go and see him in prison. I should like to see that he is suffering.'

Lasky had initially refused to bow to pressure. Even with the enormous volume of irrefutable evidence against him, he had maintained the classic child abuser's denial, and then when that hadn't worked, had been adamant that the boys he had raped had wanted it, had enjoyed it, had been giving him the come-on for months. It made John want to vomit.

Mycroft had been to see Lasky on remand. The next day, the rapist had appeared in court to plead guilty to all charges, saving the tax payer a fortune in legal costs. And, more importantly, saving his victims and their families the horror of a court case. The details had tumbled out into the press, no doubt with a little help from the older Holmes. John had been worried about how Sherlock would take this, but the fact that word of his own ordeal was kept scrupulously out of the headlines seemed to make him impassive. He had settled on his own healing trajectory.

Now, resting his hand softly on one bony shoulder, John allowed himself to feel a little anger on his beloved's behalf. Sherlock might be an insufferable git sometimes, but he was John's insufferable git, and he didn't deserve this. Nobody did. John wondered what he would do if he was left in a windowless room with Lasky for half an hour. What punishments could he reek on that despicable body? He was sure Mycroft could arrange it.

Nicholls by contrast had been sorry, or so Mycroft said. John thought of him, swinging from the bannister of his neat little suburban house. It felt like he had cheated justice, but Mycroft had been adamant that the man was haunted by remorse in way that Lasky never would be.

Lasky. John had hated Moriarty, he realised now. But nowhere near as much as he hated Lasky. Oh, the things he would do to that man, if only he had the chance…

A small voice shook him out of his fantasies of torture.

'John?' It was high, unbroken, but still undoubtedly that of his love.

'Yes?'

'Cuddle?'

Tomorrow, a little normality returns to Baker Street, and Greg is encouraged to take a little risk...