Chapter Text
Sherlock Holmes had never believed in ghosts.
This was an easy stance to take when he had spent a lifetime uncovering the mundane truths behind the seemingly supernatural. Flickering lights were faulty wiring. Unexplained sounds in the night were settling pipes or nocturnal vermin. The dead, once gone, did not linger.
And yet, in the months following his fall from the roof of St. Bartholomew’s, he felt increasingly like a specter himself—drifting through the edges of the world, unmoored, unseen, existing only in the spaces between.
It had taken him two years to dismantle Moriarty’s vast and tangled network, striking down one criminal empire after another with methodical precision. Two years spent in the shadows, in foreign cities where his name was unknown, his features altered by dye and disguise. Two years of blood, exhaustion, and ruthless efficiency—until there was nothing left of Moriarty’s kingdom but ashes.
And now, finally, he was home.
Or at least, he was in London. The word home had become uncertain, a shape he no longer recognized.
He had rehearsed the moment of return a thousand times in his head, precisely calculating every variable. And yet, for all his careful preparation, he had not accounted for this: standing outside 221B Baker Street, staring up at the windows with his pulse an unsteady drumbeat against his ribs.
John Watson no longer lived there.
Mrs. Hudson had informed him of this with quiet sadness when he first arrived, clutching his arm as though to make sure he was solid flesh and bone. ("You are staying for tea, dear, no arguments.") John had moved out a year ago, she told him. He never spoke of Sherlock anymore.
Sherlock had nodded, impassive, even as something cold and sharp drove itself beneath his ribs.
Now, weeks later, he had yet to see John face to face. He had watched from a distance: John exiting his clinic, John walking along the Thames, John sitting at a café with a book, brows furrowed as he turned the pages. His hair was a little shorter, his posture a little heavier.
Sherlock had thought, foolishly, that returning would be the hardest part. But this—this standing still, this waiting—was worse.
And so he found himself at Regent’s Park one overcast afternoon, the very place John had unknowingly led him to time and again.
The first time Sherlock had followed him here, it had been out of mere curiosity—an idle indulgence. But then he had watched John sit down on the same weathered bench, exhale slowly, and tilt his face toward the sky as if it might offer him something. He had come back the next week. And the week after that.
Now, as Sherlock walked past the iron gates and onto the gravel path, he did not allow himself to hesitate. He adjusted his coat, squared his shoulders, and strode forward.
Then he saw her.
A little girl, no older than five, sat cross-legged beneath a tree, humming to herself as she carefully arranged a collection of twigs into a pattern on the ground. Her blonde curls were slightly wind-tousled, her small hands quick and careful. Sherlock had taken precisely two steps past her when her voice rang out.
“You have funny shoes.”
He halted. Blinked. Looked down at his polished Oxfords. “They’re entirely ordinary.”
The girl tilted her head. “They look like shiny beetles.”
Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “You have a very particular way of looking at the world.”
She grinned. “That’s what my daddy says, too.”
Something shifted in his mind—an old instinct clicking into place. The curve of her nose, the faint dusting of freckles across her cheekbones, the shape of her eyes. His pulse leapt.
"Your father," he said slowly. "He wouldn't happen to be Dr. John Watson, would he?"
Her face brightened. “You know Daddy?”
There was a footstep behind him.
Sherlock turned.
And there was John.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
John looked older, but not in a way Sherlock had expected—there were more lines at the corners of his eyes, yes, but they were not just from grief. He looked settled. More himself.
Sherlock, on the other hand, felt utterly unmoored.
John cleared his throat, his gaze flicking from Sherlock to his daughter, as if trying to reconcile the two images. Then:
“Rosie, love, why don’t you go play by the pond for a minute?”
Rosie frowned. “But Daddy—”
John ruffled her curls. “Just for a minute, alright?”
She made an exaggerated sigh but trotted off obediently.
Sherlock exhaled a slow breath. “She’s—”
“Mine,” John said simply.
Sherlock nodded. The question of how was secondary. What mattered was that she existed, that John was a father now, that there was an entire life Sherlock had never even imagined for him.
There was a long silence.
Then John crossed his arms. “So. You’re back.”
“I’m back.”
John let out a short, humorless laugh. “You know, I pictured this moment a hundred times. How I’d react. What I’d say.”
Sherlock met his gaze. “And?”
“And I never quite settled on whether I’d punch you or hug you.”
Sherlock arched a brow. “A dilemma, certainly.”
