Chapter Text
Sherlock walks.
It's been two years, since he's been in London. Long enough that he must re-acquaint himself with his city, re-learn the pavement, re-orient himself in the streets that were once his home. He couldn't- not at first. Not with his return still a kept a borderline state secret, and then the paparazzi stalking Baker Street, his hobbled leg and John stealing his ability to duck out a window and sneak down a back alley. But now the turmoil has passed, so now-
He walks.
He limps, because his leg is still casted, knee to foot, and he's done his research on the procedure they'd done to him: cast or not, it is not strong enough now to take his weight. So Sherlock limps, crutching around each corner and every crosswalk, and he limps until his shoulders burn and his back aches, and he limps.
It's probably not safe, to wonder about London in the middle of the night, limping on crutches to beacon his handicap to the entire rest of the world. He knows the statistics, of course, he's not an idiot. The physically invalided are much more likely to be assaulted than the average, and a pair of crutches at two in the morning is really just asking for it.
Sherlock is not worried.
He's armed.
He's always armed.
He walks.
He deletes the pain.
He walks until he's too irritated to ignore it any longer, and then, he gets out his phone.
I'm revoking your power of attorney. -SH
It is 3:37 AM. The response comes so quickly that Sherlock suspects there's a fire being put out around the world by one especially pretentious umbrella.
I offer my sincerest apologies, brother mine, for allowing you to be properly treated by the best surgical team money could buy. -MH
I have also not been your power of attorney in three years. Was that meant to be a joke? -MH
And yet they still put me under the knife with YOUR signature. I should sue. -SH
Your shenanigans are even less amusing at three in the morning than during business hours. Get off the streets, and go home. -MH
It is clearly a dismissal.
Sherlock scowls.
His phone slips back into his pocket, vanishing into the suit that had once upon a time fit him like a glove. He scratches at the cuff, now- scratches and scratches and scratches, nail itching at a seam in a sleeve that's too loose until a loose thread is torn free.
He keeps on walking.
He's back home just before John wakes up, timed just so, and changed into his pajamas and dressing gown just three seconds before John pokes into the kitchen with tentative steps, and an even more tentative smile.
"Tea?" John asks, and Sherlock has died for that smile. "Sleep well?"
"Like a baby," Sherlock says.
They go to NSY for the first time, and it's like fresh air breathed into his lungs and the cobwebs shaken free from a whole wing in his mind palace with the curtains pulled back to let the sun shine.
There's a new paint job, and two new officers. One of them is young, green, new; fresh out of school, still lives with his mother and hates it, and has recently adopted an orange tabby kitten that hates him. The other, Sherlock knows, was transferred in to replace the officer that Mycroft had made disappear two years ago.
Moriarty's payroll.
Sherlock doesn't like new people, and he doesn't like new paint.
But Lestrade takes one look, and beams so brightly that Sherlock feels rather bowled over by a punch to the face. He shakes his hand and looks like he wants to hug him again and is smiling so hard, and he exclaims, "Good to see you again, lads," and two years are forgiven in that smile.
Sherlock died for that smile, too, if he really thinks about it. He's killed and died for these people, and now here he is, John at his side and Lestrade shaking his hand, and he doesn't know what he's supposed to do.
"I don't like new paint," he says.
Lestrade blinks.
And now, Sherlock's being hugged after all.
"Jesus-" The inspector throws his head back, laughing, but it's heavy, somehow, breaking and cracking with emotion, and he's being hugged so tightly that Sherlock grits his teeth and sucks in a breath and it hurts. "God damn it I've missed you, Sherlock Holmes," and he's still laughing.
Sherlock doesn't understand what's funny. But, he supposes the proper thing to do is just to smile.
Lestrade laughs, and Sherlock fakes a smile, and the way John is looking at him makes him feel about two feet tall.
"Is your back all right?" he presses, voice low and hushed, the very instant they get a moment alone. He comes for Sherlock under a veneer of professional concern, hand venturing out, and he looks like he's about to tell Sherlock to take a deep breath and hold it in so John can listen to his lungs. "That looked-"
"I'm fine, John," he snips back, and, lifting his chin, stalks on after Lestrade to his offie. All with as much dramatic flair as he can muster.
Sherlock isn't allowed on a crime scene until the paperwork goes through.
Or, that's what Lestrade says, but Sherlock knows it's Mycroft's invisible hand at work, and quite possibly, the concern in John's eyes, whenever Sherlock moved too stiffly or limped too heavily or smiled too brightly. It has been decided, then, utterly without Sherlock's input: there will be no crime scenes until he has healed. His consolation prize is a box of cold case files, and Chinese takeout called for in the cab ride home.
Sherlock doesn't care much, all things considered.
He's bored out of his skull already, and after two years submerged in terrorism and human trafficking and murder, it's going to take a little more adjustment before one of Lestrade's locked room robberies can be worth getting out of bed.
John divides up the takeout, when they're back home, pushing containers of rice tossed with vegetables and soy sauce and spiced teriyaki to Sherlock. He'd ordered extra again, Sherlock noted. Kept ordering extra, serving him extra portions, murmuring to Mrs. Hudson to bring him up some biscuits because he hadn't eaten enough the night before.
Sherlock has eaten more this past week than he's eaten in months. He's not bloody hungry.
But John's a doctor, and doctors don't like it when you say I'm not hungry despite not yet having met the daily caloric requirements of a male of his height, weight, and physical activity, so Sherlock accepts his dinner that smells revolting and keeps his mouth shut.
Then, it what has become a new pattern, for them, John slides his phone over to him. The conversation of a thousand words is already open, scrolled back upwards at random. It reminds Sherlock of hot sand and the taste of salt.
"Egypt," he says, before John can ask. "I was in Egypt."
