Not my best. I admit this. But, like most of my stuff I can tell that it's flawed but not see where I can improve it to fix this. So if anyone has ideas, throw them at me? I want to write better stuff, not just practise my faults.

He had never hung up. John wasn't sure why. It was silly, but… that day, when he'd looked back at his phone, seen that call still open, still clocking up the minutes… he hadn't been able to.

That phone was on the mantelpiece now. He had a new one. He'd told most people that his old phone had been smashed up somehow. Some of them bought it.

He didn't know where Sherlock's phone had got to. Perhaps it was still lying on Bart's roof. Not as though anyone was going to go looking for it. The call was never terminated.

Sherlock's phone was on a contract. Mycroft paid. John has no idea how much. More money than he cares to think about. He wasn't sure whether he owed Mycroft now, or if this was Mycroft's way of apologising, every month.

Sometimes he picked up the phone, talked. It happened more in the winter, when the rain and the cold made his shoulder ache and he just couldn't face going out. He'd broken down more than once, alone in the dark, the phone's screen like some kind of luminous headstone, and he poured himself out into it, everything that he couldn't share with anyone else. He didn't want their pity, their empty comfort. But it was alright to do this, to share it with Sherlock. Because Sherlock would know, if he was there. He'd see everything. And Sherlock never did do pity.

Sometimes, in moments of weakness he wouldn't even admit to himself that he had, when the world just… stopped around him, he listened. Just held the phone to his ear and let the emptiness fill him, time stretching out into nothingness.

He often chastised himself for keeping this up. It was a stupidity, a silliness. He told himself that he should just hang up. On the second anniversary of that day, after Lestrade has gone home, he almost did. The phone was there in his hand, his thumb hovering over that little red icon… but he couldn't do it. Sometimes, late at night, he'd know why. It's because he wouldn't let Sherlock have the last word. Not this time. He would not be the one to hang up. That'd show Sherlock. Somehow. It made sense at 3am, anyway and he always forgot it by morning.

Very seldom, maybe four times in the whole three years, he was half-certain he heard something on the other end. He tried to tell himself that was impossible, that even if there was something, he couldn't have heard it from a phone that was lying on the other side of the room from him. But he still picked it up. Still listened, sometimes for hours, out of sheer bloody-mindedness. Spoke. Shouted. Swore.

Those were the nights he cried hardest. The third time he called Lestrade, drunk, asked why the hell the police couldn't just shoot all the bloomin' pigeons, informed him that the stupid birds never bought anyone any hap.. happynappynesssss, then hangs up.

The fifth time, it was February. He was half-asleep in his chair, quite near the fireplace, when he heard it, and felt, with the certainty born of half-dreams, that it had been real. His hands shook as he took up the phone, barely aware of what he was doing, but feeling somehow that this time, this time, it would be different.

He started to speak, as he had done before, so many times.

"Sherlock? Sherlock, are you there?"

Perhaps he heard movement. He wasn't quite sure. His heart was beating too loudly, making it difficult to tell. He kept going. Stopping would be giving up, would be believing, as he had never yet allowed himself to believe, that it was impossible, that the final miracle was beyond the power of even Sherlock Holmes.

"I… I've missed you, you know. I still do. Every day. I know, it's stupid. I shouldn't let you not being here dictate the rest of my life. I know that's… ordinary, that its… dull, that…" He paused, drew breath. Drat, his breathing was all shaky already. Pull yourself together man. He swallowed. " It's just- you were never ordinary, Sherlock. And you don't stop being extraordinary just because you're gone. You never will. And for God's sake, Sherlock, for God's sake, if you're there…" his voice was rising now, getting out of his control.

"Sherlock Holmes, if you can hear me, for God's sake answer your damn phone!" John paused, gasping a little, waiting, because you had to give him a chance, you had to believe… and there was a voice. Faint and far away, not very clear.

"Go on then, you heard him."

And then… another voice, like a bullet to the chest, and John barely registered the words, only that faith had been rewarded and the world turned inside out to right a wrong.

"John?"

This was the moment. John had waited three long years to be able to do this. Too long. But here and now, it felt so good. He took a deep breath, said

"Sherlock… come home. Now."

and hung up.