Archive of Our Own

It’s not like that.

John repeats himself, over and over, and no one seems to listen. It’s not like that, not with them. Whatever they are, him and Sherlock, they’re not what people think, and people think a lot of things about them. They get candles put on tables for them, and eyebrows lifted, and congratulations once or twice. He knows Mrs. Hudson thinks they’re hiding something, and Donovan has found a new strain of insults. He’s the freak’s follower, now, and sometimes the freak’s boyfriend, and sometimes Sherlock’s...whatever, and to Mrs. Hudson, he’s dear Doctor Watson, who’s made Sherlock so happy.

Sometimes it’s Mrs. Hudson’s misconceptions that bother him the most.

He’s nothing, he’s nobody, he’s John Watson, which is about as close as you can come to the dullest name on Earth without being John Smith, and most importantly, he is not that to Sherlock Holmes, whatever that happens to be.

And Sherlock is leaning close to him, breath a white fog in the chill air, rubbing his hands together and asking, “What do you think?” It’s a stupid question, really, because even if Sherlock doesn’t know what he’s thinking before the words proceed from his mouth, John’s observations are unlikely to be of any real use, anyway. He’s not dimwitted or anything, but neither is Lestrade, or, if he’s pressed, Donovan. He’s just not the whirlwind of analytic intellect that is Sherlock Holmes. Nobody is. But Sherlock asks, and he answers, and he keeps answering because the question is repeated over the course of hours, days, weeks. What do you think?

I think I’m a handy replacement for your skull, he doesn’t say. It’s one assumption about them people don’t make, that John’s just...there. That’s how it is between them: John is simply convenient.

***

Sometimes, he wakes up in the middle of the night, hands trembling and sweat sticky and cooling on the back of his neck and forehead, his lungs heaving as if they might burst, his heart threatening to pound right out of his chest. Sometimes, he sucks air in over his teeth, willing the stinging in his eyes to disappear. He reminds himself Sherlock will hear and Sherlock can’t, he won’t. He remembers the deafening pop of gunfire, the heat and the smell, carcasses rotting beneath the acrid smoke of explosives. He remembers blood and burns and heat exhaustion and illnesses. He remembers the heft of a gun in his palm. Sometimes, he wakes up with the memories tripping over each other in his head until all that’s left is blood and burning debris, the feeling of going fever-cold in the middle of the desert, of knowing he was going to die because he knew the wound was there and couldn’t feel it.

He lies on his back and breathes, waiting for his heart to slow, for his breathing to normalize, for the screaming in his head to die down. It’s then he remembers what it felt like after. When the pain washed in. When Murray brought in the news. When he walked off the plane. When he tried to go to sleep and couldn’t because the silence felt so much like a tomb. He closes his eyes and holds the sheets in both fists and remembers hating himself for not being strong enough to either get on with his work or die like a decent soldier.

Then he remembers opening the window, eyes on his target, hands steady and breath even. He remembers taking the shot and dropping to his belly by force of sheer habit. He remembers realizing Sherlock knew, and being strangely unafraid. He remembers...laughing.

He remembers living.

And he takes a breath, and another, and rolls over and lets his eyes shut. John saved Sherlock that day, and Sherlock knows it even if nobody else does. What Sherlock doesn’t know is that the opposite is just as true.

***

John brings home the shopping, because Sherlock can’t be arsed to purchase more than tea, milk and, when he’s particularly adventurous, bread. How he ever survived on his own, John will never know. And then, because Sherlock can brew a cup of tea and make a slice of almost-unburned toast and that is about it, John digs out dusty pots and pans and makes, if not gourmet cuisine, meals that are edible. Sherlock always looks faintly surprised when John says dinner is ready, but he eats, and only complains sometimes. And John does the dishes and cleans the flat more than half the time, and the other not-half, Sherlock putters around and gives John wounded glances, like he really is above this sort of thing. (John glares at him, then at the dishes, then back at him, then back at the dishes, until something happens. Sometimes the dishes even get clean.) Once in a while, Sherlock is possessed by a fit of energy, and he cleans in a highly inefficient way, usually making a bigger mess instead of cleaning the mess that’s already there, and John usually can’t muster more than a passing sort of annoyance about it. Sherlock forgets, sometimes, that even towering intellects need to be fed and rested, and military men have very specific ideas about orderliness. So John chivvies and bullies and pleads and somewhere between them Sherlock remembers and takes a brave stab at acting ordinary for five minutes. In return, he is extraordinary all the time, and John realizes that between admiration and exasperation and concern and adrenaline, Sherlock never, ever lets him sink into self-pity or boredom.

