Work Text:
Inky blackness has saturated the familiar flat, 221b dappled in a moonlight that is warring with castoff from the streetlamps for dominance. Irregular patterns slink over the sofa and the rug, the coffee table and a lamp that is not recalled as familiar. All is quiet; the silence so pervasive that Sherlock swears he can hear the dust shift and settle.
He’s honed his sense of hearing since he’s been gone; it has proved valuable.
Now that he’s back (he’s back, and finally) he wonders how much to his advantage this will be.
There have been days of endless travel, submitting himself to terrible borsch on rickety cross-continental trains in Russian and thick, hearty bread devoured in Hungary. No air travel, too obvious, too easy to trace. He’s nearly rested now, the click and clack of steel against steel having lulled him to dreamless sleep on his journey home (Russia, Turkey, Hungary, Germany, France, England-London-Dr. John Watson). He’s well fed and feeling startlingly normal and it throws him so off-kilter, the notion that this is normal that he nearly grasps at the doorknob to steady himself.
Because he’s well-rested and well-fed for the first time in months...
You wouldn’t know it for the inky black smudges beneath his eyes, the lightning-red veins bright against his pupils, the way his coat hangs off of him. Lids remain open, eyes focused as with a practiced care Sherlock surveys the surroundings of a flat once his.
A flat once shared.
Much is different now; he’d not expected John to keep it the same, no, but the stark reality of a life moving on without him (a life that matters so much more than his own) claws deep at his rapidly beating heart, it turns his stomach. The armchairs remain but are by the windows, flanking a low, antique table piled high with books and papers. A controlled chaos.
The black fleur wallpaper is gone, obviously painstakingly removed in favor of paint, a neutral coffee that picks up the muted hues in the abstract paintings that have been hung on the wall. An amalgamation of Picasso rests over plaster he once burst with bullets; plaster-it appears-could not fix the damage Sherlock had incurred.
There’s a well of savage pride that rears within him unbound and unfair, ‘He couldn’t erase everything.’
His skull is the most conspicuous absence; surely John wouldn’t simply do away with this item of his. Eyes scan the room quickly and Sherlock’s heart gives a kick as his brain helplessly supplies the possibility that John has put it away to keep it safe, to keep a part of him safe, undusty, untouched. It gives another little wretch when he wonders if John’s taken it to his room, just to have it close.
An absurd notion, to be sure, but over the past months Sherlock has been known to indulge in slight flights of fancy.
Sherlock is a stranger here, now, and it cuts right in, deep, deep. There is nothing within him that hadn’t expected as much, there isn’t anything in him that hadn’t hoped that John had gotten better and moved beyond but he hadn’t accounted for this roiling, unpredictable tide of emotion. A blow to the gut whose inertia never gives but continues plowing forth, knocking the air from him.
He misses in this moment, thoroughly and wholly and manages to swallow a rogue sob that begins forcing its way up his throat. This is pain, real pain, blinding hot in it’s certainty. Fingers itch to curl into a thick, wooly jumper, eyes burn with the need to rove John’s face, assess the wear of time against his skin. The grief of not knowing these things, of having gone without reaches higher until Sherlock regains his breath and tamps it down. None of that, now; he’s home, to John, if John will have him.
So Sherlock sits on the sofa that is still flush against a now-coffee wall (same furniture, cushions reupholstered) and waits.
There’s nothing left but to wait.
He sits, spine straight, against a couch he used to call his own. It is John’s now, as is everything in the flat. He’d not been so sentimental as to have changed his will before he died but Mycroft had assured him that what Sherlock had called his own would be given to John, no strings.
Sherlock breathes, watches the shadows shift and morph as the moon makes its way sluggishly across the sky; hours of quiet evening stretch before him. He thinks of the way John smells and knows from being in the flat that he hasn’t changed in the slightest, not really, and misses him even more.
And he’s just one flight up.
Sherlock can’t bring himself to mount the steps and so he waits as late night slips into early morning and the traffic outside picks back up a bit, the earliest of early risers up and about. His lids slip closed slowly as though riding a sigh and he allows his spine to bend and sag and he falls into the back of the couch just as he hears the squealing creak of John’s door opening upstairs.
His footfalls are even and paced, just as always and the shivering of nerves in Sherlock’s stomach are calmed by the thought that he walks no faster. John doesn’t walk as though he’s a man burdened either, no slower. He rolls his neck towards the sounds and steels his resolve.
Sherlock has no idea why he feels the need to run.
