#journal entry

So anyways tonight I am crying about how beautifully Aulë’s description of the Dwarves of his creation was, rather than simply their hardened and nearly comical exteriors as presented in the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. The Dwarves are devoted to their work, yes, but through the lens of Aulë’s passion and lovefor his creatures do we truly see the softer, more beautiful side of the Dwarves and their rough exteriors and creations. 

They may work in the darkness and in stone, but they are craftsmen with finelyhoned talent, intricacy, and attention to detail just like their creator. Their beauty lies in their fortitude, their strength to cradle the most precious of jewels and yet survive in grandiose halls of stone. They are much like the Elves in that regard, as the Elves live long in the strongest of trees (as in Lothlorien) yet they care for the most delicate of flowers, seeds and patterns. One is a beauty of dusty, dirty things and the other is a beauty of light colors and softness. They are quite harmonious when one considers.

Cited: The Silmarillion, p. 43 - 46

It’s very cold in my new apartment surprisingly. Since when does LA feel cold? This is now my new WFH attire

Was in Sedona Arizona yesterday and today I’m finally in California lord it’s been a long journey! Still about 8 more hours to go until I’m done for the day

In Dallas on my way to Santa Fe

Moving from ATL to LA on a road trip! Currently driving through Mississippi

I’m starting a new job tomorrow that is at a company that’s been my goal for the last maybe 5 years. I feel fucking nervous and anxious. A lot is riding on me doing well there. But I’m also scared for what comes after that.

Watching queer eye during a molly come down is so much

My family is fine, and not like, actively harmful. But is it crazy to want a family/in-laws that aren’t so gung Ho for Christianity that they would rather die and “go to heaven” than try and help the planet? My sisters and parents keep dreaming of some idea like “well when the world is over we can party in heaven while the planet is dead.” Like???? What??

It would just be cool to be related to a family that isn’t ready to die at the drop of a hat and thinks other people are gonna go to some afterlife too or something.

This is a good part of the story. Well, more like a great part of the story. You can throw whatever adjective in that sentence you’d like, once you finish reading the tale.

But you can be assured, this particular part of the story – this one – you will like.

The biggest flaw with Sherlock in his thinking, primarily when it is in regards to one he cares about (John, Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson, and to an extent, a few others) is that he focuses more on the why of a situation versus on the how. He has thought of nothing but whyin the last few months that he has not begun to piece together how to get back home. It’s complicated, of course, and that’s a valid excuse. But Sherlock doesn’t like excuses. He likes answers and reasons and results. He’s thought about, almost constantly, why Moran has taken a role into John’s life as pseudo-new best friend. He’s thought to why the man, once given that role, has done nothing but act it out. Actors are allowed to act of course, but there must be some point in which the curtain is drawn and the lights are shown so the audience gets to see what happens in the end.

It’s the audiences turn now.

When you’re a consulting detective, you always want to know two things: whyandhow.

Of course, going back to the idea of whyandhow - it’s as easy as that. Sherlock’s needed to devise a way to send him back home. For the last six months he’s wanted to avoid risking John’s life with Moran such close at hand. Regardless of Sherlock’s intense desire to return home - he wasn’t going to risk John. John, despite every back and forth thought that plagued Sherlock’s head, was (and even now, is) defined as home. When Sherlock would enter 221B and John wasn’t there, it was simply another dwelling for him to lounge around that had decent access to the internet. But, oh, when John was there - he was allowed into a world that he once thought would be dull and boring and trite, and god, just like the sugar, he got that wrong too. There was nothing like having John with him in the flat - well, anywhere for that matter.

John helped make him feel like someone else was there listening - maybe even cared about what Sherlock was saying. Yes, they’d become intricate parts of the other’s lives. It’s hard not to when you watch your flatmate-turn-best friend covered in semtex and even more to so when you see the opposite party (Sherlock) drop from a four story building to his ultimate death. If you ignore the heightened parts of their friendship, you would still see two men who had, unknowingly, become the center of the other’s world. Solar system - the sun - the rock - whatever romantic title you’d like to give it. Of course, being said before - and here again, now - this wasn’t a romantic story (not yet, at least), but a love one. Sherlock and John were a love story - you just have to look at it from all the right angles to have a firm understanding of how their relationship worked.

John helped Sherlock feel as if he wasn’t invisible.

And so all this reasoning alone - saving each other’s lives, sticking up for the opposite, petty arguments over the simplest things in the sitting area, arguments over who buys the milk this week, arguments over who forgot to buy the milk this week when they were firmly told it was their turn, glasses of wine and terrible telly and passing out on the sofa,  helping a man find his heart and reminding a man that he was still brilliant under all those layers of military uniform, trust, care, compassion, love - and for all the reasons just listed, it was easy enough to see why John was (and still is) home. And Sherlock wants to go back. He’s been ready since he survived his fall and for every month, week, day, hour, and second in between - he’s been ready. But that friendship - that one he has with John that he  not risk has been the solid reasoning as to why he’s been safe with his choices. He’s always been a man to act out recklessly and without the consideration of others but he can’t do that with John. And he hasn’t.

Instead, if you’ve read, he’s done it with himself in a sense. The drugs, of course. Mycroft told him he could have cigarettes when the patches stopped working (four days after his fall) and then he had his first taste of cocaine in over six months a month later. He knows that it is silly - giving into cocaine - that the high is only fifteen minutes tops and sometimes he sees monsters and aliens and guns and blackness, but gods, sometimes, a lot of the times actually, he sees John and you may understand Sherlock’s feelings on John now. There is a quote he likes to use to explain it, but it comes with a story. Just a small one before the last one and the curtain is drawn on this part of the play.

Sherlock’s never put much time into literature except when it came to scientific readings or material used for cases or experiments. But from time to time, when the boredom hit high levels and John would nag at him for doing utterly nothing for almost three weeks straight - he would read. And so, being the man who avoids all sexual interest and romantic intentions at his earnest, of course he goes for the titles that have to do with sexuality. He doesn’t remember the title nor the author, and to be frank, he nit-picked it to the best of his ability - peeling apart the plot using the method of reading every other line and skipping parts in between that bored him.

But there was something said that reminded him of John. Of the relationship between John and him.

“But I think we both knew, even then, that what we had was something even more rare, and even more meaningful. I was going to be his friend, and was going to show him possibilities. And he, in turn, would become someone I could trust more than myself.”

Gods, the book was boring. All this romance between two men and their love and everything in between. It’d been just as dull as some of John’s blog entries really, but, Sherlock had read that quote and it stuck. It stayed. And that, in a sense, defined how Sherlock felt in regards to John. At least at the time. Now? Of course there was more. Eighteen months did a lot to a man - including his heart (which he had recently learned actually existed). He missed John, and that missing turned into the acknowledgement of care and love and want.

Maybe it was Mycroft, or maybe just himself, but he had realistic hopes that upon his return they (John and him) could make this work. That they could actually make this work. It needn’t be said again that John is straight and Sherlock just doesn’t do these things but it’s always been different with them. You could tack on a larger explanation regarding their history and friendship and romantic tension if you’d like, but that sums up their odds of actually entertaining the possibility of engaging in a relationship together.

The line had always existed - the one just about friendship - and now that Sherlock’s had his chance to look at it, he knew that he wanted to. He wanted to try. He might not have ever been good at it and clearly he would need a lot of practice because he didn’t have a lot of background (two kisses, one round of sex) in the whole relationship sort - but he would try and he thinks he might even like it because gods, really, what’s there not to like about John? So through this all - eighteen months of death he has learned what he has been missing in his life and how he wants to rectify it with one single person - not just because he is allowed as a human being but because somehow, someone gave him an invalided medical doctor from Afghanistan and Sherlock’s never loved anyone more.

But, as you have read earlier in these stories, John’s happy. He’s bloody happy with this girl who takes his hands and kisses his palms and tucks stray hairs behind his ear (he really does need a trimming). He smiles and laughs and grins and carries a blue box in his pocket waiting for the right moment because it might not have been Sherlock - and though he misses the consulting detective every day - he knows he needs to move on from the dead and here at the end of some unhidden rainbow is a lovely girl that he thinks he’s going to take a chance on. He still loves Sherlock, of course, but he thinks his heart is big enough to have more than one love of his life in it and that’s something he’s just fine with.

It really is all fine.

And so the consulting detective who has missed, cared, and come to realization of his romantic interest in the opposite holds a lot of cards in his hand. But now it’s time to throw all the cards away and just go home. He ignores the fact that even though he is going home - he may even be going to a different one, where there is a different John. Sherlock’s not the only one who has changed over the last eighteen months. He ignores the fact that he’s just a little bit heartbroken over the fact that John’s moved on and is happy and he can’t have what he hoped for - even if they were just small hopes. He ignores the fact of why Moran is doing all of this because he’s worked the last six months to investigate any and all leftover strings holding Moriarty’s web together. He ignores the fact he wants to know why Moran came in and took John as his best friend and treats him to dinners and shares beers and talks and doesn’t shoot him.

He ignores it all - ignores all the questions of why, and he is left with how.

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to answer how.

*

It’s Christmas Eve. Most of the streets are dead - best they were, anyways, at around eight o'clock on the night before Christmas. There are a few cars traveling here and there to make it in time (or rather, be late for) their Christmas Eve dinners. A bar or two are open, of course, to welcome with open arms the gentlemen and ladies out there who have nowhere to go. A good pint is almost the same as a hug from a niece of nephew - especially when the child reaches for a four second hug and pulls away to return to their new electronics or mobile phones or whatever kids get these days at the age of six, seven, and eight.

So the bar it is.

Sherlock and Mycroft sit in the back of one of Mycroft’s black vehicles. He keeps the heat on because he’s getting a little too old and his bones freeze right to their core this time of year. Sherlock, on the other hand, is more focused on the environment outside versus the set temperature inside of the vehicle. They’re set side by side and there is a silver mobile phone in Sherlock’s hand. It’s nothing special - capable of nothing more than making phone calls, sending and receiving text messages, and maybe sending a picture of terrible quality. But it will do. It has been programmed, for the time being, to be John Watson’s number - sending and receiving. And the only number loaded to the phones is Moran’s.

Sherlock clicks the screen on and his tongue darts out between his lips before his fingers dexterously begin to type out a message. He’s worked on what to say for the last three weeks - he knows it word for word for perfection.

Hey mate. Want to grab a pint? Something I want to ask you before I.. you know. Well. Right.
JW

There is a small ding when it is sent and Sherlock swallows hard before glancing back at Mycroft. Mycroft faintly smiles, gripping the end of his umbrella a little too tightly. They’re both nervous and anxious and they know that there is only one outcome they will allow: Sherlock getting to go home.

Maybe thirty seconds pass before there is another ding, indicating a text has been received. Sherlock glances at the screen and reads it once, twice, and responds before even showing Mycroft.

Sure. Not getting nervous are you? It’s not that big of a deal, but then again, you are just a soldier. ;) The Abbey? Give me twenty?

Just a soldier my arse. You owe me a pint for that one, Seb. Already here. See you then.
JW

Mycroft reviews the exchange of text messages in his seat. He only nods, keeping a grip on his umbrella steady. “Ten minutes and then send him the text. You’ll need to be in the alley then.”

And so they wait - the only sound roaming through the entire vehicle was their patient breathing and the echo of the car running. They’d all but forgotten that it was Christmas Eve. Nothing else mattered besides the minutes dwindling down and the time left between now and the moment that Sherlock returned to 221B. The moment he returned to John.

Two minutes before, Sherlock shifts uncomfortably and Mycroft grasps his wrist firmly. “You’ll be fine, Sherlock,” Mycroft speaks, though his eyes are directed to his own tinted window to the left. “We will get you home tonight.”

He’s not exactly sure what is going through his brother’s mind, despite how smart either of them are. Sure, Mycroft understands love and to an extent, has it with Greg Lestrade. But there is something more fine-tuned and mutually-defined between Sherlock and John and he dare thinks that no one will ever be able to comprehend it. He does understand the fact that there is nothing more that Sherlock wants in the entire world is to have his friendship with John back, and Mycroft is going to do everything in his power to give it to him.

One minute till.

“Are you ready, Sherlock?”

Sherlock doesn’t answer. Instead he looks down at the silver mobile phone and keys in another message quickly before sending it off. He glances up at Mycroft and folds one center of his jacket over the other, tighten it up before he opens the car door to the world outside - to London and snow and winter and Christmas Eve and home.

“Are you ready, Sherlock?”

Sherlock turns his head once to his brother, letting only a small smile tilt at the corner of his lips before he murmurs, “John.” With that, he’s out of the car and moving swiftly to the alleyway besides the bar. The mobile phone is left in his seat, which Mycroft reaches for and reads over the latest message sent.

Actually, outside the bar in the alley. Beer. Nerves. Retching. Bring me a towel or I’ll use your shirt when you get here. And hurry. Usually Colonels aren’t this slow.
JW

Mycroft can’t help but smile a bit. Sherlock is Sherlock, but he knows John all too well. He slides over to Sherlock’s side and peeks through the darkened window at his brother. Sherlock has taken a position about fifteen feet deep into the alleyway, hunched over in the darkness where only a spare silhouette of him can be seen. No questions, Mycroft thinks, ask no questions, Sherlock, and just get it over with. Get it over with and go home.

The phone dings again and Mycroft looks down.

Soldier, don’t make me kick your arse. I’m not cleaning up your puke you prat. But I did bring you a towel. I already told you, giving her the key to your flat isn’t the same as bloody marrying her or something. Calm the fuck down, John. I’ll be there in two or three minutes. Try not to die on me, soldier.

Mycroft smiles - he can’t help it. There is some hope left. So it was just a key in the little blue box, and not a ring. There’s still a chance - there’s still hope.

Sherlock.

Mycroft watches again, from the interior and containment of the car. Sherlock knows how to act - bend over and lean against the wall and create the illusion he is John Watson, retching his brains out. The clear image of Sherlock doing so triggers thoughts in Mycroft’s mind - of what he has done to his brother, what he has seen. He sees Sherlock, stuck with a needle in the arm, claiming there are monsters here and he only wants John. He’s seen the empty eyes of the opposite as weeks turned into months and months hit a year and it was just so much on one single man. He knows the crimes he has committed and he also knows that Sherlock, in a sense, has forgiven him. But still it lingers on like a pot of water rolling on the boil. It never goes over the edges but is always heated - always there in the back of his mind.

His mind is pulled from one topic to the next as he hears the rev of an engine just a short distance away. Moran has parked to the side opposite of his vehicle and he takes time to give his motorcycle a quick glance over before walking across the street, towel in hand. It is time, Mycroft thinks, and he knows that either way - one of the two men will die tonight. He just hopes Sherlock pulls the trigger fast enough. He really wishes he didn’t have to hope, but when it comes to men like Sebastian Moran, you have room for just a little.

