Title: Need To Know

Author: Still Waters

Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)

Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock. Just playing, with love and respect to those who brought these characters to life.

Summary: When John comes home from work late, limping, and gripping a cane in his right hand, Sherlock demands data. And finds a new respect for John and their friendship in how John provides it.

Brit-pick: Many thanks to the lovely mrspencil for taking the time to check my work for blatant Americanisms. Any mistakes created during subsequent editing belong entirely to me.

Notes: This story stemmed from the idea of John coming home from work one day with a cane and a limp, Sherlock quietly panicking and needing to know why, and John proving both his personal strength and the depth of their friendship in how he deals with it all. As I started to write, I found myself wanting to present it as a sort of quiet piece; a restrained look at their friendship. While I don't reference it directly, I see this story as taking place sometime after TGG but before all the Irene Adler stuff in ASiB. I could see that period being taut with high emotions, both John and Sherlock easily unsettled and looking at things with a more doubtful, critical eye, yet having grown even closer in bond. I imagine Sherlock, in particular, being prone to more seeds of doubt, whether he'd admit them or not, after everything that happened with Moriarty. I hope I did the characters, and that emotional headspace, justice. Thank you for reading.

Sherlock was sprawled in his chair, eyes on the ceiling and mind everywhere, when the front door opened.

Ah, a puzzle. Good. He had been dangerously close to boredom.

John was one hour and ten minutes late in returning from work. Certainly not the most complex or unique of puzzles – John was occasionally late home after a shift as medicine had a frustrating habit of not adhering to a set schedule when Sherlock required it – but an exercise all the same.

Hypotheses:

(1) The surgery was overbooked and understaffed (most likely, as John's locum status simply filled in for missing hands, rather than add additional coverage)

(2) John had chosen to stay late to catch up on paperwork (possible, considering John's weary sigh when Sherlock pulled him out of the closed surgery last Sunday with the pronouncement that medication reviews on an 88 year old heart failure patient were frightfully dull, and why would he possibly want to do that on the living when there was a delightfully interesting dead man's flat filled with prescription bottles to study instead?) or

(3) John had a difficult day, more specifically an emotionally draining patient, and had decided to walk for awhile to clear his head before returning to the flat (probable – it had been some time since he'd last had one of those).

He would start with those three. A rather boring selection, but it always did well to start there, to eliminate the high likelihood of the mundane before getting into the truly interesting theories.

Sherlock closed his eyes to further his hearing acuity.

He'd begin with the auditory data.

"Evening, dear." Slightly muffled. No creak of swollen wood. Mrs. Hudson calling the greeting through her closed door.

"Evening, Mrs. Hudson." John's standard reply, warm with the pleasure of routine, his affection for the woman softening each syllable. But there was something else there tonight, something John was trying to suppress. A…..tightness of sorts. Not shortness, as if he were angry or over-tired. More the well-practiced repression of a man accustomed to shouldering his duty, fading into the background, and just getting on with it.

Sherlock cocked his head toward the sitting room door, to better hear John approach the stairs. Two feet on the first step. Interesting. Even when exhausted, John took the stairs at a fair pace, one foot per step. A pause, followed by an uneven shift of weight. Limping? Forcing himself to keep his eyes closed, Sherlock pushed up a little on his elbows. Why would John be limping? It did occasionally pop up, mild and transitory, but present, when John had one of his increasingly rare cycles of nightmares, but the data didn't correlate. On those days, John still took the steps one foot at a time, and today – an intake of breath, one foot on the second step, followed by the other joining alongside it – the pattern had changed.

Why had it changed? Deviating patterns were always significant.

Another pause and unbalanced shift of weight, as if John were bracing himself for something unpleasant. Hand gripping the banister in preparation for the next step. One foot off the ground.

And then a new sound - one Sherlock had only ever heard through closed doors, when John woke up on a particularly cold or damp morning and came downstairs holding his left arm several millimeters closer to his body. Where, when he thought Sherlock wasn't looking, he gingerly moved his shoulder through range of motion exercises while waiting for the kettle to boil. A bitten back hiss, harsh through his teeth.

Pain.

Sherlock's eyes flew open as the picture exploded across the dark canvass of his closed lids.

A solid sound as John's weight hit the banister. A hastily tampered, "shit." And the metallic tap of something inorganic meeting the wooden step as John carefully shifted back toward his usual method of ascending the stairs: favoring the wall on his left.

