It's All Fine

Sherlock never asked what happened in the hours between John being kidnapped and the events at the pool. It occurs to him, days after the fact, that he probably should have.

Isn't that what people do?

But Sherlock isn't people. He doesn't have to ask, because he knows that John is fine. Whatever did, or didn't, happen in those hours doesn't matter. John is fine. It was all there in that small nod that John had given him at the pool. And even if he lied – he didn't – Sherlock would have been able to tell in a second. Certainly there had been no physical harm (surprising, it meant they had taken John completely unawares), that would have made itself clear almost instantaneously.

But – and this is the part Sherlock's brain keeps whirling back to – there are other kinds of harm than just the physical. And John is a living, breathing example of the strange ways in which the brain deals with being hurt.

Except... John is fine. He is. He'd said so, and Sherlock had seen it for himself. Had demanded confirmation while ripping that blasted, bloody Semtex vest away from John's chest and John had joked about it of all things and everything had been perfectly fine and normal (as normal as it gets with a consulting detective and his blogger) ever since.

In fact they'd been better than fine. What had happened at the pool had solidified Sherlock and John into a single unit, a team that worked better than Sherlock could have ever imagined or hoped for, even when he'd first recognized John was his friend (And that had happened rather quickly, hadn't it?).

So it's infuriating, absolutely infuriating, that Sherlock's mind keeps going back there. To the pool. And it's not about analyzing it or about Moriarty, it's about John and Sherlock is obsessing over every little flickered change in expression John had that night.

John had been in that still place of his, that tense, waiting readiness that Sherlock observed in him whenever things were truly dangerous. That was John, the true John, standing there and prepared for anything, to do anything he had to.

And that, more than anything, had told him John was fine. That John is fine.

So why, why, won't his normally reasonable, logical mind accept it?

It makes Sherlock hiss in frustration.

"Alright there, Sherlock?" John calls out from the living room.

"Fine," Sherlock says testily, because he is and John is and it's all fine.

"Right," says John. "Got it. No need to get your knickers in a twist."

And Sherlock ignores him and goes back to his microscope and his blood samples and a world where his own brain doesn't try to fight him.

Because John hasn't spoken about it (except, possibly, to Lestrade, and Sherlock could easily get his hands on the file but he won't, he won't damn it) and if John isn't going to speak then Sherlock sure as hell isn't going to ask.

Besides, it's fine. He knows it is. That John is.

He just needs to convince himself.