A/N: Because I've quite literally been staring at this animation ( HTTP (insert colon) / / br0-Harry. deviantart art/kiss-animation-285971879) for over thirty minutes now. If you have not seen it, go. Do. Now. If you have seen it, I can only hope I've done br0-Harry's artwork a tenth of the justice it deserves.
Disclaimer: Neither the artwork that inspired this fiction nor Sherlock belongs to me.
The Kiss
He's dreaming. He must be dreaming.
John opens his mouth to speak, but he can't. He won't. Not yet. Of the hallucinations that plague his waking eyes, Sherlock…Sherlock as John once remembered him countermands the fear of losing his shit. He fights to sustain the phantasm with the desperation of a drowning man, willing Sherlock to linger so that he may brand his mind with his (alarmingly) decorous expression. No blood, no broken pieces, all there was and will be no more.
It's decimating. How John envisions him so clearly. An amalgamation of yesterdays, resonating eternal between his ears. Penetrating his frontal lobe in synch with the beating on his heart. The past colligates with the present and he knows he's off the deep end. But he can't. He just. Can't. Because there are no words. No real words.
Real.
This can't be real, he thinks.
But he wants it to be.
He wants. So badly. His body, his soul aches with the whole of it.
Sherlock smiles. Soft. Small. Evocative.
Christ, he can't help himself.
John understands the heart cannot feel pain. Not technically. Angina pectoris, a lack of blood, a lack of oxygen, generally due to obstruction or spasms of the coronary arteries. Sentiment, Sherlock would say. Pointless. His partner in crime is a royal pain in the ass.
Is. Not was.
Is.
John hesitates.
Please, God, don't let him disappear. He's never prayed for something so hard in his life. Not even when he lay dying in the desert in Afghanistan.
A Touch. A caress.
The turning point. The realization. The fourth movement of a symphony. Allegro, maybe? Hell if he knows. Sherlock would. He would know. John makes a mental note to ask him later and the very idea of later is quite possibly the most beautiful, precious, invaluable notion John has ever known.
His hands, validating that which can't be true. But it is. It is true. Sherlock, drinking him in, legitimate tenderness and easy affirmation. For the first time since John unwittingly but willingly devoted his life to his flatmate, he sees in Sherlock his consummate loyalty—his love—mirrored back at him.
Suddenly, it was worth it. All of it. The agony. The despair. The months of despondency. To know the depth of devotion behind his cold façade. Sherlock's clear, hard eyes are unguarded. His firm lips—capable of inflicting the most eloquent, the most callous of insults—are waiting in quiet.
John catches a glimpse of his great heart as well as his great brain. It damn near undoes him.
He kisses Sherlock's mouth with all the palliative reverence he can muster. Chaste. Revels in the stuttered breath shared between the two of them. A promise. A pledge. Short and sweet and more alluringly provocative than he could have ever imagined, fever dreams of passion incomparable to the titillation of their first kiss. Their bodies reverberate with the implications.
John subsides, uncertain, but only momentarily. He can feel Sherlock's pulse. A delicate lure beneath his fingertips. He smiles. Justly believes he will protect him and his carotid artery forever.
Sherlock looks at John not unlike he surveys a crime scene. He says nothing. And it means everything.
It was worth a wound; it was worth many wounds; to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation.
Dr Watson: The Adventures oh the Three Garridebs