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It starts on a night Sherlock cannot stand to be himself.
They are less often now, nights like these. Most nights now are warm and cosy, filled with gold firelight and the rustle of two bodies living closely together, sharing spaces and kisses and a singular future. John fills the flat with the click of his laptop keys, with the tinny explosions of old James Bond movies, with Sherlock, what the hell is in this sink sandwiched in between high giggles of excitement and low growls of suggestion, and there are fewer moments now when Sherlock gets lost.
Still, a future does not erase a history, and the past is always there behind the present, lurking, creeping, kept in shadows, behind closed eyelids. Mistakes Sherlock made. Lies Sherlock told.
Lives Sherlock took, and ones he failed to save, too.
They find him sometimes, these ghosts that Sherlock has made for himself. They linger in the corners of the flat, in the nights that drag on for far too long, in the smell of woodsmoke and dirt. They come for him in these drawn-out hours, made thick and corporeal with doubt and regret.
It starts on a night when Sherlock feels their grip around his wrists, and thinks about letting them drag him down.
*
The memories hurt.
Moments, quick and distilled, strung together: the bits and pieces Sherlock keeps replaying, over and over in his mind, as a reminder of the cost of his decisions. They play like a movie, stinging with familiarity, and Sherlock sinks into the sofa and lets them. He knows he should fight, should sit up, should carry on with carrying on, but the night is dark and the fire is dying and he can’t remember where John has gone.
John. It’s John, it’s always John. John gives the voice that is the soundtrack; John gives the look in his eye and the set of his mouth that is the fear and uncertainty in Sherlock’s chest.
It is John’s face wavering in the faint blue reflection of the pool in the split second Sherlock had seen him as villain, as enemy. It is the scrape of John’s plea from the pavement as his hand was pulled from Sherlock’s wrist, god, no, and the bow of John’s head before Sherlock’s empty grave.
It is the stretch and split of his stitches beneath the weight of John’s body on the tiled floor, and the way his white shirt had stuck to the blood, half-dried and sticky, when he’d tried to take it off that night. The heat of a bullet traveling through his body, impossibly slow, and the realisation, the acceptance, that he was going to die without ever getting to say the things he needed to.
The sound John had made when he had pulled the trigger.
It was the slick heat of Mary’s blood on Sherlock’s hands. It was the incredible smallness of a child in his palms, the incredible stillness, the crease of John’s forehead and the breath he took that sounded like his lungs were rent in two by a schism ripping through him, leaving behind a distance Sherlock couldn’t cross.
It was John’s wide eyes and sweaty palms clutching at Sherlock’s shoulders just two nights ago, sounding wrecked when he’d asked Sherlock to say something, anything: Please, just—anything. Anything to reassure him that Sherlock was here, was alive, was real, even now, even after all this time.
Across the sitting room, the fire in the grate burns out. Sherlock closes his eyes and takes the darkness as his due.
*
John finds him, minutes later or hours maybe, Sherlock isn’t sure. Gets to his knees next to the sofa and brushes his hands over Sherlock’s arms, his shoulders, fingers carding through the curls at the nape of his neck. The tenderness of it feels like a brand and Sherlock turns his face deeper into the cushions, his mouth an ugly, sour line as he tries to steady his breath, but there’s too much tension in his shoulders and too much pressure in his lungs and it gives him away.
John’s hands slow and still, spreading out along the line of Sherlock’s spine, and they can both feel Sherlock tremble.
“Sherlock,” John says, achingly quiet, as though his palm on Sherlock’s spine draws the wretched things from Sherlock’s chest into his own. Sherlock squirms away, huffs, does not answer. “Sherlock.”
He shakes his head vehemently, selfishly. His name in John’s mouth is an inescapable reminder of so many of his ghosts—the ringing shout he heard from the roof of Barts’ hospital and the breathless, disbelieving whisper on Magnussen’s patio, the firm reprimand in the back of an ambulance not to be lost, the plea and the break and the crack as they watched a baby be carried away into infinite silence, the embarrassed tone and averted eyes, asking if he could come home as though he didn’t expect Sherlock to say yes.
His name in John’s mouth is a life sentence that imprisons him with the past.
John’s hands begin stroking again. “Sherlock.” He lays a brief kiss to Sherlock’s shoulder and his breath is warm through Sherlock’s t-shirt. “Sorry I was out so late. Stayed longer than I meant to down the pub with Mike. Can you turn around for me?”
He shakes his head again. His eyes are hot. His cheeks strain with the effort to be quiet.
“Okay,” John says with a placating hush. “Okay.” He can hear John shift behind him, settling onto his bum, preparing to stay with Sherlock for the long haul. He stretches one arm out along the sofa so Sherlock can feel the weight of it, the heat of it. The reality of it. “Mike says hi. Apparently they’ve got some new equipment in the infectious disease labs that you ought to have a look at. Did you have any dinner tonight?”
