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After the ball is over,
After the break of morn –
After the dancers' leaving;
After the stars are gone;
Many a heart is aching,
If you could read them all;
Many the hopes that have vanished
After the ball.
– Charles K. Harris, 1891
The key made too much noise as it turned in the lock, ringing in Sherlock’s ears. He wondered if he had had too much to drink at the wedding, then realised that was unlikely. The last alcoholic drink he had drunk was the champagne to toast the happy couple at the end of the evening, and he had been driving for the last hour, not too fast because following the line along the hard shoulder was always easier than trying to keep his mind entirely on the road. So not drink. Tiredness, no doubt.
The doorway to Mrs Hudson’s flat was in total darkness. She had opted to stay at the hotel; Sherlock had rented a car and driven her up the day before, closing his ears to her babble about all the weddings she had ever attended, the outfit she had chosen, and how handsome John and Sherlock were going to be in their Moss Bros suits. She was going to stay with her sister for a few days, so Sherlock would have 221B Baker Street to himself.
Sherlock started up the stairs. The last time John was here without Mary, they’d ended up lying together on the lower steps, and everything had felt comfortable and reassuring. Had that been a good stag do? John had seemed to enjoy it at the time, so maybe it was, even if he said it was awful the next day. Sherlock had read a lot about strippers and drunken revelers when he researched the traditions. He had considered inviting the men they knew: Mike Stamford, Gavin – or was it Gus? – Lestrade, that Asian bloke from the surgery that John and Mary sometimes went out with after work; maybe look up one of Irene’s colleagues to provide appropriate entertainment. But he had decided just the two of them would be best. Just like old times.
Smiling at the memory, he unlocked the door to the flat and hung up his coat and scarf. Then he stood in the doorway for a moment and stared at the darkened living room, at a loss what to do.
The laptops he had used for the case were still on the coffee table. Most had powered down, though a couple were still on standby, their lights adding to the dim orange glow from the street lights outside. Maybe he should turn them off. Or power them up and let the women know the man had been caught. Would that be a nice thing to do? Something John would want him to do? Or would it just be creepy and inappropriate? Sherlock never could tell – saying nice things sometimes made people cry and he didn’t like not knowing how they would react, even online. Most of the women had left when he pressed them to reveal their secrets. But everyone had a secret. Even Mary had a secret. Even Sherlock. Maybe he didn’t need to know everyone’s secret; who knew what he might find? Best to leave the women alone then.
Sherlock went to sit on his chair by the fireplace and kicked off his shoes and socks, wriggling his bare toes against the cool carpet. The empty chair opposite him was shrouded in darkness. He felt as if he should be doing something. Planning flowers? Writing place cards? Ordering the cars? But then he remembered that was all over. He had spent a significant amount of the months since his return helping John and Mary organise their wedding. He had taken cases, too, of course, but those had for once taken second place to making John and Mary happy. And now that was over.
All those months of effort. Sherlock had barely noticed the flower arrangements in the church, or the folded napkins at the venue, even though he’d spent hours discussing both with John and Mary, evaluating and pricing the available choices, discretely paying the difference when he knew they preferred one option but felt they should only spend a more limited budget.
And then the happy day had come. One moment, Sherlock was standing by an anxious John at the altar and the next, he was walking away from the disco and it was all over.
Maybe he should have stayed. He could have danced on his own, his inner Mycroft laughing at him all the while. If he had thought about it earlier and played his cards right, he might have ended up dancing with the chief bridesmaid. He couldn’t remember her name – Jemima? Jasmine? – but they had spent practically the whole day together, and she had seemed interested enough to seek out his company a few times when it wasn’t strictly necessary. Though to be honest, Sherlock had decided to avoid her after succumbing to that ridiculous masculine need to show off in front of a potential sexual conquest by metaphorically beating his chest and … demonstrating his dancing skills. In retrospect, perhaps that had been a bad idea. He tried to imagine having sex with her, her purple dress pushed up to her waist and his hired grey trousers down around his ankles. No, there was a reason he didn’t do that kind of thing.
Then on the other hand, maybe he should try it some day. Sex was a way of keeping people with you. There were special rules about fidelity and honesty that governed ordinary people’s relationships with their regular sexual partners, and which didn’t apply to platonic friends. It was all originally about protecting the offspring, he assumed. Nothing was more important to the survival of the human species than protecting the offspring.
John and Mary would need to stay together to protect their offspring. Nothing was more important.
On impulse, Sherlock got up and crouched down by John’s chair, sliding his long fingers into the gap between the bookshelf by the fireplace and the wall of the alcove. Hah. Several years and a couple of police raids later, and nobody else had ever found it and taken it away.
Sherlock sat in John’s chair and held the morocco case. He ran his fingers over it, feeling the thick dust that had settled on the upward-facing end. It was easy to tell that no one had ever touched it since he first slid it in there. His little secret. He wiped off four years’ worth of dust and smiled wryly. He had hidden it when he first moved in, just in case his resolve broke and the new leaf didn’t work out. New home, new flatmate, new drug-free life; he hadn’t really believed he could do it back then. And yet.
His thumb flicked the catch and the little metal plate snapped up with a click. Just a little upward pressure and the top would open. If his recollection was correct, there should be enough in here to cause a...
You’re a drama queen!
John’s voice in his mind gave Sherlock a start. He snapped the catch shut and put it on the coffee table. We wouldn’t do that to John.
Shaking a little, Sherlock dragged himself to his feet. As he moved, he caught sight of himself in the mirror above the fireplace. His mother’s eyes looked back at him, set in his father’s face; less bushy eyebrows, the hair still dark and thick, the cheekbones more pronounced, but his father’s face nonetheless. He tried to remember his father as he had once been, tall and awe-inspiring, quick-witted and formidable. But all he could picture was the man he now knew; slow, mellowed with age, content to leave all the talking and thinking to his wife. An old man.