John huffed. “Yeah, well. Reckon you deserve both.”
A pause. Then, softer:
“Did you ever plan on telling me?”
Sherlock swallowed. He had no answer that would be sufficient. "I thought—I believed it would be safer for you."
John shook his head. “Christ, Sherlock.” He let out a slow breath, glancing toward Rosie, then back at Sherlock. “You should go.”
Sherlock’s heart stuttered.
But then John ran a hand through his hair and muttered, “Or… you could walk with me.”
Sherlock inhaled sharply. “Alright.”
And so they walked.
They walked in silence.
Not the comfortable kind of silence they had once shared, when John would read the paper and Sherlock would conduct an experiment in their sitting room, both existing in easy parallel. No, this was the silence of words unsaid, of wounds not yet healed, of two people who had once been everything to each other and now stood on the precarious edge of something else.
John kept his hands in his pockets, his shoulders tense as they strolled along the park’s path. Sherlock matched his pace, resisting the urge to analyze every tiny shift in John’s expression, every flicker of his fingers, every inhalation that seemed to precede an unsaid thought.
Rosie ran ahead, pausing every few moments to inspect something on the ground—a particularly interesting pebble, a fallen leaf.
Sherlock exhaled slowly. “She’s clever.”
John hummed. “Yeah.”
“She gets that from you.”
John let out a small huff of laughter, shaking his head. “Not likely.”
Sherlock hesitated. “She’s happy.”
That, at least, was undeniable. Rosie was luminous, all bright eyes and boundless curiosity. It unsettled something in Sherlock, seeing John as a father, watching him carry the weight of responsibility not as a burden but as something steadying.
“I try,” John said, voice quiet. Then, after a beat, “You never asked.”
Sherlock glanced at him. “About?”
“Her.” John’s voice was still calm, but there was something sharp underneath. “You never asked if I had someone. If I’d moved on. If I’d built a life without you.”
Sherlock swallowed. He had wondered, of course—had imagined John in a thousand different futures, some where he had married again, some where he had left London altogether, some where he had never quite let go of the past. But Sherlock had never allowed himself to dwell too long on those thoughts, because in the end, the answer had never changed anything.
“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Sherlock said at last.
John stopped walking. “Wouldn’t it?”
Sherlock turned to face him. “John, I—” He stopped, lips pressing together in frustration. Words had always been his weapon, his scalpel, his means of dissecting the world. And yet, in this moment, he felt clumsy. Ill-equipped.
John exhaled, glancing away. “I grieved you, Sherlock.”
The words were quiet, but they hit like a blow.
Sherlock’s fingers curled into his coat. “I know.”
John’s jaw tightened. “No. You don’t. You don’t know what it was like. You weren’t there. You didn’t see—” He broke off, inhaled sharply, visibly collecting himself.
Sherlock’s throat felt tight. “I never wanted—”
John let out a bitter laugh. “Didn’t you?”
Sherlock stared at him, searching his face. “No.”
John’s eyes flicked over him, scrutinizing, assessing, before he huffed another breath and muttered, “Christ, you’re an idiot.”
Sherlock’s lips twitched, the ghost of something almost amused. “So I’ve been told.”
John shook his head, running a hand through his hair. Then, softer, “I don’t know what you expect, Sherlock.”
Sherlock hesitated. “I don’t expect anything.”
John sighed. “Right. Because you just so happened to appear at my favorite park by complete coincidence.”
Sherlock said nothing.
John let out a breath, looking away toward Rosie. She had plopped herself onto the grass and was now arranging a small collection of leaves into a meticulous pattern.
“I don’t know how to do this,” John admitted, voice quiet.
Sherlock looked at him. “Neither do I.”
A beat of silence. Then, after a moment, John exhaled and said, “Well. That makes two of us.”
Something in Sherlock’s chest loosened.
It started with small things.
Sherlock never outright asked to see John again, but he kept appearing—at the park, at the café near John’s clinic, outside the bookshop on Marylebone Road. And somehow, impossibly, John let him stay.
Their conversations remained careful at first, measured. But with each passing encounter, the old rhythms began to return.
And then, one afternoon, as Rosie tugged on Sherlock’s sleeve to demand that he deduce a series of pebbles she had collected, John sighed, rubbed a hand over his face, and muttered, “You’d better come to dinner, then.”
Sherlock blinked. “Dinner.”
John rolled his eyes. “Yes, dinner. A meal. Food. You do still eat, don’t you?”
Sherlock smirked. “On occasion.”
