Work Text:
It’s an unseasonably warm day in October when John returns to his grey and sparsely decorated flat after an exhausting nightshift at the A&E, makes a weak cup of tea, trudges into the sitting room, and finds Sherlock Holmes skulking and silent, but very much not dead.
His mug shatters as it hits the floor.
John’s right leg gives way, and he barely manages to catch himself. For some indeterminate amount of time - thirty seconds? five minutes? a week? - the two men stare at each other.
Sherlock does not look like the man that John last saw five hundred and fifty-six days ago. There’s no blood in his hair, which has grown too long, and his face isn't slack in death, but it is too gaunt.
John stares into those familiar eyes - pale, so very pale, but seeing, no longer unseeing, alive, alive, he’s alive - and then he hauls back and punches Sherlock as hard as he can. Sherlock doesn’t even try to defend himself, and he goes down like a felled tree.
After that, things get blurry.
Later, John will remember screaming. He’ll remember grabbing the lapels of Sherlock’s jacket - it’s not the Belstaff, but it looks eerily similar - and shaking the man until his teeth rattle. He’ll remember the sounds of a neighbor pounding on their shared wall in response to the noise.
He’ll remember Sherlock’s eyes, pale and seeing, not dead.
John throws Sherlock bodily from the flat. He slams the door shut, locks it, and bolts it. He pours himself two fingers of whisky, and then another three, and after that, he loses track.
He wakes at noon the following day with a headache and a tongue that feels two sizes too large. For five blissful seconds, he is only aware of his physical discomfort - the sand in his eyes, the pounding in his head, and the nausea in his throat - but then the memories of the previous night come rushing in.
That’s when John cries.
It’s only later in the shower with his shoulders slumped and water dripping into his eyes that John realizes something: the previous night, despite his anger, the shouting and shaking and pushing and pulling … throughout all of it, Sherlock never said a word.
The day they meet, Sherlock tells him, “I don’t talk for days on end.”
In the following months, John often recalls these words and quietly huffs with laughter. Not talk? Sure, sometimes. But what Sherlock failed to mention is that sometimes he doesn't shut up.
During the long, grey days after Sherlock’s fall, John often thinks back on the whirlwind of their friendship and can remember little else but the constant chatter.
Sherlock’s monologue is a stream of consciousness that doesn't even stop when John leaves the room. It's going when John comes down for tea and toast, and it doesn't cease when John retires for the night. It continues when John goes to the bathroom (with Sherlock sometimes standing directly on the other side of the door) and when John tries to edit a blog entry. It's present when John leaves for work and when he returns home.
Later, after the fall, those eleven months will be preserved in John's memory with a voice-over, delivered in a crisp baritone with public school affectation.
After Sherlock falls, it’s the silence that’s most bothersome to John. The silence chases him out of Baker Street and follows him to his little grey flat in Peckham. It haunts his dreams and waking hours. His ears ring from it.
Life with Sherlock had been as vibrant as the Royal Botanical Gardens. It was a kaleidoscope of color. It was as busy as a children’s park on a Saturday. It was overwhelming and frightening and beautiful and too much and more.
Life with Sherlock was loud.
Sherlock has been back from the dead for three months. John has been back at Baker Street for two and a half.
It’s different and the same. They eat breakfast together. John still makes the tea and toast, of which Sherlock still steals bites. The kitchen table is filled with beakers and piping and other instruments of science, and there’s only a small space on which they can safely eat.
Sherlock has not said a word since his return.
John’s not sure when he last spoke. According to Mycroft, he was silent when he was found in the dirty cell, hiding his eyes and curling into a ball to protect his stomach when the rescuers stormed through.
He didn’t say a word to Mycroft on the helicopter ride to Belgrade. He didn’t speak at the hospital in Frankfurt. He didn’t utter a word when John punched him and screamed in his face and threw him out the door. He didn’t say anything when John came to 221B four days later, shaking and wan, having just finished reading the medical report personally delivered to him by a stone-faced Mycroft.
He was quiet when John touched his face with a shaking hand, and he watched silently when John moved back in the following week.
Now he trails after John around the flat like a lost duckling. He follows John to Tesco and to Speedy’s. He even follows John to work once, and John thinks he would have waited outside for the entire shift had Mycroft not arrived to ferry his wayward brother home.
