Chapter Text
The ride home is silent. Sherlock’s hands are restless: they tap at the upholstery, worry at his buttons, swipe over his lapels. There is a tremor to his fingers once he forces them together. John looks at Sherlock’s reflection in the side window: a pallid face enframed with black, gone blank. Sherlock is distant, frozen up in his quietude. He doesn’t see John looking.
John looks back from Sherlock in the glass to Sherlock beside him. He’s at his arm’s end, within reach, but John knows he can’t close the distance.
Sherlock is unquiet, uneasy. Under his eyes there are sorrowful, grievous ashen shadows. John wants to take his face in his hands and wipe them away; but he’s afraid he’d only make them darker.
He places a hand on the seat between them instead: a tentative offering for the beast. Sherlock looks at it once and then right at him. John keeps his countenance straight and his fingers, uncurled.
Sherlock untwines his fingers slowly and puts his right hand beside, not touching, an inch away. And then—they are at the corner of Baker Street.
***
Outside, it is hot: unusually so for London. The empty ground of the border bed is cloven and the wind is blowing the dry earthen dust off onto the pavement. A newspaper fragment flutters, caught on a pike of the fence. John thinks he can just make out their faces—and then it tears and is carried away, up into the jaundiced sky.
Sherlock has already opened the door and gone in, so John follows him, catching up on the stairs. Sherlock is walking up slowly, with his hand on the banister—something he never does. John doesn’t get ahead of him: he stays on behind. Sherlock’s shoulders are squared, defensive, and his sleeves cannot hide his shivering fingers.
John enters the flat after him and waits—sure that Sherlock won’t turn to him, sure that he’ll want to remain untouchable, beyond reach behind the closed door of his room, behind his aloofness.
He is mistaken. Sherlock stays.
***
Sherlock comes through and sits down on the sofa. He hasn’t taken of his coat and his posture is constrained. He looks as if he were about to face an unpleasant and forced necessity.
Then he turns to John.
John steps in and shrugs his jacket off. He takes it by the collar and neatly folds in half, smoothing the sleeves together, places it on the chair and then goes closer to Sherlock.
Sherlock is tensed, following his movements with worried, bloodshot eyes. John thinks he has got to give him time, but going upstairs doesn’t seem right—not with Sherlock so uneasy and yet not gone. So he tugs at the hemline of his jumper, and smoothes it out, and passes his hand through his hair.
Sherlock is obstinately, peculiarly quiet.
John sits down on the further end of the sofa. He doesn’t know how to start a conversation—or if he even should start one—so for a while he just watches Sherlock watch him.
Then Sherlock looks away and unbuttons his coat.
“I suppose,” he says, taking off his gloves and placing them on the coffee table, “you'll now want to make some—enquiries.”
His gloves are now covering the newspaper that has been lying here from the night before.
His voice is tired. He looks prim, formal even—addressing a duty. John rubs at his own knee and sighs.
“No.”
“No?” Sherlock asks quickly, turning to him. John can see the incredulity on his face—that of a condemned man who was just granted pardon. He leans forward and nods.
“I don’t want to pry,” he adds, looking at his hands. “And it’s none of my business, anyway.”
Sherlock freezes and John bites on his lip, realising just now that he said these exact words just the night before—and then walked away and left him alone.
John always thought Sherlock relished being left alone—but now his hands are trembling, pleading.
He wants to say he won’t leave, regardless of what it is that he doesn’t know, of what that man meant to Sherlock. He doesn’t tell him any of that: reticence, that’s how it always is between them.
“You must have some conjectures,” Sherlock states, looking straight ahead. It is not a question, so John says nothing to it.
He does have some—of course he has. It was the matter of seeing the gentleness in his hands when they hovered over the man’s body, the whiteness of his face. Of course he has—conjectures, and yet he feels he is in no right to voice them.
Still, despite the wrongness of envying the dead, despite his compassion, there’s bitterness in his throat. He tries to swallow it away, but to no avail.
“You’re wrong,” Sherlock says, firm and sure.
***
John frowns. He didn’t think Sherlock would choose denying it.
