John woke to the tops of Sherlock's feet.
He took a deep sleepy breath and then sighed. Those long white feet were so familiar to him that his barely awake brain just took in the fact as nothing out of the ordinary. Sherlock often ended up sleeping like this, with his knees in John's belly and John's knees in his, curled around each other like yin and yang. So for a moment John did not remember that they were not in their flat, that it was not 2016, and part of his mind wondered where Sherri was and hoped she hadn't crawled into bed with them again in the middle of the night.
The roughness of an unshaven chin dragged over the tops of his feet as Sherlock moaned and pulled John closer, pushing his own knees in tighter to John's center, and John was instantly awake. This was not 2016, they were not in their flat, and Sherlock was not his lover. It was 2020 and he and Sherlock were locked in some sort of convoluted renegotiation of their relationship. The contents of the day before suddenly rushed into his mind, and he had the warning thought that he should disengage, distance himself.
But his waking body seemed to have other ideas. His body missed Sherlock, the lanky frame with all its bony angles in the dead weight of sleep. Sherlock's sleeping body was completely different than when it was awake, so languid and slow and heavy, operating without the cutting words and chaotic mania that came with Sherlock's consciousness. Sherlock slept so deeply that he was completely dead to the world, sleeping sometimes for 20 hours at a time, and the warmth that came to John in the sleeping presence of this special man, this man who had tied his life into knots since they met, washed over his body and he suddenly hungered for it with a longing that was almost painful.
This was going to become increasingly awkward if he stayed in bed much longer, however, as he felt himself wanting to pull Sherlock against himself. And he knew from experience that the longer he was in bed next to Sherlock the more likely he would lose that particular battle.
He slowly pulled his feet out of Sherlock's grasp and heard Sherlock's grumbled objection, but as John sat and then stood, Sherlock did not otherwise move. John looked at the sleeping man, the morning light coming in through the curtains and lighting his relaxed face, and the sight was familiar and yet strange. Sherlock was thinner than when they lived together, his pyjama shirt falling loosely around his chest, and the short hair and long scar on his head was still hard to get used to. But his face was so relaxed in sleep that he looked younger, like an innocent and undamaged version of himself.
Regardless of how well Sherlock was handling his life post surgery — he was remarkably functional, now that John thought about it — there were moments throughout the past few days when Sherlock seemed to freeze, as if he was caught in some sort of internal loop that he needed to be jolted out of. John was unsure if Sherlock even noticed it happening.
He heard himself sigh and thought he should go and take a shower.
John went into the bathroom and closed the door, used the toilet and then started the shower. He got in, feeling the hot water begin to seep into his skin and then his muscles. He closed his eyes and let the water run over him, allowing himself a few meditative moments before what would undoubtedly be another insane and challenging day.
But his eyes snapped open when he heard the door open.
"Sherlock?" he said and then held his breath. Through the opaque white curtain he watched Sherlock walk over to the toilet next to the shower and take a piss. John stood in the shower, facing the curtain, watching as Sherlock finished and then moved to the sink and washed his hands. Then just when he thought Sherlock was leaving, John's mouth dropped open slightly and he took in a breath as he watched Sherlock's shadow move towards the shower curtain and stand in front of it. John's eyebrows started to rise as he saw the outline of an arm move to the edge of the curtain and then hang there.
John began to panic. What was he going to do? As in most instances when John didn't know what to do, his instinct was to jump to physical action. But he couldn't seem to decide between punching Sherlock square in the face or grabbing him and pulling him into the shower with him. The two warring thoughts locked him into paralysis as he stood there, his eyes wide, waiting for Sherlock to pull aside the curtain.
But instead, the hand fell and the shadow disappeared. John blinked and then grabbed the edge of the curtain and peeked his face around the edge. The door was open and the room was empty. John suddenly felt a wave of deep disappointment, which then led immediately to being angry with himself. Why was he disappointed? What the hell was wrong with him? He stepped out of the shower and grabbed the door.
"Sherlock, for God's sake, at least shut the door!" he yelled and then slammed the door.
Sherlock had been dreaming of the ocean.
Since his surgery, his dreams were often filled with oddities and horror, his creative subconscious trying to make connections and put together a massive puzzle with mostly missing pieces, but the picture always seemed to turn out twisted and wrong. He would fill in the empty spaces with a multitude of terrifying scenarios, most of which were bizarre and fantastical - being chased by black monsters made of shadows, drowning in a field of poisonous yellow daisies that smelled of sulphur, jumping off a cliff with useless bat wings flapping as he fell to his death. Many nights were consumed by the nightmares, and some mornings he would wake as exhausted as when he went to sleep, his body drenched as if he had been struggling or running or fighting all night.