He follows John and looks at John and sometimes even smiles at John, his lips crooked as though he hasn’t had a reason to smile for years and has forgotten how.
But he never says a word.
Life with Sherlock is silent.
It surprises John the first time it happens.
John’s only just moved back in. He still startles when he turns a corner and Sherlock is there, thin and pale, but alive. Sherlock stares back at him with just as much wonder, as though John was the one to throw himself off a building.
John is staring down at the toaster, thinking about which jam he wants, when his phone chimes. He glances at it idly, returns to his musings about breakfast, and then frowns.
He looks at his phone again and blinks.
Bring me a pen. SH
Sherlock has not spoken a word to him for five hundred and seventy-two days. And now, finally, he’s communicating ... for the first time in over a year and a half … and it’s to ask for a pen .
Toast forgotten, John wheels and storms into the sitting room. His mouth opens and he feels his left hand spasm twice before it curls into a fist. The words are ready to spill out of his mouth - vitriol and acid and bitterness brewing into an awful mix - and then his eyes fall on Sherlock.
Sherlock’s curled into a corner of the couch. He’s in his dressing gown - the blue one - but he’s swimming in it now. In one hand he holds his mobile and in the other is a cup of tea. It must be cold by now. He’s frowning into its depths as though the answers to the universe are contained within.
But when John stops in front of him, he looks up suddenly and the lines on his forehead fall away. He doesn’t quite smile, but his whole countenance changes. The worry lines disappear, and so does the empty look in his eyes. He looks surprised to find John there and also relieved and so damned happy that the angry words building in John’s throat evaporate like steam.
John just stands there with his mouth hanging open.
Sherlock watches him expectantly, silent but with a carefully hopeful expression.
Licking his lips, John turns on his heel. His eyes race across the desk.
Ah. There.
He grabs a pen and offers it to Sherlock.
“Here,” he says.
Sherlock smiles.
Sherlock has nightmares now. They are silent as well.
John would never have known, except one night he wakes with a tickle in his throat. He gets up, blearily rubs his face, and stumbles down the stairs for a cup of water. He’s been back in 221B for two weeks.
He’s standing at the kitchen sink and filling a glass with water when he hears the noise. It’s soft and persistent, too regular to be the settling of the building and too close to be from outside. He turns off the faucet and frowns, trying to determine the source of the noise.
When he realizes it’s coming from Sherlock’s room, he puts down his glass and creeps into the hallway, listening intently.
It’s a dull thumping sound, regular as a metronome. He wonders if Sherlock is awake and experimenting. Before he died, Sherlock did that a lot. The night was filled with crashes and bangs and the occasional shout.
Now Sherlock goes to bed when John goes to bed, closing the door tight and not coming out until John shuffles down the stairs in the morning. He then spends his day following John, and John still doesn’t know what to think of this.
John hesitates in front of Sherlock’s bedroom door. He wavers. He doesn’t want to disturb Sherlock or the careful truce they have built. They are not quite comfortable with each other yet. Sherlock is still too gaunt, his movements hasty and lacking their old grace. John is still sad and more than a little angry about the five hundred and fifty-six grey days.
But John can’t place the sound, and it’s making him uneasy. So he opens Sherlock’s bedroom door.
Sherlock’s room is dark, but there’s a sliver of moonlight coming in between the curtains. Sherlock’s body is usually long lines and sharp angles, so at first, John can’t make heads or tails of the huddled lump at the head of the bed.
Then, suddenly, an awful realization dawns.
Sherlock is on his side, curled tightly into a ball, his long arms wrapped around his long legs. He’s still too thin - at least a stone and a half lighter than he was when they met - and he makes a surprisingly compact ball of limbs and tousled hair. His shoulders and upper back are pressed against the headboard, and his feet and backside are tucked up where his pillow should be.
The dull thumping sound is the back of Sherlock’s head, the occiput beating against the wood of the headboard with a meticulous rhythm. Sherlock’s eyes are open and staring, and his face is stained with tears - John can see that even in the poor light of the moon.
Now that John is in the room, the sound is louder, and the precise violence of it horrifies him.
Thump thump thump.
Sherlock is silent.
