Author's note: OK, so part 2 of the M-rated chapter (John's POV). Sorry, this took a bit longer than expected :)
Title of the chapter is borrowed from Vienna Teng's amazing "Never look away"
Chapter 4: You are made of memories you bury or live by
John watches Sherlock's face beneath him, watches lips part and hears gasps escape, like flocks of starlings fleeing to the sky in various formations, and admires how such unarticulated sounds can still sound eloquent. John doesn't know, but he can guess what sort of whirlwind is ravaging Sherlock's mind, words upon words wanting to be spoken, but each falling short of being able to express the fervour that is so evidently carved into Sherlock's expression. It is a lovely sight to be seen. But what John sees in Sherlock's parted lips and hooded eyes, in the tight muscles doing their best not to break the bones beneath them in half, are not words. After all, out of the two of them, Sherlock is the orator, the master of words. John sees what he's always seen. He sees the one on sight which has the power (which always had the power) to induce contradicting feelings, to make him both angry and amused, thrilled and disappointed. He sees the man who is a lot of things, but who is always a source of awe for John.
John simply sees Sherlock. Sprawled beneath him, in the soft cage formed around Sherlock out of John's forearms that rest next to the other man's head, and the long tangle of legs that makes for the most intricate weaving pattern, John sees everything he's always seen – brilliance, complexity, passion, just a sliver of other-worldliness, curiosity, invincible spark of life – all seemingly more concentrated than usual in this state of voluntary, elated disarray, blindingly bright and impossibly stunning. There's no need for metaphors and rhapsodic mystifications, because none would ever live up to seeing Sherlock for exactly what he is. Sun-bright and as impossible as true loss of energy, he eludes and transcends John's verbal skills.
Sherlock is the one who takes people apart to bits and constructs them back in deductions as eloquent as Greek epics, the one who can get a holistic impression from a single trace. Sherlock's the analyst, the scientist, breaking apart molecules and data until he can break them down no more, in order to gain a better understanding of the whole. But not John.
John sees, feels, experiences Sherlock on a level no intellect can fully comprehend. It's a level so visceral that it predates words and cognition altogether. Permeating and all-encompassing, Sherlock is like some abstract term that can only be experienced. Like explaining the colour green to a blind child, it is so incredibly difficult to describe the exact quality of warmth that zips across John's skin as Sherlock's hands come to rest on his shoulders, being used as levers to lift the rest of the man's body up, up, up until lips meet lips, like broken seams being mended back into a faultless whole, and eyes that close to grant the sense of touch it's moment in the spotlight. As they part, breath coming in and out heavily like that of men treading water, John opens his eyes and looks at the world at his fingertips. World at the tip of his lips.
So John simply looks at Sherlock.
Except, there is nothing simple about that. There is nothing simple about the feeling that shoots through John, from the tips of his eyelashes, over the roots of his spinal nerves, down his back and out to the tips of his fingers and toes, seeping into his aorta, rushing to every bit of living tissue, the feeling he gets when he sees Sherlock's half-closed eyes and half-open mouth posed elegantly in an expression of utter ecstasy. There is nothing simple about the shudders that shake him when Sherlock says his name like the most fascinating word in the English language (in any language), making it sound as if he is sacrificing the last of air in his lungs just to propel it into the commotion of air and breath and limbs that they make. There is nothing simple about the way he can feel Sherlock's fingers drawing lines over his skin, and he feels like a new world being mapped out by a pedant cartographer. Every swipe of Sherlock's hand, every slide of skin leaves new marks, new data, dots down new discoveries until John is the most detailed atlas in existence. It is right, and natural, and oh-god-yes, but it is in no way simple. But that's alright, that's how it should be. They were never made for simple.
John ducks his head to plant another kiss to Sherlock's lips, sharp teeth gentle against the thin skin of them. It is such an amazing display of vulnerability – a kiss. A willing, welcome intrusion of someone else into the softest, most defenceless bits of us. It isn't much more than moderate pressure, work of 34 facial muscles, slide of puckered skin drawn taught over nerve endings, but it is everything more. It is opening up and letting go, letting someone in. It is the best defence against perjury. Lies come so easily through words, but lying one's way through a kiss is not as easy a feat. It is a special kind of intimacy, able of leaving one naked even when no clothes are shed. There is honesty to a kiss that borders on frightening. So, John lowers his head, planting a soft kiss that soon transforms into something more, evolves into a more complex being, millennia of evolution from single-cell organisms to vertebrates condensed in 22.1 seconds and a single sigh.
They kiss and there is nothing simple about the way John feels like a soldier being stripped of his uniform and a doctor being stripped of his white coat, of his armour, until he isn't Captain John Watson or Doctor John Watson, until his identification isn't written in letters graven onto round dog tags but stamped all across his skin, and he has no title to hide behind, no rank to help define him. No rules to confine him. No oaths to keep him hostage of expectations that go against his nature. No lies or half-truths or omissions designed to defend him. Right there, under Sherlock's fingers, he is all he's ever been, in the simplest of terms (which just happen to be the most complicated ones, too).
Under Sherlock's fingers, he's John. Just John. And being 'just John' is possibly the most precarious of all options, because being 'just John' means...what does it even mean? Captain John and Doctor John are relatively easy to comprehend, roles so well learned that they provide the safety of home. But John, just John, with no prefixes...John is a conundrum.
Because being 'just John' means being just...everything. Everything he owns, prides himself on.
