Fic: Everything a Bit Broken, Sherlock BBC, 1/5
Title: Everything a Bit Broken
Pairing: John/Sherlock
Warnings: Some second-hand mention of, and much angst surrounding, a non-consensual sexual encounter.
Summary: Sherlock's been assaulted; is this part of Moriarty's plan? Or is it something worse?
The call he received came from Mycroft, not Sherlock, so John took immediate note. “He’s in hospital,” Mycroft said, his tone clipped. Wasn’t it always? This was different, though; John wasn’t sure how, but he was sure. “I wonder if you might come immediately.”
“I’ll just grab my coat.”
“Very well.”
They didn’t say good-bye or discuss addresses, but John knew he wouldn’t need that information, just as he knew Mycroft’s request was actually a command. The black car waiting outside was no surprise. That it was empty inside was, a bit, but John climbed in anyway.
Sherlock had left the flat only about five hours ago, mid-afternoon, muttering about looking at something for his current client. It had still been light out then, though the winter skies had clouded up and darkened early. As far as John knew, the only thing he had on at the moment was some minor case having to do with art forgery and a pensioner’s widow. Not terribly dangerous. No one dead or likely to be. John hadn’t become involved because Sherlock had told him it would take less than seven hours to solve from the start. He neither wanted to extend the length - frustrating Sherlock’s expectations never worked out well for either of them - nor shorten the case by offering some offhanded, unintentional clue, because he wasn’t anxious for Sherlock to slide back into boredom. So he’d sat carefully on the sidelines. Now he wondered how a case that seemed to be populated by elderly ladies might have landed Sherlock in hospital. It seemed possible that he’d angered the wrong biddy with the right cane. As amusing as that was, he didn’t figure Mycroft would’ve called him out for just that.
It took only about 20 minutes from Baker Street to the hospital. It should have taken longer, but the lights changed rather miraculously as they traveled. John had already tried texting Sherlock - no response - and he knew better than to call Mycroft back. He belatedly wondered whether he should have sent word to Lestrade, but then again, there were a few reasons Sherlock might be in hospital that would be better kept from the detective inspector. He traveled on in silence.
Once there, Anthea was waiting at the front, and she led him through a waiting room and down a long hallway without saying a word or even once looking up from her phone. Surely it couldn’t be as bad as all that, then, John thought, but his hands stayed steady.
It turned out he needn’t have worried about asking Lestrade to the scene; he was already there, as was Donovan. John slipped in behind them; Anthea stayed in the hall.
Sherlock was sitting up on a clean white bed, though the pillow was crumpled a bit. He’d been lying down. His shoes had been removed, though his socks were still on; his suit jacket was nowhere to be seen, and the white dress shirt he wore was hastily buttoned, crinkled, and had smudges of dirt at the shoulders and cuffs and blood on the collar. John wasn’t sure what that all meant, but he was certain Sherlock had been in a fight. His blood-crusted nose and bruised eye were evidence of that, as was the gash across his otherwise pale forehead.
That gash. Not your usual scrape, was it? A long, single line - like a knife. A knife. Who held a knife to someone’s forehead? Someone taller than Sherlock? No - so he was sitting down, or on the ground. John shivered. Probably not the old ladies, then. Even he could deduce that much.
“Moriarty,” Sherlock was saying, and John sighed at that. He felt a surge of relief. Sherlock had faced the man - again - and lived to tell the tale. He was here, glaring at Lestrade, not down in the morgue keeping company with his experiments.
“He mugged you? Himself himself?” Donovan said, clearly skeptical. She had a notepad out, but as far as John could see, she hadn’t taken any notes.
Sherlock rolled his eyes. “No, of course not, but this is part of his overall plan, his - goal.”
“To tear the heart out of you?” Lestrade asked.
Sherlock nodded, the barest dip of his chin. He caught John’s eye for the first time, and John offered a concerned frown. Sherlock looked away immediately. Well, they’d been in a row before he’d stormed off that afternoon. Sherlock didn’t always realize that sometimes circumstances dictated a resolution. All of the annoyance John had felt, though, at being made to make the tea another time - that was gone. He was just glad Sherlock was fine, would be happy to take him home, make him tea, bundle him into bed, listen to him rant about any of this.
“How’s he do that, by stealing your wallet? Seems a little low-rent for your mastermind friend, doesn’t it? Then again, I guess the low-class of it never stops you pick-pocketing people.”
Lestrade sighed. Sherlock was frowning, but he didn’t bite out a reply. Maybe he’d really hit his head, John thought. “Donovan, shut it for a moment, can you?” Lestrade said. “Now, look, you say these were Moriarty’s guys, fine. Tell me how to find them.”
Sherlock nodded. His eyes narrowed as he sunk into his own head. “Two men. One was about 175 centimeters. Brown hair, very short, but no military background - penitentiary.”
“You could tell he was in prison from his hair cut?”
“Yes. But not recently - got out at least a year ago. Probably Belmarsh, from the look of his tattoo - the work is smudged, but quite high quality, so probably Jonas James or an acolyte. Blurred, though, so not something he sought out. Painful. Not a joiner, then, so not a particular gang member.”
“Age?” Lestrade asked.
“No more than 28.”
“Any idea what he does?”
“Manual labor, by the state of his hands. Not well paying. Loading vegetables, I think. Organic. Small farm operation, likely; probably paid in cash, as his wallet was thick with it.” He grinned, a small, grim thing. “I did take it off him, but he managed to get it back.”
“You saw his wallet. ID?”
He scowled. “No. No cards. Just money, a receipt dated yesterday from the Tesco Metro near King’s Cross for a toothbrush and toothpaste. You don’t buy those together unless you’ve forgotten one. So: out of town. Only bought a small toothpaste, so: came in for a weekend.”
