Summary:
"Someone could be trying to slice Sherlock's aorta in two at that very moment and John didn't know how to fight them.
I hate you, he thought, looking at Sherlock, blinking the tears away. It was ridiculous that an army doctor would lose control like that.
That was what Sherlock reduced John into. A shaking mess."
CHAPTER 14
"Aren't you going to see him today?" Mary asked him, her voice travelling lazy through the phone. She was probably curled on the couch with a book, enjoying her day off.
"I don't have to see him every day, you know," John countered, tidying up his desk.
Mary laughed. "Oh, I know you don't. You do it because you want to," she said, sounding amused. "Where is he?"
"I have no idea, love, probably trying to destroy Mrs Hudson's kitchen, or trying to catch a murderer, or to saw his cast off. He is Sherlock Holmes, he can do whatever he pleases."
John looked at the calendar. It had been a week since he had seen Sherlock's x-rays.
Mary was telling him about a friend or other when Doralice knocked on the door. The old woman had a pained expression on her face.
"Your next patient is here, Doctor Watson. Can you see him now?"
John looked at his watch. It was still a quarter to five. "Can't he wait?" He asked her.
"What was that?" Mary asked.
Doralice's face turned a sickening shade of pale. "He is disrupting the waiting room," she said, alarmed.
Before John could say anything else, he heard the familiar baritone.
"Ah, John," Sherlock said, walking over to John and Doralice. Her expression was priceless.
John promptly chastised himself. Sherlock terrorizing his work place was not funny.
"Is that Sherlock?" Mary laughed. John had almost forgot she was still on the phone.
John tried to keep his face straight. "What are you doing here? I am working, " he said to the tall man approaching him. "Yes, it's him. Didn't you want to know what had he been up to? Well, apparently he was driving my waiting room insane," he told Mary, frowning at Sherlock, who looked very pleased with himself.
John sighed, but the exasperation was mostly feigned. It still amazed him to see Sherlock pop in his everyday life. It provoked something warm that threatened to claw his insides out.
"I have to go, Mary," John said, lowering his voice. He turned his back to the door and whispered. "Doralice seems like she will pass out at any moment," he snorted. "Poor woman, Sherlock must have told her how one of her cats is dying after only looking at one of the hairs stuck on her jumper."
"Oh my God," Mary giggled. "Does she even own a cat?"
"Probably," John chuckled. "Bye, love. See you later."
John turned to his door and rolled his eyes. "I have a patient now, Sherlock. You can sit in the waiting room and wait . Stop driving everyone crazy."
"Of course you have a patient. It's me," Sherlock said, and his tone emphasized how big of an idiot he thought John was. No news there.
"I think I would remember seeing your name on my schedule," John told him, flipping through the pages of his appointment book. "See?" He pointed to that day's page.
Sherlock groaned. "Yes, I see," he said. " William Scott . That is my name."
"I'm pretty sure your name is Sherlock Holmes," John frowned. "You've got a fan club and everything."
John thought Sherlock would have a stroke by the amount of rolling his eyes were doing. It was endearing, to say the least.
"I am entitled to have middle names, too, am I not, John Hamish Watson?" the detective asked, exasperated.
John gaped at Sherlock. He tried to recall all Sherlock's documents and medical files. He had never seen any one of those names.
"You can go home now. I'm his last patient," Sherlock told Doralice, who was still there, looking at Sherlock as if he weren't from this world. John could hardly blame her.
Dora seemed very glad to get the hell out of there. Still, she looked at John to confirm.
"Yes, Dora, you can go. Thank you, I'll take care of the rest," John said, mechanically, and turned to Sherlock again. "That's my secretary," he pointed out dumbly.
Sherlock looked horrified for a moment. "You can keep her, my secretary is much better," he said with a mischievousness that only he could sustain.
John decided not to ask about it.
"Take this off," Sherlock said, almost rubbing his cast on John's face. "Off, now. I don't want this anymore."
John raised one eyebrow. "I'm the one who will decide–"
"Cut. It. Off. Or I'll do it myself," he countered, defiantly.
Good God , John thought.
Sometimes not even he could understand how much he had missed this.
John held the new x-ray against the light. Sherlock's hand was fine, as he had suspected. The other marks had also faded into memories. Probably painful memories to Sherlock – not that John would know.
