Note: 'Power point' is British for 'electrical outlet.'
Beta shout-outs to hiddenlacuna, dee-light, and lapotter! I couldn't have done it without you, guys! (I mean it, I couldn't have.)
It's well after dark by the time they reach the edge of town. A half-moon is out, for all the dubious good it does; it doesn't illuminate so much as it deepens the shadows over all the deadliest bits of landscape. One might think that wandering the moonlit Welsh countryside with a man who's really a fairy would be atmospheric, but mostly it's just painful. After nearly breaking his legs three times, John's fished his torch out again, but Sherlock doesn't seem to need it.
He breaks into a run before John can even make out what he's seen, and then does a flying leap to land out in the middle of the road John hadn't realized they'd reached.
Sherlock stomps his feet on the blacktop. "A road, John! Look at it!"
"I see it." John slips a little on his way down the short bank, trying not to fall on his head while he keeps an eye out for headlamps. "Sherlock, I know for a fact they had roads when you were here last."
Sherlock spins in place, trying to look in every direction at once. "Cars use roads. Where is a car, John? I want to see one!"
This is the creature of shadow and starlight that John met in a burial mound. For a moment, all he can think of is the time he ended up herding kiddies when he was invited to Christmas with Harry's wife's family. He sighs and follows warily as Sherlock sets off towards the warm yellow flickers of inhabited houses past the curve in the road. "How can you know what a car is, but never have seen one before?"
"Sherlock knows about cars. I think…" John squints at the phrasing, but Sherlock whirls on him before he can say anything, eyes sharp as an awl. "I think he even knows how to use one. John. I need to see a car right now!"
Tragically, there are three cars parked under a street lamp, up the street from them. Sherlock sprints. John growls, shakes off that little curl of sensation down his spine at the sound of his name, and gives chase.
Sherlock's circling the first vehicle like a hunting hound by the time John reaches him. It's a broken-in, pale green Ford Fiesta. John grabs him by the back of his collar when he reaches out. "Look, but do not touch."
"I'm just going to-" Sherlock grabs for the door handle with his free hand—unlocked, bloody trusting small towns—and John physically heaves himself backward with his grip still on Sherlock's coat to keep him from climbing in.
"Sherlock." John stresses his name deliberately, hoping that whatever that strange thrill is he feels when Sherlock says his name, it works both ways. At any rate, Sherlock stops and turns to face him. He has the nerve to look as surprised as if John hadn't already told him off once. John has a suspicion that they're going to have to work on concepts of 'just because you want it doesn't mean you can have it.' "Cars are expensive. Interfering with a car that doesn't belong to us will get us in trouble. Maybe worse, it'll get us attention we don't want."
Sherlock studies him for about two seconds, as if trying to intuit a foreign language, then focuses upwards past John's head. "And what is that?"
God, he's like a ferret. John follows his gaze, flexing backwards to look up and back. "Power lines?" He looks back down to find Sherlock's gaze apparently striving to lever the information from John's brain. "Look. Leave the car alone and come with me, and I'll tell you about electricity."
The bid works, and thank God because John was short on ideas for herding an unwilling Sherlock the several streets to the bed & breakfast. John points out street lights, telephone poles, and woos Sherlock onwards with the promise of the miracles of television. Sherlock is vibrating in his skin by the time they reach the place.
John breathes another sigh of relief to note that there's no one in the sitting room when they come in. He holds the front door open and waves Sherlock up the stairs. Smuggling him in for the night is probably easiest, and then…Christ…they can catch the train back to London tomorrow morning.
One step at a time. He suspects he'll be living by that mantra for a while.
John detours just long enough to drop the rucksack off in the kitchen, and then follows Sherlock upstairs to unlock the door. There's one double bed; a bit crowded for two grown men, but they can manage sharing. He turns to Sherlock as a thought strikes him.
"Do you sleep?"
Sherlock blinks, looks thoughtful, and then says with as much scorn as if he hadn't just needed to review it for himself, "Of course I sleep. I am human."
"Right." John nods, not sure whether to be relieved or miffed. "Good. So I don't need to teach you how to brush your teeth or use the loo or anything?" Please, no.
Sherlock scoffs, turns with haughty grace, and sails into the bathroom. John closes the door on him when he starts to unfasten his trousers.
Once he's in his pyjamas and ensconced in fluffy blankets, though, John can't bring himself to roll over and stop watching the bathroom door. He's not used to people prowling around his rooms, much less near-total strangers. Who aren't even human. And who're inexplicably difficult to look away from. John jams the pillow a bit tighter under his head.
