Archive of Our Own ^beta

They’d been on the road for barely an hour before the traffic hit. Sherlock, bundled in his coat and leaning against the passenger side window, cracked an eye open when John slowed the car to a stop. He had been faking sleep for the past half hour, a fortunate side effect of the sulk he’d been in ever since John had brought up this visit. Sherlock frowned at the stopped cars all around them, looking as though they had been out to get him personally. 

John stifled a sigh.

It should have been him having a strop, after all, it was his estranged parents they were going to visit. Honestly he wasn’t even sure what Sherlock was upset about, John hadn’t even forced him to come. He had simply mentioned getting an email from his parents saying they had found the blog and wanted to see their son again, and they were sorry they hadn’t reached out sooner.

John had been sceptical at first: the memories of their vitriolic reaction to Harry’s coming out, and the subsequent lack of effort in making amends with either of them were still somewhat sore in his mind, but they had been chatting for a while, and he figured it wouldn’t hurt too much to give this a shot. Besides, they seemed properly serious about this– they had invited Harry to come up as well.

He’d brought the prospect of a visit up to Sherlock in the middle of a case, which might have been his first mistake. Sherlock seemed to think John was somewhat of an idiot, perhaps more so than usual, for believing that his parents wanted anything to do with him and his sister besides getting grandchildren in their lives for the first and likely only time. John obviously was not too pleased with this conclusion, though the thought was definitely one that had crossed his mind. It was simply less pleasant when it came from Sherlock.

The conversation was quickly discarded, however, when a phone call from Lestrade had the two of them running back to the scene of the crime. Sherlock spent ten minutes re-checking potential points of entry, and another five observing the cracked walls of the client’s bedroom, tapping intermittently at his phone, before turning to John and saying: “After the case. We can borrow a car from Mycroft.”

It took John a second to catch up with the conversation.

“You don’t have to come,” he said, privately pleased that, despite the case ramping up, he still held a part of Sherlock’s mind. Sherlock simply looked at him.

“Lestrade. Arrest this man, and have your men check under the floorboards of his basement, I suspect you will find something there.” He held out his phone, browser opened to the profile of a faculty member from the local university.

“D’you think he has the stolen laptop down there?” Lestrade said, gesturing at his men to follow Sherlock’s orders.

“No,” he replied, snapping his phone shut. “I think he has the owner’s body.”

And so that was the case mostly wrapped up, a whirlwind that got progressively more insane as they went along. It had started out as a simple robbery that Sherlock had originally dismissed, until the young woman who had come looking for help had gone missing. One thing led to another– as it often did with Sherlock –and Lestrade’s men were arresting the woman’s PhD advisor, who had killed her in a bid to protect his life’s work, which she had just been about to disprove.

Hiding her body under the floorboards felt a bit excessive and derivative, which was a thought process that horrified John as soon as it had come to mind. A woman had just been murdered, and he was worried about the lack of inventiveness from her killer. Perhaps a weekend away would do him some proper good.

That led them here. Sitting in unmoving traffic, Sherlock still sulking over whatever it was he was mad about this time around, and John resisting the urge to sigh at the absurdity of a grown man managing to out-toddler an actual toddler. 

Rosie was managing quite well, especially since this was the longest she had ever been in a car. She had fallen asleep not long before Sherlock started to fake his, and had managed to stay asleep. John was forever grateful he had been blessed with such an unfussy child. He didn’t know if he would have managed with two of them in the house.

The stretch of road they were stopped on would have been picturesque in any other circumstance. Trees lined the side of the road, and, in the distance, you could just make out the silhouette of a mountain. They had passed the nearest service station less than ten minutes before stopping, but besides that, there didn’t seem to be much else around. 

After about five minutes of sitting there, the engine rumbling quietly under the silent tension in the car, the surrounding drivers started to exit their vehicles. Some of them held their phones up to the sky for reception to seemingly no avail.

John sighed, though not for the reasons he’d been wanting to all day, and shut off the car’s engine.

