Work Text:
The flat above is soundless, and the silence is eerie. Normally soft noise pollution seeps like curling smoke into Mrs. Hudson's kitchen: sentence fragments, creaking floorboards, pacing feet, minor explosions, and the sounds of microwaves and toasters being used for warranty-voiding activities. Rare times, aching and haunting violin pieces. Rarer times, the Telly. Decidedly Less Rare Than Would Be Entirely Preferable Times, gunshots.
There is currently no sound coming from the general direction of the ceiling. John Watson drums his fingers against his mug, antsy in the absence of this ambient noise. Across the table, Mrs. Hudson's smile is warm but tight-lipped: even her friendly, gossipy chatter has stilled.
John sucks in a breath between nervously gritted teeth and holds it until his lungs ache. Tinnitus briefly replaces the pristine silence before he exhales in a rush, slamming one palm down onto the table in the same moment.
"For God's sake--" he begins, his voice foreign and grating in the motionless air. He watches as Mrs. Hudson's kind face schools itself into a momentary scowl: eyebrows knit together and drawn down, her tight smile becoming a straight line.
"John--" she warns, stern but not unkind. Her face returns almost instantly to its previous calm, but her eyes hold a look he recognizes. It's the one she reserves for Sherlock. Or rather, it's the one she reserves for the extenuating circumstances surrounding him.
He shrugs his helplessness, then levels his hand two inches above the battered table. "Mrs. Hudson," he begins, keeping his voice low enough to avoid another stern look, "Sherlock stays quiet this long, I've got to assume he's dead."
Mrs. Hudson, infinitely prim in a blue and white dress and the same perfume his mum wore for years, rolls her eyes at him. Her smile is half a grimace, and it shows teeth. "It's just a bad day, John."
His eyebrows shoot up. "You mean like--"
She shakes her head.
There are Bad Days and there are Danger Nights and he is still learning the difference. It is tempting to say that they feel the same: hushed whispers, pointed glances, careful treading because that's the way you treat the thing, isn't it?
It's not the sort of thing you talk about, is it?
"Then what?" He asks.
Mrs. Hudson's eye contact falters. She starts to glance uneasily around the room, as if looking for an explanation, or an escape.
"Sherlock," she starts up, and then pauses. "He's different, John."
He lets out a sharp exhale in response that nearly turns into a terse laugh. "You're not wrong there," he says, with a shrug.
The frown threatens to return to Mrs. Hudson's face, but she continues, "he has--well, he's a bit--" Her eyes dart into the corners of the room, as though she imagines CCTV cameras sprouting in the shadows. All things considered, perhaps she does. But there are only the tiniest corners of peeling wallpaper and a couple of cobwebs made by spiders daring enough to set up shop in this otherwise pristine kitchen. John nods in dawning realization.
"Not the sort of thing Mycroft Holmes cares to discuss, is it?" he guesses.
When Mrs. Hudson's eyes darken this time, the anger in them is not directed at him.
"He didn't speak, you know," she blurts out, as if bolstered by the thought of exploiting this chink in Mycroft's armor.
"Sherlock? Our Sherlock?" He feels his eyebrows shooting up towards his hairline. "Seems to me he never stops."
That's not true, though, is it? Not really. The silence from above is proof of that. And what was it Sherlock had told him, that first day at St. Bart's?
"Well he didn't," Mrs. Hudson insists, oblivious to this contemplation. "Refused to let anyone touch him, wouldn't eat half of the food a body set in front of him--well," she falters into that anxious little chuckle he recognizes so well. "Some things never really change, do they?"
He tilts his head just a touch in acquiescence because, well, she isn't wrong. But all of those things are simply...Sherlock. The oddities he explained upfront, the warning written onto his packaging.
Oh.
His eyebrows shoot up a second time, and he sees Mrs. Hudson sit back heavily in her chair, content that he understands now.
"He doesn't--he's never mentioned--" he falters.
"John," her voice is gentle, but also just a little impatient, as if he is being particularly dense.
"Right," he bobs his head once. "I suppose that's just Sherlock, isn't it?"
