Fic: Sherlock: Dissolution (1/3)
Title: Dissolution
Pairing: Sherlock/John, Sherlock/OFC
Warnings: Hm. Major character death? Infidelity.
Rating: Probably a PG-13 for language
Summary: In finding Sherlock another assistant, John gets more than he bargained for.
It’s a beautiful day in early May, and they are spending it at the morgue. Sherlock has decided that the first gorgeous, clear-skied day in two weeks is the perfect day to experiment with the rate at which acid will speed decomposition. Molly had been kind enough to set aside a few corpses for Sherlock before she left on a well-deserved vacation on the continent, and weather be damned, he apparently must take advantage of the opportunity.
John can’t fully explain his own presence in the morgue. He could be out doing something better; he’s just not sure what. Sit in a park and read? Not likely. Take a stroll? They’ll probably do that on the way home, and there’s probably going to be curry involved, if he waits Sherlock out. He’s been with the man for five years, now; he knows better than to think a sunny day might have any effect on what Sherlock’s going to do, and he knows himself well enough to know that he’d rather be with Sherlock than without. So he’s sat in Molly’s abandoned office, reading a new mystery novel, while Sherlock is dripping various chemical agents onto bodies in the theater. He has bad coffee and a bit of a headache from the fumes, but it’s not the worst way he’s spent the day recently.
The doors to the morgue swing open a few minutes later, and John looks up to see who might be coming in. Molly does the night shift, still, so he still sees her the most often, but he knows the day men, too. They all think Sherlock’s a weirdo, and John gets to his feet, prepared to head them off. Molly hadn’t mentioned that they’d be subbing for her.
It’s not one of the day men, though; it’s a younger woman, someone John’s never seen before. She’s extremely pretty, he notices first, almost involuntarily; she’s wearing a calf-length, tight black skirt with tights that still somehow make obvious the tone of her long, shapely legs; she’s got on sturdy but stylish black sandals and a vivid green top that cuts a flattering V between her breasts. Her skin is a creamy copper color and her hair is a reddish-brown that strikes John as natural. Sherlock will be able to tell him, unless she’s about to turn screaming.
“That smells terrible,” John hears her say. Her voice is throaty but cheerful enough. “Sulfur?”
“No,” Sherlock says, but he says nothing else.
The woman leans closer. “Magic acid, really?” she says. “Haven’t seen that since Germany.”
Sherlock looks up at her, just a brief glance, and his eyes narrow. John clears his throat from the doorway. “Ah,” the woman says. “I’m Lauren Willis. Did Molly mention - well, probably not. I’m here assisting her.”
“Hardly,” Sherlock says, and Lauren smiles.
“Of course I’ve heard all about you,” she says, looking between them. Her gaze lingers on Sherlock a few seconds too long. John is used to this; three years as Sherlock’s lover have nearly worn the jealousy out of him. Sherlock doesn’t care enough to even notice, most of the time, and John has tried to learn the same restraint.
“Anyway, I’ll let you finish,” she says. “I’m just coming in to get Mr. Graber.” She grins and offers a cheery wave to John as she heads toward the main cooler. “Let me know if you’ll need a PTFE container for the clothes, yeah?”
Sherlock pauses again, mid-dripping, and then he nods just once. She’s thought of something he hasn’t.
“Interesting,” he says later, when they’re walking home. They’ve already had the curry, and John is feeling a little mellow after two beers.
“She was bloody gorgeous and you know it,” John says, smiling fondly. He’s still not entirely sure whether Sherlock really doesn’t notice these things, or whether there’s some part of him that registers it’s bad form to mention a woman’s aesthetic beauty after she’s flirted with only him.
“She was an assistant to the man in Germany who’s done the most recent work on superacids,” he says. “That’s far more interesting than her bra size, I should think.”
“To you,” John says, but he laughs at Sherlock’s pointed look. They are exclusive. It doesn’t stop John looking, really, because he’s not sure anything could, but Sherlock knows - and John knows Sherlock knows - he would never do anything about it. As for Sherlock, well, John knows he has been attracted to others, both before and after they began their affair, but it took him two bloody years just to get up the nerve or tolerance to handle having sex with John. He’s confident in Sherlock’s fidelity.
Sherlock says, “She’s rather too smart to be helping out in the morgue.”
“Maybe she just likes the city, then?”
“Hm.”
They go home and settle in for a bit telly. John watches some new stupid show while Sherlock pokes around on the Internet, trying to tease a mystery out of the obituary column or, his latest fun, out of the craigslist ads. It’s comfortable and absolutely usual. John eventually falls asleep with his head on Sherlock’s shoulder, and he’s aware - even if Sherlock would never admit it - that Sherlock doesn’t move so as not to wake him.
“You staying up?” he asks after he stirs.
Sherlock nods, so John kisses him and goes up to bed himself. He thinks fleetingly of the attractive new doctor at the hospital as he strips off his trousers, but it’s really just a fleeting thought. He’s got all the excitement he needs in his life, right here.
