1

John put his head in his hands in despair. "Sherlock, you need your tetanus shot."

"No, I don't." Sherlock crossed his arms, covering both shoulders the shot could go in.

Molly shifted on the balls of her feet. "We can do this another day," she pointed out, gesturing with her syringe, "it's not like today is my only opening."

"This isn't even part of your job!" John protested. "You must have actual corpses at the morgue to perform autopsies on, lab samples to analyze, paperwork to finish. He's just being a bloody pain and won't go to the hospital."

Sherlock sniffed unhappily. "The people are infernally stupid there. I was saving myself time and energy." One of the thieves they'd faced the night before had decided to let her preferred weapon, a long, rusty nail, scrape up Sherlock's side. His shots weren't recent (or, as John suspected, completed), so he'd carted Sherlock down to Molly's office once he'd alienated all the hospital staff in the A&E.

"I haven't been saved anything," John grumbled.

"Money," Sherlock shot back.

"If we need money we can steal it from your crazy brother."

"But I hate him," he whined.

John turned to Molly with a 'help, my flatmate and fellow parent is being irrational' look, and she quickly jabbed the syringe into Sherlock's leg before he could react beyond a betrayed, "Ouch!"

"Do you want a polka-dot band-aid, or a Doctor Who band-aid?" Molly asked, smiling a little as she dumped the used syringe in the bio-hazard container.

"Why do you only have band-aids for children, Lestrade? Your kids live with your wife, not you," Sherlock wondered, glaring at John and Molly with all the vengeance of a child who had not been allowed ice cream.

It took a moment for Sherlock to realize what he'd said, and another moment for John to say, "You mean Molly."

"Of course." Sherlock growled, standing up and sweeping out of the room, leaving his friends to gape after him.

...

2

Every scene involving Mycroft and Sherlock usually ended in one of them stomping off in their own posh or stroppy way. In this case, John expected the stomping to occur in five...four...three...

"Get out, you're being noisy, unnecessary, and too damn happy!"

"I am having positive interactions with Lady Smallwood as part of the British Government, not for my own personal gain," Mycroft said calmly, but John could tell he was getting fed up.

"You have her phone number in your pocket, despite the fact you memorized it as soon as you saw it!" Sherlock flopped onto the couch with a dramatic sigh. "You're in denial and incredibly, stupidly sentimental; an imbecile could have seen it."

Mycroft turned his gaze to John, who, not willing to do anything to stop this fight (he'd just sat down, after all), shrugged and continued enjoying his breakfast.

"She tried to have me sent off to Eastern Europe to be killed," Sherlock remarked, head turned upside down and beginning to go red. "That's not an attractive quality."

"Not that you know what attractive qualities are." Mycroft switched his umbrella to his right hand and back to his left. John smirked; maybe Sherlock would get Mycroft to stomp off first.

Sherlock flicked his hand in dismissal. "I dislike her and will never approve of her, if that's what you came here to ask. Simple enough for you to understand?"

Mycroft spat, "It's none of your business, anyway, brother dear," put on his coat, and slammed the door behind him as he left.

The remaining Holmes brother huffed and sat up. "Mrs. Hudson as good as admitted I was right. He is getting sentimental, that hypocrite." He paused. "Mycroft. Mycroft is a hypocrite."

John raised an eyebrow, but finished his toast and tea without another word.

...

3

"The paint at the victim's feet should be green, not this hideous shade of pink!" Sherlock ranted to the available Yarders with much gesticulation. "It breaks every pattern this woman has laid out for us so far!"

John frowned, saying, "I thought the next color would be something that started with a letter before sky blue: R, or Q. What does green have to do with any of this?"

Sherlock stared at John for half a second, processing, then ran forward to hug him and shot off, shouting about his discovery. John, a bit shocked, followed behind.

"The colors weren't in reverse color-wheel order: they were in reverse alphabetical! The fabric store said that shade of purple was called violet bloom, and the one after called twilight indigo. Then the blue she chose was called sky blue. Pink is a logical next choice, especially considering her three daughters and husband's habit of dressing in drag. This must all connect with him and the clothing in his part of the closet, instead of the art teacher theory!" He spoke a mile a minute, swishing his coat around like a flying superhero as he explained his deductions to an exhausted-looking Lestrade.

"Sherlock," Lestrade said. "Sherlock." The man kept talking, running through his monologue. "Sherlock!" Lestrade finally shouted. Sherlock fell silent, looking slightly chastised, a strange expression on him in John's opinion. "Who are we arresting?"

