Chapter Text
Unsurprisingly, knocking on the door of the flat he’d moved out of seventeen months ago feels… odd. For one, the silly thing was rarely if ever closed, and for another, he’d lived there - he’d hardly need to knock to get into his own flat.
“Sherlock.”
No response - also unsurprising. He knocks again. “Sherlock.”
No response. He knocks again and briefly notes the soreness in his knuckles; the door seems sturdier than he remembers it, only that doesn’t make sense. Perhaps he’s knocking too hard.
He knocks again.
“Sherlock, I know you’re in there, so open up.”
A short pause, then a rustling of cloth.
“Go away,” comes Sherlock’s muffled voice. John’s ear - the one that doesn’t have intermittent tinnitus from an unfortunate incident with a percussion grenade - places Sherlock on the sofa, assuming the furnishings haven’t shifted. Of course, Sherlock may have rearranged the place entirely; perhaps John won’t even recognize it.
He shakes his head and huffs. “Sherlock, open the door.”
“Can’t.”
“Sherlock.”
“I can’t open the door, John.” He speaks airily, and his voice inflects oddly. John pictures the fingers steepled under his chin and frowns. “Go away. Your assistance is not needed.”
John tilts his head and is partway through rolling his eyes - to the benefit of no one, as Sherlock is still inexplicably on the other side of the door - when he replays the words in his head: I can’t open the door, John. “Sherl- are you alright?”
No response. Bugger, he’s probably turned an ankle on that ridiculous robe. “Sherlock, are you alri-”
“I do not. Need. Assistance.”
The sibilants ring out, and John clenches his jaw. Holmeses are terrible for the dentition. “Sherlock-”
“Goodnight, John.”
“No, not ’goodnight’, Sherlock, it’s three o’clock in the after-” John purses his lips and leans against the doorframe. “Look, just- open the door.”
“No.”
“Sherlock. Open. This. Door.”
“Can’t, sorry.”
“Oh, for - it’s ten paces,” he inhales for three seconds and counts them in his head, “Sherlock, ten paces from the sofa to the stairs, now open the bloody door.”
Sherlock doesn’t respond immediately, apparently deliberating. Wanker probably singed his hair on the bunsen burner. The image is almost enough to make John smile. Almost.
“No.”
John licks his lip and considers throwing himself down the stairs. Then his mouth settles into a firm line, and he speaks shortly. “Alright, okay. Fine. Stand back.” He steps back three paces to the edge of the landing and angles his right shoulder toward the door.
“You will not break that door down.”
He bunches the sleeve of his jumper around his humerus. “Yes, I will.”
“No, you will not.”
“Yes, I w-”
“That door is triple deadbolted and steel-reinforced,” comes Sherlock’s baritone, diction crisp in the way he knows John hates. John frowns and glances at his reddened knuckles. “The injury you sustained in Afghanistan severely weakened your clavicle, you’ll likely fracture it or dislocate your shoulder if you attempt t-”
“My clavicle is fine, and since when are there three deadbolts on the bloody-” he shakes his head and leans himself against the door again. “No, never mind, just… Open the door, Sherlock.”
A brief pause. “Why?”
John puts his arms akimbo and tries (moderately successfully) to regulate his volume. “What do you mean ‘why’- you’re my best mate and I’ve not seen you in- days.” John has always had a knack for understatement.
A rustle and a creak. “Dull. Go away.”
John ignores the tiny sting of hurt that flares for a second in his belly. His (dull) brain summons an image of Sherlock from a month past: skin and bones, nose bloodied, eyes darting, talking so bloody much and not saying anything. John had hit him again just to shut him up.
And now - in the typical way John’s life seems to go - he can’t get in the bloody door.
He takes a deep, slow breath - Ella would be proud - and bites out, “Well, it isn’t dull to me, so you can open this door, or so help me, Sherlock-”
The door swings inwards, and Sherlock stands behind it, poking his head and shoulders (in tact and reasonably normal-looking) around the side. He stares at John for all of five seconds. “My stride is roughly forty percent longer than yours.” John stares blankly at him, and he continues. “Only seven paces.”
He turns around in a flurry of royal blue fabric and settles himself crosslegged onto the sofa, pulling the gown taut round his knees like an odd cocoon. John blinks and steps inside, shutting the door behind him.
“Right, I’d briefly forgotten that I’m short,” he mutters as he walks toward the kitchen. “And that you’re a dick.” He grabs the kettle from the counter and fills it.
“Foolish of you.”
“Terribly.”
He switches the kettle on and settles back against the counter. A quick glance over the flat - he’s careful not to let his eyes sit anywhere too long - sets something twinging in his chest.
