Chapter Text
It was all Li Thompson’s fault. Li Thompson had told Rosie that parents are supposed to be together. That was why Rosie was now standing in the middle of the living room and staring at John with a frown she had surely learned from Sherlock. Later John would talk to Sherlock about teaching their kid expressions with which she could make his father do stupid things.
Now John had other, more urgent things in his mind.
Like, why the hell he had told Rosie that of course her parents were together.
“But Li said,” Rosie narrowed her eyes at John in a very familiar and terrifying way, “that it means that they kiss. That’s what it means. Together. You aren’t together.”
“Darling,” John said with absolutely no idea where to go from there. “Even if Li says… and who is this Li, by the way?”
“My best friend ever. But daddy, I’m the unluckiest girl in the world,” said Rosie with the certainty only a ten-year-old could possess. “You won’t buy me a pony and my parents aren’t even together.”
“Rosie, me and Sherlock are –“
“Everyone else has parents who’re together.” Rosie stared at him and blinked. There was a real danger that the kid was going to start crying. “Why aren’t my parents together?”
“But we are, dear,” John said and then bit at his lip. Too late. Rosie’s mouth dropped half-open. The possibility of tears was gone as was the frown. The kid was probably already thinking about another plan to get that pony.
John sighed. He, on the other hand, was very much in trouble.
“You are?” Rosie said, sitting onto Sherlock’s armchair. “Together?”
“Yes,” he said. The damage was already done. There was no way out. Rosie Watson was, besides being the most clever and lovable kid ever lived on Earth, also the most stubborn, which was partly inherited from her mother and partly learned from the man she had called dad all her life.
“But you don’t kiss,” Rosie said and there was a hint of frown on her forehead.
John swallowed. “We do. We do. We just… don’t do it often.”
“You never do it.”
“We do it all the time,” John claimed and then stopped to wonder how the heck this was going to help his case. “I mean, in private. And sometimes in public… I mean, living room. You just haven’t been there.”
“Dad,” Rosie said with a deep sigh John knew very well. That was the sigh his kid used to tell him that there was no way he could know anything. He had let himself believe that would be happening only with teenagers. But then again, Rosie had had Sherlock Holmes as her father for her whole life. John should have known she would pick up his habits. “Are you sure you are together? You are only averagely clever.”
John bit his teeth together. He would have to ask, once more, for Sherlock kindly not to insult his cleverness in the presence of their daughter, please or I won’t make you tea anymore.
“I’m sure,” he said. “Just ask Sherlock.”
Rosie nodded.
Shit, John thought as he realised what he had just said.
**
“Sherlock,” he said at the exact moment Sherlock opened the door. For two hours John had been sitting miserably on his armchair, staring at the door and hoping that when Sherlock got home, Rosie would still be in her room, reading or playing with imaginary horses on internet or whatever it was kids did these days. And because he had been completely unable to focus on anything, he had spent the whole time thinking about how Rosie would get to Sherlock first, stand in front of the man with her most frightening expression on her face and ask are you two together.
John coughed. Sherlock frowned at him. “John?”
“Out,” he said, “immediately.”
Sherlock stood still. John gave the man a little push and Sherlock stared at him with his usual why am I bearing with this idiot look.
“Now,” John said.
“Why? Where’s Rosie?”
John pushed a bit more. Sherlock refused to move. John drew a very deep sigh. “I told her we are together.”
“What?”
Perhaps using Sherlock's confusion to push him through the open door was somehow cheating. John didn’t care. He closed the door behind them as quietly as he ever could and then climbed down the stairs. Sherlock followed him, probably wondering if he had finally gone mad.
“John.”
John stopped and turned around. Sherlock was standing in the corridor, his hands pushed deep into his pockets, staring at him with a frown. He had been frowned at a lot today, but somehow he thought he earned it this time.
“Apparently,” he said, trying not to sound so upset and failing completely, “someone told her that parents are supposed to be together.”
Sherlock was watching him a bit too carefully. He turned to look at his own socks. One was grey and the other black. Shit.
“I said we are.”
“John –“
“I told our daughter that we are together.”
“Yes, I got that already.” Sherlock took a step closer. John leaned his back against the closed door. “John, she’s ten years old. Half of her genes come from you. Surely she doesn’t understand the whole concept too well.”
“I told her we kiss,” John said, his voice sounding very thin. “She didn’t believe me when I said we were together because we don’t kiss, so I said we do.”
Sherlock opened his mouth and then closed it. John felt quite hopeless.
