John knows a lot of things. He knows a lot of stories.
When he was married, his pretty wife used to tell him one story, about the moon and the sun, and the sky. The moon and the sun were once brothers, she would whisper to him, and the flat earth became jealous of this endless, undying love. The earth threw them apart and lay herself down between them, so they would circle forever and ever in the darkness, never to glimpse each other's light. But the sky, who was everywhere and knew everything, pitied the moon and the sun. On some days, the earth grows tired and sleeps, and in those secret days, the sky folds its wings, and the moon and the sun are thrown together.
'Those are the days when the sun goes black,' she explained, brushing dust from John's hair. 'He turns his back to the earth. He will only look at the moon.'
John would laugh at this, and inform his wife that an eclipse had nothing to do with love or wings, or even jealousy, but only the shift of the moon's silhouette drifting between the sun and the earth. An occurrence which only lasts an hour. A natural event. No brothers, no loving sky, just the vast expanse of energy and mass, and the lack of it.
Watching Molly sift through darkness and light, the soft whisper of feathers heard but never seen trickling like starsong in her wake, he wonders if his departed beloved had known the future all along.
It isn't love. Nothing like it, no, not the burning coals that scream in his chest every time he sees Sherlock smile, not the intoxicating bewilderment he finds himself in when his fledgling's wings brush tenderly against his, not the way Sherlock feels in John's arms in the blue, apologetic light of the early morning. What John feels echo in his bones is more like the memory of a motion he used to know. Molly is a song he forgot, but a melody that digs deep into his marrow and refuses to let go. She is the small, evasive moon, and endless, endless Sherlock brought her to John.
Molly makes him coffee. She always makes coffee, it seems, and not tea, the way Sherlock generally does when he has been especially impolite to John. 'There's no sugar,' she notes with a shrug.
John smiles into his mug. 'Sherlock used it to lure ants into a book,' he explains.
Molly makes a soft noise of understanding. John hums in response, and sips at his coffee. He likes it better without sugar anyhow.
'Why did you fall?' John asks nonchalantly, setting the mug down on the table.
Molly laughs a little at his brusqueness. He is being rude, of course, but neither take it seriously. After all, they both are closely acquainted with Sherlock's blatant disregard for human consideration. She rests her chin on her hand. 'My ideas were wrong, so I got tossed out,' she replies. 'That's all.' She grins then, and suddenly John is so reminded of Harry that something behind his borrowed heart twists savagely.
Where has Harry gone? Where did they all go, the beautiful and dangerous brethren? Was the Mighty done with all of them, keeping only the politicians in their place and whispering half-formed instructions to lunatic humans instead?
Molly covers John's hand with her own. She is only slightly below average temperature, five marks below John's own fiery warmth. 'Don't think about all of that,' she says gently. 'Don't look back at it. It'll only hurt. Just think about life now. We're happy, aren't we?' She tilts her head back at the fledgling sprawled across the sofa, his lips parted, dark lashes drawing heavy lines down his cheeks. His wings spread so far across the living room that, even though the lamps are turned on, the room is stilted in sleepy darkness. There is no light but for the strange amber glow radiating from Sherlock's shoulders.
John smiles fondly at the sight. 'Yes,' he agrees. 'We really are.' And it's quite alright, because they both love his fledgling, and even if Moriarty isn't done with them yet, tonight they have found the eye of the storm.
.
Sherlock finds consciousness somewhere near sundown, awoken by the soft sound of a spatula hitting a frying pan, and the strange sizzling sounds of something cooking. John never cooks. He never has the time, dragged at breakneck speed around during their chases. Sherlock's mind whittles away at all the possibilities, dancing impossibly long over Irene. He remembers her face, her wide eyes and the hopeless look in her eyes as she realised the utter inevitability of her fate, the depth of Moriarty's betrayal. And yet, her survival is impossible. Everything burned in John's flame.
Black joy digs through Sherlock's borrowed heart. He remembers this too.
John, furious and powerful, his wings lifting about his body in a spiral of gleaming blades and incandescent light, reaching with his left hand into his wings - impossible, impossible splendour that he is - and pulling out a sword. Sword is perhaps the greatest of understatements. It was nuclear fission. Chemistry. Magic. Power. Magnificent. Terrifying.
And John loves him.
Sherlock never believed in miracles, but since John limped into his life and became doctor and soldier to his war, he suddenly finds that the impossible happens daily. Maybe he will never be happy, since happiness is a state of being that is forbidden for monsters like him, but Sherlock will always be full of emotions. He used to scorn them, but they are so delicious. He should have tasted them sooner.
There is a soft burst of laughter - female - and a low murmur of continued conversation - male, John's voice - and the sizzling sounds stop. Cutlery taps against their plates. Not the best plates, so there is familiarity in the visitor.
