Momentous days rarely start that way.

This one had all the earmarks of nothing much and in retrospect that angers John. He'd have liked some warning, you know? A hint that hell was coming, that his rage was ready to ride, that he was about to get a punch in the gut and feel both fury and fear in equal measures.

He would have liked some warning early in that day—as soon as he opened his eyes would have been good—just a little heads up that he was going to want to hurt Sherlock, want to physically lay hands on him and bring him grief, pain, and tears.

Instead the day started with lazy sex. As they've gone from flatmates, to newlyweds, to married ones, John's fires have more or less stayed constant, and Sherlock's, they've been and continue to be as erratic as he is.

Some days, some weeks, some months, his interest is sharpest only when John is interested. Some days, some weeks, some months he's up for it often, waking John with sex, putting them both to sleep with sex, or simply indulging in John's body, kissing, licking, sucking.

The day it happened was one of those lazy, indulgent days where Sherlock woke first, warm, hard, and interested in remaining one but not the other.

John was still asleep, but that didn't matter. John had told him that that didn't matter.

"You want sex, love? Wake me. Ask me. Do me." He'd giggled then, pulled Sherlock close, and murmured just before sleep and right after they'd made love, "yeah, do me. Even if I'm sleeping. I'll have good dreams I bet."

That had been nearly ten years ago and Sherlock had taken him at his word. Oh, not often, because the whole point of having sex with John was to have sex with John.

But once in awhile…well once in a great while a little intercrural lovemaking felt wonderfully salacious and so Sherlock would curl against John's back, slide a slicked-up cock between his husband's thighs, and get off.

Which is exactly what he did the morning it all went to hell in a handbasket.

Without even opening his eyes he pressed close to John's back, kissed the bumps along John's spine—the good doctor was on another weight loss kick and this time he'd kept ten pounds off, every one of which Sherlock missed—yet the good doctor answered his husband's gentle foreplay with a deep sigh and slept on.

Sherlock is rarely silent, but he does know how to be. So John never woke through the whole lube process—the fetching, the slicking up—and he didn't wake when Sherlock carefully slid his cock between John's thighs.

Over the years John's sort of trained Sherlock to come quickly. Yes, Sherlock had to be taught to get on, got off, and get going. Because some days you don't want to make love, or have sex, or shag. You want to damn well fuck and then hit the ground running.

So John taught Sherlock that not every sex act had to be about how long he could drag out the pleasure, sometimes the pleasure was in seeing how much pleasure you could steal from the middle of a busy day, or before exhaustion claimed you, or in a damn cupboard (that's happened twice, just twice) (actually more than that but John's not willing to admit to more than that because…he's just not).

So Sherlock knows how to get off and get on with it, but it's almost never his first choice, and it wasn't now.

Remember, he was warm and he was hard and he wanted to be only one of those things. And so he pumped his hips slowly and stayed quiet because he knew how, and he wondered abstractly if John was dreaming now, if those dreams were good, and then the consulting detective let his big brain tiptoe over the pending day, over the cases they had—trifles—and the corpse he was going to look over at the morgue and yeah, he got far afield for awhile and by the time he focused again John's back had a pretty curve in it and he'd reached around, was gripping Sherlock's hip.

"Mmmm," he said quietly, squeezing his thighs together tight. Sherlock kissed again at the back of John's neck, up into his hair, breathed deep the sweet smell of him, was about to whisper an endearment when John's body relaxed again as he drifted into a dozy sleep.

Sherlock wanted to kiss him awake again but didn't, wanted to slide a hand over John's belly, then down between his legs, but he didn't, letting John sleep because that's what John needed, but yeah, John had woke enough to encourage Sherlock because that's what Sherlock needed…

And it would be later that they would both regret that that's how that morning played out, their bodies pressed close but their minds nowhere near one another. Yet at the time it was warm, it was lazy, and they thought it was good.

They had five open cases, and yes they were trifles, but they paid well, for at this point the consulting detective business was good. John made sure of that.

Because you can only go so long on beans and toast—even if you love beans on toast. After awhile you want to know just how much, when, and from who, and so you accept referrals, start charging so much for this and that much for that—then doubling the fee next time when no one balks—and you consistently do two things: dazzle and deliver.

So yes, they were busy, doing well, and neither had used the b-word for years. And then the fucking neighbor knocked on the fucking door.

