Archive of Our Own ^beta

Well.  His parents are here.

Someone is droning on in a low tone through a door about damned bloody Socialists, and Sherlock sighs.  His father, he realizes, will not care that justice has been served.  He will not care that a killer, and a very young killer at that, is off the streets.  His father will wonder how Sherlock got to London again, dull boring why god tedious dull duuuuuuulllllllll, because it's never a challenge to get to London.

It's only a challenge to stay there.  Which is a shame, because Sherlock absolutely adores London.

Later, after they've discovered he has materialized again, Sherlock is summoned to dinner, which he eats with Mummy as she sips something beautifully golden in a small crystal glass, refilled exactly eight times.  But Sherlock is no longer mystified by his mother's glamour (she really is very glamourous) or her intelligence (it isn't as if she uses it to show off, and isn't that the point?) or her beauty (she looks just like Sherlock, he realizes, without at the same time realizing that he is beautiful himself).  None of that matters like it used to matter when he was little--when Sherlock was seven, for instance, or when Sherlock was eight.  The silverware is too flat now, next to the bright frantic depth of the lights of London beyond, the sirens and the headlamps and the tall tall buildings, and Mycroft is off at school.  

"His name was James Moriarty," Sherlock brags.  "He killed Carl Powers with poisoned shoes, and I brought him to justice.  He'll be pronounced guilty, I know it." 

"You're quite the little marvel, my darling," Mummy answers, and her voice has gone soft from the drink she sips from the crystal. 

"They'd never have solved it if not for me."

"How marvelous.  What will you tackle next?"

He has no idea.  In fact, Sherlock has nothing to do.  Again.

At night, he turns on his side, rustling soft sheets, and stares out the window of his third story bedroom in the townhouse.  He dreams of blood and death and beautiful sacrifices.  He dreams of the pristine lines of scientific rigour and the heady chaos of human behavior.

He dreams of peace and hell. 

Both of those already live in his head, anyhow.  It's only a matter of time before he encounters them for real, he supposes.

He cannot wait for it to happen.  Adventure cannot arrive quickly enough.

 

  

 

Sherlock is eleven when Jim Moriarty is sentenced to a very long stint in juvenile prison.  A few days later, in mid-March, he receives a letter.

Dearest Sherlock, 

I've been talking to the police about you.  They're very impressed.  So am I!  I'm a huge fan.  I'm going to have a lot of time to think about you now, and that's what I'll be doing, thinking about you.  I'm rather a pip when it comes to thinking.  I'll think of you all through the day, and all through the night.  I'll be thinking about you tied to a bed while I skin you with a fish knife, all in long lovely strips, and then I'll salt them and feed them to you to keep you alive.  When we run out of your skin, I'll start feeding you bits of muscle I slice off, but if you find it too tough raw and don't like it, I might make a concession and let you snack on your own fat!  Delicious!

What a lark it will be! 

Love,

Jim

Shuddering, Sherlock sends the letter to the Yard detectives.  He doesn't hear back from them.  And Sherlock goes on with his life.

In another part of England, a boy named Mike Stamford makes the last minute decision to join his mum for a trip to the seaside.  He hadn't planned on doing much of anything that weekend, but when she proposes the journey on a whim, he sees no reason not to agree.  He loves his mum, and nowhere do they feel more close than when combing the beach for shells.  In a tragic misfortune that is ultimately blamed on the intoxicated driver of a large truck, she loses control of the vehicle when the truck driver swerves into her lane, and the pair crash into a tree.  

Mike, who unbeknownst to his mother had unfastened his lap belt, is killed instantly.  His mother survives to be haunted by the tragedy.

Sherlock Holmes, of course, never so much as hears these strangers' names.

 

 

Sherlock is sixteen years old when he realizes that something is wrong with him.

He is sitting in a study in the country house, the room full of light and full of air, the windows open and the breeze tugging at the pale curtains, bending over a chemistry set he received upon his twelfth birthday.  It is four o'clock in the afternoon, and he is unaware that his self-perception is about to take a sharp turn.  Beyond, along the portrait-hung corridors of the family's estate, he can hear the bustling of busy feet.  Every summer, the Holmes family takes in guests of a certain high station, and every summer, Sherlock divides his time between ignoring their presence and ruthlessly deducing their secret lives.  He has grown accustomed to removing his mind to a place of clarity and distance, treating distractions with no more fuss and bother than a waterfowl would grant to the rain that swells the shores of their little lake.

Sherlock bends further over his beakers and retorts, bowlike lips pursed with concentration as his slender fingers trace the words in his textbook.  He can identify this salt, he knows he can.  It is only a matter of focus and patience.

The door creaks open and the source of the scuffling enters. Reginald Musgrave is a quiet boy and an arch one.  Sherlock likes him to the extent that he doesn't actively dislike him, and Sherlock actively dislikes a great many people.  Sometimes he likes Reginald even more than that, and the thought of the ways in which Reg is pleasant and courteous and not dull always brings a soft curl of warmth to the region of his heart. 

Reginald has fair hair and a high brow, and for some reason he is shutting the door behind him.

"Still at it, then?" Reg wonders.  "You'll make yourself cross-eyed."

"But I'll get a first in chemistry when I try for one."

"Course you will," Reg laughs.  "You're brilliant."

Brushing his dark hair from his eyes with a delicate wrist, Sherlock nods.  He is brilliant.  Reg has grown taller this summer, they both have, springing up like weeds, and all traces of childish fat have abandoned him.  It seems to have found its way to Mycroft's midriff by accident.  Sherlock finds this endlessly amusing, and his brother does not, which makes it all the more delicious.

Reg has appeared at Sherlock's elbow as if by magic.  Odd.  Sherlock is generally quite keen when it comes to the relative movement of bodies through space.

"Why've you shut the door?" Sherlock wonders, not really wondering.  The salts are nearly ready.  Their secrets are almost laid bare. 

"It's all right, you know," Reg tells him.  There is a husky quality to his voice that wasn't present previously.  Has never been there previously.

Sherlock glances up.  The sun has burned golden streaks in Reggie's lank hair, and the button-down he's wearing under the woolen jumper is loose at the collar.  Sherlock can see the barest dusting of fine down there, like the feathers on a gosling.  Reggie has always been a terrible clothes horse, but it's getting worse of late.  The boys had used to spend hours fashioning costumes for impromptu Shakespeare plays and the odd pirate drama, memories that fit Sherlock like a favourite pair of oft-worn trousers.  Reggie is uncomplicated without being dense, and in Sherlock's experience, that is worth something incalculable.

"What's all right?" Sherlock asks.

Reggie reaches out and traces his fingertips along Sherlock's stark jawline. 

"That you're different.  It's all right.  I am too, you see."

Swallowing, Sherlock wonders briefly how Reg could possibly know such a thing.  The other boys at school are all elbows and hormones, sweaty and sticky and mindless, humping warm objects as if their lives depended on regular emissions, and Sherlock can't fathom a bit of it.  But this seems to be the topic that Reg is broaching.  How extraordinary.  Sherlock has awoken to questionable bedsheets once or twice, but he hasn't the smallest desire to insert any part of himself into any damp, confined space, and if Reg is similarly sexless, then god bless him for a true mate.  When Sherlock tries to think of anything more distasteful than the scene he interrupted down by the stables last spring, that catering girl his parents had hired for their party mashing her face into the crotch of one of their horrible houseguests, he can't help but shudder. 

The Reg leans over and kisses him. It isn't unpleasant.  Or even difficult.  It's warm, and breathy, and a bit intimate, and rather nice, like being complimented.  But Sherlock starts backward in surprise all the same.

Smiling in a self-satisfied fashion, Reg reaches down and cups a palm over Sherlock's trouser front.

"No," Sherlock, exclaims softly, batting the hand away.

"What's the problem?"  

"That's--no," Sherlock repeats, struggling to catch up to the conversation and failing miserably because he has absolutely zero practice at that task.  He is generally miles and miles ahead.

Reg adopts a gentle look.  Sherlock has seen it before, on days when Sherlock was sulking, or on days when his head started hurting his heart. 

"There's no harm in being gay.  Like I said, I'm the same."

"But I don't want to," Sherlock protests.  His heart is hammering.

"Don't tell me you're above it or something."  

"Of course I'm not."

"Well, then?  You like me.  I know you like me."

That's true.  They like each other.  Sherlock swallows.  Perhaps Reg is entirely correct, perhaps something should happen, something slimy and embarrassing, because he likes Reggie so much. 

That is the very worst notion Sherlock can think of.

Reggie cocks a fond eyebrow at him.

"But--" Sherlock whispers.  He is backing away and it feels better, it feels a million times better, he can breathe, he-- 

"I won't hurt you."

"I know you won't."

"Then don't be a prude."

"I'm not.  And I do like you, I just--"

"Come back here."

"I think...I think, I think I don't like it," Sherlock stammers.

Reggie's eyes narrow.  They're blue and rather striking, and Sherlock swallows, staring back in mounting panic.  Sherlock doesn't have a great many friends.  Sherlock has a brother who's growing more boring by the day and a distant mother who drinks and a father who sleeps with the help, and Reg has always been willing to traipse along moonlit paths in the dead of night, and to bury treasures, and to draw pirate maps, and to forge secret vows sealed with blood on their palms.  Reg is important.

"I thought I meant something to you," Reg bites out.

"You do."

"No, I don't.  Not if..."

Biting his lip where Reg just kissed him, Sherlock thinks hard.  There must be a way of solving this.  There must.  There is a way of solving everything.  And Sherlock, though he is very young, suspects already that he might be a genius.

"I don't want to with you because I don't want to with anyone," Sherlock explains. 

"Come off it," Reg snorts.  "Everyone wants to with someone.  And I know for a fact you don't like girls.  Wait, do you like girls?"

"No."

"So you like boys."

"No."

"What, you expect me to believe you're some kind of robot or something?" 

"Of course I'm not--" 

"Don't you ever touch yourself?"

"I...well, sometimes, but I don't particularly like it."

"Don't like it?"  Reggie's eyebrows are ballooning upward in disbelief.  "What the hell is wrong with you?  Why wouldn't you like it?"

"It's all just...it's messy, and complicated, and--"

"Sherlock, I know you like being independent and all, and yes you're a neat freak, but you're not some kind of goddamned android.  Granted, you're the only bloke I know with a sock index, but--"

"My heart beats too fast, and it's uncomfortable."

"That's completely ridiculous."

"And I don't know what to think about, and--"

"Fucking," Reg says, exasperated.  "When people have a wank, they think about fucking.  I think about fucking you." 

A terrible silence falls.

"I'm sorry," Sherlock whispers. 

Reg shakes his head and turns away.

"You said it was all right that I was different," Sherlock pleads. 

Reginald shoves his fists in his pockets.  He's verging on handsome these days and Sherlock is too observant not to know it, but suddenly he wants the old Reg back.  He wishes they were still eight, sharpening sticks into arrows and stringing bows with kitchen twine, tripping over each other and laughing.  Things were simple then, and when Reggie looked at Sherlock, Sherlock felt like a king.  Now he feels like one of his own dissection subjects, flayed out and pinned to a board.

"Well, I was wrong, wasn't I?" Reg snaps, and Sherlock understands that he has insulted his only friend somehow.  "You're a right freak."

After Reg storms out, Sherlock wonders whether a cloud has passed over the sun through the window, or if his perception has changed due to the sheer ghastliness of their altercation.  He goes back to the process of identifying the salts, but his fingers are trembling and there's an ache in his chest that he's never experienced before.  When he positively identifies the bisulfate of baryta, Sherlock can barely bring himself to care.

 

 

 

Sherlock later discovers that this whole shagging business can get him other things he wants--and that if he chooses partners carefully enough, whether or not he comes never even enters into their heads.

Cocaine, he reflects as he watches the traffic lights sweep past in the darkness beyond his little window in Montague Street, is a wonderful substance.  Good cocaine, the kind he likes, and pure morphine, the kind he likes very much indeed, are rather a drain on his finances, however, and living by one's wits by popping up unwanted at crime scenes is proving less immediately lucrative than he had hoped.  And this is the reason that this fellow named Grant is in his bed.  Grant is a thin ginger man with freckles on his chest, and he is a complete tit, but rather a well off one, and he brought Sherlock's favourite drugs along with him when Sherlock indicated via text that his urges would at last be seen to.  He is asleep on his side, snoring lightly.  Sherlock can see the individual hairs of his red stubble when a car goes by and the headlamps shine through. 

Sherlock hates him.

He hates that now his room smells like sweat and humans.  He hates that Grant wears t-shirts with bands on them Grant doesn't actually listen to.  He hates that his arse feels like this when he moves.  He hates how easy it was to hide the fact that he wasn't even aroused.  He loves that he didn't come, he only does when alone and every other month or so, just when he has to, but he hates Grant for not caring.  He hates himself.  He hates Grant. 

He suspects he might hate being alive.  There is nothing for him in this world other than crime scenes, and there hasn't been a crime scene in days.  If he isn't careful, if he doesn't dose himself carefully, the pain will come back, that feeling that the world has ground to a stop on its axis and nothing will ever be all right again and no one cares that it won't be all right except for Sherlock.

This bed is far too crowded and he has never felt more alone.

Next time, Sherlock thinks exhaustedly, I'll use my mouth and pretend that turns me on and then I won't even have to take my kit off.  That will be easier. 

Next time. 

Despite Sherlock's plans, next time Grant wants the same thing again, and so he grits his teeth and doesn't whimper and he thinks about star systems expanding, thinks about the entropy of rivers and ways to deduce Niagara Falls from a single drop of water. 

 

 

 

Sherlock is thirty-four when he falls hopelessly in love at first sight. 

He is running after a suspect through the streets of London, a cold-blooded killer by the name of Abernetty, and the thrill that courses through his veins is better than any drug.  Of course, he'll need the drugs to counteract the black reaction that will set in when the adventure is over and life is grey again, will need the cocaine or the morphine which he can now afford to buy himself, but for now, he is alive.  He is godlike in his speed, he is invincible.  His coat billows behind him as he leaps over a fence surrounding a construction site.  He and Abernetty left Scotland Yard in the dust five minutes ago, and that is fine by Sherlock, though he regrets a bit that Lestrade was nearly mowed down by a Jeep following Sherlock's wild dive into traffic, and if Sherlock loses his man, weeks of work will have been in vain. 

The sky has never been bluer, and his legs have never felt so strong.

Sherlock can see Abernetty ten yards ahead, dodging brick piles and buckets and iron beams.  His face is thin and mean, and his brown hair is balding at the crown of his head.  The autumn breeze ruffles his blue windbreaker.  Abernetty darts around a wheelbarrow stained with dried cement and nearly falls.

Sherlock can taste victory in the fucking air.

Over another fence, out of the construction site, and Abernetty is careening into Hyde Park.  The green of the trees is electric, the blood pounding in Sherlock's ears is symphonic, the delight he takes in each long stride out of all proportion.  The trees pass in a blur.  The sun is setting over London.  They are attracting stares now.  A man selling peanuts watches them streak past.  Abernetty is on a collision course with a small man walking down the path with a cane, every slow step a seeming struggle. 

"Stop that man!" Sherlock shouts.

Instantly, the limping fellow stands up straighter.  He tackles Abernetty to the ground in a way that Sherlock can only describe as artful.  Before anyone quite knows what is happening, Abernetty's chest is grinding against the pebbles as he thrashes, mouth practically frothing with curses.  The little man has both Abernetty's arms pinned behind his back and doesn't even seem to be breathing hard.

"All right, all right, settle down," the little man says mildly to Sherlock's prey.

Sherlock slows and stops before the small man, gasping.  The small man looks up, dark blue eyes alight.  He has dirty blond hair and a fascinating face--round and weathered, but handsome.  He wears a black jacket with a patch of leather on the shoulder, as if he is used to shouldering rifles.  His lips are quite thin, his grip on Abernetty steady as a rock.

"This a mate of yours, I take it?" he quips. 

"You've been in the Middle East, I perceive," Sherlock pants.

The man frowns, but he doesn't look displeased.  "How did..."

"Your wrists.  Well, and the military hold you're using on that killer under your knee."

"He's a killer?"

"On eight counts, yes.  Afghanistan or Iraq?" 

"Afghanistan."

The little man looks intrigued.  Lestrade staggers up, clutching at his side, silvery hair mussed and his shoes spattered with mud.  "You're under arrest," he bluntly says to Abernetty, who snarls as Lestrade pulls out a pair of handcuffs.  "And Sherlock, no matter what barmy adrenaline addiction you're suffering from, you can't just expect civilians to tackle bloodthirsty killers.  It's not cricket."

"I don't mind," the stranger says.

"He's not a civilian," Sherlock says.

"Well, I am now."

Lestrade hauls the spluttering Abernetty to his feet and passes him off to Donovan, who can run incredibly fast in heels and has just joined them.  The Yarders lead him off in the direction of the squad car that has pulled up to the edge of the park.  Sherlock holds out his hand to help the little man up.  He forgets Abernetty entirely.  The man's left hand is warm and calloused in places that mean he is extremely practiced at firing a gun.  The man's grip is sure, but when he gets to his feet, he leans a little.  Sherlock bends down and picks up the cane.  He hands it to him. 

"Ta," the little man says.  He smiles.  It's a curious smile.  "Are you a plainclothesman?"

Sherlock scoffs, disgusted.  "Wrong.  I'm a consulting detective."

"A detective.  Interesting."

"No, a consulting detective.  I've a turn for both observation and deduction, which led me to create a trade of my own.  Here in London we have lots of government detectives and lots of private ones.  When they're at fault, or when people are at the end of their wits, or the Yard is out of its depth, which is always, they come to me.  I'm the last court of appeal in criminal detection.  I take private clients, too.  When people are in trouble about something and want a little enlightening, I listen to their story, they listen to my comments, and I pocket my fee.  Now and again a case turns up which is a little more complex, and then I have to bustle about and see things with my own eyes.  Those are the best sort of cases.  I have a lot of special knowledge which I apply to problems, and that facilitates matters."

Sherlock belatedly grows aware that he is babbling terribly and shuts his mouth.  The small man is smiling in bemusement.  The smile looks very nice on him.  His teeth are white.  He has forgotten his injury and stopped leaning on the cane.  Psychosomatic, then.  Interesting.

Everything about this man is interesting.

"So this was the, er.  Bustling sort of case, then?"

"Precisely."

"Does bustling usually involve tackling murderers?"

"Sometimes."

"Happens often?" 

"Not often enough, but yes."

"What else do you consider bustling?  Car chases, gunfights, that sort of thing?"

"Yes."

"Sounds dangerous."

"It is dangerous."

"Lots of special knowledge.  So you went to consulting detection school then," he remarks.  "Didn't know that existed."

"No, I studied in a great many areas, all hand-selected and tailored to further my career.  I invented the job--I'm the only one in the world like me."

"Now, that I can believe."

Sherlock smiles, overwhelmed with delight.  There is something contradictory and compelling about this man.  He returns Sherlock's stare with both lightness and gravity.  The fact that Sherlock is staring in the first place is...unfortunate, he realizes.  A lot of people are put off by his stare.  Stupid people, sheeplike people.  This ex-soldier doesn't seem to mind the scrutinity, though, which is odd in and of itself.  That's marvelous.  Sherlock realizes that the thought of the small man being put off by him is absolutely unbearable.  But he has already babbled, and stared, and the small man is still here.

"Well, cheers, mate," the little man says, holding out a hand.  "Best of luck--"

"Dinner?"

"Excuse me?"

Think.  Sherlock feels panic mount in his chest at the thought of losing this very small, very strange person. 

"I have to thank you," he says.  "For tackling Abernetty.  You didn't have to do that, and it was...it was good.  So I would like to thank you for assisting me in my work by taking you to dinner and paying for the meal."

You sound like a fucking robot, Sherlock thinks in despair. 

The small man chuckles.  The small man finds him laughable.  God, it's mortifying.  The sun is nearly down, and the lights have come on in the park, glittering through the trees.  A couple on a quilted blanket a little distance away lie on their backs with their fingers entwined, watching the stars come out. Sherlock's heart is pounding painfully, and he hasn't got his breath back yet, and nothing makes sense anymore.  He wants to know everything about this person.  Sherlock wants to start with the day he was born and then read forward like a book, a page at a time, day by day, until he understands Afghanistan and the limp and the perfect small smile.

"I don't even know your name," the little man says.

"Sherlock Holmes."

"John Watson," he replies.  He sticks out his hand again and Sherlock shakes it.  He likes the feel of their palms together.  It makes sense, like a puzzle piece fitting.

"Hungry?" Sherlock breathes.

Please please please.

John Watson grins.  "Starving."

 

 

"Order anything you like, he meant what he said, he never charges me," Sherlock says loftily.

You sound like a complete ponce, he thinks next, shutting the menu and sliding it in despair a few inches away along the table.

"Nice way to thank you for clearing his name."

"I only cleared it a bit."

You already said that when Angelo was here, Sherlock thinks, and wishes the table would swallow him whole.  How do normal people carry out dates?  These cretins with their normal sex drives and their tiny little reptilian brains, how do they manage?  Is the ability to date inborn for normal people, the way wanting to take each other's clothes off is?  Is this a date?  It won't end in sex, but is it a date anyhow?  What comes next, then?  Compliments, perhaps, Sherlock decides.  People enjoy being given compliments.

"You're quite deft at tackling larger men to the ground," he says.

You just called him short.  If not small.  You are the biggest moron in the Commonwealth.  Your lack of sexual interest is a Darwinian measure against your breeding, so that the species won't be tainted by your inferior DNA. 

John Watson only smiles.  "Played rugby as a boy, if you can believe it."

Sherlock remembers how to breathe.  "It seemed to come naturally to you.  It surprised me because I expected you to ignore me.  That was extraordinary."

John shrugs.  He's wearing a thick cream-coloured jumper, and the shade darkens his hair to something deeper than gold, warmer than brown.  "It's not the maddest thing I've ever done."

"No.  You invaded Afghanistan."

"I invaded it a bit," John corrects, still smiling.

Angelo comes back to the table with focaccia in a basket and a rose in a vase.  He leaves both next to the olive oil, winking broadly, as if he knows exactly what is going to occur later and approves wholeheartedly.  Sherlock longs to die.  But John doesn't seem to mind.

"What were you doing if not invading?" Sherlock inquires.

"Ah.  Trying to save people's lives, mostly.  Occasionally I was even successful.  I'm a doctor."

"An army doctor," Sherlock repeats, awed.

You sound like you were just bashed in the head with a shovel, he realizes in despair.  Why would anyone so fascinating as a killer-healer continue on in your company?  And it is truly fascinating, this development.  John Watson, apparently, is not merely small and quick and strong and droll and friendly and bright and beautiful.  He is also brave and intelligent and thrillseeking and selfless and altruistic and dark and fierce and morally complicated.  Possibly, he is perfection.

"So you were saving lives while men were shooting at you," Sherlock continues.  "Then what happened?"

"Got shot."

"But not in the leg."

"No.  Wait, how did you know that?" John reaches for a piece of bread.

"You don't always remember your leg is in pain.  If the injury were to your leg, you'd feel it constantly."

"Instead of feeling magical imaginary phantom leg pain, yes," John agrees, and his voice is bitter.

Sherlock reaches for his own slice of bread simply for something to do even though he has never felt less hungry.  He's grateful for the fact that his fingers are steady.  What in hell has happened to his aloof sense of calm?  The buzz and hum of the restaurant is too loud in his ears.  Angelo reappears, rubbing his hands together like a gourmand.

"Go on and order, I'm not hungry," Sherlock says.

"Really?" John asks, surprised.  "Um.  Right, then.  What do you recommend?"

"The bolognese."

"Fine by me."  He nods to Angelo.  "Sure you're not peckish?"

Normal people eat while other people are eating to prevent them from feeling self-conscious about eating, Sherlock realizes and mentally slaps himself several more times.  "Two of the bolognese, and a bottle of the Dolcetto," he orders.

When Angelo disappears again, Sherlock resolves not to open his mouth until he's sure he can avoid inserting his foot in it.  But John seems to have forgot the leg pain conversation and looks quite at ease again.  He pours oil onto his plate and shoves a torn piece of bread around in it, entirely relaxed once more.  It's as if the tension had never happened.  Sherlock can't imagine how the smaller man has accomplished the shift in such a short period of time.  It seems he took his anger and simply shut it off with a switch.

"Do you have a girlfriend?" John asks affably.

Not this conversation, Sherlock begs the universe.  Not now, not so soon.  It always, always ends with someone being disappointed in him.  Always.

"No, not really my area," Sherlock manages.

"Oh.  Right.  Do you have a boyfriend, then?  Which is fine, by the way."

"I know it's fine," Sherlock snaps, feeling panic well up in his chest like water filling a car that has careened off a bridge.

"So you're unattached.  Just like me."

Drawing a breath, Sherlock dives in.

"John, while I am flattered by your interest, I think you should know that I consider myself married to my work, and that this dinner was intended as thanks and as an overture of gratitude on my part toward the person who stopped a vile assassin in the middle of Hyde Park and at a moment's notice without thought of reward, in the interests of public service, and that--"

"Hey," John interrupts gently.  "Sherlock--can I call you Sherlock?  It's fine.  Really.  It's...it's all fine.  I have no issues with tackling people who have tackling coming to them, all right?  It's fine.  Haven't tackled in ages, and it was a right treat.  Thanks for the dinner, though.  You don't owe me anything, certainly not any explanations."

Sherlock stares down his new acquaintance for a moment as the terror recedes.  Apparently it isn't enough for the detective to sound like an idiot.  He also has to sound like a nervous, braying coward.  That is just perfect, that is fantastic. 

"What's the matter?" John prods.

"Most people don't say that," Sherlock whispers.

"What do most people say?"

He shakes his head, forcing his usual neutral expression onto his face.  He is not about to answer that question.

They say "freak," or "you just haven't met the right person," or "you were probably raped as a child and repressed the memory," or "your hormones need fixing," or "you don't have to lie to me just because you're not attracted to me," or "wow, you must be really kinky to not want to talk about it that much."  Then they stare at me like I'm in a display case.  They're the ones who can't listen, but I'm the one who feels like a wristwatch in a shop window.  Made of plastic and batteries and there to be pointed at and then walked away from as the time ticks on.

They say "that must be unbearably lonely."

And then they leave.

"Never mind," John says.  And he seems to mean it, that the topic is now closed.  He leans back and crosses his arms in a way that reminds Sherlock of sitting before a cozy fireside.  "Tell me what observation and deduction are all about.  I've been in the market for a new hobby."

After dinner, which for the most part sails smoothly following the arrival of pasta and wine, though Sherlock only picks at his in the most disinterested fashion, he leaves five quid on the table for Angelo and puts his coat on.  John looks well fed and satisfied about it, and when they reach the door, Sherlock opens it for him.  The hour is late enough now that the streets have largely cleared.  The night is fine, but the September air nips.  Sherlock's flat is only a few blocks away, and the thought of returning to the experiment over the rate at which lye deterioration alters human cartilage is suddenly much less appealing than it was when he left the house this morning.  Now he will never see John Watson again.  John will return to the locum work he mentioned to Sherlock, and Sherlock will go back to solving crimes and abusing drugs recreationally, and when he dies one day, no one will notice until the flat begins to smell.

"Well, it was nice meeting you.  And weird.  Weird, but nice."  John offers his hand.  "Take care of your--"

"Come back to mine for coffee," Sherlock blurts out.

John blinks.  His hand is still in the air, and he lowers it.  He shifts his feet.  "I, um.  That's.  Okay.  Well, full disclosure, I think you should know that the answer on my part would be yes theoretically, but earlier, you said--"

"Coffee means coffee," Sherlock says, his mind racing.  "Because you deserve to know who you tackled.  I have the file and extensive notes.  I can tell you how I solved it, and you'll have a more complete picture of the case, and that will prevent you from feeling any residual guilt over it, when you see who you helped to capture."

"I don't feel guilty now," John points out reasonably.  And he's right, he doesn't appear guilty in the slightest.  "I trust you."

"Why?"

"I honestly have no idea."

"You don't have to trust me, you can see for yourself.  The case was an extremely engaging one."

"Lots of bustling?"

Sherlock cannot tell whether he's being mocked or not.  This is disturbing.  He suspects so, but not maliciously--the doctor is smirking without trying to hide the expression, checking the time on an incongruously expensive cell phone.

"Are you mocking me?"

"A wee bit."

"Most people don't dare."

"Most people aren't me."

"I noticed.  Come over, it's a three minute walk.  You want to, I can tell."

"How?"

Sherlock lifts a finger in a gesture meaning wait and goes back into the restaurant.  It was a gamble, but if nothing is ventured, then nothing will be gained.  When he reaches the table, which has already been cleared and reset, he grips the lightweight silver cane where it still sits propped against the wall in the shadows and closes his eyes for a moment.

Let this one stay for only a bit longer, he thinks.  Prays, perhaps, though he doesn't know to whom.  I'm good for him.  Let me keep him for a little while.  Please.  Then when I'm not enough, I promise to let him go.

When he reappears with the cane in hand, John raises his eyebrows and then he laughs.  Sherlock throws it in the air and John catches it easily, twirling it like a baton.  The street lights glint off of it as the scattered cars drive by.

"That's embarrassing," John says.

"Why?"

"Bloody fucking leg," he sighs under his breath, and then he smiles at Sherlock.  "I like coffee."

 

 

 

  

"This flat is brilliant," John says, admiring.

Sherlock knows it is.  He can barely afford to live there even with Mrs. Hudson's significant discount, but one likes to have space to think and whenever he's short on rent, he finds new ways to steal from Mycroft.  It's worth his ghastly older brother's irate phone calls to live in Westminster.  Besides, if you hate 90% of the people who ever enter your flat, the flat itself ought to be tolerable, he reasons. 

Sherlock sweeps his coat and suit jacket off and hangs them, then neatly pulls John's black coat from his shoulders, taking an instant to breathe the doctor's particular scent.  The flat is in Baker Street and it's technically too big for Sherlock, who keeps books and disguises in the upstairs bedroom and little else.  That's a bit of a waste, really.  But it's comfortably cluttered on the first floor, with its black and white damask paper and its mountain of chemistry equipment and Sherlock's friend the skull.  The skull is the best mate Sherlock has boasted in years.  It never asks questions and never develops touchy hands.  The skull lacks hands entirely, so the subject never comes up.  Sherlock puts his palms on his hips and swivels, appraising.

"I'd used to live in Montague Street in a hellhole," he confesses.  "This is much nicer."

"It suits you." 

"Yes."

John drops his cane against the side of the armchair facing the windows.  He smiles.  Sherlock's heart performs a small flip, though he cannot fathom why that should be.

"I'll make coffee.  Black?  I don't know that I have milk or cream."  Sherlock buries his head in the fridge, where two horses' hooves and a small jar of toes confront him.  "Bollocks.  I have Bailey's, though, somewhere, I think.  And sugar.  I do have sugar.  Or whiskey."  Switching the coffee maker on, Sherlock tries to focus, as he himself is entirely uninterested in coffee.  "Oh.  What I don't have is decaffienated coffee.  If you like I can pop down to Speedy's and--"

"Regular is fine.  Black is fine."  John has joined Sherlock in the kitchen, glancing casually about.  "You learn to take what you can get overseas.  Anyway, it won't matter, I can fall asleep on command practically."

"Because of medical school or the Afghan War?"

"Yes."  John smiles again, more tightly.  "It's the staying asleep that's a challenge."

"You have post-traumatic stress disorder," Sherlock conjectures.  "I can see it clear as day.  Intermittent tremor in your left hand, phantom leg pain, probably trust issues, nightmares, likely a sense of unreality in civilian situations.  Classic PTSD, perhaps including a sort of dreamlike state wherein you're not sure the tedium is real, the mundanity of it all, though real or not it haunts you anyhow.  When you tackled that killer, you were perfectly calm.  So stress doesn't trigger it, and violence in a civilian setting doesn't either, but inaction does.  Boredom.  Sleep.  Rest.  Fascinating.  The war changed you, but it didn't break you.  In a sense, you might even miss it.  The death, the heightened circumstances, the stakes at constantly high levels.  You became inured to horror and there's no real coming back from that.  So you look at that life, your armed services life, as better than your new one even if that's irrational by most standards, considering you probably watched your friends die.  And it isn't that you're glad they suffered, of course, but you want to be somewhere you can stop them suffering.  The trauma you survived works in reverse here--danger feels like normalcy.  You're terrified of calm."

John's mouth drops open and works for a moment before he closes it again.  His blue eyes have darkened nearly to black.  John pulls a hand over his neck, rubbing his nape. 

"Wow," John says evenly.

"You're not offended?"

"Do you want me to be?" John asks pointedly, leaning forward against the kitchen table.

Sherlock would very much like to answer that question and finds that he can only watch himself standing there silent in steel-coloured shirtsleeves, facing down an army doctor he suspects has killed a number of combatants.  Said doctor is either shocked or angry, and Sherlock wants to crawl down the drain if it's the latter.  He will live in Bazalgette's sewer with the other vermin.  But he cannot find the words.  Post-traumatic stress disorder was clearly a poor choice of topic, and Sherlock has zero tact.  This isn't generally a problem, well, yes, occasionally it's a problem, not that he cares what mouth-breathing semiconscious idiots think of him, not that he cares that he's universally hated except for a very few individuals, not that any of that matters, he can manage alone after all, can't he, he manages fine, but if he offends John Watson, John Watson will go away, and that is an unbearable outcome.

"You don't," John muses, straightening up again.  "Christ.  You really don't, do you?  You just talk at people, and whatever comes out, that mess is for them to deal with.  Over and over again, like playing twenty-one, until you finally lay down too high a card and bust.  What happens when you bust, as a general thing?"

Sherlock reflects.  "People leave, or they cry.  Or occasionally punch me in the face."

"I can see why that would seem their best option."

"I'm not much cop at self-censoring," Sherlock admits.  "I don't see the point of it.  But you haven't done any of those things." 

"I haven't been served my coffee yet."

A tiny spark of hope bursts into life.

"You really aren't angry?"

"It'd be pretty fucking cheap of me if I was, seeing as I suspect it's all true."

Sherlock barks a laugh, which is completely and utterly inappropriate, but he discovers to his shock that John is laughing too.  John is twisting his face to the side, laughing fit to burst, and it is possibly the best thing Sherlock Holmes has ever seen in his life.  John looks ten years younger, his sides shaking and his lined eyes scrunching up and his posture gone all awry as if he's on a ship's deck, they're both maurading pirates on a ship's deck, they're swaying in a salt breeze on the forecastle of a privateer having just cannonaded a slaver and rescued all its captives and seized all its gold and frankly it's...

Frankly, it's beautiful.

Sherlock finds that he has stopped laughing.

John stops too, more slowly.

"What's this?" he says, and his voice has changed.

Sherlock glances down at John's line of sight. 

Oh.

John is reading the latest letter, as it happens, and as it happens, this particular letter is rather bad even by comparison to the other 261.  Sherlock has been receiving them almost monthly since he was around eleven years old.  He doesn't like them, doesn't like the wreckage of his superior emotional balance they always, always cause, even though he does also feel a honing of the mental steel he wields when he receives a new missive--an almost painful sharpening of his wits as if against a grinding stone when his eyes follow the mad letters.

These particular letters read:

 Dearest Sherlock,

I'll be free in a week!  Aren't you excited?  We've made so many plans together over the years, I can't wait for some serious face time. 

There were so many moments, precious moments to me--moments like the other day when someone threatened me and I only kicked him in the bollocks a few times rather than beating him to death; a moment when a shower got frisky, just a touch on the crude side if you follow me, and I didn't much like where the flirting was going, I had a headache you understand, and I stabbed him in the eye with a pen (he claimed afterward he'd done it to himself and was mentally unfit to remain, what a dear little thing, soooooo clever!), and even when his mental health appeal failed I still let him live, though he didn't much want to by the time I was through, if you know what I mean; moments when every face I saw looked like your face, that oh so gorgeous face I found when you were in the papers last year for that liquor distributor case with the smuggler, Vamberry I think was his name (you're amazing, do you know that?), and I just stare at your picture and think about how I haven't yet burned those sweet sweet lips off with a curling iron.

I count the days, dearie darling duck,

Jim 

Reaching toward the paper, John pulls it closer.

"Who the fuck wrote this," he growls.

"I sent him to prison when I was ten," Sherlock answers softly.

John looks furious.  It's a very quiet fury.  He seems a bit smaller now, but in the way a lion on the prowl would slink through tall grass.  It's shockingly easy to picture him pouncing on something and tearing it apart.  Sherlock is delighted at this new John, but rather baffled by him.  Why should this letter make him angry?  Granted, it's sick.  But it has nothing to do with John.

John's left hand opens and shuts a few times, as if he's testing it.  But every trace of the tremor has vanished. 

"Tell me," he says.

Sherlock launches into a recital of the Carl Powers case, the trainers and the single-minded campaign he waged.  He isn't really listening to himself, he's told this story too many times, but John is rapt.  Sherlock supposes that's because Jim Moriarty's crime was exceedingly clever, for a man let alone a little boy, and so he slows the tale down to include a bit more detail and colour than usual.  Small memories like the way he felt when he saw New Scotland Yard for the first time, that he'd always imagined it would look like a fortress, gloomy and hulking and wonderful, and that instead it looked like a banking firm, and something about that was disappointing.  Then he explains that Moriarty quite rightly blames Sherlock for his lost childhood and plans to cut his ear off and send it packed in salt in a box to Mummy.  Sherlock has learned to be dispassionate about all this, and so he speaks quite calmly.

"And the police have what, they've done nothing?"

Sherlock shrugs.  "Well, he has the right to write letters."

"But not to harrass you."

"Obviously.  But they invariably contain useful information.  He reveals himself a little more to me every time, so on balance I'd prefer to have them.  For instance, he was in maximum security for a period, for running an extortion operation from the inside with allies who'd been paroled, but from this I can infer that he's out among the living again.  Useful.  He's expanded his network while incarcerated to the point that a man would prefer to lie about stabbing himself in the face than implicate the true perpetrator.  Again, useful.  He knows what I look like.  Useful."

John nods.  "I didn't think of it that way.  Stupid of me."

"Yes, but most people are stupid," Sherlock agrees. 

John coughs to cover another laugh.  He shakes his head.  "This seems serious, Sherlock.  Very serious.  As in, you know.  Deadly serious."

Sherlock recalls being twenty-three, on the occasion he tried heroin for the first time, while still taking desultory but crimesolving-relevant courses at uni.  It was just before Christmas but after finals.  His classmates had thrown a massive blowout at which he was treated like a ghost, a sort of ignore-the-problem-and-it-will-go-away technique they'd developed after discovering he was very pretty but not interested, and very sharp but not willing to help them cheat when they sat for exams, and very isolated but ready at the drop of a hat to explain who was shagging who while they sat at breakfast.  He'd stood there in the middle of the party, music thumping in his ears, a man and an island, and by a series of deductions he'd determined who had the best drugs and might be willing to barter them.  Giving a memorably distasteful and unhygienic blow job in a memorably trashed bathroom had led to the happy circumstance of Sherlock getting astronomically high after they'd all left.  And when he'd noticed a Moriarty letter in the little pile of mail in his new digs, and the fact that it had taken his enemy less than a month to discover that Sherlock had moved off campus to Montague Street and address the note accordingly, the drug-muddled panic had been so terrible he'd suspected that Moriarty wouldn't have to kill him after all, because the heart attack would finish him first.

On that occasion, Moriarty had wanted to chop Sherlock's arms and legs off with a cleaver and then keep him on life support until he was 90.

"Serious, yes," Sherlock sighs.  "Hand me your phone."

John's brows twitch.  "Why?"

"Because my phone is across the room in my coat pocket."

John looks a bit exasperated but hands it over.  He has a brother with a drinking problem, recently divorced.  Interesting.  Sherlock quickly types Another one. SH to Mycroft, as Mycroft tediously insists he do every time, which task he has been putting off since this morning.  Then he goes into John's contact list and adds Sherlock Holmes with his mobile number, hoping fervently that he won't be interrupted and that John won't notice what he's doing.  He is successful.  It is something akin to a test whether or not there is a God, and something akin to betting on roulette, and something akin to a desperate measure.  Closing down the screen, he passes the phone back to John.

"Shit, look at the time," John mutters.  "I really have to go now, all right?  Thanks for having me, and for dinner.  And for telling me about that creep.  It's been a very interesting day, but I have to work in the morning."

"Dull," Sherlock scoffs.

"Yeah, but I'm poor," John chuckles.  He heads back into the sitting room for his cane.  "And I want at least six hours of sleep, and I'm all the way across London from you."

"Sleeping is boring."

"Not when I do it," John says, and once again a dark undertone has crept into his speech.  "Trust me."

Sherlock follows John to the door after he dons his coat.  This time when they shake hands, John doesn't smile.  He chews his lip.  His nearness and the imminent loss of it pull at Sherlock in a physical way, like gravity or magnetism, as if they each give off opposite charges or as if John's density is far, far more vast than his true size.  Sherlock suspects a little of both is at work.

"Watch out for yourself, okay?" John says.  "I mean it.  You're...  That's just not a good letter, not at all.  Keep an eye on your flank for me."

John leaves, and Sherlock shuts the door and locks up for the night.  He then slides down it with his back against the wood, sighing, until he is sitting on the floor. 

Silence.

As usual.

Nothing to be done about it, unless he gets up and faffs about on his Strad.

Silence is to be expected.

Still.

His flat is a flat again.  For a very brief while, his flat was like a snow globe, shaken and swirling with sparkling flakes, everything different and everything brighter. 

Which is it tonight, Sherlock thinks tiredly, letting his head list back, morphine or cocaine?

Since falling in with Lestrade, he has to be more careful.  But he manages to hide it, though the dosage is sometimes insufficient to his purposes and the highs are only effective after he's made himself stop for a week or more.  Every morning he thinks about drugs and every morning he manages not to do them, in case a crime comes up that needs solving.  But by the time the day is through, the silence in his flat is too much to be born stoically.

Ping.

Standing, Sherlock reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out his phone.  The text is from an unknown number.

Nice touch. They broke the mold when they made you, eh?

The universe expands and then contracts, a Big Bang sensation of hurtling through space and then returning to a simple flat in Baker Street with a Union Jack pillow and wide front windows and cigarettes stashed away in the toe end of a Persian slipper.

"Oh," Sherlock breathes.

Shattered it, rather.  SH

The answer comes six minutes later and Sherlock discovers he has been standing perfectly still staring at his mobile in his hand during the entire period.

Well, you need any tackling done, you know where to reach me. 

Sherlock peers at the barely veiled suggestion, his heart in his throat.  It's too good to be real.  No one wants to spend time with him voluntarily.  Well, maybe Molly, but then Molly is mad.  He's still staring when his phone chimes again.

Though I suppose you do fine on your own generally. Anyway, cheers for the pasta, mate. Glad to be of use.

"No, no, no, no," Sherlock hisses, typing furiously.

A trusty companion is always of use.  SH

This time Sherlock paces his way through the waiting period, fingers rubbing manically at his hair.

I'm meant to blog for my therapy. It's usually rubbish, but today's will be slightly better than complete crap. What do you think of bloggers? Are they of use?

The thought of John writing about their day is quaint but wonderful, like a diary or a memorandum book.

Even more so.  SH

Sherlock sets off for the bedroom with his mobile.  He's pulling a soft sleeping shirt over his head when ping goes the phone and he nearly strangles himself to death trying to reach it while his arms are only half through the sleeves.

Really? Most people just whinge on about how they hate their jobs and post pictures of their food. My last post was about my laundry.

It's useful for crimesolving when people archive their entire lives online. Why your laundry? Was it stolen?  SH

Nope, nothing so exciting as a crime, it just was dirty and I wrote that down to get my therapist Ella off my bloody back. Nothing ever happens to me.

Although it is irrational, Sherlock feels a surge of bitter jealousy, because this Ella person is paid money by the Crown to talk with John Watson on a regular basis, even though she is clearly an idiot, and that is so very very very unfair.

But today you happened to Abernetty. Rather hard, in fact.  SH

I did happen to him. My wrist is a bit sore.

Worth it?  SH

Sherlock curls up with his phone on the sofa, nowhere near ready or willing to sleep.  He pretends that the answer to this question doesn't have his stomach tied in knots.  But when the mobile finally buzzes in his hand, he almost can't bring himself to read the message.

Oh god, yes.

Smiling, Sherlock wriggles his toes and stretches into a lazier curve.

Let's have dinner.  SH

What, hungry already after the two entire bites of pasta you consumed?

I'm not hungry. Let's have dinner.  SH

That makes no sense.  But sure. Later in the week, maybe. Text me.

It's a signal to shut up, which Sherlock recognizes, but he has no desire to be alone again.

Tell me about the war.  SH

What, now?

Yes. You aren't otherwise occupied, you're on a bus.  SH

Why do you keep writing your initials?  And how did you know that?

Yawning, Sherlock flops over so he's facing the back of the sofa, which is always nicer, like being in a cave.

Precision. You said you were poor, thus you don't have a car and it is equally unlikely you can afford the high cost of cabs and you're texting me, so you aren't on the Underground.  SH

A few minutes pass before John responds, minutes spent begging the universe not to allow him to feel offended over being called poor quite so bluntly, even if John did it first.  Sometimes, Sherlock remembers, people say things about themselves that are untrue, hoping to be contradicted.  But John doesn't seem like the type.

That's amazing.

Reaching out, Sherlock runs his finger over the letters.  Why do they make him feel like this, like his chest is tight and his heart hurts?

Elementary.  SH

More minutes pass, achingly slow.

The war was hot, dirty, and violent.

They text for another hour.  Sometimes John doesn't respond for a few minutes and Sherlock despairs, sometimes the answer comes right away, answers about guns and hand grenades and Americans and bleeding out and insurgents and chemical weapons and what enteric fever feels like to the point where Sherlock thinks he can smell the sand of the desert from here.  And all thanks to a series of brief text messages.  It's marvelous.  More than marvelous.  Something deeper.

Finally John sends this message:

I'm home now. Going to bed. Read a book or something.

What book do you suggest?  SH

He snugs himself further into the cushions and awaits John's reply.  It doesn't come, however, and he feels his eyelids closing, so he allows himself to drift away inside the silence, having entirely forgotten about both morphine and cocaine, phone tucked in his hand up by his neck.

It's late the next morning, when Sherlock awakes, that he realizes very possibly he has a mere week to live, and he never made John coffee.

 

 

And it's all his own fault, too, for being so careless.  Sherlock knows chemistry, he knows he's incapable of getting that high without a crash, he's a bloody scientist, he's supposed to be precise, he adores precision in fact, and he deliberately ignored the likely outcome in favour of a temporary solution to a problem.  So what if it had been too quiet?  It's always too quiet here.

And John came back after all.  But that doesn't matter now. 

John will be leaving soon.  Probably for good.

John pours steaming water over two tea bags Sherlock can't remember telling him where to find because it probably didn't happen and then taps his fingers against the countertop a few times, sighing.  Then he goes back to the part where he snatches up Sherlock's wrist without asking and counts in his head while he glares bloody murder at the second hand of the clock.  Sherlock doesn't have to ask him why, not that John has spoken directly to him yet: Sherlock's heart has been racing a hundred meter dash ever since he awoke.  It's typical of his crashes and therefore dull.  Uncomfortable nevertheless.  John doesn't need to worry over it, but the sleuth doesn't dare to attempt the first actual exchange of words on this subject. 

He stares despairingly at the picture--it doesn't seem at all real--of his white wrist in John's darker hands, with the tiny puncture wound up on his inner elbow.  John cleaned the drop of dried blood away with the hot water and a flannel as the first order of business.  Even before the tea preparations.  Sherlock isn't remotely certain why. 

If John is angry and soon to be gone forever and wants tea, well then, all the more reason he should have tea.

Sherlock studies the small mark himself, curious but expressionless.  He doesn't often look at his arm unless he's making direct use of it.  He uses a perfectly sharp and new disposable needle every single time, and alternates where he injects it, occasionally even takes a respite from the needles entirely in favour of pills or powder still more carefully measured, because he once saw a man outside of a nightclub sitting in a cardboard box whose forearm was as full of red-edged craters as the surface of Mars, and one cannot be a consulting detective in such a state.  Such a state is...repellent, in any event.  Sherlock isn't like that, he simply isn't like that, he isn't, they are nothing alike, he is a chemist.  So Sherlock is very hygienic.  Still.  Despite the feathery blue veins and the lack of track marks, it is...disturbing.  Countless little healed-over indentations, as if raindrops had fallen on clean white sand.

"You and I," John says after dropping Sherlock's wrist for the third time, "are now going to have a very fucking direct conversation."

Sherlock's heart sinks still further into the ground.  John's tone is even, but brooks no argument, in the way that tanks driving along flat desert surfaces with their heavy artillery loaded and ready to blast people to dust are also quite even-keeled.  John goes to the mugs of tea and removes the bags, bringing them back to the table.  Steam rises in Sherlock's face.  It's rather nauseating.  John, despite having tea now, doesn't sit down.  He stops before Sherlock, taller for once because the detective is seated, and begins his assault.

Goodbye, he is going to say, and good luck, thinks Sherlock.

"This is a regular thing, I take it."

Leaning back a bit, away from the steam, Sherlock fights the exhaustion and the dread that are urging him to just lock himself in his bedroom in the dark for all time and be done with the rest of it.  "That isn't a question," he rasps.

"No," says John, more slowly though no less firm, "it's not, because this is a conversation, I said, Sherlock, and while I'm your doctor at the sodding moment because you clearly need one and I am here, I'm not going to bully your life story out of you any more than I would any other patient."

"Oh, grand, a doctor conversation," Sherlock snaps viciously.  "How good of you to do pro bono work, not to mention house calls.  I've had all my jabs, more than my share in fact as you can see, I'm allergic to penicillin, I don't have a venereal disease, and I'll happily endorse your application to join Doctors Without Borders.  Here I thought your interest was, oh I don't know, idle curiosity.  How rude of me."

"No again, you complete twat," John growls, now sitting on the table and pulling the first aid box nearer.  "No, fucking no, Sherlock Holmes.  It is not idle bloody curiosity.  I don't know what the fuck you want from me, but this is not idle curiosity, not after the last few days of whatever the hell this has been.  I said doctor and patient because--you know, you're right, fuck that, you don't even understand what the bounds of professional propriety and confidentiality are anyhow, you're like a teenager with his own culture of one, so let's get to brass tacks."

"Must we?"

"Yes.  How long has this been going on?"

"Long enough."

"Answer me."

"Why does it matter?"

"Because if you don't agree to talk with me, even if it's just to say you won't or can't answer the question because it's too private, I am at.  You know.  A loss to say what I'm doing here."

The dark at the edges of Sherlock's fuzzy vision becomes solid black when his eyes fall shut.  Then there are starbursts and pinpricks from spectres in his retinas and the blood pulsing in his shivering eyelids and the aching world in his head explodes into a kaleidoscope of red and green and violet.  John's warm hand registers again on his left arm, but higher up this time, a warning perhaps, a second before a cotton ball soaked in what smells like iodine passes over his pricked skin.  This is ridiculous.  This is what weakness looks like, what pity does too, and despite the softness of the touch, maybe even because of it, Sherlock can't remember anything so painful. 

This is worse than overdosing.  At least overdosing is dangerous instead of pathetic.

"Over ten years, give or take, off and on, presently strictly monitored," Sherlock manages.  It emerges as a croak.

"Except for last night, it wasn't," John says, and there is something else there under the steel, something sad. 

"Why are you doing this, Doctor?"

"Because it's my job.  Why did you start?"

"Why did your brother start drinking?" Sherlock snarls.

He hears another quick, angry sigh being heaved.  "Okay, we deal with your magical powers and the fact that completely gobsmacked me later.  At least you know...well, at least you can assume that I know something about this.  About...self-medication, substance abuse, functioning addiction, recreation, partying, coping, whatever you want to call it.  And I don't have a brother."

"Yes, you do.  I've seen your phone."

"That makes no sense.  And I have a sister named Harry, Sherlock, and a very fucking short fuse right now."

Groaning, Sherlock slumps onto his right hand, elbow propped against the table.  He risks a look at John and the business of the moment again.  The doctor is taping a little piece of gauze to the wound.  It makes Sherlock want to scream it wasn't supposed to be you who covered it, I'd have covered it, Jesus, I never never wanted you to see that, I'd have covered any part of me that was ugly and now it's too late, you're not meant to hide that away, it ought to have been me.

"There's always something.  Pretty sight, isn't it," Sherlock whispers.

John darts a glance at him, passing his tongue over his mouth.  "It isn't pretty, no.  It's not ugly either."

"Of course it is, don't be inane."

"It's a piece of you."

"You don't really believe that."

"Not about my own scars, no."

"That's so illogical as to be completely senseless."

"So is life, in case you hadn't noticed that yet."

Humming, Sherlock closes his eyes again.  John's hands are gone now.  He's finished, packing up the medical kit.  His hands were a nice distraction, if only for the time being.  Sherlock hears John's footsteps leaving and then coming back into the kitchen.  He's probably departing now.  That's a pity.  They would have had a few more days together if not for this, maybe even another adventure, before Moriarty came and the world ended.

"Drink the tea.  It's cooled enough now."

"Ugh."

"Drink the fucking tea before I put it down your throat.  And use it to take these.  And then answer my previous goddamn question."

Sherlock's eyes open and his spine straightens before he can stop himself.  John is standing there with a pair of innocuous nonprescription painkiller and fever reducers and an expression that could knock a grown man dead.  Scooping the pills from John's hand with long, shaking fingers, Sherlock swallows them dry and then takes a sip of the tea because in for a penny, etc.  And if John kills him, at least he probably won't torture him first.

"Talk," John says.

