As promised!
Sep. 27th, 2010 10:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mesmirandaHoly cats, I need to use this journal more.
The BBC!Sherlock fic fill I did on the meme here:
I see the wasp on the length of my arm
Sherlock/John, 3958 words, R... ish.
"This man has ties to both the Yamaguchi-gumi and the Solntsevskaya brava," says Lestrade grimly. His sleeves are mucky from the Thames riverside, and together they're walking away from a dead body--a man in a great trench coat and expensive leather boots, with a messy stab wound through his stomach and a single bullet hole through his forehead. "The Japanese yakuza and the Russian mafiya. You're going into witness protection, John Watson."
"We don't have that in the United Kingdom," John points out blankly, hopping from one foot to the other. He's been out here for a few hours now (holding a man's guts in, getting spattered with blood and brains, running up and down the riverside like mad while he waits for the police) and it's really bloody cold out. He wishes he'd brought his gloves today.
Lestrade gives him a look and there's a car waiting up ahead, where Mycroft Holmes is standing with the door held open.
"Oh." John rubs at the back of his neck, absorbing this. "Could I--?"
"I'm sorry."
When he looks back at Lestrade, those dark eyes are unexpectedly soft.
--
1:29 p.m. Where are you? Mrs. Hudson's guests are here already.
1:42 p.m. Mrs. Hudson has just hit me over the head with a French baguette. You needed to be here twenty minutes ago.
1:44 p.m. I'm stopping by the flat in ten minutes. We need to talk. -MH
--
The drinking glass goes flying first, when Sherlock says "Get him back here," in a voice that silences all of Mrs. Hudson's guests sitting downstairs.
The skull goes flying next, the jawbone cracking off, but that's only after the party's over and Mrs. Hudson's gone for a nap.
Sherlock bandages up bloodied knuckles by the bathroom sink that night, mechanically, disinfectant and washcloth laid out neatly by the faucet. The heating's gone off somehow, the furnace needs to be repaired, and the flat is very cold. He doesn't look up from his task.
--
John moves into a small flat in Bristol, with a rooftop garden and two deck chairs and a balcony. Mycroft pays for his new clothing and furniture and doesn't say much, can't promise to pass on anything to Sherlock. He always looks like he's going to apologize to John but it's stuck in his throat; John, for one, has very little sympathy or patience for him right now.
He reads a couple of books on gardening, watches some TV, heats up dinner in the microwave late at night. He wonders what the hell he's going to do now. His leg hurts worse than it ever has.
In the end, after a few weeks, after John's gone out and gotten groceries and met a few people walking their dogs, passed on the mail sent mistakenly to his doorstep, he says he's a writer. This is about three-quarters true. The laptop's almost always on now; he tells himself he's never going to check the blog and then he does.
He misses Sherlock more than he can say or feel.
John sits on his couch and feels himself back in that motel room, sitting on the edge of the bed and looking out into a big expanse of nothing, and tells himself he just needs a walk in the fresh air and everything will be fine. It doesn't work. Something, somewhere, is going to explode.
--
The world explodes two days later when John comes home and hears the sounds of a violin coming from the living room.
"Sherlock?" he says, something in his chest torn apart and letting light through the cracks.
"It's William now, actually," comes the familiar voice. "You don't have space for chemistry equipment so I put the things in your bathroom, below the towels. Where are you getting all that fresh fruit in the fridge?"
"They have a farmer's market every Wednesday afternoon." He can't believe this. He can't believe--Sherlock is sitting in his chair, violin balanced delicately on his shoulder, bow and eyebrows lifted in calm inquiry. Like the past three and a half weeks never existed. "What are you doing here? And why are you called William?"
"I got bored," says Sherlock, as if that explains everything. His eyes are unreadable. "And Mrs. Hudson hit me with a French baguette, I told you that part on your phone."
"No, I want the truth." His voice is too loud as he blurts it out.
Sherlock shifts uncomfortably in the seat, huffing. "The flat has become intolerable recently. I preferred to avoid complications and move out."
And track me down to live with me? "But your business--"
"Can wait for a little while."
"Sherlock, this isn't a little while, this is--you know what Mycroft said."
"Mycroft is working on it," says Sherlock evenly, without a flicker. Before John can wonder just what the hell that means, Sherlock adds, "It's not a bad place to live. I think there's enough space for one or two bee hives on the roof."
John finally puts down the bags he's been carrying, thumping them on the table. "I don't have a job. I don't have anything right now."
"I have some ideas about that."
He's going to bloody well give in, after all. It was never a question. It's like breathing clean air after spending a lifetime in smog. "Damn it--my landlord is six-foot-five and built like four midfielders, if you shoot my wall he'll kill you," John warns him, trying not to grin and failing miserably.
"Can I shoot that annoying little dog of his?"
"What? No!"
