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Luminous mind, bright devil
of absolute clusterings, of upright noon---:
here we are at last, alone, without loneliness,
far from the savage city's delirium.
Just as a pure line describes the dove's curve,
as the fire honors and nourishes peace,
so you and I made this heavenly outcome.
The mind and love live naked in this house.
Furious dreams, rivers of bitter certainty,
decisions harder than the dreams of a hammer
flowed into the lovers' double cup,
until those twins were lifted into balance
on the scale: the mind and love, like two wings.
---So this transparency was built.
Pablo Naruda
John eases through the doorway behind Mary, out of sight, and wonders why it’s always abandoned warehouses with these megalomaniacal types. Sherlock may or may not have realized John is here by now, but either way, John hopes he doesn’t do anything stupid.
Sherlock says something John doesn’t quite catch, and Mary laughs.
“You’re so in love with him it’s pathetic,” she scoffs. “My very existence is threat enough that when I say ‘jump,’ you don’t even ask how high before you’re calculating distances and velocities.”
John shifts position until he can see Sherlock sitting on a metal folding chair, held there at gunpoint. Sherlock’s hands open and close restlessly against the top of his thighs.
“I suppose it does look rather pathetic from your perspective. But that’s what people do, isn’t it? Fall in love. Selfless love, I mean, though I’d wager that’s something you’re unfamiliar with. Self-abnegation.” Sherlock eyes the pistol in Mary’s hand. “Clearly you’ve realized there’s nothing in this world I won’t do for John Watson.”
“Even die, and let it stick this time?” Mary pulls back the gun slide to chamber a round. “They say third time’s the charm.”
John sees red.
Things happen pretty quickly after that.
~
Mycroft’s people load Sherlock and John into one van, and a handcuffed, bleeding, very much not-pregnant Mary into another. Her attempt on Mycroft’s life had failed, thanks to John’s rugby tackle, and John himself was only winged in the process of rescuing Sherlock. With Mary securely in government hands, “Moriarty’s” network is finally done for. It might not be cause for celebration (bit morbid, that), but John thinks a round of congratulations wouldn’t be out of order.
Sherlock, however, is too busy staring white-faced and grim at John’s lap where he has cinched his scarf as a tourniquet. He clasps John’s thigh with one huge hand, tightly enough that John is starting to go numb.
John wants to reassure him, to remind Sherlock it’s only a flesh wound and definitely not something which required a pen knife to slice up the length of John’s trousers. But the adrenaline is wearing off, shock is setting in, and if he opens his mouth, John can’t be certain what words will fall out. Because Sherlock is in love with him.
John can’t hold a coherent thought for longer than the few seconds it takes to cycle back around to that, the single most shocking revelation in an evening of life-altering surprises: Sherlock Holmes is in love with him.
Soon enough, they arrive at an ominous underground car park. More agents throw open the vehicle doors and hustle them into the building proper. Despite the overwhelming noise and movement around them, John stays curiously removed; probably fully into the shock, now. He has just been shot, after all.
John retains enough presence of mind to track Sherlock amidst the chaos of MI6 agents and medical personnel. Sherlock, who hovers just out of reach like a reluctant ghost that can’t help but haunt John’s footsteps. Sherlock, whose hands are smeared with blood because he had refused to hand John off to the ECP who had climbed into the van with them. Sherlock, who is in love with him.
“Dr Watson, one of our medics will assess your wound, if you’ll—”
“I’m fine,” John interrupts. He is still directed to a gurney behind a curtain that provides more illusion of privacy than actual privacy itself. His trousers are already sliced almost clear away on one side, so it’s only the work of a moment for the medic to pull on a pair of nitrile gloves and begin prodding at his thigh painfully.
Sherlock hangs back, uncharacteristically out from underfoot.
“Get over here,” John orders, because he wants someone to make damn sure Sherlock isn’t injured as well, and because John feels horrible for having lied to him for the past two weeks, and because Sherlock is in love with him.
Sherlock shuffles forward half a step. “I don’t want to interfere.”
The protest is a bit laughable after his behaviour in the van, but John doesn’t have the heart to call him on it, not with him looking like a stiff wind would knock him flat on his arse.
