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John Watson is a light sleeper.
It’s always been that way, as far as he can recall – a restlessness prickling at the back of his mind like an unformed shiver. A sense of impending urgency that never fails to catch him at the threshold of calm and drag him back with raking claws.
It hasn’t always been a bad thing. Sometimes it’s been useful. Like in uni, when he could always use a spare moment of study. Or when he’d been training in hospitals, running ragged on scant, fitful sleep but outstripping his fellow doctors anyway. Or in the army, when you had to be up and running at a moment’s notice – no time to be groggy, not when you were stationed in places where bullets were as likely to beat down on you as the baking sunlight. Being a light sleeper had been a bloody gift in the army.
Until, of course, it hadn’t.
After the bullet – after the tremor, the fucking limp – sleep grew more elusive than ever. What had once been a fitful respite of stolen hours dwindled to a thin mist, cold and clinging. Useless at keeping the ugly things out.
John doesn’t expect anything to change when he lies down for his first night at 221B Baker Street. He has a belly full of beef lo mein and egg rolls and the fingers of his right hand are still tense from pulling the trigger. He killed a serial killer not three hours ago and his flatmate is definitely a bit of a madman. He doesn’t expect to get any more or any less sleep than usual tonight.
Until he wakes, tension taut through his whole body. He sits up, one hand clenched in the duvet and the other casting about for his nightstand. For his Sig.
Sherlock stares down at him. “John.”
“Oh, for… Christ, Sherlock, what is it?”
Sherlock watches him for a moment, as if he hasn’t heard the question. Then, with all the levity of someone commenting on the weather – if Sherlock were the kind of person to discuss such mundane things – he says, “You have nightmares.”
“Um. Yeah. Yes.”
“And?”
“And what?” John asks. The weirdness of the situation is beginning to sink into him.
“You have nightmares,” Sherlock repeats, emphatic.
“Everybody has nightmares.”
“’Everybody’ doesn’t have PTSD,” Sherlock replies, and John goes still. Sherlock continues, either oblivious or uncaring. “And before you work yourself into a lather, trust me, it wasn’t much of a leap. With your history, it was more likely than not. And, though I maintain psychology is a pseudoscience, studies suggest that PTSD and somatization disorders go hand-in-hand. Quite chummy. And you suffer from recurrent nightmares, so.” He cocks his head and drawls, “PTSD.”
John is a little surprised to realize he isn’t angry. Not exactly – annoyed, maybe. But not angry. Not furious that Sherlock has invaded his life and laid bare one of his most shameful secrets without pause. This may just be how Sherlock is, full stop.
But one detail of Sherlock’s speech snags his attention. “You said I have recurrent nightmares.”
A divot forms on Sherlock’s brow. “Yes.”
“You saw me having a nightmare, just now. Possibly more than one.”
Sherlock shifts from foot to foot, skewing his gaze to a far corner of the room. “I only saw the one.”
“But you saw me having a nightmare. Presumably during my REM cycle, yeah?”
“Yes.” Petulant, prickly.
“Did you wake me during a REM cycle, or after?”
Sherlock chews on his lip, and that’s all the answer John needs. He sags back into his pillows with a groan. “Sherlock.”
“I needed data, John.”
John covers his face with his hands. “You don’t need to know everything about me. What made you think it was a good idea to sneak into the room of a combat veteran with PTSD and spy on him while he was sleeping? Honestly? Because I’m wracking my brain and I can’t fathom a proper reason.”
“That’s because you’re you,” Sherlock snips, “and I’m me.”
“Sherlock.”
“I can fathom countless reasons.”
“Sherlock.” John drops his hands from his face and scowls. Sherlock stares back, unrepentant.
“Bit weird, that’s all,” John mumbles, turning onto his side and closing his eyes. “Watching me sleep. Flatmates don’t normally do that.”
“Two people cannot physically watch each other sleep,” Sherlock says, voice dripping with scorn. “And you’re not a normal flatmate.”
“Oh?” John cracks open his eyes and blinks blearily. “I’m not normal?”
“Normal flatmates don’t shoot murderous cabbies for each other.”
John blinks again, and this time there is nothing bleary about it. A convulsive giggle bursts from him and he bites his lips, claps a hand over his mouth. Sherlock’s eyes widen.
“That’s,” John laughs, “that’s true.”
Sherlock says nothing, but his lips twitch into a wary smile.
“Bit weird,” John says again. Heaving a yawn, he sinks back into the pillows. “’Night, Sherlock.”
Silence stretches in the dark space between them. When Sherlock finally responds, John has slipped so far past the bounds of wakefulness that he scarcely knows if what he hears is real or an echo dredged up from his subconscious.
“Good night, John.”
Real, John thinks. His nightmares are never so kind.
-
John wakes with a start, the stink of chlorine burning in his nostrils. He pushes off the duvet and climbs out of bed, his entire body clammy with sweat.
Hours ago, he had sat on damp tile and watched as Sherlock pointed a gun at a coat loaded with explosives. Hours ago, they had faced down a madman with eyes of pitch and a soul like a festering wound.
The smell of chlorine is everywhere. John breathes through his mouth as he fumbles open the bedroom door and descends the stairs. A wash. He needs another wash, needs to scrub off the stink.
The shower is scalding. When John steps out, his skin is smarting and raw, but still the chlorine smell lingers. He scrapes his palm over his nose and curses as he reaches for his bathrobe and shoves his arms through the sleeves. The hot water has filmed the entire room in a fog, rendering his reflection in the mirror above the sink amorphous and pink.
Tying the knot of his robe, John wanders into the sitting room and stares vacantly at his armchair. He’s bone-weary, but a part of him balks at the thought of going back upstairs. If he goes to bed, he will go to sleep. And if he sleeps, the nightmare will come.
He settles for the armchair. He will only sit for a few minutes, he thinks. Just until his head feels clear.
Hands, rough, forcing his arms back, covering his mouth to smother his shout as he’s shoved into the van. The weight of blocks of C-4. Pale fingers curling around his shoulders. “Don’t go off-script, okay, Johnny-boy?”
A hand on his knee, a different voice. “John—”
John snaps awake and his hand shoots out, viper-quick, to seize Sherlock’s wrist. Sherlock startles, but John’s grip is iron. His breathing comes fast, shoulders heaving. Muttering an oath, he eases his grip and Sherlock draws back.
“Shit,” John mutters. “Shit, I’m sorry, Sherlock. I was just—”
“Are you all right?” Sherlock blurts out, then presses his lips together, like he regrets the slip.
His words at the pool echo in John’s mind. “All right? Are you all right?”
“Are you?” he asks.
Surprise flashes across Sherlock’s face, swiftly concealed. “Yes. Yes, of course. I’m fine.”
“All the… all the Moriarty stuff, it was…”
“I’m fine.”
“It was a lot.” John casts about for something that doesn’t sound quite so inane, but all he can do is lower his head and mutter, “It was a lot.”
“Yes, I suppose it was.”
“Carl Powers died in that pool.” Seizing and choking on chlorinated water.
“John.”
“I’ve seen drowning victims. Awful way to go.”
“John,” Sherlock repeats, “we got out. We survived.”
“It’s the smell,” John says, desperate to make Sherlock understand. “The smell at the pool. Can’t get it out of my head.”
Sherlock is silent for a moment, mouth flattened into a line. Then he steps forward and lays gentle fingertips on John’s shoulder.
“Go to bed, John. If you sleep here, you will…” He trails off, a muscle twitching in his jaw. Then, in a rush, he says, “If you sleep here, you’ll be sore in the morning and then you’ll be cross with me and I’ll have done nothing to deserve it.”
“Nothing yet.”
Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Don’t be a pedant.”
“Suppose you don’t normally start being a terror until after midnight.” John frowns. “Or until the wee hours, anyway.”
