"From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were — I have not seen
As others saw — I could not bring
My passions from a common spring —
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow — I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone —
And all I lov'd — I lov'd alone —
Then — in my childhood — in the dawn
Of a most stormy life — was drawn
From ev'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still —
From the torrent, or the fountain —
From the red cliff of the mountain —
From the sun that 'round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold —
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by —
From the thunder, and the storm —
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view —"
"Alone" – Edgar Allen Poe
Due to an increase in curiosity about whether this story will be continued or stay a one-shot, I am happy to report that, obviously, the former has occurred.
That night John bolts up in his bed, cold sweat trickling down his temples even though his head is hot. No, not hot. Burning. He stumbles out of the covers, feet twisting in the duvet in his mad escape and sending him crashing to the floor.
"Bugger—"
He groans, pressing his head against the cool floor. He probably looks fucking crazy but bollocks to that. It feels nice. He already knows that polar swim in the Thames has made him sick. One of the better perks of being medically trained. Self-diagnosis. Early-onset flu, maybe even hypothermia, but it was too early to tell—
"John?" Sherlock's voice barks from below. "John—"
The thudding of wild footsteps on the stairs before the door flies open, giving him prime viewing of two bare, pale feet. His heart hammers. His face is still too hot.
"Sh'lock." He whispers against the floor.
"Are you alright?" Sherlock asks, concern gleaning in his tone, yet he makes no move to help John up. Is he afraid of touching him? Have they reverted back to primary school and John has been infected with cooties?
"You're here." He murmurs against the faux wooden panelling.
"Of course I am." Sherlock says it like it's obvious.
"No I mean…" John trails off. What did he mean? He's not sure. And he doesn't need to give more cause for Sherlock to call him an idiot, so it's best kept ambiguous.
He manages to untangle himself from the sheets and sits up, against the side of his bed. Wordlessly, Sherlock joins him.
A soft silence settles between them like cool air, a fine dust ground together out from sounds of muffled traffic outside the window, of quiet breathing, of a plucked tensed chord with overtures of longing.
"How many nights are you going to ask me that?" Sherlock asks finally, an idle hand fiddling with the edges of a sheet.
John's head has lolled against the bed and he looks over. "Hm?"
"Whenever you have a night terror and I run up here thinking you're being murdered when really it's just me who's killing you—you always seem surprised that I'm here."
"Well that's only because I am."
"I have no intention of leaving you, John, as I'm sure you well know."
"The one time was enough for you, then?" John asks, but it sounds bitter to him. Let it. He feels bitter. He feels too goddamn uncomfortably hot, like his body has internalised itself into its own little steam room, making his skin clog with dirt and sweat.
"Why didn't you take me with you?" He asks softly, his voice barely above a whisper yet in the quiet he knows Sherlock will hear him.
Sherlock is silent.
"I served active duty, Sherlock. I'm sure I'm more than capable of protecting you and myself."
"Yes," Sherlock finally speaks up, "but that was before—"
He stops suddenly and John raises his head.
"Before? Before what?"
They both know what he was going to say.
"I've saved your life countless times since then." John points out. "Even with this fucking scar. But that's all it is, Sherlock. A scar. That's all it is. Or at least all it's been since we met." John stops for a moment, chewing on the inside of his cheek. "It bled once, you know, after you—after you left. All on its own. No warning either, just—" John gestured at the offending shoulder. "I never knew why. Still don't."
"I couldn't risk your life." Sherlock says quietly.
"That's funny." John says, but his tone indicates it's anything but. "You seemed quite fine risking it here. You thought London—London—was child's play?" John pauses, a darker thought surfacing in his mind. "Or did you think I wouldn't follow? Because I would have, Sherlock. I would've followed you to the ends of the earth and back. I still would."
"I was not 'quite fine' with risking your life, in any situation." Sherlock says rather tersely. "Many times, it was the contrary."
That silence falls between them again, like a shadow.
"Moriarty was going to kill you. In the end, I suppose he was better than me. I allowed him to slip past me twice like the little snake that he was and get to you. I allowed him to threaten your life twice."
