asgardmeridiem | [Closed] 'cause I can see your house from here now all the leaves have fallen, dear

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[Closed] 'cause I can see your house from here now all the leaves have fallen, dear

Who: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson
What: A guy named Adam tells me this shit is bad, bad news.
When: Forward-dated to day 322. Crazy early but neither life nor scheduling are kind.
Where: A... place. Baldr District house 102 and thereabouts.
Rating: PG-13? CW: mentions of suicide

In the grand scheme of things, this isn't terribly surprising. Sherlock hates that it isn't. The sudden and mostly inexplicable appearance of foliage, of a bloody tree just past the foot of his bed ought to be cause for alarm, or at least mild bemusement. Ought to, but somehow it isn't, and as Sherlock stares at it, propped up on his elbows in bed, he's decided it has ruined his mood utterly.

Falling back and turning onto his side violently, blankets pulled up over his head, does no good -- he can't ignore it. Spite is only sufficient to keep him there for another quarter hour before he slips out of bed, eyeing the thing warily as he approaches it to read the inscription on the trunk, fingers tracing the letters. Ridiculous. Passing flattering if that's meant to say anything about him, but still ridiculous. Doesn't get any less so as he turns and makes his sullen and noisy way out to the kitchen, either, his footsteps noisy, drumming out in code his foul temper. That John is up before him is passingly unusual but easily explained by his fit of pique, which kept him in his room longer than is his wont. That the fellow is passing cheerful on such an awful day, though, is less explicable.

"What'd you get, then," Sherlock asks as he plunks himself down in one of the chairs, glaring balefully around, "the Fruit of Insufferableness?"

He's too tired and irritable to think of anything cleverer than that, not that they aren't all insufferable (and there must be more; there are always more) or that it's John's fault, really. It's just that it's awful, really awful to live in a world in which the impossible is barely even notable anymore. Though he's certainly making it notable by letting it annoy him, which does cheer him somewhat. Small favours.

"Schadenfreude? Enlighten me; apparently I'm in need of a bit of knowledge in my diet."

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The only thing that's keeping John in this room is the fact that he's stormed off too many times in the past and that's apparently all part of the problem. Part of his problems. Which he supposes he knew already, but he's never really gotten it spelled out. And certainly not by a friend.

Who cares about the therapist?

"You don't know that," he says, tired, running out of arguments. "Nor do I, I suppose. But I intend to, as long as you don't get tired of me. Even if I... don't chase cabs through London or wrestle assassins with you, you can bloody well be certain I intend to stick around forever."

And he means it. Even if you take that out of the equation - the madness and the danger - he intends to.

He. Sighs.

"I'm not exactly normal, am I? All those things you worked out about me? About my family? Chances are I would never have told you. I want to figure you out but I've never really thought to just... ask."

Maybe it's the war, maybe it's something before that, maybe his family. How you don't talk about things, and don't ask in return. Maybe it's everything. But the fact of the matter is he's broken too, if his therapy sessions are any indication. Sherlock probably isn't as good for him as he likes to think, the way he sort of eggs it all on. But whatever.

Sherlock can't say he understands. Personal boundaries are erected for protection; he shuts everyone else out because he has to, because he's learned that he has to, not because he finds the idea inherently abhorrent. Perhaps a bit; people are dull and dangerous, and not the fun sort of dangerous, the sort that lands one with one's name in the headlines: fake, liar, madman; whatever else normal people concoct to shove him back into his designated corner, whatever elevates him back to distant brilliance or gets him to shut up entirely.

That much he would understand. That much he would encourage, but even if trusting John isn't always easy, it also isn't entirely possible not to. They have little enough to hide from one another, surely. Surely those boundaries exist for people who aren't essential. Acquaintances, family... they aren't either. John is right, and Sherlock would say so if he knew: people don't talk, and they don't ask.

All the more reason they should.

"No," he says, frustratedly, "exactly, you've got it now, not normal, can't imagine why you'd think I'd treat you as though you were. I'm not an idiot. Normal people don't care; thought you might."

Which vastly reduces the complexity of the real world, Sherlock knows; people's motivations are more complicated than that. That much he can work out, even if the details tend to be obscure to him. Then again, hope tends to do that: reduce complexity, reduce things down to their simplest elements, trick the mind into wanting more than it will ever be permitted to have. That's why it's so bloody dangerous.

