Fic for Emily Nicaoidh: Gift
Title: Gift
Recipient: Emily Nicaoidh
Author: scifric
Verse: BBC Sherlock
Characters/Pairings: John/Sherlock
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Some violence, language, angst
Summary: John's world is grey, then it isn't, then it is again, and then finally it's not at all.
He walked down the corridor in Bart’s, cane clicking beside him, and the world was grey.
He’d come here with an old friend not out of hope or any desire for better things, but out of habit: a pure and weary sense of duty. It was all he really had these days, though duty was no longer to Queen and country, no longer to his commanding officers, his battlefield brothers. He had no obligations to wife or kids. He didn’t even have a job. Duty no longer meant what it once did, but the sense of it was as natural to him as breathing, and still there were things that must be done. So duty made sure he did them: made sure he got up in the morning and showered and ate and went to therapy and came home and endured the grey little bedsit with its grey walls and grey furniture and grey sky beyond the windows, and the sight of his grey hair in the mirror and the gleaming grey gun in the desk drawer. Duty had made him smile and chat with Mike, and now had him limping after the man down these half-familiar corridors for a reason he could not quite remember.
He did, often, remember what life was like before the bullet and the airlift and the hospital, before his abrupt ejection from the world he’d fit so well in. He remembered purpose and pride, danger and comradeship. He remembered the colors, hot blue-white and verdant green and a hundred shades of cream-gold-brown. And red, of course. His dreams were always in color.
And maybe it was the memory of the dreams (he’d later speculate) that, there in the dim corridor, shot a sudden spurt of adrenaline into his blood; that made his pulse leap and then steady as it had when, in that other life, he’d first detected the enemy trace that meant the game was on; that heightened his senses and stilled his thoughts to utter awareness and readiness. He forgot about the cane and the constant ache in his shoulder and his leg. They were nearing a door. He thought maybe he recognized it, but that was unimportant.
Mike stopped at the door and went in, glancing over his shoulder as he held it open behind him. If Mike had passed it by, he half-thought in the quiet of his mind, still he would’ve been compelled to it, as though some lodestone within drew him by the steel of his soldier’s instincts.
Inside was a lab, also familiar though much changed, also unimportant. There were long counters covered in paraphernalia, various machinery lining the walls, and a man doing something with a pipette and petri dish. The man… the man was unfamiliar, but not unimportant. John knew that, and he didn’t know how he knew.
His vision sharpened nearly to the point of pain, John looked at him: tall, thin, sharp-angled in a well-tailored suit. A high cheekbone and slanted eyes and surprisingly youthful dark curls caught the fluorescent light. An invisible air of something… danger. His pulse leapt again and he looked away, uncertain of how to interpret these reactions, for surely there was no danger here. Wishful thinking, must be, still acclimating to a civilian existence, his instincts no longer crucial and unquestioned, perhaps no longer even viable. No danger here…
The man was speaking, asking to use Mike’s phone, and, despite John’s reasoning, at his voice something that wasn’t quite a shiver went up John’s back. He fancied he could almost feel his pupils dilate. He most definitely felt the tightening of his abdominals and glutei, and resolved on the spot to be more forthcoming with his therapist. He checked his composure and offered his own mobile. The man rose and as he approached he looked at John with blue-green eyes, and John never got the chance to be a reformed patient, for from that singular hue, over the next days and weeks, gradually seeped and spread all the colors that had gone.
Until…
The sky behind Bart’s was overcast, the stone and metal of buildings and cars washed dull, the people on the street faceless blurs as the world fell with a flapping of dark cloak wings.
She was a nice girl, and she made it easier to pretend that he was fine, all fine. She had quite a lovely smile and blond hair; well, light, anyway. Her eyes were blue, he knew they were, though most times he had to force himself to notice. But with her he felt not so terribly alone. So he thought, we’ve dated for a while and one could say that it’s serious, and now I suppose we ought to get married. That’s what one does, isn’t it? Settle down and grow old with someone. So, dutifully: the fancy restaurant, romantic dinner, some nice words, ring…
A waiter nagging about the wine, and when John looked up he saw a ridiculous false mustache, not a full handsome mustache such as John had-- she liked it anyway, didn’t she?-- and what did John care what someone else might think? Well, turns out the waiter-not-waiter thought John’s was ridiculous, and his own false one was wiped away with the blood, and he was alive, not fallen and dead and buried and mourned at all, alive. Well, fuck that for a bad deal, John couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so angry, so furiously, vibratingly angry, Sherlock had gone and John had moved on as best he could and now he had obligations, he had a steady job and a steady girlfriend whom he was prepared to marry and now here he is back from the dead to look at John with those eyes and speak in that voice and it was all John could do to punch him and focus on the pain in his knuckles instead of smash their lips together and sob his relief and despair into Sherlock’s mouth.
It was quite a close thing, but after all of that John got married, because he’d resolved to do so. For a while everything was fine.
But then it wasn’t.
So now…
When Sherlock gets out of hospital, John is waiting for him. They neither look at each other nor speak. There remains a careful distance of at least two handbreadths between them until there’s tea and a fire and Mrs. Hudson has cottoned on and quietly left, after which there’s no longer any reason not to and besides, here in the warm shadow and golden glow from the hearth, John truly knows, so he takes Sherlock’s hands and looks into his eyes and tells him how sorry he is and just what he feels and how long he’s felt it, and he finds an answer in the multi-hued eyes looking back.
