institutesamples | you know what I'm sayin'?

"Sherlock!" he huffs in weak protest, giving him a little nudge. He gives in soon after and pretends to be more put off than he is. Sherlock was well and truly invading his world, breaking barriers and almost acting like one of the lads.

John finds himself rubbing circles onto Sherlock's shoulder, half blaming his profession.

"I hope no more kids set themselves on fire today...."

Sherlock completely ignores the nudge and the protest. He makes some sort of noise as John's hand somehow seems to find a knot in his shoulder, be it of contentment or relief or something. The sound is muffled by his face buried into the upholstery of the couch. The bottle hits the floor gently with a dull thunk, and whatever tension was in Sherlock's carefully balanced frame drains out of him. His back is an unholy mess of knots and tension, layers of muscle unusually stiff beneath John's palm.

"Let them," mutters Sherlock into the arm of the couch, shifting to make himself more comfortable by sliding down to let his head rest halfway on a pillow and halfway on John's stomach. One long arm slides around John's back - Sherlock's slept this way before, clinging onto his pillow for what looks like dear life, halfway off the bed (or couch) - wherever he's stopped moving long enough for sleep to catch up with him. "Teach them a lesson. This, boys and girls, is what happens when you're stupid! New from Tesco's superior line of products, deep-fried superheroes! Find them on the frozen food aisle so you can eat yourself into a diabetic coma! Now with realistic limb shapes! One hundred percent idiot child!"

Sherlock laughs at his own joke a little too fiercely, his shoulders quiver a bit - and then they don't stop. The detective doesn't make a sound, but his fingers dig into John's back and the pillow beneath him. It's only for a few seconds, Sherlock sniffing tightly once or twice and then seeming to get a tighter hold on himself, tension rippling through his frame before Sherlock relaxes back against John and the couch, drawing his legs toward himself so he curls around John's stomach like a sort of a protective half-shell. When he raises his face, he's a little flushed.

"I'm fine. I'm perfectly fine. I'm drunk, but I'm fine. Don't worry, John. Maybe it'll turn up that Mycroft has the secret superpower of flight and we'll see him soaring across the grounds with his brolly like Mary Poppins. And Mrs. Hudson can move objects with her mind because nothing is ever where I put it in the flat. Oh! And Lestrade! His ability? He can dance! Then we'll all get together and have tea and watch crap telly while I tell you all how stupid you are and how boring normal people are and how impressive I am!" There's a faint trace of sarcasm on Sherlock's voice, but there's something else there, wistfulness, shame. "Because I am Sherlock Holmes and I am the greatest consulting git the world has ever known!"

Edited 2012-11-02 08:41 (UTC)

Hearing the reaction from Sherlock, his hand works with more purpose, finding tension and working to release it until Sherlock's laughing sets him off..... crying?

Instead, John's hand finds Sherlock's hair again and rubs at his scalp soothingly, a worried frown on his face until he pictures Mrs H with powers. And Lestrade's ability to....dance?

"Just as I was about to say you'd changed," he sighed. "For a moment you were being quite pleasant and, if I'm honest, I don't think you should be TOO proud. You're the ONLY Consulting Detective."

He'd never be beaten, of course, but that wasn't what modesty was about. Or teasing.

"You really are drunk. You're like a cat..... Or a snake...."

A thought struck him and he awkwardly dug about to get his phone out of his pocket and took a photo. It looked a bit too odd to be real blackmail material.... maybe.

Sherlock's hair is wild enough as it is, but John's found something perhaps no one on the planet knows - it's fairly soft, and Sherlock doesn't at all seem to mind the feeling of John's strong fingers buried in his curls. He makes a rumbling noise somewhere in his chest at the ministrations to his back as well, that contented sound turning to one of protest as John stops. "Hey," he mutters.

"I do not like the way being drunk feels, John." Sherlock unwinds from around the doctor and flips over onto his back, bony elbows prodding John's legs and stomach as Sherlock reorients himself to use John as part of the couch. He folds his hands over his sternum, staring at the ceiling with wide, wide eyes that are just a little too bright to be part of Sherlock's usual hood-eyed, detached stare. "Why is everything tilting to the side?" He tosses an arm over his face, reaching immediately for John's phone. "And I know you just took a picture. Don't you dare. Give me that, John. Now."

