Chapter Text
The toned paper is oily to the touch. Cheap printing ink bleeds from the warmth of his fingers, leaving a grey smudge across the margin. The pictures are grainy; they blur into dots of black and white when John rubs at his eyes and then assemble themselves together again into two smiling faces: his and Sherlock’s.
John looks over his shoulder instinctively, but the flat is silent and dark: he is alone.
He untucks a creased newspaper corner and looks at it again, his hand clasped onto his hip. They are standing together in a street, Sherlock stepping onto the roadway, John paused at the curb. Their heights match, for once, and they are turned towards one another, both grown merry on an inaudible pleasantry. Sherlock’s shoulder lightly touches John’s sleeve: a transitory point of contact, muffled by fabric.
John’s hand, laid onto the page, half-hides his own face in the photo, but he doesn’t notice.
The headline is spilled across the page, yellow and bold, slinging mud at their faces; it screams scoop and filth and amour. John covers it and looks at the photo once more.
He breathes steadily, in and out, and thinks that Sherlock will be home soon. He ought to discard it. It won’t do for Sherlock to see their names tied together like this, blackened. What’s more, it won’t do for Sherlock to face this talk.
He’s not good with emotions, never has been. He won’t want to be thought of as a part of—this.
John raises his head up and crumples the tabloid, rolling it into an unsmooth ball. Out of its folds, Sherlock’s face is still looking at John in the photo, elated in their mutual merriment. He looks unreservedly happy, and John wavers, unclenching his hand. Perhaps, there is something to talk about?
He flattens it and leaves it on the coffee table, next to a Florence flask, for Sherlock to see.
***
His room is dim and tidy. He sits on the side of the bed which is closest to the stairway, waiting for the front door downstairs to creak open. It never does, and he doesn’t notice when he falls asleep.
The waking is forceful and sudden; it leaves him swallowing the staleness of the air, bewildered. The shreds of a nightmare slowly let go of his throat and lungs, but he cannot shake them off in full.
John lowers his feet onto the floor: the left one, first, and then other. He sits like this for some time, waiting for the tremor to pass, and then goes downwards, seeking Sherlock’s presence.
***
There is a puddle of blood in the sitting room on the floor, right next to the coffee table. Its edges have dried out and are brown, but a patch in the centre is yet wet and clammy. The moon shines on it with an iron gloss, and his mouth feels numb.
The window is wide open. The wind, gentle before, grows stronger, but it is suffocating: a hot puff of sultry air blown against his cheek, swelling out the curtains. The night has brought no cold, and yet midnight is drawing near.
John stands—for some time—still, watching the wetness slowly eaten out by the brown and the dry. Its progress is sure. Then he goes inside, stopping at the border cracked in flakes.
Sherlock is sitting in a chair further to his left. A laptop is balanced on his knees thoughtlessly, but he does not heed its balance, rustling at the keyboard keys. An open book is hung from the armrest, and half of his face is lit with a soft mechanical glow; the other, dark and sunken.
John passes a hand over his face and flips the light switch.
Sherlock blinks weak-sightedly and shades his eyes with the palm of his hand. The lamp crackles, incandescent, and darkness softly folds itself into the corners, giving room to light. Sherlock looks shed and worn; the hour is odd. Electric light splashes out into the street and dissipates into naught against the murk.
John takes his place in the chair to the right, smoothing his shirt and and placing both hands on his knees. They are silent for some time. The Sherlock speaks:
“An experiment,” stretching his hand towards the blood on the floor.
John nods and silence falls again, covering his mouth with its clammy fingers. Sherlock does not look at him, his eyes withdrawn and lost to the falling shadows.
“I’ve only just seen it, myself,” John says, turning his head to Sherlock and letting his hand grip the armrest of the chair. There is a dull ache in his shoulder, nibbling at the brim of his consciousness, but his knuckles are steady. He clenches them and looks, and then turns back to Sherlock.
“Seen it?”
Sherlock sets his laptop aside and sits up, his hands in the dressing gown pockets. He waves one and then flops it onto his lap.
John is quiet.
“Seen what?” Sherlock prompts, when no response is given.
John lets go off the armrest and draws himself forward, poring over his countenance. It is retreated; his gaze, stern and joyless. He doesn’t hold John’s for long.
***
John slumps back, and Sherlock puts his palms together, twisting his fingers. After a moment, he reaches down to shut the laptop lid and sits straight, as if going into a battle. There is no discomfort on his face, but it is in the tightness of his shoulders and the curve of his rigid back. Now he is looking at John. He doesn’t want to, but still, he is looking.
The hum of the laptop ceases, and then there’s silence.
John nods to himself.
“I take it you’ve seen it, too, then”.
Sherlock does not acquiesce, but pulls his knees up, clasping them with his hands. John notices just now that his feet are bare; rawboned, they dig awkwardly into the chair cushions.
His eyes steal over to the coffee table, where, crumpled, the newspaper lies, and then to John again. He looks slightly confused, as if not knowing how to answer.
When John speaks again, his tone is somewhat strained.
“Should we talk about it?”
Sherlock’s face is dour, dispassionate. John is not certain anymore about the artless joy he saw in the man’s face in the photo: now he seems incapable of smiling. He glances down at the front page, just to reassure himself.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Sherlock asks. He readjusts the watch on his wrist and then laces his fingers together again.
“Not particularly, no.”
John draws in a breath and looks at him steadily.
“Well, that’s that, then,” Sherlock declares, bending down to pick up the laptop. John coughs.
“But I think we ought to,” he continues, avoiding Sherlock’s gaze.
“Well, I don’t see the point. You don’t want to.”
Sherlock sits up straight again and looks at him strangely, his eyes unreadable and dark.
“Do you?” John asks, raising his head. He feels sure of the answer, and that’s why he is more and more surprised as seconds pass, and there is none.
John glances at Sherlock yet again. He looks tired, and the lines on both sides of his mouth seem to have grown deeper now—or it may just be the shadow.
The distance between the two chairs is too much now, and he cannot read Sherlock’s face in the dull yellow light.
He stands up—and tastes sand in his mouth. The floor swivels, and blood drips from it upwards; it spills over Sherlock’s bare feet and charts a map of ruddy paths onto them. The sun dries them off; it is torrid, relentless.
“John. John.”
He looks up and sees he’s on the floor. Sherlock’s face has lost its rigidity, for the first time in the evening, and instead of the sun there is the moon bathing in his pupils. He is kneeling in front of him, and on John’s cheek glows a ghost of his hand.
“Are you alright?”
He blinks the sand away from his eyelashes—it is not even there, stop it—and nods, but the metallic glint of blood is still there, at the edge of his vision; and then Sherlock slips the nightgown from his shoulders and spreads it over the floor, sopping it up. John’s fingers ease, and now he finds it in him to say:
“I am fine. Fine.”
Sherlock looks over him quickly and nods, too. And then, a soft smile steals over his face, raising the corners of his mouth and lighting up his eyes. It is there for a moment and then it’s gone, with both getting up, but John’s seen it—and now he thinks they may have a chance, after all.