"Egypt." The word is soft around the edges, and then, he says it again, as if tasting how it feel. Sstaring at Sherlock, again grasping that instead of rotting in an early grave, he had been there, in Egypt.
Sherlock, for the dozenth time today, gets the feeling he probably should be apologising. Again.
But then, the moment passes and John's relaxed again, across from him, the hard glint in his eyes gone, and despite all his nagging at Sherlock to do it, barely even seems to remember he was supposed to be eating as he leaned forward in earnest interest. "You know, I've always wanted to go there. I'm... guessing you won't be much help if I wanted to ask about sightseeing, though, huh?"
"I did see a pyramid. ...From a distance. From..." Sherlock frowns, briefly, mentally recategorizing his Egypt File, thumbing through the pages he had not already deleted. He is sure there was a pyramid; he's also sure, however, that he'd deleted most of Egypt the second he'd gotten out of that damn country. "...it might've been a pamphlet in a gift shop, actually."
The laugh was sudden and sharp and beautiful, all at once. "Sherlock," John chides, with a warm fondness resurrected from the dead, and Sherlock decides it's worth it to smile back.
"So, how was it, then?" John asks after a moment, returning to his own meal at last. "Gift shops aside."
Hm.
Sherlock, again, leafs through his Egypt file. He considers Moriarty's sloppy web, there, the terrorists that he murdered because they would've murdered John. He remembers how Egypt had been the first stop where he'd fallen off the proverbial wagon, embracing the glorious siren call of cocaine because saying no had been such a tedious effort, because John's grief kept vibrating in his pocket and it had been too much. He thinks about waking up his first day in Egypt, and Edward-. Ah. Yes. Edward.
He remembers, Good morning, Shirley-
Ah, yes.
That was why he'd deleted all of Egypt the second that he could.
"...Sherlock?" John waits, a moment, his voice gone tense, and the look on his face- Sherlock isn't sure. He doesn't have a proper analogue in his database to compare it with. It's discomforting. "You want to talk about something else?"
Sherlock strides to his feet, turning past John and the food he'd never wanted and the newly wounded look on John's face, and he leaves. He thinks John might've tried to say something, but he deletes that, too, offhand, and shuts his bedroom door shut with a slam.
He doesn't want to sleep, but it's been three days since he has. That's a rule: going more than three days without sleep is dangerous. He'll cross the threshold for hallucinations, and sensory disturbances, and serious motor coordination problems. He's turned three days without sleep into a trigger, for mind palace Molly to bully him into bed, and he does not want to sleep, but he must. He must.
He'd gone seven days without sleep, in Serbia.
Not that that's relevant. Stupid, stupid Sherlock. This is Egypt, not Serbia.
"Don't call me Shirley."
John, from where's been doing a rather transparently bad job at trying not to stare at Sherlock for thirty-two seconds straight, starts.
"I..." He licks his lips. "I- wasn't aware that I had?"
Sherlock shakes his head, once. "You didn't. I am simply stating that, while I am aware that nicknames and pet names are common in what society terms as relationships, I do not wish to be called Shirley."
This statement seems to bother John, for some reason, and he can't imagine why. John has never called any of his previous girlfriends by a special nickname. John has never expressed a desire to refer to him by one. But John is still frowning, watching him with wary, quiet eyes, and it's troubling enough that he can't help himself.
"Problem?"
"What? Oh, no, I- sure thing. I won't call you, um, Shirley." He says the name like it's a foreign word that he's never heard before, mouth quirking, and is quick to offer Sherlock another faint grin. "I wouldn't have anyway, I don't think. It doesn't fit you."
"You've called me Sherl."
"What?" John splutters, yet again. "No, I haven't! I've never-"
"December 31st, 2011. You'd had four drinks of the spiked punch, and were beginning to struggle with two-syllable words. I do believe you were actually attempting to say Sherlock, but became incapable of it midway through. Highly embarrassing, mostly for you, though Mrs. Hudson was quite thrilled, for some reason."
John fades faintly pink. He looks at him, for a moment, just looks in that way that Sherlock is still struggling to define; a cross between fond adoration and exasperation. "Git," he murmurs, and something that's too low to catch but sounds suspiciously similar to eidetic memory, but he doesn't seem annoyed.
He doesn't seem annoyed, and he doesn't press. He doesn't even ask. He just smiles at Sherlock, and keeps making coffee, and that's that.
Sherlock, settled now into his chair, closes his eyes. He breathes deeply once.
And he talks.
He tells John about Edward Holland, fellow graduate student under Dr. Wharton at Cambridge for the three years it had taken Sherlock to get his masters. He's not sure how much he says aloud, but he talks, anyway. He'd deduced Edward as interested in men in the first ten seconds, just from the way he'd looked at him, sweeping his eyes up and down, the sudden warm flush in his skin as they shook hands. Deduced him as being firmly in denial about it, the moment he'd called him Shirley.
He'd adored Sherlock, but only in very certain, specific ways. Only when he'd worn his hair long, only when he'd fondled him from behind, fingers scrunching shirt over the breasts he didn't have. When he was quiet, so his deep voice couldn't give him away. When the motion sensor lights flicked off and he could pretend.
Sherlock had known he could be considered conventionally attractive, and had more than once been informed it was in a poncey, feminine way; smooth skin, glossy hair, elegant, lithe lines, just thin enough for a suggestion of curves. Edward had adored it. Sherlock had found him thoroughly uninteresting, stupid, and dull, and taken to scheduling his experiments around his just to get some peace and quiet.
He tells John about being stupid, miscalculating to almost die in the Mediterranean, waking up owing his life to Edward. He tells John about Edward stroking his short hair back when he threw up, about the look on his face when he'd seen Sherlock shirtless for the first time. He thinks, though he's not sure, he tells John, about the way Edward had tried to touch him, the day he came back so badly sunburned he needed someone's help to spread the cooling lotion over his back.
