Fic: Everything a Bit Broken, 2/5
Warnings in Part One.
The next morning, it was obvious that neither of them had slept well that night. John had spent the night in fitful sleep in his own bed with his hand curled round the pill bottle they’d been sent home with. He didn’t like administering opiates to an addict, but he saw the necessity of having them on hand. Sherlock had yet to ask for any, and John hoped that meant only that he was coping, not that he was self-medicating.
Sherlock looked destroyed when John went downstairs. He was sitting at their kitchen table in his pale, matching pajamas and dressing gown. His left eye was shot through with bright, eerie blood, and the bruise around it had darkened to match his hair. His nose was swollen and purplish on the bridge. On the table, his hands were pressed together in the usual triangle, but John could see the pressure, the tension, between the fingers - they were white at the tips, mashed against each other to mask trembling or pain or both. Probably both. His eyes stayed on the table as John approached, ostensibly reviewing the news on the laptop screen in front of him, but his hands didn’t move for over a minute. There was nothing Sherlock read that slowly. He looked half asleep. He looked bloody awful.
That was to be expected, John figured, particularly since he’d had to wake Sherlock every few hours to make sure his head wasn’t permanently broken. Among that, the difficulties of breathing through his swollen nose, the broken ribs and bruised shoulder blades that made sitting difficult and lying down impossible, and whatever was going on in that rather always cracked head, it wasn’t so unsettling that the morning found them both gray-faced and exhausted.
What was disturbing was Sherlock’s insistence that they go immediately to Scotland Yard. “Whatever for?” John asked, hands around his first mug of the day.
“Because they’ll have more information by now,” Sherlock said. “And they clearly aren’t going to share it voluntarily.”
“We could try just ringing them,” John said, though he knew Sherlock was right. Lestrade was a smart man, and a rather good one, and he was unlikely to bother them with anything less than critical information or questions right now. There hadn’t been a single text all night.
“I’ll go without you,” Sherlock said, “if I must.”
“Sure you will,” John returned, but he knew it wasn’t a fight he could win. He wasn’t going to win any fights with Sherlock, not for a while, not while Sherlock’s face was a tiger-striped mess of bruises and bloodlessness. “Right, can I at least get a shower first?”
“There’s no hot water,” Sherlock grumbled. His own hair was again damp. That made at least two baths since they’d arrived home.
“I’ll make do.”
He did, though Sherlock was telling the truth. The few moments of calm, chilling clarity that the shower brought weren’t unwelcome. When he got out, his tea was gone, and Sherlock was dressed in suit trousers, shirt and jacket, and a dark blue scarf. Only the pallor of his face and the hand he had gripped tightly around the back of the chair showed what an effort it must have taken to wrangle himself into his clothes. John thought he was panting slightly, too. He gripped the bottle of pills, now in his jacket pocket. Should he offer?
“I don’t think they’re necessary,” Sherlock said.
“Have you had anything?”
“Nothing worth mentioning,” he said. John wasn’t sure what to make of that. “I hope you have money for the cab.”
Sherlock made his way down the stairs very carefully, one hand on the rail. “We ought to call your bank,” John said. “Was your card in the wallet?”
“Isn’t it in yours?”
John fumbled around and found it, sure enough, in his own wallet. “How do you function without - oh, never mind.”
“They took almost 500 quid,” Sherlock said.
It was on the tip of his tongue to say he deserved getting mugged, walking around with that kind of money in a dodgy area, but no. Sherlock was clinging to the front door frame just to catch his breath. No. No one deserved this.
At the Yard, they went immediately to Lestrade’s office. Sherlock kept his head up and his stare straight ahead, but John looked around as they walked through. It wasn’t the usual air of dismissal, annoyance, even fear that accompanied them. There was a tinge of pity and sympathy in their glances. That was a better result than he’d hoped, really; he thought there were those who would’ve gladly visited violence up Sherlock in that office. Maybe this, though, was crossing a line, even for them.
“Well, the good news is, we’ve found your coat and jacket,” Lestrade said as they walked in. He pointed to a plastic evidence bag. “They’ve been combed by forensics. They’re yours.”
Sherlock nodded but made no move toward the bag, so John grabbed it. He felt a surprising swell of relief at this news; he’d briefly pictured Moriarty holding them for his own. He seemed just the creep to do it. Inside the plastic, though, there was the standard black trench, a suit jacket, and even his brilliant blue cashmere scarf. Too much to hope that the shoes would have come back, he thought, but those could be replaced easily enough.
