A/N: This is sort of a companion piece to Incandescent. They are a reflection of each other, if you will. You do not have to read the other but you might wish to.
Do Not Own
Wish I did.
Luminous
luminous – adjective – 1. full of or shedding light; radiant, bright, shining. 2. phosphorescent, visible in darkness 3. shedding intellectual, moral or spiritual light. 4. of visible radiation
John woke with a start. Not a dream, or a nightmare this time, but emptiness in the bed beside him. A space grown cold with absence. He wiped his eyes and glanced around their bedroom. No sign of the younger man.
The room was brighter than normal. John remembered how, on the way home, Sherlock had noted how full and luminous the Moon was. He had commented on the allure of the light and the way it glamoured the city. He said phrases like that more often since they had admitted their feelings for one another. Before he would have said sentiment. Now it was acknowledged that sometimes sentiment had its place.
He walked out into the living room and found Sherlock standing by the window.
The windows of the flat were open. A cool, gentle breeze betrayed the edges of the curtains. The Moon was full and it painted the room silver. It was one of those fairy nights, when strange things happen and portents are seen in the most mundane of ideas and objects. Where half remembered dreams reside and reality and make-believe intertwine and you can't tell where one ends and the other begins.
Sherlock stood in the window, shirtless, the light gleaming off of his pale, porcelain skin. His skin glowed and glistened. He looked intangible His hair was lost in the ebony of the darkness. His head half turned toward John as he heard him enter. Though it was difficult to discern Sherlock's features in the half-light cast on his face by the simple movement of his head, John could see his eyes clearly. Sometimes blue, mostly green, tonight they were mercurial and shining.
John felt his breath catch.
Here was brilliance and brightness and radiance. Here was beauty and glory. And not just the man's body, but also the man himself. The man and his mind.
John would gladly sit in shadows thrown by the man's intensity, just to hear the dazzle of words that flowed from his lips, his pink lips with the ridiculous Cupid's bow, out of place on most men, added refinement on Sherlock.
Sherlock held out his hand to John and pulled him into the light from the Moon. He would never let John simply sit in the dark. He knew in his heart John was the one who shone brightest. Sherlock was the Moon and John was the Sun, but theirs was not a relationship of jealousies or distances. They circled and revolved and followed and each needed the other to shine their brightest, to blaze and gleam.
Some would say Sherlock was cold and aloof and there were times he was, but John always found comfort and warmth underneath the remote exterior. You just have to get close; you have to get pulled into the same orbit, to be allowed into the same heavenly space, he thought.
John trailed his hand down Sherlock's chest. He reached up and pulled his love's head down and whispered a kiss along his cheekbone. Sherlock wrapped his long arms around John and tucked him under his head, pulled him tight and sighed deeply, at peace, however brief it may be.
John knew Sherlock wasn't a spiritual man, but he was. And in that moment of quiet splendor, he heard all the tumblers click into place and the locks fall off. The doors to the world, to the universe were thrown open and he found truth and grace, grace of beauty and grace of God, standing with his arms around the person he loved most, listening to the thud of his heart. He smiled and closed his eyes.
Time stopped in the eternity of that moment.
In the moment of love and trust as he stood in the light of two celestial bodies, in the luminosity of the moon, in the luminosity of Sherlock.