John received a text message an hour before his work day was done. It simply said "Have Analise" and had come from Sherlock Holmes. John couldn't keep the smile off his face the rest of his day, thinking about how Sherlock would have had to have made the extra stop in his cab to get her and yet hadn't thought it better to just wait the hour at home for John and her to return. She must have been ecstatic. It was nice to know she was missed.
He could hear the violin even before he'd opened the car door and shook his head with a wide smile parting it as he walked up the path to the front door. Danse Macabre if he remembered correctly and he'd heard it now and then enough to feel comfortably sure it was. Sherlock kept to the melody, stepping slowly with the beat, right arm swinging with the bow in his grip as Analise danced around on the floor with no care to how fast or slow he went. It was mostly jumping, lots of spinning to make her dress swing out like the icing of strawberry cupcake, but fundamentally dancing all the same. She seemed to hardly notice when John came in, pulling off his coat and scarf, though Sherlock looked over and gave him a small smirk on the down bow before turning with the up. John hadn't seen him in a full suit in some time. He looked quite smart in his black jacket.
When Analise did finally begin to care that her father had returned as well, she tugged on his trousers and ordered him to dance. He was tired, he wanted very much to have a seat for a bit, but he could hardly disobey a direct order. He sank down to his knees slowly, long past the stage of feeling self-conscious when giving in to his child's whims, and moved his hips while pumping his arms with the same lack of care given to the tempo Sherlock played. They were super stars every one of them. John held Analise's hand to let her twirl under his and took both of hers so together they could wiggle and jive. He was sure the song was supposed to have ended and that Sherlock was reprising a few bars one too many times. He let him play on though and did not stop dancing until the last note fell away and John clapped as Analise bounced with a curtsey under Sherlock's practiced bow. Her amusement gone, she ran off to find another, giggling all the way to her toy chest. John sighed and rolled onto his backside, getting up not really worth the effort as he leaned an elbow on the coffee table.
"It'll be tea parties next," he said, rubbing at his left knee.
Sherlock smirked on a hum, putting his violin away into her safe and comfortable case lined in black velvet. "I'm sure we've a few more years before we're forced into bonnets," he offered, closing the case with a snap of the metal fasteners before setting it on the chair for a moment. He offered John his hand and while the doctor had only just gotten himself marginally comfortable on the rug, he grabbed his wrist and wrenched himself back up with the aid. War bones were old bones. He rather hated the wet chill of late autumn and what it did to the worn cartilage in his joints. They were probably due for another thunderstorm soon. He rather hated being a weather man.
"Coffee?" Sherlock asked.
"Love some," John said, more than ready to feel the warmth in his belly that might set in and warm his bone.
Sherlock picked up his violin case from the chair, walking purposefully towards the stairs. "Me too," he said with a contained smirk as he went up to put his things away.
The right bastard. John couldn't help the smile as he sighed and walked to the kitchen himself, getting the machine pulled out on the counter to set the water and grounds within. He didn't mind. Analise was finally worn out and appeased, something John had had a fair time doing on his own. Much as he loved every second she demanded of him, it was nice to see her content to play by herself without needing the reassurance he was still there and watching. He was always watching, though. It was almost more fun to watch her fill the back of her dump truck with toys than it was to help by playing with the loader. She could be rather picky with where the dolls sat with cars and building blocks in the back of her yellow plastic truck. Better to watch and learn from the master mover herself as she scooted the big wheeled vehicle across the floor to unload with far less finesse under Sherlock's dinning room table of science. By the time John had the sugar out and mugs set out for drinking, Analise was trying to drive her truck straight up the table legs. Not the most convincing construction worker but he'd bow to the suspension of reality to imagine that perhaps in her world trucks could fly.
Sherlock returned once the coffee was done, the permeating aroma of the steaming brew a fairly obvious clue that their beverage was ready to be enjoyed. He came down the steps to thunder, shivering rain not yet patting against the roof. John pressed Sherlock's mug closer once his friend took his perch at a bar seat and leaned against the counter opposite with his own pressed between his palms at his lips. It was nice, this. He'd missed it. Perhaps more than he liked to admit.
The thunder rolled overhead again. The sun was only just setting but the sky was already dark with greys, purples and blues. John looked to make sure Analise was was still calm and happy. She never seemed to mind the rain. He felt fortunate in that.
Looking back at Sherlock, John drummed his fingers on the warm ceramic between his hands. He could understand the quiet as they both listened to the wind through the trees outside but it seemed far too intrusive somehow to remain content with silence. "So... how'd it go?" he asked, taking a sip once his question was in the air.
Sherlock shrugged, overplaying the bored angle as he tilted his chin down towards his chest. "Stopped a gang war and uncovered a developing criminal ring under one of the leaders that was doing business with smuggler organizations in Europe," he said, as thought it were something that happened every day.
"Sounds exciting."
"It was fairly entertaining. Better than nothing," he humbly agreed. John was sure he'd had fun.
John liked 'fun' in these moments, when the bad guys were taken care of and things were safer for everyone else. It was hard not to smile and join in the mild celebration of Sherlock's superiority when it was safe to enjoy the relief as well. It was the high before the crash, a fact of life they both knew well, but it was gratifying to hear that for the moment, things were good.
