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The post-case adrenaline rush is coursing through their veins as they exit the cab, Sherlock practically skipping up to the front door, John right behind. John, always right behind. Together they jog up the steps to the flat where Sherlock removes his coat in a grand flourish and turns towards John, palms warm and heavy as they come to rest on the doctor’s shoulders.
He touches when he can; he touches when he can get away with it, fills himself to the brim with John’s warmth as long as he’s allowed. It’s a terrible thing, his need, his want, but he long ago accepted that he can’t help it.
Sherlock wants to feel this everyday, this free, light feeling seeping down into his bones. Sherlock wants to feel this forever.
“Takeaway,” Sherlock instructs mock-gravely and then his face bursts into a grin as he spins away towards the kitchen, knocking about in the refrigerator while John remains in the sitting room and pulls his mobile from his pocket.
Sherlock sighs, extracts two bottles of beer with a less-than-thrilled frown and looks across the space at John. “Thai?”
“Salads, with protein,” John says with finality, even as he holds the phone up to his ear. “Yes, I’ll hold,” he agrees and moves into the kitchen to take the proffered bottle out of Sherlock’s hand, cracking the cap off with a good, solid twist. “We have to cut down on the sodium,” he says after a pull at the beer. “We’re not young men any more.”
“You’re not,” Sherlock mumbles after a slight wince, the beer not to his taste, but he drinks from it again anyway.
John flicks the bottle cap in Sherlock’s direction with his thumb and Sherlock’s heart gives a good solid kick at the playful gesture as he ducks to the left, out of it’s range. “You’re a dick-oh no! Not you, sorry, sorry!” And John flushes in embarrassment and turns away, placing their food order while meandering back into the sitting room and heaving himself down onto the sofa. Sherlock watches as John toes off his shoes, no regard for rubber scuffing the leather as he doesn’t bother to untie.
Sherlock knows, from the haphazard way John’s decided to remove his footwear and the lack of hesitance in accepting the beer that John is going to crash, the combination of receding adrenaline, the alcohol and thirty-six hours without sleep about to take a toll on his body. It thrills him that he knows this about John, that he knows exactly what John’s body language means, what his facial expressions imply. Top to bottom, Sherlock Holmes knows John Watson.
And John has forty-five minutes, tops.
Sherlock intends to make the most of all of them. He delights in John, post-case (delights in John always, really). The sweat from dashing about the city curling his hair just so, causing him to roll up his shirtsleeves so bare arms are on display. John smiles differently after they’ve solved something; he grins like the night is endless and his happiness is on display for Sherlock alone, something to treasure and keep.
Such a truly ridiculous and fantastic notion, but he can’t stop himself from wanting it. John has turned him inside out and back again over the years and he can’t stop wanting to keep these parts of John, these little slivers of the man, as his.
Sometimes, if he tries hard enough, Sherlock can trick himself into believing that John’s smile is for him, and him alone. At the moment he doesn’t have the time required to get to that wonderful place of ignorant bliss, so he simply slides into his chair, shifting it against the floor a bit until he’s turned to face John.
“Bet your back is going to hurt in the morning,” John says, brow raising and lips curling inwards a bit, no longer grinning but smiling easily.
“Likely. A fall from that height, I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Paracetamol?” John offers, hands on his knees as he moves to stand and get the medication for Sherlock.
Sherlock shakes his head. “Anything stronger?”
John purses his lips and considers. “I’ll give you one with codeine, but just for tonight.” He disappears up the steps, going for his kit where he keeps the tools of his trade. In his wake, Sherlock wonders if he should risk crossing the room and soaking in the heat left on the couch by John’s body.
Not enough.
Not enough time to risk it he decides and sits back, watches the hallway, listens to the creaky floorboards adjusting to John’s footfalls above, waiting for his return. Each and every time John enters a room, something unfurls in Sherlock’s chest, something becomes looser, more accessible, and it terrifies and thrills him. He can never tear his eyes away from John’s form, not when he’s coming back to him.
John reappears to drop a tablet into Sherlock’s palm and Sherlock thinks, You’re back. I don’t like it when you leave. You’re back you’re back you’re back, for me. He says none of this, knowing rationally that John was just upstairs, just out of sight, but his traitorous heart, his gut, they flip when John returns, every time.
Every single damned time.
“Thank you,” he accepts the pill and smiles when John gives him a look for washing it down with the beer.
