Author's Note: I got a comment on this story on AO3 that I decided not respond to directly, but I did want to address it in some way on both sites. Don't go looking for it, I have deleted it for my mental health.

Four things:

1- If you don't like what I write, hit the back button, not the comment section.

2- I am not a machine where you put in what you want out of a fanfic and out pops a chapter. I am a human with thoughts and feelings and I would like to be treated as such.

3- I already get anxiety when I see I have comment on my stories, but it really hits my depression when I get comments like this. It makes me not want to share stories with people ever again. I'll get over it, I usually do, but I suffer, my family suffers, and my writing suffers, so please don't. I write for myself and share it in hopes you'll enjoy it as much as I did.

4- Molly absolutely is that bitch. Despite what she says about being in love with Sherlock, I'd say she hurts him more than any other character combined. She is not loyal and will turn on a dime. (see all of seasons 3 and 4 for reference.)

Also I have been able to determine how many chapters there will be. A grand total of five. The last chapter I have written and one more. I decided to add John and Sherlock coming out to John's army buddies. So that will be fun.

This chapter is wee bit long because this and the next chapter will be setting the next story in this series Catalyst. A Mystrade story. Hope you enjoy!

When John arrived at the Wainwright and Crow, Greg had already gotten a table and waved him over.

He pulled off his jacket and set it on the seat, then went to order his pint of beer. When he finally sat down, he let out the breath he didn't know he'd been keeping in his chest.

Greg raised an eyebrow. He looked his friend over with a cop's eye. "You do know the point of ducking out of post-case celebrations is to get more sleep not less, yeah?" He shook his head. "You look like shite."

John huffed out a laugh. "I live with a toddler, and Rosie doesn't help either."

"Sherlock at it again?" Greg asked with a grimace of sympathy.

"What's our favorite consulting detective done this time?" Mike asked.

John and Greg looked up at Mike and grinned. Once a week the three of them got together and swapped Sherlock stories. They wanted to form a club and have some sort of silly name, but they couldn't decide on one, or on who should be included.

Because while they did commiserate having the detective in their lives sometimes, their weekly meeting was actually about looking out for Sherlock. The three men represented an aspect of his life. John was home, Greg was cases, and Mike was Bart's hospital. And they did their best to make sure Sherlock didn't slide back into the mind fuck that was drugs.

Which meant they could have included Mrs Hudson, Molly or even Mycroft, as they all loved Sherlock, but having them there didn't seem right. Every time one or more of them were brought up in joining them, there was always a reason why they shouldn't. And after awhile, they just settled into their routine.

"Hey, Mike," Greg and John said greeting the new arrival.

Mike already had his pint in hand and slid into one of the remaining two chairs.

"So...spill," he said, shrugging out of his coat. "What did Sherlock do?

John looked down at his pint in absolute misery. "Nothing. It's everyone else."

Greg and Mike shared worried glances.

John caught their look and held up his hands. "Oh, hell no. If I get started, there's no telling how long we'll be here, and I have a daughter I would like to go home to some time tonight. You two start first."

Greg took a long draft of his beer. "I don't know what you want me to say, I saw your ugly mug yesterday."

"And what a case that was," John agreed. "Go on then, you can talk about that."

"You were there," he replied. "Why do I need to talk about something you were there for?"

"Mike wasn't," John reminded him.

Greg looked over at Mike, who was leaning his chin on both his hands and batting his eyelashes.

"Yeah, Greg," Mike teased. "I wasn't there. So go on then."

Greg laughed. He launched into the triple homicide with John adding in quips and phrases to enhance the telling of the story.

"...And then this plonker," he said, roughing John's shoulder up a bit, "decides he's going to turn down the prettiest constable in all of the Met."

"Oi!" John protested. "I didn't turn her down. She just got a hell of a lot less interested when I told her I had a kid. I don't know what she thought I was when she started flirting with me, but single dad was not it. She heard the word 'kid' and beat it."

Mike and Greg winced.

"I don't know how she missed it," Greg said. "It's not like everyone was hiding it from her."

