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Chapter Text

Chapter Text

“Lock-Da, is the sky crying when it rains?”

“Not a bit of it, young Watson. It’s a perfectly natural process. The atmosphere always contains a given amount of moisture. That’s called humidity, and it’s what makes you feel sticky on a hot day.”

“Humidy.”

“And when temperature and pressure conditions are just right, the humidity condenses out of the air. Just like when the water runs down the side of your cold drink.”

“So the world is having a big drink?”

“Something like that. It’s a necessary part of the ecosystem.”

“Want to go to the park. When it’s done with the exsystem.”

“Maybe we’ll go after your nap.” Sherlock glanced up as John looked in; Rosie was still at an age where she’d be cranky and hyperactive in the evening if she didn’t go down for a short sleep in midafternoon.

“She’ll just jump in puddles, you know,” John said on returning from the upstairs bedroom. “You’re cleaning her shoes if she gets them mucky.”

“Experimentation must be permitted. One learns best from experience.”

John was silent for the best part of a minute, looking at the trickles running down the outside of the oversized panes.

“I used to imagine it, you know,” he said.

“Imagine what?" Sherlock glanced up at the back of his head. 

"That the rain was… grief. When you were gone.” John seemed intent on something outside the window. “I heard you talking.”

Sherlock knew that: that sometimes John would stand outside a door and quietly listen to the two of them together, the bond of curiosity that ran between him and Rosie.

“Because, you know. Big boys don’t cry, right? Doctors don’t cry. Spoils our detachment. Soldiers don’t cry. So I’d – you know, I’d stuff it all, turn up at the surgery, do my job, let everyone think I’m fine.” Sherlock doesn’t say what he might: that Greg, Molly, Mycroft, everyone had let him know at one time or another that during his absence, John did not appear fine. That a part of him had been queerly reassured to see John had managed to move past his grief (he thought), that another part had gone dead inside, and his shot at combining both of those reactions into history’s most spectacular reunion fail still hurt to think about, and not because of the memory of John’s right cross.

“And then it’d rain. World was having a big drink, so I did too. And after a while I’d reckon the sky was crying, so I’d join in. Then get up the next day and. Well. Stiff upper lip. Kept it to myself.”

“John. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t mean that, Sherlock – just – was thinking about what a load of tosh it is. The way we’re raised. Thinking feelings make you weak.”

“I believe even my brother has come round to the folly of that point of view. And – when I said I was sorry. I meant that I’m sorry I didn’t get there earlier myself, instead of having to -- learn from experience.  We could have – not lost so much time.”

“Right couple of prats, aren’t we?” said John, and when he turned his cheek was wet, but he didn’t try to hide it. Sherlock was already raising his arms. It felt so natural, at last, for John to slide into them.

“We’re here now,” he said, pulling him close. “We’ve got –you’ve got me, I’ve got you, Rosie’s got us both. Our stable ecosystem. That’s what matters.”

Chapter Text

“That toerag. That absolute git.”

“I assume you are referring to the gentleman in the striped jumper.”

“Gentleman isn’t the word I’d use.”

“Standing on our proper British code of conduct, are we, John?”

“No – for fuck’s sake, the cheeky bugger had the stones to ask  –” John waved about the hand on which a still-new gold ring glinted, a striking design of linked infinity symbols in heavy openwork.

“If we were married? Everyone at the Met knows that. Are you suddenly secretive about the fact?”

“Don't be ridiculous. And I don’t even know if he’s with the Met. Just because Donovan picked this place for her birthday knees-up. It’s a pub, anyone can come.”

“What was the trouble, then? Oh, by the way, he has a hobby of photography, is probably a vegetarian, and does a sedentary job, which is why I could not immediately identify him as employed by the Yard or not. I rarely interact with those who drive a desk, as Lestrade phrases it.”

“He wanted to know if by any chance the design meant we had an open marriage. Spotted our matching rings, maybe you could take him on as an apprentice.”

“I think not. Had he any aptitude, he might have discovered such a delicate detail without asking directly.”

“He led with, and I quote, ‘Do you ever share?’ I'd clocked him staring at you with his tongue hanging out since we came in.”

Sherlock raised his lager and sipped, lifting an eyebrow thoughtfully and gazing into the middle distance as if in contemplation. “There are those who say a little adventure strengthens a marriage.”

“Sherlock! You wouldn’t –” John broke off at Sherlock's adolescent giggle. “You’re winding me up, aren’t you?”

“I confess that it… strikes a note in me when you’re jealous and." The velvety voice dropped an octave. "Mm. A little possessive.”

“A note. It strikes a note.”

“A pronounced one.  With a strong harmonic. Perhaps an open fifth, from the horn section. Powerful, and quite insistent.”

“Um. How much longer d’you think we have to stay to be polite?”

“I believe we’ve satisfied courtesy. I’ll get our coats.”

Chapter Text

“This is everything?”

“It’s mostly Rosie’s stuff. Travel light, myself – oops, sorry, Mrs. Hudson.”

“I’ve just been up there airing the room – when’s the little one coming, then?”

“I pick her up from day care at five. I’m afraid she’s going to be a handful.”

“I can look after her for a bit, if you boys need some peace to unpack all this. Just the once, mind. I’m not your babysitter.”

“She’ll be making the offer twice a week,” said Sherlock quietly as Mrs. Hudson closed the door of the flat behind her. “She’s brought the conversation round to the matter an inordinate number of times. Having a young person about the place.”

“Are you sure you’re all right with that? It’s going to be a lot.”

“John, had I had any misgivings I should have expressed them before now. She will wake us early in the morning, make messes, tantrum, play with her food, and insist on wearing the same jumper five days in a row. I have read three manuals of child-rearing, and watched a stupefying number of videos on the parenting of toddlers.” Sherlock applied himself to cutting the tape on a packing-box, extracting John’s laptop, three shoeboxes, and a purple plush teddy half again as large as Rosie herself.

“Right, just so you know, most of what you learn from those books goes out the window when you actually have to do it.”

“And I understand there will be times when she wants – or needs – you to sleep in her room, and times when she will come into mi – ours.”

“Ours. And you’re all right with that too? Having me in your space?”

“John, need I repeat myself – what’s this?”

“What’s what?” said John from the door of the bedroom, a garment bag over one arm.

“What,” said Sherlock, “are you doing with a Ministerial dispatch-box?”

“Er. Nothing. It’s –”

“This is the sort of box used by the government for transportation of papers at the grade of Secret and above. Only two firms manufacture them – Barrow and Gale, or Wickwar and Company. Customarily they are stamped with gilt lettering, or sometimes a medallion engraved with the name of a specific Ministry, and retiring Ministers have been known to retain the one assigned to them, as a token of their years of service. This one has had the medallion removed.” 

“It. Er. Was a –”

“It appears significantly battered, as if it had seen long use. The modern digital security features are absent, leaving only a common lock –”

“Don’t –”

Sherlock had already picked the lock. A small sheaf of yellowing pages from the Sun and the Express; a familiar, tarnished key that had once opened the original lock of 221B, refitted since his return. A deformed bullet that might just have been dug out of the plaster over the couch; a dusty but otherwise clean Petri dish, identical to the ones currently clustered at one corner of the kitchen table; other unidentified objects that rolled and rattled beneath the folded clippings.

Near the bottom was a cheap, tatty fore-and-aft cap, fraying grosgrain ties sewn into the earflaps – the kind that had seen a flurry of sales by street vendors and souvenir shops after Sherlock snatched one up to hide his face from paparazzi and ended up splashed across the covers of the tabloids. Three flash drives fell out of the crown as he picked it up.

“John. I should never have expected you to purchase your very own Sherlock Holmes hat. Or to store it in a dispatch box of unknown provenance.”

“Erm. After you were – gone.”

Sherlock waited.  

“Mycroft came round. Offered to pay the rent until I – could make plans to move out. Or, well, even if I didn’t. I – told him I just couldn’t stay here, and he said he understood, and he’d take charge of the clearing-out. But the next day he sent Anthea round with that and – a note. In case there were – mementoes I might want to carry away.”

“Sentimentality. How uncharacteristic of my brother.”

“For a while I kept the Webley in there too. Just that little bit of trouble it takes to find the key, you know… And then, when I met Mary, I just. Loaded my blog onto some old thumb drives and chucked them into it, and shut the lid.”

“I would have expected you to… discard all this. When we weren’t – when you said you never cared to speak to me again.”

“I guess there are some things that are so – well – so secret you have to hide them even from yourself.”

Sherlock stood, holding the box at present arms as if carrying it into Parliament.

“John, do you think you could do without this box for just a bit?”

“I don’t suppose I need it any more. Back here now – bugger, that’s my reminder alarm. Need to go get the little terror from Mrs. Patel’s.”

“It is. Ah. Possible that I am sentimental too. And I believe I would like the personalisation replaced. John H. Watson, M. D. Or ought it to say John Hamish?”

“Not if you want me to sleep in your bed.”

“There’s room for… many more thumb drives in it. All the tales to come, backed up in a place of honour. Perhaps the mantel, if you wouldn’t object.”

“Definitely not Hamish then.”

The phone in John’s breast pocket burred again. “Better go.”

“Hurry back,” said Sherlock, tucking the box under one arm and extending his other hand

“Welcome home, John.”

“Somewhere in the vaults of the bank of Cox and Co., at Charing Cross, there is a travel-worn and battered tin dispatch-box with my name, John H. Watson, MD, Late Indian Army, painted upon the lid… It is crammed with papers, nearly all of which are records of cases to illustrate the curious problems which Mr. Sherlock Holmes had at various times to examine...”

--The Problem Of Thor Bridge

Chapter Text

“Oi! The Familiar’s back. Now we’ll see something.”

John still wasn’t used to the sight of Donovan smiling. Of course, he hadn’t seen her much since Sherlock’s return, and not at all in the past year or so. You could imagine that there were the beginnings of crow’s feet at the corner of those assessing eyes now, and a more deliberate, considered manner in her conduct at a scene. But she’d burst out with that phrase as spontaneously as ever.

“Beg pardon?”

“Ah, we used to call you that. Back when you started popping up with him everywhere he went.”

“Familiar? Like a pub then?”

“Nah, y’know, like witches. Always had a familiar, cat, little dog, whatever. Magic guardian. Spirit guide. That sort’ve bollocks. -- PC Bassey, block off that entry! -- Gotta admit, thought you were just like his little pet at the time. Y’know, someone to kiss up and tell him how clever he was but – I was wrong about lots’ve shite, okay? Time I said it.”

A little bubble of silence formed around them in the commotion of the fresh crime scene.

“I was wrong about him being a freak and a thrillseeker. And I was wrong about you being his little – whatever. You’re something different. You’re what made him twice what he was, and – well, gather you were on the outs for a while. It wasn’t good.”

“No,” said John, dropping his eyes to the pavement. “No, it wasn’t.”

“But I’d heard you got back together. First time he’s worked a scene with me since.” She caught John’s eyes as he looked back up, held them. “I asked for him.”

“John!”

“Duty calls,” said Donovan.

“John! A bit of help? Need a look up on this wall – if you could give me a boost –”

“Go help him work his witchcraft."

Her hand on his shoulder was unexpected. 

“Good to have you back.”

Chapter Text

“ – she overused the brushed spiccato – especially in the Stamitz piece, which was completely anachronistic – I’ll give you an example when we’re upstairs –”

Sherlock’s been banging on like this since leaving Wigmore Hall. John’s not exactly not listening, but mostly what he’s hearing is the dark-chocolate, cut-velvet tone of Sherlock’s voice. It’s a welcome change from the entirely too frenetic and mostly modern concert of solo violin and string trio music, during which that long-fingered hand had come back again and again to casually cover his own, tapping the rhythms absently against his wrist. Proprietarily, tenderly, but with the occasional sensual brush of a thumb, or a quick pressure when the music grew intense, sending a message to the base of John’s spine that made him wonder why they were still sitting there in the plush crimson seats.

