"Sherlock, I can't read it if you're reading it." The tail end of a long day (long week, month) and John had heard so much about the novel from Sarah that he'd found himself excited to read it; for the first time in a long time, John longed to pick up a book and give himself over to the plot. Perhaps lie in bed, relax, manage to get far enough into the book that he wouldn't feel uncomfortable picking it back up after a month (or two).
Instead, Sherlock holds the book, his long fingers brushing over the soft edges of the pages, glancing at the title page. Hindsight, John knows he shouldn't have left it out on the coffee table; this was destined to happen.
He holds it for a moment, still. Sherlock scrutinizes the pages, the jacket. "Sarah told you to read this."
"Sarah suggested it."
Sherlock rolls his eyes, but doesn't toss away the book as expected. "Numerous times. And she's read it more than once, I can smell her on it." His nose wrinkles and his face contorts into a mask of disgust.
It is John's turn to roll his eyes; must this always happen? "Right, yes, she spoke about it a lot, that doesn't change the fact that I would like to read it." John holds out his hand, makes a come hither gesture with his fingers, waits for Sherlock to hand it over.
Instead, he cracks it open and slides down on the chair from his crouching position to sitting; the light catches his hair, inflames it for a moment and John does not notice.
Sherlock's eyes fixate on the page and hold for a moment. He reads. Of course, John holds his hand out for the book and instead, he reads it.
"Sherlock..."
A whisper of paper shuffling against paper.
"Well I want to see what all of the fuss is about, John," Sherlock doesn't glance up; his eyes simply carry over the pages, quickly. His hands are a flurry, tossing a page, a page, another. Tips gripping the spine, dipping into the crease.
John sits and fumes, sets his jaw and just when he's had about enough, "Sherlock, I've been looking forward to starting that book all week. I really have, so, since it is you know, technically mine-"
"Sarah's."
"And Sarah lent it to me, if you could just give it here-"
Sherlock snaps his gaze to attention, settling it on John for a long, long, long moment before allowing his jaw to relax, backtrack in pages and speak. "Some hours before dawn Henry Perowne, a neurosurgeon, wakes to find himself already in motion, push-"
"What are you doing?"
Sherlock slowly moves the book to his lap, tilts his head just so to the left and regards John. He says, in a very low and very serious voice, "I'm reading, John."
John holds his gaze and can't seem to figure out what to make of what he sees there, shadowed in the wintry depths of his eyes. Instead, John sits back, slides his hands over the arms of the chair and says, "Alright."
He manages to make it through the first three chapters of the book in one sitting. Sherlock's voice hits each word with precision; he considers the meanings of the words, their context in the plot. The man, this man is a storyteller and as John comprehends this fact, Sherlock's lips and tongue slip around the word 'through' and John can hear each syllable, the slight lilt to it; his ear drums accept the word greedily.
The man knows how to read, knows how to feel the text. John's eyes slip closed and he can see Sherlock nearly massaging the letters, working them into words, speaking them into submission.
John asks him to stop.
It becomes too much; too much what he will not say and Sherlock will not give him back the book.
John slinks away, can't sleep for the sound of him resonating in his mind.
-
Sherlock reads over the telly.
Not over, but he waits for John to catch on and reduce the volume. John fidgets for a few moments, straightening newspapers, throw pillows, wiping a bit of dust from the coffee table. In a moment, he's caught up in the plot, in Sherlock's voice.
On the edge of the sofa, John listens. Ten minutes, fifteen and without asking his brain for permission, his body relaxes back into the cushioning. It's a time before he lays prostrate, his eyes slipping closed.
He does his best to grin and bear the words that are being spoken. Again, the plot is entirely too compelling, bright and real and tacit; there's something that's happening as the text is read, something that helps John translate everything in his mind, a film, a rendering in color and feelings and he finds it difficult to swallow.
To breathe.
"Are you enjoying the book, John?" Sherlock asks; the question is bright embers, charcoal, smoke.
John's eyes slide open and he sees the ceiling, fixes intently on a water mark and replies, "Yes."
He doesn't bother glancing over, but hears Sherlock shifting in his seat. "That's all for this evening."
Sherlock is up in a flash, robe billowing behind him as he takes to the hallway and bounds up the stairs. John can hear him creaking along the floorboards, pacing.
-
"Another chapter?" Sherlock does not make eye contact, does not even move from his position on the couch. John saunters in, snow in his hair (on his eyelashes) and simply stares.
