Archive of Our Own

The blond boy—his hair rebelling against what was obviously an aggressive combing—hangs onto his sister’s hand, his fingers tightening as he watches the other children running around on the small playground.

“I have to go,” the older girl says, shaking his hand away. “Your teacher is over there. She’s nice.” She flashes her little brother a smile, the only encouragement he’s received this morning. She shouldn’t even be doing this, she was only in Year 4, but their father was gone, and Mum hadn’t been in any condition to walk them to school this morning, even if it was her son’s first day of Year 1.

“But, Harry-“ He stops; she is already leaving, turning away and walking down the corridor toward her classroom. He tugs at the uniform, his fingers twisting into the navy cuffs of his jumper.

“Hello there.” The woman is bent double, smiling at him out of a pink-rimmed mouth. Her eyes are bright blue, like his own, and he smiles back at her instinctively. “I’m Miss Turner, your new teacher. Did your mum take you over to get checked in yet?”

He shakes his head, remembering what Harry told him and not mentioning that his mother isn’t here.

Miss Turner closes her mouth, but the smile remains. “Alright, well how about you come with me and we’ll get you settled in, okay?” She holds out a thin hand, the nails shining white at the tips, and he places his own into it, enveloped in the soft warmth of her skin.

He watches the other children, boys and girls all dressed in the same style uniform as him, but he has no idea how he will fit in.

“This is our classroom,” Miss Turner says, releasing his hand as she leads him over a threshold and gestures to the room.

It is bright and colorful, the walls splattered with posters, but he can only read half the words they spell out in large, swooping letters.

“Your lockers are over there,” she says, pointing to a wall of cubed shelving stuffed with coats and lunchboxes.

A particular, black one catches his eye, shining with the polish of new plastic, and his eyes widen at the image of Batman on the front. His lunch is in a paper bag in his backpack, and his fingers automatically lift to his right shoulder, checking that the frayed strap is still intact.

“Find the one with your name on it and put your stuff away. Then you can go back outside and play with the others until the bell rings, alright?” She nods encouragingly, bending down once more.

He smiles, nodding once, and she beams at him briefly before lifting up and disappearing. He is left alone in the classroom, his shoes squeaking against the tile floor as he walks to the lockers. His is the last one, of course, and he places his backpack in the cubby before turning back, no coat to shed and fill the remaining space.

The playground is loud, boys kicking footballs past girls who are standing in groups, laughing and pointing at one another as hula hoops descend to their ankles again and again.

He sticks close to the fence, edging his way along the exterior to a bench he sees sitting empty in the corner. When he reaches it, however, he finds it is not entirely unoccupied.

A boy is sitting on the concrete, hugging his legs to his chest as he leans against the arcing metal that forms the right support of the faded, wooden bench. He is very still, his head turned toward the playground, and his brown curls shift in the bit of a breeze that manages to push through the fence surrounding them.

“Hello,” the blond says, smiling brightly as he moves to stand in front of him. “My name’s John.” He holds out his hand, just like the adults do.

The boy looks up at him with eyes John does not know the color for, but they remind him of the edge of storm clouds just before the sun appears again

“That was your sister’s jumper,” he says, and John lets his hand drop back beside his leg.

“It’s too small for her now,” he answers.

“Your family couldn’t afford new clothes for you,” the boy continues, and John’s blue eyes widen but cannot look away. “Your shoes were bought at a charity shop. They’re too big. You got blisters on the walk here.”

John shifts, the movement scraping further pain against his ankles. “How do you know that?”

The boy shrugs, looking back to the playground, and John misses his eyes. “I see things,” is all he says.

“All the time?” John asks, and the boy nods. “About everyone?”

The boys nods again, slower, and looks up in a quick flash from beneath his dark eyelashes.

“That’s cool!” John exclaims, jumping onto the bench just behind the boy’s head, his too-large shoes dangling off the ground beneath him.

The boy pulls away, twisting on the ground to point his body back toward him. “Really?”

“Yeah!” John answers, the world wobbling as he nods.

“You don’t think I’m a freak?” He isn’t looking at John now, instead watching his own long, pale fingers pushing a loose stone across the ground.

“No.” John pulls his legs up under him, gripping the metal arm as he leans down toward the boy. “What else do you see about me?”

The boy smiles, his mouth closed, and then his lips break apart over shining, white teeth as he scrambles to his feet. He crosses in front of the bench, and John can already tell he’s taller even without standing himself. “Your surname starts with a ‘W’,” he says, crossing his legs as he sits on the opposite end of the bench.

John grins, nodding enthusiastically. “That’s right! Watson! Wow, you’re amazing!”

The boy grins too, looking down at his chest as his cheeks turn pink. “I’m Sherlock,” he says, holding out his hand like he does with all of his father’s business friends, but it is shaking slightly this time. “Sherlock Holmes. Nice to meet you, John Watson.”

John giggles as his small, warm fingers fold around Sherlock’s, and this makes Sherlock smile even broader. “You’re funny,” he chuckles, and Sherlock doesn’t understand why he laughs too.

“And then I went up to the front and dropped the rose pieces, and my aunt came in and walked over them!”

“Why’d you put them out for her to just step on ‘em?”

“You need flowers at a wedding, John!”

“How do you know, Mary?”

“Because my aunt got married last year, and that’s what she said!”

“Well, I think it’s stupid.”

“Then don’t listen! Go on, Molly, then what happened?”

“Then she stood up on the steps with Colin, and they said vows, and then they were married!” Molly finishes, swinging her hands out through the air.

“Vows?” John asks, tilting his head at her. “What’s that?”

“It’s a promise,” Sherlock explains, picking at the grass so he doesn’t say something mean and make John mad at him again. “People make all sorts of promises at weddings.”

“What kind of promises?”

“Have you ever even been to a wedding, John?”

“I wasn’t asking you, Mary!”

“Love promises,” Molly answers, blushing as her two friends snap at one another across her body. “Like, how they’ll never like anybody else more and be together forever.”

“Forever?” John asks.

Molly and Mary both nod superiorly at him, and Sherlock rolls his eyes.

“Like me and Sherlock!” John exclaims, beaming at the boy beside him as he understands, and Sherlock drops a handful of grass to the ground.

“No!” Mary snaps, her brown eyes looking to the sky for patience. “You can’t love Sherlock. You’re both boys!”

“So?” John asks, wrinkling his nose at her. “I’ll never like anybody as much as I like Sherlock; I could marry him.”

“John-” Sherlock tries to interrupt, because he understands that John doesn’t.

“Come on, Sherlock,” John says, pulling the arm of the boy’s jumper. “We’re getting married.”

“John, we really-”

“No,” he barks, surprised when Sherlock goes quiet and just stands beside him. “We’re getting married. How do you do it, Molly?”

Molly’s eyes widen, her lips trembling, and she looks between Mary and John. “W-Well, you have to hold hands.”

“John-” Sherlock tries again.

“What next?” the blond mutters, ignoring Sherlock’s sigh as he squeezes his fingers tighter.

Mary groans, unable to watch them do it wrong. “Then you say the vows.”

“What are they?”

“John, I really don’t think-”

“Shut up, Sherlock! What do we say?”

Mary rolls her eyes, but that makes John glare at her, so she answers. “You say that you love each other.”

Sherlock cringes, staring at his feet as he shuffles in the grass, but John pinches his hands and he has to look up.

“That you’ll never love anyone else,” Mary continues, shaking her head firmly because this is the most important part, “and that you will never, ever leave. You have to promise!”

John nods, more determined as Mary glares skeptically. He turns to Sherlock, who is looking at the clouds. “Sherlock.”

The boy bites at his bottom lip, and his cheeks are hot as he looks the few inches down to John’s eyes.

“I love you,” John says simply, and Sherlock’s hands twitch.

“And now you say it back,” Mary directs, waving a hand between them.

Sherlock swallows against the pressure in his chest. “I love you.”

“I will never love anyone else.”

“John, you don’t-”

“Say it back to me, Sherlock.”

Sherlock sighs, and the breath trembles over his lips. “I will never love anyone else.”

“And I promise I will never, ever leave.”

“And-And I will never, ever leave.”

“Promise?”

“…I promise.”

“Sherlock, we’re gonna miss graduation!”

“We’re ten; this is hardly the graduation that matters.”

“We’re going into secondary school!”

“Switching schools doesn’t merit a ceremony, and besides, the gown looks ridiculous on you.”

“Cheers.” John follows hesitantly through the spinning, glass door, but Sherlock strides ahead, his unruly curls bouncing with every step.

They stop in front of a large, white desk, and a man in a black uniform peers over the top. “Can I help you, boys?” he says, smiling even as his eyebrows furrow.

Sherlock straightens his spine at the patronization. “I need to speak to the detective in charge of the Carl Powers investigation, please.”

The man chuckles, and Sherlock opens his mouth to tell him his wife is cheating on him, but John hears the tell-tale intake of breath and tugs sharply on his sleeve. “And why, exactly, would you need to do that?”

“Because he’s wrong; it wasn’t an accidental drowning,” Sherlock replies, glaring at the middle-aged, arthritic man with a penchant for jelly-filled donuts.

John grabs Sherlock’s jumper, fingers closing around a sharp elbow in warning as he feels Sherlock’s patience thinning.

Sherlock breathes a single, deep breath, and John releases him, satisfied at the temporary reassurance.

“Oh, really?” the man whose nametag reads Ralph continues, still chuckling, and Sherlock’s jaw stiffens. “And why would you think a thing like that?”

“Because,” Sherlock snarls, hearing the small hiss of breath as John winces knowingly behind him, “his shoes weren’t there.”

“His shoes?” The man is blinking stupidly, and Sherlock wants to tell him he hasn’t been sleeping due to the pain in his left knee, but John told him to try not to make anyone yell at them in here today.

“All the rest of his clothes were in his locker, but not his shoes. His teammates wouldn’t have stolen them, not after witnessing the seizure—sentiment—so where did they go?”

“Look, kid,” Ralph says, clearly getting frustrated, and John retreats a small step, “I dunno how you know all that, probably readin’ things you shouldn’t in the papers, but I’m sure the officers workin’ the case are pursuing every possible lead.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes at the predictable recitation, knowing that soon-to-be-left-for-his-wife’s-boss Ralph doesn’t actually know anything about the case. “No, just the wrong ones.”

“Sherlock-” John grazes his fingertips against the grey wool covering the boy’s upper arm.

“If they were interested in actually solving the case instead of just getting it wrapped up so they could move onto the murder of that millionaire—which isn’t a murder, it’s a suicide, regardless of how much younger his wife is—they would be pursuing the incongruities instead of pottering along after the simplest explanation.” Sherlock meets the man’s stunned gaze, holding his arm resolutely stiff against John’s tugging.

“What in the hell- You boys have to leave.” The wheels of Ralph’s chair rattle against the floor as he pushes it back, walking out from behind the desk to glower down at them.

“Sherlock!” John hisses, frustrated if not surprised, but he cannot help but be impressed when Sherlock doesn’t back down, folding his arms to glare grey at the man in spite of his height disadvantage.

“You’re wrong,” Sherlock snaps, leaning forward, suppressing his triumphant smirk when Ralph shifts his weight backward, obviously intimidated. “Carl Powers was murdered, and your idiot officers aren’t doing a single thing to-”

“Get out. Now! Before I call security.”

“You mean security that could actually chase us for more than twenty paces without risking a coronary, I assume.”

“OUT!”

John grabs Sherlock’s arm, taking advantage of his lower center of gravity to propel the boy around and forward.

“John!”

“No, Sherlock!”

“But, they’re wrong!”

“I know, I know. We’ll try later. Maybe you can call again.” It is a desperate attempt, and Sherlock knows it, struggling in John’s grip, but John just pushes him harder toward the door.

“They’ve stopped taking my calls! We’ll have to use your phone.”

“I don’t have a mobile, Sherlock, you know that.”

“Then I will buy you one and we will use that phone. YOUR WIFE IS CHEATING ON YOU!”

“Sherlock!”

“PROBABLY WITH HER BOSS!”

“Sherlock, don’t!”

“AND YOU SHOULD BE MORE MINDFUL OF YOUR GELATIN-INFUSED PASTRY INTAKE!”

“Jesus Christ.”

“IT’S HAVING A POOR EFFECT ON YOUR GENETICALLY-WEAK HEART AS WELL AS YOUR MIDSECTION!”

“Sherlock!”

“What? I’m helping!”

“Not like that, you’re not, now shut up and move!”

Sherlock allows himself to be manhandled out the door, glaring over John’s shoulder at a red-faced and flabbergasted Ralph.

John is avoiding his eyes, glaring unfocused at a spot past Sherlock’s ear while he tries not to blush at the dozens of stares they’ve earned, most notably from a large group of young, black-uniformed officers that are being led through the lobby by a man in a navy suit.

They are fresh on the force, and their just-handed-out uniforms are still stiff with starch as they take a preliminary tour of the Yard, meant to encourage them by showing them what they could achieve, but they all know very few of them will make it within these walls of metal and glass.

One of them, a young man of 20, his brown hair cut close to his head, watches the boys go with sharp, brown eyes beneath a furrowed forehead.

“I think that’s Sherlock Holmes,” his friend says, nudging the brunette on the arm. “Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. My uncle told me about them. They come in here all the time. Guess the Holmes kid thinks he’s some kinda amateur detective.”

“He any good?”

“What?”

“Is he any good? Does he ever get anything right?”

The blond man shrugs at his friend. “Mostly I think he just gets in the way. Sure hit Ralph on the head though, didn’t he?”

“Yeah,” the other man responds absentmindedly, still watching the boys as they start down the pavement beyond the front windows.

The tall one is talking, his lips moving with alarming speed as he practically glides along beside his friend, who stops suddenly, grabbing the curly-haired boy by the arm. He shouts, gesturing back toward the inside of the Yard before leaning forward and thrusting a gloved hand into the paler boy’s face, which is slack with shock. The one who is assumedly John Watson then gives the probably Sherlock Holmes a final glare, tugging his black jacket down by the hem to straighten it before storming past, his fists balled. Sherlock stares after him for a moment, and then a smile quirks one side of his mouth as he takes a few leaps forward to catch up.

“Lestrade!”

The brunette man starts, his back straightening instinctively. The whole group is looking at him, and his friend sniggers behind a hand. “Sorry, sir,” he mutters, nodding penitently at the captain.

The captain nods back, his jaw stiff and eyes slightly narrowed, and Greg Lestrade hopes he hasn’t hurt his chances of making Detective Inspector someday.

Glass shatters against the kitchen wall directly below where John sits on his bed, his fingers fisted into the duvet as he tries not to hear the shouts.

“I’m 17, Mum! You can’t tell me I’m ‘just going through a phase’ anymore! I love Clara, and we’re moving in together!”

“Don’t you dare say that in my house! Don’t you fucking dare!”

“Your house? Your house!? You’re hardly even here! And, when you are, you’re completely rat-arsed!”

“I am your mother!”

“You’re a drunk!”

John squeezes his eyes shut, counting his heartbeats as his shaking finger holds down the first speed dial key.

“Harry told her.”

John nods, knowing Sherlock will hear it somehow. “I think she’s really gonna move out this time. She’s got a bag packed, and she graduates next week.”

“Seems likely, then.” Sherlock tosses his feet over the side of his bed, worrying at his bottom lip as he physically bites back his tongue. Harry will move out, he knows that, but her own drinking has gotten out of control, and it’s only a matter of time before Clara finds out about the inebriated breaches of fidelity.

Sherlock hasn’t told John any of this, but John can see the hesitation of something left unspoken in his eyes whenever his sister is brought up.

“I don’t know what I’m gonna do when it’s just Mum and I.” John doesn’t mean for his voice to crack, and he winces at the exposure of weakness, not knowing Sherlock does the same thing for a very different reason.

“You’ll be fine,” Sherlock assures, nodding as if, even unseen, it can make the platitude more convincing. “It’ll be okay.”

John laughs without humor, a cold, sharp huff. “Promise?”

Sherlock turns his face away from the phone so John can’t hear his pained exhale. “Do you want me to come over?”

John opens his mouth, his breath stalled in his throat with indecision.

“Unlock the window; I’ll be there in 12 minutes.”

“I-I’m on the second floor.”

“13 minutes.”

“Ya know, we really should’ve seen this coming.”

“Hmm?” Sherlock hums around the cigarette in his mouth. The smoke drifts away from his lips as he exhales, obscuring the stars for a moment before being swept away with the night air.

“Seven Minutes in Heaven. Only a matter of time before they threw us in there.” John nods his head back toward the bedroom window, open from their escape out to the roof, before resting his skull against the sloping slats. “They do know we’re not actually gay, right?” he asks before taking a swig of his beer, which is something more than his third, but he lost count after they broke into Molly’s parent’s liquor cabinet for shots.

Sherlock merely shrugs, though he knows the answer.

John blinks at him, not sure if the blurry halo around the boy’s curls is smoke or alcohol induced. “You’re not, are you?”

Sherlock exhales, long and slow, the picture of nonchalance even though his heart is pounding. “Would it matter if I were?”

“Nope,” John says with a terminal ‘p’, shaking his head more ardently than necessary and groaning as the effect catches up. “S’all fine. I mean, I’m- I’m- Whasit called again?”

“Bisexual, John, bisexual.” Sherlock smiles out over the tops of the houses, knowing John won’t notice the amusement at his expense.

“Thazit!” John exclaims, pointing triumphantly, and Sherlock dodges quickly to the right to avoid being struck in the head. “Biiiiiiiisexual. So iz all fine. All of it.”

“I know, John,” Sherlock replies, nodding very seriously, and John mimics the gesture because Sherlock makes it looks like the right thing to do.

“But what-what’re you?” John asks again.

Sherlock takes another drag, buying time, because he honestly has no idea how to answer. “I’m…a consulting detective.”

John snorts, shaking with puffs of laughter that hiss through his nose and teeth. “Yes, you are. Yes, you are…”

They’re silent for a time after that, occasionally turning at the muffled sounds of giggling or shouting from the friends who have barricaded the bedroom door with their drunken bodies.

“They prob’ly think we’re shagging,” John mumbles, his gaze fixed on constellations he thinks he recognizes, but they keep moving.

“Probably,” Sherlock answers with a shrug as he traces the lines of Scorpio with his eyes. “And how was I?”

“Rubbish,” John grumbles, breaking into a grin as he scrapes his head against the roof tiles in a minute shake.

Sherlock scoffs, his cigarette prepared and hovering. “Shut up, I’m the best you’ve ever had.”

John laughs, curling in on himself as he clutches his stomach, his body rolling to the right as he props up on an elbow to watch the smoke twisting from Sherlock’s mouth. “Those things’ll kill you, ya know.”