He imagines telling the John Watson of a week ago that he’d spend this evening sitting in one of London’s iconic concert venues, holding hands with Sherlock Holmes.

No, he’s not really paying that much attention to the extempore lecture on bowing technique.

“It’s an entirely unnecessary form of showing off –” Sherlock concludes, fishing in the pocket of the Belstaff for his keys.

“Right, because you never show off,” says John, feeling it’s time he put a word in.

“Only when I have something to show off," replies Sherlock, opening the door and waiting for John to step through. “Such as, for instance –”

John’s backed up to the hallway wall in a second. He’s not entirely sure how he got there. Did Sherlock just lift him and plaster him against it? All he knows is that those agile hands are dug into his shoulders through his jacket, that there’s the heat of Sherlock’s breath against his neck and the pressure of Sherlock’s hips against his, and didn’t they make themselves late for the concert just a few hours ago? He’s ready for it again and ready for it to happen right here. If only it wouldn’t be, well – he can see the door of Mrs. Hudson’s flat over Sherlock’s shoulder –

“ – such as my Captain Watson,” says Sherlock into the hollow of his throat. “John. Tonight. I could barely listen. You were there, and I wanted to – I wanted to touch you, to – right out in public – wanted to say – nnng,” a wordless, deep utterance against his shoulder as John grinds back into his pressure, god how’s he going to wait till they get up the stairs? Sherlock’s already got a hand at his belt buckle, he knows how this is going to go, the way it has twice a day (three times on Sunday) during the past week. Snatching moments, once almost letting the kettle boil dry, at spots in the flat that John will never look at in the same way (that armchair that Mycroft favours: he’s never going to be able to see him sitting in it again and keep a straight face).

“Sherlock. Ah God. Quiet. Mrs. Hudson could be up late watching telly – people her age sleep light –”

“Mrs. Hudson,” says Sherlock throatily, and damn his fingers are clever, rough and tender at the same time (it must be the violin technique), “is at the cinema with Mrs. Turner, according to every indication that presented itself” – he’s got John’s trousers at half-mast now, and they're pressed together in a headlong rhythm, like a couple of teenagers having a knee-trembler in an entry. The Belstaff’s engulfed them both, and John’s got that rudely cheeky arse in both hands, feeling the muscles flex as Sherlock works against him; finally slides his grip down John’s arms to twine their fingers and pin the backs of his hands against the wall. It’s urgent and adolescent, and they could be up the stairs in ten seconds and in the bedroom, stripped to the skin, in thirty more, but he hasn’t got any more patience than Sherlock, part of him has been on the thin edge all evening, every time that long, spatulate thumb grazed the skin inside his wrist, or ghosted over the back of his hand. His mouth is filled with Sherlock’s tongue; he’s compressed against the wall, a core of heat and craving, and just when he’s getting spots before his eyes from lack of breath, Sherlock breaks off to graze teeth along the cord of his neck, and that’s it, there’s another place in 221 Baker Street that he’ll never see the same way again –

The key rattles in the lock outside. “I can’t imagine who thought that was a good idea,” comes Mrs. Hudson’s voice. “Nothing but fights and shouting – they simply don’t make films they way they – Sherlock?”

“Ah. Mrs. –”

“Oh, Delia. I’ve just thought, I need to pop into Speedy’s for something.”

Belt buckles, and pockets full of coin and keyrings, seem to make a ridiculous amount of noise in the hallway as they pull themselves together.

“Well,” manages John, “that was awkward--” “I, er,” Sherlock begins at the same moment, and when John falls silent: “I shall remember to tell Mrs. Hudson that she is a treasure. In the morning. Shall we, ah, go up, and I’ll show you a bit more about bowing technique?”

Chapter Text

“I’m not your friend. I’m your hobby.”

John glances up from his keyboard, where he's just typed in the phrase "my friend, Sherlock Holmes."

“Sherlock –”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m used to it. I’ve been my brother’s project for years. When he’s bored of manipulating circumstances in Azerbaijan or Cairo, he can order up a tea, two sugars, and amuse himself with ferreting out whether I’ve scored lately. Do you know I sometimes make a buy and then bung the packet right into the rubbish, just to give him some entertainment? There are probably rats in Camden who think I’m God.”

“Sherlock, that’s not how I look at you –”

“And oh, let’s not forget Griffin. One of those sworn officers of the law who fancies himself a hero. I’m one of his Good Works. Scrape the scrawny little junkie off the pavement, get him clean, serve the public, two for the price of one. You can hear him storing up treasure In Heaven.”

“Sherlock, what’s got into you?”

Sherlock flings himself backward into the armchair, ankles crossed on the seat almost before his weight settles, presses the heels of his hands against his temples as if something’s trying to get out of his head and needs to be crammed back in.

“Sometimes. Sometimes it is extremely tiresome to be everybody’s toy. You’re all so – superficial. Look at the poor freak. He talks too fast, he thinks too much, he’s got thoughts racing around in here” (a quick rhythmic tattoo of those palms against his his skull) “too fast to catch. Let’s measure and observe him, shall we? Put him in a maze, manage his behaviour, document him for science – it’s easier with someone like Donovan, she just says it.”

“Sherlock, I’ll stop writing the blog if it upsets you. I thought you liked it.”

“Humans are weak. I’m weak. Humans like attention. We want things and we’ll grovel to get them. Have I ever told you what I’ve done when I didn’t – when Mycroft cut off my allowance and –”

“Sherlock, you don’t have to –”

“Why not? Don’t you want to know? For your hobby. So you can be the detached medical observer? Cataloguing a specimen? So you can tell yourself there’s someone whose life is a worse mess than yours? Go on, I won’t take away your hobby. Just don’t. Pretend.”

John rises, closes the laptop.

“Sherlock. I write about you because I – not because of. What you said. I – I have never known anyone like you. I never will. You are one of a kind.”

“And isn’t that lucky.”

“Only for me,” says John. “Because I’m the one – you allow to see you.”

Sherlock looks up. Those gray irises are almost transparent in a slant of late morning light, wolf’s eyes, something intelligent and wild and skittish that lives at the edge of the human world.

“And if you want to tell me – anything you ever did, like -- what you just said, I won’t judge it. I won’t repeat it. I won’t think less of you. And I won’t see you as a – a specimen.”

Those eyes fasten on John’s hand, lifting from his side, then hesitating.

“There’s -- Sherlock, I had a professor in pre-med who used to quote the same thing at the beginning of every class. Can’t remember who’s supposed to have said it. Someone asked a doctor what his hobby was. Did he play golf, or – I don’t know, collect bloody stamps or whatever, to relax from practicing medicine. And he said, medicine is my hobby. If you’re a doctor in your heart, medicine is what you do because you’ve committed to it; it’s what you do because you can’t not do it. I don’t need to relax from it.”

Now Sherlock’s gazing away.

“You’re not my diversion,” John goes on. “You’re the most important thing that’s ever happened to my life. And if I had to get shot, and demobbed, and go through – feelings so dark I could never have imagined they existed – to meet you, it was worth it.”

He finally closes the distance, and takes the hand that’s dangling from the arm of the chair.

“I am committed to medicine,” says John, “and I am committed to you.”

After a moment, even though Sherlock doesn’t look up, John feels his handclasp answered.

“You’re not a freak,” he says, “you’re not a specimen, and you’re not my hobby. You’re my friend.”

Chapter Text

It’s a bit intimidating, walking into a Savile Row shop where royalty get their togs, and where the simplest bow tie on display’s priced at half the hire of the kit I wore at my wedding to Mary. Sherlock helped with the cost of that ridiculous do – I could’ve done with the registry office, especially now when I look back and realise he was opening his veins every time he folded one of those bloody serviettes or polished a phrase of the waltz he played. At the time, I just sighed and carried on; it was clear pretty early in the day that the groom never gets consulted.

Apparently that holds even if you have two grooms. Mycroft made the appointments before we’d even decided who was going to officiate (“Grant ought to do,” Sherlock had suggested, not looking up from whatever disgusting sample he was analysing, “he’s experienced in taking control of a chaotic scene”). If you have any idea what it takes to schedule a rush fitting at Poole & Co. – “Mycroft, there’s no hurry about this, I’m not pregnant" -- let’s just say it’s clear I’m about to come to grips with the full force of the Holmes family’s standards.

Well, I can be intimidating too. I've survived bloody Afghanistan and getting shot and the asylum that was my family, not to mention countless mad midnight adventures with Sherlock Holmes. I square my shoulders and walk past the window, with its heraldic displays and tattersall draperies and the kind of understated gilt signage that might as well be painted in twenty-four karat gold. For all I know, it is.

“Captain John Watson,” I say brusquely to the bloodless oik who’s greeted me from beside a huge glass table that I’m suddenly sure I’ll eventually crash into, and manage to add “Ten o’clock fitting” instead of “reporting for duty.”

I muster my best middle-distance parade-ground stare.

He consults a scheduler about the size of the Domesday Book. “Holmes wedding,” he murmurs as if that were something remarkable, which I suppose it is. “Mr. Holmes” (and I knew he doesn’t mean Sherlock) “has been good enough to make a selection as to fabrics, colours and style. It remains only to determine the most forgiving cut. Favour the left leg, shoulder a bit lower on that side, very good, sir. This way, if you would be so kind.”

Well, that lasted all of three seconds.

I sigh, and report for duty.

Chapter Text

“Sherlock, what the entire fuck is this?”

On reflection, John wishes he’d chosen another phrase. That one just slipped out. Which is another phrase he’d better not use.

“I have been doing research, John, as is always prudent when embarking on a new enterprise.”

“Looks like you’ve been researching every block in Soho.”

“Several. Also a series of commercial sites on the Internet, some of which, I may say, were tasteless in presentation despite useful information to be acquired.”

“And the object is…?” John winces again. He probably shouldn’t have referred to objects.

“John, we have embarked upon a couple relationship.”

“Is that one of your famous deductions?”

“Of a sexual nature.”

“You don’t say.”

“It is hardly necessary to be flippant, John. Considerable reading on the subject of marital stability has made me aware of the importance of compatibility and communication in the matter of sex. It is considered crucial for partners to express their likes and dislikes, to be open to experimentation and variety – but not to force it upon the other – and to learn for themselves what they find most gratifying. Comfort and pacing are critical. I have assembled this collection in the interest of learning what might be most satisfying to each of us in the way of -- enhancements.”

“I don’t even know what half these things are.”

“I will walk you through the assortment. I made my selection carefully, with an eye to diversity of aesthetics and function.”

“Well, I know what this pump bottle is for – Back Door? That’s a bit rude –”

“I did mention tastelessness. Though, speaking of that, there’s a variety here that comes in flavours, for, er  –  versatility in activities where flavours might be perceived. I ordered the sampler kit.”

“Pomegranate? Cloudberry? Chocolate Martini?”

“I’m sure you’ll agree that any of those sound more appealing than cultured butter, enjoyable as that is in its place.”

“It was what we had on hand.”

“Hence my concern that we remedy such deficiencies. – This jelly ring uses a small battery – the sales copy assured me it would fit someone of your respectable girth –”

“First time anyone’s called it respectable.”

“I will remember to do so, if that– stimulates you.”

“Just. Hm. Flattered.”

