Chapter Text
They’re on their second pot of tea when the front door to 221 slams open and then shut and a flurry of footsteps rush up the stairs. John can hear Sherlock – he recognizes that reckless gait – moving around what must be the sitting room, and then, a moment later, Sherlock bellows, “Mrs. Hudson!”
“Why don’t you go up, dear?” she says. “It would be a nice surprise for him.”
John can’t deny that Sherlock would probably be surprised, but he suspects that ‘nice’ is the last word Sherlock would use describe an unexpected visit from him. “Actually, I can’t. I’ve really got to be going. I, er— Things to do.” All the excuses he’s planned in the past hour dry up, leaving him sputtering.
“Don’t be silly. Go on.”
“Mrs. Hudson!” comes the call a second time.
“I can’t, really. I—”
There’s a clattering on the back stairwell and then all of a sudden Sherlock is in the room, tall and lean and imperious in a sharp-cut suit. He begins to speak to Mrs. Hudson but pulls up short when he sees John at the table. His mouth snaps shut and he is suddenly stiff, his shoulders brittle tense.
“You,” he says.
John gestures to the door. “I was just leaving.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mrs. Hudson interjects. “You’ll do no such thing.”
“Really, Mrs. Hudson, it’s no problem. I’d better be getting off.”
“To do what?” Sherlock asks sharply.
“Ah—” The lie, whatever it was he’d devised to get him out of this situation, still won’t come to him.
Sherlock’s eyes narrow. He takes a small breath and then starts in: “Given that you’ve let your hair grown out – don’t want to waste money on a haircut – and that you’re making social calls in the middle of the day, it’s clear you’re still unemployed, so it’s not as if you have to be getting to work. You might have an interview, but if that’s what you call dressing to impress, it’s no wonder you still haven’t found a position.”
“Sherlock!” Mrs. Hudson scolds, but he keeps talking unabated.
“So no job, no interview. Could be you’re meeting someone – coffee with an old friend, maybe even a date – but you worked the night shift for two years after returning home from Afghanistan, it’s unlikely that you’ve made many friends, and any you do have probably keep the same schedule you did before you were sacked. Now, you might have errands to run, but there’s nothing so pressing that you can’t afford to do it later, or else you wouldn’t have sat here letting Mrs. Hudson stuff you full of two—” He squints at John’s plate. “—No, three Bakewell tarts.”
It’s incredible, how he does that. John can feel himself leaning into it like a warm touch, even as the detached tone of Sherlock’s ruthless observations threaten to flay him alive.
“Which is to say,” Sherlock concludes, “there’s no conceivable reason you shouldn’t come up.” His lips twitch as if he’s making a painful concession. “Five minutes. And then, if you still have to attend to whatever pressing grocery shopping it is you have to do, you’ll be free to go.”
*
“Tea?” Sherlock asks abruptly. Without waiting for an answer, he sets the kettle to boil and starts clattering in the cupboards for mugs. “You certainly made yourself at home.”
“Er—” Mrs. Hudson was grateful to John for tidying the flat, but it occurs to him now how invasive it must seem to Sherlock, who returned home to find his flat different than he left it, organized by a virtual stranger. “Yeah, sorry.”
“You cleaned,” he says, and John can’t tell if this is approval or reproach.
“I did, a bit.”
Finally Sherlock locates the mugs and snaps two down on the counter, dropping tea bags into them. The silence starts filling up the space between them again. This was a bad idea, John decides. He should never have come.
“You’ve not been using the cane, I see.”
“No,” John agrees. “No need. Somebody told me the limp was psychosomatic.”
Sherlock glances over at him with a half-smile on his lips, but whatever he sees in John’s expression causes it to stutter and fade.
The kettle clicks off and Sherlock pours the tea but doesn’t offer a cup to John. Instead, he lights a cigarette, drags heavily on it.
“You ought to quit those, you know.”
The arch look Sherlock gives him makes John laugh despite himself. “You survive a drug overdose and an assassination attempt, but you’re fine smoking yourself into an early grave? You really are—”
“Mad?” Sherlock cuts in. “Apparently not.” He takes a significant look around the flat, gesturing broadly to suggest his status as a free man. The smoke from his cigarette trails a delicate arc across the air.
“Yes, how did you manage it? They don’t just release people from psychiatric care at the drop of the hat.”
“Called in a favor with the Home Office,” Sherlock says, as if this is nothing at all. “Well, Home Secretary, really.”
For a moment, John just stares at Sherlock, the absurdity of this crashing over him. “So that was your plan all along? You went along with Moriarty’s attempt to discredit you, got yourself banged up on purpose, and hid out in the psych ward in order to draw Moran to you on safe ground, knowing all the while that, once you’d cleared your name, you could just call in a favor and go free?”
Sherlock’s brows draw together, his lips twitch. He glances at John, then away. “There was no plan.”
“There—” John leans in, wondering if he’s misheard. “What?”
“I didn’t have a plan.” He inclines his head, a small concession. “At first, I thought I saw a way out, but then he”—His eyes dart toward the parlor, to the mantelpiece John so diligently scrubbed clean of blood.—“forced my hand. I wasn’t . . . I couldn’t see any way forward, not without him.
