One shot written in a funky point of view, inspired by ongoing angst over the lack of series three. Enjoy.

I step through the door to our old home with a bag on my shoulder and you're there. It's like you've been waiting for me; as if, moments before you were sat bundled up in a ball in the sofa, with your dressing gown hanging off your shoulders and your arms holding your legs to your chest – holding yourself together – before you heard the door, the creaks on the steps, you deduced it was me and rose to the doorway.

That's all wrong, of course, because I've been waiting for you without realising that was still waiting, or hoping, or acknowledging that I want you still. You weren't the one who was waiting, Sherlock, you were just gone.

It's happened before.

I know it's mad and illogical and doesn't make sense, but my first thoughts are attempting to justify it myself. It has had happened before. Not in a real life way, admittedly, but there's Jesus and Lazarus and sodding Aslan and Voldemort. Doctor Who and Irene Adler. By this point you barely feel real. You are more like a book that I read, years ago, that ended so suddenly and abruptly that it winded me.

You are a muted sense of a life that was a bit too good to be true and acute sense of loss. It is easy to turn you into a fairytale.

And then with no knowledge that you are real I'm reaching out forward, grappling into the air in the hope that you'll be solid. I still don't believe that you are concrete, not some odd delusion bought on by this time of stress, but my hands close around shoulders, not nothingness, and I can feel your bones through your suit and I can feel your breathing.

You are here.

I want to believe that and my arms, which are pulling me closer and towards you, seem not to care if this is a delusion and my brain is saying that it's illogical and wrong that you might have been waiting for me at Baker Street whilst I was elsewhere, as if this distance is my fault and not yours. As if you never jumped and made me watch you. I'd rather it by my fault than the truth, and maybe I can delude myself for a little while longer.

I don't precisely mean to kiss you. It's just that I'm still searching for proof that you are real. It's not precisely sexually either, not like that, it's just that I want you – I want you to be real more than I've wanted anything, I want you to gravitate around me until I'm the thing that holds you in place, I want to be your whole world so that you won't ever slip away and disappear again. It is not realistic; before you were dead there were cases that eclipsed me to the sidelines, but I was always there and always important despite your lack of regard for everything else. I cannot think of any good reason why you will be any different after you're dead, but there are more pressing matters that I have no reason for at the moment.

It is not the first time we have kissed. Last time it was you. Before you fell, jumped, left. It was only once, but it was for the same reason. Just to be close, for a few minutes, to feel important and real and solid and there. I only realised why afterwards. After you.

It's less than a minute of lips and nothing else, before it occurs to me what I'm doing, and I retreat and close the distance another way. I'm doing this all wrong, obviously, because you were never one for hugs and here I am, desperately grappling for your shoulders and trying to control my breathing and trying to believe but still struggling.

It's not logical, you see Sherlock, and you were always logical.

When I'm this close I can feel your heartbeat.

o0o0o0o

My hands are shaking as I fill the kettle. My leg hurts and my breathing is still a little erratic. I really need a cup of tea, but I'm finding the processes unduly difficult.

"John," you say, stepping into the kitchen. I blink. I am going quite, quite mad. You cannot be here and you cannot be real.

I've gotten two cups out of the cupboard anyway.

"Sherlock," I say, as the kettle is placed back down and flicked on. I turn around and I face you. You're still there.

Only just. You are thinner, much thinner, and look like the back end of a case; exhausted, but somehow running on adrenaline alone with the sort of expression where I can see your whole life written across your face. That expression always made me want to look after you and it looks like your autobiography has not got any more pleasant. I want to hug you again.

"Not dead." I say, slowly, confirming my insanity but barely caring.

"No," you agree, "not dead."

"Right," I say, and reach for the support of the kitchen counter behind me.

"I..." you stop, apprehensive, "I faked it."

"Okay." I say, but I'm going to cry.

I've never cried in front of you. Not when you were about to jump off a building, when you were crying, and not before, and not at your grave. Always the soldier, fighting, and you don't like the emotions and the sentiment so I do try, Sherlock, but –

The kettle boils.

I turn away from you and fumble with the cups. I told Mrs Hudson I was coming and she stocked the fridge with milk and groceries, always Mrs H is so motherly, and the milk has been opened and not full and someone has opened the butter. You, then. I'm glad that you've at least been eating. It is easier to believe you're not a ghost when I see that you've been drinking the milk.