Sherlock looks almost affronted, as if John’s concession wounds his standing as a known terror. “I play the violin at night.”
“S’not a terror,” John says. “That’s lovely.”
His words may as well be a scythe, cutting the asperity from Sherlock’s expression and leaving pure surprise in its place. It’s disarming, how quickly a kind word can strip away Sherlock’s prickly exterior. John thinks of the way Sherlock reacted when John called him amazing. He thinks of Donovan’s cutting words and Anderson’s sneers.
“Right.” John heaves himself to his feet. “S’pose I should. Bed.” He rubs a crick out of his neck. “’Night.”
Sherlock scrutinizes John, head tilted, as if he expects to discover something from a new angle. Nodding, hands curling into fists, he turns on his heel and stalks down the corridor to his bedroom. The door snaps shut behind him, leaving John alone.
“Right,” he mutters again. “Well.”
He goes back to bed and lays staring into the gloom, turning over the image of Sherlock’s startled expression in his mind like a rare shell washed up on the seashore. Every time he thinks he’s got Sherlock pinned down, a new facet comes to light.
Sleep takes him, as fitfully as ever – but when the nightmare comes, when the burn of chlorine fills his throat, he cries out and thrashes against the bedclothes. And he wakes to the low, honeyed notes of a song, sorrowful and sweet. The violin.
He sinks back into the warm embrace of sleep, lulled by the music of the violin. When he wakes the next morning, he feels better-rested than he has in a long, long time.
-
John rolls over in his bed and punches his pillow with a muttered curse. It is Christmas Eve, and all he wants to do is go to sleep for about ten millennia and forget that this atrocity of a night ever happened.
Things have been mad since Irene Adler sauntered onto the scene in naught but her heels and a wicked grin. Sherlock has been off his game, wrong-footed by her. A woman, as impossible as it seems. Sherlock Holmes, besotted by a woman. A clever woman, no doubt, and beautiful besides. Pity she’s a fucking psychopath.
John grits his teeth and punches the pillow again. He can’t get comfortable, and he can feel a nightmare nibbling at the edges of consciousness.
Jeanette broke up with him. His boring teacher of a girlfriend broke up with him. Now, instead of having a beautiful woman bouncing on his cock, John is frustrated and alone.
He kicks back the duvet and shoves a hand down his boxers, his blood thumping behind his ears. But what little pleasure he can give himself is a pale imitation of what he’d been anticipating all evening.
John sweeps his free hand over the nightstand, searching for his phone. Maybe Jeanette’s temper has cooled by now. Maybe she’ll be okay with a little breakup sex.
The snick of the bolt on the door arrests John’s attention, and both of his hands go still. The door creaks open, pouring a thin bar of light into his bedroom. Sherlock stands limned by the glow.
“Don’t you ever knock?” John asks.
Sherlock shrugs listlessly, and John’s fury boils over. It isn’t his fault Irene Adler is dead. It isn’t his fault she wrapped Sherlock around her little finger and then went off and got herself killed for knowing too much about the wrong sort of people.
It isn’t John’s fault. He shouldn’t feel like shit about it.
“Look,” he grits out, “I know you’ve had a bad day, but so have I. I’d like to be alone right now.” A patent lie, but Sherlock is the last person John wants to see right now, so it rather drives home the point.
Sherlock hovers in the doorway, looking lost. Heartbroken sod. It’s pathetic, and John is brimming with frustration. He just wants to be alone.
“Get out,” he says. “Get out. I don’t want you here right now.”
Sherlock blinks, looking slightly more alert. “John—”
“No.” The force of the word cuts Sherlock short. “My girlfriend’s just broken up with me because of you and I’m feeling more than a little cross. So, if you could. If you could fuck off, that would be great.”
“John, I didn’t—”
“Are you going to help me out, then?” John demands, his temper running rogue. “Are you Jeanette? Because if you aren’t here to suck my cock, you can bloody well fuck. Off.”
Sherlock looks like he’s been slapped. For all of three seconds, his face is flushed, his jaw clenched. He turns and shuts the door behind him. His footsteps are swift on the stairs, fading fast. Gone.
John glowers at the thin square of light framing the closed door. It isn’t his fault Irene Adler is dead. It isn’t his fault Sherlock is heartbroken. And if Sherlock is going to pine and wallow and reject John’s help in favor of snarling about his fucking sock index, he can go hang.
When at last he sinks into slumber, the dream rises fast in his mind, a riptide pulling him in. Limbs twining, spines arching, mouths moving together, stealing soft murmurs and cries. A gasp as John grips, thumbs digging into the soft places beneath iliac crests, and thrusts up into tight heat.
John Watson is a very light sleeper. So, when his dream-lover reaches down to cover one of his hands with theirs – a large hand, fingers long and pale, metacarpals stark beneath the skin – and a deep voice hitches out his name, he wakes with a bitten-off cry, shocked and shaking with his hand fisted around his hard cock.
“Oh,” he gasps, quietly, helpless to stop, “oh, oh fuck.”
-
He catches himself staring, sometimes. It’s impossible not to. Sherlock is a force of nature: a forest fire, beautiful and unapproachable. In John’s dreams, he is warm and pliant and human.
In reality, John might as well try to grasp an open flame.
-
The Hound is nearing, its eyes twin sparks of flame, its lips pulled back to reveal yellowing fangs. It prowls closer, a growl rumbling up from the depths of its chest, and John cringes back against the bars of the cage, heart thundering.
“Sherlock,” he says.
The growl swells into a roar and the Hound lunges against the bars, rattling the entire cage. John can barely draw breath to scream before the Hound rips aside the bars like tissue paper and springs at him, teeth rending, blood foaming—
“John.”
John opens his eyes, teeth creaking with the effort not to shout. The dark murk of his room at the Cross Keys resolves into the shape of Sherlock, standing a few paces away from his bed.
“What.” The word is a glass shard in his mouth.
“You were having a nightmare.”
“Yes, I’m aware of that.”
“A nightmare about the Hound.”
“Yeah. Well-spotted.”
Sherlock hesitates, biting his lip. With his edges softened by shadow, he seems at once fading and small, liable to vanish.
John sighs and sits up, pushing back the duvet. “It’s nothing. Just a nightmare.”
“You called for me.”
John’s ire evaporates, and something like fondness rushes in to fill the space. “Can’t be content with monopolizing my time when I’m awake, can you,” he sighs. “You’ve got to invade my nightmares, too.”
A smile tugs at one corner of Sherlock’s mouth. “Do give me some credit, John. I don’t simply invade nightmares. I specialize.”
“Right.” John smiles wanly. “How d’you do that, exactly?”
“I invent nightmares. Like with the Hound.”
“You did do a bang-up job with that.”
“Thank you. I do apply myself.”
“Best in the field of nightmare-manufacturing, I expect.”
“Indeed. I’m very competitive.”
“Well. Good to know I got the best of the best.”
Sherlock is grinning now – that wide, uninhibited smile, all wrinkles around the eyes and mouth and about a dozen chins. “In that case, I’ll take your sleep-talk as proof of a job well-done.”
The breath freezes in John’s lungs. He schools his expression to neutrality as his mind flies ahead, conjuring echoes from the dream that has plagued him since Christmas Eve. That mortifying, exquisite Christmas Eve. He has woken more than once with Sherlock’s name on his lips and a need like a fever burning through him.
If this is the only time Sherlock has heard John calling for him in his sleep, it will be a mercy.
John lowers his gaze, feeling flayed under Sherlock’s scrutiny. “Um. Yes, I. I suppose so.”
He cheats a glance up and finds Sherlock watching him, smile fading. He looks caught off-guard. Like they’ve been dancing and John has just dropped him at the end of a dip.
