Fic for hiddenlacuna: Boxes, Part 2/2

[holmesticemods]

---

Boxes, Part 2

John blinks up at the tall, slender silhouette. Breathes in the cool, familiar scent of Sherlock, bright, clean soap, and underneath, chemicals and ink, the treacle and pine tree scent of rosin.

Sherlock steps into the room, and light floods in again, washing over John. He stays where he is, kneeling on the floor beside his bed within a haphazard circle of photos and clumps of brown paper, the one photo and Mycroft’s note still clutched in his hands.

John holds them up. “I was going to unpack a couple of boxes,” he says, surprised at how even and calm his voice is. Seems like he should sound the way he feels, as if the floor has just fallen out from under him and he’s hanging, by only fingernails and willpower, onto crumbling rafters. “I started with this small one, but...it’s not mine.”

Sherlock stands frozen above him, his face hidden in shadow.

“I suppose one of Angelo’s boys must have carried it up here by mistake. Though I can’t imagine the box was just sitting downstairs, in plain sight...” John stands, photos falling from where they’ve been laying on his thighs. His voice is as soft as the dying pink and orange light outside the window. There’s no tension in it. No censure. No emotion. He’s sunk too far into shock to feel anything other than light and float-y.

As if they’re on opposite ends of a seesaw, as John rises Sherlock drops down, sinking gracefully to his knees. He lifts first one photo then another, staring at each one as if he’s never seen it before, gathering them up with his long fingers. His hands are steady, his shoulders bowed, face hidden.

John turns on the small lamp on his bedside table, but all he can see is the top of Sherlock’s head. Soft, coffee-coloured curls gleaming in the light.

His fingertips have gone numb, but feeling is starting to creep back into his gut. It’s feathery soft and quivering. Starting to heat, like coals starting to glow just moments before they flare into fire. He can’t stop that same heat from edging into his voice. “What the bloody hell, Sherlock?”

He resists the urge to reach down, thread his fingers through the thick strands of Sherlock’s hair, and use his grip to yank Sherlock’s head back. To force Sherlock to meet his gaze, to face him. Instead he thrusts the photo and Mycroft’s note under Sherlock’s nose, rattling it, and demands, “What the hell?”

Sherlock ignores the photo and note. He gathers up all the photos from the floor, stacking them carefully.

John expects him to rise, toss the photos onto the bed. To be dismissive and disdainful. He’s sure Sherlock is using this pretence of scrutinizing and neatening the photos to try to come up with a way to brazen his way through John’s growing anger.

But John’s not having any of that. He wants answers. His fingers curl, clenching into a fist, and he rocks onto the balls of his feet, prepared to dart sideways and block any attempt to flee.

But Sherlock barely moves at all. He stares at the photos in his hands, then slowly looks up. His face is flushed, his pupils contracted. Even in the dim light, John can see that Sherlock’s eyes are all bluish green/gold, wide and exposed.

From the day John met Sherlock, the first moment John saw him, John’s thought Sherlock has the most gorgeous, outrageously expressive eyes he’s ever seen. From one moment to the next, there’s no predicting what colour they’ll appear to be or what emotion they’ll reflect. And even through his feathery shock, it hurts John to see them so filled with trepidation. It cools the anger that’s bubbling behind his navel.

He reaches down for Sherlock’s elbow, draws him up with one hand while he pushes photos away with the other, clearing enough space for them to sit, side by side, on the edge of his bed.

Without resistance, Sherlock follows the pressure of John’s fingers, moving gracefully to sit on the edge of the bed beside him.

So he’s getting new Sherlock then, just now. Not the old one who would have dismissed him, quickly, contemptuously, if John asked something he didn’t want to answer.

“Just tell me,” John says, shoving the photo and note into Sherlock’s hands. “Just...explain it.”

Sherlock swallows, his throat moving so elegantly it belies his obvious disquiet. He looks at the stack of photos in his hand, shuffles through several of them. He glances at Mycroft’s note, his lip curling slightly in that way he has whenever he’s reminded of his brother. Then he puts all of it aside on the bed.

John shifts back, sliding far enough back that his calves are pressed against the side of the bed, that he’d have to point his toes to touch the floor. “You’ve had me under surveillance?”

Sherlock shakes his head. He doesn’t slide back with John. He sits perched on the edge of the mattress, hands clutching at his knees, head down. “No,” he says finally. “It’s not what you think.”

Annoyance flares. “What I think? What does that mean? How do you know what I think? I don’t know what I think! Who’s been following me? Watching me? Was it Mary? Magnussen?”

But, no, cancel that. John’s shaking his head, even as he says it. He’s not thinking clearly. He already knows it was Mycroft. There’s the note. And all those damned traffic cameras, dancing to the tune of Mycroft’s too smooth, too polite voice.

As if it happened yesterday, a memory floods John’s mind. It’s night, and he’s in a phone box, in an area of the city that he doesn’t know. He’s been stranded in a misting rain at a crime scene by the odd, brilliant man he just met. A snarky sergeant has told him his new acquaintance is a dangerous psychopath. His leg is aching from the dampness and the walk. The greasy, unhealthy smell of frying food mixes with the scent of wet asphalt. And a stranger’s sinister voice, crackly and tinny on the payphone, demands to know whether John can see the cameras that shift and turn as the man identifies each one.

John drags himself away from the memory, back to the present. “Why do you have all these pictures? Who took them?”

Sherlock shakes his head, still not looking at John, and lifts a hand, like he’s asking for... What? Quiet? Time? Forgiveness before he’s even explained?

John’s gut gurgles, loud in the too quiet room, but it’s not from hunger. It’s because his insides are churning, muscles rippling with tension. The few bites of cake that he’s had feel like pebbles vibrating in his stomach. John presses the heel of his hand into his navel. He doesn’t know whether he’s more angry or horrified. Or disgusted. Or creeped out.

How could he have not sensed the cameras turning as he passed by? How could he have not known that someone was tailing him? Watching every moment of his life? Is this all of the photos? What else does Mycroft have photos of? How far into his life does this invasion reach? Are there more photos somewhere, in some file stamped ‘Top Secret’ in big red letters, of more private moments?

He blows out a breath and tries to silence his mind and hold back the impetuous, angry words that are threatening to tumble from his mouth. He needs to be calm. To talk is to fan the flames of the fury that’s threatening to catch fire in his gut. Best to wait until he untangles what he’s feeling. Until he hears what Sherlock has to say.

