Fic: The World on His Wrist - 4/6 (BBC Sherlock)
Title: The World on His Wrist
Rating: PG13
Wordcount: 4.9k, this part, 31.4k overall
Betas: vyctori and fogbutton
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: First, he is shot in Afghanistan. Second, he wakes to a phone call in Chelmsford, Essex. Third is pain, fourth is normalcy, fifth is agony and sixth is confusion. By the eighth, he's lost track. (John-centric AU)
prologue - part one - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four - Part Five- Part Six - Epilogue
This, John thinks, is going to be hell to repeat.
What puzzles him, though, what really gets him, is that he didn’t see this coming. He keeps a close eye on London news from Chelmsford. He keeps a particularly close eye on anything that might have to do with Sherlock.
There is no possible way he missed this. It’s in all the papers, it’s on all the news stations, it’s absolutely everywhere and John paces back and forth, useless and clueless both. Sarah’s given him the day off, citing home explosion as a very reasonable cause for sick leave, and all it means is he has nothing to do until Sherlock deduces the mystery of the trainers. John’s left alone with his thoughts and his admittedly hazy memories of last night. He’s almost glad when Sherlock decides to toy with him.
When Sherlock realizes, when Sherlock says the name of the shoes’ owner, John watches him leave. Physically, Sherlock remains next to him, but mentally, he’s away, far away. His eyes grow distant, flicking across sights within his own head, and if John reached out and touched him, he doubts Sherlock would feel it. If John recorded himself sleeping, would he look like this as well?
“Cab,” Sherlock says and John can see it, the effort to pull himself back, to say even that much. Sherlock packs up, the graceful sweeping of his hands transformed into robotic motion, swift and harsh and efficient. He’s amazing to watch like this, and a little terrifying.
John knows to lead the way out, to let Sherlock trail after him with long legs and slow steps. He gets them a taxi, Sherlock says “Home,” and John translates that into an address, his eyes never leaving his friend’s pale face.
The cabbie asks if Sherlock is okay, Sherlock makes a noise, a pained noise, and John says, “He’s fine, he gets like this - he needs quiet, could you turn your radio off, please?”
They ride in silence.
John wonders if this is what the guard at the National Antiquities Museum saw in him that night. If John had looked so lost and statue-still. He thinks about that gentle guiding touch, such a simple grounding technique, and he wonders if he should take Sherlock’s hand.
Not like, not like that. Not like Jake. But John wonders if it would help.
It’s made him push a bit, this Jake thing. When Sherlock activated his gaydar on that Jim bloke, John had to chime in. Yes, that was a flamboyantly gay man, but John couldn’t help testing the waters with an argument. “I put product in my hair” led directly to “You wash your hair,” a complete dismissal.
Sherlock doesn’t think John is gay. Well, excepting that one time at Angelo’s, but that had been an awkward getting-to-you-know conversation twisted around by Angelo and the candle and Mrs. Hudson’s earlier assumptions. That one time doesn’t count. Sherlock doesn’t think John is gay, and that’s good enough for John.
“1989, young kid, champion swimmer,” Sherlock says without warning, speaking to him, focusing on him, into him, and John lets go of his worries. He has more important things to think about.
Except apparently he doesn’t, because Sherlock doesn’t need him. John goes to use the toilet and by the time he comes back, not only does Sherlock have the skull out, he’s chattering to it. It’s not as if John pees like a girl, either. He was gone barely a minute.
He goes downstairs, watches crap telly with Mrs. Hudson. If she’s shaken from the explosion last night, she doesn’t show it. As much of a comfort as her company is, it’s not long before John’s back up in his own flat, pacing once more. Sherlock’s closed the door to the kitchen and when John tries to help, he’s sent away to Mycroft’s Twilight Zone office, a dim room with the lamps too far apart, a clock that ticks like vengeance, and a red telephone on the desk. It makes him glad he changed into a suit.
He suffers through, suffers home, and when he arrives, Sherlock’s solved it.
The woman is rescued from a car, from a car park, and John memorizes the location along with her name. He lies awake long into the night, unsure of what to do.
“Explosion on Baker Street last night,” Derek says by way of greeting, buried behind his newspaper. “Some injuries, no deaths.”
John closes the fridge, not hungry.
If he’d helped that woman, tried to step in, someone else would have been taken hostage. He knows Sherlock can do this without him, has already seen him do it. Nothing to worry about.
He keeps an eye on it, just in case. Work at the surgery goes well enough, though it does take him a moment to remember which surgery he’s meant to be working at. Mostly hypochondriacs with too much access to the internet, today. Could be a lot worse.
That night, he watches telly with Derek over the screen of his laptop, rhythmically pressing F5 until Sherlock’s solution pops up on the Science of Deduction. He goes to bed exhausted from a day of doing nothing.
He wakes up to a hangover.
It takes some doing, but he manages to piece himself together enough to stagger to his laptop and get his journalling out. He updates his Chelmsford journal and then does the same for his daylist, writing out the order he’d had his days in. It’s a good use of time as he waits for the paracetemol to kick in and when he finishes, there’s nothing else for it.
He looks through London news with a sense of dread. Only Sherlock could have solved that case. Only Sherlock would know or care about Carl Powers.
Which is how John realizes. Because the explosion isn’t there, because no one blasted Baker Street in this world without Sherlock. No one faked a gas explosion to draw Sherlock out to play.
Until now, John’s lives may have been different, but his worlds have been the same. John’s actions don’t mean much, have barely any weight, almost negligible change. He saves lives, yes, but he’s yet to truly change events. He’s not big enough, nothing special.
Sherlock, on the other hand....
John’s thoughts are interrupted by a knock at the door. He answers it and there’s Marta, ready for work. John... isn’t.
She grins at him. “Late night last night?”
Something drops inside John’s head and he thinks he knows what. It’s the other shoe.
“You knew,” he says. His voice sounds blank, but that’s not because he’s numb. He’s anything but. “You let me walk right into that.”
Marta blinks, her grin falling away. “Thought you were tired of being single.”
“Girlfriend!” John yells. “What part of ‘get a girlfriend’ involves a gay bloke?”
She peers at him like he’s gone mental. “Are you having some sort of sexual crisis?”
“No,” he snaps. “Yes. I don’t know. I probably shouldn’t have it in the garden.”
