A/N: Still not British, a writer, or a detective. -csf
First half.
Sherlock shrugged his unruly hair in a towel, as he stamped wet footprints on his way out of the warm, foggy bathroom. His hair smelled of an expensive wood and spices blend from his pretentious shampoo. Potential energy brimmed in his lean body as an uncoiled spring, a jack-in-the-box mixed pot of action, mystery and deductions.
Meanwhile, John sat at the kitchen table, lost, quiet, faraway gaze straining on the kitchen tiles' outdated medley of greens. He didn't turn, acknowledge his flatmate or react to his presence. He just stared ahead, subdued, tired, eyes slightly glazed over, until Sherlock himself squinted at the tiles in slight suspicion, searching for an answer that could never be that simple.
The detective came closer to his flatmate, his friend, to the mystery of John Watson being unpredictable once more, being uncharacteristically mute, effaced of that myriad of minute micro-expressions and tells that sang symphonies to Sherlock every time their presences met.
Sherlock came every inch closer, mesmerised by all that wasn't John, that now populated his assistant's body and mind. He could see the tension on the doctor's neck, the white knuckles in the fisted hand over the table top. The other hand unceremoniously shoved between John's locked knees. Sherlock thought he could see a hint of tremor there, and he inhaled sharply. The first valuable clue. But Sherlock was lost at sea when it came to emotions. To have John shut down, disconnect, disengage, and hide behind a barrier of effacing restrictions was worst than having John angry, hurt or frustrated.
It kept Sherlock firmly out by exploring his weakness. It was underhanded, treacherous... It was raw pain, and a desire to retreat from the world, an inner ache that Sherlock recognised from his own bones, from a time before Baker Street, before John.
The detective turned voyeur of his friend's mostly concealed pain stopped, he didn't know how to breach the final distance, even if they were now one arm's length from each other. They could be in different worlds altogether.
'Are you alright?' he asked the quiet man.
John flinched and turned, the most odd expression flickering through his face, one of surprise and shock in equal measures, and perhaps, if a percentage part can be more than the whole number, of someone utterly spooked. But why?
Not for the first time, the detective cursed his selective blindness when it came to emotional responses. He knew he wasn't half bad when responding instinctively, but Sherlock was an over-thinker. Emotions were too malleable as facts, they responded by shifting to too many variables, and their logic was murky, devious, disproportionate in ways that habitually broken patterns, deviated by excuses that didn't measure up to the whole, tainted by hidden life experiences and fictional or cultural references that could not fully be accounted for. Facts were comforting; emotions were messy. Always had been, for Sherlock.
'It's me, John', the detective elects to say nonchalantly, to break the ice. 'That is, it's me: Sherlock. You're John.' You're the one who should be doing this, keeping me from making a fool of myself.
'It's you', John repeats. Is there a hint of relief in his voice? 'You're really here?'
Sherlock blinks, guilt washing over him. Yes, he kinda left, for a week maybe, and in his urge to catch up with a serial killer, he may not have kept much contact with John. Or any contact at all. And he may have neglected to inform John of his departure by the appropriate channels of social convention territory.
'You know I'm back. You yelled at me.'
John frowns. Target memory locked. 'Sorry', the soldier says, reflexively, distantly. Useful word, devoid of particular inflection. He's not sorry at all, Sherlock deduces with a smirk.
John misses the sight of that smirk too.
Sherlock would rather John just come out and sock him in the jaw. This slow torture is disturbing, not in the least because John is hurting himself, and Sherlock gets to watch from a front row seat. Please stop this, John, stop it right now.
'Right. Takeaway for diner?' John bravely pieces himself together, like a puzzle taking form, or a broken something mended in jagged edges.
Sherlock nods, relief washing over him.
.
Lestrade's grey fox hair shines under the bleached lights of St Bart's morgue, as he recites from his manila case folders to the consulting detective:
'Poor guy got found with a few bits missing of him. Molly says she couldn't determine the cause of death, let alone the probable time of death, because the guy had practically dissolved in his swimming pool by the time we got there! And the stench! Chlorine migraines are the worse, the whole team got them, even if we were there but two seconds before we got the windows and doors open for fresh air.'
Sherlock's mercurial eyes narrow. 'You allowed valuable clues to vaporise outside the private pool house, Lestrade.'
