Fic (WIP): Be Here Now (3/?)
Title: Be Here Now
Writer: todesfuge
Status of work: (WIP: 3/?)
Characters: Sherlock/John; Irene Adler.
Rating: Hard R, some chapters NC-17 (though likely not explicit)
Warnings: Please see Chapter One.
Length: 3,076 (this chapter)
Summary: John Watson was already fighting demons when he and Sherlock met. With Sherlock's suicide, it all comes flooding back, forcing Sherlock to intervene before he's solved the persistent riddles of Jim Moriarty and his game. Together they find that something darker lurks behind Moriarty, forcing Sherlock, John, and Irene Adler into an even deadlier game with a much more dangerous foe. Begins six months after the events of The Reichenbach Fall.
CHAPTER THREE
For the first day after Sherlock had come to him, John Watson did nothing. The second day was the same.
Well, strictly speaking, John had moved at what Sherlock decided was a typical rate from the wing chair by the window to the loo and back throughout the day.
And as the second day waned from bright morning of sunlight on the lovely snow to mid-day, Sherlock - sitting before the monitor that was connected to the surveillance camera in John’s room - had started to vaguely entertain himself by trying to predict when John would need to go.
Meal times were another source of suspense. First, Sherlock watched whether John would acknowledge the servant who brought his tray of food (he didn’t), then sat in rapt attention to see if John would move toward the tray on the table beside the bed.
Not even tea. Damn.
From the single camera’s vantage point, Sherlock could only see John’s left side, the camera set high on the ceiling. Sherlock had it zoomed in as close as it would go, but the picture pixilated the closer he tried to look. This left John’s face as half of a grainy, firmly set mask. Only John’s lids moved as he blinked, his hands folded in his lap, his legs straight out with his ankles crossed. Whether he cried or not, the camera could not tell.
For his part, Sherlock’s body had begun to ache the longer he sat there watching. He’d had the monitor moved to the wide desk in his own bedroom, there next to his own laptop and the larger laptop that acted as the security console for the house and grounds.
He had to stand in the midst of his work to stretch, his joints feeling the disuse and his face and ribs aching. His lower lids were slightly puffed, accommodating the swell oozing from the blow to the bridge of his nose. The middle of his face throbbed distantly, as did his lip beneath the small Steri-strip that held it closed where it had split. A puff of swelling marked the widening bruise at the corner of his chin where John’s forehead had hit.
“There…” Irene had tsked softly after he’d eventually made his way from the foyer to the drawing room again. As she’d spoken, she’d dabbed a cotton ball at the blood on his face. “You know, you might have fared better if you’d actually tried to defend yourself.”
Sherlock sat stiffly, enduring her ministrations, staring straight ahead. Most of his attention was frankly focused below his waist. The last time he’d taken a shot like that had been when he was 16, playing football. He still couldn’t quite recall the second half of the match.
“I’ll try to remember that for the next round,” he said hoarsely after a beat. His throat burned from vomiting.
“Oh, there won’t be a next round,” she said easily, reaching for another cotton puff. “He’s got it out of his system now. Give him some time and he’ll come round.”
He looked up at her now. “You sound very sure.” It was impossible to hide the defeat from his voice.
She smiled faintly. “That’s because I am,” she replied. With that, she finished dabbing up the blood on his chin, set the cotton down on the tray of supplies the head servant had brought in at her request. Then she leaned forward, curling her hands around his forearms, squeezing faintly in a way that he found…reassuring. Kind, in a way.
“I’ve seen you two together, you know,” she murmured. “And let’s just say it’s part of my…professional expertise…to understand the things people want but won’t allow themselves to say.”
Sherlock stared, his mouth open a bit. She smiled, and it reached her eyes for a warm beat. Then they both looked away.
“There,” she said, leaning away and tightening a cap on the peroxide firmly. “All sorted. Except for your…” Her eyes flicked down. “…other injury, which I imagine you’d like to see to yourself.”
His lip curled and he met the teasing challenge in her gaze. “Thank you, yes.”
For a few beats, she stood, her arms crossed as she studied his face.
“I’ve seen worse,” she pronounced finally. Then, a bit of her mischievousness sparking in her eyes, she added. “I’ve done worse, in fact.”
He smiled faintly again, but his eyes drifted away. She leaned forward the rest of the way, kissed his forehead, releasing his arms.
“Tomorrow will have its way with you soon enough, Mr. Holmes,” she said softly. “Try to rest…”
Before him on the monitor, the servant entered with John’s dinner.