His therapist calls it codependency, and is tight-lipped and disapproving. John shrugs, because it’s just one more word for what they aren’t. They take care of each other, that’s all.

***

They survive the explosion. At least, their bodies do. Sherlock can walk after a few days, and he keeps escaping his hospital room to sit on John’s bed. For some reason, this always happens between the hours of midnight and five a.m., which gives all the conversations they have a bizarre, dreamy quality.

“You’re not my pet,” Sherlock says to him late one night when the hospital is quiet.

“He called you my pet,” Sherlock clarifies, correctly interpreting John’s nonplussed silence. “You aren’t.”

“No,” John agrees. People are nice to their pets. Like them. Sherlock certainly isn’t nice to him. Sherlock doesn’t like him, either. Not precisely.

“You’re not,” Sherlock insists, and John wonders muzzily why it matters so much.

“Probably because you’re high,” he says kindly, and pats whatever he can reach. Sherlock’s ankles, this time.

“I am not. They haven’t given me enough to even get me close.” Sherlock sounds a little put out by the fact.

“You can have some of mine. They give me a lot.”

“You aren’t paying attention,” Sherlock grumbles.

“Yes,” John counters, vaguely offended. “I’m not your pet, a leash would be weird, and you’re not high. I think I am. I think I hate it, but I can’t remember. When can we go home?”

Sherlock rolls his eyes and unfolds his body so he’s lying next to John in the bed, somehow fitting his angular body just right against John’s, his head resting against John’s hip. Now John can reach his hair, and he pats it gently, if a little clumsily.

“He was making implications,” Sherlock says, and John doesn’t know why they can’t just be quiet. “Aspersions on your character. Like you were a dumb animal that would come when I whistled.”

“You don’t whistle. You prefer to text.”

Sherlock presses his face into John’s leg.

“No, no, no,” he growls, “it’s not like that, you don’t do that. I’d hate you if you did. You’re not some stupid, happy, licking thing that will love me if I do so much as look at you.”

John looks offended.

“I have never licked you!” he says indignantly. At least, he means to. He makes some sort of noise, and his fingers push clumsily at Sherlock’s head.

“You’re not something he can kill for fun,” Sherlock is mumbling, fretfully rubbing his face back and forth. “You’re not just something he can take. He doesn’t know. He has no idea.”

John keeps patting Sherlock’s wayward hair. “Shh,” he says softly. “It’s okay.”

“You’re not as stupid as everyone else,” Sherlock murmurs. He sounds like a little kid, desperately proud of some silly, ordinary thing and anxious to have the rest of the world be proud of it too.

“Go to sleep,” John tells him, and closes his eyes.

***

It doesn’t last. It can’t last. These days, London is a war zone, a battlefield for two, and within six months, John’s side loses.

No. No, Sherlock didn’t lose. But the count of casualty is high enough to feel that way.

John shuffles around the flat, covering windows riddled with bullet holes, sweeping up glass, gathering up the manic love letters that ended in dead bodies. He boxes up the gruesome gifts and watches them disappear into evidence lockers. He brings home the funeral flowers and deliberately doesn’t water them. He sits in a clean, quiet room and wonders calmly how long it will take for him to lose his mind.

Mycroft visits and leaves behind a promise of a monthly bank balance that will keep him in food and lodging for as long as he chooses. He leaves with the violin. Lestrade visits and tries to be comforting. He leaves with a sense of failure. Mrs. Hudson limps up the stairs, wincing and older than she used to be, and asks sweetly for just a little help, there’s a good lad. She leaves with a smile, even though her eyes are wet, too.