'Believe me, it was self-defence, mate. Anyway, you could only get the pungent smell of chlorine. Like swimming pools and bleach, you know. I doubt even your most sophisticated machines could have picked up on anything else.'
'There was a dead body, inspector. Dead bodies stink of decay.'
'This one was submerged in what could have been thought of as bleach. He didn't so much stink as he was being dissolved.'
'Dead bodies produce gases, they float.'
'The murderer will have thought of that, because the body was weighed down.'
'The exposure to chlorine would have been the same throughout the victim's body surface. Clever.'
'Yeah', the inspector agrees, dubiously, with that forehead wrinkle that denounces worry over the younger man's less socially acceptable responses. 'The state of the body's skin will have accounted for Molly not being able to find violence marks. Nothing that would explain the missing brain and eyeballs. It was gruesome, mate.'
'You would have found it gruesome if you had been presented with the missing brain and eyeballs, Lestrade. Your goriness criteria fails upon closer examination.'
'Yeah, why didn't I think of that, your highness?' the inspector bites back, testily. He also searches for complicity in doctor Watson – only to find him gone from the room.
Sherlock Holmes follows his gaze and notices the absence too.
'Maybe John's gone to the vending machine. Wait', he physically holds back the retreating detective, 'give me what you've got, give me anything, Sherlock.'
But the consulting detective is usually distracted now, looking around the room as a hound trying to pick up a scent. He's missing John already, god help me, what's going on? Lestrade wonders. There's a newfound vulnerability in the detective's grey eyes that Lestrade had hoped he would never see again in them, for it reminds him painfully of Sherlock's return to London and John's hurt fuelled rejection. Everyone knew they needed each other, but the gap between them had momentarily grown too wide to breach. Who would be the first to crack their immense egos and prides was a matter for he Yard's secret betting pools.
'Not now, Lestrade. I need... need to find... where's... need John... here', Sherlock mumbles, as he brushes off the hand on his coat sleeve.
He looks truly spooked. 'Try the vending machine', Lestrade insists. Sherlock won't bother telling him that John's habitual diet is rarely dispensed in exchange for loose change in dusty public building corners. He just nods, as he flicks up his coat collar without thinking, and plunges his hands deep in his pockets, walking out into the corridor through the fire doors.
Molly's Morgue, although undoubtedly Sherlock's favourite room, is not the only such room, dedicated to body dismemberment and clinically cold assessment of causes of death. Other similar rooms, with their temporary accommodation in cold chamber drawers and sets of slabs for examination exist along the corridor, and Sherlock thinks John might be in one of those other rooms, searching for that same solace and isolation he seeked at the breakfast table.
The detective glances through the glass panel on the doors to each room, finding them empty of living, breathing persons.
There are high up windows towards the outside world along the corridor, a caprice of some Victorian architect wanting to maintain a sane connection with the living London higher up from the basement floor Morgue. Sherlock dimly registers it has started to rain, hard, and that the rain splashes against the window panes, illuminated in stark relief by occasional lightening. It's a bad storm outside, and John has gone and lost himself – presumably still inside Bart's.
John usually tenses up, his muscles reflexively seizing, during thunders, although he barely registers lightening. It took a while before Sherlock realised it was an ingrained learnt behaviour from a war zone, where bombs went off unexpectedly and doctors got scurried off to campaign operating theatres to try to patch up any unlucky casualties.
Sherlock has also realised that his presence in the room, if known to John, greatly allays the discomfort of such momentary displacement episodes. Sherlock doesn't belong in the war, and so his presence is a loadstone for John to get his current bearings. More than flattered, Sherlock is thankful for his influence in the brave soldier's psyche.
'John.'
Sherlock finally finds him. John is immobile, staring at a set of freezer drawers, where countless bodies are stored for analysis. He is apparently unaware of the storm raging outside, or that he has forsaken Lestrade and Sherlock. John is again trapped in his own mind, exploring elsewhere.
The detective's eyes narrow, as he pushes open the door, and lets himself in.
John starts and turns around abruptly, his heart rate elevated and his cheeks flushing, but otherwise refusing to acknowledge something is off.
'Sherlock. Hm, have you solved it then?'
The detective thinks he can sense the pleading echo in those words, edging him to take on the misdirection and go with it. Because John is his friend, because it appears John is hurting, Sherlock does.
'Nearly. Seen enough to know the missing organs were extracted through the nasal passage after being mushed by sharp implements, clearly mimicking Egyptian mummies embalming processes. I have yet to find out the significance of the chlorine or the swimming pool.'
