A/N: In human life there is a fundamental need to be useful by means of work and community. We equate our self-worth in productive terms and this virus situation has left so many of us feeling unjustly cut off, at times. I guess that's where this piece comes from.
(Or I just wanted to be mean to the boys. Hopefully it ends well for them. I don't do this often.)
Keep strong. -csf
2nd.
'John, there's a cyclist up ahead.'
'I can see that', I retort flatly, turning the wheel.
Sherlock grabs the car door handle so hard his knuckles turn white.
'Don't look at me, look at the road!' he snaps. There's almost a panicky tone to the detective's voice. That's so silly.
'I saw the cyclist', I state tersely.
'John, red light... Red light. Red, red!'
'Where?'
Car tyres screech and horns honk on the road. Like I say, some folks can't drive.
'Never mind.' Sherlock shudders. 'We passed it now.'
'There was no red light, you're putting me on!'
He shakes his head silently, vowing his truthfulness.
I wonder if he's coming down with something. His face is a bit pale.
'I'm a great driver, Sherlock, I'll have you know. No one ever fell asleep on Kandahar's truck convoys with me at the wheel. There's plenty of people to swear by that.'
'Indeed.'
I break into a halt suddenly, just before a real red light. Sherlock strains forward heavily against his seatbelt. He was distracted, I bet.
Looking at the consulting detective I wonder if he's been overworking, as he seems a bit dazed.
'Can I drive?' he asks, quietly, meeting my eyes. 'Please?'
Oh, great! He's at it again, like I can't drive or something!
I snap the ignition key to cut the engine and throw him the key. He catches it eagerly, looking relieved, in a very misplaced way. I snatch open the driver's door, get out, walk around the car. Inside, Sherlock appropriates the driver's seat by sliding over the gear box elegantly. Bloody flexible git. What was he, afraid I would change my mind midway?
I get inside the passenger's side, carefully glancing at Anderson on the back seat.
Yes, Anderson is tagging along with us. He needed a ride too. Ruddy awkward, I tell you. He couldn't let go of Sherlock Holmes. Said something about a burst water pipe at his flat, that a neighbour would have alerted him about; likely story. I said we wouldn't take two seconds to get to London. Serves Anderson right. With Sherlock driving it's at least two hours. He doesn't know that yet, of course, so he's not looking all that concerned.
I don't know what he's looking like.
Philip Anderson is gripping tightly his seatbelt by his chest, with both hands. He very carefully avoids my inquiring gaze. Funny fellow, Anderson. It's hard for him to act natural when he's appreciative of a favour like a lift.
Cars behind us blare their horns, urging us on, but Sherlock takes his time adjusting the mirrors and backing out the seat to accommodate his long legs. Finally he turns on the engine with a soft, pleasant purr. He glances at me with a complicit smirk and sets the car going three seconds before the green light is gone.
That's my mate. He won't have other drivers tell us what to do. I smile proudly at Sherlock's vindictive reaction to the cars protesting behind us and almost forget Sherlock's ultimate injurious choices in Brighton. Almost. I still hold on to the indignity. Sherlock swapped me for Anderson.
I cross my arms in front of me. Steaming anger seeping away to be replaced with empty sadness. Hurt. Loneliness.
At the crime scene, those two were the greatest of pals. The way Sherlock was grinning earlier, only the best locked room mysteries and gruesome murders can usually elicit that "oh, it's Christmas" grin.
I didn't expect Sherlock to break the loyalty I so much admired in him.
He grinned at Anderson. Truly happy too.
Well, I hope the two of them are happy together. Maybe Mrs Hudson can let 221C to dear Philip, so he can be at Sherlock's beck and call constantly.
Anderson won't last a week, between chemical explosions in the middle of the night, microwaved eyeballs (he really went and done it, one day), and constant summoning to fetch a pen or a beaker.
I turn my face to the window, letting that cold air wind swirling in cool my head a bit.
I hope Sherlock hits a lot if potholes on the road before London. The forensic technician is looking a bit green around the gills as it is.
