Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He liked watching her sleep.

It wasn't because he was a stalker; he most certainly was not. And once she had agreed to stay with him, he disgruntledly accepted her boundaries. Which were many, as far as he was concerned.

But when she was sleeping, she was calm. Peaceful. She brought him to a place of peace, a respite from the mundane noise of everyday life. 

Something he desperately needed.

It always started the same way when they weren't on a case.

She would take off her stilettos and suit, and have an evening shower that lasted three minutes longer than her usual shower time. Then she would get into her pyjamas and slippers, and if it was cold, she'd put on that red cardigan. It was old, worn out and overused, but she always preferred it over any new ones he might have bought her over the years. It had been long since he'd stopped trying to replace it; he knew better by now.

She'd blow-dry her hair, then find him to say goodnight. Sometimes she'd stay a bit longer, share a cup of tea with him if she needed the company or thought he needed it. Sitting on the chairs of the media room, close together but without touching. Or in the library, close to the fire he had started, sitting on the ottoman or the armchair, sharing the silence.

Finally, she would retire to bed. 

He would wait, sometimes for hours, until he was sure she was asleep. And then, he would walk up the stairs, minding the fourth step that creaked. Often, he would take off his shoes before, making sure his steps were silent.

She had two chairs in her bedroom. One served as a bedside table. The other was broken — it would take years to replace — and it always sat at the far end of the room, opposite the bed. Sometimes it was empty, more often than not it was full of clutter: books, water bottles or discarded clothes.

He would methodically take everything off the chair and then lower himself onto it, minding the leg that was broken. He sat, barely breathing at first, with his back straight.

And he watched. 

He watched for minutes, often hours. Sometimes, when his mind was particularly troubled, he stayed until the first rays of the early morning sun came through the windows. Some other times, he'd found, much to his dismay, that being in that room with her calmed and relaxed him to the point of falling asleep. Who would've thought?

The first night he’d visited, he stayed.

He’d tried everything.

He’d played the violin until the strings protested. He’d paced the brownstone from attic to basement, run calculations in his head, mentally dissected old cases, and recited chemical formulas backwards. None of it worked. The static remained—low, relentless, humming beneath his skin like an itch he couldn’t reach. 

But nothing silenced the restlessness clawing at the walls of his chest.

He sat in the library for hours, watching the fire die down. At precisely five past three in the morning, he rose from the armchair and moved through the brownstone in silence. The lights remained off. He didn’t need them. 

Every step, every corner of the place was imprinted in his mind like a blueprint. He could navigate it by instinct alone. He knew the creak of every board, knew how to move without sound. It was an old habit.

At the top of the stairs, he paused. Her door was cracked open.

What was he doing? But his feet took him to her door, as his hand grabbed the doorknob.

He hesitated on the threshold.

He didn’t mean to intrude. He only needed… silence. Just a moment near her quietness, her steadiness. He was familiar enough with her to know that she had no idea what she gave off; it wasn’t just calm. 

It was something solid to tether himself to when his own mind grew too loud.

He breathed out through his nose and eased the door open, one hand brushing the frame to steady himself.

The room was dim, just the soft golden wash of the hallway light spilling through the doorway. She lay curled on her side, one hand tucked beneath her cheek, the other resting loosely on the comforter. 

Her breathing was steady. Deeper than REM — she was in slow-wave sleep. She wouldn’t wake.

He stepped inside.

He didn’t need to look around; the layout was fixed in his memory. Two chairs. One near the bed, with a mug of herbal tea long since cooled. The other a book and a blouse on it.

He left both items on the floor, careful not to make a sound, then he lowered himself into the chair. 

Back straight. Hands resting loosely on his thighs. Eyes on her.

There was no rational purpose to his being here; no case to observe, no experiment to test.

Just her.

Watson.

Asleep. Peaceful. Unbothered.

She grounded him without trying. 

Not by speaking, not by analysing, but simply by existing. Her stillness was a metronome that his heart gradually began to sync to. Her breath, steady and slow, filled the room in a way that soothed something primal in him.

He watched the rise and fall of her shoulders with each breath. The comforter was slipping slightly from one shoulder, revealing the worn sleeve of a soft grey T-shirt. Familiar, mundane details.

But to him, they were everything.

He sat still for minutes. Then longer. Time became difficult to track. He didn’t fidget, didn’t reach for his phone.

At one point he closed his eyes, the image of her sleeping ingrained in his inner mind. And he let his mind focus only on one thing: her breathing, his breathing, in perfect sync.

There were moments where the weight in his chest lifted slightly, where the thoughts lost their edge. Not silence, exactly—but a softer kind of noise. Manageable.

She shifted once, in her sleep, turning onto her back. For a brief moment, her brow furrowed. He leaned forward a fraction, holding his breath—but she settled again, sighing softly.

He exhaled.

He remained there, motionless, until the early edge of dawn began to blue the windowpanes. The sky outside was pale and washed-out, the kind of quiet that preceded a city’s waking breath.

And still, he stayed.

Only when the sun began to rise in earnest did he finally stand. He moved carefully, adjusting the blanket that had slipped from her shoulder, then turned and left the room without a sound.

He returned to his own space, but the quiet followed him. And for the first time in days, as he prepared tea for him and coffee for her, he started to feel lighter.

Not long after, she appeared in the kitchen, clad in her worn-out red cardigan and a smile that reached all the way to him. Present. Steady. Tethering. And for once, when she looked at him as if he were the only star in the universe, the part of him that feared needing her fell mercifully silent.

Chapter Text

He told himself it wouldn’t become a habit.

He’d told himself that before, last night, and the night before that. That these nightly visits, occasional and harmless as they began, would taper off once the need passed.

But now, even without a trigger — no particular agitation, no unsolved puzzle, no unbearable itch beneath his skin — he found himself glancing at the stairs.

The evening had passed without incident. He had cleaned his violin, read for several hours, and even prepared an elaborate cup of oolong tea that had steeped three seconds too long. Still palatable, if only barely.

Watson had stayed with him a bit longer that evening. He didn’t mind the company. In fact, he welcomed it, but he hadn’t felt the need for conversation. So he sat in silence on the library floor, and she sat in the chair behind him. Legs folded beneath her, cup of tea he’d prepared and handed her cradled in her hands.

And she watched him. He could feel her eyes on him, the sensation of prickling skin on the base of his neck. Eventually, he could hear her breathing slow, the tea mug shifting dangerously in her slackening grip. She had the sense to place it on the floor before it could spill.

“Go to bed, Watson,” he whispered after the third time her head had lolled to her chin and startled her awake.

He hadn’t turned around, but he didn’t need to; the stretch of her neck and her sharp intake of breath were enough. 

“I’m fine,” she’d said, shifting on the chair.

He sighed. “You’re obviously not. And we both know that, unlike me, you work better with sleep than without. Go. Rest.”

It might have sounded like a rebuke—curt, even—but it wasn’t. Not truly. There was no bite behind the words, only fact. And a kind of quiet respect. He knew what rest did for her. What she would be without it. He wanted her to have it.

Perhaps it was the way he’d said it, gentler than usual. Or perhaps she was tired. Either way, Watson heeded his words. She left the mug on the table on her way to the stairs and disappeared down the hallway, her red cardigan billowing behind her.

He didn’t watch her go.

But somewhere in the space she left behind, the air shifted. Settled. He stayed still, though something beneath his skin was already in motion. He didn’t name it. Didn’t try. Only knew that with her gone, the rest of the night had begun.

The smell of lavender and herbal tea lingered in the library long after she’d left.

There was no cause for this. And yet.

His gaze drifted, again and again, to the stairs. To the banister. The hallway beyond.

He told himself he wouldn’t go. There was no data to justify it, no hypothesis to prove or disprove.

Just a pattern forming where there shouldn’t be one.

Still, at 2:08 a.m., when the house had been quiet for long enough and the city sounds had dulled to a low, constant hum, he found himself at the base of the staircase. Hand on the railing. 

And he climbed upstairs.

Jumped over the fourth stair, as always. The hallway stretched ahead, dark but familiar. Her door was slightly ajar, more open than last time. Left like that deliberately? He could hypothesise, but he couldn't say for sure.

He steadied himself before he pushed the door open.

Inside, the usual scent drifted outward. Lavender, laundry soap, faint remnants of the herbal tea she kept here, despite the fact that she more often than not drank her evening tea with him. 

That was the scent of Watson’s room, constant as gravity.

The light from the landing barely touched the interior, but he could see the shape of her under the covers, motionless, her breath steady.

He stepped in, his socked feet padding on the wooden floor. Then stopped.

The chair. It had been cleared.

The clutter that usually occupied the seat: books, discarded clothes, the occasional coffee mug, a scarf. It was all gone. 

In its place, neatly folded, was a blanket.

Sherlock’s step faltered.

He remained still for a long moment, eyes trained on the chair. He took inventory: dark flannel, worn at the seams. Freshly laundered — that’s where the smell of fabric softener came from. 

The blanket was not a coincidence. 

She knew. 

Of course she knew. She always noticed everything; her observation skills could rival even his. 

His breath hitched, heart stuttering once. His hands clenched briefly, knuckles whitening. 

It should have unsettled him. That his movements had been detected, catalogued, and accounted for.

But the tension passed after a moment. Just as sharp, just as fleeting. And in its place: something quieter, heavier. Steadying.

She had noticed. And she hadn’t closed the door, hadn’t confronted him, hadn’t asked him to stop.

She had simply left a blanket.

A silent permission.

A slow inhale filled his lungs as he approached slowly, with measured steps, and reached out. His fingers grazed the fabric, soft, brushed texture. The kind of blanket meant to be used, not as decoration.

His fingers lingered longer than necessary. Not testing the fibres, not cataloguing the weave, just… resting. Absorbing a softness and warmth that felt foreign to him.

A breath caught low in his chest, and he didn’t move. Not at first.

The room felt different. There was an energy, a warmth that didn’t fit any physical measurement he could recall.

Eventually, he lowered himself onto the broken chair, back straight, hands on his thighs.

The rhythm of her breathing anchored the space. No change in her position, still curled a bit to one side, comforter tucked beneath her chin. She hadn’t stirred.

Almost instinctively, his fingers found the blanket. It was softer than he expected, his fingertips grazing its surface with absent precision. And then, uninvited but impossible to dismiss, the thought slipped in as he looked at her peaceful sleeping form.

Her skin might feel as soft as this.

He exhaled, blinking as he drank her in. Still, quiet, real. He pulled the blanket around his shoulders, the fabric soft and unexpectedly heavy with warmth.

It wasn’t the room, he was aware. The air was cool, edges crisp against his skin.

No, this warmth was different. It pooled low in his chest, settling like a weight he neither expected nor knew how to name.

His mind started to dissect it, but the thought slipped away before he could catch it.

So he stayed still. And there, wrapped up in the blanket, their blanket, he stayed.

No thinking. No calculating.

Just observing her breathe in and out, his own breathing falling into her rhythm. 

Eventually, the windowpanes began to lighten. Pale grey gave way to the early blue of morning. He stood, folded the blanket as he’d found it, and left the room without sound.