Sherlock's mind ground to a halt, replaying every sound from the moment John had walked in the door. How had he missed that last sound? Out of everything it meant? He adjusted the speed, sifted through the layers, and, with some measure of relief, realized that he hadn't missed it. John must have been holding it off the ground, choosing the banister as a substitute instead, not using the blasted thing until he lost his balance and risked falling.

Two words consumed Sherlock's thoughts – "idiot" and "why?" – indistinguishable in their immediate relevance, as he bolted upright in his chair, fixing his focus on the exact spot that John eventually entered the room, right hand gripping a clinically bland copy of the cane that now lay banished, unneeded at the back of his closet.

"Why do you have that?"

John jolted to a stop as if Sherlock's words were a physical wall. He obviously hadn't expected to be able to hide it from Sherlock, nor had he hoped for a minute or two to get settled before addressing the issue. He'd known Sherlock long enough to know better than that. Still, the response surprised, and possibly even unsettled, him. He had expected Sherlock's deductive nystagmus: to be pinned under those flickering, data-driven eyes, as Sherlock silently read everything he needed to know before ever uttering a word. The fact that Sherlock had immediately spoken instead, combined with his choice of words, was….odd.

And Sherlock wasn't the only one who paid attention to patterns.

"What?" John's mouth offered as his brain rapidly flipped through its internal Sherlock encyclopedia, searching for clues.

"Why do you have that?" Sherlock demanded, words as icy as the glare fixed on John's cane.

Okay, not 'possibly.' Definitely unsettled now. Sherlock hated repetition, so the fact that he was not only doing it, but also not complaining about doing it, was decidedly Not Good.

Right.

John squared his shoulders, shifting into his 'right, then – we're dealing with this now' stance. "It isn't what you're thinking, Sherlock. Really, it's fine."

Sherlock's gaze moved over John's bearing – standing, not looking to sit, same as he'd deduced upon meeting him for the first time – before capturing John's eyes with a firm, almost offended glare, as if at the sheer audacity of John to presume to know what he was thinking.

As always, John refused to be intimidated, narrowing his own eyes in response: a reminder to Sherlock that John did, in fact, intimately, know what Sherlock was thinking at that moment because it was about his bloody leg, thank you very much. "There was an incident with a patient at the surgery today. Got my patella dislocated," he punctuated the explanation with a tap of the cane against his leg, "while getting him under control."

Sherlock's eyes darkened. "He attacked you?" He had come to the conclusion early on that John's job at the surgery, while debatably necessary, was boring, quiet, safe. Evidently a re-analysis was in order.

"Not until I attacked him. Wasn't my patient," John clarified.

"Why did he do it?"

Another "why." This one less of a scientist's drive for answers, and more the demand of the world's most brilliant, overgrown toddler. John shifted his grip slightly on the cane, watching Sherlock's eyes catalogue the action before returning to John's face in an almost petulant expectation.

Really, now.

"What? Dislocate my knee?" John asked, a hint of a smirk teasing across his lips and lighting his eyes; playfully irreverent and dangerously competent all at once. "Hmm, I can't be sure, but the fact that he was in a rage before I had him pinned on the ground with compromised cerebral circulation, might have had something to do with it."

Sherlock's expression intensified into some darker, more frightening side of irritated impatience. "Feigned obliviousness does not suit you, John, so do refrain from attempting to use it on me again. I could have accepted that narcotic pain relievers had dulled your higher functioning, but seeing as you've clearly taken nothing stronger than paracetamol, narcotic influence therefore offers neither explanation nor excuse as to why you've suddenly become stupid enough to think sarcasm will deflect my question." Sherlock fixed him with one of his post-deductive stares - a soundless breath after the rush - and enunciated his next words very carefully, each syllable a sharp, dangerous demand. "Now, why did he do it?"

Repetition again. Still Not Good.

John released a heavy, mental sigh. Externally, the sarcastic gallows humor smoothed effortlessly into quietly commanding assurance. "You're right." He pointedly ignored the smug, nonverbal 'obviously' quirk of Sherlock's eyebrow. "I'm quite lucid," he continued. "Lucid enough not to break patient confidentiality by giving you any more information than you've already undoubtedly deduced."

Sherlock scoffed through his surprise at the fact that John appeared to have actually just denied him details. "He wasn't your patient," Sherlock recalled John's words aloud, his tone a verbal equivalent of The Look. "You wouldn't have gotten involved unless he'd already injured, or was seriously threatening to injure, someone else. Considering the location, most likely a colleague. Possibly a family member."