“And I told her to ask you,” John finished very quietly. “About us. Being together.”
Sherlock sighed quite deeply. “Oh. John.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re an idiot. You couldn’t just tell her that no, we aren’t together in that particular way, could you? Like with the pony. No, Rosie, I won’t buy you a pony even if everyone else in the world has one. No, Rosie, we don’t kiss but I have shot people to save your dad and he occasionally cleans the kitchen for me.”
“I won’t tell my daughter that I have shot people for you,” John said, “and you never clean the kitchen. But I get the general idea. I’m sorry, I really am. I panicked.”
“You’re an army doctor. You aren’t supposed to panic when a ten-year-old frowns at you.”
“She’s got it from you,” John said, “and besides, I can’t take it back now. What’s done is done. What are we going to do?”
“You have to explain to her.”
“Really? What do I say?”
“That we don’t kiss,” Sherlock said, “but otherwise –“
John closed his eyes for a second as Sherlock paused in middle of the sentence. “Sherlock.”
“John,” Sherlock said, “no.”
“It’s not that big a deal,” John said. “And you’re right. She doesn’t know what together means. I’m not sure I do, either, but she definitely doesn’t. I regularly risk my life to get you out of trouble. I think that substitutes for kissing.”
“It doesn’t, though,” Sherlock said, his voice low and somehow different. John decided to ignore that.
“For ten years we’ve raised this kid together,” John said, “and now her friends tell her we aren’t together because we don’t fucking kiss. I can’t bear that. She has the maddest family in the whole world already. I can’t bear that she’s unhappy because she thinks we aren’t together.”
“So what are you going to do, kiss me?”
“Yes,” John said and then froze.
Sherlock eyed at him. He straightened his back and waited for something, probably a sharp comment about his utter idiocy. Once Sherlock might have added a question about women, are you completely sure you shouldn’t just, you know, find someone to, you know, it’s been half a month, and then a year, and then two years. After five years, it had stopped altogether. Sherlock snapped at him regularly, of course, but never made remarks about whether John ought to go find someone.
Well, now that he thought about it, it might be just because he had turned fifty not so long ago. Every day he found a few more grey strands in his hair. He would have looked absolutely ridiculous, hitting on someone in a club.
Besides, he couldn’t have done it. He was quite sure he had never even considered it, not after Mary’s death, not when they had come back to Baker Street, the three of them, and the life had begun from the scratch again.
“No,” he said when Sherlock was still quiet. “That was stupid. Sorry.”
“It’s fine, you know.”
John swallowed. “What’s fine?”
“You can kiss me if you like,” Sherlock said. He seemed tense, but then again, John himself felt like panicking. Badly. “If you think it’s for the best. For Rosie.”
“I –“, John started. This was getting out of hand. “I don’t –“
“You don’t want her to miss anything,” Sherlock said, biting his lip. “And it’s true. What would I do with kissing when I have you to take care that criminals won’t kill me as I try to catch them?”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“She’s ten. She won’t know the difference.”
“I think she would.”
“Well,” Sherlock said, “you already lied to her. It can’t get any worse.”
“No,” John agreed, even though he had a vague idea that perhaps he was supposed to say it can definitely get worse and there’s no way I’m going to trick my kid to believe her dads are together when we aren’t. Because we really aren’t. He swallowed and kept quiet.
“So,” Sherlock said slowly, “a few kisses. She’ll drop the subject and be happy.”
“I thought you despised that kind of things,” John said and cleared his throat.
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes I –“. Shit. “Okay, I didn’t. But it’s going to be weird.”
“I’ve begun to eat regular meals. That’s weird.”
“That’s for your health,” John said, “this is… personal.”
“I can handle personal,” Sherlock said,” if it’s with you. Surely you know that after ten years.”
John swallowed. “Yes. Sorry. I know you can. It’s just… I don’t…”
The door on his right opened. John bit at his lip and tried to look like someone who is just spending time in the corridor with their best friends slash co-parent slash colleague slash a partner in everything except kissing. Mrs. Hudson let out a deep sigh.
“Sorry, boys,” she hissed, “I know that health is a very important thing and you should really eat more, Sherlock, but I have someone visiting, so could you possibly take that discussion of yours upstairs?”
“We weren’t actually talking about –“, John started and then bit at his lip.
“He’s doing slightly illegal things in internet,” Sherlock said, “so I think you two might have a fair chance.”
“Oh, thank you, dear,” mrs. Hudson smiled, “that’s very sweet and quite unlike you. Off you go, then.”
