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It had been, up until that moment, an ordinary return. The kind you don’t remember until something extraordinary happens in the middle of it, carving a deep line into the day, turning everything before it into before. Mrs Hudson was thinner than he remembered, a little paler too, and he felt the same familiar guilt gnawing at him for not noticing sooner. He could blame it on his own grief over losing Mary and their unborn child, but that had been more than a year ago, and it was not something he wished to hide behind anymore. He should have noticed, especially since he had moved back to Baker Street, but somehow it had passed him by.
She’d gone to Brighton to rest after a hospital stay; just a short recovery stint, nothing dramatic, but enough to make her bones ache and her son-like lodgers worry.
“You didn’t have to come, love,” she’d said, as he’d taken the handle from her and guided her toward the car.
“Course I did. Sherlock would never forgive me if I didn’t.” He did not mention how willing he was to do any favour that Sherlock Holmes asked - partly because the truth of it grated on him as it always did, and partly because he was sure she already knew.
His words earned him a fond smile, which only deepened when her phone pinged and she ignored it in favour of telling him about some of her medical adventures.
John’s own phone vibrated in his coat pocket just as they reached the car, and he checked it while helping her into the seat.
Stall her. Surprise at home. Thirty minutes. SH.
John had frowned but thumbed a reply.
Will try. What sort of surprise?
No answer. John had sighed and glanced sideways at Mrs. Hudson. “Feel like stopping for a coffee before heading back?”
They made it to the car. She told a story about a boy on the train playing loud music and a woman who called him a “heathen” like it was 1947. He was just starting to think they might pull this off when she patted her coat pocket.
“Oh - John, I think I forgot to bring back my pills. I’ll need to go straight home - there’s another pack by my kettle in the kitchen.”
And like so many moments before, choice was irrelevant. When someone you care for needs their medicine, you don’t stall them for surprises. You take them home.
They turned onto Baker Street at quarter past four, just as the light caught the window.
And there it was. The word.
Spray-painted in red across the ground floor front of 221B, bleeding down the glass and brick and paintwork like the house had been maimed. The paint was fresh. Still wet, the smell acrid and clinging. Red, bright and violent, bleeding across the door and the glass window beside it in great slashes.
FAGGOT
Time split. There was Before, and now there was After. The word seemed alive somehow; the letters screamed. Even in silence, they screamed.
John stopped walking.
For one long second, his mind did not work at all.
It was a trick, surely. Some kind of staged thing, a performance. A strange joke.
But then he saw Sherlock.
And that thought vanished like steam on glass.
Sherlock was crouched on the front step, flattened against the door. He wore a grey hoodie stretched across his shoulders, one of the Shezza ones - meaning it had seen alleys, cold floorboards, fists. His hands were red with more than the remnants of paint. They looked raw. Sandpaper in one, a crumpled cloth by his feet. Red streaks ran down the brickwork to the side of him, and he was covered in red dust.
The word had bled into him.
He didn’t look up at first, even as they approached. He kept scrubbing. When he did look, he barely blinked.
There was red dust in his eyelashes.
“Oh,” he said, as if he'd forgotten he wasn’t alone in the world. “You’re early.”
John’s mouth opened. No words came out.
Mrs. Hudson inhaled sharply behind him - a sound like the moment you realise you’ve dropped something precious.
The paparazzi were there too, of course. Across the road, behind the bins and the low wall and the sanctimony of long lenses. Parasites in parkas.
Sherlock stood up, too slowly. Too calmly.
“I meant to text again,” he said. “Timing’s unfortunate.”
He stepped forward, shielding Mrs. Hudson from the façade with his body, as though that could possibly make a difference.
“Go inside,” he told her gently. “Cup of tea. Nothing to see here.”
“Your poor hands,” she breathed, touching his wrist, but Sherlock extracted himself.
“I’m fine. John, would you mind helping her inside?”
His hand moved in a slow arc, as though he could shepherd them away with a gesture. John could feel it, the space Sherlock wanted between them, between himself and the world, and John refused to give it.
“No,” he said.
Sherlock looked at him, rainclouds gathering behind those pale eyes.
“They’re watching,” he said, teeth gritted, the calm mask wavering. “They want a photo.”
“Let them have it,” said John, defiant. “Let them choke on it.”
Sherlock hesitated, eyeing him, obviously measuring whether it was worth the argument. Then he sighed and handed John a second piece of sandpaper like an offering. John took it. The crowd across the street snapped their pictures. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rumbled. John looked down at his smart jeans.
