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TXT from MyJohn: There in 15min w what I’m told is a nice cabernet. Polish your cheaters!
I don’t need reading glasses.—SH
TXT from MyJohn: OK, darling, whatever you say.
Sherlock smiled and pushed back from the kitchen table, where he’d been preparing slides of various synthetic fibres common in the manufacture of pet clothing. He had a lingering sense of distaste about dogs in neon-coloured collars, dogs being dragged along on the commission of crimes, dogs wearing macs and rain boots and robbed of all their inherent nobility. But. No matter. He deduced from John’s texts that it was Saturday evening, nearly seven, and as such the two had a date to lie together in bed and read (not as boring as it sounded; in fact, not boring at all, and frequently a precursor to deliciously slow and thorough, tender lovemaking that went on well past midnight.) John was on his second novel since they’d settled into their default date activity; Sherlock was on his fourteenth reference book related to crime-solving, ciphers, and aberrant human behaviour.
He began a half-hearted search for food. John would want something with the wine. Cheese, biscuits, bread, and there was fig jam, quite sexy in its way, but oh, was there honey? He liked to watch John lick it off his fingertips. Sherlock pressed his thumb against the skin of a pear and found it unlikely to survive the night, so he began to slice it.
TXT from Dolly: Just leaving my flat. Have you got any limes there?
Sherlock stood up straight, narrowed his eyes. Surely he had not made this particular mistake? After they’d all spent all that time sorting out guidelines and schedules and acceptable overlap and very much not acceptable overlap. After they’d suggested he perhaps make a habit of writing things down in a notebook?, or set up a schedule in his phone?, he’d of course assured them in rather a huffy tone that he could manage his calendar for god’s sake, he was only the greatest mind in generations. He slid open a drawer in the fridge.
Yes, five.—SH
TXT from Dolly: Just need the one. Cucumbers?
Half of one from last time you were here.—SH
TXT from Dolly: That’ll do! I’m looking rather forward to our little project! xx
Molly had a shoebox full of family photos—some of them quite ancient, apparently, frowning Victorians posed by the mantelpiece—and she had wondered if Sherlock might be able to date and order them based on visual clues in their backgrounds, the quality of the paper, and so on (he was confident he would excel at this challenge, and likely have arranged the photos in order by date within forty minutes, perhaps an hour if there were more than 100 of them). They had made a date to sit with her meticulously designed and maintained scrapbooks and Sherlock would put the glue dots on, then she would fix the photos in place. And apparently, they had made that date for the same night he’d made his date with John to read in bed.
Sherlock’s little finger twitched.
He took up all the limes and half-cucumbers he could fit in one hand, set a fresh litre-bottle of tonic water in the fridge, and returned to slicing the pear. He threw together a pile of nibbles on the tea tray, added two wine glasses and a corkscrew, and carried it to his bedside table. He went into his index and liberated a pair of his own thickest cashmere socks, left them on the foot of the bed on John’s side. Back to the kitchen to make ready for Molly. Certainly scrapbooking and reading were neither of them terribly raucous, so with the closed bedroom door and some cunning lies about things he needed from other rooms, Sherlock knew neither of them would ever know the other was there. There would be no need to confess he had failed to properly keep his calendar.
TXT from Lestrade: Be more like 8 before I get there, just FYI.
Sherlock dropped his phone into his shirt pocket and touched his lips with six fingertips. Surely it was a mistake on Lestrade’s part. He had probably meant to send that text to his children, who he often spent time with at the weekend. Picking one of them up from a school function or sporting event, no doubt. Sherlock would poke fun at him about it later—those thick fingers of his were never made for touchscreen technology. The slides he’d been preparing were slotted into an antique case, the slim picks and tweezers returned to the empty mug where they lived with pencils and drinking straws and a switchblade that folded cunningly into a crucifix. As the state of the tabletop was not technically biohazardous, he nearly forgave himself the task of spraying and wiping it, but Molly’s photos and books were precious to her, so in the end, he cleaned the surface with white vinegar and dipped his head, closing one eye as he gazed across to be sure he hadn’t missed any bits of crud.
