Fic - pre John/Sherlock 'In my end is my beginning' (PG, John/Sherlock)
John's POV - pre-slash John/Sherlock
This is the first ever fan fic I have written Comments are love...
They are running. It is bitterly cold and the unexpected view of London from the rooftops gives him a strange elation - or maybe it is Sherlock’s sheer confidence in his body and assumption that he is worthy of this chase, this pursuit. He falters for a moment in front of a particularly wide gap between buildings but Sherlock’s cry spurs him onwards. It isn’t, in any case, as if he has anything to lose. The sheer mindless exhilaration of running makes him feel invincible and faintly hysterical and when they reach their target, the fact that it’s the wrong man is a minor detail. He should be surprised when Sherlock is unconcerned that the gamble didn’t pay off. When they are finally back at the flat and almost helpless with laughter he has a sudden realisation: for Sherlock, it is all about the chase. The chase, and proving a point.
***
After that first awkward conversation in the restaurant the question mark over Sherlock’s love-life remains, just on the edge of vision - not important, exactly, but not yet answered. A minor irritation, like the last clue in an otherwise solved crossword puzzle. Not that he ever feels he has solved Sherlock.
Privately he occasionally wonders, of course, [he always inserts ‘of course’ when he finds himself wondering] why it is such a closed book? Is it too painful a subject? Too complex? Too private? Or, to use one of Sherlock’s favourite words, too mundane? He caught, perhaps, a hint of the past in Sherlock’s appeal to ‘Seb’ at the bank and found himself making a rather obvious remark about the heartlessness of bankers. But if it was intended as consolation, and he’s not at all sure that it was, Sherlock doesn’t respond.
***
-You know, a date: two people who like each other, spending time together doing something they both enjoy!
-But that’s what I was suggesting.
He’s almost certain Sherlock was responding to the definition, not the more accepted meaning. Almost.
***
Sarah’s sofa at least provides some normality. He can be fairly certain, for instance, that he won’t find a severed arm down its back or a sabre poking out from under an innocent cushion. Even here, however, Sherlock manages to disrupt his peace. When Sherlock is not only unharmed by their world exploding but also unconcerned, he feels vaguely affronted.
***
He must never forget that Sherlock is a sociopath. It’s easy at times, when they are watching crap telly together or sniping at Anderson, to be seduced - wrong word, tricked - into thinking that Sherlock’s talents are an addition to an otherwise normal world view. But there is nothing normal about Sherlock, at least not in the normal sense of normal. Sherlock’s fury is directed at his own failure to predict. The bodies? - merely inconvenient proof of that failure. And yet, even when bored, armed and quite possibly high, Sherlock doesn’t frighten him. He is irritated, yes, even exasperated, but fear? ...the thought that he doesn’t find Sherlock frightening is, itself, unsettling.
***
He is prepared to die for Sherlock. And, even more surprisingly, Sherlock is prepared to die for him. He finds he had assumed that Sherlock’s sociopathy or, at the very least, extravagant self-belief, would cause him to run. It is, after all, logical: a broken down army doctor, a man with little to live for and far too many memories vs the world’s only consulting detective, a unique genius (even if he doesn’t have friends)? The melodrama of this comparison makes him ruefully grimace, or would if he wasn’t currently wearing a semtex jacket with a gunman’s spotlight on him. He feels as if he is observing the situation from a long way off and when it is over, and his legs finally give way, and he hears his voice babbling something about clothes and darkened swimming pools, it feels and sounds as if it is someone else talking.
Later, after the blast, the police, the ambulances, he wonders why - why...any of it. But it seems an obsolete question
***
He cries out in his sleep again (still?). Everyone has their nightmares but his are demons of fire and falling and profound loss. He vaguely senses Sherlock’s weight, on the end of the bed and as he weeps he feels a tentative pat on his shoulder. He grasps the hand and clings onto it as if it has answers. The weight shifts and they lie like that until he eventually drifts into a bleak, grey sleep. In the morning, Sherlock is downstairs, staring at the wall, in the pose he adopts when he is pondering some complicated problem. He returns to find Sherlock gone and there is a leg in the sink (human, of course). At least it provides a topic of conversation when they next coincide. Neither mentions what has happened.
***
He thinks nothing has changed. Everything has changed. They step around each other like dancers, like planets in orbit (ironic, given Sherlock’s knowledge of the solar system), barely speaking, never touching. Other people seem to sense something and the jokes about their relationship are now more for show - a tired ritual which has ceased to have meaning.
They need a new pattern.
Even the normality of Sarah’s sofa seems stifling, although he no longer suggests alternatives. She asks no questions but occasionally he sees her eyes cloud over as if she, too, is grieving.
***
The edge of decision. He knocks, tentatively, on Sherlock’s door. His hand is on the latch and he is falling, drowning, burning. The threshold: a liminal space, the place of possibilities. The door opens. Finally, it begins.