Moran passes Mycroft’s vehicle and moves inside of the empty corridor. Mycroft is too curious - he cannot help it. He presses the trigger button to the window, just so it goes down less than several centimeters. He wants to hear - he needs to know - he’s the British Government.

“What did I tell you, John,” Moran starts before he’s even ten feet away from Sherlock, “I told you that if you sat down and thought too much about a bloody fucking gift, you’re going to get yourself sick. And where am I now? On bloody Christmas Eve? Not getting pissed with my best mate but, instead, cleaning the retch off my best..”

He stops.

Everything stops.

Everything has to stop.

Sherlock stands tall, no longer bending over and Moran knows.

In a car crash, the time before impact is something that someone, usually, can always remember. Sometimes you remember the realization that no matter how hard you (or the driver) presses the brake, you are going to collide. It is a realization that is swallowed and nulled to your chest as you reactively think to pull any and all body parts up to protect two places: your head and your chest. It could be said that your heart and brain matter most, but in such a quick decision, it is always curious as to why you instinctively go for those two areas. Sometimes people remember the sounds. One person may have hit realization a half a second earlier and bellowed out a scream or a yell, and in reaction, you remember that sound - then the sound of tires burning across pavement, and of course, the collide.

This is not a car crash. This is, however, a hide speed impact.

Eighteen months, eight days, eight hours, thirty-six minutes.

Sherlock never really collided with the ground at St. Bart’s. Now he does.

Eighteen months, eight days, eight hours, thirty-six minutes.

John.

“Took you long enough, Holmes,” Moran smiles brightly against the darkness of the night. Snow is falling lightly, painting them with a cascade of white and gray flecks. It is almost like a scene from a movie, if only an orchestra was playing in the background. “Took you far too long for being the world’s only consulting detective.”

This is the part of the story where Sherlock needs to act quick - needs to reach in (one hand), pull out (twice as fast), and aim for Moran’s head (releasing the trigger and one bullet). This is how in the factor of why and how. This is how it is to be done.

Instead:

“Have I surprised you, Mr. Moran?”

“Surprised?” Moran laughs and takes a step closer. He is hardly shaven and due for one, yet he does not reek of alcohol. This man has been John’s best mate for the last few months. This man has, in a sense, replaced Sherlock. “Hardly surprised. I just didn’t think it would take you this long to make a move. Have you figured it out yet then, Holmes? Why I sit next to Doctor Watson on the school bus and play with him all day like in primary school?”

Sherlock swallows. The gun is in his pocket. He knows this - Moran knows this. Moran’s probably armed too - he has to be. He’s a sniper and he never comes unprepared. They have bullets and there can be wounds but for now there are only words.

“Was it for revenge, Moran?” Sherlock asks. His voice is sharp and the air around his lips puffs out in smoke with each word offered. “Were you really shagging Jim and now your poor, broken heart needed revenge?” It’s been eighteen months but Sherlock still knows how to pick his battles. “Really, I don’t know who would want to bed a man like Moriarty, really, the man hardly ever shut up.” He stops again, eyes glittering, “Or are you like us? Get bored a lot? Needed a new distraction?”

Moran snorts.

And that’s it.

Sherlock falls to his knees at the sound, almost waiting for his own car crash to happen where a bullet impacts him. But it never does.

It takes a second - two - three - and his eyes focus on Moran just feet away, first falling to his knees and then falling face first in the snow - blood pouring from his head and melting into the snow. Sherlock gasps, takes another second, still with his hands covering his head and finally shifts a bit, looking around.

“It’s time to go home, Sherlock,” Mycroft says. Sherlock blinks and finally regains reality as he sees Mycroft standing several feet behind him, wiping the end of his gun with a handkerchief. He watches the scene for a moment, first Mycroft and then back to Moran, lying motionless on the snow in front of him.

“Mycroft.”

“It’s time to go home, Sherlock,” Mycroft repeats. Sherlock moves, albeit unsteadily, and stands completely to his feet from his knelt position. He’s shaky around the edges and alters his vision from the dead body to his brother as reality is beginning to sink in. “You’ve had enough blood on your hands. Go home.”

“Mycroft.”

Sherlock moves closer to the body, which is in between him and the older sibling. Moran is still motionless, not breathing and very clearly, dead.

Mycroft closes the gap and looks down at the body and then back up to Sherlock. “Greg will be on his way after I message him. I’ll handle this. You need to go home. It’s time.”

Sherlock nods, completely deadpanned still by what happened yet simply trying to focus on what needs to be done now. “Mycroft, you,” he belts out, stepping around the body and clenching his eyes shut. Reality is starting to seep into his veins and blood and realization (car crash, moment before impact, or even, just after) is taking its toll on the younger brother. “Lestrade - he, are you going to tell him?”

“I’ll handle this, Sherlock, but yes, I will tell him you’re alive. And I will tell him that I have known.”

Sherlock stops him short. “I could lie to him. I can tell him that you never knew until now.”

“No,” Mycroft replies, pushing the gun into his pocket. He’s surprised that no one has come by the scene of the crime just yet, but then again it is Christmas Eve. “I’ve already lied to him enough. I’ll deal with how he reacts for what I have done in the past and now. That’s my situation and mine alone.”

“Lestrade,” Sherlock sucks in air, “He’s going to be hurt.”

“My situation, Sherlock,” Mycroft responds and lifts his right hand to squeeze Sherlock’s shoulder. “Go home, Sherlock.”

It’s a scene to take in, really it is. Mycroft looks like a glass figurine against the white snow fall - body of sniper, Sebastian Moran, casually lying in the snow, blood pouring from the gunshot wound. It should be more climatic than this, but this is what was expected. This is what the ending required. Sherlock takes one more look - a glance to the sniper’s head and then back to his brother whose facial expression is nothing but neutral and calm. He probably defined both terms. Sherlock opens his mouth but nothing comes out because beyond this - beyond Sebastian Moran there is only one thing:

John.

And so he goes.

He goes back home.

Its two days before Christmas. The snow’s finally come and the night sky is nearly the darkest hues of black imaginable. Flecks of white fall overhead and tidings of Christmas joy are just around the corner. Lights stay on for this joyous occasion as Christmas Eve tomorrow is just as important as Christmas Day just beyond. The streets are empty with just a passing car or two - tomorrow there will be signs of activity and life as people do their last minute shopping and traveling, and then for once in the year, the world will turn to be very quiet. There will be the calm before the storm of children rushing down to unwrap presents and wives making coffee for their husbands and smiles and laughter all contained inside of their houses and flats. There may be lunches and dinners and visits to the church. There may be photographs and joy and thrills of new toys and presents and smiles laced around the family like the lights tangled in treetops. But for once during the year, it’s all just quiet on Christmas Day.

It’s two days before Christmas, but Christmas Eve matters too. It’s the day that Sherlock Holmes is going to kill Sebastian Moran and go home.

It’s what everyone has been waiting for.

The night is dark and Sherlock’s abandoned Mycroft’s residence, persisting in the fact that he needed time to think. It’s actually more than just that. He needs time to breathe and readjust and come to terms with the fact that he will be going home in less than twenty-four hours. Mycroft told him that it wouldn’t be easy to come back to life and Sherlock snapped back that it was much worse dying. Come now, months after that argument, Sherlock is renegotiating with his mind in regards to those terms. Going back to the world that he’s created shouldn’t be that hard really. He knows Lestrade will give him the work and he knows that he’s got enough evidence to erase the public’s thoughts on him and at least give him the green light to bealive again. He knows it won’t be easy, of course, and more or less, it will be gradual - the world acknowledging that he exists again. But that’s not the only thing on his mind tonight. No, of course not.

It’s been a year and a half. Eighteen months that have changed a lot of things. Well, to be exact, it’s been eighteen months, seven days and roughly ten hours (thirty-three minutes and ten seconds) since he’s died. That’s quite a bit of time.

Sure, he’s still Sherlock Holmes. But he’s also human. God forbid the idea would once terrify him; it now lies as fact because evidence is evidence and a scientific man such as himself is not one to meddle in petty arguments with science. Instead he has learned to accept these terms and live with them. However, with this knowledge, small things have changed. Small things that have turned into bigger things. Of course, it would be criminal to think that eighteen months would do nothing to the mind and body. You could probably add heart in there, too, if you are one of the few that think Sherlock Holmes is capable of having that particular organ. He does, but he’s not one to admit it lightly.

And so those small things that have turned into large things have become apparent. You need only flick back through his travels over the last eighteen months - all well documented, it is to be assured - and you can see the transition of a machine into a man. You can see how the robot lost its metal and learned of things such as veins and blood and of organs such as the brain and heart and how they can co-exist in the same body. You can see acceptance and submission and hope.

He’s missed John, of course. John had become, during their friendship and time together, an integral piece that kept Sherlock Holmes the man he was, and more so, John helped make him to be the man he was now. John wasn’t just the man who bought the milk and carried a gun and wrote down notes. He was the man who would look Sherlock in the eyes and tell him the god’s honest truth. He was the man who’d kill another man for Sherlock. He’s a man who’d probably kill himself to ensure that Sherlock lived. That’s what Sherlock did for John anyways. No, he wasn’t just a flatmate or friend or some sort of label that they could never find the proper word for. He was more. He had always been more. Stubborn as Sherlock was, John stayed. And Sherlock needed that all of his life - someone to stay and never let go and just to be there. And so in these last eighteen months (and seven days and ten hours), Sherlock accepted the fact he missed John.

But that small fact turned into something larger because as the machine slowly started to assemble itself into a human, it soon learned that it was also capable of lovingJohn Watson. To many, the friendship they shared while together was apparent as ever. Perhaps it could have been labeled as love, even the domestic and brotherly sort, months and months ago. It was more apparent now to anyone who had been graced by the presence of one John Watson after the loss of his best friend. The love and care he held towards the consulting detective radiated off of his body like the North Star guiding Sherlock home. Everyone knew this, months after Sherlock’s death, and John slowly accepted it. He began, even, to submit himself to this idea.

But that was John, and sadly, only two people knew about Sherlock. Sherlock didn’t talk to Molly much, but she knew of that small fact that had now grown into a larger one. She had known it for a long time, even before Sherlock’s fall. She stayed quiet though, because she always thought her opinion never mattered. Still, eighteen months after helping save Sherlock’s life, she still thinks it doesn’t. But she has spoken up - she has told Sherlock, through texts and quiet nights when he’s made home to her sofa, what she thinks on the matter. He mostly batted her away, but he was never one to understand how to be social in the first place. He did listen though, because, well, Molly was his friend. And she counted.

However, more apparent of this transition of care to love was one Mycroft Holmes. Sherlock stayed with Mycroft for countless days and weeks and months and they pieced together the last bit of Moriarty’s web that, well, really wasn’t much of a web at all. Mycroft, though, had seen this all firsthand as Sherlock began to not only accept, but feel the pressure in his heart as he began to come to terms with his affection, emotion, and care for the good doctor. He also saw as his brother began to understand that he was in love. It wasn’t easy, no, and it didn’t come quietly. But it came and it sat there and slowly but surely, Sherlock began to see that it was present and it existed and he needed to allow it in. And so he did.

And so this is the point in the story where one must say to their selves, isn’t this the part where the great kill happens and Sherlock returns to 221B, crawls into John’s arms and apologizes and it ends with one great big happily ever after?

Well, it is only the night before Christmas Eve (well, one hour to Christmas Eve to be exact), so we can’t make assumptions or go that far yet. But it can be said that Sherlock’s plan is thorough and Sebastian Moran will die tomorrow. Sherlock, too, will go home. That’s been his plan all along. But it must be mentioned there is nothing sure after that point in time.

John’s been happy, as mentioned before. And Sherlock doesn’t know what that means. Well, he does - it’s good that John is happy. He needed that; he needed it more than anyone Sherlock knows. But he also doesn’t want to mess with that. The woman - the pediatrician who has somehow managed to put bandages around John’s wounds is someone, quite frankly, that may be there to stay. For good. Sure, Sherlock knew that it was a sound possibility that one day his doctor and best friend would get married and go off onto the great new adventure. But that was before - that was before all of this. Before Sherlock jumped and before Sherlock learned that he was human and that he, despite his previous deductions, was allowed to act out on being a human. All of which included caring and loving and having aspirations for the future.

It seemed inane at the time, for a man like Sherlock Holmes to willingly accept and submit to such notions but really, eighteen months is a long time. And John Watson wasn’t just a flatmate or friend. It had always been more. It had always been there. That line just above friendship that always existed and was allowed but never looked at for more than a second. And Sherlock looked, god, he looked at it every minute of every day since he has been away.

And he wanted it.

He let himself believe he could have it.

But, really, John is just so happy. He smiles and laughs and lives and Sherlock cannot deny him that. Sherlock cannot deny him anything.

And so, an hour before Christmas Eve dawns, Sherlock rests against the brick wall of a tunnel. He’s in a park tonight, where the dull yellow of the streetlights above barely line out his silhouette from his hiding spot in the tunnel. The tunnel isn’t very large by far, maybe fifteen feet high and ten feet across, but it’s enough room for him to rest against and he knows the dealer here.

He needed time to think - needed spaced to breathe - needed the cocaine just one more time. He’s been high for the last ten minutes, leant back against the brick wall with his legs thrown out in front of him as he slides to sit down against the cold stone below. His highs don’t last long anymore, but that’s to be expected when you use the drug as frequently as he has in the past six months. He tried his best with just the cigarettes, but everything has been getting to him more than he had ever thought possible. And so now he soaks in the last few minutes of his high before reaching into his pocket, manhandling his mobile phone out with the lack of any grace whatsoever.

Need you to get me.
SH

Hyde park. Now.
SH

Are you alright?
MH

Now, Mycroft.
SH

It is all that Sherlock can send in his state and he can’t think to check his mobile again to see if Mycroft has sent any other messages after his last response. Instead he rests his head back against the brick wall and tries to clear his thoughts. He doesn’t remember much of what went through his head during his high, but he knows that there was no monsters this time and only John and that was just good enough for him. He’s hot now, itchy around the edges and his pulse is elevated. But that’s all too common with the initial states of the high falling and as always, Sherlock falls just a bit too fast.

He’s also unaware of how much time has passed when Mycroft arrives. He’s sure there’s not much time in between because Mycroft’s the type of brother who will rush out at a moment’s notice in efforts to save the younger. Mycroft is not part of the British Government in these moments. Instead, he is just an older brother who is paying for his sins and trying to help the person he gave a death sentence to, as best as he can. He is only human, too, and there is only so much he can do in these moments. He does not carry his umbrella tonight, nor does he call out Sherlock’s name in desperation. Instead he jogs through the park, eyes flicking to each and every general direction in hopes to spotting the younger brother. It’s not easy, and really, he’s not a man who handles legwork well, but he does it because it’s Sherlock and the man needs someone. The man needs someone that he cannot be, but god help him, he’ll do whatever he can.

