A/N: Well. Here it is, lovelies. The final chapter. I'd just like to thank everyone one more time for reading/reviewing/favoriting/following. It means the world to me! I have something up my sleeve for a series of oneshots, so stick around me... in the meantime, please enjoy this!

John

I lay in bed and stare up at the gray expanse of ceiling above me. I'm on top of the sheets, the cool air wafting over me, and they're taut beneath my back as I try to relax the stiff set of my shoulders.

I don't know how long I've been laying here in the dark, waiting for sleep to claim me and trying to force images of him out of my head.

Sherlock. He's alive. He's come back home to me, just like I've been asking him to on paper every day since he left. And I just beat him up and told him to go away again.

Forever.

(A feeling, deep inside my core, like something's been ripped out and stepped on and put back in again upside down. Everything is off kilter, wrong. Missing. Even though he's here, even though he isn't dead.)

I sit up fast and swing my legs over the edge of the bed all in one movement. I don't know why, and I don't know how, but I realize this feeling is one of pure terror, ripping me apart and hollowing me out. And as I run through my flat (pull on shoes, slide parka over threadbare pyjamas, get keys off the hook by the door, trot down the sidewalk and slide into the car) I realize something else: it isn't me I'm scared for.

This drive across London is faster than anything legal, and it still doesn't feel fast enough. I'm not really sure where I'm headed, only that I need to find him and─and─

And what? This feeling of fear is strange and only half familiar. I haven't felt it (not for nine months, six days and seven─no ten─hours) in so long that it shocks me all over again, just like that first night. That night where I sealed my fate by aiming a pistol through layers of glass on a hunch and shooting a man that I wasn't even positive was guilty. I'm never scared for myself, not really. I've faced things that I've never told anyone about with a firm stance and an iron-banded heart and a fully loaded machine gun without breaking a sweat. But the minute somebody looks at him... the minute he takes a risk with just a bit too much chance of failure, or the minute someone's arm swings an inch too close...

Like mine did.

I growl something (just a noise. I'm past intelligible speech) and slam the flat of my palm down on the steering wheel. Horn sounds loudly, breaking the facade of silence that's been surrounding me and prompting a cacophony of my fellow drivers annoyed blasts back at me. I curse at them all, loudly and in the safety of my tiny car, and press down on the gas.

When I finally pull my car to a stop I glance out the window at where I am and start.

Bart's. I'm at Bart's-bloody-Hospital. Of course.

I haven't been back here one single time since Sherlock jumped. I don't want to be here now. But there's a twisted, honed-in part of me that's forcing my hand to put the car in park and forcing my eyes up the brown side of the building. Slowly, inch by inch, and finally they get to the top─

Mother of God.

I throw my door open and jump out into traffic. Leaving the door open, I take off at a run.

Sherlock

I sit on the edge of the roof of St. Bartholomew's Hospital.

My legs dangle over the side of the building, and occasionally my heels knock into the creamy stone, although never by my own doing. Shoulders: curled in and up. Arms: wrapped tightly about my ribs in the hope that maybe pressure will help abate the frankly crippling ache that the fresh injuries sustained there are providing. Eyes: closed. Head: tipped back, freezing air brushing across my features and stirring my hair.

Fact: I'm working up bravery.

I'm not the brave one. Never have been. When I was young it was Mycroft's criticism that kept me doing dangerous things on my own, that constant pushing and prodding propelling me to greater and greater things. (Never told him. Never will. Laugh a little, at that.) Then, when it became inconvenient for us to be in the same room together, it was drugs that blurred my sense of reality and kept me rash and daring. Finally, after both of these things, there was an infinitely better motivator in the form of a short army doctor with a limp and beautiful eyes and a way of looking at me that effectively banished all of my fear. He was the brave one. (John.) Not me.

There's no one now.

I feel something behind me. (Something that, against my will, slows my heart rate down by ten percent and somehow, inexplicably, eases the pain coursing through my bruised body.)

Tea. Jam. Sunlight. Rage.

I don't have to look up to know he's here. John.

I sit up straight and my eyes fly open. The height of my position hits me, suddenly, in the chest and my breath is gone. I remember the last time I was up here, John on the pavement looking up at me... John... John...