“I’ll be right back.”
He escorted Mrs. Hudson back to her flat with a promise they would come up later, then went to Sherlock’s room to change clothes. He didn't even think about it - he wanted to wear something of his for this, so he did. He chose something already ruined - one of Sherlock’s old shirts, stained and threadbare, and a pair of tatty joggers. Clothes that remembered spilled tea, and failed experiments, and the long ache of someone trying to be safe. When he went back outside, Sherlock was crouched again, sleeves rolled further up, jaw clenched tight enough to creak. If he noticed John's choice of clothes, he did not mention it. He didn't speak at all for some time.
Eventually, through their combined efforts, the slur faded to a ghost, but the damage to the paintwork was done. John swore under his breath and stood. The door looked worse now - wounded instead of cursed.
“Paint stripper,” he muttered. “Only way.”
Sherlock was already moving. “I’ll go.”
“No,” John said. “You’re done. Take a break.”
Sherlock didn’t argue - which was much worse than arguing - only nodded tiredly and went in through the door.
John left, heading toward the corner hardware shop. He was halfway down the street when he patted his pocket and froze.
No wallet.
He pictured it. In the jeans by Sherlock's bed. His jeans. His wallet. His fault.
He sighed. Turned around.
The front door was still slightly ajar. He opened it.
And stopped.
Sherlock was sitting on the stairs, shoulders hunched, face buried in his hands. His shoulders did not rise and fall. They simply held still, as though the grief had arrived like a sedative and turned him to stone.
The facts didn’t register, not immediately. Sherlock didn't cry. Sherlock threw objects. Went silent. Sank into the mind palace and didn't come back for hours. Threw strops on the sofa...
“Sherlock?”
Sherlock looked up, eyes wet, mouth open on a gasp.
“I’m not upset,” he said hoarsely, as if under interrogation. “I’m angry. The anger just happens to be coming out of my eyeballs.”
He sniffed, then laughed in that quiet, unhinged way people laugh when laughter is safer than screaming. He tried to wipe his face dry with his sleeve and failed - the red dust smeared instead, leaving streaks like warpaint.
John moved before he knew he was moving. Sat beside him. Wrapped an arm around his back.
Sherlock shuddered, jaw flexing. Then something inside him seemed to give, and he turned into the contact. John felt the tremor against his ribs.
“They’re just words,” Sherlock muttered, still defensive. “But I try, John. I try so hard. And people still know.”
John didn’t speak. Couldn’t. His throat was tight with something too hot to name.
“When I was younger,” Sherlock continued, voice low, “they called me worse. Students. Teachers. Mycroft tried to stop it. Got suspended once for punching someone. But it only made things worse. He… he gets upset. When people say things. About me.”
John thought of all the things he’d seen over their years of friendship. The wounds he could name. The ones he couldn’t. He had never truly considered it - the thousand quiet humiliations Sherlock must have swallowed down.
“I’ve never really thought,” he said slowly, “about what it’s been like for you. Not really.”
“I know.”
“I should have.”
Sherlock smiled at him then, pale and tired and also older than John remembered. “You had your own wars.”
John wished he could somehow turn off Sherlock’s sudden display of open empathy, as he knew he had not properly returned it. Never once had he realized what Sherlock had been carrying all these years. The calculated eccentricity, the sharp suits, the cold voice. Armor. Disguise. And even with him - even with John - he still thought he had to act.
John took out his phone. Typed.
Sherlock leaned over, read the contact name.
“His Majesty?” he murmured, almost fond.
John smirked. “I’m still hoping for a knighthood.”
That earned a real laugh. Damp, but there.
The message went through.
Sherlock sighed. “He’ll make a fuss.”
“Then let him.”
Sherlock nodded and rose, all dust and weariness.
“Go on. Change clothes. Take a shower,” John said, giving him a nudge on the calf. “Come to Mrs. H’s after. She’s got biscuits. We’ll have tea.”
Sherlock nodded, wiped his face again, and turned away.
“Oh,” John said as Sherlock started upstairs. “If anyone says that word or anything similar to you again…”
Sherlock paused. Looked back.
“Tell me,” John says.
Sherlock’s face was blank, but still somehow broadcast a wry bitterness. “I’d have to tell you every day.”
“Fine,” John said, though he felt it like a slap. “Then tell me every day.”
Sherlock hesitated, but then, in his ancient hoodie and with his red-raw fingers, nodded.