They all tell John he’s grieving, even though he knows they’re wrong. He’s lost friends, family before, and he’s felt what grief is. This is something different, something soft and suffocating, like he’s always one breath between waking up and losing consciousness. There are no sharp edges to the world anymore, no bright explosions of adrenaline, no dragging hooks of fascination, no more want. He’s not even sad, really, just empty.

He cradles his gun in his hands but never fires. Sherlock would expect better; at the least, more interesting. So he empties the magazine and sleeps on the sofa and tries to work out what he’s supposed to do now.

***

Pronouncements of death are supposed to be final, but Sherlock has never given a toss what the rest of the world has ever said. He stands in the door with his heart beating and his lungs breathing in obstinate defiance, and John sinks onto the sofa, covers his face, and laughs. He doesn’t realize how closely the broken, hitching noises coming out of his mouth resemble sobs until he feels a cheap fleece blanket wrap around his shoulders and Sherlock’s tentative weight on the sofa beside him.

“John,” he says quietly, and John flinches back, grey-faced and shaking.

“I can’t,” he gasps out, and now he’s standing, moving away. “You aren’t...”

He laughs again, helpless, destroyed. “You’re dead. You’re dead.”

“Not quite,” Sherlock says, and John slumps against the wall, as far as the room allows from the ghost, the hallucination, the resurrection. He covers his mouth with the back of his hand.

Sherlock sits a careful distance apart and explains, slowly, using small words. He doesn’t sound like himself; he doesn’t get impatient or irritated even though John shakes his head often and whispers, “I don’t understand.”

“I didn't have a choice,” Sherlock says again and again. “I couldn't get at him any other way."

They sit that way for hours, Sherlock's low baritone slowly piecing together where he was, what he did in all those months John believed him buried. Once in a while, John asks a question, but mostly, Sherlock just talks. He stops once to make two cups of tea, the only time John can ever remember being offered a drink at Sherlock's hand. He doesn't swallow it.

He's trying to listen, trying to understand, but Sherlock might as well be speaking another language. A dead language, John thinks, but if it's a joke, he doesn't laugh. When Sherlock runs out of words, John staggers to his feet, his legs cramped and aching.

"Are you staying here tonight?" he asks. Sherlock blinks rapidly, the only signal he's surprised.

"I thought…" he begins, and John suddenly doesn't give a fuck.

"Your room is the same, but I'd change the sheets if I were you," he interrupts, and climbs up the stairs to his own room. He lies down without getting undressed and stares at the ceiling. He's angry, or thinks he is; there are lies and there are lies, and this one… Well. It would take someone like Sherlock to lie about being alive.

Sherlock is alive, though. It should be a profound relief, a giddy freedom from months of relentless, needling, terrifying loss. It isn't. Seeing Sherlock walk through the door and calmly explain that he had no choice but to leave John behind feels a little like getting shot. Numb shock first, pain and outrage later. John stretches out on the mattress and lies still and quiet.

He thinks, This definitely means you don't love me back, then.

***

Around four in the morning, John gives up on even pretending to sleep. He trudges downstairs, groggy and tense, trying to be quiet and failing miserably. Sherlock is perched on the sofa in his old dressing gown and pajamas, his knees tucked up beneath his chin and his arms wrapped around his shins. John's stomach drops, but he quickly scolds himself back to reason. He's the one who kept the bloody bedroom like a shrine, he's the one who more or less invited his less-dead-than-previously-supposed flatmate back in, and it hasn't been so long that John's forgotten how erratic Sherlock likes his hours. So he walks through the sitting room without acknowledging Sherlock's presence, starts the kettle, and pulls out two mugs without thinking about it.

Damn.

One mug shatters on the floor and John hastily drops to his knees to clean it up, gripping the shards too tightly in a desperate bid to keep from crying. It's absolutely ridiculous to cry now, not to mention Sherlock is sitting right there and is sure to have heard the crash, he has to stop, he has to stop, but his vision goes blurry and his nose starts dripping despite his violent mental protests.

Sherlock's legs suddenly appear in his peripheral vision and John hastily turns away to toss the bits of broken mug in the bin. He knows better than to hope that Sherlock doesn't know what he's doing, but there is a very, very slight chance he won't mention it.

