Any Way the Wind Blows
Written for this prompt on the meme.
Wow, what the hell? I don't know why the cut did that, and I don't know how to get rid of it, so...well, it works just fine. All of them...
On Tuesday, Sherlock had a brilliant idea. He bundled himself up in a blanket, and he went downstairs and knocked on the door to 221A.
"I'm sick," he told Mrs. Hudson.
"Oh, poor Sherlock," she said, and herded him inside.
When John returned from the surgery that evening, Mrs. Hudson caught him at the stairs and waved him over. Sherlock was in her kitchen, eating toast with butter on it. A steaming mug of chamomile tea was set before him.
"Let Dr. Watson take a look at you," Mrs Hudson said. John said, "What's the problem?"
"Poor Sherlock isn't feeling well."
John went over and clapped a hand to Sherlock's forehead. In a moment he said, "Seem to be running a bit of a temperature." Sherlock wrapped his hands around his mug of tea. "Come up, I'll have a look at you. Thanks, Mrs. Hudson. I'll take it from here."
John settled Sherlock into the chair near the window, then went upstairs for his spare medical kit. When he returned he pulled the second chair around the table, sat, and rested his stethescope around his neck. He wiped his hands on his trousers and then pressed his fingertips to the undersides of Sherlock's jaw. Sherlock watched him wordlessly, tilted his head when John's insistent hands pressed more firmly.
"Sore throat? Headache?" John asked. Sherlock considered. "Headache," he answered. John said, "Hm." He fixed the stethescope into his ears and shucked the blanket from around Sherlock's shoulders. Sherlock shivered. John pressed the end of the stethescope to his chest and told him to take a deep breath. He told him to take another. He rucked up Sherlock's shirt and pressed the plastic to his bare chest. One more deep breath. Another.
John listened to Sherlock's lungs from behind, beneath the scapula. He looked in Sherlock's ears with a magnifying flashlight. He checked Sherlock's eyes. He took his temperature with an ear thermometer. 36.6. John frowned. He looked at Sherlock. Sherlock looked evenly back.
"I think you just need some sleep," John said. Sherlock pulled the blanket back over his shoulders. He went over to the couch and laid down with his head tucked into one corner and his nose pressed against the cushion.
"Oh Sherlock," Mummy said as she bent over his hand, and he watched her face while she pulled the splinters with a pair of oblique tweezers.
"Jesus Christ," John muttered, and hooked the skin with a thin curved needle. Blood welled up in the line of the gash and eeked out as John tugged the flaps of skin together. "Tell me right away next time, don't wait until we get home. Better yet, don't let's let there be a next time." His hands were warm on Sherlock's pallid arm.
John was at a medical conference. The criminals were all on holiday. Sherlock twisted on the sofa until he was half off, resting his head on the ground and examining the clumping dust collecting against the base boards. He slumped until his whole body was on the floor, and then he stared at the ceiling. He stood, wrapped the blanket around his shoulders, and trudged downstairs.
"Poor Sherlock," Mrs. Hudson said.
Mycroft wrenched him up by the arm and delivered a stinging slap across his cheek. "Don't you ever scare me like that again," he hissed, his eyes alive with fury. He shed his winter coat and bundled up the dripping, shivering Sherlock, then lifted him quickly and carried him home.
"Because I'm not at your beck and call," John said. So Sherlock went to France alone.
The icons on his mobile swam before him. The entire room seemed to be tilting, just a bit. Exhaustion had compromised his equilibrium. Where was he? Fabregues, oh yes. He was trying to call John. Trying being the operative word.
"Come get me," he said to John's voicemail, once he'd finally found the number. He remembered that John didn't know where he was, so he had to call again. The phone rang and rang and rang.
"You've reached John Watson," the message began.
"I'm in a town called Fabregues, in the South of France." Sherlock let the phone drop to the bed, then he curled on his side in the hotel's curtained semi-dark, and he waited.
"Goddammit, Sherlock," said John. He heaved him upright and wrapped him in his coat.
"Oh. John," said Sherlock. "You'll like this one. It was-" wait. What? Oh. "It was the father in law." Oh wait, damn. He had given it away without telling the story first. "Hang on - "
"You can tell me when we get home. Is this all your things?" John had retrieved a small suitcase from beside the bed. Sherlock looked around the room. If they forgot anything, he could just buy new. Everything was replaceable. Sherlock nodded.
"First it was the pendant," he said. "I should have seen it from the beginning. Stupid. Stupid."
"Come on." John herded him out to the taxi.