“One of the articles enlarged upon the role of so-called dirty talk. I will be gratified if you can provide a short list of the things you like said to you in bed.”

“We haven’t even gotten to the bed yet, Sherlock.”

“Another omission that should be remedied as soon as possible. If we can discipline ourselves to exercise patience.”

“I’ve been rather enjoying making a mess of the couch. And the carpet.”

“I had to borrow Mrs. Hudson’s Vanish spray. Twice. I have also remedied that omission.”

“What in God’s name is this? It looks like some sort of modern sculpture –”

“The prostate gland is mentioned frequently as a source of pleasurable stimulation not experienced otherwise. One positions it thusly –”

“I get the picture, Sherlock. And – wait, you bought these online? Looks like the genuine article –”

“Lestrade was happy to accommodate; I merely told him there were occasions when we might need to, ah, detain a suspect. It appears that – speaking of discipline – some people find the sensation of restraint most arousing, and the idea of genuine Metropolitan Police handcuffs suggested itself. Some also enjoy various forms of impact and skin stimulation –”

“That’s that crop thing with the feathers?”

“Exactly. Please, John, tell me if anything here catches your interest, or perhaps – multiple –ah – things?”

“Sherlock.”

“Have I – um –  John. Have I overstepped?”

“Oh, bloody hell, Sherlock, I don’t mean that – good Lord, is this a remote control?  – I mean that – yeah, all this looks like fun. Not all at once, maybe just make a blind grab, try something out?”

“You don’t feel I’ve – taken excess initiative.”

“Nah. It was thoughtful. Makes me feel spoiled for choice but – y’know, the most important thing is that I’ll always choose you.”

“John.”

“Mmmmhm.”

“But you will,” said Sherlock after several minutes, “tell me if there’s an option that excites you.”

“Hm. I say start small. Perhaps the pink thing.”

Chapter Text

“You realise, Sherlock, we’re not as young as we once were.”

“That is a meaningless statement, John. With every passing second we are older. Which once did you wish to specify?”

“The – urgh – once when we could hoist ourselves up fire escapes without straining a muscle in our backs. Mmf, that’s the ticket. Better lay in some more of these ice packs.”

“Deterioration with age is not inevitable, if one’s transport is properly curated.”

“Right, that’s why you’re furniture-walking back to the kitchen.”

“I may have landed rather heavily after jumping that last barricade. What happened to the others?”

“The other what?”

“The other ice packs.”

“You used them to preserve that thumb that you said was critical evidence in the Millett case.”

“There’s nothing in here but frozen prawns, the last of that mango sherbet, and one of those kilo bags of peas from Tesco."

“Peas. Peas make a good ice pack.”

“What if I want you to make that thing with the peas?”

“We’ll get some more, Sherlock. Get those onto your knee before it swells up.”

“Ah. –– John, you may have a point.”

“Ta very much. Always flattering when the mad genius thinks the lowly physician has a point.”

“Your feigned indignation is misdirected. I meant about the passage of time. It may be prudent to institute a regimen of stretching, conditioning and regular use of such things as cryotherapy. This is salutary.”

“You know, we don’t have to do bloody parkour. I remember when you spent three weeks wearing a sheet and solved a dozen cases without leaving Baker Street.”

“It was a demonstration. Also, John, though it is vexing to confess it, I find I am a creature of sentiment.”

“Well, shut the fridge. Metaphorically speaking, I mean. You did shut it?"

“I discover that – on evenings like this, I am forcibly reminded of the first night after we met. When you forgot your cane, and forgot your limp, and we – it is gratifying to relive it.”

“Might get to be a time when I can’t throw the cane away. Just saying.”

“Well. That day has yet to arrive. And I predict that you will readily leap onto the next fire escape that presents itself, should it become expedient.”

“Erk. Vertebrocostal joint went back in, that’s better –”

“Fit for another round, then?”

“Sherlock.”

“Yes?”

“You know I’ll still be chasing you across roofs when I’m hobbling along on a Zimmer frame, you mad bastard.”

Chapter Text

"A secret admirer? Bit primary-school, isn't it?"

“It’s obviously meant as something of a challenge.” Sherlock rose from his chair, holding the single sheet of paper in one hand. “What” –theatrical pause –”can the world's only consulting detective divine about the person who wrote this letter?”

“I don’t know, what can he?” John barely glanced up from the latest copy of Sport.

“Well, start with the grossly obvious. Written with a common biro – the sort you might pick up at any display of sundries, most likely purchased for this specific purpose –”

“How d’you clock that?”

“You can see here, at the initial capital D, that the pen did not produce a visible line at first. But the ink doesn’t skip after that, so the pen was not near the end of its useful life, but rather beginning it.”

“Right.”

"The text is printed carefully, without distinctive quirks of letter formation.”

“Printed?”

“Possibly the writer is unaccustomed to using cursive script. Rising generations barely write by hand at all. Even signatures nowadays are commonly stamped, and prescriptions, as you’re well aware, are transmitted electronically. Or,” Sherlock flourished the paper over his head, “the writer was simply disguising his or her handwriting, or seeking to produce the impression it required disguise, though he or she clearly had access to a home printer -- the paper is the sort sold for the use.” The sheet held in front of the nearest lampshade: “No watermark or other irregularity –  intensive chemical testing might identify manufacturer, not likely to tell us much about the author though –”

“Fingerprints?”

“I have already fumed it with ninhydrin. Almost certainly the writer used gloves – the thin, sensitive nitrile variety which we both employ professionally."

“And what does this man, woman, or person of unspecified gender have to say? Last secret admirer was Moriarty. Can do without that.”

“The sentiments, disregarding the anonymity itself, seem innocuous. I’ve read every word of Doctor Watson’s blog… his regard for you seems genuine and deep – you’re blushing, John.”

“Bit awkward hearing something like that read out loud.”

“Oh, it gets better – it so often appears that you discount your own humanity, your caring heart, when it shines out through every word of the doctor’s narratives – John, you constantly romanticise me for effect –”

“I just report.” 

“– despite your efforts to paint yourself as a soulless thinking machine. I hope that one day you will be able to see yourself as others do – as someone precious and worthy of love – and I hope that one day you find it, and this, and that, yours sincerely, a devoted admirer --"

A slight tremor entered Sherlock's voice. "And you, John, did an absolute rubbish job of concealing your authorship of this note.”

“Excuse me?”

“You might have remembered that I am perfectly capable of discerning patterns of sentence formation, punctuation and cadence, and that I religiously read your blog.” He extended the letter, now refolded, between two fingers. “Or, as you would say, busted.”

“Erm.”

“You weren’t trying very hard. This was posted at the Royal Mail office in Eastcheap, near which we spent a pointless hour two days ago assessing a scene that ought to have been as plain to the responding officers as a Powerpoint. Once it became clear our efforts were superfluous, you vacated the area briefly to, as I recall, ‘go for a piss.’”

“Did need to.”

“You might have been dropping a trail of breadcrumbs. Also there is the new biro on the end table, and a fresh packet of standard envelopes on your dresser, where I noticed it when I borrowed a pair of clean socks yesterday.” Sherlock sucked in a deliberate breath, as if steeling himself. “In short, John, you have gone to a good deal of trouble to send me a painfully transparent letter of – devoted admiration. It hardly seems the subject for a joke.”

“It’s not a joke, Sherlock. I – all right –”

John stood, the letter in one hand. “I am – your devoted admirer. And sometimes – I mean, often, I – you get so prickly about what you call sentiment –  you say you don’t have friends –”

“I believe I revised that assessment shortly thereafter.”

“ – so I don’t know how you’d react if someone said. All right. Here goes. I love you, Sherlock Holmes.”

John’s eyes were closed, so that Sherlock’s fingers prying the letter from John’s hand, replacing it with his own, evoked a start of surprise.

“Why bother with this, then?”

The long fingers twined more firmly between John’s.

“I suppose to give you a little plausible deniability. If you still weren't interested in – feelings.”

“That would have required denying my gifts as well, John. Of which, I may say, you are the most precious and least deserved.”

“I’d like the chance to talk you out of that last.”

“What would you propose, John? Not to get ahead of ourselves, but –”

“What about a long conversation over dinner?”

“Angelo’s?”

John raised Sherlock’s hand, barely grazing the knuckles with his lips. “Ready in fifteen.”

Chapter Text

I remember thinking once that friends are what God sends you to make up for your family. Families are accidents more often than not – a couple of people who don’t know what they’re doing have a kid (before or after getting married, if they ever do), and then another one, and everyone rubs along for better or worse. Mostly worse. My Da was quick with his fists, something I’ve had to unlearn; quicker when he’d been in the drink. Harry picked up on that last before she was out of Secondary; even early on, he’d slide her a little tot when Mum wasn’t looking, like it was all right for him to have a skinful if his daughter joined him. All in the family.

Her Majesty’s service was a blessed relief. There were rules, instead of the whims of a mad adult who could praise you one minute and cuff you the next; the food was stodge, but it was always there, and you burned it off even if it hit your gullet like a lump of clay. Dress according to regulation, no scrounging in the wardrobe for something that fits because no one’s been bothered to take you to the Oxfam since you shot up three inches, or to go to the launderette in two weeks. You don’t pick your CO, but even the hard ones are mostly fair and you find your people. I remember when Sholto looked at me as if he were reading a map, and said “There’s something in you that wants to save the world, John Watson. Don’t let it get out ahead of you.” And I remember sitting off-duty with Murray behind the barracks at Shorabak, passing a fag back and forth – I never got the habit, and a good thing, but it was something to share. “Not that bad a show, is it?” he'd say, “long’s you’ve got mates that have your back.” Didn’t know then how much he’d have mine.

All changed when I got demobbed. All of it gone – the friends, the structure, knowing what you’d do with your day. I found a bedsit in London that cost the earth, and H.M.’s government graciously paid for a therapist to get me over my PTSD. I’ve got a secret for you: you don’t get over being shot and nearly dying. Twice, ta very much, thanks to a hospital visit from Staphylococcus aureus. Part of you always exists in that moment when you’re in mortal combat, not with a person you can see and grapple but with pain or haemorrhage, or fever that draws a minute out into an hour and makes everything outside your body vague and unreal. You think back on your family, and they’re strangers; the most they ever did was train you up, the moments when your Da made your ears ring or the screaming downstairs wouldn’t stop -- like little rehearsals for the real thing, the bombardment that seemed endless and the pain that was unbearable except that you bore it, until the next dose of morphine.

So there you are, in a peace that makes no sense, because aren’t the guns firing somewhere and aren’t there lives to save? And you’re eking out your budget to half-price tea sachets and jumbo bags of peas that are the cheapest veg in the Tesco freezer, I learned to make all kinds of things with peas, and when Ella said I should write a blog I almost asked if it should be John Watson’s Kitchen. Twenty ways to eat Nutella. How to stretch leftover curry. You sit alone in the flat, chewing over what you’ll do, where you’ll go, when you can’t squeeze a pound any harder. Back to the family you came from? No fear. They never knew you then. They damn well won’t know you now.

And then – well, you know what happened then. It’s all there online. John Watson’s world, turned inside out in a few hours that live rent free in my brain now, that I’ll never stop reliving – but in a good way, not the way I kept reliving the moment I knew I was shot, or the night in hospital when I knew I was dying. Sherlock saw me, the way Sholto had, and he wanted me in his life -- more than that, he just assumed there and then that I belonged in his life. And I wanted to be in his, like nothing I’d ever wanted before or since. Right, he was a daft bastard, and bloody right it could be dangerous, but I’d done that, hadn’t I? And I learned before that night was out that he was cursed with a family too, or at least a brother that seemed to think he was a problem to be solved, and I thought maybe, just maybe, he could use someone in his life who saw him, too.

