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This isn’t the first time John has come home to find Sherlock lying like a corpse on their sitting room floor. The flat is unsettlingly dark, but a few stray curls are visible at one end of their dinged-up, overflowing coffee table and two long legs poke out the other end.
It is the first time, however, that John joins him. It’s the first time John acknowledges the disquieting atmosphere in their normally cosy flat and allows his legs to carry him across the room without overthinking it. He drops down to the battered and worn carpet Sherlock has claimed as his current resting place and stretches out, shoulder to shoulder, beside him.
“It went well,” Sherlock rumbles, never opening his eyes, never otherwise acknowledging John’s sudden presence at his side. There’s a hint of resigned bitterness in his tone, making it brittle and a bit startling. John stares at him, bemused, drinking him in, stealing this opportunity to bask in the beginnings of an unprecedented transparency that’s been developing between them. They’ve had a few close calls in the year they’ve known one another, most of them occurring in the last month or so. A few terrible reminders that all this could be stolen from them before they even realize what’s happened.
Reminders that this great game they’ve been playing could have real consequences.
“It was fine,” It was shit—a painfully dull dinner and a handshake goodbye—but John doesn’t bother to correct Sherlock when he incorrectly deduces the outcomes of John’s dates. It’s part of their routine, he supposes, to pretend he’s finding some level of fulfillment with the carousel of women he spends his evenings trying to woo.
His heart isn’t in it. His heart is lying here beside him on their sitting room floor.
He stares up at a water stain on the ceiling, imagines himself up there looking down at the two of them, lying close like this, not speaking, not acknowledging the warmth that begs to flow between them, the fact that this one point of contact—shoulder to shoulder—isn’t really enough.
For John, at least, it isn’t enough.
In his mind’s eye they don’t look like lovers. They don’t look like flatmates or colleagues or two grown men lying on their sitting room floor either, despite the reality of it all. They look like children, maybe—confused but aloof—two humans with an indefinable relationship, who don’t much mind the perceptions of others anymore. They look like two people whose fates have been woven together rather quickly and quite irreversibly through many shared traumas and some sort of unnamable bond.
“John,” Sherlock begins, then clamps his mouth shut, squirming restlessly against their aged carpet, inching a bit closer, perhaps unintentionally, their arms now pressed together from elbow to shoulder. John looks at him again. Sherlock’s eyes are still closed, head tilted slightly toward him. A line has appeared between his brows. There is a hum of something potentially momentous building between them now. John swallows.
“Say it,” He urges, tone hushed and careful.
Sherlock turns his head, meets John’s eyes at last, two pale grey rings around unexpectedly dark pupils. John’s breath catches in his throat. He waits. Counts the seconds up to fourteen before Sherlock finally speaks.
“What if there were only me?” Sherlock breathes, a warm puff of breath caressing John’s cheeks, their noses only inches apart, John’s heart beating a bold rhythm against his breastbone. “No more looking for—no more—just—us?”
John exhales, tries to hold himself together. His eyes search Sherlock’s, looking for anything beyond the naked hope and doubt and terribly honest affection on full display. John has only caught glimpses of it before. He’s seen flashes of it, in Sherlock’s less guarded moments, only to doubt it all completely once it’s been carefully shuttered away.
But Sherlock is not hiding now.
“You’re serious,” John whispers.
“Yes,” Sherlock’s fingers find his where they rest on the floor between them. He cautiously covers John’s hand with his own.
John swallows thickly, turns his palm up and winds their fingers together. Sherlock’s skin is a warm, solid, comforting presence. Real. An anchor. John squeezes, exhales shakily.
“If I’d known,” John begins, holding Sherlock’s hand even tighter, eyes returning to the water stained ceiling while his mind whirls through their past year together—his parade of failed dates and constant uncertainty about Sherlock’s interest in anyone, least of all him. The building intimacy between them that never went beyond the platonic, despite how it made his stomach twist and his heart soar. The pining and desperation and the moments of hopelessness and confusion and then near-certainty—but then, once again, doubt. “I wouldn’t have—I—“
“John,” Sherlock hasn’t looked away. John lets his head fall to the side once more, doesn’t allow himself to break when their eyes lock and hold. “You know now.”
Maybe it’s all been building up to this moment in time, lying on the floor side by side, each (finally!) seeing through the veil they’d pulled shut between them the very first night they met.
Sherlock kisses him.
He moves forward slowly, eliminating the last few inches of space that separate them, touching John’s lips softly with his own.
John turns to liquid against him; it only takes a single moment and he’s lost. The pained, relieved sound that escapes from the back of his throat is nothing compared to the trembling mess that Sherlock has become. Without consciously deciding to do so, they’ve pulled each other in—breaths and bodies—chest to chest and twining limbs. Sherlock holds John's face in his hands in a way that says it all, really. He meets John’s lips again and again, delving in and dragging to the surface every profound emotion John has never quite been able to suppress.
“I was waiting for you,” He breathes, after what feels like an age, against Sherlock’s swollen lips. His chest rises and falls rapidly. His palm strokes slowly down Sherlock’s bony spine. “I never thought—I guess I needed to hear it from you.”
“I know,” Sherlock whispers simply, but John can hear the underlying uncertainty, the very real fear of destroying everything they have with one misguided step. He recognizes it because he feels it too.
John tucks Sherlock’s head beneath his own chin, smiles when he immediately burrows into the dip of John’s neck, breathing him in. He tightens his grip, wraps his arms around the man. He kisses his temples, rubs soothing circles across his back like it’s second nature—like they were always meant to interact in this way. Gently. Reverently.
It’s funny, or perhaps not funny at all, how right it feels to hold Sherlock in his arms.
“I’m sorry I never said,” Sherlock mumbles against John’s skin, sending an irrepressible swell of affection bubbling up through his chest. John sighs, presses his mouth firmly against the crown of Sherlock’s head.
“Doesn’t matter,” He whispers, letting one hand come to rest protectively on the back of Sherlock’s neck. His fingers knead into the tense muscle beneath them, feeling Sherlock melt further into him, feeling him sigh contentedly, feeling his body pressed warmly against John’s own. He loves him. God, he loves him. “We know now.”