"It's a public favour--"
--
Five cases, eight restaurant dinners, a flurry of beekeeping books, and another Bond night--they never got past Connery. Sherlock turns his ankle during a chase and for once in his life John's faster than him. It seems like there's only ever two cab drivers in their part of Bristol, and Sherlock's on sparring terms with both of them. A couple of test tubes blow up. A cat wanders in, stays for a week, and then gets donated to a good home.
Over in the next room Sherlock is picking out notes, he mentioned he needs to pick up new strings. John goes to bed thinking over the expression 'light-hearted', wondering how easy it is to breathe these days.
(These days they're touching more often than they used to. John knows about tactile defensiveness from the way soldiers refuse to let anyone look at injuries, even years-old ones. He's seen the way Sherlock flinches from spontaneous contact like an electric shock, stiffening and brusque. But these days Sherlock puts a hand on the small of his back to guide him, leans in close to point something out, rests heavily against his shoulder in the backseat.
One day when he was picking glass out of Sherlock's hands, after the second exploded test tube, he was working with the tweezers and mumbling, "At least it's not bloody body parts in the fridge, I keep opening the freezer expecting a damn head to fall out and knock me out like last time--"
"That wasn't my fault, you insisted on packing in the frozen things." Sherlock's voice was muffling laughter.
"Well, some people like peas!" He shot him a look--intended to shoot him a look--and stopped, because their heads were very close and almost touching, and Sherlock's eyes were back to being unreadable--except not, really not, and oh holy hell, how did he miss this?--and he was leaning in breathless when there was a knock at the door.
Behind him Sherlock hissed, an almost inaudible sound.)
John lies in bed with the sound of rain starting to tap on the roof and a few low, slow notes, tuneless and weird, like floating distorted underwater. He wonders what it'd be like to have Sherlock lying next to him--he probably steals all the covers and kicks in his sleep, the right and utter bastard--and falls asleep in the middle of his thought.
And then a knife wound that's too precise to be from a drunken man, and staring up at the roof in the back of an ambulance.
When Sherlock finally scrambles his way through the nurses and doctors--shouting, struggling and slamming, eyes and face all but possessed--John is not there. The bedcovers are folded down neatly and the window is open, airing the room out.
This time, Mycroft phones him from a very safe distance.
--
John moves into an apartment in Geneva and sits in a series of empty rooms for a few days, before his things arrive by mail. None of Sherlock's possessions show up. He can guess who did the packing.
He volunteers at a local homeless shelter. He applies for a couple of tutoring jobs. He visits the local bar and nurses two or three beers, sitting by himself and staring up at the screen, before heading out alone. None of it makes any sense. None of it gives him anything to hold onto.
John Watson is a sensible man, sensible by default. When he takes his gun out of his bag and stares at it, weighing it in his hand for a long time, he can't explain why.
--
"It's Rory now," says Sherlock.
"We can't keep doing this," says John.
Sherlock steps inside, out of the hallway, and kisses him. Pins him up against the wall and undresses him, shirt at his feet, jeans shoved down, hauled up in his new living room with his legs hooked around Sherlock's waist. Everything is too bright and sharp to see, and John shuts his eyes tight.
--
The violin got lost somehow on the flight over, and Sherlock brings an almighty curse down on the heads of Swiss International Air Lines. John scrapes together the money to buy him a new one--a proper one, all smooth polished wood and perfectly tuned strings--and Sherlock locks it gently back in its case before tackling John to the bed.
When John brings his tutoring students over to the flat, Sherlock acts as bizarre as humanly possible, walking by with a whaling harpoon under his arm or staring very intently--hands flat against each other, eyes unblinking--at a hat perched on top of a chair. When John calls him on it he just laughs and folds John into his arms, biting at the line of his neck or running his palms along the jut of John's hipbones.
Sherlock is acting like a wild man in those days, out of his mind with sheer relief, manic and full of hugeness. They're both delirious. John spends entire days with him in bed, sore and bruised and scratched bloody all over, Sherlock tonguing at the spot under his ear and slipping a hand between his legs, his fingers sliding in.
(When they both doze off at two in the morning, and when John wakes up first far too early, he looks over at Sherlock. He does toss in his sleep and poke and mumble, like he's trying to sort things out even in his dreams, but he doesn't kick and he doesn't steal the covers. He rests his head on Sherlock's chest and tries to fall back asleep again, unsuccessfully.)
John makes Sherlock cook while he does the laundry and vacuums; surprisingly, Sherlock is not bad at it. Sherlock comes home one day with a replacement skull, and John balances bills and books on top of it. The furnace wheezes constantly, on the verge of breaking down, and John teases Sherlock about leaving, and Sherlock just grumbles and huddles down deeper into the blankets until only tufts of his hair are visible.
--
"I have to do this," he tells John, his voice raw as he throws his things into a shabby old suitcase he bought second-hand. "I have to go back. If I don't go back Jim will track me down, he'll find out where I'm living and who I'm living with, he's baiting me."
