Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
-TS Eliot, "The Hollow Men"
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
-ee cummings, "somewhere i have never travelled"
The fall (that flutter of dark coat plunging towards the ground out of the clear blue sky) breaks a number of things.
Bones, obviously. There's a sort of crunch as the fluttering thing hits the ground (as it becomes clear that the speck isn't a shadowy mass of black fabric at all, but a person, a person who once breathed and talked and walked, but who now lies crumpled on the pavement). It's the sort of crunch that means hemorrhaging and internal injuries, the sort of crunch that means dying on the pavement, surrounded by strangers. (And already you can see the effects of the fall, of the crunch and shatter of bones and bodies breaking, in the gray glassiness of his eyes, of the trickle of blood down his forehead, a splash of color in a whitewashed world. You can see it in the man who kneels by his side, not screaming or shouting or weeping, but begging to be let through in a slurred voice.)
(There is something broken in him as well, but it's not his bones.)
It breaks two lives as well, rips them open and tears them apart at their seams. It reaches back into what was and breaks that too, paints the soft silvery memories of quiet Sunday afternoons and late night chases through the streets with shadows, with the specter of what waits for them in the darkness.
And it takes a man (A good man, the dead-but-not-dead person lying on the pavement wants to whisper to the man who's pressing desperately at his wrist for a pulse. A brave man.) and breaks him too, as surely as if he'd jumped off the roof himself. It devours everything he's worked for over the past eighteen months, washes away the bright strokes of color in his life, makes something in him that was once a bright gold grow gnarled and withered and gray.
(And in a way, the fall kills two people.)
Though neither of them would ever admit it, they need each other.
They smooth out each other's rough edges and look underneath (underneath the ice and arrogance, underneath the scars and anger) to find the best bits, the parts of them that glow white hot (with intelligence, with love, with life).
They see the truth in each other that the others can't (That one is not quite human, but something both much better and much worse. That the other's careful, gentle doctor's hands can become the steady hands of a killer at a moment's notice). They each push past the layers of linen and wool, the carefully erected walls and safeguards to expose the soft vulnerability in the other's chest, the steady, electric pulse of their beating heart.
(And with anyone else, this would be too private, too intimate. But they stopped being anyone else the night that one cured the other of his limp, the night that one shot a man in cold blood to save the other's life. They're SherlockandJohn now, one singular entity that feeds on danger and murders and tea. They are tied together, whether they know it or not.)
They make each other better.
They make each other more.
And maybe this is why one thing remains unbroken after the fall. Because after the blood is wiped off Sherlock's forehead by Molly's trembling hand, after John breaks every plate in 221B and collapses into his chair, there's still one thing that's whole, faint and fragile, but whole, thin as gossamer and strong as steel.
Because not even death (even when it's faked) could break the bond between Sherlock and John.
The first time it happens, it is just a few hours After.
(Because now, Sherlock's life is clearly divided between Before and After. Before is marked by warmth and John and light and John and peace and John. After is a world painted with brushstrokes of guilt and gray.)
(Sherlock much prefers Before.)
He and Molly are sitting in the stuffy broom closet that passes as her office. (Molly had tried to pass it off as a real, proper office, but seeing as half of it is home to a rather extensive collection of mops and buckets, she was forced to concede.) It is tiny and cramped and covered with pictures- of Molly's cat, of Molly's friends, of Molly's parents. It has a distinctive homelike feel to it, and Sherlock hates it for that reason alone.
(The only place that's allowed to feel like home is 221B, where there's his skull and his violin and his doctor.)
They had been cooped up in the broom closet/office while waiting for the circus that had swarmed around Bart's to die down.
(And Sherlock winces, imagining the media response. It's too good of a story to pass up, isn't it? London's former darling detective who, when revealed as a fraud, enters into some bizarre suicide pact with the man he'd supposedly hired to kill and lie and steal for his own glory and plunges off a building. More details at 10.)
(He hopes they keep away from John.)
He smokes four cigarettes, one after the other, and is about to light a fifth when Molly turns and glares down at him.
"You know can't smoke in here, right? It's a hospital."
(And Sherlock's mind flashes back to another night spent smoking in the hospital, except it was his brother beside him rather than Molly and it was Irene's turn to be the dead-but-not- dead body on the slab. That all happened Before.)
And so he ignores Molly and keeps smoking until the weight of everything that's happened to him in the past few days begins to settle on him with crushing gravity, until his eyelids begin to grow heavy.