Sherlock trundles into the kitchen. Nausea hits him in the gut, and the blood pounds angrily at his temples. He leans against the doorway.
Mollly is scooping a small section of stir fry from a plate and offering it to John. He is laughing, shaking his head as though embarassed, but already his mouth is opening to take the bite. There is nothing small, pale, or meek about Molly. Her cheeks are glowing, her hair hangs low and loose down her back, her movements indicate the assuredness of someone well-practiced in the acts of domesticity. Like John is home. She sets her hand against his arm. Her thumb traces the line of his muscle, over his vein, and even through the jumper she knows exactly where each ventricle is. She knows him, and she adores him.
Sherlock growls. That is his place. John is his.
Molly starts, her round, dark eyes widening and her lips parting. Sherlock can see the soft red rim on the inner part of her mouth, usually hidden by fatigue and badly-chosen cosmetics. She is wearing nothing today, and somehow this nakedness that women often avoid is what gives this little laboratory mouse the greatest charm of all. She is beautiful in the subtlest way, and Sherlock can suddenly see everything she so cleverly hid from him before.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
John's face jerks quickly towards him. He knows. Of course he knows, they are bound together, and instantly he is anxious and worried, but not guilty. Not guilty at all. And yet he was leaning forwards - yearning for physical contact - his tongue darting over his lower lip - nervousness, indicating a long separation or a party he wishes to impress - and most of all, smiling that special, warm smile he only uses for Sherlock.
'Hullo,' Molly greets brightly, setting the spatula into the frying pan. 'The hand's better, I hope.'
Sherlock glances down at the appendage. 'Yes,' he nods, remembering the burn. He remembers an injection through a haze of pain and delirium brought upon him through the fever in his blood. 'You cured it?' he demands, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. Molly is many things, but none of them include an inventor of ingenious cures to magical maladies.
'She cured it,' John confirms gravely. He lifts his chin and meets Sherlock straight in the eye.
But he is jealous and suddenly he hates Molly, even if she has saved his life by offering him obsession after obsession when he would have probably drowned himself in the rush of chemicals bleeding into his blood and his brain. She taught him how to love the dead human body. She whispered secrets into his ear, promising him to show new medical monstrosities, if he would throw away the needle and pick up a magnifying glass instead. She was there when Mycroft refused to be, when Lestrade ran out of patience, when even the doctors and the psychiatrists gave up.
Molly saved Sherlock. But she is in love with John, and he is in love with her, albeit subconsciously, therefore Sherlock despises every fibre of her being.
'Sherlock,' John says quietly, standing from his seat. Molly's hand slips away from his arm. 'Sit.'
Because it is his John that commands this, he complies.
John takes Sherlock's hands in his and squeezes gently, lifting them to his lips. Assurance, tenderness, and gentle whispers drift through their bridge softly. John knows Sherlock's head must hurt from the aftermath of the chemicals. 'Molly and I are not together,' he explains patiently, cupping Sherlock's face in his hand. 'I'm with you. I love you. Only you, Sherlock. You know that.' He sighs softly, his thumb dropping down the line of Sherlock's jaw, sending a shudder of sweet sparks down to the fledgling's gut.
Sherlock closes his eyes and breathes. His heart is quiet but his mind will not rest. It picks and prods at the minute hints of emotional contact, screaming the blindingly obvious signs of destruction. Sometimes he thinks there is something terrible about his architecture, that it pleads so continuously for tragedy and the malfunction of every relationship in his life.
The angels made him wrong, Sherlock decides. Only John makes him right.
John hears everything. John always does. He smiles sadly with corners of his lips, the motion drawing wrinkles from the corners of his kind, kind eyes. He leans forward, pressing his forehead against Sherlock's. 'My silly, silly fledgling,' he laughs. 'She does love me, yes, but that's because she's fallen, too.'
Sherlock blinks, stares at Molly, then stares at John. 'What?'
John grins at him, almost delighted, and that makes no sense at all. 'You can't see her wings,' he states happily.
'No, John, I can't,' Sherlock states bluntly. He stares at Molly again, who is now watching them both with a sense of bemusement. 'I didn't see your wings at first, either,' he adds as a form of explanation. In fact, he already has a hypothesis about this symptom of his supposed ability to spot Lucifer. Sherlock can only see their soul after they have willingly exposed to him, just like John did when he killed that demon.
John is grinning even wider now. He is so stupidly happy it is frustrating. 'Don't you get it, Sherlock?' he presses, shaking his head. He draws a line from the base of Sherlock's scull to the first rise of his vertebrae. His fingertips are calloused, and all the scars are beautiful because they all hold secrets, and Sherlock could spend forever focused on those puzzles. 'If you can't find Lucifer, maybe Mycroft will leave you alone,' John explains.
