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Rosie spins on tiptoe down the sidewalk, her arms held at her sides, the tulle of her skirt curving out around her legs like a bell. She laughs, a bright sound, and something deep in John’s chest sways.
It’s snowing in London. The flakes are as light and as shimmering as glitter poured from a bottle; crunching delicately underfoot, alighting in gold-dust clouds in the aura of streetlamps, crowning both Rosie and Sherlock with a wreath of white. Baker Street is another world, suspended in the mellow silvery glow of evening, the sky a purple stain above 221—a snowglobe, held still and gently settling.
Between John and Sherlock, Rosie’s foot slips on the icy sidewalk, and she stumbles sideways into Sherlock’s leg. He rights her with a soft glance, a quiet word; his voice is muffled by the blanket of snow around them, seems more tender caught between the blanched velvet night. A note of intensity that John feels in that same unsteady place just to the left of his sternum and down a bit. Rosie laughs again; John adjusts the red cap perched on her curls absentmindedly, and swallows against the tightness in his throat.
There is magic around them tonight, and John can feel it in every step they take towards their cab, in every lungful of the sharp, cold air he inhales. It thrums in the spaces between the three of them, tight and quivering like a golden thread. It pulls him closer to his family in the warm interior of the cab.
“Are we on time?” Rosie asks again. She is six years old. She is hilarious, and she is smart, and John loves her more than he can say. She is wriggling on the seat between John and Sherlock, and her pretty dress is getting wrinkled, and she’s beaming, cheeks pink with chill. She looks up at John, her eyes wide and blue, and then at Sherlock.
Wordlessly, John lifts his arm, pushing back his sleeve so that Sherlock can see the watch perched on his wrist. Sherlock consults it gravely, and then inclines his head. “Yes, Watson,” he says, looking her in the eye just as he always does when they talk. “We are, in fact, early.”
“Just like we were three minutes ago,” John says fondly under his breath. Sherlock meets his eyes above Rosie’s head and the corner of his mouth lifts in amusement—and John’s breath catches.
He’s still the most beautiful man that John has ever seen. Even after all these years.
There is magic around them tonight, yes, and much of it exists in this man. This man curled in a cab seat with one arm around John’s daughter, his eyes bright with excitement, his curls soft and dark around his face. John’s always been enchanted by him, enthralled by him, caught in his spell; but there’s something about tonight—something about the childish anticipation on his features, mixed with that happy look he gets when he is with John and Rosie—that makes it almost impossible for John to keeps his hands off.
***
When at last their cab stops, Sherlock spills out onto the pavement in front of their destination—the Royal Opera House—with an eager little leap. Smiling, he reaches back and takes Rosie’s small hand in his enormous one as she disembarks, and they both look to John with such similar expressions of excitement that John just can’t help it.
He swings Rosie up into his grasp, something he does less often now that she’s growing so quickly, and holds her tight as she laughs and and wraps her arms about his neck. Sherlock is watching them with an almost unbearable fondness in his ice floe eyes, and—and. Well. It’s Christmas Eve. Surely it’s alright if John just… surely Sherlock won’t mind…
Sherlock’s eyes blink open to the size of saucers as John pulls him close by the sleeve of his coat, sliding his hand down and clasping Sherlock’s fingers gently.
“Are you ready?” John asks, bouncing Rosie twice just to make her giggle, and squeezing Sherlock’s hand. Sherlock is frozen, his eyes enormous, and his fingers are warm and thin and tentatively putting pressure on John’s, so John crowds in close to him until they’re almost toe-to-toe.
“Yes!” Rosie chants in John’s ear, her voice loud enough that a few passersby glance over at them. “Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.”
Sherlock’s lips part around a word that’s never spoken; his gaze locks with John’s.
That place in John’s chest is warm, is deep, is almost painful. He has the sudden wild urge to wrap Rosie and Sherlock up in his arms and never, ever let either of them go; to press his lips to Sherlock’s pale temple and whisper all the things he’s always meant to say against his warm skin.