Sherlock closed his eyes and rested his head against the window as they navigated the rats nest of roundabouts surrounding the town.
"Did you take anything?" John asked. From the hotel? Oh, narcotics. Sherlock weighed his response. John was very adamantly opposed to the use of amphetamine, but at the moment Sherlock couldn't recall if he objected to it more than to the murder of children, which his use of amphetamine had prevented. It was raining. Which was the right answer? Well, when in doubt, just lie, lie, lie.
"No," Sherlock said.
"Liar."
Sherlock loved John. A lot. He felt very sick. His stomach twisted around itself painfully and Sherlock shifted so that his forehead pressed to a cooler part of the glass. He didn't want to go to the airport. Was that where they were going?
"I don't want to fly," he said.
"We're not."
Sherlock wouldn't fly unless he were heavily sedated. He didn't like the dense, muffling roar of the engines, or the fact that he couldn't get out when he wanted to. The only thing he liked was when they circled above the airport and he could map the layout of the city, note the blind alleys and busiest thoroughfairs. After that, they would breach the cloud cover and there was nothing to look at except nothing. All sounds were diminished, and the stewardesses wore those stiff blue jackets that looked as though they felt of plastic -
"No!" Sherlock shouted. "N'allons pas a l'aeroporte," he told the driver.
"Je sais."
"We're taking the train," John said. Good God, the train would take forever. Perhaps they had better fly. No. Sherlock could get off the train if he had to, and he could look out the window. He leaned back in his seat. He felt light and brittle, as though he were made of pasta. He wished he hadn't consumed quite so much amphetamine, or that he had saved some for right now. That was precisely why John didn't want him to take amphetamine. John was an idiot. He hadn't the slightest idea what Sherlock needed. It was bitingly cold in the cab. Sherlock dabbed the sweat from his upper lip. He shivered.
His arms would be bundles of dry spaghetti. Lasagna ribs. His spine would be rigatoni or macaroni. Macaroni, probably. A macaroni spine.
"No!" Sherlock shouted, and propelled himself to John's side of the cab, one foot braced against the door. "I can't get wet." He was shaking all over.
"You're not wet, Sherlock. I won't let you get wet." John had twisted so that Sherlock's back was to his chest, and he crossed one arm around Sherlock's shoulders.
"I can't get wet," Sherlock said.
"Okay."
He wasn't really made of pasta.
At the train station, John made him drink orange juice, which tasted like talcum powder.
"When's the last time you ate?" An impossible question. Sherlock had no idea when he was right now. It seemed days they had been in the cab. "Nevermind," John muttered.
They found an empty compartment, and John reclined the far seat until it lay flat, then did the same with the seat opposite, so the two seats end to end formed a narrow, cot-like bed. Sherlock looked out the window but it had gotten dark, so all he could see was his greyish reflection against the night. John made him lie down, and he faced the wall with his head tucked into the corner.
"Why do you do this to yourself," John sighed.
Mycroft heaved him out of the frozen stream.
Sherlock gasped. John was sitting right beside him. But John was at the cafe with Sally, eating biscuits. This John was an imposter. Sherlock seized him by the throat.
"Sherlock," fake John gargled.
Sherlock would know which one was fake by the scar on the shoulder. He grasped the neck of John's jumper and pulled it down.
"They both have scars," said Sherlock's evil twin. Sherlock didn't have an evil twin. John had never let him see the scar. He let go.
"Hrk," John said, and rubbed his throat. They were on the train. Sherlock watched him for a moment, then turned towards the window, drawing his knees onto the seat-bed. He pressed his forehead to the glass and stroked his reflection's eyebrow.
"Poor Sherlock," said Mrs. Hudson. Sherlock closed his eyes.
Something warm pressed up against him, which was uncomfortable because it was stiflingly hot on the train. Sherlock shivered. John tucked his own coat around Sherlock's shoulders, then pulled him around so that he was wedged tightly between John and the wall, with his head on John's chest. John smelled like John. Sherlock reached for John's cock because that was what everything boiled down to, wasn't it. That's what everyone wanted. If Sherlock wouldn't have sex with John, John would find someone who would. Sherlock didn't want either of those things; sex or for John to leave him, but one he could live with and the other he couldn't. John seized Sherlock's wrist, then brought the hand up and kissed his knuckles.
"I'll die," Sherlock said.
"No you won't."
"Where's Sherlock?" Daddy called. Sherlock stood stock still behind the lace curtain. It billowed out about his knees, the light breeze catching on his hair. "Where on Earth could he be?"
