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“Morning,” Sherlock announces, wedging into the conversation between John and Mariana, the front door to the flat shutting behind him.
Mariana physically recoils. “Oh. My God.”
John spins around. “Jesus Christ, what happened to you?”
The very blood-covered detective remains standing on the doormat, seeming completely unfazed by the state of himself. “The tap has stopped dripping,” he observes, oddly pleased. “Excellent.”
“You're covered in blood,” John says.
“Your thumb,” Mariana blurts.
“Oh my God, your thumb.” It's John's turn to recoil.
“Ah, yes,” Sherlock looks down at his hand, as though he hadn't noticed it before himself. Blood drips a little steadier from his nose like that. “Looks like dislocation, doesn't it? Look at that.” He holds his hand up for them both to see.
GROSS. “Yeah, that's disgusting,” Mariana says, taking a slight step back.
John approaches Sherlock with a stance that's somewhere between not wanting to startle an unpredictable animal and firmly concerned.
“Watson, I met the Baron last night and I feel he didn't take a liking to me poking around in his front garden,” Sherlock begins to explain.
John cuts him off. “Just– shush.” He looks back over his shoulder. “Mariana, grab me the bag of ice from the freezer, please. Oh, and um, in the bin, there's a lolly stick.”
“In the bin?” She asks.
“Yeah.”
“Right… Okay.” Mariana slowly, awkwardly turns on her heels and disappears into the kitchen.
John urges Sherlock forward, first his hand between Sherlock's shoulder blades. He's panting mildly. It slides down to his lower back as he properly gets Sherlock into the lounge. “You sit down, there,” he firmly orders.
Sherlock cooperates (surprisingly). He plops right down on the sofa. “What are you doing?” He questions.
“Making you a splint for that thumb,” John gestures. “Your nose is broken, by the way.”
“No, it isn't.”
“Yes it is.”
“No, it isn't.”
“Let me feel.” John reaches up.
“Certainly.” Sherlock leans forward to meet the touch, only for John to give his crooked nose a quick, abrupt resetting with a vile crack that rings in his skull. “Ah!”
“That's broken,” John confirms.
Mariana– woman of the hour, what a saint, John really needs to apologize for all this trouble– returns with the lolly stick just then. “Here.” And she hands him something to wrap Sherlock's thumb with.
“Thanks,” John says. “Perfect.” He holds the stick up against Sherlock's thumb and begins to wrap it tight enough to hold. Sherlock's hand is disconcertingly warm, pulse throbbing softly. He's– fuck, he's stupid– “Don't tilt your head back!”
“I'm reversing the flow of blood,” Sherlock argues.
“You're sending the blood down your throat,” John snaps.
Sherlock cracks a smile.
Sherlock cracks a smile.
Oh lord.
It's such a short, brief moment, John is almost sure he's hallucinated it.
“Better than on the carpet, isn't that right, Mrs. Hudson?” Sherlock asks.
John doesn't have time for this. Mariana attempts to correct Sherlock on her name again, but John interjects not unkindly. “You get enough blood down your throat, you'll vomit it straight back up onto the carpet.” He presses a free hand against Sherlock's chest, then reaches up and grabs him by the chin to roughly tilt his head back down. “Sit straight, pinch your nose.”
Sherlock sits up, but disregards being told to pinch his nose. The blood mostly hits the front of his shirt, anyway. He looks down at John's handiwork. “Ah, an ice lolly stick. Ingenious, Watson,” he notes. “And I thought your application of intelligence was for sports, films, and the songs of Judith Jackson.”
“Janet Jackson,” John corrects.
“Whatever,” Sherlock rolls his eyes.
“Keep still.”
Mariana leans forward, brows pinched. “So… What happened?”
Sherlock gives Mariana a long-winded, rapid-fire explanation of not only what had happened to him, but what the Baron intended to do to the victim– well, not quite the victim yet. They're preventing a murder here.
“Goodness me, Watson, I'm delirious,” Sherlock finishes, his voice strained, breathless.
John's brows pinch together. “I think you might have a concussion. Look at me,” he orders. Sherlock's striking eyes meet his, sharp as they were before. “Yeah, and– and now up to the light.” Sherlock looks up. “Is– is that uncomfortable? Do your eyes feel sensitive to the light at all?”
