Tables Turned

John was sitting in what had been Sherlock's favorite armchair, newspaper spread open in front of his face, when the door to the flat was flung open in dramatic fashion.

He'd heard the footsteps racing up the stairs, of course; who could have missed that noise? But he'd waited, face stoic, as he continued to scan the football results. Obviously it was important, obviously it was this flat that was the destination and by extension himself the intended recipient of Mr. Noisy-Running-Up-The-Stairs' attention.

Still. He wouldn't give him the satisfaction of dropping the newspaper and jumping to his feet as if startled.

Not when he'd been expecting this very moment for nearly two years.

"John?"

He smiled to himself, still not lowering the newspaper as he said: "Yes, Sherlock?"

"You seem to have been expecting me."

John heard the door shut, much more quietly than it had been opened, heard equally quiet footsteps crossing the flat, but waited until he heard the faint creak of springs indicating that Sherlock Holmes, the world's only consulting detective and not quite as dead as everyone had been led to believe, had taken the chair opposite his.

Only then did he lower the newspaper and look at his friend with a critical eye. Obviously he was in fair to good to excellent health, else he'd not have bounded up the stairs with so much enthusiasm. And the few words he'd spoken sounded fine, nothing wrong with the voice.

Nothing wrong with his, John's, memory, either, since the voice sounded exactly as he expected it to, a deep baritone with a distinctly wary tone to it. Had he surprised the great Sherlock Holmes? Fantastic! It wasn't often he was able to pull that sort of thing off.

He scowled as he remembered he was supposed to be pissed off at Sherlock. "So, two years you let everyone think you were dead. Bloody hell, Sherlock, you could have given it up once Moriarty's network started coming down. Mycroft knew, yeah?"

Sherlock nodded, studying his friend with a faintly puzzled air. "So he told you?"

John shook his head and snapped the paper, folding it in half before tossing it onto the coffee table. "Never said a bloody word. Knew from the start, did he?" He shook his head, not bothering for any kind of confirmation from his friend. "Makes sense, I guess. Once you got past the faking your own death part, he'd be the best person to set you onto Moriarty's crew."

"Yes," Sherlock replied, brows slanting as he continued to study John, confounded once again by the man's calm. Was it merely the calm before the proverbial storm? When would the explosion come? Had he gone into shock? It seemed unlikely since he hadn't bothered lowering his newspaper until after he already knew who had entered the flat…but how? "How long have you known?" he finally asked, frustrated by his inability to deduce the answer for himself.

John's grin widened. "Since just after your funeral."

"You saw me in the graveyard?"

John blinked and frowned. "You were in the graveyard…wait, when? After the headstone was put up?" Sherlock nodded and John swore. "Bloody Christ, Sherlock, you heard all that?"

"I did. However, since you obviously did not see me, then how…" He fell silent as the answer dawned on him. "It was Molly, wasn't it."

"Oh, yeah," John agreed readily enough. The grin – smirk – had returned to his lips. "But don't be too hard on the poor girl, she didn't actually say anything. Bawled her eyes at the funeral like the rest of us, took a leave of absence from work for a couple of weeks, saw me off when I headed to Africa for my stint in Médecins Sans Frontières the month after that. That's where I met Mary, by the way," he added, deliberately changing the subject, knowing it would drive Sherlock batty for him to start going on about his fiancée when the other man probably already knew everything there was to know about her.

"If Molly didn't say anything, then how did she give it away?"

Sherlock seemed honestly bewildered, and John decided to take pity on his friend. All his anger at the deception he'd been forced to witness – the supposed suicide of his best friend and flatmate – had been burned out of him as the true extent of Moriarty's web of evil (it sounded so melodramatic, that name, but really, nothing else fit) became apparent.

Besides, making Sherlock squirm wasn't turning out to be nearly as much fun as he'd thought it would be. Sauce for the goose had never been John's philosophy. "She was too happy," he finally said.

Sherlock gave him a blank look, and John chuckled. "Simple, isn't it? Too easy, yeah? But it's true. I came into the morgue to bring her coffee one day after I got back from Africa, and she was humming. I thought, hmm, that's odd. She was devastated when Sherlock died, here it is only six months later and she's humming to herself. Maybe I was wrong about how hard she'd – you'll forgive the phrase – fallen for him. For you," he added with a twinkle in his eyes.

"Molly was happy…which automatically meant that I must not be dead?"

Sherlock really wasn't getting it, and John's grin widened. "Nice to beat you at your own game, mate!" he said affably as he rose to his feet. "Want a lager?" He wandered into the kitchen, knowing Sherlock would eventually follow. This was a mystery, he'd overlooked something and must be fuming that John was being so casual about all this.

Well, he deserved it. Even if guns were literally being held to people's heads – including, he could never forget, his own – Sherlock should have found some way to let the people he cared about know he was alive.

"John? I would very much appreciate an answer to my question," the other man's voice cut into the doctor's thoughts impatiently.

As John opened a bottle of lager – politely offering one to Sherlock, who waved it away and simply glared at him – he decided he'd made him suffer enough. "Yeah, Molly was happy, ergo you weren't dead. She looked guilty when she turned and saw me there, made up some song and dance about how it was the only way she could cheer herself up at work, but I figured it out. Oh, not right that second, but by the time I got home, I knew. You weren't dead. And if you weren't dead, if you were pretending to be dead, then it must be for a really good reason. So I decided to just wait for you to show up again." His easy grin turned wry. "Although, to be honest, mate, I didn't think it would take another year and a half."

Sherlock's scowl deepened. "So you've known for over a year," he said as if unable to believe what his ears were hearing. "No," he corrected himself. "You suspected for over a year. Yet you didn't approach Mycroft, you didn't confront Molly." Neither of them had admitted to any such contact, at least, and although Mycroft had a poker face a corpse couldn't even beat, Molly Hooper he could read like the proverbial book.

John shook his head. "Nope," he agreed smugly. "I figured if you wanted me to know, you'd do exactly what you did – just show up here, burst in all dramatic-like and ready to dazzle me with the story of how you survived. I'll bet," he added with a sly grin as he took a healthy swig of his lager and leaned back on the counter, "you expected me to take a swing at you. Didn't you."

"That thought had crossed my mind," Sherlock agreed through gritted teeth. Insufferable; how could he have so badly misjudged the situation? Oh, he was pleased not to be facing John's fist, but to have been outmaneuvered like this…and all because Molly Hooper had been humming in the morgue?

"Hey, mate, don't be too rough on her," John advised cockily. Sherlock's back teeth ground together; his friend had the temerity to continue to deduce him, even now? "She didn't mean to give anything away. And me knowing hasn't changed anything, right? Didn't give anything away to the bad guys or put you in danger, did it? Cos if it did," he added shrewdly, "you'd have known. Deduced it, right?"

Now he was just needling him, looking for a reaction – and Sherlock responded with a rueful chuckle as his bruised ego finally stopped sulking long enough to recognize the warmth behind the digs. "Yes, John, I would have deduced it," he agreed, sliding into the nearest chair and taking a long, satisfying look around the mostly-unchanged flat. "And I promise not to be too rough on Molly when I take her out to dinner tomorrow night."

A spit take. A classic element of physical comedy, part of his mind noted as John spewed lager out of his mouth, eyes bugging as Sherlock finally got the reaction he'd initially sought.

How, he wondered smugly, would John react when he mentioned that she would be moving into the flat with Sherlock after John and Mary moved into the house they'd just bought?

It was good to be home.