"Hopefully you're not too bored while you wait for another one," John said with a tad more resignation than he cared to admit. There was going to be another one, obviously. Until spring came back around, what else could there be for Sherlock? He needed it, they both knew he did, and there was no need to explain or compromise on it when it was a part of Sherlock they both knew he needed. John let the warm liquid cool on his tongue before swallowing the bitter drink. It cured the cold that ailed as readily as murder did Sherlock's own maladies. He sighed as he let his mug rest on the woodblock, nodding away his reservation. "You know, I was thinking... if you need someone to help you get your science equipment back up to London, I could help. I mean, if you'd rather spend winter in London again like last year, that's fine. I'd help." He'd hate it but it'd be alright. And it was what was best for Sherlock, surely. Best to offer and let it be said than wait to be told or wake up one morning to a note.
Sherlock didn't bat an eye. "That won't be necessary," he said, licking coffee from the arch of his upper lip.
"Are you sure?" John hated the hopeful lilt to his voice and cleared it with a grunt. "I mean, you have a place to live up there, you have something to do. London just... makes the most sense for you."
"I moved away for a reason, John. This is my home. I would rather come home."
"So you're just... going to go back and forth all winter?"
Sherlock nodded. "That's my plan, yes."
"Why?" It was stupid to ask but he'd managed to say it before thinking somehow. John bit the inside of his lip, pressing on just to be sure even an ill-thought question had some merit worth understanding. "I mean, it just... it doesn't make sense. You're a misery when you're bored."
The scientist took a long, deep breath, leaning back in his chair with a sigh. "John, I'm forty years old. It's about time I started living with the living rather than for the dead."
If sounded pretty; it sounded like it should mean a lot more than it did, like it held more weight than John's understanding of the English language could carry. He held his tongue on another request for explanation, not quite sure if he seemed more stupid for not getting it than for failing to say he didn't. What it meant effectually was Sherlock wasn't going to move out for the next several months.
Sherlock wasn't okay with just an effectual understanding, though. Of course he'd read it in John's face, maybe a quirk of his lips or a falling of his brows. Sherlock leaned forward in his chair, elbows on the counter's lip, as he gestured in explanation with the calm baritone of his voice to lead. "Everyone is capable of murder, John," he said, hardly a fitting beginning but attention grabbing for certain. "Not everyone can take their own life but everyone can take another's. People are inherently selfish like that, driven by the possession of things deemed worthy of killing for. Sometimes it's a love of oneself, a sense of pride or avarice, but most of the time it's love of another or of an ideal. For my entire professional career love has been nothing but a motive of crime. But anything worth killing over is also worth living for. It's been long past time to change my perspective." Sherlock breathed with the pregnant pause, eyes slipping out towards the grey sky and shifting leaves of the side garden lost to them for now. He seemed to smile, tight lipped, but honest. The lightening lit up the evergreens as thunder roared once more. "In the spring this place is more alive than I have ever been. And I get to be part of that. It's not so dead now though that I have nothing. There is still more here for me than in all the mortar and concrete of London. I'll probably never stop the odd macabre sabbatical but I don't want to be defined by my knowledge of death and decomposition. I have fifty seven different types of pollinating flowers in my garden and two different breeds of honey producing bees. I am capable of appreciating more than I have limited myself to. I want to be with the living; I am with the living. And I will return to it as much as I like."
John found himself in a stupor, not stunned but merely quieted into an almost numbness of thought. He couldn't remember when Pinocchio became a real boy. There was no evidence to suggest he'd ever noticed when the Tinman was shown to have a heart. There were some things about Sherlock that were always Sherlock but there had been a point-and John knew he'd missed it-when some things ceased to be. Somewhere along the years he'd become wrong in thinking Sherlock was the same person he'd met that first day who cared for not even himself and hadn't a guess on the virtues of sentiment. Sherlock had learned to love and have concern for the living. And all John saw was the lack of humanity where the gaps in his awareness remained. Sometimes Sherlock did wait for him. Many times he let him in on the secrets and kept him as his only confidant not because he needed his gun but because he wanted his company. And still John denied the existence of his heart. He'd spent so long doing so, years of excuses to himself and others that were rehearsed and familiar and ignored all new developments whether great or small. How had he ever been surprised he wasn't in love with Sherlock Holmes when he'd spent so many years warning himself not to fall.
He'd wanted Sherlock to be a better man, a hero, someone who was more than just fascinating but also human. But he wasn't. And John tried to help him but like a perfectionist craftsman never saw what he hoped to see and could still not accept the limits that held back perfection from reality. Sherlock would always be Sherlock, smiling while children huddled in terror in captivity and laughing at his own brilliance in light of someone else's untimely loss. And John would never be able to compete with that want of the occasional misfortune no matter his intentions to aid.
Ten years of never forgetting.
A decade of repressed disappointment without the acceptance of the attempts. It was the same as chastising Analise for not being able to pronounce 'Sherlock' while she hopped maybe 'Lala' would do. Sherlock had infinite potential to mimic and observe but had tried not the emulate a person but to genuinely be his own, still himself, simply better.
One could not compete with murder and mayhem for the attention of Sherlock Holmes.
But the right person didn't need to.
"Biscuit?" he asked.
"Yes, please."
John nodded and turned to open up the cabinet door above the coffee maker. "Oh, and uh... welcome home, Sherlock."
Sherlock smiled, holding his mug in his hands once more as he paused to take a drink. "Thank you, John. Now I believe it's your turn to tell me about your week."
John grabbed the biscuit tin and shut the cabinet doors as the rain began to fall in syncopation against the windowpane.
