A Heart Beats The Best In A Bed Beside The One That It Loves
Title: A Heart Beats The Best In A Bed Beside The One That It Loves
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~1600
Summary: "Sherlock has his ear pressed more intently against John's back, his curls softly tickling the skin, his cheekbone sharp as the grip of a gun. John fidgets a little, but he keeps sleeping. Sherlock closes his eyes and focuses on the sound, as though John’s back were solid ground, and Sherlock could hear, could anticipate, the vibration of a stampede."
A/N: Title from "Crane Your Neck", by Lady Lamb The Beekeeper, the song that inspired this fic. As always, all my thanks and my love go to Sophie, my amazing, brilliant and the perfect beta. And she happens to be also a lovely, flawless human being.
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John’s heart beats steady.
He’s asleep. His body is so used to Sherlock’s presence in bed that he doesn’t wake up, even when Sherlock is pressing his ear against his back. Even when Sherlock wraps around John’s chest with his arm, and places his palm upon his collarbone; even then, John doesn’t wake up. He keeps breathing rhythmically, left hand under the pillow, his face relaxed. He looks tiny and innocent. Unarmed. Unharmed. He looks like a little kid who fears the monster under his bed, and who dreams of being a soldier. And not - not in the least - like a soldier who feared the monster under his uniform, and who dreamt of being a little kid again.
The last time Sherlock had a dream he was just a boy, cocoa and tipp-ex under his nails. He dreamt he was a hero and he had a cape, a cape made of black, slick feathers - like a raven. And he had a rag companion, with a lion painted on its chest and a smile painted on its face. And Sherlock, wrapping it tightly, took it to fly through the night. And they circled the moon, and they chased stars, and they saw the day break sat on the highest cliff of an endless land, their legs hanging over the edge, their hands almost touching. When Sherlock woke up, he had no cape, he was bracing his pillow, and the sun was rising for him and nobody else. He felt angry and hollow, so he decided he wouldn’t dream again. And with that, he became an adult.
Sherlock never dreams, and he rarely sleeps. Sleeping was already boring when he was alone, before John, before well this could be very nice, before very nice indeed. Before Sherlock, behave. Before Sherlock, run. And now, now that he’s not alone, now that he has John in his bed, sleeping is worse than boring: sleeping is a complete waste of time.
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Sherlock has his ear pressed more intently against John's back, his curls softly tickling the skin, his cheekbone sharp as the grip of a gun. John fidgets a little, but he keeps sleeping. Sherlock closes his eyes and focuses on the sound, as though John’s back were solid ground, and Sherlock could hear, could anticipate, the vibration of a stampede.
As though John's spine were the railway track, bringing through the iron and the distance the promise of a train, the rumour of its machinery, the vanguard of its inexorable arrival. Just the echo, just the rumour; not even a threat, not even dangerous, not even close. But Sherlock needs it closer. Sherlock needs the stampede to surround him, Sherlock needs the noise and the fury, close, inside.
Sherlock needs John closer. Closer and deeper than sex can provide. Deeper than having John inside him; pleasure turning Sherlock into a languorous cat, melted under John’s attentions. Closer than being inside John, even closer than feeling John clench around him; pleasure disarming him, disabling Sherlock’s ability to hide his unadultered love for John, his wild-and-starved-and-without-spines love, uncovered when Sherlock comes hard, biting hard, marking John as hard as close, as close as deep, as deep as the truth that the branches are the roots that the trees spread towards the sky. But there’s no way to take root in the sky.
And that’s why that deep is not deep enough, that close is not remotely close enough, and Sherlock won’t sleep until he finds the way they fit together, solid and irreducible like a truth. Like the continents when they were a single landmass; when they were Pangaea. Sherlock won’t sleep until he finds the outline of the contours where they fit together, the indentations and the ledges; the sharp countour of a puzzle made by two pieces and nothing else.
Sherlock knows how, because it’s like searching for that click that opens a safe. Closing his eyes, holding the breath, the ear against its door and his fingers gently, seductively, touching the dial. Waiting for the wheels, the discs, the catches, to rotate, to surrend. Waiting for the click. Waiting for the locked box to open with a whisper. And with a whisper he will open John, and with his touch he will find the catches, and with his ear firmly pressed against John’s back, some day, some night, he will hear the click.
