Fic: The Schedule
Title: The Schedule
Wordcount: 2225
Rating/Warning: PG-13 for vague sexual references. Spoilers if you've never read A Case Of Identity!
Disclaimer I don't own anything or anyone.
Notes/Summary: John goes to a medical conference. Sherlock goes round the bend. Hurray, mildly stalkery floof!
Monday: Introduction & Welcome, Back Pain Symposium, Cardiac Risks Workshop
Sherlock is fine without John, absolutely fine. He has plenty to do; a case takes him out to Wimbledon, where a woman is distraught over her missing fiancé. In front of several witnesses, he stepped into a taxi on the morning of their wedding and- apparently- stepped off the face of the earth.
The woman met her fiancé online: Sherlock spends an interesting afternoon ferreting through chat logs and emails, examining addresses, coming up against an unusual number of proxies- Germany, Russia, the States. Her fiancé is a careful man, the woman tells him over the phone, terrified of identity theft. All these little security measures are just like him. She starts to cry; Sherlock hangs up.
That evening he gives the papers a cursory glance, plays with the TV until he gets the regional news from BBC Tyne. There's nothing interesting. As an afterthought, he prints off John's itinerary, a three-page stapled schedule, and sticks it in his pocket. It might come in useful.
*
Tuesday: Controversies in Diagnosis of Diabetes, New Vaccines, Dermoscopy 101
Sherlock is a little restless. The case of the vanishing boyfriend is simplicity itself in theory- the strange, security-conscious suitor is none other than the woman’s stepfather. Armed with all the experience of a long career on the stage, and a stepdaughter who is both naïve and blind as a bat, the man has resorted to somewhat ludicrous- if refreshingly novel- measures to keep her substantial inheritance in his bank account.
Sherlock's problem is convincing his client that her ‘fiancé’ does not, actually, exist. He tells her, rather bluntly, that her best course of action would be to forget that she ever met him. She spends ten minutes making it very clear that she will stay faithful to him until death. Some people are just beyond help.
Irritated, he tells her the truth. There's nothing very heavy within grabbing distance- he anticipated this- but she makes do with a jam-jar full of pens. Sherlock ducks, and the missile shatters a window. He shows himself out.
Case solved, if not satisfactorily- and it’s barely lunchtime. Sherlock stops by Scotland Yard to pester Lestrade on another, unconnected matter.
“Where’s your boyfriend, Freak?” asks Sally Donovan. “Did you tie him outside a shop and forget about him?”
“He's having lunch,” he tells her. It's just gone twelve, so this is entirely true, according to the three-page stapled schedule in his coat pocket. Of course, he's not always looking at it, he doesn't need it that much. He just glances at it every now and again. If it's getting a little creased, it's only because of the poor paper stock John keeps in the printer in his bedroom. Sherlock makes a mental note to advise him to buy a better brand next time, something sturdy like Conqueror Bond.
Sally snorts, and Sherlock proceeds to tell her exactly what she was doing at just gone twelve the previous night- and to whom. He leaves her just at the point when he judges that she's about to take a swing at him. Oddly, this doesn't make him feel much better.
He spends the rest of the day analysing a series of samples from another case at the kitchen table. The flat is very quiet- in the evening, the absence of white noise from the stupid chat shows that John always puts on when he gets home from work at the surgery gets on Sherlock's nerves so much that he turns it on and lets it witter to itself as he works, but it isn't quite the same. Noise is noise, clearly, so it's what it signifies that's important- that John is home, close, that he's hearing what John is hearing. With John not here the noise is a lie, and he turns it off again, and works in silence.
He finds a webcam that streams live from Newcastle city centre and watches it for a while. Crowds stream along the pavement under yellow sodium lights, talk, shove, wave. He turns it off.
*
Wednesday: Writing an Effective Exercise Prescription, Parasomnias, Chairman’s Address
Sherlock is looking for distractions. He types up his notes on the case of identity theft, goes to see Babs at the British Museum and gets involved in a long and rambling debate about the difficulties of identifying forged Sumerian pottery (it's all in the cedar-oil), chases a cab on foot for the best part of two miles up Parliament Hill and through Hampstead Heath, accidentally starts a deer stampede, and tries unsuccessfully to goad Mycroft into an argument via text.
The three-page stapled schedule is getting holes in the corners of the folds.
That afternoon, he's just about to let himself into 221B when fast, heavy footsteps behind him tell him that something is wrong. He turns just in time to block a punch with his upper arm- with the shock still tingling all the way up to his elbow he sees the furious, inflamed face of the woman's stepfather and brings up his other arm slightly too late to guard against a concussive blow to the side of the head. That is to say, he blocks it, but with the span of his left hand.
There's a noise and white fire explodes in his fingers, thinking at the speed of pain he brings up his knee and feels a satisfying clacky crunch as the man's teeth come together and his head snaps upwards, his eyes very white, the curve of energy already falling away from his body. The man's out cold, he just doesn't quite know it yet- he takes a half-step backwards with his jaw hanging open at an unnatural angle, misses the step, and falls like a bag of mixed cement.
Mrs. Hudson opens the door. “Sherlock? What's all this racket?” She stops, hand to mouth, as Sherlock turns towards her, colour high in his cheeks, breathing out his exhilaration.
“Oh, Sherlock, your poor hand.”
*
Thursday: Personal Investment Strategies, Case Studies in Endometriosis, Q&A
Sherlock is annoyed, annoyed, annoyed. His fingers are an extension of his sense of touch, vital, unlike most of the rest of him, unlike things like ribs or shoulders or noses that he doesn't particularly care much about- vital for feeling traces of spilled sand on a surface or fingering a melancholy minor on his violin, measuring one-drop-and-one-drop-only of sulphuric acid or (feeling the fine lines and contours of John's upturned face) a hundred other things. He needs his fingers, and that means he has to look after them, no just taking three aspirin and walking it off when two of them look like they're on backwards and are starting to swell.