But there’s no way the explanation can be anything good...

He takes a deep, deep breath, air sifting all the way down into his lungs, and lets it out slowly. “Just... Just tell me.” His voice is flat, showing none of the anger, the foreboding, that he’s feeling.

Sherlock nods as if he understands the control John’s exerting over himself, over his voice. As if he’s grateful for the reprieve. “Mycroft took them—or rather, he had them taken.”

“Why?”

Sherlock takes a deep breath of his own. His jaw works, but no words come out.

“Sherlock!” John insists, voice sharpening.

Sherlock turns his head away so that John can’t see even the side of his face. And he mumbles, low and unintelligible, towards the dark rectangle of the window.

John shifts. “What? I didn’t hear you.”

And Sherlock mumbles again.

John taps Sherlock’s shoulder, gives his upper arm a little tweak to indicate he should turn back. Sherlock’s tricep is as hard as steel under his fingers. “I can’t understand what you’re saying!”

Sherlock settles back to his original position, facing forward.

John still can’t see more than a partial profile, but at least, this time he can understand the two words Sherlock utters. “For me.”

The muscles in John’s arms and across his back clamp down. He sucks in a breath of air and forces himself to relax. Forces his jaw to unclench. “Mycroft took all these pictures for you? Why?”

Sherlock shakes his head. Almost glances back at John, but stops himself.

Still, it’s enough for John to see a glimpse of the flush on Sherlock’s prominent cheekbones, for John to see the way Sherlock licks his lips nervously. The way he’s striving to settle his expression into something neutral.

John edges forward a bit. “I’m not going to let this go, so you might as well tell me.”

Sherlock sighs, says reluctantly, “After I...” His tongue sneaks out again, leaves his lips pink and wet. “When I left... I intended to have no contact with...anyone I knew. I planned to be on my own. I thought that would be the best way, the most straightforward way, to accomplish what needed to be done.”

“‘Alone is what I have. Alone protects me’.” John quotes the words verbatim, his voice bitter. Still, after all this time, accusing. Dark red flickers at the edges of his mind.

Sherlock flinches. His fingers curl into a fist. “Yes,” he whispers. “So I thought.”

John says nothing. The silence draws out, long and uncomfortable, but he waits. Waits for the explanation he’s due.

But Sherlock says nothing, only sits there, fist clenched on his thigh. Shoulders as tight as if he’s waiting for a blow to fall.

Finally, John gives up and asks, “And how does this explain why Mycroft was watching me?”

“It doesn’t.” Sherlock’s voice is soft and quiet. But then he goes silent again. Stares at the tips of his toes.

For the first time, John realizes that Sherlock still isn’t wearing shoes. His long feet are clad in only his black socks. That explains why John didn’t hear him until he was at the door. Though Sherlock could have been wearing jackboots and bells, and John probably wouldn’t have heard him through the roaring in his ears.

Sherlock shifts. The movement sends photos cascading across the duvet behind him.

John reaches back for one, a glossy 4x6. It’s of him and Greg standing just under the awning at the entrance of a pub. The warm light coming through the windows is glinting on the falling rain. Greg is laughing, just bringing his umbrella down to close it, twirling it in a whir of colour and spraying raindrops. John is shaking the rain off his umbrella, and the black cone is a blur. The motion doesn’t detract from the photo. It actually adds to it, giving it movement and mood.

Like the one of him on the park bench, it’s a really good photograph, obviously not taken through one of Mycroft’s traffic cams. Which means...whoever was following him that night had a mobile with a damn good camera. Or, more likely, a really good camera and a telephoto lens. And it was someone with an eye for a good shot. “This didn’t come from one of Mycroft’s traffic cameras.”

Sherlock glances back. “No.” He reaches back and takes the photo from John’s hand. His fingers move on it automatically, thumb fitting to the edge, rubbing up it, curling up to the top corner, back down to the bottom corner. His fingers fall easily into the rhythm, as if it’s something he’d done many times. Hundreds of times.

So...that other photo, the one John found earlier, isn’t curled from being in someone’s pocket. It’s curled from Sherlock holding it. Tracing the edge with his long fingers. Obsessively.

Sherlock’s voice is husky and tender, nearly a whisper. “Mycroft had it taken for my birthday. He sent it to me last year, along with a tiny birthday cake. It tasted like it was made with sawdust and jelly babies. It’s one of my favourites.”

His thumb moves rhythmically on the photo. “The photo, not the cake, my favourite,” he clarifies, smiling with a wry little twist of his incredible mouth. “I can almost smell the rain when I look at it. And you and Lestrade, you both look so...relaxed. So happy.”

The thought of Sherlock, spending his birthday alone in some strange place, with only a small cake and a photo of absent friends for company, sends a wash of pain through John. Sorrow sifts down through him, setting his anger to hissing and guttering like fire in rain. It almost makes him feel guilty for the smile he’s wearing in the photo.

But even with his anger dissipating into smoky tendrils, there are so many things to consider that John can’t figure out what to look at first. Which question to ask first. He isn’t sure which is the most shocking. That Mycroft has, for months, been pointing his traffic cams at John as he walked down the street. That Mycroft has had a photographer tail him. That John never noticed. And then there’s the revelation that Mycroft’s been sending photos of him to Sherlock almost the whole time Sherlock was gone. And terrible cake.

Oddly, it’s the idea of Mycroft getting someone, anyone, a tiny birthday cake that’s the strangest of all. It’s the type of sentimental gesture of which John would have never believed him capable.

John opens his mouth. But all that comes out is a low breath that sounds like it’s caught somewhere behind his breastbone. It rattles along his ribs before lurching free. His mind supplies no words to form a question or even comment.

John’s hand drifts across the photos spread out on his bed. His whole life, months worth, captured on paper. “All that time...” he finally manages to squeeze past the constriction of his throat. “If only Mycroft had told me. If only you—”

“No!” Sherlock shakes his head, cutting him off before he can finish the thought. “No, John.” He twists to face John, clutching the photo of John and Greg so tightly it crackles in his fingers. “I know you think he should have told you, or I should have told you, but... One word. If just one word, one suspicion, had been whispered about me, Moriarty’s snipers...”

