When Lestrade texts and asks if he wants to go out for drinks, John doesn't hesitate in saying yes.
Sherlock stays in the flat, violin perched under his chin because he needs to focus on this case. He needs to really think. Three murders, no good evidence at any one of them. Just a couple footprints in the mud, but then again, he's has done wonders with only footprints before.
Before. John's been using that word a lot lately. He's always thought of his life in terms of Events, in terms of Before and After. The first was Harry moving out. Then, his driver's license. Med school. The war. When he met Sherlock, he started thinking of things in terms of Before and After he moved into 221B Baker Street. When Sherlock fell, that became an Event, too. Then did his return.
John grabs his coat before heading out the door and takes the steps one at a time.
In another life, in the Before of Sherlock's return, John would have been out the door as soon as he heard his phone buzz. The After of Sherlock simply sitting in his chair one night when John came home, because being dead didn't mean he had to give up his flat key, had actually started to level out the past couple weeks. It almost took a year, but they finally started to settle back into place.
For starters, Sherlock's violin playing has resumed. And the black eye John gave him that first night has now completely faded. There's less tension crowding the space between them, and when John handed Sherlock his tea this morning, the strain was so condensed that their fingertips brushed. (John tries his best not to think about that, not to think about the tiny volts that bursted from the point of contact.)
The thing is, when the sun shines really bright outside their window and floods the living room of the flat, it never quite reaches the threshold to Sherlock's bedroom. Not yet, John thinks, still not yet. He never did see it reach even halfway there the whole time Sherlock was dead, but slowly it's been creeping in ever since his return.
Still, John isn't going to turn down an offer for drinks, even though he doesn't feel the need to try and drown himself in them anymore.
When John arrives, Lestrade's already sitting on the corner at the bar, some old dump where they've met before, looking a little out of place in his button down shirt and long coat. So he just got off work, John deduces, and doesn't blame him for crashing here for a little while. John isn't back to full time with Sherlock at Scotland Yard yet, but he's handled enough of this case to know it's one of the tougher ones since Moriarty.
The name pops into his head with little festivity. John lets it settle deftly in his brain because he's not afraid anymore. They won. No more chlorinated pools, chocolate candies, hospital roofs. He joins Lestrade, collapsing on the barstool.
"God, I'm completely knackered," John exhales, slouching so far over the counter his elbows almost touch the other side. "And I haven't even done anything today." Lestrade laughs, nods his head.
"Yeah, well I have. I ordered for you, by the way." As if on cue, the bartender hands John a glass of amber liquid matching Lestrade's.
They nurse their drinks in silence until John can straighten up at the bar, twist his stool so he's angled towards the inspector. "Still nothing on the case?"
Lestrade hangs his head. "No, God. I just hope Sherlock's able to find something... Lord knows I was hesitant to ask him to help again, after everything, almost losing my job..." John eyes him sideways and sees that glassy look in Lestrade's eyes he himself knows all too well. Reality snaps them both back into the present. "But dammit," Lestrade finishes, "sometimes we need the bastard." John takes a long swig of his drink, and it burns all the way down.
"Believe me, I know what you mean."
Lestrade motions for the bartender, gets him to refill their glasses. "I guess that's Sherlock, you know? Can't live with him, can't live without him and all."
John lets out a nervous laugh. Pauses. "I still don't know which is harder, and that's coming from a man who has literally tried both."
"Eh, looking at you for those three years Sherlock was dead, I'd say it's probably living without him," Lestrade jokes, but John just stares into his glass as the bartender pours him another, sobers.
"Probably," he says, and throws back his next glass.
After the second shot, both John and Lestrade speak in lighter tones, though the conversation stays on Sherlock. John's laugh is less strained.
"She didn't- you're kidding me. What?" Lestrade throws his head back as John gapes.
"Sure did! My own wedding reception, and Sherlock had more dances with my new wife than me."
John slows his laughs enough to knock shoulders with Lestrade. "You know, that's probably why she divorced you..."
"I really should have taken it as a sign," he replies, and chuffs. "Can't say that I blamed her, though- Sherlock does have quite a talent for dancing. Ought to have gotten him to give me some lessons."
Doubt settles over John's features. "Sherlock, yeah right. The man has about as much time for romance as I do chip-n-pin machines."
Lestrade swirls his third glass. "Oh, but it's true- told me he and Mycroft were forced into lessons for their school dances." John's eyes widen at this even through the alcohol. The image of Sherlock box-stepping his way through high school and uni is just too much.
