Under the Down Chapter 3

A/N: thank you to everyone who has reviewed, please keep them coming, they make me all glowy. FF hasn't started hacking my back catalogue about yet, so I'm hiding under the parapet for the moment. Please come and see me on Livejournal, though, at evenlode1967 dot livejournal dot come, where you can see pictures of the places described! So, now, to business...

Sharing a bed with someone for the first time, even someone you know as well as I do Sherlock, is something of a minefield. Especially when both of you are the same sex and also heterosexual. And Sherlock is heterosexual, before you ask - I know that because of Irene Adler. (But we never speak of her.)

We each change in the en suite bathroom, to preserve our privacy. I take a shower. It's been a hot day, and my skin feels sticky and salty. Besides, my shoulder hurts a lot more these days than I let on, and the hot water massages it. When I come out of the bathroom in my pyjamas, scrubbing the back of my head with a towel, Sherlock is lounging on the top of the bedcovers in his nightwear, flicking through the channels on the telly with an irritated expression. He loves to abuse popular programmes, loves to feel he is above them. We sit and watch an episode of 'Holby City', which has me huffing about the bad medicine and inaccurate depiction of the medical profession, and him growling about the appalling dialogue and plot, which he can see through in the blink of an eye. So we both enjoy ourselves.

'We're turning into Grumpy Old Men,' I tell him.

'Speak for yourself. I'm still Lads Behaving Badly.'

'Men.'

'What?'

'It's Men Behaving Badly.'

'Whatever. You'd know.' He slopes off to clean his teeth. This is weirdly domestic, I realise. We are like an old married couple, bickering gently.

There is a cry in the night. I open my eyes and realise it isn't me. Which is something of a turn-up for the books, because believe me, it's always me. But not tonight. Tonight it is the man shivering beside me, rolled up into a ball with his back to me. And yes, we are both heterosexual men, but I do what you do when you care for somebody, regardless. I reach out and I pull him into my arms. That shaking body of a man. I take him and hold him, and he tucks his head into the space between my breastbone and my jaw, and he sobs, and I coo and hush and press kisses to his dark curls until the shaking subsides and the breathing steadies, and even though my t-shirt is now soaked through and I am awake in the middle of the fucking night, I don't care, I really don't.

Because, you see, I love him.

All that stuff I was saying about being heterosexual, being straight, not being in a relationship? We both knew almost immediately that it was bollocks. Yes, we are both straight. Well, I am, and I'm pretty sure he is too. But you know when you've met the love of your life, and it doesn't have anything to do with what hangs between their legs.

'I dreamt I lost you,' he whimpers, and presses his face into the curve of my shoulder. He clings to me all the tighter.

'I'm here,' I tell him softly. 'I'm not going anywhere.'

It's odd that he has this dream so often. It should be me having it. And the truth is, I did have it a lot after the Reichenbach thing. I had repeated nightmares in which I saw him falling. At least it was a change from the dreams of the war. But when he came home, they went. Since then, he's been having the nightmares. He dreams I am lost to him. It is his greatest fear. Perhaps his only fear. Until tonight, I only knew because he told me about it, once, when he was drunk. And I've sometimes heard him cry out in the darkness, when I was wakeful myself. I didn't go to him, and I am flooded with regret about that now. I can see that I should have gone to him, held him. . But as he lies against me, trembling and sad, I realise I must let that regret go, just as I let go of my anger at him for leaving me. I pull him across my body, so that he is almost on top of me, and he presses his cheek to my chest and lets out a halting sigh. I stroke his hair. It smells so sweet – it always does. I think he still uses that same brand of shampoo because he knows I like it.

'Don't ever leave me,' he whimpers.

'I won't,' I promise, and mean it with every cell in my poor, pathetic, aging body.

Later, an owl breaks into my dreams. It's weird, shivering cry draws me into consciousness, and I realise that Sherlock is wrapped around me, snoring gently. (That's another thing people don't expect about Sherlock, he snores dreadfully, to the point that I am beginning to suspect sleep apnoea as the root of his recurrent insomnia. I can hear him through the floor of my bedroom at 221B. Snores like a bloody hog. It's that stumpy little nose of his.) He has fastened onto me like a cross between a giant sloth and a limpet. And you know what? It feels fantastic.

I've only ever slept intimately with women. And by that I mean sleeping, rather than sex – although I've never had sex with a man either. I never thought I would like sleeping with a man, sharing a bed, resting close to another man this way. Sharing a bed is far more intimate than just shagging, in my opinion. Shagging is intimate, yes, but sharing a bed is sharing territory, which is something men have evolved to fight against. It also means allowing another person to see you unconscious, without all your societal roles intact. In the raw, so to speak. The Sherlock I am seeing in the raw right now is needy and tender and loving. It is the Sherlock that is inside, that he never reveals to anyone else, and rarely even to me.

My eyes prick.

I wish I could explain how much I love him. I wish I could make him see. I think he knows. I'm sure he does. He must, after all these years together. But still. It would be nice to tell him. Just once.

Tomorrow, our boys discuss a momentous life decision and face the Sussex Constabulary...