Fic: Another Life to Live Chapter 58
Title:Another Life to Live
Rating: R
Warnings: Child abuse, language
Summary: It was almost as if he had died, to look into the eyes of a three year old Sherlock and know that they no longer shared a past, that the memories lived on only in himself. But what if this time could be better? What if this time he could protect him?
The dishes were taken and returned half filled with food with a look from John that meant something had gone wrong. It could have been anything, a smell, the flick of a hand, a word in a book, a color or experiment that maybe, for whatever reason, set him off. It was not Johns fault. Just as likely to have happened at the dinner table.
John would not see it that way.
His shoulders were slumped with the weight of the world and dark with tears that never had the chance to well but agonized themselves into existence through frustration and barely restrained bouts of panic.
Another day and Mycroft would have swept the boy into his arms and plied him with kisses he would not protest and tell him that tomorrow would be better. But this was not another day. This was war, and this broken defeat was his immanent victory.
War had never seemed so grotesque to him before.
Mycroft clattered the dishes onto the ground and dropped to a knee; tumbling his hand onto John’s weary head and messing his blond hair in a way he hoped would earn annoyance but only won belated despair.
Mycroft slipped his hand behind John’s shoulder blades and pulled him close, just for a second. Releasing before John could protest. Before Sherlock hidden deep within the bowels of their fort could note that anything was amiss. They had time before that happened. Sherlock would be lost to himself now, not in the memories perhaps but in the disappointment on Johns face, the pain he perceived as his fault echoing and amplifying in the two of them until words would seem too much of an effort to bare.
“Why don’t you two sleep in there tonight?” Mycroft dropped his forehead against Johns.
Johns weary eyes blinked and he managed to nod, his hair brushing Mycroft’s face.
Mycroft smiled, even though he did not feel inclined in the least to do so. This was no victory.
“Good. I will bring you snacks and movies and books and it will be a proper sleepover. I dare say you already have the pillows.”
John cracked a smile.
He stood and let his hand linger on the boys shoulder for a moment before pushing him back towards the fort. Best not to push his luck. This tenuous thread of happiness was hard won. He could only hope that it would catch.
“Go on, back to your fortress. I will come back with everything that will completely ruin my diet.”
He gave them another hour before returning, letting the sun fall and whither and night drop around them and gleam in through the half obscured windows. The flat was a hushed quiet of a library as he entered the living room laden down with a bags of goodies, the whispered voices of two children muffled by layers of blankets and pillows and the hushed quality of their own voices.
The whispers stopped and Mycroft had the feeling of eyes turning to him. The soft sound of footsteps against cloth and carpet shuffled closer and John emerged from the main passage way of folded cotton and silk. It had been enlarged since the last time he had seen it. John did not even have to duck his head to step into the open air of the living room with a stack of papers bundled in his arms.
John eyed the bags warily, sizing up their weight, the smells, and the protruding shapes. Whatever he deduced he found it acceptable, even daring the smallest hint of affection as his eyes flicked up to Mycroft’s face.
“I organized them.” John held out the papers that had been held tight against his chest and Mycroft could see the post-it notes of bright pink detailing each folder and page placement tacked happily to each page in John’s small neat handwriting.
None with a single blob of blue ink.
The release of the hostages.
Mycroft settled the bags on the floor and took the offered papers for the gift they were.
John shuffled his feet and stared down at his trailers, scuffing the rubber on the floor. Behind him grey blue eyes peered out of the darkness of their fort. John did not look up until Sherlock had pressed himself against his back and wrapped his arms around John’s stomach, still the watcher.
John started but did not shake the hands loose, but rather seemed to be grounded by them.
Although the flush never left his cheeks.
“We were wondering-” John started and then stopped to chew on his lip. “You can come inside if you want. It’s safe. We moved things around so that-”
And that seemed to be too much information, too much of a giveaway and John looked down at his feet again.
And John was thinking of how he hated Mycroft and loved him all at once, because that is what you do with people whom you love. He was thinking about their bedroom and the feet which stretched between where they would have to lay at night and how it seemed to stretch for miles. He was thinking about nightmares being fought all alone and growing up and how big boys had to act. He was thinking about Sherlock holding on to him without saying a word.
Brown eyes closed in though and then rose, resting stolidly on his face as he reached a hand up to cover one of Sherlock’s twined over his own stomach.
