A/N: Where I should be working and, instead, I am daydream travelling in a forest in the outskirts of Edinburgh. I am hoping to give you a bit more forward movement in the narrative in this chapter. Thank you for your patience. -csf
3.
Sherlock is crouching on Scottish forest ground, manicured fingertips getting dirty by his explorations of the fertile moist forest soil. An established forest has a wealth of historical information that tells of topography, botany, wild fauna and historical settlements.
'Found anything down there, Sherlock?'
The dark-haired man glances up and comments: 'Probably only some more buckshot from your senile aunt, John.'
There's a couple of second's delay before John Watson admits:
'Fair, if vague, diagnosis. But she's always been a bit of a firecracker. Harry and I used to get into trouble, and she was always the one to bail us out.'
'Getting into trouble for climbing up trees, for instance?' Sherlock asks with a fully-fledged smirk.
From near the top of a nearby spruce, John sheepishly answers: 'I'll give you that one too.'
'And while you climb trees so to…?'
'…find out how big is this woodland, Sherlock…'
'…I am, on the other hand, uncovering ancient artifacts from this historical woodland.'
'You found some old crockery bits, you mean.'
'Age has not reduced the acuity of your vision, John,' he admits. 'However, it is not crockery, but masonry I am finding.'
'Interesting,' John comments, followed by the rustling of leaves and pinecones, as John seems to be making his way down the tree.
'How big is the woodland, by the way?'
Grunting a bit with effort, more than he'd like to make Sherlock aware of, John responds: 'Goes all the way to the creek at the bottom of the hill. Plenty of game for Aunt Maggie to hunt.'
Sherlock's eyes widen. 'They allow her out with the shotgun, then?'
'Yes, but with blanks. She shoots from a garden chair at the edge of the lawn. They cook game they got from the nearest Tesco's and tell her she's the one that hunted it. Has been going on for years. She once told me that she set up the arrangement herself, to impress her friends at tea parties. They still keep it up for her, to make her happy.'
'Those were not blanks, earlier this morning.'
'No. That worries me,' John admits, jumping to the ground from the last branch. He is looking a bit sweaty and rugged, as he brushes his palms against his jeans. Sherlock marginally notices John is repeating this gesture a lot now. But does it mean anything?
Every micro-tell means a wealth of information, if correctly decoded.
It aggravates Sherlock that John constantly evades decoding by being unexpected; both John's greatest quality and biggest annoyance to Sherlock.
'Looks like an eye,' John again derails Sherlock's thoughts, pointing at one of the unearthed pieces of masonry.
Gargoyles. Told you.
'Might be. Too soon to extrapolate, not enough evidence to make firm leaps of reasoning, John.'
'I'm not letting you spend the day playing in the mud, Sherlock. We need to go back. The rehearsal will start in an hour, and I need a shower.'
'No need to dig up all the woods, as you put it, John. This stone is reddish, indicating the presence of iron. I need a magnet, a magnet will help to narrow down the search of the pieces that belonged to the original piece and the bits of rock that are coincidental to our search.
'Our search?' John challenges, hands on hips and an amused look in his jovial features.
'If you're all done climbing trees.'
John Watson blushes.
.
Ugh, why rehearse the conventions of the day, so to perfectly emulate such conventions, so conventional in their form that every couple in the land wants to imitate, perfect and be better at them than all the previous couples?
Sherlock was bored from the word go. Now, finally at the end of the rehearsal dinner (enacted at lunch time, composed of defrosted miniatures, clearly the budget is tight), Sherlock Holmes suffers from a severe case of boredom.
John is too busy being the light of the gathering, smiling with his social ease and drawing the attention of a small crowd of Watsons and friends. The strong jawline is a dominant trait, much like the blondness. The big eyes and strong smile are all John's, though. Sherlock busies himself with the siphon taps behind the temporary bar, pouring himself a fortifying measure of each of those taps in one single tall glass. The detective is not a drinker, and everything will do.
John's pleasant voice stands out from the small pockets of conversation around the gardens.
'"Too much CSF," Sherlock had commented to me.
"CSF?" I repeated.
"Cranial Spinal Fluid." And, sure enough, he was pointing at the fluid coming out of the victim's ears. I had missed that.
"Oh, I thought you meant Crime Scene Fun," I said to him.
"Hm, going by the way we keep gathering around mangled corpses, that too, apparently."'
They all laugh, some more politely than amused, except for Aunt Margaret, who, despite maintaining her prim and proper attitude in her severe dress, just roars out laughing and sends Sherlock a saucy look, far too wrong for her age and dress.
