Fic: City was Shining
City Was Shining
1 - Working on me
He starts off trying to control himself.
Running, he looks at Sherlock's outstretched hands, thinks about holding one of them, how it would feel, the soft skin, scars, and the bones underneath that fascinated Sherlock so. He looks away again, thinking of Sherlock's bones and skin, entwined with the night.
In bed, he folds himself into a ball and tries to ignore the sound of Sherlock rattling around the flat, and the violin that makes his guts lurch.
He hides from his flatmate because he can't look at him without smiling.
2 - My better side of you
He fist noticed John's smile when they were both standing over an autopsy table in the morgue, with Molly fluttering around them, pouting in too dark lipstick.
A single arm lay on the autopsy table, the body it belonged to in absentia. Sherlock looked down at the arm in disgust.
"Where's the rest of it?"
"Um..." Molly flapped her hands nervously, looking horrified. Glancing away from her, Sherlock caught the tail end of John's smile as it faded. He looked away quickly to avoid the light beams that that eminated from that smile.
3 - Untitled
Sherlock was playing that damned violin again. John uttered a snarl as he sat up in bed, loosening the covers. He was too hot and that moron downstairs was playing his violin deliberately to annoy him.
It was something cheerful, plinky plonky as though it should have been played on a piano. But it was sad too, the sweet memory of someone long dead.
John curled his arms around his legs and listened. The peculiarity of being happy and sad at the same time; it was a feeling he was becoming used to.
4 - In your pocket
It always hurt the most the day after he'd been out with her.
John came in looking refreshed. Sherlock, sprawled out at the kitchen table, trying to perform an experiment on a box of dead frogs, read the sex on him, the lines Sarah had drawn on him with her fingers afterwards, the whispered words. Did they talk about him? Sherlock's eyes narrowed.
"What?" asked John, the good cheer sliding off his face as he entered the dark kitchen. His eyes went to the frogs and his lip curled. Just a tiny bit, but enough. Sherlock's eyes trailed him as he took a carton of apple juice out of the fridge, drank, left the kitchen again.
What irked Sherlock was that John was supposed to follow him, not the other way round.
5 - Raise Your Weapon
Sherlock did battle with words.
"How long is your wife away?" he'd said to Anderson, and John had seen the man stutter, shot down.
*
"Have you any conception of how long it took me to grow that micro bacteria cluster in the sink? Have you any idea at all?" Sherlock raged, having come home from the morgue to find a clean sink and half a bottle of Harpic beside it.
"I suppose it had a name, did it?" John didn't raise his voice at all, although his heart was hammering inside.
"What?! Don't be absurd. It's bacteria."
"In the sink, Sherlock. Where some people wash the dishes. It's unacceptable, and unhygienic."
"Yes, but-"
"It's an experiment. I know. Perhaps when I'm in hospital with food poisoning and there's no one around to make you beans on toast, you'll remember this conversation."
"But..." Nothing. Sherlock couldn't think of anything to say.
They said it was the quiet ones you had to watch out for.
6 - Narcissism is overwhelming
He got worried after the Moriarty incident. He should have run. This was not like him at all. Caring about people.
After they came back from the hospital, a few cuts and bruises, a sprained wrist for John, they were lucky to come away with so little, Sherlock shut himself away in what passed for his bedroom. He felt... dirty somehow, as if there was someone else's mind inhabiting his own. He wanted to be alone, to flush out John's thoughts.
He went out on a case, without John, leaping across roofs, hiding behind bins, deadly silent, stalking. It rained, and when he got back to the flat he slept in his wet coat, using the collar as a pillow.
John smirked as he read a newspaper to him. Sherlock lay in bed feverish and sneezing. John had broken him after all, turned him into a human being.
Given him his heart back. And he hated it.
7 - If the sun burned out
He wondered how long it would last. They sat together on the sofa watching the X Factor. Sherlock watched it so he could show off:
"She's only on the show because she's afraid of her father's disapproval." He snorted, head cocked, "Even though he's been dead for twelve years she's still afraid of it, look at the lines on her face!"
