The first-floor flat in Baker Street was something of an Aladdin’s cave of macabre treasures. At first glance John had thought that the skull on the mantelpiece was surely the worst, or perhaps the eyeballs in the microwave, which he’d forgotten about until he came downstairs on the morning after the serial suicides case to make breakfast. He was groggy from too little sleep – and sleeping in his clothes, too, which was somehow less restful – and he recoiled when he saw the eyeballs bobbing gently in the jar on the countertop, some still with their trailing ganglia attached. It was a hell of a thing to have to deal with before coffee, and on minimal sleep, but John found that he minded less than he probably should.

They’d got back late from the Chinese place, so late it was almost early. Sherlock, high on the aftermath of a case, was captivating company, and his glances at John out of the corners of his curiously pale cat’s eyes, as though they were in on a shared plan, had induced nameless little flutters low in John’s stomach.

‘You’re going to be such a terrible influence on me,’ John had said, before his mouth could veer off in another direction entirely, like When you say “married to your work”…

Sherlock had fluffed up like a cat, all indignation. ‘Me? You’re the one who’s just shot–’

‘Alright, alright, keep it down.’

Back at the flat Sherlock had offered John the use of the upstairs bedroom that would be his, and lent him a pillow and blanket. John had tried to ignore the smell of Sherlock that clung to the pillow as he pummelled it into a comfortable shape, and got the best night’s sleep he’d had for a long time.

This morning John had roughly finger-brushed his teeth, not trusting the apparently clean spare toothbrush that sat innocently on the shelf. Not the best but it would do until he got back to his flat; he’d certainly put up with worse in Afghanistan and instinct told him that if he moved in here then he may well find himself putting up with worse again.

Now he made tea and toast – after confirmation from Sherlock that the dubious old toaster was neither going to poison him nor short-circuit the flat – and carried it through into the living room, taking a slightly self-conscious seat in the armchair that Sherlock clearly didn’t prefer and that John imagined would end up becoming his. The dining room table was covered in cardboard boxes and Sherlock, to John’s surprise, was up and about already, sorting through the contents with brisk efficiency despite still being in pyjamas and dressing gown.

‘I thought you might be having a lie-in,’ John said. ‘That was a late one last night.’

And, truth be told, something about Sherlock just screamed the sort of upper-class chap who managed to be elegantly unemployed, and who liked to sleep until noon and loll about in his pyjamas.

‘Not today,’ Sherlock said, brandishing a sharp knife and slicing deftly at the tape on a box. ‘Got to get things organised, you never know when another case might come along.’

He was an entirely different creature to the smooth, polished young man of the night before, darting about with bare feet flashing and dressing gown flapping loose about him, but no less compelling.

John eyed the stack of boxes in lieu of noticing Sherlock’s long, bony toes. ‘I thought you’d moved in already.’

‘Only the essentials,’ Sherlock said distractedly, working at a particularly recalcitrant piece of tape, and John carefully forbore to glance at the bison skull with its jaunty headphones, for which Mrs Hudson had denied all responsibility.

Sherlock paused, seeming to notice for the first time that John’s breakfast plate was perched precariously on the arm of his chair.

‘I can… do you want some space at the table? I can move things…’

Sherlock picked up a box and looked around the already crowded countertops helplessly, but John quickly waved him away.

‘It’s fine. I’m nearly done anyway.’

Sherlock put the box back down and John took a bite of toast, however his breakfast soon became an afterthought as he watched Sherlock open box after box. The first was fairly innocuous: only books, although the titles would be enough to make anyone pause if they glanced at their bookshelf. Animal Abuse and Unlawful Killing, Forensic Human Identification, The Jeffrey Dahmer Story… the more graphic dissection plates in John’s Gray’s Anatomy were going to look positively dull by comparison.

From there it all went downhill, though, as it quickly became clear that watching Sherlock Holmes unpack was no activity for the faint-hearted. John watched – at first covertly and then in mildly horrified fascination – as Sherlock opened a box and removed, in no particular order:

A small marble bust of a man with a fussy, old-fashioned sort of cravat

A dissected frog floating in a jar of formaldehyde, its entrails twisting gently around it like smoke

A packet of tea bags

A selection of handcuffs

An old-fashioned wooden display case containing a bat and a selection of enormous stag beetles

A stack of what looked like official New Scotland Yard ID cards

A bag of potatoes

Several knives of varying lengths and widths

A jar of human teeth, roots still attached

A neatly coiled length of rope

A ball gag

The sight of Sherlock’s long, dextrous fingers handling the last two items made John’s face heat. What with all that ‘married to my work’ business last night then he’d put Sherlock down as one of those cerebral, asexual types but it was conceivable that Sherlock had been turning him down gently, in what John suspected was a rare moment of consideration. And God knew that John was fairly broadminded about the many and varied things two people could do together, but something about the mental picture of a faceless stranger winding that rope over and around Sherlock’s strong, pale wrists with their faint tracery of blue veins was just too–

‘They’re for a case.’ Sherlock’s voice was tart. ‘Take that look off your face, they’re for research purposes.’

