green-violin-bow:

Sherlock emerges from his room when he hears something break – china, by the sound of it.

A bowl, it turns out, lying in three strangely neat, cracked pieces on the floor. Sherlock picks them up, and puts them in the sink.

John is grey-faced, has dropped into a chair at the kitchen table. There is one small, fat drop of blood welling on the pad of his thumb.

“Sorry,” says John, and his voice is thin, and rough. “I was going to – get her porridge on. Then get her.”

The baby monitor breathes softly on the counter, next to the kettle.

John’s face is the downturned, sideways twist of an expression that means: I won’t cry.

He does cry; Sherlock heard it once, late at night, the forgotten baby monitor pouring out wracked, dry sobs, stifled by something – a fist? the sheet? a pillow?

And Sherlock knows that even though nothing, in the grand scale of things, has happened, this is a crisis – an accumulation of so many nothings that they have reached an unbearable moment. John has the ability to bear so much, to carry everything, always, and he will push it down, will go on if he has to –

John’s right hand – not bleeding – is shaky at his forehead, trying to smooth away the creases that form in the effort not to cry.

Sherlock sits at his left, and takes John’s strong, small hand in his own. Pulls John’s right hand in, too, and the loss of its smoothing control breaks the bounds and John mouths sorry again but it’s silent, contorted by the tears running sudden, hot, over his face.

He makes as though to curl over in pain, or to hide, but Sherlock’s lips press against the heel of his hand, find the blue-beating pulse at his wrist –

Sherlock imagines the way the drop of blood at John’s thumb will break against his cheek, the viscosity of it as it smears his skin, his slight morning stubble – the daub of a war they fight every day, that they cannot win unless together –

Sherlock touches every part of John’s hands with his lips, and at last John’s head is against his, tears running from below closed lids, breathing hitched and broken.