(no subject)
Title: “Counterpoint”
Characters/Pairing: Sherlock/John/Lestrade
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Implied violence, severe injury, language, hospital procedures, angst
Word Count: c. 5,800
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Spoilers: through TRF
Summary: “God,” Sherlock rasps after a moment of silence, raking his eyes over both of them, “have I missed those faces. Greg, John. Hello.”
Notes: This can stand alone and is compliant with events from the second series. However, it is intended to come from the same universe as “Variations on a Theme," which was written prior to series 2.
--------
Counterpoint: Two or three melodic lines played at the same time; individual but harmonizing melodies.
---------
If Greg Lestrade never sees the inside of a hospital again, it will be too soon.
He’s standing in a grey hallway, the bright fluorescent lights overhead simultaneously illuminating the corridor and making his eyes ache for lack of proper light. John is at his side, and irritation rolls off him in waves. A few feet away, Mycroft Holmes speaks quietly into his mobile. They are all lingering just outside a private room in a secluded ward, and Greg has no idea why. He and John had been summoned here by Mycroft, who has subsequently been ignoring them for the past ten minutes while he talks on the phone.
“Ah, gentlemen,” he says finally, pocketing his mobile and twisting his lips into a poor approximation of a smile. “So good of you to come.”
“As though we had a choice,” John grumbles, because Mycroft’s bodyguards had left them very little say in the matter. “What is it you want, Mycroft?”
“I have something to show you, if you will indulge me for a moment.”
Mycroft taps the window to the private room with the tip of his finger, and someone inside draws aside the curtain covering it.
And that’s when Greg realises that, somewhere in the back of his mind, he must have been subconsciously suspecting the scene that meets his eyes, because he doesn’t feel all that surprised by it. Beside him, John lets out a soft rush of air but does nothing else.
Sherlock.
He should be rotting in an early grave. Instead, Sherlock is lying on a thin hospital bed, unconscious, with an oxygen line trailing from his nose and two doctors milling around his still form. Stitches are holding the skin together in several places on his face, and his arms are purple with fresh bruises.
“Greg,” John whispers, “his leg...”
A thin blanket covers Sherlock from the waist down, and it takes Greg a moment to spot what John has noticed.
“What happened?” he growls at Mycroft, because he can make out the complete outline of only one of Sherlock’s legs through the fabric. The other one appears to end a few inches below Sherlock’s knee.
Mycroft is unfazed at the fury in Greg’s voice.
“He was on the final leg of his mission--forgive bad pun--and happened to be in a warehouse when a bomb was set off. The details of that particular day are rather hazy, I’m afraid, and I’ve no idea what he was actually doing there in the first place. He was trapped in the debris, and it took some time to extricate him. By the time my people reached him, the damage was permanent.”
“Mission?” John asked, almost weakly. “Bomb? God, Mycroft, what the hell have you been hiding from us?”
“Quite a lot, I’m afraid.” Mycroft hands a file he’s been holding tucked under his free arm to John, who accepts it mutely. “Sherlock, with my assistance, faked his death and embarked on a mission to end Moriarty’s network. This file should explain most of his activities. You’ll be able to go in and visit him as soon as the doctors have finished. He hasn’t regained consciousness yet, so he won’t know about anything that’s happened. But I trust that you’ll be able to explain it to him?”
“That’s it, then?” Greg asks, finally finding his voice. “That fixes everything, does it? Just... read a file, and everything will make sense.”
He turns to look at Mycroft then, certain that he’s not keeping the contempt from his face very well.
“You knew about us,” he says quietly.
“Greg,” John starts, warning, but Greg holds up a hand.
“Don’t pretend that you didn’t,” he goes on, still addressing Mycroft. “You knew about us, and you also knew that he survived that fall! We had a right to know -”
“No,” Mycroft says sharply. “I owe you nothing, Inspector. I owe Doctor Watson nothing. My only duty is to my country, and demolishing what was left of Moriarty’s network after his demise was paramount to her safety. That’s been accomplished, thanks to Sherlock’s efforts, so consider this a thank you. Informing you of his survival was not an obligation of mine in any way, shape, or form.”
Greg feels bile rise in the back of his throat and swallows it down.
