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Sherlock spends about a week or so lying on the sofa, pillows beneath his head, propped up and covered in about a dozen blankets (a dozen-ish; Mrs Hudson had brought a load from downstairs, tutting and fretting and occasionally smacking John when she thought he was being idle, or not active enough – it’s possible she hasn’t entirely forgiven him yet). The place is back to itself; a long time had been spent in-between hospital visits, sorting everything out, bagging everything up, making the flat halfway presentable so that Sherlock could come home.

In a way, it had helped. To rip everything down – rip Culverton Smith’s face down, tear it apart and throw it away, as though it were that easy – had been therapeutic.

And it was really then, John had realised, that in no way, shape or form did he – or could, even – blame Sherlock for Mary’s death.

They still have cake remaining in the fridge, from the little upscale  dessert parlour that he and Molly had taken Sherlock to. Rosie had come as well, propped on Molly’s hip after she had picked her up from Mike Stamford’s house and her eyes had focused on Sherlock for a long moment – her godfather giving her a tentative smile, betrayed by a sudden stillness and unease, all three of them suddenly aware that he must look rather different to her – before her face suddenly split into a grin and she threw her rattle at him.

Sherlock had huffed out in surprise, and then he had laughed, the sound welcome and soft. And John had watched them; watching his daughter watching Sherlock, reaching out to pat his chest with her hands, tuning into his voice. She had always seemed to love listening to the steady rumble of Sherlock’s deductions and lectures, a constant from her very first days – and John, who knew how important it was to talk to babies and thought it would be good for Sherlock to have someone to chatter to who like him refused to keep to conventional sleeping-hours, had always been happy to let the pair of them get on with it.

It was better now – would be better now. But the thought remained: I took her away from him.

And he had – had separated them both, left a nasty letter – vicious and angry and looking for someone to blame – disavowing Sherlock, amongst other things, of any godfatherly duties or access to Rosie. The man who had watched over her for hours while he and Mary slept, glad for once for the friend who seemed to need no sleep at all; who was followed around the room by Rosie’s eyes, in vast experiments to test how much she was taking in; who had still asked John out to cases despite his fatherhood.

He had pulled them apart and then he had pulled Sherlock apart.

Never again, he had decided, as he watched Sherlock offering Rosie a tiny nibble of his red velvet cake. Never, ever, ever again.

*

Molly and Mike Stamford and Mrs Hudson all still chip in to help with Rosie but today, a morning in late summer, she’s on John’s hip, being bobbed around the room as John hums quietly to her, tidying up while Sherlock dozes. She’s got her head on her shoulder, her thumb in his mouth, but he’s all too aware of her gaze fixed on Sherlock. He glances in the mirror as he passes it, rocks on his feet as he stares at his reflection: the almost-adulterer, his baby daughter in his arms, looking over his shoulder at the godfather her own father put in hospital.

(It was the drugs as well, a nurse told him afterwards, after Sherlock had been steadied and put back on saline, after Culverton Smith had been arrested, after John had taken up permanent residence in Sherlock’s hospital room, he’s had too much and he’s dehydrated. It’s not just that.

It is that, John wanted to say. It is. But he said nothing and sat back at Sherlock’s bedside with the book he was pretending to read, his gun concealed in his coat, just in case. Mary may have woken him up, but he didn’t need anyone to tell him to do that.

Once upon a time, he never needed anyone to tell him to look after Sherlock).

Now, looking at his daughter’s tiny frame in the mirror, he shakes his head. She makes him smile – was the only person who could make him smile for some time – and she shames him.

‘It’s alright,’ he assures her. ‘He’s alright.’ He distracts her with a soft little bee, a gift from Sherlock a week after her birth and that he recently rediscovered, rattling around his old room; kisses her head, soft with now-blonder hair.

He hopes she doesn’t know – that she never knows – what he’s done.

*

‘I don’t want to die.’ Sherlock’s voice is breaking on the recording; frightened, hesitant, a man reaching a realisation even as his life lays on the line. ‘I don’t… don’t want to die.’

