Work Text:
Sherlock is falling to the ground.
He is falling to the ground and his stitches are ripping and the waiter is yelling over the sound of a glass shattering. He lands hard and slides along the tile and it's cold, a harsh contrast to fresh blood leaking from around torn sutures.
He is grateful his jacket is black.
John is here.
Sherlock is lying on the ground and John is here and safe and warm and his hands are trembling around Sherlock’s collar, pushing him down, down, down, flush against red-and-black-checked floor. John is here and he is angry and he is different but he is alive and it is the snap of the book closing on the chapter the last two and a half years have been.
Sherlock closes his eyes as the crowd around them surges in reaction, half startling away from the scene playing out on the floor and half jumping up, rushing forward, reaching out to draw John away. This crowd is not scripted; Sherlock has given them no stage directions. If he had, he would have told them, stop.
Let him.
John’s fingernails scrape across the skin of his throat and then he flexes his fingers away and it’s just his palms, pressing into the aching hollows above Sherlock’s collarbones. Sherlock cannot classify these sensations as pain, though, because pain hurts, and John’s hands on him are only a relief.
John is alive. It does not hurt.
John presses him down and Sherlock would disappear through the floor if he could, let himself be swallowed down through layers of London and earth if he could, if only because that was what John wanted.
He is lying on the ground and there are other hands now, trying to come between them, the pressure shifting off Sherlock’s shoulders as John is pulled away, leaving him cold and aching and bleeding and trying to pretend that he is not.
This was supposed to be victorious.
This was supposed to be triumph.
Instead there was only the vision of John, uncomfortable at a table laid with fine china, black suit and tie, white shirt, oblivious to his role, his importance, unaware totally of his own voice in Sherlock’s head when Sherlock desperately needed the distraction-comfort-familiarity. The sight of him caught Sherlock like a hook in the abdomen. Unsteady. Off-balance.
Sherlock was supposed to have slipped into the restaurant and into the seat opposite, smooth and sure and exactly the way John would have remembered him. John was supposed to have looked up in surprise, and then lit up with excitement, and Sherlock was supposed to have explained everything and John was supposed to have listened, enraptured, said brilliant, fantastic, amazing.
In two and a half years, Sherlock was called a lot of things, but never brilliant.
He was supposed to have led John out of this stuffy restaurant, too fancy for John’s comfort, and take him out into London. Chinese from that place with the egg rolls--in two and a half years, there were never egg rolls--and back to Baker Street. John would make them stop at an off-licence for cheap champagne to celebrate, which would clash horribly with the Cantonese duck, but they’d drink it anyway.
John would sink down into his armchair and look at Sherlock like he was the only thing in the world. And maybe, just maybe, when the champagne had softened the edges of the room and after Mrs Hudson had stopped crying and gone to bed, Sherlock would have said it: the things he was not sure of before. The things he is sure of now.
John was supposed to have been happy.
Have you any idea what you’ve done to him, the woman had asked. Sherlock had given her absolutely no thought prior to his arrival. She was supposed to be no more than a background detail--John was on a date. No more important than the sequined flowers on her dress.
Now Sherlock is lying on the ground gasping for breath and she is pushing John into a chair, blocking him from view.
Sherlock saw the box: burgundy velvet. Sherlock saw the diamonds: three, in a row, glittering promises set in prongs of silver. And Sherlock saw the map in his head of how very wrong he’d gotten it, a series of Tube stops labelled mistake and misjudgment and miscalculation.
Missed opportunity.
Sherlock is lying on the ground thinking about all the things he had wanted for this evening and realizing he was not going to get any of them.
You know, it is just possible that you won’t be welcome.
Caring is not an advantage.
Two and a half years ago, Sherlock had been lying on the ground watching John crumple like a napkin on the pavement in front of St Bart’s and Sherlock had thought, I might love you. Please be safe.
He’s had two and a half years to think it over. Back then it was a nebulous inner exclamation, made in the last half-seconds of John. He’s had two and a half years to think it over and tonight, this night, this very first night with no more time wasted, he was supposed to have found the moment and the courage and the voice to say it out loud. He has never before said it out loud. He wants to say it out loud to John.
Instead John has a mustache and a burgundy velvet box and anger, and hatred, and Sherlock has fourteen ripped stitches and two and a half years of waiting for this night crashing through his mind.
Possibly, he should not have impersonated the waiter.
Possibly, he should have sent any one of the thousands of text messages he has saved in his drafts.
But Sherlock does not, cannot, regret leaving. Even if John Watson is consumed by anger and hatred, at least he is alive to be.
The maître d’ is working his way over, the line of his shoulders and jut of his chin spelling his mission and they’ll have to leave. Tossed out into the city, back onto the battlefield, and it has never occurred to Sherlock that they might not stand on the same side.
He pulls himself up, wonders if he should go to hospital for new stitches.
God, but he’d rather not; he’s sick to death of hospitals. He’d rather have John fix him up at Baker Street. Maybe, if he could only explain, if John would only listen, the night is not lost.
Sherlock straightens and draws his shoulders back. He’ll explain everything, why he jumped, how he survived, where he’s been, what he’s been doing, and John will shake his head but smile despite himself and understand why it was all necessary. He would understand just what Sherlock was willing to do, how far Sherlock was willing to go for him.
Friends protect people. He could prove now that he has learned that lesson. Sherlock has that lesson carved into his very flesh.
He has protected John, Mrs Hudson, Lestrade, with a squash ball under his armpit and a bottle of his own warmed blood, with every night of the past two and a half years spent in foreign places, with sheer force of will carrying him forward. Three of the most understanding, most forgiving people, with targets drawn on their backs in Sherlock’s own hand by virtue of having been his friend: Sherlock understands now, what John meant. He only needs John to know that.
Then he can ask John to have a look at the stitches.