Fic: i am tired, beloved (of chafing my heart against the want of you) (2/2)
Title: i am tired, beloved (of chafing my heart against the want of you), Part II
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Word Count: 2,299
Summary: Love is more than a vicious motivator. Love is Armageddon and the plague, and the spark of life when the world’s coming down.
Sherlock is terrified. And John, well-John should probably have seen this coming.
(Part VI of the Cardiophilia Sequence; Follows suddenly your heart showed me my way, the beat and beating heart, your heart in the lightning (and the thunder that follows), echoes through the caverns of a chest (the give and take), and i'd trade your fading heart (for the flailing beats in mine)).
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author's Notes: My ongoing and most sincere thanks to speak_me_fair for the Britpicking and for probably having more confidence in my style than I can properly rationalize. Credit to Amy Lowell for the title.
Previous: Part I
i am tired, beloved (of chafing my heart against the want of you), Part II
There are two steaming cups of tea on the table at his side, pressing wet rings into yesterday’s paper, bleeding the colours, smearing the ink. John spends far too many minutes staring at them, breathing in the scent of them, watching as the heat seeps out, as the warmth dies, as the tendrils of steam start to lose height, fervour; as they claw at something crucial but miss and sink back, shrivelled. He feels for them, somehow: an ache in his gut that burns toward his chest, that can’t be the same thing it has been, always would be-can’t be the same despair, the same longing that’s been eating at him for well over a month.
Because, to be fair, John was well aware that this was coming.
He knew that getting involved with Sherlock would be unbalanced, one-sided. He’d been well aware of his own self, his own heart: he’d known where he stood and he’d recognised the vantage point for what it was-unrequited, but stubborn, dug in deep and going nowhere, not any time soon. He’d adjusted to it, the permanent lump in his throat, the buzz in his ears: he’d adapted and compensated for the lean of it, the weight in his actions, his motions, his breath. He’d managed.
And then Sherlock came to the pool, where his eyes grew wide and his pulse pushed out from the long column of his neck and the buttons on his shirt strained for the ways his lungs were working too hard, too fast. Then they’d survived, somehow, and Sherlock changed, the world shifted. There’d been that day at the warehouse, and that evening with the violin and then it didn’t matter how much John sought out equilibrium, how much he knew which way to shift.
It didn’t matter, because the earth itself had shifted. Something fundamental was spinning, shaking without pause and John could barely keep his feet on the ground, barely even saved the will to try.
Even then, though: even then, he knew the fascination would have to cease, would hold tight and blinding, would constitute whirlwinds and explosions and would leave him decimated in the aftermath, and he’d known that, he’d known there’d be an aftermath because whirlwinds lose momentum and the air stops feeding the flames after a time: he’d known forever was out of the question, with Sherlock, and yet when he’d seen those eyes, and he’d heard those words and his heart had sung in a cadence, in some otherworldly harmony with that mad-rapid beat, he’d assented. Knowingly. Wilfully.
He’d ignored the inevitability of the day it would die.
And now it’s been six weeks. Six weeks and five days, to be exact; six weeks and five days’ worth of mornings where the far mug has gone untouched, grown cold, because it doesn’t have an owner, a pair of lips to fit around and drink.
The second mug, closer at hand: that one’s gone cold because John feels ill at the sight, what it means. He feels sick in his stomach and his throat and his chest and he can’t bring himself to take so much as a sip. Even the scent makes him just this side of nauseated.
He can’t stop making tea.
John presses his lips together, firmly, puts the heels of his palms to the hollows of his eyes and breathes in heavily, tries to clear something he can’t name from the palette of his very being and fails, always fails: just smears it around and feels that much more covered, weighted. Feels that much more uneasy; alone.
He should be flattered, he thinks, that Sherlock came to the hospital at all.
The hospital. That’s where it started, really; when this started, their decline: rapid, and somehow still agonisingly slow. His mind was a bit hazy then, just this side of drug-laden, the poison and its antidote still sifting through his veins; he doesn’t remember all of it with clarity.
He knows enough of the after, though. He has enough practice in reading between the lines.
