Disclaimer: Still own nothing

Chapter Two

Things Don't Work That Way

(And No, You Don't Get a Say In It)

"You'd think that you'd have something better to do like, oh say, attempting to not be an idiot and need to call me on every little moronic case." John just rolled his eyes behind Sherlock's back as he watched him shred into Lestraude and then proceed to turn just fast enough for his coat to flair out dramatically behind him before whipping out his magnifying glass and studying the victim's shoes. It was their first case together since, since, well. Since.

The dead girl in the flat seemed out of place. More so than just the fact that she was dead. She was young. John had to guess twenty seven at the oldest. She had a mass of black hair that was piled messily, what he would have considered sexily had she still had a heartbeat, on top of her head. She had a short, dangerously short, black pleated mini skirt on which, on closer examination had sheer black lace instead of a more conventional fabric inside the pleats. Not too much make-up, but the excessive black of her extremely long, obviously fake, eye lashes and thick inky eyeliner stood stark against her already pale skin. John sighed at the ridiculous height of the black pumps and thought that maybe she was trying to kill herself with those damn shoes.

"Well, that's interesting."

He finally turned his attention to Sherlock. "What's interesting?"

"She painted the bottom of her shoes red. Why would someone even bother going to the trouble of painting the bottom of their shoes red? Maybe it stood for something, no, better someone knew to look for the color red. She was expecting to meet somebody."

"Nope, I don't think that's quite it."

"Not quite it? What do you mean not quite it?" Sherlock gave him that look, that look that said that he hated being the last one to know something, especially when the idiots in the room know something that he doesn't and that's just not how it's supposed to work look. John loved that look, especial when he was the one that put it there.

"I mean you know when a new model of watch has just released but you never had the benefit of living with a female to make you notice, if still never appreciate, the finer things in life."

"John, that's brilliant."

John's brows furrowed and his pen stopped writing mid-word in his notepad. "But I've not said anything yet."

"Exactly, I was pointing out how brilliant you have to be in order to seem so loquacious and yet not have said a single thing of importance at all. I was going for funny." Sherlock deadpanned back.

John just rolled his eyes and gave up on attempting finishing the thought he was writing down. "I wasn't kidding when I said that you should stick with ice. We're in Belsize Park. She wanted to look like she belonged here, probably was trying to pick up a guy with money."

"What?"

John just sighed. "It's the shoes Sherlock. Shoes with red bottoms are Louboutin, very high end, very expensive. She was trying to fake having money herself."

Sherlock actually stopped his examination of her bracelets, cheap gold plated, to turn prideful eyes at John. "That my dear John, that was brilliant."

And with that Sherlock was off and rattling off the state and condition of her jewelry and using that to deduce what small time boutique she visits, backed by her choice of perfume –because he did a study on the different types of perfumes because that's just what he does- and therefore gave an area from which she likely lived. An area which was definitely not Belsize Park. John left Sherlock's side to go stand by Lestraude on the outskirts of the room. He could feel the flush that Sherlock's praise had left on his checks and felt it growing even deeper in shade as he tried to convince himself that having Sherlock look at him just like that didn't make him feel like a schoolgirl with a crush on the captain of the football team.

While Sherlock was busy glaring at Anderson -for not realizing the wear on the tread of the victim's high heels no doubt showed she had been out clubbing on a regular basis and considering that is was a Friday night maybe he should reconsider where she had been murdered because obviously there wasn't enough glitter in the flat for it to have happened here based on the sheer mass of it that was sticking to her hair- Greg was talking to John in low whispers. Their shoulders brushing, heads bent together to keep their conversation private. Out of the corner of his eye Sherlock saw Greg's fingers lightly brush the slight lump that John's necklace made under his shirt and it took all of his will power not to physically grab him and break off every finger that had ever touched John.

John had moved back into 221b baker with Sherlock just under a week ago, not being able to afford the flat he shared with Mary on his own, or at least that's what Sherlock thought and John wasn't really of a mind to correct him, and it was different than it used to be. Sherlock wasn't expecting that.

"You know that you could come and stay with me whenever you need," Greg reminded John, having heard how awkward is was for him to try and get Sherlock to understand that no, technically they weren't still together and even though John wants to try, he just isn't quite ready yet. Sherlock wasn't the one waking up from nightmares of watching his husband kill himself, John was. Sherlock wasn't the one that realized that after such a long time apart, they weren't the same people that they were back when they were together, John did.