“You are invited to our sleepover.” He glanced back at the fort and for a moment his eyes caught on Sherlock and the tightness in his shoulders loosened and when he turned back his eyes were gleaming. “We have incorporated the TV into the structure of the fort.” His laughter explaining something of a story behind the remark, something that make Sherlock beam and burry his face against the back of Johns neck in silent amusement.
Johns hand tightened around Sherlock’s and when he spoke next it was not the voice of the defeated or of a little boy who only wanted everyone to be alright. It was the benevolence of someone who has everything they could ever want in the world. “You can pick the movie if you like.”
Hours later found Mycroft in the open space of the fort center, like a little theater, the roof rising in folds of gold to the top of the screen and pillows laid out on the floor like a Persian palace. Decadence was strewn around them in empty Chinese take-out boxes and bags of candies. Changes that had taken place in the fort before and after his arrival with the bags, accommodations made for his adult size although there was no doubt that they had enjoyed watching him crawl through on his hands and knees, face mashing into a covered chair leg to get inside.
He was leaning against what may have at one point been a bureau but was now only the place where their flag had been placed so it could be admired from the inside like a war trophy. If he turned to look over his right shoulder he would find a blue handprint caught in an eternal wave.
His boys had begun the night at a distance from him but then as food was stolen from foreign containers they came closer, insinuating themselves into his arms the way they had when they were barely more than babies.
But they were not his babies anymore, not even close, and they ventured away again when the movies caught their attention and drew them closer to the screen like moths to the flame, eyes wide and soaking up each moment as if the actions on the screen where their own. And that is where they lay now in the striped shadowed darkness, two bodies tangled on heaps and mounds of pillows where they had collapsed, blankets thrown and tucked over sprawled limbs and brought close to cheeks and tangled hopelessly.
In the darkness Mycroft sat and watched them sleep. He watched the rise and fall of their chests and counted them in the back of his mind like an endless lullaby.
Today it had been John who was the protector, the king in his castle breaking against Mycroft impenetrable forces. It had been John fighting to keep them together.
But tonight it was Sherlock.
John never seemed so very small as he did in sleep, where his personality could not raise him to the size of any man or imagined foe. He was almost swallowed by the swathe of material, his arms tucked tight against his chest and his face pressed into Sherlock’s chest.
The taller boy, and from this point on he would always be the taller of the two, seemed more buoyant somehow, floating on top of the pillows rather than engulfed by them with John. His face was clear although in shadow, more peaceful in sleep than he ever managed in manic wakefulness.
It may have been nothing more than a nearly sleeping body gravitating towards warmth or the happenstance of thrown out limbs and an oddly shaped sleeping surface but in the last moments before falling asleep Sherlock tucked John into his arms and then succumbed.
That’s how they lay now hours later, although closer somehow in the convening hours. With John tucked against Sherlock’s chest and in the circle of his arms so that Sherlock rested his chin on blond hair and his arm tightening around the smaller boy whenever John let out more than a whisper of breath in his sleep.
They looked…perfect. The way people never do but in fairy tales and stories, in paintings that stand not for reality, but for the idea of love.
And that was why he had to separate them. Why this has to end.
Because one day, if they are very lucky, they will end up exactly the way they are now.
John is sweaty and bruised and dirtied. He toes off his mud slicked shoes at the door and carries the rest of his gear through the flat like a sacrifice through an unseen crowd of saved villagers who watch his bent back with awe and admiration.
His football things are tumbled to the ground as he stumbles through the door and falls to his knees and then, in a final surge of life, falls onto his face, arms spread out at his sides like angels wings.
“The game was fun then?” The cool voice washes over him like water. Electrified water.
“Went alright.” John alters his sprawl and watches Sherlock close the book he had been balancing on his knees. The book which had been so adored a minute before falls to the bed abandoned as Sherlock sits on the floor beside him.
Grey eyes peer out of a pale face and past shocking black hair; they examine him ruthlessly, reading every secret. Most people flinch under ‘the gaze’. John smiles as fingers fall directly on the small purpling bruise hidden beneath his shirt sleeve. There is no way he could have known-
“Lestrade wishes you would come back.”
John squirms as Sherlock presses on the bruise, testing it the way he always test new things about John. It shifts Sherlock’s hand enough so that his fingers are on unblemished and painless flesh. It is a small bruise. He moves on to the next injury, the shin kick to his right leg. It had been worth it. John moves his leg obligingly as Sherlock pushes down his sock and examines the mark, fingers ghosting over it. John had stopped what would have been the winning goal for the other team.
“Lestrade is a grown man. He can wait until Sunday dinners to see me or take us to New Scotland Yard.”
