Chapter 5
"You told me it's been hard." Sherlock's voice.
They've been sitting in silence for some time. John's energy is ebbing. The buzz of adrenaline created on the sudden appearance of a corpse long subsided in his veins.
"Yes."
"Explain."
"Did you think it would be easy?" John asks. Quietly.
"I'm not sure I thought that far ahead."
"No, I'm not sure you did."
"You left Baker Street?" Sherlock asks.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I couldn't handle it."
"Handle what?"
"The memories. Of you. Here." John pauses. "I kept expecting you to walk through the door."
"I did."
"Took you long enough."
They both manage a smile at that. Short. Surprising.
"You moved my chair?" Sherlock asks.
"I got fed up of looking at it." John tries for light. Fails a little.
"More space for papers." Sherlock surmises, surveying the state of the room.
"Yes. I may have let the place go a bit."
"Mrs Hudson isn't looking after you."
"She's not the housekeeper,"
"So she keeps telling us."
"Kept."
"Kept telling us."
"She's with her sister."
"I know."
"You knew."
"I did."
"Thought it best to let me shout at you with as few people as possible around to hear?"
"Yes."
"She doesn't know." John remembers,
"No, I told you that."
"You're going to have to tell her."
"I'm going to have to tell everyone. Eventually"
"She's not going to be happy with you."
"Very likely not." Sherlock confirms.
"You can predict that now?"
"Yes."
"You're learning."
"There is still a certain margin of error. People aren't as uncomplicated as I used to think."
"You predicted my shouting."
"But not the effect on the crockery."
Sherlock nudges a piece of plate with the toe of his shoe. John finds himself smiling. How long ago was it that he'd broken that?
A long sigh. John sits back on his chair, resting his head back against familiar cushions. Blinking his eyes against the heaviness in his lids.
"You're alive Sherlock." He says finally.
"Oh dear, have we looped back to that again?"
His tone is so familiarly bored that John feels like laughing.
"Yes." He confirms "And we may just continue to do so until I believe it."
"You don't believe it?"
"I'm still not certain you're not just a figment of my insane imagination."
"Nothing I can say will confirm that."
"I wanted to believe this would happen."
"You asked me." Sherlock states.
"You heard that. At your grave. You thought I was talking to you."
"You were talking to your insane imagination?"
"Something like that." John pauses. "I've imagined this."
"You have?"
"Yes, quite a few times."
"Is it going like you'd imagined?"
"Not even close."
"Well that must be how you know you're not imagining this."
"You're unpredictable." John says,
"As are you."
"Except for the shouting."
"Well quite,"
"I haven't even hit you yet." There's pride in John's tone.
"No. You took it out on the mug."
"Stop talking about the crockery."
"Mrs Hudson won't be happy with you."
"For the mug?"
"And the plates." Sherlock confirms.
"I'll distract her with other things. Like dead flatmates."
"Good idea John, you can tell her."
"You're not getting out of it that easily."
A pause. They've fallen back into their easy banter.
"So what now?" Sherlock asks.
"You haven't told me how you tracked down the others."
"The others?"
"Moriarty's others."
"The usual way: clues, deductions, some help from Mycroft."
"You wouldn't usually admit that."
"That I got help from Mycroft? No. Perhaps it wasn't quite the usual way"
"They've been arrested?"
"In the most part. Yes."
"Nothing in the papers."
"It was handled quietly."
"Mycroft." John confirms.
"Yes."
"So you're back."
"I'm back."
"You're alive."
"I'm alive."
"Where the hell do we go from here?" John asks.
A beat.
"You could let me kiss you." Sherlock replies.
"You could let me hit you." John counters.
"Do you want to?"
"I'm not sure."
Sherlock stands, finally. Unfolding himself from the sofa, stepping forward. Three feet. Two feet. One. John looks up at him as Sherlock offers him his hand. John takes it slowly, aware it is the first time they've touched since… well since tonight. This night.
Sherlock draws him up, to his feet. Hands pressed together, their one point of contact.
"You were warm." John says finally, he's watching their linked hands.
"I was?" Sherlock isn't following.
"On the pavement. With the blood. The people that wouldn't let me touch you."
