Where We Started

Angels Are Watching

John woke up to the most revolting smell in the world, opening his eyes and seeing that he was basically laying underneath a thick layer of smoke. They were back at it, who knows what time, burning the corpses once more. Sherlock seemed unfazed, but his green eyes were half open, staring at John with almost shock. John realized that they were lying pretty close, but he didn't feel like explaining himself to someone who couldn't even respond. John sat up, coughing a little bit as he inhaled the human ash. He honestly could not say he's ever had a person get stuck up his nose before, but apparently there was a first for everything.
"Good morning." he muttered. Now that he looked more closely at Sherlock he noticed that there was definitely something different to his complexion, he looked even weaker. "Should I bring you back to the hospital?" John asked reluctantly, knowing the answer already. Sherlock shook his head once, looking as if that cost him too much effort. There was a new pain in his eyes, something John hadn't seen in the days previous, he was losing life.
"Sherlock are you okay?" he asked, taking the boy's freezing cold hand, which was a major contrast from his blazing forehead. Even his hand seemed thin, his fingers bony and his nails chipping. He knew that answer as well, of course he wasn't okay. Around eleven o'clock that morning things went from bad to worse, Sherlock started coughing, normally at first, but it went on and on until finally something flew out of his mouth, splattering the grass in front of him, blood. John's heart dropped, he had read about this before, but this was extreme, one of the things you see on TV, this was how they ended up dying.
"Oh my god Sherlock!" John exclaimed, having been longing on one of the tombstones, watching the smoke soar above them. He raced to Sherlock's side (the one without the bloodstained grass) and turned his head up to face him. He had stopped coughing but there was blood running down his lips, looking like some sort of deranged vampire with his pale skin. John held back tears to see the light in Sherlock's eyes had faded; he was losing even more of his humanity. John ripped off a large chunk of his own shirt, it didn't matter now, nothing did, and cleaned Sherlock's mouth with it, knowing that did nothing but pretend that there wasn't going to be more. He could hear the struggling breaths Sherlock was heaving, his lungs almost shaking, obviously blood was seeping into them somehow, the last straw apparently. He started to cough some more, rolling his head over to splatter more blood over the grass, his entire body heaving to get it out. John couldn't do anything but pat his back and wipe his mouth, like a child spilling food all over themselves, but they still had a lifetime ahead of them. As the day went on it got progressively worse, and when sunset arrived the blood was pooling and half of John's shirt had been ripped away. Sherlock was so weak he could barely lift up his head, his limbs planted firmly on the ground, not even his fingers could twitch. He coughed once again, feebly, and a small drip of blood fell out of his parted lips, his teeth stained red. John felt an end coming, like a huge cloud hovering above him, like Death was rolling up his skeletal carriage ready to come retrieve Sherlock's mangled body. John took his hand once more, and it didn't even twitch, the pulse in his arm was so weak he could barely feel it, he was slipping.
"Sherlock, you can't leave." John muttered, hovering over the boy's face in a hope that the green eyes could process what was going on. "You hear me, you have to be strong." Sherlock didn't respond, but there was a sense of understanding now present once more, he was listening but losing hope all the same. A small cough once more, but John didn't nurse him this time; he didn't need physical help as much as he needed mental. John knew Sherlock thought nothing of himself, he thought he was just a waste of space, his family hated him, his first lover dead, and his new found love 'hating him'. But John didn't hate him; in these last moments he realized it was, in fact, the exact opposite. The loss of Sherlock would break John's heart like a very complicated jigsaw puzzle, one that no one could ever put back together no matter how hard they tried.
"You need to push through Sherlock; you need to want to live. You want life Sherlock; you can't leave me alone, not here, not now. If you get through I will be the Juliet to your Romeo, I'll be the Ten to your Rose, the Percy to your Annabeth, and I know you don't know who those people are, but you can be the Sherlock to my John." John decided, feeling tears brimming from his eyelids. This was all coming from somewhere other than his head, he wasn't planning these words they were just spewing out from somewhere, somewhere cheesy no doubt, from the heart.