“Our friends miss you. It was more fun when you played with us.”
“Your friends. They nod when you express the sentiment. Hardly the same thing.”
His fingers have found the last of the new injuries and they make a circuit of old wounds, quick and familiar.
The paper cut from yesterday.
The slight acid burn (Grand-mere had had a fit) on the soft skin of his inner arm.
The bruise on his hip from nearly two months ago from Hopkido and it had not even hurt at the time because he had been laughing so hard.
Sherlock’s fingers splay there, over his clothed, bruised hip. It is the oldest wound. The most familiar. Natural to leave his hand there.
John turns on his back and pillows his hands under his head. Sherlock’s steel grey eyes had dropped in thought but now they rose to meet Johns gaze.
“Fine. I miss having you there. And they would be your friends if you let them.”
The conversation is an old one, an argument like a worn sleep shirt, you slip it on and wear it without ever seeing the acid burns and singe marks. Sherlock bats away the words he does not require and latches onto what John knows he locks away in his mind as jealous as a dragon with his treasure.
It is not his imagination and it is not the ‘product of too many adventure novels’.
When John says ‘I miss you’ calculating grey eyes that make strangers squirm and once, a grown man cry, turn liquid electric blue.
“I am perfectly happy with what friends I do have but if I ever find myself in need of a group of typical, hormonal pre-teens I will keep that in mind.”
Johns frown is perfunctory at best, because yes, they are friends, but they may be a wee bit hormonal. They are loud and hyper and a mess of fumbling uncoordinated limbs and all enjoying growth sprits that he personally was not.
Sherlock ignores his frown of disapproval utterly and flops himself on the floor next to John and looks up at the colorful plastic stars.
“I don’t see how you can read those books of romanticism and friends dying for one another and staying together against insurmountable odds and after traumatizing events that would obviously rip them apart, and then gel those ideals with the boys on your football team.”
John knows Sherlock is watching him. He can feel his laser gaze. So he closes his eyes and lets the smile tug at his lips.
“Not every friendship has to be worthy of fairytales. That’s why the relationships in books get books. Because they are something rare and special.” He waits, letting the words twist and settle over them.
He turns his head as the words gain meaning with silence, his smile is easy and light and half twisted in dismissive laughter on the brink of existence.
Sherlock’s face is calm but his eyes are black wrapped in a razors edge of blue and hungry.
John is on his side and pushing himself up onto an elbow to peer down at Sherlock, free hand hovering over the clothed circle settled over Sherlock’s heart, delicately touching the ring with a fleeting unconscious gesture.
“What happened?”
Sherlock’s lips thin, they are the only hint that he is debating the words he could loose, that he is not ignoring the question but reliving an event with the perfect clarity of a too observant mind.
John presses his hand over the outline of the ring, not forcing it into the bone of Sherlock’s chest but cupping it in the yielding flesh of his open palm.
Blue rimmed eyes flicker back from their thousand mile gaze and John can feel the words stuck in Sherlock’s throat, the heart pounding too quickly beneath his fingertips and locked in his own ribcage, debating the weakness of telling, of needing help.
No matter how old they get this has never changed.
Some moments don’t need words.
John moves silent and lightning fast just like he was taught. John has always been good with fast and silent.
He dumps his weight onto Sherlock and can feel the ‘oof’ of wind knocked from his chest. He threads his arms around his back and they flip, rolling across the floor and Sherlock’s grin is as lightning fast as John’s pounce and they are tussling, all muted laughter and knocking hands and elbows until John slams into the wood panel of one of their beds and pins Sherlock’s wrists on either side of his head.
John’s skin is roughened in places with dirt and he smells like crushed grass from practice but he knows Sherlock doesn’t mind.
The melancholy is chased from Sherlock’s lips as they repress all but the hint of a smile. They are too close together to fit a hand between them but John can feel the heart against his chest even if he can’t really and it is more of a feeling in his mind but words can’t explain that and he doesn’t ever try to.
John drops his forehead to Sherlock’s and they thump together pleasantly and Sherlock smells like tea and lightning and shampoo and he keeps his eyes open but he is too close to see, black and blue and white and John smiles.
“You are an idiot.” He says it fondly, the words echo through time, recalling with three words a lifetime. The past and present mingle in the air and they are so close that John can feel his words brushing across Sherlock’s skin.
John closes his eyes. He is willing his thoughts into Sherlock’s brain. He wants to copy what he knows as fact into the other boy by sheer force of will and physical proximity. He wants him to know all of the things that don’t have words, he wants to exist in every corner of his mind and destroy the things that would hurt him, words and dreams alike.