Besides, what about next time Sherlock needs help because the suspected criminal running away from us has slipped down from the rooftop and fell from a considerable height, breaking a leg? Anderson is not a qualified medic. He's qualified in dusting for prints and bagging evidence. Things Sherlock can do very well on his own. It's not like the two complement each other... And the next time some killer wants to gun down Sherlock? Who will be there to fire first?
I will. I'll stay. To save Sherlock from himself.
I turn my face to Sherlock and glare daggers at him.
He's got the indecency of looking puzzled.
.
John is not acting much like himself. Pent-up tension lines his brow, in a pained, betrayed way. Sherlock's actions? Possible. Upgraded to probable. The duration of that tension wrinkle, embedding itself in the fair skin, is the start of a headache grounded in the contours around John's honest eyes. Started at the hospital, then. Lost a patient. No, not loss. Loss comes with an air of defeat that washes through his gestures and words for days. A fight, then. A difficult battle. A cancerous tumour made worst, an infection rampant in a body, a broken bone ignored until it caused internal injuries. Medical assistance sought too late. Perhaps a mix of any of those scenarios. Something John felt as senseless destruction, avoidable damage. He was confronted with a sentiment of being powerlessness, compounded for hours. In this vulnerable frame of mind, John then decided to come assist me; longing for a change of scenery, desiring a distraction, needing self-affirmation through helping? Sherlock doesn't know. From the moment John found Sherlock everything went south. And this Sherlock cannot explain logically. He does not worry, though, for he knows his doctor.
John is his lodestone, the entity that can focus the detective's hyperbolic mind and turn into a symphony the chaotic inputs of all the different calls hacking away in his mind.
This is only made possible for John seems to always return to his magnetic north. No matter the short temper bursts (quite a few), there is something stable, something deep in John's core, that is his centre. Like a pendulum in its concentric advances John may stray a bit, he always returns to his centre. His constancy and his core are basal, defining characteristics of doctor John Watson.
Sherlock just needs to wait. And try not to lash out before that, if at all possible.
Sherlock will always wait for John. It's inscribed as a message in his DNA now.
.
Sherlock was acting all quiet driving the car as if it was a lazy Sunday morning, but I know him better than that.
'Cyclist, Sherlock.'
'What? Where?'
I lied. On purpose. I'm cranky enough, and two can play the game.
'Never mind. You passed him now. Give more space next time.'
'But I didn't see— John.'
It's not the friendliest or the most patient of glances he gives me. I guess it's the beginning of the end of our friendship. Making way for Anderson.
The forensic man will give the consulting detective the one thing Sherlock requires most; constant praise.
That's why Sherlock chose to adopt Anderson of all people, right?
Anderson is happy enough with the arrangement.
I snuggle back on the seat and try to close my eyes to the road passing us by in a blur of tarmac grey and roadside verges green, the wariness from those long shift hours weighing on me.
Anderson's voice floats from the back seat: 'Sherlock, I still don't get it. Why the scuba diver instructor?'
I exhale tiredly. That's not how you ask it. You must goad Sherlock into telling it to you. It's what he wants the most, right now, to tell you his brilliant deductions, but if you make it easy on him he feels isolated in his genius. He feels misunderstood, in a sea of dead brained goldfish swimming lazily around the fish bowl, never truly looking out through the glass into the bigger world. Judging him, furthermore. That's his knee jerk reaction still, I'm afraid. The freak, the damaged human with the genius intellect.
Show him you really care about the answer and that you are trying hard to understand. Show him you are clever, and challenge him. Put yourself out there with him, don't leave him alone on a pedestal.
Don't leave him lonely.
Anderson won't listen to my mental pleas; of course, he can't.
Sherlock huffs and starts a cutting diatribe on the scuff marks' height on the second woman's diving suit, and the effects of an irregular object applying pressure on 43 types of expanded rubber surfaces in cold water.
It's going to be a long journey to London.
.
'What is wrong with him, John?' Anderson bites out as I help him carry his several forensic gear cases from the car boot down the path to the block of flats.
Instinctively I fall on my default Sherlock protection mode.
'Don't know what you are on about.' And I glare threateningly.
Ingrained reaction.
