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Sherlock’s hair is beyond saving. Her long, thick curls suffered too much while she was away. She hadn’t cut her hair once over the course of those two years, but she had dyed it several times in several shades, and even done a home reverse perm in a dirty Parisian hotel sink to try and straighten out her too-distinctive curls. But really, it was Serbia that ruined it – clumps torn out in the underbrush as she ran, hunks hacked off by her captors. Even if she hadn’t damaged her hair so severely with her disguises, Serbia would have been enough. So when she returns to London – finally, finally – and Mycroft brings in a hairdresser, there is only one thing to do: cut it all off.
The result barely covers her ears and has a tendency to frizz up without the length weighing it down. Still, with some styling, it looks nice, Sherlock thinks – nice enough to see John. In fact, it’s a lot closer to the style John wears her hair in. With similar short haircuts, they’re bound to have more people thinking they’re a couple now – Sherlock rolls her eyes at the idiocy of the general public, even as the thought sends a little thrill down her spine. But she knows what John will have to say about those assumptions.
Except maybe she doesn’t, because she walks into the restaurant Mycroft named and hardly recognizes John, who is sitting across from a handsome man and has hair down to her shoulders.
The new hair doesn’t suit her at all. It elongates her face, and her jaw is the wrong shape for those layers, and – and somehow, Sherlock had completely neglected to consider that these past two years might have changed John, too.
Some poor decisions and a few location changes later, Sherlock is standing on the kerb with a bloody nose, watching John and her beau pull away in a cab. John’s carefully, awfully curled hair was ruined in the scuffle.
Eventually John deigns to speak to Sherlock again. They even go out on cases sometimes.
Mark. Mark is the name of John’s boyfriend. And apparently he’s got staying power, because Mark and John are discussing marriage.
John worries that she is too far from a traditional wife for Mark’s tastes – an army veteran with short hair who goes by a man’s name, is physically incapable of having children, and doesn’t know how to dress herself to her advantage. Only one of those things is easily changeable, so she’s grown her hair out.
“It makes you look old.”
“Ta, Sherlock. Remind me why I forgave you again?” Sherlock takes a breath to reply, but John cuts her off with a groan – “God, don’t answer that.”
“Your old hairstyle was much more flattering. Even Mrs. Hudson thinks so. Even Mark thinks so.”
“So you’ve been saying.”
“And if Mark was looking for a traditional wife, he would hardly be interested in you in any case –“
John storms out at that. It’s a little touch-and-go with them these days. It takes much less to make John leave than it used to.
But after the third time the conversation ends poorly, Sherlock has learned: John Watson does not cut her hair for Sherlock Holmes.
On the day of the wedding, John does her own hair, curling and pinning the front section up and away from her face to sit underneath her veil. Part of it is crooked in the back; Sherlock resists the urge to let her go through the whole day like that and fixes it for her just before she heads down the aisle.
After all the excitement – because of course John Watson is incapable of having a normal, boring wedding – and after Sherlock has finally played her waltz, John pulls her aside and hands her a glass of champagne, clinking it against her own.
“To your shared happiness,” Sherlock intones, because that is the kind of thing one says to the bride when one is the maid of honor. She even summons a bit of a smile. Mark appears at John’s shoulder, and Sherlock manages to include him in the vague gesture of raising her glass before taking a gulp. It’s all she can do not to down the whole thing in one go.
John takes a smaller sip of her own glass. “So. It’s… been a lot today. But, erm, Mark and I had some news we wanted to share.”
Sherlock raises her eyebrows. They’ve just got married, for god’s sake, what else could they possibly –
“We’ve decided to start the adoption process,” Mark volunteers. “We’re going to be parents.”
All Sherlock’s thoughts come screeching to a halt. It almost feels as though her heart stops, too. Sherlock hadn’t even realized she was still holding out hope until just now, when a happy announcement feels more like the final nail in a coffin. A marriage can, theoretically, be undone – people divorce all the time – but a child? A person can’t un-become a parent. Time slows. Mark is saying something about how they don’t know how long it will take, John is saying they want her to be the godmother, and Sherlock must assent because John is hugging her and Mark is kissing her cheek and Sherlock makes herself smile and squeeze back.
She runs away as soon as she can.