He wants Sherlock to believe him, to know his convictions so doubtlessly that it lights up Sherlock’s mind the way it does John’s heart.
But he doesn’t.
Sometimes John can read Sherlock’s mind but Sherlock can’t read his.
It is never in silly moments. When it is inconsequential Sherlock will look at him and smirk at the rude joke John did not tell, will agree out loud with plans he never voiced.
Right now, in a moment when it matters, Sherlock is watching his with open eyes that need and he can’t deduce John at all.
“I can believe in the friendships in my novels, especially when they die for one another and surmount incredible odds just to stay together. I have you.”
John butts his nose into Sherlock’s fondly. He releases Sherlock’s pinned wrists and begins to pull away to check that the desperation has really left Sherlock’s eyes when arms wrap around his chest and he falls onto his side and is wrapped in limbs and drowning in dark hair and pale skin. His cheek where it presses against Sherlock feels like it has a thousand times the nerve endings that it should, like it is more alive than the rest of his body combined right until the moment Sherlock growls into his ear.
“You are never allowed to die. Not for me. I wouldn’t- ”
And then John knows what happened. Not the fellows at the lab being cruel or the razors edge of doubt suddenly cutting.
A waking nightmare. Like a flash. Like you can age a lifetime in a heartbeat.
John knows what it is when Sherlock turns pale and pushes away his dinner plate with careful, trembling fingers. When suddenly, holding Johns hand is not enough.
John knows because he gets them too. Because sometimes he finds himself scrambling at the doors of cabinets, ducking to crawl inside before he remembers that he is home and home is safe. Some times are worse than others and it is harder to wake up, if wake-up is really the word. Sometimes he doesn’t know that he is safe until he finds himself gasping for breath in the dark and pressed between old coats and he has pushed Sherlock into the back of the closet where it is safe and he is holding on so tight that no one could ever take him away, not that anyone had ever tried.
In books John has read it sounds like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder but that doesn’t make sense because nothing bad had ever happened to them. Mycroft would never let that happen.
So John stays where he is on the floor and holds Sherlock close, and more importantly, lets himself be held.
John can dispute insults and solve problems and make bad people leave them alone, but there is nothing he can do to fight the things in Sherlock’s mind. Just like Sherlock can’t save him.
But without having to look John knows that the hunger in Sherlock’s eyes is fading, that it is being mollified after what could have started hours ago while John was away.
He knows because he can read Sherlock the way Sherlock can read the rest of the world.
He knows because when the situation is reversed and all he can think is not safe, waking up and having Sherlock whole and unbroken and safe in his arms is the only thing in the world that makes sense.
Time passes and Sherlock’s arms loosen and John knows that the worst has passed. He has counted his heartbeats, spent the minutes with his mind carefully blank of anything but the slowing pulse of Sherlock’s heart.
Sherlock lets go first, he cuddles him very, very close, and it is like they are little children again, tucked beneath their blankets and holding on to each other like they would never let go. Tight enough to feel…safe. Sherlock’s mouth moves against his temple in a word John cannot hear and then the next moment he is sitting up and John is lying on the floor alone watching Sherlock rubbing his nose with the back of his hand and staring at the place where Johns mud has transferred to his clean trousers.
Sometimes John wishes they could go back to being little children again.
John laboriously levers himself to his feet. He needs to change his clothes before Nana catches him getting dirt on everything and Sherlock will be quiet for a few minutes now, a mix between a shyness that never occurred to them as children and letting his thoughts shift into place and waiting for reality to reassert itself.
Sherlock is still studying the dirt stain on his leg, his fingers tracing the shape of it with more intensity than it merits when John picks up his change of clothes and turns to the bathroom. He pauses.
“Would you tell me, if I asked?”
Sherlock takes a deep breath and John expects the words to be strangled the way they normally are. They don’t talk about it. Talking makes it real. It makes the horror linger.
Johns back is turned when Sherlock whispers.
“-a pool”
John’s heart skips a beat and races to catch up, blood flushes his neck and cheeks and ears and he can hear his pulse like a war drum slamming. He pretends not to hear, the words were mumbled, Sherlock won’t repeat it. It cost him too much. He takes a step, another, and he is in the hallway, racing towards the bathroom and locking it behind him as if he is locking out a physical threat and sinks to the cool tile floor, dropping his things to the ground and watching his hands tremble.
John has never been so grateful to be Sherlock’s blind spot.