She follows him inside and hops up on the counter of his kitchen, ignoring some perfectly serviceable chairs. Her movements are a bit like Sherlock’s for all her hair and face are much like Molly’s, and John has this strange moment of picturing those two having Marta as their kid. It doesn’t calm John in the slightest.
“You okay?” she asks.
“I don’t want to date Jake,” John says. He can’t seem to unclench his fists. “I don’t want to be set up on random dates with random blokes.”
Marta sighs. “I tried to tell Rache’.”
And there it is, that’s the mortifying bit. The insult to hangover injury. The woman John was considering tried to set him up with her brother. “What’d you tell her?”
“That blokes being gay doesn’t mean they’ll like each other.”
“I’m not gay.”
She makes a face. “Bi, sorry.”
John gapes at her.
He gapes at her, and this is not his life. There’s no London, no army, no Sherlock. This is not his life. He barely knows this woman and she certainly doesn’t know him.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asks.
It’s the most ridiculous question he’s ever heard. He swallows back his first answer, and the second, and particularly the third, and says, “I’m fine.”
She clearly doesn’t believe him.
“I’m- I’ll hurry up so we won’t be late,” he tells her. “You....” He gestures vaguely at nothing in particular.
“I’ll make toast, you shower,” she says. “Shoo.” She flaps her hands at him.
Not only does she make and butter the toast, she spreads on just the perfect amount of Marmite and holds the toast for him while he drives. His body surprises him with its automatic reactions, knowing how to eat toast out of Marta’s hands while driving. It feels almost practiced.
“We do this much too often,” he can only conclude. “Why aren’t we dating? It would be so much easier than the rest of all... this.” It’s an idle, joking question and he gestures vaguely, one hand on the wheel.
“Well, you did shag my brother,” she says.
“For which I apologize,” John says, tone still half-joking. Much like his driving instincts, it’s an automatic response, which is fortunate. Otherwise he probably would have choked immediately before crashing the car. Then he adds, “How long have I been apologizing for that, anyway?”
“Not long enough,” Marta says, unhelpful.
They get to the hospital and John spends the day avoiding Rachel between surgeries and surviving the aneurysm Jake’s texts threaten to give him. It’s not too difficult.
The avoiding Rachel part, anyway.
In Afghanistan, there are men everywhere. There are women, yes, but it’s mostly men, and he isn’t attracted to a single one of them. Not even the women, come to think of it, presumably because he’s mentally marked off everyone as a patient.
Not gay.
He wakes up to another morning in Chelmsford and is immediately in a terrible mood. He needs to get back to Sherlock. There’s a bomber on the loose.
There’s also a raging Rachel on the loose, which is somehow more immediately terrifying than Semtex-coated hostages. Probably because he’s the hostage now, hauled away to a side hall for her to hiss at him.
“You told my brother you were straight?”
“No idea,” John says, because hell if he knows the right answer to that question. “I was pretty drunk.”
“Fine,” she snaps. “Just call him back. He thinks you hate him or something.”
She lets him return to the canteen and his lunch at that point, but she sits there glaring at him until he takes out his mobile.
Sorry, he types. Have stuff going on at the moment. No time for a relationship.
After he sends it, Rachel swipes his mobile, reads his sent message, and seems to want to kill him only slightly less.
The text is answered later that night, the buzz of John’s mobile making him jump.
Is that an opening for fuckbuddies or a serious rejection? because im a better kisser sober.
Rejection, John types back, which looks harsh and blunt, largely because it is. That’s the reason why he adds, but youre already a fantastic kisser drunk.
<3, Jake answers.
First thing in the morning, he and Sherlock go to New Scotland Yard. Then there’s a car, the obligatory gay joke from Donovan, and John would much rather focus on the mystery of the day. Once again, Sherlock decidedly doesn’t need him, but he does haul John about. John knows his role well, leading conversations until Sherlock finds a direction to take charge in.
He goes back to the surgery, assures Sarah he’s all right, and neglects to mention that he may have drunkenly cheated on her with a bloke in a parallel universe.
Sherlock calls him just as his shift is up, and they meet Lestrade so Sherlock can show off the neat solution he’s found to the bomber’s second puzzle.
They go home, Sherlock enters the answer on John’s laptop, and that’s that. They don’t relax that evening, not really, Sherlock ruffling up his hair as if he could shake the answers out of his skull. Heating up the remains of two-day-old take-away, John watches his flatmate, watches this hectic, remarkable man, and feels helpless in more ways than he could ever define.
He thinks, at first, desperately, that he’s finally begun to have nightmares again.
It’s a long day in Afghanistan.
Derek and his ex-wife have a shouting match over the phone. It’s long and involved, petty and stupid. Regardless of where John goes in the flat, how many doors they shut between them, he can hear it. Save for Derek’s sobriety, it reminds John of his parents.
There’s a lot of “My daughter” being flung about too, but in this case, no one yells anything about anyone being gay.
John goes outside, calls Harry to say he loves her, and spends the next half-hour convincing her he isn’t dying. He winds up hating her more than a bit, because - and here is the important bit - she’s still his stupid little sister. She makes Sherlock look like an absolute saint sometimes. Terrifying, but true. He has no idea how Clara managed.
That night, Derek yells at him for his incessant keyboard tapping. John merely does it louder, wearing out F5 until Sherlock posts.
They spend the night fuming at opposite ends of the flat.
John opens the fridge, stares into a dead man’s closed eyes, and loses it.
Sherlock just stands there, all floppy hair and weighing eyes, pale fingers endlessly turning over that blasted pink phone. All the abuse John can shout at him, Sherlock endures. No, not endures. He considers it, parses it. He splits the shouting apart into its component pieces and assembles it back together. He makes John feel stupid, which is absurd, which is inevitable, because Sherlock makes everyone feel stupid. Sherlock delights in making everyone feel stupid, except, no, he doesn’t, and now John feels vicious and cruel, as well as like an idiot.
He shouts anyway. There is a head in their fridge. There is a head in their fridge. It’s been there forever and John wants it gone.
Eventually, John runs out of air.
He stands there, shaking, so confused and enraged, and Sherlock says, “Three days.” He says it simply, not gently. He’s blunt and unchanged, entirely unaffected by John’s ranting and obscenities.
John says, “What.” Irritation chokes his throat, won’t let him say more.
“The head has been in the refrigerator for three days,” Sherlock tells him. “I was going to dispose of it two days ago, before you came home from Sarah’s, but after the explosion, Mycroft wouldn’t stop badgering me. Since then-” he holds up the pink phone, demonstration, not accusation “-I have been busy.”