"He's insane," says John, sitting cross-legged on the bed and remembering the weight of a winter parka by a swimming pool. "And not as smart as you are. Those two things, those are what's important."
"You're not leaving this city," Sherlock tells him, jabbing a finger at him. "You're not leaving this apartment."
When John doesn't answer right away: "John, you are not leaving this apartment, tell me right now--"
"I'm not leaving," says John finally. Neutrally.
Sherlock leaves in the morning, hailing a cab and disappearing down the street, and John waits half a day--finishing up the laundry, unloading the dishwasher and having a shower--before scheduling a flight. (It's not a lie but it is a half-truth, of sorts: I'm not leaving you.)
--
At 6:43 a.m. the plane lands at Heathrow. John gets his things from the carousel, trundling his way awkwardly through the crowds with his limp, and sees a man with an umbrella standing by the exit.
"What you are doing right now is going to kill him," Mycroft says flatly.
John pushes out a sigh and stares him straight in the face. "So stop me, then. I can't stop you from whisking me away again, fuck knows I can't do anything about the mafiya or the yakuza or the goddamn British government. But I'm done following your orders."
"He doesn't need you. You're only going to get in his way. And therefore, I have your ticket booked for the next flight back to Switzerland."
John doesn't flinch away. "Neither of us are ever going to change, Mycroft. Me and him."
"I know what you meant," Mycroft snaps, and makes a noise of frustration when his cell phone goes off. "Oh, for God's--get in the car."
At 9:04 he unlocks the door to their old flat; it's empty and chilly, but Sherlock's things are there and tossed about. His laptop is flipped shut but still running on sleep mode, John powers it up and clicks the windows open--there. The message. Months away from the blog and he still recognizes the tone. He tucks his bag away under the chair with military precision, reloads his gun, and heads out.
Noon is the meeting time; John gets there at eleven forty-five with the vague hope of somehow getting the drop on Jim Moriarty, because that worked out so well last time. There is no plan here, no strategy, just an urgent sense of needing to be at Sherlock's back, watching out for him, pulling him back from the world of criminal leagues and cackling villains. He's probably gone mad. He rather hopes he has, that would be a convenient excuse for stupidity.
He does a circle around the area, keeping his head down, watching out for cars or taxis or anything, any sign. The wind is picking up and the clouds are clearing away, the world filled with a dull gray sunlight.
Slipping back into the building, he's about to head up the stairs when he spots it: a shadow at the top, whisking out of sight. John creeps up the stairs slowly, making himself go quiet and invisible, hand tight on the railing. There's a thump and clicking noises up ahead, the sound of someone breathing in the quiet, mechanical locking and chambering sounds.
John crouches down and becomes small, holding his breath, hand tensed tight around his gun. Peering out around the corner: the masked gunman is setting up his rifle, his laser sight, testing its weight and peering into the scope. John doesn't dare move an inch.
Down below, the voices float up: "Sherlock! So lovely to see you again. Switzerland certainly agrees with you."
The gunman balances his rifle over the railing of the gallery, settling down into his position and going still as a statue. Police sharpshooter, thinks John, maybe a military sniper, not long out of the forces. He'll let Sherlock work out the details later.
"I never drink," says Jim Moriarty's voice. "But today I'm going out to a certain restaurant and having a bottle of the 1998 Domaine Romanée Conti Pinot Noir they've put on reserve for me. Do you know why?"
"I'm not interested," says Sherlock shortly, and John draws in his breath.
"Turn around, Sherlock," Jim croons gently. "Turn around slowly and look up."
Now.
In the instant Sherlock follows Moriarty's gesture and turns his head, in the instant the gunman reaches for the trigger, John leaps on him from behind and tightens one arm around his windpipe, hauling him back.
The gunman struggles, kicking and clawing and thudding him back into the wall; John reels as the gunman frees himself, and then John tackles him again from the front to slam him against the railing. Down below Sherlock is yelling John's name, hurtling towards the stairs, and Moriarty is bellowing, "Get him, get Watson," and John is wrestling the man to the floor to punch him across the face. They're fighting dirty, the man is yanking at John's hair and trying to pull him down for a headbutt, John is jamming his knee into the man's groin and grabbing his gun to point it.
The man grabs his wrist, faster than a snake strikes, and John tries to break loose but the grip is like iron, and then the man bucks at him and knocks him off balance and he has the gun in his hand and John jerks backwards.
He slumps down. The gunman is scrambling away, there's a tweed Belstaff coat flying by, from somewhere distant John hears a shot.
And then Sherlock is there, Sherlock is grabbing at his jacket and shouting in his face. "Stop it, I'm a writer and I have to think of some really impressive last words," he tries to inform Sherlock, very seriously, but it comes out as a pained whimper.
"You promised me," is what Sherlock's saying, he's howling, and John shakes his head.
"I said I wouldn't leave," he corrects him, matter-of-factly. "Sherlock?"
