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John was too bloody cold to worry about what Sherlock thought of finding him on his doorstep. He had traipsed through a blizzard for far too long, and he was frozen through, and he staggered through Sherlock’s door, into blessed heat, without pausing to think about it, and so it happened that the first thing he said to Sherlock Holmes, upon rediscovering him after his supposed death, was, “For God’s sake, close that door, you’re letting all the cold in.” And then he turned to the fact that he’d stumbled in with his snowshoes still on.
“What are you…” said Sherlock, and his voice wasn’t the same deep baritone John remembered, it seemed hoarse and rusty, and John thought that it had probably been a long time since Sherlock had spoken to anyone. “What are you…”
John succeeded in getting himself out of his snowshoes and turned to dropping the heavy pack off his back, stripping out of the parka that was ice-crusted around him, shaking off his snow-stiff mittens.
“What are you…” began Sherlock, again.
John left the parka on top of bag on top of the snowshoes and beelined toward the fire roaring in the fireplace, standing right up against it and holding out his hands. They stung with the heat, and John examined them and decided that they weren’t frostbitten and he wasn’t going to have to cut off any of his extremities. And, for the first time since he’d arrived, he turned to Sherlock, placing the fire at his back, and really looked at him.
He was dressed in clothes that were ratty and old and hung off him. Sherlock’s classic depression wardrobe. He was thin, much too thin, and his skin was drawn tight over his sharp cheekbones, and his bow of a mouth was chapped into a dry o of surprise as he looked at John. There was a nasty bruise fading along his jawline, and the shadows under his eyes were so deep and dark that John could have mistaken them for bruises as well. And he was clutching, loosely and with his usual disregard for safety, a gun. But for all he looked terrible—and he did look terrible, terrible enough to make John have to hold in a wince—he also looked achingly familiar. He still wore his hair slightly too long, the curls tumbled in a luxurious, unkempt mess over his head. They needed to be washed and combed out, but they were still there, looking as if they were waiting for John’s fingers to ruffle through them. And his eyes were still pale and inscrutable, staring at John. Sherlock was not moving at all, except for a twitching of the fingers not holding the gun that made John think of the violin he’d thrown into storage with the rest of Sherlock’s things because he hadn’t been able to bear actually getting rid of them.
“Siberia?” said John. “In December? Really?”
Sherlock stared at him a little longer, and John would have exulted at having struck Sherlock Holmes dumb, except that it really just betrayed how much of a mess Sherlock was and John was mostly torn between cuddling him close and telling him it would get better and shaking him until his teeth chattered and he never thought about leaving ever again.
“What are you doing here?” Sherlock asked, finally, setting his mouth into a grim, tight line.
Well, at least he’d managed the whole question this time, thought John. “Holiday,” answered John, flippantly.
Sherlock ignored him. “How did you even find me?”
“Don’t be an idiot. You are you, and I am me.”
“Not even Mycroft could have found me. I made sure of it.”
“Exactly. I’m not Mycroft. I’m me.” John’s tone was even and unruffled but his gaze was serious, because he meant every single word of it. “How long did you really think you could hide from me?”
Sherlock, after a moment, appeared to decide the best reaction to that was a scowl. “You have to go.”
John wasn’t sure how he had expected Sherlock to greet him, but he had to confess that he’d fantasized it would involve the sharing of a little more body warmth than this. Maybe it would even have involved a smile, an I’m so happy to see you. “What?” he said.
Sherlock was picking up John’s coat, where it was dripping onto the floor, and wrinkled his nose in distaste. “Go,” he said. “Now.”
“Are you mad? There’s a blizzard out there.”
“You came through the blizzard, surely you can leave the same way,” replied Sherlock, mildly. His voice was pretending to be all sensible logic but his eyes were stormy. Sherlock was clearly furious to see him, and John was trying to recalibrate his hopes and dreams for how this reunion was going to go.