John sat for a long while, reading the letters that were no longer there. Paint still clung to the crevices, to the doorframe, to the shadows.
He breathed out through his nose and headed to Mrs. Hudson’s, where the kettle was just beginning to boil.
***
Weeks passed, as they do, not in neat boxes but in breaths and glances and the quiet spaces between cups of tea. John dreamed - dreamed of being able to reach for Sherlock and comfort him, not during calamity and times of stress, but anytime. Always. When he woke, it was to the feeling that he was somehow in the wrong place, or had said or done the wrong thing, that something essential was missing…
The door had been repainted. A soft, dignified blue. The kind that made people pause and think of summer skies and old bookshops. Sherlock said the colour was “functional.” Mrs. Hudson said it was “sweet.” John said nothing at all. But sometimes, when the light hit it right, he looked at it for too long.
They didn’t speak of the word. Not because it had disappeared - more like it had melted into the rhythm of things. Like background noise. Like wind. Like grief.
Sherlock had taken to walking more. Not cases. Just... walking. Coat flapping behind him like a crow’s wing. Sometimes John went with him. Sometimes he didn’t.
That day, they were together. A market street, somewhere in Islington. Rain-slicked cobblestones, fish stalls, shouting men. A woman selling knitted gloves. A toddler holding a balloon shaped like a fox.
Sherlock was standing by a bookstall, head tilted toward a battered copy of Roget’s Thesaurus. His mouth was quirking - his equivalent of joyous raptures. John was pretending not to notice.
Behind them, a group of men - early twenties, beer breath, swagger like rusted metal - passed too close. One of them said it. Not shouted. Said, as though it were just another word in the list of things that could be casually named.
“Bloody fairy.”
Like saying “bin,” or “bike,” or “Tuesday.”
John turned. Slowly.
Sherlock didn’t.
He just flipped a page.
Didn’t blink. Didn’t flinch. Not even the stiffness John used to see when someone used to mention Moriarty, or drugs.
He just… kept reading.
And John went cold.
Because Sherlock had heard. Of course he had - he always heard everything. He could pick a match being lit from across a courtyard. He once identified a species of wasp by the frequency of its wingbeat.
So he’d heard it. Chosen not to react. Trained himself into silence.
John’s fists curled before he realised.
He turned, followed the sound, and found them. The men were laughing. Laughing because they’d seen Sherlock and known, somehow. One of them made a limp wrist gesture behind Sherlock’s back. Another elbowed his mate and smirked.
John didn’t think.
He moved.
“Oi,” he said, sharp as glass.
Three of them turned. Smiles still plastered on like masks. “You got a problem, mate?”
“Yeah,” John said, stepping in. “I do.”
And then Sherlock was there. Hand on his arm.
“John.”
That was all. Just his name. But his voice was a tether.
John looked at him. At the perfectly still face. At the eyes that were too calm. At the storm not breaking.
“They called you - ” John began.
“I know.”
“And you - did nothing.”
Sherlock’s lips moved around something that wasn’t quite a sigh.
“I’ve been called worse,” he said, too softly.
“That doesn’t mean they get to say it.”
“They do. People do. All the time. You just hadn’t noticed it before.”
That hurt. Not because it was cruel. But because it was true.
John turned back toward the men. They were walking away now, laughing louder. Cowards always did.
He wanted to follow. To tear them down word by word.
Instead, he said, “You should have told me. When it happens. Every time.”
“You said that before,” Sherlock sighed. “That I should tell you.”
John nodded.
Sherlock tilted his head, and for a moment, his mouth curled into something crooked and unfamiliar.
“I didn’t believe you meant it.”
John stepped closer.
“I meant it,” he said. “Then. Now. Tomorrow.”
Sherlock stared at him for a few more heartbeats, or possibly forever.
“Fine,” he said eventually.
They walked back to the stall. Sherlock bought the thesaurus. John carried it without asking.
That night, as they sat in the kitchen with curries between them and Mrs. Hudson humming downstairs, Sherlock said, without preamble:
“Someone at Bart’s called me a faggot when I was seventeen. I was wearing a lilac lab coat. Mycroft had told me not to antagonize them, but even back then, I loved ignoring him.”
John didn’t laugh.
Sherlock smiled anyway.
***
They were in Lestrade’s office, drinking tea that tasted like the inside of old thermos flasks. Sherlock had vanished an hour before, something about handwriting analysis, and no patience for paperwork. John stayed behind, half out of habit, half because Greg had raised an eyebrow and said, “Got a minute?”
