Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

John had no time to process what Sherlock was doing - not with a man swinging a crowbar at his head. He ducked, feeling the rush of air as metal whistled past his ear, then drove forward, tackling his opponent to the ground. A struggle - knees, elbows, a fist glancing off his ribs - but John twisted free, shoved the man’s head hard against the concrete, and scrambled upright.

Then he saw it.

The dark water churned where Sherlock had been, pushed? No sign of him now. Just spreading ripples, as if the river had swallowed him whole.

A curse caught in John's throat. He turned, wild-eyed, barely registering the absence of the man he’d just taken down. Gone. Either unconscious or smart enough to run. It didn’t matter. Sherlock - Sherlock - 

John ran. Shoes pounding against slick pavement, lungs burning.

Too long. He’d been under too long. Stupid, reckless - 

His feet hit the edge of the embankment, and he barely paused before launching himself into the water. Cold slammed into him, shocking the breath from his chest. The world turned black and muffled, the weight of the river closing over him.

Nothing. No movement. Just a vast, endless dark.

His arms cut through the water, legs kicking against the pull of the current. Where - ? He blinked against the burn, searching, reaching - 

There. A pale blur beneath him, sinking, motionless.

John drove down, hands grasping at fabric, at an arm that gave far too easily. Too limp. He hooked an elbow under Sherlock’s, twisted himself, kicked for the surface. The weight dragged at him, the cold stealing what little air remained in his lungs, but he broke through - gasped - hauled Sherlock up with him.

His head spun. The shore. Where was the shore?

There - blurry lights, voices, footsteps pounding toward them. John fought, dragged, cursed, until his knees hit the riverbed and his shoes found purchase on slick stone. Arms reached for them, pulling, lifting, and John collapsed onto the bank beside Sherlock, choking, coughing, pushing himself up just enough to - 

No. No, no, no - 

Sherlock wasn’t breathing.

John’s hands moved before thought could catch up. Tilted the head back, fingers checking the airway, breaths shallow and quick but focused. Hands locked, pressing hard into Sherlock’s sternum, counting, counting - 

Come on, come on, come on - 

He breathed into Sherlock’s mouth, chest rising, falling - nothing.

Another set of compressions. Another breath.

Nothing.

Panic roared in his ears. His own breath came too fast, too sharp. His hands were trembling, pressing, pushing, but Sherlock’s chest stayed still, his face eerily slack, lips tinged with blue.

No, no, no, no, no - 

John’s vision blurred, his pulse pounded in his skull. Another breath. Another. His own lungs ached from the strain, but he didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop.

“Come on, damn it! Breathe!”

Nothing. No movement. No flicker of life. The world narrowed to the shape beneath his hands, the awful silence where there should be breath, the way Sherlock seemed too light and too heavy all at once.

His fingers dug into Sherlock’s shoulders. He barely registered the hands on his own arms, trying to pull him back. Someone was saying his name, but he wrenched free, shoved his knuckles into Sherlock’s sternum, desperate for any reaction.

“Breathe, you stubborn bastard! Don’t you dare -”

A gasp. A splutter. A violent, wrenching cough.

Sherlock jerked, choking up river water, body spasming as he turned, heaving, sucking in a ragged breath.

John froze. His heart stuttered in his chest, then surged forward so hard it hurt, like it was a magnet and Sherlock was metal. His breath left him in a rush - relief, disbelief, anger, something raw and uncontainable. His hands still pressed against Sherlock’s chest, unwilling to move just yet.

Sherlock’s eyes fluttered open - clouded, dazed.

John swallowed hard, feeling the burn in his throat. "You absolute - " His voice cracked. He exhaled sharply. "Don’t ever do that again."

Sherlock blinked slowly, gaze unfocused, as if still trying to catch up with reality. His lips parted, voice hoarse. "Got it."

John let out a breathless, almost hysterical laugh. "Liar."

Then he saw it. Clutched in Sherlock’s fist, tight even in weakness. A USB drive, slick with river water. Evidence. That was why. That was why.

His relief curdled into fury. His breath hitched, his teeth clenched so hard his jaw ached. Sherlock hadn’t slipped, hadn’t miscalculated. He’d done it on purpose. He’d thrown himself into the river, risked everything, for that damned bit of evidence.

John shot to his feet, the fury and exhaustion and lingering terror all colliding at once. His hands clenched, then unclenched, his soaked clothes sticking to his skin, his shoes squelching against the stones. Sherlock was still sprawled on the ground, still too pale, still shaking from the cold, but John - John couldn't stay.

The police were closing in now, paramedics moving toward them, and John - 

John turned.

And walked away.

He didn't look back.

***

John walked, sodden, cold sinking deep into his bones. The river stretched ahead, dark and endless, its surface broken only by the occasional ripple of unseen currents. His breath came in tight, shallow pulls, his chest clenched with something raw and unnameable. His hands curled into fists inside his damp sleeves, but he barely felt them. Anger still churned in his chest, but it was tangled now, thick with exhaustion, too many emotions pressing against his ribs at once, suffocating.

A bench. He sank onto it heavily, slumping forward, arms braced on his knees. The shivering started then, slow at first, then violent, wracking his whole frame. But he didn’t move. Couldn’t. His thoughts were too tangled, too jagged to grasp.

How many times? How many times had Sherlock done this? No regard for his own safety, no thought for what it would do to John. Again and again, always pulling some reckless, brilliant, suicidal stunt and leaving John to - what? Pick up the pieces? Watch him die over and over?

He had already grieved him once. Eighteen months of grief that had hollowed him out, pulled him apart, left him convinced that whatever life he built afterward would always be less. He had tried - he had met Mary, tried to be the kind of man who could move on. And for a while, maybe he had been. But then Sherlock had come back, and everything had unraveled.

Once the smoke and shock and girlfriend had cleared, John had been elated, ecstatic that he was alive. But now? Now the elation had faded. The more Sherlock did this, the more reckless he became, the less John felt relief when he came out of it. Instead, there was only exhaustion, a growing despair that clawed at the edges of his thoughts. Because one day, Sherlock wouldn't come back. One day, the risk would be too great, the game would be over, and John - John didn’t think he could bear it anymore.

His fingers dug into his knees, nails biting through wet fabric, and still, the anger didn’t ebb. If anything, it deepened, darkened, took root in something beyond fury, something colder, more final.

For the first time, the thought came not as an exhausted whisper but as a real, tangible possibility.

I could leave.

Not just for the night. Not just to let the anger settle. But truly, completely. He could step away from this - step away from Sherlock - and stop living on the knife’s edge, stop bracing for the moment it all ended for good. Because it would. Sooner or later, Sherlock was going to do something like this, and John wouldn’t be there in time, or it wouldn’t be reversible, and he’d be left standing over a body that was no longer a body, just remains.

He inhaled sharply, his breath catching in his throat. His stomach clenched at the thought, a hollow ache spreading through his ribs. He had given so much. Had fought, bled, and broken for Sherlock, for this life that had wrapped itself around his own. But now, all he could see was the inevitable end of it, and he didn’t know if he could survive watching it happen. Because the more he gave, the more he tried to prove to Sherlock with every atom of himself that this was a life worth living, the less Sherlock seemed to care. The more he seemed to risk. The more he tried to leave him. 

The low hum of a car engine behind him barely registered. A door opened, footsteps approached. Then - 

“John.”

Greg.

John didn’t lift his head. Didn’t speak.

Greg sighed, hands shoved into his pockets. “He’s at the hospital.”

John closed his eyes. Swallowed against the tightness in his throat. He couldn’t go. Not now. Not when he was still shaking with anger, still feeling like something inside him had cracked so deeply he wasn’t sure it could be repaired.

Greg hesitated. “John.”

John shook his head, still staring at the ground.

“He was out for a long time,” Greg said, voice gentler now. “They’ve got him on oxygen, fluids. He’ll be all right, out in a day or two, but - you should come.”

John let out a slow breath. “I can’t.”

Greg crouched slightly, trying to meet his eyes. “He’ll want to see you.”

John gave a dry, humorless laugh. “Yeah, well. He should’ve thought of that before he decided drowning was a good idea.”

Greg huffed, running a hand through his hair. “You’re really not coming?”

John finally looked up, his expression set. “Take me home.”

Greg hesitated again, then sighed. “All right.”

John stood, moving as if underwater. He got into the car without another word.

***

The flat was silent. Too silent. John stepped inside, dripping water onto the floor, and for a moment, he almost expected to hear the violin. A single drawn-out note, discordant and sharp, cutting through the quiet. His muscles tensed as if waiting for it. But nothing came.

He moved like a ghost, peeling off his clothes, stepping into the shower. The hot water scalded his skin, but it didn’t thaw the cold inside him. His fingers worked methodically, scrubbing at the river water, at the filth clinging to him, but the sense of being drowned remained. He braced one hand against the tiles, closing his eyes against the rush of steam, saw Sherlock’s cold, blue face, and for a moment, he swayed on his feet.

He didn’t know how long he stood there before finally turning off the water. Dressing in clean clothes felt like a formality. Moving up to his bedroom, falling into bed - more motions his body went through while his mind drifted somewhere far away.

No dreams came. Just a black void.

When he woke, his head was full of static. His limbs felt leaden, his chest hollow. He moved through the morning like a sleepwalker, pulling a suitcase from the closet, then another. His hands worked, folding clothes, packing without thought. It felt like watching a stranger touch his things, like his body had decided something his mind hadn’t quite caught up with yet.

His phone, still waterlogged, sat uselessly on the nightstand. He left it.

When he zipped the last suitcase, he stood there for a long moment, staring at it. The size of it. The finality.

Dragging both cases behind him, he went downstairs, out the door, onto the street. The morning air was cold, but it barely registered.

He stood there, still. He raised his hand. He hailed a taxi. He put the cases in the back. He climbed in.

“Where to?” the driver asked.

John opened his mouth. Nothing came out. He didn’t know.

He let his head fall back against the seat, staring out the window.

“Just drive.”

Chapter Text

Dark.

No, not dark. Dim. Blurred shapes, shifting, flickering. Beeping. Too fast, too loud. A pressure on his chest, inside his throat. He tried to move, but his limbs refused, leaden, detached. Wrong.

Water. Cold. Cold. Rising up. Dragging him under.

No, no - 

His lungs convulsed. A violent, tearing cough racked through his body, pain exploding behind his ribs, throat raw and burning. He couldn’t breathe - his chest heaved, trying to pull in air, but all he felt was the crushing weight of water inside him. Another cough, harder this time, his body rejecting the ghost of the river. He gasped, the motion jagged, shuddering, the world tilting in dizzy, nauseating sways.

Where - ?

His fingers twitched, the movement sluggish, uncoordinated. He turned his head. The effort sent a fresh wave of vertigo rolling through him.

White ceiling. Clinical sterility. Hospital.

Wrong.

John.

His chest tightened painfully. John should be here. John should always be here. But his senses were screaming at him that the smells, the sounds of John, were absent. 

His pulse kicked higher, icy panic spilling into his veins. He swallowed, damp sandpaper, the burn spreading down into his chest. His vision blurred, the dim room shifting, wavering. His lungs fought to even out, but something colder than fear crawled through him, too deep to shake off as he coughed.

He was alone.

Empty.

No one. 

No familiar solid presence, no voice murmuring sharp reassurances, no rough hands pressing steady and warm against his arm.

Something had to have happened. John wouldn’t - he would be here.

Unless he was hurt.

The thought hit like an electric shock to the temples. John must be hurt, must be somewhere else in this hospital, too injured to come to him, alone, perhaps calling for him -

Sherlock’s breath quickened, chest rising and falling too fast, lungs still struggling with renewed urgency.

If John was hurt - if John needed him - 

His arms trembled as he tried to push himself up, grasping at the sheets, the IV pulling taut in his arm. His fingers fumbled at the line, jerking it free, barely feeling the sting. The machines around him screamed in protest, beeping twisting into a shrill, urgent shriek. The room lurched sideways. His muscles trembled, weak, uncooperative, but he fought against them.

Had to move. Had to get to John. The thought of him in another room, alone, in pain - 

A sudden, vicious pressure in his chest stole his breath. He gasped, coughing so violently his whole body seized. His muscles locked, agony flaring through his torso as his lungs tried to twist. He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t breathe. His hands clutched at the sheets, nails scraping against the fabric, struggling against the crushing force that dragged him down - 

Drowning. He was drowning again.

No, no, he fought, he fought to get back. He always fought to get back to John. Every time. Every breath. Every impossible moment when the world tried to pull him under. He had fought. He had won.

Two years of pain and isolation and violence, carving his way back to London, back to Baker Street, back to John. He had done it before. He would do it again.

But his body refused. 

He choked, vision dimming, the room spinning away. Hands grabbed at him, pressing him down, voices trying to soothe him, but panic swallowed them whole. He thrashed weakly, the desperation turning frantic as the edges of his world darkened. No! He had to get up. He had to - 

***

Light.

Soft, filtered through closed blinds. The beeping had slowed, steady, distant. His limbs were heavy, too heavy. Something dull and sluggish had settled into his bones, his thoughts moving like molasses, drifting.

Sedative.

They had drugged him.

The realization surfaced in the fog, trailing a flicker of protest, but it was muted, dulled. It took too long to be properly alarmed. The reaction barely reached his fingertips before it was swallowed again. He tried to lift a hand, found that he could - barely. His fingers curled weakly in the air. His chest ached, but the sharp edge of pain had dulled, numbed by whatever they had given him. 

A breath. Shallow. His chest ached, but the pain had lost its bite. A wrongness whispered at the edges of his awareness, pressing in, but he couldn’t grasp it, couldn’t piece together why it felt so - 

“Back with us, then?”

The voice was familiar. He turned his head slightly - too much effort for something so small - and met Greg Lestrade’s tired but kind eyes.

Lestrade.

Sherlock swallowed, his throat sticky. He tried to speak, but only a rasp came out. Lestrade moved, reached for the cup on the bedside table, and pressed the straw to his lips. The water was too cold, too sharp against his sore throat, but he drank anyway.

Lestrade exhaled, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “Bit of a scare you gave us.” A forced lightness in his voice, an artificial ease. “Nurses have been watching you like hawks. That, and you’ve been doing a great impression of a man trying to fight off the entire ward in his sleep.”

Sherlock blinked slowly. The fog in his mind made it difficult to pinpoint why Lestrade was talking like that, like he was trying to fill the space with sound.

He inhaled, shallow, his chest tight. “John?”

Lestrade hesitated. “You need to rest, mate.”

Sherlock frowned, sluggish, but something choked and desperate pushed through the haze. “Where is he?”

Lestrade shifted in his seat, looking down and away - dissembling. “Sherlock - ”

Sherlock’s pulse stuttered, a weak, uneven rhythm against the monitors. The sedative dulled his thinking, but not the fear, not the sharp, lancing sensation that shot through his ribs, winding around his lungs like barbed wire. 

“Is he -” A swallow, his body resisting even that small motion. The words scraped up from somewhere deep, fragile, splintering. “Is he alive?”

Lestrade’s head snapped up, alarm clear in his face. “Yes! Yes, of course, he’s alive.” The answer came quickly, too quickly, but there was no lie in it. “He’s fine.”

Sherlock’s body stilled, the words crashing through his frantic thoughts like a sudden downpour, cutting through the noise.

Fine.

Not in another hospital bed. Not injured.

Fine.

The relief should have been immediate. Should have been all-consuming. But -

Then why - ?

The question formed, half-shaped, but Sherlock didn’t ask it. Not yet. His mind was still trying to reconcile it.

John wasn’t injured. He wasn’t unconscious somewhere. He was fine. But he wasn’t here.

Had something happened between them?

No. No, John wouldn’t - he would be here. Unless -

Unless he was angry. 

A different kind of unease slithered into Sherlock’s heart, curling uncomfortably beneath the sedative’s hold. 

What had he done?

Lestrade exhaled again, rubbing a hand over his face. Avoiding. “I took him home last night.”

Home. 

Not here. 

Not at the hospital.

Sherlock’s mind snagged on the information, trying to force fractured thoughts into alignment.

John hadn’t been there.

Sherlock’s breath shallowed. His throat felt tight again, even though he wasn’t choking this time.

Lestrade hesitated. Then, voice quieter, “He didn’t want to come.”

John had chosen not to come.

His pulse stammered. It didn’t fit. It didn’t make sense.

“He seemed… angry,” Lestrade admitted, reluctant. “At you.”

Angry.

Sherlock’s vision pulsed for half a second, his body too detached to react properly.

“At you,” Lestrade continued, watching his face. “For being reckless.”

Reckless?  

He tried to think through the haze, searching his memory, but all he remembered was fighting. 

Fighting the river. Fighting to come back. Fighting for John.

He hadn’t done anything reckless. 

Had he?

***

Sherlock drifted through another day and night in the hospital, his mind hovering in a dazed, unfocused mist. He accepted the care given to him, not because he particularly wanted to, but because arguing required more effort than he had to spare. The sedative had faded, but the exhaustion remained, leaving him passive.

He carefully avoided thinking about John. About how John hadn't come. About how John hadn't cooled down, hadn't walked through the door in frustration, hadn't demanded answers or argued or been there. How he was somewhere Sherlock was not, on purpose. The thought was unbearable, so he shoved it aside, begged his mind to latch onto anything else. 

It didn’t work.

The morning he was discharged, he dressed methodically in clothes from Lestrade, fingers slow and clumsy as he buttoned his shirt. The hospital staff gave him instructions - rest, fluids, avoid exertion, go to a doctor if the cough persisted - but their words barely registered. Lestrade was still there, quiet but steady, walking him to the waiting cab without comment.

The ride home was silent.

Streetlights smeared across the window, smudges of white and yellow bleeding into the night. London rushed past in a blur of color and motion, but it all felt distant, like he was watching it from the other side of a glass wall. His own reflection hovered faintly over the cityscape - pale, drawn, eyes too dark, too wide.

He looked like someone half-drowned.

He still felt half-drowned. As if some part of him had never truly surfaced, still adrift in black water, lungs still seizing, body still shivering from something that had happened hours ago, days ago - an eternity ago.

But it would be fine.

It's all fine.

John would be waiting for Sherlock to come home.

Even if he was still angry. Even if there was an argument waiting - sharp words, narrowed eyes, the scrape of fury in his voice. Even if fists flew, if spit hit his face, if items smashed and bruises formed. That, Sherlock could handle. That, he could predict. Control. Absorb. He could dissect it, unravel it, redirect it into something logical, something solvable.

