Nightwatch

[chocolamousse]

Title: Nightwatch
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Category: Romance
Rating: PG-13
Beta: The adorable verityburns
Word count: 273
Translation into Chinese available here (thank you, Lowtension!), into Czech available here (thank you, miamam!) and into Russian available here and here (thank you, Little_Unicorn!).
Summary: 221B Baker Street, a bedroom, at night. Before the Fall.



The room is quiet. I hear only John's breath. I see his chest rise and fall steadily. It’s so soothing. I watch his sleepy face in the shadowy light, endlessly, and though I know it by heart it's not boring at all. If I close my eyes I still see it.

I observe the way his eyelids and his lips sometimes quiver. Maybe he's dreaming. Happy dreams, I hope. He has no nightmares when I'm with him. Two nights ago his eyes suddenly opened, he stared at me and I stopped breathing. After a few seconds he gave me a slight smile and closed his eyes again. He hadn't really woken up.

He shifts a little in the bed and his hand settles next to my face. I fix my gaze on it, as if mesmerised. I come near, until my mouth brushes against it. I close my eyes. I can feel the warmth of his skin on my lips. Something breaks inside me. Oh God, this is enough.

I stand up slowly and, as I do every night, I smooth the blanket out to efface any trace. He wouldn't notice anyway. A last look and I leave John's room as silently as I came in, about an hour ago. I go back to my room.

I wonder what he would say if he knew. I wonder if, one day, he'll wake up and find me there, next to his bed, in my dressing gown, my legs tucked to the side, my head resting on my arms folded on the cover, watching, watching over him. I'm afraid he will.

I hope he will.




Author's note: Are you in the mood for angsting? With my customary quick-wittedness I realised after writing it that if you skip in my dressing gown and I go back to my room, lo and behold, it's now a very sad post-Reichenbach story. Sherlock comes back to 221B every night to spend some moments next to John who's sleeping. When John woke up two days ago he felt perfectly happy for a few seconds, because he remembered seeing Sherlock, then he remembered Sherlock was dead and... Right. I definitely recommend the pre-Reichenbach version.

It's my first fic and I wrote it for verityburns' birthday, some months ago. Many, many thanks to her and to the lovely arianedevere; without their kindness and their encouragement and their kicks in the pants I'd probably never have written, let alone posted, anything. I owe you!


There is a prequel now, The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of, and a sequel, Awakening.

There is also a podfic, by the wonderful verityburns.

Comments

[arianedevere.livejournal.com]

I just got home and read it again. And still it makes me cry. You have such a gentle soft voice - the voice in my head that reads this aloud is really quiet, almost hushed, and it adds so much to the emotion of the piece. And no matter how many times I've read it since last January when I first saw it, I can never get any further than "Something breaks inside me," and something breaks inside me. That's always when the tears start, and by the time I get to the last two sentences I am literally crying.

I don't think I'll ever stop enthusing about this, Choco. And neither will I regret constantly harrassing you to get this published. It so deserves to be seen.

So when are you posting to the comms? When when when when when?

*Limbers up her right leg for more kicking in the pants if necessary*

[arianedevere.livejournal.com]

Oh, OK, you already did it. Good girl. *lets leg relax*

Although you could put it up on our_bbcsherlock as well?

[chocolamousse.livejournal.com]

I've already told you that Sherlock just breaks a rib by dint of pining, so stop crying and breaking inside now, I may need you to comment the next fic. :D

Actually I thought that posting on sherlockbbc was enough. Do you think there are many people who read our_sherlockbbc and not sherlockbbc? I don't want to, er, what's the word, the thing you do when you post to too many places and people are fed up with you. Hey, I'm not a native speaker, okay? What do you think?

Sorry about these many edits, these lines in capitals bug me. They don't appear in the prewiew. If they're still here this time, I give up. But I'm not yelling at you, right? :D By the way, thank you very much for your Tumblr reblog, you're lovely!

[arianedevere.livejournal.com]

I think there might be some people on our_bbcsherlock who never came back to sherlockbbc. I certainly get comments on the transcripts on the first comm. Give it a day or two and then post there; if you get some new comments, that answers the question!

Ooh, I quite like those small caps! (And it's called spamming - but two boards isn't spamming.)

Still excited to see this story finally online!! *hugs self in lieu of hugging you*

[chocolamousse.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your advice, I'll do that!