It was cold in the office. A chill lived there that even radiators couldn’t quite chase off. The place smelled of takeaway boxes and ancient paper.
Greg poured milk into his tea, frowned, and said, “He ever mention the graffiti?”
John looked up, startled. “You heard?”
“Of course I bloody heard. I’ve got eyes, haven’t I? Street cameras. Officers who talk. The press are still sitting on it, trying to decide if running it makes them look like concerned journalists or just bastards.”
John looked down at his tea. Watched the milk settle into cloud shapes.
“He didn’t mention it,” he said finally. “I saw it myself.”
Greg nodded slowly. “Course you did.” There was a long pause. Then he went on, “Wasn’t the first time.”
John looked up. “What?”
“That someone's had a go, that he’s been called things. I mean. You must know that.”
John hesitated. “I didn’t. Not really. I - I think I always assumed it was rare. That people wouldn’t say things like that to his face. Or not those things.”
Greg’s look was almost pitying. “You thought people didn't notice?"
“I don’t know. I suppose I just... never thought about it like that.”
Greg stirred his tea. The spoon clinked like a metronome ticking off a difficult truth.
“See, I always figured he was out,” he said.
John blinked. “What?”
“Sherlock. Out. Queer. However he’d say it in that ridiculous deadpan voice of his. I mean, Christ, half the Yard talks about it like it’s fact.”
John sat back, affronted somehow. “I never knew. I don’t know if he is.”
Greg gave him a look.
“You didn’t know?”
“No,” John said quietly. “I mean - I suppose it never mattered.”
Greg frowned. “John. Come on. You live with him. You know him. You’re closer to him than anyone.”
John’s hands curled slightly on the mug. “I never asked - not outright anyway. He never told me. That’s how it’s always been.”
Greg leaned back. “Well, then I guess you’re just the last one to figure it out.”
John shook his head slowly. “There wasn’t anything to figure out. I accepted him. For who he is. I didn’t... need to label it.”
“Even when people assumed you were together?”
John exhaled. “Yeah. At first, I corrected it. All the time. Then I got tired. Then I stopped wanting to.”
Lestrade raised an eyebrow. “So you were - ?”
John cut him off gently. “There was a time I hoped. Briefly. When I thought maybe he might be... interested. And I might not be wrong. But then - he wasn’t. Or maybe he was, but couldn’t let himself be. And I told myself to let it go.”
Lestrade nodded. No mocking. Just tired empathy in a paper cup.
John stared at the steam rising from his tea.
“I never thought about what it meant,” he said. “For him. To live like that. With people seeing him a certain way, deciding they knew, calling him names.”
Lestrade nodded again. “He never let it show.”
John thought of the stairs. Of paint on Sherlock’s sleeve. Of tears that no one else ever got to see.
“He’s used to it,” John murmured. “That’s the worst bit. He’s not surprised anymore.”
“That’s how it works, I think,” Lestrade said. “You stop fighting every time. You start rationing how much of yourself gets seen.”
John rubbed his eyes.
“I asked him to tell me when it happens.”
“Does he?”
John looked toward the window. The light was fading. The city outside moved on, unaware of its own violence.
“Not yet.”
Lestrade stood and poured the rest of his tea down the sink.
“I don’t think Sherlock needs anyone to fight for him, mate. But I think he needs someone to stand with him.”
John nodded. “Yeah.”
He looked down at his phone. A text had arrived.
S: I’ve found something. Bring tea. And biscuits. And quiet. Mostly quiet. But maybe also you.
John smiled.
“I’ll do that.”
***
Rain fell in silver threads that night, lacing the streetlights, making the whole of Baker Street look like an old photograph. Inside, the flat smelled of tea, violin resin, and some half‑finished experiment Sherlock had hidden under a tea towel. Sherlock sat in his chair, fire lit, long limbs folded, notes open in his lap but his eyes elsewhere. He glanced up as John entered. A small flicker of curiosity.
“Good chat with Graham?” he said, not really a question.
John hung up his coat, his pulse a drum in his ears. He crossed the room slowly and stopped in front of Sherlock. Took a breath.
“You know you’re brilliant, right?” he said.
Sherlock blinked, eyebrows raised at the apparent non sequitur. “Well… it has been said. Why - ”
“You’re brilliant,” John said again. “And not just clever. You’re extraordinary.”
