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The cell is warmer than John would have expected, if John was in any state at all to expect anything, really.
Distantly, his brain warns - the words echoing throughout his seemingly cavernous, liquid head - that he hasn’t been quite this pissed since university and do try to remember how that ended. He’s just on the cusp, on that delightful edge where drunk slides seamlessly into ill, but he thinks if he can keep it together for a few hours he might just sober up and feel fine.
His brain laughs at him bitterly, casually reminding him that he’s thought that before and that it didn’t really turn out for the best, now did it? John frowns and huffs a little sigh, his stomach roiling unpleasantly now; he can still smell Sherlock’s vomit, clinging to the hairs in his nostrils so he breathes out quickly, twice, trying to expel it.
Thank goodness he’s a doctor and has a strong disposition, otherwise he would have upchucked right alongside Sherlock and then where would they be?
Well, the drunk tank, probably, just where they are now and so John muses that maybe he should have vomited, come to think of it; that perhaps it would lend to a clearer head in the morning. But he shrugs and settles back against the wall, thankful for the cups of water and pack of chewing gum that had been given to him by the patrol officer who had taken him in.
The spearmint helps settle his stomach and clear his nostrils and he sucks small bubbles in, onto his tongue where they pop with little hollow thuds between his cheeks.
To his left, Sherlock cracks his gum annoyingly, snapping it in between his front teeth like a whip; it resonates in the quiet of the tiled cell. John hadn’t been sure what he’d expected of jail, but this certainly wasn’t it. This quiet, this warmth, this privacy. The two of them, in this enclosure, and John could happily imagine that they were the only people in the world.
He shouldn’t think things like that, not now.
“What time d’you suppose it is?” Sherlock mumbles and his baritone rings sweetly off of the close walls; John swears he can feel it vibrate right through to the marrow of his bones.
A smile plays on his lips, comes unheeded and John settles into it, “Mmm, dunno, you’ve a watch.”
“So’ve you,” Sherlock reminds and John hears a rustle as the detective turns, slips onto his side and gazes down at him. It’s dim, very, very dark, but Sherlock’s eyes absorb what light there is and refract it, blue-green glints that remind John of moonlight.
His voice is croaky and chapped when he responds, “S’too dark.”
They’re silent for a time, but John can’t take his eyes away; Sherlock’s gaze is heavy and sweet, the alcohol allowing for a more lingering glance without the sharp edge of deduction. Sherlock is just looking at him, just looking, asking nothing and John finds it both unsettling and quite intimate.
“At least it’s warm,” Sherlock rumbles after a time, his right arm slung over the edge of the cot, fingertips just brushing the concrete floor.
John agrees there. “Much warmer than the hallway, have to say.”
“Though not warmer than my bed,” Sherlock theorizes and John needs to remind himself not to slip into dangerous, semicharted territory. He can think of many things that would be safe, but Sherlock in his bed is not one of them and so he evicts the very notion from his mind.
“Thought you didn’t sleep,” there’s an aloofness there, enough good humor to coat over the jagged edges of his irrefutable confliction.
When Sherlock responds it’s all but a dagger to his gut, a fact disguised as a realization. “Things change, John.” The duality there is unmistakable and it steals John’s breath from his body.
“I know they do. I know it.” John allows his head to rest back against the tile, and what he had of vision swims before him. He’s entirely too drunk for this, his tongue too loose, his nerves still raw and jangling from Sherlock’s lengthy absence. Sherlock’s return had only served to salve the freshest cut, but his wounds ran deep and old and stubborn.
There were things he needed to say, and there was nowhere for Sherlock to go, nowhere that he could hide. The alcohol had bucked up his own courage and he was rather sure that he’d never have this chance again. Sherlock, alone, unable to get away from him regardless of how much he might want to. “You keep,” John began but it sounded wrong, nearly turned into an accusation. He took a deep breath and restarted again, licking his lips. “I’ve a captive audience.”
