"Your turn," John says as he comes back into the room, buttoning his cuffs. He may have to roll them up in the surgery to prevent contamination, but it is late September and he's stubborn enough not to turn the heating on in the house till mid-October at the earliest. There is a mug of coffee on his bedside table, the steam still coiling in misty spirals above it. "Thanks for the coffee."

"Why coffee?" Sherlock asks. Well, John decides that he's asking, because it's really more of a demand for information.

"I've just had three hours sleep on what must have been the most emotionally wild night of my life, Sherlock. I need coffee to stay awake."

"That's plenty of sleep."

"For you. Just how much sleep do you think I've been getting recently?" Sherlock turns away and snatches up the towel that John has left on the bed for him. That can't be right. Did Sherlock - Sherlock- really just let John have the last word?

Toast is easy to make, and someone, Wiggins, according to the post-it note stuck to the pint carton, has put some milk and half a dozen eggs in his small, under-the-counter fridge. He has enough time so he take a couple of them out and a glass bowl and makes scrambled eggs, one of the few foods Sherlock will eat in the mornings that's not left-over dinners.

"John," Sherlock calls down the stairs and he turns off the gas, which reminds him, he needs to go to the shop and put twenty pounds on the electric, or probably thirty now Sherlock is here, and goes to the bottom of the stairs. Sherlock has stuck his wet head over the banister and is looking down. "Do you have any spare clothes that would fit? All mine need a wash."

"Your dressing gown is on the back of the spare room door," John says. "I'll sort something out after you've eaten breakfast."

"I have a clean pair of pants in the bag on the table," Sherlock says, and stares down imperiously.

"What do you expect me to do about it?"

"Throw them up and put the rest in the wash with yours."

"Why should I?"

"Save energy?" Sherlock gives a puzzled grin that is a confusing mix of 'thank god you're John' and 'why are you being obstinate about this?' "You're about to put your own load on." John sighs as Sherlock's head disappears in search of the dressing gown because, yes, the laundry is next on the list after breakfast. He roots around in the holdall that is perched on the edge of the table, next to the now-closed violin case. There is a small closed laptop, a basic toiletries case and a couple of changes of clothing stuffed in a plastic carrier bag aside from one pair of underwear which must be the clean ones. John stuffs them into a ball and lobs them up the stairs.

Back in the kitchen John puts his own clothes from the trip to Northumberland- god, was that only twenty-four hours ago?- into the washing machine, a great old clunky top loader that he has to pull out from under the other side of counter from the fridge and starts to get out Sherlock's clothes as well. At the state of the first shirt, small splatters of something along the forearm and the collar he stops and takes the whole lot upstairs.

"Are you done in the bathroom?" he asks the hall at large.

"Yes." Sherlock's voice comes from his closed bedroom door. John lets the taps in the bath run for a couple of minutes with cold water and leaves the clothes to soak in a mishmash of urban camouflage. He debates adding soda crystals, but decides to give the cold water a chance first. Thought the shirts at the least are probably done for, the stains have set into the fibres. Dry cleaning might rescue them, but John has to try first.

Sherlock comes out of the bedroom just as John is walking back down the stairs. His hair has been towelled dry and he is wrapped in the dressing gown that John has kept. John can see him out of the corner of his eye and this is just so… odd. It's odd. Sherlock is running his hand along the wall of the stairs as if this touch can bring back the memories of living here. He gives a strange snort when he comes into the kitchen and sees the ceiling.

"So that's still there."

John looks above the stove, at the faint dusting of scorch marks. "Yup. Eggs?"

"That one was honestly an accident," Sherlock says as he scrapes the last of his plate. John dreads to think when the man last properly ate if he is eating like this. Sherlock used to be sensible about food when not on a case, eating precisely at eight, two and eight again and nothing else except perhaps a biscuit (digestive or rich tea only) with a cup of tea around four. Unless they were eating out, in which case it really didn't matter. Right now though, John can see him forcing himself to slow down. "I was distracted while cooking. I can cook," he adds, somewhat petulantly.

"I know," John says as he takes the plates to the sink and quickly washes them under running water, leaving them to drain. "You cooked more than I did. You don't need to defend yourself to me."

"I do," John thinks he hears Sherlock say, quietly, miserably. "Where's your gun?" The non-sequitur nearly takes John off guard.