"Shut up, for God's sake shut up--" Sherlock is fumbling with his phone, his face a rigid mask. That's not right. He needs to tell Sherlock something.
"Sherlock." It's getting very hard to think straight. "I told you back in Switzerland--he's insane. You're not. You have to live to show him that you're smarter than him, you're human and you're good."
"Not without you," Sherlock says, and his face is twisting up. John has spent his life in hospitals and never seen so much pain on anyone's face, ever.
"Yes," he says firmly, and he's got to get this right, "okay, you've got to tell Harry I love her and say to Lestrade I said something really ballsy and macho--"
"Stop it."
No. Right. The most important thing. "I love you," he says clearly, looking up at that face. "I've always been yours. It'll be all right."
The pain is seizing up his entire body and his head is clouding over. He mumbles, "Where's..." and looks around. Sherlock's hands are on his chest. John shuts his eyes to try and focus, breathing shallow. He'll open them again in a minute.
For a long, long while there's no movement from the gallery.
And then, standing with his hands in his pockets below, Jim bursts out laughing. "Wow," he says brightly, "I didn't have to lift a finger!"
Sherlock lunges for the gun. He is two, three seconds too late. The door bangs behind Jim, who is still laughing, and the shot echoes through empty air.
--
"Give me the ticket, then."
"Sherlock?" Mycroft is looking more lost and vulnerable than he's ever seen him before.
"The ticket you booked back to Switzerland. I'll take it. I need to get my belongings from the apartment."
"You need to come home," Mycroft insists, a rising note of panic.
"No," says Sherlock calmly. They're in Mycroft's office, an untouched glass of whiskey sitting on Mycroft's desk. "I need to pack up my things."
"Where are you going?"
"To find Moriarty and kill him."
"You can't--"
"You'll find I can." Sherlock stands up. "If you don't give me the ticket I'll buy one. Or are your people going to stop me from leaving?"
Mycroft looks back at him, his eyes bewildered and torn. "I did it to keep him safe," he pleads. "You know I did."
"I'm not blaming you." Sherlock looks back at him steadily. "But I have to go."
"He's going to destroy you, Sherlock," Mycroft says helplessly, his voice cracking, as Sherlock turns away.
"He already has," says Sherlock, without emotion, and shuts the door behind him.
Down below cars whizz past, a man is talking on his Bluetooth headset, there's a sausage vendor and bunch of schoolkids in uniforms swarming out of the subway entrance. Sherlock walks past them all, scarf folded up to his chin and coat whipped about by the wind, and disappears into the crowd. Nobody watches him go.
The waterfall keeps thundering down, even after the long terrible scream dies away. Sherlock looks over the edge of the cliff and down into the mist, bracing one foot against a rock. The drop is more or less sheer but the rocks are jagged at the bottom, jutting into the water, a quick and bloody end.
One movement. One leap.
"I kept my promise," he says, very softly. And takes his foot off the rock, and straightens his collar and walks back the way he came.
And the ficlet following after:
John is finally getting down to work on the rooftop garden. There are bees buzzing around his head, fat and lazy, humming as he lugs the planters into place--heavy clay pots, clanking on the ground. He wipes at his forehead, steps over the lines he's chalked out on the ground, and grabs at the bottle of water. Down below there's some kind of traffic jam, horns honking like mad.
He takes a long swig and stares out over the rooftops, squinting in the sunshine. Off in the distance he can see the river Avon; kids are running up and down the street, a woman pushes a pram, they're cleaning up the outdoor tables at the restaurant. Another bee wanders by, landing on his arm, and he can't even muster up the annoyance to wave it away.
He's propped the door to the stairwell open and now he hears noise--boots thumping, two voices arguing. John frowns faintly before suddenly going still.
"--clearly some kind of biochemical reaction in our synapses that's interpreted widely as a post-death experience, and if we understood better how the brain works--"
The door sweeps open over the gravel to admit two figures: a young woman and a man. The young woman is slight and wears frayed jeans and sandals, loose hair, a tiny black spiral at the corner of one eye. It's crinkled up right now, she's smiling.
The man is staring straight at John.
"I'll leave you to debate it with him," says the girl brightly, and clomps back down the stairwell. Her companion doesn't move.
"John?" says Sherlock finally. He sounds all of his eighty-seven years old and twelve at the exact same time.
"I made you bee hives. For when you got here." John gestures to the pallets he set up, swarming with bees, and grins from ear to ear. "Did you know I actually got to speak to William Hartnell? I mean, the very first Doctor, it was absolutely insane--"
Unfortunately there's not much talking you can do when you're being kissed, especially not like that, and John shuts up and lets Sherlock get to it. They have time to catch up later.
Oh, how I meant to tease him
Oh, how I meant no harm
Touching his back with my hand, I kiss him
I see the wasp on the length of my arm
--Sufjan Stevens, The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out To Get Us!