"On that note," John says, polishing off the last of his third glass, "I should get back to the flat. We good here?" He throws a couple bills to the bartender.
Lestrade chuckles and stands with John, gets out his own wallet. "You should get Sherlock to teach you to dance, you know."
John slits his eyes at him. "How do you know I can't already?" They make their way through the bar and Lestrade hails a cab outside.
"Can you?" He asks, clapping John's shoulder before opening the cab door.
John stammers, "Well, I..." and Lestrade continues laughing.
"Do come around with Sherlock more often, yeah? And let me know how those lessons go- maybe I can get him to teach me in exchange for cold case files!"
He steps into the car and John waves him off, then grabbing a taxi for himself. The drive back to Baker Street isn't far, but the combination of exhaustion and alcohol has made him quite warm. By the time the cabbie lets him out, John's eyes are fluttering every time he blinks.
When he manages into the flat, slightly scattered and slightly sleepy, Sherlock is still playing the violin. He pulls it from underneath his chin and turns to John.
"You really oughtn't go out with Lestrade so much; when you two start talking, you lose count of how many drinks you've had." If John wasn't about to pass out from fatigue, he might detect a hint of care in Sherlock's voice.
Instead he brushes the comment off. "Only had three tonight. But I am quite tired, so I'm heading up." He pauses before starting up the steps. "And Sherlock? Do try and get some sleep yourself." Sherlock nods and John ascends to his room.
They don't talk about sleep very much, maybe because neither of them see much of it. It isn't even that they avoid it, but rather that it avoids them. John always has an optimistic view, thinking that if only he were to get in bed on time, he could sleep long and thorough. Sherlock has long since given up even trying.
In the Before of Sherlock's fall, John had nightmares about desert sands and bombs ringing in his ears. When insomnia plagued him, it was because he was kept awake by the sound of gunshots, bullets ripping through tissue and muscle and fellow soldiers dying on the table in front of him.
Now, even in the After of Sherlock's return, even four years after the Fall, John still wakes in a cold sweat to images of Sherlock sprawled out on the sidewalk, blood pooling in the cracks between the cobblestones, hair matted to the side of his face. Some nights, it's Moriarty whom John sees plummeting to his death, and only when the Westwood suit is about to hit the ground does he realize it's Sherlock instead. (Those are the nights John pads quietly to the living room to hear the tap tap tap of Sherlock at his laptop, only retreating at a huff and snap of the computer shut, Sherlock standing to focus on something else.)
John never finds Sherlock asleep, but knows he has to recharge sometime. Maybe he waits until John is at the clinic. Maybe he knows John's need to hear him scuttling about the flat at night, awake and conscious and so very alive.
John wouldn't put it past him. The man can deduce anything; that John needs reassurance of his life, even after a year of once again moving body parts around in the fridge to get to the milk, is practically obvious. But he's never mentioned it, of course, just like how Sherlock has never mentioned what exactly happened to him in the three years he was gone.
All John knows is that there's a scar snaking up from Sherlock's chest around the left side of his neck. It's thick and jagged, like a dull knife, and the first time they made eye contact over it, John caught a shift in Sherlock's face. Before John even had time to question it, Sherlock had wrapped it in a scarf and that was that.
He doesn't like thinking about what Sherlock was probably doing while he was away. When Sherlock first came back, John pumped Mycroft for information, for something, anything, but Mycroft just told John that it was over now and not to worry.
John slips into a t-shirt and pajama pants, prays he's warm enough and exhausted enough to slip into blissful unconsciousness as soon as he lays down.
"Sherlock!"
John wakes himself up screaming. This time, he didn't even see Sherlock fall, he just felt his heart drop and splatter and knew his best friend had, too.
He stops to change his shirt, soaked through from sweat and sticking to his back like a second skin, and then he's down the steps, half-jogging to the living room because he needs to see him, dammit, not just hear him moving around for once.
John gets to the living room but doesn't find Sherlock. Not in the kitchen, either. Finally, hands shaking with desperation, he throws open Sherlock's bedroom door.
The detective starts, sitting up sharply when John barges in. Says, "John?" and "Are you okay?" and "God, come here."
In another life, in the Before, John would never have imagined a man like Sherlock Holmes to have such an impact on his life. But silently, shakily, as John climbs beside him in the bed, he can't imagine Sherlock not.
Sherlock slips his hand under John's and just for a moment, both of their worlds are still.