"No," John begins, because it doesn't make sense. "No, it was only once, at the pool—"
Sherlock shakes his head but doesn't elaborate.
"—and at Bart's?"
Sherlock nods.
"Of course." John breathes. "Of course. Christ, I've been stupid—" He brings a hand to his face, as if it will shield him from what he perceives to be the oncoming onslaught of Sherlock's criticisms. "Moran?"
"Among others, yes."
Sherlock looks at his soldier. At that battlefield that he must now clean up because he decided to play instigator, investigator, judge and executioner all at once.
"How is your arm?" He asks, because he both wants to know and change the subject.
"Fine." John murmurs. "Least of my worries with this cold—" He sniffs, as if to accentuate the point that he was getting sick and it was because Sherlock had dragged him on another case, another chance to catch Moran that had ended in an ill-advised—but graceful—dive into the Thames. In December. John was either brave or mad or a combination. Sherlock wagered it was the latter.
"I was going to kill him, you know." Sherlock admits.
"Moran? Yeah, I'd let you if I didn't want to myself—"
"No, the boy that shot at you."
"Oh."
"I understand that it's one thing to kill the enemy and it's quite another to kill a child, but he shot you, John. I saw him raise his gun and fire and then you went under and I thought the worst. I wanted to make him suffer for hurting you. I wanted to make him feel as badly as I did. Needless to say I only knocked him out."
"A great practiser of the Vulcan nerve pinch, are you?"
"The what? I've never heard of that technique. I simply applied pressure to the subclavian artery, cutting off blood to the brain and—"
"Yes, genius, I know what that does. Doctor John Watson, remember?" John pauses. "Anyways, I'm glad you didn't kill him. I'm not worth it—"
Sherlock sits up so suddenly that John thinks he's hurt himself. He grabs John's face in his hands, staring at him with those intense bright eyes, as mad as they ever were.
"Don't. Don't you ever say that again. You are worth a great many things to me John Watson."
"Get your hands off my face, Sherlock."
"Promise me."
"Sherlock—"
"Promise."
"What good would it do?" John bursts out, the sudden fire in his eyes making Sherlock drop his hands as if he's been burned. "Shooting him if he'd killed me wouldn't do anything. It wouldn't bring me back. It'd make you feel worse and you'd have two bodies to explain to Greg." John fell silent, his voice cooling. "Donovan once told me that there would be a day when there'd be a body and that Sherlock Holmes would have put it there. Technically that day has already passed, although you weren't really dead. But I don't want that day to come when it's someone who threatened or killed me. I can't have that blood on your hands."
"What if I want it?"
"That's too bad," John chuckles humourlessly. "Because I know what it does to someone and that's not happening to you. If anyone is going to kill to protect someone they love, it's going to be me."
All the air deflates out of Sherlock's lungs like he's been slowly crushed under a ton of rocks and he's just now noticed the weight.
"John…I don't understand."
"No, you wouldn't, would you?" John snaps then regrets it. "Sorry."
Sherlock stares at him a moment and John can feel the pages of analysis printing out of that brain.
"You're tired and susceptible to illness."
"Well spotted." John says dryly.
Sherlock stands, straightening his pyjama legs.
"I'll leave you to rest then."
John slowly gets up to follow him and stops as he pauses in the doorway. Sherlock looks down at him with a solemn expression.
"I would die for you, you know."
John looks at him for a moment, a hand on the door. His eyes are heavy with some unseen burden, lined with sleep and sickness.
"Yeah, I know." He says quietly. "You already did."
The door softly shuts in front of Sherlock, effectively blocking him from the man on the other side.
He hears a sniff, but manages to half-heartedly tell himself it's just John's cold acting up.
When John wakes up the next morning, he feels awful.
His body aches like it's been rolled through a printing press and he's so goddamn hot, every pore of his skin covered in dried sweat that effectively caps the uncomfortable heat inside him and makes him want to kick off the covers that are already piled on the floor. There's a tightness in his head, a knot right in the middle that keeps being pulled at both ends, and it's so hot and burning and utterly unbearable.