“Seems like we’ll be here a while.” He checked his phone. No reception.

Sherlock sniffed and readjusted the ridiculous collar of his coat, and John, well, he’d had enough.

He turned sideways in his seat, but Sherlock didn’t acknowledge him with more than a brief glance his way. 

“That’s it. Why did you even come if you were going to be so… so Sherlock about this.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “They’re my parents.”

“They’re idiots,” Sherlock mumbled from where his cheek was pressed to the seat.

“Yeah well,” John huffed and leaned back. “So am I apparently.”

This finally got Sherlock’s full attention. He sat up, managing to look imperious despite half his hair being flattened from his faux slumber. 

“Considering the fact that you let them blatantly manipulate you into visiting them when they’ve quite obviously known about your blog for months, if not, years, and only chose to contact you after your daughter was born–”

“They talked to Harry too! I asked her, and she even said they were being genuine–” He stopped himself. 

Sherlock’s eyes flicked across John’s face and suddenly there wasn’t enough space in the car. John’s chest constricted, and not in the way it usually did when Sherlock looked at him, but in the way it did when he realised that everything he thought his life would be had slipped away from him so rapidly he could barely remember how it felt to hold them. That is, until Sherlock, when instead of falling listlessly, he fell right into place, but then that, too, had been taken from him, and listlessness was the only thing he felt. He had been mourning the life he had built as both a wide eyed military recruit, trying his best to carve a space for himself, and as a veteran, finally finding his place in the world with the unlikeliest of companions.

There was no longer a need to mourn Sherlock or the colour he had brought into John’s world, because he was back, and he was never leaving again, not so long as John could help it. The only piece missing from his life was his parents, and he would be damned if he didn’t at least try to get them back, if only to prove to himself that he doesn’t mess everything up as if it’s a professional sport.

John’s hands had somehow found their way back to the steering wheel, which he only noticed once they had started to hurt from the strength of his hold. He needed to get a grip, metaphorically, but they were stranded on the road, and John was starting to regret not taking Mycroft up on the offer of a driver alongside the car.

He could feel Sherlock’s eyes still on his face, likely flushed from the mortifying ordeal of being known by Sherlock, of having the facts of his very existence laid bare, and he needed to get away before he did something drastic, like hit him, or cry, or–

Rosie wailed from the backseat.

John fumbled with his seatbelt, practically launching himself out of the car. His hands shook as he unbuckled Rosie from her safety seat, but the cool air had already started to calm him down. 

Sherlock had retreated back to his sulking position, and John, still unsure of his mood and unwilling to deal with it, dropped his keys onto his seat.

“Just… Stay with the car alright,” he said, mostly to Sherlock’s back. He shut the door with a bit more force than was strictly necessary, which he regretted instantly, since it spooked Rosie, redoubling her cries.

“It’s alright, darling.” He hitched her up his hip, missing when she was smaller, and trying not to drown in regret about having missed that part of her life. His therapist told him not to blame himself for things that he couldn’t change, but to work on becoming the kind of person who wouldn’t make those mistakes again. As he weaved his way between the stopped cars to the edge of the rural motorway, passing people leaning out their windows or fully perched on the hoods of their cars, he felt like he had lost any progress he might have made towards becoming the New John Watson, but he couldn’t pinpoint if the stagnancy had occurred after Mary’s death, or Sherlock’s. 

He shook his head in the hopes of dispelling the thought process. It wasn’t a productive one, and he wanted to retain some semblance of steadiness when he was about to dive into the very cause of his instability. 

Slowly, he meandered away from Mycroft’s car, from Sherlock and his ineffable mood, and eventually, Rosie calmed down, and so did he.

Just as she was about to slip back into sleep, another cry pierced the air. This wasn’t the cry of a child though, it was another kind he was all too familiar with– agony. 

