~One More Miracle~

deductism:

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riseuplikeangels:

He really didn’t know what he expected. On the one hand, this was Sherlock, so he was sort of getting a “disembodied limb” vibe from the prettily wrapped package before him. On the other hand, this was Sherlock, so he was equally pulled towards the confusing book territory. Essentially, an all-together good effort but nothing John would actually use. It was just…Sherlock didn’t seem like the kind of person who wanted to get to know someone well enough to buy them any sort of thoughtful gift. 

All truths be told, he hadn’t been expecting anything at all from Sherlock, hadn’t even expected him to remember that today was John’s birthday, which meant he’d already been surprised twice that day, both emanating from this parcel in front of the doctor now, a detective leaning casually up against the wall like he was in a bloody twenties speakeasy instead of a diminutive English flat. Brown paper, red bow, an altogether pleasing effect. But he hadn’t opened it yet. 

“Are you just going to stare at it, then?” 

The detective’s tone was uppity, indicating the strain of his day. Sherlock wouldn’t tell him why he’d come home so late, but a few quick texts from Lestrade confirmed that from eight in the morning until nine at night, Sherlock had been effectively sprinting nonstop across the city on the trail of several smugglers. The madman hadn’t slept in two days, hadn’t eaten in longer, and it was starting to show on his long, pale face. He may have been Sherlock Holmes, but Sherlock Holmes was still a human man, and he was exhausted. 

This was why, instead of shooting back an equally sarcastic comment, John simply smiled at Sherlock softly, feeling nothing but a bizarre tenderness for the cross detective as he undid the bow of the parcel.

“Sorry,” he heard Sherlock mumble from his wall. 

“Sorry?” John repeated, in an awkward conversation fumble that he would regret for about the next five minutes. 

“If you hate it,” Sherlock said, looking down. Lack of sleep had made him unconfident, a phenomenon not often seen but generally miserable to watch if one knew how he normally acted. 

“Sherlock, you took the time to go out and get this, or you sent someone, I don’t really care. You cared enough, though, to do something about it. And even if I hated it it’d be alright because of that.” Sherlock’s expression remained unchanged. “And besides,” John grinned, “I’m not a complicated bloke. As long as there aren’t fingers in this parcel, I think I’ll enjoy anything.”

This wrung a dry laugh out of Sherlock, who relented and sat down across John at the table as the doctor turned his attention back to the box, slipping his fingers under the tape and tearing the wrapping paper off. He couldn’t resist a joke at Sherlock’s expense. 

“Wow!” he said, exaggeratedly, holding the navy blue box up to the light. “A box. Sherlock, you couldn’t have gotten me a better gift.” 

Fortunately, this struck all right with the detective, who seemed startled to find himself laughing. “Shut up,” Sherlock said, still chuckling softly, “and open it already.” 

Who was he to deny him? John opened the lid of the box. 

A stethoscope lay curled on a bed of black velvet that was probably fake but looked real, unassuming but shining softly in the lamplight. John didn’t need a new one, but he appreciated the sentiment immensely. Getting the doctor doctor’s tools, how novel. At least, for Sherlock. “Thank you,” John started to say, but he noticed something.

The plate of the stethoscope was brushed steel, a dull but light-catching finish, an ordinary stethoscope in every regard; raised connected cylinder where one could position their fingers to accordingly adjust the plate on a patient’s chest. But it was this cylinder that caught the light and showed that there was more. 

John had no words as he regarded the tiny, minutely detailed engraving. An anatomically correct heart lay there, composed of fine lines twisting together, and as John brought it closer to his eyes to look better, he saw that one of the aortas was twisted, just slightly, to incorporate an engraved pair of initials. His. JW lay, unassumingly, at the edge of the heart. 

Maybe it was the fact it was half-eleven, and in all respects John was properly tired from a good birthday. Maybe it was relief at the package not having contained fingers.

Or maybe it was that John was really and truly touched by the item in his hands. It was simple, sweet, and so very Sherlock. 

“Thought you might…I don’t know.” Sherlock reminded John of his existence with the words, murmured to the table. “Like it.”

John huffed out a small laugh, momentarily unable to gather words around the lump in his throat (what was that for, anyway?). On a sudden impulse, he got up from his chair, crossed to the other side of the table, and reached down to hug Sherlock around his thin, drooping shoulders. “Thank you,” he said, quietly, close to Sherlock’s hair. “It’s perfect.” 

Sherlock sighed, then stuttered, then shuddered, relaxing ever so slightly into the embrace. His lack of words was the final proof of just how exhausted the detective’s recent case had made him, and when John let go he was authoritative. If this was the only use for his military training, it was a good use all the same.

“Right,” he said. “Tea, then a bit of food, and then sleep if I have to tie you to your mattress.”

Sherlock looked up, looking mildly confused. “I’m fine.” 

John held up his phone. “You’re exhausted.” 

Understanding broke over Sherlock’s features. “Lestrade.”

“Lestrade,” John agreed, and went to put the kettle on. 

Sherlock sat silently the whole while, staring at his coupled hands on the table, brooding until John brought him a mug of tea and a plate of leftover takeaway, slightly limp from the microwave but edible all the same. His eyebrow raised in the same disdain he usually showed to clothes he didn’t want to put on. 

“Not that face,” John said, the same tenderness stretching in his heart as he laid a hand on Sherlock’s shoulder. “You need it, and you know it. You just don’t want to admit it.” 

There was a moment of soft silence before Sherlock stretched out a hand for the handle of the mug, and John let out an actual sigh of relief. “Thank you.” 

Sherlock finished the tea and food without a word, getting up to put his plate in the sink and leaning back against his wall. “Thank you,” he said quietly, looking a little better; his colour was closer to normal. 

“It’s fine, Sherlock,” John said, repeating a phrase that had somehow become their mantra. “It’s all fine.” 

But Sherlock still looked uneasy. 

“Come on, then,” John said, tugging on the sleeve of the worn-out detective’s button-down. “Third step in the process. You’re going to sleep.”

“I’m not tired.” 

“Now that’s funny,” John said, tugging again. “You’re close to falling over where you stand.” 

Sherlock made no response, probably because it was true, and let himself be led back to his little-used bedroom, allowed John to bundle him under the duvet, and curled there silently. Only someone who knew him as well as John did could sense the silent gratitude in the way he lay. 

And so here John left him, back to the table for his own mug of lukewarm tea and another good look at the stethoscope, its tiny engraving, noticing something at the same time Sherlock was laying in the dark, the quiet, hoping he wouldn’t see. 

Twisted up in the lines of the third chamber of the heart, another set of initials, nearly hidden to anyone who wasn’t looking. A minute, swirling S, followed by an H wrapped up in ventricles.

Though they would never know, they both sighed at the same moment. 

the-eleventh-blog:

accio-badw0lf:

the-eleventh-blog:

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becauseavengers:

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