Winter Breaks (Johnlock/Teenlock)

Epilogue

The plan was perfect.

Well, at this point John had had doubts of the perfection of plans due to a certain plan he'd made to not have to come out as bi in which one point lead to another inevitably leaving him forced to be estranged from the love of his life out of homophobic spite from his stepfather, who was by the way an asshole if you couldn't tell that by the fact that he was homophobic.

But of course, you already knew that.

The plan, whether it be perfect or literally the worst thing ever, was that they'd meet at their old school, as mentioned before which actually makes me question the quality of my writing and remember that I have horrible memory and should shut up about my psychological issues and just continue with the goddamn story. They'd decided that they'd do a gift exchange, like they'd done the first Christmas they'd known each other. Sherlock had informed John that his family was being extra needy those year and required him to zoom or Skype or whatever you do these days at some point in the day, even though it was technically a few days after Christmas at this point.

John had nothing like that with his family.

In fact, he wasn't very well in touch with his family anymore. He'd occasionally talk with Harry, and he actually spent quite a bit of time chatting with her on discord, but other than that he felt that he wasn't even John Watson anymore, just John.

He waited impatiently in front of the school. He'd found the old bench where he and Mary had met and he was currently sitting there, his left knee bouncing anxiously. He only stopped when he hopped up from the bench in response to a very familiar voice calling his name.

"John!" Sherlock said, walking as cooly as he could (it was actually quite hard due to nerve and excitement) to John.

John smiled at the very iconic way Sherlock walked. Sherlock had informed him that the way he walked was an inherited mannerism from his father, but John was fairly sure that it was just Sherlock's unconvincing attempt at 'cool'.

"Hi," was all that John could manage to say.

"So," Sherlock said, realizing the awkwardness of the moment.

After a great deal of awkward noises escaping their noises that I can only describe as some strange deformity of mutters, they'd managed to get into a hallway of the school.

Sherlock sat and leaned his back against the wall of the school. "So," he repeated. "How's school?"

"It's alright I suppose," John said, sitting beside him, "Did you keep in touch with the old class?"

"Class? Surprisingly, yes, I did keep  in touch," Sherlock nodded.

"Interesting, what's going on with their lives?" John asked.

"I can't reveal that information, they shared all that information with me in confidence," Sherlock said.

John considered it for a moment, then shook his head, "No, you wanna share."

Sherlock let out a deep sigh, before rapidly spewing information into the conversation. "Jim died, but people from class have said that they've seen him running around with some blondie, so very obviously he isn't dead, Anderson had a panic attack and has been going 'off the grid' a.k.a he isn't bothering with social media anymore, Molly's going to medical school, much like you, but a different school, she's doing quite well according to what I've heard. Let's see...oh and Irene is supposedly a celebrity, I don't care for that sort of thing so I can neither confirm or deny that. I haven't heard much from Sally to be honest, last I heard she has a boring internship. Mary broke up with Jay, can't say I didn't see it coming, but they're still good friends, he just turned out to be gay. Which is fine, some people just don't know that sort of thing until they break up with a sort of girl like Mary—"

"Hey now, whatever you're immplying," John interrupted.

"I'm not implying anything, it's perfectly fine for that Jay guy to be gay and for him to realize that," Sherlock shrugged, "so anyways, Mary's doing well. We've kept in touch quite well actually. She's a lot nicer than I remember, it might've been just my teenage mind processing everything as annoying, but she's really quite nice. Honestly everyone else in class I'm not all that close to." He paused as to separate his points, "Anyways, how's Harry?"

"She's alright. We haven't communicated to much, but she's been doing alright with Clara," John said. "And Mycroft?"

"You know him, annoying. He's been doing well being annoying lately," Sherlock said, "Him and Goneril are still together?"

"Who's....Goneril?" John asked, pretending to be confused by this, knowing full well who Sherlock meant. "Isn't that one of the evil sisters from King Lear?"

"Is she? Oh yes, she is. Yes," Sherlock said, "and you know who I mean."

"I do..." John said, letting out a bit of a laugh.

The conversation went on like this for a while, just random comments and questions jumping in and out of their conversations, occasionally jumping back in for a moment just to leave a second later.

They exchanged gifts later on, neither of their gifts being quite as good or clever as the ones they'd given each other when they were younger, but still just as meaningful.

And also unnamed because this is my fic and I'm not creative enough for that crap.

They spent a while just sitting in the old hallways of their school, watching Netflix sitcoms on Sherlock's laptops (and also participating in a zoom call with Sherlock's family), and just in general, being together.

Being together involved a lot less high stakes than it did before, now they were really just chilling out, talking occasionally, leaving small kisses on each other's lips, just being together.

When they'd first met, chilling and talking and occasionally kissing wouldn't have been quite as interesting as chasing a murderer, but perhaps now it was maturity, or just life draining a bit of energy out of both of them, but now they didn't care about how exciting things were anymore.

They were happy to be together, together on winter break.