His phone buzzed in his pocket, no doubt Lestrade’s message along the lines of Meant that one for my Janey! Nevermind it! LOL!!!
TXT from Lestrade: I’m bringing whisky and two cold cases from Hertfordshire.
Sherlock sighed and raised his eyes heavenward, for all the good it would do. “I am in hell,” he pronounced, eliciting appropriate sympathy from himself for a plight such as his.
Very good, Sherlock texted back. Bring chips or similar if you’ll want to eat. All I’ve got is half a cucumber. Not a lie.
This was fine. He was the greatest mind in generations. Surely he could juggle them for just an hour or two and not have it end in some public-shaming event wherein the trio of them exchanged knowing, pitying glances and ruefully sighed, barely keeping their lips shut against a three-part We told you so.
He slid shut the frosted-glass doors between the lounge and kitchen, adjusted the lights to limit silhouettes from either side. Molly would complain she needed more. He removed a desk lamp from the big table and set it in the kitchen, between her usual chair and door, guaranteeing adequate task lighting as well as limiting shadows visible from the sitting room. Just for insurance, he deposited some piles of not-just-a-load-of-rubbish-John! from elsewhere in the room onto the coffee table in front of the sofa—the detective inspector would not be spreading open files there. Sherlock would put him in John’s armchair and he’d set the files on the footstool. Sherlock nudged it into place, clapped his palms together then rubbed them. It would work!
“Hello, my darling,” John called cheerfully, mounting the stairs to the landing. Carrying not just the bottle he’d promised, but four tall cans of the lager he liked and something else weighing just under a kilo—probably bread.
Sherlock met him in the doorway, where they exchanged greeting kisses and John hung his coat, toed off his shoes. Sherlock lifted the bag away and peered inside; foccacia with rosemary and olives.
“I’ve made a tray,” Sherlock said, sidestepping in order to herd John toward the bedroom. He staged a suppressed yawn. “Could do with a bit of a lazy evening. Good idea.”
“Been looking forward to it, myself,” John agreed, and if he was aware he was being steered, he didn’t let on. “I’m going to change out of these clothes. . .Oh, this looks nice.” He’d found the tray of snacks by Sherlock’s side of the bed.
“Good day?” Sherlock inquired with a quick grin, as he briefly examined the bottle John had brought, deemed it acceptable, and took up the corkscrew.
“Usual,” John replied, tugging his shirt over his head. “Clinic weekends are all infants with fevers, lonely pensioners who just want to chat, and drunks so hungover they’re convinced the headache can only be a brain tumour.”
The cork popped free and Sherlock poured while John changed into pyjama bottoms and a thermal Henley that gave Sherlock ideas about John’s pectorals. No time for distractions, Holmes; there are plates to spin. His phone buzzed and he fished for it.
TXT from Dolly: Just coming out of the station.
Sherlock did not like her walking alone—well, anywhere really—given the statistical likelihood of a violent serial rapist no more than 8 yards from her at any given time, serial murderers also too close for comfort even at just under 40 yards. She had put her foot down about reporting her whereabouts consistently, though Sherlock gritted his teeth and warned her if she ended up dead, he would kill the killer and then be in prison, and is that what she really wanted? Hmm? For him to be in prison? Cheekily she’d replied he might like it, as there he could probably get all the bumming he liked, and then there’d been some playful pushing and shoving that turned into a bit of serious wrestling (she had studied Krav Maga, clever girl, and could subdue him quite handily despite his significant advantages in height, weight, and center of gravity), which ended in him being bummed, but only nearly as much as he liked. After several discussions of the matter of her pedestrian safety, she had agreed to text him if she went anywhere particularly out of her routine, and when she was on her way to meet him.
“Who’s that?” John asked, sounding uninterested.
“Just. Someone,” Sherlock said, with a calculatedly casual shrug and eyeroll. “You know. Spam.”