Sherlock may not know how long it has taken for Mycroft to get here, but Mycroft has calculated to be exactly twenty-four minutes and some odd seconds. He kneels down and places a hand on Sherlock’s cheek. “Sherlock,” Mycroft says. Sherlock looks up and his eyes are wide and innocent. He looks so frail here - young even, and raw around the edges. Mycroft knows what Sherlock has gone through, watched it from afar without being allowed to touch, and he knows that this is the part of the story where Sherlock goes home, but not to the home he has created in his head. “Sherlock. I’m here.”

“Mycroft,” Sherlock says back. He places both of his hands on the stone below and tries to push himself up. He’s still dazed - coming off of his high. He would have taken pills to make this all last much longer, but he needed that rush - he needed to see John in the way he wantedto see John. “You’re here.”

“I’m here,” Mycroft says, letting his fingers drift down to Sherlock’s neck to check his pulse.

There is a long pause and Mycroft speaks again, voice shaking. “What have I done to you?”

It’s been said many times, how much Mycroft dwindles in the thoughts of what he has done and how much his brother has taken on. No, it’s not easy dying or coming back to life, but it’s also not easy falling in love and accepting it and being away from the person you need most. It’s not easy for Mycroft to watch from a distance and he knows it’s not easy for Sherlock to handle on a first hand basis. He wants, more than anything, to fight these demons and take the damage but the damage is already done and now he must learn to simply stand aside and hope with all of the hope he can muster that Sherlock will be alright.

“What have I done to you, dear brother?”

Sherlock answers softly, still dazed, “It’s time to go home.”

Mycroft traces Sherlock’s jaw with his index and pointer finger of his right hand and guides Sherlock’s vision upwards, at him. “Tomorrow, Sherlock.”

He fights all of humanity and the entirety of his heart not to breakdown the moment he sees slick tears trace down Sherlock’s cheeks. He’s just so tired and worn out and ready.

Even men like Sherlock Holmes get tired.

Tomorrow, Christmas Eve, will come, and at some point, in less than twenty-four hours, Sebastian Moran will die. Sherlock may not be going back to the home he imagined for himself, the one where he has John in his arms for the rest of his life, despite the romantic idealism behind it, but he will be going home. He will go home and tell John he is sorry and why he did it and what he did and he will not lie. He will answer anything John asks of him and he will go home, and if there is a god out there - someone who is looking out for the greater interest of the consulting detective - if there is someone out there who can give him just a little - he, in the very least, will have his friend back.

And he could make do with that.

On the way back to Mycroft’s residence, Sherlock lies on his side with his head in the older’s lap. Mycroft has his own jacket on top of Sherlock, keeping him warm, while his fingers thread through the younger’s hair. He has to keep Sherlock safe right now - keep the withdraw effects of cocaine at bay and help him hold on for just one more day.

Music plays quiet over the radio in the car.

It’s almost Christmas Eve and it’s time for Sherlock to go home.

And Sherlock’s still lucid enough to think of what home is.

221B, cases, experiments, John, John, John.

*

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire,
Jack Frost nipping at your nose,
Yuletide carols being sung by a choir
And folks dressed up like eskimos.
Everybody knows a turkey and some mistletoe
Help to make the season bright.
Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow
Will find it hard to sleep tonight.
They know that Santa’s on his way -
He’s loaded lots of toys and goodies on his sleigh
And every mother’s child is gonna spy
To see if reindeer really know how to fly.
and so I’m offering this simple phrase
To kids from one to ninety-two
Although it’s been said many times,
Many ways: “Merry Christmas to you”
Nat King Cole - Christmas Song 

Its four weeks until Christmas. It’s that time of the year where shops start to litter their stores with countdowns for the holidays and lights glitter across buildings and treetops. The snow has yet to fall in London for the year, but it’s just around the bend. It’s the time of the year where London fog matches up with your own breath of air and you cannot tell the difference between the two. It’s the time of year where families, friends, alcohol and happiness collide all into one mass of chaotic madness. It’s the time of year that Sherlock generally looks down upon, but right now, he likes the cold weather. It’s been a long time.

It’s been a month since Sherlock’s been in Peru, hunting down ties to terror cells that, quite frankly, really no longer exist. He’s been patient in his motives - carefully formulating a plot that will essentially bring him back home. Mycroft, truth be told, has been somewhat shocked in the fact that Sherlock hasn’t just pulled the bloody trigger and skipped off back to his flat - back to his world - back to his John, but then again, he never expected his younger brother to really fall in love. Sure, he thought his sibling had the capacity and heart to hold friendship in his arms and while he mocked the ideas of love in front of the younger’s face, he never truly thought that this would happen.

And again, it should be said, Sherlock really should have run off home by now - but there is something in the way that Sherlock is challenged with. Something he has yet to comprehend his own feelings with.

John is happy. He’s really, really happy.

She’s a pediatrician. Of course she’s a pediatrician. She’s got brown hair down to her mid back and for god’s sake, she has a smile that blinds out the sun itself. She works a lot but seems to always make time for John. And not that Sherlock’s counting, they’ve gone on approximately sixteen dates before they agreed to a relationship - which was just over a month ago. Apparently John needed to take things slow and she understood. Pediatricians are always that way it seems. But John smiles - and he laughs. Mycroft still has the feed set up in Sherlock’s room at his residence, so the younger sibling can watch to his heart’s content with how John is and what he does and everything in between. Mycroft almost wonders if this is just as worse as cocaine. It probably is. Sherlock’s destroying himself and his ideas and his hopesframe by frame as John lives on.

They go out to dinners and to the cinema and she seems to make John forget the pain and the past and maybe even forget Sherlock. It’s not that Sherlock is being dramatic in that deduction, it’s simply the truth. She holds his hand and smiles at him and he smiles back and he would be lying if he didn’t feel that pang of jealousy twirl inside the pit of his stomach. Still, he watches.

He watches him take her coat and set it to the side. He watches her find the wine glasses and pour them both a glass of red before sitting back on the sofa with him. He watches them smile and laugh and then he watches them kiss. He watches them kiss and kiss and kiss and he watches John take her up to his bedroom. There is a feed there but Sherlock really don’t want to watch that so he turns off the monitors. But just because he’s turn off the view doesn’t mean he thinks of it any less. He tries not to imagine them but its hard not to. He does not know how John makes love to another but he remembers his time with Irene and he carefully decides that, while Irene may be far more experienced, John probably has the ability to grace the act with much more intimacy and love than Irene could ever comprehend.

This time - this time he’s turned off the monitor - he is unsure if it’s their first time. He assumes it isn’t as they’ve been dating for a while and a lot has happened in between his travels before his return to London. He could ask Mycroft if he wanted to, as he is sure to know the answer, but he doesn’t want to have that conversation right now. Maybe not ever. He’s glad that John’s happy, though. He looked that way anyways - eyes sparkling and lips turned into a permanent smile. It’s good, Sherlock thinks, he needs this and deserves this and she’s giving it to him.

He doesn’t even know her name nor does he want to.

But, logically, he’s not mad at himself for how he feels. He knows what he was getting himself into when he came to terms with his thoughts and emotions towards the good doctor. Of course he knew most of it was chemical, but he wasn’t one to deny the emotional connection and attachment he had to his best friend. He even deemed that the idea of them going forth in some sort of relationship would seem possible. They could have made it work even though Sherlock was completely inexperienced and to be truthful, a complete prick. They could have made it worked because they have made everything work thus far and bent on hell and it all, Sherlock really loves John. It was a good enough reason to try.

But now he doesn’t know. He sees John too happy - surrounded by love and affection and adoration and he doesn’t want to take that away. Not after everything he’s been through. Not with what’s coming his way - the return of his best friend and the emotional turmoil that will lay itself out like baggage. He knows his return will not be pretty and consequently, it will probably lead to an argument and fist fight versus a romantic kiss upon Sherlock’s arrival. He knows all of this and this is the exact reason why, for the last three weeks and four days, Sherlock has decided to wait to put his plan in motion on killing Moran. He’s had a solid excuse, though.

I want to monitor all of Moran’s communications for at least a month, Sherlock had said upon his return to London. I want to make sure he’s been in contact with no one for a follow up job, he added as he stepped inside of the residence, I want to make sure John’s safe.

It was enough to keep Mycroft from questioning the situation. But, of course, no less than twenty-four hours later did the older begin to question Sherlock’s choices. He watched from the background, monitoring how Sherlock watched the feeds in his bedroom. He knew seeing things like this - like John kissing his new girlfriend in their kitchen - would slowly make Sherlock crack around the edges. But what terrified him more - what made him question everything was how none of it seemed to affect Sherlock at all. The younger sibling kept off the drugs and smoked, at most, two cigarettes a day. He focused his mind on the details of call logs and e-mail transmissions and while at tea, it was the only thing they’d discuss. Everything else, apparently, was not subject for discussion.

If Mycroft hadn’t been the man to kill his brother, he would have said something by now.

Mycroft does not decorate his flat for Christmas, but he’s put up a tree and stockings just because Greg mentioned it. It shouldn’t be said, but the man who holds the keys to the British Government can, at times, be a romantic. Greg seems to like it and Mycroft doesn’t mind it. There are only two stockings, of course. Mycroft still has to lie to Greg about Sherlock - mourn when asked and turn his face when mentioned. He knows he’ll have to handle the repercussions when the truth is let out, and maybe that’s a reason why he’s not too angry with Sherlock in his delay of killing Moran. He simply wants to live in his fairytale world a little while longer. It could be taken away, British Government or not. It probably will.

“Moran and John went out shopping today,” Mycroft explains, crossing one leg over the other and balancing a cup of tea in his right hand. He knows he really shouldn’t mention John, but he has to for this conversation, “John’s back home, as you should know, as is Moran. They exchanged a few text messages earlier on this evening but nothing more.”

The fireplace is lit in the sitting room and Sherlock has his eyes on the growing flames flickering in shades of red and orange and yellow. He’s never been much of a pyromaniac, but much like the weather and stars and John, he can appreciate it.

He swallows thickly and his question hangs in the air, awkwardly yet firmly asked. “Do you think Moran’s the only one?”

Mycroft considers the question. He’s thought on it deeply and researched it just the same. Records and transmissions prove that, while right after Moriarty’s death Moran had been in contact with others on several occasions, during the last nine to ten months, there has been absolutely nothing. Sherlock had come to Mycroft, explaining the henchman from Peru’s story and despite the sentiment behind his testimony, Mycroft felt the need to trust his words. It made sense. No man was going to kill without payment, unless for personal reasons. Obviously this meant that Moran’s own reasons for keeping up with this game were personal. It had to be personal. Moran was Moriarty’s favorite sniper - maybe more, he wasn’t sure and couldn’t be bothered to deduce it all out. There was a reason that Moran had wormed his way in John’s life.

“Truthfully, Sherlock,” Mycroft replies quietly, setting his tea to the side, “Yes. I believe he is the only one. The only two things that matter though are, what you believe and when do you plan to make this all stop. That, my death brother, is entirely up to you.”

A silence settles between the pair but that much is normal. Sherlock is tired. He’s really tired actually. He’s handled cases and lack of sleep and minimal food for ages but this is different. For the last year and a half he has done nothing but fly from country to country, sit in his thoughts and learn that he loves someone more than he’s ever loved another in his entire life. It may not seem like a lot in a year and a half, but for him, if you calculated everything and added it all together - it would be more than enough. It would be everything. It’s taken a lot out of him. He’s more than ready to go home. And not just to cases or experiments or any of that mess. No, he simply wants to go home and look at John and say he’s sorry and close his eyes and rest.

Even consulting detectives get tired from time to time.

“How soon, Sherlock?” Mycroft asks.

Sherlock does not waste time in his reply, “Before Christmas. I have a plan and I know what I need to do,” he stops and tilts his head back, looking up at the ceiling. If he were any more emotional he would be crying right now, “Before Christmas, Mycroft.”

“And if things change by then?”

Sherlock does not look at Mycroft but he replies, knowing full well what Mycroft speaks of despite his question, “With John or with Moran?”

“With John, of course.”

“This is not about him.” Sherlock responds, still with his eyes focused on the ceiling. They never looked so tall.

“It has always been about him, Sherlock,” Mycroft responds and before Sherlock can even respond, the older sibling carries on. Apparently he has something he needs to say. “It has always been about him, Sherlock and you cannot deny it. You’re going back home because of him. You died because of him, Sherlock. You would have not done this for anyone else - everythingyou have done, Sherlock, and my dear brother, you have done a lot,” Mycroft stops and swallows, standing right after, “You can sit here and wallow in your thoughts about John or you can finish this mess and go home and tell him why you’ve done this all. There are words for it, despite you acknowledging their existence, and even men like us are allowed to use them. There are words and you need to use them. Waiting for the right moment is over, Sherlock.”

Sherlock would say something but he knows where he stands on this situation and he also knows the truth of it all. Mycroft knows it all too and that’s clearly enough to avoid a chaotic battle between the siblings. Instead Sherlock stands and looks at his older sibling with only three words offered, “Before Christmas, Mycroft.”

He goes back to his guest room and picks up the violin before bellowing out a tune. It’s the song he’s composed for John ages ago, and the one he’s tuned over time to near perfection. The notes carry across the residence and Mycroft stays in the sitting room, listening to the faint music that his brother plays.

It was mentioned earlier that Sherlock’s tired. It stays the same now. He’s done a lot - been through a lot. Dying isn’t so easy, nor is the prospect of coming back to life. It can be said that the ideas that once lived in his head - John, John, John - being pushed away isn’t exactly the easiest thing he’s had to do either.

And he decides, playing several more notes, he simply wants to go home.

Home being, 221B, cases, and experiments.

You can see what’s missing from there.

He’s chasing sunrises and only finding sunsets. There is a beginning he seeks yet all that is illuminated is the end. Mycroft told him, three and a half weeks ago, he needed to get the London fog from his lungs and sent him away. He’s been to Paris all over again - to Rome and Italy and Peru and Poland. He ventured to the States but only stayed half a day before catching a flight to Eastern Europe. Mycroft pays for everything, of course, but at least it keeps the consulting detectives mind going instead of focused on pressing sharp ends of needles into his pale flesh. It’s all about finding decent substitutions, Mycroft thinks. And if you really thought about it - connected the dots and crossed the lines - you could see he was pretty much right. Substitutions replaced distractions and distractions replaced John.