It’s been a hot five minutes since then. He died and came back. We lost trust and rebuilt it. I had a kid, without knowing -- in the worst way imaginable -- what I was bloody doing, and decided that no matter what, she would grow up with at least one person who cared who she was and what she needed.

And now she’s got – three? Four? So many. Sherlock, who I think loved her from the moment she was born. Mycroft, who I learned -- despite the stick permanently lodged up his arse -- will always be there when he’s needed, who brings her books and puzzles ridiculously past her age level (at least I think they are, until I find her devouring them). Mrs. Hudson, who practically kidnaps her at the least sign we could use a break. Aunt Molly, who minded her when everything was broken.

And we’ve all got each other. Adopted, kind of. Or in the case of Sherlock and me – well, I’m going to ask him, soon. I think he’ll say yes.

Friends are what God sends you to make up for your family. And sometimes you get both.

Chapter Text

I knew from the start that marrying Sherlock Holmes would be a mad affair, though I’d thought more in terms of another attempted murder at the reception, or perhaps of an eyeball turning up in the buffet.

I hadn’t been considering a boutique Greek hotel in Covent Garden, with platters of filo pastry and grape leaves making the rounds, Retsina and Molavi flowing like water before the dinner’s even brought in, and a bouzouki orchestra -- all laid on at cost by the hotelier, a past client and sometime “interpreter” for Mycroft’s department. Melas greeted us with the keycard to the honeymoon suite, and I can tell before we’re well into the reception that I’m going to be waking up in it the next morning with a big head.

Now the speeches are over (I wouldn’t have expected Lestrade to be so sentimental), ending with Melas himself -- who makes it sound as if we’d merely solved a thorny problem involving his business, rather than rescuing him at the last minute from a situation that cost at least one life and probably two more. Rosie’s going from table to table, climbing up in laps, and getting baklava drips all over her ring-bearer’s dress (“that’ll come out,” says Mrs. Hudson, dabbing at it with a napkin). Mrs. Turner's visibly flirting with Mike Stamford, and one of Melas’ waiters has taken up an unobtrusive post near Harry’s table to make sure her glass stays recharged with sparkling Zero. Mycroft’s sat close to the musicians, in a position where he’s got a view of the entire room, nursing a single flute and surveying the whole proceeding as if he expects it to blow up.

The orchestra strikes up before the last toast is drained. A slow waltz, intentionally programmed, sounding odd and fairylike in the plucked string tones; I can about manage a box step, and I let Sherlock lead. I offer my hand to Mrs. Holmes as soon as the applause fades, and before I can lose my nerve; Sherlock has Mrs.Hudson out on the floor a few minutes later (the hip doesn’t seem to be bothering her; the Molavi, probably).

Molly and Lestrade join us on the next dance, when the orchestra’s started to pick up the pace, and where did either of them learn to jitterbug? The floor fills up; Sherlock takes Harry for a turn, while Stamford gallantly bows to Mrs. Turner and pilots her around under the glancing lights. I‘m fending off a teary embrace from Donovan, of all people, and reflecting that the Detective Inspector and the morgue registrar, now talking off to one side, make a cute couple – at least there are two people who wouldn’t be squicked out by each other’s jobs – when yet another number comes to a close, and through the ragged applause I hear Rosie squealing “I dance with Uncle Mikey!”

She’s already clambered half into his lap, and he looks about as uncomfortable as if he’s been not only stripped of his Savile Row kit but revealed in ignominious outlet-store undercrackers. “Uncle Mycroft doesn’t dance, young Rosamund.”

“Dance with Uncle Mikey!” She’s chock full of sugar at this point.

“If Uncle Mikey doesn’t dance,” comes Viola Holmes’ voice, cutting tartly through the background hum, “we wasted all the money we spent sending you to Mrs. Fordham’s Academy.”

Mycroft may be able to order an assassination in Sarajevo or an extraction in Dubai, but Mummy Holmes is not to be gainsaid. Rosie raises her plump little arms – there’s a smear of pistachio on one wrist – and the British Government bends awkwardly at the waist, since she can barely reach the level of its trouser pockets. Sherlock helpfully lifts my (our) daughter under the arms and positions Mycroft’s forearm beneath her bottom, and I see Melas bending to the ear of the orchestra leader, who mouths a cue to his ensemble and launches into a slow, stately measure.

I don’t think the British Government watches old films. When you’re a disabled surgeon on poverty pay, though, sometimes you’ll take home some third-hand DVDs from the thrift store free box, for some variation on cricket matches and crap daytime quiz shows. Zorba The Greek was honestly damn depressing, but it beat another programme about buying homes, which is even more depressing when you’re deciding between takeaway and putting more money on your Oyster card.

Anyway, everybody but Mycroft, apparently, knows what happens after those first few syrup-slow bars where you have to pause in mid-step to stay in sync with the music. He’s got an easy time of it at first, turning in stiff circles with Rosie clinging to his lapels; my regular locum from the surgery, with his plus-one, is already doing a grapevine step on the other side of the little dancefloor with its turning galaxy of reflections from the mirrored ball overhead.

It speeds up gradually; the musicians’ fingers fly on the necks of their instruments, and the seated guests start clapping while Rosie shrieks “Faster, Uncle Mikey!” Anderson, no less, slips in beside Mycroft and slides an arm around his shoulders, joining the line that’s started to form. On his other side, Lestrade steps in to lift Rosie from his arms, but blocks his escape, so that now the British Government and the New Scotland Yard inspector are linked by forty pounds of hyperactive toddler with her feet barely grazing the floor.

I feel Sherlock’s fingers sliding between mine. He’s opened his collar and loosened his tie; there’s a faint sheen of sweat sticking that gorgeous black hair in tendrils to his forehead (and what does that make me think of?). He drains off the flute of fizz that’s in his other hand, sets it down, and tugs me out to the end of the line, just as the dance becomes a chaotic series of skips and kicks punctuated by thumps from the drumset.

Some of the dancers are zigging and some are zagging. Anderson’s starting to look a little green, and I remember he’s never been able to hold his pint. Rosie’s squeals of delight have reached dogwhistle level, and even Siger Holmes has let his wife drag him onto the dance floor, where he stumps from side to side, resolutely refusing to perform the hopping steps that have erupted along the line.

Somebody thinks it’s a good idea to “crack the whip.” Somebody needs to get the memo. Anderson staggers; Molly teeters on the heels she’s not used to wearing; Rosie, whose dancing has been about as choreographed as a Hughlings Jackson seizure at best, puts both feet down in the same place at once, pulling Mycroft down with her as she tumbles whooping onto her bum. The line collapses in a slo-mo cascade -- just in time to collide with one of the waiters bearing another bottle of bubbly, which explodes from the neck in a geyser of creamy foam, arcing through the air to score a direct hit on the combed-over forelock that decorates the freckled, receding hairline of the British Government.

The music concludes with a startling, plucked chord.

Wild applause mixed with a commotion of concerned solicitude – Anderson meanwhile making a bolt for the Gents’, Rosie piping “Dance again, Uncle Mikey!”  –

Right, he isn’t really hurt, is he? I’ve never seen an expression like that on him. It looks as if he might be in pain. I start to elbow my way over, but Melas is there first, with one of the hotel’s expensive bamboo towels, saying something about complimentary service at the hotel’s cleaners. Mycroft snatches the towel to scrub over his face and head, that tuft that all he's got left on top standing up in a hapless wisp, and finally a sound manages to emerge, a strangling noise that has me rehearsing the Heimlich maneuver, and finally a full-on bellow –

Oh. He’s laughing.

It goes on for a while.

Finally he rises, all sticks and angles, Sherlock’s spareness without his fluid grace, and bows as deeply as the broomstick he’s got for a spine will allow. He takes my daughter’s pudgy little hand – the one with the pistachio smear – and raises it to his lips.

“Thank you for the dance, my lovely Rose.”

The orchestra starts up again. There’s a warm whisper of Sherlock’s breath close to my ear.

“Let’s sit this one out,” he says.

Chapter Text

“Sherlock. This feels like eavesdropping.”

“That’s because it is, John.”

“Well, that’s not… exactly cricket.”

“John. I am a consulting detective. If I wish to discover information that another party is unwilling to volunteer, I will not be likely to obtain it by bursting into their private conversation and asking leave to take notes.”

“It just… feels different when it’s a person who’s not actually done something wrong. Couldn’t you use your usual methods? You know, deducing and so on?”

“Ah, but this is a wily subject who knows me of old. Normal principles do not apply.”

“A grudge match, then.”

“We… spar, you might say. It is a long fought battle of wills, and every year grows more challenging. Softly, now.”

“What if we’re discovered? You standing here with my stethoscope? Be dead embarrassing.”

“We have every reason to be here. Ah. Hush, the critical part of the conversation approaches… right! Got it – make a bit of a row, now, like we’re just arriving –”

“Oh! I thought I heard you boys out here – Sherlock, you’ll be in this night week, won’t you?”

“Of course, Mrs. Hudson. John’s been at pains to remind me of the date.”

“Well, you will go haring off across London at a moment’s notice.”

“I’ll carve out the time, Mrs. H.”

“I’ll leave you to it, then.”

“Well, that was close.”

“But worth it, John. I think Mrs. Hudson would actually be disappointed if I were ever unable to describe my birthday gift before I unwrapped it.”

Chapter Text

“Rosie. Ros-ros, it’s all right. You were having a nightmare.”

“Daddeeedaddeeedaddee –”

“Shh. Shh. I’m here. Would you like some orange juice?”

“Onjuce.”

“I’ve got – damn, ‘s’one’ve these fiddly things with the straws –”

“Onjuce?”

“There.’

“Mmm. Nnnnf.”

“Better?”

“N-hnh.”

“One of the nurses when – when I was in hospital. Told me nothing pulls you out of a bad dream like something ice cold to drink. Works, doesn’t it?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Can I hug you? There we are. Want to tell me what it was about?”

“Want Blondie.”

“I forget. Is she the bunny? Or the mousie?”

“Bunny, daddy.”

“Right.”

“Where’s Lock-Da??”

“He’s out on a case, Ros-ros. You know he stays out late sometimes.”

“I dreamed he was watching me.”

“That’s not a nightmare, now is it?”

“And he left me all alone to go through the wall. It was dark, and I could hear him in my head, but I couldn’t see him.”

“That’s pretty scary.”

“I was afraid, so I ran, and the hall went on and on. Like in the Tube, but longer. And I didn’t know how I could get back to you, but I hoped Lock-Da would find me because he can find anything. You said.”

“He can. I’ve seen it.”

“But he couldn’t find himself, cos I could only hear his voice.”

“It was a dream, Ros-ros. Lock-Da promised he won't do the dangerous cases any more. He'll be back soon. Look, I’ll open the window so the dream can fly away - there, bye-bye, all gone. Do you want me to stay a while?”

“M-hm… Da?”

”What, Ros-ros?”

“You have nightmares?”

“Told you. When I was in hospital. That’s how I learned about the orange juice.”

“But you don’t any more.”

“Sometimes.”

“Does Lock-Da give you orange juice?”

“Mostly water. And a hug.”

“What do you dream about?”

“When I got hurt. In Afghanistan. But now when I wake up. I know I’m safe. And so are you.”

And I won’t tell you that on nights like this, I have nightmares just like yours. Where he leaves me here and can’t find his way back. Where I can’t find him.

“I’ll stay here till you go to sleep, Ros-ros. Here’s Blondie. Sweet dreams.”