"You're bleeding," Sherlock says, his voice strangely loud after hours of silence. Months, really. He very carefully wraps his hands around John's wrists and turns them palm-up.

"It's nothing," John mumbles. Sherlock ignores him.

"I'll get the tweezers. Go sit in the light," he commands, and stands up to rummage for the first-aid kit John insisted they always keep handy and stocked in the kitchen/lab. Defiantly, John finishes picking up the ceramic. Above him, Sherlock makes an irritated noise and grabs his sleeve when John gets up and reaches for the broom. John is towed into the sitting room by his jumper and pushed gently down onto the sofa. Sherlock angles a lamp to his liking and sits beside him, reaching for his left hand. He scrutinizes it carefully, then deftly tweezes away a few minuscule bits of ceramic.

"The other," he says absently, and John trades out hands. The same office is performed for his right hand. Then Sherlock swabs them both with an antiseptic wipe and puts plasters on the worst cuts. He releases John’s hands, and John lets them fall, open, on his thighs.

"Thank you," he says, and Sherlock turns his face away.

"I didn't even ask for tea," he says quietly. John shrugs.

"Is it really so awful, my coming back?"

John shakes his head and doesn't know how to answer properly. Sherlock shifts on the sofa, angling slightly so he's facing John's profile, his long fingers digging tightly into his own knees.

"It is awful, you're angry. You can berate me, if you like. I won't answer back or hold it against you, I promise."

John curls his hands into fists and relaxes them. The cuts sting a little.

"I don't want to yell at you," he says. Sherlock sighs, and John shudders at the all-too-familiar sound. Sherlock is frustrated, and John can still identify the precursors to his sulks.

"There must be something," Sherlock says doggedly. "We can strike up an agreement. You're not…"

He studies John quickly, thoroughly. "No, you're not seeing anyone, but if you do, I can clear out. I won't…I won't interrupt."

John gives a humorless little chuckle. "That's not likely, is it?"

"I can," Sherlock insists, and that's when John's brain catches up.

"I meant, it's not likely I'll be seeing anyone. Why are you trying to make it up to me, anyway? You said it was the only way."

"It was," Sherlock says, and scrubs his hands through his hair, making it stand up in strange whorls. "There wasn't a choice, there wasn't anything else that would have worked, and it's still," he sighs out a long, noisy breath, "wrong."

“Sherlock,” and god, the name feels awkward on his tongue, “it’s all right. Well. Maybe not quite all right. But it will be. I’m not going to kick you out or anything. I am glad you’re not dead, and we’ll...we’ll work on the rest.”

Sherlock's hands are folded in front of his face, his eyes studying, calculating, analyzing. John remembers all of it, down to the smallest twitch of an eyelid. They're sitting too close. He can't stand it.

He goes back to bed.

***

As far as anyone else is concerned, Sherlock’s return is a miracle (which it is), John was thrilled to see him (which he was, sort of), and everything is the same as it ever was (it’s not). Thanks to Sherlock’s legacy, John’s meagre work at the clinic proved unnecessary. He takes odd shifts at the morgue now, which makes it easier for him to duck out to tend to Sherlock’s texts.

The texts don’t come.

Sherlock doesn’t even ask him for body parts, which John assumed would be the very first order of business once he found out about the job switch. Instead, they are courteous and cool to each other, John because there’s no opportunity for anything different and Sherlock for reasons he keeps to himself. It hurts more than a little. But he doesn’t question it or suggest he go back to his role of dogsbody and blogger and sometime bodyguard. He can’t. That would mean he and Sherlock would be that thing they were before, the thing without a name, and they certainly aren’t that. They aren’t even flatmates anymore; the word implies some sort of mutual toleration of each other’s presence, and John doesn’t think there’s even that left. Sherlock has barely spoken to him since the night he came back, and it’s always been in that clipped, formal tone Sherlock uses with people he isn’t actively trying to offend. John isn’t sure if this is some new tactic intended to spare John’s feelings and so preserve Baker Street, or if Sherlock has given up caring what he thinks altogether.

Sherlock’s had a long time to work alone. Maybe he’s decided he likes it better.