Sherlock had asked for a steak for John - “special occasions,” John had once said - in the hopes that it might tempt him on this, at least his second day without anything to eat. That John hadn’t left the shell of himself all day made Sherlock less than optimistic his idea would work.
He watched with his precise gaze. No movement from the chair as the servant entered and sat the tray down, removing the dishes’ silver hats. Nothing as the man retreated again, locking the door behind.
A moment of stillness. Then, John’s head turned toward the plate.
“Take it, John,” Sherlock mumbled, his eyes piercing into the screen. “Come on….”
No. John turned his gaze to the window again.
Sherlock was reminded suddenly of the hatchling he and Mycroft had found beneath a tree in the garden when Sherlock was a child. Thin skin, impossible bumps of eyes, the red throat…
Sherlock had been fascinated, and more than that, deeply moved by the thing, and Mycroft (seeing this) had told him not to take it home, not to get attached.
“They never live,” he’d said.
Sherlock hadn’t listened. He brought it home to his room, made a nest of flannels over the top opening of his lamp to keep it safe and warm. But when he tried to feed it egg with the dropper, it would turn its head away, its mouth stubborn and closed, the egg stringing from the end of its beak.
When it died, Sherlock dissected it.
Then, almost as an afterthought, he’d put it back together again.
“CHRIST.” Sherlock cupped his forehead in one hand, slapped the other down in frustration, the motion jostling his phone. His eyes locked on it and he snatched it up, his thumbs racing over the keyboard.
Eat. Send.
He watched the screen. John had placed his phone on the nightstand. He could hear the wooden buzz through the camera’s audio.
John heard it too. He turned toward it.
Sherlock grabbed the phone again. Please. Send.
John rose and went to the phone, picked it up and read the screen. His face blank, he typed, sent.
Special occasion.
Sherlock thought of the hotel, John with his gun and dog tags going off alone to die in the shower (easier to clean). Sherlock’s eyes stung with tears.
Yes. Send.
Very. Send.
John looked at the screen for what felt like a long time. Then he tapped, sent, put the phone down.
Sod off.
It was better than nothing, Sherlock supposed, biting his lip.
John sat again, going still, his face turned down. Sherlock heaved a sigh, resigned himself to it and returned his attention to the string of emails he’d been dealing with.
Thirty minutes came and went.
And then, John Watson did something Sherlock Holmes did not expect.
He rose, sat down in the chair beside the dinner tray, and began to eat.
* * *
It was their only direct contact for the next two days, but it was enough for the tension that had been coiling inside Sherlock since his meeting with Mycroft to ease a bit.
Then, on the third day while he was reading email from his contacts, Sherlock’s phone buzzed.
Want to go out. Won’t run.
Sherlock considered it for a long moment, then tapped two words back.
Of course. Send.
He did not mention that John would be closely watched, nor that he would only be allowed to go so far from the house. He would hope John would know that was a given by now.
He picked up the phone and told the house staff to alert the security personnel and let John out.
A week passed in relative quiet this way. Sometimes the servants reported that John was awakened at night by nightmares. Sometimes, if Sherlock was awake, he saw with his own eyes the toll the dreams could take.
It was hard to stay away, but for once, Sherlock listened. He stayed away.
* * *
It grew slightly warmer over the next few days, and John had taken to spending more and more time on the grounds, finally venturing off into the open meadows beyond the house’s immense snow-covered gardens.
There were arched, gated entrances in the two of the four walls, manned by guards in civilian dress. They offered polite greetings to John as they opened the gates.
A herd of dairy cows moved across the field several times a day, from one barn through the meadow and back again, an old man and what were probably his grandsons and two good, pied herding dogs going with the animals as they went. The cows wore huge pewter-colored bells on wide collars, and their deep sounds carried through the cold air as they went.
John, wearing his jeans, brown boots, and black Haversack coat (which hung on him now) with a thick gray scarf, had taken to sitting on a large stone wedged in the melting snow to watch them as they passed.
He liked watching the work, the normalcy of it. Part of him envied the old man and the boys their simpler task here on this lovely landscape.
His mind had been a slow, dim place. After the initial shock of seeing Sherlock again (there something different about him…John couldn’t put his finger on it), the outburst he could barely recall at this point, he’d simply opened some numb door in him and gone in.
Not the hopelessness he’d had before. He was too stunned for that. Just some sort of cotton-wool silence and sense of space.