"Wasn't looking for a flatmate just to share the rent, was I?" That's a quiet admission, though it should be obvious. He supposes he's got to make those now, though. The admissions. Certainly today, after this... mess. He prods gingerly at the bridge of his nose, hunched over and sullen.

It's not how you're supposed to make friends. He knows it. Not at his age, anyway, but when has that ever meant anything, what one is supposed to do and to be? He can't manage normalcy, so he opts for something better. That's what this is, but it isn't as though he ever expected reciprocation.

Well. A bit, maybe, at the beginning. After the first case, when everything had been inhumanly, improbably brilliant, before John had developed into the sort of person who was, however fundamentally compatible they might be, also fundamentally incompatible.

"Wasn't after someone normal. Can't imagine why you think you've got to pretend to be; I won't tell anyone."

"No, no," John says, because he will not stop insisting Sherlock's got it the wrong way, shaking his head and raising a hand. "What I mean is, when people get to know each other, they ask these things. They ask about your parents, and your siblings, and your relationships and hobbies and where you went to school and what you work with... You just figure all that out anyway, so you don't need to. And then you do all those amazing things and..."

And, he realises, he hasn't really understood how... human Sherlock is, before recently. There have been moments, but most of the time he's seen Sherlock as a... a brilliant man who needs constant opportunities to be that brilliant man, and the rest of the time is just someone who can't handle not getting that opportunity.

Don't make people into heroes, John. Heroes don't exist, Sherlock told him once.

He's understood ever since that Sherlock isn't really a hero, as such. But then, in a lot of ways, he also is. His personal hero, in a way, as ridiculous as that sounds. But still a... person. A person with an incredibly loud mind who needs to occupy it to silence it at least a little. And John can't understand that, not truly, but he can... be there. Somehow.

Sherlock looks up at John, brow furrowed. Why this has taken so long he frankly doesn't know, and that not knowing is written all over his face, even as he dabs at his sluggishly-dripping nose with the back of one bloody hand.

"Yes, and obviously other people don't; obviously you don't. Generally people ask." Generally. He thinks. After thirty-four years he hopes he's managed to at least work that out properly. After all those years of people telling him that. Then again, they do tend to scold him for the sorts of things he does ask, when he does. Too personal, too private; he can't distinguish. What does it matter if it's all true?

Still, fair point. Fair enough, anyway. People are tetchy. That having been said...

"I'm... yes, exactly, I'm not most people, I'm hardly even a person, it's... fine. It's all fine," he says, pitch of his voice raised in a puzzled, insistent tone. Truth be told it worries him slightly, the fact that that was not abundantly clear, blindingly obvious that even the bits that aren't fine in the moment will be given time. That's how they operate, isn't it? At least for now? Sherlock has stormed his way into silence but he's not stormed out, and that's the point. They always come back, one way or another.

The best way he could think to get at it would be to say: I want to know everything about you, including what you want to know about me. There's more information than might be expected there, behind the questions, back where they're formed, and from what. The best way to know what someone thinks of a person is to examine the questions they ask about them. Inquiry betrays bias, betrays interest, betrays curiosity... and Sherlock does want to be interesting. To be interesting is to be desirable in the best way possible.

The point is, though, he must've done something terribly wrong if the status quo seems any different. If it seems as though he might... what? "I'm not going to... where would I go?"

There is nobody else. There's never been anybody else. It wasn't very long ago that Sherlock couldn't fathom what it might be like having a friend, a friend proper. And now? John storms out when he's angry because he's decided somewhere else has become a better place to be. Sherlock hasn't the faintest idea what that feels like -- and it isn't as though he's been subtle. Is it?

"It's not that I don't care," John says, almost as if talking above Sherlock. "I wanted to get how you work from the start, of course I did. But I... I don't know." He shrugs, shakes his head, helplessly. "I got distracted, all the time, I suppose."

Honestly, he can't claim to always know where he's going when he storms out either. It's always just... somewhere. Because he's told himself there will always be someone, no matter how distant a friend. It's not that strange, even if a bit towards... teenager years, perhaps. Still. He was a medical student, and then he went to Afghanistan, so maybe he's not all that caught up with how you socialise in your mid-thirties. No one's ever seemed to mind, at least, so perhaps he's not that far off.