(He is more than just exhausted. He is tired deep in his blood, deep in his bones. It's in every pore of his skin and every soft exhale of breath and smoke. He is tired in a way that hours and hours of sleep won't shake. He wears his weariness like chains of iron, like a funeral shroud.)
And for once he sleeps without a fight. He accepts oblivion like it's the best damn gift he's ever received.
He slips quickly into the dream, and for a moment, he is convinced that it is just that, just a dream.
(Sherlock Holmes almost never dreams.)
It's as if he's been cut loose from his body, as if he's all eyes and ears and a brain taking in the world without any other attachments (and isn't that what he's always wanted?).
And he'd recognize his location in an instant- the familiar dull gold warmth of 221B and even though he'd only left it a day ago, he wishes that this wasn't a dream so that he could inhale the air (with its scent of formaldehyde and tea and books and John that he knows so well) and bury his face in the sofa cushions and never ever leave again (because this is what matters, he knows now. This: home and life and John and John and John.)
And there he is, sitting in his chair, his best friend. One look at him and Sherlock knows that it's not a dream. And for a moment, he wishes he was corporeal so that he could reach out to John, give some sort of comfort- a tentative pat on the shoulder, a hug that starts out stiff and deepens into more as they realize that the two of them fit together even better than expected.
(But he wouldn't. Because they are SherlockamdJohn, best friends who Do Not Ever Talk About That. It's not what they do.)
John is sitting straight up in his chair, face propped up in his hand, staring blankly ahead. For a moment, it looks like it could be any moment in 221B; he looks for all the world like he's in the middle of telling Sherlock off for leaving toes in the vegetable crisper. But there is an emptiness to his face, a hollow gray weight that sits heavy on his shoulders and Sherlock suddenly feels ill.
(I did this, he tells himself. I did this to him.)
And there is something so deeply wrong about all of this, seeing John Watson, John Watson who bullets and bombs could not break, so very broken.
He awakes from the dream-that-is-not-a-dream with a start and he feels very sick. When he tells Molly this, she dismisses it by telling him it's nicotine poisoning from his chain smoking and this is exactly why you don't smoke in a hospital.
He doesn't bother to correct her.
John does not sleep After. He doesn't do much of anything really. He moves softly around the flat and speaks softly to Harry and Lestrade and does everything softly, carefully, as if this numbness is something fragile that, if jostled, will crack open and allow the grief to pour through.
So he lets his world slip away into a haze of static and white noise. He lies in bed with his eyes shut, willing himself to fall asleep so that he can get just a few hours of complete silence, but he lies awake through the night.
It isn't until the day of Sherlock's funeral, three days After, that he sleeps.
At first, it seems as though hardly anyone is coming to the funeral. For the first twenty minutes, it is him, Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, Molly and Mycroft sitting in uncomfortable silence, all of their eyes avoiding the glossy black coffin in front of them.
But like a river, the flow of mourners starts like a trickle and becomes a flood. Not all of them sit with the funeral party, but they throng the cemetery, some standing outside of its gates. There must be hundreds of them, ranging from City bankers (though not Sebastian, thank god) in dark suits to scruffy looking homeless, shuffling at the gates with their hands in their pockets. They all turn out to pay their last respects to the man who, at one time or another, saved them.
(They all still believe.)
There are crowds of people, and they stand there in the steady rain, silent, with bowed heads, surrounding the bare patch of earth, still without a headstone, that will be Sherlock's last resting place.
(And it's strange and it's heartbreaking and it's beautiful.)
And when it's John's turn to speak, he looks out at the crowd of people (all these lives that Sherlock had touched and he had said that he wasn't a hero) and suddenly feels very ill and it's all he can do to run away from the funeral party before he gets sick.
He retches in the bushes and when he's done, he cries, great ragged gasps of tears and air that make his whole body shudder. When he leaves the cemetery, he feels eyes on him, and there's a low burn of humiliation in his stomach and he can feel the grief he tried so hard to hold back come surging forward, a raw pit of black in his chest.
At 221B, he barely makes it to his bed before he collapses, not bothering with changing out of his funeral suit. And he can feel all of his sleepless nights at once, and in a moment, he is asleep, the oblivion he's been asking for.
When he dreams, he's convinced for a moment that he's awake and that he's somehow been transported here, into this unfamiliar hotel bathroom with its flickering fluorescent lights and chipped tiled floor.