It's stupid; the things that make me feel better.

"John." You say, again, and I can feel your hopelessness. You have no idea what to do. Me neither, Sherlock, me neither.

"Give me a minute," I say, and then the first tear is falling down my face. You can hear it in my voice. It's you, so you could probably taste its presence in the air or some other mad observation, but we both know that I'm crying. I hate it.

"John -"

"Just give me a minute." I snap.

I didn't mean to lash out at you, but it seems you were expecting it. You retreat from the kitchen and leave me there on my own. I pour two cups of tea and let it stew whilst I try to stop crying.

o0o0o0o

We sit facing each other.

"You got married." You say, your eyes boring into my skin. There's something a little accusatory in your tone, like there always is when I do something that doesn't benefit your will. I've missed that tone of voice.

"Yeah," I say, something like bitter amusement making my voice too thick, "well you committed suicide."

Your gaze flicks over to the bags I was carrying when I entered the flat. I don't remember dropping them. I remember seeing you and feeling a light dizziness, and then I just remember this vast impregnable distance between us. I remember that you felt solid, although the sensation of feeling you there fades by the instant.

"Divorced."

"Alive."

You smile for the first time. And then it dies just as suddenly as it came.

"I had to," you say, "he was going to kill you." Honestly, Sherlock, I try to process it but there's only so much I can take in one day. I barely believe that you are here. "He was going to kill all of you."

"Okay," I say again, even though it is not. I feel overwhelmingly and astoundingly happy. Everything is better when you are alive and the fact that you are here, at the moment, seems to obscure the fact that you were gone. I want to hug you again, endlessly, and my stomach is full of a giddy euphoria that makes me feel slightly sick. I am so very happy, but everything is so far from okay that it's difficult to imagine a state ever existing again.

"What's your excuse?"

"For getting married?" I ask. You give me an obviously expression. I've missed those. "It's hardly the same thing." You send me another look. "Mary," I say, "although you probably knew that. Had no good reason not to ask her out. Harry... Harry kept telling me I was just trying to prove to myself that I was moving on with my life, so I asked her to marry me to spite her."

"And?"

"And," I say, "I don't really think it's my turn to be doing the explaining."

I don't want to talk about this. I haven't talked about this at all. And I know that you can work it out. I know that you can look at me and work out that everyone tried to tell me it was a bad idea, and that I ignored them all, and that it took very little time at all to realise that it was a bad idea.

I'm so happy and I'm so very angry at you.

o0o0o0o

It's been difficult, but I've been okay. Failed marriages aside and I've been okay, really, and at least not bad enough that I could imagine you so clearly and honestly believe that you were real.

Still, I don't want to go to bed for fear of waking up and finding myself at the flat I shared with Mary, or worse, here alone.

You know this and you know me.

We were always, back then, good at pretending not to be so attuned to each other. In the middle of a case you might pretend that this particular restaurant happened to be the perfect place to watch out from, and my being hunger was irrelevant to the decision. I might pretend to believe your 'not hungry' and still leave the leftovers for you in the fridge, between the innocuous organs and body parts.

You know I don't want to be alone.

We watch television. It's so perversely normal that I want to laugh, but I seem to have run out of emotions. I've hugged you and kissed you and cried and snapped at you, and now I'm at a loss of what to feel or do next. I feel like I've run through all the options much too quickly and am no longer sure which I should fall back on.

We sit on opposite ends of the sofa and you provide one of your eternal monologues of distastes about it all, declaring even the news 'obvious' and 'dull' and 'pointless' and deducing mad things about the new reporter. I think you know that I need you to keep talking.

I'd like to close some of the distance between us and rest my head on your shoulder, but I think I feel like I might push you too far and you might leave me again.

I fall asleep sitting upright and wake up with a stiff neck, but you're still there at the other end of the sofa; knees pulled up to your chest, arms wrapped around them, that expression you used to wear when you thought I couldn't see you.

I nearly cry again.

o0o0o0o

Every time I leave Baker Street I think I might hate you.

I can't think of anything else but the great expanse of time I spent believing you were dead whilst you were alive. The thoughts fill up my brain and seem to have their own pulse, beating round my brain and pumping anger to every muscle and every inch of me that was craving your return.

