This time it's Sherlock who wakes. The tone of the storm has changed, gotten harder. It's going to rain all night, and possibly through the next day. He slips from the warm bed and John's embrace although it almost pains him to do so. But, like a cat, he needs a moment to collect himself. He wraps up in his dressing gown and wanders into the main room. The fire's dying.
He stands at the French doors that lead out to the garden. Although it's only 4:30 in the afternoon, the sky is charcoal grey. There's lightening in the distance, the thunder faint. I could retire in a place like this, he thinks. With John.
John slips up behind him, wraps his arms around Sherlock's waist, rests his head against the other man's silk clad shoulder.
"You're gasping for a cigarette, aren't you?"
"I'm always gasping for a cigarette."
John feels rather than sees Sherlock's smirk, "At least you're not so much of an idiot to go out in this and give it a go."
They stand together for a few minutes, quietly without needing to speak until John breaks it.
"What were you thinking, when I came up just now. You looked deep in thought."
"How nice it would be to retire here or someplace like this. With you."
"Retire?"
Sherlock notices that John doesn't question the second part and that makes him smile again to himself.
"Not now, or even soon, but someday.
"I never used to think of retiring. I thought I'd be dead by forty, forty-five at the latest."
John pulls back. "What? Why?"
"The way I live. The things I do to myself, the way I put myself in danger. You said it yourself, I risk my life to prove I'm clever. But now…I don't need to prove that I'm clever. I have you to tell me. He leans his head over against John's, "so I can think about living to old age with you beside me.
"But if you were gone, there wouldn't be much point after that."
It's a casual sentence that Sherlock thinks should be apparent to anyone and so he is startled by John's ferocity as John spins him around to grip his upper arms and yell into his face.
"NO. You don't say that. You don't give up if I die."
Sherlock is stunned. "But why would I want to go on?"
"Because I would want you to."
There's silence for a few heartbeats as they just stare at each other. John's panting, so he takes a deep breath to regain himself before continuing in a quiet, gentle voice.
"Do you know why we have two dog tags? One stays with you and the other is torn off to send home to your loved ones. You bury me with one tag if you have to, but you keep the other and you look at it every day and remember, and remember that I want you to go on living. Do you understand me?"
He pauses and then smiles, "Of course, without me there you'll probably fall into the Thames or be strangled with your own scarf."
Sherlock smiles back, knowing that something terrible has just been avoided. He doesn't fully understand right now, the way he doesn't always understand why people get upset about some things that seem unimportant, but he understands what John's asking and knows he'll try to do it, "So it's better that you don't die,"
"I guess so," John laughs and they lean together, foreheads touching. John moves his hands up to cup Sherlock's face and pull him in for a kiss that might go either way—back to bed or to simple holding. John pulls his mouth away reluctantly and whispers, "Come on, let's move away from the doors. It's freezing here."
So once again John makes tea and Sherlock stirs the fire. It seems as if they could do this forever, the world simply passing them by outside, closed in by the storm. It's not true of course; both know that they'd end up killing each other. Their personalities are too strong. They need other people to temper the space between them. But for now, this is peaceful and John doesn't want to think about what comes next when they return to London.
This time they settle in their respective chairs. They leave the lights off so the fire is the only illumination.
Sherlock gazes at John pensively, "Do you want to talk about what happened, what you went through?"
"I've been thinking about that. I've been questioned so many times by so many different groups, I lost track. But I've wondered, if I tell you, will you be able to catch something that they've missed? Because you're you."
"I don't know," Sherlock says. John's startled to hear that. It doesn't seem modest. It seems almost resigned, as if Sherlock has finally learned that he is human and fallible. John feels as though they've lost something, but he's not sure what.
"How could I resist the temptation to have the world's only consulting detective on the case for free."
"I'm afraid I'll have to charge you. I have rent to pay. My flatmate gets very upset when I don't take payment and end up short," Sherlock smiles.
"I guess you'll just have to take it in flesh then. I'm just a poor doctor with the NHS."
Sherlock kicks at John's foot where his long legs can just reach. "Arse."
John smiles, goes thoughtful, "You know a lot of it."