“Well,” Sherlock says thoughtfully, breathing the last of his smoke out before grinding the burning embers into the roof, “at least I won’t die a virgin.”

He lunges, catching John by the arm to keep him from rolling off the house in laughter.

“Mr. Watson.”

John turns toward the well-known voice, uncomfortable already.

“Have you seen my brother? People are asking after him.”

Mycroft is 24, only seven years their senior, but his red-brown hair is already retreating from his forehead, and he speaks as though he’s occupied his ‘minor position in the British government’ long enough to earn a curly, white wig.

“Not for a while, no,” John replies, tugging at the cuffs of his black suit. It isn’t all that too big for him, but it looks downright sloppy when compared to Mycroft’s impeccably tailored one.

“Well, do see if you can find him and bring him back in, would you? It’s indecent, him not attending the luncheon.”

“I’ll find him,” John answers, turning away before Mycroft can comment on the latter half of the instructions going unassured.

He slips unnoticed out one of the large, glass doors in the dining room, his scuffed shoes crunching on loose shards of the flagstone patio as he makes his way down one of the curved staircases that lead into the gardens. The path is brick for a while, and then disintegrates into sloping grass that  is meant to be viewed from a bench within the meticulously kept flower gardens rather that traversed by anyone not being paid to cut it, but John walks on. The sun shimmers off the lake, skipping the white spots of swans that float a safe distance out, but the glow is dappled on the shore, shifting with the breeze-caught branches overhead.

John approaches the largest willow tree, its grand tendrils reaching out to encompass a portion of the lake within its full, summer curtain. He stops at the edge, extending a hand, and the leaves play with his fingers as he hesitates.

“Permission to come aboard?” he asks softly, an echo from a kinder time.

“Permission granted,” comes the weak reply, and John bends, peeling back a doorway with his arm.

Bare feet and black trousers stick out around the opposite side of the trunk, and John walks slowly forward, avoiding the socks and shoes that have been shed in a sporadic path.

Sherlock leans against the bark, his right leg bent up in front of him, the corresponding arm lolling off his knee at the elbow.

“Mycroft’s looking for you,” John says, sinking down beside him, their shoulders brushing as he locks his hands around his pulled-up knees.

Sherlock does not speak, his jaw tightening as he bites back a retort he knows would be misplaced. He focuses instead on the glimpses of water he gets through the blowing branches out ahead.

“Sent me to find you. Bring you back in.”

“Well, you found me.”

“That I did.”

Sherlock waits for John to speak again, to tell him to get his shoes and go back up to put on a show for friends and family he hardly knows, but the boy says nothing, so Sherlock finds words spilling out of his own mouth. “You got into Bart’s.”

John smiles wryly down at his knees before looking across at Sherlock with downturned eyes. “I-I was going to tell you, it just-”

“Didn’t seem like the right time.” Sherlock turns, smiling in a weak attempt at reassurance. “It’s fine. I’m happy for you. Really,” he adds, lifting the corners of his mouth a little more as John looks at him like he’s about to shatter.

John smiles back, hoping it isn’t an act, but appreciating the effort even if it is. “Yeah, it was a bit of a shock, getting the letter. Guess I got some sort of scholarship too. Full tuition.”

Their eyes meet for a brief, knowing moment, but John doesn’t ask, and Sherlock doesn’t confirm.

“What about you? You decided?” John tries to ignore the sharp twist of dread as Sherlock inhales to reply.

“Imperial.”

“That’s good. Good school.” He’s nodding too much, but he needs somewhere to divert the energy as relief fireworks through his chest. “They’re practically famous for science, aren’t they?”

“Mhmm.” Sherlock inclines his head just once as he hums, hearing bark crack off into his curls as his head grates against the trunk.

“Guess you’ll fit right in, then. Chemistry and all.”

“Guess so,” Sherlock answers, sucking his bottom lip in and scraping it out across his teeth as he plans the next sentence out for the 57^th time. “John?”

“Hmm?”

“I was thinking- Well, I was looking-” This is not how he had it planned. “I know I said I was going to commute because—with Father always travelling, and Mycroft living in London—there’d be no one around to bother me, but now…” He doesn’t say it, and John nods softly to tell him he doesn’t need to. “I can’t stay here without her, John,” he whispers, his voice high and strangled.

Sherlock is blinking up into the canopy of branches, and John drops his eyes to the grass as he hears him breathing, slow and steady.

Sherlock composes himself, grateful for the momentary reprieve from John’s blue gaze, and then continues, his voice almost disturbingly casual. “I was looking at a flat in London. Baker Street.”

John nods, following the subject change without comment. “That’s about halfway between Bart’s and Imperial, isn’t it?”

Sherlock’s heart stutters, and he hopes none of it shows on his face. “Is it? I hadn’t thought.”

John valiantly suppresses his skeptical smirk to a mere twitch.

“Anyway,” Sherlock mutters, clearing his throat, “it’s a fairly good deal. I offered the landlady some assistance with a personal matter—Oh, stop sniggering, it was nothing like that!—and she agreed to drop the rent a- Stop it! She was forty, at least! John!?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” John laughs, shaking his head as he covers his mouth with the back of a hand.

“I am trying to have a serious conversation with you.”

“I know, I know, I’m sorry. Tell me, please.”

“Well, if you’re not going to take it seriously-”

“Sherlock, will you just ask me to move in with you already?”

“I’m not so sure I want to anymore.”

“Fine. I probably would’ve said no anyway.”

“All for the best, then.”

“Looks like.”

Sherlock’s leg is shaking, his foot bouncing erratically against the grass.

John merely smirks down at his knees and waits.

“Would you be amenable to-”

“Yes.”

“It’s close to the tube.”

“Great.”

“And there’s a good Chinese place down the street.”

“Bottom third of the door handle?”

“Obviously.”

“Obviously.”

“It comes furnished.”

“Nice.”

“And it’s got two bedrooms.”

“Ehhh, we’ll make it work.”

Sherlock laughs, the sound growing as he tilts his head back against the tree and closes his eyes.

John chuckles along, and then just grins, watching his friend sighing down the end of his amusement.

“Well…good,” Sherlock mutters, dropping his head for a moment before smiling sidelong at John. “That’s good.”

John smiles back, turning to the lake when his chest starts to tighten at the length of the gaze. With a deep breath, he scrambles to his feet, extending a hand down toward the seated boy. “Once more unto the breach?”

 Sherlock looks at the tan fingers, hesitates, and then beams, thrusting his pale hand into the waiting one. “On, on, you noblest English,” he replies, and John chuckles as he hoists him up.

Neither of them acknowledges if they hold on a little longer than necessary.

“Mrs. Hudson, stop!” John rushes up the stairs, grabbing yet another box from the woman’s hands. “I told you, I can take my own things!”

“I’m not dying or pregnant, dear. I can help you move in.” She snatches the box back with a challenging quirk of her eyebrows.

John stares after her, stunned into blinking, and Sherlock comes up behind him, shaking his head in amusement as he chuckles.

“I did warn you about her,” Sherlock reminds as he stops on the step beside John.

“I thought you were exaggerating.”

“I never exaggerate.”

“So, that time you made me run all the way to your house because you said you were being murdered, and it turned out the maid was just singing while she did the dishes-”

“You could have asked for clarification.”

“You could have not said ‘matter of life and death’.”

“I didn’t mean it literally.”

“So, you do exaggerate!”

“Why am I living with you, again?”

“My sparkling wit and charm.”

“Ah, yes, that’s it. Go grab another box.”

John laughs and walks away, his usual reaction to an order from Sherlock Holmes, who continues up the stairs, but doesn’t smile himself until he knows John won’t see.

John steps out onto the pavement, bending to pluck another of his few cardboard boxes from the pile when a shadow stretches over him, and he instinctively looks up.

“John Watson?”

John leaves the box for the moment, standing upright, although that hardly makes much of an impact when faced with a tall, uniformed police officer.

“You are John Watson, right?”

“Yes,” John replies, crossing his arms. That impact isn’t much stronger. He wishes Sherlock were here.

The officer takes off his sunglasses, and John is momentarily taken aback by the kindness in his brown eyes as he smiles. “I’m Sergeant Lestrade,” he says, holding out an already weathered hand, although he can’t be any older than thirty.

John shakes it, almost disturbed by how suddenly at ease he is with the man.

“Sorry to intrude, but I was wondering if I could have a quick word with you and Mr. Holmes,” he says, nodding toward the open entrance of 221B.

John tilts his head, his eyes narrowing. He might only be the ‘and his short friend’ to every ‘Sherlock Holmes’, but even he can see there’s something not quite right about this. “How do you know we live here? We’re only just moving in today,” he snaps, folding his arms again as he glares.

Lestrade shifts uneasily in his tight, black shoes. “It took a bit of time, but I found the address you gave your universities. I really needed to talk to-”

“If you’re trying to dispose of my skull, you’re out of luck. It was the first thing I brought up.” Sherlock emerges, taking the steps at a single leap, the collar of his slate, button-down shirt flapping upon landing. He spots the police officer—a Sergeant, obviously—and surveys his and John’s faces to ascertain the nature of the discussion.

“Sherlock,” John says, stepping back as Sherlock steps forward, a unified front once again, “this is Sergeant Lestrade. He said he wanted to talk to you.”

Sherlock’s eyes twitch narrow for a mere 1.2 seconds, and then he lets out a soft exhale, the only outward sign of his surprise. “They’ve robbed another bank,” he states, not questions.

Lestrade’s eyebrows rise briefly, but he quickly stifles his shock. It isn’t entirely unexpected, after all. He did see the boy dismantle the desk sergeant all those years ago. “Two more, actually,” Lestrade sighs, more than a little bitter about the admission. “We’re stuck, all of us, and- Well, they talk about you down at the Yard, and I thought…it couldn’t hurt to ask.”

John is fairly certain he’s hallucinating, but he waits for Sherlock to tell him for sure.

“I’d need to see the surveillance video,” Sherlock says, managing to sound impressively haughty considering his stomach is doing somersaults.

Lestrade nods. “We can do that down at the station. Can you come now?”

Sherlock nods. “Not in a police car, though. We’ll be in a cab right behind you.”

Lestrade hesitates, looking between the two teenagers, and then smiles, nodding his acceptance before turning away to return to his unmarked car.

John watches him go, his own breathing playing in stereo in his head. “Sherlock, did he just-?”

“Yes.”

“And we’re gonna-”

“Yes.”

John turns, unable to close his mouth as he meets Sherlock’s blazing eyes. He never gets used to this, the moment when Sherlock looks at him and smiles, blue and green twisting within molten silver, and John knows, knows that he is likely going to be hiding in a closet because a murder suspect came home early within the next 24 hours, but his heart is already pounding, his lips already lifting, and he is halfway through agreeing before Sherlock even asks. “Lay on, Macduff.”

Sherlock grins, grabbing his hand and dragging him along as he runs down the pavement toward an approaching cab.

“Happy Birthday!”

Sherlock drops his school bag just inside the living room doorway, frowning in confusion as he looks over the scene before him.

John is holding a single cupcake on a paper plate, a lone candle flickering in the vanilla frosting and catching on the sheen of the ridiculous party hat he has strapped around his chin. There is a single present resting on the coffee table, but there don’t appear to be any other people, so this is already a successful birthday in Sherlock’s opinion, except for the fact that-

“I know it’s not your birthday,” John says hurriedly, taking the party hat off now that his grand entrance has been completed, and before Sherlock can mock him, “but you’d be expecting it then, so I figured I’d just do it whenever the present came in. That way, I wouldn’t know either!”

Sherlock blinks and his eyes widen, uncertain if he should be impressed or offended that John has successfully worked around his abilities.

“Make a wish!” John steps forward to lift the cupcake toward Sherlock’s face.

“For what?” Sherlock asks, still feeling unsteady. The room is dark, and the candle illuminates the folds of John’s smile as he tilts his head up at him.

“Whatever you want,” John chuckles, shrugging, the plate bobbing slightly with the motion.

“I don’t want anything.”

“You must want something.”

“What’s in the box?”

John laughs, shaking his head as he lowers the plate. “Okay, fine, you can open your present, but will you at least blow the candle out? It’s probably bad luck if I do it.”

Sherlock sighs, not even bothering with the lecture on fate and luck that John continually ignores. He puffs one, short burst of air, and they’re cloaked in the dim light of a single lamp and a fluttering fire.

John bends, sitting the plate on the table, knowing the cupcake will probably go uneaten. He grabs up the present, which he left in the original, cardboard box to make it that little bit more difficult to identify. “Here,” he says, passing it over and trying to smile in spite of his mouth going dry.

Sherlock snatches the box, moving across the room to settle down on the floor in front of the fire, seeking the most light.

John follows, hovering nervously around the fringes for a moment before stepping around his armchair and lowering himself to lean against it. He watches the orange light wave across Sherlock’s features, catching in his hair and turning it to wisps of fire that dance with the vigor of his unwrapping.

Sherlock rips open the last of the tape, pulling the two folds of cardboard aside, and then stops, his lips parting as he lets out a soft breath of awe.

“There’s a whole series of them,” John explains, and then tells himself to stop talking so fast as he shifts closer to point at the contents. “They’re all The Mammoth Book of something. I only got the two, though, Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries and Locked-Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes.”

Sherlock doesn’t speak, doesn’t move, and John twists his fingers in his lap.

“They sound really similar, but I checked and all the stories are different. 30 in the first one and 29 in the second. I already found the numbers for the publishing house and editors so you can call and tell them how stupid they were for including such an obvious crime in their books, and I’m sure Lestrade could help you get in touch with the detectives who-”

“John?”

John stops, inhaling sharply, but whether it’s because of the length of his speech or the way Sherlock is looking at him, he doesn’t know.

“Thank you,” Sherlock says, a bit of his shock leaking into his voice.

John stares, frozen by those eyes for a moment, and then smiles. “Of course,” he replies with a small nod.

Sherlock pulls the books out of the box, shifting the cardboard to the side and tracing his fingers over the titles as he sits them in his lap.

John’s smile grows as he watches the tell-tale bite on Sherlock’s lower lip. “You wanna start in on them now, don’t you?”

“Well, you don’t have anything else planned, right?”

John beams at the shy, uncertainty on his friend’s face, so unlike anything he’s ever seen on that countenance before. “No, no I don’t,” he answers, shaking his head good-naturedly as he stands.

Sherlock watches, the muscles in his calves twitching as he considers whether he is meant to follow.

“I kinda figured that’s what you’d wanna do. I already ordered Thai.” John walks to the kitchen, pulling out the takeaway boxes. He piles an assortment of curry, pad Thai, and rice onto two plates and checks the microwave for the lab samples he pretends he doesn’t know are stolen. It doesn’t take more than 10 minutes to reheat the food, collect cutlery, and make his way back into the living room, but Sherlock has managed to entirely rearrange the furniture by the time he returns.

The armchairs and small table have been pushed back away from the fireplace to provide ample space for Sherlock’s long limbs as he lays spread out on his stomach, propped up on his elbows with a book open beneath his head.

“Solved it yet?” John jests, but he wouldn’t be terribly surprised. He places Sherlock’s plate beside him with a small clink, and then sits on the floor at the boy’s shoulder.

“No. This man’s penmanship is deplorable,” Sherlock mutters, pushing the book a bit to the left so John can see the pictures of police notes that have been scanned and included.

John clucks his tongue reproachfully, shaking his head down at the pages. “Pity. Otherwise you’d have figured it out by now.”

“Obviously,” Sherlock mutters, succumbing to the gnawing in his stomach as the smell of the food in front of him wafts over his face. He sits up, memorizing his page before sitting the book aside and dragging the plate beneath him. It isn’t particularly comfortably to eat on his stomach, so he sits up, folding his legs underneath him and resting the plate in his lap as he turns to face John.

They eat in silence apart from John choking out a warning about the peppers in the curry, and then he collects the plates, returning them to the kitchen.

Sherlock is lying on his back when he returns, the book held aloft over his head.

“If you drop that-”

“I won’t.”

John laughs, which is what he was going to threaten to do anyway, and stoops back to the floor beside his armchair. He’s watching, perhaps waiting for Sherlock to begin railing off impossible deductions based on the color of the woman’s bedroom curtains, or perhaps just watching, slightly mesmerized by the rapid back-and-forth movement of grey eyes across the pages. It’s extraordinary, really, that focus, the intensity in the silver, molten with reflections of the firelight. They are eyes that see everything, see too much, and John wonders what they must see when they look at him, transparent—he is sure—in the giddy awe and aching longing that have plucked at him for years. He hasn’t said it, never will say, as unaccustomed as he is to having to tell Sherlock anything at all, and it’s probably better this way. John is but the moon to Sherlock’s sun; he could never blaze that brightly with him, only reflect.

Sherlock stops reading, feeling John’s gaze on him, and tries to observe his expression as best he can out of the corner of his eye. It’s blurry, and only lit by the glow of the flames, but it’s enough to ignite a spark in the embers of a long-dead hope.

“John?”

“Hmm?” John shakes his head, a slight tremor to physically dislodge the thought of pushing back one of Sherlock’s curls.

“What are you thinking?”

John blinks, frowning in confusion, and then laughs in a quick, nervous spurt. “What?”

Sherlock pushes himself up onto his elbows, letting the book fall to the ground behind him. “What were you thinking just then?”

John splutters, his mouth opening and closing, and he can feel his face darkening several shades. “I-I was-”

“Yes.” Sherlock raises himself up onto his palms, never breaking contact with John’s darting eyes. He’s in this now, committed to the end of a conversation his body is screaming at him to run from, because it’s such a risk, too much of a risk, but oh god if he’s right about what he saw in John’s eyes…

“Yes?” John repeats, swallowing the sparse amount of saliva he can still manage to make, because Sherlock is looking at him like he hung the very stars himself and brought one down for him. “Yes to what?”

“All of it.” Sherlock didn’t mean for it to be so breathy, so shattered, but John inhales sharply anyway.

The room is spinning, blurring out to nothing but orange-flecked darkness around the edges, and John is sure the ground is rolling under him. “Sherlock-”

“John.” Sherlock can’t breathe, no matter how loud his lungs are screaming for air to compensate for his pounding heart. People call this taking a leap of faith, but it feels more like hitting the ground.

John can’t decide what to focus on, flitting between Sherlock’s eyes and lips, waiting for one of them to crack, to break, to shatter the illusion and tell him it’s all a joke, because John knows what this would be and that cannot be real. There is no John Watson without Sherlock Holmes, their names irrevocably intertwined on every tongue that utters them. They are an indelible plural, but the latter is remarkable while the former is ordinary, and John knows in the way he imagines Sherlock always knows that he could not survive should Sherlock ever see this and grow tired. The only acceptable end would be no end at all, and John cannot bridge the crackling gap between them if Sherlock does not understand the permanence.

