Sherlock stood with a spyglass clasped in his hand on a rocking ship. He was underneath a dark sky that was every shade of blue above him, including near-black and powder blue. A streak of indigo clouds masked the sun, which made the waves that crashed and receded against the rocking ship beneath Sherlock's feet look like ink; he couldn't see a thing beneath the rippling surface.
There were two reasons Sherlock stood on the deck at that precise moment; one of which was the inability to fall asleep that night as the rain outside battered against the ship, and the other of which was that he could smell something other than the ocean and fresh rain in the air; Sherlock could smell smoke. He could taste the burning wood on his tongue.
Every so often the sun would manage to peek through the indigo and the smoke clouds and a beam of light would fracture off the waves, making the ocean look topped with diamonds. It was then, as Sherlock looked out across the sparkly dark water through the spyglasses glass, that he caught sight of the billowing white fabric rising and falling with the waves.
A cloud escaped Sherlock's lips as they parted and he quickly tucked his spyglass into his pocket. "Man overboard!" Sherlock cried out, not surprised that it had gone unnoticed by the imbecile on watch, Anderson, before he kicked off his shoes, shucked his jacket, and dove into the water's dark depths.
It was icy cold and Sherlock's heart froze with the sudden shock of it. A shiver raced through him as he forced himself not to gasp, lest he suck in the ocean's salty water, and he propelled his arms through the frigid waves. His arms moved stiffly due to the cold, barely fighting against the tossing waves, so he kicked behind him and flailed through the freezing water until, at last, his hand got caught in the fabric of the floater's shirt.
Sherlock fisted the shirt with one hand and he tugged, hard, until the body tucked inside was brought close enough for him to wrap his arm around it, leaving a small chest the boy had been clinging to bobbing in the water. The words Love, Harry were carved in small, barely there letters on one side near the bottom of the lid. Sherlock kept his grip on the boy's shirt and forced his free arm and his tired legs not to give out as he struggled away from the chest and back to the ship.
Ropes were tossed down from the deck and Sherlock managed to get the boy into a sling of them before his muscles gave out and he sank under the surface. He went down like a stone, his arms and legs refusing to push against the sea surrounding him. He closed his eyes and let the dark water drag him down.
Sherlock was ripped from the water and it flooded his nostrils as he flipped upside down and the liquid flowed from his clothes over his face. He spluttered as he was jerked upward and yanked over the railing where he was deposited on the hard deck floor. Water pooled around him as he flailed to get himself free of the rope. The noose around his ankle left a nasty red burn on his wet skin.
The boy he'd pulled from the sea was a pale shade of blue laying on the wooden floorboards of the deck. His white shirt clung to his chest like it was trying to absorb into him. It was then that Sherlock noticed the boy's chest wasn't moving. His blue lips were no longer sucking in air.
Sherlock moved quickly to the young man and sank to his knees. The boy's hair was dark from the ocean and plastered to his forehead. The water ran in rivulets down his forehead, pooling over his eyelids or escaping down his cheeks.
The smoke and sea water burned Sherlock's nasal cavity as he pried the boy's mouth open and covered it with his own. He forced his breath into the young man's mouth, filling his lungs with large gusts of his air.
He felt the boy recoil beneath him and backed away just in time to avoid the full force of the water surging forth from the boy's lips. It splashed onto the deck between them and would have spotted Sherlock's knees damp if they weren't already soaked. The boy coughed and choked, bent in half over his knees, until his airways were clear, then he lay on his back once more. Sherlock waved away his crowding crewmates with a glare and the captain, Gregory Lestrade, shouted for them to return to their posts.
That's when the boy's head lolled to the side and he opened his eyes against the rising sun to look up at Sherlock. They were like two gems of Sapphire. They took Sherlock's breath away. Or perhaps Sherlock hadn't fully recovered from his dip in the sea; he refused to believe it was the former.
A crease appeared between the boy's brows, his eyes crinkled at the corners as he squinted against the sun. "Did you just save me?" he asked, his voice croaking.