John just shrugged.

"Speaking of her royal highness, how is your little bird?" Mike asked, wanting to change the topic.

"She's fine, had a grand day at the zoo with Molly and Mrs Hudson," John said bitterly. "Apparently she fell in love with the otters."

"Did you go with them?" Greg asked, his brow furrowed in confusion.

John scoffed, shaking his head. "She wasn't the problem." Greg opened his mouth to ask what had been on his mind since John had sat down, but the doctor cut him off. "Speaking of little ones, when are you and Sita going to start having children of your own? Rosie needs a play date." He bumped Mike in the shoulder.

His friend had gotten married about a year ago. Sita Manaj was an English-Pakistani researcher who had come to Bart's for a couple of months to teach a seminar to Mike's students two years ago. They hadn't dated for long when Mike popped the question. Happily, she said yes. John had been a groomsman.

Mike ducked his head to hide his blush, squirming in his seat. He bit his lip to keep from the happy news bubbling out of him.

John and Greg gasped and started to congratulate him.

"Shush!" Mike said, looking around. "We only found out yesterday. We haven't even told our families yet."

Both men tried to quiet down, but their sheer happiness for their friend caused them to giggle like school children.

Mike glared at them. "Seriously, what are you two, five?"

John tried to calm down, but made the mistake of looking at Greg and they both burst into giggles again. The third time they had broken down, Mike cracked and joined them in the happy giggles.

"You hoping for a boy or a girl?" Greg asked, once they got their breath back.

"I'm hoping for a healthy pregnancy and birth. I don't care which gender it is," Mike murmured.

John thumped him on the back. "I'm sure everything will go just fine."

Mike called for another round of drinks and took a large sip of beer. "I can't wait."

"You'll be a great dad," Greg insisted. Mike nodded. Then Greg rounded on John. "Right, don't think Mike's good news has gotten you out of telling us what's wrong. Now 'fess up."

John barked out a laugh. "Is that how you interrogate suspects? Because it's shit."

"Only bratty kids," Greg huffed.

John gasped in shock. "I'm not acting like a kid!"

Mike chuckled. "You kinda are, mate."

John shook his head. He briefly wondered if he should just refuse to tell them, but that would have proved Greg's point, so he told them everything that had happened since they wrapped up the case last night.

When he was done, he spread his hands out on the table, head down as he avoided their eyes. "I love Sherlock. I do. More than anyone I have ever met. But the reception has been cold at best and biphobic at the worst. Mrs Hudson seems happy enough, but I...I don't know."

He crossed his arms and buried his head in his arms, fighting back tears. He thought he had been all cried out, but just the act of telling Mike and Greg had reopened the wound.

Greg cleared his throat. "Well, I think I can speak for Mike here, when I say that your sexuality isn't a surprise." Mike nodded.

John raised his head. "Come again?"

Mike rolled his eyes. "Look, mate. We were at uni together and let me tell you, the boys got as many admiring looks from you as the girls did."

John straightened up and looked Mike square in the eyes. "I don't remember this."

Mike laughed. "Sure you do." He started listing people on his fingers. "There was Duncan Keller, the rugby captain, Ricky Esperanza, the dean of sciences' PA, Colin Drake, biochem, do I need to go on, because I can."

John shook his head. All right, Mike may have had a point. "In all fairness, Duncan was very fit."

Mike raised his hands. "That's your thing, mate. Not mine."

John turned to Greg. "He was very, very fit."

Greg just smiled at shook his head. He took a drink, smirking around his glass.

"So Mike's seen me ogle blokes, but how did you figure it out?" John asked point blank.

Greg raised an eyebrow. "Mate, you deny you were gay when people assumed you and Sherlock were a couple, but you never said you didn't have feelings for him."

"It was implied!" John protested.

"Was it?" Greg asked, slyly. "Or was it more that you were implying you liked both sexes?"

"Have you been speaking to my therapist?" John accused.

"No, just mine," he replied. "Also, John, I understand that you feel your friends and family are against your relationship with Sherlock, but let's be honest. It hasn't been the healthiest."