Edward had been most thrilled to volunteer.
He's midway through telling him about the cocaine when John starts shifting, again. Mouth twitching, a fist opening then clenching in his seat. He says nothing but his mouth is a thin line, eyes darted away to glare at the door like he might like to break it down.
Sherlock pauses.
"You don't like hearing this."
John huffs and glowers, a little, like an angry, bristling cat. "No. No, I don't." Opens, closes a fist again. "I don't like hearing about you doing drugs, no."
"...you're probably not going to like much of what I have to say, then."
John huffs again and now he looks positively dangerous, like he really might like to punch something. "Wonderful, then," he mutters. "More of this, then. Not that it makes it sound as if you were on a two-year long bloody vacation, binging on cocaine, having the time of your life on the damn beach while I was back here, thinking my best friend had killed himself because I couldn't stop him. But I'm sure relieved you were having a good time, at least; good for you, Sherlock-"
The words cut off in a sudden lurch, stumbling in a way that warns Sherlock there was absolutely more, John just hadn't let himself say it. His friend sits there now with clenched fists and a tight jaw, breathing deeply through his nose and glaring downwards to his coffee, as if it had said something to personally offend him. "Sorry," he mutters, though doesn't sound it at all. "Sorry. Know that's not fair." He breathes in deeply again, fist still flexing in a manner that is very close to dangerous.
This John, at least, Sherlock knows. He is and has become intimately familiar with this John.
Familiar enough to know that an apology of his own will not be welcome, and that the only other thing that he has to say- that the cocaine really isn't all that big a deal- would not at all be a wise choice of action.
Sherlock slips back into silence himself. He stares down to the coffee he'd never wanted, still with the the taste of Egyptian salt on his tongue, and finds that there is nothing for him to say.
The silence stretches into minutes. Sherlock stares at his coffee.
He, too, stares at his coffee.
"I know that you're a man," John says suddenly.
He chokes on his coffee.
"...I applaud your observational skills," Sherlock returns, because he really just has no idea what the hell he's supposed to do with that. "What was it that clued you in?"
"No, I mean-" John gestures a little helplessly, as if in a struggle for words. "I wouldn't ever... want to call you Shirley, or... pretend that you're a woman. I- um. I know that- you're a man, and I'm a man, and-" He coughs, looking distinctly uncomfortable and turning redder by the second. "Yes," he finishes, hands fidgeting in his lap as he tugs his jumper straighter.
Sherlock wonders if he might be having a stroke.
John clears his throat, after a moment; praise the lord, as far as he's concerned- no more of that, whatever that had been meant to be. "What happened to him? Edward?"
"Oh, I don't know. Mycroft turned him over to the Egyptian authorities- he annoyed us both." He turns his focus back down towards the depths of his coffee. Who told John to make coffee? Tedious; he's already jittery enough. The world is too clear, too sharp. See, this is why he does not like sleeping. "Might be in prison, for drug trafficking, any number of charges- I documented enough to put him away for a decade. Might've ended up dead, too." He glances sideways at John, raising an eyebrow. "Why do you ask?"
"...well, I was asking because I think I might like to punch him, but- I suppose prison's good, too." And now they're both smiling, a little, but John looks uncomfortable more than anything else, and he stands all too briskly and with a business-like manner that says he'd truly love to put this whole affair to bed. "Breakfast?" he asks, as if it matters- he's already marching towards the kitchen.
Sherlock's not hungry. John keeps making him eat so often he's perpetually nauseous, now, and the sleep from last night isn't helping. But he knows the only right answer is yes, John.
"Yes, John," he says, and smiles back.
"You should play your violin."
"...a sudden pronouncement. Any particular reason as to why, or have you merely missed nagging me at three in the morning to stop making such a racket?"
"Well- yes, actually," John says, and with an utterly bewildering little smile that suggests he's not even telling a lie. "Actually, though, I say because you're clearly going stir crazy from not being able to do much of anything, and I'd really like to not come back to the flat and find it blown up, and whether you admit it or not, it always helped you when you were restless." John grins at him even as he tugs his jumper on, all but halfway out the door. "You haven't played in two years, probably? I bet you've missed it."
Sherlock considers.
His fingers itch.
"I don't play sitting down," he snips.
"What? Yes, you do. I've seen you-"
"Well, maybe some things have changed, John."
There's another tense silence. John's smile, the way it does so often, these days, flags, like ash in the wind.
"Yeah, I... I guess they have."
John leaves soon after that, looking especially downtrodden. He leaves without saying goodbye.
His violin has not been touched in two years.
That's apparent, just from looking at her, still resting in the case. And that's a crime, to be honest. Violins are meant to be played, not languish in velvet and velcro- but Mycroft had known better than to touch it, and John appears to have been unable to bear to sell it.
It's a shame that he didn't. Last he'd been playing, Sherlock had gotten interrupted, and hadn't been able to loosen his bow.
Two years ago, it had been a beautiful J.B. Vuillaume A Paris replica which had run him 1900 euro. Now, it's kindling.
His violin is not kindling, will never be kindling; he will burn the flat down before he ever lets someone take a match to her. But the years of disuse are apparent in the instrument just as plainly as they are in the bow. The heat and AC were turned off to the flat, when John moved out, and the years of lack of climate control show; he can smell it, and the strings-
It feels like his ears are bleeding, when he gives them an experimental strum. For a moment, perversely wonders if John's touched her after all, tuning the first two into a tritone just for the express purpose of making him cringe.
"I'm sorry," he murmurs, tracing a finger down the neck. "Truly. I am."
He wonders why it's so difficult to say as such to John.
