It went differently than Sherlock expected.
While he wasn't exactly disappointed about the lack of a tearful reunion full of emotions he couldn't quite process (though the punch he had been sure John would throw might have helped to alleviate the guilt), it did irk him that he had been unable to accurately predict the outcome of a situation which had weighed on his mind for so long. Had his mind been dulled by all that time spent chasing down Moriarty's web without the intellectual stimulation of a real case? Or was it something in John that had changed? Had Sherlock really been away so long as to come back to a John he could no longer read?
Of course John had just changed a little, he supposed. More of the sitting down type, compared to before. His limp had returned, of course. As he had watched over John, (before he was able to show his face), Sherlock had entertained the notion that his return would heal that ailment as their first meeting had, but the damage did not appear to be rectifiable this time.
And John didn't push him to eat anymore. An embarrassingly long amount of time had managed to pass before Sherlock had picked up on this fact. Since his work precluded the need to eat, Sherlock could go for quite a while without a thought of food or his appetite; why then would he feel uneasy, why would he even notice that John was no longer nagging him to fulfill a need he didn't feel?
He did, though. And once he had noticed, there seemed to be no reasonable explanation for it. Before, John had wanted him to eat even after they'd just argued – so while he was prepared for John to go pissy and silent for a while, it was simply unlikely that anger alone could prompt the doctor to forget his concern for Sherlock's well being. In fact, given how deeply Sherlock's death seemed to have affected him, shouldn't John be more vigilant about Sherlock's health now? (Sherlock had the vague sense that this thought might be "a bit not good" but decided against asking John to confirm his theory this time.)
Not fully understanding these changes made Sherlock uneasy, but it was hardly the kind of topic that lent itself readily to discussion, or at least not the kind of discussion that Sherlock would like to have. So he chose to accept it, as he accepted the other changes that had taken place in John while he was gone. The changes in himself, however, Sherlock found somewhat more difficult to accept. For example, he had always frowned upon speaking euphemistically but, although it really was less accurate, he now found the phrase "while he was gone" much preferable to "while John believed him dead."
But there was no reason to focus on changes like that when a far more stimulating mystery lay in how John was different. Like how he no longer accompanied Sherlock out on cases. His leg would seem to be the most ready explanation for this, but it wasn't quite consistent with the way he reacted the times when Sherlock did ask him along. "Lestrade? Sure," John would huff, voice tinged with something close to sarcasm, as he folded himself into an armchair, favoring his leg. "A case, yeah." And he would sip his tea and unfold the newspaper as if he were trying to hide within it, looking for all the world like if he took his eyes off its printed pages, he would have no choice but to take in how far his raft had drifted from the shore.
Sherlock missed having John along. Maybe it was childish and selfish to want someone to chase after him and tell him how brilliant and clever he was, but Sherlock needed his blogger. The same praise would have meant nothing coming from someone else – since any idiot could plainly see that Sherlock was brilliant, the words simply had no meaning unless they came from someone whose judgment Sherlock respected, whose admiration Sherlock innately felt the need to seek.
He could still work without John, anyway. He had done until now, and even though he might have hoped he wouldn't have to work alone upon his return to Baker Street, Sherlock could not help but recognize that their lives had, in almost every other way, returned to normal, and he knew that such a thing was more than he could have asked for, far more than he deserved.
John still came home from the clinic in the evenings with a takeaway and puttered around and talked to him. John still made tea for Sherlock, too, and he still wore silly jumpers and watched crap telly, and all of those things together reminded Sherlock that he had made it back home. So what did it matter if John snapped sometimes? If he made toast for two and then threw the plate to the floor? If he got angry at Sherlock out for making too much noise but cut off his own rant with a pained, choked sound, banged his fist on the kitchen table, and let his head drop forward to sit silent for several minutes? It might not be the healthiest way for someone to handle a shock like this, but Sherlock knew that it was much better than he deserved.