"You can't die because I love you too." he muttered, his words choked out by tears once again, he felt like a pathetic crybaby, but it was true. Now that it was out there, the words floating around his head, he knew it was true, he loved Sherlock Holmes, it didn't matter that he was a guy, or that he was a servant, or even if they were born in completely different decades, obviously something brought them together, like a fairy tale, but apparently fairy tales don't always have happy endings. Right now John was relaying on the power of love more than ever. Sherlock's eyes closed all the way, his breathing slowing even more as if he had fallen asleep, who even knows if he had heard John's pathetic ramble, but it was so deep that he couldn't really accept they were his own words. Tears fell onto Sherlock's face, splashing against his pale cheeks, and something about that woke him up. His eyes shot open, gasping for breath as if surfacing for air from being under water for ages. John fell backwards in surprise, but there was no denying it, Sherlock had heard him. And from that point, maybe because of the power of love or simply because God was on their side, but there had been a miracle that day, and Sherlock steadily recovered, the light returning to his eyes, the strength to his body, his spirit and will to live coming back as if he were a new person. John brought him food and water from the hospital, where even the bird nurses were happy to hear of his recovery. Sherlock had long since stopped coughing up blood, and whatever water they didn't use John tried to wash it out of the grass, make it green once more for this Victor Trevor boy.
"John?" Sherlock muttered, the first word he had spoken since his recovery. John almost jumped and almost sang to hear a voice again, Sherlock's voice, the very same voice that had charmed John in the pub and cried in the loft.
"Yes?" John asked, not wanting to display his rejoice just yet. Keep it cool. Sherlock rolled onto his side to face John, who was leaning against a tree off to the side, waving the smoke out of his face.
"I couldn't see you." Sherlock muttered, letting his head fall back onto the grass. John smiled softly, something so simple yet so sweet. In two days the marks started going down from his neck, and in a full week he was back on his feet, with support of course. Sherlock's arm was wrapped around John's shoulders, the smaller boy somehow dragging him to his feet. The first couple of steps were wobbly, like a child learning how to walk, he was awkward on his feet, but once he got the hang of it there was a smile on both of their faces.
"This is brilliant, completely brilliant." John decided as he leaned against a tree, eating once again a half a loaf of stale bread for dinner. Sherlock was leaning on the tree opposite, still thin, but otherwise he was back to being himself, a smile on his face as he wiped his own bangs out of his face. "It's like you never got sick!" he exclaimed, looking at his friend with joy. The sun was starting to sink below the horizon, bathing the landscape in red, gold, and orange, but it was a sight for sore eyes compared to the entire galaxy swirling in Sherlock's blue eyes.
"Don't act too surprised." Sherlock muttered, eating his bread once more with a familiar half smile on his face.
"I thought I'd lost you." John admitted.
"Sorry to disappoint." Sherlock laughed. It was true, they hadn't really spoken about the way Sherlock had survived, hadn't brought up John's speech from before.
"You're not contagious though?" John pointed out.
"If I were you'd be the one dying." Sherlock defended.
"I think I'm immune to be honest, these weeks would've gotten me sick, definitely." John shrugged.
"Well I'm happy you don't bird cosplay around me." Sherlock laughed. John had so deeply missed that laugh, beautiful laugh, not just because it sounded nice but because he wouldn't have ever heard it again if Sherlock hadn't miraculously pulled through.
"Of course I wouldn't." John agreed. He finished off the last bit of his bread, used to the small portions by now, not complaining at all, but also noticing that Sherlock had barely eaten any of his own. "Are you alright?" he asked, pushing his sweaty bangs off of his forehead and looking at Sherlock suspiciously.
"Just peachy." Sherlock muttered.
"No, really, what's wrong?" John asked.
"That's the thing, nothing's wrong, it seems like there is nothing wrong with my entire life." Sherlock admitted.
"I wouldn't go that far." John muttered.
"Did you mean what you said back there?" Sherlock asked after a moment of awkward silence. Somehow they both knew this was coming eventually. John felt himself blushing involuntarily, now that Sherlock could respond it was a lot more embarrassing to admit his feelings.
"Of course I did." John assured, not meeting Sherlock's eyes but seeing a smile creep onto his face.
"Who even are those people?" Sherlock asked with a little laugh.
"Doesn't matter." John muttered, his voice cracking, completely humiliated. Sherlock had actually processed the information perfectly, he knew what John had said, brilliant.
"I'm sorry if I scared you before." Sherlock decided.
"In which event, I lost track?" John muttered with a small laugh.
"In the loft."
"Oh." John really didn't want to talk about this right now.
