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John had, a few times, dreamed of a miracle. A knock on the door, opening it with the mild wariness every unexpected knock brings, and Sherlock being there. Looking tired and nervous and regretful and in need of comfort. Not an easy thing, being dead.
In these dreams, after the hazy feeling of being about to faint had passed, John would pull Sherlock to him, in a hug that was half comfort for Sherlock and half tactile reassurance that Sherlock was actually there. Sherlock wouldn’t apologise but he would say, “I had to,” and John would hear in his tone the truth of the statement and its corollary: “I wouldn’t have left you if there was any other way.”
But, of course, that’s not how their reunion actually happened.
***
From The Landmark to the cafe to the kebab shop, John could hardly breathe for all the pressure in his chest and throat and behind his eyes. Putting his hands on Sherlock was the only way to relieve some of the pressure but overall it was ineffective, trying to shake some sense into the man.
In the cab on the way back to Mary’s place (their place, he had moved in, their place, he should remember that), after she’d said she liked Sherlock and he’d goggled at her liking the bastard who had left him without a thought, without a care, stupid old useless John… Anyway, later, getting closer to Mary’s place, Mary had asked him, “Was there something you were going to ask before we were interrupted?”
He looked at her, her kind face, how it was made up so beautifully, and he clasped the box in his pocket, and he thought about how there was a new Before and the former Before was now Before-Before, and he said, “No.”
Her face fell, so he hurried to wipe away the disappointment, saying, “No, no, I just mean it’s been a long night. I’m tired and distracted. Better to leave it for another day, when I can focus just on you.” He smiled, tiredly; she smiled; he squeezed her hand.
He fell asleep in Mary’s bed, thoughts of this After circling through his brain like sharks.
***
He was getting ready for work the next morning and heard Mary saying something, rather loudly for talking to herself, and with a cadence not quite like a conversation. He stepped into the bedroom and then realised she was reciting from his blog.
No. The entire time Sherlock had been… away (not dead, away), John had tried his best not to mix the Before and the After. He’d shared some things with Mary, yes, and he’d thought she’d understood, felt she’d understood. Now this, and mixing not just After and Before but new After and Before-Before… He told her to stop reading.
She did stop, but she didn’t get it and was continuing not to get it, until she looked up and saw the shaving cream on his face. Then she was teasing him about the sodding moustache – the one she had never bothered to tell him looked terrible on him. Sherlock had told him the truth; even Mrs. Hudson had told him the truth; why hadn’t she?
Then she was teasing him about Sherlock, and then about Sherlock and the moustache, and it was too much. He told her to shut up.
She replied cheekily, with a grin, “Or what?”
He couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
***
Through the work day, he was determined to keep his mind on work. Patients deserved a calm, focused, attentive doctor.
Even if their issues were boring as shit.
(“For most patients, the GP’s job could be done by a monkey with a bottle of Nurofen,” as his mentor had said when John was looking at specialties.)
He was determined to keep his mind on work, and he was generally successful except for breaks and lunch, when Mary seemed utterly determined to talk about Sherlock. Where he might have been, what he might have been doing. It was all exactly what he didn’t want to think about, Sherlock’s fantastical solo adventures, and the whispery tone of Mary’s voice grated across John’s nerves until he barked at her, “Good Lord, can’t you speak normally?”
“It’s supposed to be a secret,” she said, and he wanted to reply that not talking about it was the best way to keep a secret, but he already felt guilty for snapping. His temper had been well kept in check in the old After, primarily because it had been hard to feel much of anything, but still. She was used to him being gentle. Gentle, calm, quiet.
That was John Watson, in the old After.
Later that day, after the humiliation of thinking a patient had been Sherlock come to see him, come to make jokes, to again rouse the gentle, calm, quiet John Watson in the new After, John decided what he was going to do with his free evening while Mary was out with her friend Cath.
He was going to invite Mrs. Hudson out to dinner, his treat. He had some making up to do with her. He’d be charming, he’d enjoy her stories, and then he’d walk her home. If Sherlock just happened to be around at the time, well, John would decide whether to cross that bridge when he came to it.
***
The dinner had gone well. Mrs. Hudson had been mollified enough to invite John in for a bit more chatting and a nightcap. They were having a nice time until John came back from a quick trip to her loo and found the lounge empty and Mrs. H’s flat door open. He heard Mrs. H say, “Hang on! Who are you?” and rushed into the foyer.
