A/N: It is 6:13am and i am literally dying because i stayed up 7 hrs to write this lol

Idk if all of y'all know but I'm leaving the country for a month but I'll update when I come back

Thank you for your support!!! 💕

"You can come, you know."

Claire gave him a skeptical look over her potatoes. She stabbed a chunk with her fork and wrapped it in wet spinach.

"Mark said he'd love to have you."

"They're in London?" Claire repeated for the third time since the conversation began. She thought he was lying. John could tell. She kept stabbing her dinner. Chewing it like it was hard to swallow.

"Like I said, they're on a business trip. And I think this is great practice for the future."

"The future?" Claire speared some spinach. She had her overalls on, her hair pulled back by a red paisley napkin. She looked a bit like Rosie the Riveter, over in America. The British didn't have a version of Rosie - there was nothing riveting about England's home front. Outside, the murky gray was bleeding into dark, inky black nighttime, and alongside it was the burgeoning repetition of the blackout. With it came the apprehensiveness of the Luftwaffe and its devastation.

John smiled at her as she looked at her plate, stained green with spinach juices. "Our future." His bandaged hand throbbed indiscriminately as he reached forward and struggled to break Claire's clenched fingers away from her fork. Her front teeth had spinach pinned between them. John leaned across the table and kissed her lips like he was going to cut himself on them, as if he were running his thumb along a serrated knife.

Claire's hand was now gripping his, desperately. Her eyes met his with an intensity and hopefulness that scared him. "Marriage," he said, "Children. This is great practice for us - right?"

For a second it seemed as if Claire was going to agree. Then the sudden and naive optimism flickered from her eyes. "I need our bus stop to go to work. I can't be on the other side of town."

"Take some time off." John smiled encouragingly. "We have the money for it."

The spinach in her teeth became very apparent when Claire barked a violent, humorless laugh. It startled John and he withdrew his hand from hers. "I can't just take 'time off.'"

"It was just a suggestion, Christ."

"Maybe." Claire slid out her chair and stood up to take her plate to the kitchen. Her words said maybe, but her tone said, You knew. You knew I couldn't take time off and this is just another excuse to leave for a week.

"I could say no," John suggested to the back of her head as she walked away. It was an unconvincing attempt to placate his fiancée.

Claire began to laugh in the next room.

***

John was there exactly as they were leaving, opening the door that was some strange wormhole into a mirror dimension that reflected James's home, next door. (The light was on in James's living room when John walked through the sludge to Mark's doorway, but there was no way to be sure he was inside. Or alive.)

Allison bustled John in. She barely fit into the feminine, trimmed, wealthy-looking coat she was working onto a rotund body. Her baby was making it impossible to button the fourth hole, so it draped open, not unlike a curtain.

"I was so pleased when I heard you would be watching Mikey," she remarked, "very pleased. I take it Claire will join you?"

John laughed, but not too hard, trying to maintain the gentle, easy pretense. "No, actually."

"Aye, that's a shame. Little one is inside, with my husband." She smiled with her whole face, holding out her arm in a gesture to lead way to the living room.

Inside, Mark was shrugging on his own overclothes. There was a suitcase in the hallway leading to their bedroom, bigger than the child sitting on the carpet in front of the couch, leaned over a piece of paper big enough to fold the boy inside. John gave him a little wave as he looked up at the spectacle, dark brown eyes drinking in the sight of John. Short, blonde, and steely as hell. The wonder soon wore off as the grownups resumed their dialogue, and he turned back to his drawing.

"There's food in the kitchen, enough for a week," Mark said, finally ready. He grabbed the luggage and rolled it to where his wife and John were standing together, waiting together in anticipatory silence (for very unrelated reasons). "Mike needs to be at the bus by nine, bed at seven. No sweets unless he does his homework. We'll call at the hotel to see in case he decides to give you any trouble."

"He won't." John peeked behind Mark to look at the eleven year old boy again. His hair had recently been cropped close to his skull, no longer the shaggy milk brown mop that he had in August. His eyes combed through the three people at the entranceway, from his mother, to his father, to... John.

Their eyes met in a moment of pure surrealism. In Mike's expression, John found the freshness of discovering boredom, mundanity. There was nothing to be found of the jaded eyes and ceaseless fatigue that came with 1941. There was not yet the token British resignation to the possibility of death. John cherished Mikey's naivety, and didn't want to care for Mark's son long enough to ruin him. Certainly not for long enough to ruin himself, and four days was four days too long.