He doesn't even know why he lifts her to try and tune. The pegs haven't been budged in two years, the strings just the same. Sherlock's careful and slow, and he knows exactly what he is doing, but it still only takes three attempts at a turn for the G to snap free and whip him in the face.
He sits there for another solid three seconds after, feeling entirely like a right, stupid idiot.
Well, good thing John hadn't been around to see that.
"Don't worry," he promises, lowering the violin to cradle her in his lap. "We'll get you right sorted, I promise. That's it; easy does it." And John's not around to see that, either, so there's nobody to accuse him of baseless sentimentality for an inanimate object, no less, so he can hug her gently to his stomach and lean his head back and no one is any the wiser.
The state the past two years have left her in, he knows the repair technician and restorer will gently try and ask if he might not want to buy another entirely. To spare him the weeks of painstaking restoration for an instrument that will never be quite the same, to spare Sherlock the weeks of having to wait and the heavy deposit that would best be spent on an entirely new violin, one that wasn't left to rot for two years just like his fake body underground. But no one has to know, so Sherlock will turn him down, and Mycroft will tut knowingly from his office, but who the bloody hell cares what Mycroft thinks, anyway.
Acutely, he wants nothing more than that. To hobble out to the store right now, handing over his violin and signing off on the months that he knows it will take, get her out of his hands and out of his sight. The imperfections, the scars, the broken string, the useless bow, the bleeding scrape to the face. Lock it all in a box in the palace and lock that box in the deepest room in the furthest wing, and next time John asks what's wrong he'll be able to show him the repair ticket and say nothing's wrong at all, I'm just out for repairs. Ask again later.
He does take her to the restoration technician.
He doesn't tell John.
There's Chinese takeout again, when John scrolls his phone to April 2013, and, most opportunely, the conversation of the night is decided as China.
"Ah, yes. Would not recommend. Would not recommend at all. Not as a homeless, hitchhiking vagrant, anyway." He reluctantly accepts a plate, and purposefully strides for the whiskey he keeps next to the acetone. If he's going to get through this, he needs to relax. "Anderson texted me there."
"What- Anderson?"
"Oh, yes. He was quite drunk, incoherent, and moronic. Appeared to be mid-nervous breakdown." Sherlock, so-saying, raises his glass in a little mock toast, and reluctantly thumps on back to the table. "I'm afraid I can't satisfy any of your curiosities concerning him, though; I blocked him. He was most tedious."
John snorts. "Yeah, he went a bit-" He flutters a hand, seeming to not want to say it, not want to laugh, and Sherlock can imagine, oh yes, he can.
Unfortunately, Anderson's strange drunk text is just about the only positive memory he has, of China.
The story is three months' long, and bit by bit, frown by frown, Sherlock settles in to tell it.
"I had a bit of a problem, when I first got to China. Heroin," he says, and John's eyes darken just enough for the truth to swell shut in his throat. "I was shot in Afghanistan, and heroin is much cheaper on the black market than legitimate medications, John."
This is not true. Or, rather, it is true that he'd been shot, and it is true that heroin is cheaper and easier to get than prescription painkillers, but that's not why he was using. It was never why he was using.
But John looks sufficiently mollified all the same, his mouth twitching almost as if he's been chastised. He doesn't look happy, at least, but not about to tense up and glower and make displeased faces the way he might normally.
Sherlock can't imagine what he might look like if he found out that the reason he'd first shot up at all was because of his dammed texts in the first place.
He tells John about slipping into China, realising that the chemical dependency was more of a handicap than a bandaid, now; yet again, always again. He tells John abut letting Moriarty's web catch him under an assumed name, lock him up in a basement in the world's most foolproof detox.
John doesn't look very happy at that, either.
"You don't like when I'm using, and you don't like when I detox." Sherlock smirks, a little, raising an eyebrow at sulky, unhappy, silent John. "It seems I am doomed to make you unhappy, then, because I'm really not sure what other state of being there is."
"That's- no. No, Sherlock, of course I'm glad you detoxed, just..." He chews on his lower lip, for a moment, clearly struggling with what he wants to say. He certainly does not look happy, but when his eyes meet his, again, they are not unkind. "Did you do that a lot? Force a detox, like... like that?"
That's not a question that he thinks it's safe to answer.
"...Sometimes," is what he says, and ensures its on the tails of a careless shrug. It's not as if there are many state of the art rehab programs available for legally dead and penniless MI6 agents/assassins, but he knows snipping that will annoy John, so he doesn't. "In Brazil I did it in reverse order, actually; I got myself arrested for ease of access to the prison, but in prison, the wheels turn that much faster when drugs are involved." He flickers another smile to John, who's again looking particularly pale and unwell. "I actually did see a doctor after that one. You'd have been very proud."
Seen him for a rabies shot, not for the detox. But John doesn't have to know.
He tells John about China. About burning Moriarty's web to the ground, about meeting a contact on the Great Wall, about spending the night in a hostel and helping to groom a poor dog for fleas instead of sleeping himself. At some point, he hears himself slip into third person, again, calmly recounting Agent Lazarus' mission report to an increasingly unsettled John, but by this point, he's just a little too detached to care.
He does this, sometimes. Finds himself speaking, remembering, in third person, the black and white records that he'd typed down for MI6 and even now are stored in some secure server under the name Agent Lazarus. That's all that's left, of some of the worst days, in those two years. Heavily redacted and pruned files under lock and key in his own palace, only saved at all for MI6 and now they've been there so long he can't delete them.
He can't delete them.
"Wait, really? I never noticed!"
Sherlock starts again. He blinks at John. He has no recollection at all as to what he was talking about. The look on John's face, surprised and earnest and maybe just a little takenaback, does not clarify matters at all, either.
"Yes," he says blankly, and John leans forward a little more.
"Can I see?"
