CW for disturbing imagery (references to corpses, murders, violence, blood, drowning, human taxidermy)
It is the simple things that catch their breaths the most, reminding them that they have been granted another miracle (the first, the miracle of their meeting). For Sherlock, it is John's tawny hair, molten in sunlight; his eyes as blue as the open ocean; the rustle of newspaper and salmon fabric; a patch of leather on John's strong, solid shoulder. For John, it is Sherlock's baritone breath, filling the flat; his eyes, the color of nebulas, seeing straight to his heart; the swish of blue silk over grey cotton; the weight of a Browning in his hands. And for both, it is Baker Street: the creak of the seventh step, the gouge in the kitchen table, the wash of London rain on the windows, the tinkle of Mrs. Hudson's beaded curtain.
Slowly, they pull on their former lives like old, worn shirts, the fabric of their life misshapen by grief and loss and time so that it doesn't fit precisely, too tight in the shoulders here, stretched in the arms there. Once invisible in the day-to-day, the signs of age on their faces emerge as their bodies shift, adjusting to the presence of each other after so long, another person in the kitchen, another breath in the night.
They take their first cases one month After, the sound of Lestrade's old summons and the sight of yellow police tape making Sherlock's blood sing. Stepping onto the crime scene, he is a god returning to his temple, deductions spilling from his lips in a silver stream, and John offers his words up as worship.
As they settle into their old lives, nights of fresh blood and raw crime, cartons of takeaway spread in the sitting room, their laughter like dark chocolate and bubbling springs, the laws of the universe shift, adhering not to the whims of time and space, but to those of the heart and mind. With every new crime scene and foot chase, every violin solo and raucous Bond night, they grieve in reverse: remembering The First Time and The Last Time and The First Time Again, all these memories existing in the same space at the same time, turning bittersweet.
John's life Before was a long, empty train track stretching out before him for miles, his world collapsing to a vanishing point in the distance. And then the track shifted with Sherlock's return, not just from one line to the next, but entirely uprooted from the endless, sharp desert to winding hills and lush, dark valleys. There are days he still feels stuck on this same old track, hurtling uncontrollably through a thousand days of darkness.
Over the weeks and months, his leg slowly heals, the vines of pain wrapped around his thigh withering until only a thin tendril remains, permanently sunk into his skin. The little earthquakes in his hands fade completely, leaving only the scars on his hands as proof of his loss.
He keeps the flat stones of the urn under his mattress, sleeping on the fractured pieces, feeling them press into his body in the night. Over time, as John sinks more and more into the warmth of Sherlock's body, the reality of his flesh, the stones move from the mattress to his nightstand, the dark rocks spooning side by side, until they finally rest in a box underneath his bed with his dog tags and medals, the relics of all his battles.
In the quiet, in-between spaces—standing at the window, typing his blog, making a cup of tea—his old pain strikes him down without warning, flashes of Sherlock's face, smudged with rain and blood. Trapped on the raw, feather-thin edge of grief, he is brought back to life only by Sherlock's hand on his elbow, his cough from the other room, a vibrating text in his pocket. On the days when not even Sherlock's touch can heal him, when the memory of nights sleeping with cold bones wraps around him, John walks through the city for hours, letting the bracing London air clear his head of grief.
In taxis, at crime scenes, in the flat, John gazes at Sherlock even more openly, watching his living body move through space, the miracle of his breath moving in and out, imprinting Sherlock on his memory like light on a glass negative. He brushes up against him constantly, a hand to Sherlock's temple / neck / shoulder, pressing warm skin to warm skin, Sherlock's body a touchstone of flesh and blood. With every caress, the gaping, starved maw of his heart shrinks a little more each day.
There are mornings when John holds his breath before opening his eyes, counting past the 46-second mark, his old threshold of forgetting Sherlock was dead, until he feels the heat of Sherlock radiating beside him, the dip in the mattress, the press of a solid arm slung across his chest. And there are nights when he wakes choking on his screams, a new nightmare haunting him: waking up holding Sherlock's corpse, waxen, stiff, mottled with bruises; weeping into Sherlock's dead neck, his tears pouring from him in long torrents, flooding the room with salt and sorrow until he drowns. These nights, he clutches onto Sherlock's living body, feeling for his pulse again and again as Sherlock whispers his name and cradles John in his arms, pressing his mouth to the nape of John's neck until his sobs fade into sleep.
When Sherlock curls around John in the night, he envelops him like soft, warm armor, covering John's heart with his hands as if his fingers could stop bullets. Sherlock dreams of tiger hunters, John's head stuffed and mounted on Moran's wall; of kneeling in a pool of John's blood, watching his body dissolve before him, hearing John's acrid screams, the knife in his own hand. When he wakes with blood on his lips and gunshots in his ears, sometimes with his hand on John's throat, feeling his slow and steady pulse, he shuts down his quivering body, swallowing his tears and his shame.
Every morning, he stares in the mirror, poking and prodding at his crow's feet and elastic skin, his new wrinkles and worn eyes, his slowly growing hair. He feels the bruises still left in his chest, the ragged, stitched edge where he ripped his heart away so long ago. Tracing the shadows of his face, the black holes of his eyes slowly filling with light, he whispers to himself, I am Sherlock Holmes, I am Sherlock Holmes, I am Sherlock Holmes, and he prays that one day he will believe it.