"No," he says, answering that question as it really is; Sherlock's request for John to drop everything that he has built and worked for and stay with Sherlock. "I can't. Michael is with his parents and Carmen is at St Patrick's with her children, and anyway, she never works Sundays. Only Julie can come in today and both of the HCAs that I have can't make it. I'm at less than half staff and the past few days' paperwork needs to be done too."

"Clothes," Sherlock reminds John and they go back up the stairs to the spare room. John looks at the boxes lining the wall, the remains of the man standing just behind him. John watches Sherlock look around at the few items that John had not picked up after throwing the box.

"Here." John opens a box with 'clothes' printed on it in Mrs Hudson's careful hand. Sherlock has his back turned to him and has something in his hand. Something brass and circular and monogramed with SH. "You should find something in here," John says brusquely as he takes it out of Sherlock's hand and leaves the open box on the floor.

In the kitchen he looks at the watch that he had properly packed away two years ago now. The cover is the same, but when he opens it and takes out the folded note the glass is cracked. John shuts it with a snap and puts it in his pocket. Leaves the note on the table, by the violin case. Doesn't want to think about it right now, about the depths of Sherlock's hidden ways, his use of the word 'loved'. John is a straightforward man. What you see in each individual situation is what you get. Wondering never gets you anywhere. Sherlock is the man of tangential leaps and John is grounded to reality, whether reality is crazy or monotonous. Wondering if Sherlock really meant loved is a waste of his time.

"I've got to go," John says as Sherlock comes down the stairs dressed in a pair of his old trousers and the black shirt with the fine pinstripes. It seems slightly too big.

"Do you have a pair of my shoes?"

"Look in the boxes. It's all yours, anyway."

"Yours."

"What?" John turns around, his hand on the latch. If he leaves any later he won't get a head start on the piles of unnecessary paper that are waiting for him. He hates paperwork, but is sadly used to it now. If there is one thing that his life, first being a medical student, then medical officer and then a plain old medical professional, has taught him, aside from the obvious, it's to do the paperwork when you have a chance. You never know when you're going to get a quiet moment.

"It's all yours. I left it all to you, in my will." Sherlock gives that strange half-smile of his, slightly sheepish, if that's ever a word that can be applied to Sherlock.

"And yet here you are."

"Here I am," Sherlock agrees, standing in his old clothes and stocking feet. "John, here I am." Slowly, as if John may freak, or snap, Sherlock mirrors a gesture John made in a death-scented room and bends to kiss John's forehead, a brush of chapped lips on lined skin. "May I have the watch back?" he asks in the closeness.

John shakes his head, feeling the weight of the pocket watch in his trouser pocket. "No."

"Why?"

John considers this. He doesn't reply.

"For God's sake, it's not like you're my widower." Sherlock says harshly, but keeps very still, close enough that John can feel the heat from his body.

"You know what." John steps out of the cage of Sherlock's body so that he is standing by the bottom of the stairs. "I might have well have been. Look at me." Sherlock doesn't turn around. "Look at me," John repeats, "and tell me how many people I've gone out with since you jumped off a bloody building."

Sherlock turns around. "None," he says hoarsely.

"Half-wrong. Two. Both women I picked up in different bars south of the river a couple of months ago, spent the night with and that I haven't seen since. And none since six months Before, so I might as well have been." John gives a dry, awful laugh. "I'm your widower, Sherlock. Get used to it."

Sherlock is leaning against the door, face intent and shocked. "Why?" he asks again, as if this is something that he has honestly never considered.

"Because I. love. you. There, I've said it and I really don't care how you take it." John finds himself backed up against the wall again as Sherlock once more leans over him, but there is none of the anger of last night.

"But why?"

John feels his breathing stutter and his chest tighten around the warmth in its centre. He's never actually stopped to think about this. "Because I do."

"That's not helpful, John." Sherlock whirls away from him and leans on the wall next to him. It mirrors a position held lifetimes ago.

"Well, that's all that I have. You are Sherlock Holmes, and I am John Watson and you might as well be asking why the sky is blue. I need to go, you crazy, miraculous man."

"John." Sherlock's voice stops him short. He turns back around. "I… I can't say it." He looks so frustrated, and it makes Johns' stomach clench with everything that he feels, all the emotions existing in one impossible moment. His skin feels too big and too small all at once.

"I know, Sherlock." And John does know, it is writ across the man's skin and face in easy to read letters. Remorse -and that strange one- love in equal measure.

"I'm not saying sorry."

"Fine."

