Rats In Rain

Sherlock BBC

BBC Sherlock does not belong to me. I make nothing but hopefully enjoyment and a few reviews from writing this fic.(Posted on AO3 a few minutes previous.)

Rated General. Mentions of death and bodies but just in general.

John/Sherlock codependent bromance but not explicit.

I live in Phoenix, Arizona so we don't get much rain, unfortunately. But it is storming right now and I completely love it so this came out. I would like more of course but... I'm not that lucky. 8/19/14, 6:45 am

The rain falling down to the Earth in London sounds like hell on earth has come and Zeus, king of the gods himself is throwing anger down to the world. Lightning striking is not actually all that is occurring above, but as rain hits ceilings and shutters and windows, as the water falls from the sky in sheets of damp hollowness, the light and noise and pressure of change is a sensory overload.

John Watson dreams of imaginary waterfalls, of being caught in jungles at night with the secrets of the darker world trying to catch him, spiders to flies.

Sherlock Holmes lays on his side, pouting on the couch as the world splits apart above them. Even if there was a case, is a murder to solve outside, the rain keeps them both locked in, sheltered like prisoners in an empty, battered wasteland. He looks into nothing and those strange grey-blue eyes like cats flash colorless in the dark. The army doctor likes to imagine that the man is on some bright, sunny beach in his mind palace looking at an old murder he hadn't deleted for just this sort of occurrence. He's somewhere else. And for all that John is almost a normal human compared to the genius, the lonely feeling in the room doesn't bother him overly much.

A particular streak of lightning cuts across and the thunder feels like bombs and Captain John Hamish Watson of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers hits the floor again, stuck in the sand and heat at his back. There are bodies near him, some screaming, some lucky enough to duck out of the way like he is defensive, but others torn to pieces like the moth eaten clothes stuck in the closet to rot.

The chiseled, blonde man stands after a few moments. It's shaky, and aching, but he stand when his hands curl away from his head, as if to shield it from ricochets or fracture patterns. He rubs at his left leg from the ankle to above the knee as if to locate which parts are wrongly aligned. The limb aches.

Eventually his mind settles a little and he is back in the flat, 221B, back in London with the strange man that is his best friend nearby but also lucky to be a world away. His actions haven't been noticed and part of him is relieved, while another part of him is a little jealous.

John begins pacing then, back and forth across the carpet from the living room to the kitchen. He has a pot of tea on and a tea cup waiting, steaming. Every time he finds himself back in the kitchen like a dementia patient with Alzheimer's, he takes a sip and sets it down.

Rain is calming, for the most part, comfortable even. He was born in rain-his mother hadn't gotten through the car ride. But this storm disturbs him.

Dr. Watson looks outside again, the image not changing. A flash of lightning blinds him, like a flash bomb. He winces, curses out "mother fucking dammit all to hell," and then the thunder rocks his bones and he tastes his own blood on his mouth when his teeth rattle and catch his tongue. But pain is good, familiar, damning usually but in this instance of being stuck in place it feels almost good. It's real. His saliva fills his mouth and in small sips he drinks the tiny whisper of copper like a dying man in the desert searches for water.

On the couch, Sherlock does nothing. He is worlds away. The genius madman pays no mind to this world.

Even as the power goes out. "Oh bollocks," Watson whispers aloud, almost a whimper instead of anger. But he purses his lips and stomps like a child up to his room. His bag is there, the stuffed duffle with the hard box on wheels with it. He walks by feel up the stairs, careful not to bump into anything because he's already off his head and doesn't need more pain, even if the tongue in his mouth rolls broken and slightly cut. His old torch is there-the one he'd used in the nights back in Afghanistan when it was safe to have lone lights.

It still works and he gives a sigh of relief. It isn't so much that he is afraid of the dark-he isn't. But there is not way he's getting some sleep with the storm pouring over London and he isn't a whack-o to just sit in the dark and try to hold back panic from the PTSD that usually sits and lets him get through the struggles in bits and pieces.