Arguments could be resolved.

John would be there.

And this time, Sherlock would do better.

This time, he would protect him. No more sleepless nights chasing criminals through the streets. No more aggravated sighs, missed meals, no more exhaustion carved into John’s face, no more sanity lost in the pursuit of justice that would sooner laugh in their faces than make the world any better.

Because it all had to be worth something to John. It had to be.

That was why he had gone into the water. Why he had fought against the cold, against his own failing body, against the pull of the river trying to drag him under - so he could get the clue, solve the crime, claim the prize. That's when he was worth something.

That's when he was brilliant.

Amazing. 

Extraordinary.

If he failed, if he miscalculated, if he lost again -

I'll burn the heart out of you.  

John would see only the flaws. The arrogance, the things that made him unbearable. The lack of social skills, lack of feeling, lack of decency. The cold.

You machine!

The car slowed.

The blur outside sharpened into something familiar.

The door clicked open.

Sherlock stepped out, coat shifting stiffly around his shoulders, and looked up at Baker Street.

The flat’s windows were dark.

A strange, slow breath pushed from his lungs as he climbed the steps. The key turned in the lock. The door opened.

Sherlock stepped inside.

And stopped.

The feeling hit instantly, a gut-punch sensation that knocked something loose inside.

Wrong.

The air was still.

Not empty - missing something.

The door latched shut behind him with a quiet click, too soft in the silence. Sherlock inhaled, light, controlled, but it didn’t settle anything. His breath was too loud. The entire flat was too quiet.

Wrong.

He moved automatically, steps soundless against the floorboards as he climbed the stairs. John would be here. John would be upstairs. Maybe in his room, maybe - maybe not in the sitting room because - because he was angry, and he didn’t want to see Sherlock yet, but that was fine, because he was still here, still home…

Sherlock’s hand brushed the banister as he climbed, fingertips dragging against the wood. The wrongness was solidifying now, forming into something menacing, something inevitable.

John’s bedroom door - ajar.

A small thing. A meaningless thing.

And yet - 

His heart slammed once, hard, and then his body was moving before he had fully processed it, before he even understood why he suddenly needed to see.

The door creaked open further beneath his touch.

Inside - 

The closet was empty.

The shelves - cleared.

Wrong -

John’s books. His things. His personal items - the little pieces of himself that had been woven into this space - gone - except his phone. 

John’s phone, sitting there, cast aside. No contact.

Unreachable.

Sherlock’s stomach lurched, his vision blurred.

No. No, no, no.

His feet carried him forward without permission, without thought. He reached out, fingers skimming the bare shelf where John’s books had been. Nothing. Just empty wood beneath his fingertips.

His throat closed.

John had - 

John had left.

The thought didn’t make sense. It didn’t fit.

Wrong -

The silence in the flat only seemed to stretch, pressing in, suffocating. The emptiness of it - the absolute absence of John - was staggering.

Sherlock took a step back, then another, his balance wavering. A sharp, stinging heat pressed at the back of his throat.

Wro

       ng -

Then the coughing hit.

It tore through him suddenly, violently, ribs aching, breath scraping raw as his lungs spasmed against the still-lingering phantom of drowning. His hand shot out, catching the frame of the door to steady himself, but the world was tilting, distorting around the single, unbearable fact - 

John was gone.

He dragged in a breath, but it was wrong, too shaky, too thin. The silence bore down on him, the space around him too vast, too still.

Alone. Again.

The last time had been different. The last time, he had made the choice. He had controlled it. He had known he would return, if only he could survive.

This - 

For this, he had no control. No solution. 

No evidence to examine. No deductions to make. Just the cold, undeniable fact that John Watson had looked at the life they had built - 

- and decided to walk away.

Chapter Text

John sat on the edge of the hotel bed, staring at the cheap, unfamiliar phone in his hands. Four days. It had been four days since he left Baker Street, since he packed his bags and got into a taxi with no destination in mind. The hotel was twenty minutes away, far enough that he wouldn’t accidentally cross paths with Sherlock, close enough that it still felt like he hadn’t fully left.

The room was small, impersonal, a space that barely registered as existing around him. He slept in the bed, he showered in the bathroom, but he wasn’t living here. He wasn’t living at all.

The clinic was the only place that still made sense. Work was mechanical, predictable. He showed up, did his job, spoke only when necessary. He avoided looking patients in the eye for too long, afraid they’d see something cracked and empty in him. His co-workers had noticed something was off - of course they had - but he brushed off their concerns with short answers and forced smiles.

The new phone had been a necessity, nothing more. His old one had drowned along with everything else that night. He hadn’t saved his old contacts. Hadn’t reached out to anyone. He had given his work number to the clinic and left it at that. If anyone needed him, they could find him there.

But Sherlock hadn’t needed him.

Greg had said he wasn’t too badly off. That he would be fine. Which meant - what? That he was out of the hospital now? Back at Baker Street?

Four days.

No text. No call. No sudden appearance at his door, eyes sharp, voice clipped, demanding an explanation. No silhouette of tailored clothing, no whiff of aftershave, or sparkle in an eye - 

John exhaled sharply, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes. He shouldn’t have expected anything else. He had left first. He had walked away. Sherlock had no reason to come looking for him.

And yet - some stubborn, aching part of him had hoped.

He couldn’t stop thinking about him. No matter how much he tried, no matter how much he told himself he had done the right thing, Sherlock’s voice still echoed in his mind. Things he had said, things he had done - reckless, brilliant, impossible things. Things that had infuriated John, made him want to shake sense into him, but also made him - 

Made him miss him. Terribly.

And worse, it reminded him. Of before. Of grief so deep it had left him a wraith, of two years spent clawing his way toward something resembling survival, because Sherlock had been 

DEAD.

Back then, he had thought nothing could be worse. That there was no pain greater than that loss, no absence more unbearable.

He had been wrong.

This was worse. Because Sherlock wasn’t dead. He was out there, somewhere, alive - and choosing not to come for him.

John let out a breath, shoulders curling inward, fingers tightening around the useless phone as if it could hold him together.

It was familiar.

This was what it had felt like.

Coming back from the war.

That same hollowed-out sensation, the same sick, drifting weightlessness, like stepping off the battlefield only to realize the green fields of home beneath his feet no longer existed. The world kept moving, life carried on, but he was untethered, floating somewhere just outside of it.

He had spent months back then searching for footing, for anything solid, anything real. He had told himself he could adjust, that he could rebuild, that normal was just something he had to relearn. But deep down, he had known - God, he had always known - that he had already left too much of himself behind in the wreckage. That there was no going back.

No return to a fight already lost. No man left behind - except yourself. 

And just as he had not willingly walked back into a war he could never win - 

He would not go back to Sherlock.

Because love wasn’t enough if it left him bleeding out in the end.

***

Time passed.

The days blurred together, indistinguishable from one another, stretched thin and empty. He woke, he worked, he slept. Somewhere in between, he tried not to think.

Three weeks.

Twenty-one days of moving through life like a man watching himself from the outside. The numbness had settled in deep, wrapping around his senses, softening the edges of everything, except the memories. Those, he couldn’t seem to control. They surfaced without warning, threading through his days, pulling him under when he least expected it.

He thought of Baskerville. The long night in the hotel, the air between them thick with unspoken things.

I don't have friends. I've just got one.

Buckingham Palace.

The stolen ashtray. A stupid, ridiculous thing, but Sherlock had taken it for him. A gesture so small, so absurdly thoughtful, that John hadn’t even recognized it for what it was at the time. He did now.

You are a conductor of light.

Sherlock had said it as if John was something rare, something vital. A truth so stark, so undeniable, that it had cracked something open in John’s chest.

He thought of the way Sherlock had hugged Mrs. Hudson to his side, the way he had always cared without ever saying he cared. He thought of the steady, assessing way Sherlock had looked at him sometimes, gaze piercing, considering, as if John was a puzzle worth solving. Glimpses of someone John had thought cared, or at least someone who could care, someone capable of affection if he allowed himself to indulge. But John had learned the hard way that whatever it was, it was not enough. Not enough to stay. Not enough to fight for survival. Maybe not even enough to miss John now that he was gone.

John had let himself believe - 

Just for a moment. Just long enough for the thought to take root.

That maybe, maybe, they could have been more.

That despite everything, despite the recklessness, the impossibility, the frustration, Sherlock had wanted him there. Needed him just as much.

But then there was the other truth.

The one that gutted him every time it surfaced. The one that made his stomach twist and his throat tighten and his breath catch sharp and uneven in the middle of the night.

John had left.

And Sherlock had let him go.

No argument. No explanation. No apology.

Not an email, not a bratty comment on his blog. Not a knock at his door. Not a hint of the stubborn, relentless man who had once dragged John into the center of his world without permission.

Just silence.

And somehow, that, more than anything else, was what hurt.

Three weeks passed like that.

Twenty-one days of waking up to a world that felt lesser, that felt like it had lost its color, its meaning, its purpose. A dull, half-life of going through the motions while something inside him twisted tighter and tighter, as if waiting for something to snap.

And then, the thought came.

Unbidden. Unwelcome.

What if Sherlock was - 

No.

But - 

It would explain why he didn’t come.

Had Sherlock done something desperate, something dangerous? Had he vanished, chasing a suspect, slipping between the cracks of the city, unreachable? Had he walked into something bigger than even him, pushed too far, too fast? Or worse, had he fallen back into old habits, into old poisons? The thought sickened John, sitting heavy in his stomach, curling into something cold and uneasy at the base of his spine. He didn’t want to believe it, but he had seen it before, seen the aftermath of Sherlock’s mind left unchecked, consuming itself. He tried to push the idea away, but it clung to him, invasive and impossible to shake.

Was Sherlock even still alive?

The idea snuck around his defenses, abrupt and jarring, making him pull back as if he had brushed against something burning. 

He wasn’t going to think about it. He wouldn’t. Because this was exactly why he had left in the first place, because it was never going to stop, was it? The constant, gnawing fear, the knowledge that one day Sherlock would go too far, and John would be flung out into outer space, a satellite with nothing left to orbit - just the vast, empty cold stretching on forever, and the knowledge that he was utterly, devastatingly alone.

That was what he had been protecting himself from.

Still.

The thought whispered at the edges of his mind. A madness he could not silence - because deep down, somewhere beyond the numbness, beyond the logical reasoning and the now well-worn justifications, John knew something else.

If Sherlock had died, he would know.

John would feel it, somehow, in his bones, in his breath, in the blood pumping through his veins. His body, numb for weeks, would finally register something, some chemical reaction that would combust his very being into ash. The world itself would change, would fragment, in some undeniable way.

But it hadn’t.

Which meant Sherlock was still out there. Somewhere.

John wasn’t sure if that was a relief, or just another kind of agony.

***

And then, one evening, when he was walking back from the clinic, head down, shoulders hunched against the wind - he heard them.

Three young men, laughing, their voices jeering, slurred with drink. A woman’s voice, sharper, defensive. He turned into an alley, and saw them - one had her by the throat, the others grabbing at her skirt - 

John barely had to think. His body moved before his mind caught up.

He stepped toward them and they were distracted. She hit her captor in the face with her elbow and was tossed onto the floor like a rag. John shoved himself between her and them, doctor and soldier at war. His voice came out low, guttural. "Walk away."

The bolder of them sneered. Laughed. Shoved John hard enough to send him stumbling. Something in his brain awoke, uncoiled. 

The first punch landed, and John welcomed it.

The world snapped into focus, every edge razor-sharp. The pain was heady - an elixir. His body reacted, instinct overtaking rational thought. A block, a strike, knuckles splitting against bone. Someone grunted, staggered. Someone else swore, lunged. He turned into it, let them come, let the violence spill out, something long restrained, something feral.

A blow caught him in the ribs, another clipped his jaw, and still, he moved forward, pushing into the pain, chasing it. The sneering man went down hard, another reeled back, and John didn’t stop. He wanted the brutality of it, wanted to hurt and be hurt, wanted the sting and the shock and the blood in his mouth because that, that, he could understand. He fell on the fallen with fists and feet and rage.  

The others ran.

When he was done and the face beneath him reduced to a gurgling mess, John turned, searching for the woman. She was gone. 

Smart.

John crouched there, panting, blood dripping from his knuckles, his hands flexing, his skin burning. His ears rang, his pulse a deafening drumbeat in his skull.

Alive.

His body was shaking, vibrating with the aftershocks, with the memory of impact, with the familiar rush of battle, with the rush of knowing it was time to kill or be killed. It was muscle memory, a call back to the man he used to be, the one who had known exactly what to do when the world turned violent. 

He couldn’t take the slow, dull ache of meaning nothing to Sherlock, of being nothing at all, but this? 

This, he could take. 

This, he could feel.  

And God help him, he didn’t know if he could let it go.

Chapter Text

Sherlock sat in the living room, frozen.

The silence was suffocating, pressing in from all sides, fractured now and then by the rough, involuntary rasp that clawed its way up his throat, as if even his own body was struggling to remind him he was still here.

The fire had long since burned out, its ashes undisturbed. The tea in the kitchen had gone cold days ago, coating the bottom of the forgotten teapot in tannins. Dust had begun to settle on the surfaces, untouched, undisturbed - like a mausoleum, like a place abandoned. The flat, once filled with the rhythmic sounds of life, now stood empty, foreign in its stillness.

The world had ended - but only for Sherlock.

Somehow, that first day, Sherlock had got back into the living room and curled into his chair. He wasn’t entirely sure how much time had passed since then - hours, days, it blurred into one. For a long time, there was nothing but the vast, grey absence. The shapelessness of John missing from every corner of the flat. The untouched chair across from him. The faint ghost of footsteps on the stairs that had not echoed in days.

The pain was too large to process. Too monumental for thought. So he didn’t think.

Shock, perhaps. Or something beyond it. Because while some part of him reeled at the sheer finality of it, another part wasn’t surprised. Not really.

John had always been a good person.

And Sherlock was not.

Oh, John had tolerated him, had stood beside him longer than anyone else had. But there had always been an end coming, hadn’t there? Some inevitable breaking point. People left, and Sherlock gave them reasons to.

He had watched it happen in slow motion, like an experiment doomed to fail, like a patient counting their final breaths. And still, he had been helpless to stop it. Maybe he never could have. Maybe he had always been waiting for this - the moment when John would finally realize what Sherlock had known all along.

That he was impossible to love - as a friend, a companion, a colleague, or anything else.

Later in that first week, he tried to keep on by himself. He really did. He had left the chair, had forced himself out of the flat, intending to function, to prove that he could. Grocery shopping - yes, a normal task, an essential one. He made it to the shop, stood in front of the produce section, staring at rows of apples and oranges, and realized he could not remember what he had come for. His brain refused to summon even the most basic list, refused to assign any value to the task. He stood there too long, unmoving, until the employees began watching him with polite unease, until a headache threatened behind his eyes, until he had no choice but to turn and leave, empty-handed. 

The online world was no better. He forced himself to sit at his laptop, to open his emails. Subject lines blurred together, meaningless: 

Urgent. 

Follow-up. 

Inquiry.  

Even Mycroft’s text messages, usually filled with thinly veiled insults and government secrets, failed to provoke interest. His eyes skimmed over the words, but nothing penetrated the haze. The world moved on, his inbox filled, but he remained static, unmoved by any of it.

None of it mattered - none of it would ever matter again - and there was no one around to interfere as the apathy grew.

Mrs. Hudson was away on holiday, somewhere warm and far from here. Mycroft was overseas, entangled in matters of state that Sherlock could not bring himself to care about. Even Lestrade, who had once believed in him more than he should have, seemed to be keeping his distance, as if even pity required effort he was no longer willing or required to spend.

Alone protects me.

And yet, John had finally, finally proven him wrong - 

Wrong.

- and so simply, so elegantly. 

Sherlock should be able to function, to sustain himself, to carry on. But he couldn’t. 

He couldn’t.  

John had done what the great Moriarty and countless others had failed to do. He had burned out Sherlock's heart, and he’d done it without even speaking a word. 

So he remained. Sat in his chair, hollow and silent, staring at nothing. Unaware of time, only aware of the gaping, cavernous lack that devoured every inch of the flat, every inch of him.

John was gone.

And Sherlock had never been more certain that he should have stayed dead. 

***

At some point, he started walking.

It was not a decision so much as a compulsion, a way to escape the unbearable emptiness of Baker Street. He left without thought, without direction, stepping into the cold and letting his feet carry him. He walked without pause, for hours, for miles, until every joint ached, until his limbs felt nothing and he was weightless from exhaustion.

It was only in motion that he could tolerate himself.

Sometimes, there was a rogue thought - there was something else he could do, something he had turned to before in times of need, something that wasn’t allowed when there were people around him, but there weren’t and he craved and it would help it would it would -  

But he didn’t deserve that either. 

Each night, when his body could take no more, he returned to Baker Street, collapsing onto his bed, skirting into sleep too light for dreams. It was the only mercy, the only time his mind ceased its relentless circling. But each morning, he would wake to the unbearable silence of the flat, unable to look up the stairs, knowing John’s room was empty, knowing that he deserved to be alone. And so he would leave again, walking, until exhaustion pulled him back, only to repeat the cycle the next day.

His body protested, the cough punctuating each day, his lungs spasming but ignored, dismissed. He ate. Dry toast, occasionally. The odd biscuit left forgotten in the cupboard. Packets of oatmeal. Street food, bought in a daze. Anything that required no effort, no thought. But worse than all of it - worse than the emptiness, the exhaustion, the slow decay - 

- was the love. 

The love he had never spoken, could never speak, and now had nowhere to go except inwards - and it was armed, and dangerous. The love he had never even named aloud was twinned with grief, and it wailed. It had been buried so deep, sealed away so tightly, that even in John’s presence, he had barely allowed himself to acknowledge it - but now it was all-consuming, burning him with cold blue flames from the inside out.

What worth did the love of someone like him hold? Someone who could not even take care of himself? Someone who had driven away the only person who had ever stayed? Not even dying had been enough to make John stay, so why would loving him be any different? 

Part of him railed against his ineptitude, against himself, because logically he must have the capacity to take care of himself, to function - but it seemed he had lost it somewhere in those two years away, as if survival had been a finite resource, spent in the shadows of exile, used up on cold nights and desperate decisions. The reserves had run dry, the mechanisms broken, and now, left alone in the aftermath, there was nothing left to replenish them. He was like his phone - drained, neglected, and utterly incapable of restoring itself. 