"She's the black-haired woman with the gauges in her ears working at the Tesco two blocks away." Sherlock waved the officers away impatiently. "John, you seem to need sustenance, yes?"

John temporarily gaped at him for a moment before managing to stutter out, "Yeah, I could eat."

Sherlock nodded once, affirmatively, and turned to Lestrade, remarking, "If John, pinnacle of reflection and occasional wisdom, needs food and sleep, I think you do too, Rosie." He then grabbed John's hand and pulled him away from the crime scene.

John looked over his shoulder just once and saw Lestrade shake his head tiredly and trudge off to his cruiser, likely convincing himself that everything that had just happened was a very strange dream.

...

4

Saying John was currently frustrated would be frankly one of the smaller understatements he'd heard that day, one of the larger being that he needed a kip.

"I've explained all my deductions from the past three cases to her, and she still hasn't stopped crying!" Sherlock exclaimed harriedly. "Why can't you do something?!"

"I've been trying to fix up a bottle," John replied, his voice scratchy from the number of dumb pop songs from the radio he'd attempted to sing to make his daughter go to sleep. "If you get her even resembling calm, she can drink the bottle and fall asleep. Until then, we are out of luck."

Sherlock sighed deeply, rocking Rosie back and forth. His long fingers stroked up and down her little arms, trying to soothe her. It had been two hours since they'd started the long and torturous bedtime ritual, and Rosie refused to leave Sherlock and go to bed.

Once all the drama with their flat blowing up and Sherlock's sister was over, John could finally get back to attempting to be a decent parent to Rosie. Sherlock helped so much. John didn't know what he'd do without him, especially at times like these, when he hadn't got good sleep for three days and eaten well in even longer and Sherlock just stood there, cradling their (and she was their) daughter in his arms. He was an island of peace now, contrary to the way he used to be to John.

Hm. Deep thoughts. He really did need a few hours' sleep.

"Your father is tired, Molly, and so am I. Your continual negation of this easily observable fact is frankly a bit vexing." Sherlock kissed Rosie on the forehead and she immediately began to settle down, looking at him carefully for a moment, and then drifting off on his shoulder. John's look of disbelief and gratitude was effectively ignored as Sherlock sat down on the couch and tried to keep his head up.

John didn't bother telling Sherlock to find a real bed; real beds were for people with regular jobs and grownup children. Instead, he abandoned his bottle-making efforts and sat down on the couch next to him.

Sherlock's eyes blearily flicked open for a mere second before falling back closed. He nestled further into the cushions and into John's side while John smiled a little and nestled into Sherlock too.

They could talk about Sherlock's misnaming habit when Rosie inevitably woke.

...

5

"You're insufferable!" Sherlock shouted, waving about the gun in his hand haphazardly. John winced, but not long before he resumed his glaring.

"You practically dove in front of that man and begged him to knife you! I'm only concerned for your safety, dammit!" John would have cared about swearing, but Mrs. Hudson was watching Rosie downstairs. He hated making her listen to their arguments.

"He was about to run off with three days' worth of evidence and work! We wouldn't have caught him again for another week if I hadn't confronted him! The case would have been at stake, John!"

"Your life is a thousand times more important than his! I couldn't care less whether it took a week or a month to find him again as long as you were safe and healthy!"

Sherlock's gun arm dropped all of the sudden. After a moment of silence, he turned to set the gun on the kitchen table and walked out of their flat, slamming the door behind him.

John swore quietly.

Sometimes, John couldn't be sure whether or not Sherlock would wake up one day and decide that he wasn't worth it. Hell, he'd beaten Sherlock into the ground without a single coherent reason, expected him to help care for a child that wasn't his, let his late wife shoot him, left him when he needed help. He was the reason Mycroft had nearly died in one of Euros' puzzle rooms. Sherlock must have thought it so hypocritical that now John was showing care about Sherlock's life and well-being.

He didn't know what he would do if Sherlock left again, especially if it was his fault.

"Sherlock?" he called. No one answered, but then, he didn't expect anybody to.

John paced across the kitchen to the door, opening it and padding through, trying to keep the leftover anger out of his steps. As he came down the stairs, he heard a soft conversation from Mrs. Hudson's flat.

"He's not seeing my side of it," Sherlock was saying, his version of hurt dripping into his tone. John took a deep breath. He'd heard too much of that tone right after Mary died, and he didn't think he could stand hearing much more.

"Dear, he's just trying to look out for you," replied Mrs. Hudson.

"So I can assuage his guilt? No thank you, I prefer to leave our arrangement without such petty things."