His body echoes with the feel of a knife in his hands, or a gun, or a bare and pliant neck; his scars thrum with the pain of their making, the ghost of pain rippling through his body. Instincts swirling and feral, sharpened to a fine tip from years on a harrowing whetstone, he shoves down the urge to flinch away from all touch, trying to remember he is finally safe. It is then when he reaches for his violin, for a case, for John, filling his body with their complicated mysteries, funneling his sorrow into the world the only way he knows how.
For John, he lets himself be tethered and tamed, the red, pulsing string between him and John stretching and never breaking, wrapped around his throat like a sweet, soft collar. The connection winds through his nerves and blood vessels, the sensation of his heart walking outside of his body, wrapped in plain cardigans and wool jumpers, leaving Sherlock raw and naked. The thick, red, woven rope is knotted between their bodies like those of climbers, and Sherlock knows, now more than ever, that if he falls, John falls too, tumbling from this mountain of danger together, and so he takes the slightly safer routes, waiting for John to catch up, finding better footholds instead of jumping over chasms.
Sherlock forgets this only once, two months After, while halfway out the door to burgle a blackmailer, almost leaving John asleep on the sofa. The weight of his promise made on the floor of John's flat clamps down on his wrist, stopping him in his tracks. He creeps up the stairs again, eyes downcast, worrying his lips with his teeth, to find John sitting up, his face blank. Sherlock drops to his knees before John, his heart thumping out of his chest, I'm sorry and please don't leave spilling from him. John grips Sherlock's hands, voice firm, face tight—I had a feeling you'd do this. I know...it's an old habit. Just...don't do it again—and Sherlock's eyes glisten with tears. I promise. I promise.
Their life now is familiar, routine, almost ordinary: cases typed up with slow fingers, body parts kept in the crisper, long nights peering through the microscope, violin played by the dying firelight. They run together through violet alleys and over grimy rooftops, leaping across the city like lightning, and the feel of their breath in their lungs, burning dark and wild, is the only thing that matters. And yet nothing is normal about this new, extraordinary life, this wonder of breath and flesh, this worn and tired heart restarted, these small miracles blossoming between them every day:
It is finding their rhythm, learning not just how to walk side by side, shoulders almost touching, smooth glide next to sharp strut, but learning how to live in these old bodies they had discarded along the way like snake skin, a forced molting, how to pull on their old selves, the leather and wool, the Browning and brogues, adjusting the familiar layers of jumper and scarf, their new skins shifting and tingling underneath.
It is laying themselves bare with their longing: I'll wait for you and come with me and I'm listening and I'm here, running together into the night instead of foolhardy and alone; it is don't leave me behind / come closer / you can't do that / you will listen to me, pulling rank and leading the charge instead of swallowing down the anger.
It is speaking their language again, stumbling through phrasebooks to find the old words of brilliant / amazing / fantastic, pulling out the Rosetta Stone to translate the call of danger / come / need.
It is the slow erosion of grey, brittle grief by soft, clear words and bright, pale hands, digging down into the fissures until they crack.
It is the unfurling of fingers one by one, clenched around nuggets of grief for so long their hands are numb, letting their fingers splay open in the sun, the wind between them, ready for each other's hand to slip into the empty spaces.
It is the push-pull of their bodies, it is the falling down into arms and catching. It is the falling, and it is the flying, souls soaring and minds balanced, hearts outstretched; it is feeling each other underneath and beside, it is the joy of lifting up and being lifted, at once rooted and weightless.
It is rebuilding their foundation while their smoldering house still stands, stripped down by time to the bare, wooden bones, wind gusting through, laying their love down brick by brick, building it with the mortar of their words and their actions and their lives.
It is remembering the laws of physics, their souls at once universal constants like gravity and the speed of light, and as fleeting and precious as rare elements forged in a lab, flickering in and out of existence in a second.
It is the trust and the truth and the touch. It is is the grip of a hand and the letting go of silence. It is the knowing that they are the same blood, the same breath, cut one and the other bleeds, shoot one and the other gets high, and they are careful, so careful, risking only the parts of their bodies they can afford to lose, never their blood, never their hearts, saving those for each other.
It is the miracle of life and the miracle of acceptance, the miracle of hearts full of holes and badly placed sutures; the miracle of holding each other's soul in their hands, kissing them, and letting them slip back inside; the miracle of their life, of this life being enough, the miracle of the second chance and the third and all the chances after that, the miracle of a single taste of a single kiss, the miracle of waking up and of the sun rising and falling and the miracles that share the same bed, it is the miracle of a brass knocker on a black door and the hands that hold it, and it is this miracle that keeps the stars apart and keeps the galaxies alive and keeps their love fresh in their mouths.
AN: Many thanks to everyone who has stuck with this story and this series. At this point, there will be two, perhaps three chapters left in After Love. I began this series nearly a year ago, and I'm hoping to have it finished by that anniversary.
As always, thanks to Mirith Griffin for being my lovely beta, thanks to everyone on Tumblr for their support and energy, and thanks to you for reading. I welcome your comments.
The title references the Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova song of the same name. The "little earthquakes" line references the Tori Amos song of the same name. The "miracle that keeps the stars apart" references a line in E.E. Cummings' [i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]. The "miracle that keeps the galaxies alive" references a line in Al Jarreau's "After All." The blackmailer robbery is a reference to ACD's The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton. The "fabric of life" line is after a theme in Holyfant's Reichenbach fic, The Fabric of Life. This song was written under the influence of Annie Lennox's "Primitive" and Ólafur Arnalds' "Ljósið" (hat tip to FuckYourSolarSystem for this song).