It briefly occurred to John that this experience - jointly on he and Mark's parts - was to determine if they could be fathers. Looking down at Mikey, whose eyes were dark and unimpressed, gave him a vulnerable uncertainty about fatherhood that he suddenly realized he might never shake.

***

John found himself drifting around the living room, trying not to invade the boy's space but also concerned that maybe Mike just wasn't interested in speaking to him. He was really absorbed in his drawing, but in the peripheral glances John kept chancing, John couldn't tell what the hell Mike was drawing.

He ventured into his space and finally peered down, at the enormous piece of construction paper. John squatted on his haunches and let his eyes bounce from the paper to Mike and back again. Mike didn't look at him, but John almost could sense his ears prick up. "There's a lot here," John commented. In the second long pause between then and the moment that Mike actually looked at him, head swiveling sharply and suddenly upwards, John's stomach lurched as if he were terrified he'd said the wrong thing. Mike's eyes were blank, blank, blank...

And then Mike smiled. All his father's stoicism drained into his mother's warmth. His freckles became a shapeless brown blotch in the crinkle of his mouth. He gave a shy nod. "Thanks, Dr. Watson."

"I mean that it's good," John said. And it was, in a kind of school-boy way. His art wasn't... prodigious, but he had energy in his lines, and a basic understanding of how bodies looked in action. The proportions were wrong and the colors were flat, but it was good - and maybe something John would have painted two years ago. Mike had drawn two girls playing in the sand. Both blonde, with the same pale white skin, and both in the same garishly orange bathing suit. "Do you mind if I sit with you?"

Mike shook his head, turned back to his art, coloring intently, and John slid back onto his butt and stretched his legs in front of him. His shoes, new leather wingtips - from one of the best shoemakers in Bristol, too - had a spot of blood on them from a surgery from earlier that day. If he'd caught it earlier, it probably wouldn't have stained - John cursed silently and stared at his shoes for a long enough time for Mike to look back to him, and then follow his gaze to his feet.

"You can take them off," the boy politely suggested, unaware of John's arresting thoughts. He was trying to trace the speck of blood to something he had done, but today had been a blur of surgeries and prosthetic limbs. "We're supposed to leave them in the entrance hall, anyway."

John looked at Mike, only loosely aware that he had been speaking. "Sorry, what?"

"Your shoes."

John looked at the boy's socks, dark red and pulled up past his trousers. Then he looked at his brand new wingtips. They were fifty pounds - insanely and ridiculously expensive - and he suddenly hated the way they looked, even without the blood. There was something chemical about them.

He kicked them off in two smooth movements, letting them find their way across the room, and then turned over so that he was on his stomach and facing Mike on the floor. Mike wordlessly, and almost telepathically, slid John a piece of paper from underneath his own. Like vibrant marbles, like something to be cleaned, his oil pastels were distributed across the floor. John fetched the most electric blue and began to outline the graceful figure of the person he had seen earlier that night, like he was a man possessed.

***

Time was lost in the relative silence that enveloped the Baker household. John sort of remembered Mark saying something about the time Mikey needed to be in bed, but he was looking at the clock and it was already eight.

Mikey was coloring intently. He'd gone back in with a black pen to outline bits and pieces of the two blonde girls, and it was doing his drawing favors. Before, if John squinted, he could almost mistake it for something abstractionist. Like a post-modern idea of what blonde twins would look like. (It sounded kind of annoying to John - "a post-modern idea" - but fully grown men drawing like secondary schoolers was kind of annoying anyway.) Now it looked cleaner.

Mike looked up from his drawing and to John, examining his face closely. John pretended he didn't notice as the boy tilted his head and finally absorbed John in fully.

John wondered, almost absently, what he noticed about him. It was probably the militaristic sternness in which John held his body, postured unforgivingly. And the exacerbation of every line in his face. How John was growing deeper, wider.

His hair was short again - no longer the dirty-blond shags of hair that he had to slick back when he was going to parties and going outside. Now it was short, and standard, and dense, and darker than ever. John remembered his hair when Sherlock carded his fingers through it and held John's head in his hands like he was something to be held. He knew Mike could observe everything sharp and caustic about him and still never know that; still never understand the severity in which he had forced his knuckles into that mirror last week; never comprehend the blistering heat and stunning chill that Sherlock and Claire gave to him in equal measure.

John's drawing was maybe a little more violent than he had meant it to be. He considered it carefully - all the different blues, exploding, moving, dynamic - and hated it, hated how it made him feel. There was more loneliness in each bitter line than anyone would ever know.

John felt a cool, small thumb press to his forehead. It smoothed away the crease in his brow. He finally looked up and saw Mikey's small palms cover his eyes and realized that he simply couldn't be monstrous. He couldn't be like Claire's father had been.

