Chapter Text
John comes back to Baker Street on a rainy Wednesday in January.
It’s drizzling outside, and cold. It’s five in the afternoon and already so dark John can barely see to fit his key in the lock.
Of course that could also be nerves.
He feels vaguely nauseous, but that’s basically been his status quo for the last—well, years, to be honest. That feeling deep in his gut of wrongness. That something in his life isn’t right.
He takes a deep breath. Unlocks the door with the key Sherlock insisted he keep. Picks up the two duffle bags containing all his worldly belongings. Walks up the seventeen steps.
Sherlock’s in his pyjamas, unruly hair sticking up wildly. He’s sitting at the kitchen table, microscope and notebook out, obviously in the middle of an experiment.
He looks up when John enters. He gives John one of his patented Deduction Stares, eyes lingering on John’s duffle bags, then travelling up his body.
Sherlock’s eyes finally meet his, and hold.
John swallows. Maybe he should have phoned. Maybe he should have asked. Maybe he’s being incredibly presumptuous here. Maybe he’s vastly overplaying his hand.
Finally, Sherlock says, “Tea?”
John tries his best not to sag with relief. “Yes, please,” he says, endlessly glad that Sherlock isn’t asking any of the hundreds of questions John doesn’t know how to answer.
Sherlock nods, like that’s all there is to say about it, and gets up to put the kettle on. “You can unpack while it’s brewing,” he says, not looking around at John. “If you want to,” he adds after a slight pause, still with his back turned, but John can see the lines of tension in Sherlock’s frame.
He’s too thin, John thinks, swallowing around the sudden lump of emotion in his throat, a lump of feeling so big and complicated he couldn’t even begin to name it. “Yeah. Good. I’ll just—”
John goes upstairs and puts his bags into his closet. He sits down on his dusty bed, shaking, mostly with relief.
He takes a bit of time to pull himself together. Hangs up his clothes. Changes the bedsheets.
When he can’t put off going back down any longer, he makes his way down the creaky stairs.
Sherlock is nowhere to be seen, but a mug of steaming tea is sitting next to John’s chair.
John sinks into his chair and closes his eyes. He takes a sip of his tea, fixed just as he likes with just a splash of milk, and he can feel something inside of him slowly, very slowly, unclench.
Sherlock’s bedroom door opens and closes. Sherlock strides out, all contained energy, fully dressed and perfectly groomed again. He grabs his coat from the hallway closet.
“Double strangling,” Sherlock says as he winds a scarf around his neck. “Dimmock’s the DI, so it’s probably open and shut, but I think the case might not be a total waste of time. Strangling is usually a crime of passion, but a double strangling suggests there’s something more going on here.”
John puts down his mug, and for a jarring, horrible second, he’s entirely in limbo, between past and present, because Before, he would not have hesitated, but this is After, and he doesn’t remotely know who he is to Sherlock anymore, even a little bit.
But then Sherlock raises a Don’t be stupid eyebrow and says, “Well, are you coming, or do you want to stay in and watch telly?”
John gets up and catches the jacket Sherlock tosses at him, and for just a moment, the ball of emotion in his chest squeezes him so tight that he thinks he might do something drastic. Cry. Hug the bloody idiot bastard. Punch Sherlock in his stupid perfect face. But that moment passes quickly as adrenaline comes to the rescue once more, and John is sure-footed, steady-handed and bright eyed as he shrugs into his jacket. “Let’s go.”
*-*
It’s midnight, and they’re sitting in front of the telly, eating chips.
The case was over quickly. Sherlock deduced the culprit, got him to confess and they handed him over to the Yard about an hour ago. The rain had stopped sometime between the crime scene and the culprit’s house. They walked home in silence and picked up chips from the chippy down the street for a late-night dinner.
They’re watching a documentary on banking fraud, and John is about to fall asleep. The only light in the room comes from the telly.
“What happened with Mary?” Sherlock asks quietly, between bites of chips and sips of cold tea.
John briefly closes his eyes and exhales audibly. It’s a fair question. The problem is, John doesn’t know how to answer it, because the truth is, nothing happened with Mary.
Something happened with him.
What happened is this: Yesterday, he was so tired after work that all he could think of was, I want to go home.
