Applied Lingustics
Fandom: BBC Sherlock
Beta: notboldly
Brit-pick: the-physicist
Rating: R
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Word Count: ~4,800
Disclaimer: Property of Gatiss and Moffat. No money made, no copyright infringement intended.
Summary: “He wants to shake John by the shoulders, wants to open his mouth and swallow John whole. Wants to marry him.” Sherlock searches for the right words.
Applied Linguistics
Dawn spills warm and bright into the bedroom the morning after John gets home from hospital. There’s dust in the air, and the room is hazy with it in the pale glow of the newborn sun, but John lies sprawled against Sherlock’s side, face mashed into his armpit, radiating heat, and Sherlock is glad. There is a purple-green bruise that blooms from his tailbone and mottles his back almost all the way to his shoulder blades; it looks more like mould cultures than John’s familiar pale English skin. Sherlock is careful when he threads his fingers through John’s hair - it’s blond and grey and a touch ginger, and it’s grown a little longer than John prefers, but Sherlock quite likes it - and strokes down over the curving indent of John’s spine, fingertips barely skimming the firm warm surface of the expansive bruise. John stirs but does not wake; he’s a bit ticklish, so Sherlock stills the progress of his touch even though nothing would please him better than to lay hands on his lover and absorb all that he is, take the essence of him into himself, pains and joys and all that lies between. Sherlock rests his left hand lightly over the tender knot on the back of John’s head and remains still. He takes deep, measured breaths to match John’s, and there, skin against skin in the nest of the bed they share, the beat of their hearts is a singular rhythm, better than Tchaikovsky in Sherlock’s ears.
Four days ago, a tight, nauseating knot had gathered in the vicinity of Sherlock’s diaphragm as he watched John tumble head first from a first floor window in the East End onto the pavement below. Sherlock’s vision tilted and fuzzed as he watched John disappear from inside the flat. He almost let the suspect go, except said suspect was in possession of an infinite cache of stupidity and barrelled straight into Sherlock in his haste to escape. In a fraction of a second, Sherlock made the decision to pursue the suspect rather than pitch himself out after John, because he knew with the certainty of a zealot that John was alive and most probably intact. Sherlock was sure that if anything truly terrible happened - if John had splattered his brains all over the road - the knot he carried would have bloomed instantly into a consumptive fire and hollowed Sherlock out. If John were dead, Sherlock would know, Sherlock’s body would know. It was primal, it was evolution, it was biology, a fact intrinsic to Sherlock’s existence - Sherlock is, therefore John is. And Sherlock very much was just then, blood pumping, mind whirling. So Sherlock grappled with the suspect - jilted lover, show dog with sudden case of rabies, curious eBay activity, all quite pedestrian - until he was pinned, until he was tied to a chair with a complicated series of knots, and Sherlock was free to dash out of the building.
There was a small pool (a sea, an ocean, a body of water far too large) of blood, and what was left of a gathered crowd intent on rubbernecking, but John was gone. Sherlock wrenched the arm of the person nearest him and demanded to know where John had got to, but he got only a yelp and the welling of tears for his trouble, then there was a scuffle and his hair was yanked unpleasantly and then some officers came and hauled him away. Assault, they’d said, manhandling him into a police car. John Watson, Sherlock had replied. Where is John Watson?
A call in to Lestrade and three hours later, Sherlock was sprung, court date pending, and he burst into the A&E John had been rushed to by ambulance. And the nurses, the orderlies, the hateful, useless lot of lobotomised NHS workers wouldn’t let him in.
“Out of hours; family only,” came the clipped voice of the receptionist, condescending and bored all at once.
“I’m his partner,” Sherlock had snarled. He hated that term. It was so inadequate. It encompassed none of the nuance, the depth, of his relation to John. He needed a whole new word for what John was to him (fleshmoppet?). What he was to John (swizzlespoon?), and what they shared between them (stranglebum?). He resolved to think on it. But just then, the receptionist with his telly-fogged brain was incapable of comprehending anything more crafted and true than the common vernacular.
“Married?” he asked flatly. Sherlock hesitated just a fraction of a moment (uncharacteristic, might be coming down with something), and the hateful beast pounced, snapping, “Family only.” And he slid the glass shut between them with resounding finality.
Intolerable. Insufferable. Unacceptable.
Of course Sherlock managed to sneak in. Of course once John regained consciousness, he harangued his captors into letting Sherlock visit sans cloak and dagger. Of course Sherlock stayed at his side for the three full days he was kept in hospital.
But that was not the point at all. Is not the point now.
The knot that locks up Sherlock’s insides eases a little when Sherlock sets his nose in John’s hair and inhales deeply. John’s scent is warm and dark, masculine with that trace of sleep-sweat. He smells clean from the shower they’d had last night, like the soap he shares with Sherlock (more expensive than John would prefer, but Sherlock has sensitive skin) but still faintly medical. The quality, however, is a bit different from days spent doctoring at the surgery. This is the acrid, sterile bite of having been a patient, of having been confined for days, of saline drips and ethanol wipes and starchy hospital gowns. This is not quite John, though a few more hours in 221B, in their bed, in these sheets that smell of Sherlock and John and their partnership (their surgewing, their questmoth?) should cure him.
Sherlock wonders what John will smell like at eighty, skin sagging and discoloured, eyes clouded, limbs arthritic and gnarled but nonetheless wrapped around Sherlock, steadfast. He tightens his arms around him, just for a moment, before he slides out from under John’s weight, pulls on a clean suit, and pads down the stairs and out the flat to call on his brother.
Mycroft owes him a favour.
-
There are certain things John believes erroneously about the (brambleburst? heartshudder?) he shares with Sherlock, and Sherlock knows all about them.
1. Sherlock needs to be saved from himself. (He survived on his own with minimal wear and tear over thirty years before John came along, though he does not mind judicious application of John’s attention and care, his lips and hands. Sherlock is completely certain, however, that his continued survival would be in grave danger should John remove himself from the equation of their [soaringdove? hammervalve?], so Sherlock must take pains to ensure he never does.)
2. Sherlock’s regard does not match the depth of John’s. (This is a notion so preposterous Sherlock actually staggered when he realised it. His knees had buckled and he’d gasped, and John frowned at him with that darling furrowed concern of his, held him steady with a single strong arm, asked if he was alright.)
