Nocturne in Tempo Rubato
part fourJohn was not a gadget man. He enjoyed his electric razor though shied away from any that had more options than a light switch, only invested in new phones with 'smart' technology at the insistence and often expense of others, and generally waited until forced to mess with anything with a touch screen. Stabbing at yet another flimsy piece of technological frustration with his middle finger, John was half ready to break the thing in two as it continued to refused to accept his swipes, jabs, and tapping.
Laying on the bed above the blankets, dressed in his pajamas with legs crossed at the ankles, Sherlock watched John with a look of utter perplexity. "How are you still having a hard time with this? I just showed you."
"Yeah, well, I'm about to show this stupid thing who's boss here in a minute." John shook the tablet like an Etch A Sketch, feeling almost immediately the hard press of Sherlock's hand against his lower back in warning.
"Give it."
John was only too happy to thrust it back at him, swiveling on the mattress to sit facing him. "That thing hates me."
"This thing is a thing." Sherlock shook his head, fingers selecting, altering, accepting, and relocating across the screen in a fluid flourish of long, gliding fingers. "A computer is not capable of hate or spite or favoritism. If it works when I do it, it will work when you do it, so long as you are doing it correctly."
"You've watched me! Just how incorrectly can I touch a picture on a screen?!"
Sherlock shrugged, handing the tablet back to him after being assured he hadn't truly buggered it up. "Maybe you're doing it too hard."
John set his jaw, breathing angrily through his nose and he leaned over, finger pressing down into the flesh of Sherlock's chest. "This. This is me poking the screen. Is this 'too hard'?" he asked, mostly hypothetical.
"Yes."
John blinked, letting up on the poke. ".... Oh." He grimaced and sat up, glaring at the rectangle in his lap. He was good at laptops--he'd taken laptops to crime scenes before without any trouble. The weight of them didn't bother him, he didn't mind holding it out and scanning corpses with the camera to give Sherlock a better look. This was a Sherlock device, not a John one, and yet it was specifically purchased by Scotland Yard for him. The more knowledgeable about the tablet Sherlock was, though, the more John suspected he'd been the one to suggest it.
Sherlock rose up slowly on his elbow, remaining careful of the wound that was still on the mend. Only home a week. The ink had hardly been dry on the contract before Lestrade had been on the phone with a murder investigation ready to whet Sherlock's appetite for a case and stifle it for food. His tea on the bedside table was mostly untouched save for the actual drink now half drunk from its cup. He leaned forward till his own fingers fell to John's chest, his middle finger gently trailing across the knit of his cardigan in straight lines and swirls. John sat absolutely still, eyes locked on Sherlock's which followed his finger in the ghost like dance across his shirt. The pressure of the tap he gave the fleshy center of his breast was firm but short, not nearly as aggressive as John's had been but not as slight as the other extremes John had tried. Without a word or nod of acknowledgment, John picked the tablet back up and, mirroring his touch, tapped the icon for the video chat program and watched it open on his screen.
Sherlock's smirk was audible as he laid back against his pillow.
"I still say it likes you better," John muttered, plugging in his settings with his new-found language of slides and touch.
"Do you anthropomorphise all your toys?"
"Just the ones that have an attitude problem." John set his tablet on it's stand and leaned over Sherlock like a bridge over a stream, calling up the partner program on Sherlock's device in order to check his was working. A few clicks gave him a clear enough answer as his own back, rounded out over Sherlock's legs, came into view on the screen. "You see that? First try. Laptops like me. Laptops work."
Sherlock looked over at his computer. "Well, it's nice to not be the only ass in the room, anyway."
John kneed him hard in the thigh as Sherlock chuckled, the contagion starting as John hung his head, laughing at the stupidity. "Oh, god, that reminds me. You have got to fix my phone."
"Fix it? What's wrong with it now?"
John pushed back up into a seated position, casting Sherlock his own version of the 'we both know what's going on here' look. "You said you were going to fix the wallpaper settings," he reminded him.
"John, that was ages ago. You still-"
"Yes. Yes, I do." John fished around on the bedside table for it and slid the screen open, holding it out to his friend as part of his plea. "This has got to be fixed before I take this out onto the field or instead of looking at corpses, I'm going to be explaining to the Yard how it came to be that I have a purely platonic picture of your bum on my phone."
"I'm fully dressed."
"Still your bum."
Sherlock took it from him, his face skewed in an attempt not to laugh or smile ridiculously. "Well, we wouldn't want all the other children on the playground to laugh at you."