Chapter Text

I’m the one who’s always calm when others can’t be. They’ve always said it about me – it’s on the mug I got in a Secret Santa exchange years back: “Keep calm and carry on.” I can look at a dead body and understand that it was once a human person, and not let my emotions about that stop me from doing my work. They actually help – I sense what I owe that person, what it means for someone to stand witness; what my skills could do to honour their life, or help others in the future.

It’s the everyday that makes me stammer and stall – meeting new people, trying to find common ground, say the right things and make the right gestures. Especially with him, Sherlock. He was blunt and brusque when I met him, sometimes almost cruel – as if softer feelings were his enemy, something he couldn’t allow to get a foothold. But it felt as if he saw me in a way others didn’t, or at least as if he might, and without realising it I resolved to make myself indispensable to him. They do say, be careful what you wish for.

You don’t often get called on to help someone fake his own death. I wouldn’t have believed it was even a thing, if I hadn’t seen what happened with that – that woman. The Woman, I suppose I should say. I understood what she was, what she’d done, but when it worked out that she wasn’t dead after all – oh, you figure things out; Sherlock’s brother paying a visit, long after the fact, to make certain that the evidence of her demise was complete and ironclad – I was, I don’t know, relieved? She cared for Sherlock in her way, and so did I. And I think by then he respected us both for what we could do – in the cleverness line, that is, not whatever it was she did with whips and the like. I did my part to protect her, and turned over in my head all the things that were involved in faking a corpse. Professional curiosity, you might call it. I just had it in the back of my head that I might, well, need to know it in a more than theoretical way.

So when he showed up in the morgue – after those scenes in court, after the awful leaders in the gutter papers – and told me what he needed from me, I was calm. I was calm when I was asked to certify the death, when Mycroft went through the charade of asking me if I’d like someone else to sign off on the PM; I was calm as I falsified statement after statement, knowing what that might mean to me professionally. As I said, I cared for him, and it was pretty clear the way I felt was one-sided; I couldn’t offer him what I wanted to, but I could do this. And when I saw him over my shoulder in the mirror at Bart’s, two years later, I remembered what we had in common, and I smiled, and I stayed calm.

He tried to replace John with me, after he came back. I knew it wasn’t going to work, but he needed to see that for himself. I suppose I did too. I was as calm about it as I knew how to be; he’ll never know that I went home and cried. Not for myself, but for him. And for John.

It was harder to stay calm when he went back on the drugs. I hadn’t seen him at his worst, the way his brother and Greg had, but I’d seen John Does on slabs because they’d scored one time too many, or bought the wrong stuff – it comes in waves when something bad hits the street. I didn’t recognize myself in the person who slapped him when John brought him in for testing; I went home after that, said I felt ill, and actually scratched out the first draft of a letter of resignation. Tried to find a graceful way of saying I’d lost my detachment, before a couple of cups of tea (all right, there was a little brandy in the second) and a couple of hours with Toby in my lap made me realise it was just about him.

By then I’d known for a long time that there was never going to be anything between us, not the way I’d wanted at first, but he had this way of making people care about him even when he didn’t care about himself. And I realised, too, that I wouldn’t be helping anything if I stepped back. I had to stay there for him. And stay calm. Just not so calm that he could imagine he didn’t matter.

Calm when he was shot, even – apparently – inside his head; he told me later that he hallucinated me, telling him how much time he had, how to fall, like some kind of forensic shoulder angel, detached and dispassionate. (There’s a theory called bicamerality that proposes humans once “heard voices” telling us what to do, how to solve problems, not realising the voice was our own brain working, and that’s what made people believe they’d heard the Voice of God. And that under stress, we revert to that. If that’s true, then Sherlock made me his Voice, and I still don’t know what to think about that.)

Calm after Mary died; I had to be. Rosie needed someone who wasn’t drowning in grief, and that wasn’t her father. They say that mourning is harder when the relationship’s been complicated, and there was something there I never knew the whole of. But she was gone, and John was as good as gone half the time, and Sherlock – even if he’d been fit to look after a young child at that point, and he wasn’t, John wasn’t having it. All I could do was be the person I’ve always been – the person who does what has to be done, so that other people can feel their feelings, like the women who washed and laid out the dead before there were coroners and medical examiners and morticians. Only this time I felt as if I were witnessing a loss that was somehow bigger than a mere death, the fracture of a friendship that should have lasted forever. But I stayed calm, until the day he asked me to meet him – and John, and Mrs. Hudson, as it turned out – until I saw the extent of what he was prepared to do to himself. I didn’t know if anything I said in the ambulance got through to him, that day; I could only hope that John would.

You know when I wasn’t calm at all, and didn’t care? At a wedding two years later, where Greg Lestrade and I were each other’s plus-ones, because we’d become best friends by then, and a best friend is better to have at your side than tomorrow’s disappointment. Where I wore a red dress, the colour of that lipstick I’d said didn’t suit me, only it did. Where John hugged me so hard that it adjusted my thoracolumbar join; where Sherlock quietly took my hand, and thanked me for all the times I’d been there for them both, and I felt that for the first time in years, I was standing witness to a beginning, instead of an ending.

Where Greg, as they moved off to circulate among the other guests, took out his pocket square – silly, formal thing – and dabbed at my cheek with his own eyes shining, let me, I mean, is this all right, looking at me as if he’d never seen me before. He was suddenly shy, and flustered, and less calm than I’d ever seen him; and I found myself thinking I’d just seen someone marry his best friend.

Chapter Text

Sherlock Holmes is one of a kind, and incredible, and being his partner (I said I'm not gay, okay, reckon I lied) is as amazing as being his friend. And sometime, I rapidly discover, just as exasperating.

By the time the night’s half over, the bed’s always chaos. Sherlock is a gymnastic sleeper; I don’t think he wakes up entirely, but he turns this way and that, flings his arms out, burrows into the pillows, splays his legs across the mattress like Vitruvian Man. I try to avoid the most drastic of the convulsions (they’re not nearly as enjoyable as the ones that happen when he’s awake) and end up scrunched into a tiny corner of the bed; it’s a good thing I was in military service, where you learn to sleep through anything, even bombardments.

He talks, too. I don’t know exactly what he dreams about – he says he never remembers – but he mutters about pocket-money, and oysters, and god knows what else.

Also, he steals the blankets.

I don’t mean a process of gradual encroachment, where you wake up to find one shoulder bare and goosefleshy or a foot sticking out, no, this dreamland diva executes a barrel roll in the wee hours, stripping the whole lot off in one jarring yank and finishing fully enveloped, like a burrito. (The ones from Chilango’s in Soho are the best in London, by the way, and they deliver.)

The fourth or fifth time this happens, I’ve had it. I love the man to shreds, but enough is enough, especially when he maintains stoutly that he doesn’t do it, that he remembers nothing about it, even when I’ve just unwrapped him painstakingly while he mumbles in his sleep about railway passes or lithium toxicity. I grab the half-full toothglass from my nightstand and empty it over those unruly curls that look so enchanting spread out on the pillow, when it isn’t your pillow that he’s just snatched from under your head.

Honestly, he’s lucky I’m so daft for him.

He doesn’t move for a solid ten seconds. I begin to wonder if the shock was too much, and then he lifts one hand to explore his face and hair.

“John,” he says. “I am forced to conclude that you have poured water on me for some purpose I cannot divine. Were you, perhaps, having a dream? Possibly that I was on fire?”

“Sherlock, I’m going to bloody set fire to you if you don’t stop commandeering all the blankets."

“I do no such thing.”

“Examine the evidence,” I say.

He feels of the bed, the denuded contour sheet, and finally the cocoon in which he’s encased himself.

“Curious,” he says. “I have no memory of such a convolution.”

“Meanwhile, I’m freezing my conkers.”

“Well, the obvious deduction is that I, also, was cold.”

“Brilliant. So what do we do about it?”

“Again obvious. We spread out the bedclothes again – thusly” (a great thrashing commences); “I turn on my side – just so – and John Watson, a conductor not only of light but of considerable heat, takes up the station of the big spoon.”

“You’ll elbow my eye out as soon as you’re asleep.”

“I think not.”

And he doesn’t. He’s toasty as a freshly served burrito himself (really, I need to order some tonight), and his hair smells delightful when I’m nose to neck with him on the same pillow, and when I wake at first light we’re still in the same position, his head on my arm (it’s asleep but that’s okay), my other hand laced in his over his chest (he wears my pyjama tops, which swim on him, and I wear the bottoms).

“Ummm. John, have you any spare change in your pockets?”

“Sherlock.” I give him a little shake. “You’re dreaming again.”

“No,” he says, and that quiet laugh is a dizzying half octave deeper when he’s just woken up. “Only I remembered you saying I talked about that. And oysters. Hm, maybe we should go to Simpson’s for oysters tonight. Don’t we have an anniversary to celebrate?”

“Do we?” Just like him to blow a hole in our budget on a whim, but you do hear things about oysters. Could be dangerous.

“I’m sure we do. First kiss, first arrest, I’ll think of something. Meanwhile” – he rolls over, and it’s clear something else is awake early – “I believe we’ve established your talent for warming me up. Do proceed.”

Chapter Text

My brother seems happy. It is a state of affairs I had not foreseen.

I would have been content had he become merely stable – resistant to the drug compulsion, able to self-regulate, to optimise his talents without the displays of arrogance and emotionality that marred his fortunes for so long. He craved applause and admiration from the first, my brother; he could not be content, as I learned to be, with the knowledge that he had accomplished his purpose.

I was young when I grasped the advantages of self-control. My talents fitted me for the career I have chosen – the ability to perceive patterns, to calculate for human weakness and bias, to plan for contingencies as does a chess master. I found mentors at Eton who were quick to groom me for the calling, all the while thinking that they had discovered me.

But I have, also, always been of my brother’s selfsame – inclination, shall we say. I had long known where my attractions lay, and set about to starve them; it was clear I could not afford the liabilities of sentiment, the distraction of relationships. I knew, too, that my tropism could be a stumbling block in the path I meant to walk. Section 28 is not that far behind us even now; I had no illusions about what it would mean, then, to betray an affinity for others of my own sex.

And I had Responsibilities. From a young age Sherlock was my charge -- unable to cloak his differences or his scorn for the less gifted, to avoid provoking the hostility of the polite mob which is the British boarding-school. His one salvation was that, like myself, he found the cerebral more seductive than the physical. I encouraged this in him; encouraged him to pursue the peace he found in detachment, in deduction, repeating over and again the mantra that caring is not an advantage.

And yet. It is his bond with Doctor Watson, more than anything, which has saved him. I saw the shipwreck that was my brother – who had been, only a short time before, a malnourished scarecrow careening from doss house to doss house – transformed by his association with an ordinary Army doctor; eating almost regularly (how many times had I admonished him that he required fuel for his transport?), clean of the pharmacy that had for years coursed through his bloodstream, even of (at least inhaled) nicotine. (In an unguarded moment at school I myself sampled tobacco, and grew fond of the mental energy and clarity it induced; today I ration myself to an occasional lapse.)

I confess I felt a certain envy. Initially I saw Watson as merely another pair of eyes, an agent who could report back on my brother’s welfare; the depth and suddenness of his loyalty caught me on the back foot, as I am rarely caught. I had my reservations, but chose to let the experiment proceed. And Sherlock blossomed; he eschewed the drug dens and questionable chemists', his eccentric career flourished, he enjoyed all the adulation he could have wished, even to the point of being surfeited with it.

I should have seen the fall coming – the literal fall he had to orchestrate, as well as the fall from grace. The public is fickle; it is an error to court the opinion of the many. I told him as much while we changed his appearance, his identity, smuggled him out of the country. You are now, I said, no longer Sherlock Holmes, with all that means for ill or good; no one recognizes your abilities or achievements, and for your sake and that of Britain they must not. Learn to live with it.