Sherlock has precisely no idea what John is talking about. John is staring at his mouth, strangely, and that should be enough for him to know, but Sherlock is tired and sufficiently warm and slow with whiskey and just doesn't care enough to draw the proper conclusion. He swishes around another mouthful of alcohol, swallowing hard his last bite, and opens his mouth just enough for whatever the hell John is on about.
It clicks a second later, when John's odd, almost professional examination ends, and he taps one finger on his left cheek. "There it is," he says, sitting back satisfactorily. "I never even noticed until now. He did a good job. You know, for a back-alley dentist."
John is referring to the back-alley dentist, of course. The one who pulled the tooth who got infected, the one who'd seemed to rather enjoy pretending he couldn't understand as Sherlock knew he mangled a proper, native speaker's dialect, fighting against slippery words with half his mouth in agony. Sherlock has, quite frankly, deleted most of the dreadful experience entirely. He remembers the tooth, because he'd needed it for his medical records, and he remembers the Chinese, as a reminder to practice his south-east Asian accents. There's nothing else. He's not even sure he remembers the name of the city.
Mycroft, for once, won't know. Mycroft lost track of him somewhere around Pakistan. Oh, Sherlock could've gotten in touch, but by his own design, those months had been for him to be completely and utterly alone.
Sherlock finds his place in the mental file again, thumbing through the rest of the pages that are so numerous he wants to feel sick. He rubs a hand over his face, covering his mouth and nose, and forces another breath. Chin up. Steady on. He must do this for John.
John, who stops him, just as Sherlock is about to go on again.
"Can I ask you something?"
This entire affair has been John asking him things. Every night, every dinner, every conversation, every text, is John asking him things. He has died for him, killed for him, lived for him; John can ask him quite literally anything, now, and Sherlock doubts his power to say no.
Sherlock swallows back the urge to point this out, and nods.
"You do that, a lot." John gestures somewhat vaguely, and it again takes Sherlock a moment to realise he is referring to his hand, pressed loosely over his nose and mouth. "Whenever we get Chinese, you've been doing that." He pauses again. "...It's the smell, isn't it?"
Sherlock sniffs, and, very deliberately, removes his hand from his face. "I beg your pardon?"
But John hardly looks disarmed by the swift reply, instead just grinning softly again, returning to his own chair. "It's not anything to be ashamed of, Sherlock. Olfactory input stimulates memory better than any other kind; I'm sure you know that even better than I do. You were in China for a while, it pretty clearly wasn't that pleasant of a visit..." He trails off and shrugs, and god bless him that it comes out lighthearted instead of serious. "It's either that or your order's been giving you food poisoning for weeks now, and you just never bothered to mention it."
Sherlock sniffs a second time. Unpleasant, this. No; embarrassing. He takes a deep breath, and recites, "It is an irrational, inappropriate response to an undeserving stimulus, and the best method to decondition this response is via exposure therapy, which-"
"All right, wikipedia," John chuckles, and Sherlock's face burns red. It was the American Psychological Association, not bloody wikipedia. "Look, it's normal, Sherlock. Just- biological, yeah? It doesn't mean anything's wrong with you. I-" He pauses, once again seeming to fish for the right words. "I first got drunk at sixteen. Hugely embarrassing mess, a right disaster; threw up right in front of Mum and my date and an entire restaurant. Couldn't smell alcohol for a year after that without feeling nauseous."
Sherlock glowers, and keeps silent.
In fact-
In fact,he should be angry, now. This is not an embarrassing first date or mishap in a restaurant. This is not a foolish first drink that turned into one drink too many. It's not an amusing anecdote, it is a month spent getting beaten to a pulp because he let them do it, it is months spent barely able to communicate and clinging to life by text, it is his own mind palace betraying him and shutting down.
But he doesn't mind.
John is treating it like it's normal. Not defective or weak, not a Big Deal that must be Dealt With. John isn't even dismissing it as a nonsensical Sherlock-Quirk, it is-
This is still normal.
Still, Sherlock finds, token protests are a must. He huffs and straightens and folds his arm, haughty as can be. "Ordinary or no, be that as it may, my mind is not ordinary. I am far more well-practiced in mental self-discipline than normal people."
"Yes, you are." John smirks, just a little. "Whatever relevance that has here."
"I-"
"I say we take a break from Chinese, for a while," he announces, steadfast, and whatever's left of the takeout is collected together. No matter, the smell is still revolting and present and there. "I won't bug you about it. And next time you suggest Chinese, so long as it's not at this time tomorrow, then I'll assume you're fine with it, and we never have to mention it again."
And, just like that, John lets it lie. Discussion closed, tabled, conversation moved on. There's tea, and Mrs. Hudson's leftover scones, and today is not a sleep day in Sherlock's schedule, but he is sufficiently muddied from the whiskey and when John folds him onto the sofa to watch crap telly, he is too disarmed to mind. There is no more talk of China, no more talk of lost teeth, detoxes, or Moriarty; John's phone is firmly turned off and put away, saved for another day. He winds up curled on his side, glaring at the mind-numbing stupidity of Britain's Got Talent (no, Sherlock surmises, watching one out-of-step dance after another, they most certainly do not), and John's hand is in his hair and his head somehow on his lap.
He should hate it, but he doesn't.
He wakes up with a blanket warm and snug around his shoulders, soft sunlight illuminating the dust in the air. Alcohol is as alcohol does, lending him a faintly muddled head and a dryness at the eyes and mouth that come from sleeping but not sleeping well.
Sherlock, in that brief moment between dreams and morning, thinks that if every night could be like this, then perhaps he wouldn't mind sleeping so much after all.
He keeps walking, through the nights.
One night, he's mugged after all.
Sherlock had recognised he was being followed a block back, and known exactly what the stranger wanted to do to him one easy glance over his shoulder after that. He rolls his eyes, and let's the poor sod get close enough to try. Anything else just wouldn't be playing fair.