Sherlock hums, and raises his glass at her. Interesting. Sherlock always had a knack for social deviants. Apparently so has John.
Sherlock pours away the untouched contents of his drinks medley and decides to give John's boring relatives one more try. In particular, he decides to give Aunt Maggie one more try. Ah, the Watsons. It always takes a Watson to surprise Sherlock Holmes. They are deliciously unpredictable for the constantly craving distractions brain of a genius.
.
Despite being a guest, John is drafted later that afternoon to help secure the canvas tent and wedding decorations now that a sharp wind is coming up. Sherlock's name is floated as a possible helper, but one withering look from the detective and no one dares to mention it again. John doesn't allude to the faux pas either, knowing full well that Sherlock has probably reached his social quota for the day.
They arrange, however, to meet later in the day. In order to ensure this happens, as if John wanted to be sure to check up on his friend, John insists that Sherlock takes his wristwatch and wears it, for Sherlock has not brought his.
The battered wristband and the scratched glass over a square midnight blue clockface are oddly familiar, and have Sherlock feeling like he's been passed a family heirloom of unimaginable value.
Going by the hint of jealousy in Henry's expression when he sees the exchange from afar, maybe it really is a family heirloom. Sherlock decides this is a mystery to explore another day, as he less than patiently listens to the guilt in John's voice. The guilt of a man divided in his service for those he cares about; his friends, his family.
Then again, John is not aware that Sherlock endeavours to find the company of one specific Watson this afternoon, instead of moping about on his own. Sherlock believes the wedding party owes him this much; a Watson for a Watson. While they abduct his John, he will establish contact with Aunt Maggie.
He finds her easily, and, again, the old walking hazard is alone.
That could be entirely related with the drunk wedding guest singing badly "God Save the Queen" up the stairs of the great house, or the Scottish maid's voice and pummelling on the door of a nearby closet where presumably she got locked in.
The Watsons are never boring.
.
'Johnny would be mortified if he knew I'm telling you about his childhood,' Aunt Maggie chuckles, fingering her long string of pearls. A subtle decoy, the pearls. Once a symbol of purity and innocence, nothing the gossips of Aunt Maggie could claim to be. 'Naturally, John is a bit too uptight and that is exactly why I'm about to tell you everything.'
Sherlock smiles wolfishly. A shiver of delight goes through the old spinster's bones. The detective doesn't even have to put on the charm, it is oozing out of him next to this dotty lady, a Watson none the less. She's John's own Mrs Hudson, except that Mrs Hudson knows how to keep a secret, and Aunt Margaret doesn't want to.
'And how was John before the long trousers and medicine degree?'
Her face softens, but she still looks left and right before deciding to rat on John.
'He was a polite, respectful and considerate child.'
Sherlock feels cheated out of a promised treat.
'Is that it?' he huffs.
'He used to go out to the woods with his friends and cousins. Henry and Hugh would always follow him around. Henry was always a bit jealous of how easy it was for John to make friends and lead them all on their adventures. Swim at the old creek and dive off the old bridge. Borrow the gardener's old bicycle and go to the farmer's market in the next town over. Go to the old well and catch frogs only to them set them free. One day he brought back a frog to show his sister. Oh, the screams she uttered!'
The detective starts to feel jittery, looking around for a swift escape.
'But, of course, then we didn't know about the fights.'
'Fights?' Sherlock's interest perks up, but only slightly. The former soldier as a child, of course there would be some play fights. It's John's dual nature, the oxymoron in his existence – the healer and the fighter all in one.
'Yes, at home in England. He'd often turn up here with bad bruises. Never would tell a soul about how he got them. We suspected, of course, that it had to do with the Watson's temper. But John was too loyal to tell on his loved ones.'
'You don't mean Harry,' Sherlock says, clipped, crossing his fingers behind his back that it was just a spat between siblings gone wrong.
'Oh no, not for the size of the bruising in a six year old. It doesn't take a detective to see the pattern of a grown man's hand.'
Sherlock feels the cold sweep through his heart, forcing a slight arrest to his beats per minute rate.
'It happened more than once?'
She nods, some tears brimming in her eyes. Sherlock hates her at that moment. Because she was an adult and could have saved John.
John, who wakes up from sleep ready to attack, who can rarely rest peacefully in the belief that he is safe.
Going to the war with the army was just an extension of the violence ever present from his childhood, and, for once, the enemy was clearly apart from his own kin. A simpler world, no wonder John craved it.
