Chapter Text
Sherlock tries to relax into the thin pillow and closes his eyes, the better to focus on what his other senses are telling him. The mattress is hard and just as thin as the pillow, the sheet faintly scratchy. Cigarette smoke still discernible in the air, along with the faint scents of bodies, food, laundry powder, hints of incense. But mostly there is the feeling of John, lying on the thin mattress beside him.
His face is turned into Sherlock’s shoulder and can’t be seen, but the varying pressure against clavicle and humerous are easily read: John’s face is relaxed, peaceful even. One hand is draped bonelessly across Sherlock’s chest, little finger occasionally twitching very slightly. The length of his torso is leaning gently against Sherlock’s longer frame, radiating heat that warms far more effectively than the cheap blanket. Breath flutters against Sherlock’s neck, heat fanning out with every exhale to be replaced by a faint chill on the inhale.
It is just a bit uncomfortable, with bones pressing into soft flesh and his arm steadily growing numb beneath the weight of John’s chest. Short hair tickles his jaw, and John’s leg is nestled just a hair’s-breadth from truly dangerous areas. Sherlock wouldn’t consider moving even if the room collapsed around them. He listens to the soft susurrus of breath, feels the steady beating of a steady heart, smells the subtle scents of a sleeping John and admits that everything is as it should be. John is next to him and all is right with the world.
Of course, it can’t last.
The door slams open and one of the chain-smoking Eastern Europeans staying in the bunks next to his shouts something in their unintelligible language. “Hey, bidcho! Dzavidet! Modi ak, ki?”
Ah, Kartvellians then. The man in the upper bunk slurs back drunkenly and attempts to throw an empty liquor bottle at his companion, missing quite spectacularly. Muttered cursing from both parties before the door closes again, shutting out the sounds of the out-of-tune guitar and drug-fueled political theory discussion from the lobby below. This hostel is grimy, crowded, and poorly maintained, but no one here notices anyone else’s doings, making it the perfect place to hide for a few days.
Sherlock rolls to his side. John is gone. John was never here. John is precisely where he belongs, safely back in Baker Street, as he has been for the past eleven months. John thinks Sherlock is dead.
Sometimes, Sherlock wonders whether this venture wouldn’t have been easier if he and John had never solidified that intangible something between them, if they’d never acted on the vague pull both of them pretended not to feel for so long. If he’d never allowed himself to grow accustomed to everything John had to give.
It isn’t even the sexual aspect of their relationship that he misses the most. Whenever that urge gets too pressing, a hand on himself in the shower takes care of things for a while. Sherlock misses the quieter, calmer parts of their physical relationship.
All the casual contact as they moved about the flat or looked at crime scenes together. All the evenings spent pressed so closely together pretending to watch whatever John was watching. All the absent-minded kisses in passing, just because he could. All the nights spent listening to John breathe and watching him sleep.
Before John, Sherlock had never needed physical affection or even noticed its absence in his life. Nannies and tutors never touched him, Mycroft certainly would never stoop to such undignified behaviour, and there had never been anyone even remotely classified as a romantic liaison before. Then came John, and Sherlock now desperately missed something he’d never even wanted.
His skin tingles where he remembers John’s hands on him. His palms twitch faintly with the memory of warm skin under them. His arms ache for lack of holding anything significant. His lips are chapped from constant, unconscious licking. His diaphragm and upper abdominal region develop a faint, illogical pain any time he thought of John, of holding him and breathing in his scent again. None of it makes any sense, but there it is.
Psychologists call it Skin Hunger, a term he’d always thought needlessly fanciful. Now, he realises that it perfectly describes what he is feeling. His skin is hungry for the touch of John’s.
With a sigh, Sherlock closes his eyes and tries to conjure up the feeling of John again. John likes to press close behind him when they are on their sides like this. Sherlock is careful always to lie on his right side, to spare John the pressure on his bad shoulder. Now, he can feel John again.
One arm is wrapped over Sherlock’s waist, hand resting over his navel. The other is tucked between them, fingers curled against Sherlock’s scapular. John’s shorter legs are fitted in beneath Sherlock’s, one knee just barely nudging between his own. Breath fans the back of his neck, lifting and tickling the hair there. John always breathes better on his side, anyway.
Very carefully, Sherlock presses his hand on John’s arm draped over his waist, feeling the steady thrum of the pulse in his wrist. He has to move carefully so as not to wake John, who still hasn’t entirely got over his sleeping habits from med school and the army. The blanket is tugged gently up and over both of them, keeping them warmer together. Finally, with the sound of John’s breath in his ear and the soft pulsing beneath his thumb keeping time, Sherlock drifts off, held securely in John’s embrace.