John was walking on soft grass surrounded by thick fog. He couldn't see more than a metre in front of him. He couldn't hear his footsteps. For a long time he couldn't hear anything.

Then there were voices. Bizarrely, Mycroft's was first. Something about an injection. Murmuring of other voices—he couldn't hear them. Only Mycroft. He caught enough words to understand he was in a hospital. Coma, it seemed. And then there was Molly's voice. She was crying. And then Mary's, telling him everything would be ok. But where was Sherlock?

He ran, desperate to break through the fog, to see something, anything. He needed to wake up. Where was Sherlock? He needed to hear his voice. But there was nothing beyond the fog. Soft, damp grass and thick, grey fog. He had to try to get out. Why hadn't Sherlock come to see him? What if—But no. He couldn't consider the possibility.

It seemed like a year that it was just Mary's voice. She was telling him she loved him. He wished she would stop. He couldn't hear the entirety of what she was saying but certain sentences came through clearly.

"You can come home with me after all of this is over. This is Sherlock's fault."

Like hell, John shouted back into the fog. He wished she would leave. He wished she would shut up.

And suddenly there was Sherlock's voice.

John halted in his tracks. It was like warmth filtering through the mist: invisible, intangible, but it surrounded him, comforting in a way nothing had been since the embrace of Sherlock's arms around him in the street before he'd closed his eyes.

At first he couldn't hear individual words, but then they came through in snatches. The word 'idiot,' and the word 'stupid.' John almost laughed, shaking his head in disbelief. He was probably lying in a coma somewhere and Sherlock was calling him an idiot. It figured.

A full sentence: "John, I'm sorry."

Don't be sorry, Sherlock. If I'm not dead now I know it's only because of you. Never be sorry. Goddamn it where are you?

John tried to walk toward the voice, but the sound was illusory. As soon as he was certain he heard it in one direction he was just as sure he'd heard it in another.

There were more words. Not as clear. Something about dishes and the sink… Why was Sherlock talking about dishes? Was his brain garbling the words? He strained to hear more.

"I need you."

I know, Sherlock, I know. I'm trying…

"I'm not as patient as you are."

Well give us a twatting minute!

John picked up his pace; he couldn't waste time wondering if he was going in the right direction. He just had to go. He had to get to Sherlock.

"…my inspiration…you've saved my life…"

John couldn't believe his bad luck. Apparently there were two times Sherlock was going to admit to John that he admired him: at his wedding and at his deathbed and now he was missing half of it.

"I need you to be awake…"

I wouldn't mind it either right about bloody now, John thought, turning in circles as he walked to try to get a glimpse of anything through the fog that could ground him.

"…because you are everything to me."

John stopped dead.

The hesitancy, the uncertainty, the sincerity in the voice he'd come to need as much as its owner made him sink to his knees. Sherlock was here; he must be standing right beside him. But John was nowhere. It was like a nightmare where he was right where he needed to be but couldn't get there. Lost at home. Desperate to find the person whose voice was all around him. He was with Sherlock now and there was no way to get to him. He wanted to scream in frustration.

John shoved his hands back into his hair. He breathed, trying to ground himself as the oppressive fog threatened to envelop him. There was a light wind rippling the grass beneath his knees. He couldn't feel it. He couldn't feel anything. He wasn't real, he was a shadow of a dream. There was nothing to keep the fog from flowing through him, erasing him. He was numb. He needed something to stabilise him, something that could prove he had solid form: mass and weight—something that could keep him whole even as his skin turned translucent and felt himself disappearing, becoming nothing more than the fog itself.

And suddenly there was heat around his left wrist. A glowing band of heat and soft pressure that shot feeling up his arm and through to his chest. Real heat, not dream mimicry, but real sensation. It flooded through him, rushing solidity and presence into what had been fading. He held his arm out in front of him. There was nothing there, but it felt like someone had wrapped an electric warmer around it. Was it possible—was Sherlock holding his wrist?

Mycroft had almost turned to leave when Sherlock shifted, raising his head and sitting up. Mycroft waited for him to speak, but he didn't. Evidently unaware of Mycroft's presence he leaned his weight onto John's bed and, to Mycroft's surprise, crawled onto it.