But he knows that this isn't real, that this can't be real, because there's a dead man standing in front of the mirror.
(And the sight of Sherlock is a punch to the gut, a stab in the chest. It knocks the air out of him.)
Sherlock has his head shoved under the tap, scrubbing furiously at his hair. Something reddish comes away in the swirl of water and for a brief, sickening moment, John thinks its blood.
But it isn't. It's hair dye. When Sherlock yanks his head out from under the tap, he shakes his hair like a wet dog, and John can see it, despite the dampness of his hair. What was once a head of dark brown curls is now cropped and ginger.
And there's something hollow and dead in Sherlock's eyes and John realizes that he can't see his best friend, not in this man, with the ginger hair and the lifeless face.
He looks like a stranger.
It happens again and again, over and over until Sherlock begins to hate sleep even more than before, because it means seeing the way that grief bends and breaks John.
(Yet he loves it too, in some buried down part of him, because it means getting to see John.)
One moment he's dozing on an overnight train to Berlin, the next he's in an unfamiliar restaurant, watching John pick at his food across from a woman whom he's never seen before. But it's easy enough to deduce who she is- blond hair, small boned, blue eyes that are locked hungrily on the glass of wine in front of John's plate.
"So how's the search for the new flat?"
John's gaze is fixed at some point over her shoulder.
"Fine." His voice is flat.
Harry rolls her eyes.
"And how are you doing? Really, John. I know you're seeing Ella again and all but…I worry about you. You must know that."
John's expression doesn't change, but Sherlock can see the way his left hand trembles in his lap.
(He hasn't seen that since the very first day, when John still had the limp, before they were SherlockandJohn.)
"I'm doing better, Harry. Really. There's no need to be constantly fussing over me. I'm not going to bloody off myself."
(And there's a cold weight in Sherlock's stomach at that possibility, an icy prickling over his whole body. John can't. He can't.)
Harry sighs and returns to her plate of pasta, but her line of questioning isn't over because a moment later, she looks at her brother again.
"Did you love him, John?"
The fork falls out of John's hand and clatters on the table. He opens and closes his mouth several times. When he finally speaks, his voice is hushed, as if he was telling a secret, saying a prayer.
"I don't know if love's the right word for it. It was less than that and it was more than that. We just- we didn't talk about it. And I don't want to talk about it now. Please."
And that's that.
John dismisses the dream as a fluke, some strange one time occurrence created by sorrow and exhaustion. He tries his best to get on, to create a hollow shell of a life that he can hide in, a place safe from ghosts and dreams of dead men.
And he doesn't dream again until two months After.
He is standing in what appears to be an abandoned playground sometime in the deep, dark underbelly of the night. Under a tree a few yards away, there is a man, cloaked in shadows, shifting from foot to foot as he waits.
Even further away is another man, walking slowly towards the playground.
(And he knows something isn't right here, knows it deep in his gut.)
And it all happens so fast that John doesn't even realize what's happened until he hears the familiar cracking pop of a gun fired once, twice, a third time. The man under the tree pockets his gun as the other man falls to the ground.
And suddenly he's under the tree with the murderer and his victim and it's not what he expected, not even a little bit.
(Because Sherlock Holmes is a lot of things, but he is not a murderer.)
The other man is tall and burly, his shaved head covered with swirling tattoos in black ink. Underneath the tan of his jacket, there is a muddy smear of blood. His fingers are stubby and thick and there's a gold band around one of them and John wonders if it's a wedding ring.
Sherlock is squatting next to the man, slipping two fingers under his shirt collar to feel for a pulse and it's all John can do to watch him, amazed and horrified.
He doesn't know this man, this man with ginger hair who jumps off roofs and shoots people at playgrounds. This is not his Sherlock and this is not a dream.
This is a nightmare.
There is a black notebook that Sherlock keeps with him at all times. Inside there is a list of names, copied down carefully from a thick file in Mycroft's office that he'd stolen Before, when he realized that things might not go as planned.
There are eleven names. Eleven people whom, should he return to London, would happily put a bullet in John's heart (which would be the equivalent of putting a bullet in his). Eleven people, eleven different ways for him to lose his soul.
There is one name at the bottom with no distinction from the others save for a faint underscore in black ink. The most dangerous of them all, more animal than man. (He doesn't think of himself as a fearful person, but when he thinks of this man, the things he could do, the things he could do to John, he has to stand very still and focus on breathing properly.)