Sherlock is there when he wakes.
As he should be, since John is somehow, inexplicably, in Sherlock's bed.
He doesn't even have the will to ask.
"Good morning, John."
"If you say so." John grumbles, laying an arm over his eyes. A cool hand places itself on his forehead and it takes all his willpower to not grab onto it when it pulls away.
"Your fever's breaking."
"My fever—how long have you been in here?"
"You kicked me out of your room around two-thirty four this morning. Around three-thirty I heard restless noises and, knowing that you most likely caught cold from your swim, came up to check on you. As soon as you calmed down I left, but around four I heard noise again and decided it would be more pertinent to my sanity and your comfort if I moved you to my bed."
"And let me guess, you haven't left since."
"Correct."
John sighs. "Can't say I'm ungrateful—"
He's cut off as a sopping wet rag is all but thrown on his face and he drags it off, sputtering.
"What the hell are you doing?"
"I thought you'd like a cold washcloth—"
"Well yes, but not an ice bath!" John rings the excess water out into the bin beside him and tries to wipe some off his shirt before giving up and laying the cloth over his face, blanketing him in coolness.
"John?"
John makes a noise underneath the rag.
"I thought that was admirable, what you did, however ill-advised."
"What the Thames thing? Honestly I just felt like going for a swim."
Sherlock makes a noise of amusement. John stares through the small holes in the washcloth as the coolness spreads over his face.
"What was in the bag anyways?"
Sherlock mutters something.
"What?"
"A stuffed animal."
"A what?" John sits up and takes the rag off his face then instantly regrets it as light pours into his eyes and to him it may as well be molten lava. When his vision clears he sees that Sherlock has placed a worn-out, raggedy tiger in front of him that smells of the dirt and dampness of the Thames. It looks innocuous enough, sitting on its rump with all four legs sprawled in front of it. So John takes the scientific approach.
He pokes it.
Nothing happens, of course. Sherlock had seen to that before bringing it anywhere close to his doctor.
"I got shot at, jumped in the Thames, swam 30 metres in water that may has well have been ice, and got sick for a…tiger."
"It would seem that way, yes."
"Please tell me there's a bomb or a packet of anthrax in it or something so I know I was justified in risking my life for it."
Sherlock leans forward and presses something in the tiger's back. There' a slow whirring and John nearly jumps at the sound, having a hard time believing that Sherlock had brought a bomb into his bedroom and not known it.
"Evening, gentlemen." A deep voice resonates from inside the tiger. "Or whenever you happen to be listening to this. I trust it came into your hands quite easily, Sherlock Holmes."
John looks up at Sherlock as the voice spoke his name, but Sherlock doesn't move. The voice is soft, deep, like the undercurrent in the ocean threatening to churn into riptide.
"John, I'll bet you're wondering why I used a tiger. And I'm addressing you, John, because Sherlock Holmes, being the man that he is, already knows why. Sherlock, kindly tell him, but only after I'm done as it's rude to interrupt. I hope the chase after it was beguiling enough. Speaking of, Watson, I hope Sherlock nurses you back to health as best he can. I don't want to kill you when you're half dead already by his hand. That's no fun at all. This has been the second warning, gentlemen. You have one left before I come out and play."
The whirring clicks off.
Of course, to anyone else, this tiger would seem so ineffective. Why, in a world where phones and email (and even letters for god's sake) would this person use a stuffed tiger with a recorder embedded in its back?
Why, to rub salt in the wound of course. To let the great Sherlock Holmes and his loyal Watson know that he could send them on a wild chase through London after something so utterly worthless and they would do it because they thought themselves cleverer than him.
"Heavy Game of the Western Himalayas." Sherlock says calmly, hands clasped in front of him as he leaned into his fingers. His thinking face. "Three Months in the Jungle."
"Movies?"
Sherlock shakes his head.
"Books."
"By anyone I'd know?"
"Both by one Colonel Moran comma Sebastian."
"Ah. Didn't think he'd have the brain power for an authorship."