***
Molly is gone for two full weeks, and during that time, they see quite a lot of Lauren Willis. Sherlock engages her in a discussion about the new acids they’ve been forming around carbonates or some such - John knows he should know, and should probably care, but he doesn’t. Sherlock’s only testing the acids out of boredom. John doesn’t want to interfere, so he leaves Sherlock with Lauren and a half-dissolved arm and takes himself to the cinema for the afternoon. Sherlock comes home later with his eyes glinting like victory and his mouth going a hundred miles an hour about dissolution and combination and narrowly missing exploding things using water. He smells like sulfur, a bit, but John takes him to bed anyway.
***
In June, when they are chasing after a minor art thief, John falls and breaks his foot in three places. It’s a slightly complicated break, though not a particularly dangerous one, and it puts him on crutches for six weeks. This does not, it seems, discourage Sherlock at all from expecting him to get the shopping, nor does it discourage the surgery from calling him to fill in, but it does put an end to, well, chasing after minor art thieves and their like. Twice in the next week, Sherlock dashes out without him. The third time, he dashes out but doesn’t return immediately, and John answers a text at midnight that leads him and his crutches to an alley in Chase Cross where Sherlock is crouched over a body. There’s a bandage wrapped around his forehead.
“This won’t do,” John says. He wrestles Sherlock into a cab, finally, and then home. After he’s inspected Sherlock for concussion and satisfied himself that it’s minor, then sent him to shower off the dirt and blood, John begins to wonder about finding some kind of minder. Lestrade clearly doesn’t have the manpower, and though Mycroft talks a good game, he can’t physically follow Sherlock around all the time. Almost no one can or wants to, except John, and he’s benched.
He tries, anyway. The next day he follows Sherlock - who’s got a blinding headache he won’t admit to - over to Bart’s to collect further evidence off the body of the newest victim. He takes a chair outside Molly’s office this time, and settles in to wait. Sherlock looks the body up and down, gets out his magnifying glass, sniffs the man’s wrist, and takes a sample of his hair. He checks something on his phone, then asks the lab tech nearest for the man’s clothes.
“I think the police took them.”
“Right,” Sherlock says, and he starts for the door.
John grabs his crutches and barely makes it to the doors before Sherlock does. “We’re going to Scotland Yard, then?”
Sherlock glares at him. “No, I’m going to the crime scene. You’re going home.”
“I’m certainly going with you,” John says. “You’ve got a head injury.”
“This is ridiculous,” Sherlock says. “You can’t possibly, logically believe you can keep up with me while you’re on crutches.”
“And you can’t possibly think it’s a good idea that you strike out alone,” John says. “Look, you’ve said yourself, you work best with an assistant. Let’s just - let me go with you this time, and we’ll figure out something else going forward.”
Sherlock opens his mouth as if to argue, but then turns and looks at the doors. They swing open only a moment later, and Lauren Willis walks in. “You wanted the blood results on the new victim?” she says. “Hullo, John.”
“Lauren,” he says, and he looks at Sherlock. Sherlock is studying her with particular attention. It makes John a little uncomfortable, but he can follow his train of thought well enough. “Ah - are you doing anything right now?”
“Other than delivering samples? Not really,” she says, grinning. “What’s up, gents?”
“I was about to go to a crime scene,” Sherlock says. “John feels it’s not safe for me to travel on my own -“
“Not because the scene is particularly dangerous,” John says quickly, because he feels he should. “Because Sherlock sometimes takes… risks.”
Sherlock’s eyes dart a quick glare at John, then turn back to Lauren. “I don’t share his assessment of my safety; however, he has been foolish enough to injure himself, leaving me without a suitable assistant for the time being. Would you possibly -“
“Sure,” Lauren says. “More exciting than running lab samples all day. I’ll get my jacket and see you at the garage?”
“A car,” Sherlock says after she’s gone, in the same tone he said “Interesting.” “That should please you.”
John nods. “Do take care, though, all right?”
“Of course.” Sherlock leans over and kisses John at the very edge of his mouth, an off-center kiss, but more than he usually gets in public. “I’ll update you as things happen.”
“I’ll expect it.”
He does, that time, get a half-dozen texts from Sherlock letting him know what he’s found and asking him to look a few things up on the computer. She’s fine, you know. No danger. You’re not missing anything, is the last one he gets, a half-hour before a cab drops Sherlock at the doorstep. John is glad to see him, and glad to know he’s picked up on part of John’s worry from so far away. There is a small, old-fashioned part of him that worried at sending a woman running after Sherlock.
“You really shouldn’t worry,” Sherlock says, stretching out beside him in their bed. “She’s had boxing training, runs a four-minute mile, did a triathlon last year.”
“Whatever for?” John asks.
Sherlock shudders. “Fun.”
John snickers. “Well, all right. Will she do for a bit, then?”
“Just a bit,” Sherlock agrees. He rolls over on top of John, his legs carefully intertwining in a way that doesn’t put any pressure on John’s foot. John settles his hands on Sherlock’s lower back. “Really, it was very foolish of you to break your foot.”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” he says, tilting up for a kiss. “Extremely foolish to be stuck laying around for so long. This bed is rather less fun without you pacing around it.”
Sherlock grins. It is the slow, genuine smile that only John ever sees, one that hardly ever appears outside of their flat or even their bed. It is a smile that means he is glad John understands what he is really saying. I miss you out there.