“I’m his fiancee,” said Mary, partway up the stairs.
John ignored the fact that she wasn’t actually, as he hadn’t asked her yet, and called out, “Mary?”
It was interesting, how his voice harmonised so well with Sherlock’s, as they had let loose the same interrogative at the exact same time.
And then they clashed as he asked, “What are you doing here?” and Sherlock went for the more succinct “What’s wrong?”
She looked between the two of them, then climbed the last few stairs to stand next to Sherlock on the landing. “I got a text and thought it looked like a skip code.”
“What?” John demanded.
“Skip code. You know, like in that movie we watched last month.”
Exasperated and tense with unwanted adrenaline, he replied, “Was already familiar. I used to work with Sherlock Holmes, remember? We tackled all kinds of codes and ciphers.”
“Save souls now!” It was Sherlock’s baritone, reading from Mary’s phone. “John or James Watson?” Sherlock looked up then, straight at John with a small smile gracing his lips. A smile John hadn’t seen in two years, a smile that said we’re both clever, aren’t we?
For a split second, John forgot how to breathe.
He reluctantly pulled his gaze away from Sherlock to explain to Mary, “That’s not a code; it’s just a spam text. Mrs. H and I both got it earlier this evening.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and was surprised to see a dark screen. “Oh. My phone’s off. I wonder when that happened.”
Mrs. Hudson patted his back and he leaned into her touch. They’d really had a lovely evening up until this strange interlude. He was back in her good graces and grateful for it.
“Explains why you didn’t answer my text,” said Mary. She was still standing on the landing; Sherlock was still holding her mobile in one hand and fish and chips in the other. One unreturned text and she was off to bother Sherlock? Bit of an over-reaction, even with John’s name mentioned in the spam.
“Ah,” Sherlock said, interrupting John's thoughts. “Now that you’re here, would the two of you like to come in? You too, of course, Mrs. Hudson.”
“No,” John insisted over whatever Mary had been about to say. No, the two of them would not be going into 221B. He reached out toward Mary to get her to come down from the landing. “I need to take Mary home.”
As she stepped off the last step, he firmly took her hand in his, and looked back up to Sherlock. “But can I stop by tomorrow? I’ve got the day off work and could come round at eleven or so.”
“Of course,” said Sherlock. He wasn’t smiling any more but somehow his eyes seemed to be. “You’re always welcome.”
John hugged Mrs. H goodbye and escorted Mary out into the night.
***
The next morning, back in the Baker Street foyer, John pocketed his key and tucked his duffle out of the way along the side of the staircase. Later he’d take that… some place yet to be determined. No sense getting ahead of himself.
This was… that is, he was going to try, that’s all he’d promised himself. Try to hold back from expecting too much; try to remain calm long enough for the Sherlock he’d grieved to gaze steadily out of those eyes, to speak through those lips. Yes. He could do this.
Up the stairs and through the sitting room door, and Sherlock greeted him with a happy “John!” and John had to blink to clear his vision.
The blinking didn’t change a thing, though. Sherlock, sitting in his usual chair, was surrounded by a menagerie of animals. A snake was wrapped around his right arm and as John watched, a cockatiel hopped from Sherlock’s left arm to his left hand. A cat was tucked next to Sherlock’s right hip, and on the floor, a dog leaned against his legs. The last was a small white mouse climbing Sherlock’s shirt.
“There’s also a tarantula around somewhere,” Sherlock commented, having not forgotten how to read John after all. “So if you wouldn’t mind closing the door so it can’t escape…”
John shut the door as asked and stood by it, scanning the room for the arachnid. “Okay, Dr. Dolittle, so what's all this?
“Doctor who?”
Smiling, John thought fondly about the ways Sherlock and Dr. Dolittle were cut from the same cloth as he replied, “No, that's a different character entirely.”
Sherlock stared at him with mild confusion until John prompted: “The animals?”
With a nod, Sherlock replied, “Rats.”
What?
“I'm looking straight at them, Sherlock, and none of them are rats.”
“No, no.” Sherlock got up from his chair, disturbing the dog, the cat, and the bird, but somehow the mouse still clung to his shirt. And of course the snake was securely wrapped around his right arm, even as he stretched it out to gesture to the wall above the couch.
“These are my rats, John. My markers: agents, low-lifes, people who might find themselves arrested or their diplomatic immunity suddenly rescinded. If one of them starts acting suspiciously, we know something’s up – like rats deserting a sinking ship.”
