Chapter Text
They didn’t go for cake in the end. They bought plenty of sweet foods; chocolate and biscuits and far too many strawberry bon bons – John even treated Sherlock to some rather nice macaroons from Fortnum & Mason’s coveted counter - but Sherlock didn’t receive the cake they had originally planned. He didn’t mind, though. He would have exchanged cake for more time with John any day of the week.
For the most part, Sherlock was amazed at how quickly they fell back in step with one another. They were silent for a while, walking alongside one another as they cut through Marylebone High Street.
Sherlock had suggested they walk because he didn’t think he could bear the usual familiarities of the back of the cab with John quite so soon. Somehow the excitement of rushing off to a crime scene with John by his side was unbearable.
The thrill of the chase was so far away, so distinctly missing from their current lives that Sherlock could only equate the loss of it to the death of a loved one.
John wouldn’t go on any cases with him for a while. John wouldn’t let Sherlock go on any cases for a while. They both pretended it was Mycroft stopping them from rushing off whenever Lestrade summoned them. Mycroft as Sherlock’s brother, and John as Sherlock’s disapproving doctor, had unanimously decided that Sherlock needed to rest. After all, he had: “quite literally been to hell and back and you haven’t really looked after yourself in that time. Don’t give me that look, Sherlock. You weren’t pretended to be off your tits, were you? You were also beaten up pretty badly - how’re John’s knuckles, by the way? I hope John’s apologised to you. And you were nearly the victim of serial killer. Again.” Was Lestrade’s verbal reasoning when Sherlock had informed him of the decisions that had been made for him.
So, until John saw fit, Sherlock wasn’t working except for the few odd cases that drifted into his inbox. He had enjoyed solving a few of them: a vain woman in York was being catfished by her ex-girlfriend, who was using pictures of the victim but with photoshopped hair.
Sherlock had called her a narcissist and sent her the link to a full-length mirror available in a flat-pack furniture store. Another case came from a man in Bristol. He wrote to complain that his carrots kept dying and that someone was poisoning them. Surprisingly, he was correct.
Each had been an easy case to solve (it took Sherlock less than five minutes for each, and that included typing his response), but the money he received was good and he used it to order Rosie some new clothes and a few toys. He had sent them to John’s address anonymously, but the stuffed bee and the story book about Marie Curie had given him away.
“You didn’t need to get her anything,” John had told him over the phone shortly after the parcels had arrived.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You bought Rosie clothes and toys and a book about Marie Curie. Sherlock, she’s barely a year old. She can’t read. She likes cuddly toys and funny faces, she’s not interested in science.”
“She could be. You have to start these interests early, John, children are very impressionable.”
“I’ll support her in whatever she chooses to do with her life, and if she finds out that she loves science then I’ll support her.”
Those were the good days. The good conversations. The days where they almost reached a version of normality with which Sherlock could live without complaint.
And yet there were more of the other days.
Sherlock’s stomach still churned uncomfortably whenever John looked at him with an expression that wasn’t akin to happiness. He consistently found himself reassessing his actions through fear he had done something to piss John off or upset him once again. He missed the days when he didn’t have to worry about pissing John off, because he knew that, for all Sherlock’s faults, John would recognise that Sherlock would never to anything intentionally malicious towards him.
Except faking your death.
Except locking him in a laboratory and convincing him he was about to be eaten by a giant dog.
Except –
Mentally, Sherlock roundhouse kicked the lone voice as it announced his past mistakes.
“They weren’t mistakes,” he reminded himself, “I had a good and justifiable reason for each one. John would have tried to come with me if I’d told him I was about to fake my death. He’d have done it too. He could have told everyone he was going back to Afghanistan and then he could have met me in Switzerland. He wouldn’t have thought twice about it.”
His admission shut the voice up, but his stomach knotted painfully. John would have gone with him without hesitation. John would have left London in a heartbeat for the chance at more action, for the most hands-on case Sherlock had ever experienced.
And if John had have gone with him, if Sherlock had simply been better at communication and if he had worked smarter against Moriarty in the first place, John could have been a wonderful accomplice. No one would have questioned John’s return to war after Sherlock’s death. From what Sherlock had gathered from minimal deductions, John had taken a leaf out of Harry’s book and found the whiskey, just as he’d done when Mary had died.
