Sherlock held on tight, his arms like vice grips, not frantic but looped around Mycroft's neck as if he might be sleeping in his arms. Mycroft held him closer, more an embrace than what would be efficient to simply hold him, shifting him so he could settle a hand on his back, so he could reach up and touch his curls. Sherlock buried his face into Mycroft's shoulder with a breath that was warm and soft even through the layers of fabric between them.
John was sitting on the ground with Harry. Flotation devices spilled out of the bag around him in a thousand different colours, he was laughing, trying to put an arm float onto his shoed foot. He giggled and kicked the thing away, knowing full well how to use it but finding it more amusing to let it bounce against the ground.
He glanced up at Sherlock, turning his whole body so he could stare up at them. At least, Mycroft had though that Sherlock would have been the focus of John's attention. Until understanding and old brown eyes met his. John smiled at him the way an adult might have, as if to say 'it's alright', a smile too subdued and almost sad to be on a child's face.
John held out a hand, fingers opening and closing and so very five years old.
Five years old and yet somehow 'I will take care of you.'
Mycroft pressed a kiss to Sherlock's hair to no effect but arms holding on tighter. He smiled just because he could, at the absurdity of it and laboriously lowered himself to the ground next to John, shifting Sherlock in his lap.
Of course John would take care of them.
John kicked out his feet in front of him, stretching out his legs to untie his shoes, small fingers plucking painstakingly at the knot until it gave and then, after contemplating the other shoe, grabbed it with both hands and pulled it free with a laugh and enough force to nearly knock him over. All the while he had been speaking, chatting on as he will just to make a silence friendly or to make someone smile, to make Sherlock smile.
Only Mycroft didn't understand what he was saying.
He had thought that the language of their babyhood had been lost, forgotten with age but here it was, flushed out and more incomprehensible than ever. Jerlock.
It had the same up's and down's and soothing happy cadence of Johns normal speech, if he could have ignored the sound, the words themselves, it would sound like nothing was amiss, it could have been a nonsense song if it wasn't so much more.
Mycroft didn't understand, but Sherlock did.
Sherlock finally, reluctantly, mid first shoe in John's time, unburied his face from Mycroft's chest and slid down to sit in his lap, watching John silently, curling Mycroft's arms around himself.
John gave no hint that he had seen Sherlock move, but ripping off his shoe? Their military efficient little boy letting his socks fall haphazardly around him in rolled up balls to grow damp in the air or lost forever? That was for Sherlock.
Sherlock did not laugh but when John crawled over to them he held out his legs obediently, letting John take off his shoes with more care than he had his own, carefully taking his socks and putting them into the corresponding shoe.
John stood up, barefoot and in his bright blue superman shirt and held out his hands for Sherlock to take. Mycroft could still feel Sherlock's heart beating, a little too fast, his body running a little too hot. Mycroft was almost afraid, for an instant so fast it did not have time to be put into words, that Sherlock would not reach out for him. But John was all blond hair and safe and standing there like a superhero. Sherlock never really had a choice at all.
John said something, a word, a phrase, and Sherlock let himself be pulled up, let the space between them close until John was close enough to hug him. Mycroft thought he might, it wouldn't be unusual for one of them to erase whatever melancholy had taken over the other with a kiss or a touch, but John just smiled and looked into his friends eyes.
"It is just a dream."
It wasn't just a dream though. It had been real and Mycroft had been the one to pick up the pieces.
He had been there, not standing there waiting for the ruble to be taken away and the crews to come back and report to him. He had been there, dragging pieces of roofing, cutting his hands and breathing in the dust of the crumpled building. He had been there to hear the cry go out when they found a body, an arm exposed under the rubble and half underwater.
He had been the person to jump into the water black with debris and pull them out.
He had been the first one to see the wound that in the next weeks would be touch and go with infection. A chest wound that would coat his hands with blood and later when everyone else was gone, he would realize that it had dried on his shirt rust brown. Because of course Sherlock Holmes and John Watson could not die like everyone else in the world with a whimper and a bow.
