Archive of Our Own ^beta

o00o

"Is it actually possible that everyone in America has become cold-blooded?"

"And a good morning to you, too."

"It really is the only plausible explanation. If at first you eliminate the impossible…"

"Oh, please shut up. After you tell me you didn't call to complain about the cultural desensitization of the United States' population; because I know you don't care about that."

"No, I'm calling to complain about the unbearable weather on this god-forsaken continent. It must be biologically impossible for humans to be this hot, all the time, and not suffer serious long-term, health-related consequences."

"You're right. It's called heat stroke. Or heat exhaustion, sometimes heat edema. "

"Thank you, doctor, but you know what I mean. As a people, how do they continue to survive? The statistical rise in heat-induced crime alone ought to lead to total annihilation of the general population after… what, February of 2017?"

"Do you remember that talk we had about the Earth going 'round the sun?"

"What does that have to do with anything? Do you know there is an actual working fireplace in my room, and it's 33 degrees outside?"

"It means that while you're in Miami and it's - oh, god, this is entirely too much maths for one phone conversation - 9:04 PM, it's 2:04 AM here in London, where I am. Asleep. You do realize that, don't you?"

"You do realize that my brains could begin melting out of my ears if I have to spend one more day in this city? Literally - not like when some imbecilic Yarder starts spouting some idiotic crime-scene theory, and it only feels that way. Literally, melting out of my ears."

"And, you realize that I have to be on a flight in - god! - less than six hours from now?"

"John, it's so hot here I may actually die this time. And, it won't be my own doing, as you've always said it would be."

"Well, you are, as we've established, in Miami, where I hear it's rather hot."

"It's the end of September! Any civilized country ought to be pulling out their jumpers and umbrellas in the face of unending torrents of icy rain and falling leaves."

"Which is exactly what I've been doing in the two weeks since you've been gone. And, why I'm rather looking forward to making my flight tomorrow to join you in the hot, hot heat."

"Which only goes to show you cannot possibly understand how hot it is here. I cannot believe we have another week to go."

"Look, if it's really that bad, why don't you just call Mycroft and have him move us to… I don't know, Canada or Vermont or somewhere?"

"It's bad enough I let you talk me into giving into to him and leaving London in the first place; I'm not going to ask Mycroft for a favor now. I always knew listening to you would come to no good. And, by the way… have I mentioned how hot it is here?"

"I'll see you tomorrow afternoon, you unbelievable sodding baby."

"Fine. Tomorrow. Then you'll see."

o00o

What John could not possibly understand was the heat. It was not the mid-summer heat that Londoners liked to complain about on an over-packed tube and use as excuse to get themselves to the shore for the last week of August.

Nor was it the dusty afternoon Spanish heat, which sent the country grinding to halt every day while its inhabitants wisely sought refuge indoors, in their beds.

Nor the arid heat of the desert, in which Sherlock imagined John had sweated, chafing and resolute, while he turned his focus solely onto the bodies set down on his table. Sherlock privately believed if he'd asked, John would more likely remember the dry cold of the Afghan night than the literal heat of daily battle. Sherlock liked to think of John this way, ignoring his physical discomfort in favor of the work that needed to be done, the lives that needed looking after and saving. 

But, even Sherlock himself could not ignore the discomfort of his own body here, where walking was like swimming through the air itself, so thick and heavy with humidity as it was. It was maddening, his inescapable drive to go out and observe the great throng of Cubans and Americans and Russians and Europeans and on and on, but he was too dulled and sluggish from the heat to make any use of the data he gathered. Rendered all but useless, practically ordinary, by the damn heat that invaded him - not just surrounded him, but had been pulled inside on the sticky breath of his inhalation. The heat was not just in his skin and hair but in his mouth and throat and lungs, and it had had its way with his entire respiratory system.

He hated what it did to his nose, too, how the gummy molecules in the air picked up the fetid and savory and salty smells and strung them together, held them together in an inextricable bouquet, so that he couldn't make out a fish market from a patisserie until he was practically on its threshold.

Picking himself up from the green public bench where he had sat with his back to the small white dunes and the ocean just beyond, Sherlock concluded for the millionth time this was no weather for thinking, and therefore no weather for him. And, for the millionth time since he had left London, he realized that he missed the horrible wet weather of England because it was home, and he wanted so very much to go home.

Sherlock still did not quite know how he had got here, what exactly it was that had convinced him to so uncharacteristically give in to Mycroft's paranoia and hide out five time zones away. Though, granted, it was the very last place on Earth Sherlock would  have thought to find himself, and therefore an excellent place to lie low while the trial of the century - at least the sixth or seventh one of those since the turning of the new millennium - was taking place in London.

