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The night before Sherlock Fell, he and John made love for the first time. For the only time. Whenever Sherlock remembered that word - only - he wants to kick himself, and savagely. They'd wasted so much time...
No, not really, Sherlock has to admit to himself in the wretched dark, quiet damp of the small cell. He had wasted so much time.
John's sheer lack of dates after Jeanette - and Irene's words regarding that point - indicated very clearly that John was open to the idea of being with Sherlock. Sherlock had wanted it - ached for it - for so, so long, thinking it would never, ever happen that he had no idea what to do with the opportunity when it finally presented itself. And the opportunity had presented itself not at all when or where Sherlock had expected it: standing there in a lab at St Bart's, having just texted his dangerous nemesis to come and meet him on a rooftop for a fall.
Tucking his phone back into the pocket of his suit jacket, Sherlock had turned back around to find John looking straight at him. John has that look on his face which Sherlock finds so irresistible…and so dangerous. It’s that look that tells Sherlock that, for all his intellect and cleverness, John can see right through him.
"Sherlock?"
"John," Sherlock replied, struggling to keep the tremor from his voice.
John had taken Sherlock's face in his hands and looked at him, clear in the eyes, in a way no one else ever had. It's not that Mummy and Dad and even Mycroft didn't look at Sherlock and see who he truly was. (Of course they did.)
But John saw it, too. John knew all of Sherlock's quirks and flaws and unpleasant traits, yet he still stayed at his side, loving him.
Wanting him.
Sherlock made no secret that he didn't understand romantic and sexual love, for the most part. He knew it was nowt but a chemical defect. A reaction in his brain and adrenal systems.
And yet, Sherlock knew that he loved John. That he desired John. In a way he had never wanted anyone else.
Sherlock wanted to touch John, to kiss and caress him, to lie down with John and become one with him to the greatest extent that two human beings could be.
They had tumbled into one of the small offices the night duty medical staff used to grab a few hours' kip when the ward was quiet. Sherlock had wished they could be back at Baker Street, so they could enjoy each other in their own rooms and beds.
But this was all they had. A king single bed with hospital corners and an uncertain future. Sherlock still wasn't sure he would escape from this alive and unharmed. Even if he did survive, Sherlock wasn’t sure how…this…would change his relationship with John. Whether it would strengthen their bond.
Or whether it would destroy it. Whether Sherlock would lose the thing most precious to him in the world, and all for a few hours of physical pleasure with the man he would do anything for.
And it was true: Sherlock would do anything for John.
Sherlock had lain on his back for John, naked, his legs parted, his eyes wide, his cock hard and aching and leaking with desire for his friend. Sherlock had moaned John's name over and over, mindlessly, as John had slowly taken him apart with his fingers and hands and mouth and tongue, as John had whispered Sherlock's name like a benediction, had called him beautiful and gorgeous and brilliant, had told him he loved him, so, so, so very much...
Sherlock had taken John inside his body, his mind, his heart...he'd wrapped his legs around John's backside and his arms around John's back and clung to him like John was the only thing holding Sherlock to the earth.
Sherlock had babbled in John's ear, in a way that - with anyone other than John, would have horrified Sherlock - and spilled all his emotions and feelings and love, that he'd had for so long, had been afraid of for so long...
"I love you...oh, God, John...I love you, so much, so much...you have no idea..."
Those hours they had together were some of the most precious of Sherlock’s life. He stowed them, locked them down, stored them securely in his mind palace. Somewhere only he could reach...somewhere he could call on them during many lonely days and nights to follow.
But, still. It worried Sherlock: the way that this made him feel, how it affected him. He wasn’t sure if it had strengthened - or weakened - him, especially when, the next morning, Sherlock had to work frighteningly hard to restore his mask. He had looked at John's sleeping face and had come within a hair's breadth of blurting out everything to John.
But he couldn't. Not until he knew John was safe.
Telling John about the plan - and any or all of its variations - would do nothing but endanger John, Mrs Hudson, and Lestrade. Sherlock knew it would hurt John, to think he had witnessed Sherlock’s death. But it wouldn’t kill John.
Moriarty’s assassins would.
But Sherlock's mask had been perhaps too good, too stiff. He hadn't been at all surprised when John exploded and called him a machine.
Sherlock did wonder why the exact reaction he had wanted - no, needed - to ensure John's safety during this showdown, still stung so much.
And, in the more than two years he had to think about it before he saw John again, Sherlock still couldn’t come up with an answer that he could accept. Of course, he knows what the answer is, deep in his bones: he loves John, desperately and completely, in a way which almost completely consumes him.