"You're off tomorrow, yeah? Mind if I come over and watch the football game? I'll cook something this time."

"Yeah, sure, that's fine. I'm in the mood for something with curry in it this time though. I can only stand Chinese so many times a month," Greg responded, a grin showing that he was teasing. John gave Greg's shoulder a squeeze and a smile before Greg walked away to make a phone call.

"And be sure to give Liam my best," he called over his shoulder with a laugh as he lifted the phone to his ear and walked out of ear shot. John turned his attention back to Sherlock just in time to catch the end of a snarl before Sherlock turned, making a point of ignoring him to study the mysterious woman's cuticles, noting the lack of well, anything, to show that she had struggled to prevent her death.

Lack of defensive wounds, undoubtedly drugged; possibly asphyxiation; petechiae are absent, so if strangulated, was definitely not violent.

Sherlock pulled down the high neck of her glittery gold sleeveless top. He gently turned her heard from right to left, noting the absence of any type of marks. He used to fingers to poke at her throat. Larynx not crushed. Hypothesis of nonviolence, correct.

He then swept two gloved fingers in her mouth. Mini magnifying glass in hand he examined the saliva. Particulates, yes; not quite opaque, extremely thin and malleable; ninety sever percent likely to be plastic, shopping bag, most likely. Proof of smothering as cause of death, most definitely.

John looked at his watch for what had seemed like the umpteenth time in the last hour. Bollox. He still had to make it across town for his meeting if Dr. Liam Graves' voice was to ever be heard again.

"Sherlock." He walked closed to Sherlock, trying to capture his attention which, for some very particular reason, he was giving wholeheartedly so Anderson. He stopped opposite a kneeling Sherlock, the dead club girl between them.

"Sherlock, I've really got to go." Sherlock just waved a dismissive hand towards him and continued giving Anderson his rapt attention. John gave Anderson a questioning look only to get a slight shrug and a shameful blush coloring Anderson's cheek in response before he turned his gaze back to Sherlock's.

John just sighed and started walking back to the main road to try and hail a cab. Sherlock had left him one too many times for him to even attempt to feel guilty for leaving the crime scene early.

When Sherlock finally made it home after proving that it was the jealous bartending ex-boyfriend that had drugged and then killed the club girl, he opened the door to the flat to find John at his computer; angrily stabbing each key like its mere existence personally offended him.

"Mycroft sending you job offers? I told him not to bother but he does seem to enjoy a challenge."

John's hand stopped mid-stabbing-key stroke and slowly turned his glare from his laptop to Sherlock. "Tell your damn brother that I don't want his job offers, I don't want his emails, and I don't want or need his bloody assistance!" He breathed in deep before letting out a long breath, letting his head drop into his hands.

"I don't see why you can't move past this thing you have with Mycroft."

John looked at Sherlock. Watched as he untied his scarf and shoved it into the pocket of his great coat and tossed it over the back of the sofa and started towards the kitchen.

"You wouldn't understand."

Sherlock chuckled low in his throat as he stood over the dining table, examining each of the two dozed Petri dishes that have been there for the past few days. "And what is it that I possibly couldn't understand?"

"Sentiment."

Sherlock continued as he was, not even looking up at John to acknowledge that he had spoken, but for all of his brilliance, he often forgot how John could read him when others couldn't.

He didn't realize that his hand had frozen in the air at the word for only the fraction of a second before he continued, seemingly unaffected. But John saw it and knew that he had to get it out now if he and Sherlock even had a remote shot in hell to make this, whatever the hell this even was, work.

"You don't understand how hard this is for me. I don't do things like this. I don't talk about things. I blamed him for so long for giving Moriarty the ammunition to take you away from me. I blamed HIM for taking you away from me. Right now, right at this very second, I don't care if he was in on it. I don't care if he's the actual reason why you are still here and not actually half rotted in the grave right now. All I know is that for so long he was the only one on this planet that I actually had the choice to hold accountable for taking you away when, when there was so much, so much Sherlock. So much that I never got to tell you, so much that we missed."