3. Sherlock will tire of him and cast him aside. (John persists in this irrational break with reality no matter how much Sherlock tidies his experiments or catalogues John’s skin cell growth or begs, begs John to fuck him deeper, harder, until they merge and he can walk around in John’s skin, full of John, a perfectly grotesque Siamese twin.)
Sherlock also knows something else about John which has direct impact on their (veinsome? gurglesinge?): John is a romantic. Oh, not an “anatomically incorrect hearts and boxes of waxy chocolates and flowers that will wither and die when cut from the stem” romantic, not John. Not the trappings of romance, commercialised and sanitised for the masses, but what Sherlock has come to consider the core of romance: the elemental everydays. The teas and glancing kisses to cheekbones, temples, noses, jawlines. The chases through London streets at 2 am, just to be by Sherlock’s side. The surprise gifts of John’s discarded parts (eyelashes, semen, urine, nail clippings, saliva, etc.) in evidence bags, neatly labeled. These gestures of John’s esteem have made Sherlock’s life warmer, a touch more vivid. They prove to him that John holds Sherlock in the beat of his heart.
The trouble is, Sherlock occasionally encounters difficulty in reciprocation. That’s why item # 2 exists, and from it flows item #3. In a broader sense, in terms of application of what John calls “basic common sense, Sherlock,” this is also why #1 exists - or rather, why John believes it. So John frets a bit, quietly and infrequently enough that Sherlock can mostly ignore it, and Sherlock tries to get things right without mentioning any of it, which would negate the efficacy of his efforts. So he tells John how smart he looks in navy. Asks him to determine time of death even though rigor’s gone and Sherlock knows quite well enough already. Whispers “stay, stay,” when John tries to pull out, sated.
It’s been just over two weeks since John’s return from hospital, and Sherlock has a plan that will appeal to John’s sense of romance while simultaneously rubbishing John’s misconceptions about their (gemlick? cellsmear?) and solving Sherlock’s misunderstanding with the idiots of the National Health Service.
At half four he heads out to meet John as he finishes his first shift back at the surgery. He’ll sweep into the clinic just as John’s putting on his coat, present John with the requisite documents and shepherd him to their appointment, where two of the homeless network are waiting to act as witnesses. John won’t swoon because he’s not silly, and he won’t tear up because his upper lip is as stiff as Mycroft’s spine, but he’ll grin wide, the one that brightens his whole face and makes his eyes sparkle and sends curious sparks through Sherlock’s own chest. John likes surprises, especially ones that don’t involve certain death. Sherlock is a bit chuffed with himself.
But Sherlock exits the flat to find John some ten meters down the pavement, moving slowly towards him, quite diminished with his shoulders hunched inward and his gait reduced to a ginger shuffle.
“John!” Sherlock calls, by his side in moments. John cracks a smile at him; forced, pained, but there is relief there, too. John is glad to see him. “If you’re in pain, you shouldn’t have taken the tube.”
“I’m fine, Sherlock,” John says with a sigh. He waves Sherlock off. “You’re the only one who feels the need to throw money at cabs constantly.”
Sherlock casts his gaze over his intended. His face is haggard, corners of the eyes and mouth pinched, and there’s the shine of sweat along his hairline despite the chill in the air. He holds his back and shoulders awkwardly, attempting an impossible stillness while moving, and he moves his legs stiffly, with as little strain to his hips as possible. He looks like a marionette miming old age. The painkillers have worn off then, and he’s not taken any more - and not because he doesn’t have them, right there in his coat pocket.
“Too virtuous to go over the recommended dosage?” Sherlock says. He’s not quite successful at keeping the sneer from his voice - John does this, goodness for goodness’s sake, even to his own detriment, and it sends Sherlock round the bend. While on leave, John dutifully took his single pill every five hours, never more, no matter how much pain he was in. Sherlock had deduced (hoped) that that would change when he returned to work, but clearly he’d indulged in an uncharacteristic bout of optimism with that one. He regrets his tone when John’s eyes shutter and turn away from him to stare resolutely at the flat, which he approaches at a snail’s pace.
“We’re not all hedonists, Sherlock,” he says. “For some people, moderation is the soul of sanity.”
Sherlock scoffs. “Boring,” he says, “and perfectly impractical when you’ve bloody well chipped your tailbone and feel the frankly unreasonable urge to return to work, most likely out of some misplaced sense of duty and guilt, since you don’t actually need the money with me around. You should seek to purge yourself of the guilt complex you have, John. It’s destructive.”
Sherlock sees John’s fists clench.
“Jesus, Sherlock, don’t talk to me about destructive.”
Sherlock stares after John’s tense back before taking a single step to catch up with him. He doesn’t touch him, though he wants to. He wants to shake John by the shoulders, wants to open his mouth and swallow John whole. Wants to marry him. Instead, he stops his slow-motion movement toward the flat.
“John, stop. John.”
John sighs noisily and turns around to face him, head tilted up because Sherlock’s quite close now. John’s eyes are a very dark blue, like 4 am on a clear night outside London. His brow is a thunderclap, his mouth a raincloud.
“What, Sherlock? I want to get some tea in me and lie down and watch crap telly. You can join me or you can fuck off. Which is it, then?”
“Take some dihydrocodeine and come to Islington with me.”
John rubs a hand over his face. “Case?” he asks, weary.
“No.” Sherlock produces the registration slip from his coat pocket and brandishes it at him. “We’re getting married,” he says, and the whole thing’s not quite going to plan because John’s flushed now - anger, not arousal, exertion, or embarrassment.
“What scheme have you cooked up then?” he asks, low voice dangerous. “Or are you just taking the piss because you don’t even realise other people have feelings? What’s the game, Sherlock?”
“You were supposed to smile,” Sherlock says. He straightens, tucks the bit of paper away. “Everything’s set up. We just have to go and sign the paperwork. It was a surprise.”
John shifts his weight foot to foot, but there is no getting comfortable without narcotic intervention. Sherlock makes an abortive gesture toward the bottle of pills in John’s coat, but John bats his hands away and peers up at him with penetrating eyes. Sherlock feels pinned - to Baker Street, to John, to his own feet.
“You’re actually asking me to marry you.”
“Yes.”
“No ulterior motive? No pending case with convoluted set up?”
“No.”
Sherlock watches John swallow. John’s hands lock around Sherlock’s wrists, warm and sturdy.
“Seriously, Sherlock.”
Sherlock turns his hands up and grips John’s, probably too hard considering his fragile state, but he doesn’t flinch, so Sherlock isn’t sorry.