They did not speak of it the next day, nor the day after. But the chair stayed clear. 

And the blanket was there again the next night.

Chapter Text

After that night, and with only a handful of nights left, the visits had grown to every single night.

He told himself it was for the quiet. The predictability. Not because she was leaving in three days. Not because every evening now felt like it could be the last. 

Sometimes, he stayed for a few hours. More often than not, he stayed the whole night. He never fell asleep, just kept very quiet and still, until he could feel his ribcage able to gasp for more air.

But that was before M.

Before he very nearly killed the man. Sebastian Moran, he said he was. 

He'd gone there to kill him. 

But somewhere between resolve and action, Irene's scent had returned to him, sharp and sudden, like she'd only just left.

Her white, soft skin. The moles on her back, the constellation Auriga that he’d traced with his fingertips so many times. The way she smiled at him when her brain was brimming with neurochemicals after having sex, the way her eyes narrowed sleepily when he looked at him. 

Her blonde, soft hair, falling onto her shoulders like silk unravelling from a spool, quiet and effortless. He remembered the way it used to catch the light in her room and in car windows. How it sometimes tickled his chest when she curled up against him, murmuring something half-intelligible and content.

And the blood. 

The smell, the sight of the pool of blood in her flat in London. The way the champagne bottle had slipped from his hand, and the way he had to turn around and vomit in the kitchen sink.

Everything had come back at once, as soon as M had reappeared.

He remembered the crash. The way grief had once flooded in like ink into water, dark and fast and all-consuming. Back then, he’d reached for anything that could dull it. Anything sharp enough to spark or soft enough to erase.

And he would have done what he’d intended to do to Sebastian Moran. Without a second thought.  

But as life would have it, Moran had also been played. 

Like he had.

The name scrawled on the wall stared back at him, as if daring him.

Moriarty.

The shape of something terrible was forming, and he could feel it shifting under his skin. The memory of the blade in his hand wouldn’t leave him. The part of him that had wanted to use it, had planned to.

Watson hadn’t said much on the ride home. 

Her voice in the Captain’s office had been even, measured, but he could feel a crack in her, in the way she held herself. She’d looked at him differently, she had probably never seen him so… rough. Her hand had reached for his arm, trying to offer a comfort he himself didn’t think he deserved. 

That night, after the blade, after the blood, after the name stuck on the wall… after everything, Watson stayed. 

She’d prepared warm chamomile tea, and sat with him in the library, having moved one of the armchairs close to the fire. He himself was sitting next to it, trying to let some warmth inside what felt like a hollow, cold heart. 

By 1:30 a.m., Watson finally went to bed. He stayed in the chair, unmoving. He hadn’t asked her how many days were left. Three? Four? It hardly mattered. She was already receding — and the house felt colder the second her footsteps vanished down the hallway.

He told himself he wouldn’t go. Not again. Not tonight.

But just after 3 a.m., he found himself at her door.

It was cracked open. Always.

The room was dark, but the curtains were drawn back just enough to let in the streetlight’s glow, softening the edges of everything. She was asleep, curled on her side, one arm tucked beneath the pillow.

He crossed to the chair and sat down, movements quiet, automatic. The blanket she always left was still there, neatly folded over the arm. His fingers brushed over it briefly before pulling it around his shoulders, the scent surrounding him. He breathed in and closed his eyes, and he could’ve sworn he could feel his heartbeat slowing down.

The scent in the room enveloped him: clean fabric, the faint sweetness of lavender, the sharper warmth of tea leaves. And beneath it, something more elusive. 

Her.

The ache in his chest hadn’t eased. He hadn’t asked exactly when she was leaving, he didn’t want to know. Knowing would make it real.

His jaw clenched, and he drew in a breath that hitched midway, turned brittle in his throat. He leaned forward, elbows on knees, forehead nearly touching his hands.

He didn’t know how long he stayed like that.

At some point, there was the faint rustle of covers behind him. Then a soft shift in the air.

“Good night, Sherlock,” came her voice, barely above a whisper. Not surprised, not questioning. 

Just... there.

He didn’t answer.

But the moment she spoke, something in him let go.

His posture eased back against the chair. He closed his eyes. One tear, then another. He didn’t bother to wipe them away. They slipped quietly down the sides of his face, soaking into the edge of the blanket where he held it to his chest.

He kept his breathing steady, careful not to make a sound. But the panic receded, almost imperceptibly. Not gone, but dulled. Muted by her presence. Her breath, slow and even. The ambient warmth of her room. The knowledge that she knew—and hadn’t asked him to leave.

Eventually, sleep took him. Not in a crash, but in fragments. He didn’t fight it.

It was the first time. And it could very well be the last. 

He hadn’t meant to fall asleep.

He couldn’t remember the moment it happened, only the quiet that had followed. The steady rhythm of her breath beside him, the weight in his chest slowly easing until he drifted into something like rest.

He hadn’t planned for it, hadn’t accounted for the risk of it. And the unfamiliarity of waking in her presence had left him disoriented enough to want leave without a sound, barely giving himself time to process what he was retreating from.

The light in the room had shifted. Grey-blue now, softened by morning, and something inside him registered that he had crossed a line. 

Sleep, real sleep, had crept in when he hadn’t been looking. His body was stiff, his neck angled too long in one position, and the blanket had slipped down his arms.

Panic flickered in his chest. A sharp pulse of dread. Not because he’d been discovered, she already knew. The blanket, the open door, the absence of questions. 

But this was new.

He had never slept here before, had never let himself go that far.

He shifted slightly in the chair, moving slowly, as though any sudden motion might shatter the delicate equilibrium of the morning. Perhaps, if he moved quietly enough, he could slip out without waking her, and leave this strange, vulnerable moment behind.

Before it became something real. Before it demanded acknowledgement of what it meant, of what it revealed.

But then—

“It’s okay...”

Her voice cut through the quiet, low and steady, not groggy but soft with early morning stillness.

He froze.

She hadn’t turned to look at him. Hadn’t lifted her head or shifted beneath the covers. But she was awake. Had been, maybe for a while. She knew he was still there, had slept there, and she didn’t sound surprised.

She didn’t sound anything but… calm.

“You can stay,” she said a moment later.

He closed his eyes, jaw tightening as her words settled around him. Part of him braced for the inevitable consequence of what he’d done, for the breach of some unspoken line. 

It had always been fragile, this quiet thing between them, unspoken and tenuous and bound by boundaries neither of them had named. And he had broken one.

He hadn’t meant to.

But he had.

And yet she hadn’t asked him to leave. She hadn’t reminded him of the line. Instead, she’d redrawn it, just a little farther out, just wide enough to make space for him inside it. 

He felt the panic rise in him regardless, its edges fraying into something colder—shame, maybe, or fear. Of being too much. Of needing too much.

He shouldn’t have let go like that. Shouldn’t have fallen asleep, not here, not with her. The rules were clear—his rules. Vigilance. Distance. Detachment. Those were the things that had kept him safe.

And yet… he’d slept. Not dozed or merely rested. Slept.

It had come with her breath in the room. With the chair against his back. With the scent of lavender and warmth and the knowledge that she was nearby.

And even as his mind worked to reprimand him, some quiet part of him felt relief. He had slept. Because of her.

He didn’t move. Just pulled the blanket higher, wrapped it around himself again as if it might steady the parts of him that still trembled.

Then the faint, distinct buzz of her phone on the nightstand broke through the hush. He glanced at it instinctively. So did she.

A name lit up the screen.

Morland Holmes.

She reached for the phone, her fingers curling around it with deliberate calm. She didn’t open the message. Just stared for long enough to read it and then quietly dismissed the notification with a swipe of her thumb.

She set the phone back down.

“I told your father I’d stay on,” she said. “Told him you needed a bit more time.”

He didn’t respond right away. The words struck something deep, and he wasn’t sure what to do with the sensation that followed.

It was comfort. And something else.

Not surprise, he had known she was perceptive. But still, this felt different. She had seen what he hadn’t said, what he hadn’t asked for. And instead of waiting for him to voice it, she’d acted. Not with pity, not with distance, but with care.

She had called his father. Not to ask permission. To tell him.

And now she was telling him.

The knot in his chest tightened—not painfully, but with force.

He was her client. That had always been the understanding. But this—this felt like something else. Something chosen.

He didn’t quite know how to carry that weight.

But when he looked at her again, and saw how calm she was, how steady, how unchanged by his unravelling, some of the self-directed cruelty dulled. She hadn’t flinched. Hadn’t turned away or drawn a new line between them. She had seen the aftermath, had truly seen him, and still...

She had just... stayed.

He hadn’t asked her to stay. He hadn’t known how to ask, or even if he was allowed to. The rules between them had never been written down, but he had known from the start not to overreach, not to take more than what was offered. In fact, he had been reluctant to even accept she was there for him. 

And yet, now here she was, lying in her bed across from him in the quiet light of morning, her voice calm, her presence unwavering.

“He agreed,” she added softly.

He nodded once, almost imperceptibly. 

And while some fractured, familiar part of his mind tried to twist that into something pathetic, how far he'd fallen, of how childish it was to cling. Another part, buried deeper and less cruel, simply held onto the relief.

The knowledge that she was still here. That, at least for now, she wasn’t going anywhere. That he hadn’t ruined it—ruined himself—beyond the point of return.

He felt the pressure in his chest ease just slightly. Not gone, not healed. But softened by something he couldn’t fully name. A fragile, steadying force that had nothing to do with logic and everything to do with her being exactly where she was.

His fingers curled tighter around the blanket without thinking, drawn by the scent, the lingering warmth and the memory of sleep that had somehow come to him in her presence.

He turned his gaze to her and blinked.

His voice, when it came, was rough at the edges.

“I’m glad you’re staying.”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.

Her eyes and her gentle, easy smile said it all.

Chapter Text

SAFE

The house was quiet.

Not the kind of quiet that came with peace, or the settling of a day well spent. Not even the buzz after having closed a case, when his brain was filled with neurochemicals. No, it was the sort that left too much room for thought. The kind that filled the corridors and spaces between rooms with echoes he hadn’t earned the silence to ignore.

He stood at the landing, shoes discarded long ago, just outside her door.

It was closed tonight. A simple fact. One he shouldn’t have read into. Sometimes she left it ajar, sometimes not—it had never meant anything beyond habit or warmth or airflow. But lately, it had always been open. Just slightly. Just for him. And now, with the hour creeping past three, it felt heavier.

Like a door closing on breath that hadn’t yet steadied.

Because hours earlier, she had been attacked. In this very house.

By a man with a gun, a man with a plan, a man who hadn’t cared what or who he destroyed in pursuit of his goal. And she—Watson—had fought him. Had outthought him, and eventually overpowered him.

But Sherlock hadn’t been there.

He told himself she was fine now. He had seen her with his own eyes, spoken to her, let her sleep.

She had slept for six hours straight—he had counted—and then she’d come with him to a meeting.

It had been a while since she’d accompanied him, and it was oddly refreshing to have her by his side. But all the while, he couldn’t stop thinking that he should’ve been there. He should’ve protected her.