“I’m not going,” said John, setting his shoulders back into soldier stance. He could be stubborn with the best of them, certainly could keep up with Sherlock Holmes’s stubbornness.
Sherlock flung John’s parka back to the floor like a toddler having a tantrum. “Fine!” he shouted. “Then I’ll go!” He marched into what John assumed was the cabin’s bedroom, slapping his gun onto the living room’s desk on his way by it, and re-emerged pulling on a heavy parka of his own. It was so absurdly big on him that it would have been comical had it not been a little devastating. John watched him stomp over to the door and shove his bare feet into a pair of snow boots that were there, and then Sherlock launched himself into the storm, slamming the door shut behind him.
John waited, because Sherlock was not at all properly equipped to face that blizzard and any minute now he was going to come tumbling back through the door, covered in snow and blue with cold, and he would come crawling over to the fire and they could have a proper discussion like normal people / mates / best friends / hopelessly smitten flatmates with fake deaths hanging between them.
The minutes ticked by, and the door stayed closed, and John realized he had made the classic mistake of underestimating Sherlock. He was out of practice. Cursing in a long endless stream, John bundled back into his parka and struggled back into the snowshoes and managed to get himself out the door and into the blizzard.
It was dark outside, the snow in almost white-out conditions all around him, and John hadn’t thought to bring a torch. He hadn’t even thought to bring his mittens. The cold bit viciously at his exposed hands and he ignored it long enough to pull his hood up to try to protect his head, before thrusting his hands into his pockets. “Sherlock!” he shouted, into the white blankness all around him. “Sherlock!”
There was no answer. There was nothing. John looked around him wildly and felt panic lick through him. No, no, no, no, no, he had not come all this way to find Sherlock alive only to have him plunge into a blizzard and kill himself. John took a stumbling, frantic couple of steps, nearly falling over into the snow, shouting desperately for Sherlock, and snow was swirling down his collar and cold was making his movements clumsy and he was dressed for this, Sherlock hadn’t even been dressed for this—
In the end, he fell right on top of Sherlock, who had plunged thigh-deep into a snowbank. He struggled a little bit, a weak flail that John ignored, pulling him out and manhandling him back through the blizzard, back to the cabin, shouting at him the whole time. “You bloody stupid arrogant bastard, I am going to kill you with my own two hands. How dare you do something so stupid and reckless.” They fell through the door of the cabin together, into an inelegant heap on the floor. Sherlock was shivering uncontrollably.
“You insufferable selfish prat,” John said to him, struggling out of his snowshoes and pulling Sherlock up with him. “You utter pillock.” He pushed and shoved Sherlock into the other room, which did turn out to be a bedroom. When John pushed him onto the bed, he went, and although he tried to kick at John when he pulled the snow boots off of him, it was so ineffectual that John felt his heart clench. “I am going to shoot you,” John told him, tugging at the boots, “and then I am going to strangle you.” John stripped Sherlock’s soaked-through pajama bottoms off with ruthless efficiency. “And then I am going to poison you.” John pushed Sherlock this way and that, Sherlock mumbling protests, so that he could get Sherlock’s parka off him. “And then I am going to suffocate you.” John heaped blankets on top of Sherlock.
“Can you stop shouting at me?” Sherlock asked, around his chattering teeth.
“No,” snapped John, pushing his own parka off. “I am never going to stop shouting at you.” John crawled under the covers with Sherlock and said, “Let me see your hands.”
“Leave me alone,” commanded Sherlock, although he was too weak to actually do anything about it when John grabbed his hands and examined them. They were ice cold and a bit red with it, but not frostbitten, maybe a touch of frostnip.
John, without preamble, pressed them underneath his layers of jumper and T-shirt, against his stomach. Sherlock flinched at the sudden warm contract.
“You stupid, stupid, stupid idiot,” John said, looking at the red tip of Sherlock’s nose.
“You’ve said that already,” Sherlock said, wearily, blinking up at the ceiling. He looked as if all of the fight had gone out of him.