He needed his doctor.

I prefer my doctors clean-shaven. 

Then - 

He stopped. His breath stuttered, caught painfully in his chest. A cough tore from his throat, wrenching and ragged. The cold air burned in his lungs, but he barely noticed.

John.

Sherlock hadn’t been looking for him. He wouldn’t have dared - 

And yet - subconsciously, he must have been, must have wandered here with some silent, desperate pull toward the inevitable. Because of all the streets in London, all the places he could have walked without purpose, he was here, close to John’s workplace. And John was there.

Real. Present. A breath away.

John, walking home from the clinic, shoulders slightly hunched against the wind, his steps steady, gait familiar. His hair was slightly longer, just a fraction - how long had it been? His face looked different too - drawn, tense, tired.

He was close enough that Sherlock could call his name. Could step forward, could -

No.

Sherlock's heart slammed against his ribs, a sickening, hollow thud. For a terrifying second, he thought of fleeing, the instinct sharp and absolute. The fear was instant, electric, curling deep in his gut - because what if John saw him? What if John turned, met his gaze, and then - simply walked away? No hesitation, no pause, just distance widening between them like a chasm that could never be crossed.

The thought was unbearable. Unthinkable.

Sherlock would not survive it.

But if he ran, he would draw attention - so he didn’t move. He stood frozen, breath shallow, pain lancing through his chest with every careful inhale, petrified of another cough giving him away, watching as John disappeared into a hotel entrance.

Sherlock exhaled slowly, feeling the ground shift beneath him as suddenly he had a purpose again. 

From that moment on, Sherlock followed him. Not close enough to be noticed, but close enough to know. To see.

He told himself it was data collection, an attempt to understand. But it wasn’t. It was need. A need to keep John in his sights, to know he was still there, still breathing, still existing in the same city.

He watched John do the most ordinary things - buy a newspaper, buy a sandwich from a bakery, queue at the bank. He watched him fold his sleeves with that precise, familiar motion, the one Sherlock had committed to memory. He watched him rub at his shoulder absently, the way he always did when the weather turned damp. Sherlock had never cared for the mundane, had scorned routine and loathed monotony. But now, he would die to be part of it. He would do anything, suffer anything, if only it meant being there with John. If only it meant John wanted him there.

But John didn’t want him. Didn’t think he was brilliant or amazing or a genius. Didn’t think of him at all.

He stayed to the edges, moving like a wraith, keeping himself just out of sight. He learned where John went, what routes he favored, when he would stop to check his phone or adjust his bag. His cough had deepened into something wet and ugly, rattling in his chest with every breath, so he pressed the back of his hand or a sleeve to his mouth whenever it came, stifling the sound, forcing himself silent. He stood in the shadows of doorways, blended into crowds, made himself invisible in the way he had mastered long ago. But it was different now - before, it had been a skill, a tool to use, a choice. Now, it was necessity. 

John must not see him.

Once, a passerby startled, eyes catching Sherlock’s too-intent gaze as he lurked near the café where John sat sipping his coffee. The stranger’s alarm was immediate, their pace quickening as they hurried away. The realization burned through him - he must have looked strange, unhinged. Pale and gaunt, hunched in the shadows, hacking into his elbow. He ducked into a side street, breath ragged, hands curled into fists against his coat. He needed to be more careful. More subtle. If someone raised the alarm and then John saw him, Sherlock knew he would die - would be finally, permanently, erased from existence.

But even knowing that, he couldn’t stop.

***

One evening, Sherlock saw a different John.

He was walking back from the clinic, later than the first time, head down, steps steady but tired. Sherlock was watching from above, following the fire escapes, about to pull away, to vanish into the city. But then - 

Enemies. Laughter, crude and sharp. Three voices, male. Slurred, unfocused. A woman’s voice, tight with fear.

John changed course instantly, as if they had called out to him. He stepped forward. The woman struck out at the one restraining her and was thrown to the ground. John did not flinch, did not pause. He was already between them. Sherlock heard his voice float up as if he had paid for ringside seats. 

"Walk away."

One of them sneered. Shoved him back. John barely shifted. Sherlock knew the exact moment he let go.

The first punch landed, and John ignited.

Sherlock had seen him fight before. In war stories retold in movement, in moments of necessity, in that uncanny ability to act faster than most men could think. But this was different. This was wild, untamed, frightening. This was a supernova, an all-consuming beauty of destruction.

As Sherlock watched, his skin felt too tight, his core too hot. He barely realized he was almost panting with desire, coughs suppressed by the helpless clench of it, as powerless as a mouse witnessing the dance of a cobra. 

John moved with violent precision, each strike landing where it would do the most damage. A man stumbled, another cursed. The woman ran. One swung at John’s ribs. A mistake. John turned into it, absorbed it, came back harder. His fist split skin. His elbow cracked against bone. Sherlock saw the moment he should have stopped, the moment most men would have stopped.

John did not stop.

A body hit the ground. One of them scrambled away, another too dazed to react. But the last - the one who had laughed first - was still there.

John hit him again. And again. Sherlock had seen the aftermath of killings, had studied them, dissected them. This was not a killing - but it was not far from it.

The heat under Sherlock’s skin transmuted into pure, acidic, jealousy, as John’s fists rained down on this unknown man - as John focused all that awesome ferocity and blessed his broken skin.

Then John stilled. He exhaled sharply, crouching, hands flexing. Blood on his knuckles. A tremor in his arms. His breath came fast, sharp. Sherlock’s frantic gasps for air synced with John’s, as if he was the one lying used at John’s feet, undone.

John wiped his hands against his coat, pushing himself up. He turned and walked away, leaving behind the wreckage of what he had done.

It took several minutes for Sherlock to come back to himself, to realize with some detached horror that he was so hard he could barely uncurl, to force himself to look over the situation with anything remotely resembling sanity. 

Once able, he climbed down, stopping as the cough returned, making him hunch for a moment with the force of it.

He catalogued the state of the man still on the ground. 

He was breathing. Just. 

Would John want him to live, or to die? 

Sherlock crouched down, gloved hand hovering over the pink-foam-covered lips. Should he kill him? He could, quite easily. It would be cleaner. But as John had left him alive…

Perhaps not. 

He pulled out his phone and sent an anonymous message to emergency services. He stayed a while longer, staring down at the unknown man, battling the impulse to somehow take his place - to be able to say, look what John Watson did to me, isn’t it glorious - 

But then there were sirens, and it was time to go. 

Chapter Text

John dreamed of bodies. Of a nameless thug, beaten into the ground, John’s own hands continuing to smash his face until he was smashing through, smashing them down into the earth below. Of Sherlock’s body, cooling and broken on pavement, blood painting his face, eyes open to the sky, dead wrist underneath John’s fingertips. As he watched, those frozen eyes moved to meet his, the shock of connection pooling heat into his groin even as the image fell away. 

John dreamed of water. Of Sherlock standing on the edge of a cliff, his coat billowing like dark wings, arms loose at his sides. 

It’s just a magic trick. 

He tipped forward and fell, arms and legs wheeling like he’d changed his mind.

John ran, heart hammering, feet pounding against stone, looking down on ripples over blackness. He jumped without thinking, the cold sliding over him like a sheet of silk. He pushed downward, saw him, but Sherlock was moving away, drifting further, deeper, his outline dissolving into shadow. Sherlock turned, looking back at John through the murky dark, hair waving like seaweed around his face, moving backward. His eyes were sad. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but only an air bubble came out. 

John's chest clenched with panic and he reached for him, desperate, but Sherlock only drifted further down, body lax. John tried to scream at him to fight it, to swim, tried to kick himself down harder, to follow - but the water thickened around him, the cold numbing his limbs, until all he could see was the last flicker of Sherlock’s white face disappearing into the endless dark, still watching him with those pale, sad eyes.

John couldn’t breathe.

The cold reached inside him, coiling around his heart, dragging him down into nothingness. His vision tunneled, the weight of the dark pressing tighter, suffocating, endless - 

He woke gasping, sweat-soaked, rough hotel sheets twisted around him like restraints.

***

The clinic smelled of antiseptic and one of the sterile lights was blinking at odd intervals. John sat across from a young boy, no older than five, his nose red and runny, his small body curled against his mother’s side. She was watching John carefully - not just attentive, but wary.

He didn’t blame her.

He went through the routine. Checked the boy’s temperature, listened to his chest, asked about his symptoms. The flu, nothing more. The mother nodded along, answering his questions, but she looked down. John followed her line of sight. His hands. His knuckles, bruised and raw.

The boy piped up, his voice stuffy but curious. "What happened to your hands?"

John made a show of looking at them properly then, flexing his fingers like he hadn’t noticed the state of them before. 

He had scoured the London news websites after that first night, convinced he was going to find it - some mention of a body in an alley, a police report about a man beaten to death. Certain that the woman had told someone, that there were other witnesses, that any moment now, they’d come for him. But there was nothing. No reports, no investigations, not even a passing mention. 

As if it had never happened at all.

Are you alright?

Yes, of course I'm alright.

Well, you have just killed a man. 

"Oh," he said lightly, offering a small smile. "Boxing. Helps me keep fit."

The boy blinked at him, unconvinced, and the mother’s silence sharpened. John wrote out a prescription for some children’s paracetamol and handed it over, ignoring the way she paused before taking it from his bruised fingers.

But he wasn't a very nice man.

***

John lived in two worlds now.

By day, he was respectable. He wore clean shirts, pressed his white coat, spoke in calm, measured tones to his patients. He worked long shifts at the clinic, nodding along to his colleagues’ conversations without really hearing them. He gave prescriptions, sutured wounds, reassured worried parents. They called him dependable. Steady. Professional. But he noticed the way they hesitated just a fraction too long before speaking. The nurses, the receptionists, even the patients - they saw, but they didn’t ask. Something in his face must have put them off. There was no need to ask when the answer was already written on his skin. They looked, noticed, and then quickly looked away, as if instinct warned them that knowing would make it worse - that whatever John Watson was doing to himself, it was not for them to name.

By night, he was not respectable.

He walked the streets, hands in his pockets, seeking out the places where trouble simmered just beneath the surface. Outside pubs at closing time, where drink-fuelled bravado tipped easily into violence. Near betting shops where lost wages made tempers short. In the back alleys behind sports bars, where the wrong team winning could spark something ugly. He had an instinct for it - could tell by the way people moved, the way their eyes held his a bit too long or moved away too fast. He didn’t always have to start it. Some people were just waiting for an excuse. A misplaced glance, the wrong word, and suddenly, fists were flying.

The first few times, it had been almost accidental. A shove outside a pub, a drunken brawl in an alley, nothing serious. A scuffle that ended with hands yanking him back before things got too far. But the rush it gave him - the way it cut through the numbness, through the endless ache of missing - was addictive. 

On good nights, he told himself he had control. He wasn’t stupid about it. He never picked fights he couldn’t win. He watched, calculated, assessed risk - a soldier in enemy territory. Every swing, every impact was measured and deliberate. A release, but not a surrender. On good nights, it made sense. He was useful, valuable in a way. He wasn’t the man left behind, wasn’t the soldier side-lined by peace, waiting for orders that would never come. He had purpose. 

On bad nights…

He knew he was clinging to the only thing that still made him feel real. Each fight was just another desperate attempt to remind himself he was still here, still capable of something, still more than an empty space. On bad nights, he knew he was spiralling, and he didn’t know how to stop. 

The idea of stopping felt more like losing.

So he sought it out. He learned where to go, where the air felt thick with unspent aggression, where one word could tip the night into violence. He found the kind of places where men with too much anger and too little to lose prowled like caged dogs. 

He told himself he wasn’t doing anything Sherlock wouldn’t do.

But Sherlock wasn’t here. And John wasn’t solving anything - only breaking himself, piece by bloody piece.

***

And then, one night, exactly a month since he had walked away from Baker Street, it went too far.

It started the same as always. A handful of men, high on something sharp and ugly, all dead-eyed and twitchy, spoiling for a fight. He hadn’t provoked them, not really. Just looked at them too long. 

They came at him fast. Too fast. He got one down quickly, but the others were on him before he could shift properly, and suddenly, it wasn’t a fair fight anymore.

An unexpected noise. A distant shout, a bottle smashing in the alley behind them. Two of them hesitated, moved off toward the sound. It gave him a moment, a single breath, and he should have used it to run.

But John didn’t run.

The other three were still on him, and even with the odds slightly better, he was losing. A fist slammed into his ribs, hard and deep, like it was trying to carve him open. Before he could recover, another blow sent him staggering. He barely got his hands up before an elbow cracked against his jaw, lights bursting behind his eyes. He went down hard, the pavement rushing up to meet him, a dull impact that tasted of copper.

Boots followed. Kicking, stomping, driving into him like they were trying to grind him into the concrete. He curled in on himself, arms up, but there were too many of them, too many angles. Pain bloomed sharp and hot, stealing thought, stealing breath, until all that remained was the raw sensation of being hit, over and over, until his body felt like it belonged to someone else.

Somewhere in the haze, the rational part of him whispered that he should fight, should try to move, should care. But another part, deeper, quieter, answered back: Why?

Why get up? Why keep going? What was left but this?

Maybe the world would just let him stay down. Maybe the cold, unfeeling pavement beneath him could swallow him whole, just like the river had swallowed Sherlock. And for a moment - a single, dark, fleeting moment - 

He hoped -

But then - 

Shouts. The sudden wail of sirens. The crackle of a police radio.

The men scattered. John stayed on the ground, breath shuddering, saliva pooling warm beneath his cheek. The pavement was something to sink into. He could stay here. He could let it all fade.

A shadow. Tall, familiar, blocking out the harsh glow of streetlights above him.

A voice.

"Jesus Christ, John."

Greg.

John blinked, the fog in his mind receding just enough to let the rest of the world rush in - too bright, too sharp, too much. A shoe scuffed against the pavement beside him, and then Greg was crouching, face tight with something unreadable. John wasn’t sure he wanted to know what was in his eyes.

"Come on," Greg muttered, reaching for him. John stiffened out of instinct, but his body was wrecked, slow, and he couldn’t pull away before Greg’s hands gripped under his arms, hauling him upright, first to sit, then to stand. His legs wavered beneath him, the ground pitching, blood rushing in his ears. Greg swore under his breath and held on tighter. John let his head tip forward, breathing through the pain, mute. 

"Get in the car."

John let out a breath, unsteady. He should argue, should say something sharp to deflect, but he didn’t have it in him. Not tonight.

He let Greg guide him past the uniformed officers, their steps uneven. The car door was opened for him. He slid inside without a word, letting his head fall back against the seat, eyes drifting shut against the distant, tinny ringing in his skull.

Chapter Text

Sherlock was watching John fight, but something was wrong. The alley blurred at the edges, slick with shadow and sheen, like the world had been submerged. John moved like something out of a fevered memory - precise, brutal, beautiful. Each swing of his arm, each violent connection of fist to flesh, struck Sherlock like a jolt beneath his skin. The thud of boots on pavement, the ripple of muscle coiled through tension - it mesmerized him. Hypnotized him.

He couldn’t look away, fear pulsing alongside something darker, hotter, primal. The air vibrated with the crackle of adrenaline and reality rippled. The curve of John's neck, the sweat at his temple, the bruised heat in every motion - it burned in Sherlock’s chest like hunger.

He wanted to run. He wanted to step forward. He wanted it to stop, and he wanted it to never end.

Reality lurched.

John's fists didn’t stop, but the scene shifted like heat haze. The man against the wall blurred, smeared into nothing, then began to take shape again. Sherlock's perspective pulled closer, the distance collapsing until the moment broke with a jolt of recognition.

It was him.

He was no longer watching. He was under John’s hands.

He was the one John shoved back against the bricks, his coat twisted in fists gone white with tension. Sherlock could feel the cold wall at his back, the press of John’s body against his, see the depths of the river swirling in his irises. 

John’s hand closed around his throat, choking him, but only just, the pressure expertly calibrated to walk the tightrope between panic and euphoria. Sherlock’s chest stuttered, lungs straining. His hands, frozen at his sides, wanted to reach, to pull John closer, to surrender entirely, but he was not allowed to touch.

Then John kissed him.

Hard. Possessive. His mouth crashed into Sherlock’s like a punishment, a claim, a demand. Sherlock made a noise - something ragged, somewhere between shock and need - and the hand at his throat tightened. His knees nearly buckled.

John’s thigh pressed between his legs, shifting in a dangerous rhythm, each rock of it dragging Sherlock's throat in his grip, shifting him so one moment he could take a greedy sip of air from John’s lips, then be denied. John watched him struggle, even as he continued his kiss. His breath was harsh in Sherlock’s mouth, vibrating with fury and something deeper, darker. Sherlock could feel it - feel the tremor in his own limbs, the awful, glorious thrill of being wanted like this, of being taken.

As he writhed in place, he was sure John was going to kill him.

And he wanted him to.

John was looking at him like he was the only thing left in the world worth breaking.

From the cabbie’s blood on the floor and the echo of brilliant still ringing in his ears, from the first time John had chosen him - killed for him - Sherlock had been his.

He could feel it now, body failing under John's hands, dream and memory twisting together in the dark. And just when the black started to pull him blissfully under - 

Knocking.

And John was gone.

No violence. Not with a curse or a shove. Just gone.

The world of the dream paused on a knife’s edge, suspended in that unnatural hush where sensation outlasts time. Everything else fell away. There was only the imprint of John’s hand on his throat, the phantom weight of his body, the taste of the kiss still echoing in Sherlock’s mouth. 

It was always going to be this. Not fire, not fury - absence. Not the intimacy of being destroyed, but the brutality of being discarded.

John, the real John, the one who would never touch him, had only touched him when he thought Sherlock was dead and incapable of feeling it, had got a girlfriend while Sherlock was away, had shrugged his absence off, and continued on with his life, confirming what Sherlock knew. 

John may have written about him once in a previous life, but Sherlock would only ever be a footnote in John’s story. 

Recently, he’d imagined death at John’s hands would be beautiful in its finality. This quiet retreat, this vanishing - was worse. 

Because if John had killed him, at least it would have meant he wanted something from him - Sherlock’s pain, his surrender, his life. Something. 

Anything.