Sherlock tilted his head, bemused. “John, what - ”
“You’re brave. You’re kind. You’re the most loyal man I’ve ever known. You’re the one who’d throw yourself into fire without thinking if it meant someone else walked away. You’re… funny. Actually funny. Not just clever‑funny.”
Sherlock frowned faintly, shifting in his chair. “Have you been drinking?”
John kept going.
“You’re also good at cooking, even though you pretend you’re not. You fold Mrs. Hudson’s tea towels in the exact way she likes without thinking about it. You play the violin like you’re on stage at the Albert Hall. You talk to stray dogs and tell them that everything is going to be OK.”
Sherlock’s brows drew together. “John - ”
“You’re the only person I’ve ever met who can tell when someone’s lying just by the way they breathe,” John said, his voice low but gathering force. “You smell books before you read them. You hum Fleetwood Mac songs when you’re thinking, but only when you think no one can hear. You’re more patient with children than you are with adults because you think that with a bit more patience, we’d all become better adults. You buy the good biscuits even though you never eat them yourself.”
Sherlock stood abruptly, obviously unsettled. “Stop.”
“No,” John said. "You send out food to your homeless network through a courier service. You keep newspaper clippings of good news stories and you put them in a scrapbook that's hidden in between your chemistry textbooks."
Sherlock turned away, as if the words were light too bright to look into. “I don’t know what this is - ”
“This is me telling you,” John said, following him. “Because you’ve been told the worst things your whole life. Because strangers think they can name you and make you smaller. Because you’ve started to believe some of it, to let some of it in. And I won’t let all that be louder than me.”
Sherlock walked to the window, still facing away. “John - ”
“I thought you knew,” John said, his voice cracking. “I thought you already knew. That you’re the most extraordinary person I’ve ever met. That you’re my best friend. That I - ” he swallowed hard “- that I love you. In whatever way you’ll have it. As friends. As more. I love you.”
Sherlock’s breath hitched. “No.”
“Yes,” John said.
“No,” Sherlock repeated, rounding on him. “I don’t know… I don’t know where this is suddenly coming from, but this is not you. This… is this pity? You don’t even… You aren’t even…”
“Gay?” John said, stepping towards him. “You’re right, I’m not - but I’m not whatever it is that can’t love you. I’m not anything, any word, any type, any being who doesn’t have the capacity to love you.”
Sherlock suddenly looked like he might cry again, but John couldn’t stop now that he had started.
“You know everything about me. You knew everything about me the very first time you saw me, from the very first glance. So look now. Look. Please, observe, Sherlock. Please. Please see me.”
Sherlock’s eyes glistened, his mouth an unhappy moue, but his eyes tracked over John, once, twice, three times. Then he stared at John’s face - stared and breathed and stared. He stared for so long that John thought he would pass out from the tension of it.
“Sherlock?”
“They’ll do it to you, too,” Sherlock whispered, eyes huge and solemn. “If we move toward something more. You’ve started to hear what they call me. You’ll hear it every day. But it won’t stop at me. It will come for you.”
“I don’t care,” John said.
“You should!” Sherlock said vehemently, but his voice was still hoarse as if fighting a cold.
“I don’t,” John said. “It’s you and me. Always you and me, against the rest of the world. I’m not afraid of them.”
Sherlock pressed a trembling hand to his eyes. He looked like a gust of wind would knock him down. “I can’t - John, I don’t - .”
“You don’t have to believe me tonight,” John said, steady. “Just listen. You can work on believing me tomorrow.”
He stepped closer still, his words a litany now.
“You are brilliant. You are kind. You are wanted. You are loved. You’re the best man I have ever known. You make me laugh when I think I don’t remember how. You’ve saved me more times than I can count. You make the world brighter and better just by being in it, and you don’t even see it. You’re beautiful when you’re thinking. You’re beautiful when you’re wrong. You’re beautiful when you’re trying. You’re beautiful when you’re angry. You are not the names they call you. You are every good thing they’re afraid to say aloud.”
Sherlock made a small, wounded sound, hand still over his eyes. He sank backwards onto the windowsill, graceless.
“I’ve never - ” he began, then stopped. “No one’s ever - ”
“I will,” John said.
Sherlock looked up at him then, eyes bright with both disbelief and something like fear. “What?”
“I will tell you. Every day. Until it’s louder than them. Until you believe it. Until it doesn’t hurt when I say it. Every day.”
Sherlock blinked; flecks of tears glittered in his eyelashes like diamonds in the firelight. “Every day?”
