The Morning After (RP for asthenoseonyourface)

[coatandscarf]

You should have some coffee. -JR

...John? How did you...? Nevermind. When you took my phone. Of course. I already had coffee. RH

One cup? Stingy. -JR

All I need is one, Holmes. RH

I like caffeine. -JR

When are you moving into the office? -JR

Well, I'm packing the things I need now, John, but someone keeps interrupting me. RH

Oh. Who? -JR

Go look in a mirror. Or at Jacob. It's close enough. RH

...Why? -JR

Because it's you who keeps interrupting! RH

Well I'm BORED. -JR

You're welcome to help me pack. RH

Really? Why? -JR

Because you're bored. RH

So? -JR

Just giving you something to do. You're welcome to say no. RH

I'm not saying no. -JR

But why are you helping me? -JR

There a reason I shouldn't? RH *attached is her address*

Comments

[asthenoseonyourface]

John was no stranger to human contact, his brother and sister touched him often. He even found it acceptable, to be Janie's human pillow during a movie or hug his brother, be hugged. Janie giggled when he hugged her and kisses on her head made her smile. Those were vitally important things to him, and not just because their behavior told him what he needed to know about social behavior. They were triplets, they were...linked.

But something about the way Randy held his hand was different in a manner he couldn't quite put his finger on. He looked to their joined hands, then up to her face, gaze cool and assessing...confused but not bewildered, focused in his need to understand.

"Why is it important?"

[coatandscarf]

"Because despite being a self-proclaimed sociopath, you *do* care. And you are human. I've never met anyone that wasn't, besides another species. I'm sure you've been called a freak many a time, if your reaction to the name 'Sherlock' is any indication at all, but... you're merely an exception to the rule. It doesn't make you any less human than the rest of us. And that's important to me, knowing now that you don't realize that about yourself." Randy shrugged slightly, giving him the faintest of smiles. "I like to 'fix' things, I guess. But in my case, it's not things, it's people. It's... the eternal argument of the glass, I suppose. Things might try to beat me down, but I like to think that the glass is half full, rather than half empty." She closed her eyes then, shaking her head briefly as she sighed. "I'm sorry, I don't think I made any sense at all. I've never... well, had to describe any of this before."

[asthenoseonyourface]

John didn't answer.

He was no longer quite so still and silent, but John didn't answer when she spoke, watching her instead, allowing his hand to be held. He didn't try to reciprocate...and she was right, he didn't exactly understand what she was talking about.

She was talking, though, and she seemed so intent...the woman who saw like he did, who observed, who could think. She wasn't as smart as him, but she was sharp. She was clever.

Clever enough that she left John thinking, still and silent...John Riley, the man who would outlive God trying to have the last word.

[coatandscarf]

Randy opened her eyes then, looking back at him. He looked restless, but he didn't say a word. It was almost enough to make her nervous, except for the fact that he probably needed a little time to think about her words. She was certain he'd have a flood of questions, once he'd allocated things properly in his mind.

So she simply squeezed his hand lightly, releasing him as she took a sip of her coffee. If he was going to sit there, who knew how long that would take. She could continue packing in the meantime.

[asthenoseonyourface]

John blinked when she released his hand, strangely distracted by it. Squeezing his eyes shut for a second to clear his head, he reached for his coffee again as he watched her, taking a sip.

"So...you're just observant." he mused curiously. "It's nothing..." He trailed off, a little at a loss as to how to explain his problem. Janie told him it was rude to brag about being smart, Jock said no one liked a showoff...how the hell else was he supposed to explain that he was better than everyone?

"I was eight years old when I entered the sixth grade...well, seventh." he began, correcting himself. "Technically, I was only in the sixth grade for two months of the school year, passed and began seventh in the fall."

[coatandscarf]

Any desire to get up and pack stopped the moment he spoke again. 'Just observant', eh? He probably didn't mean for it to sound as insulting as it came off. Social skills didn't seem to rank high on his list of abilities.