“An act of kindness, is it,” he says dully, and turns back to look at Sherlock’s still form.
“Something like that. Or payment for services rendered. Whichever you prefer.” Mycroft gives another one of his eerie, not-quite smiles. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve a situation in Brazil to be dealing with. Good day, gentlemen.”
John and Greg enter the hospital room after Mycroft has gone, and Greg speaks first.
“I’m Sherlock’s emergency contact,” he tells the doctors. “Greg Lestrade. How’s he doing?”
Sherlock’s wounds are expected to all heal completely, given enough time. Greg leaves the more clinical questions to John once he knows that Sherlock is out of danger, and goes to his former partner’s side.
Sherlock hasn’t changed much in three years, truth be told. There are a few more lines on his face and more grey in his hair than a thirty-three-year-old should possess, but beyond that he could have been the exact same man Greg arrested in Baker Street on that horrible night three years ago. It’s unsettling, as though Sherlock should be carrying the physical markers of his years of absence on his face for all to see.
John comes up behind him when the doctors have left and rests a hand on Greg’s shoulder.
“Are you all right?” he murmurs.
Greg takes John's hand and holds it between both of his. Though they have been out of the cold for nearly an hour now, John’s hand is still chilled.
“What’d they say?” Greg asks instead, deflecting, and John doesn’t call him out on it.
“He’ll be fine. They also seem to also think that he could wake at any time - perhaps in a few hours, perhaps in a few days. But he’ll likely be disoriented for a while, mostly due to the medication and the shock his body’s been through.” John wraps an arm around Greg’s waist and leans against him; Greg puts an arm around his shoulders to hold him there. “He’s alive, Greg.”
“I’d noticed,” Greg says dryly, but his voice wavers slightly because truth be told, this sight is too familiar--the brilliant winter sky visible through the window, the tendrils of frost snaking up the glass, the hospital equipment, John at the bedside. The only difference this December is the patient, because four years ago Greg had been the one in hospital, with Sherlock and John at his side.
“Tell you something, though,” Greg says into the silence, his words coming to his own ears from far away. “I’ve spent too many damn holidays in this place. And so have you.”
He sighs heavily through his nose, and when he next speaks his words are quiet and tinged with bitterness.
“Happy Christmas, John.”
Greg and John settle in, expecting a long and tedious stay before Sherlock even wakes up. Curiosity finally gets the best of John, and he begins to read through the file Mycroft gave them. Greg, partly out of an irrational sense of anger, refuses to have anything to do with it. John narrates the important parts to him anyway, and slowly they begin to piece together the events leading up to Sherlock’s fall and what he’s been doing since.
His mission had started in Germany, and in three months he had covered most of central Europe. Mycroft had lost track of him for six months after that, and finally caught up with Sherlock in the States. Bit by bit, piece by piece, Sherlock had dismantled various branches of Moriarty’s network across the world.
“He fell because there were snipers trained on us.”
Greg, sitting on the other side of the bed, nods--an odd jerk of his head. He’s only half-listening.
“He fell,” John repeats, “because there were people who were going to kill us if he didn’t. And - and he stayed dead, because... until Moriarty’s network was no longer a threat, we would have died should it be discovered that he survived.”
“I know.”
“Why didn’t he come to us? We would have gone with him!”
Greg doesn’t answer at first. He has his shoes off and his feet propped on the mattress, his toes tucked just under Sherlock’s blanketed thighs, savouring the heat that emanates from the very-much-alive body.
“I suppose,” he says at last, rousing himself from his thoughts, “he must have felt it was too dangerous.”
John scoffs
“As though we ever cared about that.”
“Not just for us,” Greg goes on, still quiet. “How do you think it would have looked if Sherlock’s two closest friends disappeared off the face of planet the same time he did? If he was trying to keep a low profile, we could have got him killed. Hell, we all could have been killed. And the network would still be thriving.”
They descend into silence. John reads the file for a while longer before he thumps the arm of his chair with his fist and growls, “Why didn’t he tell us?”
“John, please,” Greg says brokenly. “Stop asking me questions I can’t answer.”