Of the eleven names, four are now crossed out and he leaves Berlin with a perverse sense of satisfaction.
Because he is one step closer to crossing off the final name, one step closer to home, one step closer to John.
(And his name is his constant companion, the prayer he whispers as he feels the recoil of a gun in his hand, the quiet chant as he scratches off names with a pen. It is supplication and it is pleading and desire and it is John and it is John and it is John.)
It's all for John.
By the time that the third dream happens, John knows that something isn't quite right here, that these dreams are somehow too real. But he dismisses it, tells himself that it's his subconscious imagining up other lives, other endings for Sherlock in a bizarre attempt at comfort.
(And it helps in a way, these strange flashes of Sherlock arguing with a fruit vendor in Portuguese or stowing away on a cargo ship passing through the Dardanelles. It's as if he's still here, a character in some strange story that John never agreed to listen to.)
Before he can really even see what's going on, he knows what's happening because this is Sherlock and John knows him better than he knows himself so he recognizes the rubbery snap of the tourniquet against skin and the soft clink of Sherlock's fingernails flicking against the glass of the syringe.
And he wants to scream and shout and grab him by the shoulders and shake him but he has no arms, no way to reach him. So he is forced to watch as Sherlock slides the needle into his arm and pushes the plunger down and his face tilts backwards in the most exquisite mixture of pain and pleasure and horror. When his eyes flutter open, they are wide, his pupils dilated. Sherlock looks shattered.
(And John didn't think that it was possible to lose Sherlock anymore than he already had, but here he is, slipping swiftly away from him. He is there and then he is gone, leaving ashes in his wake.)
Sherlock doesn't even realize that it's been two years since the day that SherlockandJohn became the late Sherlock Holmes and the not-quite-widower John Watson until the day is practically over.
The realization fills him with an overwhelming sense of numbness. Two years on his own and he's never felt further from home, further from himself. There are only three more names on the list, but home is a prospect that seems distant and impossible.
Without even thinking about it, he finds himself punching Mycroft's number into his phone, pacing his hotel room impatiently as he waits for it to dial.
"Hello, dear brother. It's been so long. How is the dead man's life treating you?"
He wants to say something cutting and witty in return, but there's something more pressing on his mind.
"Piss off, Mycroft. How is he?"
There is a pause, far too long of a pause, and Sherlock's stomach twists and tangles.
"Assuming you mean Dr. Watson, he's fine, Sherlock. Coping."
But there's something careful in his tone, something he's trying to avoid and Sherlock latches onto it like a drowning man does a raft.
"What is it? What's happened to him? Tell me."
There is a light cough at the other end of the line.
"Nothing's wrong. It would seem that Dr. Watson has met someone. Her name is Mary Morstan and they-"
But Sherlock doesn't hear the rest because his phone has slid out of his hands. He is cold, cold all over, and his entire body aches, even his teeth. He wants to shout, to swear, to hop on the next plane back to London and tell John all the things that they Do Not Ever Talk About, all these secret, swelling feelings.
(Of love? he asks himself as he scrubs a hand through his hair.)
(But love seems almost laughably inadequate for what he feels for John. John is his life and his life is John, and every day apart from him has been a little death.)
So he settles for picking up one of the glasses from the hotel bathroom and throwing it at the wall as hard as he can. When the dull tinkle of breaking glass fails to erase the knowledge from his brain, he punches the wall, and then howls in pain.
As he sits on his bed, dabbing the red streaks of blood off his wrist, he wonders how he could miss something that had never properly been his.
The first night that he and Mary sleep together without actually sleeping together is an uncomfortably humid night in mid-July (two years After and he'd finally able to look in the mirror and tell himself that he is alright and believe it for a while).
At around eleven, Mary marks her page in her book (cheap paperback mystery that he would've been able to deduce the ending of by just glancing at the cover) and gives him a dry peck on the cheek. There is the click of her bedside lamp turning off and the rustle of fabric as she slips under the covers and then John is alone in the dim light of the bedroom, thumb holding open his book.
(It's nice, in a quietly domestic way. He could get used to this.)
And it's the lovely sort of sleep where you don't even realize that you're sleeping until you're dreaming.
It's not much this time, and he feels slightly disappointed in his subconscious (and he knows he's like an addict and these alternate storylines that he dreams up for Sherlock are his drug of choice but he can't bring himself to care.
(And that's not even true, because even in death, Sherlock is his drug of choice. They're a matched pair, the two addicts, SherlockandJohn.)
