A/N: I suppose it's a re-acquaintance piece, they are out of sync. -csf


Second half.

A register of pain takes John hostage into the darkest recesses of his mind, once more. His arm aches, he refuses painkillers as much as he can ("they make me groggy, Sherlock, and I don't actually need them") and he isolates himself as a wounded animal, cowering in a corner to lick his wounds.

A dark anger consumes the detective, as he sees John choosing this painful path of isolation and egotistically keeping his friend from reaching over, closing the gap. Surely John assumes Sherlock will hesitate at first, act wounded himself next, payback isolation like-for-like by the end of the day. The detective recognises intimately that a previous version of himself, less fully formed, less knowledgeable of a certain doctor's patient humanity lessons, would have been severely tempted to give John the cold shoulder as a response to being pushed away first. But this current Sherlock Holmes cannot but admit he needs John to be John in his life, and that is clearly something – John being John – that also benefits John.

An emotional conundrum that surpasses its mystery by the simple means of expediency; who is Sherlock to contradict the evidence of facts, results and proof.

John is needed. Sherlock needs him.

And, right now, John needs Sherlock.

Fact.

And so, without the vast life experience to give him the confidence of what he should do, Sherlock starts where he can, in familiar territory. Sherlock pesters John with his attention.

If that is wrong, then John needs to step up and show him a better way, Sherlock thinks, with vindictive angst.

.

John doesn't want company, yet he relishes the quiet familiarity of 221B while Sherlock sets up experiments at the kitchen table, involving body parts and bleach solution, kept in tight jam jars, thermos bottles, and John's best empty spirits bottles he could find. A collection of all sizes and shapes that is mirrored by a myriad of alarm clocks that Sherlock must have bought at large, or got together for a very long time indeed.

'In order to establish just how he did it, I need to extrapolate on the rate of decomposition of human skin in a chlorine based solution. Now, chlorine is a highly volatile gas that will not remain in solution for long, just as Lestrade and his friends found out when they couldn't breathe inside the pool house, but of course we're considering a closed universe context, where the chlorine gas in the air establishes an equilibrium with the gas dissolved in the pool water, and if we are to assume minimal losses through the windows and French doors, then we can approximate the concentration of chlorine actually present in the pool water and from there calculate how long the body was kept submerged at a constant temperature and—'

Sherlock blinks, cutting himself short. John has just made some small noise from his chair. The nature of the noise was undetermined, but it thug at Sherlock's insides for some reason. John's in pain.

'Do I bore you, John?'

Please Always say No.

A rough, dry laugh responds in contempt at the question. 'Of course not, Sherlock.' Pause. Sharp intake of breath and the shift of fabric against the chair's tapestry as John tries to find a comfortable position. 'That's brilliant.'

'Just a scientific analysis.'

'Most people would stop short of body parts and bleach.'

'Most people hold themselves back.'

Another shift of fabric. John is restless, worn out by pain and low fever, the antibiotics will take another day to truly kick in.

Sherlock gets up, jittery, as if mirroring John's internal state of struggle. He roams his scrutiny across the living room, desperate for a distraction that can fulfil them both.

'Now we wait. Mind if I play the violin? It helps me think.'

'Go right ahead.'

Sherlock carefully measures his steps towards violin and bow, trying not to let any sign if his anxiety show. He's desperate for a think – a proper think – but can't bear to let John alone as he roams his mind palace depths, exploring any lost bit of repository data that can tell him how to help John.

He's already ruled out bargaining, threatening, cajoling, bribing, begging and drugging John. That last one being extremely tempting, particularly if the narcotic substance was John's own prescribed medication. But something about informed consent and John's righteous anger makes Sherlock keep it as a last resort.

Sherlock takes his violin to his chin and stares towards the window. It may seem that he's seeing the street beyond, or London as a whole, yet all the while he studies John's reflection on the glass pane. Keeping his back towards John, and maintaining a melody through some string of consciousness output, he studies the smaller man, sat in that burgundy armchair that today seems to overpower him in size, and vitality.

John's gaze is once more static, empty, assuredly glazed over. Unreachable, wherever John goes when he retreats upon his own shadows. Sherlock misses John's constant presence that now feels faded and second-hand. Sherlock wishes he could tell John this won't do, he's here now, he's sorry, he's trying to make amends, he just – doesn't – know – how – John.

'Sherlock.'

The detective's bow stops abruptly, splitting hairs as it hesitates on the violin strings. He turns, looking at the real John. Finds him looking concernedly back, eyes heavy and full in that childish honesty that is so becoming in the doctor.

'Can I get you something?' The musician lowers the instrument.

