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John had always struggled with depression, according to his therapist.
He’d struggled with it when he got home from war, wounded and unable to do much but limp around and feel generally useless, his world damp and grey and so incredibly boring.
Then there had been Sherlock.
Sherlock had not so much helped John out of his depression as yanked him out with a sharp “Boring,” and brought colors back into his dull life, brought excitement tinged with just enough fear and adrenaline to keep John’s heart racing, the chemicals in his brain finally balancing out properly again and leaving him happy. Normal, or at least.
Then everything got worse than ever before.
Sherlock jumped. Sherlock, his best friend, was dead.
That would have been enough, he thinks, to send him back to the post-Army depression he’d had, but he knew how to deal with that much. He could move on with that, even if he wouldn’t call that living, per say.
But then there was the press. Constantly calling him and following him until he went a bit mad. And there was the investigation to see if Sherlock had been a fraud, the one that had gotten Greg demoted. The one that kept calling John to testify.
“Tell anyone who will listen to you... that I created Moriarty for my own purposes.” But John wouldn’t. How could he? He’d seen everything about Sherlock, absolutely everything, and nothing had indicated that the other man was a liar. So he went on the stand and steadfastly defended his best friend.
Delusional.
Broken.
History of depression.
The papers all said things about him, each one clamoring for an interview. He shut down the blog after a while. Couldn’t handle the comments.
Sherlock Holmes wasn’t a fraud.
But the world seemed intent to prove that he was. And if that meant shattering John Watson in the process…well. What did the shattering of one boring, ordinary little doctor matter compared to bringing down the shining star that was Sherlock Holmes?
“John. You haven’t been sleeping again,” Ella would say at every appointment, followed swiftly by “Have you eaten today?” The answer to both was always no.
“John, I know you mentioned once that the tattoos you got before Afghanistan helped you deal with your moral dilemma going over there as a doctor with a gun. Have you considered getting more this time?”
Of course, John had refused to even consider it at first, but then…well, what could it hurt?
In the end, he decided on something over his scar. It would hurt like hell, but the meaning was there.
Riley did the work this time, too, and he didn’t ask why John got what he got. He just took the pattern and John’s directions and worked silently.
He didn’t even give the grieving man tattoo care advice, knowing that John already knew. When everything else failed, John was still a doctor.
Just as John pulled on his shirt, Riley spoke, more quietly than he had in John’s entire acquaintance with him.
“I do believe in Sherlock Holmes. Even if I didn’t…well, I believe in Dr. John Watson, for sure.”
For the first time since those words—“I believe in Sherlock Holmes”—became popular, John actually felt them lift his spirits. Because it was all good and well to believe in a dead man, but sometimes, John wanted someone to believe in him.
“Thanks, Riley,” he said quietly.
Months passed. John got better. Whenever he started to slip, started to lose hope, he would go and stand in the mirror, staring at his shoulder and reminding himself of the reason behind the tattoo.
He met Mary, fell in love. Was finally getting better, putting his life back on the rails…
And then that bloody tit of a detective came back.
John might have hit him once. Or twice…maybe three times. Hard.
Honestly, it was less than he wanted to do. He’d been more than angry. Anger he’d learned how to deal with a long time ago, how to handle his own rage.
What he hadn’t been prepared to deal with was his own hurt and grief, the darkness that threatened to rise up and choke him, to drag him back to the same dimness that his tattoos had saved him from. At the end of the day, he was torn between either breaking down into tears or hitting Sherlock, and he had sworn that he wouldn’t shed one more tear for Sherlock Holmes.
That had been an easier promise to keep when his best friend, the most important person in his life, was dead. Not that he was complaining.
Sherlock had, of course, deduced that John had gotten new tattoos (no he hadn’t). It was plainly obvious (Mary told him). Yet, he didn’t see them until years later. Until Mary and Moriarty were gone, and John had once again been set adrift. The wife he’d thought he’d have his whole life was gone, along with the child he’d been so excited to raise.