Fear clutches at John’s chest, knocks the air loose in his lungs so that it all rushes out at once. He remembers, with a clarity that makes him blink, those red laser sights, centred on him and Sherlock at the pool. The smell of chlorine surges up, thick and cloying, in the back of his throat. He’ll never be able to go near a pool again without feeling nauseated, without anger and fear swelling up in him like something alive and ravening. Unlike all those red memories of Sherlock, this one is blue, like water, and black with rage. He swallows it back, pushes it down, forces his fingers to unclench. He sucks at his cheeks to get enough saliva to wet his tongue. “Snipers? So that was the threat.”

Sherlock nods.

After Sherlock had returned, after John had recovered from the worst of his shock and anger, after much shouting and ranting, a few thrown punches, and much cold anger on his part, he’d gotten to the point where he was calm enough to ask Sherlock for an explanation of what he’d done.

And Sherlock—new, pod-person Sherlock—had told him some of what happened. That he’d faked his own death because John’s and Mrs Hudson’s and Greg’s lives had been threatened. How he’d managed it. That he’d spent all of the time he was gone destroying Moriarty’s network.

But then, Sherlock had said quietly that he wasn’t ready to talk about the particulars of it, of what he’d done with those two years. He’d asked John for time.

John had wanted to demand answers, had wanted Sherlock to justify the pain he had been through. But Sherlock had said the one thing that John wouldn’t force his way past. Former Captain John Watson, war veteran, wounded in body and mind, understood not being ready to talk about things that happened in battle. And he’d respected Sherlock’s request for time.

And he respects it still, but...there’s just one thing he has to know, now. “You took them out? The snipers.”

Sherlock looks away and shakes his head. “No,” he says, “Mycroft’s men...neutralised...them.” The low, dull fury in his voice tells John how much he regrets that it wasn’t him, personally, who took care of it. “But only after I dealt with the man who would have sent others to take their places. I found him in Spain. Two weeks after...” Sherlock closes his eyes, and his head dips even further. “I know I promised I’d tell you one day. All of it...”

John nods. He wants to demand a full recounting of details. He wants to know everything, from beginning to end, from the moment Sherlock understood what was happening; to the moment he felt the wind catch in his coat as he stepped off that ledge; to the moment he knew it was safe for him to return to London. John wants to know what happened all those months while he thought Sherlock was dead.

But John’s seen the scars on Sherlock’s back, the x-ray that shows the healed hairline fracture of Sherlock’s ulna. He’s glimpsed the row of suspiciously rounded scars, like cigarette burns, on Sherlock’s hip. John’s come awake, twice in only the last couple of weeks, to the sounds of Sherlock groaning and shouting in his sleep. He’s felt the cold sweat soaked into the pillow when he ran downstairs and woke Sherlock from his nightmare.

“No. No, I’m not asking you to tell me now. I understand needing time.” He brushes his fingertips down the back of Sherlock’s arm. Just the barest, gentlest touch on the soft, black silk. Reassurance for both of them. “I do want to hear it all someday, when you’re ready to tell me. If you’re ever ready to tell me. I just wanted to know...that one thing. I can wait for the rest.” John’s voice catches a little. “Can you...just tell me about Mycroft and the photos?”

Sherlock takes a deep breath.

Sherlock has shifted enough on the bed that John can see he’s winding himself up to say ‘no’. Can see Sherlock beginning to shake his head, his expression shuttering. There’s something protective, something that sings of denial, in the set of Sherlock’s shoulders, in the way he’s sitting, stretched up tall, spine straight and rigid. Old Sherlock reasserting himself.

“Really, John,” he begins in that slightly arrogant voice he adopts when he wants to brush away what’s been said, when he doesn’t want to reveal himself, “you just said—”

“You owe me that part, at least,” John interrupts softly. “They’re photos of me.”

Sherlock’s shoulders drop in defeat. A pink flush crawls up his jaw. “Mycroft took them...for me. So that I could stay focused on what I had to accomplish.”

“I don’t...” John hesitates. He wants to know, but how deeply connected is it with the stuff Sherlock isn’t ready to talk about? “I don’t understand.”

Sherlock takes another deep breath and nods. Then he slides back on the bed so that’s he nearly shoulder to shoulder with John. “I knew that I had to work alone, to do...what had to be done.”

John nods. “I got that part.”

Sherlock twists his lips. It could be a wry smile, but it’s more like a grimace, and when he speaks, it’s with nothing like his usual rapid-fire delivery. His voice is low, halting. Unsure. “Even after Mycroft assured me that the assassins assigned to each of you had been... removed...I found I couldn’t contain my unease. I couldn’t sleep. When I did sleep, I had nightmares. I had difficulty...maintaining my focus.” Sherlock stops his faltering confession. Blinks as if he’s surprised how much he’s revealed. Blushes hotter as if he’s ashamed of admitting his weakness.

John holds his breath, holds absolutely still, afraid Sherlock’s going to stop talking.

But he doesn’t. “Mycroft realized that I was...distracted. He...deduced what I was experiencing.” Sherlock still clutches the photo of John and Greg. His fingers start to move again, sliding obsessively back and forth along the edge. “He sent me the first photos, thinking that it would help. He thought that if I could see that you were all right, I would be better able to stay focused.”

Sherlock pauses to look down at the photo. “And it did help. But I could see that you were in pain. Grieving. And so my focus was improved, but my resolve to go on, to continue with the deceit faltered.” He swallows. “And so Mycroft sent more photos, a few every week, when he could. To show me that you were coping. Moving on.”

John doesn’t even try to soften the dart of anger that shoots through him. “So I have Mycroft to thank for these last two years? If it hadn’t been for him, you would have come home. You would have—”

“No, John, I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.” Sherlock folds his arms across his chest, leaning forward slightly, tucking his hands under his arms. The photo dangles from his fingers just inches from John’s chest. “It had to be done. Whether I had focus or resolve, I had to go on. All Mycroft was doing was trying to make sure I was moving forward as safely as possible.”

John sits back, chastened. Yes, of course. He can see that. He knows that from personal experience. A soldier has to be focused. A soldier in a battle zone has to be sure of what he’s doing, certain of his reasons for doing it.