He recalls waking on his own, at first: the sterile burn in his nostrils as he drifted in and out of real consciousness, as awareness eluded him for a spell and he dreamt impossible things, things like Sherlock’s eyes growing wide and his breath coming too fast. He dreams of gravel at his nape and lips on his neck, clinical but pleading; Sherlock’s head on his chest as he gasps; the fabric of John’s shirt damp where Sherlock pressed in, close, listened and measured and cried, no, that’s not it, that’s his mind playing tricks and the lingering effects of that fucking injection; Sherlock and tears, really, no; Christ, how absurd-
John recalls the moments that did make sense, though, recalls the sensation of being distinctly bereft, recalls knowing what broken ribs feel like and recognising that what’s stinging in his chest is something different, remembers being unable to reconcile the fact that someone had pressed, pushed, pumped his heart so desperately as to crack bones and bruise in fingertip-patterns with the fact that no one was seated at his bedside, the fact that no one stepped in-swept in-when he managed to stay awake for more than a few moments in a row. He remembers, before the atmosphere had shifted to accommodate the presence, before his chest expanded of its own accord and loosened, limp with a relief that made no sense but never had to, never would when eyes found his and the billowing of his coat moved the stale air about and hit John’s chest dead in its centre for the motion, the swift pause before John spoke, still a touch dazed, but sharpened now, alert: oddly content. Comforted.
Sherlock.
John remembers stretching, then, remembers reaching; he remembers seeing Sherlock recoil in the barest of instants and feeling dizzy, faint before Sherlock’s fingers wrapped about him, before Sherlock clung like the dying to his arms and shook below noticing, pressed his thumbs tight enough to bruise for all that he looked broken. John had relished it, the passion in that touch because Sherlock’s eyes had been fraying, bloodshot, and his voice had been hoarse and frantic in a way that bore only ill, but John had been willing to believe in the way that Sherlock clutched to him, he’d been willing to take that, had been willing to beg it to overcome the plunge in his gut when Sherlock’s eyes hardened, when Sherlock’s hands loosened, when they were home and Sherlock didn’t speak, stayed away, maintained a distance that had never existed between them in place. Fuck, but they’d been closer in the lab at Barts, the day the met.
John had been willing to ignore the signs, in the moment. He’d been willing to relish touch and presence and heat and the way he knew, then, in a way that transcended intellect, that overtook the simple act of being informed: he knew, in Sherlock’s grasp, that the handprints left in mottled greens and greys on his torso would fit Sherlock’s elegant fingers, the particular width of the splay between knuckles: he knows his heart is beating now because of Sherlock Holmes, and he thinks to himself-because he wants to, because they almost lost this but again, once again they were here, breathing; he thinks to himself that it’s about damn time the literal truth matched the one he’d been carrying, questioning, shying from for all that it boiled in his blood.
Fuck, but John’s fallen harder than he knows how to bounce back from; than he suspects he’ll ever learn. He’s ascended heights in this that burn from his marrow out, that make it hard to breathe and he can’t for the life of him regret it.
He can’t deny that it hurts like hell, though, even if he’d seen it coming, even if he’d turned of his own volition, his own muscles and bones.
The fact that Sherlock hasn’t touched him, hasn’t come close enough to feel his warmth;-it makes him feel far too like the long days, the worst days of the war when the heat made him shiver for the sweat running down his back; the way his stomach lurched for having nothing in it, for all the rations and the water he couldn’t bring himself to take.
The fact that Sherlock barely sees him, hardly allows himself to be seen in John presence, a spectre in their home-the fact that it happens despite no evidence of cases, for all that John knows Greg’s been swamped; the fact that there’s no erratic wail of the violin; no toes in the breadbox; the fact is that it frightens him. It frightens him, and sends a sickness through his chest that churns when he breathes, when he feeds it with oxygen, when his heart beats it around without relent.