‘Look, it’s fine, each to their own and all that. I really honestly don’t mind whatever you–’

‘Well I do.’ Sherlock scowled blackly at him. ‘I had a private client who was implicated in a matter of which he wished to keep the police ignorant. The crux of the case rested on how audible someone’s shouts could be around a gag.’ Sherlock prodded the thing with a distasteful look. ‘That’s not my area either.’

‘Right, yes of course,’ John said quickly. ‘Absolutely. I know how it is: things just accumulate before you can get around to throwing them out…’

‘Oh no, I’ll keep it,’ Sherlock said distantly, already peering back into the box. ‘Never know when it might come in useful, after all.’

John covered his face with his hand. Just when things had seemed to be moving onto a safer conversational track, too.

‘Hmm.’ Sherlock clearly hadn’t found what he was looking for; he moved onto the next box, slit the tape, and made a noise of triumph when he opened it, pulling out a piece of large, lethal-looking stainless steel equipment.

John stared at him in shock. ‘Are they rib separators?’

‘Yes.’ Sherlock flexed them a few times in evident satisfaction. ‘Always handy to have.’

John watched as Sherlock produced jars of human fingers suspended in clear liquids, which he placed meticulously in the kitchen cupboards, before returning to the box. The last items to come out of it had a sense of ceremony about them, given the way Sherlock lifted each one carefully and placed it reverently on the table: three jars of a viscous, orange-gold liquid.

‘What are those for?’ John asked, morbidly fascinated, his mind still preoccupied with the rib separators and the fact that this man had just put human body parts in the cupboard with all the care other people gave to the family china.

Sherlock gave him a look that was at first surprised and then suspicious, as though John had just asked a mildly indecent question. As though John was the peculiar one here, when he’d just sat and watched Sherlock unearth his possessions and now sex toys, preserved animals, and serious Victorian scholars all jostled cheek by jowl on Sherlock’s – on their – table.

Sherlock turned the jars slightly, delicately, so John could read the labels: Acacia, Orange blossom, and Welsh heather.

‘They’re for toast,’ Sherlock said.

----------

Sherlock liked honey on his toast. John also found, as the weeks turned into months and they started to get used to each other, that if Sherlock had no cases on he often didn’t bother getting out of his pyjamas all day, and that he was likewise given to taking long showers when nothing more interesting presented itself – letting the water beat down on him until the steam seeped out into the upstairs landing. Sherlock preferred coffee when he needed to concentrate and tea when he wanted to relax, but no such logic applied to which variety of honey he liked for breakfast (on the days that he deigned to eat breakfast). And John also discovered, during a sleepless night full of blood-soaked, half-remembered dreams, that when the mood took him Sherlock could make his violin sing like a lost and weary soul ascending to paradise.

John also tried very hard not to notice that Sherlock had narrow, clever fingers, and that he was in the habit of putting the tips of his index fingers together and pushing them into the full curve of his lower lip when he was deep in thought. He had a tiny scar near his ear, almost unnoticeable except in the right light, which John had never asked the origin of, and his left canine was ever so slightly crooked. John probably wouldn’t have noticed the latter if Sherlock hadn’t told him – while recounting a case – about a brawl he’d got into in Charing Cross waiting room, all unaware of the darkly protective surge under John’s ribcage.

Sherlock was surprisingly modest: the most he would do in front of John was flash an ankle or loosen an extra shirt button. It puzzled John, this fastidiousness; until a gash received during a case necessitated either a trip to the hospital or some butterfly strips from John’s medical kit, and then John couldn’t sleep that night for the memory of the faint, silvery lines in the hollow of Sherlock’s left arm, gleaming treacherously under the bathroom light.

John had been fighting his own demons for so long that it was easy to forget that each person had their own, and the next day he brought home some of the lapsang tea Sherlock liked and over dinner asked Sherlock about the cases he’d worked on before they’d met. He made a point of telling Sherlock how marvellous his deductions were and tried not to be charmed when Sherlock’s cheekbones flushed a delicate pink, like a young woman complimented on her beauty.

If wishes were horses then beggars would ride, and so John bought Sherlock jars of expensive honey after waking them both up with a screaming nightmare at three o’clock in the morning, and stoutly ignored the sweet, soft appeal of a sleepy Sherlock wrapped in his dressing gown and waiting for the kettle to boil for his morning coffee. Only a fool wasted time wanting things he couldn’t have.

----------

Their first Christmas came with almost frightening speed: it seemed that John had barely put away his winter coat and dug out his T-shirts, than he awoke one morning to the realisation that it was mid-December and that he probably ought to make at least a token effort at buying gifts for friends and family.