Sherlock clears his throat, as if that's going to make any difference.  It doesn't.  "I started because my mind is a jet propulsion engine, just building and building and building pressure continually, and without the work, without the mental exultation, it feels as if it's going to explode like a space shuttle strapped to the tarmac after the countdown has ended.  People aren't always supplying me with the necessary problems and cryptograms.  The work is everything I have.  Without it...I hate--"  Sherlock stops, swallowing hard.  He covers the violent wave of rage at his life with a brief coughing fit.  "Your next question is about drug safety and needle sharing and yes, I'm always safe, and no, I would never dream of it, that's disgusting.  My life is no different than someone who uses sleeping pills or mood-altering anti-depressants." 

John sits on the table again, sipping his own tea.  "Which are also dangerous, like any controlled substance, and should be regulated by a medical professional.  Though that was a great try at rationalization.  Unbelievable.  You're a classic case, you realize.  Okay.  I have a very big problem with this, my problem with this is on a global fucking scale, Sherlock, but I'm trying to understand.  What substances are we talking about here?"

"Cocaine, almost always.  Morphine occasionally."

"Fucking hell, Sherlock," John says through clenched teeth.  "Christ, you utter, utter prick.  Do you know what you could do to yourself playing with street drugs like this?  What happens if the supply is tainted?  I just.  This blows my fucking mind.  Do you chemically test every new batch personally?  What if it's laced with something, Sherlock?  What if it's stronger than it ought to be and you overdose?  What if it's whipped up by some thug in a mobile home who doesn't know what he's doing and you suffer the consequences?  As is extremely likely.  What if, and bear in mind I don't bring this up with most people, god knows, one of your enemies gets ahold of it and laces it with poison?  What if some back alley batch of coke irrevocably affects your brain?  Your brain is...I've never seen anything like it, Sherlock, it's extraordinary.  Your brain is how you work, it's who you are.  It's.  How could you possibly risk that, whatever the rush?"

Sherlock laughs, which hurts his throat horridly and forces him to stop.  "You sound like my dealer.  Or I think you do.  I deleted the conversation, but that was the gist of it."

John's eyes turn to blue steel points.  "Excuse me?"

"He doesn't like it either."  Sherlock glances over at where he sent his floor lamp crashing last night, at where it's still askew on the rug, and realizes that there is more evidence here for John of a wild binge than he had assumed.  "My dealer.  We work together when I need inside information in certain circles.  I only dose myself when I'm lethally bored, but he...he still wants me to stop."

They fall quiet.  John drinks tea, and Sherlock drinks tea, and John thinks, while Sherlock remembers the first time.  He'd just solved a case, in London, a case he'd badgered the Yard into letting him consult over, because it was marvelous, a locked room and an obscure motive and a thrilling chase, all the wonderful things that mattered most to him.  He'd gone back to uni aglow at the solution and his own audacity, feeling at his best and brightest, marched onto the campus, and stared around him at the quiet walks and the tree branches and the other bustling students and the lonesome open sky, and he'd realized that although he'd been in all the city papers that morning, BOY GENIUS DOES IT AGAIN, not a single soul in his courses would either notice, care, or speak of it.  They were presently walking past him, pretending he was invisible.  He'd smoked two cigarettes, scored a bag of coke from a weedy punk who pretended to be absorbed by medieval studies when he was really absorbed with arcane combinations of hallucinogens, and after that felt a good deal more cheerful.

"You're telling me you don't use when you're working?" John asks quietly.  "Ever?"

"Is this the best time to make me repeat myself?" Sherlock sneers.  "Or are there more dirty secrets, sorry medical history, that you want from me?"

"Fuck with me right now and I will call nine nine nine and suggest a drugs bust." 

"You wouldn't.  You'd decimate my career."

John raises his eyebrows.  "Watch me.  Careers can be rebuilt."

"You are..." Sherlock breathes.  He shakes his head.  The tea is nearly gone, so he finishes it.  It has settled his stomach, if only a little.  "I can't get your limits."

John smirks softly.  "They're...what was the word you used to describe yourself, the old-fashioned one?  Eccentric.  I'm eccentric.  Answer the question."

"Yes," Sherlock sighs.  "I'm saying I don't use when I'm working.  Ever."

"So your addiction is psychological rather than chemical."

"It's not an addiction, I've stopped plenty of times.  But if by psychological you mean when my brain is tearing itself to pieces, yes."

"And you only fuck with your brain like it's a chemistry set during the down times."

"Brains are chemistry sets, you ought to have learned that in med school if you had one of your own.  And I'm an excellent chemist."

"You're also a drug addict."

"That..."  Sherlock drops his shoulders and tilts his head back.  He pulls in a deep breath.  "That I am willing to concede, if it means something to you.  Even if it means nothing to me."

John nods.  Sherlock starts shivering again.  It comes in waves, the feeling of being hollowed out and set afire with currents all at once, and it's getting worse before it gets better.  He's done this before, and oh how he loathes himself in this state.  A tiny dose of cocaine would help, but...no, John would clearly object to that procedure.  His mind palace is still there, but all the lights are out, the hallways empty and dark, the paintings turned toward the walls, refusing to give him any meaningful input.  Where normally the palace is full of light and life, a museum of living memories, ghosts are wailing and scratching at the walls.

"Here," John says.  He retrieved Sherlock's dressing gown, apparently.  "Come on, up."  He pulls Sherlock up by the elbows and before he knows it, the robe is around him, as deftly tugged on as any professional nurse could do and better than most.  John pulls the lapels tighter over his shoulders and then slides an arm around Sherlock's waist.  "You're for bed.  Though I'm not through with this little talk yet.  Where's your room?"

"Sofa is fine."

"What did I just say about fucking with me?"

"That way," Sherlock says, fighting a hysterical urge to giggle.  "My bedroom is that way."

The progress is slow but efficient.  And Sherlock's bedroom, though he uses it but sporadically, isn't far.  John switches the light on, glances about, and then yanks the bedcovers down with his free hand.  The burning weakness in Sherlock's legs means that he would rather collapse there than collapse on John and humiliate himself further, so he goes without further protest.  Anyway, a binge like this will take at least a day to wear off.  God, how idiotic.  Sherlock is a man of such habitual orderliness that he could physically slap himself.  Nothing like this was supposed to happen.  Curling up on his side, Sherlock reaches up and runs a hand through his hair.  The harmless little pills John carried are starting to make the static between his ears less loud, though he can't stop trembling.

"Next question," Sherlock prompts hoarsely.

John tugs the blanket up over him and then sits on it, smoothing the edge down.  He looks terrible, Sherlock realizes once more.  As if he spent the night arguing with someone or waiting for a dire phone call or propped in a plastic hospital chair.  John breathes in, a calming breath, looking around himself at the periodic table and Sherlock's martial arts certificate.  He half smiles upon seeing that, then looks down at Sherlock once more.  Sherlock wonders if he understands what it means.

"Earlier, when you were comparing your mind to a jet engine, you were about to say you hate something.  You hate what?"

Sherlock nods toward his sitting room, wriggling and freeing his upper body from the covers.  He curves his arms up by his head and settles back down.  "The dull routine of existence."

"Your life?  You've got to be kidding me.  The child prodigy detective's life is dull?"

No, but it's rather a sucking void without the cases to fill it, and then you were there and then gone and you're not to blame for this, I am, only me, but the contrast was extremely unsettling.

"Well, there's the trouble with genius."  Sherlock touches the tape on his arm idly beneath the blue silk, wondering how long it would stay on its own if he tried to leave it there forever.  "It needs an audience.  Why did you come back this morning?  You left.  I offended you again, and you left.  I didn't mean to.  I can't understand why you're still here.  Why are you doctoring me when you don't even like me?"

John shakes his head at once, strongly.  He looks to be struggling with something for a long, pained moment before he speaks.  "Sherlock, this...this sort of thing.  The overindulgence, binge, whatever.  Is it..."

"I've answered enough questions to get one back in trade," Sherlock hisses.

"I'm trying!  Christ, Sherlock.  What I'm trying to say is if in any way I...contributed to your...oh, fuck me, there is no way to say this.  You're a grown man, so am I, we make our choices, we deal with the results.  End of story.  I'd never want to patronize you.  Or assume a false sense of responsibility.  What I came to say this morning is that I think the way I left might have been hurtful, I've been bollocksing things at bloody ramming speed lately, and if it was hurtful, I'm sorry.  I'm not saying you're fragile.  But I'm a complete head case just now.  I'm sorry for taking a taxi with no explanation after a moment that was...it was nice, yeah?  That was not your fault."

Sherlock peers up in utter bewilderment.  John doesn't seem to want to meet his eyes.  Then he realizes that he's avoiding eye contact and angles a look down at him.  The blue pools are very dark today.  The sleuth can barely make out the doctor's pupils. 

"You left because I was nice?" he repeats incredulously.

"No, you twit," John retorts.  "I cannot believe I have to explain this to you.  Look, full disclosure, all right?  Cards on the table.  I pulled an illegal firearm on a man for you, we can get through this fireside chat, right?  So I'm going to be honest right now."

Nodding, Sherlock studies John's face, his uncertain but determined lips and his world-weary eyes.  John waits another moment before speaking, but then he plunges in with confidence.

"I told you I was lonely and you told me I was a good person and not a nice one and I jumped in a cab just in time to have a panic attack, not because of you, Sherlock, okay, not because of you, or not because you made a mistake, god it wasn't, it felt amazing, but because I was starting to...to scare myself a little and I ran.  It was executed horribly, in the tactical sense.  I know that.  But if I hadn't left, I'd have crossed a boundary with you."

"I still can't understand," Sherlock urges, voice rattling.  "Make more sense.  Don't be vague, I can't bear vagaries."

"Fine."  John's mouth pulls into a thin, calm line.  "Sarah and I aren't exclusive.  We don't have any sort of romantic arrangement.  You were right, I'm not in love with her--I like her, she's a friend.  And I'm properly bisexual, by the way, for what it's worth.  But when you asked why I was shagging her if I wasn't in love with her, it.  It just wasn't really a question that would necessarily occur to...most people.  You know, dull people, nice ones.  If people stopped shagging everyone they weren't in love with, the economy would probably collapse.  And you also said she wasn't good enough for me, which was complete bollocks by the way.  So.  I haven't wanted to ask, and I'm not really a labels man.  But you're...do you have a good descriptor, one you like?"

Oh.

Sherlock rolls onto his back, covering his face with one unsteady hand. 

This is officially the worst day of his life.  If Moriarty could top this, Sherlock would have to applaud in sinister appreciation.  Because it would take the effort of an evil genius to outdo today for sheer bloody awfulness.

"Hey," John says gently, "come on.  It's a compliment, not a threat.  You just confuse the shite out of me, Sherlock.  You're so...so passionate, its.  And the way you move, your body language is frankly stunning, and I just got my wires crossed a bit, yeah, typical bloke mistake.  If you're straight, or not attracted to PTSD-riddled veterans, god knows there's one that wouldn't stagger me, it's fine.  I respect that you said coffee means coffee.  I do.  Hey," he repeats, rubbing at Sherlock's upraised elbow, "nothing is the matter, I was about to apologize for having been ready to snog you senseless if I stood there one more minute and then fleeing, and I--"

"Asexual," Sherlock reports in a dead tone, letting the arm John is touching be softly pulled from his face. 

Kissing John Watson, god, and he wanted to, at the same instant I wanted it more than anything he even wanted me to and I wasn't alone in that after all, me of all people, how do people live through feelings like this when that can never happen because it would mean the end of everything. 

"I discovered the term online at age twenty," Sherlock forces out.  "I'm not a virgin, but I don't want to talk about that.  Yes, all my various sex acts were consensual.  What would your other questions be?  Let's follow the general pattern.  Have I ever desired intercourse with another person?  No.  Have I experimented?  Yes.  Am I sure, really really sure?  Yes.  When did I last have sex?  Seven years ago.  Do I masturbate?  Yes, very infrequently and when I have no other choice.  I hate it, it's like electrocuting myself.  Do I dislike being touched in general?  No, not more than anyone else does.  Am I into horrible sex practices and simply celibate for the good of humanity, no, shall I list the things I'm not inflicting on innocent--"

"Sherlock," John exclaims, horrified, catching him more fully by the wrist.  "Stop.  Just.  God, stop.  Enough.  Who in god's name ever--"

"It was nice meeting you," Sherlock says, throat tight.

"Will you shut the fuck up and listen to me for a moment?  Whatever you've been told by complete tossers, there is nothing wrong with you.  Do you hear me?  Nothing whatsoever."

"Of course not.  Neither is there anything wrong with shooting street drugs.  Thank you for the hangover assistance, now if--"

"Sherlock," John says, the command back in his tone.  "Are you chucking me out of your flat because you have a very attractive mouth and I noticed on an empty street corner in a moment of revoltingly maudlin self-pity?  Because that would be truly daft."

"God, no I'm not chucking you out."  Sherlock laughs an ugly little laugh.  "My flat is nicer than yours.  You ought to live here.  It would be...practical.  Oh, fuck, please just leave me alone."

John falls silent, but he doesn't let go of Sherlock's wrist.  It's nice, like being attached to someone, so Sherlock doesn't object.  He instead closes his eyes and pictures star systems in their multitudes, silent cold configurations in the vast void of space, until he feels as if he's probably neither going to hyperventilate nor throw up.  All the while, John anchors his wrist, and all the while Sherlock wonders why.  It's senseless.  He can obviously offer John nothing save chaos and a convenient flatshare that doesn't interest him.  His pulse is still far too high, and John has his thumb over it.  Possibly counting again.  Possibly marveling at the freak.

"You said earlier that genius needs an audience," John says at last.  His voice has lost all the hardness of the John from the kitchen.  Instead he sounds nearly hopeful.  "Is that what you want?  Because you've texted me, um, a lot.  You have texted me half to death.  And I need to know why so I don't make it into something it isn't."

Opening his eyes, Sherlock looks at John half-smiling at him and thinks I want every particle of you.  And you will never know that.  Not if I can help it.  Never.

"So what you want is an audience?" John prompts.

"A colleague," Sherlock whispers. 

For a split second, one Sherlock thinks he might have imagined, John looks disappointed.  But this is the way it's going to work, if only for a few more days.  This is what keeps him safe.  This is how the impossible will be made merely improbable--if keeping John means never allowing him to imagine Sherlock might be enough for him, then by god, that is what Sherlock will do.  Because a tiny piece of this tiny person is worth any effort in an infinitely large world.

"I think I can manage that," John answers at last, equally low.

The warmth leaves the detective's wrist as John scrunches his eyes shut and he rubs them, yawning.  "That sounds.  That sounds good, Sherlock.  I don't know what you see in me.  Or why it requires so many texts.  But hell, why don't I find out, I've nothing better on, after all."  John smiles as he drops his hand and squeezes Sherlock's wrist once more, lightly.

"I thought you had clinic hours," Sherlock muses, if only to delay departure.

"Rampant lie, that."  John shakes his head.  "Sorry for all this nonsense.  Dreadful, really.  Won't happen again."

"Mmm.  You're exhausted."  Sherlock backs up, pushing himself fully on the other side of his bed.  "You can rest here for a while.  If you like."

"Er, no," John says, face darkening.  "No, I cannot do that."  Then his eyes drift to the other side of the room.

"It's not contagious," Sherlock observes icily.

"Sorry, hmm?  Oh, god," John exclaims, and then he laughs.  A full-throated laugh, too, the sort that is the only defense against absurdity.  "Not you.  I don't...no, you're not contagious.  You're extraordinary, and I.  Ha.  No.  I'm dangerous when I'm sleeping."

"Oh," Sherlock says softly.  "I'm dangerous when I'm awake, you said.  So it's fine."

John laughs again, and this time there isn't any distress in the sound.  Sherlock pictures him in dusty fatigues, skidding down a rill of sand toward a nest of snipers or riding in the back of a Humvee or shouldering a rifle or storming into a shell of a stone building with pieces of mortar blast around his combat boots.  He pictures him packing high-tech absorption materials over wounds that will bleed out anyway.  It's easy, because this, apart from the text messages, is how Sherlock falls asleep now.  He pictures ragged sobbing children running for John and John scooping them into his arms and away from harm.  He pictures John under the Afghan stars, only there you can see them for what Sherlock knows them to be, wild swaths of multicolored light.

"I'm not afraid of you," Sherlock states.

John licks his lower lip, exhaling hard.

"Are you afraid of anything?" he inquires.

"No, nothing.  Well," Sherlock sighs, "one thing a little, but that's a Pavlovian repetition of a childhood response to threat of pain and death, which is purely animal but ingrained unfortunately by means of multiple instances, and since I know it's an instinctual lower brain function that formed a regrettable groove in my youth, I can override it."

A smile appears on John's face.  He shakes his sandy head in disbelief.  It's one of the fondest looks Sherlock has ever seen.

"Are you saying you're only afraid of a psycho killer who wants to torture you to death because you were exposed to him as a child and not an adult?"

"Yes," Sherlock agrees.

"Okay, fuck this, if you can make up self-calming therapeutic bullshit that effective when it's complete crackers, I can too," John says decisively.

He toes off his shoes, leaving them by the side of the bed, and goes into the kitchen for a moment.  Sherlock hears a subtle clicking, but nothing further.  When John returns, he settles on his back on top of the coverlet at some distance from Sherlock, with his hands peaceably folded over each other.  He looks quite harmless, but of course Sherlock knows better. 

"What did you do?" Sherlock wonders.

"I broke down my gun," John says calmly, "and then I put a pretty important part of it in the microwave.  It doesn't generally get that bad, but.  That's.  What I did.  Yep."

Sherlock stares at the side of John's lined face.  His profile is perfect, the tilted-up nose and the small chin.  There is a piece of his gun in the microwave.  That is better than any fantasy Sherlock could ever have dreamed up during the wildest morphine high.

"Are you still angry with me?"

"Mmm-hmm.  Raging."

"Are--"

"No, I don't live here, yes, I'm exhausted, yes, I will punch you in the face if you keep talking.  Now, sleep it off."

It takes a few minutes, because Sherlock is watching John's breath, in and out, in and out, and also his eyelashes fluttering and also the way his lips relax ever so slowly out of their set horizontal.

But eventually, his eyes close, and he shudderingly drifts off to sleep.

When Sherlock awakes, the room is dark and John is gone.  But upon further investigation, a much steadier and less achy Sherlock Holmes finds a note sitting on his bedside table that reads:

Why are there horse hooves in the fridge?  I'm off to mine, but I ordered takeaway and left you the pho I didn't finish.  I think you live off of adrenaline, which is not actually sustainable.  Eat the food, drink more fluids, take it easy for once.  I actually truthfully work a double shift tomorrow, so don't text me all day long if you can help it.  People get miffed when their doctors are thinking about crime and not whooping cough.  I'll see you soon.  That was a nice rest, actually, so cheers.  I don't often sleep that well.

Try not to fuck with your brain, please.

Your colleague,

Dr. John H. Watson   

 

 

 

"You're back," says Sherlock.

Yes.  He's back.  Are you or are you not a genius?  Why must you state the obvious every bloody time he--

"Yeah, well, I was uncomfortable with the letters," John says, rubbing his hands together as he comes into the kitchen, "and I know we haven't been acquainted for very long but, you know, no one should have to go through that.  It got my hackles up.  But, um, a head.  That's just.  We are done with this son of a bitch.  And I realized, if I were you, and I'd been dealing with this shite for practically my entire life, I wouldn't want to sleep alone in this flat either right about now, and that's what that was all about, and...yeah, sorry for reading something else into it, but your instincts for self-preservation are pretty spot on the money, asking someone to move in, even if that someone is a bit slow on the uptake as to your motives and was being an unnaturally wary berk about the whole thing.  Not that you weren't right about this being closer to the clinic and my flat being so depressing you want to test the oven by putting your head in it.  I'm not accusing you of completely selfish motives or anything, I really believe it started as a nice thought, something you could do for me, just the urgency you were broadcasting on the subject was.  Um.  I get it now, okay?  So.  Right, you have a live-in colleague for the moment."

It is a very curious thing, Sherlock thinks as a dizzy sensation overtakes him, that he never imagined this development would actually take place.  Even though he was fighting for it, hinting at it, coaxing toward it, longing for it, telling himself that it would be highly improper to beg for it, he never allowed himself to actually imagine success.  He has pictured John Watson on vast plains of infinite-seeming sand, inside dawn bunkers and twilight hospital wards, at medical school during the noon rush for the dining hall with fewer lines on his face and less depth in his navy blue eyes.  Hours have been spent at this single activity, ever since they met.  But he had never once allowed himself to imagine John in the sitting room reading the newspaper with the down-slanting afternoon light heightening the contrasts of his remarkable face.  He never pictured John in the kitchen, laughing at a private joke they share as he stirs a curry and opens a second bottle of wine.  He never imagined running into him in the hall just after a shower, John's face pink and wet hair standing up like a punk rock star, with a single drop of water tracking its way down his temple.  Dwelling on these things, Sherlock knew, would have been much too much for him before--

"You're staying?"

Sherlock doesn't bother to hide his enthusiasm for this plan.

"I kind of think it was either that option or worry myself to death every time you stopped texting for more than ten minutes at a stretch, and that's not really, er, convenient to my lifestyle."  Going to the cupboard, John pulls down a glass and fills it with water from the tap, taking a sip. 

It's as if he's lived here for years.  As if he was made to live here.  It's like the other flat, where he was alone, was slowly draining the life force out of him, and here, it's like recharging a battery.  It's beautiful.  It's completely unexpected.  I never anticipated he'd look like this here, now that he knows he needn't leave, so much brighter than he was across the river and far away.

A new and rather less agreeable thought occurs to Sherlock.  The thought is new because he hadn't ever expected to be successful in this enterprise.  But now that he has won, there is a serious problem.  He debates voicing it and then realizes he would never forgive himself if something went wrong and John hadn't been warned.  So Sherlock hops up on the countertop to sit, leaning on his palms.

"This could be dangerous," Sherlock says gravely.

John walks over with his water, a grin that says game on plastered over his face.  "And here I am."

"No, I mean very dangerous."

"I like dangerous.  Remember?  You're the one said I was terrified of calm."

"There's calm, and then there's standing in the way of an oncoming train."

"We'll just have to duck and let it pass over us, then."

"You could get hurt due to your association with me."

"But I probably won't."

"But you might."

"Probably won't, though."

"You're a capable and experienced army doctor, I grant, but you're not bulletproof, by your own account.  You might get hurt."

"Well, I've been hurt before.  And I'm still around.  A bit wonky, yeah, I'll admit, but present and accounted for."

"Moriarty means business."

"Yep, he pretty much convinced me of that with the severed head and all."

"I don't want anything terrible to happen to you."

"Ah, cheers, mate.  Mutual feeling."

"You're not taking this seriously."

John sets the water glass down and puts both his small hands on Sherlock's knees, leaning in close.  Sherlock can smell him, the clean desert dunes and Irish Breakfast and warm cotton aroma he has come to identify as John.  It makes Sherlock's mouth water.  If he only knew what John tasted like just at the nape of his neck--

"Sherlock," John says, "look into my eyes.  You have completely lost the plot if you think I am going to waltz back out of here simply because you informed me that danger might be involved.  I saw the head, Sherlock.  I...seriously, are you taking the piss?  I'm an adult male of sound mind and body.  I think I figured out that the tosser who send you a bit of the corpse he murdered and you imprisoned him over might be dangerous."

"And you're still staying?" Sherlock asks softly.  Louder would be impolite, as John is inches from his face.

"If you'll have me, I'm staying.  Until this whole business is sorted, at least."

"Then you really are an idiot."

John laughs appreciatively, completely unaffected.  The motion sends his brow forward and just for a moment, their foreheads touch.  Sherlock swiftly archives every sensory input he can gather from the experience, converting neural signals at light speed into permanently recorded files, the shadows in John's hair and the ticking of the clock and the distant hum of a sanitation truck and the faint aroma of severed head and the sweet softness of the skin just above John's eyebrows, and tucks it in his mind palace in a carved ebony box under the bed in the master bedroom, where all the few loveliest moments of his life reside.

"Still starving."  John breaks away and finishes his water.  "I'm calling for Chinese, yeah?  Where are your takeaway menus?"

Leaning, Sherlock pulls a drawer open.  "You can always tell the best Chinese from the bottom third of their door handle."

"I'm not even going to pretend to know what that means."  John takes the folded paper menu from Sherlock and peruses it.  "Hungry?"

Sherlock shakes his head.

"You're eating.  You looked too skinny but still fit when I met you four days ago, now between the stress and the fucking street drugs you look like a ringwraith.  What's your fancy?"

"What's a ringwraith?"

"Did you really just ask me that question?"

Sherlock glares.

"Right, then, movie night with the new flatmate.  No problem.  Ooh, they have real Szechuan things on this menu.  They must have a really great door handle.  Do you like smoked duck?"

"Yes, but--"

"Good, you're having it for tea."

John whips out his mobile and requests three-pepper chicken, tea-smoked duck, fried string beans, and a side of pork dumplings.  Sherlock has no idea who is going to eat all of this.  But watching John order delivery and smile so that his voice sounds pleasant over the phone to the girl-with-her-hair-in-black-braids Sherlock knows is at the counter, and then hearing him say "Two two one Baker Street, flat B, please," is almost as satisfying as solving a case.  One of the quicker ones.  A better than average robbery, perhaps.  Still.  That is very satisfying.

"Right," John says, hanging up the phone and returning it to his pocket.  "How about a tour?"

Sherlock slides back to the ground.  He walks through the hallway, not pausing at his bedroom though the door is open.  John has seen his bedroom, and under unusual circumstances.  He opens the door to the loo, however, and they look inside.

"The water is scalding at first, fair warning," says Sherlock.

"See?"  John smirks.  "Danger already averted."

Quirking a smile, Sherlock trots up the stairs to the spare bedroom.  Opening the door, he feels John crowding behind him and...oh.

Well, it isn't as if he was warned John was moving in, after all.

"This..."  John clears his throat.  "This could be very nice temporarily."

The boxes stacked in the corners mostly consist of reference volumes Sherlock hasn't needed in ages but might one day, though they are also filled with the textbooks from his eccentric courses at uni, because he hand-picked his education, after all, according to what he deemed most necessary.  Then there are the boxes which contain all the documents related to Sherlock's solved (and a few infuriatingly unsolved) cases.  And since Sherlock has been working with the Yard as well as on commission for quite some time, those particular boxes do admittedly take up quite a bit of space.  Sherlock wonders whether it would be impressive to show John the myriad wonderful cases he's already solved, the one with Ricoletti of the club foot perhaps, or the time he almost had his left canine knocked out by Matthews the Lambeth strangler in the middle of Charing Cross station, but decides it might prove better in the long run, supposing there is a long run, to be coy on this subject.  There is already a lot for John to take in as regards this room.  What with the full-size model skeleton and the bear rug with the growling head Mrs. Hudson wouldn't let him keep in the parlour and the imposing bust of Eugène François Vidocq.

All covered by two years, three months, and eight days' worth of dust, of course, that being the date when Sherlock moved in.  Alone.  He hadn't wanted Mycroft and he hadn't wanted movers, so he'd carried the whole bloody lot of it upstairs himself after sending it through the post on his brother's expense account.  That had led to an interesting series of text messages, Sherlock recalls.

Sherlock walks to the window and pulls up the blind, instantly regretting it.  The chamber only looks smaller and dustier.

"Were you planning on keeping me in a room with an angry bear?" John wonders, taking in his surroundings.

Sherlock sniffs.  "He isn't angry.  He's triumphant.  And I didn't exactly have advance notice that you were beginning to be taken with the idea of living here.  Heads aren't deciding positive factors for most of my acquaintances."

"No," John agrees.  "Well, if you have a blanket, I can kip on the sofa.  I don't mind, I'm an old campaigner.  But depending on how long this Moriarty business is going to take, it might do to put, I don't know, a bed in here.  Maybe a bureau.  I need furnishings anyway for when I get my own place, so it isn't as if it's a bad thing for me to start collecting now."

Of course, yes, naturally he'll be leaving when Moriarty is caught, if Moriarty is caught, Sherlock realizes, refusing to be stung.  This is better than you hoped for.  Don't let yourself ruin it, thinking of the future.  Anyway, you probably won't have to deal with much of the future, and this is a magical way for it all to end, isn't it?  It is.

"What about the furniture at your flat?"

"Oh, that was a government-furbished patch of hell.  Think of it like a subsidized halfway house for wounded brownjobs.  Somebody other than me needs it now, the poor sod, lord knows there are enough of us, and I emailed the administrator before I left.  I never want to see that place again.  Everything I own is downstairs."

At the thought of both John Watson and everything the man owns being in the Baker Street flat, Sherlock turns his back as if to admire the view outside, fairly certain that he is glowing like a surface to air missile impacting.  Which might put John off.  "I sleep on the sofa all the time.  You can use my room if you'd rather."

"We haven't even talked about what I can afford to pay you, I'm not kicking you out of your own bedroom, you nit."

"Or I could stay in it as well."  Sherlock shrugs, staring out the window at the London plane tree in the rear yard, which has begun to change to a brilliant yellow colour.  "We already know you don't have a problem sleeping near me."

"Yes, of course, I should have thought of that myself, that couldn't possibly throw a spanner in the works, why don't I sleep next to the tall, dark, and handsome genius boy wonder consulting detective with the voice like three hundred quid scotch who I already mentioned I've decided not to fancy because he isn't interested?  Tease."

A black rage rises in Sherlock's chest without any warning whatsoever.

"I am not a tease," he snaps without turning away from the window.  "Though I have been called one on exactly thirty-nine occasions, none of which were any more truthful than the others.  Of all the many scientifically accurate terms you could employ, including but not limited to freak, which is a favourite of some of my Yard associates, I am not a tease."

Though the first occasion, two weeks after accidentally rejecting Reggie, was it two weeks, I tried to delete it but it wouldn't scrub off my brain, anyhow that was decidedly the worst, when Reg took it upon himself at my family's garden party to spread that specific word amongst our entire social circle, because apparently Reg had confided his feelings to one or two of his mates, who entertained high hopes on his behalf, and rather than look like rejected goods, he'd determined to exert as much power over damage control as possible, to be expected really, I can understand that urge, it's not as if it was Reggie's fault there's something wrong with me, and of course Reggie had scores of friends and I'd one former friend, and thus enjoyed the unusual circumstance of being scowled at whenever smiling at anyone for the remainder of the summer.  Not that John meant it that way.  Still. 

John is quiet for a moment.  Then Sherlock hears him sigh and shift his feet.  When John approaches, it is with a careful tread.  As Sherlock registers that John is just behind him, John slides his arm around Sherlock's lower back in a steady half-hug.  Sherlock looks down in considerable surprise.  John's eyebrows are performing fascinating new configurations of chagrin.

"That, there, was me teasing you.  But I'm sorry.  I ought to have figured--well, I just ought to have figured.  That's all.  You're not a tease.  And I'm sorry.  Again."

Sherlock shakes his head, tight-lipped.  "No need."

"There bloody well is a need, I think you're just so used to people slagging you off that you've decided it's normal.  Not that I haven't seen you do your fair share of slagging in reverse already, but I'm not going to hurt your feelings without apologizing."

"I've been reliably informed I don't have any," Sherlock returns coolly.

John barks a laugh.  "You have no feelings.  You have no feelings?  Um, right.  Yes, and I am Kate Middleton.  Posh git."

The detective can think of nothing to say in response to this outright dismissal of public opinion.  For a few moments, they look out the window, at the plane tree's leaves dancing in the autumn wind and at the rest of the dim little yard with the bicycle tire propped against the fence.  Then Sherlock turns into John's arm so they are nearly facing.  He can feel the warm, small doctor all up and down his side. 

"Did you just say you fancied me?" he inquires.

John smiles, tilting his head up.  "No, I said I have no intention of fancying you.  Anyway, I'll get over it, we've sorted that part.  Stop worrying."

Sherlock is very, very worried.

He is worried that John's arm around him feels like being pulled up to the surface when he wasn't even aware he was drowning, for instance.

He is worried that John will continue to see Sarah as an alternative.

He is worried that he is worried about Sarah.

He is worried about failing to worry sufficiently about Sarah as well.

He is worried that he has just drawn John Watson down a dark and ugly rabbit hole with him.

He is worried that John might come to care about him.

He is worried that John might not come to care about him at all.

He is worried that if John comes to care about him and Sherlock dies horribly that it would be his fault if that causes John any slight inconvenience.

He is worried that, if John comes to care about him, then all too quickly--

The front doorbell rings.

"That'll be the nosh, I'd wager," John says, heading for the door after giving Sherlock a friendly pat on the back.

Sherlock takes an interlude of about ten seconds in the upstairs room, breathing slowly, wondering if this flatmates lark wasn't the worst notion he has ever conceived.  Because it jolly well might be.  It might be an unparalleled disaster.  When he feels calm enough, he follows John downstairs.  But there is no Chinese food awaiting them.  Sherlock might have deduced that, it's far too quick for their delivery service, and even if the duck is the work of a moment, the chicken is made to order there.

Two men in immaculate black suits are in the kitchen, transferring the head Sherlock returned to the box into a large plastic container with a biohazard symbol on it, leaving the packaging intact.  John isn't paying any attention to them, however.  He is staring down Mycroft Holmes, who is dressed in a bespoke pinstriped suit and appears to be wrapping up a phone call, and who gestures to Sherlock with a single forefinger to wait a moment, the utterly unbearable prick.

"You said you'd send someone round, not come round yourself," Sherlock bites out as he descends the last of the stairs.

"...and the gravesite likewise.  Yes, all the forensics we can muster for a five hundred yard perimeter search."  Mycroft pauses.  "Excessive.  I wonder if you would find it excessive if I asked for whom precisely you work, and whether you enjoy complete job security?"

"Mycroft," Sherlock growls.

Mycroft blinks and sets the raised finger to his lips.

"This tossbag is your brother, then?" John asks, eyebrows raised.

"I prefer to think he was left on our doorstep by one of the village locals before Mummy was able to conceive me."

"Ah, excellent, I knew you'd see it in the light I do eventually."  Mycroft smiles the smile of a Gila monster, motioning for Sherlock and John to be still.  "It is an opportunity, you see, even if the act was perpetrated by an intermediary.  The mastermind behind the grave's desecration must be traced with undeniable physical proof."

"I don't like him because he kidnapped me.  What's your reason?" John wonders.

"Look at him."

"I am."

"Isn't it awful?"

"No, I plan to take certain measures to ensure that will not be happening again."  Mycroft twirls his umbrella on the floor as if he's about to spring into a Fred Astaire number.  "If you have not yet grasped that this will garner media attention where mere correspondence does not, I am beginning to find myself at a loss as to why I pay you."

"I've seen worse," John says judiciously, crossing his arms.  He glances back to Sherlock.  "He's trying to protect you."

"He's trying to ruin my life by sending me to America."

"Really?"

"Don't worry, I'm not going."

"It's probably out of family feeling, though."

"Is it out of family feeling he trains CCTV on me, bugs my flat periodically, and tried to tap your phone?"

"Fair enough."

"I don't think you are looking at this from the proper perspective," Mycroft suggests in the tone of a complacent predator, tracing his finger over his chin slowly.  "Eleven court judges who have been asked to alter James Moriarty's sentencing in light of his clearly dangerous antisocial obsession have either retired, been transferred, declined the case, died under mysterious circumstances, or in my personal favourite instance, moved to South America and taken up coffee farming thanks to a sudden inheritance.  These men and women were dealing with letters, however, and now we are dealing with the severed cranium of a murder victim.  The twelfth judge will see reason."

John bites his lip, turning to Sherlock.  "Is that...true?"

"No, of course it isn't, Mycroft only mentions it because I haven't enough concerns already," Sherlock hisses.

"Because if he or she does not see reason, he or she will have more onerous problems to face than James Moriarty," Mycroft croons into his mobile.

"So you've tried eleven times to keep Moriarty behind bars and it's fallen through.  What about the account given by the prison itself?  He can't possibly be up for good behavior," John observes carefully.

"The prison director has changed five times since Moriarty was incarcerated," Sherlock answers.  He snatches at Mycroft's mobile, but his brother easily shifts it to his other hand, and without dropping the umbrella.  "One quit because his entire family died in a fire.  One quit because he was infected with anthrax.  One--"

"Got it, yep, we're on the same page," John interjects, pressing the space between his eyes.

"Ideally, in seventy-two hours or less.  Yes, in spite of the Syrian situation."  Mycroft snaps his fingers at the two men in black suits, who are dithering about fastening the clasps on the plastic container, and then moves his hand in a circle to indicate further delay will displease him.  They move downstairs silently and swiftly, and the aroma of decay begins to lessen.  "Syria is being handled by my most competent undercover aides, and you, I deeply regret to say, are presently my most competent forensic analyst.  Did I or did I not hear rumour that you were interested in a new post in northern Greenland?  If you find this to be too perilous or too futile an exercise of your skill set, that can be arranged."

The bell chimes again.  John goes to answer it, and Sherlock, still glaring daggers at his brother, assumes that this time the delivery service was merely exceptionally fast.  Instead, about twenty seconds later he finds himself face to face with one Shinwell Johnson, who is particularly resplendent today in a red tracksuit, white undershirt which smells vaguely of tuna, white trainers that were perhaps stylish in 1994, and a gold chain with a pendant of Jesus Christ's head encrusted with diamond chips.

"He says he's your ambassador for hire in certain economic sectors within the urban London populace," John says, staring at the newcomer with calculating blue eyes.  "Sounded too ridiculous an excuse for someone who wanted to kill you when he could have said he's here to check the gas, so..."

Shinwell Johnson winks contentedly at Sherlock.  "May I state, for the record, Mr. Holmes, setting aside our other transactions, that I very much look forward to further intercourse with this Dr. John Watson individual, and that I think I can predict unreservedly that he is crump, and that any projects you undertake in future will only be enhanced by his addition to the team, as it were, and not in any way slowed by it."

"Other transactions," John says slowly.  "Wait, other transactions--what other transactions specifically?"

Sherlock looks at the ceiling and makes a silent request that, if God exists, God smite Sherlock to save him the further trouble of being alive.

Johnson coughs, seems desirous of a place to spit, sees none, and then swallows heavily.  "Transactions of a personal and a business nature combined, sir, and thus regrettably ones I must keep well mum regarding, no disrespect intended to either your feelings or your already acknowledged status as a man of the world."

"Sherlock," John says in a steely tone.

"John," Sherlock says, as he can think of nothing else to the purpose.

"Tell me this man doesn't sell you...fresh produce?"

"Oh, you told him?"  Johnson brightens considerably.  "Cor, that's on me, then, here I've been ear bashing the pair of you and you've already come fully clean with the gentleman, it's better than I predicted, Mr. Holmes, the forthrightness on your part, the unasked-for honesty as to your proclivities, and for having failed to expect you to make a clean breast about the circumstances of your private life, I humbly beg forgiveness."

"You needn't, actually," John says coldly.

Johnson, red-veined face alight with pride, remains wholly pleased by developments.  "I hope Mr. Holmes likewise conveyed my desire that the aforementioned portion of our dealings together cease whensoever he finds it possible, respecting as I do the talent residing in his every--"

"Will you shut up," Sherlock snaps.

"No, no, now I'm listening," John says firmly, widening his stance.  "Please go on."

Before John has the opportunity to continue this conversation, Mycroft hangs up his mobile decisively.  At the same moment, the doorbell rings.

"Ah, excellent," Mycroft says, making a note to himself on his phone before pocketing it.  "Might you answer that, John, if you would be so kind?"

"Might you sod off?" John returns, though he heads for the stairs at the same time.

"Might you tell me what in hell is going on here?" Sherlock snarls.

"I invited Mr. Johnson to meet with us, knowing your trust in his network and his acumen is not unfounded, despite my brotherly reservations regarding the more reckless aspects of your character and ways in which your self-destructive streak is habitually indulged," Mycroft purrs, walking to Sherlock's chair and seating himself without being asked. 

Johnson unzips his track suit, revealing a gut of sumo proportions, and bows, arms extended.  "Reservations, Mr. Holmes, that I share in every particular, and am keen to explore further at the leisure of all parties, when this present business is at an end, as overextending oneself can add to the risk of matters going pear-shaped, at least in my humble experience."

"I am aware of the opinions you hold upon the subject of my brother's potential," Mycroft sighs. "It is the reason you are still free to move about London.  Others are not."

Sherlock's mouth drops.  He stares at his brother, stunned.  But Mycroft is presently focusing all his attention upon Shinwell Johnson, who is the last dealer Sherlock could find to sell to him after his other sources dried up under mysterious circumstances.

"I hope my sentiments do me credit."  Shinwell Johnson grins widely.  "But I'm harder to catch than you might figure, all due respect.  As for the tendency to self-destruct, though we all possess it to some degree, my pet theory, Mr. Holmes, is that Mr. Holmes here indulges as an act of defiance, a sort of ownership over his life if you will, threatened as he has been practically from the cradle and desirous of maintaining the illusion that he can make an end for himself outside of the plots woven against him, that in the act of injuring himself, he takes control of his personhood, if you take my meaning."

"Oh, thank you," Sherlock sneers, "a hygiene-impaired petty criminal with delusions of grandeur is exactly the person I require to explain to me my own systems of thought, or wait, better still, inflict your opinions on me when I ask for them or when you acquire a higher education than year ten of secondary school, whichever comes first."

"It is admittedly an intriguing pop psychological analysis, though one I fail to share," Mycroft demurs.  "Isolation, pure and simple, can have a deleterious effect upon the psyche.  Do sit down, Mr. Johnson, I find the settee quite adequate.  Oh, cease looking so surprised, little brother.  You might have expected events of this nature, were you the perfect reasoning machine you claim, but I see that you've recently developed...other demands upon your valuable time and attention."

Detective Inspector Lestrade walks in with Sally Donovan in tow, both looking brightly determined although Sally's version is noticeably less enthusiastic. 

"What the fuck," Sherlock breathes.

"Right, cheers," Lestrade remarks.  "All right, Sherlock?  Sorry to be the last to arrive, traffic is murder coming straight from the Yard."  His eyes return to John, who is just cresting the stairs.  "Just met your new...what, colleague, was it?  You look familiar, though, if you don't mind my saying so, mate.  Have we seen each other somewhere before?"

John regards Lestrade and the rest of the increasingly crowded room with the air of a man who has seen everything, and thus is incapable of being flummoxed.  It's one of the most brilliant expressions Sherlock has ever witnessed.  As for Sherlock, he isn't sure whether to swan out the door in a huff with his coat swirling and his hand in the doctor's and leave them all to whatever they're scheming, or to remain at Baker Street due to desperate curiosity.  Either way, he determines, the late afternoon will be a distinctly uncomfortable one.

"I tackled that killer, Abernetty," John explains.  "You arrested him."

"Blimey, that's it!" Lestrade exclaims.  "I'm pretty keen at faces, but I didn't see much of yours.  Yeah, now it's all coming back to me.  Sally, you remember?  You know your stuff when it comes to tackling, don't you, Dr. Watson?"

"I do."

"Army doctor, was it?"

"That's right."

"Well, nice to see you again."

"Likewise."

"Lestrade.  Sally," Sherlock grates out.

"Freak," Sally chirps.

"Don't call him that," John says.

"Why, you've got a better one?"  Sally nudges Lestrade with her elbow.  "When people first meet him, the new impressions are always choice."

"How about Sherlock?" John suggests, smiling as if he's about to murder someone.

"Doesn't really flow off the tongue," Sally muses.

"Neither does Anderson's semen, I would wager, his physical regimen being nil and his diet--"

"Sherlock!" exclaims the entire room at various volumes, excepting Shinwell Johnson, who shakes his head indulgently and sighs, "Mr. Holmes, Mr. Holmes."

"What?" Sherlock shouts.  "What are you all doing in my flat?"

Lestrade rubs hand his over his cropped silver hair.  "Half a tic, Sherlock, pardon me for asking, but just what is Dr. Watson here doing in your flat?"

"I live here," John says calmly.

A silence falls as everyone digests this information.  Where all was chaos previously, a pin dropping would now sound like a lead pipe hitting the floor.  Sherlock stares at each in turn, practically daring them to object to this development.  The reactions are, to say the least, mixed.  Mycroft looks dyspepsic, Sally aghast, Lestrade pleased, and Shinwell Johnson might as well have just swallowed the sun, he is beaming so brightly.

"May I be the first," Johnson intones, "to offer my sincerest congrat--"

The door chimes again.

"Right, yep, that'll be Chinese," John announces dryly.  "Corking.  Um, get some plates, yeah, Sherlock?  I'll be right back.  And then we can start this...what is this again?"

Mycroft flashes an icy smile. 

"It is a discussion," he answers, "regarding the continued survival of Sherlock Holmes."

 

 

 

 

  

"You need to stop, by the way," John says the following afternoon as he walks into their flat.

He has just returned from a morning shift at the clinic and there is rain in his honey-coloured hair and on the tops of his shoes.  Sherlock has no notion why that should matter to him, but he likes it tremendously.  He wonders how the rain smells that has been caught in John's hair but opts not to request permission to investigate.

"Mmm?" Sherlock says, looking up from an email.

"Oi, is that my laptop?"

"Can't you recognize your own laptop?"

"Yes, that's.  Yeah, I can do, which is--why are you using my laptop?"

"Closer."

Sherlock types the last details of his meticulous report to the Russian police regarding the Trepoff crime syndicate, being careful to attach the relevant photos he discovered after searching Flickr for an hour (tedious, why can't these so-called master criminals learn not to allow their trophy mistresses to snap pictures and then smear evidence all over the internet in unlocked accounts, not that I couldn't have got in if it had been locked, how hard can it be to deduce a password chosen by a woman named Bunny, still, it's the principle) and clicks send.  He looks up at John, who now stands beside him at the kitchen table with his hands on his hips.

"Sherlock, your laptop is right there," John says, pointing a foot away at the other side of the table.

"See?  Closer," Sherlock repeats.

"There's a password on mine."

"Well there was.  I've left it unlocked now.  Easier."

"Oh, ace.  I take it this isn't a one off, then."

Sherlock blinks.

"You're something of a nutter, you know that?" John asks in a friendly way.

Sherlock smiles primly.  "What do I need to stop?"

"What?"

"You were saying, when you came in, I need to stop.  Stop what?"

"Right."  John pulls up a chair and sits at a ninety degree angle to Sherlock, rubbing his palms on his grey trousers.  "You need to stop suddenly displaying new skill sets that gobsmack your flatmate.  It's unfair.  That was you, right?  Last night?  Paganini didn't wander into our digs for a cream tea and a chat?  Because that was...pretty remarkable."

"Oh," Sherlock breathes.  "You liked it, then.  That's...good.  I never asked how you felt about the violin.  Slipped my mind."

"A well-played violin is a treat for the gods."

How appropriate a phrase for the situation as I perceive it, Sherlock thinks, his ears pinkening slightly.  John is sitting there beaming at him, scratching the back of his own head, one eyebrow raised as if they are sharing a secret.  Maybe they are.  Sherlock desperately hopes so.

"The concert was well-timed," John adds meaningfully.

"Oh?"

"Yes."

"Good."

"You know why, of course.  You know everything."

"I know it's a lucky chance to find a flatmate who doesn't mind the violin in the middle of the night."

Chuckling, John leans forward on his knees.  "What are we doing then, today, genius?"

"What would you like to do?"

"Dunno.  Solve crime, have a pint with you after?"

Sherlock surpresses a maniacally pleased grin.

"Let me present you with a situation.  A woman has been engaged as a nanny in Hampshire for a couple with one small boy," Sherlock answers slowly, savouring the moment even as he opens the email he received on The Science of Deduction and slides the laptop over so John can read it.  "She's been offered what my research indicates is double the usual rate for a single child to care for, plus room and board.  But there's a condition attached.  She has to visit a particular London hairdresser before she leaves the city and request that he dye her hair a very specific shade of electric blue and crop it very close against her head."

John's eyes are tracking across the words.  He frowns a little.  "Violet Hunter.  Kink of the father's, maybe?  That's unsettling."

"I thought so too."

"She's not going through with it?"

"She already made the commitment two weeks ago."  Sherlock clicks on another tab--Violet Hunter's Facebook profile, showing a wryly smiling young woman with short electric blue hair.

"Not a job I'd let my sister apply for.  As if Harry listens to a word I say."

"Ms. Hunter asked us to meet her in Hampshire.  There have been developments since."

"She asked us?"

Sherlock cocks his head, eyebrow tilted, barely able to mask the fact that he feels as if he is about to float out of his chair.

"What's the Moriarty situation?" John wants to know.

Pulling his mobile out and opening a text, Sherlock passes it to John.

James Moriarty transferred to solitary within the confines of maximum security for duration of trial.  MH

"Hip hip hooray," John says cheerily.

"Scroll down," Sherlock instructs, jutting his chin.

A trio of heavily armed guards with documented antisocial dispositions have been placed on a 24 hour watch.  MH

"The trial is scheduled for two weeks from now," Sherlock states innocently.  "Presumably I've nothing to worry over until then."

They pause, glancing at each other.  John hands the phone back to Sherlock, who locks the screen and pockets it.  Sherlock closes the lid of John's laptop.  He pulls his white shirt cuffs down.  Crossing his legs, John regards the detective with a brilliant sapphire spark in his eyes.  The pause lengthens until the two men are both smiling from ear to ear at one another.  As if they were each a post office from some gaslit Victorian crime novel full of cobblestones and hansom cabs and London Particulars, and the space between them were a telegraph wire, sending little electric clicks back and forth along the line.

"Come to Hampshire with me?" Sherlock says breathlessly.

"Oh, god, yes," John answers, standing.

 

 

Sherlock has been threatened enough times in his life, and knows enough about international law, that he is careful about this sort of thing.  So Lestrade is there as well as an alarming number of men and women from the drug squad and port authority, and the fight is over and most of the grim-faced men in custody before anything very interesting happens.  Other than a spectacularly successful number of arrests being made and a massive amount of contraband being seized. 

Standing on the deck of the ship with John at his side and a little ways behind him, Sherlock is indulging in a very showy round of How I Figured It Out and the Rest of You Lot Are Idiots, when a burly smuggler with facial tattoos and a desperate expression--as if, Sherlock thinks in the split second before he cannot think at all, the man would far rather be imprisoned for a British crime on British soil than be sent back to Russia without their treasure--breaks away from the policeman handcuffing him, the one now threatening to fire, and throws John bodily over the side of the ship into the dry dock.

After that, Sherlock doesn't remember things very well at all.  And his memory is usually quite clear.

He is racing down the gangplank with John's name on his lips as four officers subdue the smuggler and Lestrade shouts after Sherlock.

He is stumbling down the steps of the small dry dock, slipping on spilled diesel. 

He is kneeling on wet wood at the bottom next to where John hit a large overstuffed barrow full of lumber with a muddy tarp on it and then slid to the ground on his back.

John's eyes are closed.  He is perfectly still.

Sherlock is not thinking at this time, so he doesn't remember afterwards what he was thinking.  But several long moments pass with his hands on either side of John's small crumpled body, the fear so overwhelming he feels as if it's drowning him, staring, and then one hand is on John's cheek and the other is checking his pulse at the throat.

John's heart is beating, but John is not breathing.

"John," Sherlock breathes.  "John.  Oh, god, John.  Please."

Sherlock is about to lean down and force his own air into John's motionless lungs, potential aggravation of a spinal injury be damned, when the doctor's head rolls experimentally and he blinks, opening stunned eyes to the sky.  The former soldier winces, then gasps.

"Oh, thank you.  Please don't be hurt.  Tell me you're not hurt," Sherlock is chanting over and over again.  His hands are in John's hair now, and it's soft, it's so soft, the dark blond strands, and he's gently cradling the fragile bones that keep his mind intact, trying to keep the spinal column still.  "John, stop moving your head, you fell nearly eighteen feet.  John.  Are you hurt?  Where are you hurt?  Please for god's sake say that you aren't hurt."

John coughs violently and seems to revive a little.  He is far too broken looking, however, lying like a bird shot from the sky on the sandy, dank-smelling dry dock.  His eyes, small fragile precious things eyes skulls hearts bones lungs, manage to focus on Sherlock's face.

"Oh, fuck me," he groans.  "That bastard."  John tries to lift his head.

"No no no," Sherlock cries, bending his brow and adding it to the cage of his hands.  Now he has John's skull, breakable shatterable smashable skull, trapped by two hands and one forehead and that ought to get his point across.  He will be a box for John's small perfect head, he will be a fortress, he will be a bloody barricade.  "You could have a spinal injury, tell me for god's sake you don't have a spinal injury.  I couldn't--don't be hurt, please don't be hurt.  Take your time and think and don't move.  Where does it hurt?"

"Jesus, Sherlock, where doesn't it hurt, I'm fine."  John's warm hands are gripping Sherlock's forearms now, and Sherlock realizes his own eyes are wet.  "Hey.  Watch this." 

John knees him. 

"Oooow ow ow, fuck," John hisses, "yeah, that is the bruise to end all bruises.  Sherlock.  I fell on my side on the barrow.  Took about four feet off the landing total."

"You weren't moving," Sherlock says, and his voice is trembling.  "You weren't moving, weren't breathing, I saw.  Stop lying to me. Tell me."

"Okay," John says more gently, "I have a giant bruise and maybe a cracked rib on my left side, I scraped my elbow landing, my ankle might be a bit twisted, and the wind was knocked out of me when I hit the floor.  And I bumped my head a little.  It hurts, but it isn't even a concussion, I think, just a goose egg.  I was stunned, Sherlock, you understand?  It looked bad, but it isn't.  Nothing serious.  Do you think you can let go of my head, please."

Sherlock can't breathe himself, now.  He pulls back a little.  He looks up above at the ink-faced smuggler where he is being hauled off the gangway by four not very gentle officers.  A rage so great it threatens to send his entire brain offline sweeps through Sherlock and he finds himself screaming, "I would have murdered you in cold blood.  Do you fully comprehend that?  If you had broken this man's neck, I'd have taken the nearest gun away from the nearest agent and shot you like a fucking dog, do you hear me?"

The man's eyes widen.  So do those of the Scotland Yarders Sherlock now realizes have gradually surrounded them on the dry dock's upper level. 