The BBC!Sherlock fic fill I did on the meme here:
I see the wasp on the length of my arm
Sherlock/John, 3958 words, R... ish.
"This man has ties to both the Yamaguchi-gumi and the Solntsevskaya brava," says Lestrade grimly. His sleeves are mucky from the Thames riverside, and together they're walking away from a dead body--a man in a great trench coat and expensive leather boots, with a messy stab wound through his stomach and a single bullet hole through his forehead. "The Japanese yakuza and the Russian mafiya. You're going into witness protection, John Watson."
"We don't have that in the United Kingdom," John points out blankly, hopping from one foot to the other. He's been out here for a few hours now (holding a man's guts in, getting spattered with blood and brains, running up and down the riverside like mad while he waits for the police) and it's really bloody cold out. He wishes he'd brought his gloves today.
Lestrade gives him a look and there's a car waiting up ahead, where Mycroft Holmes is standing with the door held open.
"Oh." John rubs at the back of his neck, absorbing this. "Could I--?"
"I'm sorry."
When he looks back at Lestrade, those dark eyes are unexpectedly soft.
--
1:29 p.m. Where are you? Mrs. Hudson's guests are here already.
1:42 p.m. Mrs. Hudson has just hit me over the head with a French baguette. You needed to be here twenty minutes ago.
1:44 p.m. I'm stopping by the flat in ten minutes. We need to talk. -MH
--
The drinking glass goes flying first, when Sherlock says "Get him back here," in a voice that silences all of Mrs. Hudson's guests sitting downstairs.
The skull goes flying next, the jawbone cracking off, but that's only after the party's over and Mrs. Hudson's gone for a nap.
Sherlock bandages up bloodied knuckles by the bathroom sink that night, mechanically, disinfectant and washcloth laid out neatly by the faucet. The heating's gone off somehow, the furnace needs to be repaired, and the flat is very cold. He doesn't look up from his task.
--
John moves into a small flat in Bristol, with a rooftop garden and two deck chairs and a balcony. Mycroft pays for his new clothing and furniture and doesn't say much, can't promise to pass on anything to Sherlock. He always looks like he's going to apologize to John but it's stuck in his throat; John, for one, has very little sympathy or patience for him right now.
He reads a couple of books on gardening, watches some TV, heats up dinner in the microwave late at night. He wonders what the hell he's going to do now. His leg hurts worse than it ever has.
In the end, after a few weeks, after John's gone out and gotten groceries and met a few people walking their dogs, passed on the mail sent mistakenly to his doorstep, he says he's a writer. This is about three-quarters true. The laptop's almost always on now; he tells himself he's never going to check the blog and then he does.
He misses Sherlock more than he can say or feel.
John sits on his couch and feels himself back in that motel room, sitting on the edge of the bed and looking out into a big expanse of nothing, and tells himself he just needs a walk in the fresh air and everything will be fine. It doesn't work. Something, somewhere, is going to explode.
--
The world explodes two days later when John comes home and hears the sounds of a violin coming from the living room.
"Sherlock?" he says, something in his chest torn apart and letting light through the cracks.
"It's William now, actually," comes the familiar voice. "You don't have space for chemistry equipment so I put the things in your bathroom, below the towels. Where are you getting all that fresh fruit in the fridge?"
"They have a farmer's market every Wednesday afternoon." He can't believe this. He can't believe--Sherlock is sitting in his chair, violin balanced delicately on his shoulder, bow and eyebrows lifted in calm inquiry. Like the past three and a half weeks never existed. "What are you doing here? And why are you called William?"
"I got bored," says Sherlock, as if that explains everything. His eyes are unreadable. "And Mrs. Hudson hit me with a French baguette, I told you that part on your phone."
"No, I want the truth." His voice is too loud as he blurts it out.
Sherlock shifts uncomfortably in the seat, huffing. "The flat has become intolerable recently. I preferred to avoid complications and move out."
And track me down to live with me? "But your business--"
"Can wait for a little while."
"Sherlock, this isn't a little while, this is--you know what Mycroft said."
"Mycroft is working on it," says Sherlock evenly, without a flicker. Before John can wonder just what the hell that means, Sherlock adds, "It's not a bad place to live. I think there's enough space for one or two bee hives on the roof."
John finally puts down the bags he's been carrying, thumping them on the table. "I don't have a job. I don't have anything right now."
"I have some ideas about that."
He's going to bloody well give in, after all. It was never a question. It's like breathing clean air after spending a lifetime in smog. "Damn it--my landlord is six-foot-five and built like four midfielders, if you shoot my wall he'll kill you," John warns him, trying not to grin and failing miserably.
"Can I shoot that annoying little dog of his?"
"What? No!"
