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They’re standing in John’s old room, the one back in not-really-Swindon. Well, Sherlock’s standing, and John’s sitting on his old, rickety bed, patting the space next to him. Sherlock shakes his head, a small smile on his face. He says it’s alright, he wouldn’t want to impose. As if he’s ever had a problem with that before.
“You’re not imposing if I ask you to sit with me, Sherls,” John protests, but Sherlock refuses. The window blinds are half open and it casts orange-golden stripes on the man’s face. He squints against the sunlight.
It always did get hot here.
The room is a bit dusty, and John can see the specks dancing in the afternoon light. Sherlock’s hands are shoved into his pockets like he doesn’t want to touch anything, whether out of respect or because it’s all so old and dirty John can’t quite tell. He’s always had an aversion to cleaning things up, one of the only things he wasn’t willing to do.
John smiles back up at him. “Hey, I bet I have some old records in here somewhere. D’you want to have a listen?”
Sherlock says sure. He looks a bit fearful, as if John’s taste in music was ever really that bad, but he supposes it’s teasing, because of course he’s teasing. John gets up slowly before sitting on the floor and digging under his bed for the worn down shoe box of CDs he’d kept religiously as a teenager, making sure his mom hadn’t been home before putting one in the CD player and yelling out the lyrics while riffing on an air guitar.
His mom– Carol, downstairs and cooking with Mariana. They haven’t told him what they’re cooking, since it’s apparently a surprise, but he can smell it from up here and it smells good. Something with tomato, possibly cheese? And by the sound of it, lots of vegetables as well. If there was any one thing Carol made sure of when John still lived here, it was that he ate healthy and got exercise. Lot of good it did him in the end, but he’s still grateful.
It takes some reaching, but he pulls the poor old box out. Of course, coming from under the bed, it’s collected much more dust than everything else in the room, and one wipe at the lid sends him and Sherlock into coughing fits, though he suspects Sherlock is being a bit dramatic. Ever the drama queen, Sherlock asks when he’d last touched this box, and if it could be classified as a prehistoric fossil.
“Was that a joke, mate? Real good,” John says, rolling his eyes. “Right– pick one, please.”
Sherlock raises both of his eyebrows and frowns, but John just shakes it in his face, letting loose more dust. His coughs are real this time, and he’s cursing John out while he waves the dust out of his face. John’s torn between feeling guilty and laughing helplessly at the sight of the man swatting the air like an agitated cat.
“Sorry, sorry,” he giggles, and Sherlock just frowns heavily in his direction.
He picks I Will Always Love You out, possibly at random as he’s still sneezing in the other direction as he picks it out of the box.
“Whitney Houston, huh? Classic, I like it,” John says. Sherlock’s face lights up, the golden light of the sun letting him glow with it. Everything else around them blurs. It’s almost like there’s a halo around his head, like he’s an angel. John would believe it.
Sherlock asks if he’s alright, waving a hand in his face. John goes red.
“Yeah, yeah, fine, mate, sorry,” he mutters.
Sherlock says it’s alright.
He plucks the CD from Sherlock’s hands, popping open the case and gingerly placing it into his decades-old CD player. He presses play and watches the CD get sucked in like he always did back then.
It takes a few minutes for the music to start up, but when it does, John smiles in triumph and turns around to Sherlock humming in contentment. John decides, what better time than now to be impulsive, really?
“Care for a dance?” he asks, purposefully being over-the-top flirty. Sherlock turns red despite himself, but he still diligently puts on his show of looking half affronted and half fond. Affronded. Affonded?
Sherlock says fine, says they have time to kill anyhow. John snorts.
“Why on earth do you unironically use words like ‘anyhow’?”
Sherlock just narrows his eyes and asks if John really does want to dance. John immediately shuts up and apologizes.
Then, in no time at all, they’re dancing together, Sherlock’s hands on his hips and John’s arms thrown around his neck, almost as if they’re magnetic. The song’s still slow, it hasn’t crescendoed yet, and John’s looking up at Sherlock and his messy curls. Sherlock’s smile– always almost there, never fully. It’s intimate– they both know it, and neither of them say it. There’s dust floating around Sherlock’s head but in the sunlight they might be specks of glitter. His eyes are shining with mirth.
Sherlock remarks that the music sounds different from what he knows. John scoffs, says he probably burned another song into this CD. Acts like he doesn’t know it, even though he does, even though he knows those notes don’t play on this disc.
He brings a hand to Sherlock’s cheek, his acne-prone skin, and almost feeling the stubble there. So familiar.
So cold.
He’s almost able to touch the man in front of him, almost able to feel his comforting warmth, the one he’s felt so many times in his bed on particularly bad nights when neither of them really gave much of a damn for snoring or blanket hogging and just needed someone. Maybe tonight is one of those nights, so of course he’s here. But as soon as they get near one another he’s reminded that none of it’s real. He can almost feel him under his fingertips, but he can’t. Not really.
And he realizes that Sherlock’s eyes aren’t shining with joy, but with John’s own tears. His voice isn’t his, it’s John’s own. His fingertips, his lips, the curls in his forever unruly hair– all his, all John’s, and none of it was real.
John’s good at pretending, but he’ll never be that good.