The man is dragged away out of sight. 

Lestrade has joined them inside the dry dock proper, on the steps.  Lestrade's mouth opens.  It's moving.  Sherlock suspects Lestrade might be saying something to him.  He isn't certain, can't be certain of anything anymore.  Lestrade's face is pale and his eyes are creasing kindly at the edges, wind ruffling his silver hair.  Lestrade, already nearly to the bottom, steps onto the floor of the dry dock and sits on the ledge, hunched in his windbreaker, making himself roughly the same height as Sherlock, since the sleuth remains kneeling with John's face in his hands.  Lestrade is still saying something, this time a bit louder.

Sherlock can't hear a word.

"Sherlock, let me sit up, yeah?" John asks again.

Sherlock sits back on his heels and closes his eyes, his entire body shaking.  He wraps his arms around his ribs and grits his teeth.  He fists his hands, which had just been holding John's mortal temporary animate beautiful brittle cranium and now aren't touching him any longer.  Sherlock thinks he might be sick.  John has pushed himself up and is sitting before him now, he senses, though he does not see.  A hand reaches out and lightly brushes against something wet on his cheekbone.  That's John's hand.  So John really is fine.  That is good.  Sherlock swallows, stomach churning.

"Hey," John's voice says hoarsely.  He sounds more than a bit off.  "You practically perfect nutter.  Hey, I'm fine.  Look at me."

Sherlock obeys.

John's face is wracked with concern and fondness, his entire brow wrinkling and his blue eyes narrowed on either side of his fine delicate fracturable crushable upturned nose.

Sherlock begins to sense, if only dimly, what just happened.

Panic mounting, he glances at Lestrade, who is still moving his mouth with no sound coming out, as if someone had turned the mute button on.

"Sherlock, you're scaring me a little," John says.  "Can you take a deep breath for me?  Just out through your mouth and in through--Sherlock?  Hell no, come--Sherlock."

Lestrade, Sherlock realizes in his peripheral vision as he blinks the moisture from his eyes and flees, up, up, up the steps of the dry dock with John too slow and bruised to follow, is also calling after him.  So are several other plainclothesmen and detectives, unless they are simply moving their lips for no reason.  Sherlock pays them no mind.

When he reaches the surface, he runs for the road, away from the terrible boat and the colleague who just stared into Sherlock's eyes and must have seen nothing within them save for an impossible, tragic, foolish, and undying love.

 

 

When John arrives home, the flat is dark.  Sherlock had wanted it that way for many reasons.  John took his time coming back, enough time to get an x-ray in fact, and to check for internal injury at hospital, though not enough time to file a statement with the police, which means he was worried.  Sherlock blinks in the glare when his flatmate flicks the lights on.  They illuminate a glass bottle, a tourniquet, and a syringe on the coffee table with Sherlock sitting on the sofa before the small tableau, feet tucked up to one side, fingers tented up by his lips, now dressed in cotton drawstring sleeping clothes with a loose-necked t-shirt.  He cleaned the blood off his arm so John wouldn't have to see that, because it pains him, Sherlock knows it pains him, but the mark is still plain as day.

"Oh, do not tell me--" John cuts himself off.  He pulls off his coat gingerly.  He sounds as much exhausted and sad as he is furious.  "Fuck you, you absolute wanker.  Jesus, that is just perfect.  Morphine or cocaine?"

"Morphine," Sherlock murmurs without looking at John.  "Morphine is for forgetting.  I packed your things for you."

"You what?"

"I packed your things, you can be gone in five minutes if you like, I just couldn't find your medal of valour.  You probably hid it again after I found it in your shaving kit."

There is a long pause.  John approaches.  A tiny shadow cast by a very large soul.

Sherlock continues to study his drug paraphernalia.  "I'm sorry you were almost killed in the course of a career that isn't yours, but now it won't happen again, you see, you needn't stay, and you were right, I am a drug addict.  You couldn't possibly want to live with a drug addict, and I've been continuing to use since you've been in the flat.  It's for my brain, my brain's balance is essential to my profession, and my brain doesn't...it doesn't work when there are too many peripheral distractions, too much white noise, like anxiety over collateral damages to colleagues during drugs busts, for instance.  The legal and professional ramifications of that sort of thing, I can't be concerned over trifles, you understand, so it's best for all concerned to end it now, I think."

"Sherlock, are you still sodding high?"

Sherlock glances at John, who looks decades older than he did this morning.  "No.  I wanted to be sober again when I said goodbye to you.  I'm glad I calculated the timing of your visit to A&E so accurately.  How are you?"

John grimaces.  "About ready to punch you in the mouth.  And fine.  Giant hematoma, no cracked ribs, a swollen ankle and a sore spot on my head.  You need to hear this Sherlock, I am fine, and you are a very poor liar."

"How dare you accuse me of lying?" Sherlock snaps coldly.

"One, because you'd have to still be high to imagine I am moving out.  Baker Street is close to the clinic and a very nice flat.  It's convenient.  I'm keeping it.  Two, because you don't do drugs to fix what's in your head."

"Oh, how very perceptive, what's your alternate suggestion, my spleen?" Sherlock sneers.

John taps two fingers over his heart and stares.

Sherlock, determined not to hear any of this, because he can't, he simply cannot, closes his eyes.

All is quiet for a very long time.  Sherlock thinks about John's grip on his gun, about the lightness of his step, about the sun in his hair, and about how still John was at the bottom of the dry dock, and how John has to leave.  Tonight.  The alternative is excruciating.

"Wonder boy, we're not through talking here."

Sherlock discovers that John is still staring at him.  Not in any previously noted manner, and he had begun to think he had memorized them all.

"I'm trying to tell you that I'm a moron," John says softly.

"Practically everyone is," Sherlock sniffs.  "You're no different."

"Sherlock."  John pauses, then leans forward in that wonderfully steady way he has, and Sherlock's heart clenches.  "Do you want to tell me something?"

Sherlock shakes his head.  He cannot, cannot tell John aloud what John wants to know.  If John knew for certain that Sherlock loved him, if it were out between them like a dissection subject with an open chest cavity, then John would want to be intimate, which would lead to him fancying Sherlock, which would lead to disappointment when Sherlock couldn't respond, which would lead to shame on John's part, which would lead to him avoiding Sherlock, which would lead to him leaving Sherlock after angry words, hateful words, instead of this simple, clean, heartbreaking goodbye.

The detective can see it in his mind like a map, the steps to John's departure from his life.  They are so clearly marked, so certain.  Sherlock doesn't even think he would mind sex with John any longer.  It might even be enjoyable.  He likes it when they're close, when they brush skin over skin.  He loved having John's face in his hands, though he detested the reason.  He could kiss him and hold him and smell him and taste him, and all of that sounds miraculous, better than Christmas.  John could even fuck Sherlock if he really wanted to, if he wasn't happy with anything else--he's a doctor, he'd be kinder than some, the detective thinks.  But then he would question why Sherlock remained entirely unaffected and in fact preferred to be so, preferred to remain safely unaroused and avoid the terrible overwhelming flooding shrieking sensations he suffers whensoever he comes. 

John would lose his confidence, and Sherlock would lose his only friend after having a taste of what he wants.  Instead of before.

Instead of now.  When it's bearable.  If only just.

Sherlock schools his expression, but John has adopted a persistent look, his mouth soft.

Confess, the look seems to say.

It isn't going to happen.  If Sherlock can keep his secret, then he can keep John in his memory the way they have been the last two weeks, without bad sex and worse recriminations and still worse disgust, keep John's laugh and his ridiculous typing and his thoughtless bravery.  He can keep them locked away in his heart like treasures, to take out and examine when the world is horrible.  Which it will be forever now, without John.

"Sherlock, I'm going to turn the telly on and come over there," John says at length.  "We're going to watch something silly and you can tear it to pieces and we'll take all the parts of today that were shite and just forget about them, all right?  And if I do anything you don't like, you tell me.  Immediately."

Sherlock's breath freezes in his chest.  What could John be talking about? 

John collects the morphine and its accessories with obvious loathing and moves them to the small breakfasting table, where he covers them with a pillow from the armchair.  Then John picks up the remote and switches the set on to a talk program, turns the volume up a bit, and comes over to sit next to Sherlock. 

Only he doesn't just sit next to Sherlock.

He seats himself and reaches over, nails gently scratching Sherlock's granite-hard back where the muscles are knotted with terror.  He reaches further and tugs at Sherlock from the side, and Sherlock lets himself list over oh god what is he doing Jesus Christ until he is laying with his head in John's lap.  He smells like home and warmth and pine and distant star systems, like every good thing Sherlock has ever imagined, and Sherlock's feelings swell until they can't fit in his ribcage any longer.  John's arm stays snugged tight around him, and his other hand comes to rest in Sherlock's hair, tenderly carding through the curls.

Sherlock could cry.  That, he thinks, would be beyond absurd after the day they passed.  But nevertheless.

"Hugh Grant has turned stammering into an art form," John says thoughtfully of the man on the telly, who does indeed seem to be stammering a great deal.

Closing his eyes, Sherlock lets sight and sound drift away, training all his keen senses on smell and touch.  John's worn jeans are soft, and his thigh is compact.  Sherlock doesn't deserve this, he doesn't.  He can't be enough for John.  John is normal, and normal people want things he can't give them.  John is already far too attached to Sherlock, and Sherlock knows that he deliberately cultivated this situation, and feels a crushing wave of guilt.  But he nuzzles his nose into the fabric anyhow, pushes back into the hand in his hair, takes as much as he can because he knows it can't last and that John is doing this out of sweetness, not passion. 

A hand in his hair should not provoke this extreme a reaction.  It's unscientific.  It's also manifestly asinine.

"I can't think why I didn't see it before today," John says very quietly.  "It was just...so fast, I missed it, that's all.  I thought I was imagining things.  I didn't think I could possibly mean that to you, not a bloke like me who can't even decide if he's more disgustingly normal or disgustingly broken.  You know?  And I didn't know you at all, still hardly know you, so I didn't trust myself to see what it was, never at the beginning, and then later maybe I think I just wouldn't believe it.  As in refused to believe it.  I was afraid to be wrong.  That would have--god, wrecked me, you know?  If I'd been wrong about you.  I think it happened that night I jumped in the cab like a tosser after you told me I was good and not nice, that.  That was.  I should have known then.  But if I'd read you badly and allowed myself to, to picture us, and I'd made a mistake, I'd have.  I don't honestly know. That would have been pretty ugly for me.  But I see it now, okay?"

Sherlock could say see what?  But he won't risk it.  So he bites his tongue instead.  It hurts, but less than the alternative.

John snakes his hand down and finds Sherlock's.  When he lifts it, he kisses the base of Sherlock's wrist and then weaves their fingers together, keeping his arm around Sherlock with their appendages attached now and his other hand combing evenly through curls.

"Fine, be that way," he says.  "Prat.  I have all the time in the world."

But I probably don't, Sherlock thinks.

Sherlock shivers and snugs in still closer.  He falls asleep that way, with the man stammering in the background, and his friend's hand together with his hand clutched over his heart.

 

 

At first, he imagines he is dreaming.  Then he realizes he isn't.  And remembers.

Oh.

He swallows, heart speeding in a way that feels distinctly dangerous after coming off a morphine dose and having been in a dead sleep seconds ago.  His mouth is dry, head faintly aching, but oh how very good it is here.  John's uninjured side is tucked between Sherlock and the sofa's back, his fine blond head on Sherlock's lean shoulder, his knee over Sherlock's leg with his foot twined between the detective's, his hand resting lightly on Sherlock's right pectoral muscle with the fingers slightly curled, Sherlock's hand cradling the elbow.  Releasing it in favour of lifting the blanket slightly, Sherlock realizes John must have left him for long enough to strip and then cover the pair of them, for John's clothing is neatly folded on the armchair.  He's wearing boxers and a white undershirt.  The shirt has rucked up a little in his sleep, which means the fingertips of Sherlock's other hand are tracing his flawless beloved twistable fracturable snappable spine.

Before he can even think what he's doing, Sherlock pictures the scene at the dry dock and tightens the embrace, lowering his nose to bury it in John's hair.  He still smells of warm tea and of cedar chests filled with stacks of thrilling, perilous, fantastical stories.

"Mmmm," John says. 

Sherlock startles a little.  "Sorry, I--"

"I'm not."  John's voice is rough with dreams and disuse. 

Sighing, Sherlock returns his nose to John's head and runs his hand up John's bicep, feeling hard muscle and soft skin, simultaneously curling his nails against John's bare back.  A small pleased sound comes from John's throat.

This is beautiful frightening marvelous thrilling terrifying delightful, the detective thinks, though the words are not a string in his mind but a single concept, one that looks rather like a mobius strip made of braided blood vessels.  It interests him.  He tucks it in a stainless steel drawer in the underground laboratory of his mind palace for further study.  His hearing, meanwhile, seems to be back to normal.  It had startled him tremendously back at the Friesland, not hearing anyone or anything save for John.  But now the clock ticks along faintly and there is traffic in Baker Street beyond the window.

"How'd you sleep?"

"I can't recall."  Sherlock raises his head fractionally, leaving his lips against John's scalp.  "Your gun is in the microwave.  Or part of it is."

"How d'you know that?"

"Here you are.  Obvious."

"Oh.  Yep.  Doesn't mean you aren't incredible, just that I'm stupider before coffee."

Sherlock smiles, and that shifts the strands of John's hair, and that is magical.  "You slept well.  You'd have woken me otherwise."

"Yeah.  Other than the bruising, I was about as comfortable as I've ever been.  But I've been up a couple of times for Vicoden.  It's mine, by the way, hands off."

Gritting his teeth, Sherlock gently folds the blanket down and pulls the edge of John's undershirt up.

The bruise is spectacular.  Purple and yellow and abraded red and even a vicious near-black, fading to yellow at the edges.  It curves a little toward John's pale back and a little towards the smooth flesh of his belly.  If someone had smashed a wrecking ball against John's side, it couldn't have looked any worse.  It fills Sherlock with a rage so intense he thinks that the Russian gangster, wherever he is, can probably feel it.  And Sherlock isn't even looking at the entire thing.  He promptly tucks two fingers in the waistband of John's boxers and yanks them down sideways.  The bruise continues over his hipbone, nearly to where the small line of muscle marks his pelvis with a V, and up along the side of John's arse.

"Sherlock, just an FYI here, no direct objections, you can see me starkers all you like, but you tearing my pants down is shortly going to lead to a very predictable biological reaction on my part, one that will necessitate me leaving this sofa to have a wank, and I'm pretty cozy right now."

"I'm going to kill him," Sherlock hisses, carefully returning the boxers to their former state and pulling John closer to his chest.

John chuckles into Sherlock's t-shirt.  His eyes are still closed.  "You mentioned as much.  'In cold blood,' I think you said, though, which is frankly, um.  Wrong.  That ever so slightly mischaracterizes what you were feeling.  'In incandescent rage' would work.  'In blind fury' is good."

"He hurt you," Sherlock whispers.  "I don't care how you characterize it so long as he dies."

"I'm actually going to send him a thank you card."

"Excuse me?"

"Gratitude is often expressed through a note in the post.  It's only decent."

"Are you deliberately winding me up?"

John shifts, resting his head on his hand and gazing down at Sherlock, blinking.  It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust to the faint light.  He rubs them with his fingers briefly, then says, peering into Sherlock's face, "No.  I'm perfectly serious.  It was worth it." 

"Don't say that to me."

"You don't have a choice in the matter.  It would have been worth it if I'd been thrown off a bloody smuggling ship a thousand times.  To know that you..."  He shakes his head.  "It was worth a bruise, okay?"  Clearing his throat, he drops his hand and traces his fingertips down the column of Sherlock's neck.  "Any more inclined to talk than you were last night?"

Sherlock feels warmth spreading at the touch, from his neck down his arms and into his palms.  And no, he is not more inclined to talk, although many, many things require saying.

"This is a bad idea," he remarks softly.

John frowns and pulls his hand away.  He's anxious.  Sherlock realizes with a rush of discomfort that John's pulse is thudding rather frantically where his torso is mashed up against the detective's.  John, who isn't afraid of anything, is presently quite afraid of something.  It's incongruous on him, as if he had suddenly become very large or very cruel.  John being frightened doesn't make a bit of sense, but when Sherlock eliminates the impossible, that is what has happened.  Not that there isn't significant cause for alarm on several counts.  Sherlock wonders which of the many, many, many practical things to be afraid of he's worrying over. 

"A bad idea because of the sex thing or the Moriarty thing?" John asks.

"Yes."

"Which?"

"Because of everything."

"I don't care about your daft idea of everything."

"Well, I do."

"I concede that, but--"

"Doesn't my opinion count, then?"

"Of course it does.  We're a pair of bloody Englishmen, I don't need you to whisper sweet nothings or declare your undying whatever or bare your soul or anything like that, I just..."  John winces his eyes shut.

"You're frightened of something.  You're never frightened.  Well, except about sleeping.  What's wrong?" Sherlock inquires, frowning.  "Specifically, I mean, as many things are wrong at the moment."

John pulls in a deep breath.  "Um.  All right.  Last night you fell asleep on me and it was, that was good, okay, and when I went to change, I just, I'd forgotten you'd packed my things, and it--I couldn't look at it, couldn't even.  Just touching the zip was.  Seeing that duffel bag outside your bedroom door, I started thinking about you know, bedsits and pensioners' housing and it bloody gutted me, I just...I left it there and stripped off and crawled on top of you, I should have asked, I know, I'm sorry, that was wrong of me, but.  It was so quiet at my old flat, and the last few weeks, it's like the part in The Wizard of Oz where the colour flicks on.  There's not going to be any pressure to do anything, okay?  Not talk, or touch if you don't want to, or, I don't know, we can go back to how it was before, I can pretend I don't understand.  Just don't...  You're amazing, I think you're amazing.  I don't have to say anything else save for that if you like. But you packed my things and I was so alone and I owe you so much--"

Sherlock reaches up and cups the back of John's neck and tugs him down again.  He goes readily, breathing much, much too hard into the sleuth's neck.  It's unspeakably painful.  John frightened cannot be comfortable for John, but for Sherlock it is practically unbearable.  It smells of gunsmoke and animal terror and it is all Sherlock's fault.  It needs to be stopped, and instantly.

"I'll unpack the bag myself," Sherlock offers.

John makes a laughing sound that is far more jagged and broken than Sherlock can readily stand.  "Yeah, that.  Would be much appreciated.  Cheers." 

"I didn't properly calculate the effect it would have on you."

"It was nauseating.  I almost had a panic attack in the hall."

Sherlock tangles his fingers in John's hair.  "See?" he murmurs, shutting his eyes.  "I've already hurt you.  This is a terrible idea."

"Shut up."

"But I'll hurt you again, over and over."

"I've hurt you already, I've called you crazy, called you a tease, we got past it, it didn't affect your...the way you think of me."

This is true.  But irrelevant.

"That doesn't matter.  It'll be ruinous, I can't even shag you, let alone make you happy, and anyway my life expectancy is atrocious."

John fists his hands in Sherlock's cotton shirt.  "Shut.  Up."

"It's the truth." 

"I don't care."

"That's absurd.  Why not be logical about this?"

"Because yesterday when I fell you looked--this isn't about logic."

"Everything I am is about logic."

"That's a right laugh.  And for the record, if you'd fallen that far and seemed as dead as I think I did, I'd have...looked the same as you.  Okay, Sherlock?  The exact.  Same.  Identical.  That's.  That's really all we need to say about it if you want to consider the subject closed."

Sherlock swallows the lump that is threatening to build in his dry throat.  He can picture it happening all too easily, Sherlock imprisoned with bamboo under his fingernails and water dripping dripping dripping dripping down down down down, and John hurting over it.  John, it turns out, is too affectionate for his own good.  He deserves, here with his warm skin and his soft hair and his lined face and his blue eyes, only good things, and Sherlock is desperately worried he cannot provide them.

"I believe you, but I hate the thought of that.  So you ought to go now.  It would be better for both of us in the long run if--"

"Stop it,"John begs, "just, god, shut up, please, if you can't make it better then stop making it bleeding worse, will you?  I'm right, you know I'm right.  Tell me the things I'm right about."

Sighing, Sherlock shifts marginally and goes back to dragging his fingers lightly back and forth across John's spine.  This is useless.  John isn't going anywhere, Sherlock realizes.  John is stuck.  And Sherlock stuck him there.  And very possibly, John is in fact right.  He is right about most everything.  When he said the crisper was no place for a human hand, that was true if inconvenient.  When he said that the earth went around the sun, and Sherlock Googled it, that was true too.  John, apparently, is an immovable object, and there is nothing to be done about it.

Sherlock allows himself a small smile.

"Well, I am amazing," he owns.

John laughs again, but it still sounds nothing like happiness.  "Yeah.  Yeah, you are."

"And my flat is nice."

"Mmm-hmm."

"And I...didn't like seeing you hurt."

"Understatement of the buggering decade."

Fitting his palm to John's cheek, Sherlock lifts the doctor's head.  His face is much paler than it should be and the wrinkles beneath his eyes have taken on a bruised look.  "You need to comprehend I am a brain, and I treat the rest of me as a mere appendix.  With drugs.  With sex, when I did have sex.  With people.  I've never been in a relationship in my life.  Sally Donovan was right the other day.  About me and humans.  They hate me, and I--"

"You don't hate people, you can't bear to be alone.  You hate what people did to you," John breathes.  His eyes are piercing, sapphire-bright points.  "I don't know who it was, but I want to wring that person by the neck."

Sherlock thinks of Reggie, of the days after the ill-fated kiss, of the one letter Sherlock dared to write, apologizing, even asking if they couldn't be friends again, and of the response to his plea for forgiveness, which was a single line delivered the next day reading I've no notion what I ever saw in you in the first place, but from now on stay well clear of me--you're poison.  In all the years of torment, Sherlock can't think of a single letter from Jim Moriarty in all the litanies of hatred that hurt more than Reggie's unsigned note.

"I've been told I am not good for...people," he says hoarsely.

"You're good for me," John says fervently, "you're so bloody good for me, you know you are, the sleeping, the adventuring, the how do you call it, bustling, the violin, the having someone, you're the best thing I can think of and you practically forced me into it."

"Yes, and that rather alarms me."

"Frankly it alarms me too."

"I'm dangerous, even you said so."

"Yeah, but I'm the one invaded Afghanistan."

Sherlock can't help but smile at this, and John hesitantly mirrors the expression.  So he is still frightened, Sherlock realizes.  Of how Sherlock will respond, the decisions Sherlock will make, the choices and the options and the paths. 

The detective feels something significant within him shift.  He has spent a very great deal of time not being afraid, no, he isn't frightened of Moriarty or the letters, well, he was when he was a child, but anyhow now it's merely a chemical reaction like any other chemical reaction artificially or naturally produced, but Sherlock knows what it feels like to be frightened because the chemical reaction and actually being frightened feel the same, not that he's in fact afraid, of course he isn't, but in any event Sherlock never wants John to feel that way again.  And if what is required for John not to be frightened is that Sherlock is brave, he decides he can do it.  He has a pair of bollocks, and he will man up to the challenge.  If this means keeping John here rather than sending him away, Sherlock will manage it courageously, he determines.  If it means having a relationship, he will try it.  If it means protecting John from hazards like bullets and spinal injuries and James Moriarty and Sherlock himself, he will fucking do what it takes.   And that is that.

"Say yes to me," John whispers.  "Don't think, you sodding brain-in-a-jar, just say yes."

"Yes," Sherlock says, "yes, fine, yes, but--"

"Stop right there," John grins, with his thumb tracing over Sherlock's ample lower lip.  "Yes was plenty.  Down to brass tacks, now.  You like having your hair touched."

"Everyone does," Sherlock scoffs, nipping at the thumb.

"And the, you know, sleeping together."

"Yes."

"Cuddling, for lack of a better word."

"For god's sake, surely there must be one?"

John's smile widens.  "Not that I'm aware of.  How about kissing?"

"Yes, only not on the mouth."

Despite the fact kissing John would be something akin to paradise, he says it because kissing ruined his life, and because that's what he always says.  The response is nearly automatic.

No, not on the mouth, I don't care how much extra you'll give me.  The answer is still no, and honestly I don't see why you would give a damn.  Well, if that means it's off, then it's off, that's all.  Other people exist with access to coke.  No means no on this front, non-negotiable.  It's none of your business why--because I said so.  Why does everyone insist they want this from me?  It's just casual sex, this should not be so complicated.  No, it's not against you, I just won't, that's all.  I can't, I never do, and no, nothing you can say will change my mind.

John's face is doing something complicated.

"Are you already disappointed?" Sherlock snaps.

John looks swiftly horrified.  "No, god no, I was just thinking, and I see why that's, yeah, it's intimate and there are, you know, fluids and.  Other kissing is fine?"

"Other kissing is fine."

John ducks down at once and brushes his lips across Sherlock's eyebrow, mouthing at the bone, tenderly pressing a very slightly open-lipped kiss to it.  Sherlock can feel it like a gamma ray from the top of his prickling scalp to the tips of his oh-so-warm toes. 

"That sort of kissing?" John asks softly.  "Good?"

"Um.  Yes," Sherlock says, slightly breathless.  "Good."

Descending with an almost predatory look, John next mouths across Sherlock's jaw, which elicits a gasp.  There are lips, plentiful lips, and their soft undersides, and the scrape of teeth, and finally a bit of tongue.  Sherlock is uncertain whether stars should be bursting behind his eyes, but that is emphatically the case.

John stops.  His face is flushed.  "That sort of kissing?"

Growling, Sherlock catches John's head and nuzzles and kisses and licks, finally discovering what it tastes like where the doctor's jaw meets his ear.  It's velvet cream sandstone starlight.  John makes a sound like a happy panther, so Sherlock keeps right on doing it fantastic amazing, god, you're the amazing one.  Eventually, after he's had nowhere near his fill but can't quite breathe, he gently bites John's earlobe and John laughs out loud.

Sherlock drops back, gasping.  "Good?"

"Yeah," John says.  He laughs again.  "Yeah, good.  Are we okay now?"

Sherlock bites his lip.  "I hope so.  I'm sorry about the bag."

"And the morphine?"

He thinks it over.  Not really, no, that was for John to see Sherlock plainly and then leave him, but as that hadn't panned out quite the way Sherlock expected...

"If you like," he concedes.

"I do."

"Fine, then."

"You can make it up to me."

"Yes, name it."

John rolls up, throwing the blanket off their legs and heading with a pleased look for the loo.  He's limping a bit, but on the other foot from the psychosomatic one.  "We're taking you to the clinic," he declares.  "You've been using for a decade, I've been remiss in not doing this before now.  Get dressed.  I have many pressing concerns about you in general, but specifically, today we're focusing on your heart and your liver."

 

 

 

"This is grotesquely unnecessary," Sherlock grouses, seated on John's exam table.  He isn't working today, but he looks very doctorly anyhow, drawing blood and consulting charts and scribbling forms and tapping his fingers on file folders and writing requests for testing.  It would be very charming if Sherlock weren't sitting here with his shirt unbuttoned, watching John make concerned professional faces as he listens to Sherlock's heart through a stethoscope.  He is unspeakably bored.  He has already memorized the medical posters, the ones he thinks will be relevant to crime somehow, and now the walls are closing in.

"Yeah, well, you don't consider eating necessary, so...breathe deeply for me?"

Sherlock obeys, letting out a gust of disdain on the exhale.

John merely smiles.  "I'm dead certain you've not had a checkup in years, so don't be an arse about it."

"I am fine."

"You are, probably, but seeing as how you abuse street drugs and I don't quite know how to get you to quit yet, we're making certain.  Breathe."

"Breathing is boring."

John whaps him in the chest with the stethoscope.  So Sherlock breathes.  John is staring rather intently at his chest, he realizes a moment or two later.  It's a pleasant sensation, the being observed, even if the exam itself is ludicrous.  Sherlock watches John watching him, watches him counting freckles and sparse scattered moles and the smooth planes of his breastbone and the muscles of his abdomen and the curve of his ribs.  Sherlock is aware he is attractive in theory, likes his transport in the abstract, but it has never been this satisfying in the past.  It's a bit like John calling him amazing.  It's rather lovely.

"You like the way I look," Sherlock muses.

A smile quirks into life on John's face.  "Yep."

John moves the metal stethoscope.  But it's an excuse, Sherlock theorizes.  There's nothing wrong with his lungs, for god's sake.  He smirks at the top of John's head.

"Hmm.  You can see more of it, if you want to.  Without the doctoring."

"Oh, god," John laughs, "I'm fine, you don't have to--"

Then someone raps at the door and John calls "Yes?" and Sarah walks in.

The sleuth feels his hackles, if he has hackles, instantly rise.

Sarah is small and curvaceous and rather charming, and she is smiling, and wearing a pink dress that doesn't suit her hair, which for some reason Sherlock finds infuriating.  Her shoes are sensible and her eyes sincere.  She seems the sort of person normal people like.  A nice person.  Not a dangerous one, not a person with sharp edges and dark depths.  Sarah probably gained her medical degree in order to help strangers live longer lives, had liked the idealism and the goodness of the profession, and she probably couldn't kill a mouse that hadn't already been slain for dissection to save her life, and she probably catches the insects she finds in her flat and carries them outside and sets them free.  It's repulsive.

"Oh, hello again,"  Sarah says brightly to Sherlock.  "Everything all right?"

"Wonderful," Sherlock drawls.

Putting her hand on John's arm in a casual way, she says, "So sorry to interrupt, John, I know you're just popping in for a bit, but can I get you to sign off on--"

"Stop touching him," Sherlock snarls.

Sarah's hand drops.  She turns to Sherlock, startled.  Her eyes are doelike, round and pretty and unsure of how she caused offence.  Sarah looks instantly apologetic following the confusion.  As well she should.  John has fucked her, many times, and Sherlock loathes her.

"Jesus, Sherlock--" John begins to say.

But Sherlock is already hopping off the exam table and buttoning his shirt and sweeping his coat off the chair and exiting this horrible white room with the horrible nice woman in it with all the haste he can muster.  He hates the cold sterile air and the warm gentle woman and the places where her soft graceful hands have been.  Now his shirt is half-done up and he is outside of the clinic, the air is better here, and he strides to the bench under the tall glass building and sits.  Cigarettes.  He needs a cigarette.  He needs a cigarette like he has never needed one before.  Because how dare she with her face and her hair and her small hands and he finds half a pack in his coat and lights it, detesting the fact that John is still inside.  Making explanations or excuses or jokes about Sherlock or apologizing or kissing his girlfriend or sliding his fingers between her legs or--

The cigarette is snatched from his hand and ground out on the bench.  Sherlock looks up in surprise.

"No," John says.  He sounds tightly angry.  "Drugs are one thing, but this shit will kill you."

Crossing his arms, Sherlock sneers, "Have you quite patched things up with your sweetheart, then?"

"I broke it off with her two weeks ago, you prick, when I moved in.  I didn't know what would happen, but I knew we weren't going anywhere.  So you just shouted at my friend.  Not to mention my boss."

John sits next to Sherlock, who stares at him in awe.  Everything was a bit grey for a moment there, but now he can see the green of the small hedge and the red of the passing car and the different straw-coloured shades of John's hair.

"You did?"

"Yes.  You are a wanker."

"Only very occasionally."

Shaking his head in frustration, John falls silent.  He swipes his tongue over his lips.  He flexes his left hand a few times.  There are storm clouds in his blue eyes now, ones Sherlock put there, and that is extremely annoying. They are quiet for nearly a minute, John fuming and Sherlock testing words in his head to use on him.  None of them seem very appropriate.  But they cannot sit on a bench with the grey sky overhead without speaking forever, that would be unbearable.  Meanwhile, Sherlock isn't sorry and doesn't intend to be, so an apology--which might be the quickest route to forgiveness and is generally the approved technique--is untenable.  He will have to proceed along another route.

"Okay, you have questions," Sherlock sighs at last, flipping up his coat collar and settling back into it like a shell.  Talking about this will be a nightmare, he thinks, but better to get it over with before one of them is literally killed.

"Yes yes."  John says the words very close together, so they sound like one word.  "I do.  Yes, I have questions.  Now, listen, if you don't want to answer any of these ques--"

"I don't want to answer any," Sherlock growls.

"Yeah, I get that, but we're sorting this.  Now.  That was not a reasonable reaction to her touching me."

"Of course it was, you shagged her."

"And now we have a whatever-this-is, you're jealous about that?"

"No."

"Possessive?"

"Closer."

"Is it a Sarah thing, or would you react like that to anyone I'd slept with?"

"The latter."

"When you were sexually active, was it about affection?"

"It was about expediency."

"But what happened just now sure as hell wasn't about expediency, though?"

"Are you going to fuck other people?"

John blinks several times.  "I, Christ, Sherlock, I wasn't planning on getting a leg over anytime soon, but--"

"Because I would probably kill them, fair warning," Sherlock spits out, turning away.

John mulls this over for a moment.

"Does that mean that you want to have sex with me?"

Sherlock thinks about it.

I don't want to have sex with you, I've never wanted that from anyone, but I want to fly hand in hand with you out of our window and peep into all the houses at their secrets and their lies, and then when we were through with London we would fly higher, and I would show you the star systems I observed through a telescope as a boy, and did you know I can picture them three-dimensionally?  I can, because I'm marvelous, and I want to give you a night you've never had before, and I want to taste you on my tongue and let you linger on my lips and I want to turn myself inside out until I'm your entire world because I wrapped you inside with me as if we've gone supernova together, and I want to hear what someone I love sounds like when they're shouting for me like they're dying, and I want to give you every sort of pleasure imaginable now that I won't let you be frightened anymore, and none of it would matter to you, because you would see that I didn't want the same night that you wanted, that I'd be just as happy tracking trails through a forest with you or sleeping on your belly, but when you saw that for yourself, in the flesh, for a fact, undeniable, before your eyes, that you couldn't arouse me, that I didn't want what you did in the same way you wanted it, it would be over.

"No," he says.

"Right, unsurprising, right, but what is this about, then?  I honestly can't imagine, Sherlock."

"It's about me hating her."

"That's ridiculous, you can't hate her, you don't know her. You can only hate what she was to me.  And that's...you don't need to...fuck, I'm not going to dance around it anymore.  I get why you don't want to talk about it, but have you seen the way I look at you?" 

John's voice is growing hoarse.  That is terrible.  That is terrible, and one hundred percent Sherlock's fault, just the way everything else is.  He turns back to his former colleague.

"It's about closeness," Sherlock attempts.

"If I can get any fucking closer to you without hurting you than I did this morning..."

"I want to give you gifts!" Sherlock shouts in despair. John stops.

"Wait," he says, waving his arms in the air.  "Wait.  Just.  Wait.  Let me rephrase something.  It's going to sound crazy, but bear with me, yeah?  Yes or no to this one, because I think I have it nailed."

"I'm waiting," Sherlock snaps.

"You think of sex like a trip to the dentist.  And I think of sex like a trip to the races, yeah?  I love it.  You don't."

"Can you skip to the part where you want an open relationship, or some other ghastly disgusting--"

"'You want to have sex with me, but you do not want me to have sex with you.  Is that it?"

Sherlock is astonished. 

For that is, as John put it, it. 

A couple holding hands passes them on their way into the clinic.  A raindrop falls on Sherlock's arm and he brushes it away.  Time is either moving very quickly or very slowly, but it certainly is not progressing in the usual fashion.  John pulls out a little bottle of Vicoden and pops one into his mouth, dry swallowing it.  Then John grins, spreading his hands wide and lifting them. 

"I have absolutely no problem with that."

  

 

 

It isn't as if Sherlock meant to get himself locked in the Conk-Singleton basement and then drugged.

He was merely hacking into their database (expertly) in his small cubicle at his new desk (privately) after amassing some truly excellent on the job training relayed to Bradstreet and John and the rest of the team in the surveillance van via the wire (perfectly) and was now transferring hundreds of encoded files (deftly) and yes, maybe it (technically) wasn't part of the plan, but who follows plans to the letter when so much more can be accomplished, and he'd been about to stand up and make his escape (gracefully) when a security guard said "We just need you for fingerprinting, won't take a moment," and Sherlock said "Can't it wait?" (naturally) and the guard had pulled out his gun and said "No," and, once forced out of the public eye and into the freezing sublevels, doing his best to drop brief sarcastic remarks about where they were headed all the while for the sake of the wire, a chloroform-soaked rag was shoved in his face.

Everything is a bit blurry after that.

"Here, here, take it easy," John says.  He is under Sherlock's arm, and they're at the upper level of a set of steps.  Sherlock suspects they are in Baker Street.  It smells as if they might be in Baker Street, smells of vague cigarette smoke and old walls and the fried eggs they'd had for breakfast after Sherlock unpacked John's duffel bag.  And that means that John helped him up the stairs, probably, in an effort to reach their home.  Sherlock suspects that might have taken a while.

"Nmf," Sherlock says.

"Yeah, well.  I didn't much care for them either."

The door opens.  John flicks the light on with his other hand, groaning, "Christ we are the walking wounded."  The glare is terrible, all-encompassing.  It lances like liquid fire.

"Ugh," Sherlock says.

"I know, I know, I'm sorry, but I need to see, okay?"

He feels as if he's coming off a wild freefalling canyon-deep skyscraper high.  And he didn't even get the enjoyment.  Just the punishment.  His head is about to explode.  His tongue is numb.  He cannot feel his lips.  His eyes ache.  They may be bleeding.  Where are his lips?

Do I still have lips?

Next he is aware, Sherlock is seated on his bed in his bedroom, and John is carefully taking his glasses off.  He stops to run his finger alongside what Sherlock suspects to be a nasty cut near his hairline.

"Nng," Sherlock says, flinching.

"Sorry, I know, I know.  Shh.  You're all right.  Can I, er."  John has one hand in Sherlock's rat's nest of hair and one on his neck.  "You are just kind of flirting with shock symptoms right now, and your circulation has been crap since they knocked you out.  Can I get you into bed?  No funny business, I promise."

"Rmm," Sherlock says, burying his head in John's stomach.  It's better there.  It's nice.  Whatever John wants to do is fine.  John is a very sensible person.  He can feel John laughing through his belly.  John's hands are warm, always warm.  It's one of the many ways John is excellent.

"Mrm?" Sherlock asks.

"Yeah, this is probably confusing.  You flew a bit too close to the sun and got yourself knocked out with a trihalomethane.  You goddamn fucking lunatic.  I was furious at you.  Not before you pretty much locked down these Conk-Singleton bastards, mind.  When you went quiet, we went in after you.  They were calling the higher ups about the intruder, so they didn't get the chance to search you, thought your whole plan was to hack the mainframe, so that's a blessing.  Nice narration of where you were, by the way, but Bradstreet put a tracking device on the wire.  Did you know about that?"

"Nrrf."

"Thought not.  I like that woman.  I like her very much.  Not like that, though.  I like someone else like that.  Can I take your clothes off?  Please?"

"Hsss," Sherlock sighs, entirely amenable.

Firm hands reach down and pull the hoodie upwards.  Sherlock tries to help, honestly he does, but his limbs are shaking and unsure and his vision very blurred.  Once the shirt is finally off, a tow-coloured head comes into his impaired sightline and fingers begin working at the Converse he's wearing.

Before the blankness takes him, he recalls a sting of a cloth against his brow and a voice murmuring I know, love, it's almost done, and Sherlock wonders who love is, and then he senses soft clothes sliding on and let me, just let me, let me and here, shh, I've got you, and then being arranged on smooth sheets like a sacrifice and then being wrapped in a cocoon, only Sherlock vaguely recalls that cocoons are made of sealing wax and honeycomb typically, aren't they, but this cocoon isn't bone china at all, it's more like a pair of spun-sugar wings enfolding him as he drifts off into the nothingness of a cloudless summer sky.

 

 

When Sherlock awakens, the pain is mostly gone.  There is still an arm around him, an arm with a tanned wrist and a pale forearm and blond hairs, and someone is breathing softly into the back of his neck, seemingly on the same pillow, and now (unlike last night, he is sure of it, last night there was only let me please and you're okay, I've got you) there is a noticeable erection jutting into his lower back.

It's morning, according to the light, which is a honey colour Sherlock associates with bees who have been mucking about with clover as opposed to, say, buckwheat or lavender or alfalfa. 

The light, Sherlock realizes, it quite flattering to the arm he is observing.

Sherlock is beset with a strange feeling of deja vu.   Didn't he wake up yesterday with an army doctor, and now, again, does this mean the process is to be repeated, the sleeping tangled together ad infinitum?  If so, is that a reward for all the cases he's ever solved in his life, and if he keeps solving cases and keeps Moriarty at bay, will he continue to have a living breathing John in his bed? 

Their bed?  Could it be their bed now?

It certainly seems so, he decides.  But this is such a miraculous development as to be unclear.

John is stirring a bit, his arm shifting up to Sherlock's chest rather than his thin waist.

What happened yesterday?  There was the sofa, and then the eggs, and then the clinic, and then the fight over Sarah, and then the cab in the rain, and then Bradstreet admiring him in front of John, Sherlock loves Bradstreet, and then Conk-Singleton, and then the security guard, and then No, and then a rag in his face, and then stairs, there were certainly stairs, and then you goddamn fucking lunatic I was furious at you--

Sherlock freezes.

"Oh, Jesus, sorry," says a sleep-softened voice behind him. 

John rolls away.

Sherlock, a bit alarmed, turns over.  John is on his back now, wearing a t-shirt and presumably pants, one arm flung up lazily and his hair wildly sleep-mussed.  He looks...he looks lovely.  And he doesn't look angry, not precisely, well not at all, the lines around his mouth are perfectly calm, but Sherlock cannot recall what took them from you goddamn fucking lunatic to John sleeping with his chest to Sherlock's back and his arm around him.  John yawns luxuriously.

"Did we..." Sherlock asks softly.

John's eyes blink open.  His head lists in Sherlock's direction.  "Did...god, no, I'd never--"

"...solve the case?"

"Oh."  He smiles.  "You did, yeah."

"Ah."

"You got yourself in some trouble with chloroform, but Bradstreet says that's kind of your usual thing.  So.  Yeah, it was fine.  Scary, for a second.  But fine."

"Just a day at the office, then."

"For the child prodigy consulting detective?  I imagine so."

"I don't remember."

"No, you wouldn't.  Prat.  But you seem much better now, so that's sorted."

They fall silent.  John stares at the ceiling.  He isn't angry even though Sherlock can't remember apologizing after you goddamn fucking lunatic, the sleuth can tell by his respiration rate that John isn't angry.  That is excellent news.  Sherlock watches his chest rise and fall, the faint outline of pectorals and the clear evidence of lungs beneath, thinking, wondering what on earth John was sorry about when he rolled away.  For sharing the bed?  Surely not, not at this point.  For calling him a goddamn fucking lunatic?  Probably not, considering chloroform was involved and Sherlock, while quite capable when it comes to computers, likely should not have added hacking a mainframe to the agenda.  For--

"Well," John says, sounding a bit embarrassed, "I'm just going to, um, take a quick shower, and then--"

Oh.

Before Sherlock is aware that his hand is moving, he has a John by the forearm.  It's smooth in his grip, solid, small like the rest of John, but then again Sherlock has always had rather extraordinarily long fingers.

"You don't have to go anywhere," he says.

John peers at him, seeming puzzled, navy blue eyes gradually clearing in the morning light.  "You--I didn't mean to alarm you, I just--"

"You didn't alarm me."

"Yes, I did."

"I couldn't remember what happened last night."

"I know, and--"

"I was thinking about it, and there was a gap, that's all."

"So it wasn't--"

"I'm not alarmed."

"But you were."

"Not by sex.  Sex doesn't alarm me," Sherlock insists, exasperated.

John bites his lower lip, musing over this assertion.  He looks...if Sherlock is honest with himself, and he does make every effort to be, he looks delicious, from his absolutely perfect nose to his slender lips to his John-smelling neck.

"Yeah, we did talk about that," John says slowly, "but I just, seriously, whatever else anyone you've ever met has said to you, and from the way you act I want to throttle more than half of them, I want you to know that I don't--"

Steps need to be taken, Sherlock realizes.

He abruptly sits up and tosses the covers back and swings his leg over John's lap where he is lying on his back, drawstring pajamas over a pair of boxers, and gently sits down, John's hard cock trapped beneath him and John's wide eyes staring up at him in shock.

"Sex," Sherlock repeats clearly, "doesn't alarm me."

And it doesn't.  If it did, he wouldn't have offered.  Oh, he did hate it with other people, loathed it with some more than others in fact, but John, Sherlock is realizing, is different.  John isn't a person Sherlock despises who has something Sherlock wants but perhaps shouldn't have.  John is a person Sherlock loves, though he still doesn't know whether or how he should mention that, who is something Sherlock wants, and perhaps should have.  He comes with as many side effects as the drugs, Sherlock's heart murmuring and his breath being lost from time to time and the strange flutterings in his chest, but this isn't about bartering goods for services.  It's an entirely different sensation, rather like the time Sherlock was introduced to chemistry or when he found a book about forensics in their library at age six, that same feeling of wanting everything to do with a subject, all at once.

"Right," John says, eyes fluttering.  "Um.  Good, sex doesn't alarm you.  It seemed, though, that--"

"Sex doesn't alarm me.  Orgasms alarm me tremendously."

"That...thank you for that distinction."

"You're welcome."

"I just want you to be okay about...everything."

"When have you seen me ever do something I didn't want to do?"

"Yeah, I get that you're a brat, trust me.  But it can't just be about what I want.  What--and you are, Christ, really making your point and frankly, uh, distracting me here--what do you want, and can you answer that question as quickly as possible because Jesus."

Wriggling a bit, which causes John's eyes to fall shut, Sherlock says, "I want everything to do with you.  When you're not here, I want to know what you look like and what you're doing and when I text you it helps, because then I can picture you texting me back.  I want to see every mood and expression you're capable of, and the entire range of your emotional and mental and physical capacity, from black to white and nil to infinity and then record it all over again with different variables at play and explore changes in your responses due to the myriad permutations and the order in which new factors are introduced.  That wasn't something I wanted you to know about, since the circumstances are so challenging, but you found out after the Friesland, which makes it too late, and so I don't see what choice we have because I want to learn you completely, and if you think I can do that without having sex with you, you are far stupider than I thought you were."

John rubs at his temples for a moment.  It makes the lines on his brow shift in subtle and beautiful ways.

"Holy Christ," he says flatly.  Then he grins, as wide a grin as Sherlock has ever seen anyone wear.  "I'm all yours, you know.  I think I may have mentioned that.  But I'll mention it again, as often as you like."

Sherlock smiles.  "Do you trust me?"

"I probably shouldn't, but I seem to, yes.  Absolutely."

"And you want to do what I want?"

Pressing his hips up into Sherlock slightly, he hisses, "I really, really do."

"Then let's play a game."

John thinks about this for a moment.

"Um.  What are the rules?"

Sherlock takes John's wrists between his fingers and leans on them a little, pinning them to the bed.  At the same time, he rocks back and forth slightly on John's lap, which sends John's bottom lip between his teeth again and shrinks his irises and in every way makes him just a little bit lovelier than he was before.

"The rules are, one, that you do as I say.  And two, you don't come until I tell you."

"Yes, okay," John says breathlessly. 

And almost instantly.

Oh.

"Oh, you like that," Sherlock purrs.  "Do you like being given orders because you were in the military, or did you join the military because you like being given orders?"

"It is so not that simplistic," John answers, smiling and wrinkling his nose for an instant.

Sherlock ponders this.  "It's more specific.  Is it specific to me?"

John flexes his left hand where it's tethered beneath Sherlock's.  He clears his throat.  "Um, admittedly you are very bossy.  But that's not the point.  You have, and I am putting this mildly here, an attractive voice.  And I could get out of this within two seconds, mind, and have you completely incapacitated in another three.  But..."

"But you won't," Sherlock breathes.  "And you like choosing not to."

"But I won't," John agrees, lowering his own voice, "and I like choosing not to.  Do I get to make requests in this game?  I mean, I am a sexual enough person--as in, a very very sexual person--and you are fucking gorgeous enough that to be honest I could probably come from you reading railway timetables aloud, seriously, you could pretty much dance the Macarena and I'd get weak in the knees, which come to think of it means we're probably made for each other, but a hint or two here and there might be useful."

After considering, Sherlock nods.  "Three requests."

"Like a genie?"  John chuckles.  "Fucking start this game, I am desperately uncomfortable.  Go." 

Dismounting, Sherlock descends to his side, propping his head on his elbow.  John watches him, turning his own head on the pillow.  His hands, once they're freed, go to his belly and he links his fingers.

"First, do you need painkillers?" Sherlock asks, dragging his fingers over John's elbow.

"Nope.  Taken care of.  I'm fine.  First, are you still chemically impaired?" John adds, suddenly concerned.

"No, I'm fine."

"Good."

"Good."

"Then take your clothes off."

Pleased, John promptly shifts and then kneels up.  He pulls his t-shirt up by the hem and over his head, wincing a bit, and tosses it over the edge of the bed.  Then he pushes down his boxers, returns to his back, and kicks them off onto the floor as well.

The bruise is of course still a great purpling smear, and Sherlock loathes it.  But oh, how much there is to love here, and he takes his time to examine and record it, fearing (yes, he owns to himself, fearing) that he may not get this opportunity twice.  John's chest is smooth but not hairless, and the tan lines at his neck and wrists are echoed by another gradation in tone bisecting his upper arms.  His stomach is taut but not overly muscled, and his legs are firm.  His cock is standing proud, and he's smiling expectantly.  There is a mole on his third rib that Sherlock adores.  And the scar.  The scar is new, and spectacular.  It's like a smashed white spider or a hole in a windowpane, messy and heroic and beautiful and--

"God," John whispers, "I'm getting off just from you staring at me, you mad git.  Permission to make my first wish?"

"Granted."

"I don't want to be the only naked man in this bed."

John, the sleuth thinks, is a clever fellow.  Sherlock unties his drawstring and obliges, followed by his shirt.  He sends them down to be with John's clothing on the floor.  He likes to think of them there, together, mingling, while he and John do the same on the bed above.

"Oh, fuck me, that is just unfair," John murmurs, rapt.  "You are so...how are you perfect?  Did you fucking plan that, the being perfect?  What planet are you from?"

Leaning over, Sherlock opens his drawer and pulls out a small tube of lubricant.

"What the hell?" John asks, puzzled.

"I already hate masturbating, you think I like it dry?"

"Oh.  Nope.  Of course not."

"Hold your hand out."

John offers his left and Sherlock squeezes some onto his fingers.  "Don't do anything with that until I tell you."

"When will that be?" John asks breathlessly.  "Soon?"

"Maybe."  He tosses the tube back into the drawer.

"I vote for soon, okay?"

Sherlock returns to lying on his side but scoots closer.  He passes his fingers lightly, very lightly, down the side of John's face.  Thence to his neck, and then down to the scar and then beyond the scar to his chest and then down to his stomach and he stops with his palm against John's pelvis.  But he wants more more more, and so, leaning over, Sherlock passes his tongue over the scar tissue and John hisses softly.

"Touch me," Sherlock orders, smiling on John's skin like a caress.

"God, yes please, where?"

"Anywhere you like.  I don't mind."

John reaches out and passes the back of his right hand over the curve of Sherlock's pale hip, up up up his concave stomach and along his neck and into his hair, gripping, which Sherlock rewards by taking John's nipple into his mouth.

"Oh my god."  The grip in his hair tightens, so Sherlock adds teeth to the hardening nub.  "Fuck.  Okay, are you going to--"

"Pull your legs up."

John obliges, knees bent and his heart hammering under Sherlock's lips, which is something so tender and beautiful that Sherlock finds it almost unbearably sad.  He brushes his hand down to John's leg, never losing contact, and keeps working at his nipple for as long as he pleases, which is admittedly a long time, whole minutes passing, Sherlock gently scraping with teeth and prodding with tongue under he can feel John's thigh starting to tremble like a butterfly's wing where Sherlock's thumb is now tucked into the creasing skin at his hip. 

"Is, um," John says in a strangely high tone, "is one or the other of us going to touch my prick anytime soon--dry, wet, whatever at this point, god, because...well..."

Stopping, Sherlock looks up.  There is a little bead of moisture at the tip of John's cock, which is of medium length but a bit thicker than he remembers them being, and it's resting against John's lower abdomen above a neat thatch of dark blond hair.  Wondering what it tastes like, Sherlock sees no reason not to find out.  He swipes his thumb across the head and collects the small drop, putting it in his mouth.  John tastes like mother of pearl.  John's taste instantly goes into a large glassed-in greenhouse-like addition to the library in Sherlock's mind palace that he created after John said fucking start this game.  The room contains a large array of oak and brass display cases.  Meanwhile, John's right fist behind Sherlock hits the bed with a thump and his eyes scrunch closed.

"Oh, fuck, buggering hell, are you kidding me?  That, that right there almost did it, did you just taste me?  What the hell, Sherlock?  I am touching myself now, okay?"

"I wouldn't."

"Why the fuck not?"

Sherlock brings his hand down in hard, quick slap as low on John's thigh as he can reach without hitting the bed itself.  John gasps, and then starts laughing helplessly, shaking his head back and forth with his eyes shut.

"God help me, I am in bed with the handsomest, kinkiest ace on the face of the Earth and I think he is going to kill me--if I die, please don't tell my mum I went being spanked by a desperately hot asexual consulting detective.  Please.  Oh, god."

"Want another?"

"Yes, please."

The crack in the room is loud when Sherlock obliges.

"That counted for one of your wishes."

"It bloody well did not," John protests, his head coming up.

"Yes, it did.  But this one won't," Sherlock concedes, landing a third smack.

"Sherlock," John says, and his voice is very serious.  "If one of us doesn't touch me in seconds, I am going to bloody well cry."