A/N: Thank you all for the support and your words! This story continues because of you. <3
Rating: R
Warnings: Child abuse, language
Summary: It was almost as if he had died, to look into the eyes of a three year old Sherlock and know that they no longer shared a past, that the memories lived on only in himself. But what if this time could be better? What if this time he could protect him?
The dishes were taken and returned half filled with food with a look from John that meant something had gone wrong. It could have been anything, a smell, the flick of a hand, a word in a book, a color or experiment that maybe, for whatever reason, set him off. It was not Johns fault. Just as likely to have happened at the dinner table.
John would not see it that way.
His shoulders were slumped with the weight of the world and dark with tears that never had the chance to well but agonized themselves into existence through frustration and barely restrained bouts of panic.
Another day and Mycroft would have swept the boy into his arms and plied him with kisses he would not protest and tell him that tomorrow would be better. But this was not another day. This was war, and this broken defeat was his immanent victory.
War had never seemed so grotesque to him before.
Mycroft clattered the dishes onto the ground and dropped to a knee; tumbling his hand onto John’s weary head and messing his blond hair in a way he hoped would earn annoyance but only won belated despair.
Mycroft slipped his hand behind John’s shoulder blades and pulled him close, just for a second. Releasing before John could protest. Before Sherlock hidden deep within the bowels of their fort could note that anything was amiss. They had time before that happened. Sherlock would be lost to himself now, not in the memories perhaps but in the disappointment on Johns face, the pain he perceived as his fault echoing and amplifying in the two of them until words would seem too much of an effort to bare.
“Why don’t you two sleep in there tonight?” Mycroft dropped his forehead against Johns.
Johns weary eyes blinked and he managed to nod, his hair brushing Mycroft’s face.
Mycroft smiled, even though he did not feel inclined in the least to do so. This was no victory.
“Good. I will bring you snacks and movies and books and it will be a proper sleepover. I dare say you already have the pillows.”
John cracked a smile.
He stood and let his hand linger on the boys shoulder for a moment before pushing him back towards the fort. Best not to push his luck. This tenuous thread of happiness was hard won. He could only hope that it would catch.
“Go on, back to your fortress. I will come back with everything that will completely ruin my diet.”
He gave them another hour before returning, letting the sun fall and whither and night drop around them and gleam in through the half obscured windows. The flat was a hushed quiet of a library as he entered the living room laden down with a bags of goodies, the whispered voices of two children muffled by layers of blankets and pillows and the hushed quality of their own voices.
The whispers stopped and Mycroft had the feeling of eyes turning to him. The soft sound of footsteps against cloth and carpet shuffled closer and John emerged from the main passage way of folded cotton and silk. It had been enlarged since the last time he had seen it. John did not even have to duck his head to step into the open air of the living room with a stack of papers bundled in his arms.
John eyed the bags warily, sizing up their weight, the smells, and the protruding shapes. Whatever he deduced he found it acceptable, even daring the smallest hint of affection as his eyes flicked up to Mycroft’s face.
“I organized them.” John held out the papers that had been held tight against his chest and Mycroft could see the post-it notes of bright pink detailing each folder and page placement tacked happily to each page in John’s small neat handwriting.
None with a single blob of blue ink.
The release of the hostages.
Mycroft settled the bags on the floor and took the offered papers for the gift they were.
John shuffled his feet and stared down at his trailers, scuffing the rubber on the floor. Behind him grey blue eyes peered out of the darkness of their fort. John did not look up until Sherlock had pressed himself against his back and wrapped his arms around John’s stomach, still the watcher.
John started but did not shake the hands loose, but rather seemed to be grounded by them.
Although the flush never left his cheeks.
“We were wondering-” John started and then stopped to chew on his lip. “You can come inside if you want. It’s safe. We moved things around so that-”
And that seemed to be too much information, too much of a giveaway and John looked down at his feet again.
And John was thinking of how he hated Mycroft and loved him all at once, because that is what you do with people whom you love. He was thinking about their bedroom and the feet which stretched between where they would have to lay at night and how it seemed to stretch for miles. He was thinking about nightmares being fought all alone and growing up and how big boys had to act. He was thinking about Sherlock holding on to him without saying a word.
Brown eyes closed in though and then rose, resting stolidly on his face as he reached a hand up to cover one of Sherlock’s twined over his own stomach.
“You are invited to our sleepover.” He glanced back at the fort and for a moment his eyes caught on Sherlock and the tightness in his shoulders loosened and when he turned back his eyes were gleaming. “We have incorporated the TV into the structure of the fort.” His laughter explaining something of a story behind the remark, something that make Sherlock beam and burry his face against the back of Johns neck in silent amusement.