It’s the twenty-sixth day from being away from London when Sherlock finds himself in Peru all over again. He’s lived in boutique hotel rooms where the sheets were too white and the walls were too thin. He smokes despite the warning and tries his best to avoid the drugs. Mycroft sends what he can - names and locations, all of which Sherlock dresses to the nines for and scopes out. He wants to go home and he knows that sooner or later he’s going to need to put that bullet through Moran’s head and as the sunset fades in Peru, he’s starting to believe that it will be sooner rather than later. The year is coming to a close - just two months till Christmas and he’s ready. It’s been long enough and truth be told, for a man with a limited level of patience, he can’t wait much longer.

He’s been without John for too long.

He’s been watching an older man, mid-forties, who goes by the name of Liam Williams. He was, per Mycroft, one of Moriarty’s aides. He did the dirty work that Moriarty preferred not to, and for the last three days and six hours, Sherlock’s been nonetheless stalking him through the streets of Peru. But he’s not getting the answers that he needs. The man seems to be nothing short of a family man - quaint house in the city with a wife and child. Hell, the man even has a dog. It’s almost picturesque, really, and all the while Sherlock sits with his thoughts of what are this man’s motives? Moriarty wrote the checks, obviously - probably even ones to buy their house and furniture and everything that they have surrounded their selves with. But now - now it seems as if the man, Liam Williams, is doing nothing more. Sherlock invades his privacy on busy street corners and sees no indication of a weapon - no showcase of harm. There are no signs of blood around his fingers or dark circles underneath his eyes. There is only a man who goes to the market with his family, selects what to cook for dinner, and plays in the yard with his child and dog, while the wife stands by, wearing a proud smile.

It should be more complicated than this, Sherlock thinks. There should be men out there trying to kill him - trying to kill John - and yet, he’s stuck here with the thought that there may only be one man - Moran - doing that job.

He doesn’t understand it.

He still doesn’t, a day later when he is in a small cafe purchasing a coffee (not made by John).

“So you’re the great Sherlock Holmes,” a voice comes from the corner. Quiet yet obvious to Sherlock. He tenses slightly and turns his head back to the voice that has caught his attention and, apparently, knows of his identity. “I’m really not surprised you’re the one who made it out alive.”

It’s Liam. He has eyes that are icy blue but when his face tilts against the morning light of Peru, you can see shades of deep navy that hint around the edges. He stands shorter than Sherlock but he has the stock and build of John. He holds his own cup of coffee and takes a step closer to Sherlock. The consulting detective has been perched against the railing inside of the cafe, faced out towards the open window. Their words are quiet and sparse, but carry great depth with each syllable offered.

“Now much faith in your boss then, Mr. Williams?” Sherlock asks and takes a sip of his own coffee. He flickers over his shoulder to seek out anyone nearby, but the cafe is quiet with the two employees doing their own work behind the counter. Still, he keeps his voice low and guard high.

“No longer my boss, Mr. Holmes,” Liam replies. He takes his own sip of coffee, “The checks stopped coming after he died.”

“And you’re here because?” Sherlock draws out his sentence almost as if he’s bored because in all reality, he hasn’t had this much fun in ages.

“I could ask you the same question,” Liam responds and turns to face the taller man. He has a few scars on his face but he looks nothing less than a normal bloke with the wife, kid and house. It’s actually exactly what he has. “But we already know the answer to that. We should take a walk.”

Sherlock would be frank and ask questions such as, so you can kill me?orseveral shooters out at the bay waiting for my arrival? but he doesn’t bother as Liam is already out there door and he has answers Sherlock needs to find before asking his own.

The sun is still rising in Peru and the clouds are at a low level with the morning light pouring in through the breaks. The ground is cobblestone and they take a turn for a corner behind the cafe. It’s not that they fear what others hear - it’s just that they do, by nature. No man wanders around and speaks of murder and killing and life and death as if it’s nothing. Well, unless of course you’ve got John at your side or you’re Moriarty. There are exceptions toeveryrule.

“Have you killed any of the others, Mr. Holmes?” Liam asks. He’s leaning against the brick wall on the side of the cafe. His leg is crossed at the heel and his right hand holds his plastic cup of coffee. “I don’t keep up with the lot anymore, but I worked close with several of them.”

Sherlock stands in front of the opposite, tall and strong and doing what he does best - figuring things out. “Two.” Sherlock responds, “The snipers. I’ll assume by your choice of words that there are more.”

Liam laughs and nods, almost as if he found amusement in their conversation. “Of course there are more, Mr. Holmes,” he answers, chugging down the rest of his coffee in one go before tossing the plastic cup to the side. He may be a homebody now but that doesn’t make him any less of an ex-murderer; nonetheless, a person who doesn’t mind littering. “But much like myself, they’re not interested.”

“And why is that, Mr. Williams?”

“I already told you the answer, Mr. Holmes,” Liam laughs again, caught off guard by how easy Sherlock is easy to read. “The checks stopped coming. The day Moriarty died, I got my last check, went home to my wife and settled down. More or less everyone else has done the same.”

“More or less?” Sherlock asks. He finishes off his own coffee and repeats the action of disposing the cup to the side. Both hands fold behind his back, knitted in their leather gloves. “That is an open-ended answer, Mr. Williams.”

“Obviously you know of Moran, yes?” Liam remarks. There is no more laughter in his voice, nor is there a tone of amusement. Instead it is the straight forward answer that Sherlock has been seeking. The older man waits for no response before he continues on with the conversation as he already knows Sherlock’s answer to the question he has offered. “Everyone else - well, Mr. Holmes, like I said of myself, well, is just not interested. I’m not going to dirty my hands if there is no a pay cut for me. Neither are any of the other men - and, well, if you’ve killed two of them, outside of Moran, there are roughly eleven more,” he stops and licks his lips. There are signs of tar on the outskirts of his chapped lips and Sherlock almost has the nerve to ask him for a smoke. This is turning out to be far too casual for his liking but he needs to know everything that can be offered. “None of which will do anything, really. I’m surprised you haven’t figured that part out yet, though I am, again, surprised you did survive your fall. Moriarty is probably turning himself over in Hell on that one.”

Sherlock stays quiet and adopts all of the words that have been exchanged into his mental mindset. There is some truth and logic behind this all - no man would murder without a reward. There is no one signing the checks nor patting them on the head for a job well done. “Then why does Moran continue to seek me out?”

Liam shrugs and pulls out a pack of cigarettes from his front pocket. He pops one in his mouth before giving it a light. Sherlock does not ask for one and Liam does not offer. They are not friends and that is not allowed. “Moran, well, he’s always been different, you know? He was always Moriarty’s favorite,” Liam chuckles and takes a long drag of his cigarette. “Everyone always thought they were pounding each other into the wall - all that repressed anger, but it wasn’t really like that, no. They were just both fucked up enough in the head to enjoy what they did - money or not. Boss liked that about Moran. Plus Moran kept the boss in order,” he stops and taps some of the ash from the tip of his cigarette against the brick wall, “We’d go in for a meeting if we had a job and half the time you’d hear Moran yelling halfway down the house at Moriarty for not eating his sandwich or some shit. Motherfuckers were cynical sometimes, really. One moment Moran’s taking out boss’s suits to be cleaned and the next he’s putting a bullet through some blokes head on a moment’s notice. Boss would just giggle when his favorite sniper came walking through the door covered in blood. They were fucking different.”

Sherlock tries to imagine this word for word as Liam speaks. It’s almost unnerving to imagine but he must. It’s a place, even though Moriarty is good and dead, he must revisit to analyze and piece together a solution. To figure a dead man out.

We’re just alike, you and I, Moriarty had said. In some ways it reminded him of his own relationship with John. The doctor rambling about his lack of desire for eating, or rather, more or less, doing anything that didn’t involve cases or work or composing. He had, too, walked into the flat more than once time drenched in blood. It was almost unfitting of how the pair paralleled the story that Liam was telling. Maybe they really weren’t all that different - just opposite sides - angels and devils.

“Still doesn’t explain why Moran is still after me.”

“Like I said, Holmes,” Liam replies, finishing off the last bit of his smoke, “Moran was different. Still is, probably, if he’s still after your arse. At the end of the mission, while we were all waiting for our checks, Moran was awaiting the next assignment. He didn’t care for the money and still doesn’t. He’ll probably be after you until the day you die. And then he’ll go after that doctor of yours, if he hasn’t already.” Liam shrugs his shoulders and stretches out his arms in front of him, “I can’t really tell you why the fucker’s still on your arse, but just because the boss died doesn’t mean he’s going to stop. It’s just who he is and it’s why he was boss’s favorite. Moran would force a Xanax down Moriarty’s throat to get him to calm the fuck down and Moriarty, believe it or not, would let him. They were just different, and well, fuck, it may be revenge. I don’t know. Maybe they were pounding each other into the walls, but Moran’s not going to stop. Not until he’s done whatever he has his mind set to.”

“And why are you telling me this?” Sherlock asks, “All of this information you’re giving me, willingly, why do so?”

“Because, Holmes,” Liam replies, pulling out another cigarette and stuffing it into his mouth. He probably doesn’t get to smoke at home, Sherlock thinks, and the older carries on, “I’ve got a family and I’d like to keep it that way. You told me you killed two of the others and I don’t want to be any of the next. Moriarty wanted you dead for a reason. The little twat may have never admitted it, but he did fear you at times. He knew what you were capable of. I mean, for all I know, you could pull a gun out on me and shoot me dead center in the head. It’s a risk I took coming up on to you, but I figured giving you the facts would straighten things out.”

Sherlock stays quiet. He’s tapping his fingers against the palm of his right hand behind his back as he continues to organize all the information he’s been provided. Of course it’s logical, but logic and science do not come into play when John is involved. He knows he really should just kill the man, and kill all the other men out there too. But, again, it’s been far too long since he’s seen John. It’s been far too long since he’s been home (221B, cases, experiments, John, John,John).

“You’re going to have to kill Moran if you want your old life back,” Liam speaks, though this time much more soft, “but the others, well, they’re not going to do shit unless they’re paid. I know I’m not, even if I was. I’ve got a kid now, you know? I have enough to hold me over for a few years until I find a decent job - but I got my hands dirty enough and I don’t want my kid to see that.” He stops and finally pushes himself from his leaning position on the brick wall, “You’re going to spend years and years tracking down all the other men. Your hands will get dirtier than mine. It’s not fun playing the devil’s advocate, Mr. Holmes, and I suggest you don’t.”

“Is there anything else you can tell me about Moran?” Sherlock asks. The older man is already steps away from the open sidewalk, up and ready to disappear from the scene forever.

Liam turns his head over his shoulder and offers a small smile, “He was boss’s favorite for a reason. Best sniper you could buy and he knows how to use his fists, too. He’s smart, could control the boss - and like I said, boss let him. He’s done some crazy things, Moran, and he’s not scared of anything. Boss would tell him to do something inane like the bloody laundry and Moran would tell him to fuck off. Boss put a gun dead center at his sniper’s head and Moran just laughed. Sat there and laughed in front of everyone before walking off. They really were a pair – they probablywere shagging the fuck out of each other. But outside of that,” Liam shrugs, stepping one step further away, “I really don’t know much. He does like whiskey though. Drank in between assignments. Smoked in Moriarty’s flat - pissed the little twat off but Moran just grinned.”

Sherlock parted his lips to ask another question but the henchman was off and on his way. Sherlock, for the most part, in any other ideal situation, would have run after the man and demanded more answers to at least two dozen more questions but he had enough for now and he had the answer to what he was going to do from here on out.

When he retired back to the hotel he had been staying at for the last six days, four hours and thirty-six minutes, he lay back on the bed and took a long drag from his own cigarette.

Sometime later, three and a half hours maybe, he sends a four text messages to his older brother. Mycroft replies with one.

Coming back to London.
SH

I have a plan.
SH

Book a flight out tomorrow morning.
SH

Need nicotine patches.
SH

Alright.
MH

Withdraw is a nasty thing. Especially with cocaine. It works like any other drug out there, really. You crave it right after and then days later because your mind thinks you need it. Your body starts to believe it too. Sherlock doesn’t give in but it becomes increasingly harder by each day that passes. Mycroft tries to be patient with Sherlock for the most part - understanding that his younger sibling is volatile and on edge and seconds away from pointing another needle at his pale flesh and to be honest, that’s the last thing they need right now. So, instead, Mycroft sits with him in the sitting room with a hot kettle and a plate of biscuits. Mycroft tries to talk but it doesn’t work in the same manner as it does when he’s announcing a hall of very important individuals. But he still tries because someone has to and if it weren’t for him, who else would there be?

“When you decide to go in for Moran,” Mycroft states, hands holding the teacup, “you’ll get to go home.”

Sherlock snorts and looks out at the London night sky. “You never used to be this obvious, Mycroft. Try harder.”

“When you decide to go in for Moran,” Mycroft rephrases and sets his teacup aside, focusing his attention on the younger and the two hearts Sherlock holds in the palm of his hands, “you’ll get to be with John again.”

It takes less than four seconds (three point thirty-eight total) before Sherlock’s teacup collides with the nearby wall, splattering the cream colored liquid that tastes like tea but smells like blood into a masterpiece. Mycroft doesn’t flinch because he’s used to this. He’s adjusted to it and he knows what cocaine does to the mind. God, he thinks, my brother has such a beautiful mind that the world is envious of and here he is in a place that I have mended him to be. What have I done and what could I do? How do you fix the fallen and how do you teach them to stand?

“You could be with him,” Mycroft pushes. He knows he needs to light his words with a softer flame but he wants to keep this information alive and solid and there and leave hopeful thoughts so that Sherlock stays calms and keeps away from the monsters that hide behind a syringe. “You would have to try. John will want things, but not much, and you will have to give them. He will not have expectations, Sherlock, but he will have hopes.”

He knows that he is pushing a relationship in on his brother but he also knows that they’re just around the corner from putting a bullet through Moran’s head. He knows enough and he knows more and he knows that Sherlock will be the one to do it. They have filtered through all of the sniper’s contacts and they have watched countless minutes trail by on the CCTV of John and Moran interacting and for god’s sake, really, there is only so much Sherlock can take before he picks up the heavy metal of the gun and points it at a man and doesn’t bother to offer a word before that trigger is pulled. He will kill him this time, and he will not mourn it and he will be able to go home because heroes always get to go home. Sometimes they return home bloody and sometimes they return home alone and sometimes they return home dead, but they get to go home at the end of a journey and that’s all that Sherlock wants.

“You may not be interested in sexual activities, Sherlock, and I doubt he’d demand them of you. But he will want attention. He will want to know he’s loved.”

Sherlock squeezes his hand tightly into a ball before standing up. Cocaine withdraw is in effect and the world is crashing down on him because no one seems to understand. No one seems to just get it.

