#post reichenbach

How hard do you think he's gripped onto that pack of cigarettes?

In honour of the episode dropping tonight(/tomorrow) I drew my first comic! Full strip below :)

"Brother, do be careful," a distant, tinny representation of Mycroft's voice crackles in his earpiece. "And stay warm."

Sherlock snorts but doesn't answer. This is fucking Siberia, for god's sake.

Thousands and thousands of pounds worth of specialized clothing wrap around Sherlock's too-thin body, allowing him the few minutes he has to sit hunched, behind a wall. Waiting.

Unfortunately, The Spider and his connections loved a dramatic backdrop even more than he did.

In the quiet beneath howling winds, Sherlock adjusts the fabric around his eyes and pulls something from his coat pocket.

A rectangular, metal lighter. Flip top.

Probably one of the worst things he can have on him right now, thermodynamically speaking, but he's kept it on his person, no matter the job or country for 19 months.

The inscription etched into one side simply reads John's initials, JHW. Given to him by his sister Harry, as one of those "technically useful but personally irrelevant enough to be offputting" sort of gifts. That's what John had told him years ago anyway, when he used it to help light one of Sherlock's very rarely enjoyed cigarettes as per Mycroft's "allowance".

Sherlock strokes a thumb across the inscription, now worn, and the perfect image of John's smile comes to his mind. He hasn't seen it in 19 months but remembers every single line. He traces the image in his mind and closes the lighter protectively into his palm.

Soon, he would be able to return home. Only a few more jobs, he tells himself. Then he can come home.

Sherlock carefully exhales into the fabrics surrounding his mouth and nose and puts the lighter away.

My conductor of light, he thinks, referring with pleasure to both the lighter itself and its original owner.

The curtains of 221B are drawn against the afternoon, and the room is dim.

From the speakers, Sherlock's own recording of John and Mary's Waltz plays softly. The furniture has been pushed back against the walls, and in the cleared space at the centre of the room, Sherlock and John turn through a clumsy waltz in time with the light, graceful music.

The wedding is in three days. John, who had never danced a step in his life, has been drilled without mercy all week. Today is the last lesson. He has been catastrophically hopeless — but somehow, at last, it has resolved itself into something that can just about be called dancing.

The music stops. They stop with it.

It is the first time they've made it all the way through without a mistake. John grins, pleased with himself.

"There. I've got you to thank for that, Sherlock. Really."

He looks up at Sherlock — his lady, for the purposes of the waltz, and a good head taller than him — and grins.

Sherlock smiles back.

"Right. I should be off."

The moment John moves to step away, a hand closes hard around his waist and pulls him back.

For a second John only frowns, puzzled. When he tries to withdraw his left hand from Sherlock's, fingers thread through his and grip — and the suspicion hardens into certainty.

"Sherlock. Let go of me, would you."

He keeps his voice even, careful — careful, above all, not to let it sound like rejection.

The eyes that hold his give nothing away.

"Sherlock?"

"No."

The fingers laced through his tighten.

John looks up, half-expecting a joke, and instead meets a gaze so straight, so frighteningly direct, that a bad feeling settles over him.

"The lesson's over, Sherlock. Thank you. Now let go of my hand."

"No. There's something I have to say to you."

"And if I said I didn't want to hear it?"

"You need to know."

So here it is, John thinks. And, thinking about it — it was always going to come. It could never have been avoided.

Once, when they still lived together in this flat, there had been something physical between them. If John hadn't imagined the whole thing, then once, in this room, the two of them had been lovers.

It had ended without warning, with Sherlock's death.

A faked death, in the end — but it had ended him all the same. John had despaired of his life. Had thought, once, about ending it. Had stopped himself. Had clawed his way up from the bottom by sheer force of will, and then, meeting Mary, had found the will to live again.

So — no. He'd meant never to touch the past again.

That Sherlock had come back alive: for that, from the bottom of his heart, he was glad. And Mary — he wanted to be good to Mary. When Sherlock came back he'd said nothing, and John had let himself believe that the whole of that time would stay a thing that had never happened, buried in the dark for good.

So.

"Don't. Don't say anything. You know how this goes, Sherlock."

"I can't. You have to know."

The air seems to freeze over.

"I love you. I have loved you since the day we met, and I love you still."

"Stop it!"

John wrenches his hand free. Anger surges up hard in his chest; his breath goes ragged. Sherlock carries on regardless.

"For the two years I couldn't reach you, I lived every day with you in my mind."