"But you did."
"What?"
"Touch me."
"Barely."
"You checked my pulse."
"And you were warm." John affirms, fingers moving slightly, tracing patterns on that tiny patch of Sherlock he is currently clinging to. Remembering.
"That's impossible."
"I thought you'd say that."
"It was just what…" Sherlock starts.
"What my mind thought I should be feeling."
"Correct."
"My mind isn't usually very good at telling me what I should be feeling."
"What are you feeling now?" Sherlock asks, voice a low rumble. Close. John has to look back into his face and finds himself caught in that stare.
"I'm not sure." John replies, but is aware that the words have stopped meaning anything. He's no longer concerned with the sounds from his mouth, only the past remembered image of the person in front of him. A dark shirt: open at the collar, dark curls, pale eyes flashing in the streetlamp glow of the London night.
Sherlock.
One word.
Reaching down to kiss him.
The jumble of emotions that flood him as their mouths first find each other. The alien familiarity of Sherlock's lips: warm and smooth and soft. The heady scent of his skin. Just him, just you.
At first they are tentative, slow, an air of disbelief in their actions. John is still ensuring that this figure is in fact in the room with him: solid and real and not likely to suddenly disappear in a flamboyant puff of smoke. But it doesn't take long for the tentative to give way to the desperate. Sherlock's big hands on the back of John's neck, John's fingers clutching into dark curls, mouths pressed so close and so hard he can taste the rust of blood on his lips. John has the sense that this is the taste of the words they have said. That he will find them all here on these soft lips, crashing against his with such force they seem to draw the breath from his lungs, the words from his mind.
Why did they waste so much time talking?
John's hands are on the other man's clothes now. Fingers tearing at a dark shirt, clinging at the smooth skin it reveals as he wrings it from his body. Sherlock is no less idle, attempting to pull the hem of John's t-shirt over his head without breaking their bruising kiss. Their breath is short, hands roaming, cotton and denim and fingers and tongues. Of lost moments and longing and frustration and pain.
The memories seem to be crowding into the room around them: If you'll be needing two bedrooms.It's a drugs bust. Bored. Did you just talk to him for a really long time? Heroes don't exist. Is it nice not being me? No one could be such an annoying dick all of the time. John has that feeling again of viewing the scene as if circling around it. The entwined figures of their bodies in the centre of the room, surrounded by ghosts. The books and the papers and the notes and the secrets. Touching and grabbing and holding and hurting.
Sherlock moans.
It's a sound from a dream. The kind of dream that John wouldn't admit to having.
They fall back onto the sofa, Sherlock above him and around him and beneath him. Sherlock's clever fingers on his body. His mouth at his ear.
"Is this now?" Sherlock asks in a low breath.
John struggles to surface from the sensation. Fails to form coherent thought.
"What?"
"Or then?" Sherlock asks again.
"This isn't any time to be existential." John states as Sherlock's hand moves with confident strokes.
"Is it 'now and then'?" Sherlock asks "The time? For the odd word."
"What are you talking about?" John asks in a groan. Fingers finding every patch of his skin he can reach, touching, grabbing, the memories.
"I should tell you how I feel."
"Oh," John gasps "Now and then." He repeats in understanding.
"Though actions speak louder…" Sherlock lowers his voice and clutches. John moans.
"Yes," John's breath is heavy.
Sherlock slows, leaning down to run the tip of his tongue across the soft inside of John's ear:
"John, I…"
"I know." John cuts him off.
"But I…"
"You're alive."
"I am,"
"You came back."
"I did," They continue to move, to touch, to stroke, to connect.
"Don't ever die on me again Sherlock."
"I can't promise that.
"Just…"
"What?" Sherlock's voice is a breath. Present and alive.
"Lie,"
"Really?"
"Yes."
"Ok then, I won't."
"Won't what?"
"Die on you. Again."
"You promise?"
"I promise."
"Ok," John's mouth is a breath away from his. "Now stop talking."
"Gladly".
Thanks for all the support so far guys! It means a lot to me that you're following this little fic of mine!
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Chapters 6-8 (yes, that's one more than originally planned) will be updated soon.