John gave him a dry look. “Right. Well. Seven o’clock. Try not to get yourself killed before then.”
Sherlock tilted his head. “No promises.”
John shook his head, exasperated. “Unbelievable.”
But there was the smallest, quietest hint of something else in his expression—something that might, in another life, have been called hope.
Dinner turned into a second invitation. And a third.
Sherlock discovered, much to his own bewilderment, that he enjoyed spending time at John’s new home—a small but cozy flat in Kensington, filled with books and mismatched furniture and Rosie’s scattered drawings.
They began to fall into something like familiarity again.
It was different now, of course. John had responsibilities beyond their past life at Baker Street, and Sherlock found himself… adjusting. He learned how to interact with Rosie in ways that didn’t send her shrieking with laughter (though he had to admit, he found her amusement rather gratifying). He learned the delicate art of setting a table without knocking things over with his long limbs.
And, most of all, he learned patience.
John, for all his reluctant acceptance of Sherlock’s presence, was still guarded. Still wary. Still unsure of where they stood.
And then, one evening, as Sherlock sat on John’s sofa with a book and a cup of tea, John sighed, leaned back against the armrest, and said, “You know, Mycroft told me I’d be an idiot to let you back in.”
Sherlock arched a brow. “And yet, here I am.”
John huffed a quiet laugh. “Yeah. Here you are.”
A pause. Then:
“You don’t regret it?” John asked, voice softer now.
Sherlock looked at him, holding his gaze. “No.”
John exhaled slowly, studying him for a long moment.
Then, finally, he murmured, “Good.”
Sherlock smiled.
And just like that, the long road back didn’t seem quite so impossible.
It was never just one moment.
It was a hundred moments, accumulating like grains of sand in an hourglass, slow and inevitable. It was quiet dinners and unspoken glances, it was Rosie curling up against Sherlock’s side with complete trust, it was John laughing at something Sherlock said and not catching himself before he did.
It was all the tiny ways they had begun to belong to each other again.
And yet, there was something they hadn’t touched, something they hadn’t named. A line neither had dared to cross.
Not yet.
One evening, when Rosie was asleep and the flat was quiet, John found himself watching Sherlock in the soft glow of the lamp.
He was reading, or pretending to. The book lay open in his lap, fingers resting lightly on the page, but his gaze was distant, unfocused.
John knew that look.
“You’re thinking,” he murmured.
Sherlock’s lips twitched. “I’m always thinking.”
John huffed a quiet laugh. “Yeah. But not like this.”
Sherlock’s fingers curled slightly against the book’s spine.
There was a long pause before he said, “It’s different, being here.”
John tilted his head. “Different how?”
Sherlock inhaled, eyes flicking to his.
And for a moment—just a moment—John thought he might say something dangerous. Something irreversible.
But instead, Sherlock merely exhaled, shaking his head slightly. “It just is.”
John held his gaze for a long beat.
Then, voice quiet, he said, “You never said what you wanted, you know.”
Sherlock’s expression flickered, just for a second. “What do you mean?”
John swallowed. He wasn’t sure what had compelled him to ask—not in such a blunt, unforgiving way. But it had been simmering for months now, a silent question neither of them had dared voice.
“After everything,” John continued, keeping his voice steady. “After coming back. After—” He exhaled, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “Why did you come back, Sherlock?”
Sherlock’s fingers tightened around the book.
And then, without a word, he closed it. Set it aside.
John watched as Sherlock’s hands—those impossibly precise hands—folded together in his lap. As if steadying himself.
And then—
“I never left you, John.”
The words landed softly between them, but they struck like a match, igniting something fragile and aching in John’s chest.
John exhaled sharply, looking away. “That’s not—” He broke off, jaw tightening.
Sherlock was still watching him, gaze steady, quiet.
John swallowed, voice rough. “You did leave.”
Sherlock’s throat worked. “I know.”
A long silence.
Then, finally, John shook his head. “What do you want, Sherlock?”
Sherlock stared at him.
The air between them felt impossibly thin, stretched tight like a violin string waiting to be plucked.
Sherlock opened his mouth. Then closed it.
For a single, unbearable moment, John thought he wouldn’t answer.
And then—
Sherlock exhaled, long and slow, before murmuring, “You.”
John’s heart stopped.
A silence fell, thick and weighted.
John swallowed, pulse thrumming in his throat. “You—” He stopped, let out a breath, shook his head slightly. “Sherlock, you can’t just—”
“I can.” Sherlock’s voice was low, unwavering. “And I am.”