John’s mind betrays him, flitting from rhythm and dance to other types of rhythm and dance – dark duets with a desperate rhythm, a music of gasps and cries, a choreography all their own. He musters his control and wrestles down his rebellious imagination.
“What time does our train leave?” he mumbles.
“Half ten,” Sherlock says. His smile has vanished.
“Suppose I should…”
“Yes,” Sherlock murmurs, “I think so.”
John turns on his side and pulls the duvet up to his chin. “Good night, Sherlock.”
For a moment, Sherlock says nothing. Then there is the sound of a ragged, shivering breath, and Sherlock says, “Good night, John.”
And then he is gone, the door between their rooms closing with a snick of finality. John shoves one hand under his pillow as the other smooths over his belly, drifting lower. Anticipating.
When he slips into slumber and the dream begins – the dream– he embellishes, threading the sound of that shivering breath into Sherlock’s gasps and cries, stoking his own desperate rhythm to a knee-shaking climax. Even asleep, he has the presence of mind to clench his teeth. To hold the name in his mouth as the fever burns through him.
-
They go on a stakeout, loitering behind a stand of trees in Hyde Park as they await their criminal. It is a May night, warm and humid from the rain that has lashed the city all day. The park is a muted symphony of quacking ducks and the shushing, incessant slosh of lake water. John’s eyes are red-rimmed from the lack of sleep. He unscrews the top of his thermos and takes a swig of coffee, wincing as it burns down his throat. He feels hooked to awareness, pressure building behind his eyes.
“Stay alert, John,” Sherlock says. He stands stock-still, peering through the foliage onto the starlit expanse of the Serpentine. “Stadtler could arrive any minute.”
“You’ve been saying that for the past hour.”
Sherlock purses his lips. “If you’d done as I suggested and left the clinic, you wouldn’t be so ornery.”
“Right,” John mutters. “If I’d left my actual job with reliable income to skulk around Hyde Park with you in the wee hours, I would be so much happier.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you for ages.”
“I’m not leaving the clinic, Sherlock. Your clients aren’t consistent or lucrative enough for us to afford central London.”
“You hate the clinic.”
“I—I don’t love it, but that’s not the point. It’s a job. Adults have jobs. They go to work and make money so they can afford to live in this madhouse of a city.” John rubs his brow. “Fuck. I haven’t slept in nearly three days.” Between hunting Stadtler and a virulent cold epidemic at work, there hasn’t been time for sleep.
“Perhaps you should work on your stamina,” Sherlock remarks. “I can go five days without sleep.”
“It doesn’t count if you’re hallucinating for two of the five,” John retorts. “We aren’t all night owls like you, Sherlock.”
Sherlock grins, his teeth a flash of white in the gloom. “I’m no night owl.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m a vampire.”
John grumbles and raises his thermos for another sip. The coffee smolders through him in a stale drip. “Seems right.”
Sherlock chuckles, turning his gaze back to the path beside the Serpentine. Moonlight slants through a break in the trees, carving the planes of his face in silver. He definitely looks the part – pale skin wrapped in sleek, dark hues, and a face that looks like it belongs in a bygone era. Beautiful and predatory.
John looks away, jaw set.
“There,” Sherlock says, and he tears out of the foliage. Out on the banks of the Serpentine, Stadtler and his unknown colleague jump at the sound of Sherlock’s shout. The unknown colleague flees and Sherlock bolts after him.
John joins the fray in a riot of adrenaline. Stadtler, preoccupied with Sherlock, doesn’t notice him. He is rooting around in his jacket pocket, drawing out a gleaming object with a shaking hand.
“Oh, no you don’t,” John mutters. He launches himself at the unwitting criminal in a rugby tackle and the both of them topple into the shallow, fetid waters of the lake. John seizes Stadtler’s wrist and twists, and Stadtler releases the object – a knife – with a whimper. It plops into the water and promptly sinks.
John might have felt halfway cool about the entire incident, if not for the indignant quacking of disturbed ducks assailing his ears. As it is, he just feels sodden and exhausted.
Later, sitting on a park bench with a blanket around his shoulders, John tries not to inhale too deeply as he awaits Sherlock. The Yard have arrived to perform their usual clean-up duties and officers mill about, collecting Stadtler and his accomplice and securing the area. John suspects he will have to give a statement, but all he can think of is going back to Baker Street and falling into bed. Sleeping for roughly a thousand years.
He must have dozed off, because the sound of Sherlock and Lestrade’s quibbling rouses him.
“…got to give his statement, Sherlock.” Lestrade sounds weary. “Protocol and all that.”
“I’ve given you a more than sufficient statement,” Sherlock says tartly. “And I’ve gift-wrapped two criminals for you. Honestly, another statement is simply excessive at this point.”
“Sherlock…”
“John’s usefulness as a witness decreases significantly when he hasn’t slept, Lestrade. He won’t do you much good now. Besides, he’s getting a bit rank. I can smell the pondweed from here.”
“That’s because we’re standing beside a bloody lake!”
“Oh, for pity’s sake.” Sherlock sounds genuinely frustrated now, his sneering veneer stripped away. “Gonzo, John has been—”
“Gonzo? You’re naming me after Muppets now?”
“John is very tired.” Sherlock uses the slow, deliberate tone he reserves for infants and imbeciles. “He has been helping me on this case for four days now, with very little sleep. If I wake him, his testimony may be compromised by—”
“Oh, fuck it.” John suspects Lestrade has literally thrown up his hands in frustrated surrender. “Tell him to ring me when he’s had a nap.”
“Of course,” Sherlock says, suddenly as docile as a lamb.
Lestrade grumbles as his crunching footsteps recede down the path. Then he shouts, “You know, Sherlock, you can admit you’re worried you’ve run him ragged. I won’t tell a soul you’re being a good friend. Nobody would believe me anyway.”
Sherlock does not reply. As Lestrade’s footsteps fade, a stifling quiet settles over them. It is so still and profound that John startles when he feels Sherlock settle beside him on the bench. “John.”
If he suspects John was awake for the exchange, he doesn’t let on. John opens his eyes and yawns hugely. “Home?”
“I phoned a taxi. I’m sick of Lestrade’s toadies pestering me.”
“Hmm.” John shifts, trying to find a more comfortable position on the damp planks. “God. I’m drained.”
“And you smell,” Sherlock supplies.
“Ta for that,” John mumbles. “Only caught Stadtler for you.”
“That was…” A pause. Then, voice a little thready: “Good. It was good.”
John huffs. He is tired to the marrow of his bones. Even forming thoughts is a toil. He sways, leans. In his muddled mind, it seems perfectly logical to use the nearest available surface. Which happens to be Sherlock’s shoulder.
Sherlock tenses as John moves his head, mashing his temple against a plush fold in the Belstaff. “’Til the cab gets here,” he says, sleep-slurred.
“You truly smell awful.” Sherlock’s tone is soft, utterly at odds with his words.
“I think a duck shat on my coat.”
“Ah. Lovely.”
John slips into slumber. It is a brief respite, cut short by the arrival of the cab. But while it lasts, it is deep and dreamless and warm.
-
The night after he jumps, John doesn’t sleep. He thought he knew nightmares, thought he was inured to the sick lurch of surprise.
He had been wrong.
-
The nightmare is a constant wave in the first year after Sherlock’s death – crushing, crashing, threatening to suck him under. As endless as the sea.
Sherlock’s hand on his shoulder, a loose mooring slipping away as hysteria clouds his mind. “Are you all right? John.”
After Baskerville, Sherlock had watched John sleep. That night in the Cross Keys, ensconced in one of their adjoining rooms, Sherlock had waited while John fought off a nightmare. He could have stayed in his room, but he’d heard John and gone to him.
“It’s all right. It’s okay now.”
It should have been weird. When had it stopped being weird?
“Let’s not jump to conclusions.”