Sherlock's eyes open wide as John lets his left hand wonder lower like an alpinist descending down the long expanse of Sherlock's ribs, and Sherlock's irises fight a futile battle against the growing of his pupils, black whirlpools progressing in victory against the blue rings, all clouds-dissolving-in-clear-water and want and need and...
Everything John tries to keep at bay, attempts to control.
Sherlock's eyes open wide, all clouds-dissolving-in-clear-water and want and need and...something.
Everything he denies.
Sherlock's eyes open wide, all clouds-dissolving-in-clear-water and want and need and...and. And love.
There it is, plain as day, and just as bright, being projected like a reverse visual signal – light sending an image out of Sherlock's eyes instead of into them. As John's alpinist hand travels lower, lower and lower yet, Sherlock's eyes never leave John's face, except for those brief moments when their contact is replaced by that of lips.
Sherlock looks at John. Simply looks at John, the way John simply looks at Sherlock, and it's all but simple, because it is in that moment that John feels truly naked. Because, looking at John, Sherlock sees just John. Just everything.
everything-he-owns-pride-himself-on-everything-John-tries-to-keep-at-bay-attempts-to-control-everything-he-denies
Everything he fears.
John Watson isn't a man who scares easily. He is a war veteran who's witnessed the vilest of human tendencies. He is a doctor who's seen his share of death and suffering. It disgusts him, at times, saddens him at others, but it never really scares him. Out of all the things in the world, there is one that frightens him much more than the muddy abysses of minds of psychopaths or the deep red pools of life cooling off and away on floors of make-shift surgery tents in the middle of a dry, grating desert vastness. It is one of the most primal fears, but flipped around.
Fear of the Dark.
Only, people usually fear the dark because dark is indecipherable, it evokes the fear of the unknown. John Watson doesn't fear the dark because he doesn't know what awaits him there. The dark isn't unknown. He fears it because he knows exactly what awaits him there – knows it oh-so-well. His own, personal Dark. The desire, the love of the thrill, the need, the addiction – each bit of dark matter that stands antithetical to everything he is supposed to wish for. It is the Dark that cackles as futile attempts at simple, pedestrian life. It is the Dark that taunts and teases because it knows that simple, ordinary life – a safe life, a well-rounded, healthy life – would be death for John Watson. Death by starvation of the soul.
Sherlock's fingernails draw lines across John's back, like tracking routes in a Hansel-and-Gretel style of marking his way home on John's skin. His way back to John. John's way back to him. Home. And right there, in that stare, in the way Sherlock doesn't blink or look away once, John finds what he needs.
Danger, adrenalin – the thrill of the chase. Danger of being seen for what he is. Danger of being true. The danger of 'just – '. An addict's fix. A nightlight that, rather than dissipating the Dark, allows John to embrace it.
Thrill surges up like the tide, as he draws his teeth ever-so-lightly over the thin, breakable skin of Sherlock's wrist. Skin-white and vein-blue and blush-capillary-red paint his life into a melting, ever-changing mural now, jumping off Sherlock's body like neon signs on train stations, inviting him to board the fast train to Oblivion.
The thrill of saving a life. A doctor. The thrill of taking a life (justified). A soldier. Life and death coalescing in a single point in the night-shaded and skin-coloured dawn of their new world, Eros and Thanatos doing their eternal Paso doble – a perfect Freudian example. But this time it is John's own life that he is saving and risking, all at the same time. Because this could just be the end of him, but he doesn't care because it's the most alive he's felt in a long, long time.
Sherlock writhes, all sinewy movements and short-lived gasps. Friction threatens to incinerate them, and for a crazy moment John wonders if this is what the Earth feels like when two tectonic plates rub against each other, leaving hot magma in their wake.
That visceral feeling that's bright and non-verbal and 'Sherlock' doesn't abate, and it feels like an overdose. John knows that if he were ever to be forced to go through a withdrawal, ever denied this, he wouldn't make it. So, no – it definitely isn't simple. Because 'this' isn't just the physical, isn't just the closer-close-closer until there is genuine threat of skin-burn. This is all of it. This is everything. Just everything.
Because of all the scary, scary things John Watson has seen and done and lived to tell about, the one he fears the most is himself. The person he would become if he were forced back into a life without Sherlock. And the person he knows he is capable of becoming in order to prevent that from ever happening.
And it is frightening and delicious at the same time, this utter exposure, owning one's true form. There is something dark about John Watson, but that's alright, because there is something Dark about Sherlock Holmes too, and their Darks seem to be of the same variety, siblings hatched from the same marble-black egg. But this time, the Dark is ok, because this time, for the first time, John Watson comes to own it, instead of the other way around, and it is no longer great and vast and endless, but simply a part – a shadowy corner in a brightly lit auditorium.
Ink-black is still staining the sky outside, but in the dim room dawn comes, condensing in shiny droplets of sweat. It isn't completely bright, this darkish sort of dawn, but as John looks at Sherlock, feels the arching of the Detective's body that soon dissolves into limpness and breathing and heartbeat, the only thing dominating his vision is light. The light grows brighter and brighter. Lazy, sated hands never abandon their ministrations over John's skin, until the air in front of John's eyes bursting like a nova in the night-sky of John's Dark when Sherlock's hands mimic the path John's hands made across his body.
So, no, this isn't simple. Because love is never simple. Not for them, anyway.
But that's alright. They were never made for simple. Simple would, surely, be the death of them.