If he manages to get a hold of John's phone, Sherlock's quick at clumsily deleting the photo, all thumbs on the screen. If not, Sherlock reaches out for John's arm, draping it across his head again. "Keep doing that," he demands.

Everything about Sherlock is perfect apart from his attitude, but that was bad enough that John has no wish to be more like his friend. At all. Sure women tend to let their eyes linger on the tall idiot but.... well. It was all but said that Sherlock is a virgin.

"There ARE prostitutes," he says, thoughtfully, out of the blue.

Sherlock almost deletes it, John doesn't fight the phone off of him for that, it's the clumsiness and John doesn't want anything else deleted or seen. He snatches it back and continues petting Sherlock.

"Wonder if I can sure hangovers...."

"Prostitutes!? Are you insane!?" bellows Sherlock. Top of his lungs. Because really, no one can hear him, right? "John! Do you know what sort of appalling sexually transmitted diseases you can contract from prostitutes, not to mention the smell! If you're really that desperate you could just use me, or bring one of those pathetic boring little women around and use them, but make sure they're gone by the morning, because we are MEN, and 221B is a sacred ship! No women, that's the rule, John! We sail the high seas of crime! Nay! Say no more of prostitutes, for our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners: so that if we will plant nettles, or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs, or distract it with many, either to have it sterile with idleness, or manured with industry, why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills! You must take care of yourself, John and a prostitute shall not do!"

Sherlock flails a fist into the air to illustrate his point - hopefully not clocking John in the chin. But he does sit up, grabbing the man by the lapels and practically smashing his forehead into the doctor's again. And then there's that awful, lurching sensation that Sherlock's broadcasting to him again as loudly as possible.

YOU ARE NOT GOING TO LEAVE BECAUSE OF SOME SILLY GIRL. WE HAVE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS TO DO! - it's practically thundered at John, and Sherlock releases him as quickly as he'd grabbed him, flopping back onto the couch.

"Oh you would leave, John, you would, everyone leaves, they all go, they all get fed up or bored or find someone else who doesn't kick the sheets off of the bed or talk in their sleep or beat corpses with riding crops or keep eyeballs in the fridge. No, see, that is the logical progression of events. Yes. Et tu, Brute! Then fall, Caesar!" Sherlock proclaims, rolling into John's stomach dramatically, a hand thrown across his brow. He gropes around for John's hand again to put it back in his hair. "And leave us, Publius; lest that the people, rushing on us, should do your age some mischief!"

Sherlock emits a strangled noise, curling back up into John's side, shoulders quivering.

You'll leave, comes from the man now, quieter, more subdued as his hand smacks into the side of John's face.

In a panic, he tries to clamp a hand over Sherlock's mouth, but the man's too squirmy and twisty and-

"Sherlock! Shush!" he almost laughs. "Sherlock, my job." He listens to the rant, half shaking his head in bewilderment. "Ship? It's not a bloody ship. Who'd put us on a ship together? I wouldn't, it'd be bound for disaster."

He leans back as Sherlock scrambles up and it knocked back by the impact of his thoughts, quiet for a moment, almost gasping. He shakes his head and blinks before frowning.

Did Sherlock sabotage his relationships on purpose?

He listens, uncertain as to whether he's angry or feels more pity for Sherlock, jumping again at the second contact, though it's quieter.

How does he explain that it's just what people do?

"Don't worry, you've got me for a while now that you're back to offend ant woman within a 3 mile radius of me," he jokes, softly.

Sherlock only reaches out to flop the back of his hand against John's face, his eyes screwed shut against the world around them as it lurches and spins uncontrollably. The impression Sherlock throws off is one of an open connection. There's the quiet, analog hiss of static to imply an open radio frequency - something John might be aware of. When Sherlock's voice shows back up, it's quieter still.

You can just show me here. Images, words, whatever you want. comes the explanation, far calmer and controlled sounding than Sherlock's outward rantings regarding prostitutes. Open connection. Just... talk here. I sound like an idiot and I don't... We are -never- doing this again. This alcohol thing. Sherlock's emotions are not a deafening roar at the moment, more like the faint hum of background noise, radio chatter on sideband. It'll be easier for both of us if I don't speak until I've had a good, long few hours of emptying the contents of my stomach. A shame, you keep nice alcohol in store. I'll need water, some fizzy tablets, and one energy drink, make sure you get the kind with as much B12 as possible. Sherlock shifts a sense of well-being toward John now - he's just sick. He'll be fine. Most people would have the sense to be mortally embarrassed, but Sherlock's pragmatic assessment of the situation is unchanging.