“And I want you over here,” John insists. “With me.”
Sherlock is hesitant, until John nearly leans off the gurney reaching for him, and Sherlock finally steps within grabbing distance.
“Take off your coat, I want to see that you’re not hurt.”
“Dr Watson, one of our team can—”
“John, I’m really not...”
“Sherlock.” John catches Sherlock’s gaze. “For my own peace of mind. Please.” I’ve almost lost you too many times, he doesn’t add. He could say the words, knowing what he knows now (finally!). But John is determined not to do it in front of a bunch of Mycroft’s underlings. Sherlock deserves better than that. He deserves the privacy of his own flat, before John embarrasses himself with an inept attempt to acknowledge this thing which has existed between them, unspoken, for far too long.
Sherlock nods stiffly. John’s hand slides down to give Sherlock’s wrist a squeeze. That brief touch is enough to prove Sherlock is clammy, pulse quick and irregular, and John is glad Sherlock has acquiesced without more of a fight.
Another medic approaches and directs Sherlock to a neighboring gurney.
“Start Mr Holmes a chart, will you?” John’s attending asks a passing nurse. “Give us a few minutes, Dr Watson, and we’ll have you sorted. No stitches necessary, you were very lucky.”
“Yeah,” John agrees as his eyes make their way back to Sherlock. The man is perched uncomfortably on his gurney, shirt unbuttoned just enough to allow a stethoscope access. John hates seeing Sherlock so miserable when everything is finally back to the way it should be: just the two of them, free of the hanging spectres of both “Mary” and “Moriarty.”
“I’ll be right back,” John’s attending says, but John doesn’t acknowledge her. He glances to the foot of his gurney and spots an open folder with his name, notes on his current wound and his vitals. Beneath that is what seems to be a copy of all his previous medical records. Typical, meddlesome Mycroft.
Next to John’s folder, one of the nurses has dropped another: Holmes, William SS.
Before it even registers as a conscious thought, John is reaching for the file. A glance in Sherlock’s direction finds him enduring a penlight and vision tracking exercise with a grimace.
Just the most recent entries, John promises himself. He won’t invade Sherlock’s privacy as far back as his years of drug use, but Sherlock has been frustratingly tight-lipped about his time away, ever since John told him he didn’t care how he survived, only that he had faked his death in the first place.
The latest entry dates to what John remembers as the day of Sherlock’s return.
03/11/2015, 13:14
Pt presents post retrieval from deep mission in class. loc. Pt is malnourished w unkempt
appearance; highly reactive to loud noises, sudden movement, attempts at touch. Rec
approach w protocol appro to trauma vic due to evidence of phys torture of unk duration.
Rec full psych eval.
John skims the medical notes, feeling a knot work itself tighter in his gut the further he reads. Torture. Sherlock had been captured prior to extraction, strung up and beaten with a steel pipe, Christ. The diagrams of the injury to Sherlock’s back, the notes about radiographs done and kidney function tested, have bile rising in John’s throat. There is evidence of older, poorly healed injuries: knife wounds, cigarette burns, two crooked small toes on his right foot indicating untreated fractures. And after all this Sherlock had a haircut and a shave, left almost immediately to seek out John, and then let John knock him to the ground, choke him, and nut him right in the nose without a word of protest. John feels ill.
“That’s not your chart, Dr Watson,” the attending remarks as she reappears at John’s elbow.
“No, it is not.” John hands over the file, trying not to think about what other information exists even further back in Sherlock’s history that Sherlock would never tell him voluntarily.
John isn’t an idiot. No physician worth their medical degree carelessly left records lying about where anyone could read them. Which means this is Big Brother yet again, and John is annoyed on Sherlock’s behalf. At the same time, he can’t quite fault Mycroft; the guilt on his face had been real during that cloak-and-dagger meeting they’d had, whilst Sherlock was in hospital the second time. Mycroft is trying to make amends in his own way, but it’s still an invasion of Sherlock’s privacy.
Tortured, and John had never known. He’d all but accused Sherlock of having a grand time without John there to, what? Hold him back? Slow him down? Christ, he’s an idiot.