At the meeting, he’d glanced at her once before he spoke. He could see the flicker in her eyes, the small smile rising from the corner of her lips. She was proud of him for speaking up about Rhys, about what it meant to see someone from the part of his life he still couldn’t name without flinching. About how it felt to look into the eyes of the man who used to feed his addiction and realise he no longer wanted what he used to crave. To admit to the people listening, to admit to her, to himself, that he was afraid. Afraid of having come too close.

But now, after they’d eaten Thai together at the kitchen table, after the lights had dimmed and Watson had retired to bed; the stillness of the house stretched wide— like the moment before something breaks. And in that silence, where the ghosts hide, it wasn’t Rhys who haunted him. Not entirely.

It was Watson.

The fact that he hadn’t been there when it mattered. That she could have been— no .

He refused to finish that sentence.

His hand rose before he could stop it, resting against the doorframe, fingers curling at the edge. Then they moved forward, slowly, testing the handle, to ease the door open just wide enough to let the light in without waking her.

No creak, no sound. Just the slow swing of the door.

And there she was.

Curled on her side — as he’d come to learn was her preferred position — her hair spilled across the pillow in soft waves, her hand tucked beneath her cheek, the blanket drawn up over one shoulder. One leg had slipped free and lay over the covers; she must have grown warm during the night. The blue streetlight caught in her hair, casting a pale sheen like moonlight on water. For a second, he didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

He just stood there, one step inside the room, and let his mind catch up to the truth of her presence.

She was here. And she was safe .

And for the first time since learning his father had stopped paying her—for weeks now, without a word to him—he let himself feel the full weight of what that meant.

She had chosen to stay with him.

Not out of obligation. Not for money. Not because she was told to. She had stayed because he was broken—raw and fragile after everything. Because he had needed her in a way she hadn’t expected, and she had refused to leave him alone.

She had stayed to keep him steady, to hold him together when no one else could. To protect him, even if it meant hiding the truth, even if it meant using her own savings to be there without pay.

And still, she hadn’t said a word when his father had cut her off. He remembered the morning she received his father's response vividly, it was the first time he'd fallen asleep in her calming presence. She said he'd agreed. She'd lied, without skipping a beat.

Back then he’d spiralled so violently she should’ve run. She had seen him unravel and, against all odds, had stayed anyway—had lied, a gentle lie, so that he wouldn’t carry the guilt of her sacrifice. She had used her own savings, built her days around him, kept the truth tucked between the cracks of their routine. Not to deceive. To protect. To spare him.

And because of that belief, because of that choice—she could’ve died.

The thought hit harder now than it had when he'd first heard it. And it didn’t let up.

She had been attacked in his home, had faced down a man with a gun, and she’d done it alone. Calmly. Brilliantly. She had moved faster than the threat, outthought him, protected Rhys, neutralised the danger with the kind of precision that made him ache with admiration. She had done everything right.

And yet she should’ve never been put in that position to begin with. That was on him. He hadn’t seen the danger coming, hadn’t been there to stop it. And had things shifted slightly—had she hesitated, had she faltered—

No .

He wouldn’t follow that line. Because if harm had come to her—real, irreparable harm—he would not have been able to forgive it. Not the man. And not himself. Not again. Not after last time.

The truth of it tightened in his chest with quiet, crushing force, and he wasn’t sure what to do with it. It felt too large to carry and too fragile to set down. He, who had always prided himself on control, on logic, on the ability to remove himself from risk or feeling, could not reason this one away.

He stepped forward before he could think better of it, until he stood at the edge of her bed. Still unwilling to make a sound, afraid even the scrape of breath might disturb the fragile calm of her rest.

He knew she needed sleep. Knew the cost of what she’d endured today. He knew the strength it had taken—and the price her body would pay tomorrow. And still, his hand rose, trembling a bit, and hovered just above her.

Then, lightly, he touched the back of his finger to her cheek. Just once. A soft, reverent brush along the line of her skin, a contact too brief to mean anything to anyone but himself.

And then his fingers moved, of their own accord, to smooth one errant strand of hair from her face and tuck it gently behind her ear.

He wasn’t meant to care like this.

Not without motive. Not without desire. Not without sex or power or need.

But this—this wasn’t need. Not the kind he understood. This was something else. Something unspoken and tethered to the ache in his chest.

A single moment.

Not a plea. Not a confession. Just a tether, a quiet truth shared only in the dark.

You’re here. You’re okay. And you chose this.

He let his hand fall away.

And then, without a word, he stepped back and slipped out of the room, closing the door behind him with care only she would ever deserve.

Chapter Text

It was 2:36 am; the Brownstone was quiet. 

Watson had retired to bed over an hour ago. Before that, she’d helped him rearrange the locks by date of manufacture on the wall. They’d eaten pizza while sitting cross-legged on the table, and had had chamomile tea beside the fire in the library.

She’d claimed what was rapidly becoming her usual spot on the library sofa. Without prompting, she had opened the first volume he’d selected for her — The Principles of Inference: Applied Logic and Observational Method , a dense but underappreciated 19th-century manual that most students abandoned after the first chapter. He'd annotated it heavily in his twenties, mostly to argue with the author. Still, it made an adequate foundation, not because it was entirely correct, but because it gave her something to dismantle.

Meanwhile, he’d surrounded himself with a spread of black-and-white photographs from a 1975 cold case he had never been able to crack. He was hoping the rush of a breakthrough might dislodge whatever thread he was missing.

They had worked in companionable silence for over an hour, the kind of silence Sherlock now recognised as rare, and... not unwelcome. He hadn’t looked up from the photos, studying the blood spatter on the wall, but he knew Watson was reading. He heard the soft rustle of pages, the brief pauses she made when taking notes, the rhythm of her pen gliding and lifting. The occasional breath she held just before underlining something. It was like tracing a pattern without needing to see it. She was close, and his thoughts held steadier for it.

By 1 am, Watson closed the book, wished him good night and went to bed. 

By 2 a.m., his concentration had waned considerably. By 2:35, he had lost the battle with himself and stood.

He moved silently through the house, the floor cool beneath his socked feet. The streetlights cast pale geometry across the hallway as he walked upstairs, minding the fourth step without thinking. 

Once on the landing, he turned toward the guest room. No. Not the guest room anymore.

Her room.

The door was ajar, and he hadn’t expected otherwise. 

He hesitated—just for a moment. Just a flicker of thought, enough to register what he was doing. It had once been different, when he sought her out in agitation, needing grounding or quiet. A tether back to Earth.

Now he simply... went.

Not to solve or soothe or steady. Just because she was here. Still here.

She had accepted his offer, had chosen this life, this work. 

She’d mentioned staying rent-free, like it was nothing, but it had landed with precision. A change in terms. The kind that required no further negotiation. 

No new apartment, no suitcase waiting by the door, no final session to schedule. Just tomorrow. And the day after, and the one after that.

Steeling himself, he pushed the door open a few inches farther. She was asleep, curled toward the wall, the blanket drawn to her shoulders. Her hair had fallen across her cheek. In sleep, her face had lost the tight focus she wore by day, the kind that functioned like armour. She looked younger now. Softer.

He stepped inside.

No observation. No concern. No reason, really—except proximity.

The air inside him had stilled. No pacing. No midnight calculations. No branching variables fighting for dominance in his mind.

Only this. Her presence. The quiet certainty of what had already been decided.

He’d watched her these past few days, lingering,  letting their time together stretch longer than necessary. At first, she had stayed for him to ensure he was steady.

Now, she was here not because he was broken or needed fixing, but because she wanted to be. To do what he did, to learn to do it too. 

His throat ached with the strange weight of it.

He blinked, adjusting to the dark, and his gaze caught the blanket, his blanket now, folded neatly over the chair. He sat, careful not to disturb the hush of the room, and pulled it over his shoulders. It smelled of lavender and tea. Clean cotton. Something uniquely Watson. 

He let out a long, measured breath.

She would be here in the morning.

She made a small sound—a faint grunt, half a sigh—and shifted deeper into the bed, arm curling beneath her cheek. The movement tugged at something inside him. Not pain. Just… a pull, quiet and unexpected.

She felt safe here.

Even after last week. After the gun, after the threat that unfolded in the very same house where she now slept so easily. Even after all that, she had stayed in this house, and now slept with the kind of abandon that could only come from feeling secure.

And she was. Safe, at ease with him. That, too, mattered more than he’d anticipated.

He let the hush settle again.

He had known many clever people. Plenty of competent ones—brilliant minds with training, with sharp instincts honed by routine and repetition. But Watson... hers came from somewhere else. Not those born of habit or rote deduction, but something more fluid. Something alive.

She noticed what others missed: patterns in people, shifts in tone. Even him.

Especially him.

She didn’t flinch when he was curt or distracted or too precise in a moment that called for softness. She didn’t pull away from the mess. She saw it—saw him—and still, she had chosen this life. Chosen to stay.

He adjusted the blanket on his shoulders, gaze still fixed on her. His thoughts drifted forward— cases not yet solved, methods she hadn’t yet encountered, deductions he hadn’t yet explained. She would know them all, in time.

She would be, in time, the finest detective he knew. 

But more than that, she would be safe . 

Because she would be prepared. Because he would see to it that no harm would ever come to her.

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, letting the quiet stretch.

No Moriarty. No Irene. No weight of craving pressed down on him tonight. Nothing to brace against. Nothing to bury. Just the stillness of the room, the subtle exhale of someone he trusted more than anyone alive.

She was here. She would be here tomorrow. And the next day. There was no end date. No deadline for their work. No moment would he have to watch her pack a suitcase and walk away.

He'd been holding tension for weeks, maybe longer. Tonight, it had released so gently he hadn't noticed until it was gone.

His gaze softened.

He would never tell her any of this, of course. She would know only what he showed her—through the precision of his lessons, the protection he wrapped around her in layers of logic and planning. That was how he expressed things.

He would be her teacher. He would be her protector. She had chosen this life, and he would never allow her to regret it.

And in this room, with only the sound of her breathing and the steady rhythm of night beyond the windows, he could allow himself a rare admission.

He wouldn’t tell her. Couldn’t put a name to it, even. But her presence steadied something inside him. She made the edges of the world sharper, the silence less empty.

And when she said she would stay, some part of him, the part built for risk assessment and contingency planning, had gone very, very quiet.

She was becoming the one constant in a life ruled by variables.

And because in her decision to stay, he felt—perhaps for the first time in a very long while—something that bore a striking resemblance to hope.

Chapter Text

It didn’t stop when she chose to stay.

In fact, it became harder to stop.

There had once been logic to it. A justification he could tuck neatly into a corner of his mind and leave undisturbed. She was his sober companion. She lived in the brownstone. He was prone to relapse. If he drifted toward her room at night, quiet as a shadow, careful not to wake her, it was precautionary. A safeguard.

A tether he wrapped around his own impulse control.

But of course, that explanation had long been useless, considering how many nights he had spent sitting by her bedside, watching her breathe in and out, feeling as though the Earth had stopped spinning beneath his feet.