It hurts not to fight. To be ready for it, to fist his hands or load his gun, to engage and discover nothing to engage with. It hurts not to fight, to surrender, but this is something else. This isn’t backing down. It’s nothing like accepting the inevitable either, although of course Sherlock is right. This is the opposite of pain.
Sherlock speaks and something goes out of John. Something leaves him, and though John doesn’t know what it is, he’s glad to be rid of it.
He sags back against the counter, tired and drained, and for the first time in days, he can breathe.
He closes his eyes, gulping in air. His chapped lips burn. His chest heaves.
“John?” The first hint of emotion, such terribly slight concern.
“Afghanistan,” John says and can say no more.
“Ah,” Sherlock says, as if he knows, as if he knows. “Bombs.”
He nods, eyes tight shut. He swallows thickly, struggling for a moment, just for a moment, with memory. The explosions, the shrapnel, the wreckage. He’d cut his hand, had fumbled where no fumbling was allowed, clumsy around his own bandage. He could have done better. He should have done better.
When he stops shaking, he opens his eyes.
Sherlock hasn’t moved.
The man is a statue. His grey gaze never falters, never strays. When he speaks, it’s almost startling. “Let’s go out for breakfast,” Sherlock says.
“Not hungry,” John replies, voice rough.
“That’s really too bad,” Sherlock tells him, pocketing the pink phone. “One of us ought to eat and it’s not going to be me.”
John lets himself be carried away in Sherlock’s rising tide. In that moment, he’d let himself be pulled under, would gladly drown. Sherlock holds his jacket for him, a gesture of impatience, not assistance. Jacket on, those hands settle momentarily upon his shoulders, and the feeling tears through John, worse than a gunshot, worse than any wound, worth any wound.
He’s lightheaded with gratitude, numb except for that one feeling. It twists into him, sends his nerves tingling as he walks after Sherlock, trailing that tall figure down streets and through doors. They sit, Sherlock speaks, and all John’s tired mind can understand is baritone safety.
There’s a plate in front of him. John picks up a fork to see Sherlock smile, faintly, the sight perhaps nothing more than hopeful illusion. He eats and the illusion strengthens until Sherlock goes back to playing with that damn phone.
“Feeling better?” Sherlock asks when the bomber doesn’t text.
John blames it on the pacing of their days, on two challenges and not stopping for breath. It may be Sherlock who does the work, but it’s still John who can’t breathe.
He even tells Sherlock why, in a way. Because the bomber is doing this all for Sherlock, only for Sherlock. Everything has been geared toward him, and none of it happens without him. Somewhere out there, two somewheres out there, a mad bomber is sitting on his plots with no one to toy with, no Sherlock to stop him. It’s always the brilliant ones who are desperate to be caught, or so Sherlock says. What does that make their bomber?
Besides a sick bastard, of course. John watches Sherlock, phone held up to his ear, grey eyes locked on John’s blue as the newest hostage speaks. He doesn’t know what’s being said, only how it changes Sherlock’s face, how Sherlock glances away from him in the end, eyes wide with horror.
That helplessness returns, slinks its way into John’s chest only to be clawed out by sheer bloody-mindedness. John looks at him and knows, whatever it could be, whatever is asked, there is nothing he wouldn’t do for this man, nothing he wouldn’t attempt.
If it’s not enough, that’s really too bad. John hasn’t played by reality’s rules in ages and isn’t about to start now.
There is something exceptionally skeevy about this man. John immediately decides that while Jacob Brown might have gotten away with quite a few liberties, Kenny Prince is getting none whatsoever.
Is there a sign on John’s back? Gay Men, Molest Here? Because this is absurd.
He leaves laughing, really laughing, feeling brilliant, and even if Sherlock soon puts a stop to that, John doesn’t care. That was hilarious.
Standing next to him, watching the side of his face, John knows when the call goes wrong. He knows when the call cuts out.
Lestrade receives the report almost immediately, tells them where before he knows the who. The woman in the flat was transplanted there, not a resident. The remains aren’t enough to guess at a name. Lestrade tells them to go home, tells Sherlock it wasn’t his fault.
The closer they get to Baker Street, the further Sherlock retreats into himself. The man walks right past Mrs. Hudson, leaving John to explain, and when John gets up to the flat, Sherlock’s searching through the kitchen.
“What have you done with the bin bags?” he asks John, crouching down, staring into a cabinet beneath the counter. He’s not even close to where the bin bags go.
It takes John a second to remember the head. “Leave it,” John says.
“But-”
“Leave it.” His hand fits neatly on Sherlock’s thin shoulder. “It’s fine.”
Sherlock holds very still, then sighs. He remains on the floor, not quite steady, leaning toward John’s leg. “It’s possible I need to eat,” Sherlock says.
“It has been three days,” John agrees, thumb brushing over tight fabric. He waits for Sherlock to move, to brush him off and walk away, but Sherlock never does. It’s not hard to guess why. “If you stand up, are you going to fall over?”
“Most likely,” Sherlock agrees.
“Okay,” John says. “You stay down there, I’ll make risotto.”
Sherlock looks up at him at that, his entire face narrowed in confusion. “Since when do you make risotto?”
“Since remembering we have rice and Oxo cubes,” John answers, unable to say Since Derek taught me. There’s also cheese for it and he thinks they might still have some frozen veg in the freezer, next to the frozen raccoon John has steadfastly not inquired into. “Poor man’s risotto. Give me twenty minutes.”
They eat sitting on the floor of the kitchen, their backs against the counter.
“This is good,” Sherlock says with some surprise. “Simple, but good.”
“Not the healthiest,” John feels obligated to say, Derek’s recipe not complete without Derek’s tagline.
Watching Sherlock eat isn’t quite as strange as watching him produce crocodile tears, but it is close. Less unnerving, though, and so John has no qualms about how he might be staring. Steam curls from his fork, a last-moment escape from Sherlock’s mouth. It makes John wonder about Sherlock smoking, the ruined air from his lungs painted visible, grey as his eyes and rising from pink lips. He’s glad the man’s on nicotine patches now, but the image remains, an adaptation of Sherlock’s white winter breaths.
“If I have to eat, so do you,” Sherlock reminds him.
“Unlike some idiots, I choose not to burn my tongue off,” John replies.
Sherlock finishes eating first, actually finishes. He prods at John’s arm with his empty bowl. “More.”