It was only when he stood outside the Baker Street tube station that he realised.
Freud was a wanker, mostly, but there’s something to be said for a good old Freudian slip to reveal a truth to you that you really shouldn’t have ignored for this long.
This morning, he woke up and looked around himself and thought, For two years, you would have given your life to go back to Baker Street, back to him. Now you actually can. What the fuck are you doing?
He didn’t allow himself to think about it. He just did it. And he’s not sure he wants to think about it now.
Of course he can’t say any of this to Sherlock. He wouldn’t even know where to begin.
“It…” he finally says, after so long that it’s clear from Sherlock’s little start that he thought John wasn’t going to respond. “She wasn’t—”
Sherlock says nothing, but John can feel his eyes on him, watching him intently.
“It wasn’t right,” he finally says, the closest he will ever realistically come to describing the dissonance his life had turned into the moment Sherlock jumped, like a tuning fork vibrating just slightly off key.
Out of the corner of his eye, John can see Sherlock nod, but he says nothing, and John is grateful.
“Are you just stopping over, or moving back in?” Sherlock asks, and if John didn’t know him as well as he does, he’d have missed the tiniest crack in the facade, the slight unsteadiness in Sherlock’s voice, the sliver of raw insecurity just peeking through.
“Moving back in.” John pauses, and adds, “If you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind,” Sherlock says softly, and the tiny smile John just catches out of the corner of his eyes, a smile also audible in Sherlock’s voice, feels like the first rays of sun breaking through a nuclear winter.
John smiles. “Good.” He holds out his tea mug.
Sherlock clinks his mug against John’s. “Good.”
*-*
You’d think that two years would change many things.
And you’d be right to think that.
The first week is weird.
John doesn’t know what he expected. It’s been two years, after all. And it’s not like they were penpals throughout. No, Sherlock let him believe he was dead, John was suicidally depressed for a lot of the last two years, and Sherlock was god knows where doing god knows what. It’s not like they casually lost touch. They were ripped in two, and it’s a wound that still smarts when you make a wrong move.
It’s difficult to get into the same rhythm. John works relatively regular hours these days, but Sherlock isn’t a regular hours kind of person, and John surmises that the last two years haven’t changed that for the better. On the contrary, Sherlock seems to be even less in sync with the rest of the world than he ever was. He’s still asleep when John leaves, except for when he hasn’t slept at all and is just sort of dozing on the sofa, obviously exhausted. When John comes home, Sherlock is mostly either restlessly pacing and waiting for John to drag him out on some adventure, listless and cranky with hunger, or not home at all. The latter is surprisingly frequent, and when Sherlock is out, he usually doesn’t come home until John is zonked out on the sofa or in bed. John thinks at this rate he’ll forget what Sherlock looks like in daylight.
Sherlock is also clearly out of the habit of cohabitation, even though John can tell that he’s trying unnaturally hard to be better at being a flatmate. When John returns to Baker Street after work on his first full day being moved back in, he finds no Sherlock, but a stocked fridge, a cleaned kitchen counter, and all his experiments carefully packed away and labelled. If he didn’t know better, he’d think Sherlock even dusted. He’s painfully reminded of the first time he was in Baker Street, when Sherlock started throwing his things into boxes, awkwardly trying to clean up after himself. It makes John feel better about the whole moving back in without discussing it with Sherlock, because it’s clear that Sherlock actually wants John around. He wouldn't bother buying milk if he didn’t want John to stay.
It’s still more than a bit awkward between them. It’s clear Sherlock is trying really hard to be less… Sherlock, he makes less noise, he’s less messy and he only plucks at his violin. John appreciates the food in the fridge and the lack of toxic waste on the table, but he would vastly prefer living with the madman he remembers than this overly formal stranger, who says please and thank you and respects John’s privacy.
Of course it’s not like John is immediately at ease either. He hasn’t lived here in two years. He almost burns himself because he’s forgotten the idiosyncrasies of their shower and stumbles over the last step up to his bedroom because it’s taller than the others. He keeps his laundry in his room instead of throwing it in the hamper the way he used to because he doesn’t want to assume that Sherlock is all right with sharing laundry the way they used to.
