Authors Note: Well here we are, the very end of our tale! This has been a pleasure to write, even if it took ages longer than planned! I'm grateful to anyone who has read, reviewed or left a lovely comment on this piece! I hope we will see more of each other soon!

Side note: This epilogue went in a different direction than I originally planned so there is only the faintest glimmer of any smut, apologies if you were looking forward to that at all, it just didn't seem to fit with the rest of the piece. I do hope you enjoy it any way!

Should anyone have asked, John would not have recommended being anything to Sherlock Holmes. It was not a suggestion he could make to the weak hearted, which was just about everyone where the world's only consulting detective was concerned. Should anyone have asked, John would have said that their life together was a lot of things, that either of them were a lot of things, but easy never factored in.

They were things there weren't words for.

Like when the rest of the world learned of Sherlock's return and John had wanted to scream that it wasn't fair for other people to want a piece of the man they hadn't rightfully earned back with years of mourning as John had. Sherlock had taken one look at the doctor before turning off the telly in favour of wrapping the other man in his arms.

Like when John asked on day 1023 if Sherlock would marry him and the detective said no because he did not want John to feel obligated to stay for the sake of traditional morals. He had insisted that the doctor should always be free to find the wife and 2.5 children the older man truly deserved. There was no adequate way of explaining to the brilliant man that no one else had a flying fuck of a chance when it came to replacing him. So John asked every day for a week until the brunette broke down with a Yes, alright, if you promise to stop being so tedious with your repetition. A small secretive smile had been on his face.

Like when, on day 1, the ex-army doctor led the strange man into a bedroom the doctor would no longer have to pretend wasn't empty. Steady tanned fingers had pulled buttons from soft worn cotton and taken with them the last of the strange man's defenses. And a naked Sherlock Holmes was breath taking, in a very literal sense as John was quite positive they both stopped breathing for far longer than should be humanly possible. The taller man was gorgeous, beautiful during the day but all the more for the details only John Watson could see up close. There were new scars though. Bright white against slightly less pale skin which was covered in a fine dusting of freckles from a ginger somewhere in the Holmes' gene pool. John ran his hands over every one that day as Sherlock described each of them in turn. A knife fight in South Africa, an ambushed drug pickup in Brazil, a single bullet from the gun of a hired sniper somewhere in the far north of Canada. John's tongue followed everywhere his hands went until the detective was trembling beneath him. The doctor murmured over and over you are beautiful, you are beautiful, you are beautiful until the trembling may have been sobbing but it just meant John knew what kissing Sherlock was like with the added saltiness of tears. The kisses turned heated, desperate for what they had every right to years ago. There was the slick slide of skin, John's fingers carefully stretching Sherlock open while the detective's fingers dug into John's back and his Cupid bow mouth placed wet kisses on the doctor's neck. There were firm hands on sharp hips and a fullness which made Sherlock keen desperately for more- to be closer somehow than this, to swallow all of John Watson up until no one could separate the pair ever again. There were kisses meant to say I'm sorry and scrapes of teeth meant to say I know and after John could see past the white blinding pleasure he drank in the sight of Sherlock flushed with eyes full of something which looked a lot like love.

They were balls of barbed wire, needing to be untangled but tearing through layers of skin in the process.

There were mornings when John would wake up to a face full of unruly dark curls and want nothing but to stay in bed for the rest of the day stewing in what felt like an endless pit of anger. On these mornings he did not note how content Sherlock looked when he was still half asleep, nor did he note how that peaceful face would fall when the bright blue eyes looked over at him. On these mornings Sherlock would get up and make the tea and pretend that it did not hurt a funny place inside him to think that John might hate him a little bit forever. On these mornings, John did not comfort that thought away.

There were nights when Sherlock would not pretend and would instead acknowledge that John hated him in a way and that maybe this made him hate John a bit in a way all his own.

They argued, much the same as they always had. About stupid things like who forgot to pick up the milk and what concentration of acid was acceptable in the flat. About less stupid things like when they should start taking cases again and how Sherlock did not get to quit them to try to please John. About very serious things like the regularity with which people must eat even if they don't care about the transport, like the reasonable uses for guns and needles.

They were notes and ways.

