Work Text:
In truth, the wound still aches.
Not the point of entry itself, really, so much as below the surface. There’s a pang to it, a pull that never seems to give: elasticity and generative dexterity stunted and latent and stiff between the ribs. Sometimes it’s a turn, or a stretch that aggravates the tissue. Sometimes it’s a breath that’s heaved too deep. Sometimes it’s the sheer proximity to the flutter of his pulse when it shifts from a metronomic tapping to the rapid battering of chaos, cacophony that spins in his head and steals from him focus; upsets what equilibrium he still can hold.
But that’s not what gives him pause.
Nor is it the drumming of his blood in motion—lanced in a rush at the periphery—that jars him. It's not the swift descent to the tarmac once more, or the crippling whirl of deja-vu. It's not the tightness in his throat, or the burning in his eyes, or the wide stretch of Mary's gaze as he alights the stairs, the innocence in that stare he cannot trust and yet has trained himself, schooled himself to cherish for the way her stomach swells with a life that comes from John, for the way she wears John's ring with a certitude, an utterly perfect suitedness that Sherlock himself can only meet with a bitter sort of longing: he has taught himself to regard this woman with joy for what she’s given, gratitude for what she’s preserved, admiration for her strength, her conviction, her shrewdness—he has taught himself to love what she stands for, what she provides, if not for what she’s taken, what she’s damned his heart to bear.
Sherlock has taught himself to delete that which makes her anything less than necessary, because she is necessary to John: he has taught himself, and he’s a genius.
He is a very quick study.
But it’s not Mary that halts him in place, stills every part of his body save the racing of his pulse. It’s not the look on John's face, either: bewildered and stoic but his eyes shining for the fear that breeds sheer joy, the lust of battle and chase as it wrestles with a given agony. It's not the dive in the pit of his stomach at that voice, even distorted; those words, because for all that Sherlock may not have known what it meant to miss a person, before, he knows it now all the better, all the deeper and stronger and more crippling.
No: what gives him pause, what makes him wrench and flinch and writhe and rail after everything, is the weight that settles, that precipitates and twines about him out of nowhere, immediate and unprecedented: the arms containing him, suddenly, keeping him from leaping, from running, from doing anything; from moving toward them, toward him, toward John—from keeping his vow and protecting and being worth something to this man who is his heart when John, John has more hearts than he can hold and Sherlock's is worn, Sherlock’s is scarred, stained, strained too far and stopped too long, reanimated only for the love of a man he cannot hold and yet he wants, he wants.
But the arms, the arms around him, the arms between his heart and his heart, between the thrashing organ and the man who means its worth: the arms about him restrain and it is bereftitude all over again, it is Serbia, it is chains and bonds and hate unbound for the body restrained: it is the long game that nearly ended him, it is the voice in his head and the twist in his chest and it is worse, it was worse than the bullet, than the promise of death, to miss that much, and he will not talk, he won’t make a sound, they will not break him, he cannot breathe—
"Fuck all, Sherlock.”
There is a voice that pierces, that resonates all around him, muffled and weary, rough and visceral as it vibrates: the voice stalls his struggle against the hands upon his arms, his chest.
"It's three in the goddamned morning and you've not slept since Monday. I don't care what brilliant experiment you've just devised during your REM cycle, it'll bloody well keep. You're not getting up."
The voice sings in his veins, clarion and visceral—nearly chokes Sherlock as his lungs constrict, as he gasps around the tumult in his chest and forces, wills himself to exhale slow, because there is John.
There is John: John’s voice and John’s being, and the world’s not righted, not yet—sleep, yes, it is sleep, was sleep, remains sleep, he thinks, something foggy and weighty and wrong, unfamiliar against the known element of the man, the soul pressed against him—but John is here. John is safe. John’s breath is close and warm against Sherlock’s skin and John is an anchor around which all else will rally, John will set him right.
John’s breath is close and warm.
Close.
“Sherlock, you okay?” John’s voice lowers, changes pitch, and Sherlock recognises that it’s John’s grasp, John arms around his torso, John’s body pressed against him, less a confine than a comfort, except that it can’t be, it can’t be, and when Sherlock tenses, when the breath he’s just regained starts coming in frantic bursts and his chest starts to press into John’s hold when they shouldn’t, when they mustn’t: when Sherlock’s shirt rucks up and John’s touch remains, he can feel it. Cold.
Metal on the left ring finger.
“Love, look at me, come on,” and Sherlock blinks into the darkness as John runs his nose, his lips against the side of Sherlock’s throat. “What’s got you wound so tight, hmm?” He hums into Sherlock’s skin, all gooseflesh and sleep-sweat, and damn it all, but Sherlock trembles.