"But I do. I honestly do."

John smiles softly and nods in small motions. Quickly, he opens the door and shuts it behind him just as fast.

"Pinch me," is the first thing that he says to Mira as she walks in. She looks confused but does as he asks, the pinch sending sharp points of pain from the folded skin on his arm.

"Why?"

"Needed to check something. How was everyone while I was away?"

"Fine. It was fine. Oh yeah, a man came in a couple of times, asked for you. Wouldn't see anyone else." Mira sort of hovers as he sits down in his office and starts the computer. "Look, Doctor Watson, are you leaving?"

"What?" John looks up at her, at how she is standing with her hands tightly clasped in front of her and her eyes so worried. Something twists inside him.

"It was a couple of months back, you'd gone to the loo while it was your break and I brought a cup in for you and your computer screen was still on and it had a website up, a visa application process and you've been holding interviews these past months. And now Carmen's, Doctor Boldy-Cruz's youngest is about to start reception full time…"

"I wasn't thinking seriously about it," John says, and kicks out one of the patient chairs for her to sit on. "We need more staff anyway, and." He hates explaining this. "It's like an itch in your feet. I suppose you could call it wanderlust, I've always had it. It's why the army was so perfect for me. I'm not leaving, Mira." He smiles at her as best as he can manage. "And even if I do, I'll always come back." John thinks about the man at his table right now and the pocket watch feels very heavy.

"You're not leaving?" Mira stands and raises her head like an empress demanding that her subject obeys her.

"Not now. Who was the man who came in?"

"Not sure," she shrugs as if it is something unimportant but John can tell that she is still watching him out of all of her eye, corner and otherwise. "He came in twice, yesterday and the day before. Friday Rashida saw him, but he said yesterday that he would phone you instead."

"What did he look like?" John asks. He knows most of the Homeless Network on sight or description and it's most likely to be one of them.

"Tall, around fifty, hair that was like dull knives. He looked a bit like the brute Armstrong. Oh," Mira smiles at him, suddenly happy. It is one of the things that he likes about her, her ability to throw away whatever dark thoughts suddenly cloud her mind. "Mary says that he's been properly charged and stripped of his job. He's going on trial."

That is good news, though John dreads being called as witness, which is inevitable.

"Did the man leave a name?" He already has a good idea of who it is. Either way, this has gone on too long.

"No, it was weird." Mira goes through to the waiting room, flips up the pad she uses to take telephone messages. "He left a number. Ten-oh-eight-oh-nine. Does that mean something?"

John feels his blood run cold, the confirmation of his suspicions. "Yes. I know who it is."

"What does it mean?"

"Nothing. It means nothing." He half turns his back to her, not meaning to be rude but wanting to cut off this line of enquiry straight away.

"It's not a phone number," Mira continues.

"It's a date," John says, uncapping his pen. No matter how much he hates some technology, paperwork is somehow still worse. Perhaps because it is a physical entity of its own. "Tenth of August, two thousand and nine. He'll be in contact soon enough. It will be fine."

He waits until she leaves the room before he admits to himself that it really probably won't.

Mira sees him coming through the door and knows exactly who he is. It is obvious. She's never forgotten him. It's a bit hard too, no matter how many years have passed since he sat at their dinner table after handing over her mother's strings of gold that afternoon. She had been so grateful that Sherlock Holmes existed then, but she is more grateful now.

Although she is furious too. Who is he to walk through the door like nothing has happened when he has left Doctor Watson behind all these years? He hasn't had to see the man every day, and Doctor Watson had said, on that awful night when Armstrong came, 'the right hand side of a dead man'. His favourite place in the world, the right hand side of this dead man who is neither spirit nor dead meat, but proper, animate, live flesh moving and talking and thinking and right in this room.

She finds her feet moving before she is conscious of the fact. Sherlock Holmes is tall and thin and is not wearing the long coat that she remembers he had treated better than himself. Her hand stings red as she slaps him round the face, the snap loud in the room.

"Miss Husay," he says, still composed, but automatically cradling his cheek. She can't see trail a of blood starting down his face, like red tears that don't originate from his eyes and he is lucky because she is right handed, her engagement ring would have caught him on the ridiculous cheek bone. Gold of the low purity that she and Michael can afford is harder than flesh.