Once or twice, he snaps at Sherlock without provocation because he’s still so angry. And the apparently mutual irritation of not being able to just easily and seamlessly pick up where they left off leads them to a few small but nasty fights that end with both of them exhausted, embarrassed, exasperated, or all three. They both make a lot of tea, that first week.
Mrs Hudson’s detergent smells differently. The Indian restaurant they used to order from has closed. The Tesco around the corner is a Waitrose now. Sherlock hasn’t touched the biscuits that used to be his favourite.
Was it like this when they first moved in together? Two near strangers, trying too hard to adjust? Or are they tiptoeing around each other because everything feels much more fragile now?
It must have been similar, back then, John muses one afternoon as he sits in his chair, sipping tea and waiting for Sherlock to come home. He doesn’t remember it, probably partly because he was just so fucking relieved to get out of that bloody bedsit, and partly because he tinted the time before Sherlock jumped in rose-coloured glasses of nostalgia and grief.
They spend a lot of time watching bad telly, the way they used to. But there’s a lot less chatter now. Ironically, John thinks it’s because they have a lot more to talk about, but neither of them knows how. How do you talk about two years of loneliness? How do you ask for explanations and stories? When do you bring up how close your friend’s fake suicide was to triggering your own? Before the toast for breakfast, or after? Before asking what Chinese food to order, or after?
It’s a bit of an impasse, John thinks, holding two years of the unknown in their hands, nobody wanting to spill their heavy bag of secrets first.
They have time. There’s no orange pips, no madman hunting them now. No fiancé counting down the days to a wedding that will put an end to any attempt to find a new equilibrium.
They have time.
Meanwhile, John decides to exploit Sherlock’s unusual compliance and takes him to do the weekend shopping at Tesco. John has made a long list, because he thinks they should actually start living off something other than toast and takeout again.
Sherlock is unusually docile and compliant when John suggests it, but the facade noticeably cracks under the glaring neon lights of the Tesco bread aisle and shatters completely in the toothpaste section when John—and everyone in shouting distance—is treated to a ten minute rant about chemically identical products and their price difference, capitalism, consumer stupidity and corporate greed. John seriously wishes for popcorn as a gaggle of stupefied shoppers assemble around the ranting madman in the 900 pound coat and custom-made Italian leather shoes shitting on consumer culture over discount toothpaste. Someone tries to film him, but John shuts that down with a steely glare that threatens violence.
Sherlock ends the rant with a truly magnificent storm-off and John almost applauds this masterful piece of theatrics, but he doesn’t want to draw more attention to himself, and also he’s pretty sure there’s a packet of gum in Sherlock’s coat pocket he didn’t pay for.
John walks home alone with three heavy shopping bags.
When he comes home, Sherlock wordlessly takes the bags to the kitchen and starts unpacking them.
John watches from the kitchen door. “Did you pay for the gum?” he finally asks, after a good ten minutes of silence.
Sherlock turns around and looks at him warily. Then he shrugs. “No.”
John bursts out laughing. He can’t help himself, he just starts laughing and can’t stop, and after a minute of indignant silence, Sherlock johns him. They laugh until they’re both breathless, and when their eyes meet, John feels some of the oppressive weight he’s struggled under for far too long start to lift.
After that, Sherlock ignores the shopping and leaves his socks on the bathroom floor again.
A week later, John finds a whole human hand in the fridge.
John complains to Sherlock, loudly, but secretly he’s incredibly, immensely, irrationally relieved.
*-*
Sometimes, John wakes up screaming in the middle of the night. Sometimes, he tiptoes to the door of Sherlock’s bedroom and listens to him breathe.
Sometimes, Sherlock is also awake and John wonders what the shadows in his eyes are about. He’s pretty sure Sherlock knows what John’s shadows are made of.
Is he crazy, being here? Trying to put them back together? Is it even possible? Why does he even want this, with someone who’s hurt him this badly?
Sometimes John wonders whether he’s just the slightest bit pathetic.
Sometimes John catches a look on Sherlock’s face, when he thinks John isn’t watching.
Disbelief. Relief. Wonder. An awkward, tentative, shy kind of joy.
Sometimes John catches that look on his own face in the mirror.
It makes him feel immeasurably better about the whole endeavour.