"It's unwise to underestimate an opponent when given contradictory evidence." Sherlock pauses, thinking. Considering. "It is surprising, however."
"What is?"
"That Moran would still wish revenge on us after three years."
John folds the washcloth across his forehead, crosses his arms behind his head and leans back.
"Who said it was only Moran?" John asks quietly and Sherlock looks over at him, taking in his intentionally blank expression. He doesn't know if the red on John's cheeks is from fever or something else. "Revenge doesn't have an expiration date, Sherlock."
"But the initial anger at said event should abate at least by the first year—"
"Christ, Sherlock!" John suddenly bursts out. "It's not that simple!"
"Explain it to me." Sherlock says, but it sounds almost like a question.
John doesn't respond for a moment, staring at the ceiling as the washcloth on his heat sponges up heat. Wearily, he reaches a hand up and takes the now warm cloth off and tosses it in the laundry hamper. He sighs, wiping his face and dragging the water droplets into his spiky dark blonde hair, making some ends stick up. Wordlessly, Sherlock hands him a new one, as if conjured out of thin air. He nods his thanks and presses it to his face.
"It's so hard, Sherlock—for me." He begins softly. "You have to understand that. Something needs to click in that brain of yours so you understand." He pauses, trying to verbalise what's he's thinking. "It's hard for me, because you're here, you're here, with your mad brain whole in your mad skull, not six feet under—hell, you're not even six feet away from me—and it's all that I've wanted for three years—Christ, it has been almost three years, hasn't it?" John stills, as if it's only just occurred to him how great the passing time had been. He's silent for a moment, his lips mouthing around the words three years before he remembers that he was trying to explain his personal hell to the person that caused it. Beads of sweat are gathering at his forehead again and he presses his face to the washcloth for a moment.
"For three years." He mutters into the rag then lifts his head. "That was all I wanted. I wanted to see you again, to live with you, to—well I think you get the point." He says it weakly, like he had intended to say something else but stopped himself. "I wanted you back in my life, but with every day that passed I had to face the fact that you really were dead, and something inside me couldn't reconcile that with my disbelief that you, the great Sherlock Holmes, could well and truly die. I thought you were cleverer than that." A sad grin flitted over John's face. "I was right, though, I suppose."
"I never wanted to leave you, John." Sherlock begins, and tries to clear his throat of the invisible obstruction that's choking him. "If you should be sure of anything in this life, it's that I could never voluntarily leave you. I couldn't. I can't."
"You didn't seem to have much trouble at Bart's—"
Sherlock's chair topples back as he stands and, for a moment, he looks every bit as mad as other people reported him to be.
"You see, John, you see, but you don't understand." Sherlock began to pace the room, grabbing at his hair roughly. "The night before Bart's, when you first met Moran and didn't realise how lucky you were that you survived the encounter, I told you that I would never leave you. Do you remember?"
John nods.
"I understand that what happened at Bart's must have eclipsed that particular memory, but I meant what I said. I did not abandon you at Bart's because I thought you were a burden or because I didn't trust you or whatever reasons your personal foibles have led you to believe. I left, fled, faked my death, or what have you, because if I didn't Moriarty was going to give Moran the go ahead to blow your brains out in front of me."
"You could have told me." John says, if only to argue for the sake of arguing.
"And what? See you duck behind a skip for cover so I couldn't see you until your blood was spilling onto the pavement? I didn't know where Moran was positioned—I didn't know, John, so how could I warn you?"
"I could have saved you."
"Yes, but you do that every day." Sherlock says solemnly, offering a slightly compunctious smile. "I suspect it's getting rather boring."
"That was the only day that really counted."
"And what of every other day that you've save me from bodily harm? What of them? You should think of it as me returning a long overdue favour."
"I don't want you to owe me anything."
"But I do, John. I owe you everything."
John stares at him, his expression utterly tired, lined and exacerbated by sickness.
"You can sleep, John. I'll be here when you wake up."
"Thank you."