Even years later John would never be sure if he wished the baby sitter had shown up on time that morning or not. He's run the scenario in his head both ways a hundred times. In one, the neighbor's baby sitter showed up, he never brought his baby to 221B, and life went on as always. In the other the sitter was late and John found out what he never wanted to know but had every fucking right to know, to have a say in, to stop.

What did John wish had happened? He still doesn't know. He only knows he lives with what did happen.

And what happened was sweetness personified.

At the time, and on later reflection, John knew Sherlock did it for him. Knew that he picked up the neighbor's baby girl, held her close, and crooned softly in her tiny-shell ear because the sight warmed John, kind of turned him on, made him smile.

Well, not just for him, no. Because some part of the great detective was detecting, because there is no feasible way to turn off that brain of his. He can no more not see a suddenly-quickened pulse in a baby's neck, than you can not hear a shout.

So Sherlock saw that small child's ramped up heart beat, the faint glaze in her eyes, and the red rims of her ears, and deduced quite rightly that because her daddy was gone—dashing off and late to work—little Maryam was going to start wailing.

And so Sherlock caught John's eye and crooned softly in the infant's ear, he danced her across the floor and round and round his chair. Then, suddenly inspired, he waltzed to the fireplace, snatched me from the mantle, and held me out to the little girl.

The infant child was instantly diverted. She smacked my frontal bone, poked fingers into my eye sockets, then leaned forward to gum at a zygomatic arch.

John was transfixed of course. "Oh that's a child after your own heart." John nibbled on his lips and watched Sherlock whisper soft in the little girl's ear. "Then again, I don't think falling in love with skulls is a trait carried in a person's genes."

Sherlock danced me around in the air, to the little girl's delight. "We could find out."

For a few seconds nothing happened and then, very unwisely, Sherlock snapped his mouth shut. And then with elaborate care Sherlock turned his back, placed me carefully on the mantle.

"Sherlock?"

Shutting his mouth. Turning his back. If the tall idiot had done just one of those things, just one or the other, or better yet neither, John would have said nothing much, John would have thought nothing much.

"What do you mean?"

But Sherlock did one, then the other, and John saw both. And why did he already know he was a few moments from learning something he didn't want to know?

To be fair, John was fully complicit in what happened next. He could have let it go. Everyone has that choice—to let things go, to move on. So few of us make that choice. Even when we suspect—know—that the knowledge we seek will hurt, even then we ask, we probe, we say—

"Tell me what you mean."

For years Sherlock had a very particular habit. It was called lying. He would do it all day every day if it got him what he needed from a suspect, a victim, a police officer. He would dissemble, he would fib, he would skew, enhance, tilt, colour…he would lie.

And then there was John. From the start Sherlock had not wanted to lie to this man. Before he ever craved John's love he craved his trust.

That was twelve years ago. Since then Sherlock's long since forgotten some of the finer points of being a liar.

"I made a donation once."

So help him John knew exactly what Sherlock did not mean. He did not mean blood. Money. Time.

There are so few things about Sherlock that are normal that John absolutely knew without words that Sherlock meant he'd made a donation of the thing that was, quite literally, most him. His genes. DNA. Sperm. It took John not quite four seconds to have these thoughts, and another two to conclude that what was past was past. It was okay. He'd probably done it for an experiment for heaven's sake, even as a young man he—

"Last year, when Lucy was—"

"Last year?"

John grunted, bent over suddenly. It was a sturdy stance, the posture of someone who has taken a blow.

Sherlock, on the other hand stood taller, an antenna searching for signal.

"You did this last year?"

Last year. Not twelve years ago, not twenty. Not in Life Before John. Last year.

Disbelief.

You didn't need to be a deductive genius to hear it. Even the infant heard, staring at the good doctor, her toothless mouth as guileless and open as the man holding her.

"I don't understand."

Sherlock watched John's mouth, as if it would explain how he'd gotten here and how he could get away from here now.

"All those conversations we had in the night? You were there for them, right?"

Sherlock's legs felt cold and heavy. They wouldn't move.

"All those silly games and jokes about our little girls, Vex and Dis and…. I mean you knew I wanted kids once? Just like every other normal human being?"

Hurt.

Sherlock's arms wouldn't move.