“After that, it’s true, I did go along with Moriarty’s efforts to frame me, but not with any view of clearing my name. I told you, I couldn’t resist the idea, it was so perfect, so—neat. It seemed only fitting.
“It wasn’t until later, after I’d been arrested, that I realized, as you did, that it wasn’t really over. By surviving, I’d failed to fulfill the terms of his plans, leaving Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade vulnerable again.
“I knew that if the case came to trial, I couldn’t do anything to contradict my public image for fear of putting them in further danger, but I also knew prison wasn’t an option – it would have been far too easy for one of his agents to arrange my murder, or worse. A hospital order seemed the safest option: still reasonably secure, but with a slightly lower risk of being infiltrated by Moriarty’s allies – although we both saw how well that worked out.”
“You’re welcome for that, by the way,” John says.
Sherlock clears his throat. “Yes, well.”
“So that’s it, then?” John asks. “You just fell headlong into this, with no idea of how you’d get yourself out.”
“I wasn’t entirely alone. I had Mycroft’s help.” His lip curls incrementally. “He was the one who pulled all the appropriate strings to have the hospital order approved, and he agreed to keep Baker St. – for Mrs. Hudson, even if I couldn’t go back.”
“You really thought you’d never come back.”
Sherlock jerks his shoulder, a convulsive shrug. “I’m here now, aren’t I?”
“Right.”
Sherlock lets out a huff. “It was . . . different, after you.”
John can’t seem to let himself look directly at Sherlock, but he keeps him carefully at the edge of his field of vision, because he can’t bear to take his eyes off him, either. “After I what?”
Sherlock hesitates on the verge of saying something, but seems to change his mind at the last moment. “Once you took an interest in the case, it occurred to me that I could simply let you do the work to clear my name, and I wouldn’t be in breach of Moriarty’s deal, since it wouldn’t be me who’d exposed the lie.”
“So what you’re saying is, if it weren’t for me, you’d still be in there.”
Sherlock draws up short, his eyes cutting away from John again. “I’m still not entirely convinced I shouldn’t be.”
“No,” John says, his breath coming short in his chest. “Sherlock, just—no.”
“I was prepared to let her die, John. I didn’t think it mattered.”
“But that’s not what you think now.”
“I’m not sure I—” He shakes his head. “Moriarty was more like me than you know, two sides of a coin. There was something . . . broken in him and if I’m any different, it’s only by accident.”
John lets out a deep breath, because hold it in hurts too much. “You told me once that I couldn’t fix you or solve you or save you, and, d’you know what? You were right.” He shakes his head. “I can’t fix you, because there’s nothing in you that needs to be fixed.”
Sherlock tips his head to stare out into the sitting room, taking a long drag on his cigarette, his face hidden from John’s view, although he can hear something ragged in Sherlock’s breathing. John worries that he’s said too much, crossed some line. Sherlock’s made it clear he doesn’t want John’s help, and it was presumptuous of him to assume Sherlock would need his approval, either.
“So, er . . . What will you do now?” John asks, although he’s not sure he wants to know the answer.
“I’ll work,” Sherlock says matter-of-factly, flicking ash from his cigarette into the sink. “There’s just the work now.”
And John is briskly reminded that there’s never really been any room for him in Sherlock’s life, free or not. For a brief moment, he’d let himself believe that there might be, but he was wrong. There’s just the work.
But at least that’s something for Sherlock to live for. There may be no place for John in that work, but at least Sherlock will keep on doing it. “That’s . . . That’s good, I’m glad.”
Sherlock turns his attention back to John, catching him in that sharp gaze. “And you? What will you do now?”
All the breath seems to collapse out of John’s lungs. “I don’t know.” He shakes his head. “I haven’t the slightest idea.”
Sherlock is silent for a moment. He ashes his cigarette again, even though it hasn’t burned down far enough to need it. “It did occur to me that, seeing as you’ve nothing else on, you might . . . stay.”
“What, here?” The words are surprised out of him, and it’s only once he’s said them that he realizes Sherlock is serious.
“Of course here,” Sherlock says indignantly. “Where else?”
“As what?”
Sherlock opens his mouth – no doubt to make some snide comment – but John cuts him off.
“No, really, Sherlock. What would I be to you, if I stayed?” He can feel his hands shaking and clenches them so it doesn’t show. “Your doctor? Your assistant? Live-in chef? Because I’m not your friend, Sherlock. You said so yourself. I hardly even know you.”
Sherlock crushes the burned-down cigarette out in the sink and closes the distance between them. In a few steps, he’s so close that John can once again smell that taut mixture of smoke and skin and he feels it all the way down to his knees. Sherlock’s fingers are sliding along the sides of John’s face, tipping his head up to meet his eyes – those clear, colorless eyes – and then Sherlock is leaning down to kiss him, dry lips against his, the smell of smoke on his teeth, the warm taste of his tongue. John breathes into that kiss, wants to breathe into it forever.
Sherlock says: “Stay.”