On this particular night, however, the dreams had been clear, cool and vivid, a long stream of images that were were so unlike the confusing struggles of the many nights before that they rushed in like cold water to a man dying of thirst. Even the blue dreams where he and John were arguing in an unfamiliar room or the red dreams where he was inexplicably covered in blood and John looked up at him in surprise or the white dreams where he and John were in the open hills with the clouds flying above them - they filled and flowed and soothed his soul, his mind drinking it all in eagerly. The most vivid though was the last, of lying bundled in jackets on a cold beach, the bright spring sunlight making John's hair golden as he looked out to the blue horizon, his eyes squinting in the sun.
Sherlock woke suddenly to the sound of a door closing. He was alone in bed, his head on the opposite end from where he had fallen asleep. He could hear John in the bathroom and he was instantly fully aware as his mind expanded to fill the spaces in the room. He rose as if still in a dream and walked into the bathroom. He automatically moved to the toilet and the steam from the shower filled his lungs as he stood there and then his head filled with light as he washed his hands and then suddenly all he could feel was the bright presence of him.
Sherlock stood outside the curtain, his forehead almost touching. The sound of the hot water falling gave him a synesthetic sensation that filled his mouth with the sweetness of honey. His eyelids fluttered shut as he sensed the nearness of John on the other side, could almost see his presence by the sound of the water hitting his skin, leaving an echo that made him hear the shape of John's body as the sound bounced off the bathroom walls. He reached out his hand to the edge of the curtain and nearly touched it, felt the static pull against the hairs on his skin, as if the curtain was stretching, reaching out to touch him back. For a long moment he stood feeling the tension in the air, feeling the future expand beyond the moment, branching into a thousand paths forward. But an unexpected darkness also lay there, in the future, and he began to recoil as he was suddenly filled with fear - because even though the paths he wanted so desperately to take were the paths of light, the paths of togetherness, so many others were filled with darkness, so many filled with loneliness and fear.
Sherlock turned around and walked out of the room. He walked straight to the window on the other side of the bed and pressed his face against the coolness of the glass, spreading the heat in his body out into the cold hardness, pushing it out of the room and into the world beyond, the world that was other, intangible, invisible, irrelevant.
"Sherlock, for god's sake, at least shut the door!" John's voice boomed from the bathroom, and he heard the door shut loudly. Like an iron filing pulled by a powerful magnet, Sherlock was instantly plucked from the window and pulled back across the room, his cheek and then his entire body pressed up against the closed bathroom door. He spread his hands along the wood of the door and closed his eyes. He expanded his senses, all around the edges of the door and through the seams, his mind flowing into the room like small tendrils of smoke, slinking around the edge of the curtain and filling the shower, caressing the spaces on John's body between the cascading drops…..
John finished his shower, dried himself, put on some clothes and opened the door. Sherlock was sitting in a chair and looking out the window on the other side of the room, fully dressed in his outdoorsman clothes and fishing boots. John watched Sherlock carefully as he put his night clothes in his bag, then moved over to sit on the bed, leaning against the bedpost.
"Aren't you going to take a shower?" he asked, and Sherlock looked at him briefly and then at the bathroom, then turned back to the window.
"Maybe later," he said. "I was thinking we should go fishing."
"What? But what about - "
"If I only have one day with you, John, then I would like to go fishing," Sherlock said and then finally looked at John. Sherlock's eyes were unreadable, but the words cut straight through John's chest. He looked down at his hands and then nodded. Sherlock stood and walked to pick up their rods and tackle box.
"I asked Mrs. Barnes to fix us some tea and biscuits for breakfast, so as soon as you put on your boots, we can go."
John put on his tall boots and followed Sherlock downstairs into the kitchen. Mrs. Barnes wiped her hands on her apron and then gave them a thermos and sack breakfast, and John apologized for waking her the night before. She just smiled a little sadly and patted his arm, and John and Sherlock headed out toward the river in silence.
When they got to the bank, they both stood there looking at the water.
"Now what?" John asked as he put his hand on his hip.
"I have no idea," Sherlock said and started to climb down the bank. They found a log next to the water and sat down to examine their tackle box.
"I think we attach these hooks onto this line?" Sherlock said and picked up a bright orange feathered hook.
"Isn't that a … lure?" John asked helpfully and then picked up a bright green one.