People jump all the time. They pitch themselves off of buildings and bridges and train platforms. They jump for sorrow, for emptiness.
“What did you see?”
John hadn’t seen it. He was a doctor, and he hadn’t caught a glimpse of whatever had been lurking in Sherlock’s mind, waiting to push him off the edge. Now that it’s too late, he can’t stop wondering.
Sherlock falling, arms outstretched as if to take flight. The sound his body makes as it breaks against the pavement.
He’s three months into the new job and it’s… well. It’s work. It’s a dull marathon of snotty noses and wheezy chests but it keeps John’s mind somewhat busy and it gives him an incentive to not hit the bottle too hard on weekdays. It’s fine.
Except nothing is fine, not when John wakes in the middle of the night sweating and shaking, disoriented in the dark, thrashing against the duvet because it’s keeping him back, it’s twining around his arms and legs and he needs his legs free to run to Sherlock, he needs his arms free to find a pulse but the fucking duvet is in the way and Sherlock is broken on the pavement and his pulse is a thread, there and gone.
When that happens, John doesn’t care if it’s a weekday.
Sherlock might have taken the long fall and the sudden stop, but John thinks he might be drowning.
-
The night he returns from the dead, John doesn’t sleep. Instead, he lies beside Mary, vibrating with unspent fury.
He had waltzed back into John’s life like he hadn’t done anything wrong. He had drawn on a moustache and cracked jokes. As if he expected John to laugh.
He’d said it himself, hadn’t he? He invents nightmares. And still John had been fool enough to think he was the exception. That the nightmare wouldn’t touch him.
He knows better, now.
-
“He watches you sleep, you know,” Mary says.
John blinks out of his daze. “What?”
Mary turns to stare out the cab window, smirking at her reflection in the dark glass. Beyond, the city sweeps past in a smear of neon lights and sheeting rain. “When you nodded off looking at the client’s accounts. In your armchair.”
“Oh.” John isn’t sure how to feel. “He did?”
Mary hums and readjusts her stole. “He was fiddling with his books, on the shelf, you know. And he turned and looked at you. It was like he’d never seen you before, and he was surprised.” Her smirk widens. “Wasn’t a quick glance, either. He watched you for several minutes. I almost felt bad, waking you to take you home.”
His thoughts betray him: But I was home.
He says, “He did that, sometimes. I think he’s collecting data for… I don’t know what.”
Mary looks at him then, eyes glittering with mischief. “I think he’s about as infatuated with you as you are with him.”
“Shut up," John grumbles.
Mary chuckles. “Maybe you two should get married instead.”
-
John must have fallen asleep without meaning to. One minute, he is sitting at Sherlock’s bedside in hospital with his chart in hand, as if reading it the hundredth time will erase the facts of the previous ninety-nine. The next minute, his elbow slips from the armrest and he jolts awake.
Sherlock is awake, staring at him from the bed with glassy eyes.
“Sh—”
The lump in his throat stoppers his words. He sets down the chart and stands. For several seconds, he can only stare at the weak, pale shadow of his friend. Whoever had shot Sherlock in Magnussen’s office had done so with the intent to kill. The bullet had nicked his inferior vena cava and lodged in his rib, perilously close to his spine. It might have ruptured his liver, punctured his lung, shattered his spine. It had not, and Sherlock had still died on the operating table.
The fact that he’s alive now might almost be called miraculous. But John knows better than to believe in miracles. The universe is rarely so lazy.
John coughs past the lump in his throat. “Sherlock, I—I’m glad you’re…”
He trails off, because the natural conclusion to that statement is okay and Sherlock is far from okay. Sherlock is alive, but even that seems a tenuous arrangement.
Sherlock was dead for two years. Sherlock pitched himself off a building and broke against the pavement and Sherlock came back. He defied death to plague John with snide remarks about his mustache and John, bitter and hurting, had buried his every regret about Sherlock. He piled anger on top of the what-ifs and if-onlys and told himself they no longer existed.
Sherlock had literally come back from the dead and John pushed him away. John should have been reaching for him – holding him – gathering him close.
John reaches down and settles his hand over Sherlock’s, thumb brushing over his knuckles. Sherlock’s eyes widen.
“You almost died again,” John says. “I wish—I wish you wouldn’t. Die. I…” He swallows, tries for a wry smile. “I need you around, you great berk.”
Sherlock offers a sluggish smile. He turns his hand over to clasp John’s, careful of the pulse oximeter. John leans in until his face is inches from Sherlock’s.
Sherlock’s lips part, eyelashes fanning – and then the smile vanishes, replaced by fear.
His voice is a rasp. “Mary.”
-
John helps Sherlock settle back into 221B after all the madness with Magnussen passes. After Sherlock shoots a man for John’s sake, boards a plane to his exile, and returns a scant few minutes later.
John doesn’t know how to feel. Magnussen’s death is nothing beside the shock of Mary’s identity. That knowledge sits on the edge of awareness like a rotting carcass gathering flies. Each reminder is a fresh wave of nausea.
And beside all of that is a sense of wary relief. Relief that Sherlock has returned to him yet again. Wariness that he will evaporate the moment John tries to pin him down.
And fucking Christ, it’s more than a bit not good that John is thinking like this. Sherlock hasn’t returned to him – Sherlock has returned, full stop. Sherlock isn’t his to pin down. John has a (murderous, lying) wife and a (helpless, unborn) child. He doesn’t have Sherlock.
He climbs the stairs to 221B behind Sherlock, mindful of every step. Even months after Mary shot him, John still fears a misplaced step will shatter Sherlock like brittle glass.
Inside the flat, Sherlock slumps across the room and sinks into his armchair with a sigh. John hovers, uncertain. He should leave Sherlock in peace. He should go back to Mary.
He doesn’t want to go back to Mary.
“Do you need anything?” he asks. “Maybe a cuppa?”
Sherlock gives no indication that he has heard John. He is far away, lost in thought.
With little else to do, John goes to the kitchen to put a kettle on. He roots through the cupboards while the water heats. He can’t remember when he last saw Sherlock eat, so he scrounges up a tray and a couple of sleeves of biscuits. He arranges the biscuits in an approximation of what Mrs. Hudson would do and prepares the tea.
He gathers the tray, turns – and collides with Sherlock, standing soundless and still behind him. John flinches, jostling the tray, and one of the teacups wobbles.
He has the presence of mind to cry, “Don’t!”
Too late. Sherlock darts out a hand – and gasps as his fingers brush the hot porcelain. He snatches back his hand and the teacup shatters on the floor, flooding tea between the tiles.
“Shit—” John sets aside the tea tray as Sherlock begins to crouch. “Don’t, Sherlock. Leave it.”
Sherlock stills with his hands outstretched toward the shards. Awareness flickers through his eyes.
“You said you wished I wouldn’t die.” His voice is remote, as if he is surfacing from a deep sleep.
“What,” John begins. He remembers. “Oh. I—yes. I did.”
Sherlock reaches for a dishtowel on the counter. He kneels, carefully brushing aside the shards to mop up the spilled tea. “I thought I had dreamt that.”
“I… didn’t think you would remember.” John kneels as well, reaching for the larger shards. The porcelain is still warm to the touch. “But I… I meant it.”
Sherlock mops up the last of the tea and reaches up to drop the dishtowel in the sink. Bright urgency shines in his eyes. “I would have died. In my exile. I would have died.”
The news is not a punching blow nor the bite of a bullet. It is a knife, sliding into the tender places between ribs in slow increments. An anticipated attack. John can’t even find it in himself to be mad, not really. Perhaps, after watching him fall and watching him bleed out on the operating table, John has become numb.
“You weren’t going to tell me.” It isn’t an accusation. “You were going to – disappear.”
His thumb slips and a bright bead of blood wells along the cut. John watches the red line dribble down his thumb. There is barely a twinge of pain.