Sherlock chuckles deep in his throat, nudging himself a little closer.  He puts his head down on the scar, listening to John's heart echo through the marred flesh, his eyes fixed down the line of John's body.  John's right arm comes up and curls around his back, scratching at his spine.  It's like being in a nest, surrounded entirely by war veteran.  Sherlock finds that his own heart is pounding wildly.  When did that happen?  Was it listening to John's and trying to catch up to him, afraid it would be lost in the distance otherwise?

"Take your cock in your hand."

"Finally, bloody thank you," John sighs, reaching up with his left hand and tentatively gripping himself, coating himself with the lube.  A sound comes from his throat Sherlock has never heard before, and he promptly adds it to the display case with John's taste.

"Stroke.  Not too hard, but however you like it."

John pumps gently, slowly, twisting fractionally as Sherlock watches.  His breath, Sherlock can hear above him, is coming hard through his nose.

"What are you thinking about?" Sherlock whispers.

"The Mona Lisa."

Reaching down, Sherlock pinches the flesh of John's upper thigh where he reddened it.  Hard.

"What the fuck do you think I'm thinking about, Sherlock, Jesus, I'm thinking about you watching me toss off as if it's some kind of bloody miracle."

Sherlock blinks, eyes suddenly strangely hot, because it is a miracle.  It's a part of John he never thought he would be allowed to see, and if he doesn't live out the week, he thinks he can say for a certainty that he died knowing miracles can happen even if they only happen once.  He swallows hard.  He clears his throat.

"You don't have to be thinking about something that's actually happening," he says softly, riveted by John's hand working up and down, up and down.  "What did you think about before, when you did this?  Was I on my knees in a dark London alley while you fucked my mouth?"

John tightens his arm around the detective.  "God, no, Sherlock, I--"

"Are you saying you didn't think about me?"

"No, I did, I just don't want you to think that--"

"It's all right, it's only a fantasy, it doesn't even touch me--fantasies are always free.  Or was it you on your knees, and me in my chair while you took me down your throat?"

"Killing me," John growls through his teeth, his fist quickening.  "You are fucking killing me.  Do not consider whether or not you can have sex with me an issue any longer, all right?  Clearly you're not a genius for nothing.  Fuck.  I mean, do you want me to come first, or have a fucking heart attack first, make up your bloody mind."

"I'll bet it was that you'd worked me open with your fingers--standing, with my hands against the wall and all our clothes still on but with my pants and trousers down--and then you bent me over the kitchen table and took me in the arse after I'd started begging for it."

A strangled sound emerges from above him and John's fingernails grip harder against his back.  Then all of a sudden, John clenches down very hard at the base of his cock, making a tight ring with his fingers, his thighs shaking.  Sherlock's heart practically skips a beat.

"Did you just almost come?" he breathes, awed.

John is panting hard now, his chest heaving under Sherlock's ear.  "Yes, you complete shite, that is what just happened," he gasps.

"Good," Sherlock snarls greedily.  He reaches down and cups his hand over John's balls where they are nestled tight against his body.  "Good, because you're close, then, and I didn't want you to be thinking about that when you came, I wanted--keep pumping--I want you to be thinking about me, only another me, and I'm so hard for you, perfect gorgeous perfect you, that I can hardly breathe, you're spread out in front of me just like this, just like this, on your back, only I'm fucking you, I'm fucking you for as long as you--yes, come now, yes, like that," Sherlock demands, pressing the bollocks in his hand gently up against John's prick.

John comes with a bitten-off shout, his right hand tense and glorious in Sherlock's hair.  The first stream, and Sherlock really should have been planning for this, lands on John's chest and a bit on Sherlock's eyebrow.  The second and third pulse slowly across his stomach as he repeats a chant of fuck fuck, Sherlock, oh god, and then it is over and Sherlock has never done anything he's prouder of in his entire life, not solving the Carl Powers case or surviving uni or being consulted by the reigning family of the Netherlands, not any of that, just this this this this this this this this this this this, he is thinking, his mouth open in a sympathetic gasp and his eyes falling closed.

Long, endlessly long seconds pass, John breathing as if he's just run a race and Sherlock shivering--wondering if when his face comes away, an imprint of the scar will be on it, and if that means that something inside him will never be the same again either.

It feels that way.

John's legs slump down and his hold on Sherlock's hair fades into a smoothing, caressing motion.

"Sherlock?"

Sherlock cannot be expected to speak right now, perhaps ever again, so he nuzzles into the scar instead.

"Sherlock, did I just come in your face the first time we shagged?

Yes, and it was wonderful. 

Sherlock nods silently. 

"I am, wow, so sorry about that.  I really cannot, ha.  Apologize enough.  I'm sorry."

Sherlock shakes his head.  Reaching up, he wipes the small amount off his eyebrow and swallows it thoughtfully.

"Oh my god."

They stay like that for a little, John tracing his fingertips through Sherlock's hair.

"Baby, are you okay?  Please be okay.  Talk to me."

Sighing, Sherlock sits up.  He reaches over the bed for a sock and wipes it across John's chest and stomach, John looking at him as if he'd cured cancer. 

"That was amazing," John says softly.

Sherlock smiles and tosses the soiled sock away.  John is glowing like a Christmas tree, and it's Sherlock's doing, and for a moment the world entire is a wonderful place to live.

"Except for one thing.  I didn't get my third wish."

"Oh," Sherlock says, realizing he's right.

"But I figure you can make it up it me.  I want a kiss.  Now, please."

Sherlock descends with his elbows on either side of John's head and takes his skull in his hands like at the docks, and he kisses him in the middle of the forehead, leaving his lips there and breathing.

"Yeah," John says, running his hands up and down Sherlock's back.  "There.  That sorts it.  Are you, um.  You're okay, aren't you?"

Sherlock looks down at where he isn't hard, and where John isn't anymore either, and back up along John's flushed chest, and up his chin, and into his eyes, which are full of questions as well as positively blinding affection, the sort that could conquer entire armies.

"Never better," Sherlock says.  And it's true.

John slides a hand around his neck and kisses him, soft and sweet, along the edge of his cheekbone.

Reaching down, Sherlock tugs the sheet up over them.  He deposits his face in the crook of John's neck.  He drifts for a little, the doctor's hands exploring his spine and his shoulders and his hips and the smooth swell of his arse.  He is almost asleep when he hears steps outside their room and a familiar little knock followed by a "Yoo-hoo!"

Mrs. Hudson gives a small shriek when she enters the bedroom, and she drops an envelope she's holding.  She's back from her sister's at last, Sherlock realizes.  He smiles.  He's not really up for conversation at the moment, but Mrs. Hudson is one of his favourite people in the universe.  She's wearing a purple traveling suit and seems to have just arrived--there is Charing Cross mud, a particular variety, on her shoes.

"Oh, my stars," she gasps, her hand at her throat.  "Sherlock, you--what on earth."

"Bugger, I--sorry," John exclaims, equally startled.

"He's with me," Sherlock drawls, tucking the sheet closer around his chin and giving Mrs. Hudson his best smile.

She flaps her hand before her face, laughing a little.  "Sorry, dear, you went and caught me that much by surprise.  I've never known you to have company."  She adds to John, "You must think me a right old busybody, charging willy-nilly into people's rooms, I'd hate for us to get off on the wrong foot, I'm sure, seeing you're a friend of Sherlock's.  Oh, what you must think of me."

"I...really don't know what to think of you," John answers, mystified.

Sherlock yawns.  "John Watson, meet Mrs. Hudson.  She's my landlady."

"I suppose we hadn't better shake hands just now," Mrs. Hudson frets, concerned.

"Well," John coughs, "maybe not just yet..."

"Right."  Mrs. Hudson nods.  "I'll just pop off then, I only just got back, haven't even put the kettle on but this was under the door for you, Sherlock, dear, so I brought it up."  She picks up the envelope she dropped in her startlement and gingerly places it at the edge of the bed.  "Very nice to have met you, Mr. Watson--"

"Doctor," Sherlock corrects.

"Oooh, sorry again, heavens, I keep putting my foot in it--"

"John is fine," John says hastily.

"John, lovely, thank you for understanding, dear.  I'll just--yes," she says, smiling as she shuts the door behind her.

"Well, that was one way to meet the landlady," John muses, kissing Sherlock thoughtfully on the end of his nose.

Sherlock reaches out and picks up the envelope. 

The word SHERLOCK is typewritten across it, which is ominous.  Moriarty letters look like this sometimes.  It would be worrisome, if Sherlock were the type to worry.

Long seconds pass, pondering this.

"Sherlock?" John says hesitantly.  "Do you want...me to open that?"

Scowling, because he isn't afraid, of course he isn't, Sherlock tears it open himself.  He looks for the letter inside.  But there is none.  Only a scrawled note on the inner flap that reads "Can you come out to play?"  And when he shakes it, five little dried objects like lemon seeds--no, they aren't lemon seeds, they're orange pips--tumble out onto the bedsheets.

 

 

 

 

The caller is a female, and she is weeping in terror.  Hello, sexy, she says, and Sherlock knows exactly who is speaking to him, feels it in the sick lurch of disgust in his bones.  Following a brief conversation in which it becomes increasingly obvious that the woman is strapped to a great many explosives, Twelve hours to solve my puzzle Sherlock, or I'm going to be so naughty, Sherlock scrambles from the bath and into his bedroom, flinging the robe away and diving for his clothing. 

"Text Lestrade that I need to meet him at the Yard," he calls over his shoulder to John, who followed after while Mycroft makes a phone call.  Mycroft, Sherlock can only assume, believes that recapturing Jim Moriarty is the solution to this problem, and thus is smarmily berating someone who is not hunting for him quickly enough.  That isn't how this will work, Sherlock knows.  Jim had too many years to plan and too much motive. 

"Right," John says.  He whips out his mobile.  "When?"

"Now.  Instantly.  We have twelve hours.  And ask him where John Hector McFarlane is awaiting trial."

"Who?"

"Arsonist.  And tell him we need a trace if possible on the call I just received, and a bomb squad, and--"

"Whoa there."

"Are you doing it yet?  Is it done?"

"Call...traced...bomb...squad...fucking shit, really, Sherlock?  There.  Sent."

"Do something for me?"

"I'm here to be used."

Sherlock pulls a collared shirt over his arms, fingers sailing over buttons.  "Pull up any information you can find archived online from the papers regarding the McFarlane case.  Happened three months ago.  Search terms like arson and the name McFarlane should work immediately.  I think the victim's name was Jonas something.  And punch my brother in his fat guts while you're at it."

"Tempting.  Hey.  Sherlock.  Sherlock, come here a second." 

Sherlock buttons his trousers and moves on to his shirt cuffs as he obliges.  He walks over to where John is standing, preternaturally calm but with a tense look about his weathered eyes.  He'd run his hand anxiously through the back of his hair when he asked about the bomb squad, and it's ruffled and perfect the way everything else about him is, and it occurs to Sherlock that he's now perfectly able to reach out and smooth it for him, pausing a moment to gently rub the blond strands between his fingers.  He does.  John sighs and leans into the touch.

"Speaking of your brother," he says with a wary little glance at the closed door.

"Must we?" Sherlock wonders, pulling John closer.

John's brow hits the center of Sherlock's chest with a gentle bump.  He stays there, just breathing, for several seconds too long.

"What's the matter?  Other than a ruthless killer and a ticking time bomb, I mean?"

John puts his hands on Sherlock's waist and looks up.  His corneas are a bit glassy around the edges.  "So.  Your brother...if he was in any way right about me taking advantage of you, then.  Christ.  I'd just.  Never forgive myself."

Sherlock slides possessive arms around the smaller man, as angry as he is comforting.  John tucks his head under Sherlock's chin, sagging against him a little.  "Mycroft is a meddling diplomat with delusions of grandeur.  What did I say to you this morning?"

"Um.  Several things," John tells Sherlock's neck.  "Including that we didn't shag.  When we did."

"I said I want to see every mood and expression you're capable of, and the entire range of your emotional and mental and physical capacity, from black to white and nil to infinity and then record it all over again with different variables at play and explore changes in your responses due to the myriad permutations and the order in which new factors are introduced."

"Oh.  Yes, you did.  Verbatim, I think.  That was...very flattering."

"Well, it was true," Sherlock says quietly into the shell of John's ear.  "You're worried that you're using me as some kind of living fucktoy when all I want is to learn you and study you and get as far inside you as I possibly can.  I'm an adult man, I'm not remotely a virgin, I know martial arts, I'm a fair to brilliant boxer, you aren't forcing me to do anything that wasn't my own idea, and I've never been with anyone before whose pleasure actually mattered to me.  Shouldn't my desire to be with you physically be as valid as anyone else's?  Are you of the opinion that my mind is somehow unable to process the concept of consensual sex simply because my body doesn't work like yours?  That's frankly insulting.  I may be a freak, and this may admittedly have worried me a great deal, but it's because I was concerned over how you'd see me when you knew I was defective."

"You," John says very clearly, fisting his hands into the back of Sherlock's dress shirt, "are not defective.  You are a fucking marvel."

"Well, then, what are you asking?  Is an erection somehow a requirement for rational thought?  Do I seem slow-witted to you?"

John laughs.  "Your mind is...fine.  Best I've seen.  Well.  The morphine does not help.  But you're right.  I'm sorry.  I really...this matters to me.  Getting it right.  I didn't mean to imply you were helpless."

Running his fingernails up and down John's back, Sherlock purrs, "Make it up to me?"

"Yeah," John answers, hissing a little when Sherlock's nails hit the base of his spine.  "Yeah, that would be acceptable.  Make it up to you.  Yes.  I'm sure that more than a basic apology is in order here.  What can I do for you?"

"You," Sherlock says with his nose in John's hair and his lips ghosting over his earlobe, "are going to stop this bomb with me and then find the nearest private location and watch me get on my knees and open your trousers and take your pants down to your thighs and then open my mouth and suck your cock until I've learned just how you like it and you're begging me to finish you, pleading, and then you will watch me keep my eyes fixed on you, only on you, while you come down my throat.  Because that is something I'd like to do."

"Okay," John gasps, chuckling.  "Ah.  Would you really?"

"Yes."

"You're sure about that."

"Yes."

"Um.  You don't have to.  But.  Nope, we covered that, oh god, yes, yes, I will fuck your face, your bloody gorgeous face, all you like."

"Splendid," Sherlock says, pleased, planting a kiss on John's temple and disengaging them.  "Now, stop distracting me.  There is a woman wired to explosives somewhere and I can't concentrate while you're obsessing over sex.  Off to uncover the secrets of the unhappy John Hector McFarlane."

 

 

"I didn't kill Jonas Oldacre," John McFarlane protests wearily, his eyes glazed with despair.  "I didn't even know Jonas Oldacre until he walked into my office in the City and asked me to alter his will for him.  He was an old flame of mum's, back in the day.  I'm not a murderer."

"Like hell you aren't.  Your fingerprints were all over the murder weapon.  Bludgeoned to death with a hammer.  What this world is coming to, I don't know," Anderson sniffs.

"It's coming to certain proof that reverse evolution exists, and that the most brainless specimens tend to be hired by the Yard," Sherlock remarks.  "Can we discuss this in the proper order, please?"

Sherlock, John, Lestrade, and Lestrade's loathesome forensics tech Anderson, who worked the case, are sitting around a white plastic table in a fluorescently lit beige room in the south London facility where McFarlane is being held.  Styrofoam cups full of bad coffee rest before Lestrade and John.  The murder suspect is flaxen-haired and handsome in a washed-out, negative way, and his hands are lightly trembling.  There's a certain weakness about his mouth that makes Sherlock skeptical he is capable of tying his own shoes, let alone murdering a near-stranger.  He's a solicitor by trade, and was asked suddenly and without warning by the dead man to create a will naming himself--McFarlane--the sole beneficiary of Oldacre's fortune, which was made some time ago during the boom in the construction industry.  Back when Oldacre was still in love with McFarlane's mother.  This all interests Sherlock to no end, for which he is grateful.

Jim Moriarty, after years of crude torment, is no longer boring.  He is fascinating.

The detective is also grateful that, by the time they obtained Met clearance to see McFarlane and found Lestrade and called the bomb squad and read up on the case, he was no longer high.  He makes a point of never being high when he is working, not merely because if Lestrade were ever to find out, he'd likely go ballistic (Lestrade is small-minded the way most policemen are about such matters as chemical manipulation) but also because, when confronted with a new problem of note, Sherlock's brain sparks and glimmers like one of those glass balls filled with blue live wires of electricity that shoot to your fingertips when you touch the surface.  Being high would be superfluous.  Sherlock is positively aglow.

"Oldacre engaged you to alter his will, claiming he'd no other relations or close ties and that he had always held something of a torch for your mother," Sherlock says.  "Then he invited you down to his construction company in Norwood after hours to introduce you to exactly what sort of business you'd be inheriting."

"Suspect by his own account arrived at Oldacre Urban Solutions at around nine in the evening," Lestrade confirms.  "Oldacre gave McFarlane here a tour, then opened a safe in the office and they went through more paperwork.  There was a few hundred quid in cash in the safe."

"And McFarlance killed him over it, as well as the inheritance.  This is a waste of time," Anderson grouses. 

Lestrade stands, crossing his arms in a judicious pose.  His boyish face is grave in a way Sherlock has never seen before.  And that didn't happen when he was told his case was bolloxed.  It happened sometime previously.  He looks...he looks anxious.  Drawn.  Lestrade never looks this worried.  And he keeps shooting little flickering glances at Sherlock.  He's doing it now.  Almost as if he's concerned about...no.  That can't be right.

The bomber, of course, Sherlock concludes, he's worried about death and destruction.

"I can be as wrong as the next detective, which is what seems to be the case here," Lestrade sighs.  "Sherlock has to sort this, or a woman dies.  I don't call that a waste of time, Anderson."

"It's sorted already!"

"Yes, sorted by morons," Sherlock says coldly, "or else I wouldn't be here, or do I have to explain again that Moriarty is tied to the case somehow?  We've been over this.  Are you deaf or brain damaged?"

"Do I really have to take insults from a psychopathic freak?" Anderson demands, his hawklike face purpling.

"I'm not a psychopath," Sherlock snaps. 

"Prove it."

Sherlock can't, and it hurts that he can't, in this juvenile conversation with this juvenile man over this juvenile taunt, it hurts not to have been taken into the mental health clinic by his frigid snob of a father and tested and thus know whether he's psychopathic or bipolar or borderline personality disorder or merely an asexual genius with an addictive bent, it hurts and burns and aches in front of John with his gentle face and his eyes beginning to crease angrily, it hurts like a stone in his chest, so he puts on his haughtiest glare and wills Anderson to die on the spot.  Anderson chuckles nastily.

"Now, there's an expression worn by a psycho if I ever saw one."

"I may want to kill you right now, but that is a manifestly logical urge when confronted with cockroaches," Sherlock hisses.  "I am not a psychopath."

"I notice you didn't say you weren't a freak, though."

"Oi, watch the tone," John orders gruffly, clapping his hands together.  "And the word choice.  You know, watch the speech.  Just watch everything from here, the lot of it, there's a good lad."

"Why the hell should you get shirty about it?" the tech sneers.

"Dunno.  Hobby of mine, the shirtiness.  You'll want to look out for that.  I also tend to chin people who push me too far.  So look out for that too." 

"Sherlock, you can't bully him into listening to you.  Anderson, shut it, you're giving me a headache," Lestrade sighs. 

"Why should McFarlane have killed his benefactor when he could just wait it out and inherit a fortune?" John questions thoughtfully.

A mottled flush of pink covers the suspect's face.  McFarlane's mouth opens, but nothing emerges.

"He's in debt to his eyeballs," Anderson reports, going to the coffee pot and pouring himself a cup.  "Lawyers and their bright ideas about stock trading.  Classic."

"That doesn't mean I just upped and snuffed someone," McFarlane cries.  "And he tossed me that hammer and I caught it, he said that it was the hammer that struck the first nail in his first building, that's why my prints were on it, I didn't--"

"What did Oldacre's holdings come to in the end?" Sherlock questions.

"Less than they might have done," Lestrade admits, leaning back against the wall.  "We found out a week or two back that he'd transferred a major portion of his assets to a charity."

"Recently?"

"Yeah.  To a nonprofit foundation called Cornelius Group.  Fella might have wanted McFarlane to inherit, but apparently not that large a fortune.  Reasonable, I guess, since they didn't actually know each other."

"Why now?"  Sherlock steeples his fingers before his lips and closes his eyes.  "Oldacre was fifty-eight.  Why make a new will, donate a significant sum to charity, as if he were an old man?"

"Might have been terminally ill and not told anyone," Lestrade says easily.  "People do that sort of thing all the time.  Tie up loose ends, give loved ones a leg up.  Seemed like a lonely enough sort, if his ex's son was the only person he could think of to inherit.  He wanted to make things right with the mum, maybe."

"Why?"

"Sentiment, I s'pose."

"No."  Sherlock shakes his head.  "No, people don't relieve themselves of all their worldly possessions and give the remainder to the offspring of their former lovers."

"Well, this bloke did sure enough."

Sherlock is silent, eyes still gently shut.  He is in the garden of his mind palace, the grave garden where no flowers or vegetables grow, the garden where corpses from the cases he has worked on since childhood are laid out end to end in silent rows on the soft green grass, with paths between the bodies, waiting there for Sherlock until he needs them.  Dozens of dead men and women, arranged like petunia beds.

"The body was found in a pile of lumber at Oldacre Urban Solutions, doused with chemicals and charred past DNA recognition.  You ID'ed the corpse with dental records?"  Sherlock's eyes open and dart to Anderson, who has seated himself across the table once more, coffee cup steaming.

"No," Anderson admits.

"Excuse me?" Sherlock drawls.

"I said no."

"Laziness, or did you forget how that's done?"

"I said bludgeoned to death with a hammer, you lunatic," Anderson shoots back.  "The jaw and teeth were smashed to pieces.  Totally useless, the coroner told us."

Oh, Sherlock thinks, huffing out a small breath of air.

The others stare at him, a bit wide-eyed.  Sherlock has no idea what face he's making, but he knows he is exceedingly pleased by this news.

Clever. 

That is so very, very clever.

Fixing things for people, Jim said.  Dear Jim, will you fix it for me to get away from it all.  Dear Jim, for an extra charge, can that include revenge against the woman who once threw me over for another man? 

Dear Jim, help me to fly.

Remarkable. 

"Something other than a whim made you identify Oldacre," Sherlock muses.  He smiles enigmatically, which always infuriates Anderson, which is always satisfying.  Anderson duly scowls.  "What was it?"

"His ring was intact.  He always wore it.  Titanium.  He was also wearing his steel-toed boots, which were in bad shape but enough to give us a clue."

"You," Sherlock intones, shaking his head sadly as he rises to his full height, "have no clue whatsoever."

"Sherlock?" John says, curious.

"That man is innocent," Sherlock declares, pointing a long finger at the unhappy John Hector McFarlane.  The young solicitor's blond head raises hopefully.  "Why should McFarlane kill a man with a hammer and then viciously shatter his teeth and jaw?  There would have been blood.  A lot of it.  There would have been work involved.  A lot of it.  All this over a stranger?"

"That doesn't prove--" Anderson attempts.

"Shut up and learn something if you are capable, which I sincerely doubt.  McFarlane had definitely not visited Oldacre Urban Solutions previously.  A convenient lumber pile he might have found on his own, I grant you, but the exact chemicals capable of destroying a mutilated corpse?  You think he entered a strange environment, killed a man, took his time over bashing his face in, not a bit worried over being discovered, and then just happened upon the right materials for arson?  McFarlane is guilty of being framed by a criminal mastermind, and of being bad with finances.  But he is entirely innocent of murder."

"What are you on to, then, Sherlock?" Lestrade urges with an encouraging half-smile, propping his hands on his hips.  "We're after a different murderer?"

"Correct."

"Any idea who that might be?"

"Jonas Oldacre."

Anderson's lip curls up in disgust.  "You think a suicide due to a terminal illness or some such killed himself with a hammer and then dragged his own corpse to a wood pile and lit himself on fire?"

"No.  Only you could conceive of such a ridiculous notion."  Sherlock turns up his coat collar as John stands.  The sleuth heads for the door and throws it open.

"Anderson, take McFarlane back to his cell.  Sherlock, where are we off to?" Lestrade asks.

"To Scotland Yard.  To find the Norwood builder," Sherlock says as he sweeps out the door.

 

  

It takes hours.

Hours ticking along like the time bomb they know is out there, hours sweating like racehorses, hours piling up up up up up one after another like the bricks walling in the doomed man in the Poe story Sherlock read at John's suggestion.

Techs discovered CCTV footage of Oldacre leaving his construction company quickly enough, and the time stamp proved that he was alive when the fire started.  Jim Moriarty, Sherlock is certain, came up with the master plan of providing Oldacre with a corpse which would then be rendered identity-free and dressed as the construction company owner.  Oldacre's money by then would have been transferred almost entirely to a fake charity by the name of Cornelius Group, which Sherlock is reasonably sure has since been emptied into yet another account, but they are waiting on the bank for confirmation.

Once provided with a new identity, Oldacre would simply have vanished.  Into thin air, with a fortune, some of which would go to Moriarty.  And John McFarlane would be punished for a crime no one committed.

"Elegant," Sherlock whispers.

"Sorry?" says John.

Sherlock is sitting before a computer next to John as the other Yard officers fly around them in a flurry of activity, scouring airline records and CCTV and everything else they can think of.  The detective's fingers are flying over the keys in search of relevant social media.  Jonas Oldacre had been on Facebook but not Twitter, and interestingly, he had made passing mention of Morocco a few weeks before his death--about never having seen it, and wanting to.  The police are duly researching flights around the time of Oldacre's "death" from London to Casablanca as Sherlock continues digging for leads. 

Meanwhile, Sherlock's brain feels like a lightning rod, sucking energy from the skies and from the very static in the air around them.  He hasn't been this impressed by a case in years.

"The frame job," Sherlock answers.  "Elegant.  The vengeance, the escape all in one.  Moriarty is good at this."

When John doesn't answer, Sherlock glances at him.  John's lips are doing peculiar new things which Sherlock duly catalogs as he tries to comprehend what has put his colleague in a snit.

"Not good?" he asks at last, returning his attention to the screen.

"Bit not good, yeah," John admits.  "I mean, this crazy son of a bitch might want you to think it's a game, but we both know it's just a way to fuck with your head some more.  And meanwhile, real people are getting hurt."

"Doesn't make it any less elegant," Sherlock mutters.  "And at least it isn't boring.  And no one has been hurt yet in any meaningful fashion."

"What about the unidentified corpse?"

"What about it?"  Sherlock is scrolling through Oldacre's timeline, eyes taking in everything at a glance.

"Sherlock, Jesus, they could have murdered someone.  Someone else, I mean.  That person, whoever it was in the woodpile, died."

"Factually true, but irrelevant.  I texted Mycroft.  The grave robbing trick appears to have been practice in anticipation of sending me the severed head--when a pattern emerges, it always behooves one to follow the trail of said pattern to its fullest extent.  The corpse was an ad executive who died three days before McFarlane was framed.  Heart attack.  He was a divorced father of two who cheated on his taxes.  Mycroft says the perpetrators didn't even bother to hide the fact they'd snatched the corpse just after burial.  Left an empty coffin and a hole in the ground, as they did with Carl Powers.  I was meant to find the link."

"All right," John sighs at Sherlock's elbow, "that's better than it might have been.  But you shouldn't...  I'm glad you seem all right after--better than this morning, anyhow.  Everything's going to be fine.  But I'm a little disturbed that you're enjoying this so much.  I mean, this crime is pretty sick.  Just...so personal.  Oldacre wanted McFarlane's life ruined, and his mother's by proxy."

"Uniquely vindictive," Sherlock concedes absently, eyes flicking over pixels.

John is silent for a while, and then sighs again.  "He'd probably have let her know somehow he was behind it, later.  Just to rub it in that much more.  It's disgusting.  No wonder Moriarty took the job, it's right up his street.  Watching someone suffer."

Sherlock stills.  He remains frozen for exactly four seconds.  Then he whirls to John, catching him by the shoulders.  John's deeply blue eyes widen in surprise.

"John Watson, you are brilliant, you are fantastic, yes, thank you, thank you, oh, you are perfect."

"What did--where--"

"Lestrade!  Quickly!" Sherlock bellows, pushing and elbowing past startled detectives and technicians and finally racing into the hallway where Lestrade is having a quiet word with Sally Donovan.

"Yeah, what is it, Sherlock?" Lestrade asks, interrupting her.  She frowns but subsides.

"McFarlane's mother's house.  It's wired, probably in multiple rooms.  Video feed, audio.  Search it.  Carefully.  There will have been some sort of repair work recently--bad cable, the wireless not working, something like that.  Find the bugs and trace them to Oldacre.  He wants to watch his punishment as it unfolds, don't you see?  This is obsession at its darkest.  He wants to watch Mrs. McFarlane falling apart without her son.  Find where the camera feed is going, use my brother's technical people if it's faster, and I guarantee you'll find Oldacre."

Lestrade's face lights up.  "Let's move, people, you heard the man," he calls out, and then they are running again, out of the Yard, into a police car, John at his heels racing straight and steady and without a cane, John cradled in the detective's shadow even though Sherlock hasn't looked back and cannot see him.

John.

John who wouldn't let Anderson call Sherlock a freak even though he manifestly is one, John whose insight into human nature may have just given them the lead they desperately needed.

John who is in terrible danger.

John.

Sherlock swallows the lump in his throat as he dives headfirst into the police car and the sirens start blaring. 

  

 

"That was incredible," John says breathlessly. 

The chase led them to a hotel not far from Heathrow Airport.  Oldacre hadn't been present at first, but they had prevailed upon the hotel staff even without a warrant and waited exactly twenty-seven minutes before his return with a boxed sandwich and three pornographic magazines.  Oldacre turned out to be a wizened, wiry man with a truly odious face--crafty, vicious, malignant, with shifty, light-grey eyes and white eyelashes.  Sherlock had loathed him on the spot.

There had been rather a lot of bother afterward.  The arrest, Oldacre protesting tearfully that it had only been a practical joke, Sherlock dashing with John again at his heels down to the office and appropriating the hotel's computer to log into The Science of Deduction, posting to his forum that Oldacre had been found and arrested for falsifying his own death. 

And then, as Sherlock cannot for the life of him forget, no matter that he has tried to delete it three times now, there was his phone instantly ringing and the voice of the hostage at the other end.

Well done, you, she'd said, sobbing.

Sherlock stares into his glass of neat scotch.  He's sitting at the darkened hotel bar with John, both with necessary drinks in their hands, recovering as a football game plays in silence on the telly above them.  The detective in the recent absence of Lestrade and his team feels triumphant but lightheaded, as well as a bit sick.  Because that had been touch and go for a moment.  He'd stopped the clock, but with little time to spare.  And then he'd listened to a victim of Jim Moriarty's weeping frantic, terrified tears into his mobile.

Come and get me, she'd gasped.

It was horrible.

John, just to his left, is watching the match but thinking about Sherlock, Sherlock knows, while he sips his own glass of spirits.  The doctor keeps saying things like really unbelievable that have nothing to do with blocks or goals.

Sherlock shoots the rest of his drink.

Where are you?  Tell us where you are, Sherlock had said with seeming calm.

He wasn't calm, though.  He wasn't even close to being calm.  She'd sounded half dead of fear.  She'd sounded just precisely the way Sherlock will doubtless sound in Jim's company, after two or three years of--

"You okay, mate?" John says, glancing at the empty glass.  "Fancy another?"

Standing, Sherlock throws twenty pounds on the marble bar and tugs at John's sleeve.  "Come."

"What, now?"

"Now."

John downs his own whiskey, and he follows.

Five minutes later, they are back in Oldacre's room on the third floor.  It is now dark.  The sliding door to the balcony remains open, as it was before, and Sherlock shuts it.  He draws the cheap maroon curtains and flicks the bedside lamp on.  The Norwood builder's laptop he'd been using for surveillance of Mrs. McFarlane was seized instantly, but Oldacre's toiletries are still in the loo, the sandwich still on the table, his clothing still in the drawers.  Hateful traces of a hateful man.  Sherlock can't give a damn at the moment.  John is still in the tiny foyer when the hall door slowly clicks shut.

"Why did you keep Oldacre's key card?" he wonders.  "He left it on the table when they arrested him."

"Sentiment."

"Are you...collecting more evidence?  I thought we'd--"

In a single fluid motion, Sherlock spins John around and brings his hands up against the wall, lacing their fingers together.

"I...oh," John breathes as Sherlock's mouth descends to the back of his neck.  "That sort of sentiment.  Right."

John tastes like lemon there, like London rain, like the sweet and salty crust of a perfectly baked pie, like the desert wind, Sherlock registers as he mouths across John's nape.  His tongue emerges, questing, and John's breathing quickens.  Then Sherlock has John's fragile snappable spine between his teeth, biting softly before going back to dragging kisses, and John chuckles in a low register.

"This is a bad idea."

"No," Sherlock purrs, "this is a very good idea."

"We could go home--"

"Boring."

"If Lestrade comes back--"

"He won't.  Shut up."

Backing away a little, Sherlock unlaces their fingers and pulls John's light green coat off his back.  It hits the badly carpeted floor.  Next is a long-sleeved cotton shirt, and he strips that off too as John continues to face the wall.  Then Sherlock shrugs out of his Belstaff and goes back to what he was doing before, this time with an arm snaking around John's naked waist and his other hand sweeping up John's warm breakable vulnerable ribs.  John's forearm hits the papered wall, and he rests his tousled head against it with a highly pleased sound humming through his perfectly formed nose.

"Don't ever stop doing that," John sighs. 

"Ever?"

"Um.  You are hereby granted permission to do that for years.  If not decades."

"I want to tell you something," Sherlock murmurs against the freckles on John's shoulder, running his fingertips strongly up and down the small man's sides.

"Yeah?"

"Because you didn't want Anderson to call me a freak..." 

"Ugh, could we not talk about that wanker right now?"

"...Even though technically he was correct.  And that was...good.  Good of you."

"If you mean freak like a bloody giant diamond or a rare breed of mountain lion, fine," John growls possessively, lifting one hand behind himself to brush at Sherlock's curls.  "If you mean it like the Elephant Man, I will slap you."

"And because you helped solve the case," Sherlock adds.  His breathing is growing laboured.  Why is that?  Why, when he is only kissing John's back, when he is only running his sensitive lips over the raised skin of the exit wound, why does he feel like his chest is too tight?  Why does he feel like the crying woman, shivering and vulnerable and liable to explode at any moment?  "That was brilliant, the remark about watching suffering, brilliant.  So I want to tell you."

"So tell me."

"I'm telling you now.  Are you listening?"

"Yeah," John breathes.  His voice is gentle, caressing, like a warm summer breeze.  "Yeah, I'm listening pretty hard right now."

"Good, because I'm telling you, I'm telling you now, you have to listen to me," Sherlock repeats, helpless to stop himself.

He reaches blindly around as he's tasting John's shoulder blades to unbutton and unzip his trousers.  Tucking his thumbs into the waistband of John's pants and pulling forward away from his body slightly, he tugs down in a smooth motion, freeing John's cock into the air.  Dizzy at the fact that he can touch even more of John now, he crowds forward, passing his palms up and down John's strong thighs, curving them back to the swell of his arse and kneading as he returns to lightly kissing his neck, sweeping his hands forward over the soldier's hips and then sinking them down toward his pelvis.

"Okay, yep, that's, ah, arousing," John pants.

"Are you listening?" Sherlock demands, growing jagged-edged and desperate.

"Yes, I promise, I swear I am."

Gently, Sherlock flips John around and his back hits the wall, his body swaying slightly due to the constriction of the clothing pooling at his thighs.  Sherlock hits the floor.  He hears John suck in a small breath of surprise, but that's senseless, John was warned this would happen.  Perhaps he'd forgotten.

Sherlock nudges between John's knees.  He's at approximate eye level with John's arousal now, musky and darkly flushed and pulsing in tiny echoed heartbeats, and Sherlock wonders how anyone can stand sex when they're aroused at the same time as a loved one, it would be awful, how could anyone contain such feelings while wanting to have an orgasm in the same time and space as the object of their total devotion?  It would be like the collision of atoms that precipitates a nuclear event, it would be a pair of racecars colliding at full speed, it would be gruesome.  It would end him entirely.  Nosing into the soft nest of hair, Sherlock breathes in.

"Oh god," John, gasps.  "You are, uh, actually going to do this.  Christ.  Sherlock, will you take your shirt off, please?" 

Pressing tiny kisses into the soft skin of John's thigh, Sherlock fumbles with buttons.  His hands are shaking. 

Why are your hands shaking, you done this plenty of times with total nitwits, you ridiculous creature, he'll think you're frightened and stop you, and you aren't, or not of him, not of giving him what he wants even if he won't ever tell you he wants it, not of learning him better or taking him inside you, you're only concerned that the throbbing in your chest might literally break your heart.

Wrestling his shirt off and tossing it aside with the rest of the rumpled clothing on the floor, Sherlock wills himself to breathe deeply.  In and out, in and out, like a normal person.  A sane person.  Like a person who likes doing this with people to whom they are attracted.  It happens every day, all over London, between stupid people.  Nice people.  This is no different on a technical level. 

Reaching up, he cups John's thighs just where they meet his arse and then slowly skims his mouth along the hard ridge leading from John's hip to his pelvis.  John's hands come down to card very softly through his hair again.

"Are you going to say something unbearably stupid like do you really want to?" Sherlock asks a bit unevenly.

Because if you did, I think at this point it might actually finish me.

"Nope," John says, and Sherlock can hear a smile layered on top of the bottomless affection.

Thank god, Sherlock thinks, letting out the breath he was holding.  "Are you thinking something stupid along those or similar lines?"

"No."  John brushes his nails across Sherlock's scalp.  "I'm thinking you're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

Sherlock's eyes wince shut and he buries his face in John's smooth thigh, trying to force the trembling to stop.  How John could imagine that to be true is beyond him completely, but it's too much, he's not aroused and isn't ever going to be by this sort of thing but somehow it's already devastating, it's--

"Hey, hey.  Sherlock.  Baby, look at me.  Just because you really want something doesn't mean you can't change your--oh, fuck."

Sherlock has only the tip of John's cock in his lips, his right hand lightly circling the heated flesh, both aiming it and caressing it, thinking it's perfect he's perfect and I'm not supposed to have this and making every practical effort he can not to have a stroke then and there.  He pulls off with soft suction and mouths over the tip again, tasting briny moisture, lapping at cells produced by John, who he loves so much that it just might kill him.  When he swallows them, they will creating new cells inside Sherlock, and John will be more a part of him than ever.  John shivers violently when Sherlock leans in further, pressing the tight, hot skin against the roof of his mouth.

"Oh, shit, that is perfect, god, yes, thank you.  Please, just like that.  Jesus, Sherlock.  Oh my god."

In his momentary nervousness, Sherlock hadn't hazarded a glance up.  Now he does, angling his eyes ceilingward to meet John's partly shadowed face.  John is watching proceedings with such an expression of tenderness that Sherlock exhales a muffled little moaning sound.

"Your mouth.  God, Sherlock, your mouth.  You're..."  One of John's hands leaves Sherlock's hair, and he traces his finger around where his prick is encircled by Sherlock's lips, reverently following the bow of the detective's mouth.  He looks very sad suddenly.  He looks as sad as Sherlock has ever seen him.

"What's wrong?" Sherlock questions, pulling back a little.  John's fingers follow his lips as if to lose contact with them now would be ruinous and Sherlock catches two, tonguing up the first knuckles, scraping his teeth along the tiny ridges as John watches in a sort of pained awe. 

"I can't believe you," John whispers.  "I still can't believe you.  I try, trust me.  But.  It's all so bloody unreal.  Before I moved in, I thought every morning that probably I'd only dreamed you before I double checked on my phone.  And sometimes before that day at the Friesland I'd wake up in your bed alone and think it was maybe my flat, just my flat, and I invented you, that being so isolated had just...snapped me.  I didn't, though, did I?  You're here."

This, Sherlock thinks as his eyes shut again and a deep shudder goes through him, is completely unacceptable.  Pull yourself together, Sherlock Holmes.  It's sex.  It's just sex. 

Don't panic. 

Sex doesn't alarm you.

Orgasms and feelings, though, Sherlock realizes.  He should have known as much, deduced it about himself.  Both orgasms and feelings alarm him tremendously.

Tightening his grip and diving forward once more, he begins to bob his head in earnest.  John gasps, and then sighs luxuriously, muttering "God yes, Sherlock, amazing, fuck, you're amazing, please," as Sherlock takes him further down his throat.  Reaching up, Sherlock cups one side of John's arse firmly and pulls him in that much deeper, earning a growl from the doctor, who is sliding bonelessly down the wall. 

Sherlock increases the suction for long moments, tongues at the slit as his fingers tighten and pump during others, worships the person before him thinking only, I love you, are you listening, are you hearing that, because I do, I love you, listen to me telling you that I love you.  It's when John's thighs start to tremble and his panting breaths grow faster that Sherlock makes a truly shocking realization.

He doesn't want it to stop.

Pulling off with a strange sound he wasn't aware he was capable of, Sherlock kisses John's belly, kisses his upper thigh and the crease of his leg, running his left hand all the while over John's skin, the right still circling his cock, but now without discernible pressure.  John's hands in his hair tighten, knead lovingly, not hurrying him, just stroking, letting him delay the inevitable, and Sherlock remembers being yanked by the curls on multiple occasions and wills himself not to fall to pieces.  He kisses everywhere and nowhere for long minutes until he can breathe relatively normally.  Then he plunges down on John's now painful-seeming erection again, all the way and without warning this time, and John makes a noise like he's dying. 

"You're so bloody good," John moans.  "You're a fucking miracle, you are.  So good, Sherlock."

"It's important to be good," Sherlock admits without thinking, raising his head.

"Why?"

"Because the better I am at it, the sooner--"

Sherlock stops himself milliseconds before the utter train wreck of a statement he'd been about to make emerges to ruin everything. 

--the sooner it's over.

"The sooner you'll want me to do it again," he says, meeting John's eyes. 

It's the truth, which is the only reason Sherlock gets away with it.  John laughs, tracing his fingers over Sherlock's left ear. 

"I will never stop wanting you to do this, if you like it," he says softly.  "When and where you want."

Sherlock could collapse in relief.  But that won't do, so instead he smirks his wickedest smirk and says, "Where I want?  Is that wise?"

"God, Sherlock, I don't give a shit if it's wise.  Yes.  All right?  Train stations, public parks, banking queues.  Yes.  My answer to your question, supposing the topic is blow jobs, is now officially yes."

For a little while, Sherlock stares as John rubs a thumb along his cheekbone.  But the moment arrives all too quickly when Sherlock cannot look up at John any longer, cannot see him smiling and approving from above, radiating fondness and patience.

So Sherlock takes John in his mouth again, fully aware he's hiding, and this time means to finish what he began.

It doesn't take long.  A minute or two (imprecision in time measurement, what has become of you, appalling), deep pushing of his head while stroking firmly over John's sack (but I don't want to end it even now, I never want it to stop, and at this point in my life every time may be the last time), his lips starting to feel pleasantly battered and his throat growing sore (he could do anything he wanted to me and I'd probably thank him for it, how ridiculous) and John is shuddering and muffling a thin cry with one hand as he comes, thick and pulsing hotly, down Sherlock's throat.  The detective swallows most of it.  A little remains in his mouth and he swallows again.

John's legs are shaking, Sherlock realizes seconds later, and he seems about ready to collapse.  So Sherlock staggers to his feet and slides his arms around the small doctor and in a few stumbling steps tips them together onto the coverlet of the neatly made single bed by the door, rolling them fully onto the mattress.

Slowly, silently, John recovers his breath.  Then he shifts to rearrange them, lying on his back and pulling Sherlock half on top of him, Sherlock's leg thrown over John's disarrayed trousers, John planting small kisses along his brow. 

It doesn't take long for John to realize there is something very amiss.

He is not the only one shaking.  Sherlock had thought that the tremors would go away when it was over.  They haven't.  He's shivering as if it's freezing in here, and the room is perfectly climate controlled.  And now John has noticed.

"Sherlock, what's the matter?  That was...I don't have words for what that was.  Did I hurt you?"

Sherlock shakes his head.  "No.  But I made a terrible mistake," he whispers.

He can feel John freeze in horror, no no no no no, not like that, so Sherlock scrambles to his elbows, hovering over the doctor's lined face.

"I wanted to tell you, I wanted for you to hear me, I needed you to realize, but then I think I said the wrong thing," Sherlock babbles.  He's past any semblance of coherence now, but maybe John will still understand and the frown between his dark eyes will disappear.  "I mean, I meant that as well, what I said to you, it wasn't a lie, god it wasn't, but I meant to tell you..."

Biting his lip for a moment, Sherlock leans down.  He kisses John feather-softly, on his cheeks and his eyelids and his forehead.  He kisses him as if he were the most precious thing in the world now, because it's true.  And John needs to know. 

When Sherlock pulls away, John's eyes are very bright.

"Did you hear me?" Sherlock whispers.  "Were you listening?"

"Yeah," John replies hoarsely.  Reaching, up he pulls Sherlock's head down, and kisses him ever so sweetly between his eyes.  "Yeah, I was listening.  I heard you."

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sherlock's eyes are open to the great darkness of London four hours later, wide awake in the middle of the night.  The sheets are nearly still wrapped around them, but the blanket is mussed, Sherlock's right foot exposed a little to the air.  John is splayed along his side, his soft head tucked into Sherlock's neck, breathing evenly.  Asleep.  Every so often he twitches in concert with his dreams.

Every time, Sherlock strokes his hands along John's warm skin.  Every time, John settles back into peaceful slumber.

It is as meaningful as the sex was.  Merely registering along an entirely different spectrum.

Then, with a sound like a hundred cannons, the house explodes.

The pressure in the room changes instantly along with the shift in the soundscape, the clatter of thousands of bits of debris.  Sherlock feels himself being thrown by the blast, his limbs no longer his own.  He cannot move.  He cannot see.  The roaring in his ears turns piercing, escalates into a high hiss that sets his skin crawling.

Stunned, paralyzed, Sherlock opens his eyes to acrid dust and the stench of petrol, suddenly on his stomach with a heavy pressure against his back. 

Words are being spat above him, but he cannot understand them.  Ya, he thinks he hears in a harsh, panicked voice, and ya again.  Just when he realizes he is being taken hostage by Moriarty's thugs at last, that isn't the case at all.  A single small hand is checking him over for injuries.  The other small hand is extremely heavy and rather too cold and too hard.  There is a gun in it, Sherlock deduces.

"John," Sherlock breathes, suddenly aware with a fiery tingle that the situation is a very volatile one.

"Delta woesah," John orders in a steady snarl, and the pressure is released.  John swings himself off the bed.  "Harahkat macowa."

Turning onto his side in a daze, Sherlock watches the muscled naked man approach the door of their bedroom.  The army doctor is a shadow, like a paper cutout, all planes and sinews and the glint of metal at the end of his arm.  He's breathtaking.  John waves a palm and Sherlock dutifully flattens himself.  Then John kicks the door open and like a born predator is through the portal, turning on a pinpoint to aim his weapon at the source of the blast, covering them both.

"Shit, shit, shit," Sherlock hisses, clambering out of bed and throwing his arms into his blue gown after snatching it from its hook.  The red is far too long for John, but it's the closest to hand so he grabs that too.  The sound of the explosion emanated from the sitting room.  Smoke curls through the open door.  Sherlock coughs, the hiss in his ears subsiding a little.  This is very bad, very bad indeed.  Anything could happen, but most of the probabilities list toward the terrible.  He is just contemplating the wisdom of throwing all caution to the wind and following a PTSD sufferer into an actual urban war zone when John's footfalls sound in the hallway, returning.

"Le maa saara raaza," John says more easily, though his tone is grim.  He holds out a hand.  Sherlock hesitates.

"I don't speak Pashto," he says slowly, perfectly at ease though his heart is racing.  "You want me to tell you I'm not a threat to you now, according to our agreement, to act in a submissive manner, as if I'm a capture or a diplomat to be protected, but you know perfectly well who I am, you recognize me.  I don't need to pretend to be anyone else.  You were checking me for injuries just now, but I'm fine.  I'm fine.  I promise.  You're merely stuck on the wrong continent.  Say my name.  Sherlock."

For a moment, John looks blown apart.  "Sherlock," he says, impatient.

"Now try English."

Realization settles, a tense expression of caution around John's mouth. 

"Like this?" he asks, hesitant.

"Precisely," Sherlock approves.

"Jesus Christ," John sighs, rubbing his face far too viciously.

"There we are.  Don't apologize, you're about to, but you needn't, everything is fine, you thought I might have been hurt and you--"

"I know what I fucking thought and it is not fucking fine!" John shouts, face contorted.  "Nothing about this is OK, Sherlock!  Are we fucking clear on that point?  Not in my head, and not in our flat.  Now, what I just said was come with me, so fucking fall in line."

Whirling on his heel, John in all his magnificent nudity exits, gun firmly in hand and with the safety off. 

Left in a room that feels as if all the gravity departed along with John's mass, Sherlock follows obediently, carrying the red dressing gown over his arm.

"Step well back, there's glass everywhere," John says sharply as Sherlock approaches him.  The doctor flips on the lights in the kitchen.  "Now, take a look at this, and if you tell me it's fine again, so help me god I will slap you."

Sherlock turns.

The windows of the sitting room, so cozy moments before, are entirely blown out.  The reek of fossil fuel drifts through the air, and John is right, shrapnel and splinters and glass shards are everywhere.  Across the road, the long-empty house is lit brilliantly, its windows likewise decimated, its walls shining with floodlights as if an intergalactic space vessel had landed in Baker Street.  It's brighter than the building appears at high noon.  And painted across its surface in a hideous sickly yellow are gigantic letters:

I-O-U

The downstairs door opens.  With a key in the lock, not violently.  Footsteps, a pair of them Sherlock registers, sound as they climb the seventeen steps with urgent, determined male force.

"Oh, you would, would you?" John hisses, advancing with his weapon held high.  "Try it.  Come on in, lads, cuppa's on the house and so's a fucking bullet in your brain supposing I don't take to you."

"You're absolutely magnificent," Sherlock breathes, entirely forgetting to be frightened.  "Are you aware of that at all?"

The door bangs open.  Shinwell Johnson's huge gut appears first, followed by the rest of his limbs, clad in sagging black jeans and a garish scarlet Manchester United windbreaker paired with an incongruous off-kilter white baseball cap that reads "wot evah" in lowercase letters.  None other than Mycroft Holmes, dipped in Saville Row and then hung up to dry and presented as usual, follows in his wake.  The strong new aroma of marijuana, Sherlock decides, emanates from Shinwell, though it will be very pleasurable to rib Mycroft about it.  The two men stare at Sherlock and John open-mouthed, forgetting the decimated windows entirely.

"Oh," Sherlock says, understanding.  "John.  You're completely starkers."

"Tell me something I don't know," John returns evenly, not lowering the gun.

"I'm holding an extra dressing gown?"

"Nope.  Knew that too."

"Mycroft once ate an entire bowl of trifle over the hols.  It took him two sittings, but he managed in the end."

Exhaling, cracking his neck, John lowers the gun.  He walks a few paces away and sets it on the table, the safety still off.  Then he turns to face Sherlock, who smoothly passes him the robe.

"Right," John says, tying the belt with a jerk.  "Someone had better start talking.  I'm pretty particular as to topics just at the moment, however.  So.  Subjects that won't twist my knickers include what in bloody hell you're doing here, Mr. Johnson, what in bloody hell you're doing here, Mr. Holmes, and what in bloody hell we're going to do about psychopaths directing our notice to graffiti by blowing out our fucking windows.  You have my full attention."

 

 

 

 

 

"Surveillance, of course," Mycroft says distantly in response to the question of what precisely brought him to Baker Street, neither reaching for the teacup Sherlock sets beside him near the armchair nor sparing it a glance.  As they are wearing shoes, Sherlock waved Shinwell and Mycroft into the chairs, appropriating the sofa for himself and his friend after fetching his slippers from the fireplace hearth.  "We discovered aberrations in the gas readings that indicated a leak or a surge threatened, and no unusual data centered around the Baker Street area passes through without the utmost scrutiny from my staff.  Add to this the fact that CCTV picked up traffic wardens redirecting the flow at either end of your block, and I arrived here as soon as I could."

The paint, Sherlock thinks, staring out the window at the hulk of the empty house once more.  And the floodlights.  He needed time.

Sherlock places another cuppa before Shinwell, sets the tea tray on the low table he sometimes stands on when he needs a higher vantage point from which to think, goes to the front door, shrugs into his Belstaff, buttons it over his robe, pulls his collar up, and snugs himself into the corner of the sofa with his phone.  Nothing. 

Nothing yet, he corrects himself, thumbing the screen off.

Because Sherlock knows what this is.  He knows precisely what this is, and he doesn't like it.

John is going to like it even less, Sherlock realizes, and can't suppress a melancholy sigh.

He switches his phone on silent.  If he watches it closely enough, he'll miss nothing.  And John...John can always be informed at a later time.

The man in question reappears, incongruously smaller-seeming fully dressed.  Sherlock knows this to be mathematically impossible, but the doctor has deflated somehow after acquiring a pair of blue jeans and a black and white striped jumper.  He picks up his cup of tea as he sits, close enough to Sherlock to make a point while still far enough away to drink English Breakfast with some freedom of motion.

"Surveillance," he says, giving a professional nod to Mycroft.  All the belligerence has leached out of him.  Sherlock wants it back, wonders where on earth he put it.  It isn't as if one can deposit a fit of temper in a sock drawer and leave it behind.  "I heard that from the bedroom.  Which leaves me wondering what you're doing here," he adds to Shinwell, in a not-unfriendly tone.