As if he’s reading John’s mind, Sherlock says quietly, “I know that you feel your privacy was invaded, but... I also know you understand the importance of staying focused when you’re...in the field. It helped, more than you can know, to know that you were well. To see Mrs Hudson and Lestrade...”

Sherlock pauses, throat working as he searches for words. “Whenever I knew where I was going next, or whenever I was to be in one place for a long enough length of time, I would let Mycroft know. And he would send me a few photos. When he didn’t know where I was, he would save them until I contacted him. And then, a whole packet would come at once. Knowing that what I was doing kept you safe... Knowing you were alive and well... It kept me focused.”

He rocks forward a bit and stares at the photo in his hand. “Your face reminded me, every day, that what I was doing was necessary. Every photo reinforced that what I was doing was worthwhile.”

Worthwhile. The word echoes, bouncing off the inside of John’s skull. He gives a strangled half laugh that threatens to become inappropriate giggles. “So photos of me made you a better killing machine?”

Sherlock twitches, hunching in even tighter on himself. He tucks his chin down so tight that the back of his neck shows above his collar, exposed and vulnerable, white against the stark black silk.

John regrets the words the moment they leave his mouth, but he can’t undo them. He lays his hand on Sherlock’s back. “Hey... I’m not judging you. It’s just...”

Sherlock doesn’t respond.

“I shouldn’t have said it that way, this is all just... I’m a little...unnerved.” John centres his palm on the bony protrusions of Sherlock’s spine and massages gently. “But I’m not judging you. I would have done the same thing. To save you and the others.” He barks another strangled laugh. “Hell, I did kill to save you. And that was before I even knew you, really.”

Under his fingers, the tension in Sherlock’s spine eases. John pats him gently, urging Sherlock to relax further, until he sees Sherlock’s shoulders edge back and down. Relaxing, just a bit. That expanse of pale neck disappears behind his collar.

John feels a tiny, surprising pang of regret that he didn’t reach up, stroke the smooth skin when he had the chance. “It was just an odd thought,” he says with a grin, “that my face is so...inspiring.”

Sherlock huffs a short bark of strained laughter.

John pulls his hand back and looks at it.

Just to look at him, Sherlock seems thin, like he’s all angles and bony protrusions. But he feels much more substantial. Strong, ropy muscle and long bones. Body hot enough, even through a layer of shirt, to make John’s fingerprints feel as if the ridges and whorls have puffed up, been made more prominent by the contact. His palm is warm and tingling.

He rubs the pads of his fingers together. “Wasn’t that dangerous, though? Having these photos with you? Something that could identify you, or give you away...”

Sherlock shrugs. “I had to have safe places for identities and passports and money. Mycroft saw to it.” He smiles. “It’s possible that I hold the record for most number of countries in which a safe deposit box has been rented.”

John sucks in a breath to ease the ache in his chest. To think of Sherlock, moving from place to place, always in danger, always looking over his shoulder. And so completely alone. With only his brother and the enemy he was facing in the moment even knowing he was alive. Only grainy photos printed on computer paper to remind him of home...

Sherlock glances back at him. “I think... I think Mycroft thought I would destroy the photos once I had seen them, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. So I stored them in the safe deposit boxes or my hiding places. And the times that I had to leave without collecting my things, Mycroft would have his contacts collect my papers and destroy them or forward them on if needed. And the box of photos always came with them. I suppose it was dangerous. In a way. But at the time, it seemed...necessary.”

John’s still looking at his hand, still feeling the sensation of warmth and sparkling energy in his palm. It’s such a contrast with the cold ache in his chest. All this time, he’s been so angry with Sherlock for leaving him, for letting John think he was dead. He hasn’t really considered what it must have been like for Sherlock, being alone, being dead.

And he realizes...while Sherlock left him behind, left John on his own these last two years,
even on the other side of the world, with Mycroft’s help, Sherlock had kept John close.

“Sentiment, Sherlock?” John can’t curb his smile, and he keeps his tone deliberately light and teasing, but he can’t conceal the wonder woven through it. “From Mycroft and you, too?”

After a moment, Sherlock shakes his head like he’s trying to throw something off. He glances sideways with a lopsided, apologetic smile. “Forgive me, John. I know you don’t care for sentiment in me.”

Surprise slides into the warmth that’s building in John’s chest. “What? Who says I don’t care for sentiment? In you or anybody?”

“You called me an ‘alien pod-person’.” Sherlock says it with a smile to show that he’s not angry.

But John can see the uncertainty behind it. And suspicion floods John. Was old Sherlock—manic and unsocial and clueless—just another gift Sherlock had given him? Sherlock had been different after he came back. Especially those weeks after the marriage break-up, maybe...even before then. Had Sherlock given John his old self back, because he’d thought that was what John needed?

Would Sherlock have told him this, days ago, weeks ago, if he’d had the opportunity? Had Sherlock left that box of photos out where John was sure to find it? All that weird niceness, when John had first moved back in... He’d thought it was just Sherlock being manipulative. In the nicest sort of way, of course, but still, acting. He’d seen Sherlock do it with other people, put on a mask, turn on the charm, to get what he wanted.

But maybe it hadn’t been an act. That had been sentiment, too, hadn’t it? That had been Sherlock, glad John was back. That had been Sherlock, changed by almost two years of...doing what he’d done.

John swallows, feeling suddenly like he’s hanging from the rafters by his fingernails again.

Sherlock doesn’t seem to notice. He says softly, almost to himself, “You and Mycroft are right, in a way. Sentiment is a disadvantage. It makes the nights seem longer. It makes even days in harsh sunlight seem colder. But it gave me a focus, a sharpness, that was necessary for—” Sherlock bites back the rest of his sentence, as if he’s finally heard himself speaking.

The heat slips lower, into John’s belly, warming the blood rushing in his veins and the tips of his fingers and toes. It feels like his whole body has been numb since he first eased the lid of that box open, and now everything’s beginning to warm up. His senses are waking up.

“Sherlock...” he says huskily, and the palm he presses to Sherlock’s back this time isn’t so impersonal. He runs his hand the length of Sherlock’s spine, strokes across the width of his shoulders.

Sherlock shivers under his touch, but doesn’t turn around.

John leans forward and presses his forehead to Sherlock’s back, right at his shoulder. His nose bumps against the line where back meets arm, and he breathes in the scent of Sherlock. Silk shirt warmed by skin. Soap. Warm, sweet sweat. It’s a heady, masculine, tantalizing smell. And he’d rather breathe it than oxygen.