Instead, she listened as he explains about his educational past, surprised to hear that he had already been in the seventh grade when he was eight. Mathematically, he should have been in the second. One or two grade jumps were not that unusual... *five* was virtually unheard of. Instead she nodded slightly. "I was in the fourth when I was eight. They had me skip first and second grade, but they were scared of bringing me any further ahead." The isolation an eight year old must have gone through... Her heart ached for the man, knowing how alone he must have been.

[asthenoseonyourface]

"They let me choose." John replied, feeling slightly better as he got back into talking, having something to say. "It was my choice...and it was great for a couple of years." He paused, faltering again, then hesitantly...

"You know that feeling you get when you're thinking? When your head doesn't quite hurt, but...but it flexes. You realize your brain's a muscle because you can feel it working...and your heart starts to race and your chest starts to tighten but it's not panic, it's...I have to assume it's more like love. It's thinking and learning and just a splash of adrenaline because you don't know..."

He trailed off, and for the first time his features registered real emotion. They were soft, shining with warmth and real excitement, blue eyes no longer calm but glowing, snapping with remembered euphoria....remembered feeling.

"You think until your brain wears out, and you let it rest." he finished. "Then there's room, time for everything else, it's like...a door opens, and without the brain you have a heart and a conscience and a place for a person inside. I didn't know how, exactly, but my brother and sister showed me. How to act, what to do, what to say..." He paused, meeting her gaze again as the memory began to fade and his features slowly began to shut down again, one by one the lights going out.

"I had that for about two years. Friends, activities, all that stuff. I had to skip five grades to work hard enough that I could stop my own head from swallowing me up."

[coatandscarf]

He seemed more in his element when he was talking. He was comfortable with talking, with explaining. It was something he was used to doing, she was sure, so it was good to see that he was comfortable doing it. The slight tension in his shoulders had fading almost the moment he began to speak. He was downright relaxed as he actually explained the exhilaration, the *love* he felt over being challenged.

Randy was floored. She had never considered it like that. She loved a challenge, sure, but she'd never compared it to love. Love and thought were two entirely different things. But as she looked at him, really *looked*, she couldn't bring herself to say anything. He actually looked... happy. Excited. *Emotional*. Like he was actually alive behind that tremendous IQ.

She continued to listen quietly as he explained how the brain would wear out, and only then would he listen to the rest of his body. How his siblings taught him how to behave. Randy felt herself saddening as he met her gaze, seeing that unemotional, cold mask settle into his features once again. It was amazing, the difference it made in his features. She'd actually almost seen a smile on his lips, a genuine one. Now... any smile he might give her would feel hollow in comparison.

Her heart almost broke as he finished, her eyes wide as she looked at him. The idea that his mind worked so fast that it overwhelmed everything else, that it didn't let him *do* anything else was the most frightening thing she could think of. "You... haven't felt that since? That... your brain could slow down again for the rest of you to come through again?" She found herself asking quietly, the coffee in her hands forgotten as she met his gaze.

[asthenoseonyourface]

John nodded, shrugging. "Developmentally, I plateaued. I was stuck: high school afforded me the educational parameters I needed to expand intellectually, but socially I had no frame to hang myself on. Teachers fed me college course material to stave off mental consumption, but even that wasn't good enough anymore. It wasn't enough, it wasn't nearly enough, and in the brief instances when it was..."

The rest hung silent in the air, at least in his own head. He didn't know how to behave socially, he learned from his siblings. Having entered high school without them...he didn't know how to pretend at normalcy.

[coatandscarf]

"...You were alone," she concluded softly. It explained so much. He was overly dependent on his siblings, because he had no friends of his own. With his siblings not at the same grade as he, he couldn't rely on them in school. He had no one else to relate to, because he never learned how to relate to people, probably because they weren't his age and therefore thought him a freak. His childhood had been spent seeking the next academic challenge, rather than... just being a kid.

It was the saddest thing she'd ever heard. Dear God, the urge to give him a hug was almost overwhelming. "I... I am so sorry, John." Suddenly, calling him 'Holmes' as no longer very amusing.