Then he woke, gasping, choking on his own breath. More coughs tore through him, shaking him, his throat raw and rasping. He clutched the sheets, heart pounding in his ears, breath catching as his fevered mind scrambled for reality. The room spun. The dream clung to him, thick and unshakeable. He could still feel the heat of it, the confusion of it, the hunger low in his stomach, slow and dark and coiling, more dangerous than shame, more alive than fear. 

It throbbed like a secret waiting to be claimed.

Then - three more sharp knocks. 

Someone was at the door.

He dragged himself upright, still coughing, dragging a sleeve across his mouth. He was still fully dressed. Shoes on. Coat bunched beneath him. He didn’t remember getting into bed. Didn’t remember lying down at all. The knocks came again, louder this time, more insistent, a palm flat on the wood.

He stumbled through the flat, breath hitching, vision blurred, feverish. His legs felt wrong, too long, too heavy. 

He could still feel John’s hand at his throat.

He opened the door.

Lestrade stood on the threshold, coat damp from the mist, his expression caught somewhere between frustration, concern, and - Sherlock's heart stumbled - intent.

"Christ, Sherlock. I’ve been trying to reach you for three days."

For one awful, paralyzing second, Sherlock was certain Lestrade knew about the alley.

What if the man had died after all? What if the woman had gone to the police? What if someone had found him, reported it, filed it, tracked it, escalated it?

Adrenaline surged like poison. Sherlock’s vision narrowed. He was scanning Lestrade’s coat, his posture, his hands. Cuffs in his coat pocket? Warrant? Backup just out of view? His thoughts fractured, stuttering over half-formed deductions, wild and useless. The blood roared in his ears. Lestrade didn’t know John had moved out.

He couldn’t hear Lestrade’s words. Just saw the mouth moving, too slow, too calm. Sherlock couldn’t make sense of the sound.

What if Lestrade was here for John?

His pulse spiked. His eyes flicked to the stairwell. They were at the top. It would be easy. One step, one shove. Gravity would take care of the rest.

If they were after John, Sherlock would end them.

Starting with Lestrade.

The thought was so loud it drowned out everything else.

Lestrade was taking in the sight of him - sweat-soaked, skin pale and blotched with fever - and sighed. "You look like hell. Where’s your phone?"

Sherlock couldn’t remember, couldn’t parse why it would matter. It could have been anywhere - in the kitchen drawer, under a stack of unread mail, maybe buried in the sofa cushions. He hadn’t needed it. 

John didn’t text.

He didn’t answer, thoughts scrambling, thinking of five half-formed ways of finding out if Lestrade was there for John, leaned against the doorframe - then doubled over, a violent cough ripping out of him like it wanted to tear something loose.

It startled him. The force, the sound, the taste. For a beat, he couldn’t breathe. And in that beat, something broke through - the cold recognition that he wasn’t in control anymore. That something had cracked beneath the surface.

He was unravelling.

He was not just fevered. Not just exhausted. Not just overwhelmed.

Coming apart.

The panic surged wild through his veins, tangled with the coughs still wracking his lungs. He clawed at the doorframe for balance, lips parted in a breath that didn’t come, a gasp that turned to choking, the static rising in his ears.

John, he thought, almost incoherently. John, what should I do?

But John wasn’t there.

Every fairy tale needs a good old-fashioned villain.

"Whoa, easy there!" Lestrade said, moving towards him, but Sherlock put out his hand, wrestled his frantic breathing down to a more reasonable tempo. Needed him to stay back, to stay safe, before Sherlock -

"What... What are you doing here?" he tried. Lestrade was still too close, eyebrows raised.

"Didn't you hear me? There’s a case," Lestrade said slowly. "A bad one. Thought it might get your attention. Something about a fire - three of them now. I brought you photos -"

Sherlock caught only pieces in his relief. Words scattered across his consciousness like ash. Arson. Repeat offender. Pattern. Possible escalation.

You need me or you're nothing. Because we're just alike, you and I.

It didn’t matter.

Except you're boring.  

He shook his head slowly. "No," he rasped. His voice cracked, dry as dust. "I can’t. I’m not working."

Lestrade stepped forward, brow furrowed. "You’re not working? What’s going on with you? You look like hell. Have you seen a doctor?" Sherlock laughed at that, a dark, rough sound.

"I'm fine," he rasped once calmer, the words barely audible before another wave of coughing overtook him. He bent forward, one hand still braced on the wall, the other pressed to his mouth, muffling the sound. His whole body shook with the force of it. 

Lestrade reached toward him instinctively. "Jesus, you are not fine. You look like you're about to collapse."

Sherlock straightened again with effort, chest still heaving. "I have to go," he said, hoarse and unsteady. "I have somewhere to be."

"Sherlock, just - just wait. Let me call someone. You shouldn’t be on your feet. You need a hospital."

But Sherlock was already moving past him without meeting his eyes. "No hospitals," he muttered. "Just John."

"Sherlock -"

But he was already past him. The door clattered shut behind, cutting off Lestrade’s protest, leaving him in Sherlock’s own flat.

He didn’t look back. He had to get to the hotel. He had to see John. Make sure he was still breathing.

You're on the side of the angels.

It had become routine. Sherlock tracked John to the clinic in the mornings, always far enough behind that he couldn’t be seen, but close enough to confirm the path. He waited across the street, watching as John emerged for lunch, sometimes alone, sometimes exchanging a few words with a nurse or a passing colleague.

Once, Sherlock saw him speak to a waiter outside a café, and something white-hot and animal tore through him. The waiter smiled - too long, too easily - and he thought he saw John smile back, polite, familiar. 

Sherlock’s fists had clenched in his coat pockets so tightly his nails split skin.

He’d imagined crossing the street, knocking the tray from the man’s hand, grabbing John by the collar and dragging him away. He imagined blood. The burn behind his eyes, the flush creeping up his neck, the furious itch to be seen, to be chosen, to be known again…

John hadn’t even glanced his way.

John was oxygen. And Sherlock had never stopped drowning.

After work, he followed him home. John always took the same route. Sherlock knew it by heart now. He watched until John went into the hotel, waited until he was probably sleeping.

But sometimes, John came back out.

Then Sherlock saw the fights.

He thought the first one was an isolated altercation, some unfortunate misstep. But it wasn’t. It was deliberate. John was looking for them.

He watched as John sought out men who radiated aggression, who lingered in alleyways or outside pubs with their fists already half-clenched. He watched John provoke them, engage them, invite the violence like it was something he needed. And when they struck, Sherlock felt every blow as if it landed on his own body. Every sharp impact, every shove against a wall, every time John’s shoulder hit the pavement - it rippled through Sherlock like a personal reckoning. His jaw clenched until it ached. His chest tightened with every collision, heart hammering like it was trying to tear free. His hands balled inside his coat, fists trembling with tension so sharp it felt like his bones might splinter under it.

He didn’t just want to stop it. He wanted to be in it. To bleed with him. To be touched, even if it was in violence. He didn’t know when the pain started to feel like closeness. He only knew that when John was tearing someone apart, he couldn’t look away - because a part of him, buried deep and howling, wanted to be torn apart with him. Or instead of him. Or by him.

It was unspeakable. And it was already too late.

He timed his coughing to the sound of fists connecting with flesh, muffling the deep, hacking noise into the fabric of his sleeve, terrified that John might hear him, might see him standing there, watching, unable - not allowed - to interfere.

The injuries piled up. Sherlock cataloged them against his will. A slow, aching stiffness in John’s right arm. A limp favoring his left leg. The way he twisted his torso slightly when he sat, protecting ribs that had likely taken more than one solid hit.

Sherlock couldn’t tell if all this was making John feel better or worse. He didn’t know if the pain was helping John survive or if it was dragging him deeper. He didn’t know why John had left, if this was what he needed. If this was what he wanted.

Because if it was - Sherlock would have given it to him.

He would have run with him. All across London. Into every alley, every backstreet. Would have brawled beside him, shoulder to shoulder, blood in their mouths and laughter in their lungs. Would have cleared the floor of their flat to give him space. Would have held his ice packs and stitched his skin and kissed the bruises if he’d let him.

He would have let John tear him apart instead.

Would have let him rip the skin off his bones, slow and merciless. Would have let him break his ribs open, reach inside, and drag out everything soft and warm until there was nothing left but nerves and need. Would have let him chew through every boundary, every breath, just to feel wanted, claimed. Would have let him consume him, every inch, every failing, until there was no atom of Sherlock left that hadn’t belonged to John first. 

He would have let John into his body, until the edges separating them disappeared entirely - until there was no boundary, no thought, no line between agony and ecstasy. Would have let him work him open, piece by piece, until nothing remained but the ache of John’s name seared into him. 

He would have begged for it, if he thought John would listen. Would have moaned through the ruin of it, if it meant John would stay.

Didn’t John know? Hadn’t he always known that Sherlock was his? 

Utterly. Obscenely. Hopelessly. 

He would have let John destroy him down to ash, if it meant being his to the last breath.

Instead, Sherlock stood apart, night after night, watching him vanish behind a hotel door, or take from others what Sherlock wanted to give. Wanting to scream. Wanting to burn the world. Wishing he had never met him at all.

And then, one night, he couldn’t stand apart anymore.

The fight had started the same as the others - John, standing just a bit too close, his stare lingering just a second too long on the wrong kind of men. A taunt, an insult, an invitation disguised as an offense. But this time, John had chosen poorly.

Too many. Too volatile. Too desperate.

The first blow took him hard in the ribs. He staggered, gasping, but righted himself, shifting into a stance that Sherlock knew by heart. His movements were slower tonight. He was already worn down. Already bleeding somewhere. Already failing.

Sherlock’s breath came too fast. His chest ached with more than just the illness clinging to his lungs. 

This isn’t your fight. He doesn’t want you. He doesn’t need you.

But then John went down.

Sherlock’s entire body lurched forward. John was getting too hurt. His body was folding in on itself, even as he dragged himself back up. He was slowing down.

Sherlock reached for his phone with numb fingers. Hesitated.

Then he began typing, hands shaking too hard to hit the keys properly.

Lestrade. please. He's in trouble

Too many of them he not going to make it

Now upper st near the old pub please

Sherlock paused. Inhaled shakily.

Please

please help him

He finally stopped texting, though his fingers trembled and shook with the effort.

Then he moved.

He darted sideways, behind a skip, coughing so hard he nearly fell. His fingers scraped the pavement, found a broken bottle, and with a trembling hand, he hurled it with all the force he had left. It shattered against the bricks with a sharp, cracking explosion.

"Oi!" he barked, voice rasping and raw. "You lot miss your mothers that badly?"

Two of them turned.

He didn’t have time to be afraid, stumbling back into the shadows. The first swing he dodged more by instinct than speed - he was already coughing again, ribs protesting, lungs like fire. But he hit back. Sloppy, too wide, but enough to surprise. He got one in the throat. The other tackled him to the ground.

He fought like a drowning man - flailing, coughing, burning up. A boot caught his shoulder, and he rolled, slammed his elbow into someone’s knee, scrambled upright. He was shaking, fevered, half-delirious, but he didn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop until they ran.

Eventually, they did - one of them spitting blood. 

He forced himself to move, dragging one foot in front of the other until he was back at the mouth of the alley. He peeked around the edge - just enough to see John down on the ground again, barely defending himself. Another blow landed, and Sherlock flinched.

He glanced back at the broken bottle still glinting in the gutter, at the dark alley behind him, and his whole body tensed. 

He could do it again.

He was about to move. His body screamed in protest - every breath scorched his throat, every muscle trembled under the fever’s grip - but none of it mattered. He’d already decided. One more shout, one more crash of glass, one more act of reckless noise. Just enough to drag the others off John. Just enough to keep him alive.

He wouldn’t survive it. He knew that. Another blow to the ribs, another boot to the head, and that would be it. But if it gave John the chance to crawl away, to stand again, it would be enough. That moment - of being close, of touching pain with pain - it might even feel like -

He stepped forward.

Then - shouts. Fast, sharp. A voice of authority.

Lestrade.

Sherlock sagged against the wall, knees buckling slightly with the force of his relief. He watched as Greg waded into the chaos, shouting commands, pushing through the last of the fight with his badge and presence alone. Officers spilled in after him, floodlight torches cutting through the dark.

Sherlock watched him rescue John, and died once more.

He turned before he could see John's face. He limped away, just far enough down the alley that he knew they wouldn’t find him, his steps staggered, barely coordinated. Then his knees gave out. He collapsed sideways into grime and runoff, the muck seeping into the fabric of his coat, soaking cold into his skin.

Curled on his side, coughing so hard his vision blurred, Sherlock pressed his face to the filth and let it burn through him. The pain. The exhaustion. The ache that wasn’t in his ribs or his throat but somewhere far deeper.

He wanted John. Wanted him so badly it eclipsed thought. Breath. Sanity.

He couldn’t understand. Couldn’t make sense of it. Why would John choose this - the fists, the alleys, the strangers - when Sherlock was right there? When he’d always been there. When he’d jumped from a building for him, been tortured for him, given up his name, his work, his home. When he’d dived into that river and never resurfaced. When he had become nothing but devotion wrapped in scarred skin, and still it hadn’t been enough.

He had peeled back everything that made him Sherlock Holmes and handed it over with shaking fingers, and John had still walked away.

Now, here in the filth, in the wet and stink and dark, he lay trembling, choking on the stench of his own failure. Trying to understand. Trying to solve it still, to piece together the logic of why love - if this was love - wasn’t enough. Why giving John his body, his brilliance, his future, his name, his soul, still hadn’t earned him the right to be by his side.

The ache inside him curled inward, sharp and wild and endless. He wanted John like a freezing man wanted flame - knowing it would sear the flesh from his bones and crawling toward it anyway, arms open, mouth wide, whispering - 

Please.

He would have let John unmake him. Cell by cell. Would have let him hollow out his chest and live there. Would have begged him to.

But John had chosen strangers in the dark.

He pressed his face into the grime and let it all break. Let the sob claw its way out. Let the scream stay lodged in his throat. 

Let the madness bloom behind his eyes.

Falling's just like flying except there's a more permanent destination.

Chapter Text

The chair was metal. Cold. John sat on it without flinching, arms crossed, jaw clenched so tightly his molars ached. His body ached too, but it was distant, disconnected. Someone had handed him a towel full of ice as he’d refused a trip to the ER. Greg was somewhere nearby. Or maybe not. Everyone felt far away now. Even Greg - especially Greg. A familiar face worn thin with upset, but somehow it all felt foreign. Like talking to a stranger through a fogged pane of glass.

The overhead light buzzed like a wasp, flickering faintly. Standard interview room. Standard walls. Standard rage clawing just beneath his skin.

Greg Lestrade paced the room like a man ready to throw something. Then he stopped, planted both hands on the back of the opposite chair, and glared at John.

"What the fuck were you doing, John?" he snapped. "Four men. At once. In an alley. Do you have a death wish, or are you just trying to get locked up for fun?"

John didn’t flinch. "They came at me. I handled it."

Greg threw his hands up. "That's it? That’s your whole defense? 'They came at me'? Jesus, John, you were outnumbered and bleeding."

"I've had worse."

"Yeah? When? Afghanistan? Is that what this is, some kind of throwback tour of duty? Because it sure as hell looked like you were trying to get yourself killed."

"If I’m not being charged, I’m leaving."

Greg pulled out the chair and dropped into it. "Stop it. Stop doing this bloody stoic act. You think I can’t tell the difference between self-defense and self-destruction?"

John shrugged. "Doesn’t matter."

"It does matter!" Greg barked, slamming his hand down on the table. "You could have gotten away. Did you want to get your face smashed in?"

John stayed silent, jaw locked.

"You weren’t even moving when that guy had you on the ground," Greg continued. "Didn’t look scared. You looked... what? Satisfied? Like it was exactly what you were there for."

"I didn’t go there for anything."

Greg raised an eyebrow. "No? Those bruises on your arms - they’re older than tonight. I’m not Sherlock, but even I can put two and two together. Want to tell me how many back-alley brawls you’ve been in lately?"

John laughed, feeling somehow drunk, emotions out of control. 

Greg’s eyes narrowed. "You think this is funny? Because I don’t. I don’t think you turning yourself into a fucking punching bag is funny."

"Don’t you?" John said, that odd feeling of hysteria rising. "Because I think it’s hilarious that I can chase serial killers through half of London, and this is what gets you worked up."

Greg leaned in, face hard. "This is what gets me worked up because you’re my friend. You think you’re hiding it well? You look like shit. You were laying there like you wanted to die."

"Well, maybe I fucking do!"

Silence crashed into the room.

John’s chest heaved. His hands were balled into fists on the table. His pulse stuttered. Greg’s eyes were wide.

"John," Greg said finally, more softly. "What the hell happened to you?"

John’s voice was iron. "Sherlock."

Greg froze.

John found himself speaking without conscious thought. "He left. He didn’t even say goodbye. He faked his death and let me drown in it. Came back like a goddamn magician, expecting applause. Then what? Pissed off again when it suited him. Like I’m just... furniture. Something to walk past."

Greg stayed quiet.

"He chucked himself into a river," John went on, voice rising, "and somehow I’m supposed to be fine with that. Fine with the fact that he keeps throwing himself into danger like it means nothing. Like dying is just another performance piece."

John heard himself speaking and hated it. Knew how he sounded - unhinged, obsessive. Like every brick of his identity had been laid around one man who never asked for it. But he couldn’t stop. Couldn’t lie, not now. Everything hurt. His hands, his ribs, his throat - and whatever was left of his heart, burning from the inside out.

His voice broke, then hardened again. "And what does that make me? If I’m nothing to a genius - if even he couldn’t find use for me, couldn’t choose me - then it doesn’t take a genius to work out I’m nothing to anyone."

Greg pulled out his phone, tapped, and shoved it across the table.

John frowned.

"Look at it," Greg said.

John’s eyes dropped. The screen showed a string of messages.

Lestrade. please. He's in trouble. 

Too many of them he not going to make it 

Now upper st near the old pub

Please

please help him

His eyes traced the words slowly, confusion flickering. He glanced at the top of the screen, then his vision almost whitened out. 

Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock. Sherlock had written those texts. Which meant - he had been there. In the alley. Somewhere just out of sight, watching, hidden in the dark.

John’s stomach turned. Sherlock had seen it. The blood, the bruises, the fists. Had seen him fall.

Greg didn’t speak right away. Just stared at John like he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.

When he finally spoke, his voice was low, stunned. "You are both fucking mental."

John didn’t respond.