But John turns the corner on a yawn and Sherlock’s entire nervous system stutters to a halt, breath is arrested in his lungs and the very cells in his skin scream out that he wants to touch, that he should rush forward and touch to prove the existence of the man before him. “John,” he manages, voice paper rushing against paper and the doctor glances towards the sitting room, takes a step forward and stares.
John maneuvers to look behind him to check that he’s where he think he is, back into the kitchen and then back at Sherlock; fists swipe at his eyes, rubbing a bit of the sleep away and he flicks his lids wide to really get a proper look through the darkness. Sherlock toys with the idea with turning on the unrecognizable lamp but he’s not certain he could move at the moment.
This isn’t a dream, Sherlock wants to say. You’ve no idea how many evenings I’ve dreamt this.
Licking his lips John shivers and presses his eyes harshly, tightly closed, only to blink them brightly open.
There are long, long moments of taut silence.
“Oh, oh jesus,” John says, sleepy, pajama bottoms covering the tops of his feet, looking to Sherlock like a lost boy. Looking too young for this, too delicate for a shock of this magnitude. “Dear jesus christ,” John says again, blinking yet more. “No.”
It’s the coldness there, the harsh reality of his voice pronouncing ‘No’ that reminds Sherlock that he’s speaking to a soldier, to someone who is stronger than he can ever hope to be.
Sherlock sits and stares at John, the new lines beneath his eyes and the half stone he’d lost years ago and never managed to regain. He looks only slightly desolate, not a shell of his former self but someone else entirely. It rips right through Sherlock, straight through the middle and it’s a fight not to buckle over. “John...”
John doubles over, his hands on his knees and he heaves, heaves breath wetly and then sucks in a few quick, loud breaths. “Christ, you... oh christ, oh...” He flings his upper body towards the ceiling and stands, dazed. “You’ve got to be, fuck, your... explanation, you’ve jesus goddamned christ Sherlock... had a long time to figure out how to tell it.” Sherlock doesn’t know what to say as John continues. “And you’ve goddamned better well tell it, tell me how you go from being dead,” his voice shivers over the word. “To sitting on my sofa, perfectly alive. Flesh and bone,” John adds for good measure.
There is a long bout of silence, pregnant and it stretches wide between them; it feels as though harder than ever, now.
There’s shock in his voice, but there’s a smile forming on his lips; eyes still wide with wonder, he takes a step towards Sherlock. “I, I... I’ve no idea what to do.”
“Three years,” Sherlock confirms and at once notes the acceptance in John’s voice. “You aren’t as... you’re not as...” He blinks slowly and tilts his head, regarding John thoroughly. “Nor do I... know what to do.”
The chuckle that bubbles out of John is breathless for the wonder of it all and Sherlock’s nervous system kicks back to life.
“Would you believe me if I said that I... never believed you were dead?” John asks-breathless still-and walks three paces to stand right in front of him. John bites his lip and waits for his brain to catch up to the words forming around his tongue. “I can’t... process...” Gaze to the window and back to Sherlock, his mouth twisting into a smile, only to fall right back into a frown. “I’m mad as hell right now Sherlock and I’m sure there were reasons, I know there were but... I couldn’t ever believe that you were gone.”
Something in those words curl around Sherlock’s throat and steal his breath, temper his erratic heartbeat. It saddens him to a degree he didn’t think possible while elating him at the same time. It’s chaos in his mind; John causes all manner of simultaneous, conflicting feelings within him. It’s the most brilliant madness Sherlock has ever felt.
“Irene Adler had left me with, christ-Sherlock, she’d left me with this hope...”
And it’s instantaneous, the reaction. “Adler-” Sherlock’s eyes squint to tiny slits at hearing that name once more.
John notices, says nothing but nods, “Back when, when we worked with her she’d said... after she’d faked her death she... said that DNA tests are as good as the records you have to back them up and that, that...” John blows a harsh breath through his lips and sags a little, runs a hand desperately through his hair before pausing and tugging at it. “I don’t know why I remembered it, I don’t know why I recall anything that woman said but... If anyone... I mean, you, Mycroft...”
Sherlock blinks and what is left of his smile, the traces, slide suddenly from John’s face.
“What does that say about me?” John asks sadly. “That you couldn’t be dead? What does that say about me?” he whispers the last bit.
He still looks sleep tousled and lost, but happy and angry and sad and overwhelmed and as he strokes a hand up the back of his own neck, the tide overcomes Sherlock and he stands to move in front of John. “This is real,” John whispers to himself, as though wishing.