“Hm?” Sherlock unfurls, the slight F clef of his body, shifting into a softer bow; John watches his chest rise and fall under the thick veil of a ruined Dolce button up. He sees the taut muscles of Sherlock’s stomach flex as he settles himself and relaxes back into the thin, rubbery mat.
It’s astonishing really, the strength with which the urge to climb into the void left by his body overcomes John; he’d like to, just once perhaps, press into that form and test its warmth. But John doesn’t know if he’s strong enough for just once. He could blame the inebriation for these softer urges but he doesn’t, because he knows the truth of them as he thinks he always has: he wants to curl into Sherlock and keep him, keep them, just as they are right now.
A stunningly devastating impossibility.
“Trying to, I’m trying to tell you things and you leave and I can’t - you have to understand that for me to even get to a place where I can tell you these things is, is hard for-for-for me.” John shimmies himself closer to the bench, can’t bear to raise his voice any higher for fear someone else will hear.
God, why is he saying this in the first place?
The words tear through him, churn in his gut and threaten to stop his throat if he doesn’t speak them; they’ve been there for years and months and days, causing him guilt and grief, driving him half mad with a want he didn’t understand. His tongue is heavy but loose with the beer and the ages he’s had to think about all of this. “I need to but this is hard, yeah? You, d’you get it?”
The booze wraps itself around his tongue and John needs a moment before he’s able to speak again; it’s all a bit addled, just a little bit. He knows that he’s not making much sense, but he’s not sure what other words he could use. John can only speak of the things that want to overcome him, threaten to swell up and tear through him and the words for those things are difficult and cumbersome and oblique.
“So you’ve said.” The tone of Sherlock’s voice matches his own and he feels surrounded, protected by some invisible shield, delicate but resilient, built around them in this moment. Sherlock’s breath, humid and tinged now with only spearmint and the lingering sourness of old lager puffs across John’s cheekbones.
“Thank you for tonight, really. Even if it’s a bit of a cock up, more than a bit really. Can’t think of any better way to go out.” John laughs because the moment calls for it and then he leans his head onto the ledge where Sherlock rests, does his level best to meet the other man’s gaze across the short distance. “End of an…”
“Don’t,” Sherlock breathes and closes his eyes; John is positively terrified that the moment is gone, broken, shattered and is equal parts relieved and devastated. But Sherlock’s eyes flick back open, a sheen of tears bright and unobscured. Oh, this is something indeed. “Things… change.”
John’s answering nod is slow and sad, “Yeah.” He confirms and licks his lips, “Yeah. I… I wish…” There’s a thought there, carefully guarded and hidden and reserved and it would be so easy to speak it now.
It’s so much more simple right now, with his head light with intoxication, with his heart beating so solidly true in his chest. John can admit things to himself right now in the darkness and warmth, that maybe, maybe all along he was waiting to change. That his heart wasn’t in the dating, in the women, in the fleeting romances he’d found. John thinks that maybe he was allowing Sherlock to sabotage it all because there was a moment for them.
Just on the horizon, a moment that would have changed everything and that they had each been waiting for it in their own way. John, not pushing back hard enough when Sherlock would destroy an evening out with a new girlfriend and Sherlock expressing his jealousy in the only way he knew how. And they both allowed it because it was there, the promise of something more, just out of reach.
How brilliant they could have been, John thinks and feels his heart plummet into the deepest recesses of his stomach. There’s nothing for it now but to think of it all as in the past. He feels tethered and thick, and for a moment wonders if he went through with proposing to Mary because of some ingrained sense of morality.
But no, this is the way it was written and this is the way it breaks. They could never have had something really, not Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. The very idea of it is foggy and incomplete. There are no evenings spent in by the fire, there are no weekend trips to the countryside.
There are, but not that way.
Sherlock’s fingertips shift over and brush against John’s ankle. “You wish what?”
“Change, you know?” John closes his eyes and chuckles once, the hopelessness of it all. “I’m sorry.”
Sherlock snuffles into his elbow and licks his lips audibly. He looks ruffled and lost and so pliable that if John could just will his fingers to move…
“Why?”