“Sherlock, if-if we- I can’t-”

“Promise?”

Time never stops for Sherlock Holmes. There’s always something to do, something to find, something to search out of all the meaningless noise and chatter in the world, but this moment, watching John’s blue eyes widen in recognition and waiting for a response, has solidified around him, creeping into his veins with the cold ice of dread.

John blinks, still trying to clear the mirage, but then Sherlock’s eyes flick down to his lips, and that’s all he needs to know, the final step after over a decade of climbing. He lunges forward, the invisible threads that seemed to be holding his muscles taut together snapping upon his decision. His right hand splays against the back of Sherlock’s head, his thumb grazing across a pale cheek. John pulls, tugging Sherlock off balance, and his right hand instinctively latches onto John’s neck to correct the equilibrium before they are colliding in the middle of a world gone white.

Sherlock’s lips are soft and full, John’s are chapped and none-too-gentle, but they both taste like curry, and somehow that grounds John to the reality that he is kneeling on the floor of 221B, holding his best friend aloft below him by a hand tangled in his curls, and my god he remembers he’s the first and has to pull away.

“I promise,” John whispers, his voice low and quivering as he breathes into Sherlock’s gasping mouth. “I promise.”

Sherlock’s inside curl even tighter, a hot spiral of elation spinning further and further out of the bounds of his control, and he closes a fist in the hair at the base of John’s neck as he leverages himself the inch back up to his mouth. He grows insistent, his lips moving purely on adrenaline and instinct as he tilts his head, angling himself more completely onto John’s mouth. His left arm is shaking with the burden of his body, but John shifts further forward, his left arm encircling around Sherlock’s back, and Sherlock gently releases the lock on his elbow, allowing John to lower him to the rug. The floor is warmed by the fire, and Sherlock can feel it radiating into his body even as a shiver darts down his spine at the light stripe John’s tongue paints on his lower lip.

John isn’t sure if it is him or Sherlock groaning as his tongue grazes against the much more acerbic one, but it could be both of them for all the difference it makes connected like this. John is hovering over the long, angular body he never dreamt he could do more than dream about, his knees straddling one of Sherlock’s legs as he holds himself resolutely above touching anything covered in trousers. They’re pressed together at the chest, however, Sherlock arcing up as his fingers pull and twist in the collar of John’s jumper.

Sherlock wants to catalog John, wants to make spreadsheet after spreadsheet of every texture, taste, and sound. He wants to separate every individual flavor on John’s tongue: tea (English Breakfast), cupcake frosting he probably snuck before Sherlock got there, and pad thai, all of which should blend horribly, but somehow makes sense with John. He wants to know exactly where the wool of John’s jumper is from, exactly what dye is used to make it that navy color, and how much fabric softener he uses. He wants to test whether John will always shiver when Sherlock runs his tongue over the roof of his mouth, if he will always make that small half-moan, half-whimper when Sherlock tugs on his hair and bites on his lower lip, and he wants all the time in the world to confirm every, John-centered hypothesis. He wants to peel him apart just so he can see how all the pieces fit back together, but that is probably too creepy even for him to say, so he settles for stretching up into John to feel the off-beat rhythm of their heartbeats as their tongues tangle, writing words they can’t yet say.

It’s not close enough, nothing will ever be close enough, but this shared breath on the worn rug of 221B is enough for now, and the book lays forgotten in the oscillating, orange light for another hour of whispers.

As always, Mycroft watches.

He watches Sherlock leave for school, John pushing him out the flat door and locking it as they walk hand-in-hand to the tube station. He watches John make a special trip to Imperial when Sherlock is shuttered away in the laboratory, bringing Indian takeaway and a thermos of coffee as he settles in beside him for the night. He watches Sherlock pick locks while John fusses, but follows him inside anyway, both of them escaping out a window as the suspect’s car pulls up.

Mycroft conveniently forgets those moments.

He watches Sherlock start to pull away, shoulders tightening at every brush of John’s hand in his hair or grab at his hand. He watches John smile anyway, understanding for all the wrong reasons as he backs off his efforts.

He watches a vagrant in a grey scarf sit down beside Sherlock on the bench outside Bart’s library for the third time in as many weeks. The man is gone before John comes bounding down the steps, leading Sherlock across the street to an all-night diner, visibly restraining himself from taking the pale hand hanging by his side.

Mycroft picks up his phone, typing out six versions of the same message before realizing that would probably just make it worse. He looks up at the monitors, watching as the boys are seated in front of the window, the cliché, neon lights inside reflecting off the menu John holds up to order for them both.

“Oh, little brother,” Mycroft grieves, dropping his head, but it’s the smile on John’s face he can’t bear to look at.

John steps through the door, shaking the snow out of his hair as he peels off his jacket and hangs it on his hook in the foyer. He stomps his boots, shaking the dirty remnants of ice loose before heading up the stairs.

“Honey, I’m home!” he sings.

After nearly three months, they haven’t gotten much further than Sherlock scoffing at every pet name John attempts to throw at him, which means he throws them all at any and every possible opportunity.

“That exam didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it would. Not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing, but hey! Year and a half down, three and a half to go!”

There is no answer, but there is a loud thump from the living room as he steps onto the landing at the top of the stairs.

“Sherlock?” He moves forward, the floorboards creaking under his still-damp shoes. “Sherlock, you in there?”

The door of the living room slams open, and John jumps backward before registering the familiar figure. “Jesus, Sherlock, are you trying to give me- Woah, hey!”

Sherlock grabs him by the arm, flinging him inside. As soon as John barrels past, staggering to steady his weight as the momentum fades, Sherlock closes the door, moving fast and locking it. He has to be quick, quick enough to go unnoticed.

“What are you- Mmph!” John yelps at the impact as he’s thrown back against the wall, but his pain and shock is smothered by Sherlock’s tongue diving into his mouth. He goes limp instinctively, dropping his backpack to the floor to free his hands: one settling in Sherlock’s hair, the other pulling at his waist.

Sherlock bites lightly at John’s lower lip, his pulse racing for completely different reasons, and he wants to scream and cry and claw his way out of his skin and into John’s just so he can turn him around and take him away for another hour.

“Sherlock!” John gasps as his pale fingers fumble with the belt buckle, and it aches, oh god it aches in Sherlock’s heart in a way he doesn’t even care is biologically impossible because it’s there and it’s only a matter of time before it’s so much worse.

John looks down, unable to believe this is happening, and is not surprised to find Sherlock’s hands shaking. They’ve been taking it slow, months of never going past knee-shaking kisses and cold showers, but Sherlock gets frantic if the sensations go any further, and John won’t take anything he isn’t ready to give.

Sherlock pulls John’s cock free, mouthing along the edge of his jaw as he grips the shaft, shifting up and back in a few, preparatory strokes before rubbing over the head with a small twist, smearing the fluid his ministrations have already produced. He kneels, knowing he has only seconds, seconds to get far enough that John won’t stop him, won’t pull back to make sure he’s certain. He licks a thick, wet line up the veined underside, and John’s entire body shudders.

“Sherlock- Christ! Wait. Wait, Sherlock, wait!” John grips Sherlock’s forearms, fingers digging into the thin flesh.

Sherlock whimpers, but maybe it comes across as a moan, and he swallows as much of John as he can, keeping his eyes turned down, nearly closed apart from a necessary sliver.

“Sherlock, stop!”

John grips his shoulders, and Sherlock almost bursts into tears as he’s pushed away. His breathing is ragged, he can hear it heaving and crackling as it leaves his lungs, but maybe that will be attributed to sex, maybe he can just be nervous.

John watches, following the quivering of Sherlock’s fingers as they ghost down his shins before landing with a soft thump on the floor between his feet. He can feel the muscles leaping beneath his hands where his hold remains firm, but it is the fact that Sherlock will not meet his eyes that makes his heart skip with fear. “Sherlock?”

Sherlock shuts his eyes, squeezing them closed hard enough to hold onto every moment before this and block out every one to come.

“Sherlock, look at me.” John releases his shoulders just long enough to hastily tuck himself back into his pants and zip up his jeans, but the belt remains dangling loose with soft, metallic clinks as he crouches in the small width of space between the wall and the man kneeling at his feet. “Sherlock?”

John is two years into being a doctor, and Sherlock is a fool, but it is far too late for that as he relents to John’s fingers tugging up his chin.

It takes less than five seconds and John lets go, his back slamming against the wall as he tries to get far enough away from knowing.

“John-” Sherlock says, or thinks he says, but he can hardly hear the sound that comes out.

“You’re high,” John accuses, and Sherlock is deafened by the volume of agony in that whisper. “Oh my god, you’re high. Aren’t you?” John shakes his head, searching for another explanation in those washed-out-to-black eyes.

There are moments there are no metaphors for, no sweeping similes to qualify the caliber of pain, and John knows he will never experience anything to liken this moment to.

“John, please,” Sherlock begs, grasping out toward his partner’s knee, but John jolts away from him, stumbling to his feet as he goes.

“Oh my god. Oh my god, Sherlock.” John runs a hand through his hair, panic speeding his breath.

Sherlock stands on uncertain knees, holding his hands palms-out in front of him. “John. John, please, just-just let me explain.”

“What is it?” John asks, a more comfortable flare of anger spiking in his chest as he rounds on the man. “What did you take?”

Sherlock breathes, slowly in and shaking out.

“WHAT DID YOU TAKE!?”

“Cocaine,” Sherlock answers with a snap, because somehow admitting it seems safer than withholding it from the snarling creature now standing in John’s place.

John staggers, gripping onto the top of his armchair for support. He knows he’s hyperventilating, knows he’s nearing passing out, and he struggles to even his breaths, counting out the seconds. “How long?” he asks when he thinks he can manage it.

Sherlock wants to be closer for this, wants to grab John’s hands and hold them to his face so John can feel the apologies rolling over his fingers like they roll down Sherlock’s cheeks, but he can see John does not want him to so much as take a step. “A few months after Mother.”

John cringes, furrowing his face against the onslaught of realizations, but he cannot hold them back, and his knees give out as he crumples to the floor beside his chair.

Sherlock leaps forward with concern, but John holds out a shaking hand to halt him.

“All that time,” John breathes, shaking his head down at the rippling floor. “Everything- Everything that happened. You were…using all that time?”

Sherlock shakes his head violently, because this is important, this absolutely must not be misunderstood. “No, no! I-I was good. For a while, for a long while. And then-then there was that case with…with the little girl and I…”

John balls his fists against the hardwood floor, the pain of his fingernails in his palms temporarily abating the sob that threatens to tear his throat in two.

“John. John?” Sherlock drops to the floor, crawling the short distance to kneel in front of his friend. “Everything that happened with you and I, everything I said, everything I did…that was me. Okay? You-You have to know that. This- This doesn’t change anything, it doesn’t-”

“It doesn’t change anything?” John lifts his streaming eyes, and the bloodshot, black ones looking back at him serve as a necessary reminder. “You never told me, Sherlock. All these years, and you never told me. And after what I went through- What I’m going through with-with Harry and my mother…” He takes a shuddering breath, breaking eye contact just long enough to swallow the emotion before it beats him to it. “How could you? How could you!?”

“I’m sorry.” Sherlock is pleading now, ignoring the signs and stretching out across the floor to cling desperately to John’s knee. “I’m sorry, John, I’m sorry. I-I never meant-”

“And then you just- just try and, what? Distract me with a fucking blowjob so I don’t notice you’re strung out!?”

A shot of spit hits Sherlock on the cheek, but it goes unheeded, Sherlock’s lips trembling as his fingers tighten even further into the denim.

John closes his eyes, letting his head hang heavily off his neck for a moment. “Is this really that cheap to you?” he asks, shaking his head as he looks up, suddenly so very tired.

“No!” Sherlock urges, terror flooding him at the lifelessness in John’s eyes. “No, of course not! I just-”

“Don’t,” John breathes, closing his eyes against the excuses. He’s heard them all before, from Harry and his mother, but somehow, even if it should be the other way around, it’s hearing them in Sherlock’s voice that he thinks might be the one that breaks him. “Just don’t, Sherlock.”

Sherlock sees it, sees it before John has even completely decided, and then it’s too late, like a light switch being depressed behind those blue eyes, and his hands are clutching nothing but air. “No. No, John, please!” Sherlock’s entire body is shaking as he jumps to his feet, chasing after the man, who is grabbing his backpack and hurrying toward the door. “No! John! JOHN!”

“Let go, Sherlock!” John cries, jolting his arm out from the shaking grip, and maybe he is pleading now too. “I-I have to go. I-I can’t- I can’t do this!”

“No,” Sherlock gasps, his head rattling frantically with the negative. “No, we-we can figure it out. I’ll-I’ll get better, I will, just-just don’t go. Don’t go.”

John doesn’t move any further away, but Sherlock can swear he feels the man’s very soul retreating, and parts of his own body seem to be left cold with the absence.

“Get help, Sherlock,” John says, his voice surprisingly steady, and his legs move forward on will alone as he turns down the stairs.

Sherlock’s vision is blurring at the edges, and he can feel John’s footfalls on the steps as if they are sledgehammers pounding into his body with every added distance. “John!? JOHN!?”

John winces, clutching harder to the hand rail as he focuses resolutely on the door ahead.

“COME BACK! JOHN!? YOU CAN’T LEAVE!!”

The footsteps don’t stop, and Sherlock collapses, the sharp pain in his knees barely breaking through the smothering horror. “JOHN!?” The name rips from him in an animalistic shriek as he falls forward, his arms crumpling down to the elbows.

John lets a sob break loose, diving at the doorknob and flinging himself out onto the street.

Sherlock wilts to the floor, loosely curling into a ball as he sobs into the carpet. “You promised,” he whimpers. “You promised.”

“I’m sorry,” John chokes as he runs down the pavement, pushing his way around concerned passersby. “I’m sorry.”

Hats flutter down through the air, meeting the cheers of the rows of students who vainly try and catch their own. John is picking his off the ground a few feet to the right of his chair when he is hit broadside with a pair of arms and a squeal.

“John!”

John chuckles, pinning the arms to his chest with one hand and hoisting the girl up off the ground as he straightens.

She yelps, clinging tighter, and then just giggles as she releases him, dropping to the grass as her low heels sink in. “You did great,” she says, smiling broadly as she pulls a strand of pale, brown hair from her lip gloss.

“Thanks, Molly,” John replies, spinning his hat in his hands as he drops his eyes at the praise.

“Way better than when we practiced last week. Not that it wasn’t good then, because it was, but it got even better, I mean.” She bites at her lip, stifling the rambling.

“It’s fine,” he says, pulling on a smile as he nods. “I know what you meant.”

“Great job, mate,” Mike says, clapping him on the back as he passes. “You didn’t fall or anything!”

“Ha ha,” John answers tonelessly, but he smiles back.

“You goin’ to the party tonight over at David’s?” Mike asks, casting his eyes between John and Molly, though it’s clear by the slight broadening of his smile who he really wants to say yes.

“Maybe for a bit, yeah,” Molly answers, tucking her hair behind her ear, and Mike beams at her.

John has to fight not to smirk too conspicuously. “Don’t think so, mate. I got another graduation to go to, remember?”

“John! John!?”

He turns, a bounce of blond hair the only thing registering before he’s tackled again in a rush of lavender and vanilla.

“You were amazing!” Mary squeals into his shoulder, rattling him side-to-side under the death grip she has on his neck.

John chuckles, wrapping his arms around her in return, holding the hat aloft in one hand so as not to stab her in the back. “Thank you,” he says into her hair before he’s being pushed away by her hands on his shoulders. “I’m sure your speech tonight will be better, though.”

“Oh, bollocks, you have to say that.” She slaps him playfully on the arm, tucking a loose section of her blond bob behind her ear as she beams, blue eyes twinkling over platinum teeth.

John smiles with a weak laugh, but does not respond, knowing Mary doesn’t actually doubt he’s confident her speech at her own graduation tonight will be incredible.

“You really did do so well,” Mary says more softly, cupping his cheek with a hand. “I’m so proud of you, John.” Her smiles grows dewy as she thinks about the three weeks they have left, three weeks until John leaves for a year to complete his medical training with the army. She doesn’t dare think about what comes after that.

John is thinking about being deployed, remembering how they promised to try, but, privately, he accepts they will be lucky to survive training on intermittent emails and phone calls, let alone deployment.

Mary leans up, pulling him in with gentle pressure to his neck.

The kiss is soft and brief, not venturing any further than a touch of lips in the public setting, but John can still taste the bitter sadness mingling with Mary’s strawberry balm.

They pull apart, and John tries to reassure her with his eyes of something he does not even believe himself. Reflexively, a habit even three years can’t break, he looks up at a swirl of black movement over Mary’s shoulder.

Everything is in slow motion, his gasping inhale echoing in his ears, and all the feeling seems to go out of his limbs. He’s imagined this a thousand times, a thousand thousand times, but the legs have never been that long, the hair has never been that curled, and the eyes have never been that piercing, cutting through him in a way he knows, this time, is real.

“John?”

He starts, his eyes flickering away for a moment, and then the figure is gone, a specter passing through to leave a fresh wound gaping in its wake.

Mary smiles, but it does not reach her eyes, and John’s hands are cold when she tangles their fingers. “You alright? Lost ya for a minute there.” It’s a frail joke, punctuated by a fragile chuckle.

John breathes shakily, his heart pounding through his entire body. “I’m-I’m fine. Just…thought I saw someone.”

“A phone call, Sherlock? Must be serious.”

“I told you to stop having your minions follow me around! They’re insultingly obvious. How comforting to know the fate of the commonwealth lies in such inept hands.”

“You went to the ceremony.”

“Congratulations, you can commandeer CCTV cameras.”

“Why didn’t you talk to him?”

“…He wouldn’t want to see me.”

“He was not-so-surreptitiously looking for you for the next hour.”

“Don’t.”

“I am trying to help, Sherlock, believe it or not. I don’t understand why you won’t simply talk to the man.”

“I can’t! I’m-I’m not ready.”

“He’ll be gone for a year.”

“…”

“I’ll call the clinic.”

“…Thank you.”

John is a few months past his 24^th birthday, and he feels as though he should have more to show for it. His apartment is bare, completely packed up and put into storage, and he has only his rucksack and a small suitcase to accompany him on the plane early tomorrow morning.

Mary had been there earlier, giving him a tearful kiss goodbye, and they recited the usual diatribe of hope, but John knows it is in vain. He is not bringing her picture this time.

He is supposed to be going to Harry’s, staying on her couch for his last night in London, but he gives a different address to the cabby.

Maybe it’s because he could die. Maybe it’s because he’s been turning at every tall, dark shadow in the corner of his eye for years. Maybe it’s because, sometimes, he knows the recognition isn’t just in his head, but, whatever the reason, John is leaping out of a cab and knocking on a polished, black door.