“It bears repeating. You could have got yourself killed.” John leaned over to blow a stream of warm breath at Sherlock’s nose, hoping to help it thaw more quickly.
“What would it have mattered?” asked Sherlock, dully. “I’m already dead.”
“No,” said John, fiercely. “No. You are not dead. You are here, with me, and you are alive. You are so alive. Your heart is beating and your lungs are breathing and the blood is warming up your hands again and you are very alive, do you hear me? And you are not going to be dead ever again.” And then John kissed him.
He hadn’t meant to. It was all very sudden and unexpected, even in his head. Not that he hadn’t thought about it, after he’d thought Sherlock was gone, that maybe he’d been an idiot not to have been snogging Sherlock at every given opportunity, that maybe he’d been an idiot to pretend he was still completely straight, that maybe he’d been an idiot to keep pushing down all those fantasies that wanted to rise to the surface. And he’d thought about it even more after reading Sherlock’s letters, while chasing Sherlock’s trail from Argentina to Siberia, that maybe they should just be kissing, maybe they should be doing nothing but kissing.
Still, John had had no conscious thought process telling him to kiss Sherlock until he’d already done it, and then, when he realized what he’d done, that was the moment when Sherlock started kissing him back. It was a messy, clumsy, urgent kiss, and Sherlock clutched at him and pulled at him, struggling to get him closer, closer, and John recognized what he needed and tried to give it to him, curling as close into Sherlock as he could, while Sherlock intertwined their legs and gasped his name a million different times and a million different ways.
“I’m here,” John murmured to him, trying to be comforting. “I’m here now.”
“I’m so sorry, so sorry, so sorry,” chanted Sherlock around the frantic, desperate kisses he was planting on any part of John’s body he could reach.
And John knew, objectively, that Sherlock had a great deal to apologize for, but he also knew that somehow he didn’t care. His Sherlock was a broken, trembling mess underneath him and there was nothing John wouldn’t do to fix that. “It doesn’t matter,” John told him, nuzzling at his skin, keeping him close. “It doesn’t matter. I know.”
“So sorry so sorry so sorry,” said Sherlock, and then stopped kissing him, pressed his nose into the curve of his neck and shoulder, breathed hard and fast. “John,” he said.
“Shh,” said John. “I am here and I am not going to leave.”
Sherlock, shuddering, twisted his hands into John’s jumper and pulled him in impossibly closer. “I’m so sorry,” he choked out.
“I know,” John whispered, into the thicket of messy, filthy hair that he pressed his mouth into.
Sherlock burrowed closer, his grip firm and tight, and his grip stayed that way even though John knew he eventually fell asleep, his breaths evening out and his shuddering finally stilling. Even in unconsciousness, Sherlock was clinging to him.
John knew he should have been tired himself, but he didn’t really sleep. His position sprawled over Sherlock was uncomfortable, and he didn’t dare let his weight settle fully on top of Sherlock for fear of disturbing him, nor did he want to move in any way for fear of disturbing him. Sherlock clearly needed to sleep. John wasn’t sure Sherlock could even remember the last time he’d truly slept. So John stayed in his uncomfortable position for hours, dozing on and off but never really falling asleep, always aware in the background of Sherlock’s steady breaths underneath him, of Sherlock alive. Maybe he was an absolute wreck, but he was alive, and John was pretty much a wreck, too, so maybe they could be wrecks together.
When Sherlock woke, it was gradual, starting with a slow lazy stretch under him and then a quick tensing as he realized exactly where he was. John lifted his head, looking down into Sherlock’s wide, unfathomable eyes, a beautiful periwinkle in the room’s pale daylight.
“I’m going to use the bathroom first,” John said, “and then you’re going to shower and get dressed while I make us breakfast.”
Sherlock didn’t say anything. Sherlock watched him, and John uncurled himself from their blanket nest, wincing at his sore muscles, and hoped Sherlock wasn’t going to bolt as soon as John closed the bathroom door.