They have careful, quiet sex that afternoon, even though Sherlock is in the middle of a case and John’s foot has been sending throbs of pain up his leg. This - the softer kind of sex, what John would have called “making love” when he’d been with others - happens from time to time. John thought he’d miss having quiet moments, when he and Sherlock first got together, but he’d been quickly surprised to realize that Sherlock wants peace sometimes. He will never be a habitual cuddler or a particularly tender man, but he does really need some gentleness in his life. John isn’t the world’s greatest supplier of that, always, either; he’s used to being a hard sounding board and a physically involved lover. He can slow down sometimes, though, for Sherlock, and that Sherlock can do the same for him means something beyond whatever he used to get from holding a girl’s hand or snuggling close in the mornings. They do things for each other that only they would do, that only they understand. It is more than enough.
***
John’s foot continues its slow healing, which he doesn’t help at all by working at the clinic nearly every day. Flu season hits London particularly hard, and even the doctors are dropping like diseased flies. He tries to stay as much off the foot as possible, but within a week, he manages to re-injure himself tripping over a woman’s foot in the waiting room. The resulting fall and twist will, his colleagues inform him, probably keep him on crutches for another three or four weeks - “and you shouldn’t be up for any more than fifteen minutes at a time, John, and certainly not with any weight on your foot.”
He makes it home that night and calls the nearest Chinese for takeaway, then asks Mrs. Hudson to please bring it up when they ring. Sherlock is out. There is no note, and John doesn’t see anything on his phone, so he texts him. After ten minutes, he has a brief reply:
Running. Have L with me; all’s well. - SH
It shouldn’t bother him, John thinks, but it does, just slightly. The more he’s seen of Lauren, the more he is convinced that her flirting isn’t, like Molly’s, going over Sherlock’s head. In fact, he’s rather certain Sherlock is flattered by it, perhaps even enjoying it.
But it doesn’t matter, he tells himself, opening a beer. Sherlock is his. They live together - they’ve made something of a life together, in fact. They’re partners. Sherlock loves him, in the best way he is able to. This flirtation doesn’t matter. Sherlock is logical to a fault, and if he’s not always scrupulously honest or even particularly self-aware, he’s smart enough to realize how valuable John is to him. It makes no reasonable sense to cheat. John thinks of all the poor blokes out there who have to really worry about these things - who must wonder whether their partners’ emotions will overcome their partners’ logic and reason - and is glad, for once, to be removed from the ranks of the romantics. Give him reason and calculation. Give him Sherlock.
Sherlock brings Lauren back to the flat that evening. John has ordered enough food in case Sherlock is eating, but he isn’t; he passes the container off to Lauren, and she sits on the floor to eat it out of the carton, bare legs crossed, looking up at Sherlock as he paces. She has a smudge of dirt by her chin that John isn’t going to tell her about, and her hair is mussed, her cheeks flushed. All the signs of a good chase, John thinks, and surprises himself by thinking they are also the signs of a good shag. He looks at Sherlock sharply, but he can’t detect anything different in his manner. He is impeccably dressed, as always, and he smirked indulgently when John said he ordered from his favorite place.
John offers them both tea, ignores Sherlock’s “No,” and brings them all cups. He lets his hand linger on Sherlock’s as he passes the cup over, and Sherlock smiles just briefly. “What do you think?” he asks.
For a few moments, it is like always, like Lauren isn’t even in the room. John settles onto the couch and lets Sherlock bounce some ideas off him; he filters out the non-sense, the parts where Sherlock has to mutter to himself about his own brilliance and everyone else’s ignorance. He feeds back the questions he is really thinking, and Sherlock uses them to catapult into better, clearer thoughts.
Lauren chimes in here and there, but Sherlock largely ignores her. John almost feels bad for her. She doesn’t quite understand the rhythm of Sherlock’s thinking yet - and, John thinks, carefully rolling his ankle around, she probably never will.
When she leaves, Sherlock sits on the other end of the couch to study his case file. “You’re jealous,” he says.
“I’m not.”
“Hm.”
He flips through the file, and John watches. It takes another two minutes of silence before he says, “Should I be?”
“I don’t see why.”
“Then I’m not.”
Sherlock turns and looks at him. “Really?”
“No, but I’m trying.”
He nods, and there’s a faint upward tilt at the edge of his mouth. “I’m going to stay up tonight.”
“Figured as much.” John hoists himself from the couch and doesn’t even pause to kiss Sherlock good night. He doesn’t need to, he tells himself.
Sherlock is a difficult man to learn, a challenging man to love, and a nearly impossible man to follow. He gets into bed and lets himself relax into the knowledge that he is the only person who has ever really tried, and he reminds himself that the reward for this is Sherlock himself, who will come to his bed that night or the next, or whenever his work is done.
The case is done two nights later, and Sherlock does come to bed with him. They stay there for nearly twenty hours, with breaks only for food and tea and the bathroom. Then John has to go back to the surgery, and Sherlock decides to make a trip to Scotland Yard, and things go pretty quickly back to normal.