Sherlock knows the way clients knock, knows the way Lestrade knocks, knows the way Mycroft never knocks, and knows that this is none of them. He thumps down the stairs, buttoning up his suit jacket as he goes, and leaps the last few steps before throwing the door open in a flourish.

John isn’t sure what he expects, but it isn’t nothing, which is what Sherlock does for an endless amount of seconds, sweeping over every pore of his face with ever-widening, grey eyes. Finally, he blinks, his parted mouth closing.

“Afghanistan or Iraq?” Sherlock asks, his voice only trembling a little, which is more than he can say for his knees.

It takes John a moment to speak, because the summer breeze is ruffling Sherlock’s hair and his hand twitches with the urge to brush the curls back into place. “Are- Are you-”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Or no, depending.”

John searches Sherlock’s face, trying to see if he’s lying, but it’s been so long, maybe he can’t tell anymore. “Afghanistan,” he answers.

Sherlock can’t move, isn’t sure if he should move. Every imagined scenario of a reunion, it was always him performing a choreographed appearance at John’s door or café or favorite, Chinese takeaway place with a speech that simply could not be refused, but he does not know what to do here, caught in the reverse.

John doesn’t have a speech, doesn’t have a plan, doesn’t have a single, sodding clue what he’s doing, but he leaps the steps of 221B Baker Street and pulls Sherlock to him by the curls because, my god, he could die out there and he doesn’t want anyone else waiting for him.

Sherlock is stunned shock still. He could not believe the decision when he saw it in John’s eyes, and he can believe it’s actually happening even less, but his mouth opens automatically, sinking into patterns he thought he’d forgotten. John pushes him back across the threshold, and he hears the sound of the door slamming before he is being propelled backward up the stairs, bracing himself between the hand rail and the wall as his feet fumble on the wood.

John drops his suitcase in the foyer, taking one hand and then the other off of Sherlock’s waist just long enough to let his rucksack thump to the floor behind him, and then he is half carrying Sherlock, grasping at his waist and arms as he hoists him up the stairs ahead of him.

The kiss is sloppy, frequently interrupted by their jostling progress, and teeth click together and dig into lips and tongues, but it is perfect in its pain, and Sherlock needs to stop, needs to speak.

“John- John-” He can’t gasp out any more, but realizes he doesn’t need to; that is it, that is all, that is everything.

“I know,” John pants against Sherlock’s swollen lips, his voice wrecked with want and an emotion he can’t place on the spectrum between agony and joy. “I know.”

They tumble onto the sofa, a tangle of appendages that are much different than remembered, but still lock together perfectly.

John is stronger now, his body roped with muscle, and Sherlock traces the ridges down his back as John’s thick arms cage him in, one braced into the cushions while the other stretches up his chest to fist his curls.

Sherlock is somehow longer, or maybe just thinner, and John drops his mouth to breathe along his leaping neck before scraping his teeth against a jutting collarbone.

Sherlock gasps, an involuntary spasm lifting him to meet John’s waist, and they both groan as they press together. “John!” Sherlock doesn’t know he’s trying to say, or maybe the problem is the English language, woefully inept in the face of describing matters of his supposedly non-existent heart.

John’s answer is to wrestle with the buttons of Sherlock’s purple shirt, internally cursing the man for insisting on wearing formal attire every fucking day, but he’s not mad enough to stop grazing his lips down the gradual exposure of pale, palpitating chest.

Sherlock considers he might be dreaming, that all those past years of drug abuse may have finally caught up with him and thoroughly addled his brain, but, if he’s losing his mind, he might as well relish it, so he tugs at the hem of John’s long-sleeved shirt. John lifts up to pull it over his head and off his arms, and Sherlock takes the opportunity of John extended above him to undo the man’s belt and jeans with steady fingers.

John darts a hand down to catch Sherlock around the wrist, his shirt hanging off the side of the sofa, still attached at his opposite arm.

Sherlock looks up at him and sees the memory laid plain in John’s face, the doubt and fear bringing indecision into his blue eyes. He makes no move to shake John off, merely meeting the gaze with an unflinching one of his own and hoping it’s enough.

John rattles his shirt loose, keeping his fingers firmly closed around Sherlock as his other hand wanders shakily down the man’s neck and chest. He pauses over his heart, pressing his palm lightly into the impossibly pale skin and feeling the muscle thrumming warm and fast beneath him. With an exhale of decision, he releases Sherlock’s wrist, turning both his hands to the fastenings of black trousers that are, of course, too well-tailored to require a belt.

Sherlock wants to ask John why, why he is trusting him when all the evidence points to the contrary, but that will have to wait because he is tugging John’s jeans and boxers down over his hips and that is infinitely more important. The first stroke of his hands on John’s cock, and John buckles with a whispered curse, his arm faltering, and his body drops just as he releases Sherlock, their heated lengths brushing together. Sherlock’s skeleton melts with a moan, and he thinks John makes a similar sound above him, but his brain has officially abdicated control.

“Christ,” John hisses, his head lolling off his neck as a shiver runs through him. He lifts his eyes, and the world shrinks to nothing but the sheen on Sherlock’s forehead, the burning in his dark eyes, and the slight trembling in flushed, parted lips. The words rise up in a swell of light in his chest, but he does not say them, not here, not now, not when there are so many other things he knows, logically, should be said first. Instead, he lunges forward, sealing his lips to the heart-shaped mouth with a whimper of painful want as he closes a hand as far around both of them as he can manage.

Sherlock knows he meant to gasp John’s name, but the sound is unintelligible as it’s swallowed by the kiss. Heat is coiling in his abdomen, his blood sparking through his body as his fingers quest aimlessly over John’s chest and back and arms and neck and hair, and he knows his first time with someone won’t last long. He has to do something, though, something instead of just lying here useless and gasping, so he pulls his mouth away from John’s, shifting to stroke his tongue along the rough, unshaven jawline. He flicks across John’s earlobe before sucking it into his mouth with a quick pinch of teeth.

“Fuck, Sherlock!” It’s been too long; John isn’t going to last, and he’d be ashamed of that if it weren’t for the fact that Sherlock was writhing beneath him, quivering all over as his hips rocked subconsciously with every push and pull of John’s hand. On one rise, he rolls his hand over the leaking crest, and Sherlock lets out a wanton moan that nearly undoes John right then and there, but he reins it in with a bone-deep shudder.

“John. John!” Sherlock can feel his lips moving, but he has no idea what he’s saying. There are suns behind his eyes and stardust in his veins, and he heaves in air like a drowned man resurrected. “John!” he cries, but, this time, he’s afraid, the sensations building impossibly higher, and he’s terrified to fall.

“I’m here,” John gasps, his breath ghosting over Sherlock’s face as he punctuates what he knows will be his last, few thrusts with brushes of lips over every inch of skin he can find. “I’m here.”

Sherlock shouts, his neck snapping back as the world goes white with the combined supernovas of every atom in him. His fingernails are digging into John’s arm and back probably too hard, but he needs to cling to something, and it might as well be John, it always has been John, holding him to earth when his tendency is to spin out to galaxies and challenge black holes.

John feels Sherlock’s cock pulsing in his hand and against his own, slick warmth spilling over his fingers and further easing his slide. It’s not the first time John has done this, many a lip bloodied by stifling a groan in army dorms, but it occurs to him potently now that this is Sherlock leaking over him, Sherlock twitching beneath him, Sherlock who’s smarmy mouth has been reduced to frantic gasping, and the profound privilege of being the first, the one, the only to strip Sherlock Holmes of his faculties sends a potent wave of possession crashing over him and pushing him so far over the edge, it’s more like flying away.

There’s nothing but rippling aftershocks and somehow synchronized panting for untold minutes afterward, John’s forehead pressed down to Sherlock’s, their noses grazing with every lift and fall of their lungs.

Sherlock is wet, everything is wet, and he knows even from his limited research that they need to get up, to wipe away the sweat and other slickness before it gets uncomfortable, but, as John moves to lift away from him, he clutches at his damp, blond hair, pinning him to his mouth.

“Sherlock,” John breathes as he snaps his lips away. “We have to get up. We-We have to-”

“No.” Sherlock shakes his head, catching a momentary image of John’s eyes widening in affronted surprise before he pulls him back again.

John chuckles against the eager lips, marveling at just how quickly ‘Sherlock’ Sherlock has returned, demanding as ever, and he forgets for a moment that they’ve ever been anything but this. John wrenches himself up, ignoring Sherlock’s whine as he disentangles himself from the sofa and heads into the kitchen, hitching his jeans back up over his hips, but leaving them open for the moment.

Sherlock moves to follow, but feels a cold trickling on his stomach as he makes to straighten, and, looking down, decides with a grimace that it is probably best if he waits for John to return with cleaning implements. He resolves that, next time—because there will most definitely be a next time—John can be on the bottom and bear the after effects.

“Here,” John says, returning from the kitchen with a handful of paper towels and re-zipped jeans. He smiles weakly, the awkwardness beginning to creep in around them as he kneels down beside the sofa and begins swiping at Sherlock’s torso.

“You remembered where they were,” Sherlock answers, watching John’s face closely, looking for any signs of regret.

“Of course I did,” John replies, trying to smile, but it’s there now, their last encounter playing over in his mind, and his hand slowly pulls away from Sherlock’s now-dry skin.

“John,” Sherlock blurts, leaping up and grabbing John around the wrist as he makes to turn away and dispose of the towels in the kitchen.

John’s chest his heavy with nostalgia, but he allows himself to be pulled back to face Sherlock standing in front of him.

Sherlock lifts his hands to John’s face, his thumbs stroking over the tense jaw and cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, curving the bridge of his nose into John’s forehead. “I’m sorry.”

John hesitates just a moment, the smell of sweat and sex still lingering in the air around them as he breathes Sherlock’s breath, now a mix of both of them. He lets the ball of dirtied paper towels fall to the floor, knowing Sherlock has spilled much worse on these rugs, and spins his fingers into soft curls as he tilts his head up, meeting Sherlock’s lips, and the taller man actually wilts with relief in his arms.

They know they should shower, but neither of them wants to separate for that long, so they spend hours on the sofa, John flat on his back and propped against the arm rest while Sherlock is slotted in at his side, pinned between the cushions and John’s body as he rests his head on John’s still-bare shoulder.

Sherlock is slipping away, sleep twisting its way to the forefront of his post-coital haze, but the patterns John is tracing on his exposed arm aren’t helping. “Come back,” he murmurs, tucking his head further so his lips whisper against John’s sternum. “You have to come back.”

“I will,” John answers, the words warm in Sherlock’s curls. “I will.”

The next morning, John wakes alone to a cup of tea and a note on the coffee table.

Promise?

He chuckles, getting ready and taking the gold-cornered piece of stationary with him, leaving his own, folded sheet of notebook paper in its place.

I promise.

When Mr. Holmes dies eight months later, the letters stop, and John knows. He sends a single text.

Make sure it sticks this time.

The response is immediate.

I will.
MH

The sun burns, the sand blisters, his ears ring, and his shoulder pounds. He can feel the slip of blood on his fingers as he tries to move his hand, a patch of warmth spreading over his chest.

Someone is yelling, several someones even, but he cannot help them, cannot even localize their voices through the spinning in his head.

His arm begins to numb, and he knows he’s losing too much blood, knows there isn’t much daylight left, and no one survives a night in the desert.

Distantly, as if from underwater, he hears his name being called. “Watson! Watson!?”

He tries to answer, but nothing but a strangled wheeze escapes him.

“Watson!? WATSON!?”

“John?”

He blinks against the sun, an unmistakable silhouette kneeling beside him.

Sherlock smiles, impossibly impeccable as always in a black suit and white shirt, looking like an older version of the boy John found under their tree during his mother’s funeral.

“Sher- Sher-” John breathes, his vision blurring, but the image remaining the same.

“Shhh, don’t bother talking, John. I’m not really here anyway.” Sherlock tilts his head with a shrug and a sad smile. His eyes graze over John’s wound, his face falling to thoughtful. “Looks like it missed the subclavian artery. Damage to the brachial plexus also appears to be minimal, but I can’t say for sure, of course.” He shakes his head, frowning, as if frustrated by his lack of omniscience, and it’s so heartbreakingly real, John nearly sobs.

“Sherlock, what- Why-”

“Because you can’t die here, John,” Sherlock whispers, smiling down at him with that familiar pity that always accompanies John missing something obvious.

“Sherlock-”

“Shhh,” Sherlock urges, placing a hand John can’t feel over his blood-dampened, left, breast pocket, and John’s breath shudders with a completely different kind of pain as he remembers what he’s keeping there. “It’ll be alright. Because you promised, remember?”

John doesn’t realize he’s crying until the salt stings at a cut on his cheek. “Sherlock, I-”

“You have to promise,” Sherlock whispers, broken but firm.

John closes his eyes, tears pressing out the edges. He does not reply.

“I can’t!” Sherlock cries, ripping his hands out of his hair as he leaps from his chair, startling Mrs. Hudson in the doorway.

“He’s asking for you!”

“He’s not even awake yet! He could be calling for the bloody queen of England for all you know!”

“Sherlock Holmes!” Mrs. Hudson shrieks, her head rattling with every syllable. “How can you say such a thing!? After everything you two have been through!?”

“It’s really not that difficult, you just open your mouth and words come out.” Sherlock has no idea why his natural response is always to make a situation worse, but he’s uncomfortable and defensive and Mrs. Hudson should know better than to try and talk to him about these things!

“No, no you don’t get to do that this time, Sherlock. Not this time!” She steps into the room, muttering furiously and wagging a finger at him. “You can be as big an arse as you want with the rest of the world, but that man”—she points in the direction of the stairs as her eyes swim at him—“does not deserve it. He doesn’t, Sherlock.” She shakes her head, her voice fading as a single tear blinks away, and Sherlock feels something in his chest grow cold. “He deserves nothing but the very best of you.”

Sherlock winces, not even certain what the best of him is anymore. “Don’t you understand!?” He is shaking as he rounds on her, uncountable days without sleep written in his dark-rimmed eyes and coffee-stained shirt. “I can’t! I failed! I let him down, I-I couldn’t keep my promise.” His face is wet all of a sudden, and he drops his head to the floor.

“But he kept his.”

Sherlock snaps his head up, his heart leaping into his throat as his breath stalls.

Mrs. Hudson is looking steel at him as her hands release from their stiff fists. “That has to count for something.” She leaves, her shoes thumping down the stairs, and Sherlock is alone, his tear-streaked face falling into trembling hands.

The first thing John registers when he wakes up in hospital is a note propped against a water bottle on his bedside table. He recognizes the card immediately, even dirt-splattered and blood-stained around the edges.

Promise?

“Oh, that man put that there,” the nurse at his arm says, as if they’ve been having a conversation, and John wonders just how long he’s been awake without truly being aware. “It was in your personal effects, but he wanted it there when you woke up. Kinda morbid, if ya ask me.”

“No,” John chokes out of sleep-parched lips, shaking his head to illustrate the point as he tries to lubricate his throat with a swallow. “No, it’s not.”

“He left this one too,” she says, crossing to the other side of the bed and lifting up another card that has fallen flat.

John recognizes his own hand immediately, and there’s a burning behind his eyes.

I promise.

“Possible suicides. Four of them. There's no point sitting at home when there's finally something fun going on!”

Sherlock balances himself on the hand rail as he leaps the last few steps, snatching his coat off the hook and swinging it over his shoulders.

“Look at you, all happy. It's not decent,” Mrs. Hudson scolds, but she’s smiling fondly, and Sherlock steps back to plant a light kiss to her forehead.

“Who cares about decent,” he mutters, shaking his head dismissively at the sentiment. “The game, Mrs. Hudson, is-“ He freezes, his hands hovering on his half-popped collar as the door swings open.

“On?” John suggests, a wry smile twisting at his mouth as he tilts his head, but there’s more than enough pain in his eyes.

“John,” Sherlock breathes, and Mrs. Hudson gasps behind him. Before he can muster an appropriate (greeting? apology? lie?) something, he is pushed aside, staggering on the doorstep as the older woman bursts past him.

“Oh, John!” she sobs, flinging her arms around John’s shoulders, and he chuckles in spite of the grim moment. “We were so worried! Are you alright? Well, obviously—I mean, you’re walking about and everything—but are you alright?”

John nods, sparing a brief glance over her shoulders at Sherlock, and his chest twists as he realizes that the man has already noticed what Mrs. Hudson has evidently failed to. “More or less,” he mutters, waggling his cane in the air, and he watches her eyes widen with now-familiar pity.

“Oh, my!” she gasps, lifting a hand over her mouth. “Oh, John! Is it- I mean, are you-”

“It’s nothing permanent,” he assures with a practiced smile, even the comfortingly dismissive shake of his head down to a science.

Mrs. Hudson shifts her hand to clutch at her chest. “Thank god! What, with you being such a young man, and all. What are you now, 25? 26?”

“One more,” John chuckles, the act somehow feeling much cheaper in the presence of grey eyes he knows are seeing right through it. “27.”

“Oh, dear, time has flown, hasn’t it?” She begins to laugh, and then realizes the slip, her amusement dying away. She lays a conciliatory hand on John’s arm. “It’s good to see you, dear,” she urges, nodding in a way she hopes conveys encouragement, and then turns away, making sure to shoot Sherlock a warning glare before closing the door behind her.

Sherlock blinks, his mouth rattling with uncertain breaths. He would be frustrated by being surprised by John Watson if it were not for the novelty of being only ever surprised by John Watson, but he is once again caught in the proverbial headlights by a gesture he never expected to not be on his shoulders to perform.

“Going out?” John asks, nodding toward Sherlock’s fingers, which are still hanging limply off his collar.

Sherlock lowers his hands, but now has no idea what to do with them, so he thrusts them into his pockets. “Yes, er, Lestrade called. About a case.”

“Those serial suicides?”

Sherlock’s eyebrows furrow, and he tilts his head in unspoken inquiry.

John shrugs, smiling weakly as he drops his head. “I read about it in the paper. Seemed right up your alley.”

“Oh,” Sherlock murmurs, which is a stupid thing to say, but he can’t summon anything clever.

“Well, I’ll just-” John mutters, waving his free hand back the way he came.

“No,” Sherlock snaps, stepping down level with John on the pavement. John turns back hesitantly, and Sherlock can’t think of what to say other than something to make him not go. “You-You could come.”

“What?” John chuckles, his forehead furrowing, because Sherlock cannot possibly be suggesting what he thinks he is.

Sherlock nods, taking a careful step closer. “You could come. To the crime scene. I-I could use a medical opinion.”

“Well, I’m sure the police have plenty of-”

“I want you.”