John moves without making the conscious decision to do so. He grasps Sherlock’s shoulder, but Sherlock’s body is tense and unmoving, and he continues the horrible tattoo. John shoves his hand between the back of Sherlock’s head and the headboard, and he winces when Sherlock continues his self-injurious tempo, smashing John’s hand between skull and wood.
John changes tactics.
He hooks his hands around Sherlock’s ankles and pulls his entire body down the bed. The noise finally stops, but Sherlock’s movements continue for a few seconds more. Finally, his head stills. His brow furrows. He blinks, and his eyes seek out John’s. He doesn’t seem bothered by what’s happening, but only curious.
He’s still so very silent.
In the morning, John will work up the nerve to ask Sherlock what happened, and Sherlock will simply text back: “Bad dream.” He will not elaborate, and John will not ask him to. He also won’t ask Sherlock how many other times this has occurred. John won’t want to know.
But now in Sherlock’s moonlit room, John stares at Sherlock and feels a familiar burn growing in the back of his eyes. His throat is tight. He wants to scream, but that hardly seems fair when Sherlock can’t even whisper a word.
So instead, John crawls into the bed and wraps his arms around Sherlock’s thin shoulders. Sherlock immediately stiffens, and it takes fifteen minutes before the tension begins to leave his body. When John tucks in his chin and looks down at Sherlock’s face, Sherlock is watching him with pale eyes, his expression hollow.
He is silent.
So John is silent as well. He closes his eyes tightly and holds onto Sherlock.
Sherlock finally falls asleep after another thirty minutes, and John follows him into slumber forty after that.
The following night, and every one after that, John shares Sherlock’s bed to aid in Sherlock’s silent struggle against his nightmares.
Their first case upon Sherlock’s return is a disaster.
Sherlock has been alive again for two months. The Met has been hesitant to call on him, dallying for weeks, but this case has careened out of control. The victims are too young and the brutality too garish, and Londoners are clamoring for justice.
Somewhere, high in the New Scotland Yard feeding chain, someone in power has decided it’s time to bite the bullet and call in their redeemed consulting detective.
Greg meets John and Sherlock at the yellow tape. The expression on his face is complicated. He seems happy to see Sherlock, but there’s also anger in the lines around his mouth. He’s been smoking again and his tie has stains on it.
Some of the younger coppers have only heard about Sherlock by name, and their curious gazes follow John and Sherlock through the crime scene. The older ones are divided: some appear relieved, while others watch with distrustful eyes. Sally is off to the side, her face carefully blank, and John can’t bear to look at her. Sherlock’s eyes never drift her way.
Greg has been warned that Sherlock came back different, but it’s clear he doesn’t fully understand, at least not until Sherlock starts to examine the body.
Sherlock stoops and twists, kneels near a grate and then stands on tiptoes to examine a light figure. He moves a little too sharply, and to a casual observer, Sherlock is only buzzing with his normal manic energy. But Greg, like John, knows him too well, and they both can see the frenetic fire that burns beneath Sherlock’s skin. He’s a live wire, and John doesn’t want to dampen him, but he’s worried about the sparks.
Throughout this entire time, Sherlock is silent, and Greg’s frown becomes deeper.
Everyone is waiting for a verbal explosion of deductions. Instead, Sherlock pulls out his mobile, and his fingers fly across the keys. John’s phone chimes.
Where’s his accomplice? SH
John repeats the question to Greg, who stares with a gaping mouth at Sherlock before he visibly shakes himself.
“Witness saw a second man fleeing the scene at roughly quarter three.” There’s a beat of silence. “So he seriously doesn’t talk now?”
John shakes his head, unable to meet Greg’s eyes.
John’s phone chimes again.
He wasn’t murdered until at least 5AM. SH
John repeats this to Greg.
Greg is still frowning, but he asks for Sherlock to explain his logic.
Sherlock is typing his response when a voice behind John asks, “What’s wrong with him?”
John turns and his lips twist.
It’s Sally.
In the first few days after Sherlock’s fall, John needed someone on which he could shower his anger. Sally was an easy target. His mind was heavy with grief and the memory of every unkind word to ever fall from her mouth, and at Sherlock’s funeral, John had tried to punch her.
Months later, he can reluctantly admit that given the knowledge she had, and Sherlock’s tendency to needle her for fun, her willingness to believe him a fake and a criminal was not that outlandish. She was calling it as she saw it.