Sherlock picked up his deposited water pouch and handed it over to the boy, who took it thankfully and drank deeply from it. "If you consider returning you to life saving you, then yes."
The boy handed Sherlock back the pouch and Sherlock slung it on his belt once more. "I'm John Watson," the young man said.
"My name is Sherlock Holmes," Sherlock informed him, peering down at the boy from where he knelt above him.
A faint smile crossed the boy's face before he sat up suddenly, looking frantic. He looked around the deck in search of something before he clambered to the railing. He searched the water's surface with blue eyes that matched the waves that were now a lighter, glittering blue.
"If you're looking for the chest," Sherlock said, standing beside the boy at the railing, "it's right over there."
The young man followed Sherlock's finger in the direction of the box and he quickly went to the chest. He dropped down onto his knees in front of it and dug hastily in his pocket for a key. Finding it thankfully still there, he withdrew the key and fitted it into the lock. With a click, John unlocked the chest and raised the lid.
Sherlock watched as the young man's shoulders sank. Through his see-through white shirt, Sherlock could see a faint starburst scar on the back of the boy's shoulder. He forced his gaze away from John's strong shoulders and peered over them into the open chest.
Pages and pages of parchment with curled corners filled the chest. As Sherlock watched, streams of black ink bled from each sheets. A sob escaped John's throat and he dipped his hands into the box to pull out the sopping wet pages. The parchment landed with a splat on the deck and John dove back in, extracting the dripping pages from the chest and depositing them on the deck floor.
"John," Sherlock said quietly as the boy began carefully peeling each ruined piece of parchment apart and laid them out across the wooden floor. When John didn't respond, Sherlock stepped forward and touched the boy's scarred shoulder gently. John jerked his body away and rose to pace away from Sherlock, a stack of sagging parchment still held in his hands.
"Everything I've written since leaving home," John said, his voice broken as he raised the pages. A few tore and fell with a plop to the floorboards. "They're ruined."
"I'm sorry," Sherlock said softly.
John cried out and threw the soggy pages to the sea. He grabbed pages from the deck and threw them overboard, went back for more and threw those, too. When he went for the final ruined pages, Sherlock stopped him. He grabbed John's wrists and held them tight in his hands, squeezing the young man's wrists together.
"I'm sorry, John," Sherlock said as tears darted down the boy's cheeks. "I'm sorry."
John hanged his head and tear drops splashed on the already wet boards beneath his feet. "Everything I've written, everything I've done... It's all gone. My ship, my crew..." John shook his head and looked up at Sherlock with his eyelashes damp with sea water and tears. "What am I supposed to do now?"
"Start again," Sherlock said. He leaned forward a bit, the shells in his curls clinking together as he bent down to look in John's eyes. "I've got an empty bunk in my room; you can stay with me."
John's eyes widened hopefully and he looked down at Sherlock's hands clasped around his wrists. "You'd do that?"
Sherlock laughed. "I'm not an easy person to live with," Sherlock warned.
"Neither am I," John said, his eyes darkening. He cast his gaze on the remaining wet parchment. "I can do sutures," John said when he looked back up. "I can bandage wounds, and I'm a crack-shot with any Flintlock."
A smile spread across Sherlock's face and he laughed warmly. "Let's start with getting us into some dry clothes," Sherlock suggested.
That night, and every night to follow, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson sat on the deck with their legs dangling through the railing, watching as the sun set. John had a quill and ink and sheets of parchment in which he covered in his loopy scrawl, recording the adventures in which he and Sherlock took place. Secretly (at first), Sherlock would watch as John wrote, determining the height of the sun by the shades of gold in John's hair.
Eventually, he did this sitting just a little bit closer to John on the deck, so that his hand brushed John's breeches when he leaned back on his palms. Not long after that, he did this with his fingers laced through John's. And sometime following, Sherlock would wake not with John in the bunk above him, but beside him, and he would get to watch as John's hair grew gold for the first time once again in the rising sun as it shone in through their window.
With Sherlock, John Watson started again.