Nor was it exactly how Sherlock had thought that John would cope, but they were, after all, English. Maybe it had been unrealistic to expect an emotional reunion, a charged exchange, an embrace his arms weren't quite sure how to return, a fist to the jaw. But instead, Sherlock would slip almost seamlessly back into life at 221B, and life would go on like it had, except John would shout sometimes and then go silent and blank and that would be how he coped, and Sherlock would step quietly around him and deserve so much worse.
So now it was John who went for days without talking, who made an inexplicable ruckus at odd hours (Sherlock was careful about the violin, now – of course John had kept it, and Sherlock had rescued it from where he found it locked in the cupboard and cleaned it, but he no longer played while John was in the flat. John had once loved the music but now it made him go quiet and still, and hold his head in his hands. Sherlock had tried playing at night once, hoping that he could help stir up happier memories if John heard it in his dreams, but John's face the next morning – drained, pale, and sick with exhaustion – had robbed him of this delusion quickly, and the flat was quiet, now), but Sherlock knew that he deserved some rottenness. He had done even before he'd disappeared (died and come back). It was a bloody miracle that the universe had seen it fit to give him a flatmate as kind and as good as John in the first place. If John was still here with him after everything, that was more than Sherlock could ask for.
Sherlock didn't keep body parts in the fridge anymore. To be fair, he hadn't yet taken many cases which required him to do so, and for those that did, well, it didn't hurt to work at St. Bart's from time to time. Their lab wasn't as good as his kitchen, of course, as it wasn't organized in his sensible way and he had to follow their bloody rules and procedures or risk being kicked out and having to store eyeballs next to the jam again, but the universe had given him John back and Sherlock understood now, better even than while he was gone, what a wonderful and fragile gift that was. And he would be good.
That isn't to say that he had stopped his experiments entirely; forensic science, the pursuit of knowledge, his own cleverness – these were not things he could neglect simply because he was ineffably, paralyzingly grateful. He was just taking a break from the things that would make Mrs. Hudson shriek, in favor of tamer, less gruesome exercises.
And what's more, John didn't get angry about the experiments like he had before. Whether this was some new found perspective (after all, microscopes and bubbling chemicals did not provide complaint fodder compared to human lungs in the crisper drawer) or simply another change in John, Sherlock couldn't be sure. But even if John didn't yell at Sherlock to put that away or do that somewhere more appropriate than the sodding kitchen table, dammit, the experiments did seem to bother him in a way they hadn't before. Sometimes, seeing Sherlock fiddling with beakers and flames (and occasionally thumbs, yes) would make John sit down heavily and rub his temples for a long time, mouth tight and face pale.
Sherlock had continued to appropriate John's laptop to record his data, and for a while, he had thought that it was just as it had always been and John didn't really mind (or at least not enough to put up more than a token protest), but Sherlock had been disabused of this notion one day around tax season, when John came home from the clinic and opened up an Excel spreadsheet, and Sherlock had seen the color drain from his face straightaway.
"No," John had said, banging the laptop shut. "No. I didn't, I can't, I'm..." He drew his feet up into the armchair and breathed deeply, eyes squeezed shut. He seemed to be counting to ten. Sherlock observed that he made almost all the way to six before getting up and disappearing into his room. John had reemerged a few moments later, only to vacate the flat without saying a word. It had seemed obvious to Sherlock that he was going to the pub, probably for a long night out, but then John had disappeared to Harry's for two days, which was outside the realm of the ordinary, to say the least.
Sherlock had begun playing the violin – Tchaikovsky, which he almost never played for himself, in the hopes of drawing John back home through some sort of sympathetic magic – when he heard John's uneven footsteps on the stairs. The idea of stopping crossed his mind briefly, but drawing John's attention to the fact that Sherlock could see how the violin upset him seemed to be crueler, somehow, and so he did not.
