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Something is off.
John knows it the moment he steps through the door of 221B, arms laden with Tesco bags and shoulders hunched with the weight of the day. It’s too quiet in the flat. Too bloody still. The clinic had been a madhouse. Flu season is upon them, and John is sick of it. Sick of sick. But (hallelujah) he himself is not ill. The man currently occupying the couch, however—
“Sherlock,” John says firmly from the doorway, narrowing his eyes at his flatmate’s dormant form. If Sherlock Bloody Holmes has got flu, John isn’t sure he himself will survive it. No response, not even a twitch. He’s in his typical spot on the sofa, but curled on his side, facing the sitting room. His arms are wrapped protectively around his torso—a defensive position. Or perhaps an attempt at comforting himself. He looks oddly boyish, unsettlingly harmless like this, and John does not like it.
He doesn’t like it at all.
Stepping through the kitchen, John leaves the shopping bags on the table, winds his way through teetering stacks of books and papers and other everyday detritus to perch on the coffee table in front of the couch.
John has lived here at Baker Street for over a year now. Sherlock is very much a part of his life—the centre of it, some may say—and John has accepted that. He’s happy with it. Happier than he’d thought himself capable of, in what was shaping up to be the most glum and colourless season of his life. Content even, though it’s taken him longer than it should have to accept it. He’s stopped dating, finally. Stopped kidding himself. Whatever this is that he’s found with Sherlock isn’t something he’ll be trading for a charming wife and a white picket fence.
Or a sex life. Ah, well.
For all his eccentricities, Sherlock is fairly predictable in his demeanor. John knows what the man looks like when he’s deep in the halls of his mind palace. Knows when he’s starving and simply unwilling to admit it, when a black mood is upon him and he’s lost to himself and to everyone else. Knows how he looks in sleep. But this is new.
“Sherlock,” John tries again, quietly, leaning forward a bit to study the lines of his face: the pinched brow, the normally expressive lips pressed into an unhappy line. Slow, shallow breaths and a thin layer of sweat coating his forehead. He’s in pain, clearly. John feels his heart rate kick up a notch at the realization, immediately scanning for injuries. He gently takes one of Sherlock’s narrow wrists in his hand and pries his arm away from his body. Sherlock doesn’t fight him at all.
No sign of a wound, no sign of anything that would cause his abrasive, lippy best mate to retreat so thoroughly into his shell. Sherlock always asks John for assistance when he needs it, even on those occasions when he could easily just help himself. He never hesitates to pester John relentlessly at the first sign of injury or mild discomfort (or just an inconveniently placed mobile that he’s too lazy to retrieve), so what, then, is this?
John opts for a direct approach.
“Hey,” He says, voice hushed but close, resting a tentative hand on Sherlock’s bicep. “What is this, Sherlock?” He stirs slightly under the heat of John’s palm. John watches, waits for him to surface. He wants to brush the sweaty curls from his forehead, to lie down beside him and stroke his back, synchronize their breathing, fold him into his arms and keep him. John wants to do these things all the time. He wants to do them even when Sherlock isn’t clearly hurting.
He doesn’t. He remains perched on the table, an acceptable distance between two close friends.
“John,” Sherlock mumbles. It isn’t a question and he doesn’t open his eyes to confirm that it is indeed John fretting at his bedside. “Migraine,” He breathes out.
Oh.
Well that’s—
“You’ve had migraines before?”
“Mm.”
“What do you take for them?”
“Nothing.”
John ponders this for a moment. Sherlock generally accepts whatever feeble dose of Paracetamol John allows him for whatever aches he’s acquired from an unsuccessful experiment or errant criminal. Obviously, John doesn’t keep anything stronger in the flat. Evidently, Sherlock isn’t hoarding any triptans or he’d have taken them.
“Medication doesn’t work for you, then?” Sherlock only inhales deeply, wincing slightly as his body shifts. It takes every bit of will John’s got not to reach out.
