Chapter 9: The end will start with fire
"A spark neglected makes a mighty fire." - Robert Herrick
They make it to 221B before John. Lestrade offers to wait with Sherlock, but is soon persuaded against it. Mrs. Hudson comes up for a short while, carrying a tray with tea. She casts a worried at Sherlock, gently cupping his face before retreating back to her own flat.
Trying to calm the slight tremor of his hands, Sherlock moves as quickly as his treacherous body allows him, and reaches into the kitchen cupboard. With clumsy fingers, he finds a little white tablet. Just as he crushes it on the counter and wipes the powder into one of the tea cups, he hears the front door open and close. Quickly pouring tea into both cups, careful to keep track of which one contains the pill, he moves towards the den, carrying the tray
"Sherl-!"
Sherlock is half-way to the sofa when John bursts into the room, Sherlock's name dying on his tongue as he lays eyes on the tall form in front of him. He takes in the pale skin and the purple bruises fatigue has painted with tiny fists under Sherlock's eyes. John looks at the haggard, but so beautifully alive man in front of him, and finally, finally, takes in a proper breath.
"Sherlock."
Sherlock puts the down the tray. John takes of his jacket, hurriedly, pulling at the cuffs of his shirt in the process, riding them high up his forearms until his sleeves are a raggedy mess around his elbows.
"Are you alright?" he asks, taking a step closer. He grabs Sherlock's hands, turning them over in his own, looking for tales of woe written over the skin there. Sherlock stands still, ever so still, until John's eyes stop their frenzied marathon all over the planes of Sherlock's body, in search of injury, and make their way to Sherlock's face. "Sherlock? Are you ok?"
"I am fine." Sherlock replies. There is less than a foot of space between them now, a foot of warm air the only thing dividing them. Sherlock takes a step back, warmth dissipating like a faultily woven spider's web. The confusion and hurt on John's face because of Sherlock's retreat are soon replaced by that of gentle wonder as Sherlock reaches and tugs John's sleeves back into place, one by one, slowly sliding the fabric down to its rightful position.
John stands very still, hands slightly raised as Sherlock eases the cuffs of his shirt back into place, dusting off imaginary lint before releasing John's sleeves from his grip. The fire in the hearth casts a too-warm glow across the room. It's another freeze-frame in their narrative, only this one is major – a tipping point. A log cracks, releasing sparks into the chimney – bright little things, so splendid and so short-lived – and there is another tug of sleeves, only this time it isn't half as tidy and neat as the previous one.
Two hands grip at cloth, John's left grabbing Sherlock's right sleeve and Sherlock's left doing the same with John's, as if touching skin would be a blasphemy. This reverence doesn't last long, seeing as skin finds skin soon enough, lips to lips, but that is the only offending break of skin-tocloth barrier. Hands roam over clothed planes, with only lips and breath allowed to be the point of ignition. It's like inhaling steam, hot air burning his lungs, but John can't help it, doesn't want to stop it. The kiss tastes red and rusty, like blood and decay. They're breathing ash into each other's lungs, as if they're being cremated from within, by some unstoppable furnace.
If there is hunger that doesn't quite read as just lust in Sherlock's desperation, if it feels as if he is searching for something, desperately, along the seam of John's lips, something John can't provide, John doesn't do anything about it. And if it feels like a goodbye when it should be a hello, Sherlock refuses to admit it. The kiss is an eyes-wide-shut sort of ordeal, a desperate attempt to deny the outside world, shun it out and renounce it. As he draws in a sharp breath, stealing already limited supplies of oxygen from the miniscule space between them, John comes to understand the phrase about flames 'licking' at something. He could swear his mouth is being assaulted by licking flames, half gentle and half detrimental. When they break apart, he is surprised not to find blisters on his lips.
Heavy breaths, damp and coloured with the rusty smell of dried blood on Sherlock's chapped lips, mingle in the narrow space between them, carbon dioxide and oxygen being exchange like trinkets, full of loudly screaming silence. Masters of subtext and double meanings. Masters of deceptive appearances.
"Tea?" Sherlock asks, out of breath. John looks at him, and the silence is as heavy as a raincloud. Men speaking in code. Men not speaking at all – kisses instead of words, that's how they work now, Sherlock's goodbyes traded for sighs and slide of hands, a message sent so not even the recipient can read it until it is time (until it is too late).
"Um...yeah..sure."
They sip the tea. It's absurd – a misplaced action taken from another story, stolen from a place with less mayhem. It's ridiculous. It's what they do. It's what they've always done. It's one last deceit, one last half-truth, a lie by omission. One last act of loyalty – or selfishness, depending on whom you ask.
Before John can utter a word, Sherlock places his emptied cup on the table. The clatter of china is too loud, too sharp. John flinches, as if the sound is a wake-up call. His eyes seek out Sherlock's, looking for –what? Confirmation that there is no regret? A mirroring image of the sentiment he knows is showing in his own? Sherlock can only guess, but he rather wouldn't. He can't. Instead he decides to make his exit. They're just actors, it's all just play. John has his lines and Sherlock has his. The scene is done now. Time to retreat.
"I'm going to shower", he says, "I would really like to get the grime of two weeks off my skin." He doesn't meet John's eyes. He can't – he is already listening to John's laughter in his head. He can't say goodbye to both at the same time.
"Um..yeah...'course." John stutters, looking slightly shell-shocked. He sips some more tea. "Are you sure you're alright?"