The silence seems to imply that it's John's time to talk. Or show. Whichever. Sherlock shifts once more to bury his face into John's jumper.

At first John's worried when Sherlock's hand finds him again, but everything is calm. Sherlock is even calm, despite that bubbling drunkeness. He closes his eyes to listen, though at first something cold and frightened shoots through him and shuts off completely at the offer of sharing. He knows he's done it, but he can't take it back. Perhaps it's pettiness, Sherlock already knows so much from looking at John, there are thoughts and feelings and memories he'd like to keep as his own.

When his turn seems to come, he gently removes Sherlock's hand and drops it onto his lap. It's a moment before he takes his own hand away from Sherlock's.

"I'm sure I owe you at least that much," he says, quietly. "You're a fine idiot, by the way."

Sherlock's movements tend to be fairly precise, but at the moment they're really rather not. He almost yanks from John when he feels the stab of fear come from the doctor, but some internal force of will makes him stay put. Instead, when John removes his hand for the second time, Sherlock curls long fingers around his his wrist, just above the cuff of his jumper. His brows furrow inward toward one another, confusion laced with the effects of the alcohol, and he swallows tightly as the room takes another spin around him.

"M'not an idiot," the reply is petulant, but there's not much force behind it.

"I shouldn't say anything, I should't be talking right now, but I know so many things, so many stupid little details," Sherlock muses softly, his voice pitched a little lower than usual. His words blend together, a lazier version of his native accent, which even now might be fairly pleasant by virtue of its softness. "So many things... about so many people, places..." His pale eyes seek John's face, studying the lines, looking for signs of sleeplessness or stress, picking out any grey that might be starting to form. Sherlock shifts again, more slowly this time, lest he feel as if he's going to fall off of the couch and perhaps even off of the world.

Sherlock lets out a miserable groan, curling into a fetal ball around John. The fingers curled around his wrist release their spidery grip for half a second. The first two fingers on Sherlock's hand pulse point in the doctor's wrist with fair accuracy. That done, Sherlock lets his eyes sink closed. His breathing slows.

I haven't slept in a few days. Not since ... His internal broadcast voice trails off, still calm and clear. John is shown a few images - Sherlock standing in a dark corridor, his hands coated in blood. He's bleeding too, in agony he's never known from what's probably broken ribs, stab wounds - the extent of his injuries were far worse than when he'd shown up to see John. The smell of mold, damp and dank. Sherlock lets a tiny bit of the relief he felt then eke out toward John. That it was over. He could go home.

The body of a man is before him, what can only be Mycroft's men swirling around him to clean the scene within seconds of the fellow's death. Sherlock tries only shows John the empirical observation - he's kind enough not to share the majority of the emotional content, though it's there too, writhing underneath the surface of all the thoughts. Images of Sherlock hunched in strange, cold places, stealing patches of sleep every three or four days. A flicker of a dim imagination of John next to him, keeping watch. He shares missing with him, longing. Just wanting to go home for a cup of tea to dissect pigs and watch John recoil in terror from the fridge. The mercy of his own regenerative properties is what has kept him alive in many instances where ordinary folk would have lost their minds from fatigue.

Sherlock's physical voice breaks into the silence between them.

"Can I come home? Would that be alright?"

Edited 2012-11-02 23:16 (UTC)

It's temping to pull away from the touch but a combination of things keep him from doing so. Missing Sherlock, knowing how determined the lanky shit could be, and curiosity.

"You are an idiot," he says, "sometimes." He listens to his friend with an almost sad smile, but there's fondness in it. "Too many stupid little details." He nods and watches his friend carefully watching him back. He doesn't know what Sherlock can deduce from him right now, but he doesn't care too much about the outward signs.

Despite common misconceptions about masculinity, especially in the army, they weren't strangers to comfort. It usually came towards the end of a long run out there. The point of stress becoming too much, the fear and loneliness. So it didn't feel out of place to pull the figure in his lap a little closer, arms around him. Even if it was Sherlock of all people.