Mrs Hudson and Harry were easy enough, but Sherlock was the very devil to buy for. His interests were so far-ranging and obscure that John could never tell what might keep him keenly absorbed for hours and what would elicit barely a cursory glance before being tossed aside. At last he settled for a copy of Memoirs of a Bow Street Runner that he’d seen in the window of a second-hand bookshop on Cecil Court, and a box of Sherlock’s favourite loose-leaf tea from Fortnum and Mason.

The book actually cost him rather a lot of money, since it was a first edition, and John had no sooner got it home than he started to fret. Sherlock would no doubt be able to tell the book’s value at a glance; was it too much for one flatmate to spend on another? Too much effort? Would Sherlock read all the implications that John had so carefully kept hidden all these months?

But Sherlock would so love it, at least John hoped he would. Not buying it for him seemed impossible.

In the end it was all rendered irrelevant. Because they got home late on Christmas Eve, after leaving the flat in the small hours of that morning, to find that Mrs Hudson – before departing for a few days at her sister’s – had left her present to them on their kitchen table: a hamper of food. Some of the contents looked homemade, like the jars of preserves, but some things were clearly bought and John said ‘Oh,’ as he guiltily resolved to nip out over Christmas and buy her a few more things to supplement the chocolates he’d got for her from himself and Sherlock.

Sherlock, sleep deprivation notwithstanding, had started unpacking the contents, pushing his experiments to one side in order to lay them out with an odd gentleness; much as he often addressed the giver herself.

‘Mmm,’ Sherlock purred, unscrewing the top of a jar of National Portrait Gallery honey. He dabbed a fingertip in it and licked it before returning for a second swipe and oh God, John really ought to make some sort of protest about hygiene but the words died in his throat as he watched. Sherlock, even with concrete dust in his hair and a graze on his cheek – the last and crucial piece of evidence had been on a building site – was still the most gorgeous thing John had ever seen. He was missing a button from his shirt and was pale with exhaustion, but his eyelashes made twin dark fans on his cheeks as he closed his eyes to savour the taste and John held his breath against the familiar pang of want that went through him.

Until Sherlock opened his eyes and caught John watching; he looked self-conscious at his brief moment of indulgence before his gaze sharpened. Floating in the last fumes of exhaustion, John didn’t manage to look away in time and then, after the initial shock, he didn’t try. The past year had worn grooves of self-denial into his very soul, or so it felt, and he let it well up, let Sherlock see all the affection and admiration and desire John had for him, and Sherlock blinked, truly startled for perhaps the first time since John had met him.

‘You…’ Sherlock took his finger out of his mouth and tried again. ‘You wouldn’t… I don’t suppose you…’

‘Yeah,’ John said softly, utterly spellbound by seeing Sherlock so off-balance. ‘Whatever you’re thinking, the answer’s probably yes. It’s almost always yes, to you; haven’t you noticed?’

Sherlock swallowed. Their kitchen was silent apart from the tick of the clock and the shouts of Christmas revellers in the street on their way home from the pub, and John heard Sherlock’s throat work before he tried ‘I thought that was to the work. Not me.’

John shook his head. ‘Only at first. Not for a long time now.’

Sherlock’s face lit up with an unearthly joy and his mouth, when it met John’s a few moments later, tasted of nectar gathered on the rooftops of London.

----------

That hamper lasted them all the way through until the twenty-seventh of December. The pate and cheese and fancy biscuits were eaten in bed on Christmas Day, along with a bottle of champagne that Sherlock produced from nowhere, and John wondered if he’d ever stop being enchanted by Sherlock sprawled bare-chested and tousle-haired in the sheets, delicately taking morsels from his fingers simply because it was John who was offering them. It was the best Christmas lunch John had ever had, bar none.

The chocolates were put in the cupboard for later consumption, the spiced dried apple slices went almost indecently well with the crackers and some sharp Cheddar, and the honey… Sherlock adored the honey. He dabbled smears of it into the hollow of John’s collarbone and over his nipples before licking it off, smudging it across John’s lips before kissing it away and leaving golden-sticky fingerprints across John’s thighs and belly. Sherlock’s obsessive nature translated perfectly into the bedroom: he seemed to see no difference between how many types of cigarette ash there were and the precise locations of all of John’s scars and birthmarks, both were equally important and worthy of consideration.

After three days John had been tired, and sore, and happier than he could ever remember being. He had sat up in bed with his laptop – while Sherlock dozed, his face mashed into John’s hip and a proprietary arm slung across John’s legs – and booked Mrs Hudson on a spa weekend from both of them.

(He had to use his credit card; Sherlock’s had been strained almost to its limit by John’s Christmas present, a large donation to Help for Heroes.

‘Yes, well.’ Sherlock had turned his head and preened at John’s awkward but heartfelt thanks. ‘They can’t all have their own consulting detective.’)

Sherlock now waited for John at crime scenes, a possessive hand in the small of his back and a smug smile on his face as though he couldn’t believe his luck. Some of John’s possessions took up residence on the side of the bed nearest the door in the large master bedroom, and Sherlock looked bright-eyed and healthier from the increased amount of sleep (and sex, John flattered himself).

