London Werewolves [1/2]
Summary: There were werewolves in London. John had no idea how many, but he knew they were there. People walked past them during the day, utterly oblivious. Perhaps some of them were living in his very building, and he didn’t know.
Written for mahmfic for the April Swap (Chosen trope: werewolf fic.)
Part I
Being back in London felt surreal. People hurrying to work early in the morning, the smell of the rain, the hustle of the city - everything felt alien. It was as if John had left London for three decades instead of three years, and the city he’d come back to was very different from the city he remembered. He drifted through London like a ghost, and at night he dreamed.
Memories he’d tried to suppress during the day took hold of his brain, and without the aid of light and consciousness he found himself unable to fend them off. He laid down, as frightened and helpless as he had been months ago, the moment of the attack. He always tried to resist the pull of sleep but there were only so many days a man could remain awake, and eventually he slipped under.
Exhaustion never granted him a dreamless rest. Behind his eyelids shadows took mysterious shapes. Lights coming from the street, reflected on his window, glinted in the dark like yellow eyes.
He heard the howls in the distance.
“You’re okay,” John repeated over and over, pressing a soaked gauze against Ryan’s ripped stomach. Blood oozed out, thick and warm, staining the sand black.
“You’ll be all right,” John kept repeating, and he knew he wasn’t making sense, he knew there was no way Ryan would ever be all right again, but for some reason it was important he kept repeating it, and even if Ryan was certainly going to die, at least John could say that he had tried, he had tried.
“You’ll be all right, mate,” John repeated, pressing on Ryan’s stomach so hard that his hands slipped inside. “I’ve got you.”
The howls sounded closer now but John couldn’t get up, he could not turn.
“It’s okay,” John lied, eyes fixed on Ryan’s white face.
Ryan gasped like a man about to drown. His eyes snapped open just as a set of sharp teeth sank deep into John’s shoulder, and they were filled with horror.
John woke up with an echoing gasp, clutching his wounded shoulder, a scream stuck in his throat. His vest was clinging to his torso and his back, and it took him a frightened few seconds to realize that it was sweat and not blood slicking his skin, pooling in the hollow of his neck.
He dragged himself upright, sitting with his back against the wall. His heart was thudding madly in his chest, his hands were shaking. He couldn’t breathe. He got up on unsteady legs to open the window, inhaling the cold air of the night in large gulps. Little by little his heart slowed down but the overwhelming sense of anxiety remained, wedged in his ribcage, a heavy weight against his lungs.
He leaned with his forehead against the window glass. A black cloud unraveled in airy wisps, and from between its ragged edges the moon peeked with her white, glowing face. Full moon.
John shivered. There were werewolves in London. He had no idea how many, but he knew they were there. People walked past them during the day, utterly oblivious. Perhaps some of them were living in his very building, and he didn’t know. Bile rose in his throat. He closed the blinds of the window, trying to keep the odious face of the moon out of his sight and out of his thoughts.
John met Mike Stamford as he was limping home after yet another pointless session with his therapist.
“John,” a voice called. “John Watson?”
John turned towards the bench he’d just walked past, saw a man with glasses and a round familiar face.
“Stamford,” the man said, pointing at himself. “Mike Stamford? We were at Bart’s together.”
“Yes, sorry, Mike! Hello,” John replied, though he hadn’t recognized him at first, and moved his cane from his right hand to the other to shake Mike’s proffered hand.
“I heard you were abroad somewhere, getting shot at! What happened?” Mike asked, smiling.
John looked down at his cane and his lame leg with a grimace.
“Well,” John said. “I got shot.”
The lie slipped easily enough from his lips and Mike, too mortified by his tactless question, didn’t press him for details.
Mike asked John if he could stop for a coffee and a bit of a chat, and thought John didn’t really feel like it, he thought declining the invitation would be too rude. It wasn’t like he had anything else to do, at any rate.
They sat on a bench and John asked Mike a few questions about his wife and his job at Bart’s, but mostly he let Mike ramble on, and Mike seemed happy enough to do more than his share of talking to fill in John’s silence. When Mike asked him where he was staying, John told him about his tiny flat, the only thing he could afford on his army pension. He supposed he could always look for another place somewhere that wasn’t London but he’d always loved the city, and despite his present sense of alienation he doubted he would feel better in another place.
“Can’t you get, I don’t know, a flatshare or something?” Mike suggested.
John snorted. “Come on,” he said. “Who would want me for a flatmate?”
Mike smiled to himself, seemingly amused.
“What?”
“You’re the second person to say that to me today.”
John turned to look at him. “Who was the first?”
The first, as it turned out, had been some bloke named Sherlock Holmes. Mike took John to one of the labs at Bart’s, where they found the man in question in the middle of some experiment. A man of science, it seemed. Tall, thin, with piercing eyes and quick hands, he moved around the lab with smooth elegance. He looked younger than John had imagined.
“Afghanistan or Iraq?” were the first words he spoke to John.
“Sorry?”
“Afghanistan or Iraq, which was it?” the man asked, and turned to look directly at John for the first time with inquisitive gray eyes.
“Afghanistan,” John stammered, confused.
The man proceeded to tell John that he played the violin when he was thinking, sometimes he didn’t talk for days, and that he’d got his eye on a nice place in central London.
“Together we should be able to afford it. We’ll meet there tomorrow evening at seven o’ clock,” he announced, before dashing out of the lab to retrieve a riding crop he had left in the morgue. (John didn’t even try to puzzle out the meaning of that sentence because it made absolutely no sense.)
He threw his name at John almost as an afterthought, just as he was walking out of the room. “The name is Sherlock Holmes, and the address is 221B, Baker Street. Afternoon!”
John just stood there, bewildered, staring at the door.
No sane person would think of sharing a flat with a manic man who seemed to ignore the basic rules of common courtesy and looked more than a bit barmy - but John had never thought of himself as particularly sensible, and it was the only interesting thing it’d happened to him in months, so when he got home he googled the man’s name (there couldn’t be that many ‘Sherlock Holmes’s in London) and was lucky enough to find a website.
“The Science of Deduction.” This Sherlock Holmes seemed to be some sort of… detective? Hard to tell. Apparently the man thought he had elevated the “art of deduction” to a science. The website was partly as pretentious as its title and partly boring, with ranting essays about very random topics, such as different types of natural fibres or the classification of plant-derived poisons. One didn’t have to look very hard to see the sparks of brilliance, however, and John found he was intrigued despite himself.