"You keep doing that and you're going to get lines," Mike warned, hands still planted firmly on John's brow bone.

"Who told you that?" John asked, although Mike was right. His space felt vaguely violated but not to the point where he felt any actual discomfort. He wondered if he should inform Mike that it wasn't okay to touch people...? Was that what parents did?

"Mummy." Mike took his hands off John's forehead and sat up, with crossed legs, turning his attention back to his drawing.

There was a second of silence before John finally moved, mirroring Mike's movements so he was sat on his bottom, legs folded up as not to disturb their drawings. He commented, "I like it a lot."

"Are you just saying that? Dad just says that."

"No," John said, trying for reassurance, "I'm not just saying that. And your father's a sod. I'm not a sod."

Mike grinned at John again, and then chuckled. Something in John fluttered, something he didn't know he had.

"You can tell him I said that," John added jokingly, feeling his own reservedness melt away.

"No, I can't!" Mike said, giggling with his mouth open enough that John could see where his adult teeth were growing in. When Mike settled, he gave John's drawing a look. "I like yours, too." He paused, and then asked, "Who is it?"

John's face darkened for a moment as that familiar yawning feeling poked at his insides. The feeling he usually got when people asked who Sherlock Holmes was. He could never explain it sufficiently. Even when they had gone to that bar in Oxford, even when Angelo had said John was Sherlock's date, even as Irene Adler called Sherlock John's boyfriend - it was like he hadn't been in on the joke.

He tried to smile. "He's my made up person."

"You can't make people up," Mikey protested matter-of-factly.

"Yeah?"

"I think..." Mike furrowed his eyebrows, deep in retrospect, "...that only God can make people up."

John mentally stepped back from the sudden, child-like understanding of imagination. It struck him as odd that an eleven year old would say that, but he brushed it aside for the sake of conversation. Maybe Mark didn't bother to correct his son when he said things like that. John responded, "I know. But sometimes, I feel like God shouldn't have all the fun by himself." John paused to let that sink in for Mike, who seemed to deem the response as satisfactory, and then he asked, "Who are the girls in your picture?"

"My new twin sisters," Mike answered. "I know that they won't look that way, exactly, but I'm pretty sure they'll look somewhat like that."

"Oh? Didn't you make them up, too?"

"No, because they're already here, but they're just not out of Mum, yet."

"I see," John said. Mike made sense of his hypocrisy in a way that only an eleven year old boy could make sense of things. His drawing sat on the floor, the farthest possible representation of what Mark's child would look like. Neither of Mike's parents were fair or blonde. And the likelihood that Mike's mother would have twin girls was practically unfathomable. But instead of analyzing Mike's rudimentary understanding of a Punnet Square, he commented on his artistic skill. "Do you draw a lot at school?"

"Yeah." Mike placed his hands on his crossed feet, feeling the soft red cotton of his socks as if to distract himself from the conversation.

"You have an art course, I'm supposing," John said.

"Yes," Mike said, looking up and behind John. "It's the only class I enjoy, really."

"Why?"

Suddenly, it was if Mike realized he had given too much of himself away while speaking to John. His gaze flickered to John's and then away. He pulled his legs in close to his chest and put a physical barrier between he and John, even going so far as to slide his portrait of his imaginary twin sisters behind him. He folded his arms over his legs and said nothing.

A little appreciative smile quirked John's mouth. "Alright, then. You don't have to say anything."

Mikey yawned, then. His muscles relaxed slightly and he set his head atop his legs, left cheek to kneecap. He peered at John as he had done when he had first come over an hour and a half ago.

They mirrored each other, once again trying to pull meaning from the other's expression. Maybe John wanted to see if there was anything in Mike that he recognized in himself, something that he could learn to cherish in the way one would cherish their own child.

"Do you ever look outside?" Mike asked John quietly. "I mean, after the sirens and the blackout?" His eyes were lazing shut.

"Yeah, I do." It struck him that he vividly recalled how Bristol looked when the city was drowned in the smooth pool of moonlight. He could also remember how the ground used to rumble when there was no war, when cars sped by his window at night, before Mike had ever been born. (He had been entering college when twenty-two year old Mark had called him in the hospital and reported with beaming pride that the name of his newborn was Michael.)

"Mum tells me not to look."

"Why?"

"She says it ain't natural. To have the city be all black... she hates it when it's quiet."

"I quite like it."

Mikey smiled, his eyes brightening a bit, even in his fatigue. "I do, too. I like... peeking around the curtain and looking at the stars."