Johns hand tightened around Sherlock’s and when he spoke next it was not the voice of the defeated or of a little boy who only wanted everyone to be alright. It was the benevolence of someone who has everything they could ever want in the world. “You can pick the movie if you like.”
Hours later found Mycroft in the open space of the fort center, like a little theater, the roof rising in folds of gold to the top of the screen and pillows laid out on the floor like a Persian palace. Decadence was strewn around them in empty Chinese take-out boxes and bags of candies. Changes that had taken place in the fort before and after his arrival with the bags, accommodations made for his adult size although there was no doubt that they had enjoyed watching him crawl through on his hands and knees, face mashing into a covered chair leg to get inside.
He was leaning against what may have at one point been a bureau but was now only the place where their flag had been placed so it could be admired from the inside like a war trophy. If he turned to look over his right shoulder he would find a blue handprint caught in an eternal wave.
His boys had begun the night at a distance from him but then as food was stolen from foreign containers they came closer, insinuating themselves into his arms the way they had when they were barely more than babies.
But they were not his babies anymore, not even close, and they ventured away again when the movies caught their attention and drew them closer to the screen like moths to the flame, eyes wide and soaking up each moment as if the actions on the screen where their own. And that is where they lay now in the striped shadowed darkness, two bodies tangled on heaps and mounds of pillows where they had collapsed, blankets thrown and tucked over sprawled limbs and brought close to cheeks and tangled hopelessly.
In the darkness Mycroft sat and watched them sleep. He watched the rise and fall of their chests and counted them in the back of his mind like an endless lullaby.
Today it had been John who was the protector, the king in his castle breaking against Mycroft impenetrable forces. It had been John fighting to keep them together.
But tonight it was Sherlock.
John never seemed so very small as he did in sleep, where his personality could not raise him to the size of any man or imagined foe. He was almost swallowed by the swathe of material, his arms tucked tight against his chest and his face pressed into Sherlock’s chest.
The taller boy, and from this point on he would always be the taller of the two, seemed more buoyant somehow, floating on top of the pillows rather than engulfed by them with John. His face was clear although in shadow, more peaceful in sleep than he ever managed in manic wakefulness.
It may have been nothing more than a nearly sleeping body gravitating towards warmth or the happenstance of thrown out limbs and an oddly shaped sleeping surface but in the last moments before falling asleep Sherlock tucked John into his arms and then succumbed.
That’s how they lay now hours later, although closer somehow in the convening hours. With John tucked against Sherlock’s chest and in the circle of his arms so that Sherlock rested his chin on blond hair and his arm tightening around the smaller boy whenever John let out more than a whisper of breath in his sleep.
They looked…perfect. The way people never do but in fairy tales and stories, in paintings that stand not for reality, but for the idea of love.
And that was why he had to separate them. Why this has to end.
Because one day, if they are very lucky, they will end up exactly the way they are now.
John is sweaty and bruised and dirtied. He toes off his mud slicked shoes at the door and carries the rest of his gear through the flat like a sacrifice through an unseen crowd of saved villagers who watch his bent back with awe and admiration.
His football things are tumbled to the ground as he stumbles through the door and falls to his knees and then, in a final surge of life, falls onto his face, arms spread out at his sides like angels wings.
“The game was fun then?” The cool voice washes over him like water. Electrified water.
“Went alright.” John alters his sprawl and watches Sherlock close the book he had been balancing on his knees. The book which had been so adored a minute before falls to the bed abandoned as Sherlock sits on the floor beside him.
Grey eyes peer out of a pale face and past shocking black hair; they examine him ruthlessly, reading every secret. Most people flinch under ‘the gaze’. John smiles as fingers fall directly on the small purpling bruise hidden beneath his shirt sleeve. There is no way he could have known-
“Lestrade wishes you would come back.”
John squirms as Sherlock presses on the bruise, testing it the way he always test new things about John. It shifts Sherlock’s hand enough so that his fingers are on unblemished and painless flesh. It is a small bruise. He moves on to the next injury, the shin kick to his right leg. It had been worth it. John moves his leg obligingly as Sherlock pushes down his sock and examines the mark, fingers ghosting over it. John had stopped what would have been the winning goal for the other team.
“Lestrade is a grown man. He can wait until Sunday dinners to see me or take us to New Scotland Yard.”
“Our friends miss you. It was more fun when you played with us.”
