Chapter Text
When Sherlock's eyes flicker open, they are aimed at the white ceiling of the hospital room. The awful white sans serif clock on the equally white wall reads 8:12, and based on the sharpness of the white light through the window and the searing white glare of the bedsheets, it is morning.
He is back.
He is in the real world.
He is alive.
He is in agony.
Sherlock manages to croak a wordless expression of pain, and the dossier that Mycroft is studying spills in a merry white paper waterfall to the white linoleum.
"Oh, Christ," Mycroft gasps. "Sherlock. No, don't try to talk just yet, you're--God, I thought you'd--just be still while I. Yes, there we are."
Sherlock is vaguely aware of his brother pressing some sort of alarm or call button. That seems a prudent idea. He has heard Mycroft stammer once or twice before in their lives, when they were very young or Sherlock had taken a particularly alarming cocktail of boutique poisons. But three aborted attempts at independent clauses in a row signals the Second Coming. Possibly an event yet more dramatic. The detective's throat and eyes burn as if blasted in a kiln, his tongue where he bit it days previous is still a swollen mass, his hand very decidedly has a throbbing hole in it, and his side aches in a persistent dull shriek like the whine of some unseen banshee. His body feels coated with grime, though he knows John washed the lifeless husk twice (because he could feel it in the reading room and the act made him so sick with thwarted affection and the memory of that life-altering bath at Baker Street that he had felt physically ill even from the safety of the Mind Palace). The sludge in his veins feels poisoned, he is itchy and damp with fever, his head is an over-inflated balloon about to burst, the light is blinding him, and he is ravenously hungry.
He has never felt more grateful to be awake in his life.
Turning his head proves a task too daunting to complete, and Mycroft catches his cheek lightly in his palm. The elder Holmes has lost at least four pounds, and his eyes behind the glasses are rimmed in the poppy crimson of extended sleeplessness, and possibly worse activities. It makes Sherlock's chest hurt to look at him.
"Hello, brother mine," Mycroft says softly.
Swallow. Blink.
Blink.
Breathe.
"Congratulations," Sherlock manages to rasp. "The diet is working."
"You patently absurd, utterly ridiculous boy." Mycroft shakes his head in despair. A shattered laugh escapes his lips. "Incredible."
Attempting an aloof smile, Sherlock produces a slight quiver of the lips.
"This is the last time, do you hear me, William Sherlock Scott Holmes? The very final occasion on which you worry me half to death from a hospital bed. I freely grant that it was not entirely your fault in this instance, but it is nevertheless the last instance, because I won't tolerate this sort of behavior any longer. I am putting my foot down. I have been through this enough times, and therefore you are being given final notice. Dying is henceforth off limits. I will invent ways of punishing you that you cannot possibly conceive if you dare to go against that order. Do you understand me, young man?"
"Forgive me," Sherlock whispers.
"Forgive you," Mycroft repeats as if stunned. A brief silence follows. "Of all the...you were held against your will by a sadist. Forgive you for what, Sherlock?"
Waving near-lifeless fingers, Sherlock indicates the equipment, the hospital, his own body, and the horror of repeated instances of same.
Some of them self-inflicted.
Mycroft heaves a great sigh. This seems to settle him, and the mask of professionalism slides back into place as soundlessly and smoothly as one of the high security doors in his secret lairs. His palm leaves Sherlock's cheek and the sleuth marvels at it having been there in the first place.
"I already did," he replies quietly. "Years ago. Couldn't you tell?"
Just when Sherlock begins to think surviving might be overrated supposing it hurts this much, doctor comes bustling in, her face brittle with restrained concern which smooths to satisfaction when she finds Sherlock staring at her. She is a pretty woman, mid-forties, with bold silver streaks in her severely bobbed straight black hair. A tag on her lab coat reads DR. CHANG.
"Well, well," she greets him coolly. "Mr. Holmes, it's good to finally meet you." She is joined by nurse, a blonde equine-faced caretaker with kind eyes and a galaxy of freckles on her arms.