Sherlock had kept his distance, which was itself surprising. But John knew he was there, watching. He swore sometimes he could feel Sherlock’s gaze on him everywhere, following him around his quiet room, through the gardens and out past the gates.
John tried to decide if he resented it. He hadn’t come to a conclusion as yet.
One thing he was certain he resented was the presence of Irene Adler in the house. He’d seen her walking with Sherlock off on the wooden fence line in the distance several times over the past few days. At times, she walked slightly ahead of Sherlock, her hands in the pockets of her fur coat. Sometimes she was on his arm, the two small dark figures moving as one on the pale landscape.
Sometimes they just walked, disappearing over the ridge or back into the privacy of the garden wall. He could tell they were often speaking. John would see them on other occasions stopped, leaning for long spans of time on the fence railing and looking at him.
Sometimes, John would turn and stare right back.
It was hard for him to choose which element of Adler’s presence pricked him the most. Perhaps it was that she was a reminder of yet another lie by Sherlock, one that had the added bonus of John lying to the all-too-informed Sherlock to spare his feelings, thus making John look like an arse. Or it could be the lingering aftertaste of Adler’s treatment of him in the hotel, his sudden jolt from suicide accomplished with the hard slap of her hand.
Or was it simply the way she walked locked arms with Sherlock now just at the fence line again?
Or, truth be told, the thought that perhaps Sherlock had spent the last six months here with her, hiding in this beautiful place?
John was staring at them where they’d paused in their walk, the two of them at the pasture’s far edge. His face had set into something angry that he couldn’t quite hide, so he looked away again.
* * *
Even at this distance, Sherlock hadn’t missed the look on John’s face.
“It’s not you,” Irene said from beside him.
“That he’s furious with? I disagree.” He was getting better at reading her as she read him.
“Oh no, love, not this time. This time, it’s definitely me.” She shook her head, the small smile of satisfaction surety brought her curling her lips.
They’d spoken little since leaving the house. The silence, the work on the project, it was beginning to wear him thin. Irene had herself been quiet and contemplative beside him.
The low bells were coming up the rise as the dairy cows made their way across the white meadow. The old man and one of his grandsons - the younger one, Sherlock noted - followed, waving to John on his stone and calling out to him in English. John, polite as always, raised a hand and called a greeting back.
The boy was holding something, and he called to John again. John said something, waved him in. Sherlock watched as the boy trotted over to John and stood close, showing John something cupped between his hands. John leaned in, indulging.
The sight tugged at Sherlock in a strange way. His face fell with it as he watched John and the boy, the animation of them, John’s face as he spoke…
“What is it?” Irene asked. Her voice was gentle, curious. No challenge.
“I was thinking…” Sherlock began. He didn’t take his eyes from the scene before him, his mouth working as though he were reaching for words from new language.
Finally he said: “I was thinking...what a fine father he would have made.”
Irene looked at him, her brow creasing at the oddness of what he'd said, including speaking of John in the past tense. She looked back at John, where the boy was now walking away with his little prize, happily calling to John over his shoulder. Then she turned back at Sherlock.
“I’ve never seen you like this,” she murmured. “I didn’t know you could be…opened…hurt like this.”
Sherlock looked down, feeling his face flush (shame?). “A lot has happened since last we met.”
“What?” Her tone was urgent, excited, as though she had to understand -- to solve -- this.
Something in Sherlock closed at the tone. He shook his head, his eyes darting toward her, then back to where John was back to watching the two of them watching him.
“I’m going to go talk to him,” Irene said suddenly, bending to go through the wide slats in the fence.
“Irene-“ Sherlock said softly. “He’s made it clear that it’s best to let him be.”
She started walking, said: “He didn’t make it clear to me.”
* * *
“I have some things to say to you,” Adler was saying to him as she got closer.
John found himself gaping, his body tense, his face screwing up in confusion. He’d been watching her approach with a feeling somewhere between fury, fear, and disbelief. But what she said? That took the cake.
“Wait, what? You’ve got some things to say to me?” He rose to face her as she stopped a few feet from him.
“Yes,” she replied, more calm now that she was closer. “Let’s start by setting the record a bit more straight. First, Sherlock and I are not shagging.”
Anger flamed behind John’s eyes. “I don’t give a good goddamn-“
“Shut it!” she burst in, pointing at his chest. It surprised him so much that he did.