John longed for a good hot shower but he didn’t want to leave Sherlock alone and unattended any longer than he had to. So he settled for a quick splashing of water in the sink. Then he went through Sherlock’s medicine cabinet, quickly and systematically. There was a vast amount of painkillers, and John pocketed all of them. He was aware that Sherlock had been shot not very long ago, ill-treated, beat up and left for dead, because he had tracked Sherlock to the Argentinian hospital that he’d escaped from. However, he was also aware of Sherlock’s addictive tendencies, and he didn’t like the presence of so many painkillers all at once.
Sherlock was still lying in bed when John exited the bathroom. “Your turn,” he said, casually, to Sherlock’s unresponsive figure, and he waited until he heard the shower turn on before he opened the cabin’s front door. The blizzard of the night before had ended, and the sun was already high in the sky, blinding on the crystal snow all around them. John squinted against the dazzle and threw most of the painkillers as far as he could, keeping just a few for whatever Sherlock might need before they could get back to London. Then he turned his attention to the kitchen.
Unsurprisingly, the kitchen was in a dismal state. John turned to the pack he’d brought with him and pulled out protein bars for them to have for breakfast, and then he carefully unwrapped the proper tea he’d brought for Sherlock and set a pot of water to boil. Then he placed the gift he had brought for Sherlock on the small dining table.
Then he indulged in a little bit of snooping, peering at the piece of paper next to the gun on the small desk. Dear John, it read, but the rest of the page was blank. There was, however, a little sheaf of papers next to the blank paper, all turned to their blank sides but John could see the hint of writing leaking through, and he longed to pick them up and read them.
He didn’t. He recognized that Sherlock in his letters was not what Sherlock would have wanted the world to see, that Sherlock’s reaction last night had been an instinctive retreat back into his shell now that his vulnerabilities had been exposed, and he didn’t think he was going to make things better by going through Sherlock’s things.
So he was watching the pot of water strive toward boiling, being stubborn about the proverb, when the bathroom door slammed open and Sherlock stalked out and demanded, “What have you done with the pills?”
John made a noncommittal noise and didn’t look away from the pot.
Sherlock stomped around the cabin, throwing things about. “I need those. I was shot and…other things.”
“I know,” said John, mildly.
“How do you know?”
John looked at him for the first time. He was dressed in one of his sharply tailored suits, but he’d lost so much weight that it hung on him. John should have been attacked by a stab of nostalgia at the sight but he was just furious at everything that had happened to bring them here. “I tracked you, remember?”
Sherlock’s mouth set into a grim, dissatisfied line. “How?”
“I already told you that: You’re you, and I’m me. Not in the house.”
Because Sherlock had stuck a cigarette in his mouth and produced a lighter. He stared at John. “What?”
John told himself that the cigarette drooping out of Sherlock’s bow of a mouth wasn’t actually kind of hot. “I’m not going to worry about breaking you of the smoking habit until we get back to London, but I’m not going to have you smoking in the house with me. I have too much respect for my lungs.”
“But…this is my house.”
“I know. And it smells like stale cigarette smoke, it’s awful.” The water was boiling, and John reached for the pot. “Go outside if you like.”
“Outside? In Siberia? In December? What’s that?”
John glanced over his shoulder as he poured the tea out. Sherlock was staring at the present on the table, his expression inscrutable. “It,” John announced, “is Christmas Day. Merry Christmas.”
Sherlock didn’t move. John carried the mugs of tea over to the table. “Christmas Day,” Sherlock echoed. “No, it’s not.”
“Yes, it is,” John said, and nudged Sherlock’s tea toward him. “No milk, I’m afraid. Your kitchen is appalling.”
Sherlock looked uncomprehendingly at the tea, then back at the present.
“Go on,” John encouraged him, taking a seat and pulling a protein bar over to him, “open it.”