“You think I know nothing.”

Mycroft already knows what he is speaking off. “Just because you slept with Miss Adler does not mean you are necessarily comfortable with the idea of sleeping with others. You did it because of John and it left you in a worse scenario than the moment you offered the idea to her.”

Mycroft knows of Sherlock’s history with sex and dating and all of those activities that Sherlock claims to be boring. Mycroft would have half a mind to admit the same if he wasn’t in his own shell of a relationship. But he also knows it’s not because that they don’t stimulate his mind - no, sex, on the contrary, is much like a drug in itself - as is love - but he knows that Sherlock’s never had practical experience in either categories. It is hard being a genius, let alone one that the world barely accepts. He thinks Sherlock could be open to it, if given the opportunity, but he also knows that, more than likely, nothing will change between Sherlock and John if they entered into a relationship. If Sherlock didn’t try.

“You think you know,” Sherlock snarls. On most days, when the sun is bright and the clouds are high and the world is as itself, Sherlock stands tall against his brother and holds his reservations and talks in a belittling voice rather than that of an outraged lion. But today is not one of those days because his blood is pumping and he has not had a high in four days and he needs one now. He knows where it is and he knows how to get there and even if Mycroft came after him, it would be far too late. “You think I’m oblivious to the ideas of a relationship or sex or anything of that nature. You think I wouldn’t know how to give John what he needs. And here you are, Mycroft, set with your teacup and knowing glances thinking you can mend and mold me to be a better person when you have yet to see the type of person I am to begin with. You do not know me, Mycroft,” Sherlock swallows, steps two steps closer to the door and clenches his eyes shut as he touches the door handle, “You do not know me and I fear you never will. You barely know yourself.”

Sherlock leaves with his withdraw and Mycroft is left with his thoughts. Sherlock retires to the guest room as he begins to clumsily reach through the drawers to find his stash. Mycroft tries to take it away, but Sherlock has had too many years of experience to have an older sibling keep his cravings at bay. It’s only moments later when Sherlock has a needle jammed into his right arm and he falls back to the bed. The sheets have been cleaned today and the duvets feel cool against his shirt-covered back. He falls into heaven and hell and he rushes to think of things so he can have that beautiful vision that he desires.

Cocaine is quick but Sherlock is quicker. He thinks of John and what Mycroft has said and how he could be good enough. How, even though he has only had one sexual encounter ever in his life, he could do this for John. He’d want this with John.

Cocaine grabs him and he starts to dream - words, thoughts, hopes, denial, John, all whirling about in his head.

*

They’re forty-four and thirty-eight now. They’ve been together just four years now but it’s been the happiest four years they’ve ever had and they know there are many more to come. John has never cheated and Sherlock’s never been forced. They kiss quietly and John breaks to the loo on some nights. Sherlock never counts the time that John is in the bathroom, nor does he think about what is in John’s mind as he finds relief. John never offers, either, because they know that’s a line they do not cross. But after he finishes he always returns to bed and holds Sherlock close.

The first year or two it took an hour or two of coaxing Sherlock, letting him know that it’s fine and he’s happy. The year after John starts to add in the fact that he loves Sherlock and it only takes thirty minutes. It’s almost five years and it only takes two or three minutes and Sherlock will turn to face him, kiss him softly, and say that John in his world.

John will laugh and say that Sherlock is his world and he’s glad to be a part of it.

*

They’re forty-nine and forty-three now. John has a lot more gray hair but he can still keep up with the chase. John proposes and Sherlock accepts. They don’t have a huge ceremony but they both want a small one. It’s more than signing a piece of paper to them. They invite maybe ten or twelve people and have a small dinner afterwards. They’re all smiles and John rests his head on Sherlock’s shoulder. The world is nothing but perfect for the consulting detective and his husband.

I love you, John says into Sherlock’s ear, I love you, I love you.

I love you, too, Sherlock says back.

They have a honeymoon and they don’t have sex. Sherlock has an idea and John trusts him. John sits in the bath first, covered in bubbles to hide his private areas. He politely closes his eyes when Sherlock enters and strips of all his clothes. He settles in between John’s legs and it’s just like sitting on the sofa together, except they are lacking trousers. John shifts a bit and tucks himself as best as he can so Sherlock is comfortable.

They stay in the bath until their fingers are wrinkly and almost all the bubbles are gone. Sherlock’s fallen asleep with his back to John’s chest and his head rested at an angle on John’s shoulder. John doesn’t fall asleep and simply holds him in the now lukewarm water.

They decide to do this at least once a week for the rest of their lives. Sherlock likes it and so does John and John never pushes for more. He never masturbates either, when they escape the bathtub. He knows that this is far more intimate than something of sexual need. This is Sherlock opening up. And this is John going in.

Sherlock loves him for this because he doesn’t have to explain for John to understand.

*

They’re fifty-four and forty-eight now. Sherlock’s starting to get gray hair but not by much. They still live at 221B but they take far less cases. Sherlock mostly works on experiments and he’s started to write articles for science journals. John’s working on a book dedicated to all their adventures. He’s honest in his writing. Says that they are married and in love, but he leaves out the details of their private life. He mentions kisses and tea and always and forever. He doesn’t talk about the fact he gets to hold Sherlock each and every night. That secret is for him alone. No one else gets to hold Sherlock.

John sometimes has to take arthritis medicine and Sherlock sleeps a bit more than he used to when he was younger. Lestrade is retiring soon and they go to his retirement party. Everyone knows they are married but no one knows how much they are in love.

Simple minds could never understand the complexity of their love.

John writes about that, too.

*

They’re fifty-nine and fifty-three now. They retire. They’re in Sussex and they have a small cottage. It has three bedrooms. One for their selves, one as an office-turned-experiment-room and the last as a guest room. They do have guests, contrary to popular belief. People respect them and sometimes they host. Only sometimes though, as they are private people. They share tea on the patio a lot and Sherlock watches the growing dandelions.

Those thoughts still linger in his mind as he has aged. Not wondering if John’s made the right choice (that is threaded in his heart with the best thread that could be crafted by love), but if him taking a life of celibacy was right. But those thoughts have dwindled over the years. Sherlock never said it was going to be perfect and John never said it was going to be easy, but it’s been just fine. Sometimes those thoughts still litter Sherlock’s mind but just like the petals off the dandelions flowing with the wind, such thoughts venture on their own journey because they don’t belong in his mind.

They never did.

They still take baths together, though John no longer closes his eyes when Sherlock steps in the tub. He has to make sure he gets in safely (Sherlock hunched too much over his microscope all his life and he has a bit of trouble with certain movements). Sherlock doesn’t mind though because he knows John is not looking at his privates, and instead he is looking at his heart and seeing how wonderful it was crafted to be.

He sees how it is his.

That’s more than sex, Sherlock realizes as he slips into John’s arms and lets the warm water wash away all of his fears.

*

They’re sixty-four and fifty-eight now. John no longer masturbates, as he knows he doesn’t have a lot of time left in the world and he’d much rather be set on the sofa with Sherlock lent on his side, flicking through a book. This day John sits Sherlock up and faces him and kisses him the hardest he has ever kissed him. Sherlock’s not taken back and he follows into the kiss, even letting his tongue run along John’s lips. They’re wrinkled and hard and need lip gloss, but they’re much older now and it’s understandable.

When John pulls away, they’re both breathless. Sherlock looks up, tears rimmed around the edges of his eyes. It’s been twenty years and Sherlock comes to a huge realization.

“I probably could have had sex with you,” He admits. He could have if he tried real hard and just let his mind go and if he just gave in. He could have, he could have, he could have.

John raises Sherlock’s chin with his fingertips and he’s smiling so elegantly that a single tear falls down Sherlock’s cheek.

“I never wanted you to,” John says, tucking a strand of hair behind Sherlock’s ear, “It’s exactly how it should have been.”

Sherlock rests his head against John’s shoulder and sobs into the crook of his neck. No one’s ever loved him like this man and no one ever could. Just like he could never have sex, no one could love him just like this. John was made to love him and Sherlock was made to love him back.

It’s at this point that he comes to another realization: sex is not a requirement for love.

John holds him close and strokes his back. They never kiss so roughly ever again.

Once is more than enough for a lifetime.

*

They’re sixty-nine and sixty-three now. Sherlock has cancer.

He’s tired and weary and he has to go through a lot of chemotherapy. He loses all of his hair and John catches it with his hand and throws it away. John still tells him he is beautiful and Sherlock believes him. They both know the inevitable and they both hold each other through the last few days like they’re dying together.

They are.

When Sherlock dies, it is a cool autumn day. They’re at home and John’s made him comfortable. He’s not like a wallowing husband who sits by their partners’ bed side and pleads with the god’s to make this change. No, he won’t let Sherlock go down like that. Instead he crawls into bed and tucks Sherlock into the safety of his arms and never lets go.

Sherlock says he loves him and he’s tired and that John was the greatest thing to ever happen in his life. He says that John made his life worth it. I love you, I love you, I love you, Sherlock says into the crook of John’s neck.

John just holds and holds and holds until Sherlock breathes no more.

They never had sex but that doesn’t matter because they had everything else and more.

They had each other.

*

He’s seventy-nine now.

He’s finished their book and had it published.

He’s tired, too. He knows he could probably live longer but he’s tired and his heart still hurts. He knows he was gifted nearly thirty years with his husband and he had a few extra himself.

He makes two cups of tea and sets them on the nightstand.

He closes his eyes and the only thing he thinks of is Sherlock.

When he opens them, Sherlock’s there, takes his hand and pulls him home.

I love you, I love you, I love you, says Sherlock into the crook of John’s neck.

I love you, too, John says back.

*

When Sherlock wakes from his high, Mycroft is at his bed side, holding his wrist. It takes a moment for him to try and grasp reality but when he does, he laughs to himself. He knows what he’ll want with John, if he’s allowed to have it. He knows he’ll want kisses and sex and love and more. But he also knows that even if he couldn’t offer all of that - even if he was the man that Mycroft has painted him out to be - John, his John, would still take him as he was.

He is not a sentimental man, and really, he is married to his work. He does not date and he only engaged in his very first sexual relations just months ago, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t human and that doesn’t mean he is allotted a spot of time in his lifetime to grace someone else with love. He may not have a lot of it in terms of what people proclaim to one another, but he has died, theoretically speaking, for John, and he would do it again and again and again and that should just be enough. That should just be enough to allow one genius to offer love to another without the public looking at him as odd or different because, really, he’s already a freak and he’s already done so much and even if it is seemingly out of character, it’s just this one thing he wants.

He turns his head on the pillow and hides his smile from the older sibling because he refuses to share it. Mycroft simply thinks he is still high and maybe he is, but he can only think of how much he has missed John and when he goes home, if John will let him, he’s going to say one thing:

I love you, I love you, I love you, into the crook of his neck.

And maybe John will say it back.

He expected this, of course. How could he not?

When you take the role as one of the prime leaders of the British Government, you learn to expect everything. You also learn the fine line between right and wrong and how to get away with it all. Mycroft is least of all a perfect person but he is a perfect image and in today’s society, that is good enough. It’s actually more than good enough but he doesn’t waste time to keep track if one individual of the nation’s society likes him or not. However, while he is not a perfect person and has no desire to act on that accordance to be one - he does try to be a decent brother. He knows he will never attain perfection in that category - Sherlock would never allow it - but he does try to be good enough. He struggles for it - has struggled for it for decades actually - and still he feels, as he turns in his bed at night, that he always falls short.

Mycroft Holmes can, perhaps, save Britain in her beautiful glory but he cannot save Sherlock Holmes. He really shouldn’t blame himself, but he can’t help it. He’s supposed to be the older brother, but again, as tucks himself into his duvets for sleep, he doesn’t even feel like a brother.

Sherlock is flush out on the bed today. Mycroft’s been gone for the last eight hours - urgent emergency he proclaimed as he flew through the residence with only a nod to the younger sibling. And if he had to guess, Sherlock’s been gone for at least two of those eight hours. Sherlock’s fading from his high off cocaine and getting ready to crash out into sleep. He’s dazed when Mycroft touches his shoulder and if the older had arrived any sooner, he is sure he would have seen Sherlock at his depths of his high.

“What did you see?” Mycroft asks quietly. The evening sunset is bursting into the room and Sherlock looks as fragile as ever. Mycroft has seen him like this before, but this alarms him in a higher sense just because there is a man named John Watson in the picture. “Sherlock.”

Sherlock blinks and tilts his head up. He’s drugged and he knows that he really probably should have just stuck to the Vicodin or the Xanax or something other than cocaine but he needed this. And he knows, more often than not, that Mycroft never really stays mad at him for such incidents. The figure of the British Government does have a lot of bark and bite but he also has a level of understanding that most people do not know about. It is something that he is not trained to give out, nonetheless qualified to (at least, at his level of authority) but on quiet days when the sun is burning through the clear window and your brother lays flat out in a drug-induced state, you allow it. He allows it. He has to. And to some extension, an arm’s reach at the very least, Mycroft knows that his younger brother would not be where he is now (not home, not home, not home) if he hadn’t lost the game he tried to play with James Moriarty. He doesn’t like to think about it at all but he does because he is not that perfect person.

“John,” Sherlock replies. His eyes are shifting from their blown-out proportions to standard size and he reaches his grasp to grip some of the white duvet with long fingers. “I saw John.”

Sometimes Mycroft tries to imagine what Sherlock is going through, especially when moments like these arise. He tries to mimic the mental frame that Sherlock holds and while he may be the smarter one, that doesn’t mean he is the one that is human. No, don’t be silly – he is not an alien or some sort of spawn of the devil (though he does wear the horns from time to time), he simply grew into a man and skipped his childhood. However, his counterpart did the complete opposite. He experienced a greater portion of childhood and while he tended to be an adult at an early age, he grew into a child. And now that John Watson has slowly allowed him to see that he is human and does, in fact, have feelings - the child has become a person. The child is learning to be human. But still, he tries to imagine the world that Sherlock lives inside. The world that Sherlock’s mind has created.

Mycroft has Greg, of course. Their relationship is subtle and has just expanded beyond a year and some odd months. Greg is understanding of Mycroft’s busy schedule but he is also understanding of the fact that even though Mycroft is powerful and strong and intellectual, he is also just a man. You cannot put metaphors on that phrase either because when it comes down to the core, it’s just that. Mycroft is a man. Ignore the gender basis of that and you can go down either further - Mycroft is just a person. And Greg understands this and caters to this and somehow, in the moments they do share together - they laugh and smile and exist and the great nation of Britain gets put on hold.

He could exist without Greg, of course. He has for the great portion of his life, but he still enjoys the company of the detective inspector. However, without the former, he would simply go on living and surviving and leading his nation to greatness. He still would not be a perfect person, but he would continue to create a perfect image and that would be good enough. Good enough for him and good enough for Britain.