"Positive." Sherlock replies, forcing his eyes up. It is a mistake. John's eyes are like a silver screen, scenes of a future no longer possible running like childhood dreams and youth-related hopes across the blue irises. It takes every morsel of Sherlock's self-control (oh, the irony again) to tear his gaze away.
"I'm just going to...um...sit down then." John says, pointing half-heartedly in the general direction of his chair.
Sherlock leaves for the bathroom, leaving a confused John in his wake. He closes the bathroom door and turns on the shower, but doesn't make a move to take off his clothes. Instead he counts down in his head, sliding down the wall until he is seated on hard, cold tiles. His head feels like that of an infant – too heavy for a too-weak neck to hold. After two minutes, he knows he is in the safe – the sleeping pill he used to douse John's tea – the pill he's been keeping stored for an experiment – should have started to take effect by now. Poisoning John's tea is becoming a recurring theme, apparently. He should be out cold. Sherlock attempts to stand up, but there is something holding him down. He would like to believe this to be just physical weakness, but he knows it's more. It's this place and its contents – 'Home' Sherlock admits – that keeps him anchored to the spot, unable to move, to leave. To do what's right.
Sherlock thinks he hears the pipes moan, and it sounds like ghosts and ghouls and creatures of myth Sherlock never believed in. It sounds as if there's a pigeon stuck in the scratch-scarred wall – like a living thing hopelessly trapped between inanimate layers of plaster, and wood, and bricks, trashing in its confinement.
The sound is unsettling, eliciting a surge of anguish as Sherlock presses his palms to the sides of his head, covering his ears and trying to drown it out.
A pigeon in a wall. Moaning pipes. Ghouls and ghosts, indeed, Sherlock thinks, as he listens to the beating of his heart.
He remembers his return after chasing down Moriarty's network, his resurrection, coming back into John's life with all the theatricality of a match being struck alight in the dark and dropped into a trail of gun powder. Like a ravenous flame, bright and blazing and magnificent, and so utterly, utterly devastating, notable only in its legacy of destruction. He remembers soft, fragile tendrils of actual happiness, John's actual happiness, being burnt to a crisp by the conflagration that was Sherlock Holmes back from the (un)dead. It was incomprehensible then, this idea of John happy without him, because it was so obvious to anyone with even the slightest of morsels of wit that John was so much better off with him.
He thought he was a trail of light returned to illuminate the gloom of John's days, but he knows now that he was just a pyromaniac's delight.
It is a funny thing, perception. So easily skewed, distorted. Pliable and unreliable. If there had been more light, or if John had a chance to sneak a better look, (or if the stars aligned differently or the Earth spun East to West, or, or, or...), maybe he would have noticed Sherlock's pupils, constricted despite the given circumstances of semi-gloom and physical flurry.
Sherlock can feel the first vicious grips of yearning tugging at him. It's beyond an urge. It's not a wish, or an itch. It's hunger, primal and visceral.
If it weren't for two speeding heartbeats mixing and racing each other, maybe John would have noticed the increasingly erratic rhythm stealing into Sherlock's.
His mind is craving, but that need falls short of the physical want Sherlock feels in his every cell, every tissue.
If it weren't for his own clouded, frenzied mind, maybe John would have noticed the slight slur in Sherlock's speech.
Raw need tears at him, destructive and detrimental, disintegrating coherency like acetone dissolves varnish.
If, if, if...If there weren't for so many "if"-s, perhaps they could have simply enjoyed the warmth, without being singed by the flames. The "if"-s are not to say John is to blame for missing the signs. No, they are simply indicators (like thermometers and litmus paper) which provide data on one small aspect of cosmic dynamics – the one dictating the lives of these two men.
Sherlock can feel his own body clawing at itself, dwindling down to a yearning husk, with his brain taunting him mercilessly, its chemistry viciously altered. He would give anything for a fix– 'Anything. The Work? Anything. The thrill of the chase? Anything. That brilliant brain? Yes, anything! – sacrifice anyone – Mycroft? Please. Lestrade? Anyone. Mrs. Hudson? Yes, anyone! Himself? Anyone – how is that still unclear?! Even John? YES, ANYONE! ...Oh.'
Sherlock's eyes grow wide with realisation, as he bolts up and out the door. He passes though the kitchen, catching the image of a sleeping John in his armchair, and rushes out of the flat. When he slams it shut, it sounds like a match being lit.
One day the world will end. The end will start with fire.
The world ending with John isn't what happens, isn't what Sherlock gets. Instead, it is the worse of the two options that Sherlock has considered on that rooftop, which unravels – the end of his world with John.
All the "if"-s, in their endless procession, are here to show that when Sherlock's and John's world turns into a desolate fire site, like so many events, so many meetings and beginnings and endings, like starts of so many fires, it is as a product of ordered chaos, a sequence of random pieces which could just as easily be a very systematic plan, put in motion so long ago that its purpose and course lie buried under layers of age.
So, when familiarity of what they are, the delicate balance of similarities and differences, their symbiosis, turn into ashes in wake of a toxic conflagration, it happens like all other beginnings/endings/meetings/goodbyes/creation/destruction - completely by accident, or maybe, completely by design.
Either way, these are the things they lose to the fire.
End of Part One
Thank you for sticking around! :) Hear that sound? The clinking of loose ends? The whistling noise that confusion makes? Yeah, no worries, those will be dealt with in Part 2, which I plan to start uploading this week :)
What else? I don't know...as I said, The Sign of Three is making me a bit barmy, so it's for the best that I just leave it on a "thank you" :)