Sherlock dropped the cigarette on the table and reached for the present and John knew he was trying not to look excited and intrigued but he did anyway. Sherlock pulled off the paper and opened the small box and revealed his key to Baker Street, which John had been given after it had been taken off Sherlock’s 'corpse.'
Sherlock sat heavily in his chair at the table and did not take his eyes off the key. He said, “John. I’m not coming home.”
“Yes,” John said, firmly. “You are. As soon as possible, since you don’t have any food for us in this bloody place.”
Sherlock still didn’t look up from the key. “I…can’t. I’m supposed to be dead, John.”
“No, you’re not. What have you done to yourself, Sherlock? What are you doing?”
Sherlock’s eyes closed. “I was saving your life.”
“I don’t want it saved like this.”
Sherlock opened his eyes and looked at John for the first time, and his eyes reminded John of the snap of the frost coating their windows. “Well, you don’t have a choice. You are you, and I am me, and I will never not save you, John, no matter the cost.”
“That’s not how it works. We save each other.”
“No,” Sherlock retorted. “You save me, over and over. Over and over.” Sherlock stood, leaving the key on the table, pacing restlessly through the cabin, his hands in his hair. “You saved me the day after you met me, when you shot the cabbie. You saved me again, and again, and again. You were always saving my life. Do you know how much I owed you? This was my turn.”
“How many times am I going to have to tell you that you are a sodding idiot before you believe me?” John asked, in exasperation. “I saved your life the day after I met you, but you saved my life the very day you met me.”
Sherlock looked at him in obvious disbelief.
“It’s true. I was just going through the motions. I had no interest in it anymore. I had a gun in my drawer and it had bullets in it and I thought it’d be absolutely fitting to use them on me. Quick, through my head, a gun in my mouth. An unattractive corpse, but fitting.”
Sherlock had stopped pacing. He stared at him. “John,” he said.
“Then I met you. And I wanted to know more about you and suddenly things were interesting and I used the gun and the bullets on other people, people who weren’t me, people who might take you away from me and make things empty again and I couldn’t go back to that, Sherlock. You cannot save my life by taking you away from it. You are my life—” John suddenly swallowed the end of the sentence, because he hadn’t meant to say that, he hadn’t meant to…
Sherlock did nothing for a moment, then slowly sat down, looking thoughtful. When he spoke, it was very carefully. “Listen to me. I cannot be your life. If you knew…It was better for you, that I was dead. You’re a doctor, you understand these things. The human body grieves, it recovers, it moves on.”
“Yes. I know. We are meant to do that, we human beings. We are meant to absorb great amounts of loss in our foolish, meaningless lives. We are not meant to do to ourselves what you did to yourself, this pretending to be dead thing. You lost everything about your life that made you you, and you couldn’t get it back. You cannot pretend to be dead, I think, I think that it just makes you feel dead. I was so angry at you for this deception, Sherlock, and I still am, but I think you were much harder on yourself than you were on me.”
“Good,” said Sherlock, shortly. “That is how it was supposed to be.”
“Why did you do it?”
“Because Moriarty was going to kill you if I didn’t kill myself. And I couldn’t see any other way to save you. Other than killing myself. I should have just killed myself.”
“Don’t say things like that,” said John, sharply.
Sherlock stood and resumed his pacing, hands in his hair, not looking at John. “I thought I could just dismantle Moriarty’s web. I thought it would take me, oh, I don’t know, a few weeks, and then I’d be back, and you’d be angry but you’d forgive me. I don’t know what I was thinking. There was so much…It was so much…And I’m rubbish at all of this, I’m terrible at it, I was only ever good at…I’ve made such a mess, such an impossible mess, I can’t…I just want it to be over. I’m so tired. And it could all be over, if I was dead. And I should be dead anyway. So I…” Sherlock gestured all around the cabin.
“You can’t do this. Not this way.”
“Why not?”