John blinks, as if trying desperately to harness all his attention to the here and now.
'We'll have to brush up on our ancient Egyptian mythology.'
'We can do that at Baker Street. I'll get us a cab. There's a raging storm outside', Sherlock volunteers. John wonders why is this his lucky day.
Soon they are heading out of St Bart's building to the dark tempestuous night.
'Wait, Sherlock, you did tell Greg we were leaving, right?'
'Who's Greg, again?'
'Sherlock!'
'Just drop it, John.'
.
'He's getting away! John, cut him off from the left! I'll take the back passage!' DI Lestrade orders sharply.
It's in the military doctor lifeblood to obey orders during battle, and make no mistake, John sees this as a battle. It's London and they are running around in a derelict and half torn down warehouse, but it could easily have been the dusty streets of Kandahar or the spicy markets of Helmand, the way John reacts to his orders. He's sprinting, low to the ground, across the warehouse, just out of sight behind abandoned stations of sewing machines. John knows from experience this is far from over yet. His jaw is set in determination, his muscles are wired with contained energy, and his thoughts are dark and calm. He's trailing his gun in his right hand, ready to break up the fight if he only gets a clear view of the shooter that wastes ammunition to keep the good guys from catching him.
He's the pool house murderer and Sherlock has found him by deducing evidence of footwear in the mud outside. Simple, so simple, that the murderer resents it with all his guts, so it seems.
'Keep down, John!' someone shouts with anger and trepidation. Immediately another prompt joins the first: 'He's heading your way, John!'
And that's the soldier's cue. He calculates his changes and dismisses his maths because it hardly matters anyway, he springs out of hiding in a fast run across to the next row of machinery, and at the same time he's aiming, by sight and instinct alike, and shoots at the killer. He nearly slides along the dirty ground as he reaches safety again.
Then silence alone. He hears nothing. He doesn't know if he hit the enemy with a lethal shot – instant kill – or if he missed him altogether. He certainly doesn't consider minor injuries from his shots, as people tend to yell and curse and moan a lot if they are aware they've been hit. The seconds pass in heightened tension, waiting to break into action.
'John, get away!' a different voice yelps, familiar yet impossible, and John hesitates. Just the tiniest hesitation – can Sherlock be here? of course he is here – and John tries to follow the directive, but it's an instant too late and he feels white hot searing pain on his forearm, nearly making him drop the gun. Nearly. He's a soldier yet. It takes something more instinctive than geometry and angles or physics and drag, and John is already taking up his injured arm, blood flourishing and bursting into vivid pain, but he's already shooting the killer, for if the killer had an angle on him, John easily had an open chance to shoot him back.
From the upper level balcony railing, a thud of a falling murderer being given instant justice.
John groans and lowers his arm, and himself, as he crumbles sideways to the support of the nearest machine.
The next second Sherlock Holmes is there, pale as a white sheet, haunted eyes denouncing the question he doesn't want to ask aloud.
Why did you hesitate, John? Why didn't you trust me?
The unspoken words hung in the metaphorical abysm between them, as the detective helps John up to stand.
.
'John, I do not take well to being ignored.'
The detective's thundering voice is but a mask for his turmoil of uncertain emotions, John knows. Still John glances up, fleetingly hurt. He couldn't control his instinctive response, his mind a mess since Sherlock up and left him with no explanation, reminding John of the fragility of his life as he knows it.
Not that it's Sherlock's fault John got grazed by a bullet, John knows that. He chalks it down to the risk associated with the life he chooses to lead.
'Flesh wound, mate. Hardly worth harping on about it.'
Uh-oh. John seems to have hit upon the one answer most likely to tick off his flatmate.
'John, you're grounded! You will not leave the flat until you are suitably—'
Pardoned? Reprogrammed? Chagrined? Wrapped in kevlar?
'Sherlock, it's not that serious...'
'John, you have contaminated the secondary crime scene by means of blood letting. I assure it is most serious!'
The doctor can't help it, later he'll blame it on the meds the paramedics insist on giving him, right now, at the back of an ambulance getting assessed for treatment, he giggles at Sherlock's antics. And it works. Soon, Sherlock is betraying his righteous anger by giggling along – and, for one perfect moment they are both aligned in the here and now, in each other's company.
.
TBC