The flat Sherlock had found was actually very nice and so was Mrs Hudson, the landlady. Sherlock had apparently decided to move straight in - overflowing boxes were strewn across the living room, there was a human skull on the mantelpiece and beakers and vials cluttered the kitchen table, but John didn’t really mind. It was… almost nice, a flat that actually looked lived in for a change.
“Consulting detective”, that was Sherlock’s job, as he prickly informed John. The only one in the world, too. He’d asked John to accompany him to a crime scene, saying his opinion as a medical man might be useful.
“Don’t they have people on Forensics?” John had asked.
“I don’t work with them,” Sherlock had replied cryptically.
And Sherlock on a crime scene was… brilliant. There was no other word for it. If John had thought most of what Sherlock had written on his website was just pretentious boasting, he soon changed his mind when he saw how the man could read clues no one else saw, and how he could reconstruct a whole story from the smallest mark.
“You make it sound like some magic trick. Anyone could do it if only they paid attention to what’s under their nose,” Sherlock told John when he expressed his amazement. “I explained you how I deduced everything I told you about your brother.”
Indeed, Sherlock had somehow read Harry’s drinking habits on John’s phone, and he’d even managed to deduce Harry and Clara’s recent divorce. That didn’t mean he’d got everything right.
“Not my brother,” John said, trying to hide his amused smirk at Sherlock’s incredulous expression. “Harry’s short for Harriet.”
“Ah,” Sherlock said. “There’s always something.”
Living with Sherlock was… something else.
221B was in a state of constant chaos. Old papers and magazines were scattered around the living room (John picked them up and tried to stack them in a neat pile every now and then, but they never stayed that way for long), trinkets and weird objects of every sort - apparently souvenirs of old cases - adorned the mantelpiece and the bookshelves. Sherlock always had some experiment going on and seemed to treat the kitchen as his personal lab. John could put up with the microscope and all the equipment sitting on the kitchen table, but had to draw the line at poisonous compounds stored in the cupboard into unassuming boxes, especially when they looked an awful lot like sugar or salt or anything John might be tempted to put into their food.
Sherlock was also in the habit of keeping human body parts he’d brought home from the morgue in their fridge - after much quarrelling (and after John had found a head in there) Sherlock had agreed to keep them all in the lower shelf, and to label any specimen that looked even vaguely edible.
Mrs Hudson seemed unruffled both by the mess in their flat and by Sherlock’s manners, and seemed actually delighted that Sherlock had managed to find himself a flatmate “as nice as John.”
There were often people coming and going - Detective Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard sometimes popped in to ask for Sherlock’s help or advice, and on top of the work he got from helping the police, Sherlock accepted private clients when he deemed their cases interesting enough.
Most of these clients came from John’s own blog, though Sherlock was reluctant to admit it. John’s therapist had insisted he write about his life after being invalidated home from the war, and John had devoted himself to writing about Sherlock’s most interesting cases. He was still half-heartedly looking for a job but now he often accompanied Sherlock on crime scenes and had become a sort of assistant - and since Sherlock’s work was, in John’s opinion, more fascinating than anything else going on in his life, writing about it seemed the most logical conclusion.
“People read this?” Sherlock had asked in disbelief, scrunching his nose as he read John’s latest blog entry. He didn’t think John much of a writer and had said so in more than one occasion, berating him for omitting details he considered essential, or for not describing Sherlock’s deductive process thoroughly enough.
“No one wants to read four paragraphs of you going on and on about bloodstain pattern analysis or different types of tobacco ash,” had retorted John, and Sherlock had left the room in a huff.
It hadn’t taken John long to learn that Sherlock was prone to sulking and throwing temper tantrums. It was very much like living with an overgrown toddler at times. Sherlock’s mind, brilliant as it was, seemed to require constant entertainment. Cases and experiments were usually enough to keep Sherlock busy, but when criminals were lying low and private clients failed to provide their share of interesting cases, Sherlock fell victim to sudden bouts of apathy. Sometimes he turned to his beloved violin - he could be an excellent player, John had found, but Sherlock in an irritable mood meant John would be subjected to a lot of screeching and plaintive noises, usually in the dead of night or the early hours of the morning.
John suspected anyone else would’ve left after barely a week - and yet, he thought sharing a flat with Sherlock had been the best decision he could’ve taken. Now he felt he could be of some use at least, and well, life with Sherlock Holmes was anything but boring.
Although he couldn’t understand at first why Sherlock would want him to come along to assist him on his cases - he hardly needed John’s input to solve them, and he seemed to use John as a mere sounding board most of the time - it had become clear that Sherlock valued his presence, rather than tolerate him as he did almost everyone else, Mrs Hudson and Lestrade being the only exceptions that John could think of.
Sherlock had welcomed John’s interest in his work with an eagerness that made John think he’d been just as lonely as he was before moving in to Baker Street, and John, who was always so reserved and guarded, had come to consider this strange man a friend rather than a mere flatmate in a ridiculously short time.
That didn’t mean Sherlock didn’t still behave like a colossal git, sometimes.
One day, during one of Sherlock’s attacks of boredom, John decided to go to Tesco, thinking it would be better to leave the flat for a while. He told Sherlock he would be back in a couple of hours, thinking he might as well take walk (Sherlock’s only reply was an irritated grunt) and left. Halfway down Marylebone Road though, John realized he’d left his wallet home and had to walk back. He opened the door of the flat warily, bracing himself for whatever awful thing Sherlock might be doing to find relief from the oppressing ennui - but nothing could have prepared him for the sight that welcomed him when he entered the living room.
Curled on their sofa, there was a wolf.
No, not a wolf, John corrected himself - a werewolf. The horrifying image of those beasts had been branded in his brain ever since the day of the attack, and John could have recognized a werewolf anywhere. Bigger than a normal wolf - and also stronger, quicker and deadlier, as John knew first-hand.
The black ball of fur stirred and uncurled, and the beast raised its head. Big yellow eyes fixed on John’s face.
John didn’t move. He couldn’t move. He could barely breathe. His heart was beating so fast it hurt and its wild beats were the only thing John could hear - for an horrifying moment he thought his heart might explode in his chest.