"It's a public favour--"
--
Five cases, eight restaurant dinners, a flurry of beekeeping books, and another Bond night--they never got past Connery. Sherlock turns his ankle during a chase and for once in his life John's faster than him. It seems like there's only ever two cab drivers in their part of Bristol, and Sherlock's on sparring terms with both of them. A couple of test tubes blow up. A cat wanders in, stays for a week, and then gets donated to a good home.
Over in the next room Sherlock is picking out notes, he mentioned he needs to pick up new strings. John goes to bed thinking over the expression 'light-hearted', wondering how easy it is to breathe these days.
(These days they're touching more often than they used to. John knows about tactile defensiveness from the way soldiers refuse to let anyone look at injuries, even years-old ones. He's seen the way Sherlock flinches from spontaneous contact like an electric shock, stiffening and brusque. But these days Sherlock puts a hand on the small of his back to guide him, leans in close to point something out, rests heavily against his shoulder in the backseat.
One day when he was picking glass out of Sherlock's hands, after the second exploded test tube, he was working with the tweezers and mumbling, "At least it's not bloody body parts in the fridge, I keep opening the freezer expecting a damn head to fall out and knock me out like last time--"
"That wasn't my fault, you insisted on packing in the frozen things." Sherlock's voice was muffling laughter.
"Well, some people like peas!" He shot him a look--intended to shoot him a look--and stopped, because their heads were very close and almost touching, and Sherlock's eyes were back to being unreadable--except not, really not, and oh holy hell, how did he miss this?--and he was leaning in breathless when there was a knock at the door.
Behind him Sherlock hissed, an almost inaudible sound.)
John lies in bed with the sound of rain starting to tap on the roof and a few low, slow notes, tuneless and weird, like floating distorted underwater. He wonders what it'd be like to have Sherlock lying next to him--he probably steals all the covers and kicks in his sleep, the right and utter bastard--and falls asleep in the middle of his thought.
And then a knife wound that's too precise to be from a drunken man, and staring up at the roof in the back of an ambulance.
When Sherlock finally scrambles his way through the nurses and doctors--shouting, struggling and slamming, eyes and face all but possessed--John is not there. The bedcovers are folded down neatly and the window is open, airing the room out.
This time, Mycroft phones him from a very safe distance.
--
John moves into an apartment in Geneva and sits in a series of empty rooms for a few days, before his things arrive by mail. None of Sherlock's possessions show up. He can guess who did the packing.
He volunteers at a local homeless shelter. He applies for a couple of tutoring jobs. He visits the local bar and nurses two or three beers, sitting by himself and staring up at the screen, before heading out alone. None of it makes any sense. None of it gives him anything to hold onto.
John Watson is a sensible man, sensible by default. When he takes his gun out of his bag and stares at it, weighing it in his hand for a long time, he can't explain why.
--
"It's Rory now," says Sherlock.
"We can't keep doing this," says John.
Sherlock steps inside, out of the hallway, and kisses him. Pins him up against the wall and undresses him, shirt at his feet, jeans shoved down, hauled up in his new living room with his legs hooked around Sherlock's waist. Everything is too bright and sharp to see, and John shuts his eyes tight.
--
The violin got lost somehow on the flight over, and Sherlock brings an almighty curse down on the heads of Swiss International Air Lines. John scrapes together the money to buy him a new one--a proper one, all smooth polished wood and perfectly tuned strings--and Sherlock locks it gently back in its case before tackling John to the bed.
When John brings his tutoring students over to the flat, Sherlock acts as bizarre as humanly possible, walking by with a whaling harpoon under his arm or staring very intently--hands flat against each other, eyes unblinking--at a hat perched on top of a chair. When John calls him on it he just laughs and folds John into his arms, biting at the line of his neck or running his palms along the jut of John's hipbones.
Sherlock is acting like a wild man in those days, out of his mind with sheer relief, manic and full of hugeness. They're both delirious. John spends entire days with him in bed, sore and bruised and scratched bloody all over, Sherlock tonguing at the spot under his ear and slipping a hand between his legs, his fingers sliding in.
(When they both doze off at two in the morning, and when John wakes up first far too early, he looks over at Sherlock. He does toss in his sleep and poke and mumble, like he's trying to sort things out even in his dreams, but he doesn't kick and he doesn't steal the covers. He rests his head on Sherlock's chest and tries to fall back asleep again, unsuccessfully.)
John makes Sherlock cook while he does the laundry and vacuums; surprisingly, Sherlock is not bad at it. Sherlock comes home one day with a replacement skull, and John balances bills and books on top of it. The furnace wheezes constantly, on the verge of breaking down, and John teases Sherlock about leaving, and Sherlock just grumbles and huddles down deeper into the blankets until only tufts of his hair are visible.
--
"I have to do this," he tells John, his voice raw as he throws his things into a shabby old suitcase he bought second-hand. "I have to go back. If I don't go back Jim will track me down, he'll find out where I'm living and who I'm living with, he's baiting me."
