Sherlock X Reader One Shots || 𝐹𝐿𝑈𝐹𝐹 + 𝑆𝑀𝑈𝑇

A Picture Speaks A Thousand Words (Part 4)

And now for the one time all three of the metaphorical cats left the metaphorical bag.

...

It all started on a damp afternoon in mid-April when Sherlock came home with a bruised cheek.

The bruise had begun a shocked red, an explosion of blood cells rushing through capillaries. By now, the passage of time had dulled it into a mellow purple hue, a stark and bare contrast of colour against his china-cup-pale skin.

A man had hit him, and was now wishing he hadn't. The man's hand had suffered much more than Sherlock's face. The prominent bone his bare, unsuspecting knuckles had collided with had felt like a whetted wedge of marble. He'd doubled over to cradle his wounded fist tight to his chest immediately after delivering the punch, protectively shrinking away like a wounded animal.

There's a reason boxers are encouraged to lightly bounce on the balls of their feet. In a fight, it's best to keep moving. The man didn't keep moving, he was too distracted trying to nurse something----anything---back into his fingers. This allowed Sherlock to neatly and efficiently disable him even further, and slip his wrists into a pair of handcuffs.

A useless piece of information: The man doesn't care that he lost the fight, or that he was arrested. He's just glad the police station has first aid.

Sherlock couldn't smile as he greeted Y/N upon entering the flat, although he wanted to. Smiling meant his contused muscles pulling up the corners of his lips, dragging them back, away from his teeth. The movement twinged more than he'd expected it to.

It was probably because of the lack of smiling that Y/N reached the fairly logical conclusion his wound was much worse than it actually was.

Sherlock can read Y/N like a book. Well, he can read everyone like a book, but she is his favourite. He'd read her many times, cover to cover. He'd memorised paragraphs. He'd kept notes and jotted in the margins. He is an expert on all things Y/N. It didn't take an expert to register her obvious, abt concern, though. Her shoulders had set and her mouth had fallen open enough to give Sherlock a glance at the rocky edge of her teeth.

"I'm fine," He said quickly, his words nudging the ones she'd been about to say gently back into her chest. "Remember that case with the bottle-opener?"

Y/N had been cleaning. There was something sticky on the table that would cling to her shirt sleeve every time she sat down. Scrubbing hadn't really helped. If anything, it had made the situation worse; the sticky thing had grabbed at the cloth and bitten off bunches of fibres. Now it looked like it had grown fur. It had evolved.

The door opening had been a welcome distraction, but the sight of her friend's beaten-up face had been very unwelcome. Well, not his face. The bruise flowing on his cheekbone was the worrying imposter. It had made Y/N's stomach slip between the rest of her organs and fall wetly onto the floor. Who had done this? And was revenge necessary?

Y/N nodded. She remembered all of Sherlock's cases. Mainly because he enjoyed telling her about them. She also enjoyed hearing about them. It was a perfect arrangement. "The guy with the black hair?" She'd asked the question but it didn't matter. She'd just said it as something to say.

"Yeah, him. I caught him today and he hit me." Sherlock had slipped his cobalt scarf from his neck and was now busying with his coat buttons. The material had crystal-clear droplets of moisture pebbled over the shoulders---from the rain---and harsh scrapes of murky globules staining the elbows---from where he'd accidentally ran them along the slick walls of an alleyway. Everything's always slick in April---showers and all that.