Archive of Our Own ^beta

He looks just the same.

Well, no, not just the same. Perhaps a little older, even though it hasn’t been that long, although it feels like a lifetime—stress? John’s racing mind catalogs a dozen things at once: that yes, faking your death would be a stressful situation, and whatever he’s been up to, whatever reason he must have had, must also be stressful, whatever reason he had to fake his death must be important (it is important, right?), if that’s what even happened, if he isn’t hallucinating, but surely a hallucination would look just as he remembered, stepping right out of the past, or perhaps horribly warped and dripping river-water, but if Sherlock had faked his death, if he had faked his death, if Sherlock—

John takes a step closer. The storm rumbles outside. “How are you alive?” he asks. Barely notices as Sherlock sighs and returns the condiments to the fridge.

Sherlock is alive. It’s hard to even think the words in that order, painful, digging into his heart like barbed wire. Sherlock is alive; Sherlock is here and rummaging through his fridge. It’s so painfully, wonderfully Holmes that it feels as though it must be real. Only Sherlock Holmes would come back from the dead by breaking into John’s house and stealing from his fridge.

“Trickery,” says Holmes, with a little grin, so animated and real and alive. That same voice that Watson had missed, the accent, the age and warmth of it, that voice that not even hallucinations had quite gifted him back. “Some sleight of hand. A dash of—skullduggery.”

John glances back at the bedroom—no sign of Laila waking, no one to verify what he's seeing but also no one to interrupt—and back at Sherlock, still having just a little bit of trouble tearing his eyes away. Sherlock Holmes, alive. He knows it’s foolish to keep repeating the words, even in his head, but regardless, they repeat, an echo on loop: Sherlock’s alive, Sherlock’s alive, Sherlock’s alive.

“Do you have an overnight guest, my friend?” Sherlock says, little grin never dropping, having noted John’s glance back. “Is that why we’re whispering?”

Bastard isn’t whispering in the slightest. Not shouting, but hardly whispering. John only feels affection at the thought.

Still, John zeroes back in on Sherlock’s earlier words, the important words. Laila, as much as he likes her, is an afterthought right now—Sherlock Holmes is supposed to be dead, a waterlogged corpse they never found, a pale and cold body Watson never dragged from the depths. And here he is, hale and whole, standing here in John’s kitchen.

“…trickery,” he says. Slow. Careful. A hint of disbelief and even betrayal creeping into his voice. There is still the possibility this is a hallucination, but there’s no reason he should be progressing this fast, with nothing in between, and anyway, the possibility of this being real is simply too intoxicating, too tempting, too painfully hopefully real. It seems so real. “On me?”

I thought you trusted me.

“On everyone,” Sherlock corrects, almost gently. “Not an easy decision, but I do believe it had to be taken.” Said with easy, near brash confidence. Again, typical Holmes. It was so, so in-character.

“Why?” is all John can say. Why did you fake your death, why did you lie to me, too, why was it necessary, why did you come back now. Why?

His breath trembles. This is real, he’s almost certain of it. Sherlock’s real, and standing only a few feet away.

Sherlock steps slightly closer now—John’s still holding his bat, even though he feels almost numb, and they’re standing almost close enough to touch. He’s hesitant to try and touch. He wants to try and touch.

“I’m closer to the end, now, than I am to the beginning,” Holmes says, a hint of excitement now there, like when he explains the solution to a case, when he begins to get to the whodunnit. “And if I’m to spend my remaining energy in the way that I intend… I had to clear the stage.”

John doesn’t miss that this isn’t an answer. More questions. Part of him, the detective, is already looking for clues, already searching, already demanding more answers. Another part of him is still on loop: Sherlock’s alive, Sherlock’s alive, Sherlock’s alive.

“How else can one spring a third-act surprise?”

He says it with a little lilting grin, almost mischievous, like they’re in on a joke together. He had always talked like that with Watson—like they were in cahoots, like they were equals. Best friends, partners in crime-solving. Like they were sharing a joke, and Sherlock trusted John was one of the few clever enough to get it. Watson had always been in on the joke, for all Sherlock liked to spring a little reveal and amaze everyone.

And then the smile fades, and he looks down, and he says, “Would you like to hit me, Watson?” He’s glanced at John’s baseball bat. “A single blow, perhaps, from that misshapen cricket bat? I could hardly blame you. And I won’t resist.”

Typical, typical Holmes. That brash, mischievous confidence melting into earnest self-deprecation—not one thing becoming another, but both at once, all wrapped up with humor as a bow. He meant it, too—he would allow Watson to clock him with a baseball bat or knock the air out of him if John wanted to, would trust he would know exactly how to hit him hard enough to hurt but without causing proper injury.

Perhaps he even wanted him to, thought he deserved it. Perhaps he felt guilty.

Of course, Holmes also likely suspected John would never hit him; he was clever enough for that—but he would let it happen, if, even in a fit of emotional impulse, that was what Watson wanted.

Watson doesn’t want to hit Sherlock.

The bat slips from his suddenly slack fingers, and it clatters to the floor, and Sherlock’s already smiling when John starts to grin. He can’t help it. For all his questions, all his confused and complicated and contradictory feelings—one overwhelms them all. Relief. Love, even, although that makes two, and he can’t help but give an ever-so-slightly hysterical laugh.

He steps forward, claps hands on Sherlock’s shoulders—feels him, warm and solid and alive, here, real, so incredibly real—and says, voice nearly breaking even as he practically beams, “You’re alive.” He pulls Holmes in tightly and hugs him, wraps arms around him as he laughs joyously over Watson’s shoulder, and just—breathes for a moment.

His best friend, one of the dearest people in the world to him, is alive. Sherlock Holmes, warm and solid and breathing in his arms, solid and pressed close, stomach to stomach and arms around shoulders and waist, hands at backs.

They rock back and forth, Holmes held tight in his arms and wrapping arms around him back, near clinging, and Watson can’t help but say, disbelieving and overjoyed and utterly breathless with relief, “You’re here. And you’re alive.”

Holmes seems relieved, too, like maybe he really did think Watson would punch him, would be furious, would make him leave. That, for all the mystery and betrayal and anger, the doubt, the reckoning with grief and guilt that’s been torn open… that any of it would come before the relief, the love, the joy at having him here and alive and okay.

He breathes in—Holmes smells the same, too, the bergamot and orange and tea—and for a moment, the world is right. The rain patters on the windows, the distant thunder rumbles softly. Sherlock Holmes is in his arms, alive and breathing and clinging back.

“You’re alive,” he breathes again into Holmes’s ear, and one of his best friend’s hands rubs over Watson’s back in a circle, reassuring and carefully affectionate.

All the many questions can wait a moment. For now, this is all there is.