"Ah," Shinwell wheezes, adjusting his "wot evah" cap and taking an appreciative slurp of hot tea.  "Would you believe, Dr. Watson--and I think you will, being a man well used to the quixotic twists and turns of fate--the same identical circumstance brought me to your door, and at the identical moment to boot?  The younger Mr. Holmes here has been texting me a pre-agreed upon phrase daily to indicate his own continued well-being, may it ever remain so, as you are probably already aware, but we've put in place other additional precautions, and these include the invaluable round-the-clock eyes of the freaks, junkies, winos, punks, ravers, pervs, base heads, skinheads, and airheads employed by us in times of trial."

"The Homeless Network," Sherlock explains to John's eyebrows.  "They work for Shinwell.  They work for me when I need them. They're watching the flat."

"Do you think it might be, I dunno, a good idea to tell me this sort of thing?" John demands, sloshing the tea in his cup.

"Possibly," Sherlock owns, "and I'd meant to, but they can guard you better when you aren't looking at them."

"The point being, of course," Shinwell continues smoothly, "that as I was putting my feet up just half an hour back to indulge in a few post-midnight biscuits and some homeopathic remedies passed down from me own late blessed grandmum as a cure for the demon blight of insomnia, it being a curse attached to the Johnson family tree and nature's wonders being myriad and their fruits--"

Mycroft Holmes snorts, checks his phone, and returns his attention to the high polish on his shoes.

"He's uncomfortable with the concept of marijuana," Sherlock interjects, "as he was widely assumed to be a stoner in his youth and when he entered government work was forced to confess to a poor metabolism and an obsession with pouring treacle over everything.  And I mean everything.  Do go on."

"I was called to the front lines due to suspicious activity," Shinwell concludes, saluting with three fingers at John in a way that is exactly half admiring and half sarcastic.  "It were the traffic detour bit, not the gas readings bit.  Banksy, this sorry sot isn't.  Pulled up in me chariot a block over just about the time Mr. Holmes here did, and there you have it.  Barely missed getting singed ourselves, though you know I'd not shirk in the line of duty.  Does that cover most of the dangly bits?" he finishes, winking at Sherlock.

"All right," John sighs, shooting the last of his tea as if it were whiskey.  Sherlock leans in and pours him another.  "Pax.  Pax all round.  Please."

"Oh, I weren't never the slightest bit discomfited, I assure you, and if I may say so, the longevity of our business acquaintance and the purity of its ensuing personal affections being what it is between me and Mr. Sherlock Holmes here," Shinwell continues, blithely ignoring Sherlock's expression of shocked irony, "it behooves me to state in all honesty that I've long desired for him to come by a bird, or a bird what's in fact a bloke if he'd rather, who suits him, the suiting him being the general gist of the thing and not the gender of the party, you understand me, and by Christ if it doesn't seem that he has done at long last, and I'm that chuffed over it, Doctor, my prior positive impressions being confirmed and all, that you could shake your unmentionables right up in me face and I'd ne'er bat an eyelash, as the saying goes."

Sherlock, as an experiment, makes a mental attempt to diagram Shinwell's previous sentence.  The effort quickly comes to nothing.

"Um," John says, half-smiling.  "Thanks?  I think?"

"Yes, now that you have been welcomed into this...individual's good graces, by all means indulge in any outrageous display you like," Mycroft mutters furiously.

"I'm through now, 'ta," John answers.

"You needn't be, it's my flat and I like you naked," Sherlock says pettishly, tucking himself back into his coat collar as he enjoys the rare sight of his brother physically squirming.  "It's none of his business what you do behind closed doors.  Or broken windows."

"Regarding the common etiquette perspective on the subject at hand, you dropped a clanger there, make no mistake about it, sir," Shinwell agrees sagely, nudging Mycroft's shiny shoe with his elbow.  "Crashed and burned like anything.  The humanity."

Mycroft, previously maroon, turns an unlikely shade of eggplant.

"It's fine," John says flatly, setting his teacup down in its saucer.

"Why is it fine now?" Sherlock demands.

"Because I said so."

"No," Sherlock objects, irritated.  He checks his phone.  Still blank.  "Five minutes ago you were--"

"Sherlock, friendly fire might be friendly, but it's still fucking deadly and I've lost men to it," John growls.  Sitting back, he tugs his leg up over his knee and regards Mycroft with a level expression.  "Anyway, I agree with your brother."

"You what?" Sherlock snaps.

"I agree with your brother that all your previous partners were tossbags, and yeah, I was narked, but he knows me even less well than you do and that's saying something, so it's going to be fiddly between us until I manage to prove myself, Christ, scientifically or something."  John blows a resigned breath through his lips. 

"But you don't need to--"

"The point is someone out there is trying to frighten and then kill you, and your brother loves you and wants to keep that from happening, and this is the identical row I had with you after we sorted the Norwood builder business, I'd wondered why it felt like deja vu, and we don't have time to have the same row twice.  Therefore, your brother can treat me like the shite under his shoe all he likes, it'll make for a nice hobby until he gets bored with it.  I don't matter.  So long as he leaves confidences you don't want to share out of the picture, I'm through taking the piss.  Meanwhile, we all play nice and fight terrorists together.  Next question."

Sherlock sweeps the blade of his grey gaze towards his brother.

Mycroft's high colour slowly fades.  Reaching up, he adjusts his necktie, though its dimple is already perfect. He considers, as if somehow fact-checking this small speech against what he knows of John, scanning mental databases for discrepancies.  He ruminates for a moment or two more.  It's maddening.  Finally, he reaches for the untouched tea Sherlock poured him and takes a discreet sip of it.

"Glad to see firsthand that the bruise is healing well, Doctor," he says neutrally.

John grins, about as wide as he can.

But Sherlock finds himself still more disconcerted.

You were right, he thinks, studying the pleased little quirk in John's brow.  You were right, and you knew you were right, and you let it go.  For me.

You don't give a toss what Mycroft thinks of you.  That was for me, for me entirely.

Why are you so much smaller? he thinks next, frowning.  What happened between losing the adrenaline rush and coming back to whip the troops into order?

I don't matter, he hears John saying.

Then, You're to die for.  I would die for you, I think.

Stomach tightening into a painful knot, Sherlock lights up his phone screen.  Nothing. Something is very wrong nevertheless.  Well.  More wrong than usual.  He burns to understand what it is.

"I confess the timing of this new form of harassment puzzles me," Mycroft says, raising his eyebrows at John as if asking him a direct question.

"You and me both.  Until it was always his plan to escalate.  I assume people are searching the area?" John inquires.  "I'd hate to be chatting over a cream tea while our target makes tracks out of harm's way."

"No, no, a full sweep of the area is being enacted as we speak by my team, they arranged for a tight perimeter to be set days ago, and with special emphasis on trapping James Moriarty should he be nearby, which doubtless he is not," Mycroft assures them.  "What I desire to know is what set him upon this particular course of action."

"I didn't thank him," Sherlock says carefully.

All eyes dart to the detective.  He clears his throat, as it seems to be suffering the aftereffects of sleeplessness. 

"I didn't appreciate his present, or not vocally," Sherlock explains.  "The locked room.  The Stoner case.  It was a gift.  He's been tormenting me with randomness for years, and now I'm meant to be grateful when he gives me order and I solve the riddle and gain the reward of the stopped clock and rescue the hostage and feel like the victor.  It's textbook, supposing his next planned gift to me is Stockholm syndrome.  He wanted me to acknowledge he was the only man in the world who could have given me the perfect locked room murder."

The wind through the curtains caresses the fabric, sweeps the dust into small puffs as the gathering considers this suggestion.  Mycroft, drawing a long breath, rubs at the bridge of his nose.

John's hands grip his knee and his shin tightly.  "And was he?" he asks, harsh as metal.

"Yes," Sherlock snaps.  "Unfortunately."

We were made for each other, sings like a chorus in his head.

"What do you mean you didn't appreciate his present, or not vocally?" John demands, and this time he doesn't even try to disguise his anger.

"Just because you warn me a present is beautiful poison doesn't make it any less beautiful," Sherlock returns icily.  "And I was sick enough over enjoying it afterward that you ought to be perfectly happy."

Practically grinding his teeth, John shrugs, snapping his eyes out to the three massive letters.  "Fair point."

No, Sherlock thinks, furious, you're right about this too. 

Fight me. 

Fight me, demand I do better. 

Desperate for an answer, Sherlock thinks back further, scrolling through his database for clues.

Can't this mean you're mine, a little?  Can I keep you after? John asked, sounded ragged and pleading.

Followed almost instantly by:

Forget what I asked.  Erase.  Delete.

"What is wrong with you?" Sherlock demands.

John blinks, wide-eyed.  His head pulls back as his mouth drops.  "I--what?  Jesus, Sherlock, how can you ask me that?  Our fucking windows are destroyed, a psychopath is giving you murders as a sodding flirtation device, and--"

"And you're not angry at me for any of it!" Sherlock exclaims.

"Angry at you?  Are you completely mental?"

"I solved the Carl Powers case, I kept all those letters all those years and read every word as if they were gospel, I set us boundaries I didn't understand myself, I admired the crime scene he left me, I wouldn't answer your question after you kissed me, how are you not angry at me?"

Sherlock blazes to know the answer to this question, now he realizes this specific question exists.  He aches with it.  Not asking the question once he'd identified it never so much as entered his mind, and if Mycroft and Shinwell are sitting there with their jaws open again, well, they've plentiful tea at hand to rehydrate them, after all.

John pales visibly even in the low light, wipes his palms on his jeans, and shifts away a little.  Silent.

"Answer me," Sherlock orders.

"I'm not doing this."

"Fine, run," Sherlock scoffs.  "Forget what I asked.  Erase.  Delete."

"That is not fucking fair," John says, his voice shaking.  Sherlock has never heard John's voice shake in quite this fashion before.  It's fascinating.  He doesn't enjoy it, but he wants more of it, like poking at a wound and watching the blood pool.

"It doesn't matter, you won't blame me for unfairness, after all," Sherlock drawls, tenting his fingers.

"No, I won't, because you have the relationship experience of a fucking kicked puppy."

"I don't need your pity."

"Good, because you don't have any of it."

"Stand up for yourself!" Sherlock all but shouts.

"What, you want me to drop trou again and shake my--"

"Not to them," Sherlock hisses.  "To me.  I'm the one who turns you into a coward."

"Fuck you," John says clearly.  He turns to look Sherlock directly in the eye, and oh, this is good, this is marvelous, it's real, and it hurts.  The tremor is gone from John's voice, and his hands have relaxed fully.  He's perfectly comfortable again, looking trim and calm and capable.  "Fuck you, Sherlock Holmes.  There.  Happy?"

Sherlock swallows.  He can't look at John, so he looks at his phone screen.  There is a new voicemail on it.  Face a blank, he stands, dropping it into his coat pocket as if nothing had happened.

Mycroft is staring at him intently, eyes bright with something too similar to understanding, and that won't do either, so Sherlock heads for the hallway.

"All right, gents, if I could just redirect the conversation a touch, as it seems to me we may have got just a wee bit off the intended path and all, no reflection on you both of course, nor your characters, as the strain must be enormous," Shinwell says nervously, spreading his fat hands, "we ought to--"

"I'm just off to the loo for a moment," Sherlock says.

"Sherlock," John says, and he doesn't know what that tone means. 

He doesn't wait to find out.

Slamming the bathroom door shut behind him, the door John fixed after breaking in the previous time, his heart racing wildly, Sherlock turns the taps on.  He raises the volume level of his phone and checks for missed calls.  Private Number.  Of course it was.  Sherlock enters his password and raises his hand to listen.

"Heeelloooooo, my only darling," trills Jim Moriaty's real voice in his ear.

Fear slams into Sherlock, the old fear, the uncontrollable sort.  He grips the sink edge, white-knuckled, watching the water flow uselessly into the bowl of the sink as if it's blood into a gutter.  He can't do this.

He cannot.

He can do this.  John has been teaching him.  John isn't perfect, John in fact is terribly mysterious just now, but John cares and John is not leaving anytime soon and John thinks Sherlock can do this.  Sherlock breathes.  In and out. 

He looks at his own grey eyes in the mirror.  They're granite-hard and distant as ancient star systems.

Moriarty is breathing into his ear like a lover.

"I was so sure you'd like my little present," the soft Irish lilt continues.  "I was hoping you'd call, you know?  After such a fabulous date.  I mean, it really was a bloody amazing date, no matter what they think it was.  Did you just love my client, Grant Roylott?  Was he to die for?  Such a big ugly brute, nothing like the two of us.  When I picture you and your gorgeous brain in that locked room, observing, deducing, weaving all my little threads into the pattern I left you, in and out, god Sherlock, and that gang of clods watching you and I as we danced?" 

Another long pause ensues.  Sherlock's jaw tenses in disgust.

"It was like public sex.  Whoops!  Sorry, sweetheart," Moriarty adds, panting a little.  "Had to make myself a bit more respectable, this new suit is tailored so well, and just thinking about your perfect, perfect face makes me indecent.  Aaaah.  There.  But you don't have that problem, do you?  Never mind, darling, I'm not offended.  Well, not yet."

The mirror gives Sherlock his drawn, pale features, the fiery hurt in his eyes, the blood slowly leaching out of his skin.  Sherlock looks like death already, and only from a voicemail. 

How much more can he be expected to take?

"Listen, buttercup, reason I rang you," Moriarty sings, "it's just, I think you're getting a bit distracted.  By that Jeff fellow.  Jack?  Was it Jack?  John.  That was it.  Stupid name, but then it suits him, doesn't it?  Your pet veteran.  God, he's mad for you, isn't he?  Like some kind of fucking golden retriever.  Did I promise to torture him to death yet?  I think I did--did I?  Was that meant to be if you lose our game?  Were those the rules?  I just have no short term memory when it comes to poor dumb animals, my apologies.  Anyhow, I so wanted you to be able to concentrate on the fun of that last challenge I gave you, and I kind of think he might have ruined it, and so, you know what, Sherlock, my heart's song?" 

Sherlock waits.

"The rest of these cases are not going to be fucking fun!" Jim Moriarty screams.

It's too difficult to lean like this, so Sherlock drops his elbows to the sink edge.  He watches his reflection's eyelashes trembling like moth's wings.  Breathe out.  Breathe in.  Breathe out.  Breathe in.

"Concentration.  On me, Sherlock.  No one else.  Concentration is key.  Eye on the prize.  Well, I think that's everything!" Moriarty calls happily.  "Oh, and since you're not sleeping, boom and all that, I'll just send you the next pip in a mo'.  Ta ta, dearest!  Be with you soon.  In the meanwhile, I'll try my best to remember whether I decided John Watson should be dead by the time we meet in person.  My memory really isn't what it was before prison, thanks to you, my sweet.  But I'm counting the hours!" the convict concludes, hanging up.

Dropping the phone on the sink counter, Sherlock covers his face with his hands.  It's just one sob, just a tiny sound.  No one will hear it.  It'll all be fine.  Secret.  No one will know.  John least of all.  John.  The water continues running.  Sherlock shouldn't have picked at him like that.  If John leaves--no, that would really be for the best, all things considered, if John were to leave. 

One more horrible whimpering sound from the back of his throat.  The taps will cover it.  There.

Sherlock straightens, breathing hard.  His eyes are glassy.  He splashes water in his face. 

Better.

He turns and opens the door.

John is on the other side of it.  Waiting.  Not angry.  He should be very angry.  He looks, instead, gutted.

"We have to get ahead of him," Sherlock says in a rush. "We're treading water and we won't win, we can't win this way.  I have to solve something quicker than he expects and then wait before stopping the clock, give us time to explore other avenues, or, I don't know, be in two places at once, but if we keep on as we've been doing, it's never going to get any easier and we'll be boxed in impossibly and I won't be able to think our way out."

Reaching up, John brushes his fingertips across Sherlock's eyelashes.  His half-smile wrenches downward.  John's entire haggard heart is in his face.  Perhaps Sherlock opened this door prematurely. 

Perhaps he should never have come out at all.

"I'm sorry," Sherlock whispers.  "You're not a coward."

"Fuck you," John repeats.

"Please, I can't stand--"

"Phone," John says, holding the same hand out.

"No, it won't help--"

"Now," John snaps.  "I sent your brother and your friend off to scheme amongst themselves.  They could see we have...matters to discuss."

"He's not my--"

"If Shinwell Johnson isn't your friend, I don't want to know what friends look like.  That fact he's also your dealer will just have to, um, broaden my horizons.  And you were right about me standing up to you.  And when I know how to explain it, I'll try.  All right?  I am way more damaged than you give me credit for, chum.  Just.  Give me your fucking phone and--"

Sherlock dials his voicemail and then hands him the phone as he sinks slowly to his knees, placing his face squarely in John's belly.  He should be able to handle this like a man, damn it, but breathing into John's jumper sounds like the best possible option at this point in time.  John clutches Sherlock's head to his torso and sets the mobile to his ear with his other hand, leaning against the doorframe. 

"Shhh.  Hey, hey there, love.  God, Sherlock, it's OK," he says.  "I'll just--"

John stops.  He listens to the voicemail.

He cards his fingers through Sherlock's hair.

He goes on listening.

John's belly, which was very soft a moment ago, is now tense as a boulder.

When it's over, John carefully puts the phone in the pocket of his jeans and tugs Sherlock's curls gently back with both hands.  "Hey.  Oi, you.  Look at me."

Calmer now that John has heard the worst of it, Sherlock hesitantly looks up. 

"I am supposed to be strong for you right now," John rasps.  His eyes are slightly red.  "If I cannot be strong for you right now, I'll never forgive myself.  But I can't do that if you try to break me in pieces and put me back together.  You're, uh, more than capable, trust me, but this is not the right time.  This is a very, very bad time to play John Watson puzzle games."

"That isn't fair.  You broke me in pieces and put me back together," Sherlock protests as John's thumb traces his eyebrow.

John opens his mouth.  He shuts it again.  He thinks this through.  "I made love to you, that's not the same thing."

"Is that what that was?" Sherlock demands in a much higher-pitched voice than usual. 

"Of course that's what that was.  Wait, did you--"

"Do you have any idea what that did to me?  Why do you keep backing down?  You're more than capable of asking for what you want, just not where I'm concerned.  Do you honestly think I don't deserve to know what in hell is wrong with you after you did that to me?"

Anger clouds John's face.  "You know perfectly well what's wrong with me, you deranged prick.  You're the one called me a coward.  You know what, Sherlock?  Fuck.  You.  I can't--"

Sherlock's phone buzzes in John's pocket.  Tucking his hand into the denim, Sherlock pulls it out.  John drops to his knees alongside the detective and both ruined men stare at the picture Moriarty just texted them.

The digital image is a mug shot of a woman.  She is very beautiful, even Sherlock recognizes the fact.  She has a strong, clear-cut, and yet sensitive face, and though there is spiritual sensitivity in her eyes, she seems vaguely powerful, as if her influence over others is a strong one, as if she is able to dominate in her chosen field.  She is clearly tall, by the markings she stands against, her long brunette hair tied back, and her dark eyes have in them the searching, lost expression of a hunted creature.

She holds up a placard bearing a prisoner number and the name GRACE DUNBAR.

"That does not look like any fun at all," John says softly.

"It won't be," Sherlock agrees, switching the image off.  "But duty calls."

"Wait," John says.

He leans in and kisses Sherlock.  Their lips open, part like flowers Sherlock has seen bloom in speed-enhanced film.  Sherlock knows what John means.  So he gives back as good as he gets, his tongue tracing the impossibly soft edges he finds, and almost as soon as it's started, it's over, and when Sherlock wanted it never to end, just the pair of them half-collapsed in a hallway surrounded by ash and rubble, daring the world to interrupt. 

He could live on that, he thinks.  That's what John can never know.  Not until this is over, one way or another.  There's too much fragile hope in the fact, too much optimism.  The thought it could all be fine tears Sherlock in half.

"I did want you to answer my question," John admits roughly as they break apart.  "I wanted to keep you.  I wanted you for good, wanted to know this wasn't just about the fucking twisted game it's turned into.  I still do.  But I'll wait.  All right?  I'll wait for you."

"You're an idiot," Sherlock says. 

"You told me to ask you for what I want."

"And I'm not giving you anything that's about to be snatched away again."

"Sherlock," John says, horrified.  "That isn't even--"

"No," Sherlock growls, sweeping to his feet.  "There's only one way out of this, and that's through the worst of it.  Now, help me to find Ms. Grace Dunbar."

  

 

Sherlock could have pegged Mr. Neil Gibson as a successful man of affairs from his manicure, let alone the giant stone house with the acres of grounds surrounding it called Thor Place.  He stands in his study wearing a black bespoke suit despite the fact it is now nearly three in the morning, a tall, gaunt, craggy figure with remorselessly cold grey eyes. 

As a matter of taste, Sherlock dislikes Neil Gibson instantly.  But his wife Maria Pinto-Gibson has been murdered, shot in the head to be specific.  The rich man's au pair, Grace Dunbar, has been arrested for the crime, so Sherlock grudgingly agrees with Lestrade that the instinct to begin with Neil Gibson and the arresting officer is a sound one.  Bradstreet is standing with her arms crossed over a hastily donned cashmere jumper paired with a businesslike skirt, her cropped blonde hair gelled into chaos as a matter of expediency, staring down the belligerent mining magnate.

"Grace had nothing to do with my wife's death, I can swear to that," Gibson spits in a heavily American accent, falling into a masculine leather armchair and gesturing angrily at the sofa by way of hospitality.  Bradstreet sits, as does John, while Sherlock paces.  "Maria might have been a real bitch to her, I'll admit that much, but why should Maria's bullshit threaten Grace in any way whatsoever?  She must be used to washed-up beauties hating her guts.  It's useless to lie about it, you're probably snooping into her emails, checking her Facebook status updates, whatever you call police work these days.  Maria loathed Grace.  But Grace?  If she gave a shit, I never noticed."

Abraham Lincoln, Sherlock realizes.  If Abraham Lincoln had been a nasty old man rather than a great leader, he would be Neil Gibson, right down to his slab of a granite jaw.

"I see the period of mourning for your wife has passed," Sherlock observes sarcastically, studying the room's artwork as he prowls.  Several Flemish school artists unknown to him by name, two Picasso sketches, a genuine Gauguin.  Mr. Gibson is very, very wealthy indeed.

Neil Gibson shrugs.  "I loved her when we got married.  It was a very romantic, whirlwind wedding.  I loved her as a mother and as a person if not as a spouse before she died, and I want to catch the real culprit.  But she was a gold-digging piece of work.  The only reason we were still married was the prenup.  A man in my position can't feel beholden to parasites after he's caught wise."

"Were you sleeping with Ms. Dunbar, then?" Sherlock inquires coolly.

Gibson smirks.  "That is none of your business, but for the record, I know better than to bang a good nanny.  Not with that woman watching my every move, that is, and an infidelity clause written into the legal work.  I kept our bargain as far as chasing tail was concerned."

Bradstreet smiles as well, all teeth and anger.  "You know, you're not exactly crossed off my list yet, Mr. Gibson, even if your alibi clears you of any wrongdoing as far as your spouse is concerned.  Meanwhile, did you hurt your wife, ever?  Physically I mean?"

The tycoon laughs.  "Her?  I'd as soon touch a diseased monkey as lay a finger on Maria after our marriage went south.  I told her as much.  I'm the honest type, and she wasn't.  Isn't it better to face facts in the long run?  Would have been a lot easier for everyone, including the kids, if she'd taken the settlement I offered and gotten the fuck out of Dodge.  I think she imagined I wanted her gone to make room for someone more like Grace, and you know something, towards the end I didn't bother denying it any longer.  Maria would have been happier without me and she refused to see it.  We hated each other, or at least I hated that she was still clinging to me like a crumb of shit.  There's no point in lying about that--any of our servants would report the same, so I might as well fess up."

Stopping before a family portrait, Sherlock narrows his eyes.  The two children, a boy and a girl, are biracial, charming, with gaps in their front teeth and unfortunate holiday attire.  Neil Gibson is steely-eyed, as if he ingests small countries and excretes money.  Maria Pinto-Gibson, on the other hand...Maria Pinto-Gibson, at the time this sitting was scheduled and shot, loved her husband.  He can see it in the almost pleading curve of her hand on his hard shoulder.

"Detective," John says quietly, as if Gibson weren't present, "you're too good at your profession not to have arrested this knob if the evidence pointed to him.  What pointed to Ms. Dunbar?"

"And who the fuck are you meant to be?" Gibson snarls at John.

"He's a medical consultant," Bradstreet trills, jotting down notes in a Moleskine.  "Yeah, glad you asked, Dr. Watson, it doesn't actually look very sunny just now for Ms. Dunbar.  She texted Mrs. Gibson's mobile that she'd be at Thor Bridge at nine o'clock.  There's a little river at the back of the property, runs through everyone's estates in these parts and probably sends the value through the bloody roof for homeowners.  Picturesque, all that rot." 

John nods as Gibson's eyes flicker with disdain.  "Any notion what the meeting was about?"

"None.  Anyway, Mrs. Gibson's body was discovered there shortly after the planned appointment, and a recently discharged handgun of the right caliber was found by yours truly in Ms. Dunbar's closet.  We don't have the bullet, mind, but we do have the bullet wound.  All indications--" 

"That's ludicrous," Sherlock says, rounding the force of his temper on Bradstreet as he turns in mid-stride.  "Grace Dunbar is supposed to have shot a woman in the head and then gone home and put her weapon of choice in her sock index, the gun still smoking?"

"Index?" Bradstreet says, her attractive features twisting in puzzlement.

"Socks," John mutters, rubbing his eyebrows.  "I've known this bloke for all of a month, mind, but don't get me started on him and socks."

"My socks are catalogued according to colour and weight and are also irrelevant," Sherlock sniffs, pretending to be more annoyed by this than he is.  "What sane woman has never watched enough telly to learn you don't put your pistol in your pants drawer?  The gun was planted."

"That's exactly what I'm saying," Neil Gibson grunts as he taps on his mobile.  "Thank you."

Bradstreet throws up her manicured hands.  "It wasn't my favourite arrest this month, not by far--even if Ms. Dunbar was fed up with this household's wankery to the point of murder, she doesn't strike me as either the pistol to the head type, nor the type to drop a hot weapon in with her Uggs--but I'd have been irresponsible not to arrest her.  Hell, I'd have been begging to be sacked."

Sherlock continues to pace, impatient beyond his capacity to hide.  He has been here all of five minutes and he's aware Ms. Grace Dunbar is innocent.  He likely knew it from the photo on his mobile, in fact, since if Moriarty is involved, this story must be askew somehow.  Now he comes to think of it directly, her being innocent is why he insisted Mycroft help him speak with her immediately.  But the discarded handgun--in the closet, of all places--clinches his hypothesis. 

It only remains to discover what actually happened.

And Sherlock is terribly distracted just now. 

He is distracted by John's frequent hostile glances and his ruffled hair where Sherlock clutched it in the cab for a silken, too-brief moment.  He is distracted by the faint flush remaining on John's lips.  He is distracted by John's impatient tapping foot and the fact he'd clearly like nothing better than to slap Neil Gibson across the cheek. 

Sherlock is distracted by the apparent fact that John loves him.  Before it was merely suspected and thus could be ignored accordingly, as unproven data is often dismissed.  Now it is real, and it is tangible.  John is a different size now in Sherlock's perception, as compared to when he had only hinted at loving Sherlock.  Now John's feelings have grown denser by several pounds, and his posture is accordingly more grounded. 

Gravity has shifted in proportion to the perceived weight of John's heart. 

John casts his dark blue eyes at Sherlock, an unspoken question: what's next?

"Take me to the location where the body was found," Sherlock orders Bradstreet. 

"I don't get why you're even here at this hour," Gibson grumbles, "though I'm not sorry this idiotic excuse for a cop is being shown how actual investigating works.  My only experience of detective work is CSI Miami, and I could solve this faster than she is.  I wouldn't be sorry to see Grace exonerated either, I know she didn't do it, she's a good girl and hot as all fuck, but meanwhile you have me up in the middle of the freaking night.  Business is a hard game and the weak get composted.  I can make or break people, and it's usually break--more fun that way.   I don't have time for this crap."

"Do your children have time to find out who killed their mother?" Bradstreet asks icily, and for only a moment, Sherlock can see the part of her which isn't intelligence and posh shoes and glib sexuality, the reason she chose police work in the first place.  He decides it might be acceptable for John to call her Jane after all.  "I might be curious, if it were my mum.  And I was, you know, bored."

"He has a properly ironclad alibi, doesn't he?" John postulates, marveling.  His short legs part on the sofa, and instantly Sherlock tries to identify why his mouth feels hungry--whether he wants to taste John's inner thigh or the hard curve of his knee.  "I think I'd be knocking seven shades of shit out of this maggot otherwise, pardon me for saying so."

"Yep," Bradstreet sighs, scratching at her already decidedly punk hair as she flips back through her notes.  "In fact, he was giving a live interview on Al Jazeera about heavy metals used in electronics and how the market's changing during the entire range of time of death.  Not that he deserves to live just because he didn't shoot his wife in the head, mind."

"No," John agrees dryly.  "Could he have hired someone to do it and planted the gun in the closet?"

"Oh, I'm checking so very very thoroughly into every nook and cranny on that point, you'd think I was fisting the poor bloke," Bradstreet purrs, and again Sherlock feels an insane urge to applaud her choices.

"I don't know what you fucking amateurs want from me," Gibson growls, stalking to a cabinet and pouring himself a whiskey.  "Women do all sorts of crazy shit men can't figure out, and if you want to blame me for it, well, that just makes you exponentially less relevant as far as my attention is concerned."

And that, Sherlock thinks, is quite enough of that.  I have a doctor to hold on to before the night is over. 

"You might find your wife's death trivial, but it's quite important to me at the moment.  As a matter of fact, it affects my life expectancy."  Sherlock whirls on Neil Gibson with all the flair which entering a room with a good coat and a short friend and never seating oneself can provide.  "You're going to take me to the crime scene, now.  You're going to disclose to me every word you ever exchanged on the subject of Ms. Dunbar with your wife, and vice versa, now.  You're going to give me a short list of your worst enemies so that I can determine if they are relevant, though this smells like a domestic dispute, now.  And you'll apologize to Jane Bradstreet here for being impossibly obnoxious, and I mean now, or I'll go direct to the British government with all the ways you illegally profited from the American financial collapse five years ago."

Gibson, despite his tan, pales.  His drink he deposits on the desk, in concert with his fallen expression.

"You wouldn't," he marvels.

"Trust me," Sherlock sniffs when Bradstreet chuckles and John nods silently in approval.  "I would in a heartbeat."

 

 

  

Sherlock solves the crime within twenty seconds of being shown the scene. 

They carry strong lights, leaving the tycoon indoors, searching the grounds and the area surrounding the picturesque little Japanese-style bridge in the suburbs, staring at the bushes and the weeping trees.  The air is cold but not bitter, an expectant feeling.  They all peer at the gravel and the bark and the paving stones.  They look with interest at the grass and the fallen leaves. But only Sherlock sees a tiny fresh chip in the wooden guard of the bridge's rail, and then realizes a handgun was tied to a cord attached to a weight and thus flung into the stream when Maria Pinto-Gibson killed herself, framing her rival.  The scene plays out in brilliant whites and flares of colour in Sherlock's vast imagination.

She wanted a complete revenge and dropped a recently fired weapon into Ms. Dunbar's closet after making an appointment with her, like so, Sherlock sees blazing across his eyes.

She had tied the gun to a stone and lifted the weapon to her head, like so.  She fired, like so.

She died, and in dying hid the true murder weapon, like so.  

Going to the rail, Sherlock peers into the deep stream.  It's completely dark, so he sees nothing, but he can sense the presence of the pistol beneath the water and feels a surge of hatred for Jim Moriarty when he imagines what Maria Pinto-Gibson's appeal to him must have been like.

Dear Jim, if I can't have my husband, please fix it so I can ruin my bitterest foe.

And Jim's answer was simplicity itself: die.

Sighing, Sherlock runs his hands over the wood, smelling pine and rushing water and thick loam under the distant stars.  The dramatic part of him wants to borrow John's gun and replicate the experiment.  John would enjoy that.  He'd laugh, shake his head, call Sherlock a mad prick.

The part of him that doesn't want to die remains silent.  They need the gun.

More than that.

They need time.  They need so many more years together, and John is right.  Sherlock talks as if precautions are valueless.  He talks as if he's already dead.  It disturbs his partner.

Partner, Sherlock thinks with a pleased swell of chest.

The easy gush of the cold water beneath his polished black shoes reminds Sherlock of another stream, back when they were children, of the minnows that used to flash in its shallows on days when Mycroft taught him to skip stones, and John is right about another thing: Sherlock has apparently forgotten during years of psychological torment that Mycroft, beneath the arrogance and the smear of pastry cream, is exceedingly adept at nearly everything.  A text, Sherlock decides with a feeling like pressure being released from his chest, is in order.

Contact made with hostage--she is with Moriarty.  And I've solved it.  Best of luck to you.  SH

After a few more moments of watching reflected constellations be distorted in the stream, Sherlock reads:

You've been talking to your doctor friend, I take it.  Lay low, brother mine, and delay your revelation for as long as you can.  MH

The sound of Bradstreet and John's shoes crossing the bridge echoes as they approach Sherlock, and he turns away from the rail which solved everything so neatly.

"Anything?" John says, huffing a little.

Sherlock nods at a slight angle.

"Cor, we might sort this in time yet," Bradstreet says, clapping her hands together.

"I solved it," Sherlock corrects.

"What, from the bloody angle of the moon?" John exclaims, doing nothing to hide his admiration as he spreads his arms wide. 

Sherlock begins striding away toward the front of the estate, flipping his coat collar up, as he explains.  Despite the grim nature of the information imparted, he enjoys himself immensely.  By the time they've come around front, he has reached his conclusion and there is a tight, disturbed look to the faces of his audience.  Sherlock cannot help but agree with them.

Locked rooms are very fun indeed.  Suicides disguised to look like murders, while disgustingly clever, are not fun at all.

"Wait a few hours for daylight and then drag the stream," Sherlock says to Bradstreet as they part ways before the estate, Gibson staring balefully at them from the parlour window.  "There are men, very good ones indeed, trying to rescue the present hostage.  My stopping the clock at the moment does nothing save hurt us.  If my brother can manage to capture Moriarty, there won't be any more hostages at all--and if he doesn't, then I post the solution and she still lives because the case is closed."

"I suppose I'll text you if we don't find a gun back there," Bradstreet says dryly, shaking his hand.

"Oh, I'm afraid you'll definitely find the gun," Sherlock sighs.  "I am not a genius for nothing." 

"You're also not a complete git for nothing.  How many hours do you have?" Bradstreet asks, already on the phone with Lestrade.  She huddles a bit in her posh jumper now, her arms crossed.  Sherlock is glad she was there and meanwhile wants to leave more than anything he has ever wanted on earth.

"Ten," Sherlock reports.

"And in the meanwhile?" 

Stepping away as the group watches him for guidance, Sherlock hesitates once more in the quartz drive before the estate.  She died because she loved him, Sherlock thinks, looking up at the all but vacant house.  Maria Pinto-Gibson left her children and she died for no other reason than that she loved someone who failed her. 

He said he was in love with you, or almost did, Sherlock thinks next, and is overcome by pure selfishness.  He turns away from the mansion.  From Bradstreet, from the arrest she didn't want to make and the lives which should have been lived better.

"We're to lay low," Sherlock announces as he walks.  "Good night, Bradstreet.  Thank you for coming.  Don't fall in the stream later."

"Fuck you, you prat," Bradstreet calls back in a friendly way, heading for her police car.

"Where are we off to?" John demands, trotting to keep pace with Sherlock when they reach the darkened road.  Their cab awaits still, polished and purring softly about ten yards distant.  "That was...you're not really going to be reasonable and take Mycroft's...hang it, do we need to run tests or something?"

"I am being reasonable.  There are no tests, only time.  Thank you for the recap," Sherlock answers softly, getting into the car.

"Then..."  John shakes his head as he shuts the door.  "Christ, the flat is going to be cold.  And bloody fucking unsafe."

"Oh, assuredly.  Pall Mall, driver," he calls out, and the car pulls away.

"What's in Pall Mall?" John asks, tucking his hands between his thighs.

"The Diogenes Club," Sherlock replies, allowing himself to smirk for a moment.

What have I been so terrified of, supposing John is right? Sherlock wonders.

Sherlock checks his watch, knowing they can't sleep at Baker Street any longer and it would be sweet, sweet vengeance against Mycroft for every slight, both real and imagined, if the pair of them took a suite in the club members' area of the Diogenes and loved each other on every surface until the sun warmed their blue skin to ivory, loved each other in the presence of ghastly but expensive fake flower arrangements and desks which helped record only warlike, alarmingly sweeping decrees from their patrons.

"You were limping again," Sherlock confesses on a strong exhale.  "You were limping and I couldn't bear it.  It was my fault, my resignation to disaster that caused it, never Moriarty's doing.  I accused you unfairly of him getting to you, and I'm sorry."

"Oh," John says, surprised.  "Could...could we record that on my phone or something, just for posterity?" 

"I'd another penance in mind."

"Well, bloody bring it on."

"What do you say," Sherlock says, flashing the full flare of his grin at John in the darkness of the cab, "to my taking you back to my awful, awful brother's warm, posh, expensive club for the night and our...making the most of it?" 

John's small glimmer of tongue wouldn't be visible save for the fact it's wet, but Sherlock can see it.  Sherlock sees many things which other people fail to observe.

"You mean you want to...tell me something again?" John questions, flexing his fingers outward from his legs in a stretch.  He laughs.  "I shouldn't be allowing this.  God, um.  Or I should be applauding you.  I'm the one told you not to jump through hoops and here you are not jumping.  This will...do no harm, for lack of a better phrase?"

Sherlock nods and reaches a hand across the aisle, wanting only the press of John's shorter fingers under his own.

John slides closer and twines their arms together, resting his head on Sherlock's coat just as it meets Sherlock's questing nose.

"Tell me anything you damn well please," John declares.  "I'm in love.  We're resilient creatures, after all."

 

 

"I have...certain privileges," Sherlock concedes.

As you needed rather badly on that occasion when you were twenty-two, and more of an idiot than you usually are, wearing black tie on New Year's Eve and hideously high, more than slightly battered from the thugs who accosted you in Shoreditch where you were scoring some truly superb cocaine and grew careless from sampling the stuff, and Mycroft was here and when he clapped eyes on you didn't say anything, not a word, just a bland nod to the concierge and before you knew any better you were waking up in fresh sheets with your hair still slightly damp from the shower and only the grimmest of suspicions as to who'd bandaged the laceration on your scalp from where your head hit the pavement when they took you down. 

Checking his phone, Sherlock winces at himself.  Nine and a half hours.  Mycroft has nine and a half hours, and of course Mycroft cares, there is sibling pique and then there is willful ignorance.  One must never, Sherlock reminds himself, insensibly twist facts to suit theories rather than the converse.  If Sherlock is going to be stupid, let it be about a subject less irritating than his brother. 

"This is a nice room, very nice indeed, but.  We don't have any...well, anything," John realizes, rubbing at his eyes.  "Toothpaste, shampoo.  Pants."

"Please," Sherlock drawls, tucking his dress shoes with the socks neatly inserted into the closet.  "They have everything here.  If you can think of anything they don't have, frankincense or myrrh for the bath for example, just ring for it and they'll send someone out.  We'll be fine, at least until tomorrow.  I for one don't plan on wearing anything to bed."

Glancing up at Sherlock in a sort of fond, weary surprise, John's mouth parts as the detective lowers himself gracefully between the doctor's knees.  He lands in soft cotton, folded up like a fawn.  It's lovely here, the quiet and the warmth of it, the way when he tucks his face into John's lap and his arms behind John's waist, his friend buries small hands in his hair and easily tangles his fingers in the curls.  Sherlock emits a pleased humming sound, nuzzling.

"You're like a bloody great cat," John observes.  Sherlock can hear his smile.  "We don't have to do...anything, you know.  We can sleep.  You ought to sleep.  I caught a few winks, but.  Well.  Some sixth sense makes me suspect you didn't."

John is right.  Sherlock spent the few hours they passed in bed observing John.  He wonders how the man could know, then elects not to ask, preferring the little mystery intact.

"Sleep is for the weak."  Sherlock pushes his hands up, under the jumper, tracing nails over the firm skin of John's back.  The skin comes alive in tiny hills as he scratches, and Sherlock counts their peaks beneath the sensitive pads of his fingers.

"Look, you don't have to turn into Mr. Libido just because you're about the sexiest thing I've ever seen."  John's voice remains amused.  "We had a brilliant fucking shag not six hours back."

"That didn't count."

"Oh my god," John laughs.  Sherlock's fingers continue to trace patterns and John arches his spine a little, appreciative without being demanding, and Sherlock's heart aches with that, with all the questions John doesn't ask and all the ways Sherlock has caged himself off and all the times John has allowed it, resigned--not resigned, deserving of rejection, or so he believes.  "What in hell are you waffling about now?  You said I broke you in pieces.  That..." John clears his throat.  "I don't know what to make of that, and I'm sorry if I need to be, but it sure as hell is warm counted for something."

Sherlock can think of no reason it wouldn't be pleasurable to undo John's trouser button and zip with his teeth, and so makes the attempt, his nose brushing hard against the smooth flesh of John's lower abdomen.  It's easier than he imagined, perhaps because he's attempted successfully to get himself out of handcuffs using his lips and a key multiple times.  Sucking in a breath, John rocks once and then stills, his grip on Sherlock's hair tightening.  "It didn't count because I didn't know."

"What didn't you know?" John says tightly, pulling his fingers over the shell of Sherlock's ear.

"You were in love, I didn't know that you were in love, I--" Sherlock catches himself losing his breath and clenches his jaw briefly.  It cannot be allowed to mean so much this early.  It can't, or he will shatter like their Baker Street windows.

"Oh.  And you're supposed to be brilliant.  Fancy that."  Hooking his fingers under John's waistband, Sherlock tugs, and then happily the doctor's pants and trousers are halfway down his thighs and the smaller man gasps lightly.  "Oh, Jesus, what are you doing."

"Obvious."

John is...interested, clearly.  His half-hard cock gives a strong twitch as Sherlock cups it in his palm, rolling it forward, and John surges up and down with one hand on Sherlock's nape and the other still deep in his hair, lifting the sleuth's face for a kiss.  Sherlock doesn't recall parting his lips, but somehow they understand what they're meant to do and are open instinctually, and it's glorious kissing a taller John, a John whose mouth tenderly bullies his own, a John whose tongue can dive and slide without straining at their height difference, and when Sherlock bites the doctor's lower lip in an open challenge, John twists an arm around his lower back, pinning him closer between short legs.

"You make me.  Completely.  Crazy," John growls, biting along Sherlock's jawline.

"When did you fall in love?  Tell me," Sherlock demands.

"Um.  Fuck.  Sherlock, this is not how this conversation generally goes."

"I want to know.  I need to backdate the database on you to incorporate the nuances of your affections during everyday interactions, like the time two weeks ago when I glanced at the teakettle from the sofa and then starting meditating on the business of the stockbroker's clerk and then when I opened my eyes there was tea at my elbow, I need to know, it's not accurate otherwise, I need to rewrite the file if required, if you didn't simply also happen to want tea at the same moment," Sherlock pleads, tightening his grip on John's cock.  It's hard now, warm with blood and bobbing occasionally, and Sherlock hasn't learned the feel of it with his fingers yet, and this is all he wants at the moment.  He cannot imagine wanting anything else.  He wants every one of his fingerprints permanently stamped on John's most intimate places.

"Sodding hell," John marvels, kissing him firmly and then pulling back to look in his eyes.  "Erm.  I knew you for something extraordinary when I left you that night.  It was early days, I know.  You said I was good and not nice.  I was in pretty serious trouble, I realized, and didn't want to turn into some weepy git, and so I left.  Then after that, I...it.  Come on, Sherlock.  It just happened.  It's not a scientifically measurable event."

"Everything is scientifically measurable."

"No," John says fiercely.  He pulls Sherlock's hand away from his groin and wraps both their hands together, all four sets of fingers intertwined and pressed up against his thin mouth.  Breathing for a moment, he stills them, slows the pace.  "No, it isn't.  There is not a scientific limit to what I'd do for you.  That's what I've been trying to explain."

Swallowing, Sherlock stares into dark blue eyes.  They are unflinching, mildly curious, a bit exasperated, boundlessly loving.

You're to die for.  I would die for you, I think.

"Like one of your fellow soldiers," Sherlock says, understanding.  "You're planning to save my life."

"You already saved mine, so that's only fair," John answers calmly.

Lunging up on his knees, Sherlock kisses the soldier, lips flushed and wanting.  John makes a sort of pained sound into his mouth, tasting the edges of his tongue and playing symphonies with the lush bow of his lips.  The doctor's fingers descend to Sherlock's buttons, flicking them open.  Then he pushes the shirt from Sherlock's shoulders and abruptly stands, pulling off his jumper and vest in a quick, efficient sweep.  After making short work of his own pants and trousers, Sherlock follows him up, manhandling his smaller friend until he's up against the narrow wall table next to the armchair, lifting John by his thighs so he's sitting on the smooth wood.  Another strong pull, and John's trousers are in a puddle and Sherlock is stepping on them with his naked feet as he muscles his way closer.  John, his head tilted, laughs suddenly.

"What?"

"I kind of half thought you were kidding about defiling every surface in your brother's club."

"That was a serious as I have ever been," Sherlock breathes, dipping his head to catch one of John's nipples in his mouth.  He rolls it on his tongue, feeling the texture harden.

"Oh, fuck, fuck.  This is completely insane," John protests happily.

"Why?  The ticking time bomb?"

"Nope, that's being sorted.  God, I hope it is.  I dunno, it's only, If you'd told me two weeks ago we were going to have a fucking brilliant sex life, I'd have called you a whopping great liar."

Bracing one hand on the thin table, Sherlock bends far enough to coax the tip of John's penis into his mouth.  It's slightly damp now, tasting faintly of ocean water and stormy skies.  John hisses, a hand flying to the side to brace himself as his head hits the mirror behind him, and a vase housing an abstract arrangement of multicoloured rocks and dried materials crashes to the carpet, rolling. 

"Shit!"

"Never mind.  Mycroft will settle the bill."

"That was, shit, not in reference to the vase.  Fuck the vase.  Was that even a vase?"

"Oh," Sherlock says, highly pleased.  He pulls his teeth very gently over the perfectly smooth head, tonguing at the slit, and John's thighs tense where they're gripping his torso.  Taking a breath, Sherlock presses him deeper, nearly to the back of his throat, and holds there, relishing the pressure and the feeling of John's heat against his tongue.

"Could you not talk about your brother when you're giving me head, love?"

Sherlock chuckles deep in his chest, which makes John moan, which makes Sherlock's heart perform complicated acrobatics within the empty arena of his ribcage.  Now he realizes he is allowed to laugh during sex, he doesn't want to ever have sex again without this queer, surprised joy bubbling up inside him.  It turns potentially repellent biology into something quite different, something closer to music, something along the lines of a flawless duet.  Love feels enough like pain during his typical waking hours that he can relish this, the carefree teasing and the jokes which fall harmless and sweet as London raindrops.  He never imagined such a thing existed before John.  He redoubles his efforts, increasing the suction and wrapping John's length with his tongue.  Soon, the hands in his hair become more insistent.

"Fuck.  Hey.  Sherlock.  God, Christ, you are amazing.  I don't want to come like this.  I have an idea.  Sherlock, come up here."

Obeying, Sherlock rather defeats the point of continuing the conversation by covering John's mouth with his own.  Now they can both taste John, both savour how wonderful he is, and the army doctor makes a high-pitched sound at the back of his nose.  Sherlock brushes the fine hair back from John's brow, does it again and again, something he always wanted to do from the moment he set eyes on him and is now allowed.  His breath comes quick and shallow through his nostrils. 

Kissing is...kissing is completely intoxicating.  Sherlock actually feels high.  This would be positively disgusting with anyone else, far worse than simple sex, but kissing John is like dreams of flying, the dreams Sherlock recalls from being a little boy when he still wanted things like a cape and a pirate ship, wanted to fly like the child in the book about Neverland and in the depths of his slumber one night actually soared through the constellations he finds so beautiful when he views them from the prosaic weight of life on solid earth.

"I couldn't decide if I wanted to be the boy who stayed young forever or the pirate captain," Sherlock confesses, only partly aware he is talking utter nonsense.  "From the book.  I think I deleted the title.  But I remember flying.  You're like flying.  John, you feel exactly the same."

"Oh god, love, I have no idea what you're talking about, but keep at it until I do," John laughs, though there is something bittersweet and sad at the back of the mirth.

"What was your idea?" Sherlock asks when he must either breathe fully or else pass out there on the poncey carpeting.  Burrowing into John's neck, he works to catch his wind, watching his fingertips play along the stiff line of John's cock.

"It.  Um.  Well, ah, sod it, I was wondering...did you mean what you said earlier?"

Sherlock looks up, calculating.  Of course he meant what he said earlier.  Sherlock always means what he says.  Unless he is deliberately lying, and then...no, that wouldn't apply here.  Is John talking about fucking him?  John's eyes are bright with unspoken hope and he swipes his tongue over his lip, tilting an eyebrow.

"Of course I did."  Forcing a confidence he doesn't quite feel, Sherlock plants a kiss lightly on John's chin and strides to the bedside table.  "They always have absolutely everything here, it's obscene really.  Ha!  See?  Lubricant and condoms, second drawer below the pens.  The number of laddish men of means who have passed through these rooms with paid company doesn't really bear considering.  In fact, I regret mentioning it.  Anyway, yes, of course I meant what I said."  Tossing the packet of lube onto the bedclothes, Sherlock sprawls gracefully on his back, his arms open and one of his knees cocked up, expectant.

John advances with his hands on his hips, his eyebrow twisting, a smile fighting for dominance.  "You, um, have this backwards," he says flatly.  "But I appreciate it.  The offer.  It's very generous."  He goes into Sherlock's embrace readily, pressing their pelvises together with care he doesn't hurt any of Sherlock's tender bits, and both men pull air in unsteadily.

Sherlock runs his palms broadly up and down his friend's muscled back.  "I don't understand."

John squints down at him, happy and patient and still fighting a laugh.  "I was rather hoping you'd fuck me."

Freezing, Sherlock stares. 

This is...this is not kind.  It lances through his chest, hot and sharp.  How is he meant to respond in the face of such callousness?  It isn't his fault he's this way, and for John to be disappointed when he cannot help it, after he's offered absolutely everything he can is...it's devastating.

"That is an incredibly cruel joke," the detective states icily.

John merely rolls his eyes.  "Sherlock Holmes, do you or do you not possess hands?"

"I...oh," Sherlock breathes.

Leaning down, John paints little nips along Sherlock's collarbone.  The touches spark through him, lighting small candle flames in his belly.  Sherlock pulls one slender violinist's hand up and studies it between them.  He knows abstractly that his hands are deft and aesthetically pleasing, but this notion of what to do with them...it's vaguely terrifying.  John, up on one elbow, catches the appendage in his own and places kisses along his knuckles.  Then he turns the hand over and kisses the stripe from the fireplace iron.

"You don't have to," he assures Sherlock, who has forgotten how to inhale properly.  "And if flexing your hands hurts, then forget it.  You said you wanted to get inside me somehow.  Earlier, in the cab.  That is an achievable goal, my friend.   You inside me would be bloody spectacular.  That would make my fucking life, mate.  So...again, you might have meant something else, mentally or emotionally or something, and god knows you've properly wormed your way in there as well, love, but if you wanted to...then you could."

"You like that?" Sherlock whispers.

"Yeah," John says fondly.  He bends to take the tip of Sherlock's middle finger in his lips for a moment.  "Yeah, um.  Not with everyone.  With you, I would.  You're amazing."

"You've done it before?"

"Sure."

"With men or women?"

"Both."

"How many?"

"Sherlock," John sighs.

"Tell me," he growls.

"I didn't count, Sherlock.  Maybe twenty times with men, maybe half that with women.  With women, it didn't come up as often."

"Are you serious?  Where?"

"Various places.  All over.  I'm not exactly an innocent.  Three continents were involved, if you must know."

"When was the last time?  In the army?"

"No, god no.  A bloke from a pub here in London, must have been two or three months ago."

"Were you in love with him?"

"Christ no, you barking mad prat, it was a lark.  He was fit, I was desperately lonely, there you are."

"And you...it didn't hurt you?"

"No," John says, frowning worriedly.  "That is not the point of it.  That is the precise opposite of the point.  I like it, it feels good.  God, Sherlock, I swear to Christ if I ever meet one of your exes in a dark fucking alley, I will tear their fucking limbs--"

"How do you like it?" Sherlock demands, now entirely lit up from the idea.  He grins ferally, tracing John's slim mouth with his fingertips.  "Deep?  Shallow?  Slow?  Fast?  How many fingers?  Right on target, or should I avoid--"

"Oh god, you look like you're going to eat me," John hisses, capturing Sherlock's mouth in a bruising kiss.  "Slow at first, and then...yeah, just sort of brush at it in circles, and you'll have me coming apart at the seams.  Your hands don't hurt?"

Eyeing the still-livid bruise along John's side, Sherlock shakes his head.  Their injuries are surely trivial in the face of such a request.  Fumbling around beyond his line of sight on the coverlet, Sherlock finds the packet and brings it between them.  John, grinning, rips it open with one hand and his teeth, rocking himself against the line of Sherlock's pelvis where his cock is nestled.  Sherlock offers his right hand for servicing and John coats the tips of his fingers with the stuff, on the longest ones where the middle and index crook together.

"Are you sure about this?" John asks, his lips pressing outward in concern.  "If I'm being a bloody selfish berk, then...oh."

Sherlock smirks.  He isn't pressing hard just yet, merely slid his fingers down into the swell of John's arse.  He smoothes his fingertips gently, spreading the slick where it's needed, watching John's eyes flutter as he memorizes textures and the suddenly ragged sound of John's lungs working.  This is...completely unprecedented.  John's lashes are a fine blond where they quiver, and the line of his strong neck is tight with veins as he twists himself up, mouthing kisses all along Sherlock's pale throat.  John is entirely surrounded by Sherlock Holmes as he massages tenderly, and it's the most precious sight Sherlock could possibly imagine.