John’s inhale is a sharp hiss as he winces. “Sherlock,” he says warningly, unable to meet his eyes.

“John-” Sherlock starts, daring another step and an outstretched hand, but John shrinks away from him.

“No, this- This was a mistake. I-I shouldn’t have-”

“John, please.”

“I-I can’t-”

“I’m not asking you to.”

John looks up, curious at the desperate tone, and Sherlock’s eyes match it, the expression strange on his face.

“Just-Just come along. Just for today.” Sherlock’s arm twitches to rise, but he refrains, pushing all his pleading into his eyes instead. “Please.”

John hated him the whole way here, planned out a rant of righteous fury that was mostly four-letter words—because, honestly, who the hell doesn’t fucking call when their best friend gets fucking shot!?—but seeing him standing in front of him, exactly as insufferably impossible as John remembered, he cannot bring himself to deliver any of it, and he thinks it ought to be illegal for someone to be able to beg that well.

“Fine,” John mutters, trying to sound as bitter as possible. “Today,” he clarifies firmly, and Sherlock nods, but John doesn’t miss the gleam of triumph in his eyes. He wants to hit him with his cane.

Sherlock moves out of swinging distance and hails a cab, which swoops up next to the curb beside them. Sherlock slides in first, knowing it will be difficult for John to accomplish with his leg, and John flops down on the seat a second later, closing the door before shifting as close to it as possible.

Some silences are so thick with tension, it actually permeates the air, making your lungs work harder to suck in oxygen through the panic.

“Your limp is psychosomatic.” Sherlock’s eyes nearly pop out of his head as he stares out the window, because oh god that was the absolute worst possible thing he could have ever-

John laughs. Just laughs. He starts and he cannot stop, and he can see Sherlock looking at him like he’s gone completely mad, but he’s not exactly in a mood to disagree. “My limp is psychosomatic!?” He turns to Sherlock, who has gone translucently pale. “Are you fucking kidding me!?”

“John-”

“I don’t hear from you for two years, and your opening line is ‘Your limp is psychosomatic’!?”

John’s eyes are rabid, and Sherlock would like to avoid being strangled if at all possible, so he does not speak, his lips firmly pressed together as he stares and waits.

John sees the terror in Sherlock’s eyes, and slowly calms his breathing, shaking his head as he looks unseeingly out his own window. “You’re unbelievable, you know that?” he mutters, throwing a brief nod in Sherlock’s direction. “Un-fucking-believable.”

“John-”

“Save it.”

“I’m sorry, I panicked.”

“I said save it, Sherlock.”

“I’m not good at this! You know I’m not good at this!”

“Sherlock, stop.”

“You just…showing up! I never know what to do!”

“Oh, and I suppose you were just about to pick up the phone. ‘Hey John, long time no see! Wanna grab a pint and talk about how we shagged and then I left you for dead? Great! How’s 7 at The Volunteer sound?’” John’s chest is heaving, and he’s sure a bit of spit flew out at some point, but he simply can’t be arsed, and just continues staring down a slack jawed Sherlock.

Sherlock blinks, snapping his mouth shut as he feels a flush rising violently up his neck and cheeks. “Well,” he wheezes, his chest tight with humiliation, “I suppose…when you put it that way-”

“The right way, Sherlock. I put it the right way.”

“I know.” Sherlock cringes down at the carpet of the cab, knowing he’s revealed too much in the creaking, wrecked sound of his voice.

John turns, his anger dissipating considerably at Sherlock’s beaten, submissive posture. He sighs heavily. “Look,” he says, and Sherlock warily does, “I didn’t come to yell at you.”

Sherlock bites back a caustic retort, knowing getting defensive will get him nowhere. He is in the wrong here; he might as well accept it. Pay the proverbial piper, so to speak. “Why did you come?”

John stares out the window, watching London blurring past as he thinks, because, if he’s honest with himself, he doesn’t know. “I just…wanted to know you were alright,” he says, unable to turn around. “And…and I wanted you to know I’m alright.”

“Oh,” Sherlock murmurs, not a small bit disappointed and unable to tell if John is lying when he won’t look at him. “Good.”

“Yeah… Good…”

Before either of them works up the foolhardy courage to break the silence, the cab stops, the rather flustered-looking driver not meeting their eyes as he calls out the total.

Sherlock pays, pushing the door open, and one foot is just landing on the asphalt when he stops, his upper body twisting back. “Do you still want to-”

“May as well,” John says with a shrug, trying to sound regretfully resigned, but he doesn’t want to leave things like this, and he is a little curious about what exactly Sherlock does, an invitation to a crime scene having never been proffered before.

“Right,” Sherlock mutters, trying to sound like he doesn’t know John’s not nearly as put out as he seems.

Sherlock is not showing off. He’s not showing off when he points out Sally’s knees or the woman’s wedding ring or the weather in Cardiff or her missing suitcase (although that one was rather impressive, if he could be so bold), and, yes, it probably could have gone better if he hadn’t floundered and introduced John as his colleague (much to Lestrade’s confusion), and if they hadn’t had to keep stopping on the ride home to search for the woman’s suitcase, but, altogether, running through the streets of London and proving a point about John’s cane was not the worst possible ending to the day.

“I can’t believe you did that,” John mutters, shaking his head as they lean against the wall at the bottom of the stairs, but he can’t entirely suppress his smile.

“It worked, didn’t it?” Sherlock replies, spinning John’s cane in his hand like a drum major in a parade before heading up the stairs.

“It’s still cheating,” John scolds, watching his left knee’s unhindered progress as he follows on the steps.

“All’s fair in love and war,” Sherlock chuckles, spinning on his shoes, and he doesn’t realize what he’s said until he catches John’s eyes as the blond freezes.

John looks up into Sherlock’s shadowed face, his body growing hot at the familiarity of their position on the stairs, and he can see the same recognition in silver eyes as they flick down to his lips. “Did you just-”

A loud thump reverberates through the floorboards up ahead, and both their heads jolt toward it, the atmosphere instantly charged with defense.

Sherlock turns back, lifting an eyebrow in question, and John nods once, crouching slightly as they creep silently the remainder of the way. Sherlock only has to press his ear to the door for a moment before bursting inside, anger flaring through his lungs as he searches for a familiar, grey head.

“What the hell are you doing here!?” he snarls, and, as Lestrade’s eyes widen in a moment of shock, he realizes his frustration at being interrupted with John is probably showing a bit more than he’d like.

“Drugs bust,” Lestrade answers cheerfully, waving his hands to gesture out at the lemmings pilfering through Sherlock’s possessions.

Donovan is whinging about something pathetically insignificant behind him, Sherlock is sure, but he doesn’t hear a word, everything fading to a muted murmur except the stop of John’s footsteps and the whisper of his gasp. Sherlock turns, his heart pounding in his ears.

John stares into wide, chrome-blue eyes, wondering how he let it get this far again, and there are suddenly too many people in a room with not enough air. He takes a single, staggering step backward, and Sherlock’s hand twitches out toward him, his head tilting as he entreats without words.

Sherlock wants to rush to John, to fall to his knees and wrap his arms around his waist to become a physical anchor, but half of Scotland Yard is in his (their? Please be their) apartment, and John wouldn’t let him anyway, so he settles for the only thing he can do. It is the work of a moment, but it is an entire conversation as Sherlock mouths ‘Once more’. Just once more, John. Once more unto the breach.

John knows this cliff, knows just how far the bottom is and how much it hurts to hit it, and an overwhelming part of him wants to run, to tear from this room, this street, this city, this whole country if he has to and find a nice, normal person in a nice, normal town where the inevitable disappointments will never be so crippling as those with Sherlock Holmes. But, where the lows will never be so low, the highs will never be so high, and he didn’t travel halfway around the world to get shot at because he likes the easy road, and there was no road, no matter how twisted and probably laden with landmines, that was worth traveling without Sherlock at his side.

John nods.

Sherlock could weep.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he snaps, rounding back on Lestrade. “You’re not here for anything of the sort.”

Lestrade lifts his hands in mock surrender. “Ya got me. I came for the suitcase.”

“So you set up a pretend drugs bust to bully me?” Sherlock mutters, crossing his arms over his chest, scowling even as he wants to leap in relief at the sound of John’s footsteps approaching behind him.

“It stops being pretend if they find anything,” Lestrade answers, pointing at Sherlock, a hint of seriousness tainting the banter.

“I am clean!” Sherlock snarls, knowing Lestrade isn’t who he’s really trying to reassure.

“Is your flat. All of it?”

Sherlock opens his mouth to spit out a retort, but Donovan interrupts from the kitchen.

“Are these human eyes?”

“Put those back!”

“They were in the microwave.”

“It’s an experiment,” Sherlock says, but he’s not the only one. He turns to find John smiling softly at him, and feels a rush of fondness heating through his chest.

John grazes Sherlock’s arm as he passes, squeezing lightly at his elbow in assurance, and then walks toward the kitchen. “It’s a pH thing,” he mutters to Donovan, gingerly picking the jar of eyes from her hands and ignoring the scandalized looks of the officers as he returns them to the microwave, which they will definitely be getting a second one of. If he moves back in, that is.

Sherlock is yelling something in the living room, but John recognizes the tone as his haughty, condescending, deduction voice, and thus doesn’t pay particularly close attention as he wanders around the kitchen, putting things back where he still knows they go. It goes quiet for a moment, and John turns around the find a renewed fervor of activity from the officers and Lestrade yelling something about a mobile, but Sherlock is all John focuses on. “Sherlock?” he questions, tentatively approaching.

Sherlock stands shock still, his mobile clenched in his hand as he watches the white head of a figure retreating down the steps over Mrs. Hudson’s shoulder. He hears John calling him, feels John’s footsteps vibrating through the floor as he approaches, but he cannot look at him, cannot let him see the panic of comprehension he knows is in his eyes. He has to get out of there, get that man out of here and far away from Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade and John, oh god not John, he can’t have John. “I-I have to go out.”

“What?” John splutters, confused, his eyes following Sherlock’s gaze out the door. When he turns back, Sherlock is already drifting toward it. “Sherlock?”

“I’m fine, I just…just need some air. I’ll be right back.” His voice sounds miles away, but he can’t correct it now, his brain consumed by a screaming mantra of ‘get out, get out, GET OUT!’

When the cabbie tells him to get in the car, he goes without a fight.

John knows he is going to have to get used to this around Sherlock Holmes, become accustomed to standing at the back of an ambulance and watching Sherlock snap at the EMTs as they try to wrap him in blankets and take his blood pressure, learn not to hesitate when pulling the trigger on the latest nut job his self-proclaimed, high-functioning sociopath friend (flatmate? boyfriend? bane of his existence?) has challenged, but, right now, he is fuming, arms crossed and his teeth nearly cracking as he clenches his jaw. “What the hell do you think you were doing?”

“We got him,” Sherlock says, euphoria leaping through his veins as he beams at John, who doesn’t look nearly as enthusiastic about this for some reason. “We got him, John. We won.”

John’s stomach flips at the familiar burning in those eyes, and he battles with twin, titan urges to kiss or strangle the barmy man in front of him. “Won? You could have been killed! You-You- UGH!” He shouts, running a hand back through his hair as he paces a few steps away before rounding back. “You were gonna take it, weren’t you? You were gonna take that bloody pill?”

“No, of course not,” Sherlock scoffs, but even he isn’t entirely sure if he’s lying. “I was just buying time. I knew you’d come.”

“No you didn’t,” John counters, shaking his head incredulously, because that is the most absurd thing he has ever heard. “Is this what you do now?” he asks, angrily waving a hand to gesture up at the building around the ambulance. “Risk your life to prove your clever?”

“No, I-”

“Christ, Sherlock,” John murmurs, stepping away again as he plants his hands on his hips, breathing slowly down at the ground with closed eyes. “You’re bloody well insane, ya know that? You’re impossible! You just run around like you’re-you’re…invincible or something, and you don’t think, don’t consider for a moment-”

“Then why did you come?” Sherlock interjects, leaping off the back of the ambulance to stand challengingly in front of John, glaring extra hard to make up for the lurid, orange blanket on his shoulders. “If I’m so impossible, why even bother? Why shoot a man,” he whispers, but John looks nervously around anyway, “to save me if I make your life so thoroughly intolerable?”

“Because, Sherlock!” John shouts, his hands tearing out of his hair as he half turns away.

“Because why, John!? Because, to be honest, I’m having a hard time understanding why you ever came back at all if all you wanted to do was-”

John is not gentle, years of worried, sleepless night and half-dialed phone numbers rising violently to feed the grip on Sherlock’s collar and the crushing of their lips. His tongue is twisting into Sherlock’s shock-slack mouth almost of its own accord, and he twists his hands, pulling the detective almost painfully flush against him. Sherlock barely begins to respond, a small moan vibrating from the back of his throat, when John tugs them apart with an audible click.

Sherlock twitches his face forward, seeking contact again, his eyes opening with a dazed series of blinks, and John’s still-so-close face comes into focus, shifting from blue to red with the flashing lights around them.

“Because Sherlock,” John practically growls, freeing his fingers from the collar and putting a safe distance between them as he breathes steadily. “I don’t know exactly what this is…but it isn’t over.”

John turns, walking back toward the barricade, and Sherlock is left stunned, his head lolling slightly on his neck, a physical representation of how off-balance he feels. He watches John’s progress, watches him lift the yellow tape and duck under it like he belongs, and Sherlock’s heart seems to spread its anatomically impossible wings and lift in his chest, pulling his mouth up along with it. He darts forward, catching up in a few, long strides. “Hungry?” he asks, because he’s not entirely sure John’s impulse to hit him has passed, and ignoring what just happened seems like the safest course of action.

“Starved,” John answers, relieved to temporarily pass his moment of impulsivity, and he is quite hungry. “Thai?”

“No, it closed,” Sherlock answers, and there’s a moment of uncomfortable silence at the reminder of time lost. “There’s a Chinese place there now—stays open til 2—and it’s quite good.”

“Bottom third of the door handle?” John murmurs, turning his face to smile upward.

Sherlock chuckles, smiling back. “Obviously.”

“Obviously.”

They simply stare at one another for a moment, eye contact lingering much longer than appropriate for a crime scene, but the grins are likely the most out of place element.

“Ah, Sherlock. Performing your civic duty again, I see.”

And there go the grins.

“What are you doing here, Mycroft?” Sherlock snarls, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his coat as they approach.

“Doctor Watson!” Mycroft greets, holding his hands out in celebratory recognition, although one is occupied with an umbrella. “How lovely to see you up and about again, in spite of the setting,” he says, and John nods. Mycroft’s smile shifts to disapproval as he looks back to Sherlock. “I hear you’ve had quite a busy night, Sherlock. A serial killer. Nasty business.”

“Yes, and you do so hate to get involved in anything nasty.”

“Sherlock,” John cautions, slipping effortlessly back into the role he supposes has been left vacant for him.

Sherlock narrows his eyes at Mycroft, but holds his tongue, not wanting to give John any more reason to be mad at him. With a huff that may be childish and a swirl of his coat that he’s sure is dramatic, he leaves, storming back toward the direction of the main street to find a cab.

John shakes his head, watching the modern-day Dracula glide away into the darkness beyond the yellow ring of the streetlight. “Some things never change,” John sighs, smiling sympathetically at Mycroft, but stops short at the serious expression he’s met with.

“Some things do,” Mycroft says softly, holding John’s gaze for a poignant moment before they both turn back to watching Sherlock. “You know, Doctor Watson-“

“Mycroft, I know you’re a fancy G-man and all now, but you’ve known me since I was five. Ya think you can use my first name?” John teases, tilting his head up at the taller man.

Mycroft chuckles, tapping his umbrella into the ground. “Fair enough,” he says, and John nods in acceptance. “You know, John, when Sherlock first came home from primary school and said he’d made a friend, I was…skeptical.” He pauses, flashing a John a small, wry smile. “He’d never had any friends, not beyond the children of our father’s business associates who were required to tolerate him at company functions, and I- Well, I confess, I thought he got rather carried away with you.”

John raises an eyebrow, but makes no comment, not entirely sure how to read that statement.

“He talked about you all the time, you know.” Mycroft smiles down at John, uncertain if John’s eyes are widening at the gesture or the information. “John says this, John thinks that. My god, he was insufferable! He didn’t eat spinach for a month because you said you didn’t like it.”

John laughs, unable to rationalize this glimpse of Sherlock with the person he has always known, but there is no lie in Mycroft’s eyes as he looks down at John with a slight twitch of his lips.

“I was worried—understandably so, I think—and not just for his iron intake.”

John laughs again, fairly certain Mycroft has just made a real, proper joke, but it’s so hard to tell when it’s Mycroft.

“But then… Well, then he brought you around.”

John watches Mycroft’s pensive eyes drift back to Sherlock, who is in a phone booth down the street, just trying to look busy instead of waiting, if John were to guess.

“The first time I met you, John Watson, you and my brother had barricaded yourself in the library wearing folded, newspaper, pirate hats, and he was shouting at me through the door that I absolutely could not board the H.M.S. Holmes,” Mycroft says, a hint of fond mocking slipping into his tone as he progresses.

John is absolutely sure this kind of laughing isn’t appropriate at crime scenes, and he clamps a hand hard over his mouth, shaking silently.

“Do you remember what happened?” Mycroft asks, tilting his head down at him.

John thinks, but his brain is too full of imagining an adult Sherlock Holmes wearing a suit and a newspaper hat to conjure up the memory, so he simply shakes his head.

“You told him that, considering I was a Holmes too, I should be allowed on the ship,” Mycroft answers his own question, and he’s definitely smiling now, although his lips remain closed.

“Seems logical enough,” John mutters with a shrug.

“Indeed,” Mycroft replies, and there is a distinct flash of teeth, however brief, “but the remarkable thing was, he listened. Acquiesced to my getting my own pirate hat and everything. Although, I did have to walk the coffee-table plank more times than I think were strictly necessary,” he adds in a mutter, not the slightest bit still bitter about it. “But,” he continues with a sigh, “he had listened, and I went to Mother immediately after Sherlock dismissed me by proclaiming I’d been eaten by a shark, and told her, because I knew.”

John waits for him to elaborate, but he doesn’t, seemingly lost in staring down the street at Sherlock, although which Sherlock he’s seeing, John couldn’t begin to guess. “Knew what?”

Mycroft turns to him, and any lingering amusement is sucked away by the look in those eyes, John’s breathing nearly stalling as he waits intently for something he somehow knows is very important.

“I told her you would be the making of my brother,” Mycroft says, firm and sincere, “or make him worse than ever.”

John blinks, his mouth parting slightly, but the words do not readily come. “And?” he manages softly.

“And what?” Mycroft questions, his eyebrows furrowing.

“Which was it?” John clarifies, marveling at how thick the brilliant, Holmes’ can be about some things. “Did I make him, or make him worse than ever?”