Sherlock is shrugging back into his coat with nothing worse than a few bruises, apparently. He still looks too peaky for John’s liking. All John wants now is to get Sherlock back to 221B, alone, since there are questions and truthful answers deserved on both sides.
“I’ll have someone fetch you a pair of trousers,” his attending offers, interrupting John’s fantasy of getting a cuppa and maybe some biscuits into Sherlock, of sitting across from him in their armchairs again and just… looking his fill. Which is a bit pathetic, if John thinks about it too deeply.
“Yeah, please.” John doesn’t intend to stick around with MI6 all night, but one never knows with Sherlock. Sherlock has a way of throwing a spanner into the simplest of plans, and John would feel a right tit to be caught walking around any longer than necessary in trousers sliced from hem to hip.
Sherlock approaches to watch as John’s bandage is taped in place. His face shows no trace of his earlier terror, and John can almost convince himself he had imagined the tremor in Sherlock’s voice (If John is dead, neither you nor I are leaving this room alive, Mary). But John knows what he heard.
“Alright?” he asks quietly.
Sherlock wrinkles his nose. “Yes, of course. I told you I was fine.”
Someone brings John a pair of scrub trousers. Sherlock clears his throat and gestures vaguely toward the door. “I’ll just wait outside, then, shall I?”
He’s gone before John can protest. The ride back to Baker Street is going to be awkward as hell, John can tell already.
Sherlock proves true to his word and is waiting right outside the medical bay when John is finished, fussing with his phone. Not texting as far as John can tell, just fussing. Something about such a nervous, human gesture from Sherlock is unexpectedly endearing. John might tease him about it, if not for the anxious pinch of Sherlock’s brow.
“What is it?” John asks. “Because I will drag you right back in there if—”
Sherlock waves off his concern. “It’s true, then? Moriarty, Brook, whomever he was…he really is dead?”
“Oh, that. Yes. Mycroft said he found him hiding in Serbia right before he extracted you. Apparently he’d been stalking your every move since your ‘death,’ like a little pervert. Well, I’m paraphrasing.” John lifts a hand to rub at the back of his neck uncomfortably.
“According to Mycroft, Moriarty was off the deep end. In custody, he kept going on about how you two were made for each other.” Mycroft had used the term ‘vulgar sexual obsession,’ but John really, really doesn’t want to go there.
“He eventually made a grab for a guard’s weapon, and, well, you can probably imagine how that played out. Mycroft seemed to think he was suicidal by that point, knowing he was beaten and his sick game was officially over.”
“Makes sense,” Sherlock acknowledges, but there is still that little pinch between his brows. Not surprising, considering that as far as Sherlock knew, it had been a video broadcast and the threat of reprisal for her take-over of Moriarty’s network that had driven Mary to lure Sherlock in under the guise of her own kidnapping. John tries not to enjoy it unduly, knowing something Sherlock doesn’t and having been successful at keeping a secret from him. John has a lot of explanations to make, and not just about his eleventh-hour teaming with Mycroft.
Later, he promises himself.
~
John starts to explain as they ride toward Baker Street in one of Mycroft’s cars, if only to fill the silence. He tells Sherlock about slipping away to check the A.G.R.A. thumb drive on a reception computer while in hospital with Sherlock the second time, and finding it empty. About the nurse John didn’t recognize from Sherlock’s rotation showing up and pulling him aside into an empty surgical suite where Mycroft was waiting to confess his involvement in the current situation.
However, it quickly becomes clear that Sherlock is only listening with the barest interest. His hands clasp and unclasp between his knees, and he seems intent on looking anywhere but at John, except out of the corner of his eye. It’s a manic, jerky energy John recognizes from cases gone on too long, at too great a personal cost to Sherlock, and John decides the storytelling can wait. He’s no stranger to subsuming his ego for Sherlock’s sake. Instead, he cuts straight to the only part Sherlock probably really cares about.