"He cares about you and he doesn't want to watch you in pain again. Can't you observe it?"

Sherlock scoffed and John felt his chest clench and unclench, as if his lungs had forgotten to breathe. "He doesn't need me, Mycroft."

Mrs. Hudson didn't mention the name switch. "But he wants you with him. Isn't that what matters now?"

John coerced his lungs into breathing again as he scaled the stairs, just barely catching the sound of Rosie babbling as she only did in Sherlock's arms.

...

+1

"John?" Sherlock called across the crime scene. "Have you found anything?"

John nodded, forgetting Sherlock couldn't see him. "Yeah, there's a huge amount of blood over here. The victim could have been killed here and then-"

"Yes, yes, carried over to this area. Quite sloppy, wouldn't you say?" Sherlock replied, the quirked eyebrow evident in his tone.

"I suppose." John frowned and looked at his watch. "We should get home in enough time to put Rosie down for her nap. You know how she gets-"

"Fussy until the early hours of the morning? I do, indeed." A coat flashed past John and he had to jog to keep up with his partner.

"What's with you today?" John asked once they were through the front door and he could take a few breaths without huffing. "Did you start drinking coffee again? You know how hyper you get, and you're hyper enough already."

Sherlock shook his head. "Your tea will always be my beverage of choice. I believe I've been ruined for all others."

A small smile spread across John's face as he hung his coat up on the hook.

"John?" Sherlock asked. "I believe I requested tea. It's only fair since I'm putting Molly to sleep."

And suddenly it hit John in a burst of memory, quite an arbitrary memory really, but made important in the scenario.

"I read a study about why people call others the wrong name, and it doesn't have anything to do with memory problems most of the time. This is common among parents: they'll be thinking of one of their children, and in attempting to get their attention will use all the other siblings' names before they get it right."

Sherlock frowned. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Let me finish," John admonished him. "The reason for this phenomenon is that all the loved ones' names go in a sort of folder in the brain. When the brain is forced to think of a name of a person, it searches in the folder for the name and other names are pulled out simply because all the people are associated in the same folder."

"What does this have to do with me?" the detective asked quietly. His brow had begun to wrinkle and he directed his gaze toward the floor with not a single ounce of subtlety.

"In searching for the names of your brother, Molly, Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, and our daughter, you pull out the wrong name from the folder sometimes."

A small smile stretched across Sherlock's face. "I do, don't I?"

John took a step forward. "I hope you know that it's okay to have a folder of loved ones. It hasn't interfered with the Work yet. You always shoot back."

Sherlock snorted. "John, you taught me that. One would think you could follow your own teachings," he sniped, but his smile grew a little.

"Yeah." John paused. "Yeah, you're right. You're absolutely right."

He quickly took three steps forward, fleetingly kissed Sherlock on the cheek, and went into the kitchen, turning on the kettle. The tea wouldn't make itself.

...

(Hours later, when Rosie fell asleep and Sherlock had been playing soothing lullabies on his violin for an hour and twenty-three minutes and John had been sitting on the couch, Union Jack pillow curled into his chest, Sherlock set down his bow.

"It's okay, you know," John whispered. "It's okay if we're just co-parents or friends. Where we go from here is up to you."

Sherlock huffed into the silence that sentence left in its wake. He packed his violin and bow back into their case and shut it, trying to make as little sound as possible. One of the strings jostled and the plucking noise it made sent a jarring feeling into the peace left behind by the lullabies. John shifted positions on the couch, finally laying down and sliding the pillow under his head. He was too tired to climb the stairs to his room and those stairs were beginning to creak more and more. He couldn't afford to wake Rosie. John closed his eyes and willed his mind to sleep, not that that method worked anymore.

A few minutes must have passed. As John drifted closer and closer to sleep, someone slipped onto the couch, laying behind him and creeping an arm around his waist. He relaxed against the other man's body, breathing the slight scent of Sherlock's ridiculously expensive shampoo.

Sherlock dropped a kiss onto John's hair. "You silly man, you have a folder of your own. That was never in question, was it?"

"I had to be sure," John murmured.

"Well then, here's for certainty." He rubbed his thumb gently back and forth against the skin of John's arm. "I love you."

John nestled into Sherlock's arms and nodded. "I know."

He fell asleep before he could say what he meant to say. Sherlock knew though. He always had.)

I've been working on this oneshot and meaning to publish it for a while, but I lost so much drive to write over the past year. I'm getting back into it though, so more stuff should be coming soon. Thanks for reading!