He doesn't say anything and neither do I. (Couldn't if I tried.) Feet: scuff on the dirty roof as he makes his way slowly─agonizingly slowly─closer to me. (He's treating me like a scared animal, he's treating me so... so─so─)

And John is inches from me now. (Brace myself for what comes next. A punch, a slap, two hands firmly against my shoulder blades and a sharp push over the edge.) His breathing is heavy and erratic and I ache when I feel it on the back of my neck, so close─

Two warm arms slide around my waist. His hands lock tightly together right under my ribs, warm and shaking, and his soft head falls forward and comes to rest right at the nape of my neck.

"Sherlock," he whispers. (Fact: he's crying. I can feel it on my cold skin. Warm as blood.) "Stay."

I try to say something, I really do, but there's a knot of something in my throat keeping any noise from escaping. I will do anything that you wish of me, John, I want to say. I will throw myself off of this building or I will turn myself back in to that prison in Serbia or I will come back home and curl up inside of you and let you cry against my neck. Instead I gag, and gasp, and for some reason pitch forward a little bit.

"No," he says. Voice: low, hoarse, tangled. He pulls back against me and I slide backward off of the edge that I'm sitting on and straight into his lap. (He must have dropped to his knees at some point to catch me. For some reason the realization makes me cry.) "Absolutely not. Not again. Never."

"I'm sorry," I say. (Crying makes the knot go away. While normally I would not endorse tears, in this situation it seems not only inevitable but necessary.) Bring my hands up to grip his and squeeze as tight as I possibly can. "I'm so, so sorry John, I'm sorry..."

"I know," he murmurs. "Jesus, Sherlock, I'm sorry too─"

"I couldn't tell you. They were going to shoot you, John, with a gun─"

"Sherlock." His voice is textured with layers of roughness, and it wraps around me and scrapes me gently. I want to shut up and to lean back (into him) but this is one of those times where my brain isn't in control of my body. I keep talking instead.

"And even though Moriarty is dead his network certainly isn't. It spans the globe like some sort of conflagration, and obviously I was the only candidate who could even possibly have a chance at putting it out. I would have done it any way, even if I didn't have a chance, you know that, John. No one would have been able to stop me if it meant I had a chance at keeping you safe─"

"Sherlock, shut your great, stupid, beautiful mouth and turn around," John hisses. Breath: whispering across my skin and raising all the hairs on my body, every last one, to a complete stand. I shiver, and do as he says (would do anything he says) turning somewhat awkwardly (somewhat painfully) in his lap. Face him now. Stretch legs out, curl them around his hips. Sink posterior between his knees.

I see him now, for the first time since he came up to this roof. His hair is in disarray (just how I like it) and his eyes are wide and glimmering (the color of a lake that I visited with my family one summer when I was five) and his mouth is shut very, very tightly.

"You don't have to..." I say, staring at it. My hands are shaking (and my heart is pounding) and so I act on impulse and slide them up under the edge of his neatly zipped parka. This, as it turns out, is a brilliant idea. (One of my best.) I let my fingers wander a bit, and they smooth the warm cotton of his pyjamas (he's wearing pyjamas) (he didn't even change into trousers to come find me) (I'm overwhelmed with feeling) before coming to rest against his waist.

John releases his lips from their toothy hold. They fall open. Bite marks around the inside that I want to touch. "I know," he says. He's missing every other breath, just like I am. Makes his cheeks a bit rosy. "I missed you so much," he whispers, and then he's leaning in─

And then he's kissing me.

It isn't the most glamorous kiss, as kisses go. (I've seen the films.) There is no great crescendo of a heartthrobbing sonata, no explosions of fireworks above our heads. I jump when he does it, and my eyes widen, and I accidentally pinch his waist between my long fingers. Our lips are sort of mashed together, closed (no tongue. This is real life, not my imagination) but still undeniably touching. My blogger brings his hands up and places them (feather-light) one on the back of my head (touches my hair with ghosted fingers) and one on the (left) side of my neck.