“What else have you found?”
Lestrade took a seat behind his desk and gestured they should follow suit. John did, but Sherlock stayed standing. He wondered if it hurt too much to get into the chair, then realized that sitting meant keeping his back to the door. From where he leaned against the wall, he had a much better view of everything. Fine, John thought. That’s good.
“Well, we’ve actually matched your report to several other, similar reports in the area.” He lifted a stack of thin folders and held them out. Sherlock took them with only the slightest hint of discomfort.
“Common robberies?” Sherlock said, voice filled with disdain. “That’s hardly the same as-”
“Two of them, one last month and one last week, involved sexual assault,” Lestrade said. “Very similar to your, ah, case. And there’s the knife at the head.”
Sherlock nodded and flipped through the files. He opened one at the bottom. “Stock broker? What’s a stock broker doing in that part of town at 5 in the afternoon?”
“What’s a consulting detective doing there?” Lestrade said. “Anyway, the point is, we haven’t had a good description of them until now. They’re plain faced, they’re average height, all of that. But now with what you’ve told us, and what we’ve found from the robbery squad, we’ve got a set of suspects. Do you want to have a look?”
Sherlock’s eyes widened. John sat up. Five minutes alone, he thought. “You’ve got them here?”
Lestrade shook his head. “No, but like you said, the one’s been in prison, so we’ve pulled some photos.”
“Oh. Of course.” He cleared his throat, but John had already caught the shaking voice.
Lestrade hit a button and paged Donovan, asking her to bring over the photo sets. While they waited, Sherlock studied the files, and John looked from him to Lestrade. He could almost sense the man’s questions: how’s he doing, really? he seemed to be saying. Truth was, John had no answer for him. He shrugged, minutely, and Lestrade nodded. He turned his arm over and tapped one finger against the inside of his elbow.
Before John could shake his head, Sherlock asked, “Shall I leave you two to gossip?” He didn’t raise his head from the folders.
Lestrade sighed. “Good to see all’s usual, then.”
“I assure you, I’m quite -“ Sherlock began, but the door opened and he startled and dropped the folders. Donovan stood in the doorway, staring open-mouthed as Sherlock cursed. He bent to pick up the papers and then gasped and turned a horrible shade of green.
“Down, sit down, you,” John said, pushing his chair over and then easing Sherlock, with hands on both shoulders, down into it. Lestrade was already collecting the papers from the ground, and John stooped to help. Sherlock rested his hands against his chest. His eyes were closed, his color dangerously wan. After the explosion of a moment before, his silence was like a weight. “There, that’s all done, then,” John said, shuffling papers randomly into files. He knew it didn’t much matter; Lestrade or fucking Donovan could sort them later.
Lestrade stood helplessly behind his desk, hands spread. Donovan’s mouth was still open. “Is there anything we -“
“A cup of tea,” John said, studying Sherlock’s too-even breathing and flushed red neck, “would be welcome.”
“Right.” Donovan and Lestrade walked out together, and John rested one hip on the desk. He was two feet from Sherlock and afraid to move any closer.
“I don’t need tea,” he said, his voice low, quavering, almost too wet.
“I might,” John said. “Your ribs?”
“Brilliant deduction. No money wasted on your medical degree.”
“Mm.” Sherlock’s heart was beating so quickly and so hard that John was fairly convinced he could see the pulse at his neck. His breath was coming in what must have been painful heaves. In anyone else, he’d expect a breakdown. He pulled the pill bottle from his pocket. “Right, then, let’s try this.”
Sherlock’s eyes fluttered open. “You’re sure?”
“Either you take them, or I do,” he said. “One of us should be in top form.”
“Really,” Sherlock said, taking the capsule in one trembling hand. “What’s paining you?”
“Same thing as always,” he said. “Bloody know-it-all flatmate who can’t sit still to save his life.”
A tiny quirk of a smile appeared at the edge of Sherlock’s mouth, already closed around the capsule. “I may need two.”
“Let’s wait and see.”
Sherlock nodded, slowly, as though trying out whether he’d be able to do so. John stood still, waiting to see his breathing even, waiting for things to feel OK again. Maybe the last was impossible, but the former came after a long, silent minute. Through the glass wall of Lestrade’s office, John could see him and Donovan trying to gauge whether it was safe to come back in. Safe as it ever was, he figured. Sherlock was mercurial at the best of times; he had a feeling he’d react quite sharply to any expression of sympathy. “So,” he said, opening the door, “you’ve got the photographs?”