The mouse had crawled its way to Sherlock’s shoulder. It was a bit too close to the snake’s mouth for John’s liking, so he plucked it up, let it sit in his cupped hands.
“I’ve activated my homeless network to follow all of their movements,” Sherlock continued, as the cockatiel chirped from its perch on the back of John’s armchair. “In return, the network has asked me to take on the case of three siblings in jail for a crime they did not commit.”
The dog, some kind of spaniel at John’s best guess, had settled in front of the fireplace; the cat had curled up in Sherlock’s chair for a nap.
“And that somehow required the purchase of animals?” John asked. “You're not experimenting on them, are you?”
“Of course not, John.” Sherlock could not have conveyed more indignation at the question for any want of trying, and John felt a bit guilty for the off-the-cuff question. Then again, John had lost an entire Wednesday once, so obviously experimentation on living beings wasn’t completely inconceivable for the man.
“These six creatures”—Sherlock stooped and then rose with a tarantula on his palm—“are the pets of the three siblings. My network for obvious reasons could not take physical possession of all of them, so I said I would house them until the case is resolved, which should be a matter of only a day or so.”
“Oh,” said John. The mouse in his hands had finished its thorough inspection of his fingers and was now peering out at Sherlock. “They're just going to wander around the flat?”
“The network collected not only the pets but their necessary accoutrements, including a cage, crate, or carrier for each. However.” Sherlock stopped to smile, and John guessed this was going to be a fun anecdote. “I deduced that Mycroft would be extremely uncomfortable with the animals having free reign.”
“And he was.”
“And he was,” Sherlock confirmed. He strode into the kitchen, and John noticed for the first time the two glass enclosures on the kitchen table. The tarantula was deposited into the smaller of the two, and the snake into the larger. Sherlock then moved each terrarium; the snake went onto the smaller table along the wall, and the spider went onto the kitchen counter near the back window.
“I was going to have my parents take care of the animals,” Sherlock said, “but haven’t had time to go out to their cottage.”
Ah. Sherlock’s parents. Who John had been told existed by Mycroft after Sherlock’s “death” but had never met.
“Mm,” John said. “Your parents, did they know, too?”
Sherlock traipsed past John on the way to the sitting room desk and hummed vaguely.
John very purposefully did not clench his fists as he did not want to squeeze the mouse. “Did they know that you spent the last two years playing hide and seek?”
.
Sherlock poked at the keyboard of his laptop and didn’t meet John’s eyes. “Maybe.”
“Ah!” Time to find the mouse’s cage, because his fingers very much wanted to flex. “So that’s why they weren’t at the funeral.”
“Sorry,” Sherlock blurted. “Sorry again.”
“Mm.” The mouse cage was located on the kitchen floor next to the counter. With some judicious one-handed shuffling, John was able to clear enough space on the counter to tuck the cage next to the kettle. The moment he had the wire door open, the mouse leapt from his hand into its familiar home, burrowing into the shavings.
As John stepped back into the lounge, Sherlock said again softly, “Sorry.”
Try. John had promised himself he’d try, and it looked like Sherlock was willing to try too. John let out a slow breath and then asked, “Do you know why you’re apologising?”
Sherlock looked up at that. “So you’ll forgive me.”
Well, duh, but… Trying, they were trying. John sat in his chair.
“Not that. I mean, do you know what you’re apologising for?”
Sherlock’s eyes got a little wider and his breathing seemed to stop for a second.
So that was a ‘no’ then. OK.
OK, too soon, they’d put a pin in it and come back later. Besides, John had come by ostensibly for another purpose, to help Sherlock with an urgent issue.
“Terrorists,” John said firmly.
Sherlock’s mouth opened a little, then closed. He was blinking more rapidly than John had thought humanly possible.
“You said there was a terrorist thing that you wanted my help on,” John reminded him.
The tiniest, quietest “oh” popped out of Sherlock’s mouth and then he was back to normal. “Yes. According to Mycroft, an agent gave his life to tell us there’s an underground network planning an attack on London.”
“Kind of what terrorists do.”
“Yes, exactly. Why would such a vague statement be worth an agent’s life?” Sherlock steepled his hands at his lips and moved to the evidence wall. “My rats. Five of them are behaving perfectly normally, but the sixth…” He pointed to a photo of a very familiar-seeming man.
“I know him, don’t I?” John asked.