Sherlock sagged against the wall, the concrete cold at his back. His breath puffed thinly into the frigid air. Perhaps this time he had gone too far. He fumbled for his mobile in his pocket, and his blood smeared slick across the screen.
"You've reached John Watson," the message began. "I'm not available at the moment." Sherlock ended the call.
It had hurt much more than he'd expected. What had begun as a dull throb had morphed into a searing, breathtaking agony that dulled his senses and numbed his extremities. The mobile slipped from his grasp, and after several attempts he was able to retrieve it.
"You've reached John Watson," the message repeated. You have not reached John Watson.
"John," Sherlock gasped into the phone. "I need you."
"Where's Sherlock?" Daddy called. "Where on Earth could he be?"
Sherlock awoke in a hospital room that was white all around. John, ashen-faced, was camped beside him, and he looked up as Sherlock stirred.
"Thirsty," Sherlock said.
"Fuck you!"
John went from relieved to livid with remarkable alacrity. "Fuck you, you utter fucking twat, don't you ever - don't you ever - fucking do that to me again, do you understand me?"
Sherlock looked at him, but had nothing to say. John wiped his nose on the back of his hand and then stormed out of the room. Sherlock switched his gaze to the ceiling. He knew there were forty-four squares without counting.
John loaded Sherlock into a wheelchair and took him home. He helped him up the steps and settled him onto the sofa, then stood in the middle of the room, facing away.
The next day John changed the dressing on the wound, grimly wadding up the used bandage and applying new. Instead of John's neat black stitches, the hospital had stapled Sherlock's skin together, and the wound ran angry red, three inches down his side.
John wasn't speaking to him, although it didn't seem intentional. He did the chores about the flat, and simply had very little to say. He changed Sherlock's bandages every day, but focused solely on his task. Sherlock was bored. His wound itched, and he was beginning to worry. Mrs. Hudson came by with a bag of oranges.
"Oh Sherlock, you'll be up and about in no time," she said. She sat next to him on the sofa and peeled him an orange. She looked him in the eye and said in a low, quiet voice, "You ought to take better care of yourself. What will John do if you go? He's awfully alone in this world, Sherlock, you don't realize." She handed him a slice of orange, but he didn't want it anymore. "Oh dear," Mrs. Hudson sighed, and wiped her hands on her skirt.
Sherlock stood before the bathroom mirror, removing his staples with a pair of needle nose pliers. It hurt a lot.
"Jesus Christ, Sherlock, you need a special tool for that," John said, and snatched the pliers away. Sherlock examined his smooth pink scar and its intermitant metal smile.
"I don't like it," he said.
"You don't like it, then don't get stabbed."
Sherlock glanced up, but John wasn't looking at him. He was wiping the blood off the pliers with a bit of tissue.
"John," Sherlock said abruptly.
"What."
Sherlock looked back at his stab scar, angled just up under his ribs. It had caused considerable damage to his liver and nicked his lung. He had needed a blood transfusion, and had been treated for septic shock.
"I've never seen your scar."
"Which?"
Which. "The gunshot."
John looked at him for a moment. Then he set the pliers on the counter and pulled off his jumper by grasping it over his back, leaning forward and pulling it over his head so that it wouldn't be inside out. He stood square shouldered before Sherlock and looked at him frankly.
It was tiny. Just a jagged white bump above his armpit. Sherlock turned him around and saw the winding exit wound, the scar along his shoulderblade, wrapped down around his back, around his side, towards his heart. Sherlock stepped back, and John shrugged back into his jumper. He turned around. "Alright?"
Sherlock stared at him keenly. "Do you love me?" he decided to ask. John turned away in disgust.
"Of course I do, what do you think." He made to leave the bathroom, but Sherlock called out to him again.
"How much?"
John's shoulders slumped. His hand was on the door. "You're all I've got, Sherlock."
"Wrong." Sherlock's chest felt very tight, as though no blood could flow there anymore. "You could have anyone."
John turned wearily and faced him. He looked at Sherlock with tired, troubled eyes and said, "You're all I want."
Sherlock swallowed thickly. He was shaking all over. Finally John dragged a towel from the rack and wrapped it around Sherlock's shoulders. He led him to the living room, where he replaced the towel with a blanket. Sherlock clutched it around him. John went upstairs and returned with a blanket of his own. They went down to 221A.
"My poor boys," said Mrs. Hudson, and ushered them in.
"Where's Sherlock? Where on Earth could he be?"