*-*
When John tells his therapist he moved back, she’s gobsmacked. It’s clear that she thinks he’s flipped his lid, even though she’s too professional to say so.
“Why would you do this to yourself?” she asks. She talks about co-dependence and toxicity and healthy bloundaries and all of that shit, and John couldn’t fucking care less.
He could never explain to her that even like this, even half broken, messy, awkward and jarringly painful, there’s nowhere he’d rather be than right beside Sherlock Holmes.
John doesn’t want normal. He doesn’t do stable, he can’t handle sane. He wants chaos, he wants action. He wants to be consumed. He wants his sense of self to be overridden by the gleam in Sherlock’s eyes and the all-consuming force of his attention. He wants to be the John Watson he was when they were still an Us against the World. He wants to see himself in Sherlock’s galaxy eyes. He wants to feel whole again.
Maybe that’s not achievable.
But fuck, he wants to try.
His therapist recommends having a talk with Sherlock about boundaries and honesty.
John doesn’t go back.
*-*
The cases help.
It’s not that they don’t talk otherwise, but the cases give them something to focus on. In the beginning, John notices a certain lag in finding private clients, and that Sherlock takes Met cases he wouldn’t have touched with a ten-foot-pole before. John is glad even about the trivial cases, because Sherlock seems much more himself when he has a case to dwell on, and it gives them something to do. A page to be on together. A lowest common denominator they can fall back to.
After a good chase, when they’re both breathless and grinning with adrenaline, that’s when John feels most himself, most like the John he was before he broke. Before they broke. Before Sherlock broke them.
It’s easier to forget how much it hurt, how much it still hurts, when they giggle at crime scenes, when they walk where here be monsters and they only have each other to keep the darkness at bay.
John restarts the blog, and the clients come back, slowly but surely. John reduces hours in the surgery after he falls asleep in the break room for the third time in the same week. (Mary quit shortly after they broke up, and John hasn’t seen her since. He’s not sorry about that.)
*-*
It’s early spring, and slowly, things start to settle down. Their rough edges start to sand off against each other again. Sherlock has taken to blowing up the kitchen again, though the violin stays mostly silent. John has resumed pub nights with Lestrade, and he carefully hasn’t commented on the destroyed toaster. He just bought a new one, and the three kinds of jam Sherlock likes. Sherlock starts eating the biscuits again. Mrs Hudson, who cried when John moved back in, to John’s eternal embarrassment, has resumed scolding them about never cleaning.
Slowly, slowly, their lives sync up again.
It’s then that John notices that Sherlock has a secret.
*-*
It takes a while for John to notice that some of Sherlock’s absences have a pattern. He’s not home for dinner every Monday and Thursday. He also vanishes every Saturday morning, and only shows up again after lunch.
When he finally notices the regularity of Sherlock’s absences, he wonders what in the world could make Sherlock Holmes be at a certain place at a certain time regularly.
It’s eating at him a bit, if he’s honest. Sherlock never says anything, but something about him when he comes back from his outings is a bit… off. His hair is a bit messy, he moves differently. He’s a bit sweaty.
Like he had a good workout.
Or like he had really good sex.
It’s the last one that makes John feel a bit nauseous.
He knows nothing about so many parts of Sherlock’s past. Or present, if he’s honest. Sherlock has always maintained a carefully crafted air of mystery, and John used to love it. Sherlock is an enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in an expensive coat, and John has always fallen for the mystique hook, line and sinker. It’s one of the reasons he finds Sherlock so endlessly fascinating.
But the flip side of this particular coin has always been that it makes being Sherlock’s… anything, honestly, more difficult. It makes it more difficult to trust Sherlock, for one. If you never know what you’re up against, what your place in the whole of Sherlock’s life is. It’s difficult to fit a puzzle piece if you don’t know what the picture looks like.
And Sherlock is being unhelpful, as usual. When John asks him, casually, one random Monday, “What did you do all day?” Sherlock just shrugs and mutters something about Molly and corpses and research, but when John asks Molly later, she says Sherlock left around five-ish, looking rushed and checking his watch like he was worried he’d be late.
What the everloving hell would make Sherlock Holmes worry about being late? They’ve had court dates where Sherlock sauntered in an hour late without seemingly being aware of the passage of time. John has always wondered why Sherlock even owns a wristwatch, as he rarely seems to actually consult it.