Mycroft smiles, a soft, fond thing that John knows he will likely never see again, but he doubts he has time to take a picture. “I would have thought it would be obvious, John,” Mycroft says. “Both.”

John frowns, uncertain if he’s meant to be insulted, but Mycroft is still smiling, and he finds himself following, a warmth blooming in his chest. He thinks he may have just gotten the Holmes version of a blessing, but, considering how long-winded and cryptic it is (par for the course when dealing with a Holmes), it’s difficult to say for sure. So long as Mycroft’s not threatening to have him dragged into the back of a windowless van, though, he’ll take it as a good sign.

“JOHN!” Sherlock shouts, giving up on his fake phone call, and John waves at him in a gesture of forthcoming obedience.

“That’s my cue,” John sighs, going for woeful, but he doesn’t mind too much when some contentment slips in. “I’ll see ya around, yeah?”

Mycroft inclines his head. “I hope so, John. I certainly hope so.”

John beams at him, nodding before turning away and beginning to jog toward Sherlock. He pauses a meter or so away, twisting on his soles to call back. “Mycroft!”

The tall man pauses at the door of his car, the majority of his body hidden behind the black metal.

“Thank you,” John says, careful not to allow it to carry back to Sherlock.

Mycroft looks momentarily surprised, and then a corner of his mouth twitches up. “No, John,” he replies. “I believe it is I who am in your debt

Without another word, he drops into the car, and John is still standing there as it pulls away and disappears down a side street.

“The Chinese place is only open ‘til 2,” Sherlock snaps, glaring at the taillights of Mycroft’s car as he stops at John’s shoulder, folding his arms.

John chuckles, turning to smile up into narrowed, grey eyes. “Oh, stop it. We were just talking.”

“About what?” Sherlock sputters, because there is absolutely nothing Mycroft could be talking to John about that would be any good at all.

John thinks for a moment, his eyebrows pinching together with the effort, and then breaks into a grin. “Pirates,” he says grandly, relishing the rare look of absolute befuddlement on Sherlock’s face as he brushes past him.

“Pirates?” Sherlock repeats, making chase, walking sidelong so as to better interrogate John. “What do you mean, ‘pirates’? Actual pirates or copyright pirates, because, you know, one is infinitely more interesting than-”

“Sherlock!” John laughs, stopping on the pavement and shaking his head as he turns to the man.

Sherlock scans over John’s face for meaning, but all he sees is John’s expression shift into a glowing smile as he sighs.

“Let’s just go home,” John says, somewhat tiredly, but also achingly fond as he looks up into the inquisitive face.

John continues down the street, and Sherlock lingers just a moment, watching the streetlights reflecting off his blond hair.

“Home,” he whispers, testing the word on his tongue, and then follows, their steps synchronized as they walk abreast.

“I will burn the heart out of you.”

“Sherlock, run!”

Sherlock looks down at John where he sits against the tile wall, his hand steady as it points John’s gun at the explosive vest. John meets his eyes, and Sherlock asks the question in a wrinkle of his forehead and a burning in his eyes.

Once more unto the breach?

John takes in a single breath, and then, as always, nods.

The ride back to Baker Street is silent, the space between them pulled taut with indecision. They’re very careful not to touch as they ride in the back of the cab, and they have not spoken apart from quickly agreeing outside of the pool that there was no point in calling the police. They were both unharmed, after all; John didn’t have a single mark on him. So why did he feel so raw?

John wordlessly hands money to the cabby as Sherlock unlocks the door, not waiting for John like he normally would, the night air too cold against his arms. He didn’t bring his coat to the meeting with him, too high on adrenaline at the time to bother, but now he feels bereft standing in the foyer, empty-handed and staring at the hooks with nothing to place on them.

John enters, closing the door behind him with a soft click. He strips off his jacket, tossing it over his hook with slow movements, all too aware of Sherlock’s tall, solid silhouette behind him.

As John turns, Sherlock takes his cue, moving away and heading first up the stairs. He reaches the top and hovers on the landing, moving aside to allow John ample space. They stand there, facing one another, but pointedly not looking, and the silence is so thick, Sherlock thinks his ears might pop. He doesn’t have the words, maybe there aren’t any words, so he shifts toward his bedroom down the corridor.

John sees the twist of Sherlock’s body, watches as his feet begin to turn away towards his room, and something is decided for him. He takes a half step forward, reaching out to loosely cradle Sherlock’s wrist in his hand. He doesn’t say anything, not at first, he just holds him there and stares down at where their limbs entwine.

Sherlock stops, his small gasp resounding in the electric quiet, but John is not looking at him when he turns back.

For the past two months, John has been making every excuse imaginable to himself. He tells himself Sherlock has never done anything like this, tell himself that he himself has only done it a couple times, tells himself they should ease into, wait until Sherlock is ready. But he knows that Sherlock has been ready, that this isn’t about Sherlock at all, and that holding back that one thing, the last thing, the final, uncrossed boundary, is actually John holding back a lot more.

He doesn’t trust Sherlock, doesn’t trust him every time he’s gone without warning, every time he doesn’t immediately reply to texts. John worries he will come back shaking and panting, and those eyes he’s put his faith in will be stained black again. He worries this tiny life they’ve built will collapse on top of him, fragile as a house of cards and heavy as a ton of bricks, and he could not bear it again, could not stitch the jagged edges of himself back together and come out remotely human on the other side. But, when you consider dying in conflagration at a public pool an acceptable alternative to being parted for one single second from the man beside you, well, trust issues seem like a silly thing to have, and John feels silly now, standing on the landing of their flat, the air awash with the intermingling of tea and unnamed chemicals.

So, he decides, decides and lifts his eyes to Sherlock’s confused, silver ones, because there’s something he has to do before his brain is all adrenaline and dopamine and other things that make declarations doubtful. “Don’t.” Don’t leave, don’t move, don’t speak, don’t do anything, because I have to do this but don’t quite know how.

Sherlock is barely breathing, watching the shifting blue of John’s eyes as he turns back to face him, careful not to tug at the contact point of John’s fingers. He can see the confusion there, the uncertainty, but he does not see the now-familiar doubt that has scrutinized him every single second of the past 58 days, and he does not dare move, lest he break whatever spell has befallen.

John takes a step, the hitch of Sherlock’s breath matching his own, and releases Sherlock’s wrist to start a slow, tingling sweep down his palm. “I love you,” he whispers, interlocking their fingers as his other hand lifts to the edge of Sherlock’s forehead. “I love you.” His fingertips leave trails across cool cheekbones. “I love you.” He brushes over a parted mouth, pulling out a shaking exhale. “I love you,” he finally breathes against Sherlock’s lips before he covers them.

Sherlock is on fire, incinerating from his hand joined with John’s to the fingers in his hair. He’s never felt so high, not even when he really was, and he closes his eyes and brings his free hand to John’s head because he is there, he is real, and he is his, and Sherlock whimpers into John’s mouth at the impossible beauty of it all. Sherlock can taste the intent on John’s tongue as it twists over his, deepening the kiss, and something heats so hot in Sherlock’s abdomen, he’s sure John can feel it from where their torsos are pressed flush. “I love you,” he pants, pulling his head away for a quick gasp of air, because he has to say it now before he is too far gone for words.

John is momentarily stunned, wondering if he’s perhaps imagined it, but Sherlock is looking frantically between his eyes as if he will take it all back. Something tugs at John’s chest, warming him through, and he lets out a soft breath as he smiles. Leaning back in, he settles a firm hand on the back of Sherlock’s neck, releasing the other one from Sherlock’s fingers to tug at his waist.

Sherlock folds into John’s arm with a gasp, his eyes reflexively opening for a moment before fluttering shut again. His fingers twist into blond strands while his other hand claws into the front of John’s shirt. He can feel the heat flooding his groin, stretching the front of his trousers uncomfortably, and he wavers, sudden self-conscious, but then John grinds against his hips and there’s no room for second thoughts.

“Upstairs,” John whispers against his mouth, and Sherlock’s entire body lurches.

John pulls him along by his belt, not breaking the contact of their lips until they reach the bottom of the stairs, and then he moves away, grabbing Sherlock’s hand and hurrying them up the steps.

They slam against John’s bedroom door, John grating Sherlock into the wood, and Sherlock keens while John growls. John untucks Sherlock’s shirt from his trousers before reaching around to turn the door handle. Sherlock nearly falls as his support swings in, but John catches him by the waist, eliciting a synchronized moan as they press together again. John pushes Sherlock back toward the bed, undoing the man’s trousers as they go.

Sherlock’s knees bump against the mattress, and he collapses with a small yip of surprise before John is on top of him, pulling open his trousers. Sparks shoot across his eyelids at the first stroke of John’s hand, and it’s nothing they haven’t done countless times before, but knowing it won’t end there transforms that small act into something cataclysmic. John moves away from where Sherlock wants him for now, however, and unbuttons Sherlock’s shirt with practiced hands.

John rips the shirt open across Sherlock’s chest as he gets to the last button, and Sherlock sits up for just long enough to strip it off. It lands somewhere to John’s left, but he is looking up the bare, white expanse to where Sherlock’s eyes are storm-grey, his mouth flushed and open. John smirks, just the slightest quirk of lips, and catches Sherlock’s eyes widen before he ducks his head. He bites at Sherlock’s hip, prompting a gasp and a quiver, and then moves on to Sherlock’s trousers.

Sherlock moans as John slides away his clothes, kissing a line down the inside of his thigh as he exposes the skin. Once his ankles are free, Sherlock pushes his legs apart, waiting for John to settle between them again, but he remains conspicuously exposed. Opening his eyes, he finds John hovering over him, irritatingly clothed as he stands at the edge of the bed, his blue eyes darkened to twilight. “John?” Sherlock asks, growing concerned when the man does not move.

“God, you’re beautiful,” John breathes reverently, shaking his head in disbelief, because what had he ever done to deserve the brilliant tornado of a man laid out before him? “So beautiful.”

“And you’re wearing too many clothes,” Sherlock replies his voice strangled with want.

John chuckles, reminded exactly who he’s with and all the happier for it. He pulls his jumper and undershirt over his head, and, in the brief amount of time he’s blind, Sherlock sits up, his fingers already undoing John’s belt by the time the wool is tossed aside.

Sherlock tugs John’s zipper down, wriggling the jeans and pants over his hips enough to free his cock. He wraps his pale fingers around the shaft, relishing the shiver that runs through John’s body. He trails teeth and tongue down John’s torso as he works him in his hand, and John groans, fingers lodging into Sherlock’s curls, not pulling, just holding, a warm, reverent pressure. Sherlock abruptly ducks his head, licking a thick stripe up the underside of John’s length before taking it into his mouth, and the man twitches in an aborted thrust.

“Sherlock,” John gasps, his fingers tightening in dark hair as his other hand clutches a pale shoulder. “God, Sherlock!”

Sherlock leans forward, taking as much of John as he can into his mouth, tasting the soap and musk and salt and John as he pulls back up, his tongue flicking over the leaking tip.

“Jesus!” John bucks as Sherlock engulfs him again, the coiled warmth in his abdomen growing with every swipe of that caustic tongue. Sherlock hollows his cheeks, sucking hard on a slide up, and John groans, his fingers digging into Sherlock’s shoulder blade. “If you want this to go any further, you should probably stop that.”

Sherlock chuckles as he frees his mouth, his head leaning against John’s hip. With a last, sweep of his tongue over John’s skin, he pulls away, moving backward on the bed as John climbs over him.

John leans on one hand, the other reaching to the bedside table and opening the drawer. “Do you want to-”

“No, you,” Sherlock replies, barely repressing the shiver that runs through his body at the thought.

John swallows hard, having been expecting that, but hearing it in Sherlock’s deep, lust-shaken voice makes the prospect almost overwhelming. Almost. He searches out the tube of lubricant, them having dispensed with condoms for their other activities after their tests had come back clean, and closing the drawer with a rather loud slam.

Sherlock chuckles, low and hopefully nonchalant in spite of his frantic heart. “Eager, are we?”

John laughs without humor, but the smile is real as he flicks up the cap, the sound suddenly the only one in the room apart from their huffs of breath. John meets Sherlock’s eyes, which widen sharply as he glances down at the container in John’s hand, and John places a hand on his thigh to draw his attention back up. “We don’t have to, ya know,” he says, shaking his head for emphasis. “It’s fine if you’re not ready. It really is.”

Sherlock swallows stiffly through his dry throat. “No, I-I am.”

“Are you sure?”

“I trust you,” Sherlock replies with a nod, because that’s all there is, all that matters, the all-encompassing answer to every, possible question.

John releases a breath and squeezes some of the gel onto his fingers, stroking lazy patterns up and down Sherlock’s thighs with his clean hand as he rubs his fingers together, heating the lubricant with friction. John presses lightly against Sherlock’s thigh, and the man spreads apart, his feet planted on either side of John’s body while his knees hover at his shoulder. John touches a single finger to Sherlock’s entrance, feeling the muscle leap and tighten beneath his barely-there graze, and he looks up once more, checking for last minute indecision. Sherlock is only watching him, however, his eyes dark and flashing, thunderclouds encased in white. “Relax,” John advises, adding just the slightest bit of pressure.

Sherlock laughs, a high, nervous sound, but it is funny, ridiculous even, John telling him to relax when his mind is firing everything at him, from the smell of John’s shampoo to the thread count of his sheets, and to tell him, him, to relax when there is everything to know, to learn is the only impossible thing John has ever asked.

John watches Sherlock’s chest heaving, a combination of breaths and heartbeats as the man closes his eyes, his head tilted back toward the ceiling. He seems beyond the reach of words, so John doesn’t use them, instead shifting his position where he’s kneeling on the bed to feather a kiss to the inside of Sherlock’s knee. The man twitches at the sudden appearance of his lips, but does nothing more, and John slowly traverses down the inside of his thigh, waltzing with the thirds of lips, teeth, and tongue.

Sherlock is planning out an experiment, planning out every possible place on his body he needs John to try this to see if everywhere is just as sensitive. His fingers grip into the sheets as he throws his head back with a gasp, and it takes him a moment to notice that his reaction is not solely based around John’s tongue nearing the apex of his thigh, but that the unbelievable, mad, amazing, perfect man in front of him has just slid a second digit inside him, and Sherlock almost wants to laugh at the genius of the trick, but his mouth is otherwise occupied with a sharp gasp.

“Okay?” John asks, stilling his movements, because Sherlock seems to have noticed now and two fingers is bound to be a little uncomfortable.

Sherlock waits, just breathing until the small stab of pain gets swallowed by the growing swell of heat, and then nods, his brain wholly incapable of forming a verbal affirmation. He can feel John’s fingers moving inside him, shifting and twisting as he stretches him open, and Sherlock is desperately trying to count the flaws in the ceiling, trying to focus on something, trying to keep a hold of himself as his hands cramp with the force of his grip on the sheets. He is regulating his breathing, counting out the seconds of inhales and exhales, but then John shifts his fingers just so, and Sherlock loses track of it entirely.

John pauses, his hands working with doctor’s precision as they gently stroke Sherlock’s prostate, but the sounds Sherlock is making, my god, they might just kill him if he keeps going.

“John. John!” Sherlock doesn’t know what he means, what he’s asking for, all he knows is that this, right now, is not enough. John isn’t close enough, isn’t here enough, and something needs to be done about that right this second.

John looks down at Sherlock’s sweat-sheened face, tracing the tremors up his torso, and pauses for just a second, just one last double check, and then reaches for the lubricant again. His first touch against himself makes him bite back a moan, forgetting just how hard he was as he was focusing on Sherlock, but now his brain is humming with arousal, taut strings plucked and reverberating in echoes of want around his skull as he lines up with Sherlock’s damp, stretched entrance.

Sherlock feels the pressure of John against him and stills, a shuddering breath of anticipation releasing from trembling lips. “John,” he says again, because he knows John is waiting, knows John is worried, and he summons what little control he has left to tilt his head down and meet John’s eyes out of the bottom of his heavy-lidded ones.

John watches Sherlock’s face as he slowly presses in, stopping at every wince and tension to allow him time to adjust, and then his pelvis is flush to Sherlock’s skin and a shudder runs through him at the realization. His cock twitches, and so does Sherlock, a gasp arcing out of him as his eyes shoot wide. John wants to move, wants to grab Sherlock’s hips and pin him to the bed while he thrusts to relief, but he forces his hands to be slow as he lays one lightly on Sherlock’s thigh, the other gently cupping a sharp hip.

The room finally comes back to Sherlock, the haze of pain clearing, and he’s left with only a desperate fullness and an unbearable heat. He doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, but his brain isn’t at the controls anymore, and his body rocks against John’s hips instinctively.

John hisses in a breath in time with Sherlock’s groan, and then a dazed smile stretches across his face as he slowly lifts Sherlock’s leg to balance on his left shoulder, his scar obscured by a pale, shaking thigh. “Impatient git,” he chides, but only half-heartedly, because it is somehow comforting to have Sherlock still being Sherlock at a time like this.

Sherlock chuckles, cutting off to a breath as the motion brings a fresh shiver of sensation up his spine. “Will you just get on with it alre- AH!” Words vanish, thoughts vanish, the room spins away in a watercolor blur as John snaps his hips, and Sherlock is gone, floating somewhere between John’s fingers digging into his skin and the cock sliding in torturously slow motions back and forth.

John is dreaming, he has to be. Dreaming or dead, and really, with Sherlock Holmes, the latter was probably more likely, but, either way, he was certain this wasn’t real. The sweat-damp curls sticking to a porcelain forehead, the legs drifting up to drape over his shoulders, clenching periodically at a particularly well-placed thrust, the flushed and twitching cock glistening against Sherlock’s stomach, none of it can possibly be real, because there is nothing John Watson has ever done in his life to deserve to be the only person gifted with this sight. “God, Sherlock,” he breathes, taking Sherlock’s length in hand and smearing the liquid down the shaft. “You’re perfect. Christ, you’re perfect.”

“John,” Sherlock pants against the pressure spreading up his lungs from his abdomen, tightening and twisting like a rabid, wild animal thrashing against the confines of his body. “John!”

John can feel the muscles pulling taut in Sherlock’s legs as they tighten around him, feet bouncing against his back with every slide of sweat-slickened skin, and he sighs what breath he has, relief flooding through him, because he was not going to hold out much longer either. “I’ve got you,” John whispers, leaning up over Sherlock’s body, planting his shaking, left arm into the bed, his right hand working Sherlock’s length as he whispers against his lips. “Just let go.”