“It was, it could have been so much more Sherlock. You’re my best friend and it… it could have been so much more.” The truth of it is solid and heavy and takes up all of the space between them. John takes his bottom lip between his teeth and waits, waits for anything.
Sherlock scoffs, lolling his head against the makeshift bedding, disbelieving. “You’re drunk.”
That’s the truth and John smiles at him pointing out something so obvious. “Yeah, well, so are you. Drink tends to… make things like this easier.”
“Drink turns men into fools,” Sherlock seethed, his face very close to John’s face. Even as his eyes shone they were unfocused and Sherlock blinked John’s face back into view.
“Your fault, your stag night-you, you planned it, you turned me into a fool,” John accuses, bright and loud and harsh, slurred and long; the double meaning cannot possibly go missed. He swallows against the lump in his throat and falls back against the wall, what little fight he’d managed to rouse draining right from him. He’s made it as plain as he possibly can with the words that he knows.
It’s now up to the world’s only consulting detective, now violently intoxicated, to suss it out for himself.
He rolls onto his back with a groan and his hand goes to his forehead; they fall back into silence that to John sounds like crisp, white static in his ears. He looks to the ceiling and across at the wall, where hazy moonlight has cast an oblong shape; he focuses on it and waits.
For a time he thinks that Sherlock is asleep. His breathing has evened out and he’s relaxed, both hands over his eyes and a strange sensation floods through John. It’s a hollow feeling, the lightness of admittance cancelled out by a lone opportunity lost. With his tongue against his lower lip John closes his eyes, fit to doze until morning.
But Sherlock turns over, settling his head on his right bicep and studies John for long minutes; John can feel it but doesn’t look over because he’s not sure he could process what he would find there. He’s a coward and all too courageous and a million other things that he can’t parse out because he’s pissed.
He wishes he hadn’t started this.
He wishes he’d pushed it further.
“John,” Sherlock whispers, “are you asleep?”
John smiles, “You can’t tell if I’m asleep?”
“S’all a bit difficult at the moment,” Sherlock drawls and John turns to face him. When their eyes meet, he nearly wants to turn away; Sherlock is so open and earnest that it’s painful to see and he fears what might pass his lips next. “More, you say.”
John heaves in a steadying breath. “Yeah, more.”
Sherlock purses his lips briefly and then blinks, says nothing, does nothing, just watches John with such endless fondness that something inside John physically cracks.
It’s a mutual thing; Sherlock tilts his mouth up and John tips himself forward and their mouths meet in an odd, awkward, dry kiss. Neither one of them move, just lingering there, breath huffed out through their noses, in time.
Their eyes are open, Sherlock’s wide, surprised but accepting, but John’s threaten to slip closed.
It’s Sherlock who moves first, shifts back so that their noses align; it is his eyes who slip closed, mouth quirking into a small, sad smile. “You can’t-can’t do this.”
“Shut up,” John mutters but makes no move back to Sherlock’s lips, just remains curled uncomfortably on the floor, his face against Sherlock’s, breathing. “Just shuddup.”
He can feel Sherlock’s silent laugh, feels Sherlock sway in the bunk, feels Sherlock’s breath and apprehension and fright.
“Just, just,” John cups his jaw and then his neck and breathes out harshly against Sherlock’s cheek. “Just please.” He knows it’s not fair to ask, but he can’t help it, to have come this far and leave it at an awkward press of lips, it might just kill him.
Sherlock surges then, uncoordinated in his inebriation and nearly tumbles off of the shelf. Their mouths mash together hard and John gives a little grunt of pain before pressing his hands to Sherlock’s shoulders and righting him. Their mouths open, sliding together seamlessly.
John’s mind blanks for a split second before his hands move, greedily touching against Sherlock’s back and face and shoulders. He may never get to do this again, this is likely the only time he will feel this and he wants to remember every last bit of it. Distantly, he wishes he wasn’t so far gone at the moment, though, he concedes it wouldn’t have happened had they not both been three sheets to the wind.
