Innocent

John glowered through the one way glass, wishing he was on the other side of it so he could properly vent his anger and frustration. He'd never liked this feeling, though to be fair, he hadn't been forced to deal with it since Afghanistan. That restless, churning fury that makes your muscles vibrate in readiness, in anticipation, that urge tingling up your spine like ghostly fingers trying to prod you into doing something, anything, to vent the build up of pressure eagerly pushing against your skin and coiling your muscles like a spring ready to propel you forwards. To get it done. To fix the problem.

And then the infuriating realization that there is nothing that can be done. Nothing to do with all that energy.

It was maddening.

So, unable to do much else, John had to settle with trying to penetrate the glass with his hatred and telekinetically set the man's head on fire. So far it wasn't working.

Carl McMillan sat in the negotiation room, handcuffed securely to a sturdy metal table across from Anderson and Donovan. He wore a smug look on his dirty, unshaven face that made you just want to smack him, despite the fact that he was physically imposing; towering over six feet tall, well muscled, hard eyes and a raging temper. Worst of all, he was smart and he knew it. He knew it had taken them ages to track and catch him, even with Sherlock on their side, because he had planned it that way.

It wasn't the type of case they normally took, but when Lestrade had burst into their flat a few weeks ago looking exhausted and at the very end of his rope, Sherlock had agreed to help and, as far as cases went, John could easily say this had been one of the most brutal, something they'd only found out afterward. The whole thing had been very hush hush and confidential and they'd only allowed Sherlock to decipher the puzzle clues left behind by the killer, something which he'd been furious about to begin with but soon had lost himself in the puzzle solving. They were elaborate and designed to taunt and Sherlock had lost himself in them for days, not eating or sleeping.

The man had let it consume him on a level far deeper than what John would have considered healthy, in his professional opinion. When he had gingerly broached his concerns with Sherlock, he hadn't gotten a snarl or a vicious insult like he'd been expecting, but a weary, anxious look when his flatmate had raised his head to stare at him. John remembered him muttering something out this one being bad, how it was itching but he didn't know where to scratch, so to speak. He hadn't really understood and had told Sherlock as much, but the other man hadn't seemed to be able to articulate his meaning beyond a few words.

"This man is smart, John, and twisted. I don't know why looking at these puzzles of his makes me so desperate to solve them. Whatever he's doing while I'm being kept busy with these is something that makes my stomach roll; even though I don't know what it is."

John had felt stunned after the confession. Sherlock never felt unnerved like he'd been while trying to work through McMillan's games and it had left John a little unsteady himself. Not to mention, it hadn't helped his concern for his friend's well-being either.

He remembered stumbling into the kitchen at three in the morning after being woken by a strange urge for peanut butter. Sherlock had been on the case, as restricted as he was by Lestrade, for a little over a week. John hadn't been sure at that point when Sherlock had lest slept, but it had been days at least and John knew it was just about his breaking point. Sherlock never lasted more than four days before his body forced him to rest. And sure enough, when he'd gone into the kitchen there had been his flatmate, hundreds of papers scattered over the kitchen table, head of dark curls resting on his folded arms and a case file clutched tightly in one of his hands. Sound asleep.

With a small smile, John had tried to move about the kitchen as silently as possible so as not to wake the man from his much needed sleep, but it seemed, even at rest, Sherlock's brain never stopped spinning; never truly came to a stop.

John was pulling a butter knife from the utensils drawer when Sherlock shifted abruptly, a paper crushed in his fist. One look behind him told John he was still asleep and he turned back to spread peanut butter over his bread just as Sherlock suddenly lurched to his feet, the legs of the chair scraping loudly in the previously silent room.

"Jesus, Sherlock!" John cried, hand over his heart as it thudded loudly.

The detective still had his eyes firmly closed for a second before they slowly opened and found John's. "I'm so tired." his whispered absently, looking down at the papers littering the table.

John figured he must be, to admit it out loud. "Then why don't you go to bed?"