Next Part
The next morning, it was obvious that neither of them had slept well that night. John had spent the night in fitful sleep in his own bed with his hand curled round the pill bottle they’d been sent home with. He didn’t like administering opiates to an addict, but he saw the necessity of having them on hand. Sherlock had yet to ask for any, and John hoped that meant only that he was coping, not that he was self-medicating.
Sherlock looked destroyed when John went downstairs. He was sitting at their kitchen table in his pale, matching pajamas and dressing gown. His left eye was shot through with bright, eerie blood, and the bruise around it had darkened to match his hair. His nose was swollen and purplish on the bridge. On the table, his hands were pressed together in the usual triangle, but John could see the pressure, the tension, between the fingers - they were white at the tips, mashed against each other to mask trembling or pain or both. Probably both. His eyes stayed on the table as John approached, ostensibly reviewing the news on the laptop screen in front of him, but his hands didn’t move for over a minute. There was nothing Sherlock read that slowly. He looked half asleep. He looked bloody awful.
That was to be expected, John figured, particularly since he’d had to wake Sherlock every few hours to make sure his head wasn’t permanently broken. Among that, the difficulties of breathing through his swollen nose, the broken ribs and bruised shoulder blades that made sitting difficult and lying down impossible, and whatever was going on in that rather always cracked head, it wasn’t so unsettling that the morning found them both gray-faced and exhausted.
What was disturbing was Sherlock’s insistence that they go immediately to Scotland Yard. “Whatever for?” John asked, hands around his first mug of the day.
“Because they’ll have more information by now,” Sherlock said. “And they clearly aren’t going to share it voluntarily.”
“We could try just ringing them,” John said, though he knew Sherlock was right. Lestrade was a smart man, and a rather good one, and he was unlikely to bother them with anything less than critical information or questions right now. There hadn’t been a single text all night.
“I’ll go without you,” Sherlock said, “if I must.”
“Sure you will,” John returned, but he knew it wasn’t a fight he could win. He wasn’t going to win any fights with Sherlock, not for a while, not while Sherlock’s face was a tiger-striped mess of bruises and bloodlessness. “Right, can I at least get a shower first?”
“There’s no hot water,” Sherlock grumbled. His own hair was again damp. That made at least two baths since they’d arrived home.
“I’ll make do.”
He did, though Sherlock was telling the truth. The few moments of calm, chilling clarity that the shower brought weren’t unwelcome. When he got out, his tea was gone, and Sherlock was dressed in suit trousers, shirt and jacket, and a dark blue scarf. Only the pallor of his face and the hand he had gripped tightly around the back of the chair showed what an effort it must have taken to wrangle himself into his clothes. John thought he was panting slightly, too. He gripped the bottle of pills, now in his jacket pocket. Should he offer?
“I don’t think they’re necessary,” Sherlock said.
“Have you had anything?”
“Nothing worth mentioning,” he said. John wasn’t sure what to make of that. “I hope you have money for the cab.”
Sherlock made his way down the stairs very carefully, one hand on the rail. “We ought to call your bank,” John said. “Was your card in the wallet?”
“Isn’t it in yours?”
John fumbled around and found it, sure enough, in his own wallet. “How do you function without - oh, never mind.”
“They took almost 500 quid,” Sherlock said.
It was on the tip of his tongue to say he deserved getting mugged, walking around with that kind of money in a dodgy area, but no. Sherlock was clinging to the front door frame just to catch his breath. No. No one deserved this.
At the Yard, they went immediately to Lestrade’s office. Sherlock kept his head up and his stare straight ahead, but John looked around as they walked through. It wasn’t the usual air of dismissal, annoyance, even fear that accompanied them. There was a tinge of pity and sympathy in their glances. That was a better result than he’d hoped, really; he thought there were those who would’ve gladly visited violence up Sherlock in that office. Maybe this, though, was crossing a line, even for them.
“Well, the good news is, we’ve found your coat and jacket,” Lestrade said as they walked in. He pointed to a plastic evidence bag. “They’ve been combed by forensics. They’re yours.”
Sherlock nodded but made no move toward the bag, so John grabbed it. He felt a surprising swell of relief at this news; he’d briefly pictured Moriarty holding them for his own. He seemed just the creep to do it. Inside the plastic, though, there was the standard black trench, a suit jacket, and even his brilliant blue cashmere scarf. Too much to hope that the shoes would have come back, he thought, but those could be replaced easily enough.
“What else have you found?”