Still. He has to wonder.

"No," Sherlock says, pushing himself to his feet and running dirty fingers distractedly through his hair, palm leaving a smear of blood on his forehead. "Not getting, choosing to be. Easier not to think about it. Everybody does that. Better wondering than knowing, might have to account for it otherwise."

Might have to care. Might have to start thinking about him as something other than just a brain, and a body which carts it around for the express purpose of being brilliant for other people's benefit. It's easier if he's funny old Sherlock with his funny old head, his odd habits which are easy to explain away as just that. Easier to explain them away than dig up their foundations and sort out why they happen.

It's not just Sherlock, of course. People do it to one another, too; when sympathy is inconvenient, in particular, people avoid addressing anything that might inspire it. It's worse with him, though. Worse because what isn't avoided is so loud, because it's easy to mistake all that noise he projects for the noise inside his head, and in doing so ignore what he is, what makes him work.

"You don't care, actually. Or you don't want to, rather; bit different." He shoos the thought away with a motion of his hand. "Easier if you don't, then you can pretend it doesn't matter to me, probably better. Anyway, I told you, doesn't matter. It's fine."

Where would I go? The question hangs in the air but he doesn't need to ask it again. They both must know he has nothing else, and doesn't want it besides.

"Everybody does it. Even Mycroft, and he's my brother. They're supposed to, I gather. Stupid, as though it means anything that we've got the same parents."

And there Sherlock goes, being absolutely daft again, enough that John thinks he warrants another punch to the face. The only reason he's not doing it is because he has a bit more sense not to now, and because that nose is already in a bad enough state. Still needs to have a better look at it, just in case, even if he knows Sherlock is quite capable of making sure a nose isn't broken.

Just in case.

But that isn't important, not right now. What's important is all the nonsense Sherlock is spouting.

"Doesn't matter?" he repeats, in utter disbelief, and raises a finger. "No. No. It matters. It matters that you think I don't... That you think I don't care. That's not what it's about. I don't know if I can explain it but. I haven't really been... I should have asked, I'll admit that. But just because I haven't doesn't mean I don't care, and don't you dare come and tell me you know that better because you don't, all right? And it's not fine. It's not fine that you actually think all this. You don't... You don't need to settle, or whatever I'm supposed to call this, Sherlock, just because you have nowhere to go. That's not how it works."

"I'm not." Sherlocks exasperation isn't quiet anymore. He drops his hand as he says it in emphasis, jaw set sullenly. "I'm not, that's the point, that's why you tried to smash my bloody face in, isn't it, because I'm not settling. You're not paying attention. It's-- English isn't working or you're not listening, don't know which; either way you've got it wrong."

Obviously. He'd have been able to live without settling. He'd not have tossed himself off the roof down at Bart's if that's all it were about, would he have? It's insulting, frankly. He'd got on fine for thirty years before John showed up. It's not about needing, it's not about not having had the choice to take him on as flatmate, to take him on all those cases. It's about how the rest of that is sufficiently good as to have taken away all other options.

"You're still better, that's the point. If you knew the first thing about me you'd know I'm not half as pathetic as you're implying; I wouldn't have bothered for settling. Moriarty knew that. Even my bloody brother knows that and he has no idea who I am. Just because I've nowhere else to go doesn't mean I'd want one even if I did have, does it?" He hangs his head and brings his hand back up to lace his fingers in his hair and pull at it gently, trying to yank his thoughts back into place, trying to vent out the angry fog that's covering everything.

"I don't settle, I'm not made for settling, and if I were I'd probably still be following Mycroft around, or Victor Trevor. I'd be a chemist and bored senseless or dead but I certainly wouldn't be here, or staying." And he is staying. That's the point, the point of the question. Where else would he go that would be like this?

Sherlock built himself up from nothing, from a mad little boy who might've been better left home with his mother than let out into the world, but he'd clawed his way up to something resembling functionality, and then brilliance, and then he'd taken that and made for himself a career, a job nobody else had thought to do, much less made themselves able. He's wrestled an impossible mind into a more useful shape, even if he lapses, even if it all goes wrong; he sets his jaw stubbornly and swallows down the anger and the shame that all of that stirs up inside him. He's failed, clearly he's failed if all he looks like is a petulant child, clinging to whoever gives him the slightest attention because it's all he knows how to do.