“Yes,” Sherlock confirms, voice tight.
John blinks up at him, assesses their proximity. “Who gets this chance,” he says, nearly to himself. “To get someone back after... afterwards?” John presses his lips together and swallows. “And how do I... how do I do this moment justice?”
Sherlock shakes his head, meets his own gaze in the mirror above the hearth over the top of John’s head. “I... don’t know that either. I...” Sherlock’s eyes fall closed and he sighs and just breathes in the scent of the man before him. “It had to be done. To ensure that Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson and... you...”
John nudges closer, his nose brushing just beneath Sherlock’s chin. “Your death to ensure our lives...” And of course John understands. John is a man who offered himself up in Sherlock’s place, tit for tat; of course he understands.
Again, the detective swallows, wants so badly to touch, to diffuse himself back into this space, to claim John as his own once more (was he ever?) but he does not have this right. “You were always a dangerous disadvantage John,” Sherlock murmurs. “One I, however, quite could not, can not do without.”
John clears his throat, and glances up with a lick of his lips. “That so?”
Sherlock’s hand reaches up and curves around John’s neck, tickles at the hairs at John’s nape. The ‘yes’ Sherlock hisses is lost against John’s chapped lips. It’s just a press, just a slide of mouth against mouth but it causes John to puff a little exhale of breath through his nose and sigh, wind his arm up and touch against the place where Sherlock’s neck meets his shoulder.
It’s startlingly tender; Sherlock is content to rest here against John for the rest of his days. It seeps into his bones, bleeds throughout his consciousness that he’s home and that this is somewhere he wishes to stay; this is somewhere he never wants to have to leave again.
Here, where John’s mouth is pliant and opening beneath his. Here, where John slides his arms around his waist and holds on with everything he’s got. With a slight angling of his head, with a freedom he never knew existed Sherlock gives himself over, opening to John.
It’s a slow, wet slide of tongue against tongue, agonizingly slow. Sherlock tastes John, sleep and cinnamon, rainwater and moss, heady and rich and endless. “Yes,” Sherlock rasps excitedly as his fingers curve around the cusp of John’s ear and over his shoulders, everywhere that there is to touch. “This.”
There’s a wonderful little hum against him as John pulls back and lays his mouth against Sherlock’s bottom lip. “Hmmm,” he hums again and leans to press his face into Sherlock’s neck. “I need to... three years is a lot of time making promises to myself,” John murmurs and Sherlock listens closely. “I need to...” The warm breath that skates across Sherlock’s skin is brilliant and wonderful and he tucks his chin down against John’s temple. “I need to take you apart.”
John pulls back; Sherlock blinks at him, expectant. “That was the worst of it, the wishing I’d known you, tasted you just once, knowing that I’d been a coward before you’d...” John squares his jaw and stands a little straighter. “I need to take you apart.”
Lips part but no words are spoken because there are none. Longing, John knows of the longing he too has felt; equal parts pain and regret and shame. And Sherlock’s hand cupping John’s cheek, leaning in and kissing him deeply. And oh, oh, it still hurts, still burns deeply but it’s a glorious sort of hurt; a constant sort of ache that throbs in his chest. Hands press in against John’s face and hold him as their mouths slide together, plying against one another.
It’s a fine line for the both of them, something between just enough and not nearly enough and Sherlock thinks, thinks that if he could just crawl inside and stay forever, that it might be enough. It might begin to be enough, because missing this man has made Sherlock aware, finally, of the depths and breadths of love. Love, a foreign term, but that has to be it, has to be the gaping, ragged hole left in him with John’s absence; it has be this need to touch and feel and be felt and never, never stop. (Not if he can help it; three years of solitude have taught him some things.)
“Oh jesus,” John whispers, glancing his teeth against Sherlock’s neck, hands suddenly shivering everywhere. “Jesus, jesus christ,” and fingers against buttons and both shirt and coat falling to the floor to reveal bruised and pale, so much skin.
John’s arms twine around Sherlock’s shoulders and he holds him, “Just give me a moment.”
“Alright,” Sherlock intones and is content to feel the warmth of John bleed through his shirt, feel the small, delicate kisses John places over his right shoulder.
Pulling back to run the tip of his nose over the curve of Sherlock’s ear, he asks, quite plainly. “Upstairs, please?” There’s a slow turn of a nod and John ducks his head and pulls completely away, walks away, mounting the stairs and trusts Sherlock to follow.
