Author's Note : Hello all! So this is the first Johnlock story I've ever written, and I would love to have some feedback
Harriet Jane Watson was a recovering alcoholic, that much was evident from the way she tapped on the wine list and dog-eared the corners.
She was sat at a small table, in the corner of a rather overpriced restaurant and was preparing to tell her brother she was relocating to America with her sobriety coach.
That news was written all over the nicotine stains on her fingers and the way she parted her hair. John was running late, he always ran late this time of year.
It had been nearly two years since Sherlock's death, and Johns grief had resulted in him always being about fifteen minutes late, the re-emergence of his psychosomatic limp, and the growth of a rather bushy, yet meticulously kept moustache.
When she saw John, her heart hurt a little bit. He was wearing a navy suit, with a white shirt, and had clearly been over-combing both his hair and his moustache.
"Hello Harry."
"John."
She leant forward to hug him and felt him tense up. It was hard for him to stand physical affection.
Whenever Sherlock touched him, those fleeting moments of physical intimacy, whether it was his fingers grazing Sherlock's chest when he made John grab a pen, or late nights when Sherlock condescendingly ruffled John's hair whenever he fell asleep on the couch, it meant so much more than the every day meaningless affection.
"Sorry I'm late. Something about the traffic." John lied, both knowing it.
"How have you been?" She asked. She smiled, half-heartedly.
"Yeah, yeah really good. I've been continuing on the consulting work after.. you know."
They both knew what they meant, after Sherlock died. John continued on as a consulting detective, being paid a handsome retainer by both public and private interests.
"I'm glad to see you actually. I've got some news."
She shifted in her seat. She hated this part. Honestly, John was always the more sensitive of the two, and Harry was rather selfish. She drank, she smoked, she flitted between women quicker than a fly between pieces of shit. John disapproved, of course, but was frequently hurt by her thoughtlessness.
"Oh?" He asked, no emotion in his voice, as he gestured for a waiter, and pulled the wine list away from her.
"Yeah. Things have been going so well, Leonora has asked me to come with her to the sobriety retreat in Manhattan. She thinks it would be good for the brand to have a success story so up close and personal, you know?"
"Nothing to do with the fact that you're fucking her then?" Harry nearly choked on her drink, but John didn't bat an eye. He'd changed a lot since Sherlock, and even more since Sherlock's death. It hardened him.
"No not at all. I mean, um, well obviously our relationship has been moving in such a good direction." She trailed off, and then looked puzzled, and was about to ask how on earth John knew about it, but before she could a confusingly familiar waiter came to the table.
He leant on the table, nonchalantly, which she thought was rather over personal.
"Yes Sir, what can I do for you?" The waiter with the ebony curls asked him.
"What do you recommend I drink to irritate my tee-total sister?"
"Oh, we have many brilliant options here. I personally would recommend the Dalmore. It's a forty-five-year-old Highland Scotch, and if I may say, runs down your throat warm, like a familiar face from the past." John didn't even look up, and the penny hadn't dropped yet.
The great Sherlock Holmes, previously the worlds only consulting detective, and famed arrogant bastard, was now seemingly a revenant.
"Very well then. I'll have a double." John winced, pain shooting through his leg. Cruelty didn't suit him.
"Sir, perhaps you didn't hear me. I said the warmth is like seeing a face from the past." The waiters voice dropped, to a dangerous and seductive low. John would have recognised that voice anywhere.
It couldn't be.
Perhaps he was hallucinating. He did that from time to time.
He looked up, and the entire world seemed to have stopped spinning. It was him, it was Sherlock, black curls amassed almost perfectly. His deep eyes, grey pools to swim in. Those fucking cheekbones.
Unsure of his reality, John brushed his fingers against Sherlock's hand, he was still lent over the table. He recoiled instantly. He was real. He was alive.
"Well, John. I guess I wasn't expecting anything as trivial as a hug, but couldn't you at least look happy to see me? I guess the short explanation you're looking for is, not dead."
Harriet snorted. She opened her mouth to say something but found herself speechless.
"Sherlock." John spoke at last.
Still leaning on the table, Sherlock gave him a crooked smile and winked.
Without even thinking of the consequences, John stood, forgetting his crutch and the pain it was supposed to help with, and punched Sherlock in the face, before yanking on his lapels and doing it again.
For once, Sherlock didn't see it coming.
Three Hours Later:
Three hours later, Sherlock and John had been thrown out that restaurant, a greasy spoon, a kebab shop and one fish and chips. Each time Sherlock had been, well Sherlock and John had punched him.
Eventually, Sherlock conceded that he was a terrible asshole, and suggested that they go back to 221b to talk everything over with a takeout.
He daren't point out that John left his crutch at the first restaurant, he didn't think his jaw could take another hit.
Sherlock found that nothing had truly changed in the two years, and he didn't know if he should be concerned or thankful.
Instead of plastering over the bullet holes in the wall, John had elected to hang a picture over it.
Instead of getting rid of Sherlock's armchair, he'd pushed it into the corner of the lounge, away from Johns line of sight.
His experiments had been disposed of, but Sherlock found the fridge startlingly bare – milk for tea and one leftover Chow Mein.
They ate in an awkward silence, John vowing to not talk first before Sherlock had attempted to explain with some half-hearted apology.
"So." Sherlock started after watching John wolf down his fish, whilst Sherlock picked half-heartedly at his.
John said nothing. He pushed his food away and stood. He crossed the lounge and moved Sherlock's armchair back in front of his own.
