Author's note:Funny how an intended Tuesday update turns into a Friday update...(a.k.a. sorry for the wait).

Enjoy!

Chapter 12: Edges are dangerous places

The early morning frost creaks under John's steps, white traitor carrying voice of his approach. He is sure Sherlock is aware of the fact that he is not alone, but Sherlock being Sherlock, he doesn't bother to acknowledge it. Stopping several steps behind Sherlock, John exploits Sherlock lack of socially appropriate behaviour and looks his fill. Sherlock fits in with the landscape as much as he does in London, although in ways distinctly different. In London, he is a specimen of an endemic species in its natural habitat, as much a part of the city as old operating theatres hidden in attics of churches and fish and chips shops with stacks of old newspaper stored for wrappings. There, he is a part of an ecosystem so complex that small changes in it appear invisible but are felt by those connected to the city so intrinsically that they equate the rush hours over its streets to the speed of blood pumping through their blood vessels. Whether the Sherlock is a man bespoke for the city or the other way around is only determinable by the differences in their age and rules of chronology.

Here, though, Sherlock is a wonder of a different nature. He isn't an integral part of the place, but an addition, easily noticeable. But, despite his position as a visitor (or an intruder), there appears to be a mutual understanding between him and his surroundings, some sort of silent conversation conducted on levels inaudible to ears of others. He is (always has been) a creature of the wild sort of beauty, that which is tremendous in its absolute refusal of being conquered. Just like the mountains and the sharp, too-clean air that surround him, as well as the water that carves its way though stone of the Alps, Sherlock seems to be something deeply raw that only allows the illusion of being tempered down to everyday civility for the sake of those around him. The landscape treats him not as a rival but as an esteemed peer, a distant kin that somehow got trapped in bones and skin and the ridiculous confines of a human body, forced to forgo sharp peaks and snow caps, foaming waterfalls and vastness of the forget-me-not-blue sky.

In that moment, he is simply unbelievable (but there is nothing simple in that, not for John), but not in the mundane sense of the expression. He is literally unbelievable, a term beyond John's grasp, an idea too incomprehensible, that he should exist, this eccentricity of the Universe. At times, times like this, John swears Sherlock is a fluke, Universe's slip of finger, a beautiful miscalculation that resulted in a whole world being stored in 184 centimetres of fallible human tissue, held together only by its own gravity. It's impossible, illogical, ridiculously sentimental and defiantly at least slightly unhealthy, but John wishes he could be an inhabitant of that world for just a little bit longer than he knows he has. Sherlock is his home world – has been, longer than John has been aware.

"I get nervous when you stand near edges of high places, you know", John calls out, voice somehow too loud and foreign in the silence of the yet-to-be morning, forced levity cutting sharp wounds across the distance that separates them.

Sherlock flinches, his coat flapping like wings of a startled bird that cannot fly, and spins around, eyes oscillating between being widened in shock and narrowed in inspection. Shock, confusion, and –ah, there it is – relief, almost guilty, surge over Sherlock's face, and John know it is only due to the element of surprise that he has on his side that he is allowed this glimpse at Sherlock unguarded, reacting instinctively rather than calculating each twitch of muscle, each micro expression.

Just as John catches a glimpse of it all, Sherlock's face grows guarded, as if he cannot decide if all this just a cruel prank or a twisted trap. His mouth smoothes into a thin line, the small muscles of his face working to close it off, make it a mask of doubt and inquiry, but his eyes – his eye betray him. Perhaps it is only to John that they do so, who knows Sherlock so intimately, but between narrowed lids and lowered eyebrows, hope glitters like an uncontrollable electric current. John can tell Sherlock wishes he wasn't feeling at, let alone showing it. And it feels a little bit like death, this reluctance of Sherlock's to hope, to feel an emotion so dangerous, so glorious that it might just break him under the right (wrong) circumstances.

John steps closer, closer, until he is a one and a half step away from Sherlock. He reaches out towards Sherlock's still form, catching the cuff of his coat sleeve, delicately, just a slide of fingers against dark fabric, using it to pull Sherlock a bit closer and a bit further away from the edge of the viewing deck. Sherlock is towering above him now, their height difference forcing John to look up in order to maintain eye contact across the half-a-step wide space filled with air that touches each of them but prevents them from touching each other. Just half a step, half a breath and it would be gone, this damned distance that dances like a mutual mistress between them. And John hopes it will be, soon, but there is something that needs to be said before it can be banished, if only for a few suspended inhales.