John’s hands curl into fists and everything swims; he lowers his head, lowers it, until the forehead meets the table in front of him. Breathe. Breathe.

‘Lovely,’ Culverton Smith sneers. ‘Here it comes.’

‘Do you want me to turn it off?’ Lestrade asks, across the table and John holds up a hand; inhales as he sits up. He knows how this ended – of course he knows. He just needs… he needs to hear this. Lestrade pauses, hesitates, then stays his hand from where he’s reaching towards the buttons on the recorder and so with a nod and an exchanged glance, they carry on.

And they listen; listen to every word, every snarl that comes off Culverton’s tongue, his clear relish of Sherlock’s weakness and John can hear it, the moment he puts his hands over Sherlock’s mouth; the recording device really was top-notch, well, why would it be anything less?

(Somehow, this is worse than Mary’s DVD. Why the hell do she and Sherlock do these things to him – leave these things for him to find? A disc, his cane: his wife and his best friend).

‘Maintain eye contact,’ Smith’s voice is a blatantly-pleasured shudder and John’s fists tighten even further, his shoulders twitching: this monster must be eradicated and John can just picture it, even as he hears the muffled protests, the rustling struggles that can only come from Sherlock on the recording, that he doesn’t quite know were purely fake or instinctive reaction.

Was Sherlock just putting on a show – just acting the helpless patient, just to highlight Smith’s truly horrific nature? Or was he actually scared, in the end – fighting off Culverton Smith for as long as possible, wondering if John was truly going to turn up…Putting his life on the line to save John’s. And bring a murderer to justice, to boot.

‘I like to watch it happen – ‘

Click.

‘John.’

He opens his eyes, didn’t realise he’d squeezed them shut – glances down at a puncturing pain in his hands: his fingernails, digging into his palms, crescent shapes scattered along the skin. Lestrade eyes him, his gaze almost seeking, one finger on the off switch of the recorder.

Why, John wonders, did no-one ever pick up on it? The man could have been Charles Magnussen’s twin, for crying out loud, his younger, evil brother, just as reprehensible, just as cruel. And how could anyone have let the man into a children’s ward at a hospital – a hospital for crying out loud? If that had been Rosie – if Rosie had been one of the little girls in the ward, there would have been no stopping John, no hesitation, if he had known.

‘Alright?’ Lestrade asks softly and John places a hand over his face, just grunts, low and furious.

‘Mary told him to,’ Lestrade replies, in what sounds like a suspicious attempt to comfort. ‘She told him, John.’

John shakes his head, shakes it firmly. There’s a thing inside him, a shaking, trembling cloud of a thing that’s been shivering with rain for weeks and he thought he’d lost it, thought it had all rained down on Sherlock (and Sherlock lying there, letting him do what he wanted, he’s entitled, not fighting back, he used to fight back) and it’s still there. It’s still there.

‘If he gets off,’ he hisses the words at Lestrade, not because he’s angry at him but because he’s seen it, he saw it with Moriarty and he saw it with Magnussen – it cannot happen again. ‘If he gets off.’

‘He won’t,’ Lestrade assures, as if he believes that John would actually parade up and down the stairs at Baker Street; would maintain a twenty-four-hour watch with his gun while Sherlock and Rosie slept, if it meant keeping Culverton Smith away. John can’t guarantee he wouldn’t. ‘He’s confessed, it’s been signed off and people are starting to come forward. He can’t, John,’ he repeats because maybe John looks cynical, like he doesn’t believe him – but after everything he’s seen, can John really be blamed for feeling like that?

If he couldn’t protect Sherlock before...

He stares hard at the recorder, containing the confession from inside his cane. Had Sherlock slipped into the house when they had all been out, him and Molly and Rosie? Had he used a key he had cut himself, or had he just managed to open a window and sneak through? Was John so predictable that he knew exactly where he was keeping it, in the corner of the kitchen cupboard, brought with him out of some misplaced sense of not wanting to leave it in Baker Street as clutter, but somehow not wanting to get rid of it; a reminder, really, of what Sherlock had done for him (the very reason why, when it came to making that final farewell, John had chosen that. I won’t forget, the cane promised. I won’t. But apparently, even the gratitude of that was anticipated). Had the twat been high while he did it?