Greg leaned forward, voice rising now. "You think he doesn’t care? Have you read those messages? Please, John. How many times do you think Sherlock Holmes has said the word please in his entire life?"

John’s throat tightened.

"He was scared out of his mind,” Greg went on. “Because he thought you were going to die and he didn’t know how to stop it."

John did move then. He shoved the phone away like it burned. "Bullshit. He doesn’t get to do that. He doesn’t get to vanish, then sneak around behind my back like he suddenly cares."

Greg’s hands slammed down on the table again, shaking the metal. He shot to his feet, face red, voice booming. "He’s always cared, John! Are you seriously this blind? You both are!"

"Fuck you, Greg," John snarled also standing, feeling the thrill of a fight about to start. "Don’t stand there pretending you know what it’s like."

"I do know!" Greg shouted back. "I watched you both destroy yourselves for years! Dance around each other like it was a game while the rest of us waited for one of you to die or finally say something real. And now here you are, covered in bruises, screaming about how he never cared, when I’ve got his fucking please on my phone like a goddamn prayer."

John was breathing hard, fists shaking. Greg was shaking too, and John shifted his weight, ready for the attack.

“And now?” Greg went on, jabbing a finger towards him. “Now, it’s spilled out onto the streets. God knows, the two of you might want to destroy each other, but none of this goddamn melodrama justifies you being out in my city beating the shit out of people!”

“Oh please!” John said, pacing a little to the left, pleased that Greg tracked his movements. “I haven’t been attacking innocent boy-scouts, Greg.”

“Maybe not,” Greg said, voice colder. “But whatever is going on with you and Sherlock doesn’t give you the right to break the law.” 

“You never cared when it was him doing it!”

“Maybe because he’s a darn sight smarter than you, and never got caught!”

John growled out an inarticulate sound of frustration, fists clenching. "You’re still defending him!” He snapped. “He thinks he's the sun - that everything - me, you, the whole fucking world - just spins around him while he burns. He disappears, reappears, sets things on fire, and gets away with it."

Greg jabbed the phone again. "You're wrong. He doesn’t think he’s the centre of anything. He thinks the work is. The cases."

John opened his mouth, but Greg cut him off. "You know what he said to me once? He was high off his face, barely able to talk, and he said the world was just darkness."

John wondered how fast he could clear the table if he had to. Wondered if he could use the chair as a weapon.

Greg’s voice dropped, low and savage. "The work used to be the only thing that gave him any light. That’s what he told me - solving them - that was the only light in the dark. Cases, puzzles - that was it. That’s all he had."

John faltered. He had a sudden sensation of vertigo.

Because he remembered.

…conductor of light…

Greg was still talking, but it was like his voice was muffled. Sherlock’s words echoed through John’s head - blurted out at a moment of high emotion, and never referred to again. 

John flinched like he’d been slapped.

"No," he whispered. Then louder, angrier: "No. That doesn’t fix it. He doesn’t get to say… say that, and walk away like he didn’t leave a crater behind. You know what it felt like? Like I didn’t exist ."

"You left!” Greg said, incredulous. “You didn’t even go to the hospital! You went home!”

John’s felt his face crumple for a second before he caught himself. "I had to. I couldn’t keep doing it. Watching him kill himself slowly. Watching him not care if he lived or died. I was drowning."

Greg sighed then, and rubbed his hands over his face, stepping back. For a moment, John felt angry - angry that a potential opponent was backing down - but whatever scrap of sanity he still had reminded him that this man was his friend. His friend, trying to help him, though John must have caused him a world of trouble. 

What had he been doing?

Neither spoke for several minutes. John heard his own breath rasping, too fast, and fought to bring it back under control. He could feel Greg watching him, but the DI didn’t press - just gave him space to calm down. 

“I… I wasn’t trying to beat the shit out of people,” John tried once he felt his heart rate somewhere approaching normal. “I wasn’t. I just… I don’t even know how to explain. I’m sorry.”

Greg gave him a very tired look. “You should be. And you better pray that there isn’t any forensic evidence linking you to any reported crimes. For tonight, thankfully, nobody is pressing charges. Unless you want to?” 

John shook his head, the drop in adrenaline leaving him very tired as well. He sat back down like his knees gave out. He stared at the table. The phone. The word please.

…conductor of light…

John swallowed hard. His voice was barely audible. "He needs to take better care of himself."

“You’re one to talk. And Sherlock’s never been any good at that. Still isn’t.”

John looked up sharply. "What do you mean?"

Greg hesitated, then sat back down across from him. "I went to see him. He hadn’t answered his phone for days, I was worried."

Something cold crept into John’s spine.

Greg went on, voice lower. "He looked like hell. Thin. Grey. I don’t think he’s changed clothes in days. He was coughing so hard he could barely speak. Couldn’t focus on a sentence. I brought him a case - something big, arson, likely to escalate - and he just said no. Wouldn’t even look at the files."

John’s mouth opened, but nothing came out.

Greg’s voice was steady now, but edged with frustration. "You know he wouldn’t say no to a good case. Not unless he’s nearly dead. And even then he usually drags himself to the scene. This wasn’t pride. It was like he couldn’t see it. Like it didn’t matter anymore. And he wouldn’t go to hospital - remind you of anyone?"

John’s hands curled tighter around the edge of the table as if to hold himself in place.

He didn’t want this. Didn’t want to care. Didn’t want to feel the lurch of panic starting up again in his ribs.

But it was too late.

"So yeah," Greg said quietly. "I think… I think you wrapped up all this mess and turned it all outwards, but Sherlock? Well, you know.”

And suddenly, John did know. 

With Sherlock, it always turns inwards.

***

John barely remembered leaving the Yard, barely registered the cold night air biting against his skin as he made his way back to the hotel. He was drifting again, thoughts clawing through the storm Greg had unleashed. Every word was unwanted but undeniable.

The hotel room was dim and silent when he stepped inside, the door clicking shut behind him. It felt like stepping into a vacuum. No sound, no warmth. Just hollow quiet. He sat heavily on the edge of the bed, hands slack against his knees, staring at nothing.

Sherlock had always spoken of his intellect with the kind of certainty most people reserved for faith. His mind, his deductions, his work - those things had value. Measurable, transactional. Safe.

But John - John had heard him play.

He had heard Sherlock pour heartache and wonder into strings, had seen him draw from silence the kind of beauty that could stop time. He had laughed - really laughed - at Sherlock's dry jabs, the deadpan absurdity only he could conjure. He had watched him walk into rooms like a weapon and still pause to feed stray cats, to protect the woman who made his tea.

But… but maybe for all his observing, Sherlock had never seen it.

Never valued the parts of himself that weren’t sharpened to a point. Never saw the miracle of his own being, only the machinery of his brain.

Not his music. Not his humor. Not his beauty.

Because God, he was beautiful. Unfairly so. The kind of beauty that caught in the throat and stayed there. It was in the long stretch of his limbs, the precision of his movements. In the shape of his mouth when he was lost in thought, the arch of his back when he stretched. In the way his collarbone shifted beneath pale skin, and in eyes that belied description. John had memorized those things without trying.

It had always struck John as unbearably sad - how Sherlock never connected to the body he lived in. How he treated it like a nuisance, something to be tolerated or punished. If he had, John thought - if he'd understood - it might have been different. If he'd let someone in.

John had wanted to be that person. Fiercely. He had longed to touch, to show. To show Sherlock that his body wasn’t just a vessel for brilliance. That it wasn’t a burden. That it could be something else. Something more. John could have shown him, skin to skin, that there was more to life than utility. More than survival. That he mattered - all of him.

But none of it counted to Sherlock.

Only the mind. The machine.

And if the body had to be broken to make it run - if it had to be starved, bruised, suffocated, thrown off buildings or drowned in a fucking river - then that was the cost of doing business.

John dragged a hand over his face, chest burning. And then the thought came - clear, brutal, uninvited.

I’ve done the same.

He had. The moment he believed Sherlock didn’t care - really, truly didn’t - he’d stopped caring too. He’d hurled himself into fights like a man asking for punishment, let his body take beating after beating like it didn’t matter. Like it wasn’t his. 

Like it was just transport.

John stood abruptly. His body protested - every bruise, every scrape shouting their existence - but he didn’t care. He pulled off his stained shirt stumbled into the bathroom and stared into the mirror.

He looked awful. Like a man halfway to ruined. Bruises across his ribs, his jaw, his shoulder. Blood crusted over his knuckles. A face that looked older than it had a month ago.

What had he done to himself? 

What was he doing here, alone in the dark?

Sherlock had always thought that brilliance alone would save him. That as long as he kept solving puzzles, he would matter. But John could understand it now. It wasn’t drive or pride or ambition that pushed Sherlock into recklessness - it was desperation. 

Because Sherlock was afraid of the dark. 

John turned, strode into the bedroom, and went to his suitcase.

He started packing like he was loading a weapon.

***

In the cab, as the engine hummed beneath him and the city flickered past in quiet rhythm, something began to shift. The fog in his head thinned. Each street they passed scraped away another layer of numbness.

By the time they were nearing Baker Street, he was wide awake.

He was going home.

He missed the smell of the old wood. Missed the way Sherlock’s voice filled the flat before his footsteps did. Missed the chaos of it all - the sound of the bow dragging across violin strings at two in the morning, the clatter of teacups on mismatched saucers, the rustle of paper beneath frantic notes.

And the look. The look on Sherlock’s face when John entered the room.

That half-second of stillness. Of impossible softness. Of surprise, like he hadn’t really believed John would come back until he did.

He pictured it now. Imagined Sherlock looking up from some mess on the floor, eyes widening, voice catching on his name.

John.

He wasn’t sorry he left. He couldn’t be. Sherlock had been on a path to destroying himself and taking John with him. But now - now he had to find some way to make Sherlock see that his life was worth more than gambling it away. That their lives, tangled and messy as they were, were worth something. 

That they were worth something.

He couldn’t plan it. There was no script for this. He’d open his mouth and let it come. He’d say what he could and hope it landed. Sherlock had always been three steps ahead - surely, surely he’d already seen this moment coming too.

And if Greg was right - and John knew he was - then Sherlock would be thrilled. Not just relieved. Thrilled.

John felt his pulse quicken. His hands curled tighter in his lap.

He wished the car would move faster.

***

When the cab pulled up, he looked at the flat. His heart kicked hard in his chest. The windows were dark. No silhouette pacing behind the curtains. No glow of lamplight against stacks of papers.

The key in his pocket still fit the lock. He stepped inside, went upstairs, flicked on the light.

Silence greeted him. The air was stale. Dust shimmered faintly where the hallway light caught it. He dropped his case by the door and closed it, moved forward slowly, heart thudding louder with every step.

No empty takeaway cartons. No half-drunk mugs of tea. The kitchen counters were bare. He opened the fridge. Nothing. Opened the cupboards. Empty.

His pulse thrummed in his temples.

He moved into the sitting room. A thin film of dust over the table. The violin case closed. Blankets twisted on the floor. No fresh notes on the walls. 

The flat felt… dead. 

John’s pulse jumped again, and his breath hitched. He turned for Sherlock’s bedroom like he was running out of time.

The door was ajar. The room was dark. The bed was a disaster - sheets tangled and filthy, stained with dirt and sweat. The smell was strong. Mildew. Something acrid beneath it. A body that had stopped caring.

But the bed was empty.

"Sherlock?"

No answer. Just the hum of silence. The kind that rang.

He looked like hell. Thin. Grey. I don’t think he’s changed clothes in days. He was coughing so hard he could barely speak. Couldn’t focus on a sentence. 

John’s breathing went ragged. Too fast. Too shallow. He stumbled back out, then tore up the stairs to his bedroom. Empty. Back down, checked the bathroom. Empty. His heart slammed in his chest, wild and useless.

Where? Where would he go? Where was he?

He turned a full circle in the middle of the living room, eyes darting across walls, windows, doorframes, shadows. "Sherlock - " louder now, not a question but a plea. Nothing.

His throat closed. He could feel it, a tightening spiral just beneath his ribs. Each breath shorter. His hands found his knees. He bent forward, eyes squeezed shut, trying to drag air into lungs that wouldn’t listen.

Where would he go?

Where would he go?

He could be anywhere. Nowhere. Gone.

John's fingers dug into his scalp. He couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. He felt the edge of the spiral - saw himself tipping in.

And then, like a flare in the dark - 

Sherlock would go anywhere John was.

…even then he usually drags himself to the scene…

John’s breath caught like a sob. His heart thundered in his ears.

Then he turned, slammed the door open, and ran.

He knew where to look now.

Chapter Text

The world fractured.

Darkness surged, swallowing Sherlock whole. Walls shifted. The air turned thick, cloying, pressing in on him. He tried to move, but his limbs were heavy, sluggish, unresponsive. A hand fisted in his collar, yanking him upward - no, downward - no, sideways. The world tilted. Shadows lengthened. Voices twisted around him in cruel, echoing murmurs.

He knew this place. Cold, hard cement against his cheek. The dull pulse of a bruised rib. The iron tang of blood in his mouth. Serbia. He was back in Serbia.

He braced for the next strike, for the voice that always came before it. But when he tried to call out - tried to ground himself in now, in London, in John - something in him would not let him. His voice locked in his throat, an invisible hand sealing it shut.

He had lost the right. He was not allowed to call for John. Not anymore. His throat closed. Breath sealed inside his lungs like a vice. 

A laugh, sharp and bright as glass, cut through the dark.

"Really, Sherlock," came the voice, rich with amusement. "This is how you end? Wheezing in your own filth like a broken marionette."

Moriarty.

Sherlock tried to sit up, but his body didn’t respond. He was on the floor - no, in water - no, in the alley. Rain. Pavement. A scuffle. A coat falling over him. The slam of a door. Hands, not cruel but clumsy. Panic. A voice - shouting? Moriarty? No…

Moriarty crouched beside him, tilting his head like a curious bird. "You should’ve stayed dead. It was the only thing you ever did right."

Engine sounds. Shouting. 

“You keep crawling back,” Moriarty sang on. “But nobody wants you. Not really. They only need the work. The mind. Not you.”

Pain surged - cold and sudden, a boot slamming into his ribs. He gasped, but no air came. Then came the flood. Water pouring over his face, down his throat. Waterboarded. The river again. The cell. The silence. The struggle.

He tried to scream.

But he had lost the right to scream for John.

Not allowed. Not anymore.

Time slipped. Broke open. Reformed. Something repeated. Someone close. The reek of rubbish. A coat falling over him, again and again. The slam of a door. The slam of a door. The slam - Heat. Hands, patting, panicking. That voice - praying? 

And then - again - darkness.

More flickers. Cold compresses. The scent of antiseptic. Gravity misbehaving. Liquid in his veins. A voice murmuring something low. The faint click of a clock. Then night again.

Then light.

Then night.

He had no idea how long he drifted. Time felt shattered, nonlinear. The world kept folding in and out of itself.

A bed. His bed?

His bed.

He was clean. He was in pyjamas. The room smelled of antiseptic and linen. An IV was threaded into his arm, taped down.

His mind reeled. He tried to sit up and immediately collapsed back into the pillows with a breathless, rasping cough. His ribs flared in protest. The IV tugged against his skin.

He stared at the ceiling, heart pounding, trying to make the shapes of the room hold. The bed. His bed. But the sheets weren’t stained. There were no dirty clothes clinging to him. His shoes were gone. The musty scent had been replaced with lavender soap. He was warm. Too warm. And he didn’t remember how he got here.

He’d been in the alley. He remembered that now. The cold. The stink. The pavement slick beneath him, his breath rattling in his lungs as the night closed in. And now - 

Now he was here.

He couldn’t reconcile it. Couldn’t find the seam where dream ended and reality began.

Had he died?

It made more sense than the alternative. This antiseptic peace. The warmth. The absurd, impossible comfort. Pyjamas. Clean sheets. An IV in his arm. No filth. No pains in his torso and head sharp enough to scream over. It felt fabricated, like a film set. 

He wondered if this was heaven.

Then John walked in.

And Sherlock knew - knew - this couldn’t be heaven.

No. This was worse. This was punishment. A hallucination given shape and breath. A cruelty wrapped in comfort. The clarity hit like a needle to the chest.

Hell wasn’t fire. It was this: the thing he had always wanted, finally close enough to touch, but threaded through with guilt, with shame, with all the things he had done and all the things he hadn’t. The scent of soap instead of blood. John's presence instead of Moriarty’s voice. Too kind. Too still. 

Wrong.

He had done this. He had earned this.

Of course, it wasn’t real. Of course, John wasn’t real.

He’d hallucinated Moriarty often. Why not John now? Why not his voice, soft and steady, here to tell him exactly why he deserved to be alone? To replace the jeering with disappointment. The mockery with calm, damning restraint. To explain, gently, that Sherlock Holmes was not just unloved - but unlovable.

That he had broken it. Broken them. Broken everything.

John.

Sitting now at the edge of the bed, watching him.

No.

It couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be him. Because if it was - if it truly was John - then Sherlock had no excuse left. No mask to wear. No story to believe but the truth: that he had driven John away, and now John had returned only to witness the final collapse.

And something in him couldn’t bear that.

If this was a hallucination, let it turn violent. If this was real, let it end.

If John wouldn’t leave, then Sherlock would force him. If John had come back, then he must have come to finish it. To put the final bullet through whatever soul Sherlock had left.

He could give him reason.

Sherlock’s mind flashed with every buried word, every festering thing he had never dared say aloud. He would hurl them now, sharpened to blades. He would gut the moment before it could soften.

He would make John angry. He would make him fight. He would tear into him with words like razors, claw at the bruised wreckage of their past, drag every mistake and betrayal into the light until one of them broke.

And if John killed him in the process - then good.

That wouldn’t just be justice. 

That would be mercy.

He exploded into motion - a snarl wrenched from his throat as he threw off the covers, lunging upright with a burst of strength he didn’t have. His body betrayed him instantly, limbs trembling, barely able to hold his weight. But he didn’t stop.

“Get out!” he rasped, voice ragged and furious. “You’re not real. You’re not real, and I don’t want you!”

Moriarty clucked his tongue from the corner. "That's the spirit," he purred. "Push him. Shove him. Hurt him first, and then he’ll hit back. And if he hits you - well, then you’ll know he cares."