"I realised I made a mistake. I was...angry. Betrayed. I needed time to sort things out and I thought I did, but I realised I was wrong." John delivers his speech on a single breath. "And then I left because I felt like that would help, but I was wrong again. Us ordinary idiots tend to get things wrong", he offers with just the slightest indication of a smile. All the time, Sherlock's expression remains unchanged, unreadable. John's words linger between them like the smoke John so hates to smell on Sherlock, curling in dark spirals, apparently insubstantial, inadequate in mending whatever it is that has been broken. John is about to say something more (though what, he has no idea – he only had this little bit worked out and it has already taken him all the air in his lungs to deliver it), when Sherlock lounges forward and before John can realise that he's chased the hate distance away with his words, Sherlock's mouth reaches his, breath on breath, and for a fraction of moment it's only their respective breaths kissing, mixing, carbon dioxide making love in the warm cloud of exhalation. And then – then Sherlock's hands find sides of John's face, gripping like a surgical frame (but endlessly gentler) to hold John in place, rooted to the frozen soil beneath him, right there, in front of Sherlock, so very close, almost occupying the same space, and John thinks (or, more precisely, he would think if he were anywhere near a condition allowing even a single coherent thought) that this is how a person should be kissed – thoroughly, hungrily, precisely and eagerly. Sherlock kisses him with the fervour of a desperate soul clinging to the edge above the river Styx, unwilling to drown, determined to hang on to life. It is a kiss that speaks of things lost and found, of hopes and futures surrendered and given up only to be resurrected and given back. Relieved lips slide and frenzied teeth nip and bite, and it's so broken that it is healing (only because there is nothing else it could possibly be – anything else would lead to complete dissolution). John opens his mouth and it's a voluntary slitting open of a wound, an invitation into the soft vulnerability with no means of defence. Sherlock doesn't waste his time, stealing John's air, erasing whatever divide there still is between him. He does it with the urgency of a long-shunned traveller returning home. It's a flood so strong that it feels impossible to stop.

If it were a sound it would be a cry, that of a newborn taking its first breath and one of a nightingale pressing its chest to a thorn, bleeding beauty over the rose's malicious finger. It would be a scream, and an angry shout, and manic laughter, and an exasperated groan. If it were a story it would be a myth and a cautionary tale, an epic legend and a cookie fortune significant only in personal context of everyday problems and quests.

But it's none of those things (or maybe it's all of them, blended together). It is just a kiss.

And yet, there is no way this is just a kiss – it must be something more, some primal energy surging up from the ground beneath them, misguided, missing a seed or a young strand of grass, and blooming through them instead. A moan tumbles out of a mouth, or maybe two, a sound of pained glory a flower feels with first opening of petals.

It feels a little bit like death, but only in that way in which death feels like the culmination of life.

But just like life, the kiss ends (too soon, too soon).

They don't speak right away. For a while they let the sounds of their rapid breathing fill the air, warm moisture of all the unsaid words they fed each other, swallowed down and gave back blurring the air. It is such an intimate, dangerous thing to let another person just listen to you breathing. You can't help it – you must breath – and you are allowing them to witness, to focus on one of your greatest addictions. Just breathing, with no words, is so infinitely harder than talking. You can never breath as anyone but yourself. No acting, no faking – there are no lies in breaths, just raw reveal of things in the truest of lights. A breath is ultimate honesty.

"Are you staying?" Sherlock's voice is quiet but clear, words strongly formed, which only serves to tell John how much Sherlock must be tormented by not knowing the answer.

"The game is on, is it not?" John replies, a teasing glint in his eyes.( He cannot say 'Of course I'm staying' because he doesn't want to lie, not even partially.)

The smile that cracks across Sherlock's face borders on delirious and John thanks whatever cosmic authority wired the human brain to be partly incapacitated by such strong joy, because he is rather certain that the chemical disturbance of it is the only think keeping Sherlock from catching onto what's really going on.

People see what they want to see. Believe what they want to believe. For once, Sherlock sees but does not observe, and John can't identify the emotion that stirs within him – it's an impossible concoction of a wistful sort of relief, a dulled version of dread that comes with the anticipation of an inevitable event, the sort of joy that can only be elicited by Sherlock. 'I guess that's what people call love' John muses and in that moment a knowledge settles, finally falls into place. It isn't a sudden realisation as much as it is a hard-won final shift of a lever that sets a mechanism into motion. It isn't really anything new – many have reached the same conclusion before him – but it's there and right then it's John's, this (truest) truth that love isn't really a feeling at all.