They were a team, a partnership. Sometimes John barely had to glance at Sherlock to guess where his thoughts tended, and on the still-frequent occasions when he couldn’t then he was the only person for whom Sherlock would deign to stop and explain himself.

It was heady and sweet, like the thick golden days of summer, and they both grew fat and replete with it, blindly secure in the belief that they would always be faster, cleverer, one step ahead of their enemies.

Until one terrible day, several winters later, when they weren’t.

----------

The jars of honey gathered dust in the cupboard when Sherlock went away. That was how John had to think of it: ‘went away’. He could barely bring himself to think the word ‘dead’, much less say it; it was hard to believe that someone so energetic, so exuberant, so in love with life could be simply… gone. John had read about this, about how bereaved people found it hard to move on without seeing the body (by the time his concussion had cleared and he’d been pronounced fit to leave then Mycroft had already identified the body and had it taken away for burial).

John took a week off work and spent most of it in 221B. The hours seemed to slip out of his grasp, running away like water while the rest of his life – a life without Sherlock – stretched out ahead of him, grey and repetitive.

He stopped writing in his blog. What was there to write about? He dutifully made himself get up and get dressed and leave the house at least once a day, even if it was just to trudge round the park, and spent a lot of time not thinking about things. He took the memory of Sherlock’s smile and the smell of his hair and the way his fingers danced over his violin and locked them all away in a box buried in the deepest recesses of his mind, never to be opened.

John determinedly forgot that he’d ever spent time browsing properties just outside of London, not quite daring to let himself think retirement; he forgot that he’d been anticipating years of watching the sparse silver threads in Sherlock’s hair thicken and cluster at his temples. He learned how to walk down the street without flinching at every tall, dark-haired man in a suit, and when he stumped around the supermarket – leaning heavily on his cane – he walked past the rows of gold-gleaming jars of honey without a second glance. They were just one more thing that he’d taught himself to forget, after all.

----------

After Sherlock’s return, John spent a month avoiding the press and their demands for a story, even going so far as to accept Mycroft’s offer of a holiday in an exclusive resort where the staff were used to dealing with film stars and royalty, and where a worn-down ex-Army doctor being hounded by the London gossip rags barely raised an eyebrow. After Mycroft’s part in the deception then a long holiday with no strings attached was the least that he could do, to John’s mind.

Sherlock didn’t follow him there, slightly to John’s surprise. When he’d turned up at John’s new flat then it was true that John had passed out from shock, and when he came round he’d punched Sherlock in the mouth and told him he never wanted to set eyes on him again. But Sherlock had never before shown much respect for John’s orders, commands, and occasionally pleas for some peace and quiet, and John wasn’t sure what to make of this apparent acquiescence.

But that was before he got back to London, and the deliveries began.

At first they were small things, easily overlooked. A new jumper, exactly like an old favourite that John had regretfully consigned to the bin several weeks ago and been unable to find a replacement for. He wore it: he didn’t know where Sherlock had managed to get it from so he could hardly return it and give Sherlock his money back, and throwing away a perfectly good garment would just be wasteful. Likewise he tolerated the new gloves – the weather had recently taken a turn for the worse – and the month’s worth of food delivered from Sainsburys, which was mysteriously non-returnable.

The suit, however, was the breaking point.

John opened the garment bag to find it hanging in impeccable folds, all crisp clean lines and a deep grey-blue that he knew would flatter his eyes. He didn’t even try it on; the card that came with it indicated which Savile Row tailor it came from and John took it there. After much arguing he managed to exchange it for a credit note for the shop, which he promptly sold on eBay for less than its face value (although still a tidy sum) and donated the proceeds to Help for Heroes. He then proceeded to type a long, angry email to Sherlock about how, despite what Mycroft might have taught Sherlock in their childhood, people couldn’t be bought.

Sherlock’s reply was an apology that, for him, verged on the profuse and a receipt for another donation to Help for Heroes, the amount of which made John’s eyes widen before he covered his face with a despairing hand. After that there were no more physical gifts – or at least none so extravagant, surely the occasional tin of tea from Fortnum and Mason hardly counted – but the surgery where John worked received unusually fast approval for their planning permission to extend one side of the building, and a publisher contacted John to express interest in collecting his blog into a book of short stories. It might have been mere coincidence – certainly the man had sounded honestly bewildered when John demanded how much Sherlock was paying him – and John could have written it off if it hadn’t been for the cases.

Complicated ones, simple ones; cases pertaining to confidential Government matters and ones about missing cats… after Sherlock’s return then all of London wanted some of his time and attention and Sherlock appeared to be taking each and every case that was laid at his door. He texted John before each of them, inviting him along from the beginning or just to be in at the denouement, and John ignored each and every one. Except one, when Sherlock was apparently about to take on a well-known gang of dangerous jewel thieves without any support, and John had arrived, provided the necessary cover for Sherlock to manage the switch, and then left, all without speaking a single word more to Sherlock than was absolutely necessary and ignoring Sherlock’s overtures.