John didn’t move. His face was unreadable, but not cold - just heartbreakingly calm, like someone watching a wild animal in a snare. His brow was drawn tight, his mouth a hard line, and his eyes - God, his eyes - looked tired and bruised, not just with emotion, but from the real, physical damage that still mottled his skin. A healing cut curved just beneath his cheekbone. Purple shadows bloomed along the ridge of his jaw. His lip was split. Sherlock had given him none of it, and yet sitting here now, John looked wrecked.  

Sherlock staggered out of the bed, chest heaving, head spinning. A cough tore through him, doubling him over, and for a moment he truly thought he might choke. His vision blurred, lungs spasming. He grabbed for the curtains, IV stand falling and hitting his feet, instinctively curling in on himself as the fit passed. “You think this makes you kind?” he ground out. “Doctor Watson? You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to see me like this.”

“Hit him,” Moriarty said lightly, examining his fingernails. “Just one punch. He’ll understand. He likes that sort of thing.”

Sherlock forced himself upright, fists trembling, breath shallow. “Is this what you want? Some final act of pity? Are you here to say goodbye? To watch me disappear?”

John stood too, stepped closer. His gait was a little uneven, favouring one side. Sherlock’s eyes caught it - he had seen that limp before, back in a different life. Now here it was again, in the soft hush of a bedroom, John still hurting, still healing. The look on his face didn’t shift - not even when Sherlock’s voice cracked, not even when his fists came up. He looked... devastated. But resolute. There was no anger, no fear. Just an unbearable patience.

“I won’t hurt you anymore,” John said softly, his voice barely above a whisper. “Not ever again. No matter how much you try to hurt me.”

The words landed strangely. Sherlock blinked, thrown off balance. Hurt him? He had hurt John? That didn’t make sense. That wasn’t how it worked. That wasn’t the story he knew. But before he could puzzle through it, the rage surged back, confused and too large for his body.

Moriarty leaned in closer, whispering, "If he doesn’t flinch, he doesn’t care. So, make him flinch. Make him feel it."

“Don’t you dare look at me like that!” Sherlock spat. “Like you still give a damn! You were nothing without me. Nothing! Is that why you’re back, back from your boring little life? Going to write about it on your blog?”

He couldn’t finish. The words collapsed into a cough, but he shoved forward again, swinging a weak, trembling fist at John’s shoulder, IV tubing snagged at his feet.

John didn’t dodge, didn’t block. He simply tilted his body, letting the blow glance harmlessly off his upper arm.

“Pathetic,” Moriarty whispered with glee. “Try again. You’re only one strike away from the truth.”

Sherlock lunged, striking again, again, clumsy and desperate. John shifted with each one, absorbing them - forearms raised just enough to deflect, body angled just enough to receive without resistance. Never striking back. Never even bracing.

It enraged Sherlock. It undid him.

“Fight me!” he shouted, tasting copper. “Do something! Don’t just stand there like - ” He threw another swing, barely more than a shove, and John caught it.

He didn’t let go.

Sherlock twisted, tried to yank free, threw his left hand - but John caught his other wrist just as gently.

“Fight me!” Sherlock growled again, voice cracking. “You hit me once, remember? Remember Belgravia? Do it again! Hurt me! Make it real!”

But John’s eyes didn’t harden. They softened. Still, he didn’t speak. His hands never tightened. He absorbed Sherlock’s fury like he’d known it was coming - like he had prepared for it, accepted it, and forgiven it before it ever began.

“Come on! You went out night after night picking fights with the worst scum in London?” Sherlock’s voice pitched higher, rawer. “If I hadn’t been there - if I hadn’t followed you - you’d be dead! You would’ve died a hundred times over if I hadn’t been there!”

Moriarty lounged against the wall, grinning. “That’s it. Say the right thing. The worst thing. He’ll break. He’ll grab you. He’ll finally see you.”

John didn’t speak. Didn’t flinch. His expression remained steady - eyes locked on Sherlock’s, jaw tense, but his hands gentle. He was absorbing it all. Every word, every blow that didn’t land. Absorbing it the way the beach absorbs the waves.

Sherlock twisted, shoved, thrashed. Another coughing fit seized him, cutting off his shouting mid-word, and he gasped between flails, throat raw, eyes watering. Still, he didn’t stop. “Why are you here? You don’t get to come back. You don’t get to -  You left! ”

The room spun. His legs shook. He collapsed forward, but John slowed his fall.

Sherlock screamed into his chest. “Why won’t you fight me?” he choked. “Why won’t you fight me? ” His voice cracked, shrill and breaking. Wordless. Guttural. He screamed until the sound broke into sobs. “You left me,” he cried. “You left, and I waited, and I waited, and I never stopped - ”

He jerked his arms again, weakly, fists still twitching with confused intent - half trying to hit, half trying to pull John even closer. His breath hitched on another sob, and his forehead knocked clumsily against John's collarbone.

Off to the side, Moriarty made a small, disdainful sound. “Pathetic,” he muttered. “I had such high hopes.” His voice faded away into the dark.

Sherlock kept on, each word more frayed than the last. The coughing returned in sharp bursts, raking through his chest like claws. His body trembled with the effort of speech, of breath, of holding himself upright in John's arms. “I hate you,” he sobbed. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you - ”

But even as he said it, his strength failed. His arms gave out, his hands slackening. His body slumped forward, exhausted, every nerve stripped raw. He didn't even feel John release his wrists - only the shift as one arm came around his back, the other up to cradle the back of his head.

He didn’t fight anymore.

He curled into John’s chest, breath hiccoughing, mouth pressed into wool and skin. His fingers tangled in John’s jumper, holding tight, desperate to confirm. 

Safe. 

Real.

John held him like he might never let go.

After some time, a low murmur in his ear. “It’s alright.”

At that, Sherlock made a small, wrecked sound against John’s throat, a sharp inhale that shuddered through him.

He felt John’s cheek press against his curls. Felt his tears fall onto his scalp.

“I’m sorry too,” John whispered.

***

Sherlock drifted.

Time unravelled in loose coils. Sometimes the light changed through the window. Sometimes, the air tasted sharp with cold. Sometimes, he felt John’s hand on his brow or the press of a spoon at his lips. But each touch came like a question. Too gentle. Too kind. He couldn’t be sure they were real.

Was he living in a memory? A hallucination? The fever played tricks on him, made his skin hyperaware and his mind untrusting. He felt the cloth on his forehead and almost flinched, not from pain, but fear - fear that he would reach for John’s hand and find only empty air.

He didn’t know how long he had been sick. Didn’t know how long John had been there. Hours. Days. A lifetime. Maybe never.

The fever dragged him under again and again, but it wasn’t as lonely as before. The nightmares still came - rivers and blood and boots and cold - but now they were interspersed with things that might have been gentleness. A soft voice. A touch to his shoulder. The scent of soap and wool. A hand rubbing his back as he coughed, tissues at his mouth. A strong arm under his, to the bathroom and back.

He dared not focus his eyes too often. If he looked and found John gone, it might finish him. Better to stay still, stay silent, and play pretend.

He listened instead - to the clink of the spoon in the bowl, the rustle of fabric, the scrape of a chair. John opened the window when the fever climbed. He changed the sheets. He wiped Sherlock’s skin down with a damp cloth. Changed him like a child. Like a soldier too injured to protest.

He wanted to speak. He wanted to ask - Why are you here? Why did you leave? What changed? But more than anything, he wanted to ask what he had done wrong. What part of himself had driven John away. Which misstep, which words, which failings had finally made him unbearable.

The words stayed buried in his throat, thick as the coughing that tore through him in waves. And somewhere beneath all that, the truth: he was terrified that asking would break the spell. That if he gave voice to the questions, the fear, to the yearning, to the guilt, John might disappear all over again.

Sometimes, when the silence stretched long enough, John would take his hand. Just hold it, quietly, as though reminding him he wasn’t alone. Other times, Sherlock felt fingers moving gently through his curls, stroking his temple in long, steady motions. The sensation burned with tenderness. It was unbearable. It was everything.

Sherlock kept a catalogue of every touch.

And then one night - or was it morning? - John leaned over him, adjusting the sheets, and Sherlock reached out.

His fingers found John’s knuckles. 

John froze.

Sherlock traced the bruises there. He didn’t ask. Didn’t speak. Just finally dared to look up at him. And John looked back.

His expression shifted. He slid down onto the mattress beside him, taking obvious care not to jostle too much. He settled close, so their bodies barely touched - just enough for Sherlock to feel the heat of him, the shape of him.

Sherlock turned, watching him, wary. But when John lifted a hand and laid it gently across his waist, the warmth of that touch melted something frozen inside him.

He let his forehead fall lightly against John’s shoulder. No words. No sound. 

Somehow, impossibly, his breath began to ease. It felt like he could breathe for the first time since the river. 

For the first time since St. Barts.

John’s hand moved slowly through his hair, and Sherlock stayed utterly still.

He waited for it to stop. For John to remember that he shouldn’t be here. For the warmth to vanish and the touch to turn cold. But it didn’t.

Instead, John bent forward and pressed a kiss to his burning forehead.

“You’re not allowed to die,” John murmured, voice fraying at the edges. “Not again. Not ever again.”

The words hit Sherlock somewhere in the throat, sealing his voice away. He only nodded - willing John to understand what he couldn’t yet say: that he would do anything, anything John asked of him, if it meant this wasn’t the end. John hummed, lips vibrating against his skin.

“I’m sorry,” John said after a while. His voice was rough. “For leaving.”

Sherlock didn’t answer. He still couldn’t. He kept his face hidden in John’s neck, his mind still reeling with the disorientation of days blurred together.

“I never told you why,” John continued, softer now. “I just left.”

Sherlock blinked. Pulled back. Found his voice. “You said something to Lestrade. About recklessness. But - ” He trailed off.

John let out a long breath. “It was what you were doing to yourself. The way you threw yourself into danger like the risk didn’t matter.”

“But that’s how I get results,” Sherlock whispered, baffled. “It’s always been that way. I don’t understand why - why that’s the thing that drove you off.”

“Because it was killing you,” John said, his voice tightening. “And I couldn’t bear to watch it happen. Not again. Not after everything. I saw it in your eyes, Sherlock. Every time you threw yourself into danger, you were daring it to finish you. And I couldn’t - ” He broke off, jaw tight. “I couldn’t keep pretending that was just brilliance. It wasn’t. It was slow suicide.”

Sherlock blinked, still not following. “But… but it wasn’t. It wasn’t. I - I’ve always risked everything. That’s how it works. That’s how I do it, that’s how I solve them.”

“And that’s exactly why I left,” John sighed. “Because you don’t see the difference between brilliance and self-destruction.”

“I don’t see why it matters,” Sherlock said, more to himself than to John. “It’s my life. If I’m willing to use it - ”

He trailed off at the look on John’s face. 

“You drowned in the river, Sherlock. And last week? Coughing your lungs out, unconscious on the ground. That’s not ‘using’ your life. That’s throwing it away.”

Sherlock looked down, struggling to reconcile the anger in John’s expression with the concern in his voice. “But it was mine to throw away.”

“It wasn’t just yours,” John said, quieter now, but no less fierce. “Not to me.”

Sherlock was quiet, bewildered. “I thought... I thought you’d understand. The puzzle is what matters. It always has been.”

John exhaled, long and shaky. “No. You matter. You always mattered. I just couldn’t watch you keep risking death over and over again and call it amazing. Because it was killing me too. Watching you. Waiting for the moment I’d get the call, or find you gone. I couldn’t keep going through it.”

“You thought I was going to leave you,” Sherlock murmured.

“You did leave me,” John snapped, then caught himself, drawing a breath. “You faked your death. You vanished. For two years.”

“I did that to protect you,” Sherlock said, hearing the whine in his voice, wishing he could stop talking, go back to before this conversation started.

John shook his head. “I know. Because you didn’t see another way. Because you never see another way.”

Sherlock closed his eyes, shame creeping cold through his chest. “Then… then maybe you should have stayed away. I don’t know how to be… how to be this person you want me to be. I thought you were right to leave.” His voice barely carried. “I thought you’d be better off without me. Happier.”

He swallowed hard. “But then I started following you. I saw what you were doing. The fights. The bruises. The way you moved through the city like you were looking to disappear.”

He forced himself to open his eyes, to look up to John's face, searching. “You looked so - lost. I couldn’t understand. Why would you choose that, if I was the problem? Why would you rather fall apart than…”

John looked at him for a long time. “Is that why you didn’t come after me?”

He nodded.

John shifted closer. Sherlock moved his hand up, tangled them between their chests, forming a barrier. “I started picking fights,” John said quietly. “Because it was the only thing that made me feel anything. Being without you was - ” He stopped. “Unbearable.”

Sherlock’s hands tightened together. “You let yourself get hurt.”

“Yes,” John agreed. “So did you. Why didn’t you take care of yourself?”

Sherlock’s voice was barely audible. “I’m… I’ve never been very good at that. And I thought… I don’t know. I was worried about you. Transport… it’s not important.”

A silence. Then John’s voice, quiet, raw: “Why does it matter so little to you?”

Sherlock blinked slowly. “You’re conferring value onto something that doesn’t have any. I’m not - my body isn’t some treasure. It’s just... a mechanism. A tool.”

John stared at him, eyes wide and red-rimmed. He breathed deeply, and Sherlock couldn’t look away. Then John spoke, carefully, his voice low and steady. “Alright then. If that’s what you believe - if you truly think your body isn’t yours to value - then let it be mine.”

Sherlock’s breath caught. 

The words shouldn’t have soothed him. They should have frightened him. Possession, obligation - none of it was rational. But instead, there was only one thing rising in him - 

Relief.

John’s eyes didn’t waver. “You say it’s just a mechanism. Just a tool. Then fine. I’ll take it. Call it penance, or payment, or whatever you like. But if you’re going to keep living like your life belongs to no one - then let it belong to me.”

Sherlock’s mouth opened, but no sound came. The tight coil of uncertainty in his chest began to loosen, a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding slowly seeping from his lungs.

He knew this wouldn’t pass any so-called standard of psychological health. He knew it would horrify therapists and well-adjusted people everywhere. But he and John had never been normal. Sherlock got high on unsolvable murders. John lived on adrenaline and danger. This wasn’t twisted, not to Sherlock - it was the only thing that made sense.

John leaned forward, his voice low. “You’re not allowed to throw it away anymore. Not without asking me first.”

A laugh, weak and aching, scraped up Sherlock’s throat. It didn’t escape his mouth. But it was there, burning behind his eyes.

“I can live with that,” he whispered. “Or - because of that.”

John nodded, squeezing his waist once more.

“So yes,” John said. “It matters. Because it’s mine now. And I’m not giving it back.”

Sherlock closed his eyes. The words settled, low and heavy, deep in his chest, like something he’d been waiting to hear without knowing it.

He felt John's hand shift, cupping the side of his face - thumb brushing lightly over his cheekbone, reverent, unhurried. Sherlock's breath hitched.

And then John's lips were on his.

It took Sherlock a breath to react, and then another to believe it. The kiss was light at first - almost reverent - barely more than a meeting of lips. But John didn’t pull away. Instead, his fingers tightened at Sherlock’s jaw, tilting his face, deepening the contact.

Sherlock responded in kind - tentative, then instinctive. His lips parted under John’s, a soft sound escaping him. His pulse fluttered, not just from fever but from the staggering closeness, the sheer reality of it. He had imagined this before, of course he had. But nothing in those distant, desperate thoughts had captured the texture of John's fingertips, the way his thumb stroked slowly over the pulse point on his neck.

Then John kissed him again - deeper now. More certain. Sherlock’s breath caught, his whole body stilling in a moment of stunned surrender. Heat flared low and sharp in his belly, not from illness but need, aching and familiar.

He leaned into John, lips moving with growing urgency, hands reaching - one finding the worn fabric of John’s jumper, the other, his hair. He felt John shift closer, steady but careful, his own breath hitching.

Sherlock made a low, broken sound against John’s mouth. Want threaded through every nerve. He could feel John’s heartbeat - fast, unsteady. Sherlock had catalogued the signs of arousal in others, but feeling them now, through John's body against his, was dizzying. He could sense it in the way John's breath caught, the tension of his grip, in the way his hips didn’t quite stay still.

The tension coiled tight in Sherlock’s own limbs slowly began to unwind into something looser, stranger - something not fever, but fire. His fingers clutched at John, his breath stuttering against the kiss. Their lips parted and met again, hungrier this time, the world narrowing to skin and mouth and breath.

He arched his body against John’s. The need was sudden, startling, overwhelming. John was warm and solid and there, closer than Sherlock had ever let himself imagine, and his body responded before his mind could catch up.

Then the coughing hit.

Violent. Sharp. Tearing.

Sherlock broke away, gasping as his body convulsed with it. He twisted to the other side, choking on the burn in his throat, one hand braced against the mattress.

“Easy - hey, easy,” John murmured, already moving. His arms were around him, steadying, chest pressed against his back.

Sherlock coughed until he thought he might pass out again. He shuddered with the effort, breath sawing in and out as he blinked through the dizziness.

“It’s alright,” John said. “Just breathe. I’ve got you.” Once the fit was over, John turned him back over, wrapped his arms further around him.

Sherlock sagged into him, resting boneless against John’s chest.

John’s lips found his temple.

“You don’t have to change anything about who you are,” John murmured against his hair. “But you do have to live.”

Sherlock exhaled, shaky. “For what?”

“For me,” John said. “Live for me.”

In the end, it’s so simple, thought Sherlock, as his body slowly calmed, soothed by the person he belonged to.

Finally.

“For you,” he agreed. 

Chapter Text

John hadn’t meant to take things that far.

He’d kissed Sherlock. The man had been laying there in John’s arms, looking so, so relieved to have John there with him, that he had done it without a thought. It had been a vow disguised as a kiss, a claim staked without prior discussion or preparation. A declaration born of desperation, not ceremony.

And Sherlock had yielded.

There had been no hesitation, none. He had just folded into it like someone surrendering something precious - not out of trust, but from sheer exhaustion.

It hadn’t felt like victory.

It had felt like trespass.

Now, with every passing hour, John found himself spiraling through the possibilities. Had he overstepped? Had he taken something Sherlock wasn’t ready to give? The man had barely been lucid - ravaged by fever, chest bruised from coughing, his voice raw from too much emotion and too little rest.

There was a whisper in John’s mind - tight, afraid, unforgiving: He didn’t kiss back because he wanted to. He kissed back because he thought you needed him to.

And maybe he did. Maybe John had reached the end of his own endurance and needed something - someone - to hold onto.

