John:

You blink out the sleep from your eyes and smile vaguely at the warmth around you.

There's something quite distinctly strange about waking up next to Sherlock Holmes. Beneath Sherlock Holmes, to be more accurate. Even stranger waking up in his bedroom surrounded by his things. There were the impromptu drug busts of course and the times when the great detective couldn't be bothered to retrieve something himself and that one time with Adler. But this, you've never had this before.

For a moment, the shade of his ceiling is enough to captivate you. The bookshelf, the coat hanger, the little trinkets here and there, they're more than enough. Should it really come as such a surprise that you're actually allowed in here? Then again, you weren't, were you? You dragged him in here, pushed him down…

The tender warmth that had settled itself into your mind coils and springs against you. The pleasant heat that had seeped into your every pore now burns like a wick.

Your moment of staring at white ceilings breaks in an instant. You're not one to second-guess your actions. You're not one for regrets and changes of heart. So it's not exactly regret than you feel right now. It's panic. Sheer bloody panic.

Not only did you just have sex with Sherlock Holmes. You had sex with Sherlock Holmes the day both your wife and daughter died. Didn't even wait it out, just right then and there, how loyal of you! Really!

The pain and the grief churn loudly somewhere in your chest but they're in a different compartment now. And wasn't that the point? The panic overrides everything.

You haven't felt like this since your first kill in the army all those years ago. It's a moment of realization when you know you've made a moral decision that's going to leave its mark on the rest of your life. When you pulled that trigger, it wasn't just some idealized situation in your head. It was an action. A commitment to an idea. You've pulled the trigger for Sherlock too. That first day. Simplest thing you've ever had to do. But this is different. This is taking the gun and blowing Sherlock's brains out with it.

You're not sure what gets to you more. The fact that you slept with him or the fact that you're completely unsurprised by it. That beneath all your panic – it's the circumstances, the pain, and the confusion that you hate. You feel ashamed.

You can't hate him but you can't forgive him either. That thought alone sends your grief into a maddening spiral. You know you've hurt him too, but you can't regret what you've done. And here's the part that scares you, the part that sends your heart reeling: You wanted him to hurt and you knew exactly how to do it.

You could see the pain in his eyes when he saw you break, you could feel his shame and self-deprecation flare with each of your accusations. You saw him cry and you hope to God it was genuine or else none of this can ever make sense.

You loved him once. Of course you did. You still do and you can't ever lie to yourself about that. You still do and even though you wanted him to hurt, even through your anger and your grief… when he'd kissed your face and whispered your name, none of it mattered anymore.

Even now the thought bursts into your mind, crashing through the backdoor: That this is what it would have been like, this is the road you'd been traveling, if it hadn't been for all the lies, if it hadn't been for Mary, if it hadn't been for―

You almost push him off you, but you can't handle seeing his eyes open right now, you can't handle him awake and knowing.

So of course you leave. You just had to.

You occupy yourself with the kinds of tasks you'd have found daunting just under 24 hours ago. Paperwork, statements, more paperwork. You identify Mary's body in the morgue and it's somehow less horrible than you thought it would be. You refuse to go anywhere near your baby. Not now. Not yet.

You even pass by your marriage home. (Weird to think about it like that. 221B always seemed the more homely of the two, severed fingers and decaying eyeballs included.) You walk around like the place is going to dematerialize any second. Your eyes call back your wife's pleasant form on the sofa curled over a book. You can almost pick out the smell of early morning breakfast accompanied by the thrills of laughter and tender flirting. On some level you always knew you weren't cut out for this. Like it was all some fantasy you were desperate to claim. After his 'death' all you wanted was to be normal.

Sure, your wife turned out to be a psychopathic killer, but there was still hope: A softly budding hope in the form of a child's tender hand wrapped around your finger, her laughter clear and tinkling. You pause in front of the Nursery, your heart in your throat.

A nightmarish sequence blends into being before you: A little girl dressed in fluffy white frills and ribbons in her hair twirls round and round with her arms outstretched. She's laughing at her dress as it becomes a cone around her, watching the circle of white grow bigger and bigger. She's laughing even as the tips of her dress turn red and the darkness seeps further and further along the cotton until there's nothing left of the white at all. The little girl in the blood-stained dress points a finger at you through the haze, eyes wide and unblinking, "Why didn't you save me?"

You close the door with a loud bang and sink into the floor, knees buckling beneath you. You remember the way Sherlock held you yesterday and you madly wish he were here.

But she's accusing him as much as she's accusing you.

You really should get out of here before you lose whatever meager control you have on your wits. You can't stay here, not with the floating laughter and stained memories. You can't impose on Mike or Greg, who both have enough shit to deal with. You can't rely on Harry, who'd probably be all to glad for an excuse to join your miseries together at the bottom of a glass.

Besides, there's only one place in the entire world that still makes sense, disemboweled corpses and all. There's only one place that'll have you, one man that'll have you, faults and all. You shove a pile of ironed clothes into a suitcase along with some basic necessities and leave before you can look back. You just hope against hope that Sherlock isn't there to see you move back in.

He isn't.

You can't give yourself any room to think. So the moment you're done unpacking your stuff you begin to scrub and clean with the advertisement enthusiasm of a 50s housewife. But there's only so many times you can wipe down a headboard.

You've gone down to make some tea when you hear the front door open and close. His usual exuberant strides have morphed into quiet steps that echo lightly over the stairs. But you know that it's Sherlock Holmes, you just do.

You try not to look at him the moment he comes in, that'd be a bit much. For both of you. You can hear him hesitate at the entrance and there's something intensely satisfying about throwing the great detective for a loop. But that's until you turn around to look at him. Whatever smirk had been about to make its way to your lips falls instantly.