Slowly, gently, John smiles at him.
Slowly, gently, Sherlock smiles back.
***
Inside, it’s absolutely breathtaking.
Everything is done up in shades of scarlet and gold, opulent and burnished like being nestled in the center of a garnet. The ceiling his high and domed; there are rows upon rows upon endless rows of gorgeous velvet seats, and every wall is lined with intricate balconies overlooking the curtained stage.
John’s been here with Sherlock before. Once, a very long time ago. Before everything had ripped them apart and then thrust them back together again. Before John knew that this dizzying affection and devotion he feels for Sherlock Holmes has a name, and before he knew that that name was love.
He doesn’t remember what they saw, only that it was an opera—he remembers hardly anything of that evening, in fact. He’d spent the whole night pleasantly buzzed and gazing at the heart-stopping beauty of his flatmate, too caught up in the nearness of him to pay attention to anything else going on.
They haven’t been back since then, though, and so John relishes the look of wonderment that passes over Sherlock’s features as they step into the house of the theater.
Rosie is equally amazed by the splendor around her. She gasps in John’s arms, and leans forward for a better view with such enthusiasm that he almost drops her.
“Daddy,” Rosie says, her voice a little bit cowed as she gazes down at the stage. Sherlock glances back at John and Rosie as he leads them to their seats, and then quickly away.
“Yes, my love,” John says, settling down in their row and helping Rosie struggle out of her coat. Sherlock provides assistance from the other side, and when their hands bump, John feels a familiar shock of electricity travel across the surface of his skin.
“That’s splendid, ” she breathes.
John smiles.
“Excellent word choice, Watson,” Sherlock remarks as he peels his own heavy coat off of his slim shoulders. John tries not to make it too obvious how intently he’s staring. He must fail; for Sherlock catches his eye, looking briefly startled before his cheeks turn faintly pink.
There is magic around them tonight.
John doesn’t look away. “You look lovely,” he says. His voice is lower than usual, softer, thick. He doesn’t mean to speak, but he doesn’t exactly try to hold the worlds back; he feels loose-limbed and strangely lucky tonight. He feels the shadow of years of missed chances looming behind him, and he wants to banish it.
“I.” Says Sherlock. He blinks. Blinks again. “Oh. John. You. As well are… indeed. Lovely.”
I love you, John thinks. But he doesn’t say it. The curtain is rising, and he doesn’t have time.
***
From the moment the orchestra strikes its first note, Sherlock and Rosie do not take their eyes off of the stage.
John finds that he’s capable of being very proud of himself.
From the moment that John announced he’d gotten them all tickets to see the Royal Ballet perform The Nutcracker, it’s all that’s been talked about in his home. It had been more a gift for Rosie than Sherlock, although John knew Sherlock had a special affinity for Tchaikovsky, so at the very least he’d appreciate the score; however Sherlock has been so taken with the idea of watching a ballet that John’s beginning to think he might be fond of dancing, as well. The thought warms something inside of him.
And now, watching Sherlock lean forward in his seat, watching his eyes grow heavy and blue with wonder, watching his lithe fingers keep time in the air near his head—now, John feels so full of love that tears prick at the corners of his eyes.
A cloud of women in white and silver spins across the stage, and Rosie gasps in delight. Sherlock nearly falls out of his chair. John loves them.
John is happier than he has any right to be. Even after everything—after lies and betrayal and heartbreak, after death, after resurrection and birth and rebirth—Sherlock Holmes let John and his daughter into his home. Made his home their home, and never once complained.
Rosie is happy. If John knows Sherlock at all, and he’s fairly sure he does, Sherlock is happy too. They love each other, Sherlock and Rosie, in a way that John had never allowed himself to hope for. John loves both of them in a way that he almost cannot comprehend.
It is greedy to want more?
“Stunning,” Sherlock murmurs, and beams at Rosie and John. He could melt ice caps with that smile.
No, John decides. Not greedy. Not if everyone else wants more, too.