“John,” Sherlock gasps at the open press of John’s mouth at the crook of his neck as John coaxes him, turns his face, his shoulders, the whole of his body to face John’s own, to press into him from thighs to chest. “John, what are you—”
And then John’s mouth is on his, soft and tender and fond, all affection and heat and terrifying familiarity, and Sherlock’s stomach swoops for a whole host of reasons that rise again and thread through his ribs until his heart feels pressed to collapsing, because Sherlock is selfish, Sherlock is weak, and Sherlock is a broken thing who cares little about everything and everything about very little, about this one man before him who cannot be here, cannot be his, who Sherlock does not deserve and has no right to touch, who, if not a figment, is a mistake for all that he is perfection, but Sherlock is a fool, and more than that: he is a fool who kisses back.
He kisses back, and he’d have given in to death a thousand times when it beckoned if he’d known that Heaven would taste so goddamned sweet.
“No, no, fuck.”
The words that break the contact, the bliss, bursting from Sherlock’s mouth in a breathless heap: the words themselves are less than articulate, something short of poised.
“John, we can’t,” Sherlock gasps, and John’s hand on his neck feels like the most perfect, the most endless of storms: measuring the ecstasy that’s roaring through his veins and weighing the trajectory of the most effective killing blow as Sherlock says the words that will end this, end him:
“What about Mary?”
John’s breath huffs, John’s teeth drag along the reddened swell of Sherlock’s lower lip as he pulls back, achingly slow and oh: the quizzicality of that dear brow, scrunched so delightfully in askance, wondering just what are you on about, you daft nutter?, and were Sherlock to admit just how many times he’s wanted to run his lips along the folds of John’s forehead when he makes that gorgeous face, he thinks his heart may well burst for all the wanting.
“Mary?” John asks, entirely bewildered, and Sherlock means to process it, he does, means to try to make it into sense except there is something in him that’s straining, that’s cracking down the middle and it hurts a great deal, even now, layered as it is in resignation and regret, so much so that it takes a good few moments for the words that follow to break through to real effect: “You mean the client formerly known as Morstan?”
Sherlock’s mind has betrayed him to utter cacophony more times than he can recall.
Silence, though, total blankness—that’s a rare and wondrous feat.
“What?” Sherlock finally says, nearly splutters, because somehow in his brain forgetting its motions, his lungs have followed suit, and the world before him is immediately white around its edges.
“Sherlock, seriously, breathe,” John’s hand is upon his shoulder, massaging the flesh and easing, because Sherlock’s body will never fail to ease for the proximity, the affections of John Watson, however misguided or misplaced.
“If her case is getting you this keyed up, I say hand her over to Mycroft.” And John’s eyes are so full, so saturated with warmth, with concern and with feeling that Sherlock nearly feels sick for it. “It’s not worth you—”
“John, please,” Sherlock gasps, because his lungs, for remembering too work, contract off-rhythm, impede the slamming of his heart beyond its bounds: “The baby.”
“The baby? Hers?” And Sherlock doesn’t know, cannot know what to make of the way John’s frown deepens, the way he seems entirely bewildered at the mention of a child, this child, his—
“She’s barely ten weeks, best thing we can do is wrap this up as quickly and calmly as possible.” John’s entirely professional about it, too: any care strapped tightly to the concern of a doctor, of a medical man for his patient. “Keep the stress off her and the foetus.”
Sherlock is torn, here, now: he is torn between joy and regret, guilt and wonder, hyperventilation and the keen desire to vomit.
“But right now?” John’s talking, John’s talking; John’s touch his skin again hands on the curves of his wrists: focus: “I’m a damned sight more concerned about you.”
And it doesn’t make sense, because John is steady, John is reaching for him everywhere and John’s gaze is focused on Sherlock and Sherlock alone. John is not here for the promise, or the threat of being elsewhere. John is not minding him because he cannot face another.
John is so much more than minding him, pressing into Sherlock’s chest, ducking his head and kissing soft, tender at the lines of Sherlock’s clavicles.
“Was it a nightmare?” John breathes into the hollow of his throat.
Nightmare.
He’s never been susceptible to them, per say: but after the Chase, after hunting down Moriarty’s network, after more time in captivity than he prefers to recall, well.
Even he is not immune.
But never had it seemed so real before. A nightmare, it couldn’t, it can’t—
But John is here—
“Shit,” John’s lips catch, wet against Sherlock’s skin as he bows his head, tucks into the space beneath Sherlock’s chin. “I thought you were just crawling out to check on that bile thing you’ve got spread all over the kitchen.”