She closed the door. John wanted to say something, because surely this wasn’t settled yet, they couldn’t just go in and kiss and trick their daughter and be done with it. But Sherlock turned around with his black coat, the third in the line of black coats if John had counted right. It seemed quite clear that Sherlock didn’t want to talk about this anymore, and as John tried to find something, anything, to say, his words got stuck in his mouth and he had to cough. And then they were back in the flat, Sherlock took his coat off and sat down onto his chair, and thank God Rosie was still in her room.
“Relax,” Sherlock said.
“I’m relaxing,” John snapped, though perhaps it would have been a bit more convincing, had he not been standing in the middle of the floor grinding his teeth.
**
“Dad,” Rosie said with the voice she usually saved for the occasions when she wanted to ask for something she definitely wasn’t going to get. John froze with a cup of tea in his one hand and a half-eaten slice of bread in the other. “Are you two together?”
“Of course, dear,” Sherlock said without looking up. “Don’t be daft.”
“I mean,” Rosie said, “together.”
“We have kept residence in this particular flat for ten years,” Sherlock said, “after your mother died, and for several years before your father even met your mother. We have raised you and regularly stopped you from doing stupid things. John takes care that I eat and I take care that John’s most awful clothes get recycled. Occasionally he has killed –“
John cleared his throat very loudly.
“- my desire to lock myself up in his room for days to be able to concentrate on reading a particularly interesting article. I wouldn’t let anyone else have that effect on me. I would also get totally bored of anyone else in less than thirty minutes.”
“Yes,” Rosie said, “but Li said –“
“Hush, darling,” Sherlock said, frowning at the article he was reading. He had told John about it last night, before John had gone to his bedroom and Sherlock had placed his ridiculously long legs on the sofa. It was about something John didn’t and didn’t want to understand. He had said good night and then wondered how long the man would keep insisting that he didn’t need a proper bed. “Dad is reading a very good article. Go find something else to do. Did you read that book we talked about?”
“It’s clearly for adults,” Rosie said, and John straightened his back. “About astrophysics. I don’t do astrophysics.”
“You will,” Sherlock said, “some day.”
“I definitely won’t,” Rosie claimed loudly, turned around and walked to her room that once had belonged to Sherlock. For years John had said that it was fine, of course the kid could share the bedroom with his father, and then he had argued for a few more years that it should be him who gave his bedroom to Rosie and started sleeping in the living room. Obviously, he had lost both fights.
“You may thank me now.”
John took a deep breath. The living room had gone quiet, Sherlock’s eyes were still scanning the article and Rosie had begun dancing, guessing by the noises that echoed from her room.
“Thank you,” he said. “You did far better than me.”
“I always do.” Sherlock threw a glance at him over the paper and smiled. John smiled back.
“I’m sorry I dragged you into this.”
“You’ve kept me from going mad. You’ve literally kept me alive. But as I have now spent two minutes telling your daughter facts about how I share quite a lot of my life with you, I think we’re even.”
“Our daughter,” John said, “and it goes both ways, you know.”
Sherlock frowned. “Excuse me?”
“Keeping you alive. Keeping you from going mad.”
“John, I didn’t –“
“You didn’t say it to get a compliment,” John said. “It’s not a compliment. It’s the truth. You should know.”
“John,” Sherlock said, turning a page, “I know.”
**
After four days, John was quite sure everyone had forgotten about kissing. He had been waiting for the time when Rosie would frown at him, unasked question clear on her face: why don’t you ever kiss? Everyone else has parents who kiss. Just buy me a pony and I’ll never frown at you again. But the time didn’t come. Rosie frowned at him, of course, but this time it was about making her do her homework. John began to wonder that perhaps he, as a parent, wasn’t as clueless as he always felt and perhaps his daughter had just this once believed what he had told her.
Sherlock hadn’t mentioned kissing, either. If John had been completely honest with himself, he would have had to admit that for the last four days, he had flinched every time Sherlock had passed him by. He was quite certain Sherlock wasn’t just going to kiss him, not just like that. There would be a warning. Probably he would have to do it himself. He would have to grab Sherlock’s collar and rise onto his toes, and even then Sherlock would narrow his eyes at him, confused, and John would have to press their lips together and push his fingers into Sherlock’s crazy hair that didn’t seem to be getting thinner at all as the years went by. Sherlock wouldn’t kiss him back. He would feel utterly awkward afterwards, but Rosie could tell Li Thompson her parents had kissed.