"You're home," he says, a little choke to his voice he tries to clear out. "Get some sleep now. You can stay on the couch...."

He tries to untangle and get up so that Sherlock can have a proper rest.

Sherlock isn't about to let John up. No chance in hell. When John tries to extricate himself from the lanky detective, Sherlock's arms grow even tighter around him. "No," he mumbles. "No, John, please. I can't sleep. If I sleep, they are going to come, and they are going to kill you, and Lestrade, and everyone. Please. You have to keep me awake. Do whatever you have to." There's a a faint pleading note in Sherlock's voice. Sherlock does sit up though, just for a moment, to stare at John with wide, frightened eyes. Then everything, the emotion, the fear, the trembling quaver of his voice completely drops out, and Sherlock's eyes snap back into focus.

"My apologies," he intones softly, sounding very much like a certain elder Holmes before he gets to his feet. The attempt to stand is pretty much a failure. His bandy legs wobble, and he simply collapses back into the couch. "There is something very wrong with me, John." Sherlock's quiet, calm assessment of the situation. Then his eyes are blank again, and Sherlock balls up his fists in his hair, causing the curls to go mad.

In a fit of fury, Sherlock catapults from the couch, picking up the bottle of scotch one again and downs about half of what's left in the bottle.

"Yes you can," he says firmly. But he knows what it's like to be caught there, in a memory or a fear and how frustrating it is for somebody to tell you it's not real. "I'll be on watch for now. My gun's in my desk. I'll take care of everything."

And then Sherlock returns. The old Sherlock. Or at least almost the old Sherlock, this one's still not quite as steady on his feet. "What's wrong with you is," he hesitates and watches Sherlock drink, "....not going be solved by doing that."

Standing up, he urges Sherlock back onto the couch.

Sherlock's eyes are wild as they level on John as the man tries to push him toward the couch. His fingers curl tightly around the scotch bottle. He'd probably break it if he could, but Sherlock's hands, even with their violin proclivity, are not going to be able to crush a scotch bottle. So he sets the bottle down on the floor, hugging his legs into his chest, his eyes dilated, unable to sit completely still.

"John. You must not let me sleep," he repeats, more calmly, but his fingers dig into the cloth of his trousers. "Under any circumstance."

John stands in front of Sherlock for a moment, looking at him. He could let him down the rest of the bottle and hope it knocks him out, or take it away and save a worse hangover. And a little money.

He holds his hand out.

"Do that thing. The...weird... mind thing. Not weird, you know what I mean."

Sherlock stares at John for a long couple of moments, saying nothing at all, his eyes too bright and too wide in his face.

He reaches out for John's hand, taking it in his own, his grip a little too fierce, a little too tight.

There's an open connection now, dead air, static sounding mentally between them.

Edited 2012-11-03 12:52 (UTC)

John, new to this, is a quiet jumble of thoughts about Mrs H, about Lestrade and guns and the taxi driver and the war. But it settles into a voice that soon begins to soothe.

Sleep. I've got you.

He tries to imagine himself as sleepy as possible to try and encourage Sherlock. Thinks of home, of their chairs, of peace and quiet. It was a rare thing to happen in that flat, Sherlock either working or bored, so he focusses on a particular memory. Of Sherlock by the window, gazing out at London at 4 in the morning, violin tucked under his chin, bow only ever-so gently touching the strings as though thoughtfully trying not to wake John. John had stood and watched for sometime before it had chased his nightmares away and he'd been able to return to bed.

Sherlock pulls in on that memory, clinging to it, making it his own. What returns to John is screamed. Noise. Fury. Unquenchable, tireless rage, anger that drives Sherlock on each and every night with little sleep or food for weeks upon end. The image of peacefulness John shows him is torn apart by gunshots, Sherlock's mind wheels back at him, showing him the corpses of Mrs. Hudson and deargodnoJohnno-. Blood on the faded carpet, over the walls, over that damned yellow smiley face. The entire flat turned over.

So he can't sleep. Absolutely cannot, under any circumstances, why can't John just see that, why can't he understand?

The response is too much at first, John pulling back but not away completely. He sees the images and, as shocking as they are, they're not unknown to him. Things like this used to be all to normal and had become so again after the fall.