"Oh, no. No, no ,no, no. No, I'm worried they're going to get one look at this and then they're all going to want one. And it'll be all 'where do I get one, John', 'can I have yours?' and we'll never get anything done."
Sherlock gave up on trying to keep from laughing, a feat John hadn't even attempted once he'd fallen from chatter to teasing. He liked making Sherlock laugh. It was hardly best practices with a stitched up side and oblique injury but the light in his pale eyes made it feel like good medicine anyway. Sherlock bit his bottom lip to still his chuckle, a few awkward breaths-turned-trailing-post-laugh-sighs escaping all the same as he nimbly worked on the phone. "Okay, so what do you want it to be instead?"
"Doesn't matter. Just plain black or one of the saved default things is fine."
Sherlock nodded, his face falling back into normal passivity. "You want me to delete some of the photos off here while I'm at it?"
John leaned forward, trying to see his screen in Sherlock's grasp. "What sort of stuff do I have on there?" he asked.
"About twenty pictures of the inside of your coat pocket by the looks of it," Sherlock leaned away, keeping the phone tilted just enough to remain out of John's sight. "Then there's that one of me and a few of her."
John froze for a second, his chest constricting painfully in a flinch of muscles and organs. Even if heartache was all in the head, it certainly felt like a punch to the sternum. "Ah... you know what? Just.. uh.. leave those. For now. You can get rid of the pocket ones but.. I mean, I'll go through the others."
Sherlock just nodded quietly, handing John his phone back without much more ado. The wallpaper wasn't black or any solid color but instead an odd vortex of greens, blue and white like a whirlpool near the break. It was very much different from the slender silhouette he'd had saved there previously. It was certainly less awkward but somehow felt less like his. John slid it in his coat pocket, mindful of the camera button just in case. "Right, thanks. I think that's about everything then."
"Except the speech," Sherlock pointed out, crossing his arms behind his head.
John hated being predictable. With Sherlock, it came with the territory. "I take it you also know what I'm going to say?" he asked.
Sherlock sighed. "You want me to refrain from saying anything about the other officers that might make them feel more inferior than they demonstrably are, to stick to conversations about the actual case and to remember that everyone can hear me, there is no such thing as an aside over video chat."
"Yeah, that's pretty much the gist of it." John let out his own sigh, knowing full well that reciting the rules meant nothing in the application of them. He'd done more than a little reading into Aspergers in the eighteen months he'd spent living with him. He'd done quite a bit more in the months he'd been away for some clue as to what sign he'd missed that meant he was completely undone. He held up the daily pill case and shook it for emphasis. "I should be back before you need to take these but they're here if I'm not. You have to take them with food so call Mrs. Hudson if you don't feel up to walking and she'll bringing you in something."
"I don't see why you need to tell me all this when we're going to be talking the entire time you're out via the internet."
John shrugged. "That's work. While we're there it's time for work-talk. This is home-talk."
Sherlock looked up at the ceiling, which, after a week, had become something akin to a dart board. "Everything is related to the work, John. It's just the scope that's gotten greater."
"Maybe for you but I still have a life outside criminals and maniacs." John packed his tablet away and leaned over, feeling Sherlock's head for fever before masking the concern with a tussle of his hair. Sherlock turned his head, trying to escape the affectionate toss. "I'll call you when I get to the scene. Lestrade's on duty so it'll be him and me for the most part but you know there will be others so just... well, good luck."
"To you too. It's your first day on the job after all." Sherlock gave him a warm smile as he watched John stand. "I hope you get an utter idiot who gives you an excuse to show off your nice new badge."
Secretly, John did too.
Such was not the case however, as Lestrade greeted John at the crime scene tape, hurrying him past and in towards the officers currently working. His celebrity hadn't been missed among their rank. John felt a little nervous under the stare of strangers even with Lestrade at his side. Greg certainly wasn't going to be enough to keep him from chinning the first idiot who said anything ignorant.
"So how is he?" Lestrade asked, waiting as John fussed with the tablet, starting it up to get running and ready to connect. "You about ready to call in for reinforcements?"
"Sherlock's doing well, actually. Keeps trying to prove he's ready to get out of bed for more than the time it takes to use the toilet or find the couch but I don't have to fight him too much on it. He wants to be properly better, not just okay sooner. At least I think he understands that, anyway." John gave him a small shrug of his eyebrows as he thought back to the finger on his chest and mimicked Sherlock's gentle tug over the touchscreen. It worked without issue. There had to be a less embarrassing way to recall the pressure sensitivity of the stupid gadget.
Without further delay, Sherlock's slightly brooding face appeared, looking far less pleasant than when John had left him. The 'uh oh' feeling in John's stomach clamped in hard as his eyes scanned for physical sighs of what could be troubling him.