The night she said she was staying as his apprentice, something inside that rationale shifted. The shape of it folded inward, into something softer. Even less defensible.

The act didn’t change, not at first. 

He still waited for the brownstone to go quiet. Still walked the corridor in silence, shoes left behind. Still paused at her door before stepping through.

Only now, he no longer needed to. And that, curiously, was what made it harder to stop.

Whatever boundary had once held the habit in check dissolved. Not all at once, not with the finality of a latch unhooked, but slowly, quietly. Like tidewater rising up the sand. No grand declarations.

Just a pattern repeated until it became muscle memory.

That was how most addictions began, wasn’t it? Not with intent, but with repetition.

He didn’t go every night. He told himself it was intermittent. That he could stop if he wanted, that the compulsion hadn’t grown teeth. That it wasn’t about her comfort, or her presence. Not even her.

But it was.

He knew it. He had always known.

He went when the quiet felt too loud. When the case was solved but his mind refused to still. When the air in every room of the brownstone felt stale, and the chair beside her bed promised just enough gravity to keep him anchored.

But he also went when everything was calm, and he still needed to be near her.

Sometimes it was the chair that pulled him. Sometimes, it was her.

The difference, in the end, was negligible.

He remembered the first time she stirred.

Not fully. Just enough to shift beneath the covers, her face angled toward the door.

“Sherlock,” she breathed, shifting in her sleep, barely a whisper. Not even conscious, he suspected, of whispering his name into the night.

There had been no surprise in her voice. No alarm. Just warmth. And something in her tone—gentle, familiar—that felt recognisably fond.

Fond of him .

He’d gone utterly still, listening to her breath even out again. As if nothing had happened.

He stayed longer that night, and it took his heartbeat even longer to slow from its mad thumping.

There had been an evening in early spring, when the light was still gone by seven, that a child had been found safe after nearly vanishing into a riverbank. The case had left Sherlock hollow in a way he couldn’t name. Too close. Too familiar. 

Watson had handled the arrest at the precinct. He had walked home in silence, the sound of the boy’s mother sobbing still echoing somewhere in his skull.

He found himself at her door again, arms folded tight, pulse ticking in his throat.

The lamp was still on. She must have left it by accident, he told himself, though he knew better. 

Her breaths were even, her spine curved gently into the mattress, one hand curled under her cheek. He stood in the doorway and watched her. Then stepped inside.

One foot.

Then the other.

He hovered at the edge of the bed. Reached down, not to touch her, just the blanket. Just to straighten it. That was all.

His hand stilled near her wrist.

A breath caught.

He withdrew. And he sat instead.

He let the hesitation fold into his lap like paper softened by water, fragile and half-broken. He would not touch her. Not now. Not ever, unless invited.

But he stayed until the cold in his chest gave way to something quieter.

There were nights he didn’t come. And those were worse.

Nights when his thoughts scraped against themselves like broken teeth. Where memory and failure and loathing knotted tight in his gut, so tight he could barely breathe around them. Nights when he couldn’t stand the idea of her seeing him like that, even if she never opened her eyes.

He remembered one such night with painful clarity: the absence of her room. The absence of the chair. Her absence, though her door was only a few steps away from his.

The next morning, everything felt misaligned. A misstep in tempo, a missing note in a familiar symphony. As though he’d broken something he didn’t understand and couldn’t fix.

That evening, her door was open. Not ajar—fully open. As if she had seen the struggle on his shoulders all day.

As if she knew.

But of course, she did.

Eventually, the chair stopped being a decision.

It became instinct. A ritual, stripped of deliberation.

Watson never mentioned it, never so much as raised an eyebrow. She let the ritual settle, undisturbed. He imagined, once or twice, that she’d wake one day and tell him to stop. He imagined that she’d set the line again, would move the chair and close the door. 

But she never did.

So he never stopped. 

___________________________________

He came that night too, though he hadn’t meant to. 

The day had passed without incident—no anniversary chips, no ceremony, no open recognition of what it was. But she had known, somehow, in the way she always seemed to know, and she had given him something quiet.

A frame. A poem. No instructions, no commentary, only the words and her silence, which said more than any reassurance ever could. 

I've got promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.  

He had read the line once, twice, again. And though he had said nothing, the echo of it followed him, circling under his ribs like something that didn’t need to be named.

He told himself he wasn’t seeking her out. He told himself he needed to think. Or quiet. Or anything else. 

But his feet moved on their own, and the house felt softer than usual, and her door was already open. 

She was asleep, her breathing steady, the covers pushed slightly askew the way they always were when she’d fallen asleep too fast to notice.

He stood there for a moment longer than usual, letting the silence build in his lungs until it steadied something in him, and then he stepped inside.

The chair took him without resistance. It had become familiar by now, a habit created by repetition. He watched her, not because he was afraid or anxious or in need of reassurance, but because he didn’t know how else to say thank you. 

Not for the gift, though it had unsettled him in all the ways kindness often did. But for the way she’d looked at him the previous evening, when he’d tried to explain. For the way she’d never once asked him to be better than he was, but still believed he could be. 

For the way she still looked at him—lips slightly curved, eyes soft, head tilted toward his. He didn’t know if he deserved that kind of gaze.

She had seen the worst of it, the worst of him. And still she stayed.

When the light began to shift and the edge of the blanket turned to gold, he rose without sound. He crossed to the bed, leaned in slightly, not enough to wake her.

“Thank you, Watson,” he said, barely above a breath.

Then he left, and by the time she stirred and walked downstairs clad in her red cardigan, there was coffee waiting for her in the kitchen. No sugar. Still hot. Just as she liked it.

And then there was Moriarty.

Irene. 

Everything.

The collapse of what he’d believed to be true, and the brutal unveiling of what had always been real. The love he thought he'd mourned, the woman whose memory had haunted him for years—her voice, her letters, her touch. All of it shattered in a single moment of impossible clarity. 

There had been no Irene . 

Only a design, a performance, a lie stitched with precision into the most vulnerable part of him. And like a fool, like a man who wanted something too badly to see it for what it was, he had walked straight into the fire. No hesitation. No shield.

He had looked into the eyes of the only person he had ever trusted with his heart and discovered that they were not eyes at all—but mirrors. Cold, polished surfaces reflecting back only what he most feared: his own blind hope, his own capacity to be deceived.

And still, somehow, he had survived it.

The hospital finally let him go, his ribs bound, his veins flushed clean of anything artificial, his thoughts still humming at strange, dissonant frequencies. He returned home to find Watson waiting. 

Not with demands or questions, not with scolding concern or brittle sympathy.

But with a quiet house, a kettle already boiling on the stove, and a warm mug she pressed into his hands without a word.

She didn’t need to speak. 

Sometimes she would hammer him to speak, to open up about what was bothering him.

But in moments like these, when just by looking into his eyes she could plainly see his pain, she never did.

The house dimmed around them as evening folded itself over the city. Doors closed. Pipes exhaled. The familiar architecture of domestic life resumed its usual rhythm, as if none of it had been broken, as if no one had shattered anything.

But the brownstone was quieter than usual that night. Not tense, not hollow, just… still. Holding its breath, perhaps, or merely making space for something neither of them could name yet.

He had intended to remain in the library. Truly, he had. His shoulder ached each time he reached too far, and his back felt as though it had been used as a chessboard by an angry giant. Logic dictated rest. The study offered solitude. And yet, when the clock slipped past midnight and the silence grew too wide to contain, his body made a different choice than his mind.

Not a conscious one.

He found himself at her door again. Just standing there, as though no time had passed, as though he hadn’t faked an overdose. As though the final curtain hadn’t fallen on the most elaborate deception he had ever witnessed or endured.

She was already asleep, or nearly there. The hallway light barely reached her, outlining the edge of her silhouette beneath the blankets. Her back faced him, her posture relaxed but curled slightly inward.

Something about that small vulnerability tugged at him in a way he didn't want to examine too closely.

He stood in the doorway and did not move. For a moment. Then another. Then another.

She had saved him.

She had saved him in the most literal sense imaginable. With strategy, with foresight, with loyalty that had refused to waver even when he had given her every reason to walk away. Even when he had spat in her face words he now wished he could take back. And she still had saved him.

Not metaphorically, not in some convenient, symbolic way he could later dismiss as sentiment. No.

She had seen through the illusion, unravelled the impossible knot that was Moriarty, and laid the final trap. He had helped bait the trap, yes. But she had built it.

She had caught the spider.

And now she slept, unaware of the weight still settling in his chest.

He stepped into the room, the familiar creak of floorboards grounding him in the present. He moved slowly, as if disturbing the air too much might undo something fragile.

The chair welcomed him like it always had. Same angle, same ache in the seat cushion, same slight shift beneath his weight. He lowered himself into it with caution, muscles protesting, and exhaled through his nose.

But he didn’t take his eyes off her.

Not tonight.

Something had changed in him.

Not a grand transformation, not a cinematic realisation, but a quiet settling, like sediment in clear water. The clarity arrived slowly, and then it was simply there. He had trusted her before. He had depended on her. But this… this was different.

He didn’t want to retreat anymore.

He didn’t want to pretend that what she had done for him could be reduced to utility, to logic, to the mechanics of a case solved. She had seen him at his worst and had responded not with fear, but with action. With resolve. With belief.

And if he was honest with himself—and he was trying, now, to be honest—he knew he would never forget that.

She had chosen him again. And again. Not because she had to. Not because anyone had asked her to.

But because, somewhere along the way, she had decided he was worth it.

And so, tonight, he chose her back.

Not with declarations. Not with clumsy words that would only cheapen something as rare as this.

He simply stayed.

The silence wrapped around them, thick but not heavy, a silence built not of absence, but of presence, shared and understood. He breathed with her, not quite in rhythm, but close enough. And for once, his mind did not race. Did not fracture. Did not flee.

It simply… rested.

When the light shifted, soft and golden, and the shadows stretched into morning, he rose slowly from the chair, careful not to make a sound. The ache in his ribs had dulled to a manageable throb. The bruises would fade. The damage would heal.

He crossed the room on silent feet, paused only once to glance down at her sleeping face.

Then, without ceremony, he slipped back into the hallway, made his way to the kitchen, and prepared a cup of tea.

Still hot. No sugar. Just as she liked it.

He returned, set it gently on the table beside her bed, and stepped away before she stirred.

She didn’t need to open her eyes.

She would know.

Time passed. Not in ways he could measure precisely. Not by days or cases, not by headlines or holidays, but by smaller markers. The way the nights grew warmer, the blanket eventually folded and left untouched. The way the lamplight in her room changed hue as the season shifted. The way his feet, without command or thought, carried him back to her door.

He did not always sit. He did not always stay long. But he always came.

It wasn’t logic that compelled it anymore. Not habit, either. It was something quieter. Older. The kind of thing he could not catalogue without altering it.

And so he left it unnamed.

But still—

He counted time now not by victories or days without relapses, but by breath. Hers. Steady. Present.

And the fact that she never once asked him to leave.

Chapter Text

The brownstone was dark when he returned.