“Deadly,” he says.
And John beams, just like Sherlock knew he would.
“Get down here and kiss me then, you mad bastard.”
Sherlock obliges in full view of the Baker Street passersby, and when he pulls away, John’s standing taller and his expression has lifted, and he holds Sherlock’s hands hard enough to grind the bones together. Sherlock has always appreciated that.
“Shall we, then?” he ventures. “The registrar is only booked until half five.”
John is already pulling him towards the street, raising his hand to hail a cab.
“Who’re our witnesses then? Mrs. Hudson? Oh, God, Sherlock, is it Lestrade? He’ll never let us live it down.” John’s eyes are full of mirth, sparkling up at him. “When did you arrange all this? How did you arrange all this? Don’t both parties have to go in to declare intent or some such?”
“Mycroft,” Sherlock says grudgingly, and John has the audacity to laugh at him, a light, tinkling sort of sound that intoxicates him. “When you came home from hospital. I needed to make sure that never happened again.”
John’s laughs subside and he lowers his arm. A cab pulls up nonetheless, but the moment stretches between them, interminable, and neither gets in. John’s midnight eyes have gone big and tragic.
“Make sure what never happened?”
“How those utter imbeciles wouldn’t let me in to see you. They couldn’t if we were married, you see? John?”
John closes his eyes and leans a moment on the cab.
“Come on, John,” Sherlock says, but John’s body blocks the door. Sherlock presses his shoulder, just a bit, just enough to make him move. He does, and Sherlock opens the door. “John.”
“Go on,” John says, voice soft. Sherlock sits and John holds the door open. He can’t read John’s face, there’s a blank, a whiteness, a nothingness, and suddenly Sherlock’s stomach rises to his throat. John leans in, and he so rarely looms over Sherlock that it’s disorienting. Sherlock can only blink up at his empty face. “So that’s it, is it? The right to visit me in hospital?”
“You could visit me, too,” Sherlock says. Of course the rights are reciprocal. Is John’s head injury not completely healed?
“I know, love.” Sherlock especially likes to be called that, but today it makes his chest hurt.
“Get in, John, the meter’s running.”
“No. No, thank you, Sherlock. You go on.”
“John. What’s the problem? I’m wearing that suit you like.” Charcoal grey, violet pinstripes. John’s gaze always lingers when he’s wearing this one, on the line of his shoulders, the stretch of his legs, the curve of his backside.
John’s smile is nothing like what smiles are for. In general, smiles indicate happiness. There are many subsets of smiles of course, including ones that are totally opposing to what smiles are meant to accomplish (since childhood Sherlock has been familiar with polite smiles and uncomfortable smiles and nasty smiles meant to make him feel small), but this one makes John’s face a foreign country. There is only desolation.
“I could do this with someone else, you know,” John says then. “Someone who thinks a committed relationship is more than gunshots and morphine drips.”
John closes the door and stops at the driver’s side window, but Sherlock doesn’t hear where he tells the cabbie to go. Sherlock is entirely consumed by white noise.
-
Sherlock goes to London Zoo, but he’s escorted out when he makes a child cry and the behemoth father pitches a fit. He goes to the Yard, but Lestrade’s not there and no one will let him look at any cold cases, plus the sound of Anderson’s voice threatens to lock up his bowels for weeks. He deduces tourists in Trafalgar Square, he points out fake designer bags loudly in Chinatown, he pokes about in Jack the Ripper’s old haunts, but all of it leaves him hollow, cold at the core. Finally Sherlock holes up in his lab at Bart’s. Rather, he makes everyone else leave, and then it’s his lab. He’s found one of John’s hairs on his coat, and he’s been inspecting it under the microscope for an hour.
It’s…golden, Sherlock has determined. It’s undamaged, very thin and fine, the follicle is gone, and the end is neatly cut. It’s utterly ordinary, nothing to look at by itself, and it tells him absolutely nothing about what he got wrong earlier today. But he places his eyes against the eyepiece and doesn’t move for a long time, even when the door opens.
“Oh. Sorry, Mr. Holmes.” It’s Molly, like a mouse nibbling at his shoes.
“Molly,” he says, unmoving. Maybe this particular hair is more bronze, really. “I’m terribly busy.”
“I’ll be out in just a tick.” There is the sound of rummaging, and bins being dragged around on the floor, and the clank of glass. Then there is a presence at his side, the warm movement of another person in Sherlock’s space. He glances up, and Molly is big-eyed and earnest at his shoulder. “Are you having a sulk?” she asks.
Sherlock scowls at her. “I never sulk!”
“You look a fright,” Molly says. “I mean, more than usual. Do you need a corpse to cheer up? I’ve got one just in, cirrhosis.” Her brown eyes are lit and eager.
Sherlock stares. All his life, he has been told that he is an utter arsehole who will never have a meaningful (cranglesham? humslinger?) with anyone other than his mother, who is obligated by biology to care for him, at least a little. And yet, he is reasonably certain that she cares for him quite a lot, certainly more than the minimum for social acceptability. There was Victor, in uni, who seemed to enjoy his company free of ulterior motive for years, and there is Lestrade, who harbours exasperated affection and professional respect. There is Mrs. Hudson, who overlooks his flaws and buys him biscuits and does the hoovering on the sly when he and John are out. There is Molly, whose enthusiasm for him in general has persisted despite the rather abrupt death of her crush following the Jim-from-IT incident last year. And, of course, there’s John. John, his spinberry, his fizztrickle. Dr. John H. Watson.
“Thank you, Molly,” he says. “You’re a star.” She grins at him, a lopsided, endearing sort of thing that almost makes him wish she weren’t so dull. He’d pick apart her teeth, if he could. “But that won’t be necessary, I’m quite occupied.”
“Where’s John, then? Have a tiff?”
Sherlock narrows his eyes. Recent haircut, abrasion on her collarbone, the lingering swell of well-kissed lips: newly acquired boyfriend.
“Deducing me, are you?” he drawls. “Tell me, Dr. Hooper, is this latest beau also a homosexual or have you branched into men you might have a chance with?”
That thin mouth twists and her brows go pinched. She draws herself up as tall as her small frame will let her.
“Someday you’re going to wake up to find you’ve driven away each and every poor soul who’s ever given a damn about you. I pity you, Sherlock Holmes.”
She lacks the skill and sense of drama to swirl her labcoat behind her as she leaves, but Sherlock gets the picture.