Recipient: Emily Nicaoidh
Author: scifric
Verse: BBC Sherlock
Characters/Pairings: John/Sherlock
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Some violence, language, angst
Summary: John's world is grey, then it isn't, then it is again, and then finally it's not at all.
He walked down the corridor in Bart’s, cane clicking beside him, and the world was grey.
He’d come here with an old friend not out of hope or any desire for better things, but out of habit: a pure and weary sense of duty. It was all he really had these days, though duty was no longer to Queen and country, no longer to his commanding officers, his battlefield brothers. He had no obligations to wife or kids. He didn’t even have a job. Duty no longer meant what it once did, but the sense of it was as natural to him as breathing, and still there were things that must be done. So duty made sure he did them: made sure he got up in the morning and showered and ate and went to therapy and came home and endured the grey little bedsit with its grey walls and grey furniture and grey sky beyond the windows, and the sight of his grey hair in the mirror and the gleaming grey gun in the desk drawer. Duty had made him smile and chat with Mike, and now had him limping after the man down these half-familiar corridors for a reason he could not quite remember.
He did, often, remember what life was like before the bullet and the airlift and the hospital, before his abrupt ejection from the world he’d fit so well in. He remembered purpose and pride, danger and comradeship. He remembered the colors, hot blue-white and verdant green and a hundred shades of cream-gold-brown. And red, of course. His dreams were always in color.
And maybe it was the memory of the dreams (he’d later speculate) that, there in the dim corridor, shot a sudden spurt of adrenaline into his blood; that made his pulse leap and then steady as it had when, in that other life, he’d first detected the enemy trace that meant the game was on; that heightened his senses and stilled his thoughts to utter awareness and readiness. He forgot about the cane and the constant ache in his shoulder and his leg. They were nearing a door. He thought maybe he recognized it, but that was unimportant.
Mike stopped at the door and went in, glancing over his shoulder as he held it open behind him. If Mike had passed it by, he half-thought in the quiet of his mind, still he would’ve been compelled to it, as though some lodestone within drew him by the steel of his soldier’s instincts.
Inside was a lab, also familiar though much changed, also unimportant. There were long counters covered in paraphernalia, various machinery lining the walls, and a man doing something with a pipette and petri dish. The man… the man was unfamiliar, but not unimportant. John knew that, and he didn’t know how he knew.
His vision sharpened nearly to the point of pain, John looked at him: tall, thin, sharp-angled in a well-tailored suit. A high cheekbone and slanted eyes and surprisingly youthful dark curls caught the fluorescent light. An invisible air of something… danger. His pulse leapt again and he looked away, uncertain of how to interpret these reactions, for surely there was no danger here. Wishful thinking, must be, still acclimating to a civilian existence, his instincts no longer crucial and unquestioned, perhaps no longer even viable. No danger here…
The man was speaking, asking to use Mike’s phone, and, despite John’s reasoning, at his voice something that wasn’t quite a shiver went up John’s back. He fancied he could almost feel his pupils dilate. He most definitely felt the tightening of his abdominals and glutei, and resolved on the spot to be more forthcoming with his therapist. He checked his composure and offered his own mobile. The man rose and as he approached he looked at John with blue-green eyes, and John never got the chance to be a reformed patient, for from that singular hue, over the next days and weeks, gradually seeped and spread all the colors that had gone.
Until…
The sky behind Bart’s was overcast, the stone and metal of buildings and cars washed dull, the people on the street faceless blurs as the world fell with a flapping of dark cloak wings.
She was a nice girl, and she made it easier to pretend that he was fine, all fine. She had quite a lovely smile and blond hair; well, light, anyway. Her eyes were blue, he knew they were, though most times he had to force himself to notice. But with her he felt not so terribly alone. So he thought, we’ve dated for a while and one could say that it’s serious, and now I suppose we ought to get married. That’s what one does, isn’t it? Settle down and grow old with someone. So, dutifully: the fancy restaurant, romantic dinner, some nice words, ring…
A waiter nagging about the wine, and when John looked up he saw a ridiculous false mustache, not a full handsome mustache such as John had-- she liked it anyway, didn’t she?-- and what did John care what someone else might think? Well, turns out the waiter-not-waiter thought John’s was ridiculous, and his own false one was wiped away with the blood, and he was alive, not fallen and dead and buried and mourned at all, alive. Well, fuck that for a bad deal, John couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so angry, so furiously, vibratingly angry, Sherlock had gone and John had moved on as best he could and now he had obligations, he had a steady job and a steady girlfriend whom he was prepared to marry and now here he is back from the dead to look at John with those eyes and speak in that voice and it was all John could do to punch him and focus on the pain in his knuckles instead of smash their lips together and sob his relief and despair into Sherlock’s mouth.
It was quite a close thing, but after all of that John got married, because he’d resolved to do so. For a while everything was fine.
But then it wasn’t.
So now…
When Sherlock gets out of hospital, John is waiting for him. They neither look at each other nor speak. There remains a careful distance of at least two handbreadths between them until there’s tea and a fire and Mrs. Hudson has cottoned on and quietly left, after which there’s no longer any reason not to and besides, here in the warm shadow and golden glow from the hearth, John truly knows, so he takes Sherlock’s hands and looks into his eyes and tells him how sorry he is and just what he feels and how long he’s felt it, and he finds an answer in the multi-hued eyes looking back.