I'm short with Mary when we meet for lunch and I don't meant to be, because we agreed to be amicable (which of course you don't understand at all), and her face twists into displeasure and she wants to ask me what's wrong. She doesn't. I'm glad because I'm not sure I could talk about you yet.

When you're not there in the room there's a panicky, nervous feeling that you'll disappear again and I hate you for making me feel like that. I'm not needy, normally, but you've pushed me to my limits this time, Sherlock.

I want to shake you and yell at you and make you aware of the hell that you put me through. I want to push you over and demand why I had to watch and whether you think it was worth it. I want to hurt you and yell until I can just be happy that you exist again.

I push open the door to our flat and I'm sure, this time, I will force you to sit and take ownership for what you've done to my life, but you're not there.

My heart's thudding in my chest and I'm panicking.

You haven't left the flat since you came back from the dead. Occasionally, you venture to Mrs Hudson's, but I passed her in the hallway so you can't be there. I can count the number of people who know you're alive on one hand and Mycroft is supposed to be knee deep in a cover up mission, so you are to stay in the flat and pretend you're still dead.

I don't know where you are.

And then suddenly you're at the door and I feel winded again. You pull the coat that was once a shroud off your shoulders, hang it up, and reach up to take off your scarf too.

"Where were you?" I ask, my voice still shaking slightly.

"Mycroft's surveillance reports merely said that Mary Morstan was not hazardous," You say, "I hadn't realised that was code for the most boring woman in Britain, or possibly the entirety of Europe."

"You followed me," I say, trying to find the meaning in the words, "you followed me."

"Obviously."

"Fuck you," I mutter, grabbing hold of a fistful of your suit, "fuck you, Sherlock." I want to hit you and cry and hug you all over again. "You've got no idea," I say, "you haven't got a fucking clue about anything. You don't have the right to follow me and judge me when I've just been here having to make do. You never gave me the option to follow you, Sherlock, so you just..." I stop and I let go of your suit, "I'm going to bed." I say.

It's the first night I don't sleep on the sofa with you.

o0o0o0o

The third time we kiss it's you again.

I'm making us breakfast in the kitchen. I slept badly because you weren't in the room, and I'm still in a bad mood because of yesterday, but it's hard to stay mad at you when I'm still so overwhelmingly happy that you're alive and you're here.

I am putting the toast in the toaster and suddenly you're right behind me, much too close, and I turn around to face you.

The desire to punch you has dissipated, but it's been there under the surface since the moment after I hugged you, and I'm not sure how long I can hold off without trying to dent your cheekbones.

I'm trying, Sherlock.

"Morning," I say.

And then you just kiss me, straight off, and I've barely worked out what's happening before the toaster pops. You pluck a slice of toast from the toaster and you exit the room as if nothing has happened.

It's not the first time I wonder whether this whole thing is an elaborate experiment to see how much it takes before I go mad; a suicide turned fake death, a resurrection and a spontaneous morning kiss.

I butter my toast and I think that it won't take much more.

o0o0o0o

You seem to have taken it upon yourself to try and push me into losing my temper again.

It starts with you insulting Mary, which is irritating but given you've only seen her once your material runs out quickly and you instead fall back on your generic insults which I'm so used to it barely phases me. You start up a series of experiments in the flat, but I've missed finding body parts in the fridge more than I can put into words, and given you're flat bound and I'm able to leave if the experiments get too putrid it doesn't work too well. You disappear into your room, or my room, or the bathroom whenever I'm about to return to the flat, but after the first time I get over my initial panic.

I'm expecting you to try and push my buttons when I get back from meeting Harry for lunch, I'm not expecting you to turn into your brother.

"You went back to therapy." You say.

I turn to stare at you.

"You went back to drugs," I counter, "so don't get at me for having an emotional reaction to the fact that you committed suicide in front of me, Sherlock, that's well within my right."

"The 'things you wanted to say but couldn't..." you read off, flicking through this file, "are they still relevant?"

"Give that here," I say, stepping forwards and trying to drag the file out of your hands.

"It says you were unable to say deceased's name."

"Stop it, Sherlock." I say. My heart's beginning to thud in my chest.