“Because I love you,” said John, which stopped Sherlock in his tracks. He looked, dumbfounded, at him, as John stood and walked over to him. “I think you need to know that. I wasn’t clear on that…before. But I love you. You sent me those letters and I realized that we’d never said it, either one of us, and do you know what a waste that was? I realized you’d never have sent me the letters unless you thought you really were about to die and I thought that maybe you really were dead, and we had never said, out loud…” John cupped his fingers around Sherlock’s face, gaunt and bruised and splotched over with emotion, and Sherlock didn’t move, stayed stock still, blinking at him. “I didn’t know I loved you the moment I saw you, I can’t claim your brilliance. I didn’t know until it was too late to tell you, but I loved you all along and I love you now. And every moment that I spent pretending that I didn’t, telling people that I didn’t, telling you that I didn’t, I want to take all of them back. If I ever made you think, even for a heartbeat, that you couldn’t, that I wouldn’t…It’s Christmas, Sherlock. Tell me what you want.”
Sherlock, after a very long moment, closed his eyes and shook his head, shaking it out of John’s grasp. He wheeled backwards, away from John, away from the tea and the protein bar and the key on the table, into the bedroom, where he closed the door and left John all alone and cold.
***
John built a fire in the fireplace and settled down on the sofa to wait for Sherlock. It wasn’t surprising that he fell asleep. He’d had an exhausting time recently tracking Sherlock, and he also hadn’t slept at all the night before.
What was surprising was that, when he woke from his nap, Sherlock was there, sitting with his back to the fire, watching him solemnly.
John stretched a little bit and blinked himself awake and tried to think what to say.
“You,” said Sherlock, and John’s heart skipped and turned around and fell in his chest. “I want you. I’ve always wanted you. You’re the only thing I want. Didn’t you read those stupid letters?”
John’s heart clenched at that. “They were lovely letters,” he said, hearing his voice all sleep-roughened.
Sherlock winced. “Stop. They were humiliating and embarrassing.”
“Those two words mean the same thing,” John pointed out, because he thought it would help relieve Sherlock’s discomfort to have that pointed out.
Sherlock glared at him.
“I loved the letters, Sherlock. I loved them so much. They were…so beautiful. They were so you. Do you know I read them as slowly as I could? I wanted to savor them, each and every syllable of them. I thought they might be the last things I would ever have of you. I didn’t know…”
“How could you not have known how I felt?” Sherlock demanded, sounding annoyed.
“That wasn’t what I meant,” John started, but Sherlock spoke over him.
“How could you not have read it in every look I ever gave you? There was you, there was you, there was only you, everyone told you, everyone saw it, even strangers who ran into us on the street. ‘Oh, they must be a couple.’ Yes. Because I looked at you, always, like the moon and the stars and the sun and all those stupid planets you’re obsessed with revolved around you. It was obvious to them. And to Mycroft, and to Lestrade, and to Moriarty. All so obvious, that you were the most important thing in my life, the only important thing in my life, that I would do anything for you. And then there was you, and all you said, over and over, was that you weren’t gay, you weren’t gay, you weren’t gay. We weren’t a couple, not like that, not that way. Look at all the happy, adoring people strolling through Regents Park, hand-in-hand. Oh, not John and Sherlock, they are not like that.”
John had sat up slowly during this speech. “Sherlock, I didn’t—”
“Do you understand how you killed me, daily, every time you turned to watch a woman go by? Do you comprehend at all how many stupid disastrous things I did just to make sure that you would come when I called you, that you hadn’t got distracted elsewhere? I needed you worse than any drug, worse than cocaine ever got for me, I needed you like oxygen, and I couldn’t get you, I couldn’t keep you, all you ever said to me was not like that. And I was dying inside, all along, inch by inch, every day you didn’t look at me the way I wanted you to look at me. It was there, sometimes, if I did something particularly clever, but I can’t be impressive all the time, John, not even I could manage that. Do you see how much easier it was to die all at once than to die the way I was doing it?”