What follows is a confusion of gently probing questions and the studying of readouts. Mycroft hastens to fetch ice from down the hall, and after a few chips, Sherlock can speak a bit better. Yes, he can understand them, and yes, he can talk if only very haltingly and with an unfair amount of pain. Yes, he comprehends that his breast feels like a donkey kicked it because he seized on the operating table four days previous and they were forced to employ electrical paddles during the period he was deceased. Yes, he will make every effort not grow overstimulated.
"Your latest bloodwork is very promising, but I believe in being honest with all of my patients, and you gave us cause for profound concern," Dr. Chang informs him as she adjusts an IV drip bag. "That was about as close as I've seen anyone come and manage to fight their way back. But fight you did, I'm pleased to say, though you aren't completely out of the woods yet. Your fever hasn't entirely dissipated. And naturally, the wounds you sustained are in only the very beginning stages of healing themselves. What's important is that I believe we have the sepsis under control. The coma was difficult for your loved ones, but may have ultimately worked to your advantage--it was your body's way of preserving the last shreds of your resources."
Loved ones, thinks Sherlock with an agonizing flood of gratitude.
But they aren't all accounted for.
His throat may feel like pounded meat, but thankfully the detective doesn't need his voice where Mycroft is concerned, so he asks the question with a slow sweep of pale grey irises.
"John stepped out," Mycroft answers in a clipped tone. "When they're through here, I'll speak to you about it. Everything's all right, don't look like that, Sherlock. Lie still and let them do their jobs. John would say the same, were he present. And he will be. Soon."
Queasy with hurt and uncertainty, Sherlock allows his reflexes to be checked and the nurse to fuss over his morphine dose (it's too high for her liking, but Sherlock can't be arsed to care). When they depart about ten minutes later, with stern admonishments that Mycroft not overtax him, Sherlock slaps the blanket with his uninjured palm in impatience. It requires an incredible effort on his part.
"Desist immediately, you've been out of a coma for all of twenty minutes," Mycroft scolds. A measure of his hauteur has returned, but since he's wearing denim and a jumper, it comes across as mother hennish rather than deadly. "No flailing about like a handcrafted marionette as you so dearly love to do. No speaking unless not speaking would do you still more harm."
Please, Sherlock mouths desperately.
"Yes, well, as to John." Mycroft removes his glasses, polishing them on the hem of his sweater. "I'm afraid there was something of a scene. Unfortunately. Your army doctor and I have been under considerable strain, and while we have both done everything in our power to ensure your complete recovery, I fear that your continued lack of consciousness began to wear rather profoundly on us. John raised the query whether I was accomplishing all I was able to, whether I ought to bring in other specialists. Or better qualified ones. It was a reasonable question, but I fear I responded...poorly."
Sherlock twists his eyebrows as his stomach churns in apprehension.
"If I tell you this story, will you stop working yourself into a froth?"
Snarling is impossible, but Sherlock bares his teeth fractionally and Mycroft sighs in resignation.
"No, you never did do well with unfinished tales. I may have indicated to Dr. Watson that I had settled for nothing less than the very best in the first place, as I have always done where you are concerned, and suggested he was grasping at straws due to his own feelings of impotence in the face of a harrowing situation," Mycroft admits ruefully. "He said if I was so keen to play God, why hadn't I kept you from being taken at all, or caused Moriarty to be eliminated long ago? To which I replied that at least I managed not to get myself kidnapped along with you, at which point the discussion grew rather heated. Stop scowling at me, child, you're exhausted and a hair's breadth from passing out again, if I'm any judge. John wanted to know why I couldn't manage to spare you this experience with the entire British government at my disposal, and I wanted to know what good he imagined he'd done watching you be torn apart with a nail gun. I daresay neither party emerged the winner. We were both...distraught, sincere apologies were exchanged, and he declared himself in need of a wash."
Horrified, Sherlock grimaces.
He already said that he failed me. He already said I wouldn't be held to anything.
He already called me a free man.
Mycroft, what have you done?