It didn’t happen, though. John began to breathe a bit more freely. He didn’t even flinch when Sherlock brushed his arm passing him in the doorway. He was so relieved his stomach felt actually a bit tight, like he had been disappointed, except that he wasn’t and it was just the tension finally wearing off.
That was pretty much when Sherlock kissed him.
He was making tea. Rosie was in the living room, minding her own business, which was what she always answered when either of them asked her what she was doing. Would you do the same, please, she would ask with her frighteningly stubborn voice. That was exactly what John was doing now: he was making tea. He kept a close eye on his cup of tea and thought about the climate change and if they were able to politely ask mrs. Hudson if she needed help with shopping or washing the dishes, and then Sherlock stopped besides him.
“Thank you, John,” Sherlock said and took his cup of tea.
John turned to stare at the man. It was his tea. Sherlock was a man in his fifties, he could very well manage to make his own. He meant to say all this aloud, he just didn’t have time.
Sherlock placed a hand on his shoulder, leaned forward and kissed him on his mouth.
“What are you doing?” Rosie said from the sofa. “That’s gross.”
“No, it’s just two human mouths pressed against each other for one and a half seconds,” Sherlock said, walking away with John’s cup of tea. “Do your research, kid.”
“I’m not a kid.”
“Of course not, kiddo,” Sherlock said. “By the way, you should show me those exercises you skipped at the Math lesson as you chatted about something regarding pop-culture, probably that new band you’ve been listening to, with your friend who was sitting in your right side. As you know, I’m considerably more intelligent than any of your teachers and I can help you.”
“Sod off,” Rosie said, standing up.
“Rosemund Mary Watson, you are ten years old, you don’t get to speak like that to your father until you’re eighteen.”
“Oh, please,” Rosie sighed.
“Sit down,” Sherlock said. “It was equations, wasn’t it?”
“You think that’s cool,” Rosie said, “but it’s really not. It’s just annoying. Nobody else has dad who tells them what they’ve eaten in lunch looking at their fingers. Or the mud in their shoes. It’s not cool. Daddy, tell him.”
John blinked.
“Daddy, tell him he’s not cool,” Rosie said, looking straight at John, and John found that he was brushing his lips with his fingertips. He pushed his hand down as quickly as he could, and then, just to be sure, clenched his fists.
“Sherlock,” he said with a somehow thin voice, “you aren’t cool.”
“Liar,” Sherlock said, and John looked the man in the eye even though he knew it was a mistake.
Sherlock smiled at him shortly.
His knees felt quite weak.
“I hate you both,” Rosie said, “you’re ruining my life.”
“You aren’t supposed to say that for at least two years,” Sherlock said in an absent voice.
“I’m a fast learner. I got it from you. Can I have chocolate?”
“Sure. Just let me show you how good I am at equations.”
Rosie sighed very deeply. “You’re insufferable.”
“That’s so much better than sod off,” Sherlock said, sitting onto the sofa next to Rosie. “John, I think I used all the milk earlier. Would you mind shopping?”
John swallowed. He was still standing in the kitchen and he had a vague idea that if Rosie’s parents had actually kissed before today, he, being one of them, wouldn’t have been standing frozen in the kitchen, wondering how the hell he was supposed to cope with that.
“Yes,” he said and cleared his throat, “no, I wouldn’t. I’ll go. Anything else I should get?”
“I would like to have parents that are actually cool,” Rosie said.
“I’m not sure if they have them in Tesco,” John said, “but fine.”
He took his coat. There was a possibility that Sherlock stared at him, but he didn’t think he could handle finding out. He pressed the door shut and stepped down the stairs. On the street he realised what Rosie had actually asked of him.
**
“John?”
He sat up on his bed. “What is it? Is everything –?”
“Yes,” Sherlock said, standing in the doorway. “Don’t panic. Can I come in?”
“Sure,” John said, pushing his shoulders back. It wasn’t like Sherlock hadn’t been in his bedroom before. Sherlock had also seen him without a shirt before, including lately when his chest hair had turned grey so fast he hadn’t even realised it was happening until it had already happened. They had been living together for ten years, for fuck’s sake, this was perfectly normal and John wasn’t panicking at all.
“You didn’t like it,” Sherlock said, stepping inside and closing the door.
“What?”
“When I kissed you.”
John drew a deep breath. “Come here. Sit down.”
Sherlock sat onto the bed next to him. It was fine. It was all fine. They were definitely allowed to sit next to each other, even if it was John’s bed that Sherlock never sat on, and even if John wished he had been wearing a t-shirt.