"True," John acknowledged with a noncommittal shrug. "Oddly enough however, that negates neither his right to privacy, nor his right to avoid becoming your next case. It's a matter for the police and his doctors, Sherlock. Not for you."

Sherlock had to assume that John was being willfully obtuse. It was the only logical explanation for his flatmate missing the obvious fact that anything, or anyone, that caused John to use a cane again automatically was his case; that it was a matter for Sherlock, because John mattered.

Surely John had to understand that Sherlock needed data. He had offered one possible explanation, yes, but without more facts, Sherlock couldn't rule out the second, much uglier possibility that was gnawing at the edges of all other rational thought. While he didn't suspect that John would blatantly lie to him – not that John really could; he was a poor liar at best – the man had proved remarkably gifted in managing to surprise Sherlock with hidden facets of himself, which made the acquisition of unencumbered, objective facts that much more imperative. There was an outline of a knee immobilizer under John's right trouser leg, but it would be easy enough to put one on in order to support a story about dislocation; to direct Sherlock's attention away from the real reason: like the sudden return of a psychosomatic limp. Something John would not want to discuss.

It certainly would be clever. Was John that clever? Possibly. People had a tendency to underestimate his flatmate. A mistake that Sherlock, like anyone else who had seen John prove them wrong, was careful not to make again.

No, there was no acceptable margin of error in this case. He had to know.

Building from John's infuriatingly unhelpful response to his previous deduction, Sherlock changed tactics, appealing to John's caring nature for confirmation of at least one fact. "Was anyone else hurt?"

John chuckled low in his throat, giving Sherlock a half-impressed, half-'I expected that' smirk. "Nice try, but no. Not giving you any more, Sherlock."

Sherlock nearly growled, wrestling the frustrated sound down until it was nothing more than a harsh edge in his next inhalation. "You know I'll just go to the surgery and find out for myself," he pointed out.

"You can go to the surgery, yes. Never thought for a minute that you wouldn't. But none of the staff will give you any more information than I have. No matter what you do with your….." John waved his left hand, the disgusted gesture softened by a stubbornly irrepressible, underlying fondness, "….cheekbones, or coat collar, or, God help us, if you actually try to charm it out of them."

Sherlock fixed John with a piercing look: equal parts confusion, curiosity, and 'why are you not behaving according to my previous theory' irritation. "I don't understand why you are so adamant about protecting a man who has displayed such obvious disregard for the safety of others." This was John – the man who had killed a cabbie for trying to kill Sherlock, a man he had only just met. And slept soundly for it.

John gave him a layered look; one that Sherlock, unable to immediately read, filed away for later analysis. "Because I'm an idiot," John snorted softly; the weary sound part private joke, part disappointment that Sherlock hadn't made the connection. He drew himself up, only then making it apparent that he had ever slumped at all. "And because it's my job. I take my oaths seriously, Sherlock. All of them. Thought you'd have deduced that by now." He managed to spit the word – the one Sherlock valued as an extension of his very self - without ever changing his tone.

Sherlock went silent.

"Are we done here?" John's voice was dangerously low, command-clipped.

Sherlock remained quiet, eyes still focused on John, but blanking out as he moved to internal processing; newly steepled fingers a clear indicator that he wouldn't be moving, or talking, for some time.

"Good," John nodded, military sharp. Executing an equally sharp left-face despite the cane, he strode into the kitchen, ignoring the feel of Sherlock's eyes tracking and analyzing every movement as he put the kettle on.

Several hours later, long after John had gone to bed, Sherlock finally understood.

"I don't understand why you are so adamant about protecting a man who has displayed such obvious disregard for the safety of others."

He hadn't been wrong about the cabbie. John did have a strong moral principle. He'd just forgotten that morality, in any terms, tended to be quite difficult to pin down and define. Rather than black and white, it was often decidedly gray.

Layers, and layers, of gray.

Like the answer that had been right there in John's eyes, layered under the words he'd chosen to speak out loud: Same reason I do it for you.

Sherlock's gaze shifted along the ceiling toward his flatmate's room.

"Oh."

