john works at a local record store to support himself after coming back from afghanistan, and he hates the monotony of it and the loneliness of it–because who goes to a record store when you can buy whatever you want online–and he feels like he’s wasting away here, like he’s already dead, until one night sherlock comes up just as he’s locking up for the evening, and even though john’s tired and just wants to go home after 8 hours of dusting off racks and racks of albums that no one wants to buy, their eyes meet through the door and he thinks what color even are those and he doesn’t know except that they’re beautiful and john can’t resist beautiful, not when there’s so little beauty in his life these days, so he lets sherlock in and locks the door behind them and flips just one of the lights back on, and sherlock asks if they have any samuel barber, and john can feel those strange eyes on him as he searches and manages to find one worn old record in their bins of used vinyls, and when he’s ringing up the sale he admits he has no idea who samuel barber is, and sherlock scoffs and mutters typical and john’s ears go pink at the tips and he thinks maybe he shouldn’t have let sherlock in after all if he’s going to be an ass, but then sherlock stutters out would you, um, want to, you know, give it a listen, and john smiles, beams really, and it feels awkward on his face because it’s been so long since he even tried, and then there’s a cab ride to a flat on baker street and the awkward arrangement of limbs on an unfamiliar sofa and the telltale clicks and pops of imperfections in the vinyl before the strings begin, and sherlock closes his eyes when the music starts and john’s too busy watching him for a while to really listen, looking instead at the way the notes can be seen in fluttering lashes and twitching fingers and the crinkling across the bridge of his nose, and sherlock tells him close your eyes without even opening his own, and john coughs out a dusty laugh but he presses his eyes closed and listens, and there’s tension and there’s sorrow–heavy and deep–but there’s beauty too and he’s never heard anything like it, felt anything like it, the way the music seems to fill him up like swirling sand scraping every nerve raw, and it’s almost unbearable, a single tear slipping free to be swiped away by the soft brush of unfamiliar fingers along his cheek, and then sherlock is shifting, moving closer, and
over the rising crescendo of the strings
john can hear the question in the shake of his breath, and he nods his answer, and sherlock’s weight settles across his lap, their bodies taut and buzzing with possibility as hands come up to cradle his jaw, and he feels electric, like lightning made flesh, and when soft lips press against his, john crackles back to life
willowfoot 