"You should have been there six minutes ago, John," Sherlock complained, readjusting his laptop over his thighs for a brief view of his belly before the screen and camera were folded up further. "I hope you didn't tip him well. Such unimpressive service should go without reward."
Nothing, then. Fantastic.
"Evening, Sherlock," Lestrade waved to the screen, leaning in over John's shoulder. "You're looking better."
"Thank you. I have a very competent physician." Sherlock offered the compliment quickly, moving on in the next instant as he scowled, waving at John with a swish of his hand. "Hold me out. Scan the area. I want to see where I am."
"Alright, hold on." John turned the tablet out, remembering to hold it up a bit to give him a more normal view for his stature. The crime scene was nondescript by all accounts, just brick walls and alleyways which gave good cover but no real added advantage from any other near identical spot in the area. Even the graffiti was more or less indistinct with a few tags and a stenciled design or two. A utilities pole said someone had lost a cat and that a vacancy had opened up nearby. Bellow it was a flier for the symphony performing at the Royal Albert Hall the next month. John made a quick mental note of that. Tickets were probably already on sale. Without further instruction, John decided on the full three-sixty view and continued to turn in place. As he rolled over the heads of the other officers, he could hear Sherlock hiss in distaste.
"Oh, god, it's been breeding," he cursed.
John skewed his eyes, looking out in the dark towards the other officers. After only a second, without much searching at all, he caught the gaze of someone looking back at him with large, startled brown eyes. He was somewhat surprised he hadn't noticed her before. Sally Donovan stood by one of the police vehicles, averting her line of sight the moment she could tell he'd seen her. She looked to his own eyes as fit as ever, pant suit smart and ringlet hair styled much the same as before. Women of her age had the benefit of not aging much in three years. That or when she sold her soul to the devil to be rid of Sherlock, she'd gotten some youth as a sign on bonus.
John wasn't all that surprised that the sight of her still filled him with anger. He was disappointed in his inability to let it go after three years, but not surprised.
John pulled the tablet back into his view, not wanting to broadcast whatever disgusted face Sherlock was putting on regardless of his shared response. "You mean Sergeant Donovan?" he asked.
"Clearly. Married with an infant now. God, the freedoms they allow people. Wasn't there any sane person left on the planet to object? Remind me to ask Mycroft about spaying the dispensable."
"Sherlock!" John put his hand over the picture's mouth instinctively though instantly saw the problem with that. He put his hand back to hold the side panel, lowering his voice in hopes he might do the same. "You cannot preach eugenics at a time like this! Not even as a joke. The papers will go mad; do you hear me?!"
Sherlock sighed, hardly looking as though he felt in anyway ashamed of himself.
John rubbed his face. He was going to kill him when he got home. Smother him with a pillow. No one would blame him. "How do you even know she's had kids?"
"A kid; singular. Recently too by the size of her breasts--swollen; still lactating. Could be a boob job but a woman in her profession wants to be taken seriously and augmenting ones breasts isn't the way to go about that in a traditionally male dominated line of work when you're looking to be judged on your accomplishments. A woman invested in her career--a career involving violent crimes for that matter--doesn't have time for a large family so first and only child. Ring on the left hand suggests marriage and the fact that she's here and not at home says there are money issues. The father probably works a day shift somewhere, has the flexibility of a schedule that can work around... oh. Oh, god." Sherlock looked away, hand to his mouth. "Never mind. I'm going to make myself sick. Show me the body."
Lestrade chuckled, hands in his pockets and he laughed. "Yeah, bet you're regretting that one, Sherlock."
John raised an eyebrow, tilting his chin back towards the other officers. "He right about all that?"
"Oh, yeah. And for the record, they're a lovely couple."
"Speak another word and I will have John hit you."
"I will not." John turned the tablet out, walking beside Lestrade as they approached the medical examiners and their bloody, bullet torn body.
The tablet, on second through, was rather nice. It weighed a substantial amount less, it was less awkward to turn and position according to Sherlock's instructions, and he could even hold it on one hand while moving collars or fingers, offering as good a view as had the man himself been there. He didn't feel so bad about the work expense after floating around a corpse for ten minutes, waving it about without arm fatigue. It only took ten minutes because John had to coordinate with his requests and fumble with the vague instructions that would have been a second nature gesture to the true detective. Ten minutes of kneeling, standing, and laying, though, and Sherlock had enough to go on to give Lestrade two solid leads, one confirming quite well the guilt of a detained suspect. Ten minutes.
