Chapter Text
John saw two doves on the windowsill that morning. Sherlock didn’t believe him. John didn’t know if Sherlock thought it wasn’t significant to see two doves or if he thought it was ludicrous. As ludicrous as if John had come down to breakfast claiming to have seen two mating orangutans consorting on the windowsill.
“I did though,” John insisted. “I observed.”
At this Sherlock stopped his insistent pacing and arched an eyebrow at him.
“How many feathers did they have? Were they male or female? “
“They were white,” John said firmly. “They were dove-shaped. They had two wings. Each.”
“You didn’t observe them. You just saw. If you saw at all.” Sherlock crowed dismissively
“I observed,” John said, digging his fork rather too harshly into his breakfast plate. His egg yolk got murdered and began to bleed all over the place. This annoyed John. He liked the egg to run at the end, when the toast was just the right amount of soggy with melted butter. It hadn’t been time for his egg to die.
He didn’t want to think too hard about why the doves ought to be important, about why he’d imagined Sherlock’s delight when he’d told him.
It had to do with warm sand. How he’d gotten hit and all the pressure he’d been trying to apply to his patient’s wound (Private Justin Ponte, aged 22) had failed and the kid’s blood had spurted up into John’s face as John was forced to release his hold. (Private Ponte was negative of HIV or any other blood borne diseases John had heard through a haze of fog one day.) Small comfort for John at the time and no comfort for Private Ponte.
John had settled back into warm sand. It was like that, a settling, as if the earth had reached up to cradle him, to receive him. It did. John could feel his blood pulsing into the sand, rendering it sticky, fertile. There was dirt and grass in it, and on his face. The earth eager to claim him.
John inhaled to cry out when a bird landed at his head. It probably wasn’t a dove but it had two wings and was dove-shaped. It wasn’t the kind of bird that wanted to peck your eyes out when you were dead.
He turned to face it.
“Help,” he said. His voice was weaker, far weaker, than he’d thought it would be. He regretted all those school days he had faked illness with a thin, hoarse voice. He’d been a pitiful actor. This was the real thing.
The bird didn’t look at him. It stood still as stone and John had the strangest idea that if he reached out to touch it, to grasp it firmly by the leg, that the bird would carry him up to heaven.
But his heavenward arm was injured.
“Help!” he said instead. Louder this time, with none of the weak kitten flailing, putting all of his breath, so much breath that it pained him and made him ache down and down and down. “Help!” Again with the ache thundering down and down and through him into the sand.
But it was still a weak kitten cry, despite all the thundering it wrought through John’s body. The bird turned then and looked at him. Just with one black beady eye. John didn’t know how such a speck of an eye could hold pity, but it did.
Peet! Peet! it said. “Peet-too-weet!”
And then John had heard human cries of “John! John!” and human hands had hauled him from his would-be grave. The bird took flight without him.
~*~
“John. John!” John was transported back into the present world so quickly that he felt sweat break out on his brow.
“You’re pale,” Sherlock was noting with scientific curiosity. “Down to your lips. You’ve spilt tea all over. The left hand trembling is upon us again. Are you burnt? You’ve gone pale. Perhaps you should lie down.”
“I’m fine,” John lied and he was horrified to find the old weak kitten had infused his speech though he’d tried to make his voice sound hale and hearty.
Sherlock had leaped upon several pieces of furniture to kneel at John’s side and take his hand. No, not his hand, his wrist, his pulse.
“It’s alarming,” Sherlock announced and then he picked John up out of his chair as if John weighed no more than a sack of kittens and carried him to Sherlock’s own bed.
“Couldn’t manage the stairs with you.” Sherlock was mumbling to himself. Then, turning fiercely, “You are better when you’re drunk and can bear half your own weight!” He rubbed his eyes and smiled a death grimace smile. “Sorry, shall I phone a Hudson? Or an ambulance? Lestrade should get here before you expire or Donovan will assure him I’ve murdered you. John? No matter how you die people will think I’ve murdered you. Sorry. Who shall I phone? Don’t say Mycroft.”
John didn’t know whether to smile fondly in bemusement at Sherlock or to vomit violently at his memories of war still swimming at the surface of his mind. He chose the middle ground.
“Call Molly to sit with you, love,” he said. And then it was as if he had grasped the bird’s wing and all was dark and blissful.
~*~
“Sherlock, you don’t need me to tell you that he’s breathing. You did something to damage him but he needs his psychiatrist when he wakes, not a mortician.”
“What do you mean I…”
“I don’t know, you set off his PTSD, maybe you brought up murder or gunshot wounds or…”
“We were talking about doves!”
“Turtles doves?” This was Lestrade’s voice and John couldn’t help but quirk a smile.
“Greg,” Molly said disapprovingly.
“George,” Sherlock said.
“It’s near Christmas! I thought…I dunno…you had been dissecting turtle doves in the kitchen…trying to mate them with a partridge and a pear tree or something.”
There was a silence. A long silence in which John imagined murderous looks being exchanged.
“Look,” Lestrade said at last. “He’s breathing. He’s fine. Bung him off to the shrink tomorrow and when that doesn’t work I’ll take him out for a pint.”
“Ta, Greg,” John sighed. “I’ll need that. Bugger off now.”
John felt a firm hand clap his shoulder and then a soft one press it gently. That hand trailed up in a friendly way into his hair.
“We’re always here if you need us, John,” Molly whispered into his ear and then they were gone and there was silence but for Sherlock’s breathing.
John didn’t open his eyes.
“Did I…did I damage you John?” Sherlock said into a long, still silence.
John took his time answering, rolling over in the bed to face Sherlock. It gave him time to notice two things. One, he was under the covers and two, he was without trousers.
“Sherlock…” he began.
“Oh, I wanted to make sure you didn’t burn yourself when you spilt your tea all over your lap.” Sherlock said. “I assure you I did not assault your penis in any way.”
“Do people often assume you’ve assaulted their penis?”
Sherlock quirked a smile. “On occasion,” he said. “And you’re residing under the covers because blankets cure shock. So I’m told. I didn’t know if you were in shock. But with the paleness and the mention of turtle doves…Shall I ban the Twelve Days of Christmas? I can play it but it’s not necessary…”
“Sherlock,” John interrupted.
Sherlock looked relieved. “John?”
“You know you didn’t damage me? You’ve rather…well you’ve saved me. The whole cane thing and
Angelo’s and all that.”
Sherlock stood from his chair and came to sit on the bed. To John’s surprise he took one of John’s hands in his own. He took the one that hadn’t been able to reach heavenward all those years ago. John felt that it reached toward heaven now though it merely rested in Sherlock’s lap.
“There are these quilts, John. You know, these tiny pieces of fabric joined together to make patterns. Beautiful if you know what you’re looking at. They used to put one purposeful fault in them. So as not to displease God.” Sherlock lowered his voice to a whisper and squeezed John’s hand. “That’s the part you look for. The odd part. The damaged part that doesn’t displease God. It’s what makes it interesting.”
Sherlock stood then, pressing John’s hand back to the mattress gently.
John thought, his heart thumping madly in his chest, that Sherlock might lean down to kiss cheek, or his brow, or the back of his hand.
But Sherlock merely laid a hand on John’s hip, said, “The odd part was always as strong as the rest,” and he left the room, closing the door softly behind him.