The beast blinked at John and gave a yelp. Then it hopped off the sofa, and looked for a second as if it was trying to stand on its hind legs. John watched, petrified, as the body of the wolf lengthened and its fur seemed to retreat under its skin. He had never seen a werewolf’s transformation, and in his shocked state he would have found it hard to pay any attention to the process, but as it happened it was so quick it seemed to take place literally in the bat of an eye. One second John was staring at a huge black werewolf, the next at the stark naked body of his flatmate.
John could do nothing but stare.
“John,” Sherlock said, sounding surprised and looking slightly mortified. “Excuse me for a second.”
And then he gave John an awkward nod, as he might have done to greet an acquaintance he’d crossed on the street, and walked out of the living room.
John didn’t move.
A werewolf. He’d been living under the same roof as a werewolf. John’s leg started throbbing, and he plopped into his chair because he feared it wouldn’t hold him up for much longer.
He rubbed his hands on his face, trying to get his breathing under control.
“Drink this,” Sherlock said and John, startled into looking up, saw that Sherlock was standing in front of him, holding a glass of water. Had he always moved so silently?
“Thanks,” John said mechanically, accepting the glass, but he didn’t drink.
He looked up at Sherlock, who was now wearing a t-shit and one of his numerous dressing gowns. He looked… like usual. He didn’t know why he would expect him to look any different.
Some water splashed on John’s trousers, and he looked down at his hand. It was shaking.
He put the glass on the floor, beside his chair. Sherlock fidgeted with the belt of his gown, then sat down too, facing John.
“So,” Sherlock said. “I imagine you’ve got questions.”
John laughed. It was a nervous laugh, he couldn’t help it, and then clasped a hand over his mouth. Sherlock’s tense expression turned to one of concern.
“You,” John said, his voice unsteady. He started again. “You’re a werewolf.”
“Yes,” Sherlock said. “I think that’s pretty obvious now.”
“You’re a werewolf,” John said again, as if repeating it might give the statement some sense.
Sherlock said nothing but raised both his eyebrows, as if waiting for John to say something sensible.
“You never said.”
“It never seemed relevant.”
“Relevant!” John almost gasped. “Jesus, Sherlock, we share a flat. I’d say that’s the first thing you should have mentioned.”
Sherlock straightened in his chair. “I don’t see why,” he said in a defensive tone.
“Oh, do you want me to give you a list?”
“Very well,” Sherlock retorted, “perhaps after I’ve given you mine.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry to have upset you,” Sherlock said, and he actually sounded like he meant it. John had never heard Sherlock apologize - not even for the body parts in the fridge - and the words made him forget what he wanted to say for a moment.
“I didn’t intend for you to find out this way,” Sherlock went on while John was silent. “But I never thought I could keep it a secret forever, nor did I plan to. I was going to tell you, eventually.”
“Why not straight away?” John said. “Potential flatmates should know the worst, remember?”
It wasn’t a tactful thing to say but John was too shaken to care. Sherlock’s expression closed off.
“Hardly the worst,” Sherlock said. “This doesn’t make me neither better nor worse than the man you already know.”
“You don’t see why I might have a problem with that?” John asked.
“I do,” answered Sherlock, “which is why I didn’t tell you. Would you have accepted to meet me at Baker Street, had you known I was a werewolf?”
The answer must have been written plainly on John’s face because Sherlock shook his head with a bitter smile.
“No matter how integrated we seem to be, I’ve come to expect some prejudice,” he said. “I don’t think it was that unreasonable to want you to give me a fair chance.”
John didn’t know what to say. The shock was wearing off, leaving place to a sense of anger he wasn’t sure was justified. He bent to pick up his glass from the floor, drinking the water in two large gulps.
“Are you going to move out?” Sherlock asked. He posed the question in a carefully neutral tone and his face remained unreadable, but John knew him well enough to recognize the tension his ramrod straight back betrayed.
“You put a human head in the fridge and I’m still here,” John replied. “I hardly think you can do worse.”
Sherlock’s looked surprised, and then his lips twitched, and John couldn’t help but smile.
They remained silent for a few minutes, but there wasn’t as much tension in the room as there had been just a moment before. John cleared his throat.
“So…” he began.
“I wasn’t turned,” Sherlock cut in.
“Sorry?”
“I’m a werewolf by blood. I was born this way, which means I have complete control over my transformations. A full moon has no real effect on me, in case you were worrying about that.”
“Oh.” John nodded. Of course, John had been too stunned to connect the dots, but it was obvious now that Sherlock had pointed it out. Werewolves that had been turned couldn’t transform at will, but only during a full moon, unlike born werewolves - and it seemed that Sherlock could transform effortlessly whenever he wished to. John frowned as a thought suddenly occurred to him.
“Your brother?” John asked. He had met Mycroft, and he was just as brilliant as his brother, but infinitely more scary when he wanted to be. The idea that Mycroft might also be a werewolf was… disturbing, somehow.
Sherlock grimaced. “God, no,” he said. “Just me, and my father. The only way in which we were ever alike.”
“Are there others?” John asked. He winced inwardly at the anxious tone of the question.
“What, in my family? London? The world?” Sherlock said, teasingly.
John huffed a laugh. “I mean… people we know.”
Sherlock thought about it for a few seconds. “Yes,” he said.
John waited.
“It seems hardly fair to tell you,” Sherlock said, and got to his feet.
“Oh, come on,” John complained.
Sherlock walked into the kitchen, then went back to John and dropped his wallet into his lap.
“I believe you were on your way to Tesco,” he said, and although he wasn’t hostile it was as clear a dismissal as any, “and I’ve got a case to work on. See you later.”
Neither of them said more about the subject, that day. John walked around Tesco almost in a daze, and couldn’t stop thinking about Sherlock’s revelation. Had there been clues he had missed? He had noticed that despite his thin frame Sherlock possessed a kind of wiry strength, but he had never given it much thought. Now that he thought about it, he didn’t think he’d ever seen Sherlock properly tired out. He was never out of breath when they were running after criminals, he slept only a few hours per night, and John had no idea where he found all the energy that kept him going, given how little he usually ate. Well, it looked like John had found the answer to that question.
When he got back to Baker Street, Sherlock was sitting at the kitchen table, busy with what looked like an extremely delicate experiment, and John didn’t think it wise to disturb him. When Sherlock looked like that, John always feared a slip of hand might be enough to blow up the entire flat - so he stored the groceries away in silence and then retired to the living room, where he tried to work on a new post for his blog. The day then progressed just like usual, so much so that John almost forgot the surreal conversation he’d had with Sherlock just a couple of hours before.