Clever bastard. Clever, stupid bastard.

‘I put him in there,’ he says it aloud and it doesn’t help him to feel any better. ‘And he was on his own.’

Lestrade shrugs. ‘Wouldn’t have worked otherwise. You’d never have let him get close enough for us to get the confession. Wasn’t ideal, but…’ he shrugs, with a sudden, almost-kind smile. He watches as John takes a gigantic sniff, wipes his nose with his sleeve; then, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out some tissues, slides them across to him.

(And a week ago, he had been prepared – more than prepared, after taking John’s statement – to charge him for Grievous Bodily Harm).

It’s a vicious cycle, John reflects dully – they all seem to have grown accustomed, haven’t they? All of them, in the end, him, Mary, Lestrade – even Mycroft: this constant, violently faithful idea of Sherlock always, always being the sacrificial lamb. Once, John would have thrown himself forward as the candidate – being kidnapped and drugged by the bastard himself tended to do that to you. But, since that windy, fateful afternoon at Barts…

Not too long ago, John had barely been able to look at Sherlock, had blamed him out of some misplaced sense: Mary’s last stand. But in the end, hers, and hers alone.

And now they’re sharing tea and cake, he and Sherlock, in a sun-streamed 221b, watching Rosie play on the floor by their feet as Sherlock recovers. John has another appointment with his ever-patient therapist before too long – for a woman who had their session barged upon by a furious landlady and a sky-high consulting detective, she seems remarkably dexterous about it all.

(‘It is what it is,’ Sherlock murmured above him, gentle and gentlemanly in equal measure and that simply kindness had been what made John give up – he had let himself go, sobbed into his best friend’s chest and despite everything, despite being felled by him just a few days prior, Sherlock had stood firm and tall and never faltered).

‘I need to go,’ he tells Lestrade now, ‘He’s – I’d rather not leave him on his own for too long.’ It’s a confession of sorts, a kind of yeah, this is where we are now, the simple fact that it’s not so much John and Molly and Mrs Hudson and Mike Stamford doing the watching – it’s mostly John. Not all, but mostly. 

Lestrade nods, understanding and takes the hand John offers. Something in John loosens, relief that on top of everything else, he may just be on his way to earning the forgiveness of another friend and he gestures to the recorder.

‘Listen…thanks. For… for that.’ It sounds grim, he knows, even to his own ears, offering his gratitude for this of all things, and the grimace they share confirms it but it’s still…done. It’s something that will no longer keep him up at night, at least not with speculation. Maybe other things will keep him up instead; he’s grown used to not sleeping. But not that.

‘Come by and see him, yeah?’ he offers; Lestrade grins, cheerful, claps him on the back, successfully evaporating the last of the disturbed tension in the room and opens the door for him.

‘Sure, I will. Tell him to get well soon, I’ve got everyone here up my arse. Turns out he’s a bit of a lovable fungus before too long.’

*

When John arrives back, it’s to find Sherlock dozing on the sofa as per, Rosie across his chest and held securely in place by Sherlock’s careful hands, one on her back and one by her feet, both of them fast asleep.

What John doesn’t expect to see – and which rather tarnishes the adorable image – is Mycroft, currently sitting in his chair that’s been pulled up by the sofa, quietly reading a book John is pretty sure is from their shelf.

‘Hello,’ John manages and Mycroft looks up with a supreme air of ‘Oh, hello, I didn’t expect to see you there even though I clearly heard you coming up the stairs and I’m a Holmes, so I recognise your footsteps a mile away.’ Or maybe he deliberately wasn’t paying attention and just deleted the sound of John’s tread from his own memory Palace. Or Galaxy, maybe? John wants to ask, but that would probably be suicidal.

‘Good afternoon, Doctor Watson,’ Mycroft offers up a polite-but-not really smile, snapping the book shut and getting to his feet.