"I'm no better pleased with the situation than you are," Mycroft continues in an even undetone. "I ought to have retained my composure, even supposing he had lost his own. Should you like me to look for him? I cannot imagine that he left the building entirely."
"All right, sorry for bunking off, but I'm sorted now," comes John's voice. It's strong enough, but faded as grey as his complexion and the loose-fitting sweats he wears. He's framed in the doorway, dark blond hair toweled nearly dry and neatly combed, holding two coffees. Not raising his eyes from them. "Again, I'm...well, never mind, you heard me the first time. That was the most cack-handed conversation I've ever conducted, but it won't be repeated. I promise you."
"John," Sherlock rasps.
Sherlock, when in a state of boredom or impatience, greatly enjoys random acts of destruction--shooting walls, lighting matches, smashing busts, punching walls, etc. But he has never before seen two full paper cups of steaming Ecuadorian blend descend in slow motion to join Mycroft's papers where they still lie on the floor, the liquid exploding in a brown fireworks display and the air immediately drenched in the aroma of roasted caffeine.
John makes no move to see to the mess. He wraps his arms around himself and then covers his mouth with one tightly clenched fist.
"I'll just inquire about a mop," Mycroft says silkily, stepping with catlike distaste around the twin puddles. "No histrionics, I beg. Within reason."
He shuts the door behind him.
For several long seconds, John stares. His eyes fill. He quickly blinks the moisture away. Sherlock wants to crawl to him, bury his head in John's belly and wear him like a winter coat, but he's too thin and too weak to move and John...John looks uncertain beneath the tide of feeling.
No, not uncertain. Ashamed.
Sherlock suppresses a shudder.
"You're awake," John says at last, his voice nearly cracking.
"Obvious," Sherlock grates even though words feel like acid.
This produces a broken little smile. John walks to the bed, limping visibly, yes, yes, closer, as close as you can stand it, and bends over Sherlock's emaciated frame.
"God, Sherlock," he says wonderingly. The smile lines edging his mouth are like riverbeds, and the double sacks beneath his eyes that can lift so readily into dry laughter look heavy as stones. "I...shit, I have, just. So much. There's so much. To say to you. But that can, yeah, wait. Until you're stronger. Mycroft is right. So. He's been taking good care of you, the best, really, but unfortunately, you're not going anywhere for a while. Welcome back to the land of the living. Has Dr. Chang been in?"
Sherlock nods.
Touch me.
Please.
Don't just stand there, can't you see I'm starving?
"Hurts like a motherfucker to talk, doesn't it?" John winces in sympathy. "I remember from being shot. I was out for days, too. Er. Yeah. You know about that. Feels like you swallowed a bag of razors?"
Lifting a shoulder, Sherlock agrees. He doesn't care about his voice. Still wracked with concern, he flicks his gaze down towards John's leg.
"What? Oh, yeah, I'm fine. Right as rain. A few rips and tears, but nothing that chipped the bone. Some damage to the tibialis anterior and the soleus, mostly punctures, what you would expect. All sewn up now. Nothing to fret over. Thank you for asking."
John's face is now carefully blank, glancing from machine to machine to check data, skimming the bedclothes, darting towards where the chart hangs. It's the most frightening thing Sherlock has ever seen upon waking up in hospital, and he more than once snapped into consciousness only to be plagued by drug-induced nightmares of Jim Moriarty standing over him with a buzzsaw or a leashed slavering hog with artificially sharpened teeth--images from the letters.
This is worse.
"They have you on a fair amount of morphine, as you probably already know, but are you in a lot of pain?" John questions in a professional tone. "I mean, of course you're in terrible pain, I'm sorry. That sounded daft. But is any of it unexplained or unusual or too severe to manage? Anything I ought to be aware of?"
Sherlock regards him in a state fast approaching panic.
