Chapter Text
The Holiday
-x-
The message was the same on the website, the voicemail and the email autoreplies. It didn’t stop people contacting him. After a long rant down the phone about how bloody obtuse the general public were, he got John to put the message up on his blog as well, which at least limited the calls he got considerably after that. It was a simple enough message – he really shouldn’t have to labour the point.
‘Due to recent personal circumstances, Sherlock Holmes regrets that he is not taking on any new clients or cases at present. Kindly go away.’
-x-
They’d said at the hospital that it would be better to get Sherlock seeing a qualified physiotherapist, which Sherlock obviously ignored, as he ignored John’s protestations that he was just a GP and not the best person to give practical physio. John had ended up doing a lot of research very fast to become enough of an expert in physiotherapy to muddle through the task in hand. But then, hadn’t that always been the way? A ‘mysterious benefactor’ – clearly Mycroft – was putting a generous paycheque into his account for the hours he’d dropped down at the clinic to help Sherlock with his rehabilitation.
Not nannying – he wasn’t nannying. It was physio. And besides, spending three afternoons a week with his best friend was… “nice” wasn’t the word. “Needed”, that was the word. It wasn’t nice. Not yet. Not in these circumstances. It would be nice when Sherlock was better. Only, it was taking Sherlock longer than John had been expecting to get better, this time.
Mrs Hudson, as usual, opened the door to him when he knocked. Sherlock had never been one for answering his own front door as it was, but after last month… well.
‘Hello John.’ Same smile – part welcoming, part concerned. ‘Come on up, he’s expecting you.’
‘How’s he been over the weekend?’ asked John, following his former landlady up the stairs.
Mrs Hudson shrugged. ‘Same as last week. At least he hasn’t had another turn for the worse, so there’s that.’ She knocked on the door to flat B. ‘Coo-coo? Sherlock? John’s here.’
‘All right,’ came a muted voice from beyond. There was a pause, then the sound of a mortice lock and door chain being undone, followed by the latch that had, once upon a time, sufficed. Sherlock opened the door.
Even though John was seeing him three times a week and was used to Sherlock going through phases of suddenly losing a lot of weight, the gauntness of the man these days still caught him off guard a little. Sherlock’s left arm was out of its sling now at least, but the broken fingers were still taped, leaving his left hand largely useless, and his right hand still needed to hold a crutch so that he could walk with his fractured tibia in a brace. He still held himself in a way that betrayed the fact that his three cracked ribs had to be causing him considerable pain. At least you couldn’t tell about the teeth he’d lost any more. The dentist had done a marvellous job. Had to still hurt to eat, though. If he was so much as trying to.
‘All right?’ asked John, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.
‘I’m OK,’ replied Sherlock, also in spite of all the above evidence. ‘Come in.’ He turned on his crutch and limped through to the living room.
Mrs Hudson came through with them, doing up all the locks to 221b behind her, on autopilot. ‘I’ll make us some tea. And you should have some soup, Sherlock.’
‘Just tea for me, thanks.’ Sherlock slowly manoeuvred his self into his chair.
‘You’re having soup,’ chorused Mrs Hudson and John. Sherlock just rolled his eyes.
‘Good weekend?’
‘Mmff. You? How are the Watson Ladies?’
‘They’re fine. One of them projectile vomited on me at 4.30 this morning – I’ll let you deduce which.’
‘It’s a trouble with new mothers,’ said Sherlock. ‘They’re not used to drinking any more, turn into a bunch of lightweights.’
‘Says you.’ John smiled faintly.
‘I’m not a lightweight. If somebody hadn’t been spiking my drink on your stag night…’
‘And if somebody hadn’t made drink spiking a norm for this friendship…’
That brought out a genuine smile, at least. John grinned back. Since the attack, those moments were like short bursts of sunshine through slate-grey clouds. Sherlock rumbled a little laugh, his complaining ribs caused the smile to twist into a grimace, and the sunshine was gone again.
‘Let’s get to business then, shall we?’ asked Sherlock, getting up again with difficulty. ‘Exercises, exercises. Watch me do my exercises.’
John started getting out the equipment. ‘You been practicing?’
‘Mmhmm.’
‘And what about the rest?’
‘What about the rest?’
‘What we were talking about on Friday,’ John replied. ‘The rehabilitation isn’t meant to just be physical. Did you go to that support group I found for you?’
‘Yes of course I did,’ sighed Sherlock. ‘We all had a big cry in a circle and a biscuit and that made everything magically better.’
‘Your shoes and coat are still exactly where they were this time last week. You haven’t been out of the flat at all.’
‘Oh, everyone’s a detective now, are they?’
‘Sherlock. It’s been five weeks. We all know that this…’ he indicated around the stuffy, darkened flat ‘isn’t one of your usual down periods or black moods. This is what can happen when somebody gets… gets put through what you got put through.’
‘Oh, for crying out loud.’