Sherlock lays, looks boneless, ebony pajamas making his skin all the more stark. The flat is quiet, save for the crackle and pop of the fire, the snow deafening the outside noise. It's a strange scene, somehow intimate. John rakes a hand over his hair and Sherlock spares him a quick glance, tears his gaze away when John attempts to meet it.
Kicking off his boots in the hallway, John says, "Sure," though his voice wavers for reasons he does not wish to dissect.
John moves to the kitchen, and Sherlock waits a beat to begin.
His voice sounds throughout the apartment and John slows to make their tea with the utmost care. He's following the thread of the novel but just barely, now. There's something that John is realizing, that is washing over him like a warm, slow revelation. He enjoys Sherlock's voice, the pitch-tone-cadence-everything.
It's... beautiful. Tempered and crisp, lulls and yet keeps him on edge.
He makes it only a few pages before he has to turn in, can't begin to stand this. John needs to process this new information, but even as he lies in his bed, he needs more, wants more, doesn't know how and won't ask for it.
-
The book is forgotten for ninety-three days, and just when John thinks it's finished, Sherlock palms the paperback.
It's been a night, an endless one, when daylight bleeds to evening and back again and they're both gasping on fumes.
"Tomorrow, perhaps," Sherlock says, before slipping his head against a pillow on the sofa. He's stomach down, the book nestled between the pillow and the sofa and John resists the urge to stroke his hair before he pulls himself up the steps and to bed.
-
A sweltering Spring day; no one had accounted for this. The meteorologists had assured it would not peak over twenty-one and yet the humid air rolled in, slicking over every surface available.
John makes it a point to put a container full of coffee in the refrigerator overnight, wedges it between a cadaver of a rat (sealed in a biohazard bag, thank god) and a head of rapidly-expiring cabbage. He's lethargic and molasses slow as he pads downstairs, into the kitchen and retrieves the chilly beverage. He doesn't bother with a mug, with milk, simply holds the container to his lips and drinks.
Lovely, acrid, everything he needs.
There's a slight snuff from the living room and John wonders how he missed him when he came down. Sherlock is already awake, standing by the open window. He's clad in a white t-shirt and loose gray pants. John's not sure he can handle the sight of this, the intensely-casual.
The air in the apartment is heavy and thick with moisture and Sherlock has begun to sweat. It strikes John as strange that he's never seen the man break a sweat, even after running blocks and blocks. Yet now, now...
"Morning," and it's more of a question than a statement.
Sherlock drags a palm up against the nape of his neck. It's so off kilter, everything; it's all different, hugged by a thick of steam (it's so hot.) John can't help-or can he? can he?-but notice the subtle ring of sweat, the suck of cotton on moisture at the nape of Sherlock's t-shirt...
John forgets the coffee, forgets everything, forgets exactly why this is something he should be pretending to ignore.
"Shall I read?: his hand is tangled in his hair, as John has never seen it. It's the heat, the heat. His eyes are focused elsewhere, at the wall, outside the window; he looks everywhere but at John.
"Yes."
It's the one word he can manage.
The sweat on the back of his knees causes him to buckle into a kitchen chair, watches Sherlock as he remains by the window in the sunlight.
-
It's nearing August and John realizes at the height of a fever that no novel should take this long to read. He has yet to even touch the thing; it's Sherlock's now and they read together. It's been too long since they've delved into the novel and John hasn't picked up another tome.
It feels like cheating; bizarre, how he feels about all of this, really.
John makes it to the bathroom and back, tries for the kitchen but his legs shudder before he even reaches the stairs and reckons it's a bad idea.
He wants to ask for a bit more, a chapter or two but he feels so weak, so cold, diagnoses himself with the flu and manages to drag a few afghans on his bed before he succumbs to a slumber that's anything but restful.
When he awakes, thirteen hours later, there's a large glass of water, a warm mug of tea and a consulting detective in one of the arm chairs from the living room. From the living room? Did he...
"Sherlock, did you-"
"Quiet now, you're sick and you're a doctor so you should know, don't overexert." Sherlock demands this and sits rigid in the chair for a moment while he knows John is considering arguing back, that yes, he is a doctor and he actually knows best. But that's not the point.
But he spies the book. The book that Sarah lent and he hasn't spoken to Sarah in months and it's Sherlock's book now.
And it's silly, childish nearly, too much to ask for and yet, John's head falls back against the pillow after a long drink from the tea. It's all he wants, a few words, another chapter.
Just to hear Sherlock speak.
"Go on now," is the last thing he remembers saying.