"He's insane," says John, sitting cross-legged on the bed and remembering the weight of a winter parka by a swimming pool. "And not as smart as you are. Those two things, those are what's important."
"You're not leaving this city," Sherlock tells him, jabbing a finger at him. "You're not leaving this apartment."
When John doesn't answer right away: "John, you are not leaving this apartment, tell me right now--"
"I'm not leaving," says John finally. Neutrally.
Sherlock leaves in the morning, hailing a cab and disappearing down the street, and John waits half a day--finishing up the laundry, unloading the dishwasher and having a shower--before scheduling a flight. (It's not a lie but it is a half-truth, of sorts: I'm not leaving you.)
--
At 6:43 a.m. the plane lands at Heathrow. John gets his things from the carousel, trundling his way awkwardly through the crowds with his limp, and sees a man with an umbrella standing by the exit.
"What you are doing right now is going to kill him," Mycroft says flatly.
John pushes out a sigh and stares him straight in the face. "So stop me, then. I can't stop you from whisking me away again, fuck knows I can't do anything about the mafiya or the yakuza or the goddamn British government. But I'm done following your orders."
"He doesn't need you. You're only going to get in his way. And therefore, I have your ticket booked for the next flight back to Switzerland."
John doesn't flinch away. "Neither of us are ever going to change, Mycroft. Me and him."
"I know what you meant," Mycroft snaps, and makes a noise of frustration when his cell phone goes off. "Oh, for God's--get in the car."
At 9:04 he unlocks the door to their old flat; it's empty and chilly, but Sherlock's things are there and tossed about. His laptop is flipped shut but still running on sleep mode, John powers it up and clicks the windows open--there. The message. Months away from the blog and he still recognizes the tone. He tucks his bag away under the chair with military precision, reloads his gun, and heads out.
Noon is the meeting time; John gets there at eleven forty-five with the vague hope of somehow getting the drop on Jim Moriarty, because that worked out so well last time. There is no plan here, no strategy, just an urgent sense of needing to be at Sherlock's back, watching out for him, pulling him back from the world of criminal leagues and cackling villains. He's probably gone mad. He rather hopes he has, that would be a convenient excuse for stupidity.
He does a circle around the area, keeping his head down, watching out for cars or taxis or anything, any sign. The wind is picking up and the clouds are clearing away, the world filled with a dull gray sunlight.
Slipping back into the building, he's about to head up the stairs when he spots it: a shadow at the top, whisking out of sight. John creeps up the stairs slowly, making himself go quiet and invisible, hand tight on the railing. There's a thump and clicking noises up ahead, the sound of someone breathing in the quiet, mechanical locking and chambering sounds.
John crouches down and becomes small, holding his breath, hand tensed tight around his gun. Peering out around the corner: the masked gunman is setting up his rifle, his laser sight, testing its weight and peering into the scope. John doesn't dare move an inch.
Down below, the voices float up: "Sherlock! So lovely to see you again. Switzerland certainly agrees with you."
The gunman balances his rifle over the railing of the gallery, settling down into his position and going still as a statue. Police sharpshooter, thinks John, maybe a military sniper, not long out of the forces. He'll let Sherlock work out the details later.
"I never drink," says Jim Moriarty's voice. "But today I'm going out to a certain restaurant and having a bottle of the 1998 Domaine Romanée Conti Pinot Noir they've put on reserve for me. Do you know why?"
"I'm not interested," says Sherlock shortly, and John draws in his breath.
"Turn around, Sherlock," Jim croons gently. "Turn around slowly and look up."
Now.
In the instant Sherlock follows Moriarty's gesture and turns his head, in the instant the gunman reaches for the trigger, John leaps on him from behind and tightens one arm around his windpipe, hauling him back.
The gunman struggles, kicking and clawing and thudding him back into the wall; John reels as the gunman frees himself, and then John tackles him again from the front to slam him against the railing. Down below Sherlock is yelling John's name, hurtling towards the stairs, and Moriarty is bellowing, "Get him, get Watson," and John is wrestling the man to the floor to punch him across the face. They're fighting dirty, the man is yanking at John's hair and trying to pull him down for a headbutt, John is jamming his knee into the man's groin and grabbing his gun to point it.
The man grabs his wrist, faster than a snake strikes, and John tries to break loose but the grip is like iron, and then the man bucks at him and knocks him off balance and he has the gun in his hand and John jerks backwards.
He slumps down. The gunman is scrambling away, there's a tweed Belstaff coat flying by, from somewhere distant John hears a shot.
And then Sherlock is there, Sherlock is grabbing at his jacket and shouting in his face. "Stop it, I'm a writer and I have to think of some really impressive last words," he tries to inform Sherlock, very seriously, but it comes out as a pained whimper.
"You promised me," is what Sherlock's saying, he's howling, and John shakes his head.
"I said I wouldn't leave," he corrects him, matter-of-factly. "Sherlock?"