The moron gets whacked in the face with one of his crutches.
Then, for some astronomically stupid reason, the moron keeps moving, and Sherlock rounds on him with a vengeance to prod the knife out of his hand and punch him round the head so hard he's pretty sure a tooth got knocked loose. His nose splatters Sherlock's cheek with hot blood, and now he's ended up on the sidewalk, clutching his face and bleeding and dazed out of his mind.
Sherlock takes the knife for himself, leaves the moron lying there whining like a stuck pig, and keeps walking.
I'm going to start taking from your trust fund to pay the agents watching you at night. -MH
Love you too, bother dear -SH
I know better than to ask if that was a typo or a mere Freudian slip. -MH
Sherlock, I don't know what you're playing at, but wandering about London at four in the morning, assaulting ne'er-do-wells, and not sleeping, are not your wisest choices. Do not make me interfere. Go home. -MH
Tosser -SH
He walks, and he walks, and he walks until the sun rises, and then, as usual, he walks back home.
He whispers upstairs, ten minutes before John's alarm is set. He limps soundlessly through the door, combing a hand through his hair, and is half the way back to his room before it clicks.
He whirls.
John glares.
He stares.
John continues to glare.
Uh oh.
The back of Sherlock's neck prickles. He knows better than to joke, at the moment, but with defenses already rising, drawing tightly about him and provoked solid just by that look on John's face, there is very little else for him to say.
"...Good morning."
John's glare is frosty and solid, stock still in his seat. "Seems as if it's been morning for you for quite a while."
John is angry. John is angry, clearly, at him, in the same manner as when Sherlock has done something a bit not good. John knows he was not here this morning. The calculations whir in his head; for him to be angry, for him not to consider it just an early morning, for him to be worried- four hours, at least. No, he corrects, analysing the wrinkles in his shirt and the tired bruises about his eyes, five. "I'm sorry," he says, because that's what he's supposed to do; John looks angry, because of something he's done, so an apology is mollifying and appropriate. "I had a case- nothing concerning. Nothing that needed-"
"You didn't have a case. Greg's not letting you on crime scenes yet."
"Private client," Sherlock says, shrugging. "Came by a few days ago-"
But this, evidently, was a critical error to make.
John is up on his feet with a bang, advancing on Sherlock, and Sherlock doesn't know where to go or what he's done incorrectly so keeps his mouth shut, but John looks absolutely furious. "No, Sherlock," and now, he's shouting, "No! There was no case, there was no private client; you just vanish in the middle of the night and now you won't even tell me why?!"
Sherlock is thoroughly confused, now, with next to no idea what to say. He's vanished in the night before, and John's never minded, so why-? "Oh," he murmurs, listing back. "This is Mycroft, isn't it-"
"No, Sherlock, this is you lying to me! You're lying to me again, and you promised! You promised, you shit! I told you if this was going to work, you couldn't do that, you couldn't lie to me again, and now you haven't even started taking clients yet and you're ALREADY DOING IT!"
"I'm-" He stops and stutters once, a pathetic flutter of his tongue. "I wasn't-" Doing anything? Causing trouble? In danger?
He doesn't know the end to that sentence, but John, evidently, has decided that he does, and it's another lie. He stares back at Sherlock with something between heartbreak and rage, neither emotion one that seems to make any sense right now, because Sherlock really wasn't doing anything, but John looks just about out of his mind. He pushes away with an angry huff, back turned and shoulders hunched, gasping to himself, trembling, silent.
Then, without so much as one more look back to him, John stalks away, muttering something that sounds suspiciously like forget it.
The door slams on his exist, and just a few moments later, he hears the door to the street slam, too.
The silence in the flat becomes too loud not four minutes after John had left it, and not five minutes after, Sherlock is walking again.
He absolutely does not mean to, but somehow, some way, he walks to Bart's.
Molly becomes the seventh person to hug him for his return, and the first one to touch his back since the stitches have come out.
He throws another deadbolt on the door labeled Serbia in his palace, and force himself to hug back.
"I'm so- so glad you're back," she chokes, "I was so worried about you-" and now she's sniffling; oh, no, now she's crying, and what's he done wrong now? He hasn't even said anything!
But she pulls herself together after a moment; which, quite frankly, thank god. She sniffles once, head pressing to his coat, then steps him back with her hands on his shoulders and sweeping him over with analytical doctor's eyes. "You're okay? You're sure?"
This is, frankly, a stupid question. He's been back for weeks, now; there is no other sensible state for him to be in other than okay- but this reminds him of a suddenly gaping hole, a critical flaw in his plans, and he abruptly feels as low-down and awful as Christmas, 2011.
"I apologise," he says, somewhat stiffly. Second time today, but at least this time, he knows what he is apologising for. "It- occurs to me that I have been back in London for some time, now, but haven't properly offered my gratitude until now. For-"
"No, no. No," Molly tells him, squeezing his shoulders again. Why do people do that, so physically tactile, insistent- "Your brother talked to me, when you first got back. It's okay. I know you've been... dealing with a lot."
Sherlock immediately recommences the planning of Mycroft's murder.
It's also wholly irrelevant- he doesn't know what Mycroft's told her about Serbia, but he can see in her face what she's assumed about it, and she's wrong. He hasn't been lazing about, injured, traumatised, recovering; he is and really have been quite fine. But despite his new determination to no longer take Dr. Molly Hooper for granted, developed on the floor of a warehouse mid-March 2013 in miserable China, he's somehow managed to forget about her for six weeks straight, and he just-
He still doesn't really understand, how so much of what he says and does makes the boring, ordinary people that populate his life wince or shy away or, on the worst occasions, cry. And he still doesn't really care at all, if he makes any random, scattered member of those ordinary masses upset.