“Second, I have not been here with him all this time. In fact, if you must know, I had no contact with him until a month ago when he asked me to repay a favor by helping him get to you before you bloody shot out your brains.”
John swallowed, though the rage still simmered in his chest.
“Right,” she said, seeing her words starting to have an effect. “Third…has it occurred to you to ask why he did what he did?”
“Of course it has,” John said sourly. “It’s not like there’s been much of a chance.”
“That’s been your choice,” Irene said. “How about I tell you myself.”
John crossed his arms, once again taken back by her absolute gift for trampling into things. “Go on then. By all means. Explain it to me. Do that for him, as well.”
Her hand shot up toward his face, but he was expecting it this time. His own snapped up and gripped her wrist just before it touched his cheek. He yanked her close to him, speaking directly into her face.
“Never. Hit Me. Again.” His teeth were grit. Her eyes narrowed and he let her go.
She rubbed her wrist, pinning him with her eyes instead. “There were snipers following you and two of Sherlock’s other acquaintances that day. Jim Moriarty had set it up that if the snipers didn’t see Sherlock jump, all three of you would be dead.”
John’s brow creased, soaking that in. He shook his head as the enormity of it began to bloom in him. “What? How-“
“Yes, Dr. Watson,” she broke in. “He did it to save your life. That life. The one you were about to leave all over the walls of that hotel. I’m glad you’ve got that clear now.”
John was silent, his breathing quickening a bit. The shaming of her words stung him, and his eyes were going to betray him yet again. He bit the tears down, swallowed hard.
“That wasn’t…only about this…” he said, and he hated the way his voice shook. He didn’t even know why he’d felt he had to say it.
With that, her face fell. Something appeared to blow over in her eyes, and she flushed, looked away for a beat.
“I know,” she said faintly, meeting his eyes again. “I do know. Forgive me. I shouldn’t have implied that was the case.”
John nodded, accepting it. But something in him was painfully opening, like a fist too long in a clench. He felt vaguely sick.
“Please speak to him,” she said softly into the beat of silence.
Her eyes implored him in a way he didn’t expect. It disarmed him, and his shoulders eased a bit. He looked back up to where Sherlock was standing stone-still at the fence.
Finally, he nodded. “All right,” he said. "I will."
* * *
Continued in Chapter Four.
Writer: todesfuge
Status of work: (WIP: 3/?)
Characters: Sherlock/John; Irene Adler.
Rating: Hard R, some chapters NC-17 (though likely not explicit)
Warnings: Please see Chapter One.
Length: 3,076 (this chapter)
Summary: John Watson was already fighting demons when he and Sherlock met. With Sherlock's suicide, it all comes flooding back, forcing Sherlock to intervene before he's solved the persistent riddles of Jim Moriarty and his game. Together they find that something darker lurks behind Moriarty, forcing Sherlock, John, and Irene Adler into an even deadlier game with a much more dangerous foe. Begins six months after the events of The Reichenbach Fall.
CHAPTER THREE
For the first day after Sherlock had come to him, John Watson did nothing. The second day was the same.
Well, strictly speaking, John had moved at what Sherlock decided was a typical rate from the wing chair by the window to the loo and back throughout the day.
And as the second day waned from bright morning of sunlight on the lovely snow to mid-day, Sherlock - sitting before the monitor that was connected to the surveillance camera in John’s room - had started to vaguely entertain himself by trying to predict when John would need to go.
Meal times were another source of suspense. First, Sherlock watched whether John would acknowledge the servant who brought his tray of food (he didn’t), then sat in rapt attention to see if John would move toward the tray on the table beside the bed.
Not even tea. Damn.
From the single camera’s vantage point, Sherlock could only see John’s left side, the camera set high on the ceiling. Sherlock had it zoomed in as close as it would go, but the picture pixilated the closer he tried to look. This left John’s face as half of a grainy, firmly set mask. Only John’s lids moved as he blinked, his hands folded in his lap, his legs straight out with his ankles crossed. Whether he cried or not, the camera could not tell.
For his part, Sherlock’s body had begun to ache the longer he sat there watching. He’d had the monitor moved to the wide desk in his own bedroom, there next to his own laptop and the larger laptop that acted as the security console for the house and grounds.
He had to stand in the midst of his work to stretch, his joints feeling the disuse and his face and ribs aching. His lower lids were slightly puffed, accommodating the swell oozing from the blow to the bridge of his nose. The middle of his face throbbed distantly, as did his lip beneath the small Steri-strip that held it closed where it had split. A puff of swelling marked the widening bruise at the corner of his chin where John’s forehead had hit.