“Sherlock,” he whispers again. He wants to say more, but the words get all wound up in his head, caught in his throat. Because Sherlock did all this—gave up months and months of his life, risked his life, became a killer—for Greg and Mrs Hudson and for him. Sherlock gave up the person he’d become to be the person he thought John needed. “I never meant I didn’t like you being sentimental. I like you...whichever way you are. I want... I want...”

And suddenly, like a box has been opened, revealing the treasure inside, the road forward is visible. Stretching out, fine and smooth, ahead of him. And Sherlock is standing in the middle of it, looking back. Hopeful and smiling. Waiting for John.

But here, in this room of boxes, Sherlock is holding himself so still that he’s near to vibrating with tension. Waiting for John.

John clears his throat. “I want you,” he says gruffly. The words, so alien to anything he’s ever believed about himself, are shockingly easy to say. “I want you however you are. However you want to be.”

The muscles in Sherlock’s back shift under John’s fingers, and he wheels, his eyes wild and strange, his expression shocked. Disbelieving. Sherlock twists towards him, sound that’s half groan, half sob coming out of him, moving clumsy and fast.

John’s so surprised that he rocks back and freezes.

Their bodies collide, and Sherlock bears John back onto the bed. He covers John’s body with his. Searches with desperate, dry lips for John’s mouth.

The sudden heaviness across John’s chest flattens the breath out of him, and he grunts. His arm is caught beneath the weight of Sherlock’s body, and it feels like his wrist is warped to the point of breaking. Sherlock’s face grates against his, cheek rough with five o’clock shadow, and it burns John’s skin. But he doesn’t care. If his bones are broken and his skin is stripped from his flesh, he doesn’t care.

He scrabbles for Sherlock with his free hand. Lips grazing eyebrow, eyelid, cheek, nose. Breath coming short and sharp as he tries clumsily to meet Sherlock’s kiss. And finally, lips on his. Finally. After all this time. Lips on his. Soft, sweet mouth pressing against his.

After months of pain. Of feeling like he’d dried into a husk so transparent and desiccated he’d blow away in a light breeze. Feeling like his heart had been scooped out of his chest, one painful, bloody spoonful at a time, leaving nothing. Nothing. Finally, there’s this. This wild, soaring feeling. This life.

Sherlock’s mouth on his. Kissing him. Kissing. And it’s dry and desperate. Then wet and desperate. The taste of Sherlock, indefinable, unique, sweet with milk and tea, with the spice of cake, explodes across his tongue.

This kiss. It’s like sand in his veins. Hot burning sunlight. This should desiccate him, this sensation that’s hotter than the desert. That stings like sand in a windstorm. It’s more dangerous than gunfire, than mortars. It is a mortar. Exploding his heart. Arousal, sweet and tingling, unspools low in his belly. And he realizes he’s rasping words into Sherlock’s mouth. “This. This. Finally. This.”

“This,” he murmurs, sliding his lips along Sherlock’s jaw. Pressing his face into the curve of Sherlock’s throat. This taste, this scent, silk and skin and musk. “This.” This feels like home.

He’s moved. And he’s moved—four times in the last three years—from one place to another. Belongings shoved into boxes, then unpacked. Things placed about him, dusted, stacked, hung on hangers. Then repacked while he’s moved again. But all he needed, the whole time, to be home, to be safe, was this. This heartbeat, thundering beneath his lips. This man.

John can’t wait to lay his head on Sherlock’s naked chest. Feel the warmth. Move his lips across hair so fine that it shows only as glints of red and gold in the lamplight. He can’t wait to lie, still and quiet and warm, with Sherlock’s heart beating against his cheek. With Sherlock’s heart beating against his spine while Sherlock’s arms enfold him. He can’t wait to wake and find that he’s no longer alone in a cold bed. That the person next to him, reaching for him in the cold, morning light is Sherlock. The promise, the possibilities of a future so far removed from anything he’s imagined, unfurl like flowers opening for the morning sun.

And then Sherlock’s pulling away. Trying to raise up. “This,” Sherlock echoes. “This is not a good idea.”

John can see the fear starting to trickle in. The wildness is gone from Sherlock’s gaze, replaced by dismay, by that tight, closed-off expression Sherlock always exhibits whenever sentiment threatens his control. New Sherlock threatening to be subsumed back into the old, cool, always-pretending-to-be-in-control one.

“Forgive me, John.”

John holds on, fingers digging into Sherlock’s ribs. Feeling the shift and slide of muscle over bone. He remembers Sherlock saying softly, ‘People change, John.’

Yet it was John who was still clinging to their old ways. Maybe he had needed Sherlock to be who he was. He’d boxed himself in so neatly that he hadn’t even realized it. He hadn’t even known it. Until this moment, when the realization of how much he’s changed, too, smacks him.

He didn’t even know that he wanted this, but now that he does, he’s not giving it up easily. Not after all he’s been through. After all they’ve been through. To get to this point and let everything slip back to what it was before...it’s not going to happen. Not if he can stop it.

Sherlock tries again to pull away. Harder this time. Drawing the mask of the old Sherlock back over his features.

John catches at Sherlock’s ribs, then his shoulder, but his fingers slide off the soft shirt. Sherlock’s shirts are too tight to begin with, and now, with him twisted on the bed, his arm across John, the shirt is drawn across Sherlock’s chest and arms even tighter. John can’t find a place to grip the slick, taut cloth. He gives up and grabs at the collar, at the gap at Sherlock’s throat where the collar is open. He wedges his fingers into the small opening and yanks.

The first button pops off, ricochets off John’s nose and hits the headboard, bone button pinging on wood, then disappears in the photos scattered across the duvet. Two more buttons pop off, and two more come open, sliding through the buttonholes with the sound of bursting threads, exposing Sherlock from throat to navel.

“What” John gasps, “is wrong with this idea?”

Sherlock freezes, hanging over John.

John winds the fingers of both hands into the finally loose, gaping shirt and holds on. His knuckles are pressed into Sherlock’s chest, thumbs pulling the shirt open even wider.

His gaze flicks down, taking in the expanse of pale skin with a smattering of freckles. John arches up. Shoves his nose between Sherlock’s neck and his collar and inhales. Presses his lips to the sharp line of clavicle. Meanders down.