John jabbed a thumb at himself. ‘I got shot in the shoulder, and I’ve been seeing a therapist on and off for years, although the occasionally life threatening adventures with the frankly barking best mate might have added a bit of fuel to that. Over the past six months you’ve been shot in the chest, very nearly died; escaped from hospital like an idiot and nearly died again; you…’ he trailed off slightly, remembering Mrs Hudson in the kitchen. ‘There was that unpleasantness on Christmas Day; a man who you saw blow his own brains out is somehow back and as obsessed with you as ever and then – then came the Gruner case. You, mate, have had a frankly shit half a year, and it’s taken its toll, and I think you really, really need to speak to somebody who can help you get over it.’
‘Isn’t that what I’m doing right now?’
‘Yes, but…’
‘Physical rehabilitation. That’s what I need to get over what happened.’ Sherlock stared at John, his face crumpling into an expression of mock pity. ‘Oh, bless. You think I’ve got PTSD, don’t you?’
‘No. I know full bloody well you’ve got PTSD. We’re in full Takes One To Know One territory, here.’
‘No.’
‘You don’t go out. You won’t take on new cases. You barely so much as answer the phone. You’ve turned the flat into fort knox…’
‘That’s not a psychological response, John. That’s practical. How am I supposed to do anything like this?’ Sherlock motioned up and down his injured body. ‘The transport is broken, and needs to be fixed before I can get my business up and running again, that’s all. I can’t take on a case in this state. And I certainly can’t defend myself like this, I think that was made perfectly clear last month.’
‘Sherlock Holmes,’ clucked Mrs Hudson from the kitchen, ‘for the last time, flowers go in a vase, not in the bin.’ She brandished a rather unhappy looking clutch of red roses at him. ‘He gets sent lovely roses from his fans, John, and just throws them all away.’
‘I’ve never been one for romantic sentiment, Mrs Hudson. The past month’s done nothing to change that.
‘Horrible, ungrateful boy. They’re only wishing you their best.’
‘You have them, then, if you’re so fond of them.’
‘I don’t want them,’ Mrs Hudson exclaimed. ‘They’ve been in the bin!’
‘Will you go to the group?’ John asked.
‘Er, no.’
‘If I find you a therapist for private sessions, will you call them?’
‘Nope.’
‘Will you do something, Sherlock? Just… something? Anything other than just sitting alone in your flat all day, not even being able to play your violin.’ He paused, wondering whether to verbalise what they both already knew. ‘Knowing that he broke your fingers specifically so that you wouldn’t be able to play your violin…’
‘My brother’s not paying you to babble,’ snapped Sherlock. ‘Shall we get on with the exercises now, or must I endure another twenty minutes of bloody small talk?’
‘Fine,’ said John. ‘Fine. If it’ll give you something to concentrate on, then exercises it is.’
-x-
Another week went past.
‘A holiday,’ came a voice past John’s shoulder as he was walking towards Baker St tube station, ‘wouldn’t you say?’
John stopped, and turned back towards the anonymous businessman who stepped away from the wall, folded away his copy of The Telegraph and became recognisable as Mycroft Holmes.
‘Beg pardon?’
‘Being stuck in London is getting poor Sherlock down.’
‘No,’ said John. ‘Gruner’s getting Sherlock down. Getting flung around like a rag doll by him and his lackeys, and the justice system he’s supposed to be working for ending up letting Gruner walk away from it, is getting Sherlock down. The fact that he got attacked where he lives and works, destroying his concept of a safe place, is getting him down. The fact that Gruner’s still out there somewhere and could just waltz in at any point and make good on his threats is getting Sherlock down. Being stuck in London’s not really the issue, here.’
‘But being stuck in London isn’t helping, at least.’
‘No,’ conceded John. ‘It’s not.’
‘Very good,’ said Mycroft, his smile like a razor cutting through soft clay.
‘Are you going to get that bastard?’ Asked John.
‘Gruner?’ Mycroft quirked a brow. ‘We had him once, Dr Watson, but my brother demanded we did things by the book.’
‘Yeah, well. I wonder who it was who instilled the fear of God into him for doing things that way, recently.’
‘Au contraire, my good Doctor. Sherlock’s intervention with regards to Gruner wasn’t about me, or the sticky end of The Dane. It was about him, and Miss Winter settling things on their own terms.’
‘Pity it didn’t work.’ John paused. ‘Three hours. Just three hours in a locked room with him, me and the Missis. Go on. You arrange the meeting, we arrange a babysitter, we’ll pull that scumbag inside out.’
‘I have no doubt that you would. And, as willing as I was to give you and Mrs Watson that particular evening out at the time, the matter is now out of our hands. All we can do in the mean time is assist my brother in the speediest of recoveries.’ He flashed a second razor grin. ‘Make yourself available for next week, won’t you?’ He got into a car that John hadn’t even realised had been idling, and was swiftly lost in the traffic.