“Every day,” John repeated. “Even if we’re only ever friends. Even if one day we’re something more. I will tell you. Every day.”
Sherlock let out a long, shuddering breath, looked around the room, eyes flitting from item to item, seemingly unable to find a safe place to rest his gaze. Head still turned away, his hand lifted, hesitant, and John met it with his own.
“I… alright. If… if this is what you want,” Sherlock said, and John could feel the tremble in his fingers. “If… You can try. If you want.”
It was at that moment that John realized he was not the only one who would do anything for his flatmate. The thought both scared him and filled him with hope.
***
John stayed true to his word.
At first, Sherlock met each compliment like a blow - flinching slightly, confused, wary. He stood like a man waiting for the laugh to follow, the punchline to arrive. When it didn’t, he often made some excuse to leave the room.
But days passed.
“You look better in that coat than any man has the right to.”
“You’re my favourite conversation.”
“I like the way you look when you’re smug. Don’t change that.”
“You’re the reason I still believe in people.”
After some time, Sherlock began to stay in the room when John spoke.
He began to listen.
He began to sit closer. On the sofa. By the fire. At the kitchen table. Letting the words soak in like rain after drought.
One night, when the seasons were turning, while they sat on the couch in the warmth of their flat with the windows open and the night alive beyond them, Sherlock murmured without looking up:
“You didn’t say anything today.”
John blinked. “What?”
“You forgot,” Sherlock said, eyes fixed on his book, voice forced-casual. “You usually say something kind. Irrational. About me.”
John felt something shift in his chest like the swing of a pendulum.
He reached over, touched Sherlock’s hand.
“I didn’t forget,” he said. “I just hadn’t said it yet.”
Sherlock looked at him.
And John said, “You are extraordinary. You are beautiful. You are loved. And I’ll keep saying it, even when you don’t need me to say it anymore.”
Sherlock swallowed, visibly nervous, which meant he was letting it show.
“What if… What if I always need you to say it?”
“Then I guess I’ll have to stick around,” John said, letting his fingers trail over Sherlock's hand.
“For always?” Sherlock asked, cheeks flushed, looking at John through his lashes.
“Sounds about right, yeah,” John said, heart squeezing in his throat. Sherlock seemed to consider that, before he turned his hand over, interlacing their fingers.
“You’re awfully calm for someone proposing eternal emotional servitude,” he said, a shadow of his old confidence colouring his tone.
John snorted, internally elated. “Well, it’s hardly a new development, is it? I’ve been emotionally servile to you for years. We're just making it more... formal.”
“I see. Shall I prepare vows?” Sherlock asked, lifting his chin with mock solemnity, but his eyes were intense as the confidence built. “Would you prefer them in Latin, or shall we go full Gothic and carve them into the floorboards?”
“I’ll allow vows,” John said, pretending to think. “Carving is pushing it.”
“Spray-paint?” Sherlock said, and John’s pulse jumped at the reminder - but his Sherlock had always had a dark sense of humour.
“Right across the front of the house, if you like,” John said, reaching for Sherlock’s other hand. In fact, he rather liked the idea.
Sherlock gave a faint smile, eyes flicking down to where their hands rested together. “I thought you’d tease me.”
“I am teasing you,” John said. “Just also reminding you I’m in love with you at the same time. I’m versatile like that.”
“You’re stubborn,” Sherlock murmured.
“Mm. You love it.”
Sherlock’s long fingers curled further around John’s. His voice, when it came next, was very quiet. “I do.”
The silence that followed was full of measured breath and heartbeats and the warm, odd shape of a world that had finally tilted into alignment.
Sherlock gripped both of John’s hands tighter. “I’m going to kiss you now,” he said, and for once he was not blinking - not at all.
John smiled, a little crooked, a little breathless. “’Bout time.”
Sherlock leaned in carefully, like he was learning a new instrument and afraid he might break it. Their noses bumped. Sherlock frowned, adjusted. John laughed into it, and then -
Then Sherlock kissed him.
It was soft, measured, like he’d studied this. Not just in theory, but in his dreams, in his long silences, in the pauses between insults and compliments. He kissed like someone discovering that the world was made of colour after thinking it was greyscale for a very long time.
When they pulled apart, John kept close and said, “That was… I hope that was something we’ll do again?”
Sherlock’s lips twitched. “Every day.”
John let out a breath, gripping back just as tightly. “Good.”
He couldn't imagine ever letting go.