John tried to kid himself he watched it for the fun of it, the things that went wrong, the people who thought they could sing like Katherine Jenkins but sounded like Britney Spears. In fact he watched it so he could listen to Sherlock. He wondered how many nights they would be allowed before everything changed.
8 - The things you need to know
"This is it. I can't live like this any more."
"Now who's being melodramatic."
"Shut up!"
Sherlock allowed himself a smirk, even though inside, everything was churning. His brain was churning. He watched John flying about the flat, filling a bag with enough stuff for a day or two.
"I'll come back for the rest later."
"Right."
John glared at him, as if to say 'Don't you care?'. Thing is, he did. Rather too much, in fact.
9 - Your perfect lips won't win
John had started putting his phone on silent after the night Sherlock rang him twenty seven times in an hour. Now he pulled the blanket around his shoulders and watched the phone flash; Incoming call: Sherlock.
He watched until the phone stopped flashing. And started again a moment later.
In the end he'd decided not to go to Sarah's. Sherlock could find him there. Instead he rented a shitty little bedsit in Hammersmith with no central heating and ex neighbours who had kicked the wall in once upon a time.
He glanced at the clock. Five minutes since the last call. He felt half relieved and half something else - at least when Sherlock was trying to ring him he was thinking of him.
He went to the window. Outside, London shone. John pressed his forehead against the glass, looking in the direction of Baker Street.
10 - Never caught your name
It was a mistake, but life was about 'mistakes'. That's what normal people did. He just hoped Mycroft hadn't seen him do it.
He pulled on his coat, glancing once at the bed, and at the person within. They didn't stir, even when Sherlock dropped his Blackberry on his foot and swore.
He took the glove because it was the same colour as one of John's jumpers, a sort of porridgey colour, completely comforting, and made of a soft woollen material. He stuffed it in the pocket of his coat and left, head bowed to avoid the security camera's outside.
11 - I wanted you to miss me
I need help with a case. It's urgent.
SH
Are you there?
SH
John?
SH
The next text I send will be to Mycroft asking him to send a black limo round to make sure you haven't killed yourself.
SH
*
email to: mycroft.holmes@gov.org.uk
cc: john.watson7@hotmail.com
Mycroft.
Send someone round to John's horrible bedsit immediately. It involves a case and it is very important you fetch him and bring him to 221B Baker Street as soon as possible.
SH
*
email to: sherlock@scienceofdeduction.org
cc: john.watson7@hotmail.com
I take it you two are not talking to each other?
M
*
email to: mycroft.holmes@gov.org.uk
cc: sherlock@scienceofdeduction.org
Piss off, mycroft.
John
*
Ah! You're alive. 21 Saffron Gardens. Very important.
SH
You just don't know when to give up do you?
John
12 - House made of paper
The house was cold, and grew colder as Sherlock inched his way up the stairs.
The trail of blood leading to the bedroom. Routine.
The hand print on the wall. Cavalier.
Sherlock paused to look at the rest of the wall. It was covered in newspaper print, stories of murders, serial killers, brutal mutilations plastered all over the wall like a scrapbook.
He was so absorbed in reading, he didn't notice the cold hand snaking towards him until it had him by the throat. The cold metal of a - Glock G21! - pressed against his temple.
13 - Hands of grace
"Bastard," John muttered as he looked though the threadbare curtains and saw the black limo parked up outside. He was unsure which of the Holmes brothers he was referring to. Possibly both of them.
Mycroft himself was waiting for him.
"He needs you."
John began to interrupt. Mycroft held up a hand to stop him.
"Only you will do, Doctor Watson. He asked for you specifically."
When he got there, Sherlock was on his knees on the wet ground with a scratch on his face and inkstains on his fingers, and the man with the Glock G21 standing over him. John pulled out his gun.
When it was over they faced each other, the city lights reflecting in their eyes.