What begins as John’s name turns into a muffled shout against the man’s mouth as John slams into his prostate on a thrust. Sherlock has chased highs down the shafts of hundreds of needles, hunted criminals through countless, lamp-lit streets, and dodged death in a maelstrom of bullets, all experiences that turned his mind to fire and his skin to kindling under the influence of tidal waves of adrenaline, but none of them, nothing, not a single substance on this planet could parallel this. Rolling sweeps of hot and cold rattle through him, earthquakes that crack his surface and release the excess energy of his gone-nuclear core in a blinding flash of white that wipes his vision. His mouth is open, gasping veneration in the repeating hymn of John’s name as he spills over their chests.

John groans as Sherlock clenches around him in spasms of completion, that impossibly deep voice gasping his name against his lips in the hot breaths of a man lost to the world, and John is wrecked by the sight of him, pulled under with him, and, if he were to drown here, it would not be in vain. He shouts, returning his own name with Sherlock’s as he spends himself, and Sherlock trembles anew as John’s cock hardens and twitches inside him.

They don’t move for several moments, just lying there, breathing one another’s air as their lips brush, and then John’s shoulder starts to ache and he has to pull away, dislodging Sherlock’s limp limbs as he slides out with a fresh shiver.

A strange feeling is spreading in Sherlock’s chest as his breathing gradually slows back to somewhere close to normal, his pulse following. He is staring up at the ceiling, trying to place it, and he is still trying to place it when John returns with a towel, wiping at his chest, and Sherlock has to laugh.

“What?” John asks, back in his boxers as he leans over the pale expanse of Sherlock on the bed.

Sherlock throws his arms over his head, his fingers lightly brushing the headboard beyond his pillow, and he lolls his head toward John with an enormous amount of effort. “Here we are again,” he answers with a lazy smile.

John tilts his head, confused, and then the memory pulls back up in front of his eyes and he chuckles, dropping his head as he turns to chuck the rag into the laundry basket. “Not quite,” he teases, moving back to stand at the edge of the bed, and then hesitates, uncertain.

Sherlock rolls his eyes, reading John’s face, and then eliminates the question by reaching up to John’s forearm and giving it a sharp tug, tumbling the man onto the bed.

John lets out a small shout of surprise, and then laughs as Sherlock tugs and twists at him, pulling him across the bed until he is stretched out on his back, a long length of consulting detective pressed against his side and moving out his arm to rest a curled head against his marred shoulder. “Didn’t take you for the clingy type,” John mumbles, and there is a flurry of movement before he is met with a mouthful of pillow. “Oi!” he yelps, grabbing at the thin, unseen wrist that holds the down-filled cotton to his face.

“Shhh,” Sherlock whispers, placing his other hand on John’s reaching arm. “Just breathe. It’ll all be over soon,” he soothes, and then he’s broadsided by the other pillow.

“Sherlock!?” John calls up the stairs as he ascends. “Sherlock, if you’re still in bed!”

A groan emanates from inside the room, and John rolls his eyes as he pushes open the door.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Sherlock!” he shouts down at the lump in the bed, the sheets tented around a faint, blue glow at the head. “We’re going to be late for Lestrade’s party!”

“Party?” Sherlock mutters from inside his makeshift shelter, turning his head in the direction of John’s shadow through the thin cotton. “What party?”

“The Halloween one I told you about a dozen times, now get up!” John snaps, slapping at a lump in the blankets that looks roundabout where Sherlock’s buttocks would be.

“Why is Lestrade having a Halloween party?” Sherlock asks, pulling the blankets off his head, the air cool now that he is outside of the warm, humid cocoon. He moves his laptop off the pillow, twisting around to lean against the headboard as he watches John’s progress toward the wardrobe.

“Because,” John mutters, irritably throwing open the doors of their closet, “he and his wife have reconciled-”

“Won’t last long, she’s already sleeping with the-“

“and,” John stresses, turning away from rummaging through the rack of suits to glare daggers at the tousled man, “he wanted to have a bit of a knees-up at his place, get the whole gang together.”

“The ‘whole gang’?” Sherlock repeats scathingly, dropping his head in condescension.

“Yes, Sherlock,” John sighs tiredly, turning back with two, plastic, garment bags in hand, “we have a gang, you’re in it, and we’re going, just like we said we would.”

“I never said I would-”

“I told him we would.”

“Since when can you make those sorts of unilateral decisions?”

“Since you moved all your stuff into my room. Now, hurry up! Get your costume on.”

“Costume!?” Sherlock flails out of the blankets, scrambling away from the bag John is trying to hand him. “You didn’t say it was a costume party!”

“Yes, I did,” John counters, leaning forward to hold the costume out further across the bed. “Several times. You’ll like it, I promise.” He smiles, trying to reassure Sherlock’s narrowed eyes. When the man makes no move to take it, John sighs, lowering the bag to the bed. “Well, I’m going to get changed into mine. Downstairs,” he adds as Sherlock shuffles forward, a mischievous glint in his suddenly alert eyes.

Sherlock pouts exaggeratedly, dropping his head so his curls fall over his forehead, an expression that usually works, but John merely rolls his eyes, and, with a smirk over his shoulder, is gone behind the door. Sherlock huffs, crossing his arms, but he swiftly realizes his show is wasted on the empty room, and turns his attention to the long, black bag in front of him. He lifts his hand to the zipper a few times before grabbing it, pulling it down to reveal- Oh. Oh.

He leaps out of bed, stripping off his dressing gown and pajama trousers—he never did bother with a shirt anymore, John didn’t seem to mind—and rips the costume out of the bag. He nearly falls three times putting it on, but it is worth it for the moment he turns to look in the mirror.

The white shirt is his own, but it tucks into a wide, leather wrap that serves as a belt around his waist, holding up patched, black trousers that tighten at the ankles, where they are swallowed by folded-over, black boots with large, golden buckles. Over the shirt is a navy, velvet jacket with gold embroidery and wide sleeves, the collar popped beneath a triangular, black hat. The final touch is a sword—a prop, unfortunately—that drapes in its sheath along his leg from a strap over his belt.

“Sherlock?” John asks, knocking on the door before pushing it inward. “Are you- oof!” He has a face full of blue velvet and an armload of consulting detective, and he laughs as he grabs him by the arms and pushes him away. “You like it, then?”

Sherlock beams down at John, who’s wearing the same, amazingly ridiculous trousers and boots that he is, but he has his black-and-white striped jumper on, as well as a knit, black hat pulled low over his head and a red bandana tied around his neck. “You made me a pirate!” Sherlock exclaims.

“Aye aye, Captain,” John chuckles by way of an answer, waving two fingers off his forehead in a mock salute.

Sherlock’s smile falters, his eyebrows furrowing as he searches John up and down. “What are you supposed to be?” he mutters, his eyes holding on the small scabbard and dagger at John’s waist.

“Your first mate,” John answers, smiling hesitantly as he scans down his own body, wondering how that isn’t obvious.

“No, that’s not right,” Sherlock scoffs, tugging away from John’s hold, his hand lifting to his chin in thought. “You shouldn’t be my first mate. If I’m the captain of a pirate ship, then you would be-”

“If you say deckswabber, I swear to god-”

“No, John,” Sherlock chuckles, placing a hand over the one pointing at his face and lowering it, tangling their fingers as he does. “You wouldn’t be my deckswabber. You’d be Polaris.”

John blinks, his forehead creasing as he tilts his head in confusion. “Polaris?” he repeats slowly, wondering if Sherlock has perhaps finally gone mad. “I’d be…Polaris?”

“Yes, of course,” Sherlock answers with a smile, because it really is quite obvious if John were to just think about it. “You would be my North Star, John,” he continues, placing the hand that isn’t in John’s on the man’s face, which slackens at the touch, “because, no matter how lost I get, you always point me back home.”

John chest is doing something strange, swelling to perhaps dangerous proportions, and he wonders if Mycroft has cameras in their bedroom just so he can remind himself that this moment really happened. He lifts up onto his toes, sliding his hand up Sherlock’s neck and into his hair as he pulls their lips together. The kiss is soft and languid, a slide of lips and lazy sweeps of tongues.

“You romantic little shit,” John murmurs against Sherlock’s mouth, and they both curl up in a smile, “but it’s not getting you out of this party,” he adds with a smug lift of his eyebrows before turning on his heels.

Sherlock’s mouth drops open as his hand slides away from John’s leaving fingers, and, if his eyes drift down to John’s black-clothed arse as he leaves, it’s hardly his fault. Those damn, pirate pants. “But, Joooohn!” he whines, stepping to the doorway.

“Get your coat!” John orders as he heads down the stairs.

“I just called you my North Star!”

“So follow me then!” John turns on the landing, sending his cheekiest grin up at a rather flustered-looking Sherlock. He adds a wink for good measure, and then heads down the second set of steps toward the waiting cab.

Sherlock hovers at the top of the stairs, his fists clenching and unclenching with indecision as he looks frantically around at nothing. With a frustrated growl, he races downstairs, but, by the time he’s swiping his coat and scarf off the hook, a begrudging smile is on his lips.

“What’s going on?”
“An apology. It’s all true.”
“What?”

“Why are you saying this?”
“I’m a fake.”
“Sherlock-”

“Nobody could be that clever.”
“You could.”

“It’s a trick. It’s just a magic trick.”
“No. Alright, stop it now.”

“Goodbye, John.”
“No. Don’t—!”

The ground is soft and wet, a misty rain trickling over the guests as they walk through the maze of stones, emerging from the fog in a parade of black umbrellas as they make their way to the cars gathered on the street. A solitary figure lingers in front of the freshly hewn ground, his reflection distorted in the water running down the polished, stone surface of the marker before him.

Mrs. Hudson turns back from the door of the black limousine they’ve hired for the day, her glassy eyes focusing through the haze on the man’s hunched back. She lifts a shaking hand to her mouth, a sympathetic gesture she would not dare do to his face, and then lowers herself into the car, closing the door in some needless observance of privacy. “Just wait a bit,” she advises the driver Mycroft’s provided, who nods with a mumbled, “Yes ma’am.” She then looks out the window, watching as the black-suited man kneels in front of the flower arrangements, placing something within a wreath of roses.

He turns, and the stoic look on his face nearly breaks her heart, but the cane in his right hand does it entirely. When he reaches the car and opens the door, he looks back, and Mrs. Hudson follows the line of his eyes back to the gravestone, where she would swear the small, white token he had placed was no longer there.

“John?” she asks, leaning across the seat to peer up at him.

“Sorry, Mrs. Hudson,” he murmurs, flashing her a painfully sad smile, and his 29-year-old face looks years more weathered for the dark circles around his bloodshot eyes. He slides into the car beside her, not without difficultly while accommodating his limp.

She reaches a hand to his as the car begins to move. “It’ll be alright, dear,” she consoles, patting the man’s tan fingers. “You’ll see. Somehow, we’ll be alright.”

He nods, turning his hand over to hold her fingers in his own, larger ones, and the smile he gives her seems slightly more genuine.

Are you going to tell him?
MH

He knows.
SH

How can you be so sure?
MH

I never make a promise I can’t keep.
SH

John’s fingers are lead as he turns the key in the lock of 221B, pushing the door open as he leads with his cane. The click of the latch as the door closes behind him echoes in the silent foyer, and John looks up the stairs, a habit still after over two years.

“John?”

He turns at the voice, Mrs. Hudson’s head peeking out around her door at him. “Got the shopping,” he says, lifting the bags for emphasis. “They were out of P.G., so I got you Tetley.”

“Oh, thank you, dear,” she murmurs, taking the box from him, but her eyes keep drifting distractedly to the ceiling.

“What is it?” John asks, looking up, but he sees only plaster.

“Nothing, nothing,” she dismisses with a wave of her hand. “I just… Well, I thought I heard you come in earlier. But, the plumbing in this place, it’s always making noises. Waking me up, all hours of the night. I’ve had the plumber in twice already this year, but he- John?”

John takes off up the stairs, his cane clattering forgotten to the floor. Yesterday, he raced up these steps. Yesterday, when the news that Sherlock had been cleared finally broke. Yesterday, when he expected to open this door and find six feet of consulting detective resurrected in all his insufferable, immortal glory, but the flat was empty, empty but the lingering smell of chemicals he couldn’t believe he missed.

Now, however, he stands at the top, his arm outstretched toward the doorknob, and he can’t do it, can’t open up to that world of potential disappointment again. His hand begins to shake where it hovers in the air, and his breaths pass over quivering lips as his thunderous heart rattles his ear drums.

There’s a rustle at his feet, as well as a small tap that vibrates through the rubber sole of his shoe, and he looks down to find a piece of paper that has been slid under the door. It is wrinkled, worn in the lines of being folded time and time again, and what was once white has weathered to a dirty grey, the blue lines all but disappeared by wear and water marks, but John recognizes the script of his navy pen that he rested against funeral flowers, a long-standing vow of faith. He bends, picking it up, and then, holding his breath, he twists the handle and pushes open the door.

Sherlock got a flight in that morning, went to Mycroft’s to shower and shave, got a freshly-cleaned suit and his coat, and then broke into Baker Street and waited. He paced patterns across the worn rugs, ran his fingers in lines through the dust on his violin and armchair, and then, as the time John got out of work neared, he simply stood there, turning the token he had taken from his gravestone over and over in his hands. He has a speech prepared, a good speech, an irrefutable speech with a thousand apologies and a perfectly reasonable explanation, but it abandons him now in the face of John standing in the doorway, his face slack with shock and his blue eyes swimming as they blink. Sherlock’s mouth opens and closes with soft clicks of his tongue, and he drops his eyes to the paper held in John’s quivering fingers.

“I know you took mine to Afghanistan,” he says, because it’s the only thing that comes to mind, “but that one went to Russia, so…” He trails off with a swallow, his voice stalling at the lump in his throat. He cannot seem to meet John’s gaze.

John lets out a breath of a chuckle at the comment, because, somehow, that makes it real. If Sherlock had broken out into begging or pleading, John would have thought he was hallucinating (again), but the sarcastic condescension was so, painfully familiar, he could not possibly have been imagining it. He takes a step into the room, closing the door softly behind him without taking his eyes off the detective’s face, but the man is looking away, staring at the floor and biting his lip.

John doesn’t know what he feels, what this swooping and spinning sensation swirling around inside of him is, but he takes a few, slow steps forward, hoping it becomes clearer as he gets closer. The only thing that becomes apparent, however, is how tired Sherlock looks, the dark circles seeming to emphasize the glassiness of his widening eyes.

Sherlock can feel a burning behind his eyes, and he blinks feverishly trying to dislodge it as he inhales a choked breath. “John, I-”

Suddenly, John knows exactly what he feels.

There’s a flash of pain, that familiar swooping terror of falling, and then Sherlock is on his back, his face stinging, his mouth faintly metallic. He barely has time to wheeze out his breath before John is atop him, his weight pressing down over his chest as hands close around his throat.

“Two years,” John growls through bared teeth as he shakes Sherlock head by the neck. His eyes sting, his body trembling with fury. “Two years,” he says again, but his voice is cracking now. “Two years.” It is barely a whisper, punctuated by a weak shake as he moves his hands to the detective’s shoulders, his own rocking as a sob breaks through him, and, suddenly, he doesn’t know what he means, because what is two years out of a lifetime, what is two years in the face of everything else they have seen?

Sherlock looks up at John’s quaking figure, watches the tears welling up in pained, blue eyes that won’t look at him, and he doesn’t have the faintest idea what to do, what to say, so he lifts a hand to John’s chest, enveloping the pounding of his heart as if he can hear through the rhythm whether it’s still his.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, his fingers digging into the fabric of John’s shirt to keep him there in every sense of the word. “John, I’m so-” His body is pulled up, his head lolling back before springing forward to John’s mouth. His muscles tighten for a moment in shock, his eyes shooting wide, and then he whimpers with relief against John’s lips, clutching at the man’s neck to hold himself up. He can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t focus on anything but the beat of their twin hearts and the movement of their lips, and, if it tastes a bit like blood, well, that just seems all the more fitting.

John slams the door behind him, not waiting for Sherlock to finish paying the cabbie, and starts up the stairs, his jaw aching for how hard he’s clenching it.

“John!” Sherlock bleats as he bursts in behind him. “He was going to get away! What was I supposed to do?”

“Call, Sherlock, you could call!” John shouts from the top of the stairs, where he bursts into the living room and begins pacing back and forth. There was a time when he would retreat to his room during a fight like this, but, considering his room was now their room and Sherlock’s room was dangerous to stay in for too long, he was going to have to face this or shut himself in the loo, and he was probably too old for that at almost 33.

“There wasn’t time, John,” Sherlock sighs as he enters the room, watching the blond before him wear the rugs down with his furious steps. “I knew he would move before nightfall, and you didn’t get out of the A&E until five.”

“So you thought you’d just run off and get yourself killed!?” John bursts, rounding on the tall detective, his arms waving out at his sides in anger.

“Honestly, John,” Sherlock mutters with a roll of his eyes, but there’s a growing discomfort in his chest at the blazing in the usually calm blue, “I had no intention of getting killed. And I wasn’t.”

“No, no you weren’t, but you gave it a hell of a try, didn’t you!?” John steps forward, grabbing Sherlock’s arm and wrenching it out to display the bandage wrapped around his torn shirt at the bicep.

“It’s a graze, John,” Sherlock snaps, pulling his arm away. “You examined it yourself; it’s superficial.”

“Yes, Sherlock, it’s a graze. A graze from a bullet! Because you were shot at!”

“I really don’t understand why you’re making such a big deal of this.”

“You could have died!”

“But I didn’t.”

“But you could have, and I would’ve had no idea where you were!”

“Well, I would be dead, so what would it matter?”

“BECAUSE I NEED TO KNOW, SHERLOCK!” John roars, his chest heaving with hot fury, and his vision is going blurry around the edges. “I can’t just-just sit here and wonder if you’re never coming home! Not anymore, not again!”

“Again?” Sherlock repeats softly, his head tilting slightly as his eyes narrow at John’s face, which has frozen into something resembling shocked embarrassment.

John turns away, walking to the window to stare out over the street, his arms folding around himself. He hears Sherlock’s steps nearing his back, but does not react.

“John?” Sherlock asks, hovering an uncertain hand over the man’s shoulder, lifting and lowering until finally making the commitment to place it on the leather patch of his black jacket.

John takes a slow, deep breath, closing his eyes at the pressure of Sherlock’s warm hand through his coat. When he speaks, he addresses the postbox across the street. “You can’t do this again, Sherlock,” he says, shaking his head. “It can’t be like this. We can’t be like this.”

Sherlock swallows, dropping his head, and then moves to press his upper body to John’s back, wrapping his arms loosely around the shorter man as he brushes his jaw through blond hair. “Okay,” he whispers, nodding against John’s head. “I’m sorry.”

John sighs, lifting a hand to cover Sherlock’s where it rests against his chest. “I know. I know you don’t mean to, you just-”

“Forget,” Sherlock finishes, turning his lips into the soft, sable hair.