But after two years of watching John Watson fall apart as a direct result of his inaction and incompetence, Sherlock has made his decision: he is done with hurting the Important People. He has to be done with it. He can't do this again.
Step 1 of that, google leads him to believe, is apologising for the hurts he has caused. He's done that, just now; Molly tells him it's okay.
Step 2, again, courtesy of google, is thanking them for what they've done for him.
"Thank you very much, Molly Hooper," he intones obediently. She looks startled, so he goes on. "For looking after John. While I was- away." And, me. Christmas, 2013.
She softens a little, mouth tugging downwards even as her hands at last slip off his shoulders. Good. She looks like she wants to say something again, to brush away the gratitude, but they both know how important what she'd done was- every bit as important as the day she'd helped him survive a fall off a five story roof.
"I was... really worried about him, for a while. I was really worried about both of you, but- he was the only one I was able to do anything for."
This is categorically untrue, on multiple fundamental levels. More than once, Molly Hooper's texts had been the only reason he'd slept. The only reason he'd eaten. She had given him the worst and yet most meaningful Christmas of his life. And that is, ultimately, immaterial; she has saved him by saving John.
But before he can open his mouth to announce this, she goes on again, watching him with those same big, worried eyes and a quivering mouth. "How is he, now, then? Any, um... any better?"
"Oh, he's-"
Sherlock stops. He scowls.
Step 3: no lying.
He sniffs haughtily. What sort of patently ridiculous, thoroughly impossible demand is that? People want to be lied to. The truth is so often very unkind.
Nonetheless, he will square his shoulders, shape up, and try. Chin up; all of that.
Just for now.
"...Sherlock?"
"He's- angry. At me." Sherlock sniffs again, choosing instead to focus on the body cracked open for autopsy, right there on the table. Cause of death: heart of attack, most likely one due to poison. Probability suggests the wife, and he knows that's where Lestrade will be looking, but they should be looking at the sister, instead. "For lying, he said."
"Oh, well, that's new." She chuckles quietly and returns to her autopsy, cracking open the ribcage with a near earsplitting snap. "Is this a new lie, then? Or any of the hundred others you told him two years ago?"
"What does that mean?"
"It's- well, Sherlock." Molly smiles weakly to him again, but she seems a little more hesitant, now, a little more wary. "John's probably quite- oversensitive, right now. About you lying to him."
"He's..." And oh, it hits Sherlock with the brilliance of a blazing lightbulb flicked on in the darkest of cellars of his palace. Oh. Oh.
Of course! It's so simple, now that he thinks of it- or that Molly's thought of it, most accurately; of course, of course. Obviously. John is not angry at him because of last night, John is angry at him because he associates Sherlock is Lying with- two years ago. Yes. No wonder he reacted in such a silly manner to what amounted to so little; it's nothing that Sherlock has done wrong, not this time, it's not his fault. He didn't break this.
His newfound little burst of euphoria sickens fades all the way to sour, when he realises that he may not have broken this- but he does still have to try and fix it.
He wants to fix it. He's spent two years of his life fixing things, deleting problems from the world and neatly cauterizing their sins from existence; so often just like in that cracked open body lying just there on Molly's table. That is, in fact, all he has done for two years: fix things.
He will fix this. He must. There is no other allowed eventuality.
"I can't sleep," is what he tells John, in the end.
It's not quite a lie. The line between can't and don't, really- it's indistinct, fuzzy. Sherlock doesn't consider it worthy of being pointed out, though that's perhaps because he knows just what sort of displeased look would be on John's face if he did.
It's not displeased now, in fact. He looks tired and vaguely ill- long day, little sleep, lots of stress, little sleep- but his eyes are crinkled with slow surprise and concern, not disappointment. "You can't..." He rubs at his eyes, seeming to rather want to go to bed himself. The desire to yell at him again doesn't seem all that buried, either. "Are you trying to tell me that you can't sleep, and that's why you weren't in bed last night?"
Ah, John. Wonderful, ordinary, clever John.
Sherlock nods easily once, and finds himself with curious, dubitable award of John sinking down to the nearest seat, burying his face in his hands, and heaving out the longest, most exhausted sigh that Sherlock has ever heard him sigh. He looks like he doesn't know what to say, really, like he's just as frustrated and tired and exasperated as this morning. Most unfortunate. Fascinating, too, but mostly just unfortunate.
Sherlock lingers on his feet, and John just stays down in his chair, head in his hands, for a long time.
"Any particular reason you couldn't just say that this morning?"
"I didn't consider it significant-"
"It's not. I don't care. You should've told me anyway." John scrubs a hand through his ruffled hair again; by the looks of it, has been doing that all day long. "Sherlock, you can not do this. Not again. I don't bloody care what it is; I can't do this if you start lying to me again. That includes lying by omission, that includes being misleading, that includes you being a little shit with word play and thinking you're clever when all you're doing is giving me the wrong impression on purpose."
"I'm... fairly certain those last two are the same thing, J-"
"For fuck's sake, Sherlock."
Right. Oversensitive about lying. Right. Mustn't joke. Must remember to thank Molly, again.
He nods to John's back, and lets himself settle back down in his usual chair, irritants of crutches clattered aside and the leg that is still entirely Mycroft's fault stretched out, for maximum comfort and minimum fuss. "I apologise for worrying you," he says quietly, which is, in fact, true, and at last does seem to have been the right thing to say.
John sighs again, lowering his hands, mollified and softer. He sighs a third time, turning just enough to face him, and he just looks so tired. Then, with a business-like clearing of his throat, he wipes it all away, facing Sherlock head on and smoothing the wrinkles of his shirt away like he's wiping away the last twenty-four hours with that gesture alone. "Right, then. Can't sleep. Insomnia, or nightmares?"
"Oh, for God's sake."