John took his hand and squeezed it tightly.
Wow, what the hell? I don't know why the cut did that, and I don't know how to get rid of it, so...well, it works just fine. All of them...
On Tuesday, Sherlock had a brilliant idea. He bundled himself up in a blanket, and he went downstairs and knocked on the door to 221A.
"I'm sick," he told Mrs. Hudson.
"Oh, poor Sherlock," she said, and herded him inside.
When John returned from the surgery that evening, Mrs. Hudson caught him at the stairs and waved him over. Sherlock was in her kitchen, eating toast with butter on it. A steaming mug of chamomile tea was set before him.
"Let Dr. Watson take a look at you," Mrs Hudson said. John said, "What's the problem?"
"Poor Sherlock isn't feeling well."
John went over and clapped a hand to Sherlock's forehead. In a moment he said, "Seem to be running a bit of a temperature." Sherlock wrapped his hands around his mug of tea. "Come up, I'll have a look at you. Thanks, Mrs. Hudson. I'll take it from here."
John settled Sherlock into the chair near the window, then went upstairs for his spare medical kit. When he returned he pulled the second chair around the table, sat, and rested his stethescope around his neck. He wiped his hands on his trousers and then pressed his fingertips to the undersides of Sherlock's jaw. Sherlock watched him wordlessly, tilted his head when John's insistent hands pressed more firmly.
"Sore throat? Headache?" John asked. Sherlock considered. "Headache," he answered. John said, "Hm." He fixed the stethescope into his ears and shucked the blanket from around Sherlock's shoulders. Sherlock shivered. John pressed the end of the stethescope to his chest and told him to take a deep breath. He told him to take another. He rucked up Sherlock's shirt and pressed the plastic to his bare chest. One more deep breath. Another.
John listened to Sherlock's lungs from behind, beneath the scapula. He looked in Sherlock's ears with a magnifying flashlight. He checked Sherlock's eyes. He took his temperature with an ear thermometer. 36.6. John frowned. He looked at Sherlock. Sherlock looked evenly back.
"I think you just need some sleep," John said. Sherlock pulled the blanket back over his shoulders. He went over to the couch and laid down with his head tucked into one corner and his nose pressed against the cushion.
"Oh Sherlock," Mummy said as she bent over his hand, and he watched her face while she pulled the splinters with a pair of oblique tweezers.
"Jesus Christ," John muttered, and hooked the skin with a thin curved needle. Blood welled up in the line of the gash and eeked out as John tugged the flaps of skin together. "Tell me right away next time, don't wait until we get home. Better yet, don't let's let there be a next time." His hands were warm on Sherlock's pallid arm.
John was at a medical conference. The criminals were all on holiday. Sherlock twisted on the sofa until he was half off, resting his head on the ground and examining the clumping dust collecting against the base boards. He slumped until his whole body was on the floor, and then he stared at the ceiling. He stood, wrapped the blanket around his shoulders, and trudged downstairs.
"Poor Sherlock," Mrs. Hudson said.
Mycroft wrenched him up by the arm and delivered a stinging slap across his cheek. "Don't you ever scare me like that again," he hissed, his eyes alive with fury. He shed his winter coat and bundled up the dripping, shivering Sherlock, then lifted him quickly and carried him home.
"Because I'm not at your beck and call," John said. So Sherlock went to France alone.
The icons on his mobile swam before him. The entire room seemed to be tilting, just a bit. Exhaustion had compromised his equilibrium. Where was he? Fabregues, oh yes. He was trying to call John. Trying being the operative word.
"Come get me," he said to John's voicemail, once he'd finally found the number. He remembered that John didn't know where he was, so he had to call again. The phone rang and rang and rang.
"You've reached John Watson," the message began.
"I'm in a town called Fabregues, in the South of France." Sherlock let the phone drop to the bed, then he curled on his side in the hotel's curtained semi-dark, and he waited.
"Goddammit, Sherlock," said John. He heaved him upright and wrapped him in his coat.
"Oh. John," said Sherlock. "You'll like this one. It was-" wait. What? Oh. "It was the father in law." Oh wait, damn. He had given it away without telling the story first. "Hang on - "
"You can tell me when we get home. Is this all your things?" John had retrieved a small suitcase from beside the bed. Sherlock looked around the room. If they forgot anything, he could just buy new. Everything was replaceable. Sherlock nodded.
"First it was the pendant," he said. "I should have seen it from the beginning. Stupid. Stupid."
"Come on." John herded him out to the taxi.