The lights flicker overhead. He can hear some crackling on the tele across from Sherlock. Inside there is something some world weary hope before it turns to resignation when the fluctuation turns out negative and the power suffers another lapse. "Godsdamned infernal shite-splitting bastard," he mumbles in the face of the storm above.

The gods must be laughing, and he gives a half-angry thought at Mycroft with his burnished umbrella. Somewhere in his imagination, John conceptually draws the man walking briskly in the rain with his hat and suit on, the umbrella curved roundly about his person down a dark street. The imagery in John's head places the faithfully attractive secretary close behind him, sheltered by his power as well as his umbrella as she walks in stilettos with her phone alight in her hand. On the man's face is the smug, satisfactory smile, that he knew all along that the rain should be kept off their heads and he is the only one who was smart enough to bring his umbrella.

Like the way a clock, even broken, is occasionally on time. John is well aware that anyone down on the streets is sloughing in water right now, which would make the imagery unlikely, but it's still funny, and annoying.

"Of course," he mumbles to himself in the dark, "he' probably has biblical ark just waiting to pick him up somewhere if we get turned into rats to drown." With the light flashed on, he turns the high-shutter beam towards the wall and bends down.

With his hands, he feels through the bag of 'goodies' to find a plastic, hard box about two feet long. There is a long necked weapon inside, but he opens the smaller compartment on the side and pulls out half a dozen pieces of shiny, silver, metal.

He feels it like the inside of the medical kit he carried in the war, familiar and dust free, like taking a bike out of storage in the sun. He put the pieces together, finding the fits and sheets that go together without a word.

As it rains cats and dogs in London, like sweat from the soldiers half a world away, John Watson plays the clarinet. Just a note here, a whistle there and a quick blow or two to keep his tongue from bleeding anymore. Nobody hears it as the storm takes the sounds and sucks it into the noiseless ether, but he plays and the walls pull and push the notes back to them.

And he is back in the war, in the blood, in the camaraderie of soldiers fighting for queen and country. John is back with his helmet, gun, with his kit and his friends under the hot, roasting sun and the dry sand flickering gold and grey that begs for their blood to soak into the earth like a sacrifice to a land that rains the sea. He is back in that hell, but the stars shine like glittery eyes, an audience that will never talk or clap or whistle appreciation or mockery. But they sparkle and those around him, some with an instrument, and others with cheers and voices to lead to song. Or even just and ear. They are all there.

He is back with the rest of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers and the war around them is calm for the small bare moment. They are the storm, are the momentary slice of life and insane happiness between deaths of enemies and comrades. They are back.

John is almost peaceful for a moment, alone in his room as his mind flies away into old memory that mixes with fantasy. Even as the flashlight flickers and rolls of the bed, hitting the button off and bathing the room in a lightless shadow, he breathes, deep and uneasy. But he breathes through the rush of blood in his veins and his mouth. He breathes through the tantrum running hot outside and the loneliness in his panic. And somehow, in the dark stone of the world he swears that there is a violin playing somewhere in the makeshift band of soldiers.

In 221B, the living room of the only consulting detective [re: London], there is no light. It is pitch dark save the occasionally flicker of flashing atoms in the stratosphere that flood the area of rooms and city streets with images of the gods fighting in the sky.

Sherlock Holmes hums along to a tune he cannot hear. His mind is gone but the fingertips of both hands move as if stroking the Stradivarius up hidden in his own room. It isn't a conscious thing but as if kept in Harmony with another body, he plays a tune he does not know and hears the curses of the world.

Outside, the rain is heavy and the streets are flooded with the wet tears of the world. And London itself, the heady black hole of life in all of Britain that calls soldiers and homeless and strange geniuses alike to its center, throws its tantrum. It swallows its pain and sadness and misery even as it creates more.

It's a cesspool outside. Inside is little better. But like two rats in the rain struggling for purchase in the flood of dark waters, two who figure themselves drowning rodents find a little harmony. in the dark.

END.