John’s stomach flipped. His hands clenched into fists against his thighs.
He wasn’t sure if he was furious or relieved.
Maybe both.
Sherlock continued watching him, gaze open, unguarded. It was disorienting, how much he was giving—how utterly un-Sherlockian this quiet, patient honesty was.
John exhaled sharply. Ran a hand through his hair. “You—Christ.” He let out a quiet laugh, disbelieving. “You really don’t do anything halfway, do you?”
A small smirk tugged at Sherlock’s lips. “You already knew that.”
John shook his head, still half-smiling. He exhaled, shaking his head again.
Then, quieter, “Are you sure?”
Sherlock’s expression softened, something indescribable flickering in his gaze.
“Yes,” he murmured.
The certainty in his voice did something to John, unraveled something deep in his chest.
He swallowed.
Then, very slowly, he leaned forward.
Sherlock didn’t move.
Didn’t even breathe.
John hesitated, eyes flickering over Sherlock’s face, cataloguing every minute shift in expression.
And then, finally, he closed the space between them.
The kiss was soft. Tentative.
Sherlock inhaled sharply, a quiet, shuddering sound against John’s lips, and then—then he was kissing back, hesitant but unyielding, as if committing every second to memory.
John’s hand lifted, curling gently around the nape of Sherlock’s neck, pulling him closer.
Sherlock’s hands, those steady, methodical hands, came up to grip John’s waist—light at first, then tightening, like he wasn’t quite willing to let go.
When they finally parted, neither of them spoke.
John exhaled, forehead resting against Sherlock’s.
Sherlock was still holding onto him.
And John… John found that he didn’t mind.
A year later
Sherlock had never been one for mornings.
John, however, was.
Which was why, when Sherlock stirred awake to the faint sounds of movement in the kitchen, he did not immediately react. He merely buried his face deeper into the pillow, exhaling a long breath against the linen, and willed the world to be silent.
It wasn’t.
A small, delighted giggle broke through the morning hush, followed by the clinking of plates.
Sherlock cracked one eye open.
The flat was bathed in golden morning light, casting soft shadows against the walls. The warmth of the sheets was tempting, but the warmth of something else—something new, something infinitely more dangerous—drew him out of bed.
With a sigh, he padded toward the kitchen.
John was there, of course.
And so was Rosie.
She was perched on a chair, swinging her legs and grinning as she proudly held up a messily assembled peanut butter sandwich. There was an embarrassing amount of peanut butter on her cheek, and—if Sherlock had to hazard a guess—probably in her hair as well.
John, standing beside her, was biting back a laugh.
When he glanced up and saw Sherlock lingering in the doorway, his smile softened. “Morning, sleeping beauty.”
Sherlock made a disgruntled sound, rubbing a hand over his face. “The concept of beauty sleep is a fallacy.”
Rosie beamed at him. “You are pretty, though.”
John outright laughed.
Sherlock stared at them, unimpressed. “This is harassment.”
John, still grinning, turned back to the mess Rosie had made. “We’re making breakfast,” he explained, gesturing vaguely to the catastrophe on the counter.
Sherlock observed it, disapproving. “I see that.”
Rosie, completely unfazed, patted the seat beside her. “Come sit!”
Sherlock hesitated.
Not because he didn’t want to—he did, strangely enough—but because some small part of him still wasn’t used to this. This softness, this welcome.
This belonging.
John must have caught something in his expression, because his amusement faded into something gentler. Something warmer.
“It’s just breakfast, Sherlock,” he said, quiet but certain.
Sherlock swallowed.
And then, without another word, he stepped forward.
He sat beside Rosie, who immediately offered him half of her abysmally made sandwich, smiling so wide her nose scrunched.
Sherlock took it.
Took a bite.
It was terrible.
Rosie giggled. “Good, right?”
Sherlock glanced at John, who was watching him with something unreadable in his gaze.
Sherlock hummed. “It’s… unique.”
John let out a breathy laugh, shaking his head. “God, you’re awful.”
Sherlock smirked. “And yet, you kissed me anyway.”
John rolled his eyes, but he was still smiling.
And Sherlock—Sherlock felt something in his chest settle, quiet and certain.
It wasn’t grand gestures or dramatic confessions. It was this.
Messy sandwiches. Morning light. Laughter that wasn’t just tolerated, but invited.
A quiet sort of forever.
And for the first time in his life, Sherlock thought: Yes. This.
He could stay.