He made no answer to that. He said only, as he boarded the craft that would take him out of my sight but not my ken, “Look after John.” I was left wondering at this unexpected capacity for attachment.

Their reunion was another of my few miscalculations. I had allowed matters with the Morstan woman to go too far: I was certain, given what I had seen, that my brother’s reappearance would end that connection, which I had followed keenly as one indiscretion after another on her part opened the book of her history page by page. I had not counted on the complexity of John’s feelings at Sherlock’s reappearance, or on Sherlock’s reaction: retreating into his shell – and, before long, into old habits – at the blow of seeing John pledge himself to someone else. I repeated to him again, oftener than I thought I would ever need to again: caring is not an advantage.

And yet. She is gone, and John survives, and so, after everything, does the bond that holds these two damaged men together – the valence that means one cannot thrive without the other, that appears to make them whole, a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

It is a conundrum. It leads me to speculate that I have committed yet one more miscalculation.

I have here in my waistcoat-pocket the business card of the Detective Inspector who befriended Sherlock when he was still on the street; who has been his guardian angel over the years when he resisted such oversight from me; who has conferred with me time and again about my brother’s welfare. Sherlock has found his stable ground with his doctor, yet I look back – warmly, if I must confess it – on the occasions when it was necessary to work with Lestrade, and regret the likely loss of his society going forward.

He is unmarried now, and at last report uncoupled, and a remark here and there in the past suggests that his attractions may be no more rigidly conventional than John Watson once thought his.

Sherlock and his doctor began by dining together. It is not strange for two gentlemen whose paths intersect in life to do so, to strike up an acquaintance beyond the merely professional. I have made a reservation at Da Terra – a choice which marks the occasion as special but eschews the white-and-silver opulence that would discomfit a man on a Yard Inspector’s salary. Gratitude, I will say, for all the years he looked after my brother. A wish to enjoy his company, to which I have grown accustomed. And perhaps, by happy chance, there will be something more.

It will be an experiment.

Chapter Text

“Mhmmm. I detect something hot and good in this kitchen.”

That voice of his. The bastard. He knows how to drop it to a purr that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, among other things.

“It’s only soup,” I say, which in itself is a pretty dignified way to describe random refrigerator contents. Still, we’re trying to stick to a grocery budget.

“I was referring to Captain Watson.” Is there any kind of rule about copping a feel when a man’s using kitchen knives? The carrot might do if I cut off the part that’s turned black.

“Sherlock, I’m handling sharp objects. That’s… distracting.” Completely unfair’s what it is; his powers of observation extend to memorising exactly what – let’s say what makes it difficult for me to concentrate on soup.

“I might offer you something else to handle.” He demonstrates, prying a packet of luncheon meat out of my hand just as I’m undoing the butcher paper, and replacing it –

“Sherlock, for fuck’s sake – “

“If you say so.”

“Just for information, when did you start talking like this?”

“I have been doing research, John.” He’s doing some serious research right now. “It appears many partners find dirty talk arousing. The state of affairs here suggests you are one, hence I consider my effort rewarded.” He could read the bloody A to Zed in that voice and I’d respond that way. “Spontaneity is also mentioned as an aphrodisiac.”

“The soup –”

“We needn’t go as far as the bedroom. This chair back is convenient – I believe the term is quickie –”

I’m a lost cause at that point. I’m wearing cutoff joggers as it is, because we haven’t gotten to the launderette in a couple of weeks and I’m down to my last pair of work trousers, and he doesn’t even bother to take them down. I suppose that’s another thing that comes under the heading of spontaneity, though I notice he equipped himself with the necessary beforehand, granted by the time that thought occurs to me I’m not in a condition to point it out.

He knows everything that does it to me, damn him, and at my age you wouldn’t think I could go from zero to sixty that fast, but with him I might as well be  fourteen again and susceptible to exploding under the influence of a strong breeze or a bumpy ‘bus ride. Before I know it I’m collapsed over the back of his easy chair with my knees wobbling and hoping we haven’t done something embarrassing to the upholstery; he’s whispering rude things in my ear, I’m recovering my breath in big gasps, and that’s when I realize –

“Sherlock – there’s something on bloody fire, let me up –”

It’s the butcher paper that was wrapped around what was probably unsalvageable week-old mortadella, and I slap and smother it with a wet towel, meanwhile noticing that the soup is now rapidly metamorphosing into a scorched mass at the bottom of the Dutch oven, and feeling vaguely grateful that I’ve still got the joggers on.

“Well that’s that,” I say. “Hand clearing this up, all right? Going to have to do everything over.”

“If you say so, John. Perhaps in that case we could adjourn to the bedroom this time."

Chapter Text

Mrs. Hudson says her hip predicts the weather. In med school, if the subject came up – which it did, a few times – the consensus was that that was an old wives’ tale.

I’m not so sure, these days. My shoulder’s got a language of its own; when a spell of drizzly days is coming in, I feel the scar in a different way than when it’s promising clear and fine. It’s got so we meet in the entry, and I’ll notice her limping a little, and say “Rain by evening, you think?” And she’ll nod: “About tea-time.” She’s usually right, even when the clever little weather app on my phone disagrees.

Sherlock says it’s equally a matter of intuition – the unconscious assembly of subtle observations that form a pattern: a little change in humidity, in the quality of the light, in the patterns of clouds that we might not have studied in school but which have been compiled over the years in our databanks. Even, perhaps, in the electrical charge of the air.

“You’d want instruments to pick up something like that, wouldn’t you?” I counter. I’m looking it up online, and finding things like the Feynman lectures that lose me after two paragraphs.

“There is no instrument more sensitive than the human creature,” he says. “Instruments only prove. Consider, John. When I play my violin, each note resonates at a given number of cycles per second. The standard concert pitch orchestras use for tuning is the A above middle C at four hundred and forty cycles; we have mechanical devices that can generate that pitch. If concert pitch is dropped a few cycles, we say the collective sound of the orchestra is darker, an imprecise term that no one can exactly define, but which everyone understands. Increase the number of cycles and the sound is brighter, as with orchestras that claim to reproduce the sound of Beethoven’s time. You cannot count those cycles, but you sense them in an organic way. In the same way, apprehension of minutiae below the threshold of conscious awareness is a critical source of information. I could not do my work without it.”

“I thought you were all about deduction. One thing follows from another, and so forth.”

“The two principles go hand in hand. Medicine is a science, after all, but think of the stories you’ve told me of nurses who always sensed when a patient was about to crash, or mothers who knew their children were more seriously ill than any lab work indicated. Evidence is crucial, but it is the whisper of all our senses that tells us where to look.”

And he’s right. My shoulder’s become a better predictor than the morning news of when to wear a mackintosh; it'll hurt at all sorts of odd times, but I've learned to notice a different colour to it, a different timbre, like the same note resonating in an empty room instead of a furnished one. And I wonder if Sherlock knows how I’ve come to predict his weather: know one of his silences from another, tell when he craves the drugs before he knows himself, and bring up the subject or fix the dinner that’ll shift his mood.

I suspect he does. Sometimes when I feel my shoulder twingeing, I think of what I could do that I can’t now, and what I left behind in Afghanistan. And he’s always got a case at times like that, something he wants me to look at, something on which I need you, John, to cast your invaluable light. Hand in hand, both of us understanding without reasoning, because I think he knows my weather, too.

Chapter Text

I know it sounds like I’m manipulating him – dangling cases in front of him, offering him what he wants if he’ll give up the other thing he wants. Telling him to be a good little do-bee because that’s what coppers do, just using the carrot instead of the stick.

Put it that way, I suppose I am. I just want to see him clean. Police work, you see what drugs do to people – bright people, decent people, kind people, who lose all those qualities in a slow erosion, until fixing is the only important thing and they’ll betray everything they once were to do it. I don’t want to see the light in those eyes go vague and distant, those quick movements turn into the underwater drifting of someone who’s malnourished and toxic. I’d feel sick to see that keen expression replaced by a junkie’s hopeful excitement at the prospect of a handout.

No, there’s nothing that says I have to see him again. But I know I will; crime scenes draw him, they’re his other drug, and even if I didn’t, I wouldn’t stop thinking. You meet someone like that once in a lifetime. So I strike the bargain.

And of course, Mycroft finds me. There’s someone who doesn’t manipulate when he thinks he can get away with issuing orders, although it’s clear that he knows how to make a phone call to Kyiv that’ll bring down a political candidate in Ghana. Lower-level government functionaries don’t send silent black electric cars to collect you at the Yard, for all his office in Whitehall is windowless and unassuming. Windowless means security, and that’s one thing I can see he’s got by the truckload.

But where his younger brother is concerned, I get the sense he resents the notion of using subtlety. Sherlock is family, Mycroft is the elder, he’s sent his brother to this therapist and that rehab, and the unruly creature refuses to behave no matter how sternly he’s scolded. Good luck changing someone’s heart by telling them what to do.

So I lay out my case. “He’s good,” I say. “I’ve got inspectors on the force with years of experience who don’t spot what he does. I’d give eggrolls to keep him as a consultant, if he can stay clean.”

“That is the exact problem, Inspector,” says Mycroft (where did their parents find these names? Maybe that’s what’s warped them both). “He will backslide, and you will embarrass yourself, and I will most likely have another mess to clean up. I require your cooperation in this matter.”

“I don’t think so,” I say, and I can tell from the minute widening of those cold eyes that he’s not used to having anyone push back – anyone but Sherlock, probably. “Have you ever smoked?”

“I beg your pardon?” I might as well have asked him if he’s ever gone cruising in Soho.

“Smoked. I’m thinking you’d be a Silk Cut sort of chap.”

“It is hardly – I’m assuming you are trying to make some sort of a point.”

“Used to be a pack a day man, myself. Gets old, waking up with that thick cough and losing your wind going up the stairs, even if it feels like it keeps you sharp.” I unbutton my cuff, rolling back my sleeve to show the Nic-Assist patch on my forearm. “These helped. Every day for a while, then cut in half, then every other day. And if there’s a bloody awful case and I’m itching for a smoke, I promise myself I’ll get a whole patch so long as I don’t give in. Not the healthiest thing in the world, still jacks up my heart rate and gets me light-headed sometimes, but then you don’t join the force for your health, do you?”

“And your point being…?”

“Sherlock craves something. Not my job to know why, quit asking that kind of question a long time ago. But it’s all brain chemicals, mate, they tell you that in training modules when some cuddly Addiction Services handholder gives a workshop. You can get ’em from something that’s going to tear up your lungs or leave you starving and stupid, or you can get ’em from something a little less destructive.” I button my cuff again.

“You are comparing yourself to my brother?”

“I’m saying people are human.” Except present company, possibly. “In my work, you’ve got to size ’em up enough. Let him work cases, it’s just catnip to him, you can tell. On the condition he stays off everything else. And I control the supply. He’ll have to pee in a cup any time I say he has to. Let me toss his flat, search his pockets. But if he keeps up his end, there’ll be a steady flow of his other drug. God knows we’re not sitting round the Yard playing draughts.”

He gives me a long, searching look. I look right back. I’ve stared down killers who were warmer and fuzzier.

“All right,” he says. “I shall not interfere at this time.” Minor government functionary. “I expect regular reports. I consider myself – responsible for my brother. I will not tolerate any indication of neglect for his welfare.”

“Take as good care of him as one’ve my own, mate.”

“Anthea will return you to the Yard,” he says, standing.