‘Afternoon.’ John folds his arms, feeling oddly defensive. He’s never been particularly intimidated by Mycroft – just vaguely embarrassed at best and that was only that one time in the early days when Sherlock dolled him up in a suit and shoved him out the door – but there’s a very good reason for a lack of friendliness from Mycroft right now and that reason is lying asleep on the sofa between them, still healing from a battering.

‘Your daughter is positively blooming,’ Mycroft compliments, smiling tightly at him as though he can read his thoughts. John finds a half-smile at that and glances at Rosie, her head laying on Sherlock’s chest, her little hands tucked up underneath, clinging to his pyjama top. Sherlock is a peaceful sleeper when he wants to be, looking comparatively sedate when he’s dead to the world. It’s one of many reasons why John used to try and bully him into getting three or four hours a day – that, and Sherlock being awake for days on end and flouncing about on tea and little else being enough to make John wince. He doesn’t know how the hell the man managed while he was gone.

Self-importance, a voice scolds, sounding much like Mary, and John clears his throat. She’s not wrong; it’s hard to feel self-important about anything regarding Sherlock’s welfare right now and he’s sure – he’s very sure – that Mycroft knows it as well.

‘Thanks. You, er, been reading to him?’ He gestures to the book in an attempt to remain polite; a single, silent chuckle moves Mycroft’s shoulders and he looks amused, as though he knows precisely what John is doing.  

‘Merely reminding myself of one or two factors of modern life while my brother rests.’ He puts it down on the chair and then turns to regard John, leaning on his umbrella, almost daring him with a look to contradict him. John really wants to, but he won’t.

‘Mrs Hudson’s bridge club was rescheduled this week,’ Mycroft informs him, silkily, ‘so I assured her I would take a little time out of my schedule until Molly Hooper arrived.’

John nods, remembering; that’s right, Molly asked before if she could take Rosie out for a stroll this afternoon, just to the park and back again. She’s not been very happy recently, John reflects dimly, has been quieter than usual as she fed and washed and played with Rosie, moved around him without saying a word. He had known why – the truth was dislodged somewhere inside and he had regarded it in his quietest moments, when he simply couldn’t move, could do nothing except remember: she was angry, too, but not with Sherlock. It brimmed as they moved around each other, her own quiet rage filling his rooms. She had been there, but she had been furious.

Next to Sherlock, she’s probably the most honest person John knows.  

 ‘Well. Good of you,’ he says now. ‘Thanks for, you know.’ He glances at Rosie – there are worse things, after all, than having Mycroft Holmes on hand to watch over your daughter. Well, John can’t exactly think of any, right now, but then it is Mycroft. ‘I’ll get Rosie up in a bit, get her ready for Molly. Sherlock should be awake before too long, he’s been out like a light.’

‘Yes. I imagine getting pummelled by one’s doctor does such a thing.’ Mycroft’s voice is a blade, sharpened but steady and John stops in his tracks, glances at him. The man says nothing, but everything in him has shifted and he’s regarding John with open distaste – distrust, even.

John bites his lip; turns on his heel, meets his gaze. This is the closest they’ve come to having this conversation; there had been a heavy silence and then a phonecall, the night Sherlock left his flat for the first time in weeks (and John had wondered, just for a second; what that meant, wondered why Sherlock was the one holing himself up when he was the one who had lost his wife); and then spooks and another drugs-bust.

‘Yeah,’ he states it, simply. ‘It does.’

There’s a long, heavy pause as they look at each other; something in Mycroft’s face seems to shift – consideration, maybe – but John stays his gaze, the only way he knows how to admit it: Yes, I know. I know. That was bad.

Mycroft raises his head then, just a fraction, something that John only spots when you’ve spent six years navigating your life around the Holmes boys – although that indication given before, the slip of Mycroft’s tongue, still lingers, has been lingering at the back of his mind for some time and that he had almost forgotten about; a very potential truth that had been filed away when he dashed off to save his own Holmes Familiar and that had almost drained out of his system with his tears for Mary, damp patches on Sherlock’s shirt and dressing gown.

Almost.

Why the mystery? he wants to challenge and if there is another sibling, then why isn’t John allowed to know? Mycroft was all too eager to make his acquaintance within twelve hours of his meeting Sherlock – would another brother be just as eager, even more so? Is John to expect a visit in the middle of the night?