Greg can feel John’s eyes on him, and he pointedly keeps staring at Sherlock’s bruised face, knowing that if he makes eye contact with his lover he will break down. He hears John shift in his seat, and knows he’s about to come over. Greg sits rooted to the spot, knowing he can’t flee, knowing that the moment John puts a kind hand on his he will be undone.
It is more than a blessing, then, that Sherlock opens his eyes at that moment, stares at Greg, and says, “Idiot.”
The room is organized chaos for near half an hour.
John and Greg stand in a corner, out of the way, as doctors and specialists stream in to question Sherlock, take his pulse, test his reflexes, ask him how he’s feeling. Sherlock is near unresponsive at best, which worries Greg, but John assures him that it’s to be expected. But Greg’s known Sherlock long enough to pick up on his non-verbal cues, and though he hasn’t been able to form the words, his eyes have been screaming Get out, get out for the past ten minutes.
“Right, I think that’s enough, don’t you?” he says finally, and three pairs of eyes swivel around to land on him. “He’s had a bloody trying day, can we please give him some rest?”
Ten minutes later, it is just the three of them, and John and Greg resume their seats by Sherlock’s bed.
“Sherlock?” John ventures finally, and is met with a cloudy pair of grey eyes. “How do you feel? Do you know where you are?”
“John,” Sherlock says, his words heavy with medication.
“That’s right,” John says slowly, and then he nods to Greg. “Greg’s here, too, see?”
Sherlock turns to look at him, and repeats, “Idiot,” without any hint of malice. Greg offers him a smile, and brings Sherlock’s hand to his lips.
“That’s right,” he says, kissing Sherlock’s knuckles. “But I’m your idiot.”
“Of course,” Sherlock says automatically, and Greg feels tears prick behind his eyes. That had been their exchange, and theirs alone, for idiot was as close to an endearment as Sherlock ever came to use.
“We’ve missed you,” Greg adds.
Sherlock’s response is slow but deliberate, as though they are the most important words he will ever say.
“Yes. But I came back.”
It’s clear that Sherlock wants to sleep, but now that he’s awake they find it’s difficult for him to go back under. He dozes lightly for a few minutes here and there, but he’s usually startled out of his sleep by a jolt of pain or a noise from the hallway. Every few hours a technician comes to draw his blood and take his temperature, which disturbs his rest further.
John and Greg try to fill Sherlock’s moments of consciousness with idle conversation so that he has something to focus his mind on, and they eventually explain his injuries to him a little after midnight. He takes the news well--perhaps too much so, and John privately voices his concern that Sherlock might not fully comprehend what they’re trying to tell him. Greg has a feeling he’s right.
Sherlock regards his injury with fascination, treating it as though it’s something that has happened to someone else, and John answers his curious questions as best he can. At one point, Greg excuses himself from the room for a quarter of an hour so that Sherlock can’t see his red-rimmed eyes or the difficulty he’s having keeping a smile on his face.
Sherlock has always had a high tolerance for pain, but in the early hours of the morning he starts to lose his composure. He squeezes Greg’s hand so hard that his knuckles pop and his bones grind together, and John finally calls for a nurse a little after four. They try icing his healing injuries first, and then switch to heating pads. The relief is only temporary, and it isn’t long before Sherlock is pale and trembling again with the effort it’s taking him to keep it together.
Finally, the nurse gets hold of Sherlock’s doctor, and the decision is made to switch him to a more powerful painkiller.
“It will make him even more disoriented,” John points out to Greg.
“Don’t think that really matters at this point,” Greg mutters under his breath while a nurse prepares to administer the medication. “It’s not like he was all there to begin with. I’d rather have him comfortable right now, yeah?”
John concedes his point with a wordless nod and, when they are alone again, reaches for Greg’s hand.
Sherlock falls asleep just as dawn is starting to colour the horizon, the heavy painkillers dragging him under with remarkable efficiency. Lestrade drinks weak coffee found in the lounge down the hall and John pulls out his mobile for the first time in twelve hours, breaking their mutual radio silence. He calls Harry to tell her that they won’t be able to make it over to her place for Christmas, and spends ten minutes trying to explain himself without actually saying anything of substance.
