Still Two Days till We Say We're Sorry

For a prompt from the Sherlockbbc_fic kink meme: Come up with a less half-assed reason for Sherlock to fake his death. Have John punch him anyway. Companion piece to "On the BackSwing."

Somewhere in my head, I have been wanting to write this story since I was 14.

'Shock' did not remotely cover it.

John knew about shock. He hadn't passed out when a bullet ripped his shoulder apart in Afghanistan, or when he'd been strapped into his own portable bomb, or even that time he had fallen out of the tree when he was 11 and tried to stand up and felt his ankle fold over on him like a collapsing straw; but the cognitive dissonance of his dead best friend standing in his bleeding doorway was enough to make his brain register critical system failure and shut down for reboot.

His last memory before the world flipped over and went away was of that impossible voice cursing in surprise.

When he came to, he was sprawled in his favorite chair with the taste of scotch on his lips. He didn't remember getting drunk, but he must have done, because that was one hell of a…something he'd just woken up from. He groaned and rubbed at his face, then looked around to assess the damage.

Sherlock.

Was standing in front of the fireplace.

The world began to tilt sideways again.

"John!"

The hand that wrapped around his bicep was warm, hard and undeniable. John frowned down at it, then up at those painfully familiar eyes. He tried blinking a few times to clear away the image. Surely this was Mycroft peering carefully into his face, or Lestrade, or…

They stared at each other for a long moment. Nothing happened. John was forced to consider the possibility that he was not hallucinating.

Sherlock must have seen the moment when reality solidified under John's feet again, because he straightened up with a satisfied noise and passed over a glass of scotch from the mantle, along with a look that, on anyone else, would have been sheepish.

"I'm sorry, John. I suppose I got a bit too clever on that one. I just wanted to see the look of surprise on your face." He even sounded faintly remorseful.

John took a substantial swallow of the alcohol; the smoky bite in his throat grounded him. "Well done you, then." He lapsed back into staring silently up at Sherlock, feeling like a very small boat riding a storming sea of emotion. What was he supposed to do here, exactly?

Sherlock had a whole kaleidoscope of emotions going off in his eyes: glee, embarrassment, concern, relieved, amusement. Underneath all those, he also looked completely knackered. That last one kicked some autopilot setting into life inside John; doctorly instinct, maybe, or long-dormant habits, or a life preserver in pure helpless confusion.

"For god's sake, sit down if you're staying." As if John would even let him get near the door. He pointed at the chair across from him and repeated, "Sit," in his best officer's voice when Sherlock didn't obey right away.

Sherlock sat, looking a bit surprised.

The expression John felt forming on his face brought back memories. It was the 'please bestow on your poor stupid doctor the workings of your magnificent brain' look. Ah, old habits did come back quickly.

Speaking wasn't necessary. There was only one question that mattered, and Sherlock answered it obligingly. The animation and self-satisfaction in his voice were the same as ever as he laid out his account: how he had let John be distracted from the confrontation with Moriarty, how they had not fallen together after all, how Sherlock had let the world believe he was dead while he engaged in a deadly cat-and-mouse game with the chief psychopath's lieutenants for three years. How he had finally been drawn back to London on Colonel Moran's trail and bumped into John while in disguise.

It was a fairly long story, in fact, packed with the sort of drama only Sherlock Holmes could wring from life. But John, who had always loved listening to Sherlock's ludicrous adventures, loved seeing his remarkable thought processes laid out, heard the entire thing as, "Blah blah clever-clogs me blah." Because, no, it turned out that wasn't the question he wanted an answer to after all. Under the wash of that old, beloved, still almost unbelievable voice, his own brain had begun to grapple with all those emotions it had previously voted off the dinghy, and it…well, he thought he was gaining some insight into the schizophrenic mind.

Somewhere during the recap, Sherlock had got up to pace—still unable to sit still while he talked—and John had retreated to the emotional safe house of tea-making. Sherlock paused long enough in his narration to quaff the contents of the mug like an alcoholic downing his last drink. When the tale wound down, John said nothing for a long moment. Simply leaned in the kitchen doorway and drank in the sight of his friend. The impossible, wonderful, miraculous, infuriating sight of his previously very dead friend.

Just like that, he found himself on the verge of tears. Or violence. Or possibly, humiliatingly, hysterical hugging. "Why," he asked in a voice locked down under iron self-discipline, "did you leave us all to believe you were dead?"

Sherlock always had been able to read John like a scrolling billboard. Now, in the face of what he saw there, he had the appalling gall to look vaguely ashamed of himself. "Moriarty's lieutenants are among the most dangerous men and women in the world, John." He pressed his lips together briefly in a sort of minimalist shrug, looking everywhere but at John. "Mycroft had to know. He had resources I needed and besides, he's Mycroft. But if any of those people had thought for a moment that you or, or anyone could tell them where I was…"

"I never would!"

"Yes," Sherlock said softly. "Exactly. If they thought you knew, if they thought I cared…" He shrugged again, a broader gesture this time meant to evoke all the heinous possibilities. He hardly needed to elaborate on them to John, of all people.

"And you had to do it all by yourself, did you?" John asked, startled by the deadly quiet lacing his own voice.

It startled Sherlock too, whose attention finally snapped back over to him with an uncertain frown. "What else should I have done? Uprooted you from the life you'd only just re-established? Left everyone who cared about you thinking you were dead while I dragged you through every miserable dirty corner of the globe for three years, chasing after homicidal criminal masterminds? It wasn't fun, John. It was filthy, lonely, brutal, exhausting, dangerous work. Frankly I rather expected to end up dead somewhere along the way. Hardly seemed fair to put you through it twice-"

Put him through it twice? John's hand shook. "Shut your mouth."

The rapid-fire apologia stopped. Sherlock's mouth hung open, frozen with shock in mid-syllable.

"No. Shut. Your mouth." Because, John realized as he caught on to the fact that his body was moving, he was about to punch Sherlock in the face and it would be a shame if he bit his tongue.

He had a pretty good left hook when he wanted to use it. Sherlock dropped back into his chair, holding his jaw and gaping wide-eyed up at John. As if punching him for being a prat were somehow a worse betrayal than going away and leaving him alone to die.

John's knees gave out, cracking audibly off the floor. He ignored the pain in favor of lunging at Sherlock again, who flinched back before he realized that this was an entirely different sort of attack.

If his ribs creaked under the ferocity of John's hug, Sherlock didn't protest. After a moment, he slid one whipcord arm around John's back with the caution of a man unsure of his welcome. John didn't realize he was crying till Sherlock's other hand came up to touch the side of his face, where he'd buried it in Sherlock's shoulder, and trailed through the wet tracks there.

Well. He'd gone three for three, then. Bully for him.

"If I wake up and you're dead," he whispered into Sherlock's ratty coat, "I will find your body and desecrate it."

Sherlock's arms tightened around him. "I'm not going anywhere."