But even if that was the case, Sherlock hadn’t held back. He had surged forward with all the ferocity of a man solving his final riddle - urgent, immediate, consuming. Like love might be something he could fall into with enough velocity to outpace the consequences.

That was what wrecked John the most.

Because Sherlock hadn’t kissed like a man falling in love. He’d kissed like a man who was just falling - through air, through time, through every safety net John had tried to weave between them. Like John himself was the next rooftop, the next grave, the next battlefield.

John didn’t want to be any of those things.

He didn’t want to be Sherlock’s next catastrophe. He didn’t want to be the height Sherlock hurled himself from or the river he drowned in.

He wanted to be the place Sherlock landed.

The place he stayed.

So he didn’t kiss him again, though he also didn’t go far. John had told the clinic that he needed a couple of weeks off to care for a loved one, which was the truth. Over the next few days of providing that care, John kept reaching for him. A touch on the back of the neck. A hand at his elbow. Reminders: I’m here. Come back.

Every time John reached for him - tucking the blanket higher, helping him up from the sofa, letting his hand rest between Sherlock’s shoulder blades as he steadied his breathing - Sherlock soaked it up like dry ground after a drought. Never recoiling. Never flinching. Just... absorbing. Huge pale eyes tracked John’s every movement, his very posture called for him…

But he never initiated. Not once. 

John didn’t comment. Not yet. They needed to talk about it, and they would. But for now, he just kept touching him. Kept offering and offering, like it might finally sink in that he didn’t need to earn it, or ask for it, or brace himself for the moment it would be taken away.

Even though Sherlock was beside him, breathing, recovering, it still felt like the most vital part of him wasn’t there. There were no deductions, no rambling, no random facts spewed forth in trills of exploding syllables. There was no arrogance, no impatience - just a kind of wariness. He was present in body, but not in spirit.

The worst of the fever had broken, but Sherlock still coughed hard enough to leave him breathless, his frame trembling with the effort. At night, when the flat settled and Sherlock finally slept, John would lie awake wondering if he'd imagined the whole thing - if Sherlock had ever really come back from the river, or if he’d left something of himself in the water that couldn’t be retrieved.

John had walked away, but now it was Sherlock who was gone. 

At night, he saw it plain - Sherlock had been wary of him for longer than John wanted to admit. Even before the bruises. Even before the damn river. There had been calculations behind every word, like Sherlock was waiting for John to snap, to walk, to leave - because of some error, some flaw.

He wasn’t scared John would hit him. He was scared John would give up on him.

And Christ, John had. For a whole month. He'd walked away, told himself it was self-preservation, told himself Sherlock didn’t want him there anyway. And it had broken both of them.

So he didn’t coo reassurances or whisper nonsense about everything being fine. He wasn’t built for that. He was built for action, for stubbornness, for digging in his heels and saying, No. Not this time. I’m staying.

He showed him, in the ways he knew how.

He held Sherlock’s gaze when he tried to skip his meds. “You think you’re clever enough to cheat biology?” he asked, not unkindly, but without blinking. Then he pressed the blister pack into Sherlock’s hand. Sherlock grimaced, but swallowed the pill.

He handed Sherlock glasses of water and sat opposite him. “You need more than intravenous sarcasm to rehydrate.” Sherlock huffed but drank, the sarcasm still sadly missing.

He didn’t say anything when Sherlock toyed with his food, just took the seat across from him, arms folded, eyes steady. And he stayed there - quiet, unmoving - until Sherlock finally sighed, picked up the fork, and ate.

He got Sherlock into clean clothes without a fuss and helped him down the stairs. There was no protest. At the hospital, John stood beside him the whole time, arms folded like he might square off against the entire waiting room if need be, but Sherlock did every test he was asked to do without complaint.

And it made John ache.

The care, this closeness - it should have started so much earlier. Back when Sherlock wasn’t afraid to be himself, and John wasn’t afraid of letting him. 

But they had it now - and John wasn’t going to waste another second pretending either of them were anything but desperate for it.

***

One day:

“I looked at the report from the hospital.”

John, curled on the armchair with a medical journal he’d barely read, glanced over. “Yeah?”

Sherlock’s gaze didn’t move from the mug between his hands, balanced on his stomach where he lay on the sofa. “The radiologist’s notes. You didn’t argue.”

“I didn’t need to. You saw what I saw.”

A pause, a cough. “I thought you’d scold me. About waiting so long.”

John exhaled. “What’s the point? You already know it was bloody stupid.”

That got a flicker of something - dry, almost familiar - at the corner of Sherlock’s mouth. “Yes. That’s usually your cue for dramatics.”

John set his journal aside. “You’d rather I shouted?”

“No. Just… it would be easier.”

“Easier to be punished than forgiven?”

Sherlock looked at him then, really looked. “Yes.”

John sighed then reached over to rub Sherlock’s forearm. It was too thin. “I’m not angry anymore. I was. But not now.”

“And that’s harder,” Sherlock said, looking away again. John retreated. 

“For both of us, I think.”

***

Four days later and four hours until sunrise, John found him pacing in the hallway. Slow, restless steps, one hand gripping the bannister for balance.

“You should be in bed.”

Sherlock didn’t stop. “I couldn’t sleep.”

John reached out to steady him when he stumbled. “Come on. You’ll collapse at this rate.”

He guided him back to his bedroom, but Sherlock hesitated at the edge of the mattress. Then he turned, and his expression startled John - desperation.

“I can’t keep guessing,” Sherlock said, voice low and hoarse. “What’s allowed. What’s too much. What you want from me now.”

John’s brow furrowed. “I told you I’m not going anywhere.”

“That’s not the same,” Sherlock said, stepping in close. “I need... John, I need you to… to explain. To just… just show me. I want - I need you to.”

Confused and tired, John opened his mouth to respond, but Sherlock rushed on, each word more frantic than the last. “When I’m injured, I don’t argue with your treatment. I hand myself over and you fix it. So fix this. Take it. Whatever this is - just take it. Because I don’t know how to wait for you anymore and not ruin it.”

Before John could answer, Sherlock surged forward and kissed him - clumsily, desperately, all breath and need and panic. It was messy, uneven, all but bruising in its urgency.

For one breathless, helpless second, John almost let it happen.

Almost gave in to the heat of it, the intensity of everything Sherlock offered, the pull of surrender that hummed under the skin. Almost pushed him back through his bedroom door, back into the mattress, saw himself slide over that narrow, fever-wrung body, press Sherlock down and take what was being so blindly, desperately given.

He imagined the feel of Sherlock’s back under his palms, the way their legs would tangle, the sounds Sherlock might make if John let this happen. If he let it become what it so clearly wanted to be.

But then he saw the wildness in Sherlock’s eyes - not lust, not certainty, but fear. Saw the way his fingers dug in like he was clinging to something vanishing fast. And John came back to himself with a sharp jolt.

John broke the kiss with a violent intake of breath, his hands coming up fast to push Sherlock back by the shoulders. "No," he said, more forceful than he meant, and instantly regretted the flash of hurt that crossed Sherlock’s face.

John had nearly gone with it. Had nearly let himself become that for Sherlock again: the solution, the opiate, the next sharp edge.

“That’s not what we are,” John said. "Not like this."

Sherlock’s eyes widened, head recoiling like he’d been slapped. “You said - ”

“I know what I said,” John cut in, still gripping his arms. “But not like this. Not when we're just trying to prove that we can survive it.”

Sherlock’s breathing was shallow, his mouth still parted. He looked like he was falling again.

John’s voice softened. “It has to be something we come to together. When we’re calm. When we’re ready.”

Sherlock’s jaw trembled, and his eyes moved away, but he gave a small, tight nod.

***

The morning after, Sherlock was quiet. Not his old calculating silence, but a warmer one, laced with something that looked far too much like shame. He avoided John’s eyes as he supported him on his way to the couch.

John continued on as if nothing had happened. 

By the next day, John’s calm seemed to be rubbing off. The tremor in Sherlock’s hands was gone. He stopped hovering in doorways like he was unsure of his welcome. The cough that had plagued him for weeks settled, slower and less frequent, as though his body had finally stopped bracing for impact.

And by the following day, Sherlock seemed to forget to be on alert. He wasn’t watching John from across the room like he expected the rules to change without warning. Instead, he rose from his armchair mid-afternoon, crossed to the sofa where John was reading, and sat down. He shifted closer, tucking himself into John’s side with a sigh.

John turned slightly and rested a hand against Sherlock’s back, feeling the steady rhythm of his heart, breathed with him as if they always had done it, always been this. 

Slowly, steadily, Sherlock came back.

His laptop reappeared on the couch, propped open with its familiar chaotic sprawl of tabs. John passed by with a fresh tea and caught glimpses of articles in Russian, Latin, even Sanskrit. Case notes, chemistry journals, maps.

“You doing a crossword,” John asked, “or diagnosing a ghost?”

Sherlock didn’t look up. “Comparative analysis on arsenic absorption rates in isolated populations. Someone’s poisoning monks.”

John chuckled, warmth blooming in his chest, and with his free hand ran his fingers through curly hair. 

Then it was his violin. A scale in the morning, the bow scraping once before Sherlock huffed, adjusted his grip, and tried again. John didn’t comment, just listened from the hallway, heart pounding.

Another day, John came home from picking up prescriptions to find Sherlock seated at the kitchen table, sketching out timelines with three pens and a spoon. “Lestrade,” Sherlock muttered. “His report left out the victim’s cat.”

“God forbid,” John said mildly, dropping the paper bag on the counter. Sherlock shot him a look, and for the first time in weeks, it was sharp enough to sting.

Then came the conversation with Greg. John stepped into the hallway just in time to hear the unmistakable lilt of irritation curled around laughter.

“Yes, well, perhaps if you hadn’t contaminated the crime scene by stomping through it like a drunken elephant - ”

A pause.

“No, I am housebound, thank you for reminding me. But I’d still manage a more coherent investigation coughing up blood than you lot do in peak condition.”

Another pause, then a sniff. “Send photos. And tell Donovan to practice her penmanship, it looks like a toddler wrote it in an earthquake.”

John leaned in the doorway, arms crossed, unable to stop smiling and the indignant figure in the armchair. There was the acerbic arrogance, the theatrical disdain. But there was something else too. Fire. Passion.

Life.

Sherlock hung up, then turned, caught John watching. He flushed slightly, but didn’t hide.

“Not good?” he asked, voice lower, a little rough.

John didn’t answer. Just stepped forward and took the phone from his hand, setting it aside. He perched on the arm of the chair, curled his hand around Sherlock’s jaw. Sherlock stared up at him, suddenly solemn again. 

“Now?” he asked.

John nodded once. “Now.”

And leaned in.

This time, without the panic of imminent loss, John was free to appreciate the wonder of those lips. Sherlock tilted his face upward, his breath warm against John's mouth, pressing back ever so softly, and John could have lived on that feeling alone. He felt Sherlock’s hand come up to rest lightly against his hip, fingertips just brushing the fabric.

John shifted closer, spine bending, thumb smoothing along Sherlock’s cheekbone. He pressed kisses to his cupid’s bow, to the pillow of the lower lip, along a cheek to the crest of the bone, and back again. Sherlock sighed when he returned, like John’s brief outing away from his lips had been a trial. John opened his mouth and immediately felt Sherlock do the same, tongues brushing once, twice, before John had to turn his face to the side, almost overcome.

They stayed like that for a long moment, temple to temple, breath shared in the space between.

When John pulled back to look at him, Sherlock kept his eyes closed for a heartbeat longer. Then he opened them, looked back up at John, and a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. Whatever he saw on John’s face made him let out a low sound that might have been a laugh, barely audible. His hand tightened slightly where it still rested on John’s hip. John kissed him again, just a press of lips this time, but Sherlock responded immediately. There was a rhythm now, a quiet give and take.

The kiss deepened. Sherlock shifted under him, rising slightly to meet John’s mouth, hand sliding up to cup the back of his neck. John leaned in fully, one knee propped on the seat, his fingers slipping into Sherlock’s hair.

Breath quickened. Hands grew bolder.

John pulled back again just enough to see him - cheeks flushed, lips parted, pupils wide - and felt like he had after giving Sherlock mouth-to-mouth, after he had dragged in a breath on his own. Elated. Grateful. So fucking grateful. He gave a soft huff, half amusement, half disbelief, then reached down, took Sherlock’s hand, and pulled him to his feet.

***

They stumbled into the bedroom, breathing fast and uneven in between kisses, hands grasping, pulling. Sherlock’s shirt was hanging open, John’s jumper gone, and Sherlock backed up to the bed, pulling John down on top of him.

But then, something shifted. John felt him go still. Sherlock’s eyes were wide, stunned - not with fear or desperation this time, but with the enormity of what they were about to do.

John stilled too, breath catching, knowing that if he too thought too much about where they were, where they had been, what they might have lost… He propped himself on one elbow, breathing hard.

"Are you alright?" he asked, though he already knew the answer.

Sherlock nodded. "Yes. Just..." He glanced around, eyes still very wide, gaze darting between John’s eyes, chest, hands…

“I know”, John said, and he dropped down to the side, cradled his head, pulled it close until he felt Sherlock’s breath against his neck. “I know.”

He held there until he felt the tension begin to ease, until the skipping unsteady breaths on his skin deepened, until those breaths were followed by soft kisses, and the grip of the hands on his shoulders became a caress.

John found Sherlock’s mouth with his again, luxuriated in it, and then moved down to his neck, trying to hold back the avalanche of noise in his head exulting that he was finally able to do this. 

Sherlock made a sound, soft and uneven - something between a sigh and a gasp - and his head tipped back. John nipped at the skin then soothed it immediately with his tongue as Sherlock’s rib cage contracted beneath his hands. God, he wanted to devour this man.

John’s hands slid over the curve of Sherlock’s waist and around to his back, pushing up against the mattress, feeling for tension, for comfort. But his fingers found something else - a narrow, ridged scar, too clean to be random.

He stilled.

"Sherlock - ?"

Sherlock flinched, just slightly, and pressed his face more firmly against John’s shoulder, his hand tightening on his shoulder. He shook his head, a silent plea not to be questioned. A breath shuddered out of him, and he pressed closer, like he could bury the memory back into John's skin.

John’s heart clenched. He smoothed a hand through Sherlock’s curls and didn’t ask again. Instead, he ran his hand again over his back, pressed firmly over both scars and smoothness, accepted it all, loved it all. Sherlock’s answer was to press upwards, as if the force of his desire could make them levitate, help them defeat the force of gravity, and never fall again.

John stopped holding back. The reverence was still there, but so was hunger. Fierce, focused, and undeniably possessive. This man - this infuriating, brilliant, beautiful man - was his. Had always been his, really, from the first day they met, from the first look across a lab, from the first time Sherlock demanded his attention, his possessions, his future, and he gave it all to him without a second thought. John mapped him with hands and mouth and breath, claiming every inch, memorizing every stuttered breath and the way Sherlock’s fingers clenched in the sheets. Sherlock was too thin, and his hips jolted with every unfamiliar sensation, but John guided him with wordless certainty, grounding him with murmured encouragement and touches that said: yes, now, just like this.

There were no practiced moves, no performance. Sherlock seemed inexperienced but so willing, so open beneath him, it made John’s chest hurt. He guided Sherlock’s hands across his own body, letting him explore and learn, let him understand, let him love.

When Sherlock finally came apart beneath him - body straining, a fractured gasp escaping his lips like it had been ripped from the centre of him - John held him through it. Arms tight around him, breath tangled with his. He felt like he too had been cracked open, like that gasp had been inserted into his chest cavity and it lived there now, alight. The ferocity of his feelings sent him over the edge, but with Sherlock’s hands in his, he was flying.

***

After, they lay tangled in silence, skin to skin, breath to breath.

Sherlock’s voice was quiet against John’s collarbone. "John? Is this what it’s meant to be like?"

John felt his eyes go hot, and he pressed his lips to the crown of Sherlock's head.

Was it meant to be like this? Like years of tension all being released at once, like knowing, from the humming of every cell, that you have finally come home? Like dying, that little death, so you can be reborn, together?

"Yeah," he murmured, pulling him closer still. "This is what it’s meant to be like."

Chapter Text

Sherlock woke to warmth. Soft light slipped through the curtains in narrow, golden slats, cutting across the sheets tangled at their waists. The air was still, quiet, broken only by the cadence of John's breathing beside him.

It was strange, this sense of stillness. Not the kind that came before a deduction, or the tense hush before action - but a different kind of quiet altogether. A foreign one. It was as if the world had paused for a moment, holding its breath with them.

John was sleeping on his side, facing Sherlock, one arm tucked beneath the pillow, the other draped casually over Sherlock’s hip. He looked younger in sleep. Softer - as if the weeks of strain had finally eased from his face, leaving behind something startlingly gentle. Sherlock studied him with reverence, eyes tracking each shift of light and shadow. The urge to catalogue gave way to the knowledge that he still didn’t understand how he’d ended up here.

He marveled at the ease with which John had touched him last night - how different from what he had imagined it might be. Touches not bestowed in the heat of emergency or the haze of recovery, but with affection. Gentleness. That still baffled him - how John could look at him with such open devotion when Sherlock had spent most of his life believing he was unlovable - difficult, cold, occasionally cruel. How John could wrap around him like something sacred, and expect nothing but his breath in return.

He still didn’t understand how they had gone from blood and choking and chaos to this, from spiraling pain to the softness of a shared bed. A year ago, he would have burned this down before it could begin. 

Two months ago, he nearly had.

Now, he lay still, heart pounding, afraid that any movement might wake him from a dream he hadn't dared to have.

John stirred, and Sherlock looked away quickly, fixing his gaze on the ceiling like he hadn’t just been caught watching.

“Mornin’,” came John’s voice, thick with sleep.

“Morning.”

There was a pause, then John’s hand slid from Sherlock’s hip to his ribs, dragging him a little closer. Sherlock let him, pressing his forehead into John's shoulder with a barely-suppressed sigh.

“You were staring,” John mumbled.

“You were drooling.”

“Liar.” John opened one eye, sleepy but amused. “You’re smiling. You were definitely staring.”

Was he smiling? 

Yes, he supposed he was. 

He let John pull him in tighter.

