Sleepless
part twoJohn put his right hand down against the pillow beside the fall of dark brown curls as he leaned down, eyes closed, and kissed his somewhat bewildered looking best friend on his full but subtly chapped lips. No more regrets. No more uncertainty or hesitation. Neither of them had the excess of time that promised the opportunity to crawl before they ran. He loved him. He was the most dear thing on all the earth to him. So it only made sense that before hello, before pleasantries, before the usual and expected greetings between two close and well traveled friends, that he make good on a promise aged three long years before moving on to the present and its warning of dread. Sherlock did not appear to disagree. Despite the hesitancy of surprise, perhaps the lethargy and uncoordinated efforts of the sleep addled and drowsy, he had his fingers curled into the fold of John's jumper within moments of their reunion, pulling him down even as he arched himself up claim the space between them where there was still far too much open air. The surge of relief was overwhelming in the moment when John knew Sherlock was not only awake but that he was his. No more dreams to placate or fantasies to wile away vacant years. They were both returned. Time to start the journey again.
John left the kiss as a chaste exchange though his tongue ever sought a new place to play. He kissed him once long and lingering, then again in short, successive, parting apologies as the proximity proved to be too wanted to employ an honorable retreat. He let his hands slide to the sides of Sherlock's face, thumbs pressed to the cusp of his cheekbones as his palms filled in the hollows beneath. He pressed his forehead to his, noses crossed like swords, and let his dark blue eyes remain closed as he felt the warmth of his skin and the pulse of his breath in a relaxed exhalation that breezed across his jaw and down his neck. He could spend forever in this moment of content with Sherlock's hands taking ownership of all he could reach with the possessive embrace of a spoilt child.
"I could punch you," Sherlock rumbled into the air between their chins, his hands tightening in their hold along the good doctor's ribs.
John chuckled breathlessly, thumbs caressing the raised flesh of his cheeks amidst the flutter of feather-soft lashes. "For that?" he asked, guiltlessly tilting down to taste just once more against the promised rise of his cupids bow.
He could feel Sherlock smile in the fullness of his cheeks and the stretch of his lips as they tucked into his palms. "No," he said. "Unrelated. Though I expect driven by similar motive."
John smirked and straightened up, giving them both some more space though with it came added perspective. For nearly three years they'd dreamed of friendship, never remembering the promise of more as incentive. There had to be more to life than just survival, they'd agreed. And here they were again.
"You should have mentioned you wanted to be alone," Mycroft called from the doorway, looking down at the watch on his wrist with agitation and an unlikely excuse for avoiding their direction.
John shrugged, still feeling rather bold having spent the past half hour barging into offices, making demands, and snogging his best mate. He rather enjoyed the power trip after spending far too long at the mercy of others. "I've nothing to hide," he said, planting both hands against the white sheets of the hospital bed. "Does it make you uncomfortable?"
"Not so long as you are now finished."
Lucky for Mycroft's sensibilities, he was. John had no real reason to engage in public displays of affection above and beyond the impulse to not wait a second longer for certain affairs. He nodded curtly and moved his hand down along the edge of the bed until his fingers found Sherlock's as he took his post beside him. He might not have been as smart as either brother, but he knew when and how he was needed. Sherlock's fingers curled reservedly along John's which John spread out and covered with his own to assure no hesitancy was required. They'd been friends all their lives and on the edge of more for only hours before it all ended and started over. John was choosing more. And maybe, if he was lucky, when Sherlock wasn't fresh from sleep and simply happy to see him, he'd decide to choose more as well.
The hospital room certainly wasn't unlike anything they'd seen before. Painfully white with fluorescent light that pressed all eyes to squint, it was one of many identical cells where patients were brought to be slowly awoken and cared for as they fought to remember what was real as the fantasies faded in memory. John remembered his own time spent reconciling death and opportunity in the lonely room. They weren't good memories. Lots of things were better left in the past.
For his part, Mycroft looked as stoic as ever. John hadn't expected a big, wet faced, brotherly reunion but it was interesting in a way how aloof they both held themselves in the presence of the other. It was an act, and an old one at that. They both cared and anyone who mattered knew it--meaning the three of them exclusively. In his perfectly pressed three-piece suit, Mycroft was still a figure of authority while Sherlock, draped in thin pajamas and tucked loosely under the sheets, was clinging very well to his air of indifference at seeing his brother once more.