By the next day, she’s obtained enough cocaine and heroin that she could make an end of things. She won’t, at least not today, but it feels good to have it in any case. She helps herself to the supply whenever the oppressive blankness of the future gets too heavy.
To say that Sherlock is surprised when Mark shoots her is an understatement. Oh, she has been so blind. She had wanted to believe the best of Mark, because that made it easier to give John up. As she lies bleeding on the floor, she has a sudden vision of Mark in his wedding tuxedo, the way he’d looked over John’s shoulder and caught Sherlock’s eyes for the briefest moment before looking back down at John and professing his vows with a small smile: I will.
No, Sherlock certainly cannot die tonight.
It’s Christmas, and here are the facts as they stand:
#1. John, Sherlock, and a vile blackmailer stand outside surrounded by helicopters, and Sherlock has a gun in her hand.
#2. Mark is a threat as long as his secrets risk being exposed and used against him. He has given nearly every indication that he is ready to leave his old life behind and settle down, but he will act erratically and dangerously when he believes his past is in danger of affecting his current lifestyle in any way. Eliminate the risk of exposure, and eliminate Mark as a threat to John. (This is where the gun from Fact #1 comes in handy.)
#3. John and Mark are adopting a child. They have a future together. John made her choice ages ago, long before Sherlock walked out of the grave to find the love of her life sitting across a table from a man with a ring in his pocket. Never mind that John made her choice before she knew all her options. Sherlock’s a living ghost, and it’s time for her to stop haunting John.
With these facts in mind, Sherlock levels her gun and shoots.
It’s a very neat solution, really. All the loose ends tied up.
Just when she’s allowing herself to admit that her solution was a shit plan, the plane destined to take Sherlock to her death reverses course and lands. She’s been given a second – third? fourth? fifth? – chance. How many times will the universe correct her mistakes? It’s no matter. She does not intend to ask for another chance after this one.
Moriarty’s back, and Sherlock is led on a goose chase around the city which ends at her own front door. Mark is sitting in John’s chair, smiling and ready to play - just like his deceased mentor. God, Sherlock was wrong again. Everything she thought she knew was wrong. She hates being wrong.
Sherlock doesn’t much care for this game, but she doesn’t have a choice. She fights grimly and joylessly. It’s time for this to end.
It’s awful, and then suddenly it’s over.
When Sherlock is released from hospital, she leaves only long enough to collect a bag of John’s things from the flat John shared with Mark. When she returns to the room, sneaking in after visiting hours, John smiles. John’s hair is a mess, the bags under her eyes are awful, she’s broken four ribs, her husband’s gone forever, her life as she knew it is in pieces – but she smiles when Sherlock walks in. And Sherlock breathes, because it can be all right again. It’s not all right, not yet, maybe not for a long while, but it can be. Eventually.
John’s been back in 221B for three months. She’s quiet. Both of them have been quiet. Their recent experiences color the atmosphere in a grey, somber mist that precludes things like laughter and teasing. It’s mourning, but tinged with relief, and then guilt for feeling the relief. The mix of emotions in the flat is stifling.
Sherlock lets John set the pace and follows, for once, rather than trying to lead. John sleeps a lot, and is unwilling to leave the house except for her shifts at the surgery. Frankly, she looks a mess, even when she leaves for work – she has permanent purple circles under her eyes, and Sherlock doesn’t think her hair’s been combed through properly even once since the hospital. But Sherlock doesn’t push, and does the shopping and some of the cleaning, and goes out on cases by herself. And even when the cases are exciting and interesting, Sherlock doesn’t compare them to Christmas or marvel at their gruesomeness. Well, she doesn’t do it audibly, at least.
Slowly John becomes more active. The first time Sherlock hears an exasperated “eugh!” from the kitchen, she smiles all afternoon. One morning she pokes her head in the fridge and finds a jar of jam she didn’t buy herself. When she puts it out for breakfast with a raised eyebrow, John shrugs sheepishly. “You’ve been buying the wrong kind.”
And finally the day comes where Sherlock gets a call from Lestrade and it sounds like a good one, a really good one, and when she turns to John with the half-hopeful question in her eyes, expecting to be disappointed yet again, John surprises Sherlock once more by grabbing her coat off the hook and stuffing her feet in her shoes and preceding Sherlock down the stairs.
And it’s wonderful.