Lestrade took a seat behind his desk and gestured they should follow suit. John did, but Sherlock stayed standing. He wondered if it hurt too much to get into the chair, then realized that sitting meant keeping his back to the door. From where he leaned against the wall, he had a much better view of everything. Fine, John thought. That’s good.
“Well, we’ve actually matched your report to several other, similar reports in the area.” He lifted a stack of thin folders and held them out. Sherlock took them with only the slightest hint of discomfort.
“Common robberies?” Sherlock said, voice filled with disdain. “That’s hardly the same as-”
“Two of them, one last month and one last week, involved sexual assault,” Lestrade said. “Very similar to your, ah, case. And there’s the knife at the head.”
Sherlock nodded and flipped through the files. He opened one at the bottom. “Stock broker? What’s a stock broker doing in that part of town at 5 in the afternoon?”
“What’s a consulting detective doing there?” Lestrade said. “Anyway, the point is, we haven’t had a good description of them until now. They’re plain faced, they’re average height, all of that. But now with what you’ve told us, and what we’ve found from the robbery squad, we’ve got a set of suspects. Do you want to have a look?”
Sherlock’s eyes widened. John sat up. Five minutes alone, he thought. “You’ve got them here?”
Lestrade shook his head. “No, but like you said, the one’s been in prison, so we’ve pulled some photos.”
“Oh. Of course.” He cleared his throat, but John had already caught the shaking voice.
Lestrade hit a button and paged Donovan, asking her to bring over the photo sets. While they waited, Sherlock studied the files, and John looked from him to Lestrade. He could almost sense the man’s questions: how’s he doing, really? he seemed to be saying. Truth was, John had no answer for him. He shrugged, minutely, and Lestrade nodded. He turned his arm over and tapped one finger against the inside of his elbow.
Before John could shake his head, Sherlock asked, “Shall I leave you two to gossip?” He didn’t raise his head from the folders.
Lestrade sighed. “Good to see all’s usual, then.”
“I assure you, I’m quite -“ Sherlock began, but the door opened and he startled and dropped the folders. Donovan stood in the doorway, staring open-mouthed as Sherlock cursed. He bent to pick up the papers and then gasped and turned a horrible shade of green.
“Down, sit down, you,” John said, pushing his chair over and then easing Sherlock, with hands on both shoulders, down into it. Lestrade was already collecting the papers from the ground, and John stooped to help. Sherlock rested his hands against his chest. His eyes were closed, his color dangerously wan. After the explosion of a moment before, his silence was like a weight. “There, that’s all done, then,” John said, shuffling papers randomly into files. He knew it didn’t much matter; Lestrade or fucking Donovan could sort them later.
Lestrade stood helplessly behind his desk, hands spread. Donovan’s mouth was still open. “Is there anything we -“
“A cup of tea,” John said, studying Sherlock’s too-even breathing and flushed red neck, “would be welcome.”
“Right.” Donovan and Lestrade walked out together, and John rested one hip on the desk. He was two feet from Sherlock and afraid to move any closer.
“I don’t need tea,” he said, his voice low, quavering, almost too wet.
“I might,” John said. “Your ribs?”
“Brilliant deduction. No money wasted on your medical degree.”
“Mm.” Sherlock’s heart was beating so quickly and so hard that John was fairly convinced he could see the pulse at his neck. His breath was coming in what must have been painful heaves. In anyone else, he’d expect a breakdown. He pulled the pill bottle from his pocket. “Right, then, let’s try this.”
Sherlock’s eyes fluttered open. “You’re sure?”
“Either you take them, or I do,” he said. “One of us should be in top form.”
“Really,” Sherlock said, taking the capsule in one trembling hand. “What’s paining you?”
“Same thing as always,” he said. “Bloody know-it-all flatmate who can’t sit still to save his life.”
A tiny quirk of a smile appeared at the edge of Sherlock’s mouth, already closed around the capsule. “I may need two.”
“Let’s wait and see.”
Sherlock nodded, slowly, as though trying out whether he’d be able to do so. John stood still, waiting to see his breathing even, waiting for things to feel OK again. Maybe the last was impossible, but the former came after a long, silent minute. Through the glass wall of Lestrade’s office, John could see him and Donovan trying to gauge whether it was safe to come back in. Safe as it ever was, he figured. Sherlock was mercurial at the best of times; he had a feeling he’d react quite sharply to any expression of sympathy. “So,” he said, opening the door, “you’ve got the photographs?”
Next Part