If Sherlock had a solution for this, he wouldn’t be lying here trying to hold himself together. John has encountered plenty of patients with migraines over the years. Some find a medication that works for them, some never do. Of course Sherlock’s bloody brain would reject any attempt at eradicating this painful intrusion. Everything is always just a bit more complicated than it needs to be, with him.
But John has some ideas.
He rises, shuffling toward the windows and beginning to unceremoniously yank the drapes closed. The sun is beginning to set, but there’s still plenty of late-afternoon light spilling into the room. Once the heavy fabric is secured, he glances around the sitting room, satisfied with the relative darkness but anticipating the chill that’ll be seeping in soon. He builds a fire, hoping that the smell of it doesn’t send Sherlock over the edge. When he gets no reaction whatsoever, he counts it as a win.
“Are you able to sleep?” John has crouched down beside Sherlock now, listening to his pained breathing and wondering at his own increasing concern. Lots of people get migraines. He’s fine. It’s fine. But from the absolute bloody start, John’s instincts have screamed to protect this man at all costs. To comfort him in whatever way he’ll accept. To be there.
“No, John,” He says quietly. No attempt at venom. No obviously tacked on at the end.
John hesitates.
“I’m going to try something,” He says finally, keeping his voice low as he rises slowly to sit at the edge of the sofa. Sherlock’s body immediately inches forward to curl around his side. Oh, hell. He knows bloody well that Sherlock, in this diminished state, is just drawn to the warmth that his proximity provides, but John’s heart squeezes painfully nevertheless. He finally gives in to instinct and brushes a hand over the man’s forehead, pushing sweat-soaked curls out of his eyes. “Tell me to fuck off if this isn’t helpful, yeah?” No response, but John hadn’t expected one. He’s well aware that Sherlock will make it known the moment his presence is no longer wanted.
Bracing himself for the inevitable annoyed dismissal, John leans in cautiously, sliding his right hand around the back of Sherlock’s neck and tentatively pressing the pads of two fingers into the dip at the base of his skull. Sherlock inhales suddenly, clearly surprised at the contact, wincing again as he jerks his head forward slightly. John waits, keeping his fingers held firmly against what he knows to be a pressure point for headache relief. A method (much like prescription drugs) that does not work for everyone. He’s not expecting much. Sherlock doesn’t especially like to be touched by anyone, from what John has observed over the last year—though he tolerates it from John. They’ve been fairly tactile with each other from the start, though this is certainly crossing some sort of line.
John could not care less. He’s got to try.
Sherlock lets out a shaky exhale, leaning back against the cushions once more, with John's fingers now trapped beneath his head. The angle is more than a bit awkward, so John shifts slightly, turning fully on the sofa so he’s sideways, facing Sherlock, his right thigh pressed warmly against the man’s side. He stares down at Sherlock’s tightly clamped eyelids, lips still pressed into an uncomfortable line. Perhaps this isn’t helping. Perhaps there’s little hope of providing any relief at all. But the man beneath him has shown no sign of protest at John’s hovering presence, so there must be some comfort to be found in the contact.
John wishes more than anything that Sherlock would allow himself to find comfort in him.
Continuing the pressure at the base of his skull, John moves his thumb in slow circles against Sherlock’s temple, gradually increasing the pressure there as well. His left hand has now abandoned all sense of self-preservation, fingers combing gently through sweat-damp curls, nails scraping lightly against his scalp. Sherlock hasn't moved an inch, lying stock-still under John’s ministrations, breath still shallow and eyes still shut. But the tension seems to be slowly seeping from his body. At least a bit. John can feel it as Sherlock adjusts to these unfamiliar touches, as he allows himself to accept what John has to give.
At least a bit of it.
