John was standing in the doorway with luggage; it didn't require Holmes-level deduction skills to work out what had happened.

But how serious was the separation? The presence of two suitcases—overstuffed, which contrasted with Sherlock's knowledge of John to be a light packer—negated any impulsive, storm-out scenario. Time and effort had been spent packing. Sherlock didn't need to open the bags to know they'd been packed with military fastidiousness: shirts folded crisply and pants rolled tightly to maximise space. John clearly meant to avoid having to go back to Mary's for as long as possible. Very serious.

Sherlock stood stock-still in the living room facing the doorway. In the number of seconds it took him to understand the gravity of the situation he felt the earth shift under him. New results from an old experiment. Fascinating. Unexpected. Everything he'd been prepared for, the arrangements he'd personally influenced, had switched completely and without warning.

Or perhaps not entirely without warning. Sherlock, considering his specific skillset, would have been hard-pressed not to notice John's weight loss, his stress levels, his exhaustion from sleepless nights over the past year and especially in the last few months. The signs of an unhappy marriage were all there. Sherlock had just preferred not to officially file them, because John was supposed to be with Mary. There had been a wedding. He'd said goodbye to his flatmate and embraced Mr. and Mrs. Watson. He'd known it was for the best, and all evidence to the contrary had been ignored. Yet here John was, standing in the doorway with suitcases and looking at Sherlock and being entirely un-ignorable.

Sherlock stood with his arms at his sides, violin and bow dangling from either hand, quite speechless.

From his position in the doorway it seemed clear to John that Sherlock was not going to respond anytime soon. Taking advantage of his friend's paralysis he said, "Ok, I'll just come in then."

John grinned despite his exhaustion. He was rarely able to surprise Sherlock and he had to appreciate the moment. He dropped his bags beside his armchair and flopped down into the seat. He drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair and looked curiously up at Sherlock. "Are you all right?"

Sherlock blinked, refocusing on John. He sucked in a breath and said, "Fine, erm… Yes, I'm fine. Erm… Something to drink? Tea?"

John quirked his eyebrow. "You were dead set against tea a minute ago."

"That was more about Mrs. Hudson, less about tea."

"I'd have something stronger, if you've got it."

"Whisky and soda?"

"Is it possible you have soda here?"

"Highly improbable."

"Whisky neat's fine."

"Right."

John watched as Sherlock set the violin down on a stack of papers and wandered off behind him into the kitchen. He looked around the room and felt a pang of distress at the thought of all the cleaning he'd have to do. But beneath the haphazard hills of books and papers and dishes, it was still 221B.

John gripped the arms of the chair, his chair. Sherlock had moved it away after the wedding, and then moved it back after Mary shot him. Sherlock had convinced John to forgive Mary, but the chair had stayed. Was it an invitation for him to come back? A sign that Sherlock knew he would come back? John dismissed that train of thought. There was no understanding Sherlock's motives until he explained them. No use guessing.

John looked around the room and registered its welcome familiarities. The yellow smiley face spray painted over the wallpaper, the bullet holes in the wall, the bison skull (still wearing the old set of headphones John had clapped over its 'ears' after they'd broken), Sherlock's music stand, the harpoon, Sherlock's coat thrown carelessly over the couch… The closeness of the room, with its clashing wallpaper and mismatched furniture, seemed a world away from the understated colour coordination and open space of the Kensington terraced house he'd just left. John let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. If he'd had any misgivings about coming back here he knew now that he'd made the right decision. He was home.

Sherlock returned with the drink and held it out toward John's left hand. John's eyes flickered in surprise as he took the glass. It was a small detail, but he'd forgotten that this was a habit of Sherlock's. Most people handed things with an unconscious preference toward the right hand, but Sherlock always, even naturally, placed things in John's left hand. John knew this was simply a byproduct of Sherlock's vast memory for detail, but considering he never even remembered Lestrade's first name it was really quite… nice.

More composed now, Sherlock sat down across from John and regarded him thoughtfully. John knew better than to expect Sherlock to ask why he was there or what had happened. That Sherlock already knew most of the things that happened to John, by reading them on his clothes or face, was an understood part of being Sherlock's friend.

"I suppose," Sherlock said, "that you've made up your mind about this, and I won't be able to persuade you otherwise?"

"That's right," John said. He looked hard back at Sherlock. He had made the decision to leave Mary painstakingly, not impulsively, and he was not going to be manipulated out of it. Not this time.

"She made you happy," Sherlock said, his voice just detectably softer. "I observed it plainly."