" –in contrast to earlier issues of forming relationships with others –"

" – Sherlock give me that – "

"– John seems to be eager to form close relationship with anyone." I drag the file out of your hands. "Although trust issues remain." The file is on the floor and I'm not sure how it got there. You're standing up, eyes piercing through me. "So, John," you say, voice falsely bright, "these things you wanted to say... or were those things you told my gravestone?"

"You bastard."

And that's when I punch you.

"You don't get that, Sherlock, you don't get those years because you weren't there. That's not yours to delve into when you feel like riling me up. That's not fair."

"What did you want to say?" Your voice is calm, level, cutting through me.

"No." I snap at you. "It doesn't matter because it wasn't real."

You reach out and grab my arms. I'm shaking. I might punch you again.

"John," You say, "tell me, I want to understand."

"I didn't think you understood," I'm saying, even though I can barely think, "because you couldn't possibly understand because if you understood you couldn't possibly have jumped Sherlock. I didn't get it because I didn't know you were jumping because of Moriarty, so I thought it must have been because you thought I didn't believe in you or didn't care and all that time I'd been deluding myself into thinking you knew that I cared about you. And it was so pointless of you to jump when you were my best friend and I loved you and if you didn't know that then that was my fault." You're staring at me and I'm breathing heavily, and I can only just see you through this film of tears that I won't cry in front of you. "And it's all just stupid because you did know and you still jumped. And everything I was killing myself over for three years was just fiction. Some stupid story that Moriarty wrote and you completed and I believed it like the idiot I am."

It's you who reaches out for me this time. You've never initiated a hug before, and I fall against your chest and, for the first time, I don't feel like I'm carrying the weight of three years around on my shoulders.

o0o0o0o

"The headlines are going to be horrible," I say, just after Mycroft has left us with the message that we're allowed to walk back into the real world whenever we want, "newly divorced John Watson and recently resurrected boffin Sherlock Holmes continue on as though nothing ever happened."

You're talking about something else. Some hint Mycroft dropped about you being careless in Belarus, and how he'd had to delete your prints of the worldwide DNA database to stop the backlash.

Apparently, when you were away you killed people. I know you'd never killed anyone before. That was my job.

"They're going to make out like my divorce is completely connected to your return," I say, pressing a finger to my forehead, "Sherlock, it's going to look like we planned this."

"Good," you say, still thoughtful, "fine."

"I need to tell Mary."

"Yes, you do that."

"Sherlock," I say, and you pull your attention back towards me – just about – "it's not the same as it was." You nod at that. "Can I stay with you tonight?" I ask. You know I'm thinking about the nightmares and the still prickly feeling of waking up not knowing whether you're real or not.

You pick up your violin in one swift movement, you nod, and then you play.

Sometimes, Sherlock, your music breaks my heart.

o0o0o0o

When I wake up, you've evidentially been up for hours. You might not even have slept. Yet you're still here, stretched out above the duvet on your phone. I could count every rib and every new track mark on your arms, and I hate it – I hate that you were gone and suffering and I wasn't there to nag you and make some misguided attempt to make it better for you. I hate that it might have worked.

"Lestrade is coming over in thirty minutes with a case," you say, dropping your phone and not looking at me, "they'll brief us here. Don't want us in the yard until after the story breaks."

"Sherlock," I say, "you're going to have to do an interview at some point."

"Can't you just update your blog?" You ask, making a face.

"Later today," I say, "let's just have a bit longer before this blows up again." You look down at me for a few long seconds before you nod your agreement. "Better get presentable for Lestrade," I say, "or they'll be a different kind of blow up to deal with."

I can't imagine what any of them would say if they saw this moment. Me in your bed and you in just your pyjama bottoms. After all of this, I'm not sure that I can even bring myself to care.

I just want you to be here and somewhat close. I want to pin myself to you and be important because of you. I want you to know that I am blissfully happy that you're back, and that I know you provoked me to try and chase away the last of my anger, and I want you to know that I'll probably never be the same after what you've done to me these past years.

But, when you're here and I can see how thin and vulnerable you are I can forgive you because I know you did what was necessary and it hurt us both. And you're here, and it's impossible to hate you when you're actually here.

"Hmm," you say, and then, "morning John," and for a second I think you're about to kiss me again, then you're up and out of bed and from the room.

o0o0o0o

The idea of being on a case is laughably strange. It is like we've dropped into our old lives, except that Greg Lestrade hovers in the doorway of our home with Donovan by his side and both of them look so uncomfortable that it's hard to breathe.