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Language is generous when it comes to tasks of the heart. Other organs have just one term for their functions. The kidney filters, the lung oxygenates and the stomach digests. But the hopeless romanticism of men has provided the heart with an endless variety of posibilites. And so a heart can gallop, a heart can beat, hammer, pump, drum, melt or sink. Or break. A heart can be burned out of someone. And that’s worse than death, that’s worse than boredom, that’s worse than sleep.
That’s why it’s dangerous to own a heart. It’s an incitiment to wear it everywhere. Sherlock used to keep it safe in the second drawer of his wardrobe. But then John found it, and he secretly slid it in the inside pocket of Sherlock’s coat. And it beat so close to Sherlock’s chest, and it felt so comfortable, so powerful and promising, and it was so close, that one day, Sherlock started to wear it inside his chest. And that was the day John kissed him. And then Sherlock’s heart beat oh-so strong.
It’s dangerous to own a heart. But it is worth it. John moves by heart and that makes him a target, that makes him a hunter, that makes him strong, stunning, mighty; that makes him a lion, John the Lionheart - a territorial creature, dangerous, lethal. It’s dangerous to own a heart, but it’s so much more dangerous to own two. Sherlock has his heart and, if he presses his ear against John’s back, if he places his palm upon his collarbone, and feels John’s heart galloping, and feels his own heart matching that pace then, and only then, he owns two hearts. And that hurts. Hurts even in the sun.
The sun, that sun, the same sun that woke Sherlock to adulthood, is starting to show through the curtains, the horizon, the last curve of the universe, and it’s bathing the room with the first rays of the day. Sherlock feels its first warmth on his back, and sees the pale light painting the wall in front of him. And this is Sherlock’s favourite part; this is Sherlock’s favourite game. Because he can play with the sun, play cat and mouse with the sun, play to map John’s contours. He has to be fast, he has to be gentle, he has to have feathers instead of fingers, to touch John’s waist, ankles, thighs, chest, groin, ear, hair, back, toes, neck, before the sun light reaches them. John is wriggling a little in his sleep, making distracting, tiny noises, maybe because he’s ticklish, maybe because the light is filling the room and he’s starting to rise from the depths of sleep.
That makes the game change, and Sherlock fights tenderly for the advantage, tries then to protect John from the light, to keep John sleeping for a few minutes more. Because Sherlock has two hearts, and that makes him able to eclipse the sun, to prolong the night, to prolong John’s dreamland, building ephemeral bridges just before John takes the next step into the void.
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John’s heart beats confidently even when he walks blind and without net. Without net but with Sherlock. Running hand to hand everyday with Sherlock towards the danger, towards the noise, towards the storm. Trusting blindly. Trusting Sherlock on the cliff. Trusting Sherlock in the stampede. Trusting Sherlock in their bed. Entrusting Sherlock with his heart, his lion heart.
Sherlock stretches on the bed like a human hearted lion, all head, teeth and royalty, and presses gently his chest against John’s back, curls his legs in the hollow of John’s flexed knees, and tightens the arm wrapping him, the paw, the wing, the bridge, the net. Like that, he covers and protects John from the daylight. Like that, Sherlock knows he has defeated the sun. He has won John.
John’s heart beats steady, soothing and intoxicating like a primal lullaby. Without noticing it, Sherlock’s breathing starts to imitate John's, and his limbs, his eyelids, his heart, become invitingly heavy. Sherlock fights the sleep, but he’s exhausted for having fought the sun, and even his eyelashes, that brush against John’s right shoulder, weigh too much, too much to be upright, too much to be awake. But Sherlock fights it anyway, because he can’t sleep yet, because he still has to find the key, the code for the safe, the map for the secret edges of John, the way back to Pangaea.
With a sigh, Sherlock tightens his hand upon John’s chest, and then, unexpectedly, John softly holds his hand, bringing it to his mouth, and kisses Sherlock’s wrist. There, over Sherlock’s pulse, where there’s a tiny heart secretly beating, beating through the skin like the train and the stampede, like the comforting promise of danger; beating blue and without spines, beating loud and strong its love for John; that’s where John places his kiss. It’s a kiss warm and long and purposeful, as if John were a prince from a subverted fairy tale, John The Lionheart, the one who will put Sherlock to sleep, with a kiss, with a true love’s kiss.
Sherlock has fallen asleep.
And he dreams. He dreams he flies with John the skies of Pangaea.
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