“You’re wrong,” Sherlock repeats, more insistent this time. He looks John straight in the eyes, not blinking, as if trying to force a conviction.
John doesn’t believe him, at that time.
***
They drop the matter after that—for now, John unconvinced, Sherlock unsatisfied. Sherlock goes on to sit over the chemistry equipment on the kitchen table for hours, his face growing darker with each. John reads a study on bullet wounds, the pages smelling indistinctly of antiseptics and hospital sheets. Both stay quiet.
Every once in a while there’s a soft clink of glass or a whisper of sand being poured and John looks up, but Sherlock’s back and elbows hide his occupation. Again, John doesn’t ask.
Once the sun is falling down to the horizon and the shadows are getting longer, Sherlock stands up and motions him to follow.
John puts his jacket back on and Sherlock picks up his gloves from the coffee table, his eyes stopping for a moment over the newspaper. He pauses and John tries to read his face—in vain.
Sherlock turns abruptly and heads towards the stairs. He’s already halfway down when John calls him,
“Where are we going, exactly?”
Sherlock tarries with the answer. Then, with his back to John, he explains:
“The case, John. Do keep up.”
There’s no acidity in his voice: it is flat and tired. In it, there’s a distinct undertone of not—okay. He has turned up his collar, and the cuffs of his shirt are rumpled, as if he has been clutching at them.
“The case?”
John goes several stair steps down, closer to Sherlock. Sherlock turns and leans his back on the wall, his arms crossed in front. He reclines his head and looks at John through slitted eyes, tensed. There’s no light on the stairs, and the semi-darkness wraps them together, only watered down by the electric light down in the hallway.
The proximity and the dark blend together into something almost akin to—intimacy; and this is why John dares to go on.
“You can’t be talking about—this case? The one from this morning?”
He ceases speaking and swallows, unsure whether it is his right to mention it, but Sherlock doesn’t recoil and so he continues:
“You know you don’t have to take it, right?” He rubs at his forehead. “I mean, I’m sure you’d solve it, but—”
Sherlock is not helping him, not finishing the phrase, just standing still and watching.
“Sherlock, come on. You must know what I’m getting at.”
John sighs and grimaces.
“Look, you don’t want to acknowledge it—fine. But there’s no need to push yourself into looking into it. If you’d like, I’ll never mention it again.”
Sherlock shakes his head tiredly.
“You’re wrong, I already told you. It’s not what you think.”
He is quiet for a moment, looking up and down John’s face.
“And I must look into it. That’s the way it works.”
“That’s the way—what works?”
Sherlock doesn’t answer.
***
They’re almost out of the door when there’s mrs Hudson’s voice, calling for Sherlock. In a moment she appears herself, flustered in some unspoken worry. She smiles to John, absent-minded, and says sternly,
“Sherlock, dear. Must it go on any longer?”
Sherlock presses his lips together and casts a glance at her, half angry, half pleading. In his look, there’s guilt.
“You know it’ll only be worse once he finds out,” she tuts. “You’ve got to tell him sometime.”
“He´s right here,” Sherlock hisses. “Must we be having this conversation now?”
He wrinkles his nose and adds below his breath, quietly:
“I need some more time. Just a bit more time.”
John folds his arms and shifts from one foot to another. There is a palatable feeling of uneasiness in his stomach; it curves upon itself and tastes of lead.
Mrs Hudson surveys Sherlock for a moment and then nods.
“Well, alright, then. But do tell him soon, will you?”
She looks at John once more, her lips pursued, and smiles: a small rueful smile. Then she goes back inside and clicks the door shut.
“Sherlock.”
Sherlock steps back from him, his hands in his pockets, and looks defiant—almost defeated.
“Sherlock,” John repeats, more insistent this time. “What is it? Why can’t you—?”
Sherlock shakes his head violently and snarls,
“No.”
“You’ll know. You’ll know in due time,” he adds, his shoulders sagging, bitter. “But when you do, the wind cannot return anymore on its circuits.”
“The wind—it’s from the Bible, isn’t it?” John pinches the bridge of his nose. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that you can’t un-know it, John,” Sherlock says quietly. “And then—everything goes to ashes.”