There's a fragile breath of moment between them.
In the darkness, the only sound is the rain against the glass, and it's cold in the flat. Cold enough that John's exhalation has a moment to cloud, catching faint light, before Sherlock takes it in. Their faces, the intake of breath as it pearls past Sherlock's lips, only centimetres apart. John is finding it impossible to stop staring at those impossible lips.
Sherlock's fingers twitch at his side, as if aching to move. He watches John watching him breathe, uncertain of what to do next, of what move to make. It's an unusual feeling, uncertainty. Most of the time it thrills him, but when it involves John and emotions, he suddenly feels like he's on the edge of St. Bart's again. Breathless and trembling, his heartbeat pounding in his ears. He knows the possibilities, but it's such a huge leap to make, and the moment feels like a fragile bubble of glass. What if he's shattered too much of John already?
Watching from a distance never ached this much.
Returning was inevitable and necessary. He wouldn't be able to do it alone, not anymore; he's realised that, now he's returned. John is a symbiotic part of the Work. Without John, it's all just noise. Sherlock's always needed an audience, but apparently it no longer matters unless it's John who's watching. Even if he's just a sympathetic ear. A whole year without someone - his someone - to tell about each clever move, each complex solution, made it all so empty. The rush was dulled. For once, he was driven more by the purpose, the need to return, to regain Baker Street, to have John by his side again. He would give anything, everything, and did, nearly, on several occasions.
He knows, now, what it cost him, and more, he knows what it cost John. A price he never gave John a choice in paying, and while the good doctor swears he's forgiven his flatmate, Sherlock knows it's not quite true. He's caught that empty look on John's face when he walks out of his room in the morning and hasn't woken enough to remember Sherlock is back. The wince when he asks for a cup of tea after John only fills the kettle enough for himself. The subtle flinches, the wary and watchful gaze. Sherlock hates it and knows he deserves it, all at once.
He wonders if telling John he has to convince himself that John isn't a figment of his own imagination at times would help in any way.
It's in that moment a sympathetic pang blooms in Sherlock's chest, and he realises that you can't break something once it's already broken. You can only make the bits smaller … or start to put them back together again. After weeks of this intolerable distance, this awkward discomfort, this cloud of distrust and unspoken words, to be this close …
Sherlock's fingers itch to at least attempt a repair of John Watson's heart. If John would allow it. Please, please … Just give me the chance.
"Sherlock."
John breathes again, but this time his breath is sound, and it's Sherlock's name, and it's almost a question and almost a plea. Eyes that look like ocean in moonlight flick up to meet up to meet changeling silver. The uncertainty there, as if Sherlock is a phantom that will disappear in moments, his mind playing tricks on him again. Again. It carves a painful hollow in Sherlock's chest where the pang sat before. There's nothing more he can do. He has to try.
Now, Sherlock can't help himself. He's always been impulsive, always trusted himself when his mind gives him the split-second green light of proof and evidence. He has a working hypothesis, now let him test and find his solution.
Long, slender fingers reach out, fisting in John's white shirt, and a soft huff of surprise has time to escape before Sherlock tugs him just near enough to capture the beginnings of anything else. It dies as soft murmurs against Sherlock's mouth. Their lips part, less a kiss and more a vaguely open-mouthed caress, a meeting of skin and damp breath.
John nudges his chin against Sherlock's then, and their mouths close the loop, tongues brushing softly. Sherlock's fingers flex tighter in John's shirt as he tries his best to rob his friend of breath in the best of all possible ways. He tries, with gathering intensity, to wordlessly tell John how much he missed him, how much he is wanted and missed still, how he needs him and cares for him. How he loves him, those words that might never ever leave his lips in sound. But as John presses him into the wall, he thinks it might translate and be enough. Please, let it be enough. Let it, at least, begin to be enough.
It's likely the most eloquent apology that Sherlock has ever managed to express in any form.