He’s left in the sitting room, glancing around once more to simply take it all in. It’s a luxury, or feels like it. He slides his hands deep into his pockets, balances on the tips of his toes and breathes in once, deeply, before setting up the stairs after John.
Sherlock wants badly to rush up the steps and burst into John’s room but he takes his time; he can do that now, take his time. It’s a long minute before he reaches the landing and pushes open the door slowly to reveal John standing at the window, back towards him.
John takes a breath, Sherlock can see it in the way his back flexes. “This will be my...”
There’s no need to say it and there’s no need for Sherlock to admit that he understands. This is all new to him as well; they’ll fumble through together. Together, as they always used to be. Together, as they always will be; Sherlock somehow knows this deep within himself, that there is a forever for him and that John is the majority of it. Instead of being a startling revelation it is calming and Sherlock steps fully into the room and closes the door behind him, quietly.
“I expect that after you’ve told me everything that’s happened I could fill a book with it,” John says as he turns and lifts his thin white tee shirt over his head. “And maybe I will... maybe, maybe...” He walks to Sherlock and reaches out a shaky hand, fingers catch a lone shaft of light. Fingers trace a collarbone through his shirt and Sherlock shrugs so his coat pools on the floor at his feet. “Not now, but you will tell me...”
Sherlock feels entirely sane and startlingly off balance. He feels whole and incomplete. He feels.
“I love you quite a lot,” John says thoughtfully as he places his other hand at Sherlock’s waist. “Is that alright?”
His eyes flash and he remains still, turns the words over in his mind, very nearly feels them in his mouth and chews on them. “Always so sentimental,” Sherlock murmurs and moves his own hands to John’s hips.
“You know me,” John says quietly, sadly even as his lips curve upwards.
“Hmmm,” Sherlock hums and smiles himself, a small, wavering thing. “I do, don’t I?” Another revelation and this startles him. He knows everything about John, everything because John wants Sherlock to know everything. It’s heady and intoxicating and Sherlock dips his head to skim his lips against John’s before he makes an admission of his own.
John leans forward and kisses back, gently.
Gently.
Because they have all of the time in the world.
They have ages and ages and ages because Sherlock is back and Sherlock is alive and John is more than alive now, in Sherlock’s arms. And so his mouth opens beneath the other man’s and his tongue darts out to lick at the seam of Sherlock’s lips. He gives in easily, shifts his body, turns himself until he can walk back to the bed and sit upon it.
John, between the vee of his legs, runs his hands over the curve of Sherlock’s shoulders before tapping at the buttons of his crisp shirt. Sherlock chuckles suddenly and works over the buttons as John smiles back and curls a hand around the back of his neck. John takes his time, paying attention to Sherlock’s mouth, nipping at the bottom and then the top lip, darting away to skim teeth against his chin and newly- exposed collarbones.
Sherlock is quite certain he’ll never have enough of this.
After ridding himself of his shirt -flicking his wrist to toss it somewhere towards the foot of the bed-John presses him back, spreading his body against the chocolate duvet. It’s too stark, the contrast of skin against fabric and John blinks as though his eyes are seared.
He stands back after a moment, hair tousled and lips swollen and looks his fill.
A heat rises in Sherlock’s cheeks but he remains still, allows John to memorize his body with his eyes. “I don’t-” John croaks and then clears his throat. “I don’t even know where to begin...”
The slow grin that travels across Sherlock’s lips and up his cheeks feels foreign; he twists up the bed, body lying across the left-hand side of the bed, leaving more than enough space to John to lie with him. And lie he does, spreads his body across the bed and takes Sherlock into his arms.
So tight.
Sherlock’s lips find the hollow of John’s throat and remain there for a time, breathing, licking, nipping; he has John underneath him and when he bucks up his cock brushes against Sherlock’s, separated only by a few thin layers of fabric. “Off, off,” he mutters into John’s neck, begs John’s carotid.
John lets out a heavy breath into Sherlock’s hair and raises his hips, wriggles out of his pajama bottom and takes advantage of Sherlock’s position to unbuckle his trousers and press them down as far as he can. Sherlock laughs and then laughs again, mutters a little, “Oh christ,” and John’s hands slip beneath the band of his pants to press those down too.
“Shhh, quiet,” John urges, the words smeared into the corner of Sherlock’s mouth. “Hush,” he murmurs as his hand tests the temperature of his skin. Fingers tickle against the hair there, raking through before dipping to brush against Sherlock’s hardening cock.