Sherlock takes the shard and sets it aside. He threads John’s fingers with his, stemming the flow by pressing John’s thumb to his knuckle.
“I realized, on the plane,” Sherlock says, “I don’t want to die.”
-
Mycroft, as it happens, has been working industriously to prove Mary’s guilt. She is wanted around the globe, her every step leaving behind a trail of blood and broken lives. She does not yet know it, but her steps are numbered.
They plan. It is surprisingly easy to make plans, John thinks, once the baby’s safety is promised.
Once the planning is done, midnight has passed and the starlit hours of morning are well underway. John, exhausted and resigned, moves to the doorway and pulls his coat down from its hook. His mobile phone has been inert all evening – not so much as a text from Mary. The silence feels more like an ill omen with every passing minute.
“John.”
John turns with one arm in the sleeve of his coat. Sherlock stands in the center of the sitting room, pale and weary-eyed and alone.
“Stay,” he says.
John feels his heart stammer as he struggles to form words. “But—but you said—the plan.”
“I know the plan.”
“I should…”
“Yes.” The word is vanishingly soft. “You should.”
He looks up again, meeting John’s eye, and the naked vulnerability in that glance freezes him in place. His mind clamors for excuses to feed to Mary – all feeble – and before he can question his sanity, he is shrugging off the coat and restoring it to its hook.
“What do you want, Sherlock?” he says. “I need to know. I can’t… I keep stumbling through the dark. With you.” His mouth has gone suddenly dry. “I need…”
His voice dwindles. Slowly, Sherlock steps forward, stopping when they stand a few inches apart. He moves like a phantom in a dream, as likely to vanish as he is to reach out and touch. But he does reach out, hands encircling John’s.
“I want you here,” he says. “With me.”
-
In his dreams, Sherlock is lissome and lovely, every shiver and hitching breath setting John’s blood on fire. In his nightmares, Sherlock is falling and breaking and shattered and bloodied.
In his arms, Sherlock is sleep-soft, curled around him with arms like twining vines. Careful not to wake him, John coils an ink-dark curl of hair around his forefinger.
John wants so much – god, he wants everything – but the timing is wrong. Danger looms over them, its shadow spreading like toxic mold into the space they’ve carved out for themselves.
It isn’t perfect, not yet, but as Sherlock presses a clumsy kiss to his scarred shoulder, John thinks it could be good. It could be reality.
-
John returns to the house, defying every instinct but one: the need to protect the baby. The little girl who is not his child, but deserves a chance at a life unspoiled by her mother’s crimes.
John returns to the house, and every step past those he sets over the threshold feels like playacting. Every brush of Mary’s fingers on his skin makes his stomach twist. Every pleasantry is a lie. Every night, when Mary wraps her arms around him and her belly presses against his ribs, John wills his hands limp so they do not seek her throat.
One night, he wakes to find Mary watching him. Her grey eyes are huge and unblinking, shiny in the streetlight seeping through the window curtains.
John watches her watching him. Fear clots in his throat.
“I think I can see it,” Mary says. “What Sherlock sees. Watching you sleep.”
His blood runs cold. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She whispers the words against his neck. “You look soft. Vulnerable.”
She knows. The thought clangs in John’s mind, so loud he’s certain Mary can hear it. She knows. She knows.
For a single, horrible moment, he weighs his options. He could kill Mary now, break her neck like the stem of a dandelion. He could kill her before she has a chance to show John just how vulnerable he is. He could protect himself and Sherlock, preserve the chance of a future together.
He could do all of that – if he put his and Sherlock’s lives over that of an unborn child.
Mary knows this. And she knows what John will choose. She smiles and snuggles into the circle of his arms with a contented sigh. John waits until she is fast asleep before he lets out a convulsive, choking sob.
Sherlock has watched him sleep more often than is decent – certainly more than Mary has. But under Sherlock’s gaze, John has never felt like livestock being readied for the butcher’s knife. He has never been choked by fear.
-
When it is all over, Sherlock and John return to Baker Street in a daze.
John fits the key into the lock with steady hands and the door opens into darkness; Mrs. Hudson was evacuated to a safe house before Mycroft initiated the final phase of their plan. When the two set foot inside 221 Baker Street, they find it as still and lifeless as a tomb.
John ushers Sherlock inside, mindful of his shaking shoulders. He follows him, every muscle frayed, every nerve ending dead. He is detached from the unwieldy weight of his own body. He wants to cut himself free and fly into nothingness like a kite with a severed string.
Sherlock hobbles up the stairs with one hand clutching the bannister. John follows. When his hand slides on the bannister, he notes a brownish-red crust beneath his fingernails. His heart lurches – just that moment, just that lurch. Then the rhythm is restored. He is a metronome of denial.
Inside, the flat is as desolate as the rest of the building.
Sherlock stumbles across the sitting room, shedding his sodden Belstaff, and disappears down the corridor. The door to the loo opens, snicks shut. The sound of running shower water permeates the hush.
Mind empty, John climbs the stairs to his bedroom. A t-shirt lays on his bed, discarded a lifetime ago; he grabs it and stalks back downstairs, hand on the bannister. If he lets himself think – lets himself remember – his knees will turn to jelly.
He sits in his chair while he waits for the loo. Every moment is a careful interment of memory: placing each one with care, scooping up the earth to cover what he cannot bear to see. Sealing away the past hours.
The rush of water cuts off and Sherlock emerges from the loo in a curl of steam. But for the towel slung around his hips, he is naked. A new bandage adorns his brow and a scarlet trail of bruises marks him from his right shoulder down to the edge of the towel, where they disappear. He catches John’s eye and stills.
“I.” He drops his gaze. “My clothes are filthy.”
John says nothing. It seems wrong that Sherlock should come over shy after years of parading around the flat in bath towels and sheets. But that logic does little to cool the flush he feels climbing to his face.
“Right,” he says, voice hoarse. “Fine.”
They stare at each other. The moment stretches like heated glass, pulled thin as gossamer and looped into intricate shapes before it cools. A flick of the wrist could transform it into something lovely. And a clumsy movement could shatter it.
John stands. “I should…”
The moment splinters. Sherlock nods. “Yes. Well, I’m—I’m going to.” He gestures toward the corridor, toward his bedroom.
“Right.” John becomes acutely aware of the space between them. He could cross the room in a few steps, but the distance to Sherlock feels suddenly vast. “Good night.”
“Good night, John.” He turns and stalks down the corridor. The door closes behind him, and he is gone.
John goes to the loo and twists the shower lever, jetting hot water into the stall. Steam curls in the air as he tugs off his sweat-encrusted shirt and bloodstained jeans. The nurses cleaned off the cuts on his face, but the itch of stale blood crawls across his skin. Tossing aside his clothes, he steps into the stall and lets the scalding water buffet him.
There is a moment when he is scrubbing the cuts on his face, and he sees it. Water drips from his face, tinged pink, and swirls down the drain. He grabs the loofah hanging off the lever and saws at his fingernails, desperate to clean out the blood. His skin is raw and pink when he staggers out of the stall.
John returns to his room and climbs onto the bed. It seems an impossible feat, but sleep eventually takes hold of him. The nightmare rises swift and sure, catching him in its claws and dragging him down.
He is sprinting down a walkway along the Thames, horror filling his throat, because she was too quick, too clever, and now Sherlock and the baby are going to die for it. The plan was airtight, Mycroft said. Infallible.
They should have never underestimated Mary.
The echo of John’s footsteps on concrete herald his arrival like thunderclouds preceding a storm. The air of the building – an apartment complex under construction, skeletal, gaping walls shrouded in plastic sheeting – is stale and dusty, stifling.
“John.” Mary’s voice purls through the darkness. “Took you long enough.”