He held Sherlock's eyes and savoured that rare moment in which he had the control of the room. It wasn't a common feeling when with Sherlock. John always felt like he was a small boat drifting in the ocean.
"I know it's all right, John, you can stop pretending now," the other man told him, amused.
Prick .
John motioned Sherlock to follow him through the corridor. The surgery was mostly empty and John suspected Sherlock had something to do with that.
"What have you done with my other patients?" He asked Sherlock, while unlocking the orthopaedist's office. It was Bill's day off, but John had already warned him about having to take a friend's cast off. Bill was a fan of Sherlock Holmes, so he hadn't asked many questions.
"Oh, both discovered their respective spouses were cheating on them. Very dreadful business," the detective said dismissively, perusing the bookshelves and Bill's desk. John asked him not to tell any sordid details of his colleague's life.
Bill seemed like a nice fellow, John wanted to keep it that way. No one could survive Sherlock's scrutiny.
The detective just shrugged.
While John plugged the saw, Sherlock took off his gloves, scarf, and coat. He hung them pristinely on the back of a chair. It surprised John again and again how methodical Sherlock could be with his clothes. Sherlock, who lived among chaos and science debris.
John helped him to fold his shirt sleeve above his elbow. Sherlock seemed unhappy about tousling his clothing.
John rolled his eyes. "You can take your poncy shirt off too, you know. This way I don't have to hear you complaining about the white powder on your black shirt. Couldn't you have worn a white one, by the way?"
Sherlock went tense on the shoulders and his lips formed a rigid line. "There's no need. Just try not to make a mess out of it."
John looked at Sherlock intently.
That man had never been modest about being shirtless anywhere. He had gone to the bloody Palace wearing nothing but a sheet. That scene in front of John didn't seem right.
"Take your shirt off," John said, resting the saw on the hospital bed and crossing his arms over is chest.
"No," Sherlock answered and mirrored John's position.
"Okay, then you will keep the cast on," John said. That crazy bastard was hiding something from him and John felt his spine growing cold with fear.
"That is ridiculous," Sherlock said. His face showed some outrage, but John thought that deep in his eyes there was something else. Something broken and vulnerable.
Or maybe he was seeing himself reflected in those glassy eyes.
"Well, that is how it's going to be," John insisted.
Sherlock groaned and rubbed his face with his left hand. "God, I can't even rub my face properly!"
"Yes, you are losing in the dramatics there, mate," John mocked him.
"You can't do this. You took an oath."
John rolled his eyes. Sherlock was the very antagonizer of the Hippocratic Oath.
The silence engulfed them both.
John suspected his eyes had become softer and softer by the seconds. Maybe Sherlock could see they were pleading. John had to see what Sherlock was clearly going out of his way to hide.
Very slowly, Sherlock started to take his shirt off. John would have laughed of how uncoordinated he seemed unfastening the buttons one-handed, but that image tugged something in John's chest. He thought about Sherlock alone in Baker Street doing everything by halves.
221B was half-empty, John remembered. Everything was strangely connected in his head.
It hit John how odd that scene could seem if someone opened the door. Sherlock was undressing himself and John was there, just staring at him.
But what would probably look erotic to an outsider was a bubble of dread growing around them, threatening to burst at the slightest move.
After unbuttoning his cuffs, Sherlock finally took the shirt off and looked at John, who was analysing Sherlock's torso with military acuity. John remembered every mole and freckle, every old scar Sherlock endured. He remembered the one he'd got after being jabbed with a broken bottle by a particular ly nasty suspect, and the one after getting his arm cut on an old iron gate in Leeds when the two of them had been investigating a forgery case .
In some ways, Sherlock's body was like the 221b's walls. He had some of their story written on his skin.
John had everything in his hypodermis, in his blood. He had everything so deep that things drowned him more frequently than not.
The detective cleared his throat awkwardly. "Happy?"
John let the corner of his mouth turn up to show that he was listening, but the truth was that he was happy. Sherlock's torso seemed the same as before. A minor scratch here and there were much better than what he was expecting.
He took a step, intending to walk around the bed to exam Sherlock's back. He felt a hand wrap his wrist.
