Wait for the Ricochet (3)
The bluish lights of the police cars were slowly rotating in random directions before John’s eyes. Never before had he dropped a dream level without falling asleep first. The abrupt change in his cerebral activity was sending his head spinning. He felt he was going to be sick if he moved too harshly.
A couple of coppers exited the building, carrying a body bag. John retreated deeper into the shadows cast by the cars parked behind the police tape. He didn’t want to look. The body of the cabbie wouldn’t be anything more than an empty shell, created by the Navigator in the split second he’d fled into a new dream and pulled them along with him. John forced his head to focus on a calculation of time. He was pretty sure that the Navigator was dying - that’s why he designed this new level for them, to buy himself time and a new shape for his play with Sherlock. The cabbie in the original dream would probably bleed out within minutes. In the deeper dream, it could be days but the Navigator would be bound to strike sooner this time.
“Are you all right?” The tall detective emerged suddenly from behind John, looming over him. John startled and then he giggled helplessly, the shock and the frustration getting the better of his usual calmness. Dramatic Belstaff coats shouldn’t be worn with an orange shock blanket wrapped around them, really. Sherlock regarded him a bit warily.
“Sorry. No. I’m not all right.” John knew he should be trying to look serious and convincing. But how could he, with all the blinking lights still floating, his own hands shaking, and the man whose life he’d just saved looking at him with the strangest mix of soft admiration and sharp curiosity in his eyes-
“And you aren’t either,” John blurted out. “Don’t you see? Can’t you feel it?”
Despite the blanket around his shoulders, Sherlock wasn’t visibly distressed. How was it possible that he didn’t feel the same? Then John remembered how Sherlock practically danced upon the mere prospect of suicide investigation. A few moments ago, he caught a serial killer, nearly becoming his fifth victim in the process - the endorphin and adrenaline rush from a case solved could cover for the chemical imbalance caused by the drop very well.
One corner of Sherlock’s mouth quirked up. “I’m no wilting flower, John. Violent deaths don’t alarm me.”
“Oh, you...” John ran his fingers through his hair. This made no sense without knowing Sherlock’s totem, but he still had to try.
“It wasn’t real.” His right hand came up to his shoulder involuntarily, feeling the scar under his jacket. Sherlock’s eyes narrowed at the motion. “It still isn’t real. Sherlock, this is a dream. I know it sounds-”
“You’re in shock.” Suddenly, John found himself enveloped in a cocoon of orange blanket that Sherlock threw over him as he drew him into an awkward embrace. “Coping mechanism through denial - your PTSD kicked in. It’s a natural reaction given the fact that you’re just killed a man, though I must admit I’m a bit disappointed.”
“Uhm, Sherlock?” John huffed, his voice muffled by the fabric of Sherlock’s coat.
“You’re in need of comforting and I’ve been told that this is an appropriate method of delivering it,” Sherlock informed him.
“Jesus, Sherlock.” John pushed him a fraction away, creating a much needed space for drawing a long breath. “Thanks, really, but I’m not in shock, and you can’t hug me like a teddy bear on the bloody crime scene. People will talk.”
“People do little else,” Sherlock smirked. John extricated himself from the blanket and folded it neatly, not so much out of the habit as because he needed something to do with his hands. The opportunity to making Sherlock aware of his dream was clearly gone in the wind. He cleared his throat.
“So...disappointed? That I didn’t kill a man for you in cold blood?”
“You did kill him,” Sherlock all but purred with delight. “It surprised me. Any normal people would call police. That would be the expected course of action.”
“They would be late,” John pointed out. Sherlock nodded.
“Exactly. With any normal flatmate, I would be dead by now.” John imagined that this was as close to thank you as he was ever going to hear from Sherlock Holmes.
“So, if you survived without me turning up homicidal, you would have me looking for a new flat by the end of the month,” John remarked a bit wryly. “Are murderers the only thing that interests you?”
They turned their backs to the fateful buildings and started to walk slowly down the street, ignoring the calls of the police officer in charge. Sherlock gestured vividly, his eyes shining.
“They are! Crime is- a deviation. It’s something out of the ordinary. Normal people are dull.”
Oh. So Sherlock saw it. He saw how maddeningly average and predictable this world was but he failed to interpret it correctly. John seized what could be his only chance.
“Have it ever occurred to you why? Normal life shouldn’t be dull, it should be unpredictable, changeable, ever exciting - can’t you see what’s wrong with it? With you?”