Still, John cannot forgive her for the role she played in Sherlock’s death.
When he turns, an angry response ready, he expects to see a familiar smirk on her lips and a familiar unfriendly shine in her eyes. Instead, he’s surprised to see no anger or disgust, but also no guilt. She is just looking at Sherlock, her brow furrowed and eyes sad.
He turns to Sherlock.
The man is frightfully still. His shoulders are hunched, and he has partially turned away from John. His lips are pinched tight, and the blankness is heavy in his eyes.
John’s breath catches in his throat.
Sherlock wheels, his coat fluttering dramatically, and he strides down the alley. For a moment, John is reminded of the man from the night of the pink lady. He can almost see a vision of that Sherlock, juxtaposed on this new one.
The Sherlock of old was loud and outrageous, and John had only known him for a few hours, but still, he would have done anything - followed a serial killer, shot a man, rented a flat with a mad stranger - just for the chance to rotate in his gravitational pull.
Then the image fades, and John can only see the man that Sherlock has become: silent and pale with hands that sometimes shake.
“I don’t know,” John says.
They are at the park.
Sherlock has been alive for seventeen days.
The silence has become suffocating, and so John’s gone to Regent’s Park. Sherlock has followed him.
John’s chest is filled with relief and fury and deep, deep sorrow, and so they have just finished their third turn around the Inner Circle. He collapses onto a bench, his head spinning. Sherlock folds in quietly beside him.
The birds are singing.
John presses the heels of his palms against his closed eyelids so intensely that he sees flashing lights. Somewhere close, a child is screaming. Nearby, a brusker is strumming his guitar. Beside him, Sherlock is silent.
John opens his eyes and turns to Sherlock, unsure what he wants to say but feeling words bubble up into his throat nonetheless.
Sherlock’s head is tilted toward the sun. The hollows of his cheeks are still too deep, but the late morning sunlight is gifting his skin a healthy glow.
John’s lips slam shut and he swallows his words.
He takes a deep breath.
He turns his own face to the sun.
After the resolution of their third case with the Met since Sherlock’s return, they kiss for the first time.
The police have accepted this new Sherlock, who is a little bit more cautious and more prone to think before he acts. This Sherlock still flirts around the crime scene like a hummingbird, but he also takes the time to explain his findings in text, and John reads them aloud. He still rushes away when inspiration strikes, but he always pauses - just for a heartbeat or so - so that John can catch up.
The case starts as a robbery, but it develops into grand larceny, and then Sherlock uncovers the connection to organized crime. It takes five days to solve it, and John sleeps barely four hours each night, cranky and alone in Sherlock’s bed while Sherlock hacks at his keyboard into the wee hours of the morning.
John is starving, and Sherlock is grey with fatigue, but a self-satisfied smirk has been haunting his lips the entire cab ride home. John has been surreptitiously studying those lips for over twenty minutes now, letting the rolling sensation in his stomach build and build.
John takes off his jacket while Sherlock strides around their sitting room, taking in the details of his evidence board, the photos and notes pinned to the wall, the strings and the receipts. He’s nodding to himself and is pleased as punch.
John then collapses onto the couch so that he can untie the laces of his boots with fatigue-clumsy fingers. His mobile chimes. He frees it from the pocket of his jeans.
Tea? SH
John looks up to see Sherlock lurking a few feet away, watching him hopefully.
Sherlock has gained at least a stone, and his face has filled out, but he’s still too thin. He’s still silent, and he still follows John around the flat sometimes, but he is more comfortable being left alone. He seems to accept that John will leave, but also that John will always come back.
He still moves a little too sharply, especially when they’re in public, and he still reminds John of a live wire. But when it’s just the two of them in the flat, the manic energy drains a bit, and Sherlock’s movements become more fluid. He’s almost like the Sherlock of before, except some of the distance he always carefully cultivated is gone. His expression no longer shutters.
And now he’s watching John with so much unmistakable affection that John feels his heart skip a beat.
John rolls his eyes heavenward and laughs, and Sherlock cocks his head. It’s suddenly ridiculous to John that he hasn’t seen this before.
He stands up, still chuckling. Sherlock has begun to smile as well, although more hesitantly, and his eyes are questioning when they meet John’s.
