BBCSH 'How to Save a Life'
Author: tigersilver
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2000
Warnings/Summary: Pining, requited, and unabated spates of 'first kiss' fluff. Post Mary, AU, mildly cracky. John lays a smooch on Sherlock's nape in passing. The world does that thing it does when it wobbles and Sherlock practically falls off his own pins.
"Sherlock." It was decidedly peculiar, the manner in which John Watson hummed breezily at him in greeting and dropped a passing kiss upon the exposed skin of Sherlock's nape. "Hey."
Sherlock froze instantly, his fingers curving claw-like on the fiddly knobs of his scope, his breath stopped in his chest, his bared toes curling down relentlessly into the chilly lino of the kitchenette's floor. And John slid on by him with a deft ease and relaxed shoulders, the evening's shopping swinging gaily from his fingers.
"You hungry?" John enquired, busily slapping tins and bread and a carton of milk on the counter; he seemed unaware the world had ceased spinning for Sherlock. "Oh, that's very nice, Sherlock," he went on, sniffing loudly in disgust over something and not waiting for Sherlock's reply. "Tell me, in what universe is your bone saw kept in with the regularly cutlery? Wait—is this even clean?" Not that John was going to receive a reply; Sherlock was turned to stone where he sat. "Ew! Jeez, Sherlock! You're a bloody genius chemist. You know how to sanitize your instruments! Bastarding fuck!"
The offensive tool hit the sink with a metallic clatter. Sherlock concentrated furiously on not sliding out of his chair and collapsing into a boneless, amorphous heap on the floor. Or perhaps simply fainting, a distinct possibility given the anomaly of the smooch.
"Bugger. Well, anyway, tea first. I'll need it, at least, before I have to get on with disinfecting all the silverware," John grumbled on, the already fading stroppishness visible in the tightened lines of his face and the squint of his eyes as he turned to shove the pint of milk into the fridge. "You?"
He glanced over his shoulder at Sherlock, who overcame his stasis and rose abruptly, knees carefully locked beneath him to keep himself upright once he got there, his long narrow hands fisting and flexing on the stems of rubbery-feeling and very lax arms. They swung lightly at his sides until he consciously stilled them, staring back at his flatmate with every synapse on high alert.
"John."
Sherlock was well aware his voice sounded a bit strange. Perhaps it was that his throat was closing in on itself and his mouth had gone arid. Or it could have been due to the manner his pulse thundered in his echoing eardrums or the fact that his world had gone all collywobbles, turned peremptorily arse over tea kettle via a solitary and entirely singular action of his flatmate's.
"You," Sherlock gasped, gallantly struggling for focus and mostly succeeding. "Y-You? What. Was. That."
As far as interrogatory questioning went, Sherlock realized, that last was a fail. But, he and John? They didn't kiss, as a rule. There were no random caresses, no burning glances (at least not on John's part) shared between them, no cuddles nor hugs nor hands fasted when they walked together. He and John merely lived together, as flatmates and as best friends, as they had previous to Mary's advent and then even for a few short months during Mary, and then (finally again!) after her precipitous exit from John's life. It was fine. It was exactly as Sherlock wanted, all he could desire, and it was perfectly, delightfully, satisfactorily…fine.
If perhaps he might allow his mind to wander down a few carefully concealed byways, musing over what it might be like to play a role in John's life that was slightly greater, a tad more significant, then Sherlock was extremely careful never to let John catch an inkling of it. And if maybe he employed his great intellect and huge imagination to build a few flimsy air castles or a sumptuous vista of a more passionate existence, all hinged upon the desirable person of John Watson, Sherlock made certain his staid, steady doctor never suspected.
It was fine, after all. John had said so himself and Sherlock took that as gospel. For John would know what was acceptable behavior for two confirmed bachelors and Sherlock, through ongoing, intense observation, would manage to sort it, his willing conformation: how it was one went about carrying on as a bloke's best mate and not in any way as his unrequited, unacknowledged lover. There was no bitterness, Sherlock often reminded himself; there was no regret. He was…all right, better even than he'd ever hoped to be, and the situation was optimal and there was not a thing he was missing. He had John in his life, after all, and Mary most definitely did not.
Excepting... now there was this anomaly. In the form of a kiss.
"Pardon?" John had spun away from the gaping fridge to stare openly back at Sherlock, all unnoticed by a set of moonlit eyeballs temporarily blinded by a terribly fierce cogitation. Startled, Sherlock blinked in return, rudely wrenched from his bemusement. "What was what?"
For Sherlock's thoughts had completely scattered, chaff to the four winds, all the thousands of them madly dashing about his Palace, calculating, assimilating, rationalizing over this singularity of a kiss. The one that never should have happened, the one John had just bestowed upon an unsuspecting Sherlock, straight out of the clear blue sky.