[asthenoseonyourface]

The name stirred him from his thoughts, making him frown briefly in confusion. They made a deal, social contract said she ought to call him Sherlock, whether he liked it or not...

"You feel sorry for me." he realized aloud, without offense or distaste...save for a tiny kernel of exasperation. "Don't be sorry, there's no reason for it. I'm the best at what I do, beats the hell out of being ordinary."

With his usual small, somewhat empty smile, he stood and crossed the room, suddenly a whirl of brisk agitation and impatience. Thank God for caffeine...

"Pack, you were packing. Let's pack." he declared emphatically, picking up a book and giving it a cursory glance before hovering over one box, then another, then finally placing it in a third, the correct one if she went to check.

[coatandscarf]

She watched him rise, after having explained that she should be sorry, because it beat being ordinary. He went off like a bullet then, moving to help her pack, putting a book into the box she'd been preparing for her bookshelf.

Of course he'd know where to pack her things away. What didn't he know?

Randy rose to her feet, moving to grab some of her equipment, setting it into the first box. "Do you regret it? Obviously, your mind is extraordinary but... Do you regret not knowing how others feel? And I mean beyond the academic understanding. I mean an emotional understanding." She had a feeling she'd know the answer already, but part of her really wanted to hear what he had to say about it.

[asthenoseonyourface]

John snorted as he picked up another small stack of books, carefully sorting them into their respective boxes. "Oh, I feel, I just don't care."

The words left him casually, even a little cold, like talking about the weather or an errand that needed running.

"That's the thing with sociopaths, we have feelings, we just don't...know how to use them, I suppose." he sighed. "I can feel all sorts of things, very intensely, even. I just don't care about really anything you do. Who I hurt, what I have to do to get what I want, how to behave in public." He paused, and a shadow crossed through his empty gaze, his movements hesitating the briefest moment.

"Those two years were good, though." he admitted as clinically as he could manage. "Jock and Janie, they had real lives. They didn't have to worry about me, they could take me out in public...it was better for them. I do regret that: being a burden."

[coatandscarf]

Randy listened carefully. She listened to his tone, she looked at his mannerisms, making a multitude of mental notes about the man and how he considered himself.

She noticed the hesitation immediately.

He admitted he regretted being a burden to his siblings. That worrying them was a concern. She could see why they would be preoccupied with him. Anyone that didn't know about his conditions could easily be overwhelmed by the man. "Have you ever found something that might let you recapture those years?" The question came out before she even thought about it, and she regretted it almost the moment they left her lips. What business was it of hers? Why should she care, when he himself did not?

But that was it, wasn't it? Because somewhere in there, he *did* care. He cared enough about something, and that something was important to him.

[asthenoseonyourface]

He nodded just a little, finishing with the books and moving on to a small stack of file folders. He opened one, closed it, then promptly set it in the correct box.

"One thing. Why do you think my brother and sister opened a detective agency, Doctor Adler?" He glanced up at her with his small, hollow smile. "I'm an antisocial mad genius with a drug habit...how else do you keep a white hat on a man like that?"

[coatandscarf]

Adler. He'd gone back to Adler. Yet with a formal title accompanying it. "So your work is your distraction. It's what permits you to... feel again?" She didn't dare say 'live', because it was clear that this *was* his life, unemotional or not. And who was she to say that such a life was not really living?

She looked him over carefully, thinking about the sort of drugs a man like him would take. Immediately, she stiffened. "John, I need to be clear with something. If you *ever* take my prescription pad, for *any* reason at all but especially for yourself, I will *never* speak to you again. Are we clear?"

[asthenoseonyourface]

John's head shot up sharply, and in a strange display, the entire moment played out across his face in seconds.

Startled. Shocked at the assumption...nay, accusation.

Thought. It was convenient, he hadn't considered that. Why hadn't he considered that?...

Fear. Boredom, the threat of before, Before, the only one of his kind and surrounded by morons (his siblings didn't count)...