It takes John a moment to recover from sheer confusion. Then he says, “Get it yourself.”
“I’ll fall over, remember?”
“Lazy bastard.”
“Always.”
John rolls his eyes, takes the bowl and stands up. “Honestly,” he says. He spoons a bit more into Sherlock’s bowl, keeping the portion small. Sitting back down, legs crossed rather than stretched out before him, his knee settles against Sherlock’s thigh. He hands the bowl over, warning, “Keep going on like this and you’ll end up like Mycroft.”
“Never,” Sherlock swears. “If I have to kill you if you go senile, then you have to kill me if that happens.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Fine,” Sherlock huffs. “I’ll work out something else.” He eats slowly now, small forkfuls of rice and peas. He chews deliberately, eyes fixed straight ahead at their kitchen table. “Ask it,” he says abruptly. “Whatever you’re staring at me for, ask it.”
“Was there any way to save her?”
“No,” Sherlock says, the answer immediate. “She thought she was helping me by telling me about his voice. I didn’t have time to convince her otherwise, I did try.”
“I know,” John says. “I know you tried, I was there. I just meant.... I don’t know. For next time. Tomorrow, I mean. If we can trace the call, find out where the hostage is...”
Sherlock looks at him.
“...then the hostage is detonated,” John finishes for himself.
“Yes,” Sherlock agrees.
Silence trickles in between them, fills them up and is filled up in turn. Downstairs, through the floorboards, he can hear Mrs. Hudson bustle about. The fridge makes its noises, the plumbing its natural company. Cars pass by below their broken windows. Sherlock’s breaths disappear into his, their breathing synced.
“I didn’t know you could cook,” Sherlock says.
“I can cook.”
“Yes, but I didn’t know.” As if insulted, as if John has willingly withheld the secrets of the universe from him.
Which, John supposes, he sort of has. “I just don’t cook in your lab area, that’s all.”
“Half of it is still your kitchen.”
“It’s not my half that stops me, it’s the half you keep on top of it.”
Sherlock smiles a little, just a little, but that soon stops. Looking down, he begins to roll the peas out of the rice, piling them on the side.
John watches, chewing slowly, needing this to last. “You’re not going to eat those, are you?”
“No,” Sherlock agrees.
“Eat your veg.” Not much of a command, not at all. Watching Sherlock sort peas and rice is oddly hypnotic.
Once Sherlock has all the peas separated out, he lifts his bowl over John’s and proceeds to scrape every remaining trace of veg onto John’s dinner. “Can’t. Now it’s yours.”
“Prat.”
“Eat your veg, John.”
John laughs, but obeys. Halfway through a mouthful, a yawn takes him, tries to crack his jaw.
“Very attractive,” Sherlock drawls.
John snaps his mouth shut. He soldiers on through the remainder of his meal only to have Sherlock swap bowls with him, room temperature rice bound in cheese, soaked in sodium and artificial chicken flavouring. John eats on. Without meaning to, he yawns again, tries to grit his teeth through it.
“I don’t mind,” Sherlock says.
“Hm?”
“If you want to rest,” Sherlock clarifies. “I don’t mind.”
“Well, I do,” John replies and he forks the remainder of the risotto in his mouth. Sherlock watches him. Which is fine, turnabout being fair game.
Finished, John stacks the bowls and leaves them on the floor, forks settled on top. The silence returns, soft and slow. They’re in the eye of the storm, the damage done and more yet to come. John keeps yawning however hard he tries to bite his lip.
“You need sleep,” Sherlock tells him, his voice the same as it was this morning. This time, instead of drawing out the pain, it saturates him with it. It hurts so bright, a white flash behind the rush of red.
“You’ve never cared before,” John replies, more truthful than cruel. More wondering.
“I’ll need you tomorrow,” Sherlock explains.
John accepts that, more hope than belief. “I know.”
“If it will help,” Sherlock begins, speaking with stolen hesitancy, tentative as a stranger, “I could keep an eye on you. Wake you if there’s a repeat of last night.”
“It doesn’t work that way.” Premature waking has never interrupted his days. To wake, he must first sleep. “I know that doesn’t make sense, but that’s how it is.”
“All the same,” Sherlock says.
John picks up the bowls and stands. He puts them in the sink.
Sherlock’s hand touches his knee. “John,” he says.
Helping him stand is the most natural thing in the world, a practised motion for all its novelty. For a moment, a mere instant, Sherlock sways, eyes wide and fighting to focus. He holds onto John and John holds onto him, because he knows exactly how it feels.
“I don’t want to sleep,” John says, watching the fog clear away from Sherlock’s eyes. “I want to be awake, all the time, right here.”
“A compelling thought, isn’t it?” Sherlock muses, dizzy, breathless from it. His grip on John’s arms is a hard one. It slackens only to tighten, harder than before.
“I think about it all the time,” John confesses. “Every day. You’ve no idea.”
“I think I might.” He doesn’t, but he means it. There in his eyes, focused on John’s, on John, he means it.
“I don’t want to go away anymore.” He wants this, just this, because this is more than enough and he’s tired of waiting for it. This is the best of all worlds. He’s seen them, he knows. “No more.”
Sherlock’s fingers curl around his elbows, grip him to the bone. “Afghanistan is over,” Sherlock tells him, and John laughs to keep from crying.
“You’re wrong.” He shouldn’t be grinning, but he is.
“I’m not.”
“You are,” John insists, “but that’s all right.”
Sherlock says nothing, mouth open and awaiting words. John can see his teeth, a flicker of his tongue. John can hear his silence.
“It’s fine,” John says. “I’m fine.”
“You’re lying,” Sherlock says.
“Yes, and?”
Sherlock sighs at him, as if John is the difficult one. His hands drift down from John’s arms, fall away like pale autumn leaves. “And when you wake,” Sherlock says, “I’ll still be here. If that helps.”
“It would,” John admits, releasing him in return. Sherlock’s arms are so thin, fit so easily in John’s small hands. Letting go is like disassembling a puzzle, removing curves and edges from edges and curves, like ruining something painstakingly repaired.
“All right then,” Sherlock says.
John goes to bed, still wrapped in baritone safety.
He wakes touching his fingers to his wrists, arms folded across his chest. Fingertips touch leather, touch an analogue watch, and John’s heart soars before it breaks, before he discovers the band is closed around his right wrist, not the left. Afghanistan, Afghanistan again, a warzone in a world where Sherlock Holmes is dead.