It is a fine balancing act, a study in tolerance between opposing emotions, an exercise in being contrary at one's very core, thus allowing diametrically opposite concepts, feelings and thoughts to co-exist in narrow spaces and each other's vicinity. Love isn't a feeling, but many of them, in combinations – like codes, like words. It is a procession of faults and virtues and a lesson in dancing to sounds of both sets of footsteps. It's the slow-slow-quick-quick of foxtrot, imperfect, full of wrong turns and damaged toes. Love isn't a feeling, or a thing – it's not even really a dance. It is what happens, stealthily, covertly, when breaths kiss and mind wrestle and lives refuse to untangle themselves from each other. If life is what happens while we are busy making other plans, then love is what happens while we're busy doing, thinking, feeling other things. And once it does, if one is lucky, there is enough time to enjoy it just for what it is. But John knows he spent all of his luck and has no such privileges now, which is why all of this feels like a glorious sort of pain. He must move things along while he still has the strength to.

"Oh, by the way, Mycroft sends you this" he says, struggling to keep his tone nonchalant. He's become quite an actor. He extends his hand, offering Sherlock a simple, black USB stick.

The previous evening

"Why would he believe the info to be true?" John asks, eyeing the black USB Mycroft's offering him.

They are standing in Mycroft's room at the Diogenes Club, with the fire cracking lazily in the fireplace despite the mild March temperatures. It casts dancing shadows onto Mycroft's face, making it look like a venue of some tribal dance or rite-of-passage ritual.

"Because he is the one who gave it to me. I convinced him his data was wrong, that my sources were more reliable. You will tell him I was mistaken and that he should proceed as he originally suggested. And if Sherlock likes anything then he likes prov-"

" – proving you wrong." John finishes with a slight shake of head and a sigh which is half relief and half exasperation. Who would have guessed that Sherlock's petty, immature feud would be the thing to save him.

"Precisely." Mycroft agrees, "Sherlock can be brilliant, when he is not too busy being childish."

At any other time, John would have taken a moment to smirk at the petulance of Mycroft's tone, but not now. Not with each moment being so valuable. Not with each being a countdown.

"Are you sure this will work?" he inquires, eyes stuck on a little black USB Mycroft handed him. It looks so innocuous, just a bit of plastic and metal, no one would ever guess its importance. Lives contained within 4 gigabytes of memory. It doesn't take much to store life, it would seem.

"No, I'm not." Mycroft's answer sounds as if the uncertainty pains him slightly. "But it's the best option that's available. John..." John lifts his gaze, meets Mycroft's eyes with a hard expression that speaks of determination, of a soldier at peace with his duty.

"Even if it works, you are aware of the risks, are you not?" There is a hesitant note in Mycroft's cadence, an oddity so rarely witnessed that John is almost knocked off balance by it. He only heard it once before, three years ago, in this same room – 'John...tell him I'm sorry, will you?'. What followed after ended John's life as he knew it for quite some time. John doesn't particularly like that note. "I will try and get in touch with some contacts I have in Switzerland. Due to the country's neutral status I cannot do much via the official channels...We cannot risk an international incident if word got out that the British Government was sending special units there. You will be utterly exposed and mostly unprotected."

"I know." John's jaw is set, his stance all squares and sharp, unyielding angles.

"And you still persist in your hope that this will work?" If he didn't know better, John would say Mycroft's tone holds something edging dangerously close to admiration.

"Yes."

"Despite the implications?" Admiration and something else...

"Yes."

"Very well. The plane leaves in an hour." ... something very similar to regret.

They make their way up to the hotel lobby, all marble and stainless steel. Sherlock asks for his room key while John signs in.

"Here you go, Mr Dupin" the receptionist says in impeccable French, as he hands Sherlock the keys.

"Thank you." Sherlock replies and moves towards the lobby lounge area without further ado, stopping at the frame of the French windows that segregate the space into blocks. His back is turned to the reception desk and to a casual observer he would seem deeply engrossed in the view through large windows on the furthest wall. John watches him from the corner of his eye, so focused on Sherlock that he misses the other receptionist asking him a question. He snaps out of it, turning his head to meet the young woman's eyes fully.