On that night, John had looked at Sherlock, nodded, and disappeared into his room again. When Sherlock saw him making breakfast the next morning, he appeared to have returned to normal – or the new normal, anyway. Which was more (Sherlock reminded himself) than he deserved. John had made toast for the both of them, but Sherlock hadn't noticed, and his portion had waited there on the plate until John had come home from the clinic and binned it.
A few days had passed since then, and things had been calm. And even if John may have been a little quiet, yes (of course, John was overall quieter now than he had been before, but this John was even quieter), nothing in particular was out of the ordinary. John was off from the clinic, taking advantage of a few days of leave he had earned filling in for a colleague whose daughter's appendix had ruptured, and instead of taking a proper holiday, he was spending the time resting up at 221B.
Sherlock was enjoying John's company. They were interacting only sporadically, as the samples under the microscope on the kitchen table required Sherlock's full attention, but he appreciated the reassuring warmth he felt hearing the rustle of pages from the other room, the occasional yawn, the sound of John clicking a pen against his teeth. He knew that John wouldn't call out to him for help with the crossword answers, but when he heard John's slippered feet padding into the kitchen to refresh his tea, Sherlock hoped that his assistance might be necessary with a particularly vexing clue.
John closed the cupboard, set a package of biscuits on the table, and regarded Sherlock at his microscope.
"I suppose that's just what you do, isn't it?" he said. "Even now."
"Yes," responded Sherlock, adjusting the viewfinder. Obviously. He still didn't understand the purpose of this kind of chatter. This was a particularly inane example. Did he do what he did? Why yes, he did, thank you.In what universe did this even resemble productive conversation?
John studied Sherlock closely. "It wouldn't make sense for you to do anything else, would it?"
"Hardly," Sherlock replied, not looking up from his specimen.
"Right," said John. He looked away and sipped his tea. "Right."
A few moments passed in silence before Mycroft knocked on the door. Sherlock heard the peremptory quality of the knock, its echo of this is only a courtesy to let you know I've arrived and will be letting myself in, because your flat, as all of Britain, is under the umbrella of my authority, and only one person in Sherlock's life knocked like that. John, however, must not have recognized the knock as being so undeniably mycroftian, and he headed towards the door to greet their guest.
Mycroft let himself in before John reached the door, and John stood in the entryway, steeling himself for this interaction.
"Hello, Mycroft," he spoke, softly. "What is it today?"
"John," Mycroft nodded an acknowledgment and swiftly crossed the room to sit opposite Sherlock at the kitchen table. Sherlock pointedly ignored him. He had some observations that he would have liked to jot down on his memo pad, but they would just have to wait. He would not be lifting his face from the viewfinder until his brother was gone.
"Would you like some tea, then?" offered John. Mycroft politely declined, and sat back in his chair, perfectly content to begin a staring contest against Sherlock's curls.
Sherlock could feel John's eyes on him as well (somehow, Sherlock always seemed to be aware of whether John was looking at him), a purposeful and almost penetrating stare, as if John was trying to see through him to the chair. He felt John's eyes away dart away from him to his brother, who was reclining like a king in the chair directly across from Sherlock, to the chair beside Sherlock, and then back to Mycroft, at which point John ultimately elected to remain standing. Why he would make such a big production out of the simple process of choosing whether to sit, Sherlock didn't know, but he could see how such a display would demonstrate to Mycroft that his imposition was presumptuous and resented, and Sherlock had to appreciate that at least a little.
Mycroft, eyes still fixed on his brother, was the one to break the silence. "If I didn't know better, I'd be concerned." Still looking back and forth between the two brothers, John shifted slightly, as if he were beginning to sweat. "It's unusual for you to ignore my messages for so long."
"I'm sorry, what messages?" John asked, his voice overlapping with Sherlock's simultaneous retort, "Why should I respond to something so deathly boring?"
Mycroft Holmes, as befits a man with his minor position in the British government, was usually the model of polite diplomacy, but a brief conversation with his little brother could shortfuse his temper in a way hostage negotiations and international crises never could. He slammed his palms down on the kitchen table and thrust his head forward.