"Shut up, for God's sake shut up--" Sherlock is fumbling with his phone, his face a rigid mask. That's not right. He needs to tell Sherlock something.
"Sherlock." It's getting very hard to think straight. "I told you back in Switzerland--he's insane. You're not. You have to live to show him that you're smarter than him, you're human and you're good."
"Not without you," Sherlock says, and his face is twisting up. John has spent his life in hospitals and never seen so much pain on anyone's face, ever.
"Yes," he says firmly, and he's got to get this right, "okay, you've got to tell Harry I love her and say to Lestrade I said something really ballsy and macho--"
"Stop it."
No. Right. The most important thing. "I love you," he says clearly, looking up at that face. "I've always been yours. It'll be all right."
The pain is seizing up his entire body and his head is clouding over. He mumbles, "Where's..." and looks around. Sherlock's hands are on his chest. John shuts his eyes to try and focus, breathing shallow. He'll open them again in a minute.
For a long, long while there's no movement from the gallery.
And then, standing with his hands in his pockets below, Jim bursts out laughing. "Wow," he says brightly, "I didn't have to lift a finger!"
Sherlock lunges for the gun. He is two, three seconds too late. The door bangs behind Jim, who is still laughing, and the shot echoes through empty air.
--
"Give me the ticket, then."
"Sherlock?" Mycroft is looking more lost and vulnerable than he's ever seen him before.
"The ticket you booked back to Switzerland. I'll take it. I need to get my belongings from the apartment."
"You need to come home," Mycroft insists, a rising note of panic.
"No," says Sherlock calmly. They're in Mycroft's office, an untouched glass of whiskey sitting on Mycroft's desk. "I need to pack up my things."
"Where are you going?"
"To find Moriarty and kill him."
"You can't--"
"You'll find I can." Sherlock stands up. "If you don't give me the ticket I'll buy one. Or are your people going to stop me from leaving?"
Mycroft looks back at him, his eyes bewildered and torn. "I did it to keep him safe," he pleads. "You know I did."
"I'm not blaming you." Sherlock looks back at him steadily. "But I have to go."
"He's going to destroy you, Sherlock," Mycroft says helplessly, his voice cracking, as Sherlock turns away.
"He already has," says Sherlock, without emotion, and shuts the door behind him.
Down below cars whizz past, a man is talking on his Bluetooth headset, there's a sausage vendor and bunch of schoolkids in uniforms swarming out of the subway entrance. Sherlock walks past them all, scarf folded up to his chin and coat whipped about by the wind, and disappears into the crowd. Nobody watches him go.
The waterfall keeps thundering down, even after the long terrible scream dies away. Sherlock looks over the edge of the cliff and down into the mist, bracing one foot against a rock. The drop is more or less sheer but the rocks are jagged at the bottom, jutting into the water, a quick and bloody end.
One movement. One leap.
"I kept my promise," he says, very softly. And takes his foot off the rock, and straightens his collar and walks back the way he came.
And the ficlet following after:
John is finally getting down to work on the rooftop garden. There are bees buzzing around his head, fat and lazy, humming as he lugs the planters into place--heavy clay pots, clanking on the ground. He wipes at his forehead, steps over the lines he's chalked out on the ground, and grabs at the bottle of water. Down below there's some kind of traffic jam, horns honking like mad.
He takes a long swig and stares out over the rooftops, squinting in the sunshine. Off in the distance he can see the river Avon; kids are running up and down the street, a woman pushes a pram, they're cleaning up the outdoor tables at the restaurant. Another bee wanders by, landing on his arm, and he can't even muster up the annoyance to wave it away.
He's propped the door to the stairwell open and now he hears noise--boots thumping, two voices arguing. John frowns faintly before suddenly going still.
"--clearly some kind of biochemical reaction in our synapses that's interpreted widely as a post-death experience, and if we understood better how the brain works--"
The door sweeps open over the gravel to admit two figures: a young woman and a man. The young woman is slight and wears frayed jeans and sandals, loose hair, a tiny black spiral at the corner of one eye. It's crinkled up right now, she's smiling.
The man is staring straight at John.
"I'll leave you to debate it with him," says the girl brightly, and clomps back down the stairwell. Her companion doesn't move.
"John?" says Sherlock finally. He sounds all of his eighty-seven years old and twelve at the exact same time.
"I made you bee hives. For when you got here." John gestures to the pallets he set up, swarming with bees, and grins from ear to ear. "Did you know I actually got to speak to William Hartnell? I mean, the very first Doctor, it was absolutely insane--"
Unfortunately there's not much talking you can do when you're being kissed, especially not like that, and John shuts up and lets Sherlock get to it. They have time to catch up later.
Oh, how I meant to tease him
Oh, how I meant no harm
Touching his back with my hand, I kiss him
I see the wasp on the length of my arm
--Sufjan Stevens, The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out To Get Us!
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Date: 2012-11-01 05:34 pm (UTC)