“It’s just-” Here John cuts himself off. He snorts and shakes his head. “I can’t believe I didn’t realize it.”
Sherlock is still watching him, eyes bright and uncluttered.
John takes a step closer, and Sherlock doesn’t move away.
“It’s obvious, really,” John tells him, and he stands up on his tiptoes. His lips brush across Sherlock’s.
It’s a chaste kiss, sweet and glancing, and John doesn’t try to turn it into anything else. Instead, he rocks back onto his heels and unerringly meets Sherlock’s stare.
Sherlock’s eyebrows have disappeared under his fringe, and his lips are parted. He blinks and blinks, and then his eyes flicker around the room, as though he’s looking for an explanation for what just happened, for hidden cameras, or for all of the New Scotland Yard to tumble out of the fireplace with cameras.
When none of these things come to pass, his gaze falls back on John. Very slowly, so slowly it’s almost glacial, the surprise melts from his face, and joy replaces it. His eyes are very pale as they meet John’s.
“Okay?” John asks.
Sherlock grins.
Mycroft’s visits, oddly enough, have changed little since Sherlock’s return.
Mycroft still drawls on and on. Sherlock still glares. The violin still emits noises like a dying cat.
John keeps to the kitchen and thinks about how little words are needed for the two brothers to fight like a pair of feral toddlers.
Sometimes John can’t help himself. He’ll remember that first kiss and think: wouldn’t it have been something if that had been the moment that Sherlock found his voice again? It would have been romantic - the broken champion returned home, beaten but still standing, his words returned to him after such a sweet and lovely thing as a kiss.
Then John will scoff, roll his eyes, and chastise himself for sentimental poppycock.
Sherlock doesn’t speak after that kiss. Nor does he speak after their second one, their fifth, or even their fiftieth.
Things aren’t perfect. They still annoy each other. They still bicker, albeit silently. And John can no more heal Sherlock’s trauma than Sherlock can magically erase John’s anger and grief for having been left behind those five hundred and fifty-six grey days.
Still, things get better.
Sherlock doesn’t speak after the first time they make love either.
That doesn’t make it any less spectacular. Even silent, Sherlock’s still acres of pale skin (now with more scars than when he left) under John’s more compact body. His dark curls are unbelievably soft to the touch. He’s warmth and wetness around John as he thrusts with abandon. He falls apart under John, and it’s a remarkable thing to behold. John thinks he’ll never get tired of this.
Sherlock is reduced to gasps and wide eyes and wet lips, and as John empties himself deep in Sherlock’s body, John knows that this is it. He’ll spend the rest of his life with Sherlock, loud or silent, even if he’s still angry or sad sometimes. He’ll never want to be anywhere else.
Afterward, their bodies sticky with sweat and semen and lube, John pulls Sherlock close and tucks the other man’s head beneath his chin. Sherlock lets out a sigh, soft and content, and John feels his heart expand to fill his entire chest cavity.
Sherlock doesn’t say anything.
John doesn’t either.
No words are needed
It’s a Tuesday morning in April.
They finished a case two days ago, and when John left for his shift the day before, Sherlock had been sleeping like the dead in their bed. John had hesitated in the doorway, his eyes lovingly skimming the long lines of Sherlock’s naked side before he turned away with a sigh and set off for work.
John still works a few shifts a month, just to keep in practice. It’s not like they need the money - they earn enough from the cases coming in through the website.
It rained during the night, but the morning is unusually warm. The front windows are open and the scent of petrichor is heavy in the sitting room. Downstairs, Mrs. Hudson’s radio is blaring, and music drifts up through the floorboard. A siren goes by on Baker Street.
John is nursing his second cup of tea of the day. He’s still in his robe and slippers, and he’s considering staying in them until bedtime. He feels like he deserves some laziness.
Sherlock is hunched over his microscope, peering into the eyepiece as he scribbles madly in his moleskin notebook. His lips are pursed, and he sighs unhappily - he didn’t get the results he expected.
He sits up and looks at John.
Their eyes meet.
John smiles.
The frown lines around Sherlock’s eyes fade, and slowly, Sherlock smiles back. And then he opens his mouth.
John feels his heartbeat pause in his chest, and he sits up a little straighter in his chair.
“Tea?” Sherlock asks.