Is there something else, he thinks at Mycroft, to this life that you’ve carved out, that’s made you both what you are?

He doesn’t, though and he knows Mycroft knows that he wants to, knows he can see it, dangling down like a rope between them with the temptation to just pull. There’s a warning tilt of the eyebrows, a twitch in the jaw, a reminder that John has escaped arrest but not necessarily incarceration and John sets his jaw in return; glances at Sherlock.

Does he know?

He doesn’t get an answer, but then he’s not expecting one as the moment is broken by the snuffling and mewling cry of Rosie as she shifts on Sherlock’s stomach and comes back to herself. John is there, scooping her off as Sherlock himself starts to stir.

‘Mm, sorry,’ he mumbles sleepily.

‘It’s alright,’ John assures, lifting Rosie clear so he can adjust. ‘It’s alright – it’s okay, darling,’ he soothes Rosie, using his spare hand to replace the duvet. ‘Go back to sleep if you want, Sherlock.’  

‘Mm, and miss all the fun.’ Sherlock gives a half-lidded, half-there smile to his brother, standing by, followed by a wink. Then he shuts his eyes and turns over onto his side, falls back into a doze. Mycroft watches him for a long moment and then his pupils dash to John – a gaze which John, currently rocking Rosie, doesn’t fail to ignore.

‘He’ll be fine,’ he says in response to the man’s unasked question, over Rosie’s head. ‘He’s due a check-up, but I’ll give him a once-over once Molly’s gone out. He’s healing,’ he assures, as Mycroft’s eyes focus back on Sherlock for a long moment, a swallow in his throat. John can understand; Sherlock’s face still bears marks, the cut above his eye, for example, that had to be stitched and is still blatant evidence of John’s fists (and the marks on John’s own knuckles are still faint).  

And as much as John fails to get on with Harry, if he was the one talking to the person who had helped put her in a hospital ward…

‘Very well.’ Mycroft tears his eyes away, making the declaration in something like deliberate finality, maybe relief. ‘Good afternoon, Doctor Watson, Miss Watson.’

He bows his head a little to Rosie, his smile a fraction warmer towards her than it is towards John and then strolls past them, umbrella in a slight swing (and to this day, nothing can convince John that that ever-faithful brolly isn’t actually some kind of concealed weapon) and takes his leave, disappearing down the stairs in that almost soundless way he seems to manage. John waits until the front door closes with a firm click – maybe Mycroft knows he’s listening and shuts it for effect – and then swings the flat door shut and goes to warm up a bottle for Rosie.

If he’s really honest with himself, he wouldn’t blame Mycroft for it, he really wouldn’t…

… But John doesn’t want to leave Sherlock now.

*

Molly shows up at two to take Rosie out and John smiles at her reassuringly, carries the pram down the stairs and lets his eyes linger on her as Molly pushes Rosie up the high-street. It’s not that he’s particularly worried; he knows by now that Mycroft has surveillance on Sherlock’s flat and that Molly’s own significance to Mycroft’s network has increased ever since she helped him and Sherlock fake Sherlock’s death, four years ago now. Even without that, if she wants to be, Molly can appear unassuming enough to just… slip by, to detract any attention or danger – even though John knows by now that behind the doe-eyes and the desperate apologies (Stop apologising, he’s wanted to tell her, more than once, stop sounding like you’re saying sorry for your very existence) there isn’t just a heart as big as London, but also a solid spine.  

In the silence of the flat, he sits on the sofa – right on the edge of it, with care – and places a hand to Sherlock’s forehead, checking his temperature: not quite as cool as he would like. There’s been the odd illness as part of the healing process, a sore throat or two, but given how hot it is that’s no surprise. The man hadn’t showered for what smelt like weeks by the time they were brought back together – Lestrade wasn’t wrong when he said fungus – and judging by the amount of time he’s been sleeping, he hadn’t rested, either.