“Try not to get knocked off of a ledge next time, yeah? I know it was a low one, but all the same. What would I do if you cracked your head open?” He says it lightly and so Sherlock responds in kind.
“Well you’d inherit a sizable amount of money and the deed to a property in Plymouth, for one.” Even as it leaves his mouth, light and airy, he knows it’s the wrong thing to say. He knows it’s wrong because John’s eyes darken a shade and his mouth tightens and he goes just a bit rigid.
John bites his bottom lip and let’s the sentence settle between them. “I’m serious. Don’t...don’t do that please.”
“Get knocked off ledges?”
John’s eyes fall closed on a sigh and when he opens them again, he’s looking across at Sherlock with such raw honesty that Sherlock stops breathing. “Needlessly put yourself in a harmful situation. It… it…” John searches for the words and Sherlock marvels as John recedes back into himself, becoming the picture of composure, shuttering himself up. “It takes years off of my life.”
A joke, and Sherlock perks a brow. “Ah.” The rest of his beer goes down in a giant gulp and Sherlock stands, “Can’t have that,” but he says it so quietly, so gently that it crosses the narrow line into the territory of revelation.
“I don’t know...” he glances up at Sherlock and there’s something there in his eyes, something struggling to shine through. “...how much longer I can do this.” John finishes lamely and sits in silence as Sherlock crosses the sitting room to gaze out of the window.
Sherlock knows John worries and John cares and Sherlock too no longer knows how much more of all of this he can take. It settles, acknowledged but unresolved, between them.
The food arrives and they eat in silence, Sherlock surreptitiously watching John from his periphery. He’s quiet, picking at his lettuce and every so often his thumb slides across his palm to brush against where his wedding ring once rested. Bile rises in Sherlock’s throat at the action, but he times it, the length of the touch, and when John’s thumb falls away Sherlock releases a breath and notes that it’s the shortest duration yet.
This pleases him and he finishes the whole of his spinach salad and half of the pita bread with gusto, belly feeling full to distention when he leans back into the leather of the chair; for his dessert, he watches openly. John’s actions slow, his fork dragging through his food, muscles drooping as the last of the endorphins recede and he’s left tired and tipsy, the whole of his beer going down before any food had.
Sherlock has to say John’s name twice before he glances up, a need to slumber evident in the slant of his eyes, the set of his shoulders. “John, take my bed, I’ve notes to write up about the case anyhow.”
And instead of saying no, insisting that Sherlock get sleep as well, or mentioning that his bed - newly dressed and situated amongst the many boxes, newly arrived, of John’s belongings - is just up the steps, John blinks and nods, puts the cover back on his salad and stands. “Thanks.”
“Of course.”
A million thoughts occur to Sherlock in that instant but the one that demands, shouts, repeats is John’s scent in my bed. His scent in my bed. His head on my pillow and body beneath my sheets and his scent in my bed.
It’s all too much, far too overwhelming and the knowledge of his need for this man creaks open the tightly-sealed box in Sherlock’s chest and diffuses, taking over every cell, every singular atom. It’s this that has been chipping away at him for these past years, wearing down at his resolve until it’s nothing but a thin veneer. It’s weak and ready to break and when Sherlock allows himself a brief moment of imagining the hue of John’s hipbone against his sheets, his head falls into his hands in submission.
He was never strong enough for this.
It’s too much, the prospect of watching John in his bed, amongst his things, imagining he belongs there; it tears Sherlock from his chair after long minutes. Silently, he slips down the hallway and through the cracked door. He feels like a trespasser in his own room, filled with guilt until his eyes adjust to the darkness and he makes out John’s form beneath the covers.
Stripped down to his vest, his skin contrasts with the white of his shirt and the navy of the bedclothes. He’s a study in contrasts and it amuses Sherlock: a forty-three year old man is his definition of absolute, endless beauty. This is a scene he could stare upon for hours and hours and not be bored.
John’s skin is touching fabric that Sherlock’s own skin has touched, will touch again; this revelation causes Sherlock’s prick to twitch and his skin to heat and he grabs at the doorframe to steady his rapidly spiralling thoughts.
There’s a creak and his nails make a sharp pinprick of sound against the wood and John rouses. Sherlock stills and holds his breath, willing John to fall back under, but John shifts onto his back, blinks his eyes open and his gaze falls upon Sherlock, standing there in the doorway watching him.
When he sits up, the sheet falls to his lap and Sherlock wonders desperately what he’s wearing beneath.
