John stood under the spray of the shower, still shaking with reaction. His thoughts were in a mad tumble.
"You asked me to," Sherlock had said, and what the fuck did that mean? John suspected, but he couldn't quite wrap his mind around it. If his dream last night had not been a dream at all, then...
Come here, love, he had said. I've got you, love. I won't let you fall.
John groaned aloud, stifling the impulse to bash his head against the tiles. Had he really said those ridiculous things, not just aloud, but to Sherlock? In the hazy dreamspace those kind of words came naturally. Dream-Sherlock understood how John felt about him — not only understood, he reciprocated. Those type of reassurances were commonplace between them.
John felt an irrational spike of anger at the real Sherlock. It was almost as if the man's reappearance had stolen something from him, taken dream-Sherlock away. Christ, maybe he was going mad after all. And if it hadn't been a dream, if that had been real-Sherlock last night, what the hell had happened? Had he really crawled into bed with John? Wrapped his arms around him, even cried on his shoulder? Impossible.
Sentiment? John imagined Sherlock scoffing. Don't be ridiculous, John.
He went through the motions of showering automatically, cringing inwardly as his still-numb fingers fumbled over the cap of the shampoo four times before he was able to flip it. The mix of hangover, violent vomiting, and adrenaline reaction had turned his muscles to jelly. His mind was scattered, barely able to follow a train of thought for a moment before being derailed by a riot of confusion and emotion, a constant stream of images flashing through his head. Dream-Sherlock whispering in his ear, Sherlock falling from the roof of St. Bart's, Sherlock's throat under his fingers, Sherlock rain-dampened in his arms...and through it all, like the throbbing of his pulse, the drumbeat of euphoria — Alive, alive, alive, alive.
He brushed his teeth and carefully shaved, knowing on some level that he was stalling. He wrapped a towel around his waist, foolishly wishing that he had brought a change of clothes into the bathroom with him. He didn't need to feel even more exposed before Sherlock, but there was no helping it. Finally, he took a deep breath before opening the bathroom door, not sure if he were more afraid that Sherlock would be there or that he would be gone, a hallucination after all.
Even prepared as he was, the sight of Sherlock still struck John like a blow. He was puttering around in the kitchen but he lifted his head as soon as the bathroom door opened. John felt Sherlock's gaze flicking over him like a physical touch, skittering across his body, lingering on his face, his unsteady hands, the gnarled scar on his shoulder. John imagined the string of deductions — shaving with a blade now instead of electric, nicked your throat when your hands shook — but Sherlock was uncharacteristically silent for once. Neither of them spoke as John turned his back and awkwardly started to pull his clothes on.
When he turned around again Sherlock was still in the small kitchen, staring doggedly into the sink. John self-consciously pulled open his desk drawer, retrieving his gun. He checked the chamber and safety before tucking it securely into the small of his back, pulling his jumper down to cover it. The familiar weight of it, long-absent, seemed to steady him.
The electric kettle started to click just as John got to the kitchen doorway. Sherlock finally lifted his gaze, his eyes flashing over John and then away, before he held up the coffee tin.
"I couldn't find your coffeemaker," he said.
"It's instant," John said, and then had to stifle a laugh as Sherlock managed to look both flabbergasted and affronted at the same time.
"Instant?" he repeated, as if personally insulted. "There is such a thing?"
John couldn't help it, his amusement breaking free in a soft huff. "You likely deleted it. Quite rightly, I'm afraid."
John had to dig through a cabinet briefly to find the honey that Sherlock favored, but then he fixed tea for Sherlock and coffee for himself, swallowing down the lump in his throat at the familiar sight of two cups together. Sherlock had skittered out of the kitchen as soon as John had entered, and was now sitting in the only chair at the small desk.
John handed him the cup and sat on the bed opposite, finally letting himself take in the reality of Sherlock Holmes, alive and well in his miserable little flat.
