Wherein Lies Balance

Title: Wherein Lies Balance

Author: LimpBiskit

Fandom: Sherlock BBC

Pairing: John/Sherlock

Rating: PG13

Warnings: Slash.

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Sherlock Holmes was a man of coexistent action and thought.

He knew such things that could make or unmake a person's entire self, their tiny awareness of the

world went under siege at even the shallowest of his glances.

No one looked him in the eye for longer than they must, not the Inspector who summoned him, the

speakers of hateful words or even his very own brother, these and so many many more had been

quelled and catalogued, found wanting though what did they expect, want from him didn't they know

no they didn't see and just as quickly set aside in the search for newness, something other

or else that would hold the rein of his mind for even an instant-

It never lasted. Never kept pace, never even trod on the heels of that quicksilver smattering of his

resting thoughts, and sometimes how his mind it howled like a beast for some garish bridle, the oh

so lovely bite of a needle or the coldburningflight of deep poison through willing veins, where would he

land and My God if there is one who isn't me I don't care just let me find it, have it when would it

finally be too much or even just enough..

It was too little too late, always too damned late and how he hated to be and hated when he wasn't but

this damned human body, it needed and cried for sustenance beyond the electric slivers of mind

and calculation, to the very Devil he hated the transport that so great a living demanded..

He thought sometimes that he was not Holmes, was nothing but waiting, searching, pursuit and almighty

judge of things no one else dared to touch, feared and forsaken because really, who was it that they

always called when the bad went worse and sane people closed eyes against the madness of what

one man may do-

He saw everything.

Even that which he knew not was seen, stored and laid atop tottering mountains of castoff knowing

that one day maybe it's today, today the needle breaks today I find no perch and it goes on so far

forever that he would settle into a rage of boredom, the current stoppered by inactivity outside his

grasp and he would need so much for these half-fathomed ideas to keep him living when there was so

little life-

And here was a broken man, a good man, who questioned and saw and felt and never once looked

away and please yes those eyes those eyes he needed feared thought he maybe might

have loved because he was so broken that nothing could make him what he had been and maybe

didn't want to be again, it was so actual and so very close to that feeling of flight-

The story he read in that man's face, so worn a tale that frayed and unravelled along it's length until

here, sound of body but unwilling to live so free, not when others like him or no, not like him there

was no one like him, but others had bled out their lives across his unassuming fingertips no matter how

desperately tight he'd struggled to hold the wounds that rent them away and scattered them to

nowhere..

And all of that and all of everything else was new and there and how he wanted to sift the

pieces of this man's full mind until all there was of him could be seen, studied, understood and why oh

why was it that he smiled when the freakish confronted him head on with nothing to give in return but

the momentary embrace of thorns that wept a subtle toxin named danger into his free heart-

And John wanted it, thirsted for every bit of anything that made peace evaporate for even an

instant, and when the very fount of risk overran itself he said no more than oh God yes and they were

off on the God's own work..

But men of bone and blood were never meant for that divine vindication, and even when he could have

had it, taken it along with the last dose of ill-cured reason, it was this death-parched warrior of a

figurehead Queen that stopped him, stopped them both from casting off the possibility of

possibility, gave justice the motivation to tip the scales and loose the blindfold that covered what parts of

a man that saw inside himself most clear-

And he never looked back, didn't want or need to because that clarity held his pace and wove his bridle,

the beast grew tame and longed for a quiet lie that made him content for the first time in all his lives

and there had been so so many, he felt or knew that he lived a hundred or a thousand times all while

the world lay in the silken trappings of sleep, oh he was so achingly old by Dawn to simply

be, working his deathly sorcery for the pleasure of one who never thought it ghastly but instead raised

those eyes in a child's own wonder and smiled just for him..

For him. He saw it, or it may have been no more than a silvered dream of what Heaven might be,

felt for one instant that yes, here was his heart, a thing so blackened and tangled that it sometimes

seemed to be made of raven's-down and rosethorns, alive and throbbing in his chest as if it would burst

before submitting to that cold nothingness ever again-

And in the darkness of his room, he sometimes laughed along with the startling rhythm, because he had

though that he understood need. He'd been wrong, all wrong because this was need,

this crushing loneliness that had no cure unless by the touch of something so much more alive than he'd

ever been, and the thought of never having the one thing that might make him human after all..

He might have gone mad, truly mad, if not for one moment of having, when that solitude was swept

clear by the very hands he craved, the man's life gone but for the breath he blew into the lips that had

smiled for no one the way they did for him and it wasn't enough he couldn't let go the soul that made this

body John, and he was thankful for that damned rush of thought that let him act and do and even

pray oh no, not now please God you can't be, won't let you not take this breath I held and all the life

that's in it until those hands closed in his lapels and the eyes he'd dreamt of so many times opened to

read him the way no one ever did-

And they saw no more or less than a man, judged him worthy and blessed within the span of a blink

and he finally finally understood that terrible instant of pain when he knew that this was a life he could

never avenge should it be lost-

Impossible. Even thought froze for the time it took him to feel this ever-new thing, this lifting of a barrier

against his own mortality that made him be as he was and then there was nothing, only that smile again

because he had worked a miracle just for the man he now held so tightly that he must surely hear the

very heart of him as it pounded the notes of some unnamed benediction-

Even now, lain beneath the familiar blankets of his rarely used bed, he thought the other must still hear it,

feel it as he worshipped the hands that stroked him and the lips that spoke his name so sweetly that he

all but died with every stilted breath, knew his human heart and understood that it was for no one

if not him..

And still it was the meeting of eyes that had him all undone, because the understanding was total and

he knew now that it was the man's heart that he had always seen there, the thing that had brought him

down from that high and lonely place at last, and held him low to the Earth where all men must be if they

were to live-

And what lived could love.

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And there's another little tidbit of incomprehensibility. Comments are still love? *hides*