Not the usual quiet of sleeping rooms and distant plumbing, but a stillness that suggested something had changed. Something subtle, not seismic, but enough to make the space feel… off.

He entered quietly, the door lock clicking faintly behind him. His coat clung to his shoulders, damp from the street; he hadn't bothered with an umbrella.

The cold still clung to his skin, though the night air had long since fled.

His breath came fast, clipped. Shoulders tight. Jaw locked. The ache behind his ribs was persistent—dull but insistent, like an injury that refused to heal.

His footsteps landed softly on the floorboards. Same boards, same house. But something felt tenuous. Off-balance. Like entering a room just after an argument you weren’t part of.

Watson should be in bed by now , he thought. But the library lights were on.

And she was there.

Curled in the old armchair looking out the front door, knees pulled close, glasses slipping down her nose. One of the monographs he'd suggested—pathology, he noted—lay open on her lap.

Awake. Waiting.

He blinked, caught by the quiet rise and fall of her breathing. The soft cadence that always somehow steadied him. There was a tremble there he couldn’t place, a vulnerability that pulled at him in a way logic never could.

He stopped at the threshold of the library, coat still on, breath uneven. She raised her gaze, calm and unreadable, but the slight tilt of her head gave her away; a silent welcome.

The familiar mix of lavender, wood smoke, and the herbal tea she favoured reached him as he stepped in. It was her , distilled into scent, unchanging. Constant.

Something in his chest unclenched.

Here, he could stop bracing. 

A flicker beneath his ribs, not sharp and not new. Just familiar. It was the kind of ache that knew the shape of silence at the end of a hallway. The one that didn’t know what it wanted, only that it wanted not to be alone.

He cleared his throat.

“I thought you’d already be in bed,” he said, his voice deep and hoarse. 

Her smile widened a little. Not polite, not curious, just... warm.

“I was waiting for you.”

That was all. No questions sharpened into concern.

She rose with quiet ease and crossed the room in near silence. Her hand hovered in his line of sight, not sudden, just steady, before it settled on his cheek.

A hundred instincts flared at once: to step back, to snap, to disappear into logic. But he stood there and let it happen. Let her touch the raw, sea-stung version of himself, the one with no defences left.

Her thumb brushed through the coarse edge of his beard, where dried salt still clung to skin. The whirring sound of it, that small, soft friction, stirred something in him. He hadn't known there were tears left.

“Let me help you,” she whispered, almost inaudible.

He closed his eyes and gave a slight nod. He desired nothing more than that. It was surrender, not permission. Thought had slipped from him hours ago. All that remained was this hollow ache — this ache, and her .

Her fingers brushed the collar of his coat, gentle but sure. She didn’t pull, just guided, slow and certain, the fabric slipping from his shoulders.

She hung his coat over the hook, neat and deliberate.

It shouldn’t have caught him. It was only a gesture, domestic and undemanding. But her nearness, her silence, the precise, gentle way she didn’t ask,

It undid him.

He lowered his gaze, blinking hard as heat pricked at the corners of his eyes, untimely and utterly beyond his control.

He stood motionless before her, just for a beat. Then his shoulders dipped.

Not much. Just a tilt forward, slow and graceless, until his forehead came to rest against her shoulder. Not clinging, not holding. Just leaning.

His breath hitched. Once. Then again. Her scent filled his senses, but not even that could hold everything in.

“It… hurts,” he muttered — choked and wrecked, not really meaning to say it aloud.

Her hand rose instinctively, steady against the small of his back. The contact made his muscles tense and then suddenly slacken, as if he could finally stop holding himself together.

“I know,” she whispered.

He stayed there, breathing shallow. Then pulled back, not meeting her eyes.

“I walked,” he said, voice low. “Meant to come home sooner.” A pause, thick. “Didn’t.”

She shook her head, her raven black hair moving with the movement,  “That’s all right.”

“I don’t…” The words came slowly, scraped raw. “I went to a meeting, but… I didn’t want to talk. Not then.”

She nodded once. “Do you want to now?”

He hesitated. The question lingered between them; open, patient. After a beat:

“…A little.”

Watson gave him that sad smile, the one she saved for moments like this, when she saw something in him he hadn’t yet admitted to himself. It always felt as if she could look straight through to his soul. If he believed in that sort of codswallop.

Her hand, still at the small of his back, steady and warm, guided him toward the library and the fire that had been burning for some time. He sank into the armchair nearest the flames, a sudden cold sweat prickling at his collar, one that had nothing to do with temperature.

She sat beside him and adjusted her leg under her, wincing slightly as she muttered something under her breath; he only caught the words “bloody hip”. A moment later, she was composed again, but he noticed.

They sat by the fire, the last embers glowing low. She had made tea for him, which had long since cooled. Still, he sipped, as if the warmth mattered less than the ritual.

The silence stretched, not uncomfortably. Her presence felt closer than usual. Not in touch, but in weight. Not just in space, but in posture. In attention.

“We had this thing,” he said quietly, eyes on the fire. “He’d fold his gloves every time after he took them off. Left over right, thumbs tucked, seams aligned. Called it his ‘silly little ritual.’ I mocked him for it.”

He shifted slightly, not looking at her.

“Said it was to keep the fingers from curling. But I think he just liked putting things in order.”

She didn’t speak, but she was listening. He could tell. She always made room for his voice, even when he didn’t yet know what it needed to say.

“He had this way,” he went on, “of staying calm when I couldn’t. When I needed to be awful or difficult… he let me. Didn’t try to outdo it. Just waited until I burned out… a bit like you.”

A beat. 

“I used to think that was weakness. Now I’m not so sure.”

He heard her shift, maybe turning toward him, but still no words came. Just the quiet, steady presence that asked nothing in return.

He spoke clumsily about Alistair, about the fractures inside him, the parts that ached and wouldn’t settle. Words too heavy, too exposed, but somehow necessary.

She listened. Not trying to fix. Not pressing for answers. Just there. Solid and quiet. The kind of presence that made the edges less sharp.

Alistair had once told him not every pain needed solving; some just needed company. Sherlock was beginning to think he might have been right.

Eventually, after the fire had nearly died and his voice had turned hoarse, her head dipped forward, slow, reluctant. Gravity tugged her down before sleep claimed her. Proof she’d been trying, really trying to stay awake with him.

He noticed. Felt the weight of it.

“You don’t have to wait until I’m asleep,” she murmured, not looking at him. “You can come with me.”

His breath caught, a pinprick sharp and sudden, and the breathlessness settled deep in his chest. The words unsettled him more than logic allowed: a jagged pull between his need for control and the raw, almost overwhelming ache beneath.

It was the smallest surrender, and yet it almost unmade him.

His mind blinked, caught off guard by the clarity of it. The words unfolded slowly, like a puzzle piece sliding into place where he hadn’t realised one was missing. No calculation. No parsing. Just a widening in his chest and a quickening in his throat.

Wait. Come now? Not after she’s gone and asleep? Not when it’s safe and quiet and empty? No waiting or holding back, no silent fight against himself, in a game he was destined to lose. No pretending it’s just a habit observed in silence.

His breath caught sharply, involuntary and brief. The space between wanting and acting narrowed dangerously.

He felt it in his hands first, a sudden tremble he didn’t command. Then his ribs, tight and too full. Then his throat, closing fast. It was happening before he could label it: the collapse. The breach.

That soft, certain invitation was a key, and the lock gave way.

He blinked again. Vision narrowing, edges softening. His heart thudded with an unfamiliar, uneven rhythm.

A nod. Barely a motion, but a surrender all the same.

They rose without a word, moving through the house like actors in a well-worn play; familiar steps, familiar silence.

In the bedroom, her hands found his suit jacket with gentle precision. She peeled it from his shoulders, slow and certain, the fabric dragging faintly as it slipped down his arms. Then the vest, its buttons giving way one by one beneath her fingers. He didn’t move to help. Couldn’t. Just stood there, watching her in that quiet, reverent stillness that lived somewhere between disbelief and awe.

He crouched to tug off his shoes without unlacing them. Graceless and rushed. She said nothing. Just waited. 

There was no hesitation in her movements, no fuss. No demand in her touch. And somehow that undid him more than anything else. 

That she wanted him near, just as he was.

She slipped into bed with her usual quiet grace, the blanket folding over her like it always did, smooth, practised, habitual.

He moved the chair closer than ever before, the legs scraping softly against the floor. A small sound, suddenly loud in the hush.

His knees brushed the edge of the mattress, the proximity new and electric. The air between them shrank, the distance collapsing, yet not quite gone. Close enough to feel the heat rising from her, but still measured enough to hold the fragile space between two careful souls.

He settled into the chair beside her, closer than he’d ever allowed himself before. Close enough that the space between them shrank — not vanished exactly, but softened. Just enough to feel the warmth without fear.

It didn’t take long for her breathing to slow, regular and peaceful. One arm resting over the blanket, the other curled toward her chest.

Then, without breaking the quiet, she extended her hand, an offering as simple as breath. Steady. Waiting. She didn’t open her eyes. Just let it hover in his direction, loose and patient. Like someone offering comfort, but too tired to do anything more.

His eyes caught on that hand. He felt it before he moved — the weight of what it meant.

For a breath, he stayed still. The rational part of him scrambled for distance, for dignity, for anything that could shield him.

His breath caught, somewhere between fear and longing, between the instinct to run and the ache to stay. His pulse thudded at his temples, loud and unrelenting.

But the aching parts of him won.

He reached. Fingers closing around hers, not tentative and not shy, but with the quiet panic of a man who’d spent too long holding himself together. Who didn’t know how to do it anymore.

The contact shattered something deep within.

It cracked open in his chest, sharp and sudden. His throat tightened and his vision swam.

He didn’t sob. That would’ve required sound, and he had none left. Just the sting behind his eyes and the slow, involuntary spill of tears down his face, hot, unwanted, impossible to stop.

Her thumb brushed over his knuckles, grounding and reassuring. Her lips curled slightly, not fully awake, but still there. As she always was, as she always would be.

“Shhh,” she whispered. “I know it hurts, Sherlock. But whatever you’re feeling… It’s all right. Let it.”

He didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

But he didn’t let go.

And she never let go of him either.

Chapter Text

After Alistair’s death, Sherlock found it impossible to keep away from Watson’s bedroom for more than one night at a time. At first, it was need — for the world to stop, for his mind to still, for her calm. For his tether.

But after a few weeks, it had become something else. He didn’t know when, or even what it was.

It wasn’t grief, or insomnia, or fear. He didn’t go to her with an impossible problem to solve.

No, this was simply what he did. On nights when the world stilled and her light had gone out, he would make his way to her bedroom and sit on his chair.

She was always asleep by then.

That was mostly part of the ritual, unspoken and exact. It mattered, somehow, that she didn’t invite him in with words, but with gestures. The door left ajar, the blanket over the empty chair, the space right beside the bed empty so he could stretch his legs. He was a man of details, and it mattered to him that even if they never voiced anything when the light of day came, the nights were theirs.

His and hers.

And when the day finally bled into the night, when he needed her presence, the chair was always empty, ready for him.

