“You’ll always be beautiful, you daft bastard.” John isn’t breathing right either. “Beautiful like white tigers, and really expensive guns.”
“Beautiful like things you think will hurt you.” Sherlock nods in quiet despair. “I will again, probably. And you can’t take it, I see that now, and that’s—”
“No! It was never…oh, Christ. It was never about that. Not being able to take it.”
“Why else would you have left me?”
”Left you?” John exclaims. His lips dart forward, pushed together, as they do when he’s vexed about something. “Sherlock, I went to my sister’s. Without my bags or my clothes or. I never. God in heaven. Don’t tell me that you of all people didn’t know where I was, it’s impossible.”
“Of course I did, I had you tracked by the homeless network.”
“And I was easy to find, yes?”
“Childishly so.”
“Well, and what did you make of that?”
Sherlock gapes at him, because he’d not made anything of it.
“After I’d picked up the bare necessaries, I never set foot in a shop, either. You knew that? You were watching?”
“Of course I was.”
“And you didn’t make any deductions? Not a single inference?”
”What inference?”
“That I needed some air,” John murmurs, looking dazed. “A lot of air. A very great whopping deal of air. There isn’t enough sodding air on the planet for the amount I needed. I nearly derailed the entire ecosystem. But I…are you serious? You thought I was going to live out the remainder of my adult life with a knit jumper, a mobile, and three pairs of new-bought pants to my name? Are you ought of your—”
John cuts himself off, putting a hand over his thin mouth.
The entire world is reeling. Sherlock can’t understand why the other people in the Park aren’t staggering about, the ground is so uncertain.
“You left your keys!” he snaps. “You left without saying goodbye. You left me standing there. You left.”
John winces, hard. “God, I did. I know. I was punishing you, I think. Punishing myself too, for. I don’t know. Not being enough. Enough of a friend that you…enough to keep you here. But god knows how that drug was messing with your internal chemistry, and you did come back, and I should never have… I’m ashamed of myself, really.”
“Why? You know you can leave. I’ve told you.”
“No, not for leaving, not if I’d really been leaving because I knew I couldn’t take you anymore. That would have been fine. It isn’t as if you were being tactful, you’re never that, and you were being… Well. Unguarded, I suppose, worse than usual. Still. I never thought we couldn’t survive it. But I thought you’d come after me a hell of a lot sooner. Sherlock, I went to Harry’s. Not—not Abu Dhabi, for fuck’s sake. At first I was too hurt and furious to think at all, but later I supposed you’d pop round by morning, demanding I follow you to some godforsaken bloodbath or other. I can’t believe you managed to resist, in all honesty, with me kipping on my drunk sister’s sofa, but then again. Christ. You shock me stupid six and seven times in the week. Why didn’t you burst through her door with a case and a cracked expression?”
“I could have. Morty Tregennis was murdered horribly. It was wonderful. But I don’t understand this.” Sherlock’s head is beginning to pound again.
“I almost lost you. I was half off my head already, Sherlock. Then you…you gutted me pretty thoroughly, and I s’pose I wanted to punish you. It was wrong of me, now I look at it, but that’s what it was.”
“Because I was being unguarded,” Sherlock says slowly. “But you’ve already seen the very worst of—you’ve already seen twenty-six on the chalkboard, for example, though there are perhaps others equally as bad now.”
Not Fine List
26. Carve a massive scar in John’s right shoulder to match the absolutely brilliant one on his left, so that the majority of his scarring belongs to me, and slowly, and he had better watch me do it.
“What?” John looks alarmed. “There are new ones?”
There are, of course, since the Incident of the Flu. They’re slightly out of order of importance these days, as twenty-seven is still John mercy-killing Sherlock, but he can’t be bothered to re-number everything perpetually, can he?
28. Arrange for John to ingest nothing whatsoever save what I feed to him, forever, so that the production of all his new cells might be entirely my doing.
29. Induce another serious fever, this one more prolonged, and thereby learn absolutely everything about John’s subconscious.
30. If only one of John’s kidneys failed, then I could—
“Stick to the point,” Sherlock snaps. “How was what happened any worse than—”
John throws his hands in the air. “Because you seemed to think it was all right to tell me you returned from the brink of death so as to pay me back a fiver for cab fare. As if you were in a snit over an accounting balance. It wasn’t nice.”
“A fiver?” Sherlock cries. “It was because of…of the hospital. You didn’t have to do that, to do something mad just because I’m mad, I never imagined a life where I even wanted such things from a person before I met you, let alone a life where anyone would dream of tolerating them, let alone coming up with new ones unasked. It was something I didn’t even know I wanted and you gave it to me just because you’re good, and it was a miracle, you’re a miracle. An electroencephalogram? You did that because I’m insane, it was tailored for me, and you…you understand. So yes, I wanted to give you something like that. Something…it was an act of charity, John. I wanted to return it in kind.”
This ought to be working, but John is turning green.
“What have I done now?” Sherlock demands.
“I am an idiot,” John whispers. “Officially. But for the record, you giving me a spectacular orgasm does not fall under the category ‘selfless favours John has done Sherlock,’ or ‘John’s acts of pure altruism,’ you barking mad git.”
“I can’t talk anymore, talking isn’t any good when I’m not,” Sherlock says miserably, fear seeping like acid through the soles of his shoes. “I knew it wouldn’t be. If you come home, we don’t even have to—I could try to let you alone, John. It’s a nice flat. Yousaid it was very nice indeed. The rent is low. I just need to hear you walking over the kitchen floor occasionally, that would be enough. You don’t have to blog about me, or help me, or sleep with me, or make two cups when you make tea. Just don’t leave me. I’ll be very quiet if you like, even when I’m doing experiments. You’d never have to touch me again, or kiss me, just be there. Will that make you come home?”
“No, it fucking well will not make me come home,” John gasps, reaching out with two hands and dragging Sherlock’s mouth down to his.
—
excerpt from Part III of A Thousand Threads of What-Might-Have-Beens by wordstrings
