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"John," he hears, low and direct, and smile quirks across his lips.
"Off to the donation centre, won't be long." He steps into his trousers and rummages in the drawer for some socks.
"John."
He casts a glance at Sherlock, who is very enjoyably naked. Sharp pale eyes meet with indulgent annoyance, "Really, I won't be above an hour, you insatiable..."
And then he sees clearly.
He sees the last three months of racing up stairs, giddy on deductions and rooftop chases and falling breathlessly into bed. He sees the dates-that-are-dates and the breakfast takeaway. He sees Sherlock's bare shoulders like white hills and three short months of learning how this glorious man tastes and sounds and feels and how to love a man, just this man.
John sees straight through that there is no way they will want him or his blood now, down at the centre on Margaret St. He's tainted. He can't bleed for Queen and country any longer.
One sock is on, the other held tight in his left hand. Sherlock watches the shock working across that plain and lovely face. John slumps heavily against the bureau and there is a sharp intake breath.
"Oh."
John drops the sock and covers his nose and mouth with a dry hand. Sherlock's memory flashes with knowledge that John keeps his nails trimmed quite short - like his hair, like his speech. Fastidious, collected, purposeful. Useful. John is forever wanting to be useful.
"Bollocks," ghosts out between John's fingers, so quiet as to barely be a word. He is staring far into the middle distance, as if he were about a million miles away.
Or precisely three-thousand, five hundred miles - far enough to reach the desert and the heat and the cries of pain. Far enough that he feels the heartbeat in his ears again, thundering blood in his skull. And then so very close are the torn up medic bags and the torn up people and so much red on the sand and so little he can do.
There is the glare of fluorescence on his school's gymnasium floor, where he passed out laughing after his first donation. There is the garish hospital light during his rotation in the A&E, blood units gone through like so much water. There is Harry flung upon the street, her shining bicycle under the front wheels of the lorry. There is the glint of silver in his wallet, his Donor card for his twenty-fifth donation, and his Dad's hand shaking his. There is the smell of disinfectant and the smile of the nurse and the long needle sliding into his arm to carry away what he has to give.
There is the harsh sun of Afghanistan, and being very far from home.
~
John thinks sometimes that his life could be defined in terms of what he has given other people. There are things he chooses to be: a doctor, a soldier, a donor, a good man. These he gives his blood, and his bullets and his duty. These things are important, and worthy. He does them because he can and because he must.
And then there are things he could not choose to be, though he would have done even if he'd been given a choice: a brother, a veteran, a man in love. These things he gives his whole heart, these things will bleed him for a lifetime.
He only has so much to give, in the end. It seems some definitions must be traded in to make room for the new ones. He's now companion to the most brilliant, bloody bastard of a detective to ever haunt London, and he's no longer an O neg registered donor.
~
He breathes out and puts both hands down at his sides. He crosses the room to their bed, where he curls on his side and closes his eyes against the lights of memory, against the light of a fading sun of the man he was.
Sherlock's hand is firm on his shoulder, over his scar. It's all that he can feel.