Then there was an exultant cry from the kitchen, and Sherlock bounced into the living room with a manic grin, telling John he’d solved the case. He’d already wrapped himself in his big coat and scarf before the words had a chance to sink in, and Sherlock had to frogmarch a confused John to Scotland Yard while prattling on about his incredible breakthrough.
He could hear the wolves howl in the distance.
“You’ll be all right,” John told Ryan, though his life was bleeding out and his heart was slowing down.
Under the cover of darkness, the wolves were approaching on silent feet.
“Ryan,” John pleaded. “Stay with me.”
A beast growled ominously behind John’s back. Claws of steel ripped through his uniform just before vicious teeth snapped closed around his shoulder.
John woke up. His heart was racing and he was drenched in sweat, as always. He was in his own bed, at Baker Street, safe in London. He brought a shaking hand to his face and pressed it against his eyes, waiting for the sense of horror his dream had aroused to dissipate. It had been a while since he’d last had this particular nightmare, and he didn’t really have to search his brain to know what had awaken this particular memory. He swung his legs off the bed. Adrenaline was still running through his body, he certainly wasn’t going to fall asleep again anytime soon. He threw on a t-shirt and walked downstairs.
Sherlock’s voice made him jump.
“You were having nightmare,” he rumbled from somewhere in the living room. John squinted and waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, and saw Sherlock’s familiar shape curled on the sofa.
“Didn’t mean to wake you,” John said, voice rough from sleep. It occurred to him that he might have been screaming, but he was too embarrassed to ask Sherlock.
“I wasn’t asleep,” Sherlock replied. He sat up, and even with no light on John could make out his ruffled curls, sticking up in every direction. “Are you… all right?” Sherlock asked. He sounded almost tentative, and it occurred to John that if he could pinpoint what had triggered his nightmare so probably could Sherlock, even without knowing what had happened to him. He wondered for a fleeting second if he was feeling guilty. “Yes, I’m fine,” John said.
He hesitated, then went to sit in his armchair. He could feel Sherlock’s eyes on him, but he didn’t turn.
“It wasn’t a bullet,” Sherlock observed after a minute or so of silence. John snorted. He didn’t need to ask Sherlock what he was talking about, that question could only mean one thing - and even if it was a tactless question, it was almost a relief to see Sherlock act like his usual self.
“No, it wasn’t,” John confirmed. He couldn’t bring himself to elaborate, not right after that nightmare, not when the night and the memories were still hanging thick around him. He could feel that Sherlock was bursting with questions, but he probably sensed John’s unwillingness to talk and managed to restrain himself.
Without saying anything Sherlock got up and went to put the kettle on.
They drank tea in silence without even turning the light on, and only after a while, when he remembered how Sherlock had been curled on the sofa, did it occur to John to ask: “Why did you turn? I mean, when I was out today.”
Sherlock paused with his mug halfway to his mouth.
“It’s helpful, sometimes. I find I can think better, after. And,” he stopped, then added, almost uncertainly, “it had been a while.”
He didn’t say why that was, but John didn’t exactly have to ask. He took a sip of tea. “I don’t mind, you know. If you wanted… needed, to do it again. I mean… Don’t stop on my account.”
John wasn’t sure why he said that after he’d be so shocked earlier that day, and even Sherlock looked a little doubtful.
“Thank you,” he said anyway.
When John woke up the next morning he was a little disoriented to find he’d fallen asleep in his chair. Sherlock was no longer on the sofa - in fact he wasn’t even in the flat, but at some point during the night he had carefully draped a blanket over John.
Just because they didn’t talk about it, it didn’t mean John never thought about Sherlock being a werewolf. On the contrary, he thought about it... quite a lot, if he had to be honest. His mind kept circling around it with the same kind of morbid fascination that rendered someone unable to look away from a gruesome car crash. Logically John knew that it didn’t make much of a difference. Sherlock wasn’t going to turn into a beast once a month during full moon nights, and despite John’s half-hearted permission, he’d never shifted again - at least never in John’s presence. He wasn’t dangerous. Or well, he was, but it had nothing to do with Sherlock being a werewolf, it was about Sherlock experimenting in the kitchen and running after murderers for a living, and that wasn’t anything John hadn’t deduced after the first week of sharing a flat with the man.
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Sherlock. Or maybe it was, a bit. John knew his fear was irrational, but on the first new moon after discovering Sherlock’s identity he’d locked himself in his room, and had spent a night more horrible than usual. John was fairly certain Sherlock had noticed the signs of exhaustion on his face in the morning, but thankfully he hadn’t remarked on it.
John tried his best not to let his mind associate Sherlock to the beasts that had attacked him and savagely killed all of his unit in Afghanistan. There was a difference between being a werewolf and being a brutal weapon - many cruel and unfair things happened in times of war, and it was no secret that in the army werewolves were often ruthlessly trained (and even more often, forced) to become merciless killers. John had never met any of them in the army; the brutal practice had been formally outlawed by the British government and, virtually, by every other Western country - but rumours had it there was a secret special unit of trained werewolves in the pay of the British and American governments, too.
John thought about what Sherlock had said, that there were other werewolves in their circle of friends. Now, Sherlock’s circle of friends was quite restricted, and even counting mere acquaintances there weren’t that many people both Sherlock and John knew.
John had tried to observe Sherlock’s interactions with other people as subtly as he could, but he wasn’t sure what he should even be looking for. One day when John had jokingly asked if Mrs Hudson was a werewolf as well, trying to make Sherlock spit a name or two, Sherlock had looked at him with an expression that was half-surprised and half-impressed, and John had almost choked on his tea. “Lestrade?” he’d asked then, thinking of one of the few people who seemed able to put up with Sherlock. Sherlock had hummed in confirmation.
“Are they… your pack?” John had asked. He didn’t know much about werewolves and their etiquette, so he hoped he’d come up with the appropriate word. Maybe he hadn’t, because Sherlock bristled and looked disdainful at the mere suggestion.
“I don’t have a pack,” he’d said to John, as if dismissing a ridiculous and vaguely offensive notion, and John had raised his hand in an appeasing gesture. “Right then,” he’d said, though he wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong. “You’re a lone wolf. Makes sense.”