"Hey, settle down, mate, I know this is awful," John soothes with his attention now fixed to the heart monitor. "Christ, I do. I'm not trying to upset you. Quite the opposite, so you have to tell me if the discomfort is anything approaching unbearable. You might well benefit from a sedative to put you back under. I'm not cocking about, you aren't meant to be tortured just because you've got an unholy tolerance, I could probably get them to--"
The detective cannot be expected to bear this for any longer. Reaching out, Sherlock clasps John's hand. Merely that small amount of contact, skin to skin, makes both men pull in a breath. He tugs the doctor forward, setting John's wrist over his chapped lips, and he leaves it there, drinking in his heartbeat as if it's the antidote to everything that ails him.
"God, Sherlock, I..." His friend's mouth dives down at one side. John lifts his other limb, slides faintly trembling fingers into the tangled swarm of curls. "I didn't. Look, you don't have to. Sod it. Is...is this all right, then?"
Sherlock signals his confusion with a pleat above his nose.
"Just..." John flinches hard, stroking his friend's temple with the thumb that isn't buried in his hair. "That all came a cropper at the end, a complete and comprehensive shit show, a disaster, and it. Bloody hell. It was my fault."
Shaking his head, Sherlock presses a more determined kiss to John's pulse point.
"You bet your arse it was," John growls tenderly. His dark blue eyes are again glassed over, the navy glazed porcelain-bright and just as fragile. "Yes, we put paid to the sick fuck who's been haunting you for your entire career, but not before he hurt you, and Jesus Christ, Sherlock, that was not meant to happen. No, you know what? We can't have this conversation in your condition. You're going to be swarming with nurses any second. We're changing the subject, and you're fixing your heart rate before you break the goddamn monitor, OK? That would be...so typical. But we're not trying it."
Glowering, Sherlock sets his lips in a thin line of displeasure against the doctor's skin.
John's neat fingernails make a featherlight pass over his scalp. "Yeah, yeah I know, you're three parts posh wanker and seven parts bloody superhero, but it doesn't matter how strong you are. Or think you are. We shouldn't talk about this right now."
Since Sherlock already knows the entire gist of the topic at hand, he can't help but allow the dread flooding his mind to seep through into his eyes.
"What, what is it? Tell me. I'm making it worse, Christ, how am I doing that? You're safe, he's dead, what do you need to know? Please, Sherlock."
"You didn't fail me," Sherlock manages to husk.
The pain searing his vocal cords forces his eyes shut, but not before he watches John understand, deep regret mingled with another layer of disgust marring the stoic set of his mouth.
"You, um. You heard me say that? Last night?"
Nodding, Sherlock keep his mouth resolutely pressed to John's deft, deadly little wrist.
"For the love of fuck." John blows a breath out and grips Sherlock's hair infinitesimally tighter. "I am so sorry. That can't have been...buggering hell, I'm sorry."
The sleuth shakes his head urgently.
"Yes, I am, and yes, I did, and you'd be well within rights to toss me out on my arse."
"No," Sherlock hisses pleadingly, but John's face only darkens in revulsion.
"Why the fuck not? I swore to protect you, I gave you my word, and here you are lying in hospital, a fucking skeleton pumped full of painkillers and industrial strength antibiotics, just come out of a coma, and it's my fault. How can you look at me after what happened to you?" The tears finally spill, but John doesn't seem to notice. "I'd have cut my own heart out and handed it to him before I let this happen. This...this is, I'm sorry, I'm not meant to upset you, I'm sorry, but you died on that table and it killed me and I don't know if you remember everything I said before you woke up, but I don't deserve you any longer. Or I never did. How will you live with that kind of knowledge? He hurt you and I didn't stop him. I want to watch you get better, nag at your doctor and help with your physical therapy, make a nuisance of myself keeping the nurses on their toes, all that rot, but you have your brother here and it's completely up to you, you have to believe that. Everything's changed now. I can have my things packed and out of Baker Street within an hour."
"Do you want to leave me?" Sherlock scrapes out. The thought opens a hollow in his belly. "After what happened? Is this an excuse?"
"God, no. But you died."
"Everybody dies."
"Not on my watch, they don't."
"I always do," Sherlock rasps. "In all the strings. But I always come back to you. I think."
"Strings?"
"Our other lives. There's a limitless number of them. On strings, and I die, that's the story. I didn't know how it ended before, but now I'm back."