“All right. A vegetable loader. The other bloke?”
“Stronger. Tall - 185 centimeters, though some of that came from his shoes. Black Wellingtons, rubberized, soles worn more at the front than the back, so possibly used for sports, not standing. Thick mud in the tracks, which suggests he’s either a gardener - unlikely - or from out of town somewhere. Someone who works with horses.”
“What, he told you that?”
“He had horse hair on his trousers,” Sherlock said. “And I could smell it on him.”
Lestrade looked perplexed. Donovan said, “Is that why he broke your nose? You were sniffing at him?”
“No,” Sherlock said, and he turned his glare to her for a moment. “I assure you, I had ample time to observe all of these details.”
“Right, while they were cracking your head open.”
John decided this was as good a time as any to break in. “What exactly happened, by the way?”
“Freak’s been mugged,” Donovan said. “I don’t know why we’re listening to a word of this, anyway. You’ve got concussion, the doctor said.”
“You were knocked out?” John asked. His voice was perfectly steady. It wasn’t so much of a shock. Things like this seemed to happen to Sherlock more than one would imagine.
“Only briefly,” Sherlock said, waving his hand as if to dismiss the effects of head trauma.
Lestrade sighed. “Anything else, Sherlock?”
“Single,” he said. “But married at some point. The marriage broke up when he lost his rather well-to-do job and was forced to take something much lower paying.”
“How could you possibly -”
“His underwear,” Sherlock said. John shifted. Something bad was coming, he knew it. Sherlock was too calm. He wasn’t enjoying this. “Very high quality, showed signs of careful laundering. That says wife or mother. Indent on the ring finger says wife. But the trousers were falling apart now. That says either the wife stopped caring - unlikely - or the wife is gone. The rest of his clothing was not of that same class. That says the underwear, like the wife, are a relic of an old life.”
Donovan coughed. “His underwear, freak? How d’you explain seeing that?”
“As I said, I had ample time,” Sherlock said. He was staring right at the wall, his eyelids slightly lowered, his voice nearly bored.
“How exactly -“
He glanced between the two detectives, then stared hard at Donovan. “It’s rather amazing the things one notices when trying not to think about the penis being forced into one’s mouth.”
There was a moment of hard, clear silence in the room. John saw Lestrade’s head turn toward him, just slightly, and guessed that he was looking to him for help. He couldn’t help him, though; he was still stunned. He tried not to close his eyes. He didn’t want to imagine this.
“What? Sherlock,” Lestrade said, his voice now quiet. “You said they mugged you.”
“I said they’d assaulted me,” he said. “Do keep up. Any investigator worth his salt would have picked up the signs by now. Look at my wrists.” John did, and noticed, now, how red they were, how likely forming bruises. Something began to burn in his chest. “There are also at least two impressions on my neck that did not come from wearing my scarf too tightly. The knees of my suit - really, Donovan, I’d’ve expected that’s a detail you’d notice - are worn, and the cut on my head is not one that either of the two men I’ve described could easily give without either them standing on chairs or me kneeling before them.
“I’ve also developed an involuntary flinch every time anyone opens that door or moves much closer. My voice is a bit raw sounding, and,” here he paused, and his head bowed suddenly. When he spoke again, it was in a quiet, almost uncertain voice. “Do you know, I think I may actually be in some kind of shock.”
It was mesmerizing, John thought, it always was, listening to Sherlock deduce. It was also thoroughly frightening when he was talking about himself. John’s hands were clenched in fists. “We don’t have to do this now,” Lestrade said, and John heard his own voice, finally.
“No,” he said, voice sharp and clear and commanding. “Ask him. He should get this out while it’s fresh. You’ll never catch the bastards otherwise.”
Sherlock looked up then, and John was fairly certain the look he got was gratitude. It only made sense. John thrived in emergencies; Sherlock thrived when his mind was engaged, when he was working out a mystery. If he could help Lestrade with this, it would be the best treatment possible. John stepped around Lestrade and went to stand next to Sherlock’s bed. He did flinch, but only for a moment, and John didn’t try to touch him. He made a show of collecting his medical file from the tray at the end of the bed, and he focused on it. It said exactly what he might have expected: concussion, contusions, abrasions. A massive beating ending in unconsciousness. There was no mention of the sexual assault, which meant that they hadn’t done the bloodwork they should have. John would have to see to that. He’d have to see to many things, he thought. This would be a new kind of awful experience.
Lestrade asked Sherlock all the standard questions, and mostly stayed quiet while Sherlock recited the details down to the nib. Donovan had stopped talking and was looking at Sherlock with something like shock on her own face. John felt about the same. Really, Sherlock, assaulted like this? It didn’t make much sense. It didn’t - even to John, who knew that at his core, Moriarty was a truly evil man - seem like the kind of thing an archenemy would do.
The descriptions they eventually got were probably enough to allow Lestrade and Donovan to start knocking on some doors. Lestrade mentioned he’d send a crime team to the scene, and Sherlock snorted, then winced. The attending doctor had noted it was probable his nose was broken, though it hadn’t needed to be set. “Like they’ll find anything.”
“You’re not going, though,” John said. He’d read enough to know that Sherlock should barely be moving. He had two broken ribs and one cracked, boot-mark contusions and abrasions all down his back, skinned knees and a very battered head. He’d lost some blood. He’d been unconscious for the better part of an hour. John put one hand carefully on Sherlock’s arm. Sherlock jerked minutely, then sighed.
“I suppose not,” he said. His skin was surprisingly cool even through his shirt. “But please, send someone with half a brain -”
“I’ll send Wiest, not Anderson” Lestrade said. It was the closest he came to saying what John could read all over his face: how very, very sorry he was that this had happened at all.
“Very well,” Sherlock said, a clear dismissal. “I gather I have some medical examinations to endure.”
