John's eyes, tanned from Afghanistan's blazing sun, scanned through the crowd as he pulled his luggage off the carousel. Turns out, ignoring a thousand stares directed at your tattered dusty military coat and bruised face was much easier when only one person really matters. As John wheeled his cart out past the security doors, his heart grew increasingly erratic, impatient with excitement. Where was that daft old - ?
As if on cue, a blur of black and blue launched himself at John, nearly knocking the poor soldier over.
"Hey, hey, Sherlock!" John found himself laughing, laughing properly for the first time in months, as his arms met at the small of his flatmate's back.
"I missed you," the all-too-familiar baritone breathed into John's ear, slightly muffled underneath layers of scarf and coat. The strain in his voice answered all of John's questions about how his flatmate had gotten on while he was away.
John clung to the embrace, as sweet as it lasted. He knew now, all too well, that that wasn't him fighting out there under the Eastern sky. That wasn't him, tending to gashes and wounds, coming to his cot with the smell of blood and death lingering around his person. He was this, this connection, doctor and detective, of heart and mind. He was only, and could only, be this, here, now.
Sherlock released John reluctantly, although his face remained impassive as he grabbed John's trolley, which had wheeled itself dangerously close to a bookshop's glass display. To any ordinary passerby, he would appear almost bored. John, however, caught the jubilance in his bright blue eyes, the jaunty gait to his walk, felt the unspoken waves of affection radiating off his person.
A slow smile spread across John's face as he entwined his warm fingers in Sherlock's icy ones. Let the people talk as they pleased; only one person mattered anyways.
John Watson was home.