"You're not making a scrap of sense." The torment in John's eyes snaps instantly into soldierly concern. "But Christ knows that's to be expected. I'm shocked you're still conscious. Only you, Sherlock Holmes. How many fingers am I holding up?"
"I don't care."
"Well, I fucking do, and I'm in charge at present. Answer me."
"Three."
"Well done, you. What day is it?"
"The day I woke up."
"Fair enough. Who's the chief of the Metropolitan Police?"
"An idiot."
"Sodding hell, Sherlock, are you always going to be this stubborn? I'd say you were the walking wounded, but you haven't even made it that far yet. Thanks to me."
Sherlock releases John's wrist to run a finger weakly along one of the tear tracks, his heart splintering with the regret he feels that John should be subjected to this degree of guilt.
"It was worth a wound," he says.
"Sherlock," the doctor chokes.
"John. It was worth many wounds."
"Shh, love. Be quiet for me."
"I don't want to. Don't leave me. You won't, will you? Please don't go."
John leans down and sets his lips over the fever sheen on Sherlock's brow, murmuring under his breath perfect, lovely, brilliant, shh, you're all right, I'm here, you're mad, do you know that, beautiful amazing lunatic, you're cracking mad, I've got you, everything will be all right now, you precious creature, you perfect unearthly thing, until Sherlock can breathe again, and the heart monitor's chaos slows to a martial beat.
"You said that when the Russian threw you into the dry dock," Sherlock insists. He pushes John away just enough to look up at him. "Remember? Do you remember that day? When you came home, and you asked if I wanted to tell you something, and I couldn't? You said it was worth it. The bruise. Was I worth it? Even after Jim trapped you like an animal? Because if it's about that, you can go, of course you can, but I don't care that I died. I meant to. It was all for you in the end."
"Stop talking, sweetheart. Shhh. No, Christ, don't cry, you don't have that kind of energy to spare. Please don't. No, no, no. I'm not doing you any favours lately, am I?"
"You saved my life."
"Be still now."
"That day at the dry dock, you weren't breathing, weren't moving, and you understood, and I still couldn't tell you, but you stayed anyway, and I've never been worth it, not to anyone else, only to you." Gasping again, Sherlock makes the jagged words come out in the best string he can muster, like pulling a length of barbed wire from his chest. "No, shut up, I need to say it. Then you wouldn't let me tell you, not in Jim's white room, but I did, I did all along. Without telling you. In all the strings, I do. I do in the laboratory in Prague in nineteen-ten, I do in the Amazon in the sixteenth century when we're mapping the rivers, I do in Istanbul trading spices for guns. I do in London in the rain and fog. I do. I always do. Sometimes I never tell you, but I always do."
"Sherlock, I'm begging you, stop, you're hurting your--"
"I love you." Sherlock has his good hand slung around John's nape, and he watches his friend's eyes go wide. "Sometimes I never say it. That's...I don't like to think about that. It was almost too late again this time, it's always almost too late, I think, when I do say it. In this world, I fell in love with you the day you tackled Abernetty, and it only gets worse every hour. Please. I've fucked this up in infinite permutations, but I still love you. And you let me. I don't know why, but you let me."
Soft lips meet Sherlock's parched ones, the doctor chasing after the strained, sweet sound he just made in response to his friend's confession. While it is a desperate kiss in its fashion, it is also a kiss of quiet permanence and reassurance, like a marble pair of lovers twined together in the middle of a moonlit pool. And so it lingers, brightening and fading the way such statues do in the dawn and the twilight. And when it is over, John slanting to the side to brush his mouth over the borders of Sherlock's prayerfully, something of this kiss paradoxically remains in existence. As if it were always about to happen even while it is always ending.
"Of course I let you. I love you," John whispers fiercely. He runs a thumb under Sherlock's damp eye.
"Then you understand?"
"Hell, no. I don't understand any of the rest, you great git, and we've never been to the Amazon. You've been dreaming the nights away while I waited for you. I couldn't breathe while you were gone, love, and I don't understand."