“That’s all right,” I answer. “Could use the exercise. Benefit, you know.” I pat the patched arm, sketch a salute with two fingers – not the way I’m itching to, just a graze at one eyebrow.

It occurs to me on my way along the Embankment that I’ve managed to manipulate Mycroft Holmes, too – made him give up something he wants, the kind of control you can see he’s used to exerting over everything in his orbit, for something he wants more. His brother, clean and sober. If I can keep him that way.

Everyone’s got their carrot and stick. People are human. Even Mycroft Holmes.

Chapter Text

You’ve gotten in my way more than once, whether you knew it or not. It’s time to put an end to that.

I don’t mean summary execution. I mean, I could. They’d never trace it to me, but – that’s not what I want. No, I’m going to enjoy myself. I’m going to rub your face in it. I’m going to destroy everything you care about, and everything you’ve worked for, before I end you –  because I can, and I want you to be aware who did it. I’m just that kind of a guy, you know?

It’s not just that you’ve fucked with my plans. The bank tunnel – that was going to pay off a mercenary group in Tbilisi – the counterfeiting operation, the schematics for the submersible. (You got the people who were my hands and eyes, but you didn’t get me. And you won’t.)

No, it’s just that I’m not above jealousy – not of your cleverness, because I’m cleverer than you; we’ll see that before I’m done. It’s the fawning adulation. And you court it, because you can. Do you know how often I’ve wanted to shout at people how stupid I find them? How much they look to me like mindless, milling ants? Well, I could, but I don’t have the option of showing them what I am, what a real intellect can do. Not if I want to finish everything I've started.

I was good at maths in school, do you know? No, you don’t. All-knowing Sherlock Holmes, but he hasn’t got the least clue about me. Blindingly good, I was. Probability. Games theory. One of the teachers at Secondary told me I was set to be the next Stephen Hawking, minus the wheelchair of course. But poor bastards from backgrounds like mine don’t get tutors or find their way into the Oxbridge fast track.

No, we get looked down on by people who couldn’t locate their own arses with a searchlight, a GPS and a set of printed instructions. We get some things aren’t for us, James  and you need to control your temper, James and you need to be contributing, James, until you’re sick of the sound of your own name. Until the number of people you’ll hurt – the number of stupid ants you’ll step on, on the way to the power you want, the wealth you deserve, isn’t a bug. It’s a feature.

But you. Upper-class Eton boy with all the advantages, you squandered so many, and you still think God shat you out on the eighth day. Posh boy with that public-school finish. I earned this, you didn’t, and we’ll see how posh you look by the time I finish you. You’re going to be sorry, so sorry, and you’re going to say so. I have plans, oh yes, I do, and you’ll never see it coming; I’m done with stubbing my toe on you at every turn. That chapter’s coming to an end in my life, and in yours too. Not long now, and I’ll know I’ve built something you’ll never tear down. Whatever happens after that, Jim Moriarty’s good with it.

As long as I make you grovel. As long as you know you’re trapped, and that I did it.

I’ll have your apology before I’m done.

I’ll burn the heart out of you.

Chapter Text

When I met Sherlock I felt damaged, imperfect – one of the broken toy soldiers the British Army puts away in the box. He changed that overnight. Just not quite enough.

Enough to make life stop tasting flat, enough to reconcile me to days at an NHS surgery lancing boils and treating ‘flu, instead of saving limbs and lives in a war zone on the regular. I’d go home to Baker Street and live a different life, one that led me over rooftops and onto crime scenes, where I could forget what I’d lost for a while. But when the women ghosted me after the second or third date, I’d tell myself they were repulsed by what they saw when the clothes came off – a relief map of scars, twisting and shiny as if some ugly squid had sucked itself onto my shoulder, the angry signature of a wound that had gone septic and had to be opened back up not once but twice. It got so I didn’t undress all the way, and got things over with quickly, and I reckoned maybe they weren’t keen on that, either.

It was easier, I guess, than admitting that I was stupid in love with Mr. Relationships-aren’t-my-area, so obviously that they could all tell. But when it sank in, I realised I’d always made sure not to go shirtless around him – he probably just thought I was absurdly modest – and when I finally let myself imagine what I wanted with him, I always imagined it happening at night, in the forgiving dark, where he might feel it but wouldn’t have to see it. Wouldn’t be repelled by it, or pity it.

It was Mary, of all people, who talked me around about that, once I’d decided to make the best life I could without him. Funny, isn’t it? Of course, she had an agenda, and it involved making me need her, making me trust her. You can leave the light on, John. John, will you let me touch it? It’s not ugly, John. It means you’re a hero, someone who put himself in harm’s way for other people’s sake. That’s pitching it a bit high, I told her, but when a woman like her talks to you that way, it goes to work on you all the same. I should thank her, I suppose – even after everything we eventually learned about who she was and why she latched onto me.

It took a lot of time, after she died, after all that came out. I’d gone in a handful of years from soldier and surgeon to casualty; to friend who wanted to be more, to grieving survivor, to husband, to father, to widower. I watched my hair start to go grey, my midsection get a little softer and my skin a little rougher, and gradually began to realize there was a John Watson who’d been created, not spoiled or destroyed, by all the things that had happened to me. Who was kinder and more humble than the one who’d shipped out to Afghanistan, maybe a bit wiser than the one who came back, and had work to do and fences to mend.

We started slowly – texts exchanged about cases, a meeting in the park. One day I brought Rosie. One day he asked me to visit at Baker Street. While I was there he asked if I’d ever think of coming back. And for the second time since I’d met him, in just the same tones, I said “Oh, God, yes.”

Now Rosie’s down for the night, in the little camp bed across from mine, and London’s long summer twilight’s glowing in at the windows when I come back down to the kitchen. There’s been an electricity in the air between us, the past few days; one moment we’re sharing the washing-up, I’m drying, and the next I’ve got my mouth on his, the dishtowel forgotten in one hand. It disappears somewhere on the way to his bedroom

It feels like something that should have always been. He shows the years, too, but he‘s just as beautiful to me as he’s been from the first, his lips as gentle against mine as I’d imagined. But when I start to undo his shirt buttons he switches off the light and moves to pull the blinds.

I stop his hand. “I want to see you,” I said.

“No, you don’t,” he replies, and he says it kindly, but I can hear the hurt. “You know there’s… damage. From the gunshot, from when I was -- away -- just this one time, I'd like you to be able to imagine -- how I used to be.”

I wrap his hand in mine, silent a moment.

“Your call, Sherlock. But you ought to – I mean, if I hadn’t been thinking that way myself, this might have happened a long time ago. Before you left. Before Mary.”

He’s briefly silent in his turn. “You wanted…? Then?”

Instead of answering I open my own shirt; bring his hand to my shoulder in the dimness, guiding it along what’s become a gnarled, white glyph in some forgotten language, a memorial inscription to the Captain Watson who’d thought his value lay in being fit and unmarred. His hand's warm.

“I did,” I say. “But I didn’t want you to see that. It was fresh, and I hated to look at it, and I thought I would be… ugly to you.”

“John. You could never be ugly to me.”

“Then you have to know I feel the same way. I want all of you.”

I can’t see his eyes in the dimness. But he finally slips those pearl buttons through the silk, catching a plane of the late light, and draws my hand to his flat abdomen, letting me trace a pucker at the top of the long vertical scar that starts below his breastbone, a detour around a navel that’s more of a wink, a wider glossy stretch just above the place where it disappears behind his waistband. Slides my fingers to lap around his ribs, where I can feel the beginnings of a humped seam that angles upward. I feel more than hear his long, shaking sigh.

“We’ll have the light on when you’re ready,” I say. “But I –” The words come back to me unbidden. “Someone who – understood a little about people once told me that all that this means” – I guide his hand back up to my shoulder – “is that I put myself in harm’s way for someone else’s sake. Well, so did you. And, thank God, you were stubborn enough to survive.”

He drops his forehead to mine with an odd little laugh. “It’s still… I always think when I see them, when they hurt – if I’d been a little quicker, a little cleverer… I’m a perfectionist, John.”

“Perfection is overrated,” I answer. “Come here.”

Chapter Text

“I have done no such thing.”

Sherlock doesn’t even look up from whatever ghastly thing he’s interrogating under the microscope.

“Why’s the jug in the fridge empty, then? It was full this morning.”

“I have no idea. Perhaps Mrs. Hudson ran short while we were both out, and popped in to resupply.”

“You are not accusing Mrs. Hudson of nicking the milk.”

“Tactical acquisition, as I believe you phrase it in the military, is common between individuals domiciled together.”

“She’s not our flatmate. She’s our landlady.”

“Nonetheless, she is the only other person who has access to this flat. You could scarcely blame her, an elderly woman with an arthritic hip, for avoiding an unscheduled excursion to the shops. I am sure she will replace as soon as she’s made her usual trip.”

“Sherlock, I’m just saying, you’re the one who helps himself to my socks.”

“You will never cease to bleat about that, will you?”

“It’s bloody inconvenient when your actual flatmate, who’s married to his work, plunders your dresser repeatedly because he’s so wrapped up in a case that he can’t be arsed to go out to the launderette. Or pick up this place” – I pluck a dishtowel from the coffee table that’s got God knows what spattered on it – “or sleep, or eat, or – what’s this?”

What it is, is a tumbler, decorated with smudgey fingerprints and the characteristic film that milk leaves inside an unrinsed glass. We’re having a warm summer and it’s already getting a little skunky.

“Sherlock. Have you actually been out today?”

“For about a half hour, to obtain a soil sample from the road works in the High Street.”

“And I’m to believe that Mrs. Hudson slipped up here like a sneak thief during that interval and pinched a gallon of milk, leaving the empty jug in the fridge, instead of popping into Speedy’s next door?”

“The prices charged there are usurious.”

“Have you got your own prints on file?”

“Why?” He finally looks up. I thrust the glass under his nose.

“Because I deduce from the evidence of this glass that you’ve been sitting there all day peering at dirt and guzzling all our milk because you can’t be bothered to heat up the leftover curry. Or the beef stew. Or that piece of shepherd’s pie.”

He takes the filmy glass, and gazes into it so long that I imagine he’s about to prophecy from it.

“I have no memory of doing so.”

“Right, you always say you edit everything out of your memory that you don’t need.”

“I’ll buy more milk, John.”

“I’ll want my socks, too.”

“I’ll have them in the morning.”

“Rolled, not folded.”

“Just as you say, John.”

Chapter Text

A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

It’s that first step that’s difficult.

John looks fixedly across at Sherlock, currently oblivious in his mind palace. There’s something vaguely Yogic, or meditative anyway, about the way he holds his palms together when he goes there -- fingers steepled under his chin, ankles crossed on the battered orange armchair -- so it seems fitting that this random Wisdom Of The East bubbles to the surface of John’s mind. It was calligraphed over a collage in Ella’s office, and she pointed it out to him once, saying that the journey would take time, but that by coming, he’d taken the first step, and now merely needed to take another, and another.

It could be our journey.

He hopes he’s not deceiving himself. Sherlock, whatever he said that first night at Angelo’s, is sending out every signal. Usually when there’s deniability, true; the end of a pitched pursuit, the moment a case is closed, when he’ll seize John’s hand, laugh as their eyes lock; once skipping about the flat in a silly play-yard dance, pulling John after him through the obstacle course of books and slippers and papers on the floor. Wrapping John's frozen fingers around an absurd Gromit novelty mug filled with instant cocoa, lingering just that extra moment, after tonight’s weather had turned raw and wet and the Tube closures meant he’d had to walk from Bond Street.

I could be wrong.

Or it could be the rest of our lives.