John uses this moment to wrap himself in Sherlock's bedroom, taking in the wallpaper, desk in the corner, microscope, heavy duvet he has slipped under. The old t-shirt Sherlock is wearing, books stacked on both nightstands. Completely and fully, John folds himself into a piece of this room, thinking maybe if he concentrates enough, he can fold himself into a piece of Sherlock, too, like the hand still settled under his own.
"You know you already have, John," Sherlock mumbles from the side of the bed, and John wonders if he had been thinking out loud. Wonders if it matters. Decides it doesn't.
He rests against the headboard, duvet and pillows at his waist but he can still smell that mix of chemicals and expensive cologne he has come to know as uniquely Sherlock.
"We never talk about it, Sherlock," John says, and he can feel the mattress stiffen almost as an extension. "About what happened."
Sherlock doesn't reply, just pulls his hand away from John's and the doctor feels a cold air replace it. "I had to protect you," he says simply, as if it explains everything. Explains John's nightmares, how John still has to remind himself to pour two cups of tea. The drawer of sleeping pills John still has upstairs, every bottle full, saved.
"You know that's not what I meant." From this angle, John can see Sherlock's scar even through the darkness of his room, jutting up from the place where his neck rests on his pillow. John traces it with his eyes.
"Knife, but you probably deduced that," Sherlock says, and John turns his body towards him. "Moran was the last link of Moriarty's web that I had to find, but somehow he was able to find me first." John bets there's more to the story, but he doesn't press the matter.
John stares at him. "I'm so sorry, Sherlock," he whispers, and that's the first time John has said it since Sherlock's return.
The detective lunges closer, grabs John's face with both of his hands, and John sees pain highlighted on every one of his features. Something raw, something he's unlikely to ever see out from under the throes of midnight. "John," Sherlock breathes, and their faces are so close it falls on John's eyelashes like a prayer. "You have no reason to be sorry. I am the one who is sorry, John. So sorry."
His hands drop. John nods, thinks about running his fingers over Sherlock's scar but since he turned, it's completely buried in the pillows. Abruptly, John stands. Sherlock sits up, looks at him confused.
John holds out his hand. "Dance with me," he says, as if it's the most natural thing in the world.
"What?" Sherlock says, but grabs John's hand anyway. John pulls him to stand.
"Lestrade said you're a great dancer, so dance with me. Or teach me, I don't know much." John expects further protest, but instead, Sherlock moves closer to him, wraps his right arm around John's waist, grabbing his hand with the other. John's arm slides up to Sherlock's right shoulder and they breathe in time.
"You don't have to," Sherlock says, and John can feel Sherlock's cheek come to rest at his temple for a heartbeat, maybe the breeze of lips over his hair. He would think the two of them would be awkward together, all limbs and too many lines, angles. But they're not. They're twin hemispheres, gravitational, magnetic, two puzzle pieces fated to fit together perfectly.
"I'll lead," Sherlock tells him, and John relaxes into the feel of Sherlock's hand at his lower back. "You follow."
John exhales. "Always."
There isn't much open space in the room, so they slide together as close as necessary (maybe a little closer). And they don't have any music playing, but John swears he hears a melodic rhythm in the way Sherlock's hips guide his own. The stocking feet pressed to both of his, bare. The winding scar grazing his chin that he could, if he wanted to, kiss with a mere dip of his head.
John yawns, and Sherlock stops moving, his long arms encircling John in a hug he'd never admit in daylight. "Come to bed," he says, and John can't help a shiver run down his body at Sherlock's tenor. "You're exhausted."
"No more than you," John says, and they each breathe out a smile. Somehow, without untangling, Sherlock maneuvers them back to the bed, under the covers. John takes this moment to kiss Sherlock's scar and feels him go rigid.
"I have too many more to show you all right now," Sherlock says, and John runs his lips over the scar again.
"Then I guess we'll have to take some time." Quietly, in the dark of Sherlock's bedroom, their flat, London, John rolls Sherlock on his back lifts himself up so he's leaning over him. In the midst of all the moving around, the hem of Sherlock's shirt has ridden up his stomach, revealing another nasty scar right under his right lung. Stab wound, John deduces, and looks into Sherlock's face for a heartbeat - just long enough to see him locked up in a hospital somewhere cold, somewhere where everyone speaks another language and no one wears ugly jumpers - before pushing Sherlock's shirt further up.
"God," John breathes, finding raised ridges like constellations littering Sherlock's chest.
Sherlock stays motionless underneath him, breath hitched because John can feel the tension in his chest, they're so close. And when he pushes a leg over Sherlock's and comfortably straddles him, neither says anything. Nothing is really new, minus the technicalities.