His shaggy black head shook slightly as his blue eyes wandered over the papers, "No, I..." he trailed off and then reached for one of the pages, setting it down next to another before exhaling sharply, suddenly very much awake. "Oh..."

And just like that he'd found the pattern. The elaborate, twisting labyrinth of a path that led them to the man. Unfortunately, in the high of solving one of the most complex puzzles he'd ever stumbled upon, Sherlock had torn out of the apartment, leaving John gaping in his housecoat holding his butter knife. Thankfully, Sherlock had had the mind to call Lestrade while he was well on his way to wherever the puzzle had led him and only the fact that John had already called the D.I. to the flat and his worry for Sherlock's safety kept John from getting truly angry at the man's stupidity.

In hindsight, they should have known it was a trap and they'd all been shocked after the fact that they hadn't realized it; although no one had been more shocked about it than Sherlock had been. Carl had been waiting for him in the old warehouse, after leading Sherlock to believe that was where the next victim would be and that he'd be able to save them.

The consulting detective hadn't stood a chance against the giant of a man even if he hadn't been half starved and dangerously sleep deprived.

They'd gotten there just in time, bursting through the large double doors with guns draw, screaming orders to put down the knife. It had all been rather a loud and chaotic ordeal that had only lasted a matter of seconds, when John thought back on it, but in that moment he'd been aware of nothing but Sherlock, taking in his dazed expression as he struggled to push himself to his hands and knees, a thick trail of blood trickling down the side of his face from under his dark hair. His coat was gone and his shirt had been ripped open, presumably when McMillan had grabbed him. John remembered seeing his pale chest heaving, his lungs desperately trying to gather precious oxygen; but whether it was in panic or exertion, John would never know.

After letting the paramedics on the scene check him over, John himself had done so as well, pushing and prodding and poking and asking questions until the detective had lost his temper. The man was lucky that the blow to his head had only stunned him instead of something more serious and he'd told him as much but, as usual, Sherlock had just shrugged off his concern.

Now here they were, back at the station. Lestrade stood beside him, arms crossed as he too glared out into the room and Sherlock, after having the paramedics clean his face and head wound had steadfastly refused the hospital and now sat somewhere down the hall.

On the table between Anderson, Donovan and McMillan lay a scattering of photographs taken from the various grusome crime scenes he'd left for them. They were in the process of getting a confession, which the man was drawing out with far too much pleasure.

So far, what the he'd had to say was far beyond disturbing. McMillan had left a trail of rape and murder and dismemberment of young men across London, giving Scotland Yard one of the most disturbing cases in a long time. They'd gotten him to confess to the murders but they also wanted to pin him with everything and anything they could to make sure he spent the remainder of his life in prison.

"Why did you work so hard to get to Holmes?" Anderson asked, sounding, John was pleased to note, perfectly professional.

A slow sinister grin spread over Carl's face. "Oh, I love those little posh boys." he answered slowly, as if savoring both the thought and the words. "He's the prettiest I've seen yet." His tongue darted out to lick his lips, "All pale skin and dark hair and those eyes." He closed his own eyes and sighed. "You can always tell the clever ones by their eyes, and the clever ones are the best. So beautiful, so...innocent."

As the man spoke, John felt goose bumps blossom across his skin and he pressed his hand to his mouth, images of what McMillan could have done to his friend exploding in his brain against his will. Vivid, graphic. He felt sick.

"So you staged this elaborate game and went after all these men because of their innocence?" Sally asked dubiously.

Carl regarded her carefully for a moment, his black eyes sharp as needles. "You don't understand, do you agents? You hate him so much that you can't even see..." He trailed off into a sad chuckle, as if he was disappointed that they didn't appreciate the fruit dangling right in front of them. "There is one thing all those boys have...well, had, in common. Their innocence. Hard to find but when you do...ohh it is so worth the effort. To have something so pure and untouched in your hands...and their eyes. Watching, searching, begging for answers that normally come so easily to them. You can see their brain chugging away, trying to do the math, trying to read between the lines, see the pattern, predict the outcome...but they never can until I show them the answer." His eyes narrowed, snapping over to Anderson, "Do you know how it feels to have that kind of power over someone? To hold them down and fuck them for the first time? They always tremble so delicately, so scared, so nervous because they just don't know what's happening to them, they don't understand. It is an exquisite thing to witness."