“Text spam?” John’s expression was a blend of bafflement and disbelief.
“Do you not get those?” Sherlock asked rhetorically.
“Nope. What are these for?” John held up two limes and the cling-filmed cucumber half. Sherlock must have set them on the tray when he’d meant to leave them on the kitchen worktop. Which reminded him that Molly! Had just come out of the station!
“Garnish,” Sherlock told him. “Looks nice there.”
“Does it?” John asked disbelievingly.
“You’re right. Failed experiment.” Sherlock gathered them. “I’ll put them away.” Awkwardly, he managed to lift one of the wine glasses and give a cursory sniff. “To a well-earned quiet night,” he offered, and before John had even got his fingers around the stem of his glass, Sherlock took a long draft—much more than a sip—then frowned at the assertively sharp, tart taste. “That needs a bit more time to breathe, I think,” he said. “Go on and start with the snacks if you’re hungry; I’ll be a few minutes.”
Out he went to the kitchen, soundly shutting the bedroom door. As he dropped the limes and cucumber on the worktop, he heard the soft shush of Molly’s little shoes coming up the steps. He ducked into the bath, thrust his head into the bedroom. “Just. . .” he said to John, as if that explained everything, then pulled the door shut between it the two rooms.
He emerged into the hallway in time to direct Molly through to the sitting room, where he relieved her of multiple tote bags and her coat, accepted her fussing with his shirt collar, leaned down for a kiss. She was wearing a perfume he liked, not for its forward scents of lemongrass and peach, but for its undertone of glutaraldehyde, which was not something one frequently got to smell up close without a respirator.
“You look nice,” she said, “Bit of pink in your cheeks.”
“Oh?”
“M-hm.” She stroked two little fingertips down his jaw. “Suits you.” She ducked down and rummaged in one of her bags, brought out a bottle of high-mid-range gin. “Buy a girl a drink?”
Sherlock smiled and took the bottle, as well as lifting all her totes together in one hand. “Cleared the table for us,” he offered, and indicated for her to slide the door aside. Once in the kitchen, Molly went about setting up her scrapbooking gear while Sherlock fixed them gin and tonics.
“Anything on?” she asked casually, and Sherlock was grateful for the opportunity to share.
“A woman thinks her sister is trying to drive her mad by replacing her clothes and shoes at irregular intervals with identical items in different sizes.”
Molly lifted her eyebrows. “It’s not just that she’s a yo-yo dieter?”
“Dolly, you’ve solved it,” Sherlock said with a smile. He always smiled more in her company; there was nothing about her that wasn’t delightful. And she was absolutely brilliant at and enthusiastic about pegging him. If he were less of a slag and she more of a feminine stereotype, he’d surely have had to marry her. He set sweaty glasses of well iced G & T on the tabletop and Molly handed him a bundle of her photos, which he began to shuffle, front to back, making mental inventory, beginning to cross-reference. In his mind palace he used a hotel-white bedsheet as a spreadsheet—why not, it was temporary so he might as well have a bit of fun—and hung it out to dry on a sunny, windless day.
“These, I know the dates of—or at least within a decade—as they’re of my parents and me, my sisters and brother.”
Sherlock slowed significantly and scanned each face, looking for Molly’s narrow nose and pointed chin. For some reason he imagined plaits in her hair. But every female face could have been hers.
“God, are you quadruplets? You and the sisters?”
Molly laughed. “We all look like our mum, it’s true. But it’s all right; she’s lovely.”
Sherlock absently reached for his glass and had a swallow. It was bracing, smelled of juniper and citrus—he’d forgotten the cucumber, still sitting sad in its clingfilm straitjacket, where it had rolled against the backsplash—and he had another long draft. Sliding the top photo to the back of the stack revealed a man in jeans and a white vest with enviably thick, slicked-back hair. A hard man. Handsome. Hairy forearms and a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. Oh, hell, Lestrade!
“I think I’ve got a magnifier somewhere. Might take me a few moments to locate it, but it’ll be handy.”