Bloody idiot, John thinks, absent-mindedly brushing some of the fringe away from Sherlock’s forehead, the strands tingling against his fingers like a kind of lively string. He had helped Sherlock wash it a few days before, soaking it under the shower-head and then, with a towel around Sherlock’s shoulders, escorted him on still-shaky legs to his bedroom, combing through the knots and the kinks.

If I had been here, he had thought savagely, taking the comb to a particularly rebellious lock – ‘Ow!’ Sherlock had complained – this would never have bloody happened.

I like to make people into things.

John squeezes his eyes shut, shakes the thought away, thinks about going to find some thinner sheets or maybe run a bath he can coax Sherlock into to cool him down and help him feel fresh – but then the detective stirs under his careful hand and John pauses, stays his palm, as Sherlock opens his eyes, focuses, gives him a little wave.

‘Hello.’

‘Hello,’ John parrots. ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.’

‘No, fine. Mm.’ Sherlock shifts a bit, looking content and well rested. ‘Rosie?’ he checks then.

‘Molly,’ John rejoins shortly, contemplative and Sherlock nods, lets his eyes shut again.

‘Obviously.’

‘Mm.’ John nods back and after a beat, carefully lets his palm just move through his friend’s dark, soft curls, the motion almost hypnotic in its way and when Sherlock shows no sign of distress, he does it a few more times, slow and easy. It helps, somehow, the sheer physical contact of this beneath his hands, evidence of Sherlock’s continuing to breathe – Sherlock, who hums a little at the touch, sounding surprised but pleased and he lounges his head towards John’s palm, languid and lazy and here, rather than on a slab on the morgue, Culverton Smith interfering with him, another body to play with to his heart’s content.  

I like to make people into things.

Sherlock, John thinks with sudden determination, isn’t anyone’s thing. He’s Rosie’s godfather. And John’s best friend.

‘Don’t die, Sherlock.’ He says it, means it, throws the words out into the room and Sherlock’s eyes open again, focus on him as John stays his hand. 

‘I’m serious. I don’t,’ he catches himself, coughs. ‘I don’t want you to die.’

Sherlock blinks, caught-off guard almost, his eyes flitting over John’s face in something like concern, curiosity.

‘I’m not dead, John.’

‘No,’ John agrees, with a hearty chuckle pushing its way through and he puts a hand to his forehead, composes himself a moment at being spoken to like an idiot because no, Sherlock Holmes is still part of this world. ‘No, you’re not – and I’d rather you weren’t. We need you.’ And as soon as he says it, something; a thing that he spent weeks trying to ignore, trying to jam, finally gives way – finally falls back to fill the gap he was pretending wasn’t empty. ‘We both do, Rosie and I, we – we really, really need you, Sherlock and Rosie – she loves you, she missed you while you were – while I was gone.’

‘Oh.’ Sherlock blinks. ‘Um. Really?’ He tilts his head to look to the left and John sees him taking in the small pile of cuddly toys that he’s left scattered on and around his chair – tugged up and out of the way to prevent Sherlock or Mrs Hudson or even himself falling over them. (Mainly Sherlock, though, with his wobbly gait every time he gets up from a nap).

‘Yep.’ He smiles kindly as Sherlock looks up at him, because there’s no beating around the bush: Rosamund Mary Watson well and truly adores Sherlock Holmes.

‘She kept – she kept throwing her rattle out,’ he confides. ‘It was like she was waiting for you to give it back. I wasn’t good enough.’

For some reason, the memory of that – of his daughter throwing her toys from her high-chair, waiting for someone to pick it up, and only him available to do it, limited patience in-between laundry and food shops and sorting out Mary’s funeral and affairs and fighting the urge to just go back to bed – brings a lump to his throat and he has to look away. It’s not that – he’s not embarrassed about showing emotion in front of Sherlock, he’s not – not anymore, not when he spent the better part of an hour wailing in the man’s arms – but this is difficult.

‘John?’ Sherlock’s voice is gentle and there’s a hand on his shoulder – since said wailing session, Sherlock has become a lot more at ease at offering physical comfort. They both have.

Say it. Just say it.

