"Father?" Hamish asked, his curly dark hair covering his face, as usual.
"Hm?" Sherlock grunted, not taking his eyes off his work.
"When is daddy coming home?"
Sherlock put his pen down and turned to his son. He had on a curious expression, one that was identical to John's. Sherlock didn't want to tell Hamish the truth. John wasn't going to be home for a long time. But, being Sherlock, he didn't really have a filter so he told him anyway. "Your other father is currently stationed in Afghanistan. He should be home again in about two years."
"But he's already been gone for a whole month! Is two years much longer than a month?" Hamish looked rather distressed. Sherlock knew it was going to get some getting used to. Hamish was used to Sherlock running off with Uncle Greg for a few days to work on a case, but John was always around for him. It broke even Sherlock's heart to know that John wouldn't be there to see Hamish off on his first day at school. "One month is one-twelfth of a year, and since he'll be gone for two years, one month is one-twenty-fourth of two years, so if you take the one month that has passed, multiply that by twenty-four, and that's how long daddy will be gone for." Sherlock tried to say this simply so his five-year-old could follow, but he spoke rather quickly. Hamish understood, though. Sherlock was sort of hoping he wouldn't.
"But father! I want daddy home now! Can't we just go get him?"
"I would if I could, Hamish, you know I would, but we're just going to have to get used to him not being around. We'll still speak with him on the phone, and we'll still talk to him over video, but he won't be with us again until either his two years are up, or he gets shot and killed, whichever comes first." Oops. That was one more deduction than he was expecting. Hamish, who liked to respond to bad news like John -normally -burst into tears and ran down the stairs to Mrs Hudson.
Sherlock slumped back in his chair and sighed. Poor kid, he thought, it should have been me in Afghanistan, not John. He's so much better at this than I'll ever be. He sat back up in his chair and picked up his pen, returning to work. Mrs Hudson would take care of Hamish. She always did, anyway.
Thirteen months, two weeks, and six days later
Sherlock's phone was buzzing on the nightstand. Oh, good Lord, Greg, go to sleep. Sherlock, who hadn't gotten a full night's sleep in about two months rolled over to his side of the bed (he'd been sleeping on John's side) and picked up his phone. It was Greg.
"Greg, it's four in the morning, what the hell do you want?"
"Don't try and tell me you were actually asleep. This is important, Sherlock!"
"Alise Fitchburg is innocent, you should let her go. It's rather difficult to murder a sheep with a shoe horn."
"That's not why I'm phoning! Sherlock.. Sherlock, it's John."
Sherlock sat straight up in his bed, Alise Fitchburg's murdered sheep suddenly out of his brain. "John? What do you mean 'John'? What's happened? Is he alright?"
"Well, that's the thing, Sherlock. I'm old mates with his Major, and he's just rung me to say John'd been shot."
"What?!"
"Sorry, should have led with this: he's okay."
"Jesus, Greg! What happened? Where is he?" Sherlock's mind was racing. He couldn't remember being this worried in his life.
"He's at Bart's. Molly's watching him. He came in by helicopter about an hour ago."
"Why the hell am I only hearing about this now?!"
"Mate, I've been calling you for five hours now, I figured you'd be up."
"Well I'm on my way."
"No, John said not to come. He wants you to stay with Hamish."
"What? Why?" Sherlock obviously loved Hamish, but someone had shot and hurt his person and he intended to do something about it.
"Sherlock. He's got school in the morning!" Oh, yeah. Sherlock thought. Even his brain isn't fully functional at four in the morning.
"Well, school can wait." Sherlock said finally, "Hamish will be fine, besides Mrs Hudson can see him off."
"No, John specifically said not to let you come under any circumstances. You can come see him in the morning when you've sent Hamish off. John's also been adamant about not telling him what's happened. He wants to surprise him when he gets off school tomorrow, so I'm driving him over to the school at the end of the day."
"..."
"Sherlock?"
Sherlock, who had completely ignored Greg's voice, was pulling on his coat and wrapping his scarf around his neck.
"I'll be there in fifteen minutes. Ten, if I can get a cab directly outside Baker Street, which always seems to have an abundance of cabs."
"Did you even listen to m-"
Sherlock hung up the phone and flung himself out of his bedroom door. He crept into Hamish's room to check he was still asleep. He was. Sherlock just watched him for a moment and decided to let him sleep. Good lord, I've gone soft. He thought, disgusted. He shut Hamish's door quietly and leapt down the stairs and hammered on Mrs Hudson's door.
Tiny Mrs Hudson poked her head out of the door after two minutes of insistent knocking. "What is it, Sherlock?" She looked more nervous than annoyed at being awoken in the middle of the night. It was almost as though she was used to it.
"John. Shot. Bart's. Going. Take Hamish to school. Gotta go. Call later." Sherlock ran out the front door of Baker Street and, lo and behold, and taxi was driving down the street at that exact moment. Imagine that.