John was there on day 3078 when Mycroft stopped by to sit in the tattered patterned armchair and tell his brother that their Mummy had died the night before, alone in her manor. John was there when Sherlock quietly wept like a tree no one saw in the forest for a woman he hadn't spoken to in two decades. Both out of intense relief and an unexplainable grief that the detective was surprised to find he felt.

John was there when the greatest mind in the country would come undone. If Sherlock Holmes waged war with himself, then there were days when he did not win. When all the reassurance in the world could not bring him back from the dungeons of his own mind. It would start as a black mood and a vacant stare in John's direction that made the doctor's heart ache. Then the detective would curl in on himself, refusing to speak. On the worst occasions, Sherlock would lock himself in their bedroom and John would pound on the door desperately for hours because he could hear the sobs, the frustrated screams of wanting for nothing but for the noise in that brilliant mind to stop forever. The brunette could stay locked up for days without letting the doctor in until finally the door would creak open and John would always think how ugly this process made Sherlock look. Greasy curls, red eyes with heavy bags, boney limbs with too tight skin. How worn out the other man's demons made him. The doctor would ask Here? and the detective would answer Right here because they both knew what John meant. And John would kiss him and ask Sherlock to tell him about it. Sometimes the detective would, other times his eyes would cloud over again and he would whisper no a thousand times in a voice so terrified that John wondered if maybe he really didn't want to know.

John was there on day 14978.5, in a hospital bed with sheets he was certain were overly starched thinking that doctors really did make the worst patients. Sherlock was looking at him sadly and John was happy knowing that the lines on that beautiful face had not come from frowning. He would have told the strange man- who was no longer a detective unless one counted the case of who ate the last of the marmalade- that this could not be it. That there was more, there always would be. But turning his head to look at this great man drained him of energy and words felt painful on his tongue. Sherlock's thin fingers, softer with age but no less elegant, wrapped tightly around shorter ones that were far from tanned. The strange man leaned in to plant a chaste kiss on John's forehead before whispering that it was alright, that he would remember his promise to find the doctor again in that next life they'd been planning, that John could let go. John was not there on day 14979.

They were giggling at crime scenes and indecently happy.

They decided on a blue house near the coast because the colour reminded John of Sherlock's eyes on the mornings when he thought his heart might burst with the feelings it contained for that one person. The doctor made two cups of tea sweetened with honey almost every morning and would pass one over to the strange man with a soft smile. Sherlock had a few more greys in the tangles of his curls but the salt and pepper made him look possibly more distinguished. Even with the ridiculous protective suit on for when he tended to his hives, which he often forgot he was wearing though Sherlock never forgot to point out the particular hideousness of whatever jumper John happened to have chosen. They would nibble on toast with honey and say nothing because neither wanted to miss a second of bliss.

From the comfort of their flat, John wrote countless blog posts with increasingly terrible names. The Caked Crusader, A Hopped Up Scotch, The Tale of Two Felicity's which was actually an interesting case about a set of serial killer twins. Sherlock complained almost daily that John's writing made him sound far too romantic, that there were only so many paragraphs that could be dedicated to one person's eyes or cheekbones before the general public lost interest. John would point out that those where just a few of the features the detective possessed that the public had a right to know about, that he hadn't even gotten to the ones about the pouty lips or lush arse yet. And Sherlock would saunter over to John's arm chair, straddle his lap and ask to hear more of John's thoughts on the subject matter.

John had told himself he would not cry the day they got married because Sherlock Holmes in a suit was nothing new and if he cried over it then he'd be obligated to cry every other day of the week as well. But seeing Sherlock walk up the aisle of the small charming old church instantly brought tiny pinpricks of salt water to his eyes. They took a moment to huff in laughter together through the tears as the justice of the peace read something very nice about the powerful bonds of love and the pull of two souls together. John vowed to always stay, to patch up the detective after every failed experiment and to provide surplus amounts of tea. Sherlock vowed to never leave, to continue his experiments for the sake of science and to drink more tea than any other fluid for the rest of his life. No one objected, which sent John into another giggling fit which was soon accompanied by a deep baritone chuckle because really no one said anything? And later that night- after the dinner and the cake and the dancing and John pulling that expensive suit off piece by piece- they fell asleep in a pile of tangled limbs together.

And every day was a goddamn miracle.

Authors Note: It breaks my heart a little to let this one go, but all messages have to end eventually! A new story will be out shortly, I promise! Until next time my lovelies!