“I just got surprised, that’s all,” he said. His voice wasn’t nearly as steady as he had planned.
“But you told me to,” Sherlock said. “We agreed on that.”
“I know. I just… I guess I didn’t think you’d actually…”
“Kiss you.”
“Yes.” John swallowed. Sherlock was staring at his own palms, placed on his knees. John moved his thigh a bit further away from Sherlock’s. “Oh my God. Rosie is so… so right about us.”
“No, she isn’t,” Sherlock said in a firm, low voice. “We are together. In this. We have been for this whole time. You came back to Baker Street with me. You stayed even though I had almost got us both killed. Again.”
“Do you know what I’m thinking about right now?” John asked even though he shouldn’t have. “I’m thinking about how we’re sitting here on my bed, and after ten years I wouldn’t dare to touch your thigh.”
“Try not to be an idiot,” Sherlock said. “You’re my doctor. You’ve touched my thigh.”
“Yes, but I mean, now, like this, when we’re –“
John bit at his lip. Sherlock squeezed John's knee lightly and then drew small circles with his thumb. John tried to breathe. And he was the one who was wearing nothing but pants. Shit.
“I do,” Sherlock said. It was possible that Sherlock’s hand trembled just a little. Or perhaps it was John’s knee. “I dare to. Breathe, please.”
John gasped for air. It was ridiculous. He was ridiculous. Sherlock didn’t laugh, though.
“You must miss it,” Sherlock said, not looking at him. “Touching. Before all of it, before Mary, you always had a girlfriend. No matter how hard I tried to drive them away, you always found another one.”
John chuckled. “You really were quite… quite an obstacle.”
“I’m sorry,” Sherlock said, sounding rather smug. “I guess I didn’t know how to share you.”
“You won’t have to anymore. You know that.”
“Yes, though I can’t understand why. You gave all that up. Touching, kissing, and, you know. Sex.”
“Surely we don’t have to talk about this,” John said, “not now that we’ve managed to get along for ten years –“
“But why would you do that?” Sherlock asked, frowning at the wall. His fingers tightened on John’s knee. John tried not to notice. “For me.”
“You’re very,” John said, swallowed and placed his own hand over Sherlock’s, “very… I mean, we are… I think I did it for… us. And Rosie. And, you know, Mary. After she died, it took a lot of time before I could even think about… being with someone else than her. And then you were there. With me. And everything was… fine.”
“But it’s not fine.”
“Yes, it is,” he said. Sherlock’s hand felt weird under his palm, warm and big and somehow familiar but still weird. “You don’t get to decide that it’s not okay, not after ten years that we’ve lived like this. You just don’t get to do that.”
“I’m not trying to,” Sherlock said and took a deep breath, “I’m not trying to –“
“Sod off,” he said, holding Sherlock’s hand on his own knee.
Sherlock laughed. John closed his eyes for just a second. He probably should have let go of Sherlock’s hand now, but for some reason he couldn’t. Ten years. He hadn’t had someone touching him for ten years.
“Your lack of vocabulary,” Sherlock said, “is ruining our girl.”
“Don’t you mock my vocabulary,” John said. “It got me this far.”
Sherlock opened his mouth, glanced at him and then turned his gaze away. “Surely you realise I have a hand on your knee.”
“Yes,” he said, “it’s fine. It’s more than fine. You know that you could… I mean, if you ever felt that you wanted somebody to… to pat you on the shoulder, or something, you could just ask. I would do it. Obviously.”
“You would pat me on the shoulder.”
“Or rub your shoulders. Or… whatever you like.”
“Surely not whatever I like.”
“Well,” John said and cleared his throat, “you wouldn’t… you don’t… it’s quite late, isn’t it?”
“You know perfectly well how late it is, there’s a clock on the wall straight in front of you,” Sherlock said with a dry tone but withdrew his hand nonetheless. John’s knee felt oddly empty.
“Sherlock –“
“You could kiss me next time,” Sherlock said, standing up and walking to the door, “so that you know when it’s happening. You can’t look that frightened about it. It isn’t convincing.”
“Sherlock.”
“Unless you want to call it off, you know, you lying to your daughter about kissing me.”
“She’s yours, too. She’s ours.”
“I know that,” Sherlock said. John watched as the man stopped at the door and took a deep breath. “Good night, John.”
“Good night,” he said to the closed door.
He couldn’t sleep, though. He placed his own fingers onto his knee but it didn’t feel the same. Half past one he heard footsteps echoing from downstairs. He pushed the duvet aside, walked to the door, and then turned around and went back to bed.