It's just a hotel room, small and heavy with the scent of cat piss and of something burning. The hotel is right next to a railroad and every time a train passes by, the whole room shakes.
Sprawled out, half under the covers and half on top of them, is Sherlock, fast asleep. His gun sits on the side table next to the bed.
(But that's not what John focuses on. All he sees is the bits of Sherlock that lie on top of the covers, the stretch of pale skin that is his leg, the gentle curve of his spine, the way the curls, dark brown once more and far too long, brush against the nape of his neck.)
And if he weren't just a set of eyes, he would've taken in a sharp breath of wonder, of amazement, of fascination.
(And for once the voice that held him in check Before, the voice that told him that this was wrong, that wanting your flatmate, your best friend like this was wrong, that this what they Do Not Ever Talk About for fear of upsetting the delicate balance that is SherlockandJohn is silent.)
He wakes up with a start and he's shivering despite the unbelievable humidity of the flat and he's aware of an insistent sort of pressure in his pajama bottoms.
(And there is guilt there when he looks over and sees Mary sleeping next to him, but not enough to stop him from slipping his hand under his waistband. It only takes four firm strokes and then the world goes white and shattered and he finds that his mouth is shaping itself around Sherlock's name.)
He slides out of bed and pads softly into the bathroom to clean himself up. When he's done, he looks at himself in the mirror, his face sallow under the bathroom lights, his cheeks still a bit flushed. His hair sticks up in all directions.
(And there is no denying that that actually just happened, that he was picturing the sharp lines of Sherlock's body the entire time rather than Mary's soft curves. It feels like this is a point of no return, a choice that he's made and can never go back on.)
(And there's a mix of regret and relief in that realization, but then again, he and Sherlock were star-crossed at best.)
You just got off to your dead flatmate, he tells himself. You couldn't even realize how you felt about him until he jumped off a building.
(And he laughs and laughs like it's the funniest joke he's ever heard. He laughs until he cries and he cries until he can't keep himself standing anymore.)
They break up two weeks later, sitting in a tiny coffeehouse (and it's obvious that the middle-aged woman next to them is very keen on listening in on their conversation and John shoots her rude looks whenever possible).
Mary, bless her, doesn't cry, doesn't yell, doesn't do much of anything really besides swirl her spoon in her latte.
(And yet the sound sets John on edge, the scrape of the sugar against the glaze of the cup. He wants her to stop, wants everyone to stop. He wants silence.)
"It's him, isn't it?" Her tone is level, with no accusations or malice behind it.
(And he wants to try and explain, but Mary will never understand, could never understand late night chases and the way Sherlock's whole face came alive when he deduced something and the quiet sleepy golden warmth of Sunday mornings in 221B. She will never understand the guilty joy of waking up flustered and shivering after dreaming of Sherlock in a faraway hotel room or the way John's entire chest had given way on that day he watched Sherlock fall from the roof. She will never understand the miracle that is SherlockandJohn.)
So instead of saying all this, instead of trying to explain, he just says, "Yes."
(And there it is, the closest thing to a declaration of love that he'll ever be able to say to Sherlock, this admission that yes, even beyond the grave, Sherlock still fucks up his relationships.)
(John hopes he's pleased about that, the wanker.)
Sherlock is weary down to his bones. He can feel the past two years settling into all the soft places of him, tearing into him, poisoning him from the inside out.
In Buenos Aires, he crosses off the tenth name on his list. There is no relief or sense of satisfaction, just detachment.
(And he knows that a part of him really did die when he fell off the roof, because he hasn't felt alive since that last night with John, the last night of Before.)
And he leaves the body for the Argentinean police to find in the morning and he gets on a plane bound for Johannesburg, Moran's last known location and he wonders to himself if there is anything left of his heart at all.
After John breaks up with Mary, he doesn't dream of Sherlock much anymore. He begins to figure that it must've been some strange sort of coping mechanism that's now run his course.
The rawness of grief begins to soften, until it's a dull, constant sadness that sits heavy in his chest. It's not pleasant, not by any means, but he can live with it. He will live with it.
But for whatever reason, he dreams that night, two years, six months, two weeks and three days After.
And it is Sherlock of course (who else would it ever be?) and he's sitting in a chair in an empty room by a window, waiting for some unseen visitor. John can see the outline of his gun pressed against his side.