“Lord Moran, peer of the realm, Minister for Overseas Development. Pillar of the establishment.”
“Yes.” John nodded.
“He’s been working for North Korea since 1996,” Sherlock stated, with a smug look. Definitely back to normal. “He’s the Big Rat. Rat Number One. And he’s just done something very suspicious indeed.”
John joined Sherlock at the table to look at footage on Sherlock’s laptop: Moran stepping into the Tube carriage and then not being there at the next station.
“Yeah,” John had to admit, “that’s odd.” He sat down and played the footage a second time, with the volume up a bit louder.
Pacing behind John, Sherlock began, “There’s something –” but the cockatiel interrupted him, letting out three loud squawks in a cadence that reminded John of the old Tube recording telling riders to “Mind! The gap!”
It startled a chuckle out of him, and then the cockatiel repeated the squawks. John looked over to Sherlock, expecting to share in the amusement, but Sherlock was obviously having one of his a-ha moments.
“Yes,” he said triumphantly, continuing his pacing to the evidence wall and back. “Yes! That’s good. That could be brilliant.”
“What are you on about?”
“Mycroft’s intelligence – it’s not nebulous at all. It’s specific, incredibly specific.”
OK, no. Sherlock would not be leaving John out again, even just in a thought process. “What do you mean?” John demanded firmly.
“It’s an underground network planning an attack.”
John opened his mouth to explain how little that actually clarified anything, but Sherlock leaned over John’s shoulder to replay the footage another time. “The Underground. Look – seven carriages leave Westminster… but only six carriages arrive at St James’s Park. Moran didn’t disappear; the entire Tube compartment did. The driver must have diverted the train and then detached the last carriage.”
An entire missing carriage; it seemed impossible. “Detached it where? There’s nothing between those stations.”
“Not on the maps, but once you eliminate all the other factors, the only thing remaining must be the truth. That carriage vanished, so it must be somewhere.”
Impeccable logic. It must be somewhere. But… “Why, though? Why detach it in the first place?”
Sherlock’s phone pinged; he took it out of his pocket and flipped through several screens. “Our rat’s just come out of his den. He came up out of Westminster Tube station and is walking next to the Houses of Parliament.”
Right in front of John’s eyes, Sherlock froze for a second. “What’s the date, John, today’s date?”
The date? OK, the date; John looked at the laptop. November Fifth. Guy Fawkes. Blowing up Houses of Parliament… “My God.”
“Tonight there’s an all-night sitting to vote on the new anti-terrorism bill,” Sherlock pointed out. “But our rat Moran won’t be there.”
Everything was a bit of a blur for a while after that. Getting the bird into its cage (and John hoped Mrs. H had a suggestion for cleaning the top of his chair); working with the train bloke over Skype to figure out how to get to the missing carriage; ensuring all the animals had food and water; racing across London and into the Underground; Sherlock’s crowbar and refusal to call the police and stairs and losing signal and tunnels and then there they were, in the missing carriage, with Sherlock saying:
“The whole compartment is the bomb.”
He’d prised up a panel from the floor, exposing a massive device. The only saving grace was that the timer wasn’t running.
“We need bomb disposal,” John asserted.
“There may not be time for that now.”
John thrived in do-or-die situations, but this was a bit too close to “die” without near enough “do.”
“You’re Sherlock Holmes. You’re as clever as it gets. There’s got to be something.”
Sherlock’s face… John was waiting for the eureka expression to show up, for the lightbulb of inspiration to illuminate Sherlock’s visage as it always did, but that was not a eureka on his face now. It most certainly was not. There was… This was…
The lights came on.
Not in Sherlock’s face, but in the entire Tube carriage, overhead, walls, everywhere. It was bright and a bit hopeful for the fraction of a second before John realised that the countdown timer had begun to tick down.
“Er…” Sherlock said.
“My God!” John shouted. The bomb was ticking, and there was nothing he could do, and apparently nothing Sherlock could do – “Use your mind palace!”
"How will that help?”
"You’ve salted away every fact under the sun!”
Sherlock’s face twisted. "Oh, and you think I’ve just got ‘How To Defuse A Bomb’ tucked away in there somewhere?”
John heard the sarcasm, of course, but refused to let it deter him. "Yes!”
That brought Sherlock up short, and he was forced to concede, "Maybe.” He shut his eyes and gripped his temples, and John couldn’t help praying that this would work.