As quickly as he could with a toddler on his hip, he made his way towards the noise. Adrenaline poured through him, and he readied himself to jump into the fray, to yell out: “Don’t worry, I’m a doctor!” and save the day, which, if he was honest, was something he dreamed of even now, when swooping in with his credentials was somewhat of a norm for him already. 

However, to his very mild and quickly conceived disappointment, no one was injured or even in need of any medical assistance. The source of the cry was simply a young woman sobbing behind the open trunk of what John assumed was her car, while her grim-faced friend rubbed gentle circles into her back. 

Still, he could sense trouble, and he cautiously approached, not wanting to scare the women nor wake Rosie. 

“Is everything all right?”

The crying woman turned to him and sniffed, trying to rein in her tears.

“My dress-, ” she started, before the tears started up again. Her friend’s face got even grimmer.

“Her wedding dress. We went to go pick it up yesterday evening, and it was in the trunk of my car and–”

“It’s gone and the wedding’s tomorrow .”

John furrowed his brow, taking in the scene.

The car was a CUV with a rather large but relatively barren trunk. Whatever sparse objects were in there didn’t look any more disturbed than a car ride would entail, and the latch didn’t seem to exhibit any signs of forced entry, though he’d need to take a closer look and–

He caught himself going into Sherlock Mode, and when his chest constricted this time it was in the way it did when Sherlock smiled at a clever observation he had made, or when he talked Rosie through some scheme of his, promising her experiments of her own when she was older, and generally just Sherlock , existing in proximity to him, close enough for his fingers to brush but not enough to take hold, to ground. John stopped himself right on the edge of a smile, and suddenly whatever silent row they had been having didn’t matter anymore, because Sherlock had come with John despite his obvious distaste for the situation. 

“Do you think it could have been stolen?” He asked, shifting Rosie slightly to pull out his mobile. 

The friend scoffed, her grim face pinched in distaste. “How could it have been stolen? It’s been in the trunk since we got it last night, and I even checked on it this morning before we left.”

“Could I just get my friend to come take a look anyway? He’s a detective, of sorts.” He had already tapped out a message to Sherlock. “He might be able to sort something out.”

The bride, intrigued by the possibility of a theft, and very obviously looking for reassurance that her friend had not been able to provide, wiped her eyes on the sleeves of her sweater and nodded. “That would be lovely… It would definitely put my mind at ease. Of course if it’s no trouble–”

“No trouble at all.” John smiled his half-second public not-for-Sherlock smile. He couldn’t even be bothered to stay angry at him right now, not in the face of a case. They never let it get in the way of the work, sentiment and all that. The only thing that had ever put a halt to their vigilante crime chasing was Rosie, and that was despite John’s insistence that Sherlock went on without him.

“I’m still not getting any reception here,” the friend said, waving her phone about. “I might pop down to the servo we passed. See if I can get some news and maybe grab a bite.”

The bride nodded again, and her friend headed off, squeezing her shoulder on the way past, and shooting John a sceptical look.

Obviously the situation was much more trivial than what Sherlock was accustomed to, but he turned up in no time. Rosie had pulled herself fully from sleep, and was babbling at the bride, who seemed charmed, as everyone tended to be in her presence. 

John stood back with the bride as Sherlock examined the car.

“The dress was my grandmother’s,” she said out of the blue. John shifted slightly to face her, but she was watching Sherlock. “I wanted her to be part of my wedding.” She blinked quickly, tipping her head up for a moment before refocusing her gaze on Sherlock. John followed her eyes, unable to tamp his fascination with Sherlock at a crime scene. He was very likely the person who knew Sherlock the best, and that was including his omniscient older brother, but what went on in that brilliant mind of his was still a mystery to him. Sure, he had gotten better at following along over the years but… there was truly no way to keep up with someone so incredible, and John was content to bask.

“We had to take the dress to London. The family who made her dress I–” The bride shuffled her feet, looked over at Rosie, now chewing on John’s sleeve, smiled and looked back at the car, her eyes a million miles away. “I couldn’t trust anyone but them to get it fixed up for me. But of course, just my luck, the dressmaker was quite ill for a while and wasn’t able to get it sorted until the last minute and now…” She scrubbed her hand over her face and up through her hair. “Now it’s just vanished.”