All conscious thought escapes him when he picks up on the breathy, needy little sounds Sherlock is making in his throat. The man is surprisingly attentive and adept at this, his lips soft but limber and intuitive. It’s brilliant, really, and John’s chest creaks and expands to accept the flood of tenderness and love.
Sherlock presses kisses to John’s cheeks and chin and neck, all like he’s a bit starved for it. It feels brilliant, to know he’s wanted by this man, to know that he’s being craved just as he himself is craving. John’s teeth catch on Sherlock’s lower lip and worry there briefly as he takes the opportunity to sink his fingers deep into Sherlock’s hair.
“I’ve never felt so alive,” he finds himself mumbling, slurring into the sweet line of Sherlock’s neck. He can’t quite believe what he’s doing and it slams into him, swimming up lazily before landing between his eyes and it kicks a heavy breath out of him. John’s mouth lands hot and open against Sherlock’s jaw. He blunts against him, teeth clamped together but flat against Sherlock’s skin.
Sherlock stills and breaks John, utterly shatters him when he reaches around to cradle his head gently. John’s next breath that comes is in the form of a sob and Sherlock murmurs into him, sweet and nonsensical and John pulls back to kiss him with care.
It’s slow, and John finds himself bracketing Sherlock’s face with tender hands. His head swims so pleasantly the way Sherlock kisses back, intently and just as carefully as John. He’s deliberate in the way he meets John’s mouth, of course he is, meticulous and desperate. They fall into it together, John pressing himself right up to the edge of the bench and Sherlock looms over him, falling easily into John’s sturdy frame.
The angle should be awkward, and he’s sure it’s the booze’s fault but he’s just fine on the floor.
Sherlock lumbers up onto his knees, their mouths slipping apart and John perks up on his own knees, places one palm flat on the shelf, pressing up into Sherlock’s downturned mouth. Against him, Sherlock laughs and John smiles in turn, managing to unfurl and clamber up onto the mat.
They stare at one another breathless and then John presses him back until he’s slouched halfway down the wall, blankets Sherlock with his body and lies with him as they kiss. It’s all tender and slow and timeless. There are light fleeting touches and telling grasps of clothing. “We can’t,” Sherlock whines, his voice drawing out the ‘t’ as John dots a kiss on his nose.
“S’my stag do, I can do… shuddup.” He thinks of Mary in that instant, her image, her likeness cropping up in his mind and instead of feeling shameful and guilty he feels just the slightest bit more hollow. Not that she would approve of this, but he can’t help wonder, of all of those nights spent discussing his devotion to Sherlock Holmes and the depths of his sorrow, that she wouldn’t be the slightest bit, well, understanding.
Sherlock releases John’s mouth with a sloppy little pull of teeth. “Stop it.”
“Mmmwhat?” John eyes flicker open.
“I can taste her on you, stop… stop thinking,” Sherlock smears into John’s cheek and locks his arms around his lower back. They pause and it’s the worst thing for it really, it allows reality to slip back in through the haze.
John presses his brow to Sherlock’s chest, presses hard. His head moves in time with Sherlock’s breath, calming, soothing. He can taste him on his tongue, heady and reminiscent of lager and something darker.
Jesus, kissing Sherlock Holmes.
Before he makes a conscious decision, John is rolling to the side, off, fumbling haphazardly back down onto the floor. He licks his lips and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, feels once more the heavy weight of Sherlock gazing at him. “Shit, shit I’m… ‘v gone and cocked it all up, all of this.”
“Mmmm, no,” Sherlock hums. “No, you’vnt.”
John sighs and pulls his hands away, extends his legs as long and he can. When he lets his palms fall onto his thighs, the noise startles the both of them. “I just…” he begins but finds that finally, frustratingly, he is all out of words.
Sherlock blinks down at him and John just catches his eyes before the veil of detachment falls over them. It’s a crushing blow, but well deserved, he supposes. “‘m tired, go to sleep, John.”
The cell is warm but the ground is uncomfortable but somehow John manages to tame his runaway thoughts, settles back, drifts to sleep to the sound of Sherlock’s breathing.