John sighed. It had been a long day and he wasn't in the mood to talk about it. But considering he'd just barged in on Sherlock in the middle of the night, he figured he owed him an explanation.

"That was before," John said, looking at his whisky. The honey brown colour provided a soothing contrast to the sharp scrutiny of Sherlock's eyes.

Those incredibly distinctive eyes were as exceptional and enigmatic as their owner. Arresting verdigris tinged with darker green in some areas, greyer blue in others, and spots of bright gold flecked throughout. As a doctor John recognised this as partial heterochromia iridis, a not entirely uncommon condition which causes multicoloured irises. But as a person who was often on the receiving end of Sherlock's renowned Piercing Stare it was difficult not to be mystified by the colours. The irises seemed to have changed every time he looked at them, like something in a dream that can't be held by memory; something fluid and shifting. It was frustrating. Several times John had even missed part of what Sherlock was lecturing (or shouting) about due to his suspicion that Sherlock's eyes had changed again.

But there was always the flaw. In Sherlock's kaleidoscopic eyes only the flaw remained constant. In his right iris, just above the pupil, was a single dot of dark brown amid the bright sky colours. Beautiful and flawed. John would say Sherlock's eyes were a perfect reflection of his mind, but that was the sort of writerly romanticism that Sherlock so often scoffed at while reading his blog.

Nevertheless, despite Sherlock's distaste for the finer sophistications of literary art, his body insisted on being an excellent metaphor for his disdain of the ordinary. His porcelain pale skin, his shock of black, loosely curled hair, his height, his slender frame, those bloody cheekbones… Everything about his appearance was striking; poetic, John would even say just to watch Sherlock scowl. And of course he couldn't have just one eye colour; he had to have five, that poncey git.

So John continued to avoid Sherlock's searching gaze as he explained, "I haven't been happy with her since… For a long time."

Sherlock had his elbows on the arms of his chair and his fingers intertwined. He didn't speak, so John continued. "Things didn't get better," he said. "I thought things would get better but they didn't." John finally lifted his eyes and met Sherlock's. He needed Sherlock to understand this, and not to argue with him. "I don't want to—I can't—live like that anymore. It's over. So, if you've got used to having the flat to yourself I can rent my own place, but either way it's done, and I'm not going back."

"No," Sherlock said abruptly, sitting up in his chair.

John gave Sherlock an exasperated look. If Sherlock was intent on burying him under an avalanche of arguments about why he was wrong and why he needed to patch things up with Mary, he could at least wait until morning.

But to John's surprise Sherlock continued in a rush of words, "No, I haven't got used to living here alone. Everything's a mess, there's no room for my microscopes, the fridge is only suitable for cannibals, and my debit card doesn't work when you're not here."

John made an effort not to laugh. Instead he raised an eyebrow sceptically and said, "So what I'm hearing is you need a maid. And possibly an accountant."

Sherlock sighed dramatically and flopped backward in his chair, tilting his head back. "And…" he said slowly. John waited. "And my skull's become boring."

"Oh really?"

"Yes," Sherlock addressed the ceiling. "Its conversational skills have declined alarmingly. I'd say Alzheimer's if it weren't already dead."

"Well, I'm sorry to hear that," John said. "It was a good friend of yours."

Sherlock sat up again. "Stay," he said, possibly more forcefully than he meant to, because he cleared his throat and tried again. "Erm, please stay." He looked hard at John, who shifted under the intensity of his stare.

"All right," John said, taken aback by Sherlock's sudden sincerity. "So it's settled then. I'll move back in." John finished the last swallow of whisky and set the glass down. He checked his watch; it was past eleven already. "I'll just go unpack." He stood up, and slung the duffel bag over his shoulder.

"John," Sherlock said from his chair.

John turned back.

"You know what I didn't like about Mary?"

"What was that?"

"When she shot me."

John gave a short laugh. "Yeah, in the end I didn't like that either."

Sherlock grinned, "Welcome back."

It was well after midnight and Sherlock was pacing the living room again. One problem solved another arises. Of course he was glad John was back; he hadn't wanted him to leave in the first place. But it was more complicated now. When Sherlock had left London, and John had found Mary, he had reasoned that Mary was what John needed. She was John's chance for at least half a normal life. True, she'd turned out to be a former assassin, but total normalcy had never been John's cup of tea anyway.

Sherlock had figured that as a successfully (at least for the most part) retired assassin, Mary would be able to balance him. John would continue to work on cases with Sherlock, and the rest of the time Mary would do the mundane things with John that Sherlock couldn't—like going to the cinema, and cooking dinners, and seeing people in social situations. Sex too, he supposed, due to his own aversion to it and John's rather frequent yelling about not being gay.