-
Sherlock paces the flat while Lestrade waits patiently near the kitchen, while John settles himself into an armchair for the wait. For the revelation. It's nearly ten minutes of Sherlock's back and forth and back before anyone speaks.
Lestrade picks up the book, thumbs the pages hastily and scans the back cover. "Saturday, eh? Any good?"
The detective inspector bends down and scoops it up as though it's nothing, as though it's just a book.
John has no idea what to say. (He has no idea what to say about the fact that there is simply too much to say.) Why say anything at all? It's just a book... it's just...
Sherlock is staring out the window at the rain, beyond it. "It's brilliant, no, a bit contrived and it reaches but it's - no, the witness, the color of her hair..."
Lestrade drops the book and tries to remember (point is, he drops the book); Sherlock spins, meets John's eyes and for a moment their gaze holds. Sherlock's eyes soften, his lips morph into whatever happens just before a smile.
Just before a smile.
A secret.
"Her hair was blonde..." Lestrade trails off because he knows Sherlock is going somewhere with this.
John knows that there's nowhere to go with this, a smoke screen. "Ah, yes, blonde," he says.
As though that means anything at all.
-
Sherlock does not ask permission when he enters his room. "I need to read the next chapter," is all he says and settles himself on the far side of John's queen, just on the very edge.
John awakes from his slumber with a start but understands what is being asked of him. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he half-crawls over the empty side of the bed and turns on the bedside lamp, pats the empty expanse of mattress.
Sherlock hangs his chin a bit, assesses the area on which he has been invited to stretch out on and does so primly. At John's amused exhale, he brings up his feet and leans his back against the headboard.
He says nothing other than the words that are on the page.
-
It's all but disastrous, that last chapter. John can't sit still and Sherlock does not wish to move from the kitchen, has been there for two days.
Sherlock holds his head in his hands for a good thirty minutes before he bothers touching the book. John settles himself in at the living room table, tapping at his blog, writing so much nothing. It's avoidance, to be sure. They both know it and neither says, which just renders it all the more telling.
There's the pacing, John's pacing, back and forth from the sofa to the fireplace. Hands in and out of pockets.
Ten months of this and everything else that is in between. The pages have been damaged, taking on moisture, curling. They've been dogeared by Sherlock's careful hand. A few pages have been scribbled on in smudged pencil. It's been transformed in a very tangible way.
Sherlock flicks the corner of the cover; it's manic, his movement, but the cover is pliable, worked into softness by constant touch. John thinks about this, about his hands all over the book. And it's unfair, that he's not been able to touch it, hold, run his fingertips over the pages.
John strides forward and grabs the book from his hands hastily. "I'll just..."
And still, he flips to the latest noted page, reads the words and can't bring himself to read them aloud. In his mind, he gets halfway through the page and yet his voice won't permit him to speak the words typed there. "Sher... I just," he closes the book and clamps it tightly in his right hand, balling his other fist by his side. "This... you know... the book..."
Sherlock blinks, face blank. As always. Always and always.
John's voice drops and his cheeks pinken. "Shit..."
There's nothing but breath, a steady breathing between the both of them for moments, perhaps an entire minute.
Sherlock stands, wiping his hands on the thighs of his trousers. If John could swear it, he'd guess that this was all nerves, pure adreneline. Every movement he's making, because his hands twitch and he very nearly bites his lip.
"John." Sherlock states, takes a step closer.
John knows, but does not know what he's saying. What else is there to do but agree? "Yes," he nods his head very judiciously, mechanically and Sherlock whispers his lips against his.
Dry lips against dryer lips; nothing like a kiss. A shiver. An experiment.
Sherlock steals the book from him in a flash, manages to sit, make it through the very last chapter as John leans shakily against the counter. His fingers slip against the slick top and John's chin falls to his chest, waits as Sherlock reads the last of the written words.
He places the book carefully down on the edge of the table and raises his eyes to meet John's. "The end."
John thinks maybe, perhaps, that yes, this is the end. Sherlock holds out the book, his head nearly hung, as though in concession, supplication.
John hand reaches forth, grasps instead Sherlock's wrist and holds. He doesn't know what to say, not really. His thumb moves over Sherlock's pulse point and the steady thrumming of blood beneath the skin, the intensity of it and an idea springs to mind.
"I'll... I'll find another book," John finally manages. "It's ehm, it's my turn, after all, yes?"
Sherlock looks up and meets his eyes; something flashes there.
Sherlock's fingers maneuver to brush John's wrist and then he breaks free, snatches the book back and bounds up the steps.
From epilogue to introduction, it takes only a day.