‘I’m sorry,’ John manages the words, lets them loose; the words he should have said a week ago, a month ago, even, when Rosie was looking away from him, looking for not one but two other people that had been part of her life one minute and were gone the next. ‘I’m so sorry. For everything. For,’ he gestures to Sherlock. ‘What I did.’  

Beating down, blow after blow onto Sherlock’s unresisting body, not being fought off by Sherlock but restrained instead by strangers… It’s too much and he has to shut his eyes, has to breathe out, breathe out the image of Sherlock’s bloodied face gazing towards him, looking for something and receiving only accusation, after weeks of silent recrimination.

And it had felt good – for about half a moment. Then it had felt like someone was squeezing his chest, his stomach, right inside a vice and left him standing by a hospital bed in sheer uncertainty.

‘You were grieving,’ Sherlock murmurs softly, now, almost knowingly - almost healed and all-forgiving. John shakes his head; that’s not the point.

‘Doesn’t matter. I’m sorry.’ And he is; it’s been burning through his veins for a week, since the moment he went to see Sherlock in hospital, since he looked at him and realised he couldn’t stay – not because Sherlock had cut the bonds between them, but because John had, with his own bare hands.

‘If you don’t forgive me,’ he says it bluntly, honestly; owes Sherlock this much at least, ‘then I really wouldn’t blame you.’

Sherlock puts his head to the side and then he smiles softly, a half-tilt. Then he does the most surprising thing he’s done since that hug: reaches out and puts his hand over John’s, claps it tightly, warmly, gives him a faint wink with his still-sore left eye. It’s alright.

 John bites his lip; doesn’t care how exposed that makes him feel right now. Bloody hell. He turns his hand around under Sherlock’s and squeezes it.

John. Do better.

‘If I had just… not texted,’ he manages finally; realises that he has to explain this as well, this… other thing that’s been lingering for weeks, since the moment he looked Sherlock Holmes in the eye underneath the aquarium and accused him of breaking his word, just so John wouldn’t feel like he was the only one who had. ‘I mean – you had your eye on the ball, didn’t you? You always have your eye on the ball.’ He meets Sherlock’s eyes, the admission clear; the almost-affair.

‘And I hated that it was you and not me paying attention, when it should have been me. She was my wife. And so I told myself I hated you,’ he raises his voice, just a little, as Sherlock opens his mouth to argue, the way he always argues for John if he feels he has to; he has to say this, say it now, ‘for that. But I don’t. So. Don’t… die. For me. Don’t die. Okay?’

He takes his own hand, clasps it on top of Sherlock’s, the detective’s hand large and nearly-white between his palms, covered on both sides in both his own. In this position, he can feel the steady tread of Sherlock’s pulse. Promise me.

Sherlock blinks; takes it in, nods slowly with a half-tilt of the mouth, something in his face unfailingly open and recipient, even kind (he’s become kinder, John realises. Maybe he was always kind, under all that early bravado, that coldness and John just didn’t see it).

‘Just… get better.’ He removes a hand and slightly embarrassed, grips his own hair instead, mussing his combover (a style he began to favour and which neither Sherlock or Mary seemed to protest, so it stayed). ‘Get better, Sherlock. Please.’

And it’s fairly contradictory – downright hypocritical, he knows that, particularly as he was the short-tempered bastard who kicked it all off in the first place, who punched the button that led them all here. But. It’s what he can do, now.  

‘Okay.’ Sherlock agrees, simple and more eloquent than John can ever manage and then his smile widens with ease, his eyes crinkled and warm as he regards John with oddly gentle eyes, squeezing the hand he’s holding again.

It feels like absolution.

John snuffles, glancing at their joined hands, wondering just how the hell Sherlock puts up with this and contemplating the fact that they should really, really be breaking that martyrdom role that he’s put himself into. They sit in silence for a while before John finally recovers himself, reaches out to grasp the back of Sherlock’s neck briefly before drawing him in for a hug, wrapping his arms around Sherlock’s shoulders and pulling him close.  

No more of this. His hands grasp at the familiar dressing gown and he buries his face against the cotton of Sherlock’s pyjama top.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers, almost mute – but Sherlock hears him, all the same.

*