“There…” Irene had tsked softly after he’d eventually made his way from the foyer to the drawing room again. As she’d spoken, she’d dabbed a cotton ball at the blood on his face. “You know, you might have fared better if you’d actually tried to defend yourself.”
Sherlock sat stiffly, enduring her ministrations, staring straight ahead. Most of his attention was frankly focused below his waist. The last time he’d taken a shot like that had been when he was 16, playing football. He still couldn’t quite recall the second half of the match.
“I’ll try to remember that for the next round,” he said hoarsely after a beat. His throat burned from vomiting.
“Oh, there won’t be a next round,” she said easily, reaching for another cotton puff. “He’s got it out of his system now. Give him some time and he’ll come round.”
He looked up at her now. “You sound very sure.” It was impossible to hide the defeat from his voice.
She smiled faintly. “That’s because I am,” she replied. With that, she finished dabbing up the blood on his chin, set the cotton down on the tray of supplies the head servant had brought in at her request. Then she leaned forward, curling her hands around his forearms, squeezing faintly in a way that he found…reassuring. Kind, in a way.
“I’ve seen you two together, you know,” she murmured. “And let’s just say it’s part of my…professional expertise…to understand the things people want but won’t allow themselves to say.”
Sherlock stared, his mouth open a bit. She smiled, and it reached her eyes for a warm beat. Then they both looked away.
“There,” she said, leaning away and tightening a cap on the peroxide firmly. “All sorted. Except for your…” Her eyes flicked down. “…other injury, which I imagine you’d like to see to yourself.”
His lip curled and he met the teasing challenge in her gaze. “Thank you, yes.”
For a few beats, she stood, her arms crossed as she studied his face.
“I’ve seen worse,” she pronounced finally. Then, a bit of her mischievousness sparking in her eyes, she added. “I’ve done worse, in fact.”
He smiled faintly again, but his eyes drifted away. She leaned forward the rest of the way, kissed his forehead, releasing his arms.
“Tomorrow will have its way with you soon enough, Mr. Holmes,” she said softly. “Try to rest…”
Before him on the monitor, the servant entered with John’s dinner.
Sherlock had asked for a steak for John - “special occasions,” John had once said - in the hopes that it might tempt him on this, at least his second day without anything to eat. That John hadn’t left the shell of himself all day made Sherlock less than optimistic his idea would work.
He watched with his precise gaze. No movement from the chair as the servant entered and sat the tray down, removing the dishes’ silver hats. Nothing as the man retreated again, locking the door behind.
A moment of stillness. Then, John’s head turned toward the plate.
“Take it, John,” Sherlock mumbled, his eyes piercing into the screen. “Come on….”
No. John turned his gaze to the window again.
Sherlock was reminded suddenly of the hatchling he and Mycroft had found beneath a tree in the garden when Sherlock was a child. Thin skin, impossible bumps of eyes, the red throat…
Sherlock had been fascinated, and more than that, deeply moved by the thing, and Mycroft (seeing this) had told him not to take it home, not to get attached.
“They never live,” he’d said.
Sherlock hadn’t listened. He brought it home to his room, made a nest of flannels over the top opening of his lamp to keep it safe and warm. But when he tried to feed it egg with the dropper, it would turn its head away, its mouth stubborn and closed, the egg stringing from the end of its beak.
When it died, Sherlock dissected it.
Then, almost as an afterthought, he’d put it back together again.
“CHRIST.” Sherlock cupped his forehead in one hand, slapped the other down in frustration, the motion jostling his phone. His eyes locked on it and he snatched it up, his thumbs racing over the keyboard.
Eat. Send.
He watched the screen. John had placed his phone on the nightstand. He could hear the wooden buzz through the camera’s audio.
John heard it too. He turned toward it.
Sherlock grabbed the phone again. Please. Send.
John rose and went to the phone, picked it up and read the screen. His face blank, he typed, sent.
Special occasion.
Sherlock thought of the hotel, John with his gun and dog tags going off alone to die in the shower (easier to clean). Sherlock’s eyes stung with tears.
Yes. Send.
Very. Send.
John looked at the screen for what felt like a long time. Then he tapped, sent, put the phone down.
Sod off.
It was better than nothing, Sherlock supposed, biting his lip.