The case concludes thrillingly, with a brawl in a pub where John has the chance to chin a six-foot blond drug dealer (who looks maybe a bit like her murderous ex-husband) and takes full advantage of the opportunity. She is glorious. Sherlock has never loved her more than when John is watching the dealer be handcuffed by police, blood on her knuckles, blonde hair in disarray, and anger cooling in her eyes.
Ah, bugger.
They take a cab back to Baker Street and John is once again quiet. Sherlock worries that she will lose John again to the depths of her own mind – was the case too much, too soon?
When they arrive home, John disappears into the loo. After fifteen minutes pass without any noise, Sherlock fretfully decides to tap on the door. It swings open under her touch. John is standing at the sink, staring at her reflection in the mirror.
“John?” Their eyes meet in the glass for a long moment.
“Will you cut my hair?” John asks.
Slowly, slowly, Sherlock smiles, and John, watching her in the mirror, smiles too. “I thought you’d never ask.”
It turns out the only scissors they have in the flat that haven’t been used on biohazards are kitchen shears, since they had been protected by John’s explicit request in the early days of their flatshare. There’s tape on the handle labeled “NO EXPERIMENTS” in the neat block lettering John uses when leaving stern notes for Sherlock, which is much more legible than her usual doctor’s scrawl. The scissors are a bit unwieldy, but sharp enough to do the job.
“I don’t mind,” John says, lips quirking. “Reminds me of being in uni, cutting my own hair to save money. Ridiculous. Once I used pinking shears.”
Sherlock can’t help but chuckle, imagining the surely disastrous results, and sends John to wet her hair. She gathers supplies while John takes a quick shower, and tries not to think about anything but the task before her. Chair, towel, broom, kitchen shears, hand mirror, hair clips dug out of the bottom of her disguise kit. Check, check, check. Soon the sound of the shower shuts off and Sherlock is left with nothing but her own breath in the quiet.
Eventually John emerges, damp and slightly flushed, in an old RAMC t shirt and shorts, with her towel around her shoulders. She looks at Sherlock, wets her lips, and seats herself in the chair without a word.
Sherlock doesn’t double check and ask if John is sure. She doesn’t ask how short John wants it cut, or if she wants to wait for the morning and go to a hairdresser who will actually know what she’s doing. Sherlock doesn’t break the silence at all, but simply sets to work.
It's almost meditative, the hush that falls. Sherlock snips with the kitchen shears and bits of blonde hair fall to the floor with a whisper. Sherlock runs her fingers through the strands to shake loose any bits left clinging. This moment feels too important for words, somehow, like the two of them are building something precious together, with this act of John’s trust and Sherlock’s care. Snip, shh, snip, shh. John’s eyes are closed and her hair is approaching short again, in that way that highlights her bone structure and makes her eyes sparkle when she looks at Sherlock to tell her off for baiting Anderson or growing poison ivy on the windowsill.
God, how Sherlock adores her.
One last check to make sure the sides are even, and Sherlock is done. She finally breaks the silence to say as much. “Look,” she says, and hands John the mirror.
John takes it, but does not so much as glance at her reflection. “Yes,” she says, and looks at Sherlock instead, her gaze somehow both soft and determined –
And that is all the warning Sherlock receives before she is being pulled down into a kiss, John’s hot mouth slanting over hers, John’s hands gently but firmly holding her upper arms, John’s damp blunt hair strands tickling her cheeks. It’s soft and slow and Sherlock surrenders entirely to it, kissing John back before she’s even processed what’s happened. Her brain fades to radio static as her lips connect again and again with the slick perfection of John’s, and her entire body is buzzing gently.
Eventually the kiss winds down, John pulling back with a soft smeck and huffing out a laugh when Sherlock, eyes still closed – when did she close them? – tries to chase her mouth unconsciously. “Okay?” she asks, cupping Sherlock’s face in her small hands. Somehow Sherlock is sitting on John’s lap now, and their eyes are almost level.
“John,” Sherlock replies, meeting her gaze, and she thinks that maybe, probably, John can see everything she needs to know there.
“Yeah, okay.” John is smiling. “Okay.”
And John wraps her arms around Sherlock and presses their foreheads together, and Sherlock’s short curls tangle with John’s new-old short blonde strands, and maybe, after all the pain and wasted time, they are on their way to the way they were meant to be.