John turns. Mary stands several yards from him, leaning against a brick wall beside the whistling maw of an open window. Her face is ashen. Strands of hair stick to her brow, dark with sweat. The baby whimpers in her arm. Though she is swaddled, she is still filthy with the ordeal of birth. Mary has her other hand outstretched, her Walther PPK pointed at John. Behind her, Sherlock is sprawled motionless on the concrete. A vice tightens around John’s heart.
“Put the gun down,” she says, breathing labored, “and kick it away.” John tenses, jaw set, and she rolls her eyes. “Oh, for pity’s sake.” She swivels the gun, points it at Sherlock. “Now.”
John kneels slowly and sets down the Sig. He stands and kicks it so it skitters across the floor. Raising his hands above his head, he says, “You could have left her.”
Mary’s arm tightens around the infant. Behind her, Sherlock stirs and John feels his heart leap.
“She belongs to me.” Mary’s tone is flat. “I trust you’ve worked out she isn’t yours. She’s got nothing to do with you.”
“She’ll only be a hindrance to you.” John fights to keep his voice calm even as every passing second pushes him closer to hysteria. “Give her to me, Mary, and I won’t follow you. Sherlock and I will leave you alone.”
Mary looks at him, eyes as dull and dead as stones. “We both know that won’t happen. You aren’t capable of leaving me be, John. It isn’t in your nature.” A weary smile tugs at her lips. “The brave little soldier, that’s you. Mr. Moral Compass.” The baby wails piteously and Mary shifts her arm, draws her closer. “As for her… she’s mine. I decide what happens to her.” The baby’s cries grow feverish, as if she can sense the peril she has been born into. “Even if she dies, it will be my decision.”
“You couldn’t,” says John. “She’s only a baby. Even you couldn’t kill something so… so vulnerable.”
Mary’s eyes flash. She turns the gun on John, voice quivering with rage. “You think so?”
The world explodes into motion. Sherlock leaps to his feet, heedless of the blood congealing on his temple, and hurls himself at Mary. She rounds on him and takes aim, but Sherlock is a blur of motion, diving into the opening of her arm and grasping her wrist to divert the bullet. The silencer, still affixed to the barrel, muffles the shot into a whistle that detonates off a nearby concrete pillar. As dust showers down, John sees it: the cold clarity of Mary’s decision. Before he can move a muscle, she stumbles toward the open window, unfolds her arm, and casts the baby into the open air.
Sherlock gives a wordless cry and, using Mary’s arm as a lever, throws her aside. She collapses to the floor on her hands and knees. Sherlock bounds toward the window before John can utter a sound, the trail of his coat flapping like dark wings, and vaults after the baby.
John rushes to the window, his heart in his throat. They are on the first level, probably thirty feet above the water. Not likely to be fatal for a grown man, but certainly deadly for a newborn infant. Mind whirling, he scans the seething, brown-grey churn of the Thames.
Sherlock bursts from depths with a choking gasp. His curls are plastered against his brow and his coat billows around him in a dark cloud. A small shape is cradled beneath his chin, ominously quiet.
A blow catches John on the temple, exploding white across his vision. He drops like a stone as his surroundings spin. Mary stands above him, shoulders heaving, knuckles white around the grip of her gun. Tears stream down her cheeks. “Get out of my way.”
She takes his place at the window. Something like a sob bursts out of her as she spots Sherlock and the baby. Gritting her teeth, she braces herself against the ledge and levels the gun. The tears are still wet on her cheeks as her body stills, crystallizing whatever scrap of maternal emotion escaped her and pulverizing it. She takes aim.
A horrible sound slices through John’s throat as he hurls himself at Mary, shoving her away from the window. He barrels her back against the concrete pillar, seizes her wrist, and twists with all his strength. There is a brittle snap and Mary screams. Her free hand rises, fingers curled to rake the nails across John’s eyes, but John bears all of his weight down on her and twists her wrist until the gun slides free of her grip. John is screaming, shoving her back against the pillar so her head cracks on the bullet-spattered concrete. Mary’s eyes glaze over and John’s hands fly to her throat. He is wringing the life from her. Mary flails, clawing at his face, her nails gouging lines of fire down his temples and cheeks, but John doesn’t care. He grits his teeth and puts all of his love and hate into one final shove, and the bones of Mary’s neck give with a sickening crunch.
Mary’s eyes widen for an instant – pure shock, swiftly clouded. John’s hands fall away as she slumps against the column, slides. She topples sideways and hits the floor. Her body spasms, shudders – and with a guttural wheeze, she stills. Her wide eyes are frozen on John.
Sirens shriek in the distance. Lights flash, piercing the plastic sheeting to dance across the brickwork. John barely notices as he staggers to the window. Outside, Sherlock has floundered to the bank. He sits hunched over the tiny form of the baby, hands working furiously.
“Sherlock,” John gasps, “Sherlock! Is she—”
“I don’t know!” Sherlock’s voice is strained. “I can’t find…”
John stumbles away from the window and races toward the stairwell. The sirens are piercingly loud when he reaches the ground floor and sprints outside. Red and blue lights paint over the panic on Sherlock’s blanched face as he looks up at John.
“She’s not breathing,” he manages.
John kneels beside Sherlock, pushing his hands aside and leaning down. When he feels no breath on his skin, he sits back and places two fingers on her tiny, fragile chest. “Get the Yard over here!”
Sherlock stumbles to his feet and runs toward the approaching headlights. John fixes his attention on the baby, begins compressions, and mutters a prayer.
You only get one miracle, isn’t that it? The baby’s skin is like ice under John’s hands, and as the wail of an ambulance joins the chorus of police sirens, John’s prayers spin into despair. She doesn’t deserve this. She is so small and new and perfect, untarnished by the world, a spark snuffed out before it has a chance to truly burn.
Hands land on his shoulders. “John, the paramedics—”
He shrugs off the touch. Tears smear across his vision. “Don’t.”
“John!”
No heartbeat, no breath. She is cold and inert, flickering out fast. “I have to—”
Fingertips quest over his cheek, feather-light. “John.”
It is a chasm of a voice, deep and shrouded in shadow, and John is trapped in the deepest pit, besieged on all sides by the jagged rocks pressing in. Waking is like clawing himself out, bloodying hands and feet as he climbs toward the light. His eyes flutter open, and a pale phantom of a face coalesces from the gloom.
His own voice sounds very far away. “This is a dream.”
“It’s not.”
John closes his eyes. “It is. I know it is.”
A palm settles at his jawline, thumb sweeping the corner of his mouth. “How?”
“Because,” John murmurs, “it can’t be real.”
“Why?” Questions, all the questions, and not a hint of the sarcasm John knows so well – both in dreams and reality. “Why can’t it be real?”
“Because we failed. Because…” A lump forms in his throat. “Because she died. The baby.”
“Not yet, John. She had a pulse when they took her away.”
“This is a dream.”
There is a soft rustling noise. The thumb strokes over the corner of his mouth, lingering like a kiss. “John.”
Eyes still shut, John tilts his head. His mouth bumps against something dry, pliable, and a startled exhalation warms his lips. He draws back a fraction and opens his eyes.
Sherlock is staring back at him, eyes wide and lips parted. His skin is bone-white, his curls in matted disarray. He is beautiful.
“Oh,” John says, and that is the only sound he can utter before Sherlock is leaning forward and slanting their mouths together with a clumsy desperation that sends his heart knocking against his ribcage. The kiss is brief, hard, and Sherlock pulls away, eyes frantic.
“I’m sorry,” he manages. “I know it’s all wrong, but—”
John props himself up on an elbow and reaches for Sherlock, cupping his hand at the nape of his neck. Tendrils of inky hair curl around his fingers as he pulls Sherlock into another kiss.
A flush has risen to Sherlock’s face when they part. His eyes are glassy, the irises slivered thin by dilated pupils. “John.”
