"You two have a lot to talk about." And Mary had given John a kiss on the cheek and smiled at the both of them before getting in a cab and leaving them for the night.

Which was how they both now stood in 221B, neither anywhere near certain of what should be done.

"…tea?" Sherlock finally offered.

John nodded. "Right, yes."

So Sherlock went through the motions of preparing the tea, and John looked around the room and tried to accept that Sherlock was back in his flat.

Sherlock set the tea tray on the coffee table and convinced himself to look at John.

"So," John started. He ignored the tea. "Not dead."

"Yes."

"Just like that? Two years, I see you dead and buried except you're not really dead you're just gallivanting off across Europe, that it?"

"John…"

"Shut up."

Sherlock did. John was angry – of course he was; hadn't Mycroft warned him about this? He lowered his eyes and watched the steam curl off the tea on the table below.

John was still talking, though Sherlock wasn't hearing any of it. He wasn't hearing anything, really, until John pinned him against the wall. "You aren't even listening it me, Jesus Christ, Sherlock! Dead for two fucking years and you just come back like nothing's changed and you won't even fucking listen to me!"

Sherlock winced when his back hit the wall. John mistook this for an annoyed eye roll, and he slammed his hand against the wall by Sherlock's head. "Would you fucking listen to me!"

He didn't look up at John; he couldn't bring himself to. He studied the shoes – his shoes, John's shoes. The floor.

He counted John's breaths. Slow; controlled. Trying to keep control. Stress management.

Nine… ten… eleven.

"Where were you."

Sherlock counted his own breaths.

"Two years, I don't hear a single word, so where. Were. You."

Sherlock closed his eyes. "Not quite gallivanting," he barely said. Then, more clearly, "Moriarty's web was still active. I needed to take care of it." John stayed silent – still very tense, but silent – and so he continued. "Mycroft pointed me to them, and I took care of them. I finished the last one in Serbia a few days ago."

It was several minutes before John spoke. "Just – tell me it was necessary. You wouldn't have stayed – dead – if you didn't have to, you would have come back sooner if you could have."

"Yes." Sherlock didn't miss a beat. "Of course."

John nodded and finally moved back, letting Sherlock off the wall. He stepped to the coffee table and picked up his tea, and tapped his fingernail against the edge of the mug.

"Two years tracking down criminal masterminds." He kept his voice light and managed a slight smile, even if he was still a bit tense. "How was that, then?"

Sherlock resisted the urge to rub at the hardly-healed wounds on his back. "Mastermind would be a bit generous for most of them," he replied, managing to match John's smile. Only just.

Silence had settled back over the room before John realized what Sherlock had said, it seemed.

"'Took care of them', you said," he started. "What… what exactly does that mean?"

"I did what was necessary to gain the information required to bring an end to their operations," Sherlock said.

John considered this. "So… getting information from members of the world's top criminal mastermind's web…"

"Undercover work, mostly."

John looked up to Sherlock. "Did you – did they hurt you?"

Sherlock – changed, slightly; something in his face, just for a moment. Then he repeated himself: "I did what was necessary to gain the information required to bring an end to their operations."

John hardly waited for Sherlock to finish his sentence before he set the tea down and closed his eyes. "Shit," he muttered.

"I'm fine," Sherlock said, apparently needing to convince John it wasn't his fault he had tackled him to the floor in the restaurant, or punched him at the diner, or – shit. A few days, he'd said – if anything had happened to him there, in Serbia, then – when he tackled him this evening, he'd still been…

"How bad is it," John said.

"It's not."

"How. Bad. Is it."

"John, I'm – "

"Shut up." John rubbed his face, took a deep breath. "Let me see."

"It's fine."

"Yes, and you only say that when it's not and you've always been shit at deciding if you were all right or not and I – just let me see." He exhaled slowly. "Please."

Sherlock nodded once, and then began to unbutton his shirt with deft fingers and slightly stiff, somewhat restrained arm motions. And even before he pulled it off, even though the lights had not all been turned on, John could make out scars in various stages of healing. And his eyes started to sting with heat even before Sherlock turned around.

So when he did turn around, shirt clutched in one hand, cuts all down his back – well, John thought he was going to be sick.

To say they had scarcely begun to heal would have been generous.

See your angel now, the John Watson of Sherlock's mind palace supplied. Of course it was John – Sherlock would never call himself that. It was too noble.

John didn't want to think about how much it must have hurt. Both at the time of infliction and earlier that evening. But Sherlock stayed quiet while John forced himself to think about it, because Sherlock deserved at least that much from him.

"Go and lay down; I'll get the first aid kit," John finally managed.

Sherlock did not turn around and began to slip his arms back into the sleeves of his shirt.

"Sherlock."

