A Tumblr post made me aware of something that was said during the 2013 SDCC panel. This is what my mind came up with. Not even remotely funny, contrary to what, according to Steven Moffat, the actual scene will be like, but I had to write it anyways.
Rated K+.
"John."
Voices coming from beyond the grave didn't exist. They were simply a figment of imagination, the mind's way to deal with circumstances it couldn't understand. Pain, terror, shock. Grief. John Watson had often heard that voice, that rich and soothing baritone, in the past three years. Those years he had spent without his best friend; years that had crawled by ever since Sherlock Holmes had died. It was a voice that used to say horrible, insulting things at times, and the most amazing ones at others, and that never failed to calm down him down in moments when desolation threatened to overwhelm him.
"How dare you come back now." He wasn't even sure it was real. He wasn't sure the figure standing in the doorframe was there, and wouldn't just vanish when his heart and soul, in permanent uproar because they had never fully accepted the truth of his loss and fought against it ever since, decided to settle for a deception his rationality refused.
But then the person began to move, - the tall, lithe human being with serious and honest eyes, with boyishly dark curls, with ridiculously full lips and ever-fascinating cheekbones that came together to form features John had been strangely intrigued by from the very first day on - approached him without vanishing into thin air, as he should have, as visions always did the moment one had the chance to touch them, and John knew with agonizing and yet delightful certainty that this shadow of a hope he'd clung to for too long was real.
He was real.
"You are alive."
"Yes, John," the voice once more washed over him; and there was this well-known tone, this hint of disapproval for stating the obvious in it, and it was the last confirmation John needed.
"I stood at your grave and I begged you not to be dead. Do you hear me? I begged you!"
"I know," Sherlock had the nerve to reply calmly, "I was there."
"You wer-" John drew a shaky breath, and closed his eyes for a moment. His stare was hard and cold when he focused it on the detective again. "You... were... there," he tried to assess the fact, tried to grab its meaning by understanding it word by word. "You were there and you-" Another pause, and a headshake. "You were there and you didn't, just for a moment, consider to let me know you are alive?!"
"I couldn't, it would have interfered with my plans." The doctor simply gaped at him; his brain taking, for his taste, too much time to process what he had just heard.
"You plans? And which-" Another lungful of air he sucked in, seeking a calming effect. And it helped - to a degree. Dangerously low was his voice when he continued, a humorless smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. "Which plans, if you don't mind my asking, kept you from telling your friends that you weren't dead? Kept you from being a selfish bastard?" The younger man flinched slightly at his last words, and John registered it with smug satisfaction.
"I had to assure that Moriarty's criminal network wouldn't continue to exist after his death. I couldn't allow for anyone to know that I wasn't dead; I may not have been able to disassemble this organization otherwise. Unfortunately it included causing you distress, for which I am sorry."
"You are sorry? You bloody arrogant son of a-" And there it was. A slip in his self-control. The inability to stop his words from turning into motions. John had always prided himself on being able to control himself, to rather fight verbally than physically; he'd done enough of the latter in his years in the Army. Never was he to lay a finger on family and friends; he ought to have protected and defended them, not hurt them.
But Sherlock's words, delivered as emotionless as ever, caused rage to flame up inside of him - and his fist to land a punch on the other man's face before he could even register his own failing composure. Sherlock looked irritated enough, a small cut showing on his lower lip, an angry red mark appearing almost immediately on his pale skin.
"I mourned you. You were my... I needed... I..." He knew he didn't need to finish the sentence. And he couldn't either. Too busy he was with swallowing his tears, his anger turning against himself at an instant for his inability to control his emotions - especially in front of one Sherlock Holmes.
But then he saw it. The flicker of guilt in Sherlock's eyes, brief, gone in the fraction of a second, but it had been there. Just as there were endless tales and explanations pouring from same eyes now, exasperated illustrations of events, clarifications of behaviors and actions that didn't believe needed justification, for they had been well thought through, and they had been done for the right reasons.
And still, for maybe the first, even the only time in his life, Sherlock Holmes was betrayed by his tongue.
"I was afraid you could get hurt. I was afraid to lose you." He had said it quietly, barely audible; admitting weakness, confessing sentiment. It had been a low rumble of voice, a humming sound that affected John so deeply that he couldn't even begin to understand it. But he understood the words.
John understood. Finally.
It was his heart reigning over his mind. It was his body acting up, leaving his head powerless. It were his hands framing his best friend's face, pulling it close, and his mouth claiming the other man's lips.
It was a kiss his life depended on.
If he'd been conscious enough of what he was doing, if he hadn't just acted on feelings, on desperation and relief and anger and something else he didn't dare to name, he would have actually wondered about Sherlock's reaction. He would have wondered about why there was a reaction, how the consulting detective, forever uninterested in any kind of relationship safe for his friendship with John, fell into the kiss as if it was the most natural thing in the world. He would have wondered why Sherlock let it happen, didn't push him away, complaining about unreasonable actions. He would have wondered how Sherlock knew exactly how to kiss him back, how to make his knees weak, rob him of his breath.
If he had been able to think, he would have never wanted to think again.
But once more his mind betrayed him. Once more he simply ignored everything, everything he felt and wanted and longed for. He reveled in the kiss, in having Sherlock close, have him back in his life, have the man he needed so much with him again. Have him for one stolen moment.
A moment that was over too soon.
Slowly he detached himself, took a step back, and turned to the door.
"I'm getting married next week."
And then he left.
*runs and hides* Sorry?!