Ceasing his combing of damp curls, John moves the thumb of his left hand to the crease between Sherlock’s brows. Another known pressure point. He waits for Sherlock’s pained scowl to relax a bit under the pad of his thumb, then presses firmly, moving in slow, tiny circles. His fingers move to do the same against the man’s other temple, both hands deftly working in unison to create what is likely an overwhelming distraction for the great brain beneath them, if nothing else.
Sherlock sighs, still unmoving, still basically unresponsive. John continues, smiling slightly down at him as he begins to doze and trusting that stillness is the best he can hope for—that in some small way this experiment has been a success.
✦
Sherlock wakes gradually, feeling more than a bit disoriented—and warm. Very warm. Safe. Cosy. Well-rested.
Odd.
A dull ache remains within the walls of his traitorous bloody head, but the piercing, all-consuming agony of last night has left him entirely. It’s very early morning, he can sense it without even lifting his eyelids. He ponders that simple fact, feeling his brow furrow in a moment of rare confusion. When was the last time he’d slept through the night? When was the last time he’d slept through a migraine? He’s certain that he never has. The few times a year he’s consumed by them generally result in an intolerable twelve hours of debilitating pain and an even more maddening sense of desperation and inefficacy.
And why is he so bloody warm? The fire’s long dead, he can smell the lingering, comforting scent of it in the chilly air, his awareness beginning to sharpen (finally), always a bit bloody sluggish after—after. Oh. Memories of last night flood his slowly awakening, useless bloody brain, unbidden, swamping his suddenly alert senses with every ounce of the data that he should have been well aware of by now.
John. John is here. Right here. He's been right here. All night. All morning. Closer than Sherlock had ever dared to hope for. He is pressed against Sherlock’s side from his gently thudding chest to his warm socked toes. His head is pillowed on Sherlock’s shoulder, the fingers of his right hand tangled in the curls at the back of his head, where they’d been numbing Sherlock’s aching mind, overwhelming him in a way he hadn’t known was possible and allowing him to sleep through the worst of it for the first time in his life.
At some point John must have lain down beside him, tired but unwilling to release the hold he’d had on Sherlock’s seemingly immutable misery. But he had muted it, almost entirely. Reduced it to a manageable thud so that Sherlock could slip under, could surrender, could sleep.
Now John breathes quietly beside him, his face so close, soft breath on Sherlock’s neck causing an overwhelming swell of fondness to course through him. Sherlock cracks an eye open, turns his head just so. John is asleep, almost certainly, and Sherlock's mind goes into overdrive trying to plot how to keep him that way, keep him here, like this, for as long as he possibly can.
He lies still. Still and silent as he can manage, just as he had done last night when John had begun to touch him— to touch him! —to press into his skull and his temples and his brow with deft fingers, all at once—so carefully and effectively. With such purpose. Even through the haze of pain, Sherlock had become instantly terrified that if he showed any outward sign of anything, John might stop. That he might move away or leave entirely.
Because John doesn’t touch him, not really. They’ll pull each other out of harm’s way in an adrenaline fuelled moment of chase, or bump shoulders while walking, while laughing and losing themselves in whatever private and usually inappropriate joke they’re sharing. A hand on a shoulder while passing, every now and then. But it isn’t much. It isn’t enough, anymore. And Sherlock hasn’t been able to parse whether John doesn’t welcome his touch or whether John believes that Sherlock isn’t interested in any sort of actual physical contact. It is true that he’s rather given that impression in the past, much to his current dismay.
He was quick to dismiss John’s gentle probing into his nonexistent love life when they’d first met. He’d told him flat out that he didn’t partake in such things, that it was a ridiculous waste of time. He’d told him in their first week as flatmates that he doesn’t believe in sentiment, doesn’t need it, doesn’t seek it out. And that was true, at the time.
How could he have known, then, what he would find in John?
John inhales deeply, chest expanding against Sherlock’s side, fingers slowly untangling from his curls and sliding down to cup the side of his neck instead. Sherlock shivers, certain that his duplicitous heart is about to shatter the walls of his brittle bloody chest. Ridiculous. He’s allowing his mind to drift into the realm of fanciful metaphor. This clearly cannot go on.
