A/N Wow, thanks for all the reviews last chapter! :D

Thanks to Hummingbird1759, DandyLeonine, ThisDayWillPass, johnsarmylady, J C Cathrine, 265, Guest, Guest, And I Am Undone

Disclaimer I don't own Sherlock or any associated characters, events, etc.

XXXIII. Expectations

"What's he like to live with? Hellish, I imagine."

"I'm never bored.

"Good, that's good."

Mycroft's words, offered as they may have been in casual greeting, come back to John time and time again—every time that a new bullet hole appears in the wallpaper, every time a bubbling chemical experiment melts or burns another spot on the kitchen counter, every time that a stray limb falls out of the fridge when John opens it to check the milk supply. Never bored, that's for damn sure, but at the same time, he can't help but think that the elder Holmes was rather correct in his first assessment. Hellish. John's constantly on his toes, making sure that he doesn't irritate Sherlock even as the latter torments him to no end, aloof and crabby and impossible to understand as he is.

When Mike Stamford offered John a flat share, he wasn't expecting this. Perhaps he had envisioned a slightly younger man that he'd be living with, bright-eyed and excited for his life in London, with a mundane job—store clerk, valet, something like that—and a constant chain of girlfriends that kept him occupied, allowed him to stay appropriately distanced from John.

Instead, he received a thirty-five-year-old, self-proclaimed sociopath, the world's only consulting detective and Scotland Yard's greatest pest, a genius and an insensitive asshole and an utterly unique, intriguing, fascinating man who John would never imagine being able to complete so perfectly.

He does complete him, though—they complete each other, and even with the occasional fights and spats, with the inherent messiness of the flat and the exhaustion of the full-time job that John has somehow become part of, it's all worthwhile. Living with Sherlock Holmes is an adventure in and of itself, an adventure that John knows he wouldn't trade for the world.

And that was the cause of his words to Mycroft—I'm never bored—because, even if his lifestyle is by all definition hellish (dirty, tiring, sometimes tedious and always strenuous, mentally and on occasion physically), he can't deny that it's perfect for him. It's not something that he'd even think he'd want, but he knows now that he does want it, he wants it more than anything else, wants this occupation, this home, this landlady, this flatmate.

This flatmate, because Sherlock is the heart of it all. If John himself was the consulting detective, with no assistant—if he had 221b and Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade, it still wouldn't be the same. Sherlock's at the center of it all, he binds them all together, and he's really what John needs and lives for more than anything else. His esoteric mind, his beautiful eyes, his haunting violin melodies and his quick-spoken deductions—they all wind together, forming the utter essence of Sherlock, and that essence, above all else, is what perfects things.

I'm never bored, he told Mycroft, quietly and honestly.

John's never bored because he has Sherlock, and he'd never want anyone else.