-
Sherlock returns to 221B rather late, by John-reckoning. There is no crap telly on, there is no cooling tea. Sherlock presses a hand to his stomach to calm it. If John were gone, he’d know. Primal, evolution, biology; he’d know. He climbs the stairs and pushes the door to the bedroom open slowly, afraid of what he might (not) find. But John is there, facedown, stripped to his sensible cotton pants, legs tangled in the sheet. He’s reading a book though the one corner lamp throws inadequate light. Inside Sherlock feels like broken eggshells.
“You’re my pumpflood,” Sherlock says into the silence. It’s as close to an explicit declaration as he’s ever made, other than ‘we’re getting married.’ He hopes this goes better than that one did. “We have a grimmythistle, and I would like to keep it that way.”
The paperback goes down on the pillow - Maurice, of all things - and John contorts enough that he can peer at Sherlock through slitted lids.
“Oh God, are you high?”
“No. I don’t want you to leave.” Sherlock shucks the trousers and the shirt, peels off his socks, throws them in a pile on the floor. He clambers into bed and inserts himself into the space beside and underneath John. He pushes his head into John’s stomach, which is warm, and soft, and smells of just him. The hair there is definitely honey, almost invisible. He lets his arms come loosely about John’s hips, and he’s careful not to jostle him even when he entwines their legs. His nose rests in the hollow of John’s navel. “So don’t leave. Please.”
John’s sigh is something he can hear like blowing wind, but he feels it too: the contraction of his abdomen against Sherlock’s face, the breeze of breath on his arm. Then John’s hand comes down and strokes through Sherlock’s hair just how he likes.
“I’m not leaving,” John says. “It’s just - I felt utterly shite, Sherlock, and I wasn’t in the mood for…whatever that was. I’m sorry I said what I said.”
“It wasn’t on,” Sherlock says into John’s bellybutton.
“No, it wasn’t.”
“I would die. I would dry up and blow away, and there’d be nothing to even identify.”
Then John’s hands were strong, insistent soldier’s hands, pulling him up to lie side by side. John forces him to meet his eyes.
“Don’t say that, Sherlock. That’s not on either. You can’t go round talking like that.”
“Everyone hates the truth,” Sherlock says, and he can feel his mouth arcing downward into his ugliest frown.
“You scare the living hell out of me, you know that?” John’s eyelashes are russet. “And God help me, I’m still here, with you. Where I’ll always be, if you can stand it.”
Sherlock sags into him, forehead mashed into nose, but John doesn’t seem to mind. He knots their hands between them.
“Then why won’t you marry me?” The deduction’s eluded him all night, eclipsed by John’s threat and totally opaque besides. Behind the panic he’s kept banked, the why of John’s refusal has been as maddening as a leaky faucet.
“Sherlock. Jesus. Look at me.” Sherlock lifts his head, meets John’s eyes - black in the dark of the room. “Tell me, in precise terms, exactly why you want to marry me.”
“So I’m never kept from you again.”
“At accident and emergency.”
“Yes.” An infinitesimal droop of the eyelids; John is disappointed. But Sherlock continues: “In the narrower scope of things.”
John untangles his hand from Sherlock’s and splays it on Sherlock’s chest, framing his sternum. His thumb strokes the hollow of his throat, of which John is very fond, and Sherlock can feel his own pulse and John’s, a syncopated beat. John’s Adam’s apple bobs.
“And in the broader scope?”
“Well it’s a solemn vow, isn’t it? Marriage. Civil partnership,” he corrects himself with a grimace. “And you’d sign your name, give your word. That’s a profound bond, for you. So you would have made the solemnest of vows, promised yourself to me, and I to you. And then when we were very old, I would have a whole index of all your cast off bits and my analyses of them in chronological order, and I would look at the whole lot of it and know, know John, that you’d grown and outgrown all of them during the tenure of our lungblot, and it would be forty or fifty years’ worth of never being kept from you, and it would almost, almost be enough. Almost.”
When John inhales, his breath shakes, and Sherlock wonders if he has to reevaluate the state of John’s upper lip. He’s been wrong too many times today for his own comfort, but John presses his lips to Sherlock’s own and he rubs his thumb along Sherlock’s eyebrow just so, and Sherlock is not wrong when he deduces John’s complete, incandescent bliss.
Then John’s thrown his head back and he’s laughing until he gasps for breath.
“God, Sherlock, couldn’t you have said that before?”
Sherlock props himself up on one elbow. He’d like to remember John exactly like this, eyes shining, mouth grinning, teeth gleaming, love bursting. He’ll delete the yellowing bruise, of course.
“I did though,” Sherlock says.
John’s giggle is high and thin and undignified and thoroughly charming, and when he catches his breath he says, “No you bloody well didn’t! ‘Sign the paperwork,’ you said. ‘Couldn’t keep me from visiting you in hospital,’ you said. You utter berk!”
“But it’s exactly the same.”
John’s laughs are dying down, bubbling up in spurts and fits. He cradles Sherlock’s face with both hands, presses soft, sucking kisses to his temple, his eyes, his nose, his chin.
“If you say so, love.” There’s a pause. “Sherlock?”
“Hm?”
“Will you marry me?”
“Oh.” His heart gives a palpitation. “Yes. Thank you.”
John kisses his palm. “Two weeks. We’ll have your mum, Mycroft, Mrs. Hudson, Harry and Clara, and Lestrade while we’re at it. And I’ll let you pick out a new suit for me to wear because mine are all rubbish.”
“No Mycroft.”
John casts a flat-mouthed look of vexation at him. “Mycroft, Sherlock, and that’s the end of it,” he says.
“No Mycroft and I’ll give you a blowjob.”
John huffs out a laugh, links their fingers. “You’d give me one anyway, and besides, everything still hurts too much.”
“Dihydrocodeine. You’re due for one, surely.” Sherlock squeezes John’s hand and pushes a thigh up between John’s. John rocks into it, but it’s more playful than heated.
“Shush. Just - just lie still. Let me look at you.” He smiles like he’s trying not to smile too big, but it only makes him look more soppy. “My husband.”
Sherlock pulls a face.
“No?” John asks. “Spouse? Partner?”
“No!”
John laughs again. “Well, what then?”
“Anything you can think of.” Sherlock tells him. “We are - more. Greater. You and me. There isn’t a proper word for it, not yet.”
The smile fades away, and John’s just looking at him. His hand has become hot, but Sherlock doesn’t want to let go. Sherlock gazes back into the fathomless blue.