The flat - or what John can see of it - is entirely unchanged. The stack of correspondence on the mantle run through with an illegal hunting knife, the stout red armchair and its tattered union jack pillow, the small array of petri dishes containing unidentifiable (thankfully?) substances on the kitchen table - everything is just as it was the day he packed up his room, stood by the sofa, and said a simple, one-word goodbye. The constriction in his throat had made it incomprehensible and ugly, but he hadn’t said it again.
‘Unchanged’ may not be the right word.
John crosses his arms. “What was that about?”
Sherlock doesn’t look up. “What?”
“You wouldn’t come to the door. I figured you’d burnt your eyebrows off or something.”
Sherlock makes a disgusted face at the coffee table. “Why on earth would I do that?”
“Well, not on purpose, you-” he huffs and points a finger at Sherlock, a bitter smile tightening his mouth. “You’re deflecting. What’s going on?”
Hearing the note of warning in John’s voice, Sherlock looks up. John thinks for a second that he looks odd, but then Sherlock always looks odd.
He stares blankly at John’s face for a moment, then narrows his eyes and lets them skitter across John’s frame and down to his feet. John clenches his jaw. “Sherlock.”
“How was your date? Other than the gnocchi,” he turns his head back to the table. “You obviously enjoyed that.”
“How could you possibly - no,” John interrupts himself and tilts his head back. “I don’t wanna know,” he says to the ceiling. “My date was fine, the gnocchi was fine. It’s all…” he glances over at Sherlock, who sits perfectly still and stares glass-eyed at the table, “fine- what’s the matter with you?”
Sherlock’s eyes dart up to his for less than a second before settling again on the table. John’s brow wrinkles - he’s probably hidden fags inside the leg again.
“I don’t know what you mean,” says Sherlock flatly.
John looks up from where he had glanced at the table in confusion, snorts, and crosses his arms over his chest. “Huh, right.”
Sherlock’s brow rises in a look of Mycroft-esque nonchalance, and John shudders. Sherlock doesn’t notice. “I’m sure I’ve no idea what-”
“Oh, well, let’s see,” John snaps, throwing his arms down to his sides and stalking into the living room. “You padlocked the door, you won’t let me in-”
“Deadbolted. And I did let you in-”
“Well, you wouldn’t let me in, and now you’re sitting there swathed in that silly thing-” he gestures vaguely to the dressing gown, “-like the bloody Nosferatu!”
Sherlock frowns and glances about in the vacant way that usually means he’s missed a pop culture reference. “And this is different from any other day?”
John thinks: You’re alive, you twat. Of course it’s bloody different.
John says: “Any other day when you’ve not had a case on for weeks? Yes, it’s different.” He takes a quick breath and moves to stand next to the armchair (his armchair), trying surreptitiously to investigate the table legs. “I figured you’d have burnt the place down in sheer boredom by now.”
Sherlock tracks John’s eyes then rolls his own, nodding his head once toward the mantle. John follows his gaze to the skull and sighs before marching over and dislodging the packet of fags from the cranium.
“You seem to think me terribly destructive,” Sherlock intones.
John slips the packet into his trouser pocket and peers at Sherlock. “You’re the most destructive person I’ve ever met.”
Sherlock’s jaw tightens for a quarter-second, his eyes still glazed and unmoving. John thinks again that he looks odd - his stare unfocussed and somewhere in the middle distance, form still a good fifteen pounds less than a year (nineteen months) ago; his hair is shorter now than John’s ever seen it, and his face is gaunt - ridiculous cheekbones stretching white, papery skin.
Well. At least now we both look like shit.
John sighs and steps forward until his shins bump the table. An empty teacup rattles on its saucer, and Sherlock’s head shoots up.
“Well. As you can see, everything is perfectly fine here. Your assistance is not nece-”
“I am not your assistant, I am your friend.” John forcibly pulls his shoulders back from where they had rolled forward. “And on my life, Sherlock, if you say you don’t have frie-”
“I do have friends. You are my friend.”
…
An ellipsis appears in John’s head, clicking thrice like a typewriter; or sierra in morse code; or the triplet that got him principal clarinet in sixth form; or the Greenwich pips — do not describe him — his voice was so sof-
John stares, blank-faced and unblinking, at Sherlock for - by his own dubious estimation - ten seconds. Then he exhales a soft and slightly hysterical laugh, before his face sets into hard lines.
His voice comes louder than anticipated. “Are you dying?”
Sherlock’s brow furrows and his eyes cast about in bemusement. “Not at a significantly increased rate.”