After three months of being stuck in an emotional maelstrom, just to top it all off, John got ill. Nothing life-threatening, just the winter cold that was going around, but in his worn-down state it was enough to leave him exhausted and shuffling from the sofa to the kitchen for yet another Lemsip or cup of tea. On the evening of the first day Sherlock texted, asking why John hadn’t left the flat that day, and all John had sent back was Please tell me you’re not staking out my flat from the café over the road. There had been no reply.

All was quiet on the second day, suspiciously so, until mid-afternoon, when a knock at the door woke John up from dozing on the sofa in front of GoldenEye. He shuffled to the door, blowing his nose in a tissue, and swung it open to find Sherlock.

‘Oh Christ.’ John rubbed at his face; was a little peace and quiet too much to ask now, of all times? ‘Look, Sherlock, not now, okay? I’m ill, and–’

‘I know,’ Sherlock interrupted, and thrust a bulging Sainsburys carrier bag at John. ‘Here.’

John clutched reflexively at the bag and opened the top to glance inside, finding packets of extra-soft tissues, tins of soup, and boxes of paracetamol. There was a DVD – Skyfall, on closer inspection – and buried at the bottom of the bag was something that rattled.

‘Vitamin C tablets,’ Sherlock said. ‘Cochrane meta-analyses have shown that it can shorten the duration of a cold.’ He shifted his feet and shoved his hands in his coat pockets, a rare tell that always used to betray his uncertainty when he wasn’t focussing on suppressing such indicators. ‘And ingredients for honey and lemon. You always take… you always used to take it when you were ill.’

Sure enough, John pushed aside the packets of tissues to find a bottle of lemon juice and a jar of honey. It was only the cheap, supermarket own brand, but the sight made John bite his lip. No planning, or preparation, or careful sourcing of Manuka honey harvested by hand and shipped all the way from New Zealand; Sherlock had clearly nipped into the local Sainsburys and just grabbed what he could find, because John needed it now.

John looked at Sherlock: his first proper look since Sherlock’s dramatic reappearance in John’s surgery, since the jewel thing had been mostly under cover of darkness and John had been too tightly wound with anger to accord Sherlock any more of his attention than absolutely necessary. His dominant thought was that Sherlock looked older and, if possible, thinner; there were new lines around his eyes and mouth, and more silver hairs than he remembered in that mop of dark curls. It seemed unconscionable that John hadn’t been there to note each new mark, to give each change its due acknowledgement as it appeared on Sherlock’s body, and for a moment he almost shut the door in Sherlock’s face.

Sherlock read the impulse in the twitch of John’s arm and he stepped back.

‘Take care of yourself,’ he said tersely, drawing his coat around him as he turned away.

‘Wait.’ It was out of John’s mouth before he’d been aware that he was going to speak.

Two years without with the other half of himself was an awfully long time. But the rest of his life was even longer, and so John pulled a tissue out of his pocket, blew his nose, and said thickly: ‘I’m about halfway through GoldenEye. If you want.’

Sherlock turned to face him again, his expression lifting cautiously.

‘Yes. I… yes, please.’

The old Sherlock would have scoffed at the suggestion, but this Sherlock looked as though there was nothing he’d rather do than sit next to John and his collection of soggy tissues to watch an hour’s worth of improbable gadgets and explosions and terrible chat-up lines.

‘Right then.’ John stepped back from the door and Sherlock entered. ‘Tea?’

‘Yes please.’ Sherlock took off his coat, draping it quickly over the back of a chair as though John was about to change his mind, and came close enough to lift the bag out of John’s hands. ‘But I can make it. Go and sit down, you look dreadful.’

Sherlock’s hand fluttered out towards John’s side, as though he wanted to send John on his way with a brief touch but wasn’t sure he was allowed, and John wandered over to the sofa. As he sat there, resting his head on the back and closing his eyes, he listened to the inexplicably reassuring sounds of Sherlock moving about in his tiny kitchen until he dozed off.

----------

John eventually moved back to Baker Street. From the moment he had allowed Sherlock to cross the threshold of his new flat then he’d been in no doubt as to where things would tend, but Sherlock’s astonishment and then gratitude at John’s casual enquiry as to whether the upstairs bedroom was still free gave John a guilty pang.

Sherlock after the fall was… different. Gentler. He’d never be a saint, and his temper still flared when things – and people – weren’t moving quickly enough to suit him, but he was also more inclined to listen to the many tales of woe that ended up at their door. Mrs Hudson brought a friend of hers to him, Mrs Warren, who was having trouble with her tenants, and Sherlock took her case without a murmur or a sigh, his voice curiously gentle as he patted the arm of a distressed Mrs Hudson and told her not to fret, that he’d see to it.

