When the World Falls Apart
Part 1
Tension has been hovering in the flat, an inky festering miasma building up in the spaces where words ought to have been, feeding on half-truths and masked emotions, until John, overwhelmed by the unseen force and helpless against Sherlock's stolid silences has left in a huff. Again.
The fourth time in as many weeks, Sherlock notes. No cause for alarm until the outbursts become more frequent. Granted the nightmares have been sounding more vociferous…virulent even, but based on the evidence, it appears to Sherlock that John is not yet on his last legs.
Still, he can't keep himself from going to the window to watch his colleague's progress onto the sidewalk and out into the street. He watches until John passes beyond the ochre aura of the streetlight and there is nothing left to witness but shadows. Eventually Sherlock turns on his heel back in to the cluttered living space, his hands reflexively coming to their reflective steeple position at his lips. Unaccustomed as he is to regard others, the murmur of the word that comes to his lips is as plaintive as a sigh,John.
...
John manages to stalk a block and a half from Baker Street before coming to an abrupt, panicky halt. "Shit! Shit, shit, shit, shit!" he curses, stomping his feet whilst pulling his trembling hand through his close cropped hair. He is irritated with himself, with Sherlock, with the whole bloody situation. And he has no where to go.
Sarah had told him as much the last time he had turned up unannounced. With disturbing clarity she'd hurled words at him such as "confused" and "selfish." He'd lacked the energy to defend himself and as a result, was standing cold and alone on a city street in the middle of the night, the dark congealing into shadows that, for some ridiculous reason he can't explain, are nearly as menacing as anything he'd experienced in Afghanistan.
Head down, jaw set he resumes walking. An unnoticed figure brushes close past him, causing an audible whisper where the fabric of his coat has been touched. Air catching in his lungs he swirls around to meet his attacker, to find only a swiftly retreating pedestrian. Get it together, John. He gulps hard, trying to swallow the knot at the back of his throat.
Truth told, there's no place he wants to be, except back at the flat where there are surrounding walls and familiar smells, a warm fire he'd lit earlier (unless Sherlock has let it die out), the pulsing glare of the telly, a cuppa, Mrs. Hudson and… and Sher….. Mrs. Hudson.
Though he'll have to endure her questioning brow and rambling innuendos, asking to bed down on Mrs. Hudson's sofa seems a better alternative to sleeping rough. Purposefully he makes his way back to 221b Baker Street and quietly lets himself in with his key.
From the bottom of the stairs he can hear Sherlock animatedly attacking a piece on the violin that he thinks is something by Bach. Some nights when he dreams, this same music seeps in, almost like a life preserver to pull him to safety from the horrible images haunting his sleep. Does Sherlock know?
Ever so lightly, hoping against hope that Sherlock won't hear, he raps on Mrs. Hudson's door.
"Had another row, then doctor? " she asks, her tongue practically clucking like a mother hen.
John tries for his best sheepish shrug and sighs.
"Well, never you mind. Back to normal by tomorrow, mark my words," she reassures ushering him inside with a consoling palm clasped to his shoulder.
Normal, thinks John. Whatever the hell that is anymore.
...
Eyes sealed to block incidental distraction, Sherlock gives himself to the music. His playing always begins from a purely mechanical origin- fingers here, bow just so- to draw the notes from the strings, but as he proceeds, the strains carom betwixt sweeping and subtle, poignant and playful, belying, for anyone who listens in the night, the humanity inherent in the musician. Without a voice, he outpours the heart he claims not to have.
Sherlock knows when John Watson has returned to 221b, can sense his presence as clearly as he can hear the metallic click of the bolt turning in the front door below. A smile flashes across his face as he plays, the melody growing deeper.
John is home. John is safe.
...
John is well and truly knackered. The fitful, frightful sleepless nights have become more than he can bear and are beginning to effect more than his mood. Yesterday, for instance, he'd dropped a tongue depressor and while gathering the energy to reach over and pick it up, it had seemed to levitate off the dingy linoleum floor in his consulting room. Not good.
He is tempted to ask Sarah to write out a prescription for sleeping tablets, but doesn't want to deal with the inevitable recommendations of therapy. He's been down that road before and it had ended- well, it had ended with Sherlock, hadn't it? Sherlock, who unlike the others hadn't molly-coddled or pandered. Sherlock, who had simply said "Come at once," and John had.
He still wonders about that. Was it Sherlock's imperious air of authority that compelled him to blindly follow? Or was it recognition of a similar unnamed wanting in Sherlock that had drawn him in to the whirlwind of his sphere? Or…
Pondering, mulling, thinking so damn much, these are Sherlock's areas, not John's and as he grasps for reason, he feels a heaviness across his chest, can feel straps being pulled tight across his rib cage, cutting in to the malleable flesh, the tense muscles. It is the recurring ghost of that damnable decoy vest of Moriarty's. John's lungs constrict with dread, with a loathing so deep he cannot breathe. He holds this feeling, his own breath until his body forces him to gasp and choke, tears seeping from the corners of his eyes.
This exercise has become a sort of rite now- a challenge he puts to himself to test how long he can last, how far he can go to feel a semblance of the heady rush of relief that came when Sherlock freed him of his burden. When he was given back his life. But, as on that day, the sensation is fleeting.
There is a more powerful fear from that day at the pool, a fear that lingers like a disease he can neither tend nor cure. It glimmers red and bright against marble skin- deadly, dancing lesions of light threatening to rip his world apart.
...