"I'm fine." This wasn't John's business, what had happened; it wasn't his responsibility to take care of it.

"Sherlock."

Did he really have to be so demanding? Even now? For God's sake, the man had only been back a few hours. He should at least have some time to rest before all this started. Sherlock pulled the left sleeve of the shirt fully onto his shoulder.

"Sherlock."

Oh. Not demanding. Pleading.

Sherlock paused. Then he nodded, just once, just slightly, and slipped his shirt off again as he walked the fourteen steps it took to get to his room.

John collected himself – it wouldn't do to completely break down in front of the man now, not after all he'd ever said about sentiment – and collected the first aid kit from the bathroom, along with a bowl of cool water and a rag. He pulled a chair up alongside Sherlock's bed, and, without bothering to consider that it had been two years since he had set foot in the flat, let alone this room, he began to care for Sherlock's cuts and scrapes and bruises. Sherlock stayed silent, save for a sharp inhale here or a slight tensing there when the antiseptic touched one of the more recent lacerations.

It was late when John had finally dumped the water down a drain and rinsed the rag out in the sink. Late enough that, when John returned to the room to finish replacing the ointments and gauzes in the kit, Sherlock had noticed the time lapse, and remarked, "It's a bit late for a cab."

"Yes, well, they do run twenty-four hours for a reason. I can manage my way to the main road." John's words were possibly more bitter than he meant them to be, especially so soon after his learning of how Sherlock had spent his time in the afterlife.

Sherlock let John put everything away, move the chair back to the wall, wash his hands and scrub under his nails. In fact, John was in the bathroom when he heard the quiet request from the other room.

"Please stay."

He wanted to ignore it. Pick up his coat and leave, even if he had to walk all the way to Mary's flat. At least, he tried to convince himself he wanted to. But. Regardless.

"All right," John heard himself say. He dried his hands. "I'll sleep on the sofa. Get a cab tomorrow morning."

So John turned off the one light that had been flicked on when they had first entered the flat, and he lay down on the sofa.

Sherlock's light was still on when John woke early the next morning. Or perhaps Sherlock had simply woken already. Late to bed, early to rise, see how little sleep the human body can function on – so seemed to be his life's motto.

At any rate, John should at least say goodbye before leaving. He poked his head into the room. "Sherlock," he started.

And then Sherlock started – quite violently, too. He bolted up, nearly cracked his skull against the headboard, kicked the blankets from his body.

"…sorry. I'll just – be off, then."

John was only half waiting for an acknowledgement. But a nod or 'see you 'round' would have been preferable to the shallow breaths and blank gaze cast upon the far wall.

"…Sherlock?" John tried after a moment.

And just as suddenly, Sherlock glanced up at him, perfectly certain of himself. "Yes. Good day."

John nodded slowly. "Uh… take care," and he zipped his jacket and left.

They didn't see each other for another two weeks, and then only because Mary had inquired as to how Sherlock was doing and oh, shouldn't they visit him, and Mrs Hudson, too, wouldn't she love to see John again?

So John let Mary call a cab for them, and they went to Baker Street. Mary rang the bell. Mrs Hudson answered; she and Mary hit it off right away after the ever so necessary 'oh, John, dear, it's been so long, how are you?' They started talking about gardening or baking or something – someone said something about flowers, or maybe flour? – and that was all John had to hear before he knew this really wasn't his conversation to have. So he looked up the stairs, considered his options, and then ascended the stairs.

"Sherlock?" he called tentatively, tapping his knuckles at the door, and then stepping in anyway.

"I see they're getting on." John heard the man before he saw him, seated cross-legged on the floor with a laptop on one knee.

John nodded once. "Well. Yes. You know how they both are."

"Mm," Sherlock hummed, still very much attentive to his computer, rather than his friend. John had a moment's hesitation. Were they still friends? Yes, the man had pretended to be dead for two years, but – apparently he had good reason, apparently he was very much sorry for it all, so… where exactly did that leave them?

"Did you need anything in particular?" Sherlock inquired, still not looking up.

Ah. "Erm… just… thought I'd see how you're doing. Adjusting back to – well – life, and all. London. Erm – whatever it is you've been up to."

"Yes, fine."

John nodded and looked around the flat. "Right. Good." But, no, it wasn't, because there were a half dozen cups of cold tea in the kitchen and the kettle had boiled dry just recently judging by the steam (he wasn't a complete moron, after all) and there were two pieces of toast and jam looking rather stale on a plate by Sherlock's knee, and Sherlock's hair was far from its best. John would estimate four to six days since it had been washed properly.

"Nightmares or anything?" What the hell, he figured. He had just as much right to be blunt as Sherlock did.

Sherlock looked up. Ah, so that had gotten his attention. "What?" he asked. Then, very quickly, "No. Of course not. I'm fine."