"John."
Sherlock's voice sounded rough. As if he had been holding so much in his throat that the effort of not letting it out was choking him.
"It will only make you angrier," he said, holding John's wrist more firmly.
John smiled sadly back at him. "You know I can't not do this, don't you? Just... let it go," he answered, squeezing Sherlock's hand and freeing himself from it.
John placed himself stubbornly at the other side of the bed. He took a deep breath and finally looked at Sherlock's back.
And almost forgot how to breathe.
A dozen slots and scars adorned his scapula and lower back.
The angry marks over Sherlock's left kidney pushed the air out of John's nasal airways.
"Shit."
He placed his hand over that particular point. Those weren't simple scratches.
Sherlock had been stabbed. Over and over again. Someone could have pierced his aorta. He could have died, really died, and John have been ignorant of it.
He traced his fingers over the marks. They hadn't healed neatly. Sherlock had probably had an infection.
"Shit."
It made him want to bang his head on the wall. It made him want to do anything that could knock himself out of it.
"John!" Sherlock turned to him and held his hand forcibly.
John's chest cavity threatened to explode out of his body. He flattened his hands on the hospital bed and breathed, trying to soothe himself. He could feel his eyes filling with involuntary tears. His nostrils were invaded by the acrid smell of the morgue, and if maybe it had a faint trace of chlorine, John wasn't pointing that out.
He lifted his chin and looked at Sherlock's eyes. They had a desperate tone in them, a kind of urgency that John knew well enough.
"It's all right," Sherlock said, awkwardly.
John snorted, swallowing down the bitterness that was fighting its way up on his throat.
Things were so not right that John could not wish to begin putting them back together. That was the whole problem. The past was always coming back to haunt him.
It haunted him every time he looked at Sherlock and remembered that something was happening and John didn't know what. Sherlock had lied to him about being dead, then had lied to him about his injuries.
Now he was lying to John about mysterious envelopes.
Someone could be trying to slice Sherlock's aorta in two at that very moment and John didn't know how to fight them.
I hate you , he thought, looking at Sherlock, blinking the tears away. It was ridiculous that an army doctor would lose control like that.
That was what Sherlock reduced John into. A shaking mess.
He hated that he couldn't just trap Sherlock in a cage. Or take the wounds in his place, or do anything to keep him safe.
It was bloody unfair that John felt responsible for the most irresponsible being on the planet.
"John," Sherlock insisted. "I told you you would be upset."
Fucking genius . How very observant of him.
"I told you it would only make you angrier," Sherlock said, simply. He turned his back to John again. "Don't you think you already have reasons enough to hate me?" He mumbled.
If John were able to speak, he would have been speechless by that.
He looked at Sherlock's back again. Shiningly pale region of skin that now looked like a map. Maybe a map of the path Sherlock had to take to get back to London.
John didn't know. He didn't know if he wanted to, anymore.
And why was Sherlock whom he hated for those scars? Sherlock, the one who had suffered them in the first place. He didn't deserve to be blamed for it.
John wanted to tell him that. To say he was sorry for the thousandth time that week. But what good would it do? He was tired of falling back on that miserable dance they seemed unable to stop doing around each other.
He let his fingers trace the area once more, telling himself he was examining it more thoroughly. He wanted to look inside that body, to make sure Sherlock had healed, that the infection had been dealt with.
What he really wanted to do was to rest his forehead on Sherlock's shoulder and breathe him in.
And that thought hit him like a blunt blow. Like being tossed in space and being embraced by the void.
What the fuck was happening to him, he didn't know. He was going insane.
John walked to the small sink and washed his hands, without saying a word. He frankly had no idea of what to say.
After drying his hands and forearms, he put on the latex gloves and set to work.
Maybe other people would feel unsure about having a doctor who had almost collapsed minutes earlier taking their cast off, but Sherlock wasn't other people. He looked at John with the same expression he always had when John took care of him. Like he was the only doctor in the world.
Or maybe he knew John's hand never shook when his health was at stake. Maybe he knew John's body never failed him when there was still the possibility of taking care of him.
John turned on the orthopaedic saw and focused his mind on getting Sherlock out of his cast. They had had reminders enough of all the physical pain that man had endured. John couldn't wait to get rid of it.