"We were married, which we had agreed to keep to ourselves and yes, I did see Lestraude touch those rings, our rings, through your shirt, so don't even pull the 'I'm the drab John Watson that wraps myself in the self-righteous cape of my morals and then looks down on the rest of the world act' because I know you. I know the darkness that lives inside of you that needs the death, the thrill, the game just as much as I do," Sherlock sneered back at him, one hand fisted in his trouser pocket, the other gesturing wildly as he stormed out of the kitchen and over to his armchair. He threw himself down into the seat where he angrily scrubbed at his scalp, making his already wild hair even worse before he picked up his violin and started to pluck at it. The room was eerily silent following his outburst, broken only by the unattractive plink plink from him picking haphazardly at the strings.

John was hunched over the kitchen table. His knuckles white from how hard he was gripping the table in the effort to keep his anger, his sanity, in check.

"You're right."

Sherlock stopped mid-plink and, not sure he heard what he thought he did, asked John to repeat himself.

John shoved his fists in the pockets of his just a bit too baggy trousers. Sherlock felt a twinge of guilt at the weight that John had lost in his absence. He cocked his hip against the table, finally turned to look at Sherlock and started to chuckle. John had to wipe tears from his eyes as the chuckle turned into a full blown rolling laughter that had such an edge to it that it sent a chill down Sherlock's spine and his skin tingled with goose bumps.

As his mirthless laugh died, he scratched the back of his head, pulling taut the already snug v-neck jumper. He looked across the room at Sherlock through his eyelashes, the deep blue of the jumper matching John's eyes so perfectly that Sherlock's breath caught in his throat at how beautiful John had become in their time apart.

"You are right. We agreed that no one would know, well, other than Mycroft but that's because we both knew that there was no chance in hell that we could get away without him knowing about it anyways. I know. But I figured that once it had come to the point that he wouldn't leave me alone after I had drunk to much without either taking all of my ammunition, the gun itself, or would sleep on the sofa because he was terrified that one day I wouldn't answer his calls and he'd come over to find most of my brains scattered across the wall in your bedroom, well, I guess that I owed him some kind of explanation for why I was so broken up about a flat mate. Don't you?

"And you know what else? I had no friends other than the ones that I had with you and you didn't have any other than me so when you decided to destroy me I thought that I was going to die. And if I was being honest, if not for Greg, I probably would have so please, don't go and bring up promises that I broke when I thought that I wasn't going live out the month anyhow. What? You've nothing to say? I'm amazed. I've just rendered King of the Last Word silent. I guess I really can still surprise myself."

There was a long stretch of silence, then Sherlock started that god awful plink plinking again as he tried to stare a hole through the rug.

"Oh no. No no no. You're jealous. Are you jealous? Really? Why?"

"You're my husband."

"No, I was your husband. 'Til death do us part' remember? And according to your death certificate I am a free man, a widower."

"And yet you still carry around our rings?"

John smiled. "Do you remember how I proposed?"

Yes, Sherlock did. John was never good with words, and Sherlock wasn't good with anything resembling sentiment, attachment, or feelings in general. When they had become lovers instead of just flat mates, they didn't talk about it. They didn't have to. It just happened, the feelings were there, and they were always there. They never had to say how felt about each other because they had an understanding that the other already knew. So when it had come to the proposal, John was doing an update on his blog and, when browsing through some of the comments that were left he came across one that said something along the lines of 'at this point, why don't you two just tie the knot and make it official.' John had pointed it out to Sherlock and said, "So, what do you think?"

To which Sherlock naturally replied, "I've next Tuesday open." No declarations of undying love and loyalty. There didn't need to be because it was already said so many times a day in every lingering look when they were among other people, in every lingering caress and soft moan when they were behind closed doors. The only reason why they had rings, even if they were never worn, was because John was a bit more of a traditionalist that he'd like to give himself credit for.

"I'm not doing that again Sherlock." Sherlock's head whipped up, the hurt to raw to be concealed, before he went back to trying to burn a hole through the rug with the sheer power of his will.

"If it was that god awful, then feel free to leave anytime."

John rolled his eyes. "You are so brilliant Sherlock that sometimes I can forget how incredibly stupid you are. I want to try this. I'm not making any promises; I'm not ready to just say yup we're married again like nothing ever happened. We've been apart for a hell of a lot longer than we were ever together. We need to get to know each other again if we want this to work. But not silence this time. You have no idea how much the thought that I never properly told you that I loved you had haunted me after. After."

"Attempt?"

"Yeah. That I can do."