A.N. - I Will Wait - One evening, not too long ago, I found myself listening to the words of Mumford & Sons. Now I've always danced along happily to this song, but when I listened to the words it began to mean something else, entirely different to me. And then this depressing nonsense happened...

DISCLAIMER: As always, not mine. Just borrowed, with every intention of returning, I swear.

John has questioned his sanity so many times in his life. And so many more times in the past months. But never more than now, when he is standing at the cold wet window and looking through rivulets of rain out onto the road below, looking at the shadow he has loved more than life itself. Has loved, has lost, has mourned. He is not even sure sanity exists in him anymore.

If he had any sense he would shake his head and walk away, dismissing the sight in front of his eyes as nonsense. If he had any sense he would have walked away years ago.

Instead he raises a hand, as he did those months ago, echoing the exact movement of that moment but it is now of a different kind. This time he is standing above and he is the one falling.

On the pavement below him, holding his gaze, the figure raises its hand too, slowly and unsteadily, fingers grasping at whatever it is John might be giving. Those long digits fold closed and sink back down, clasping to a heaving chest, the other hand coming over to cover it and hold it there.

John focuses on his own shaking fingers, the tips damp with the condensation from the glass, teardrops of their own. When he looks back the shadow is gone.

He closes the curtain.

...

It is nowhere near time for bed and if he headed into the dark prison of his room John is not sure he would ever leave. The sofa is where he finds himself, his body wracked with sobs, wrecked beyond repair. There is no reprieve in the silence, no ticking of a clock or buzzing of a television. Only the sounds of his own gasping and shuddering. Crying is not something he spends much of his life doing. Never has. But now he has started it is impossible to stop.

The leather is cool against his burning skin, but just cold, not soothing. The crisp edge of a cushion is chaffing his cheek, stinging with the salt of tears absorbing there. There is the faintest taste of something achingly familiar in the fabric, something he tries not to remember, but that seems to follow him around despite his desperate efforts. He catches it on the air in the strangest of places; crowded supermarket queues, around the corner of a corridor at work, he even caught a whiff of it the other day on the underground. He had brushed against a stranger and nearly been bowled over by the cooling breath of Sherlock's scent. He had shaken it off, his grip tightening on the sticky black handrail of the escalator. He tries to shake it off now, but for the first time in half a year John feels his heart breaking. All over again.

Hours later the silence of the flat is broken with a rasp and click of a latch below. John raises his head from the cushions of the back of the couch. His skin sticks a little to the worn leather and it burns at the pull and peel of detachment. There is a gun on the table, loaded and oiled, waiting impatiently for use, of whatever kind. But he only looks at it, knowing that whatever comes through that door has to be better than the wall-less hell he has rediscovered. It is more than likely that it will be something horrific, bearing torture and death hopefully, because any kind of excruciation has to be better than this. His head drops again, exposing his throat.

He doesn't even look up at the door creaking open, but the shadow drawn across the floor is achingly familiar, and John's face falls. All hope gone. There will be no reprieve of death or distraction. His delusions have followed him here and the shell of reality he has shielded himself with has cracked.

There are no words, none would convey any meaning worth listening to, just the ominous beats of slow footsteps on the cold floorboards. John closes his eyes. He cannot bear to see it, the dark outline of his dreams, can't cope with tormenting himself anymore. He just needs the end.

The rock of weight that has been jammed in his chest for far too long seems to have finally sunk and is now resting lightly in his lap. Something damp grazes the skin of his arm and snaps his eyes open. Sight is an unreliable sense, but touch promises much more. And the promises are filled with a sight even his dreams have never seen before.

Sherlock Holmes is on his knees, his head bowed to John, forehead in his lap and cold wet curls caressing John's arm. The chest pressed against his knees expands with a heavy breath and releases it just as slowly. Relief, pain, apologies, love. All mingling and merging and melding in that small expulsion of air. John tentatively lowers his free hand to the top of that head, letting his fingers slowly sink into damp silk, feeling the heat of a scalp rise through his fingertips. And wishes for the life of him that this is real.

Chapter two just around the corner. You could review if you like...