Over the months, the chair had inched forward, inch by inch. Until, after Alistair’s passing, it found its permanent place right by her bedside.

He struggled to remember the exact moment it had started to feel like his place. But he couldn't pinpoint it; he only knew it did.

The wooden legs creaked in a specific way when he settled in, and the corner of the carpet underneath curled slightly from where he shifted his feet.

He brought nothing with him. No books. No files. No phone. There was no stimulation here, no distraction, and that was the point. He didn’t need anything but the sound of her breath, slow and even in the dark.

Sometimes, when the moonlight fell right across her cheek, he would watch her for a long time. Not curiously, just quietly. As if her presence might undo something frayed inside him, stitch him back together without touching a thread.

Once, he blinked awake in the chair, stiff-necked and disoriented, and found the blanket draped over his shoulders. The blanket that had been hers and had slowly become his.

He hadn’t put it there. He would remember if he had.

It must have been her, then, awake for a moment in the night, seeing him hunched and cold.

He didn’t mention it the next morning, though he had to admit, his heart made a little jump in his chest. He stayed longer that night.

Another time, she stirred as he entered, half-asleep. Her head turned toward him on the pillow, but she didn’t open her eyes. She sighed, softly, and he could’ve sworn he heard a soft “Sherlock…” coming from her lips.

There were nights when the habit felt almost ceremonial.

He would pause at her door, listen to the stillness, then slip inside and lower himself into the chair without a sound. His breath would slow, then match hers. Sometimes he didn’t even realise it was happening, the syncing, the settling, the sense of ease so rare in his waking hours.

And in the mornings, he would wake her up in a myriad of ways, a favourite pastime of his. And she would complain endlessly, but her lips would curve in a small grin. She would rise and drink the coffee he’d made and eat the breakfast he’d readied for her.

And he would pretend not to notice the way she glanced toward the chair.

He had no concrete data to say for sure, but from her small smiles and glances, he would say she was fond of this particular habit of his.

It had started as a search for silence. But somewhere along the way, it had become something else entirely.

Something like home.

He wasn’t sure when the conversation had turned into a fight.

It had started like so many others. Facts on the table, voices raised only slightly, her arms crossed, his hands fast gesturing. But somewhere in the back-and-forth, she’d said it. Just a few words. An offhand remark, not even delivered in anger, made it worse.

“You know, for all the ways you mock and insult Mycroft, sometimes you’re not so different.”

No venom. No raised voice.

But it stopped him cold.

He had stared at her, wondering if she’d always thought that. If she’d thought it ever since meeting his brother less than a year ago, and had only now said it aloud. If she’d always grouped them together: both cold, both controlling, both… too much.

It didn’t hurt, not exactly. He’d long accepted what he was. He didn’t need soft descriptions or warm reinterpretations of his flaws.

But the fact that she had said it, the fact that it was precisely Watson, who had made a home alongside the very parts of him others fled…

Well, if she thought that, then what was the point of pretending otherwise?

The thought constricted something in his chest. Not pain, exactly, but a sensation he refused to classify.

He hadn’t argued. He just looked at her, unblinking, jaw so tight his teeth ached before he walked away. Before the words could do more damage.

He left the brownstone and walked for blocks, past streets he knew by rote but hardly saw. By the time he reached a park in Brooklyn, he was half-frozen inside, the words still ringing. He chose a bench and sat, spine rigid, as though testing how long he could hold himself apart. He told himself he preferred it, that distance was easier, cleaner, safer than her pitying gaze.

He didn’t come back to the brownstone until well into the night, until he was sure she would be asleep and the house silent.

Once at home, he went into the library and closed his eyes, breathing in. It still smelled like her.

Like the tea she’d made before bed, the mug still half-empty on the floor beside the fireplace. Like the fabric softener of lavender, which always hit his senses. It didn’t matter where he sensed it; this smell would always be Watson. Always.

He looked up the stairs, towards the second floor. Her bedroom was upstairs.

Something inside of him rattled. He should've been angry at her remark, should've been mad at her words — but still, he was drawn to her.

He was feeling her slip through his fingers. The words of that morning, the gaze in his eyes… Watson had never looked at him with such… what?

He couldn’t even tell the emotion she held in those eyes, but it was not the way she usually looked at him. It wasn’t even the frustration she’d held in the first days of their partnership, when he refused to let her in, to let her help.

He drifted toward her door, heart thumping with every step, every creak. His pulse a hammer for such a small act. The lights were off; he didn’t need them to navigate his sanctum sanctorum.

His hand twitched as if to reach for the knob, the smallest gesture of hope. But the sight stopped him cold.

The door was closed.

It wasn’t the first time it had ever been shut; it had been like that early in their partnership. But it had been many months now since then.

He stared at the door, blinking, as he felt his breathing more ragged. No light bled through the gap beneath. No shifting in bed.

Nothing.

Just stillness. Absolute and quiet enough to breathe through and be suffocated by at once.

He told himself it meant nothing, that she was tired.

He didn’t believe it.

The next night: closed. The night after: closed. Again. And again.

The suffocation deepened with each closed door.

He didn’t knock. Didn’t call her name. Didn’t press his hand to the wood, didn’t ask her silently to open up.

He thought about it once. Thought about tapping, lightly, just to see what she would do. Just to see her in the stillness and the darkness of the night, again, to see her face lit beneath a moonlit sky.

But the idea of her not answering, or worse, turning him away, made his throat go tight.

So he stood there a moment longer each time, staring at the wooden door as if willing it to open for him.

But the door remained closed, and each time he turned away.

She didn’t say anything about it in the morning. Neither did he.

He tried to dismiss it, to file it under variables: stress, fatigue, coincidence.

But he knew Watson, or at least he thought he did.

And while people were confusing at the best of times, he did know patterns. That was the problem.

And this definitely felt like one.

One that, despite his best efforts to hide it or even refuse to admit it to himself, was beginning to break him apart.

He tried to remember, to hold onto the memories of so many nights by her side. But he couldn't help it slipping through his fingers. Some nights, he almost forgot the feeling of being seated on the chair. The rhythm of her breath, the way her scent filled the room.

There was no argument about it. No declaration that things had changed. Just a slow unravelling.

Every night, he’d tell himself he wouldn’t check, and he did try. But by 2 am or 3 am, when his energy was at its lowest, when the house was still, he always lost the battle with himself.

But every time, he turned away from the door that remained stubbornly closed, his chest grew heavier each time.

Until he no longer approached it.

Some nights, he would go upstairs to the roof and watch his bees, his eyes following the Euglassia Watsonia with more attention than the others. As if this made him feel closer to the real Watson, sleeping downstairs, pulling away from him.

And night after night, the chair beside Watson’s bed, the one that had the shape of his body, remained empty.

They argued more during the day. Over small things. Cases. Hypotheses.

One night, after an especially fractious day and too many dead ends, Sherlock found himself in the bathroom, studying the inside of his wrist. Just the angle of the light, tracing old scars. Counting the quiet lines that were nearly invisible now.

He hadn’t felt this far from himself in years.

And then, Watson waited for him outside of one of his meetings. He felt hopeful, couldn’t even hide his surprise and joy when he saw her there, waiting for him.

And she told him about the case.

Paige Dahl. A missing girl. Watson had insisted they help her sister, desperate and hopeless. The investigation led them to a small apartment, a shoebox of a room that smelled of cat litter and vinegar. That's where Sherlock had found the telltale evidence in a coffee tin under the bathroom sink: heroin, folded into tiny white envelopes, each marked with a blue smiley face.

He picked one up, studied the mark for too long, longer than necessary. His thumb traced the fold, neat and precise. He should have destroyed it on the spot. Instead, when Watson’s back was turned, he slipped one into his pocket. No explanation, not even to himself.

Not out of temptation, he told himself. Not out of desire.

A precaution. Insurance. Just in case.

It sat now in a book on the upper shelf of the library, hidden between pages of Paradise Lost. He hadn’t looked at it since. But he knew it was there.

Some nights, when the silence pressed too close, he would take it out. He never tore the paper, never even loosened the fold. He only held it, the weight of it impossibly small for something so catastrophic. His fingers would flatten it against his palm, pressing as if he could crush the urge by force alone. When he was done, he would return it to the book, spine closed tight as if nothing had ever happened.

When Watson was taken by La Milieu, Sherlock had come undone in ways he hadn’t thought possible. Every hour of her absence twisted deeper, every second proof he was about to lose the only person tethering him to himself.

He'd wanted to punch Mycroft in the face for daring to place her in danger. For daring to take her away from him, for pulling them apart, and now, now she was —

He’d resisted Mycroft with everything in him, loathing the manipulation, loathing even more the helplessness of having no choice but to play his brother’s game if it meant the smallest chance of getting her back alive.

And then, impossibly, Watson was home again. Safe. Breathing. Whole, if quite traumatised after the ordeal.

She'd been gone for a night and a half. He hadn’t slept. He and Mycroft had gotten her back, though it had cost them. The blow to the back of his skull still ached a bit. And he wasn’t sure whether it was that or the sight of her standing in the library, in front of him, whispering that she was alright. As if she was trying to calm him down.

As if any of this was alright.

It made him unsteady on his feet.

She was safe. She was home. And still, that night, he did not go to her.

He’d wanted to.

When Mycroft finally left, Sherlock had found himself outside her door again, fists clenched, chest tight.

He hadn't been inside her room in weeks.

He stared at the wood grain. His thoughts were a jumbled knot: her voice telling him Mycroft wasn’t wrong, Mycroft’s voice saying, “I think she’s the person you love most in this world.”

Was that true?

He knew it was. There was no way he could deny it, and he wasn't in the habit of lying to himself.

And yet — he could do nothing about it.

Sherlock backed away. He returned to his room. The chair remained empty. The envelope in Paradise Lost remained unopened.

But he knew exactly where it was.

And he knew exactly why.

The words still echoed in his mind.

He hadn’t even had time to steady himself in the relief of having her back, safe and sound, when she looked him in the eye and told him she was leaving.

That she was moving out.

She said it in the kitchen, after dinner. Followed by an “it’s time”.

Without warning. Like a scheduling matter she meant to bring up earlier but forgot.

She said it had been sitting on her chest for days. No softening. No asking what he thought.

She just said it.

His hand twitched toward his jacket pocket. Toward the place where the envelope waited. He didn’t pull it out; didn’t want to do it in front of her. Just the thought of it, the reassurance of its presence, was enough to steady him for a breath.

Then the wave of despair returned, even heavier than before.

Sherlock tried to explain it through the trauma of being taken, another ripple effect of his brother on their lives. Wanting more than anything that the words spilling out of his mouth to be true.

But he knew they weren’t. He’d been seeing her pull away steadily for weeks, ever since Mycroft came to New York.

His feet took him out into the cold night of the streets, needing to leave her presence, needing to breathe.

He spent the night sitting at another park.

He thought bitterly that he’d soon know the benches of parks close to the brownstone more than his own home.

That night, the house was too quiet.

No soft creak of floorboards from the hallway. No click of her bedroom door as it opened and closed. No sound of her voice drifted down the stairs to ask if he was still awake. If he’d eaten. If he was alright.