Sherlock stares at him for a moment then deftly takes the rag off John's face, wiping at the remaining water with his own hand, which somehow seems cooler in comparison. As he draws it away, John wishes it had stayed longer. Hell, he wishes he was at the top of Everest or at the bottom of the ocean if it meant coolness.
Sherlock doesn't bother to right the chair he knocked over, which nags at John until he collapses back into an exhausted sleep.
The world was ending, surely. The day had come and the Riders were near, closing in on Baker Street.
Sherlock Holmes had done the grocery shopping.
John opens tired eyes to an empty room and his fever-addled brain struggled to dredge itself out of sleep.
"Sh'lock?" He slurs, raising his head. The chair is still toppled over. "Sherlock?"
John tosses back the covers that somehow tucked themselves around him again and staggers to his feet. The room sways and he barely makes it to the bathroom before losing the sparse contents of his stomach into the toilet.
This cold may have to be upgraded to flu.
John is not a particularly violent person, but right now he wants to hurt something. He wants to tear that tiger's goddamn head off.
He stays slumped against the toilet seat before gentle hands come up behind him and lift his head back, propping him against the opposite wall.
"I thought you'd gone off somewhere." Sherlock's deep voice says to him, but he doesn't want to open his eyes.
"I could say the same." John groans out.
"I went to the grocer's."
John's eyes snap open. He must have misheard.
"You what?"
"I bought the milk."
John stares at him like he's suddenly sprouted a second head.
"I must be dead."
"Or dreaming, which is much less detrimental to both our health."
"Are the Four Horsemen outside yet? Has everything gone to hell? People being raptured in the streets?"
"Well, now that you mentioned it, a homeless man did steal some poor woman's jacket off a bench."
"And Lestrade didn't ring you up to solve that one?"
"Lestrade would ring me up to solve a crime he watched occur."
John starts to laugh, but regrets it as his chest tightens and he falls into a few racking coughs.
"Come on." Firm hands reach beneath his arms and he lets himself be lifted up. "Back to bed with you."
"Will you make me tea?"
Sherlock smiles.
"I'll make you tea."
"No milk though. That's not ideal for an onset of the common cold—"
"Yes, John, I know."
"Why'd you get milk then if you never drink it and I can't right now? Sherlock, it'll have gone bad by the time I get better—"
Sherlock pauses and knocks a fist absentmindedly on the doorframe.
"I suppose I should confess that I didn't get milk. I just wanted to see the look on your face."
Sherlock disappears as he heads to the kitchen, leaving John a stupefied, muddled mess.
A few minutes later John hears his bare feet padding against the floor and he appears once more, carrying a steaming cup of what can only be tea (John can only hope that he hasn't contaminated it) in one hand and John's laptop tucked under his other arm.
Without spilling a drop, Sherlock hooks his foot underneath the edge of the chair and tilts it back up, sitting on it in the same movement and placing the cut on the table beside John, who can only stare dumbly at it for a moment.
"It's Early Grey." Sherlock says, nudging it towards him with one long finger. "Your favourite."
John's gaze darts to the cup then Sherlock then back to the cup before taking it and hesitantly taking a sip before remembering just what it is he's drinking.
"Hothothothothot —"
"It's tea John, I should hope that it is." Sherlock sniffs from his seat beside John, John's laptop resting on his knees.
"At least there's no sugar in it this time." John admitted before eyeing his computer. "You could have asked to borrow that you know—"
Sherlock rolls his eyes and prods John with his foot.
"Oh, hush, I brought you tea."
"What are you looking up? More ways to drug your flatmate with things that dissolve in tea?"
"One time it happens and he never lets me forget it—"
"Oh you say that like it wasn't a bad thing—"
"I'm sending screenshots of my suspected coordinates of Sebastian Moran's location to Mycroft and Lestrade."
"Suspected—you know where he is?"
"Only conjectures."
"Which usually prove to be right."
"Occasionally."
"Oh, such modesty…it really must be the end of the world."
"Drink your tea before the chemicals solidify."
"Chemicals…Sherlock what did you do?"
Sherlock smiles at John's stricken expression.
"Kidding, John. Only a joke."
The buzzer downstairs sounded.