***
They stay in their seats until the theater has emptied out, sitting silently. As mesmerized as Rosie had been, it’s nevertheless late for her yet—and she sleeps against John’s shoulder, her blond curls messy, her mouth curled into a smile.
Sherlock is staring at the empty stage, but John can tell that he isn’t really seeing it. He has that euphoric, almost intoxicated look of distance on his features, the one he gets when he is remembering something particularly wonderful, and he sways gently back and forth to a music that only he can hear.
“Sherlock,” says John softly, reaching around Rosie and taking one of his friend’s slim wrists in his hand. “Hello in there.” He runs his thumb in a gentle circle over the web of veins covering Sherlock’s pulse, until slowly Sherlock comes back to himself.
He looks at John, dazzled, something a little bit desperate playing about the corners of his mouth, and John doesn't think doesn’t think doesn’t think—kisses him.
It isn’t very long, and it isn’t very good. Nothing more than a brush of lips, really, a meeting, a hello, you, it’s me at last —but it shakes John right down to the base of his spine, it makes that place in his chest heave and whirl and pulse and thrum, it fills him with an unnamable something and leaves him yearning for more.
Sherlock pulls away slowly, slowly, slowly. His eyes are closed; his inky lashes fan across his blush-stained cheekbones. He’s breathing unsteadily, but he’s smiling, and when he opens his sea-storm eyes, John knows.
There is magic around them tonight.
***
Rosie sleeps soundly all through the ride home, tucked between John and Sherlock like a tiny little wall.
John doesn’t touch Sherlock, and Sherlock doesn’t touch John. They don’t look at each other, don’t speak to each other—but John can feel him. In every shaking breath that’s released to the air around them. In every whisper of shifting fabric.
They’re really wiser than anyone gives them credit for, John thinks a bit distractedly. They both seem to be aware that once they get their hands on each other, it’s going to be quite a difficult thing to ever let go again.
John takes Rosie into his arms, carrying her out of the cab and onto the sidewalk as Sherlock pays. It’s still snowing; the flakes come to rest against Rosie’s pale eyelashes, her round, pink cheeks. John shivers in the cold, and leans close to Sherlock’s warmth as he comes up beside him.
Sherlock unlocks the door and they mount the stairs quietly. John leads, and Sherlock follows, only one step behind. John almost stops in his tracks and turns around when he feels Sherlock’s hand come to rest at the small of his back; he aches so badly to hold and be held by this man that it seems harder than anything John’s ever done to simply put one foot in front of the other and wait.
They’ve waited so long. Too long.
At the flight of stairs leading to John and Rosie’s room they pause, at last meeting eyes for the first time since exiting the Opera House. The landing is shadowed, and casts Sherlock in monochromatic shades; his eyes are a moonlit grey as they bore levelly into John, and the bow of his lips is almost white. The inky shadows of his cheeks and temples and wrists hold secrets that John longs to uncover.
“Wait for me,” John whispers, even though he knows he doesn’t need to. He can see that Sherlock will, just by the way he’s leaning just as close to John as John is to him, and yet still he speaks. “Wait for me.”
Sherlock doesn’t answer. He bends his neck and places a butterfly-soft kiss on Rosie’s forehead, and then, with one last look, he turns and heads into the flat.
***
Sherlock is curled in his armchair—knees up, head down—and John loves him, John loves him, John loves him.
His steps seem unnaturally loud as he crosses their sitting room on socked feet, but Sherlock doesn’t move. The only hint that he knows John is even there lies in the sudden absence of his softly rasping breath, and the near-crippling silence that falls after it.
It feels like walking towards the edge of a cliff. It feels like plunging into the pits of hell. It feels like the most terrifying thing that John Watson has ever done, and he almost turns back so many times, but then he remembers:
Sherlock’s lips brushing softly, willingly against his own; before that, the soft glow of his moon-bright eyes, the heat of his body inches from John, his smile as he’d taught John’s daughter things that made her laugh.
