Work Text:
John stared into the fire at Baker Street.
A client had sent them a package of scented pinecones for the fireplace, he held a pinecone gently in his hands and his mind went back to Afghanistan.
It was one of several holidays spent away from home. He was grousing, yet grateful because he had been given an Attn: Any Soldier package for the holidays. Grousing because he led a life that resulted in the need for such. Grateful because it often was the only mail or packages he received throughout the year and it really was better than nothing at all. It was certainly better than the last email he had received from Harry that day.
She was clearly drunk when she wrote it. He knew it. He knew she did not really mean most of what she wrote. He knew she will be full of remorse and apologies when she sobers up and sees what she sent. She is always appalled at her drunken behavior when it gets out of hand like this. Still, she’s never appalled enough to quit drinking for good. Remorseful and apologetic were for later, right now her words were hurtful. Especially after having come from a disastrous mission two days before which already had him in a less than gracious mindset to deal with her rants.
So he was especially grateful to receive the AnySoldier.com package. It was a charming drawing from a six-year-old named Brian, some beef jerky, socks and one scented pinecone in a Ziploc bag. With his childhood what it was, both parents now gone and Harry being Harry, it was not as if he really had much of a home to yearn for. It made him wonder how this lovely child would spend the holidays. The pinecone with its cinnamon scent had filled him with a strong sense of fernweh. The strong longing of how Christmas holidays at home would be for him and his family, once he had one, nearly brought him to tears.
He stood in front of the fireplace in the officer’s barracks and stared into the fire holding Brian’s pinecone gently in his hand. He vaguely recalled when he was a teen he had taken a girlfriend to a travelling circus that had popped up a town over. The girl had insisted on going in to Madame Leondra’s gypsy both. He was not going to do it, but when the girl came out she had such a look of wonder on her face that curiosity got the best of him. He had left the booth minutes later annoyed with himself for the wasted money. He lightly laughed to himself, idly recalling that the gypsy’s words had mentioned something involving a pinecone. He tossed the one he held into the fire. He was surprised, but delighted as it flashed bright green for a few moments, enjoyed its scent, then turned away from the mostly forgotten memories, real or otherwise, and rejoined his fellow officers.
“John? Is everything all right?”
John blinks out of his reverie, tosses the pinecone in his hand into the fire and then looks up into Sherlock’s concerned eyes as Madame Leondra’s exact words suddenly come back to him:
You say you seek a home, but you truly want more than you say. First there will be the green fire pinecone. After the pinecone, there will be pain. After the pain there will be confusion and death. After the confusion and death there will be your true home. Only then within your true home there will be everything you truly want and seek.
Joyful tears start to well as John reaches up in stunned realization to reverently kiss the beautiful, green-eyed, dark curly haired genius standing with him before the pinecone scented fire.
It is a good kiss.
A deep soulful one.
"Ooooh, hello to you as well, my love." Sherlock’s baritone rumbles gently at the unabashed love in his husband's deep blue eyes going slowly dark with need, making his own breaths shallow with desire, "What brings this on?"
Captain Watson had burned a pinecone that sparked green fire - the green fire pinecone. Months later he was shot in his shoulder ending his Army career – pain. His feelings for Sherlock and when Sherlock jumped from St. Bart’s – confusion and death. His permanent return to Baker Street – his true home. And now standing in front of a fire by a gift laden Christmas tree, in the open acknowledgment of their love for each other at last with their marriage and their young daughter asleep upstairs –
“Everything.” John whispers in wonder and renewed appreciation of his husband's belief that the universe is rarely that lazy.
“Everything.”