“So far, so good,” John laughs and Sherlock joins in, their mouths meeting, open and messy. Legs scissor until he has the bundle of bottoms at his knees and Sherlock twists himself onto his back for a moment to toe off his ludicrously lavish wingtips and socks. He makes quick work of it, the task so easy he wonders at it for a moment.
It’s as though the fates that he does not believe in have all conspired to make this the easiest thing he’s ever thought to do.
John perks a brow when Sherlock turns back to bracket his neck, supporting himself on his elbows and before he can think about it, slides their pelvises together. It’s all humid heat and delightful friction and John’s body tenses deliciously beneath his as their pricks slide and align.
“Ohhhh,” John drawls a whisper as his eyes fall languidly shut.
Sherlock takes a few calming breaths, swallows deeply and then glances at John’s face, forgets how he ever did without seeing it every day. Forgets why he cursed himself to years without him. Circular reasoning, for if he hadn’t left John there would have been no John to come back to.
He speaks the words aloud because he thinks that John really should hear them, “If I hadn’t left you, you wouldn’t have been here to come back to.”
“I understand,” John breathes as he peels his eyes open and shifts so that Sherlock finds himself on his side with John straddling his thighs, pushing him onto his back. “I understand.”
Sherlock wonders at John, watches as he maneuvers down his body and dips his head. Tongue laps at precome and Sherlock keens, eyes whiting out. A blizzard, a snowdrift and he’s positively lost.
Hips stutter and strain beneath John, bucking up, needing nothing but “More, please,” and even air is an afterthought. And John swallows him, gives himself entirely, wrapping his hand around the base and moving his mouth unhurriedly and reverently over Sherlock’s cock.
Sherlock clutches at the sheet and at John’s hair and it feels wonderful but after a few glorious minutes a fissure of terror runs down Sherlock’s spine and he pinches John’s shoulder. Pulling away he glances up and the fear melts away; his eyes, his eyes are what Sherlock needs right now. John’s mouth and John’s breath and John’s eyes seeing him.
Sliding up his torso, Sherlock takes him into his arms. “Alright?” John asks and at Sherlock’s nod, he settles his cheek against the detective’s and breaths him in. “Might I risk more sentimentality?” John asks, maneuvering his hand between their bodies to clutch around their pricks.
There’s a huge jerk from Sherlock, who turns onto his side, forcing John to twist onto his own. “Yuh-yes?”
“I never want to have to be without you again,” and the blush on John’s cheeks and his hand moving along the both of them aided by their mutual desire and Sherlock bucks and smiles and agrees.
“Nor I you.” It is quite sentimental for him but he finds that the brilliant warmth it unleashes in his chest is very much worth it. Sherlock licks his palm and moves it to join in with John’s and it is awkward and sweet and entirely brilliant.
Sherlock’s mouth moves in silent pleas and just before he comes John slips his lips over the detective’s. They do not come together but it’s a very near thing and when falls his eyes fly open to meet John’s. Hips buck and hands hold tight and when he’s able to suck in a breath it sounds like a sob and John nestles his nose in next to Sherlock’s and remains still.
Still.
When John moves it is only to locate his pajama bottoms and clean them off with one of the legs; when he’s through he tucks himself into Sherlock’s side without apprehension or shame and allows his heartbeat to finally settle as he listens to Sherlock’s beating solidly in his chest.
“You’re here, finally,” John says into Sherlock’s neck as his fingers slide down his forearm to clutch at his palm. Sherlock turns his hand and allows John fingers into the spaces between before clutching back.
Sherlock wonders how he went his entire life without any of this. Without skin on skin and hands that clutch and John’s voice that is telling him that he’s the only thing in the world, the only thing ever?
He sighs in unspoken thanks to whatever forces put this man on the earth.
“It feels as though I’m finally able to breathe, as though I’ve finally come up for air,” the words come unbidden, on a rush of sudden breath and his free fingers are twined in John’s hair and John’s cheek is pressed to Sherlock’s collarbone and the dawn rises crisply behind dark blue window coverings.
Sherlock allows his eyes to fall closed and he begins to drift off to the sound of John’s paced breathing as his fingers squeeze back so tight. He shall rest tonight and find solace behind closed lids, finally, truly and he will wake in another world in which he can live as himselfonce more. For the first time in a very, very long time, Sherlock thinks of the future as a reality.
‘Home is where the heart is,’ he recalls just before nodding off and with his last conscious thought banishes the saying for being far too sentimental.