Sherlock knows what he’s doing—trying to be casual enough to lure Sherlock into answering, giving him room but still drawing him out. John is ever the soldier, looking for way to complete his mission: bring Sherlock back. It makes Sherlock’s chest burn a little with affection and he can’t deny John.
He clears his throat and tries to find the answer; it comes out wobbly, but it comes. “No. Sorry.”
“I had a cheese toastie down the pub,” John tells him, his tone casual but still quiet and encouraging. “I could be a little hungry, though. If I made an egg, would you eat one? What do you think, Sherlock?”
His name in John’s voice, soft now and simple, but still with all the echoes of pain and desperation in Sherlock’s mind. Sod the egg. Sod the runaround. “Do you remember when I jumped?” It comes out in a rush, pitched a little too high. “When I—died.”
The hesitation is almost imperceptible. “Um. Yes, I do. I remember.”
“You—you yelled. You called out for me.” Sherlock shrinks deeper into the sofa as he says it, embarrassed and ashamed. It’s his name, and John has said it in so many other ways, in love and in irritation, breathless with wonder and desire, to warn him and cajole him and guide him.
But when he says it now, all Sherlock hears is fear.
“I did,” John agrees. He shifts again and his hands are back, stroking through the hair at the nape of Sherlock’s neck. “Called out your name. Just instinct, I guess.”
Sherlock nods, and takes a breath through his mouth, and he can’t manage to say it without his voice fragmenting into a whisper. “I still hear it that way. Every time you say it.”
There’s a pause, and then John takes too big a breath and his hands tighten against Sherlock’s body. “Oh, no, Sherlock, no,” he says, disbelieving, as if he can command it not to be true, as if he can command their hearts to keep from breaking.
But it’s done, and these things have already happened, and Sherlock clenches his eyes shut and shakes in the clutch of John’s arms. Having said it made it more real than it had been in his head, and John knowing makes it inescapable, and he shakes, and shakes, and shakes, while John holds him. John makes a shushing noise like Sherlock’s grandmother used to make and lays his cheek against Sherlock’s shoulder blade as if each beat and exhale of his body is something John needs to hear, to count, to know for certain, and he holds him, tight and fierce against the unseen storm.
The seconds draw out into minutes and then more. John waits, patient and close and present, humming into Sherlock’s spine with vague, muffled comforts. He doesn't ask for more explanation, for more detail. He already knows what they've both been through.
Eventually Sherlock shakes himself into exhaustion. His body begins to still and his breathing to even, and the moment begins to pass. He reaches for John’s hands and when they squeeze, he squeezes back.
John presses a kiss to the top of his spine. “Can you turn around, please, love?”
Love. John doesn’t use a lot of pet names, not really. They’re not natural to him, to their relationship—they are both more quietly affectionate, more about fingers drifting over wrists and smiles exchanged across rooms for no reason, quick pecks to the cheek and lingering kisses where names become irrelevant between I and love and you.
Sherlock turns, awkwardly trying to wipe his face as he does. John’s eyes greet him, warm but wary, a precarious smile on his mouth. “There you are,” he says, and he bends his head close, rubs their noses together. “Hello, I missed you.”
Sherlock tilts his chin and bumps their mouths together before withdrawing back into the hunch of his shoulders, back behind the loose curl of his hands. “John,” he answers, not a little shyly. He’s hyper-aware of his reddened eyes and mottled cheeks and he feels ridiculous, but John just smooths a thumb over a cheekbone and kisses his forehead as if he doesn’t notice.
The seconds tick by and John watches him, stroking over his cheek. “I love your name,” John murmurs to him. “Did I ever tell you that? It’s the loveliest name I think I’ve ever heard. And I love to say it, I love the way it feels to say it. How you turn to look at me whenever I do, like I’m the only voice you hear.” He kisses Sherlock’s forehead again, then his temple, then his cheek, nuzzling in among the fingers Sherlock is half-hiding behind. “It’s the word I use to mean you, just you, and you are. You are the only thing in the world that matters to me, in the end.”
Sherlock looks and looks and looks at him, but the half-smile that he gets just from talking about Sherlock’s name doesn’t disappear. “Don’t you hear it, though? All those other times you’ve said it?”
He doesn’t have to explain any more than that. John understands, and he shakes his head.
“Not really. Maybe sometimes, when I have bad days. But it’s your name, Sherlock. It means you, and I love you so much. When I think about your name I just end up thinking about how lucky I am to be here with you, to be able to kiss you—” John leans in and drops a kiss onto Sherlock’s nose— “whenever I like.”