'He was downright rude to me with his 43 types of rubber scuffing! No one else saw that underneath the seaweed!'
I bite my tongue. It really was a crass miss.
Anderson carries on, regardless. 'And the way he spoke to you when you turned down Chinese take away? He wasn't like that at the crime scene, John... Is he always liked that? Hot and cold? I mean at 221B? What is he like as a flatmate?'
Asking for a friend? I ball my fists around the case handles.
Anderson's righteous anger is dissipating into adoration once again.
'I guess incredible genius is a difficult thing to understand.'
'You two got on like a house on fire at the crime scene, why ask me?' I snap, at last.
The technician looks at me funny. I ignore him. And unclench my fists. And will my heart rate to go back down.
'John, you get to feel his genius every day, you are so lucky.'
Great. He's drooling again. Anderson has no idea what it is like to work with Sherlock for as long as I have. To be his friend, his support.
To know he had your back every single time you needed him.
'He was all smiles at you!' I shout, all temper lost.
The echo of my words on the warm stale air makes me flinch; were those really my words?
Anderson chuckles. I could punch him.
'Was that before or after he kept addressing me as "John"?'
My accelerated breath catches. 'What did you just say?'
Time comes to a standstill.
'You heard me', he dares to challenge me. Not a good time for that. I'll punch you right here, right now...
Too many witnesses.
'I wasn't even there!'
'Force of habit, I take it... Do you – really – not know? Oh, you don't, do you?'
Anderson is both amused and demure, all of a sudden.
'What?' I bark.
'Sherlock calls everyone "John" once he gets lost in his head. When he's looking for clues at a crime scene, deducing to Lestrade at Scotland Yard, he even called Molly Hooper from the morgue "John" more than once that I've witnessed. It's like a running joke now. There are active pools at the Yard on how many times more Sherlock will call someone "John" versus "idiot". Your name keeps winning. It's still annoying, but slightly less insulting than constantly being called an idiot...'
I exhale a long breath and rub my eyes.
Oh, Sherlock. In a way I was there all along. Not forgotten in the least.
Could there be a more fitting reference to a missing friend than feeling as if I'm around all the time?
Like a child with an imaginary friend or something.
Okay, so maybe it's not all that healthy, this co-dependency, but—
It warns my heart.
I missed him too.
I have managed to avoid calling my patients Sherlock, though. Mostly because I'd suffer a mini heart attack every time addressing a patient on a ventilator, for instance. I won't transport Sherlock's ghost to a hospital ward. As for healthier, sprained ankles and runny nose patients, they would object surely. Sherlock makes it look so easy...
I should appreciate there are no anecdotal evidence so far of Sherlock addressing mangled corpses as "John".
'Alright', I admit at last, handing Anderson his cases, before turning on my heels and walking stiffly back to the car. I'm on a mission.
'Thanks for the ride!'
Yeah, whatever. I'm busy. I wave Anderson off.
I owe the git an apology.
He's been a great friend. I got jealous. I was tired and got a bit worked up.
'Chinese, you said?' I bark as I enter the car.
Sherlock's face lights up. He scans me up and down, before humming satisfied. He turns the engine on, apparently intent on the road alone.
'Time to get some food into both of us. Can't live of thin air, a good doctor has told me', he adds, slyly.
But it's not enough. I need to come clean.
'I'm sorry, mate. I was wrong.'
'Cyclist, John.'
His interruption derails me.
'What? You're the one driving!'
There is no cyclist, by the way. Unless he means the one coming in the opposite direction, a long way away from us.
'The cyclist, John. Identify theft con artist, but he downsized as a rich banker, because he was clearly a real life Tour de France cyclist. Anyone can tell that much by the muscle development of his quadriceps!'
I blink. This is how Sherlock goads me into asking him for the glorious deductions he's made.
'I want to hear that, but first I need to explain that I acted like an idiot.'
'Just drop it, John. I witnessed no such behaviour.'
I grin. He does too.
Yes, that clever grin.
I let the lie pass unchallenged.
'Tour de France... By his quadriceps alone, really?'
'I'll explain it over extra dumplings, John.'
.
