Chapter Text
“Don’t you want to know how I did it?” asked Sherlock.
John looked up from the blog entry he was working on. Sherlock was sprawled on the sofa, fingers in prayer position against his lips, staring up at the ceiling. It was almost as if he hadn’t spoken at all, but John knew he had.
He turned back to the computer in front of him. He knew exactly what Sherlock was talking about; even though, before Sherlock’s question, they hadn’t spoken for at least 45 minutes, and that last conversation had been a suggestion that John make them tea. Several suggestions. Until John finally capitulated.
“No,” John answered, and hunted for the next couple of letters in the word he was typing. “I don’t.”
He felt Sherlock glance at him, then look back up at the ceiling, pretending indifference. “But you always want to know how I do everything.”
John said nothing, only continued to poke slowly at the keys on his keyboard. He kept up his version of typing.
“Aren’t you typing a blog?” Sherlock persisted. “Or, I suppose I should say, painstakingly pressing keys as such a way as to approximate some form of communication that could be described as typing, at its most basic level. Isn’t that what you’re doing?”
“I don’t know about how you’re characterizing it,” John said, on a slight sigh, peering at what he’d just written, “but I am typing a blog, yes.”
“A blog about me.”
“What makes you think that?”
“They’re all about me.”
“Maybe I’m talking about me this time.”
“You don’t do that. You talk about yourself by talking about other people.”
“Whereas you talk about yourself by talking about yourself,” remarked John, musingly, steadfastly typing onward.
“You’re composing a blog entry about my return from the dead.”
“We discussed this, all of us. It’s time for the formal announcement.”
“How can you compose such a blog entry without knowing how I did it?”
John paused for a split second in his typing, then resumed. “I don’t want to know how you did it, Sherlock.”
The funny thing about Sherlock was most of the time he was the most observant person on the planet, but sometimes he seemed so incredibly blind when it came to a normal human emotion, especially one on John’s part. He apparently had no idea John was furious, because what he said next was exactly the wrong thing. What he said was, “It was impressive.”
John suddenly snapped his laptop shut, and Sherlock jumped, startled at the sharp click, and looked at him in surprise. “It wasn’t,” John snarled at him, “impressive, Sherlock. It was many, many things. It wasn’t impressive.”
Sherlock stared at him, then seemed to decide he should be sitting up for this conversation. “John,” he said, slowly rearranging himself on the sofa.
John spoke over him. “It was devastating, and it was horrifying, and it was, frankly, cruel. But it wasn’t impressive.”
Sherlock’s eyes narrowed at him. “Are you angry with me?” he asked, in disbelief.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” mocked John, sweeping an arm toward Sherlock, “the world’s only consulting detective.”
“This morning you woke me up by kissing me, with tongue, and a hand down my pants: Not indicative of being angry with me. Three hours ago, fellatio in the shower: Not indicative of being angry with me. Thirty-seven minutes ago, you made me tea: Not indicative of being angry with me.” He ticked these points off on his fingers, as if it were a normal list.
John could feel that he was blushing, which irritated him. He focused on the last point. “I only made you tea because you wouldn’t stop whingeing about it.”
“Oh, so it was the tea that made you angry with me?”
“It wasn’t the tea, Sherlock.”
“I can document more examples of behavior on your part indicating no anger toward me—”
“I do not want a recap of our sexual encounters. I don’t want to discuss any of this any further.”
He had never yet had a girlfriend who would let him drop an argument that way. Maybe that was the nice thing about having a boyfriend instead, or at least having Sherlock Holmes as a boyfriend, because he said, as if the conversation were boring him, “Fine,” and lay back down on the sofa.
No wonder girlfriends never let him drop it, because it turned out he didn’t want to drop it. He wanted to have it out. He wanted to shout at Sherlock that yes, he was angry with him; that Sherlock seemed to have no idea what it was like to think that your best friend was dead, for eight whole months; and that he’d died before you’d been able to fully grasp that it was possible he was the love of your life. And, worse than that, that he’d leaped to his death directly in front of you, on the phone with you. But he’d been the one to say he didn’t want to discuss it any further, and Sherlock was apparently willing to take that at face value.
John frowned and crossed his arms in his chair and leaned back and glared at Sherlock.
The door opened and shut downstairs, and Sherlock said, to the ceiling, “Mycroft.”
Which was indeed who walked in, with a cursory knock at the open lounge door with the base of his umbrella.
