Once again, with this chapter the rating goes up to M :) Just to be safe.
Chapter 3: (Pre)verbal antithesis in terms
Sherlock thinks that there are deductions that should be made. Something is going on, with John, and the clues are right there for Sherlock to read, but John is too close and he's making it all impossible. Like a text being held too close to the eyes, John's invading Sherlock's space, eliminating any possibility of a clear read. John's lips are on his own, and John's body is pressing closer, closer and closer yet, until Sherlock is in no way able to distinguish who's stealing whose oxygen, until there is so little air between them that they seem to be breathing in each other.
This would usually be a problem, but right now, it really isn't. None of what's happening could in any way be categorised as a problem. It's most definitely not a problem. It is, however, a lot of other things.
It's a conflagration, blazing and rapid. It's the coldest of waters, pulling him under, heavenly heavy around him. The feeling is a wondrous paradox of sensations that threatens to burn Sherlock to a crisp, while causing him to drown at the same time. Fire and water battle for dominance, as sweat trails his hot skin, stealing its heat as if trying to put out a fire that hasn't even ignited yet. Pre-emptive strikes.
Opposite to expectations, when they manage to navigate onto the bed, Sherlock's back hitting it like a heavy feather, graciously, but with a thud, and John intertwines his knees with Sherlock's, steadily eradicating any remaining distance between them, skin to skin, Sherlock doesn't become lost for words – 'such a ridiculous notion, preposterous ignorance about factors influencing cognitive functioning' – because, if anything, words are truly Sherlock's forte. Oh no, Sherlock doesn't lose his words – quite the opposite. He feels as if he is turning into words, into descriptions and exclamations, theorems and postulations. With every movement and every touch, he feels the unnecessary terms dissipate, until what is left falls into place – perfect syntax forged in flames and floods, out of fertile ground left in their wake.
When John's lips move from Sherlock's own, to the hollow juncture between his collar bones, Sherlock feels like a lexical entry, a dictionary definition of a word written in writhes of body and tremors of air.
"John..."
As gentle hands come to rest on Sherlock's bare shoulders, John's name becomes a refugee breath making its escape from Sherlock's mouth before he can catch it, and Sherlock's whole being becomes its definition. If one wanted to understand the meaning of 'John', understand his effect, if one was to look where to place and use 'John' within a sentence, they would find it all there, find John explained across Sherlock's skin, in the disarray of his hair and the radius of his pupils.
Sherlock morphs himself into John's explanation, his etymology and meaning, translation into various tongues, alphabets, and codes. Gooseflesh of Sherlock's skin speaks of John in Braille's letters, legible only to John's fingertips as they move from joint to joint, from sinew to sinew, and John can close his eyes and still see, still know and read Sherlock, read all definitions himself, all he is to the brilliant man stretched out in front of him.
Warm fingers trail skin in order to underline examples of use of 'John' in various contexts, travelling left-to-right to read Old English and Glagolitic along Sherlock's clavicle, right-to-left to decode Arabic and Hebrew hidden in the swirls of curls on the nape of Sherlock's neck, and (finally) up-to-down, reading ancient Chinese symbols and Egyptian hieroglyphs on the parchment-scroll of Sherlock's chest and stomach. The flexing of Sherlock's fingers against the sheets that occurs as result of John's hand slipping lower, lower and lower still, speaks of John in sign language, and when they move to John's back, nails leaving marks in Linear B, it is only to compensate for any information that failed to be relayed through moans in Greek alphabet and sharp gasps scribbled in mid-air in Cyrillic.
There aren't enough languages, not enough alphabets in all of human history that would suffice in capturing and defining John precisely, so Sherlock doesn't limit himself to them. There are numerous ways of conveying messages and meaning, and Sherlock uses as many as his body will allow him to write John's definition. Heartbeats in binary. Blush on pale skin below blue-green eyes – red, white, blue, green – international maritime signal flags.
John seems intent on imprinting even more of himself on Sherlock, amending gaps and incomplete information with his hands, his lips, his breath. He draws nonsense patterns along Sherlock's sides – 'code, it must be code, with a meaning, with ah-...' – and on the back sides of his knees. It feels like now, they're men speaking in code.
There is pressure that doesn't feel cold, so it can't be water, but that doesn't feel light, either, so it cannot be fire. It is fire-hot and water-heavy, but Sherlock can't remember the meaning of 'fire' or 'water', or 'hot' or 'heavy', not in any context outside the present, so they all come down to one word, the only important word, which seems to encompass them all, hold attributes of all of them.
John.
John is fire and water, and pressure and heat, and so much more, everything more, and Sherlock is the lexicon of all his meanings, cataloguing them, living them, feeling them. They make for a perfect pair – the definition of the word, and the actual entity it denotes, pressed skin-to-skin, merging until they are indelible, as is only right. Sherlock's body shivers, shudders and then (finally, finally, fina-oh...) convulses, the word being screamed by erratic spasms, his muscles spelling out John's name in Morse code.
Sherlock feels John shudder, as if he is cold despite the heat, and then they're like continents that have just merged and enclosed a living, beating, burning heart of a planet beneath and between them, with the last shivers of a world being born still ripping through both of them. This place, this time, this – this state of being – it is the juncture point where the hot heart of the planet slithers into salty water, molten lava spilling into the ocean. Burning waters. As Sherlock's body steadies, the only movement rattling him being the beat of his heart, he lies still and lets it fill him up, to the brim. For just a moment, it seems to shake out the words (not all words. John. John. John.), replacing them with a primal rhythm that preceded them, in that time before words came to be. It is the hot-cold lump of salt-crusted, ocean-chilled lava. It's visceral. It's tectonic.
Originally this chapter was supposed to conatin both POVs, but I decided to break it up into two parts. John's POV should be up soon :)