The first time they kiss has nothing of the expected drama about it.
It is months since Mary, since that whole mess had left them both reeling, battered and uncertain in each others company.
Weeks only since the last nightmare had disturbed the relative silence of Baker Street. John’s, that time. A rapid red-tinted cacophony of fire and of precious things falling, fingers clutching at air. A body landing on hardwood had Sherlock hurrying up the stairs to find John hyperventilating in a ball on the floor. Sherlock had knelt beside him, talking in his ear and giving him his voice and his hand, two true things to latch onto.
They had not kissed then.
It’s been days since their last case, running blindly though familiar streets, both of them winded far sooner than they would have been six years ago. A helter-skelter thing that had ended in Sherlock tripping over a stray cat that had gone screeching onto the night, while Sherlock himself had flown cursing into a stagnant puddle that hadn’t borne too close an examination.
John had gone to him, fighting for breath, both because of the chase but also because of the laughter—sputtering and weak as he’d knelt carefully at Sherlock’s side and pressed instinctive fingers into all the usual places.
“Alright?” he had gasped, as Sherlock lay panting in the litter-strewn filth, cursing whenever heaving lungs let him. Sherlock had snarled, a wordless sound of frustration, and snatched at the fingers kneading carefully at his skull.
“Fine,” he’d snapped, even as he’d held those fingers between his own, not quite letting go, John not quite trying to get them back, a point of languid and unintentional contact hanging halfway between them and going nowhere, till the light of the beat sergeant’s torch had extinguished it.
They hadn’t kissed then, either.
No. When they kiss, they are walking.
Just another WordPress site