Sherlock doesn't get a chance to say. Mariana leans down a little bit more. She's in on it now, either out of concern or intrigue. “So, what do you do now?”
Sherlock looks to her, and then back at John. “Watson, does our client have the phone?”
“Yeah, they've got everything they need.” John had made sure of it.
“Ah, yes!” He's pleased. “They have the evidence. I have the address.” Sherlock raises his bandaged hand and curls his fingers into what would've probably been a fist if he could move his thumb. “The vice grip closes on the Baron.”
John quirks his brows. “Well, the vice grip can't use his thumb for two weeks.”
Sherlock leans forward, setting his uninjured hand carefully on John's bent knee. “Watson, the final stage of my plan must be undertaken this very evening.”
“Plan? What bloody plan?”
***
All in all, everything goes just fine.
The Baron was taken care of (John's not sure he's ever going to forget the sight of a man's face being eaten through with sulfuric acid), they got through police questioning, found time to get Sherlock's dislocated thumb put back into socket, Sherlock joined him for a beer in the grass, and they got the actual company together with Mariana settled in to run it.
Overall, they did some mighty fine work.
Mostly Sherlock, but John learned a shit-load of information about the Ming dynasty in just a couple of hours, for God's sake. He deserves something.
Though, by the time John is far too ready for bed– showered, in pyjamas, sitting in the lounge while he uploads some files onto his laptop– Sherlock still hasn't properly wound down.
In fact, he's been pacing between the stretch of floor between the front door of the flat and the doorway to the kitchen for about half an hour, tapping at the bridge of his nose with his middle finger.
“Sherlock,” John starts, pushing his laptop aside a bit. “You need to sit down.”
“No, I don't need to sit down,” Sherlock states. “I'm going to be fine. I'm not tired.”
John sets his laptop down on the coffee table. “Mate, you got yourself beat up by a murderer, and then saved a member of the British aristocracy from said murderer.”
“Yes. Your point?”
“You're gonna run yourself absolutely ragged if you keep this up.” He pauses, and then adds on something more. “And– like, that much tapping can't possibly feel good, you know? I mean, your nose was broken.”
Sherlock's pacing slows to a stop. “This?” He continues on with the motion. “This is what you're worried about? I'm not tapping very hard. Certainly not strong enough to put my nose back out of place.”
“I know, but– I mean, if you could just– find something else to do?” John offers, delicately. “It's late. You need to wind down.”
Sherlock huffs a great sigh. “Honestly, Watson, I don't know why–”
“I'm not gonna fight with you on this,” John sternly interrupts, and it stops the words in Sherlock's throat. “I'm just as tired as you are, even if you don't feel it, alright? If you just sit down for a bit instead of running yourself into the ground by letting your mind race, you might actually get to bed at a decent time.”
Sherlock's brows raise. “I…”
A quiet moment passes between them, John stern, Sherlock stunned by the firmness of the doctor's tone.
John sighs. “Come here.” He raises his hand and holds it out.
“What.” Sherlock deadpans.
“No, come here, give me your hand, I'm gonna wind you down.”
Sherlock stares at him. Then, he takes a tentative step forward. Followed by another three. He unconsciously goes to place his right hand in John's, though that's the one with the splint.
“The other one,” John orders.
“Watson–”
“No, sit down on the sofa and give me your good hand.” He beckons the detective, clenching and unclenching his hand a couple of times to wordlessly demand he cooperate.
“It's not like the whole hand has gone bad, it was a dislocation–”
“Sherlock.”
Sherlock sighs. Again. But he does comply, if only to get John to shut up. Sherlock sits down next to him and carefully sets his hand in John's.
Christ, that shouldn't feel the way it does.
Sherlock's palm is warm and soft in John's own, and he can just barely feel the roughened calluses on his fingertips from violin-playing.
John just holds him there. Not squeezing to keep him in place, not holding him fast.
Just… Holding.
Cradling, almost.
Eventually, everything noticeably starts to slow.
Sherlock can feel the defeat, the exhaustion rushing into his bones.
John can see the tension ease from Sherlock's shoulders.
John gently rubs the pad of his thumb along the side of Sherlock's.
Sherlock meets him with a soft squeeze.
After a while, John turns his gaze back to Sherlock's face. “You feeling any better?” He asks, his voice ever so soft. Sherlock looks over at John out of the corner of his eye.
“...Yes,” Sherlock says. “I am.”