Sherlock draws in a jerky breath and shifts back, out of the reach of John’s mouth. He braces on one knee and his elbows, his arms and hands sliding across the duvet until they’re alongside John’s shoulders and head. “But, John, I thought you wanted— How could you...? You cannot possibly want...”

“Is that what your brilliant observational skills are telling you?” John smiles up at him, drinking in the way Sherlock’s body is squared over his, not quite touching him. Boxing him in. He rocks his hips, grazing Sherlock’s thigh with his erection, before falling back to the bed.

Sherlock’s brilliant eyes flare. The pupils dilate, that lovely green/gold swallowed up by black.

John lets go of his grip on the shirt with one hand so that he can slide it the length of Sherlock’s long torso, graze his palm across the front of those tight black trousers. Make sure that Sherlock really is taken over by sentimentality. That he wants, as much as John wants.

Sherlock’s mouth opens, his tongue darts out to moisten his lips as John strokes the length of his growing erection. He groans softly as John draws him down, shifting so that their hips align, their cocks align. John rocks up into him, thrusts against him gently.

Sherlock shivers. Tentatively, as if he doesn’t quite believe John, he responds, moving his body against John’s. Lowering himself down carefully, as if he’s not sure he can trust John to bear his weight. “I thought...” he says huskily. “You are quite fond of telling people you’re not gay.”

John smiles. “Never said I was straight, though, did I?”

Sherlock tilts his head, surprised and questioning.

John shrugs. “The reason I’ve protested about my sexuality is because people were making assumptions about me when they didn’t know me. I don’t like...” He pauses and then laughs aloud at the analogy that jumps into his head. “I don’t like being boxed in.”

He lets go of his grip on Sherlock’s shirt so that he can run his hands over Sherlock’s back. Down his sides. Down to cup that lush, perfect arse.

Sherlock draws in a shaky breath and shifts against him. Lowers his head to press a tentative kiss to John’s neck.

John whispers in his ear. “I’ve never had a relationship with a man, but I’ve done a bit of experimenting.”

And the sound that comes out of Sherlock is like something Sherlock would draw out of his violin. Low and soft and plaintive.

Pleasure ripples up John’s back. “What about you?”

“I have...experimented. A bit,” Sherlock admits.

And John laughs again, just for sheer joy, and clutches Sherlock to him. No matter how suddenly his whole view of the world has changed, he’s still boxed in. By this room and this life. And now his body, too, boxed in by bone and flesh and the warm, musky scent of Sherlock. By sentiment.

Sherlock pushes back to stare at him. His expression still hovers between uncertainty and stunned disbelief.

John runs his fingers over Sherlock’s face, learning the feel of sharp cheekbones, softness of eyelashes, the lush, soft curve of Sherlock’s mouth.

John sighs. If someone would just close the flaps over this moment, tape the box shut so that not one instant—not one molecule of Sherlock’s scent, not one ounce of his weight and warmth, not one second of Sherlock’s amazing eyes staring into his—would be lost, then that would be perfect.

“If you think, for one second, that I’m letting this go...” John works one hand into the edge of Sherlock’s torn-open shirt, presses his palm flat against warm naked skin, cranes up, and presses a kiss to the pale skin in the hollow of Sherlock’s throat. He whispers against Sherlock’s breastbone. “If you think I’m letting you go... You’re not as observant as you think you are.”

Sherlock’s seems frozen with fear. He shakes his head slowly, like he’s going to protest.

And John says quietly, with as much conviction as he can fit into his voice, “People change, Sherlock.”

Sherlock shudders. The tremor passes over his whole body, making the photos near John’s head shift. He stares at John’s face, gaze fixating on the soft, promising smile John gives him. On John’s mouth.

And then Sherlock gives one quick, hard twitch of his head, like he’s resetting all the dials in his mind. He smiles, too, still a bit unsure, but determined. Then he looks down at John’s hand, fisted in his shirt, and a haughty, amused mask slips over all the uncertainty that’s crinkling the corners of his eyes.

“Really, John,” he says, his voice a bit too gruff to carry off the pretend arrogance. “Tearing off my shirt? Must you be so clichéd?”

John shivers at the way Sherlock keeps looking at his mouth. The way his gaze slips away, then returns, caressing John’s lips while his tongue darts out to moisten the bump at the centre of his own lips. Sherlock looks like he wants more breathless, heartbreaking kisses, and John does, too. But he also knows that Sherlock’s still half poised on the edge of running away. Still not sure that what John is saying is real.

John smiles, willing to go along with the game. He grins, unremorseful, up at Sherlock. “Then you shouldn’t wear shirts that fit like a second skin. It was the only way I could get a grip on you.”

Sherlock looks like he’s trying to decide whether to laugh or to be affronted.

John uses his grip on the shirt to draw Sherlock down. He kisses him, a slow, gentle touch of lips that could so easily slide into desperate hunger if he let it go.

Sherlock kisses him back, but...not quite as enthusiastically this time. He’s still unsure.

Instinct tells John to tread lightly. With a leisurely press of lips to the corner Sherlock’s mouth, his jaw, then the trembling pulse point beneath his ear, John lets him go. He unwinds his fingers from the soft shirt and holds onto the tip of the collar with only a finger and thumb.

Sherlock looks a bit shell shocked. Still wavering between laughter and escape. But he manages a teasing smile. “But if I wore shirts that didn’t fit as well, you wouldn’t admire my chest and shoulders as much.”

John laughs at him softly. “I’d admire your chest and shoulders even if you were wearing a muumuu.”

Sherlock wrinkles his forehead at the image.

John grins and rolls his hips, as much as he can with Sherlock’s weight bearing down on him. Just in case Sherlock has forgotten just how much John admires him.

Sherlock catches his breath, tilts his hips into the contact.

John tugs gently a the collar he’s still gripping between thumb and forefinger. “Even if it as a great big, flow-y muumuu, with pink flowers and tropical birds. And a lace collar.”

After a moment, Sherlock smiles, too. And the rest of the tension slips out of his face and he eases back down. Most of his weight is still on his elbows, but he rests his face against John’s shoulder.

John twists, hand coming up and threading through that incredible hair, gripping lightly to keep Sherlock’s head in place. His bends his neck at an impossible angle so that he can kiss Sherlock again. And again.