Mycroft took a step forward to stop his brother—coma patients were not to be climbed on—but he wavered as Sherlock settled down without knocking out the IV or disturbing any of the equipment. He lay on his side with his head on John's chest and his arm around him. Was Sherlock awake? He couldn't be, or he would have noticed his presence in the room.

Seeing his brother like this—trying to hold on to John—he felt the familiar constriction in his chest. It was the same one he'd felt in the helicopter, when Sherlock shot Magnussen in the head. Magnussen, Mycroft's lips tightened at the memory. Magnussen had known weaknesses, pressure points, better than anyone—he'd known Sherlock was his.

Briefly he wondered which would be crueller for his brother, if John died or if John woke up. Because if John woke up they would have to fall back into pretending, if either man wanted to maintain any shred of his self-constructed identity: John as staunchly heterosexual and Sherlock as superior to love and contemptuous of all forms of affection. Looking at Sherlock curled over John's body Mycroft sincerely doubted that any such pretence would remain a possibility if John woke up. And what then? Would his haughty brother really condescend to a physical relationship? Or having shattered that delicate friendship—the love they shared so precariously balanced between platonic and not—would they have to say goodbye, knowing self-deception would no longer be an option?

It was a headache Mycroft didn't have time for. Normally he wouldn't care—normally being forced to consider his brother's sexuality would have made him rather cross (in fact it was a blessing that heretofore there hadn't been one to consider)—but this was different.

With John Watson, he thought wearily as he pressed the button for the nurse, it appeared everything was different.

Heat was radiating around his wrist as John stood and walked forward. The constant pressure and warmth on his skin was combating the numbness that had nearly overwhelmed him before. The fog swirled and parted as he moved. He held his left wrist where he thought Sherlock's hand was.

It was a while before he noticed the fog was thinning. He could see stretches of grass farther and farther out in front of him and finally there was a dark shape outlined in the distance. A house? John picked up his pace to a jog. Where was he? What was this? It was the first concrete image he'd seen since he shut his eyes in the street with Sherlock—a blur of a memory—how long ago? Days? Weeks?

As he neared the front garden he recognised with a start that it was Sherlock's parents' house. The home the detective had grown up in and the place John had been invited to one memorable Christmas which had begun with festive nibbles and ended with Sherlock shooting a newspaper tycoon in the head.

But the house was different than when he'd seen it last. The windows were black. There was no doorknob on the front door. John walked the perimeter of the house looking for a way in. But when he reached the back garden he understood that what his mind wanted him to see was not inside the house.

There was a child kneeling in the grass with his back to him. John approached and the boy looked up. John's breath caught in his chest. It was Sherlock. He couldn't be more than ten years old, but with his shock of black, curly hair, his pale skin, his thin, wiry frame, and his eyes—there was no mistaking those irises. He was smartly dressed—dark trousers, white collared shirt under dark blue, cashmere jumper. His sleeves were pushed back to his elbows, shirt folded back over the cuffs of the jumper. John tried not to scoff—of course a ten-year-old Sherlock would already have a sense of fashion.

The boy was not surprised to see him there, and he returned his attention to what looked like a pen in his hand. He pointed it toward a line of ants on the ground. He pressed a button and trained the thin laser light on a specific ant until it burned. He did the same to the next.

"They're so stupid," Sherlock remarked.

John knelt beside him as ant after ant crumpled under the heat.

He placed his hand gently on the boy's arm, moving the light away.

Sherlock looked at him curiously.

"Can I see it?" John indicated the laser pointer.

Sherlock passed it to him.

"Where did you get this?" John turned it over in his hands.

"Mycroft."

Leave it to Mycroft to give young Sherlock illegal 'toys' to play with. The strength of the laser was undoubtedly higher than regulations allowed.

When John looked up he was surprised to see Sherlock regarding him carefully.

"John, where are you going?"

"I'm not going anywhere," John said, handing Sherlock back his laser and standing. "There's nowhere to go in this fog."

Sherlock looked up at him. "You're going that way." He pointed to a fence John hadn't noticed before. The gate was open and there was a narrow path through the grass leading out beyond the garden.

Curious, John walked to the gate. He looked out to where the path disappeared into the fog. He felt a pull from within him. Sherlock was right. He was supposed to go this way.

"Don't go." John was startled to find Sherlock standing at his side. It was a strange experience to look down at that head of curls. The child took hold of his left hand.

"I think I'm supposed to."