There is a flutter of motion in the apartment building across the street and Sherlock is up and moving in an instant, his gun held outstretched in his hand. But whoever's across the street obviously has a gun as well, because suddenly there are bullets flying every which way.
For a brief, terrifying moment John thinks that Sherlock's been hit, and even though he knows it's just a dream, the ground feels as though it's dropping out from underneath him and suddenly he's back at St. Bart's again, watching Sherlock fall from the roof.
But Sherlock is fine, he's better than fine, he's a blur of motion running out of the house, across traffic to the other side of the street, thundering up the stairs of the apartment.
And there, in another, almost identical empty room, is a tall, lean man with blond hair and a cruel face. There is a bullet hole underneath his eye socket, giving the entire right side of his face a grotesque, monstrous look.
(It's a lucky shot, especially for Sherlock, whose aim can be sporadic at best, and John feels a rush of relief that it is this man's face who is caved in and bloody and not Sherlock's.)
Sherlock stands over the body for a moment, and then he takes a little black book out of his pocket and crosses something out.
Then he falls to his knees and weeps.
As soon as Sherlock has made certain that Sebastian Moran is dead, he calls Mycroft again.
"I'm ready to go home."
Mycroft's voice is its usual cultured calm, but there is an undercurrent of joy there that all the polite detachment in the world cannot disguise.
"I can put you on a flight to London within the hour. Oh and Sherlock?"
"Yes?" He is impatient for this conversation to be done, to get home to London and 221B and John and John and John.
"I've been told that Dr. Watson and Ms. Mary Morstan split amicably several weeks ago. Don't make the same mistake again."
And just like his last phone call, he doesn't hear the rest of what Mycroft says. But this time it's because he's broke into a sprint.
(He's a bit desperate to get to the airport.)
On his (hideously long) flight back to London, he sleeps and he dreams.
It's 221B again, just like the first dream, just like Before, except this time around there are boxes stacked everywhere.
(John had moved back, but now he's home. He's home and soon Sherlock will be too.)
And John's sitting in his chair, eyes glued to the telly screen, where a reporter is speaking into a microphone in front of St. Bart's.
"…And new evidence has come to light that the allegations that the late detective Sherlock Holmes, who committed suicide two years ago, was a fraud, may be false."
John isn't moving a muscle, just sitting in his chair looking for all the world like the story has no effect on him, but Sherlock knows him better than that. He can see the tight line of his mouth, the way his teeth are gnawing the inside of his lower lip, the way his left hand trembles in his lap.
(And in his lap is his computer opened up to his blog and the first entry on it in nearly two years is titled I Believe in Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock wonders if there has ever been a person more loyal than John Watson.)
John minimizes his blog and opens up a blank message in his email and begins to type.
Sherlock,
This letter's really more for my sake than for yours, because I need to get this out somehow and you're dead and doesn't even matter anymore, does it?
I love you.
I've probably loved you since that very first night, the case with the cabbie. You must've known even then, right? You can see through everyone in a matter of minutes, so you surely could've seen the way that meeting you made me come alive again. That's what you do to me, you know. You make me come to life.
But anyways, I've been absolutely gone on you since the very start, though I was a complete idiot and couldn't see it until after…you know. You are brilliant, you really are. There's no one else like you, because you're like some sort of supernova or white hot star or something and the only things that a person can do when they meet you is either run away for fear of being burnt up or stay to savor the light.
I was one of those who stayed, I guess. I'll always stay with you, even now when you're gone. But you know that right?
Anyways, you're brilliant and you're brave and you're exciting and you're handsome and you're conceited and you're rude and you're funny and you're kind and I know you don't think that at all, but Sherlock Holmes, you are the very best man I have ever known. There will never be another like you.
And I love you and I love you and I love you.
I suppose that's why things with Mary or Sarah or any of my other girlfriends in my Post-Sherlock life (because that's how I think of my life now, did you know that? Life before and life after you) never worked out. I was never fair to them, because I could never give them what they needed, because everything I have was already going to you. I'd happily give you anything, Sherlock, I'd follow you to the ends of the earth, you know.
God, I wish you weren't dead.
For the longest time after you died, I hated you a bit. I thought you were selfish for leaving me alone like this, for abandoning me when I needed you most. But I don't, not anymore. To be honest, I kind of hate myself for not seeing that signs. I should've been able to save you, Sherlock. You should've let me save you. It's only fair, because you saved me, all those years ago.