John sat again, going still, his face turned down. Sherlock heaved a sigh, resigned himself to it and returned his attention to the string of emails he’d been dealing with.
Thirty minutes came and went.
And then, John Watson did something Sherlock Holmes did not expect.
He rose, sat down in the chair beside the dinner tray, and began to eat.
* * *
It was their only direct contact for the next two days, but it was enough for the tension that had been coiling inside Sherlock since his meeting with Mycroft to ease a bit.
Then, on the third day while he was reading email from his contacts, Sherlock’s phone buzzed.
Want to go out. Won’t run.
Sherlock considered it for a long moment, then tapped two words back.
Of course. Send.
He did not mention that John would be closely watched, nor that he would only be allowed to go so far from the house. He would hope John would know that was a given by now.
He picked up the phone and told the house staff to alert the security personnel and let John out.
A week passed in relative quiet this way. Sometimes the servants reported that John was awakened at night by nightmares. Sometimes, if Sherlock was awake, he saw with his own eyes the toll the dreams could take.
It was hard to stay away, but for once, Sherlock listened. He stayed away.
* * *
It grew slightly warmer over the next few days, and John had taken to spending more and more time on the grounds, finally venturing off into the open meadows beyond the house’s immense snow-covered gardens.
There were arched, gated entrances in the two of the four walls, manned by guards in civilian dress. They offered polite greetings to John as they opened the gates.
A herd of dairy cows moved across the field several times a day, from one barn through the meadow and back again, an old man and what were probably his grandsons and two good, pied herding dogs going with the animals as they went. The cows wore huge pewter-colored bells on wide collars, and their deep sounds carried through the cold air as they went.
John, wearing his jeans, brown boots, and black Haversack coat (which hung on him now) with a thick gray scarf, had taken to sitting on a large stone wedged in the melting snow to watch them as they passed.
He liked watching the work, the normalcy of it. Part of him envied the old man and the boys their simpler task here on this lovely landscape.
His mind had been a slow, dim place. After the initial shock of seeing Sherlock again (there something different about him…John couldn’t put his finger on it), the outburst he could barely recall at this point, he’d simply opened some numb door in him and gone in.
Not the hopelessness he’d had before. He was too stunned for that. Just some sort of cotton-wool silence and sense of space.
Sherlock had kept his distance, which was itself surprising. But John knew he was there, watching. He swore sometimes he could feel Sherlock’s gaze on him everywhere, following him around his quiet room, through the gardens and out past the gates.
John tried to decide if he resented it. He hadn’t come to a conclusion as yet.
One thing he was certain he resented was the presence of Irene Adler in the house. He’d seen her walking with Sherlock off on the wooden fence line in the distance several times over the past few days. At times, she walked slightly ahead of Sherlock, her hands in the pockets of her fur coat. Sometimes she was on his arm, the two small dark figures moving as one on the pale landscape.
Sometimes they just walked, disappearing over the ridge or back into the privacy of the garden wall. He could tell they were often speaking. John would see them on other occasions stopped, leaning for long spans of time on the fence railing and looking at him.
Sometimes, John would turn and stare right back.
It was hard for him to choose which element of Adler’s presence pricked him the most. Perhaps it was that she was a reminder of yet another lie by Sherlock, one that had the added bonus of John lying to the all-too-informed Sherlock to spare his feelings, thus making John look like an arse. Or it could be the lingering aftertaste of Adler’s treatment of him in the hotel, his sudden jolt from suicide accomplished with the hard slap of her hand.
Or was it simply the way she walked locked arms with Sherlock now just at the fence line again?
Or, truth be told, the thought that perhaps Sherlock had spent the last six months here with her, hiding in this beautiful place?
John was staring at them where they’d paused in their walk, the two of them at the pasture’s far edge. His face had set into something angry that he couldn’t quite hide, so he looked away again.
* * *
Even at this distance, Sherlock hadn’t missed the look on John’s face.
“It’s not you,” Irene said from beside him.
“That he’s furious with? I disagree.” He was getting better at reading her as she read him.
“Oh no, love, not this time. This time, it’s definitely me.” She shook her head, the small smile of satisfaction surety brought her curling her lips.
They’d spoken little since leaving the house. The silence, the work on the project, it was beginning to wear him thin. Irene had herself been quiet and contemplative beside him.
The low bells were coming up the rise as the dairy cows made their way across the white meadow. The old man and one of his grandsons - the younger one, Sherlock noted - followed, waving to John on his stone and calling out to him in English. John, polite as always, raised a hand and called a greeting back.