She ignores him and marches back to the desk. The waiting room is, for once, empty. Mira doesn't think that she should call Doctor Watson down, he doesn't deserve to see him, but Doctor Watson has been so sad and lonely that once, after he had been arrested by Armstrong and after she had handed over her phone to the Umbrella Man and after she had gone straight to Michael's, she cried for him, because he wasn't going to. Someone, she had decided, should cry for the injustices that Doctor Watson faced, and if it wasn't him, it would be her. Sherlock Holmes showing up is righting one of the injustices, so she will call Doctor Watson down and leave them alone for few minutes.

"You idiot," Doctor Watson says, when he sees Mr Holmes. It's not the reaction that she was expecting, but it's something. "I thought that you weren't going to leave the house. I'll be home in an hour or so."

"I had to talk to Wiggins," Mr Holmes says, pacing back and forth. "She had some information about Moran. He's in London. He's the one who killed Ronald Adair."

"Hang on." Mira peaks through the crack between the frame and the slightly open door as Doctor Watson gets right in Mr Holmes' path, stops him pacing and holds onto his upper arms. She watches something cross his face, something that she has not idea of how to categorize and wants to romanticise, but knows that doing so will cheapen whatever the two men have that is strong enough to survive death. It is something very big and very good and occasionally very sad. That was in an episode of Doctor Who years back. It seems apt now. "Does Lestrade know that you're on the case?"

"Of course not. But I've solved it from the newspapers. The only thing that isn't obvious is the murder weapon but even that I know is some kind of modified rifle." A twitch of a smile on Mr Holmes' face and it is like a picture come to life, the two of them.

"Air rifle," Doctor Watson says, and moves to step away. Mr Holmes doesn't let him, hands coming up so they are both holding on to the other's elbows, forehead to forehead. "That was Moran's speciality when I was posted with him. He was always mucking around with it. Sherlock, I need to finish up the paperwork. There are no more appointments tonight."

Mr Holmes steps back and turns to look at the children's paintings on the blue wall, at the one of Doctor Watson. "I'll be there then. Mycroft may also be there when you get back; I have things to discuss with him."

"What's mine is yours, like usual." There is a strain of a vow in those words, Mira thinks. Despite the uncomfortable tension that dances between them, the both of them slightly unsure of the other, despite the fact that she has only ever known the two of them without the other, and Doctor Watson longer, imagining them apart now seems wrong. "Go home, you clot," Doctor Watson says.

"To Montague Street?"

"Of course." Something flashes across Mr Holmes' face, but it is gone fast enough that Mira can't identify it. Doctor Watson can.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing." Mr Holmes steps away with no fanfare, just easy movement between the two of them.

"Sherlock…"

"Really, John, it's nothing. I shall see you in an hour." He disappears into the corridor towards the back alley.

"Closing early tonight then?" she asks as Doctor Watson comes into the kitchen five minutes later with his empty mug.

Doctor Watson stands by the sink and rinses the mug, water running smooth and sounding hollow on the metal bowl of the sink. "What? I don't know."

"You might as well. No more appointments and everybody knows your phone number. How long has he been back?"

"Who, Sherlock?"

"No, Elton John. Of course Sherlock Holmes."

"Last night. Since last night." That explains why he has been so distracted all day then. There is a small bleep as a phone goes in the room. They both have the same text alert; it has caused some confusion in the past. "That's me," Doctor Watson says and checks the screen before locking it and putting it back in his pocket. "Closing early then," he says, and something is slightly off, something is wrong.

"What is it?" she asks.

"Nothing." He looks at her, waiting for her to say something else. "I'm nearly finished here. You can go when you're ready. Really, Mira, it's nothing."

It's only when she's halfway down the street that she realises that it's the exact same turn of phrase that Mr Holmes had used.

Greg Lestrade looks once, and looks again. He very carefully thinks about whether he has had a drink tonight. The answer is no.

He looks again. Sherlock Holmes is still sitting in his chair, is still tapping his fingers impatiently against the plastic in what he suspects is the fingering for a violin, is still there.

"Do something that I could never imagine Sherlock Holmes doing," he demands, and runs a hand through his hair. Half the reason that it is grey is this… man. The other half is a genetic disposition but it's easier to blame…

"Greg," says Sherlock Holmes.

"You mad bastard," Greg gasps and can't help himself as he drags the younger man upwards into a hug. Sherlock stands awkwardly, vibrating restless and impatient in his arms until it's finished and then looks at him. It reminds Greg of a younger version, all bravado and hidden fear and loneliness.

"John hasn't come home."