"All right?" Sherlock asks, himself breathless by now.

"Yeah, that.  That is.  That is just fine," John grits out.  He looks at Sherlock, his eyes open and raw with feeling.  "God, I want so much from you it scares me.  I couldn't ask for it, how much I want from you, it would rip me in half."

Finding there is no answer to be made to this that wouldn't simultaneously involve Sherlock's untimely death due to heart attack, he ever so slowly dips his middle fingertip inside and they both shudder at the sensation.

"Oh my god," John whispers.  "You're fine, press further, I want it.  I want you there.  Yeah, like that.  Like that.  Just like that for the moment."

Sherlock's single finger is more than halfway seated and surrounded by heat, by John's blood, by the beating of his heart, and John trembles where his prick lies trapped between their bodies.  It's heartbreaking, this sight, so real and so very present that Sherlock forgets what it was ever like to be anywhere else, with anyone else.  It becomes tremendously important for Sherlock to get this right, to show John what he means to him since he appears to be a fucking mute when it comes to expressing the topic aloud.  Ever so cautiously, Sherlock pushes, and then settles for a gentle pulsing rhythm, sliding back nearly to the first knuckle and then driving softly inward again.

"All right?" he demands again.

"Fuck yes, do I look all right," John gasps, laughing.  "Deeper.  That's it.  I'm not going to break, love."

"If you let me hurt you, I will murder you," Sherlock snarls, his chest aching with possessive desire.

"That's...really weirdly nice, cheers.  Your fucking hands are so gorgeous, deeper, come on."  John arches back a little, arcing his spine.  "Curve your finger a bit when you press in.  Yes, like...fucking bloody hell."

Sherlock can feel it.  John's entire body sings like a bowstring, muscles flexing as his mouth parts on a stifled yell.  When Sherlock repeats the motion, John's frame tenses again, and he muffles the sound he's making in the flesh of Sherlock's shoulder.  Sherlock grips John's hair with his free hand and forces him up into a kiss, fucking him again with a crooked finger, breathing him as he struggles in seemingly every direction at once.  He watches, pulse pounding, for five or six minutes more, as John's reactions grow increasingly frantic.

"I want to keep you just like this all the time," Sherlock growls, recapturing John's panting mouth where it slid away from his.

"Done.  Yes.  Fine.  Oh, fuck," John gasps.

"Can you come like this?  Just from this?"

"Um."  John's eyes wince close and he bites back another little yelp of pleasure.  Sherlock's lower belly where John's erection is writhing has grown nearly as slick as where their bodies are joined.  "Yesterday I'd have said hell no, and called you a lunatic to boot, but now on the other hand..."

"I want to make you come like this, just with my hand and your cock on my stomach and you'll forget everyone you've ever met except for me," Sherlock hisses.

John tries to swallow another whine and fails.  "Yes, yes, yes.  Come on then, add another finger.  I'm fine."

"It won't be too much?"

"No, it'll be brilliant, I need it, I need more.  Please."

"Are you begging?"

"Yes, you buggering beautiful nit, that is exactly what's fucking happening, so fucking help me."

"Are you certain?"

"Fucking fuck me with your stupidly pretty hand, Sherlock, or I will have my revenge on you," John demands, twining his fingers against Sherlock's scalp and pulling at his wildly disheveled hair.  "There, yes yes, now just twist a bit and then press, god.  Sherlock."

With two fingers buried in John's trembling body, Sherlock thinks it might be possible to perish from affection.  Biting his lower lip, he concentrates, ignoring the small sore lump in his throat and the possibility that this may all vanish in the morning--that despite their efforts, they will lose, and he will never have John this way again.  John is very tight, but not uncomfortably so, and growing more relaxed, his pulse galloping, so the detective deepens the push, tucking John's face into the hollow of his neck with his left hand.  He's rewarded with teeth scraping his throat, with more badly muffled soft sounds, and he wonders how he can have lived so long without this.  Without intimacy.  Without any love.

Sherlock thinks that living is worth it if it's to please this man, but more than that, he knows what John meant.  If it would save the army doctor, there's nothing Sherlock wouldn't do, he realizes as long minutes of intimate pleasure pass between them.  He'd throw himself off the roof of Bart's Hospital to keep him from coming to harm.  There are no lines anymore, not between them, and borders are meaningless.  Sherlock doesn't end where John begins, nor the other way around.

"Oh, fuck," John growls as Sherlock increases his pace.  He sounds wrecked, his face buried below Sherlock's chin.  Sherlock can feel the faint sheen of sweat from his brow.  "I needed this, need you like this.  I want--"

"Go on, it's all right, I've got you," Sherlock assures him.  He hooks an ankle over John's calf, gathers him as closely as two people can be joined.  John twitches against the taut, slick skin of Sherlock's pelvis.  "What do you want?" 

"Everything," John says, laughing brokenly.

"Take it.  Take everything."

"Just tell me this means something to you, please," John requests hoarsely.  "I know it does, I know it does, you're a crap liar, but you're actually fucking inside of me, and I--just say anything, I don't care what it is.  Say my name."

"John," Sherlock whispers, and that feels right, more than right.  "John, it means everything.  You can have everything. I want to see you.  Give me that, please?  John."

"Jesus, I am really really close," John pants, wriggling again.  Sherlock's fingers thrust steadily, much more assuredly now, but John's movements are growing almost random, his hard prick thrashing sweetly against the detective only to surge back against his hand.  He moans extravagantly, then bites his lip.  "Sorry."

"God, why?" Sherlock demands.  "I could stay like this for years, let me hear you.  I want to make you scream for it."

"This is actually doing something for you?"

"Everything, I told you," Sherlock insists desperately.  He doesn't know who wants John's climax more, only knows that they're both dying for it to happen.  "Absolutely everything.  What do you need?  Come on, love.  Let go."

"Oh, god, what did you just call me," John gasps.  "I'm...almost, I'm sorry, I can't quite..."

Out of impulse and a certain spirit of adventure, Sherlock tucks his ring finger in with the others and presses in harder than any of his previous efforts.  John chokes something completely inarticulate and then stills with a sharp cry, his muscles contracting and his cock spilling thickly between them.  Sherlock catches his face in his palm and kisses him through it, their lips moving messily, more scraping and gasping than anything else, but no less beautiful for the lack of finesse.  The sensation of flying returns to Sherlock in a rush, creeping blithely along his shoulder blades and shimmering down his spinal column.  John's pleasure rips through him, bowing his back and twisting his perfect small features.  Waiting until the worst of the shudders are over, which takes far longer than is customary, Sherlock very carefully withdraws his fingers, cupping John's arse cheek as the army doctor collapses against his chest. 

They stay like that for what seems many minutes, relearning how to breathe.

"Tell me you're all right," Sherlock says at long length, shifting the hand cradling John's feather-soft head against him.  He doesn't mean for it to come out wrecked.  Unfortunately, however, it does.

"Mm spectacular," John slurs after due consideration.  "You?"

"I'll be fine."

John nods into Sherlock's skin, traces a pattern on his pectoral muscle with his fingers.  They are quiet, which is easier.  It is far, far easier than any variety of speech.  Slowly, Sherlock feels the dizzy bliss recede.

"This affects you, just not the way it does most people.  It affects you...quite a bit, I'm learning.  Arousal has bugger-all to do with it, but you're just as deep in this as I am.  Was it true when you said I broke you in pieces?" John wants to know next.  His tone is careful.  Sated, loving, and yet...cautious.

"Yes," Sherlock sighs.  "It wasn't a pejorative, if you can believe that.  It was simply outside the realm of my normal experience."

"I think I know what you mean now.  That was...fuck.  I'm shattered.  That's not a pejorative.  You're incredible."

Smiling, Sherlock drops a kiss to his brow.  "Move a moment."

"No."

"Get off."

"Fuck you."

"You'll be happier in the long run."

Sighing, John rolls onto his back.  Sherlock disappears into the loo, washing his hands and stomach, wetting a flannel and bringing it back to the bed.  John cocks a wry eyebrow as he approaches, cloth in hand, and cleans the tender skin of John's flagging cock, wiping away the worst of the sweat and lube and come from his softly glowing body.  Throwing the flannel onto the expensive desk in triumph, right on top of the stationery, Sherlock retrieves his phone from his trouser pocket.  There are no correspondences.  All is peace, or at least, all is not lost. 

Not yet.  Not tonight.

Eight and a half hours.  It will serve.

"C'mere," John whispers, holding a hand out.

"I'm right here," Sherlock says, suddenly exhausted.

John pushes himself up and draws the covers back, one arm still thrown wide.  Sherlock taps out an alarm which will wake them within three hours of the countdown finishing and crawls into bed, curving his spine away from John as John tucks the blankets around them.  John settles along the sleuth's back, crossing an ankle over his and encircling him within his arm. 

There is nothing here save the two of them.  There will not be for some few hours.  Sherlock, unused to simple happiness, finds himself growing uneasy.  But he forces the feeling down and concentrates, places John's pulse at his core and John's cry when he climaxes in the carved ebony box in the master bedroom of his mind palace, runs his fingers over the latch and presses it closed, falling into a dreamless slumber of terrifying depth.

 

 

 

Odd.

In the absence of the quelled alarm, the room is now very quiet.

An army doctor lies along Sherlock's back, pressed close as can be, his chest to Sherlock's spine and his perfect tiny fragile nose breathing gently into Sherlock's mop of squashed hair.  His hand is draped over Sherlock's chest and the appendage curls, scratching capable fingers into the detective's milky skin. 

"What's happening?"  John's voice is rough, thick with slumber and deeper than usual.  It sounds lovely.  Sherlock wonders if it's typical for John's voice to change in the morning, wonders how many mornings he will be granted in order to test this subject.  It changed the morning after the Friesland.  It changed the next day, after the chloroform.  It changed--

"Anything on?" John insists, still gruffly.

"Nothing," Sherlock answers, mystified.

Something must be wrong. 

He cannot be allowed simply to lie here with John Watson, sloughing skin cells onto each other as John kindles weary nerve endings before quieting them again with smooth, stroking touches like the ones the doctor is patting--no, petting, there's the word--along his side and flank.  This cannot logically be permitted to continue, Sherlock really isn't the sort of person to whom this happens, not by a long shot, never in a thousand lifetimes should this moment be possible, so something must surely have gone grievously amiss.  He feels chosen, and without John having said a word, and in his disoriented state Sherlock suspects that is entirely unacceptable.

I wouldn't trade you, here in this bed with me, Sherlock recalls.  Not for anyone else. 

The world is out of balance.  Good fortune blazes so brightly that complete disaster must have taken place elsewhere.

Sherlock taps out a message to Bradstreet, as an experiment.

I trust you found the pistol?  SH

After sixty seconds or so, she replies.  So there is nothing wrong with his phone, apparently. 

Yep, just now.  Have it right here.  Catch of the day, fresh as anything.

Bizarre. 

And disconcerting.

Something is wrong.  John is pressing his toes against Sherlock's bare calf.  It would be absolutely wonderful if it weren't so very, very unlikely to last.  Perhaps Bradstreet isn't Bradstreet after all?  A test is in order.

I can't believe you were idiot enough to doubt me even if it was only for 1.3 seconds.  I am, after all, a savant.  SH

About a minute later, Sherlock's phone chimes.

You're also a sow's tit.  But I'd have had jack all to go on if not for you, so cheers. 

That is definitively, absolutely Bradstreet.  It could be no one else.  Sherlock stares at the mobile, biting his lip as he tries to decide how to respond to her compliment without being either too grateful or too vitriolic.  But he is prevented by another text.

And this archnemesis of yours is one sick puppy--suicide as a frame for murder?  Give him hell, mate.

This is easier.

Puppies don't murder people.  I should have thought the Yard would be aware of that.  But noted.  Have you taken any further action?  SH

Setting wheels in motion to release Grace Dunbar on bail.  Otherwise we're waiting on you. 

"Now what's happening?"

"Nothing," Sherlock admits, returning his phone to the bedside table with a little sigh.

John undulates against the pale skin of Sherlock's back.  He is, the detective realizes now, not entirely relaxed despite having just been asleep--his hands are restless, his prick noticeably stiff.  John's breath comes sweet and sleep-slow against Sherlock's scalp and the taller man nudges his head back fondly. 

The club is profoundly silent in the way only the Diogenes ever can be--it's an accumulated silence, practically an historic silence, silence in thick strata like the softest white winter layers.  There is nothing tentative or temporary about it.  It's what he loves about the Diogenes, despite Mycroft's greater claim to the place, which is a rather detestable circumstance.  Mycroft fouls the air of all his favourite nooks with the greasily insincere aroma of artificial cake frosting.  No matter how great a strop Sherlock finds himself in at his brother, however, he adores the Diogenes.  The silence is unbroken as the wide Atlantic, sound ripples shifting only in Sherlock's immediate proximity.  John's inhales, John's exhales, the whisper of sheets and the almost-friction of flesh against flesh.  Heartbeats like small songs. 

Chamber music, Sherlock thinks.  And in a soundproofed room, to boot.  Nothing extraneous or crass or common.

"Cracking," John murmurs.  "I am very comfortable."

Humming, Sherlock agrees.  He tucks his arm back under the blankets, head yet feeling strangely thick.  Under ordinary circumstances he'd be appalled at himself, and he feels a sour-tongued twinge of longing for the cocaine that would sweep away the cobwebs.  It wouldn't require much, and he'd be instantly sharp and steely again.  But John is here, and John is good, and anyway, Sherlock can't.  Not when the game is still on and a very old woman has a deadly weapon pointed at her head and is probably dressed in semtex. 

After a few minutes, Sherlock realizes he wouldn't want the cocaine to wipe away the fog even if he had some here and is so astonished at his own aberration from the norm that he wakes up a bit more.

Contentment, he identifies after a brief scan of the English language.

It feels like a small flightless sparrow in his hands, pure white, with no head or feet, merely a sleek birdlike shape equipped with meekly fluttering downy wings.  He suspects without needing to be told that it is extraordinarily fragile.  Sherlock walks through the halls of his mind palace into the bedroom on silent bare feet, cradling the thing.  He creates a nest in the corner by the window and places contentment there with a reverence born of complete shock.

"Did we move at all?" he marvels.

"Nope.  You must have been properly jiggered to manage that sort of beauty rest."

"I was," Sherlock realizes.  "I think I...have been.  I was just distracted.  Before."

They fall quiet again.  John's fingertips trace small loving patterns on Sherlock's sternum.  He slides a bit lower along the bed and the arousal which had pressed against Sherlock's lumbar curve fits just into the dip of his arse.  It's clearly an accident, because John stills as if determining his welcome.  When Sherlock fails to stiffen, merely yawns contentedly, John likewise relaxes.  Idly, Sherlock wonders what he's doing, because it feels quite nice--far from threatening, and intimate in the way locks and keys fit, the romance of objects that were made to slot together.  When John's lips nip along the back of his neck, he understands the move south was based on wanting to taste creamy near-morning skin and he glows accordingly.  It was for Sherlock, not for John at all.

"I find it really bloody difficult to believe I'm here," John confesses, muffled against Sherlock's neck.

Sherlock knows just what John means, but imagines their reasons are quite different.  "Why?"

"Because we've been dating for all of four days.  I think.  If you count the beginning the night of the Friesland and not the next morning."

Groggily, Sherlock calculates.  So much has happened that this news is surprising, but yes, John is right.  Four days.  Three cases, three hostages.  One terrible cheese and tomato sandwich.  One unprecedented bath.  More sexual encounters than Sherlock ever imagined being bearable, let alone marvelous.  No wonder he fell into such a dreamless abyss.

"We've never been on a date," Sherlock drawls lazily instead.

"No?"  John chuckles, mouthing at Sherlock's spinal column.  "Um.  Wrong.  You asked me on a date the day you met me."

"Technically that was a gesture of thanks."

"Date."

"No, it wasn't."

"Even that Angelo bloke said it was."

"Well, it wasn't."

"Yes, it was."

"You can't change reality simply by contradicting me.  It was a thank you.  I don't date.  You are simply unnaturally attracted to dangerous people and situations, so the aftermath of tackling Abernetty seemed to you--"

"I'm unnaturally attracted to dangerous people and situations?" John chuckles.  "Why is everything always my fault?  As if you weren't texting me every half minute?  Anyhow, plenty of dates since, too.  That Ethiopian place, the midnight walk along the Thames last week."

Sherlock shifts, exasperated, and can feel John's warm body slide easily against his back.  "The Ethiopian restaurant's owner was being embezzled from by his own wife, and the midnight walk along the Thames last week was surveillance in an effort to capture a serial strangler, an effort at which we succeeded."

John is unfazed.  "That movie night at the flat when I showed you Unforgiven was a date."

Sherlock bites back a snort.  "That was you watching a man squinting in the near-total darkness in some part of Western America because they apparently forgot films require lighting while I sipped tea and outlined a new article on types of cigarette ash, which is bound to be spectacular and published to universal acclaim."

"You're kidding."

"I'm not.  I know ash."

"Dates.  Every one of them.  I'm wise to you, my friend.  I know how you get your jollies and I know a date when I am on one."

Laughing, Sherlock traces the back of John's hand where it continues to roam over his chest.  He pushes his fingertips into the web of John's digits as the doctor's hand wanders upward, tenderly circling Sherlock's throat.  "What are you doing?"

"You have a pretty wonderful laugh.  And you don't laugh very...often.  I wanted to feel it."

This quiets Sherlock, though he doesn't mean to impede John's exploration.  He sighs instead, swallowing against his friend's cupped grip as an apology.  John's hand increases its pressure incrementally.  It doesn't feel hostile in the slightest, feels more as if Sherlock is being tethered to earth like a child's precious balloon which could bob away at any moment.

"I've never been on a date in my life," Sherlock insists.  "The point of dates is relationships.  I've never had a relationship, as you are well aware."

"Just sex, then?"

"Yep."

"Not as many partners as for me, though."

"Not as many as for you," Sherlock agrees, feeling a small fiery pang.  "Whyever are we talking about this?"

"Because we don't know each other at all and we've been dating for four days," John observes calmly.  "If I'm going to be mad about someone, I'd prefer to know their, you know, biography at least in broad strokes.  And if we're going to be sleeping together, I'd rather stop treating you as if you'll fall apart if I ask the wrong question." 

"You once interrogated me for half an hour over my entire drug history and threatened to call the Met if I didn't oblige you," Sherlock observes dryly. 

"Yeah, well, that was before."  John shrugs.  "You scare the shite out of me now, and you figured it out, clever you, and that is really making me squirm.  I want to quit being this fiddly.  Are you uncomfortable?"

"No," Sherlock realizes, surprised.  He ought to be, because...well, oughtn't he be?  The sleuth shifts his hand back and runs his palm over John's hip. 

"Have you ever fucked anyone else like that before?" John purrs next.

He's referring to last night, to Sherlock's long fingers and to his own tremulous sounds as Sherlock unraveled him.  Shivering, the sleuth shakes his head against the pillow.  That would...not have been possible.  He can feel John grow a fraction harder against him, feel the small throb of his prick against his lowest vertebrae.

"No," Sherlock owns in a rasp.  It comes out far too feelingly for his taste.

"No?"

"I was saving myself," he quips, rolling his eyes.

Better.

John laughs appreciatively.  "No one wanted that, though?"

"No.  But anyway, I'd have told them to go to hell."

"Did you like it?"

"You know I liked it.  I may have liked it more than--wait.  Did you like it?"

"It was very pleasant," John says in a tone so lascivious that Sherlock melts against him even further.  "We are going to do it again sometime.  You know.  One of these days.  The odd Wednesday.  When you're...bored or something."

"Good," Sherlock approves.  He smiles as John's fingers drift to trace his Adam's apple and the hollows of his throat.

"Tell me what you were feeling," John requests, kissing Sherlock's shoulder blades.

"Whatever do you mean?"

"You were lit up like Christmas, the way you were in the bath, the way you were in the bed, but.  I was hardly paying you much attention physically.  Sorry about that, you were bloody killing me.  But I was definitely not doing much of the work just then.  Limp as a rag, totally useless afterward as well.  If I'd been spoiling you, I'd get it, but...I emphatically was not.  And I'm trying to understand you, so.  Explain that to me.  Please." 

His teeth scrape, and Sherlock gasps.

"I, ah," Sherlock stammers.

"What?"

"Sorry, that's...nice.  I, um, felt..."

"Think away, genius, I have hours," John murmurs, and Sherlock feels him give a small twitch of his pelvis.  It's not quite a thrust, but it's unmistakable, and it reminds Sherlock of the morning after the choloroform poisoning, when John was embarrassed and uncomfortable and thought he'd alarmed Sherlock.  Realizing he truly is no longer being treated like glass, Sherlock grins broadly as he forces his brain to find an explanation for his sensations during their most intimate moments.  When he replays the file, relives the thirty-six seconds including the end of the latest interlude and its afterglow, he finds parsing the experience less terribly difficult that he'd first feared.

"We were a circuit," he says, clearing his throat.  "I was in you and you were kissing me and it was a circuit, a high voltage circuit, when I made you moan and your air was in my lungs.  Forty-one, possibly forty-two thousand volts, if I were to measure it in the sensation of the electrical signals, though I am well aware the number of sodium and potassium ions present in the human body is far too low to create such a charge.  The human organism can produce up to a hundred millivolts only, but yours were building and building as I touched you, and they fed into my sympathetic nervous system and then mine fed back into yours and it made the impulses triggering my heart contractions vastly stronger on a differential spectrum.  That's what it felt like."

The doctor groans lightly and his hand darts down to grasp Sherlock's upper thigh, his compact body giving a definite roll.  His prick where it lies neatly between Sherlock's cheeks is hotter than the rest of him, a fact explained through the organic sciences of blood and love.

"Sorry," he says as his brow hits Sherlock's upper arm and he breathes deeply in and out through his nose.  "Sorry, that was.  Sorry.  I think you just declared your feelings by means of electromagnetism.  Given that you explain fear as hormonal imbalances and sentiment as a chemical defect, I am.  Completely unsurprised.  I did that for you, and you weren't even aroused?"

"You're never going to arouse me," Sherlock sighs, arching his back and pressing himself further into John.  "And if you did, I'd hate it.  And you always change the electrical impulses triggering my heart contractions."

"That might be the most romantic thing anyone's ever said to me, even though I don't understand it." 

"Just as you said before--I'm happy whenever you walk into a room," Sherlock owns.  "I think the sex factor causes the phenomenon to be...amplified."

John makes a soft sound through his nose that evidently is on the precise frequency required to send a silvery arrow stab into Sherlock's chest.  Widening his eyes as a flash of thought strikes, he reaches for the half-used and pooling packet of lubricant he'd tossed on the bedside table the night before, collects an ample amount, and then reaches behind himself, wrapping his fingers around John's prick.  The doctor groans quietly, hoisting himself up on one elbow to look down at Sherlock.

"What do you think you're doing?"  John's hair is standing on end and his eyes are still a bit more sleep-constricted than normal.  He seems genuinely confused, though a wicked smile quivers at the edges of his mouth.

"Helping," Sherlock says, blinking innocently.  Tightening his grip, he strokes languidly a few times, up and down, sending a small shudder through his friend, then wipes his hand on the sheets and raises an expectant brow.

"Sherlock, I'm not going to--"

"You aren't hurting me, you idiot, and I don't mind," Sherlock insists, petulance bubbling at last to the surface.  "Just don't actually--"

"I already told you I have no interest in anal sex with you whatsoever.  You have pants listening skills."

"This isn't the same thing.  That's not what I meant, I don't want that either, but I don't mind." 

Sherlock can hear his own doubt and eagerness and devotion and nerves and detachment and need and hauteur in this pair of sentences, in the nearly-tremulous vowels and the too-clipped tone, and if they confuse the living hell out of him, the mixed signals ought to be wreaking havoc on John's libido.  Stilling a little, almost holding his breath, Sherlock waits to be rejected if for no reason other than that this was a very stupid idea.

"Um.  Let me get this straight.  You don't mind me humping the crack of your arse like a spotty teenager who forgot to buy rubbers," John says dubiously, but there is laughter in his voice and that is absolutely extraordinary. 

Sherlock grins.  "Not if you're kissing me, I don't."

"Fucking hell yes," John breathes, and the hand not gripping Sherlock's hip bone twists deeply into his hair.

Lowering himself, John presses his lips behind Sherlock's ear.  It's difficult at this angle to indulge in any serious snogging as the soldier rocks slowly against the detective, his cock slick now and swelling to its fullest.  John's teeth scrape at Sherlock's neck, and there are nails against his scalp, and the hand which was holding his hip steady has shifted lower, down to press flat against his pelvis, and what, god, what now there is a delicate tracing of tongue against the shell of Sherlock's ear, and suddenly he winces because this is all very sweet and very temporary and it feels good  to be held like this, it feels so very very good to be cradled against someone who wants you for something other than a quick fuck.

This is exactly what Sherlock feared allowing to happen.  It has happened.  He lost the battle.

He has hope.

What if this otherworldly tension between bliss and calm were normal?

What if he could live this way?  In the mornings?  In all the mornings?  The ones without cases, anyhow, the ones without sudden kidnaps and ruthless murders and daring robberies during which John brings his gun and his eyes turn the blue of expensive pottery in the sunlight as he laughs at mayhem and peril?

What if--

"All right?" John asks, concerned.  His body stills.

"Fine, I..."  Sherlock swallows.  Speech rapidly follows.  Too rapidly, in fact.  "You can touch a lot of me in this position, you're in contact with a large percentage of my epidermis, I like that, I just mean to say, for the record, and it's...but it's..."

"A lot?" John supplies when his friend falls silent.

"Yes.  Don't stop, please," Sherlock whispers. 

John rolls his hips gently again, draws the hand pressing against Sherlock's abdomen upward to trace his ribs.  John is in his hair and wrapped around his body and rutting tenderly against his skin.  It is all very marvelous for a while and then when his mouth ducks back to Sherlock's throat, sweet teeth pinching the skin, the detective produces what he can only embarrassingly admit was a whine. 

Whining cannot be considered couth in the bedroom.  Even if what he was feeling was warm light suddenly bathing the musty carpets of his mind palace's well-thumbed library as the curtains were blown open.  Disappointingly, John stops again.

"What?" Sherlock snaps.

"Whoa, hey there," John says swiftly.  The hand in Sherlock's hair relaxes slightly.  "Too much?"

"No," Sherlock growls, annoyed at himself.  He grips the bedsheet, trying to recover the earth's gravitational pull.  "Fuck.  I'm sor--" 

"No."

"But--"

"Sherlock."

"Present.  Hello."

"You're not sorry.  Fuck sorry.  Just talk to me."  John's voice isn't angry and Sherlock can see him even though his eyes have closed, see the lines of worry and hurt and mirth around the doctor's dark irises and the lopsided frown he's wearing and Sherlock simply loves him, he loves him too much to breathe very effectively, and here John is, thinking Sherlock doesn't like experiencing his own suffocating affection, that Sherlock doesn't want to drown in the feeling, that he doesn't want to love him the way John already nearly owned he loves Sherlock, he thinks Sherlock either isn't in love or doesn't want to be, and he is entirely wrong, and suddenly that knowledge pains him more than he ever imagined possible.  "Don't be sorry.  Is this too much?  Are you--"

"I don't know," Sherlock hisses.  John simply has to understand this, that nothing is wrong, or it will actually kill him.  Sherlock is not fragile, he is not precious, his wants simply don't fit within his spoken language.  "It doesn't matter."

"Baby, you need to fucking tell me if I'm--what, overloading your hard drive?"

"I don't know, please don't stop."

"I'm not going to just--"

"You think it's the physical that's going to cock this up, something you do wrong, but it isn't, I'm fine, I just feel...everything," Sherlock confesses desperately.

Sighing, John drags the curls away from Sherlock's brow and drops his own dark blond head.  He barely brushes the cartilage of Sherlock's ear for a moment, then nips at the lobe.  His other hand passes downward, lightly skimming the detective's stomach, settling gently, and Sherlock breathes a bit easier.

"I've got you," he says quietly.  Like a promise.  "Whatever happens, I've got you."

Which is very much better.

"That much I know," Sherlock assures him, twisting his neck to look into John's eyes, because he means this sincerely.  If John says he has Sherlock, if he is certain of his benevolent hold, then he is right.  John has him.

And he does.  He does then, when he smiles down and kisses Sherlock full on the mouth and Sherlock moans, and he does minutes later, when the slide of his prick grows carefully urgent, and he does when he starts murmuring tender nonsense like prayers into the chapel-like stillness of the club, and he has Sherlock steady and safe when he begins to lose his rhythm and slows, gently, gently, and he does when Sherlock reaches frantically back to grip him by the leg, and he does when he gasps and comes, breathing hard against Sherlock's neck, his panting indistinguishable from the trail of kisses he drags across Sherlock's slender shoulder blades.

John has him the entire while.  So everything is fine.

Vaguely, Sherlock understands that John has left the bed, and he stretches out on his belly with his head in his arms, buzzing with absurdly fine tremors like champagne spilling through his arteries and veins.  When the doctor returns, it is with a warm flannel, and he cleans Sherlock's lower back with a sure touch, kneeling on the mattress.  Sherlock isn't fussed by the mess, but silently hopes that John will have the good sense to contribute to the room's air of general debauchery.  Sure enough, he tosses the cloth across the room and it lands half-draped over the flat screen telly. 

Perfect.

"You're really fucking beautiful, by the way," John says, curling up on his side there in the bed.

Sherlock hums, pulling his knees up a bit and mirroring John.  John brushes a thumb over his cheekbone.  For a moment they simply look at each other.  John appears somewhat awed. 

This would be ridiculous under some circumstances, but Sherlock knows how he feels. 

"Yeah, no.  Nope.  Over here, you, you're practically bouncing out of your own skin," John announces.

Obligingly, Sherlock slides over and finds himself with his head to John's chest, one knee over his shorter legs, the bedclothes helter-skelter and the shivery sensation still lingering in his spine.  They lay there for a while, sharing silence.  It's as nice as the sex, only calmer.  The difference between a river and a waterfall.  Neither is less or more powerful, and after all, the two add up to the same thing at differing speeds.  Sherlock could fall asleep again, he realizes to his own shock, registering the occasional brush of lips against his hairline.

"I hope somebody or other at some point has told you that," John muses, tightening his hold.  "Even if he was a complete dickhead."

"Told me what?"

"That you're beautiful."

After considering the question, Sherlock realizes that he has in fact been told that, under very different circumstances, about six years ago.

You've grown up to be so fucking beautiful, Jim Moriarty wrote in perverse glee.  I'm so fond of your face, that incredible face of yours, that I can't help but want to borrow it.  But supposing I cure it for a fancy dress mask, rest assured I'll create you a plastic replacement for the loss of skin.  Can't have you DYING on me, now can I?  Even if I always had your face preserved in leather to remember you by.  I could put it on and touch myself and be both of us at once, for hours. 

"Yes," Sherlock says reluctantly.

There is a knock at the door.

Shifting out from under his friend, John hops up and dons a robe from the closet.  He seems rested.  Restored, rather.  Sherlock, careful of his palms, rolls to a sitting position and drapes the bedsheet over his lap.  He reaches for his mobile, but nothing has changed.  There are no messages, and this prickles at him again, creeps along his spine even as John methodically picks up his gun and goes to answer the door with an air of someone who will need very, very little provocation to shoot intruders.

Anthea, Mycroft's terribly condescending and rather beautiful minion, walks through the door.  She is texting.  She wears a tailored black skirt and jacket with a flowing satin blouse, the ivory material rippling.  She effortlessly carries a heavy duffel bag which Sherlock recognizes at once as John's, and she places it on the floor next to the wardrobe.  Presumably, she has been instructed to deliver some of their things, and this confirms Sherlock's long-held belief that Mycroft is notified the instant his younger sibling sets foot in the Diogenes.

The insufferable prat.

"Hullo," John says, forcing a smile.  He returns his gun to the table top.  "We were...um.  Hi.  Nice to see you."

Anthea looks grim.  Her nicely round face is tense, her full lips puckered, her eyes dark, a line between them.  Sherlock has never seen Anthea discomfited by anything.  Ever.  Nothing shakes her absent-minded little smirk, this is a principle of Sherlock's very existence.  Once Mycroft had to deal with a serious nuclear threat, and the North Koreans merely managed to inspire Anthea to frown.  Briefly.  If Anthea is upset over something, that something is of proportions Sherlock doesn't immediately want to contemplate.  She takes in the two flannels and the scantily clad men, wrinkles her nose slightly, and resumes texting.

"Good morning to you too," John says when he's had enough of this.  "Is that a change of pants for us in my bag, then, or did I forget I was shipping back out?"

Anthea presses send and looks up blankly.

"Coffee?  I can ring for a pot."  John gestures in a way which is somehow thoroughly sarcastic and hospitable at once.  It's miraculous.

"Ah," she says.

"Scones?  Eggs?  Croissant?" John attempts with barely contained hostility.

"Mmm, no time," Anthea says.

"Are we going somewhere?"

"Yes," she affirms readily.

"Am I meant to be contacting Moriarty?  Did Mycroft find him?  What's happened?" Sherlock demands.

"The answers are, respectively, no," Anthea says clearly, raising her eyebrows, "yes, and boom."

 

  

It takes Sherlock and John under half an hour to dress in fresh togs from the duffel and arrive at the crime scene in one of Mycroft's sleek black cars.  When they reach the shabby suburb outside Havering, they find a quiet neighborhood swarming with police cars.  Sherlock, feeling positively sick, steps out of the vehicle and flips up his collar, more as a shield than an effect for once.  He hasn't eaten since the previous day, he realizes, and unexpected hunger is beginning to make itself evident in lightheadedness rather than simple stomach pangs.  If he only had some cocaine, or better yet some morphine, his appetite wouldn't be rearing its inconvenient head.

Hunger, Sherlock assures himself against the onslaught of fear.  Post-coital sentiment.  Hormonal backwash.  That's all.

"Come on, then," Anthea says, walking briskly toward the center of the hubbub.  "Your brother wants you."

"I could use that woman's personality on a sponge and completely sanitize our fridge," John mutters, buttoning his jacket and striding sturdily alongside Sherlock.

Sherlock scarcely hears him.  This is the balance, he thinks, this the price of the small white headless bird in the nest and the morning silence and the "I've got you."  These are the consequences.  Plainclothesmen are everywhere, taking notes, talking in hushed tones.  The sun has just risen and it paints a soft blue glow over the little houses and the chippy and the corner store and the florist's display and the shrapnel, shrapnel everywhere, worse than at Baker Street where it had merely blown through the windows, bits of wood and cinderblock and metal and plastic and ash and less identifiable materials.  The pale light illuminates it all, the crowds with hands over their shaking mouths and the stone-faced bomb squad and Mycroft with his umbrella over one arm, pale and sour-looking, speaking into his mobile.

And the gaping, nauseating, smoking hole in the landscape that was once the dwelling of the blind old woman.

 

 

 

  

  

 

"In your own time," Sherlock grits out in the Stranger's Room of the Diogenes Club.  They are surrounded by immaculately clean bookshelves, and the lighting is low and clear and golden, and the rugs are very deep, and the house is entirely quiet save for where Sherlock, Mycroft and Melas are seated before a curtained picture window.  "But quite quickly."

I have a child to save this time, he thinks, and refuses to flinch when he hears the high, piping voice of the terrified little boy again.

Mr. Melas is a short, stout man whose olive face and coal black hair proclaim his southern heritage, though when he speaks, he sounds like any other public school Englishman.  First generation to be born here, studied abroad in India, intelligence worker, gay but doesn't talk about it, art collector in his spare time, Sherlock deduces without saying anything.

"I worked closely with Paul--we were in the same department," Melas explains.  "Mr. Holmes here will tell you that we've all been worried sick over Paul since he vanished.  I'd almost given up hope of his being alive at all.  We make a great many enemies in our line of work, you understand.  But this matter of kidnapping...that's a new line altogether.  Surely we can get somewhere with that, even if we don't know where he's being held."

"I'm all attention," Sherlock urges impatiently.  "What was Kratides working on when he disappeared?"

Mr. Melas darts a worried look at Mycroft, who smiles in a vulture-like fashion at him.

"You may tell my brother whatever you imagine to be relevant.  In fact, I suggest you do so quickly and efficiently, as otherwise I would not have summoned you here," he says silkily.

Nodding, Mr. Melas licks his lips and continues.  "Well, recently there have been developments in a certain variety of codes that contain a linguistic element.  They are...how shall I put this...rendered more difficult to break due to the fact that patterns fail to emerge as readily when the message is translated into multiple languages before being encrypted.  Terror cells are beginning to use them.  Paul and I were working with our top codebreakers to work out intercepted messages.  Any number of those operatives might wish Paul harm.  I'm referring to several radical groups, mind--they're based in Iraq, Pakistan, Syria.  These are ruthless killers we're talking about.  So when he disappeared--"

"We put every available agent on the task of tracing those who might have had reason to wish Kratides, Melas, and company stopped," Mycroft supplies smoothly.  "The results have been disappointing."

Sherlock steeples his fingers, shifting in his chair.  "Of course they have been--you were in essence searching for a body that didn't yet exist.  If someone wanted the talent behind your operation stopped, why kidnap Kratides?  Why keep him and starve him?  Why not kill him?" 

"It doesn't fit," Melas agrees, shrugging sadly.  "I confess I thought as you did--I imagined Paul was already dead."

"Could someone be coercing him into translating a message or breaking a code against his will?" Sherlock asks his brother.

Mycroft waves a languid hand.  "Possible, but extremely unlikely.  I can think of eight more probable scenarios.  Paul is a linguist, not a cryptographer.  He was part of a team.  And if they need something translated, why not simply find a willing party?"

Sherlock considers.  It is fully morning now, the sun burning the edges of the discreet curtains half-pulled over the picture window, and somewhere a little boy is sobbing, strapped into a semtex vest, and Sherlock knows precisely how little boys feel when they are frightened, it is all-consuming and wretched and ferocious and nauseating, Sherlock has felt just so many, many times, because of the same man, in fact, and that identical psychopath selected a little boy specifically because he thought it would mindfuck Sherlock, this other little boy is entirely innocent, dragged into a madman's elaborate vengeance and likely to be as permanently scarred by it as Sherlock is, thought to a lesser degree perhaps, the unnamed boy will never never never never be the same afterwards no matter what Sherlock does, how quickly he wins the day, and this thought more than anything infuriates the sleuth.

"Tell me about Kratides," he says, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes.  "Tell me everything.  Don't be discreet.  Ready, set, go."

Mr. Melas, his voice a bit uncertain, does so.  He speaks of Kratides and his time at Eton and Cambridge, his lingering preoccupation with rowing, the fact his colleague spent several years in America as a child, that his top languages, the ones he's really flawless in, are Portugese, Dutch, Swedish, and Finnish apart from English and Greek, that he is unmarried but dates a number of women, that he came from a very wealthy family with coffee concerns in Columbia, that the great tragedy of his personal life is that his sister Sophy Kratides is a heroin addict who spends months at a time on the streets, suffers through rehab, then uses again, that when vacationing Paul is partial to coastal areas because he is a scuba enthusiast, that his only vice is expensive cigars, that--

The sister, Sherlock thinks, and his eyes fly open.

"Yes?" Mycroft croons, but there is a suppressed note of pride beneath the nonchalance.

Standing, Sherlock begins to pace.  "This is personal, it has to be," he says breathlessly.  "It's been personal every time.  Jonas Oldacre wanted revenge and framed his ex's son for murder.  Grant Roylott wanted to keep the family fortune and murdered one of his stepdaughters.  Maria Pinto-Gibson framed her rival for murder by shooting herself.  This is family.  It must be family, this is just another domestic gone terribly wrong, he's rich, you said, or the family is, and the sister is a heroin addict?  We have to trace the sister.  Where does she live currently?  She's to do with this, I'd bet my life on it."

You're actually betting someone else's life on it at the moment, Sherlock remembers, but he is certain. 

These cases are all of a pattern.  Decayed families, blighted relationships, hate warped into love, greed flowering in soil meant to cultivate ease and affection--twisted, sickening acts that bear no resemblance to the best of human relations, and Moriarty has been giving Sherlock a tour, he realizes, of total depravity.  Sherlock's stomach turns over, but he manages to keep his face impassive.

Mr. Melas's eyes are wide.  Mycroft is already on his phone, dialing as he purses his lips.

Sherlock's pocket trembles and he reaches into it.

Might not be completely sorted, but the waterworks have stopped and she accepted my apology.  There was a hug.  I'll keep at it.

"Yes, Anthea, please trace the whereabouts to the best of our knowledge of Kratides' sister," Mycroft requests.  "More likely to be a drug den or a subletting situation than anything actually documented, but leave no stone unturned."

"It's awful to think about," Mr. Melas says, his tanned, appealing face tight with anger.  "Are you sure about this, Mr. Holmes?  I hope you're wrong.  It was bad enough when we thought Paul had been murdered by terrorists, but the thought of his very own sister--"

"I once won a card game with the Clarence House Cannibal, a card game a pretty hefty wager was riding on to boot, and she ate her own brother over the course of a month after strangling and butchering him," Sherlock snaps.  "She kept different cuts in the freezer, used the thigh meat for a stir-fry with Chinese veg and the back meat for steak and ale stew, as I recall, I got a bolthole out of it but I don't think the brother benefited very much that I solved the case and won the poker game, as he'd already been digested and all, and yes, this has to do with the fucking sister.  Do not hope that I am wrong."

Sherlock pulls his phone out when he hears another chime.  John again. 

Where the bloody fuck are you????

Sherlock's blood freezes in his veins for a moment.  He is a statue supported by a cardiovascular system that has petrified.

John.  Fucking, fucking, fucking hell. 

John.

Mycroft's phone rings, and he answers.  "Yes?  And they've been known associates for how long?  No, a love affair is more helpful than nothing.  Harold Latimer, you say."  A long pause follows as Mycroft listens.  "And his address?  Beckenham, thank you.  En route."  He rings off.

Swallowing, Sherlock types out a response.  His heart is pounding again, and he wonders just how much the organ can go through without finally being overtaxed.

The Diogenes, but we're headed to Beckenham.  The fourth pip happened while you were with Molly.  But I think I've solved it.  Take a cab and meet me.  SH

"What's the address?" Sherlock asks with a dry throat, following Mycroft and Mr. Melas as they hasten out of the club.

"Two thirty-one High Street," Mycroft answers.  They plunge through the door and again the black car pulls up, as if it's a vehicle which can be magically summoned.  If Mycroft could travel via fucking flying carpet, Sherlock thinks as he texts John the address, he would do.  "Apparently a man with a trust fund he is no longer allowed to touch, though the family keeps him in digs.  I suspect you to be correct, Sherlock.  Apparently Latimer has also been in and out of rehab facilities, and his influence over Sophy Kratides is profound.  He has a criminal record--forged cheques, fraud.  The family used their connections to pave over his indiscretions.  He is without work, and recently without support other than the residence.  One can only sell so many silver spoons, after all, before one becomes...creative."

Sherlock, who has either gone down on or been fucked by exactly thirty-seven men in exchange for drugs, hears the dry disappointment in this statement and feels a slow burn of shame and anger spreading over the back of his neck.  But he hasn't the time for Mycroft's prudery.  Chemicals for chemicals, endorphins for narcotics, are a perfectly reasonable trade, he tells himself for the thousandth time.

"What service did Moriarty provide, I wonder?" Mycroft drones.

"Muscle," Sherlock replies. He is sure of it.  "If they're extorting money from Kratides, they need muscle.  Muscle that can't be tied to Moriarty, but that he was given a fee for and provided.  When we find him, I post the address to my website, and the pip is solved.  No fucking alternatives, Mycroft.  You buggered us completely the last time, trying to get out ahead of him.  I'm stopping this quick as I can."

"Naturally," Mycroft answers in a huff.

Sherlock's phone lights up just after the three men pile into the towncar and it pulls away from the kerb.  Sherlock reads John's text with his heart in his mouth:

We don't fucking need Moriarty anymore, I am going to fucking kill you myself.  On my way.

 

 

 

It is when they arrive at the address on High Street and Sherlock picks the door lock and they burst into the house that things go rather spectacularly wrong.

The rooms are spacious, airy, but uncared-for; Harold Latimer apparently prefers privacy to cleanliness.  There are white rugs that seem to have once indicated an intended change of lifestyle, but they are filthy with wine and traces of sex and cigarette ash.  A suit of Japanese mail stands in the corner, obviously antique, its shine dulled with neglect.  On the low coffee table lie two glasses, an empty brandy bottle, several half-open cartons of Chinese takeaway, a bong, a roll of electrical tape, and a box cutter. 

Sherlock's ears perk.  "What is that?" he asks suddenly.

They all stand still and listen.  A low moaning sound emanates from above their heads.

Sherlock rushes to the nearest door and finds a short hall.  The dismal noise is coming from upstairs.  Racing, Sherlock dimly registers Melas and Mycroft at his heels.  When he crests the staircase, he discovers three doors facing him upon the upper floor, and it's from the central of these that the sinister sounds are issuing, sinking sometimes into a dull mumble and rising again into a shrill whine.  It's locked, but the key is left on the outside. 

Sherlock flings open the door and dives in.

"What the fuck," a soft, singsong voice wonders, and Sherlock hears the click of a gun being cocked.

Harold Latimer, who must once have been handsome and is now scruffy, bleary-eyed, quivering, and debauched, is slumped in a corner.  His clothes are extremely expensive, but the jeans (2011) are fraying at their cuffs and split at the knees in ways that particular True Religion design never featured, and the Rag and Bone shirt (2008) is discoloured and unwashed.  He blinks at Sherlock bemusedly.  Sophy Kratides, a dark-haired beauty dressed equally well and equally messily, reclines with her head in his lap, a bent spoon just visible on the floor beside her.

Paul Kratides is tied to a chair, head lolling, gaunt, masked in garish electrical tape with writing on it, and a very small man stands before him.  He is middle-aged and very mean-looking, with rounded shoulders but a scrapper's physique, and he wears glasses, and he is the one pointing the gun at Sherlock.  He giggles suddenly, a nervous, jerky laugh, but the gun remains steady.

Mycroft sighs.  "And whom might we have the considerable displeasure of addressing?"

"Wilson Kemp," the small, mean man answers.  He giggles again.  The high sound grates like chalk dragged over a board.  "Be very still now, the lot of you.  If you fuckers try any tricks, god help you!"

Sherlock edges further into the room and feels Mycroft doing the same. 

"What's the plan, then?" Sherlock wonders idly.  "You've taken this man, abused and starved him, and what do you have to show for it?  He clearly hasn't paid you off, and he clearly has no intention of doing so.  Your only hope of a lighter sentence now is to drop that gun.  Immediately.  Dull.  Couldn't you have done a bit better?  Honestly."

The venomous giggle returns.  Sherlock desires to slap this very small person, the one in the pay of Jim Moriarty who is the reason the little boy is still dressed in semtex.

"Let you go? Now, where would that get me?  Kill you, now there's a thought.  Fucking shoot you and properly splatter your brains all over the room."

"Wilson?" Sophy slurs, and she sounds frightened.  Harold Latimer tightens his grip on her and forces her face into his belly, where she can't see what's taking place before her.

"Fucking do it," Harold barks out, laughing when Kemp does.  He is high as a kite and Sherlock is suddenly madly, excruciatingly jealous of that fact.  "Blow their brains out, the bloody interfering pricks.  I'll help with the cleanup."

"How could you do this?" Melas cries to Sophy, who is struggling weakly under Latimer's hands.  "Your own brother?  How could--"

"Shut the fuck up," orders Kemp, whose gun shifts to Melas.  He giggles once more.  "You know what, Harold?  That's a pretty generous offer.  I'm going to take you up on that, mate.  Goodnight, gentlemen, and may god have mercy upon your souls..."

Sherlock is lunging forward in desperation even as Mycroft's umbrella makes a vicious jab at the same moment and in the same direction, directly at Kemp's insanely merry eye.  But a shocking crack prevents either of them from completing whatever half-thought-of defensive effort they'd attempted. 

It becomes clear that Mr. Melas, his eyes turned black and his dark brow furious, had pulled a gun from some unknown location.  There is now a hole in Wilson Kemp, one rapidly darkening with spreading blood, just above his heart--a kill shot expertly managed, Sherlock realizes, thinking linguist in surprise before remembering special forces--and Sophy Kratides lets loose a belated shriek of horror.  Harold Latimer, who Sherlock suddenly realizes is probably Jim's real client rather than Sophy, releases a bellow of rage as Kemp sways.

Turning with a smile on his lips, Sherlock is about to roundly--if sarcastically--congratulate Melas when Kemp's gun explodes even as the dead man falls to the floor.

 

 

"I really cannot fucking believe this fucking bullshit," John fumes.  Later, at the Diogenes Club, after the post made to The Science of Deduction with the picture of Paul Kratides, which Sherlock made while he was still bleeding rather badly.

Mycroft's men had stormed the High Street house very soon after the gunfire was exchanged.  Mr. Melas was driven away in one car with Paul Kratides, Harold Latimer and Sophy Kratides in another and in handcuffs.  Wilson Kemp was driven to the morgue, doubtless.  Mycroft was driven back to Whitehall when all was said and done.  Sherlock possibly ought to have been driven to hospital, but he was only grazed, just nicked really, on his right upper arm, and anyway he prefers John to hospital on a global scale, and anyway John likes fixing things, and John is too enraged just now to create sentences without profanity in them, so Sherlock wants to give him something to do. 

Thus he sits on the bed at the club and watches as John cleans the shallow, painful scrape, carefully sanitizing it before he pulls an absorbent pad from his kit and starts to bandage the four-inch wound.

"I was only shot a little," Sherlock points out in his own defense.

John is back to making the half-smile that means he'd like nothing better than to punch someone in the face.  His wheat-coloured hair is mussed, his hands perfectly steady, his feet set bullishly apart as he tends to his friend.  John arrived in a cab about twenty minutes after all the excitement.  After Sherlock had already received word that Lestrade retrieved the little boy and returned him to his mother unharmed.

Not really unharmed, Sherlock reminds himself.  But better than it could have been.

There has been no word from Moriarty yet of a fifth pip.  So Sherlock waits at the Diogenes, sitting on the soft bed in the (disappointingly) cleaned room, and John smiles, and fusses professionally, and smiles more, and looks as if he is at any moment about to turn Sherlock over his knee and take his mind off the pain in his arm by giving him new pain to think about.

"Only shot a little," John repeats, wrapping over the bandage with a sterile cloth.  He laughs without any humour whatsoever.  "Fucking shit, Sherlock Holmes.  I just.  Wow.  What... Never mind.  You massive fucking twat.  I'm going to kill you, and then resuscitate you, and then kill you again and repeat the process."

"That would rather defeat our stated pur--"

"You fucking left me at Bart's and swanned off to solve a pip while I was making nice to your girlfriend!" John roars, throwing his hands up in the air.  The end of the roll of bandaging tumbles to the floor. 

"She isn't my--"

"Shut the fuck up, please, while I complete my fucking thought!  What if...I don't even want to finish this sentence.  What if, Sherlock?  What fucking if?  You were shot, you fucking piece of shit.  Not shot a little. There is no such thing.  You were shot."

This is technically true, Sherlock realizes, and he feels suitably ashamed of himself.  But he cannot devote his fullest attention to his own shortcomings when John's eyes have turned the colour of midwinter squalls off the coast of Scotland, not when John's muscled but petit chest is heaving in outrage, not when his breath is coming hot and fast through his slim lips this way. 

John looks good enough to eat.

"I'm sorry," Sherlock says softly, hoping to placate him and, then again, not hoping to placate the small soldier at all.  "It was admittedly a regrettable lapse of judgment.  I was with my brother, and I'm--"

"You're a fucking brilliant, arrogant, pretentious, selfish, mannerless, impetuous, idiotic son of a bitch, and I could shake your fucking curly head off and probably will," John says, smiling with teeth that could rip flesh open. 

"Right, yes, but I did solve--"

"I don't give a rat's pink arsehole that you solved the pip, you fucking dense bastard, or I do, of course, but, you know, yeah, you fucking solved the pip without me.  Did it never occur to that fucking massive brain of yours in all that time--"

"It honestly didn't, because--"

"Because you are the fucking thickest genius on the goddamn planet, you gorgeous fucking cocksucking prat, and that is why right after I finish patching you up, I'm going to fucking kill you dead."  Briefly satisfied he has made his point, John reaches down for the roll of cotton and continues wrapping the bandage over Sherlock's arm.

All is quiet for a moment.  Diogenes quiet.  When the Diogenes is quiet, it's generally graceful and soft.  This time, though, the high ringing of John's fury hurts Sherlock's ears.  Sighing, he drops his head.

"I'm used to being alone, is what I was about to say," Sherlock whispers, his eyes downcast.  "I didn't mean to frighten you.  That wasn't my intent.  I just thought--"

"You didn't fucking think!" John shouts.  He tapes off the bandage and stands with one hand on his hip, the other clenching again and again at his side.  "You fucking moron.  You didn't think.  You acted.  What would I have done if you--if Moriarty had--I can't even.  What.  Would I have done.  I fucking love you, I love you.  Sherlock, I love you so much, you fucking stupid donkey, you taught me how to breathe again, and--"

Sherlock wouldn't be sure of when the terrible shouting becomes passionate kissing, the biting sort of kissing that stings and lingers, if John hadn't been forced to stop talking.  His hands grip Sherlock's face as if he equally wants to crush it as kiss it.  The detective is already shirtless, but he rips John's trousers open while the doctor devours his mouth.  John's tongue parries and thrusts like a broadsword, and this isn't pleasant kissing, not a bit of it, Sherlock has never been kissed like this, he only vaguely knew that kissing like this existed, but where it fails at pleasantry it succeeds at overwhelming, comprehensive ownership. 

Yes.  That's it.  Sherlock feels owned.