"We could have adopted, you know. But it didn't seem…it wasn't what we were supposed to do. We agreed on that, right? You were there when we agreed on that?"

For a man who could not move, Sherlock was shaking awfully well.

"And this? You didn't give a fuck what this would mean to me."

Sherlock's chest hurt.

"It didn't even occur to you to care." John's voice was flat, like his gaze.

Sherlock grunted at the tightness in his chest. For one second he thought about asking John what a heart attack felt like but give that man a cigar even Sherlock realized he'd sound like a fucking drama queen. So instead Sherlock said, "John."

John looked at Sherlock's mouth as if he could see that one word. "Oh great, here we go again."

Rage.

John sneered. It was happening again. It has happened a dozen times in the last dozen years, Sherlock's convenient inability to speak when John needs him to speak most.

"No, don't. Don't even try," John said, shaking his head. "Because I don't care. Whatever you eventually figure out to say—and you will, I have faith in your unrelenting brilliance Sherlock, your stupid, stupid brilliance—just no. Nothing will make this right you fucking idiot. Nothing."

This isn't John. Not the John Sherlock met at St. Bart's twelve years ago, not the John that married Sherlock ten years ago, not the John from yesterday. This mean-mouthed John is brand-spanking new, fresh out of the box, and all his parts work a treat.

"What tea do I like right now Sherlock?" John paused just long enough to listen to silence.

"What year did we get married? What did we give Angelo for his birthday last week? What did we give Greg for his birthday last month? When I broke my foot last year who took me to the hospital and why wasn't it you?"

Sherlock wanted to clutch his chest, so help him. He wanted to touch the pain because it felt so much like there was a hand there, fisted around his heart so tight it robbed him of words, of reason, and so he fell back on the one thing he could do, the one thing that has almost always been enough.

"John, John."

The good doctor stepped close, lifted a hand to press against Sherlock's mouth but instead held that hand in the air, fingers spread, a symbolic wall between them. "Stop it. Stop saying my name you idiot, you fool, it's not a magic incantation, it's not refutation, it's not an apology. It's nothing. It's nothing, Sherlock. Just like me. Just like me to you. I'm nothing. In all the ways that matter to normal people. In all the ways that matter."

John dropped his hand, his shoulders, his chin to chest, a small man grown suddenly so much smaller. "It was the one thing that mattered. You knew that, Sherlock. You knew."

Grief.

It comes when it will, and it was coming now for Sherlock. Because he knew this was the day John would leave. He was as certain of it as he was of blinking, of breathing, of dying.

Yet grief had already found John, grief had a strangle-hold on his throat so tight it physically hurt to speak but speak he did.

"I tried not to talk about it too much. I've always known that by the time the time was right I was just too old to be a good father and you were just too scared and so we made up imaginary children because one of us sort of needed it and one of us thought it was funny but I tried Sherlock, I tried so hard not to make you feel bad about the fact that yeah, like most people I always thought I'd have kids but it turns out I didn't and I was okay with that. Why? Why? Because I was okay with you. With the world containing just you, your magic, your grace, your gifts. I didn't used to think I was a jealous man but fuck me twice I am red with rage and green with envy and doubled over with the pain of it, the idea that there is a child in this world with your beauty and your brains and your…that there's you out there somewhere and I will never see that child, that I will never know them, that their grace and their magic and gifts will never be part of my life and that despite what the future brings you will carry on and…and I will never know that child."

John sat down and fisted a hand to his chest. No one would ever accuse John of being a drama queen and so for many long seconds Sherlock literally stood on tiptoe, mouth open, brain drowning in the terrible words heart attack heart attack heart attack but no, John was good, John was standing just as quickly as he'd sat down and he looked into Sherlock's eyes, his own eyes soft, and he said very carefully, as if the words contained more than the sum of their parts, "I can't listen to myself talk any more."

Then John just turned, walked away and just when the door closed behind him, exactly then and precisely then and only fucking then did Sherlock find words.

"I didn't know John. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't."

But Sherlock was lying for the first time in years.

Because Sherlock knew. Sherlock damn well knew.

And he'd gone and done it anyway.

I'll repeat what Rory said early on: John doesn't stay gone for good. Eventually it'll be okay. But not just yet. Especially next chapter: Warnings there for self-harm. (P.S. Yes, I was supposed to update with something fluffy, not this. *headdesk*)