It was a week after those devastating events, and he was sitting in 221B, a cold cup of tea by his hand as he stared at the wall. Sherlock was hovering nearby, eyes worried and dark. He had known the price this would exact on his friend, and he’d worried that it would be too much after the grief that had nearly laid his dearest friend flat.
“John?” he said, voice uncharacteristically muted. John glanced up at him, eyes red-rimmed with exhaustion and grief. Without a word, he pulled off his shirt. Sherlock blinked, taken aback by the sudden shedding of clothing.
“Left shoulder. Over the scar.” Sherlock walked over and saw, in small black, block letters, the words Kandahar, Helmand, Bart’s Hospital in a column over his shoulder, the neat letters following the ridges of his scar.
“Places you’re a veteran of,” Sherlock whispered, his fingers tracing the letters and feeling John shiver beneath him. Ah, yes. The scar was sensitive.
“Places I’ve survived, when I really had no right to,” John corrected softly, head bowed. “Kandahar, where I lost my first friend. Helmand, where I was shot. Bart’s, where you…” He choked, shaking his head. “Each one broke me a bit more, but I survived. I got stronger for it. I got it because…I needed to remember that I had never thought that I’d survive those, but I did. If I had that reminder, I felt like I could recover. I could get stronger.” He sighed. “Saved my life, these did.”
Sherlock swallowed at the idea of John’s life needing to be saved because of him, his fingers lingering on the shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize anymore, please. God knows you’ve saved my life more than enough since then,” John sighed, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “This has been hell. I’m just glad it’s over.” Sherlock nodded, reluctantly pulling his fingers away. It…hurt to see John so upset, still, hurt like it was his own heart that was breaking.
“John, I’m not good with emotions—“
“Oh, shut it, you’re fine with mine.”
“…Perhaps. Still, I do not want you to suffer, but I am uncertain how to cor-umph.” John had pressed his lips against Sherlock’s, and, after a brief pause, Sherlock returned the kiss, his long fingers coming up to tangle in soft blond hair as callused, thick fingers came to stroke his own curls.
When they finally broke away, staring, John smiled a little. “Well, that’s one way to shut you—mmph.” Sherlock initiated the kiss this time, swallowing John’s giggle—the first hint of laughter the doctor had shown in months—and then pulling away with a grin.
“It seems the effect is reciprocal,” Sherlock chuckled, and then, for the first time since Sherlock had been shot by John’s wife, the two broke into uncontrollable laughter, holding each other as they laughed.
Eventually, their laughter gave way to soft, gentle kisses, usually interspersed with soft giggles. Sherlock eventually worked his way to John’s back, his lips tracing the dark ink of his tattoos, gentle on his scar. John rolled over and captured Sherlock’s lips again, deft fingers unbuttoning the detective’s shirt and kissing down his chest, lingering over every scar. Some from the two years chasing Moriarty’s web. One from John’s own wife.
“I’m thinking of getting a tattoo there,” Sherlock admitted, his breathing hitching as John pressed his lips against the scar. “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds,” he whispered, and John blinked up at him in surprise.
“You know Shakespeare?” Sherlock sniffed, and the sound was so familiar, so unchanged.
“Of course I do, John, I went to a decent school, and love is motivation for many crimes. It’s only worthwhile to know Sonnet 116.” John laughed, kissing Sherlock’s scar against and tracing out the words against Sherlock’s stomach as he spoke them.
“Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom,” he murmured. “Get them matching?” Sherlock’s eyes lit up.
“Big commitment, that,” the detective commented, tone careless even as mercurial eyes met gunmetal blue.
“Well, seeing as you’ve come back from the dead twice for me, it seems there’s no getting rid of you,” John sighed, rolling his eyes even as he came up and kissed Sherlock’s lips again. “Guess I’ll just keep you forever.”
A week later, they both had the same words stretched across their stomachs: “The Edge of Doom.”