Chapter Text
December 20
It was morning, it was zero bloody degrees, everything around him was unfamiliar and American and cold, and John Watson was right on that inhuman precipice between still drunk and terribly hung over.
"Just coffee," he muttered to the barista. One hand rested over his eyes, but he lifted it enough to make some squinted eye contact.
She chuckled. “You're sure you don't want the drink of the month? It’s a caramel gingerbread latte with fresh whipped cream.”
John growled. Or he thought he probably growled. He couldn’t think of the word for the sound he made because words were fucking fuckers, and so was thinking.
But at least the barista was grinning. In a city that seemed to have more bloody universities than toilets, John supposed she probably saw a hundred hung over customers a day.
"Well, if you're sure," she relented. "Want to drink it here? You get a free refill if you have it in-house."
John nodded in mute gratitude and she slid a hot mug across the counter.
"A lot of mothers and babies come in and sit in that area," she warned, cocking her head toward the plush couches and chairs at the back of the coffee shop. "But if you stay toward the front, near the windows, it's quieter."
"Ta," John rasped. The barista pressed his change into his hand, still smiling.
“Happy holidays,” she said.
Blurrily, John looked from his hand to the plastic jar next to the till. “WE’RE SAVING UP FOR AN OFFICIAL RED RYDER CARBINE ACTION TWO HUNDRED SHOT RANGE MODEL AIR RIFLE,” announced a green square of paper taped across the front of the jar. He frowned at the money in his hand: a fold of notes—unfamiliar and American and all the same size—and a couple of smooth copper coins.
Oh, fuck it. Harry and Clara were paying for everything anyway, weren’t they? He dumped the lot of it into the jar and took up his mug.
It was no easy feat, making it to a table without stopping to put his head between his knees. His cane clacked, unpleasantly metallic, against the legs of chairs as he passed.
The coffee was a miracle. John drank it black and didn’t even bother to care when it burnt his tongue. Unwilling to release his hold on the hot mug, he fished one-handed in his coat pockets to be sure he hadn’t lost anything the night before. He deposited the lot in a little pile on the table. Wallet, hotel key, phone. Harry's keys. A tin of lip balm Harry had demanded he carry for her. A paper fare card for the subway. A crumpled-up napkin and the plastic wrapper of a mint from the hotel bar. John patted the little pile protectively.
A sudden wave of nausea gripped him, making him drop his mug and his forehead, simultaneously, to the table.
And, of course, a child somewhere in the back of the room let out a hunger klaxon that felt like it physically sliced right through his brain. John rolled his head to the side to glare, but as suddenly as the sound had started, it was gone, pacified by a swiftly produced bottle of formula.
God, what a night. The important thing to remember was that even a hangover of this magnitude was worth it. Harry and Clara had spared no expense whatever on this whole ridiculous week – the result of which was rather a stupid amount of single barrel bourbon and a lot of guests. Some of whom were staggeringly intelligent, hot physics graduate students from Clara’s lab.
Indeed, somewhere between the drinking and the hangover there had been a very witty exchange with one of the very intelligent, very hot graduate students, and then, to John's utter joy, she had asked if he was "the John Watson" and it turned out she had actually read and liked his books.
Shortly after that, there had been a kiss, an invitation, a cab ride. And then she'd thrown him backward into a bed and there was sex, lots of it.
John grinned into the table.
As promised, the back of the coffee shop gradually filled with youngish couples, each laden with their own set of complicated straps and slings, blankets and garish quilted bags. Squawks issued periodically from the children they held clutched to their chests or balanced on their knees.
Thankfully, nearer to John, things remained quieter. The tables were small and round and the natural light from outside had drawn a few solitary patrons with books and e-readers. One, a grey-haired man in a fuzzy hat, was busily scribbling in the margins of a thick gold-edged volume of poetry. A smattering of others had installed themselves at the tables near wall outlets and were typing intently on laptops or tablets. John contemplated them idly, automatically conveying the mug to and from his lips, listening to the sluggish plop of each moment that passed without his head exploding. Eventually, when he raised his mug and tipped it back, only a drop fell to his tongue.
"Refill?"
A pale, slender hand extended into John's field of vision. Blinking, he followed it up, up, interminably up to an equally pale, slender face.