"I wasn't dreaming. I was locked in the palace, watching you in the painting."
John shakes his head. "Your subconscious is, um, without precedent. But I knew that. Never mind. Speaking of your subconscious, I think you should go back to sleep now. Can you do that for me?"
Sherlock thinks about waking up here without John again and shivers.
"Hey, hey." John's hands frame his face with grave delicacy. "Enough. He's dead now. Do you hear me? It's over."
"And we lived."
"God, yes. We shouldn't have, and I'm gutted you're in this state. For the record."
"But we lived."
"Correct. We did."
"Then don't leave. Promise me."
"Yep, not leaving would make more sense, wouldn't it?"
Sherlock grins his blinding-est, maddest, happiest, brightest grin. John, chuckling ruefully, kisses it off his face again, and the heart monitor slows again to a warm, well-loved rhythm, and the men and women going steadily about the business of saving lives at the nurses' station never have so much as an inkling that anything was ever amiss.
Sherlock is thirty-five when he is taught another valuable lesson about the potential threats posed by men of a seafaring nature.
He and John had been investigating the murder of a notorious scumbag by the name of "Black" Peter Carey. The victim was a wife-beating, tobacco-spitting, dog-kicking, whiskey-swilling thug by all accounts, and ought to have been dead nine or ten times over, considering the amount of drugs he had smuggled and the number of killers he had miffed. Sherlock wouldn't ordinarily care about the untimely death of a two-bit heroin pusher who doubled as a longshoreman and signed on for the occasional voyage when his taste for Thai teenagers had gone too long unslaked. But this two-bit heroin pusher happened to have been speared through the wall of a dockside warehouse with a fiendishly sharpened javelin.
So Sherlock had cared in a borderline gleeful fashion. Since drugs were involved, he readily enlisted Shinwell Johnson. With his dealer's assistance and a few neat deductions to do with the javelin and a missing tin box full of diamond-pure opiates belonging to Carey, Sherlock soon identified the culprit as one Patrick Cairns: roughneck, college javelin thrower, occasional seaman, and raving heroin addict with delusions of being a javelin-wielding bringer of justice.
Which is how Sherlock comes to be seated in a grimy warehouse on the outskirts of London's Royal Docks, not far from where the Olympic Rings made their frightfully gaudy appearance, dressed in torn jeans and a baggy hooded coat with too many pockets. He is having a shouting match with Shinwell while John fusses over the gash across the sleuth's palm. Patrick Cairns is on the wet concrete, interjecting delirious remarks at random.
It's smashing good fun, for the most part. The air is seasoned with river water, industrial oil, adrenaline, and blood.
"I never said it was a drug deal!" Sherlock roars. He shifts on the uncomfortable metal folding chair and John hisses in annoyance. "We were meant to lure him here with the promise of a job, one in proximity to a veritable candy store of addictive substances, not break the law by trying to enter into an illegal transaction with him, and what the bloody hell is this text you sent?" Sherlock brandishes Cairns's mobile. "All caps, no less. Which is offensive enough. 'SWEET AS CANDY UNCUT ARIES AT DISCOUNT TO FRIENDS OF PETER CAREY. NO BAD BUNDLE HERE WOT MEET GEORGE V DOCKS.' With the date and time. What the fuck, Shinwell?"
Shinwell Johnson is clad in baby blue track pants with snaps all along the sides, as if he wants to be able to rip them off and reveal all his buttery-thighed glory at any moment. The look is completed by a pastel blue and yellow plaid cotton driving cap, and a yellow t-shirt the size of a tent printed with the image of a pug in a hoodie and the words PUG LIFE. As accustomed as he is to Shinwell, Sherlock is grudgingly impressed by this ensemble. And the pale yellow shirt is greatly improved by the bloody handprints Sherlock accidentally smeared all over it during their four-way struggle with the murder suspect.
Men who are off their tits on heroin can occasionally be surprisingly elusive. Particularly when armed with knives.
"What even is a bad bundle?" John mutters.