However, it is completely the opposite for Sherlock. Now, if you don’t want to romanticize everything, it could be said that Sherlock could live and exist without John. He is now, albeit unsteadily. But he’d prefer not to. He doesn’t want to. He wants John there, in his life, and playing a part of it. He’s never really had a friend like John before, nor has he ever really had a friend. He’s never had someone who actually stayed. So, yes, he could live and solve cases and hypothetically, he could say screw it all and live in a rural city somewhere far away and find small cases to handle and continue on with his experiments until he dies of old age. But he doesn’t want to. He wants to find Moran and put a bullet through his head and go home (221B, cases, experiments, John, John, John). He will wait every day until the right time - that perfect moment - to carry on with his job just so he can exist in a world with John. He’s not the same person without the former and he wants nothing less.

This reason - this exact comparison - is why Mycroft can never fully grasp the straws that thread Sherlock’s mind together. He can understand and see why Sherlock does the things he does, but that does not mean he comprehends them. This is why Mycroft is the British Government and why Sherlock is human.

“When you close your eyes,” Sherlock mumbles, words slurred and off, “you can see John and he can see you. There are no monsters here.”

Mycroft realizes that his calculations are probably off and Sherlock is still under his high in the slightest. He wonders what monsters invade his brother’s mind and he wonders if he could ever find the sword to kill them all off. And then he realizes that he’s the one has put them there. He reaches out, right hand, and touches Sherlock’s right cheek gently. Sherlock doesn’t flinch and instead he turns his face into the warm touch of the older sibling. “John,” Sherlock says, eyes closed and mouth parted. It’s enough to make Mycroft have to turn his head and look out at that sunset fading in the window. London is beautiful. London is so beautiful.

Mycroft sits on the small amount of space to the left of Sherlock and keeps his hand on the younger’s cheek. He knows how to try and pull Sherlock from his drug-induced state and he also knows how to alter the thoughts trailing through his head. He wants to try and help but sometimes (and only sometimes) he’s scared to attempt because he knows how much damage he’s already done and he’s not sure how much more Sherlock can take.

“John is at home today,” Mycroft says quietly. He wants to create a beautiful picture for Sherlock to look at behind closed eyes. He wants the last of Sherlock’s high to be what he needs. “He came home from the clinic and has put tea in the kettle. He’s thinking about you, Sherlock. He’s waiting for you to come home, dear brother. He’s always waiting for you. You have nothing to worry about.”

The last line isn’t really a lie because even though Mycroft is not a perfect person he knows that John Watson is. Of course the soldier makes mistakes and has flaws, but that doesn’t make him less than perfect. Mycroft sometimes envies the good doctor but he’s never been good at jealousy so the moments are there and gone in a matter of seconds. “When you come home he’ll be waiting for you, Sherlock. It will go back to the way it was and you’ll have that life you want.”

Sherlock mumbles something that Mycroft can’t quite distinguish but he thinks it’s ’John’ again and the older goes on. “He loves you, Sherlock. And he will love you if you let him. Caring is not an advantage, but loving is.” He swallows hard and focuses on that sunset that is starting to mix with the navy blue of the night sky just overhead. “He will hold you when you come back home and tell you that he’s missed you. You should tell him that you missed him too, because that’s the truth. Isn’t it, Sherlock? You miss John.”

Mycroft can see Sherlock’s eyes twitch behind closed eyes and he sighs softly. His fingers are stroking the younger’s cheek softly. Neither has been very affectionate towards each other past their days of youth but, again, Mycroft knows how to pull Sherlock to safety. “John,” Sherlock mumbles. He turns his head against the white pillow and takes a deep breath. “John’s home,” he says, clenches his fist tighter into the duvet and lets go. “John’s happy I am home.”

“Yes, you are home, Sherlock,” Mycroft lies. He thinks Sherlock will have about another forty-five minutes to an hour of hallucinating before he comes down from his high and begins the long and drawn out effects of the withdraw period. He also knows how to handle those. “John is happy you’re home. Is he there with you?”

“He stays,” Sherlock says and opens his eyes. They are bright and vibrant and telling a story that Mycroft cannot read. They are another language that no one knows. “John always stays.” His words are crisp and poignant and expose every truth that there is in existence of John Watson. Of course the soldier stays. Not because he is paid to do so or is forced or anything of that nature. Mycroft thinks there is a balance between the two worlds - the invalided army doctor and the consulting detective that not only makes them equals, it makes them better. “John.”

In Sherlock’s mind, he sees things right now. His high enables him to live in a world that is non-existent at this moment in time yet is still allowed to exist because he is altered and changed and allowed. He sees the sitting room of 221B and he sees himself and John and everything he thinks of when he opens his eyes and exists in the world that he is chained to. He sees John on the sofa and himself at his feet, head pressed to the soldier’s knees. He sees John crying and he thinks, in his drug-induced state, that he may be crying too. “I missed you every day,” John says and bows his head. Their foreheads touch and everything is gray and black and white and so, so beautiful. “I missed you, too, John,” Sherlock replies because John deserves the truth and this is the truth. “I missed you every day, too.” He could probably elaborate on every minute and second of time that has existed where his mind and heart have theoretically missed John but he’s too caught up on the acknowledgment that he has been missed too to discuss such things. John missed him too. “John,” Sherlock says, “I have missed you, too.”

In his mind, as he rests on the duvets and rolls through the last bits of high, he does not see them kissing. There is no romance here, but there is a love story. You do not need to be lovers to be in love and right here, in the sitting room of 221B, this much is evident. John traces Sherlock’s face with his fingers to make sure he’s not a ghost and Sherlock looks up at the opposite and reminds himself that this person matters; that this person was worth every waking moment of being away just to be here. “I never want to be without you again,” John says and closes his eyes, only to reopen them. If he had the ability to smile he would because Sherlock is still here. “I never want you to leave me again.”

Sherlock’s hands are on John’s own and his cheek is pressed to the doctor’s. There are psychological theories out there that explain the exact art and science of missing someone and even go into the pragmatics of how one handles the moment of return but none of that explains the momentary loss of words and motions andlife that exists in the very moments that are crafted here. Sherlock sees this all in his mind right now. He sees how everything else is forgotten because they just need each other for a moment or two and for once the world allows it. “I’ll never let you go again,” John says into Sherlock’s ear, presses his chin into the younger’s cheek. “You could break me if you left me again.”

“John,” Sherlock says, steadying himself on his feet as he pushes himself up so that he can press his mouth into the older’s short hair. “Every day, John,” Sherlock says and the visions are the most beautiful thing that Sherlock has ever seen. “I’ve missed you every day, John. I’ve missed you. I have missed you.”

The visions stay like that as Sherlock continues to dwindle down from the highest point of his drugged state. Mycroft stays at his side and continues an outpouring of words that he’s not entirely sure pull through into that chaotic mind but he still says them because he’s not sure what else to say. His right hand stays blatantly pressed to various amount of exposed skin that Sherlock has (cheek, jaw, neck, arm, hand) and he can practically feel Sherlock’s flesh humming with happiness. He hopes that there are no monsters in Sherlock’s hallucinations because he does not deserve them. He knows what he has said may not come true, he knows there are lines he has blurred with color that have never existed in either’s world but he is Mycroft Holmes and he knows how to manipulate. He knows how to control.

He also knows how much Sherlock is hurting.

Sherlock rides out his high for the last hour and Mycroft stays at his side. There are no bearing government issues here nor are there pressing matters that require Mycroft’s attention. There are only two brothers who inhabit the same chaotic world yet live in entirely different ones. Sherlock dreams of going home and seeing John and simply living in the world he’s in dire need of. He dreams of John’s warm fingers pressed to his cheek and how they look at each other after over a year of separation and he dreams of never leaving again.

Mycroft doesn’t know what Sherlock dreams of but he lets him.

He lets him dream and see and feel and have and he hopes that it’s good enough for when Sherlock wakes. He hopes that it’s enough to pull him through another day - another week - another month - until he can actually go home and live in a world not just created with his mind, but created with his heart.

Of course it rains in London.

It rains and it pours and if Sherlock were any other man he could easily come up with better terminology to describe the endless days of rain but instead he opts for a phrase he saves as backup for any and all cases: cigarettes.

He hasn’t left Mycroft’s residence once and he has barely trailed outside of the guest bedroom he now labels as a temporary home. Paris with John would be a vacation and while he could consider this hell (Mycroft could scare the devil himself), he opts not to because despite it all, Mycroft allows him to smoke indoors and to pop a few pills from time to time. He’s stayed clean off the cocaine for the last two weeks but it’s not been easy. He had the needle to his pale flesh just weeks ago when Mycroft left him with an unanswered text message in regards to Sebastian Moran and John Watson. There is probably a valid reason as to why the prick of the needle never broke his skin but he isn’t one for much sentiment so he opts, also, at the time, to painfully ignore the fact that he didn’t give in for once. Mycroft secretly celebrates. Alone.

He’s found a temporary new drug, too, much like the temporary new home he is in. Mycroft has set up two televisions in his bedroom - each with a distinctly different view of the sitting room in 221B. It took four days of begging - well, in Sherlock’s sense, completely ignoring Mycroft and food - before a third television was added where there was a view of John’s bedroom. Mycroft really should have said something along the lines of personal boundaries, but then again, it only took him two seconds flat to remember that Sherlock had none. And so these televisions act as replacement drugs because John is a drug for Sherlock and seeing him in whatever doses is good enough for now. It makes Sherlock feel safe because he knows John is safe. He knows when he is home and when he is not and best of all, he can watch, at times, when John is sleeping. He does that a lot and while it should be considered somewhat obsessive, Mycroft elects not to say a word. A cocaine-free Sherlock is better than a John-infused one.

“What did he do today?” Mycroft asked one night during tea, trying to bring up a subject that he could at least intrigue Sherlock with.

Sherlock had only glanced distantly and continued to neglect his own cup of lukewarm tea. “You already know.”

“Did he sleep?” Mycroft asked because if you’re going to ask questions, you just have to dive right in at the meat of it because neither of them are girls and neither of them are soft around the edges. To get to softness at the heart of either of the brothers you have to work your way outside in and find the edges of their skin. “I don’t keep a watch on his bedroom habits like you.”

Sherlock flickered a small amount of amusement across his face before glancing back at his older sibling. It had been a long week. “He slept.” He responded at the time, closing his eyes once again.

Sometimes Mycroft thinks that Sherlock closes his eyes because he doesn’t know how to cry. And like usual, Mycroft is right.

It’s not that crying is a weakness, it’s just, well, Sherlock’s never learned the proper way to do it.

And that’s how tea has been for the last few weeks. They rarely discuss Moran because neither knows how to exactly handle the situation, which, to say the least, is odd enough on its own. They understand the situation but they are unaware in their own mental mind frames on what they should do next. Sherlock plays it safe in his responses when they do talk - declaring that he doesn’t want to have the chance of Moran doing anything while he has John close. Mycroft, on the other hand, adamantly admits that while that seems the better route, he feels faithful in his idea that they can apprehend Moran at any point.

“You don’t know Moran,” Sherlock had said, pushing his plate of food away. He never eats a lot in the first place and sticking topics such as this in as appetizers to the entrees does little to help.

Mycroft responded, choosing to drink rather than eat, “And neither do you.”

The thing that really stood out was that while they had pages and pages of documented information on Sebastian Moran, none of that bullshit mattered after the day that Moran was spun into Moriarty’s web. They could only guesstimate that Moran was one of Moriarty’s most trusted (in whatever sense of the word that could be applied to the consulting criminal) snipers. And from that guesstimate they could only apply Holmes brother-style deductions. All, as usual, were quite correct.

Tonight Sherlock tries to get into Moran’s mindset as he watches John sit in his chair at 221B. His eyes flicker from screen to screen - different angles - as he watches the other seem agitated and almost uncomfortable in his chair. He watches as John glances at his mobile phone every once in a while, and at times, he will glance at the yellow roses set on the table that separates his own chair from John’s. He feels safe when John is at home. He doesn’t feel the same when he cannot see John on any of the three screens. And all the while, in this time on nearly obsessive behavior, he continues to try and piece together what Moran is doing.

Most men, he thinks, would simply take whatever Moriarty has left him and go on with their lives. He is sure that Moran is a decently paid sniper. He is paid for his trigger finger and perhaps his other abilities - kidnapping, murder by hand, acting as a bodyguard - whatever Moriarty demanded, Sherlock was sure, is what Moran did. But Moran continues to keep at this. He plays a game that Moriarty has left off and he can’t figure out why. And without that answer of why, he refuses to try and make a move until he knows for sure the outcome. He needs John to be safe. He needs to make sure that when Moran dies that there is not a bullet aimed at his best friend. He can experiment and take chances all his wants but that logic and factual information does not apply to John Watson. It never has and never will. Not when the situation sets itself up like this.

He watches as John glances down at his mobile phone and types something out. Seconds later, his own pocket chimes and he reaches in to pull out his own device. John has sent him a text message that simply reads his name: Sherlock. The months will soon turn into a year and John is still mourning. Of course, it’s to be expected. Sherlock has given up on the notion that John will just get over it. He gets it - understands it, to the point of understanding in Sherlock’s mind, that they’re both feeling an emotional connection to each other. John looks out at a headstone in the graveyard and says things he wishes that he could have said when Sherlock was still alive. Sherlock, on the other hand, listens and learns that love isn’t so bad. Sure, it’s slightly uncomfortable and new and something he’d typically disarm without a second look. But no one’s ever loved him like John Watson has and quite frankly, he doesn’t give a damn who else will.

He’s worked out and has become comfortable with the fact that he is quite keen on acting on the intents of engaging in a relationship with John after he returns. He thinks, whole-heartily, that if done right, things will barely change but it will be what both wantandneedat the same time. It probably will end up with a lot of spats and rows and nights out at the pub for John while Sherlock lies on the sofa and brews over what John’s done wrong (or, in reality, what hehas), but in the end, it will be exactly what both of them want:

Sherlock and John.

Nothing less.

He watches as John continues to look down at his mobile phone. He imagines that if he were there now, he would play a small tune on the violin for John. He’s composed John a song, a long time ago. It has changed over time, though. He alters it and mends it as needed because his relationship with John, while as stable as a diamond, is one that is beautiful enough to allow change. It is also the type that allows room for growth. He doesn’t think that John knows he’s composed a song for him, and as sentimental as it is, he’s titled it just that - John - but he does know for sure that he would play it right now. He would face the open window and turn his back to John and close his eyes and play note after note until he thinks John is fixed just enough to the point where Sherlock can handle the rest. He knows that certain things can stitch the wounds but he also knows that only he can act as the bandage to the damage.