"Never said you weren't," John assured him. "Just – wondered. Y'know. With – what you had to do and all."

Sherlock scrutinized him for several moments longer – trying to decide if he was lying about anything important, perhaps – and then returned to his computer. "I am fine," he repeated, punctuating each word with a click of the mouse.

John left him to do whatever it was that was so important and wandered down the hall towards Sherlock's bedroom. Door wide open, bed made up though wrinkled. He'd lain on top of the covers, but not slept properly. Sofa was out of the question – well, Sherlock never slept on the sofa, and it wasn't as if he should suddenly have cause to now.

See. Decidedly not an idiot.

John stepped back into the sitting room. "Sleeping much?"

"Mm," Sherlock hummed, a distracted affirmation meant only to appease and possibly shut up John.

"Good. Only… you're not."

Sherlock looked up. A kid caught with his hand in the sweets jar.

"Bed's mostly made up. You never make your bed, Mrs Hudson would have done it properly. So that's just how it was the last time you were on it. Laying on top of the covers."

Sherlock said nothing. If he didn't deny it, he wasn't lying. If he didn't confirm it, John had nothing to worry about.

If John was logical. Which John never was.

"Nightmares?" he inquired again.

Sherlock skimmed an article. "You have to fall asleep for there to be nightmares," he muttered. "I never get that far."

"You haven't slept in two weeks?"

"Four to six hours, I figure."

John did the math. Less than a half hour a night, or maybe a few proper afternoon naps. Nothing long enough for a full sleep cycle, he presumed.

"You did sleep when I was here, though." Not quite a question.

"Yes." Sherlock's hand hovered over the mouse. Reading? No; his eyes were fixed upon one point. Thinking.

John ran through his options. Let the man ignore all of his human needs – food, showers, sleep – or… "I'll stay here again tonight." Then, before Sherlock could protest, "Mary's been wanting to do a girls' night or something for a while, anyway."

And that was that. John spoke to Mary, they went back to her flat, and he packed an overnight bag and came back after dinner. Sherlock still had not moved, so John ordered what he remembered as the preferred takeaway. He convinced Sherlock to shower before bed. He saw him to bed, light turned off and all, and then he set himself on the sofa for the night.

And so it was, and so it would be. Once every ten days turned into once a week turned into once every three days that John would spend the night at Baker Street, on the sofa, so that Sherlock would sleep.

Neither of them ever said a word about why it was Sherlock would not sleep without John there. Neither made any guesses as to why it seemed he only could sleep with John there. But it worked, for them. And after the fourth or fifth round, it had gone from a simple 'good night' in the evening and 'see you around' in the morning, to dinner and crap telly and Sherlock playing his violin again (Mrs Hudson told John before he left the next morning that that was the first time she'd heard it since he'd come back) and… they were back to where they had been two years ago, more or less.

Possible 'more' rather than 'less', because now the hours of crap telly were passed with the two of them on the sofa. The first time, Sherlock had sat next to John. The next, he'd leaned against him. The next, he'd stretched his legs out. Until they were watching crap telly with John's hand combing through Sherlock's still-damp-from-the-shower curls, Sherlock stretched out across the sofa and his head in John's lap, completely disregarding any semblance of personal space.

And they were going out for dinner again. Sherlock had gotten tired of the takeaway after about a month, and John thought it would be good for him to get out again – he wasn't certain how often, if ever, Sherlock was actually leaving the flat. For anything. So they went to Angelo's. And that new Chinese place. And this place that apparently had the best bouillabaisse, even if it normally took a month's reservation to get a table because, well, Sherlock had done the chef a favour once upon a time.

John wasn't sure exactly when it happened, or why, or what had changed to allow it to happen. But it did.

'It'?

Well. Sherlock had just gotten back to Scotland Yard for a case, the first one since he'd been back. It had been a bit longer than usual since John had spent a night at 221B – eight days, as compared to the now usual three, or the two that was becoming more frequent. John and Mary had decided to go to the continent for a few days. Apparently Mary enjoyed skiing, and they both had time to take off from work, so they made a short holiday of it.

Once they got back from their little excursion, John spent a night at home, and then went to Baker Street the night after. He had started keeping his overnight bag in the coat closet by this point – it was just easier, that way. And it was more like he was living there than not – only his clothes, laundered with Sherlock's when Mrs Hudson took it upon herself to do the laundry, remained in the bag. His toothbrush, razor, spare bottle of aftershave – they all stayed in the bathroom, alongside Sherlock's things.