End
Beta: notboldly
Brit-pick: the-physicist
Rating: R
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Word Count: ~4,800
Disclaimer: Property of Gatiss and Moffat. No money made, no copyright infringement intended.
Summary: “He wants to shake John by the shoulders, wants to open his mouth and swallow John whole. Wants to marry him.” Sherlock searches for the right words.
Applied Linguistics
Dawn spills warm and bright into the bedroom the morning after John gets home from hospital. There’s dust in the air, and the room is hazy with it in the pale glow of the newborn sun, but John lies sprawled against Sherlock’s side, face mashed into his armpit, radiating heat, and Sherlock is glad. There is a purple-green bruise that blooms from his tailbone and mottles his back almost all the way to his shoulder blades; it looks more like mould cultures than John’s familiar pale English skin. Sherlock is careful when he threads his fingers through John’s hair - it’s blond and grey and a touch ginger, and it’s grown a little longer than John prefers, but Sherlock quite likes it - and strokes down over the curving indent of John’s spine, fingertips barely skimming the firm warm surface of the expansive bruise. John stirs but does not wake; he’s a bit ticklish, so Sherlock stills the progress of his touch even though nothing would please him better than to lay hands on his lover and absorb all that he is, take the essence of him into himself, pains and joys and all that lies between. Sherlock rests his left hand lightly over the tender knot on the back of John’s head and remains still. He takes deep, measured breaths to match John’s, and there, skin against skin in the nest of the bed they share, the beat of their hearts is a singular rhythm, better than Tchaikovsky in Sherlock’s ears.
Four days ago, a tight, nauseating knot had gathered in the vicinity of Sherlock’s diaphragm as he watched John tumble head first from a first floor window in the East End onto the pavement below. Sherlock’s vision tilted and fuzzed as he watched John disappear from inside the flat. He almost let the suspect go, except said suspect was in possession of an infinite cache of stupidity and barrelled straight into Sherlock in his haste to escape. In a fraction of a second, Sherlock made the decision to pursue the suspect rather than pitch himself out after John, because he knew with the certainty of a zealot that John was alive and most probably intact. Sherlock was sure that if anything truly terrible happened - if John had splattered his brains all over the road - the knot he carried would have bloomed instantly into a consumptive fire and hollowed Sherlock out. If John were dead, Sherlock would know, Sherlock’s body would know. It was primal, it was evolution, it was biology, a fact intrinsic to Sherlock’s existence - Sherlock is, therefore John is. And Sherlock very much was just then, blood pumping, mind whirling. So Sherlock grappled with the suspect - jilted lover, show dog with sudden case of rabies, curious eBay activity, all quite pedestrian - until he was pinned, until he was tied to a chair with a complicated series of knots, and Sherlock was free to dash out of the building.
There was a small pool (a sea, an ocean, a body of water far too large) of blood, and what was left of a gathered crowd intent on rubbernecking, but John was gone. Sherlock wrenched the arm of the person nearest him and demanded to know where John had got to, but he got only a yelp and the welling of tears for his trouble, then there was a scuffle and his hair was yanked unpleasantly and then some officers came and hauled him away. Assault, they’d said, manhandling him into a police car. John Watson, Sherlock had replied. Where is John Watson?
A call in to Lestrade and three hours later, Sherlock was sprung, court date pending, and he burst into the A&E John had been rushed to by ambulance. And the nurses, the orderlies, the hateful, useless lot of lobotomised NHS workers wouldn’t let him in.
“Out of hours; family only,” came the clipped voice of the receptionist, condescending and bored all at once.
“I’m his partner,” Sherlock had snarled. He hated that term. It was so inadequate. It encompassed none of the nuance, the depth, of his relation to John. He needed a whole new word for what John was to him (fleshmoppet?). What he was to John (swizzlespoon?), and what they shared between them (stranglebum?). He resolved to think on it. But just then, the receptionist with his telly-fogged brain was incapable of comprehending anything more crafted and true than the common vernacular.
“Married?” he asked flatly. Sherlock hesitated just a fraction of a moment (uncharacteristic, might be coming down with something), and the hateful beast pounced, snapping, “Family only.” And he slid the glass shut between them with resounding finality.
Intolerable. Insufferable. Unacceptable.
Of course Sherlock managed to sneak in. Of course once John regained consciousness, he harangued his captors into letting Sherlock visit sans cloak and dagger. Of course Sherlock stayed at his side for the three full days he was kept in hospital.
But that was not the point at all. Is not the point now.
The knot that locks up Sherlock’s insides eases a little when Sherlock sets his nose in John’s hair and inhales deeply. John’s scent is warm and dark, masculine with that trace of sleep-sweat. He smells clean from the shower they’d had last night, like the soap he shares with Sherlock (more expensive than John would prefer, but Sherlock has sensitive skin) but still faintly medical. The quality, however, is a bit different from days spent doctoring at the surgery. This is the acrid, sterile bite of having been a patient, of having been confined for days, of saline drips and ethanol wipes and starchy hospital gowns. This is not quite John, though a few more hours in 221B, in their bed, in these sheets that smell of Sherlock and John and their partnership (their surgewing, their questmoth?) should cure him.
Sherlock wonders what John will smell like at eighty, skin sagging and discoloured, eyes clouded, limbs arthritic and gnarled but nonetheless wrapped around Sherlock, steadfast. He tightens his arms around him, just for a moment, before he slides out from under John’s weight, pulls on a clean suit, and pads down the stairs and out the flat to call on his brother.
Mycroft owes him a favour.
-
There are certain things John believes erroneously about the (brambleburst? heartshudder?) he shares with Sherlock, and Sherlock knows all about them.
1. Sherlock needs to be saved from himself. (He survived on his own with minimal wear and tear over thirty years before John came along, though he does not mind judicious application of John’s attention and care, his lips and hands. Sherlock is completely certain, however, that his continued survival would be in grave danger should John remove himself from the equation of their [soaringdove? hammervalve?], so Sherlock must take pains to ensure he never does.)
2. Sherlock’s regard does not match the depth of John’s. (This is a notion so preposterous Sherlock actually staggered when he realised it. His knees had buckled and he’d gasped, and John frowned at him with that darling furrowed concern of his, held him steady with a single strong arm, asked if he was alright.)