The stranger raised an eyebrow when John didn't speak.
"Yes, thanks," the stranger said for him, and swept the mug away. When he returned, one mug had become two. He clunked them down carelessly before dropping into the chair opposite John.
"Mind if I share the table?"
John looked haplessly around, but didn't see any unoccupied tables. Ah, well. With any luck this chap would just sit quietly and –
"Liberty Hotel or Nine Zero?" The man crossed his legs and settled back in his seat. His posture matched his accent, posh in that nonchalant way that was designed to make class difference seem to be genetic. His eyes were trained on John's face for a brief, piercing moment and then they were on a phone the man had produced from the inside pocket of his jacket.
"Sorry?" John tried to figure out if there was a joke in this somewhere.
The man sighed and glanced towards the door.
"Never mind, our company's here."
John sucked in a breath to protest – or, he would have, but for the mouth that was suddenly pressed to his. He had a momentary taste of sweetened coffee, a sensation of warmth where a hand landed on the back of his neck.
"Holmes?"
As quickly as it had begun, the kiss broke off.
"Ah, Sally," said the unhinged person who appeared to have just exacted a kiss as compensation for bringing him a (free!) refill of coffee. The man – Holmes, apparently – leaned back in his chair, crossed his ankle over the opposite knee, and turned on an obviously false look of concern. “I see the tinsel your dog ingested last night did not agree with her."
John’s brow furrowed. He looked to Sally for help, but it seemed she was making some kind of point of ignoring his presence entirely. She was a pretty though frazzled-looking woman clad in taupe and black. A very full book bag hung precariously from her shoulder, and the purse she clutched under the other arm was filled with loose papers. She crossed her arms, looking combative.
"I could have happily gone my whole life without seeing your face fastened onto anybody else’s. Don't tell me you actually have a boyfriend," she spat. "You?"
John straightened up in his chair.
"We're not–"
"Anything official," Holmes finished smoothly. And then he winked in John's direction. Winked. "I've got a personal life, same as anybody," he said airily.
Sally was unmoved.
"No, you don't. Where does a colossal dick like you find a date?" she demanded, shifting the book bag to the other shoulder. "Or doesn't that matter on Grindr?"
"Now hang on," John spoke up, not entirely sure what to be offended by first.
"Thanks so much for stopping by to chat, Sally," Holmes cut him off again. "Your disdain is unbecoming as always." He flashed the most condescending grin John had ever seen, and made it all the more condescending by only offering it for a millisecond.
Huffily, Sally stormed off toward the farthest corner of the coffee shop. Holmes lit up visibly when she was forced to share a table with a blustering baby and an obviously overwhelmed mother.
John remembered that he had vocal cords. “Just who the hell do you think you are?" he demanded. A dull headache corkscrewed into his left eye socket.
Holmes looked at John in surprise, as though he'd forgot John was there.
"The name's Sherlock Holmes," he said. "Now shut up."
"Right," John growled. He drove the heel of his hand into his eye, trying to tamp down the headache. "Listen, mate, I dunno who you think you are, but you cannot just kiss other men in coffee shops."
Holmes gave no sign of hearing him.
"Hello? You do know we're not on a date, right? If you are looking for somebody from Grindr, you've got the wrong person."
Holmes remained focused, intently, over John's shoulder.
"What is happening?" John demanded. "Is this some kind of terrible kink between the two of you? Assault a stranger and then have a fight over it?"
"Nnnnnnno," Holmes responded at last. He sounded amused. "Absolutely n–" he cut himself off with a sharp grunt of disgust. His hands flattened on the table as he leaned forward. John turned, following his gaze, unsurprisingly, to Sally. She was pulling a book from her bag, talking into the phone she held cradled between shoulder and and her ear.
"Ugh," Holmes announced. “She’s writing a book with Anderson?" His hands fluttered, dangerously close to John's face. "That's not even interesting."
He fell back in in his chair.
“It’ll be more utopian politics," he muttered darkly. "Not even worth nicking a manuscript when she goes to the loo in ten minutes." He flipped a memory stick John had not noticed before around in his hand, considering. "Then again, might still be worth it, for the look on her face."
John crossed his arms. "Stop spying on that woman," he commanded. "She clearly wouldn't want you to."