That perfect, beautiful liar.
calendar guide next
Rating: PG13
Wordcount: 4.9k, this part, 31.4k overall
Betas: vyctori and fogbutton
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: First, he is shot in Afghanistan. Second, he wakes to a phone call in Chelmsford, Essex. Third is pain, fourth is normalcy, fifth is agony and sixth is confusion. By the eighth, he's lost track. (John-centric AU)
prologue - part one - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four - Part Five- Part Six - Epilogue
This, John thinks, is going to be hell to repeat.
What puzzles him, though, what really gets him, is that he didn’t see this coming. He keeps a close eye on London news from Chelmsford. He keeps a particularly close eye on anything that might have to do with Sherlock.
There is no possible way he missed this. It’s in all the papers, it’s on all the news stations, it’s absolutely everywhere and John paces back and forth, useless and clueless both. Sarah’s given him the day off, citing home explosion as a very reasonable cause for sick leave, and all it means is he has nothing to do until Sherlock deduces the mystery of the trainers. John’s left alone with his thoughts and his admittedly hazy memories of last night. He’s almost glad when Sherlock decides to toy with him.
When Sherlock realizes, when Sherlock says the name of the shoes’ owner, John watches him leave. Physically, Sherlock remains next to him, but mentally, he’s away, far away. His eyes grow distant, flicking across sights within his own head, and if John reached out and touched him, he doubts Sherlock would feel it. If John recorded himself sleeping, would he look like this as well?
“Cab,” Sherlock says and John can see it, the effort to pull himself back, to say even that much. Sherlock packs up, the graceful sweeping of his hands transformed into robotic motion, swift and harsh and efficient. He’s amazing to watch like this, and a little terrifying.
John knows to lead the way out, to let Sherlock trail after him with long legs and slow steps. He gets them a taxi, Sherlock says “Home,” and John translates that into an address, his eyes never leaving his friend’s pale face.
The cabbie asks if Sherlock is okay, Sherlock makes a noise, a pained noise, and John says, “He’s fine, he gets like this - he needs quiet, could you turn your radio off, please?”
They ride in silence.
John wonders if this is what the guard at the National Antiquities Museum saw in him that night. If John had looked so lost and statue-still. He thinks about that gentle guiding touch, such a simple grounding technique, and he wonders if he should take Sherlock’s hand.
Not like, not like that. Not like Jake. But John wonders if it would help.
It’s made him push a bit, this Jake thing. When Sherlock activated his gaydar on that Jim bloke, John had to chime in. Yes, that was a flamboyantly gay man, but John couldn’t help testing the waters with an argument. “I put product in my hair” led directly to “You wash your hair,” a complete dismissal.
Sherlock doesn’t think John is gay. Well, excepting that one time at Angelo’s, but that had been an awkward getting-to-you-know conversation twisted around by Angelo and the candle and Mrs. Hudson’s earlier assumptions. That one time doesn’t count. Sherlock doesn’t think John is gay, and that’s good enough for John.
“1989, young kid, champion swimmer,” Sherlock says without warning, speaking to him, focusing on him, into him, and John lets go of his worries. He has more important things to think about.
Except apparently he doesn’t, because Sherlock doesn’t need him. John goes to use the toilet and by the time he comes back, not only does Sherlock have the skull out, he’s chattering to it. It’s not as if John pees like a girl, either. He was gone barely a minute.
He goes downstairs, watches crap telly with Mrs. Hudson. If she’s shaken from the explosion last night, she doesn’t show it. As much of a comfort as her company is, it’s not long before John’s back up in his own flat, pacing once more. Sherlock’s closed the door to the kitchen and when John tries to help, he’s sent away to Mycroft’s Twilight Zone office, a dim room with the lamps too far apart, a clock that ticks like vengeance, and a red telephone on the desk. It makes him glad he changed into a suit.
He suffers through, suffers home, and when he arrives, Sherlock’s solved it.
The woman is rescued from a car, from a car park, and John memorizes the location along with her name. He lies awake long into the night, unsure of what to do.
“Explosion on Baker Street last night,” Derek says by way of greeting, buried behind his newspaper. “Some injuries, no deaths.”
John closes the fridge, not hungry.
If he’d helped that woman, tried to step in, someone else would have been taken hostage. He knows Sherlock can do this without him, has already seen him do it. Nothing to worry about.
He keeps an eye on it, just in case. Work at the surgery goes well enough, though it does take him a moment to remember which surgery he’s meant to be working at. Mostly hypochondriacs with too much access to the internet, today. Could be a lot worse.
That night, he watches telly with Derek over the screen of his laptop, rhythmically pressing F5 until Sherlock’s solution pops up on the Science of Deduction. He goes to bed exhausted from a day of doing nothing.
He wakes up to a hangover.
It takes some doing, but he manages to piece himself together enough to stagger to his laptop and get his journalling out. He updates his Chelmsford journal and then does the same for his daylist, writing out the order he’d had his days in. It’s a good use of time as he waits for the paracetemol to kick in and when he finishes, there’s nothing else for it.
He looks through London news with a sense of dread. Only Sherlock could have solved that case. Only Sherlock would know or care about Carl Powers.
Which is how John realizes. Because the explosion isn’t there, because no one blasted Baker Street in this world without Sherlock. No one faked a gas explosion to draw Sherlock out to play.
Until now, John’s lives may have been different, but his worlds have been the same. John’s actions don’t mean much, have barely any weight, almost negligible change. He saves lives, yes, but he’s yet to truly change events. He’s not big enough, nothing special.
Sherlock, on the other hand....
John’s thoughts are interrupted by a knock at the door. He answers it and there’s Marta, ready for work. John... isn’t.
She grins at him. “Late night last night?”
Something drops inside John’s head and he thinks he knows what. It’s the other shoe.
“You knew,” he says. His voice sounds blank, but that’s not because he’s numb. He’s anything but. “You let me walk right into that.”
Marta blinks, her grin falling away. “Thought you were tired of being single.”
“Girlfriend!” John yells. “What part of ‘get a girlfriend’ involves a gay bloke?”
She peers at him like he’s gone mental. “Are you having some sort of sexual crisis?”
“No,” he snaps. “Yes. I don’t know. I probably shouldn’t have it in the garden.”
She follows him inside and hops up on the counter of his kitchen, ignoring some perfectly serviceable chairs. Her movements are a bit like Sherlock’s for all her hair and face are much like Molly’s, and John has this strange moment of picturing those two having Marta as their kid. It doesn’t calm John in the slightest.