"Stop. I don't want to hear it. Sherlock, are you out of your mind? You're not using again, are you? I'm getting married. What's the point of any of this now—"

"You are the only reason I have to live. Then, and now."

The blood in his body might have been boiling. John glares at him.

"Two years, Sherlock. You lied to me for two whole years—"

"As far as I'm concerned, it was only two years. You couldn't wait even that long before marrying someone else."

"You absolute bastard!"

John flies at him, seizes him by the collar and drives him backwards. There's a dull thud as Sherlock goes down. Still gripping his collar, John straddles him, pinning him to the floor.

"Shut up, Sherlock. Don't you ever say that again. We are over. I'm marrying Mary. Don't you ever say anything that obscene to me again."

"It's the truth."

"…So that's it? You'd wreck your best friend's life for this? I want something small, Sherlock. Something ordinary. Don't I get to have that?"

John looks down at him, cold-eyed.

Sherlock looks back up at him with eyes so clear, so utterly without shadow, that John is the one who has to look away.

"John. If you can't forgive me, you can kill me now. I don't mind."

"—"

"…If it's you, I don't mind dying."

"—"

The sheer idiocy of it enrages him. The fury swells until he thinks a vessel might burst.

If that's what you want, John thinks, and closes both hands around Sherlock's throat, feeling for the airway with his thumbs, pressing down, bearing his weight into it by degrees. His thumbs sink into the pale column of Sherlock's neck.

"—kh… hah…"

A strange sound leaks from the shut-off airway.

Sherlock doesn't fight him off. He lifts his hands and lays them, tenderly, over John's — as though cradling them there.

John keeps pressing. The blood dams up; Sherlock's face flushes; his features twist, starved for air — but his eyes never leave John's.

John's hands, bearing down too hard, are shaking.

And then Sherlock — as though he could already see death waiting beyond this — quietly closes his eyes and smiles.

His face, in that moment, is almost holy. Unbearably gentle. Beautiful.

"—AAAH, AAAAAAH—!"

John screams like an animal, howls, writhes — and breaks, and weeps.

Released, Sherlock drags in a breath; oxygen floods his lungs and he coughs, hard, over and over. Still collapsed over him, John weeps without shame, without restraint. The grief comes without end, clawing for a way out.

Kill me, John seems to say, very softly — though it might only have been the shape a sob happened to take.

Sherlock gathers him in as though he were something breakable, soft and careful, and slowly strokes the violently shaking back.

"…John. Come to the bathroom."

Hsssssshhhhhh………

From the fixed head in the ceiling, water as warm as skin pours down over the two of them, roaring like a tropical downpour.

John stands with his back to Sherlock, his left hand braced against the tiles, holding up his trembling body. He's biting down hard on his other forearm. He has to be — otherwise he can't hold back the sounds welling up out of him.

"—nn…… hh……"

Sherlock's lips and tongue drag, wet and slow, along the side of his neck. When he catches John's earlobe lightly in his teeth from behind, John can't hold it — a low moan breaks out of him.

For the first time in two years, he feels Sherlock's bare chest against his back. Once, he hadn't minded this — being held like this, taken from behind. Back then he'd even said soft, foolish things like I don't like it when I can't see your face, simply because he'd known Sherlock liked hearing it.

—But now.

Now he doesn't want to see that face, doesn't want to speak, doesn't want to hear a single word. It was John who'd asked him to leave the shower running. He'd wanted to let all of it wash away, hidden in the endless, lukewarm rain.

Sherlock's fingers, creeping round from behind, pinch a nipple without warning, and John's whole body jerks. It takes him a moment to understand that the sharp pulse of sensation spreading out through him is, unmistakably, pleasure.

But once his body has remembered a pleasure, it takes only an instant to start devouring it — and, thinking himself shameless even as he does it, John arches into the touch, begging for more.

As if in answer, Sherlock's pale, elegant fingers work the reddening peak — crush it, pinch it hard, tease it gently, catch it with a nail and leave the mark there.

—This was how John liked it.

"Ah——!! Nn…… Sher…… lock……"

Biting down on his own arm is no defence now. With the water pouring endlessly down, the air is saturated to its very limit; it's like drowning in a deep pool, impossible to breathe properly. When he opens his mouth to try, out come the cries he least wants to hear from himself, and he wants to cover his ears, and he can't.

"Nng—!"

His cock, hard for a while now, is suddenly gripped, and just that nearly finishes him. He stops his breath at the last second and holds on.

Against the swell of his backside, Sherlock's own cock is pressed, hot and hard — and the fact that Sherlock, too, is this far gone throws John into confusion: whether he ought to be glad of it, or whether he ought to be shuddering at how completely there is no escape now, his feelings swinging wildly from one to the other.