"Sit." He commanded Sherlock. Sherlock obliged.
"I don't give a shit about how," John said, emotion clouding him, voice breaking. "I want to know why."
He was holding himself together quite well, all things considering. Sherlock frowned. He didn't know what to say, how to explain. How to start.
"John. I want you to know that I don't, I didn't mean to, I didn't want to."
It was surprising to see Sherlock falter so, though John was enjoying what he interpreted to be his own brand of karma.
"John, I didn't do any of this to hurt you. I didn't want to, hurt you. When I got onto that rooftop, I knew there wasn't going to be a happy ending, no matter how perpetually you'd have me believe in the possibility. He had all of you at gunpoint."
"I don't remember that."
"Of course you don't. If you'd known about it, you would have fought back. You all would have."
"All of us?"
"Molly, Lestrade, Mrs Hudson, Mycroft, and you. Though, Mycroft knew about the weak link in his team, but just pretended not to, so he could help me."
"Mycroft knew? The man you nicknamed the Ice Man? Horrible older brother that allegedly tormented you for most of your childhood? He knew?" Johns fists were balling up and his knuckles were turning white.
"He runs the British Government, of course he knew. He got me out of the country, he made sure you were all safe."
"Then why not come back? Why not just get of the bleeding roof and tell me it was all okay?"
"Oh John. Come on, you're not that thick. You're not stupid at all, you know that if I'd have just pulled a Lazarus his criminal network would have destroyed all of you. I couldn't risk that. I had work to do. I had to dismantle Moriarty's remaining network and make sure that neither he nor anyone else could hurt any of you, ever again."
"So you just watched. You just let me cling to a dead body, begging for a pulse and praying that this was one of your clever little tricks. You watched, did you? I bet you got off on that, didn't you, you sick fuck? Proof that the amazing Sherlock Holmes had someone to grieve him." John twitched.
Sherlock said nothing, but he looked away from John, and if John didn't know any better, he'd read the expression on Sherlocks face as humiliation. Perhaps regret. He almost looked hurt.
Sherlock wouldn't tell him that it was his body on the floor, and that he felt Johns hand clinging onto him. Sherlock wouldn't tell him how much it hurt, or how he cried himself to sleep for nights on end afterwards, guilt eating at him like mould.
This was almost more than John could take.
He'd gotten used to his meaningless existence since Sherlock's death. Case, solved, sleep. Case, solved, sleep.
Occasionally, when the nightmares proved too dark and being awake proved too desolate, he'd find solace in the bottom of a whiskey bottle. Several Whiskey bottles. He wasn't proud, and ashamed of turning out like his sister.
But this, it felt like ice had been poured over him, whilst he was stood on hot coals licking fire up his legs. This man, this impossible man, who'd shown him such wonderful things and given him a reason to live, was sat in front of him.
He was sat in his old armchair, and damn him, he looked like a day hadn't passed.
But in reality, two years had been a lifetime for John, a lifetime of loneliness, regrets, and stoic acceptance of a life without love.
He'd always believed that Sherlock loved him, in his own, asexual, strange way, but right now it was hard to believe Sherlock ever loved anything other than his own jumped up ego.
Sherlock saw John lost in thought, and probability would suggest it wasn't filled with grateful thanks to an unknown deity that Sherlock survived.
In an attempt to quell the burning rage Sherlock knew was coming his way, he spoke again.
"I, am sorry John. I cannot imagine how you feel right now, and I won't bother with false humility or grovelling, that would just embarrass us both. There was nothing in my power I wouldn't have done, there was nothing I wouldn't have considered, and there is nothing I will not do to keep you safe."
If those words, that idea of sentiment had come from anyone else, it would have sounded overplayed, pretend, like the words from a bad script like an unknown author.
But from Sherlock, the stoic asexual and perpetual virgin, those words flowed freely, and no matter how mad John was, he knew that Sherlock meant it.
John swallowed and stood up.
He was shaking, and could barely stay on his feet, but if he didn't leave now, he wouldn't be able to bring himself to leave the presence of the detective. He wanted nothing more than to stay by his side for the rest of eternity just to prove he was real. But he couldn't.
If Sherlock left him once, he would leave him again, and John refused to get attached just to have his heart ripped out.
"I take it back. I don't care why you did it. I don't care how. I can't believe a word you said. I grieved you, and I lost you. I was stood at your grave and I cried. I asked you for a miracle! I asked you to not be dead!" John was almost shouting.
Sherlock blinked.
"I know. I was there." A sob left John at this point, and he faltered, emotion and physicality overwhelming him, and he fell to the floor. He was shaking, and nearly hit his head. He was having a panic attack.
Sherlock was at his side in an instant, cradling his head and offering his support. Between gasps and sobs, John thrashed at Sherlock, and yelled something nasty about the sodding detective.
Wordlessly, Sherlock lifted John like he was nothing, and holding him gently, like a groom carries a bride, took him to his room.
Once he placed him on the bed, he nodded, a sign of goodbye, that he wouldn't intrude on Johns consciousness any longer, and shut the door behind him on the way out.
When John calmed, he heard the kettle boiling, and then Sherlock's door shutting. Quietly, socks padding on the hardwood floor, John Watson left his bedroom and crossed the hallway into the kitchen.
A cup of tea, just the way he liked it, milk, one sugar, was out waiting on the side. After wrestling with what it symbolised if he took it, and cursing the absurdity of the situation, John took the mug, and limped back to his bed.