John stares for another second or two, then shakes his head spasmodically. He approaches the sofa in three strides and holds out his hand. “Give me your wrist.”
Sherlock rears back, his spine going ramrod straight, and - in a manoeuvre John might have laughed at if he weren’t so irritated and (admittedly) worried - pulls his arms inside the gown.
“Oh, for the love of-” John skirts the edge of the sofa, his knees clanging sharply against Sherlock’s as he sits on the coffee table. He grabs Sherlock’s chin none too gently and glares when Sherlock presses himself against the back of the sofa as if trying to absorb himself into the cushions.
“Stop it,” he says and patently ignores Sherlock’s scowl. Placing the back of his left hand against Sherlock’s forehead and his right against his carotid, he hums in concentration. “… Glands aren’t swollen. You’re quite warm, though. Pulse is elevated as well.”
An thought occurs, and John’s eyes narrow. “Have you-”
“I haven’t taken anything,” Sherlock asserts, tone bland and a bit nippy. John drops his hands and purses his lips.
“Your pupils are dilated.”
Sherlock looks up then and stares defiantly over John’s shoulder. He talks through his teeth, “I have not taken anything.”
John stares at him for a moment; he’d nearly forgotten how odd Sherlock’s eyes are up close. His right one has a brown spot amidst the teal that makes the iris look like a tiny globe. No, a rusty penny.
Nineteen months Sherlock had been gone (dead. For a year and a half, Sherlock was dead). A lot might have happened in those months - clandestine meetings with informants and spooks, days of ill-begotten reconnoissance, probably a fair bit of trouble as well (enough for a lifetime, too much); a relapse was hardly out of the question.
Of course, in nineteen months, nothing at all had happened to John.
“Right. I’ll just.. fetch the paracetamol, shall I?”
He stands abruptly and sidesteps toward the hallway.
“No need. I’ve taken the maximum dosage.”
John halts his step and sighs, weary of a sudden. He turns around slowly and clenches his fists at his sides; had Sherlock always been this exhausting? “You just said you hadn’t taken anything.”
Sherlock makes an odd motion, and it takes John a second to realise Sherlock has crossed his arms underneath the gown. “You’re being unbearably dull.”
John bites his lip and crosses his arms over his chest. “When?”
Sherlock’s eyebrows rise incrementally. “All the time, to a degree. Right now, in particular.”
John really is too knackered for this. “When did you take the paracetamol, Sherlock?”
Sherlock inhales a short breath and tilts his head back in a nod. “Oh. Two hours ago.”
“How many?”
Sherlock’s spine stiffens almost imperceptibly. “Six.”
“Six?” John shifts his weight and his jaw tightens; perhaps he’d have his dentist send the bill to 221B. “Six is twice the recommended-”
“I recalculated the dosage to suit my body chemistry.”
“Your b-” his fists go to his hips without his control. I look like my mum; Sherlock Holmes turns me into my bloody mother. “Sherlock, you’re nearly a stone underweight.”
Himself waves a hand in a way that says something between ‘put him in the stocks’ and ‘let them eat cake’. “My Quetelet index is eighteen point three, which puts me at less than a kilo below optimal.”
John clenches one fist, the arm going taut while the other gesticulates. “I’m sorry, which one of us went to medical school?”
“I’m sorry, which one of us is a genius?” Sherlock imitates his tone (quite accurately), and John has a brief but visceral urge to clock him.
“Well, that’s up for debate at the moment, isn’t it? Look, if you took six tablets two hours ago and your fever’s not gone down, there’s a problem.”
Sherlock shrugs artlessly under the gown. “Then, I’ll see a doctor.”
“I am your doctor!”
Sherlock’s head jerks up and he meets John’s eyes for what seems like the first time in weeks. (Months. Oh god, years.) Even when John had grasped his chin but a moment ago, Sherlock hadn’t looked at him. Even when Sherlock had stood outside the coffee shop nearly a month ago, staring wide-eyed through the window and looking every bit as undead as he suddenly was, he hadn’t looked at John - not really.
He’s looking now.
John realises of a sudden that he may have shouted that last, and his ears warm as he takes in the ringing silence of the flat. Sherlock stares at him for an interminable amount of time, an unreadable expression on his face; John wonders briefly if it actually is unreadable, or if these nineteen (wasted) months have weathered his literacy.
“I’m fine, John.” Sherlock looks back down at the table. “I don’t require your assistance.”
His voice is oddly calm, soft in a way that makes John inexplicably angry. He balls up his hands again - pointedly ignoring the tremor - and swallows the wretched words rising in his throat. It wouldn’t do to say something-
It wouldn’t do to say something.