'We tried having them stay with us, you know,' Aunt Margaret continues, shaking her head. 'He wouldn't leave his mum, she was already getting very ill.'
'You failed John,' Sherlock states simply.
'Oh, yes. Twice. Maybe three times, if Henry doesn't get his head off his backside and see that John needs closure.'
Sherlock's eyebrows raise up in his forehead. Maybe this old lady is not as dotty as everyone makes her out to be… but then she says to him: 'And who are you again? My memory is not what it used to be, and you are so handsome I want to get to know you.'
He studies the lost film glazing over her eyes from the onset of Alzheimer's, and replies politely as if he was her valet: 'Sherlock Holmes at your service, miss.'
'Oh, how gallant! You simply must come to every one of my parties, you are invited! All my friends are coming over.' She leans over and adds: 'I'll be shooting the deer we're roasting for dinner, you know?'
'Yes, your party trick. John has told me.'
'We all have our party tricks. Henry's is simply lethal!' she chuckles to her own words, imbuing them with dark meanings.
Sherlock is, just like that, once again hooked on a Watson.
.
'Do you want to go home now?'
John's quiet questions is flat and inexpressive, giving nothing away from the heaviness in his expression, that has been brewing all day long.
Is he checking on his friend, or is he looking for an easy way out? Did something happen during the pinning up of garlands and balloons full of glitter and confetti, that activated John's fight or flight? It crosses Sherlock's mind that perhaps he should not have left John's side this afternoon.
'Excuse me?' he tries to gain time to analyse the circumstances, but John knows him only too well.
'It's fine.'
Sherlock is not entirely sure John knows who he is talking to; Sherlock or himself. Reassurance often works both ways.
John finishes moving things around inside his bag, and rubs the palms of his hands on his jeans, building up static electricity in the room.
'We could go up for dinner, but I think that I'm still full of mini pizza, calamari and fried cheeses.'
'Ah, yes, the renowned Scottish cuisine…'
'My cousin has the taste of a buy-in-bulk supermarket or discount chain, I'm afraid. You can be a finnicky eater, did you manage to eat something?'
'Yes, I was offered sustenance from your Aunt Margaret's finest stash of bourbon biscuits.'
John chuckles. 'I think she still hopes that if she has enough bourbon biscuits, she may get drunk.'
Sherlock smiles mischievously. 'We both tried that theory earlier today. I have insisted on the most scrupulous scientific method, of course.'
'Look, I'm sorry that my family is a bit… odd.'
'Nothing important to note so far, John.'
'I guess you weren't there when Hetty tried to nail a tackle for a garland with the high heel of her shoe, then. Or when Hugh (that's Henry's brother, also my cousin) got so drunk that we had to carry him up the stairs while he was singing "God Save The Queen".'
'Very patriotic.'
'We have a King on the throne now.'
'A small lapse from your cousin, I'm sure.'
John sighs, a deep sigh that reveals the exhaustion he's been trying to shield from his friend.
Of course, Sherlock knows. He makes his business to know everything. How could he miss the obvious tells in John?
After a couple of quiet moments, where John is trying to find his ground again and Sherlock is left hovering by uselessly, the good doctor takes a deep breath and straightens his back, tightening his jaw. He scoops up one of his jumpers from his luggage and hands it to Sherlock. Thinking the offering to be butt ugly, the detective tries to decline the flax-coloured thick jumper, but John cuts him short:
'You'll need it. Let's go for a walk, and I don't want you to get hypothermia.'
John grabs the other jumper, the one he's already been wearing, as they head outside.
.
There is something inherently comforting in wearing someone else's thick jumper, lightly scented of their laundry detergent and the tea bags and gun oil John could never forget to pack in the same bag, alongside the jumper. Sherlock feels himself unwind a notch from the comfort of familiarity that John's jumper is bringing to him. It might be hideous – Sherlock still thinks it hideous – but it is so genuinely John that it almost looks nice. It feels nice too, comfortable and protective around him, both a fluffy cover to hide behind and a cushion against the dangers of the world.
John is like that. Even as he stands on shaky ground himself, he can steady Sherlock.
Sherlock vows to see John through this dark cloud he's under. Somehow. He's just not sure how.
Sherlock and John are walking over too much gravel in gardens that are too perfect, too constructed, too still – and that is when they hear it; the blood curdling scream proclaiming: 'He's dead, help, someone!'
They glance at each other – Sherlock with a winning smile and John standing up straighter in a way that makes him look two feet taller – and they run towards the danger together.
'Finally, John! A nice murder in the manor house. Why did it have to take so long?'
.
TBC