“That one in your pocket?” Molly ventured.
“No, a pretty one. An antique. Victorian.” He made an utterly random, non-lovely shape in the air with his fingers. “Gilt. . .y. For you. Mine’s.” He expelled breath upward, disturbing his fringe, as he rolled his eyes. “You know.”
She nodded. “Doubling up on nicotine patches, are you?”
He let out a faintly hysterical giggle. “Back in a—” He pointed, and went into the bath, shut the hallway door, opened the bedroom door.
“Have you been in there all this time?” John looked like a faintly worried doctor, which made some sense, as at the moment that was precisely what he was. “Feeling all right?”
“Fine,” Sherlock answered automatically. “Well, not fine, exactly, but. I will be. Fine.” He reached for his glass and sipped at the wine. “Ah, that’s better already. What are you reading?”
John passed over his book so Sherlock could skim-read the back cover. The bride did it.
“Aha,” was all Sherlock said. Lestrade really would be there any minute, with that distressingly rumbling voice of his. Sherlock fumbled his phone out of his shirt pocket. “Have you ever tried one of these white noise apps? I found one that’s alleged to be sounds from inside a restaurant we’ve been to—that fat chef that used to be a cute twink? We binge-watched him that time. Cockney rough trade?”
“Jamie Oliver.”
“Right. Here,” he urged, setting his phone on the bedside table with the volume slid all the way up. “Have a listen. Drown out. . .” he tilted his head toward the bathroom door. Really? Gastric distress was his cover? No sex with John tonight, if he had to maintain that ruse. Idiot!
John nodded and turned back to his book. “This is a real page-turner; I can’t put it down.”
You’ll never see it coming, the bride. You’ll talk about it for days, shaking your head, saying, ‘You’d have solved it in a minute, I’m sure, but I was completely gobsmacked. Hell of a story.’ Is there a thing about you that isn’t attractive? Gastric distress; what the hell is wrong with me?
“Just another minute or two, then have to fetch mine from the lounge. Save me some of those olives.”
“With a bad gut?”
Sherlock had another gulp of the wine. “Best to eat whatever appeals, in these situations.”
“True.”
Sherlock passed through the bath, shutting doors, shed his suit jacket and hung it on the hall tree, began unbuttoning his shirt cuffs with aim to turning them back. His fingers were strangely uncooperative. He went downstairs, hanging about in the front hall, checking his watch. Finally there was the sound of a key in the lock and he flung the door open, saw Lestrade standing there, and before he could boom out a single word, Sherlock threw himself forward and kissed him deeply, tugging at his sleeves, backing them up into the foyer. Lestrade kicked the door shut but it didn’t quite go. Feeling grateful, Sherlock reached over Lestrade’s shoulder to settle it where it belonged.
“Mm, Poppet,” Lestrade growled at him—bedroom voice—so distracting. The smell of him: Saturday afternoon football that didn’t leave him sweaty enough to warrant showering but which Sherlock scented on him nevertheless.
“You have cases?” Sherlock prompted, reaching for his battered attaché.
“Yeh, yeh. And Macallan. And a mighty need for a pretty boy in my lap—maybe you know one.”
Sherlock moued, and turned to lead him up the stairs. Greg gave his bum a proprietary squeeze that made Sherlock wriggle away from his grabbing hand.
Once Sherlock had got him planted in the red armchair and poured their generous doubles, they clinked the rocks glasses together, took deep sips, and Sherlock stood behind him, massaging tension out of his shoulders. He leaned down, close to Lestrade’s ear and murmured, “Show me what you’ve got, then, big man.” Naughtier than he’d intended; certainly he could not keep John and Molly properly occupied if he did, in fact, end up in Lestrade’s lap with undue haste.
“I wish I didn’t know you mean the files,” Lestrade said ruefully, and touched Sherlock’s hand. Sherlock kissed his cheek: whisker stubble, so rugged. As Sherlock regained his feet, his knees felt a bit jelly-like, so he took another pull of the whisky, to steady himself.