Sherlock had narrowed his eyes at John as if he was being even more ridiculous, and John had dropped the subject entirely.
Read Part II
Written for mahmfic for the April Swap (Chosen trope: werewolf fic.)
Part I
Being back in London felt surreal. People hurrying to work early in the morning, the smell of the rain, the hustle of the city - everything felt alien. It was as if John had left London for three decades instead of three years, and the city he’d come back to was very different from the city he remembered. He drifted through London like a ghost, and at night he dreamed.
Memories he’d tried to suppress during the day took hold of his brain, and without the aid of light and consciousness he found himself unable to fend them off. He laid down, as frightened and helpless as he had been months ago, the moment of the attack. He always tried to resist the pull of sleep but there were only so many days a man could remain awake, and eventually he slipped under.
Exhaustion never granted him a dreamless rest. Behind his eyelids shadows took mysterious shapes. Lights coming from the street, reflected on his window, glinted in the dark like yellow eyes.
He heard the howls in the distance.
“You’re okay,” John repeated over and over, pressing a soaked gauze against Ryan’s ripped stomach. Blood oozed out, thick and warm, staining the sand black.
“You’ll be all right,” John kept repeating, and he knew he wasn’t making sense, he knew there was no way Ryan would ever be all right again, but for some reason it was important he kept repeating it, and even if Ryan was certainly going to die, at least John could say that he had tried, he had tried.
“You’ll be all right, mate,” John repeated, pressing on Ryan’s stomach so hard that his hands slipped inside. “I’ve got you.”
The howls sounded closer now but John couldn’t get up, he could not turn.
“It’s okay,” John lied, eyes fixed on Ryan’s white face.
Ryan gasped like a man about to drown. His eyes snapped open just as a set of sharp teeth sank deep into John’s shoulder, and they were filled with horror.
John woke up with an echoing gasp, clutching his wounded shoulder, a scream stuck in his throat. His vest was clinging to his torso and his back, and it took him a frightened few seconds to realize that it was sweat and not blood slicking his skin, pooling in the hollow of his neck.
He dragged himself upright, sitting with his back against the wall. His heart was thudding madly in his chest, his hands were shaking. He couldn’t breathe. He got up on unsteady legs to open the window, inhaling the cold air of the night in large gulps. Little by little his heart slowed down but the overwhelming sense of anxiety remained, wedged in his ribcage, a heavy weight against his lungs.
He leaned with his forehead against the window glass. A black cloud unraveled in airy wisps, and from between its ragged edges the moon peeked with her white, glowing face. Full moon.
John shivered. There were werewolves in London. He had no idea how many, but he knew they were there. People walked past them during the day, utterly oblivious. Perhaps some of them were living in his very building, and he didn’t know. Bile rose in his throat. He closed the blinds of the window, trying to keep the odious face of the moon out of his sight and out of his thoughts.
John met Mike Stamford as he was limping home after yet another pointless session with his therapist.
“John,” a voice called. “John Watson?”
John turned towards the bench he’d just walked past, saw a man with glasses and a round familiar face.
“Stamford,” the man said, pointing at himself. “Mike Stamford? We were at Bart’s together.”
“Yes, sorry, Mike! Hello,” John replied, though he hadn’t recognized him at first, and moved his cane from his right hand to the other to shake Mike’s proffered hand.
“I heard you were abroad somewhere, getting shot at! What happened?” Mike asked, smiling.
John looked down at his cane and his lame leg with a grimace.
“Well,” John said. “I got shot.”
The lie slipped easily enough from his lips and Mike, too mortified by his tactless question, didn’t press him for details.
Mike asked John if he could stop for a coffee and a bit of a chat, and thought John didn’t really feel like it, he thought declining the invitation would be too rude. It wasn’t like he had anything else to do, at any rate.
They sat on a bench and John asked Mike a few questions about his wife and his job at Bart’s, but mostly he let Mike ramble on, and Mike seemed happy enough to do more than his share of talking to fill in John’s silence. When Mike asked him where he was staying, John told him about his tiny flat, the only thing he could afford on his army pension. He supposed he could always look for another place somewhere that wasn’t London but he’d always loved the city, and despite his present sense of alienation he doubted he would feel better in another place.
“Can’t you get, I don’t know, a flatshare or something?” Mike suggested.
John snorted. “Come on,” he said. “Who would want me for a flatmate?”
Mike smiled to himself, seemingly amused.
“What?”
“You’re the second person to say that to me today.”
John turned to look at him. “Who was the first?”
The first, as it turned out, had been some bloke named Sherlock Holmes. Mike took John to one of the labs at Bart’s, where they found the man in question in the middle of some experiment. A man of science, it seemed. Tall, thin, with piercing eyes and quick hands, he moved around the lab with smooth elegance. He looked younger than John had imagined.
“Afghanistan or Iraq?” were the first words he spoke to John.
“Sorry?”
“Afghanistan or Iraq, which was it?” the man asked, and turned to look directly at John for the first time with inquisitive gray eyes.
“Afghanistan,” John stammered, confused.
The man proceeded to tell John that he played the violin when he was thinking, sometimes he didn’t talk for days, and that he’d got his eye on a nice place in central London.
“Together we should be able to afford it. We’ll meet there tomorrow evening at seven o’ clock,” he announced, before dashing out of the lab to retrieve a riding crop he had left in the morgue. (John didn’t even try to puzzle out the meaning of that sentence because it made absolutely no sense.)
He threw his name at John almost as an afterthought, just as he was walking out of the room. “The name is Sherlock Holmes, and the address is 221B, Baker Street. Afternoon!”
John just stood there, bewildered, staring at the door.
No sane person would think of sharing a flat with a manic man who seemed to ignore the basic rules of common courtesy and looked more than a bit barmy - but John had never thought of himself as particularly sensible, and it was the only interesting thing it’d happened to him in months, so when he got home he googled the man’s name (there couldn’t be that many ‘Sherlock Holmes’s in London) and was lucky enough to find a website.
“The Science of Deduction.” This Sherlock Holmes seemed to be some sort of… detective? Hard to tell. Apparently the man thought he had elevated the “art of deduction” to a science. The website was partly as pretentious as its title and partly boring, with ranting essays about very random topics, such as different types of natural fibres or the classification of plant-derived poisons. One didn’t have to look very hard to see the sparks of brilliance, however, and John found he was intrigued despite himself.