Sherlock seemed a bit more on edge that night – the case had happened while John had been away, and Sherlock never slept or ate when he was on a case, and it hadn't been an easy one that they had called him in for, and the lack of John's presence meant he was unable even to collapse into bed and sleep for eighteen hours as he might have done after a trying case before all this mess had come into being – but John hadn't particularly noticed during dinner. Takeaway, it was. Thai. They had both wanted something simple, and so they made short work of the dinner and then relaxed into their usual positions on the sofa.

But Sherlock hadn't even stayed through one episode of – whatever it was they had been watching; neither had been terribly concerned with that detail. He rose and went to bed early. John thought nothing of it. A man was allowed to be tired, no? So he left the program on, made himself an evening cuppa, and eventually fell asleep with some wildlife documentary still playing.

It was a shout that woke him. At first he thought it might have been the telly, but he quickly realized it had turned off when the power had apparently cut out. It took longer than he would have liked to admit for him to notice the storm that had finally broken. It took even longer for him to decide why he had woken up – he normally had no trouble sleeping through a bit of thunder; God knew he'd slept through worse during his time in Afghanistan.

And then he heard the shout again. Not any intelligible word, just – a shout. Surprise? No; more like one of a man in danger. A man needing help.

John was at Sherlock's bed in an instant.

"Sherlock?"

The man was paralyzed, thanks to some slight malfunction in the human body's habit of prohibiting motion during sleep. But he didn't need to be able to move for it to be clear he was terrified.

John flicked the lamp on and hoped it wouldn't be too much. "Sherlock."

No response. Had he really expected one?

"Sherlock. Sherlock? I know you don't want to, but I need you to relax, all right? It's just me, just John." He bit his lip and searched for some sign of waking. "Sherlock? It's just a dream, yeah? So you need to relax for me, can you do that?" His breathing steadied a bit – or was that John's imagination?

Don't wake him suddenly; that much, John knew for certain. Some dreams, maybe that was best, but with what he certainly suspected Sherlock's of being? One of them could very well end up with a broken bone. Or two.

John sat down on the very edge of the bed and gently slipped his hand into Sherlock's. "Okay, good, breathe. I want you to squeeze my hand, can you do that? Just focus on squeezing my hand, all right?"

And eventually it worked. Sherlock broke free of whatever invisible force had been holding him back from reality. He looked at John, and he saw John.

"I – "

"Just stay here a minute. I'll get you some water." John waited for Sherlock to nod before he went into the kitchen.

He had just gotten the glass from the cupboard when he heard, "John?"

"I'm right here. Just in the kitchen." He filled the glass with water from the tap and went back to the bedroom. "Right here."

Sherlock drank half the glass all at once. He was still very visibly shaken from whatever it was his mind had conjured up for him.

John didn't say another word, only watched him, until he had placed the glass on the table next to the bed. "Do you want to talk about it?" he finally tried, careful not to sound too demanding.

Sherlock shook his head. "I'm – fine now. Sorry, that – it was –"

"I know."

John stayed right where he was for another long moment. Make sure he's all right, make sure he's all right. "Anything I can do?" he offered after several minutes.

Sherlock looked down.

John frowned.

"Um." Sherlock swallowed the lump in his throat. "Could – would you. Stay. Here. I mean." He kept his eyes down, but they flicked over to the empty side of the bed for just a moment.

John should have asked himself what the hell he was doing, was he at least going to think this through, he had a bloody fiancée just the other side of the city – but none of that entered his mind. He just nodded and answered without a second's hesitation. "Course." Then he turned out the light and made his way to the other side of the bed and pulled the covers up around himself.

They both slept through the rest of the night. John missed his alarm, actually, because it was on his phone, and his phone was still on the coffee table. So it was Sherlock shifting as he himself woke up that woke John.

If either of them had any problem with what their situation had become in the middle of the night, now that they were both fully aware of the world and of the fact that they had both moved closer to the other – Sherlock had needed protecting and John had needed to protect, John would try to tell himself if he thought about it too much, but the fact of the matter was they had met in the middle – well. Neither of them said a word about it. Sherlock put the kettle on, John showered and dressed for work (in a bit of a hurry, because he was running late), and they both had a quick cuppa and a few pieces of buttered toast before John provided his usual 'See you around' and Sherlock nodded in acknowledgement, as had become his custom, and John went running off to catch a cab to the surgery.

And that became their new normal. Every other night, John went to Baker Street for dinner, crap telly, and a bit of a serenade by a rather talented violinist if he was lucky before they would both retire to Sherlock's bed for the night. Nothing ever happened between them, no – Sherlock needed comforting, John needed to comfort. That was all. Only – John couldn't quite ignore the guilt that began to slowly gnaw at his intestines on the nights he lay in bed with Mary. Because, really, what did he and Mary have now? Work? Dinner? 'How was your day?' A shared bed?

Fuck.

He needed to sort this out.

Before the comforting turned into anything else.

Because he wasn't certain he didn't want it to.