"Your name, sir?" she repeats in English, her accent barely noticeable. It takes John a second to remember the fake name Mycroft told him to use. He clears his throat and answers a bit too loudly.

"Victor Trevor."

Sherlock's eyes cut towards John, flashing with some unfamiliar light that John has hard time catching and identifying since he is still busy maintaining at least some level of civil communication with the woman in front of him.

"Here is your key, Mr. Trevor" she says and John is soon fully equipped to retreat to his room. He moves towards the lounge, passing Sherlock and settling on a small sofa. Sherlock takes a seat opposite him, a strange concoction of barely-contained excitement about the case and something else – something John suspects has to do with his fake name. But he can't dwell on that now. He has a job to do. A plan to conduct.

"We should start right away – " Sherlock's words start to flow in that familiar rapid fashion John loves so much, but he can't allow himself the indulgence today.

"Actually, could we just take it slow for 15 minutes? Have some tea?" he asks, using his best imploring voice. The expression of incredulous confusion on Sherlock's face is simply priceless.

"Tea? You want to have tea? Now? With the case waiting?" Sherlock sounds as if he would really like it for John to say he was just pulling his leg. But the catch doesn't come (it will, of it will, but Sherlock certainly won't see it coming...not in time, anyway).

"Yes" John responds, "I would like to have tea with you. Please. For me, Sherlock."

John doesn't say anything else. Only lies have detail, and even though it isn't an innocent request, it isn't a lie that John would like to have tea with Sherlock. Just a few more stolen moments of fake normality (or whatever that term denotes in terms of John and Sherlock).

John doesn't break eye contact and after a few more beats of befuddled staring, Sherlock just nods. John springs to his feet and moves towards the bar, ordering two cups of tea. He doesn't move back to the sofa, but instead stays and waits for their tea to be made.

Sherlock observes him from where he is seated, the sun now slowly starting to filter through the wall of glass behind his back. For a few moments, John blocks the view of the tea with his body, fiddling with the cups a bit. Finally, he seems to have gotten both of them and he moves back to where Sherlock is, handing him a cup as he passes. They sit and sip their tea. It's utterly ridiculous.

'Oh god, the Swiss can't make tea for the life of them.' Sherlock grimaces. The tea is bitter, as if over-brewed, the sharpness cutting through the layers of sugar. But he isn't really bothered, he can't force himself to be. John is here and that's all that matters.

It's simply everything.

Two keys are definitely redundant, Sherlock ponders as they climb to his room. 'We won't be needing two bedrooms' he smirks. For some reason, Sherlock's body feels heavy, his steps a bit uncoordinated. A yawn catches him unassuming and Sherlock stumbles as they enter the room.

Funny, he is never, ever, sleepy during cases. Must be the mountain air.

The bed looks warm and inviting, even though it is morning and not night. John takes Sherlock's hand and leads him to it. For a moment Sherlock wonders if John is about to chase away Sherlock's sleepiness with rather pleasant methods, but John just lies down on his side, so that he is facing Sherlock as the Detective does the same. He wonders what happens next.

John is just looking at him, but it isn't in that happy, buzzing way he did only moments ago and on the viewing deck. As if something dark and sad and unwanted is leaking through cracks in John veneer now. Sherlock doesn't like it. Moreover, he doesn't like that he can't identify it. Can't think about it properly. Can't think about anything properly in fact.

God, why is he so sleepy?!

John's eyes are unblinking, bottomless blue dots drawing Sherlock in. He thinks he might drown in them. He wishes he could. Just fall asleep on the surface of John's irises, afloat in John's eyes, safe below the dome of his cornea. Sherlock wants to be the look in John's eyes, tender and soft and oh-so-loving. Just not quite so...sad. Sad? Why sad?John should not be sad. He should be happy, like Sherlock is happy. Why...why sad? He is missing something, Sherlock knows it. Something hidden in the blue of John's eyes in that spot where Sherlock should be.

He's seen that look before...seen it...in John's eyes. In another bed. His bed. Their bed? Not so long ago. When he thought John has made up his mind. When he was wrong.

It was there then, this unidentifiable look. Sherlock didn't know what it was until later, until the moment decayed into 'too late'. He didn't recognise it for what it was then (what it is now, as well)...