John seems to have managed all this movement in sleep, as his breathing remains deep and even, heart rate still steady and eyes still closed.
Sherlock breathes slowly through his nose, wills his heart to calm, attempts to quiet his mind a bit—to tamp down the swell of anxiety and let instinct float to the forefront. This is fine. This is good. This is comfortable, even, if he’d just let it be. It’s what he wants—has wanted—for ages. It’s the closeness he’s craved, and it was John who’d initiated it, even if he is now quite asleep.
Sherlock wants to turn his body, to curl into John, to pull him close, closer. To bury his face in the dip of his neck and breathe and breathe.
He does one of those things.
Carefully, gradually, Sherlock shifts, rolls onto his side toward John until they’re facing one another, until he can drape an arm loosely around John’s waist, palm resting lightly against his jumper-clad back. John moves with him, adjusts automatically until he’s burrowed into Sherlock, face pressed into his chest, nose coming to rest against one sharp collarbone. He exhales slowly, a contented sound. Comfortable, Sherlock hopes.
Sherlock closes his eyes, tries to suppress his doubt about this, about throwing all his cards on the table, about making the affection he’s shuttered for all this time so painfully clear. He cannot help but accept what John is giving him, though, even if it’s just the once. So he sets the doubt aside for a moment and allows himself to stroke slowly up and down John’s back. The notches of his spine are still vaguely evident beneath the layers of cotton and wool, and the firm muscle that makes up John’s strong, compact body seems to further dissolve under Sherlock’s sweeping touch.
Time passes. Sherlock loses track as he drifts in and out, the last lingering remnants of the migraine gradually dissipating. John’s hand still rests warmly against his neck, steady puffs of breath still felt against the thin fabric of the t-shirt Sherlock had spent the night sweating through. John doesn’t seem to mind. Sherlock spends each quiet moment committing this to memory—every point of contact between them, every swoop of his heart when John’s fingers knead gently into the skin of his neck, their mingled scents, the light beginning to slink through the tightly closed curtains. All of it. He won’t forget this. Not ever.
“Why can’t we have this?” He finds himself whispering—barely audible but surprisingly fierce, pleading—against the crown of John’s head. His lips brush against soft golden hair, his grip tightens slightly on John’s jumper, arm instinctively pulling him a bit closer to his chest.
He feels John twist a bit in the circle of his arms, sudden panic overtaking him when it becomes painfully clear that John is quite awake. Sherlock holds his breath, internally berating himself for slipping, for letting those words out, for letting this happen at all. Stupid. Stupid.
Everything is quiet for a moment. Too quiet. Much too bloody quiet. Eventually, John’s hand disappears from his neck—instantly leaving him feeling cold, regretful, strange. Sherlock wants to pull away, now, to flee, escape the onslaught of rejection that’s sure to come. Before he can force his limbs to do so, however, John’s palm lands warmly against his cheek instead, the pad of his thumb tracing the sensitive skin beneath one of Sherlock’s tightly closed eyes.
Sherlock can feel John’s boundless blue gaze on him, can feel the jut of his chin pressed against his sternum as John peers up at his inscrutable face. He can feel the ceaseless sweep of John’s thumb against his skin, the wild, flailing thud of his own heart behind his ribs, the line of warmth that remains, still—cloaking him, keeping him here. Right here.
“Sherlock,” John says quietly, moving impossibly closer, tangling their legs together easily, pressing a foot against Sherlock’s calf and pushing his fingers once again into a now riotous shock of curls. Sherlock sighs, a small sound escaping the back of his throat as fingernails drag gently against his scalp. John frees his left hand from where it had been tucked up between their chests, presses it flat against Sherlock’s roaring heart instead.
John’s lips are pressed—unhesitating, soft but sure—against the underside of Sherlock’s jaw when he finally speaks again. “We can.”