Warm late afternoon light pooled across Greg’s office, the muted sounds of the city outside his window. On the other side of his office door, the NSY bullpen phones hummed, a distant coffee machine hissed, but he was listening for a specific sound and took a deep breath when he heard the pings of the unseen lift banks beyond the cubicles.
Years of working with John and Sherlock meant reception no longer announced them when they visited. So, it surprised him when he got a call warning him that he was about to have a visitor who didn’t look to be in the best of moods.
Thus, he looked up as a familiar silhouette rounded the corner: John.
John’s shoulders were hunched, his frame looking uncertain, worn, as if every step of walking hollowed him out a little more. He paused in the doorway, eyes not meeting Greg’s, then looked away; his deep blue eyes looked haunted and overwhelmed.
“John?” Greg’s brow furrowed.
“I… I just came from my anger management,” John managed, the words spilling with a tremor that betrayed more than fatigue.
“I didn’t know you were going—”
“I signed myself up after… after…”
Greg winced internally at the unsaid, his mind automatically bringing up how he last saw Sherlock: the bloodshot eyes, the cut face.
A fit of anger, a moment when the wrong choice had consequences now coming to a bitter head.
“That’s good. But… What happened …?” Greg gestured for John to sit, but the man remained standing.
“It made me really look at myself and… Oh Christ, Greg, I’m such a monster!” The words cracked apart, then gathered themselves with razor clarity, spilling onto the floor between them. “In my head… I know what I did… was not in anger, but guilt.”
“Guilt? What do you mean?”
“I was so angry, but at myself, at my guilt, because… Because…” John clenched his trembling left hand tight, “Because a part of me, an uncomfortably large part, is relieved… she’s…dead.”
Greg wanted to be shocked; by all rights, he probably should be shocked the man was relieved to be a widower; that his daughter would be motherless.
When Sherlock unexpectedly jumped, the loss hit John the hardest. The man fell into such despair that Mycroft secretly had him on suicide watch for a long while. Nearly everyone was glad when John finally pulled himself out and began to live again.
Then after two years, Sherlock returned just as unexpectedly. John proposed and married Mary anyway. Then Mary died saving Sherlock’s life.
And John punished Sherlock for it in the most brutal way.
“But none of it. None of it excuses what I did to him!” John shook his head as he continued, not hearing him. The tremor of tears came, and John crumpled to his knees, hands wringing at the edges of his coat, voice rough and glottal.
“That is true.” Because not even Greg would sugarcoat that.
No, if anything, Greg felt his complete lack of shock for the situation was the shock.
John drew in a shaky breath, the sound hollow in the quiet room, and Greg mentally braced himself, somehow knowing what was coming.
“I… love him,” John tearfully whispered, the admission a fragile thing. “Sherlock. I’ve always loved Sherlock. And I lied to myself about it, about everything, because I was afraid of what people would say. I let fear and convention and anger blind me. And I did that!”
Not quite knowing how to respond, Greg came around and grabbed him by the shoulders; the urge to shush John fought with the understanding his friend really needed to get this off his chest.
“Had I followed my heart… My proposal… should have been to Sherlock.”
The words came out ragged, the confession stinging like salt in a wound. He cried out in a way that felt both mortal and intimate, as though every wound he’d tried to bury had erupted into pain he couldn’t swallow.
“John…” Greg tried to get him to stand, but John stayed kneeling.
“I’m sorry, I did not come here to tell you all that. Just that I decided to leave London.”
Now Greg was truly shocked. “What? No! What are you saying?”
“With my CV, I can be a GP doctor anywhere, but Sherlock’s home, his life, The Work, is here in London.”
“John, don’t say anything you’ll regr-”
“I can’t stay! London’s big, but not big enough. The risk of running accidentally into each other and the memory of what I, of all people, did to him, hurting him anew. No, I’ve hurt him enough. I will take my daughter and leave and spare him seeing the man who could do that to him.”
Down on one knee on the floor with John, Greg had forgotten about the bullpen just outside the office door that John had left ajar, but now opened fully.
"You would leave and never come back?" a familiar voice, cold and smooth, cut through the murk of the moment. “Promise?”
Distracted by John’s unexpected visit, Greg hadn’t been paying attention to the time and looked up at his dinner date.
With a look of betrayal at Greg, until Greg hissed at Mycroft, still, John recoiled as if struck, scurrying back until stopped by Greg’s desk.
Mycroft looked at Greg in barely hidden surprise. From the very first moment John met him, John respected Mycroft’s power, but had never feared him in any way, shape, or form – until that moment.
Then again, John had only taken his little brother to the hospital for help, not put him there by harm from his own hands.
Saying Mycroft had been livid at the time did not cut it. It had taken Greg a lot to calm his lover down from raining hellfire upon John when he found out. Greg knew Sherlock would forgive his brother anything done in defense of him -except make little Rosie an orphan.
Still, this was the first time the two men had seen each other face-to-face.
Greg knew Mycroft was well aware that John would leave London and never return if pushed. And if anyone could push him at this moment, it would be Mycroft.
“John,” Greg spoke, steady from the experience of seeing people bear their worst and holding them up anyway. “You would leave and never come back?”
John, still on the floor, took another shaky breath, then faced his judge, jury, and executioner at the door.
“I’ll leave the city,” he whispered, not as a surrender but as an act of choosing the fire over frying pan. It was evident how much John hurt. He would leave London; it would kill him, but he would do it. “Sherlock deserves a life free from me, and I owe it to him to stop hurting him, even if that means my never seeing him again.”