John tilts his head sideways, a small hint of disbelief.

'You weren't paying attention, then. No, of course, you weren't. It was so honest, so sincere.'

'What do you mean?'

John shifts in his seat once more. This time he looks uncomfortable through no pain.

'Sherlock, I— that song you were playing... you were improvising, I believe.'

The musician shrugs. Comes closer. Sits on his chair, facing his friend. 'Yes, must have been. I wasn't paying attention.'

'I didn't think you were. You'd have censored it if you'd have known. It was... I could hear what you meant by it, Sherlock.'

One of the kitchen lab alarms goes off, making them jump, shattering the captive magic of the moment. The consulting detective gets up abruptly.

'It meant nothing, it was just training', he claims. Instantly, he regrets it.

Doesn't matter, John's lost his gaze again on the book spines lining the shelves on the fireplace wall.

.

The kitchen tiles, the morgue drawers, the book binds. Is John counting, Sherlock wonders. Counting, as he counts when asking undetermined deities to give him patience when his temper rises too fast. Attempting to control himself and his behaviour. Sherlock thinks that over and dismisses the hypothesis, for John's glazed eyes do not engage, do not study, do not move about methodically.

Is it just a stage, then, a projection stage for his thoughts, a replaying of memories resurfacing? Again, it doesn't seem right. Memories tell stories, and a storyteller like John smiles to himself, huffs, recreates tension in some muscles, ready to advance, retract, reach out. Contained as stories are, memories usually elicit some reaction from the willing participant, and Sherlock saw nothing of that either.

Just empty, blank stares. Defeated stares. The stares of a wound down automaton, waiting to be cranked back into action, be giving a mission, a purpose, a meaning.

John is needed, here and now, why will he not activate? Resume a full life, without these horrible pauses, these fractures in sentience, these eclipses from his own self?

Sherlock is worried now, worried he alone cannot fix John, for he doesn't even know where to start.

.

'Sherlock? Sherlock, where are you, dammit!'

It's John's calling, and the detective rushes from the bathroom with toothpaste frothing down from his mouth, wild hair and maniac eyes. He worries some grave danger has befallen John. Rushing forth on the corridor towards the living room, he stops short as he recognises John, looking small and forlorn, sitting down on the hard wood steps to his room. Their gazes meet; wild and lost.

John blinks and reality crushes his distant thoughts.

'You're home, Sherlock! I thought you left, hm, to the Yard', he stumbles, sounding very unsure, as if doubting his own recollections. 'Or somewhere else.'

'I emailed the inspector the satisfactory results of the bleach trials. My presence is not yet required.'

'Oh.'

Sherlock turns sharply away. This is a conversation he dearly wants to hold with John, but the excess toothpaste drooling is making it too awkward to bear.

This time, however, he hears footsteps following him. It's a small victory of established connection.

John stops outside the bathroom door, fruit of education and politeness. Sherlock couldn't be less preoccupied, not being prude by nature, and not thinking toothpaste is unforgivable among flatmates. He busies himself clearing it, though, just in case.

'Do you understand that I thought you were gone again?' The doctor starts, and his honest voice trembles like a leaf.

'I didn't do a thing to warrant such conclusion. Not this time, John.'

'I know. It's not your fault. I'm just...' he struggles for words, for sense and structure and narrative.

'I would have left you a note, texted you, told Mrs Hudson to come up and tell you. I know you would want me to.'

'I want to hold you up to that promise—'

'But?'

'It's not exactly a rational response, Sherlock. Expectation is a product of habit, I suppose, and if will take some time to rebuild that trust.'

'But you want to?'

John smiles, sincerely, relieved, bright, almost a John's sunshine smile.

'I want nothing more.'

'Then I'll wait for you, John', the detective says, solemnly.

'Sherlock, don't move.'

The detective blinks, as the only indulgent concession to surprise. John determinedly reaches out and gathers a spider from Sherlock's shoulder, cupping it gently in his hands and whisking it away, through the bathroom window.

Heroic rescuing done, John's shoulders sag. That there, was absolute, unquestioning trust. In the end, it wasn't about an arachnid, but about the trust response. Sherlock didn't flinch, argue, question or delay. He waited.

John wasn't sure if he would have responded so trustingly if the tables were turned, because his emotional responses were bursting full of hurt for the betrayal of abandonment, shouting at him that repeated actions meant contempt over John's reactions, ignoring John's pain, making fun of the lost puppy sidekick that got left behind—

A warm hand settles on his shoulder, reeling John back to the moment. Sherlock's grey-green eyes are stormy as they attempt to pierce John's armour of thoughts.

'It's nothing, Sherlock.'