They don't know how to react around you.

I know that feeling.

"John," you say, calling me back into the present "you're meeting Mary for breakfast?"

"Yes."

"Can you cancel?"

I can feel everyone in the room's gaze fixed on me, especially you, and I can feel myself wanting to shrink and become smaller. I'm mad at you again, but I'd forgotten that I spent most of your pre-death life absolutely livid at you, Sherlock, and I wasn't expecting this newly found honeymoon period to be over so quickly.

"No," I say, because if I cancel on her once for you I know I'll do it again. And if I have to face up to the fact that when you were gone I got married to spite you and Harry and everyone else, then now I will deal with the consequences properly and amicably.

"You're unbelievable," Sally Donovan says, staring at him, "come back after three years and expect everyone to drop anything, even his wife."

"Ex-wife," you correct, archly, and I swear I could kill you. The staring power in the room is once again focused on me and, just as predicted yesterday, they're both thinking that I got divorced because of you.

I did, I suppose, but not because you were alive. I got married because you were dead, if I'm honest, and I'd realised that was a shit reason before your resurrection. It was because you were still dead and I still wasn't over it. Your being alive is just a bonus.

"Sherlock," I say, a warning.

"We'll be there after eleven."

Sally looks like she might want to argue.

"Fine," Greg says. He looks tired.

"I'll see you out," I say, standing up and heading towards the door with them, "I'm sorry," I say, shutting the door behind me as I step out onto the landing.

Donovan looks like she might cry with anger. "It's not you who should apologise," she says, hands shaking, "that freak."

"You'll be holding out a long time waiting for Sherlock Holmes to apologise," I say, with a wry smile as I think of you. I know you're listening. "It wasn't his choice," I say, "he was keeping people safe."

"I'm glad he's not dead," Donovan says, hands still balled up at her sides, "I'm glad I'm just so..."

"Donovan." Greg warns.

"It's fine," I say, "I understand."

There's not an easy way to deal with this.

They both nod at me, and then they leave. I watch them walk out the front door before stepping back into out sitting room. Already, I am back to my old job – I am your buffer for life, and later I will become your blogger again.

You're stood up and waiting when I enter the room again.

"I'm sorry." You say, and you step towards me.

"For faking your death or what you let them assume about my marriage?"

You don't answer that, but I like to think you mean all of this and everything all at once. You usually mean everything, but maybe that's only to me.

I step forward, grappling with the distance between us again, and once again not knowing that I want from you. I can demand explanations and your sympathy until I'm blue in the face, but it changes nothing. We've been apart for years and we've both hated it. I believed you were dead. You believed I moved on easily (I am not blind to where your obsession with my marriage comes from, as much as you like to think me stupid). I want to wrap our lives around each other again and fall back into the past, but that's impossible.

It's not quite the same.

You kiss me again. I'm not expecting it, this time, nor am I expecting the sheer want. Because I do want you, but it's just that I want you to be happy and healthy and here with me. Always. I just want to grow old as the two of us and solve crimes and blog about it. That's what I want.

We're wrapped around each other and then we're on the sofa, your lips pressed into my neck and my hand brushing across the skin of your hips.

"What are we doing?" I ask you. Your fingers fold over mine. My breath hitches in my throat.

"Your powers of observation -"

"- oh, don't be such a smart arse," I say, grinning, as I reach out and run a hand through your hair, "what are we doing Sherlock?"

You don't answer and instead you kiss me again. I can't decide if it's just another side effect of you pretending to be dead and both of us wondering around life so blindly, but I let it happen anyway. There's so much to deal with.

So much happened and yet, still, there is all of this.

"I missed you," I say into the skin beneath your earlobe, "I still miss you even though you're here."

"Illogical," you mutter.

God, I love you.

"Why are you...?" I ask, distracted because you're so close I can believe, without a shadow of a doubt, that you are here. "If you're just doing this because you think I...?"

"John," You say, irritated, "you are forgetting that I instigated."

Yes, there is that. There is always that. Back before you fell, years ago. I remembered that on a loop for weeks wondering... but, that was all so long ago that it was difficult to attach it to what was happening now.

I close my eyes and I try not to think. There is entirely too much to think about.

"Are you sure," you say, "you can't cancel your breakfast plans?"

I think I can probably manage just this once.