"Dirty dope, man," Cairns slurs from the floor. John cast the decisive vote by tapping him on the head with the butt of his gun, and now the deranged hoodlum is tied hand and foot with the Yard en route. "The nightmare train with the broken brake line."
"Well, chuffed we cleared that up, then."
"Shut up. This text," Sherlock insists, "is an unmitigated disaster."
"Stop gesturing, you're bleeding everywhere," John snaps.
Shinwell, all three hundred or so pounds of him, bristles in indignation. "No disrespect, Mr. Holmes, and begging forgiveness of the doctor's sensibilities where the delicate subject of substance abuse is concerned, knowing as you both do my reluctance to act as bag man to any save the most verifiably grotty of our teeming population, the fact is, you never said it weren't a drug deal, neither, in the ungrammatical vernacular of these very docks. And mathematics being what they are, while I humbly ask pardon for any enterprise of yours I may or may not have scuppered, the impossibility of proving a negative being what it is and always has been, since it was not made clear this was not a drug deal, I hereby with due deference return the what the fuck to your court. What the fuck, Mr. Holmes."
Sherlock is in the act of rolling his eyes when the line down his palm explodes in fire. John has produced an alcohol wipe from some diligently stocked pocket. Sherlock hisses like a spooked cat.
"Sorry," John says. He doesn't sound sorry. "Honestly, Shinwell, this could only truly go south if you in fact brought the...what did you call it?"
"Aries," Cairns mumbles. "Ballot, big H, birdie powder, shit makes you fly, makes you dream in stereo with all the triangles. No more flat lines, mate. Triangles. Every angle at once."
"Dear god," Sherlock observes.
Shinwell produces a toothpick, sniffs it, holds it to the glow of the bare bulb, and determines it is clean enough for use. "Like I said, Mr. Holmes, never implying that your memory is anything short of blinding, the gentleman before you--and in this case I use the term ironically--is a natty example of the species of entirely damp squib to whom I sell. Is it any wonder we suffered a regrettable breakdown in our interpersonal communications? The circumstance is, admittedly, hard cheese, but--"
"I'll try this one more time, and then you're on your lonesome. Did you," John demands as he continues to dab at the laceration, "bring uncut heroin you can't explain when the police arrive to this rendezvous, or did you not?"
Two hours later, after Shinwell vanished in a patchouli and musk cloud of Power cologne by 50 Cent and Sherlock and John delivered Cairns along with their statements, John unlocks the door to 221B.
"That was ridiculous," John sighs. He shrugs off his coat and clenches his left hand a couple of times, as he often does when escapades turn violent.
"But invigorating," Sherlock counters eagerly. "A javelin, John."
"Yes, I know."
"But a javelin."
"Yes, it was knees up, particularly the bit where you tried to go hand to hand in a knife fight. I did have a gun, you realize."
"He was aiming for Shinwell," Sherlock protests, dropping the pocket-infested coat to the floor in distaste. "Where would the Courvoisier market be without Shinwell? Countless jobs would be lost. The entire brandy economy would collapse. The nation would lose significant revenue. Children would go hungry. And it would be on my head."
John fights valiantly. But seconds later, he is giggling, and then they are both giggling, swaying a little in unsteady harmony, and then the moment subsides as it always does and John steers Sherlock to the kitchen table, pulling out a chair.
"I'm getting the antibiotic ointment and the plasters."
"John, I'm fine."
"Yep, I guarantee it."
Sherlock slouches back in the chair, suddenly knackered. It was a good case, even if it ended too quickly and was simple to solve. Bradstreet was pleased with him. She tousled his hair and called him a manky tosser, but the detective doesn't mind that so much anymore. She's only taking the piss, as John calls it. There was a javelin, and a midnight warehouse summons Shinwell nearly buggered, but it worked out in the end, and the scrap left a pleasant fight-or-flight buzz in his bones like the perfect cup of coffee, and John may not care about the javelin while Sherlock is bleeding, but when he thinks about it in light of the blog he started about their shared cases, he'll be pleased. Spicy details like javelins make for more hits, although he already has a shocking number of subscribers. All Sherlock wants now is a cuppa and a decadent lie-in, but he's too tired to move.
