Sherlock doesn’t kiss him all at once. He takes John apart, piece by piece, until there’s nothing left of him.
First of all, I am an absolute sucker for post-Reichenbach fics where the boys don’t immediately get right back together and everything’s fine. (Of course, I don’t mind the other kind either, reunion in general makes me happy.) I love John in this fic. He’s been through hell, and he’s not just going to let Sherlock walk right back into his life. The story follows them through an extended period of time as Sherlock tries to make amends and get John back into his life. There are some great canon case references here, and some interesting bits of non-canon cases. I think one of my favorite lines was early on, when Sherlock texts John: “I’m going to ask you to move back in three times. Last night was the first. By the third you will agree.” That’s very Sherlock, to me. I won’t say whether he was right or not, but I will say the fic has a happy ending.
The author makes several interesting references to John having panic attacks—I would’ve liked to have seen more about that, and for it to have had more of an impact on the story as a whole. John’s concerns about what sort of sex Sherlock wants to have (kinky vs. not-kinky) seem like something that would belong in a shorter story where that could be the focus. Here it feels a bit tacked on. That said, the sex scenes are absolutely lovely and emotionally satisfying as well as hot.
Warnings for case-related body horror and corpse dismemberment, small mention of case-related necrophilia, mentions of suicide, and PTSD. Mature readers for the aforementioned lovely sex scenes.
Word Count: 17K
My Rating: A-
Read it here, fic by teahighThanks to biblioaesthetica for the submission!
This fic is gorgeous. Definitely go read it if you haven’t yet.
YES. Tea was saying on innercircle just the other day that she felt outclassed by the writers who hang out in there, but then she goes off and produces work like THIS, and like The Paper of His Skin, and I just aldjf;lasdkjf;oaiewjhfoaiwehf;aofh IT’S 15,000 WORDS OF FLAWLESSNESS OH GOD WHY NOT ME but hell, as long as she’s writing it then at least I can read it. <3