He's annoyed because the doctor at the Minor Injuries Unit tutted at him and took too long and asked stupid questions, annoyed because the bandage splints his two broken fingers- index and middle- against each other, making them into one giant-idiot-finger that won't fit into his gloves, annoyed because the whole thing is stiff and awkward and, yes, alright, painful. It just feels wrong. It's too tight or too loose or badly-supported or something, he doesn't know, but he knows that John would have done it properly. He wouldn't have tutted at him, either.
And he's really annoyed when he's at the scene of a suicide that's been arranged to look like a murder, describing the glaring clues that even someone with both their eyes shut and a bucket over their head should have noticed, and he points out a splatter on the ceiling with his giant-idiot-finger hand, and Anderson bursts out laughing and says 'that's illogical, Captain' between snickers and then everyone starts laughing, even Lestrade. Sherlock doesn't understand what's so funny, and there's nothing guaranteed to make Sherlock angry faster than a roomful of people laughing at him for a reason he doesn't understand.
John would probably have stopped him doing what he does next, which is ripping them to bloody pieces with his tongue (all of them, Anderson, Sally, Lestrade, and some poor random SOCO who's only stepped in to find a notebook) and then walking out on the lot of them, and the case.
John would have calmed him, explained the 'joke' with that fond, half-amazed look he always gets when he trips over the depths of Sherlock's ignorance of things that don't matter, but John isn't here, and now it's dark and it's just Sherlock and his giant-idiot-finger and a television that doesn't work because he kept switching channels non-stop for three hours last night until the remote died.
He spends hours watching webcams all over Newcastle, slipping like a restless ghost from town centre to motorway to shopping precinct, checking traffic updates, local news feeds, airport schedules, hunting for something- anything- some sign that something is not as it should be.
He doesn't find it.
The flat is cold- he didn't bother turning the heating on- he doesn't want to eat and he can't sleep. His head feels full of little bits of shattered bone and three hundred miles is an aching, terrifying distance. His bandage feels wrong and his eyeballs feel lightly deep-fried from staring at the only channel the TV will now display, on which a spotty blue cartoon dog is currently committing horrible crimes against the science of deduction.
At four in the morning, red-eyed and chilled to the bone, he gives up.
John's thickest cable-knit sweater is a bit too short at the wrists, but Sherlock doesn't care. He falls asleep on top of the covers on John's neatly-made bed, face-down, the destroyed rag of the three-page stapled schedule crushed between him and the blankets.
*
Friday: Masses in the Head and Neck, Eye Emergencies, Farewell Address
John's plane lands at Gatwick at five-fifteen PM, by which time Sherlock has been haunting the South Terminal for the better part of three and a half hours. There is a window in the murderously busy little WH Smiths that looks out on the UK Arrivals gate, and Sherlock trundles a wheelie-shelf ten feet across the floor and builds a small sniper's nest for himself between a half-unpacked box of John Grisham novels and the Mother's Day display. If any of the staff notice what he's doing, they're too confused to comment.
He sees John immediately, pulling his little suitcase along with the somewhat blank, concentrated expression common to anyone who is tired and just trying to keep their brain engaged enough to get from point A to point B in a busy place without having to think too much. Sherlock yanks his collar up and strides out of the shop and straight through a group of milling schoolchildren. They part before him like the Red Sea, making sure that John fails to spot him until the last possible moment.
“Oh, hallo-” says John, a moment before he is engulfed, and Sherlock understands that this isn't a greeting, it's an expression of total surprise. This is understandable, since Sherlock's last remark before John left for Gatwick on Monday morning was something along the lines of Well, I expect I'll see you Friday night, then, just to see that tiny flicker of hurt on John's face. He'd known damn well that John would feel hurt- although being John, he'd soon convince himself that he hadn't exactly expected to be met at the airport anyway, because Sherlock was Sherlock, and didn't do things like that.
God, he thinks, nose buried in John's hair, when did I become such a massive arse?
John smells of plane, recycled air and tasteless food, but underneath he just smells of John, always, and Sherlock breathes properly for the first time since Monday.
“Thought you said you'd see me at home?” says John, pulling back a bit. He sounds perfectly happy, though. Pleased, in fact.
Sherlock shrugs. “Had some time to kill.”
“Hey, whoah, wait. What's that?” John catches his wrist, holding Sherlock's giant-idiot-finger up between them. “Broken? Honestly, can I not leave you on your own for five minutes?”
“Five days.” Sherlock presses his other two fingers together as well. This time, he's done his research.
“Live long, and prosper.”
John starts giggling, and reaches up to pull his hand down. He winds his shorter, stronger fingers through Sherlock's own, and in that moment Sherlock wonders if anyone else in the history of humanity has ever sold themselves so short, has ever been so endearingly blind to how completely and utterly vital they are to someone who deserves them so hideously little.
“Looks a bit stiff,” They start to gravitate in the direction of the exit, made a bit trickier by the fact that they are still sort of both wearing Sherlock's coat. John's suitcase makes little trundle-y noises on the fake marble tiles behind them. “The bandage, I mean.”
“It is,” says Sherlock. He looms a bit, his head not far from John's shoulder, his free hand shredding the remains of the three-page stapled schedule to bits inside his coat pocket. “The doctor was an idiot. I'll need you to do it properly.”
“Alright, fine,” says John.
And it is.