John scoots back and lifts the duvet. “Come here.”
Sherlock hesitates for an instant before climbing onto the bed and crowding into John’s embrace, burying his face in the crook of his neck. John gathers him close, one hand stroking the small of his back as the other buries in his hair. He can feel Sherlock’s heart drumming hummingbird-swift against his breastbone.
“Sherlock?”
“She was so small.” His voice is muffled in John’s neck. “So light. Like a doll.”
“Sherlock…”
Sherlock begins to shake in his arms. “She was so cold when I pulled her out of the water. She barely felt human.”
John can think of nothing to say; if he did, he wouldn’t trust his voice to convey it. He can only hold Sherlock close and hope the warmth bleeding between them quells his racing pulse. As the minutes creep past and Sherlock’s breathing evens out, John pictures something he has never entertained, not even in his most illicit fantasies: simply resting, at ease with Sherlock soft and sleepy in his arms. Unbothered, as if they’ve just reached the end of an ordinary day; as if John has been at the clinic, and Sherlock at home, tinkering with some experiment or another. As if they’ve sat down to dinner, maybe takeaway because even when they try to cook for each other, Sherlock gets lost in his own head and occasionally forgets. As if they finished the evening with a cuppa in front of the fire, John tapping away at his blog and Sherlock poring over a textbook on poisonous flora, content in each other’s company and the brief reprieve from their chaotic life. As if they have gone to the bedroom – their bed– and fallen asleep, lulled by the promise of tomorrow.
-
John wakes to his mobile phone buzzing on the nightstand.
Reluctantly, he unwinds one arm from Sherlock and reaches for the phone. Sherlock snuffles sleepily, pressing his nose into John’s ribs. John puts the phone to his ear. “Hullo?”
“Dr. Watson.” Mycroft’s voice is cool and crisp. “I’ll keep this brief. Mary Watson’s baby is stable and currently in the NICU of St. Pancras hospital.”
“Oh.” Oh, thank God.
“Indeed,” says Mycroft. “Furthermore, you will face no repercussions for the death of Mrs. Watson. Aside from her being a dangerous criminal, you did it in defense of my brother. I will not forget that.”
“Oh,” John repeats, because his mind seems incapable of processing anything beyond ‘baby is stable.’ “Um. Thank you.”
“Of course.” John can hear the smile oozing across Mycroft’s features. “I will keep you informed on the baby’s progress. Once she is recovered, we can discuss her future… situation.”
John can hear his pulse roaring behind his ears. “Yes. Okay.”
“Good day, Dr. Watson.”
“Bye, Mycroft.”
“Dr. Watson?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
Mycroft rings off before John can fathom a reply. He pulls the phone away and stares at the screen until it darkens, mind blank with shock.
“She’s alive.”
The voice is so close – rumbling through his chest and into his bones – that John almost mistakes it for his own. He blinks and looks down at Sherlock. “You’re awake.”
Sherlock yawns and shrugs, as if uncertain. He tilts his head, curls tumbling back from his brow, and says simply, “She’s alive. That’s good.”
“Yes,” says John, and suddenly his voice sounds a bit strangled. “Yes, it’s. It’s very good.”
“Don’t cry, John. Please don’t cry.”
“I’m not—I’m fine. I’ll be fine, I promise. It’s only that…”
Sherlock shifts, disentangling himself to reach up and brush the wetness away from John’s face. John feels something crumple inside himself.
“Don’t cry,” Sherlock murmurs. “Please.”
-
Eventually, life resumes its usual pace.
Mrs. Hudson returns to her flat, escorted by a pair of Mycroft’s most intimidating men. She invites everybody down for tea – including the goons – and has a little bit of a wobble in the middle of her chamomile tea, oh, my boys are back and safe, thank goodness. The goons look mortified and touched by turns, and Sherlock stares into his teacup like he wishes he could evaporate in the steam. Taking pity on him, John nudges him with an elbow. Sherlock flicks a confused glance at him and John offers a milk chocolate biscuit from his own plate. Sherlock takes the proffered biscuit with a shy smile.
“Oh, my boys,” Mrs. Hudson wobbles, dabbing at her eyes.
“Stop sniveling, Mrs. Hudson,” says Sherlock, but his voice lacks venom. “A biscuit isn’t worth your tears.”
“It’s not that,” Mrs. Hudson says, sniffling. “I only just realized.” She pauses to raise her cup for a shaky sip.
“What, then?” John prompts.
She smiles. “That everything is going to be just fine.”
-
John moves back to 221B, taking the bare minimum from the house he shared with Mary. He doesn’t think he can bear it, not yet: dealing with the baby’s things. The half-assembled crib, the changing station, the cupboards stocked with nappies and bottles and tiny clothes. So many clothes. So many socks, hats, and onesies, a pastel parade of rose and peach and seafoam green. John and Mary’s domesticity may have been a farce, but the imminent child was very real.
For many nights after, lying alone in his bed at 221B, John dreams of the baby. Sometimes he closes his eyes and sees her tiny, swaddled form careening through the air and crashing into the cold murk of the Thames. Sometimes he sees her cradled in his arms, rosy with health.
In the end, neither comes to pass. When Mycroft calls to inform him that the baby is ready to be discharged from hospital, a jumble of words crowds John’s throat. The dream wars with the nightmare in his mind, and it is all he can do not to blurt out a horrible, impulsive wish.
“Dr. Watson.” Mycroft’s tone is patient but firm. “What is your decision?”
-
That night, John lays in his bed and stares at the ceiling. It is for the best, he tells himself, but still sleep eludes him.
-
When it finally happens, it is surprisingly simple. As simple as waking from a dream.
John is climbing the stairs to 221B, weary after a long day of headaches and high blood pressure and fitful stomachs. Cut off from the city bustle, the quiet of the flat enfolds him like a soft blanket. He wants a hot meal, a few fingers’ worth of whisky, and an early night.
The door of 221B opens to a hushed tableau – all is coppery stillness, the late evening sun streaming light through the parted curtains at the window. Sherlock reclines in his chair, basking in the honeyed glow with a rare tranquility that makes John stop and stare. He is not merely relaxed, but asleep, arms draped loosely over the armrests. His head is tilted back to expose the pale line of his throat. His soft, full lips are slightly parted and his lashes flutter as his eyes twitch behind closed lids. Immersed in a dream, he is as peaceful and cozy as John has ever seen him. The picture sends a twinge of pain to John’s heart. He steps out of his shoes, crosses the room, and stops before Sherlock.
And hesitates.
“You look soft,” Mary had said. “Vulnerable.”
That night, John had been as helpless as a mouse in the talons of an owl. He had never felt like that when he caught Sherlock watching him sleep. Annoyed, maybe. Certainly perplexed. But never afraid. Never vulnerable.
A dawning sense of clarity comes over John. It’s as if he has been comatose for a long time, trapped in a mire between sleep and waking. But now he’s awake, and he can’t believe he’s been such a bloody fool for so long.
“Sherlock,” he says softly. He leans down and settles a hand on Sherlock’s knee. “Wake up.”
Sherlock exhales deeply and opens his eyes. A smile tugs at his lips. “Oh. John.”
John rocks forward, bracing his other hand on the armrest beside Sherlock’s. He stops, watching the sleep vanish from his friend’s eyes. “Okay?”
On the armrest, Sherlock nudges his little finger against the inside of John’s wrist. His voice comes out ragged. “Yes, John, John…”
John pitches forward and crushes his lips down against Sherlock’s. A sound escapes Sherlock, something like a murmur and something like a sigh, as his hands rise to clasp John’s shoulder, the nape of his neck. He drags John closer, closer, and John goes, desperate to fill his senses with Sherlock. The smell of cigarette smoke and chemicals, all overlaid with a scent John has known so long it simply registers as warmth, safety. Sherlock’s mouth falls open on a gasp and John licks inside, tastes tobacco and milky tea.