"I know that I kind of sprung it on you, but I was panicking, but now Irene's an ocean away, I guess she's not a player in this game after all."
"So you're not going to marry her?" John asked.
"God no, never would've, weren't we going to run away together?" Sherlock asked with a laugh.
"I think we already did that." John admitted.
"But um, did you really mean that you, you know, loved me back?" Sherlock asked, his usually confident voice sounding small and nervous again, like a scared child. John blushed, if possible, even more.
"Yes." He muttered, almost having to spit out the word. What would Sherlock even say, would he laugh? Was this all an act for some reason? Sherlock muttered something though, something that sounded disturbingly like 'he loves me'. One hit with the plague and he's going Gollum.
"Was that the wrong answer?" John asked nervously, waiting for an answer that obviously wasn't coming.
"No, no, not at all of course not. Just, wow." Sherlock admitted, blushing even more furiously than John was.
"I'm not that big of a deal." John defended.
"If you only knew how much of a big deal this is to me. You know how difficult it is to be, you know, not into women, in this society? And to have the one love of your life like you back, it's a bigger miracle than surviving the plague." Sherlock pointed out.
"What about Victor?" John asked, trying not to overthink 'love of my life' too much.
"I didn't love him, not like you, he was more of a date because there were no others like us in the town. So neither of us was lonely but neither of us was completely happy either." Sherlock admitted.
"Well maybe we have a guardian angel on our side." John shrugged.
"Like the one hiding in that basement, setting the tides straight, it only makes sense." Sherlock decided.
"Back to this fate thing?"
"Of course. You can't deny it, not now, I'm Belle and you're the beast, or as you say it, Romeo and Juliet." Sherlock admitted. John blushed again at the mention of that speech. Sherlock cautiously got to his feet, walking over like a scared puppy to John, but sitting down next to him, leaning his back against the same tree. John felt almost paralyzed with both nerves and awkwardness; there was no doubting Sherlock's intentions. But there was also a spark of cautious excitement, it wasn't like he could mess up now, he was the 'love of Sherlock's life' apparently. Maybe their love would go down in the history books as well. Sherlock's hand was resting on the crumpled leaves, right next to John's own; it would only take a small, brave movement to take it. But before he could, John heard a small chuckle next to him, and suddenly realized he had been staring at their hands for who knows how long, an internal battle going on in his head.
"Well maybe you'll surprise me if you stare even more." Sherlock decided, moving his hand to take John's, sending a shock down his spine. So this was actually happening then.
"Sorry, I was, just, nothing." John muttered. He looked cautiously around, not wanting one of the bird men to see them now, but there was no one around except for smoldering dead people, but even they were too far away to be more than blurs in the darkness. Such a sight would normally scare John to death, but apparently they had conquered even that, fear and death, all in their wake. Sherlock smiled down at him and for once John took the leap to return the look of love, their eyes locking nervously, now you definitely had to be blind not to see what was coming next.
"Time to be the Sherlock to your John I suppose." Sherlock muttered, leaning ever so cautiously in. John felt his lips, soft as cotton, brush slightly over his own, as if scared to actually kiss him fully. Never the less there were chills racing all over John's body, his stomach seemed to have run away somewhere and his heart was beating out of his chest. Sherlock had hardly pulled away, leaving himself very venerable for John to take over, pressing his own lips more firmly on Sherlock's. There seemed to be no better feeling in the world than kissing what had to be your soul mate, it made John feel absolutely weightless, unstoppable and powerful. There was nothing that could tear them apart, not even Death himself. Soon Sherlock's hand was on the side of John's face, pulling him closer, deepening the heavenly kiss. And John didn't resist, he simply melted at Sherlock's touch, so beautiful and elegant, his very existence made all the other girls seem like mistakes, even the once worshipped Sara Sawyer seemed like an annoying pimple of a human. But all good things come to an end, or they wouldn't be treasured. Sherlock pulled away ever so softly away, his long fingers running through John's hair as he once again clasped his hand once again in his own. John couldn't find his breath, he couldn't seem to make a thought in his head and he could never form a real word if he tried. Oh god, oh wonderful Sherlock, John felt like he would never fully live to deserve something so amazing or someone so beautiful. John could only smile up at him, probably looking extremely deranged, but it was an attempt. But Sherlock smiled back at him, and it was all okay, he had done nothing wrong and he never would again, not around Sherlock at least.