Title: "Clean-up"
Fandom: Sherlock
Rating: Teen and Up Audiences
Pairing: John/Sherlock
Length: 755
Content notes: Minor injury, blood.
Author notes: For fan_flashworks Challenge #27, "Ghosts and Gore".
Summary: At least Sherlock isn't kicking; he'd kicked when Greg had first brought up A&E.

* * *

"Sit down," John orders, but Sherlock is apparently still disinclined to listen to him—or anyone, really. John finally grabs him by the lapels of his coat and pushes him down into one of the chairs at the table.

"No, don't." Sherlock wipes at his head. It does exactly no good at all. "I'm going to bleed on the carpet," he grumbles.

"Well, I can make you sit on the toilet and we can do this properly, if you like," John says, exasperated. He hadn't managed to get Sherlock in there earlier, and he doesn't think he'll be able to manage it now. At least Sherlock isn't kicking; he'd kicked when Greg had first brought up A&E.

Sherlock's nose wrinkles. "No, thank you," he says, without sounding either grateful or subdued in the least.

"Stay there," John tells him, and goes to get the first aid kit and wet a flannel. At least all their towels can be bleached, he thinks, not for the first time.

Much to his surprise, when he comes back down, Sherlock is still sitting in one place, chin in his hand, elbow on the table, eyes closed. Blood is streaked all over his cheeks and down his neck, soaking into the collar of his shirt and the coat. It's not something John has ever enjoyed seeing. He swallows and pulls over another chair, so he has someplace to set the first aid kit.

"Duck down," he says, and Sherlock ducks his head. John pushes Sherlock's hair out of the way as best he can. He can't see the cut very well; there's too much blood. The eternal problem with head wounds, really.

"Can't we do this in the shower?" John asks. "It'd be so much easier to clean."

Sherlock doesn't say anything. He bows his head lower, instead, and presses his sticky forehead against John's ribs.

John stills, and then takes a breath.

Sherlock has tucked his fingertips into John's jacket pocket. He's not moving. He's just. Being still, and waiting. John swallows and picks up the flannel, and wipes, as gently as he can, at Sherlock's hair. The cut is still bleeding, but not so heavily as it was in Knightsbridge. John can manage to see to get it cleaned and stitched up, at least. Sherlock doesn't move until he's finished.

"That's probably good enough," John says, and Sherlock turns his face up. It's a pretty gruesome sight. John wipes the wet flannel over Sherlock's forehead, leaving behind pink and red-streaked skin.

"You should shower," John says. He wipes off Sherlock's ear, which is caked in drying blood and, John knows without knowing why he knows, very sensitive. Sherlock taps his toe against the carpet, twice.

"John," Sherlock says.

"Without me, I mean," John says, and shakes his head, laughing, stepping back.

Sherlock watches him. "John," he repeats.

"I'm not ready," John says, too fast.

Sherlock stills.

John takes a deep breath, and starts packing up the first aid kit.

"It isn't as though I expect anything from you," Sherlock says, flat. "But I'm perfectly aware of what my reaction would be, and I don't—I know you're not—"

"Apparently I am, actually," John says, and then laughs, and shakes his head.

Sherlock doesn't say anything.

"Plenty of me wants to wash your hair," John says, all in a rush, "with your back pressed against my chest."

His face feels hot. He closes the first aid kit with a snap.

"All right," Sherlock says, quiet.

"But I can't," John says. "Not yet."

"All right," Sherlock says, and then takes a breath. "Maybe the next time I have a gushing head wound, then."

John looks up at him. Sherlock's face is wrinkling up on one side with his awkward and uncomfortable-looking smile, and for once, he isn't turning away. He's pink over his face and his neck, and it's not, John thinks, just the last remnants of badly wiped-off blood. John wants to touch Sherlock's throat. John wants to rub his fingertips over the edges of Sherlock's adam's apple and up over his scraggly-stubbled chin. John wants to touch the divot between Sherlock's collarbones, just bared by the open buttons of his once-white and now hopelessly ruined shirt. John wants it with all of himself, for once, so he does it.

Sherlock takes a breath, separated from John's hand by blood and skin and nothing else. John can feel Sherlock's pulse.

"John," Sherlock says.

"All right," John says. "Next time."



Archived: 3 November 2012, at AO3.