“It’s got to be somewhere,” John said reassuringly. He didn’t have the best track record when it came to comforting crying women, but he was also a far different person than he was back when that used to be a regular problem of his.

“I just… I feel like if this one thing doesn’t go well then the entire ordeal will be a mess. And I knew there was a chance it wouldn’t be finished in time, so I’ve got a backup but it just…” Tears streamed down her face once more, but these were silent.

She was very obviously fighting an internal battle, one that had the dress as an end all be all, the final touch of a perfect portrait. John felt the strongest urge to comfort this woman, though that wasn’t a skill he was renowned for. She reminded him too much of himself, and for that, he needed to try.

“I understand,” he said. John felt the need to scrub his face with his hands, or to, maybe, sit down in the middle of the road, or laugh about the absurdity of the situation. “I barely had any family at my wedding, which honestly made planning the whole event feel entirely pointless.” He shook his head, remembering the disaster of that evening. A mess as characteristic as the couple it had been celebrating. “But when everyone was there, I realised that I had fixated so hard on my traditional idea of family that I forgot about all the other important people in my life.” 

Rosie gurgled, blinking owlishly, as if she had suddenly realised they weren’t just watching Sherlock work back at Baker Street, but were in fact, somewhere strange. The surroundings were quite strange indeed, even if one wasn’t a toddler.

“Part of your grandmother will be with you at the wedding,” he continued, doing his level best to seem calm and sure. “After all, it is her granddaughter getting married.”

The bride huffed out a laugh, but the tension in her eyes had receded, and she was smiling at Rosie.

Sherlock had knelt by the car, inspecting the tyres. He sprung up and slid his magnifying glass shut, before turning towards them.

“John, I am in dire need of Detective Watson’s assistance,” he said, reaching his arms out for Rosie, who was reaching for him in turn, babbling happily. It wasn’t until she was safely ensconced in Sherlock’s ridiculous coat that John realised his shoulder had begun to ache, both from Rosie’s persistent weight and the pervasive early autumn chill. 

“Your husband’s quite sweet,” she said, “I’m sure your family missed a great wedding. They’d be kicking themselves if they saw how precious the three of you are.” She smiled, sweet and wistful.

“Oh,” John said. His face warmed at the idea. His little family. “He was my best man, actually.” The bride froze, but before she could apologise, John continued. “Next time, though.”

He smiled, not unlike the way the bride had been smiling.

“Sorry for assuming,” she chuckled, “But I’m sure this time around will be lovely.”

John’s stomach swooped, and he bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling too hard. “Next time…”

Before he could go from sentimental to outright soppy in imagining a world where he and Sherlock even had a wedding, the bride’s friend returned, flushed from exertion and carrying a plastic bag of snacks.

“Checked the news at the servo,” she said, rifling through the contents of the bag and handing the bride a fancy looking bottle of soda. “Apparently there’s been a massive crash a bit down the motorway. Got an hour or two before they’ll clear it all up.”

The bride opened her drink and took a small sip, already seeming more relaxed in the presence of her friend.

“Thanks, Lils,” the bride said, “I texted Ollie ahead and he’s going to get his mum to take the backup dress for a bit of a touch-up. I told him it wasn’t necessary, but he insisted.” She smiled, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “He’s too sweet.”

The bride’s friend– Lils, likely short for Lily or one of its augmentative forms –frowned a bit. “Yeah, he is,” she practically grunted, though the bride didn’t seem to take notice.

Sherlock, however, did.