“While you’re sorting them, I just have to. . .” Sherlock non-explained, and fetched a book at random from the case by the television set, which he switched on and tuned to something sport-related Lestrade might find interesting, which would serve the dual purpose of distracting him from the length of time Sherlock might be gone, and any sound escaping the kitchen. A quick stop at the big table for the magnifier, which he slid into the hip pocket of his trousers, and another quick stop as Lestrade caught his wrist as he passed and pulled him down, sucking and biting at the side of Sherlock’s throat. His head felt light. He drew away and smiled, then shook the book at Lestrade. “I’m on a tidying spree; this belongs in the bedroom. Patience, please.”
Lestrade chuckled, either at the farfetched idea he could be patient, or at the downrght outlandish one that Sherlock was tidying. “I’ve an idea; each fact I give you about these cases, you take off something.”
Now it was Sherlock’s turn to growl. “I like this mood on you, Lestrade.”
“Will you never call me Greg?”
“Never.”
Lestrade gave him a swat on the thigh as he moved toward the kitchen.
“Still haven’t found it, I’m afraid,” he announced to Molly, having taken the long way around to avoid opening the sliding doors separating her from Lestrade.
“I thought you must have gone to the Victoria and Albert to steal one,” she replied. “I don’t need it; nevermind.” She gestured at the tabletop, where she had laid out her first batch of old photos—much older than the ones they’d been looking at when she first arrived—in a slighty messy grid of about four dozen. He set his book on the kitchen worktop and turned to survey them; he could feel the pinch of the skin between his eyebrows as his mind revved up for the puzzle. Molly handed him his gin and tonic, which he absently sipped at as he began to rearrange the photos, switching their places, sometimes lifting one close to his face to examine the texture of the surface, to read the scrawl on the back, or to sniff it for chemical identifiers. Molly hung about his waist, fiddling with the collar of his shirt again, fingering the buttons.
He hummed at her and the pace of his motions as he sorted the photos picked up.
“You’re all right? You seem distracted,” she ventured. “More distracted, I mean. More than usual.”
“Hm? No. Not at all.” He compared the degree of beach erosion in two holiday snaps taken at least five years apart. “It’s just focus,” he explained. The final ‘s’ felt a bit slippery on his tongue.
“If I didn’t know better—” Molly began, looking him over with something like suspicion. “Did you eat anything? Supper?”
Sherlock had finished his drink and set it aside. He wiped the condensation from his fingers onto his shirt, over his ribs. “I don’t recall.” He’d nearly got them all in order by then; there were seven he was still working to place.
“Sherlock,” she scolded. “I’m going to fix you something.”
“Don’t bother.”
“I will so bother. The gin’s gone to your head already, and I need you present and accounted for.”
He had three left to slot in. World War II soldiers, home on leave, posing with the girls who’d soon be writing them Dear John letters. The way the soldiers wore their caps was quite nice. Sherlock’s tongue dipped out to caress his bottom lip. This one here. This. . .probably there. Finally. Here. Molly was rummaging in the fridge.
“I’m making you a sandwich. Which of these mustards do you like?”
“None of them. Just butter the bread.”
“It’s ham steak though.”
“I like my bread buttered, regardless.”
She blew a tight sigh through her nostrils. “You’re an overgrown child.”
Sherlock caught her by the waist and drew her to him; she pretended to struggle but let herself be captured. “And you, my peach, are a pretty pretty doll. I think perhaps I should keep you in a glass case, take you out now and then to comb your hair. Undress you.”
“Bad boy.” She was grinning as she kissed him, his second favourite of her non-sexual kisses. She drew back and he could sense her reluctance, but she returned to her task and tossed her head to indicate the table behind her. “We’ve our project to finish.”
Sherlock nudged his empty glass toward her. “Fix me another, while you’re cooking.”
“Beg your pardon?”
Sherlock pressed himself close to her back, leaned close to her ear. “Pretty please, Dolly.”