Sherlock has calculated, has consulted the books and sites and decides there is only one avenue left him to force John back from the brink. In a fluid movement, hands outstretched to compress John's head between them, he drops his lips to the other man's mouth and applies pressure. Very quickly he realizes everything about it is wrong. The fact that his hands have gone from stable diagnostician to grasping teen, that John's thin firm lips seem to soften with acceptance, that his tongue suddenly wants an occupation other than speaking. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong! logic screams at him as he leans in closer and his right thumb strokes the sandy hair above John's ear.
And then John is backing away, trembling with fury. "What the hell, Sherlock?" And that's wrong too.
Rigid with confusion, Sherlock's mouth hangs open while he processes, tries to think where he's miscalculated. He'd expected John to be shocked- intended it, in fact- but in a calmer sort of way. In a way that would bring him back to himself. A thought flashes through Sherlock's mind that perhaps he has loosed the soldier instead of the calm and steady John. His John. "Unexpected," he mumbles, his brow crinkling.
"Jesus!" John snarls, his blue eyes growing molten.
There's a danger there, the animal instinct of fight or flight, behind which Sherlock can just discern a trace of something... Could it be isolation… hope… repulsion… longing? Base human instinct he can understand, finer feeling, true emotion is more difficult for him to comprehend. Why is my hand reaching, still reaching out, though John is moving away?
"Leave it! Just leave it," John says looking down at the age-worn rug. "I can't. Deal. With this. Right now." And John is walking away, but not out the door this time.
Sherlock watches the smaller man's posture change, the strict back slumping, the shoulders curling in like an injured animal before it drags itself to safety, as he mounts the steps to the upper bedroom, each step reflecting a concerted effort to make his limbs work.
Sherlock decides that if John wasn't quite broken before, he is now.
His mouth opens to call John back, to somehow make amends, to clarify, to illuminate. John's eyes always sparkle when Sherlock reasons a problem out. This feeling in his chest, however, the hollow ache just below his ribs is alien and therefore the words will not come and he cannot explain.
...
It was a blessed relief. The sudden closeness, the whisper of warm breath against his skin, the lean, stable contact of Sherlock's body gently supporting him as the supple fingers drew him in. The echo of it trembles in him yet, a crackling vibration, a hum pulsing through every nerve of his body. Insensible of his actions, his tongue flicks out, tasting, testing the impression of Sherlock's lips on his own. Mmm. Curry. At least he's eaten today.
John feels his cheeks flush with elation. He's managed to hide something from Sherlock, he's fairly sure of it, though he came so close, too terribly, frustratingly close to letting go, to delving tongue-first in to the dark crevice of Sherlock's mouth- the first fragile point of entry into his being. God that mouth!
He paces for a little while, both for Sherlock's benefit down below, to give vocalization to his presumed agitation, and for his own, to burn off some of the excess energy of his success. If he knows anything of Sherlock's clinical if bombastic personality, it's that he needs time and a motive to imbibe previously un-catalogued data.
Since that day at the surgery when he'd begun to really let himself consider…things, John has concentrated on little else but trying to create a poser for Sherlock. Hours and hours of corruptive, endless time to think, to suffer, to strategize, to play the game. He was helped immeasurably by checking the searches Sherlock had done on his laptop, was even surprised to realize the detective might already have a bloody clue. So, while he's not on par with Moriarty, the encounter downstairs has proven he can make Sherlock's mind (and possibly body) percolate, and that's something he hadn't known before.
Now he's sure, he has to keep the wheels in that glorious machine working. He has no choice.
...
Sherlock is searching for tells, charting the ridges and lines of cheekbones, the hollows below, the slanting angle of a sharp jaw, the shape and color of the eyes, the broad forehead partly obscured by a mass of soft dark brown curls, but the mirror seems loathe to reveal any secrets. Obviously he's missing something.
Elsewhere, then. His hand trails down his bare torso, past the sharp angle of his hips to his groin, where his hand gives his cock an experimental squeeze. The flesh responds quickly, thickening a little in his grasp, but it isn't enough to truly awaken his primarily dormant urges. Granted, there had been a… stirring, last night, but hardly anything since. Pointless, he decides huffing his frustration toward his mirror image.
Beyond the locked door he hears the discreet tread of John's boots as he passes by. Sneaking off to work, then, to avoid a scene. But no. There's water being turned on from the other tap, the clank of the kettle against the spigot. Curious. Sherlock strains to listen, brow arched. Spoon, sugar canister, tea tin. He allows his eyelids to close as his mind begins to construct a picture of John in the kitchenette making tea.
However, his usually agile brain will not focus. There are too many Johns in his memory. John tearing through London behind or beside him, helpful. John beaming admiration. John laughing with him. John put-out because… well, for any number of reasons, it seems. John grim-faced and steady, gun in hand. John strapped with explosives. John defending him. John trying to understand him. John in his grasp needing to be kissed. John lying still- unconscious on a tile floor, the abrasive smell of chlorine permeating.
Gradually Sherlock realizes his hand has been working independent of his brain, tugging, pulling, sliding along the length of his shaft, the friction making him warm and slick until his cock has grown taut to the point of pain. He needs release and soon. His breath is fast and too loud, his jaw clenched against a deeply rooted groan that threatens to climb from his esophagus out in to the world. Please!
Within a few moments there is a single searing flash of lightning and he is sinking to his knees as quietly, as cautiously as his body will allow. Sherlock Holmes is shaking, spent, his supple fingers tacky with his own seed. From his awkward position on the bathroom floor, his eyes roll open drunkenly as a bemused smile flits across his face. His mind is utterly blank. He finds it terrifying.