Actions

Work Header

Rating:
Archive Warning:
Category:
Fandom:
Relationships:
Characters:
Additional Tags:
Language:
English
Stats:
Published:
2018-09-05
Words:
1,273
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
30
Kudos:
129
Bookmarks:
9
Hits:
1,203

It's the Landing

Summary:

Sherlock is falling upwards. His transport is failing.

Notes:

Thank you so much to Youngdarling for putting up with any of this in any way! She made it make a bit more sense and is generally awesome.

There are lines of dialogue from the show. So, obviously--I take no credit at all for those ones.

And, here's the inspiration.

Work Text:

I dreamt we spoke, I dreamt we spoke again

It'd been so long, it’d been so long, my mind filled in the blanks

(Death Cab for Cutie)

 

 

Sherlock tries to lift his head, but he can’t.  It’s just so heavy. His whole body hurts, limbs won’t follow instructions, eyes won’t open.  His transport betrays him, lying still. He’s falling upwards. That can’t be right, but somehow--it is.

All he sees is colour, a sickening blur of blues and blacks, glowing off and on and off and on, a garish grin, all teeth.  Pinpricks of white, smears of red so bright they could be blood. He can’t stop falling. It’s so loud. He needs quiet to think. He has to get down from here.  He tries opening his eyes again, but the noise grows louder, blaring like an alarm of white static, like a heartbeat that refuses to regulate. Colours swirl. The clock is ticking.  Tic-tock. Tic-tock. Tic. Tic. Tic. Tic.

His stomach reels; he can’t shut his eyes against any of it:  the noise, the colour, the never-ending kaleidoscope of falling too fast.  His head sinks deeper into his pillow. It is not a comfort; it feels like a hand clamped tightly round his nostrils, sealing his mouth shut.  It feels like suffocating.

He doesn’t want to die.

He doesn’t want to die.

There is so much noise.  Too many colours. Nothing takes shape.  His eyes won’t open. His transport lies still.  

“We don't know a thing about each other. I don't know where we're meeting, I don't even know your name,” the voice says, breaking through.  It’s clipped but calm, and perhaps a touch amused.   Sherlock breathes, and the noise quiets, the fall slows to floating.  Everything important begins to slot into place. This is the voice that matters. Stay here. “And we’re going to look at a flat--”  

His own voice is strong now as he replies, interrupting.  “You’re lying.  You do know.”  He thinks he might be smiling.

“True,” the voice says.  “You play the violin when you’re thinking.  Sometimes you don’t talk for days on end.”

Sherlock hears a lip curl into a smile, fond.  People are basically fond .  

“That doesn’t bother me, though.  Never has.” And the scent that fills his nostrils is strong--warm, well-worn, and so very close.  Soft wool and tea steam and the smell of carefully controlled fire. It crackles. It feels like home, that voice.  He can touch it with his fingertips if he reaches, soft like velvet. Behind his eyelids, the colours shift and shimmer like lights underwater.

“Are those the worst things about me?” he asks, genuinely curious.

“Not by a bloody mile,” the voice says.  There is a pressure on his forehead, a soft thrum of warmth that tugs lightly at his hair.  It’s like his own fingers on the strings of his violin, a quiet sound, precious, unmistakable, lovely in its familiarity.  He’s known it for almost his entire life.

“Is that why you went away?” Sherlock asks.  “The worst things about me?” He hears a waltz, but his feet won’t move to it.  They can’t find the grounding.

“No, Sherlock.”  Calloused fingers against his cheek.  “Oh, no. I went away because of the best things.”  The hand in his hair pauses.  “I just didn’t know is all.” 

Is this real, or is it his own deduction?  He can’t tell. He understands it as truth anyway.

He lurches upwards to a sharp jolt just left of centre.  Beeping. Everything is loud again. The colours are back, blue and lighter blue and something like water filling his lungs, stopping his breath.  He tries to cough against it and gags, gasps, can’t lift his hands to fight. He’s lost the voice, the fingers, the scent. He must control the panic.  He’s losing him. He’s losing him .

Focus on the voice.  Find it again.  He needs air, so he finds some.

“I should have told you,” Sherlock shouts through the din, into the void as the wind lashes his cheeks, cold and wet.  “I should say; I’ve always meant to say and I never have--”

“I wanted to know why ,” the voice says, breaking through, and the noise quiets again.  Everything stills.  The tone is different this time than last, softer--an explanation rather than a demand.  “You never told me.”

“I was trying to tell you.”  He can’t keep the sorrow out of it.  It creeps into every syllable. He tried every way, every way he could think of to show the why.  It didn’t work. It just didn’t work .   “I can’t do it, John.  I don’t know how.” He takes a shaky breath.  He is higher now than he was before, farther and farther away from where he needs to be.  

He wishes he knew how to get down from here.  He swallows against the lump in his throat.  Fear. 

He knows the way down. He does. He knows how.  

He doesn’t want to die.

The problem, though is this: the landing will kill him.   He feels the panic creep back in, slithering beneath his skin, skittering in the spaces between muscle and bone.  He is shaking with it.

Everything is loud and blue and blue and blue and blue .

“Open your eyes,” the voice says; he can barely hear it.  “Just open your eyes.”

“I always meant to say,” Sherlock says again, but his voice sounds like it’s coming from a faulty speaker, interrupted by static. He has to say it.  If he doesn’t say it now--

“I always heard you,” the voice replies.  “Even when I didn’t want to. Even when I covered my ears.  Even when I shut my eyes.”

“I wish you could hear me now,” Sherlock says, and it’s true.  The chance will be gone before he knows it, before he--. 

He can’t get down. He needs to get down.

Sherlock’s arms feel like they are flailing, flung out, grasping at the wind, trying to catch water.

“Just open your eyes,” the voice says, and it’s different now--closer, canceling the noise and the colour and the suffocating water.  The falling stops. “I’m here.”

The fingers in his hair play music to the tune of worn brocade fabric, soft leather, honey on toast. The music in his hair keeps playing.  The player strums, and the light glows gold, warm, dry, safe. It goes along in time, the light, following now, going where it’s directed.

Luminous.

Sherlock can follow the light too, like a beacon, and he does, and he sinks.  And he’s scared, so he goes slowly, but he follows the light and sinks and sinks and sinks.  It doesn't feel like falling at all.

His eyes open.  John’s face is there.  Everything hurts.

“Jesus, Sherlock,” John breathes.  “Thank fu--” His word breaks as he drops his head to Sherlock’s shoulder.  His hair smells terrible , as if he hasn’t washed it in days.

“John,” Sherlock says, but his voice won’t work right.

“You’ve had a tube down your throat to help you breathe,” John says.  “Don’t try to talk too much.” He places a straw against his lips. “Here.”

Sherlock takes it.  

“How long?” Sherlock asks.  How long has he been here?

“Two weeks,” John replies.  

“Mary?” Sherlock asks.

“In the wind, like we planned,” John says.  “Mycroft is tracing her.  She’s been in Morocco since Thursday night.”

“Good,” Sherlock manages, but his eyes are already heavy.  When he closes them, though, it is colourless.  He hears the intermittent ticking and beeping of the monitors around him, feels the bed, soft and solid beneath him.  John’s fingers are warm, wrapping around his own.

 

--End--