“Better.”
He kissed her temple and reached for the book. “Back in a minute,” he assured. “I think the magnifier’s in the bedroom.”
“I won’t ask why,” she said cheerily to his retreating back.
John was dozing with his book open on his chin, but he startled awake at the sound of the door opening and then closing. Sherlock dropped onto the bed with his book in hand.
“Mmf, hi. Sorry.” John boosted himself more upright.
“Quite all right,” Sherlock told him. The wine had opened up beautifully: overripe cherry and underripe plum, black pepper, dank rose. Gorgeous. He rolled it over his tongue. “This is a very good bottle,” he complimented.
“Yeah, the woman said.” John reached for his own glass. “Lovely.” He set his book on the mattress by his hip and ran a hand possessively along the top of Sherlock’s thigh. “What are you reading, my darling?”
Sherlock had no idea. He fetched his book off the nightstand and flipped it in his hand. “Uses of Metal Filings in Non-Industrial Applications: A Comparative Study.”
“Sounds racy,” John jibed. “Are you sure it won’t be too exciting for you? Awkwardly-timed hard-ons can be so embarrassing.”
“I’m never embarrassed by my hard-ons,” Sherlock said, and his eyelids stayed down longer than a blink by the time he’d finished the joke. John gave his lap a quick fondle, which woke him right up.
“You should get out of these; we’re meant to be relaxing.”
“I don’t know the meaning of that word.” Another deep swallow of the cabernet. It really was fantastic. He wanted to drain the glass, settled for coating his tongue and the interior of his cheeks. His back teeth felt a bit fuzzy. So did his head. His mind palace had just got in new carpets and curtains and there were cashmere duvets draped over all his nicest Louis XIV furniture.
“Stomach’s feeling better?” John inquired, and felt Sherlock’s cheek with the back of his hand. “No fever. Something you ate?”
“Fine,” Sherlock assured him, and grasped his wrist, kissed the base of his palm with open lips, tongue. Messy. Stop. John pulled away and almost-discreetly swiped his wrist against his pyjama bottoms to dry it. John was bare foot. Surprisingly small and soft feet for a man. Just a couple of hairs on the knuckles of his big toes. Not like Lestrade’s much hairier toes, a smattering of hair on his instep, as well. And the hair of his chest and belly, of course, was a sight to behold. Sherlock felt his mouth slacken with a particular, loose smile. But oh no.
Sherlock sat upright, away from the pillows and headboard.
“What’s the matter?”
“Not fine,” Sherlock lied. “Urgent.”
“Poor you,” John began. “In the bathroom cabinet—there’s some—”
Sherlock held up his hand to stop him even as he rolled off the bed. “Boundaries,” he scolded. “Think about something else. Anything else.” And the worst part was, he wasn’t even sick. Now John was thinking not of arranging their two bodies in a particular shape (Sherlock had been running an experiment on subliminal suggestion for at least a week, planting over a hundred versions of the number 69 in John’s way, but subtly), but instead John was distracted with thoughts of Sherlock’s urgent toilet visits. The data was almost certainly fatally corrupted. “Back in a minute,” Sherlock assured, and flung himself into the loo. A quick look at himself in the mirror revealed that his gaze was soft and unfocused, so he narrowed his eyes, but it made his head spin. Wouldn’t chips be lovely right now? A big pile of greasy chips.
“Did you bring chips?” Sherlock demanded, swanning back into the lounge. Lestrade had piles of papers on the footstool, the seat of Sherlock’s chair, the pretty little cabinet, and on the floor. He was watching a rugby match on telly.
“No, I didn’t think you were serious.”
“I could murder chips,” Sherlock told him.
“The whisky’s good though,” Lestrade said, and though his own glass was near empty, he held up Sherlock’s abandoned one and it was still nearly a double. Sherlock took it from him, slugged a mouthful. It tasted like the leather of his chair. Now there was a thought. He drifted a minute in a melted-together memory of three separate times he’d been in a position to bite its cushions. Lestrade, there. John. . .oh, there. And Molly, too. She’d been quite wound up that day; smacked his arse with her pretty hand. The whisky was good; Lestrade was right. More, then.