“You okay?” she asks.
“I don’t want to date Jake,” John says. He can’t seem to unclench his fists. “I don’t want to be set up on random dates with random blokes.”
Marta sighs. “I tried to tell Rache’.”
And there it is, that’s the mortifying bit. The insult to hangover injury. The woman John was considering tried to set him up with her brother. “What’d you tell her?”
“That blokes being gay doesn’t mean they’ll like each other.”
“I’m not gay.”
She makes a face. “Bi, sorry.”
John gapes at her.
He gapes at her, and this is not his life. There’s no London, no army, no Sherlock. This is not his life. He barely knows this woman and she certainly doesn’t know him.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asks.
It’s the most ridiculous question he’s ever heard. He swallows back his first answer, and the second, and particularly the third, and says, “I’m fine.”
She clearly doesn’t believe him.
“I’m- I’ll hurry up so we won’t be late,” he tells her. “You....” He gestures vaguely at nothing in particular.
“I’ll make toast, you shower,” she says. “Shoo.” She flaps her hands at him.
Not only does she make and butter the toast, she spreads on just the perfect amount of Marmite and holds the toast for him while he drives. His body surprises him with its automatic reactions, knowing how to eat toast out of Marta’s hands while driving. It feels almost practiced.
“We do this much too often,” he can only conclude. “Why aren’t we dating? It would be so much easier than the rest of all... this.” It’s an idle, joking question and he gestures vaguely, one hand on the wheel.
“Well, you did shag my brother,” she says.
“For which I apologize,” John says, tone still half-joking. Much like his driving instincts, it’s an automatic response, which is fortunate. Otherwise he probably would have choked immediately before crashing the car. Then he adds, “How long have I been apologizing for that, anyway?”
“Not long enough,” Marta says, unhelpful.
They get to the hospital and John spends the day avoiding Rachel between surgeries and surviving the aneurysm Jake’s texts threaten to give him. It’s not too difficult.
The avoiding Rachel part, anyway.
In Afghanistan, there are men everywhere. There are women, yes, but it’s mostly men, and he isn’t attracted to a single one of them. Not even the women, come to think of it, presumably because he’s mentally marked off everyone as a patient.
Not gay.
He wakes up to another morning in Chelmsford and is immediately in a terrible mood. He needs to get back to Sherlock. There’s a bomber on the loose.
There’s also a raging Rachel on the loose, which is somehow more immediately terrifying than Semtex-coated hostages. Probably because he’s the hostage now, hauled away to a side hall for her to hiss at him.
“You told my brother you were straight?”
“No idea,” John says, because hell if he knows the right answer to that question. “I was pretty drunk.”
“Fine,” she snaps. “Just call him back. He thinks you hate him or something.”
She lets him return to the canteen and his lunch at that point, but she sits there glaring at him until he takes out his mobile.
Sorry, he types. Have stuff going on at the moment. No time for a relationship.
After he sends it, Rachel swipes his mobile, reads his sent message, and seems to want to kill him only slightly less.
The text is answered later that night, the buzz of John’s mobile making him jump.
Is that an opening for fuckbuddies or a serious rejection? because im a better kisser sober.
Rejection, John types back, which looks harsh and blunt, largely because it is. That’s the reason why he adds, but youre already a fantastic kisser drunk.
<3, Jake answers.
First thing in the morning, he and Sherlock go to New Scotland Yard. Then there’s a car, the obligatory gay joke from Donovan, and John would much rather focus on the mystery of the day. Once again, Sherlock decidedly doesn’t need him, but he does haul John about. John knows his role well, leading conversations until Sherlock finds a direction to take charge in.
He goes back to the surgery, assures Sarah he’s all right, and neglects to mention that he may have drunkenly cheated on her with a bloke in a parallel universe.
Sherlock calls him just as his shift is up, and they meet Lestrade so Sherlock can show off the neat solution he’s found to the bomber’s second puzzle.
They go home, Sherlock enters the answer on John’s laptop, and that’s that. They don’t relax that evening, not really, Sherlock ruffling up his hair as if he could shake the answers out of his skull. Heating up the remains of two-day-old take-away, John watches his flatmate, watches this hectic, remarkable man, and feels helpless in more ways than he could ever define.
He thinks, at first, desperately, that he’s finally begun to have nightmares again.
It’s a long day in Afghanistan.
Derek and his ex-wife have a shouting match over the phone. It’s long and involved, petty and stupid. Regardless of where John goes in the flat, how many doors they shut between them, he can hear it. Save for Derek’s sobriety, it reminds John of his parents.
There’s a lot of “My daughter” being flung about too, but in this case, no one yells anything about anyone being gay.
John goes outside, calls Harry to say he loves her, and spends the next half-hour convincing her he isn’t dying. He winds up hating her more than a bit, because - and here is the important bit - she’s still his stupid little sister. She makes Sherlock look like an absolute saint sometimes. Terrifying, but true. He has no idea how Clara managed.
That night, Derek yells at him for his incessant keyboard tapping. John merely does it louder, wearing out F5 until Sherlock posts.
They spend the night fuming at opposite ends of the flat.
John opens the fridge, stares into a dead man’s closed eyes, and loses it.
Sherlock just stands there, all floppy hair and weighing eyes, pale fingers endlessly turning over that blasted pink phone. All the abuse John can shout at him, Sherlock endures. No, not endures. He considers it, parses it. He splits the shouting apart into its component pieces and assembles it back together. He makes John feel stupid, which is absurd, which is inevitable, because Sherlock makes everyone feel stupid. Sherlock delights in making everyone feel stupid, except, no, he doesn’t, and now John feels vicious and cruel, as well as like an idiot.
He shouts anyway. There is a head in their fridge. There is a head in their fridge. It’s been there forever and John wants it gone.
Eventually, John runs out of air.
He stands there, shaking, so confused and enraged, and Sherlock says, “Three days.” He says it simply, not gently. He’s blunt and unchanged, entirely unaffected by John’s ranting and obscenities.
John says, “What.” Irritation chokes his throat, won’t let him say more.
“The head has been in the refrigerator for three days,” Sherlock tells him. “I was going to dispose of it two days ago, before you came home from Sarah’s, but after the explosion, Mycroft wouldn’t stop badgering me. Since then-” he holds up the pink phone, demonstration, not accusation “-I have been busy.”