When Sherlock lifts his back up from the pillows, John finishes what he started and slowly eases Sherlock's shirt up over his shoulders, over his head and tosses it off the side of the bed. Sherlock's fingers toy with the edge of John's shirt and he loses that, too, closes his eyes and shivers despite the hot, sweaty air of the bedroom when Sherlock's hand runs over the bullet scar on his shoulder. "We're just alike, you and I," Sherlock says leaning up towards John, and John takes this opportunity to slat his lips against the other man's and push him back down into the bed.
Their thighs are sticky against one another's and John doesn't really know if he's ever going to get used to the feeling of a completely flat chest underneath him, but that's what makes it so perfect. So complete. The absolute impossibility of it, all the puzzle pieces that had to fall exactly in place for them to meet. John getting shot, finding Mike. Needing a flat. Needing a flatmate.
And then, years and years later, so many girlfriends (either run off by Sherlock or by his complete and utter devotion to Sherlock) later, the absolute impossibility of John, fingers buried in loose curls, pressed up against Sherlock, lips and tongues and hearts tangled together so tightly he doesn't know if they will ever fully be separate again.
Sherlock moans deep in the back of his throat and swift as silver flips John so that he is hovering above the doctor, grinning darkly when he pulls back, kissing down John's neck, still settled between his legs. "Sherlock," John breathes when he reaches the tender spot in the hollow of his throat.
John smooths his hand down Sherlock's neck, memorizing the knife scar snaking down it. He winds his legs around Sherlock's waist and arches up into him just as Sherlock draws his mouth back up to John's.
Sherlock is wearing long pajama pants, but John's hands work at the waistband and soon they fall to the floor to join the discarded shirts. Both of them in only boxers, John can feel Sherlock's erection hard against his own. He flits his fingers over Sherlock's and Sherlock throws his head back, presses into John's hand.
Before either one knows it, both of their boxers are also on the floor and they're naked, under Sherlock's sheets that John changed for him last week, still in the silence of the bedroom John kept locked for three years. The pain of those years hits him flat in the face and when he looks up at Sherlock, as raw and intimate as he's ever seen him, John feels a desperate need to take it slow, revel in the time they have, the time John thought had shattered on the foundation of St. Bart's with the world's only consulting detective.
So they do, first Sherlock's lips working at John's from above, achingly slow as he rolls his tongue around the outside of the doctor's mouth until John opens. And he doesn't know where or when Sherlock learned to kiss like that, but he's betting he didn't pick it up from any book he's read.
John rolls Sherlock onto his side and faces him, pulls his leg down so one is in between Sherlock's legs and pressing against Sherlock's erection like Sherlock's leg is pressed against his own. It takes everything John has not to thrust against Sherlock's thigh, but he refrains, and instead works his hands down Sherlock's back, feeling the scars littering his back like train tracks to wherever he traveled while he was away. Sherlock kisses John's ear thoroughly, and John closes his eyes against it, rumbles escaping his throat.
Just as Sherlock is licking off the last of John's ear (God, how did he know that was John's weak spot), John takes the opportunity to cup Sherlock's arse and pull him up over John's other leg so their bodies are completely molded together. Now, their erections are pressed together, and both gasp at the sudden jolt of electricity.
Sherlock works his hips up and down against John's and John can't take it, he's too close, so he wraps a hand around both him and Sherlock together and it takes one stroke, two, only three before he comes all over his hand and both their chests, Sherlock not following far behind. John moves his hand to wrap it around Sherlock's back, and when he starts to cry, Sherlock doesn't say anything, just rubs circles into John's thigh and whispers in his ear, "It's okay, I'm here, I'm not going anywhere again, I'm sorry, I'm here, I love you."
"Sherlock?" John says, running a hand through the detective's wild mop of hair. The musk of last night has almost completely faded away with the morning, even if it's still dark in Sherlock's corner of 221B. "Will you take me dancing sometime?"
Sherlock scrunches up his nose. "How sentimental," he murmurs, but takes the opportunity to pull John closer to him. He buries his face in the crook of John's neck and shoulder. Kisses there, just lightly. So lightly John might think, if he didn't have his hands to squeeze at Sherlock's sides, that he was a ghost. "Of course, love. Of course."
If it's out of character at all, John doesn't say anything, just presses his lips to Sherlock's head and waits for the sun to peek in from under the bedroom door. It's only a matter of time, he knows. It's already spilled into the rest of the flat. It's coming for them soon.