“Text me, if you don’t mind,” John said, and Lestrade nodded.
Then the police were gone and it was just the two of them in Sherlock’s hospital room, John’s hand still resting on Sherlock’s arm. He turned to face Sherlock and found him staring ahead. “I’d rather not have any kind of scene,” Sherlock said.
“That’s two of us, then,” John said. He briefly squeezed, then released, Sherlock’s arm. “Did you manage to talk to your client?”
Sherlock scoffed. “You missed that part, I guess. I had a text from her, not long after I’d left. She wanted me to come by, look at some piece of art her son had found. That’s where I was headed.” He shook his head. “I should’ve known. The diction was wrong.”
“A fake message, then?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“How’d you wind up here, then?”
“Ambulance,” Sherlock said. “Apparently, an old woman found me blocking her skip when she went to empty her bin and called it in.”
John tried not to think about cold it was outside. “And Lestrade?”
Sherlock sighed. His hands folded in his lap. “I assume that was Mycroft’s doing. You, too?” John nodded. “Figures. I imagine my name is on some kind of automatic warning list he’s set up. Any time I show up here, there’s probably a bell that goes off.” His eyes closed, just briefly. “Surely he won’t phone Mother.”
“I think he can be counted on that far,” John said, though he wasn’t completely sure. It wasn’t always obvious where the boundaries were with, or between, the Holmes brothers. “Am I to watch you for signs of concussion tonight, or aren’t you allowed to leave?”
“You’re my doctor,” he said, and his voice did sound raw, and weary, and worse than all of that, bewildered. “You tell me.”
“Home,” John said. “I’ll go and tell someone.”
It took him only about three minutes to find a nurse and be routed to another doctor, who was glad enough to have Sherlock off his hands. “He’ll need some follow-up,” the man said, and John knew that was certainly true. He also knew Sherlock wouldn’t do any of it, at least, not the mental stuff; John could administer and monitor the blood tests himself, with Mike’s help at Bart’s or maybe even Sarah’s at the clinic.
Back in the room, Sherlock was standing, one hand on his hip, staring at the floor. “I don’t have my mobile,” he said.
John nodded. “I’ll ask Lestrade to keep an eye out.” He looked around the room, then opened the cupboard near the door. It was empty. “D’you know what they did with your jacket?”
Sherlock sighed. “I imagine they sold it.”
So they’d stolen it. “Shoes, too?”
“Shoes, jacket, coat, scarf, wallet, phone.” He reached up as if to rub his forehead, then winced. “Not bad at making it look like a robbery.”
“It was a robbery,” John said. “Well. I’ll find some slippers.”
He did, and then a blanket. Sherlock balked at the last. “Do you really think I’m in shock?”
John rolled his eyes. “I think you’re going to freeze outside, without something on.” Sherlock still shied from the blanket, so John sighed, cast it aside, and shrugged off his own jacket. “I’m your doctor,” he said, holding it out. Sherlock frowned, but he allowed John to drape it over his shoulders. He winced again, and John said, “Bruised?”
“Quite,” Sherlock said. He put his arms slowly through John’s sleeves, then stared at how far his hands stuck out. John was tempted, for the first time he could remember, to take one of Sherlock’s long, pale hands into his own. That wasn’t the relationship they had, though, and there wouldn’t be a scene now. Instead, he pulled his own mobile from his pocket and handed it over. “Something to keep you awake on the ride home,” he said. “You’re not going to sleep for a bit.”
“Yes, I imagine that’s true,” Sherlock said, clicking the phone open.
+++
There was no touching scene once they got home, either. Mrs. Hudson took one look at Sherlock’s face and clapped both hands to her mouth.
Sherlock said, “John has gambling debts,” and limped his way up the stairs while John tried to explain what had happened.
“Oh, it’s getting so bad out there,” she said when he mentioned the mugging. “Can’t go anywhere. It’s just not safe any more. I’m glad we’re here, still a safe street, but just wait! The city gets worse every year.”
John nodded. He wasn’t ready to reveal Sherlock’s Moriarty theories just yet. Mrs. Hudson was more afraid of him than she was of London going bad, and John didn’t need to spread panic. He thanked her for her concern and promised to keep her updated, then followed in Sherlock’s footsteps up to the flat.
Sherlock went nearly immediately to the bath after they came in. John figured that was natural enough. He heard the shower turn on and listened outside the door for a moment, just in case Sherlock needed any help getting in. Then he stayed put outside the door, telling himself it was because he should be keeping an eye and ear out for anything, lest Sherlock’s head was worse than he thought and he fell. Really, he just wanted to be nearby, but he wasn’t sure how to ask. He wasn’t sure what was going to happen now, what even should happen now.
It was made worse, he thought, by the fact that he wasn’t always sure how to act around Sherlock these days anyway. They’d progressed only recently into a new, strange, somewhat romantic relationship, which was to say that they’d had sex over a dozen times (John had lost count, but he was sure Sherlock knew) and talked about that exactly zero times. Last month, after they’d been sleeping together for three weeks, John had rather casually asked whether Sherlock might like to go to the cinema the next evening, and Sherlock -- bored and terrible -- had told him he should find himself a girlfriend if that was the type of entertainment he craved. John still wasn’t sure how to take that -- was Sherlock his boyfriend, then? Or was Sherlock open to John having a girlfriend while they remained... whatever it was they were? Flatmate-fuckbuddies?
There had been some small signs that perhaps it was more than just a distraction for Sherlock. He had once taken John out for breakfast after they’d woken up together; once sat with his bare feet in John’s lap while they ate biscuits from a tin confiscated from Mrs. Hudson’s pantry; once bought him a sturdy pair of leather gloves for no apparent reason; and once, last week, he’d come into John’s room two nights in a row, and the second night, he’d just laid down and slept. In the morning, his arm had been over John’s stomach when he’d woken for work. It wasn’t flowers and candy, but that wasn’t Sherlock. John thought they were making some subtle, exciting progress, actually. He thought perhaps they were getting a bit more involved, and he had to admit, he liked it.
