John sits on the front step, lit by street lamps. Everything is orange. A cigarette dangles from his hand, and its ash litters his coat. Over the road, a piece of discarded foil is caught in a gate, and as the wind lifts it it flutters at him in morse. A F D W K S A. He isn't sure what it meant, but it seems important, and as he has no idea what it is he's supposed to notice anymore he writes it down in the dust of the street, just in case. Where the light hits the phone cables they shimmer like cobwebs, and John finds himself imagining that the pole they meet at is a bird-eating spider, and that this is why there were no pigeons around today.
The cigarettes and codes were Sherlock's fault. Neither of them had occurred to John before he'd turned up and deduced that he needed a sidekick, that John needed him, and he's still unsure as to which of these facts worries him more - and they are certainly facts, he knows, because Sherlock only ever speaks in them, slave to veracity that he is. John sees more now, he's sure of it, but he understands less than ever. It is Sherlock, the stubborn bastard, and his predilection for the improbable, that means that ordinary John and his ordinary problems are forever the ones sitting on the threshold, staring into the distance, taking dictation from litter. Damn him. John has less brain space to waste. No wonder he forgets the milk so often.
This is Sherlock's fourth ambulance this week. He wonders idly if they offer discount cards. They could use his friend's ever-bloodied fingerprints as stamps, collect all ten for a transfusion, ha bloody ha. Quite literally. John bides his time before he approaches, gives Sherlock space once the paramedics have abated. This blanket is silver, an unwelcome change speaking of actual physical injury - he must be cold, there are abrasions to his slim frame, his eyes glassy and still. That last bit on its own is intolerable, to John. There is a limit to his sympathy, however, as he is certain that this is Sherlock's fault, at the root. That may seem presumptuous but for all his wild darting around, all his diversion and diverting, at heart he is remarkably predictable in his erraticness. Is that a word? Sherlock'd know. John reaches for his phone to text the question, but thinks better of it. Yes, Sherlock's fault - his chills, his scrapes, his hair matted to his scalp by worried, bored fingers. He'll have said something, the calculated wrong thing, aimed just so. Provocation is never an issue in these cases. Lestrade probably has some kind of stamp for that box on the inevitable forms. Keen on efficiency, that man. Doubt he ever sees any, with a consulting detective on his books.
John can't hold out any longer, and stands, ash fluttering everywhere. it catches the breeze follows its eddies, and brings the smell back up to his face with a cough. He flicks the offending butt down a gutter, feeling a little ashamed, and braces himself for the welcome admonishment. It doesn't come. Sherlock is as silent with him as he was with the medical staff, with Lestrade, with his brother, even, who can usually draw at least he most minor insults out of him. He is mute for the next three weeks, and it is deafening.
The living room is a mess, because Sherlock hasn't been in it. Until now John had not appreciated that rather just than being the maelstrom of stuff that he had previously considered him - and he is that, let us not be hasty - Sherlock is actually something of an organisational force in his life. When Sherlock is around, things of high importance are put away, in an attempt to maintain at least a facade of privacy. Papers of joint interest are stacked up so as to enforce the most rudimentary of filing systems. Remotes, phones, bills, newspapers - normally, these are the hardest things to pin down in their flat, so transient they are in nature, but the accumulation of close to a month's worth is starting to show, and it isn't long before the detritus in their space is enough to put John right at the fraying end of his tether.
And so it is to a drift of paper that Sherlock finally emerges from his room behind the kitchen. The little stoop between areas is stacked with plates and bowls, relics of John's attempts to get some food into his flatmate, but like, say, speech, they have gone undisturbed. At first John doesn't notice, his brain skipping over the last few weeks to a position of normality, to Sherlock's unending presence in his life, retroussé nose poking its way into the most mundane of minutiae as if as fascinating as Fermat or Hawking or Gray. He nods at Holmes, then casts his eyes back down to the book he's reading, takes a bite from his apple, tries to read to the end of the page. It's another ten seconds before his heart caches up with his brain, and promptly stops.
That evening, once Sherlock has been told off thoroughly, and John reminded that this is what he does, that he was told that this is what might happen when they first met – John much prefers the violin to the not speaking, he decides – they find themselves on the sofa, newly visible, and the silence that surrounds them is enough to make John uneasy.
"No." Say Sherlock, voice still a little raw. He fingers an antimacassar and smooths the leather of the armrest flat.
"What?" John asks, glad of the chance to converse – muteness is catching, he had talked to few people recently.
"Just because I am currently not speaking does not mean that I am not planning on doing so in the near future. Look, I'm doing it now," Sherlock gestures to his own mouth with a look of studied surprise, "oh, how careless. Wouldn't want to wear that out."
"Of course not. Where would we be without you to keep us informed? I might wear a jumper without the explicit knowledge that doing so gives away the fact that I once visited Hull. What would the neighbours think?" John smiles, thinking of the 'married ones', a little enviously.
He takes a too-deep breath and turns to face Sherlock, resting a hand on his shoulder to turn him around slightly.
"You scared me, Sherlock. I know," he starts, as Sherlock opens his mouth to remind him again of that first meeting, "that you warned me. It doesn't make it easier."
Sherlock studies his flatmate's face, and frowns a little.
"Not good?" he asks, humour creeping into the edges of his voice.
John smirks, and resigns himself to not-quite-understanding, yet again.
"Little bit not good, no."
As was to be expected, Sherlock's next injury doesn't take too long to follow. They weren't far from home, for which John is thankful as he drags on a coat and slams the door behind him. He finds his flatmate on hia knees and panting in Regent's Park, and throws himself down to cut at the bindings around his wrists.
"Ah, John," Sherlock wheeze out, tugging his sleeves down to staunch the little bleeding hed suffered, "took you long enough."