Would John become like that? Would there be a tipping point when he realised he was no longer the hunter and protector, and started deferring to Mary in all things, while she carried on nurturing her descendants with the verve of little old grannies throughout the ages, the true guardians of the species.
What happened to men who weren’t married? How did they suffer their decrepitude without the strong guiding hand of a longer-lived partner? Did they just end up like the Underground man and the murderous cabbie, with no one to care whether they were unkempt or ridiculous, isolated from humanity by their solitude?
Sherlock was still standing, staring down at the box on the table, when his phone rang in his coat pocket on the other side of the room. For one insane moment, Sherlock guiltily imagined that John or Mary—probably Mary—had noticed he was missing and was calling to ask why the hell he had ruined John’s night by walking out before the end. But then he remembered that the happy couple were probably in the honeymoon suite by now, having celebratory sex, or anxiously watching the colouring of a hastily purchased pregnancy test dipped in Mary’s urine—Sherlock was eternally grateful that he wasn’t a woman—or perhaps simply fast asleep, exhausted by the long day.
No, he didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes, the famous detective with the funny hat, to guess who was calling him at this hour.
“What are you doing up so late?” he snapped when he had crossed the room to answer the call.
“Late night call with Hong Kong. One must do one’s best to maintain good relations with our former colonies.” Mycroft’s voice was all innocence. “Did you enjoy the wedding? I hear you gave quite a moving speech. And solved an attempted murder, of course. Who would have thought you would turn out to be the ideal best man? Well, aside from John Watson, that is. His belief in your abilities has always been nothing short of amazing.”
“Hmm, let’s see,” said Sherlock thoughtfully, turning his back on the box and the mirror. “Ah, of course. The woman in the blue dress. I was a little preoccupied or I would have spotted her immediately.” Just in case, he went to the windows and drew the curtains. He couldn’t be bothered to check for a camera in the room itself. “You’re spying on me again. Why?”
“You’re the famous detective,” said Mycroft.
Sherlock sighed and undid his tie and waistcoat. “I’m fine, Mycroft.”
“You surely know better than to fob me off with something so mundane. There was a time when you were above such things. You are obviously not fine. You do realise it’s quite rude to leave a wedding before the bride and groom, don’t you? Anyone would think you were upset. You know this was inevitable. Things change, people move on. You’ll get over it.”
“Did you call to give me... a pep talk?”
“Hardly. I merely wanted to mention something that arose from my conversation with my Chinese contact in Hong Kong.”
“Oh, I see.” Sherlock shrugged off his shirt and laid it out on the sofa with the tie and waiscoat. “It isn’t a pep talk to cheer me up. You’ve found me a case.”
“If you want to see it that way, yes.”
Under normal circumstances, under any other circumstances, Sherlock would have simply hung up. Instead, he removed his trousers and let Mycroft talk about the ‘case’. When he was stripped down to his underwear, Sherlock observed the couch, a forgotten memory springing unbidden to his mind.
Still holding the phone to his ear, even though he hadn’t been listening to Mycroft for a few minutes already, Sherlock felt down the back of the sofa. There were papers and wrappers and a couple of cigarettes, though reassuringly no sweeties or reading glasses. Then his fingers touched something cold, a metallic tube that was not the frame of the sofa.
Sherlock pulled out John’s old cane, puzzled as to how it had ended up there and indeed, why he had never found it before.
“Sherlock, what are you doing?” asked Mycroft on the phone.
“Noth—” started Sherlock, before realising that was another one of those facile lies that normal people used. “I’m sitting on the sofa in my underwear.” He stroked the long, cold length of the cane. “Do you think I should have had sex with John?”
Mycroft didn’t exactly sigh, but Sherlock could hear the irritation in his voice. “Did you want to have sex with John?”
“No,” admitted Sherlock. “Not particularly.”
“Well there you go. That would have been a terrible mistake, and it would have made absolutely no difference in the end. You left him and he moved on. Now put some clothes on. One of my agents will bring you the dossier tonight.”
Sherlock padded down the corridor to his room and lay on the bed, John’s cane beside him and the phone still to his ear.
“I don’t need someone to tuck me into bed, Mycroft.” Sherlock yawned. “Send your agent to check up on me in the morning. I’ll be back here as soon as I’ve returned my suit.”
There was a short silence while Mycroft apparently debated whether to send someone to keep Sherlock company anyway—probably with specific instructions to keep him out of the box in the living room—or trust Sherlock to go to sleep and stay out of mischief.
“Very well,” said Mycroft finally. “I’ll send someone in the morning.”
Sherlock set the phone to hands-free and placed it on the bedside table. “You can tell me more about the case, if you like,” he said sleepily.
Do you think Mummy and Daddy will be home soon, Mycroft?
No. They’re busy. It’s the Mansion House speech tonight. They won’t be back until well after Nigel Lawson shuts up.
Is Nigel Lawson important?
No. He’s an idiot, like you. Anyway, shouldn’t you be asleep?
I’m not tired. Tell me a story, Mycroft. A story about pirates!
Sherlock turned the light off and closed his eyes. On the phone, he heard Mycroft sigh. There was another pause before Mycroft started to speak again, filling in irrelevant details about the background to his conversation with his Chinese counterpart. Sherlock had already deduced them all from the first words Mycroft had spoken, but he let Mycroft carry on. Eventually, his eyes grew heavy and Sherlock began to drift off, his fingers curled around John’s cane and Mycroft’s familiar voice in his ears.