Mrs. Hudson offers a tenderly resigned shrug in response.
Above them, something crashes.
"Right then," John rises from the table. "That would be my cue."
Mrs. Hudson doesn't move from her spot. She looks half-troubled, opening her mouth once and then closing it again.
From above, there is another dull thud.
"I'll be careful with him," John says, without her having to speak. She smiles like she finally trusts that he will.
John takes the stairs to the flat above with the lightest step he can manage, and finds a way to swing the front door open with minimal squeaking. Inside, Sherlock sits in his chair, knees pulled to his chest and coat wrapped tightly around him as though this is winter, and as though he is outside.
There is a broken teacup on the floor, and tea is slowly seeping into the floorboards. John chooses not to comment on it, not even to ask if this is the source of the crash from moments before. Instead he kneels down and gingerly begins to pick up the broken pieces of the cup.
"Lestrade knows," Sherlock's voice makes him jump: it's the first time he's heard it form words all day, and it is throaty and hoarse from lack of use.
"Hmm?"
"Lestrade," Sherlock says. "He googled it," he sneers at the second to last word as though it is a curse. "He told me so himself. One might imagine that Scotland Yard would value detective inspectors able to keep secrets, but," he tsks.
John shakes his head, as if to clear it. "What? Googled what? I'm sorry, Sherlock, but I've been with Mrs. Hudson. If you've been talking to the skull, you're going to have to start over," as soon as the words leave his mouth, he wonders if they are too harsh. But Sherlock does not seem to care.
"The word," He says instead, by way of explanation.
"The what?"
"The one word. What did you tell Lestrade at Baskerville?"
John feels his eyes slip shut and he swallows very hard. "You--you heard all that, then," it is a question, but it doesn't come out sounding like one. He doesn't know if he means the conversation at Baskerville, the conversation from downstairs, or maybe both.
Sherlock simply arches his eyebrows in response.
"I--I am sorry. I am, Sherlock. What I said to Lestrade--"
"You're only sorry now that you've been proven right," Sherlock notes. "As a medical man, I thought you would be delighted to have your diagnosis proven correct."
"It," he barks a short laugh, "wasn't a diagnosis though, was it? It was me being a bastard. And I'm sorry. Please just let me apologize and--"
"Apology accepted," Sherlock responds abruptly, his tone suggesting that he has had enough of this conversation. He looks as though he feels the world turning at a slightly different axis now, looks as though he is expecting John to say something.
So John doesn't say anything, except to look at his wristwatch and ask if Sherlock wants more tea (but he doesn't mention the broken cup).
The way Sherlock nods at him, careful and slow, like he's waiting for a volley of questions, confirms his suspicions. Again, John stays silent. "I'll be careful with him," he promised to Mrs. Hudson. And he intends to.
By the time he brings the tea, Sherlock has relaxed, losing the guarded look in his eyes. John hands him the teacup and then crosses the room to sit heavily in his own chair.
The universe seems to release a breath it didn't know it was holding. "Anything good on telly?" He asks. Sherlock shakes his head. But when John reaches for the remote control all the same, he can see traces of a smile on his face. It looks like relief. It looks like "thank you," or the closest thing Sherlock can muster. John bobs his head once and turns on the television, volume low.
They watch in silence. John can barely hear a word being said, but sometimes things are loud in Sherlock's head, and for today he is willing to let quiet happen outside of it. For his part, Sherlock is all fidgeting digits and rocking body. Watching him, John wonders if Sherlock has always moved this way and he has never noticed, or if he finally feels safe doing so. Either way, John finds that he doesn't mind.
It isn't until halfway through the program that John recognizes the tapping of Sherlock's fingers as Morse code: a long stream of silent and unacknowledged thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyous. Without breaking eye contact with the screen, he taps back "you're welcome."
After that, Sherlock's tapping begins to lose focus and meaning. It becomes a jumble, with only a few words scrambled in here and there. John listens, but does not respond, and thinks. If this is what their new normal is going to feel like--knowing why Sherlock is Sherlock, learning to help where he can, he thinks he can manage that much.