Praying not to the Christian God, he realised, but to the divinity he’d come to see within Sherlock’s mind. There was Sherlock, his friend, the most human human being he’d ever met, who he loved dearly; there was the Great Detective Sherlock Holmes who he admired; and then there was the supernatural intellect that existed in a plane beyond them all.
"Please,” he found himself whispering.
After moments that felt like both days and milliseconds, Sherlock let out a cry and opened his eyes. Breathing heavily, he looked directly into John’s eyes.
John’s heart dropped. "Oh my God.”
The divine had failed them, and there was nothing John could do, and they would die in flames along with most of Parliament, useless, so useless.
As John wandered aimlessly around the carriage, he heard Sherlock shifting, flailing, pattering.
“Oh my God!” he repeated, because what else was there to say?
The sounds of Sherlock’s movements stopped, and the man said softly, “I’m sorry.”
When John turned back around, he saw Sherlock on his knees by the bomb. Sherlock’s scarf was off; his hair was mussed; he looked… frazzled. Not a way he’d ever looked before. They were so fucked.
Sherlock straightened up on his knees, and brought his clasped hands up. Who would he pray to, John wondered.
"Forgive me?”
Not prayer then, but entreaty. “What?”
“I know what I want to apologise for. Forgive me for leaving you behind. Forgive me –” John had to look away from the earnestness in Sherlock’s expression. His gaze fell on the bomb. “– for not saying –”
“Wait,” John interrupted him. “The countdown has stopped.”
They both looked down at the timer, where the red numbers were flicking back and forth between 1:28 and 1:29.
“Yes,” Sherlock confirmed. He looked up at John. “There was a switch on the side of the bomb.”
What was John’s life? John’s life that was apparently going to continue beyond the next minute and a half.
“A switch? We were going to die and then click, everything’s fine.”
Confusion suffused Sherlock’s face. “Um, yes.”
Oh lord, this man was so bloody stupid. Unless… “Did you know there’d be a switch? Was this whole thing just a joke to you?”
“No!”
Sighing, John had to press a hand to his eyes. “The alternative is that you led us all the way down here with no plan for how we would take care of this bomb.”
“I had a plan.” Somehow sceptical and hopeful at the same time, John looked Sherlock in the eyes and raised an eyebrow. “That we would figure it out when we got here.”
Disgruntled at the need to explain to Sherlock again, for the thousandth time, what the definition of the basic word “plan” was, John happened to look past Sherlock and saw circles of light bobbing, growing closer.
“So you did call the police?”
“Of course.”
“And you lied to me about it.”
“I knew you’d insist we wait for them, and there wasn’t time.”
“There wasn’t time for us to get here and then have no idea what to do?”
“Well…”
They were alive. Alive. Not Dead. And Sherlock wanted to apologise, and officers would be here any moment, talking to them, asking for explanations, and there’d be many, many things to do, and they were both Not Dead.
“We’ll be talking about that later.” Sherlock looked at him. “We’ll be talking about it all later.”
***
After an interminable amount of time had passed, they were back in 221B. Sherlock took the dog out for a wee, and John checked that all the animals had the water and food they needed. It was a bit of a guess that the tarantula was fine with no food as there wasn’t a bag labelled “spider kibble,” but John did change out the shallow dish of water for it.
The dog trotted into the kitchen and slobbered into its own water bowl. Sherlock was standing awkwardly in the middle of the lounge, leash still in his hand.
“Well,” Sherlock said, “it’s late. I suppose you’ll be wanting to get home to Mary.”
John left the kitchen and settled into his chair. “You suppose? I’ve never heard you suppose anything; I thought you were morally against the concept.”
“I –” Sherlock’s hard drive seemed to reboot just then; he looked at the leash in his hand, threw it on the coffee table, and took a seat in his own chair. “It is a mistake to theorise ahead of the evidence, but I’ve also recently come to understand that it’s deleterious to interpersonal engagement to unnecessarily impinge upon others’ privacy.”
Deleterious to…? John spotted the nervousness around Sherlock’s eyes and suddenly understood.
Sherlock was making a purposeful effort not to deduce John, to let him have his privacy.
Oh, this man.
“That’s a good insight generally, Sherlock, but just this once, I’d be quite happy for you to go ahead and read the truth off me.” John tilted his chin up a fraction and rested his hands on the arms of the chair. Open book. Not that keeping his book closed had ever put up a challenge for Sherlock Holmes.