He sat back, that smug look back on his face. "And Sherlock was the prize worth fighting for. Skin as white as fresh snow and soft as silk, it was; not a mark or blemish on him, from what I could see, and eyes like crystals staring right in to your soul. They see everything...except what I was about to do to him. So clueless, so unaware, so innocent." His smile grew, "Had him at my feet for a good twenty minutes before you lot caught up. Helpless as a kitten, and I told him what I was gonna do to him. I told him every way that I could without saying it outright word for word, and you could still go out there and ask him what he thought was about to happen and he'd get it wrong. I'd bet my freedom on that. And that, is perfection." His face was falling now and his eyes went dark. "My perfect boy and I'll never taste him because of you."

By the time they'd carted the man away John felt nauseous and faint as he blindly followed Lestrade from the room on shaky legs.

"Alright?" Lestrade asked him, looking a little pale himself.

He nodded absently in response, quite far from it.

Together, they walked back to Lestrade's office in silence and John, out of the corner of his eye, saw Sherlock sitting in an unused meeting room, fiddling intently with something in his hands. He paused, a deep frown settling on his face as he contemplated his flatmate. The consulting detective was oblivious to the attention, his keen eyes trained firmly on the flat wooden box in his hands, tilting it this way and that.

After just a moment of hesitation, John strode determinedly into the meeting room, feeling Lestrade close behind.

"Sherlock?" he asked, sounding much more tentative then he'd planned to.

The other man didn't even look up, merely humming to let John know he'd heard.

"What are you doing?"

"Regretting the moment I picked up this damn puzzle game."

John realized then that it was one of those 'roll the ball through the maze' puzzles. He hated those with a passion. He took a seat at the table a few spots down from Sherlock and Lestrade followed suite seconds later across from him.

"Sherlock, we just needed to speak to you about what happened in the warehouse. We need your side of the story." John said, watching his friend's face closely.

But the detective was fully engrossed with the puzzle and didn't look up. "Got there, he smashed the handle of that enormous knife into my skulls, I fell down, he prattled on and on, then you all showed up." He said it all very fast, clearly preoccupied.

"Sherlock put that damn puzzle down, will you?" Lestrade snapped, his posture screaming 'uncomfortable'.

Shockingly, the man obeyed and he set the box on the table before lifting his eyes to stare at them expectantly.

John cleared his throat and chose his next words very carefully. "Sherlock, do you remember what Carl said to you?"

"Of course."

"Go on then."

"Something about wanting to hurt me and that he could do whatever he wanted to me." Sherlock was examining his fingernails, looking for all the world like they were discussing something as mundane as the weather.

"Did he go into specifics?"

He shrugged. "Not really. Said he'd been waiting a long time to play with me. Did he mention any more puzzles?" He asked, looking a bit eager at the prospect.

John swallowed hard around the lump in his throat. "No. No he didn't."

Sherlock sighed now, seeming disheartened. He sunk into the chair on an angle and draped one of his long legs over the armrest, staring up at the ceiling.

"Anything else you can tell us?" Lestrade pushed.

The detective bit his lip. "He called me pretty." he frowned, "And said I had something that he wanted and he was going to take it from me." his pale face was clouded with confusion, seemingly trying to figure out what he could possibly have that Carl wanted. His interest in it only lasted a few seconds before he was picking at his fingernails again and swinging his leg back and forth over the arm rest, bored as ever.

"What do you think he meant?"

"Haven't the foggiest." His shaggy head rolled to the side to stare at John, "Shall we get takeout tonight? Chinese?"

"Sherlock..." the name eased past his lips as a sigh; he was unsure if he even wanted to push this any further.

