Chapter Text
It’s light as champagne froth, the dance to John across the abyss of time, across the restaurant. Bow tie, glasses, twirl and flair, the moustache a touch of his old brilliance. Sherlock perfected a memory-John, admiring, exacting and staunch, to carry with him in exile, and now...
Fantasies shatter against John’s face. His eyes. The set of his chin.
Words fizz and leak from Sherlock. It takes the woman to speak for all of them: ‘Oh no, you’re...’
‘Yes.’
John was his light for years. Through capture and flight and torture. John’s fists hit the table, and a core node of Sherlock’s brain is calculating: How can this be? Where is my error? What John is this?
John honks like an aged walrus. Appalling. Sherlock monitors the clench of his own chest. It’s not loss he feels, but adjustment to data. An inevitable process. Sherlock makes jokes to help.
‘You let me grieve? How could you do that?’
He can’t answer.
When John takes him, he falls on his wounded back. John’s body strains for his. Violence and touch, like his deeper dreams. Is this the breach that heals them? John is dragged away, but not before their legs tangle, knocking hips.
John’s hands withdraw from Sherlock’s neck. The relief is bitter. On his face, the fading heat of John’s breath.