It hurts not to fight. To be ready for it, to fist his hands or load his gun, to engage and discover nothing to engage with. It hurts not to fight, to surrender, but this is something else. This isn’t backing down. It’s nothing like accepting the inevitable either, although of course Sherlock is right. This is the opposite of pain.
Sherlock speaks and something goes out of John. Something leaves him, and though John doesn’t know what it is, he’s glad to be rid of it.
He sags back against the counter, tired and drained, and for the first time in days, he can breathe.
He closes his eyes, gulping in air. His chapped lips burn. His chest heaves.
“John?” The first hint of emotion, such terribly slight concern.
“Afghanistan,” John says and can say no more.
“Ah,” Sherlock says, as if he knows, as if he knows. “Bombs.”
He nods, eyes tight shut. He swallows thickly, struggling for a moment, just for a moment, with memory. The explosions, the shrapnel, the wreckage. He’d cut his hand, had fumbled where no fumbling was allowed, clumsy around his own bandage. He could have done better. He should have done better.
When he stops shaking, he opens his eyes.
Sherlock hasn’t moved.
The man is a statue. His grey gaze never falters, never strays. When he speaks, it’s almost startling. “Let’s go out for breakfast,” Sherlock says.
“Not hungry,” John replies, voice rough.
“That’s really too bad,” Sherlock tells him, pocketing the pink phone. “One of us ought to eat and it’s not going to be me.”
John lets himself be carried away in Sherlock’s rising tide. In that moment, he’d let himself be pulled under, would gladly drown. Sherlock holds his jacket for him, a gesture of impatience, not assistance. Jacket on, those hands settle momentarily upon his shoulders, and the feeling tears through John, worse than a gunshot, worse than any wound, worth any wound.
He’s lightheaded with gratitude, numb except for that one feeling. It twists into him, sends his nerves tingling as he walks after Sherlock, trailing that tall figure down streets and through doors. They sit, Sherlock speaks, and all John’s tired mind can understand is baritone safety.
There’s a plate in front of him. John picks up a fork to see Sherlock smile, faintly, the sight perhaps nothing more than hopeful illusion. He eats and the illusion strengthens until Sherlock goes back to playing with that damn phone.
“Feeling better?” Sherlock asks when the bomber doesn’t text.
John blames it on the pacing of their days, on two challenges and not stopping for breath. It may be Sherlock who does the work, but it’s still John who can’t breathe.
He even tells Sherlock why, in a way. Because the bomber is doing this all for Sherlock, only for Sherlock. Everything has been geared toward him, and none of it happens without him. Somewhere out there, two somewheres out there, a mad bomber is sitting on his plots with no one to toy with, no Sherlock to stop him. It’s always the brilliant ones who are desperate to be caught, or so Sherlock says. What does that make their bomber?
Besides a sick bastard, of course. John watches Sherlock, phone held up to his ear, grey eyes locked on John’s blue as the newest hostage speaks. He doesn’t know what’s being said, only how it changes Sherlock’s face, how Sherlock glances away from him in the end, eyes wide with horror.
That helplessness returns, slinks its way into John’s chest only to be clawed out by sheer bloody-mindedness. John looks at him and knows, whatever it could be, whatever is asked, there is nothing he wouldn’t do for this man, nothing he wouldn’t attempt.
If it’s not enough, that’s really too bad. John hasn’t played by reality’s rules in ages and isn’t about to start now.
There is something exceptionally skeevy about this man. John immediately decides that while Jacob Brown might have gotten away with quite a few liberties, Kenny Prince is getting none whatsoever.
Is there a sign on John’s back? Gay Men, Molest Here? Because this is absurd.
He leaves laughing, really laughing, feeling brilliant, and even if Sherlock soon puts a stop to that, John doesn’t care. That was hilarious.
Standing next to him, watching the side of his face, John knows when the call goes wrong. He knows when the call cuts out.
Lestrade receives the report almost immediately, tells them where before he knows the who. The woman in the flat was transplanted there, not a resident. The remains aren’t enough to guess at a name. Lestrade tells them to go home, tells Sherlock it wasn’t his fault.
The closer they get to Baker Street, the further Sherlock retreats into himself. The man walks right past Mrs. Hudson, leaving John to explain, and when John gets up to the flat, Sherlock’s searching through the kitchen.
“What have you done with the bin bags?” he asks John, crouching down, staring into a cabinet beneath the counter. He’s not even close to where the bin bags go.
It takes John a second to remember the head. “Leave it,” John says.
“But-”
“Leave it.” His hand fits neatly on Sherlock’s thin shoulder. “It’s fine.”
Sherlock holds very still, then sighs. He remains on the floor, not quite steady, leaning toward John’s leg. “It’s possible I need to eat,” Sherlock says.
“It has been three days,” John agrees, thumb brushing over tight fabric. He waits for Sherlock to move, to brush him off and walk away, but Sherlock never does. It’s not hard to guess why. “If you stand up, are you going to fall over?”
“Most likely,” Sherlock agrees.
“Okay,” John says. “You stay down there, I’ll make risotto.”
Sherlock looks up at him at that, his entire face narrowed in confusion. “Since when do you make risotto?”
“Since remembering we have rice and Oxo cubes,” John answers, unable to say Since Derek taught me. There’s also cheese for it and he thinks they might still have some frozen veg in the freezer, next to the frozen raccoon John has steadfastly not inquired into. “Poor man’s risotto. Give me twenty minutes.”
They eat sitting on the floor of the kitchen, their backs against the counter.
“This is good,” Sherlock says with some surprise. “Simple, but good.”
“Not the healthiest,” John feels obligated to say, Derek’s recipe not complete without Derek’s tagline.
Watching Sherlock eat isn’t quite as strange as watching him produce crocodile tears, but it is close. Less unnerving, though, and so John has no qualms about how he might be staring. Steam curls from his fork, a last-moment escape from Sherlock’s mouth. It makes John wonder about Sherlock smoking, the ruined air from his lungs painted visible, grey as his eyes and rising from pink lips. He’s glad the man’s on nicotine patches now, but the image remains, an adaptation of Sherlock’s white winter breaths.
“If I have to eat, so do you,” Sherlock reminds him.
“Unlike some idiots, I choose not to burn my tongue off,” John replies.
Sherlock finishes eating first, actually finishes. He prods at John’s arm with his empty bowl. “More.”
It takes John a moment to recover from sheer confusion. Then he says, “Get it yourself.”