He had swooped in right as Lily spoke, and despite having Rosie cradled in his arms and waving joyously, he carved an imposing figure. No one in their right minds would ever describe Sherlock as sweet, except perhaps John, though it wasn’t as if John was ever completely in his right mind around Sherlock anyway, but that was all besides the point. His chat with the bride had set his head a bit straight, and he was slowly starting to suspect the true reason behind Sherlock’s strop, and if he was right, which John felt he was, he would have called it sweet. Not out loud, and certainly not to Sherlock’s face, at least not right now, but in the pocket of his heart where he kept his feelings for Sherlock. The good, the bad, and the ugly. He would tuck this moment away, coming back to look at it when he felt like he was alone in the world, which, these days, was almost never at all.

“Did you find anything?” The bride clutched her drink close, as scared that it, too, might vanish from right under her nose.

“Yes,” Sherlock said primly, though the illusion of his stoic propriety was broken by Rosie tugging on the collar of his coat. “The dress is still in London.”

The bride frowned. “I was so sure it was in the car before we left. Lily even checked it.” She turned to her friend, who had become visibly uncomfortable with the turn of the conversation. “Right, Lils?”

“I did,” Lily confirmed, but the bride had finally clued in to her discomfort.

She frowned even more. “Did you really, though? It’s okay if you didn’t, you wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it if it was stolen anyway.”

Lily opened her mouth, but before she could come up with some sort of likely half-hearted protest John was sure she had concocted on her walk to the service station, Sherlock cut in.

“Oh she most certainly did, but what she failed to mention was that, during her check, she took the dress and left it with her sister.”

Lily, John, and the bride stared at him, and John felt the little spike of excitement that came right before Sherlock laid all his observations out. Only Rosie remained unconcerned with the matter at hand, though she seemed quite concerned with Sherlock’s hand, at least.

“You said the dress was handmade by a friend of your grandmother’s, whose family business is located in London. You needed to pick up the dress but couldn’t go with your fiancé because of bad luck.” Sherlock paused, looking like he wanted to mention exactly what he thought of that particular superstition, but instead, his eyes slid to John and then away, so quickly that John wouldn’t have noticed had he not been staring at Sherlock intently ever since he started speaking. 

“Of course,” he continued, “Your friend here volunteered, even though she’s not your maid of honour, despite the fact that she very obviously assumed she would be.”
Lily sputtered at the accusation, but before she could protest, Sherlock held up a hand, still looking towards the bride. “You know each other quite well, she brought you your favourite drink and has a picture of the two of you on holiday set as her lock screen. In fact, she introduced you to your fiancé, and it bothers her how well you two made off without her.”

Lily inhaled sharply, and the bride’s face started to falter.

“So, she decided to enact a little bit of petty revenge, forcing you to have your second choice dress, knowing how much your grandmother’s meant to you.”

“That’s absolutely absurd,” Lily scoffed, “Where would you even get that–”

“There is hotel stationary in the car with your coffee orders on it, and the coffee cups in the cupholders are from a shop a block away from the hotel the two of you were staging at, but she didn’t go to that one, she went to the one four blocks away instead. That particular shop also happens to be across the street from where your friend’s sister lives. The sister she told you was out of town during your trip, thus forcing you to book a hotel. So she took your coffee order, detoured to the car to grab the dress, stopped by her sister’s to drop it, got the drinks and returned, confirming the safety of the dress and hustling you along on your merry way.”

Lily scoffed again, but her knuckles were white against the handle of the plastic bag. “That’s all complete rubbish.”

The bride looked sceptical, but John found that most people who didn’t want to believe in difficult truths tended to dabble in denial.

“How could you know all that from hotel stationary?” She shook her head.

John smiled in anticipation, not even bothering to hide it this time around. Sherlock in action never got old.

“There’s a coffee stain on your friend’s sleeve that set before she was able to clean it off, as she did with the stain on her collar, indicating that the spill happened during transit. The nearest branch of the coffee shop to your hotel is too close for the spill to have properly set, which indicates that she went to the next furthest location– far enough for the stain to set, but not far enough away that you know it’s a lost cause.” 

Sherlock turned dramatically towards the open trunk of the car.