The flat Sherlock had found was actually very nice and so was Mrs Hudson, the landlady. Sherlock had apparently decided to move straight in - overflowing boxes were strewn across the living room, there was a human skull on the mantelpiece and beakers and vials cluttered the kitchen table, but John didn’t really mind. It was… almost nice, a flat that actually looked lived in for a change.
“Consulting detective”, that was Sherlock’s job, as he prickly informed John. The only one in the world, too. He’d asked John to accompany him to a crime scene, saying his opinion as a medical man might be useful.
“Don’t they have people on Forensics?” John had asked.
“I don’t work with them,” Sherlock had replied cryptically.
And Sherlock on a crime scene was… brilliant. There was no other word for it. If John had thought most of what Sherlock had written on his website was just pretentious boasting, he soon changed his mind when he saw how the man could read clues no one else saw, and how he could reconstruct a whole story from the smallest mark.
“You make it sound like some magic trick. Anyone could do it if only they paid attention to what’s under their nose,” Sherlock told John when he expressed his amazement. “I explained you how I deduced everything I told you about your brother.”
Indeed, Sherlock had somehow read Harry’s drinking habits on John’s phone, and he’d even managed to deduce Harry and Clara’s recent divorce. That didn’t mean he’d got everything right.
“Not my brother,” John said, trying to hide his amused smirk at Sherlock’s incredulous expression. “Harry’s short for Harriet.”
“Ah,” Sherlock said. “There’s always something.”
Living with Sherlock was… something else.
221B was in a state of constant chaos. Old papers and magazines were scattered around the living room (John picked them up and tried to stack them in a neat pile every now and then, but they never stayed that way for long), trinkets and weird objects of every sort - apparently souvenirs of old cases - adorned the mantelpiece and the bookshelves. Sherlock always had some experiment going on and seemed to treat the kitchen as his personal lab. John could put up with the microscope and all the equipment sitting on the kitchen table, but had to draw the line at poisonous compounds stored in the cupboard into unassuming boxes, especially when they looked an awful lot like sugar or salt or anything John might be tempted to put into their food.
Sherlock was also in the habit of keeping human body parts he’d brought home from the morgue in their fridge - after much quarrelling (and after John had found a head in there) Sherlock had agreed to keep them all in the lower shelf, and to label any specimen that looked even vaguely edible.
Mrs Hudson seemed unruffled both by the mess in their flat and by Sherlock’s manners, and seemed actually delighted that Sherlock had managed to find himself a flatmate “as nice as John.”
There were often people coming and going - Detective Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard sometimes popped in to ask for Sherlock’s help or advice, and on top of the work he got from helping the police, Sherlock accepted private clients when he deemed their cases interesting enough.
Most of these clients came from John’s own blog, though Sherlock was reluctant to admit it. John’s therapist had insisted he write about his life after being invalidated home from the war, and John had devoted himself to writing about Sherlock’s most interesting cases. He was still half-heartedly looking for a job but now he often accompanied Sherlock on crime scenes and had become a sort of assistant - and since Sherlock’s work was, in John’s opinion, more fascinating than anything else going on in his life, writing about it seemed the most logical conclusion.
“People read this?” Sherlock had asked in disbelief, scrunching his nose as he read John’s latest blog entry. He didn’t think John much of a writer and had said so in more than one occasion, berating him for omitting details he considered essential, or for not describing Sherlock’s deductive process thoroughly enough.
“No one wants to read four paragraphs of you going on and on about bloodstain pattern analysis or different types of tobacco ash,” had retorted John, and Sherlock had left the room in a huff.
It hadn’t taken John long to learn that Sherlock was prone to sulking and throwing temper tantrums. It was very much like living with an overgrown toddler at times. Sherlock’s mind, brilliant as it was, seemed to require constant entertainment. Cases and experiments were usually enough to keep Sherlock busy, but when criminals were lying low and private clients failed to provide their share of interesting cases, Sherlock fell victim to sudden bouts of apathy. Sometimes he turned to his beloved violin - he could be an excellent player, John had found, but Sherlock in an irritable mood meant John would be subjected to a lot of screeching and plaintive noises, usually in the dead of night or the early hours of the morning.
John suspected anyone else would’ve left after barely a week - and yet, he thought sharing a flat with Sherlock had been the best decision he could’ve taken. Now he felt he could be of some use at least, and well, life with Sherlock Holmes was anything but boring.
Although he couldn’t understand at first why Sherlock would want him to come along to assist him on his cases - he hardly needed John’s input to solve them, and he seemed to use John as a mere sounding board most of the time - it had become clear that Sherlock valued his presence, rather than tolerate him as he did almost everyone else, Mrs Hudson and Lestrade being the only exceptions that John could think of.
Sherlock had welcomed John’s interest in his work with an eagerness that made John think he’d been just as lonely as he was before moving in to Baker Street, and John, who was always so reserved and guarded, had come to consider this strange man a friend rather than a mere flatmate in a ridiculously short time.
That didn’t mean Sherlock didn’t still behave like a colossal git, sometimes.
One day, during one of Sherlock’s attacks of boredom, John decided to go to Tesco, thinking it would be better to leave the flat for a while. He told Sherlock he would be back in a couple of hours, thinking he might as well take walk (Sherlock’s only reply was an irritated grunt) and left. Halfway down Marylebone Road though, John realized he’d left his wallet home and had to walk back. He opened the door of the flat warily, bracing himself for whatever awful thing Sherlock might be doing to find relief from the oppressing ennui - but nothing could have prepared him for the sight that welcomed him when he entered the living room.
Curled on their sofa, there was a wolf.
No, not a wolf, John corrected himself - a werewolf. The horrifying image of those beasts had been branded in his brain ever since the day of the attack, and John could have recognized a werewolf anywhere. Bigger than a normal wolf - and also stronger, quicker and deadlier, as John knew first-hand.
The black ball of fur stirred and uncurled, and the beast raised its head. Big yellow eyes fixed on John’s face.
John didn’t move. He couldn’t move. He could barely breathe. His heart was beating so fast it hurt and its wild beats were the only thing John could hear - for an horrifying moment he thought his heart might explode in his chest.