John shook his head, breathing out a soft, breathy laugh. "You are absolutely amazing," he half whispered to the microphone.
"Bring home a take-away?"
"You bet." John balanced the screen against his stomach as he used his other hand to navigate the screen. "I'll call from the cab. See you in a bit."
Sherlock nodded, smiling, and the screen went blank.
John folded the case back over the device, feeling a high of accomplishment.
"I can't get over you two," Lestrade shook his head, rubbing the back of his head as he smiled nervously. "You, eh.. won't be offended if I ask you a personal question will you?"
"Only if it's 'are you two dating'." John stipulated in jest, looking up to see the nervous smile replaced with just nervousness. John blinked in bewilderment, pulling back slightly. "You too? Seriously?" John stood with his mouth slightly agape for a moment, hoping panic wasn't registering above surprise. "Greg, you know me."
"Yeah, I know I do. Was a time, though, I thought I knew Sherlock and then he went and met you." Lestrade kept his hands in his pockets, head slightly bent and his eyes constantly shifting, never lingering long in connection to John's. "I mean, they always say people have to suffer for their brilliance and all and let me tell you, he did but... he's not suffering anymore. Sometimes I feel like I hardly know the man and that's not scary, that's fantastic. Because the Sherlock I knew didn't care about anything and I can count on one hand the number of people who cared about him. He was impossible to get close to, impossible to understand, and you just knew looking at him that you were looking at a man who'd given up on the world. Life didn't interest Sherlock; just death. The Work. He used to scare the shit out of me."
John swallowed, shifting on his feet. "We really don't have to do this."
"No, guess not." Lestrade looked at his feet, rocking slighting toe to heel. "Well, it doesn't matter to me either way is what I'm getting at I guess. You're the best thing that's ever happened to him and I read your blog so I know it's pretty much the same for you. It wouldn't change a thing between us if you two were."
"Thanks... I guess." John licked his lips and tried to swallow again, his whole mouth as dry as a cedar box.
Lestrade slapped him on the shoulder with a good ol' boy smack. "Good to have you here all proper like. This should be fun."
"Oh, yeah. Time of our lives." John smiled slightly, his heart still beating a little too fast in his chest as he walked away and out towards the main street to call a cab. He needed to play it cool; he had to breathe in and remember to exhale or else his face would turn red and his ears would burn.
Greg Lestrade just asked if he was dating Sherlock Holmes. One of their few shared friends just asked...
They were going to have to be more careful. Much more careful.
John shoved his free hand in his coat pocket to retrieve his phone, the other still supporting the tablet against his turned wrist. He'd only glanced at the time before the phone buzzed in his hand, an unknown number flashing on the screen. He didn't care to answer any mystery calls. Probably another reporter, some fanatic, someone eager to get the latest scoop. He rejected it, slipping the phone back in his pocket with a quick nod to the hour of eight-twenty-one. He pulled up the police tape and let himself back under.
A voice broke the space of the eventual silence, a click of heals preceding. "John!"
He paused, turning slightly towards the speaker though he knew without sight who is was. He had half a mind to keep walking. Sally ran up, her tight curls bouncing against her shoulders as she stood on the other side of the police tape. She remained several feet away, more than an arms length but not far enough to escape the sharpness of John's glare. "I really have nothing to say to you, Donovan." Why he bothered to give her the time it took to tell her even that he wasn't sure. The high from the case had pretty well vanished in less time that it took to solve it.
Sally took a deep breath, her bottom lip tucked tight behind her teeth for a moment before she laid her hands out in the air between them, palms up. "I never... I should have, though. You know. After. Things just... Well, it's just-"
"Making sense would nice," John interjected, all out of patience for the evening as his eyes scanned the stars for a moment amidst a half roll of annoyance.
Sally scowled but the fire in her eyes was no more than a spark in the rain. "I'm trying to say I'm sorry," she said, nervousness changing her pitch. "And that... I believe in him, in that weird, amazing brain of his. I don't mean weird, I mean... I don't like to admit it but he is... better. Than us. At these sorts of cases. We need him. London needs him. So... welcome to the force."
John's brows flinched, his eyes blinking awkwardly. He scratched his head behind his left ear, looking off towards the brick facing of the closest building as he weighed the responses between 'fuck you' and 'thanks'. He scanned her briefly, reminding himself of Sherlock's deductions. "Is it still Donovan?" he asked.
"Ah... no. It's, uh... Anderson."
John couldn't help but chuckle through his nose slightly. "Well, it'll have to be Sally, then." He put his free hand in his coat pocket, backing away towards the street. "Evening, Sally. See you around."