"Still as sensitive as ever, John."

Sherlock seems to decide that any more would push him over the edge, and lets him go. The arm caging him from behind loosens, his body freed — and yet John finds himself missing Sherlock's warmth, as though something that had been there from the start were suddenly gone.

Sherlock reaches up to the rack. His hand brushes the familiar bottle of chamomile shower gel, and a faint sweetness lifts into the steam. Then his fingers find something tucked behind it: a small tube John hasn't let himself think about, untouched for two years and somehow never thrown away.

That scent — clean, delicate chamomile, so out of place here — revives memory in an instant.

Back then, the two of them had used the same shower gel. When they held each other naked, this same scent had always caught at his nose, and neither could have said whose it was.

How many times had they lain together wrapped in that scent, and fallen asleep, and woken to find the other still there, and reached for each other again?

They had loved each other, the two men who lived in this flat. That was simply true.

And the truth of it cut so cruelly into John that, though he had no wish to, he began to cry again, and couldn't stop the tears.

"…Why are you crying?"

"Nn…… it's…… nothing…… leave me be……"

As if to soothe him, one kiss falls behind his ear.

Then, unhurried, Sherlock parts him. Mary has never touched him here. Two years ago Sherlock had slipped inside him with ease; now he's tight again.

Slick with lubricant, Sherlock's fingertip traces gently, deferentially, in slow circles round the rim, as though asking permission.

The feeling carved so deep into John's body, never faded, comes flooding straight back.

This is anticipation.

Untouched still, the deepest part of him — the part Sherlock had opened so many times — goes hot.

"Aah……………"

A sob-caught sigh dissolves into the drifting steam and the sound of the water, and is gone.

At last the finger presses into him. The index first. At the fresh, overwhelming wrongness of it, his breath catches.

"You're very tight… Was I the last to touch you here? Two years ago?"

"Shut… up. Shut it—"

Slowly Sherlock works the finger in and out, turning his wrist in an easy circle, opening John up. When it moves freely, a second joins it, and the two press inside, widening him the same slow way.

Then, without warning, they drive up deep, find his prostate without effort, and grind against it.

"—————nngghH!!!!"

"There it is… John… swollen — I found it at once…"

There, there, there — pressed in quick succession, and pleasure fierce enough to sear the brain white races up his spine. His knees give; he starts to go down, and Sherlock catches him from behind.

Working him without mercy, over and over, spreading the two fingers and closing them, Sherlock takes all the time he needs to open John right up.

Every last measure of the pleasure those fingers give, John's body remembers faithfully. That he is being reduced to a molten wreck by the very man he wants, right now, to kill — it fills him with a vicious frustration.

"God, if you want to do it, then just get on with it!"

"No. I won't hurt you. Not by so much as a hair."

—Rich, from the man who's wrecked another man's whole life this thoroughly.

—Yes. This was the sort of man he was.

John loses track of how long Sherlock spends opening him up. By the end he's wrecked, trembling and yielding. The tears, the drool spilling from the slack corner of his mouth, the pleasure leaking ceaselessly from the tip of his cock — the falling water rinses it all away, so it doesn't matter any more, none of it matters, let it come to whatever it comes to, John thinks.

"Please…… Sherlock…… I'm begging you…… just put it in……"

He turns to plead — and is startled, because the soaking-wet Sherlock wears an expression more sorrowful, more gentle, than any he has ever seen.

He hadn't wanted to see a face like that. He'd wanted him to wear the face of a cold, cruel man.

Sherlock rubs the head of his cock slowly over him, once, twice, almost tender, before he begins to press inside — so slowly it's maddening.

However thoroughly he's been opened, the moment he feels Sherlock filling him stops his breath. Without thinking John lets out a long exhale — and, timing it exactly to that, Sherlock grips his hips and pushes all the way in.

"Hah…………………"

Buried entirely inside John, Sherlock, too, sighs deeply. He wraps John in his arms from behind, fits their bodies flush, and rests his chin on John's shoulder.

Then he begins to move, slow, searching out the places that undo John, and finding them, works them with terrible gentleness.

"Sher… lock…… I'm begging you…… don't…… don't be so gentle with me……"

"No."

"Please…… Sherlock…… just…… wreck me……"

"No."

It was torture. The pleasure Sherlock gave was so sweet it made him swoon, so soft, and John thought the guilt of it might undo him.

If Sherlock would only take him hard enough, cruelly enough, then John could pretend none of this had been his choice.