It's twilight at the edge of the forest. John stands under the shadow of the trees, and watches the meadow glow with a universe of fireflies flickering in the purple fog.
He can feel the forest's eyes on him. It's waiting to find out whether he'll step out into the ghostly meadow, or back in under the cool cloak of the trees; pondering whether he's something to devour or something to toy with. He feels it as a twisting thrill in the pit of his stomach. He wants to try his hand against the forest, but he's caught at the verge, can't quite pull free from the hypnotic glimmer of the meadow.
A hand snakes around his waist to flatten over his stomach. A figure of midnight green and black presses against his back like the forest's living body.
"You like to live dangerously, don't you, John Watson?" the familiar voice purrs in his ear and coils sweetly in his gut.
John blinks his eyes open to stare at the dark ceiling of his room at the bed & breakfast.
He feels ridiculous for how long it takes him to be sure it was a dream. He doesn't have dreams that vivid, except about the war. Sherlock's next to him, a pile of black curls sticking out of blankets, breaths soft and resonant in his long nose in his sleep. John turns his head to watch his chest rise and fall. What exactly has he signed on for?
They need to be up at 06:30 to catch the train back to London. John's trying not to think about it, because all the conclusions he can to come to are insane. What's he meant to do once he gets Sherlock home? How is he supposed to handle modern London if he could barely manage the excitement of a car?
It occurs to him, watching the shadows of tree branches move across the ceiling, that they could stay here. Somewhere like this, at least; a nice small town where Sherlock can acclimatize gradually.
But the idea of not having a sea of people and urban weirdness for Sherlock to blend into is terrifying. John's got a feeling that nothing smaller than London would be big or strong enough to hold him. He's so fucked, honestly. Why didn't he think about this before he took a fairy home with him?
He lies there for a long time, mind rattling with train schedules, training schedules, and dancing budgets, weighing the two of them crammed into a Camden bedsit vs. the likelihood of affording a larger flat. Eventually, he falls asleep to the music of another man's breathing.
When John wakes in the morning, Sherlock's sitting cross-legged in bed, watching him. John blinks, because it doesn't feel the least bit strange. He looks up at Sherlock, who looks down at him, and the moment has all the solidity of a mundane event.
No, it is a mundane event. All at once, an entire history of them rolls out in John's head. He knows Sherlock. Sherlock plays violin in the middle of the night. He does chemistry in their kitchen. He wears unreasonably expensive suits to mucky crime scenes and never fixes John coffee even though he'll cook and sometimes make tea, and that one time after they were locked into a meat freezer, he made them both hot chocolate-and not with a mix, but the old-fashioned way. He never tidies, and he won't do his own laundry, and he was a big fat liar when he claimed to have told John the worst about himself, but he tells John the most amazing stories about his cases and he is always, always, always there when John is alone and needs a friend.
John stares up at Sherlock, who sits watching him with his curly case of bedhead poking into his eyes, all long bare limbs in his shorts and a borrowed t-shirt. "Sherlock? How...?"
Sherlock grins at him, eyes glinting mischievously.
John should be afraid. He should. He just got an entire life downloaded into his head and he's pretty sure he should be hyperventilating, but all he can feel is happy. As though Sherlock has just gifted him with everything he ever wanted in life.
That, somehow, is what scares him. He doesn't have the first clue what to do with that.
Then his brain jumps tracks and he sits bolt upright. "Oh hell. Iron!" He turns to face Sherlock, who doesn't so much as twitch, watching like he's expecting John to do a trick at any moment. "Cold iron, Sherlock! Can't it hurt you?"
One eyebrow goes up. "So you remember that, do you."
That is not an answer. John stares relentlessly at him. Catching on that John will sit there till he says something, Sherlock admits with disturbing casualness, "Iron can kill me."
The bottom drops out of John's stomach. The train. How the hell is he supposed to make this work if he can't even get Sherlock to London?
"Assuming someone stabs me to death with it," Sherlock continues dryly. He was already meeting John's eyes-reading John's reactions, Sherlock's mocking him, deliberately teasing him, and should that feel this warm and fond?-but his gaze turns a little more sardonic. "What exactly were you expecting?"
John opens his mouth to explain, and then sort of hangs there, because explaining about iron to a fairy seems, well, awkward.. "Um. It doesn't...do things?" The Watson eloquence. He has it in spades.
"I did touch the car last night, if you'll recall." Sherlock looks distinctly, humiliatingly amused. "Why? Are you planning on braining me with that flat iron serving as a door stop downstairs?" He slaps John's sheet-covered leg. "You should get up or we'll be late for the train. In which case I'd have to make you suffer, because I want to see it arrive. I've got a notion that they're like dragons."