***
A month later, John is finally out of his cast, though still fighting the flu every day at work. He so far hasn’t contracted it himself, but it seems only a matter of time. He’s taken every precaution, though, including making certain he has a solid eight hours of sleep each night. When the cast comes off and he is cleared to walk again, he realizes that is going to be very difficult - he’ll soon be back on the streets with Sherlock again.
“Well, you don’t have to,” Sherlock says. John isn’t sure if he is imagining the slight bit of hurt in his eyes or not.
“No, of course I do. I will,” John says. They are having a late lunch at a diner not far from the courthouse where Sherlock will testify that afternoon. He has on his best suit, which is really a spectacular thing. John has conflicting emotions about that suit: it is so perfect on Sherlock that all he wants to do is rip it off.
“Only -” Sherlock says, pushing away his muffin.
John nods. “Only - maybe it would be all right to wait another week or two? I should do a little therapy on the foot, anyway, and - we’ve been so swamped at the surgery.”
Sherlock shrugs. “It’s fine, John,” he says. “Lauren’s fellowship is nearly over, anyway. She’ll have time, if I ask.”
“Are you all right with that?”
“It’s not the same,” Sherlock says, “but I’m fine. Better than taking the skull along, or listening to you complain about having the flu.”
John is glad they settle it so easily.
***
Really, John reflects a month later, it ends up offering him the best of all worlds. Lauren’s fellowship ends and she takes up a permanent position at Bart’s overseeing some of her own graduate students. On the days and nights that John is available to go with Sherlock to a crime scene, he does; when he can’t go, or doesn’t want to, Lauren fills in. Sometimes, she comes over and they all have dinner together and discuss the case. It’s not so bad, having a third voice around.
She’s a hard woman to pin down, John thinks. One evening, he’s sitting in Molly’s empty office, typing a new entry for his blog, when Lauren comes by and leans against the doorframe. “God, he’s in a mood,” she says, crossing her arms.
It’s the first time John’s ever really heard her say anything negative about Sherlock, and it surprises him. “It happens,” he says after a moment. He’s used to commiserating with Lestrade about Sherlock, sometimes even Donovan or Molly, but he doesn’t usually join in when strangers are having a go. Lauren isn’t a stranger, though; it’s likely she needs to blow off a bit of steam after having been out with Sherlock all day.
She recrosses her arms and John congratulates himself on exactly how unjealous a man he is, that he lets his lover spend his days and sometimes nights with a woman whose breasts are this luscious and constantly on display. “Do you get used to it?” she asks.
John laughs. “No,” he says. “But you learn what he means. Most of the time, he doesn’t mean anything.”
“Really? Because sometimes, I feel like he does mean something, and I just can’t get it, and he doesn’t even expect me to get it. That’s the worst, isn’t it? That he just - he’s just so much smarter that he doesn’t even try to explain, he just assumes I won’t know.”
John knows. Of course he knows. He’d need every hand in the morgue plus a few who aren’t dead yet to count the number of times Sherlock has insulted his intelligence indirectly by assuming John is too stupid to catch on or catch up. “Some of that’s just habit,” John says. “He’s been the brightest man in the room his whole life.”
Lauren snorts indelicately. “Except for that whack-job brother of his, right?”
“Mycroft? You’ve met Mycroft?”
She frowns. “Maybe I wasn’t supposed to tell you.”
“Nah, don’t worry about the cloak and dagger stuff,” John says. “Mycroft has a flair for the dramatic. They both do. Always have.” He leans onto those last words, wanting to remind her, remind himself, that he's been here longest.
Lauren grins widely, something a little nasty in her look. “Must make for a great time in bed,” she says.
“With Mycroft I’d have no idea,” John deadpans, and she laughs.
“I knew it,” she says, “I knew he must be wild.”
“Wild what?” Sherlock says, sweeping into the office past Lauren. “John, really, I texted you four minutes ago. Can we please leave, I’m not going to get anything done until I’ve been to Montrose’s study again.”
“Again?” John asks. “Sherlock, it’s nearly ten, and you’ve been there twice tonight already. What could possibly -“
“Evidence doesn’t sleep,” he says. “Even if you somehow insist you must.”
“It’s fine,” Lauren says, though she sounds a little weary to John. “I’ll go. We can share a cab to Baker Street and then on, all right?”
“Yeah, fine,” John says, and he’s grateful that she’s willing to do this, even if it is exhausting.
As he gets into bed that night, alone, he reminds himself that Lauren’s willingness to help out makes it possible, finally, for John to keep not only somewhat regular hours, but also for him to bring in a steady paycheck. For the first time since he’s moved to London, he is comfortable financially, socially, and physically. This is thanks to her. He should really stop worrying, he decides.
Besides, somehow not being together all day, every day has produced a subtle but lovely change in his relationship with Sherlock. He suddenly turns up at the surgery sometimes, just to take John to dinner or, once, to bring him a packet of crisps and a hot cup of coffee. At home, he sleeps nearly every night in John’s bed, and John wakes twice to find a long arm curled around his waist. Sherlock doesn’t start doing the shopping or making him breakfast or anything miraculous, but John sees these as clear signs that theirs is a partnership that can thrive even without getting shot at together every single day. Sherlock genuinely enjoys his company.
It is brilliant.