And now, this. It was too awful to think about. Sherlock was absolutely the same when he was having sex as he was the rest of the time, but it was such a different experience. He was still bossy, still selfish, and still and always so very, very open about what he was thinking, feeling, wanting. It was amazing. The same personality quirks that made him nearly impossible to live with the rest of the time made him a mind-blowing sexual partner: vulnerable and knowledgeable all at once. So very appealing. John hated, with a fury that surprised him, took his breath away, nearly, hated anyone who would have given Sherlock any cause to be less open, less beautiful and careless, by making the act of sex so awful and painful. He couldn’t imagine that Sherlock, who over thought everything, wouldn’t be dramatically affected by this ordeal. Frankly, he couldn’t imagine that he himself wouldn’t be affected. He felt worse for the wear already.
When Sherlock emerged, he was in a dressing gown, pulled tight, and nothing else. The pinkish bruises at his neck stood out like bumps against his pale, damp flesh; the delicate skin around his eye seemed to be blackening even as John watched.
Sherlock didn’t say anything about John’s vigil. He met his eyes for only a moment and didn’t make any expression, just stood there until John realized he needed to move a bit or Sherlock couldn’t get past him in the hallway. Not without touching. He backed up a few steps, and Sherlock walked slowly out and over to his bedroom. John stayed where he was, his back pressed to the wall, near the linen cupboard that Sherlock used to store boxes of test tubes.
“Where are you hurt?” John asked.
“You’ve read my medical file,” Sherlock said. His voice sounded shaky, still, and too deep.
“Yes, I meant, where are you hurting right now?” John called. There was no reply. “Is your throat bad?”
“Could use a cup of tea.”
John knew that was a dismissal, but he stayed put. “No caffeine. Not with your head like it is.”
“My head,” Sherlock said, his head appearing around the doorframe, “is fine, thank you.”
“You’ve got concussion.”
“You’re trying to figure out whether you should give me any of the pain pills the doctor sent home,” Sherlock answered. He disappeared, and John heard his bed creak as he sat down. “Right now, no.”
“So you’re feeling - all right?”
“I feel as though I’ve been hit with a pipe and strangled against a wall,” Sherlock said. “Neither of these feelings yet requires medication.”
John stayed silent for a moment, trying to think how he could ask what he wanted to ask without sounding like he was eager to see Sherlock’s wounds. In truth, he was a bit eager, because he wanted to know exactly how bad things were. He wanted to know what to expect. He wanted, more than anything, to be helpful. “Is there anything-“
“I require nothing.”
So he went back downstairs. He made tea - decaf, horrible stuff, he had no idea why they had it - and considered heating up some beans. He wasn’t sure whether Sherlock was hungry, whether he’d eaten anything at all. Would he want to? John could get a takeaway, come to that. He didn’t need to cook.
Sherlock emerged downstairs after what felt like a very long time. Twenty minutes, perhaps. He was slightly flushed against his pale button-up pajamas, and John realized that he probably had needed help getting dressed. Broken ribs and countless contusions. God. “Ah, tea,” he said, taking a mug when John offered it. It wasn’t scalding hot anymore, but Sherlock took it anyway and didn’t even complain.
“Do you want me to get a takeaway? Are you hungry at all?”
“Peckish,” Sherlock said. “Though from the noise, I believe Mrs. Hudson might have taken care of dinner.”
John stepped into the hall and from there could smell it: some kind of meat roast. Beef, he thought. Lovely.
He was grateful, actually, for Mrs. Hudson’s company, too, when she brought up the food. Sherlock retreated nearly fully into his own head and John’s laptop screen the moment he was settled on the couch, so having Mrs. Hudson flitting about, setting up dinner and then, at John’s invitation, taking a chair herself, was just fine. They turned on the television and found a new house makeover program that Mrs. Hudson liked. “Reminds me of my brother,” she said. “He tried to redo a great old house once. Was going to turn it into a bed-and-breakfast, but it never quite worked out. He was a bit like you, Sherlock. Constantly up to something, always in a scrape.” She shook her head. “Dear man. Terrible luck.”
John only knew that Sherlock was listening because he saw his hands slow, though not stop, on his computer keys. “It wasn’t luck,” he said, shortly, and went back to whatever he was doing.
After an hour of vapid TV, John ushered Mrs. Hudson back down to her flat with many thanks and promises to share the leftover roast with Sherlock. When he turned from the door, he found Sherlock still in the process of standing. “I’ll sleep here,” he said as he straightened.
“Of course,” John said, quashing the small hope - was it even a hope? - that Sherlock might join him that evening. Of course it made more sense for him to sit up and sleep, and the couch would be more comfortable for that than John’s narrow bed or Sherlock’s messy one. He brought down a pillow and a quilt and set a glass of water within Sherlock’s easy reach. Then he added a box of tissues, in case his nose bled, and cup of tea and a few biscuits for good measure. He surveyed his work, then paused. “If you want, I could sit here a while.”
Sherlock blinked. He was still staring at John’s computer, but his typing had slowed. “What for?”
John shrugged. “In case you need something.”
“If I need something, it will doubtlessly be an issue at 3 in the morning, not right after you’ve delivered the entire contents of the kitchen to me.”
“Right,” John said. “OK. Well. Good-night, then.” Sherlock nodded. John paused at the foot of the stairs. “I’ll be back down, of course. You’ve got concussion.”
“Right, fine,” Sherlock said.
John still felt a little strange, nervous, almost, at leaving him there to go up to his own bed. If Sherlock felt anything similar, he didn’t show it.