He’s sure that once he is done playing he would not say anything along the lines of ‘that’s for you’ or'I thought of you and composed this’ because that’s simply not Sherlock’s style. While he is affectionate for the other and cares for John as a whole, he cannot change who he is. Instead, he would simply turn around and offer a small bow and smile before setting his violin down. He thinks, and he’s quite sure on the fact, that he would kneel down at John’s chair and rest his head on John’s knees.

John is not the only person who needs his wounds healed.

“You’re thinking a lot little brother,” Mycroft says. Sherlock catches himself in his thoughts but doesn’t bother to turn his head to look at the older. It wasn’t always this easy to catch Sherlock by surprise, but then again, they’re both not six and thirteen running about the backyard with swords made out of sticks anymore. “Ah. I see. John’s home.”

“Brilliant deduction, Mycroft,” Sherlock replies, but it doesn’t have as much bite as it would in any other situation. Mycroft takes the open seat at Sherlock’s side and watches all three screens at once.

“How has been?” Mycroft asks.

This is the point, where if they really were in any other situation, Sherlock would be witty - he would be himself at 221B set by John’s side, offering some sort of snide comment that would make John grin. Therein allowing Sherlock to grin, too, albeit somewhat manically. But that point doesn’t exactly exist at present time because everything has been altered. If one has read and looked at everything as closely as possible, they could easily see that the dynamic of the brother’s relationship has changed over the course of the last few months. Mycroft is still at ends over the fact of what he has done and while he tries to help in any way possible, he knows he must be careful with his moves because Sherlock could turn him away at any point. Sherlock, on the other hand, is not looking at this from that perspective because he does not have time to. He is more focused on the destination rather than the emotional ramifications of it all. He could be mad at Mycroft if he wanted to - he really could, but he just doesn’t have the energy to. Everyone seems to forget that John is not the only person who has lost someone; that John isn’t the only person in mourning.

“The same,” Sherlock replies, because really, outside of everything said, there is no point in being rude or oblivious or anything in such a nature. “One text. My name. Nothing more. He doesn’t work again until two days’ time. I very much doubt he’ll leave the flat before then.”

Mycroft is too quiet in his response and Sherlock flickers his gaze from the television’s glow and glances at the older. “Unless you know otherwise, Mycroft.”

Sherlock does not like when Mycroft withholds information and Mycroft knows that. He knows that after so many years of living and so many years of being an older brother.

“He’s made plans to meet with Moran again,” Mycroft replies, not returning the gaze as he stays intently focused on the image that John makes on two of the three screens ahead of him. “There are no exact details but they exchanged a series of text messages detailing their plans for the next few days. John seemed eager in his responses.”

Of course he seems eager, Sherlock thinks, the man has lost everything and is grasping at ends to pull at some sort of reality to find himself in.

“We could attempt to make a move on Moran wherever they elect to meet, Sherlock,” Mycroft offers, countering the spiel of silence that Sherlock has crafted by ways of thinking alone. “We would have to plan it out but Moran is only one man.”

Sherlock swallows hard because this is where he would usually snap, but again, he is not at a privilege with time to be offered a moment to sulk or whine or act like the person he normally is. “No,” he responds, glancing back at John on the television screen. “We do not know who Moran is working with. Regardless if Moran is at John’s side, there may be another sniper with a bullet lined to John’s head. We know how Moriarty played and we can only expect that he trained Moran the same way.”

“Do you really expect that Moran has others working with him?” Mycroft asks.

“Do you?” Sherlock responds.

There is silence because while they feel adamant in answering 'no’they are not comfortable in it. This is John and that makes all the difference in the world.

They cannot take chances. Sherlock will not allow it.

“I pulled Moran’s number from John’s mobile records,” Mycroft explains. This is news and Sherlock turns his head. “I am already running his number. I’ll give you a copy of his call records and anything else I can turn up. He may operate with another number if he does engage in contact with others but I’ll do as much as I can with what I have.”

Mycroft keeps his eyes on Sherlock as they share looks until the younger turns his attention back to the screens. John is moving into the kitchen of 221B and there is only a small angle of him offered. He is making tea, Sherlock knows, and he wonders what it would be like to be on the receiving end of one of those cups of tea. Seconds later he sees John moving to the sofa, set at the far end, with a cup of tea placed on the coffee table. He sees a spot next to John with his name on it and he glances back at Mycroft. “How long for the records?”

“By tomorrow at the latest,” Mycroft responds, returning his gaze to John who is lent back on the sofa.

Mycroft stands to leave several minutes later. He knows there is no reason to ask Sherlock if he is hungry or thirsty or needs anything but he still does anyways because that’s his job. Sherlock responds with all the usual answers and keeps one leg crossed over the other as he continues to monitor John from his temporary residence inside the bedroom. He knows John will sleep in several hours and he looks forward to that because sometimes when John sleeps, Sherlock will close his eyes too, and rest for a minute.

“You will sleep tonight, Sherlock?” Mycroft asks, hand on the doorknob of the bedroom.

“Yes,” Sherlock replies, not really the truth but not exactly a lie. “I will sleep.”

The door clicks closed moments later and Mycroft leaves with a heavy sigh.

And just because Sherlock doesn’t properly know how to cry - well, to an extent - does not mean he doesn’t lean down in his chair, tilt his head back and let out a shuddering sob.

He’s mourning, too. He’s thinking of John. He’s thinking of home (221B, cases, experiments, John, John, John). He’s thinking of everything he had for a year and a half and everything he misses and everything he’s doing this all for. He’s thinking of cheap takeaway and horrible telly and everything in between because while, at the time, they seemed so placid and boring and simple, they’re not really that at all when you’re looking at them from the outside. He’s thinking of the song he’s composed for John and how he is mentally altering certain notes right now in his mind as he watches John struggle on one side of the television as Sherlock struggles on his own side. He’s thinking of how sentimental it would be to touch the screen and to touch John’s face and he knows he’s not that sort of man. He thinks of what sort of man he really is and shakes his head because he doesn’t really know right now. So instead he just stops thinking and simply watches John on the screen.

About an hour and thirty-four minutes later (fifteen seconds), he finally reaches out and touches the screen.

It’s really uncharacteristic of him but nobody is watching and if you haven’t figured it out by now, he really just wants to go home.

221B. Cases. Experiments. John. John.

John.

John,

This letter may come as a shock to you, but in all honesty, I hope it never comes. I have let Mycroft know to only offer it to you should the situation arise where he felt that you could use me as a conductor of light for once. I may not shine as brightly as you, John, but I hope this comes to some use for you.

It is a cloudy Sunday afternoon and the incident at the pool with Moriarty was just four short days ago. Things have been adjusting around the flat. Things change when a friend offers his or her life for another. No one has ever thrown their life out on the line for me in such a manner and I am still trying to figure out how to react. But I wanted you to know such a thing was an eye-opening experience for me.

I do not know why this letter has been handed to you, but these words I offer you are for you alone, John. Only you John. Only ever you and no one else. You may scoff at the end of it and ask yourself, was he always hiding such sentiment behind his heart, but I can only reply that you were the one to have given me such a heart in the first place and in essence, the ability to pen such a letter.

You are the most amazing person I have ever met. You may be the picturesque description of what is defined as ordinary but you draw the line between extraordinary and the norm, and you soar above it. I have never said this to another human being, John. I have never allotted such words of fascination and admiration and truth for another so please do not short change it. I do not know what has taken me away from this world, though I hope it was in efforts to save your life at the very least, but I want you to know that you have made my life worth living. If there is anything you have done with your time in the world, though I think you have done much, you have had the ability to turn a freak into a person and make them feel like they were good enough to exist in a world where he never felt like he belonged. I do not know when this exactly happened but it is something that has dawned upon me over the course of the weeks and months we have shared together.

I do not know when, or if, this letter will ever be handed to you, John, but if it were in the future, I want to tell you what I see for you. I am not a man who holds much regards to emotions or hopes or aspirations for what one’s life may have if they dream or pray, but I do think you have wonderful things set ahead of you. I may be selfish in my mind to wish to keep you at my side until we retire of old age. To keep you to such an old age where I do experiments that you tidy up after when I’m too old to bend over and you rub your hands from arthritis while you pen the rest of our tales. I should not be selfish in my wishes to keep you at my side forever and take care of you, but I am. But should that not be the case, and I expect it shan’t, I see you in a wonderful life, John. If I am to have one wish given to me - one fortune cookie come to light - it would be for you to live a happy life. It’s not that I want it for you, but instead, you are a man who simply deserves it. You can define it as you like - beautiful wife with children, practicing doctor to an esteemed clinic under your name, author of all our tales - whatever you like, John. Whatever makes you happy.

It will be beautiful, John, if you let it. I can appreciate beauty in nature, and I can appreciate it even more in your life.

If there is a heaven or afterlife, I hope that after my downfall, I am allowed to spend the rest of my days watching your life from up above. It would be my greatest honor and privilege to see you flourish in life with all that you are due, all that you create, and all that you live.

I do not know why this letter was given to you John, but I want you to know how much you were cherished by me. Even at my grave, as I tend to have all the words in the conversation, I can extend that line out to say that you are still cherished by me. There is little room in the world for men like me and even less for them to have friends yet here you are, at my side, day in and day out. They may not always be the prettiest of days, but they are ones that I look at in the darkest of times to remind myself that if there was anyone in the world that I would risk everything for - that I would do anything for, John, it would be you.

You are not just the conductor of light in my life, John; you are the love of my life. Love to me has always been something composed of chemicals and a feeling that dwindles down over the first few months of a relationship and, if the consistency stays the same, it will manage through a marriage. However, I see a different spectrum of love that I have for you. It is one that dives past the labels of flatmate or friendship that we have titled our relationship as. It may not be one that I wholeheartedly understand, but it is something that is clear and concise and existent in this heart that you have crafted for me. There may be reasons as to why my mind and body were designed the way they were. Many people consider them flawless, but I know of the flaws that exist in them. In that same manner, I think, despite the sentimental value behind it, that there is a reason that I feel such a love for you.

This love may not offer you kisses or the romance that you seek out through your strings of dates, but it is the kind that is pieced together by a careful friendship based on trust, devotion, care, concern, and eternal gratefulness. I am grateful for you John, and for everything you have ever done for me. I trust you; am devoted to you, and I care about you more than I have ever cared for another soul. If this is not the epitome of what love is defined as, I will just title it Sherlock and John and let the rest of the world be envious of what we have and what they do not.

I do not know why this letter was handed to you nor do I know why I have left the face of the Earth, but I want you to know that whatever is going on in your world where I no longer exist, that there is someone out there watching you from afar and only wishing you nothing but the best. I will not fill this letter with words such as it gets betterorall struggles end, as I do not know the facts of the situation and I do not cross lines into things that are not evident, but I will tell you that you are loved, John. That much is truth. That much is evident. And to someone, to some freak you met by chance, you have changed his life and made it the greatest life he’s sure anyone has ever had. There is not one thing I can point out that made it so worthwhile, but a compilation of it all.

You have given me the perfect life.

You have changed me, John. You have allowed me to have a great life and to have things that I have found nonexistent before. You have given me a heart and let me see yours and the greatest thing of it all is that you have shared a portion of your life with me and it is the most wonderful thing I have ever had the chance to experience. There are no cases or murders or suicides that could ever compare to the moments that I have been allowed to have in your life, John.

I do not know why you were given this letter, John Watson, and again, I hope you never have to read its contents. I hope we both live a long and great set of lives where, whatever the case, you live the happiest life of them all - but if this ever comes in your hands, if these words ever come to life, I hope you remember the most prominent fact of it all:

To me, John, you are the greatest person I have ever met, and you are cherished, cared for, and loved with the entirety of my heart.

Thank you for what you have shared with me, John, and I only hope that you have great things for the remainder of your life. I will never leave you, not really, and I will be by your side in even the darkest of times. My life may be dedicated to solving crimes and figuring out mysteries but my heart is dedicated to you and I thank you for that.

Very sincerely yours,
Sherlock Holmes

[ a letter hand delivered to John by Mycroft per Sherlock’s request]

This is not sulking.

Sulking, as Mycroft has defined by the dictionary stashed on one of his many bookshelves, is read as, to be sullenly withdrawn or defined as aloof.

Sherlock Holmes, at this very moment - 6 o'clock on a cloudy day in London - is not sulking. If he were to be sulking it would be over something childish and petulant, such as being denied a cigarette or being found with a broken toy behind his back (aged five to nine). But this - this worn expression in his eyes of loss and confusion - is not what is listed in the dictionary on his bookshelf. Maybe he needs to invest in a newer edition of the dictionary - or perhaps he should just label this as the one thing that his mind is deducing:

Heartbreak.

He looks at Sherlock from the corner of his eyes in the sitting room and draws in a deep breath because he is breathing for the both of them. There are shadows under the younger’s eyes that have always been there but they are different now. He is different now. The younger brother accepted his own demise when Jim Moriarty sauntered into his life, and for the most part, he schemed a lucrative attempt to salvage everything too. But there is nothing to ’accept’ when it comes to John Watson and any configuration of words such as loss, pain, hurt, or despair. Sherlock understands what these words mean and for the most part, he can dispose of them as he pleases, but he has not yet clearly defined John Watson as a whole nor could he dispose of him if he even wanted to. It’s not like that. It’s not that easy. And so he sits with the pairing of words - John Watson and loss; John Watson and pain; John Watson and hurt; John Watson and despair; John Watson and love. And it’s not that Sherlock cannot figure out what to do with it all - it’s simply that it affects him.

This hurts him, too. It causes him pain and despair and loss and it’s because of the last correlation of words - John Watson and love.

Mycroft was not in the hospital room when Sherlock peered down at his best friend, nor did he look through the slender third-of-a-meter window opening to peek in on something he was not allowed to see in the first place. He could easily piece together the five minutes of time and make educated guesses of what happened, what was whispered; but nothing in his mind could map out what Sherlock felt second by second. He assumes it was hurt, loss, despair and love, but God knows that the man is going through something even beyond such words plastered across as substitutes to explain it all. Maybe it should be considered dramatic, Mycroft knows, but then again, Sherlock has always been dramatic and he’d never been in love before and when you mix the two together, it is a solution for disaster.

Sherlock’s been working the last few days. Not in his mind palace, no, but, instead, his heart. It’s a place that has always existed, of course - everyone needs the organ to live; but it is a place not used as purposefully as it could be used until very recently - until John Watson. Sherlock likes to think, as sentiment is allowed for his doctor and his doctor alone, that John is the reason he began to recognize his heart for something more than a vital organ. Sometimes, in the dark of the night when he really, really misses John, he thinks to himself that John has given him this heart. He learned, by text message, that John had given Sherlock his own heart, too. He doesn’t know when this has happened but he keeps it safe next to his own as best as he can until he can return home. At that point he will give John his own heart and maybe that will be enough to cover the words ‘I’m sorry’and'I’ve missed you’and'I love you’ in ways that Sherlock is unsure of how to say.