"Yeah" - John laughed, leaning back onto his forearms, wondering at this kid's... wonder - "it never used to be like this. It was very loud. And bright. And my fiancée and I-"

"Ms. Tabbot!" Mikey exclaimed excitedly, his head perking up. "She's really nice."

John forgot what he was going to say as he tried to grasp Mikey's elated smile. He shook his head as if to dispel the thoughts that were trying to drill holes into his skull.

Mikey appreciated her. More than that - Mikey seemed to like her. He responded to her like a dog would, hearing the sound of their favorite toy: with unquantified happiness. She was kind to him, peaceful in a way a mother's friend only could be, and probably nurturing.

She wanted to have John's children. She wanted to put his sons to bed. She wanted to caress and breastfeed and smile at their child as they learned to speak and read and crawl. She wanted to do everything that her best friend had been doing for eleven years - with John. And was it even in his power to deny a woman's desire to love and raise what was already inside of her?

He looked at Mikey, with his fathomless joy, and wasn't sure that he was right anymore.

"She's kind," John said, remembering their non-argument from earlier that day. She hadn't been kind, then - but she was a person filled with hopefulness, filled with denial. Even when she drank poison, she prayed that she might have been wrong about its contents all along.

John tried to shake off his arresting thoughts. He murmured, "She's been very patient with me."

"Me, too. She doesn't tell Daddy if I take an extra sweetie after I do my homework."

"That so?" John said, lips twisting into a wry smile. John could imagine her: finger pressed over red, smiling lips, wordlessly gesturing that Mikey's secret was safe with her. He'd be a fool if he were under the illusion that he could ask the same of her. He'd struck the match too many times.

But, maybe.

Maybe she would forgive him if he was fucking honest. (About all of it.) And maybe John would forgive himself.

He immediately cursed the knowing wistfulness of the thought.

Mikey once again got that look - like he was afraid of being told on.

"I won't say anything."

"Thanks, Dr. Watson." Mikey grinned, the combination of baby and adult teeth making an odd smile. "Can I look out the window?"

"Better, actually. You can go outside."

"No! Really?" Mikey's fatigue instantly disappeared and he scrambled to his feet.

"If you keep my secret, I'll keep yours, alright?"

"Oh, blimey, of course!" He ran into the entrance hall and grabbed a coat of the coat rack, and then threw the door open. The chilling winter air hit John full force, all at once, and he pushed through the gust of wind to go outside.

Mikey was standing on the first step leading to the front door, staring at the blue, star spattered sky. It looked like God had sneezed with a mouthful of milk. John didn't know anything about astronomy, but looking - really giving it a good look - it made him weak. With nothing in his line of sight but the blackness of space, it was quite easy to feel as if he were up there, floating. (Not like any one human would ever be up there.)

He had to stop staring because he was teetering on his feet a bit. He saw the city, sprawling in front of them, blanketed in white. It was beautiful to John for the first time in months.

Mikey sat down on the stoop next to him. They said nothing. It was quiet, just as Mikey had described.

***

When Mikey finally was falling asleep on his feet, even in the blistering cold - John looked at the moon, and it must have been around nine-something - he led the child back inside the house, sparing a pained look at James's home. (The light was still on in the living room.)

He removed the boy's coat and placed it on the coat rack. Mikey's fingers were cold and pink, but he was smiling in his comatose state. "Good?"

He nodded wildly. "Yeeeeees."

"Okay. Well, it's time to go to bed, now." John took the boy's small, pink hand in his and led him to the stairs, where it seemed that Mikey was so tired that he struggled to get up the steps.

"Awwwwwwww," he said, and then just like in a sitcom, he yawned. He stalled on the steps. "I wanna... I wanna go back outside."

"It's two hours past your bedtime, Mikey. Your father's going to murder me" - religious sacrifice, John noted bemusedly - "if he finds out."

John gently pushed him into the bedroom and followed after, just in case he... fell, or hit his toe on something, because he was seriously swaying. Mike slid into his blue bed and smiled drunkenly at John's blackened silhouette in the doorway. "Goodnight, Dr. Watson."

"Goodnight, Mikey." John nearly closed the door, and then a sudden and useless anxiety made him pop his head back into the room. "Um, Mikey... don't tell your father anything that happened past eight. Okay?"

Mikey smiled at John, suddenly imbued with agency, with purpose. "If you keep my secret, I'll keep yours."

He's almost unconscious from fatigue and cold, yet he's still quoting my words back at me, John noted. He closed the door to the bedroom, and then his amusement suddenly trickled into unbridled laughter.

What a fucking kid.