“Tucked in the corner of the trunk there’s a small un-postmarked package with the return address for an Adriana Jameson living across the street from the coffee shop. You friend’s sister asked her to post it on her way out of town, but your dear friend here couldn’t think of a reason for her very much in town sister to have asked her to complete such a task, so instead she crammed it behind everything else and decided to do it later. As for the jealousy, well, it seems standard: she introduced the two of you and you ended up closer to each other than her, with you even opting to select your fiancé’s sister as your maid of honour instead of her. She doesn’t really want to break you up and was perfectly content being minorly annoyed at the way things turned out, but then your fiancé started taking up more of a role in your life than she did, and that apparently was too much to deal with.” He pursed his lips. “In the trunk are files from her work, indicating a dedication to the job. The car itself is due for maintenance, but she’s put it off in the hopes of having the funds to do some restoration on it, or better yet, upgrade it to the newer model. She was waiting to get promoted, but she didn’t, and that, combined with the jealousy, prompted her to take action. As far as revenge goes, this is petty and childish, but what else is to be expected from someone who backstabs their friends just because they didn’t let her into circle time on the playground.”

Lily and the bride both stared open mouthed at Sherlock, in horror and awe respectively, and the bride’s eyes started to well up again.

“Lils…” she started.

“I swear Bethy, he’s barmy,” Lily exclaimed, but the bride– Beth, he really should have asked their names ages ago –seemed to be sorting things out in her head, and wasn’t paying too much attention to her friend’s futile attempts at saving face.

“I just don’t understand why you would even do such a thing.” Beth shook her head, starting to look angry underneath her watery eyes. “You know full well how important that dress is to me, and… and how important Ollie’s been for me too… I just cannot believe– ugh!”

“I’m sorry–”

“I don’t care if you’re sorry! This is just bloody ridiculous.” Beth threw her hands up in frustration, and in doing so remembered she was holding the drink Lily had gotten for her.

She shoved the half empty drink into Lily’s hand and stomped away. Lily watched her leave, looking positively despondent, which John thought was rather unfair of her. After all, she had been the one who tried to sabotage a wedding.

“I never meant to hurt her,” she muttered, though to whom she was trying to absolve herself, John didn’t know.

Sherlock had already followed Beth away, and John trailed after them.

“John,” Sherlock said once he was in hearing range. “I’ve sent Mycroft to fetch the dress and bring it up. Someone will be here to pick–” He paused.

“Beth,” John supplied.

“To pick Beth up.”

John smiled and extricated Rosie from Sherlock’s grasp. She was starting to yawn.

“That’s awfully nice of you,” he said, if only to see Sherlock squirm.

Predictably, Sherlock’s face puckered. He waved his hand dismissively, and stalked off towards the car. John watched him leave, and he was sure that any onlookers could see his admiration written on his face, plain as day.

Once Sherlock was out of sight, he spotted Beth at the edge of the motorway, staring at the unmoving cars. She must have detoured back to the car at some point, because she now had a coat and a backpack on.

“It’s a bit dystopian, isn’t it,” she said when she saw John approaching. She kept her voice low, likely for Rosie’s sake, which John found quite nice. It warmed him, how much strangers could come to care about one another’s lives. “All the stopped cars. We’re all basically trapped here.”

“I suppose.” John turned to face the cars. People were milling about between them, chatting with strangers they would probably never see again.

The three of them stood in silence, only broken up by the occasional breeze carrying voices over to them. Rosie finally tipped back into slumber, and the steady rise and fall of her little chest made John’s heart feel full to bursting. Before he could get soppy about the joys of fatherhood again, he remembered why he had followed Beth away.

“Sherlock’s having someone bring you your dress, and some transport, as well,” he said. “I’m assuming you’re not wanting to sit in a car with your friend at the moment.”

Beth turned to him. “Why are you helping me?” She chewed on her lip. “Figuring everything out, I can understand, but sending someone all the way from London… You don’t even know where my destination is!”

John shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. They’ll take you.”

She shook her head. “But why? You don’t know me.”