“You’re not going home to Mary,” Sherlock said confidently but gently. “Ever.”
John nodded. “Not sure it ever was home, with Mary. I’ll always be grateful that she tried to help, though.”
Here Sherlock’s face turned a bit tentative. “There’s someone else you have feelings for.” His eyebrows crinkled.
John smiled and waited.
And waited. The cat gracefully leapt onto the arm of Sherlock’s chair, then slinked into his lap. The dog was lying pressed against John’s ankles.
And… nothing. Apparently that was as far as Sherlock was going in his deduction. He could identify an airline pilot by her left thumb but couldn’t read what John was trying to convey.
Couldn’t, or wouldn’t. Was scared to? Ridiculous. Sherlock Holmes was the bravest person John had ever met.
Then again, ostensibly John was brave, but here they both were. Looking at each other in a silence so deep that they could hear the mouse scrabbling through its shavings in the kitchen.
“Now would be a good time for that apology,” John said.
Sherlock nodded and a bit more vitality came back into his face. “Thank you,” he said. The cat had been headbutting his torso but settled when he began petting it in earnest. “I want to apologise to you primarily for three things. The first is the hardest for me to articulate. I’m sorry for my, um, mindset.”
“Mindset?”
“My way of thinking that produced words and behaviour that may have led you to believe I was callous toward you.”
“You were callous, Sherlock.”
“I was, in that that was your perception and therefore the truth.” The cat complained a little; Sherlock lessened the grip that had become tighter. “But within me, I had no lack of regard for you whatsoever. I –”
He let out a frustrated breath. “It's like seeing but not observing. I thought about you but not about you.”
John’s hands needed to move, so he bent down to place some well-received skritches on the dog’s head. “I’m not getting it, Sherlock.”
“Yes, yes, and the fault for that is entirely mine. Oh.”
John looked up and saw that the cat had begun kneading Sherlock’s thigh. Sherlock had removed his hands and was holding them awkwardly in the air.
“Is that normal for a cat?” he asked.
“Entirely,” John replied. “Means it’s comfortable with you.”
“It’s nice that someone is.”
John sat back and regarded Sherlock. Trying, he reminded himself. They were both trying, and it made no sense to give up just now.
“I’m comfortable with you, Sherlock. A little confused, yes, and still, um,” hurt, “frustrated, but comfortable.”
“We’re not broken?” Sherlock blurted out.
“No, we’re not,” John assured him. “Kind of cracked –” They both smiled at the double meaning. “But not broken.”
The dog had stretched out across John’s feet for a snooze, snout pointing toward the fireplace. John thought about getting up to start a fire; this conversation seemed to call for one. But his feet were warm and Sherlock was doing his best to apologise, and better to literally let sleeping dogs lie.
“These animals,” Sherlock said, “made me realise where my mindset needed to change.”
“Oh?”
“Their owners went away unexpectedly, which was no doubt distressing, but they’re being taken care of, so they’re content for now. When their owners come back they’ll be quite happy, and life will go on. That’s how I was thinking of us.” Obviously noting John’s glare, he hastily added. “Not as owner and pet per se. But I blithely assumed you’d stay where I’d left you, and when I got back to London we’d continue on as we had been.”
Nope, not any better, and John told Sherlock so.
“I know. That’s what I’m apologising for, for considering you just in relation to me, and assuming you’d be in stasis while I was away. You’re not a pet or a toy or a sidekick. You’re the person whose opinion means the most to me. You’re the person who means the most to me, and that’s the second thing I want to offer an apology for.”
“You’re sorry I mean something to you?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. You deserved to hear it. I hope that you knew anyway.”
He hadn’t. Or rather, he had thought in the Before-Before that Sherlock might see him as more than a “live-in PA” and then in the old After (the current Before) he’d veered wildly from hope to despair. But he hadn’t known.
Until now.
“You, um, the same,” John said.
Fuck! He found it so difficult, this sort of stuff.
“I mean, I also, uh,” he continued, folding himself down to pet the dog, because. Dog. Yes, urgent that he pet the dog immediately. “You. You’re the best and wisest man, um, that I have ever known, and you. Mean the most. To me.”
Sherlock asked, “Are you talking to me or Scrambles?” and there was amusement in his tone, gentle, light. Not mocking.
John took a breath and sat up. “Scrambles?”
“It was not I who gave the dog that moniker, I assure you.”