“Sherlock’s alive,” he admits finally, apparently realising that the only way he could get out of this one was with the truth.
Even from his perch on the other side of the bed, Greg can hear Harry’s That fucker! loud and clear through the phone.
“Yeah,” John says, meeting Greg’s gaze and rolling his eyes. Greg snorts. “We know.”
There’s a shift change not long after dawn, and a new lab technician comes in to draw Sherlock’s blood soon after. It’s the fifth time this has happened in twelve hours, and it pulls Sherlock from the first true rest he’s had since John and Greg have been at the hospital. And that’s when Greg finally snaps.
“Enough,” he growls, and he would have brought his hand down in anger on the bed’s railing had it not been for John’s quick reflexes. “Enough! Can’t you see the state he’s in? How’s he supposed to get any sort of rest when you lot are in here every two hours, waking him for blood draws and tests and to take his bloody pulse? Don’t you have anything better to do?”
John gives his hand a painful squeeze and flashes a reassuring smile to the technician, who looks utterly unfazed.
“I’ll be sure to mention that to his doctor,” the man tells Lestrade diplomatically.
Sherlock gazes at the technician through bleary, uncomprehending eyes. He then drops his gaze to his arm, watching as three vials of blood are extracted from the bruised flesh, capped, and efficiently labeled.
“Spelled m’name wrong,” he mutters finally as the technician packs his equipment away and prepares to leave. They are the first words he’s spoken in hours, and they are as cracked around the edges Sherlock is himself.
“I’ll do better next time,” the man says blandly, and Lestrade resists the urge to strike him. John squeezes his hand again, no doubt feeling his tension, and so Lestrade says nothing.
“They’re just doing their jobs,” John murmurs when they are alone again.
Lestrade is too furious to put his indignation into words, and so he doesn’t even bother trying. Besides, there are more important things to be dealing with right now, and he turns his attention to their bemused companion.
“Sherlock?” he ventures. He reaches out and places a hand on Sherlock’s good leg, squeezing lightly, trying to draw his attention. “You with us, lad? Remember where you are?”
Sherlock is gazing down at what remains of his left leg, eyes unfocused and lips slightly parted as he contemplates it.
“Thought tha’ was a dream,” he murmurs at last, words made heavy and cumbersome by exhaustion. He then lifts bruised eyes to theirs, blinking rapidly as he tries to focus, interest in his damaged leg completely lost. “Hello.”
John finds his voice first.
“Hello,” he says, reaching for Sherlock’s hand with his free one. His left hand is still wrapped securely around Greg’s. “You okay?”
“London?”
“Yeah,” Greg tells him thickly. “You’re back in London. You’re home.”
“Ah. Home. Good.” Sherlock punctuates his last word with a brisk nod that would have been comical in any situation other than this. He then frowns, thinking, and finally points at John. “Cases! We need to do... cases.”
“What? No, Sherlock, that’s not -”
Sherlock waves his concern away and tries to wrestle out of the blankets wrapped around his legs.
“Game, John, the game!”
Lestrade presses Sherlock back against the bed, and it takes them a full fifteen minutes to convince him that no, he needs to stay there until the doctors say otherwise. The cases can wait. It’s an additional half an hour before they can get any form of sustenance into him, and even then he’s only able to down a glass of juice. It’s progress, they reason, and are relieved when Sherlock falls into an uneasy doze around mid-morning.
He sleeps for the rest of the day. John and Greg finally pull themselves from his side in the early afternoon, and return home for a shower and change of clothes. They bring back to the hospital some items of Sherlock’s that had never quite made it into storage after his fall--a few of his favourite books; his father’s watch; a pair of tracksuit bottoms.
When it appears as though Sherlock is going to sleep through the night as well, John glances at Greg. He doesn’t need to ask his question.
“We’re staying,” Greg says. He hadn’t even considered being anywhere but here while Sherlock recovered.
They drag in a chair from the lounge at the end of the hall. It’s large and orange, outright garish and near-blinding when the lights are on. It’s made in a style that had been popular some thirty years ago, no more practical now than it was then. The seat is too low to the ground and too long to make normal sitting even remotely comfortable, or possible. But as they have no intention of using it as such, it’s not an issue.