John harrumphs and nods once. “Alright.”
He pivots on his heel and marches three strides towards the door, triplet points of light gleaming on the deadbolts.
The rub of it is, this is what he wanted.
In the moments after (keep your eyes fixed on me—), there was shock and fear and (—will you do this for me?) sadness. In the days and weeks after, there was hateful silence and (it’s what people do, isn’t it—) self-loathing. It wasn’t until several (—leave a note?) indistinguishable months had passed that he finally allowed himself (—goodbye, John) to think it:
His first mistake - apart from getting shot, of course - was Sherlock. Fucking. Holmes. And once he’d thought that, a thousand other (shameful) thoughts came unbidden:
I wish Regents Park had been flooded.
I wish Stamford had forgotten my name.
I wish I’d never met Sherlock Holmes.
And of course - of course - not a week after thinking it, like speaking of the devil, like presque vu, like bloody staircase wit -
The kettle goes off.
John’s hand is outstretched, fingers hovering near the door handle.
He stills for a moment - recalling two panes of glass twenty meters apart and a portly cabbie in a flat cap, all three destroyed within the same millisecond - and decides, steadfast, to make his (second) first mistake.
“No,” he says, quiet but certain. He walks briskly into the kitchen and fetches two mugs, ignoring the bemused silence at his back.
“Nnno,” Sherlock responds a moment later, inflectionless, and John turns to face him.
“That’s right, Sherlock, no. You’ve been-” he struggles for a moment, “back - for a month, texting me all hours of the day and night. Then I stop hearing from you entirely, Greg can’t reach you, Mrs. Hudson says you’ve not left the flat in a week, and now you won’t let me through the bloody door?” John shakes his head. “No, something’s wrong.”
He peers at Sherlock, trying for adamant while circumspect, but likely coming across as grumpy. Sherlock hisses through his teeth and turns his head away.
“I did let you in.”
John sighs, his chest feeling heavy. “If it’s drugs, Sherlock, I’ll help y-”
Sherlock makes a frustrated sound in the back of his throat. “For god’s sake, I am clean!” He glares up at John for moment, and his face breaks into a sneer. “I’d nearly forgotten how tedious it is repeating myself for the clarification of idiots - you know, in my time away.”
John blinks several times in succession, and his heart does something he might diagnose as an acute arrhythmia. He stares blankly at Sherlock for all of ten seconds, then his eyes narrow; Sherlock is a twat (obviously), and he’s often deliberately cruel, but never - never - to John.
“Why do you want me to leave?” John posits.
Sherlock’s sneer is replaced with shock for a split-second (point Watson) before settling into mild indifference. He blinks twice, then turns his head with disdainful finality. John licks his lip and tries again.
“Until a week ago, you were practically begging me to come-”
“I do not beg-”
“And now I’m here, and… what, you want me to just- go?” He lets his confusion colour his voice.
“Yes.”
John shakes his head at the immediacy of Sherlock’s response. “Why,” he demands.
“It’s…” Sherlock’s face turns a little redder, his eyes losing focus, and John wonders for a moment if he might sick up on the coffee table. “… It’s for the best.”
John squeezes his eyes shut and presses the heels of his hands into the sockets. “What- does that even mean?”
“It means,” Sherlock’s tone is annoyed, and John snorts in disbelief, “that I do not have a medical issue and therefore do not need-”
John looks up quickly. “If you say the word ‘assistance’ again, I will deck you.”
Sherlock rolls his eyes around a sigh and mutters, “Your intransigence on this matter is not helpful.”
John snorts again - this time in grudging amusement - and raises his brow in (pyrrhic) victory. “Agree to disagree on that one, mate.” He points at the robe still pulled taut around Sherlock’s form. “Take that off.”
“What?” Sherlock says, pulling the gown tighter around himself like a victorian era maiden. John feels his face scrunch up.
“For Chri- I’ve seen you in naught but a sheet in the bloody palace! Now, take that silly thing off - it’s not helping your fever any, gone all red now. I’ll make up a compress.”
John marches to the bathroom, shaking his head in irritation, and fetches a handtowel from beneath the sink. On a whim, he glances into the bathtub and is surprised to find it free of experiments, gruesome or otherwise. A knot of worry settles itself in the pit of his stomach, and he quickly wets the handtowel, before striding briskly back into the living room.
He glances at his watch - a gift from Mary after she’d stuck him with a two-year-old patient who’d practically drenched him in projectile vomit - and reclaims his place on the coffee table, folding the damp cloth in neat thirds.