He worked with surgical precision, and the noise of metal piercing cast was all that could be heard in the room.
When finished, John washed Sherlock's hand and forearm, examining them. Sherlock had lost some of his strength, what was perfectly normal in those cases.
John took a rubber ball out of one of the Bill's drawers and handed it to Sherlock, who squeezed it tentatively, at first.
"So, how do you feel?" John asked. He had been quiet for so long that his voice seemed aggressive in the quiet room.
"Free," the other man smiled, squeezing the ball with more force than was necessary.
John held his hand to stop the movement, but refused to acknowledge the tingling in his fingers. "Well, you are not. Start slowly ."
Sherlock rolled his eyes, but stopped squeezing the rubber ball. He walked over to the chair he had hung his clothes on and started dressing himself while John cleaned the bed and tried to place everything in order.
"So," he started, awkwardly. "William Scott...?" He turned to Sherlock and raised an eyebrow at him.
Sherlock snorted. "Yes, well, what can I do?"
"It fits you perfectly," John said, taking off the covers of the bed and putting them on the proper bin.
"Does it?" Sherlock asked, and John didn't need to look at him to see he was interested.
"Yes," John nodded, "Silly and unnecessarily pompous," he smirked.
Sherlock chuckled. "That's because you don't know Mycroft's name."
John gaped at him.
Sherlock finished fastening his scarf around his neck. "I could tell you, but then he would kill you."
John laughed out loud at this. "I totally believe he would."
Mycroft seemed to have heard them talk about him, because when John and Sherlock stepped out of the cab, he was right there at 221B.
At least, that was what Sherlock told John, even before they had got out of the cab.
They walked up the stairs and John could feel Sherlock's annoyance pouring out of him like heat waves. Mycroft had always made Sherlock upset, but this seemed a bit too much.
"Are you okay?" John asked him, uselessly. Sherlock wouldn't tell him the opposite.
The detective nodded and opened the door.
Sure enough, there was Mycroft, sitting on Sherlock's chair, in all his umbrella-y glory. He looked at John as if he already knew he would be there.
He didn't know why he felt like he had been caught doing something he should be ashamed of. He felt the irrational fear that Mycroft would be able to see in his eyes that he had wished to cuddle Sherlock earlier.
It was ridiculous, for Christ's sake. Mycroft still hadn't installed the CCTV in John's brain.
Well, at least he didn't think so.
The brothers seemed even tenser than John remembered, and he noticed that Sherlock wasn't the only one looking more agitated than usual.
Mycroft Holmes looking agitated. That was quite unusual.
John promptly asked them about tea and decided to retreat to the kitchen.
"Theremight be a head in the fridge," Sherlock said, hanging his coat.
John frowned. "There might be...? You mean you don't know ?" He asked, smiling. It was impossible not to. That was the kind of conversation one was bound to have at Baker Street.
"Molly said she was going to bring it over today, but I don't know if she did," Sherlock told him.
"Or maybe she did come, and Mrs Hudson wasn't home," Mycroft said, matter-of-factly, which hit John as very strange.
"Yes," John said, unsure. "Or that," he finished and it sounded like a question.
What was Mycroft implying?
John looked at Sherlock for support. Was he being insulted? Because he felt insulted and he had absolutely no idea why.
Sherlock seemed uncomfortable.
Ah , so that was something.
John hated that. Being around Sherlock and Mycroft was like swimming in waters filled with jellyfish.
Mycroft stood up and placed a chair for himself in front of Sherlock's armchair.
"Well, aren't you going to tell him?" Mycroft asked Sherlock, sounding as obnoxious as ever. It made John's skin crawl.
Sherlock looked angrily at Mycroft and rolled his eyes. "Molly's got a key," he said, simply, without taking his eyes out of Mycroft.
"Yes, she does," Mycroft nodded and turned back on the chair to look at John. "So be aware of the head in the fridge, Doctor Watson," he said, turning back to Sherlock. "And of the elephant in the room."
John looked at Sherlock again and the detective seemed so distressed that John gave up asking for any explanation about that.
Rolling his eyes at the Holmes typical nonsense, he stepped into the kitchen and closed the door to give the brothers some privacy.
He knew he would never hear anything they did not want him to.