It’s a thought that’s been lurking in John’s brain all day. It’s four in the morning now. John punches his pillow and tries to get some sleep.

He must sleep for a while, because when he opens his eyes again, the clock reads three hours later and Sherlock is sitting beside his bed.

“Was’it?” he slurs out, and Sherlock waves his barely verbal question away without answering. John sits up a bit and tries again.

“You’re in my room.”

“Yes.”

“Why are you in my room?”

Sherlock is on the floor, cross-legged, his dressing gown draped loosely over the angles of his body. He is tracing a pattern on the dangling edge of John’s duvet.

“I want to be.”

John slowly peels back the duvet and swings his legs off the mattress. Sherlock’s hand falls close to his feet, like a penitent, but does not touch. John sighs and runs his hands over his hair.

“What do you want, Sherlock?” he asks quietly.

Sherlock looks up. He looks like a stranger in the dim, artificial light. He doesn't say a word.

John reaches forward, buries his fingers in Sherlock’s hair, and kisses him.

There had been half-formed plans, once, about what John could say if only Sherlock were alive. John forgets them all and breathes in the heat of Sherlock's mouth, smoothing his palms over the sharp angles of Sherlock's face. The angle is terrible, John bent nearly double to reach Sherlock from the bed and Sherlock still sitting motionless on the floor. John pulls back sharply when he realizes Sherlock hasn't moved at all.

"I'm sorry," he says evenly, and sits up ramrod straight on the bed, hands planted firmly on his own knees. "That was…I'm sorry."

"No, you're not," Sherlock says flatly, and springs up without warning to wrestle John to the bed. He's strong and demanding, nudging John with palms and knees and elbows that give no quarter. And he's kissing John, too, clumsy little nips that John barely tastes before they're gone. John grips the tight line of Sherlock's forearms and tries to gentle him, catching his lower lip and sucking gently, moving easily where Sherlock wants him to go. After a moment, some of Sherlock's tension unwinds and he lets himself be kissed.

"I'm sorry," he mumbles against John's mouth. "I'm sorry, I really am, I didn't think it would…"

"Shut up," John says, and kisses Sherlock long and deep. Sherlock’s hands run over the soft fabric of John’s t-shirt, those long fingers dipping below the hem to skate up, light and ticklish, over the skin of his back. John slides one leg between Sherlock's and deftly flips them, catching his weight on his elbows. Sherlock could easily counter the move, John knows, but instead he obligingly tumbles into into the faint hollow left by John’s body. John crawls over him, straddling his hips and licking his way into Sherlock's mouth.

Sherlock scrabbles at John's back, somehow tangling their legs together and grinding upward in unconscious need. A low, broken noise jerks out of John’s throat at the contact. He needs skin, needs heat, just needs more than what he’s getting, so he hauls his shirt over his head and sets to the task of unwrapping the thin layers of fabric between him and Sherlock’s chest.

“John,” Sherlock groans, and sits up a little so John can throw the offending garment as far away as possible. “John...”

“Yeah,” John says, and has no idea what he’s talking about. “C’mon, let me, let me."

A bit of uncoordinated flailing and they're both naked, skin pressed hot against skin. John's mouth is busy sucking bruises in the little dip where Sherlock’s neck meets his shoulder while his hands smooth over the tight, lean muscle of Sherlock’s chest, learning him by touch. Sherlock is writhing beneath him, arching up into his hands and dragging possessive fingers down his back.

“Please,” he groans, begging, and John swallows the word. Sherlock pants into his mouth, yanking him down like he’s trying to fit them into one skin, and that gives John ideas. It’s a short trip down Sherlock’s torso, only made long by the amount of skin there is to kiss and lick and touch, but John finds what he’s looking for fast enough and sucks it down. Sherlock keens, his hand flying up to clutch at the headboard. It's been a long time since he's done this, but from the breathless moans falling almost accidentally from Sherlock's mouth, it's been even longer for him. John flicks his tongue and swallows before adding a finger to the mix, and that’s even better.