Oh, they were back. Not broken, not even all that cracked (in meaning number one; in meaning number, two, they were and always would be). That was good.
But there was a duffle downstairs, and John needed to know where he might unpack it.
“Sherlock,” he said. “I think it would be good if we clarified our relationship. You know, what we are to each other, besides, um, meaning most.”
“OK,” Sherlock replied, and those two syllables did hold a lot of emotion within them. “First, partners in the Work. Right?”
“Yes,” John confirmed, “but you know that means you can’t go haring off without me, yeah?”
“Yes. Third thing.”
“What?”
“Just remembered I never made the third apology I wanted. I’m sorry for leaving you behind, John, and for leaving you out of the decision-making. It should have been both of us, as a team.”
John’s throat and chest filled, in a parallel to the night Sherlock came back, but this time, the newest After, the feeling was warm and pillowy.
“What else are we?” he asked.
Sherlock sat for a moment, his gaze directed at the floor. “Friends?” he eventually ventured.
“Yes, of course. You’re my best friend.”
“Oh.” Sherlock blinked rapidly a few times. “I am? Yes, I am. Thank you.”
John smiled. “What else are we?”
“There’s more?”
“If you want there to be.”
“Flatmates? Will you move back home?”
John’s smile grew, and this time he knew exactly what to say. “I’d be delighted to.”
They grinned at each other for a moment, until the bird squawked loudly from Sherlock’s bedroom.
“I think it must be bedtime,” Sherlock noted. He rose, shuffling the cat from his lap to his chair’s seat, and headed back through the flat.
John followed. “Is that it?”
“It?” Sherlock asked off-handedly. He checked the bird’s water and food, then tickled its feathers through the bars.
John leaned against the doorsill. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable by suggesting something you don’t want.”
Sherlock was draping a large cloth cover over the bird’s cage. “I can’t imagine what you’d suggest that would make me uncomfortable. Unless it’s keeping all these animals. One is fine, but six is rather cacophonous.” He slipped past John into the kitchen, checking the other cages.
Onward. John took a big breath, held for a count of three, and let it out slowly and silently.
“I’d like to ask you to dinner.”
Sherlock’s face was half-hidden by the lid of the snake’s terrarium as he checked on the reptile. “We’ve had dinner together a multitude of times; that’s –”
“As a date,” John clarified.
The terrarium lid clattered back into place. “A date?”
“With a candle on the table, and holding hands if we feel like, and maybe a goodnight kiss.”
The rapid blink was back.
“It’s just something I thought I’d ask. It doesn’t–”
“Yes!” Sherlock blurted. “Yes, I, uh, a date. Could be a thing. That we do.”
“We’ll just give it a try, yeah? If you don’t like it, we don’t have to do it again.”
“What if you don’t like it?” asked Sherlock.
John laughed. “There’s pretty much no chance of that. I’ve imagined it more than once and, yeah, I’m sure I’ll like it.”
Turning abruptly, Sherlock headed back to the lounge. “I haven’t been, um, on a date per se, so I’ll read about –”
“No, no, no.” John caught up and pulled the laptop away. “Just be you. That’s who I want to go on a date with.”
“But I don’t want you to be bored.”
“Huh?”
Sherlock paced away, the picture of exasperation. “After each of your dates, unless you’d had sex, you were terribly bored. What if that happens again?”
Ah. John settled into his chair again; the dog immediately lay across his feet again. “It wasn’t the date itself, it was the person. With you, I can’t imagine ever being bored.”
“I can.”
“Well, yes, I expect so.”
Sherlock’s face conveyed his feeling even before his words emerged. “It’s horrid, John.”
“Yes, I know, you maniac. But we’ve got a say in that, don’t we? We don’t want life to be boring, we can make sure it’s not.”
The glint in Sherlock’s eye made John hurry to clarify, “Without dying! Or rendering the flat uninhabitable!”
“Or leaving you behind,” Sherlock added, “which I vow will never happen again. No more haring off on my own.” He paused, and the right side of his mouth quirked up. “From now on we’ll be haring off together.”
John had thought he’d wait for their first kiss, see how Sherlock felt about the dating, assess his response to gentle romantic gestures. But that statement from Sherlock, the openness in his expression, the resolution in his stance… John was compelled to rise from his chair, gather Sherlock in his arms, and reach up to place his lips on that beautiful mouth.
Together, from now on.
Here they were, in the last and final After, which John dared to dream might just be Happily Ever.