Mycroft walked from the door to the bedside, taking a seat in one of the provided chairs as he crossed his legs, knee over knee, in a comfortable recline. "Have the staff spoken to you?" he asked, fingers tapping against the armrests.
"Pointlessly." Sherlock watched his brother intently, eyes keen in their focus. "Seems to be quite a big deal that I'm awake now, though it appears I'm not the only one."
"No. A fair amount are awake, in fact. The fight against the disease is at an end."
Sherlock's eyebrow twitched in an interested arch. "You have a cure?" he asked. The hopeful sound of his voice made John's fingers curl to squeeze his hand.
Mycroft shook his head. "No. It has simply run its course. There are those who never were sick--those who were tucked away in safety--and then a small percentage of the rest of the world that are like you. The illness may still exist but it cannot penetrate these walls."
"That only matters if you never plan to leave," Sherlock muttered, his mood embittered as he sulked into his pillow.
His brother nodded, eyes drifting to the floor as he let the tone of their silence settle there among the tiles. He took a deep breath, shoulders rising on the inhale as his neck lengthened on the sigh. "How do you feel?" he asked.
Sherlock shrugged, uninterested. "I feel fine."
"No weakness from muscle atrophy? No blindness from your previous illness? I see you failed to notice the state of your own arms."
Sherlock's heavy brow furrowed as he looked to his brother for signs of dementia. John squeezed his hand again. Remembering the reality was always much harder than forgetting the dream. This was something else entirely.
His arms were pale and without blemish, the skin smooth under the brush of John's thumb as he gently stroked the back of his hand. His hair had grown in over three years and not a bald spot remained nor threat of one lingered. His pupils dilated and tracked motion smoothly. He looked like the man they had both dreamed of instead of the scarred and tormented creature that had been taken from John in the garden of the Wilks' home. And he sure as hell, under normal reckoning, was not supposed to. John watched as Sherlock stared at his own flesh without comprehending and waited as the brows fell with confused accusation and the lips drew into a startled pout.
Mycroft was watching as well. He smiled lightly, some affection dripping into his voice from the otherwise detached delivery. "In your dreams you were whole and active. I don't suppose it occurred to you that you should not be. There's no need to be alarmed. You are, indeed, fine. It's been a source of interest for our scientists for a long time and most questions you may have have their answers." He set both feet down on the floor and leaned forward, hands steepled at his nose in a manner that seemed to run in the family. "The first question is, of course, 'how?'. How are you in perfect physical condition? You might not choose the word 'perfect' on your own but it is the correct one. The same protein that identifies the disease in the human body is apparently responsible for modifying the gene that regulates how human cells are repaired and replaced. Normally, despite old cells being replaced by new ones, they do so on a degrading scale. Not yours. Not anymore. When your cells are replaced they are replaced as copies based on the genetic blueprint rather than of their predecessor. In another seven years you will more or less be completely remade. A perfect specimen of the mature, adult male aged roughly twenty-five."
Sherlock stared at him then shot a quick glance towards John as though weighing the odds of this all being a very elaborate joke. John's reaction to being told hadn't been much different five months earlier. It had sounded like a miracle. It had all sounded too good to be true. So, of course, it was.
"You can imagine the scientists' shock when they first realized your scars were fading," Mycroft continued. "It had never occurred to anyone that the protein was not merely part of the disease but that the disease was transportation for it. One doesn't recover from the illness, Sherlock; one is changed by it. And right now there are hundreds of men, women and children in this world, like you, who are considered by most to no longer be human."
Sherlock turned his free hand over against the bed, watching the easy movement of fingers that should have atrophied into stilted jerks and the unmarred skin that no surgeon could have replaced. "Is it still contagious?" he asked.
"Very. Several test subjects were taken from the Ark project to see just how severely. While none of them exhibited signs as sever as the diseased stages, all are now considered to have the same... condition. Their cells are in a constant process of regeneration rather than a normal one of decay."
"Then you do have a cure."