But held like this — gently, tenderly, as though he were adored——

"I'm going to lose my mind."

Quietly, John despaired. He understood now that he could go neither forward nor back.

Then there was only one thing left. For now, only to drown in this man.

"Sherlock, more…… I want more…… please……"

He begged for pleasure, and nothing else.

Sherlock's large hand closes round John's wet cock and works it, urgent now. Vivid pleasure gathers and threatens to spill, and at the same time the head of Sherlock's cock drags over his prostate on every thrust, and John is driven fast to the edge.

"Ah, ah…… I'm…… I'm going to come……"

"John — John — I'm — close, too—"

It was Sherlock who came first. With a great shudder through his whole body he crushed John to him, buried himself deep, and spent himself inside him.

Feeling Sherlock's heat burst deep within him, gripped hard one last time, John came too. What he spilled was washed away by the water almost at once.

Worn out, John sleeps in Sherlock's bed.

His still-damp fringe has fallen a little across his forehead, and asleep, unguarded, he has almost the air of a boy.

Sherlock sits in the chair drawn up beside the bed, watching him, unmoving.

How long he stays like that, there is no telling.

Sherlock takes up John's left hand where it lies flung carelessly out. John slowly opens his eyes. Perhaps he wished it were a dream — his face contorts as though in pain, and he closes them again.

Sherlock cradles John's left hand in both of his own. Reverently, as though it were a treasure more precious than anything in the world.

And he presses a kiss to the ring finger of John's left hand.

The ring finger that, in a few days' time, will bear the wedding ring binding him to Mary.

John opens his eyes and watches, steadily.

Twice. Three times. Looking only at John, Sherlock kisses the ring finger of that left hand, again and again.

John only watches, his dark eyes unreadable.

Part 1 of 2

This WIP - working title: Odysseus Returns - is inspired by @calaisreno's fic His Husband where Mary proposes she and John go on holiday to Greece. I don't often bring bloody Mary into my fics, but needs must. Don't worry, though, this is a post Reichenbach fix-it fic...

Excerpt:

Eighteen months. It’s been eighteen months since he watched his best friend, his lover, his Sherlock jump off the roof of Barts hospital. There was no warning; no chance for John to prevent it. He must believe that if he shall be able to remain relatively sane. His heart still twists painfully as the image of a falling Sherlock Holmes intrudes his mind (relentlessly, even now).

“John!”

Mary’s voice is brimming with impatience. Apparently, he hasn’t paid attention to what she’s been saying. Again. Honestly, he fails to understand why she’s still here.

“Sorry. What was that?”

He keeps his tone polite, trying, but failing to insert some warmth into his voice.

“I asked if your passport is still valid.”

“Oh. I…I dunno. Can’t remember the last time…”

He trails off because he does know when he last used it. On his way home from Afghanistan. Mere weeks before he met Sherlock. He swallows around the lump in his throat.

“How is it still there after all this time?”

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tagging some moots who might be interested (tell me if you want to be tagged or removed)

John waking up in cold sweat every night terrified with his dreams replaying the fall, of Sherlock disappearing. It's not just the Reichenbach fall now though that plagues him, lately it started to morph into Sherlock dying in every manner of death.

He's only ever able to calm down after going to Sherlock's door, putting his ear against the door focusing in on him softly breathing in his sleep because he still isn't sure if Sherlock coming back wasn't all just a dream. He could just open the door to see but the weight of witnessing a dead Sherlock in his nightmares to then opening the door to be met with Sherlock's empty room would be too much.

The morning he prepared two cups of tea instead of one.

The afternoon he came back from grocery shopping and realised he doesn’t have to place all the food so carefully not to touch the body parts in the fridge.

The night he could’ve slept through because no one was playing violin at 3 AM anymore but couldn’t get himself to even close his eyes as he feared that he might forget how Sherlock’s sharp gaze felt.

John could never truly understand how much he meant to Sherlock.

The night he thought all he could do with his brilliant brain was to vanish for years and endure not only physical but psychological pain of John’s absence.

The dawn he tried to tell John what his funny brain has come up with but didn’t find anyone by his side.

The morning he knew he could come back to London for the first time in years and the first thing popped up in his mind was to see John.

They both ridiculously underestimate their significance to the other.

John isn’t with Sherlock only because of the adrenaline he feels. He’s there also for the serotonin he feels listening to Wagner played by the delicate yet passionate fingers of the consulting detective.

Sherlock isn’t with John because of the sweet words he gives like “brilliant”. He’s there also for the scolding words like “Stop” that calm him down (occasionally).