"I don't really. Start at the beginning when we parted, in Edinburgh."
"After you'd left, after I realized you were gone, I wasn't sure what to do. I knew I couldn't stay there, couldn't stay in that room where we've been happy so I changed the plane ticket. It wasn't hard to do. I decided to return to London, then pack up my things and hopefully find a new place before your return."
"Did they take you there, in Edinburgh?"
"No, the plane ride was uneventful. When I got to Heathrow, remember I had no luggage, I was walking through the terminal when I heard them page me, the courtesy phone.
"It was so stupid. It was like something out of a movie. I picked up the phone but no one was there of course. Someone was nearby. They must have drugged me, not sure how, probably an injection. Or there was something on the phone. I know the Secret Service's been back to check that out; check everything and my plane, nothing. Moriarty's thorough."
"And after?" Sherlock asks.
"After? They Don't know. They must've kept me under. I don't remember the plane ride. I don't remember anything. I don't know how they got me out of the country."
John sounds frustrated, angry at himself, as though he should have known better, been better trained better. As if you could ever train for this kind of thing, Sherlock thinks. "Go on."
"When I woke I was in a sort of flat; it wasn't a cell, but it had no windows, just three tiny rooms and a bathroom. There was a door and I tried repeatedly to break it down, or pull out the hinges, or get it open in any way. Nothing. The walls were concrete cinder blocks. There was food in the kitchenette, a comfortable bed and even some trashy popular novels from the 1970's. The sitting room had a couch and a desk. It was like being back in the veteran's hotel. There was a telly and videos, yes, videos, but no outside connection and that was all. I saw no one for, I guess a month. You lose track of time like that. You end up sleeping a lot, and without a clock, without daylight, you don't know if you've slept for two hours or twenty. I tried timing things with the videos, but I ended up breaking the tape on a couple and I didn't want to lose them. If not for the movies and even the books, I'd have gone mad. They left me some paper and pens. At first I wrote things down, tried to keep a record, and I wrote letters, to you, Harry, Mum, even Mycroft in case…in case something had happened to you, but I worried about running out of paper. I worried about the food lasting too. I didn't know If I was going to be there a week, a month, until I died. I didn't know if anyone was looking for me—"
"John! Even with— even with what happened, you have to know that I would have come to find you."
John smiled, sweetly, sadly, ruefully. "I know, I knew! But I didn't know if you knew that I'd been kidnapped. Remember, I didn't know who'd done it or why. Or if they'd taken you too.
"I rationed the food. Trying to give myself enough to keep up my strength, but not too much in case it was a long haul. I guessed that they didn't actually want me dead or they'd have left me with no food. There was clean water from the taps, so I wouldn't have died of thirst.
"I exercised. Obsessively. I wanted to be strong enough to overpower someone if they came through the door.
"I jury-rigged an alarm with left over tin cans and spoons so that it would rattle to wake me.
"And I tried to think like you. I must have examined every corner of those rooms dozens of times over. Climbed on the furniture to look at the ceiling, pried up the cheap carpeting, ripped apart the furniture, crawled in the kitchen cabinets, looking for bugs, cameras, anything.
"Masturbated. A lot. Thought of you. Thought of what I wished I said or done differently, or would say if I ever saw you again."
John pauses. His eyes flicker to the fire and there's a tension in his posture. "There were times that I really did think that I would go mad. You just lose your bearings like that, with nothing to hang onto. You don't realize how much you need other people, even people you don't know, to keep you grounded. I felt…I felt like my identity was slipping away. When I came to, in the hospital, and they told me it had been a month…it felt like I'd only been awake for ten, maybe fifteen days at most but at the same time I was shocked that a year hadn't gone by.
"I…I did think of suicide. More than once. And ways to do it. I only had dull butter knives but I had tin can lids and there were the bed sheets, although there wasn't anything really to tie it to. I could have drowned myself.
"But I thought of you. I always thought of you. I wondered if you'd been taken too and if they found me, would they find you. I…I needed to stay alive to see you again, if there was any chance at all."
Sherlock stretches his foot out again to caress John's. "And the day of the rescue? How did it go?"