The poor detective can only nod to appease his friend, but it's conniving with a lie and he knows it.

.

The stormy weather persists through the next night, long after John has retired, and Sherlock brushes up on his knowledge of the ancient mummy's embalming processes, because he enjoys it, and because Lestrade challenges the murderer's modus operandi, saying his motive is not clear. Murderer's logic is something Sherlock is usually fluent on, so he takes this abnormal killer as a personal challenge.

Twenty minutes turn into two hours, and soon it's the middle of the night, and only the storm flogging rain and wind against the living room's windows punctuates the silence.

A lightening strews sharp acidic light over Sherlock's studies. The detective raises his head. The thunder resounds a bit later, echoing over the tight packed houses of London. Sherlock puts down his pen, nicked from John's stash, with the surgery's name on it. Another two lightenings race each other in tight succession. Sherlock pulls back his chair, gets up, tucks in the back of his shirt back into his trousers. He pads quietly towards the landing, grabbing his phone in passing.

Thunders rumble in the distance and the rain intensifies outside as Sherlock takes the first steps towards the upper floor. It's noticeably cooler upstairs, something he notices mid way up the flight of stairs, as if he was stepping into a foreign territory. John doesn't like his room too warm, he sleeps better away from warm stuffy spaces, another souvenir from Afghanistan. Sherlock acknowledges that recollection and shoves it away. John will be cold tonight, as the wind sweeps through the cracks, in unpleasant drafts. Sherlock turns up the radiator in the upstairs landing in passing, hoping some of that comfort makes its way to the stoic soldier.

He knocks gently on the door, gives it a few, than opens the door and lets his eyes get accustomed to the darkness. The familiar contour of a sleeping John is devoured by the duvet he's already managed to tangle himself with. Sherlock uses tactile memory to turn on the torch function on his phone, and lays it on top of the chest of drawers, helping to illuminate faintly the darkest recesses in the room. Soon John will crash back in London from his haunting nightmare, disoriented and frightened. Sherlock continues to approach John's bed, he now softly calls his friend's name. John. He touches the clammy wrist without restraining it, but it's enough for John's bruised eyes to snap open, his expression a terrorised grimace, until he lays his wavering, unfocused gaze on Sherlock and he shudders, his whole body releasing this way the tension, relaxing, his eyes finding meaning, recognition, safety.

John struggles an invisible fight with the duvet to sit up in bed. His damp sweat shirt clinging to the muscular chest, his breathing pattern slowing visibly.

They hug each other, both desperate to juxtapose physicality as a bridge over the rift between them.

'It's alright now, John.'

.

Just as suddenly as they had come, they disappeared, those strange absences from John while he was still in the room. Sherlock found he was tremendously grateful, but something in that investigative mind of his irked with not understanding how victory had been achieved.

Lestrade had just left, the next evening, and the storm was now but inconvenient steady downpours. John was sat in his favourite woollen jumper by the fireplace, and Sherlock had put away his studies of Pyramids and Sun gods away by shoving the pages of the now mind archived knowledge straight into the hearth, spraying ashes all over the arm of John's chair before Sherlock replaced the metal guard.

'Another case solved, Sherlock. What will we call this one?'

The detective fakes disinterest, as per their usual games.

'Not nearly all solved', he finds himself muttering, glancing at John.

'Oh, you mean me.' Sherlock's eyes widen, John smiles softly. 'Come on, I noticed you were worried about me, and that now that I'm not spacing out anymore, you are looking brighter. Even Lestrade noticed.'

The consulting detective shrugs.

'Then how did I do it, John?' he asks, despite himself. He must know.

John looks into the flickers of fire, then notices he should be looking Sherlock straight in the face and does so. 'You weren't there when I thought you'd be. You made me wonder if you'd disappear suddenly again.'

'Then you weren't counting the kitchen tiles.'

John grins. 'No, I wasn't counting our kitchen tiles.'

'There are 147 of them, minus a few damaged ones behind the toaster, don't tell Mrs Hudson.'

'So that's why the toaster changed places.'

'Hm-hm.'

'The toaster's chord won't reach the electric socket!'

'I'll get you a second toaster then.'

'Good... Sherlock, what you did last night was show up when I expected no-one to come to my aid. And you knew exactly what to do that would work for me too. By impressing me with being there when I needed you the most, you made me know that I could truly count on you to be there for me when I need you. That's more important than you not being around when a case pulls you away and you end up not coming home for dinner for a week. Although', he adds abruptly, firmly, 'next time you'll answer your god damned phone, do you hear me?'

Sherlock grins too. He can do that, for John alone he can do that.

.