Sometimes Sherlock accidentally falls asleep on the sofa when he means to be thinking.
When John first notices this he thinks is unaccountably adorable, but it’s not really his business so he just leaves him there and goes up to bed. After they’ve lived together for a while, John starts tucking a blanket around him, gently, so as not to wake him.
As John starts to think that maybe there’s something there, something deeper, he occasionally hangs back, watching Sherlock snuffle into the throw pillows and wondering what would happen if, when he tucked that blanket up around his shoulders, if John leaned down and kissed his forehead. Would he wake up? Would he be angry? Or would he look at John with a sleepy smile and kiss him back?
He does it, once. Right after the case in Dartmoor. Conductor of light. Only Sherlock could call him an idiot and make it sound as though he’d hung the stars in the sky. So John dares to try it, just once, about a week after they come back to London: leans down and brushes his lips over the delicate skin at his temple. Sherlock smells like wet wool and tea, and John hovers for a moment, half-bent over him, to see if he will wake, but he doesn’t.
It doesn’t really mean anything, he knows, but it feels enough like a rejection to put him off trying again.
When John finally comes home again, after everything is said and done, he occasionally finds Sherlock sleeping on the sofa and remembers it, that one half-arsed attempt, and wonders what would happen if he tried it again.
Sherlock is different now, though, alarmingly so. More cautious, more quiet. Sometimes John thinks he has nightmares, and he sits in his chair and sings all the soft, quiet songs he can think of, remembering how the violin used to get him through the nights when he first moved in all those years ago.
Tonight, though, Sherlock is quiet, sleeping soundly, and when John drags the blanket over him, he loses track of himself a little bit and without even thinking, leans down and does it again: lips on temple, narrowly missing a mouthful of hair, that smell like lavender and mint.
When he draws back, Sherlock’s eyes are half-open, hazy and confused. “Mm. This is a dream,” he mumbles.
“No.” John dares to run his hand through Sherlock’s sleep-mussed curls. “It’s not.”
His face softens into a smile and he reaches up to catch John’s hand. “Oh,” Sherlock says, eyes slipping closed again, “Good.” And, just as John has imagined so many times before, he pulls John back down as he tilts up his face and he kisses him, Sherlock kisses him, as if it were the simplest thing in the world and maybe, after all this time, it is.
pixelskylines
yousharknotpass
izzy806
janainaart
romaincrisis
origamiaround
discoholicmusic
blakekathryn
stormborns