John stared at him, feeling queasy and terrible. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“You would have left. You would have…You would have said, ‘Oh, dear, Sherlock, not like that,’ and there would have been pity and you must be mad to think…I should never have said anything at all, but the stupid letters, I was supposed to die in Argentina, I don’t know why I even fought as hard as I did, it’s like the body doesn’t want to die, resists it, fights it at every turn, even when the mind is so ready for it. And I came here with enough pills to cause oblivion and I couldn’t—I couldn’t—”
John slid off the couch suddenly, grabbed Sherlock behind the neck and forced his flitting eyes to his. “Look at me,” he commanded. “Look at me. I was an idiot. Isn’t that what you always say to me? I didn’t see it. I didn’t see it in you, and I didn’t see it in me. Not until it was too late. But now we have a second chance, you and I, to fix this. We’ll go back to London and we’ll be John and Sherlock, hand-in-hand, in Regents Park. We will be everything you wanted us to be. Because I love you, and you will have me as long as you want me, you will have me for longer than that, because I will never let us be separated again.”
Sherlock shook John’s touch off, and John let out a noise of frustration, turning as Sherlock leaped up and fled over to the desk. “You’re not understanding,” Sherlock said to him as he went. “You are not understanding how I love you. You are not understanding the terror of it.” Sherlock came back, clutching a sheaf of papers, and sat on the sofa, away from John, flipping through the papers. “I want to rewind us,” read Sherlock, “back to the day after I met you, when you killed the cabbie for me and we went for a Chinese and we got back to the flat so very late. You were very slightly drunk, giddy from the lingering adrenaline of the shot and from the drink you’d had at the restaurant. And the flat was new, so you didn’t know where the light switch was yet. You walked in before I did, and you fumbled for the switch, and you giggled about being unable to find it, and it was dark, only the lights from the street through the window, and I wanted to press you against the wall and kiss you, taste the laughter on your lips, drink your adrenaline, make you mine. I should have done that. I want to rewind us and I want to do that. It would have changed everything. I don’t know if you would have kissed me back the way I wanted you to. I was scared that you wouldn’t. That’s why I didn’t do it. Having you there at all, I told myself, was better than not having you there.”
“Sherlock,” said John, eyes on the pieces of paper. “You don’t have to do this—”
“If I had it to do over again, I would tell you every day that I love you,” Sherlock read.
“Sherlock,” said John again.
“I can tell you that I love you, I can tell you when that started, but to say the rest of it, to use words to say the rest of it, is impossible. And that’s not a word I throw around lightly.”
John said nothing, as Sherlock angrily flipped to the next piece of paper.
“I had it all. Everything I could ever want. I had you, which was more than I’d ever realized I wanted and more than I ever thought I could have. I had you, every night and every morning and all the in-between times. I know you used to be exasperatedly bemused by my tendency to talk to you when you weren’t in the flat, but I don’t think you ever grasped: I didn’t do that because I didn’t notice you weren’t there, I did that because, to me, you were always there, you were everywhere, I carried you with me, as solid as the heart in my chest. Those times when you weren’t next to me were unimportant data, irrelevant, deleted as they happened. You accused me of being a machine, the last time we spoke face-to-face, and you were so right in a manner of speaking, as I was like a machine who only ever whirred to life when in your presence. The rest of my life didn’t exist for me.”
Sherlock suddenly flung the papers at John. “Letters, John,” he said. “More letters. And none of them even come close to saying what I want them to say. And now here you are, saying that you missed me and you love me and that I should come back home, that it doesn’t matter, the things that I’ve done, because you love me. Forgive me, if I cannot bring myself to believe such a thing. Forgive me, because I know that it is fragile of me, I know that it is cowardly of me, but I have never been a soldier, I have never been as strong as you, I have proved that, irrevocably, over these past few months. If I let myself believe what you are saying, you have no idea how I will shatter when it is not true.”
“Sherlock,” John tried to say, but Sherlock had already stood and disappeared back into the bedroom, closing the door.