But then, if John had have gone with him, he would never have met Mary. And if he had have gone with him, he might hate him a little less now.
“Everything alright?” John asked, looking up at him as they walked side-by-side. “You look a bit agitated. We can stop.”
Everyone had protested at Sherlock having painkillers. Whether it was all for a case or not, he had consumed a fair amount of unsavoury substances recently and no one wanted to risk him falling any further down that rabbit hole again. Neither John nor Mycroft had forgotten that Sherlock had nearly overdosed on the other plane over a year prior to Culverton Smith surfacing at all, and neither had they forgotten accidentally stumbling across him in a drug den. Case or not, Culverton Smith or Augustus Magnussen, both John and Mycroft had recognised that tricky cases hadn’t been the only factor in Sherlock’s relapse.
However, his blackened bruises had largely faded and his eye was improving all the time, but his body still ached. He was tired a lot, and his teeth felt strangely gritty after the about of sugar John had offered him.
John watched him with concern, his hands stuffed in his pockets, shielding them from the cold January air.
“Sherlock?”
“No, I’m alright. Just thinking,” Sherlock replied.
John’s eyes narrowed slightly, a slight frown forming on his tired face.
Experience told Sherlock that John’s expression was one born of confusion rather than displeasure.
“Really,” Sherlock said, “I’m fine. If I needed to stop I would tell you, or I would just stop.”
John raised an eyebrow, sceptical.
Absently, Sherlock wondered which part of the lie John was unsure about. He suspected the first part, but John neither confirmed nor denied those suspicions.
“Okay,” John conceded eventually, “I’ll get you a cab back to Baker Street after we’ve picked up Rosie. You look exhausted.”
“Oh,” Sherlock reacted automatically, without really thinking. “I thought… actually, it doesn’t matter.”
John tilted his head to the side.
“No, what were you going to say?”
Sherlock steeled himself.
“I thought you and Rosie could come back to Baker Street with me,” he said, and he felt the tips of his ears burn. He was glad, for the first time, of the mass of dark curls covering his head. It shielded his tell-tale ears from John’s view. “Baker Street is too quiet. I don’t like it.”
John smiled slightly.
“Baker Street is never quiet with you there,” he chuckled. “But, okay, we’ll come back to Baker Street with you. Only for a few hours though and be warned, Rosie is teething and is extremely grumpy. Molly said that she’s been crying most of the day. Mary and I used to joke that she was straight out of a horror film, the amount of screaming she used to do.”
Sherlock nodded. He wasn’t quite sure what to reply to John’s anecdote; John’s consistent laments about Mary’s death had darkened any of the positive factors of their relationship. The usual husband and wife things had been overshadowed by their extended lives, and it didn’t help that Mary had done a runner to Morocco.
“But if you want to get her home that’s okay,” he cut across his own thoughts. John needed to make up for lost time with his daughter, mourn the death of his wife in a healthy way, and not be in charge of babysitting a junkie detective he evidently didn’t like very much.
“We can always do this another day.”
John stopped, and an irate woman wrapped in fur tutted as she almost collided into the back of him.
“Sherlock,” he said, ignoring the woman.
Sherlock’s stomach knotted again.
“Hm?”
“You know you’re not a burden, right? I mean, I’m not spending time with you because we’re worried about your drug habit. Well, that is part of it but I think…” he faltered, looking away, catching himself before he voiced the unthinkable. “Doesn’t matter.”
Sherlock watched him.
“I know.”
John looked up at him, unbridled surprise and worry etched into his face.
“You know?”
“I know I’m not a burden,” Sherlock supplied, and John’s shoulders visibly relaxed.
“Oh, well,” he began, but Sherlock cut him off.
“We’re friends,” he said, “which is not something I admit to lightly, but you also have a daughter. I am not a parent, nor am I ever likely to be one, but I understand that your child will always take precedence. I would be a pretty rubbish friend if I couldn’t understand that, so if you want to take Rosie home I will understand.”