John decided he could bloody well make tea, since he didn't have anything better to do. He put the kettle on and looked around the kitchen, smiling a small, private smile.
He loved that place.
He would never say that out loud, but he loved it. It was probably the room he liked most there. Weirdly enough, it was the room Sherlock felt more at peace in, consequently being the room in which John had always felt more at peace. There, Sherlock was thinking about science and order, not bored or thinking about shooting up some cocaine to give himself something to do.
John looked at the chairs around the table.
Molly had a key to Sherlock's flat. That was... new .
Yes, new. New was a good word for it.
John tried to shut up the inner voice that keep telling him that that was how things were now. That never mind how hard they tried, things were just different. There were different people.
Those two chairs around the kitchen's table... Knowing as he did now that Molly had her own key to the flat, it seemed obvious that the other chair was hers. It seemed appropriate somehow, they were both scientists.
He asked himself what else Molly had in there.
Or Irene Adler, for that matter. Maybe she'd got a key too – she was alive , after all.
John sighed.
It was just still hard to think about 221B as Sherlock's flat.
John still had to adjust to the fact that it wasn't his home anymore. In fact, it was almost as if he had never lived there.
The truth was that every time he came around the flat, that empty spot in front of the fireplace killed him a bit more.
He was getting used to it again, getting to know its every corner and speck of dust again. He was falling in love again with a place that he didn't have the right to love now.
The kettle had just boiled when the sound of rising voices coming from the living room called John's attention. He could almost make up what they were talking about.
"... him out of it," Sherlock maybe said.
Mycroft said something John couldn't understand.
"That is not up to discussion!" Sherlock shouted, and John didn't even need to concentrate to hear it.
It was impossible for John not to feel interested. He wanted to know who ' him' was.
John stared at the door, connecting the dots in his head.
He wasn't as stupid as Sherlock liked to think. The only him John knew who was capable of making Sherlock lose his temper like that was John himself. He knew that much.
The urge to eavesdrop was maddening. John was growing more and more certain that they were talking about him. And he wasn't a kid to be left in the corner until people decide d what to do with him.
He tried to slow down his breathing and stop all the other noises in the kitchen. He stopped making tea, and cursed the bloody fridge for being so loud.
That was just ridiculous. He was an army captain, there was no way in hell he was going to stay there and wait for them to decide what to do about him.
He squared his shoulders and cracked his neck. In a way, it was like being in a battle. He had a Holmes to face, and he had no idea which.
He opened the door loudly and walked over to the couch, with a smile on his lips.
He sat and stared at the brothers defiantly. "You two still think I am completely stupid just because I am not like you, don't you?"
Mycroft looked at him, interested. Sherlock was looking for a lie to placate John.
"You," John said, pointing at Sherlock, "Are full of shit."
Sherlock looked at him as if he had been caught.
"Yeah, I can tell you are trying to fool me right now," John shook his head, but the smile never left his lips. "Aren't you two tired of lying .Face?"
"Indeed, Doctor Watson," Mycroft unexpectedly replied. "I am," he said, but his eyes didn't leave Sherlock's.
"This is what you want, isn't it?" Sherlock asked Mycroft, pouring all his anger in his words. "Did you think I wouldn't notice your pathetic scheme to let him know about what happened?"
John could see Sherlock's fingers flexing over the leather of h is armchair. They were turning white. He looked like a glass statue vibrating, ready to shatter.
"Did you think I wouldn't notice several test results in one envelope, Mycroft?" Sherlock asked.
Ah.
That explained so much.
John looked at Mycroft again. He had no idea of what Mycroft was playing at.
It was suspicious.
Mycroft was laughing. What an obnoxious sound.
"Oh, dear brother. I was perfectly aware that you would notice," he tapped his umbrella on the floor. "What I wanted to know was if you would let him see them anyway."
"And he did," John said, just so they didn't forget he was still there. Also, because Sherlock didn't look like he was going to say anything. He seemed paler than before and he had set his lips in a hard, thin line.
"Yes, you did," Mycroft asserted. He looked at Sherlock as if that had more meaning than what John was grasping.
He didn't care.
"You will tell me what's happening right now, and stop bloody lying to me!" John said, angrily. "It's about those envelopes, isn't it?"
