(Gloriously beautiful art commissioned from @willietheplaidjacket, based on @roquentine19’s favorite picture of BC. And then I wrote a ficlet based on it for this month’s @hiatustory prompt, bed sharing.)
He had been walking the shadowed streets of Edinburgh for hours, and the problem remained unsolved:
It had been the perfect accidental setup. Their train had been severely delayed, and they’d arrived at the hotel far past their guaranteed reservation time. The only room left contained one queen bed. They’d taken it, of course; what choice did they have? It’s not as if they hadn’t done it before. Well, Before. Which was the problem. Everything had been Before, and now it was After, and there had never been a During.
Sherlock desperately wanted a During with John, and sometimes he thought maybe John wanted it too. There had been several moments over the last few months where he thought John was about to say Something, but there was always an interruption in the form of Rosie or Mrs. Hudson or a text from Lestrade, and the moments had all passed. But there was no couch or chair in their tiny hotel room, and barely any floor space, so they’d have no choice but to share the bed and maybe this thing that Sherlock so desperately wanted might…happen.
So naturally when John had gone into the shower, Sherlock had thrown on the Belstaff and fled.
Needed a walk. Don’t wait up. –SH
Then Sherlock had walked, and walked, and walked. He’d stopped at one point and had two fingers of Scotch in a pub, and then he’d walked some more. He was cold and he was tired and he was lonely and he was so, so afraid. He was afraid of going back to the room and he was afraid of staying away; he was afraid of John finding out and afraid of holding this secret close to his chest forever.
He was afraid that John would decide Rosie needed a mother, or that Sherlock was unfit to be in Rosie’s life. He was afraid that now that he’d realized how lonely he was, he would never be anything else.
He wasn’t used to being afraid, but everything having to do with John Watson was a rare exception to the way he lived the rest of his life.
He took a deep breath, turned the key in the lock, and pushed open the hotel room door. He would use the bathroom, put on his pajamas, and just…get into the bed.
The room was dimly lit by both the bedside lamp John had obviously left on for him and the television that was quietly displaying the end of Rear Window, and John was asleep. His head was at the foot of the bed–wanted to be closer to the screen without having to sit in the desk chair–and he was sprawled out on his back–fell asleep watching the movie on his stomach; flipped over to his customary sleeping position sometime after. Sherlock found himself crossing not to the bathroom as he’d intended, but directly to the bed, where he stared down at the wonder that was John Watson.
Sherlock relished the rare chance to look his fill unnoticed. John was always beautiful to him, but in sleep, with his edges softened and his cares laid aside, he was at once the entire world and the only thing Sherlock had ever truly wanted. It was so easy to imagine crawling in beside him and curling up with his head on John’s good shoulder, letting their breathing patterns syncopate as they slept. It was equally easy to imagine waking John with his mouth, either with a gentle kiss on the lips or by tugging down his pants and–
John stretched in his sleep, one hand coming up behind his head, and as the muscles in his bicep shifted, Sherlock swallowed hard. He’d spent hours, days, years cataloging everything those hands could do, and twice that time fantasizing about the things he wanted them to do. He let out a quiet sigh, briefly letting his eyes fall shut as he thought about the way John’s hands might feel on his skin.
When he opened them again, John was gazing up at him.
It was too late to school the emotions away from his face, and he knew that everything he felt was plainly visible for John to see. He was so tired of hiding, so tired of running. John would see, and John would react, and at least then Sherlock would finally know. He was so wrapped up in this revelation that it took him a long moment to see that John, too, was done hiding.
And the world, at last, fell away.
Part two is now here: http://msdisdain.tumblr.com/post/162461708184/part-2-johns-pov
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