Next Part
Pairing: John/Sherlock
Warnings: Some second-hand mention of, and much angst surrounding, a non-consensual sexual encounter.
Summary: Sherlock's been assaulted; is this part of Moriarty's plan? Or is it something worse?
The call he received came from Mycroft, not Sherlock, so John took immediate note. “He’s in hospital,” Mycroft said, his tone clipped. Wasn’t it always? This was different, though; John wasn’t sure how, but he was sure. “I wonder if you might come immediately.”
“I’ll just grab my coat.”
“Very well.”
They didn’t say good-bye or discuss addresses, but John knew he wouldn’t need that information, just as he knew Mycroft’s request was actually a command. The black car waiting outside was no surprise. That it was empty inside was, a bit, but John climbed in anyway.
Sherlock had left the flat only about five hours ago, mid-afternoon, muttering about looking at something for his current client. It had still been light out then, though the winter skies had clouded up and darkened early. As far as John knew, the only thing he had on at the moment was some minor case having to do with art forgery and a pensioner’s widow. Not terribly dangerous. No one dead or likely to be. John hadn’t become involved because Sherlock had told him it would take less than seven hours to solve from the start. He neither wanted to extend the length - frustrating Sherlock’s expectations never worked out well for either of them - nor shorten the case by offering some offhanded, unintentional clue, because he wasn’t anxious for Sherlock to slide back into boredom. So he’d sat carefully on the sidelines. Now he wondered how a case that seemed to be populated by elderly ladies might have landed Sherlock in hospital. It seemed possible that he’d angered the wrong biddy with the right cane. As amusing as that was, he didn’t figure Mycroft would’ve called him out for just that.
It took only about 20 minutes from Baker Street to the hospital. It should have taken longer, but the lights changed rather miraculously as they traveled. John had already tried texting Sherlock - no response - and he knew better than to call Mycroft back. He belatedly wondered whether he should have sent word to Lestrade, but then again, there were a few reasons Sherlock might be in hospital that would be better kept from the detective inspector. He traveled on in silence.
Once there, Anthea was waiting at the front, and she led him through a waiting room and down a long hallway without saying a word or even once looking up from her phone. Surely it couldn’t be as bad as all that, then, John thought, but his hands stayed steady.
It turned out he needn’t have worried about asking Lestrade to the scene; he was already there, as was Donovan. John slipped in behind them; Anthea stayed in the hall.
Sherlock was sitting up on a clean white bed, though the pillow was crumpled a bit. He’d been lying down. His shoes had been removed, though his socks were still on; his suit jacket was nowhere to be seen, and the white dress shirt he wore was hastily buttoned, crinkled, and had smudges of dirt at the shoulders and cuffs and blood on the collar. John wasn’t sure what that all meant, but he was certain Sherlock had been in a fight. His blood-crusted nose and bruised eye were evidence of that, as was the gash across his otherwise pale forehead.
That gash. Not your usual scrape, was it? A long, single line - like a knife. A knife. Who held a knife to someone’s forehead? Someone taller than Sherlock? No - so he was sitting down, or on the ground. John shivered. Probably not the old ladies, then. Even he could deduce that much.
“Moriarty,” Sherlock was saying, and John sighed at that. He felt a surge of relief. Sherlock had faced the man - again - and lived to tell the tale. He was here, glaring at Lestrade, not down in the morgue keeping company with his experiments.
“He mugged you? Himself himself?” Donovan said, clearly skeptical. She had a notepad out, but as far as John could see, she hadn’t taken any notes.
Sherlock rolled his eyes. “No, of course not, but this is part of his overall plan, his - goal.”
“To tear the heart out of you?” Lestrade asked.
Sherlock nodded, the barest dip of his chin. He caught John’s eye for the first time, and John offered a concerned frown. Sherlock looked away immediately. Well, they’d been in a row before he’d stormed off that afternoon. Sherlock didn’t always realize that sometimes circumstances dictated a resolution. All of the annoyance John had felt, though, at being made to make the tea another time - that was gone. He was just glad Sherlock was fine, would be happy to take him home, make him tea, bundle him into bed, listen to him rant about any of this.
“How’s he do that, by stealing your wallet? Seems a little low-rent for your mastermind friend, doesn’t it? Then again, I guess the low-class of it never stops you pick-pocketing people.”
Lestrade sighed. Sherlock was frowning, but he didn’t bite out a reply. Maybe he’d really hit his head, John thought. “Donovan, shut it for a moment, can you?” Lestrade said. “Now, look, you say these were Moriarty’s guys, fine. Tell me how to find them.”
Sherlock nodded. His eyes narrowed as he sunk into his own head. “Two men. One was about 175 centimeters. Brown hair, very short, but no military background - penitentiary.”
“You could tell he was in prison from his hair cut?”
“Yes. But not recently - got out at least a year ago. Probably Belmarsh, from the look of his tattoo - the work is smudged, but quite high quality, so probably Jonas James or an acolyte. Blurred, though, so not something he sought out. Painful. Not a joiner, then, so not a particular gang member.”
“Age?” Lestrade asked.
“No more than 28.”
“Any idea what he does?”
“Manual labor, by the state of his hands. Not well paying. Loading vegetables, I think. Organic. Small farm operation, likely; probably paid in cash, as his wallet was thick with it.” He grinned, a small, grim thing. “I did take it off him, but he managed to get it back.”
“You saw his wallet. ID?”
He scowled. “No. No cards. Just money, a receipt dated yesterday from the Tesco Metro near King’s Cross for a toothbrush and toothpaste. You don’t buy those together unless you’ve forgotten one. So: out of town. Only bought a small toothpaste, so: came in for a weekend.”
“All right. A vegetable loader. The other bloke?”