"That's not to say we're aren't happy for you!" Mike cut in before John could protest. "Because we are." Greg nodded. "We also know better than most that you have changed. Mycroft and Molly don't see you as often as we do, so they're a little behind the curve."

"I've seen a John Watson without a Sherlock Holmes and a Sherlock Holmes without a John Watson," Greg said. "And let me tell you, you two are miserable apart and effervescent when you're together. It's like your jagged pieces fit into his, and now that you two aren't denying your feelings for each other, everything else will just fall into place."

John felt this weight come off his shoulders. Greg was right. He had spent too much time fighting his feelings for Sherlock and didn't even know it. But now that it was out in the open, it felt...

True.

"Do you have any idea how hard it was watching you two make a rough go at something I saw from the beginning!" Mike shouted.

John burst out laughing. "You mean to tell me you were setting us up that first day?"

Mike just shook his head with a sigh.

"Hey, in my defense, he told me he was married to his work," John said, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck.

"He did what?" Greg asked. "When was this?"

"That first night with the cabbie. We had gone out to dinner to watch for the murderer and he told me that he was flattered by my interest, but that he was married to his work," he said, flinching under the intense glares of Mike and Greg.

"And that didn't clue you that you might not be straight?" Greg bit out, his voice high from the stress.

"I'm not saying it was the smartest thing I've ever done, but he did shoot me down," John defended.

"John..." Mike moaned. "On day one! And then he went out of his way to make you the most important person in his life."

John blushed. "I know," he whispered, hanging his head.

"Look, mate," Greg growled. "Anyone who went to your wedding could tell he was in love with you."

"Just another reason I didn't go," Mike murmured. "I don't think I could have watched Sherlock give you up in the most heartbreaking way imaginable."

"One of?" John asked, his brow furrowing. "I thought something came up?"

"Oh, it did," Mike said. "I just felt a palpable sense of relief that I couldn't begin to describe."

"Oh."

Greg stepped in as the air became thick with something like regret. "I think we're getting off the topic. We're happy for you. Yeah, it took you two awhile to get there. But you got there and I, for one, am over the moon."

Mike took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. "That's all I was trying say, mate. Honest. I wasn't trying to drag you for marrying Mary. I couldn't imagine what I would have done in your shoes. Plus, I love your little bird."

John smiled.

"And as far as Molly and Mycroft are concerned," Greg said, swirling the last of his pint, "maybe they'll come around, maybe they won't, but that's their loss, not yours. Don't take on guilt that isn't yours, you have enough to worry about."

"I think Mycroft will come around after he's had time to actually rest," John said, shaking his head. "I think he was coming from a place of no sleep, the weight of an empire, and a self-worth based around his intellect and not who he is as a person. That's a lot even for someone with a healthy work/life balance. And that man is a workaholic if ever there was one."

Greg frowned. "Why do I feel like there's something you're leaving out?"

"I can't break doctor/patient privilege, but I've recommended to his bosses and got permission to put him on leave," John replied, wearily.

"Come again?" Greg asked, his voice cracking. "Is he okay?"

"He's fine," John assured him. "He just needs some rest is all. And if you're so worried, call him."

"It's not that I'm worried per se..." Greg hedged.

"Uh huh," John said finally taking a sip of his pint and grimaced when the warm liquid hit his tongue. "Just like you weren't Mycroft's man at Baskerville."

"Ohh..." Mike said, his eyes lighting up. "That was just after your divorce, wasn't it?"

Greg looked back and forth between them, slightly panicked. "Now if you're insinuating–"

"I wasn't insinuating anything," John said, coolly. "Only, if Sherlock could tell I was bisexual, I can only imagine what he figured out about you."

Greg opened his mouth and then shut it as Mike gaped at him.

"Are you a second secret bisexual?" Mike asked, leaning forward eagerly. "You know I won't judge."

Greg looked at John hopelessly.

John raised an eyebrow. "I won't out you. If you want us to shut up, we will. But if not now, when?"