There were kisses then - slow, sleepy things that made Sherlock’s heart pound even faster. He hadn’t known you could miss someone while still in their arms - but he had missed John. Missed him for years. John increased his grip on Sherlock’s side, tugging him over until Sherlock was lying on top of him, until John’s bright blue eyes were beneath his, crinkling with affection. Sherlock had to pause his kisses, trying to work out where to brace his weight not to hurt him, trying to work out how to bring pleasure without pain. John slid a hand into his hair and pulled his face down, kissed him again and again, until Sherlock couldn’t hold himself up anymore. He melted forward and down, knees naturally falling either side of John’s - and then John’s hands, his skilled, strong hands, were sliding down his sides and around to grasp his behind and lock him in place. 

Sherlock gasped into his mouth, surging forward again, then back, forward, and back, only realising he was thrusting against John as it happened, body managing to stay one step ahead of him, led through this dance by instinct. Unable to kiss at the same time, feeling overwhelmed, he panted into John’s mouth, traded breath, and then John was leaning up to kiss at his chin, at his throat, at the pulse he could feel hammering at his jaw. 

“John,” Sherlock whispered, gasping for air, unable to stop his body’s foreign movements, reveling in John’s response of pushing himself up and against him, even while feeling a tendril of fright at this act, this release, that he had only experienced once before, with this very person, in this very bed. 

“Yes, Sherlock, yes,” John panted into his neck, hands gripping him tighter, thrusting upwards to meet him. Sherlock pressed his face next to John’s, squeezed his eyes shut against the pillow, too much stimulation and not enough pulling him taught like the hairs on a bow. 

“John, I -” He couldn’t think, couldn’t speak, body moving without control, without finesse. John seemed to understand, as suddenly he flipped them over, knees pushing Sherlock’s further apart. He sat up, paused to drag his hand through the precome painting Sherlock’s belly, drawing a startled laugh from Sherlock’s lips. Mortified, Sherlock tried to school his features, but the lustful heat in John’s face had already turned speculative. 

“Was that…?” John trailed off, then with quick nimble fingers prodded Sherlock’s belly again. 

“St-top,” Sherlock huffed on another laugh, not knowing how to handle this change in atmosphere, abdomen and thighs still tensing in a gentle rhythm he couldn’t suppress. 

“Oh, my God,” John said, grin spreading over his face. “Sherlock - you’re ticklish.”  

“No, I’m - ah!”

And then there was surprised laughter, and a tangle of limbs, and his knees and elbows in the wrong places. There was John squealing indignantly, and there was wrestling with the sheets, and pillows kicked off the bed. There were play-bites to the ribs, brushing John’s hair back from his forehead, and an, “I adore you,” mumbled with bashful enthusiasm. There was a raspberry blown into his bellybutton, an un-sexy comment about hygiene he tried to take back, and an “I love you,” whispered into the shell of his ear. 

There was John behind him, arms around him, stroking him with those same clever fingers - and there was a rush of heat, and stars, and there was John’s name once again on his lips. 

***

In the quiet that followed, Sherlock watched as John slid out of bed and moved through the room - pulling on clothes, wandering just out of sight and putting the kettle on, rifling through the fridge for something edible. There was a grace to it, despite the mundane rhythm of the actions. Sherlock had seen John in a hundred kinds of motion - leaping over fences, stitching wounds, landing punches with soldier's precision - but this quiet domesticity after remolding the world was a real marvel.

John was humming under his breath. 

Humming. 

He sat up slowly, sheet pooled around his hips, and tried to make the world make sense again. 

“John?”

“Yeah?”

“Why are you humming?”

John stuck his head around the door for a moment, peering at him with a raised eyebrow. 

“I’m happy,” he said. Then he winked, disappearing again. 

He winked. 

“John?”

“Yes, Sherlock?”

“Why are you happy?” It seemed very important to know - because if he knew, then he could replicate it, and maybe he could keep it. 

John’s head reappeared, brow furrowed this time. "Because it’s morning, and you’re here, and nothing has exploded yet?"

Sherlock frowned. "That’s all it takes?"

John returned to the bed with two mugs of tea, handing one over. "Sometimes, yeah.” He sat down in the bed, shuffled over until they were pressed side to side. “I think… I think I spent too long thinking it had to be a big reason. Some big victory. Life or death. Turns out, it can be tea. Tea with you, anyway." He clinked their mugs together, put his free arm around Sherlock’s shoulders.

Sherlock looked down into his mug, uncertain. "But…"

“But?”

Sherlock didn’t know what he had been going to say, so he shook his head. John didn’t seem to mind. 

***

Later, Sherlock sat cross-legged on the sofa, John's laptop balanced on his knees. He scrolled through old blog entries with a furrowed brow, each line a puzzle he hadn’t solved the first time around. He was searching for evidence - some moment, some sentence - that would tell him John had loved him then. That he had been wanted, even when he was too blind to see it.

There were hints, certainly. Longing woven between lines of irritation. Admiration dressed up as sarcasm. But nothing definitive, nothing he could hold up and say: Here. This was the moment.

A familiar ache throbbed low in his chest. It had always been there, he realized. The fear. The certainty that John would one day grow tired of him. That needing someone as badly as he needed John was a kind of defect. Something ugly and dangerous. He didn’t know how to do anything halfway - devotion least of all.

He startled when the cushion beside him dipped. John had emerged from the shower, hair damp, sleeves shoved up as he reached out and gently closed the laptop.

“Alright?” John asked.

Sherlock stared down at his hands. "It's not normal."

John didn't respond immediately. He waited.

"To need someone this much," Sherlock continued, voice low. "To feel like I stop functioning when you're not here."

There was a long pause. Then John reached for him, dragging Sherlock sideways into a one-armed hug, hand firm against his spine. It seemed to be where he wanted him the most.

“Maybe not,” John said eventually. “Maybe not everyone's version of normal. But it's ours. And you’re not wrong, Sherlock. Not for loving like that."

Sherlock didn’t answer. But he leaned in, resting his head against John's shoulder.

After a moment, John pressed a kiss to his temple. "You know I can’t function without you too, right? I wasn’t, before I met you. Not even a little bit."

“And it doesn’t bother you?”

“I think it did, yes, when I thought it was one-sided. But I get it now. I need you, and you need me. So, I guess we should stick together, hmm?” He rubbed his hand up and down Sherlock’s side. 

John always knew how to help Sherlock understand things. 

“Yes,” he said, and exhaled. 

***

A few mornings later, after the dust of waking together had begun to settle into something familiar, John rolled onto his back with a sigh. "We should probably get up. Greg said he might have something for us."

"Text him back," Sherlock said, nose buried in the hollow of John’s shoulder. "Tell him we’re busy."

John chuckled into his hair. "Sorry, I told him we’ll be there in twenty minutes."

“Why?” Sherlock asked, rearing back and peering at him. 

“Because,” John said, kissing the tip of his nose, “You’re Sherlock Holmes, and you like solving crimes. Remember?”

***

Lestrade met them outside Westminster, two coffees in hand and a smirk already tugging at his mouth.

"Jesus, you look better," he said, eyeing Sherlock. "Amazing what getting shagged instead of getting pneumonia can do for a man."

Sherlock blushed, felt his mouth drop open. Then he stiffened, half-turning toward John, ready to apologise, mortified. He must have slipped somehow - let it show, broadcast it from his pores, his stance, his eyes... But when he looked, John was already smirking, bumping Lestrade’s shoulder as he said, "Don’t be jealous, Greg."

Lestrade rolled his eyes. "Oh, piss off." But he was grinning as he said it. “It’s a good look on you, too. Better than the vigilante act.”

Sherlock blinked. Stared. And then it hit him. John had told Lestrade. Days ago, probably. Like it was normal. Like it was something he wanted his friends to know.

Like it was good. 

The coffee in Sherlock’s hand was suddenly too warm. He felt his ears burning.

John, grinning, added, "Yeah well, a good friend put me right. A better friend than I deserve, I think."

Then Lestrade was the one flushing even as he turned away. “Alright alright, enough of that, now.”

They followed him to the site - a closed-off section near the river’s edge, already cordoned off with tape and humming with quiet activity. A junior MP had been pulled from the Thames early that morning. The body bore signs of post-mortem tampering, but no obvious cause of death. No struggle. No note.

Sherlock dropped into a crouch beside the bagged remains, gloved fingers skimming just above the skin. "It’s staged," he said. "They wanted it to look like a suicide, but the details are wrong. Angle of bruising on the clavicle. Position of the hands. Even the shoes."

He could feel John behind him, solid and silent, waiting. Greg’s offhand comments still buzzed at the back of his mind, and Sherlock had to work hard to shake off the lingering amazement that not only was John now his lover, but others knew about it - it had become a new kind of normal. He wasn’t sure how to join in with the banter, didn’t know how to belong in that warmth without questioning it. But the puzzle on the ground, the patterns of skin and bruise, the weight of a mystery unsolved - this, at least, he understood - so he set everything else aside and focused.

"And why do that?" John asked, crouching beside him, sipping his coffee.

"Because he knew something. Because someone didn’t want him to say it."

Lestrade filled in the blanks: the MP had recently requested access to files from an old surveillance inquiry. Something to do with a cover-up tied to a private security firm. It smelled like conspiracy, and Sherlock's mind came alight.

Theories formed and collapsed. A plan took shape. It involved going into the firm’s headquarters in disguise, intercepting the suspect at the source. He outlined it in sharp, clipped tones, already half-turned to move - 

It made sense. It was fast. It was clean. It was his way.

But it was also dangerous. High-risk. 

And it would mean leaving John behind.

He paused. The wind whipped faintly down the embankment. In his peripheral vision, Lestrade was already calling in the location. John stood still, eyes fixed on him.

Waiting for the moment Sherlock would run. Would vanish. Would go it alone - again.

He took one step back towards the road. 

Then stopped - not because it was the wrong decision tactically, but because it was the same old decision. The one that always ended in disaster. That one left John with blood on his hands and grief in his eyes.

His fingers twitched at his sides. He remembered John’s voice days earlier - you never see another way.

Sherlock turned back, heart hammering, caught John's gaze. The concern was still there - but beneath it, a hope so careful it almost broke him.

He swallowed, forced his voice to steady. “Nevermind,” he said to Lestrade. “We’ll circle the perimeter instead. There’s a better vantage point from above. We can take him together.”

Lestrade blinked. “You sure?”

Sherlock nodded once.

John said nothing, but the look on his face had Sherlock blushing harder than Lestrade’s blunt comments could ever hope to achieve. 

***

Later that night, the wind off the river cut sharp against their coats as they stormed the crumbling warehouse near the wharf. A trap had been set for the suspect - and it had worked. Too well. Three suspects emerged from the shadows instead of one, weapons glinting in the dim light, eyes already calculating escape or violence. They moved to attack.

Time fractured. Slowed.

Sherlock felt the world narrow to a heartbeat, to the warmth of John at his side and the certainty that they would prevail. They moved as one. John ducked under a wild swing and seized a rusted pipe from the ground. Sherlock mirrored the shift, slipping behind the first assailant just as John swept the pipe low, cracking it against the man’s shin. A gun clattered to the floor. Without missing a beat, Sherlock caught the man’s collar, yanked him backward, and brought him down hard. One.

Another charged. John pivoted, and Sherlock braced. In a single motion, John grabbed Sherlock’s wrist and Sherlock grabbed his, John using the counterforce of his body to swing Sherlock forward. Momentum carried him like a whip, foot connecting with the second man’s chest. He staggered, then folded under Sherlock’s follow-up blow. Two.

The third lunged at John with a flick knife. Sherlock turned. Too far. Too slow. But John was faster, stepping into the attack, trapping the man's arm with his own, while Sherlock surged in from behind. Hands found John's again, and together they twisted - arms locked, weight shared, a silent language in motion. The knife dropped. The man followed onto the floor. Three.

For a beat, silence reigned.

The suspects groaned on the floor, beaten and bleeding. Sherlock and John stood above them, flushed, panting. Their eyes locked across the chaos. Sherlock's pulse surged as time sped back up. John was staring at him, wild and possessive, and inside Sherlock’s chest his heart thrummed out - John was his.

John surged forward, grabbing Sherlock by the collar and kissing him - hard, hungry, completely inappropriate and unstoppable. Sirens wailed in the distance, red and blue lights strobing against the broken windows, but Sherlock only clung tighter, kissing him back like he was being rebuilt. Being kissed by John didn’t feel like drowning, or dissolving. It felt like being put back together - brick by brick, bone by bone - held up and reinforced by John’s hands and breath and belief.

***

Back on the street, Lestrade clapped them both on the back. “Remind me never to stand between you two and your suspects. Jesus. Like watching two wolves bring down some deer.”

Sherlock was still catching his breath. He glanced sideways at John. “We work well together.”

John, hair mussed and knuckles bruised, grinned at him with unmistakable heat. “Yeah, we do.”

Sherlock flushed again, instinctively looking to Lestrade, expecting mockery or censure, but he was already turning away with a grimace, flapping his hand at them.

John didn’t miss a beat. He leaned in close enough for Sherlock to feel the breath of a promise behind his words.

“No one’s looking, love,” he murmured, and then added with a wicked glint, “Or rather, no one wants to look. Not when I’m about to do this.”

He kissed Sherlock again, rough-edged and wanting.

Greg groaned loudly. “Oh for God’s sake. You’re going to be impossible.”

John gave him a cheerful two-finger salute then turned away. Sherlock, dazed and alight with stunned joy, simply let himself be pulled after him, trusting that John knew exactly where they should go.

***

Turned out, John thought they should go back up to the rooftop where they had spent most of the afternoon overlooking the crime scene warehouse - accessed thanks to a fire escape ladder he pulled up after them.

From there, the Thames stretched out before them, the water dark and soft-edged in the dusk light. Gold and grey streaked the sky like bruises in retreat, and the police vehicles melted away back into the night.

Sherlock leaned on a rusted railing, breath slowing, hair tousled by the breeze. 

"I used to think I was alone in the dark," he said quietly, eyes on the water. "But I wasn’t. I’d just closed my eyes."

John stepped in behind him, arms wrapping around his waist to unbutton his coat, lips pressing for a moment to the nape of his neck. “And now?”

Sherlock turned toward him fitting into the space John had made. “Now they’re open.”

He leaned forward, kissing John slow and sure. His coat hit the rooftop in a quiet thud, then John was tilting him, easing him down onto it. The concrete was cold beneath the wool, but John’s body was warm above him. Sherlock breathed deeply as John’s leg pressed between his, John’s hands sliding beneath Sherlock’s jacket and shirt like he was unwrapping something too precious for light.

There were no words at first, only breath and motion and the locking of eyes. John undressed him with care sharpened by hunger, his touch both worshipping and desperate. Sherlock’s mind reeled - he was the violin now, and John was playing him like a virtuoso, every touch a movement, every kiss a symphony. Sherlock arched, whispered, “Don’t hold back,” and the melody shifted. 

John obeyed.

The kiss turned primal, greedy. John pulled at his belt, his zipper, pulled his trousers off with enough force to drag Sherlock half off his coat. They shifted back into place together, Sherlock pulling at John’s clothes until John pulled them off with a snarl, flinging them away as if they offended him. Then John was everywhere, all at once - mouth and hands and tongue over and around and inside - 

Sherlock welcomed him, his heels dragging John closer, his breath coming in hot, fractured whines of sound he didn’t recognise as John’s tongue opened him up in pulses, and then his fingers refined the tempo. Sherlock had no frame of reference for this, nothing to compare it to - but he didn’t need to.

It was John. 

The sky above them darkened to indigo, the stars bleeding into view, and still they moved together - slow and then fast, then slow again. John moved away to his fallen coat for a moment, returned with a small bottle, but there was no impish smile this time - only heat. Sherlock's legs wrapped back around John's waist, his hands clinging to his shoulders, feeling he may go mad from the inches of air separating them. John gentled him even as he prepared them both, one hand soothing Sherlock’s twitching thigh. When John finally pressed into him, Sherlock breathed in hard, the air catching in his throat until he exhaled it on a sigh. It wasn’t pain, but instead the unmistakable knowledge that this was exactly where John was meant to be - where they were both meant to be. 

The tension between them stretched tight and hot and perfect as John moved, staring down at Sherlock like he had never seen him before, and Sherlock braced one foot on the floor, straining to meet each thrust, reached one hand up to cradle his face.

“Yours,” Sherlock whispered, feeling it in every cell. John gasped, his hips stuttering for a moment. 

“Yours,” he echoed, kissing Sherlock’s thumb. Sherlock moved his hand down to the floor for leverage, rolled his hips upwards, and with a hiss of indrawn air John was moving again, faster and faster. Sherlock thought he might shatter with the force of it, might be snapped cleanly in two, but that was alright - John would put him back together. 

He didn’t break apart - he caught fire. Heat surged through him all at once, fierce and consuming, as John’s mouth pressed against his cheek, as John’s hand cradled the back of his head like he was something irreplaceable. A moment later John choked out Sherlock’s name, thrusting once, twice more before slumping forward, and Sherlock ran his palms up and down his back, and kissed him, kissed him, kissed him.

***

The next evening, in a corner booth at a pub Lestrade had recommended, John pushed Sherlock's pint toward him with an indulgent look.

“We’re celebrating,” he said. “We saved the country again, and we’re both in one piece. I think that deserves at least a few sips.”

Sherlock took a drink, then made a face. “Bitter.”

“That’s because it is bitter. It’s meant to be.”

Sherlock sighed. “Why do people drink things that taste like failure?”

“Because it’s cold and wet and we’ve earned it.”

“I think I’ve earned a Singapore Sling, actually,” Sherlock said with a pout, but he took another sip.

Lestrade dropped his coat into the corner and set a greasy paper bag and pint glass on the table. “You two did good yesterday. That’s not flattery. That’s numbers. Three armed suspects, zero injuries to yourselves, minimal property damage. Practically boring.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Next time we’ll aim to set something on fire. For your amusement.”

Greg took a chip, ignoring the bait. “So, you back at it, then? Full-time crime-solving and chaos?”

“I never left.”

“You did, actually. Refused a case. Bit of a sulk, if we’re honest.”

“I was sick!”

“Yeah, yeah - well you’re better now. And didn’t go charging in alone this time, hey? That’s new. Just wondering if it was a temporary lapse in judgement, or an actual shift in strategy.”

Sherlock’s fingers tapped once against the glass, then stilled. Across from him, John didn’t say anything, but his eyes sparkled.

“I think,” Sherlock said slowly, “I might be trying something new.”

Lestrade grinned. “God help London, then,” he said, raising his pint in a salute.