Sherlock closed his eyes and rested his head against the window as they navigated the rats nest of roundabouts surrounding the town.
"Did you take anything?" John asked. From the hotel? Oh, narcotics. Sherlock weighed his response. John was very adamantly opposed to the use of amphetamine, but at the moment Sherlock couldn't recall if he objected to it more than to the murder of children, which his use of amphetamine had prevented. It was raining. Which was the right answer? Well, when in doubt, just lie, lie, lie.
"No," Sherlock said.
"Liar."
Sherlock loved John. A lot. He felt very sick. His stomach twisted around itself painfully and Sherlock shifted so that his forehead pressed to a cooler part of the glass. He didn't want to go to the airport. Was that where they were going?
"I don't want to fly," he said.
"We're not."
Sherlock wouldn't fly unless he were heavily sedated. He didn't like the dense, muffling roar of the engines, or the fact that he couldn't get out when he wanted to. The only thing he liked was when they circled above the airport and he could map the layout of the city, note the blind alleys and busiest thoroughfairs. After that, they would breach the cloud cover and there was nothing to look at except nothing. All sounds were diminished, and the stewardesses wore those stiff blue jackets that looked as though they felt of plastic -
"No!" Sherlock shouted. "N'allons pas a l'aeroporte," he told the driver.
"Je sais."
"We're taking the train," John said. Good God, the train would take forever. Perhaps they had better fly. No. Sherlock could get off the train if he had to, and he could look out the window. He leaned back in his seat. He felt light and brittle, as though he were made of pasta. He wished he hadn't consumed quite so much amphetamine, or that he had saved some for right now. That was precisely why John didn't want him to take amphetamine. John was an idiot. He hadn't the slightest idea what Sherlock needed. It was bitingly cold in the cab. Sherlock dabbed the sweat from his upper lip. He shivered.
His arms would be bundles of dry spaghetti. Lasagna ribs. His spine would be rigatoni or macaroni. Macaroni, probably. A macaroni spine.
"No!" Sherlock shouted, and propelled himself to John's side of the cab, one foot braced against the door. "I can't get wet." He was shaking all over.
"You're not wet, Sherlock. I won't let you get wet." John had twisted so that Sherlock's back was to his chest, and he crossed one arm around Sherlock's shoulders.
"I can't get wet," Sherlock said.
"Okay."
He wasn't really made of pasta.
At the train station, John made him drink orange juice, which tasted like talcum powder.
"When's the last time you ate?" An impossible question. Sherlock had no idea when he was right now. It seemed days they had been in the cab. "Nevermind," John muttered.
They found an empty compartment, and John reclined the far seat until it lay flat, then did the same with the seat opposite, so the two seats end to end formed a narrow, cot-like bed. Sherlock looked out the window but it had gotten dark, so all he could see was his greyish reflection against the night. John made him lie down, and he faced the wall with his head tucked into the corner.
"Why do you do this to yourself," John sighed.
Mycroft heaved him out of the frozen stream.
Sherlock gasped. John was sitting right beside him. But John was at the cafe with Sally, eating biscuits. This John was an imposter. Sherlock seized him by the throat.
"Sherlock," fake John gargled.
Sherlock would know which one was fake by the scar on the shoulder. He grasped the neck of John's jumper and pulled it down.
"They both have scars," said Sherlock's evil twin. Sherlock didn't have an evil twin. John had never let him see the scar. He let go.
"Hrk," John said, and rubbed his throat. They were on the train. Sherlock watched him for a moment, then turned towards the window, drawing his knees onto the seat-bed. He pressed his forehead to the glass and stroked his reflection's eyebrow.
"Poor Sherlock," said Mrs. Hudson. Sherlock closed his eyes.
Something warm pressed up against him, which was uncomfortable because it was stiflingly hot on the train. Sherlock shivered. John tucked his own coat around Sherlock's shoulders, then pulled him around so that he was wedged tightly between John and the wall, with his head on John's chest. John smelled like John. Sherlock reached for John's cock because that was what everything boiled down to, wasn't it. That's what everyone wanted. If Sherlock wouldn't have sex with John, John would find someone who would. Sherlock didn't want either of those things; sex or for John to leave him, but one he could live with and the other he couldn't. John seized Sherlock's wrist, then brought the hand up and kissed his knuckles.
"I'll die," Sherlock said.
"No you won't."
"Where's Sherlock?" Daddy called. Sherlock stood stock still behind the lace curtain. It billowed out about his knees, the light breeze catching on his hair. "Where on Earth could he be?"