"Mrs Hudson's out." Sherlock notes, standing. "I'll get it."
"If that's not Gabriel coming to tell us that war's broken out in the streets then I'm going back to bed." John mutters. "All this tea and jokes and grocery shopping—"
Sherlock leaves him murmuring to himself as he heads down the stairs to open the door, a smile plastering itself to his face. He likes ill John. Ill John is interesting, to say the least.
He returns to John with the smile wiped from his face.
He won't tell John why.
John sighs, closing his eyes. He's counted the repeating pattern of the wallpaper twice now. There's only so much longer he can stay in this flat.
"Sherlock?" He calls out.
He hears footsteps and Sherlock comes into the living room, caught in the middle of brushing his teeth.
"Hm?"
"If you're not going to let me leave then you can at least acquiesce to going on a walk."
Sherlock stops for the barest moment, but John catches it.
"What are you so afraid of that we can't leave the flat?"
"M'not afraid." Sherlock mumbles into the toothbrush as he turns back to the bathroom.
"Yes you are." John says, turning to look over the back of his chair. "I've been well enough to leave the flat since yesterday and every time you bar the door and give me some bollocks about airborne diseases that's not even half-true—"
Sherlock comes up behind him and wordlessly shoves his phone into John's hands.
It's a picture of the door to 221, but there, spray painted in bright red, are a series of numbers and symbols that takes John a few minutes to decipher.
12°58′0″N 77°34′0″E
"Coordinates of Bangalore, capital of Karnataka, India." Sherlock explains, taking his phone and coming to sit across from John.
"What about it?"
"Moran was in the 1st Bangalore Pioneers when he was in the army."
"Oh."
There's a short silence. Sherlock is waiting for John to realise something but John's not sure what epiphany he's currently supposed to be in the grip of.
"John?" Sherlock says.
"Yeah?"
"This is the third warning."
"Oh."
"He must have gotten word that I suspected where his base of business was."
"This is why you don't want to leave the flat."
"This is why I don't want you to leave the flat."
"Sherlock, this is ridiculous, I'm not going to spend the rest of my life like bloody Rapunzel, afraid of my own shadow—"
"Please, John." He says quietly, his eyes focused on the mantle, away from John.
"What?"
"Please," He repeats, gaze still fixed on the mantle. "Just give me one day. That's all I want. All I need. 24 hours." He turns his head and John can see his desperation, but also the resolve buried underneath it. Sherlock will use all he has in him to scourge Moran from this world just as hard as he had tried to rid them of Moriarty. John trusts him; Moran, even if judged with proper estimation, was no contender with Moriarty's brilliance.
And Sherlock would find him.
John is still awake when Sherlock leaves for Bart's.
"On your way out then?" He asks as Sherlock brushes past him.
"Yes." Sherlock answers quickly, and John knows it's out of anxiety more than rudeness.
"When do you expect to be back?"
"Hopefully by dawn."
"Sherlock."
The detective pauses at John's stern voice and shuts his eyes. Wordlessly, he backtracks his steps and reaches into his pocket, handing John a pack of cigarettes.
"Thank you." John says, then, as Sherlock pulls away, adds "Wait," pulls a single cigarette from the pack, and hands it to Sherlock. "For luck." He offers, knowing he's stretching the truth.
Sherlock finds that his smile is genuine.
"I won't need it."
One cigarette, fifteen hours and twenty minutes later, he receives a text from John.
How's it going?
Sherlock's gaze sweeps the lab table, awash with loose papers and dead-end conclusions that have led him nowhere. Lestrade's errant and ill-advised raid on Moran's headquarters had proven, as Sherlock had suggested, pointless. Moran knew that Sherlock knew where he was; anyone with half a brain, including Moran, would've left as soon as he could. Now Sherlock had to pinpoint another location based on erroneous evidence that he considered sloppily gathered by the Yarders and even more carelessly organised. Of course, Lestrade had heard an earful as it was delivered to Sherlock and he had fled the lab just as fast as his feet could take him, offering Molly a quick kiss and promise of lunch together (Sherlock had been unsurprised that in his absence the two had gotten together; Lestrade's divorce had been impending for years and it was obvious that Molly was good with and loved kids so naturally all it took was Lestrade's viewing of his youngest son's fall in a tour of the lab and Molly's subsequent doctoring skills for him to—finally—ask her out.).