"I must have missed something. There'd never been any indication of moment from beyond the door. I don't remember exactly. I guess I was knocked out somehow."
"Gas, probably."
"Probably. Like "The Prisoner," John smiled. "When I woke up I was bound in the chair. And then there you were. Saving me for once." He chuckles.
Sherlock smiles, but it's a sad smile and John notices.
Sherlock leans back in his chair, legs outstretched, fingers templed in front of his mouth in his thinking pose. John feels a flush of warmth in his chest that isn't sexual, though Sherlock is certainly beautiful this way, but with the pleasure of seeing Sherlock in his element again. Sherlock, the great detective. The mind at work. It's what he first fell in love with, he realizes. Hearing Sherlock figure things out in an instant, having Sherlock pull him into a mystery, at the battlefront again with the most amazing companion he could ever find.
I love him, John thinks and it hits him like a blow to the solar plexus. It shouldn't be a surprise. It isn't really. He's said it today, and he said it on Christmas Day and he whispered it into his pillow every night, and meant it every time. But for some reason, this moment leaves him breathless in its certainty. He will never love anyone like this again. If something were to happen, a thought too terrible to imagine at this moment, he might love someone else, but it will never be this.
"Tell me about the puzzles. I know some of it. I know you wouldn't give up."
"It was terrible. It was in all the useless things that people like you—"
"Idiots.'
"Yes, no, you know what I mean, the trivia. The things that are known or not known, not that can be observed. I half expected him to set up a puzzle where I needed to know the planets of the solar system, or the villains in James Bond."
"I'm sorry about that. I feel like I should never write in my blog again. It gives him or whoever it is, too many ideas of how to get to you, how to get under your skin and how to trick you."
"No, it's not you. He knew about Carl Powers. He would have found a way.
"I just kept thinking that if you were with me you would know the answers instantly, but that was the whole point, I didn't have you."
"Maybe we're meant to be together."
"That's rather fanciful of you."
"No, not like that, but in the sense that we're better together. Work better together."
"That same agent, she said that we can't protect each other all the time. That we'd have to live in a sealed box and never leave it and even then we wouldn't be completely safe."
"But we can never absolutely guarantee that the person we love will be safe. No matter how much we might want to. Life happens."
"Yes, I suppose it does. Doesn't stop me from wanting to try."
John nods, "Tea?"
"The answer to everything."
"No, but a comfort anyway."
John goes to the kitchen and puts the kettle on. He almost jumps out of his skin when Sherlock presses up against him.
He turns to face him. "You're so bloody tall. It isn't quite as obvious when we're…you know…horizontal."
Sherlock smiles his wicked smirk. John can feel his erection against his thigh, slipping free of the robe and Sherlock leans in for a kiss.
It's powerful and intense and John remembers again how strong (and tall) Sherlock can be, so it's no surprise when Sherlock is backing him out of the kitchen, through the sitting room and into the bedroom. It's almost like being danced across a room.
They hit the bed with a satisfying thump. The skin of their thighs is rubbing together…
And the kettle whistles.
Sherlock leans his forehead against John's and they laugh stupidly.
"I'll get it," Sherlock says. "Stay here and…be ready when I get back."
John takes off his robe and tries to straighten the tangled sheets.
It seems ages before Sherlock returns without the tea and holding his phone.
John smiles. "Important?"
"Lestrade. Double homicide, miles apart, but two brothers."
"Moriarty?"
"Doesn't appear so." Sherlock shrugs. "It can wait. Now where were we?"
But John pushes him away. "No, you'll be distracted. Go look up the train schedules and pack your things. I'll clean up and get ready to go."
"But…"Sherlock begins. He sounds plaintive, but John knows he's torn.
"John, will you…will you be alright in London, in Baker Street? You can stay here if you like. I'll come back. It shouldn't take too long."
John smiles gently, "We tried separating before. Didn't work out so well."
He pauses and his eyes flicker down. He licks his lips, "The truth is, I don't know. I won't know until I get there. There will probably be moments…that are hard. But I should be there. I need to be there, with you."
Sherlock understands and smiles.