Something sudden and inferno-esque overtakes me. Fact: I want to wrap him up tightly and bring him closer. I want to open my mouth, let him touch me in the way that I've dreamed about since the moment I met him. I want to not be here, on the freezing rooftop at midnight in a chilly London fog; I want to be back home, back at our home, intertwined somewhere warm and safe where I can be Sherlock and he can be John (and he can kiss me better).

Instead, I settle simply for closing my eyes. Because it's enough that he's here with me. Not countries and oceans away. Not knocking me senseless (although if he wanted to, I would let him). And it's shocking enough that he's kissing me at all.

(Pressure lets up from John. I realize that I've been utterly unresponsive to this display, and hope he doesn't care.) (Because there is not a single cell in my body that isn't on fire.)

He finally pulls away: just enough that a few inches of cold air hover between us. John's eyes now: still deep, still glimmering, still blue, but now something else. Now deeper, fuller somehow, and I can see myself reflected in them. Two tiny Sherlocks, faces utterly pale. (Not like any lake at all any longer. More.)

John licks his lips. (I'm not a swearing man. But fuck.) The lines on his face are more prominent than when I left him.

"Also," he says, those eyes flickering down as I lick my own lips, tasting the bit of John Watson left there. "I love you."

There are two hundred and seventy three things that I wish to say in response to this. As they spin through my mind, I feel my heart swell (not possible, I know, but─) and I slide my arms further around him. Only words that come out of me, however, are, "But you aren't gay."

Stare: just for a seven seconds (didn't count, brain can just tell. We do this a lot) (stare, I mean) before he smiles at me. The sweetest, most valuable smile in existence; the one that pulls his eyebrows down a little on the outside edges, and makes his face go soft, and positively turns my internal organs to liquid. "Sherlock," he says softly. (Wonder if he can feel my pulse hammering in the side of my neck. Probably can. He's a doctor, after all.) Shakes his head a little. Not chidingly, not pityingly, but almost wonderingly. "I know now that that's the last thing that matters when it comes to you and me. I would love you if you were a man or a woman or neither or both or anything on this earth. I was... I was a git, all those times people thought they saw something between us and I told them there wasn't anything there. You," and he leans in, touches my forehead with his, and I smile, "are the exception to everything, and there's been something there since the moment I handed you my phone in that lab."

The atmosphere surrounding us is cold, but we've created a pocket of warmth that fills the tiny spaces our limbs don't touch and slowly works on expanding a few inches around our tangled bodies. I close my eyes again. (Too much. Just want to feel.) "I love you too," I say softly.

(And I'm beaming. The biggest, most stupid grin I've ever worn. Fact: feels unexpectedly good.)

"If I hadn't... If... I'm sorry. About earlier." Low. Hurting.

(Grin softens into a quieter smile.) I pull him in to me, and he rests his head the the hollow between my neck and my clavicle. "I'm sorry too. Again."

"You were doing what you had to do. I was being a cock." Laughs: one time, against my chest, sharper than any sound indicative of real amusement. "I shouldn't have gone ballistic on you like that. I shouldn't have questioned it. I should have just kissed you then." He raises his head and looks me in the eyes, and something about that probing glance makes me sweat. In a good way. "Hell, I should have just kissed you years ago and been done with all of this. I mean, if we could have been doing this─" he makes a quick gesture with his (right) hand in the space between us─ "the whole time..."

"Well, yes, that would... that would have been nice," I admit. (Would have been more than nice. Would have been perfect.) "But you didn't, and I'm back now, and we've both confessed, so do you think..." I trail off. I'm disconcerted to feel my skin heating up (from forehead to chest) as he gives me that look that I'm finding impossible to explain. (Hate not being able to explain things.)

"Do I think what?" He raises one eyebrow. (Oh.)

Scratch that. Back up, start again. "I'm going to kiss you."

(There are a million things we still have to talk about. My time away. Serbia. What he did while I was gone. Where the two of us are going to go from here. And there are a million things we still have to do, as well, getting off of this roof being a primary one, but somehow I think all of those can wait thirty seconds more. Or possibly a minute.)

A smile from John. Big, like mine, and sunny, and beautiful, and I'm home now. He leans back in. "Sounds fantastic─" he begins.

"Staggering," I correct as I lean in too.

"Staggering," he amends softly.

Fact: And so I do.