John sat, bewildered and dazed, by the fire, looking at the letters Sherlock had thrust at him. He had hurt him far more badly than he’d realized. He had cut him to the quick in London, and he had done it repeatedly. Sherlock, who had never loved anybody before and had given his heart, freely and wholly and completely, to a man he had thought would never accept it, to a man who had told him he would never accept it.
John tried to think how to convince Sherlock that he would make up for that. He dismissed the idea of using sex, because he didn’t think Sherlock saw sex in any sort of intimate way. Yet. He considered knocking on the door and trying to get Sherlock to listen to reason, but he didn’t think Sherlock was in any state for it. John looked at the letters and had an idea.
***
Dear Sherlock,
I do not have your way with words. Which is funny when you think about it, because I’m the one who is supposedly the writer.
I would like to say that I love you the same way. I would like to say, of everything you write in your letters, “Yes, that.” But that is a cowardly way out of it, and you deserve better than that from me.
You are wrong about which of us is braver or stronger. It takes a very usual type of courage to go to a war. It takes a very different sort of courage to love the way you loved me, day in and day out, thinking that I would never love you back.
But I do love you back, not out of pity or loneliness or regret or any of the things you might be thinking. I love you back because I love you. I loved you so much for so long that I forgot about it. When I was shot, there was a moment when my heart stopped beating, and oh, how that hurt, I will never forget the pain blossoming through me, worse than anything I’d ever experienced before, and when I was better, when I was recovering, I used to lay in the hospital bed and listen to my heart monitor beeping and I would think how I couldn’t feel it. I could not feel my heart beating until the moment I realized that it had left me, that it was no longer keeping me alive. And that’s how it was with you. I didn’t realize how much you were keeping me alive until you left me. I didn’t realize how much I loved you until then, but I loved you the whole time.
I know the face you’re making, all scrunched up and dubious. I love that face. These are things I love about you:
• That face you make when you think the rest of us are being idiots
• That face you make when you think you’re being nice to me but you’re really being condescending
• Your cheekbones
• Your mouth
• Your hair
• Your eyes
• The way you never make tea unless you’ve done something wrong
• The terrible tea you make when you’ve done something wrong
• The experiments all over the kitchen
• And that one memorable time in my bed
• The thirsty curiosity in you that makes you so eager to learn
• The way everything in the world, when you are in the right mood, is a fascinating puzzle to be untangled
• The way, when you are in the wrong mood, I know now how to coax you out of it
• Did I mention your hair?
• The way you smile at me, like I am the only worthwhile thing on the planet and you can’t believe how lucky you were to have found me
• The fact that you have a heart of gold even though you pretend you don’t
• The way you play the violin so beautifully I could cry
• How much you love Mrs. Hudson
• The way you find a way to pay for everything even when I am trying not to let you
• The way you play the violin so terribly when you are angry
• Your giggle when I have amused you
• How, sometimes, you stand too close to me, lean over my shoulder, in just such a way to make everyone see that I’m yours
• Your ridiculous suits
• Your dressing gown
• Your eyes
• The way you make me laugh
• The way you listen to me
• Your coat
• The little sigh of satisfaction you give when I make you a cup of tea
• The way you leap about when you’re excited
• The way you never once treated me like I was broken or delicate
• The way you make jokes at the most inappropriate of times
• The way you have a different definition of “inappropriate” than everyone else on earth
• You, lost in whatever you’re doing, and me, next to you, lost in whatever I’m doing, and looking up to catch you, unexpectedly, looking at me, and the way you would smile at me, just quickly, before going back to what you were doing, like you were just making sure I was still there
• Must mention your hair again
• I do really love your hair
• Etc.
That is only a partial list, because I can’t find any more paper and I’m running out of space. But I hope you get the picture.
Come home. Please. I love you more than I can say, more than I can tell you, so let me show you. Come home, and I will never let you shatter. I will keep you, safe and sound, my love, my life, my heart. Please.
Love,
John