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It’s a rare thing that Sherlock is beaten - just so, bruise bearing fists to the sternum, all black and hot over his face, a trickle of delicate dark pooling in the shell of his ear - but he is, this time. And no, he can barely move when they’re done, yet he will live, and John still manages to grip his arm tightly shaking, somehow guides him away from the brightly open doors of an ambulance and into a cab; the bitter London air tainted with the alcoholic breath of its previous passengers, the hush hush of his own pulse whispering against the pads of John’s fingers, squeezing his wrist, now.
Sherlock does not want to escape this moment, he finds, with John’s sure movements turning into frantic ones as they cross the threshold (because Baker Street is a different place, another universe and realm and space of joyful impossibility, and they are them here, no one else). He’s quite content on some hyper real level - though that may be partly down to the adrenaline and yes, a fair bit of shock, coursing through his veins - to let this man, this doctor and this enigma, set him down on a chair and unbutton his shirt and lay hands on him.
Lay, John is laying hands on him. Placing them on Sherlock’s skin like he is an un-primed canvas, not yet ready for more, unable to handle the weight of anything else, too absorbent. John is being too careful in his mapping of Sherlock’s wounds, and though Sherlock thinks that he might, actually, he says -
“I won’t break”
John looks at him because that’s what they do, in these situations - in all - they look and take each other wordlessly; and how Sherlock functioned before this, before these eyes meeting his own, he does not know.
Sometimes though, John only sees what he wants to, and so he fetches some water and some paper towel that Sherlock didn’t even know existed outside the aisle in Tesco that he has passed once or twice, sets it all down on the table neat and in line, produces a first aid kit - John is the first aid kit, he is Sherlock’s aid - and performs like Sherlock is simply a patient, albeit a patient with shallow knife wounds and the imprint of a boot, probably, on his ribs.
And then again no, not just that -
There are wrinkles ghosting above John’s eyebrows, folds of skin and unsaid words, a failed attempt to detach himself. Maybe a few months ago Sherlock would have found that hard to accept - to understand is easy, he is built to understand (John cares for you and when people care for other people it’s like they don’t have control anymore, everything is taken and flipped and your stomach flips when things go wrong, get hurt) but right now, after all these seconds with John, each syllable that Sherlock has saved, he accepts the wrinkles on John’s brow, feels his own, strangely mirroring.
“I did solve the case, though”
He offers, closes his eyes as John digs his fingers a little too hard into a purple green bruise, shivers and feels warm again. An excuse, explanation, apology - I’m sorry you’re hurt because I got hurt.
John breathes a laugh, Sherlock feels it against his sternum.
\\
“Orion, the hunter”
Sherlock looks but he does not really see, in the vast darkness, how stars could mean things other than brightness and science and worlds far from their own (with his back against the chilled grass, damp seeping through his thick wool coat, and it’s surely already wetting the plane of John’s spine, next to him, shoulder to shoulder).
He makes a noncommittal noise, and John continues on regardless. Sherlock lets him, because in this he has stored little to no information, cannot grasp, and needs to, and John is bright now. Glowing and breaking through the black blanket of night.
“The hunter, um, strong and intelligent, he um” John shifts, a whispering squeak of damp grass against his jacket, attempting to move the numb from his bones, arms tight at his shivering sides.
“He became the greatest hunter in the world, but he had a massive ego, boasted he could kill just about anything…”
Everything is so still around John, nothing moves but John’s lips and his throat and his glassy eyes and his chest as it sucks in icy air, Sherlock’s mind is pinpointed, grasped to the point of utter devotion. It’s maddening, really.
“…so this scorpion comes along, and Orion plays with it because he fears nothing, absolutely nothing, until it kills him, beats him at his own game -“
There’s a silence that transcends the stars, and Sherlock is able to read through it, hears the change in John’s voice before it comes forth from his throat, a lengthy swallow of unwavering anguish, and since when did emotions become palpable? Sherlock can hear them drumming a distorted beat in his head, somewhere to the right, a staccato of not quite yet forgiven deeds. For John, now, he is Orion, the foolish game player; and though it’s utterly ridiculous and makes no sense and is in no way even relevant, Sherlock sees it, clear in John’s flexing jaw.
Yes, oh - such a brutal connection between the celestial and himself. They haven’t talked about it enough, yet, for the unfounded - unfounded, because really he was just saving John, that’s all - guilt to spike in Sherlock’s chest, for his pulse not to feel wrong and heavy in his veins.