"This is ridiculous. Who's idea was this anyway?" Sherlock grumbled as he started to attach the lure onto his fishing line.
"Yours."
"That's not how I remember it."
"Right," John said and just shook his head.
They fell back into silence as they did their best to put together their rods and gear and then wade out into the shallow river. After a dangerous flick of the line that almost resulted in a hook embedded in John's face, they both got the hang of it and started tossing the line and then gently reeling it in. They fished without talking, each man deep in his own thoughts with only the sound of the river rushing around their boots and the whir of their reels as they tossed out the line. After a while, John got a tug on his line, the end of the rod dipping with each tug, but after pulling it in slowly, the fish slipped off and the line went slack again.
"Dammit! Almost got the bugger," John cursed and reeled the rest of the line in to toss it back out again.
"Don't tell me you're actually finding this interesting," Sherlock said as he reeled in his line and started to walk carefully towards the bank.
"There are worse things to be doing than standing out here in the open sunshine on a clear morning," John said as he watched Sherlock set down his rod and reach for the thermos.
"Even if it's with me?" Sherlock said and didn't look up as he poured a cup of steaming tea.
"Sherlock... don't be like that," John said quietly, but Sherlock didn't respond as he waded back out to him and handed him the cup of tea.
"Thanks," John said and took a sip. He then handed the cup back to Sherlock and watched as Sherlock took a sip. His chest constricted slightly to see Sherlock share a cup of tea with him, a gesture that seemed oddly intimate. Sherlock's words about how they only had one day together turned over in his mind and he looked back to the river. He tossed out his line and watched as it hit the water several yards away. As he let out more line, Sherlock slowly walked up right behind John, reaching his arm around to hand John the tea again. As John took it, Sherlock wrapped his arm around John's chest and gently pulled him into him, sticking his nose in John's hair and breathing deeply. John closed his eyes as he felt the tears rise to the surface, and he fought to keep it together as his former lover and best friend embraced him.
They stood there for a long time, and John tried to calm his breathing as he let Sherlock explore his hair and his neck with his nose. But when he felt a hot wetness on his neck, he gasped and took a step forward out of Sherlock's grasp. He turned around, and Sherlock was standing with his eyes closed and his arms at his sides.
"Sherlock -"
"It helps," Sherlock interrupted with a deep grumble and opened his eyes. He looked around at the trees and the sky and then opened his arms wide. He took a deep breath and then let his arms drop again. "It helps me. I don't know why, John, but when I'm around you…"
Sherlock looked as if he was trying to find the words in the trees, but then rubbed the back of his head in frustration and gave up. He turned and walked back over to the log and started to examine the tackle. John reeled in his line and followed him.
"It's this damn brain injury. I can't think straight. That must be it because I can't explain it otherwise," Sherlock continued as John sat down next to him. "But when you're around, things just seem to work better. I work better. And everything else seems so tedious, everyone else so dull."
He stopped what he was doing and looked at John, his eyes wide and questioning.
"Why is that, John? Why is it that you're the only person who seems alive in this world?"
John just sat there dumbfounded. What could he possibly say? Sherlock seemed so lost, and John remembered the early days of their romance when Sherlock went through a phase of being obsessed with him and would ask such questions all the time, when John had to walk him through every step of his emotions, reassuring him and helping Sherlock recognise and identify what he was feeling. How could he tell Sherlock that what he was feeling was falling in love? How could John possibly face that himself?
John just rubbed his eyes and then reached out and took Sherlock's hand.
"Look," John said and then looked Sherlock in the eyes. "These last few days have been hellish, I must admit. I never want to repeat a day like yesterday ever again and it's going to take a long time for everything to sink in for me. It might never be okay, all this. But this isn't the last day you're going to see me, all right? I don't know what's going to happen, and I'm certain it won't be easy, but -"
John squeezed Sherlock's hand gently.
"As long as you don't lie to me again, as long as you tell me the truth and you honor that, then maybe we can be friends again."
John watched as relief slowly began to edge into Sherlock's face. A light returned into his eyes as Sherlock nodded briefly, and John squeezed his hand again in reassurance.
"Well, the barristers are in agreement with you about the lying, so they will likely keep me in order," Sherlock said.
"What?"
"Also, we should probably pack up and go because the ambulance is likely here. I sent for it first thing this morning," Sherlock said as he stood up abruptly and picked up the tackle box. John just looked up at him in confusion.
"I believe we have a body waiting, do we not, Dr. Watson?" Sherlock said cheerfully, and gave John a small smile. "Let's find out what killed poor Lady Beatrice."