Mrs Warren was a large, loud, over-excitable woman and after a couple of hours even John was starting to feel a little frayed around the edges. But Sherlock’s voice and manner almost never wavered, and it was only once the case was solved – leading to the capture of a member of the mafia, which made Lestrade look like it was his birthday and Christmas all rolled into one – that Sherlock slammed the door and snarled ‘Oh God, that woman! Where are my cigarettes? Have you put them in the skull again?’

And John had laughed and carefully not looked at the loose panel on the side of the bookcase.

It wasn’t quite the same as before, but then John was old enough to know that they were never going to recapture that first flush of infatuation with each other. But that didn’t mean it was bad. On the contrary: John felt more secure in what they had now than he ever had before, when – among all the danger and adrenaline and passion – there’d been an ever-present sense that it was too good, too much, to last. Entirely justifiably, as it turned out.

John published a book, and then another, and another. The Case Files of Sherlock Holmes, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; Sherlock accused him of romanticising what should have been a series of essays on logic, even as he rearranged the bookcase to ensure that John’s first editions had pride of place.

If what had gone before had been a firework – bright and dazzling and fleeting – then this was a storm lantern, steady and strong and anchoring. John blogged the exploits of the half-mad genius whose life and work he was privileged to share and Sherlock – no matter how confidential the matter, or from what exalted heights the request for assistance came – utterly refused to listen if John wasn’t present also.

There was no such thing as Sherlock Holmes without Dr Watson, and when they visited NSY then it was less ‘Freak’ and more ‘Mr Holmes, sir’ from Lestrade’s team. All except Sally, who never gave up her original nickname for Sherlock even after she’d gone off to head a team of her own, and Lestrade, who often referred to him as the Norwegian Blue and laughed at Sherlock’s glower. There was a young sergeant there – Stanley Hopkins – who worshipped the ground Sherlock walked on to an almost embarrassing degree, who Sherlock grudgingly admitted showed promise, and of whom Lestrade had said that he wouldn’t be unhappy to hand over leadership of his team when he retired.

The stairs of Baker Street once more resounded under the feet of the puzzled, the heartsick, the weary. The suit that John had rejected found its way into his wardrobe, Sherlock doodled idle compositions on the violin when he was trying to think, there were body parts in the fridge and honey in the cupboard, and John couldn’t imagine any other life than this.

----------

It took a shot fired by a desperate man to make them admit what had been sitting unspoken between them for some time. After Sherlock had wrestled Evans to the floor and John had dissuaded Sherlock first from killing the man with his bare hands and then from rushing John to the nearest A&E, Sherlock hovered nearby while John sat on the closed lid of their toilet and patched up the shot to his leg. It was barely more than a graze, really; all it needed was a few sutures and a quick dressing, but the problem was what it represented.

They were getting slow: in the past John would have ducked out of the way in time, or Sherlock would have got to Evans before he could fire. John stood to wash his hands in the sink, grimacing at how old and tired he looked, and caught sight of Sherlock in the doorway. The look on Sherlock’s face made John sigh and sit back down.

‘Come here,’ he said, holding out a hand, and Sherlock came to stand between his legs, cupping John’s head as John wound his arms around Sherlock’s hips and leaned into him.

‘You’re hurt,’ Sherlock murmured, and John turned his head to kiss Sherlock’s stomach through his shirt.

‘Just a graze. I’ve had worse.’

Sherlock’s warm hand settled over the scar on John’s shoulder, rubbing gently. It had started to ache when the weather was cold; John would never have admitted it but, living with Sherlock, he hadn’t needed to, and increasingly often these days Sherlock was unavailable for overnight stakeouts when NSY came calling.

‘Perhaps we should think about calling it a day,’ Sherlock said, and John looked up at him, shocked.

‘You’re not serious.’

‘I’ve never been more so in my life.’

True, Sherlock’s voice and expression were grave, but John tried: ‘It’s barely a scratch, it’s nothing to fret about. And anyway, what would you do without the work?’

Sherlock cupped his face in warm, calloused hands, one long thumb stroking over the lines at the corner of John’s eye.

‘Right now the question is more what I’d do without you,’ he murmured, a little sadly, and John squeezed his arms tighter in response. ‘And besides, Mrs Hudson is planning to move in with a friend and sell this house.’

Another shock, and John demanded ‘How do you know? Has she said something?’

Sherlock shook his head. ‘She hasn’t needed to; you can see it in her eyes when she comes up here.’

John fell silent. Mrs Hudson’s second hip replacement had slowed her down tremendously, and she was too proud to use the stairlift they’d had installed unless she absolutely had to. Her mind was as sharp as ever; sharp enough that it was easy to forget that, actually, she was now an old lady.

‘I suppose it’s a bit much for her,’ John admitted at last. ‘Alright.’ He pressed another kiss to Sherlock’s stomach, where he’d started to acquire just the slightest bit of extra softness with age. ‘It can’t hurt just to look at some places.’