"That's it then?" Lestrade coaxed.

"I don't know what else to tell you, Lestrade. You've been interrogating McMillan for over three hours, surely you must have plenty of evidence to-"

"You're the only living witness, Sherlock." Cried the D.I.

"Lestrade, he was talking nonsense and waiving his knife around and I was trying not to pass out. That's it. Honestly."

Lestrade nodded. "Fine. Off you go then."

John walked silently beside his tall companion, at a complete loss for words. Carl had been right. As much as he hated to admit it, John was left with a changed image of Sherlock and a fierce desire to protect him from, well, whatever was out there, reared in his chest, roaring in his ears like an angry lion. It was an intense and foreign feeling and it made him stumble a bit as he walked. He'd never felt something like that before, for anyone, much less Sherlock Holmes, a man he'd have sworn an hour ago was the only person he knew that didn't need protecting. But that was all changed now, and he couldn't unsee it; to be honest, it was more than a little unnerving to have had a conversation like that with someone who usually had the answers to everything and was cool and calculated when it came to all else but was utterly clueless, oblivious, to anything sexual.

"Where is my coat?" The taller asked suddenly.

"Oh, yes. It was in the warehouse and...wasn't salvageable. Sorry Sherlock."

The man shrugged. "It's only a coat."

But as luck would have it they stepped from the building into a torrential downpour. He saw Sherlock immediately wrap his thin arms around his torso and John thrust his hand into the air to hail a cab as quickly as possible. A few moments later they were soaked to the bone and climbing into a taxi, finally on their way back home. When they stepped into the flat, John eyed his shivering flatmate.

Sherlock's dark shirt was soaked and clinging to his skin, revealing just how slender the man was and John had to close his eyes against another rogue image of Carl easily overpowering the willowy man. He stomped it down mercilessly, focusing instead on his gratefulness that the evening hadn't taken such a devastating turn.

He felt desperate for some sense of normally to ground him and his eyes and brain simultaneously latched on to the only thing that could give that to him: the tea kettle. He set it on to boil while he went and changed into something dry and when he returned to the living room, Sherlock was already sitting at one end of the sofa, now wearing black pajama bottoms and a white t-shirt, knees drawn to his chest for warmth as he stared at the television.

"Tea?" John asked.

"Please."

As the doctor busied himself his brain was racing. Should he explain to Sherlock what Carl had intended to do or should he leave the man in blissful ignorance? What good could come of him explaining to Sherlock just how vulnerable he'd been or how close he'd come to experiencing something traumatic that he didn't understand? Would telling him better prepare him should something like this happen again? He turned to look closely at his friend.

Sherlock was a beautiful man. Tall, lean, flawless alabaster skin and piercing blue eyes and John found himself wondering if Sherlock had ever been in a position where someone was hitting on him and he just hadn't realized. He decided it would have been highly probable if Sherlock didn't have a habit of being so ruthlessly honest with his thoughts and opinions.

"John?" Sherlock said suddenly, pulling him out of his thoughts. Darn, he'd been caught staring. "You alright?"

"Yep!" He handed Sherlock his mug and sat down beside the man on the couch. After a moment he cleared his throat and looked over. "Actually...I wanted to talk to you about what happened today."

His concern was greeted with a dramatic eye roll. "Why John? Look, you can't even see the cut on my head anymore. I'm fine."

"I wouldn't be so sure. I think you just rolled your eyes so hard you saw your brain. That must have done some damage."

"That's not even-"

"I know it isn't possible!" He took a breath, "Sherlock. Do you understand what almost happened to you today?" he asked softly.

"I almost got filleted with McMillan's knife?" Sherlock answered, sounding more like he was guessing the answer John wanted to hear.

He sighed. "No..."

"Oh! You almost decided to hit me because I rushed off without telling anyone again!"

"No, Sherlock-"

"Wait, don't tell me! I can-"

"I didn't intend this as a game!"

"...oh."