"That's not the least bit like a dragon," Sherlock complains as the train comes to a hissing, squealing, shuddering halt before them.
John studies it with elaborate care. "I shouldn't think so. Dragons have wings, for a start."
Sherlock sniffs. "Only some of them." He dodges John's attempt to nudge him toward the rail carriage, trying to peer down at the undercarriage. "They're all different. Very individual, dragons."
"Right." John purses his lips. "Good to know I've got an expert I can consult." He catches Sherlock by the arm and tows him past the less-than-impressed conductor. The carriage is about half-full of passengers, mostly dozing at this time of morning. They move quietly through the aisle to an empty pair of seats, where John lets Sherlock take the one by the window. He's got a premonition that Sherlock would end up clambering over top of him, if he didn't.
"So what is the train like, then?" he murmurs once he's tossed his bag into the luggage rack and sat down. "If it's nothing like a dragon?"
Sherlock shakes his head.
Under John's repeated admonishments, Sherlock sits till the conductor has come by to collect their tickets, and then he's up and moving, practically vibrating with his desire to explore the train. John finds he's got his hands full with keeping Sherlock from pulling the emergency brake or the fire alarm, or getting into the intercom system.
They step into the vestibule between carriages, and John nearly has a heart attack when Sherlock slews sideways to grab onto the handle of the exterior door and smush his face against the window. John takes a step, braced to haul his new friend back in from hurling himself to his death. But Sherlock just...stays there, for a good minute, before he finally turns around to fix John with a puzzled expression. "Your glass is very strange." And then he's sailing off through the door into the next train car, leaving John to stare helplessly at the nose-print he's left smeared on the window.
In the next carriage, Sherlock pops open the sliding door to one of the toilets to start poking at everything he can find in there that'll rattle. John stands outside the open door with his hand over his face, hoping vainly that no one will recognize him, or possibly that he'll somehow manage to die on the spot. A woman holding the hand of a child who comes up to her waist stops about five feet away, glaring at him.
"I'm so sorry," John mutters through his fingers. "He's intolerable if I don't let him explore. He'll be out in just a second. Won't you, Sherlock."
Sherlock reaches over his shoulder to flap his hand in John's general direction. John can't tell if he even noticed what John said. When he hears the clack of the toilet seat, John grabs him by the coat tails and bodily drags him out. "Time to go back to our seats."
John keeps close to Sherlock's back as they make their way back, the better to steer him if he takes it into his head to dive into anything else. A few of the passengers they pass are riding with cats curled in their laps. Most of the cats seem to be dozing, but when Sherlock passes, every one of them lifts their head to follow his progress. It's a bit spooky, the way John can turn back and see them all staring after him with knowing cat-eyes.
Sherlock stops by an older man with a fluffy, long-haired Siamese-looking cat on his lap. He locks gazes with the cat for a few seconds, and then Sherlock yowls.
The sudden, horrific shriek strips about a decade off John's life. All activity in the carriage stops. John tries to restart his heart and sink through the floor at the same time.
Looking terrified, the man holding the strangely pleased-looking cat opens his mouth, probably to call for help. John lunges forward to elbow Sherlock aside. "I am so sorry." He grabs Sherlock's elbow and begins pulling him away. "It's fine, he's harmless! Just his morning meds haven't kicked in yet."
Sherlock shakes him off a few strides later. "I was having a conversation, John!"
"Keep your voice down," John hisses. It looked more like screaming to him, but he doggedly stays on topic. "You were frightening the passengers."
"The cat was fine!"
John only realizes how hard he's gritting his teeth when they creak. "Not the cat, Sherlock."
Suspicious glares follow them all the way back to their seats, where John all but shoves Sherlock into the one by the window. Sherlock doesn't seem to care about the rough handling; he sets to examining all the things in this space, running his hands over the fabrics and metals, around the edges of the power point. Gratitude wells up in John that he thought to address the whole 'not sticking your fingers in' issue. "What is this made of?" Sherlock asks after a moment. "It's not wood or metal or stone..."
It's hard to switch gears from 'frustrated panic' to 'teacher.' "You know about bicycles but not plastic?"
He gets no response. Sherlock spends the next five blissfully quiet minutes apparently meditating, eyes closed and one finger absently stroking the power point.
John watches Sherlock think and wonders what's wrong in his own head. Where's his well-earned sense of caution? He's got used to being a suspicious bastard, these days. He knows better than to let his guard down; life's taught him to brace for the shite it flings. Hell, when he went out on the hunt with Bill's mates, he got the jitters every time he had his back to them, his nape prickling with the awareness of their loaded guns where he couldn't see them.