It was easier said than done, though. It was impossible to picture Sherlock anywhere but London, but nonetheless John browsed property websites and arranged viewings, albeit with a sense of futility. None of the places seemed right: they were too poky, too inaccessible, too close to the nearby village (John was certain that Sherlock would go mad within a week if forced to conform to village life). Many were simply too small: John thought of the homely mass of books and papers and Sherlock’s chemistry equipment and found himself shaking his head at place after place, unable to imagine it all fitting in but equally unable to imagine getting rid of any of it.

Sherlock was careful to make approving noises at all the right moments but John wasn’t fooled. Sherlock had his chemistry studies, true, but there was only so much time they could take up and time had always hung heavy on Sherlock’s hands; John watched Sherlock’s face carefully before rejecting property after property.

One afternoon they were out in the Sussex downs, returning from a trip to see yet another cottage. John had had such high hopes of this one. True, it was a little farther out than they’d been looking previously but the creation of a new, high-speed rail link between London and Eastbourne meant that the capital wasn’t that far away, for visits to take in one of Sherlock’s beloved violin concerts or an interesting exhibition.

But they’d taken one look around the place – charming but far too small, like all the others – and John shook his head.

‘Now Mr Watson,’ the estate agent began, ‘I really think that you’ll find it has–’

‘It’s Doctor Watson,’ John corrected her, a little sharply. She seemed nice enough but there was a slightly patronising tone to her voice that put John’s hackles up.

‘Sorry, Dr Watson,’ the girl – Tamsin, her name was Tamsin – said. ‘But it’s so quaint and charming, I’m sure if you just have another look–’

‘We’re not in the market for charming,’ John snapped, almost at the limit of his patience. ‘Or quaint. Look, I write about murders and serial killers, and he–’ he jerked his thumb at Sherlock, who was already waiting by the car and engrossed in his phone, ‘–currently has a full set of human teeth slowly dissolving in various concentrations of acid. Not to mention that I told you our space requirements and you seem to have ignored them, so I think we’ll be heading back to town now, thank you.’

Sherlock’s hearing was still as sharp as ever; he shot John a darkly amused look as they approached the car, Tamsin looking distinctly frosty.

‘Hopkins is really coming along well,’ he said in the car, just a shade too loudly. ‘He had almost arrived at the solution by himself, and barely needed any prompting at all to think of looking in the new flowerbed for the missing foot.’

And John hid a smile behind his hand as Tamsin’s shoulders twitched.

On the drive back to town John stared out of the window, heedless of the greenery flashing by.

‘We’ll find somewhere.’ Sherlock’s hand covered his where it lay on the seat between them and he folded his fingers around John’s. ‘Not to worry.’

John made a non-committal noise, still lost in thoughts of locations and property prices and trends in the housing market, until a sharp note of interest in Sherlock’s voice caught his attention: ‘What’s up there?’

‘Nothing,’ Tamsin said curtly, as they swept past a country lane with a signboard at its entrance. ‘Some old place that’s been on the market for years, the current owners don’t live in it and it’s gone to ruin a bit.’

‘We’d like to see it, please.’

Tamsin glanced at them over her shoulder, startled. ‘Oh, it’s really nothing special. Now if you have time to come back to the office then I’ve a selection of much nicer places I can show you–’

‘Nevertheless.’ Sherlock’s voice was calm but brooked no argument, just the slightest touch of steel in his pleasant tone. ‘We’ll see it.’

Tamsin shrugged. ‘If you insist. But please don’t expect too much.’

Within a few minutes they were back at the lane entrance, and started to make their way up it. The hedgerows either side of it were straggly and overgrown and twigs rattled against the car windows as they passed, but after a surprisingly short time they rounded a corner and pulled up to an old farmhouse. It wasn’t as bad as John had feared from Tamsin’s description: a few tiles were missing but the structure looked sound enough at a quick glance.

‘You see.’ Tamsin turned the car off and they sat there, contemplating it. ‘It’s really not in a saleable condition, it needs so much work.’

‘Mmm,’ Sherlock said vaguely, and got out of the car.

John expected him to make for the main house but instead he made a beeline for the outbuilding. At first glance he had taken it for a shed or a garage, but as he joined Sherlock he saw that it was more like a workshop: peering in through the grimy, dusty windows revealed the vague lines of long benches set against the walls.

‘House looks sound enough,’ John said, shoving his hands in his pockets and turning to Tamsin, who had condescended to get out of the car and come over to join them. Sherlock was circling the building and making thoughtful noises, and John knew enough to leave him to himself when he got like that. He’d come to John with his conclusions when he was ready.

‘I imagine it is,’ Tamsin said cautiously, watching Sherlock with a puzzled frown. ‘Although obviously you’d have to get a surveyor to look it over properly for you.’

‘Yes.’ Most of John’s attention was still on Sherlock.

‘And the garden has run completely wild, of course,’ Tamsin continued, gesturing at the back of the house. ‘Come and look.’

They walked around the back of the house and John looked silently at the tangled mess of vegetation that confronted him. Sherlock, on the other hand, didn’t pause when he caught up with them but plunged straight in, trampling a path for himself as he disappeared around the corner of the house.