John steps out of his trousers and pants and yanks his undershirt and jumper over his own head with one swift motion.  He eyes are wild.  Sherlock could drown in them.  Easily.  He wonders whether terrorists used to look at him in the desert and piss themselves with fear, soaking the sand.

"You fucking idiot," John says, and this time it comes out thick and wet and sorrowful.  "I hate you, I hate you, you left me there and--"

"Hate me some more," Sherlock gasps as a newly naked John's mouth descends to sink his teeth in his neck none too gently and his hands scrabble desperately to tear Sherlock's trousers off.  Sherlock lifts up and they are both naked already, how, and this is very very fast and a little bit frightening, but yes, Sherlock thinks, and I'm sorry, and yours, and he forgets to be mortified that he isn't hard and he forgets to be nervous that John might be unsure of his claim.  "Hate me, I'm sorry.  You can hate me.  I deserve it."

"I don't hate you, you fucking half-wit," John says, closing his fist in Sherlock's hair and pulling his head back, just this shy of terrifying and instead...again, again, do it again.  Sherlock remembers--as if he could have forgotten--that John is good but John is not very nice, and he stifles the whimper rising in the back of his throat.  "I hate you, yes, but that's because you forgot you were mine.  That was pretty thick of you.  Remember next time.  You do recall that bit, yes?  The saying you were mine while you were fucking me in this very fucking bed?"

"Yes."

"Are you taking it back?"

"No."

"So you're still mine, and you'll recall that in future?"

"Yes," Sherlock agrees, licking his lips. 

"No, you are not getting your face fucked right now," John snaps.

"No?" Sherlock questions in a far too high voice.

John crowds him forward until Sherlock falls back on his elbows and then fully back on the bed.  When the doctor's mouth covers his once more, Sherlock cannot hold back a moan.  John, under Sherlock's lips, smiles furiously again, and Sherlock is too much in love for his heart to hold it as John straddles him and takes his own cock in his fist and begins to pump deliberately.

"Now would be a good time to alert me if you object to my coming all over your chest," John informs him before returning his teeth to Sherlock's throat. 

"No," Sherlock chokes out.  "I mean, yes, you can...you can do that.  Yes."

"Good," John growls as his arm works more rapidly.  "Because you.  Are fucking.  Mine.  And you do not wander off into mortal danger and get yourself shot without me.  Are we clear?"

"Yes."  Sherlock is struggling mightily for air, panting as John covers him with sucking, nipping kisses that leave red marks like the small bright blooms of rose blossoms across his pale flesh.

He is still panting a few minutes later, but the scattered roses are now a garden and spring has arrived. 

He is still panting when John suddenly works his wrist in rapid tugs, shaking. 

He is panting when the mark John is leaving just behind his ear is interrupted by John's muffled cry as he finishes, and if Sherlock taught John how to breathe again, he must have passed his friend the knowledge when he bestowed it and lost the knack himself, for he has forgotten everything in the world save for John on his chest and over his ribcage and buried in his hair and murmuring, I love you, you stupid, stupid prick, I love you. 

I love you.

 

You'd be like heaven to touch

I wanna hold you so much...

Jim Moriarty smiles as he sways, eyes still closed, the boombox lightly perched against his neck, twitching his hips and his feet in neat, loose, subtle, timely motions that would look natural and appealing under other circumstances, but which in this one are absolutely grotesque.

At the same moment, Sherlock and John, both standing there speechless, realize their phones have started echoing the telly screen.  John's arm shoots out from his body, sending the mobile to the bedclothes as it begins to sing.

At long last love has arrived

And I thank god I'm alive...

"What's happening?" John snaps.

"I don't--" Sherlock attempts.

Their room floods with an innocent-seeming ivory light.

Both men pivot on a hair-trigger towards the windows.  Sherlock makes three long strides and yanks back the curtain.

His own face is being projected onto the stately Pall Mall building opposite the Diogenes. He is half-turning on a laugh, pale and frizzle-haired and eighteen years of age and not yet quite as gaunt as he would become during a later period, having just solved his very first serial killer case and (unfortunately for public relations) lionized by the papers with his true feelings on the subject captured.  Sherlock feels John's warmth at his elbow even as he unlatches the window and shoves it open to flood the room with autumn chill.

"Fuck me with a hand grenade," John says in grudging awe.

Cars on the street are slowing.  Multiple cars, in fact. 

All the cars. 

Pardon the way that I stare

There's nothing else to compare

The sight of you leaves me weak

There are no words left to speak...

People on the pavement are stopping.  Sherlock hears faint tinny sounds of music and watches as they throw their driver's side doors open and escape with their hands over their ears, watches as joggers yank their ear buds out in startlement, watches as pedestrians pause, pull their mobiles out of their purses and backpacks and stare in amazement. 

The sound swells, crescendos.

I need you baby

And if it's quite all right

I'll need you baby

To warm the lonely nights...

Every single electronic device within god knows what circumference of the Diogenes Club is pumping out the melody that Sherlock, when he turns, Jim Moriarty is still dancing to--a flitting sprite of an Irishman with a rabid smile and the blinding light of complete insanity burning in eyes which remain happily closed.

"That image of you is coming from within the club," John growls, leaving Sherlock's side.  "Has to be.  You stay here, I'll--"

"Do you really think anything will be left to find?" Sherlock roars, catching his wrist.  "Do you honestly think it's anything but a timed projection, the perpetrators long fled?  Do you understand now, John?  Do you?"

John stops, breathing deliberately slow.  He touches Sherlock's hand on his wrist and rubs at it softly.  Sherlock becomes aware that his own grip must be painful, bruising in fact, and he relaxes it as best he can.

"I'm not going anywhere," John says.  His tone is as sober as a deathbed.  "Not ever."

So Sherlock turns back and looks down at the street and at the dozens of people, the many people with their iPods and their radios and their mobiles, while all the while the telly blares behind them and John advances, pressing his body against Sherlock's back.

Oh pretty baby

Don't let me down, I pray

Oh pretty baby

Now that I've found you stay

And let me love you...

 

Can't take my eyes off of you...

"He accomplished a massive network hack," Mycroft intones.  His hands are in his pockets, and he sways back on his heels in a manner Sherlock has always found revoltingly self-important.  It reeks of side corridor handshakes and quiet assassinations.  "Never mind the details, it was absurdly simple when all was said and done.  Merely a parlour trick, but it got his point across."

It's all Sherlock can do not to visibly wince at every successive word in this heinous conversation.

It wouldn't be that difficult. 

Just duck into Baker Street, tell them you need some air, tell them you have an idea for a lead on Jim's whereabouts, tell them the sky is falling and you need a very big pole to prop it back up or we're all done for, tell them you're going to be sick if you're stuck in their company a moment longer, tell them you need to pick up some shopping, tell them Lestrade needs you, tell them you're craving chips at the moment, tell them you have a waxing appointment, tell them that the current King of England wants to consult you over a case, tell them anything as long as you can get your hands on some motherfucking drugs...

Not difficult at all, when one comes down to brass--

"All right?" John asks pointedly, and Sherlock realizes he was being addressed.

"What?  Sorry, bit of a...headache."

Mycroft, already looking gaseous and irate, sweeps knowing eyes to Sherlock and frowns meaningfully.

Help me, Sherlock begs some unknown force, rapidly shutting down four separate wings of his mind palace to avoid spontaneous combustion. 

John wouldn't care for my brain to self-immolate.  Would he?  No.  And he's already--

"You want me to fetch something from the room?" John inquires, his brow furrowing.  "Size of your cranium, headaches can't be a picnic."

Yes, morphine.  Or barring morphine, cocaine.

"Don't fuss," Sherlock requests in a clipped tone.  "Where was the video recorded?"

"We have not the faintest idea," Mycroft drawls. 

"We haven't the faintest idea of anything," Sherlock sneers. 

He stands abruptly.  It's all he can do. 

When he fully realizes that he can do nothing else, he allows himself a small grimace and continues his exit in what he hopes is a dignified and dramatic fashion even without his signature coat.

"Don't appall me when I'm exhausted, Mycroft," he snaps.  "If you can't be of any use, the least you can do is keep your fat fucking face out of my sightline, it's putting me off."

John covers a smile by sighing with his hands over his lips.

Mycroft scowls.

The worst of it is, even after that not-altogether-bad parting shot, Sherlock can barely manage to keep enough breath in his lungs to reach the guestroom and curl up in a small caterpillar's ball on the bedspread.  Refusing to allow John to find him that way, he gets up a few moments later.

Still.

The incident lingers like the horrible queasiness which ebbs and flows as illegal drugs leave one's veins.

 

 

They have dinner at a smart little place near the club, though Sherlock really just pushes risotto around on a plate and obsessively checks his phone screen while John frowns, and when they return to the club they sip expensive scotch Sherlock puts on Mycroft's account, and long after the sun has set, after the positively Matisse-like colours, when ordinary people are going to bed, Sherlock sees no reason not to be ordinary for once--or at least do something ordinary when soon he may never get the chance to try it again--and changes into his pyjamas, falling into the opposite side of the bed from John, who is regarding the flickering telly with considerable distaste.

"John," Sherlock says softly.

"Yeah?"  Unconcerned, John clicks the screen off.

"You said we didn't have to..." 

Stopping, unbearably frustrated, Sherlock tries to think of a way to say, I want to have sex with you as many times as possible before the end, but if we have sex and I am still hearing this song in my head, and I feel skinless afterward, I may actually vomit on you. 

Without being insulting.

John reaches out and brushes a curl off Sherlock's forehead, smiling slightly.  "What, shag?  I'm not shagging you right now, beautiful.  I'd love to, believe me, but I'm knackered."

He switches the light off and lies down on his back, his hands linked behind his head, neither of them touching at all. 

Growing steadily colder despite the fact that he is beneath the expensive coverlet, Sherlock finds this development almost as unbearable as the shagging would have been.  He thus slides over, tentatively brushing his head against John's shoulder. The instant he does so, John has him in a steady embrace, passing his hand up and down the detective's arm while being careful not to reach so high as the bullet wound.  His other palm he cups around Sherlock's nape.  The sleuth is instantly warm again.

It isn't morphine.

But nevertheless, it is a temporary solution of another kind.

"Is this how ordinary people sleep, or am I being high-strung again?" Sherlock says caustically, just as a test.

He waits a few seconds for a reply.

"It's how we ordinary folk sleep, yeah," John says under his breath, "but you're not ordinary, so you can't sleep like an ordinary person no matter what you do.  You'll have to sleep like Sherlock.  Right?  Get to it."

They are silent for a few minutes, Sherlock's mind playing a soundtrack which has a similar effect to noise torture.

(Moriarty, of course, explained high-decibel torture when Sherlock was twenty.)

He swallows, grimacing.

"Am I hurting your side?" he asks.

"Nope."

"Did you set an alarm?"

"Nope."

Say it.  Say the words.  Please say them, I don't know what's wrong with me, Sherlock thinks, unconsciously nuzzling against John's shirt.  You might never be allowed the opportunity to say them.  At any moment, any day, any night.  It could be over.  Say it.  Tell him.  Tell him the rest.  Tell him everything.

Tell him you'd cut your own heart out in the middle of a marketplace for him, if only he were watching and said, "That's amazing."

"I ought to be working, seeing if I've missed anything," he says.

"Nope."

"Is that all you're going to reply for the rest of our lives?" Sherlock hisses.

"Nope."  A small laugh escapes from John's chest.  "We'll figure out tomorrow when it's tomorrow.  There's enough adrenaline leaving your system to kill a pony, and it needs time to filter out.  Sleep." 

John cups a hand over his ear and another over his eyes, the way he did back in the Baker Street flat.  The song's volume drops perceptibly.  Sherlock sighs, twisting the fabric of John's boxers in his fingers.

Then John tilts his hand up a bit so Sherlock can hear him and says, "I love you.  Tell your brain that for me, please.  I don't know that it's always listening.  Goodnight."

Sherlock swallows hard and cannot think of a single thing he could possibly mention that could match the depth and breath of John Watson's soul, and thus seals his lips.

There are dreams after, dark ones, dreams of an East Wind razing the land and blasting everything Sherlock has ever come to know into oblivion.  It's the old childhood nightmare, the vortex obliterating everything in its wake.  All dust and shrapnel and bodies and low, dying moans.  Razed fields, afterward.  Stark skies and hungry crows.  Corpses everywhere, and as ever, one of them is Sherlock's own.

But when he awakens, the maelstrom is only the whisper of John's even breaths in his ear.

 

 

On the second day, John and Sherlock pay a call.  There is still no word from Jim and, though he was told there wouldn't be, Sherlock wonders if the torment of waiting for the blow to fall might be actually more keen than any of the rest of it.

Molly turns bright red when he arrives at Bart's, dropping a pair of forceps into a cadaver.  She looks down in bafflement, as if she'd just lost the tool down a sewer grate.  Irretrievable.  The poor girl hasn't bothered with lipstick on this occasion, though her lashes are lightly coated with mascara and her skin tone is artificially even. 

Sherlock takes a few more strides, retrieves the forceps for her, and goes to wash his hands after giving her one of his gamest attempts at a smile.

"Sherlock," Molly chokes out.  "I, um.  Where's...John, then?  But, not that I meant to imply.  You're perfectly.  I mean, he's not with--"

"Just using the men's." 

Sherlock shakes water off his fingers.  

Molly fidgets in a motionless way only Molly is capable of fidgeting.

For several seconds they study each other, wondering what--if anything--is the right thing to say. 

"John spoke with you," Sherlock attempts. 

It's better than nothing.  At least it clears the atmosphere a bit.  Ducking her chin, Molly affirms this to be true.  Sherlock very suddenly is aware of all the wisps of hair sticking out around her temples and wants to tell her, shhhh, it will all be all right in the morning.  Molly, of all people, shouldn't be hurting this way.  But since he knows that it probably won't be all right in the morning, he merely continues speaking.

"He made it clear, then, that we're...together.  Or.  Well, he probably made it very very clear.  Sorry about that."

Again Molly nods, her face this time distorting before she forces it back into some semblance of order.

This is awful, Sherlock thinks, and then tries not to think about it again.

"Yep," he blusters on.  "And he probably also indicated that, for reasons which I never disclosed to you, one major impediment in particular, a real smasher, you'd not have wanted me anyhow," Sherlock forces himself to state, waving his hand in the air.

Molly's chest is heaving shallowly.  Her lower lip is performing tasks never imagined by great dams and dykes holding water in check.  The Panama Canal has nothing on Molly Hooper's face at present.

"I should, should um, apologize," she attempts.  "I never...you're so...just, you never said, so I didn't...if I made a fool of myself--"

"The only person I can think of who made a fool of himself yesterday is John," Sherlock assures her in a hesitant voice.  "He's an idiot.  Well.  Better than some, but--"

"No, that's not...I didn't mean about..."  Wincing, Molly looks down at the forceps in her tiny hand.  "Not yesterday.  He's, uh, very...he's nice.  Well, now he's nice, not before, but--anyway, you know about when my dad died?  I told you that story?  How brave he was about it, always tried to be happy right to the end?"

Sherlock sets down a hand towel and crosses to her, frowning.  "Yes."

"He looked so sad sometimes, but not when we were watching," Molly whispers, her throat thick.  "And you, you, you sometimes, um, you looked so sad when you thought that I couldn't see you.  But I did see you, and that's...I wanted you to know that.  I saw you.  That's why all the...I mean yes, I fancied you a bit, but, oh god, sorry to bring that up, sorry, I always put my foot in it around you, but my point is, I know I don't count, but everything hurts sometimes, just everything, in anyone's life, you know, not just the unlucky people or the depressed ones, and you're just--it's so much for you, all the time, and you looked sad when you thought I couldn't see you and I did, you were wrong, I saw every moment, and I never wanted you to be all alone."

The tightness in Sherlock's chest gives a mean squeeze. 

Everything hurts terribly.  Molly is right about that much. 

Bending down, he softly kisses Molly's cheek.  It's very smooth, and she leans a bit into it despite her shock, her back bowing, and he pulls slowly away.

"You're wrong, you know," Sherlock says, low and deep.  "You do count.  You've always counted and I've always trusted you."

A very strange, pained sort of smile appears on Molly's face.  It brings out her twin dimples, makes her odd little mouth twist, and she looks at the floor before meeting Sherlock's eyes again.

"I think I'm going to die," he admits to her.

Sherlock can admit it to Molly. 

If only to Molly. 

Her eyes widen, then grow bright with unshed tears.  Reaching out, she takes his hand, pressing it before chastely dropping it again.

"Then you're wrong, too," she says simply.  "You have to be wrong.  For John, for...maybe me.  If you wanted.  For your friends.  That's...that's all.  You have to be wrong."

Nodding, Sherlock tousles his mop of hair in a quick scratching motion.  The repellant R&B love song went away yesterday, but now the static is excruciating.  For days, he had a purpose, and it has been taken away from him.  Like everything else is about to be...

"What are you going to do?"

Blowing out a draught of air, Sherlock thinks, pull yourself the fuck together for once in your stupidly brief life.

"We're trying to track Moriarty down.  He's been a bit naughty."

"Sherlock, he blew up an old woman," Molly chides, looking horrified at this glib assessment.

"No.  Well, yes, but technically I was talking about him serenading me with a boombox," Sherlock amends.

John comes through the door at a determined pace, rubbing the fingers of his left hand together.  He isn't limping, but he looks uncomfortable.  When he reaches Sherlock and Molly, he smiles at her, a real one Sherlock thinks, and presses her elbow.  Molly relaxes visibly.

"How's this one, then?" John asks by way of making conversation, nodding at the corpse.

"Not very well.  He's dead," Molly says blankly.

John laughs before he can stop himself, but quickly manages to sober.  He clears his throat.  "Right.  Yes.  Did you...talk?  The live people, I mean?"

"Yes," Molly says, finally putting the forceps down. 

"And it's all good?"

"You need to do everything you can," Molly says to John breathlessly.  She clasps him by both shoulders and John stares back at her, steady as he always is.  "Everything.  I can't, um, I mean, no, if either of you need anything, anything at all, just ask me, but you need to take care of him if there's nothing I can...do."

Not knowing how to feel about this display, Sherlock watches John carefully.  The doctor crosses his arms, lowers his face, clears his throat again, and puts his hand out. 

Releasing John from her grip, Molly takes it cautiously.

"I will," John announces.  "That's a promise."

They leave Bart's and again there is food that turns to ash in Sherlock's mouth, Chinese this time, and again he wears the battery on his phone down, and again the sun sets over London and paints the plane trees with kind amber light, and a cool stripe of blue appears in the sky, then one of orange, and Sherlock can watch the progression of the stars coming out as they walk the distance back to Pall Mall, and he wondered once whether he would get to see sights like this with John Watson before the end and had thought that sort of accomplishment would bring him peace, but it doesn't. 

He wants more.

He wants forever, now. 

He wants eternity and he wants to cradle it in the palm of his hand.

Instead, he takes John's, lacing their fingers together, and pretends not to notice his friend's mouth widening into a smile.

This time when they go to bed, Sherlock doesn't ask if they have to have sex, he simply curls into another pathetic despondent ball, and it isn't until John snakes his arm around him from behind and murmurs loving words into his back through the thin cotton of his shirt that Sherlock realizes he never told Molly goodbye at Bart's. 

And now might never be allowed to.

"How can you wait like this?" he asks John roughly in the darkness.  "How can you stand it?"

"This is what soldiers do when we aren't shooting at things or being shot at," John answers patiently.  "We wait."

 

  

On the third day, they return to Baker Street with their things.  The windows have all been replaced.  Sherlock goes to them, letting John see to the bags.  He stares out the new glass into the road, all the familiar shops and doors and passersby.  The windows of the house opposite have likewise been repaired and Sherlock stares at the small figure of his own reflection.  He looks terrible, he realizes.  Wrung with nerves and too thin and far too pale.

He is acutely aware, as people who John would term addicts are always aware, of just how close he is to morphine and cocaine and just how simple it would be for him to simply walk ten yards and take it already.

Sherlock reaches for his violin and rests it on his shoulder.  At first he only cradles it there, the posture a comfort.  Then he draws a few scraping notes with his bow.

"Sherlock?"

He lowers the violin, turning.  "Hmm?"

"Sherlock, we need to talk for a bit," John says gravely.

Studying him, Sherlock sets his bow and instrument down with care.  John looks...he doesn't know how John looks.  This is a different John.  Different Johns are wonderful, but this one is rather frightening.  It reminds Sherlock of John Speaking Pashto, and a little bit of John Tackling Abernetty, but honestly he's never seen this John before.  If he were to guess, he imagines this might be Captain John Watson, and a half-thrilled and half-anxious feeling strikes his gut.

"So talk," he demands, rolling his eyes.

John gives a single, very military nod.  "It's about Molly."

"Oh, for the love of god!" Sherlock exclaims.  "My cock is non-functional, except for when I wish it were.  How exactly and when exactly am I meant to have--"

"No," John says firmly, holding up a steady hand.  "That's not--no.  Your friend Molly told me I needed to do everything I could.  She was quite right.  And I haven't been.  There's one thing I haven't wanted to do, and I need to do it.  I've been putting it off and putting it off, but if I can be of any use to you, then I have to take the risk and take a stab, okay, so you need to listen to me right now.  Sit down."

Sherlock sits in his capacious chair, baffled.  He crosses his legs.  John remains standing and paces a bit--not aimlessly, more as if he's planning an attack.  He sighs briefly, clenches his fists, releases them, and then faces Sherlock.

"Tell me about your mind palace," he orders.

Blinking slowly, Sherlock frowns.

"Not intimate details, just--you said it was a system, not a symptom.  What does it look like?"

Growing very uneasy indeed, Sherlock answers, "It's a palace.  In my mind.  Do you speak English?"

"Yes, and a little German, and Pashto, and passable Arabic."  John allows himself a cold smile.  "Berk."

"What is this about?"

John is quiet for a very, very, very long moment.

"It's about torture," he replies evenly.

The penny drops.

"Jim wants to keep me alive," Sherlock surmises breathlessly.  "You realize this.  You understand that he wants me suffering, not dead, so in case he gets to me, which now you think he will--"

"He won't," John bites out.  "And sorry, it's Jim now?"

"Since you've reevaluated your position on whether or not he is capable of kidnapping me, now you realize that in order for me to live through whatever he has planned, you ought to apprise me of the basic principles of hostage survival."  Sherlock laughs suddenly, his head falling back as he claps his hands.  "Now that your supreme and might I add stupid conviction that he's incapable of touching me has perished, you're feeling guilty because you haven't been training me to keep it together while he's setting starving rats on my naked person." 

John remains quiet and still.

"Brilliant.  Oh, this is rich, Christmas came early," Sherlock exults, shifting in his chair.  "I love it.  I do.  No, really.  Oh, shit, Sherlock's gone missing, well, as least he's just being broken on a rack and not actually dead.  This is...so perfect.  Since he wants to keep me alive as long as possible, get as much out of me as he can, you're counting on time being a factor in your finding me after he strikes.  I lose a few limbs, a few teeth, but maybe I don't lose my mind, and you're suggesting you'd still want that person?  The one who isn't the tidiest bloke in London anymore because he's sewn my lips together in such a way that the skin grafts into itself?  That one of his favourite plans, by the way.  You're going to want to retrieve my half-salvageable carcass so long as my brain still works?"

"It won't come to that.  But.  Yes.  Even if your brain doesn't still work," John answers in the same voice of unnatural calm.

"You want to live with a torso with zero bodily autonomy and a head full of nightmares?" Sherlock cannot seem to stop laughing, because really, this is too amusing for words.  "You're going to kip with a caterpillar with an artificial everything who can't even fuck you properly?  You want a Chia pet for a flatmate?  You'd choose that person when you could have anyone?  Are you mental?"

John grinds his teeth a bit.  "The palace.  Tell me."

"Oh, yes, sorry," Sherlock gasps, eyes tearing with mirth.  "Yep.  Yes, Captain.  Um, it's actually quite large.  Are you wondering what the deepest bits are?"

"In essence," John agrees.  "Your first step if he gets to you, which he won't, is to acknowledge you're there.  I know that sounds crazy and you do of course need to look for every possible escape route.  Every single day, you try to escape.  You never stop doing that.  But beyond staying alert for exits, accepting you're in a shite place is necessary.  Denial will only break you in two later.  You realize that you're in trouble, and you know that I am coming for you."

"This is lunacy," Sherlock insists, still giggling.  "You're out of your mind.  You thought I was the one who'd gone round the twist.  You're perfect, do you understand that?  You're delusional.  I can't begin to...you are so fucking perfect, I didn't even know your kind existed.  Tell me you're coming for me again."

"I'm coming for you," John says, the smallest glint of humour in his dark blue eyes.

"God," Sherlock moans, arching his neck back.  "The sooner the better." 

"That much seems obvious."

"No, I meant come over here.  Now."

"We're having an important conversation," John says, crossing his arms as his thin lips twitch in amusement.

"Have it in my lap."

"There are two things you absolutely will not do," John continues implacably.  "First, you will not ever respond to sudden kindnesses or overtures or gifts or reprieves with feelings of kinship with that fucker.  He is not your ally.  Ever.  He is the enemy.  Always.  Second, you will not deliberately remain quiet, because that is not effective at all.  If he hurts you, yell about it.  Loud.  Use the noise.  That's supposing you're even present for whatever he's doing.  I'm hoping that there's a bit of your mind palace that's deep enough he can't even reach you there.  Can you go into trancelike states at will?  We should practice that."

"I go into trancelike states when you're kissing me," Sherlock growls, running his hands down his thighs as he uncrosses his legs.

"Answer the fucking question."

"Yes, Captain," Sherlock drawls, "I can go more or less comatose.  Whether I can do that while someone has my eyelids forced open and is fucking me remains to be seen."

"Stop it," John snaps.

"Oh, for god's sake, will you just shut up and kiss me?" Sherlock pleads, opening the first two buttons of his grey shirt.  He has never tried this technique before, but he can imagine its potential effect and...yes, John's eyes are narrowing even as his pupils widen.  Brilliant.  "You're going to keep him away from me anyhow.  This little chat is academic."

"Knowledge is power," John counters, studying the sliver of Sherlock's pale chest.  "How are you at breathing exercises?  Calming techniques?"

"Breathing is boring."

"Do you know what stress positions are?"

"I'm in one right now."

"Psychological torture is--"

"Presently taking place in this very flat."

"You're going to want to find a way to track the passage of time effectively," says John, inching closer.  "If he takes accurate timekeeping away from you.  Daylight, that sort of thing.  Prolonged darkness can be hell on a person."

"I'll tell you what I know about time," Sherlock purrs, unbuttoning the rest of his shirt.  "You still aren't kissing me, and that is hell on--"

John's legs are bracketing Sherlock's hips a second later and his hot mouth is devouring Sherlock's and yesyesyesyesyes, now his tongue is battling for supremacy, now his teeth are worrying the detective's lower lip, now his hands are everywhere, one at the side of Sherlock's face, one roving up and down his bare ribcage and around to scratch his back where the scratches from before have faded, and Sherlock makes a hungry sound that causes John to growl deep in his throat.

"See?  Best take advantage while I still have all my appendages," Sherlock observes, chuckling giddily as John fists both hands in his tailored shirt and sucks a mark onto his long neck.

"I would still love you if you were a fucking brain in a jar," John pants.

"How about a broken brain in a jar?" Sherlock presses, his heart pounding as he tears John's trousers open and shoves his palm against the hardness he finds there.

"I'd love you if you were even a trace of you.  Fucking understand me," John insists, biting his own lip as his hips thrust forward.  "If you are alive, I love you.  Period.  If you're dead, I love you, but..."

"Not quite so enthusiastically," Sherlock laughs.  "In the physical sense."

"Now you've got it."

"Tell me you're coming for me again.  Captain."

"Sherlock Holmes, I am fucking coming for you," John says, finally answering Sherlock's weird joy with a matching feral grin.

They are kissing again, wildly, madly, when Sherlock's phone rings and both men freeze.

It rings again.

"I should, um," Sherlock stammers.

"Yeah, yeah, go on," John says quickly, sitting back just a bit though he doesn't move away.

Managing to pull his phone from his pocket, Sherlock settles his breathing as best he can and answers.

"Hello?"

For a moment, the other end of the line is quiet.  Then a voice Sherlock has never heard before begins to speak in a gruff, efficient undertone.

"Sherlock Holmes, I take it," the man says.  "Do you have somewhere you can go that's private?  This conversation is for your ears only.  And I mean, you'd better be alone.  I'm not playing around."

"Who is this?" Sherlock questions sharply.  Gesturing for John to move, he stands, fastening one of his shirt buttons.  "What is this about?  If you're calling regarding a case, I'm on a temporary hiatus due to--"

"This is Sebastian Moran," the voice interrupts.  There's an edge to it Sherlock recognizes now, a combat-honed edge, and his blood chills.  "You don't know me, but I used to work top security for your brother, which is what landed me where am I right now.  Jim will be gone for another ten minutes maybe, and I need to give you some key information.  It's regarding John Watson and the fifth pip."

"What about him?" Sherlock asks calmly, looking at the same man two feet away.

"He's the next hostage," Moran says.  "I served my time overseas and there's a lot I'm willing to be paid for, but I knew of him back then.  Jim is going to kill him.  Either way, no matter what you do.  I don't call it fucking sporting, which us why I'm ringing you.  He's claiming the third pip, the one where he torched the old lady, was cheating by calling in your brother.  John Watson is a dead man walking.  So you need to listen to me very carefully.  Alone."

  

This is exactly the sort of thing you were terrified would happen.  Told him might happen.  KNEW would happen.  Was inevitably going to happen.  You're not surprised, not at the contents of the warning, merely at the fact of the warning itself.  The rest is to be expected.

So what are you waiting for?

John raises his sandy eyebrows in an endearing who-do-I-need-to-kill-now-for-fuck's-sake sort of fashion.  Shaking his head with a quiet, genuine smile, Sherlock feels tenderness spreading, devotion hemorrhaging outward in thick gushes, the sort of boundless protectiveness he has never previously felt for anything save his own oft-threatened hide, and now lying is easy, any form of deception or betrayal would be easy, he could create the most elaborate strategies and enact them in complete secrecy without a twinge of remorse, because he is lying for John and if he would kill for John and die for John, then why not lie for him, and the sleuth says into his phone, "Yes, put them through.  I'll just find somewhere private.  One moment."

He clicks the mobile onto mute.  "It's my parents," he says carefully.  "They have a new secretary whose voice I failed to recognize.  They...well.  You can imagine.  Might I have a bit of..."

Sherlock counts the seconds passing.

It was the easiest fib he ever told, but that doesn't mean John will believe it.  Sherlock thinks he has a chance nevertheless.  A seventy-four percent chance, by all telling calculations.  John isn't catching him being not-Sherlock, after all, that wouldn't work, he's being perfectly Sherlock, easy, so easy, to look at John and think, you've become my whole world, and then tell him a lie. 

Still.

John merely makes a wry, concerned face, rubbing at the back of his neck tiredly.  "Jesus.  Yeah.  I didn't...of course you have parents, I mean, the pair of you didn't spring fully formed from the head of Zeus.  They must be going mental." 

Sherlock thinks of his staggeringly beautiful and brilliant mother, when her first book was published and she chose a career in mathematics over raising children, and how the woman who had once ruffled his hair turned into an empty space in the empty house, instead traveling to rarefied scientific conferences and publishing abstract studies no one save her could even attempt to understand, and the fact that his quiet desperation to understand the stars and the constellations feels like wanting to be close to her when he couldn't be.  He thinks of his never-quite-so-bright father, once charming and now bitter, who felt abandoned enough by her to fall back on a life of business connections and clubs and politics, who only cared about Sherlock when his son made front page bylines.  Mycroft hasn't included them in the Moriarty concerns in years. 

"They do have some questions," Sherlock lies softly.

John sways his torso back and forth gently--understanding, considering.  Sympathetic.  "Yeah, I'll just.  God.  I'll be in the bedroom, okay?  Take as long as you need."

Nodding, Sherlock forms a sharp line between his eyes that means thank you and I'm sorry you're saddled with this and forgive me.

The doctor just drops a light kiss to Sherlock shoulder as he scoops up his laptop and makes for the bedroom on small, quiet John feet.

Taking a deep breath, Sherlock unmutes the mobile and hold it to his ear, striding towards the stairs.  He very softly closes the sitting room door behind him and trots down to the eighth of the seventeen steps leading up to flat B, unconcerned about Mrs. Hudson overhearing since she's in protective custody.  He speaks, tense and low.

"First off, this line is probably monitored."

"It was," Moran returns.  "By both sides.  I've sorted that for the moment, but we don't have much time."

Sherlock's curls hit the wallpaper and he huddles into himself a bit, keeping his voice as hushed as he can.  "Right, then spend the next minute convincing me that I should listen to a word you say.  I know your family died over this, or most of them did, but you're still with him, and whether you're being coerced or not, this could easily be a setup."

"It could," Moran agrees.  "I'd anticipated your skepticism.  So listen hard, and then make your choices.  I've been a hired mercenary ever since the Persian Gulf swallowed me whole and spit me back out again.  I'm a tough customer.  Kill people, hurt people, makes no difference to me.  I've never been a man who thought principle outweighed practicality, and some of the shit your brother has asked me to do has been dirty as all fuck."

"I can imagine," Sherlock affirms dryly.

"My family were nearly killed in a plane crash twenty years ago," Moran continues in the same gravelly monotone.  "There was a water landing, search and rescue, you name it, and ever since then I've understood we are all on borrowed time.  My dad was a complete prick, really the gold standard, and mum was a pretty useless old bat, but they lived by the skin of their teeth and I got to suffer through a few more excruciating hols before shipping out.  I learned we're all disposable." 

Tell me about it, Sherlock thinks, biting back a retort.

"Some of my choices during combat might even have been affected, fuck if I know.  I can't say who I'd have been if they hadn't been found, but I can tell you who I am now.  They got an extra twenty years and then Jim Moriarty pressed a button and boom, now I have a sister and I want to see her again someday.  I will see her. She's the only one of us worthy of her own skin." 

"Go on," Sherlock says tentatively.

"You need to understand that I am a man who makes the practical choice ten times out of ten.  I was a sniper.  I shot fathers who were holding fucking babies in their laps through windows, my friend, terrorists who were some of the most beautiful, batshit women I've ever seen with holes in their pretty heads.  If Jim takes you hostage, you get no sympathy from me.  What happens is that Jim pays me when he's done with me and I get my sister back and this fucking brilliant psycho and your monumental prick of a brother are both misty watercoloured memories, you hear me?"

"Loud and clear," Sherlock agrees, recalling John's words.  "This is a war.  Why give John a pass?"

"I'm not," Moran answers gruffly.  "I detest rigged games.  War is hell, but war is also a game, a winnable game, and Jim here is stacking the deck.  Guarding that fucker before he cut and ran was...don't even ask me.  A revelation.  Life-changing." 

Recalling Moran's hand shaking as he reached for the gum in the video days ago, Sherlock can't help but wince a little.

"He's one of a kind.  I don't need to tell you he's the maddest, most charismatic fuck alive, or that if my sister wasn't involved I'd either cut his heart out and eat it or else throw in my lot with him and rule the goddamn world.  But my family, all those years ago?  They ought to have died.  There was a tiny chance, but that was all it took.  I'm not giving either of you a bloody pass."

"You're giving him a chance," Sherlock realizes.

"You probably can't do anything."  Moran makes a spitting sound after coughing briefly, and the crackling sound of a smoke being enjoyed erupts near the mouthpiece.  "I don't think you can think your way out of it.  You definitely can't bluff your way out, and you sure as shit can't fight your way out." 

Sherlock remains silent.

"But you can know what's coming, and that you probably won't make it through.  Maybe you get to say goodbye.  Anyhow.  Take it or leave it, but the plan is to wrap John in semtex and blow him sky high.  He had a reputation back in Afghanistan--stone cold, loyal as fuck, could take a bite out of your rifle and spit a bullet back at you."

To his shock, Sherlock finds himself smiling wistfully at these brutal recollections, tracing the wallpaper grooves with his fingertip.

"My family ended up in tiny pieces," Moran concludes.  "You get a free glimpse into the future, mate.  Use it."

The line goes dead.

All is very still.  Mrs. Hudson has recently dusted the bannister, Sherlock observes.  Pity.  Dust is eloquent.  He could have seen John's finger marks on the rail and imagined he felt their warm pressure against his bare skin.

Or he could simply walk into the bedroom and have the real thing, considering John is still breathing for the moment.

Fuck, Sherlock thinks numbly. 

Though he knows John is probably fretting above, Sherlock slides his phone into his pocket and remains on the Baker Street staircase a while longer. 

Seventeen familiar steps, all of them his.  Seventeen steps which never seemed at all mystical or significant before John's footfalls graced them, a man with a duffel bag over his shoulder walking resolutely toward a room containing a severed head in a box and reeking of human decay.

Smiling senselessly again at the image, Sherlock settles his elbows back against the tenth step and he thinks. 

Because Moran was right.  They cannot fight their way out, or bluff their way out.  Mycroft can do nothing.  All the king's horses and all the king's men?  Useless.  Utterly beside the point. 

But Sherlock is the most brilliant human being on the fucking planet--possible exceptions for Mycroft Holmes and Jim Moriarty notwithstanding.

And what is more, he is not against risking his life to prove he's clever.

The palace is cool today, full of shadows and coastal breezes, a gun-grey firmament spreading above the front steps of the stately entrance.  Sherlock sits physically on the hushed stairs of Mrs. Hudson's house, and in his mind he sits in the same relaxed posture on the curved stone steps leading into the great estate, shivering slightly in the chilled atmosphere.  Echoes of John's words keep circling above him, fragments of conversation come to life, black sea birds with long bills and elegant pointed wings with blood-red tips.  They are restless, cawing, lovely fowl, but sleek and compact for all their fluttering.

You're to die for, John gasped in bed between burning kisses.  I would die for you, I think.

It's an unacceptable option for all it's the most likely one, but oh, how beautiful it is, Sherlock suddenly realizes.  He pictures a John wrapped in semtex rushing Jim Moriarty, clutching him like the tiny ferocious bear John is, wrapping himself up in a madman with a furious embrace that mimics passion and shouting Run, Sherlock!  Run!  Would he do it?  God, he would, wouldn't he?  Death in John's eyes, death in Jim's, Sherlock Holmes their single overlapping obsession. 

Merely a thought exercise.  One that makes his heart clench.  He won't let that happen.

He can't.  It hurts too much.

Oh, Sherlock thinks, his eyes snapping open to view the dark hallway.

He closes them again.  John is still speaking, the new bird with its sable wings and splash of crimson feathers widely spread, hovering as if on an updraft before Sherlock's face.

Kill yourself.  That would sort it.

"I can't win if I'm not alive to try," Sherlock objects, the stone steps harsh and cold against his thighs.  "Are you saying skip the torture, skip the fight, skip it all?  End it, for your sake?  Just die and have done?  Jim would have a fit, that I grant you."

He can't get to you afterward, can he?  The bird's eyes are like polished glass, fathomless and implacable.  Not even Jim Moriarty can trump death.

The Sherlock in the palace sits forward, frowning, gazing at the black sharp-billed bird.  The Sherlock in Baker Street steeples his fingers, dropping his long neck and exposing it fully to the ceiling as he reclines further.

"That isn't what you're really saying," Sherlock whispers excitedly.

The breeze picks up, tangling Sherlock's curls, and the John-bird cocks its head.  Another joins it, likewise hovering without flapping its wings, and then a third follows, and now there is a trio of sable tern-shaped creatures floating before him, making minute adjustments in the bullying wind.

You know how you win a war, Sherlock?  I'll tell you, the first says.

Every time you fire your gun, you do it for the man next to you, hoping he lives, the second continues.

And every time he fires his gun, it's for you, the third concludes, its down ruffling in the brisk wind.  

And suddenly, Sherlock knows exactly what to do.

The birds dissolve into smoke which is quickly blasted into nothingness by the approaching storm Sherlock now realizes is his mind calculating every possible alternative, every probability and potentiality, every nuance of every detail he has ever learned about Jim Moriarty in his wretchedly lonely life, and everything he has ever learned solving the grimmest of cases for a living since boyhood. 

The wind begins to howl like a hurt child. 

Calculations splinter into pounding rain like glass shards, strategies whipping through the corridors of his palace in great gusts, thunder in the distance and a resolute cold like the end of the world settling over all. 

Trees in the grounds crash and crack. 

God, that hurts, Sherlock thinks helplessly as he forces himself through and past it, clenching his jaw as the squall climaxes in a final torrent of ice crystals that lance like needles against his skin.

The cataclysm stills.

A little out of breath, the Sherlock sitting on the eighth step hoists himself up with a stifled groan.  That was...that was alarming, even for him.

Alarming but useful.

So John Watson is a dead man walking? Sherlock thinks, pulling out his phone while he has the chance and John is still absent. 

Two can play at that game.

He silently hopes that Moran's blocking the monitors on his mobile is still in effect.  Or else this will go very badly indeed.  Particularly if Mycroft hears.  The bullet scrape in his arm throbs, a mute warning.  Sherlock ignores it.  The other end of the line rings only once before Shinwell Johnson picks up.

"Talk to me," Shinwell growls.   

"Hello to you too," Sherlock drawls irritably.

"Oh, bless us, but that's good news--cor, Mr. Holmes, here you rang and all, and I being an observer of the human condition same as you though admittedly a bit less eggheaded a sort, seeing as you didn't text and ringing a bloke up for you is akin to paper cuts on the bollocks, if you follow me, not life-threatening but fucking Christ nevertheless a profound pain and a spiritual annoyance to boot, the audible telephone form of communication I mean to say, well I leapt to the conclusion that you might have been in a tight spot."

"I am," Sherlock snaps.

"Bloody hell, where are you?" Shinwell cries.  There is a crashing sound as he apparently leaps to his feet, and the high staccato of dogs yapping follows.  "How many cavalry necessary?  Do you have a weapon?  Is the doctor with you?  Are you injured?"

"Shinwell--"

"If bleeding, did you try to staunch the wound wi' a jumper or a blanket or, dunno, that poncy scarf you always wear?  Are you in the boot of a car?  If you're in the boot of a car, mark me now, you're going to listen to the roadways, memorize every sound, remember if there are any changes--bridges, traffic, tolls--"

"I am not in the fucking boot of a car," Sherlock moans.  "Will you hold your peace for once in your life and listen to me?  I have a plan."

"A plan?"  Shinwell's always greasy voice positively glistens with pride.  "Lulu!  Annabelle!  Henrietta!  Shut the everloving fuck up!"  The yapping lessens somewhat.  "Apologies, Mr. Holmes.  Pray continue at your leisure and, I need hardly add, at your own pace and in your own way."

Momentarily, Sherlock lowers the phone to stare at it, wondering what terrible force of human ridiculousness created Shinwell Johnson.  But he returns the mobile to his ear with a heavy sigh.

Sherlock explains.

Shinwell listens.

"That is, and please forgive me for being blunt, the worst idea it has ever been my privilege to listen to, and you are--in the figurative and not the literal sense, you understand--barking," Shinwell whispers in awe.

"I don't have a choice!" Sherlock hisses.  "You have to trust me on this.  You have to stay with him, help him, please will you do this for me?  Any other way, he dies.  There are no other options left.  And I can't live like this indefinitely."

There is--shockingly--no reply to this assertion.

"Shinwell," Sherlock says, thoroughly exasperated, "time is at a premium."

A wet sniff followed by a muffled gurgle emerges from the phone.

"Are you crying?" Sherlock demands, scrubbing his free hand into his hair in disbelief.

"Mr. Holmes," Shinwell answers in a choked voice, "begging your pardon for what might seem, to a man of your iron nature, an unseemly display of sentiment, but Jesus Christ on a tricycle, that is simply the most sodding beautiful and tragic proposal I've ever heard in me life, and it ain't going too far to say that I'm profoundly moved in the spiritual sense, and that your love for this fine and might I add deserving gent is, and I'm not exaggerating here, an absolute model of nobility and self-sacrifice, and that to witness this kind of devotion in the modern fucking age of selfies and celebrity and greed and Kardashians and general wankery is nothing short of miraculous, and I'll go down in history as your greatest admirer, with or without your permission, if you please, because 'greater love hath no man than this,' as the Scriptures put it, and fuck me with a broomstick if I don't agree."

The unexpected lump which forms in Sherlock's throat at this bald and unabashed assertion stubbornly refuses to dissolve immediately.  So Sherlock coughs several times before managing, "Thank you.  Will you help me?"

"I'm your man, Mr. Holmes," Shinwell Johnson avers.  "To the fucking last ounce.  Bring it on."

  

 

Knocking at the bedroom door with his toe, a cup of tea in each hand, Sherlock waits.  When John opens it, Sherlock passes him the beverage and John regards him with mild awe.

"You made me tea?" he marvels, taking it.

"Oh, shut up," Sherlock sniffs, pretending pique.  "I do know how to boil water.  I can cook too, if you must know.  It's merely organic chemistry."

"That's it, you're making me dinner," John says.  The light in his dark eyes dims slightly.  He sips at the tea, as does Sherlock.  "How are your parents?"

"Upset," Sherlock lies, sitting on the bed cross-legged and patting the coverlet beside him.  John soon follows.

"Damn right they are.  How are you?"

Mulling it over, Sherlock shrugs minutely.  Upset, he thinks, but it wouldn't be fair to worry John unduly.

"God, you put the whole sugar bowl in here," John teases, smacking his lips.

"I like sweet tea," Sherlock admits.  He sets his own cup down.  "Particularly when..."

When I feel utterly ruined, he prevents himself from saying.

John, unfortunately, understands anyhow.  He goes to put his cup on the side table after taking another healthy swallow and stands in front of the detective, burying his fingers in his hair.  Sherlock goes readily, wrapping his arms around his friend.

"I honestly can't believe you're still here," he says hoarsely.  "It boggles the mind."

"You're kind of stuck with me," John states, smoothing Sherlock's curls and allowing them to spring back under his palms.

Sherlock guides John onto the bed so they're facing each other, and the smaller man goes readily.  The doctor's irises are a wonderful, fearful blue, and Sherlock wonders briefly whether he is ever going to see them again.  A hint of the terrible pain he's feeling must cloud his features by accident, because John props himself up on one elbow with a serious expression.

"You know," John says lowly, pressing his palm to Sherlock's suit lapel, "the thing about you is, you have completely turned my life around.  Within another set of circumstances, I might not have got to have this, and...just..."  He blinks, smiling briefly.  "You've changed everything.  For the record, notwithstanding the mortal danger and the fact you're kind of a complete dickhead, I'd not change it.  So there."

"Would you really come for me if I vanished?" Sherlock whispers.  He needs to know.  "Truly?"

"To hell and back," John answers at once. 

Sherlock smiles sadly.  "Weren't we interrupted at something?"

"Ah, yes, yep, that's true," John grants mildly.  "Kissing, I think it was."

"I forget how it's done."  Tentatively, Sherlock reaches out and traces the line of John's throat.  "I've hardly any practice.  Show me again." 

They are still kissing, sweet and oh so slow, when John falls limply unconscious to the bedclothes.

"I'm sorry," Sherlock says, pressing one more kiss to the insensate doctor's brow. 

 

 

 

First Sherlock posts a message to The Science of Deduction's forum.  It's his Skype handle, W.S.S.Holmes, with nothing more.

Fetching John's gun, he goes into the sitting room and opens Skype on his laptop, waiting for the message he knows will come soon.  For two minutes he sits motionless, staring at the screen.  When fairy_tale_ending contacts him, he accepts immediately and watches as the caller appears.

"Sherlock, my dear," Jim Moriarty purrs. 

The sight of him is sickening, but since it's also unavoidable, Sherlock simply quashes it.

"Jim," Sherlock intones.

It's the first time they have spoken face to face since the Carl Powers trial.  Jim is smirking, his hair neatly styled, wearing white shirtsleeves with a tailored black jacket.  He seems to be sitting in a very ordinary dining room and is sipping something brown with a few cubes in it.  He has the most casually arrogant set of shoulders Sherlock has ever seen.

"What's cookin', good-lookin'," Jim trills.  "Did you just love my serenade?"

"Guess," Sherlock drawls.

"You did, didn't you?  Thought you would.  What's up, precious?"  Jim tastes the scotch-coloured drink appreciatively.  "If you're going to beg for mercy, I really think we should skip it.  Dull.  Tedious.  And I'm still going to mail your ears to your brother packed in salt."

"I'm not begging," Sherlock answers.  "I'm going to offer you a deal."

"A deal?" Jim crows.  "Oh, goody, I can't wait for this.  You are offering me a deal.  What hath God wrought.  This is fabulous."

Sherlock raises the Sig so it's visible.  "I deduced what you intend to do to John Watson.  You're planning to kill him.  He's the fifth pip--it's only logical.  Don't try to lie to me, I know it's true.  What better way to get to me?  But you aren't going to kill him, you're a sporting man and you're going to vow to me by the rules of this game that you won't touch him, and if you do that, if you swear never to touch him ever, or compel anyone else to touch him ever, then I'll walk right into your net.  You can have me.  Me for him.  It's quite simple."

Jim yawns, passing the back of his hand across his mouth.  "Fuck.  Sorry, sweetheart.  That was a very soothing bedtime story.  I can get you anyway.  So there must be more to it than this.  If I agree to leave your midget alone, you turn yourself over and we live happily ever after.  What if I don't?"

Sticking the muzzle of the gun under his chin, Sherlock cocks it, smiling.

"I kill myself," he says coldly.  "Game over."

Jim's eyes go a bit wide and then he grins devilishly.  "You wouldn't dare."

"I would," Sherlock vows, and he is perfectly serious.

"Oh, go on, then, don't let me stop you," Jim chuckles.  But his clever eyes are anxious.  "You can cherish the look of surprise on my face as you expire."  Jim makes a comical expression of exaggerated horror.

"You want me to shake hands with you in hell, I will not disappoint you," Sherlock growls, shoving the muzzle into his own flesh, cold and bruising.  "You think I'm not prepared to do anything?  Prepared to burn?  If you wanted more than life to preserve something or someone, what wouldn't you do?  What wouldn't you do to keep me alive?  Well, I would go ten times further for John Watson.  If you refuse, I die.  Right now.  You have ten seconds."

Jim chews the inside of his lip thoughtfully.  "Honey, you really don't have to do this for him.  He's not that interesting.  Cute in a really ugly-cute way, I grant, but..."

"Five," Sherlock says through his teeth.

"This is cheating," Jim hisses.  "You can't just--"

"One," Sherlock reports.  He closes his eyes and draws a deep breath.  "Goodbye, Jim."

"Don't!" his mortal enemy shrieks.

 

 

Ten minutes later, having changed into baggy blue sweatpants, a comfortable t-shirt, sneakers, and a hoodie which are the remnants of a disguise for a long-ago case and still are useful for hiding in plain sight, Sherlock texts his brother. 

John is a bit under the weather.  Popping out for some Lemsip incognito.  Tell your gorillas not to shoot me. SH

He waits exactly thirty seconds and then exits the house without his keys and unarmed.  The phone buzzes a moment later. 

Go by the directest route.  My people will follow and wait to escort you back.  MH

Sherlock is counting on this, and he walks at a brisk pace toward the nearest Tesco.  When he arrives, he strides coolly past shelves of wine and hummus and flowers and books toward the rear of the building.  Without hesitation, he opens an unlocked door marked PRIVATE.  Complete confidence is the key to this sort of benign invasion.  The air back here is cooler, dry with dust and cardboard aromas.  A few heads turn to look at him, but the place is mostly deserted at this hour. 

Sherlock ducks and darts between the boxes, heading for the employee loading dock.  When he reaches it, he flips up his hood and jumps down to the pavement.  CCTV will pick him up soon, but he hopes his opponents will act quickly enough for it not to matter.

He walks to the predetermined corner and he waits.

"Please," he whispers to no one in particular, and not even really aware of what he is praying for.  Terror ebbs and recedes like waves until his head is aching with it, but Sherlock steadfastly refuses to move. 

When an unmarked van pulls up, the driver puts the vehicle in park and hops out.  He is a tall man, handsome and blond with blunt, square features, eyes brown and entirely ruthless, a bit of stubble marking his strong jaw.

"Sebastian Moran, I take it," Sherlock says coolly.

"Now that," Moran says, a hint of admiration in his voice, "I did not expect."

"No," Sherlock agrees.

"Are you armed?"

"Of course not."

"Phone?"

Sherlock hands it over without protest.

"Still.  We're not going to want you conscious for this," Moran warns.

"Oh, just get it over with, I hate waiting."

When the syringe comes out, Sherlock allows it to sink into his neck without a flinch, and the world goes very swiftly cold and dark.

 

 

He spent a very long time insisting that it was a Pavlovian glandular malfunction.  But now he has decided not to be frightened anymore, Sherlock can admit to it: he was terrified all that long while.

"Sorry, I--" Sherlock mumbles, confused and apologetic even as his arms are tightening around the completely unprecedented warm body which is draped over him.

As if he can't help it.  As if it's another chemical defect, just waiting to be triggered.  The longing for a fellow human pressing against his thin skin.

"I'm not," John replies in a sleepy whisper.

The plan, such as it is, was based on certain premises regarding which Sherlock had no doubts whatsoever.

PREMISE ONE: Moriarty wants John Watson dead.

PREMISE TWO: While is it difficult to defend someone ad infinitum, it is relatively easy to kill someone so long as the killer does not fear reprisal in the form of punishment, censure, or attack.  Indefinite protection is fraught with challenges.  Terrorism and assassination are incredibly simple.

PREMISE THREE: Sherlock Holmes's death is preferable to John Watson's death.

CONCLUSION ONE: Skipping the fifth pip is the only logical alternative to John Watson's demise.

Sherlock is on his back, floating in a wide salt sea under a sky that offers no cloud cover and thus no protection from the rays searing into his pale chest.  Abstractly, he knows that his skin is probably not aflame, but he feels sweat-soaked and fried nonetheless, as if his epidermis is about to curl up and slough away like burning paper.