He’s beautiful in the flicker of the gas fire, the light prinking auburn glints from the tumble of dark curls, playing over that thoughtful gaze. As John watches those eyes are briefly lidded, and he imagines waking up in the morning and seeing Sherlock like that next to him, vulnerable, at peace.

He’s given John back his life. Sometimes he seems to take John’s loyalty, his companionship, for granted. Sometimes John wonders if that merely means Sherlock knows how he feels, and finds no need to elaborate. There’s no telling what he’s seeing, off in those crowded corridors, exploring his collection. Is he in the John Watson room? Or someplace floors away?

John rises, the empty mug in his hand a perfectly good excuse. He could walk around Sherlock’s chair to rinse it in the kitchen. Or –

He takes one step and pauses.

“John.”

Sherlock’s looking up, hands still steepled, now resembling a porcelain angel at prayer. John gazes down, just a little too long to be explained away.

“You must still be cold, John.”

The praying hands part. One slips around John’s to lift the mug away and set it on the table. And suddenly it’s the most natural thing in the world for John to slide to the carpet, leaning back against the rolled arm of the chair closest to the fender, his shoulder against Sherlock’s knee. Natural for long fingers to trace through his damp hair.

“Is this all right?”

John finds he can only make an inarticulate noise.

“Lacking protest, I will take that as an affirmative.”

It’s hypnotic; the quiet thunder of the fire, the stroking fingers.

“I had been attempting to deduce whether such an attention would be welcomed. My inference from your vacillation upon the carpet appears to have been correct. Unless you were truly lost in contemplation of that hideous mug.”

(He’s going to treasure that mug. Drink from it every day at breakfast.)

The stroking goes on, until the sounds of traffic below in Baker Street, the random clang of the old pipes, become echoing and distant. On the edge of dropping off, John manages to rouse himself and look up. Sherlock’s smiling down at him, an unguarded, youthful smile.

“So,” says John. “Where do we go from here?”

“Where?” repeats Sherlock. “Well – that is very much for you to decide, John. However, if you are consulting my preferences, I would say through life together.”

Stopping that stroking hand to hold it is natural, too.

“Though we need not go anywhere just yet.”

John’s already subsiding again. It’s comfortable resting his head against Sherlock’s knee, and the fire’s warm, and it feels as if he’s made a day’s journey in the last quarter hour. The next one can wait.

“No. Not yet.”

A single step.

Chapter Text

We don’t take the dangerous cases any more. Sherlock had a belly full of that in Serbia and points east; when I moved back into Baker Street, I discovered that he had nightmares, stonking awful ones from the noises he made. He said he couldn’t remember much about them, which was probably good, but those were the days when I worried that drugs might find their way back to him; he’d be short-tempered, and leave the flat for hours because “I don’t wish to be like this around Rosamund.” It was the nightmares that started my sleeping in his room – I remembered what it was like to waken from those dreams, alone – and that went where it was always going to, though it didn’t help his sleep much. In the end I suggested he might want to talk to Ella, and a little bit to my shock, he went.

Mostly, though, it is about Rosie: keeping her life normal (at least as normal as it can be around someone like Sherlock Holmes). She’s got enough brains for the three of us, if you squint away from things like a persistent difficulty with shoelaces, and Sherlock’s already teaching her basic chemistry and chess. (We have to stack a couple of old encyclopedias on the chair for her to reach all the pieces, but she’s starting to make him work for it.) Days when he hasn’t got a case on she skips day care, and he takes her round London, pointing out things like soil differences and the variations in the treads of automobile tyres. There’s usually an ice cream in the park, or a little miniature picnic, and some gift that will improve her mind (I’m not sure what she’s going to do with the Rubik’s Dodecahedron, but for now she likes the pretty colours.)

In short, Baker Street has become ridiculously domestic. We go to bed early (well, Rosie and I do), and I haven’t found any random digits in the fridge in ages, and there’s always a sort of comfortable dishevelment about the place. None of this, though, prepared me for what greeted me when I got home from the surgery one day shortly after Rosie's fifth birthday, only slightly late for dinner.

“Sherlock? What is this?”

“The species should be apparent, John.”

The coat was a dull grey-black, with dirty white paws and chin; the limbs were scrawny, the midsection bloated, one eye looked inflamed and a little winky, and I was pretty sure I saw a flea jump off it before I’d gotten out of my coat.

“It’s a cat. I can see that. What is it doing in our flat?”

“The creature approached us in Regent’s Park this afternoon while I was teaching Rosamund the taxonomic names of various flora. I surmise it may have been haunting the environs of the Zoo where food may be obtained by slipping into the various enclosures. There was a phenomenon of instant bonding, facilitated by the most of the contents of her sandwich. I hired a cab to return us to Baker Street. Rosamund is quite eager that we should adopt.”

“You told her no, right?” Definitely a flea.

“John, Mrs. Hudson has complained of mice. They are prepossessing but insanitary creatures, who leave droppings that spread disease. We share the care of a child who still prefers to read, draw and play games sprawled on the carpet rather than use any piece of furniture in the flat. Of course I told her she could keep it.”

“It’s got fleas, I’ve already – dammit.”

“That will be remedied. I’ve made an appointment for tomorrow at the veterinary surgery in Ebury Street, which is providentially your free day. It will help you to bond as well. Pipette is scheduled for half one.”

“Pipette?”

“Rosamund says the word has a pleasing sound.”

The vet was a youngish woman with long chestnut hair and a businesslike manner, who inspected eyes, ears, paws and abdomen while Rosie watched nervously. She’d huddled the makeshift basket carrier to her all during the cab ride – there were perforated cardboard ones sold at the check-in desk, and I'd already added one to the bill – and whispered to the cat the whole way that we were going to fix her up nice and Da would make sure she lived like a princess.

“Heart sounds good, a little runny nose but it’s consistent with the rhinoviruses they catch out there. That accounts for the eyes too, I’ll give you some drops. The tests for FIV and fe-leuk will be back tomorrow. We can bathe her, and I’ll send you home with some Fleasolve. We’ll give vaccines today – that’s right, little girl, you’ll be safe now” – the efficient manner softened for a moment as the cat twisted in the examining hands and uttered a plaintive, musical little mew. “Hanging about the Zoo probably socialized her to humans. She’s sweet.” One gloved thumb rubbed the base of the cat’s ear; she had a purr bigger than she was. “Do you want to abort the kittens?”

“Kittens?”

“She’s about a month pregnant. That’s why the nipples are so pink.” The vet held the cat up to exhibit her belly. “It’ll be safe for her, we’ll just want her fed up and hydrated for a week or so, and we can do the spay at the same time.”

“What’s abort, Da?”

“It means Pipette will have kittens if we don’t do something. But the vet can fix it so she doesn’t have to.”

“Noooo!”

“Rosie, we can’t have kittens –”

“Want kittens!”

“I’ll let you talk it out.”

“John, of course we’ll manage. And we do know a great many people, and London is riddled with rodents. Molly’s Toby is quite elderly by now, and perhaps Mrs. Hudson would enjoy a companion.”

“Sherlock, I am standing here in a veterinary surgery with a hysterical toddler, flea bites all over my ankles, and a pregnant cat who has just made a conquest of the receptionist. I was hoping for you to be the voice of reason.”

“And so I am. Rosamund is perfectly fit to do simple tasks of pet maintenance. Pipette will do the hard work. I will obtain a manual on feline parturition.”

Mycroft called in at Baker Street when Bunsen, Beaker, Squibb and Florence were about six weeks old. Every so often he consults with Sherlock on things that I’m not supposed to know about, not that Sherlock doesn’t tell me anyway. I ushered him into the sitting room – Sherlock, predictably, was having his morning shower at about two in the afternoon – and wondered about his more than usually disdainful expression until I realised that I’d got used to the litter of catnip mice, jingly balls, and assorted grooming tools that had taken over.

He sat gingerly on the guest’s chair, which at least has leather upholstery that doesn’t retain shed fur. A kitten immediately jumped into his lap, sinking needle-sharp kitten claws into his Bond Street gabardines.

“Who – er – is this?” he managed, looking down at the kitten as if it were unexploded ordnance. Bunsen’s the most social of the lot, and prone to climb people as if they were trees, especially at mealtime. I’ve resigned myself to owning distressed-look jeans.

“That’s Bunsen, Uncle Mikey,” said Rosamund. “Say hello.”

“Er. Hello.” Mycroft and Rosie have an odd bond; I once caught him teaching her the patty-cake rhyme at Christmastime, and he looked up with a stricken expression as if he’d been caught selling state secrets.

“He likes a head skritch.”

Mycroft rubbed between the small grey ears with a tentative fingertip, then sneezed resoundingly. Bunsen rappeled off his lap and ran about the room like an insane thing. Pipette, protective, was already inspecting the elder Holmes’ trouser cuffs; he seemed to pass muster, as she began to butt his shins with her head. She’d put on some weight by that time, and packed a pretty forceful head-butt. He sneezed again, withdrawing a monogrammed handkerchief from his waistcoat.

“I suppose you wouldn’t be – er – interested in adopting a kitten,” I said. He answered with another sneeze. Beaker tumbled over at that moment, as if on cue, and dropped a catnip banana at his feet.

“I’ve got Piriteze in the lavatory,” I added. Pipette jumped up and began to ram him amidships, rolling and depositing a layer of hair on his lap that matched his charcoal chalk stripe.

“And this is – ?” Mycroft asked Rosie, then blew loudly.

“Um – I’m sure Sherlock could meet with you in Speedy’s, if –”

Mycroft favoured me with a withering glance, tentatively stroking Pipette along the back. He seemed to get the hang of it as he went along.

“Doe deed, Doctor,” he said. “Bud the Pirideze would be welcome.”

“She likes it under the chin,” said Rosie.

I left them to it.

Florence caught her first mouse at the age of four months and paraded it around the flat, finally dropping it in my carpet slipper. Squibb and Beaker did a tour of Mrs. Hudson’s not long after, and committed a slaughter which Greg, upon hearing the story, dubbed the Saturday Night Mouseacre. (“You boys are not giving those two away, I’ll have them down every fortnight, if you please.”)

Squibb prefers Rosie’s company, but Bunsen’s taken to sleeping on our bed along with his Mum. I’m usually the big spoon, Sherlock’s the little spoon, and he has his arm over Bunsen while Pipette wraps herself around my head and sticks her cold, wet nose as far as she can into my ear canal. It’s oddly endearing.

Sherlock hasn’t had a nightmare in a long time.

Rosie still has trouble with shoelaces, but at least the cats enjoy chasing them while she works it out. She asked me what a flock of cats is called, and I when I looked it up the word was “clowder,” which she kept mispronouncing as “chowder,” but Sherlock suggested we use the term applied to lions, which is pride.

They walk on the mantelpiece, and shed on the cushions, and it doesn’t do to look too closely near the hem of the draperies, but who does? Rosie’s good about brushing them, and faithfully delivers breakfast (dinner’s on me, and treats, naturally, are on Sherlock, because of course they are, but we trade off on the litter boxes in the passageway).

The last time Mycroft called in, he brought an assortment of organic catnip, five breakaway identity collars in various herringbone and check patterns, and something called a Furminator from a pet boutique in Wigmore Street.

Pride. I like it. It says something about the way my daughter, and Sherlock, and our whole odd little menage make me feel, and definitely says something about how performing their assigned duties of rodent control makes the cats feel. And in the evenings, when Rosie’s bedded down with Squibb, there’ll be a cat in Sherlock’s lap and maybe a couple in front of the gas fire if it's cold and wet out, and one on the arm of my chair, and I’ll listen to the steady purr and wonder how we got on without them, the Pride of Baker Street.