In the chaos and emotion of earlier events, he hadn't been fully able to mark the changes in him. His hair was shorter, and somewhat shaggy, as if he had cut the curls away himself. His face was thinner, lines at the eyes and across his wide brow that hadn't been there before. He held himself stiffly in the chair, his torso upright despite his slumped shoulders and sprawled legs. John's doctor's eye marked the stiffness — a cracked rib maybe, or something else.
"Just a scratch," Sherlock remarked, his uncanny mind-reading powers apparently unabated. "Nothing to be concerned about."
"Right, Of course." John tamped down hard on the urge to roll his eyes. 'Just a scratch' for Sherlock encompassed anything from a laceration to a perforated intestine.
He continued to regard Sherlock. More notable than even the physical changes was the change in his demeanor. The nicotine-stained fingers fidgeted, wrapping around the tea mug for only a moment before fluttering away to pull at the fabric of his trousers or drum on the desk. Instead of the unnervingly direct gaze John was used to, Sherlock hardly seemed to know where to look, his eyes skimming across John's face in only brief glances before wandering around the rest of the flat, sparse as it was. His expression, usually so diffident, was constantly changing as if he were buffeted by a flux of emotions too overpowering to mask. A door slammed down the hall and Sherlock startled, sloshing tea over the edge of his mug. He wiped it up carelessly with the cuff of his shirt, the bared bony wrists exposed by the too-short sleeves striking John as shockingly vulnerable.
"Sherlock?" He found himself saying softly, not even sure what he was asking. 'Hasn't anyone been taking care of you?' flew through his mind.
Sherlock raised his head finally, his gaze meeting John's almost defiantly. "You've got questions," he stated crisply, sending John's errant thoughts back to a moment in a cab, less than a day after they had met, Sherlock's deep voice unspooling John's life before him.
"When was the last time you ate?" John asked.
Sherlock's mouth twisted, and for a heart-stopping moment John thought he might cry. He tipped his head back instead, blinking rapidly, but his voice when he spoke was carefully nonchalant. "I don't remember. It hardly matters."
John cleared his throat around a lump of emotion as well. "That's where you're wrong, mate." It matters to me, he just barely kept himself from saying. He set his coffee cup on the desk with a decisive clink. "Here's what's going to happen," he said, his voice firm and commanding, a tone he rarely used with Sherlock. "I'm going to make us breakfast. You're going to eat every last bite. Then I'm going to look at this scratch of yours. And then, you can be damned certain, I am going to ask you every question that I have. And you are going to answer every one."
This felt like second nature to John. Pushing the bigger issues aside and taking care of the here-and-now. Mortars might be falling outside, but John stayed focused on the wounded soldier on his table. And one thing was apparent — whatever had happened, it had wounded Sherlock. He had suffered — was still suffering — and Sherlock's reasons for doing what he had were markedly less important to John now that he had seen it.
Sherlock kept his head tilted back, his eyes closed now. "Yes. Fine."
"All right," John said. "All right." He started to stand, but couldn't bring himself to step away from Sherlock. He needed, just for a moment — just a touch to know that he was real. His body betrayed him, his hand reaching for Sherlock's before his mind could tell him what a bad idea it was. The first touch of his fingers had Sherlock startling, his hand jerking on his thigh as his head snapped forward. John forced himself to meet the startled gaze unwaveringly, his left hand clasping Sherlock's right hand awkwardly in some semblance of a handshake.
"I'm...I'm glad to see you again, Sherlock," he said, his voice raspy with emotion.
He started to draw away and then Sherlock's hand was suddenly gripping his — desperately, ferociously, as if he were drowning and John were his only lifeline. He watched as Sherlock squeezed his eyes shut tight, seeming to struggle with some emotion, before finally his face eased. His fingers loosened their grip and then pulled away, Sherlock blunderingly patting John's hand before wrapping his own back around his mug of tea.
"Yes," he said, blinking rapidly again. "Good."
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