Just silence, stretched so thin it hummed in his ears.

And so, somehow, he'd ended up back in his own room, her blanket clenched tightly in his fists, pulled from the chair that had become his sanctuary these last few months.

He lowered himself to the floor beside his bed, spine pressed to the frame. The blanket was soft and still smelled faintly of lavender and chamomile and her. That scent had become a balm he hadn’t known he’d relied on until it threatened to vanish from his life entirely.

She was leaving.

She was leaving.

He pressed his face into the fabric to muffle the sound he didn’t want to make.

His shoulders trembled. Just once. Just enough to betray him.

Meanwhile, the door of her bedroom stayed closed.

And the chair remained empty.

He hadn’t realised how long he’d been hunched in that same position until he heard his door being opened.

He didn’t look up from where his face was hidden in his arms. The blanket he’d stolen from her bedroom around his shoulders was the only thing tethering him to a reality that was slowly slipping through his fingers.

On the nightstand, the envelope lay on his bedside table, under a manuscript of autopsies in the early 19th century. Still sealed. Still whole. He had set it there at some point, though he couldn’t recall when. Its presence was damning enough. The fact that it remained untouched was his only victory.

The floor beneath his bum was cold, his knees pulled up to keep his body heat.

His breathing was shallow and uneven, the kind he knew only came when you’re trying very hard to keep the sound from escaping your chest.

Her hands landed on his arms, soft.

But that softness was fake to him. He didn’t want it. Didn’t need it.

“What do you want, Watson? I’m thinking,” he said, his voice bitter, harsh.

She visibly flinched, but didn’t pull away.

“You haven’t said a word since I said I was moving out,” she said, and she sounded gentle. As if what she said earlier hadn’t destroyed every single thread of hope he ever had.

He blinked and swallowed, trying to clear his throat.

“There is nothing for me to say. Your decision is made,” he said, pulling slightly away, “there’s nothing more to discuss.”

He couldn’t see it, but he could feel her stare, could see in his mind’s eye her lips curving into a grimace.

“Sherlock, don’t make this harder,” she said, her voice soft, “I know this is difficult for you, I get it. We'll work this out, okay? But this isn't about the work, you know I love what we do. Right now I just — I need this. For myself.”

But Sherlock refused to acknowledge her words, refused to acknowledge her. She was saying the words kindly, but they sounded like every other goodbye he’d ever heard.

And so she left him, and the room felt emptier, colder without her in it.

He could already feel the hole in his chest, growing bigger and bigger. He closed his eyes, feeling hot tears roll down his cheek, and he let them.

Nothing she said altered the fact: she was leaving. Even Watson, who had borne him longer than anyone else, couldn’t bear him anymore.

He pulled the blanket tighter around himself, pressed his face into it.

And tried to remember how to breathe without her.

Chapter Text

Unopened. Unmoved.

It had been there for days. Seven days, twelve hours and twenty-seven minutes, exactly. 

That was the amount of time he had spent alone, staring at the tiny white envelope.

The postmark had begun to blur where condensation from his tea had soaked into the corner. The stamp grinned at him every time he looked up: a round-faced blue smiley with glasses and a moustache. 

Cheerful. Mocking.

Sherlock sat opposite in a threadbare armchair that wasn’t his, just as nothing in this flat was his. The furniture had been intended for short stays, transitional. He had never left. Now the armchair sagged under his weight, springs groaning each time he shifted, though most of the time he didn’t shift at all.

His clothes clung to him like another failure. A ragged jumper, elbows worn through, a constellation of small holes along the hem. Joggers loose around his legs, thin from too many days of being worn without washing. His hair unkempt, his jaw rough with stubble that itched but not enough to move him toward a razor. Even the air smelled of defeat: damp books, stale tea, ash from the hearth where the fire burned low but gave no comfort.

The envelope pulsed in his vision. Small as it was, it dominated the room. 

A silent, patient predator.

He had not slept properly since Kitty left. Hadn’t even touched his bed in two days, preferring the upright torture of this chair.

At first, he had waited. Waited for the sound of her returning, for the door to slam open, for her voice to fill the air again, sharp but alive. He had waited a day. Then two. Now a week had passed, and the silence had grown thick, oppressive. A silence that told him the truth: she was gone.

He kept trying to think logically, to structure the chaos of his thoughts, to rebuild order from fragments. But the calculations dissolved, numbers dripping away, words shattering mid-thought. His mind circled and circled, a dog chasing its own tail until exhaustion blurred everything to grey.

He bowed his head, pressed his palms into his eyes. 

Wet. 

He hadn’t even registered the tears until his skin came away damp. When it did, it was all he could do. His eyelids clamped shut; a ragged sob clawed its way out, uninvited, like evidence he couldn’t suppress.

The ache in his chest sharpened, the cold in his stomach deepened. His breath came ragged, a staccato he couldn’t control.

Then, all of a sudden, a voice. Her voice, unbidden, surfaced in his head.

You’re stronger than this.

It wasn’t angry. Nor accusing. 

Simply steady. The way she had always been when he faltered.

His throat closed. His stomach turned even colder.

This isn’t who you are, Sherlock. You can beat this.

The echo throbbed like an exposed nerve. He clenched his jaw until it ached, teeth grinding, but it didn’t drive her voice away. He could see her as clearly as a photograph: bent over a corpse, brow furrowed in thought. Sitting across from him in the brownstone, tea balanced between her hands, another she’d press into his without him asking. The way she’d look at him, a small smile in her lips, the sort of grin he never knew what he’d done to deserve but was always thankful for. 

Quiet, but always present. Reliable. She had been reliable when no one else had.

And he had left her.

The thought was a spike to the sternum. His breath caught; he folded forward, fingers trembling against his knees. He had walked away from her, from everything, because it had been easier to leave than to see the result of being left behind. Abandoned. Yet here he was, abandoned all the same.

Everyone leaves.

The words were etched into him like old scar tissue. Mother. Father. So-called friends. Irene. Watson, in the end. Kitty now, too. Always leaving, always his fault.

The envelope blurred. He blinked once, twice. Not blur, tears. They came sudden, unstoppable. A sharp, broken breath tore out of him, then another, then the sound itself; a sob ripped raw from his chest. He doubled over, forehead pressed to his fists as if the posture might make the weakness invisible.

It didn’t. The sobs came again, shaking his shoulders, his body shivering under the weight of them. His throat burned. His chest constricted until each breath felt like a wound. He had never let anyone see him like this—not Watson. Especially not Watson. 

He had to be composed, brilliant, untouchable. Now there was nothing left but the shell.

The flat stayed mute. 

Minutes or hours, he couldn’t tell. His breathing slowed eventually, though it still stuttered when Watson’s name flickered across his mind, when Kitty’s last words replayed with cruel clarity. His eyes burned. His jumper was damp at the collar where he had pressed his face. He leaned his head against the arm of the chair, staring at the table.

The envelope gleamed faintly in the firelight. It promised relief. Numbness. Silence.

And a smaller voice, her voice, whispered that she would never forgive him if he did.

He almost welcomed that. Better her anger than her absence. Better shame than silence.

His body sagged more heavily into the chair. The fire popped behind him, ember and ash. His eyes closed against the sting, against the sight of the envelope. He didn’t reach for it. He didn’t push it away either.

It stayed. Patient.

He stayed. Breaking.

The flat, the fire, the envelope. Everything dissolved into the single fact of his loneliness.

A sound cut through the silence.

A knock.

Sherlock’s head snapped up. For an instant he was certain he’d imagined it, too many days since there had been any sound but the fire, his own ragged breathing, the groan of the chair. But then it came again: softer, tentative.

He rose unsteadily. His body felt heavy, grief-stiffened, legs cramped from hours of stillness. The room tilted as he crossed it. He wiped his sleeve across his face, quick, imprecise. His fingers locked white against the door frame, tendons straining as though bracing his whole body against collapse. Only when he was sure the mask would hold did he unlatch the lock a fraction. Two inches, no more. Enough to see. Enough to be seen.

Kitty stood there.

Her chin was lifted, but her eyes betrayed her, guarded, fragile at the edges. She looked younger than when she had stormed out. 

For a moment, neither spoke. Sherlock kept his gaze low, fixed on the ground between them. Safer that way. Less revealing.

When he did speak, his voice came raw, thick with what he hadn’t yet swallowed.

“Did you… forget something?”

Her breath trembled before it steadied. 

“I’m sorry for leaving last week. It was a mistake.” The words spilt quickly, as if she feared they’d vanish if she slowed. “You started something with me, and I’d like you to finish it.”

He blinked, feeling something shifting in his chest. 

Not repair, not mending — but a catch. A hook of hope. He drew a long breath, steadied himself against the door.

“Come back tomorrow at midday,” he said softly, still looking to the ground. “Bring goggles. And a ladder.”

Her lips twitched as he nodded. Not a smile, but close enough. Then she turned away, her footsteps fading into the night.

Sherlock closed the door.

For a moment, he leaned his forehead against the wood, palm flat against the grain. The silence pressed in again, but it no longer howled with abandonment. 

It hummed thinner. Lighter, somehow, though he had no words to describe it.

When he turned back, his eyes found the envelope still lying patiently on the table. It hadn’t moved, but it had shrunk. Its menace no longer filled the room.

He picked it up. The weight, no more than a coin, felt suddenly absurd. 

He could almost hear Watson scoffing, her voice precise in memory: This isn’t who you are.

His throat tightened. For weeks, Watson’s absence had pressed down on him until he thought it might crack his ribs. Even here, in this borrowed London flat, her ghost lingered; the brush of her shoulder in a cab, the quiet steadiness of I’m here. 

She had been the first to anchor him. Proof he wasn’t entirely broken. He wasn’t a lost cause.

And he had lost her. By his own choices. By his fear.

But Kitty had returned. Kitty had knocked. Proof, perhaps, that something lost could be coaxed back. Proof that he could still build, still teach, still tether himself to another soul. Kitty was not Watson. She never would be. But she was a reminder that connection was possible, even for him.

And if Kitty could come back, perhaps Watson might too. Perhaps New York was not closed to him forever. Perhaps the home he had abandoned was not irretrievably gone.

He closed his eyes and breathed in, and despite the dampness and staleness of the flat, his lungs filled with cleaner air. For a fleeting moment, with his eyes closed, the damp air of the tiny flat gave way to another night. At the brownstone, Watson’s blanket around his shoulders. The quiet scrape of her breath in sleep reminding him that he was not alone. 

He had not realised until now how much he had longed for that weight again. To hear that steady breath again, to feel her close. To know she was back in his life.

He opened his eyes, his fingers holding the envelope. They trembled as he turned toward the fire. Without ceremony, he dropped the envelope into the flames. The paper curled instantly, blackened, vanished in sparks. The chemical sting bit the air, acrid but clean.

Sherlock exhaled, shaky but freer. His shoulders eased. For the first time in days, strength stirred in him again. 

Not because the loneliness had gone, but because someone had chosen to come back.

And because somewhere across the ocean, someone else might yet be waiting.