‘Dr Watson…’ Tamsin’s voice was doubtful, and John turned to her. ‘You’re not… you can’t be seriously considering this? It needs so much work, it’s a simply mammoth task, and you… I thought that you were both looking for something–’

‘Right, yes, ta,’ John said vaguely. Sherlock hadn’t reappeared and so John left her talking and set off in search of him, finding him at the end of a trail of flattened grass at the bottom of the garden.

‘Right,’ he said, no preamble as he came to stand next to Sherlock. ‘Talk to me. You like this place, don’t you?’

‘It’s got a large outbuilding, that–’

‘That could easily be turned into a chemistry lab,’ John finished. ‘Yeah, I know, I saw that too. We’d need to run a line over to it from the main building, though, and get an electric heater or two in there. Otherwise you’re going to freeze your arse off come winter.’

‘John…’ Sherlock looked at him properly for the first time since he’d got out of the car, frowning a little. ‘It needs a lot of work.’

John rolled his eyes. ‘So did you when I first met you. And we’re not old men quite yet, ta very much. I’m sure we’ll cope.’ He had a small pang of an old worry, and asked: ‘Would you cope? It’ll be quieter than Baker Street, you know.’

‘I know. But–’

Sherlock stopped at the sound of Tamsin’s approach, and John turned to see her picking her way through the damp grass in her ballet pumps, grimacing slightly.

‘What’s the asking price?’ he called to her.

She gave him a despairing, disbelieving look, but John had been the recipient of such looks more times than he could count – mostly from various NSY officers – and he merely held his look of pleasant inquiry until she came up to him and said, defeatedly: ‘I can find out for you.’

‘That’d be lovely.’

Sherlock had wandered a little farther on, towards a large pile of something that was buried under clinging, climbing weeds, and John watched him take a stick to clear some of the greenery away. The things underneath looked for all the world like a load of tea-chests on stilts, and Tamsin made a dismissive noise.

‘Obviously they’ve not bothered to clear all the rubbish out of the garden.’

‘They’re not rubbish.’ Sherlock stroked a gentle hand along the top of a tea-chest. ‘They’re beehives.’

‘Either way,’ she persisted, ‘you’ll want to ensure that the current owners arrange disposal of them before completion.’

‘No,’ Sherlock said thoughtfully, brushing a still-clinging tendril away. ‘No, I don’t think we will.’

And as John looked at the dearly familiar light of interest in Sherlock’s face, he smiled to himself. Something told him that Sherlock was going to be just fine.

----------

These days their honey came from Sherlock’s hives, and John swore loyally that it was nicer than even Fortnum and Mason’s. Sherlock started a blog on his research into varroatosis and colony collapse disorder, and John joked that he might have more luck holding onto his readers with that than with fifty shades of cigarette ash until Sherlock glared at him over the top of his reading glasses. John began work on his first independent novel, and a couple of publishers expressed interest in the outline he sent off. They were up in London regularly for concerts and exhibitions – John knew Sherlock too well to imagine for a moment that he’d abandon it completely – but more and more Sherlock seemed content to stay put.

The house renovation was indeed a mammoth task, but John couldn’t pretend that he wasn’t glad of the scale of the project as a way to ease the transition from London to the countryside. Several of their old friends found their way down from London, and Lestrade proved to be a positive mine of information on various queries related to wiring a house.

Sherlock’s hair turned almost entirely silver and the first twinges of rheumatism started to show themselves in cold, damp weather, but when the mood took him he would throw himself into his chemical studies or his hives with all the energy of his younger self. Neither of them was the lithe-bodied young man he had been, and the initial passion between them had cooled to something deeper and slow-burning. But all the same, they had their moments.

At breakfast one morning Sherlock was eating toast with honey and idly licking the honey off his fingers as he perused the daily papers prior to beginning an experiment on his hives. John watched him covertly; suddenly forty years ago felt like it was only yesterday, and John was sitting at the living room table in Baker Street opposite a gorgeous young madman and trying to work out whether he stood a hope in hell with him.

‘What?’ Sherlock raised his eyebrows inquiringly at John, and John shook his head a little to clear it.

‘Nothing.’

Sherlock was silent but his expression spoke volumes and John elaborated ‘I was just… well. Remembering the Christmas hamper.’

Sherlock grinned at him, the devil in his eyes, and even after all these years that look still had the power to make John’s heart pound.

‘We spent that entire Christmas in bed,’ Sherlock murmured.

‘We did.’ John’s mouth was dry.

Sherlock pushed his plate away. ‘You know, there’s no reason that this experiment has to be done today. And I have to say, I didn’t sleep at all well last night.’

‘Mmm.’ John couldn’t quite stop himself smiling. ‘I should go back to bed then, if I were you. Doctor’s orders.’

‘I think I might.’ Sherlock stood, pushing his plate away, and held out a hand to John. ‘Coming?’

John caught Sherlock’s hand, twining their fingers together. ‘Why the hell not.’

--End--