“Why do you bother to knock?” asked Sherlock, without looking at him. “You never ring the bell.”
Mycroft looked from Sherlock to John, who was still glaring at Sherlock, and caught the mood of the room effortlessly. “Am I interrupting something?” he asked, with the air of knowing the answer was yes.
“No,” said Sherlock, and sat up. “John doesn’t want to discuss it any further. What is it?”
Mycroft glanced at John with his eyebrows raised, but John kept frowning thunderously at Sherlock so Mycroft gave his typical ghost of a shrug and sat in John’s chair by the fireplace, crossing his legs and arranging his umbrella. “I thought you might like a case. It would be a nice way to get the blog going again.”
“A case,” echoed Sherlock. “I’m not going to start a war for you, Mycroft.”
“Who said anything about a war?”
“This has to do with the woolly mammoth wandering around Siberia, no doubt a Baskerville experiment gone wrong, and you’d like me to do something in such a way as to blame the Russians for the woolly mammoth.”
Mycroft paused, which was telling. John couldn’t help looking at him in surprise, because, if Sherlock was right, that was kind of an amazing story. “That would hardly start a war,” Mycroft said.
“Hang on,” John interjected. “There really is a woolly mammoth in Siberia?”
“Not officially,” said Mycroft.
“Is the Loch Ness Monster a Baskerville experiment gone awry, too? What about Bigfoot?” asked John.
Mycroft frowned at him, then looked at Sherlock. “Will you help with the woolly mammoth?”
“No. Go and get a team of wildlife experts to capture the thing for you, if that’s what you want.”
“I want to know how it got there in the first place.”
“You’ve a leak somewhere. Obviously, someone at Baskerville smuggled the DNA to someone in Russia. And apparently the Russians have a Baskerville of their own. But I plan not to worry too much about that, knowing my dear brother is aware of it now and will do all he can to keep us safe. Figure out the leak on your own, that’s dull.”
“How would we publicize that anyway?” John said. “What sort of blog entry would that make?”
“The capture of a woolly mammoth?” said Mycroft. “You don’t think that would make for an interesting blog entry? Obviously, the rest of it would stay between us.”
“I don’t capture animals, prehistoric or otherwise,” Sherlock announced, with finality. “Now go away.” He collapsed back onto the sofa.
“Fine,” said Myrcoft, and stood. “I will leave you to your domestic squabble.”
Which annoyed John, who said, once he’d heard the door close behind Mycroft, “I’m going out.”
Sherlock looked at him in alarm. “Where are you going?”
“We’re out of milk,” John told him, shortly. “You finished the last of it with your tea.”
***
Sherlock did not like for John to be angry. Because, most of the time, John was angry about things that completely bewildered Sherlock. Well, the things didn’t bewilder Sherlock, but reacting to them with anger bewildered Sherlock. John didn’t get angry very often; it was one of the best things about him, that he didn’t let minutia bother him as much as people might. But, when he did get angry, it was always over a matter of principle, and Sherlock thought principle was tedious at best. People wasted so much time and energy on principle, and John was normally so much cleverer than people that Sherlock couldn’t help but be thrown whenever he wasn’t, whenever he got himself tangled up with principle and then got angry with him over things Sherlock couldn’t change and wouldn’t change even if he could because changing would be illogical. John’s anger was always the result of a breakdown in logic and a surfeit of emotion. Sherlock didn’t mind certain types of emotion on John’s part. He quite liked when John was feeling fond and good-humored and indulgent, liked especially when John looked at him with his eyes bright with affection, liked when John nuzzled at his neck contentedly or kissed him back energetically or giggled at something Sherlock had said. Sherlock liked all those emotions of John’s very, very much.
Sherlock just did not like when John was angry.
He couldn’t very well just sit in the lounge brooding about why John was angry. That was not productive in any way. His mind would run ‘round in circles until he’d be frantic with the annoyance of it all. And, if John was angry, Sherlock was aware the most foolish thing he could do would be to whip himself into a state of annoyance in response. It would be better to be pleasant and unruffled, it would defuse John’s anger. John was that sort. If Sherlock was especially charming when John got back, maybe John would even feel guilty over being angry in the first place.
So Sherlock buried himself in the experiment he was using the kitchen table for currently, and when John came back from the shop with milk and whatever else he’d seen fit to purchase, Sherlock was surrounded by test tubes and leaning over a microscope.