The beast blinked at John and gave a yelp. Then it hopped off the sofa, and looked for a second as if it was trying to stand on its hind legs. John watched, petrified, as the body of the wolf lengthened and its fur seemed to retreat under its skin. He had never seen a werewolf’s transformation, and in his shocked state he would have found it hard to pay any attention to the process, but as it happened it was so quick it seemed to take place literally in the bat of an eye. One second John was staring at a huge black werewolf, the next at the stark naked body of his flatmate.
John could do nothing but stare.
“John,” Sherlock said, sounding surprised and looking slightly mortified. “Excuse me for a second.”
And then he gave John an awkward nod, as he might have done to greet an acquaintance he’d crossed on the street, and walked out of the living room.
John didn’t move.
A werewolf. He’d been living under the same roof as a werewolf. John’s leg started throbbing, and he plopped into his chair because he feared it wouldn’t hold him up for much longer.
He rubbed his hands on his face, trying to get his breathing under control.
“Drink this,” Sherlock said and John, startled into looking up, saw that Sherlock was standing in front of him, holding a glass of water. Had he always moved so silently?
“Thanks,” John said mechanically, accepting the glass, but he didn’t drink.
He looked up at Sherlock, who was now wearing a t-shit and one of his numerous dressing gowns. He looked… like usual. He didn’t know why he would expect him to look any different.
Some water splashed on John’s trousers, and he looked down at his hand. It was shaking.
He put the glass on the floor, beside his chair. Sherlock fidgeted with the belt of his gown, then sat down too, facing John.
“So,” Sherlock said. “I imagine you’ve got questions.”
John laughed. It was a nervous laugh, he couldn’t help it, and then clasped a hand over his mouth. Sherlock’s tense expression turned to one of concern.
“You,” John said, his voice unsteady. He started again. “You’re a werewolf.”
“Yes,” Sherlock said. “I think that’s pretty obvious now.”
“You’re a werewolf,” John said again, as if repeating it might give the statement some sense.
Sherlock said nothing but raised both his eyebrows, as if waiting for John to say something sensible.
“You never said.”
“It never seemed relevant.”
“Relevant!” John almost gasped. “Jesus, Sherlock, we share a flat. I’d say that’s the first thing you should have mentioned.”
Sherlock straightened in his chair. “I don’t see why,” he said in a defensive tone.
“Oh, do you want me to give you a list?”
“Very well,” Sherlock retorted, “perhaps after I’ve given you mine.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry to have upset you,” Sherlock said, and he actually sounded like he meant it. John had never heard Sherlock apologize - not even for the body parts in the fridge - and the words made him forget what he wanted to say for a moment.
“I didn’t intend for you to find out this way,” Sherlock went on while John was silent. “But I never thought I could keep it a secret forever, nor did I plan to. I was going to tell you, eventually.”
“Why not straight away?” John said. “Potential flatmates should know the worst, remember?”
It wasn’t a tactful thing to say but John was too shaken to care. Sherlock’s expression closed off.
“Hardly the worst,” Sherlock said. “This doesn’t make me neither better nor worse than the man you already know.”
“You don’t see why I might have a problem with that?” John asked.
“I do,” answered Sherlock, “which is why I didn’t tell you. Would you have accepted to meet me at Baker Street, had you known I was a werewolf?”
The answer must have been written plainly on John’s face because Sherlock shook his head with a bitter smile.
“No matter how integrated we seem to be, I’ve come to expect some prejudice,” he said. “I don’t think it was that unreasonable to want you to give me a fair chance.”
John didn’t know what to say. The shock was wearing off, leaving place to a sense of anger he wasn’t sure was justified. He bent to pick up his glass from the floor, drinking the water in two large gulps.
“Are you going to move out?” Sherlock asked. He posed the question in a carefully neutral tone and his face remained unreadable, but John knew him well enough to recognize the tension his ramrod straight back betrayed.
“You put a human head in the fridge and I’m still here,” John replied. “I hardly think you can do worse.”
Sherlock’s looked surprised, and then his lips twitched, and John couldn’t help but smile.
They remained silent for a few minutes, but there wasn’t as much tension in the room as there had been just a moment before. John cleared his throat.
“So…” he began.
“I wasn’t turned,” Sherlock cut in.
“Sorry?”
“I’m a werewolf by blood. I was born this way, which means I have complete control over my transformations. A full moon has no real effect on me, in case you were worrying about that.”
“Oh.” John nodded. Of course, John had been too stunned to connect the dots, but it was obvious now that Sherlock had pointed it out. Werewolves that had been turned couldn’t transform at will, but only during a full moon, unlike born werewolves - and it seemed that Sherlock could transform effortlessly whenever he wished to. John frowned as a thought suddenly occurred to him.
“Your brother?” John asked. He had met Mycroft, and he was just as brilliant as his brother, but infinitely more scary when he wanted to be. The idea that Mycroft might also be a werewolf was… disturbing, somehow.
Sherlock grimaced. “God, no,” he said. “Just me, and my father. The only way in which we were ever alike.”
“Are there others?” John asked. He winced inwardly at the anxious tone of the question.
“What, in my family? London? The world?” Sherlock said, teasingly.
John huffed a laugh. “I mean… people we know.”
Sherlock thought about it for a few seconds. “Yes,” he said.
John waited.
“It seems hardly fair to tell you,” Sherlock said, and got to his feet.
“Oh, come on,” John complained.
Sherlock walked into the kitchen, then went back to John and dropped his wallet into his lap.
“I believe you were on your way to Tesco,” he said, and although he wasn’t hostile it was as clear a dismissal as any, “and I’ve got a case to work on. See you later.”
Neither of them said more about the subject, that day. John walked around Tesco almost in a daze, and couldn’t stop thinking about Sherlock’s revelation. Had there been clues he had missed? He had noticed that despite his thin frame Sherlock possessed a kind of wiry strength, but he had never given it much thought. Now that he thought about it, he didn’t think he’d ever seen Sherlock properly tired out. He was never out of breath when they were running after criminals, he slept only a few hours per night, and John had no idea where he found all the energy that kept him going, given how little he usually ate. Well, it looked like John had found the answer to that question.
When he got back to Baker Street, Sherlock was sitting at the kitchen table, busy with what looked like an extremely delicate experiment, and John didn’t think it wise to disturb him. When Sherlock looked like that, John always feared a slip of hand might be enough to blow up the entire flat - so he stored the groceries away in silence and then retired to the living room, where he tried to work on a new post for his blog. The day then progressed just like usual, so much so that John almost forgot the surreal conversation he’d had with Sherlock just a couple of hours before.