The room seemed to compress around John, who looked up with bloodshot eyes and a desperate, almost pathetic need to be believed. It came with a gut-wrenching sound. Greg remembered that sound. It was similar to the pain John vocalized when Mary died in his arms.
“You’ll do no such thing,” Mycroft said again, the certainty in his tone almost physical.
“Because… And I cannot believe I am saying this… You’re more than the worst thing you’ve done,” Mycroft replied, the edge in his voice enough to make John listen.
Mycroft quietly reminded John that Sherlock is certified in not one but two forms of self-defense, letting the implication hang.
"You're saying he let me do that to him. WHY??" John shook his head in disbelief, even as the truth of the words began to register.
“Dear god…” Mycroft sighed loudly in exasperation. “You really are your own worst enemy, Watson.”
"And this bullshit right here..." Greg looked up at Mycroft but pointed to John, "...would still be us, had I not found the courage to say something to break the stupidity."
Mycroft’s brief smile to him was enough to show how grateful he was for it.
"And that you, Mycroft, dared to follow through." Sherlock stepped from behind Mycroft.
It was one of the times Greg was reminded that Mycroft is, in fact, slightly taller than his younger brother. Tall enough that neither he nor John noticed he was there until they both stepped into the office and Sherlock fully closed the door.
The office, the bullpen beyond, the city—all of it seemed to pause.
“Sherlock…” John whispered the name that carried both mercy and condemnation.
“Did you mean it?” Sherlock asked, the rumble of his voice carrying both surprising tenderness and a quiet, ruthless honesty that cut through the fog of fear and doubt.
“What you said,” Sherlock continued, his gaze locked onto John’s, “All of it—did you mean it?”
John’s breath hitched, the confession spilling out in a gasping rush. He slowly stood, the idea dawning with a clarity he hadn’t allowed himself to admit, as if the universe itself were offering him a doorway he hadn’t dared to walk through.
“Yes, Sherlock. I meant it. All of it.”
Greg and Mycroft looked at each the unspoken FINALLY hung between them.
“Then where in this world do you think you can go where I can’t find you and drag you back to where you belong, you and Rosie – by my side at Baker Street?” Sherlock’s tone was offered as a lifeline and a binding oath, a promise that love could become a map rather than a trap.
“Sherlock, I don’t think I-…”
“John, you and I not thinking, or rather, overthinking, is why we’re here at this moment. Do shut up.”
For a long moment, no one said anything. Then Mycroft spoke.
“If you two are quite done being the horrendous warning that caused Gregory and me to act sooner rather than later, perhaps you can follow our good example and take your much-needed sentiment in conversation elsewhere.”
The edge of humor, faint as a sigh, threaded through Mycroft’s words, a quiet, unspoken support and a reminder that even in the most harrowing of moments, something human and redeeming could still surface.
“Very good idea…” Sherlock opened the door and gestured out, “John?”
But Mycroft Holmes is Mycroft Holmes.
“And John?” Mycroft waited until John’s eyes met his. “It would do well to remember if there’s a next time, there is nowhere in this world I can’t find you…”
The threat was left open; Greg’s steady gaze closed it.
“And if there’s a next time, I won’t hold him back.”
Sherlock’s brow cocked in surprise at Greg.
“I had wondered… thank you.”
The moment stretched, the room breathing with the weight of confessions laid bare, then narrowed to a single, stubborn truth: that even the deepest wounds might, in time, become the edges that define something braver than despair.
John wiped at his eyes, a tremor still in his hands, and exhaled a shaky breath that felt like a fragile, new beginning.
“We can and will talk at Baker Street, but then I’m still leaving,” he said softly, more to himself than to them, and held out a hand, stopping Sherlock’s immediate protest. “I’m not running away, Sherlock. I’m choosing to wait and learn control. To learn to live in a way that when I come with Rosie to you, I will come with openness and honesty, not with excuses.”
A quiet, almost sacred pause settled over the room. John bowed his head, the weight of his decision pressing, yet there was something unsealed within him: a stubborn resolve, a sliver of hope, a willingness to seek healing — not just for himself, but for all of them who carried the memory of what had happened.
“When you do come back, you’ll find me ready to listen, not to punish, but to rebuild.” Sherlock paused, then added with a gossamer smile that held the weight of their shared past and the fragile promise of a future: “I’ve waited a long time for this. Maybe I’m just a fool who loves you, but if you don’t come back, if friends is all we can ever be, you’ll still have a place in my memory as someone who cared enough to try.”
“Go talk,” Greg said simply, his voice carrying both consent and caution. “Do what you must to heal, both of you. And when you’re ready, if you’re ever ready, we’ll be here.”
“I was there for you before. I’ll be there again.” Mycroft added for John, then looked at his brother, “I’ll always be there for you.”
John’s gaze shifted from Mycroft to Greg to Sherlock, fear tempered by a stubborn, stubborn thread of hope. He slowly drew himself upright, not fully steady, but still standing. The world, which had threatened to swallow him whole moments before, now offered a path he could take if he chose to walk it, one careful step at a time.
With a curt nod, John chose to walk it.
And took that first careful step.
With hands in their respective pockets, Sherlock and John left together, the tension slowly easing into something resembling the beginnings of peace, brittle and bright.
“So, those two idiots have finally said the words. Confession is good for the soul.” Greg leaned back against his desk, watching the two men depart.
“They will confess again at Baker Street,” Mycroft said confidently. “After that? Only Universe knows.”
“And like with us, Universe is rarely so lazy as to let them go all through that for nothing?”
“Exactly.” Mycroft gestured out, “Dinner, my love?”
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