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Sherlock cannot sleep.
Midnight. Hollow darkness. Empty, weighted air.
A clock—
Tick. Tick. Ticking.
(There had been a case.)
A long one—days of running, hiding, avoiding, triumphing. Sherlock had been brilliant, and John had been luminous, and the populace had been grateful. But that’s over now.
Now there is only this.
He sits in his chair, in the too-quiet darkness. Knees pulled up to his chest, arms threaded around them and clasped at the wrists: a child’s pose.
Sherlock lowers his head slowly; presses his forehead against his knees and counts to thirty, breathing in until his lungs begin to scream. He wants to let his air out—he wants to, but the thought of denting this perfect, convex night chills him. He breathes out in a slow, steady stream, and feels the coolness of his own breath on his thighs.
He feels like a child, here in rooms that are suddenly cavernous and strange and yawning. A child, afraid of the dark pressing in on him from all sides. A child, terrified of the itch, itch, itching of his veins and of his heart—
Thump. Thump. Thumping.
(There had been a case.)
A long one—children were involved.
John is always so fierce when there are children involved. Fiercely determined, fiercely driven. Fiercely sad if Sherlock cannot be brilliant enough fast enough.
Darkness.
(Sherlock almost hadn’t been brilliant enough.)
A sound above him: creaking. Floorboards.
(Sherlock almost hadn’t been fast enough.)
Creaking on the sitting room floor.
(Can’t sleep, either.)
Creaking on the stairs.
(There had been a case.)
Children were involved. Long one—and sad, almost, and Sherlock, not enough, not enough—and John,
John.
John.
(Breath. In. Out.)
Perfect darkness shattered—look up—
The light in the stairs has been turned on, and it outlines John in casual golden relief; presents him as a stark black cut-out, a child’s shadow puppet thrown against a wall. But then he moves into the room, and into the shadows, and away from the light, and Sherlock almost springs out of his chair to grab him.
Because John could get lost in this dark, dark, darkening room. And then what would Sherlock do?
“Sherlock.”
John’s voice is low, and steady, and warm. Sherlock wants to cup it between his palms; to press it into his heart.
John moves with silent steps until he’s standing just in front of Sherlock’s chair. His arms are wound tightly across his chest: closed off? No. Closed in. Guarded, sheltered. Sherlock meets his eyes (silver in the black) and tips his head back.
John hovers, silent, and Sherlock knows that he is thinking. He loves when John thinks; when John puzzles and wonders.
He’s dazzling like that, even if Sherlock never says. (Should say it someday.)
John touches Sherlock’s knee with careful, gentle fingers; Sherlock gives in, and takes the bottom hem of John’s t-shirt in his hands.
“Tea?” John asks him quietly.
Sherlock can’t speak. He nods his head jerkily, and lets John take his hand in his own much warmer one.
They move slowly across the vast, empty nightscape of 221B. Sherlock crowds against John’s back—only their hands touching—until they reach the kitchen.
John flicks the light on, and Sherlock blinks against the sudden brightness. Something deep inside of him breathes again, and his hand falls away from John’s.
Better; not perfect.
(There had been a case.)
John’s socks whisper across the lino as he prepares their tea. Sherlock stands utterly still, watching him. It’s a practiced ritual that is inherently John, this act of making tea. Unhurried movements; learned intuition; thoughtless, meaningful gestures.
If there is only one true thing in this world, it is that John Watson will always know how Sherlock Holmes takes his tea.
The kettle: whistle, whistle, whistling.
John pours water into two cups, and his muscled shoulders shift beneath his shirt as steam rises up in a gentle tendril.
Sherlock feels choked and small. The distance between them is wide, so he closes it off.
When John turns around with a soft, tired smile, Sherlock is standing just a few centimetres away from him. And John (steady, steady, steadying John) must see the cold, shaky feeling in his core; the wild, sharp, residual fear.
“Hey, Sherlock,” he says. Voice a caress. He frowns, and sets their teas down. Wipes his palms on his pyjama trousers. “Hey. Come here.”
John opens his arms, and before Sherlock can even think, he’s tipping forward into them. His hands grip tightly at John’s waist as John’s arms envelop him; he lets John hold him, lets John stroke his spine in long, sweeping movements.
Sherlock rests his temple against the side of John’s head.
John is warm.
(John smells like them. Like Baker Street. Like home, and sleep, and closeness.)
“It’s ok,” John is murmuring into the side of Sherlock’s neck. “You’re ok. You’re safe here, with me, yeah?”
John is sunshine captured in human form.
“Not—almost not,” Sherlock chokes out. Words squeezed tight by faulty lungs. He rubs a circle against John’s hipbone.
John pulls back a little. Panic in Sherlock’s breast—then calm. Calm, and one warm palm against Sherlock’s cheek, and two steady, steady, steadying blue eyes against Sherlock’s own. John is fierce in this moment: a flare, burning bright. He tips his head forward until they are forehead-to-forehead.