Beside him, Sherlock fell silent. John quickly looked up. The face of his new friend was suddenly stiff and impassive, eyes cold and aloof. It was as if Sherlock drew a veil of self-protection over his features, wiping off the genuineness of his smile, hiding it like a treasure he didn’t share very often. Hello, Freak, John remembered how the sour constable back in Brixton greeted Sherlock and he bit on his tongue sharply, berating himself for such ill-considered words.
He’s a genius. He must have sometimes found the life boring even when he wasn’t dreaming.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean-”
“It’s hardly my fault when the world seems unpredictable to such placid mind as yours,” Sherlock clipped the words.
John mustered the courage to look mildly offended: “Look, I am sorry.”
“Well, I am not,” Sherlock glared but John could see the ice cracking. They continued the walk in silence.
After a while, Sherlock shot John a sidelong glance. “Dinner?”
John released a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “Starving.”
***
Next morning John woke to a fridge devoid of anything passable as food. Well, there was a head. However, John had no intention of turning into a cannibal, so he set out to do the shopping, because that’s what flatmates do. Feeling marginally better with a cartoon of milk and eggs in the grocery bag under his arm, he stepped out of Tesco’s and ran right into Mary.
She looked exactly as she did the first day they met. Tracksuit bottoms, dark blue racerback top, softshell windcheater unzipped to let the morning air cool her skin as it flushed from the jogging. She smiled at him, gave him an affectionate peck on the cheek, refastened the loose strand of blond hair that had strayed from her queue, and suggested a coffee.
It took John a while to realise that she was acting the steady girlfriend, and that she was enjoying the role.
She chatted lively in that funny accent reminding John that she was India born and bred, her father having a ‘round the globe sort of job’. She never talked much about his father or her family; John gathered the impression that at some point, her father just walked away from them. He never assumed that Mary’s mother was actually dead but when Mary insisted on a quiet, ‘just-the-two-of-us-and-the-witnesses’ sort of wedding, he understood that he might never meet his mother-in-law. His own parents were dead by that time so it wasn’t like he needed Mary’s to reciprocate.
They were a good match. Mary was a slender, five foot-six blonde girl with eyes of such light shade of brown that they reminded him of champagne, sparkling and attractive. She was the one who has taken the initiative from the start. Later she told him that it were his unassuming looks that drew her attention, combined with his taste for danger. I can tell a tiger when I smell him, she told him at their first proper date, after she emptied the barrel of her gun into the target on the shooting range. She was a damn fine shot. There are still tigers in India, man-eaters. My father used to hunt them.
She said that he was born for the job. You’re a little tiger, aren’t you, John?
Well, that was then. Now it was-
“Back in the business, John? I thought you’d never pluck up the courage again.”
“I missed you,” he said, then realised that it was true. She could see the widening of his eyes and laughed; a soft, crystal-clear, perfectly calculated sound.
“Me? Or my rifle?”
John grabbed his own wrist under the table to prevent his hand from going up and touching his shoulder. “I could use a nice back-up these days,” he said instead, only half-joking. Okay, more than three-quarters serious.
“I’d say,” she nodded slowly, taking her time about blowing on her coffee and adding sugar into it, moving the spoon in slow motion. John watched the white crystals soaking and going under the dark brown surface, melting like miniature ice-bergs.
“Mary...”
“Ssshhh. I know.” I’m in your head, after all. “This one is different. I can feel it too. Kinda like this dream. It feels like it really could never end.” Her eyes were alight with the idea and she put a reassuring hand on John’s arm, the bad one, and it surprised him that he managed not to flinch.
“Seems we have time in spades. Why couldn’t we enjoy it?”
He watched her nip at the cookie. “After all, it’s the only time I get to see you.”
Perhaps that’s the one true reason why I accepted this contract. I wanted to see you again.
They parted in front of the cafeteria. Mary watched him disappear in the crowd, humming to herself. Then she replaced her earplugs and jogged away in the direction of Regent’s Park.
***
Sneaky hands adjusted the earpiece in his ear and tucked the excess length of the white twisted cable under the collar of the parka. John couldn’t help a shiver at the skin-to-skin contact. The vivid tactile memory of a spider that once decided to take a walk on his head while John slept sprung forth in his mind; he nearly jumped.
