DISCLAIMER: I own nothing of these guys, except their presence in my slightly twisted imagination. They belong originally to A.C.D and in this form to the good old BBC and Messrs Moftiss.
The appallingly familiar rattle of gunfire. A distant scream of pain. John tensed, hunkering down, keeping his head down, grasping blindly to the side for a rifle, anything to defend himself. But all he could reach was softness. He was going to die.
It was cold, bone-achingly freezing. He felt his own body seize and judder from the outside, as if he was somewhere else, looking in. Dying. He must be. There was no pain, shock must be setting in. He forced his locked eyes open, anticipating the vision of death, of sand and rocks and scrubby brown grass and bodies all around. But there was only white, and the slash of a navy duvet cover wrapped over his outstretched arm. But it was enough and he sank back into the mattress.
When he surfaced a minute, an hour, maybe even a day later he knew where he was. The bed was familiar. Once upon a time it had been Sherlock's and now it was his. The weakness of his body allowed his mind to sneak open the door and grief reared its ugly head. Eeking in slowly at first, sourness creeping around the edges of his clouded reality before a flash flood overtook and he gave a wracked sob into the pillow. His long overdue scream of anguish was muffled in the bedding. Sherlock was gone. His life. Was gone. Just what had he been living for these past months? There was no point.
He should call for help. Even in his addled state he knew he was ill. There was no way the room could feel this cold when he was drowning in sweat. No way he ever would have forgotten, even for a second, if his mind was clear. Mrs Hudson would probably hear if he yelled a bit. His phone was on the night-stand if he could only roll over and reach for it. There was glass of water there too. How long had it been since he had drunk anything?
He drifted back into unconsciousness, dwelling for a while in the haven of dreaming, of icy blue eyes and long soft fingers. His ears rejoiced in the low rumbled murmurings of his imagination, feeling the vibrations coil out slowly, spreading to soothe his tired aching bones.
"I never told you," he mumbles, wishing Sherlock was actually here to listen. He would tell him what he had never put into words. He didn't know if it were possible, if the words even existed. You were that part of me that I had lost, maybe that I had never even found. I didn't even know it was missing until there you were. You were the best part of me.
"John." That voice. He had missed it so much. John would let himself be this ill more often if he got to hear it again. He would spend his life in agony, skirting the edges of death. Hell, he would have let himself fall into the hazy spiral of drug-fuelled oblivion if he had known there was the faintest possibility he would have had one more second with Sherlock, real or not.
"I never told you," he struggled to push the words from his brain to his mouth. It sapped any remaining energy from him and he gave up. This conversation would just have to stay in his hallucination. I never told you. You meant more to me than anyone. I never knew it was possible to feel for someone what I felt for you. I would have given my life to you and expected nothing in return. I lived for you more than for life itself.
"Just sleep John, you're ill."He needed to work on his imagination a little. There was no way Sherlock would ever sound that concerned and sympathetic.
"No shit, Sherlock," John's voice cracked on the name. It was so long since he had let himself say it.
Long cool fingers wrapped around his wrist. He tried to force his eyes open, but they just would not cooperate this time. Possibly because he knew what he would see. Nothing. Big fat nothing. And it would break him.
"What are you doing?" There was no point taking his pulse. Sherlock, especially an imaginary one who should share John's thoughts, would know that.
But it was apparently not his only intention. John felt his arm stretch up over his head, extended by the firm force. The wall contacted with the knuckles of his fist, echoing a knock into John's stuttering mind. And again. And again. And a few more times for good measure. Until it hurt.
"Fuck off." He pulled against the movement. What was this? Some kind of twisted torture he was inflicting on himself. Two more cracks of his fist on the wall and it placed itself gently back to the pillow beside his head.
Behind his eyelids the blackness clouded impossibly darker. He was slipping away again. He felt the weightlessness of his body as the heaviness lifted and he floated upwards into sleep. But he couldn't, not just yet, he still had to do something. What was it? What was he forgetting?
"I never told you, Sherlock, I should have said. Should have said something. You... I just..." The words wouldn't come. There was a sharpening of pain in his head as he frowned in frustration. But he needed to say it. Even to his imaginary Sherlock, who was silently waiting, his fingers tracing gentle lines on the inside of John's wrist. But nothing would come.
"It's okay, John." Sherlock's hushed voice was so close. If John let himself he could feel the tickle of his breath on the heated shell of his ear. "Just rest now. Help is coming. Listen, hear Mrs Hudson on the stairs. She'll find you here and look after you. You'll be fine."
Rubbish. He'd never be fine again. But John strained his ears as instructed. And there it was; the slow uneven tread of Mrs Hudson coming to the flat door. The knocking, it had been to call her. It made sense now, in a nonsensical kind of way. His mind could be quite sharp when it wanted. He battled his eyelids open, and words he had been shoving towards his lips twisted into a cry of pain. His room was empty.
The sound strangled down into barely a whisper. "I loved you."
Two weeks later John was finally recovered enough to leave the flat. The flu, apparently. He had treated enough cases of it recently. It had never occurred to him that he was vulnerable. Nobody was invincible, he should know that better than most.
And he headed straight for the place he needed to be. Ridiculous, he knew, he should have taken it slowly, a quick stroll around the block, perhaps. So as he reached the marbled black headstone he had to slump down weakly against it. Fitting, he thought, that even now he was leaning against him.
The side of the stone was cool against the back of his sweat-dampened head and he closed his eyes. He could feel the chill rising from the ground. He would be too cold in a minute, he knew, but right now it was skating along that thin line between pleasant and not.
"Why did I never tell you?" he whispered. Even that hushed breath of air managed to break with emotion. "Oh, Sherlock. I should have told you. Now, now you're not here and can't even hear me, I have said so many things, to you and to this bloody black stone. Stupid."
John could feel the tears streaming down his face, dripping down his chin and onto the front of his jacket. He hiccoughed indelicately, "So fucking stupid." It must be raining too, because not even John had enough tears to be soaking into his jeans, chilling his legs stretched out in front of him. The sky was crying with him, and it was so right when everything else was so wrong. "You never would have listened anyway. You would have shrugged me off, laughed at me."
"I'm listening now." The voice beside John ripped his eyelids open, and he knew then that he had well and truly lost his mind. Sherlock was sitting down beside him on the damp muddy grass, folding his long limbs and leaning his warmth against John's side. He could not bring himself to look up at the face next to his, fearing that his memory would not be accurate enough to define those features. He could not bear for that face to be blurred, those angles to be indistinct.
John couldn't say anything. He just stared at Sherlock's imaginary legs. The shift of trousers over the lean muscles and wished, really wished, for the life of him, that he was real. He tried to breathe him in, to taste the familiar tang of Sherlock on the air. But all he smelt was rain and mud.
"John, John, my foolish John," Sherlock's voice was smiling. "I listened all the time. I heard it every time you said my name. I felt it in your healing hands every time I needed you. I saw it every time you looked into me in those beautiful long silences. I listened."
A slender hand reached out then, catching John's chin and forcing it up to look at him. Finally John's starving eyes raked over that glorious face, drinking him in. The plummet of John's stomach was so sudden and so deep that it should have hurt. But he had been waiting for it so long that it was almost too good. He knew then, that it was real, it was all real. His Sherlock was real. He was here.
Those full lips quirked at one side and parted, speaking slowly because he knew John needed him to, "You told me. And I listened."
Couldn't get this idea out of my head. Who looks after John when Sherlock's gone? What if Sherlock knew he needed him, would he be there? If he did pop back to play nursemaid could he bear to leave again? Argh...
Please review if you liked (or didn't... but manners are free, remember).