“Not,” and Sherlock’s mind is slowly turning, starboard now from port, course-correcting as it stutters, stammers, starts to filter mere hateful fiction, the tricks of his own consciousness from the fact of John’s breath in the dark. “Not all over.”
The bile experiment. For the cold case with the barrister and her addict lover. To keep him entertained whilst John worked the surgery, until Mycroft secured access to Anne Grey-Raimon Amberlind’s CIA files.
“Yes, quite,” John barks out a gentle laugh, and it stirs in Sherlock’s blood like actualities and evidence. “You left me the kettle, if nowhere to set a mug. Ta.”
John’s lips on his throat, though: they’re nigh irrefutable.
“What happened, darling?” John whispers into his skin, and Sherlock shakes with it, the way it laces around his nerves but John presses closer, steadies him with a kiss to the pulse in his neck.
“Your heart’s still racing, Jesus,” John exhales, and then there’s a hand on Sherlock’s chest, at Sherlock’s waist: there is warmth that rises and surrounds, and Sherlock leans, Sherlock moves, magnetic, to soak in the presence, that heat.
“John,” Sherlock forces, makes himself ask it because this is everything, this is everything, and goddamnit it all, what if this is the dream? “John, we—”
But then it’s just John’s palm upon his sternum, and John’s mouth poised to devour his lips, John’s tongue tracing the perimeter of his own mouth, glorious and practised and perfect, and oh, if Sherlock’s heart’s still racing, now it’s leaping, now it’s trilling, now it’s aching for the promise of such joy, however hollow, however brief.
“John,” Sherlock gasps, and John hums into the breath of it, and it’s exquisite.
Just a dream. Just a dream. A nightmare of death and resurrection, of fire and blood, bullets and murder and weddings and loss—
It can’t possibly be so simple, can it? His mind couldn’t possibly be so cruel.
“You are safe, Sherlock,” John whispers, fierce and true. “You are here, with me, at Baker Street,” John laces their fingers together, squeezes Sherlock’s hand in his own. “We’ve got a case, it’s maybe an eight, but I’m beginning to think there’s more to it than you’ve been letting on.”
And something in Sherlock loosens, then, to hear the warning, the edge in John’s voice: this he knows.
This he knows.
“Was it the Serbians again?” John asks, hushed and careful, brimming with concern, with the knowledge of this, of the things that Sherlock is beginning to relegate to the real, rather than the fabricated, the false.
Serbia.
“Sherlock, you’re safe. We got you out,” John murmurs, reading posture and feeling where Sherlock says nothing, barely breathes. He etches into Sherlock’s skin so as to make it indelible, an unequaled sort of ache. “We got you out, and I got you back.”
And Sherlock remembers, now, as the haze begins to clear, as John burns away the fog: John had come to him, with Mycroft, had saved him from the clutches of his captors, had taken him in his arms and railed and trembled and held, and Sherlock grasped at him like the dying in return. It had been John’s hands on his face, shaving him, restoring him. It had been John’s eyes on his wounds, John’s skills on the scars he'd sustained, forbidding new ones, healing the flesh of him as deftly as the heart.
“I got you back,” John inhales sharp, and yes, yes.
It had been John’s lips upon his own that had made the world make sense.
“It wasn’t,” Sherlock finally speaks, shakes his head and breathes out slow: “It wasn’t the Serbians.”
Dear god, what he wouldn’t have given for a dream about the Serbians, in exchange for the weight that still lingers in his limbs, in his arteries and veins for the way the nightmare he had suffered still lingers, still pervades.
“Do you want to talk about it?” John asks delicately, strokes along Sherlock’s arms, gathers him close to lilt along his spine.
“No,” Sherlock rasps, because he can’t, be can’t, he wants to leave that horrid world behind and delete it entirely and he will, he will, but not yet.
He can’t.
“I love you.” And John, clever John: John knows Sherlock’s limits, knows what they look like in the quirks of his face. John knows him, and Sherlock could not adore John more in this moment for seeing, for moving, for saying exactly what he needs.
“I love you,” John leans in to kiss Sherlock’s mouth, full of meaning and intent. “And no matter what useless firing your neurones want to do, you will always wake up to find that fact will never change.”
And it’s that, it’s that precisely that lifts the tension from Sherlock’s chest, the smog from Sherlock’s brain: those words, and John’s eyes, and John’s taste, they restore him.
He kisses back with all that he has, all that he is because he can, because he must.