“Your friends. They nod when you express the sentiment. Hardly the same thing.”
His fingers have found the last of the new injuries and they make a circuit of old wounds, quick and familiar.
The paper cut from yesterday.
The slight acid burn (Grand-mere had had a fit) on the soft skin of his inner arm.
The bruise on his hip from nearly two months ago from Hopkido and it had not even hurt at the time because he had been laughing so hard.
Sherlock’s fingers splay there, over his clothed, bruised hip. It is the oldest wound. The most familiar. Natural to leave his hand there.
John turns on his back and pillows his hands under his head. Sherlock’s steel grey eyes had dropped in thought but now they rose to meet Johns gaze.
“Fine. I miss having you there. And they would be your friends if you let them.”
The conversation is an old one, an argument like a worn sleep shirt, you slip it on and wear it without ever seeing the acid burns and singe marks. Sherlock bats away the words he does not require and latches onto what John knows he locks away in his mind as jealous as a dragon with his treasure.
It is not his imagination and it is not the ‘product of too many adventure novels’.
When John says ‘I miss you’ calculating grey eyes that make strangers squirm and once, a grown man cry, turn liquid electric blue.
“I am perfectly happy with what friends I do have but if I ever find myself in need of a group of typical, hormonal pre-teens I will keep that in mind.”
Johns frown is perfunctory at best, because yes, they are friends, but they may be a wee bit hormonal. They are loud and hyper and a mess of fumbling uncoordinated limbs and all enjoying growth sprits that he personally was not.
Sherlock ignores his frown of disapproval utterly and flops himself on the floor next to John and looks up at the colorful plastic stars.
“I don’t see how you can read those books of romanticism and friends dying for one another and staying together against insurmountable odds and after traumatizing events that would obviously rip them apart, and then gel those ideals with the boys on your football team.”
John knows Sherlock is watching him. He can feel his laser gaze. So he closes his eyes and lets the smile tug at his lips.
“Not every friendship has to be worthy of fairytales. That’s why the relationships in books get books. Because they are something rare and special.” He waits, letting the words twist and settle over them.
He turns his head as the words gain meaning with silence, his smile is easy and light and half twisted in dismissive laughter on the brink of existence.
Sherlock’s face is calm but his eyes are black wrapped in a razors edge of blue and hungry.
John is on his side and pushing himself up onto an elbow to peer down at Sherlock, free hand hovering over the clothed circle settled over Sherlock’s heart, delicately touching the ring with a fleeting unconscious gesture.
“What happened?”
Sherlock’s lips thin, they are the only hint that he is debating the words he could loose, that he is not ignoring the question but reliving an event with the perfect clarity of a too observant mind.
John presses his hand over the outline of the ring, not forcing it into the bone of Sherlock’s chest but cupping it in the yielding flesh of his open palm.
Blue rimmed eyes flicker back from their thousand mile gaze and John can feel the words stuck in Sherlock’s throat, the heart pounding too quickly beneath his fingertips and locked in his own ribcage, debating the weakness of telling, of needing help.
No matter how old they get this has never changed.
Some moments don’t need words.
John moves silent and lightning fast just like he was taught. John has always been good with fast and silent.
He dumps his weight onto Sherlock and can feel the ‘oof’ of wind knocked from his chest. He threads his arms around his back and they flip, rolling across the floor and Sherlock’s grin is as lightning fast as John’s pounce and they are tussling, all muted laughter and knocking hands and elbows until John slams into the wood panel of one of their beds and pins Sherlock’s wrists on either side of his head.
John’s skin is roughened in places with dirt and he smells like crushed grass from practice but he knows Sherlock doesn’t mind.
The melancholy is chased from Sherlock’s lips as they repress all but the hint of a smile. They are too close together to fit a hand between them but John can feel the heart against his chest even if he can’t really and it is more of a feeling in his mind but words can’t explain that and he doesn’t ever try to.
John drops his forehead to Sherlock’s and they thump together pleasantly and Sherlock smells like tea and lightning and shampoo and he keeps his eyes open but he is too close to see, black and blue and white and John smiles.
“You are an idiot.” He says it fondly, the words echo through time, recalling with three words a lifetime. The past and present mingle in the air and they are so close that John can feel his words brushing across Sherlock’s skin.
John closes his eyes. He is willing his thoughts into Sherlock’s brain. He wants to copy what he knows as fact into the other boy by sheer force of will and physical proximity. He wants him to know all of the things that don’t have words, he wants to exist in every corner of his mind and destroy the things that would hurt him, words and dreams alike.