“Stronger. Tall - 185 centimeters, though some of that came from his shoes. Black Wellingtons, rubberized, soles worn more at the front than the back, so possibly used for sports, not standing. Thick mud in the tracks, which suggests he’s either a gardener - unlikely - or from out of town somewhere. Someone who works with horses.”
“What, he told you that?”
“He had horse hair on his trousers,” Sherlock said. “And I could smell it on him.”
Lestrade looked perplexed. Donovan said, “Is that why he broke your nose? You were sniffing at him?”
“No,” Sherlock said, and he turned his glare to her for a moment. “I assure you, I had ample time to observe all of these details.”
“Right, while they were cracking your head open.”
John decided this was as good a time as any to break in. “What exactly happened, by the way?”
“Freak’s been mugged,” Donovan said. “I don’t know why we’re listening to a word of this, anyway. You’ve got concussion, the doctor said.”
“You were knocked out?” John asked. His voice was perfectly steady. It wasn’t so much of a shock. Things like this seemed to happen to Sherlock more than one would imagine.
“Only briefly,” Sherlock said, waving his hand as if to dismiss the effects of head trauma.
Lestrade sighed. “Anything else, Sherlock?”
“Single,” he said. “But married at some point. The marriage broke up when he lost his rather well-to-do job and was forced to take something much lower paying.”
“How could you possibly -”
“His underwear,” Sherlock said. John shifted. Something bad was coming, he knew it. Sherlock was too calm. He wasn’t enjoying this. “Very high quality, showed signs of careful laundering. That says wife or mother. Indent on the ring finger says wife. But the trousers were falling apart now. That says either the wife stopped caring - unlikely - or the wife is gone. The rest of his clothing was not of that same class. That says the underwear, like the wife, are a relic of an old life.”
Donovan coughed. “His underwear, freak? How d’you explain seeing that?”
“As I said, I had ample time,” Sherlock said. He was staring right at the wall, his eyelids slightly lowered, his voice nearly bored.
“How exactly -“
He glanced between the two detectives, then stared hard at Donovan. “It’s rather amazing the things one notices when trying not to think about the penis being forced into one’s mouth.”
There was a moment of hard, clear silence in the room. John saw Lestrade’s head turn toward him, just slightly, and guessed that he was looking to him for help. He couldn’t help him, though; he was still stunned. He tried not to close his eyes. He didn’t want to imagine this.
“What? Sherlock,” Lestrade said, his voice now quiet. “You said they mugged you.”
“I said they’d assaulted me,” he said. “Do keep up. Any investigator worth his salt would have picked up the signs by now. Look at my wrists.” John did, and noticed, now, how red they were, how likely forming bruises. Something began to burn in his chest. “There are also at least two impressions on my neck that did not come from wearing my scarf too tightly. The knees of my suit - really, Donovan, I’d’ve expected that’s a detail you’d notice - are worn, and the cut on my head is not one that either of the two men I’ve described could easily give without either them standing on chairs or me kneeling before them.
“I’ve also developed an involuntary flinch every time anyone opens that door or moves much closer. My voice is a bit raw sounding, and,” here he paused, and his head bowed suddenly. When he spoke again, it was in a quiet, almost uncertain voice. “Do you know, I think I may actually be in some kind of shock.”
It was mesmerizing, John thought, it always was, listening to Sherlock deduce. It was also thoroughly frightening when he was talking about himself. John’s hands were clenched in fists. “We don’t have to do this now,” Lestrade said, and John heard his own voice, finally.
“No,” he said, voice sharp and clear and commanding. “Ask him. He should get this out while it’s fresh. You’ll never catch the bastards otherwise.”
Sherlock looked up then, and John was fairly certain the look he got was gratitude. It only made sense. John thrived in emergencies; Sherlock thrived when his mind was engaged, when he was working out a mystery. If he could help Lestrade with this, it would be the best treatment possible. John stepped around Lestrade and went to stand next to Sherlock’s bed. He did flinch, but only for a moment, and John didn’t try to touch him. He made a show of collecting his medical file from the tray at the end of the bed, and he focused on it. It said exactly what he might have expected: concussion, contusions, abrasions. A massive beating ending in unconsciousness. There was no mention of the sexual assault, which meant that they hadn’t done the bloodwork they should have. John would have to see to that. He’d have to see to many things, he thought. This would be a new kind of awful experience.
Lestrade asked Sherlock all the standard questions, and mostly stayed quiet while Sherlock recited the details down to the nib. Donovan had stopped talking and was looking at Sherlock with something like shock on her own face. John felt about the same. Really, Sherlock, assaulted like this? It didn’t make much sense. It didn’t - even to John, who knew that at his core, Moriarty was a truly evil man - seem like the kind of thing an archenemy would do.
The descriptions they eventually got were probably enough to allow Lestrade and Donovan to start knocking on some doors. Lestrade mentioned he’d send a crime team to the scene, and Sherlock snorted, then winced. The attending doctor had noted it was probable his nose was broken, though it hadn’t needed to be set. “Like they’ll find anything.”
“You’re not going, though,” John said. He’d read enough to know that Sherlock should barely be moving. He had two broken ribs and one cracked, boot-mark contusions and abrasions all down his back, skinned knees and a very battered head. He’d lost some blood. He’d been unconscious for the better part of an hour. John put one hand carefully on Sherlock’s arm. Sherlock jerked minutely, then sighed.
“I suppose not,” he said. His skin was surprisingly cool even through his shirt. “But please, send someone with half a brain -”
“I’ll send Wiest, not Anderson” Lestrade said. It was the closest he came to saying what John could read all over his face: how very, very sorry he was that this had happened at all.
“Very well,” Sherlock said, a clear dismissal. “I gather I have some medical examinations to endure.”