"Wha-what you did," Sherlock managed. "The th-thing." He cleared his throat several times over. He was in pursuit of an explanation that mattered more than anything in the world—and only John could provide it to him. It wouldn't due to fumble it or say too much or—god forbid!—muck it all up by demanding. "To me. Just now." For there were, Sherlock concluded frantically, really only two possible scenarios to suit the facts. Two scenarios, count them, and only the two.
Sherlock's heart played teeter-totter in his chest, buoyed up a faint but rising bloom of hope (Scenario Two), contrarily dragged down by the more mundane likelihood (Scenario One).
"…John?" He clasped his restless hands before his abdomen finally, not knowing what else to do with them, and stayed perfectly still, a living statue of a man. Waiting upon John, as patiently as he could.
Fact: Sherlock's flatmate was highly unlikely to simply kiss a fellow chap for no real reason. Doctor Watson might be a little handsy when in his cups but he would never, no, never…or perhaps he had, once or twice, some time before, back in the grey dreary days before Sherlock and John were introduced. It wasn't impossible; no, not at all, and further consideration even granted the idea a higher degree of validity. Yet, despite that, it wasn't really a positive prospect now, Sherlock was aware, given the relatively short time they'd spent together since Mary's abrupt departure and given the rather frowsily determined and business-like manner in which John viewed his own sexual psyche. His bounds or comfort zone, as it were. The places he'd be willing to venture and the people he'd allow himself to consider as potential life mate fodder.
Women were, in fact, easier, at least for John. Sherlock might be a potential life mate (fact) but he absolutely was not a woman (fact).
Fact: Neither Sherlock nor John had shown any signs of altering the status quo. Sherlock because he was just that bloody grateful to have it back, all of it (fact), and John (probably) because he was still a bit shell-shocked, after Mary. Flatmates and friends and business partners all worked too, too well for the both of them to ever consider endangering those constructs.
Sherlock shuddered involuntarily; he'd sailed far too close to the wind a few too many times to even imagine it all ending—not again.
But, yet? He eyed John warily. There was no place for deduction here but, still, Sherlock couldn't resist it, the lure and call of aligning all the many facts up neatly.
Fact: John Watson was a caring man, far more so than perhaps even he realized. His heart was a huge organ. Capable of sustaining a great deal of stress, willing to allow even the strangest, oddest of fellows a place in it. John cared for Sherlock (fact), and that was better than all right and leagues above fine.
"Oh," John said, humping one shoulder just a smidgeon and then letting it lapse. "Well." He settled his waist back against the edge of the short sweep of counter and regarded Sherlock steadily, almost without expression. "That. Right." He nodded, a firm dip and rise of obstinate chin. "Well, yes. Yes I did. You're not mistaken."
"I know you did, John!" Sherlock burst out, clasped hands at last coming apart to flap upwards madly. "It's why you did I'm asking!"
"Sherlock."
"Oh!" Sherlock shut his mouth with an audible snap, stifling the cascade of questions barreling up his throat and threatening to spill over. John was a man of foreshortened temper. To lose sight of the kiss in the throes of a squabble was the last thing Sherlock wanted. Or needed.
Fact: Temper aside, John was an affectionate person even if not overly inclined to display it. He was fond of Sherlock.
Scenario One: John had possibly been distracted, returning from work and then the shopping, and had dropped that incredible caress of a kiss upon Sherlock's neck in a fit of fond abstraction, much as he might have done once with Mary.
"Please, John?"
Sherlock controlled his pleading hands and reclasped them before the plaquet of his pajama flies, much in the manner of an apologetic schoolboy. He literally forced himself to stand still and wait once more, though every particle wished only to shove aside the scope and the table itself and stride over to where John stood. To latch the whole of himself onto John, maybe even go so far as to shake John up a little. As Sherlock was shaking, quivering and quaking within the taut bounds of his own skin, a chill spreading unchecked from core to fingertips, a tiny part of his brain shrieking the warning that he was almost assuredly (fact) rapidly entering into a state of profound shock.
"John."
Scenario Two: John had experienced a sea-change, somehow. Suddenly, during his boring day as a locum, or perhaps whilst at the Tesco's buying ingredients for their (or at least his) supper, a revelation had struck him. He had realized not only that the man he flat-shared with loved John beyond all reason (helplessly, hopelessly and passionately) and then had realized as well that he felt the same or similar. In return.
"…John?"
Sherlock stood still. As still as he could manage, as still as a hapless hare caught stark in the view of a circling hawk, even as still as an ancient creature trapped for millennia in the Burgess Shale might be whilst John shoved himself off the counter and stepped slowly about the corners of the kitchen table. His shoes squeaked in the lino; his eyes were very, very blue. The sundry crowd of glassware atop didn't even rattle, though John's hip brushed along in his passing.
Fact: Sherlock's verboten fancies occurred a little more regularly than even he cared to admit.