“Please,” Sherlock cries, his shoulders coming off the bed as his body arcs up, every inch of him begging for more. John teases him a bit more, but only a bit. It only takes one more gasped invocation of John's name to have him back up, thumbs rubbing over Sherlock's sharp cheekbones and kissing him like it's the only thing keeping him alive. Sherlock grabs at him, fumbling one hand down between John's legs. John swears as Sherlock curls his fingers around John's cock, then lightly bats his hand away.

"Want you," he says, and his voice comes out a deep, hoarse growl. "Want to be inside you."

Sherlock's eyes go dark and he exhales. "Yes."

Sherlock lets his legs be pushed open into a more obscene sprawl and John fumbles at the bedside table. It’s a lot less smooth than he’d like, and it’s actually Sherlock who grabs the little packet and tears it open with his teeth. He works Sherlock open as slowly as he can stand, mindful of the potential damage even as Sherlock ruts against his hand, wanton and greedy. Finally, he's able to push into Sherlock's body and fuck, John’s so eaten up with want he can’t remember his own name.

He remembers Sherlock’s, though, and it’s jerked from his mouth with every breath, a meaningless litany that means everything in the world, and he can’t stop saying it any more than he can stop breathing. John bends Sherlock's thigh back toward his body and his hips snap forward, urgent, needy. Sherlock is making little noises beneath him and fighting to keep his eyes open and watching, even though his eyelids flutter as he works a hand between them to grip his own cock. John can’t take it, can’t breathe with a thousand sensations chasing themselves through his blood, over his skin. He lets his forehead drop, lowering it to Sherlock’s and closing his eyes. They’re not-kissing now, their lips brushing wet and messy, panting breaths into each other’s mouths until Sherlock cries out, jerking his face sideways, and John drives up, once, twice, feeling every muscle in his body go tight and rigid before release crashes over him and washes that breathless, yearning burn away.

Slowly, John pulls out and falls to Sherlock’s side. For a few minutes, they stay that way, separate and panting against the sheets. Then John moves closer, heedless of the mess, and carefully lays his head over Sherlock's heart. It thunders beneath his ear.

"John," Sherlock says, and John squeezes his eyes shut tight.

"Please," he says, and his voice falters a little. "Just for a minute."

Sherlock wraps one arm around John's shoulders and holds tight. He doesn't let go until morning.

***

John collapses face down on the sofa and very pointedly ignores the sound of Sherlock shedding his coat and jacket behind him.

“You’re just getting everything else wet,” Sherlock points out, and John lifts his hand to make a rude gesture.

“You should get in the shower at least,” he persists, and John lifts his head.

“Shut up, I hate you, I can’t walk that far anyway. And if you try carrying me again, I will shoot you. I swear to god.”

“And you call me dramatic.”

“Drama should be tattooed across your forehead like a warning label.”

“John. The sofa.”

“Says the man who keeps vials of acid on the kitchen worktop.”

“You’re getting it wet,” Sherlock repeats, only the register of his voice separating him from whining child and the man John has slept with for eight months and loved for far longer than that.

“Fine,” John grumbles, and hauls himself to his feet, heading for the bathroom and stripping his sodden clothing as he goes. “Do us a favor and pick a case that doesn’t involve three hours in torrential rain next time.”

It’s something no one would suspect about them, that John takes the first shower while Sherlock conscientiously picks up the trail of wet clothes. John makes tea while Sherlock takes a turn, and it’s John who decides they can live without food until morning. Sherlock agrees without protest and leads the way into the bedroom that’s gradually lost a singular owner and just become theirs.

“You told him I wasn’t your boyfriend,” John says into the dark. Sherlock shifts beside him, curling into his side.

“Terrible term. Juvenile. Entirely inaccurate,” Sherlock yawns.

“We live together. We share a bed. I remember some particularly good sex about three days ago, and you just hung up my wet clothes. And aren’t I the one who usually does the denial in this relationship?”

“He meant it as an insult, so I defended you.”

“Of course. That’s exactly what you were doing.”

“The word boyfriend is a pitifully banal label invented by people with prurient minds and feeble imaginations,” Sherlock says archly, and nuzzles into John’s neck.

“God save us from the banal and unimaginative,” John says contemplatively. “Tell me then, what does that make me?”

“Mine,” says Sherlock, and John bends to kiss him. He’s right; it’s the only word that fits.