"Shut up." John stands and straighten his back out, lower vertebrae clicking into place painfully.
Something about their positioning clicks into place too, Sherlock on his knees and John with his rictus grimace, and John shakes the thought from his head before he has a chance to consider it.
"I don't mean to sound ungrateful," Sherlock says, stretching his hand out and motioning to be pulled to his feet.
"No Holmes should be without, right?" John's shot at bitterness falls wide, and it is with the downtrodden hopefulness of a once-favoured pet that he comes to stand with Sherlock's hands in his and his eyes on the long, pale collarbone in front of him.
"Ambulance?" John's mouth forms around the word of its own volition, eyes still on that neck, hoping it looks and feels like he's merely following the blood around its body, matching the pulse in Sherlock's wrist with that of his carotid.
"No. You'll do nicely."
It is a good few hours before this particular revelation bubbles to the top of John's mind.
"I'm your ambulance?" he asks quietly, passing Sherlock in the corridor as they go about cleaning themselves and the flat up. Sherlock is taking the stairs two at a time when he's asked, and John assumes he didn't hear, but no, it appears he was just thinking, because when he reaches the top, he turns and leans on the balustrade.
"If I can be your accidents," Sherlock says from the top of the landing. John doubts he meant the statement in the way he's taken it, so he pushes for more.
"You want to be my what?" He asks, cringing at the hopeful tone in his voice, and preparing for the rebuke that should by all rights accompany a request for Sherlock to repeat himself.
"Accidents. I will be your accidents if you will be my ambulance."
John is climbing the stairs now, and Sherlock's eyes never leave him.
"I can't work out if that should sound selfish or touching. It might be both," John says, looking anywhere but Sherlock's face.
"You need stress. Your hand, remember? And I need someone to deal with the aftermath of it. And given that your stress is my aftermath, I think this could work out.. very nicely indeed." Sherlock is prowling now, and John is moving backwards towards the steps he's just climbed, wincing slightly at the use of his own words.
"Not much of a life, is it? Running after a madman and setting his nose once in a while?" John turns and sits at the top of the carpet runner, feet a few levels lower. He flattens himself against the wall when his flatmate sits down beside him.
"I'd take it." Sherlock offers, hands upturned on his knees. He flexes his palms thoughtfully.
"No, you wouldn't." John takes the one nearest to him and pushes up its cuff, examining the bruising he finds there. The flesh is hot, but so is his, now, with the proximity and the questioning, and he can't tell Sherlock off for overactivity without knowing for sure that it isn't John himself who's overheating.
"No, I wouldn't," Sherlock agrees, "but if I were you, I'd want me."
John laughs nervously, and feels the artery under his fingers jump.
"Did you deduce that, or are you putting yourself in my – quite boring, I'm sure – shoes?" He swallows heavily and hopes desperately for the latter. Cards on the table, then.
It seems, however, that John has done the not-impossible-enough and shut the taller man up. He pulls his hand back and clasps them, pushing them between his knees and looking off to the left, forehead against the bannisters.
"Neither," he murmurs, voice rumbling through the glossed wood and reverberating through John's hips.
"Oh?" He asks, hand placed on Sherlock's shoulder, before it is thrown off by him standing up abruptly and moving down a few stairs, until he's at the right height to lean forward and rest his arms on the lip of the landing, head level with John's. Bow-shaped lips are mere inches from John's when Sherlock moistens his, preparing himself for an admission. He doesn't make them often.
"I had merely assumed that you feel the same way about me as I do about you. I don't trust easily, John, you know that. And nor do I like to appear vulnerable. So imagine, if you can, quite how hard it must be for me to let you look after me." Sherlock's face moves closer, and down, until his last line is spoken in a whisper just above John's ear, mouth brushing the widest part of his sideburns. His breath is warm and damp, and John shivers before he can stop himself.
"And, I," John stumbles for the words as Sherlock weaves above him.
"Spit it out." Aggression and impatience force the words through his lips with a speed that makes the phrase almost onomatopoeic.
"And as hard as it is for you to trust me, it must be that hard for me to trust you," John mumbles the words in one breath, knuckles white in his lap.
"Don't make me spell it out for you." Sherlock has moved to look straight into John's eyes. "Because you know I can."
"I'm a doctor who likes war. Needs it, even," he adds, with a glance to his weaker wrist.
"Yes, yes, obvious. Hurry up, John."
John rolls his eyes, confidence returning to him with this flash of normality.
"And if it's danger and a chance to practical my clinical skills that I want, who better than Sherlock Holmes," he grins triumphantly, disaster averted, emotional outburst still very much in check.
Sherlock looks faintly disappointed. John'd even go so far as to say he's pouting. Which is not hard to judge, at this range. A hollow space opens up in John's stomach, and it occurs to him that perhaps this was the wrong angle to take. Sherlock does not ordinarily do intimacy, and with a crash like a slammed door, he watches his face close up, mere inches away.
"Yes, well. Of course," Sherlock manages, finally straightening up and descending into the hall, John taking the opportunity to stretch his limbs and make his way slowly downstairs. "So. John?"
"Mm?" He stops in the doorway, blocked by Sherlock, who has draped himself over the frame like a particularly sinuous curtain.
"Ambulance?" He offers his hand to John, eyes unreadable to all but his blogger, who could swear he saw hope in them.
John looks at the outstretched fingers, then up to Sherlock's face, and makes a decision that, probably, should've been thought through better. He takes a step closer, reaching up to mimic their earlier pose, nose to nose, and with a decisive nod of the head he bridges the gap between them and pushes their lips together.
That Sherlock swooned at this point would later be flatly denied to him, but given that no one but the skull was watching, John decided not to push his luck.