The boy was holding something, and he called to John again. John said something, waved him in. Sherlock watched as the boy trotted over to John and stood close, showing John something cupped between his hands. John leaned in, indulging.
The sight tugged at Sherlock in a strange way. His face fell with it as he watched John and the boy, the animation of them, John’s face as he spoke…
“What is it?” Irene asked. Her voice was gentle, curious. No challenge.
“I was thinking…” Sherlock began. He didn’t take his eyes from the scene before him, his mouth working as though he were reaching for words from new language.
Finally he said: “I was thinking...what a fine father he would have made.”
Irene looked at him, her brow creasing at the oddness of what he'd said, including speaking of John in the past tense. She looked back at John, where the boy was now walking away with his little prize, happily calling to John over his shoulder. Then she turned back at Sherlock.
“I’ve never seen you like this,” she murmured. “I didn’t know you could be…opened…hurt like this.”
Sherlock looked down, feeling his face flush (shame?). “A lot has happened since last we met.”
“What?” Her tone was urgent, excited, as though she had to understand -- to solve -- this.
Something in Sherlock closed at the tone. He shook his head, his eyes darting toward her, then back to where John was back to watching the two of them watching him.
“I’m going to go talk to him,” Irene said suddenly, bending to go through the wide slats in the fence.
“Irene-“ Sherlock said softly. “He’s made it clear that it’s best to let him be.”
She started walking, said: “He didn’t make it clear to me.”
* * *
“I have some things to say to you,” Adler was saying to him as she got closer.
John found himself gaping, his body tense, his face screwing up in confusion. He’d been watching her approach with a feeling somewhere between fury, fear, and disbelief. But what she said? That took the cake.
“Wait, what? You’ve got some things to say to me?” He rose to face her as she stopped a few feet from him.
“Yes,” she replied, more calm now that she was closer. “Let’s start by setting the record a bit more straight. First, Sherlock and I are not shagging.”
Anger flamed behind John’s eyes. “I don’t give a good goddamn-“
“Shut it!” she burst in, pointing at his chest. It surprised him so much that he did.
“Second, I have not been here with him all this time. In fact, if you must know, I had no contact with him until a month ago when he asked me to repay a favor by helping him get to you before you bloody shot out your brains.”
John swallowed, though the rage still simmered in his chest.
“Right,” she said, seeing her words starting to have an effect. “Third…has it occurred to you to ask why he did what he did?”
“Of course it has,” John said sourly. “It’s not like there’s been much of a chance.”
“That’s been your choice,” Irene said. “How about I tell you myself.”
John crossed his arms, once again taken back by her absolute gift for trampling into things. “Go on then. By all means. Explain it to me. Do that for him, as well.”
Her hand shot up toward his face, but he was expecting it this time. His own snapped up and gripped her wrist just before it touched his cheek. He yanked her close to him, speaking directly into her face.
“Never. Hit Me. Again.” His teeth were grit. Her eyes narrowed and he let her go.
She rubbed her wrist, pinning him with her eyes instead. “There were snipers following you and two of Sherlock’s other acquaintances that day. Jim Moriarty had set it up that if the snipers didn’t see Sherlock jump, all three of you would be dead.”
John’s brow creased, soaking that in. He shook his head as the enormity of it began to bloom in him. “What? How-“
“Yes, Dr. Watson,” she broke in. “He did it to save your life. That life. The one you were about to leave all over the walls of that hotel. I’m glad you’ve got that clear now.”
John was silent, his breathing quickening a bit. The shaming of her words stung him, and his eyes were going to betray him yet again. He bit the tears down, swallowed hard.
“That wasn’t…only about this…” he said, and he hated the way his voice shook. He didn’t even know why he’d felt he had to say it.
With that, her face fell. Something appeared to blow over in her eyes, and she flushed, looked away for a beat.
“I know,” she said faintly, meeting his eyes again. “I do know. Forgive me. I shouldn’t have implied that was the case.”
John nodded, accepting it. But something in him was painfully opening, like a fist too long in a clench. He felt vaguely sick.
“Please speak to him,” she said softly into the beat of silence.
Her eyes implored him in a way he didn’t expect. It disarmed him, and his shoulders eased a bit. He looked back up to where Sherlock was standing stone-still at the fence.
Finally, he nodded. “All right,” he said. "I will."
* * *
Continued in Chapter Four.