He would concede that his role in taking down the infamous Kay brothers did put him at a somewhat elevated risk, but what was that, really? "Elevated risk" was where he and John lived; it might as well be hung right underneath "221B" on their front door, so permanently did they live there.

True, the trial was bound to get ugly. There was little doubt that juries would be tampered with, threats would be made, officials would be bought; Sherlock was, for the most part, spectacularly uninterested in those proceedings, now that his case had been put to bed. But London was still there, still waiting for him, rife - after two weeks, surely - with crimes wanting to be solved. London waited for him with street projects winding down and needing to be recatalogued in his mental atlas; with shops full of heavy-soled shoes arriving with new tread to be inspected; and with cups of tea, sweetened just so, to be drunk in his own flat, on his own sofa, in a dressing gown he needed to keep out a trace of chill.

Crossing Ocean Boulevard on his way west to Lincoln Road Mall, it was surprisingly easy to imagine tea drunk next to a late-night fire, the smell of slightly damp wool and cotton underlying the smoke of the fireplace. Easy to imagine the feeling of the fire, anyway, with the asphalt throwing the heat back up at him from below. Cloudless blue sky, pink and white square buildings trimmed with fading chrome, slanting palm trees, an ever-present and disturbing stream of water in the gutters - these did nothing to abet the soothing picture he carried in his head. But it was also easy to imagine those very things - probably sans the mysterious gutter water - were precisely what John himself imagined when he suggested Miami for Sherlock's temporary retreat.

Sherlock found he had to admit, at least to himself, that even if John felt the inferno as keenly as he did, John wouldn't fester nearly as much as he would enjoy the sand and the waves and the proper holiday of it all. Which is why Sherlock also had to admit that he really did know how he had ended up dodging the heels of 4-foot 9-inch Cuban woman ringed in sweat from the unforgiving Miami sun.

Only the tiny tan Chihuahua she carried in her £4000 Gucci bag could pass for a creature who might legitimately claim to be comfortable.

o00o

From: John Watson
Message: Trouble at the airport. Go to kollel without me. ETA 7pm EST.

From: Sherlock Holmes
Message: You know I cannot possibly speak to the rabbis by myself. What could you be thinking?

From: John Watson
Message: I am thinking you are a grown man who knows how to at least pretend to be charming to people.

From: Sherlock Holmes
Message: Does not extend to holy leaders. My curls do not work on them.

From: John Watson
Message: Should have known your charms had such obvious limits. Wait for me at hotel.

From: Sherlock Holmes
Message: You are pathetically obvious.

From: Sherlock Holmes
Message: Fine. Am surrendering mobile at front desk, so as not to disturb holy scholars at work. Will be back to the hotel by 7 tonight. Will bring takeaway.

From: John Watson
Message: You will bring me takeaway? Must inform airport officials of the incoming porcine threat.

From: Sherlock Holmes
Message: What?

From: John Watson
Message: The flying pigs.

From: Sherlock Holmes
Message: What? Have you been dosed with some sort of airport security drug? (If yes, please procure further samples. And note all effects.)

From: John Watson
Message: Nevermind

o00o

At least Miami had the decency to provide her visitors with adequate cab service, but as Sherlock emerged into the hot (of course), humid (of course) night air, the wait for a taxi to pull up to the curb seemed interminable. By the time Sherlock stepped from the cab to the Sandwicherie just ten blocks away, he had felt the minutes spent in the car sharply, as though each had sprouted its own hour.

The visit to the kollel had been Sherlock's stab at using his time away - away from John, from London, from anything even vaguely worthwhile - wisely. Considering the fervor with which so many people touted their faith, the number of religiously motivated crimes remained surprisingly sparse. But when he'd discovered that Miami had an unexpectedly high population of Orthodox Jews, Sherlock had decided he must take the opportunity to gather data from that institution's most learned scholars. And, of course, he thought he'd have John to mediate for him. And he'd known that John would find the experience fascinating; John was interested, it seemed, in everything.

With John stuck at the airport, though, the time dragged on, and Sherlock found himself stuck and sticky and all but unable to concentrate during the hours at the school. He thought, perhaps, that John did not deserve the takeaway that had been promised to him, even after Sherlock's cab dropped him at the outdoor restaurant on 14th Street.

The wait in line for his order lasted a lifetime. He was an old man with a stooped back and silver white hair by the time he stepped up to the window to place his order, but at least senility had not crept in, and his French was as flawless as ever.