“But Orion was never dead, not really,” (Barely above a whisper, but Sherlock’s ears burn.) “he was alive all along, up there, just - just watching, stuck in the sky with the stars instead of back on earth with - with”
Sherlock braces himself for the fallout because he hasn’t really had it yet. John punched him, the morning he arose from his empty coffin, and said things that Sherlock never really thought he’d say - (“I wish you hadn’t come back, I don’t want you here anymore”) - but then the metallic rage left, vanished in the breeze of a sigh pressed to his shoulder, a loose arm around his chest and strong, strong fingers curling into his coat. John had been angry about Sherlock’s none-death, his half-life; devastated and broken and sad, but not for long enough, not deep enough or nearly as bad as Sherlock had expected. As he had wanted, because it would somehow make it easier if Sherlock was broken, just a little, too.
Instead John rolls his left palm up from its flat line on the wet grass, licks his lips in the moonlight and pushes two fingers to the underside of Sherlock’s wrist, to Sherlock’s weakness, to his life; and Sherlock lets him, because all is safe in the press of John’s steady hands.
“Not even the stars, John” (Could take me away from you)
Somehow, John smiles.
\\
The blood is just water. The blood is just water. The blood is just water.
Sherlock’s hands shake and his teeth tremble and he still has half of the Thames in his lungs, but then there’s John, limp and soaking with blood, dark red blood that’s already staining Sherlock’s fingernails and the grubby ground of London’s riverbank; and how could he be so stupid, how could he not foresee the trajectory and speed and flick twist of the killer’s wrist, of the bullet that’s now lodged between John’s fragile, barely breathing ribs.
There’s mud in John’s hair and it seems wrong, so Sherlock picks it out with two fingers, his other hand firmly pressed to the ebbing wound, like it has been for the past four minutes twenty-eight seconds, (“pressure, Sherlock, I need pressure”), and he is so useless, so utterly abandoned because his doctor is flitting in and out of consciousness; his doctor is someplace far, far away whispering things to Sherlock that Sherlock can’t hear, can’t understand right now, he cannot reach, cannot pull him back - and he is worth nothing, Sherlock’s mind is worth nothing if John is not there to keep it whole, and he can feel the life dribbling away through his doctor’s pores, giving up without so much as a goodbye (Sherlock said goodbye, he said it and he meant it) -
He presses his cheek to John’s and waits for a breeze of oxygen, but only a shadow of breath parts the man’s lips. John is leaving, already, without permission, being stolen by the water and lead in his veins.
Lestrade is on his way, and the ambulance is on its way, and John’s life is on its way; speeding here in the wires of a defibrillator, in the drip of an IV, in the form of all the things that Sherlock cannot provide.
So he waits. He waits with John’s blood everywhere, with John’s very being cradled in his lap and veins pulsing faintly. Sherlock wants to say so many things, right now, so, so many, but John is not here to listen to them, may not ever hear them -
His whole body constricts and convulses at that singular notion, and suddenly he’s in so much pain, complete torture, he can’t deal with it, cannot handle it; the thoughts in his head threaten holes in his skull (and John is not here to fucking mend them) tiny fractures where everything he knows is being taken away from him; except this time there’s no fall and no plan and no wrenching guilt, just John’s soul, his self, leaving his beaten body through the gaps in Sherlock’s fingers.
So Sherlock waits, and John continues to die -
and it is agony.
\\
The sheets are crisp and white, they feel like snow beneath Sherlock’s cold cheek. Everywhere is quiet, dead. John is here, with his hair so clean and his smile so warm.
Sherlock knows he’s fallen asleep, because everything is too easy.
It’s okay though because his friend is alive, and not completely whole but mending, slowly; the body Sherlock is sleeping in knows it, can distantly smell the unique disinfectant that only hospitals seem to have, can hear the soft breathing of John’s abused lungs close to his ear, muffled by the oxygen mask shielding his mouth.
And he would know. Sherlock would taste it if John was dead.
So Sherlock allows himself to continue sleeping, gives into the push and pull of his own consciousness, the lull of drowsiness lapping at his skin like ocean waves.
His body shifts in its half state, slumps a little further forward in the chair that’s been drawn up right next to John’s bed, until the curls of his hair brush a gown-clad shoulder, the rough of the cotton like reeds, tickling his exhausted mind.
Everything feels heavy. And it’s strange, because when Sherlock rarely sleeps it’s always only just, teetering on the edge, but now he’s immersed and he can’t get out again, his brain keeps him anchored. Sherlock’s arm rests across the body next to him, guards John’s chest, his ribs, everything that is vulnerable, everything that is breakable, and everything that was nearly stolen from him.
Sleeping Sherlock is fighting demons now, ghosts that want to take John and hide him somewhere unknown, somewhere unreal; there are no clues so it’s unfair, Sherlock is blind and there’s no science, and none of John’s brightness to guide him.
He does not stir as the man beneath his arm blinks into consciousness, as his doctor blurs back into the present; as John smiles into his oxygen mask, and brushes his lips against a single dark curl of hair.