Greg kicks off his shoes and settles down onto it first, propping his feet up on Sherlock’s bed and sinking low into the chair. John sheds his jacket and does the same. The chair isn’t meant for two people, not really, but they aren’t all that concerned with personal space. Greg wraps an arm around him and John rests his head on Greg’s shoulder, draping an arm across his chest and tangling their legs together.
They sleep for a time, lulled into an uneasy rest by the beeping of the hospital equipment and the sounds from the hallway outside the room. A lab technician comes for Sherlock’s blood at two, which rouses them. John has tucked himself deeper into Greg’s side, but even that isn’t enough to ward off the chill that has fallen over the room. Greg snags an extra blanket from the end of Sherlock’s bed, and it’s almost enough to make them comfortable, so they sleep again.
They wake again at four, for no reason in particular, and John murmurs, “I love you,” equally inexplicably.
“Love you, too, John.” Greg wraps his arm tighter around John’s shoulders, even though it’s beginning to tingle with the loss of circulation. “Go back to sleep.”
Another technician comes for Sherlock’s blood at five, and after that John and Greg don’t sleep again. They don’t move from their makeshift bed, but with morning approaching, real life is closing in again and there are plans to be made. After all, less than two days ago, Sherlock was still dead.
Now, they are living in a dream.
“He won’t know about Mrs Hudson,” John murmurs at one point.
“Nor about his mother, I’d wager,” Greg points out softly. John then curses Moriarty on a furious rush of breath, and Greg hums in agreement.
Dawn finds John with his head on Greg’s shoulder again, their hands clasped together, both of them staring listlessly out the window while Sherlock sleeps.
Yesterday had been dazzling; so brilliant that to look at the world outside the grey hospital room actually made their eyes ache. Today is cloudy and blustery, and a stiff wind buffets dead leaves and flakes of snow past the window. Now and again a valiant bird tries to fly against the breeze, and is shunted sideways for his efforts.
Greg rests his cheek against John’s forehead, his stubble rasping against the soft skin. He feels John waking, growing more aware of the world as the grogginess fades, and can also tell that there’s something weighing heavily on his mind.
“Wanna tell me about it, sunshine?” he murmurs finally, the name slipping automatically from his lips. It had been Sherlock’s, ages ago, but in the three years since his death Greg has taken to using it on John. In fact, it’s been John’s now for longer than it had been Sherlock’s, though Greg will always be reminded of where it originated.
“What if I don’t love him anymore?” John asks quietly.
“That’s mad, John, of course you do,” Greg says gruffly. “We both do.”
“I guess what I mean is... what if I don’t love him like I used to? Like we used to?” Outside the window, a bird dives and then soars out of sight. “What if that doesn’t come back?”
They have been only two now for longer than they were three, Sherlock having fallen just a little over a year after their first night together. Though no two of them had ever been a visible couple to the outside world, most people had assumed Sherlock and John were lovers, and after a while the two men stopped contradicting that assumption. It was a truth, after all, if only partly.
Greg had expected things to fade between him and John after the funeral--after all, they had started out as three back on that horrid April night, when the bombs and the snipers had finally gone. How could they possibly work as two? But they had adapted, filling in the gaps that Sherlock had left behind, and now the thought of a life without John is absurd to Greg. He can’t believe he ever considered it a possibility in the first place.
“He spent all these years fighting to come back home; to come back to us,” John goes on, softly. “We spent them moving on.”
Greg’s voice is heavy with sorrow when he speaks. “We couldn’t have known.”
“I know. That’s not what I mean. We’re just... we’re in two different places, now. How can we possibly bridge that gap?”
It’s a long while before Greg speaks again.
“Maybe we can’t,” he says in a voice so low it’s almost inaudible, even to his own ears.
“I don’t want that to be true.”
“Neither do I, but we can’t ignore it.” Greg kisses John’s forehead, and murmurs against his brow, “He’ll always have us; that I know. It just might not be like before.”
“He must have known this would happen,” John goes on, continuing to muse idly. “He jumped... knowing that we would move on, and he wouldn’t.”
“Yes... he did.”