In that heart that is existent he has been working on a letter. It is carefully written because John is still not allowed to know that Sherlock is alive but Sherlock has things to say and he thinks those things will help John focus on life - focus on the future - focus on how much of an amazing person he is. He thinks the letter he has penned with help John focus on how much he was loved and is loved and more. Sherlock has never penned a love letter before and to be quite frank, he never planned to in his life - even if he was to end up in the arms of John Watson now or in the future, but this is different. This is the difference between the showcase of sulking and heartbreak that Mycroft sees. This is the difference that has evolved when seeing your best friend lain out on the sheets of a hospital bed with only five minutes in your hand to see and say everything that is in your mind, and in your heart.

Five minutes was never enough.

A lifetime will never be enough.

This letter may not be either, but he has to try. He needs John to know. He needs John to understand. He needs John, simply put. And while the letter itself is entirely unselfish, he knows that his need to do such a thing - to extend a hand out to John, invisible as it may be, is selfish in its own act. He doesn’t care because even though he has changed his mind on love and sentiment (for one person though. Only ever John. Only ever him and no one else), he has never proclaimed to be less of a selfish man in his actions.

“I don’t want you to read it, Mycroft,” Sherlock explains. The letter (two pages) is folded in a trifold and it sits heavily in Sherlock’s grasp. He will not hand it over until he is ready and unlike the five minutes he had in the hospital he knows he has more now. “These words are not for you, Mycroft. I want them for John alone.”

There is no tea in the sitting room today. There is only Mycroft and Sherlock and a letter and a world outside that has never really accepted them but still allows them because the world allows love, causalities, loss, and people like the Holmes’ brothers. Perhaps you could label them as freaks or misunderstood individuals or geniuses or simply men who grew into boys, but one of them has enough humanity in him to pen a letter of love and mean every word in it.

“You know I will not, Sherlock,” Mycroft responds. “I owe you that much.”

Mycroft, truthfully, owes him more. Mycroft owes him a lot - but they’ve never been one for counting favors. Mycroft has sewn together Sherlock’s busted teddy bear when he was four and Sherlock has helped Mycroft on one too many cases even though he deemed them uninteresting and boring and just a waste of his time. They could tally it all up but it was be nothing more than a shrug of their shoulders and a steaming pot of tea. Of course it doesn’t erase the fact that Mycroft is a solid reason why Moriarty had so much background on Sherlock, and even though the younger sibling tears at that fact every once in a while when he misses home (221B, cases, experiments, John, John, John) the most, he does not hold it against the older sibling anymore. He knows he has made mistakes too, and John has forgiven him for them all. He can forgive Mycroft just this once.

(Maybe karma exists and John will forgive Sherlock for everything he has done when he returns.)

“When will you take it to him?” Sherlock asks quietly. His eyes are focused on the letter. It is not heavy material - some stock paper he found in Mycroft’s office laced with the ink of a fountain pen (black) - but it feels heavy in his hands. Just like John’s heart he holds in his chest - it weighs down the world with being nearly invisible. Words are invisible, even when written with the thickest of ink, yet they tend to weigh more than chemicals and experiments and cartons of takeaway in the light of everything.

“By tomorrow morning,” Mycroft responds. He taps his fingers on his knee and glances out the window by his face. London is getting darker. “If he is home this evening, I’ll stop by tonight. If not, tomorrow morning at the latest. What do you want me to tell him, Sherlock?”

This is where Sherlock has had to carefully design his plan. The letter itself explains everything for the most part, but he has to utilize Mycroft to make sure John clearly understands when and why this letter was written. If anything is mistaken, this entire ship could go to hell and take them both with it.

“The letter explains itself,” Sherlock responds. The letter is lifted and the sharp edge of the upper right hand side taps the corner of his chin. “Simply let John know that this letter was given to you after the incident at the pool in April of last year. Tell him that you were informed by me to give this to him only if something substantial happened.” He pauses because he needs to elaborate. Attempted suicide is something substantial but it is also something that needs to be categorized with other things for John to understand. “Explain to him that I asked it to be given to him, if and only if, his life was in danger or if he reached a point in his life after my own demise where he seemed to need the help. Where you, personally, Mycroft, felt giving him such a letter would seem appropriate.”

Mycroft understands - he is smart after all. “Should he think that I have read the contents of the letter?”

“No,” Sherlock replies. He catches his brother’s face in the fading London light and he balances both trust and hope on the man who heads the British Government. No one else can extend this letter to John besides the opposite and Sherlock needs this to work. For John’s sake, for his own sake. “Let him know it was entrusted to you by me and you kept to your promise to keep out of its contents. You needn’t say anything more. Though,” another pause and Sherlock sighs heavily. He knows he owes Mycroft nothing but he also knows that this could create ill-will between the older sibling and his best friend. Not that there was never some sort of pseudo-awkwardness that manifested between the pair, but he knows anything added to the situation could only leak in as fuel to the fire. “He may be upset at you for holding out the letter. I am unaware of how you will handle that.”

“It’s fine,” Mycroft stresses the word 'fine’ because he knows, regardless of the fact that if Sherlock feels as if they owe each other nothing, he, truth be told, owes Sherlock this and more. He killed his brother and he must pay back his debts. “John is not a hateful man nor is he one to hold a stance with another. It’s fine, Sherlock.”

Sherlock swallows this information before offering a nod. He then, at that very point, leans over and offers the letter to the opposite. Mycroft takes it and lets it set in his lap. There is a man’s heart on these two scraps of paper - one side only each, maybe one thousand and two-hundred words at most - and Mycroft knows he is not allowed to know such a thing. This heart is entitled for a man named John Watson and Sherlock would have never written such a letter for anyone else.

"Do you feel better after writing it, Sherlock?” Mycroft asks.

“I’ll know when we see how John does after reading it,” Sherlock responds, casually blowing off the real answer that Mycroft seeks. Only because Mycroft doesn’t fully understand just yet that Sherlock’s own feelings heavily rely on the doctor’s.

“But how do you feel?”

“How do you expect I feel, Mycroft?”

Mycroft swallows hard and he knows he cannot answer that question. If he had any choice in the matter at this very moment, he would exchange his own life in order to send Sherlock home (221B, cases, experiments, John, John, John). He would kill Sebastian Moran with his own hands and let Sherlock return to the life he had been denied for such a long time and only had the opportunity to have for such a brief period. But, blatantly put, Mycroft has no choice in the matter. They cannot do much until then have Moran in the right position at the right time and the fact of the matter is that Moriarty trained his sniper right. The man is smart and knows how to hide. He also knows that John Watson is the direct line to Sherlock’s heart and he knows how to not just burn it out, but destroy it. One bullet is all it takes and if things continue the way they are now, the trigger may not even have to be pulled. John could pull it himself.

“Tomorrow morning?” Sherlock asks over his shoulder. Mycroft hadn’t even realized that Sherlock had stood from his chair and made his way to the exit of the room. He rarely got lost in his own thoughts but things were not so simple anymore.

“Tomorrow morning at the very latest,” Mycroft responds, hands teasing the edge of the two sheets of the folded paper, “Tonight at the earliest.”

It’ll have to be enough.

Sherlock goes back to the guest room that is littered with paper and finds sanity (or the closest he can mend to be it) in the folds of the bedclothes adorning the bed. Tucked under the topmost sheet is a picture of John Watson he had from his mobile phone - printed out and kept on hand for a very long time. For the greater portion of the previous months prior to his 'death’, he kept the picture tucked in his wallet. It was hidden behind his own identification card so that John would never find it. There were no other pictures in his wallet because no one else really ever mattered. However, for the last two and a half months since realizing that he really was capable of the notion of love and he had such a thing for his best friend, he kept the picture in arms reach. Usually closer.

John is smiling in it - as he should be. It was taken after a case and even though it seemed as if Sherlock was just flicking through his mobile phone at the time, he simply had the volume set to mute and caught John in the most beautiful act he’d seen in a very long time.

Sherlock cannot, for the life of him, remember what they were discussing, but they were sharing bites of Chinese off each other’s plates and smiling and laughing and living.

Sherlock would really like that back.

And the thing is - the thing that he accepts the most is that he would be perfectly fine with just that. He knows that there has been layers added to both sides - proclamations of love and desire through text messages made by the mind and heart - but he would be just fine with having the life he once lived with John. He’s never been kissed by someone he’s loved and he thinks he might like that. He could manage a few dates and while he’s never had sexual relations with someone of the male gender, he thinks that he would be adaptable to something of that nature if John Watson shared his bed. He thinks all of that could be considered what Americans call, icingon the cake. And he thinks he might really enjoy all of that and above. But if it came down to it - if he went back home (221B, cases, experiments, John, John, John) he would be fine with just that – just John. John making tea and threatening him for eyeballs in the microwave; late night telly and violin playing and everything that composed the last two years in what Sherlock would label as perfection.

Of course he’d like more - kisses along the jaw and knowing smiles across the room and hand holding where no one can see and hand holding where everyone can see - but he just wants to go home to John at this point and have it all back. He knows he really won’t change much as a man but he knows for a fact that he will never let a day go by without John knowing how much he is valued, appreciated, and loved by him.

Thank you for everything, Sherlock will say, just before either escapes to bed for the night, and know that you are loved by me.

It is sentimental and probably unnecessary but Sherlock will say it each and every day because it’s the truth and if he’s going to say things like, John, that shirt looks terrible on youand John this movie is utter crap, because it’s all the truth, he’s going to say he loves John, too.

Love, he thinks, as he lies back on the folds of the sheets and tucks the picture of John into his hands, can mean more than one thing. He understands this and knows this now. Many people know many types of love - mother and daughter; sister and brother; lover and lover. But Sherlock only knows one type of love:

John.  

(Just a lot of words. A lot of pointless and beautiful and painful words. Isn’t that what writing is?)

(Always is the cruelest world I know.)

“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

I do not know what happened. I was sitting at a Starbucks with a warm cup of hot chocolate. A pair of children made silly faces at me through the window, and I laughed. For a moment. I laughed. I turned my head back to the work in front of me, typing words into another paper for my writing class—a class I loved, for the professor I admired, for the dragging determination that I would continue on, in spite of everything. Certainly, I was miserable, but that was something to be overcome, to fight against; I would make it as long as hope remained. 
—
How was it then, that moments later I became hopeless?
—
I see myself sitting on the train, watching soft night descend on city lights. Watching apartment buildings for glimpses of lives I’d never know, hoping to catch the shadow of some lamp, the face of a curious onlooker, watching me as I watched them. Life, at its purest essence. Humanity has always been the same.

Always. Was it that word that broke me? That sense that everything should go on? Was it my own determination to continue in spite of everything? What was it that struck that fear so deep into my mind? What was it even—but that concept of always—that I feared?

Half an hour later, with hot water streaming down my face, I slipped into the bottom of the bathtub and tried to chase out the thoughts. Head underwater. The sound of artificial rain on my ears. Eyes closed. Breath held.

I’ll know what it’s like—eternity—in a second.

It wasn’t death I was hoping for, it was paradise. It was a glimpse of the divine and a promise of eternal life—everlasting consciousness. I didn’t want to die, you see, I wanted to make certain I would live forever. I wanted to know what my mother felt when I was born, when she almost died, when she heard the voice of god and knew paradise.
I felt my body plead for oxygen. I felt my heart skip a beat. I felt cold darkness echo back to me the same way it did each time I prayed to god and begged for some promise of hope. I felt the unforgiving silence again, and nothing more.
Instinct took control and I lifted my head from the water, gasping at air the way I grasped for hope.
I still don’t know what happened; I don’t know what made me so afraid of dying that I wanted to risk life.
—
I keep telling them I want to be dumb. If I were dumb, I wouldn’t think about it; it wouldn’t bother me. Like a bird I would live and I would die and would care very little for eternity.
—
What I understand of neuroscience and physics, what I know of thermodynamics, makes me think eternal consciousness is impossible.
—
What I know about religion and philosophy is that this is the ultimate question. Or as Camus said: “There is only one really serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that”
It’s the ultimate question because no one truly knows the answer.
—
Is that what made it happen again? Is that why I had to run away? The deepest and yet most absurd question—is that really what made me leave school for the third time?
I know it’s not of course. It was more than that. It was an inability to keep going, it was a loss of hope and an outpouring of fear. It was everything and nothing.
—
I beg god again, for something, really anything. But like all those days, those endless hours sitting, curled at the bottom of my closet pleading, I meet silence and darkness and emptiness. I meet the very thing I fear, and the thing which has taken over my OCD, and anxiety, and led me to the deepest depression I have ever known. I hope for certainty where I cannot have it.
—
There are two things I know:
1. I do not have any reason to hope for eternal life. Death, like every other thing in this world, seems physical, temporal.
2. Without the hope of eternal consciousness, I have no reason to enjoy living, no reason to hope for anything. Hope, at that point, becomes temporary, and seemingly useless.
—
There is no reason for me to say any of this, of course. I am not asking for anything, not looking for someone to tell me to just have faith, not looking for anyone to tell me not to.
—
My obsessions have fixated on ideas of aging and death. (Time is so short. “It is later than you think.”) I sank into depression. I left school again because I was simply, physically unable to continue on, even though this time I thought I would make it. 
Until that moment, that second on the train watching the world go by I was okay.
Now, I need to know that I will be okay forever—literally forever—or I don’t know if I will ever quite be okay again. 
Without a hope for everything, is there a hope for anything?
—
No, I haven’t given up all hope. I hope for a someday (and for an eternal someday.) I hope to find some sense of spirituality, some presence or peace from some god, some little spark of light in the echoing darkness. I hope. But I do not expect—I do not know.

• story time : Nov 04, 2021

Was on my way to I.T business park early today and sa jeep may na kasabay akong cutie.. and nagka eye to eye kami… it was awkward kasi magka harap kami and I’m not brave enough to hold a stare… so I pretended to use my phone nlng.. and I saw him do the same tapos gulat nlng ako when I looked over him, kasi the screen of his phone was facing me and may naka lagay na number sa screen.. was he discreetly giving me his number? Idk pero as bihira lng mangyari toh.. i took the chance and copied the number into my phone (discreetly din haha) as soon as I got home I texted the number (hoping na tama yung assumptions ko or tama ang na copy ko) waiting nlng for a reply.. lol.. shuta. Parang akong bumalik ng highschool sa kilig.. or I’m living in one of my gay fantasies.. hoping I dont jinx this tho