Maybe Sherlock has a boyfriend.
And what if he does? he asks himself, swallowing around the vague nausea he doesn’t want to think about too much. It’s none of your business. He’s a grown adult, he can do what he wants with his life.
But what if it’s not a boyfriend? What if Sherlock is still investigating Moriarty’s network? What if he’s meeting with someone dangerous? What if he’s running off and getting himself killed again?
Sherlock doesn’t look like he did just before the whole fucking Moriarty mess. Then, he was preoccupied and almost haunted. These days, he’s calm, or as calm as Sherlock ever gets. But there are shadows behind his eyes that John can’t place, and more than once John finds him fitfully asleep on the sofa, or wide awake at five in the morning, obviously driven from his bed, by what John can only guess at.
John knows the thing to do would be to ask Sherlock what he wants to know.
But he’s 100% sure Sherlock wouldn’t tell him, and frankly John is sick of being lied to. He doesn’t need to solicit it by asking questions he knows Sherlock won’t answer.
He’s vaguely aware that this isn’t exactly a healthy, good or sustainable state of affairs. But as he doesn’t know how to break out of the cycle of half-truths and stiff upper lipping it they’ve both been maintaining for as long as they’ve known each other, he goes on like nothing happened.
He’s gotten shockingly good at that.
*-*
He doesn’t mean to spy on Sherlock. It’s more of an accident, really.
It just sort of happens, one Thursday. He’s running some errands and left work a bit earlier because of it. He’s on the Circle line, idly leafing through a Metro someone left on his seat when he catches something out of the corner of his eye. A silhouette he’d recognise anywhere. For a second, he’s back where he was six months, a year, two years ago, reminding himself. It’s impossible, it’s not real, he—
And then he remembers.
He is glad the newspaper hides his face because he needs a moment to recover from the sudden onslaught of emotion that sometimes hits him when he remembers.
He takes a deep breath, admonishes himself to keep it together, then is about to call out to Sherlock when he realises that Sherlock is going in the wrong direction for Baker Street, that it’s Thursday, and that it’s about the time of Sherlock’s mystery appointments.
He darts a look at Sherlock. He’s standing near the doors, one hand on the handle, phone in his other hand. He doesn’t look up from his phone, but John can see from his body language that he’s still very aware of his surroundings. He’s not carrying anything, as usual, and he doesn’t look worried or excited. He looks like a Londoner going about his business.
But Sherlock’s exterior can never be trusted.
They’re calling Barbican station, and Sherlock pockets his phone and turns to the door, obviously preparing to get off.
It’s a split second decision to follow him.
Just to make sure he’s not doing something incredibly stupid again, John thinks as he lets the mass of people alighting carry him along, even as he tries to keep an eye on Sherlock’s distinctive form. Thank god he’s so tall, and so unique. Otherwise John would have trouble keeping him in view with the masses of people streaming through the underground, moving through the blood vessels of London’s body in a steady stream of life.
Sherlock moves with the stream, blending in and standing out the way only he can, his elegant movements and distinctive coat making him at once one of the crowd, just another person living his life in this city, and incredibly unique, marking him as special, apart, above the crowd somehow.
Sherlock doesn’t look back, doesn’t notice John as he carefully uses every trick Sherlock ever taught him, hiding behind taller people, blending into the crowd, looking at reflections instead of his target, trying to anticipate his movements so he can fall behind or even ahead if he has to.
It’s rush hour, and there’s enough people around that John has an easy time of it. He knows he would never be able to pass undetected if there were smaller crowds. But as it is, it’s easy to follow Sherlock as he goes up the stairs towards Charterhouse Street.
John’s heart is beating overtime, not only from the adrenaline and the slightly stale moral aftertaste of practically stalking his flatmate, but also from nerves about what exactly he’ll find at the other end of this.
Is it drugs? A clandestine meeting with an informant? A case, dangers John isn’t allowed to share, again? A handsome, charming, funny, smart man, who will take Sherlock away from John (again)?
John clenches his fist as he walks, reminding himself that he has no right, no claim, that he’s not in any way entitled to anything, that Sherlock owes him nothing.