“You’re biased,” Sherlock mutters, but it’s almost a joke and John pecks another kiss to Sherlock’s fingers. Sherlock folds them down so he can kiss John back properly a moment, just a tender press of reassurance as the blackened memories begin to loosen and ease their grip on his wrists, his ribs. “Horribly so.”
“Doesn’t matter, love,” John answers, combing his fingers through Sherlock’s hair. Love again. Sherlock shifts, tilts his ear into that word. “I’m happy to be biased for you.”
“Say that again,” Sherlock breathes, closing his eyes. He wants to hear it, wants to hear how a new word can be applied to him without all the weight, without all the baggage. Love. A temporary title. A new name.
“I’m happy to—”
“No, the other part.”
“Doesn’t matter?” Then there’s a slow exhale and John’s fingers fall away from Sherlock’s hair. “Love.”
It’s embarrassing and stupid, and he can imagine John staring at him with a sceptical quirk in his brow, but Sherlock nods anyway. There’s so much freedom in it—he has to hear it again.
“Love,” John repeats, and instead of ridicule it sounds like amazing, it sounds like brilliant; it sounds like a name to mean every wonderful thing John has ever called him, and it doesn’t sound like judgment or scepticism at all. “You’re okay, love. I can call you that sometimes, if you like.”
The flush is creeping up Sherlock’s cheeks again. He wants to say that he likes it, that it feels nice to hear, to hear it applied to him, but he can’t sort out a way of saying it that won’t make him sound like a numpty, so all he says is, “Maybe. Yes.”
John smiles, a big, proper smile that crinkles up the corners of his eyes, and he takes Sherlock’s hands in his, pulling them away from Sherlock’s face. “Love. Sweetheart. Darling.”
“Shush, you,” Sherlock says, but he leans over and kisses John again, sinking into it this time. John tastes like beer and the heated secret thing he always tastes like, and there’s hope in it, in this kind of tenderness, in John’s patience and John’s certainty. The hollow spaces of Sherlock’s chest fill up with him, the spectres smoothed away by the gentle insistence of John’s hands over his.
God, he’s becoming such a sentimental sap these days, but he kisses John a little deeper and finds he doesn’t care.
*
Eventually, John gets off the floor and Sherlock lets him pull him up off the sofa, and together they meander into the kitchen. Sherlock still feels a little unsteady, maybe a little overwhelmed, but they leave the overhead light turned off and he sits on the table while John scrambles an egg just by the light over the stove. He isn’t hungry at all, but John still has the worry in his eyes and across the bridge of his nose, and Sherlock knows a little caretaking goes a long way for an army doctor that needs something to do with his hands.
Love and eggs. It’s not perfect, but it’s theirs.
For never really having used pet names before, John doesn’t seem to miss a beat about starting to. He slides them in easily, trying a few different ones on to see how they like them. Darling doesn’t seem to appeal to either of them, but love makes Sherlock dip his chin and smile, and John says sweetheart like it’s always lived behind his teeth, and none of them sound like the past.
He doesn’t give up Sherlock’s name entirely though, always turning to face Sherlock when he says it, with purpose and intent but as gently as he can manage, as if to say, but this one, this one is the one we both need, and we’re going to take it back.
“One toast or two?” John holds up a loaf of bread, interrupting Sherlock’s thoughts. “One for the egg, but do you want a second? For jam?”
Sherlock wrinkles his nose, considering it. “Two,” he finally responds, “but the other for honey.”
John grins and turns back, taking two slices of bread and popping them in the toaster. “Should’ve known. Maybe that’s what I ought to call you. Honey.”
“No, no. My father calls my mum that sometimes.” Sherlock slides off the table and drapes himself over John’s back, rubbing his nose along the nape of his neck. He smells faintly like sweat and salt. It’s a good, familiar smell, and it settles some of the uneasiness still thrumming along Sherlock’s joints.
John tips his head back, resting it on Sherlock’s shoulder a moment. “No? You like honey though, and bees. Honeybee. What do you think of that, hm?” He twists in Sherlock’s grip so they’re face-to-face again and wraps his arms around Sherlock’s waist, pulling him in even as Sherlock shuffles closer, brushing noses in the half-light. “Bumblebee, maybe. Wouldn’t want to remind you of your parents.”
“Don’t talk about my parents when I’m trying to kiss you,” Sherlock mock-reprimands, and he does kiss John, a slow, boundless thing that deepens the silence of the flat around them into an eternal hush, a cocoon for just the two of them.
Then the toast pops.
John chuckles as he slips past Sherlock to get the butter and honey together with the plate with Sherlock’s egg, glancing over at Sherlock as he finishes preparing the toast. “Bumblebee,” he says firmly. He offers the plate to Sherlock. “I like that one. Here, bumble.”