Molly stared at Sherlock's face as his eyes moved around John's sleeping body. He wasn't checking him out so much as examining him. John had fallen asleep after the surgeon had stitched him up good and proper, but Sherlock was wide-eyed and concentrated. He'd been going up and down John's body for two hours.
"Um... Sherlock?" Molly said carefully.
"What." he said grumpily.
"Well... it's just... John's been asleep for a few hours now... and he's completely stable... and the bullet didn't go near enough to his heart to cause any kind of permanent damage... and Mrs Hudson called, she's worried about you both... and Hamish's teacher called because Hamish was upset he didn't see you this morning... and well-"
"Molly?"
"Yes?"
"Shut up."
"O-okay."
Sherlock resumed running his eyes across John's body, then finally pinpointed the scar. Well, he'd pinpointed it before, obviously, but in his mind he was going through each layer on John's body, trying to figure out exactly how far the bullet had gone and how much nerve damage it could cause. He'd reached the layer the bullet had been at, and he sighed thankfully and sat down in the chair next to John's bed. It wouldn't have gotten far enough to be a massive problem, just a temporary inconvenience.
Sherlock stretched and yawned and ruffled his hair. His perfect, perfect, dark, curly hair. The kind of hair a you would want to give birth in. Wait, what?
"You should try and get some rest."
"No. I've got to be here when he wakes up. I want to be the first thing he sees when he wakes up." Again, Sherlock proves he has no filter and tells Molly too much information. But, since she's Molly and would say the same thing, she instead says, "well, I'm having a bed brought in for you, and I'll keep an eye on him. If he looks like he's about to wake up, I'll wake you up first."
"Thank you, Molly, you're a real... you're... really... a...snnoooooorreeeee" and he fell asleep in the most cliche way possible.
Four hours later
"Sherlock? Sherlock! Wake up! John's stirring."
Sherlock sat up suddenly for the second time in twenty-four hours and immediately leapt to John's side. He grabbed his hand and held it in his own, staring and the man he loved most in the world, and waited. John's eyes flicked open and slowly shifted into focus. He looked at Sherlock, with that hedgehog-look he's so famous for, and widened his eyes.
"Sh-Sherlock?" John said, weakly.
"John! John, don't worry, I'm here, how are you feeling?" Sherlock felt very out of character.
"What... what time is it?" John asked.
Sherlock looked annoyed. "It's quarter past go fuck yourself, why is the time important?"
"Did you abandon Hamish to come see me?"
"No." Sherlock said, perhaps too suddenly.
"ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! MOLLY, WHERE THE HELL IS GREG?! GO GET GREG!"
Sherlock leapt away from his husband the way he had leapt towards him a few lines ago. He wasn't quite used to seeing John angry. He didn't like it. Not at all. John basically went from baby hedgehog to release the fucking kraken in one second flat.
"John, please, be rational here, I couldn't-"
"YOU BASTARD! You decided that coming to see your perfectly okay husband in hospital at bloody four in the morning was more important than seeing your only son off on his first day of school?!"
"Of course not, John! Hamish wasn't alone, Mrs Hudson saw him off!"
"MRS HUDSON IS NOT HIS MOTHER."
"WELL NEITHER AM I."
"SHUT UP, SHERLOCK. YOU'RE NOT AS FUNNY AS YOU SEEM TO THINK."
"Well what would you have done?!"
"I would have learned that you were okay immediately after taking the call, spoken to you on the phone, and gone back to bed. Then I would have brought Hamish to school and come to the hospital after. Why is that a difficult concept?!"
"Well I'm sorry, John, but your life is more important to me than Hamish's first day of school. And nice to see you, too, by the way, it's only been an entire year."
John stared at Sherlock. "Sorry. I'm sorry. It was... probably the drugs talking. Come here. Please."
Sherlock approached John slowly, much in the way a cat would approach a new kind of dead animal it hadn't encountered before. John held out his hand and Sherlock held it gently.
"Thank you for coming. You're right, Hamish is fine. Let's just make this about us for now." John looked lovingly into Sherlock's glowing eyes, which looked more tired than they ever did before. He took in Sherlock's full appearance, and realized he was wearing the same damn purple shirt he was wearing on the day John left for Afghanistan. Sherlock sat down and stared lovingly back at John's equally tired eyes.
"It's good to see you, John." Sherlock's voice suddenly gruff and deep.
"It's always good to see me, Sherlock." John replied. Sherlock rolled his eyes. John let out a small giggle. He was always famous for laughing at his own jokes. Sherlock smiled fondly and leaned down towards his husband. He pressed his lips against John's for the first time in fourteen months. He felt the same thing he felt the first time they kissed all those years ago. That same, familiar tingling. That same, familiar spark.