He cups that perfect arse and thinks about sliding into Sherlock. About making him moan. And he moans to think of it.

Sherlock moans with him, and they move together in a slow rhythm. Bodies pressing, sliding. Cock straining against cock, hot even through layers of fabric.

John’s breathless and quivering with pleasure, aching. Wanting naked flesh against his own. He’s seconds from tearing at his trousers and Sherlock’s. From making Sherlock’s impeccable clothing as rumpled as his own.

But as he shifts, the corner of a photo pokes him in the neck. Another crackles beneath his arm. He pulls back. “Why don’t we take this somewhere more comfortable? Your bed, maybe? We’re ruining your photos.”

Sherlock blinks and looks about him as if he’s surprised at where he finds himself. After a moment, he nods and slides off John. But instead of getting up, he rolls onto his back and lies, staring up at the ceiling, eyes wide and unblinking.

John hates the loss of warmth and closeness, but in honesty, his bad shoulder was starting to ache with the weight, so he doesn’t protest. He just shifts until the side of his body is pressed, shoulder to knee, against Sherlock’s. He takes Sherlock’s hand in his, and Sherlock opens his fingers, twines them with John’s.

More paper crackles and protests as they move, and John lifts his head to look around them.

There are photos surrounding them, tucked under elbows, shoulders, hips. Another one curls and pokes him in the ear when he drops his head back down. He fishes it out. It’s a photo of him walking alongside the Thames at dusk. His hands are in his pockets and his head is down. He looks...lost and sad. A million light years from this moment.

He lays it aside. “We’re still ruining your photos.” It doesn’t come out as apologetically as he’d intended. It’s difficult to be apologetic when he’s breathless from kissing Sherlock Holmes. When his heart is beating with a slow, bass throb. When arousal and anticipation and possibilities are curling through him, unfurling in his imagination. When happiness is making him grin, idiotically, at the dusty spiderweb that he’s suddenly noticed in the corner of the ceiling.

Sherlock twists his head so he can see John. He blinks. Blinks again. His tongue darts out and circles his lips like they’re dry, though they can’t be, because they’re shiny wet with John’s saliva. After a moment, he smiles. “It doesn’t matter,” he says huskily.

He shifts again, turning on his side, readjusting. Photos crackle and protest as he the slides his body alongside John’s and lays his head on John’s chest. “I don’t need them anymore.”

He reaches over John and picks up the shoebox that had contained all the photos. Tilts it up on its end and presses, like he’s going to crumple it down flat.

John catches his hand and stops him. “No, don’t.” He extricates the small box and places it carefully against the headboard, out of harm’s way. Then he twists around to retrieve the lid and tucks it against the pillows, too. He scoops up photos from under his arm and along his side and drops them into the box, moving carefully so that he won’t dislodge Sherlock’s head from his chest.

But Sherlock raises up onto one elbow to watch what he’s doing.

“This is one box I’m going to keep,” John tells him.

Sherlock raises one eyebrow.

“For sentimental reasons,” John says.

After a moment, Sherlock nods. And he reaches over and drops the photo of John and Greg into it.

###

Comments

[hiddenlacuna.livejournal.com]

Part 2 of the read-along comment! Whee! Here we go:


Yep, those are the scents of Sherlock Holmes

I'm really liking the pent-up energy similes you've worked into this story - possessions, snakes, words, questions, light, emotions. It's a lovely theme, and it's very effective at sustaining and building narrative tension.

voice as soft as the sunset - oh, pretty

all of the pictures are so very exposing. ouch

mercurial eyes

Good, John, make space for the real thing. Putting the photos on the bed was rather suggestive, then, wasn't it, you silly potato

poor thing. Got your hands full, don't you (snerk)

ahahah yes, Mycroft, your fingerprints are rather all over this one

stomach like vibrating pebbles - quite evocative

DO NOT ASK WHAT ELSE MYCROFT HAS PHOTOS OF

Controlled John does not mean Calm John

Damn right, bitter. That was a dick move. (again with the profound colours)

eeeeeeeyeah it does

S(herl)ock

jackboots and bells - I've read that fic :P

Oh, that's a lovely image. I love umbrellas in the rain. They're optimistic, somehow.

betrayed once again by muscle memory

..... sawdust and jelly babies

...........

(I once tried to make jam out of nothing but wild grapes(?) I found in a park and half a cup of sugar. This sounds worse. Damn it, Mycroft, stop cooking and order something from Harrods, would you?)

John agrees with me that that cake sounds fucking awful. That is attack cake.

red blue black. an inverted Union Jack pillow. discomfort mistrust lack of home

Pour vous, mon chèr. Tout, tout.

you had time and you asked for more time. I have time, so much time, two years of time, all the time

the opening shots of this montage would look a lot like S1:E1 but darker and with no helmets

return of the grinmace! yay!

no choice no choice in your bright blue eyes

OK, John, that was just mean and you know it

Massage. Skin. GET IT, JOHN. warms-seeking missile

shut up sentiment is awesome I will cry if you disagree

He's basically a scalene triangle full of antlers, yes. This is the life you (are) chose (choosing).

It wasn't as much for them, if we're being honest here. I mean, it was, but.

OPEN THE BOX OPEN THE BOX OPEN THE BOX

yassssssssssss box opened

heartbeat is loud because heart is full of feels

YES IT IS A GOOD IDEA YOU LIE BACK DOWN NOW, SIR

button negative space

you're pretty

SMASH THE BOXTRIARCHY

Oh, but you like this particular box like my cat likes pop can boxes. Which is to say, a lot.

OK but really have you just had this second skin lying around since you were sixteen or whatever because it no longer fits, buddy

These are all pleasant thoughts and I am glad you have had them

see you in hell, shoebox

Awwww, so sweet! You DO have a heart, you great cabbage.

_________

Nonny, that was just lovely - thank you so much for all the hard work you so clearly put into this! What a sweet story, with so many layers to it! I am delighted and pleased. :)

Can't wait to say thank you to whatever your true name is! Eeeeeee! :D

-L

[lyricaxxx.livejournal.com]

I just can't get over this... It's...it's beyond words. Just so amazing to be given insight into what you were thinking as you were reading.