"No. We have an option. And sadly not one that is easily weighed." Mycroft rose up from his chair, palms rubbing against the bronze pinstripes of his dark drown trousers. He usually looked much younger when he spoke to Sherlock, little bits of their childish feud taking the years from his eyes as petty grins and snide comments passed between them timelessly. Now he just looked old. John pitied him a little, knowing most of it came from the weight of the world sat pressed against his shoulders. The seas were spilling, the mountains were crumbling, and he simply had no other arms with which to carry his brother as well. John would never envy the sort of power that forced the man to take sides. Being his own person in a world that quite heavily revolved around the whims of Sherlock Holmes was hard enough. And admittedly they did not have even half the history the two brothers shared and which remained mostly in shadows to John. Mycroft did not bend to the pressure but stood firmly under it, a half smile offered his brother not in humor but in reference to being without any. "To become like you and the others would mean an end to cancer. An end to organ failure or adverse mutations. An end to old age. It is eternal youth and longevity, so to speak. And while individually there appear to be few side effects, there are social implications to having a population of people who will never grow out of reproductive maturity. Civilizations would regrow quickly but never tapper off as the entire world eventually would have to consider the consequences of exponential growth. Resources are finite but populations would be infinite. You and those like you are as much a promise of hope as you are a threat. Which is why the world council is debating whether or not we should accept that risk and leave the consequences to future generations, or murder you all now to preserve the human race as it has been and remain underground until new measures can be taken to reclaim the surface."
Sherlock scowled, heavy brows darkening his eyes. "I don't suppose anyone thought coexisting would make a viable option."
"The protein can be passed to sexual partners and progeny. Eventually everyone would become genetically modified. It is all or nothing. Globally. We must all be in agreement or the majority must eliminate the opposition." He offered raised palms in supplication, though nothing else in his stance or voice hinted towards anything but useless gestures. "Discussions have been going on for months. I expect it to take longer still. Every survivor the world over, hundreds if not thousands of people who haven't the slightest idea what is at stake and think the worst is over are being argued over like criminals for the crime of failing to die. I had hoped you would remain as ignorant as them. About a great many things."
"Oh?"
Mycroft let his eyes rise from his brother's prone form to look instead at John. His face remained closed off but John had seen that look in his eyes enough times to know the thoughts going on behind it. He offered back a partial grin, shrugging his shoulders with a nonchalance that in the past had served him well. "I sort of expected him to notice the wrinkles," he said, giving Sherlock's hand a pat and the man himself a crooked grin. "Most observant man in the world my arse."
The detective scowled slightly, no more than a plaintive expression, before the grey-sky eyes boiled over into molten silver and his gaze jerked back to glare in rage at his brother.
Mycroft was already resigned to it. "He was accepted into the Ark with qualifications that set him up as little more than breeding stock. When it came to expendable resources--"
"You infected him?"
"It wasn't against my will," John interjected, turning Sherlock's chin towards him though the other man jerked away from the coercive tug. "They asked me and I said yes."
"You're a moron. I expect this sort of impulsive, suicidal nonsense from you. From him I expected better, though!"
John placed his hands on either side of Sherlock's chest, leaning in till Sherlock was eclipsed once more by his shadow, his pale arm raised to shove John away as his willingness to listen further fell all but extinct. "I am not a moron," John said, leaving all playfulness aside. "I knew what I was agreeing to and it was not impulsive either. I knew there was a chance I'd get sick. I knew there was chance I could die. But I can't stand by and watch again. I can't. So when they asked, when they said I could give them information that could help decide whether your life is worth keeping, you'd better believe I volunteered."
Sherlock glared at him, shoving hard against his opposite shoulder with the crux of his arm. "If you think I'm impressed or flattered, you're wrong," he spat, rage coloring his cheeks with the rush of his pulse.
John rolled with the shove, not moving more than inch before fixing his stance. He stayed close so his voice could remain at a hushed scratch above a whisper. "I think you wouldn't be nearly this angry if you weren't in love with me. So I'll take it as a compliment," he said, trying not to smile as Sherlock's expression rolled in waves of fury, surprise, and annoyance.
"I've half a mind to stop," he uttered through a pouted grimace.
"If you can figure out how to stop being in love with someone by sheer force of will, your days as a test subject aren't anywhere near over." John raised one brow and stood straight, letting Sherlock shove him aside this time as he pushed himself higher against the pillows.
"Stop placating," he ordered, though the fires had dimmed to embers and ash. He still looked at Mycroft with far more contempt than forgiveness but that was to be expected--had already been accounted for. Sherlock did not want John to be ill, to be counted among the infected, to share whatever burden that was put upon him by the fault of his own secretive impulsiveness. He did not want John to share in this particular adventure.
Well, too bad. He didn't get to make all the decisions. And if he thought John could be made to be content with simply being there on the other side of the divide again, he was far beyond just being wrong. There were a lot of things John had decided in the past five months; a lot of changes and a lot resolutions for things that should never change. They were in this together, through hell and high water, and for lack of a better phrase, not till death would they part.