So Sherlock had accepted the marriage as necessary, although he didn't like it. He didn't like it because it meant that John wouldn't be around all the time to talk to him and to wear jumpers and drink tea and make him laugh about things it never would have occurred to him to laugh about. In his entire life he'd never found anyone's company tolerable, let alone desirable, until John. But he knew he couldn't keep him. He had nothing to offer John besides cases and crime and danger, and while this had always been enough for him, he knew John needed more.

As a goldfish, despite being a highly superior—if not the most superior—goldfish, John would want to do goldfish things sometimes. Sherlock couldn't ask John to forever forego pub nights in favour of crouching in dark alleyways, trade movies for morgues, and love for labs.

He couldn't ask him… But what if John chose it without being asked? He was here now, wasn't he? Was it possible… Could it be that John had decided that he, Sherlock Holmes—a high-functioning sociopath who cared for John more than anything, in his own disordered and necessarily limited way—was enough after all?

But no… What about when John eventually tired of Sherlock's exhausting, morbid work, and then finally of Sherlock himself? Mary had been John's best life raft. She had been John's way out, his way back to a safe, normal life where people didn't kidnap him and strap bombs to him, or stick needles in his neck and try to burn him alive. But now John had cut the life raft loose.

As self-absorbed as he might be, he was not oblivious to the fact that John sacrificed a lot for him. So regardless of his own feelings about giving up the only person he'd ever truly cared for, he had promised himself he wouldn't wreck the marriage, and indeed vowed to John that he'd do everything in his power to support it. This was why he'd convinced John to forgive Mary after she'd shot him (though he hadn't been as keen on her himself after that). And why he'd ignored the signs of the declining marriage afterward. He couldn't acknowledge being such a consistently destructive force in John's life.

But despite everything, here John was anyway. For John to leave Mary—for him to have known the potential for a different life and still to choose to come back to Baker Street—on his own volition, actually despite Sherlock's efforts, was exactly what Sherlock hadn't dared to hope for.

And yet… Sherlock stopped pacing and leaned back against the doorjamb between the living room and kitchen. He folded his arms and looked down at the floor, black hair falling into his eyes (remember to get haircut) …And yet, just because he was happy about it didn't mean John would be. It was another thing in John's life wrecked and Sherlock had no idea what to do about it.

John and Sherlock were sitting on the curb outside of St. Barts hospital and John was only vaguely aware he was dreaming.

"There are exactly twelve different types of perfume with the same ash quality," Sherlock was saying. "That's why I can always tell."

John suddenly saw that blood was running down the side of Sherlock's face and his hair was wet with it. He hadn't noticed before.

"Criminals are so obvious these days," Sherlock continued. "All you have to do is check the fibres in their socks. That's what the police never get. It's the socks."

"Sherlock," John said, and Sherlock stopped and turned to look at him. Bright eyes, brighter than anything else around them. Blood ran down his neck staining his white shirt. "God, why do you wear such expensive shirts all the time? It's not practical in your line of work. Look this one is ruined, just like all the others—"

"I don't care about my shirts."

"Well, I do."

"Why?"

"Because they're nice and you don't even try to take care of them."

"Would it make you happy if I tried to take better care of them?"

"Yes," John said firmly. "It would."

Sherlock shrugged. "Then I'll try."

"And what about this?" John asked touching Sherlock's face, smearing some of the blood there. "You can't go to Molly's party looking like that."

"I always look like this."

"No you don't."

"Yes I do."

"You do not."

"I do."

A pause.

"So, you'll have to go without me." Sherlock said, looking out across the empty lot.

John shook his head. No. "But we already bought cake."

"It doesn't matter!" Sherlock suddenly turned and grabbed the lapels of John's jacket and his eyes turned grey. "It went out the window with the glasses and the flowers." John looked around and it was true. Shards and stems of shattered champagne glasses gleamed on the pavement around them. And flower petals, purple and yellow, were falling around them, settling lightly over the pieces of broken glass.

He reached out to take one of the petals but Sherlock caught his hand before he could touch it.

"Don't," he said. "It's still sharp."

John looked down at their hands in surprise. Sherlock didn't let go.

"What are we going to do about this mess?" John asked, looking around.

But Sherlock wasn't paying attention. A phone had materialised in the hand that wasn't gripping John's. "Excellent!" he shouted looking at the screen. And he started laughing.

He was laughing so genuinely that John couldn't help laughing too.

"What is it?" John finally gasped.

"Text from Lestrade." Sherlock's eyes flashed. "Murder socks."