Greg downed the rest of his beer and set it down roughly on the table, not quite slamming it. "Fine. If tonight is the night for airing our secrets, then I am gay. I've known since I was fifteen."

"But I've only ever seen you with women," Mike pointed out, frowning.

Greg and Mike looked at John who, had merely nodded at Greg's pronouncement.

"Sherlock may have mentioned that Greg was so closeted that Aslan was old friend," John said with a grin.

Greg snorted. "King of Narnia, that's me," he said, running with the metaphor. "My parents were homophobic, and while being gay wasn't criminalized, that didn't stop cops from trumping up charges for other things. My dad wanted me to be a cop just like him. So it was either be a closeted cop or an openly gay dead man. I chose being a cop. I thought that I could change the culture from within." He snorted derisively. "I was always outspoken against that kind of policing, but there is only so much you can say before it's like pissing in the wind. You may have relieved yourself, but you got wet in the process."

"And it just drove you further away from coming out?" Mike guessed.

"I wanted to be a DCI. And I couldn't be gay and in charge of my own team," Greg confirmed. "I guess I could have come out after the divorce. I had been given the promotion just before that, but I couldn't do it. So I continued to date women. It was easier."

"Nah, mate," John said. "I get it. Coming out in your forties is hard, doing it in your fifties must be harder. But let me tell you something I've learned in all the years of Harry dragging me to every Pride festival ever. It's never too late to come out. I've seen men and women in their seventies and eighties that have come out because everyone who would have cared is dead. And they are so fucking happy."

Greg took a shaky breath. "How did we go from Mycroft being sick to me coming out of the closet?"

"Because it's obvious you have a thing for men in three-piece suits," John teased.

"Oi!" Greg protested. "Maybe it's just gingers!"

Mike and John laughed.

Mike turned serious. "Is there someone that will care? That you're gay,I mean."

Greg shrugged. He signaled the waitress for another round of beer. "Couldn't say."

"You don't have to come out to anyone you don't want to," John said, clapping Greg on the shoulder. "You could just come out to us if you wanted to and keep dating women. That's up to you. However, I think you'll be happier if you do come out to your friends and family."

Greg nodded.

Mike smiled. "Those that matter won't mind, and those don't mind, don't matter."

Greg scoffed. "Dr Seuss is great for children, but not so great for those of us with bosses and co-workers who could make your life miserable."

"Maybe what you need is a holiday to think about it," Mike replied, pulling out his wallet. He removed a card and wrote a number on the back. "This is my sister, Gabby, she's a travel agent. Give her a call, and let her help you take the time you need to think about what you really want from this life, yeah?"

Greg took the card and nodded. He put it in his coat pocket.

"It'll be good for you," John agreed. "Give you a chance to clear your head."

The rest of the night was spent in calmer waters with topics of football and rugby. Finally they broke up for the night.

"Thanks, guys," John said, as they stood on the pavement waiting for their cabs. "Sherlock was right, I needed this tonight."

"I did, too," Greg said. "It's like this weight is off my chest. Just having someone I can trust knowing who I am."

"We can be there for each other as we navigate this strange new world," John said.

"And I'm here if either of you needs to talk," Mike said, grabbing each of their shoulders. "Call me any time, I'll most likely be awake."

"You better get all the sleep you can before your little one comes," John said. "You won't get any after."

Greg's cab came first, and it was Mike and John left.

"He'll be okay," Mike told John. "And so will you. I can't imagine the turmoil the two of you are going to go through in your personal and professional lives, but know that I'm here for you."

John took a deep, shuddering breath. "Thanks, Mike. It means a lot coming from you."

"That's for you," Mike said, nodding to the cab that had just pulled up. "I'm happy for you and Sherlock. Honest."

John got in the cab and saw Mike watching his cab drive off. They watched each other until the cab turned the corner, John straining to see out his window. Once Mike was out of sight, John settled back into his seat.

He sighed happily. The future was a lot brighter than it had been when he left his flat for the evening. He really did have a lot to be grateful for.