And Sherlock. Sherlock is fae. The Fair Folk lie. That's what they do; they lie and they trick you and they take what they want and if they're in a good mood they make you believe it was your idea to give it to them. He's a living force of nature, unpredictable and barely governable, and John's responsible for him. Sherlock's climbed into his head and rewritten his memories. Shouldn't he be afraid?
No, reword that. He should be afraid. He should be sodding terrified. But Sherlock is incandescent with intellect. John can't tell whether the light in those eerie eyes is his own fancy or if they actually glow sometimes, but when Sherlock gets going, his eyes turn the colour of lightning and his presence beats against John like a gathering storm, tingling over his skin and raising the hair on the backs of his arms. It feels like he's just been raised from the dead. Like the first clean breath of air he's drawn since Afghanistan. All John can do is revel in that thrill of amazement every time Sherlock says his name, or speaks, or looks at him.
The next thing he knows, John's getting kicked awake from a dream by legs in his lap. Which is interesting, because Sherlock is also in his own seat. And also glued to the window, so engrossed in whatever he's looking at that he's flailing around like an octopus that's fallen behind schedule.
What the fuck is even going through his head? John rubs his face and tries to shake himself free of the pieces of dream that insist on clinging to him. Long, strong fingers threading through his hair. He'd been purring in pleasure at the sensation; actually purring because, now he thinks of it, he'd been some sort of cat. A great cat, with a tawny, striped fur coat into which fingers had dug and rubbed. John can still feel the rumble of the purr in his throat. God, had he been doing that out loud?
Sherlock's voice had been there, with the strange unearthly harmonics he'd had when he spoke in the barrow. The sounds of his voice hovers at the edge of memory, but John can't fetch the words back.
"Your eyes are the same," he says aloud, for no real reason other than that it's true.
Sherlock turns to look over his shoulder with a mischievous smile before he faces back to the window and points. "What is that?"
John leans forward to look. "That's Birmingham." Which is a stupid thing to say to a man who's never seen-
"It's a city," Sherlock murmurs in a tone that sounds something like affront. Granted, if ever a city could offend on sight, that'd be Birmingham. But Sherlock looks a bit rattled, too. A little lost in his own head, if John's honest, like he's seeing something else. Or maybe another time. "Why would you do such a thing?"
John resists the impulse to bristle. The decisions of the collective human race aren't on him. "I don't know. Because we could, I suppose." He regards the shifting skyline, tries to imagine how it must look to brand new eyes. "Skyscrapers are efficient. Build up instead of out, it uses less land. Keeps things closer together."
Sherlock's head shifts back and forth like a rubbernecking tourist. Which is precisely what he is, isn't it? Is he offended? Does it look like some sort of technological abomination to him? What do fairy cities look like? "Do you have them?" John blurts out on the heels of that last thought, because if they do, it must be amazing.
Sherlock doesn't answer till the skyline disappears behind the walls that enclose the tracks along the final approach. Then he turns back. John catches his breath, because Sherlock is radiant.
"It's magnificent," Sherlock says, with as much intensity as if it'd been John's idea. John smiles helplessly back.
They sit there for a few moments, the rattle and sway of the train carriage in the station tunnel filling the silence. John can't begin to imagine what might be going through Sherlock's head, but he feels vaguely like he ought to be starting a conversation or something.
Sherlock's fingers tap at the armrest on his far side with a hypnotically gentle rhythm. After a bit, John remembers what he'd been curious about. "What were you doing with the power point earlier?"
Sherlock makes a noise of query, then glances at the little plastic plate on the wall. "It's empty."
"Yes?" He explained this last night, but then he's dumped a lot of information on Sherlock in the past...twelve hours. Good god, he's out of his mind, doing this. But he's already made his decision, so he musters his explanation and starts again. "You plug things into it..."
Sherlock rolls his eyes. "Not like that. Look." He reaches up to lay a hand on the headrest of John's seat. "The last person who sat here was a woman in a blue skirt. She was on her way home from a weekend of cheating on her husband, with...oh, two other men." His head tilts like a curious hawk's. "No, no, one was another woman. How refreshing, you lot were so prudish last time I was here. Mine contained, sometime in the past week, a bicycle racer who'd just returned from India with a satchel of illicit drugs and a conviction that he was a famous poet in a past life. Entirely wrong of him; he was previously an accountant."
"Um." A response seems called for, but how exactly does one respond to that? "What?"
Sherlock hefts a sigh. "Things have lives, John. They have histories, experiences, memories. The wood of the door on your room at the inn came, about two hundred years ago, from an oak tree that witnessed a bloody battle when it was alive. It held human bones wrapped in its roots, and took pride in its guardianship of their resting place. This, on the other hand..." He reaches over to tap the power point, brow furrowing. "It's etched with fleeting contact of many human lives, but it knows barely anything about itself. It's all but empty."