He sat again, not collapsed this time but upright, eyes fixed on the fire. The flat was still small, still cold, still temporary. But it no longer felt like the end.

Tomorrow, Kitty would return.

And soon, perhaps, so would he.

Back to New York.

Back, perhaps, to Watson.

Chapter Text

The library had grown too quiet once Kitty went upstairs.

Her footsteps lingered a moment on the landing, then the door closed and the brownstone sank into stillness.

Sherlock slipped out of his shoes and lowered himself to the rug before the fire. The chair beside him was empty; he had not wanted it. The floor suited him better, grounding him in the ache of his knees, the wool scratch against his palms. The flames climbed and fell, restless, never holding shape for long.

All day, he had spoken as though nothing had changed. He had tracked aliases, followed different lines of investigation, and in that work, there had been no rupture, no gap. They worked, Watson and he, just as they always had. She saw through him as swiftly as ever, cut him off when he wandered too far, pressed where the weakness in a theory lay. 

He had to admit, he had missed it. That sharpness, that tether. The bouncing off ideas that worked even when she was obviously still hurt by his sudden disappearance over half a year ago. He had known with every word, ever clipped retort, that she was holding herself apart.

It was her right.

He rubbed at his jaw, the motion more habit than need. In the firelight, the bookshelves blurred into shadow. Watson’s room — no, Kitty’s room now — sat above him, off-limits.

The space where, for months, her breath and silence had steadied him.

Another absence he had authored.

Her voice still echoed in his mind.

Today, she had told him there was no partnership. That he had ended it with five short sentences. And she was not wrong.

He had never considered that she might be hurt by his disappearance. Surprised, yes. Annoyed, certainly. But at that time, when Watson was looking for an apartment to move out of the brownstone, when their partnership was on the rocks...

He had thought that brevity was cleaner than confrontation. Less risk of unravelling. After all, she was about to leave him anyway; what was the point of explaining further?

But tonight, with the fire gnawing softly at the grate, clarity struck: he had done to her what he most dreaded for himself.

Left. Vanished. 

Cut the cord before it could be cut on him.

Cowardice, thinly disguised as strategy.

And contrary to what he would’ve done, she had thrived in his absence. Her work sharp, her footing steady, her voice sure with the authority of someone who no longer needed him. She had survived where he would not have.

His chest tightened as the thought sank in. He had not protected her. He had not spared her pain.

He had only proven that he could deliver it.

The fire cracked, scattering a brief rain of sparks. He watched them fade into ash.

Of course, he had no doubt she would succeed without him, she was a far more capable individual than he ever was.

But facing her angry eyes, the tautness in her expression, the stiff set of her back — when she had always been open to him, always willing... well, that was a different kind of pain.

Remorse was not foreign to him. He could catalogue his failures with ruthless precision. But this one cut differently. 

Because even tonight, raw with anger, she had returned to the brownstone. Even tonight she had granted him a measure of trust, however provisional. That was her strength, her flaw, her impossibility: to still see worth in him where he saw only wreckage.

He lowered his forehead into his hands, elbows braced to his knees. Silence pressed in around the fire’s hiss.

It had been easier to imagine London as a severance, a clean line drawn across a painful attachment. But there were no clean lines. Watson’s voice still lived in him. Her steadiness still haunted him. She had not vanished in his absence — only changed. Only hardened.

He could not undo what he had done. He could only sit here, in the house that was once theirs, and admit what he had refused to admit eight months ago.

That he was afraid.

That he had failed her.

That he had chosen his own cowardice over her trust.

And now the cost was written in her eyes.

The fire snapped again, heat brushing his face. He let it sting, let it burn.

Tomorrow there would be cases and deductions, there would be the mechanics of partnership masquerading as if it still existed. They would work, because they always did. But tonight there was only the coals, and the knowledge that he had broken something he might never mend.

The fire had burned down to embers, the last flames gnawing thinly at the grate. Sherlock rose slowly from the rug, pressing his palms into the floor for balance before he uncoiled his long frame. His knees complained. He stood anyway.

He did not reach for the chair; it sat empty, watching him. Instead, he moved quietly through the brownstone, listening to the hush of the place he had once shared with Watson. A hush that no longer included her footsteps overhead, her voice on the stairs, her presence in the room above.

He pulled on his coat at the foyer with the care of a man leaving a sickroom. A hand rested briefly against the frame of the door. Then he stepped outside.

The city met him with a damp chill. Rain had fallen earlier, leaving the pavement dark, gleaming, alive with thin reflections of the street lamps. The air smelled faintly of gasoline and wet iron. His collar lifted automatically against the cold. He set off without thought for destination, though his mind had already chosen for him.

He stopped a taxi halfway, barely speaking to the cabbie, the silence of the night pulling against his chest. He made him stop a few blocks away, preferring to walk the rest of the way there.

Blocks passed under his feet in silence. He let the rhythm of walking steady him, though his chest felt tighter the nearer he drew. The city had not changed. It still pulsed, restless, fractious, impatient with human sorrows. But for him, it felt both unwelcoming and unfamiliar, as though he had returned only to find himself a stranger in the place he once called home. London had been no refuge, only a way to flee from his fears, his pain. Now, New York pressed on him the same truth.

At last, he reached the street. He slowed down. There it was: Watson’s building.

He stopped across from it, shoes damp from the pavement, hands buried in his pockets. He’d never seen the building before, only memorised the block and floor when Gregson mentioned it.

His gaze lifted to the darkened windows, knowing exactly which ones were hers. They were dark tonight, curtains pulled tight. No shadow moved inside.

He did not go forward. He did not even cross the street.

Instead, he remained on the far pavement, collar turned up, shoulders rigid. He shoved his hands in his pockets, fingers curling hard around the hem inside and pulling.

He didn’t want to break the fabric. That was never the point. He only wanted the feel of it in his hands, a small ritual of restraint, something to grip against the damp.

The building seemed to watch him as much as he watched it. He tried to imagine her inside, asleep, breath steady. Tried to imagine what she might do if she knew he stood here, a sentinel in the street, watching windows that gave him nothing back.

Once, he had walked through those doors without thought. There had been a chair he could sit in, with a blanket around his shoulders, the weight of it a comforting balm. There had been a room where he was expected and welcome, where her presence steadied him. 

He had been tethered to something then. To her.

Now he was an exile at the threshold.

The word pressed on him with a clarity almost unbearable. 

Exile. 

Not because she had cast him out, but because he had done so to himself. He had left. He had reduced their partnership to five sentences on a page. He had inflicted on her the very abandonment he had feared most. In fleeing pain, he had created it.

He knew it with an almost painful certainty: had she been the one to leave, he would have shattered. That was why he left, to avoid the pain of being left behind. He had chosen the lesser strength, to flee. 

And she had borne the wound he delivered.

The windows above gave nothing back, the curtains still, unmoving against the chill of the night. He turned from them at last. His shoes splashed faintly in the puddles as he walked back toward the brownstone.

Tomorrow, he would see her again. They would speak, perhaps even work together, if she allowed it. To anyone watching, the mechanics of their partnership would appear intact, the old rhythm of deduction restored.

But he knew better. The truth was written in her eyes when she looked at him: distance, coolness, the knowledge that what had been whole was now broken.

And tonight the truth was written here, in the wet pavement and the silent street: he was outside. She was beyond his reach.

A few weeks had passed, and with them, a restless current coiled tighter beneath his skin.

He had not expected the work to come back so easily. Yet when Watson was beside him, it did. Their exchanges were quick, almost breathless, deductions sparking against each other as if no rupture had ever been carved between them.

It both exhilarated and steadied him. 

She did not require him to slow the velocity of his mind; she moved with it, kept pace where others stumbled. With her, the machinery of thought clicked into alignment, seamless as breathing.

He still marvelled at it, even now. Especially now, when so much else between them remained fractured. Their partnership held, a tether that survived the damage he had inflicted. But the ease of it only sharpened the contrast: the casework sang, while the silence between cases sat heavy, unresolved.

The fire had burned low, throwing more shadow than heat. Kitty’s door upstairs had closed nearly an hour ago, her quiet presence absorbed back into the silence of the brownstone.

Sherlock sat rigid in the armchair, one ankle crossed over his knee, hands steepled beneath his chin as if mid-deduction. But no deductions came. His eyes were fixed on the flames, the firelight sharpening the hollows beneath them.

Watson turned a page of her notes, then stilled.

“You’ve been off all day,” she said at last. Her tone was not sharp, not indulgent; only flat with concern. “You’ve been snapping at everyone, including Kitty. And me. What’s going on with you?”

He didn’t look at her. “Snapping? Hardly. I was correcting errors in reasoning. You know better than anyone that—”

“Don’t play that game with me, you were being obnoxious,” Watson interrupted.

A flicker of a smile ghosted over his mouth—automatic, brittle. 

“Obnoxiousness is the bedrock of progress.”

“Sherlock.”

Her voice— quiet, but still demanding —landed heavier than the word itself.

It summoned, unbidden, a memory: a year ago, the Watson who stayed with him, coaxed but did not coddle, steadied him without allowing him to wallow.

The Watson he had missed with an ache he refused to name.

He drew a breath, then another, as though assembling another retort. None arrived. His shoulders lowered by a fraction. He bit down hard on his lower lip, grounding himself in the sting.

When he spoke, the words were softer than he intended, almost lost to the hiss of the coals.

“I fear I have done irreparable damage. To you.”

The words hung there, suspended between them. Watson stayed silent, maybe waiting for him to continue. His throat felt clogged, but he forced himself to speak, to tell her.

“I assure you, Watson, it was never my intention to cause you pain,” he said. His gaze blurred slightly, and he blinked, fixing his eyes on the burning flames in front of him. “Quite the opposite. Inflicting pain upon you is the outcome I have most strenuously sought to avoid. But I saw you pulling away, leaving the brownstone… and I could not bear to watch it; to feel it. So I left first. In attempting to avoid my own pain… I caused it to you.”

Watson’s fingers tightened around the pen she wasn’t writing with. 

The rustle of papers. The scrape of a chair. Then softer footsteps—Watson crossing to the ottoman. She sat beside him. He caught the shift of her outline at the edge of his vision but refused to turn, unwilling to risk the expression on her face.

“It isn’t irreparable,” she whispered. “I just need some more time to work through… residual feelings. But we’re not done yet.”

His breath caught. He forced it out slowly. 

“May I be of assistance?”

The answer came without hesitation. 

“No. But we’ll sort it out. Like we always do.”

That we struck deeper than any rebuke. He turned his gaze at last, and she was already smiling. Small, almost reluctant, but there. 

He let it linger, held onto it in silence until she rose and began gathering her things.

“Good night, Watson,” he said as she slipped into her coat.

She turned back, and for a fleeting second, that old look, the one that steadied him, warmed him, flickered across her face before she turned away again. And with a nod, she turned to the front door and left the brownstone.

Sherlock did not move. The fire cracked once, scattering sparks that died before they touched the rug. He watched them fade.

Something in his chest, long starved, flickered in answer. Perhaps the tether was not severed after all.