"This is a matter of national importance," he hissed, straining to keep his voice below a shout "and you know that very well. I cannot see how your experiments" Mycroft spit this word out as if it were too hot to hold in his mouth, "could possibly keep you –"
There was a loud thud, and Mycroft's words cut off suddenly. Sherlock lifted his gaze from the microscope to see John pressing himself back against the refrigerator as if retreating from an onslaught of enemies. The way his knees were bent indicated that his legs could not be trusted to hold his weight, and his eyes were wide and blinking as his mouth tried to form words.
"John," Sherlock said, and he was on his feet immediately, but John wasn't looking at him. Unsteadily, he raised his hand to point one finger at Mycroft, then let his arm fall back to his side.
"You..." John was out of breath but his face was drained of color. He closed his mouth, swallowed, and parted his lips to try again. Sherlock saw the soldier in John as he steeled himself, and spoke, projecting the same authority in his voice. "Who... are you talking to... Mycroft."
Mycroft didn't seem sure of what was the proper response. His eyes darted to Sherlock – he parted his lips and blinked – and then quickly back to John.
At that, something registered in John's eyes (shock, grief, fear) and he crumpled into himself as he slid to the floor. He gathered his knees close and let his head drop between them, struggling for breath. Almost immediately, Sherlock was by his side, arm outstretched to touch, to take a pulse, to find out what was wrong, but he found himself hesitating. He turned his eyes toward Mycroft (hating himself for looking to his older brother for answers) and watched the knowledge dawn on Mycroft's face. Mycroft had found the answer, Mycroft had solved the puzzle, Mycroft had decoded his John.
"John," Sherlock ventured, testing. John drew in a ragged breath and let it out, almost a sob. Sherlock laid the tips of his three middle fingers against John's shoulder, carefully against the arm muscle, not to brush where he knew the scar must be. John drew in another quivering breath and spoke, voice surprisingly even.
"Just to be clear..." John began shakily, and stopped himself there, as if continuing were more than he could bear.
Mycroft, the bastard, didn't need the rest of the sentence. "John, I am so sorry," he whispered. "If I had known..."
John raised a trembling arm to dismiss the apology by waving his hand. "No... it's... it'll be all right. I'll be..." Even as John's head remained firmly tucked between his knees in crash position, Sherlock saw a movement reminiscent of his habitual, polite nod and could perfectly picture the expression on John's face.
Mycroft stepped back and pushed the chair neatly under the table. "I'll leave you two, then," he offered lamely, and turned, heading for the door. As he pulled it open, he turned to look at his brother, and where Sherlock expected his face to read Really, Sherlock or maybe You ought to take better care of your toys, he could see nothing but sorrow and pity.
The door swung closed behind Mycroft and in that instant, suddenly, Sherlock knew. He felt his eyes widen and his jaw drop open. His chest tightened but at the same time, something in his gut loosened and his stomach dropped to his feet and his body went cold.
John had thought he was living with a dead man. John had thought he was going mad. John had... Sherlock felt a heavy, buoyant fog roll in around his mind. Condensation short-circuited the motherboard. The knowledge weighed him down, pulled him towards the earth. He was aware that his mouth wanted to gasp open like a fish and he stared blankly at John, at the ball of doctor curled in front of the fridge.
John. John had thought... for how long, oh God. Sherlock wanted to curl in on himself and disappear for real. He wanted to wrap his arms around John's shoulders... and say what? He wanted to fall to his knees in front of John and cry – cry! – with his head against John's stomach. He wanted to prostrate himself at John's feet and sputter apologies and cough up his heart, the one he had been reliably informed he didn't have, and offer it up in atonement and show John the blood, the real blood, dripping from his hands.
Sherlock Holmes wanted to do all these things. He rose from his place at John's side, head swimming, and closed his eyes against the world. He raised his hands to his face and sucked in one deep, harsh breath, and then another before backhanding his microscope to the floor and fleeing out of the flat into the London streets.