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Sherlock is climbing up the stairs.
He is climbing up the stairs and John is right behind him, always right behind him, always steady, always solid, and Sherlock isn’t sure what he’s going to say to him when they get to the top. John has not said a word since the plane landed and Sherlock stood in the open doorway, looking out over the airfield, looking out over England, it’s good to be back.
He had thought it was goodbye and he had thought it was forever and he had choked on the words in the back of his throat and swallowed them down.
Sherlock is actually a girl’s name.
Sherlock is climbing up the stairs to 221B and he wishes this staircase would last forever so he wouldn’t have to turn around and look John in the face because he thinks, the way John looked when they got in Mycroft’s car together, he thinks John knew what he had meant.
John wasn’t supposed to know what Sherlock had meant.
Not then. Not now. Perhaps not ever.
I love you, I love you, I love you.
They’re climbing up the stairs and when they get to the sitting room Sherlock will sit in his chair, purse his lips behind his fingers, and start trying to understand how Moriarty could be on every screen in the United Kingdom when Moriarty was dead.
John will make tea, probably, because John only ever makes tea when he needs something to do with his hands. Despite appearances and assumptions, John is by far the less domesticated of the two of them, reinforced by years of eating out of canteens as he trained and worked and became himself. But he’ll not having anything to do or say and Sherlock’s voice is shriveled in his throat under the weight of what he almost said and didn’t, so there’s not likely to be any conversation, and so John will make tea.
Sherlock is climbing the stairs and John is right behind him, and his step is slowing as they’re nearing the top because he doesn’t really want to be here, or maybe he doesn’t want John to be here.
He wishes he had kept his mouth shut the way it’s been shut for years, swallowing back the thick, stumbling confession and never letting it form, but he thought it was going to be goodbye and he thought it was going to be forever.
They reach the top of the stairs and John has to unlock the door because Sherlock left his key to the flat on the coffee table so Mrs Hudson could let it out to someone else. His belongings are in boxes, neatly this time, a planned departure rather than a sudden fall with an abrupt end, and just being here in the flat leaves something far too big and prickly and warm and sticky in Sherlock’s chest. The insides of his elbows ache.
Sherlock turns to look at John and sees it in his face.
John wasn’t meant to have understood.
“I’m sorry,” Sherlock says, because things didn’t work out the way Sherlock meant them to, and it’s the only thing he can say now, and John wasn’t meant to have understood but he did, he did, Sherlock can see it in his face and he wishes he could take it back. Sherlock is actually a girl’s name.
“You’re sorry,” John repeats, in that low, cold voice he uses when he’s about to be very angry at something, and Sherlock closes his eyes to steady himself.
“It was, regrettably, out of my control.”
John smiles the worst smile, the one he smiles because he can’t control his own face, the one he smiles when he is trying not to yell or shout or punch someone and Sherlock knows it’s directed at him because there’s no one else here and no one else has tried to bite back their confessions right before they fly away to their deaths.
He takes a deep breath and lets his muscles go limp around his bones, barely keeping himself upright so that when John finally hits him and he finally hits the floor, he won’t be tense through the impact. Less likely chance of injury.
But John doesn’t hit him.
“You are,” John says, imitating a calmness Sherlock knows he does not feel, “without a doubt, the stupidest man I have ever met.”
And then he takes three big steps forward, seizes Sherlock by the coat, and kisses him.
Sherlock nearly falls out of shock but John wraps an arm around his waist and pulls him to his chest, reaching up with the other to wrap a hand around his neck to keep him in place and John kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him, and it’s rough and wet and Sherlock thinks maybe John is crying, but he’s kissing him and Sherlock’s brain is, for once, entirely, blissfully blank.
John kisses him and kisses him and Sherlock doesn’t really understand because John wasn’t meant to understand and he was definitely not meant to do that, but John kisses him until he’s pushing Sherlock away and he looks like he might have wiped something wet off his cheek. “You are so stupid, how can you be so stupid, how can you say things like that and then just walk away? Hm? How can you do that, Sherlock?”
Sherlock stares at him.
“I didn’t say anything,” he says after a moment, after the tingle in his lips has faded enough that he can control them. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You said enough,” John says, accusingly. “Jesus, Sherlock.”
I love you, I love you. Sherlock is actually a girl’s name.
Sherlock flexes his hands and looks at his fingers and instead of committing to memory what it is like to kiss John Watson, he thinks about the kiss of cold metal on the back of his neck where John’s wedding ring had almost caught in his curls.
They stand there, not looking at each other, and moments ago John was kissing him but John can’t do that, he can’t do that, because John is married to the woman who put the pen in Sherlock’s hand so he could sign his own death sentence, because John loves her and John forgave her and John wants her, that’s why Sherlock did this, that’s why he has done everything.
There is very little that Sherlock doesn’t understand but he definitely doesn’t understand this.
“It doesn’t matter,” he tells John. It doesn’t matter when Mary is sitting in their house on the other side of town, the house they share together, the rooms they share together, John’s promises glittering on her finger, John’s forgiveness glowing in her smile. “Just forget it.”
John lunges forward, back into Sherlock’s personal space, and grabs him by the coat again, forcing Sherlock to look at him. “It is the only thing that matters,” he hisses. “I’m tired of it, Sherlock, I’m tired of pretending this isn’t happening when you almost just left me behind again. You got on a plane and left and if this is what I have to do to get you to stop leaving me then I will do it. I love you, you sodding idiot. I love you. Stop leaving me.”
His voice cracks.
Moriarty’s face is on television screens across the country and Mary’s sitting in the house she shares with John, waiting for him to come home, and John is standing in the sitting room at 221B saying that he loves Sherlock like he’s angry about it, like he tried not to, like he wishes he didn’t, and Sherlock knows how that feels, and it feels like the breath rising in his throat, hard and huge, a gasp the size of a fist.
John looks up at him with the crinkles around the corners of his eyes but he’s not laughing and John says, “Sherlock. Forget everything else for a minute. Tell me I’m not wrong about this.”
“You’re not wrong,” he says automatically.
“Say it, for real this time. Say it.”
Sherlock swallows and swallows and swallows. When he opens his mouth, he can’t give voice to anything more than a whisper because he’s so used to swallowing back the noise. He's so used to keeping those words trapped in his throat and now John is asking for them, asking him to say it, pleading with him to say the words Sherlock has relegated the formation of to fantasy and imagination. “John. I love you.”
And John kisses him again and for one brilliant, crystalline moment, Sherlock can’t think about anything else.