“What… did you… did you want to sleep?” John asks blearily, hair a mess, rubbing at his eyes. Sherlock’s never seen anything better, never wants to see a single thing but this - John waking in his bed - ever again.
“No,” Sherlock whispers, his throat tight as he steps into his room, crosses and sits down on the bed quickly. He is terrified of himself, terrified of John, terrified of the pain in his chest and the lightness in his limbs. If this is love Sherlock thinks, suspects that it is, this is absolutely abysmal.
John says nothing, does nothing, just blinks sleepily and wears a ghost of a smile, waiting for Sherlock, waiting to see what he’s come for. They’re only a short distance apart and Sherlock trembles, feels the slumber-warmth roll off of John, the man’s scent carried with it.
He’s never felt the urge before to burst into tears, to cry out, but now Sherlock does, feels the pressure welling in his chest and pricking behind his eyes because this is perfect and Sherlock Holmes has never experienced anything close to perfect before in his life.
It’s humbling.
His hands move to cup John’s face, palms against cheek and jaw, thumbs resting against the small wrinkles at the corner of his eyes. John is warm beneath him and patient and Sherlock feels it when he breathes out, steadying, through his nose.
Sherlock sweeps the pads of his thumbs against the puffy, delicate skin of the bags beneath John’s eyes. John’s eyelashes fall in a slow blink and when they peel away and up again, his eyes are watching Sherlock curiously.
The muscles of Sherlock’s throat work to swallow but there is no saliva to help it along; his mouth has gone completely desert-parched and he’s not surprised, he’s wanted this for so long that the mere inkling of not being allowed to have it won’t allow Sherlock to simply taste even the possibility of it. The urge to touch is so great, even when accompanied by the knowledge that this isn’t something that John wants.
It isn’t.
Is it?
Reassess.
Sherlock breathes in and casts his eyes over John’s body, watches as his breath picks up, just so. John swallows thickly, twice, and Sherlock watches as his Adam’s apple bobs beneath skin with a five o’clock shadow. Sherlock wants to taste him there, feel the movement there, everywhere muscles shift against bone and skin, Sherlock wants to know it.
But the observations persist; John’s pupils reduce to specks of black surrounded by stormy seawater blue. And he’s allowing Sherlock’s hands to linger on his face, he’s allowing Sherlock to sit so close. He’s allowing Sherlock to be with him while he’s sleepy and vulnerable.
Sherlock is sure that they’re sharing breath and John isn’t saying a thing to stop him.
Sherlock thinks he should, that John should speak up, speak up loudly and very, very clearly or Sherlock is going to take. He can’t help it, the need is keening within him, to test the texture of John’s lips, discover how their tongues slide together.
“Kiss me,” John’s mouth says, quietly, his lips curving and contorting around the two words in what seems like slow motion. Sherlock’s synapses fire and absorb but cannot process what is happening. He blinks, blinks again, gaze still lingering on John’s mouth, but his eyes are wide and glossy, disbelieving. The voice is somehow removed from the mouth that speaks the words and for a brief second Sherlock is very, very lost.
Sherlock exhales and leans back a fraction, allowing him the space to make eye contact with John. John who is now fully awake, John who is waiting patiently for Sherlock to come back to himself, John who says again, “Kiss me.”
It’s not a kiss, not really, it’s Sherlock’s upper lip settling against John’s bottom one and the two of them breathing together. It’s not a kiss, but his plywood heart is splintering, giving way, cracking open. Helpless, Sherlock shivers, hands slipping down to bracket against John’s biceps, hard, holding him in place.
John sucks lightly, pressing a warm palm to the back of Sherlock’s neck, squeezes there before settling his forehead against Sherlock’s own. “Can we both agree, you and I, here and now, without… can we both agree that we’re allowed this?”
Sherlock pulls back, shocked, apprehensive of the hope he feels welling at John’s words.
“Can we both agree,” John asks, taking a steadying breath, breaking their gaze momentarily to glance off towards the windows, “that we’ve paid our dues?”
It takes him a moment, static in his ears and electricity in his veins, to make his tongue wrap around the words he wishes to speak. “A thousand times over, John.”
John’s smile wavers, falls as his face turns away to look towards the window again and when he turns back, there is a grin, bright and steady and honest, above all, relieved.
Years and years and eons fall away from his face and John Watson sits before Sherlock Holmes a new man - the same, but new. His.
Paid up.
Sherlock breaths in.
John exhales. “A thousand times.”