Sherlock bent over to glance at the files spread about, started to overbalance and had to steady himself on the edge of the cabinet. “Oof,” he heard himself say, then a weird giggly laugh, then, “Ah-uhm!” as he cleared his throat.
“Jeezus,” Greg cursed, grabbing his wrist and dragging him to sit on the arm of the red chair. “It’s not that good. What’s going on with you?”
“Cold medicine,” Sherlock lied. He sniffed stagily, only serving to emphasise how not-congested he actually was. What a perfect way out, though! “Didn’t want to disappoint you but the truth is I’m. . .dying.”
“You aren’t dying, Poppet. Not of a cold.”
“As good as.” Sherlock tried to look weak and worthy of sympathy, which wasn’t hard, as he really was feeling rather greenish just then. “I apologise.”
“No, it’s all right, sweetheart,” Lestrade told him. “You should have said.” He began to gather the files.
“Can you not—” Sherlock barked, then softened, in an attempt to recover the moment. “Can you not leave them for me?”
“Yeah, no, all right,” Lestrade acquiesced. He liked to think he was helping, so Sherlock usually let him look on while he solved them. Sherlock tried to make himself appear pitiable even as he poured pity on his Big Man, about to be chased away from the date that was meant to begin with cold cases but would have surely ended with a thudding fuck rampant with curses, Sherlock’s throat raw, and Lestrade looking smug as he smoked a well-earned post-coital cigarette.
Sherlock leaned over his back, arms laid along the lengths of Lestrade’s arms, drawing him up into a folded embrace. He smudged kisses along Lestrade’s jaw, the lobe of his ear. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
Lestrade let out an amused sort of growl Sherlock felt reverberating through his own chest. “Yeh, you will. Course you will.” Lestrade shrugged him off. “Talking of which, where are my cuffs?”
He’d pinched the handcuffs the previous afternoon, right off Lestrade’s hip, right in his office, right in front of two sergeants and a constable.
“I’ll get them,” Sherlock volunteered. “When did you miss them?”
“This morning when I was trying to arrest a kid tried to steal a bike off the rack not ten yards from the front door of my office, the stupid arsehole.”
Sherlock grinned, and started toward the frosted glass of the sliding doors, corrected himself and veered left to take the scenic route.
“Sit down and eat this, what the hell have you been doing all this time?” Molly demanded. It wasn’t like her to curse. The gin had likely gone to her head. She should have the sandwich; she needed to soak up the alcohol.
“Magnifier,” Sherlock reminded, and dropped into his usual chair. He shifted far left to reach into his trousers’ hip pocket, nearly lost himself off the chair’s edge in the process. He thunked it down on the table. “Can you make out the cars’ number plates?”
Molly slid a dish toward him. The smell of the ham steak in the sandwich was offputting in the extreme, and Sherlock slid it back at her. There was a fresh G & T on the worktop he’d rudely demanded she make for him, as if he were that type of man and she that type of woman. He really was awfully in-the-rough, wasn’t he, in so many ways; obviously it would take all three of them to sort him. He had to drink it now she’d made it, despite his bad behaviour. He reached for it. His gut flipped merrily. But oh. Not so merrily.
“Put that down,” she tutted, and lifted it from his hand, thank all that was holy and sacred in the world. “I’ve never seen you like this, after one drink.” She started to gather her photos, arrayed across the kitchen table, which seemed an excellent idea given Sherlock was not sure he could be counted on not to sick up on the whole lot of them at any moment.
“Ice,” he muttered, and set his head in his folded arms.
“What’s that mean?”
“Can you give me a cup of ice,” he droned.
“You need a big glass of water and to go to bed, Sherlock.”
He smiled at the tabletop; his eyes wanted to stay shut. “Come with me? To bed.”