An uncomfortable silence swelled between them then and John thought for a second that he should abandon this endeavor while he still had the chance. After all, this was likely going to be a long, tedious conversation and if it turned into something like an adult version of the birds and the bees, he wasn't sure he could handle it.

"Sherlock..." he took a deep breath and decided to plow through his doubt; this needed to be done. He deeply wished his friend would never be in that kind of situation again but the reality was that he could never be sure of something like that and the thought of someone hurting Sherlock that way made him feel ill and incredibly angry. So he made a decision to come at this from the only angle Sherlock was going to understand. He had to be direct.

"Sherlock he wanted...he was going to..." A curse slipped past his lips and he ran a hand through his hair; he was a doctor for god's sake! He'd given people more devastating news than 'you were almost sexually assaulted', why was he having such a hard time spitting it out? He thought it might have something to do with the way the other man was staring at him; blue eyes puzzled, brow furrowed, still oblivious to the danger he'd almost faced today.

He rubbed a hand over his face and sighed sharply into his hand, "God, how can you not know this?"

"John..."

He groaned, hearing the genuine worry in his friend's voice now. Great. He was messing this up spectacularly.

"John I don't...understand." The last word must have been a struggle for the detective to say, given his past unwillingness to concede such human shortcomings.

But it gave John a chilling flash of McMillan's words from only a few hours ago.

'...and their eyes. Watching, searching, begging for answers that normally come so easily to them. You can see their brain chugging away, trying to do the math, trying to read between the lines, see the pattern, predict the outcome...but they never can until I show them the answer...They always tremble so delicately, so scared, so nervous because they just don't know what's happening to them, they don't understand.'

He took a deep breath, locking his fingers together tightly. "He was going to rape you."

Even though he was looking at the floor, John could still feel every muscle in his flatmate's body tense, taut like an over tuned violin string. He glanced over at the man, saw pale fingers twisting the hem of his t-shirt, and frowned. Sherlock didn't fidget. He looked higher and saw that the man's blue eyes were staring straight ahead.

"Sherlock?"

His flatmate swallowed and closed his eyes, moving his head like he was trying to work out a kink in his neck, and when his eyes opened again his mask was firmly in place, the fidgeting had stopped and he reached out to the coffee table, grabbed his tea and took a sip.

Hoping that the most difficult part was over, John regarded him carefully. "Are you upset because of what could have happened to you or because you didn't see it coming?"

"Bit of both, I think." Sherlock answered, sounding as if he didn't have a grip on himself nearly as much as his outward appearance suggested. After a moment, Sherlock's eyes fluttered shut and he pulled a breath through his nose, sinking down into the couch in such a way that had John sitting up quickly, back ram rod straight and fairly alarmed. Sherlock's body language screamed something John couldn't quite put his finger on, but the fact that Sherlock even had body language to read was alarming in and of itself.

"John, I don't know what to do with this information." he said, his voice shaking ever so slightly.

Trying hard not to let his worry show, John put on his best calm doctor face. "You don't need to do anything with it, Sherlock."

"I have to put it somewhere." The other argued. "Somewhere...away."

"No. You don't. Don't hide from something that didn't happen."

Another moment passed in silence and John desperately hoped his flatmate knew what he'd meant by that. His intention hadn't been to scare the man and he certainly did not want him dwelling on something that was no longer a threat, but hindsight had a funny way of messing with your head, even if your head housed a brain as brilliant as Sherlock Holmes'.

"Suppose that makes sense."

"What? I'm sorry, did I just hear you say I'm right?"

"Yes, well..."

John simply smiled and graciously chose not to take the teasing any further. "Takeout? Chinese?"

"Spring rolls. Extra-"

"-plum sauce, yeah, I know."

John was satisfied when he saw the corner of Sherlock's mouth twist in that lopsided grin he got when John did something he found amusing and he pushed himself off the couch to call the takeout place, his chest light, once again feeling so very happy that this night had turned out so well.

Do please review, I'd be delighted.