"It doesn't matter," he says, low, quiet, voice tight with all the unfortunate emotion that swims through him, "because if it did I wouldn't be here, I'd not have stayed, or let you stay. You should know, with how you badger me about my not taking cases if they don't fascinate me."

And there's an unfortunate implication if there ever was one, even if it is in its own way true: you fascinate me.

Good thing that implication goes straight over John's head, then. He hasn't really fully understood the weight of the way Sherlock looks at him or talks about him when he does. Maybe it just seems so out there to imagine...

"That's not what I meant," he says, sighs because English isn't working here, is it? "I meant... You could have asked me, you know. Somehow... Maybe... Asked me if I don't wonder. Because I do. Of course I wonder about you, Sherlock. Every day I wonder about you. And I. I do ask, sometimes, I just don't sit down and. Interrogate you. It would make me sound like a therapist, wouldn't it? 'Tell me about your issues with your brother, Sherlock. Your father left you and Mycroft blames it on you? How does that make you feel?' "

He pauses, shakes his head with a wry laugh at himself, leaning his forehead against his fingers. "Probably not quite like that, but. Same basic idea."

Not even he knows exactly where he's going with this. Something like... personal hang-ups, he supposes.

"You only sound like a therapist when you try to diagnose me," Sherlock responds flatly. "I know what they're like, I've had plenty."

Obviously he's had plenty. What parent, presented with a child like him, wouldn't immediately seek out a therapist? None of them were helpful, of course, and nearly all of them were completely wrong about him. Even the ones that weren't were mostly wrong, and Sherlock hadn't helped matters. Had learned, in fact, more from running circles around them than listening to them.

"It's not at all the same. I'm not paying you for it, am I?" There's work and there's interest, and they're not at all the same thing. Occasionally they overlap, and those are the therapists one stops seeing immediately but the acquaintances one keeps, depending upon the motivation behind the asking.

"Pointless to ask you, besides. It wouldn't work, it's not working now, and plenty of it's not... not good, besides." All that nonsense that'd come out in the papers, which Moriarty had leaked, none of that even begins to touch on the contents of Sherlock's head, for which he can only be glad.

"I did tell you: I know. It's easier." Even if it's far from perfect. "Just can't see where you get off on shouting at me as though you've any idea what it was like, that's all." Not to mention trying to smash his face in, but frankly he doesn't mind that nearly as much. That's a form of aggression and tension relief he can understand, and frankly if they were to start it all over again he thinks he'd fight back this time. Better than feeling all wound up inside with nowhere to go and nothing to do about it. But the shouting, the disapproval...

He'd done the best he could with what he was given. If the situation were posed to him abstractly, given distance from the players involved he's fairly certain John wouldn't disapprove in the slightest. It's how they tell it in stories, what everybody expects from a friend when things turn out the way they had: an altruistic sacrifice. This certainly wasn't the first, but it looks that way from the outside, which seems to be enough for most people. Most. It's hypocritical, is the point, this anger. What else would he have done? Given the choices laid out before him, what else was there to do? Being angry at him doesn't help anything, does it? Just makes him wonder what he should've done, where before he was fairly certain. It leaves him floundering more than he'd like to say. Another anchor cut away; Sherlock has always been adrift in this particular sea but he'd thought that at last, at last he'd done something good.

Never turns out that way, though. Not ever. He really ought to've expected it.

"I saw you tell me you're a fake and created Moriarty before you jumped off a roof. How else could I have reacted?"

As if there was any time to stop and think, any time to try to be rational, to tell himself that he didn't know the whole picture and how there might be more to it and... As if that even hit him at all.

"Would you have done it that differently? It's not like I got much context."

But he's not sure it would have helped much even if he did, since he apparently didn't know about the snipers and. Whatever.

"I'd have wanted to know why." There's enough stubborn certainty in Sherlock's answer to prove that it's honest, and not simply stated to be contrary. "Nobody does anything without a reason."