And he has no idea whatsoever as to how to deal with it.
John dreams of Sherlock. Constantly. Almost every night. Banal things, like squabbling over whose turn it is to clean the shower, or pick the milk up. Exciting things, like chasing criminals through London's narrow laneways or some abandoned warehouse in the Midlands, or some ancient Manor house out in the country.
Their last night together, flashes of Sherlock's dark hair and pale skin and lustrous eyes, that obscene mouth uttering words John never thought he'd ever hear...
But it's Sherlock's last words that run round and round and round in John's head, round and round. All day. For months and months and months. He can't shake them.
"It's a trick. Just a magic trick."
John doesn't want to give himself false hope. He's never felt so stupid in his life.
But while he was certainly gifted when it came to offending people, Sherlock didn't tend to speak carelessly when it counted.
John was fairly sure nothing about Sherlock's last words to him were careless or not thought through. And Sherlock had switched from past tense, to present tense.
"It's a trick. Just a magic trick."
The more he thinks about it, the more John can't let it go.
John sees his last few patients, and then goes to see Molly before he can think better of it.
He needs answers.
Sherlock is half-dead when Mycroft is finally able to pull him from the clutches of the Serbians, his hair long and matted, his back bleeding freely, gouged with deep wounds
Mycroft is thankful there are no signs of sexual assault, but knows that was pure luck: had Sherlock been there any longer, Mycroft is fairly sure that luck would have run out.
Putting Sherlock back together physically is going to be difficult enough, but it quickly becomes clear that the emotional and mental damage is likely far worse: Sherlock is almost completely unresponsive but also appears lost in a world of his own creation, that only he can see.
It does not surprise Mycroft that one of the few words of Sherlock’s that he can actually make out is ‘John’.
Mycroft’s lips are pressed into a thin line as Sherlock is loaded onto the small medical plane that will take both of them back to British soil.
He knows what he has to do. Whom he has to retrieve.
He just has no idea how to do it.
It wasn’t that Mycroft hadn’t seen John Watson since Sherlock…left. Indeed, they had seen each other fairly frequently...although that sometimes involved Mycroft watching John from a distance. Mycroft wasn't self-absorbed enough to assume that he always went undetected. Mycroft has kept an eye on Doctor Watson during Sherlock's absence; for the first six months, Mycroft had been deeply concerned that the good doctor may have been about to take his own life.
When Sherlock first ‘died’ and John was too distraught to get out of bed, Mycroft made it his business to ensure that John’s bills continued to be paid. He even had a quiet word with a friend of a friend of a colleague of an associate who owed Mycroft a favour (or several) and got the medical practice to keep John’s job open for him on special bereavement leave for as long as John should require it.
Mycroft knew it was dire indeed when John didn’t even try to protest against Mycroft’s interference, but rather, seemed grateful for it, as it was one thing he didn’t have to worry about.
Sherlock has been…gone...for two years, one month, two weeks and seventeen days when John sees the sleek, familiar black car pull up at the curb outside the doctors’ surgery. Despite his ravenous hunger and the sandwich in his hand, John freezes and doesn’t move for a full twelve seconds.
The window rolls down and John finds himself eye-to-eye with Mycroft Holmes.
It doesn’t matter that John has pictured this moment since Sherlock’s burial, that he has played out this moment in the privacy of his own head tens of thousands of times. He says nothing, and the two men stare at each other in complete silence for several moments.
“I thought you hated legwork,” John says to Mycroft. He is pleased that his voice sounds so steady because, deep in his gut, John knows that Mycroft can only be here to deliver one of two possible pieces of news: Sherlock is alive, or Sherlock is really dead this time.
Mycroft actually surprises John: he smiles, however thinly, in reply. "Is it possible for you to take the rest of the afternoon off after your lunch break, Doctor Watson? I don't wish to intrude upon your schedule of healing the sick, but a good friend of ours requires your expert care and attention."
John's face flickers through several different states with frightening speed in the following twenty seconds, before resting on a quiet, but dangerous and barely-restrained, fury. If Mycroft were not used to being stared down by highly-trained, highly-skilled and highly-dangerous assassins, secret agents and the like, the look in John's eyes would have terrified him. John sees it, despite Mycroft’s carefully-schooled features, but takes little pleasure in it.
"Sherlock," John says.
It isn't a question, and Mycroft merely nods.
"Wait here," John snaps. "I'll tell the office I need to take some time off."
Five minutes later, John gets in the car.
He doesn't look at Mycroft. Mycroft finds himself glad of it. He isn't sure he would like the weight of the fury and betrayal in John's eyes resting on him.