“Text me, if you don’t mind,” John said, and Lestrade nodded.
Then the police were gone and it was just the two of them in Sherlock’s hospital room, John’s hand still resting on Sherlock’s arm. He turned to face Sherlock and found him staring ahead. “I’d rather not have any kind of scene,” Sherlock said.
“That’s two of us, then,” John said. He briefly squeezed, then released, Sherlock’s arm. “Did you manage to talk to your client?”
Sherlock scoffed. “You missed that part, I guess. I had a text from her, not long after I’d left. She wanted me to come by, look at some piece of art her son had found. That’s where I was headed.” He shook his head. “I should’ve known. The diction was wrong.”
“A fake message, then?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“How’d you wind up here, then?”
“Ambulance,” Sherlock said. “Apparently, an old woman found me blocking her skip when she went to empty her bin and called it in.”
John tried not to think about cold it was outside. “And Lestrade?”
Sherlock sighed. His hands folded in his lap. “I assume that was Mycroft’s doing. You, too?” John nodded. “Figures. I imagine my name is on some kind of automatic warning list he’s set up. Any time I show up here, there’s probably a bell that goes off.” His eyes closed, just briefly. “Surely he won’t phone Mother.”
“I think he can be counted on that far,” John said, though he wasn’t completely sure. It wasn’t always obvious where the boundaries were with, or between, the Holmes brothers. “Am I to watch you for signs of concussion tonight, or aren’t you allowed to leave?”
“You’re my doctor,” he said, and his voice did sound raw, and weary, and worse than all of that, bewildered. “You tell me.”
“Home,” John said. “I’ll go and tell someone.”
It took him only about three minutes to find a nurse and be routed to another doctor, who was glad enough to have Sherlock off his hands. “He’ll need some follow-up,” the man said, and John knew that was certainly true. He also knew Sherlock wouldn’t do any of it, at least, not the mental stuff; John could administer and monitor the blood tests himself, with Mike’s help at Bart’s or maybe even Sarah’s at the clinic.
Back in the room, Sherlock was standing, one hand on his hip, staring at the floor. “I don’t have my mobile,” he said.
John nodded. “I’ll ask Lestrade to keep an eye out.” He looked around the room, then opened the cupboard near the door. It was empty. “D’you know what they did with your jacket?”
Sherlock sighed. “I imagine they sold it.”
So they’d stolen it. “Shoes, too?”
“Shoes, jacket, coat, scarf, wallet, phone.” He reached up as if to rub his forehead, then winced. “Not bad at making it look like a robbery.”
“It was a robbery,” John said. “Well. I’ll find some slippers.”
He did, and then a blanket. Sherlock balked at the last. “Do you really think I’m in shock?”
John rolled his eyes. “I think you’re going to freeze outside, without something on.” Sherlock still shied from the blanket, so John sighed, cast it aside, and shrugged off his own jacket. “I’m your doctor,” he said, holding it out. Sherlock frowned, but he allowed John to drape it over his shoulders. He winced again, and John said, “Bruised?”
“Quite,” Sherlock said. He put his arms slowly through John’s sleeves, then stared at how far his hands stuck out. John was tempted, for the first time he could remember, to take one of Sherlock’s long, pale hands into his own. That wasn’t the relationship they had, though, and there wouldn’t be a scene now. Instead, he pulled his own mobile from his pocket and handed it over. “Something to keep you awake on the ride home,” he said. “You’re not going to sleep for a bit.”
“Yes, I imagine that’s true,” Sherlock said, clicking the phone open.
+++
There was no touching scene once they got home, either. Mrs. Hudson took one look at Sherlock’s face and clapped both hands to her mouth.
Sherlock said, “John has gambling debts,” and limped his way up the stairs while John tried to explain what had happened.
“Oh, it’s getting so bad out there,” she said when he mentioned the mugging. “Can’t go anywhere. It’s just not safe any more. I’m glad we’re here, still a safe street, but just wait! The city gets worse every year.”
John nodded. He wasn’t ready to reveal Sherlock’s Moriarty theories just yet. Mrs. Hudson was more afraid of him than she was of London going bad, and John didn’t need to spread panic. He thanked her for her concern and promised to keep her updated, then followed in Sherlock’s footsteps up to the flat.
Sherlock went nearly immediately to the bath after they came in. John figured that was natural enough. He heard the shower turn on and listened outside the door for a moment, just in case Sherlock needed any help getting in. Then he stayed put outside the door, telling himself it was because he should be keeping an eye and ear out for anything, lest Sherlock’s head was worse than he thought and he fell. Really, he just wanted to be nearby, but he wasn’t sure how to ask. He wasn’t sure what was going to happen now, what even should happen now.
It was made worse, he thought, by the fact that he wasn’t always sure how to act around Sherlock these days anyway. They’d progressed only recently into a new, strange, somewhat romantic relationship, which was to say that they’d had sex over a dozen times (John had lost count, but he was sure Sherlock knew) and talked about that exactly zero times. Last month, after they’d been sleeping together for three weeks, John had rather casually asked whether Sherlock might like to go to the cinema the next evening, and Sherlock -- bored and terrible -- had told him he should find himself a girlfriend if that was the type of entertainment he craved. John still wasn’t sure how to take that -- was Sherlock his boyfriend, then? Or was Sherlock open to John having a girlfriend while they remained... whatever it was they were? Flatmate-fuckbuddies?
There had been some small signs that perhaps it was more than just a distraction for Sherlock. He had once taken John out for breakfast after they’d woken up together; once sat with his bare feet in John’s lap while they ate biscuits from a tin confiscated from Mrs. Hudson’s pantry; once bought him a sturdy pair of leather gloves for no apparent reason; and once, last week, he’d come into John’s room two nights in a row, and the second night, he’d just laid down and slept. In the morning, his arm had been over John’s stomach when he’d woken for work. It wasn’t flowers and candy, but that wasn’t Sherlock. John thought they were making some subtle, exciting progress, actually. He thought perhaps they were getting a bit more involved, and he had to admit, he liked it.
