The Made-Up Plan

Touch

I stared at him, stared into his shocked blue eyes. He looked a startled creature, suddenly so vulnerable and thin, and less--less than he had ever appeared before.

I had wanted this, I reminded myself. Steady, now. I wanted this truth out of him. For me.

"What did you need--"

Sherlock slammed the mug on the table in front of the sofa, shouting with the effort, "IT DOESN'T MATTER!" he roared, so loudly that I was very afraid the landlady may have heard from downstairs.

"Sherlock! What has gotten into you?" I tried, in a scalding tone. He was seething visibly, as I could see, and when he looked up to glare at me his pupils dilated again and I was staring into the eyes of a possessed man who was not only trying to hide something, but run away from it.

So I tried a softer approach.

"You're never like this. What happened, tonight? What do you need, Sherlock?"

He flinched visibly at the last question and broke our intense shared stare by dropping his head weakly into his sweaty looking palms. He tried to massage his temple and say something at once, but the words came out an indistinguishable blurb.

"What was that?" I asked.

"I said, I took some pills."

I grimaced. "Not deadly ones, I hope?" I asked, trying to appear less perturbed and incredulous than I was feeling.

"Of course not." I already knew that answer. "Apart from what you may think, I do not wish to die at the peak of my brash youth," he remarked, reviling my curiosity with his insidious sarcasm.

Something was trying to click in place in my mind, but it was spinning just out of reach and I dare not try to snag it yet, not until I was sure.

"Can I ask where you went out to?" I softly started to probe him. Depending on what he said, I might know how to proceed onwards.

"With Mycroft," he replied.

"Don't care. I want to know where you two smuggled off to."

"The hospital. Why?" He looked up from his pasty red-smeared-on-white hands.

Careful, I thought. I didn't want him to catch onto my game; no, not at any cost.

"I have a right to know," I fought back. "Why were you there?"

"Looking at a woman's body, John."

"Spare me the gruesome details," I japed, and asked him, "Whose, exactly, was it?"

"THE Woman, John, 'The Woman' woman...she's dead, John. We had a so-to-speak bet, and Mycroft was showing me right."

"You're telling me that Irene Adler is dead?"

"Yes, John, must I say it thrice?" The words seethed out of his cold, hard lips and crystallized in the frosty air between us.

"And, how does that make you...feel?" I carefully pushed the question between us, knowing fully well the volatility of those words, if taken the wrong way by my friend.

Sherlock didn't answer me, though, and I almost laughed with relief. When instead he ducked his head down into his folded arms, I took this fragile, so fragile, opportunity to hold him. I sat down next to him, knowing he would flinch at my touch even before I laid my hands over his shoulders and pulled him into my chest.

It was only a little gesture, as our two bodies were separated by just millimeters of air. But at the same time, it was an enormous little leap in our relationship, and I could feel it sitting heavily on my lap...that burdensome truth.

I would have given the world to be able to carry it for nights longer and previous to this one, but damn the bloody bastard's unwillingness to cooperate with my schemes! I wished he had succumbed to me sooner--it had taken me countless nights of work to plan for this one alone.

Yes, it is true.

I wanted Sherlock to fall in love with me, tonight.