And more comments that deserve comments (just some, because really, I could quote most of your original comments back at you {g}...
Good, John, make space for the real thing. Putting the photos on the bed was rather suggestive, then, wasn't it, you silly potato
Controlled John does not mean Calm John
DO NOT ASK WHAT ELSE MYCROFT HAS PHOTOS OF (I thought of this, as I was writing. That could be a whole nother story, couldn't it? Back plot bunny! Back!!! Wait your turn!)
jackboots and bells - I've read that fic :P
I love umbrellas in the rain. They're optimistic, somehow.
red blue black. an inverted Union Jack pillow. discomfort mistrust lack of home (I must confess...I didn't see of this when I was writing it!)
He's basically a scalene triangle full of antlers, yes. (This is just an amazing description. I'd steal it for a story if I thought I could get away with it.)

And just so many others, but I must stop!

Thank you so much! This is phenomenal!!!

[jcporter1.livejournal.com]

That was wonderful. a fresh look at the hiatus I had not seen before. And very nicely written.

[lyricaxxx.livejournal.com]

Sorry to be so late in replying. Thank you so much for your very lovely comment!

[swissmarg]

I really like the idea of Sherlock being solicitous at first but changing back to his old personality when John complains. He truly would do anything to make John happy, even at his own expense. I'm also so glad that John recognized that and said “I want you however you are. However you want to be.” What a great moment, I got all tingly! And then Sherlock saying he doesn't need the photos anymore, because now he has the real thing... that just melted me! I hope they'll take lots more pictures now though, of them together, and put them up all over. And maybe even have kids and grandkids to show them to later. :)

[lyricaxxx.livejournal.com]

Again, sorry for the late gratitude. Just got tangled up with deadlines and holiday stuff and computer gremlins...

Thank you so much for your comments!

I'm especially glad to hear you like Sherlock's deliberate personality change. I don't feel that I have a handle on writing Sherlock, so I wasn't sure about that aspect of the story. I really appreciate hearing it worked for you.

And the 'I want you however...'. That was a late addition, and I was concerned that it might be a little too romantic for manly men. {g}

Thank you so very much!!!

[saki101.livejournal.com]

What an incredibly delicate exploration of the pain both of them have endured and what a beautiful and thoroughly believable resolution. Beautiful.

[lyricaxxx.livejournal.com]

So sorry to be so late in replying, but thank you so very much for your comment! I'm especially glad to hear the resolution was believable. I strive for that, but am never sure whether I've achieved it.

[starfishstar]

I love the idea of Sherlock treasuring these pictures all the time that he's away, needing John with him (even though John can't be with him) in order to keep going.

[lyricaxxx.livejournal.com]

So sorry to be running late with replies.

Thank you so much for your comment. I'm glad you liked the idea of Sherlock with the pictures. The base idea for the story came from the idea of John finding this box of photos and discovering that they were Sherlock's from his time away. The rest just grew from that one image.

[ancientreader]

How I love the image of Sherlock's boxed-up heart hidden among John's things. And John flummoxed and disbelieving and missing the point entirely, right up until the moment when he gets it.

And the bit about Sherlock thinking John doesn't care for sentiment in him! Oh, my goodness!

Such a moving story.

[lyricaxxx.livejournal.com]

Thank you so very much!

And I never thought of it that way...Sherlock's boxed up heart. That is such a lovely image. I wish I'd thought of it when I was writing the story.

(Sorry to be running so late with thank yous, and I really appreciate you taking the time to comment.)

[nia_kantorka]

Oh, I loved your John here. How lost he was in between all these boxes and also in this point of his life. It was marvellous how much you told us while he was alone in his room. And Sherlock. Thinking about him being so lonely all around the world, only pictures to keep him company. And that part about the sentiment in him. It was heartbreaking when John realised it. No wonder Sherlock had a hard time to believe John's change of heart.
Great story, MA! I loved it!

[lyricaxxx.livejournal.com]

Please excuse me for taking so long to get back to you!

Thank you so much for your comments! And thank you for saying you liked how much info was packed into that scene with John. I labored over that and worried that there was too much narrative, so I appreciate knowing you liked it.

More to you later, on your gift story to me, now that I'm out from under holidays and deadlines.

Thanks again!

[what-alchemy.livejournal.com]

Aw! So many things I really appreciate in this fic - Sherlock giving up that the photos were for him, and what's more, he needed them to keep going, the revelation that "the softer, gentler" Sherlock is perhaps the "realer" Sherlock he keeps hidden away because he presumes John's disdain of sentimentality, and, of course, the fact that he's been purposefully tormenting John (and us all) with those tight shirts and straining buttons. Lovely!

[lyricaxxx.livejournal.com]

Please excuse me taking so long to thank you for your lovely comments!

I put in the bit with the shirt buttons in an attempt to lighten the mood a bit (and, well, because the tight shirts torment me, too! {g}), so I'm glad to know you liked it.

And though I didn't start out with the idea that Sherlock needed the photos, that rapidly grew out of their conversation. So I'm happy you liked that, too.

Thank you so much!!!

[billiethepoet.livejournal.com]

The theme of boxes, being boxed in or being boxed up, is a great metaphor for how both John and Sherlock can be reluctant with each other.

But thank god those buttons finally gave way. I've been hoping for that for ages.

[lyricaxxx.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to be so late with my thank you.

I appreciate your comment about the metaphor of boxes. My initial idea was more about John finding the box of photos, and the whole 'boxes' theme grew from that. So nice to know that it worked for you!

And the shirt buttons...well, that's got to John acting out a bit of wish fulfillment for my benefit. {wink}

Thank you so much for your comment!!!

[ruth0007.livejournal.com]

“This,” he murmurs, sliding his lips along Sherlock’s jaw. Pressing his face into the curve of Sherlock’s throat. This taste, this scent, silk and skin and musk. “This.” This feels like home."

Gorgeous. I liked how you framed John's struggle and state of mind to return and feel at home with his discovery of the photos. Sherlock's slow acceptance that John really wanted him was a perfect match. Thank you for this character study and it's tender build.

[lyricaxxx.livejournal.com]

Sorry to be running late (deadlines, holidays, brain off-line)with my reply! But thank you so much for your lovely comment.

character study and tender build -- I tend much more toward writing the smutty stuff, so for something to be thought of as 'tender'... That makes me shiver! Thank you so very much!!!