It’s normalcy, and it makes John ill in his gut, makes something twist beneath the ribs, breeding a sensation that’s entirely new, that reminds him of spilling intestines and blood when it gushes where it’s not meant to be and the oesophagus curling and crushing around the lungs and the heart alike and squeezing, pressure placed until they burst: a mess. He’s a mess, and they made their own normalcy, didn’t they, a normal that was absolute madness and the fit of their bodies together and the way that Sherlock sucked at his pulse and memorised his heartbeat and he hadn’t even flinched. And Sherlock would know now, wouldn’t he, he’d listen to John’s heart as it squeezes and contorts and he’d know what was wrong in an instant, he’d hold the only cure for it except he doesn’t care, and John’s in a right fucking state, all sentiment, and this is why Sherlock dismissed feeling, this is why it could never last, this is why John should never have given in and could never have held out against it because for all that he wants Sherlock to feel, John’s afraid that he feels more than enough for them both.
It’s all such a mess.
John notices, suddenly, the way that steam from the tea in front of him has stopped rising, ignores the clench in his stomach, the nausea; he shouldn’t be surprised by the hollowness, the way he feels everything but most keenly, it’s the emptiness that bites.
He wants Sherlock looking at him, studying him, counting the beats of his heart in his crazed and careful precision, in fascination like an innocent and a soul older than time all at once; like a man who holds him close because he needs it, needs proximity and exactitude but also needs John, needs to feel him and keep him close and still and present and never-ending, because John deluded himself, all right? Yes. He’d believed they were something, believed they were timeless and rooted and obscene perfection like torn skin stitched together too tight, the only way it can.
John imagined they were something greater. John had thought... John had believed that he’d been special. That he’d broken the rules and changes the course and was someone enough to snag an enigma for now, but also for always.
A part of him, however small but bright, had believed, and had thought about one day learning Sherlock’s heart just as close, just as dear and unfailing, just as frantic and steady and shaking and certain.
John had known the truth and had cast it aside in exchange for a fool’s hope. Aptly called, that.
John knew that this was coming.
John knows they’ve run out of tea. He’s not sure if it matters, it he’s even meant to buy more. Perhaps he’s pretended, perhaps he’s tried to put off the inevitable for just a little bit too long.
It’s been six weeks and five days. Maybe that’s how long it takes, in the end. Six weeks and five days to let the dream die.
John sighs, and listens to his bones creak, his heart pumping languid, mournful, resigned when he stands and shrugs into his jacket; descends the stairs.
Ignores the tightness in his chest as the door slips shut.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Word Count: 2,299
Summary: Love is more than a vicious motivator. Love is Armageddon and the plague, and the spark of life when the world’s coming down.
Sherlock is terrified. And John, well-John should probably have seen this coming.
(Part VI of the Cardiophilia Sequence; Follows suddenly your heart showed me my way, the beat and beating heart, your heart in the lightning (and the thunder that follows), echoes through the caverns of a chest (the give and take), and i'd trade your fading heart (for the flailing beats in mine)).
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author's Notes: My ongoing and most sincere thanks to speak_me_fair for the Britpicking and for probably having more confidence in my style than I can properly rationalize. Credit to Amy Lowell for the title.
Previous: Part I
i am tired, beloved (of chafing my heart against the want of you), Part II
There are two steaming cups of tea on the table at his side, pressing wet rings into yesterday’s paper, bleeding the colours, smearing the ink. John spends far too many minutes staring at them, breathing in the scent of them, watching as the heat seeps out, as the warmth dies, as the tendrils of steam start to lose height, fervour; as they claw at something crucial but miss and sink back, shrivelled. He feels for them, somehow: an ache in his gut that burns toward his chest, that can’t be the same thing it has been, always would be-can’t be the same despair, the same longing that’s been eating at him for well over a month.
Because, to be fair, John was well aware that this was coming.
He knew that getting involved with Sherlock would be unbalanced, one-sided. He’d been well aware of his own self, his own heart: he’d known where he stood and he’d recognised the vantage point for what it was-unrequited, but stubborn, dug in deep and going nowhere, not any time soon. He’d adjusted to it, the permanent lump in his throat, the buzz in his ears: he’d adapted and compensated for the lean of it, the weight in his actions, his motions, his breath. He’d managed.
And then Sherlock came to the pool, where his eyes grew wide and his pulse pushed out from the long column of his neck and the buttons on his shirt strained for the ways his lungs were working too hard, too fast. Then they’d survived, somehow, and Sherlock changed, the world shifted. There’d been that day at the warehouse, and that evening with the violin and then it didn’t matter how much John sought out equilibrium, how much he knew which way to shift.