“I’ll fall over, remember?”
“Lazy bastard.”
“Always.”
John rolls his eyes, takes the bowl and stands up. “Honestly,” he says. He spoons a bit more into Sherlock’s bowl, keeping the portion small. Sitting back down, legs crossed rather than stretched out before him, his knee settles against Sherlock’s thigh. He hands the bowl over, warning, “Keep going on like this and you’ll end up like Mycroft.”
“Never,” Sherlock swears. “If I have to kill you if you go senile, then you have to kill me if that happens.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Fine,” Sherlock huffs. “I’ll work out something else.” He eats slowly now, small forkfuls of rice and peas. He chews deliberately, eyes fixed straight ahead at their kitchen table. “Ask it,” he says abruptly. “Whatever you’re staring at me for, ask it.”
“Was there any way to save her?”
“No,” Sherlock says, the answer immediate. “She thought she was helping me by telling me about his voice. I didn’t have time to convince her otherwise, I did try.”
“I know,” John says. “I know you tried, I was there. I just meant.... I don’t know. For next time. Tomorrow, I mean. If we can trace the call, find out where the hostage is...”
Sherlock looks at him.
“...then the hostage is detonated,” John finishes for himself.
“Yes,” Sherlock agrees.
Silence trickles in between them, fills them up and is filled up in turn. Downstairs, through the floorboards, he can hear Mrs. Hudson bustle about. The fridge makes its noises, the plumbing its natural company. Cars pass by below their broken windows. Sherlock’s breaths disappear into his, their breathing synced.
“I didn’t know you could cook,” Sherlock says.
“I can cook.”
“Yes, but I didn’t know.” As if insulted, as if John has willingly withheld the secrets of the universe from him.
Which, John supposes, he sort of has. “I just don’t cook in your lab area, that’s all.”
“Half of it is still your kitchen.”
“It’s not my half that stops me, it’s the half you keep on top of it.”
Sherlock smiles a little, just a little, but that soon stops. Looking down, he begins to roll the peas out of the rice, piling them on the side.
John watches, chewing slowly, needing this to last. “You’re not going to eat those, are you?”
“No,” Sherlock agrees.
“Eat your veg.” Not much of a command, not at all. Watching Sherlock sort peas and rice is oddly hypnotic.
Once Sherlock has all the peas separated out, he lifts his bowl over John’s and proceeds to scrape every remaining trace of veg onto John’s dinner. “Can’t. Now it’s yours.”
“Prat.”
“Eat your veg, John.”
John laughs, but obeys. Halfway through a mouthful, a yawn takes him, tries to crack his jaw.
“Very attractive,” Sherlock drawls.
John snaps his mouth shut. He soldiers on through the remainder of his meal only to have Sherlock swap bowls with him, room temperature rice bound in cheese, soaked in sodium and artificial chicken flavouring. John eats on. Without meaning to, he yawns again, tries to grit his teeth through it.
“I don’t mind,” Sherlock says.
“Hm?”
“If you want to rest,” Sherlock clarifies. “I don’t mind.”
“Well, I do,” John replies and he forks the remainder of the risotto in his mouth. Sherlock watches him. Which is fine, turnabout being fair game.
Finished, John stacks the bowls and leaves them on the floor, forks settled on top. The silence returns, soft and slow. They’re in the eye of the storm, the damage done and more yet to come. John keeps yawning however hard he tries to bite his lip.
“You need sleep,” Sherlock tells him, his voice the same as it was this morning. This time, instead of drawing out the pain, it saturates him with it. It hurts so bright, a white flash behind the rush of red.
“You’ve never cared before,” John replies, more truthful than cruel. More wondering.
“I’ll need you tomorrow,” Sherlock explains.
John accepts that, more hope than belief. “I know.”
“If it will help,” Sherlock begins, speaking with stolen hesitancy, tentative as a stranger, “I could keep an eye on you. Wake you if there’s a repeat of last night.”
“It doesn’t work that way.” Premature waking has never interrupted his days. To wake, he must first sleep. “I know that doesn’t make sense, but that’s how it is.”
“All the same,” Sherlock says.
John picks up the bowls and stands. He puts them in the sink.
Sherlock’s hand touches his knee. “John,” he says.
Helping him stand is the most natural thing in the world, a practised motion for all its novelty. For a moment, a mere instant, Sherlock sways, eyes wide and fighting to focus. He holds onto John and John holds onto him, because he knows exactly how it feels.
“I don’t want to sleep,” John says, watching the fog clear away from Sherlock’s eyes. “I want to be awake, all the time, right here.”
“A compelling thought, isn’t it?” Sherlock muses, dizzy, breathless from it. His grip on John’s arms is a hard one. It slackens only to tighten, harder than before.
“I think about it all the time,” John confesses. “Every day. You’ve no idea.”
“I think I might.” He doesn’t, but he means it. There in his eyes, focused on John’s, on John, he means it.
“I don’t want to go away anymore.” He wants this, just this, because this is more than enough and he’s tired of waiting for it. This is the best of all worlds. He’s seen them, he knows. “No more.”
Sherlock’s fingers curl around his elbows, grip him to the bone. “Afghanistan is over,” Sherlock tells him, and John laughs to keep from crying.
“You’re wrong.” He shouldn’t be grinning, but he is.
“I’m not.”
“You are,” John insists, “but that’s all right.”
Sherlock says nothing, mouth open and awaiting words. John can see his teeth, a flicker of his tongue. John can hear his silence.
“It’s fine,” John says. “I’m fine.”
“You’re lying,” Sherlock says.
“Yes, and?”
Sherlock sighs at him, as if John is the difficult one. His hands drift down from John’s arms, fall away like pale autumn leaves. “And when you wake,” Sherlock says, “I’ll still be here. If that helps.”
“It would,” John admits, releasing him in return. Sherlock’s arms are so thin, fit so easily in John’s small hands. Letting go is like disassembling a puzzle, removing curves and edges from edges and curves, like ruining something painstakingly repaired.
“All right then,” Sherlock says.
John goes to bed, still wrapped in baritone safety.
He wakes touching his fingers to his wrists, arms folded across his chest. Fingertips touch leather, touch an analogue watch, and John’s heart soars before it breaks, before he discovers the band is closed around his right wrist, not the left. Afghanistan, Afghanistan again, a warzone in a world where Sherlock Holmes is dead.
That perfect, beautiful liar.
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