Holmes scoffed. "Of course she wouldn't want me to, John." He rolled his eyes. "Oh, don't gawp. Your name is on the card you failed to put back into your wallet when you bought your coffee."
John hastily shoved the traitorous card deep in his pocket. Pain spiked in his head and he pinched the bridge of his nose. "Damn it," he complained. "I hate you."
When he looked up, there were two mugs in front of him, where before there had only been his own.
"Refill, please." Holmes was back to staring at Sally, scrutinizing the stack of folders she had drawn out of her bag.
“Why—” John stopped to focus on breathing, in and out and in again. “Why,” he began again, at a more civilized volume, “would I do that?”
“Seems only fair,” Holmes said without missing a beat. “I got the last round.” His fingers drummed on the table.
For a brief, heated moment, John seriously considered kicking something over. Preferably the chair Holmes was sitting in.
Instead, he bit out, "Sorry, perhaps I wasn't clear. When I said we are not on a date, what I meant was, we are really not on a date. Not on any kind of date. Do you see?"
Holmes's gaze slid over until he was looking down his nose at John.
"You're unpleasant," he observed. "And surprisingly homophobic for somebody who was at his gay sister's hen party," he checked his watch with a flourish, "somewhere between seven and nine hours ago."
John blinked. "Did we meet last night?" Surely he would have remembered someone like this.
Holmes tossed his head.
"No, and so much the luckier for me," he retorted. His odd eyes roved up and down John’s body. "It's obvious you're uncomfortable in that suit, but a man of your stature – that is, short – will have had to have the trousers and sleeves tailored for it to fit as well as it does. Therefore, it's yours, and not uncomfortable because it's borrowed or rented, instead it's uncomfortable because you've been wearing it since last night. Wrinkled at the elbows – holding drinks, gesturing in conversation – but not in the knees – standing, mingling, not sitting. Not rumpled anywhere else, so you didn't sleep in it; you slept naked, with someone else, I imagine, but not the woman who left the pink feather stuck to the shoulder of your jacket and the silver threads on your lapel. Why? Because you haven't got an engagement band on – and you are the kind of man who would – and while the pink and silver could be from encountering a child with some kind of princess costume on, it's more likely, given everything else, to be from one of those hideous bachelorette sashes people wear here. What is a straight, single man doing being hugged repeatedly by a woman in a bachelorette sash? Simple: he's her darling little brother, traveled all the way from London for her Big Day."
The last two words were obviously, scathingly capitalized. John came to the belated realization that his mouth was open.
"How did you know she was gay?" It came out sounding more awed than he wanted it to.
The corner of Holmes's mouth twitched.
"Inviting a heterosexual brother to her hen night? No strict traditionalist would permit it. The brother would go instead to the stag night. Unless there was no stag night, because while she's still enough of a traditionalist to have a pink feathered bachelorette sash, she's broken with convention when it comes to gender. So. Gay marriage it is."
John's stomach flipped over, but it didn't quite feel like the hangover queasiness from before. It was strange.
"You're joking."
Holmes looked back in Sally's direction.
"I'm not," he said.
John took a long moment to study Holmes's face. The man himself seemed neither to notice nor to care. He was genuinely odd-looking: paper-thin skin stretched over sharp cheekbones, pale eyes with a startling glint of gold that kept reappearing and then disappearing before John could get a real look at it. His nose was prominent, angular. His lips matched his nose: a pair of sharp peaks marked out the middle of his upper lip, where he kept tapping one slim, thoughtful finger.
"Okay," said John. "How did you know about –"
"Napkin on the table," Holmes answered. "And 'red line,' words you scribbled onto your palm as a reminder to yourself about which train to take back to your hotel. Only two hotels on the red line use that particular shape and shade of cream for their paper napkins; therefore, Liberty Hotel or Nine Zero."
John was busy squinting at the faded lines of ink on his hand. It had been well into the evening when he decided to pen his little reminder, so the script was hardly legible.
"That barely says 'red line,'" he challenged. "Maybe it says 'deadline.' Maybe I'm a journalist with an article due today."
Holmes smirked.
"Red line seems more likely, don't you think?"
John started to speak, but Holmes was already standing to leave.
"Welcome to Boston, John," he said as he swept away toward poor Sally's unattended laptop.