He had said it more for his own sake than John’s, it gave them an excuse to part ways and never see each other again. If John walked away, Sherlock could list the reason for John’s absence as handling the difficulties of being a single parent and feelings wouldn’t be hurt.
Sherlock decided to ignore the overwhelming flaw in his logic.
John meanwhile eyed him uncertainly, his brows furrowed.
Sherlock decided he didn’t like that look.
John’s stare faltered after a few moments, and he sighed heavily.
“Let’s just see what sort of mood Rosie is in first.”
Sherlock nodded, his whole body ached.
“You know, we haven’t discussed your hair yet,” he said, deciding to change the subject. “Is the look permanent or…?”
They carried on walking, and John grinned sheepishly.
“I told my barber to do anything,” he explained, turning through a gap in fence that brought them onto a short expanse of trees and grass. “I needed a change, and becoming a Dad made me feel a bit… old.”
Despite the cold January air, Green Park was enjoying a day of idle walkers and cyclists, carrying them between Buckingham Palace and the Underground Station.
“So you deciding to fight off the old age by letting your idiotic barber give you a quiff,” Sherlock supplied, stepping out of the way of a large gaggle of tourists as they chatted to one another.
John laughed.
“It’s not a quiff, Sherlock.”
“It’s a quiff.”
“If it’s a quiff, it’s a very small quiff.”
“It’s still a quiff.”
A few metres in front of them, Molly stood against a tree with Rosie strapped to her chest. She held one hand against Rosie’s back, and the other she was using to wave madly at Sherlock and John.
“There she is,” John beamed, abandoning the conversation and helping Molly pull Rosie out of the baby carrier.
Just like her Dad, Rosie’s brows furrowed at the sudden confusion caused by being hoisted into the air, but she smiled when she recognised the man holding her and made an indistinct grab at his nose.
“She’s cheered up now,” Molly explained, tugging the baby carrier off herself. She sighed once she was free. “And she doesn’t have a temperature anymore, either. Hi, Sherlock.”
Molly offered him a small, sheepish smile, which Sherlock did his best to return. It came out as a pained grimace.
“Hello.”
Molly’s smile didn’t falter.
“This is for you.”
She tugged a rucksack from her back and placed it on the ground, before crouching down and rummaging around inside it.
Sherlock recognised it as Rosie’s travel bag.
Molly retrieved something from the bottom of the bag and straightened up again.
“This is from Rosie, as a thank you for the clothes and toys.”
She handed Sherlock a folded up piece of paper, through which Sherlock could see various blocks of colour that had almost soaked through to the opposite side.
Sherlock unfolded it.
Black block capitals were stamped across the top of the horizontal sheet, reading: “Thank you, Sherlock!” And beneath the writing stretched a collage of tiny handprints in different colours, all mashed on top of one another with no coherent order or reason.
Sherlock smiled, looking down at it.
“I imagine your flat is covered in paint, now,” he said, folding the paper and pocketing it. “You’ve changed your shirt three times today.”
Molly shook her head.
“No, I didn’t make it with Rosie,” she said, “it was on John’s fridge. It’s alright that I gave it to him, isn’t it?” She asked quickly, turning to John. “I presumed it was meant for him but you kept forgetting it.”
John chuckled and nodded, holding Rosie close.
“Something like that,” he said, not looking at either Sherlock nor Molly as he spoke. His focus lay completely on his daughter, who was watching a squirrel with absolute fascination as it rushed about between the trees.
“Well, thank you, John and Rosie,” Sherlock hummed, tapping his pocket. “It’ll take pride of place on my fridge.”
Both Molly and John looked up at him in surprise.
“Really?”
Sherlock frowned, looking between the both of them. Even Rosie was looking at him now, though her eyes still shone with all the excitement of seeing a squirrel.
“Yes,” Sherlock confirmed, a little confused. “I do have magnets. John, you know I have magnets. You used to rearrange them to spell out rude words.”
“That’s not…” John started, then trailed off. He shook his head. “That’d be nice.”
Sherlock nodded slowly, more than a little bit confused.
“Does anyone fancy some lunch, then?” Molly piped up, her hands clasped together.
Sherlock had forgotten she was there.