The new voice causes them to start so violently that Greg knocks his chin against John’s head, and pain spikes through his jaw. He ignores it, sitting as upright as the odd chair will allow, and stares at Sherlock.
Sherlock licks his cracked lips slowly, deliberately, and adds in a low rasp, “But I found that, to protect you two... I would do anything.”
He’s staring at them, eyes bloodshot but a good deal more lucid than they had been yesterday morning. The corner of his mouth lifts in a crooked smile.
“God,” he rasps after a moment of silence, raking his eyes over both of them, “have I missed those faces. Greg, John. Hello.”
John and Lestrade take turns sitting at Sherlock’s bedside over the next few days, rearranging their work schedules so that at least one of them is with him almost constantly. Sherlock spends most of his waking hours groggy and quiet, but he manages to hold up his end of conversations well enough and he isn’t in very much pain, so they count it as a step in the right direction.
One night, John has gone back to Baker Street for a shower and some sleep, and Greg is sitting with Sherlock. He hasn’t slept much today, and tonight rest is proving once again to be elusive. Greg, exhausted though he is himself, won’t permit himself to fall asleep while Sherlock lies frustratingly awake. Sherlock dozes, but not enough, and Greg is always at his side when he wakes.
“Hello, lad,” Greg greets when Sherlock startles awake--again--around midnight. He strokes the hair off Sherlock’s forehead. “How do you feel?”
“S’nigh.”
“Yeah.” Greg smiles. “It’s night out.”
“No.” Sherlock swallows hard and waves his hand idly, trying to process his thoughts through the haze of medication. His words are thick when he speaks, each one an effort. “I mean... yes. Night. But... s’nigh. S’nice. Nice.”
“Nice? Oh.” Greg returns his hand to Sherlock’s head. “You like that?”
“Mm.” Sherlock closes his eyes. “Don’ get used to it.”
“I’ll enjoy it while I can. Do you feel all right?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Are you lying to me?”
Sherlock cracks open an eye and attempts a weak glare.
“John?” he asks instead.
“He’s back at the flat, getting some sleep.” Greg sits on the bed, near Sherlock’s hip, and resumes stroking his hair.
“Good.”
“Yeah, I thought so, too.” Greg stifles a yawn with the back of his hand. “He’ll be back in the morning.”
“Sleep.”
“No.” Greg, touched, gives him a gentle smile. “Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because you aren’t.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Yes,” Greg tells him solemnly. “You always matter.”
The next time Sherlock rouses himself from a half-doze, his eyes are clear and comprehending. He touches Greg’s hand and asks, “What’d I miss?”
“A lot,” Greg answers before he can stop himself, and winces at the same time that Sherlock flinches. “Oh, Christ, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that, lad. I just... I don’t even know where to begin.”
“You don’t have to begin anywhere. Just... Just talk.”
Greg drops his eyes to the floor, thinking. Cool fingers slide through his, and he wraps both hands around Sherlock’s one.
“My sister had a baby--a boy, this time. He’s almost a year old now.” Greg lifts his eyes to Sherlock’s face and catches the tail-end of an eye roll. “I saw that, sunshine.”
“I had counted on it.”
“John kept the flat. We cleaned out your things, but they’re only in storage.”
“You didn’t move in.”
Greg shakes his head.
“No. Too used to having my own place, I suppose. In any event, people always assumed you and John were... well...”
“People are idiots.”
“Yes, well...” Lacking an adequate response to that, Greg trails off. He picks up the thread of his thoughts elsewhere a few minutes later. “I kept my job at the Yard--probably have your brother to thank for that one. Actually... I’ve got a lot to thank him for now, it would seem.” Greg rubs Sherlock’s hand absently. “I didn’t go to your funeral.”
“That bothers you.”
“Yes.”
“Even though I am actually alive.”
Greg pauses before admitting, “Yes.”
“Interesting,” is all Sherlock says. Greg knows that the silence that follows isn’t because Sherlock has lost interest, but because he doesn’t quite understand, and he’s filed the information away for later contemplation.
Sherlock finally drifts off to sleep around two. Half an hour later, Greg follows.
John arrives at the hospital just as the day shift is beginning to come on duty. He steals into Sherlock’s room to find Sherlock wide-awake and watching the television while Greg sleeps in a chair at his side.