“Mycroft thought Mary was the sniper who was supposed to shoot you if you stepped out of line on the roof of Bart’s. She shot Moriarty in the back of the head instead, as he faked suicide at you. Theatrics gone wrong, supposedly. Until it turned out the body wasn't him, fingerprints didn't match up with MI6 records. And at that point, even Mycroft didn’t realize that—” It’s difficult, swallowing down so much bitterness at everything that was taken from them, for no reason beyond pure narcissistic psychopathy.
“She was the mastermind behind ‘Moriarty‘ after all,” Sherlock finishes. “So Jim's ‘death‘ on the roof of Barts was her tying up loose ends? And afterwards, he was free to shadow me all over the globe as I worked to tear down his web one strand at a time...”
“‘What does it tell you when an assassin misses,’ aren’t you the one who said that?” John asks. “It was a bluff for your sake. She didn't actually want him dead, he was her brother.”
“His sister,” Sherlock groans, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes. “There’s always something!”
Sherlock exhales shakily, and the sudden urge to grasp his hand is so intense that it’s like a fist around John’s heart. He hesitates, because despite the declaration Mary dragged from Sherlock tonight, they have yet to actually talk about it. John is still trying to reconcile, in his mind, the cool and untouchable Sherlock Holmes he can’t believe he ever thought was the ‘real’ Sherlock with the raw, vulnerable man squeezed into the back seat beside him.
“Brilliant,” Sherlock says, but there’s no delight in it as there was years (ages, a lifetime and two deaths) ago. Instead, Sherlock’s voice rings hollow and exhausted.
Fuck it, John thinks, because hadn’t he spent the two years Sherlock was gone torturing himself with ‘if only’s? Hadn’t he hated himself as he made a last-ditch attempt to get anything, a single word (One word, Sherlock, that is all I would have needed.) out of Sherlock on his stag night, something which would have allowed him to listen to the roiling of his gut every time he contemplated making the life he had with Mary permanent?
Sherlock loves me, he reminds himself with a giddy sort of disbelief, and to continue to deny Sherlock comfort due to his own lingering insecurities seems cruel.
“Jesus,” John says, exasperated at himself. “It’s fine now, Sherlock, everything is fine, it’s good, come here.” Reaching out, he slides a hand along the back of Sherlock’s scalp, rubs his thumb over the thin skin behind Sherlock’s ear. “Perfect,” he adds aloud without meaning to, unable to tear his gaze from Sherlock’s profile.
Sherlock’s eyes slip closed, lashes trembling. “John...” he says with a hitch in his voice.
“Come here,” John repeats. He doesn’t want to spook Sherlock, but John can’t let this ridiculous man spend another moment thinking he’s anything other than the center of John’s entire, ridiculous universe.
Gently, John guides Sherlock’s head toward his shoulder and does what he wishes he’d done a year ago, with Sherlock hopeful and jittery and alive in that stupid French waiter’s get-up. He presses his lips fiercely to the crown of Sherlock’s head and breathes him in. Sherlock hasn’t washed for at least as long as it’s been since he last slept, the result of several days of hard use of his mind at expense of the ‘transport,’ but in that moment, John wouldn’t have him any other way.
“You’re in love with me,” John whispers against Sherlock’s hair. He wants to give Sherlock the chance to deny it, to tell John he’s wrong. Sherlock stiffens in his arms.
“Sherlock.”
“...Madly,” Sherlock admits, sounding on the verge of tears. “Not that that’s anything new: me, mad.” The creaky, self-deprecating bark of laughter which follows is a sound John hopes to never hear again in his life.
John’s heart twists painfully, but it’s a good pain. It’s the pain of more emotion than he knows what to do with, having pushed it down for so long out of fear it would be unrequited.
“That’s good. I’m glad,” he says. He reaches up to card his fingers through Sherlock’s lank curls. “Christ, am I glad. Because I am stupidly in love with you.” John presses his mouth to Sherlock’s temple and holds it there for a long moment, and just that much skin-to-skin contact feels better than John could have ever dreamed. “Not that that’s anything new. Me being stupid, right?”
Sherlock doesn’t say anything, but the hard press of his forehead into the crook of John’s neck, the heat of his tears as they soak through the fabric of John’s shirt, these are answer enough.