Which is why he should know it won’t last.
Part 2.
Pairing: Sherlock/John, Sherlock/OFC
Warnings: Hm. Major character death? Infidelity.
Rating: Probably a PG-13 for language
Summary: In finding Sherlock another assistant, John gets more than he bargained for.
It’s a beautiful day in early May, and they are spending it at the morgue. Sherlock has decided that the first gorgeous, clear-skied day in two weeks is the perfect day to experiment with the rate at which acid will speed decomposition. Molly had been kind enough to set aside a few corpses for Sherlock before she left on a well-deserved vacation on the continent, and weather be damned, he apparently must take advantage of the opportunity.
John can’t fully explain his own presence in the morgue. He could be out doing something better; he’s just not sure what. Sit in a park and read? Not likely. Take a stroll? They’ll probably do that on the way home, and there’s probably going to be curry involved, if he waits Sherlock out. He’s been with the man for five years, now; he knows better than to think a sunny day might have any effect on what Sherlock’s going to do, and he knows himself well enough to know that he’d rather be with Sherlock than without. So he’s sat in Molly’s abandoned office, reading a new mystery novel, while Sherlock is dripping various chemical agents onto bodies in the theater. He has bad coffee and a bit of a headache from the fumes, but it’s not the worst way he’s spent the day recently.
The doors to the morgue swing open a few minutes later, and John looks up to see who might be coming in. Molly does the night shift, still, so he still sees her the most often, but he knows the day men, too. They all think Sherlock’s a weirdo, and John gets to his feet, prepared to head them off. Molly hadn’t mentioned that they’d be subbing for her.
It’s not one of the day men, though; it’s a younger woman, someone John’s never seen before. She’s extremely pretty, he notices first, almost involuntarily; she’s wearing a calf-length, tight black skirt with tights that still somehow make obvious the tone of her long, shapely legs; she’s got on sturdy but stylish black sandals and a vivid green top that cuts a flattering V between her breasts. Her skin is a creamy copper color and her hair is a reddish-brown that strikes John as natural. Sherlock will be able to tell him, unless she’s about to turn screaming.
“That smells terrible,” John hears her say. Her voice is throaty but cheerful enough. “Sulfur?”
“No,” Sherlock says, but he says nothing else.
The woman leans closer. “Magic acid, really?” she says. “Haven’t seen that since Germany.”
Sherlock looks up at her, just a brief glance, and his eyes narrow. John clears his throat from the doorway. “Ah,” the woman says. “I’m Lauren Willis. Did Molly mention - well, probably not. I’m here assisting her.”
“Hardly,” Sherlock says, and Lauren smiles.
“Of course I’ve heard all about you,” she says, looking between them. Her gaze lingers on Sherlock a few seconds too long. John is used to this; three years as Sherlock’s lover have nearly worn the jealousy out of him. Sherlock doesn’t care enough to even notice, most of the time, and John has tried to learn the same restraint.
“Anyway, I’ll let you finish,” she says. “I’m just coming in to get Mr. Graber.” She grins and offers a cheery wave to John as she heads toward the main cooler. “Let me know if you’ll need a PTFE container for the clothes, yeah?”
Sherlock pauses again, mid-dripping, and then he nods just once. She’s thought of something he hasn’t.
“Interesting,” he says later, when they’re walking home. They’ve already had the curry, and John is feeling a little mellow after two beers.
“She was bloody gorgeous and you know it,” John says, smiling fondly. He’s still not entirely sure whether Sherlock really doesn’t notice these things, or whether there’s some part of him that registers it’s bad form to mention a woman’s aesthetic beauty after she’s flirted with only him.
“She was an assistant to the man in Germany who’s done the most recent work on superacids,” he says. “That’s far more interesting than her bra size, I should think.”
“To you,” John says, but he laughs at Sherlock’s pointed look. They are exclusive. It doesn’t stop John looking, really, because he’s not sure anything could, but Sherlock knows - and John knows Sherlock knows - he would never do anything about it. As for Sherlock, well, John knows he has been attracted to others, both before and after they began their affair, but it took him two bloody years just to get up the nerve or tolerance to handle having sex with John. He’s confident in Sherlock’s fidelity.
Sherlock says, “She’s rather too smart to be helping out in the morgue.”
“Maybe she just likes the city, then?”
“Hm.”
They go home and settle in for a bit telly. John watches some new stupid show while Sherlock pokes around on the Internet, trying to tease a mystery out of the obituary column or, his latest fun, out of the craigslist ads. It’s comfortable and absolutely usual. John eventually falls asleep with his head on Sherlock’s shoulder, and he’s aware - even if Sherlock would never admit it - that Sherlock doesn’t move so as not to wake him.
“You staying up?” he asks after he stirs.
Sherlock nods, so John kisses him and goes up to bed himself. He thinks fleetingly of the attractive new doctor at the hospital as he strips off his trousers, but it’s really just a fleeting thought. He’s got all the excitement he needs in his life, right here.