“I think Sherlock thinks he ruined my wedding, and this is his way of making up for it,” he said, “That, and he does love to extort his brother for favours. It’s complicated.”

“What about you, though? You didn’t have to come find me in the first place.” She seemed troubled by it all, like she had never believed she could be fussed over. Beth reminded him oddly of Mary, both careful and carefree at once. Overly meticulous and unable to accept that sometimes, all you needed was a helping hand. Mary and Sherlock had been similar in that regard.

John shrugged again. “I’m a doctor, it’s my job.”

He knew the statement didn’t really make sense, but it was the best he could come up with. John cared about people, he did, but caring didn’t always translate to this glaring need to be seen as good, to have it be known that he was worth something, if only for what he could give to others. Sherlock had been one of the first people to look at him and see someone worth knowing, just for the sake of his existence. 

“Well, did he?” Beth said, after a brief moment of companionable quiet.

“Did he do what?”

“Ruin your wedding.” Beth cocked her head, studying him, eyes sharper than they had been all afternoon.

John thought back to his and Mary’s wedding. To Major Sholto, and Sherlock’s speech. To Sherlock’s song, and the first time he'd learned of Rosie. To searching for Sherlock halfway through the night and finding him gone. He should have known then and there that his first thought would always be Sherlock. 

“No.” John smiled. “He made it so much better.”

They slowly made their way back to the car, where they found Sherlock asleep– for real this time. John quietly tucked Rosie back into her safety seat, continuing the story of his wedding. People tended to get quite intrigued when you mentioned capturing a murderer on the happiest day of your life. Though John thought the happiest day of his was actually his engagement. 

Beth expressed all the normal amounts of sympathy after learning of Mary’s death, but John reassured her that they were all okay, Mary most of all.

Mycroft’s help arrived in the shape of a motorcycle weaving through the stopped vehicles, as sleek and anonymous as all of his endeavours attempted to be. Beth nearly started crying again at the sight of her dress, carefully tucked into a garment bag and fastened within an inch of its life. She thanked John profusely before putting on the proffered helmet and hopping onto the motorcycle. 

The cars started to move a little while after the motorcycle– which had arrived at inhuman speeds –left. John wouldn’t have been surprised if that, too, had been Mycroft’s doing. He drove along with the radio low, not wanting to wake up the two most important people in his life. Though after a while, Sherlock shifted again, blinking himself awake.

They sat listening to whatever top forty hits they were playing, none of which John recognised, until he decided to simply take the plunge.

“You don’t have to worry, you know,” he said, trying not to watch Sherlock’s every move out of the corner of his eye.

“Worry? What would I worry about,” Sherlock grumbled, voice croaky from his brief nap.

“I’m not going to suddenly up and leave you just because my parents want to see me every other holiday. I just want to give Rosie as much of a family as possible.”

Sherlock didn’t reply. John stole a glance. He was staring straight ahead contemplatively.

Molly had once told him that John was the only person whose feelings Sherlock ever tried to spare. That he only ever let himself look sad when John wasn’t looking. 

“Even if this whole thing doesn’t work out… I want to be able to say that I tried, even if it hurts me.”

He reached out, letting his hand rest on top of Sherlock’s.

“I’ve already got everything I need, right here, in this car. And at your parents’ house, and at Baker Street and the Yard and Saint Bart’s. All of this is more than enough.”

“But you still need to try,” Sherlock whispered. “I just don’t want you upset.”

John’s heart twisted, and he pitied whatever version of him had to live without Sherlock. It was silly and fanciful, but he hoped there wasn’t ever a John Watson who had to go through life without his own Sherlock Holmes.

“How could I ever be upset, when I always have our home to return to?”

Sherlock exhaled, and John saw, with perfect clarity, how the weekend would play out. They would make nice with his parents, or they might not. They might catch Harry sneaking a drink, but they probably wouldn’t. They would all fight, either passively or in the open. John might yell, or cry, or laugh, but at the end of it all, he would pack up the car with his most precious cargo, and they would all go home.