They would go down saving each other.
If the entire bomb had really been Semtex it would not have mattered who was in front of whom, it would not matter who got the shrapnel in the chest and who was protected.
But of course it had mattered.
It mattered now too.
Sherlock looked almost frightened, deadly quiet when the room picked up the echo of every step and breath they took.
John hesitated, but only for a second, an old fear. He took the hem of his shirt and pulled it up until the bold 'S' of superman was lost in scrunched blue cloth. He held the material in place, his small chest rising and falling before their eyes. Sherlock almost reached out, almost spoke, but it was enough. John took Sherlock's hand and put it over the place where there was no scar, not even the hint that once he might have died protecting Sherlock in a place like this.
John smiled and put his hand over Sherlock's, fingers splayed over his ribs.
"Just a dream."
Resilient. His boys were resilient. It was a fact; they were here in a swimming pool laughing, giggling and watching him with two sets of mischievous eyes.
Resilient, and now, hopefully, buoyant.
Very, very, buoyant.
Sherlock, reassured and hand in hand with John, had disposed of his shirt and grinned impishly whenever anyone asked about it. Somewhere wet then, obviously.
Mycroft had finally taken off his suit and was now…adequately attired for a pool. Mrs. Hudson had taken the liberty of acquiring a swimsuit for him. The boys loved it, laughing good naturedly and pointing at their own blue flowered shorts and then at him, delighted. It is amazing, the things you learn around children, the things you never wanted to learn.
Amazing that someone would have the…lovely…idea of making matching bathing suits for children and adults.
No one said anything about his weight, not even Sherlock who was too enamored with their matching outfits to do much else. But that was before Mycroft had insisted on the floats.
There were vests, tubes, water wings, and all manner of devices that looked like floating medieval torture devices with straps and buckles of neon green and florescent yellow.
Mycroft had imagined a child sized life preserver and arm floats and one adult per child, holding them continuously, at the very minimum. At best he had imagined the floating swimsuits, so that even if Sherlock made a concerted and even brilliant effort at drowning himself it would at least take him a few minutes to manage the task.
Sherlock had apparently imagined rather less.
John let Harry put the arm floats on him, laughing as his arms bounced against his sides, upper arms encircled with bright red balloon 'waterwings'.
Sherlock pursed his lips, standing at the edge of the pool as Harry and John made their way into the water in the shallow end, Harry letting John kick at the water from her arms before lowering him further into it.
Mycroft picked the least garish of the floats and approached the little boy cautiously.
"Sherlock?"
Sherlock shook his head 'no', lips still pursed, eyes still watching the water, watching John and Harry.
Mycroft was only a few feet away when Sherlock turned to him.
"There is water everywhere isn't there?" He took a deep breath, eyes turning back to the water as if it might creep closer and steal him away. He looked very small against the dark blue of the deep water. "I have to learn."
"You do not have to if you don't want to. We can come back later."
Sherlock shook his head again and almost smiled when John called out to him and waved from the other end of the pool.
It was the way he said it that made Mycroft heart begin to race, like his words were a whisper to the water. And an echo from the past.
"Want to see how long I can hold my breath?"
Sherlock jumped into the water without looking back, with nothing keep him floating, white against dark blue and only air and water beneath him.
Mycroft yelled.
He was already in the air when Sherlock's splash swallowed him whole.
Mycroft was only underwater for the span of five terrible heartbeats thundering in his ears before Sherlock was in his arms, warm and so very fragile, and together they were breaking the surface of the water.
He was beyond words as he held Sherlock in his arms, drenched, his curls hanging in his face, coughing up the water he had swallowed, but smiling. He was shaking by the time Mycroft swum to where they could stand up, to where he could just hold him and not let go. Sherlock wrapped his arms around Mycroft's neck and laid his head on his chest blinking the water from his eyes.
Mycroft was still trying to find the words, to get his heartbeat to stop being louder than his mind, to determine which of them was shaking harder when Sherlock whispered against his chest.
"Just dreams."