He glances up, and his jaw falls slack at the sight before him.
Sherlock is staring away - as he has been for the better part of the afternoon - and is nude save for a pair of faded black briefs. The royal blue gown is bunched in his hands over his groin, and he sits ramrod straight with his feet flat on the ground. The mottled flush on his face and neck traverses all down his chest, and even the tops of his thighs are pink and blotchy. But worst, John notes, are the five, six… no, seven circular scars - mostly healed - along his side, one straying dangerously close to his left nipple. John’d seen those scars enough times in patients suffering domestic abuse and even in Harry, who - in a drunken stupor - had been known to do ridiculous (if generally minor) harm to herself.
Burns. Cigarette burns.
Someone had put out fags on Sherlock Bloody Holmes.
“Jesus…”
Sherlock takes a quick breath - his eyes losing focus for a moment as if it pained him - and his head twitches a negative. “Nnnnope. Still me, I’m afraid,” he mutters, and his eyes flutter closed but for a moment.
Sherlock shifts in apparent discomfiture, and the soft light from the window catches the sheen on his chest and forehead.
A worried furrow forms in John’s brow. “Sherlock, you may need A&E.”
Sherlock, the cock, snorts derisively. “Don’t be an idiot.”
John blinks several times in quick succession. “I’m serious, Sherlock, you’re-” he settles his fingers against Sherlock’s throat once more, and Sherlock’s fingers tighten slightly in the gown. John looks down for a moment, then back up at Sherlock’s face, an odd heat building in the pit of his stomach like acid reflux. He peers down to Sherlock’s chest, gone nearly vermillion now with beads of sweat forming along his collarbone and sliding down to small, peaked nipples—
He looks back at Sherlock’s face, still turned away from John with lips pinched tight in… shame?
John blinks, bewildered. “Are you - ?”
Sherlock’s eyes move side to side - his only guilty tell. Oh my god.
John flinches and stands abruptly, knocking the table back several inches. “Oh god, Sherlock! Jesus f-”
“I did say I didn’t need your assis-” his rolls his eyes at John’s glare, “-help.”
“Well, of course you don’t - !” A manic laugh bubbles up in John’s throat, but he tamps it down with a vicious glottal sound. “God, Sherlock, I was-…” he trails off, shaking his head vigorously, “ - actually worried about you.”
“There was no need.” Sherlock raises an aloof eyebrow even as his face contorts in-in… Oh, GOD.
“Sodding hell, you couldn’t have just-just- put a sock on the door or something?” John scrubs his hand over his face. “Jesus, you let me take your pulse and check your bloody forehead-”
“It seemed to put you at ease.”
An incredulous laugh. “Yes, Sherlock, because I was worried about you. And now you’re just - hell, I didn’t even know you did-” his hands flail about uselessly. “Oh god, put your robe back on!” He turns around in a (pointless) attempt to give Sherlock (and himself) some modicum of privacy. “Christ, you are such a wank-”
A ridiculous thought occurs.
“Oh god. Ooh my god, Mrs. Hudson said you’ve not left the flat in a week. A week, Sherlock! Have you seriously just been sat in here this whole bloody time just-just- God, what is the matter with you?”
The room goes silent save for the rustle of Sherlock’s robe. John turns back round in a flurry and glares at Sherlock, who, once again, has cocooned himself up in the gown, staring eerily blank-faced at the coffee table. John sighs and grimaces, then sighs again.
“You…” a hand musses his hair. “You never let me yell at you that long… Well, not unless I’ve missed something obvious.” Sherlock smirks - a weak and odd little thing - and John stares at him, awkward but spellbound. “You’ve not left the flat in a week.”
Sherlock pulls a deep breath in through his nose. “So you’ve said. Several times.”
John licks his lips, staring intently at Sherlock while Sherlock stares intently at the coffee table. “Are you.. having a…” laugh? mental breakdown? psychotic episode? “…fit? Or- something?”
Sherlock looks up at John sharply, his expression caught between rage and… John squints, perhaps embarrassment? But before he can place it, the detective’s face goes irritatingly blank, and his glass eyes shift to the dirtied window. “It’s nothing to concern yourself with.”
Jesus.
… Well, John is nothing if not brutally honest with himself: Sherlock had given him an out - more than that, really, Sherlock had actively tried to prevent John’s coming in. He’d padlocked - deadbolted - the door, he’d gritted his teeth and declared he was fine, he’d asked John to leave, he’d said he-
Hang on.
He’d asked John to go, to leave Baker Street.
