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It started from such a little thing. John had opened the fridge to find the milk next to a container of some unidentifiable substance. He had closed the fridge, bent his head, and started to count to ten. Unfortunately, Sherlock entered the kitchen when John had only got to three.
“John?” Sherlock said, his inflection rising at the end. “Whatever are you doing?”
“What am I doing?” John turned to face his flatmate. “I believe the question should be, 'What are you doing with that green goo in the fridge!'” Even as his voice rose, John took a couple of steps toward Sherlock. He knew his anger was disproportionate to the situation, but he couldn’t stop himself. He had been feeling this eruption coming for quite some time, ever since Sherlock's return.
Sherlock found himself backing away from John under a barrage of words. He was determined to hold it together. He had this coming, after all. It had only been a matter of time until his friend's anger resurfaced. He had known it was coming. Still, Sherlock was surprised at how John's words and actions were affecting him. His heart rate had increased and his palms were sweaty.
Still advancing on Sherlock, John's words shifted away from the unidentified mess in the fridge to the Fall. “Even you, as emotionally stunted as you pretend to be, could have predicted how I would react to seeing your broken body on the pavement. Jesus?” He backed Sherlock up against the wall. “Or did you just not care?” Even as John continued his tirade, he found himself looking at Sherlock's lips. They were lush, and at the moment, Sherlock's bottom lip was caught in his teeth. God, but John had dreamt about those lips, kissing them, caressing them with his tongue.
Sherlock knew he was trembling but couldn’t seem to stop it. With every word John uttered, every stepp he had taken, the trembling had got worse. The room seemed to be getting dark around the edges and he started hearing voices out of the past. They were decidedly not nice voices. This had happened a few times, but never in the presence of John, at least not until now. Sherlock's knees started to give out just as John's angry rush of words came to a stop.
John suddenly realised that all he wanted to do was make Sherlock understand why the Fall had hurt him so badly. He needed the other man to know just how much he cared. A kiss would do just that. Besides, he simply wanted to kiss him. He went up on his toes to press his lips to Sherlock's when he noticed his friend was shaking and starting to... Cower. No, that couldn’t be right. “Sherlock? What's wrong?”
The words John had uttered reached Sherlock from a distance, but it was too late. He was too far gone. He could smell, hear, and see the dank basement where he had been held captive for so long. He could hear the words of his captors, who promised him nothing but pain and death.
John finally realised what was happening to Sherlock. At least, he suspected he knew. His friend was having some kind of flashback. The mere thought of that made John's stomach drop and caused shame to blossom on his cheeks. How could he have missed the signs? They had been there. Had he wanted to overlook them? He shook his head to clear it. Self-recriminations weren’t going to help Sherlock.
Very deliberately, John took a couple of steps away from Sherlock and raised his hands into the air. “It’s just me. It’s John. And I’m not going to hurt you.” His mind was searching for everything Ella had ever told him about flashbacks. He needed to ground Sherlock in the here and now. He spent the next several minutes talking to his friend, reassuring him of where he was and that John wouldn’t hurt him. Each word pained him, knowing that his actions had brought this about.
Eventually, Sherlock came back to himself. His surrounding came into focus, his shaking subsided, and most important of all, he recognised John. Mind still slightly befuddled, he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around John. He held on like he might never let go.
John was at a loss. He had no idea how to proceed except to reciprocate. He had expected Sherlock to rant, to deny anything was wrong and march his wobbly self to his bedroom to sulk. John had never imagined this. “I’m so, so sorry,” John said into Sherlock's shoulder. “I see now. It wasn’t all fun and games while you were away.” To John's surprise, Sherlock let out a small, quiet sob. “I shouldn’t have acted how I did. It was completely unjustified.
When John pulled his head back to look at Sherlock's face, he was caught off guard by his friend who kissed him firmly on the lips. “That’s why I jumped.”
John kissed him back. “And that's why I mourned.”
They weren’t okay yet, far from it, but they would get better together as time passed.