Decision...and with decision, scorn as he scoffed at her.

"Seriously?" he huffed, going back to poking through her things.

[coatandscarf]

It was like he was a book. He was so caught off guard, that it was like he forgot to put the mask into place. It was fascinating to see, she had to admit.

The thought of taking her pad hadn't crossed his mind yet, much to Randy's surprise. Then he considered that it had been obvious, an easy fix. For a moment, he looked scared, then...

He scoffed.

"Yes, *seriously*." Her hand shot out and she gripped his arm, tugging at it a bit to make him look at her, then instantly releasing it as she realized what she'd done. "John, besides the fact that it's illegal as hell, it undermines me. And it tells me that you have no respect for me. I will not stand for it. I need to hear it from you, right now, that you will not do that. That you will not disrespect me in that way."

[asthenoseonyourface]

He caught it, the reaction and the realization. She wasn't being polite, she was being afraid. Of him.

Usually, it was a pretty safe bet. Fear of him, maybe even revulsion. But that wasn't in her eyes, she didn't have that wall up...or if she did, he couldn't see it behind the trauma. She was open, connected, not separate or other.

He laughed then, and it wasn't the most pleasant sound. Very deliberately, he caught her hand before she could pull it totally away. He held her gaze deliberately, and while he didn't take advantage of her fear, he didn't try to put her at ease, either.

"Don't worry, I've been sober fourteen months now...but I don't respect anyone. I'm not capable of it." he reiterated slowly, quietly...and again, very deliberately, placed her hand back on his arm, holding it there with a press of his hand, surprisingly warm in temperature for all his coldness.

"I'm not one of the good guys, Miss Alder. I'm not nice, I'm not reliable, and I will let you down if you put me on a pedestal." He leaned in a little, his movements still slow, deliberate as he got right down in her face. His grip was firm, strong, but not crushing as he held her hand against his arm.

"The only reason I'm not a wanted felon is because I have babysitters. They keep me busy, and so I stay out of trouble, otherwise the Boston PD would have their hands very full with the likes of me. I'm dangerous, Randy, well and truly dangerous. Be afraid of me for that. Not because I'm a man."

[coatandscarf]

As he caught her hand, she froze, and for a moment, she wasn't there. The firm grip took her somewhere else, to another time. It felt like another world. His voice drew her back to the present, a lifeline back to reality. Her eyes shot up to him, the slight tremble in her fingers fading as he pressed her hand against his arm, holding her in place.

Her eyes came up to his as he declared that he wasn't one of the good guys. As he drew close, it took every bit of her disciple not to back away, nor to burst into tears at the sight. She hadn't had a man this close to her since... since...

She couldn't bring herself to keep her eyes open then, to *see* how close he was. To know how tightly he held onto her and how little she could do about it. God help her, she had invited him in, and he could take full advantage of it.

Randy was terrified. And it was taking all of her self-control not to panic just then. Yet beyond the tension in her body, and the fact that her eyes were closed, it would've been hard to guess. "...I'm not scared of your sociopathy. I'm not scared of *you*. I'm scared because you *are* a man, and you not knowing that makes you far more terrifying than anything else you say you're capable of."

[asthenoseonyourface]

There was...something there as he stared into her face, as he refused to let her go. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but it was warm and fluttery and sick-making it scared him. He was scaring her, he shouldn't...feel like that.

Still, he pressed on.

"I know what scares you, and I know what I'm doing." he pressed flatly, his voice even and quiet, still holding her hand to his arm where she'd originally grabbed him. "Don't be boring, be ready...you're a soldier, Adler, act like one."

[coatandscarf]

Her eyes snapped open at him, her anger at being toyed with coming through. "Shove it, *Sherlock*. I might've been a soldier, but I'm a doctor first. And before all that, I'm a human being." She pulled then, releasing her hand from his grip, only to bring it back to smack him on the arm. "I am not a puppet for you to conduct, John Riley. Don't *ever* treat me like that again." Yet she didn't move away, she stood her ground and glared at him.