I know that you never really returned my feelings, but that's alright, honestly. I never really expected you to. I know that you're not interested in any sort of relationship like that, and being your friend was enough. Not everything but enough.
We were supposed to spend the rest of our lives together, you know that?
I can only imagine what that would've been like- growing old together, slowing down, retiring. Even the great Sherlock Holmes has to get old. But it would've been alright, because you would've had me next to you, love.
I never thought you were a fake, by the way. Not for a moment, not even when you were on the roof telling me so yourself. You wouldn't do that, not to me.
I believe in you. I love you.
All my love (and you'd better believe that's a bloody lot),
John
John shuts his laptop, rubs his hand across his eyes. He flicks off the telly and just sits there for a bit, staring thoughtfully ahead. For the first time since the fall, he doesn't look empty or hollow, just a bit sad and a bit happy and the sight of it is enough to burst Sherlock's heart.
He doesn't know what to think or how to react. Something in his chest feels warm and golden and full and he wonders if it's possible to die from joy.
(John loves him. John loves him. John loves him.)
(He could never get tired of those words.)
And he knows that John puts far too much credit in him in thinking that Sherlock had known since the start (because Sherlock had probably fallen for John that night too and he'd had no idea, so how was he supposed to figure out John?), but he can't even care. Besides, he loves John all the more for it.
(Is it even possible to love John more than he already loves him? That could be an experiment to be performed when he gets home. He already looks forward to it.)
There's shock mixed in at some of the things that John's written, namely that Sherlock never really returned his feelings.
I do, John he wants to say with his nonexistent vocal cords. I do.
Because that's it. It is probably the truest thing about him, that Sherlock Holmes loves John Watson. John is his truth, is his kindness and his light and his heart.
And there's something singing inside of him and it's love love love.
There is nothing more intimidating than the seventeen steps that lead to 221B.
Sherlock thinks for a moment that maybe this is a mistake that he still has time to flee halfway across the world (except that he's already told Mrs. Hudson, so half the world probably knows by now).
He weighs the possibilities in his mind. On one hand John could kiss him. (He'd like that, more than he can quite say.) On the other hand, John could punch him.
(Or worst of all, John could simply not say anything that all, just walk out of the flat and out of Sherlock's life. And that's too much to think about, too much to bear.)
And after a long moment of standing hesitantly on the first step, he realizes that he is being ridiculous. It's John after all and finally, after two long years, he's been given the very best gift, the chance to start over, to be given back 221B and cases and home and John.
(John who loves him. John who cares about him.)
So he doesn't allow himself a second thought and he finds himself climbing the seventeen steps in fours long strides and opening the doorknob without once stopping.
The look on John's face is one of a man who has just had his world shattered and rebuilt in a single second and he surges forward to Sherlock, who finds himself hanging awkwardly in the doorway, unsure of his hand.
"You fucking bastard." John's voice is shaky and unsteady and when he winds his arm up for a blow, Sherlock braces himself, but the expected punch never comes. Instead he winds his arms around him and buries his face in the crook of his neck.
"Don't you ever do that to me again or I swear I'll never come back." His words are muffled, and Sherlock is distracted for a moment by the feeling of his lips against the skin of his neck.
"Never, John, never." He laces his fingers into John's hair and repeats the words until John stops shaking in his arms.
(And the words are as much a reminder for him as they are a promise to John, to never do this to him again.)
"God, I love you. I missed you more than anything," he says into John's hair.
(And he really, really didn't mean to say the first part, but he doesn't even realize he's said it until it's out of his mouth, out of his control.)
John pulls away from the embrace a bit, blinking up at him in surprise, and for a brief, terrible moment, Sherlock is afraid that the dream with the letter might have been an actual dram and that he's just fucked everything up royally.
But then John's knotted one hand in his curls and pulled him down towards him and they are kissing and kissing and kissing and god who knew that it could be so glorious? John's mouth presses and moves over him and in between kisses, Sherlock can hear him.
"I always knew you'd come back for me. You never leave me behind."
(And the amount of trust and faith that John has in him leaves Sherlock feeling a bit weak in the knees, though that might be from the kissing.)
And he tries to answer in his own way, their private little call and response.
"It was all for you. All for you and I love you and I love you and I love you."
And it is kissing and it is trust and loyalty and it is SherlockandJohn together once more and it is golden warmth and Sunday mornings in 221B and murders and cases and experiments and joy and color.
And it is love and it is love and it is love.