“Hello,” he greets. Sherlock gestures to Greg.
“He hasn’t been sleeping lately,” he points out solemnly.
“Yeah, I know. Don’t worry, I’ll be quiet.” John sets his bag down in a corner. “Were you able to get any sleep?”
Sherlock nods, and John comes to stand at his side. They aren’t particularly tactile with one another--certainly nowhere near as physically affectionate as they are with Greg--but when Sherlock turns over his hand on the bed so that his palm is facing up, John recognizes the invitation and takes it in his own.
“I knew things would change,” Sherlock murmurs absently, his eyes moving to Greg’s still form. “But...”
“But knowing something and being faced with it are two entirely different things,” John finishes for him. He wonders how they must look to Sherlock. Older, for one. More grey. Thinner, in Greg’s case. “Not everything’s changed, though.”
“Hasn’t it?”
“Greg’s still got his flat; I’ve got Baker Street,” John tells him softly. “We still split our time between the two, just like the three of us used to do. Angelo still has the restaurant, Molly’s still at Barts, I’ve got my job and Greg has his team...”
John trails off and lifts one shoulder in a shrug.
“Do you still blog?”
“A bit. Not as much as when we were working together, but I haven’t stopped.” John nods to Greg, a sudden smile touching his lips. “And he still steals the blankets at night.”
Sherlock lets out a soft huff of breath--a failed chuckle. And then he mutters, “I had to come back.”
John looks at him, but Sherlock is still gazing at Greg.
“I couldn’t die on the mission,” he says quietly. “I had--I had to come back. I don’t know why. It doesn’t make much sense, does it? I was still dead to you, and you had mourned. Whether I had died in London or abroad... I would still be gone. It wouldn’t matter. But it did, to me. Isn’t that absurd?”
“No.” John touches his shoulder. “No. Not at all.”
The chair behind him creaks as Greg begins to rouse.
“It was irrational.” Sherlock shakes his head slowly. “I’ve... never been so irrational as when I was around the two of you.”
“Sometimes,” Greg says as he comes up behind John, “there are things in life that call for a bit of irrationality. Morning, Johnny.”
“Hey.”
Their kiss is brief and familiar, as much a greeting as it is an affirmation, and it is as automatic to them as breathing. But in the moment before he can mask his face Sherlock looks as though he has been physically struck, and John feels a stab of regret. Not for his actions--he will never be sorry for loving Greg--but for all they might have had now if not for Moriarty, and for everything Sherlock missed. They were broken apart by a madman, and even though they are together again, they may never be able to undo the damage.
It is profoundly unfair.
Greg has also apparently seen the expression on Sherlock’s face, for his hand goes to his throat. He tugs a chain out of the collar of his shirt. There’s a ring on it, slim and silver, a ring that matches the one that sits on John’s hand in the privacy of their flats and the one that Greg’s worn every day since Sherlock’s fall.
It’s the ring Greg gave Sherlock four Christmases ago, before the Woman and the hound and the fall. It’s from back when they were three instead of two; when everything was alright despite the threat of Moriarty on the horizon.
“This is yours,” he says unnecessarily to Sherlock. “‘Bout time you had it back, yeah?”
He removes the chain from around his neck without waiting for a response and slips it over Sherlock’s head. Sherlock closes a hand automatically around the ring, clutching it tight in an ironclad fist as though it’s his only anchor in a storm-tossed sea. His eyes never leave Greg’s face but he squeezes John’s hand, almost imperceptibly, as though for assurance.
“I don’t know...” Sherlock trails off.
Tinny Christmas music filters into the room from the nurses’ station just outside, high-pitched and warbling, and the air between them is heavy with all they don’t know how to say.
“I know.” Greg, who has always known how to make the best of most any situation, gives a reassuring smile and adds, “I don’t know, either. But don’t worry. We’ll figure it out.”
And in the moment before a nurse enters and they all spring apart, slipping into their daily personas because the outside world can’t see what they are (or were), Greg reaches for John’s hand while taking Sherlock’s in his other one. He squeezes, only once, but it is enough.
“Happy Christmas, lads.”