Sherlock sagged against the wall, the concrete cold at his back. His breath puffed thinly into the frigid air. Perhaps this time he had gone too far. He fumbled for his mobile in his pocket, and his blood smeared slick across the screen.
"You've reached John Watson," the message began. "I'm not available at the moment." Sherlock ended the call.
It had hurt much more than he'd expected. What had begun as a dull throb had morphed into a searing, breathtaking agony that dulled his senses and numbed his extremities. The mobile slipped from his grasp, and after several attempts he was able to retrieve it.
"You've reached John Watson," the message repeated. You have not reached John Watson.
"John," Sherlock gasped into the phone. "I need you."
"Where's Sherlock?" Daddy called. "Where on Earth could he be?"
Sherlock awoke in a hospital room that was white all around. John, ashen-faced, was camped beside him, and he looked up as Sherlock stirred.
"Thirsty," Sherlock said.
"Fuck you!"
John went from relieved to livid with remarkable alacrity. "Fuck you, you utter fucking twat, don't you ever - don't you ever - fucking do that to me again, do you understand me?"
Sherlock looked at him, but had nothing to say. John wiped his nose on the back of his hand and then stormed out of the room. Sherlock switched his gaze to the ceiling. He knew there were forty-four squares without counting.
John loaded Sherlock into a wheelchair and took him home. He helped him up the steps and settled him onto the sofa, then stood in the middle of the room, facing away.
The next day John changed the dressing on the wound, grimly wadding up the used bandage and applying new. Instead of John's neat black stitches, the hospital had stapled Sherlock's skin together, and the wound ran angry red, three inches down his side.
John wasn't speaking to him, although it didn't seem intentional. He did the chores about the flat, and simply had very little to say. He changed Sherlock's bandages every day, but focused solely on his task. Sherlock was bored. His wound itched, and he was beginning to worry. Mrs. Hudson came by with a bag of oranges.
"Oh Sherlock, you'll be up and about in no time," she said. She sat next to him on the sofa and peeled him an orange. She looked him in the eye and said in a low, quiet voice, "You ought to take better care of yourself. What will John do if you go? He's awfully alone in this world, Sherlock, you don't realize." She handed him a slice of orange, but he didn't want it anymore. "Oh dear," Mrs. Hudson sighed, and wiped her hands on her skirt.
Sherlock stood before the bathroom mirror, removing his staples with a pair of needle nose pliers. It hurt a lot.
"Jesus Christ, Sherlock, you need a special tool for that," John said, and snatched the pliers away. Sherlock examined his smooth pink scar and its intermitant metal smile.
"I don't like it," he said.
"You don't like it, then don't get stabbed."
Sherlock glanced up, but John wasn't looking at him. He was wiping the blood off the pliers with a bit of tissue.
"John," Sherlock said abruptly.
"What."
Sherlock looked back at his stab scar, angled just up under his ribs. It had caused considerable damage to his liver and nicked his lung. He had needed a blood transfusion, and had been treated for septic shock.
"I've never seen your scar."
"Which?"
Which. "The gunshot."
John looked at him for a moment. Then he set the pliers on the counter and pulled off his jumper by grasping it over his back, leaning forward and pulling it over his head so that it wouldn't be inside out. He stood square shouldered before Sherlock and looked at him frankly.
It was tiny. Just a jagged white bump above his armpit. Sherlock turned him around and saw the winding exit wound, the scar along his shoulderblade, wrapped down around his back, around his side, towards his heart. Sherlock stepped back, and John shrugged back into his jumper. He turned around. "Alright?"
Sherlock stared at him keenly. "Do you love me?" he decided to ask. John turned away in disgust.
"Of course I do, what do you think." He made to leave the bathroom, but Sherlock called out to him again.
"How much?"
John's shoulders slumped. His hand was on the door. "You're all I've got, Sherlock."
"Wrong." Sherlock's chest felt very tight, as though no blood could flow there anymore. "You could have anyone."
John turned wearily and faced him. He looked at Sherlock with tired, troubled eyes and said, "You're all I want."
Sherlock swallowed thickly. He was shaking all over. Finally John dragged a towel from the rack and wrapped it around Sherlock's shoulders. He led him to the living room, where he replaced the towel with a blanket. Sherlock clutched it around him. John went upstairs and returned with a blanket of his own. They went down to 221A.
"My poor boys," said Mrs. Hudson, and ushered them in.
"Where's Sherlock? Where on Earth could he be?"
John took his hand and squeezed it tightly.