3. Sherlock will tire of him and cast him aside. (John persists in this irrational break with reality no matter how much Sherlock tidies his experiments or catalogues John’s skin cell growth or begs, begs John to fuck him deeper, harder, until they merge and he can walk around in John’s skin, full of John, a perfectly grotesque Siamese twin.)
Sherlock also knows something else about John which has direct impact on their (veinsome? gurglesinge?): John is a romantic. Oh, not an “anatomically incorrect hearts and boxes of waxy chocolates and flowers that will wither and die when cut from the stem” romantic, not John. Not the trappings of romance, commercialised and sanitised for the masses, but what Sherlock has come to consider the core of romance: the elemental everydays. The teas and glancing kisses to cheekbones, temples, noses, jawlines. The chases through London streets at 2 am, just to be by Sherlock’s side. The surprise gifts of John’s discarded parts (eyelashes, semen, urine, nail clippings, saliva, etc.) in evidence bags, neatly labeled. These gestures of John’s esteem have made Sherlock’s life warmer, a touch more vivid. They prove to him that John holds Sherlock in the beat of his heart.
The trouble is, Sherlock occasionally encounters difficulty in reciprocation. That’s why item # 2 exists, and from it flows item #3. In a broader sense, in terms of application of what John calls “basic common sense, Sherlock,” this is also why #1 exists - or rather, why John believes it. So John frets a bit, quietly and infrequently enough that Sherlock can mostly ignore it, and Sherlock tries to get things right without mentioning any of it, which would negate the efficacy of his efforts. So he tells John how smart he looks in navy. Asks him to determine time of death even though rigor’s gone and Sherlock knows quite well enough already. Whispers “stay, stay,” when John tries to pull out, sated.
It’s been just over two weeks since John’s return from hospital, and Sherlock has a plan that will appeal to John’s sense of romance while simultaneously rubbishing John’s misconceptions about their (gemlick? cellsmear?) and solving Sherlock’s misunderstanding with the idiots of the National Health Service.
At half four he heads out to meet John as he finishes his first shift back at the surgery. He’ll sweep into the clinic just as John’s putting on his coat, present John with the requisite documents and shepherd him to their appointment, where two of the homeless network are waiting to act as witnesses. John won’t swoon because he’s not silly, and he won’t tear up because his upper lip is as stiff as Mycroft’s spine, but he’ll grin wide, the one that brightens his whole face and makes his eyes sparkle and sends curious sparks through Sherlock’s own chest. John likes surprises, especially ones that don’t involve certain death. Sherlock is a bit chuffed with himself.
But Sherlock exits the flat to find John some ten meters down the pavement, moving slowly towards him, quite diminished with his shoulders hunched inward and his gait reduced to a ginger shuffle.
“John!” Sherlock calls, by his side in moments. John cracks a smile at him; forced, pained, but there is relief there, too. John is glad to see him. “If you’re in pain, you shouldn’t have taken the tube.”
“I’m fine, Sherlock,” John says with a sigh. He waves Sherlock off. “You’re the only one who feels the need to throw money at cabs constantly.”
Sherlock casts his gaze over his intended. His face is haggard, corners of the eyes and mouth pinched, and there’s the shine of sweat along his hairline despite the chill in the air. He holds his back and shoulders awkwardly, attempting an impossible stillness while moving, and he moves his legs stiffly, with as little strain to his hips as possible. He looks like a marionette miming old age. The painkillers have worn off then, and he’s not taken any more - and not because he doesn’t have them, right there in his coat pocket.
“Too virtuous to go over the recommended dosage?” Sherlock says. He’s not quite successful at keeping the sneer from his voice - John does this, goodness for goodness’s sake, even to his own detriment, and it sends Sherlock round the bend. While on leave, John dutifully took his single pill every five hours, never more, no matter how much pain he was in. Sherlock had deduced (hoped) that that would change when he returned to work, but clearly he’d indulged in an uncharacteristic bout of optimism with that one. He regrets his tone when John’s eyes shutter and turn away from him to stare resolutely at the flat, which he approaches at a snail’s pace.
“We’re not all hedonists, Sherlock,” he says. “For some people, moderation is the soul of sanity.”
Sherlock scoffs. “Boring,” he says, “and perfectly impractical when you’ve bloody well chipped your tailbone and feel the frankly unreasonable urge to return to work, most likely out of some misplaced sense of duty and guilt, since you don’t actually need the money with me around. You should seek to purge yourself of the guilt complex you have, John. It’s destructive.”
Sherlock sees John’s fists clench.
“Jesus, Sherlock, don’t talk to me about destructive.”
Sherlock stares after John’s tense back before taking a single step to catch up with him. He doesn’t touch him, though he wants to. He wants to shake John by the shoulders, wants to open his mouth and swallow John whole. Wants to marry him. Instead, he stops his slow-motion movement toward the flat.
“John, stop. John.”
John sighs noisily and turns around to face him, head tilted up because Sherlock’s quite close now. John’s eyes are a very dark blue, like 4 am on a clear night outside London. His brow is a thunderclap, his mouth a raincloud.
“What, Sherlock? I want to get some tea in me and lie down and watch crap telly. You can join me or you can fuck off. Which is it, then?”
“Take some dihydrocodeine and come to Islington with me.”
John rubs a hand over his face. “Case?” he asks, weary.
“No.” Sherlock produces the registration slip from his coat pocket and brandishes it at him. “We’re getting married,” he says, and the whole thing’s not quite going to plan because John’s flushed now - anger, not arousal, exertion, or embarrassment.
“What scheme have you cooked up then?” he asks, low voice dangerous. “Or are you just taking the piss because you don’t even realise other people have feelings? What’s the game, Sherlock?”
“You were supposed to smile,” Sherlock says. He straightens, tucks the bit of paper away. “Everything’s set up. We just have to go and sign the paperwork. It was a surprise.”
John shifts his weight foot to foot, but there is no getting comfortable without narcotic intervention. Sherlock makes an abortive gesture toward the bottle of pills in John’s coat, but John bats his hands away and peers up at him with penetrating eyes. Sherlock feels pinned - to Baker Street, to John, to his own feet.
“You’re actually asking me to marry you.”
“Yes.”
“No ulterior motive? No pending case with convoluted set up?”
“No.”
Sherlock watches John swallow. John’s hands lock around Sherlock’s wrists, warm and sturdy.
“Seriously, Sherlock.”
Sherlock turns his hands up and grips John’s, probably too hard considering his fragile state, but he doesn’t flinch, so Sherlock isn’t sorry.
“Deadly,” he says.