“Not tonight, I don’t think,” she said matter-of-factly. There was a decisive shuffle somewhere off to his right, and the rustling sound of her tote bags.
Too crowded, anyway, he thought. John there already, in his jim-jams with his book on his face.
“I’m getting you a paracetamol,” Molly declared, and he heard her little round-toed, flat shoes brisking off in the direction of the bath. He lurched to life and threw himself down the hallway, into the bedroom. John looked like he was trying not to look cross. For a doctor, he had a surprisingly difficult time maintaining the illusion of sympathy for very long. Lost patience with his patients! Sherlock grunted a laugh.
“What’s funny?” John asked, smiling, looking forward to a joke instead of having to find euphemistic ways of discussing Sherlock’s (fake!) stomach upset.
“Need these,” Sherlock told him, everything blurry and awful and he wanted to lie down, he was done, he surrendered. He dragged the folded quilt off the foot of the bed and wrapped it around his shoulders like a shawl, then took his best pillow. He considered finishing the rest of his wine—there was one good swallow left in the glass, and by morning, it would have soured—but he couldn’t bear the idea, and so just went wordlessly out the door he forgot to shut behind him.
His legs were leaden, every cell in his body shrieking a need for SLEEP. IMMEDIATELY. YOU IDIOT. THEY’VE BESTED YOU! There was a jumble of glassware and neon tubing on the sofa—because of science—for a case—so he dropped his pillow onto the rug between the piled-upon sofa and the cluttered coffee table, and adjusted his quilt around him, and sank gratefully to his hands and knees, then onto his side, curling into himself. O, excellent pillow! Thou art perfect of temperature and loft! One day greater men than I will write odes upon your. . .good. . .ness. Good pillow. Nice.
Quilt, too.
Very good.
*
Sherlock woke to a staticky radio broadcast—a comedic play, two men and woman, bantering. Bantering, bantering. Laughing at themselves, thinking they were clever. Murder oozed black in his heart at the thought of them. So much static, and so loud! And a reek of grease. Not from the radio, that bit, well deduced, Holmes. He rolled his throbbing head on his mashed, smelly pillow. Had he been sick? Everything smelled sweet and horrible. The palms of his hands. Not sick, though. He’d been drunk. A booming chuckle from one of the men on the radio, a flirtatious giggle from the girl. That sound wasn’t static, it was frying! Sherlock had a need for a bacon sandwich slathered in brown sauce greater than his need to breathe. John was making breakfast! He was the best one before noon. Always had been.
Sherlock rolled onto his back and let his limbs fall open and away. Dead Starfish, human on wool/poly blend, artist unknown, present year. The voices carried on bantering. Damn their banter. Had they no respect for the dead?
John, then. Clearing his throat. Sherlock forced one eye a quarter open.
“Oh, no.”
“We told you to get a calendar, Poppet.”
“No.”
“John’s made breakfast. You hopeless man.”
“I have the greatest mind in generations,” Sherlock mumbled.
“We all had a drink together—”
“Don’t say drink, John, honestly. . .”
“—and we set up a group text.”
“I nearly managed it,” Sherlock offered, feebly he thought, opening both eyes and arranging his face to elicit crooning. Possibly petting. Cutlery clattered against a plate as it was set down atop the 15th volume of the OED, on the coffee table too near his head. He winced.
“You nearly did,” Molly said indulgently.
“C’mon, then. Up you get.” Greg’s hand was extended to him, and Sherlock took it but didn’t relish the idea of an upward trajectory.
“Coffee?” John asked.
“Buckets,” Sherlock replied. He heaved a sigh, grabbed his forehead.
“Remember that feeling, Sherlock,” Molly told him.
“I won’t soon forget it,” he replied.
“All that, just to avoid getting a calendar.”
“All that just to avoid admitting we were right!”
The three of them laughed, and Sherlock grumbled, though as he raised a cup of milky-sweet coffee to his lips, he smiled around the rim. It really would take all three of them to sort him. But already they’d made an excellent start.
-END-