Well, maybe not entirely nothing. But John would settle for so little. He just wants Sherlock to tell him the truth, for once. A little bit of honesty isn’t too much to ask for, after all they’ve been through. After all Sherlock put John through, isn’t he owed at least this?
Whatever hypotheses John has formed, whatever he expected, or didn’t expect, or surmised, or guessed, when he finally sees the building Sherlock enters, he’s nothing less than stunned.
One Yoga Studio reads the simple plaque on the door Sherlock enters.
John blinks in surprise. Reads the sign again. It still says the same thing.
This can’t be right. There has to be something more going on here.
Sherlock Holmes and Yoga seem to be two words that don’t belong in the same sentence.
He crosses the street to see whether the studio has windows to the street. It’s getting dark, and the lights are on upstairs. John gets lucky, the windows to the street are quite large and it’s easy to see into the room from across the street.
He watches Sherlock enter the room, now dressed in Yoga leggings and a short-sleeved workout t-shirt. Sherlock greets the teacher as if he knows her. There are other people in the room.
Stunned, fascinated, John watches as the teacher starts the Yoga class. He swallows around his dry throat as he watches Sherlock, who’s near the window. He feels like a voyeur, dirty, unjustifiably nosy. This is wrong, this is none of his business, he should leave.
But as he watches, he notices it.
Sherlock has obviously done this many times before. He’s everything you’d expect from him. Graceful. Strong, so good at this the way he’s good at everything he does. Balance, poise, timing, he has it all. And what John can’t see, his imagination and familiarity with Sherlock’s body are filling in the blanks. Sherlock’s hair curling, sticking to his forehead with sweat. His strong, elegant arms, muscles bunching and stretching.
He’s so beautiful, John thinks, his mind unguarded from its own secrets for a moment. The thought just slips out, hovering in John’s conscious mind, waiting to be acknowledged. John hugs his arms over his torso, trying to keep the feeling in, shivering in the cool spring air in his thin jacket. He can’t, can’t think of Sherlock this way. If he lets this go unchecked, it will consume him, destroy him like it almost did two years ago when he lost Sherlock. Sherlock doesn’t feel the same, and never will. He was perfectly fine without John, and would still be fine right now. John is a nice bonus for Sherlock’s life, while Sherlock is John’s gravity, oxygen and light.
He shoves the thought back into the box it belongs, in the back of his mind, the bottom of his heart. There’s something going on here, and he has to figure out what it is. Something nagging at the back of his mind.
Is this for a case? Is Sherlock investigating this Yoga studio?
John does a quick web search, but the website and the reviews of the studio seem to be genuine. The studio has been around for a while, too. He looks up the teacher, and she seems legitimate as well. She has a long resume on the website, giving her credentials as a Yoga teacher and physical therapist.
Physical therapist…
And then John knows, suddenly. He can’t see Sherlock’s face from across the street, but there’s something about the way he moves. Boldly at times, carefully at others. How sometimes he doesn’t go quite as far, how some movements seem slightly impeded.
And suddenly a lot of things John noticed only subconsciously make a whole lot more sense. How Sherlock is sometimes so very careful, his body language so tightly contained. John thought he was uncomfortable, and he was, but physically, not emotionally. How careful Sherlock was to not be undressed in John’s presence, how he rarely plays the violin, how he’s not quite as quick to chase well-armed criminals as he was.
Sherlock was injured, while he was Away. He was injured, maybe severely, and John didn’t know, wasn’t there, couldn’t help, wasn’t allowed to…
He leans against the wall as the full force of all the things he hasn’t allowed himself to think about hits him like a ton of bricks. Two years. Two fucking years. Why?
He doesn’t know how much time passes, or how he ends up sitting on the steps of the building opposite the studio.
He only knows he’s cold through when Sherlock finds him.
“John?”
John looks up, sees the small worried frown line over Sherlock’s nose, the curls sticking to his temples with sweat. He’s in his street clothes again, and he’s crouching at John’s eye height. There’s a lovely flush over his cheekbones and he looks relaxed, if a little concerned.
John’s heart twists in his chest painfully at the sight of him. “Why don’t you trust me?” he says, speaking without thinking, the pain in his heart too fresh to be hidden.