And now, this. It was too awful to think about. Sherlock was absolutely the same when he was having sex as he was the rest of the time, but it was such a different experience. He was still bossy, still selfish, and still and always so very, very open about what he was thinking, feeling, wanting. It was amazing. The same personality quirks that made him nearly impossible to live with the rest of the time made him a mind-blowing sexual partner: vulnerable and knowledgeable all at once. So very appealing. John hated, with a fury that surprised him, took his breath away, nearly, hated anyone who would have given Sherlock any cause to be less open, less beautiful and careless, by making the act of sex so awful and painful. He couldn’t imagine that Sherlock, who over thought everything, wouldn’t be dramatically affected by this ordeal. Frankly, he couldn’t imagine that he himself wouldn’t be affected. He felt worse for the wear already.
When Sherlock emerged, he was in a dressing gown, pulled tight, and nothing else. The pinkish bruises at his neck stood out like bumps against his pale, damp flesh; the delicate skin around his eye seemed to be blackening even as John watched.
Sherlock didn’t say anything about John’s vigil. He met his eyes for only a moment and didn’t make any expression, just stood there until John realized he needed to move a bit or Sherlock couldn’t get past him in the hallway. Not without touching. He backed up a few steps, and Sherlock walked slowly out and over to his bedroom. John stayed where he was, his back pressed to the wall, near the linen cupboard that Sherlock used to store boxes of test tubes.
“Where are you hurt?” John asked.
“You’ve read my medical file,” Sherlock said. His voice sounded shaky, still, and too deep.
“Yes, I meant, where are you hurting right now?” John called. There was no reply. “Is your throat bad?”
“Could use a cup of tea.”
John knew that was a dismissal, but he stayed put. “No caffeine. Not with your head like it is.”
“My head,” Sherlock said, his head appearing around the doorframe, “is fine, thank you.”
“You’ve got concussion.”
“You’re trying to figure out whether you should give me any of the pain pills the doctor sent home,” Sherlock answered. He disappeared, and John heard his bed creak as he sat down. “Right now, no.”
“So you’re feeling - all right?”
“I feel as though I’ve been hit with a pipe and strangled against a wall,” Sherlock said. “Neither of these feelings yet requires medication.”
John stayed silent for a moment, trying to think how he could ask what he wanted to ask without sounding like he was eager to see Sherlock’s wounds. In truth, he was a bit eager, because he wanted to know exactly how bad things were. He wanted to know what to expect. He wanted, more than anything, to be helpful. “Is there anything-“
“I require nothing.”
So he went back downstairs. He made tea - decaf, horrible stuff, he had no idea why they had it - and considered heating up some beans. He wasn’t sure whether Sherlock was hungry, whether he’d eaten anything at all. Would he want to? John could get a takeaway, come to that. He didn’t need to cook.
Sherlock emerged downstairs after what felt like a very long time. Twenty minutes, perhaps. He was slightly flushed against his pale button-up pajamas, and John realized that he probably had needed help getting dressed. Broken ribs and countless contusions. God. “Ah, tea,” he said, taking a mug when John offered it. It wasn’t scalding hot anymore, but Sherlock took it anyway and didn’t even complain.
“Do you want me to get a takeaway? Are you hungry at all?”
“Peckish,” Sherlock said. “Though from the noise, I believe Mrs. Hudson might have taken care of dinner.”
John stepped into the hall and from there could smell it: some kind of meat roast. Beef, he thought. Lovely.
He was grateful, actually, for Mrs. Hudson’s company, too, when she brought up the food. Sherlock retreated nearly fully into his own head and John’s laptop screen the moment he was settled on the couch, so having Mrs. Hudson flitting about, setting up dinner and then, at John’s invitation, taking a chair herself, was just fine. They turned on the television and found a new house makeover program that Mrs. Hudson liked. “Reminds me of my brother,” she said. “He tried to redo a great old house once. Was going to turn it into a bed-and-breakfast, but it never quite worked out. He was a bit like you, Sherlock. Constantly up to something, always in a scrape.” She shook her head. “Dear man. Terrible luck.”
John only knew that Sherlock was listening because he saw his hands slow, though not stop, on his computer keys. “It wasn’t luck,” he said, shortly, and went back to whatever he was doing.
After an hour of vapid TV, John ushered Mrs. Hudson back down to her flat with many thanks and promises to share the leftover roast with Sherlock. When he turned from the door, he found Sherlock still in the process of standing. “I’ll sleep here,” he said as he straightened.
“Of course,” John said, quashing the small hope - was it even a hope? - that Sherlock might join him that evening. Of course it made more sense for him to sit up and sleep, and the couch would be more comfortable for that than John’s narrow bed or Sherlock’s messy one. He brought down a pillow and a quilt and set a glass of water within Sherlock’s easy reach. Then he added a box of tissues, in case his nose bled, and cup of tea and a few biscuits for good measure. He surveyed his work, then paused. “If you want, I could sit here a while.”
Sherlock blinked. He was still staring at John’s computer, but his typing had slowed. “What for?”
John shrugged. “In case you need something.”
“If I need something, it will doubtlessly be an issue at 3 in the morning, not right after you’ve delivered the entire contents of the kitchen to me.”
“Right,” John said. “OK. Well. Good-night, then.” Sherlock nodded. John paused at the foot of the stairs. “I’ll be back down, of course. You’ve got concussion.”
“Right, fine,” Sherlock said.
John still felt a little strange, nervous, almost, at leaving him there to go up to his own bed. If Sherlock felt anything similar, he didn’t show it.
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