John did not say hello when he walked in. He went straight to the refrigerator and put the milk away. He emptied the rest of the bags systematically and sighed when he opened one of the cupboards and found an ant farm in it, but he didn’t say anything to Sherlock. Which was a very bad sign.
“Hello,” Sherlock offered, watching him.
“Hi,” John responded, perfunctorily, and Sherlock knew he said it because he didn’t want to be childish; John hated being childish whereas Sherlock thought it was quite useful in many circumstances.
Sherlock wondered what he should say next. He didn’t want to ask why John was angry, because he’d rather John just forget that he was angry at all. He was a bit annoyed that John hadn’t forgotten yet.
John said, without looking at him, as he was walking out of the kitchen, “I’m going to bed.”
Sherlock was surprised. He looked at his watch, even though he knew what time it was, and it was early for bed. If John hadn’t been angry, Sherlock would have taken it as an invitation, but John was very clearly still angry, and Sherlock didn’t think it was a good idea to bring up sex at the moment.
“John,” Sherlock said, before John could completely exit the kitchen, and John paused, although he still didn’t look at him, and Sherlock scrambled for something to say, anything. He went for the first thing that came into his head. “If you’d like us to take the woolly mammoth case, I can phone Mycroft and—”
“I don’t want us to take the woolly mammoth case,” said John, wearily. “Good night.”
Sherlock frowned after him and then, not knowing what to do, went back to his experiment. Eventually he finished with as much as he could get done. It needed time now, and that meant he had nothing left to do with himself. He paced the lounge for a bit. He would have played the violin but it was now late and it would not help John’s anger if he woke him up by playing the violin. He could have gone to bed himself, but John had gone to his own room, which he had not done once since they had moved back to Baker Street together, and Sherlock hated the idea of his bed being empty. He had never been good at sleeping alone, which was one of those things he had no real biological explanation for and so hated about himself, but it was true. Plus, he was too restless to sleep at the moment anyway, even if he’d wanted to brave his empty bed.
He wandered through the lounge, frowning at books. John read for pleasure all the time, maybe he could, too. But none of the books seemed the slightest bit interesting. He was standing by the fireplace frowning at the telly and wondering whether turning it on would disturb John when John appeared in the doorway of the lounge. He looked rumpled and tousled and also annoyed, so apparently he was still angry.
Nevertheless, he looked at Sherlock and sighed, after a second, “Come to bed.” Then he walked out of the doorway.
Sherlock hesitated in surprise, then followed him. He had gone into Sherlock’s bedroom, and he was already settled under the covers on the side of the bed he’d commandeered, his head buried in the pillow and turned away from Sherlock.
“Change out of your suit,” he mumbled at him. “You know I hate it when you sleep in your clothes.”
“John,” Sherlock began, staring at his form in his bed and trying to determine what this was, wishing John were facing his direction so he could try to read his expression.
“Don’t talk,” said John. “Don’t say another word. I don’t want you to make things worse. Just be quiet. And come to bed.” John paused. “Please.”
Sherlock considered, then shed his suit and found pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. John was not asleep when he slid into bed, but he was pretending to be. Sherlock could tell the difference. He let him pretend, lying carefully next to him and not daring to move for fear it would, as John had said, make things worse. Eventually John stopped pretending and fell asleep for real, his breaths evening out. Normally this was Sherlock’s favorite part of any night, when John fell asleep and he could unabashedly lay in the moonlight cast over the bed and study him, because Sherlock felt as if he never got to look at John long enough, never really got his fill of the examination of his face. Sherlock listened to him breathe and watched him sleep and felt fear, which he had become more and more acquainted with over the past nine months of his life and which he really detested, every time it reared its head. He detested it now, watching John sleep and trying to regard his fear with detachment, trying to analyze it and strip it of its cold teeth, but it didn’t work. John was angry with him. And everything Sherlock was was all tangled up with John; he couldn’t imagine what he would do if this fragile and incomprehensible thing with John fell to pieces around him. He couldn’t imagine how he would ever go back to the clawing hollowness that life had been before John; he couldn’t imagine how he would survive it.
Slowly, testing, Sherlock shifted closer to John, close enough to nudge their shoulders together, to line up their legs. John turned into him sleepily, fitting against him automatically, snuggling his head into the curve of his shoulder, and Sherlock took a shuddering breath of relief and kissed his temple cautiously, not wanting to wake him, just wanting to rest his lips against him, to breathe into his skin.
John slept. Sherlock waited for dawn, memorizing.