"I'm a GP, now, Sherlock, this is literally what I do, every day." John grins back, and it's the least strained it's been all conversation. Given the stress and fatigue still creasing around the mouth, the faintest shadow at his eyes, that doesn't really mean much. "So- insomnia or nightmares? The former isn't anything unusual, for you, but if it's getting worse you might want to consider taking something for it."
Oh, Christ, this has become a doctor's visit. They're talking about medicating him, now; how did this happen? "I am most certainly not going to resort to chemical intervention for-"
"Oh, don't be such a baby, Sherlock."
"As you already know, I simply require less sleep than ordinary-"
"Chemically speaking, you know that's not true-"
"-and isn't it unethical for you to be prescribing me-"
"When the hell have you ever cared about ethics, Sherlock?" John laughs again, which is just not at all what Sherlock wants from this. He does not at all want Dr. Watson, he does not want Baker Street to turn into a GP's office, and least of all, bloody hell, does he want interference and medicalization and labelling of what is a perfectly acceptable coping mechanisms.
Is that was this is to be? John labelling him, treating him, fixing him. As if he is already not perfectly aware that he is not normal; of course he is not, he'd sooner kill himself, and as if he hasn't been told ad nauseam there is something wrong with him- but to hear it from John?
John is looking at him a little oddly, now. Already strained smile faded, and that is Sherlock's cue to snap his mouth shut. He's done that quite often, recently, actually. Sherlock has fallen a bit out of practice, in schooling his features to be socially appropriate; certainly is no longer used to doing so for people like John, who know and can actually read him. It's absolutely hateful.
And now, John is watching him closely enough to make him wish for an explosion across the street again, just for the distraction. Just to put a stop to whatever the hell this is.
Sherlock does not want to be need to be fixed. Having John try to be the one to fix him is entirely another level of intolerable.
"Sorry," John says, finally. And what's all the worse, he actually sounds genuinely contrite. "I guess I shouldn't have assumed- if you don't want me as your doctor, anymore, then that's fine. Of course that's fine-"
But it's not fine, because that's not what Sherlock said, is it? John is his doctor. That is how it is. Why on earth would he not want that? There is no one else that he'd trust to fix matters when he is seriously ill or injured.
He just does not want John doctoring him when there is nothing wrong with him.
But there's not time for him to say this, because John, again, has already moved on.
"-but, can you at least promise me- no more midnight walks, for now? At least until the cast comes off?" He cracks another half-smile, this one, almost teasing. "I'm sure that you're a ninja even on crutches, but it's only for another week. There's no reason to tempt fate, I think?"
Sherlock considers this.
Considers his new, apparent lack of alternatives.
God, sentiment truly is a defect, isn't it?
"I promise," he says, and John beams right back.
Three days later, John has another all day shift at the clinic.
Sherlock signs into NSY's network under GLESTRADE, texts the poor inspector a reminder to update his password, and finds the latest, most interesting, least annoying crime scene. Then he power-saws his cast off at the kitchen table, bins the dusty, disintegrating chunks in his room, and all but skips out the door.
John, as predicted, just about has kittens.
It's glorious.
"Oh, Sherlock, there you-..."
"Hello, John. Takeout?"
"You- that's-... I thought your appointment was Monday?"
"Italian? We've been getting Greek quite frequently, lately."
"Sherlock, you didn't..."
"Lord, must we do this? The average recovery time for the procedure I had done expires today, which is precisely the reason for why my appointment was scheduled for Monday. I merely-"
"You had to have X-Rays! Your range of motion and muscular strength had to be tested, you might need therapy, you-"
"I've already found the requisite exercises on the internet, and will work through them, if necessary." This much, actually, is true; without Mycroft about to bully him into a hospital, Sherlock had worked himself through minor physical therapy more than once, in his two years abroad. Successfully? Perhaps, perhaps not, but at least he's done it, when excruciatingly necessary. He doesn't like hospitals, never has, but after such extensive experience in working his way through recovery, time and time again, Sherlock knows when something is beyond his ability to treat. This is not.
John, meanwhile, looks like he's about to have kittens for the second time in two minutes, which is really rather why Sherlock didn't mention his plan to him before he sawed the cast off.
"We're keeping that appointment," John huffs at last, in a tone that allows absolutely no argument. "And until you get cleared by the ortho, you're using your crutches. And if not, Sherlock Holmes, I will handcuff you to your bedpost, don't think I won't!"
Sherlock suspects there's a sex joke to be made, there. He also suspects if he makes it, John will wind up handcuffing him to the bedpost out of sheer spite, somewhere before or after- likely before- he dies of shock.
He doesn't make it.
That night, John tempts him with warm leftovers- not interested- and cold whiskey- not necessary. Sherlock knows exactly what it is that John is getting at, but he's just glad that John isn't so angry with him as to ignore him entirely, so he lets him have his way.
He sleeps the night on the sofa again, dozing in stone cold sober John's lap, and very certainly not walking about the city. Because it seems John has done some deducing of his own, and learned if he plies Sherlock with enough depressants it will put him to sleep, and if pets his hair then he'll stay that way, and Sherlock will simply disintegrate on the spot if anyone ever realised how much he loved feeling John's fingers in his hair, but he does love it and John knows it and he is helpless to defend against it.
He dreams about Serbia, and Mycroft with a snake's head watching him drown, and John texting him I hate you and goodbye. He perhaps dreams, but maybe, maybe, it's for real, a warm hand rubbing gently at the back of his neck, and a voice that is all together just sad, murmuring, "I wish you'd just talk to me."
Sherlock is quite sure this is a dream, because otherwise, it is insensible. He has done very little but talk to John, as of late.
He wakes up alone again- alone but warm, crutches again propped irritatingly by the couch aside a long gone cold cup of tea.