Sherlock blinks once, surprised, and obviously perturbed by the sudden and raw honesty of the question. “I... that’s not...”
“Please don’t tell me it’s not true,” John says, making a sharp gesture to cut off Sherlock’s words. He doesn’t want to hear any more lies. He meets Sherlock’s eyes and swallows, before continuing, “What did I do, that made you not trust me? Why didn’t I deserve the truth? Why don’t I deserve it now?”
Sherlock looks… stricken. There’s no other word for it. He stares at John in wordless shock, obviously not at all prepared for this sudden outburst, on a random Thursday evening on a busy London street, out of absolutely nowhere. John isn’t sure he blames him.
He shivers a bit in his thin jacket, and somehow that small motion seems to galvanise Sherlock into action, because he gets up and holds out a hand to John. “There’s a rather nice dim sum bar around the corner. They have the best pork dumplings in London.”
“Bold claim,” John says, hating himself a bit for how shaky his voice is, how exposed he feels, how stupid. What is he doing, what good will this do?
“The owner owes me a favour,” Sherlock says, still holding out his hand. He looks at John, so obviously uncertain.
John has to smile. “Of course she does.”
He holds out his hand and lets Sherlock pull him to his feet.
“Come on,” he says, steering John in the direction of the restaurant. “Dinner’s on me.”
*-*
Sherlock was right. The dumplings are excellent. He’s not sure he would go as far as to say they’re the best he’s ever had, but they’re among the top three, certainly.
They eat their way through a variety of dumplings mostly in silence. The owner, Mrs Yeoh, doesn’t even bring them a menu, she just delivers plates and bamboo steamers full of delicious food, and occasionally tops up their Jamine tea with fresh hot water. She’s not as chatty or as demonstrative as Angelo, but it’s obvious she knows Sherlock and likes him.
They’re sitting at one of the few small tables in a window nook, hidden from view from most of the restaurant, but in full view of the streets. The restaurant’s neon sign flickers red and blue lights over Sherlock’s hair, his cheekbones, his eyes.
John’s warm and well fed and somewhat embarrassed about his outburst earlier. They haven’t talked about it at all, of course. They’re eating dumplings and drinking tea mostly in silence. Occasionally, Sherlock deduces a patron or a passerby. John tells an anecdote about the various orifices people shove chopsticks into, and Sherlock listens with fascinated horror.
When he’s so full he can’t eat another bite without throwing up, he puts his chopsticks down and watches Sherlock watch him. “I’m sorry,” he says, suddenly, out of nowhere.
“Why are you apologising?” Sherlock asks, that small confused frown line back between his eyes.
“I… I shouldn’t have… pried. It’s none of my business,” he says, uncomfortable, dropping his eyes down to the delicate Chinese tea cup in his hands.
Sherlock doesn’t say anything for a while, and when John hazards a look, he’s watching the street. “I recognise how the data available to you might… lead you to the conclusion you came to,” he finally says, so quietly John can barely hear him. He’s still looking out of the window, and the expression on his face is thoughtful, almost pensive. “It is, however,” he continues, turning to look at John, with a small, humourless smile, “completely wrong. Or, if not wrong,” he adds, holding up a hand before John can interrupt him, “it’s at least not framed correctly.”
“What would be the correct framing, then?” John snaps, more than a bit irritated.
“Your phrase earlier suggested that you think my lack of trust in you is somehow your failing,” Sherlock says softly, eyes flicking away from John as his voice goes even more quiet as he adds, “When it’s actually mine.”
John blinks, completely taken aback. “What— what does that mean?” he asks in a shaky voice.
Sherlock shrugs, lifting his eyes to John’s as he says, with forced levity, “As it turns out, alone is vastly overrated.”
John huffs out a startled laugh. “I told you so,” he says, giving Sherlock a small, hesitant smile.
“Well.” Sherlock grimaces and shrugs again. “You were right.”
John grins, feeling much lighter all of a sudden. “Was that as painful to say as it looked?”
Sherlock returns the small smile. “More, probably.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. Your secret is safe with me.”
Sherlock’s smile grows more gentle, and more honest. “I know, John,” he says. “I know.”
And for the first time in a long time, John believes him.