He pulls back with a chuckle. “You’ve been cheating.”
Sherlock sucks in a breath, face flushed. “Just the one.”
“You taste awful.” But he’s leaning in again, greedy for more.
“You don’t…” Sherlock loses track of his words for a time. When John draws away again, smugly studying the effects of his handiwork, he manages, “You don’t seem to mind.”
“Hm. No.” His hand moves from Sherlock’s knee, skirts up his thigh. The pilled cotton of his sweatpants rasps against his palm. “Yeah?”
Sherlock closes his eyes for a moment. He nods. “Y-yes. Yes.”
John keeps his eyes on Sherlock’s face as his hand finds the clothed bulge of his cock, already thickening. Now that he’s made up his mind, he’s determined not to miss a single instant of this. He drinks in every flicker of expression crossing Sherlock’s face, every blink and bitten lip. His fingers frame the hard ridge of Sherlock’s cock, thumb rubbing up the shaft, and Sherlock drops his head back with a sigh. “John…”
“I’m sorry it took me so long,” John says. “Deciding I wanted this. Stupid of me, really.”
“It was,” Sherlock grunts. John pauses in his ministrations, quirking an eyebrow, and Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. I know you needed time.”
“Well, which one is it?” John prods. “Stupid or ridiculous? Choose wisely. I have got my hand on your prick.”
“Both,” Sherlock mutters, petulant. John draws back his hand and he hastens to amend, “Neither. Neither. Please, John, for the love of—”
His words break off in a moan as John pulls down the waistband and closes his hand around Sherlock’s cock. He jumps, hips arching, and John drops his free hand to his waist, pushing him down. “Don’t move, yeah? I haven’t done this in a while.”
“What…”
John takes pride in robbing Sherlock of speech. His cock is hard and flushed and leaking, bitter salt when John dips his head to tongue the slit. Sherlock startles with a gasp and, encouraged, John braces his hands on Sherlock’s hips and slips the head of his cock into his mouth.
There is a quality unique to dreams – a languid haze overlaying every detail and action, as sweet and unhurried as honey dripping down the comb. John wants to reclaim that quality, so he takes his time, ignoring Sherlock’s panting pleas as he bobs his head. Despite his whining demands, Sherlock keeps still, so John risks prying one hand off his hip to encircle the base of his cock. With spit and precome to smooth the way, John’s hand strokes to make up the lack, and his lazy pace soon has Sherlock begging.
“Please, John…” And John looks up, meets Sherlock’s gaze. He is staring down, chest rising and falling rapidly, and the brush of their eyes sends a bolt of heat down John’s spine. Sherlock drops a hand to John’s head, fingers threading through his hair. His eyes widen. “Oh.”
John raises his head and Sherlock’s cock slips out of his mouth with a slick sound. “What is it?”
Sherlock touches his lips to hush him. “Memorizing. Your lips, and the way your hair ruffles, like…” His fingers move from lips to brow, over his hairline. Swallowing, he mumbles, “Memorizing.”
John rises, his legs putting up a twinge of protest. “Come here.”
Sherlock goes willingly, meeting him in a kiss that sparks a flame deep within John. He pushes a knee between Sherlock’s thighs and settles his weight there, half-climbing into the chair. Sherlock twines an arm around his waist and fists his hand in his shirt to anchor him in place as the kiss deepens and their bodies come flush together. His other arm insinuates between them, fingers fumbling with John’s flies.
“Wait,” John says against Sherlock’s lips. He shifts back just enough to undo the buttons of his shirt and shrug it off, toss it to the floor in a puddle of fabric. The position of his legs makes it difficult to pull down his trousers, but with a bit of squirming, he’s able to extricate himself and kick them off. The air is cool on his skin as Sherlock drags down his pants and pauses, eyes raking over him. John checks an urge to cover his scar and shrugs, smiling wanly. “Well.”
“You’re perfect,” Sherlock murmurs. “Perfect, John.”
John bites back a groan as Sherlock’s fingers curl around his prick. His own arousal is a pulse pounding through his body, a drumbeat growing louder with each passing moment. As Sherlock begins stroking him, he rocks forward, urging him to meet the rise of his hips. Sherlock gasps as their cocks meet in a stuttering rhythm. He is all burning heat and angles, each gasp a staccato burst.
John can feel it – the moment Sherlock begins to unravel. His thrusts grow erratic, hands scrabbling at John’s back. A trembling courses through him like an electric current as his panting shapes words. “I’m—I’m close, John—”
John lowers a hand to cover Sherlock’s. Tearing his gaze away from the sight of their joined hands, he looks up. Sherlock’s expression is all intense focus and rising passion, a combination like flint to the kindling within John.
“Beautiful,” he whispers, reverential, “god, Sherlock, you’re beautiful…”
Sherlock tenses, stiffens – and cries out, spurting over their fingers. He slumps back in his chair and John wastes no time, smearing his fingers through the come on Sherlock’s fingers and using them to slick his strokes. Sherlock watches him with heavy-lidded eyes as he pulls himself, feverish, and his need is so strong that he scarcely manages half a dozen strokes before he’s toppling over the brink. He shudders and pitches forward, burying his face in Sherlock’s neck to muffle his shout. Sherlock runs gentle fingers over the back of his neck as the trembling subsides.
After, they lay together in the gathering twilight, too spent to move. It is only when John’s legs begin to cramp that he slides off the chair. He wobbles, lightheaded, and Sherlock hauls himself out of his seat to help him balance.
John blinks past the white spots dancing across his vision. “That was…”
“John.” Sherlock’s tone is edgy. “If you aren’t…”
“That was incredible,” John says. He draws Sherlock into a soft kiss. “Fucking incredible.”
Sherlock looks flustered. “That is… high praise, coming from you.”
John narrows his eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well. You are a bit of a slag.”
John gives him a playful shove. “Cheeky.”
“I’m in earnest. They don’t just hand out nicknames like ‘Three-Continents Watson.’ You have to make an effort.”
“Gosh. And here I was going to ask if I could sleep in your room from now on. But if my sordid past really bothers you, I’ll stay in mine.” John swallows his words. The offer had sounded much more flippant in his head. “Um. That is, if you want me to.”
“I do,” Sherlock says without hesitation. “I… I have for a long time.”
“Oh.” John shifts from foot to foot. Funny, how he feels more awkward with the prospect of literally sleeping together than the reality of the euphemism. “Good.”
Sherlock hums, rearranging his expression into a façade of composure. “Quite. In fact, I think we should start as soon as possible.”
“You mean now?”
“Well done, John.” Sherlock strides toward him and takes his hand. “We have limited experience sleeping in the same bed. Best to repeat the conditions – multiple times, of course. We have to ensure their validity.”
“Of course,” says John. “We’d be mad not to.” He glances down at Sherlock’s shirt. “That’ll have to be laundered.”
Sherlock purses his lips, pries his hand from John’s, and undoes the buttons of his shirt. He tosses it on the floor with a look of supreme indifference. “Later. Bed, now.”
“Right.” John smiles. “Glad we’ve got our priorities sorted.”
-
Later, ensconced in Sherlock’s bed, John mumbles a confession into the dark. “You’re a dream, you know. You really are.”
“I must get that in writing,” Sherlock muses sleepily. He nestles into John’s side, throwing an arm across his torso. “For the next time you start whinging about my experiments.”
“I mean it. Even when you do horrendous things to our kitchen appliances.”
“Goodnight, John.”
“You do know, don’t you. That I…”
The mattress shifts as Sherlock moves. A kiss over each closed eye, lingering at last on his lips. “I know. Sleep, now.”
John sleeps, lulled by the steady tempo of Sherlock’s heartbeat at his ear.
-
When he wakes, he finds a dream in his arms.