The labour is fruitless, as of the moment. Lestrade made sure of it. SH
Need a distraction?
Molly already came in here offering coffee. I'd say that merits enough distraction for the rest of the day. At least for Greg (as you call him). SH
I mean the good kind.
There hasn't been a murder reported today yet. And I'm too busy trying to prevent yours to indulge in another's. SH
I mean the REALLY good kind.
Is this your attempt at seduction? SH
You could call it that, yeah.
Sherlock smirks. Surely John has better things to do.
Very well. Parade your wares. SH
I don't need to. You've already made up your mind.
I have, but you don't know the conclusion. SH
You took care of me when I was sick. I think that signifies a more-than-small amount of devotion.
It was my understanding that friends look out for one another. SH
Friends don't wipe vomit off their sick friend's faces.
Au contraire, the cinematic stereotype of clubbing friends suggests that in an intoxicated state one friend will take the sick one to the bathroom and metaphorically (or with females and feminine men physically) 'hold their hair' etcetera
He's interrupted by another text from John.
Friends don't tell friends 'I love you' on the bank of the Thames and then kiss them.
I only kissed your face and the area around your mouth, therefore I did not kiss you in the typical sense. Although why people decided that the mouth was a romantic piece of skin I don't know. SH
I retract the last bit then. But the rest is true, isn't it?
Sherlock hesitates before sending the next text. It's true though. He can't deny that John heard him admit certain things when he was still trapped in the fear that his doctor had been injured.
Yes. SH
He waits in supreme agitation for John to text back and when he hears the ping he snatches his phone so fast that he nearly sends it flying across the room.
Fine.
Fine? SH
Fine. Come home and ravish me.
John, if this is a joke— SH
John sends him a picture of a shirt crumpled onto the floor of Sherlock's bedroom, along with the text: I was wearing that three seconds ago. I'm waiting.
On my way. SH
Needless to say Sherlock packs up his supplies as hastily as Sherlock can with his anal-retentive nature, flies past a bewildered Molly, hurtles out of St. Bart's and hails the nearest cab.
He must seem like a crazed criminal on the run from something with the way the cabbie's looking at him. Hell, he's taking deep breaths to calm himself and he's carrying an indiscreet bag that jangles with every movement, he may as well have been running from the police for all this man knows.
He spends the cab ride in an unsettled anxiety, drumming his fingers on his knee, silently wishing that desire was a convertible form of energy that could spur the car to go faster. He watches the buildings go by but doesn't see them, his mind on that picture John sent him. That little crumpled t-shirt that conveys so much. Consensual affection and desire. It was too good to be true. He pulls it up again and stares at it until the cab pulls up to the flat. He hurriedly tosses the fare at the cabbie, adding a tip for his more than probable mental nervousness at the fact that he might be carrying a fugitive.
A bloody tip. John must be rubbing off on him.
He bolts up the stairs, unwinding his scarf as he undoes his coat buttons, and throws the door to the flat open loud enough that there's no chance John didn't hear his arrival.
"John? John, I feel like I should state that, with as many things as I'm certain of, your response, while not unwelcome, came as a happy surprise and I'm quite grateful you accepted my proposal…" Sherlock trails off, shedding his coat over a chair in the kitchen in his haste.
The flat is oddly quiet. John must be waiting in their room. Their room. It makes him want to puff his chest out in pride and declare to everyone that John loves him and he loves John and nothing will ever get in their way again.
John? I swear if you're not naked yet I may just shag you were you stand—"
He stops, frozen, as he turns to the sitting room.
Sebastian Moran is sitting in Sherlock's chair. The one he'd been so happy to see that John hadn't thrown out.
"Hello Holmes." He smiles crookedly, eyes glinting. "Miss me?"
It had been too good to be true.