Through all the rows, all the ridiculous experiments that resulted in permanently foul-smelling RAMC mugs, shredded jumpers, and shards of erlenmeyer flasks being (somewhat) carefully removed from Sherlock’s hands and arms (and on one memorable occasion, his backside - how, even?) - through it all, Sherlock had never asked him to leave Baker Street. Always seemed quite put out whenever John had left in a strop, come to think of it.
But today, he had asked, demanded, nearly begged for John to leave, and what had John said?
I am your doctor.
John sighs, licks his lip again, and takes a cautious step toward Sherlock. “How long?” he asks. Sherlock glances toward him with a frown, but doesn’t meet his eyes and doesn’t respond. “How long have you had…” John falters briefly, then he mentally pulls on a pair of latex gloves, snapping the bands round his wrists, blowing a hot breath onto the head of his stethoscope. “How long have you had symptoms?”
Sherlock winces and draws his knees to his chest. “We really needn’t discus this, J-”
“How long?”
Sherlock bites his lip in the way that makes him look about twelve. “Approximately six days, intermittently.”
John folds his arms over his chest. “Intermittently?”
“It - the..” Sherlock grimaces, “symptoms… return.”
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuckfuckfu-
John harrumphs. “Right. How quickly?”
“Pardon?”
“After you…” he sighs, to hell with it. “Your refractory period, how long is it? On average.”
The careful blankness returns en force. “Irrelevant.”
Of course, leave it to Sherlock Bloody Holmes to make every part of an already awkward situation needlessly more so. “It’s really not, Sherlock. If it’s lasting longer than four hours with less than an hour refractory time, you could develop a priapism, and you reeeally don’t want that.” He waits for a response, but - of course - none is forthcoming. “Sherl-”
“I’ve been able to divert it roughly every three hours for a period no shorter than thirty minutes.”
John takes a moment to parse the words spoken at peak deduction speed, then nods once. “Alright.. When.. how long since you last… ?” Christ, don’t make me say it, you tit.
Sherlock frowns. “Diverted it?”
Fuck it all. “When did you last orgasm?”
The detective’s face flushes an unprecedented shade. “Immaterial.”
“Christ’s sake, Sherlock, I just told you-”
“And I just told you, I’ve diverted it for thirty minutes every three hours.” Sherlock glares up at John, the sort of withering look that tended to atomize weaker men. John might have laughed, if not for the disgusti— you’re a doctor, Watson, pull it together — sensitive subject matter.
He shakes his head in an attempt to clear away the debris. “So it was less than three hours ago?”
A roll of verdigris eyes. “Yes, I diverted it less than three hours ago, which I believe I have stated a number of t-”
“Yea, why do you keep saying ‘diverted’, what does that even - ? Oh, god.” John’s eyes shut tightly; why is it that whenever a lightbulb goes on in John’s head it never illuminates anything nice? “Have you not - Sherlock, you have…” Sherlock reluctantly looks up at John, the queer little frown above his nose more pronounced than ever. “You have…” John swallows, “taken care of it, yes?”
Narrowing to slits, Sherlock’s eyes dart side to side before he glances back up at John, perplexity staining his expression. “You’re attempting to communicate something through inflection.”
John wonders if all this heavy sighing is de-oxygenating his blood. “Yyyes. Spock.”
“Well,” Sherlock begins, contributing a sigh of his own, “I suppose we can wait for me to spontaneously develop the ability to read subtle social cues.”
“Sherlock, have you…” I hate my life. I hate my bloody stupid, sodding li- “masturbated?” He looks quickly to the window, some adolescent part of him expecting to see a hundred familiar faces pointing and laughing.
Sherlock’s mouth tightens to near invisibility, the effect making him look strangely alien - well, more so than usual. “In the past week or ever?” he asks, tone bland as if asking after what sort of tea John would prefer. Not that he’d ever done that.
John stops his teeth from grinding, but only just. “In the past w-” Wait. What. John replays the question in his head. “Hang on,” he takes a small step towards the slightly shivering detective, “… ever?”
Sherlock nods once, lips pursed. “Ever, yes, thrice. In the past week, no. Now, if we’re quite finished addressing entirely irrelevant mat-”
“Thrice.”
“Yes.”
John blinks. Shakes his head. Blinks again. “Thhhhrice.”
“Yes.”
Is my mouth moving right n- “Thrice in your entire life?”
“Yesss, John,” Sherlock growls, hissing like a snake grabbed by the tail. “Thrice, three times, twice more than once and once more than twice, a veritable triptych of onanism. Thrice.”