Sherlock begins to reach for the plate and then stops, his breath catching in his throat.
Bumble.
The blush rises in his cheeks before he can even fully process it. The word rumbles through his mind and takes its place, golden and sweet, and Sherlock knows right away that this is it. This is a word that can mean him, and only him; this is a word that can be theirs when the other words are too full of memory and meaning and things he is trying to escape.
It’s a word with rounded edges, a word that sounds like way the sunshine smells on wildflowers and long grasses. It’s a word that exists in the before places, in the way things were when they were simple and easy and innocent, before bullies and shame, before drugs and the cruelty of laughter, before fear, before sacrifice, before death.
It’s a word that feels the way John makes him feel in the soft, fluttering places under his breastbone.
“Oh,” he says. Bumble.
John smiles, a small, knowing thing, and sets the plate on the worktop. He takes Sherlock gently by the elbows, stepping in close again. “Yeah, bumble,” he says, certain and entirely calm, studying the reactions forming across Sherlock’s features. “You like that one.”
Sherlock’s flush deepens and he ducks his head, but John slides one hand along his jaw and dips down to look Sherlock in the eye anyway. “That’s a special one,” John decides. “That one’s just for nights like this.”
“Yes,” Sherlock agrees, more breath than voice. Suddenly he feels a little hot behind his eyes again, but John stays close, stroking his thumbs over Sherlock’s cheeks and keeping him tethered to the earth until he sniffs and tries for an awkward, watery smile.
“Your eggs have gone cold,” John says, and he winks.
Sherlock laughs in spite of himself. It’s definitely a joke, but it also means, it’s okay, we don’t need to keep talking about it, if you don’t want to, and John is so utterly perfect that Sherlock needs to lean in and kiss him right then.
John accepts his kiss and grins, reaching for the plate again. He rips off a piece of the buttered toast with honey and holds it out, and Sherlock rolls his eyes but eats it anyway before ripping off the next piece and holding it up for John to take.
Sentimental sods, the both of them.
Together they finish the toast and about half of the scrambled egg, leaning half on the worktop and half on each other, watching the shadows of the room catch and pool along each other’s faces and occasionally drifting in to kiss the darkness away. They exchange whispers between bites, soft voices, careful giggles, brushing hands, and it all seems somehow ethereal and delicate but also solid, like the moment carries weight.
When Sherlock closes his eyes now, the ghosts are gone.
They’ll be back. That’s the way of ghosts. They come back sometimes, they sneak in, they take advantage of the doubt and fear and vulnerability that was seeded and fed and grown in the past, leaving holes in one’s armour. They’ll come for Sherlock, and they’ll come for John too, and it won’t be the first night they spend too long on the sofa, grasping at each other and trying to lead each other back into the light.
But there’s a grim beauty to be had, even in that, even in the knowledge that the peace won’t last forever, because Sherlock knows neither he nor John will ever have to fight alone.
John puts the dishes in the sink and turns off the lamp above the stove. The darkness of the flat seems tranquil now, like safety, protection. He takes Sherlock’s hand and kisses his knuckles. “I think we’d better go to bed, bumble.”
They go, stumbling over each other with fingers twined together, helping one another strip off their clothes and sliding between the covers, hip-to-hip and chest-to-chest and nose-to-nose, fingertips affirming well-known planes and angles and curves, both of them remembering the way the other feels under their hands.
Half-asleep and warm, Sherlock scoots closer and rests his head on John’s pillow, and John accepts him, shifts an arm to let him into his space. “Thank you,” Sherlock mumbles through a sudden surge of exhaustion.
“You’re welcome,” John responds, kissing Sherlock’s forehead, and they both know it means more than just the pillow space. He rubs his hand in a circle over Sherlock’s lower back. “I’m not going to use the names all the time.”
“I think at crime scenes we’d both find that pretty uncomfortable.”
“D’you think? Come here, cupcake, and tell me what you think of this smudge on his liver?”
“Oh god.” Sherlock jerks his head out of that sleepy place to glare across the pillowcase. “Do not call me cupcake.”
John laughs and pulls him close again. “No, no, I don’t think so. Just the ones we like. Whenever you need them, all right? Love. Sweetheart, sometimes. Bumble. I don’t think I’ve ever called someone bumble before.”
“Good,” Sherlock says, burrowing into John’s chest, reveling in the solidity of him. John is warm and alive and here, wrapped around Sherlock, holding the pieces of Sherlock together, not always knowing quite what to say but somehow getting it right anyway, and Sherlock is so, so in love with him. “That makes it mine.”
“All of me is yours, Sherlock,” John whispers back, and then he reaches over and turns out the light.
*