Fact: John was the perfect height, the best build, the most brilliant of minds and hearts and talents and ethics. Fact: John was Sherlock's very own miracle; his inspiration and his muse. Fact: Sherlock would do anything: murder innocents and criminals both; steal anything, from diamonds to data; lie bald-faced, to Queen and to Country and even unto John himself, and then burn down the world around them all if need be. Oh, yes! Anything at all if it were for the sake of John Watson.
Fact: John was 'not gay.' He'd flat out said so, far too many times for Sherlock's liking.
Fact: Mary was only recently gone; she'd wounded John badly.
Fact: Sherlock was in truth an idiot and this wasn't his area (fact) and though he had a reasonably rough idea of how to carry on (fact) should circumstances suddenly (miraculously, impossibly, improbably) change, he'd no guarantee John would want that. Fact: Sherlock's respiration rate was gone highly uneven, stuttering in his veins. His breath had taken to rasping between his parted lips. His head was pounding with the swell of pressure building between his sweat-dampened temples and he could barely see John through the sudden burning film of hot moisture abruptly clouding his normally acute vision, even though he really, truly wanted to, as the expression on John's face was decidedly most peculiar.
"Sherlock? Sherlock, look at me. Sherlock."
Fact: John was…was far too close to Sherlock, all at once. Fact: Sherlock was fine, fine with anything and everything and hadn't dared consider ever prodding John for more. Fact: John had kissed him. In the most vulnerable of places and in the most careless of manners. As if it were the norm, and not the opposite of that. Fact: John loved Sherlock, yes, but never yet before now in that peculiar, particular way. Fact: Sherlock loved John, in all ways and in every way and ridiculously more so each day.
"I am. Looking," Sherlock replied in an aching whisper, the full timbre of his voice failing him. "I always do. Why?"
Longing was torture and hope was a cruel hag, Sherlock knew—oh, how he knew—yet he managed nonetheless to lower his wobbly chin, to bend his throbbing head down upon on the stem of a neck gone stiff with tension and peer back at John's gently enquiring gaze. And, by herculean effort, he managed to not simply reach out his twitchy hands and grab at the prize.
"Is it…is it wrong, John?"
To observe, endlessly. To take, without asking. To seize, with a high-handed possessiveness. And inhale and taste and touch and consume—and devour.
"No, not wrong." John shook his head in instant negation, sharply enough to set a tendril or two of fringe tumbling. His lovely mouth curled up at the corners, a fleeting glimpse of a grin unsettling Sherlock's equilibrium even farther. "And—and I think you've already sorted it, Sherlock, really I do," John went on, speaking oh, so softly, drawing ever closer and ever nearer to Sherlock and in all the most darling and daring and confiding of ways, the little tease. "The why of it."
"Un-unlikely!" Sherlock growled, broken at last, grabbing at John's shoulder and waist in desperation. Hang permission!
"Imp—arrgh! Impossible!" he snarled, hungrily pressing his chapped lips against John's furrowed brow and pushing his nose into that ruffled thatch of corn-gold and silvered-grey. Sod longing!
"Too much—too much to expect, J-John!" Sherlock sobbed, lifting leaden arms and gratefully surrendering to the mad urge to haul the smaller man, the singular man, the very much most beloved of all possible men, against and along every presenting plane and jutting angle of his own person, helplessly breathing his protests of emotional injury right into John's one neat little ear on a series of ragged gasps. Fuck the status quo, this was war! "Was all right—was fine—would've been, if only—but for you!"
"Sherlock. Sherlock, really." Sherlock literally felt John's answering frown against his exposed throat. "You can hardly blame me for what you didn't have the bollocks to inform me of a whole lot sooner than today. Just think of the time we've gone and wasted!"
"You mean you wasted, don't you? Faffing about! But—John! John, all is forgiven!" Sherlock grandly interrupted John's little diatribe, already nearly fully recuperated and caught up in a burgeoning maelstrom of gleeful anticipation. Easing back a step and sizing up the situation between them vis-à-vis their newfound proximity scientifically, he tilted his jaw and cocked his head just so in final preparation for an all-out assault of his flatmate's senses. If John Watson could blithely kiss a fellow and go about unscathed after, than so might he, Sherlock! "It's better now, isn't it? All better now, John!"
"Oof! Fuck, is it? Sherlock! I can't—can't—breathe!"
The detective all but pounced upon his anomalous flatmate in his eagerness, but oh! What a happy, happy, bloody amazing Christmasthis was! Even if, in fact, it was mid-March.
"Sher—oh god!" Fact: Breathing was boring. "Sherlo—ck—hrrhummph!"
Fact: Sherlock Holmes is unparalleled in solving mysteries which defy the capabilities of run-of-the-mill man. But?
Fact: John Watson knows how to save a life.