“Yes, I-” want to kill myself. One shot to the temple, dead before I’d hit the gr- “-understand. I…” John gulps and sighs, his vision going a bit red round the periphery. Yup, definitely low oxygen. “Fuck, I can’t believe I have to explain this to you,” he mutters under his breath before putting his hands at his hips and scraping his teeth along his upper lip. “Sherlock, it… it may not go away, if you don’t…” he flails a hand about spasmodically.
That single bloody eyebrow again. “…Take care of it?”
John closes his eyes, nodding. “Right.”
“It will,” says Himself, nearly flippant enough to offset the flush spilling down his neck. “It always does.”
John does a double-take. “It always d- how often does this happen?”
Sherlock shrugs, the robe slipping artlessly from one shoulder. “Once every few years. It never lasts longer than a fortnight.”
John’s eyebrows climb nearly off his face. “A fortnight! Sherlock…” A disbelieving smile. “Jesus, mate, just take care of it.”
“No.”
John looks up at the finality in the detective’s tone. “No.” He repeats. Sherlock notices his bare shoulder, glares at it as if the appendage had personally offended him, then pulls the gown back into place. John steels himself, his jaw clenching til he’s sure he can taste ground bone. Don’t ask, don’t ask, don’t even think about aski-
Well, of course he’s going to ask.
“Why not?” John flinches around the question and wishes (shamefully) that Sherlock could be just slightly more ordinary. Just this once.
Sherlock responds in his ‘even a dunderhead like you couldn’t miss something so obvious’ voice. “I do not.”
Well. When has wishing ever worked for John? “You do not.”
Sherlock’s face contorts as if he’s smelt something foul. “Of course not.”
“Oooof course not.”
A vicious eye-roll puts the detective’s irises behind his eyes. “Must you repeat everything I say? It’s reminiscent of that horrid film with the-” and trembling - but no less annoying for it - wave of the hand, “-parroting macaw and the irritating child.”
If the shoe fits. “I think you can just call it a parrot- and, what do you mean, ‘you do not’? You just said you’d done it thrice.”
“Hence my usage of the present tense, I do not.” The idiot at the end goes unspoken but very well-heard.
John nearly licks his lip, then bites his tongue instead. “Then when was the last time you did?”
Sherlock throws his hands up. “What does it matter?”
Goddamnit. “Sherlock, you have taken eighteen hundred milligrams of fever reducer to no effect, you’re flushed head to toe and sweating when it’s barely fifteen C in here, your breathing’s erratic and…” John peers at the slight tremble in Sherlock’s jaw, only now noticing how close he’d stepped to (my undead best friend being absolutely ridiculous on) the sofa. “You’re shaking, Sherlock- I’m not at all convinced there isn’t something medically wro-”
“Seventeen years.”
And the M.B.E. for services to non-sequitirs goes t- hang on. “…Sevent-” Oh, Jesus. Oh bloody buggering Christ on toast- “-you were nineteen… the last time you… you were nineteen.”
“Yes.” A slight twitch in a pinkened cheek.
John shakes his head. And again. And again. “You haven’t had an orgasm since you were nineteen?”
Sherlock sniffs and muffles a prudish ahem behind a slightly knobbly hand. “Yes. And as fascinating as your ability to compute simple subtraction is, I’d prefer it if- … what are you doing?”
John looks up from the coffee table where, he notices belatedly, he’d been staring wide-eyed and shaking his head. “Sorry. A lot of things are.. clicking at once.” He peers back up at Sherlock, his stomach contracting in a most unpleasant way. “Did you say seventeen years?”
Sherlock sits back against the couch. “And we’re back to parroting.”
“The maddest thing I’ve ever - no. No,” John says to himself, shaking his head with a smile/grimace - grile? smimace? “How is- how is it possible that, of the two of us,” he gestures between them with an angrily pointed finger, “-you are the repressed one? That literally makes no sense-”
“I am not ‘repressed’,” Sherlock hisses with a glare aimed, oddly, at John’s chin.
John laughs bitterly at the cutting sibilants. “Ha, two-week long erections-”
“Is that the standard unit of erectile measurement?” Sherlock demurs.
John continues undeterred, “-for the past decade and a half? That’s literally textbook sexual repression.”
Sherlock sighs, and his irises - gone bright green now, likely in contrast to his rose-red face - oscillate strangely in an aborted eye-roll. “You’re overusing that word, literally. I am always literal, it’s redundant to state it.” The prick crosses his arms over his narrow chest.
As if John could ignore an opening like that. “Well, apparently you’re only figuratively a wanker.”
The flat goes uncomfortably silent.