John smiles in spite of himself, knowing all attempts at continuing putting up an angry front are lost with the expression, because Sherlock will surely have noticed somehow. He taps Sherlock’s hand twice and then turns, the detective releasing him as he shifts to face him. “It’s alright,” John says, smiling openly now as he cups the pale, angular jaw. He plants a quick kiss to the corner of Sherlock’s mouth, and then steps past him, moving across the room to settle himself into his armchair.

Sherlock furrows his eyebrows, his lips pouting in confusion at the shift. “What are you-”

“We have-” John interjects, cocking his head as he points to the ceiling, the doorbell buzzing right on cue. “-a client!”

Sherlock blinks, his eyes widening. “How did you-” He stops, closing his mouth and nodding down to the floor. “You saw them walking up from the window.”

“Maybe,” John replies with a coy smile and a matching tilt of his head.

“Oh, and I suppose the other explanation is you’re psychic?” Sherlock teases as he follows, flopping into his own, leather chair.

“Maaaaaaybe,” John croons, waggling his eyebrows.

“Oh, really?” Sherlock replies skeptically, but he’s smirking as he leans forward over his knees, balancing on his elbows as he steeples his fingers beneath his chin. “What do you see in my future, then?”

“Oh, you know,” John says with a sigh of dismissal as he waves a hand through the air, “murder, mayhem, being a total prat. The usual.” He holds his nonchalance for a moment, staring unfocusedly at a spot on the wall before turning his eyes back to Sherlock, a grin slowly forming.

Sherlock laughs, his hands falling to his lap, and John quickly joins, causing a rather awkward situation when their tear-streaked client is led in by Mrs. Hudson, but that’s par for the course at 221B.

“Oh, I love this part,” John says, tapping at Sherlock’s arm with the backs of his fingers. They are propped up in bed, leaning against the headboard and watching a DVD on John’s laptop, and Sherlock has, for once, gone quiet. “Ya know, there’s a song on the soundtrack named after that line. ‘Together Or Not At All’.”

“Hmm.”

“Real incredible stuff. That BBC orchestra.” He shakes his head with an appreciative whistle.

“Mhmm.”

“You should listen to it. Really. This season has one of the better sound- Are you crying!?”

“No!” Sherlock snaps, ducking his head, but John pushes up from his side, twisting his upper body to face him.

“Oh my god, you’re a fucking Moffateer!” John exclaims, looking over the man.

“I have no idea what that is, but I feel fairly confident in saying I’m not one,” Sherlock mutters up to where John is hovering over his slouched form. “I’ve just got something in my eye.”

“You’ve got something in your eye? Seriously, that’s what you’re going with?” John chuckles, dipping his head.

“It’s true!”

“So, you just happened to get something in your eye at the exact moment they jump off the roof?”

“I don’t think the probability of dust particulates coming into contact with my eyes is in any way correlated with what scene happens to be-”

“Oh my god!” John interjects, but he’s laughing as he leans forward, stretching over Sherlock to brush their naked chests together. “Why did I pick you?” he bemoans, shaking his head where it hovers inches from the detective’s face.

Sherlock stills, his face falling for a moment as he considers. “I don’t know,” he answers dazedly, because he truly can’t fathom it. He then smiles softly up at John once again. “But you’re stuck with me now,” he says with a lift of eyebrows.

“Oh, am I?” John inquires, a hint of a threat in his voice, but none of it in his growing smirk.

“Yes,” Sherlock mutters, wrapping an arm around John and tugging him to his body to emphasize the point, and John giggles into his shoulder as he collapses. “For as long as we both shall live.”

“Promise?” John asks, lifting his head up to meet Sherlock’s eyes.

Sherlock pauses, searching John’s face. He is smiling still, but there is a hint of something more serious in his eyes, something that makes Sherlock’s lungs seize with panic, and then, a moment later, release into a fluid warmth, like liquid gold surging through his chest. “I promise,” he whispers.

John’s gaze shifts between grey eyes, searching for understanding, searching for doubt, and then he smiles, breaking into a full grin before dropping his head to seal his lips to heart-shaped ones.

Sherlock lifts a hand to John’s hair, keeping the man fast against him as he arches his body up to deepen the kiss. Something pinches at the back of his brain, however, and he has to pull away. “To be clear, you did just propose marriage, correct?” Sherlock asks, pressing his head back into the pillow to allow enough space for the words between them.

“Yes,” John answers, his eyes narrowing as his stomach leaps with fear, “and you just accepted?”

“Obviously,” Sherlock scoffs, rolling his eyes before breaking into a smirk.

John chuckles, his chest expanding so much, he feels he could float away if not for Sherlock’s arm wrapped over his back. “Obviously,” he murmurs against Sherlock’s lips as he drops his head again.

“Where are we going?” Sherlock snaps at the back of the driver’s head.

“We’ll be there soon, sir,” the man responds, the only thing Mycroft’s men ever say, and Sherlock huffs, slamming back into the cushions of the back seat and crossing his arms.

He glares at the man in the rearview mirror, but the man doesn’t appear to be cowed, or even looking, so Sherlock turns his gaze uselessly back to the tinted windows as he tugs at the knot of his tie. The ensemble is a bit formal, even for him, but it had been folded on his bed when he got home that afternoon, a note from John resting on top that demanded he dress and be ready for the car at 4pm. He couldn’t imagine what he’d need his best, black tuxedo for, or why John had bought a new, royal purple tie for whatever occasion, but he was wearing it, in spite of usually preferring to meet Mycroft’s cronies looking as haggard (or naked) as possible. He tugs nervously at his cuffs, his polished, black shoes tapping against the black, carpeted interior of the limousine.

John always takes his hand when he fidgets, flashing him a comforting smile, and it disturbs Sherlock quite suddenly how odd it feels to not have him at his side. There’s no one to challenge him to a competition of who can get the most things caught in the driver’s hair before he notices, or make ridiculous deductions about people they pass on the street just so Sherlock gets the chance to show off and correct them. Entirely without meaning to, Sherlock seems to have so thoroughly assimilated to John’s presence, he feels only half without him; a lifetime of conditioning culminating in this helpless sense of being lost. He needs John, the fulcrum to his ever-stretching compass, and it’s with a rather ridiculous surge of relief that he flings open the door of the car the instant it stops. He then freezes, however, standing with one hand on the door as he looks up at a building he had almost entirely deleted out of self-preservation.

“What the-” he murmurs, his eyes following a path of red, paper cutouts that are taped to the ground in splotches that seem to be meant to replicate magnified clusters of blood droplets. He glances back at the driver, who is studiously avoiding his gaze as he takes the door from Sherlock, and then follows the path, apparently the only, somehow-logical choice.

He unlatches the tall gate, which is unlocked for some hopefully soon-to-be-explained reason, and steps cautiously around it, walking down the narrow alley between the brick wall of the building and the large, wooden fence that runs the perimeter of the asphalt slab beneath his feet. Rounding the corner, the area spreads open, and Sherlock freezes, taking in a scene he’s fairly certain he’s hallucinating.

There are fairy lights wrapped around the trees that stretch up over the fence, glowing against the dusk-darkening sky. Ahead, there are two lines of yellow, crime scene tape intermingled with even more lights as they drape between posts sitting atop the painted, hopscotch squares and forming a path to a metal, light-wrapped arch sitting on a token patch of grass within the block of asphalt. A grey-suited figure stands awash in the white light, talking with a small gathering of people, but he turns as the rest of the party gradually goes silent upon noticing Sherlock standing there.

“What is this?” Sherlock asks, somewhat breathless, and he blames John in that suit, smile wide and warm over a lilac tie.

“A murder scene,” John answers, gesturing widely over the preparations. He’s terrified, his heart pounding and palms sweating, but the grin on his face is entirely genuine. “The death of our single lives,” he chuckles, delivering that part confidently, at least, because he’s practiced it, rehearsed this moment to give off an air of comfortable ease, but he’s not actually that sure Sherlock won’t turn around and run.

Sherlock’s tilts his head, frowning perplexedly as he takes in the remainder of the image. Molly and Mrs. Hudson are standing behind John, each dressed in what he supposes passes for formalwear and holding small, bouquets of yellow and purple-hued flowers, the only thing matching between them. Lestrade and Mycroft—Sherlock heroically manages not to glare—stand opposite, each wearing crisp suits in navy and brown respectively, a yellow pocket square tucked into their jackets. Anthea stands centered, just inside the archway, a table in front of her, and Sherlock looks down at the pens at either end and sucks in a comprehending breath. “A wedding,” he says, stepping forward on shaking legs. “This is…our wedding.”

John smiles, striding down the aisle to meet Sherlock at the end, knowing the detective would probably pour acid in his eyes before walking up it alone like some blushing bride. “I prefer to think of it as a vow renewal,” John shrugs, smiling as he reaches down to Sherlock’s hand.

Only then does Sherlock understand why, why they’re on the playground of their old primary school, the arch in that particular spot, and he blinks, a warm pressure building behind his eyes as John interlocks their fingers. “John-” he breathes, but that is all he can manage, and John squeezes against his hand to show he understands as he leads Sherlock up the aisle.

“Well, then,” John chuckles, breathless with nerves as he turns to face Sherlock in front of the arch, taking both his hands in his own, “here we are again.”

Sherlock smiles, a small huff passing through his nose as he drops his head, and then he look softly back up to John.

John inhales deeply, exhaling in rush as he begins to speak. “I wasn’t going to plan anything out. Didn’t seem fair, considering you’d be surprised, but then I realized you’d probably pull out some Shakespearean-quality monologue anyway”—he pauses to smile at Sherlock, who is biting his lip against a guilty smirk—“so I thought about it a bit.” He takes another, slow breath, not seeming to be able to keep enough air in his lungs, and then straightens his spine, determined as he meets Sherlock’s eyes.

“Sherlock, when I married you on this playground those almost-three-decades ago,” he begins, tilting his head as he moves their entwined hands out slightly, the small pendulum of their linked arms gesturing to the grass beneath their feet, “I had no idea what it meant to make those promises, didn’t understand just how heavy a word ‘forever’ really was.” He squeezes Sherlock’s hands tighter as his heart flutters. “But, over the past thirty years, I’ve learned. I’ve learned ‘forever’ means picking up the phone at 4am and pretending I didn’t wake you up. It means playing my favorite songs on your violin the night before a big exam because you know it helps me sleep. It means bringing home sweet and sour chicken from the Chinese restaurant anyway, even though I said I wasn’t hungry, because somehow, as always, you know better.”

Sherlock chuckles, and then nods, lifting his eyebrows in smug confirmation.

John grins, shaking his head, because this man is truly ridiculous. “And, sometimes, it’s simple things. Like putting a warning post-it on the crisper when I really won’t want to open it.”

A chuckle ripples through the group, and even Mycroft manages a small smile.

John looks up into grey eyes, a calm settling warm over his chest. “Sherlock, I didn’t know what ‘forever’ meant when I promised mine to you all those years ago, but you’ve taught me with every day I’ve been lucky enough to keep you…and I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life learning.”

Sherlock can hear Molly and Mrs. Hudson sniffling behind him, even Anthea dabbing a bit at her eyes from a handkerchief she pulls from her pocket. Sherlock can’t look away from John’s twinkling, blue eyes, can’t make his mind do anything productive at all, and all he wants to do is grab the blonde’s collar and kiss him unintelligible, but he knows he’s supposed to say something fantastic and heartwarming, and he is more terrified than he has ever felt in his life. But then John—perfect, incredible, extraordinary John—quirks a corner of his lips at him in a smile, and Sherlock is returning it, the words seeming to outpour from the glowing pressure in his chest.

“John, you have terrible taste in television programming.”

John is momentarily surprised, blinking as his eyebrows furrow, and then he just laughs because it’s all too perfectly, obnoxiously Sherlock.

“And your music preferences are, somehow, even more appalling,” Sherlock mutters with a pointed look to the sky.

Everyone is chuckling now, their tissues covering their mouths instead of their eyes.

“And I truly don’t understand why one person needs so many varieties of jam,” Sherlock continues, shaking his head in bewilderment. “I mean, honestly, half the refrigerator is full of red jars.”

“Some of those are probably yours,” John mumbles, trying to sound disparaging, but the palpable ache of fondness in his chest is twisting his lips in betrayal.

“But,” Sherlock snaps down at the man, and John merely smirks, “I-I truly don’t know what I would do without you around.” Sherlock’s eyebrows furrow for a moment as he considers it, and then immediately dismisses the thought, because it will never be an issue. “I told you once that you were my North Star, guiding me home whenever I was lost, and I don’t think even I realized just how true that was.” He can hear the shift in the mood of the group around him, and he’s not even ashamed that Mycroft is listening as he looks down to John’s hands in his, shifting slightly to stroke his thumb across John’s palm.

“John, I-” He pauses, his voice failing for a moment, but the open blue of John’s eyes urges him on. “I don’t have a single, decent memory that doesn’t have you in it,” he says softly, and there’s a pair of sniffles from over John’s shoulder. “Whether we were chasing pirates, hunting killers, or fighting chip-and-PIN machines in-between,” Sherlock adds with a smile, and John chuckles, “you’ve always been there. Always.” He holds John’s gaze in silence for a moment before swallowing, steeling himself for the most important part.

“John, I’ve loved you my whole life,” he breathes, and the entire group may have stifled a gasp. “I-I know I’ve never told you that. Not really, anyway, but it’s true,” he continues, and he’s mumbling a little now, but it’s all fine. He can see in John’s misty eyes that he already knew, but the dewy smile tells him it was good to finally hear. “I’m insufferable,” he says with a breathy chuckle, and John’s eyes wrinkle with a smile as he momentarily ducks his head, “and you’re impossible…and I can’t imagine spending my life any other way but slowly driving one another mad.”

John laughs shakily, dropping his head as the lifting of his cheeks dislodges a tear. One of his hands is suddenly free, and cool fingers are brushing at his face, whisking away the moisture as he looks up. Sherlock is smiling crookedly down at him, silver eyes glittering, and every muscle in John’s body shrieks in unanimous agreement, moving him up to Sherlock’s softly pliant lips. He cups a sharp cheekbone, the hand Sherlock had on his cheek drifting to his hair, and, as ridiculous as it is, the entire world does fade away, disintegrating in comparison to the brilliance.

221B is quiet, for the moment, and that statement always needs to be followed with a ‘for the moment’, because the two inhabitants of the downtown, London flat can be rushing out at any time, scrambling for their coats, scarves, and guns—the usual essentials—before bursting onto the streets with their usual, rabid determination. For now, however, they are upstairs, the taller man leaning against the headboard and swiping out a text message while the blond wanders to the bureau in nothing but boxers, ruffling his damp hair with a towel as he picks out a shirt.

The sun is streaking through the window, the curtains open at the doctor’s insistence, and it reflects in glistening, golden patches across the large picture frame that hangs over the bed. The frame is simple, black and matte, and you would not know by looking at it that the entire thing is fade, water, fire, and bulletproof, but the contents hardly seem worth it at first glance. Two, weathered pieces of paper sit together, one hovering over each side of the bed, but they have taken a journey to get there, covering tears and worry and laughter and miles with their dirt-rubbed creases.

“Where do you think this is going?” John asks into the quiet, crawling onto the bed beside Sherlock, his towel abandoned over the desk chair.

Sherlock stills, his index finger freezing over his phone as he frowns. “Isn’t that the sort of question you should have asked before you pledged yourself to me for all eternity?”

John chuckles, shaking his head, but ignores the jab as he lowers himself to curl against Sherlock’s body, a long arm automatically moving to encircle his shoulders as he lays his head on Sherlock’s chest. “I mean us, what we do, ridding the streets of evildoers and whatnot.”

“Dramatic.”

“Shut up, I am the night.”

Sherlock chuckles, dropping his phone to the bed as he turns his face to talk against John’s forehead. “What do you want to do?”

John shrugs, tracing thoughtful patterns over Sherlock’s abdomen with a lazy finger. “I dunno. I mean, you’ll probably have to give it up eventually. Can’t be chasing after your withered arse the rest of my life.”

“Are you planning on finding other arses to chase?” Sherlock smirks into John’s hair.

“Shut up,” John laughs, and Sherlock spasms beneath him as John pinches his side.

Sherlock laughs softly back, and then grows quiet, thinking as he lifts his hand to tangle with John’s. “I always thought I’d retire to the country. Someday,” Sherlock says wistfully. John doesn’t reply, but there’s a small shift of his head against Sherlock’s chest that tells him to continue. “Get a house with some land. I always wanted to try keeping bees.”

“Bees?” John parrots, craning his neck to look at Sherlock, who shifts to allow him room to move up onto his pale shoulder.

Sherlock nods, feeling slightly sheepish, and John doesn’t make it much better by smiling with transparent fondness.

“What if I’m allergic?” John teases, his nose just brushing Sherlock’s jaw at the words.

“Then I want a divorce,” Sherlock deadpans, and John positively giggles, burying his face in Sherlock’s neck.

“So,” John sighs, returning to rest on Sherlock’s shoulder, “a country house. Keeping bees. Maybe some ducklings.”

“No ducklings.”

“A whole horde of fuzzy, yellow ducklings.”

“That sounds like an apocalypse movie.”

“Who sleep in our bed.”

“Only if they’re in our pillows.”

“You would pluck my baby ducklings!” John bleats as he lifts up onto his hands to gape down with mock horror.

“If you let them sleep in our bed,” Sherlock counters, firmly holding John’s gaze. The blond does not relent however, gradually drifting into pouting territory, and Sherlock folds, rolling his eyes and causing John to laugh back down on top of him in victory.

“I think I could do that,” John whispers, turning slightly to breathe the words against Sherlock’s collarbone.

“Really?” Sherlock asks, the question a prayer against John’s hair.

John nods, smiling as he tugs at Sherlock’s left arm, bringing it over the man’s chest to lock their fingers. He watches their left hands fitting together, Sherlock’s ring pressing cool against the skin over his own, golden band, and it’s a sight John doesn’t think he will ever get tired of. “Really,” he whispers, turning to brush a kiss to Sherlock’s neck. “But only if I can have ducklings.”

Sherlock sighs, grateful John can’t see the smirk on his face, but John always seems to know when he’s putting it on anyway. “One.”

“But what if they get lonely?”

Sherlock groans, and that frustration is a little more genuine. “Fine. Two. But no more,” he says, pointing roughly in the direction of John’s face with his free hand.

John chuckles, wriggling further into Sherlock’s hold. “Fair enough.”

They lay in bed for hours, planning out the hypothetical paint colors and laboratory equipment in their future, country home, and, all the while, the framed messages watch over them, a constant vigil over their, four walls.

Promise?

I promise.