John studies the thing, as though it might do something while he's watching. Dear god, is everything like this for Sherlock? The whole world, clamouring its stories in his ears every time he brushes by? It's...fantastic is such a stupidly obvious word. He'd call it impossible, if he hadn't already invited impossibility to come live with him. As it is, he doesn't know what to call it. He's having trouble even processing it.
"Would you like to see?" Sherlock asks.
John looks at him, wide-eyed. "You can show me?"
"I can if you want me to." Sherlock's lips quirk into a smirk that dares him to agree. "Interested?"
It'd be stupid to say yes, wouldn't it? Sherlock looks too enthusiastic, which never spells anything but trouble. Then again, his newly-acquired memories tell him it tends to pay off to say yes to Sherlock. John looks around the people in the carriage around him, licks his lips, and nods. He's always rather been a fan of trouble.
Sherlock leans over the armrest, long fingers slipping into the flap of John's jeans pocket and wriggling downward, prodding him in the hip as he tries to delve in; it's nearly impossible while John's seated. John twitches in surprise. "What are you...?"
"Coins, John."
Oh. Yes, that...no, that doesn't make sense, exactly, but John lifts his hips anyway, and lets Sherlock's fingers press in deeper. He tries not to shiver as they caress the inner crease of his thigh through the thin lining. Surely it's not intentional; Sherlock's just digging through the change at the bottom, and why are they doing this exactly? He can feel every twitch of Sherlock's finger and thumb as he pinches one and draws it out slowly, a streak of warmth lingering in his wake.
Sherlock turns the penny over in his fingers a couple of times, then lets it fall into his palm. "Touch it, and close your eyes." John eyes him for a moment, still a little shell-shocked from the sudden groping, before he obeys.
At first the only thing that happens is that the penny gets warm, caught between their palms. And then...
He wonders if he's fallen asleep again. He can feel himself turning over and over again in warm fingers, the light gleaming off his raised edges.
The music of a violin floating around him as he falls with a clunk onto felt; fingers snapping, flipping, he shines through the air and sees her pull him in for a kiss as John falls... Lying under resigned leaves. Flying, caught in a bird's beak with a happy ca-ca-caw sounding around him. The jostle and jingle of other coins around him: in the soft darkness of pockets and purses, the ceramic chill of piggy banks, the exposed brightness at the edge of a glass jar. Water and fabric and soap, sloshing back and forth, back and forth; and then tumbling, hot, around and around, clattering joyfully on the dryer's metal walls.
Dancing through fingers again. They stroke and spin and play with him, swift and graceful, and John's never been able to dance so beautifully. He remembers a lot of skin, then; a lot of fingers, the shapes of fingerprints pressed into his surface. Twirling over knuckles, slipping secretly into and out of sleeves, appearing from behind children's ears to the chimes of their delighted giggles.
And then dropped into a sink and washed down a drain with the remains of a dinner, his smooth shiny surface nicked and marred by the blades of the grinder. It's only a moment, but John gasps with the pain and the grief of it, and has to put a hand to his own face to be certain he's not missing chunks of himself.
He's in one piece, and the train and its noises are surrounding him again, but threads still catch at him: two warm, slightly sweaty palms, pressed together with him sandwiched in between. The metal of him heating with the heat of their bodies.
Their hands are clasped, settled on the armrest between them. The grinder; he vaguely remembers grabbing...but with his skin tingling under the intensity of Sherlock's eyes, some outlandish part of him doesn't really want to let go. This is getting out of hand; he's sitting with his fingers laced together with a man who just screamed at a cat. In public. He tugs half-heartedly, and Sherlock's hand tightens for an instant before he releases him.
Sherlock's hand slips back into his own pocket with the penny. John rubs the heels of his hands over his eyes. He's not sure how to process what just happened. It feels like a dream, but...it feels like his dreams of Afghanistan. Things that are real; just not happening here.
Entirely unfazed for his part-and why should he be? he's used to this-Sherlock goes back to poking, fiddling, and looking around. Needing a moment to be selfish, John ignores him till Sherlock's sudden stillness catches his attention.
He comes out of himself, to find Sherlock staring out the window again, with something like horrified awe on his face. It doesn't take being acquainted with him for months to know that that's alarming. "Sherlock? What is it?"
But he knows, with one glance outside the window, because they're almost home.
Sherlock's head twitches toward him, but his eyes don't move. "John...that's London. What have you people done?!"