I.
There was a knock on John's door, and he opened it.
He had change in his hand, including a tip, for the Chinese take-out delivery boy he expected to find.
His heart bounded up and landed squarely in his stomach, like a helium balloon in a freezer, when he saw the too-wide grin on Sherlock Holmes' face.
"Miss me?" asked the man, leaning against the doorframe.
There was only one way to get rid of that Cheshire smile.
The change clattered onto the floor, the bills floated onto the floor, and Sherlock collapsed onto the floor - once John's fist had had enough of all three.
. . . x . . . X . . . x . . .
An icepack and some herbal tea later, John sat on mixed feelings as naturally as Sherlock sat on his new couch, which sat on the floor of his new flat, which sat on the fifth floor of an apartment building as unlike their Baker Street arrangements as John could find.
Sherlock was Sherlock, after all, even if he'd been a right prat and disappeared for years.
And Sherlock was... Sherlock.
Indeed, it was like old times again as the long-presumed-dead consulting detective chattered rapidly about the people that had undergone so much disembodiment - sometimes literal, sometimes (bless him!) only metaphorical - at his hands.
John felt old stirrings rise up within him as he listened to the conceited, self-aggrandizing puffery, feelings that included joy, betrayal, anger, despair, denial, joy, self-loathing, joy, and, finally, joy won out.
"I must be a masochist," he said when Sherlock paused to reluctantly nibble a piece of toast that Harry (John's current flatmate) offered with cold insistence.
It was possible she hated Sherlock more than John did, at the moment, because Sherlock's reappearance could really only mean one thing - John would be moving and leaving her with twice the rent to pay.
"Because you aren't as angry as you think you should be?" asked Sherlock, his tone a bit too cheerful.
"As ever, you're right," said John, settling deeper into his chair and blushing just a bit.
Being under Sherlock's scrutiny felt exactly how he remembered it.
In all sorts of ways.
Ways he'd only recently come to terms with.
Ways Sherlock probably had noticed, acknowledged, and filed away the week they first began living together. And perhaps, in the time since, deleted.
Though the things John wanted to change would be easier to change if Sherlock's knowledge of those ways hadn'tbeen deleted.
If those ways were seen as important. If those ways were reciprocated, somehow.
Sherlock had to have at least a few ways tucked in him somewhere, even if hidden and unacknowledged by his own brilliant mind.
Sherlock was here, wasn't he?
And what a journey it'd been to get here, it sounded!
If there weren't any ways that Sherlock felt for John, what would have been the point of coming back?
. . . x . . . X . . . x . . .
In a whirlwind of fervor they'd blown back into Baker Street and taken up residence as of old.
No sooner did they reestablish themselves (simple because Mycroft had paid rent on an untenanted flat for the duration) than did they collapse in exhaustion - Sherlock on his couch, John in his armchair.
And all was right as rain.
Morpheus only danced with them, however, and did not ask them to spend long at his lair - Sherlock soon was itching to experiment, especially because, he said, he'd had no proper conditions to do much labwork in his travels.
"Though I did, in France, do some studies on coal tar and resins that were most enlightening," he explained as he dug cardboard boxes for his goggles, and as he found them and put them on, the light of some untold joke was laughing in his eyes.
"Why do I get the sense that you're trying to be funny?" John said, stirring his tea.
"Do try to keep up, John. I was just telling you how I met Jean-Pierre Dermaud, who is not only a famed violinmaker about whom I've talked frequently but, more relevantly, an exceptional bowmaster."
John squinted at his friend. "Do you mean coal tar and resins have something to do with music?"
"Not music, John. Carbon-fiber bows - more durable and consistent than wooden bows, arguably better. I assisted Dermaud in uncovering who was pilfering hundreds upon hundreds of pounds' worth of trade secrets and exporting them to Chinese violin manufacturers."
John just laughed. "I see."
"Perhaps, John, but you do not observe," replied Sherlock, the scathing bite somehow missing from the way he usually used those words.
. . . x . . . X . . . x . . .
"So, in the meantime, John, I'm very interested to know if you've stopped telling yourself that you're not gay."
Well, John thought, that was as obvious as an outright confession.
It seemed that Sherlock did have some ways in which he was interested in certain things.
So John smiled.
And was about to foray into waters that he'd only dreamed about discussing with Sherlock.
But...
"Good." Sherlock refocused his attention on his chemistry experiment. "It was getting painful, watching you run after women in some half-arsed attempt to conform to outmoded Victorian ideals when it was clear all along that even I was something you found more attractive. I assure you John, that I've always felt - well, the way you said it our first night on the run was quite apt - It's all fine, wasn't that what you said?"
John wasn't sure where this was going, but Sherlock wasn't looking at him and therefore not seeing the crestfallen look on his face.
"Anyway, I'm saying it. It's all fine. Provided you extend me the courtesy of not complaining if I practice violin while you're occupied with someone. Though if you turned on the radio or something, I wouldn't feel compelled to, you understand."
If John wasn't very aware that Sherlock was holding a tube full of volatile chemicals at the moment, he might have thrown a pillow at the great detective.
Was Sherlock gently alerting John to his indifference, or was he hopefully testing the waters?
Either way, John needed it to be spelled out to him. "So...you...Sherlock...you're not interest...ed..."
"Not my area," returned Sherlock quietly, never taking his eye off the beaker of bubbling fluid that he held in forceps over the Bunsen burner.
To be continued.
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