"They aren't just envelopes, Doctor Watson. They are death threats. Ten of them," Mycroft replied, still looking at Sherlock.
"They are nothing," Sherlock insisted.
"Death threats? And you weren't going to tell me?" John stood up and walked over to Sherlock. "Are you fucking insane?"
"There's no need to drag you into this!" Sherlock stood up too.
Of course he would have prefer red to be taller to have this conversation. If only he could choose such a thing.
"Drag me?" John echoed.
He couldn't believe his ears. He was so fucking caught up in all this, he couldn't believe Sherlock still thought it possible to leave John at bay. That Sherlock still preferred it, actually.
"When you decide to stop shouting at each other, we can decide what to do," Mycroft interjected, sounding bored. It made John want to punch him.
"Oh, Mycroft, don't push it. Or I will kick the shit out of you right here in this living room. And you know I bloody well could if I wanted to."
This made Sherlock snort, as John thought it would. Mycroft just rolled his eyes.
John walked back to the couch and sat again. "You are going to tell me what's happening. Or I'll have to call Mycroft for the details. Or Lestrade ."
At Sherlock's vexed expression, John smiled, bitterly. "You really do think I'm stupid, don't you?"
Sherlock had assembled everyone to help him, but not him.
Of course not him, never him . Never John.
Sherlock's face had softened, but he still wasn't convinced. "The less you know, the better, John. You wouldn't be able to do anything."
"And who, pray tell, can help? Irene Adler?" Mycroft asked, disgusted.
"Oh, so Irene knows too?" John smiled angrily. "Bloody brilliant, Sherlock. Is she in London?"
"No," Sherlock replied.
"Pity. You could invite her for tea," John said.
Sherlock rolled his eyes. "She knows people–"
"Or knows what they like," John interjected.
"Oh, lord, this is tiresome," Mycroft said, looking at his watch.
"I want to see the letters," John said.
"No," Sherlock said, simply. His face was hard and left no room for argument.
John would never have thought he would do it , but he turned to Mycroft for help.
Mycroft seemed uncomfortable. "I don't think that's necessary. The problem is that, even though my little brother insists that they are nothing, I can't get my hands on the person who is sending them. We've come across dead end after dead end. Junkies, homeless, these are the kind of people who leave the envelopes here. But the source, Doctor Watson, is still a mystery."
"To you?" John asked, astonished.
It wasn't that hard to believe something being a mystery to Lestrade, but to Mycroft, of all people, it seemed almost unreal.
"Yes, to me," Mycroft's lips turned up, but without humour. "Do you see now why this is a problem?"
"Yes."
Of course he did. If Mycroft didn't know where the letters were coming from, it meant they weren't a joke. And the people behind them were going out of their way to stay hidden.
Sherlock sighed, dejected. "I don't see how this is helping."
"You don't see why having one of our Majesty's best shots and your doctor by your side when you are receiving death threats is helping you?" Mycroft smiled at Sherlock, unpleasantly. He stood up and straightened his suit. "And you call yourself a genius." He loomed over Sherlock, who had sat on his armchair again. "I will keep him posted," he finished.
Walking over to John, he offered his hand. "Always a pleasure, Doctor Watson."
John looked at him and raised an eyebrow. "I'll walk you out."
He was on the receiving end of two Holmeses surprised expression. John wanted to take a picture.
Mycroft walked out of the room and John turned to Sherlock. He frankly had no idea of what to say.
Why are you pushing me away all the time?
Don't you think I could shoot anyone who threatened to kill you?
I can't lose you again. Don't you see?
"Stop moping. I hate it when you do that," he said, instead.
Sherlock rolled his eyes, but his lips turned slightly up.
John smiled at him . "I'll be right back."
He had a million things to discuss with another Holmes.
As ever, thanks to Archie for working with me and accepting to read this absolutely enormous chapter without complaints.
Thank you all for being supportive, for leaving me messages and reviews, it means a lot to me. Come talk to me on tumblr!
I would also like to tell you that if you haven't read Blue is the warmest color (the comic book), then you should probably do that as soon as possible. I know, the movie is nice and all, but the comic book, guys... Is just one of the saddest, warmest, most beautiful things ever. So yeah...