He wants Sherlock to believe him, to know his convictions so doubtlessly that it lights up Sherlock’s mind the way it does John’s heart.
But he doesn’t.
Sometimes John can read Sherlock’s mind but Sherlock can’t read his.
It is never in silly moments. When it is inconsequential Sherlock will look at him and smirk at the rude joke John did not tell, will agree out loud with plans he never voiced.
Right now, in a moment when it matters, Sherlock is watching his with open eyes that need and he can’t deduce John at all.
“I can believe in the friendships in my novels, especially when they die for one another and surmount incredible odds just to stay together. I have you.”
John butts his nose into Sherlock’s fondly. He releases Sherlock’s pinned wrists and begins to pull away to check that the desperation has really left Sherlock’s eyes when arms wrap around his chest and he falls onto his side and is wrapped in limbs and drowning in dark hair and pale skin. His cheek where it presses against Sherlock feels like it has a thousand times the nerve endings that it should, like it is more alive than the rest of his body combined right until the moment Sherlock growls into his ear.
“You are never allowed to die. Not for me. I wouldn’t- ”
And then John knows what happened. Not the fellows at the lab being cruel or the razors edge of doubt suddenly cutting.
A waking nightmare. Like a flash. Like you can age a lifetime in a heartbeat.
John knows what it is when Sherlock turns pale and pushes away his dinner plate with careful, trembling fingers. When suddenly, holding Johns hand is not enough.
John knows because he gets them too. Because sometimes he finds himself scrambling at the doors of cabinets, ducking to crawl inside before he remembers that he is home and home is safe. Some times are worse than others and it is harder to wake up, if wake-up is really the word. Sometimes he doesn’t know that he is safe until he finds himself gasping for breath in the dark and pressed between old coats and he has pushed Sherlock into the back of the closet where it is safe and he is holding on so tight that no one could ever take him away, not that anyone had ever tried.
In books John has read it sounds like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder but that doesn’t make sense because nothing bad had ever happened to them. Mycroft would never let that happen.
So John stays where he is on the floor and holds Sherlock close, and more importantly, lets himself be held.
John can dispute insults and solve problems and make bad people leave them alone, but there is nothing he can do to fight the things in Sherlock’s mind. Just like Sherlock can’t save him.
But without having to look John knows that the hunger in Sherlock’s eyes is fading, that it is being mollified after what could have started hours ago while John was away.
He knows because he can read Sherlock the way Sherlock can read the rest of the world.
He knows because when the situation is reversed and all he can think is not safe, waking up and having Sherlock whole and unbroken and safe in his arms is the only thing in the world that makes sense.
Time passes and Sherlock’s arms loosen and John knows that the worst has passed. He has counted his heartbeats, spent the minutes with his mind carefully blank of anything but the slowing pulse of Sherlock’s heart.
Sherlock lets go first, he cuddles him very, very close, and it is like they are little children again, tucked beneath their blankets and holding on to each other like they would never let go. Tight enough to feel…safe. Sherlock’s mouth moves against his temple in a word John cannot hear and then the next moment he is sitting up and John is lying on the floor alone watching Sherlock rubbing his nose with the back of his hand and staring at the place where Johns mud has transferred to his clean trousers.
Sometimes John wishes they could go back to being little children again.
John laboriously levers himself to his feet. He needs to change his clothes before Nana catches him getting dirt on everything and Sherlock will be quiet for a few minutes now, a mix between a shyness that never occurred to them as children and letting his thoughts shift into place and waiting for reality to reassert itself.
Sherlock is still studying the dirt stain on his leg, his fingers tracing the shape of it with more intensity than it merits when John picks up his change of clothes and turns to the bathroom. He pauses.
“Would you tell me, if I asked?”
Sherlock takes a deep breath and John expects the words to be strangled the way they normally are. They don’t talk about it. Talking makes it real. It makes the horror linger.
Johns back is turned when Sherlock whispers.
“-a pool”
John’s heart skips a beat and races to catch up, blood flushes his neck and cheeks and ears and he can hear his pulse like a war drum slamming. He pretends not to hear, the words were mumbled, Sherlock won’t repeat it. It cost him too much. He takes a step, another, and he is in the hallway, racing towards the bathroom and locking it behind him as if he is locking out a physical threat and sinks to the cool tile floor, dropping his things to the ground and watching his hands tremble.
John has never been so grateful to be Sherlock’s blind spot.
A/N: Thank you all for the support and your words! This story continues because of you. <3