Then there was an exultant cry from the kitchen, and Sherlock bounced into the living room with a manic grin, telling John he’d solved the case. He’d already wrapped himself in his big coat and scarf before the words had a chance to sink in, and Sherlock had to frogmarch a confused John to Scotland Yard while prattling on about his incredible breakthrough.
He could hear the wolves howl in the distance.
“You’ll be all right,” John told Ryan, though his life was bleeding out and his heart was slowing down.
Under the cover of darkness, the wolves were approaching on silent feet.
“Ryan,” John pleaded. “Stay with me.”
A beast growled ominously behind John’s back. Claws of steel ripped through his uniform just before vicious teeth snapped closed around his shoulder.
John woke up. His heart was racing and he was drenched in sweat, as always. He was in his own bed, at Baker Street, safe in London. He brought a shaking hand to his face and pressed it against his eyes, waiting for the sense of horror his dream had aroused to dissipate. It had been a while since he’d last had this particular nightmare, and he didn’t really have to search his brain to know what had awaken this particular memory. He swung his legs off the bed. Adrenaline was still running through his body, he certainly wasn’t going to fall asleep again anytime soon. He threw on a t-shirt and walked downstairs.
Sherlock’s voice made him jump.
“You were having nightmare,” he rumbled from somewhere in the living room. John squinted and waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, and saw Sherlock’s familiar shape curled on the sofa.
“Didn’t mean to wake you,” John said, voice rough from sleep. It occurred to him that he might have been screaming, but he was too embarrassed to ask Sherlock.
“I wasn’t asleep,” Sherlock replied. He sat up, and even with no light on John could make out his ruffled curls, sticking up in every direction. “Are you… all right?” Sherlock asked. He sounded almost tentative, and it occurred to John that if he could pinpoint what had triggered his nightmare so probably could Sherlock, even without knowing what had happened to him. He wondered for a fleeting second if he was feeling guilty. “Yes, I’m fine,” John said.
He hesitated, then went to sit in his armchair. He could feel Sherlock’s eyes on him, but he didn’t turn.
“It wasn’t a bullet,” Sherlock observed after a minute or so of silence. John snorted. He didn’t need to ask Sherlock what he was talking about, that question could only mean one thing - and even if it was a tactless question, it was almost a relief to see Sherlock act like his usual self.
“No, it wasn’t,” John confirmed. He couldn’t bring himself to elaborate, not right after that nightmare, not when the night and the memories were still hanging thick around him. He could feel that Sherlock was bursting with questions, but he probably sensed John’s unwillingness to talk and managed to restrain himself.
Without saying anything Sherlock got up and went to put the kettle on.
They drank tea in silence without even turning the light on, and only after a while, when he remembered how Sherlock had been curled on the sofa, did it occur to John to ask: “Why did you turn? I mean, when I was out today.”
Sherlock paused with his mug halfway to his mouth.
“It’s helpful, sometimes. I find I can think better, after. And,” he stopped, then added, almost uncertainly, “it had been a while.”
He didn’t say why that was, but John didn’t exactly have to ask. He took a sip of tea. “I don’t mind, you know. If you wanted… needed, to do it again. I mean… Don’t stop on my account.”
John wasn’t sure why he said that after he’d be so shocked earlier that day, and even Sherlock looked a little doubtful.
“Thank you,” he said anyway.
When John woke up the next morning he was a little disoriented to find he’d fallen asleep in his chair. Sherlock was no longer on the sofa - in fact he wasn’t even in the flat, but at some point during the night he had carefully draped a blanket over John.
Just because they didn’t talk about it, it didn’t mean John never thought about Sherlock being a werewolf. On the contrary, he thought about it... quite a lot, if he had to be honest. His mind kept circling around it with the same kind of morbid fascination that rendered someone unable to look away from a gruesome car crash. Logically John knew that it didn’t make much of a difference. Sherlock wasn’t going to turn into a beast once a month during full moon nights, and despite John’s half-hearted permission, he’d never shifted again - at least never in John’s presence. He wasn’t dangerous. Or well, he was, but it had nothing to do with Sherlock being a werewolf, it was about Sherlock experimenting in the kitchen and running after murderers for a living, and that wasn’t anything John hadn’t deduced after the first week of sharing a flat with the man.
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Sherlock. Or maybe it was, a bit. John knew his fear was irrational, but on the first new moon after discovering Sherlock’s identity he’d locked himself in his room, and had spent a night more horrible than usual. John was fairly certain Sherlock had noticed the signs of exhaustion on his face in the morning, but thankfully he hadn’t remarked on it.
John tried his best not to let his mind associate Sherlock to the beasts that had attacked him and savagely killed all of his unit in Afghanistan. There was a difference between being a werewolf and being a brutal weapon - many cruel and unfair things happened in times of war, and it was no secret that in the army werewolves were often ruthlessly trained (and even more often, forced) to become merciless killers. John had never met any of them in the army; the brutal practice had been formally outlawed by the British government and, virtually, by every other Western country - but rumours had it there was a secret special unit of trained werewolves in the pay of the British and American governments, too.
John thought about what Sherlock had said, that there were other werewolves in their circle of friends. Now, Sherlock’s circle of friends was quite restricted, and even counting mere acquaintances there weren’t that many people both Sherlock and John knew.
John had tried to observe Sherlock’s interactions with other people as subtly as he could, but he wasn’t sure what he should even be looking for. One day when John had jokingly asked if Mrs Hudson was a werewolf as well, trying to make Sherlock spit a name or two, Sherlock had looked at him with an expression that was half-surprised and half-impressed, and John had almost choked on his tea. “Lestrade?” he’d asked then, thinking of one of the few people who seemed able to put up with Sherlock. Sherlock had hummed in confirmation.
“Are they… your pack?” John had asked. He didn’t know much about werewolves and their etiquette, so he hoped he’d come up with the appropriate word. Maybe he hadn’t, because Sherlock bristled and looked disdainful at the mere suggestion.
“I don’t have a pack,” he’d said to John, as if dismissing a ridiculous and vaguely offensive notion, and John had raised his hand in an appeasing gesture. “Right then,” he’d said, though he wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong. “You’re a lone wolf. Makes sense.”
Sherlock had narrowed his eyes at John as if he was being even more ridiculous, and John had dropped the subject entirely.
Read Part II