The assumption of foundational evidence is dangerous; it would be out of character, he'd want to understand. If something had been missed, he'd want to know what it was, and if it hadn't, he'd be all the more suspicious. "I'd want to know what I'd got wrong."

Wouldn't anybody? These things aren't spur of the moment decisions, they're... there are always echoes. Sometimes one sees them in retrospect. Maybe sometimes one imagines them, too. "It's not my fault you had to believe, either."

Not really John's either. Moriarty's, more like, and neither of them have ever had any control over that. John wrote his blog, gave Moriarty the tools he needed to ruin the both of them. Sherlock was born; that seems to've been enough, as he can't imagine even being capable of having chosen to live any other way.

He sets his jaw, and lets his shoulders slump infinitesimally. "Forget it. Forget... all of it, I told you it doesn't matter. I'm not sorry, won't be, still worth it; you can't make me so you may as well stop trying. Don't know why you are in the first place. What would you have done differently? Same question applies."

Forget it, Sherlock keeps saying. As if that's something you just do, as if John actually cares to do that. He's not going to, and it's beginning to get on his nerves how Sherlock says to forget things and that it doesn't matter and. Whatever. Tries to deflect it all as unimportant when it isn't.

He frowns, shakes his head.

"I'm not... saying it's your fault, Sherlock. I get it. But I don't have to be happy about it just because of that. I can't be."

It's possible to understand and be unhappy at the same time, so he's going to be.

"You don't honestly think that I am?" Sherlock says it with a familiar sort of incredulity, the type which is meant to express the opinion that John is being particularly thick, even for someone who makes a habit of missing the point. But it's halfway fond, even so, because that, at least, is halfway familiar. It shouldn't be acceptable, not when Sherlock hasn't yet managed to figure out whether John is underestimating him or overestimating him at times like this, but familiarity doesn't really breed contempt like people pretend. Not at times like these, anyhow.

The corner of Sherlock's mouth twitches, almost as though something in him wants to smile, and he weighs the likelihood of his getting punched again if he should opt to call John an idiot. He does wonder where it all went wrong, but at the moment he can't see the point of trying to put it to rights anymore. Maybe it's not possible.

"Would've told you if I were. Look; I'd not have done it if it weren't worth it anyhow, and I'm not inclined to let James Moriarty or my git of a brother ruin anything else." Or John, but Sherlock isn't thick enough to think that saying that wouldn't just invite further argument.

Oh, damn it.

Sherlock's lips twitch, and while John's annoyed at it, his own do too and he drops his chin almost all the way down to his chest, pressing his fingers to his brow. No, no, he doesn't want to smile, it's not the time for it. Not for laughter either, for that matter.

"We're not getting anywhere," he says, with an exhale in place of a chuckle, and drops his hand with a shake of his head. "We're going around in circles. Look-- I. I'm still cross. But... It's not like I want to die. So." A breath. "Thank you. Even if you're a right idiot."

But that's established already. They both are, or something like that.

"We're only going in circles because you're not listening." Sherlock's tone is light, arch; he's being deliberately annoying and the both of them are likely to know it, given the entirely too innocent expression on his face. Not an easy trick to pull off with all the blood; if anything it just makes him look madder than usual.

"If you're quite done trying to make a mess of me, I'm going to wash up. Do let me know; should hate to take the trouble if you're only going to ruin it again." Which he's asking for, quite deliberately, as needling is more familiar and more comfortable than addressing anything outright, as they've just established.

It's certainly easier than acknowledging the thanks in any way, because Sherlock isn't entirely certain he deserves that either. It implies he's done something unexpected, something notable, instead of just something normal. He does suspect it is. Sometimes he suspects that anyone who wouldn't have done the same in his place is a right idiot, to boot.

John responds with a blank look to meet Sherlock's innocent one, but doesn't actually answer because deliberate annoyance deserves no answer. And no answer is needed, for that matter.

"Yeah," he says, waves a hand. "I'm done. Since I need to get to work anyway."

Not that he'd punch Sherlock again even if he didn't need that, but.

His lips twitch.

"It's just a bit bloody, right?"

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[Closed] 'cause I can see your house from here now all the leaves have fallen, dear

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this makes no sense lalalalala I clearly need more sleep

No shhh it's fine

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