Keeping the contact, he holds Sherlock's face and looks him in the eyes, simply sending back his memory of the Taxi Driver. He'd barely known Sherlock, but he knew all he needed to. He sends the memory of walking into that room, seeing Sherlock across the way, too far, the killer right there. The fear, the worry that he was too late. And then the calm as he lifts his gun, steady, focussed and pulls the trigger. And then the relief.

He has already killed for Sherlock and he'll do it again as many times as he has to.

"Besides," he smiled, softly, "I'm a much better shot than you."

Sherlock only reaches over into his coat to pull out a Walther PPK - both amusingly appropriate and tiny in his hand, but his hand shakes a touch as he pushes the weapon up onto the couch, in reach of John. Sherlock's other hand tightens on John's a bit. Sherlock's never killed anyone. People have killed themselves in front of him, he's seen corpses, but it's a very different thing to be the direct cause of a living person's death, no matter how reprehensible they seem to be.

So, Sherlock sends a memory back at John. Waking up out of a dead sleep in the middle of the night to the sound of the doctor's voice, calling frantically for soldiers who are not there. Sherlock padding across the flat to sit next to the bed on the floor, tapping Bach canons with his toes and staring at John's face in silence. Sherlock is confused, bewildered, unsure of what to do. He's unable to sleep after watching his friend in such agony. So the rest of the night is given to researching military codes and protocols, trying to find what John would have heard and said during his time in the war. The second time he wakes up to John shouting, Sherlock sits by his bed on the floor, speaking responses quietly to him, giving the most correct replies to his commands that he can manage until John quiets back into calmer sleep. Sherlock remembers going to step out of the room, standing in the doorway, and then going back to tug the blankets John has kicked off back over the sleeping form of the man.

Will I be like that? Sherlock questions, refusing to uncurl from his position. Will it always be like this when I close my eyes? A flash of blood, the harsh report of gunfire. Sherlock shuts his eyes, opens them, finds that he cannot get away from the memory replaying in his head, and instead turns to look up at John, blank and exhausted.

He almost wants to pull away from watching Sherlock's memory. It's a little embarrassing and he's not sure what else. But, why had Sherlock done that. Curiosity, surely, maybe an experiment? But he knows there's more to it than that and he's grateful. Even if it is something private he prefers to keep to himself.

John gives Sherlock a sad smile and shakes his head.

"Not when you know who you killed and why. Or when you protect the people you.... grudgingly like."

He had been in the Army for seventeen years. He had a lot of things to be afraid of, confusion and doubts. The nightmares that remain are no longer people he'd killed, but people he hadn't saved.

"Get some sleep," he says, taking the gun. "I'll be right here."

Sherlock leans forward, between John's knees, keeping the doctor's hand in his own to continue the mental contact. A ripple of trust comes from Sherlock, so terribly open it can't possibly be something native to the detective, though he tries desperately to clamp down on it and the wash of calm that comes from feeling and hearing John's heartbeat underneath his jumper as Sherlock's head collides softly with the doctor's chest.

He doesn't care anymore. He's exhausted. Something in Sherlock breaks a little, just a bit, and he floods John with the things he cannot say, that he does not know how to say and does not understand. They're simple concepts to a man like John Watson, but to Sherlock, they are as foreign to him as Swahili is to John. Sherlock pours forth implicit trust, a tangled heap of feelings that is too noisy to identify, but it's fond anyway.

John rests his chin on the top of Sherlock's head and breathes in, deeply, his eyes closed. What a whirlwind of a day and how strange it was to see Sherlock so honest. Soaking up the emotions coming from Sherlock, he waits until they've quietened before standing.

"It'll all fix itself soon."

Sherlock untangles himself from John, finally, collapsing into the couch and reaching for his coat. He doesn't even bother to take off his shoes as he pulls the coat over his shoulders, wrapping himself in it tightly against what is otherwise a warm room. A hand reaches out for John again, fingertips brushing his trouser leg and holding onto the fabric by the tips of his fingers. He tugs John toward him, but his hand falls by his side off the couch, fingers trailing the hardwood.

John moves closer, looking down curiously before ruffling Sherlock's hair.

"Just get some rest or you'll be useless. And when you're useless you're bored. And when you're bored..... you're a pain in the arse."

A part of him would love to see Sherlock being annoying right now, it beats this horrible depressive state, but maybe in time. He turns away, taking the gun over to the desk.

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