***
Molly is gone for two full weeks, and during that time, they see quite a lot of Lauren Willis. Sherlock engages her in a discussion about the new acids they’ve been forming around carbonates or some such - John knows he should know, and should probably care, but he doesn’t. Sherlock’s only testing the acids out of boredom. John doesn’t want to interfere, so he leaves Sherlock with Lauren and a half-dissolved arm and takes himself to the cinema for the afternoon. Sherlock comes home later with his eyes glinting like victory and his mouth going a hundred miles an hour about dissolution and combination and narrowly missing exploding things using water. He smells like sulfur, a bit, but John takes him to bed anyway.
***
In June, when they are chasing after a minor art thief, John falls and breaks his foot in three places. It’s a slightly complicated break, though not a particularly dangerous one, and it puts him on crutches for six weeks. This does not, it seems, discourage Sherlock at all from expecting him to get the shopping, nor does it discourage the surgery from calling him to fill in, but it does put an end to, well, chasing after minor art thieves and their like. Twice in the next week, Sherlock dashes out without him. The third time, he dashes out but doesn’t return immediately, and John answers a text at midnight that leads him and his crutches to an alley in Chase Cross where Sherlock is crouched over a body. There’s a bandage wrapped around his forehead.
“This won’t do,” John says. He wrestles Sherlock into a cab, finally, and then home. After he’s inspected Sherlock for concussion and satisfied himself that it’s minor, then sent him to shower off the dirt and blood, John begins to wonder about finding some kind of minder. Lestrade clearly doesn’t have the manpower, and though Mycroft talks a good game, he can’t physically follow Sherlock around all the time. Almost no one can or wants to, except John, and he’s benched.
He tries, anyway. The next day he follows Sherlock - who’s got a blinding headache he won’t admit to - over to Bart’s to collect further evidence off the body of the newest victim. He takes a chair outside Molly’s office this time, and settles in to wait. Sherlock looks the body up and down, gets out his magnifying glass, sniffs the man’s wrist, and takes a sample of his hair. He checks something on his phone, then asks the lab tech nearest for the man’s clothes.
“I think the police took them.”
“Right,” Sherlock says, and he starts for the door.
John grabs his crutches and barely makes it to the doors before Sherlock does. “We’re going to Scotland Yard, then?”
Sherlock glares at him. “No, I’m going to the crime scene. You’re going home.”
“I’m certainly going with you,” John says. “You’ve got a head injury.”
“This is ridiculous,” Sherlock says. “You can’t possibly, logically believe you can keep up with me while you’re on crutches.”
“And you can’t possibly think it’s a good idea that you strike out alone,” John says. “Look, you’ve said yourself, you work best with an assistant. Let’s just - let me go with you this time, and we’ll figure out something else going forward.”
Sherlock opens his mouth as if to argue, but then turns and looks at the doors. They swing open only a moment later, and Lauren Willis walks in. “You wanted the blood results on the new victim?” she says. “Hullo, John.”
“Lauren,” he says, and he looks at Sherlock. Sherlock is studying her with particular attention. It makes John a little uncomfortable, but he can follow his train of thought well enough. “Ah - are you doing anything right now?”
“Other than delivering samples? Not really,” she says, grinning. “What’s up, gents?”
“I was about to go to a crime scene,” Sherlock says. “John feels it’s not safe for me to travel on my own -“
“Not because the scene is particularly dangerous,” John says quickly, because he feels he should. “Because Sherlock sometimes takes… risks.”
Sherlock’s eyes dart a quick glare at John, then turn back to Lauren. “I don’t share his assessment of my safety; however, he has been foolish enough to injure himself, leaving me without a suitable assistant for the time being. Would you possibly -“
“Sure,” Lauren says. “More exciting than running lab samples all day. I’ll get my jacket and see you at the garage?”
“A car,” Sherlock says after she’s gone, in the same tone he said “Interesting.” “That should please you.”
John nods. “Do take care, though, all right?”
“Of course.” Sherlock leans over and kisses John at the very edge of his mouth, an off-center kiss, but more than he usually gets in public. “I’ll update you as things happen.”
“I’ll expect it.”
He does, that time, get a half-dozen texts from Sherlock letting him know what he’s found and asking him to look a few things up on the computer. She’s fine, you know. No danger. You’re not missing anything, is the last one he gets, a half-hour before a cab drops Sherlock at the doorstep. John is glad to see him, and glad to know he’s picked up on part of John’s worry from so far away. There is a small, old-fashioned part of him that worried at sending a woman running after Sherlock.
“You really shouldn’t worry,” Sherlock says, stretching out beside him in their bed. “She’s had boxing training, runs a four-minute mile, did a triathlon last year.”
“Whatever for?” John asks.
Sherlock shudders. “Fun.”
John snickers. “Well, all right. Will she do for a bit, then?”
“Just a bit,” Sherlock agrees. He rolls over on top of John, his legs carefully intertwining in a way that doesn’t put any pressure on John’s foot. John settles his hands on Sherlock’s lower back. “Really, it was very foolish of you to break your foot.”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” he says, tilting up for a kiss. “Extremely foolish to be stuck laying around for so long. This bed is rather less fun without you pacing around it.”
Sherlock grins. It is the slow, genuine smile that only John ever sees, one that hardly ever appears outside of their flat or even their bed. It is a smile that means he is glad John understands what he is really saying. I miss you out there.