“Hold still, Johnny.” The strange dichotomy of his auditory signals confused him for a second - the crackling but clear voice transmitted by the earpiece collided with the live whisper of the same voice in the other ear, breath and mint smell ghosting over his skin and leaving his hair stand on end.
“We don’t want to spoil our game, do we?”
*
The game began with five Greenwich pips and a gas leak. John had hardly time to put away the groceries, studiously avoiding the glass shards on the floor, before he was swept along with the investigation as if it was the most natural thing to do. Perhaps it was; now when he became another pebble on the sea shore of this dream and all that was left for him was to rise and fall with the tide that was Sherlock Holmes.
And what a merciless force of nature that tidal wave could be.
At first, John almost suspected that Sherlock was, in fact, aware that they were dreaming. The bomber made his threats through live targets, strapping Semtex to people and using them for the countdown, but Sherlock didn’t seem affected, let alone moved by that. He didn’t ask himself to whom belonged the shaky voices that spoke to him through the pink phone, he didn’t bother thinking about why the voices shook, he clicked his tongue impatiently when their messages were interrupted by them swallowing their tears. As if he knew that the people weren’t real, John mused before he realised that this was just Sherlock being Sherlock.
“Will caring about them help save them? No? Then I’ll continue not to make that mistake.”
A man with no friends. Makes one wonder why.
If John had been really honest with himself he’d have to admit that should he ever find himself kidnapped and held hostage by a madman, he’d want to have the ruthless, uncaring Sherlock go after him, instead of the considerate, sensitive, and probably completely useless police.
*
“It won’t make any difference, for him. That it’s me. No difference at all.” John let his words emerge casual, bit on the tired side. They faded out on the tiles of the showers, thinned down by the sharp smell of chlorine and disinfectant.
The other man giggled; a shrill, high-pitched sound.
“I know, Johnny, I know that so well. He’s too good a player to be distracted by such a little detail as his current flatmate in mortal danger, nah. I happen to know him way better than you, don’t you see? We’ve been having such a good time together before you showed up. Don’t worry, he won’t give a damn about you.”
The black, oily eyes narrowed at him.
“You see, I will. You’re a nuisance, little Johnny-boy. I’ll give you that. But no matter; you won’t be that for long.”
*
The lab at Bart’s hummed around them with the low buzz of the computer fans and fluorescent tubes. Sherlock kept on muttering under his breath while he examined the traces of mud on the trainers and John fiddled around, trying to be useful and failing miserably.
The door hinges squeaked as if determined to wake the dead in the morgue two floors below; Sherlock’s shoulders twitched in annoyance.
“Oh. Sorry.” John looked up sharply to find Mary already two steps into the lab, an apologetic smile on her pretty face. His first impulse - to hide her from Sherlock’s view and his deadly-acute deductions - dissipated before he even started to move. She doesn’t want to kill me this time. So, why couldn’t I have a girlfriend after all? She came over to him, leaning in for a quick peck on the lips, and John sneaked a possessive arm around her to rest his hand on the small of her back. He could practically hear Sherlock’s eyes roll behind the microscope.
“I know you said you might be late for our dinner...” She ran her glance pointedly over his every-day jacket and slightly crumpled shirt which was in sharp contrast to her evening outfit. “So I cancelled the reservation and decided on surprising you here. How I am?”
“Generous and perfect and very, very lovely,” John complimented her. The eye-roll from Sherlock got louder. “Hey, Sherlock, this is Mary, my-”
“On and off relationship, now obviously in the ‘on’ phase. Lovely to meet you,” Sherlock fired out dismissively. Mary’s mouth quirked upward at the corners. John wished briefly that this was the kind of dream where you can stare a hole through one’s skull.
“Could be called like that,” she whispered to John with a wink. Aloud, she continued: “So you’re the fascinating flatmate.”
Sherlock didn’t seem to grace that with a reaction but Mary, once set on being amiable, couldn’t be deterred so easily.
“Never been to such high-tech lab before. Wow. I wouldn’t even get in the hospital but there I go all lucky tonight-” She gestured to the door as John remembered they didn’t squeak when they shut-
“-I met this nice boy right near the employee’s entrance, stealing a moment for a cigarette, and when I explained that I really needed to see my date, he agreed to smuggle me in.”
John, his eyes still on Mary, more sensing than seeing the figure of a young man standing awkwardly behind the half-open door as if being too shy to come in, felt the air stolen from his lungs.
.
.
.
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