“I know that doesn’t make it go away,” John exhales into the part of Sherlock’s lips as they nip at once another, fervent and desperate and more fucking in love than Sherlock knows how to stand, even now–especially now. “I know that’s not enough—”
“It’s enough,” Sherlock gasps and kisses John harder, draws John closer, and prays to every power he can imagine or conceive to meld straight into John’s body, John’s being, because this.
This.
When their breathing settles, and John is moulded gorgeously to the contours of Sherlock’s body, the strong splay of his shoulders fitted to the curve of Sherlock’s ribs; when Sherlock’s hands are wrapped, are entwined with John’s and settled soft upon John’s rising-falling chest, the world is suddenly very soft, and very clear, and very full.
Sherlock cannot help himself the indulgence of eradicating the last of the darkness in him, cold and feral, because the darkness that surrounds him is nothing but warm.
“John, just,” Sherlock begins, hesitates, but John’s grip upon him tightens, grounds and fortifies his very soul. “Promise me,”
“Anything.” John dips his head to kiss at Sherlock palm. “Except that thing with the lamb intestine. You know that’s where I draw the line.”
Sherlock cannot help the bouyant chuckle that escapes, that reminds him that this is his reality, this is his truth, unequivocally.
And yet—
“Mary.”
“Sherlock,” John sighs, “just pass her off to MI—”
“Don’t date her.”
John turns in Sherlock’s arms, blinks at him with nothing short of absolute bewilderment. “What?”
“Ever,” Sherlock underscores the point, to be safe, to be sure. “Just,” he swallows, shakes his head: “Don’t.”
“Fuck,” John exhales, the sound imparting a low hint of a whistle. “What nonsense did you dream?”
“John,” Sherlock pushes him, needing this beyond reason or logic; beyond sense. “Please.”
“Sherlock,” John murmurs, serious and fond all at once, and Sherlock feels his heartbeat all the more for the way John flattens their hands, still joined, against Sherlock’s chest—a chest conspicuously sans-bullet wound, thank god, thank god—suddenly intent.
“I made my promises the day I put that ring on your finger.” And it’s when John leans to kiss the wedding band that Sherlock wears—a perfect match to John’s own, the one that had sent ice through his veins in the wake of his dreams. “Long before that, even,” John breathes, and Sherlock knows, knows that he is home.
“I made my promises, and I intend to keep them,” John presses lips to Sherlock’s finger, to the symbol of a day that sealed a life, their life, and oh, but it’s sweet like none other. “I intend to keep you for however long you’ll let me,” John breathes into him, settling against his chest again, resting against the steady pulse of Sherlock’s blood.
“Hmm,” Sherlock relishes the feel of his voice, the rumble of it mingling with the pump of his heart, a symphony pressed against John’s body, for John alone. “Always, then.”
Sherlock can feel John’s lips twitch upward against the skin of his chest, and he can’t help it when his own grin starts to stretch in kind.
“Now for fuck’s sake,” John says, trying for firm but it lacks any heat: “You’re sleeping ‘til eight, I don’t care what it takes.”
Sherlock’s arms around him tighten, hold him all the closer. “But the bile needs—”
“I don’t,” and John pauses in emphasis, kisses Sherlock’s chest to underscore each word, lips on his sternum. “Care.” Lips on his collarbone. “What.” Lips at his suprasternal notch. “It.” Mouth parted, breathy near his nipple: “Takes.”
“Yes, John,” Sherlock sighs, and it’s something of a joy to settle, to feel himself relax, wrapped up in the man he loves.
“Mmm, yes,” John hums as he resituates atop Sherlock’s torso and makes for sleep.
But first: “There’s a good husband. Mark it on the calendar,” John grins, and Sherlock can hear the wicked lilt of John’s voice before John nips playfully at the bud of Sherlock’s nipple, relishing Sherlock’s startled whine with a giggle that makes it—this, everything—more than worth it, just to hear.
“Spousal abuse,” Sherlock pouts, nuzzles into John’s hair.
“Nope,” John yawns, burrowing closer into Sherlock’s skin. “You know very well that we called a truce on that after the dressing gown incident.”
“Hmm,” Sherlock smiles, remembering. “I suppose we did.”
The dressing gown incident. What a day that had been.
“Goodnight, you utter loon,” John whispers, and Sherlock exhales long and slow, feeling what hints of foreboding, of loss and hate and hurt still remained slip free from him, disappear into the night.
“Your utter loon,” Sherlock breathes, and John shifts against him, wraps around him all the more.
“Just so,” John kisses the centre of his chest with a reverence that makes Sherlock feel infinite. “And don’t you forget it.”
Within minutes, they’re both asleep.