John takes another step.
The nights they spend after a case perched on the sofa, laughing softly so they don’t wake Rosie, Sherlock’s cold toes wedged under John’s thighs. Step. Those first few months back at Baker Street, when John had realized there was nothing in the world that was certain except that he never wanted to leave Sherlock again. Step. All those times over the years that John has almost told him, almost said what’s been waiting on the tip of his tongue for nearly a decade—
“John.”
Sherlock has changed into his soft blue t-shirt, turned inside out so the seams don’t scratch at the tenderness of his skin. It’s a little bit big at the neck: pushed and pulled and stretched so that it hangs off of his collar bones widely, sliding a little bit over one boney shoulder. John has seen Sherlock in it a million times. John has never seen Sherlock in it before he’s about to kiss him.
He is staring up at John, and his lips are full and parted around an invisible word. John presses his shins into the base of Sherlock’s armchair, rests his hands on the armrests, and Sherlock reaches up for him in a gesture that’s so blatantly wanting that John could cry.
“John,” he says again, and John slides his hands around the expanse of Sherlock’s fragile ribcage, cups his scapula, noses carefully at his aromatic hairline. Sherlock makes a tiny noise; his palm rests on the side of John’s neck, his thumb brushes his Adam’s apple in tentative strokes. “Thank you for the ballet.”
John hums. He kisses Sherlock’s temple, and it’s like drinking dew from the curled petals of a flower. “I didn’t know you loved ballet,” he murmurs.
Sherlock lets out a soft, humid breath. His long fingers pluck at the hem of John’s shirt, questing daringly beneath, and John shivers. “I never said,” Sherlock whispers.
John runs his palms up and down Sherlock’s spine, feeling each and every vertebrae, living and present beneath his fingertips. He lets his lips rest against Sherlock’s warm cheek, lets his eyes fall shut. “You shouldn’t have had to.”
There is silence, but it isn’t heavy. It’s the settled peace of decision, the unspoken unity of two hearts finally beating in time. John and Sherlock move together through this silence: pressing lips to hands, to cheeks, to hair, limbs moving like water over and around each other until John is seated across Sherlock’s thighs and they can’t tell where one man ends and another begins.
“I danced,” Sherlock begins, cupping John’s face carefully in his long hands, “when I was a boy.”
There’s a peculiar smile on his face. Small and quiet and a little bit secret, and John remembers this smile. He knows this smile well. He has a feeling that he’s the only one who does.
John kisses him on the chin. “Ballet?” he asks.
Eyes fluttering closed, Sherlock hums an assent. His voice is low and honeyed when he speaks. “Was quite good, too.”
John laughs. Beautiful, lovely man. “I bet you were, you genius,” he says, grinning softly. His heart aches, aches, aches with how much he loves him, and some of that ache comes out in his words when he leans close and whispers, “ My genius.”
Sherlock’s eyes fly open.
“I am you know,” he whispers. “Yours. Always… always have been.” His throat bobs when he swallows, and slowly, deliberately, John bends his head and kisses the side of his neck; lips against soft, flaming skin. “John,” Sherlock rasps—and suddenly, there is desperation in the air, making it thin and hot and hard to breathe, and John stands and Sherlock comes with him, and John’s hands are around his slender waist and pulling him in, in, in, in—
Sherlock’s mouth crashes against John’s like a hurricane, and John is swept under. He doesn’t bother fighting.
He thought Sherlock would taste of years of missed chances. He thought Sherlock would taste bittersweet, would remind him of the time they’d wasted and would never get back—but instead, all John senses dancing on his tongue is the bright, cherry-red promise of things to come. The mulberry haze of yearning. The dark green declaration of absolute love.
John holds him, and Sherlock holds him back, and they shake apart in their sitting room as they cling and kiss. And slowly, surely, they fall back together again.
A new sum of parts. The amalgamation of the whole. A unit, a cohesion, one—
“I love you.”
There is magic around them tonight.
“I love you, too.”