"What the hell happened, Sherlock?" You realize halfway through the statement that you hadn't thought to erase the concern from your voice. Now it's too late.

At the sound of your voice, Sherlock's whole frame seizes up. He whips his neck around to the sound of your voice, his wet hair sending water droplets flying across the apartment.

His eyes are staring at you with an unnatural whiteness. He blinks in quick succession, looking for all the world like the perfect embodiment of the phrase "deer in the headlights".

"What happened?"

After a moment he shakes his head slowly and opens his mouth to speak. Once, twice, and nothing. Finally, he just looks over at the couch to indicate a forgotten set of coat, scarf and gloves. You can't remember him ever forgetting them on a rainy day before and the sheer helplessness of his posture takes you by surprise.

Suddenly, you realize that for Sherlock Holmes, you are the headlights.


Sherlock:

How in the world does John Watson always manage to take you by surprise? Exactly how many rules is John Watson supposed to break before he breaks you too? You've only ever been rendered this speechless once before in your life. And again, it was John Watson.

"What the hell happened, Sherlock?"

The moment you heard his voice, it was like the pitch of it broke something in you. His concern. Confirmed again by the look of worry in his eyes as he takes in your appearance. There's a silent observer in the back of your mind that has enough coherence to remark on the wonderful conundrum you both pose: Which one of you is more surprised to see the other? Or more accurately: Which one of you is going to do the surprising next in this convoluted dark comedy you've set up for each other?

Right now it's you wearing the fool's hat. You just never thought he'd come back. Not so soon. Not now. And the larger part of you was going with, 'Maybe not ever'. You must be more the Virgin than you thought to get this disarmed by the man's mere presence.

He's asking you that question again and you find yourself uselessly grabbing for some kind of response.

The usual: It's an experiment.

A joke: The alligators in the sewers are allergic to coats.

The truth: I was out in the rain sulking because of how horrible I feel about what I did to you and yet how thankful I am for last night, no matter what it meant. Or what it didn't mean.

What you do manage in the end is some meager nod towards your discarded clothing. Bravo!

You look back at him and he's got this vaguely alarmed look to his eyes, filled with questions and a slight tint of anger.

But he's here and he doesn't look like he's going away.

You can't maintain eye contact.

You want to run away into your room but you can't. That place hurts the most. You think of curling up on the sofa but you're all still wet and he won't appreciate the unnecessary health complication associated with sleeping with your clothes soaked all the way through. Are you shivering? Of course you are. Are you scared out of your mind that he's just going to bolt any second now or is it the cold? Probably both.

You dart off towards the bathroom and shut yourself in, shedding most of your wet clothes along the way. The weight of them was beginning to feel like snakes against your skin. The shower is scalding hot to drown out any thought trying to creep up on you.

By the time you wrap yourself in a flimsy cotton robe and sneak back into the living room, John's nowhere to be seen. You quell whatever panic had been threatening to brew by taking a deep breath and listening for the sounds of his footsteps upstairs.

He's still here.

You try to curl up on the couch as you'd originally intended, if only to remain somehow closer to him in distance. But in the end you make your way back to your bed, desperate to remind yourself of what had happened last night. It was real.

The pain of it and the crushing anger. The way his fingers fisted into your curls pulling savagely to expose the length of your neck, making it available for the heated ministrations of his tongue and lips. The way his fingers clawed at your back and thighs as he slammed deeper and deeper inside you.

You can still smell him in the sheets and your brilliant memory has every little twitch of his muscles catalogued for further viewing. You thread you fingers into the pillow and breathe in the soft scent of your combined energy. In perfect high definition clarity, you remember the precise way in which he bit his lip, closed his eyes with a flutter of lashes, and whispered out your name.

"Sherlock."

The smile that touches your lips is the softest and purest you've felt since Redbeard.

For a while, this is enough. This infinite gratitude that swells and bursts within you. But then you wrap your fingers around the length of your shaft, focusing all of yesterday's passion into that single touch.

You come embarrassingly quickly, but then again, you are new to all this.

Through your silent reverie, you hear a voice that stops your mind in its tracks. It's John and he's having another nightmare. You've seen these symptoms before, but they were never this loud, unless he's purposely left the door open. He hasn't: The pitch more closely resembles one that would escape through an impediment, such as a closed door.

You've only rarely ever interfered with this sort of thing out of a sense of propriety and respect. Only when it was bad enough and you feared some sort of injury. In either case, you'd always play something lighthearted on the violin later in an effort to distract his subconscious mind.

But this is different. You feel a pull towards the stairs that's almost magnetic, the electric interference messing with the pulse of your heart.

As if that isn't enough, you hear a clear shout carried across the distance that stops your heart altogether, "Sherlock!"

You run!

You're at his bedside instantly, cupping his cheeks with your hands and soothing back his hair. But he's thrashing too strongly and the blankets are so thoroughly wrapped around his limbs that you're sure it's cut off circulation to at least one of his legs. You're shouting out his name but he can't hear you. You think of punching him but you expect he'd kill you if you do, and while this is a desperate situation, your death will hardly solve anything in the long run.

You have an idea and you hope to God it works or you're going to be pummeled within an inch of your life.

You climb onto the bed and straddle his hips to still his legs and you try to hold down his hands with your own.

"Don't M-Mary! Please, not–"

A sob breaks out of his chest and a thin line of tears streams down into the pillow, erasing the beaded sweat in its wake. Even though most of his body is incapacitated, his chest and shoulders are still shuddering violently, his head snapping from side to side.

"Sherlock!"

You do the only thing you can think of, because you're desperate and he's desperate and it just makes sense.

You kiss him.


A/N: Due to popular demand: I've continued this! I hope you all like it. Please review with any comments or suggestions :) Reviews help me update faster ;) Thank you for reading!