...a goodbye.

As he yawns again, trying so very hard to fight off sleep, Sherlock's eyes widen in hazy panic as he realises that it is a fight he will lose. Sherlock can feel his drugged brain putting all the pieces together.

John's insistence that Sherlock drink his tea.

John blocking Sherlock's view.

The slightly off taste of the tea.

'Of course...sleeping pills.' Sherlock wishes he could slap himself, but his limbs are so heavy. He can only stare at John in panic as sleep claims him slowly but ruthlessly. John needs Sherlock to sleep tonight. 'But why? Why would he need that? Why would he want me asleep. If I'm asleep then I can't be with – oh. Oh, John. Oh, no.'

Sherlock's whole field of vision consists exclusively of John, who can't hold his mask in place any more. His face is pure, raw pain. Strange how much it looks like love. Horrible love, stupid love, dangerous love – Sherlock can feel it on his skin, dull ache of invisible bruises made by John's eyes mixed with the tormenting sweetness of John's fingers kissing him like hands of a blind reading love letters in Braille. Sherlock's brain is muddy, his eyes barely open. He slurs out his words.

"John...John, what did you do?"

The answer is so simple. So simple even Sherlock can understand it, even though his brain is shutting off at a rapid speed. Darkness steals the sight of John's face from Sherlock as his eyes close, lids cemented together, but sound is still flowing in, rocking Sherlock to sleep. John's answer is a horrible lullaby that ensures nightmares. What did you do?

"I chose."

One day the world will end. The end will start with fire. Next, there will be floods. In the end, all that will be left will be ashes and mud.

Once he is sure Sherlock is out cold, John rises from the bed, lacing his trekking shoes.

John remembers watching a documentary about climate change. He recalls listening to the explanations of the greenhouse effect accompanied by poorly-coloured diagrams and animations of sunlight piercing the glass of a greenhouse and heat remaining trapped below it. He remembers thinking how stupid the human race was, knowing exactly what could very well be their undoing, possessing the knowledge on how to prevent that from happening and still doing nothing. Earth's doom will be a shared product of its inhabitants and the star it so relentlessly circles. One can hardly blame the Sun for shining, although its heat plays a significant role in Earth's demise.

John Watson can't escape Sherlock Holmes any more than the Earth can escape the Sun. Even if he could, he knows he wouldn't want to. Funny (but it isn't, not really) how easy he was to judge people for doing nothing to stop climate change. In the end, isn't he the same? There was such a simple way for him to save himself (only it was never simple). Humans are stupid, John decides as he stalks across the stark graphic of the remote Swiss countryside, and he is easily the stupidest of them all.

He casts one last look at the hotel, trying to identify the window of his room – the room in which Sherlock is currently sound asleep. It's too bright to be sure, Sun reflecting off all windows with the intensity of a toothache, and John finds this slightly anticlimactic, but life isn't a novel or a drama and such neat, cathartic moments simply don't happen just because one wants them to. It doesn't matter, not really. Maybe it's the human nature to always expect more than can be delivered, if only for the simple indulgence of being disappointed and thus allowed the semi-poetic/semi-pathetic instants of melancholy that feels like more, that wears make up in order to fool people into thinking it is something great and profound and not simply a fancy word from feeling put out. How many moments of larger-than-life were Sherlock and he already granted, John thinks.

The dominoes and the coordinates, the case and the drugs, that cold Christmas Eve in the underpass and the warm nights in Mycroft's house that followed, that first meeting in the greenhouse and then the second – it all seems like a part of a different life now, so distant, so detached from here and now. 'Yes', John acquiesces silently to no one in particular, 'we've had a good run...so many of them'. Looking back he sees all the things that were lost – to fires, to floods, to themselves and to each other – and he swears he can trace their footsteps in the ashes and mud that now reside in the wake of turbulences, to this exact spot, this precise moment.

It is life after death, this path they drew together. The crash after the culmination of being unapologetically alive. John thinks it was worth it all. And so it this...so is this.

Love is what happens while we're busy doing, thinking, feeling other things, and once it does, if one is lucky, there is enough time to enjoy it just for what it is. But if one isn't so lucky, then love is the endgame, the name at the end of the road for all the steps that were taken.

Love isn't a feeling...love is the very edge of the world.

And quite possibly, its end.

I think there'll be another three or so chapters of this (hopefully before we're all retired) :)