That, of course, was not enough to stem the tide of his peevishness. In the moments after he stepped aside to wait for his order to be prepared, Sherlock hated everything about this place, this city, country and continent. John, Sherlock was certain, would love it here. He would appreciate the international flavor of the city, metaphorically, and delight in the flavor, literally, of a Cuban sandwich made by accomplished French chefs. He would, of course, make noises about the rich and over-abundant American diet while doing his best to sample as much of the local cuisine he could get his hands on. His eyes would light up, lips curling on the right side of his face as though he was actively fighting his own smile, when Sherlock dropped the paper bag in his lap. He would offer a token protest when Sherlock opened the mini-bar to fetch a bottle of whatever passed for beer in this country, but his smile would at last fight itself all the way out when Sherlock ignored him to open the lager. And, he would positively glow when he took a bite of Sherlock's humble offering.

In the moments right before his order was up, Sherlock recognized it was time to face the blatant truth: Between the two of them, he no longer held any of the cards. John had wanted him out of harm's way, and Sherlock had wanted to never see that frightened look on John's face again. What John wanted, what made him happy, was what Sherlock would do, and there was no more evidence needed than the greasy bag in his hand and the sweat on his brow.

And so, Sherlock's absence from London was a mystery to absolutely no one at all.

o00o

Another cab ride delivered Sherlock to their beachfront hotel, somewhat disquieted and certainly cranky despite the brilliant sunset. No text from John might mean something horrendous, like John was being held captive by idiot airport security officers, and worse, he still wasn't here. Which would also mean that John himself would be cranky and unhappy when he finally did arrive, which was the opposite of what Sherlock wanted. But, on the positive side, John's absence would also mean that Sherlock had the opportunity to get himself cleaned up a bit; god only knew the fate of the shirt and trousers he was currently wearing, soaked from the day as they were.

Stepping into the elevator, Sherlock sweated and struggled not to. And this, this was the worse part: finally getting out of the heat only to realize that it was now trapped inside you, lighting you up from the inside and radiating outward. That was a heat you couldn't escape from, when you'd been in it for too long and carried it with you inside, into the otherwise frigid air of the hotel. He hated that the heat trapped in his diaphragm had more influence over his body than he did himself for the next fifteen minutes or more, and hated that he could not change how unacceptable that was.

Shower, he decided, as the elevator chimed and he stepped out onto his floor. Shower, and then he'd go to the airport himself if John still hadn't texted to say he was on his way. 

But moments later, the odd noises coming from their suite were enough to put paid to the necessity of going back out into the humid evening. As he approached the door, Sherlock paused to listen more intently, head unconsciously cocked to one side in confused concentration. The rustling sounded decidedly more ... sweeping than simple unpacking might, as though something light - paper, maybe - was being scattered around the room.

Under normal circumstances, the idea of that would be enough to convince Sherlock their room was in the process of being ransacked; but, he doubted there was enough loose paper in the rooms to be tossed around, and definitely nothing of any importance. The reinforced security door to their suite was thick enough to muffle the subtler nuances of the noises originating therein, but the lack of any indication around the entryway of illicit activity - forced entry, smudges near the peephole, traces of fingerprints on anything other than the handle - reasonably assured him that it was John on the other side of the door.

And so it was, Sherlock found as he stepped into the common living space of their suite. His John, indeed unpacking the contents of a suitcase and strewing them about the room with unmistakable glee, almost exactly as he'd inferred from out in the corridor. Of course, Sherlock wasn't certain whether he'd be more or less surprised if the items being thrown from his bags had been John's usual sartorial choices - jeans, jumpers, trainers, boxers, the things even the dimmest person would expect to be pulled from a suitcase 4500 miles away from home - than he was when he realized what was actually being pulled from the bag in great fistfuls.

Leaves. Red, brown, golden, fading and some dry enough to crackle and snap between John's fingers as he grabbed them up to spread around himself. At one point, he'd certainly been throwing them into the air, clearly with no less child-like enthusiasm than the image suggested; a red oak leaf clung drunkenly in the hair behind his left ear, a golden elm locked onto the frayed threads of his right shoulder seam. John held himself still in a surprised tableau, his mouth occupied by an apple held between his teeth and his hands arrested in the process of throwing more leaves. The piles of them lent the air a damp vegetal smell, edged with the sharp scent of early decay, which was precisely the way the air should smell in a September late afternoon.   

Sherlock closed his mouth and pulled in a deep lungful of the smell, pleased to discover he could clearly distinguish the separate scents of the leaves, the sandwich in his hand, the delicate must of heavily used carpeting and a faintly artificial tang of flame from the gas fireplace. John had closed the blackout drapes covering the hotel windows and lowered the temperature in the room to perhaps 15 degrees, enough to clear out the weaker smells that had previously hung in the air.