And John beams, just like Sherlock knew he would.
“Get down here and kiss me then, you mad bastard.”
Sherlock obliges in full view of the Baker Street passersby, and when he pulls away, John’s standing taller and his expression has lifted, and he holds Sherlock’s hands hard enough to grind the bones together. Sherlock has always appreciated that.
“Shall we, then?” he ventures. “The registrar is only booked until half five.”
John is already pulling him towards the street, raising his hand to hail a cab.
“Who’re our witnesses then? Mrs. Hudson? Oh, God, Sherlock, is it Lestrade? He’ll never let us live it down.” John’s eyes are full of mirth, sparkling up at him. “When did you arrange all this? How did you arrange all this? Don’t both parties have to go in to declare intent or some such?”
“Mycroft,” Sherlock says grudgingly, and John has the audacity to laugh at him, a light, tinkling sort of sound that intoxicates him. “When you came home from hospital. I needed to make sure that never happened again.”
John’s laughs subside and he lowers his arm. A cab pulls up nonetheless, but the moment stretches between them, interminable, and neither gets in. John’s midnight eyes have gone big and tragic.
“Make sure what never happened?”
“How those utter imbeciles wouldn’t let me in to see you. They couldn’t if we were married, you see? John?”
John closes his eyes and leans a moment on the cab.
“Come on, John,” Sherlock says, but John’s body blocks the door. Sherlock presses his shoulder, just a bit, just enough to make him move. He does, and Sherlock opens the door. “John.”
“Go on,” John says, voice soft. Sherlock sits and John holds the door open. He can’t read John’s face, there’s a blank, a whiteness, a nothingness, and suddenly Sherlock’s stomach rises to his throat. John leans in, and he so rarely looms over Sherlock that it’s disorienting. Sherlock can only blink up at his empty face. “So that’s it, is it? The right to visit me in hospital?”
“You could visit me, too,” Sherlock says. Of course the rights are reciprocal. Is John’s head injury not completely healed?
“I know, love.” Sherlock especially likes to be called that, but today it makes his chest hurt.
“Get in, John, the meter’s running.”
“No. No, thank you, Sherlock. You go on.”
“John. What’s the problem? I’m wearing that suit you like.” Charcoal grey, violet pinstripes. John’s gaze always lingers when he’s wearing this one, on the line of his shoulders, the stretch of his legs, the curve of his backside.
John’s smile is nothing like what smiles are for. In general, smiles indicate happiness. There are many subsets of smiles of course, including ones that are totally opposing to what smiles are meant to accomplish (since childhood Sherlock has been familiar with polite smiles and uncomfortable smiles and nasty smiles meant to make him feel small), but this one makes John’s face a foreign country. There is only desolation.
“I could do this with someone else, you know,” John says then. “Someone who thinks a committed relationship is more than gunshots and morphine drips.”
John closes the door and stops at the driver’s side window, but Sherlock doesn’t hear where he tells the cabbie to go. Sherlock is entirely consumed by white noise.
-
Sherlock goes to London Zoo, but he’s escorted out when he makes a child cry and the behemoth father pitches a fit. He goes to the Yard, but Lestrade’s not there and no one will let him look at any cold cases, plus the sound of Anderson’s voice threatens to lock up his bowels for weeks. He deduces tourists in Trafalgar Square, he points out fake designer bags loudly in Chinatown, he pokes about in Jack the Ripper’s old haunts, but all of it leaves him hollow, cold at the core. Finally Sherlock holes up in his lab at Bart’s. Rather, he makes everyone else leave, and then it’s his lab. He’s found one of John’s hairs on his coat, and he’s been inspecting it under the microscope for an hour.
It’s…golden, Sherlock has determined. It’s undamaged, very thin and fine, the follicle is gone, and the end is neatly cut. It’s utterly ordinary, nothing to look at by itself, and it tells him absolutely nothing about what he got wrong earlier today. But he places his eyes against the eyepiece and doesn’t move for a long time, even when the door opens.
“Oh. Sorry, Mr. Holmes.” It’s Molly, like a mouse nibbling at his shoes.
“Molly,” he says, unmoving. Maybe this particular hair is more bronze, really. “I’m terribly busy.”
“I’ll be out in just a tick.” There is the sound of rummaging, and bins being dragged around on the floor, and the clank of glass. Then there is a presence at his side, the warm movement of another person in Sherlock’s space. He glances up, and Molly is big-eyed and earnest at his shoulder. “Are you having a sulk?” she asks.
Sherlock scowls at her. “I never sulk!”
“You look a fright,” Molly says. “I mean, more than usual. Do you need a corpse to cheer up? I’ve got one just in, cirrhosis.” Her brown eyes are lit and eager.
Sherlock stares. All his life, he has been told that he is an utter arsehole who will never have a meaningful (cranglesham? humslinger?) with anyone other than his mother, who is obligated by biology to care for him, at least a little. And yet, he is reasonably certain that she cares for him quite a lot, certainly more than the minimum for social acceptability. There was Victor, in uni, who seemed to enjoy his company free of ulterior motive for years, and there is Lestrade, who harbours exasperated affection and professional respect. There is Mrs. Hudson, who overlooks his flaws and buys him biscuits and does the hoovering on the sly when he and John are out. There is Molly, whose enthusiasm for him in general has persisted despite the rather abrupt death of her crush following the Jim-from-IT incident last year. And, of course, there’s John. John, his spinberry, his fizztrickle. Dr. John H. Watson.
“Thank you, Molly,” he says. “You’re a star.” She grins at him, a lopsided, endearing sort of thing that almost makes him wish she weren’t so dull. He’d pick apart her teeth, if he could. “But that won’t be necessary, I’m quite occupied.”
“Where’s John, then? Have a tiff?”
Sherlock narrows his eyes. Recent haircut, abrasion on her collarbone, the lingering swell of well-kissed lips: newly acquired boyfriend.
“Deducing me, are you?” he drawls. “Tell me, Dr. Hooper, is this latest beau also a homosexual or have you branched into men you might have a chance with?”
That thin mouth twists and her brows go pinched. She draws herself up as tall as her small frame will let her.
“Someday you’re going to wake up to find you’ve driven away each and every poor soul who’s ever given a damn about you. I pity you, Sherlock Holmes.”
She lacks the skill and sense of drama to swirl her labcoat behind her as she leaves, but Sherlock gets the picture.