They have careful, quiet sex that afternoon, even though Sherlock is in the middle of a case and John’s foot has been sending throbs of pain up his leg. This - the softer kind of sex, what John would have called “making love” when he’d been with others - happens from time to time. John thought he’d miss having quiet moments, when he and Sherlock first got together, but he’d been quickly surprised to realize that Sherlock wants peace sometimes. He will never be a habitual cuddler or a particularly tender man, but he does really need some gentleness in his life. John isn’t the world’s greatest supplier of that, always, either; he’s used to being a hard sounding board and a physically involved lover. He can slow down sometimes, though, for Sherlock, and that Sherlock can do the same for him means something beyond whatever he used to get from holding a girl’s hand or snuggling close in the mornings. They do things for each other that only they would do, that only they understand. It is more than enough.
***
John’s foot continues its slow healing, which he doesn’t help at all by working at the clinic nearly every day. Flu season hits London particularly hard, and even the doctors are dropping like diseased flies. He tries to stay as much off the foot as possible, but within a week, he manages to re-injure himself tripping over a woman’s foot in the waiting room. The resulting fall and twist will, his colleagues inform him, probably keep him on crutches for another three or four weeks - “and you shouldn’t be up for any more than fifteen minutes at a time, John, and certainly not with any weight on your foot.”
He makes it home that night and calls the nearest Chinese for takeaway, then asks Mrs. Hudson to please bring it up when they ring. Sherlock is out. There is no note, and John doesn’t see anything on his phone, so he texts him. After ten minutes, he has a brief reply:
Running. Have L with me; all’s well. - SH
It shouldn’t bother him, John thinks, but it does, just slightly. The more he’s seen of Lauren, the more he is convinced that her flirting isn’t, like Molly’s, going over Sherlock’s head. In fact, he’s rather certain Sherlock is flattered by it, perhaps even enjoying it.
But it doesn’t matter, he tells himself, opening a beer. Sherlock is his. They live together - they’ve made something of a life together, in fact. They’re partners. Sherlock loves him, in the best way he is able to. This flirtation doesn’t matter. Sherlock is logical to a fault, and if he’s not always scrupulously honest or even particularly self-aware, he’s smart enough to realize how valuable John is to him. It makes no reasonable sense to cheat. John thinks of all the poor blokes out there who have to really worry about these things - who must wonder whether their partners’ emotions will overcome their partners’ logic and reason - and is glad, for once, to be removed from the ranks of the romantics. Give him reason and calculation. Give him Sherlock.
Sherlock brings Lauren back to the flat that evening. John has ordered enough food in case Sherlock is eating, but he isn’t; he passes the container off to Lauren, and she sits on the floor to eat it out of the carton, bare legs crossed, looking up at Sherlock as he paces. She has a smudge of dirt by her chin that John isn’t going to tell her about, and her hair is mussed, her cheeks flushed. All the signs of a good chase, John thinks, and surprises himself by thinking they are also the signs of a good shag. He looks at Sherlock sharply, but he can’t detect anything different in his manner. He is impeccably dressed, as always, and he smirked indulgently when John said he ordered from his favorite place.
John offers them both tea, ignores Sherlock’s “No,” and brings them all cups. He lets his hand linger on Sherlock’s as he passes the cup over, and Sherlock smiles just briefly. “What do you think?” he asks.
For a few moments, it is like always, like Lauren isn’t even in the room. John settles onto the couch and lets Sherlock bounce some ideas off him; he filters out the non-sense, the parts where Sherlock has to mutter to himself about his own brilliance and everyone else’s ignorance. He feeds back the questions he is really thinking, and Sherlock uses them to catapult into better, clearer thoughts.
Lauren chimes in here and there, but Sherlock largely ignores her. John almost feels bad for her. She doesn’t quite understand the rhythm of Sherlock’s thinking yet - and, John thinks, carefully rolling his ankle around, she probably never will.
When she leaves, Sherlock sits on the other end of the couch to study his case file. “You’re jealous,” he says.
“I’m not.”
“Hm.”
He flips through the file, and John watches. It takes another two minutes of silence before he says, “Should I be?”
“I don’t see why.”
“Then I’m not.”
Sherlock turns and looks at him. “Really?”
“No, but I’m trying.”
He nods, and there’s a faint upward tilt at the edge of his mouth. “I’m going to stay up tonight.”
“Figured as much.” John hoists himself from the couch and doesn’t even pause to kiss Sherlock good night. He doesn’t need to, he tells himself.
Sherlock is a difficult man to learn, a challenging man to love, and a nearly impossible man to follow. He gets into bed and lets himself relax into the knowledge that he is the only person who has ever really tried, and he reminds himself that the reward for this is Sherlock himself, who will come to his bed that night or the next, or whenever his work is done.
The case is done two nights later, and Sherlock does come to bed with him. They stay there for nearly twenty hours, with breaks only for food and tea and the bathroom. Then John has to go back to the surgery, and Sherlock decides to make a trip to Scotland Yard, and things go pretty quickly back to normal.