Mycroft had quite enough of that when John confronted Mycroft about Moriarty's "source of information" about Sherlock.
“Where is he?” John demands finally.
“St Barts.”
John nods. He's alive! The relief almost flattens him. “Is Molly caring for him?”
“Yes, Dr Hooper is personally overseeing his care.”
John finds himself smiling slightly at the proper use of Molly’s job title. “Good,” he says, and falls silent.
Mycroft knows that he needs to warn John of the sight which awaits him. But what can he say? That Sherlock is not the man who left Britain more than two years prior. That he is gaunt to the point of almost-starvation, that his hair, though long, has thinned with poor nutrition, that there is barely an inch of him which is not bruised or broken or scarred. It is also clear that Sherlock has disappeared deep into his Mind Palace in order to survive, and is clearly delirious and confused; in his few moments of wakefulness before arriving at Barts, Sherlock either thought that John was already at his side, like some sort of silent protector (or, worryingly, heckler), or that he seems to think John is married to a woman who used to be some sort of super-spy assassin, and that John's reaction to seeing Sherlock alive would be to beat him.
Mycroft isn't sure what to make of any of that.
Or, indeed, what to make of the real John, who - pale and thin himself - took one look at Sherlock’s shattered form lying in that hospital bed and immediately sits at his bedside, gripping his hand between his own.
"Sherlock..." John whispers. "Sherlock, I hope you can hear me. It's me. It's John. I'm here. You're safe now. You can wake up, all right? You're safe."
And, for hours and days and weeks, John keeps talking to Sherlock, quietly begging him to come back to the land of the living.
Looking at John look at Sherlock, Mycroft knows that - if Sherlock wakes up - it will be when, not if, the good doctor and his brother will make it official.
Mycroft knows Sherlock is in love with John, just as he knows John is in love with Sherlock. Mycroft knows Sherlock carries those awful scars on his back for John, and that John will weep over them. But that together, they will heal.
But that, for any of that to happen, Sherlock has to wake up first.
When Sherlock finally wakes, all he can do is stare at John, and cup his face in his hands, and cry. Sherlock clings to John like a limpet, his face buried in John's chest, as if he is terrified John will disappear the moment Sherlock lets go of him. Mycroft also suspects John's presence is the only thing which is keeping Sherlock from flying apart.
"I thought you hated me," Sherlock sobs to John. "For what I did."
"Why would I hate you?" John laughs, tearily, carding his fingers through Sherlock's curls, which now tumble to his shoulders. "You only threw yourself off a fucking rooftop to save my life. Why would I hate you?"
Mycroft knows that he has hidden his surprise poorly, but that no one else in the room is likely to notice...or care.
If Sherlock is surprised, he doesn't bother to show it on his still-bruised face.
Sherlock's voice floats back to Mycrfot's memory, from after Sherlock fell. "Brother, John Watson is cleverer than he gives himself credit for."
Mycroft has to agree.
They let Sherlock out of the hospital purely because John is a doctor and has promised to be Sherlock’s caretaker.
John helps Sherlock up the stairs to Baker Street - practically carrying him, his stomach sinking when he sees again just how thin Sherlock actually is - and puts him to bed.
John is about to turn around and leave the bedroom when Sherlock whimpers, softly.
"Sherlock?" John asks, kneeling immediately at Sherlock's side. "Are you all right?"
Sherlock reaches his hand out, his long, pale fingers wrapping around John's hand. "Please stay?"
John nods. "All right."
He is about to pull a chair up beside the bed when Sherlock's grip tightens, leaving John surprised by its sudden strength.
"Sherlock?"
"Please...lie here with me?"
John doesn't say anything; he knows how much such a request who have cost Sherlock to make...well, the old Sherlock, anyway. So John just toes off his slippers, and strips down to his t-shirt, boxers and socks, and climbs into bed next to Sherlock. Sherlock immediately winds himself around John like a limpet, burying his face in John's chest.
"I used to see you there with me sometimes," Sherlock whispers.
"Yeah?" John replies.
He can feel John nod into his chest. "They weren't...they weren't hurting you." To John's surprise, Sherlock laughs then, a raspy, hollow shadow of its former self. "They couldn't see you, of course. The rational part of me knew you weren't really there, and was grateful for it. Because it meant you were safe."
John can't help but tighten his grip on Sherlock at that.
"But you were there," Sherlock whispers. "I could hear your voice...it made me feel better. And also knowing that you weren't really there. That you were here. Far from danger. That you were safe."
"We're both safe now, Sherlock," John says. "Rest. I'll be right here when you wake up."