John’s head is tilted to the side - rather smugly - and Sherlock has all but pulled his lips entirely into his mouth. His eyes glaze over for a second, and - for an entirely surreal moment - John thinks the ridiculous man might actually weep. John’s head perks up in worry even as he thinks, he’s an actor, Watson, could win a bloody BAFTA if he set his sights on it, bastard could fool anyone, fool everyone, fooled Moriarty and NSY, fooled Mrs. Hudson - tosser fooled you, made a right bloody prat out of you, you sad little—
Sherlock inhales, his chest expanding a little too quickly, and the (crocodile’s) tears are gone into the ether. “Your wit,” he intones, “so sharp.” He pops the ‘p’ and peers up at John through empty slitted eyes.
Frustrated and exhausted, John laughs. Or sobs. Or growls. “Yeah, so’s Occam’s Razor, Sherlock.”
Sherlock’s face contorts dramatically, the unsated tremble now the quiver of fury. “Oh, for-” he leans forward on his elbows, all stubbled jaw and piss and vinegar. “Simplest solution or not, I do not and will not do it. My reasons are not pertinent to this conversation - a conversation for which I have expressed my distaste several times during the course of it - and I will not discus them or this matter any. further.”
John’s eyebrows raise as he smiles off to the side, as if through a fourth wall. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he begins, aggression bleeding through the false deference, “is it personal?”
“Yes.”
John laughs silently in bitter disbelief. “Boundaries now, are there?” He turns to the dusty window. “Back from the dead, and now he’s got bloody boundar-”
“Thank you for your input, Dr. Watson, you may go.”
John looks back to the sofa where Sherlock has demurely crossed his legs, his public school posture stiff as it’s ever been, and his blank eyes - pre-storm grey again - settled unmoving on the coffee table.
John breathes heavily for a moment, then swallows, the slight angry smile returning unbidden. “Are you having a laugh?” He licks his lip. “Is that what this is, you having a laugh?”
Sherlock’s eyes flutter closed. “N-…” He seems to think better of this response and his eyes open, dull and impenetrable. “Yes, John. All a lark. You should see your face.” He looks at John, stone-faced, and jerks his chin toward the door. “Now, get out.”
John’s smile - insomuch as it might be called that - falters. Something is wrong. Something is…
Something is very, very wrong. “Sherlock…”
Sherlock looks away and clenches his jaw, teeth grinding nearly audibly. John wonders if he tastes enamel, or dentil, or pulp, or perhaps even blood. Red, brown, black blood pooling so dark, one could hardly tell it from the rain-soaked wool of a fifteen-hundred quid Belstaf-
“Okay,” John whispers. He clears his throat and says it again - “okay” - though he knows that Sherlock heard the first time. “I- I’ll go.” He turns, parade, and makes for the door - four strides, five, six, sev-
He turns around quickly, before he’s even had a mind to. Sherlock stares up at him, just this side of dumbfounded. “Just…” he pauses and swallows compulsively. “You’re still…” my best mate, my brother in arms, the reason I’ve not ate my gun for the boredom - everything, you’re everything to me, from the moment I met you, you were everything, and you don’t deserve it, you don’t deserve it at all, not a bit, you sodding fucking bas- “I’m still angry.” A soft harrumph. “Really angry, but…” another gulp, “but you can…” he breathes a sigh, deep enough to empty his lungs, finally, finally. “Oh, sod it - you can talk to me about anything, alright?” Sherlock’s eyes are comically wide, but John doesn’t smile, can’t smile. “Psychopaths and…” a quick breath, and he trudges on, “-and snipers,” Sherlock winces almost imperceptibly, “and…” whatever the fuck happened here today, “I dunno, mad things that make no sense, I s’pose. It’s all… fine.”
Sherlock’s eyes slowly return to human-size, and he stares vacantly in the middle distance. Biting his lip in that funny odd way, he nods once. He looks back up at John, and John knows there’s something - something - in those eyes, something there, something that means something...
But it’s been so long. So. Bloody. Long.
John nods. “Alright,” he steps to the door and grabs the latch. “I’ll pop round tomorrow, check on you.”
Sherlock looks down and shakes his head. “That isn’t-”
“I know it isn’t necessary,” John says, scrubbing his hand across his eyes. “Just… I’ll be here, okay?”
Sherlock makes no response but to tilt his head in John’s direction, eerily bright eyes still on the floor, lower lip still bitten tight, face still flushed and shiny, hands still trembling and fidgeting at the hem of his robe. Grab. Release. Grab. Release. Grab-
“Right,” says John. “Off out.”
He doesn’t shut the door behind him.
~*~