***
A month later, John is finally out of his cast, though still fighting the flu every day at work. He so far hasn’t contracted it himself, but it seems only a matter of time. He’s taken every precaution, though, including making certain he has a solid eight hours of sleep each night. When the cast comes off and he is cleared to walk again, he realizes that is going to be very difficult - he’ll soon be back on the streets with Sherlock again.
“Well, you don’t have to,” Sherlock says. John isn’t sure if he is imagining the slight bit of hurt in his eyes or not.
“No, of course I do. I will,” John says. They are having a late lunch at a diner not far from the courthouse where Sherlock will testify that afternoon. He has on his best suit, which is really a spectacular thing. John has conflicting emotions about that suit: it is so perfect on Sherlock that all he wants to do is rip it off.
“Only -” Sherlock says, pushing away his muffin.
John nods. “Only - maybe it would be all right to wait another week or two? I should do a little therapy on the foot, anyway, and - we’ve been so swamped at the surgery.”
Sherlock shrugs. “It’s fine, John,” he says. “Lauren’s fellowship is nearly over, anyway. She’ll have time, if I ask.”
“Are you all right with that?”
“It’s not the same,” Sherlock says, “but I’m fine. Better than taking the skull along, or listening to you complain about having the flu.”
John is glad they settle it so easily.
***
Really, John reflects a month later, it ends up offering him the best of all worlds. Lauren’s fellowship ends and she takes up a permanent position at Bart’s overseeing some of her own graduate students. On the days and nights that John is available to go with Sherlock to a crime scene, he does; when he can’t go, or doesn’t want to, Lauren fills in. Sometimes, she comes over and they all have dinner together and discuss the case. It’s not so bad, having a third voice around.
She’s a hard woman to pin down, John thinks. One evening, he’s sitting in Molly’s empty office, typing a new entry for his blog, when Lauren comes by and leans against the doorframe. “God, he’s in a mood,” she says, crossing her arms.
It’s the first time John’s ever really heard her say anything negative about Sherlock, and it surprises him. “It happens,” he says after a moment. He’s used to commiserating with Lestrade about Sherlock, sometimes even Donovan or Molly, but he doesn’t usually join in when strangers are having a go. Lauren isn’t a stranger, though; it’s likely she needs to blow off a bit of steam after having been out with Sherlock all day.
She recrosses her arms and John congratulates himself on exactly how unjealous a man he is, that he lets his lover spend his days and sometimes nights with a woman whose breasts are this luscious and constantly on display. “Do you get used to it?” she asks.
John laughs. “No,” he says. “But you learn what he means. Most of the time, he doesn’t mean anything.”
“Really? Because sometimes, I feel like he does mean something, and I just can’t get it, and he doesn’t even expect me to get it. That’s the worst, isn’t it? That he just - he’s just so much smarter that he doesn’t even try to explain, he just assumes I won’t know.”
John knows. Of course he knows. He’d need every hand in the morgue plus a few who aren’t dead yet to count the number of times Sherlock has insulted his intelligence indirectly by assuming John is too stupid to catch on or catch up. “Some of that’s just habit,” John says. “He’s been the brightest man in the room his whole life.”
Lauren snorts indelicately. “Except for that whack-job brother of his, right?”
“Mycroft? You’ve met Mycroft?”
She frowns. “Maybe I wasn’t supposed to tell you.”
“Nah, don’t worry about the cloak and dagger stuff,” John says. “Mycroft has a flair for the dramatic. They both do. Always have.” He leans onto those last words, wanting to remind her, remind himself, that he's been here longest.
Lauren grins widely, something a little nasty in her look. “Must make for a great time in bed,” she says.
“With Mycroft I’d have no idea,” John deadpans, and she laughs.
“I knew it,” she says, “I knew he must be wild.”
“Wild what?” Sherlock says, sweeping into the office past Lauren. “John, really, I texted you four minutes ago. Can we please leave, I’m not going to get anything done until I’ve been to Montrose’s study again.”
“Again?” John asks. “Sherlock, it’s nearly ten, and you’ve been there twice tonight already. What could possibly -“
“Evidence doesn’t sleep,” he says. “Even if you somehow insist you must.”
“It’s fine,” Lauren says, though she sounds a little weary to John. “I’ll go. We can share a cab to Baker Street and then on, all right?”
“Yeah, fine,” John says, and he’s grateful that she’s willing to do this, even if it is exhausting.
As he gets into bed that night, alone, he reminds himself that Lauren’s willingness to help out makes it possible, finally, for John to keep not only somewhat regular hours, but also for him to bring in a steady paycheck. For the first time since he’s moved to London, he is comfortable financially, socially, and physically. This is thanks to her. He should really stop worrying, he decides.
Besides, somehow not being together all day, every day has produced a subtle but lovely change in his relationship with Sherlock. He suddenly turns up at the surgery sometimes, just to take John to dinner or, once, to bring him a packet of crisps and a hot cup of coffee. At home, he sleeps nearly every night in John’s bed, and John wakes twice to find a long arm curled around his waist. Sherlock doesn’t start doing the shopping or making him breakfast or anything miraculous, but John sees these as clear signs that theirs is a partnership that can thrive even without getting shot at together every single day. Sherlock genuinely enjoys his company.
It is brilliant.
Which is why he should know it won’t last.
Part 2.