He whispers Sherlock’s name. Sherlock feels the echoes of it against his lips.
They move in tandem across their kitchen and into Sherlock’s bedroom, not saying a single word. John peels back the comforter on Sherlock’s bed and ushers Sherlock into with a light touch at the base of his spine. He climbs in immediately after Sherlock, pulling the blankets over them and opening his arms once more.
There is darkness in this room, too, but Sherlock has his own light, now. Sherlock burrows into him, presses against him, presses under him, presses around him, on top of him.
“Sherlock,” John whispers again as Sherlock tucks his face against John’s clavicle and breathes. One of John’s hands strokes through Sherlock’s curls; sparks, trailing deliciously down his spine. “My brave, brilliant thing. You saved them. You did.”
I almost didn’t, Sherlock thinks. I almost lost them, and I almost let you down.
“You almost didn’t,” John agrees softly. Like he can hear Sherlock’s thoughts. “But you did. You did.”
He did.
There had been a case.
A long, dark, dangerous one—but it’s over now.
(Sherlock tucks his cheek against the velvety skin of John’s neck.)
(Sherlock closes his eyes.)
Now, there is only this.
John.
***
Warmth.
The gently buoyant rise and fall of something precious in Sherlock’s arms. The weight of dappled sunlight spread across his hands and face. Blankets, piled around his legs and torso, warmed by the sun and by the life in this bed.
Sherlock opens his eyes, and stares straight into a pair of navy ones.
“Morning,” John says slowly. The word is liquid in the scant space between their faces on Sherlock’s pillow, and accompanied by a soft smile. (A secret smile.) (A just-for-Sherlock smile.) “Sleep well?”
Sherlock hums contentedly in the back of his throat.
“Me, too,” John says. He’s still smiling.
John looks beautiful like this, all ruffled and sleepy-sweet with sleep. His cheeks are flushed, his eyes deep and warm, his hair is wild, and Sherlock never wants either of them to leave this bed.
Sherlock feels the skin of his cheeks stretching and realises that he’s smiling as well, that big, wide, uncontrollable one that he knows gives away everything. He doesn’t try to contain it. Not today.
“Good,” Sherlock whispers. Then, “Thank you.”
John strokes Sherlock’s wrist with his thumb, and only then does Sherlock notice that they’re holding hands. It must have happened sometime in the night, or in the blushing light of dawn. They must have reached for each other, and not let go.
The notion makes Sherlock’s stomach flutter.
“Nothing to thank me for, love,” John says in a deep, sleepy tone. Sherlock wonders if he knows what he’s saying.
Here, in the light of day, last night’s fears seem minimised. Not invisible—never invisible. But smaller. Farther away from Sherlock. Warded off by the fiercely luminous John Watson who’s holding him and smiling at him as though he hung the moon.
Sherlock stares at him.
Sherlock kisses him.
(Small. Soft. Hesitant.)
Nothing more than a brush of lips against lips at first, a chaste caress, an overzealous thank you.
As Sherlock draws away, their noses bump, and John cups the back of Sherlock’s head. One palm: just enough to keep Sherlock from escaping all the way across the pillow.
“Oh,” John breathes. His eyes are two fierce suns.
“Indeed.” Without breaking eye contact, Sherlock brings their joined hands to his lips. He kisses John’s knuckles, his heart thundering in his ears.
“Oh thank god,” John murmurs with a fervency that surprises Sherlock. He tugs a little on one of Sherlock’s curls, and this time their mouths meet in the middle.
A gentle exploration: the inside of Sherlock’s lips, the planes of his tongue, the edges of his teeth.
(Sherlock’s entire body shivers.)
The hand holding Sherlock’s fingers slides to Sherlock’s waist, up under his shirt, with feather-light touches.
(Small, delicate sips of kisses at the corners of Sherlock’s mouth.)
John kisses like he’s incandescently joyous. He kisses like he’s singing. He kisses like the sun.
(He kisses like he’s drowning, and absolutely happy to die.)
“John,” Sherlock breathes as their lips part. He’s clutching fistfuls of John’s shirt in his hands. He might be ascending.
“Sherlock,” John answers, tenderly stroking the nape of Sherlock’s neck. He’s smiling with his eyes; soft and deep. His voice is steady—his breathing is not—as he lifts the corner of his kiss-blushed mouth.
Sherlock doesn’t know what to say. Here is John—steady, steady, steadying John—lying beside him like it is the most natural thing in the word, and Sherlock’s thinks his heart will burst.
“John,” he says. “I—”
I thank you. I love you. My conductor of light.
John is kissing him, and it’s overwhelmingly beautiful, like the sun, like singing, like breathing.
(In. Out. In. Out.)
Now there is only this.
“I know.”