It didn’t matter, because the earth itself had shifted. Something fundamental was spinning, shaking without pause and John could barely keep his feet on the ground, barely even saved the will to try.
Even then, though: even then, he knew the fascination would have to cease, would hold tight and blinding, would constitute whirlwinds and explosions and would leave him decimated in the aftermath, and he’d known that, he’d known there’d be an aftermath because whirlwinds lose momentum and the air stops feeding the flames after a time: he’d known forever was out of the question, with Sherlock, and yet when he’d seen those eyes, and he’d heard those words and his heart had sung in a cadence, in some otherworldly harmony with that mad-rapid beat, he’d assented. Knowingly. Wilfully.
He’d ignored the inevitability of the day it would die.
And now it’s been six weeks. Six weeks and five days, to be exact; six weeks and five days’ worth of mornings where the far mug has gone untouched, grown cold, because it doesn’t have an owner, a pair of lips to fit around and drink.
The second mug, closer at hand: that one’s gone cold because John feels ill at the sight, what it means. He feels sick in his stomach and his throat and his chest and he can’t bring himself to take so much as a sip. Even the scent makes him just this side of nauseated.
He can’t stop making tea.
John presses his lips together, firmly, puts the heels of his palms to the hollows of his eyes and breathes in heavily, tries to clear something he can’t name from the palette of his very being and fails, always fails: just smears it around and feels that much more covered, weighted. Feels that much more uneasy; alone.
He should be flattered, he thinks, that Sherlock came to the hospital at all.
The hospital. That’s where it started, really; when this started, their decline: rapid, and somehow still agonisingly slow. His mind was a bit hazy then, just this side of drug-laden, the poison and its antidote still sifting through his veins; he doesn’t remember all of it with clarity.
He knows enough of the after, though. He has enough practice in reading between the lines.
He recalls waking on his own, at first: the sterile burn in his nostrils as he drifted in and out of real consciousness, as awareness eluded him for a spell and he dreamt impossible things, things like Sherlock’s eyes growing wide and his breath coming too fast. He dreams of gravel at his nape and lips on his neck, clinical but pleading; Sherlock’s head on his chest as he gasps; the fabric of John’s shirt damp where Sherlock pressed in, close, listened and measured and cried, no, that’s not it, that’s his mind playing tricks and the lingering effects of that fucking injection; Sherlock and tears, really, no; Christ, how absurd-
John recalls the moments that did make sense, though, recalls the sensation of being distinctly bereft, recalls knowing what broken ribs feel like and recognising that what’s stinging in his chest is something different, remembers being unable to reconcile the fact that someone had pressed, pushed, pumped his heart so desperately as to crack bones and bruise in fingertip-patterns with the fact that no one was seated at his bedside, the fact that no one stepped in-swept in-when he managed to stay awake for more than a few moments in a row. He remembers, before the atmosphere had shifted to accommodate the presence, before his chest expanded of its own accord and loosened, limp with a relief that made no sense but never had to, never would when eyes found his and the billowing of his coat moved the stale air about and hit John’s chest dead in its centre for the motion, the swift pause before John spoke, still a touch dazed, but sharpened now, alert: oddly content. Comforted.
Sherlock.
John remembers stretching, then, remembers reaching; he remembers seeing Sherlock recoil in the barest of instants and feeling dizzy, faint before Sherlock’s fingers wrapped about him, before Sherlock clung like the dying to his arms and shook below noticing, pressed his thumbs tight enough to bruise for all that he looked broken. John had relished it, the passion in that touch because Sherlock’s eyes had been fraying, bloodshot, and his voice had been hoarse and frantic in a way that bore only ill, but John had been willing to believe in the way that Sherlock clutched to him, he’d been willing to take that, had been willing to beg it to overcome the plunge in his gut when Sherlock’s eyes hardened, when Sherlock’s hands loosened, when they were home and Sherlock didn’t speak, stayed away, maintained a distance that had never existed between them in place. Fuck, but they’d been closer in the lab at Barts, the day the met.