John returns with supplies and fills the kettle, slings it on the hob, and pulls down the mugs.
Sherlock finds himself smiling a helpless, private smile, and John catches the expression as he turns.
The doctor whistles, rounding the table. "What's got into you, then? You look like I just hung the moon."
"You did," Sherlock returns simply.
John makes fond clicking sounds as he turns Sherlock's left hand over to examine it in the better light. The fresh red line runs through a puckered scar that aches when the barometer shifts, still hampers Sherlock's playing of Locatelli's Il labirinto armonico in D major, and makes any sort of prolonged physical labor like rowing or rope climbing--which he does have to accomplish occasionally, one never knows what sort of messes they're going to land themselves in--excruciating. John says it will get better if he does his exercises and stretches more often and stops being an utter prat about them, but Sherlock knows it will only improve in increments from now on. Sometimes he misses the dexterity with which he could wield a tennis racket or fire a bow and arrow, before.
More often, it simply reminds him that John loves him, so he lets his hand curl inward, cradling the ache like a precious thing.
"You've come over all dazed," John notes, pursing his lips. "Adrenaline crash. Should I be worried? Tell the truth, now."
Sherlock still takes drugs from time to time. He tries not to. And he mostly succeeds. But sometimes, he can still sense the mould and the mice coming for him, and John cannot stop them. They argue about it, occasionally viciously.
John stays nevertheless.
"Yes." Sherlock clears his throat as his friend finishes dabbing the stripe of ointment, starts applying soft bandaging and wrapping it in tape so Sherlock can still move his hand when he needs to. "But not about...that."
"About what, then?" John's arched brows create familiar tired ripples.
Sherlock shakes his head in frustration. "I'm...I wanted a cup of tea, just now, and you put the kettle on."
"Um, yeah. I did. Well spotted."
"Right. But I didn't ask you, you did it without my saying anything."
"And?"
"You do that all the time."
"Well, what can I tell you? You want tea all the time."
"But I don't say anything."
"Granted, our tea-based transactions are largely nonverbal."
"But why do you?"
"I'm not holding out for a 'ta,' if that's what you're on about, I know half the time you don't even notice tea is in front of you until you've finished it."
"No, that's not what I meant."
"OK. What did you mean?" John inquires with infinite patience.
"Something about your doing that...I don't know." Sherlock shuts his eyes, a sudden wave of fear gripping him. "Do I do that? For you?"
"Do what?"
"Put the kettle on for you without your asking?"
This has nothing to do with kettles, Sherlock knows all too well.
Am I enough?
Am I too much?
Was it worth it? All that suffering?
No. It's much simpler than that.
Am I worth it?
The doctor stops what he's doing to rest his thumbs in the hollows of Sherlock's long neck. It takes nearly twenty seconds, but eventually, Sherlock draws a breath and opens his eyes to stare directly back into John's.
"No, you don't," John says softly. "You hang the moon. Three hundred and sixty-five nights a year. All right?"
Sherlock bites his lip to keep his mouth from doing something tragic. Something John would misinterpret. His eyes prickle, but that makes no sense. John only smiles, rubbing circles at the back of Sherlock's hairline. Later, there will probably be some kind of sex, John biting at Sherlock's stark collarbone while Sherlock palms his length, or John's tongue in his mouth and cock sliding against Sherlock's belly until both are sweaty and satisfied. There often is, after cases. Not always. Not when Sherlock doesn't want to, or John is spent. But there will also be two toothbrushes in the little ceramic cup, and Sherlock's dirty socks in a tangle with his friend's in the hamper, and arguments over whose turn it is to clean out the microwave (which no longer has a piece of John's gun in it, even when they are asleep). There will be an arm flung possessively around his waist as he sleeps. There will be all the rest of it. Which would already be enough, on any of the strings Sherlock is still convinced exist.
A thousand and a thousand times over.
"All right," Sherlock answers.
THE END.