-
Sherlock returns to 221B rather late, by John-reckoning. There is no crap telly on, there is no cooling tea. Sherlock presses a hand to his stomach to calm it. If John were gone, he’d know. Primal, evolution, biology; he’d know. He climbs the stairs and pushes the door to the bedroom open slowly, afraid of what he might (not) find. But John is there, facedown, stripped to his sensible cotton pants, legs tangled in the sheet. He’s reading a book though the one corner lamp throws inadequate light. Inside Sherlock feels like broken eggshells.
“You’re my pumpflood,” Sherlock says into the silence. It’s as close to an explicit declaration as he’s ever made, other than ‘we’re getting married.’ He hopes this goes better than that one did. “We have a grimmythistle, and I would like to keep it that way.”
The paperback goes down on the pillow - Maurice, of all things - and John contorts enough that he can peer at Sherlock through slitted lids.
“Oh God, are you high?”
“No. I don’t want you to leave.” Sherlock shucks the trousers and the shirt, peels off his socks, throws them in a pile on the floor. He clambers into bed and inserts himself into the space beside and underneath John. He pushes his head into John’s stomach, which is warm, and soft, and smells of just him. The hair there is definitely honey, almost invisible. He lets his arms come loosely about John’s hips, and he’s careful not to jostle him even when he entwines their legs. His nose rests in the hollow of John’s navel. “So don’t leave. Please.”
John’s sigh is something he can hear like blowing wind, but he feels it too: the contraction of his abdomen against Sherlock’s face, the breeze of breath on his arm. Then John’s hand comes down and strokes through Sherlock’s hair just how he likes.
“I’m not leaving,” John says. “It’s just - I felt utterly shite, Sherlock, and I wasn’t in the mood for…whatever that was. I’m sorry I said what I said.”
“It wasn’t on,” Sherlock says into John’s bellybutton.
“No, it wasn’t.”
“I would die. I would dry up and blow away, and there’d be nothing to even identify.”
Then John’s hands were strong, insistent soldier’s hands, pulling him up to lie side by side. John forces him to meet his eyes.
“Don’t say that, Sherlock. That’s not on either. You can’t go round talking like that.”
“Everyone hates the truth,” Sherlock says, and he can feel his mouth arcing downward into his ugliest frown.
“You scare the living hell out of me, you know that?” John’s eyelashes are russet. “And God help me, I’m still here, with you. Where I’ll always be, if you can stand it.”
Sherlock sags into him, forehead mashed into nose, but John doesn’t seem to mind. He knots their hands between them.
“Then why won’t you marry me?” The deduction’s eluded him all night, eclipsed by John’s threat and totally opaque besides. Behind the panic he’s kept banked, the why of John’s refusal has been as maddening as a leaky faucet.
“Sherlock. Jesus. Look at me.” Sherlock lifts his head, meets John’s eyes - black in the dark of the room. “Tell me, in precise terms, exactly why you want to marry me.”
“So I’m never kept from you again.”
“At accident and emergency.”
“Yes.” An infinitesimal droop of the eyelids; John is disappointed. But Sherlock continues: “In the narrower scope of things.”
John untangles his hand from Sherlock’s and splays it on Sherlock’s chest, framing his sternum. His thumb strokes the hollow of his throat, of which John is very fond, and Sherlock can feel his own pulse and John’s, a syncopated beat. John’s Adam’s apple bobs.
“And in the broader scope?”
“Well it’s a solemn vow, isn’t it? Marriage. Civil partnership,” he corrects himself with a grimace. “And you’d sign your name, give your word. That’s a profound bond, for you. So you would have made the solemnest of vows, promised yourself to me, and I to you. And then when we were very old, I would have a whole index of all your cast off bits and my analyses of them in chronological order, and I would look at the whole lot of it and know, know John, that you’d grown and outgrown all of them during the tenure of our lungblot, and it would be forty or fifty years’ worth of never being kept from you, and it would almost, almost be enough. Almost.”
When John inhales, his breath shakes, and Sherlock wonders if he has to reevaluate the state of John’s upper lip. He’s been wrong too many times today for his own comfort, but John presses his lips to Sherlock’s own and he rubs his thumb along Sherlock’s eyebrow just so, and Sherlock is not wrong when he deduces John’s complete, incandescent bliss.
Then John’s thrown his head back and he’s laughing until he gasps for breath.
“God, Sherlock, couldn’t you have said that before?”
Sherlock props himself up on one elbow. He’d like to remember John exactly like this, eyes shining, mouth grinning, teeth gleaming, love bursting. He’ll delete the yellowing bruise, of course.
“I did though,” Sherlock says.
John’s giggle is high and thin and undignified and thoroughly charming, and when he catches his breath he says, “No you bloody well didn’t! ‘Sign the paperwork,’ you said. ‘Couldn’t keep me from visiting you in hospital,’ you said. You utter berk!”
“But it’s exactly the same.”
John’s laughs are dying down, bubbling up in spurts and fits. He cradles Sherlock’s face with both hands, presses soft, sucking kisses to his temple, his eyes, his nose, his chin.
“If you say so, love.” There’s a pause. “Sherlock?”
“Hm?”
“Will you marry me?”
“Oh.” His heart gives a palpitation. “Yes. Thank you.”
John kisses his palm. “Two weeks. We’ll have your mum, Mycroft, Mrs. Hudson, Harry and Clara, and Lestrade while we’re at it. And I’ll let you pick out a new suit for me to wear because mine are all rubbish.”
“No Mycroft.”
John casts a flat-mouthed look of vexation at him. “Mycroft, Sherlock, and that’s the end of it,” he says.
“No Mycroft and I’ll give you a blowjob.”
John huffs out a laugh, links their fingers. “You’d give me one anyway, and besides, everything still hurts too much.”
“Dihydrocodeine. You’re due for one, surely.” Sherlock squeezes John’s hand and pushes a thigh up between John’s. John rocks into it, but it’s more playful than heated.
“Shush. Just - just lie still. Let me look at you.” He smiles like he’s trying not to smile too big, but it only makes him look more soppy. “My husband.”
Sherlock pulls a face.
“No?” John asks. “Spouse? Partner?”
“No!”
John laughs again. “Well, what then?”
“Anything you can think of.” Sherlock tells him. “We are - more. Greater. You and me. There isn’t a proper word for it, not yet.”
The smile fades away, and John’s just looking at him. His hand has become hot, but Sherlock doesn’t want to let go. Sherlock gazes back into the fathomless blue.
End