From the ratio and mixture of species, the leaves had come from Regent's Park; from the dampness of those toward the bottom of his suitcase, they'd been collected only hours before John had boarded the plane. Clearly, a spur-of-the-moment decision stemming from their last conversation, which would mean John would not have had enough time to send his clothes ahead of him.

"You decided about 15 minutes after we hung up the phone to gather the leaves and put them in your suitcase, but you would have waited until a more reasonable hour to call Mycroft to smooth the way for you through British customs. The stiffness in your left side tells me you were delayed on the American side, carting your bag with you for a much longer period of time than if you'd just walked through as usual. But you're not as stiff as you could be, which means Mycroft probably made a modicum of effort to smooth the way here, as well."

Sherlock casually kicked his large feet into the stray leaves that dotted his pathway to John, and reached to take the apple from his mouth. John might have been muttering something like "Amazing!" or "Fantastic!" around it, but even Sherlock couldn't make it out around his clenched teeth.

"You're still later than you should be, cutting it awfully close to 7 PM, so the twinkle lights, humidifier and the apples - small and irregular enough to be organic and so probably from a roadside fruit stand - were spur-of-the-moment additions."

The small humidifier pumping out wet air in the background was doing a pitiable imitation of a good English fog, but the cool damp soothed the last of the heat left in Sherlock's cheek. He took a bite of white meat from the apple he held; its sharp tartness stabbed a pang into the sinuses behind his jaw and flooded his mouth.

"I knew the humidifier was ridiculous, but when I saw the chemists across the street, I couldn't resist. The twinkle lights were on sale." John sounded rueful, and maybe a little embarrassed, which was both ridiculous and exactly like him. "Besides, I sent you a message asking that you text me before you got back. Couldn't resist your little surprise, could you?"

Even Sherlock knew he was standing far too close for accepted social protocol, and John had to tip his head back to address Sherlock where he stood. "John, I'm offended. I received no such text. International roaming or some such thing."

"Ah. Of course. I apologize."

John cleared his throat and stayed where he was; they held eye contact for another ten seconds. Then twenty, then thirty, and by forty, Sherlock finally recognized that he might hold more cards than he'd thought a full minute ago.

"You want me to be happy." He realized he sounded a bit confused, perhaps doubtful, certainly amazed.

"Obviously. Why else would a person pack a suitcase full of leaves?" Defensive, just a touch, and determinedly casual.

"Yes, but even if you could pass the leaves off as the act of a good friend, the humidifier and the apples were something more. You want something more. You want... me."

By the end of this sentence, Sherlock was certain John had heard the disbelief, but also, more importantly, the hope in his voice. Absolutely certain, because it was then that John broke his gaze but nodded his head "yes" and brought both hands up to slide into Sherlock's hair. He leaned in, nodding his yes into Sherlock's sternum, then looked up again and pulled Sherlock down to kiss him.

o00o

There might have been a time when Sherlock read a poem about kissing lips in the cool and calming autumn, drinking the clinging flavors of an apple from his lover's mouth. Such a poem may have made some point to contrast the feeling of the misty air upon heated cheeks and the cool juices of the fruit banking a fire burning within. And though he recognized how trite such a poem must clearly have been, he loved the flavor of it on John's tongue. Another deep breath and Sherlock imagined he could taste the leaves in the room, the misty air, the trace of the fire and the promise of everything that John had brought here with him from their home. John tasted exactly like all those things and every other thing that was the way it should be.

Here, in an autumn that was nothing like a cool and calming autumn should be, everything was exactly as it should be, and Sherlock found himself cooled and calmed.

o00o

Sherlock:

You weren't kidding when you said Miami was hot, but then again, so is London when you're in it (I know, I know - but simply had to be done).

Anyway, I've run out to try to clothe myself for the next week and pick up a few other necessary things.

Going from the state of your hips, you haven't made any effort at all to eat since last I saw you; judging from the sandwich you brought me (thank you for that, by the way. Did I thank you?), I would have thought getting a decent meal here would be easy enough even for you. Please do me a favor and eat one of those apples, o hollow one. 

Text me and let me know what you want for breakfast.

--John

o00o

From: Sherlock Holmes
Message: I make London hot, John, really? Beneath you.

From: Sherlock Holmes
Message: You thanked me. Did I thank you?

From: Sherlock Holmes
Message: Hollow, perhaps. But flexible. Come back now.

From: Sherlock Holmes
Message: Breakfast, not necessary. Clothes, not necessary. Other things... probably necessary. Get them from chemists across the street, then return immediately.

From: John Watson
Message: On my way.