Chapter Text
Heathrow, gate 32
John hadn’t slept. Not properly. Not through the night. Not without interruption. In truth, he hadn’t slept in the kind of way that restores a person in weeks - months even, if he chose honesty, which he rarely managed to do anymore. The fluorescent lights were too bright, a sterile white which consecutively managed to feel both sharp and dull, pressing against the edges of his sight like another relentless ache. He kept his eyes open anyway. Keeping them open was easier than shutting them. When he shut them, Mary returned - and he wasn’t ready for that. Not today, not in public. Not anywhere.
Beside him, Sherlock stood. Hands burrowed deep into the pockets of his indigo greatcoat, shoulders composed in a way which implied a rather substantial amount of effort. Sherlock wasn’t built to appear casual, casualness required a larger quantity of looseness which he failed to possess. Even now, motionless in a terminal flocked with a modicum of holiday-goers and exhausted businessmen, all blurring into a haze, he vibrated faintly with thought, like a machine idling, too powerful to truly ever power down.
He stared forward, expression unreadable, except to someone who’d spent years learning to read him.
“Your left shoe is untied,” Sherlock said, tone mild.
“It’s fine,” John murmured, scanning nothing in particular.
“It’s not fine,” Sherlock replied. “It’s untied.”
John breathed in sharply through his nose. “Yes, well, nothing is bloody fine, is it?”
The words came out too loud, too hard - sharp as the airport’s glass edges.
Sherlock went still. Not offended, somehow not even surprised. Simply just… attentive. The crowd moved around them, utterly unaffected and unaware: children tugging at parents’ sleeves - whole families donning Disney ears, a group of students with sunburnt cheeks, a businessman muttering hastily into a phone. A cacophony of unrelated lives brushing past, the buzz of the continuity of life despite everything.
“No,” Sherlock said softly. “No, it isn’t.”
The words were hushed, yet landed with an incomprehensible weight. John closed his eyes for a moment, palm dragging down his face. His skin felt too tight, like it didn’t quite fit.
“I’m sorry,” he said, voice losing its edge. “I didn’t sleep.”
“I know,” Sherlock answered - simply, lacking embellishment. No lecture entailing his nimiety of deductions, no explanation of REM cycles or cortisol levels. Just knowing, because he knew.
Overhead, the boarding announcement for the flight to Florence echoed: gently, finally, inevitably.
Florence. Even thinking the name made something within John’s chest feel far too small. Florence was everything that London wasn’t; warmth, colour, stone illuminated by golden light rather than rain, streets illuminated by a sweet, honey glow. A city which smelled of Basil and the dust permeating from old churches rather than the all-encompassing odour of petrol and grief.
When John had suggested to go (his voice quiet, uneven) Sherlock had simply nodded. Put on his coat. Packed. Unquestioning. Sometimes, that was all you needed from someone. Not answers, not solutions.
Just… yes.
They walked to the gate. Sherlock adjusted his steps, matching John’s pace without acknowledging it. The familiarity of the act ached.
The pane smelled like recycled air, plastic, and something faintly metallic. The sound of buckled clicking filled the cabin like small, rhythmic punctuation. Sherlock claimed the window seat. John took the aisle. No discussion, no need. As the plane lifted, London unfurled beneath them - streets and rivers and rooftops shrinking into an intricately grey map. John looked and felt a tug deep within his ribs. Loss having a geography.
About half an hour into the flight, Sherlock spoke again.
“You’re doing better than you think,” he said, eyes still on the window.
John huffed out a humourless breath. “Am I?”
“You’re here,” Sherlock said simply. “You’re breathing. And you are..” he paused, searching, “… persisting.”
Sherlock didn’t use words like coping or healing or grieving. Those were words which other people used. People who didn’t understand the matter of that grief was not simply something you walked through, but something you carried. A second pulse beneath the skin.
John turned his head to look at him. The soft, low, spotlight of the cabin throwing Sherlock’s profile into soft relief: the strong line of his nose, the gentle slope of his cheekbone, the faint tension at the corner of his mouth. And those eyes - sharp, clever, always searching - yet quieter now. Dimmed, in a way which John had never seen before Mary passed.
“Why did you come?” John asked. The question originating from somewhere low and aching. Sherlock blinked. Once, slowly. He didn’t turn away.
“Because you asked,” he said.
“That simple?”
“For me, almost nothing is simple.” Sherlock’s voice was soft, weighted. “But this is.”
John swallowed. The plane hummed around them; soft, steady, inevitable. Something within his chest tightened… but gently this time. Not tearing. Not shattering. He nodded once, Sherlock didn’t speak again.
At some point, John’s exhaustion pulled at him, heavy and insistent. His eyes slipped shut, consciousness escaping him. His head drifted. When it came to rest against Sherlock’s shoulder, he didn’t move. He stilled- not rigid, not uncomfortable- just careful. Protective, almost. A living anchor within a cabin full of strangers. He stayed like that for the remainder of the flight.
When they disembarked, Florence met them like a held breath released. Warm air engulfed them, thick with summer, scented faintly with Jasmine, basil, and sun-warmed stone. The sky was in the middle of its slow metamorphosis from gold to violet, like the day was deciding whether to remain or let go. The airport glowed with soft yellow lights, warm and honeyish. Reflecting off of taxis, off glass panels, off Sherlock’s coat buttons. Everything looked gentler here. Softer.
John stopped just outside the automatic doors and inhaled, slow and deep. The air tasted different. Less heavy. Less haunted. Sherlock stood beside him, shoulders relaxed just slightly. Watching him, but not intruding.
“Welcome to Italy,” Sherlock said.
John didn’t smile. Not fully. Not yet. But his chest expanded - properly, deeply - for the first time in a very long time. And that was enough. Not everything had to be headed at once, some things only had to begin.