Mumble fic!
So, my fantastic Mumble wrote me some Sherlock fic (FLAIL), but she wants me to post it on my blog instead of posting it on hers, SO I AM GOING TO DO THAT. Here is a Mumble fic, guys. I am still flaily over it.
Coming Home
The day he came back from the dead, Sherlock Holmes was afraid.
He was, of course, no stranger to fear. It had been his constant companion for years now, occupying a space which was so vast and so empty that not even fear could fill it entirely. It had caught him at fairly predictable times: while hunting down some of Moriarty’s more ruthless allies, when a mad beggar in a strange city had pulled a knife on him, when he was in the final stages of cornering Sebastian Moran. And it had caught him far more firmly at less usual times, such as the instances in which Mycroft had gotten in touch and started the conversation with “It’s John.” The news he brought was never the news Sherlock feared, and he craved these little snatches of home: he’s doing well, he’s gotten a girlfriend, he’s gotten married, he’s having a tough month, he’s getting a divorce, he still limps but has stopped seeing the therapist. On these calls, his brother often deigned to repeat the words he’d first given Sherlock in a morgue years before: caring is not an advantage. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough because it was no longer true.
After each piece of news, Sherlock was sharper than before, quicker, lean and hungry on a diet of knowing what he was fighting for. He kept fighting Moriarty’s plan, kept chasing down his game pieces, but the spider had laid his web too well. Even now, with that magnificent brain splattered across the rooftop of St. Bart’s, Moriarty was playing their game. The only difference was that Sherlock had started to win. But that took time, time which he spent grabbing at every line Mycroft could drop him and dreaming of the London air, of a sitting room with two mismatched chairs facing each other, of his violin and quiet mornings and the slow, laborious clacking of a keyboard. Then, one day, he put Moran away for good and, when reaching as he’d always done for information on where to find the next criminal on his list, he came up blank. There was, suddenly and at last, nothing more to fear from Moriarty. He was finished.
Sherlock returned to London. He went straight to the Diogenes Club, not even in disguise, no longer cautious. He’d walked up to Mycroft, sitting in his favourite chair by the window that looked out on the street, and with his nose still buried in his newspaper Mycroft had handed him a note which remarked on how horrible it must have been to walk all the way here from the station without getting a cab in shoes that didn’t fit quite right and then mentioned offhandedly that John was at home. When Sherlock finished reading, his brother had folded his newspaper down and favoured him with the tiniest of smiles, a gesture which still said good to see you and I’m glad you’re okay and welcome back.
So, after three years, Sherlock had gone home. He walked the streets he knew so well to 221B Baker Street and the conqueringly familiar black door, and that was where he stopped, because for once in his life he wasn’t sure what to expect or how to proceed. He didn’t know how John was going to react, the idea of which was so startling that for a brief instant he felt groundless, almost dizzy. Then he shoved the feeling away and pushed the buzzer, listening intently to the uneven footsteps coming down the stairs, bracing for the shout or the punch or the hug or the slammed door – the possibilities which he’d decided were most likely – and when John Watson opened the door to see Sherlock standing there, his poor army doctor had done something completely unexpected: he’d fainted.
Sherlock was too stunned to even attempt catching him, and he fainted to the side, his bad knee crumpling first; this had the unfortunate result of him crashing directly onto a side table with a framed photograph and a bowl for keys. The resultant crash brought out Mrs. Hudson, who came out to find Sherlock crouched over John, bleeding from a cut on his face and just coming to. She’d gone immediately back inside for an herbal soother, which made Sherlock grin helplessly, surging with joy to just see them again. Then John had woken up and immediately reached up to grab Sherlock’s ears, then his nose, then coat, as though making sure he was real. Then he’d sat up, pulled his hand back, and slammed a fist into his face.
For a long moment, the pair of them sat there on the tile in the downstairs hallway, Sherlock pressing his scarf to his bloody nose and John pinching his eyes shut, and after a moment John let himself smile, and he leaned his head back against the wall in silent acceptance. Sherlock sat there with him and watched him just breathe, completely ignoring the cut on his face he’d gotten from a corner of the picture frame, and felt like he’d finally come home.
Mrs. Hudson patched them up, all anxious energy and excited fluttering hands, and when he stood back up she’d dissolved into tears and shuffled into his arms. So they brought her upstairs with them and settled her in Sherlock’s armchair – the only thing of Sherlock’s that John had refused to give up – with a mug of tea, and he’d started explaining himself. None of them knew, at the time, that the process would take days, and that some of those days would be spent learning to navigate the new, awkward silences. After, there were weeks upon weeks of apologies – little ones, the only ones Sherlock really knew, like waking up before John to make the morning tea, or like volunteering to get the groceries, or performing his more odious experiments at the lab and not the kitchen table. And one night, John finally made him stop sleeping on the couch and invited him to share the king size bed he’d bought with Mary. They spent a few nights with an ocean of space between them, which gradually shrunk until one night John rolled over, tucked his head down against Sherlock’s chest, and promptly fell asleep. His cane rested in the corner by the closet doors where he’d forgotten to grab it that morning, and Sherlock fell asleep to the sound of his breathing, thinking that things might finally be okay again.
There was a softness to the way he woke in the mornings: full of calm clarity like any soldier, but with pillow lines still imprinted on his face. Sherlock wasn’t sure how he felt about those lines. Their reassuring indication of a deep sleep, their warmth, were all perfectly charming. But they blurred the curved line of the scar he’d given John, carved just below his temple when he’d fainted on Sherlock’s return. Its presence created a blank space between them which neither had dared to address; it, after all, marked the moment at which John had realized he’d been lied to.
As was typical, John had never mentioned it. Sometimes, though, when he was thinking about his sister or a date he had that evening, he would place his finger upon it – like a bookmark, Sherlock thought, or a sigh – and didn’t seem to notice. Sherlock, of course, noticed. He catalogued its progress from raw slice to bumpy scab to smooth white line more obsessively than he’d ever noted the differences in tobacco ash and stationary and handwriting. These changes, to him, were infinitely more important. The scar, after all, reminded him every day of everything John had forgiven him for. This was part of the reason why the pillow lines disturbed him so much: they faded, and John found them unremarkable until they did. His scar, of course, would stay. But Sherlock was at times remarkably afraid that it would one day come to mean as little as those lines.
So, one night when he was feeling particularly sentimental, he came up behind John as he sat on their sofa and pressed his lips against it. Thank you, he tried to make it say. I have not forgotten.
There, with his eyes closed, he couldn’t see the smile that lifted the corners of John’s lips. But he could feel it in the way his doctor’s breath paused on the inhale, pulse gentling to a softer rhythm, one that was calm and sure and strong and which felt, to Sherlock, like home.