Sherlock drops his gaze. Unfortunately, he already knows that this will not come to pass. He knows the persistence with which Mycroft follows his items of interest, and if he has a use sculpted for Sherlock, then Sherlock shall be made useful in this organised manner. If Sherlock fails to accomplish his given task, he is at risk of being obsolete, and Sherlock does not need to guess what a manipulative hog like Mycroft does with broken toys.
Sherlock finds solace in the hollow of John's neck. Strong, strong John. John will protect him, won't he? 'If I can't find Lucifer,' Sherlock whispers, 'Mycroft will kill me.'
'No,' Molly voices, startling them both. Her eyes blaze with unholy light, almost as furious as John's impossible sword, and her body is immovable steel. 'He will not.' Her hand tightens around the spatula until her knuckles whiten. 'I will not allow it.'
Sherlock can see the family resemblance now. For the most part, Molly would seem harmless, just like small, jumper-wearing John, only they both can turn devastatingly terrifying in a breath, like their idle harmlessness is only a mask that can be torn off. Mycroft certainly isn't as good at playing his power down. He's much too self-obsessed for that. Somehow, this dangerous part of Molly makes Sherlock uneasy inside.
John needs danger to survive. What if Molly is more dangerous than Sherlock? What if she's the right sort of danger? What if John leaves.
Thick daggers stab Sherlock's abdomen, and he bleeds into himself. No. No. No. No please no.
Can't lose John. Can't. Can't can't can't he's essential I needneedneed John.
So Sherlock clings tighter to John, squeezing his eyes tightly shut, and wills Molly to return to her previously unassuming self.
.
Sleep evades them tonight. They sit together in the cluttered kitchen, Sherlock trying to memorise the smell of John's jumper, and the Good Soldier trying to ignore the various mental images of Mycroft striking his fledgling down with his spear, as he struck many a demon down before. Mycroft is not one to fight. He is the bringer of messages, the over-dressed bearer of the Mighty's proclamations, but he is merciless.
Molly left, of course. There was no conversation to be held. The lion was roaring too loudly to be mistaken for her usual lamb. Sherlock was inconsolable. Is. Is inconsolable, the beautiful child, still burrowing his way to John's sternum in search for a place of final refuge. It's endearing, which is inappropriate, but John's concept of inappropriate behaviour is warped. The night is dark and quiet, and the lamps have died out. Sherlock's emptiness is more contagious than hellfire.
A car passes the flat, its intrusive headlights giving life to every object in the room. The elk head watches them with brightened eyes, its antlers oddly elongated in the swiftly passing light. From the fireplace, the skull grins blankly at the wall. Inanimate objects, the lot of them, all containing an element of intimacy they had no right to own. Each part of this flat was like a removed section of Sherlock's identity, written in code for the world to see. No one would ever understand the complex language except John, but that was alright, since it was his message to interpret, after all, and there was nothing Sherlock created that John wouldn't eventually understand.
His fledgling's fingers clenched the back of John's shirt. Nails dug into skin.
But that's fine, because you'll take the pain too.
'What happens to me,' Sherlock whispers, 'if you fall in love with someone else.'
John closes his eyes. 'I can't,' he responds, barely above a breath. He doesn't trust himself with any more than that. Any louder, and the thick object lodged in his throat will dig in, and he will surely break. 'I can't love anyone else anymore, Sherlock. I really am yours, and I can't change it. That's what giving someone your heart means, for us. It's permanent.'
Forever. Forever and ever and until the stars all die out, I am yours.
The thin body in his arms shakes. Oh, God, the way it seems so fragile and small against his scarred chest. It cleaves him in two, and he is ripped at all his badly gathered seams. Sherlock never believes it, and it must be because every other being regards him with nothing but disgust and resentment, and John wants to boil their marrow, slice their veins open so they might understand.
A lot of things matter. They always do. Yet nothing is as important as this moment, this sliver of time when the universe evaporates and only the walls of 221B exist, and the shadows that Sherlock's curls make on the nape of his neck.
'Why do I feel like she has something I don't?' the fledgling grits through his teeth, frustrated at his own fall to sentiment and the weakness of caring too much. 'Why, why does it feel like she's going to take you away?'
John stares out the window, over Sherlock's head. He thinks about the soft glow of familiarity, compares it to the wild adrenalin-pumped moments sprinting through dark alleyways with his mad flatmate. He grins crookedly. He was always better fitted for danger anyways.
John pulls away from Sherlock, far enough so he can cup the fledgling's angular face in both hands. 'Well then,' he says softly, smiling mischievously, 'let's give you something Molly will never have.'
He waits patiently as Sherlock clears away the clutter of emotion, blinks, and realises the implication. Then, with a strangled noise that is part laugh, part agonised groan, Sherlock grabs a fistful of John's shirt and grinds their lips together.