As John looked out the fog lifted enough to see farther down the path. There was ocean that way. He could see the shore. Soft sand; the steady pull of the waves. It was nice there, he knew somehow. Everything would be all right if he walked that way.

"I know." There was sadness in the child's voice. "I know that's how it works. Everything I love will leave me. I know."

John raised his eyebrows. It was a shockingly cynical view for a child, even if the child was Sherlock. But then something else occurred to him.

John blinked down in surprise. "Are you saying you love me?"

"I should have thought it was obvious."

"It's not obvious to me."

"That's because you're an idiot."

John gave a small smile at the familiarity of the conceited words in the young voice.

Sherlock looked back at the ground. "But erm," he hesitated, hand shifting anxiously in John's, "it could also be because it's probably not enough. They said I'm a sociopath. It made mummy cry. They said sociopaths don't love as much as other people, but, John"—Sherlock looked up at him with large eyes—"I love you more than anything."

Something clenched tight in John's chest, making it nearly impossible to breathe let alone speak.

"I know you're supposed to leave now because I told you that, but"—Sherlock's smaller hand tightened around John's—"but please don't go! I'm sorry if it's not enough but it's everything I have. Please, stay with me."

John knelt down and held the boy's arms. There were tears in Sherlock's eyes but he looked at John steadily.

"Sherlock," John said, never more certain about anything in his entire life, "I will never leave you. Not if I have a choice."

Sherlock stepped forward, putting his arms around John's neck and burying his face into his shoulder. John wrapped one arm around the boy's thin frame and held the back of his head with his other hand.

"Don't go, don't go, please don't go," Sherlock was murmuring into his jacket.

"I'll stay," John said softly. "I love you."

The warmth of Sherlock's body spread through John's limbs, thawing his numb skin. He felt his nerves prickling like pins and needles, like waking up. He held tightly to Sherlock as the fog dissipated and the garden began to vanish. He would have been falling, he knew, if it weren't for the weight of Sherlock in his arms, anchoring him while the chaos of the in-between rushed around them.

His eyes were heavy but he was prying them up. Blurring, blurry, sharpening image: Sherlock. Not a child. Sherlock as he'd left him in the street. His eyes were shut but his arm was around him and John's hand was tangled in the back of his hair, like it had been a moment ago in the garden. The warmth he'd felt had been real. Sherlock was here, lying in his hospital bed, holding him, radiating body heat.

Sherlock, he tried to say. His mouth didn't work. He moved his hand through Sherlock's hair but Sherlock didn't wake. He tightened his grip on John, pulling him closer.

It was the only moment they had.

Sound rushed in on what had been perfect silence. Machines humming. Beeping. Voices. Squeaking wheels. Hands descended on them.

Sherlock was pulled away and John found himself unable to protest. There were people around him fussing over monitors and Sherlock was gone.

"We'll have to move him for rounds in an hour," the nurse said to Mycroft, looking sceptically at the extra body in her patient's bed.

"Let him stay until then."

"I suppose we could—Wait, is that—"

Mycroft had seen it too. They rushed to John's side as he shifted, lifting his arm to embrace the man curled around him.

"He's up," the nurse said urgently. "We have to examine him"—she jabbed her finger at Sherlock—"and we need this guy gone."

She pressed a button and soon there were more nurses in the room followed by John's doctor. Mycroft murmured instructions to one who grudgingly agreed. They were not in normal hospital, and the staff were required to follow orders by those who outranked them. Mycroft outranked most people.

The nurse lifted Sherlock's arm and gave him another injection just as he began to wake. His eyes dropped shut again and the nurses pulled him out of John's arms and onto a gurney that had been brought in for the purpose. The doctor needed the space to work, to stabilise John, and this was not the time or place for Sherlock's antics.

Mycroft sent a text and a man met them in the lobby.

"You requested a driver, sir?"

"Yes, he needs a lift home," he replied, indicating Sherlock's unconscious form on the gurney. "See that he gets there."

"Yes, sir."

"You have the resources to move him? I'm afraid he won't be much help."

"My partner's in the car. It won't be a problem, sir."

The on-call nightshift men of MI6 were no strangers to unusual requests at all odd hours of the night. They were unfailingly reliable and incorruptibly trustworthy. This would not be the first or last time they moved dead weight.

Mycroft nodded. "221B, Baker Street."