John had been willing to ignore the signs, in the moment. He’d been willing to relish touch and presence and heat and the way he knew, then, in a way that transcended intellect, that overtook the simple act of being informed: he knew, in Sherlock’s grasp, that the handprints left in mottled greens and greys on his torso would fit Sherlock’s elegant fingers, the particular width of the splay between knuckles: he knows his heart is beating now because of Sherlock Holmes, and he thinks to himself-because he wants to, because they almost lost this but again, once again they were here, breathing; he thinks to himself that it’s about damn time the literal truth matched the one he’d been carrying, questioning, shying from for all that it boiled in his blood.
Fuck, but John’s fallen harder than he knows how to bounce back from; than he suspects he’ll ever learn. He’s ascended heights in this that burn from his marrow out, that make it hard to breathe and he can’t for the life of him regret it.
He can’t deny that it hurts like hell, though, even if he’d seen it coming, even if he’d turned of his own volition, his own muscles and bones.
The fact that Sherlock hasn’t touched him, hasn’t come close enough to feel his warmth;-it makes him feel far too like the long days, the worst days of the war when the heat made him shiver for the sweat running down his back; the way his stomach lurched for having nothing in it, for all the rations and the water he couldn’t bring himself to take.
The fact that Sherlock barely sees him, hardly allows himself to be seen in John presence, a spectre in their home-the fact that it happens despite no evidence of cases, for all that John knows Greg’s been swamped; the fact that there’s no erratic wail of the violin; no toes in the breadbox; the fact is that it frightens him. It frightens him, and sends a sickness through his chest that churns when he breathes, when he feeds it with oxygen, when his heart beats it around without relent.
It’s normalcy, and it makes John ill in his gut, makes something twist beneath the ribs, breeding a sensation that’s entirely new, that reminds him of spilling intestines and blood when it gushes where it’s not meant to be and the oesophagus curling and crushing around the lungs and the heart alike and squeezing, pressure placed until they burst: a mess. He’s a mess, and they made their own normalcy, didn’t they, a normal that was absolute madness and the fit of their bodies together and the way that Sherlock sucked at his pulse and memorised his heartbeat and he hadn’t even flinched. And Sherlock would know now, wouldn’t he, he’d listen to John’s heart as it squeezes and contorts and he’d know what was wrong in an instant, he’d hold the only cure for it except he doesn’t care, and John’s in a right fucking state, all sentiment, and this is why Sherlock dismissed feeling, this is why it could never last, this is why John should never have given in and could never have held out against it because for all that he wants Sherlock to feel, John’s afraid that he feels more than enough for them both.
It’s all such a mess.
John notices, suddenly, the way that steam from the tea in front of him has stopped rising, ignores the clench in his stomach, the nausea; he shouldn’t be surprised by the hollowness, the way he feels everything but most keenly, it’s the emptiness that bites.
He wants Sherlock looking at him, studying him, counting the beats of his heart in his crazed and careful precision, in fascination like an innocent and a soul older than time all at once; like a man who holds him close because he needs it, needs proximity and exactitude but also needs John, needs to feel him and keep him close and still and present and never-ending, because John deluded himself, all right? Yes. He’d believed they were something, believed they were timeless and rooted and obscene perfection like torn skin stitched together too tight, the only way it can.
John imagined they were something greater. John had thought... John had believed that he’d been special. That he’d broken the rules and changes the course and was someone enough to snag an enigma for now, but also for always.
A part of him, however small but bright, had believed, and had thought about one day learning Sherlock’s heart just as close, just as dear and unfailing, just as frantic and steady and shaking and certain.
John had known the truth and had cast it aside in exchange for a fool’s hope. Aptly called, that.
John knew that this was coming.
John knows they’ve run out of tea. He’s not sure if it matters, it he’s even meant to buy more. Perhaps he’s pretended, perhaps he’s tried to put off the inevitable for just a little bit too long.
It’s been six weeks and five days. Maybe that’s how long it takes, in the end. Six weeks and five days to let the dream die.
John sighs, and listens to his bones creak, his heart pumping languid, mournful, resigned when he stands and shrugs into his jacket; descends the stairs.
Ignores the tightness in his chest as the door slips shut.