Where is he?  What shipwreck caused all this drifting along amidst shallow waves.

"Sherlock, you're scaring me a little," John says. 

But where is he?  From what side is his voice emanating?  Or is John everywhere?  Could he be the water and the sun and the blinding sky? 

"Can you take a deep breath for me?  Just out through your mouth and in through--Sherlock?" 

So Sherlock had to give himself to Jim.  He had to.  There was no way around it.  But there were emotional impediments which required John to be temporarily removed from the equation, and if there is one skill at which Sherlock Holmes excels, it is the ruthless removal of emotional impediments.

PREMISE ONE: John will sentimentally object to my deliberately endangering myself.

PREMISE TWO: Moriarty wants my life preserved for as long as possible simply so that he can make my existence excruciating.

PREMISE THREE: The probability is high that John will not stop looking for me if he is able to do so, and now he will be will be assisted by Mycroft and Shinwell and our homeless network.

CONCLUSION TWO: John's objection to my giving myself freely to Moriarty is irrelevant to the endgame and could hamper our eventual success and thus should not be considered a factor.

A small point in Sherlock's neck aches terribly, and his arm is throbbing.  He is in a desert composed of black sand, every grain glimmering, and the sky above him is painted in ivory and beige.  Something is wrong about all of this, Sherlock realizes, but he can't understand what it is.

He can see John approaching, wearing fatigues, his dog tags a lump beneath the pale green undershirt, and he suddenly knows that John cannot be allowed here, he cannot glimpse Sherlock in this land, if John speaks to Sherlock here, everything will be over and the pair of them will become pillars of salt.  Forever frozen.

So Sherlock hides.  In the nick of time, too.

"Sherlock," John calls, but he doesn't see his friend in the shadow of the black dune.  "Are you chucking me out of your flat because you have a very attractive mouth and I noticed on an empty street corner in a moment of revoltingly maudlin self-pity?  Because that would be truly daft." 

The prospect of close proximity to Jim is highly distasteful but likewise irrelevant as regards the most logical stratagem.

PREMISE ONE: Moriarty cannot be killed at a distance, as Mycroft would have managed it by now if anyone could.

PREMISE TWO: In order to torture me, Moriarty will be required to close the physical distance between our corporeal forms.

PREMISE THREE: I am a master in regards to escaping rope bindings, handcuffs, and other restraints, and freeing myself while in captivity leads to astronomically better opportunities to strike than running, hiding, or allowing Moriarty to continue to dictate the series of events.

CONCLUSION THREE: Possible temporary discomfort and even permanent disfigurement does not nearly outweigh the tactical advantages of feigned surrender when John's life is considered.

Sherlock is standing on the roof of St. Bart's hospital, right up against the edge, the place where he goes whenever he wants a quiet cigarette, and the air is crisp and clean under a pale sky.  He is smoking, the taste of ash on his lips a comfort, watching John on the street below as he advances toward the building.  They are both on their mobile phones and when John stops walking to smile up at Sherlock, the detective feels his heart stutter. 

"There's not going to be any pressure to do anything, okay?" John says gently as the breeze toys with his dark blond hair.  There is a slight crackle to his phone-voice, but Sherlock can hear him perfectly.  "Not talk, or touch if you don't want to, or, I don't know, we can go back to how it was before, I can pretend I don't understand.  Just don't..."

Waiting, Sherlock watches as John bites his lip.  The doctor is carefully considering his words.  A bicycle whizzes past, and pedestrians ebb and flow around him.  But John is quite still, keeping his eyes fixed on Sherlock.

"You're amazing, I think you're amazing," John concludes.

 

 

When Sherlock finally wakes up after dozens of half-remembered nightmares, it's with a gasp followed by a groan.

For several rather horrifying seconds, his eyes refuse to open.  But then he cracks them with an effort and light floods in--awful light, vicious light, lancing into his corneas--and another helpless sound is forced from his lips due to the severe reaction he is being subjected to following the stab of Moran's needle.

It's another two full minutes before Sherlock can focus his energies enough to sit up.  Once he manages it, he gapes at his surroundings in considerable shock.

Sherlock stares down at his own agile hands, baffled. 

He had expected, first of all, to be cruelly restrained.  Considering the fact that Sherlock's memory is annoyingly perfect and Jim's capacity for creative description is grotesquely apt, he had expected to be chained to a wall, tied to a chair, encased in a box, hanging by his wrists from the ceiling, already missing limbs, hooked up to an electrical restraint system, encased in cement, or at the very least handcuffed or muzzled.

He isn't. 

Sherlock is sitting in a bed with white sheets and pillowcases and a white duvet, surrounded by very tall white walls.  They look simply like drywall with primer painted over them, and Sherlock recognizes the sharp aroma of it still lingers in the perfectly blank chamber.  A fluorescent light he couldn't possibly reach shines coolly about twelve feet above him.  There are small vents up there, which are heavily armoured but allowing plentiful air to flow despite this fact.

No one is here.  There is a plain white door in the corner, closed.  Next to it is the button Sherlock supposes controls the overhead light.

There are no sounds save for the faint buzz of the fluorescent fixture.

When he looks down again, Sherlock realizes he is wearing white cotton drawstring trousers and a white short-sleeved shirt and recalls that he had sewn several small pins and other potentially useful but relatively unnoticeable lock-picking tools into his hoodie.

"Fuck," he says under his breath, crushing the heels of his hands into his eyes.

The clothing fits perfectly and is quite comfortable, but it's extremely eerie.  Sherlock thinks about the loss of his equipment and grimaces again. 

He wonders who dressed him like this, and why.

Oh. 

To take any tools or signaling devices I'd smuggled.  Naturally.

Then he wonders who undressed him, and he can easily guess the answer, and manages not to gag only by a supreme effort of will.

"Hello?" he calls next, crawling out of the bed.  It's the only object of furniture in the room.

All is terribly quiet. 

Sherlock staggers, emitting a stifled grunt, barely catching himself by a corner of coverlet before he tumbles to the blank white floor tile on unsteady legs.  It takes several lungfuls of air to get his muscles under control.  He feels like a newborn gazelle.  But after a minute or two, he stops panting.  Sherlock stands straighter, peering about.  Worried.

Well.  Worried would be something of an understatement, he corrects himself, drawing his brows towards his nose.

He's not in any sort of hospital--the walls are too high and the bed is too comfortable.  He's not in a gaol, or not really, not a traditional one, just in a room.  Sherlock fully expects the door to be locked but determines to try it anyway.  It would be pure laziness not to make the effort.  He guides himself carefully along the wall and twists the simple knob.

It opens.

Sherlock remains where he is for several more seconds, simply dreading what he will find beyond.  His heart thuds uselessly.

As both a delaying tactic and an experiment, he tries what is theoretically the light switch, half expecting to be tasered for his impudence.

The light flicks off.  Then it flicks back on again when he presses a second time.

So.

That's...a light switch after all.

Gritting his teeth, Sherlock walks forward.

Another white room presents itself.  This one is a hallway with nothing in it.  There is a door off the corridor, however--no, no, three doors--and Sherlock tries the nearest one.

He finds himself in a very small bathroom, again with high freshly painted white walls and an efficient but impenetrable ventilation system.  There is a toilet with low water level and no covering lid, a sink, a few built-in shelves, and a shower stall.  No mirrors are in evidence.  The shelves are stocked with one mini-toothpaste, a tiny travel toothbrush, deodorant, a small roll of bandaging, antiseptic gel, a hotel-sized soap, and an electric shaver that appears to be chained to the wall.  This confuses Sherlock profoundly until he realizes that one cannot electrocute oneself and thereby shuffle off the mortal coil if the shaver cannot reach the water of the toilet or the shower, and likewise that even disposable razors can be turned into weapons.

A very uncomfortable feeling churns in Sherlock's belly.  This is not an environment packed to brimming with instruments of torture.

It is in environment bereft of ways to die.

Examining himself more closely, Sherlock sees that the bandaging on the bullet graze has been changed and cleaned since his capture and this time he does lean over the toilet, violently spitting the contents of his empty stomach into the pristine white porcelain.

It might be the tranquilizer hangover.  It might be terror.  Sherlock has no idea which and elects not to ask himself stupid questions.

When he stands up, he feels slightly better and tests the taps.  Hot water flows readily from the shower head and the sink, and he finds a single small towel folded on the tiled floor. 

It disturbs him in ways no towel should ever disturb anyone.

"I told you to acknowledge you're here first, remember," John says gently in Sherlock's head.  He is wearing jeans and a familiar black and white striped jumper.  He looks tired and rumpled, but unafraid.

Hello.  Yes, Sherlock thinks, sniffing at the toothpaste and the soap and finding them perfectly normal, but you also said to try to escape every day, and this is...not what I expected.  And I don't like it.  At all.

"You expected not to like it," John says with a half-smile.

I know.  But this is utterly fucked.  Do you like it?

"Not one tiny bit, mate."

Returning to the corridor, Sherlock glances back and forth.  There is still no one here, and nothing could possibly frighten him more.  No Jim, no Moran, no human save himself, exploring a space he knows was explicitly designed to torment him.

"Take it easy," John warns.

Shut up, you aren't even here, Sherlock thinks, rolling his eyes as he goes to the next door and shoves it open.

"You must take this one step at a time, brother mine," Mycroft admonishes, fiddling with his umbrella.  "Do not allow yourself to be overwhelmed."

Oh, do be quiet.  If there's one good thing about this place, it's that you're not here, Sherlock huffs in his head as he crosses the threshold.

The new room is as tall and nearly as blank as the first two.  This is a kitchen...of sorts.  It contains at first glance only a wall-mounted digital clock with a calendar function beneath the time, and a large steel table--one Sherlock could not possibly dismantle without tools no matter how many heads he'd like to bash in with a metal leg--and a drinking fountain.  But on second examination, there is a mini-dumbwaiter installed in one wall of the relentlessly white chamber. 

Frowning, Sherlock goes to it, and easily flips the cover open.  On one side is a trash chute, or so he supposes, which can collect whatever garbage might accumulate in such a barren place.  The paper covering of his soap bar, he supposes dryly. 

On the other is the dumbwaiter box itself, far too small to even contemplate escape that way--for god's sake, his head wouldn't even fit in the thing--which he next learns contains a cold filet of poached fish with a yoghurt-like dressing, a cucumber salad, a hearty roll of bread, and a glass of white wine, all resting placidly in paper products.

The sight alarms Sherlock on so many levels, he cannot even bring himself to count them. 

His hands are shaking, he discerns.  He locks them together with fingers laced, hitting himself repeatedly on the forehead with them, telling himself to breathe, you idiot, just--

"Look," John says calmly, his wrinkled brow furrowing, "you need to let yourself be--"

Panicked? Sherlock explodes in his head.  Irritated?  A bit miffed?  What in fuck is wrong with you? 

"Sherlock--"

I'm apparently being held captive in a no-man's-land, a cage in which there is nothing other than myself and my three square meals a day--

"Nope.  Stop right there, soldier.  You don't know that yet.  This might be the only food you get for quite some time.  That could easily be the case.  Eat it."

There aren't any forks. 

"Of course not.  But--"

Sherlock glares scimitars.  Then he scoops a handful of salmon into his mouth and swallows, wincing, rinsing his fingers afterward at the water fountain, which is pleasingly cold.  The fish is fresh and delicately cooked, the seasoning of the sauce nicely balanced, with a hint of spice to the tang.

There.  I hope it's poisoned.

"It won't be.  That would make no sense."

Drugged.

"It doesn't seem to be drugged either."

Well, I fucking hope it is.

Imaginary John merely purses his lips disapprovingly.  "It's okay," the captain offers.  "You can lose your temper.  Completely natural."

Nothing about this is sodding natural.

"Do you want to, maybe, just--I mean, you should go ahead and look in the last room," Molly suggests, adjusting her lab coat and then nervously fiddling with a piece of her hair.

Fine, Sherlock thinks shortly.  If it doesn't contain an iron maiden, I'll be very much surprised.

Returning to the hall, Sherlock passes through it and enters the final chamber.  This one is much longer and narrower than the others, and contains at either end a pair of metal cabinets with digital combination locks on the doors. 

There.  See? Sherlock demands. 

"What?" John questions, passing a sweeping hand across the landscape.

Spikes.  Whips.  Thumb screws.  Medieval dental equipment.  Inside the cabinets.  Are you daft?

"That could be," John says quietly, "the thumb screws I mean to say, but you don't know yet.  So just be right here, right now, in pretty good kip, and not in some bloody awful hypothetical."

"What the actual fuck," Sherlock mutters aloud.

At the end of the room is another door, this one much more industrial than the others, very very locked, featuring an electronic card reader.  All along a single side of the long chamber, however, a highly polished mirror takes the place of the drywall.  Sherlock pads in his bare feet up to the mirror and examines himself.  He already looks grotesquely pale and underfed, with huge dark marks under his eyes, hair a riotous mess, and he has been here...all of one day.

I can't do this, Sherlock thinks, breathing harder every second.  There is no way in hell I can do this.

"You haven't even conducted a thorough search yet, Sherlock," Mycroft reminds him smugly.

I hate you, Sherlock replies, shivering.  I have always hated you.

"Oh, we both know that's not quite true.  Now--you've missed things, surely.  Look again."

His disembodied brother proves to be correct, for opposite the mirror, Sherlock finds a flat screen telly about four feet wide, mounted into the plaster. 

So he is to be communicated with electronically.  Perfect. That is just fucking perfect.

The next hour Sherlock devotes to examining the prison with greater care.  He knows it's an hour because, aside from having a very keen sense of time, the clock in the kitchen (he calls it the kitchen for lack of a better term) says it's half eight in the evening when he finishes.  Sherlock has deduced already from the stubble on his jaw and the state of the bruising on his hands from Roylott's poker that the hypodermic knocked him on his arse for an entire day.  Nevertheless, senseless as it is, the hour spent searching every nook and cranny feels like it was a sad waste of time, if only because he discovers so wretchedly little.

Items of note: there is only one exterior door.  The cabinets seem to be impervious to Sherlock's efforts to open them.  The ventilation ducts in every room, while inaccessible, appear to contain small glinting cameras, for Sherlock can make out the slight c-curve of their lenses.  This last is the least surprising fact Sherlock can think of, but it's supremely vexing even if predictable. 

So they can see him.

They can see him all the time.

Sherlock spends five minutes being precious about this development before giving in to catlike personal hygiene and showering, ruthlessly efficient in every clipped movement, defiantly visible, washing his hair with the plastic packet of shampoo he finds on the floor of the stall.  When he's re-dressed and dry apart from stubbornly curling wet tendrils of hair, which he is forced to comb with his fingers, he returns to the dumbwaiter and stares at...well...dinner.

"It's not a test," John says, leaning against the white wall with his arms crossed.  "It's a meal."

Closing his eyes, Sherlock thinks, It's an insult.  Insult to injury.  First the injury, then the insult.  That's what this is, John.

"Yeah, love, I know.  But it's also calories.  And I kinda desperately want you back.  So..."

Sighing, Sherlock takes the meal to the table and eats it, stopping on occasion to glare daggers at the vents.  When he's through, he tosses the paper containers in the trash chute, finishes the wine (a fairly good un-oaked Chardonnay) and disposes of the cup, and flips the bird to the ceiling before washing up.  Having finished this task, he collapses against the table with a small exhausted sound.

"I ate plenty worse overseas," John says, leaning down across from him with both elbows on the steel.  "I quite like salmon, actually."

Yes, by all means regale me with your superior mental stamina.  I'm not the one with the PTSD problem.

"You kind of are, though," John answers softly.  "I don't hold it against you.  But takes one to know one."

I miss you, Sherlock thinks miserably.  It's like an ache in my lungs that won't stop.  Every time I breathe, you're not there.  I knew it would be awful, but not this kind of awful.  I miss you so much I can't stand it and I haven't even been conscious for two hours. 

This is insupportable.

I'll be here forever, and I can't do it, John.  I can't.  Me and a mirror.  That means me and...unadulterated me.  It's what I always hated most, flung in my face daily.  Total isolation.

I can't.

"You can do this," John says, ducking his head down encouragingly in that sideways manner he has.  "I believe in Sherlock Holmes.  Remember?  That's exactly what I said, and I...god help us, you're still a wreck from the drugs, aren't you, love?  I'm coming for you.  Now, get some rest." 

When Sherlock pulls the covers over himself, a little after ten, he resolutely sinks into the cellar of his palace, determined that if he dreams, he will dream about John's face when he agreed to come to Baker Street for coffee the first time--before overwhelming, devastating love ruined the pair of them in a single blow.

 

 

Sherlock remains entirely unmolested the following morning, and he rolls out of the bed with a far clearer mind than the night previous. 

He goes about brushing his teeth and taking a piss and then checks the dumbwaiter at 9:17 am.  It contains two already shelled and salted hardboiled eggs, and orange juice, alongside a paper cup of fairly expensive tea.  Beside the breakfast he finds a pair of clean pants, a new shampoo pack, and another plastic travel square (this one of moisturizer).

"Fuck you very much," Sherlock growls to the vent before mechanically eating one egg and binning the other.  He drinks the juice out of a vague fear of scurvy developing and stands in the kitchen sipping tepid Darjeeling.

The detective spends ten minutes refusing to accept the clean undergarments before giving in.  Sherlock changes in the bedroom (for lack of a better word--the room with a bed in it, at least) and without the slightest remorse bins the other pair rather than sending them back in the dumbwaiter.

He has principles, even if he is to be kept in a fucking zoo.  One of them is never allowing motherfucking Jim to touch his pants. 

Ever again.

For as long as I can manage it, Sherlock morbidly corrects himself.

"What's the plan?" John asks when Sherlock returns to his tea in the tragically farcical kitchen.  He's drinking a cup of coffee out of his RAMC mug, smiling affectionately, wearing a button-down with a maroon cardigan.  He looks like the deadlier version of a physics professor.

I like that you think a plan is possible.  But then, you're an idiot.

"Well, we have to do something or we'll go mental."

I'll go mental, you mean.

"Sherlock," John warns.

Sherlock thus decides to declare war on the floor to ceiling mirror in the largest room. 

When Sherlock retires for the night, this time at 12:37 am, he is covered in bruises from his wrists to his shoulders from throwing himself at the taunting glass.  It was exercise, if nothing more.  But now he is profoundly sore from the somewhat frenzied effort, and with nothing to show for his labour despite seeking scientifically weak points in the reflective plane.  His fists didn't work.  His bare feet didn't work.  His miniature toothbrush didn't work.

Nothing worked, and Sherlock wants to scream.

"Scream if you want to," John reminds him, looking up from the corner where he's reading a novel.

No way in hell am I giving Jim the satisfaction, Sherlock snaps to himself.  Early days, John.  Early days.

"Where do you think we are?" John asks, changing the subject.

This topic does puzzle Sherlock.  But he has pieced the evidence into an excruciatingly partial answer like a quilt not yet assembled.

A converted warehouse or industrial space, possibly an abandoned building, he explains.  Nowhere anyone else can hear me through vents, presumably.  Nowhere anyone would notice the food delivery or the locked doors.  My guess is an untenanted structure, with only a portion in use, so as to better hide me from the outside world. 

"You never guess," John quips.

No, Sherlock owns, rubbing at his throbbing arms.  He avoided the side with the bullet scratch, but now everything aches equally.

"Yes, you do."

No, I--

"Eat something," John urges more softly.  "C'mon.  It can't hurt.  You'll feel better after."

Sherlock obeys himself numbly.  He already tossed lunch (a fresh coronation chicken salad sandwich) scornfully into the trash, and manages only a few bites of dinner (lamb stew with Irish soda bread and a cup of porter) before his shaking arms demand he retire.

"You'll think of something else tomorrow," John whispers.  He is lying on Sherlock's bed (no, not my bed, shut up, shut up, not my bed, my bed is in Baker Street) with his knees drawn up, wearing only boxers and an undershirt now.  "Don't hurt yourself like that again, Sherlock, please?  I hate watching it."

You aren't watching it, Sherlock reminds him grimly.  You're a creation of my subconscious made manifest due to the visually pronounced nature of the method of loci I employ.  I think you might be my sense of self-preservation, though it's possible you're my superego--no, then again, you're probably my conscience.  Or my soul.  Something poetic and stupid, a construction invented by moralists who fancy themselves prophets, a fallacious pit stop listed on the guidebook of the human condition.  You're chemicals and enzymes.  You're not real.

"But I love you anyhow."

That's the worst of it, Sherlock thinks, swallowing.  If you were real, I'm beginning to think that would actually be true.  

If his eyes are watering dangerously, well, it's just the bruising, isn't it, and Sherlock falls exhaustedly to sleep.

 

 

Sherlock spends the third day trying to reach the vents.  He earns more bruises, rips his towel in shreds and forms a rope despite having only an electric shaver, and manages to learn that there are seemingly spray attachments next to the cameras.  What these are for remains anyone's guess.

Sherlock thinks he can guess, but refrains out of sheer self-preservation.

"You had better fucking make today up to me," he says snidely to a vent as he slides back down his makeshift towel-rope to the bed.  "Or no more showers for a week."

When dinner arrives (veal cutlet with pasta pomodoro), it's accompanied by a new towel and two pills Sherlock instantly recognizes are morphine.  His mouth falls open. 

He shuts it again.

For the bruising?

No.  Surely not.

Still.

It must be.

For the...?

No.

Oh, god no.  Please no.

Nevertheless...

When he looks back on it, the most aggravating part is that he didn't even have control over his own hand as it guided the two beautiful pills to his mouth and washed them down with a good Valpolicella.

"What the bloody fucking fuck did you just do?" John demands in horror.  "Is this what you wouldn't tell me before?  Is bargaining yourself for drugs some kind of habit with--"

He's striding toward Sherlock with an incensed cast to his small features, but then he isn't real, maybe none of this is real, soon the morphine will tell Sherlock so, will wash new ink over all the ugly, ugly words of this story, and thus everything is fine after all.

 

 

 

Following a really cracking night's sleep thanks to the morphine, Sherlock spends the fourth day working on the table and the drinking fountain and the digital clock and the flat-screen telly.  He makes every effort he can to dismantle them using a toothbrush and oiling the screws with hand lotion before prying at them.

It doesn't work.

Dinner (pad Thai with a glass of sparkling something or other, Sherlock could never quite tell a great prosecco from a middling cava) is accompanied by morphine again.

Sherlock takes it.  The water is so, so cold, and the drugs are so sweet that he almost, for a single moment, doesn't want to jump off a rooftop.

"Don't think I don't know what you're up to," he tells the vent icily as he heads for his (no, Jim's, I'm his prisoner) room.

"You can't do this," John says gravely.  He's sitting cross-legged at the end of the bed in his dressing gown.  His kind face is pinched at its every corner.  "Not the grand arc of the thing, I mean, you're a bit under the weather, everyone gets that, of course you can do that, losing it, but the narcotics? Narcotics?  Sherlock.  You fucking cannot do this to me.  This of all things.  God, Sherlock, you...I know.  I know.  Trust me, please, I know.  Can't you try?"

I am trying, Sherlock thinks furiously. 

"No, you're letting him alter your brain chemistry, and that when you can fathom perfectly well--"

I don't need a fucking invisible friend to judge my choices while I survive being a POW, thank you very much.

"But you're going to survive?"

Yes.

"Will the morphine help with that, y'know, goal, do you think?"

Stop badgering me! Sherlock cries in his mind.

"I'm not actually here, Sherlock!" John shouts in return, which effectively settles the argument.

Apart from the progress he has made in breaking out and forming weapons (none) and the salient points of this conversation, Sherlock deletes everything that happened on the fourth day.  It takes him twenty minutes.

But when he has managed the task, he no longer feels like sobbing.

 

 

On the fifth day, Sherlock obsessively tidies the prison with his towel and when dinner arrives (fried rice with beef and broccoli and a Tsingtao), he bins the morphine and most of the meal, having foregone breakfast and luncheon.  Before sleeping, he deletes everything save for binning the morphine.

On the sixth day, Sherlock starts an imaginary chess match with his brother.  It can't hurt, he reasons, might even help to pass the time.  He bins the morphine and after dinner (steak with salad and a glass of cabernet), he deletes everything save for chucking the drugs and the details of the chess match.

On the seventh day, he figures it out (how could I possibly have been so slow?) and has a conversation with the vent in the mirror room.

"You want me to want you to hurt me," Sherlock announces at 4:23 in the afternoon, two minutes after his epiphany.  He laughs, clapping his hands.  "Oh, brilliant, that's cracking.  Best idea yet.  Really, my cap is off.  You want me to be so desperate for sensation--and you provide all the sensation, don't think I haven't noticed--that I'll beg for it.  You want me so debilitated that I crawl to you and plead for floggings and brandings and long for you to rip my teeth out just so I can feel something.  Well, fuck you."

The telly, predictably, says nothing.  So Sherlock pivots dramatically to face another vent, still high on his single success thus far.

"It will never happen," he exults.  "You could keep me here for decades and I'll never want your knife playing over my back.  I'll never need you for that.  I'll never ask you to ruin me.  I'll never long for your attention, not in any capacity.  You can have me, just this tiny fraction of me, this is the shell, Jim, this is the fucking laptop's case, do you understand, just the husk, but fucking mark my fucking words, Jim, I will never want you, not for anything, not for as long as I live.  Do you know why?"

The flat screen remains entirely lifeless.

"I did it all for him," Sherlock hisses venomously.  "I am here because of him.  You don't even enter into the picture.  You're nothing.  A shadow cast by a closet door, a monster under the bed.  You're irrelevant to me.  How does that feel?"

To his shock and horror--but not inconsiderable satisfaction--this is the moment that the telly springs to life behind him, and Sherlock whirls to meet Jim Moriarty's wicked smirk face to face as the hissing of the electronics coming to life fades like a disinterested serpent.

 

 

 

  

The hunger strike Sherlock embarks on is entirely accidental in nature.

After screaming himself hoarse on the seventh day, Sherlock walks very calmly into the bedroom and removes the mattress from the bed frame, dragging it and the sheets and pillows and duvet into the long room.  He sets everything as close to the glass as he can and then curls on his side with his knees drawn up to watch.

This continues, with brief breaks for the loo and to drink water, for five days.

Three times daily, he throws away a meal.  I'll eat the next one, he thinks.  I'm not hungry, he thinks, and truthfully, and the John who was once in his head is silent, because the John across the street is haggard and grey-faced.  Sometimes John is alone in the flat, and Sherlock cannot see him.  Sometimes John is out searching for Sherlock in the wrong places.  Sometimes he is probably at the Yard.  Sometimes Sherlock sees John at the window.  Sherlock catches glimpses of Lestrade, Donovan, Mycroft, Bradstreet, Molly, Anderson, Mrs. Hudson, Shinwell; Baker Street seems to have been appointed a headquarters of sorts. 

Everyone is weary.  Everyone is sad.  Everyone is angry.

Sherlock watches, numb.

The weather shifts.  It rains on the ninth consecutive day of his captivity, two days since the mirror became a window, and Mycroft arrives and departs with his brolly unfurled, looking pinched and pale. 

The rain dries, and Shinwell appears with bags of Chinese takeaway.  Sherlock wonders whether John eats it.  He hopes John isn't too hungry or too cold or too bereft.  Sherlock imagines John eating, imagines him satisfied, and falls asleep when the sun sets with a faint smile on his face.

Sherlock awakens with the dawn sometimes, and at other times in the night, and at other times in the early afternoon.  Sherlock watches.  He ventures into the kitchen and investigates the dumbwaiter periodically.  When there is wine, he drinks it, and when there is morphine, he takes it with water.  He bins fried chicken, Greek salad, cheese ravioli, eggs benedict, crepes with berry compote, udon soup.

When the lights go out in the other buildings, the light in Sherlock's bedroom remains on whether John is at Baker Street or out searching.  John never turns it off.  Sherlock wonders why.  If John is absent, it glows like a beacon.  If John is present, his short, sturdy silhouette paces up and down, up and down, before collapsing on the bed.

Sherlock watches.

He showers when he begins to smell himself, and shaves when his face itches.

He doesn't care about any of it.

Sherlock watches as John slowly grows frantic with worry.  He can see it in jerky head movements and palms pressed together before his mouth, the way Sherlock always used to do.  If it would make John feel better, Sherlock would trade his life, die in earnest, but that wouldn't make John feel better, nothing will make John feel better, and Sherlock cannot stand it.

"I'm right here in front of you," he whispers once, and the words hurt him so badly that he decides never to say them or anything else ever again.

On the twelfth consecutive day of his captivity, Sherlock has accidentally failed to eat for five days, and the telly comes on.  Jim's voice rings out in the long room.

"Sherlock, my dove, you really do need to eat something," Jim sings.  "This is ridiculous.  I've been watching you lie curled up on a mattress for ages now, and it's dull.  Show a little pluck, honey.  Where's that fuck you spirit I liked so much?"

Answering would be tedious in the extreme, so Sherlock merely pulls the duvet tighter and watches shadows crossing his 221B sitting room.

"Sherlock," Jim says more sternly.  "You're going to answer Daddy, he's had enough now."

Under normal circumstances this phrasing would disgust Sherlock, but now he barely registers it.

"There are consequences for defying me, precious, and trust me, you are not going to like a single one of them.  You are really begging for a little discipline here."

Flipping the bird to the room sounds entertaining and appropriate, but Sherlock decides that a stationary lump of bedclothes is rather more eloquent and does nothing.

"Sherlock," Jim hisses, "you're not actually playing fair any longer, are you?  If I have to come in there and strap you down and force feed you, I will, but I think you'd rather eat the fucking chicken soup I just sent you and talk to me."

A grim smile creeps onto Sherlock's averted face.  He hadn't thought of it before, but this is actually leverage.  Sherlock is faint much of the time now, walking is becoming incredibly difficult, and his head aches, and his joints burn, and his eyes are sore with trying to keep them dry.  But his body is still his for the moment, and if barely moving and not talking to Jim and not eating get Sherlock a little of his own back, well it's all just transport, isn't it?  The John who was in his head might have objected to this gambit, but that John is gone.

There is only real John, who hasn't been eating much either, Sherlock can tell.  And Sherlock, who is wasting away.

And Jim, who is now bored.

Jim hates being bored.

"Sherlock, if you don't fucking walk into that kitchen and eat, I will punish you in ways I promise you haven't thought of yet."

Sherlock merely snugs further into his pillow, strangely happy despite his weakened, shivery state.

The darkness in the long room reverses suddenly, a blaze of light shining, and Sherlock bites back a hurt sound as his eyes flinch shut.  The mirror is a mirror again.  The lights are painful after so long in darkness.  Jim took Baker Street away. 

Fine, Sherlock thinks, closing his eyes.  Now perhaps the other John will come back.

Next there is a strange hissing sound. 

Sherlock rolls creakily onto his back to stare at the vents.  They are the source of the noise, like a leak in a tyre, and Sherlock at the first sickly whiff of airborne sedative finds that his earlier suspicions were confirmed: if Jim or Moran are coming in or out, Sherlock is to be completely at their mercy when the outer door is open.  It's nothing he had not anticipated, but the fact he has actually thwarted Jim's designs in however small a fashion paints a smile on his face as oblivion beckons.

Do your fucking worst, he thinks, and then darkness swallows him down into the deep. 

 

 

  

Sherlock wakens only very slowly.  He is dreaming that he is with John.  He recalls vaguely that he was drugged and is probably now strapped to a rack or hooked up to a feeding tube like a baby bird, but for the moment, John's voice is still gentle and insistent and he can feel the ghosts of John's steady touches like the handprints children paint with their fingers.  So the John in my head does come back when the mirror is here.  Lovely mirror.  Don't take it away again.  Sounds blanket him, faintly soothing but nevertheless urgent.  They own a harsh quality like the comfort of warm wool.  Sherlock has no desire to wake up from this, ever again, so he makes no effort to do so.

"...trying for me.  Please?  Come on.  Sherlock, I really need you to open your eyes.  Christ, shit, shit, what has this sick fucker done to you.  Sherlock.  Love, talk to me.  Now."

This, Sherlock thinks, is how I choose to spend the rest of my life.  He is splayed on his mattress still, eyes resolutely closed.  A phantom hand smoothes down his cheek and another is propping up the nape of his neck.  The latter tightens.

"It's going to go like this," the voice in Sherlock's head murmurs.  "You're going to come round any second and look at me and we will fix you.  You will tell me what this fucking evil prick did, and god, Sherlock, please just say something.  Do something.  Non-responsive with your blood pressure this low is just not on.  You're barely breathing and your lips are fucking blue.  Do not fuck with me like this, Sherlock Holmes.  I'm really not in the mood right now, I've had a shite twelve days."

Stay asleep, Sherlock thinks desperately, his eyes watering.  Stay asleep and starving and delirious forever.

"No, no, no.  Jesus, what is this?"  Thin pressure that feels like John's imaginary lips brushes his forehead.  "Why in bloody hell are you fighting me, you brainless fucking ponce?  What did he do to you?  Wake up.  This instant.  Your vitals are fucking low as fuck, Sherlock, wake up for me."

Sherlock can imagine--his head is swimming and he can't quite feel his extremities.

"Right, if you're nervous I'm going to kill you for knocking me cold and doing a runner, yes, hell yes I was planning to kill you, but you're half dead already.  And Shinwell told me why...Shinwell told me everything.  Yeah?  I chinned him, knocked his nose off kilter.  He said it was a badge of honour.  Or something like that.  Something much...wordier."  The voice is growing more strained.  "Sherlock, please.  I want you to do this one single thing for me, and that's wake up.  I don't care what it takes.  I need you."

Wincing in despair, Sherlock covers his eyes with his hands.  One of his forearms brushes something...solid.  Not unlike an arm.

"God, there you are, thank you, thank god, now just look at me.  Please.  It's me.  It's John."

"I know who it is," Sherlock rasps.  "You're not here.  I made you up."

"Did you really," the voice says, and it's thick with relief.  "Neat trick, that, you should try it at parties.  Do you have great pink bunnies for mates too?  God, I missed you, I was going spare, Sherlock, absolutely fucking mental, I couldn't stop imagining--never mind.  Just keep talking to me.  Seriously?  Nothing?  All right, fine.  Deep breaths.  Good, better.  Now, look at me before I slap you senseless."

Half out of sheer frustration, Sherlock removes his hands and opens his eyes.  Spots swim before him, great swaths of technicolour.  He blinks.  Objects come into focus, but not many--white walls, vents, a mirror, a flat screen, the mattress.

John.

John half-smiling, looking wrecked and rumpled and only very recently drugged himself, wearing the same white shirt and cotton trousers Sherlock is clad in, only in his own proper size.

"Hello, love," John says softly.  "I tried to find you quicker.  I'm so sorry."

It takes a full three seconds for Sherlock to remember how to scream.

 

"This can't be happening," Sherlock breathes as soon as the scream exhausts itself.

John, who merely flinched gamely at Sherlock's half-strangled reaction to his presence, emits a low sigh.  Other than the horrible blank terrifying clothing his own has been replaced with, the doctor looks no different than he did through the two-way mirror into Baker Street, wan and disheveled and fraying with care, so at least Jim doesn't seem to have harmed him.

Much. 

Yet. 

Still.  Enough.  Other than the drugs and the kidnap and...

"Oh please, god no," Sherlock chants softly.  His eyes fall shut.  When did Jim replace his eyelids with Kevlar?  Was that the only surgery so far?  The detective can't be sure, but raising his lashes has never been this difficult, not even following days and nights without sleep, long twilights marked by cups of cooling coffee and scattered case files and web searches and the hum of bad government lighting at New Scotland Yard.  His corneas burn and scratch.  Everything is a muddle when Sherlock forces his lids open a slit, white walls spinning and the white room elongating in a vertigo effect, the whites of John's eyes and the flash of his teeth as he opens his mouth in rapt concern.  "God, no."

"Nice to see you too," John deadpans.  He lowers Sherlock's head gently back to the pillow, and Sherlock breaks out in a cold sweat as the world tilts wildly.  Fingertips are taking his pulse at the throat.  "Sherlock, breathe deep for me.  Come on, sweetheart.  Slowly." 

Sherlock tries.

Shallow panting appears to be my only option at the moment.

"What the hell did he do to you?  Have you been drugged all this while?  Is that it?"

"You're not here," Sherlock groans.  His empty stomach lurches.  "You're back at Baker Street with the light in my bedroom shining all night through.  You're not here, you can't be here, god no."

"I did leave your light on."  John's voice is tight with restrained anger.  "I...how did you know?  Did he tell you?  I didn't...I'm not sure why I did that.  You left it on when you drugged me, you comprehensive son of a bitch, and something...I couldn't stand the idea that you'd not be back to switch it off again.  The thought of turning it off made me ill.  So I left it alone.  The others never said a word about it, but they noticed all right.  Picturing you escaping, you coming home, maybe hurt or confused or maybe needing me, and finding all the lights dimmed...I couldn't do it."

Sherlock feels his face wrenching into a grimace.  He had wondered about the light.  This John knows about the light, and his explanation is both simple and heartbreaking, which can only mean that Sherlock is not hallucinating.  John Watson is truly here, in the bare prison, wearing snowy cotton and measuring Sherlock's frantically pounding heartbeats. 

It's devastating. 

"All right, settle down, Sherlock, just keep breathing.  Christ, but you're a wreck, your skin is like paper and you could ship all the tea in China with the bloody bags under your eyes.  Dehydration, malnutrition, what, drugs, sensory deprivation, what else?  Tell me.  How did he hurt you?  Tell me everything." 

"There's not much to tell."

"You've been alone all this while, then?"

"No, not precisely."

"I don't understand." 

"You should have that put on a t-shirt," Sherlock snaps, suddenly outraged at the wretched unfairness of all he has been through, all for John (well, a little bit for Sherlock,) but after John's arrival tackling Abernetty it became all, all, everything for John, and all in vain.

Not even dying was enough to save him.

"You've had visitors, then?"

"No.  And yes."

"I still don't understand."

"And there's the back of the shirt."

"Don't be a prick, Sherlock, not when you're barely conscious and I require some fucking information.  Do you know where we are?"

Sherlock positively howls with laughter. 

Tears are running down his cheeks seconds later, though he doesn't think he's crying.  John, making short, sweet hushing sounds, half-lifts him and now Sherlock is folded in his friend's lap, shaking with hysterical amusement because yes, he absolutely does know where they are.  His bones feel as if they're about to rattle their way clean out of his skin, perhaps snap like twigs with the force of the miserable laughter.  This doesn't sound like any noise he's ever produced in the past, more a high rasping scrape against his vocal cords than anything resembling mirth, as if someone had taken a belt sander to his chest and throat.  There are hands in his curls, fingers wiping away the tracks of saline from his face.

"Yes," Sherlock gasps when he can breathe.  "Yep, I know where we are.  That was rather the point of the place."

"I don't understand, and if you make one more crack about t-shirts--"

"Is the mirror still a mirror, then?"

"Yeah," John says slowly.  "But..."

"Ye of little faith.  I've not gone completely mad quite yet, it's a two-way."

"Oh."  John's voice sharpens with intent.  "All right, more on that after we get you sorted.  Do you know how long you've been missing?"

"Twelve days, assuming we didn't both lose a day to the last round of sedatives.  I'm assuming he drugged you too."

"Yeah, I was on my way to the Yard when a bloke came out of nowhere with a syringe.  Woke up on the box spring in the other room with this kit on and a whopping headache."

Sherlock imagines Jim Moriarty touching John Watson's unconscious form and prays with all his heart that God is capable of small mercies, and that it was thus Moran instead.

"Are you--"

"I'm fine, unlike you," John answers, exasperated.  "This fucker is a dead man, Christ, Sherlock, I can't tell you how fucking terrified I was, and now I find you and you're a skeleton.  Has he been feeding you?"

"Ah.  Well," Sherlock coughs, face heating with shame.  "Come to mention it, he, um, has.  Now you bring up the subject, I seem to have lost my appetite in light of circumstances.  And if I'm reasoning correctly, it's probably my fault you're here.  He said if I didn't eat, I'd regret it.  No, he said he'd punish me in ways I hadn't thought of yet.  Yes, that was it.  And wonder of wonders, he was correct.  I...did not think of this.  This is worse than anything I had anticipated.  This is...the limit.  Beyond cruel.  I'd have died first.  I tried.  And since we're on the subject, if I had known he meant to bring you here to snap me out of it, I'd have eaten, I swear to God I would have done, on my life I would have."

"This was, what?  A hunger strike?"  John's voice is shockingly gentle.  Sherlock brushes the back of his wrist over his eyes to scrape away the last of the hateful moisture.

"Not a deliberate one, I assure you."

"Get lost in the mind palace?"

"Nothing of the kind.  That would have been a comparative picnic.  God, I'm so sorry."  Sherlock finally manages to force his eyes wide, looking up, and John's practically silhouetted, his haggard face wreathed in shadow.  "He promised, John, he promised not to touch you, he swore it to me."

A dry chuckle shivers through John's slight frame.  I'm not the only one who's lost half a stone, Sherlock thinks.  "Yes, well, cheers for the thought, and for the optimism, but maybe next time we decide not to credit verbal agreements from murderous psychopaths, eh?"

"It was all I had left," Sherlock whispers, nuzzling his brow against John's compact thigh.  "You were going to die."

"Shinwell told me," John husks, tracing Sherlock's face with steady fingers.  "And now I'm going to kill you."

"He told you everything, he did as I instructed?"

"He said I was the fifth pip."  John clears his throat.  "He also said a lot of...other things.  There were Bible verses, or I think there were, before I punched him in the face.  That surprised me for a tick, but you recall that ridiculous diamond-studded Jesus necklace he sports, so I guess it makes sense.  There were also tears, and something about Harry Potter dying to save the wizarding world, I wasn't really listening by that time, and I want you to know that you have the single most absurd drug dealer in the history of, dunno, forever.  Also, I never wanted this for you, never, do you fucking understand me?  But thank you.  I know what you felt like, and...thank you.  I'm so angry I can barely see straight, but for god's sake don't suppose I don't find you the most unselfish, noble twat alive."

"I'm a total failure.  You're here."

"You're not a--"

"I'm sorry you're here.  God, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." 

"Sherlock--"

"No wonder you want to kill me, when it was all for nothing in the end."

"I need you to calm down, all right?  My death threats are harmless.  Well.  When directed at you, they are, but on the other hand--"

"I'm sorry, please believe me, I...  Wait, I can fix this," Sherlock gasps, lurching out of John's lap.  "Jim!"

"What, he's here?" the soldier demands, shifting instantly to a defensive crouch even as he grips Sherlock by the arm.  "Is that what you meant?"

Sherlock shakes him off impatiently, stumbling to his feet.  When he falls like a wet colt, he crawls towards the screen, nauseous and dizzy, shouting, "Jim!  Jim, we need to talk.  Man to man.  Now."

"Oh my god," John says faintly, his mouth twisting sideways in disgust as he realizes what the screen is used for.  The detective can hardly blame him.

"Jim!" Sherlock yells.  He drags himself up, knocking against the screen with a shaking hand.  "Send me something in the dumbwaiter.  Is there something there already?  I'll eat it, I swear to you, only let him go.  I'll eat anything you like, you can fucking feed me yourself for all I care, you sick sod, you win.  I'll do it.  Feed me like a fucking baby bird, just let him--"

Strong arms wind around his shoulders a second later, and the sound of his own begging grows fainter in his ears.  When Sherlock is aware that he can barely stay upright, and that he is pinned against John, both men face to face on their knees, he allows himself to collapse a bit more fully against the doctor.  Black spots swim in front of his corneas, darting hither and thither like flies swarming a corpse.  Sherlock shudders, remembering the body of a drug dealer he discovered in an abandoned skip once years ago, the way when the lid opened the carrion flies buzzed and spiraled, the way the smell was thick enough to clog his nose and grease his skin, the way he hadn't got the sickening aroma out of his pores for days.

All right, I have you, he thinks John is saying, and then someone is lifting him, murmuring nonsense about that's better, that's better now when nothing is better or could ever be better now that Sherlock has dragged John into hell with him.  Nothing will ever be better again, even though Sherlock is floating away into the glacial whiteness of a blinding crystalline cloud. 

 

 

 

When Sherlock awakens, the taste of broth lingers in his sore throat, and the ghostly handprints of palms against his neck and jaw.  Almost certain it was Jim, he gags once, choking on the spasm, but "Oi, none of that, please," John advises, and Sherlock goes limp again, drifting.  He is propped up in bed--the bed with the frame, not the mattress before the window screen revealing Baker Street like some untouchable dream, and his back is supported by soft pillows.  Clearly John must have been rearranging their new domicile.  The white clothes and white sheets are rough against the sleuth's oversensitive skin, and his body, unable or unwilling to regulate his temperature properly, feels feverish.

"Good lad.  Let's try this again."

Paper is set against his lip, and Sherlock recalls he has promised Jim to eat.  Maybe if he sips the broth John holds--lukewarm, smells like beef tea, which isn't entirely unpleasant--John will go away and be safe and Sherlock will stay here to be tortured and he'll not have entirely cocked up the life of the man he loves so much that he tried to abandon him entirely.

"Smashing.  Now, I suspect you're past due for these."

Sherlock cracks an eye.  John holds a pair of morphine pills, kneeling casually on the duvet with the broth in his other hand.  His blue eyes are crinkled in resignation, but a strong undercurrent of roiling rage flows beneath the placid surface.  John's pupils are deep sea caverns--gentle ripples above, monsters lurking in the darkness below.

"Come on, take them."

The sleuth lies immobile, shocked and vaguely frightened of whatever sort of test this is.

"I'm not angry."

As this is patently untrue, Sherlock scowls in disbelief.

"This isn't your fault."

Quirking a brow, Sherlock attempts to convey what the fuck have you been smoking, you idiot without opening his mouth, as he feels decidedly queasy.

"Right, let's get one thing straight here," John growls.  "Locking a genius drug addict up in a perfectly featureless room with nothing but solitude and morphine for company would be an inhuman enough plan with a mirror as a prop, let alone with the alternative to that mirror, which I saw when it switched back to a window half an hour ago.  We're across the street from two two one B, and despite the fact you lost your last marble and thought I'd be better off if you turned yourself in--"

"You would have died," Sherlock insists in a harsh, almost toneless rasp.  "What alternative would you have suggested?  I resurrect you?"

"--The point stands that you did not torment yourself for years and then imprison yourself in a Sartre-worthy version of existential hell.  I am neither surprised you took the morphine nor angry at you for taking the morphine.  I am going to rip Jim Moriarty's head from his shoulders at the next opportunity, and I am going to give you these pills because you are currently starving to death and if you go into mild withdrawal symptoms from depriving yourself even of this low dose, all the nutrition I am attempting to get down your neck is going to come back up again.  Take.  The pills.  Sherlock Holmes.  We will solve this problem when he's dead.  One step at a time."

Taking the pills, Sherlock drops them in his mouth and allows John to tip the cup against his lips again.  Things are about to get very bad, he knows, but for now there is morphine and there is the warm broth sloshing in his gapingly hungry belly and there is John, the white shirt making his fine blond hairs look richer and the neat, hard curve of his lips the most fascinating thing Sherlock has ever seen. 

This is the look he wore in troop movements and battle convoys, Sherlock knows, and though there were shades of the expression over the course of the past few days, I am coming for you dropping calmly from the doctor's lips as if it weren't the most impossible promise in the world, now here John is and he smells of sandstorms and gun oil and home.

"Shinwell seems to have taken up residence at Baker Street since I...left," he says calmly.  He reaches for something further down on the coverlet Sherlock hadn't noticed and lifts a packet of biscuits.  "Ready for solids yet?  Right, sip some more of this, we'll get there in the end.  Yep, I can't say as I'm fussed over his taking over my armchair, what with Mrs. Hudson hidden away and no one to mind the property if one of the homeless network turns up there with news.  I...Jesus, Sherlock.  We've been looking round the clock for you for twelve bloody days and here you were under my nose.  I almost feel like I ought to have known, somehow.  Should have...felt you or something.  Heard you going quietly mental over here.  Please forgive me."

"Forgive you for not what, having some sort of magical extrasensory bond with me?  Did you really just say that?  Right, sorry, I forget sometimes you're the mad one," Sherlock observes thinly.

John shrugs, smiling.  "I know it doesn't make any sense, but people in high-stress situations like this often indulge in daft episodes of magical thinking.  It's love, not logic.  Look at me, with the leaving your bedroom light on, and...you don't know what it was like."

"Yes, I do."

John's lips press in and out, and he licks them after barking a short huff of bitter amusement.  "The mirror is the exception rather than the rule, then?  He made you watch me going steadily barmy.  Fucking pervert."

"Perverts everywhere are offended by that comparison."

"Truer words, truer words."

"I didn't have audio," Sherlock admits.  "What's been happening?"

John sighs, rubbing at his jaw.  "Nothing useful.  You went off the grid when you went out the back of the Tesco.  Mycroft managed to trace the vehicle you were placed in via some pretty snappy triangulation, but it was dumped.  They seem to have drove you in circles, went into a car park, switched transportation, and poof.  You vanished.  I'm...I'll never forget what that felt like.  Christ.  So we've been following every lead possible, but Moran and Moriarty both seem to have gone deep underground.  I was confused about that, but now I see the telly screen and the dumbwaiter, it makes perfect sense.  They could be sending anyone to feed you via that thing and it would only look like someone carrying a takeaway bag down Baker Street."

"I was an idiot not to have noticed how quickly it was repaired," Sherlock says, willing John to make sense and hate him already.

"You were a genius who didn't think glass going up in the heart of Westminster dodgy because it wasn't dodgy."

"The explosion was for a reason, I should have seen that.  It's still my fault."

"Stop it," John says in a quietly steely tone.  "Right buggering now."

Sherlock shakes his head, but obeys anyway.  "Lestrade was working with you too, and Shinwell.  Anything useful?"

"Oh, sure, some bleeding ace work done by everyone involved indicating that you had disappeared into fucking thin air and might not even still be in London.  If I hadn't been terrified of botching the search for you, I'd have been pretty tempted to just get arseholed every night, won't say I didn't share a nightcap with Bradstreet once or twice, but that was when I was ready to put my head through a wall.  If we had known there was an electronic feed between their location and this one..."  He shrugs.  "There was no end of the trail to lead back to them.  Now there is, but we don't have a way of alerting Mycroft, I take it?"

Sherlock shakes his head minutely.  "It's not like they gave me a phone, or a carrier pigeon, or even a fucking pen, John."

"I get it, I get it."  John holds his hands up.  "There must be something we can do, though.  You've been here...Christ, a good long while.  What can you give me?"

Finishing the broth, Sherlock allows John to take the cup and place a thin biscuit in his fingers.  He eyes this dubiously, then settles for holding it.  But the morphine is working by this time and he thinks, with luck, he might manage the feat of consuming solids in a few more minutes, and the sooner the better, because maybe then Jim will be merciful.  Maybe, despite everything, Jim will keep his vow.  He must have absolutely loved the begging, after all.

"We have no weapons and no means of making them," the sleuth says wryly, organizing his scattered thoughts. 

"Your brain.  My fists."

"Fine, we have no weapons that are a match for a gun, not to mention an airborne sedative delivery system.  All the food is delivered in paper.  We have electricity and water, but no means of combining the two meaningfully.  We have a bed, a mattress, some linens, and toiletries delivered in travel packs.  Sometimes he gives me fresh pants.  Anything we could do to get him here physically is a good idea, at least it gives us a chance by means of proximity, but so far I've not done anything interesting enough to change the game other than by bringing you here.  The wine he sends is decent.  The electric shaver is surprisingly effective.  There's a steel table I tried to dismantle for an entire day and a two-way mirror I threw myself against until I was black and blue. That's it, that's the list."

"Your arm looks better," John says, neutrally cheerful.

"Oh."  Sherlock hasn't spared a thought for the bullet scrape in days.  "Yes.  How is your side?"

"Practically good as new."

Sherlock pops the biscuit into his mouth and, as a reward, investigates by rucking John's shirt up a little.  The navy has faded to purple, the sickly yellow to a healthier pink.  The detective allows himself a single brush of knuckles against John's skin before he retreats, landing with a defeated sigh against the pillows.

"I take it we're being watched?" John surmises almost teasingly.

"Think of us as glorified goldfish," Sherlock agrees, gesturing at one of the ceiling vents.

His eyes had fallen closed again, so Sherlock gasps in surprise when John kisses him, and then the detective makes a sound in his throat pitched high with anguished affection.  He cannot help but kiss back, warmth suffusing him in liquid light as if John just turned the sunshine on there in that horrible room, as if a bit of Regent's Park in July was recessed in the ceiling all along and John's lips whipped away the shade to free the trapped glow.

"Stop.  We can't," Sherlock pleads, voice raw.  He opens his eyes.  His hand is grasping John's nape as though the doctor were about to be swept physically away, body flying through an open hangar door on a jet aeroplane.  Sherlock doesn't know if he's clutching him closer or pushing the smaller man away until John's mouth brushes open-lipped against Sherlock's once more, and the doctor pulls back of his own volition.  "I want to, but he'll, oh god, what will he--"

"I know, love."  John settles back on the bed, running soothing fingers along Sherlock's temple.  His eyes, hard as granite previously in stony amusement, have gone liquid with affection.  "I just really, really needed that.  I needed that more than whatever the consequences will be, because we're in for a spot of bother no matter what we do.  You know that, right?  Our actions are largely irrelevant.  We could probably snog for a few hours and bung in a quick shag while we're at it and not do any worse in the long run.  So I needed that, because I was beginning to think I had lost you for good, and that was unbearable, but here you are alive if not well, and now I'll be your colleague again.  I won't get handsy unless you want me to.  Okay?"

Breathing too hard, Sherlock nods.  He studies the bright creature leaning over his pillow, a smile playing over the military man's kiss-dampened lips, and his heart is so grieved and so guilty and so full that he wonders if it might crack his ribs without Jim so much as laying a finger on either of them.