The next morning, Sherlock stormed the surgery an hour into John's shift only to find, to his great annoyance, that John had been right: no one gave him any further information, not even a simple confirmation or denial as to whether the incident had taken place. Sherlock had just settled against a strategic observation point on the far wall, resigning himself to the tedious method of observing every staff member that walked by and attempting to separate their personal medical history or healthcare-induced bad back from a potentially raging patient-induced injury, when Sarah walked behind the desk, picked up an x-ray envelope, and motioned for him to follow her.

Sherlock trailed her into an empty consulting room, already in mid-breath to cut off what would undoubtedly be a pathetic attempt to cite privacy regulations in order to force him to leave. Instead, he found himself stopping three steps into the room when, with a private smile, Sarah flicked on the x-ray viewer and held the envelope out to him.

"He didn't need to have both of these done, you know. It was an obvious lateral displacement and reduced easily; no reason to suspect fracture or other complications. But John insisted on going out to A&E for pre and post-reduction films. Never said why," Sarah smiled knowingly at Sherlock.

Annoyed with her obvious pleasure at feeling like she had one up on him, Sherlock maintained his neutral expression while infusing his voice with its most superior, smug smirk. "Aren't there some sort of privacy rules against giving me these?"

"Top sheet," Sarah waved the envelope, holding it out further toward Sherlock, as if tempting a wary, but curious, animal to come closer and take it.

Sherlock moved forward in two long, fluid, soundless steps and plucked the envelope from her hand, eyes moving over John's information on the upper corner as he reached in and pulled out a consent form, signed by John, giving Sherlock one-time-only permission to view the envelope's contents.

Sarah gave one of those infuriating smiles again as she stepped around him toward the door. "Let me know if you need help interpreting them," she tossed over her shoulder.

Still focused on the consent form, Sherlock rolled his eyes as the door clicked shut. As if he hadn't spent the early morning hours studying websites on orthopedics and trauma-based psychology in preparation for the day's data collection. He pulled out the x-rays, took careful note of the date and time stamps, and lined them up side-by-side on the viewer. His eyes moved from the first film – a clear, lateral patellar dislocation as John and Sarah had stated – to the second, timed nearly thirty minutes later, showing the patella back in place, with all surrounding structures intact. Sherlock's focus was a diagnostic test itself, eyes boring into the white images as if he could read John's very DNA; be certain that they were John's bones.

Once satisfied with the authenticity of the data in front of him, Sherlock unfolded a final piece of paper from the envelope: a blank chart note with the previous day's date in the upper right corner in John's specific-to-work doctor's scrawl.

See? It's all fine. I'll be rid of the sodding thing in a week or two. No need to arrange another cab chase across London – first dose is still holding brilliantly, thank you. Now stop harassing my patients and colleagues. Go bother Lestrade if you're that desperate for something to do. I'll be in for dinner.

~ John

Sherlock sighed: a long, open, unrepentant breath of relief.

Clever John. Brilliant, under estimable, caring John. Who had put up with Sherlock's interrogation the previous night despite the knowledge of what he had already arranged; what he had done for Sherlock simply because he knew his friend would need it.

And Sherlock had needed it. As much as he hated to admit it, this was exactly what he'd needed.

His chest loosened as a long denied, tightly pent-up mix of anxiety and uncertainty faded away in the face of a clear, data-driven answer.

Physical injury. Not a psychosomatic echo.

Temporary. Not returned.

He hadn't been wrong in his initial treatment of the limp, and he hadn't failed. Hadn't failed John: a possibility more unacceptable, in this case, than having potentially been wrong in general.

Interesting.

Yet no longer completely surprising.

Sherlock tucked John's note into his pocket, turned off the viewer, and walked to the desk, handing the envelope to the receptionist with a polite nod.

On the way back to Baker Street, he sent a purposefully provocative text to Lestrade – Surely your squad of idiots hasn't actually been solving cases for you today. SH – before dialing a well-used number. Judging by the full waiting room, he knew that not only would John appreciate the initiative, but that he'd also accept it as a wordless apology.

"Angelo? Sherlock Holmes. I'll be needing a table for 7:00 tonight, if you have one." His lips quirked at Angelo's exuberant confirmation of the reservation. "Excellent. Thank you."

The first time he'd brought John to Angelo's, it had been with the private knowledge that John would soon be rid of that bloody cane. Sherlock fingered the note in his pocket. Tonight, he had shared confirmation of the same.

So his choice of restaurant had nothing to do with some ridiculously misplaced sense of nostalgia or sentiment.

He simply enjoyed symmetry.